He broke a promise! He broke a promise!

I am extremely disappointed by the lack of discussion on my last entry. I was all ready to post another big long analysis too, this one about Roe v. Wade.

Before I continue, I need to link Seb's post on the Obama fist pound (or terrorist fist jab). Then I need to take a moment to sob bitterly...

Okay. All better.

I try never to use the word "hate" in reference to a person. I openly hate my anthropology class, getting up in the morning, driving at night, egg casserole, Microsoft, the Pentagon, Coca-Cola (the company, not the drink) and the fact that Manchester no longer bothers to have any full-time professors for my major, but I really make an effort not to let myself hate people.



Lou Dobbs regulalry challenges this effort (click that link for a treat). It's not just that he's a xenophobic loudmouth; there are plenty of those. It's the way he comes on CNN, a fairly well-respected news network, proclaiming himself as independent (which he is) and talking like his opinion is the only one that matters. I seriously do not understand why anyone agrees to go on his show - they get four words in edgewise, are belittled and told how wrong they are, and then it's on to something else. And it's all done on a news network from a non-partisan guy, giving the impression that somehow he's the straight talker, cutting through everyone else's bullshit.

I just get sick and tired of the complete lack of respect for anyone else and, what's worse in my opinion, a refusal to see any other side of an issue.

Last night's episode was no exception. This time, he set my blood boiling by talking about Obama's broken promise.

For those of you who somehow missed it, the big issue here is that Obama has chosen not to accept federal funding (and with it, spending limits) for his presidential election bid. No other presidential nominee has done this since the system was set up after Watergate, but it's really an issue because he previous indicated that he would accept federal funding, making this a flip-flop for him or, as Lou Dobbs said six times in his five minute mini-coverage (and unvariably in response to every other point his guests tried to bring up), a broken promise.

Let's get the facts on the table before we continue: Barack Obama did say on a questionnaire in 2007 that he would accept public financing for the general election campaign, adding that he would make aggressive efforts to come to an agreement with his opponent on the matter.

McCain and Obama have very different things to say about this. The McCain camp is hammering home that Obama broke a promise to the American people, while Obama's campaign points to the "aggressive" efforts part. The two campaigns have very different stories about how aggressive the efforts were.

I think, on a matter of fact, that McCain has this one right. I doubt Obama's people made very serious efforts to come to an agreement on public financing, what with his massive fundraising advantage and all. He did, in fact, go back on his word.

Who cares?

When I got my ear pierced my sophomore year of high school, I let my dad think I was agreeing to never get any other piercings or tattoos. I didn't expressly promise (I wanted to keep a window open), but I did allow him to pay for the piercing under that understanding. I ended up having to return the $15, but I didn't pay interest.

I broke a promise. But what should I have done? Gone my entire life not doing something I wanted to do because of a promise I made when I was fifteen? That's ridiculous. I probably shouldn't have agreed to those terms in the first place (though I didn't have a problem with them at the time), but the fact is I changed my mind.

Barack Obama changed his mind. And no, it wasn't the move that showed the most integrity: he's got his foot in his mouth, because he was acting like some champion of public financing before he found out just how much money he was capable of raising, and now he's completely reversing his stance and pretending that somehow his private donor system is better than the pubic one. And just to make his stance look better, he adds some false claims about McCain's donor base.

I was going to make some aside remark about how I wasn't just defending my candidate and how I have a record of playing devil's advocate and apologizing for opponents, but I think I just showed that.

Anyway, back to the broken promise. Get over it. The facts changed, Obama found he could get a LOT more money this way, and he changed his mind. It was a legal decision, an expected decision, and probably a decision most other people in his position would make. To reject all that private money would essentially be to handicap himself and voluntarily surrender one of the real advantages he has over John McCain.

Besides, George W. Bush promised to win the war in Iraq. I think we'll all be thrilled if he decides to break that promise and give up. Sometimes changing your mind isn't all bad.

P.S. - I promise that if John McCain wins the 2008 presidential election, I will be in another country by October 2009.

Moral issues: Gay marriage

I'm sure you're all aware of the California Supreme Court decision last month legalizing same-sex marriage in the state:

The 4-3 ruling declared that the state Constitution protects a fundamental
'right to marry' that extends equally to same-sex couples.

