I was reared in North Alabama and Metropolitan Atlanta in the waning years of the Civil Rights movement. I was ten and living in Atlanta when Martin Luther King was shot, an event which probably galvanized my feelings on human rights. We had just moved from Alabama the year before and I was attending a school district that had desegregated they year we were to leave. I'll never forget the cruelty I saw from adults toward the black students who entered my school in 1967. I've rarely felt as helpless since then but it was a feeling I have never forgotten. What I am left with is this idea: it is conservatives who have resisted the extension of rights in the United States. I believe the current crop of conservatives are the new and improved model of the same power that exercized the cruelty I witnessed in Madison, Alabama, in 1967. It was no wonder that by 1972 I was a teenager for George McGovern in 1972. I've considered myself an unashamed liberal ever since. I can't say that I'm exactly an activist, but I volunteer my services to organizations I support. In the past I have served on the boards of the Georgia chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union and the Georgia chapter of the National Abortion Rights Action League. Presently I serve on the board of two HIV/AIDS organizations in Eastern Iowa: the Iowa Community AIDS Partnership (ICAP) and the Iowa Center for AIDS Research and Education (ICARE).
9/11, Iraq, and the Bush Administration
When the towers of the World Trade Centers were struck on September 11, 2001, the first thing that came to my mind was sympathy for the innocent victims of the tragedy. Almost immediately thereafter, thoughts of how the Bush Administration would exploit 9/11 for political gain and to further their stilted world view came to my mind. Sorry, sue me. I'm a cynical person by nature (Lily Tomlin: "No matter how cynical you become, it's impossible to keep up."). I was hoping that I was setting my sights too low, but so far this Administration has pretty much met and exceeded my darkest expectations. The United States under George W. Bush has squandered most of the goodwill the world had toward our country and has made successful attempts to strangle civil liberties using our time of "war" as an excuse. This was a president when offered the opportunity to give the speech of his life suggested that we "go shopping." I believe that the war in Iraq is based on lies and that given a range of acceptable realistic reasons that Saddam Hussein should be toppled, the Bush Administration chose the ones that just happened not to be true. Iraq posed no threat to America's security or safety. Now that the United States is faced with the responsibility of rebuilding Iraq I find it tragically comic that the administration will support public infrastructure programs there that it would oppose domestically. Schools in Iowa that have leaking roofs will go unrepaired so we can pay British textbook publishers to to reprint Iraqi textbooks without Saddam's picture.
Attorney General John Ashcroft was embarassed to give press briefings in front of the statue known as "Minnie Lou" (behind) and ordered her to be covered by 'tasteful' curtains. Raise your arms if you're sure?
Most Americans actually believe that Iraq had something to do with the attack on the World Trade Center and I think this is an attitude that the Bush Administration has carefully orchestrated to justify an agenda it had before 9/11 (check out the website of the Project for the New American Century for some scary stuff). Domestically, the Administration was more than prepared to act to strangle civil liberties, having John Ashcroft, someone that I think of as an enemy of what makes me proud to be an American, as Attorney General.
After George W. Bush was, um, shall we say appointed to the presidency, the Onion ran this article. I couldn't have said it nearly so well. I'm supporting Howard Dean for President, but I'd be happy to have any electable democrat win in 2004 (I could even halfway stomach Joe Lieberman).
Abortion
"Legal but rare," was the Bill Clinton line on abortion and I couldn't agree more only I think that the word "legal" here is more important that "rare." I don't really believe the labels "pro-life" and "pro-choice" could be more inaccurate to describe the two sides of this issue--this is the sort of double-speak we learned during the Reagan administration (remember Peacekeeper Missiles?). People who describe themselves as "pro-life" seem to only care much about the life of fetuses, and the term "pro-choice" implies that abortion is merely a choice--actually I think it's something that happens in the absence of choices. The pro-legal abortion side to which I subscribe does have a fear of facing the emotional ramifications of abortion and sometimes that makes us look callous.
Roe v. Wade is part of the natural progression of the expansion of individual rights beginning with Griswold v. Connecticut that helps further the interpretation of the Constitution to a right to privacy that has eventually resulted in the recent U.S. Supreme Court case striking down the sodomy laws in Texas, Lawrence v. Texas that overturned Bowers v. Hardwick (and actually admitted that decision was wrong). I simply think it's bad public policy to force a woman to bear a child she does not wish to carry. Of course I also tend to believe that the opposing side only really believes a fetus is a human being until it is born since as breathing, outside the womb children the programs to feed, clothe, and educate children seem to be anathema to the American Right. Naomi Wolf's article, "Our Bodies, Our Souls," pretty neatly sums up my position on the subject--you can read that here. President Bush has paid mere lip service to the anti-abortion side of the debate--he knows there is not majority support for making abortion illegal even within his own party. In a cynical attempt to keep Christian conservatives in the GOP happy, Bush has made chosen symbolic opposition such as the so-called "partial-birth" abortion ban and cuts to family planning agencies that promote abortion in the two-thirds world (nothing that would seriously affect abortion domestically).
