Ironically, As Long As There Are Gay Republicans, The GOP Will Think It's OK To Bash Gays

The Republican Party just lost a voter. Or, at least, a member. In a post to his blog, GOProud co-founder Jimmy LaSalvia announces that while the "Proud" part still applies, he is no longer GOP.

Jimmy LaSalvia: Today, I joined the ranks of unaffiliated voters. I am every bit as conservative as I’ve always been, but I just can’t bring myself to carry the Republican label any longer. You see, I just don’t agree with the big-government ‘conservatives’ who run the party now.

The other reason I am leaving is the tolerance of bigotry in the GOP. The current leadership lacks the courage to stand up to it – I’m not sure they ever will.

I have worked hard to help to create an atmosphere on the right where conservatives can openly support gay Americans and even support same-sex marriage. In that effort, we have won, but there is more work to do to root out the anti-gay and other forms of bigotry in the party.

So I changed my voter registration today – “No Party.”

For those who need to catch up here, GOProud is an organization of LGBT Republicans who seem to exist solely to demonstrate that there are LGBT Republicans. It's an offshoot of the Log Cabin Republicans, a similar group that LaSalvia and fellow GOProud co-founder Christopher R. Barron left because it was "too centrist."

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The Tyranny of a Short-Term Majority

A majority taken collectively is only an individual, whose opinions, and frequently whose interests, are opposed to those of another individual, who is styled a minority. If it be admitted that a man possessing absolute power may misuse that power by wronging his adversaries, why should not a majority be liable to the same reproach? Men do not change their characters by uniting with one another; nor does their patience in the presence of obstacles increase with their strength. For my own part, I cannot believe it; the power to do everything, which I should refuse to one of my equals, I will never grant to any number of them.
-Alexis de Tocqueville, "Democracy in America."

That reasoned argument against what de Tocqueville called "the tyranny of the majority" is a total crock. A bunch of hooey. Liberal claptrap from a French intellectual with no real understanding of democracy. Never mind that James Madison agreed in the Federalist Papers, warning of "the superior force of an interested and overbearing majority" -- Madison was just some loonie leftist. The majority is all-powerful. If you can get enough people to agree with you, you can do anything you want to anybody. There are no such thing as rights, only privileges that can be voted away at any time. Get enough people together and you can even take someone's First Amendment rights away -- if people don't like what you're saying, they can use the power of democracy to shut you the hell up.

So sayeth that great American patriot Kenneth Starr. Best known for an unsuccessful witch hunt against then-President Bill Clinton, Starr is the dean of Pepperdine law school -- which makes you wonder what kind of education Pepperdine law students get for their money.

At issue was California's Prop. 8 -- a ban of same sex marriage. The state Supreme Court had previously ruled that gays and lesbians had the right to marriage. Prop. 8, which passed as a referendum, would remove that right and retroactively undo the marriages that have occurred since the court's ruling.

But, since the court ruled that marriage was a right, not a privilege, Prop. 8 became a classic example of the "tyranny of the majority" -- with a simple majority vote, Californians took a right away from a minority group. The ballot measure is now in California's Supreme Court, where Ken Starr -- representing Prop. 8 supporters -- argued yesterday that there's really no such thing as "rights." At least, not if you're in the minority.

"Swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence if one is weak, enjoy all one's rights if powerful: that's my doctrine," wrote the Marquis de Sade. Starr apparently agrees.

Raw Story:

The people "have the raw power to define rights," he told the court while arguing in favor of invalidating over 18,000 marriages.

"The right of the people is inalienable to change their constitution through the amendment process," said Starr. "The people are sovereign and they can do very unwise things, and things that tug at the equality principle."

Chief Justice Ronald George posed a hypothetical: what if the majority demanded the right to free speech be revoked?

"After much banter back and forth, Starr says they do," reported Advocate.com. The Los Angeles Times reported similarly on Starr's alarming response.

