The Republic of T.

One of the things I noted during the 2004 presidential debates was how often Bush began his responses to John Kerry’s statements with the phrase “you can’t say that.” I bugged me because by that time there was a whole list of things that fell under the “you can’t say that” heading in post 9/11 America.

Or, at least, you couldn’t say those things without consequences, which would be visited upon you by your fellow citizens, not the government. Things like speaking out against the war in Iraq, having an anti-Bush poster, giving the commander in chief the thumbs-down, carrying the “wrong” reading material, teaching your kid “un-American values” could get you a visit from the feds.

Well, in the last couple of days there’s been a story roiling the progressive blogosphere that highlights some other stuff you can’t say without consequences; one that makes me glad I’m not among the top tier political bloggers, and that it’s highly unlikely anyone will ever want to hire me to blog for their presidential campaign. At least, not if they’ve seen anything I’ve had to say about religion recently, or in three years of blogging.

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It looks like my reading on religion and politics isn’t done yet. Thus far I’ve read: Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, The Baptizing of America: The Religious Right’s Plans for the Rest of Us, American Theocracy: The Peril and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil, and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, A History of the End of the World: How the Most Controversial Book in the Bible Changed the Course of Western Civilization, Jesus and the Disinherited, What God Has Joined Together?: A Christian Case for Gay Marriage, When Religion Becomes Evil: Five Warning Signs, The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously, Pocket Guide To The Apocalypse: The Official Field Manual For The End Of The World, God’s Politics: Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn’t Get It, The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount, The Sins of Scripture: Exposing the Bible’s Texts of Hate to Reveal the God of Love, Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why, Skipping Towards Armageddon: The Politics and Propaganda of the Left Behind Novels and the LaHaye Empire, Letter to a Christian Nation, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, Atheist Universe: The Thinking Person’s Answer to Christian Fundamentalism, Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction, and The God Delusion.

Whew. I hadn’t realized how long that list was until I wrote it just now. That’s not counting the related titles sitting on my “to read” list and/or in a pile next to my desk. And it’s bound to get longer still. If Chris Hedges’ latest AlterNet column is any indication, I’ll have to add his American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War On America to the list, and maybe even move it to the front of the queue.

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Do you have one? I don’t. Or at least not one that I thought about until I read this Lifehack post (one of several similar blogs I’ve been reading since I starting trying to implement a GTD system) about how the author’s seven-year-old started his own life list.

About two months ago, on a rainy Saturday, my seven year-old son (who is enjoying his budding ability to write) came to me with a small, yellow pad of paper and said, “Daddy, I want to write a list. What should I make a list of?” Suddenly, I recalled reading about John Goddard and the life list he wrote at age 15. His list consisted of 127 things he would like to do or see during his lifetime (for example: Climb Mt. Everest, run a mile in under five minutes, land on and take off from an aircraft carrier, and circumnavigate the globe). Goddard is now 75 years old and, at last count, has accomplished 109 of the goals he wrote as a teenager.

I hadn’t heard of John Goddard or his life list, at least that I can recall, but I was impressed with the idea that he even started one at age 15, let alone knew what he wanted to do. I can’t imagine doing that at 15 or at seven.

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Well. I wish I'd known about this before I tpicked on Tom Cruise and Scientology. Via Pharyngula, it appears that those comments could make me a dangerous criminal. Like this guy.

Keith Henson, an engineer, writer and futurist, was arrested Friday in Prescott, Ariz., where he has been living for the past few years, and now faces extradition to California. Henson originally fled to Canada after the 2001 conviction.

The misdemeanor conviction in California stems from a post that Henson made in the alt.religion.scientology Usenet newsgroup that joked about aiming a nuclear "Tom Cruise" missile at Scientologists, and Henson's picketing of the group's Golden Era Productions in Riverside, Calif.

Michael Kielsky, Henson's defense attorney, said Monday that his client will likely be released on Monday evening and is required to appear in court for a March 5 hearing.

Kielsky said that Henson was mistreated by police and jailers–including being told during the arrest that he had no right to an attorney and being held in solitary confinement in a poorly heated cell without adequate bedding. "My best information is that it's very political," he said. "They gave him an extra blanket but then an hour later they took it away–(this is) a 66-year-old man with a heart problem."

Huh? How do you get from posting a joke about Scientology to sitting in a cold cell?

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Update: Here's the website for the Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance and Initiative 957. If you want to know how you can help, Washington state residents can download and circulate petitions. The rest of us can send donations. 

This is funny, and given that bit about non-procreative sex in the previous post, I couldn't help posting about it. Given the constant use of the "gays can't reproduce" as a reason we should be able to get married. (i.e., the purpose, or one of the primary purposes, of marriage is to produce children, and since gays can't reproduce they don't qualify) I suppose it was inevitable that someone would propose that heterosexuals must reproduce if they want to stay married.

Proponents of same-sex marriage have introduced a ballot measure that would require heterosexual couples to have a child within three years or have their marriages annulled.

The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance acknowledged on its Web site that the initiative was "absurd" but hoped the idea prompts "discussion about the many misguided assumptions" underlying a state Supreme Court ruling that upheld a ban on same-sex marriage.

The measure would require couples to prove they can have children to get a marriage license. Couples who do not have children within three years could have their marriages annulled.

All other marriages would be defined as "unrecognized," making those couples ineligible for marriage benefits.

Of course it's an "absurd idea," but it's merely the logical application of the idea that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation, or that the ability of both partners to reproduce with one another is one of the defining characteristics of marriage. It's taking the Washington Supreme Court's ruling (PDF) at face value.

