The Republic of T.

I’ve attempted to offer some analysis — however imperfect — of what happened and why with regards to the Clinton blogger lunch. I got some things wrong in the process, and have tried to clean up my side of the street in those instances. Now I want to try and offer some suggestions for moving forward without rehashing any that if I can help it. More to the point, I want to address what I think progressive bloggers of color — or any other constituency of progressive bloggers, really — can do to help ourselves and others in our corners of the blogosphere, independent of what anyone else does or doesn’t do. The primary point is to strengthen ties and communications between us, and secondarily to help us find, support, and promote one another. So, I offer this as a proposal in response to Jeffrey Feldman’s diary on Daily Kos.

I’ve been thinking about the question I had on my mind as I left YearlyKos, about the possibility of establishing an lgbt netroots site, which instead became weekly lgbt diary rounds-up on Daily Kos. That seems to be going well for now, but , I’ve begun to think that establishing a central site/network or progressive bloggers of color might be a step towards building and strengthening or own network, parallel and complimentary to — not separate from —the larger network of progressive bloggers. This is “not a lets take our ball and go home proposal. I don’t envision people ceasing to participate in the larger progressive netroots, nor do I even remotely want that. Our communities stand to gain too much from a successful progressive movement, and like wise that movement from strengthening its diversity, to allow that to happen. The focus of this proposal is to combine our resources and strengthen our connections for everyone’s benefit

(more…)

Late last year I blogged about All Saints Episcopal Church in California, the church that found itself faced with an IRS warning about its tax-exmpt status after the pastor gave a sermon against the war in Iraq. Now the IRS is stepping it up, and asking the church to turn over emails and other documents from the 2004 presidential election.

The Internal Revenue Service has ordered a prominent liberal church to turn over documents and e-mails it produced during the 2004 election year that contain references to political candidates.

The IRS is investigating whether All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena violated the federal tax code when its former rector, Rev. George F. Regas, delivered an anti-war sermon on the eve of the last presidential election.

Tax-exempt organizations are barred from intervening in political campaigns and elections, and the church could lose its tax-exempt status.

Rev. Ed Bacon received a summons Thursday ordering the church to present any politically charged sermons, newsletters and electronic communications by Sept 29.

Bacon was ordered to testify before IRS officials Oct. 11. He said he will inform his roughly 3,500 congregants about the investigation at Sunday’s services, and will seek their advice on whether to comply.

“There is a lot at stake here,” Bacon said. “If the IRS prevails, it will have a chilling effect on the practice of religion in America.”

I don’t know if it’s a chilling effect on the practice of religion in America but it may have a chilling effect on the union of religion and politics, especially if the application of IRS regulations cuts both ways. Liberal Christian churches are becoming more active, so now the IRS is taking a closer look at political activity in churches of any political persuasion.

(more…)

As soon as I have time I going to post some ideas I’ve had coming out of the discussions in the wake of the Clinton blogger lunch. (My follow-up posts are here and here.) In the meantime, Chris has a post up at MyDD about the potential of local blogging that I think also speaks to some of the frustrations expressed in the last few days. Most of the discussion was, and is, focused on political blogging at the national level. After all, the focus on the top (most highly trafficked) progressive blogs makes national politics the focus, because that’s what most of them write about.

What I get from what Chris writes is that the field is already pretty crowded when it comes to political blogging on the national level. The national blogging scene, according to Chris, may be tapped out.

I point this out because I think that local blogging is the way of the future for the progressive movement. Partially, I write think because I think that the national scene is close to tapped out: we currently reach nearly every progressive political junkie who is also a heavy user of the Internet. While there are some demographic areas where we could make more gains, in general I do not feel that there is much room for national political blogging to grow. We already reach 17% of the Democratic electorate on a fairly regular basis, and how many more progressives are there who follow news closely enough, and who use the Internet frequently enough, to increase on that number? I can’t imagine it is very many.

I think Chris may be right about that (commenters on his post make some interesting counterpoints), and I think that may be what people are bumping up against with some of the issues that have been discussed in the last few days.

