gold-catalinarobayo: July 2008

The Summer of Love

Two nice bits at The Nation today.

First, avowed Obama supporter Katha Pollitt reassembles her exploded head long enough to criticize her candidate for his support of faith-based initiatives.

Obama may have given his initiative an inclusive-sounding name--the President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships--and he may insist that with proper oversight government money can go to religious institutions without going to religious purposes, like proselytizing. He wouldn't let churches discriminate in hiring for these programs or provide services only to their own (although the Supreme Court permits religious discrimination in church hiring, even for janitorial jobs). He says churches will have to obey their state's antidiscrimination laws, which would mean that in twenty states churches that consider homosexuality an abomination would have to hire gays anyway. It would be hard to overestimate the amount of bureaucratic energy required to enforce these provisions. Besides, money is fungible--a grant for the prison-ministry-that-never-mentions-Jesus frees up that many dollars for Sunday school or a new car for the Reverend.

Spot on. The cognitive dissonance must be hard to resolve, though. If Pollitt were to look at Obama's other policies with the same jaundiced eye, it might become unsustainable.

Second, Dave Zirin (from whom I’ve learned a lot about the politics of sport) points to threatening cracks in the cheery façade of the Beijing Olympics.

Athletes, activists and globe-trotting protesters are poised to raise a panoply of issues, including China's crackdown on Tibet, its support for the Sudanese regime and environmental concerns. The Communist Party has been forced to respond to this pressure cooker by opening a steam valve, announcing on July 24 that public protests will be permitted during the games inside three designated city parks. But as the Times reported, "Demonstrators must first obtain permits from local police and also abide by Chinese laws that usually make it nearly impossible to legally picket over politically charged issues."

On the minus side, we have an open letter to Obama, “Change We Can Believe In,” taking him to task for “troubling signs that you are moving away from the core commitments shared by many who have supported your campaign, toward a more cautious and centrist stance.” Among the signatories are Katha Pollitt, Barbara Ehrenreich, Gore Vidal, Walter Mosley, Norman Solomon, and Studs Terkel – all people who really should know better. I've become increasingly skeptical of open letters like this ever since I read Diana Johnstone's demolition of a typical one some years ago.

Given today’s brouhaha over Obama’s quite sensible response to the latest McCain attack ad, I’m more convinced than ever that the corporate media are an impediment to making sense of any presidential campaign. (Or about anything else.) I thought that this reaction to McCain's ad, by a former McCain staffer, was very good.

And at Salon, Glenn Greenwald wakes up and smells the coffee:

Here's what I learned today about democracy and ideology as a result of my debate with Ed Kilgore and having read the comments to the piece I wrote about targeting Blue Dogs:

If you believe in the Fourth Amendment, an end to the Iraq War, the rule of law for government and corporate criminals, a ban on torture, Congressional approval before the President can attack Iran, and the preservation of habeas corpus rights, then you're a fringe, dogmatic Far Leftist ideologue, the kind who ruined the Democratic Party in 1968 and wants to do so again. ...

I’ve chewed on Greenwald before for trying to push certain American realities beyond the pale. Maybe, instead of being shocked! shocked! that his views cause him to be labeled (the horror! the horror!) as a fringe, dogmatic Far Leftist ideologue, he (and others like him) should consider the possibility that being a fringe, dogmatic Far Leftist ideologue isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But as I’ve also pointed out before, and Greenwald seems to be figuring out only now, by these criteria most Americans are fringe, dogmatic Far Leftist ideologues. Or, as IOZ once put it, "To a Donkle, the margins are everyone else. It must get lonely."

Not that recognizing this really solves anything; but it might make some people less vulnerable to attack, less prone to retreat when someone calls them names, and that would be a plus.

The Summer of Love

Two nice bits at The Nation today.

First, avowed Obama supporter Katha Pollitt reassembles her exploded head long enough to criticize her candidate for his support of faith-based initiatives.

Obama may have given his initiative an inclusive-sounding name--the President's Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships--and he may insist that with proper oversight government money can go to religious institutions without going to religious purposes, like proselytizing. He wouldn't let churches discriminate in hiring for these programs or provide services only to their own (although the Supreme Court permits religious discrimination in church hiring, even for janitorial jobs). He says churches will have to obey their state's antidiscrimination laws, which would mean that in twenty states churches that consider homosexuality an abomination would have to hire gays anyway. It would be hard to overestimate the amount of bureaucratic energy required to enforce these provisions. Besides, money is fungible--a grant for the prison-ministry-that-never-mentions-Jesus frees up that many dollars for Sunday school or a new car for the Reverend.

Athletes, activists and globe-trotting protesters are poised to raise a panoply of issues, including China's crackdown on Tibet, its support for the Sudanese regime and environmental concerns. The Communist Party has been forced to respond to this pressure cooker by opening a steam valve, announcing on July 24 that public protests will be permitted during the games inside three designated city parks. But as the Times reported, "Demonstrators must first obtain permits from local police and also abide by Chinese laws that usually make it nearly impossible to legally picket over politically charged issues."

And at Salon, Glenn Greenwald wakes up and smells the coffee:

Here's what I learned today about democracy and ideology as a result of my debate with Ed Kilgore and having read the comments to the piece I wrote about targeting Blue Dogs:

If you believe in the Fourth Amendment, an end to the Iraq War, the rule of law for government and corporate criminals, a ban on torture, Congressional approval before the President can attack Iran, and the preservation of habeas corpus rights, then you're a fringe, dogmatic Far Leftist ideologue, the kind who ruined the Democratic Party in 1968 and wants to do so again. ...

