Wildmon complains that people shouldn’t put the “twisted sexual desires” of adults ahead of the welfare of children. If he said twisted sexual taboos instead of desires, then he would be uttering the very condemnation of his little clan of busybodies that they most need to hear.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture, People
Post tags: Gay marriage

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

In the most recent year for which we have data, the FBI reported roughly 7,600 hate crimes in this country. Over the past 10 years, there were more than 12,000 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation alone. And we will never know how many incidents were never reported at all.

And that’s why, through this law, we will strengthen the protections against crimes based on the color of your skin, the faith in your heart, or the place of your birth. We will finally add federal protections against crimes based on gender, disability, gender identity, or sexual orientation. (Applause.) And prosecutors will have new tools to work with states in order to prosecute to the fullest those who would perpetrate such crimes. Because no one in America should ever be afraid to walk down the street holding the hands of the person they love. No one in America should be forced to look over their shoulder because of who they are or because they live with a disability.

At root, this isn’t just about our laws; this is about who we are as a people. This is about whether we value one another — whether we embrace our differences, rather than allowing them to become a source of animus. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the mind-set of someone who would kidnap a young man and beat him to within an inch of his life, tie him to a fence, and leave him for dead. It’s hard for any of us to imagine the twisted mentality of those who’d offer a neighbor a ride home, attack him, chain him to the back of a truck, and drag him for miles until he finally died.

But we sense where such cruelty begins: the moment we fail to see in another our common humanity — the very moment when we fail to recognize in a person the same fears and hopes, the same passions and imperfections, the same dreams that we all share.

We have for centuries strived to live up to our founding ideal, of a nation where all are free and equal and able to pursue their own version of happiness. Through conflict and tumult, through the morass of hatred and prejudice, through periods of division and discord we have endured and grown stronger and fairer and freer. And at every turn, we’ve made progress not only by changing laws but by changing hearts, by our willingness to walk in another’s shoes, by our capacity to love and accept even in the face of rage and bigotry.

In April of 1968, just one week after the assassination of Martin Luther King, as our nation mourned in grief and shuddered in anger, President Lyndon Johnson signed landmark civil rights legislation. This was the first time we enshrined into law federal protections against crimes motivated by religious or racial hatred — the law on which we build today.

As he signed his name, at a difficult moment for our country, President Johnson said that through this law “the bells of freedom ring out a little louder.” That is the promise of America. Over the sounds of hatred and chaos, over the din of grief and anger, we can still hear those ideals — even when they are faint, even when some would try to drown them out. At our best we seek to make sure those ideals can be heard and felt by Americans everywhere. And that work did not end in 1968. It certainly does not end today. But because of the efforts of the folks in this room — particularly those family members who are standing behind me — we can be proud that that bell rings even louder now and each day grows louder still.

I cribbed those from here.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I suppose one of the reasons I was so attracted to him was that he had a heroic and optimistic view of life that didn’t seem (to me) tarnished by naivety, romanticism, or sentimentalism. In other words, through his eyes life could truly be grand, and I could believe that was true.

So, anyway… I’ve sampled his writing on this blog before, and I’m about to do it again. The idea this time is to hear whether it is still believable. Tell me what you think. From The Poet:

Those who are esteemed umpires of taste, are often persons knowledge of admired pictures or sculptures, and have an inclination for whatever is elegant; but if you inquire whether they are beautiful souls, and whether their own acts are like fair pictures, you learn that they are selfish and sensual. Their cultivation is local, as if you should rub a log of dry wood in one spot to produce fire, all the rest remaining cold. Their knowledge of the fine arts is some study of rules and particulars, or some limited judgment of color or form, which is exercised for amusement or for show. It is a proof of the shallowness of the doctrine of beauty, as it lies in the minds of our amateurs, that men seem to have lost the perception of the instant dependence of form upon soul. There is no doctrine of forms in our philosophy. We were put into our bodies, as fire is put into a pan, to be carried about; but there is no accurate adjustment between the spirit and the organ, much less is the latter the germination of the former. So in regard to other forms, the intellectual men do not believe in any essential dependence of the material world on thought and volition. Theologians think it a pretty air-castle to talk of the spiritual meaning of a ship or a cloud, of a city or a contract, but they prefer to come again to the solid ground of historical evidence; and even the poets are contented with a civil and conformed manner of living, and to write poems from the fancy, at a safe distance from their own experience. But the highest minds of the world have never ceased to explore the double meaning, or, shall I say, the quadruple, or the centuple, or much more manifold meaning, of every sensuous fact: Orpheus, Empedocles, Heraclitus, Plato, Plutarch, Dante, Swedenborg, and the masters of sculpture, picture, and poetry. For we are not pans and barrows, nor even porters of the fire and torch-bearers, but children of the fire, made of it, and only the same divinity transmuted, and at two or three removes, when we know least about it. And this hidden truth, that the fountains whence all this river of Time, and its creatures, floweth, are intrinsically ideal and beautiful, draws us to the consideration of the nature and functions of the Poet, or the man of Beauty, to the means and materials he uses, and to the general aspect of the art in the present time.

The breadth of the problem is great, for the poet is representative. He stands among partial men for the complete man, and apprises us not of his wealth, but of the common-wealth. The young man reveres men of genius, because, to speak truly, they are more himself than he is. They receive of the soul as he also receives, but they more. Nature enhances her beauty, to the eye of loving men, from their belief that the poet is beholding her shows at the same time. He is isolated among his contemporaries, by truth and by his art, but with this consolation in his pursuits, that they will draw all men sooner or later. For all men live by truth, and stand in need of expression. In love, in art, in avarice, in politics, in labor, in games, we study to utter our painful secret. The man is only half himself, the other half is his expression.

Notwithstanding this necessity to be published, adequate expression is rare. I know not how it is that we need an interpreter; but the great majority of men seem to be minors, who have not yet come into possession of their own, or mutes, who cannot report the conversation they have had with nature. There is no man who does not anticipate a supersensual utility in the sun, and stars, earth, and water. These stand and wait to render him a peculiar service. But there is some obstruction, or some excess of phlegm in our constitution, which does not suffer them to yield the due effect. Too feeble fall the impressions of nature on us to make us artists. Every touch should thrill. Every man should be so much an artist, that he could report in conversation what had befallen him. Yet, in our experience, the rays or appulses have sufficient force to arrive at the senses, but not enough to reach the quick, and compel the reproduction of themselves in speech. The poet is the person in whom these powers are in balance, the man without impediment, who sees and handles that which others dream of, traverses the whole scale of experience, and is representative of man, in virtue of being the largest power to receive and to impart.

Frankly, I’m not sure I can still believe.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture, People
Post tags: Ralph Waldo Emerson

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh

I favor the hate-crimes expansion – it’s not exactly the right policy, but it is not unjust toward hate-criminals, and it does better than nothing at recognizing and trying to stop systematic victimization of certain classes of minorities. I’m conflicted about passing it as part of a military appropriation. In fact, I dislike that method of doing business in Congress altogether. But that’s another story.

*No, it isn’t usually really “hate speech” that preachers agitating against gays are involved in. It’s not far removed from it, though. The excuse of “just preaching the Bible” is mainly B.S. While a harmonized Bible does seem to forbid homosexuality (depending on how you harmonize “the Bible”, that being an extremely tricky task in the first place), it absolutely does *not* require the kind of pulpit-driven jihad against homosexuality that we see today. That, as with other forms of intolerance probably comes from – I regret the cliche, but – ignorance more than “hate”… It isn’t that most preachers hate gays – it’s just that they don’t care enough about them as people to be very reflective or caring about how they approach the topic, or very diligent to be sure what they say is the best and truest account of things – even though they know that gay people generally feel hurt and put-down by what they do say. The result is that their speech toward and about gays is justifiably received as hateful. Unfortunately, the few preachers – even theologically conservative ones – who *do* go the extra mile to be caring and loving toward gay people get painted as “liberals” and exist on the fringes of their denominations. But none of this matters. The law is about hate crimes. Hate speech, and other intemperate forms of speech, are still protected by the first amendment.

Read full post, see embedded content, and comment here!
Posted in: Culture
Post tags:

Feed enhanced by Better Feed from Ozh