So, if the majority votes that you should shut up, by God you'd better shut the hell up. In Starr's world, rights are a legal fiction. The founders basically argued that the person and the person's rights were one thing, inseparable -- "unalienable" as the Declaration of Independence put it. But Ken argues that your rights are granted to you by majority rule and can be taken from you at any time, presumably for any -- or no -- reason. As I've already pointed out, those aren't rights, those are privileges. Starr argues that people in California -- and Americans in general -- don't actually have rights.

What the right is really worried about here is the "normalization of homosexuality." When you get right down to it, same sex marriage is harmless -- it can't possibly have any effect on your life if your not in that marriage. If you're outside that family, what that family consists of can't possible harm you. There is no rational reason to oppose marriage equality.

However, "rational" is a bad description of the religious right. They're so panicked at the idea that same sex couples would be considered just people and not monsters that they're willing to give away all the guarantees they have to any rights at all. By Starr's argument, people could literally vote to bar Christians from holding office. But hey, that's better than having to look at two male or two female dolls on top of a wedding cake.

But the "normalization of homosexuality" is pretty much a done deal. Regardless of how people feel about marriage equality, the idea that homosexuality is some sort of national problem is losing ground rapidly. The religious right isn't just losing that fight, they've lost it. Same sex marriage isn't a question of "if," but "when."

A Harris Interactive poll taken after the 2008 elections found that "Three-quarters of U.S. adults (75%) favor either marriage or domestic partnerships/civil unions for gay and lesbian couples. Only about two in 10 (22%) say gay and lesbian couples should have no legal recognition." The numbers for legal marriage alone, as opposed to civil unions, was evenly split between pro and con.

This "normalization" train has left the station.

But the most desperate battles are often fought at the end of the war. That's when the craziest tactics will be tried. The religious right would burn the village in order to save it, by giving away any guarantee they have to any rights in exchange for a victory in a losing battle against marriage equality.

If Ken Starr really wants to argue on behalf of the tyranny of the majority, he might keep in mind that public opinion is moving away from him. It won't be long before he's in the minority, subject to the whims of the mob rule he advocated.

Unfortunately, when that happens, I don't expect him or any of his allies to shut up and "swallow the bitter pill and act with diligence," as the weak and rightless should.

Maybe we can all take a vote and make them shut up.

-Wisco

A Ban in Search of a Reason for Being

In March 2007, Stephen Benjamin was discharged from the Navy. An Arabic language translator, Benjamin fell prey to Bill Clinton's absurd 1993 compromise policy of "don't ask, don't tell." Under that rule, gays are allowed to serve in the military, but only so long as it's a big secret. If you tell anyone about your sexual orientation, for any reason, you're out. In Benjamin's case, it was text messages -- intercepted by military censors -- that made it clear that he and a former roommate stationed in Iraq were gay. They were fired.

"My supervisors did not want to lose me," he wrote in the New York Times in June of that same year. "Most of my peers knew I was gay, and that didn’t bother them. I was always accepted as a member of the team. And my experience was not anomalous: polls of veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan show an overwhelming majority are comfortable with gays. Many were aware of at least one gay person in their unit and had no problem with it."

Despite a "desperate shortage of linguists," the Navy thought it was more important that intercepted intelligence pile up untranslated than to let some gay guy translate them. This is supposed to serve our national interests, because allowing gays to serve would somehow harm "unit cohesion." Seems to me that breaking up units to preserve their "cohesion" is astonishingly ludicrous -- it's like arguing you have to get divorced to save your marriage.





So it's hard to act surprised when you learn it's been a disaster. A 2006 study by the University of California on the effectiveness of "don't ask, don't tell" found it didn't really do much except fire good people and cost big ol' pile of money. And, for the purpose of this post, we'll define "big ol' pile of money" as $363.8 million in the less than ten years it had been since it was instituted. This was a fuller accounting of the entire cost than a previous study by the Government Accountability Office, which found that "the federal government spent at least $95.4 million to recruit and $95.1 million to train replacements" between 1994 and 2003 to make up for the personnel lost under the policy. Some, like Benjamin, have proved hard to replace. You can't really train people to speak a language without a common root to your own. Learning Arabic -- like Chinese or Hindi -- takes the average English speaker about a decade to reach fluency. Seems to me we don't have that kind of time. Especially when you consider that there would be a very real danger of these recruits deciding not to re-enlist during this time.