(more…)

It's a cliché, but not necessarily untrue, to say that some conservatives want to the social clock back to 1950's America, due to some longing for "the good old days." It's also a cliché, but not necessarily untrue, that the "good old days" weren't exactly good for everybody. How "not good" were they? Trey over at Daddy, Papa and Me has a post up (via Pam) that paints a picture of just how bad those days were for gay people. In Greensboro, NC, in 1957 came to be called "the purge", but for gay people in America it was pretty much called every day life.

The now-obscure episode, which some longtime residents came to call "the purge," was the largest attempted roundup of homosexuals in Greensboro history and marked one of the most intense gay scares of the 1950s.

Unlike sweeps of subsequent decades, involving raids on public parks and gay bars, Greensboro’s 1957 trials focused on private acts behind closed doors.

The purpose, in the words of the police chief, was to "remove these individuals from society who would prey upon our youth," and to protect the town from what a presiding judge called "a menace."

Some 32 trials in the winter and spring of 1957 would end in guilty verdicts, 24 of them resulting in prison terms of five to 20 years, with some defendants assigned to highway chain gangs.

Thirty-two men, arrested for private acts "behind closed doors," and twenty-four sentenced to prison terms. It sounds pretty bad, and I'm willing to bet that even some opponents of gay & lesbian equality would stop short (at least publicly) of saying they want to return to those days. It might be tempting, even, to write it off as atypical of the ear; an isolated incident. Except that it wasn't I got a feeling of deja vu when reading the story about the Greensboro "purge," because I'd heard one very much like it not long ago.

(more…)

Once again, I broke it in public, so now I must try to fix it in public. Today seem to be my day to apologize. If that’s the case I’m in good company.

Per Lauren’s comment in the previous post, It looks like I owe an apology to Jane Hamsher and the folks at Firedoglake, and I wanted to publicly apologize as soon as it was brought to my attention.

Terrance: I wrote to Jane Hamsher to protest the removing of your blog from her roll, and was advised that this occurred quite some time ago, as they moved from one blogging system to another. She was quite upset with the implication that it was otherwise, and I have apologized to her for the misunderstanding.

Yesterday, after learning of Liza’s deletion from the Daily Kos blogroll, I happened to look at the blogroll at Firedoglake. My blog had been listed there previously, and during visits to the site in the last three or four days, I thought I saw it listed there still. When I noticed it missing yesterday, I assumed it had been deleted as a result of the discussion around the Clinton blogger lunch, etc.

It now appears I may have been mistaken in that assumption. If that’s the case, then I offer my apologies to Jane, FDL, and anyone else who may have been affected as a result.

The last few days haven’t been easy ones, at least not in my corner of the progressive blogosphere. I am genuinely sorry if my mistaken assumption, or anything else I’ve written during this period, made them any more difficult for anyone. I hope my apology will be accepted, and I hope now that there’s a constructive discussion going on about how to address the concerns raised in the last few days that I can at least contribute something helpful.

This has been on my mind for a while now, but it took a private email from a friend to nudge me into saying something about it. Since it's something I do on my blog, it makes sense to address it here too. I think the saying goes "I broke it in public, so I gotta fix it in public."

For some time now, whenever I write about Christianity, I've been doing so with a small "c," while capitalizing the names of other faiths. I've been doing it for a while now. I don't remember when or how it got started. It may have been intentional the first couple of times, but I kept doing it after I became aware of it and at that point it became intentional.

Well, from now I'm I'm not going to do that anymore. It's wrong, antagonistic, non-constructive, small, and petty of me to do that. It probably stems from some personal issues with religion in general and Christianity in particular, that I've mentioned before. But that doesn't excuse it. In fact, that makes it worse because it's insulting, dismissive, hurtful, and frustrating to people who are sincere in their beliefs, and who have nothing to do with my personal history.

Beyond that, it smacks of painting all Christians with the same brush as my intended targets (far-right, fundamentalist, theocrats, etc.), when there are progressive Christians who don't fall into that category. It hypocritical of me to do that when I wouldn't appreciate someone doing the same to me as an African American or a gay man.

It also makes it hard for me to engage in a discussion about religion — which is something I still intend to do, because it's an issue that's inextricably intertwined with politics, and because it's a subject I'm still trying to come to terms with on a personal level — because it overshadows or otherwise overpowers anything legitimate I might have to say about the subject. That's something I'll probably be doing for a long time. From now on, I want to try to do it in a way that isn't hurtful to others.