Not that recognizing this really solves anything; but it might make some people less vulnerable to attack, less prone to retreat when someone calls them names, and that would be a plus.

PROVINCETOWN, NOT PALM SPRINGS

If you want to get married before the November election, plan to do so in Massachusetts. The legislature has repealed the law that effectively banned out-of-state couples from marrying there, and Governor Patrick will sign the repeal shortly.

Because Californians are voting up or down in November on retaining marriage for same-sex couples, any marriage there carries a risk. If a ban on same-sex marriage passes, all the marriages performed before then will be under a cloud.

On the other hand, the skies are clear in Massachusetts. Thanks to the fine work of Mass Equality and a lot of straight allies, marriage for same-sex couples is secure there. So choose the Berkshires, not Berkeley, and breathe easy.

Maybe He Is Magic ...

...and I agree he's adorable. But he's still dangerous.

Maybe He Is Magic ...

...and I agree he's adorable. But he's still dangerous.

They Don't Make Nostalgia Like They Used To

Sorry, still too busy to write at any length. So here are two videos (and yes, I know, if I have time to surf YouTube I have time to write about Noam Chomsky). One's by the Korean pop group Jaurim, one of my current K-pop favorites. A couple of years ago they put out a CD mostly of covers of 70s and 80s American pop, sung in English. So when I saw the title of this song, I hoped they were going to do the same with the 60s:

Alas, no. Great video, though, and a good song. Imagine Jaurim performing Steppenwolf's "Magic Carpet Ride."

I remember people commenting on the bass player's fashion choices even in the 60s. One commenter on YouTube says, "One guy looks like he's wearing a dress!" I can understand someone making that mistake in the 60s, but if it were a dress it would be a muumuu. It looks to me like a djellaba. Granted, the boy is trying to look fey in his closeups, but mostly he just looks stoned. Nice head nudging between him and lead singer John Fay, though, whose sexiness I didn't appreciate when I was a teenager.

And now I need to get back to reading Joanne Passet's Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster, which I'd like to finish tonight if I can.

They Don't Make Nostalgia Like They Used To

OHIO PAID SICK LEAVE CONTINUED

I posted a couple of weeks ago about the narrow definition of family member in the Ohio Paid Sick Days initiative. Since then, I've spoken with the initiative's campaign manager, Brian Dunn, and looked into the role of Equality Ohio and other gay rights groups.

What I have to report is both sad and infuriating.

Ohio has a Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that bars marriage and recognition of marriage for same-sex couples but also says the state “shall not create or recognize a legal status for relationships of unmarried individuals that intends to approximate the design, qualities, significance, or effect of marriage.” Perhaps Ohio could not mandate paid sick leave that employees could use to care for a sick unmarried partner. That doesn't really create a "legal status," but someone could argue that it does.

But, as my earlier post pointed out, there are at least two good alternative options: include anyone who is a member of the employee's household or include the definition that federal workers now have -- anyone related by blood or affinity whose close association with the employee is the equivalent of a family relationship. The latter definition is in Senator's Kennedy's Healthy Families Act.

Brian Dunn told me that Ohioans for Healthy Families, a coalition spearheaded by SIEU, consulted with their lawyers and was told that a more inclusive definition would not be possible given the state DOMA. This is just dead wrong. Workers have households containing a variety of individuals; allowing a worker to balance work and family responsibilities by using sick leave to care for a sick household member would not be "recognizing a legal status" between the worker and the sick household member that "approximated marriage."

Sure, one of the right-wing groups that pushed for the Ohio DOMA might challenge the law. They would lose. Last year the Ohio Supreme Court ruled, 6-1, that the state could prosecute a man for violence against a woman he lived with "as a spouse" without running afoual of the state DOMA. In the lead-up to the case, one of the strongest proponents of Ohio's DOMA said it would not violate DOMA to make domestic violence against any household member a crime.

So now we know where Ohioans for Healthy Families was coming from. I blame both bad legal advice and what I imagine to be an inability to tolerate even the slightest chance that a right-wing maniac would challenge the law. Proponents of the initiative decided it was better to sacrifice the variety of households, including those in which many same-sex couples live. I repeat what I said in my earlier post. Shame on them.

Now as for the gay rights groups, they were not asleep at the wheel. The gay community knew the campaign excluded them, and Equality Ohio voted to oppose the measure. I have since heard that Equality Ohio voted to remain neutral on the initiative, but I have been unable to confirm this. The Human Rights Campaign was involved as well, and dealt directly with SIEU. They did supply language such as the definition in the Healthy Families Act. The initiative's sponsors were unmoved.

So this leads up to the obvious question...support the initiative or not? It's a painful choice. Is there a way to vote for this initiative but send a loud and clear message to SIEU and to all the state level groups working on paid sick leave that what they did was unacceptable and unnecessary and should not be repeated elsewhere? Is there a way to vote for this initiative, which goes by the name "The Healthy Families Act," while not diluting or compromising on the provision of the federal "Healthy Families Act" that includes the much broader definition?

If I lived in Ohio, I know I wouldn't just vote against this initiative. That wouldn't make my voice heard in other states and across the country. But would I vote for it, knowing this history? Well, I'd like to hear what Ohioans have to say about this...

