Double-Speakeasies - or - How I'm Taking It Personally Now

Freedom vs. Slavery.

photo © 2008 Tony | more info (via: Wylio)

That was the main meta-story in the US of the mid 1800's. Except it wasn't just the Northern abolitionists saying that about the Southern slave states. It was how Southern plantation owners framed the struggle to their poor white neighbors. "If the slaves were free, they would take all of your jobs, rape your wives, be a drain on the economic system, raise your taxes to serf-like levels. A free negro is a threat to our great civilization and will end your freedom as you know it, as well as their own."

Any of this sound familiar?

Yesterday I realized, for the first time, that my daughter has what could be described as a "pre-existing condition." After several months of a persistent, standing pneumonia that doctors could never quite figure out, over Thanksgiving weekend we found out she has bronchiectasis. There is no cure. We have to treat her half an hour three times a day by hooking her up to machines. Each day. For the rest of her life.

I lay awake at night and hear her struggling to breathe. I can feel her air trying to go through her airways, while they're blocked up with mucus that she can't get out of her system easily and automatically like most of the rest of us.

There are others who are in worse situations, of course. And I've long advocated for universal, affordable health care (preferably Single Payer, the system Canada uses). But now it's intensely personal. If the little gains we received under the recent health care reform bill were rescinded (without a better plan in its wake), my child's health will be affected intensely.

I wish that the current Republican crop weren't just trying to score cheap political points by comparing health care reform with slavery, or death panels, or whatever current lie is fashionable. Because it seems obvious to me that 1) universal health care works in every developed nation but this one; 2) leaving one-tenth of all Americans without insurance is

disgusting, uncivilized, and un-neighborly - it leaves tens of millions of Americans without recourse but intense debt and allows easily preventable diseases to build until they become lethal; 3) arguing against universal health care is immoral and indecent.

We can argue about the means to the ends of universal health care. Many of the suggestions for reform that Obama and the Democrats brought up last year were, in fact, originally Republican ideas - including the mandate. Including the public option. But then those suggestions were labeled toxic and slave-inducing by the same people who supported them some fifteen years prior.

But much of the rhetoric being used against the new reforms assume that covering everybody is murderous. It's the double-speak of the 1840's all over again. And again, the people that profit most from these lies are not those that are defending them (with their votes or lives), but those at the top that spew them. Those that are defending the lies actually have the most to lose. Consider the white sharecroppers who barely got by on the sweat of their brow but were led to believe it was the Africans' fault that they may die as poor as they entered into the world, if not worse.

The lie was, if the dark-skinned ones get free, the white worker will become their slaves. Forget the fact that they were just a step above the slaves themselves because of the practices and policies of the ruling class...

The lie is, if the uninsured are covered, there will not be enough medicine for the working class and the senior citizens. Forget the fact that the cost of insurance is rising astronomically every year so that businesses cannot afford to keep up anymore. Forget the fact that insurance companies employ teams and teams of numbers-crunchers to figure out how to deny care costs. Forget the fact that it's a public health issue. Forget the fact that we spend twice as much of our GDP as other countries (that actually cover everyone) do on health care, yet still 1/10th are uncovered, a significant fraction is under-covered, and many more claims are unfairly, unjustly denied. Forget the fact that racial and economic disparities in coverage lead to tens of thousands of deaths a year.

And I can't help but feeling that every time someone argues that any viable progress in reform leads us all to slavery, they are arguing that my daughter doesn't deserve to live.

Please explain this to me.

How Children Learn Nasty Stuff from Us

Dan Savage (the NorthWest-based Sex Columnist known for being particularly crass in a field of crass-ness) had a particularly strong column last week on Christians' relationships with anti-gay bullying. Some of his points for those of us who need to listen the most may have been missed in his offensive efforts of calling the writer out, but they are poignant and for those of us who can stomach such insults, they need to be listened to. Slightly edited version is at the end of this blog.

However, I want to take some time to re-envision what this may mean for us Christians.

Imagine that your children are in school in a land where Christians are openly mocked and persecuted. Not the persecution-lite that some radio pundits and mass-mail fliers try to convince us is increasing in this country. (They were saying the same thing when I was a child, about basically the same situations. But I was a Christian then just as now and I can honestly say, I was never truly persecuted. However, as a teacher, I did see real, malignant persecution for sexually ambiguous young men. It broke my heart). Occasionally being teased for being a virgin in the locker room is hardly the same as the verbal, emotional, physical, sexual onslaught that, say, homosexual children receive on a daily, hourly basis. Let's put aside the concerns that homosexuality is learned or biological, because as Christians, we choose. So we know that choice shouldn't be a justification for persecution.

