Fairness - The Commentary

When those rich, white males turned the Declaration of Independence’s “All men are created equal” into the original U.S. Constitution, they took “men” quite literally. Their constitution made landed, white men equal. They denied the vote to everyone else. “Taxation without representation” ended – for them. Freedom in its fullest form was limited to them. When we immortalize these founding fathers, let’s be realistic: they didn’t include most of us in the American dream. It took “radical” and “disruptive” people who were willing to give blood, sweat, and tears to change that constitutional discrimination so that freedom would be something legal regardless of gender, race, skin color, or sexual orientation. We white males, even if we’re gay, might hate to admit that we’ve had historical privileges others haven’t. Change to all this came about often because women, often those who today would identify as lesbians, forced that change upon us against the odds. There were courageous, subversi...

By now everyone should know that June is going to be celebrated as LGBTQ+ “Pride Month.” That’s well-established in cultures across the globe whether anyone else likes it or not. Anti-LGBTQ forces use the public celebration to their advantage - to raise more money in their fear-based fight to roll back equal rights and to turn public ire against almost anyone who doesn’t feel ashamed about LGBTQ people. Their gripe often comes down to the fact that if LGBTQ people have to be around they just can’t stand that those LGBTQ people look and act proud . A self-identified straight guy who’s proud of the fact that his whole career is one where he kicks footballs around for money and notoriety recently told a captive conservative Roman Catholic commencement audience about his kind of Catholic “pride” in contrast. He righteously boasted that his is: "not the deadly sin sort of pride that has an entire month dedicated to it, but true God-centered pride." Such well-worn claims are foist...

Every generation that has ever existed on the planet, it appears, has complained about its younger generations . In the 4 th century B.C.E., to cite one example, Aristotle wrote: “[Young people] are high-minded because they have not yet been humbled by life, nor have they experienced the force of circumstances.…They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.” Psychologists have studied the why behind it. And at the heart of the phenomenon, they seem to agree , is flawed memory of what younger generations were like in the past, especially one’s own. As poet Adrienne Rich, put it: “Nostalgia is only amnesia turned around.” This creates divisive and unhelpful generational feuds. So, as one writer confidently predicts : “Today’s ‘OK boomer’ Gen Z will complain about the youth one day.” “It’s safe to assume this is an immortal aspect of human society: Young people always exist, and older people will always complain about them. Young people, in turn, always say, ‘Ugh, o...

Have you ever thought about the fact that “religious” people all over the world – I mean everyday people, not elite thinkers or those who use religion to push their career and political agendas – care about the same things when they practice their religions? I’ve been observing that in my formal studies and teaching as a historian of religion for over fifty years. The religious thinkers, philosophers, theologians, and organizational leaders can give us all the great theories, scriptural quotations, logical cosmologies, and great doctrines all they want. And when these experts talk about various religions, that’s usually what they tell us theirs is. Likewise when people refer to other religions they like to speak in terms of those doctrines when the majority of the people who visit their shrines, temples, mosques, and churches couldn’t care less. How many people think that Zen (Ch’an) temples are places where all that contemplative Zen philosophy we read about in books is being taught a...

How many of those supporting LGBTQ people thought that achieving marriage equality back in 2015 was the end of the struggle for equality? Not Michelangelo Signorile in his wisely skeptical warning It’s Not Over , written in that same year. He warned us that a resulting “victory blindness” seduces us into thinking that LGBTQ people have made it, pulling advocates back from what is merely another step while the enemies of equality were obviously continuing to plan to chip away at rights the way they slowly chipped away at Roe v. Wade . State by state, local election by local election, a backlash of forces of inequality slowly and with a long-term strategy worked to return the US to a culture that kept them in privileged positions they feared they were losing. While others responded by concentrating on building huge national organizations to rub shoulders with those at the top of the federal government, these radically right-wing forces knew that the real work and funding needs were at gr...