WHAT'S IN THE NAME?

Another book about marriage came to my attention this weekend: "The Marriage Benefit: The Surprising Rewards of Staying Together, by psychologist Mark O'Connell. The title sounds close to that of "The Case for Marriage," Linda Waite and Maggie Gallagaher's book that I blast in my book for its "marriage promotion" propaganda and that Bella DePaulo skewers in her book, "Singled Out."

So imagine my surprise to hear what Dr. O'Connell said on Tom Ashbrook's On Point on public radio. A caller said she would not marry her male partner because same-sex couples cannot marry. She also said she would not marry because she is bisexual and if her partner had been a woman she would be unable to marry her. Here's how the author responded: "Everything I wrote in the book really applies in a broader sense to the matter of intimate commitment....I wouldn't sit here and argue that one has to be formally and conventionally married in order to have the kind of benefits that come from intimacy....What we are talking about it here is what is it about sustained intimate commitment that can bring you things that are actually quite unique?"

So why call the book, "The Marriage Benefit?" Why not call it "The Intimate Commitment Benefit?" I think I know the answer. The name marriage sells. It resonates in a culture that has been inundated by the claims of the "marriage movement" and government-sponsored "marriage promotion" that the decline of marriage causes our social problems. It would actually be a radical claim in our culture that intimate commitment brings the same benefits that marriage brings. The author even said he believes in divorce! You wouldn't know it from the book title. I'm sorry this author -- and his publisher - chose not to make the more radical and nuanced claim in the title of the book itself.

A Thousand Years From Now, This Photograph Will Be Meaningless...

... but in this moment, I find it funny. (via)

Busy day today, so I won't have any more to say until tomorrow or so.

A Thousand Years From Now, This Photograph Will Be Meaningless...

... but in this moment, I find it funny. (via)

Busy day today, so I won't have any more to say until tomorrow or so.

The Person Sitting In Darkness

The Korea Herald’s “Kaleidoscope” column has struck again. On July 23 it featured "Society respecting no authority" by Kim Seong-kon, a professor of English at Seoul National University and president of the American Studies Association of Korea, in a thoroughly confused defense of authority against those who disrespect it. This is a motif that’s been getting a lot of play in South Korea lately, in reaction to the candlelight vigils, though of course it turns up everywhere else, including these United States. It’s a handy ad hominem, useful for distracting attention from the issues at stake, and its popularity is a good reason to subject it to some jaundiced scrutiny.

Professor Kim falls on his face right off the bat:

Recently, radical African-American scholars began vehemently attacking white American writers as racists. The allegedly racist authors include Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell. It appears to have become fashionable these days to shoot down major canonical writers who are historical pioneers of American literature.

Evidently Professor Kim is unaware that these and other writers and others have been criticized for their treatment of race for a very long time, and not only by ‘radicals’ (though I think Professor Kim is using that term simply as an expletive). Faulkner and Mitchell, besides, are no “historical pioneers of American literature”, and the label of pioneer hardly fits even the 19^th-century Twain. Even if they were, it wouldn’t automatically put them above criticism. (Nor is Mitchell as canonical a writer a Professor Kim seems to think.)

Professor Kim then defends his triumvirate against the charge of racism with what he calls “well-known” facts – Mitchell’s donations to Morehouse College, for example, or that Faulkner “took African-American children to school, holding their hands and valiantly marching through the intimidating picket lines of white protesters. How, then, could he be racist?” I’ve had trouble verifying this specific claim about Faulkner. He did speak out against white racism with great courage – for a while. But in 1956 he retreated, urging blacks to “slow down,” prompting Martin Luther King, Jr. to comment that “It is hardly a moral act to encourage others patiently to accept injustice which he himself does not endure.” (King, like James Baldwin who also criticized Faulkner’s counsel, was no doubt one of those “radical African-American radical scholars” who so annoy Professor Kim.) Faulkner was ambivalent about race and about desegregation, and it does him no honor to try to erase his less edifying pronouncements.

Twain’s attitudes toward race, in his life and work, have also been much debated. I’m not going to try to settle the question here. What amazed me was Professor Kim’s authority for Twain’s moral purity:

Leslie Fiedler, who was Samuel Clemens Professor of English at SUNY/Buffalo, used to lament the recent academic trend of defaming Mark Twain as being racist. "They completely misread Huckleberry Finn," Professor Fiedler once told me. "Twain was never a racist. Au contraire, he sharply criticized slavery and racial prejudice in Huckleberry Finn." … [T]he radical scholars have not been able to read between the lines or uncover the underlying messages in Huckleberry Finn and Puddin'head Wilson. Yet, these militant scholars seem to unscrupulously repudiate anyone who they think belongs to the canon.

Professor Kim betrays his ignorance and selective reading here by citing Leslie Fiedler, the great Bad Boy of American literary study, in defense of authority and the canon! The maverick Fiedler is notorious for having argued in what is probably his most famous work, Love and Death in the American Novel, that the love between Huck Finn and the slave Jim was “homoerotic” – indeed, that “homoerotic” love between males was a dominant theme in canonical American literature. (Fiedler used the word “homosexual” in his 1948 essay “Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey!” but later substituted “homoerotic,” denying that he’d meant to imply that Huck and Jim committed “sodomy.” More recently scholars, relying on a misreading of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Between Men, have adopted the term “homosocial” to keep suggestions of sodomitical vice at, um, arm’s length.) Fiedler's thesis didn't go down well with most boosters of American literature -- calling Huck and Jim a couple of fags, how could he! And how could Professor Kim quote someone who makes such awful attacks on the historical pioneers of American literature?