And many of the replacements we're spending so much to train and recruit aren't anywhere near as good as the people we've fired. The latest Harper's Index tells us that the Bush administration has "loosened" 9 restrictions on Army recruits since 2003, allowing 245% more felons to be recruited between 2004 and 2007. Good thing they aren't gay, though. You can sure trust a felon with a fully automatic rifle more than you can a gay, right?

Some politicians see the stupidity, absurdity, and just plain idiocy of the policy of "don't ask, don't tell."

Barack Obama, interviewed by The Advocate:

[I]think there’s increasing recognition within the Armed Forces that ["don't ask, don't tell"] is a counterproductive strategy -- ya know, we’re spending large sums of money to kick highly qualified gays or lesbians out of our military, some of whom possess specialties like Arab-language capabilities that we desperately need. That doesn’t make us more safe, and what I want are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who are making decisions based on what strengthens our military and what is going to make us safer, not ideology.

Toward that end, Obama has said he'd work to repeal "don't ask, don't tell" within his first term. Yet, despite every logical reason why it should be done immediately, some are warning that we shouldn't get our hopes up. Yes, it's stupid. Yes, it's discriminatory. Yes, it's a waste of money that puts America's defense at risk no real reason and without benefit.

But it's not all that important.

Roll Call, via Queerty:

Key Democrats — even openly gay lawmakers — are quietly conceding to letting another two years go by before trying to overturn "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the controversial 1993 law banning openly gay people from serving in the military. Most fear that moving too quickly on such a divisive issue could backfire, and most would rather tread lightly, at least in the early months of President-elect Barack Obama's administration.

[...]

Democratic lawmakers regularly beg off questions about the contentious policy, arguing that other issues are far more important — such as winding down the war in Iraq or bolstering the economy. They also remember the political uproar when then-President Bill Clinton used the beginning of his presidency to try to overturn an outright ban on gays serving in the military. That effort tied his administration in knots in his first months in office, and Democrats fear a repeat performance.

But that "political uproar" was fifteen years ago. Why assume that everyone's stayed crazy? In July, a Washington Post-ABC News poll showed that three out of four people believed that gays should be able to serve openly in the military. When "don't ask, don't tell" was instituted in 1993, that number was 44%. The political landscape doesn't look anything like it did back then. In fact, even a majority of Republican voters disagree with the ban, with 64% saying it's a bad idea. I really don't see how caution is called for here; this seems safe as Nerf. "Don't ask, don't tell" is almost literally as unpopular as George W. Bush. Are they waiting for 100%?

After the loss of Proposition 8 in California, after choosing the awful and divisive Rick Warren to bless his first term, Obama needs to recognize that gays not only deserve a win, but need one. But the new Democratic-led congress seems committed to being just as lousy and useless as the last Democratic-led congress. Presidential leadership on the issue is going to be called for, since the reliably cowardly congressional leadership seems to want to brush the issue under the rug and hope everyone forgets about it.

There is no good reason to avoid dealing with the ban. It serves no legitimate purpose, it hurts our military readiness, it's expensive, it's discriminatory, it's backwards, and I could make a real good argument that it harms our culture by giving homophobia an institutional status. And, on top of everything else, getting rid of it is a gimme.

Yes, getting out of Iraq is extremely important. Yes, the economy should be a priority. During the election, Barack Obama said he could walk and chew gum at the same time, in response to John McCain's suggestion that the presidential campaign be suspended so they could deal with the market crash. I haven't seen any evidence that that's stopped being true. Barack Obama can still walk and chew gum; he can deal with these other issues while also dealing with this no-risk political task. In that big long list of difficult problems facing our nation, "don't ask, don't tell" isn't on it. It's a problem, but fixing it doesn't seem all that difficult.

Difficult is reading more stories like Stephen Benjamin's and knowing it puts our country at risk for no real reason.

