View from the Loft

My LTE about marriage equality

The following is my letter to the editor of our local newspaper, which was published on July 14. The woman mentioned in my letter, Virginia Schell, had written a letter claiming that god has ordained marriage to be "one man, one woman," and that god would now abandon our sinful nation for ruling that DOMA is unconstitutional. The columnist I thank wrote a wonderful piece about same-sex marriage that urged people to stop being narrow-minded and recognize that love is love and should be recognized as such.

First, I would like to thank Carolyn LeDuc-Krehel for her column in Wednesday's (July 10) paper. It's good to hear voices in support of gay marriage.

It may come as a shock to people like Virginia Schell (letter of July 10), but they don't have the right to foist their particular beliefs on the rest of us. The Constitution declares as much. When such believers invoke God and predict that we will all pay a price for abandoning God's word, they assume that all of us believe in the same way. In fact, there's quite a diversity among religions. In the United States, no one religion has the right to declare itself the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong, or of public policy. I know a lot of Christians who are fine with marriage equality for gays.

I also find it amusing when Christians declare that marriage as designed by God is "one man, one woman." I seem to recall that according to the Bible, Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, and that God at one time commanded women to marry their rapists, a man to marry his brother's widow regardless of the living brother's marital status, and virgin girls taken as spoils of war to submit to their new owners.

 As any historian can tell you, marriage has changed over the centuries. Only a few decades ago interracial marriage was illegal in many states. Enlightened people today look back on that time with near disbelief. One day, most of us will feel the same about having forbidden marriage to gay couples in committed, loving relationships who simply want the same recognition of their bond--and the same rights and benefits--that straight couples receive.

Hell No!

In light of the recent court decision regarding a public school's prayer banner that had been hanging in the gym illegally since the 1960s, my son's experience with the imposition of religion--specifically Christianity--in his school came to mind.

In objecting to the posters put up by an after-school bible club, he did not experience vilification, threats of assault and even death, ostracism, and elected officials spewing vitriol, as did Jessica Ahlquist, who acted as plaintiff in the lawsuit. (See here, here, here, and here, just for starters--there's much more.)

Jessica Ahlquist ran into trouble from day one. And the school administration was dishonest, claiming that the banner (which began with the words "Our heavenly father" and ended with "Amen") was not a prayer, just a "tradition." This fooled no one, certainly not people speaking at a public meeting about the issue last February. Speakers invoked god and insulted atheists openly.

Here's what happened in my son's case: the Hell No! club hung posters in the hallways featuring bible quotes, quotes such as "only a fool does not believe in God," and threats of eternal punishment for nonbelievers. Our son felt that these were inappropriate in a public school and wrote letters to the principal, superintendent, and school board. While I'm sure that some people thought we put him up to this, we did not. Ethan asked me to check the letter for spelling and formatting, which I did. I had no other input.

A few days later he was called to the principal's office. The school's attorney had been informed of the situation, and some of the school board members contacted a local college to see how such matters were handled there. The attorney  considered that featuring a cross on posters advertising a bible club was legal, but that posters suggesting superiority of a particular religion and containing arguably harrassing statements had to come down. About half the posters were removed.

As Ethan reminded me in an e-mail, "A few people were irritated about the signs coming down, but once I exposed myself as the 'squeaky wheel,' no one was really mean about it and some people congratulated me." I recall running into the superintendent and a few of the board members at a restaurant shortly after this happened and being complimented on our son's letter.

But as my husband pointed out, the religionists have gotten much uglier in the past couple of decades, so who knows what might have happened to him if the events that transpired then were to happen today? Whether it's the political clout of the rabid religious right or fears about a secularist minority that's becoming more vocal and less inclined to stay closeted that's causing such vile behaviors as Ms. Ahlquist has had to suffer, the godbotherers have gotten nastier and nastier.

There is a reason not to tolerate such expression of religion in a public school: as the courts have decided again and again, it violates the separation of church and state. Yes, I remember singing a little song in first grade that started with "Oh, the Lord's been good to me," but that doesn't mean it was right, and subsequently such religious artifacts in state-funded schools were ruled illegal. As they should be. The majority of Americans may believe in god, and particularly a Christian god, but the Constitution exists to protect the rights of the minority.

