The Republic of T.

I posted earlier about the political influence of the “Rapture Ready” crowd, and prior to that about their specific influence on foreign policy based on their particular interpretation of the book of Revelations. But, CUFI and the Apostolic Congress notwithstanding, some people think that the current talk of theocracy potentially looming on the horizon amounts to paranoia. But, when I look at some recent news items and developments, I think some level of paranoia is justified. I’m talking about:

• Stuff like what happened to the Smalkowski and Dobrich families.
• The conservative legal organization that’s endorsed mandatory school prayer.
• The Missouri legislators who sought to establish christianity as the state’s official religion.
• The Georgia mom who wants to ban Harry Potter from the school library, because the series offends her religious beliefs.
• The conservative blog that published the Dobrich family’s address and phone number.
• The Wiccan soldier killed in Afghanistan, whose family can’t get the army to put the symbol of his religion on his headstone.
• The conservative outrage that the a U.S. Marine base might provide Muslim U.S. service members with a place to worship on base.
• The evangelicals who’ve taken over the Air Force Academy and made it hell for anyone who isn’t an evangelical christian.
• The Bush administration joining forces with Iran’s fundamentalist government, to block U.N. access for GLBT human rights activists.
• The lack of oversight in Bush’s faith-based initiative, that’s basically spawned a taxpayer-supported evangelical christian proselytizing cottage industry, supporting groups like the Silver Ring Thing and Prison Fellowship.
• The same faith-based initiative supplying the Salvation Army with 95% of its budget, thus supporting religious discrimination with tax dollars.
• The Indiana Republican legislator who wanted to marriage a legal requirement for motherhood and enforce criminal penalties for out-of-wedlock pregnancies.
• The Republican Senate Candidate who can declare separation of church and state “a lie” and still be the front-runner for the Republican nomination.
• The Left Behind video game, in which kids go on “convert or kill” missions against unbelievers, homosexuals, etc.
• Some of the same loonies mentioned above want to hold a constitutional convention.
• And, yes, the people who want to hasten Armageddon with bombs.

I could go on, believe me, but I’ll stop lest I come off as paranoid. I’ll just add that it was items like the laundry list above that inspired me to add Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us, and American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century to my reading list earlier this year, with the thought that I’d read them as a means of gaining some insight into the people, policies, and propaganda behind all of the above.

After reaching a critical mass (really, after the Dobrich and Smalkowski stories) I decided not to wait for the paperback editions, bought the books one by one, and read them to see what they could tell me that I didn’t already know. The answer? Plenty. Afterwards thought that I might eventually post a review of all three. So, here goes.

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Too busy at work to do much posting today, but I was inspired to post an update about my adventures with BookMooch after getting into the office this morning to find three mooched books waiting for me. It works! It really works!

Two of the titles are fiction that I became interested in after reading a lot of Derrick Jensen's work — Ecotopia and Into the Forest — neither of which I had much luck finding in bookstores. Now I basically have them for free, or at no cost beyond the minimal postage spent on books mooched from me. (Media rate postage isn't terribly expensive.

But the title I'm probably most excited about is one I got for Parker, I Once Was a Monkey: Stories Buddha Told. I posted a while back about pondering how to raise a kid with a particular set of values in a non-religious family. To that end I've been searching for children's books related to Buddhism, that I can start sharing with Parker. Most of them are hard to find in bookstores, so rather than ordering one from Amazon I decided to give BookMooch a try first, and found one of the titles I was looking for. Yay BookMooch!

I've thumbed through it, and I'll have to give it a closer reading, but my first impression is that it's probably a little to advanced for Parker right now. (He has a tendency to get impatient if there are "too many words" and wants to turn the page before we're finished reading it, which I take as an indication that the particular book is one he's not ready for yet.) Still, I may try reading one story to him this evening, just to see how it goes. If he's likes it, great. If it's too much for him right now, at least I have it and it'll be on the shelf when he's ready to give it another try.

Parker’s daycare is closed today, and I’m at home with him. So sporadic posting is the most that you’ll see here today. (I’m taking out for pizza and ice cream for lunch, and the rest of the day will probably be spent reading books and playing with his trains.) But I didn’t want to let the 1 year anniversary of Katrina go unnoticed, since I blogged about it quite a bit when it was happening. So much, in fact, that I’m not sure what more there is to say about it except this.

