the rix mix

How is it that Ronald Reagan became the Republican's Franklin Roosevelt. I'll concede Reagan his reputation as a speechifier & phrasemaker, & that the nation needed someone more cheery than Jimmy Carter. But Reagan the President wasn't nearly Reagan the Ideologist. Ronald Reagan enjoyed being President too much, & was too smart to push a far right conservative agenda the vast majority of Americans didn't want & hadn't elected him to do. He was elected to lift the spirit of post-Vietnam malaise, & this he did, & he did it mainly through speeches & launching a thousand ships that had nothing to do. I rather enjoyed seeing those old strategically useless battleships come out of mothballs: Reagan's Navy. No more Pearl Harbors for him. He took a wartime President's conviction that an "enemy" also has to be outspent into economic collapse: the Soviet Union had been tottering in that direction since the early Sixties. He funded oppressive right wing governments & insurgencies & conquered Grenada. He was FDR writ small.

 Uber-conservatives of course say Reagan is the Father of the Conservative Resurgence. To which I say yes, but what is that? The establishment of an invasive National Security State? Democrats were equally complicit in it. Selling the government to big corporations & banks? Yup, Democrats were in on that too. Rolling back abortion rights? Some real success there. But since Reagan the score is this: Republican Presidents: 12 years, both named Bush. Democratic Presidents: 16 years, one of them African-American, & if it hadn't been him she would have been a second Clinton. Opposition to marriage equality -  remember, this has been a central issue for Repugs, their symbol of the Moral Collapse of Western Civilization - a Big Fail. The dominos fell against it for a few years, but they were patiently set up again & knocked in other direction.

Labels: sex with a Republican

Labels: art, culture, sex with a Republican, THE election

Barack Obama is no more our "first gay president" than Bill Clinton was our "first Black president." Obama is our first Black president. We've had a gay president, James Buchanan. The evidence is compelling in his personal behavior & his own words, & from what others in his own time wrote & observed. President Buchanan was known to be homosexual, although the word didn't  yet exist then (they had other terms like sexual inversion, perturbations).  Most American historians now accept this as fact. It's difficult to consider that America may have become more homo-bigoted in the 20th Century.

Mitt Romney, not Barack Obama, is strongly out-of-step with America.  True, most Americans still oppose equal marriage rights (by an ever-shrinking majority), but Americans know there isn't much the President can do to promote equal marriage rights. However,  a growing majority of Americans favor options like domestic partnerships & civil unions, including an increasing number of Republican insiders & operatives tired of writing off a large, affluent demographic over a losing cause. Mitt gains few votes by opposing all legal recognitions of  same sex domestic relationships. He does identify himself as someone drifting toward the edge of American mainstream culture. He has enough of a problem convincing Americans his rich kid, Mormon upbringing puts him in touch with the "average" American. Unlike George W. Bush, you can't even imagine having a beer with the guy.

President Obama in effect told us, "You knew I wasn't really opposed to equal marriage rights,  so let's stop the charade. Yeah, Biden pushed me to do it, but the why doesn't matter. It's all in the open now."

Labels: religion, sex with a Republican, THE election

Sen, John F. Kennedy's Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, 9/12/60, is required reading in both great American oratory & First Amendment writing.

I believe in an America that is officially neither Catholic, Protestant nor Jewish; where no public official either requests or accept instructions on public policy from the Pope, the National Council of Churches or any other ecclesiastical source; where no religious body seeks to impose its will directly or indirectly upon the general populace or the public acts of its officials, and where religious liberty is so indivisible that an act against one church is treated as an act against all.

What little I recall of the 1960 presidential election: First, grownups of my parents' generation were excited by it; a win by either Kennedy or Nixon would mark  a passing of the torch to a new generation. Second, there was already a general air  of sleaziness about the Kennedy men's personal lives, although adults didn't discuss the rumors in front of children. But it was there.  Third, there was an uneasiness among many protestants regarding Kennedy's Catholicism. It wasn't so pronounced  in my town; just something picked up from wisecracks of other protestant kids I figured they picked up from their parents.  My Republican dad, an ex-Catholic (raised strictly), so detested J.F.K. as a person & politician that I doubt religion even figured into it. He certainly  had no qualms voting for Catholic Republicans. But it surely meant more in the protestant South & Midwest farm states.