We were very proud of our son for taking this action, as I assume Jessica's parents are of her. It isn't easy to stand for what's right when the majority of your community is against you--even without name-calling and death threats.

To all those religious believers and promoters who tell the rest of us to shut up, I can only say, "Hell, no!"

 

So true.

Behold teh stupid

Okay, about a month ago I responded to a Facebook poll, comment, or something (I don't even remember now) about mass drug testing, and came out against it.

I received an email from someone whose screen name, at least, is Darlene Mesa:

If you aren't taking drugs, what do you care if you get tested or not?

Since this person was apparently not too savvy on the Constitution, nor too terribly concerned with Constitutional rights, I attempted to enlighten her.

That's like saying, "If you have nothing to hide, why do you care if the cops search your house/car/computer?" I have a right to privacy, that's why, and a right not to be searched without cause. That's what living in a democracy is supposed to be about. You know? The Constitution and all? The prohibition against being searched without due cause? For some strange reason, I just have a thing against being treated like I live in a dictatorship. Odd, that, eh?

But I guess the difference between living in a police state and living in a democracy was just too much to wrap her mind around. She came back today with this:

Like I said, if there is nothing to hide...why worry? If you give someone reason to think they have to drug test you or search your possesions, than that is on you. You obviously are on something.

See the mindset? If I don't agree that unlimited police search and seizure is A-OK, then it's because I am "on something." It doesn't enter what passes for her mind that I might have a principled stand against police-state tactics. Not to mention that she assumes that any kind of drug test or search can only occur if I "give someone reason to think they have to drug test [me] or search [my] possessions."

 

How fucking naive can you be??

 

It's "on me" if the cops do an illegal search of me or my possessions? Sorry, babe. We do have that little piece of paper, shredded though it is, that does guarantee us certain rights. One of which is the right not to be searched without due cause.

 

I wrote back with my usual restraint:

Nope. Have never taken illegal drugs in my life (I do like wine, though). It's the principle of the thing, dearie. And the principle is that there has to be a reason for a search -- OMG, it's even in the Constitution!! Have you ever read that document? We as citizens have a right not to be hassled by the police without due cause. That's what is supposed to make us a democracy, as opposed to a police state. In a democracy, people have actual rights.

By your reasoning, any asshole cop could come into my house at any time to search for anything, and I shouldn't care a bit about having someone violate my privacy as long as I had nothing to hide. Fuck that shit! I have a right to a private life unviolated by the police as long as there is no due cause.

It's very telling that you think a principled stand against police state tactics indicates a drug problem. Jesus H Christ on a popsicle stick. Educate yourself.

Actually, now that I think about it, I probably have ingested illegal substances at some point in my life ... I don't count pot, though. (What reasonable person does?)

 

I just can't stand that excuse for police-state tactics: "What do you care if you have nothing to hide?" I'll tell you--at some point people who have done nothing wrong but militate against state power are targets of the police, FBI, or whatever, and the only thing keeping us from mass arrests and state coercion is the Constitution. Not that I have much faith in our current Supreme Court to keep the Constitution viable.

 

Just another day in Amerika.

If abortion were illegal, what should the punishment be for women who have abortions?

The answer of most anti-choicers is "Duh ... never thought about it ..."

Check it out. Apparently, actual women who actually have abortions don't even enter into these people's thoughts, reasoning, or arguments. They're simply nonexistent in all the romanticizing about the innocent "pre-born" being sadistically killed.

Forty years ago today

On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King was assassinated. Perhaps, like me, you're old enough to remember the shock and grief this news brought.

Perhaps, like me, you had the misfortune of hearing an expression of triumph. My aunt, whom I'd never thought was an overt racist, burst out, "Good! I'm glad they got the sonofabitch!"

That was nearly as shocking to me as King's murder.

This diary over on Kos marks the tragic occasion by recalling a speech given by King exactly one year before his death. That speech was "Beyond Vietnam -- A Time to Break Silence." Sadly, it is still sharply relevant today, when the US is embroiled in Iraq, still raining down carnage on innocent people it views merely as "collateral damage."

I urge you to read both the diary and the speech itself. Let me leave you with this, from near the end of the speech, after King's call for a "revolution of values" that shifts America from being "thing-oriented" to being "people-oriented":

A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa, and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say, "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of South America and say, "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just.

