The Republic of T.

I saw this over on the God’s Politics blog, and it seemed like a good idea to look back over the books I’ve read in the past year and pick some favorites. The only problem is that I’ve read a lot of books in the past year, and picking out a handful of them (the max seems the be five at the blog I’m borrowing this from) is going to be difficult. So, I’m just going to list them here with a few thoughts about each title.

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J.W. Richard over at Mandrake Society Radio is running a series of Kwanzaa-related podcasts this week, in which he’s asked different black LGBT bloggers to speak about the principles of Kwanzaa. I was honored to be asked to reflect on the principle of ujima — collective work and responsibility.

To build and maintain our community together and make our brother’s and sister’s problems our problems and to solve them together.

It was December 1st, World AIDS Day, when I sat down to write what I wanted to say. So my mind naturally turned to the HIV/AIDS epidemic in African American communities. And in reflecting on that, I couldn’t help remembering some of the things I’d blogged about this year, like reading a great book about homophobia in black churches or reading about and responding to Keith’s experience at Central State University. I thought about Michael Sandy and Dwan Prince. I thought of ministers like Alfred Owens, Willie WIlson and Wellington Boone. I thought about how few African Americans are more like Leonard Pitts.

I thought about all of the above in relation to collective work and responsibility, and poured it into today’s podcast in the Kwanzaa series. I got a little long-winded, but I wanted to make sure I got all of the context in. I hope it’s a useful contribution. Also, check out the previous podcasts addressing Umoja (unity) and Kujichagulia (self determination).

I'm probably going to get at least a little flack for bringing this up, given the timing and the circumstances, but there's an interesting development in the aftermath of James Brown's death that I couldn't help noticing. I saw it yesterday, but didn't get a chance to post about it, but apparently, there's some question about Brown's marital status that's resulted in his wife being locked out of their home.

James Brown's lawyer said Tuesday that the late singer and his partner were not legally married and that she was locked out of his South Carolina home for estate legal reasons.

"It's not a reflection on her as an individual," lawyer Buddy Dallas told The Associated Press. "I have not even been in the house, nor will I until appropriate protocol is followed."

Brown's partner, backup dancer Tomi Rae Hynie, was already married to a Texas man in 2001 when she married Brown, thus making her marriage to Brown null, Dallas said. He said Hynie later annulled the previous marriage, but she and Brown never remarried.

"I suppose it would mean she was, from time to time, a guest in Mr. Brown's home," Dallas said.

Wow. Demoted from wife to house guest, and before the man's body is even cold. It's not an unfamiliar story, but fortunately for Hynie the Godfather of Soul wasn't gay and they weren't a same-sex couple.

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This is one of those things you can only file under “Did I Hear That Right?”, “Is He Listening To Himself?” or “He Can’t Mean That.” At least that’s my initial reaction to hearing the Pope call for an end to prejudice.

Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday urged people everywhere to prepare for Christmas by overcoming prejudices as pilgrims and tourists gathered in St. Peter’s Square ahead of Christmas Eve celebrations.

“Jesus came for each one of us and made us brothers,” Benedict said during his traditional blessing from his window overlooking the square.

In turn, he added, people should strive to “overcome preconceived ideas and prejudices, tear down barriers and eliminate contrasts that divide — or worse — set individuals and peoples against each other, so as to build together a world of justice and peace.”

Oh, really? ‘Cause that seems to fly in the face of some other stuff he’s said recently.

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Well, as mentioned in my previous post, I finally saw Dreamgirls. The hubby and I went to a morning matinee yesterday before heading off on a day-long date together. We saw it at the Uptown (photo via thinkrad!cal), which has one of the largest (if not the largest) screens in D.C., and I had a bit of a weird moment as we were walking towards the theater. Having not read blogs or any other news over the holiday, I hadn’t heard the news about James Brown. So, I was taken aback when I saw his picture on the front page of USA Today, and figured the news must be bad (“Super Bad,” to borrow one of his titles). Sure enough, when I stopped to read the caption, I found out Brown had passed away.

That gave me pause on my way into the theater to see a movie that, in some ways, paid homage to Brown as much as it did to an entire era of African American music and its influence on American popular music and culture (the Wikipedia page for the movie lays out the details better than I can). That wasn’t the reason I was going to see the movie. It gave me something else to think about, but I was merely wondering whether it would be a good movie.

Well, it was.

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As the clock ticks down on the holiday, the blogosphere is getting less and less busy. I guess people are pushing themselves away from their keyboards spending some time with their families. And I think it’s a good idea for me to do the same. So, from now until the 27th, I’m taking a break from blogging. Or I’m going to try to, anyway.