But going back to Twain, I agree that he was opposed to slavery, though this was less controversial in 1885, when Huck Finn was published, than it was when the story took place. The trouble for Professor Kim’s case is that Twain was hostile to other established authority, especially religion and imperialism. Given Professor Kim’s following lamentation about the disrespect for authority that now characterizes Korean society (“Even North Korea does not seem to respect South Korea much”!), I shudder to imagine what he’d think of Twain’s blistering 1901 polemic against American imperialism and racism, “To the Person Sitting in Darkness.” The first time I read that piece, its tone and substance reminded me of Noam Chomsky:

Then They that Sit in Darkness are troubled, and shake their heads; and they read this extract from a letter of a British private, recounting his exploits in one of Methuen's victories, some days before the affair of Magersfontein, and they are troubled again:

"We tore up the hill and into the intrenchments, and the Boers saw we had them; so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees and put up their hands clasped, and begged for mercy. And we gave it them – with the long spoon."

The long spoon is the bayonet. See Lloyd's Weekly, London, of those days. The same number – and the same column – contains some quite unconscious satire in the form of shocked and bitter upbraidings of the Boers for their brutalities and inhumanities!

As Professor Kim’s op-ed rises to its peroration, it collapses:

Indeed, South Korea is currently suffering from endless demonstrations, frequent workers' strikes, and violent protests. People no longer respect the government, the National Assembly, or the police. Having lost its authority, the Lee administration is not capable of prosecuting those who organize demonstrations and conspire to overthrow the government. …

Many South Koreans either confuse authority with authoritarianism, or misunderstand authority as an inherited or unjustly acquired privilege. They assume that all authorities should be denied and defied, which is why Korean society always looks unstable and faltering. Unfortunately, that is precisely how foreigners perceive South Korea from the outside. We desperately need to restore the long-lost respect for authority.

I agree that many South Koreans confuse authority with authoritarianism -- President Lee's supporters defend his authoritarianism as authority. I guess I have to repeat that if the Korean people had slavishly respected authority in the past, the South would still be ruled by a military dictatorship. (And if you want to enforce respect for authority, the North still does very well in that department; maybe Professor Kim would be happier there.) Since Professor Kim refers to President Lee’s predecessor only as “the leftist Roh administration … [when] the Confucian decorum of respecting the authority of one's seniors and superiors was completely eradicated,” I take it he doesn’t have in mind the Right’s conspiracy “to overthrow the government.” Not all authority deserves respect and obedience in Professor Kim's eyes, it appears. And South Korea doesn’t appear “unstable and faltering” to this outsider. But then I’m one of those radicals who don’t recognize authority, who consider that the burden of proof lies on those who demand respect -- let alone obedience.

The Person Sitting In Darkness

Professor Kim falls on his face right off the bat:

Recently, radical African-American scholars began vehemently attacking white American writers as racists. The allegedly racist authors include Mark Twain, William Faulkner and Margaret Mitchell. It appears to have become fashionable these days to shoot down major canonical writers who are historical pioneers of American literature.

Leslie Fiedler, who was Samuel Clemens Professor of English at SUNY/Buffalo, used to lament the recent academic trend of defaming Mark Twain as being racist. "They completely misread Huckleberry Finn," Professor Fiedler once told me. "Twain was never a racist. Au contraire, he sharply criticized slavery and racial prejudice in Huckleberry Finn." … [T]he radical scholars have not been able to read between the lines or uncover the underlying messages in Huckleberry Finn and Puddin'head Wilson. Yet, these militant scholars seem to unscrupulously repudiate anyone who they think belongs to the canon.

Then They that Sit in Darkness are troubled, and shake their heads; and they read this extract from a letter of a British private, recounting his exploits in one of Methuen's victories, some days before the affair of Magersfontein, and they are troubled again:

"We tore up the hill and into the intrenchments, and the Boers saw we had them; so they dropped their guns and went down on their knees and put up their hands clasped, and begged for mercy. And we gave it them – with the long spoon."

The long spoon is the bayonet. See Lloyd's Weekly, London, of those days. The same number – and the same column – contains some quite unconscious satire in the form of shocked and bitter upbraidings of the Boers for their brutalities and inhumanities!

As Professor Kim’s op-ed rises to its peroration, it collapses:

Indeed, South Korea is currently suffering from endless demonstrations, frequent workers' strikes, and violent protests. People no longer respect the government, the National Assembly, or the police. Having lost its authority, the Lee administration is not capable of prosecuting those who organize demonstrations and conspire to overthrow the government. …

Many South Koreans either confuse authority with authoritarianism, or misunderstand authority as an inherited or unjustly acquired privilege. They assume that all authorities should be denied and defied, which is why Korean society always looks unstable and faltering. Unfortunately, that is precisely how foreigners perceive South Korea from the outside. We desperately need to restore the long-lost respect for authority.

Tales of the Closet

Gwendolen. I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma. [They rise together.]

Lady Bracknell. Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself...