A true revolution of values will lay hand on the world order and say of war, "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice, and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

[text omitted]

We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find new ways to speak for peace in Vietnam and justice throughout the developing world, a world that borders on our doors. If we do not act, we shall surely be dragged down the long, dark, and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power without compassion, might without morality, and strength without sight.

I'm afraid that thanks to the corrupt, venal, mendacious sociopaths who have been running this country, we will indeed suffer a legacy of shame--and worse.

But Dr. King never gave up hope, and neither should we. Yes, I often despair; but you can't work for change if you're paralyzed by despair.

Despair is a luxury we can't afford.

Cluelessness is never in short supply

Glenn Greenwald takes up a crucial issue in his analysis of conservative reaction to the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex couples must be afforded the same rights as married couples. That reaction, predictably, decries "judicial activism" and calls for the matter of same-sex civil unions or marriage to be settled by state legislatures rather than by judicial "fiat."

Such calls, as Glenn points out, reflect a dismaying ignorance of how the law works:

Either the New Jersey State Constitution -- as defined by the governing precedents applying it -- compels the legal conclusion reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court or it does not. That is the only relevant issue. It's not a matter of picking and choosing which issues we think it would be nice for a court to resolve and which ones we'd sort of prefer -- given our subjective druthers -- the court leave to the will of the majority.

At the very center of our constitutional republic is the principle that the overarching obligation of courts is to nullify any and all laws that conflict with the guarantees of the Constitution. Or, as Hamilton put it in Federalist No. 78: "wherever a particular statute contravenes the Constitution, it will be the duty of the judicial tribunals to adhere to the latter and disregard the former." Courts in these cases have only one question to answer -- do the relevant constitutional provisions (in this case, Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey State Constitution) bar the law in question? -- and if so, courts are required to nullify that law. There is no discretion or political judgment involved, and they are not permitted to simply decide that they won't involve themselves in such matters.

In addition, the idea that the "will of the majority" should decide matters of law is a dangerous one that fails to ensure protection of the rights of the minority. A majority of Americans opposed Loving v. Virginia; to have decided the matter of interracial marriage based on the will of the majority would have denied these two people their rights. As Glenn says,

Maybe it would be better in some political, societal or cultural sense if gay marriage and related issues were decided by legislatures and referenda rather than courts. A reasonable argument can certainly be made that it would be "better" for advocates of gay marriage if they win by convincing their fellow citizens rather than via judicial rulings which hold that denial of marriage rights is unconstitutional.

But that is just not how a constitutional republic works. Constitutional guarantees exist to limit majority will, and courts must nullify any laws which conflict with those guarantees -- even if it would be "better" in some vague political sense to leave it to the majority to decide. [my emphasis]

There have been many landmark cases in which the US Supreme Court has outraged the populace by ruling to protect minority rights; presumably, there will be many more (although one has doubts, given the current makeup of the Court). Such rulings are based on constitutional law, not on the desires of the majority. They are the opposite of "judicial activism" in that they rest solidly on interpretation of law.

The hypocrisy of those complaining about judicial activism must also be pointed out. Many of these same people are or were dead set against civil rights legislation, just recently attempting to stop renewal of the Voting Rights Act. If they were honest, they would admit that in many cases, they find legislative activism just as offensive. They cloak themselves in self-righteous squawks about the will of the majority, but when Congress has reflected that will through legislative action (imperfect as our system of representative democracy is), such conservatives screamed just as loudly.

DoD's database on antiwar protests

I doubt if any of us are too surprised at the news that

The Defense Department acknowledged last year that its analysts had maintained records on war protests in an internal database past the 90 days its guidelines allowed, and even after it was determined there was no threat.

In Bush's America, this sort of thing has become expected. Not that it's without precedent: think of the lists that were kept in the 60s. But it's clear that, like all such activities, such a database is meant to have a chilling effect on dissent.

The documents indicated that intelligence reports and tips about antiwar protests, including mundane details like the schedule for weekly planning meetings, were widely shared among analysts from the military, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Homeland Security.

“There is simply no reason why the United States military should be monitoring the peaceful activities of American citizens who oppose U.S. war policies,” said Ben Wizner, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U.