Before I go, it seems like I should try wrapping up the year somehow. But, knowing me, if I tried it I’d probably still be writing the post when the 27th rolls around. So instead here’s a meme I picked up from several different blogs:

Instructions: Record the first sentence of the first blog post of every month this year.

Since I had a database crash in May, and had to move all my old content to a subdomain, some of what you’ll see will be over there instead. (Also, there are two posts for May, as a result.)

But here goes.

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Mary Cheney’s pregnancy is old, old news by now. I haven’t waded into the discussion because I needed time to gather my thoughts, and because I figured by now no one would be talking about it. After all, James Dobson’s Time magazine column in response to Mary’s pregnancy has already been denounced by the researchers whose work he poached and misrepresented for his purposes. (True to form, Dobson’s followers have dismissed the researchers’ objections. And if evangelicals’ knowledge of the bible is any indication, it’s par for the course from people who are more used to just believing what they’re told than they are to employing critical thought. So, they probably won’t read the researchers’ work anyway.)

Then there’s the president, who can’t make up his mind what he thinks. Or at least can’t answer a simple question about whether the fact that he thinks Mary will make a fine mother ought to have any relation to how he addresses policies that will affect Mary’s family and the rest of us. That’s really just puts him in the same category as the Cheneys and a lot of other Republicans who love, accept, and privately support their gay and lesbian friends and family members, but have also accepted the anti-gay policies of people like James Dobson as part of the bargain for maintaining political power. But more about that in a bit.

Then I came across this post on Queercents, addressing some of the issues Mary’s new family may face, and finally realized I had one or two things to say after all. Besides, what better time of year for a post about a pregnant woman named Mary who’s “had no relations with man”?

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I haven’t written about Iraq nearly as much as I did when I first started writing this blog. Maybe it’s because, as one who opposed the war from the start, I’m not sure what’s left to say now that most of the worst predictions made by those of us who opposed the war have come true, and a lot more people have come to think it was a bad idea.

But, it’s the top news story of 2006, and probably one of the reasons the Democrats took Congress in this last election. A number of Americans may have followed Bush and the GOP to the edge of a cliff after 9/11, but many of them have decided they don’t want to follow them over the edge. After all, U.S. troop losses are at 2,955 now, and that means the 3,000 mark isn’t far off. Even Bush says we should expect more loses, while simultaneously calling for a troop increase. Meanwhile, soldier suicides in Iraq are up.

You don’t hear the usual line about “supporting the troops” as much as you used to a few years ago, when accusations of “not supporting the troops” were likely to be hurled at anyone who was even slightly critical of the war in Iraq. And the question “Do you support the troops?” was right up there with “Do you still beat your wife?”, because a “yes” answer would get you labeled a liar if you happened to oppose the war and a “no” answer was obviously out of the question.

The thing is, I never figured out what people mean by “supporting the troops” beyond waving the flag and sticking a yellow ribbon on my car. (I guess the idea is that you can’t oppose the was and “support the troops.”) This video doesn’t exactly answer that question, but it makes a point, in a amusing way. Oh, and it’s definitely Not Safe For Work (NSFW), unless you have some earphones handy.

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Well, it looks like civil unions will become official in New Jersey. The governor plans to sign the civil unions bill today.

New Jersey’s gay couples are gaining all the rights and responsibilities of marriage under state law as New Jersey moves to become the third in the nation to institute civil unions and the fifth to offer some version of marriage.

Gov. Jon S. Corzine planned to sign the civil unions bill on Thursday.

When the law takes effect Feb. 19, New Jersey will join Connecticut and Vermont as states that allow civil unions for gay couples. Massachusetts allows gay couples to marry, while California has domestic partnerships that bring full marriage rights.

Gay couples granted civil unions in New Jersey will have adoption, inheritance, hospital visitation and medical decision-making rights and the right not to testify against a partner in state court.

Like I’ve said before, civil unions are not marriage. Not by a long shot. But they will give same-sex couples in New Jersey rights they didn’t have in that state before. (And so long as they stay in New Jersey, they’ll keep them.)

Back on the USAToday homepage, next to the link to the New Jersey story is a link that says “Vote,” which pops up a poll on same-sex marraige.

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I mentioned Parker in the previous post, so now it seems appropriate to share his most recent school picture.