The majority opinion, by Chief Justice Ronald M. George, declared that any law that
discriminates on the basis of sexual orientation will from this point on be
constitutionally suspect in California in the same way as laws that discriminate
by race or gender, making the state's high court the first in the nation to
adopt such a stringent standard.

Those who read my blog regularly will recall that I was elated by this news, both as a gay rights activist and an amateur legal scholar. You see, it's times like these that you can rest assured that our system of checks and balances is working: it is the judicial branch's (sometimes unpopular) job to protect minority groups from the whim of the majority. When the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on interracial marriage sixty years ago, it was an incredibly unpopular decision (90% of Americans opposed interracial marriage), but one we now recognize as correct.

So what's so wrong with a ban on gay marriage (44 states have such laws)? I'd like to know what's right with them. Here are a couple of points:

Victimless crime, or society at risk?

An anonymous quote that I love goes like this: "A great law protects me from the government. The Bill of Rights has 10 GREAT laws. A good law protects me from you. Laws against murder, theft, assault and the like are good laws. A poor law attempts to protect me from myself."

A ban on gay marriage does not protect me from my government, nor does it protect me from you. Now, gay marriage opponents will argue that we're not trying to protect people from each other, we're trying to protect society from a fundamental change in the definition of marriage.

This is a load of crap.

I keep hearing quotes from anti-gay groups in California justifying the now illegal ban by saying marriage has always been an intersexual affair (tell that to Massachusetts, Canada, Belgium and the Netherlands). But since when is that a good argument for anything? If we could travel through time, I'm sure we'd hear people saying, "But it's always been illegal for Blacks to marry Whites," "But we've always had slaves," "But women have never been allowed to vote," and so forth.

Gay marriage will not hurt society or the "institution of marriage." If marriage can survive Vegas, I don't think a couple of dudes walking down the aisle is going to cause marriage certificates to spontaneously combust. And arguing that heterosexual marriages are cheapened by gay marriage is just plain stupid (unless the temptation suddenly becomes just too much). It's been legal is Massachusetts for years, and that state's still there. I guess God's been too busy to go all Sodom and Gomorrah on their ass, what with punishing the sin fest that is New Orleans and all.

Which brings me to my other point...

God said don't be queer.

I won't go into all the things that are wrong with this theology, because it's completely irrelevant. Fortunately for those of us who still like our communion wine (or those of us who prefer not to eat our savior), the United States is not a theocracy, much less a nation founded on the strictest principles of fundamentalist Christianity. In short, what God said (or didn't say) should have no bearing on a country who holds in the higest import the freedom of religion. It is essential to a free society that we base our law not on religious code alone, but on an extrareligious examination of the consequences of our laws and the freedoms we hold dear.

A Christian attitude

Finally, I have to say that I don't think it's particularly Christian of us to focus so much effort on trying to enforce a personal ethic. To quote one of my favorite Facebook groups that I'm not a member of, "Don't like gay marriage? Then don't get one and shut the fuck up." (Ironically, that's not a particularly friendly attitude either, which is why I'm not a member.)

Outlawing gay marriage will not reduce homosexuality, nor will it make the people who pass the law any better. In fact, it might just get them in trouble:

“Do not judge, or you too will be judged. For in the same way you judge others, you will be judged and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you (Matthew 7:12).”

In having such a law, we are only succeeding in denying a civil liberty to a group of people. But also, in vocally supporting such a law, we are turning gay and lesbian individuals away from Christianity. Sinners or not, don't we want to bring all people closer to God? Imagine what would happen if we were as hard on people about gluttony as we are about homosexuality - we'd have to cancel our ice cream socials!

Whatever God really thinks about homosexuality, we should be a little more concerned with following the examle of Jesus, and listening to what he said was important: Love God with all your heart, and love your neighbor as you love yourself.

Maybe we should save this whole condemning homosexuality thing until we can just get that part right.

Amending the Constitution?

The fight in California isn't over.

But the scope of the court's decision could be thrown into question by an
initiative already heading toward the November ballot. The initiative would
amend the state Constitution to prohibit same-sex unions.