Kennedy's speech pretty much settled the matter of Roman Catholics in American public office.  In response to Kennedy's campaign,  the Vatican made an important change to its official view of church/state separation (from disapproval to alright for a Democracy; a key adjustment that eventually made it possible for the United States to open diplomatic relations in 1983, although Baptist  Harry Truman had wanted to do it in 1951).

We've since had a Roman Catholic candidate, John Kerry, & a Greek Orthodox Catholic candidate, Michael Dukakis, neither of whom lost due to their religions. Vice President Biden is Roman Catholic.  Six Supreme Court justices are Roman Catholic or were raised Catholic.

Rick Santorum, a Roman Catholic whose run for the presidential nomination as a candidate soliciting votes of conservative protestant Republicans seeking to erode church/state  separation was ironically made possible by John F. Kennedy, says this great speech made him want to "throw up."

Would Santorum take orders from the Pope?  His reaction makes me wonder about it. It's clear Santorum doesn't like secular laws contrary to Catholic doctrine.  Never mind required  health insurance coverage for  contraceptive methods.  What about the public availability of contraceptive devices & medications, including those Trojans on display in 7-Eleven? The Roman Catholic Church is against artificial insemination, also covered by many insurance plans. Marriage equality? Maybe Santorum wants to restore so-called "sodomy laws" that made heterosexual oral sex illegal.
***
Santorum backed away from the "throw up " statement but not from opinion attached to it.  He thinks there's some terrible threat to religious expression in America.  Has there ever been more religion in American political discourse? Have the  religious beliefs of presidents & presidential wannabes ever been more scrutinized & more important? What major religion in America is suffering more suppression than Islam? Every Muslim in America is still expected to apologize for 9/11 as a precondition to expressing a public opinion on anything else. "I'm sorry for the terrorist attacks, I condemn them, & would you please fill the pot hole in the street in front of my house?

Labels: blogging against theocracy, religion, sex with a Republican, THE election

everything else is a bonus."
 Herman Cain, book inscription to his alleged mistress

"I was so far ahead of the pack, the crowd had to run after me with torches to show me the finish line."
Herman Munster

Labels: culture, sex with a Republican, THE election

I don't get this.  For the past year, national polls measuring views on full marriage equality, when the choices are simply yes or no, come up about evenly divided. Northeast & West Coast are more in favor than South & Midwest.  But when there are three choices; full marriage equality, domestic partnerships / civil unions,  or no recognition,  around  a whopping 70% of Americans favor some kind of legal recognition for gay & lesbian couples. The hinge remains the word marriage.  In Michigan, the legislature is acting against the preferences of a large majority of its constituents.

 Michiganders & Americans support basic legal rights & protections for same sex couples. Approving a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man & a woman, as Michigan did,  doesn't change that. A lot of straight people, mainly over the age of 40,  have problems applying the word  marriage to same sex couples.  Michigan voted against gay marriage, not against civil unions, & if they were polled today  it's  what the polls would indicate.  Most Americans by large margin  want same sex couples recognized in some way  as legitimate households, if not as husband & husband or wife & wife.  True, Michigan has some very rural districts. In New Jersey, I doubt if  any Republican has been elected to the statehouse with a mandate to roll back Jersey's civil union laws (despite what a few of them may believe), as he or she did not win  election  based on that issue.  I suspect the same applies for most Republican legislators in Michigan.  A large majority of Jerseyans support our civil union  legislation, & there's been remarkably little complaint about it.  It went into effect, we accepted it.

If there's a problem in Michigan defining a domestic partnership, if the state civil service commission  has defined it in such a way that it  could result in an abuse of benefits by couples that are not really committed "partners," the state legislature should deal with that matter & tighten the eligibility requirements with some stronger contractual standards, not use it as an excuse for homo-bigotry.

Unless The United States morphs into a theocratic police state, always a possibility if we stay on the road we're traveling,  the next few generations of Americans  will be repealing all these anti-marriage equality laws & amendments, except  in Mississippi.