-Wisco

Just One Good Reason

Here's a question that's both timely and informative; "Do you approve or disapprove of California allowing homosexuals to marry members of their own sex?" That question was asked of 1,052 California voters and their answers may spell bad news for opponents of same sex marriage in that state. 51% approved and only 42% disapproved.

Californians are now enjoying the fruits of marriage equality in their state, after a state Supreme Court ruling found that a ban on the issuing of licenses to same sex couples was unconstitutional. Writing for Slate, Yale Law professor Kenji Yoshino manages to explain the ruling in one paragraph:

Writing for the California high court, Chief Justice Ronald M. George first found that the exclusion of gays from marriage violated their fundamental right to marry, thereby drawing strict scrutiny from the court. This meant that the state would have to produce a compelling reason to bar gays from what the court deemed "the most socially productive and individually fulfilling relationship that one can enjoy in the course of a lifetime." In a crucial move, Chief Justice George rejected the state's argument that tradition was such a reason. Allowing tradition to thus entrench itself, he said, would have allowed for laws barring interracial couples. And, as he noted, the California Supreme Court struck down a ban on interracial marriage in 1948, almost two decades before the U.S. Supreme Court did in Loving v. Virginia.

Basically, the court found that there was no reason for same sex marriage to be illegal. It's a law that serves no purpose, other than to discriminate.

Which brings us to a second timely and informative question -- why should same sex marriage be illegal?

Turns out the finest legal minds the State of California could provide couldn't come up with a reason. For the life of me, I can't either. Some of the arguments don't make any sense. To no one's surprise, former Pennsylvania Senator and professional holier-than-thou idiot Rick Santorum made one of these nonsensical arguments.

"Look at Norway. It began allowing same-sex marriage in the 1990s," he wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer. "In just the last decade, its heterosexual-marriage rates have nose-dived and its out-of-wedlock birthrate skyrocketed to 80 percent for firstborn children. Too bad for those kids who probably won’t have a dad around, but we can’t let the welfare of children stand in the way of social affirmation, can we?"

Unfortunately for Rick, pretty much none of that is true. The Center for American Progress tells us, "Norway began allowing same-sex civil unions in 1993. But according to M.V. Lee Badgett, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts, Norway’s 'big surge' in the nonmarital birth rate occurred in the 1980s, jumping from 16 percent to 39 percent. In the decade after Norway authorized civil unions, the nonmarital birth rate rose only 'slightly,' and then, 'after a couple of years, leveled off at 50 percent.' These rates are similar to those in countries without such laws."

Of course, the fact that Santorum's lying shouldn't surprise anyone. One, he's a well-known liar and, two, his story doesn't make any damned sense at all. Maybe Rick didn't get the memo -- we can be pretty sure he skipped out on sex ed in school -- but gay couples don't produce children, married or not. Not that they can't, it's just that most don't, preferring adoption or already having kids from previous marriages. Most of these kids Rick's made up would come from heterosexuals. Why would same sex marriage result in fewer marriages? That's the kernel of the argument and it doesn't make any sense. Rick tries to give a good reason why it should be illegal, but fails miserably by resorting to lies.

Another attempt at a good reason for a ban comes from John Stemberger of Florida's Yes2Marriage.org which, confusingly, takes the No2Marriage position. In an email to supporters, Stemberger writes (emphasis his):

The innocent-sounding idea of gay marriage has wide spread and far reaching consequences to the transformation of law, culture and society. When marriage is legally redefined, it simultaneously changes thousands of other laws. Marriage license forms will issued to “Party A and Party B.” The words “husband and wife” will be removed and replaced with “partners.” The words “Father and Mother” will become outdated terms. Every aspect of the law is gender-neutered. Laws which reflected the reality of human femininity and masculinity will be erased. Further, public school curriculum and textbooks will be transformed to model homosexual families. In order to avoid lawsuits for discrimination, public schools will begin to teach homosexual behavior as the moral, social and legal equivalent of marriage between a man and a woman. Listen to this NPR radio interview on how public school teacher Deb Allen in Massachusetts teaches lesbian intercourse to eight grade students with models and charts HERE. I promise you that this nonsense will be coming to Florida at political light speed unless we all work hard to tell others to vote “Yes” on Amendment 2.