Have I mentioned before that at least once a day I look at my son and feel an indescribable sense of wonder? Yeah. I do.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a “blogging meta” post, especially since my last foray in to that arena got rather bloody. But Chris Bowers has a post up at MyDD about “HowBloggers Are Held Accountable,” that kind of struck a chord with me. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you might have noticed a change or two in how I blog. One, I’ve tended to write longer posts that are rather deeply linked and researched. Two, I’m posting less often. Sometimes, lately, a day may go by without even one update.

Part of that’s due to realizing some realities about my life and blogging, which I’ll get to in a minute. But here’s the part of Chris’ post that jumped out at me.

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I’m a day late on this too, as it made the rounds this weekend, and blogging on the weekends is a bit challenging for me. But I didn’t want to let to much time pass without posting something about Leonard Pitts’ amazing column, “Why Gay Rights Matter.” There are any number of reasons to be impressed with it. First of all, too often when you hear African American men talking about gay issues, they come out sounding like Joey Porter or D.L. Hughley. [Via Jasmyne Cannick.]

As I snuggled into bed and turned on the television to HBO, what do I see, comedian D.L. Hughley comparing the Black civil rights movement to the gay civil rights movement and using the analogy that “taking dick and picking cotton” are two very different struggles.

I was even more disappointed to later learn this was the Comedy Relief benefit show for victims of Hurricane Katrina. I’m sorry, scratch that, I meant the straight victims of Hurricane Katrina, because there couldn’t have been any gay victims, let alone Black gay victims they way Hughley was talking.

… But I guess if there are people that could laugh at Michael Richard’s nigga tirade, and yes, if you listen to the tape closely, people were laughing before they understood it wasn’t part of a punch line, then I shouldn’t be surprised at D.L. Hughley being able to garner laughs at his dick vs. cotton conundrum.

But then Leonard PItts breaks it down.

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I spotted this in a Daily Kos diary over the weekend, but didn’t get to post about until today, and now it’s broken out all over the blogosphere. It looks like a speaker at an anti-gay marriage rally in Massachusetts — actually, the guy who heads up a group called Catholic Citizenship — violently attacked a female counter protester.

Sarah Loy, 27, of Worcester was holding a sign in defense of same-sex marriage amid a sea of green “Let the People Vote” signs when Larry Cirignano of Canton, who heads the Catholic Citizenship group, ran into the crowd, grabbed her by both shoulders and told her, “You need to get out. You need to get out of here right now.” Mr. Cirignano then pushed her to the ground, her head slamming against the concrete sidewalk.

“It was definitely assault and battery,” said Ronal C. Madnick, director of the Worcester County Chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Police interviewed Mr. Madnick and several others moments after the incident.

As Ms. Loy lay motionless on the ground, crying, Mr. Cirignano ran back behind the lectern, where moments before he had opened the afternoon rally by leading a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance.

Even the unpleasantness in Provincetown, over the outing of anti-gay marriage petition signers, didn’t get quite this ugly. When things get to this point, is it safe to say they’ve run out of arguments?

Cirignano claims Ms. Loy was getting dangerously close to the lectern. I’m not sure what he thought she was going to do, but I think Cirignano ought to be charged with assault and battery, at least.

The combination of nationalism and religion, and the conflation of patriotism with religiosity, has always made me uncomfortable. I guess that’s why even in high school the song “God Bless America” got on my nerves more than a little. I could never quite understand why “God” or any other deity should bless or favor this particular country over any other. (It sounded vaguely like Manifest Destiny, which seemed racist to me even then.)

Post 9/11, we’ve pretty much been awash in all of the above, and it’s only now beginning to abate a little. But it’s not anywhere near gone yet. I’d say we’re just waist-deep in it now as opposed to nipple-deep in it a while back. So, I wasn’t surprised to see Kevin over at Preemptive Karma point out the Family Research Council’s latest attempt to drag out the old saw that “God” has removed “his” favor from America. Jerry Falwell was among the first to dust it off even as the dust was settling at Ground Zero. Now the FRC is extending the blame from gays to include everyone who voted Democratic this November.

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Via Parent Hacks comes word of the The Parenting Manifesto Project, by RebelDad, whose asking for contributions of parenting advice from parenting experts — parents, that is — of no more than 500 words. It's a pretty cool idea, given how much unsolicited advice parents get from all sides. So, for what it's worth, here's the few nuggets I've gathered in my still relatively new career as a parent.