I think this takes the cake as about the shittiest move ever. The Supreme Court ruled that we can't oppress a minority group, so let's change the document they base their rulings on (non sequiter: Dad, it's okay to end a sentence with a preposition). After all, it's the only way to bypass that stupid check on majority whim.

You know what? I support a Defense of Marriage amendment.

I think we should amend the United States Constitution to guarantee the right to marry to all people, gay and straight, everywhere in the country.

Comment away!

Read it.

Read this article.

It needs no commentary. Just read it.

Yes, I know it's 9 pages long.

Read it.

Here’s my two cents, so that makes $6,921.02

As I have previously mentioned on this blog, virtually all of my "keeping up with the news" these days takes place in the politics section of the New York Times, with the occasional trek over to technology if I feel like expanding my wish list (I maintain that this is one step above keeping my nose buried in entertainment news). I'm not really proud of this, because such practice can cause one to miss underplayed but potentially important stories like this one about the Islamic Revolutionary Guard taking aggressive actions against U.S. Naval vessels.

However, the fact remains that if I have a newsworthy expertise, it's politics, so I've decided to go ahead and throw in my thoughts regarding the current presidential race.

I'll start out by noting that I have been an Edwards supporter throughout this election. I mean, I like Kucinich, Gravel, Biden and possibly Richardson more, but as far as the front runners go Edwards is my man, mostly because of his focus on poverty and his commitment to nuclear disarmament - and it doesn't hurt that he polls better against leading Republicans than his rivals. That said, I have to say I'll just be happy to see a Democrat in the White House.

Edwards loyalties aside, I am very excited about Obama's momentum. His positions aren't anything special to a leftist like me, but I like the fire he brings to this campaign. Frankly, in my mind, the significance of experience and policy takes a back seat to the fact that Barack Obama isn't just running a campaign: he's leading a social movement. And he is bringing the sort of passion and hope to American politics that haven't been seen since Bobby Kennedy was shot.

Also, I'm a sucker for great speeches, and while he doesn't really stand out in debates, Obama is definitely the best orator out there on either side of the party line.

As far as the Republicans go, I could probably live with McCain or Giuliani. I used to be a big fan of McCain, back when he was a maverick senator and actually had a backbone, but I'm sick of the political games he's been playing these past few years trying to shore up party support. As for Giuliani, I think he's a shifty liar, but the fact that he's being a shifty liar while trying to secure a Republican nomination leaves me feeling like his White House politics will be more liberal than, say, Fred Thompson. I'm not going to shed any tears over the Republicans getting shafted here.

Who do I not want? That other star of Iowa, Mike Huckabee. The first time I saw him debate, I liked him. I thought he had a moderating tone and a sensible outlook. And that's what makes him so dangerous: he's silver tongued, but he's a more conservative, more religious George W. Bush. Also, he lists homosexuality with pedophilia and necrophilia, he thinks international terrorism is completely unrelated to our aggressive foreign policy, and he has Chuck Norris endorsing him.

Okay, so what's going to happen? Well, I'll tell you this: I saw Barack Obama giving his (amazing) victory speech in Iowa, and I said "That is the next president of the United States." He's shrugging off Clinton's challenges about electability by, well, winning. He's inspiring. As far as I can tell, he's honest. And I think that's what people are looking for right now after seven years of Dick Cheney being our Vice President.

I'm not calling this for Obama because 87,000 Iowans liked him. That's stupid. Iowa does not and should not represent the choice of the American people. But there's no denying that he's got a lot of momentum; with a clear Iowa victory under his belt, he's already pulling ahead in New Hampshire, where just two months ago he was trailing Clinton by twenty percent. And we haven't even gotten to the real liberal urbanites yet, who I'm thinking just might swing towards a Black guy from Chicago. Also, Obama is overwhelming popular among young people, which is pretty significant this time around because he actually got them to caucus. How much easier a time will he have getting them to punch a card and be on with their day?

So yes, I think Barack Obama is going to get the nomination, even though I'd like it to be Edwards, and I wouldn't cry about Clinton either. I'm not even going to make a guess about the Republicans. Huckabee got Iowa, but he's not getting New Hampshire. Romney is still popular in some parts too, though he's getting hit pretty hard by the other Republicans. McCain finished stronger than was really expected in Iowa, and he's got a good shot at winning New Hampshire. And even though he could make evangelicals leave the party, Giuliani can't be counted out either. I will say that Fred Thompson is going to prove too boring and Ron Paul too crazy. They'll drop out.