It's hard to know where to start. How will the terms "father" and "mother" become outdated? There's this thing called "medical science" and it talks about fathers and mothers. Unless we start reproducing exclusively by cloning, this is a crazy claim.

And Stemberger's sort of hoping you won't listen to that NPR interview. Deb Allen had been teaching about homosexual intercourse before Massachusetts legalized gay marriage. She's a sex ed teacher. The only real change is that she's more comfortable doing it now. How awful!

But the stupidest argument is that it'll force the state to change the wording on paperwork. Seriously, name a law that doesn't. If that's a good reason to ban same sex marriage, then it's a good reason to stop making law altogether. "Yeah, we'd love to make email scams illegal, but it'd be this whole big thing and we'd have to print new forms..." The laziness of the state print shop is a pretty lousy argument.

Other arguments are just as bad -- that it makes a "mockery" of straight marriages, that it encourages people to be gay, that gay people can't reproduce, etc. None of these are compelling reasons to deny marriage equality to homosexual couples. Other people's marriages have no effect on yours, gays don't need to be "encouraged" -- they're pretty much as gay as they're ever going to be regardless, and there are plenty of straight couples who can't reproduce. I have yet to hear anything approaching a logical argument against same sex marriage.

The final argument, the very last bastion of the bigoted, is that Jesus doesn't like it. My answer to that is that Jesus hasn't been elected to anything. When He becomes President Jesus or Congressman Jesus or Senator Jesus or even Governor Jesus, then we get to care what Jesus thinks. Until then, Jesus's opinion -- which many Christians argue would be pro-gay marriage anyway -- is irrelevant. We're a nation of laws, not Gods. Since I'm not a Christian myself, I could really care less what Jesus thinks about the law.

Maybe that's why California's new push to amend their constitution and ban same sex marriage is failing so far -- no one can think of just one good reason to do it. The only arguments in favor of the ban are irrational.

Given the opportunity to expand freedom, no one can think of a real reason not to.

-Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; law; California; marriage; equality; gay; religious right; I keep looking for someone who has just one good reason to ban gay marriage -- so far, I've come up empty

Building Larry Craig's Closet

Sen. Larry Craig's mugshot

There are already accusations of a double standard in regards to Sen. Larry Craig's arrest for lewd behavior in an airport men's room. It's hard to keep my fairness gene in check and not refer to an "alleged behavior" or an "accused senator," but with his previous guilty plea, the facts are pretty much set. Craig claims that pleading guilty was a "mistake," but you don't get a do-over on this kind of thing. I'm not an attorney and I suppose he could appeal (if I'm wrong, I can count on someone correcting me), but it seems to me that going to court and being proven guilty would just be a final nail in the coffin. He'd be found guilty of lewd behavior by the law and of being gay by the public. Not that anyone has any doubt on either count.

The alleged double standard works this way -- if Republicans get busted in a sex scandal, they get pounded with criticism. If a Democrat does the same, they get a pass. It's hard to see how this is valid, since Bill Clinton was impeached for a blow job, but there you go.

The real double standard here comes from the right. John McCain, Norm Coleman, and Peter Hoekstra have all called for Craig to resign. McCain's reasoning seems the shakiest. "When you plead guilty to a crime," he explained, "You should resign." Any crime? Say, jaywalking? Craig pleaded guilty to what is apparently a nuisance crime -- he got a $500 fine and a year's probation for a misdemeanor. Legally speaking, Craig might as well have smoked in in that men's room.

Let's look at other things Republicans have done, shall we? The most recent was Louisiana Sen. David Vitter's connection to prostitution in DC and at home. Vitter held a press conference, declared that he'd "received forgiveness from God and my wife in confession and marriage counseling" and got right back to lecturing everyone on morals. Right Wing Washington barely made a peep about this. The left/right split in the Senate is so slim that they can't afford to lose the seat. It's got to be something really serious -- like being all ho-mo-sekshul -- before Republicans call for a GOP Senator's head (don't look for Alberto Gonzales's replacement to come out of the Senate, BTW).