But on to other burning issues. A week or so ago (time does fly) a straight friend told me he’d heard that Queen Latifah had come out. It’s a mark of how out of touch I am with today’s popular culture that Queen Latifah was not high on my list of people most likely to. I asked him where he’d heard this, and he wasn’t sure, so I did a couple of Google searches, which came up dry.

Well, not exactly dry, except by my standards. Last December it seems there was a flurry of speculation in the tabloids that Latifah was “officially engaged” to a woman she’s been tight with for several years. “Officially engaged” was the giveaway, since “officially” in this context has all the force of “literally.” (As in, “My head literally exploded.”)

An engagement, like a marriage, is a public event. If Queen Latifah were really officially engaged, our little county newspaper would have chronicled the fact by last December at the latest. Of all the material I found from last winter touting the happy event, nothing pointed to an actual announcement of the engagement. All of it was basically gossip-column chatter, with no real sourcing.

But then I found another flurry of links from this summer. It was inspired by the overturning of California’s ban on same-sex marriage by the state Supreme Court, and all of it was rewarmed versions of the items from last winter. I could almost see the tiny gears grinding in the tiny brains: hey! now that it’s legal, maybe Latifah and her honey will tie the knot. … Maybe they will, but so far there’s no evidence that they will.

From what I read, Latifah has mostly not denied the rumors that she’s gay, except for a tiresomely routine evasion after she played a lesbian in the movie Set It Off. "It's insulting when someone asks, 'Are you gay?'” she wrote in her autobiography. “A woman cannot be strong, outspoken, competent at running her own business, handle herself physically, play a very convincing role in a movie, know what she wants—and go for it—without being gay? Come on.” Aside from the fact that it is not insulting to be asked if one is gay, she had a point. I was writing yesterday about Americans’ dislike of (or inability to comprehend) irony: I linked it to our Puritan heritage, which like the Christian tradition generally is hostile to theatre and acting. To be one thing yet pretend to be another is as bad as having sexual intercourse in a standing position!

There was a mild flurry some years ago when Will Smith chickened out of kissing a man in his first movie role, Six Degrees of Separation. (A stunt double was used for the dangerous scene.) He tried to blame it on Denzel Washington, who he claimed had warned him that black folks have trouble separating the actor from the role, so “Don’t go kissing no man.” Many years earlier, on her 1975 album Modern Scream, Lily Tomlin did a routine in which an interviewer complimented her on her courage for playing a heterosexual (presumably in Robert Altman’s Nashville.) “I’ve seen these women all my life, I know how they walk, I know how they talk,” Tomlin said. “You don’t have to be one to play one!” True: a fair number of homosexual actors have done it over the years. The joke was a wink to her fans who were in on the open secret of Tomlin’s lesbianism and her relationship with her producer Jane Wagner. But an open secret it remained for another quarter of a century.

Lady Bracknell. To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

More recently, according to the gossip sites I saw, Queen Latifah has simply refused to discuss her personal life. That’s certainly her prerogative, and it’s a lot better than the denial. Could it have something to do with her apparent involvement with the woman the sites name as her girlfriend? She won’t confirm the relationship, but she won’t deny it either. Maybe now she can’t put the rumors down to her being a strong, competent, outspoken woman.

As Sarah Schulman wrote in 1990 during the big outing controversy,

As for the morality of dragging gay public figures out of the closet -- well, I'm not sure. What I do know, though, is that to call this an invasion of privacy is distorting and dishonest. Most gay people stay in the closet -- i.e., dishonor their relationships -- because to do so is a prerequisite for employment, housing, safety, and family love. Having to hide the way you live because of fear of punishment isn't a "right" nor is it "privacy." Being in the closet is not an objective, neutral, value-free condition. It is, instead, maintained by force, not choice. … The closet is not a right. It is something we want to make unnecessary, not claim and cling to.

I was struck by the report on one gossip site that “According to the National Enquirer, the couple are ‘planning an intimate ceremony with close family and friends.’” It occurred to me years ago that legal marriage would undermine so many closet cases’ argument that their love lives are nobody else’s business. Anyone can exchange vows, but it has no legal weight. If they apply for a marriage license, which is part of the process of getting legally married, their love lives will become everybody’s business, no matter how intimate the ceremony they have. Legal marriage is “private,” but it isn’t secret: it’s a matter of public record.

But nowadays, who cares? Lots of celebrities have come out publicly, so who needs people who lack the courage or integrity to do it, who choose (as Schulman put it so precisely) to dishonor their relationships? When Tomlin finally came out, she tried to put a good face on it, as did Rosie O’Donnell, by claiming that because ‘everybody knew’, or it was obvious they were gay, there was no need to say it aloud. But if everybody knew, why not say it aloud? (Nathan Lane did the same thing: “Look, I'm 40, I'm single, and I work in musical theater - you do the math!” But before that interview he’d complained because people did the math: “I didn't know I was supposed to make a public declaration. I didn't think anybody cared.” Girl, what planet were you living on? And don’t get me started on Janis Ian…)

Gwendolen. I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of us is engaged to be married to any one.

Cecily. It is not a very pleasant position for a young girl suddenly to find herself in. Is it?

Tales of the Closet

Gwendolen. I am engaged to Mr. Worthing, mamma. [They rise together.]

Lady Bracknell. Pardon me, you are not engaged to any one. When you do become engaged to some one, I, or your father, should his health permit him, will inform you of the fact. An engagement should come on a young girl as a surprise, pleasant or unpleasant, as the case may be. It is hardly a matter that she could be allowed to arrange for herself...

