Fairness - The Commentary

One lesson most moviegoers picked up from Steven Spielberg’s “Lincoln” was that the workings of Congress have always involved downright ugly wheeling and dealing. Votes were bought, sold, and traded to pass both good and bad legislation. The laudatory goal of that January 1865 backroom and back-alley horse trading was to pass the Thirteenth Amendment to the U. S. Constitution, outlawing slavery and involuntary servitude. Lincoln and Secretary of State, William Seward, were uncomfortable with offering direct monetary bribes to buy the necessary votes, but instead authorized agents to under-handedly contact Democratic congressmen with offers of federal jobs in exchange for their support. Americans can cling to the idea that their country is somehow virtuous, even uniquely so. But contrary to what we might want to believe about America as an exceptionally pristine nation moving in some providential way toward the expansion of liberty, the fact is that the good that’s been accomplish...

Valentine’s Day encourages a whole season of love, whatever that means in American culture. At least it means that the new year begins with stores overflowing with candy, flowers, cards, stuffed animals, jewelry, and other paraphernalia needed to show how buying proves we’re in love. Valentine’s Day is a patterned American written and oral exam testing whether you really do love someone, and whether you’re really loved by someone. If they truly love you, they’ll show it through the day’s products. It’s not all bad. If it is a reminder to take the time in a busy life to express love, how can that in itself hurt? Yes, someone shouldn’t need a special day to do this, but the commercialism that defines the Day also restricts how regularly we get the space to celebrate love. The problem is that instead of celebrating love between two people just as they are as human beings, the Day is more a celebration of culturally defined patterns that are not only meant to sell products and se...

2012 is ending with the Associated Press publishing a new stylebook for journalists that bans the use of the words “homophobia” and “Islamophobia.” The AP argues that “phobia” describes an illness or mental disability and, thus, isn’t accurate in “political or social” reporting. As Michelangelo Signorile argued , the problem with their decision “is not necessarily the logic of the argument as much as it is how long it took the AP to get to it.” He himself restricts use of the term to discussions of psychological motives and so prefers “anti-gay” where others use “homophobia. The word, however, has been used for 40 years. This change comes at a time when anti-gay forces, feeling they’re on the run culturally, are hunting for any support for their retrograde prejudices. So by banning “homophobia,” Signorile argues, “the AP is in fact playing into a political agenda, erasing a word that came into usage decades ago and has a meaning that is broadly understood. By banning the word, ...

With the 2012 popular vote supporting marriage equality regardless of gender winning in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington, the struggle for marriage equality has turned a corner. It’s not  the  corner, but an important corner nevertheless. We can quibble all we want about whether human rights should ever be put up for a popular vote, but the fact that for the first time on a state-wide level activists have been able to beat back the huge funding mechanisms and built-in grassroots networks of right-wing churches and bigots is a symptom of an on-going cultural shift. And that’s worth celebrating. Along with the reelection of President Obama and other progressive wins, much of the regressive right-wing has acknowledged that they’re on the run. They’ve concluded that the Evangelical vote has lost the clout it held for the last decades. “I think this was an evangelical disaster,”  lamented Albert Mohler , president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in L...

That’s the gist of an all too common question. And when looking at the daily news, there’s clear reason for asking it. Recently we saw again what can happen when anti-Muslim Christians - this time using a film – chose to rile up anti-Christian Muslims. It’s as if both sides in such feuds thrive on the hatred of the other. And the psychological reality is, they do. Extreme right-wing religions play on the fears and insecurities of people growing up in a world that installs these in its children through what the late child psychologist Alice Miller calls “poisonous pedagogy.” In fact, their theologies enshrine and sanctify such childrearing practices. “There are countless theological explanations for the motives behind God’s inscrutable counsels,” Miller writes in  The Truth Will Set You Free  (2001), “but in all too many of them I see a terrorized child trying hard to interpret the mysterious actions of the [punishing] parent as good and loving, even though the chil...

The government of the United States has no right to tell two consenting adults whom they can and cannot love. That’s the essence of the argument for marriage equality. Religions can believe anything they want, but love is none of the government’s business. Let religions fight with each other over this, for there are religious people everywhere disagreeing over who people should or shouldn’t love. When a society is built on fear and hate, whether religiously or otherwise inspired, those who dare to love whom they want are seen as subversive. They’re the ones willing to fight society’s fear and hate so they can live as people who love another. Groups that want to limit the definition of love so it fits nicely within their stifling boundaries get scared by love that knows no bounds. They visit their fears of what it would mean if they themselves loved boldly on those who don’t fit what feels safe to them. It doesn’t matter that real loving never always feels “safe.” It feels vul...

It’s silly season. And it would be laughable if elections weren’t downright serious. We’re about to see the worst of politics. It’s been building all summer, but now the money really flows. So, here we go. “Awash in money” is an understatement as the 1% bids for owning the political winners. The system is drowning in corporate and billionaire’s contributions. As cowboy-comedian Will Rogers, Jr, put it generations ago: “We’ve got the best Congress money can buy.” Not telling the truth has always been a part of politics, but we can expect outright lies from the right-wing to increase to a level never seen before. And when someone points out the lie, we can expect them to continue and do it blatantly. There’s no penalty in the mainstream media. Even if it’s a known lie, when repeated long enough, it becomes just another opinion taken to be equal to fact-based claims. It’s unusual to find anyone in the mainstream media who is any help. If it weren’t for the evening lineup on ...

Who can’t understand why people are frustrated, skeptical, fed up? We have two political parties with a monopoly on politics that are dominated by corporate interests. We often find ourselves voting for the least awful alternative, not a candidate who courageously champions our interests. We hear the label “liberal” used of people who barely lean left and often tilt to the right, who readily seem to cave in to the right-wing in order to get re-elected. We desperately want to believe in someone. So we scrounge around like abused spouses clinging to anything that tells us they’re for us, that their critics don’t understand. We make excuses for their failures to stand boldly against the opposition. We tell ourselves to be realists because it’s really, really, really the best they can accomplish “given the state of politics.” Such feelings are widespread. In terms of the corporate world, for example,  a recently released Gallup poll  conducted in 2011 indicates that abou...

In response to the President publicly supporting marriage equality, it’s open season for right-wing pastors to publicly preach violence toward LGBT people. Brown University political scientist  Michael Tesler has previously shown , as in a recent issue of  The American Journal of Political Science ,  that President Obama has such an affect on race-conscious voters that they adjust their positions on health care reform, taxes, Supreme Court justices, and even  a president’s dog  because of him. Tesler’s recent analysis of surveys on marriage equality (“T he Spillover of Racialization into Marriage Equality ”) demonstrates that Obama’s support pulls blacks toward equality, but also pushes white “racial conservatives” away. The most rabid of them feel free to spout the same hatred toward LGBT people as they do toward the not-white president. On May 6 th  at Berean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, NC,  Pastor Sean Hayes’ sermon  recommended m...