…the legislature was entitled to believe that limiting marriage to
opposite-sex couples furthers procreation, essential to survival of
the human race, and furthers the well-being of children by encouraging
families where children are reared in homes headed by the children's
biological parents.

In other words, it's taking a flawed argument to its logical extreme.

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I know everyone else is talking about the Snickers commercial during the Superbowl and, being a good gay blogger, I should probably say something about it too. So, there. I just did. You don't need me to say more, do you? Good, because I've had something else on my mind for the last couple of days.

I stuck a toe into the water earlier, and now I hesitate to jump back into the debate about the HPV vaccine, after learning just how controversial vaccines are in general. (And, no, I didn't know about this video before writing this post.) But after posting that Maryland's proposed HIV vaccine bill was pulled, I kept reading about the issue and came across some interesting developments and issues. And a couple of surprises, like Texas becoming first state to require the HPV vaccine for girls entering the sixth grade.

Texas on Friday became the first state to require all 11- and 12-year-old girls entering the sixth grade to be vaccinated against a sexually transmitted virus that causes cervical cancer.

Averting a potentially divisive debate in the Legislature, Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, signed an executive order mandating shots of the Merck vaccine Gardasil as protection against the human papillomavirus, or HPV, starting in September 2008.

Mr. Perry’s action, praised by health advocates, caught many by surprise in a largely conservative state where sexual politics is often a battleground.

“I had no idea; I was absolutely caught off guard,” said Representative Jessica Farrar, Democrat of Houston, who sponsored a bill to require the vaccinations starting this September. “Normally, the governor does not take things like this upon himself, although I’m glad he did.”

Under the order, girls and women from 9 to 21 eligible for public assistance could get free shots immediately. The governor’s office said parents could opt out of the school program “for reasons of conscience, including religious beliefs.”

Not just that, but Virginia passed similar bill, after including an opt-out for parents.

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Jim over at Vigilance, has been blogging about the story of two teenage girls from Montgomery County, MD, who'd been missing for two weeks.

The disappearance of two Montgomery County teenagers has prompted a nationwide search amid fears about the meaning behind a note left by one of the young women about her desire to "stay with my true love, buried next to her."

Rachel Crites, 18, of Gaithersburg and Rachel Smith, 16, of North Potomac both called their parents Friday afternoon to say they were in Georgetown and planning to see a movie.

But cell phone records showed the call was placed from Charles Town, W.Va., a small town south of Frederick best known for its horseracing track.

That was the last their parents heard from them. Now the Montgomery County Police have issued a nationwide search for the teens and for Crites’ dark blue 1997 Subaru Outback station wagon.

Sadly, the two girls were found dead. They appear to have committed suicide.

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What out for the exploding heads of wingnuts. I saw this on The Blue State when I started my reading this morning, only to have it confirmed later. Al Gore has been nominated for the Nobel Prize.

Former Vice President Al Gore was nominated for the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for his wide-reaching efforts to draw the world’s attention to the dangers of global warming, a Norwegian lawmaker said Thursday.

“A prerequisite for winning the Nobel Peace Prize is making a difference, and Al Gore has made a difference,” Conservative Member of Parliament Boerge Brende, a former minister of environment and then of trade, told The Associated Press.

Brende said he joined political opponent Heidi Soerensen of the Socialist Left Party to nominate Gore as well as Canadian Inuit activist Sheila Watt-Cloutier before the nomination deadline expired Thursday.

Oh, boy. This ought to be good. To give you an idea of how good, I posted earlier about one objection to Gore's film An Inconvenient Truth being shown in Washington state schools.

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Not to beat a dead horse, but that last post about Mary Cheney felt incomplete to me. I wasn't sure why until I read Robbie's post, suggesting that gay activists ease up on Mary. I started writing this as a comment on his post, but it started running a little long, so I decided to post it here. I've been more than a little critical of Mary and her parents in the past, but this time I kind of agree wit her, and posted as much.

As a gay dad, I'm glad she's speaking up and countering one of the accusations so often leveled at us by the Dobsons of the world: that we become parents purely for political reasons. I know she won't reach people like Dobson, but maybe she'll reach some people that folks like me can't.

On the other hand, I understand some people's frustration. In 2004, she quietly supported a candidate and party leadership that made our families a political issue. And not without consequences either. That frustrates people like Steve Koval, whose post set Robbie off.

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I’m a wee bit out of sorts today, for various reasons, and wasn’t even sure I’d post much today. But, as we’re waiting to expand our family, I’ve been thinking a lot about the various things that have been said about gay parents, gay couples adopting, etc. And I’ve been blogging a lot about the challenges our families face, particularly related to not-having the rights and protections that other families have. Mary Cheney’s pregnancy was one opportunity to do that.

She’s been pretty quiet since announcing her pregnancy, and setting off a firestorm of controversy. So, when I saw a New York Times article in which Mary Cheney talks about her pregnancy, and the decision she and Heather made to become parents, I had to stop and read it. It’s not often — in fact, it’s downright rare — that I find myself nodding in agreement with Mary Cheney. So, when that happens, I think it’s worth noting.

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Looks like the Washington Post Express picked up on my post about gay families and the 2008 presidential race. I was alerted via email about the quote in yesterday’s edition. I hope that wasn’t was caused the flames yesterday at the Metro stop where I get off on my way to work. (For what it’s worth, the fires seem to break out about 10 minutes after I leave station. And, no, I’m not leaving any newspapers behind. And I’m not that much of a flamer. Not that early in the morning, anyway.)