Lady Bracknell. To speak frankly, I am not in favour of long engagements. They give people the opportunity of finding out each other’s character before marriage, which I think is never advisable.

As Sarah Schulman wrote in 1990 during the big outing controversy,

As for the morality of dragging gay public figures out of the closet -- well, I'm not sure. What I do know, though, is that to call this an invasion of privacy is distorting and dishonest. Most gay people stay in the closet -- i.e., dishonor their relationships -- because to do so is a prerequisite for employment, housing, safety, and family love. Having to hide the way you live because of fear of punishment isn't a "right" nor is it "privacy." Being in the closet is not an objective, neutral, value-free condition. It is, instead, maintained by force, not choice. … The closet is not a right. It is something we want to make unnecessary, not claim and cling to.

Gwendolen. I am afraid it is quite clear, Cecily, that neither of us is engaged to be married to any one.

Cecily. It is not a very pleasant position for a young girl suddenly to find herself in. Is it?

SAFEGUARDING OUR FAMILIES -- FROM THE IGNORANCE OF OUR SUPPOSED ALLIES

The District of Columbia is a gay-friendly place. Our first anti-discrimination ordinance was passed in 1973. In 1976, we passed legislation banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation in child custody cases. The first second-parent adoption was granted in 1991, and our highest court approved the practice in 1995.

We have had domestic partnership here in DC since 1992, although Congress (which controls DC laws...don't get me started on that!) blocked the city from spending any money to implement the law. That ban was finally lifted in 2002. The DC law allows any two people living together in a committed, familial relationship to register; in other words, it is not limited to same-sex couples.

At first few legal consequences attached to registration. Additional legal consequences have been added several times since 2002. Some of the most significant came last year, including the rights of inheritance and division of assets when the relationship ends. Effective this coming fall, registered domestic partners will have almost all of the legal consequences that attach to marriage.

The last major area that needs law reform here concerns the status of couples having children together. So it's logical that we pass legislation that will give DC what California, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Oregon, and Vermont already have -- a presumption that a child born to one domestic partner is the child of the other.

DC is also one of a minority of states with no statute on donor insemination. Many of those statutes are old and apply only to married (heterosexual) couples, but the modern statutes apply to all women. The best framework does two things: it says that when two people (married/registered or not) decide to have a child using donor insemination and both intend to raise the child as their own, then they are both the parents of the child; and it says that a semen donor is not a parent unless there is a written agreement to the contrary.

Legislation recently introduced in the DC City Council accomplishes these goals. So imagine the shock of the legislation's supporters when the DC Office of the Attorney General sent a letter -- but no witness -- to the July 11 hearing on the bill. The letter reflected complete ignorance about families headed by same-sex couples, about reproduction using assisted conception, and about the laws in other states. The OAG didn't know that the Social Security Administration recognizes a parent-child relationship between a child and her nonbiological mother who was in a Vermont civil union with the biological mother when the child was born, even though the Washington Post had an editorial about the case days before the letter was written!

The letter was offensive on so many levels, it's truly hard to comprehend. Because no witness showed up to defend the letter, Committee Chair Phil Mendelson couldn't question anyone from the city, and those of us supporting the bill (Michele Zavos, Bob Summersgill, Rick Rosendall on behalf of Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance (GLAA), and myself) were left in disbelief and outrage.

Did I mention that DC is a gay-friendly place? We expect our elected officials and their staff -- including the city's lawyers -- to understand who we are and strive to provide our families the strongest legal protection possible. So I spent most of the last two weeks writing a detailed response to their letter. After I sent it to the OAG I received a voice mail message from the letter's author saying they would review what I wrote and "act accordingly."

Stay tuned for an update.

King Grayskull toy Review at San Diego Comic Con 2008 Bronze Statue

Strike While The Irony's Hot

The anger of so many liberal Democrats at the New Yorker’s cover cartoon of Barack and Michelle Obama was only to be expected, of course, especially the Obamamaniacs for whom hushed reverence before His Total Coolness is the only acceptable attitude. As the satirist Ellen Willis once wrote, “Humorless is what you are if you do not find the following subjects funny: rape, big breasts, sex with little girls.It carries no imputation of humorlessness if you do not find the following subjects funny: castration, impotence, vaginas with teeth.”

Humor isn’t really the issue, though. I didn’t think the cartoon was funny because I don’t like the artist’s style, and he didn’t do anything with the joke, but I recognized that it was satire and what it was intended to mean. The outrage was especially ironic because it tended to come from apparently white, educated liberals, the kind of people who look down on literalism and ignorance in their political opponents. For that matter, I’m sure many of these people must be, if not fans, then at least aware of The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, South Park, and The Onion, the pillars of mainstream American satire. So their objections that the New Yorker cover was tasteless must be disingenuous. More likely, though, they’ve just chosen to forget that good satire is tasteless, offensive, and outrageous.

Most of them have heard, surely, of Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, published in 1729, which advocated fattening Irish babies for the tables of English diners. Can you get much more tasteless than that? Maybe – in 1967 Paul Krassner published a piece in his magazine The Realist, parodying William Manchester’s tome The Death of a President; in one scene Jackie Kennedy discovered Lyndon Johnson copulating with her dead husband’s neck wound. Barbara Garson’s play Macbird! also mocked Johnson bitterly and tastelessly, casting LBJ as Macbeth.