Labels: blogging against theocracy, religion, sex with a Republican

Labels: Cape May, jersey shore, postcard, sex with a Republican

was the Jersey State Senate vote against marriage equality. But I don't make too much of it. Public support for marriage equality hovers near 50% here . The most vocal spokespersons in the senate for & against were both Roman Catholic men, & the against guy is 75 years old. Our suburban Republican governor-elect is relieved he won't have to veto it; he was hired to do something about spending, taxes, & corruption & is disinclined so far to promote a right wing "social values" agenda. No politician of consequence attacks domestic partnerships. So the defeat is more a "not yet" than a "never."

Only the most naive of those opposing marriage equality in New Jersey can't see they're on the road to Appomattox. When I see a conservative Black Baptist pastor & a Hassid protesting together, I'm looking at both what's great about America & awful about religious patriarchy. I almost excuse them for the reason that they must protest. Almost, because marriage equality won't affect them any more than Will & Grace TV show reruns or the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade. No one will disturb their patriarchal order & insist that dancing Hassids include women in their celebrations or a Baptist preacher acknowledge that his Sunday School Director has lived for years with a "friend" of the same gender & they're not just sharing the rent. Although I feel for the closeted men & women in their communities whose only alternative to staying silent is being shunned & driven out into the wilderness. Being born into those communities is different than choosing a religious environment in order to hide from one's sexuality, like gay students at Liberty University.

Small comfort to same sex couples in Jersey who want to be married now, but if the courts don't help, a clear popular vote majority for marriage equality is just a few years away here in many other states. High school & college age youth aren't interested in the reasoning that can elect an openly lesbian mayor of Houston & yet deny her a legal status as someone's life partner, & then get hung up on the line between "domestic partnership" & "marriage." You want to legally call it marriage, fine with me. I'd prefer if government got out of the marriage business & everyone signed the same civil union contract. But that is not to be. It'll have to be marriage.

Labels: blogging against theocracy, love, New Jersey, New Jersey politics, religion, sex with a Republican

No couple I know (including my own parents) who were married in a religious ceremony & subsequently divorced, considered the "sanctity" of their marriage an inhibition to ending it. Ending a marriage is rarely simple or easy, but that doing so might be offensive to God doesn't much figure into the decision.

On the news, we all see the novelty weddings, people getting married on roller coasters, skydiving, in Vegas with an Elvis impersonator officiating, with participants dressed as Star War characters. This is sanctification? To those people it is.

The best marriages (& intimate long term relationships) I know are - in ways I cannot quite explain - profoundly spiritual. They're not all first marriages. One couple had cohabited for 15 years before legalizin' it. The spirituality in these unions grew over time from the inside out, through a life together lived day-to-day, it's not a quality anointed by a magical two become one rite.

At some point, a gradual, evolving process for me, I concluded I didn't care if gay couples had access to the rights of civil marriage or the word "marriage," if that's what they wanted, & state domestic partnership laws weren't sufficient. The problem is the civil alternative isn't even available at the national level as it is in Great Britain, which went to great effort in keeping the word "marriage" out of the laws. In America, resistance to gay couples having the legal rights & protections of heterosexuals goes beyond defending the definition of "marriage." It goes to prejudice. It isn't enough for an individual state to extend those rights. I thought it was irrational to guard a word, "marriage," without providing a full alternative in civil law, & that's probably what pushed me across the line into open support of gay marriage. If we want to hang on to a traditional definition of marriage "between one man & one woman" in a society that continually demonstrates contempt for the institution's traditional "sanctity," we have to offer a defensible alternative. America does not.

I've noticed cultural peculiarities I might find amusing if I didn't know what they meant. Young evangelical guys setting off my gaydar - which is not finely tuned - I'm generally incurious about a person's sexual orientation; these men, nearly all over-compensating spectator sports enthusiasts, use the word "gay" flippantly, & often, to signify inadequate maleness. It's a buddy insult. There's the black lesbians fleeing Newark via PATH train on Saturday evening, I've watched how they relax, smile, & become more unguarded as the train passes across the Meadowlands & the Newark skyline shrinks. What's with that city? I've thought.

I don't know if the Jersey marriage rights legislation will pass next week. Public support hovers around 50%; over the next few years it'll break in favor & stay there. The problem is that approval is weighted toward the younger demographic, & they're not reliable voters, so a referendum this year would likely lose, too. It won't lose three or four years from now. But it's good to put politicians on record. With her committee "no" vote, I think future aspirant for statewide office, State Senator Jen Beck blew her chance to become governor or U.S. senator when she grows up, that's how much the Jersey cultural & political landscape will change.