Now, imagine living in an area where Christians are outcasts, blamed for all sorts of things that we can't possibly be responsible for: polluting the minds of young children, if not doing worse; promoting a secret, clandestine agenda;looking to convert innocents and drag them from their family and traditions. In fact, it seems entirely plausible to me that WE are actually doing the things we are accusing the LGBT community as a whole of doing, even as they're mostly just trying to get a hold on the confusion-matrix that is school, life, hormones, family...

And your children go to school. And they're bumped into lockers for being at the least moderately associated with Christianity. They're called all sorts of names, the sorts of names that I just promised a friend I'd try not to repeat. Constant barrage, constant butt of highly embarrassing jokes. Being roughed up in the halls regularly; being sexually assaulted constantly. Derision. Mockery.

And you're talking with your next door neighbors about these problems. And they're basically decent folks. Keep to themselves, keep a clean manor, music is down low; they're not shout-y people like some of the other guys. But you know that their kids are roughing up your kids. Even leaders amongst the anti-Christian bullies.

And they respond, "Now, you guys can live over there and pray your little prayers to your Magical Sky Fairy in peace, and we can do something worthwhile and valuable in peace and we should be all okay. It's really too bad that's happening to your children. But we don't tell our kids to bully your kids. That wouldn't be very nice or neighborly. It's against our moral code to do so.

"I'm actually a bit offended," they continue, adding injury to insult by their mock pain, "that you'd suggest that we would possibly persuade our children to aggravate your children. Maybe if you people didn't try to be all Christian, what with your going to church and stuff, and wanting to be married and hang out at the ice cream shop like normal people... Maybe they wouldn't be targeted. But that's not our fault."

That's the same sort of semi-human/back-handed disregard that we're feeding in our Christian community about Gay/Lesbian/Bi-sexual/Transgendered people. How do our children internalize such talk? Seriously??

Q: I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened by and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life.

If your message is that we shouldn't judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man, and I know for a fact that's true of many other people who disagree with your viewpoint.

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people....

—L.R.

A: I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not. Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying...

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.

And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.

... The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians" and the lies about us vomited out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to mom and dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh and others—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call mom and dad.

Loving the Individual Sinner, Hating the Institutional Sin

... and forgive us of our sins as we forgive the sins of those who trespass against us...

- Jesus

I just got back from a retreat that was bookended by some furious moments*. Rising early on Monday morning I was greeted (if that's the word for it) by an email from a friend of a friend**. In an honestly odd and disturbing manner he took me to task for standing up for African Americans in a conversation with our mutual friend. And then he practically ordered that I defend him as he - according to his story - is constantly under attack by the African Americans that live around him. After telling him a truncated version of my life story I assured him that I stand and advocate for all who are abused, marginalized, oppressed and beaten-down. And then I challenged him and told him that he should stand WITH those that attack him.

He didn't like that. His response showed anger that I wasn't siding with him and against them. And with that, he showed his true colors.

But I'll talk more on that later.

I was in a rush to see my wife this evening. As usual, running late to an event (this one an appreciation dinner for volunteers - of which I'm one, though a small part - at a local social services organization) and passing a group of African Americans, one of whom calls me by name. I couldn't recognize him instantly, but he did me and asked me about church, etc. Feeling bad that I was running behind and frustrated that I couldn't place him, I told him I had to get going to this event. As I made way down the block, some kid (I can only presume) throws a pen at my back. I didn't have time (or the patience) to return to the scene of the crime, so I kept walking and lifted my shoulders as if to ask, "Why?"

There is something that I want to say to both of these people, to the child and to the man:

Open your eyes and realize that you are enslaved. Break the shackles off your mental slavery, from your feelings of woeful inadequacy. You are better than what society has told you you are, and you do not need to hurt others to feel better about yourself. Together, we can defeat your mindset and the tools and armies of oppression that surround us all. Divided, we only fight and die divided.

But it was my toddler's near-ragged, relentlessly exhausted and exhausting, cragginess and violent rebuttals to night-night that caused me to look inward as well. I struggle to not continue the cycle of violence and shame that I learned from my own dad and thus drag her into it. And that's harder to perform than swinging a good, swift swat. But I also have to remember about grace, and redemption. And about not continuing the same block-headed stubbornness that my father and I were locked into for some eighteen long years.

Sure, Jocelyn - the sinful and stubborn little booger that she is - needed a time-out. She needed to learn to listen to her daddy and sit in that corner until the bell rang as a reminder to not hit. But she also needed grace. And a blankie. And forgiveness. And a long hug.

I gave her those things. And sent her back to her corner for the last minute or so. And then we cleaned out her nose and read stories and laughed.