Dick Cheney shot some poor fella in the freakin' face and they're cool with it. This is apparently a family value. Republicans love guns and hate gays; so if Dick had shot a gay guy in the face, they'd probably have cheered.

That's the real double standard here. Vitter could get laid on a float in the Mardi Gras parade with a Dominatrix and the petite filles from Madame Belle's Maison Derriere and nothing would happen. Dick Cheney could get hammered and blow the hell out of his entire neighborhood and no one would suggest he resign.

How genuine are these GOPers outrage over Craig? Probably not very. Surprisingly, there isn't a huge anti-prostitution voting block on the right. Porn, sure, but not prostitution. The anti-gun right is nonexistent. But that antigay right, they're huge. The current crop of GOP presidential candidates shows that. Not a single one has been crazy enough to even suggest that homosexuality is remotely OK. So, no matter how minor the crime, if it involves homosexuality, you might as well have committed murder. You're toast.

This double standard extends even to Larry Craig himself. It's the root of his hypocrisy. There's a "save me from myself" movement in the Republican party. People who feel the need for a rigid, inflexible, and archaic moral framework. If you're gay and don't want to be, you join in with those who want to wipe out gays. Your problem isn't your own gayness, your problem is other gay people. They're tempting you, they're dragging you down what you see as a moral sinkhole, and they must be controlled -- not you. You can bet that in his private moments, Craig curses that closeted culture of random men's room encounters, not himself. If that culture didn't exist, he wouldn't be in this mess. Never mind that people like Craig are instrumental in building that culture. In his mind, he probably thinks he was right all along and just didn't fight the homosexual menace hard enough.

And all those who are clamoring for Craig's resignation, but not Vitters, built that closeted culture as well -- gay or not. They would rather see homosexuality as the secret Hell that Sen. Larry Craig lived in; furtive encounters among strangers in secret. When it's out in the open, healthy and sane, then it's a problem.

But those who are moral, those who know what Jesus wants, they should just stop being gay. Get a wife, start a family, and -- no matter how phony -- live the Ozzie and Harriet life. If it's unfair to that wife and kids, so what? What's most important is that no one ever be gay. Because that's a choice and you can choose not to be. If you find yourself fantasizing about someone of your own gender, that's a personal failure and a sin -- even if it comes unbidden and out of the blue. It's still a choice.

Given this rigid and fake moral code, it's absolutely predictable that these secret encounters happen. And no one knows that better than Sen. Larry Craig. He lived with that inner struggle every day, he threw away more than one life in a passionless marriage, he tried to shove every gay in America back into that closet with him. He believed that this secret Hell was what every gay should live with. He thought that guilt and shame and lies were moral and that repression, denial, and the closet were the way to go.

There's a double standard, all right. And Larry Craig lives it. In right wing happyland, everyone pretends gays don't exist, then freak out when they discover they do. If you accept this worldview, it's even possible to hate yourself.

So you build that closet and you cram as many gays back in there as you possibly can. If that ruins lives of people in the closet -- as it has with Larry Craig -- that's their own damned fault.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; republican; Senate; religious right; gay; John McCain, Norm Coleman, and Peter Hoekstra help Larry Craig build a closet

The Great Man is Dead, Long Live the Hatred

The death of Jerry Falwell makes me think of Jose Ferrer's film, The Great Man. In that film, Ferrer's character sets out to discover what a popular, but recently deceased, radio commentator was like in order to create a eulogy program for him. Turns out, the man beloved by many was a completely worthless human being. Rather than tell the truth, Ferrer lets the myth live on.

In Falwell's case, I'm unwilling to do that. So much of what's being said about him is incomplete. It's generally considered bad form to speak ill of the dead -- at least, the recently dead -- but in the case of some few truly lousy people, there's is no more fitting closing chapter. The pretty words said about him are lies, while the truth damns him. And if there's ever a moment for truth, it's in those closing sentences. They are the summation, the denouement. No one can escape the truth forever -- we all, eventually, must stop running. Jerry's footrace with history is lost now and it's time to see what's caught up with him.