What happened in the aftermath of Katrina is exactly what you can expect to happen when the people running the government are wedded to an ideology that says the government shouldn’t be in the business of helping people who can’t help themselves. Barrack Obama pointed it out after the disaster, and it’s pretty much what I said peviously.

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A couple of weeks ago, there was some concern that I might have gone a bit too far in characterizing the “AIDS is not the enemy” rap of a prominent “abstinence-only” advocate. Like, maybe I read her wrong in flipping it to reveal an “AIDS is a victory” subtext. And I kinda hafta admit I was a little concerned that I’d done just that, and that maybe the statements of this activist merely sounded more extreme than they were. Maybe I was guilty of what so many people accuse progressives of doing: painting political “people of faith” as much more extremem than they actually are.

Then along comes someone like Judie Brown, who — as piny points out — isn’t bothered much by rising abortion rates so long as people don’t have access to contraception.

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More YouTube diving, After finishing Kingdom Coming, The Baptizing of America, American Theocracy, and walking through some of the more troubling passages of the bible with Bishop Shelby Spong’s The Sins of Scripture I’ve been getting curious about some of the people I’ve been writing about lately. Namely, the “Rapture-enthusiasts” that are — some might say — influencing U.S. foreign policy, both at the ballot box and in the oval office. (In American Theocracy, Kevin Phillips lays out a pretty good case for these people — various segments of evangelical christians who share a belief in a particular interpretation of the biblical book of Revelations — making up at least a 30%-40% block of the Republican party’s voter base.)

Back in May 2004, I posted about a meeting one such organization had with a Bush administration foreign policy advisor. More recently I posted about the people who are cheering on war in the Middle East because they believe it means they’ll be having pie in the sky with Jesus soon. At the beginning of the month I posted about a minister whose rapture-related preaching built an organization that gets even people like RNC Chair Ken Mehlman, Rick Santorum and San Brownback to speak at its meetings. (And the president sends “words of support,” from a safe distance I guess.)

After reading those last three books, I’ve decided to pick up Pocket Guide To The Apocalypse: The Official Field Manual For The End Of The World and Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire just to get a handle on just what these people think. Towards those same ends, earlier this year I got my hands on the Left Behind Trilogy of movies. (It was easier and faster than reading the books, I figured.) So while I was YouTube-diving, I entered a few relative search terms to see what I’d come up with, and the result was another playlist (or two, or three).

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I decided to take a break from reading and writing blogs this weekend, and devoted my time and attention to my family instead, so there having been any new posts. But I also found time to spend exploring YouTube. Boy, once you get going on that site, you can spend a great deal of time clicking on related videos. That’s what happened to me, and resulted in this post and more to follow.

Saturday night, the hubby and I happened to catch Logo’s special Out in Nature, on same-sex activity in the animal kingdom. I’d seen it before, and much of it jibed with two books on my shelf: Biological Exuberance: Animal Homosexuality and Natural Diversity and Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People. Sunday morning the comments on this post reminded me of the show and the books. Later on Sunday I was randomly searching YouTube for interesting stuff, and came across several clips from the program, which I added to a playlist, and decided to share here.

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It’s the end of the week again, and I have to admit I’m not sorry to see this one pass. It’s been a bit of an emotional roller coaster for me, for reasons I won’t go into here. It’s been a weird week, with more than its share of ups and downs, and unexpected twists and turns when it comes to lgbt-related news.

It started off quietly enough, as I tried to continue an earlier conversation by asking “What rights should same-sex couples not have?” And the discussion continued with more than a few new twists of its own. I’m still not sure where that discussion’s going, or whether it’s headed downhill or up. In the meantime, before we can finish that discussion we actually have to turn around and have another discussion about straight civil rights, for non-married heterosexual couples. If we get domestic partnerships or civil unions, do they get them too? Even though they can marry each other and we can’t? You may begin to see what I mean about the twists and turns, and the strange territory these questions lead to. So, with that, let’s plunge into this week, shall we?

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Had a busy day yesterday, and probably will today too. So posting may be pretty sporadic, or nonexistent until later this afternoon. In the meantime, here’s another random 10.