Down but not out?
Rumor has it that Roy Moore has plans for higher office. Even though he's been removed from the Alabama Supreme Court, there's no prohibition from running for re-election to his seat.
Church-State separation / Ten Commandments
I'm almost embarassed to say that one of the places I consider home is also the home state of Judge Roy Moore of Alabama. This man is not a conservative, he wants to put the government and his version of god in all of homes and lives. What he fails to realize is that most of the items in the Ten Commandments are not illegal and shouldn't be (although they may be unwise). One of the commandments covers something that our entire "new" economy is based on--coveting thy neighbor's ass! Read more analysis of this issue here in The Nation. You can also hear Judge Moore interviewed by Gail Harris on WBUR-Boston's program The Connection. Notice that in this so-called "liberal media" the respect with which Judge Moore is treated.
Gay Rights / Marriage
As my partner says (and I agree) I support this for anyone but ME. To former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr, who authored the Defense of Marriage Act, I'd like to ask, "which marriage would you like to defend? your first? your second? or your third?" But seriously, what I would like to see is the state to be out of the marriage business entirely. You want to get married? Find a church. You want a legal partnership with another person? I think the state should sanction that and I think the state should see those partnerships legal regardless of the gender mix of the party-of-the-first-part and the party-of-the-second-part.
Canada (the country to which I look toward for political hope on many fronts) has had formally recognized domestic partnership laws on the books for several years now. In 2003, Ontario and British Columbia changed their marriage laws to recognize same-sex marriage. The Canadian House of Commons is expected to take up and pass nationwide legislation in 2004 as the Canadian Supreme Court has handed down a ruling stating that if the House did not pass a law on same-sex marriage, the Court would overturn the marriage law.
As far as gay rights in general are concerned, I kind of liked having that special status as a gay man and I think that's eroding. Now the guys that plug cigarette lighters into dashboards of Impalas at the GM plant are just as likely to be gay as anyone else. It's good, mostly, but it's also a loss somehow. We're achieving normality. It's what we wanted, right? Yawn. I liked being a deviant--as long as I never felt perverse. Human Rights Campaign website.
Poster for the 2003 Campaign by Adbusters Magazine, a protest against consumerism and globalization.Globalization / World Trade
I am more and more convinced that the Iraqi war is being fought to open the Middle East to Western corporate interests. Who would like to take bets on the first WalMart Supercenter to open in Baghdad? I think of myself as an internationalist, but I'm also opposed to the 'race to the bottom' philosophy that short-sighted Western business interest espouse. The frenetic chase to find workers who are willing to work for slave or just above slave-wages is a net-sum zero game. I'm also concerned about the elimination of cultural and national diversity that the spread of oppressive Western culture inevitably brings. Listen to Naomi Klein speaking to a group at the University of Washington in Seattle on Globalization and its effects on Argentina and the possible upcoming effects on Iraq.
Socialized Medicine / Single Payer
This is a hugely complicated issue, and while I hope that someday a comprehensive health system will serve the United States, I just can't write about it. I'm not even sure I know where to begin to lay the blame but the website of Physicians for a National Health Program explains my side of this issue pretty clearly.
"War" on Drugs
This is just an unwinnable war and the war itself has worse consequences than drug trade or use itself. The Bureau of Justice Statistics claims that Drug offenses accounted for 23 percent of the charges against the almost 400,000 men and women being held in local jails during 1989--up from 9 percent in 1983. The Bureau also reported that the number of inmates in the nation's 3,312 local jails grew 77 percent from 1983 to 1989. More than 40 percent of that growth resulted from the increased number of persons held for or convicted of drug offenses.
If you're a participant in the burgeoning corrections industry this is good news. Statistics also indicate that more persons of color are incarcerated for drugs, as a percentage of individuals convicted than are whites. The drug war is clearly a good idea if you like the idea of putting black men in prison. Drug laws tend to prejudice the system in ways that make the punishment of offenses for the use of drugs commonly used in the black community more severe than for those drugs more commonly used by white. In other words, if you're arrested for use of cocaine, it had best not be 'crack' cocaine.
The drug war also has international implications. The United States has chosen to meddle in the governments of two-thirds world countries that are known as suppliers in the drug trade. How would we feel if, say, Columbia, chose to interfere in the internal affairs of Kentucky because it supplies the world with Bourbon and tobacco? Statistically, alcohol and tobacco cause more illness and death than use of illegal drugs. The drug war is insanity and it needs to stop. Go here for a comprehensive website called Drug War Distortions.
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