Empathize. This is something I didn't get right away, then Hope pointed me in the direction of the Center for Nonviolent Communication, and their parenting advice. It's simple. Put yourself in the child's shoes. See things from their point of view. This might not change the rules (i.e. "You still can't run through the parking lot, and you still have to hold my hand."), but it can inform your response in a given situation. Verbalize it ("I know you want to run and it upsets you that you can't"), and you validate the child's feelings even if it doesn't change what they can or can't do.

Explain. This may be a reaction to my own upbringing, where unquestioning obedience was the rule and "Because I said so," was the end of any further inquiry. Growing up, I found it insulting because it seemed to indicate that you either (a) didn't have a good reason for something or (b) didn't think I was capable of understanding it. Kids understand more than they're often given credit for. Explanation doesn't mean argument, and it doesn't mean that you negotiate away authority. (i.e. "You can't run through the parking lot by yourself, because there are a lot of cars here, and you can get hut of one hits you.") Again, it's validation of the child's personhood so that he'll validate his personhood, and include in it a right to legitimately question authority. Of course, that's assuming you believe that authority should be questioned and can be questioned legitimately.

Listen. Contrary to how I was raised, I think children should also be heard. I'll listen to Parker even though it doesn't always mean he gets his way. (i.e. "I know you want cookies, but you need to eat some dinner first.") And sometimes I end up realizing what he's really asking for or trying to say. Listening logically goes with the two previous bits. It can help teach a child to express himself appropriately and affectively, and build important lines of communication that will be crucial later on.

Anyway, that's all I got in the way of advice. At least right now, anyway. To me, those three things are the difference between being an authoritative parent versus an authoritarian parent. The first one being what I'm aiming for.

Got this from Rachel, who forgot to tag anybody with it, but I decided to join in anyway.

1. Find the nearest book.
2. Turn to page 123.
3. Go to the fifth sentence on the page.
4. Copy out the next three sentences and post to your blog.
5. Name the book and the author, and tag three more folks.

So….

In the 1970s many historians began dating the love match from the eighteenth or even the seventeenth century. Today, many scholars trace the celebration of married love and companionship back to the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century. A few even believe the basic contours of marriage go back as far as the thirteenth century.

But I can't resist adding the following as well.

I believe the older system of marrying for political and economic advantage remained the norm until the eighteenth century, five thousand years after we encountered it in the early kingdoms and empires of the Middle East.

That's from Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage by Stephanie Coontz. It's a fascinating historical take on marriage, which reveals that what we think of as "traditional marriage" today is a relatively new institution in human history, and that marriage itself has gone through constant changes during human history. (Including some cultures that recognized same-sex unions and included them in the structure of their society, so it hasn't always been an exclusively heterosexual institution.)

In fact, what we recognize as the "traditional family" today, according to Coontz, only reached it's current form in the "long decade of the 1950s," form 1947 to the early 1960s. For more on how even that idealized "family" was a myth, check out Coontz's The Way We Never Were: American Families and the Nostalgia Trap.

As for who to tag next, I'm not really sure. So, if you read this and you want to join in, by all means please do!

Like I said before, civil unions are not equality. In fact, they don’t even qualify as “separate but equal,” because they don’t offer all the rights of marriage and they’re not necessarily recognized, as this news story bears out.

With New Jersey on the verge of passing a civil unions law for same-sex couples, Rick Connolly called his insurance company to see if he could add his partner of 23 years to his homeowner’s policy.

His partner could be added, Connolly was told, but not the same way as a spouse. The difference: If Connolly died, his partner would not be able to keep the policy.

The response is example of the confusion and frustration that might be in store for any gay couples who expect civil unions in New Jersey will give them the same rights as married couples.

“This is the first time in my life I’ve felt like going to a politician and saying, ‘What’s going on here?”‘ said Connolly, 63, of East Hanover, a former Army officer who is now retired from a career in the telephone industry.

… Stephen Hyland, a Princeton lawyer who published a legal guide to New Jersey’s domestic partnership, said federal taxes would be complicated for gay couples in New Jersey.

They won’t be able to file their federal returns jointly. But to file jointly on their state tax forms, they will still need to fill out the joint federal forms and send them to New Jersey, Hyland said.

Also, the civil unions bill requires companies that offer health insurance to spouses of their employees also offer it to civil union partners of workers. But for the civil union partner, unlike a spouse, those benefits would have to be reported as income to the IRS and would be subject to taxes, Hyland said.

Surviving partners won’t be able to collect deceased partners’ Social Security benefits and may not be able to collect their pensions, which fall under federal regulation, said Felice T. Londa, an Elizabeth-based family lawyer who represents many same-sex couples.