This is how we do it:

1. Fire up the MP3 player or iTunes.
2. Shuffle everything.
3. Play & post the first 10.

Here’s mine.

1. One from the album “American III” by Johnny Cash
2. I´ll Be Around by Randy Crawford / Tiefschwarz
3. Unconditional Love from the album “The Donna Summer Anthology (disc 2)” by Donna Summer
4. Macho Man from the album “Casablanca Records Greatest Hits” by Village People
5. Girls Just Wanna Have Fun from the album “Twelve Deadly Cyns…And Then Some” by Cyndi Lauper
6. Last Night I Dreamt That Somebody Loved Me from the album “Singles” by The Smiths
7. Jump (Album Version) from the album “Confessions On a Dance Floor” by Madonna
8. Get It Together from the album “Seal: Best, 1991-2004″ by Seal
9. Little By Little from the album “Goodbye Country (Hello Nightclub)” by Groove Armada
10. I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish from the album “Singles” by The Smiths

So, what’d you get?

I can’t help but find a little bit of irony in the news that South Africa — a country that, in my lifetime, had bigotry and discrimination literally as the foundation of its laws — is taking a step on road to allowing same-sex marriage.

South Africa’s Cabinet has given the green light for a bill allowing gay marriage, which would make it the first country in Africa to accord homosexual couples the same rights as their straight counterparts.

Government spokesman Themba Maseko said the Cabinet had approved the bill — which must still be adopted by Parliament — after the country’s highest court ruled it was unconstitutional to deny gay people the right to marry.

“Basically (the bill) will legalize same-sex marriage in compliance with the constitutional court ruling,” said Maseko, who could not say when Parliament would discuss the bill.

It remains to be seen whether the bill will pass in Parliament, but if nothing else South Africa joins Canada, the Netherlands, Spain, and Great Britain in taking a giant step ahead of the U.S. when it comes to equal protection under the law for all of its citizens. Whether the U.S. is ready to take a tiny step forward, as opposed to the usual giant steps backwards, remains to be seen. But we can hope, I guess.

One of the things that’s interesting in the whole discussion about the various legal statuses that may or may not be applied to same-sex couples is the question of just who else they may or may not apply to. For example, if you establish a reciprocal beneficiaries status that’s available to same-sex couples, and other eligible adults who are interdependent relationships but for some reason can not marry, should unmarried heterosexual couples be eligible as well? If they’re not, is that discrimination?

One woman in Washington state thinks so, and she’s filing a civil rights suit.

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The Republic of T Podcasts #1 – Randy Boyd Podcast

Check out my latest podcast, in which I talk with author Randy Boyd about his creative process, his lastest book, and his thought on interracial relationships and the black gay community.

(Here’s a direct link if the flash player doesn’t work.)

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I’ve been getting the Victory Fund’s Gay & Lesbian Leadership SmartBrief via email for a while now, but this is the first time I think my blog has been featured in it.

Nice. The discussion of which rights same-sex couples should or shouldn’t have has spread out beyond this blog as I hoped it would. It’s been picked up by the Washington Blade’s blogwatch and most of the rest of the Window Media gay papers, and gotten some discussion on Daily Kos as well.

For the record, I’m not sure I’m advocating reciprocal beneficiaries so much as exploring how they might be a means to an and in terms of winning rights and protections for our families, and how they might dovetail with increased support for marriage equality in the future. It remains to be seen, as far as I’m concerned, how broadly or narrowly that kind of legal status will be constructed and how secure it is from attack and attempts to scale it back when and where it is established.

That said, I hope I contributed to the discussion if nothing else. It’ll be interesting to watch how it unfolds.

I’m not sure where “The Book Meme” started, but after seeing it at A Stitch in Haste I thought it might be a good idea. Unlike Kip, I’m a big fan of blog memes, if only because I usually pick up something interesting from other people’s responses. And since I’m an even bigger fan of books, who’s always on the lookout for reading suggestions to add to my ever-growing “to read” list, this one was a natural fit. If you want to jump in, feel free to post your own picks in the comments, or link back here if you post it on your own blog (I’d just like to see other people’s answers).

