Fairness - The Commentary

What a relief it was to hear that the US Supreme Court had overturned Section 3 of the “Defense of Marriage Act” that was signed into law by centrist Democrat Bill Clinton in 1996. No longer can the federal government define marriage as exclusively heterosexual. Now it’s back to the states, for this Court is for nothing if it isn’t states’ rights. The President can decide if federal marriage benefits are defined by the definition of marriage in the state one lives or the state one is married in, but the battle for full marriage equality depends upon politics at those state levels and some long, drawn-out court cases that must begin soon with same-sex couples suing for recognition in their non-accepting home states. One legal hurdle is gone, and the celebrations all around the nation were exuberant, maybe overly. There should be relief that on the way to full human rights the law has taken this turn even as the right-wing flails in reaction and there’s so much more to do. The pu...

In 2012, 26,000 women and men reported sexual assault in the American military. We have no record of how much remains unreported. That’s only one year of victimization in what military brass admitted before Congress was a “cancer.” If it weren’t for the seven women on the Senate Armed Services Committee, I’d expect such reports to be buried. Hearing so many of the old Congressmen respond to this with stupidity, sexism, and pseudo-science, even surprised those of us who expect so little out of right-wing politicians. And blaming the existence of women in the military ignores the fact that 14,000 of those victims were men. That’s 6.1% of the women in the military and 1.2% of the men. And 98% of the reported sexual assaults on men were committed by other men. In one of the most insightful analyses of this epidemic, Ana Marie Cox of  The Guardian  concludes: “it’s something about being in the military  today , at this moment in history, fighting the kinds of wars w...

There’s still a need for opportunities to show that LGBT people are not only here but are glad they are. I’m not sure the best way to do it is through today’s versions of Pride Festivals, but nevertheless, I’m convinced that any opportunity for LGBT people to show to others that they like who they are is a gift to society as a whole. Most people have gotten use to the idea that LGBT people exist. They might even have come to tolerate the fact that some could be attending their church and providing them with their music. They might have come to know that they could be working with some. And they might even suspect that they have an uncle or aunt that’s one of those people. People are accustomed to laughing at them on network sitcoms. As they have with many minority groups, they’re tickled with the idea of LGBT people serving up their food and entertainment. They might deplore the attacks on LGBT people and the suicides of lesbian and gay teenagers who were bullied by their pee...

This won't be a real old-fashioned Mother's Day. Nations have a habit of sanctifying people and events that might otherwise disturb the system by cleaning them up so that their memories actually celebrate and promote the status quo, especially its business. When President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed May 9, 1914, the first Mother's Day, asking Americans on that day to give a public "thank you" to their and all mothers, the holiday was sanitized so it wouldn’t challenge our socio-economic system but actually further its consumerism. Activist, writer, and poet Julia Ward Howe first proposed the idea of an official celebration of Mothers Day in the United States in 1872. She was best known for her famous Civil War song, "Battle Hymn of the Republic.” In response to the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, Howe proposed that June 2nd be celebrated annually as Mothers Day so that on that day mothers could rally to end all war. In Boston in 1870, in...

The right-wing, especially the religious right-wing, knows that it’s on the run. It’s scared because it lacks faith in its higher power. Thus, the overwhelming accumulation of examples of down-right lying among them. Then, sadly, the denial that they could be lying from those whom the lies hurt continues. Their fear makes right-wingers doubt - and desperate to do anything to promote their righteous cause and gods no matter how deceitful it might be. Saving souls or their pocketbooks from hell is all the excuse they need to deceive. Enter their academics who are so convinced of the rightness of their cause that questionable studies are commonplace. And right-wing journals salivate over publishing anything that comes from anyone who supports the ideology they push. In March,  The American Independent   obtained documents exposing  “The New Family Structures Study”  published in June 2012 by Mark Regnerus, associate professor of sociology at the University of...

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...