And finally, it goes against what I claim or at least aspire to practice in terms of right speech. And, yes, there are certainly other aspects of my blogging in which I'd do well to be mindful of that principle.

That said, I want to apologize both for the practice I mentioned above and to anyone who was frustrated or in any way hurt by it. I'll definitely continue blogging about religion as it intersects with political issues I'm concerned with. While I haven't changed my mind on the subject, or my beliefs, I hope that I can at least contribute something positive to the dialogue from here on out.

Unfortunately, that is. Sometimes You gotta take the bad right along with the good. I confess it’s been a guilty pleasure of late for the hubby and I to snuggle on the couch on Sunday night to catch Bridezillas on WE tv.It’s been fun to gape at the over-the-top theatrics and the weddings themselves, and feel every so slightly smug even though we were convinced that some of the bridal drama must be due to the bridal couples getting some help with wedding costs as part of the agreement.

Our mouths hit the floor when we saw the previews, but I supposed it was inevitable that gay couples would get in on the act.

(more…)

This will be probably be the last I say about this, at least for today since the family and I are off to shop for a "big boy bed."

Honestly, after reading the latest FDL post — and comments — aimed at Liza, I'm begnining to think that some of these folks aren't people I want sit at a table with anyway. There's nothing more offensive than being told to remember your place, as zuzu aptly puts it. And we're supposed to be on the same team? Well, I've got a lot more to think about now. If nothing else, though, I'm glad I saw that FDL post. Experience has taught me to value and pay close attention to those moments when the mask slips and people (as Oprah one put it) show you who they really are.

Bottom line on all of this, given that folks were gonna blog about this meeting and folks were gonna read about it, some prior knowledge about who was invited but unable to attend would probably have saved everyone a lot of bandwith. There wasn't any intent or conscious effort to exclude bloggers of color, but neither was there any conscious recognition of how things would look and how they'd be interpreted in the absence of any context. Still, I'm glad I posted what I did because it was the catalyst for a much needed discussion. And because, as the FDL post I mentioned shows, it makes clear some things that weren't before.

Beyond all that, I want to chime in on a few other things.

(more…)

After the updates on Virginia’s anti-gay marriage amendment in this week’s QueerlyKos round-up, it seemed appropriate to share this video by the Commonwealth Coalition that’s organized to oppose the amendment.

It’s particularly interesting to me that it mention’s George Mason’s Virginia Declaration of Rights, because I’m reading about Thomas Jefferson’s Act for Establishing Religious Freedom, which established separation of church and state in Virginia upon its pasasve. Maybe it’s me, but I can’t help seeing a connection between Jefferson’s Act and the state’s current anti-gay marriage amendment.

Via Rick Sincere and Steven Miller.

(Update: As Peter Daou, who organized the event, points out in the comments, invitations were issued to POC bloggers like Steve Gilliard and Oliver Willis, who were unable to attend. So the question of an oversight is settled. However, some earlier communication to that would have been helpful, as foresight might have suggested there might at least be some questions about appearances.)

Wow It looks like I started something. (Thanks to Pam and PageOneQ for the initial linkage, and to Liz for turning up the volume, BTW.) Well, good. I hope it at least facilitates discussion, and the posts I’ve seen thus far suggest that it has. And Micha is right, my “write your own caption” post was a gentle way of trying to goad folks to ask “What’s wrong with this picture?” and underscore that no one appeared to ask that question in the first place.

The approach was gentle because my experience is that when it comes to race, well, there are still some landmines one wants to avoid if possible. I don’t, for example, think any of the bloggers involved the meeting — many of whom I’ve met and spoken with previously — are racist or intended to exclude anyone on that basis. But the whole thing underscores something that I think progressives in general, and progressive bloggers in this case, need to keep in mind. It’s something I wrote last year on blogging while brown, and while I posted it as a comment in the previous post, I wanted to re-post it for consideration here in an extended form.