Here goes:

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What is there left to say? No matter how much I’ve railed against the Bush administration’s agenda in Iraq, and the suffering and destruction it’s caused in that country, I can’t quite bring myself to take much satisfaction in people finally coming to realize what those of us who opposed the war before the first bomb fell knew back when the whole thing was just so much neocon saber-rattline. Now, even our closest allies are beginning to realize they’ve cast their lots with an idiot.

The alliance between George Bush and Tony Blair is in danger after it was revealed that the Prime Minister believes the President has ‘let him down badly’ over the Middle East crisis.

A senior Downing Street source said that, privately, Mr Blair broadly agrees with John Prescott, who said Mr Bush’s record on the issue was ‘crap’.

The source said: “We all feel badly let down by Bush. We thought we had persuaded him to take the Israel-Palestine situation seriously, but we were wrong. How can anyone have faith in a man of such low intellect?”

Well. Who didn’t know that about him in the first place?

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I’ve covered this ground before., but the subject crossed my mind again earlier this week when this article from the Indianapolis Star, about black gays and lesbians in anti-gay black churches, came up for discussion on an email listserve for LGBT people of color.

Like many black gays living in Indiana, Taylor, 25, finds herself in a Catch-22: She wants to keep ties with the spiritual heritage of her childhood, but that often means attending a church opposed to homosexuality.

Taylor is a board member of Indiana Black Pride, which wraps up its annual celebration today with a community worship service designed to merge an acceptance of gays with a traditional gospel service.

Eastern Star offers the energetic, passionate worship style that resonates with Taylor and many others — so its stance on homosexuality does not keep her out of the pews.

Jeffrey A. Johnson, senior pastor at Eastern Star, said the Bible “speaks against homosexuality, and we stand with the Bible.”

“I don’t know of anyone who is openly gay in my church,” Johnson said. “But if someone claims to be openly gay, then we’d pull them aside and . . . try to convince them to God’s way and will.”

“I want them to hear God’s word. But they cannot serve in leadership and ministry with that kind of mentality. It’s not just gays, but anyone who is outside of God’s will.”

Despite that, Johnson said all are welcome in his church.

It’s always been a paradox to me, and one I still don’t fully understand. How does one nourish one’s soul in a place where part of one’s soul is maligned and denigrated?

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It may very well be the epitome of lazy blogging these days, but I haven’t done it that often. So here goes.

I was clicking around YouTube looking for a video clip related to something I want to post a bit later, and I came across this hilarious bit from The Daily Show concerning the disasters that have befallen the state of Massachusetts since same-sex marriage was legalized there and gay couples started taking vows. Just thought I’d share.

Along those same lines, I came across a few of the ads that are being used to fight the anti-gay marriage amendment in Wisconsin.
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The hubby and I were watching Logo last night, and we caught an Advocate Newsmagazine interview with Howard Dean in which he talked about his 700 Club appearance, the Democratic platform, and same-sex marriage. (He’s for “equal rights under the law,” whatever that means.) I’ve been pretty hard on Howard lately, but I have to give him credit for something he said.Actually, it was something he said that wasn’t quite right, but I got the point anyway. On the Republicans’ exploitation of the same-sex marriage issue, Dean claimed the ‘Pubs are shooting themselves in the foot on this issue because “they started the conversation” and “once you start talking about something the more you talk about it, the more acceptable it becomes.”

Well, he’s wrong on the first part, because it was same-sex couples who started the conversation after realizing what rights and protections they lacked. But he may be right on the second part. More and more the question seems to be what rights and protections same-sex couples should or should not have, instead of whether we should have any at all. Over 10 years since the issue really entered the American consciousness, and the national conversation has raged on, more people (including some surprisingly conservative ones) have moved towards believing that same-sex couples should have some legal rights and protections. Now the discussion centers around just which ones.

So, can we talk?

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I asked earlier “What rights should same-sex couples have?” And the ongoing conversation has been interesting, to say the least, and even informative in terms of understanding where people on the opposite side of the issue are coming from. Of course, that’s after you get past the notion that gay people are basically the moral equivalent of segregationists or white supremacists or something. (I kid you not, but that’s a topic for another day. I have something else in mind for this one)

It’s also been informative in the sense that it’s made me consider that I might be asking the wrong question, and also asking the wrong persons. Maybe the question I should be asking on a broader scale, and to more people, is “What rights should same-sex couples not have?” (Especially if it means we don’t have to talk about it anymore.) The question comes to mind after much back and forth about same-sex marriage vs. civil unions vs. domestic partnership vs. various state constitutional amendments designed to prohibit all three. (And maybe other legal arrangements as well. Or not, depending on who you ask.)