Of course, there are plenty who want to keep running for him. John McCain joined the race almost as soon as he heard the Great Man had died. "I join the students, faculty, and staff of Liberty University and Americans of all faiths in mourning the loss of Reverend Jerry Falwell," his press release reads. "Dr. Falwell was a man of distinguished accomplishment who devoted his life to serving his faith and country."

The Nation's John Nichols wonders how John McCain defines the word 'accomplishment':

Distinguished accomplishment? Would that be when Falwell regularly featured segregationists Lester Maddox and George Wallace on his Old Time Gospel Hour television program in the 1960s? When he condemned the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and referred to the civil rights movement as "the civil wrongs movement"? When he opposed sanctions against South Africa's apartheid regime in the 1980s? When he produced an infomercial in the 1990s accusing President Clinton of orchestrating murders of journalists and political critics, even though he would eventually admit that "I do not know the accuracy of the claims"? When he attacked Teletubbies character Tinky Winky as a gay recruitment tool? When he asserted that the Antichrist "must be, of necessity, a Jewish male"?

In short, Falwell's great accomplishment has been his ability to consistently choose the wrong side of history. McCain called Falwell an 'agent of intolerance' when he was still concerned with telling the truth -- i.e., not running to be Caesar Bush III. He's since distanced himself from that statement, as his 'straght talk express' heads away from all the inconvenient straight talk.

Ceasar Bush II isn't any more honest in his assessment of Falwell. "Laura and I are deeply saddened by the death of Jerry Falwell, a man who cherished faith, family, and freedom," a White House press release reads. Falwell for freedom? There's a laugh. He made a career trying to limit freedom. Falwell's entire political philosophy was a laundry list of things you should not be allowed to do. Falwell, like Bush, liked to talk about freedom a lot, but he didn't really have much use for it.

He began his career as he ended it -- as a professional bigot. In 1958 he said in a sermon, "The true Negro does not want integration... He realizes his potential is far better among his own race... It will destroy our race eventually... In one northern city, a pastor friend of mine tells me that a couple of opposite race live next door to his church as man and wife... It boils down to whether we are going to take God's Word as final."

Having lost the fight against integration and interracial marriage, he moved on. But not before embracing apartheid in South Africa. While others were pushing for divestiture to defund the system, Falwell was urging his faithful to buy krugerrands -- gold coins issued by the South African government -- to support the government's policies and make up the losses caused by the divestiture movement. Segregation was still alive in one corner of the world and, as long as it survived, there was a chance it'd come back to the US.

Even his faith was phony. Falwell founded Liberty University and soon found that financing it was a little more than he could handle. In 1994, Falwell accepted $3.5 million from cult leader Sun Myung Moon to bail out his college. Moon claims to be the messiah and routinely describes Jesus Christ as a 'failure.' That unfortunate fact didn't stop Jerry from accepting the money from his new friend. Hypocrisy in the name of Christ was a virtue, not a sin.

There really isn't enough room here to get you to truly appreciate what Jerry Falwell really was. It'd take a book -- there's just so much. The homophobia, racism, misogyny, antisemitism, and just plain hate that he stood for will not die with him. He founded the religious right and the ideas he advocated will continue to be fought for long after his death.

Yet, like his embrace of segregation, his issues, beliefs, and philosophies will lose. Hatred always fails, eventually. The world moves on and the bigots are left behind in the dust.

The world hasn't lost anything with death of Jerry Falwell. The movement he started doesn't need him anymore. It'll keep going. So the world hasn't gained anything either. That'll happen when these fights he started, but couldn't finish, are lost.

If you find any of what I've written offensive or in bad taste, let me ask you one question -- what part of it isn't true? Falwell's life speaks for him and it's hard to look at history and find anything redeeming about the man. His life has been one of hatred and lies.