Joyce Miller, an official with the American Friends Service Committee, a Quaker group that learned that information on some of its antiwar protests was in the military database, said she found the operation to be a “chilling” and troubling trend.

Indeed.

Can it happen here? Oh yeah.

Wow. I've heard of Sinclair Lewis's It Can't Happen Here (1935), but I've not read it. Now I'm thinking it's a natural for our book group--if only it were still in print! From the Amazon customer review by Charles Haberl:

It starts with the highly contested election of an oafish yet strangely charismatic president, who talks like a "reformer" but is really in the pocket of big business, who claims to be a home-spun "humanist," while appealing to religious extremists, and who speaks of "liberating" women and minorities, as he gradually strips them of all their rights. One character, when describing him, says, "I can't tell if he's a crook or a religious fanatic."

After he becomes elected, he puts the media - at that time, radio and newspapers - under the supervision of the military and slowly begins buying up or closing down media outlets. William Randolph Hearst, the Rupert Murdoch of his times, directs his newspapers to heap unqualified praise upon the president and his policies, and gradually comes to develop a special relationship with the government. The president, taking advantage of an economic crisis, strong-arms Congress into signing blank checks over to the military and passing stringent and possibly unconstitutional laws, e.g. punishing universities when they don't permit military recruiting or are not vociferous enough in their approval of his policies. Eventually, he takes advantage of the crisis to convene military tribunals for civilians, and denounce all of his detractors as unpatriotic and possibly treasonous.

Man, is that prescient or what? Not really--Lewis was simply able to see how easy it can be to subvert democracy when vigilance ceases and illusion is embraced, when conditions allow certain passions take over--in other words, when emotions are manipulated so as to truncate thought and rationality.

So many things in the above summary of the novel have already occurred or are in the process of occurring. While the road to fascism didn't start from nothing with the "election" of George W. Bush, his coming to power combined with 9/11 and the manipulation of emotion surrounding that national trauma put us on the fast track for fascism. Particularly disturbing to me has been the wholesale abandonment of rational thought that has accompanied the shameless fearmongering of the Republican apparatus. Is such abandonment inevitable? Accidental? I very much doubt that it's either. Critical thought and the demand for proof, along with skepticism and the distrust of those in power, are the enemies of fascism. When Cheney and Bush came to office with an insatiable desire for power, they didn't have to invent the wheel. BushCo knew there was already to hand a tried-and-true set of emotional responses ready to be exploited.

Via Orcinus, take a look at these "mobilizing passions" described in Robert O. Paxton's Anatomy of Fascism:

1. a sense of overwhelming crisis beyond the reach of any traditional solutions
2. the primacy of the group, toward which one has duties superior to every right, whether universal or individual, and the subordination of the individual to it
3. the belief that one's group is a victim, a sentiment which justifies any action, without legal or moral limits, against the group's enemies, both internal and external
4. dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences
5. the need for closer integration of a purer community, by consent if possible, or by exclusionary violence if necessary
6. the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny
7. the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason
8. the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success
9. the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law, right being decided by the sole criterion of the group's prowess in a Darwinian struggle

Orcinus examines these points particularly as they relate to the recent passage of the Military Commissions Act (warning; pdf) with its far-reaching implications, including the death of Habeas Corpus, the conferring of exraordinary power upon the president, and the institutionalizing of torture in the US.

We can see these various "passions," however, as they resonate more broadly. Every one of emotions or attitudes listed has been vigorously promoted under the banner of patriotism and national security. Every one has been used for the attainment of greater and greater executive power.

Number 1, for example: we are frightened by being told repeatedly that we face an enemy like none we have ever faced before, that traditional solutions can't save us now, that the traditional rules and restraints that have characterized America's official actions (if not always the unofficial) are now too dangerous for us to abide by. "Even worse than Hitler!" comes the cry again and again.

Under number 2 we can see that civil liberties and individual rights must give way, so Bush's argument goes, to the safety of the group. Further, American exceptionalism makes America's needs primary over and against all considerations of the safety and well-being of any and all others. To disagree with this is to be called a traitor. I know, because I've been called one.