In all of that, the term “RB’s” was brought up over and over again, as the answer to the questions I’ve been asking. I figured it was an abbreviation of something, but I wasn’t sure what. I made a mental note to ask, but decided to do a bit of googling which revealed that “RB’s” is an abbreviation for “Reciprocal Beneficiaries.” It turns out I wrote about it back in February. I already knew what it meant, but didn’t immediately make the connection. It also turns out to be a good place to start in terms of the previous question and the one that’s the title of this post.

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It’s that time again. I’m not sure why I started doing this meme again every Friday, but it feels like a good idea lately; a nice, light way to start the last day of the week before getting into anything serious. The only problem is I’m running out of context-driven subtitles for these posts. So this one is officially “you name it.” Is there a context that fits all the songs? Or do they fit into some context of what’s been going on this week in the news?

I don’t know. I’m asking.

1. Fire up the MP3 player
2. Randomize
3. Gimme ten

Here’s what I got.

1. Boogie Oogie Oogie from the album “Greatest Disco Groups” by A Taste Of Honey
2. Love Is a Stranger from the album “Ultimate Collection” by Eurythmics
3. Looking for a New Love from the album “Sounds of the Eighties: Rockin’ 80′s” by Jody Watley
4. Ode to Billy Joe by Bobby Gentry
5. Do You Miss Me from the album “Fired Up!” by Jocelyn Enriquez
6. I Know It’s Gonna Happen Someday from the album “The Best of Morrissey” by Morrissey
7. Alla That’s All Right, But from the album “Breaths” by Sweet Honey In The Rock
8. Last Dance from the album “Divas Of Dance (Disco Nights Volume 1)” by Various Artists
9. The Humpty Dance from the album “Old School Rap” by Digital Underground
10. I’m Not Worried At All from the album “18″ by Moby

I’m not sure what to call it. But I do have a favorite line from one of the songs listed above: “Somebody come and carry me into a seven day kiss…” (That’ll have to wait until I get home, tho’.)

And after writing this post, I just let iTunes keep playing and the next song that came up was Someday from the album “No One Is Alone” by Laurie Beecham. The lyrics? Well, I can’t pick a favorite line, but right about now it seems appropriate to post the whole song.

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There’s been an interesting development in a story a blogged about earlier, the one about the Oklahoma teen who was kicked off the girls’ basketball team for refusing to join in team prayer, and whose father was assaulted, falsely accused of assault and later found not guilty. Now the parents have filed a civil suit against 16 defendants.

A conspiracy amongst Hardesty School and several Texas County governments is alleged in a million dollar First Amendment Civil Rights lawsuit filed in Federal Court Friday.

The plaintiffs, Chester and Nadia Smalkowski of Hardesty, and American Atheists, Inc., a Texas Non-Profit Corporation, are suing 16 defendants for damages due to a number of Civil Rights violations incurred after the Smalkowskis’ daughter was allegedly kicked off Hardesty’s basketball team, suspended from school and later threatened for refusing to say the Lord’s Prayer before a game.

… “We are asking for a 1983 Civil Rights Violation, and that has nothing to do with the year, that comes from Title 42 of the United States Code, Section 1983,” [the Smalkowski's attorney, Richard] Rice said. “It’s the civil rights violation that says under color of law you have deprived somebody of their civil rights.

“We are maintaining that there was a conspiracy between a number of governmental employees from the school district to the town of Hardesty to the Sheriff’s Department to the District Attorney’s Office and the violation is based upon the first amendment right that they have not to pray in school and we believe that the daughter was kicked off the basketball team because she refused to pray in school.

“We are now filing a federal law suit because it’s a federal violation.

“I have the Right to pray, believe in God, attend church without fear of reprisal from any branch of any government here in America,” Rice said.

“I have the Right to not pray, to not believe in God, or to not attend church without fear of reprisal from any branch of any government here in America,” [Kentucky Attorney Edwin] Kagin said.

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