At his Counterpunch site Alexander Cockburn wrote:

The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, claims to be stunned and upset that satire has been confused with reality. … Either Remnick is being disingenuous or he’s really stupid. Anyone familiar with editing material for the internet knows that satire is always taken as literal truth.

Fair enough, except for that last remark about the internet: satire has always been indigestible to many people. Cockburn should know, having written and published a fair amount of satire himself, including a famous 1983 piece depicting Adolf Hitler interviewed by Andy Warhol. Notoriously, the popularity of Norman Lear’s sitcom All in the Family relied at least partly on viewers who admired Archie Bunker and didn’t realize that the program mocked him.

The singer-songwriter Randy Newman, whose best work is built on American politics including racial politics, has often been (mis)taken literally. Most singers who cover his song “Sail Away” change the line “Climb aboard, little wog, sail away with me” to something like “Climb aboard, little child…” – apparently unaware that the song’s narrator is a slave trader luring Africans aboard his ship. A few years later, his “Short People” (“got no reason to live”) inspired controversy and protest, giving him his first hit, to Newman’s amusement. I wonder what the people who admire “Political Science”, which calls for America to “drop the Big One” on an ungrateful world, think it’s about; judging from this YouTube video and the comments it inspired, at least some think he meant it literally. And most effective of all, his “Rednecks” enraged white liberals for its use of the N word and its indictment of Northern racism, and white Southerners for its negative stereotyping of white Southerners. (“College men from LSU / Went in dumb, come out dumb too.”)

The reasons why the New Yorker’s Obama cover enraged so many liberals are obvious enough (to me, anyway): it’s Just Not Nice to make fun of someone they like (not a uniquely liberal belief, of course), and it’s a cliché that Americans in general don’t have much of a feel for irony. As I’ve suggested before, the American distaste for irony may have roots in our puritan heritage, which doesn’t like ambiguity. But deafness to irony may not be quite the problem either. I think the same people who were furious at the New Yorker can follow satire when its target is someone or something they don’t like, as with Vanity Fair’s parody of the New Yorker cover, which mocks John McCain as an old man with a walker and his wife as a pill-popper in sweatpants while the US Constitution burns in the fireplace. As satire, it’s about on a par with Rush Limbaugh’s infamous joke about Chelsea Clinton as the White House dog (which Limbaugh later pretended he didn’t mean). But the comments at the VF site are revealing: for one commenter “The important difference between this cover and The New Yorker cover is that the satire here is based on facts. Excellent!” But the New Yorker cover was based on the fact that many Americans believe that Obama is a closet Muslim; that fact was cited by many of the cover’s critics as a reason why it was bad. (But then, Obama fans didn’t react kindly to Naomi Klein’s earlier reminder that being called a Muslim isn’t a smear.)

[P.S. Rereading all this, I realized that the people who complained about Blitt's cartoon but liked the one in Vanity Fair really don't understand what satire is. They think it means something like "Hahaha! John McCain is old! Rush Limbaugh is fat!" Which means they are as dumb as any dittohead who thinks "Michael Moore is fat" is a devastating critique.]

At its most basic, satire can’t be fact; it involves stretching fact into caricature until it shows the horrifying reality on the other side of caricature. (Today The Nation weighed in with its own contribution, a cartoon which shows Eustace Tilley sitting stunned on the floor of the Oval Office, one eye blackened, his monocle smashed, and a bloody tooth on the carpet, while a grinning Michelle brandishes a sign saying “Get Whitey” – just kidding, it says “Round 2”. Barack proudly holds up the fist with which he decked the effete rascal, and with the other hand tosses the offending issue of the magazine into the fireplace. The Nation site touts the image as “Edgy, controversial, hard-hitting... and funny.” Haw, haw, haw. And does The Nation think this is a positive image of Obama for progressives?)

Because I refuse to split the world into good guys and bad guys, I also think that good satire should be double-edged: it should make the viewer uncomfortable, laughing and wincing at the same time. It’s not really odd that nominally Christian Americans prefer to ignore the beam in their own eyes -- that too is one of Jesus’ teachings that most Christians prefer to ignore – they’re just leaning harder on the sheep vs. goats Manichaeism of the rest of Jesus’ teaching.) That’s why in my satire of the Greek system, for example, I used the rhetoric of the antigay Christian right, to try on the perspective of a position I deplore; and why it was both depressing and gratifying to find that other gay people would thoughtlessly welcome seeing fraternity boys and sorority girls as if they were, well, queers. If satire doesn’t stir the satirist’s own anxieties a little, it’s not going far enough.

I can’t shake the feeling that for white liberals, anyway, Barry Blitt’s cartoon (probably unintentionally) touched a nerve: their own desire for a nice Negro politician who isn’t angry, won’t make them feel uncomfortable or guilty, a Magic Negro who will give them what they want without requiring that they change themselves. Remember that appalling video from earlier this year, with Obama fans telling us what they want to find under the tree this Christmas?