Number 3 we have seen repeated countless times by countless numbers of useful right-wing idiots: the deaths of the victims of Sept. 11, 2001 justify any amount of brutality and lawlessness, including torture, the invasion of a sovereign nation who posed no threat to us, and the claim that we are no longer bound by international treaties and conventions.

In number 4 ("dread of the group's decline under the corrosive effect of individualistic liberalism, class conflict, and alien influences) we've got pretty much a summary of the fears of the right-wing extremists. Right now it's easy to find examples of the white majority's fear that they are becoming a minority. The Christian fundies fear that liberalism is erasing the cohesiveness of what they think of as a "Christian" nation; conservatives and xenophobes fear multiculturalism and "exotic" religions and beliefs, as well as liberal ideas like women's rights and gay rights. These "threats" erode the rights of privileged white males and those who believe they benefit from such males' status, and/or they are seen as diluting the superior cultural influence of both the Christian and the Western traditions.

The fifth "mobilizing passion," the perceived need for a purer community, can easily be seen in the anti-immigration hysteria we saw earlier this year in calls for a wall along the Mexican border, the blaming of immigrants for crime and disease, etc. Torture itself will, of course, help to preserve our way of life (just ask the Traditional Values Coalition) and will weed out the terrorists among us.

To me, numbers 6 and 7 are perhaps the scariest of the emotions running dangerously loose and unchecked: "the need for authority by natural leaders (always male), culminating in a national chief who alone is capable of incarnating the group's destiny" and "the superiority of the leader's instincts over abstract and universal reason." We have seen these in spades, and they are very, very dangerous. As Orcinus comments:

It is astonishing, really, just how broad-ranging are the powers President Bush will have acquired if this legislation survives its inevitable court tests. Moreover, the public is constantly admonished not to question Bush's basic decency when it comes to granting him powers typically only granted to totalitarians [my emphasis]. Of course he wouldn't apply these powers to ordinary citizens. And five years ago, he similarly assured us that of course he wouldn't seek wiretaps without a warrant.

I am reminded, upon reading number 8 ("the beauty of violence and the efficacy of will, when they are devoted to the group's success"), how often the extreme right wing has urged greater use of force and brutality, going so far at times as to call for near-genocide, so that America may emerge victorious and so demonstrate the superiority of the American Way. Lost is any idea that the sort of action for which they militate would demonstrate the complete collapse and end of American ideals as they have been expressed, if not lived up to, for the past 230 years.

And finally, we know that number 9, "the right of the chosen people to dominate others without restraint from any kind of human or divine law," is the Bush Doctrine. It applies not only to those individuals whom we torture, but to entire nations, entire religions, entire wide swathes of the earth.

As far as I'm concerned, fascism is already here. It simply hasn't yet been implemented. I fear that the coming months and years will see such implementation happen, to our eternal regret and our imminent disaster. I'm not one of those who sees in a Democratic takeover of one or both houses of Congress a sure-fire reversal of the horrifying trends we have seen and are seeing. Once the machine is set into motion, stopping it--let alone reversing it--is a monumental task against which all the bureaucratic, economic, social, and political forces are aligned.

This is who we are now

With yesterday's vote, the US now joins the ranks of those nations who have made torture official policy. We have now trashed our own Constitution and the Geneva Conventions; our Sadist-in-Chief is no doubt rubbing his hands together with glee as he contemplates all the misery, horror, and agony that will now attest to his power.

If you have not read this piece by a victim of torture, you should. In it, he speaks not only of what he endured, but what happens to those who torture and the nation that sanctions it.

I know from my own experience that interrogation is an intensely personal confrontation, a duel of wills. It is not about revealing some secrets or making confessions, it is about self-respect and human dignity. If I break, I will not be able to look into a mirror. But if I don't, my interrogator will suffer equally. Just try to control your emotions in the heat of that battle. This is precisely why torture occurs even when it is explicitly forbidden. Now, who is going to guarantee that even the most exact definition of CID ["cruel, inhumane or degrading"] is observed under such circumstances?

But if we cannot guarantee this, then how can you force your officers and your young people in the CIA to commit acts that will scar them forever? For scarred they will be, take my word for it.

You really must read the whole thing. The enormity of what our elected officials have done will only gradually reveal itself as the moral fabric of this nation erodes in ever more accelerated a fashion.