So let's say Obama makes it to the general election. Here's where it gets dangerous, because we all know no senator has gotten elected to president since JFK. They're often seen as not having the right experience, and the nature of Senate voting leaves them open to easy, if unfair, attacks. Clinton's already after him about his vote for the USA Patriot Act after he said he'd oppose it, and according to factcheck.org there's not a lot of deception in that accusation, except maybe that she did exactly the same thing. I can see it now: Romney (for example) will be running ads blasting Obama for something like voting $300,000 to studying the reproductive habits of fish off the coast of California or something, and very few people are going to realize he's probably talking about some budget that also gave $400 billion to the military and had the support of every Republican in the Senate. I am a bit worried about Governor Huckabee beating Senator Obama.

On the other hand, Obama is very good at shrugging off attacks, and I think his positive message is going to resonate with voters. So maybe he can do it. I'll believe it. That, after all, is the audacity of hope.

All things beyond my control

(Written yesterday and contains more interesting things than my smelly socks)

My room smells, and it is not a pleasant smell of daffodils or skunk (which I do appreciate). More like the kind of smell you'd expect from opening the 3-year-old gym bag you just found or sitting near the bathroom on a 10 hour bus ride in Mexico. I spent much of this morning following my nose around my room, attempting to locate its source. It's amazing how the human nose can pick up subtle smells from tiny particles, yet we never seem to be able to track down where they're coming from. I checked my shoes to see if they could be at fault (I do believe I walked through dried-out vomit on my way home last night), but they did not appear to be the focal point of the smell. I checked all corners of the room for dead animals. In the end, the culprit was clear: the socks I'd worn in the rain yesterday and put outside my window to dry had, due to what I can only assume was overnight rain, not done so, and the smell was wafting into the room. Mystery solved.

The socks weren't the only thing emitting a foul odor, though. Last night, as some of you might be aware, was a CNN Democratic presidential debate, starring Hillary Clinton, Barrack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson, Dennis Kucinich, Chris Dodd and the unforgettable Joe Biden. I'm right there with all the pundits who say Clinton basically carried the debate - after weeks of Obama and Edwards taking shots at her, she showed up well-rested and well-spoken and managed to rise above the squabble, though not without a little help from Wolf Blitzer, who seemed to be keen on interrupting and patronizing everyone but her.

Obama and Edwards were just outright embarrassing. Obama spent the evening tripping over himself and failing to answer questions, while Edwards came across as hot-headed and angry. Joe Biden was his usual hilarious self, repeatedly saying things like "Let's just cut the crap, America doesn't care about this stuff" and being the only candidate to answer yes or no questions with a yes or no.

In my mind, the shining stars were Kucinich (who I always love) and, actually, Bill Richardson, who I hadn't paid much attention to before but now am starting to like. Richardson won my heart by saying "give peace a chance" and saying human rights should get a higher priority than percieved national security. Meanwhile, Kucinich just agrees with me on every issue out there.

A couple of my favorite moments:

Hillary Clinton was asked whether it was true that her campaign was playing the gender card. She said no, absolutely not, and that she's running for president not because she's a woman but because she's the best qualified candidate. She went on to tell an allegory of a 95-year-old woman who shakes her hand and says "I was born before women could vote, and I want to live long enough to see a woman be president."

How is that not playing the race card?

And finally, my favorite:

Moderator: "Mr. Kucinich, you're the only person on stage that had the opportunity to vote on the Patriot Act and voted against it..."
Kucinich: "Because I read it."

And, since this post is regarding all things beyond my control, I want to express dismay that I'm being charged 920 pesos (90 dollars) to replace the lens mechanism on my camera.

Finally, I continue to be frustrated by some comments apparently not showing up. Try leaving some and see what happens.

Further thoughts regarding my arrest

Unlike my last piece discussing my arrest in Fort Wayne two months ago, which was written for the osteinsible purpose to justify my actions to my employers and with the intent to convince them of my position themselves, and which was organized using some regard for appropriate English composition, this post will just be a collection of thoughts with no editing work. You have been warned.