(more…)

It’s been another week of ups and downs, but more-so because it included the anniversary that no one can help but remember. I hadn’t decided whether to post some remembrance of the day, until I thought about the gay & lesbian Americans who lost their lives that day, some in the course of acting heroically to help others in the midst of the terror. Needless to say, I wanted to do my part to remember them and honor who they were.

Speaking of acting heroically, we lost someone this week whom I think fits the category. Tyrone Garner was one half of the couple behind in the Lawrence v. Texas Supreme Court ruling, which struck down state “sodomy laws.” Anyone who helped bring the court to a point of deciding that something which “demeans the lives of homosexual persons” should not stand definitely deserves to be remembered. As for the rest of the week, well, there was a lot more to remember

(more…)

Another nameless edition, unless someone cares to christen it with something appropriate. Wanna play?

1. Start your MP3 player
2. Shuffle everything
3. Gimme the first ten

Here’s mine.

1. Stomp from the album “Disco Nights, Volume 2: The Best of Disco Funk” by The Brothers Johnson
2. Whoaa from the album “Livin’ the Luxury Brown” by Mint Condition
3. Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) ’91 (Hot remix) from the album “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This) ’91″ by Eurythmics
4. As We Lay from the album “Shirley Murdock!” by Shirley Murdock
5. Daylight Robbery from the album “The Antidote” by Morcheeba
6. You Make Me Fell (Mighty Real) by Sylvester
7. Here One Minute from the album “Necks Move” by Deep Thinkers
8. Ça Varie Varie from the album “Ancestry in Progress” by Zap Mama
9. If You’re Ready (Come Go With Me) by The Staples Singers
10. Take A Bow from the album “Something to Remember” by Madonna

What’d you get?

I haven't done a blog round-up in a long time, but it's the only way I'm ever going to post about the links I've collected recently.

I guess you could say the last few books I've read have piqued my interest. Having read about the political ambitions (and successes) of "believers" with theocratic leanings, I wanted to read more about both what they're reading and how it drives them, and the other side of the political coin. So I made my way through Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire, and now I'm a little more than halfway through A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization.

The former is worth it alone for the synopsis of the Left Behind Series at the end of the book. (Though I may still mooch the series, one book at a time, and read it myself.) The latter is a fascinating (and readable) history of of the book of Revelation and the history of the apocalyptic movement, though I've only gotten to the part where the apocalyptic obsession makes the leap to the New World. In the meantime, just to balance things out a bit I'm also reading Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism, basically the other side of theocracy vs. secularism in the New World.

Next on the nightstand is The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously. But, I've also mooched God's Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It, The Battle for God and Divided by God: America's Church-State Problem–and What We Should Do About It. I may wrap up this course of reading (for the time being, anyway) with The Left Hand of God: Taking Back Our Country from the Religious Right.

In the meantime, I've bookmarked a number of blog posts and news stories I've been meaning to blog about, but in the interest of time I decided to do a round-up of them.

(more…)

I came by this video via an email listserve for gay dads. It’s a Dutch kid singing about having two gay dads, and it’s pretty cool. But then, I’m probably a little biased. >

Can you imagine the response if a kid appeared in American television, happily singing about having two dads? In front of an audience full of kids? And if they sang along with him?

There are a few historic moments for which I remember where I was when I witnessed or heard about them. There's the obvious one I wrote about yesterday, but there are others. For example, I remember where I was when I heard about the Supreme Court's Bowers v. Hardwick decision, upholding Georgia's sodomy law. At the time I was in high school and already out. When I heard about the decision, I basically felt that the Supreme Court had divorced gay Americans from the constitution. (It was shortly after that I stopped standing up for the pledge of allegiance in class.)

I remember where I was, too, when the Lawrence. v. Texas came down, and invalidated the state sodomy laws that hadn't been repealed by 2003. By then I had a husband, and was relieved to hear that we were no longer committing a felony in some states. Strange as it sounds, it made me feel like more of a citizen in the same way the previous decision made me feel like less of one. And it was especially encouraging to me that one of the plaintiffs was an out black gay man. So, I was a bit saddened to hear of Tyrone Garner's passing.