There’s another major tax issue regarding breakups of the relationships. Under federal law, alimony is not taxed.

But support paid from one partner to another when civil unions are dissolved would likely be subject to federal gift taxes, said Daniel Serviss, a Woodbridge-based matrimonial lawyer. Additionally, the couples in civil unions won’t necessarily have those unions recognized when they travel in states outside of New Jersey.

The article goes on, but the above is just a sampling of why civil unions create more questions than they resolve. Given what I said in the previous post, it’s also interesting to note that the article says gay couples in New Jersey are planning vacations that will take them only to states that have similar laws.

So, call it what you will, but don’t call it equality. Don’t even call it “separate but equal.” It’s more like “separate, but unequal.” In other words, very little has changed.

If I were even a little more of an ambitious blogger I’d have mentioned this again before now. But today, or what remains of it, is the last day to vote in the Weblog Awards. And while I have no chance of winning Best LGBT Blog, that doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate any votes I do get. So, if you’re so inclined…..

(And even if you’ve already voted, you can vote again. But only one vote per day.)

So, it looks like New Jersey is going to do just what I said it would do after the state’s Supreme Court rendered its decision on marriage. The legislature’s vote for civil unions as a means of granting same-sex couples the rights and protections of marriage is a step forward in the sense that it means gay families in New Jersey will have more protections than they had before, but it leaves something to be desired.

The vote in the General Assembly was 56-19. The Senate vote was 23-12. Gov. Jon S. Corzine has said he would sign a civil unions bill into law.

Steven Goldstein, director of Equality New Jersey, told Bloomberg that the vote was a mixed blessing for the state’s gays and lesbians because there was no guarantee non-government entities would honor the decision.

“Nobody knows what civil unions are in the real world. That’s the problem,” Goldstein told Bloomberg. “We want marriage equality, not a law that discriminates.”

The move follows an order by the New Jersey Supreme Court, which directed the state to provide same-sex couples with marriage rights or their equivalent.

Employing civil rights terminology, gay and lesbian advocates blasted the decision and said that providing the benefits of marriage without calling it marriage was tantamount to the “separate but equal” treatment of a discriminated group.

… “By passing a law that marks same-sex couples as inferior, the government has paved the way for others to discriminate against them,” said David Buckel, marriage project director at Lambda Legal and lead attorney on the Lewis v. Harris marriage lawsuit that led to the court’s decision.

It’s not surprising, because the New Jersey legislature is well practiced in the art of compromise, as evidenced by the states domestic partnership, statute, which permitted cities and municipalities to establish domestic partnership policies for city employees, but didn’t require them to. The statute was no help to Laurel Hester, who had to mount a fight for domestic partnership even as she was losing a fight against cancer. And it was only afterwards that the Legislature got around to putting some teeth in the domestic partnership statute.

If you ask me, I think civil unions may be a tiny step forward, but they don’t solve anything. In fact, they raise more questions than they answer.

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Never mind that business that soy products my might make your kid gay. If junior’s chowing down on tofu and turning up his nose at meat, it might just mean you’ve got a bright kid on your hands, according to a study suggesting that bright children are more likely to become vegetarians.

It’s official – vegetarians really are smarter. But it is not because of what they eat. Bright children are more likely to reject meat and opt to become vegetarians when they grow up, a study has shown. Clever veggies are born not made.

The finding helps explain how a team of vegetarians won the BBC Test the Nation competition in September, when they beat off competition from six other teams including butchers, public school pupils and footballers’ wives to achieve the highest overall IQ score.

… Researchers from the University of Southampton who conducted the study agree. They suggest that vegetarians are more thoughtful about what they eat. But they say it is unclear whether bright children choose to become vegetarians for the health benefits or for other reasons, such as a concern for animals, or as a lifestyle choice.

The scientists began investigating the link between IQ and vegetarianism because people with higher intelligence have a lower risk of heart disease, which has long puzzled doctors.

There are a few other interesting bits of information, including a finding that vegetarians are likely to be better educated and of “higher social class.” If you ask me, I think that makes sense in part because those two factors make more likely to be able to spend much time thinking about what you eat, and to put more effort in buying particular kinds of foods. You probably have a grocery store in your neighborhood, maybe even a Whole Foods, and/or transportation to get you there and back home.

But, it’s easier to eat healthy if you live in the suburbs, where there are grocery stores and health food stores, and have the money to spend. In other words, it’s easier to make healthier choices when healthier choices are readily available. When they’re not, it’s not.

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