And I asked if I could pray for her. And as she was falling featherly deeper and sounder into her sleep-state, I prayed the Lord's prayer over her. And I decidedly meant every word. Whether or not my child understood every word, I felt her approval as if God were nodding as she was nodding off.

Forgive me my pettiness, Oh Lord.

........

Now on to the title of the piece and the idea of true colors:

A motif that I've noticed recently is that people (and this tends to be White people, but they're certainly not the only ones. But what I've noticed recently has to do with Whites' responses to racism and racial injustice) have this incessant need to be forgiven for the systemic sins that they have no intentions of repenting from. It is ridiculous and stupid and evil and immoral and needs to be corrected, but I also realize that they are slaves to the institutional sin that they propagate (and that has been practiced on them). It is a sign of true colors: we're all slaves in one way or another to some system of sin, some - as we Christians sometimes call it - demonic stronghold.

This stronghold, this institutional sin, this immoral injustice needs to be rectified. And the person practicing it and legitimizing it needs to be corrected. But she also needs grace. He also needs to be loved. The hope is that we get to save both the lost sinner and end the enslaving system. That, in the long run, is win-win.

And I like those odds.

*There is one more moment that I can not stand to testify about, at least at this moment. But in sticking up for a (somewhat righteously) stigmatized group, I was labeled with the same stigma. I can only imagine that the young man who made such uncharitable, inflammatory and just plain hurtful remarks toward me has suffered some deep, uncharitable, inflammatory and just plain hurtful pain himself - possibly in a related way.

Or, he could just be a self-righteous prick hiding under the relative anonymity of Facebook. I did offer to kick his ass if he so desires to come to Chicago and he hasn't taken me up on that offer yet...

**Friend and email both being loose terms as this was all done through the miracle of Facebook.

Immigrants cause crime?

Blame Lou Dobbs. Or nativism. Or Dan Stein and his inexplicably mainstreamed hate-policy group, FAIR. Or the 24/7 news culture that somehow leaves us less informed and more afraid than ever before.

But these reports - shooting up everywhere, throwing impossible-to-verify data on the ground in retaliation against migrants - defy any and all logic whatsoever. Not just logic, but experience, and research to boot. I won't spend all day trying to gut the lying numbers, since they do not add up to reality and any quick research will point out that Dobbs and his racist friends* can't admit - they're lying racists who use irrational fear to bring people on the fence to their side. Well, some people on some fences...

It says something fundamentally ugly, however, about American tribal culture that we can so easily believe such unfounded, irrational and perverted lies about our fellow humans simply because THEY (immigrants) are not US (Real Americans).

This is my observation living amongst many cultures: It's not the migrant populations who tend towards violence.** Rather, it's those populations who have tried and failed to assimilate to American cultural norms - those who have looked deep into the heart of domestic imperialism - those who have seen the hard work, toil, sweat, and dropped blood of their parents, aunts and uncles, grandparents and cousins go for naught, but in fact repaid in viciousness, exploitation, burned crosses and ambush parties. These - the second and third and further generational Americans - are those who tend to resort to violence. They've learned from the United States what it means to be ugly.

And sometimes, sadly, they give in to the hopelessness.

Rather than hurting our migrant neighbors by repeating, reposting, accepting, or - often worse - ignoring those who tend to link violent crime with immigrants, we need to offer them and their children a path to hope.***

After all, isn't that what being an American is supposed to be all about?

*To counter the charges of xenophobia, Dobbs' supporters point to the fact that he has a Latina wife. But then I could make an illustration about the different meanings of "love" using goats, but I think I'd rather not...

**Actually, undocumented immigrants tend to become the victims of these crimes rather than perpetrators because their victimizers know that they are in constant fear of deportation and that the police often have their hands tied by laws that, in effect, do not favor much of their population.

***In fact, we should also offer the Dobbses hope too, for as long as they continue to buy into the vicious lies, they continue to not only imprison the new Americans and darker-skinned people, but also themselves. One of us be chained, mofos, we ALL be chained.

Rush to Judgment

I can see why this guy is big stuff on the religious right's calendar. Why they listen to his unsubstantiated bigoted rants against The Gays, the Intilekts, Women, and that Magic Negro.

Rush Limbaugh is going to enter into his FOURTH marriage! Isn't that Teh Awesome??

This guy loves heterosexual marriage so much that he's doing it again and again. That's three more times than the man we all want to fail, right, Rushie? You're four times as dedicated to straight marriage than that ManChild in Chief, as you like to call him.

In addition - and this is what makes him such a Great AMERICAN - Rush is also a lover of freedom, which is why he doesn't stay with those marriages. Can't keep him cooped up; ya can't keep a good man down.

So I ask, what's wrong with the rest of us? We should be on HIS level!

Why do we hate hetero marriage and freedom so much?