It's a pity that won't be marked on his tombstone.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; obituary; gay; abortion; racism; hate; Jerry Falwell, father of the religious right, made bigotry a political movement

Earth to Pace -- Gays Aren't the Problem

Gen. Peter Pace has found himself on the receiving end of a lot of deserved criticism for an interview with the Chicago Tribune. In that interview, Pace explained that he thought homosexuality was 'immoral' and comparable to adultery. Pace misses one important fact -- it's heterosexual behavior that harming troop morale and unit cohesion, in the form of rape and sexual harassment.

First, Pace on gays:

Chicago Tribune:

"I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts," Pace said in a wide-ranging discussion with Tribune editors and reporters in Chicago. "I do not believe the United States is well served by a policy that says it is OK to be immoral in any way.

"As an individual, I would not want [acceptance of gay behavior] to be our policy, just like I would not want it to be our policy that if we were to find out that so-and-so was sleeping with somebody else's wife, that we would just look the other way, which we do not. We prosecute that kind of immoral behavior," Pace said.

A ban on adultery may strike some people as a little 19th century. But consider that military personnel have access to guns -- and RPGs and tanks and jets, etc. You kind of want to avoid situations that would make one person angry at another. However, a ban on homosexual activity lacks that sort of actual, real world reason. It exists only because some people find the idea distasteful. It's hard to think of a situation where it would cause a problem. At least, not a problem caused by gays.

Any problem serving with gays would be caused by bigots. Homophobia is the problem, not gays. It's like blaming minorities for racism -- it's bass ackward thinking. Pace is only reinforcing that backwards, blame-the-victim reasoning.

Meanwhile:

Helen Benedict, Salon:

As thousands of burned-out soldiers prepare to return to Iraq to fill President Bush's unwelcome call for at least 20,000 more troops, I can't help wondering what the women among those troops will have to face. And I don't mean only the hardships of war, the killing of civilians, the bombs and mortars, the heat and sleeplessness and fear.

I mean from their own comrades -- the men.

I have talked to more than 20 female veterans of the Iraq war in the past few months, interviewing them for up to 10 hours each for a book I am writing on the topic, and every one of them said the danger of rape by other soldiers is so widely recognized in Iraq that their officers routinely told them not to go to the latrines or showers without another woman for protection.

Women are warned not to go out alone at night at Camp Arifjan, Kuwait. "They call Camp Arifjan 'generator city' because it's so loud with generators that even if a woman screams she can't be heard," said Abbie Pickett, 24, a specialist with the 229th Combat Support Engineering Company. A National Guard member tells of carrying a knife with her everywhere. The fear of rape is so constant that it's literally killing troops. Benedict again:

Last year, Col. Janis Karpinski caused a stir by publicly reporting that in 2003, three female soldiers had died of dehydration in Iraq, which can get up to 126 degrees in the summer, because they refused to drink liquids late in the day. They were afraid of being raped by male soldiers if they walked to the latrines after dark...

Looking at Benedict's piece, it's hard to figure why gays are supposed to be the big problem here. Yet you look through the Trib piece and you don't find Pace mentioning rape and sexual harassment at all. In fact, recent changes in military recruitment standards suggest that morality is no longer a big deal for the military.

The Ledger, FL:

Enlistment into the armed services can be barred for two categories of crime: felonies and serious misdemeanors such as burglary and vehicular homicide. But those with such convictions can serve if they are granted a moral waiver.

The numbers of such waivers granted by the Army increased about 65 percent in the past three years - from just more than 4,900 in 2003 to 8,129 last year. That was happening while the Army used other methods to increase the recruiting pool. Those included cash bonuses and less-stringent weight and age restrictions.

So Pace is arguing that morality's a big deal in the military, while the armed services (the Army's not the only one) is handing out something called 'moral waivers' left and right. It really kind of blows his argument out of the water.

Pace would better serve his nation and the people under him if he were more concerned with the realities and less concerned with right wing theories. Someone needs to tell him there's a war on.

--Wisco

Technorati tags: politics; war; Iraq; Afghanistan; religious right; gays in the military isn't the moral problem that Peter Pace needs to be losing sleep over...