My arrest keeps coming back to haunt me... or rather, to praise me. I think I'd prefer the former - not because I don't like positive attention (I admit it, I do), but because like it or not, I don't really know what to do with it. It would be one thing if I ran a 5k in world record time or something, but I'm not convinced I did anything special. At the risk of sounding preachy, it's not accomplishment that people like me are out getting arrested. It's a shame that more people aren't. I reluctantly accept speaking engagements and - more reluctantly - my father's constant bragging, but while part of my motive was personal, I never wanted this much attention.

I did want to get arrested for selfish reasons - I wanted to show myself that I could do this, set a precident for being willing to risk the consequences of my convictions, and have the exciting new experience of being thrown in jail. And I did, in a way, want to be a symbol. Not a symbol in that everyone praises what I did, but a symbol in that I hope I can in some way show others that they too can go out and (try to) make a difference, consequences be damned. In terms of how much we're willing to sacrifice for our way of doing things, I think we're still lagging way behind military personnel. That's we, me included, because while I think I would be willing to give up my life for peace, I still seek the luxury of planning out exactly what risks I'm going to take. I'm still convinced Jesus calls us to a more active discipleship than that.

Let me expand on my comment that I want more people to get arrested. According to one diagram (I forget the original source, so I can say it's mine, right? At any rate, I learned this from Matt Guynn of On Earth Peace), a social movement includes four types of actors: The citizen, who earnestly follows a lifestyle reflective of the movement's values; the reformer, who seeks to change the system from within and advocates a patient pursuit of legislative action; the change agent, who recruits others to the cause and supplies information; and finally, the rebel, who wants change now and seeks to bring it about by more radical means (e.g. civil disobedience). The original author of this concept asserted that all four roles are crucial to the movement, and I agree (my favorite is the citizen, actually). But I firmly believe that the peace movement has a great scarcity of rebels, and those we have are often sadly untrained, unfocused and unprepared for their actions. Additionally, many who seek rebellious paths do not show Christlike love for their enemies or a deeply held conviction to nonviolence. This is not to criticize those persons, but to demonstrate the need for committed nonviolent Christians to take part in organizing, preparing for and executing civil disobedience.

Another thing I don't especially appreciate is the indignant response some people have to the Marshals arresting me. There's been talk of my rights being violated - and I can't help but mention, since this is a personal reflection, that the U.S. Marshals did very clearly violate my first amendment rights a few minutes after the arrest - but let's get one thing straight: yes, I should have been arrested. We weren't just visiting our representative, nor were we arrested for praying. Yes, we were in a public building, but we were in a part where there was no staff to supervise us, and the U.S. Marshals told us to leave. We refused. Yes, we were arrested during normal business hours, but we had every intention of staying until we were put in handcuffs (honestly, the early arrest spared us hours of boredom and a late night in the Allen County Jail). If we fight the premise of our arrest then we undermine the very convictions for which we were arrested. If we manage to weasel our way out of trouble with arguments about public property and first amendment rights, then we aren't really making any statement because we're not willing to sacrifice. As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated, a crucial element to civil disobedience is a willingness to accept the consequences, because that shows the highest respect for the law.

I hope I haven't bored you too much. As always, feel free to share my thoughts with anyone you like, but also feel free to just absorb it yourself. If I were going for circulation, I'd write to a magazine.

Addendum: 1970

Eleven years later. Numbers have dehumanized us. Over breakfast coffee we read of 40,000 American dead in Vietnam. Instead of vomiting, we reach for the toast. Our morning rush through crowded streets is not to cry murder but to hit that trough before somebody else gobbles our share.

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children who will never be born. (The last we can afford: there are too many starving children in the world already.)

Do we scream in the night when it touches our dreams? No. We don't dream about it because we don't think about it; we don't think about it because we don't care about it. We are much more interested in law and order, so that American streets may be made safe while we transform those of Vietnam into flowing sewers of blood which we replenish each year by forcing our sons to choose between a prison cell here or a coffin there. "Every time I look at the flag, my eyes fill with tears." Mine too.

