Fairness - The Commentary

It doesn’t take much awareness to notice that our Universe loves, really loves, diversity. Just imagine what our world would look like if it were all one color. From the bright red of the male cardinal to the subtle colorings of his female companion, from the blues of the sky to the greens of our plants and trees, from the deep shiny ebonies of the raven to the glowing yellows of the gold finch – nature revels in dazzling colors, shapes, and sounds. There’s diversity in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, the skin colorings and body types of humanity, the varieties of insects, the shapes of snowflakes or leaves, the colors and sizes of planets, and on and on. It’s clear that a dull sameness is not in the natural interest of the world around us. Such diversity doesn’t have to be, it seems to me. We could have evolved efficiently without it. But Nature doesn’t want to have that – it’s into flamboyance.   Equality, affirmation, and celebration, then, is not about ignor...

Back in 2015, as LGBTQ activists celebrated the victories of marriage equality and other progress, Michelangelo Signorile warned that given the right-wing, anti-LGBTQ religious strategies they were already setting in motion, It’s Not Over . Just as they were far into implementing a carefully planned process of chipping away slowly at a woman’s right of choice over her body, they were planning a similar backlash against LGBTQ people . Progressives were, Signorile wrote then, in danger of a “victory blindness” that would ignore what the right-wing was already preparing to do to LGBTQ rights in that similar manner that it had been using to slowly but surely gut Roe v. Wade . And now we see all that coming to fruition. Not only have the years since his warning seen regressive sectarian religious groups work at local and state levels to place their kind in office, but they've recently right-wing use of the previous administration and a Party leadership that is now beholden to them and t...

Before we put away the decorations and crèches used in the Christmas and Epiphany celebrations that are taking place around the world, there’s one more episode in the stories surrounding these holidays that’s often glossed over too quickly. Whether any or all of these stories is historical can’t be determined, but this final episode is there in the Gospel of Matthew to complete the saga that’s meant to teach its readers lessons that it considers important. The previous episode of those foreign Magi and other outsiders honoring the baby Jesus in Bethlehem that’s symbolically depicted in countless nativity scenes wasn’t the conclusion of the series. Matthew 2:12-18 instead goes on further to teach its readers one more thing: that the “Holy Family” are comrades with any who have had to flee their home or homeland for protection. The Magi, the Gospel previously said, had been to the capital city, Jerusalem on the way to Bethlehem. Their inquiries thereby alerted King Herod and his dutiful...

When we have a mainstream media that has bought the idea that it will make money by gluing the eyeballs of its viewers and readers to it by hyping violence, controversy, horror, extreme right-wing politicians, and a former president that leads a personality cult, it’s easy for anyone who pays attention to feel overwhelmed by it all. When there’s one political party dominated by those who refuse to cooperate with anything that it feels threatens its power and position…. When that party has stacked the courts, gerrymandered elections, promoted a culture of unregulated weaponry, and condones and even calls for violence to protect its stash…. When so many leaders in the other party haven’t awakened to how to deal with fanatics and still think one can reason with them…. When so much is under threat – LGBTQ marriage and other LGBTQ rights, voting rights, civil rights protections, the public schools, science that doesn’t support their political interests, universities, libraries, and the liva...

Just the time some of us were appreciating the progress being made in our culture’s definition of masculinity and its use of slurs against LGBTQ people to enforce a manhood toxicity, we’re confronted with evidence that any of that progress hasn’t reached as many as we’d hoped. Two of many examples caught the attention of the media this past month. The first was the use of the tired old slurs and gender expectations by Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden. Though Gruden resigned on October 11th because his emails showed bigotry against women and people of color as well as his anti-LGBTQ attitudes, his slurs appear to represent an ongoing larger and lingering cultural problem that’s been pointed out again and again . Many of those emails, covering a seven-year period, were sent to Bruce Allen, the Washington Redskins’ then-president, who was fired in December 2019. Jemele Hill, a contributing writer for The Atlantic after investigating, responded:   "The question we should be a...

In LGBTQ History Month, it’s worth recognizing how difficult it is not to read modern prejudices or hopes back into the lives of famous characters. Before the nineteenth-century category of sexual orientation labelled “homosexuality” was invented there wasn’t a way to categorize those we’d today expect were, or we’d consider, lesbian, gay, transgender, or queer. The creation and subsequent demonization of modern categories of sexual orientation and gender identity that aren’t straight enough by today’s definitions has raised complaints about what has been ignored about LGBTQ people in history.  But it’s also invoked negative responses to the reexamining of historical documents without modern homophobic reactions that expend a lot of effort trying to prove that those examples weren’t really lovers but “friends, brothers, sisters” who expressed their love more intimately than siblings and friends would in today’s apparently more homophobic cultures. LGBTQ History Month - interestingl...