(more…)

Good grief. I finally got my hands on a copy of The Passion of the Christ. (Without having to put any money in Mel Gibson’s pocket. It’s amazing what you can find on trade sites like Zunafish. Maybe I’ll peruse the Left Behind series the same way.) Now I find out the movie should come with a warning label: “May cause you to strangle your loved ones”

A HUSBAND almost throttled his wife during a heated theological argument triggered by a controversial Mel Gibson film, a court heard.

Michael Watson loosened his grip on the throat of his wife, Patricia, only when she appealed to his faith by gasping: “Do not touch God’s anointed.”

The court was told that the couple, both devout Christians, celebrated his birthday with dinner and a bottle of wine before sitting down to watch The Passion of the Christ.

Mrs Watson left the room, and her 44-year-old husband became so upset by the graphic depiction of the Crucifixion that he pulled the leads out of the television and went upstairs.

His wife then decided to watch the God Channel and went to ask him why the television was not working.

Yvonne Jobling, for the prosecution, said that an argument developed, and Watson accused his wife of being evil. He grabbed his wife by the throat and she fell to the floor. She said: “His grip was so tight she was unable to speak, but she then managed to say something of a religious nature which seemed to cause him to relax his grip.”

Theological argument? C’mon, it’s not like they were discussing transubstantiation vs. transignification or something.

Anyway, the only footage I’ve seen of the movie was a few clips featured in The God Who Wasn’t There. (Trailer available at Google Video.) So, I’m curious. But after reading the story above, perhaps I’d better watch it when then rest of the family is safely out of the house.

So, I'm working from home today, because the last of our window treatments were being installed. It was especially convenient, I thought, because I could walk just a couple of blocks over to vote in my first Maryland primary. Imagine. After 12 years of living in D.C., I have my first opportunity to cast a ballot for voting representation in Congress. Alas, perhaps it's not to be, as the voting machines aren't working.

Election Day in Montgomery County and parts of Prince George's opened in chaos and frustration this morning, as a series of problems and missteps left thousands of citizens unable to vote or forced to cast provisional ballots.

By mid-morning, a bevy of statewide and local candidates had begun calling for polling stations to stay open past the scheduled 8 p.m. closing time. Montgomery County's Board of Elections held an emergency meeting and agreed to petition the Circuit Court to extend voting times until 9 p.m.

No electronic voting machines were operational when polls opened at 7 a.m. in Montgomery County, because election officials failed to deliver the required voter authorization cards to the county's 238 precincts. Voters were supposed to be given provisional paper ballots instead. But several precincts quickly ran out of those backup ballots.

(more…)

I wasn’t planning on posting anything today, in order to leave the previous post up, but I came across some video about Mark Bingham and others that I wanted to share before signing off for the day.

(more…)

I suppose that, being a political blogger (or a blogger period) it’s almost obligatory that I do some sort of post related to the 5th anniversary of 9/11, about where I was, what I saw, what I felt, and what changed for me after that day. It was, in a sense, a queer day. The events of 9/11 brought two things came into sharp focus for me. One, that my husband was the first person I’d called. We’d been together just over a year, and just a month earlier we moved into our first home together. Two, that America was under attack in a way that I’d never seen before, and in a way that brought home not just my own vulnerability, but the vulnerability the man I love and the vulnerability of our relationship in the face of the new reality that we were all plunged into on that day.

As an American, my life became a little less secure. As a gay man in a committed relationship, our life together became even less secure, in a way that differed from most people. So, while it was and probably still is impolitic to view 9/11 and the aftermath through the lens of my identity as a gay man, that’s a necessarily a part of the context of that day for me. And today it seems appropriate to acknowledge how much gay & lesbian Americans were a part of the events on that day.

(more…)

If I had to sum up this week in song, I’d choose “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley, in particular the chorus, “Does that make me crazy? Probably.” This was the week that the crazies came to my blog.

I suppose it’s my fault for encouraging them by either (a) attempting a dialogue or (b) posting about them. I finally had to walk away from a discussion after it got the point where I found myself actually splitting hairs over whether NARTH’s recommending that bullying “not be stopped” was the same as advocating bullying. Then the people from He Intends Victory belatedly stumbled across my post about them, and confusion reigned. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any crazier, or make me any crazier, I found out Karl Roves’ dad was gay. Could the week get any crazier? Well…

(more…)