If the dead mean nothing to us (except on Memorial Day weekend when the national freeway is clotted with surfers, swimmers, skiers, picnickers, campers, hunters, fishers, footballers, beer-busters), what of our 300,000 wounded? Does anyone know where they are? How they feel? How many arms, legs, ears, noses, mouths, faces, penises they've lost? How many are deaf or dumb or blind or all three? How many are single or double or triple or quadruple amputees? How many will remain immobile for the rest of their days? How many hang on as decerebrated vegetables quietly breathing their lives away in small, dark, secret rooms?

Write the Army, the Air Force, the Navy, the Marine Corps, the Army and Navy Hospitals, the Director of Medical Sciences at the National Library of Medicine, the Veterans Administration, the Office of the Surgeon General - and be surprised by what you don't learn--One agency reports 726 admissions "for amputation services" since January, 1965. Another reports 3,011 amputees since the beginning of the fiscal year 1968. The rest is silence.

The Annual Report of the Surgeon General: Medical Statistics of the Untied States Army ceased publication in 1954. The Library of Congress reports that the Army Office of the Surgeon General for Medical Statistics "does not have figures on single or multiple amputees." Either the government doesn't think them important or, in the words of a researcher for one of the national television networks, "the military itself, while sure of how many tons of bombs it has dropped, is unsure of how many legs and arms its men have lost."

If there are no concrete figures, at least we are beginning to get comparative ones. Proportionately, Vietnam has given us eight times as many paralytics as World War II, three times as many totally disabled, 35% more amputees. Senator Cranston of California concludes that out of every hundred army veterans receiving compensation for wounds received in action in Vietnam, 12.4% are totally disabled. Totally.

But exactly how many hundreds or thousands of the dead-while-living does that give us? We don't know. We don't ask. We turn away from them; we avert the eyes, ears, nose, mouth, face. "Why should I look, it wasn't my fault, was it?" It was, of course, but no matter. Time presses. Death waits even for us. We have a dream to pursue, the whitest white hope of them all, and we must follow and find it before the light fails.

So long, losers. God bless. Take care. We'll be seeing you.

-Donald Trumbo. Published as an addendum to the 1959 introduction to the novel Johnny Got His Gun.

Change the channel

I seem to remember a time when every night of the week yielded a prime-time show I deemed worth watching. Nowadays a combination of being less entranced with the boob tube, the cancellation or "natural" end of all the good shows, and the (convenient) shuffle of all my favorites to the same days of the week (Law & Order: SVU and House are both on Tuesdays) have cut down on my brain melting (besides, The O.C. isn't on this summer).

When I do turn on the TV, though, I confess I do a bit of channel Jujitsu (not to be confused with Jungle Kung Fu): I slide onto the couch after the evening news and pick my favorite show or channel, confining myself to NBC and CBS when FOX is doing the local news. Then as the other two networks start in on the news, I either retire or go back to FOX for some Cheers. So yes, I do take pains to avoid watching the news, but I have an excuse: I read the New York Times.

Until the end of the week, I'm the Peace Minister at my home church. I'm admittedly not very good at it, but one thing I have managed to do is talk to a few youth groups and a camp about everything from conscientious objection to current events. I've been getting a sinking feeling that nobody knows what's going on in the world all summer; my worst fears were realized when, in the midst of an all-out Israeli invasion of Lebanon (which, I confirmed tonight, does indeed make the airwaves), a three-member youth group was able to name only Iraq and "somewhere in Ireland" as conflict zones.

And then I have friends, my age, who out and say they don't care. This is the problem in America. It's not the gays, it's not our warmongering (okay, that's a problem too), it's not obesity (see above). It's that Americans are simply out of touch with everything that's happening in the world. Maybe that's why the terrorists hate us. They don't hate our freedom, they hate our unbelievable ignorance and apathy towards the unimaginable suffering that's going on all around us. We're all part of this world. I'm not asking you to go save children in Africa; if everyone did that, nobody could have sold me the speaker system I bought today. But the least you can do is pick up a newspaper and at least know things are happening, if not all the gritty details. Here's an idea: Every day, go to the New York Times website (www.nytimes.com) and read just their headline news. Maybe even just the first article on the page. But for God's sake, don't sit in a cave with your fingers in your ears.