The legal protections & exemptions extended to clergy are unnecessary, but go ahead & add them. How can a Catholic priest be forced to officiate at a gay ceremony when he not only can decline any invite to participate in wedding ceremonies outside his own parish in any capacity, he can refuse to provide the marriage sacrament itself for any Catholic from his own parish he deems not in good standing?

Labels: culture, New Jersey politics, sex with a Republican

Facebook is popular. Yesterday I became friends with two people as unlike each other as one could imagine, & whose presence on Facebook was completely unexpected. They found me.

One is a leftist, pot smoking male poet & retired professor of classics & journalism. The other is a woman from Virginia, quite conservative in some of her views, not all. They've had very different lives.

The professor was a dear & loyal friend of my poetry mentor, & became his friend when the friendship required a good deal of patience & understanding. He is wise & trustworthy in the same matters of conscience that my mentor was, & wiser in some others.

The woman from Virginia has a poetic side expressed in her sense of humor & sensuality. She understands the beach in same way I do, not as a place to cook yourself. & she showed me Monticello as only someone who grew up with a view of it could know it.

I've been a comfortable guest in the homes of both, for different reasons. If they ever met, I have no idea what they could say to each other. Do they represent the breadth of my experience or just expose the banality of my beliefs - that I can overlook too much or blur important distinctions? I have beliefs & opinions, but I don't think I need to have them about everything. What if a woman doesn't bring up politics on the beach or during pillow talk?

Facebook is not an information stream for me, although it's there & tempting. I look in two or three times each week, clear the accumulated invitations to join this group or take that quiz, see what my friends have been doing for the previous few hours, upload an amusing Jersey postcard, & logout. Just waving hello.

Labels: culture, sex with a Republican

Obama press conference video clip: ".....police acted stupidly...."

Wolf Blitzer: Turning now to our panel of experts, coincidentally together at our affiliate studio on Martha's Vineyard, let me throw this question out to all of you: Does the President's strong remark on the Skip Gates controversy indicate his willingness to accommodate further compromise on health reform?

Expert One: Absolutely, Wolf. Because the American people are not stupid no matter what the President says about us, & we're simply not going to accept a reduction in the quality of health care to the level of a village in Ghana, like the one in Kenya where Obama was born, by the way.

Expert Two: Let's stay on topic. Why is that when an African-American commits an alleged crime, the police respond immediately, but when I complain about a barking dog owned by my white neighbor, the police don't do anything about it? I thought we were in a post-racial era. I'm sick of hacks like Sotomayor waltzing into Princeton because privileged black men like Professor Gates receive MacArthur grants, which unfairly entitles them to break into their own homes & steal their own televisions.

James Carville: That's putting the cart before the horse at the end of the day. You expect these setbacks when you're framing the brand. But if the Republicans just want to say "no" like this good old boy does when my wife offers me a can of the swill they pass off as Dr. Pepper nowadays, they're in for big shock when the American people elect two black presidents in 2012, both of them progressive Democrats like Bill Clinton.

Expert One: Have you ever been to Cambridge, Jimmy?

Carville: Little town in Iowa....

Wolf: Have to cut you off now, thank you panel, & say hello to Skip Gates for me, I see him behind you waiting for the barista. Up next a special Situation Room report spotlighting a man named Jackson from Jackson, Mississippi & how his life has changed since the tragic passing of the King of Pop.

Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, sex with a Republican

"Ring me up before that guy comes back with a gun," I said to the cashier after he'd grabbed a length of 2 x 1 board behind the counter & chased some man out of Family Dollar. I have no idea what the man did, hadn't even noticed him, but suddenly him & cashier were yelling at each other. He had work boots draped over his shoulder. Must have been previous bad blood.

Cool jazz audience at Railroad Plaza. The flautist was excellent. I wasn't in the mood for the music. Between the trains & the expanse of hot stone, not a very pleasant location to hear it.

Amazing, the first evening this summer I've wanted to turn on the a/c, & it isn't in the window yet, & I'm not putting it in tonight. By now we've usually had a few or more than a few scorchers in Jersey. It's just mildly uncomfortable, probably feel fine by bedtime.

I've had sex with a Republican. Have you?

Labels: Elizabeth NJ, sex with a Republican