“I would like to see a cleaner earth for my child that I’m bringing into the world very soon,” says one smiling young woman. “It’s time for change,” a serious young white man agrees, “I want a better future for my children.” “I would like our environment to be safe,” an elegant African American woman adds. “Someone to actually make a difference in my generation,” says a white man with close-cropped hair and what appears to be a bruised eye, wearing a bomber jacket and hoodie. “I would like to see us in a world without fear,” says a man with his arm around a smiling woman. “Basically, um, I just want the war to end,” says a young Latina who earlier assured the viewer that “Esto es nuestro America.” The expectant mother returns with “I would like the rest of the world to think highly of our amazing country.” Also I’d like an Xbox, a Hannah Montana DVD, and a Cabbage Patch doll, okay? … If I were going to satirize this video, I’d show Obama dressed in work clothes, shuffling and scraping as he pushed a broom, mumbling, “Yes’m, I’ll clean up the earth for you right away, ma’am. A world without fear, suh, comin’ right up!”

Blitt could have made his satire less ambiguous, by (say) showing Rush Limbaugh peeking through a window and being shocked by having his worst fears about the Obamas realized: like Omigod, they really do want to Get Whitey! Whether that would have appeased those who attacked the cartoon, I don’t know. But I think the real problem was that the cartoon aroused white Obama fans’ fear that in reality Obama is an Angry Black Man, a Jeremiah Wright, an anti-Claus who’ll leave a lump of coal in their stockings instead of a new iPhone, a pony, and world peace.

This has nothing to do with Obama’s actual policies, about which his fans prefer not to think very much. (But then, neither do his enemies.) He’s not a secret militant, very much the opposite: he’s a mainstream American politician, ready to uphold and sustain the Imperium. Their hatred of ambiguity extends to an inability to understand what he says he’ll do: if he says he’ll withdraw US combat troops from Iraq, they’ll fail to notice that he won’t withdraw support troops, and that the occupation will go on. As long as Obama can maintain the Santa Claus façade, flattering his fans’ image of themselves as enlightened and compassionate people who are fundamentally different from that awful man Bush and his dupes, they’ll ignore or explain away what he actually does; they want to feel good about themselves, not change the world – or themselves.

And, to confirm once again that reality outruns satire, a new piece by Nicholas Kozloff just appeared at Counterpunch. Kozloff, who wrote a decent biography of Hugo Chávez and just published a new book on political changes in South America, compares Obama’s views on Latin America with McCain’s. Funny thing, though: Kozloff says virtually nothing about Obama’s actual views, while giving McCain’s in detail. He says that

an Obama victory would take a lot of wind out of Chávez’s sail. To an extent, Chávez was able to leap on to the world stage as a result of U.S. misdeeds and imperial misadventures. The war in Iraq is enormously unpopular in South America, and Chávez has been able to raise his profile as a result of his long-standing criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. It is difficult to imagine that Chávez would have achieved the same degree of political notoriety had Bill Clinton been in office and not George Bush.
If he were to win, Obama would start off his administration with an enormous amount of goodwill in South America simply by dint of his racial origins. Many Afro-Latinos in South America—particularly in Brazil—would see an Obama victory in Washington as an enormously positive social step. …
Obama could capitalize on this goodwill by withdrawing troops from Iraq. The new U.S. president could then increase economic aid to impoverished South American countries or promote free trade deals with small nations such as Ecuador. Chávez has long decried the excesses of globalization, but Obama might be able to steal some of the Venezuelan leader’s thunder by negotiating separate trade deals that protect labor and the environment. In this way, Obama could put a break on ALBA expansion and frustrate Chávez’s international ambitions.

Kozloff says nothing about Obama’s declared intention to maintain the embargo against Cuba, or his hostility to Chávez, or his endorsement of Reagan’s foreign policy, or his support for Colombian terrorism (via), or his generally patronizing attitude toward Latin America, exemplified by his Miami speech of last May. (I dissected it here.) True, if Obama becomes President, he could withdraw troops from Iraq (though he doesn’t intend to end the US occupation entirely [via Chris Floyd), and he could win goodwill by adopting policies helpful to the poor in Latin America and elsewhere, or by giving everybody lollipops. But will he? Ignoring Obama’s known intentions, Kozloff offers only fantasy in their place.

Strike While The Irony's Hot

At his Counterpunch site Alexander Cockburn wrote:

The editor of the New Yorker, David Remnick, claims to be stunned and upset that satire has been confused with reality. … Either Remnick is being disingenuous or he’s really stupid. Anyone familiar with editing material for the internet knows that satire is always taken as literal truth.

an Obama victory would take a lot of wind out of Chávez’s sail. To an extent, Chávez was able to leap on to the world stage as a result of U.S. misdeeds and imperial misadventures. The war in Iraq is enormously unpopular in South America, and Chávez has been able to raise his profile as a result of his long-standing criticisms of U.S. foreign policy. It is difficult to imagine that Chávez would have achieved the same degree of political notoriety had Bill Clinton been in office and not George Bush.
If he were to win, Obama would start off his administration with an enormous amount of goodwill in South America simply by dint of his racial origins. Many Afro-Latinos in South America—particularly in Brazil—would see an Obama victory in Washington as an enormously positive social step. …
Obama could capitalize on this goodwill by withdrawing troops from Iraq. The new U.S. president could then increase economic aid to impoverished South American countries or promote free trade deals with small nations such as Ecuador. Chávez has long decried the excesses of globalization, but Obama might be able to steal some of the Venezuelan leader’s thunder by negotiating separate trade deals that protect labor and the environment. In this way, Obama could put a break on ALBA expansion and frustrate Chávez’s international ambitions.

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