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What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow

What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow published on 6 Comments on What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow
This is not a marriage. No matter what
it might look like. No siree-bob. If they have
kids, they will not be a family.  Nope.
This message brought to you by a lot of
organizations with the word “family”
in their names, so they know what
they’re talking about.

So far, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann are the two presidential candidates (wow; it’s still strange to say that) who have signed something called The Marriage Vow. What is this vow, you ask? Well, it’s a pledge conceived by a Christian organization called The Family Leader, based in Iowa and associated with Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Because by golly, you don’t care about families if you don’t have “Family” right there in your name.

And the word “family,” of course, means something very specific: a church and state-authorized union of two people who were born biologically male and female respectively, who were virgins until marriage and maintain a strict monogamous relationship, would never divorce unless perhaps one of them beat the other to a pulp, and whose sexual relations (which involve no consumption of pornography) have produced at least one child containing their shared genetic lineage. Or to use the Vow’s terms, “innocent fruit of their conjugal intimacy.”

Having clarified that, let’s get to the Vow itself. The purpose of this pledge is to outline a set of stances a presidential candidate will promise to support and uphold in defense of the Institution of Marriage, which is critical to maintaining that of Family (TM) outlined above.  If a candidate refuses to sign, then of course we need no more evidence whatsoever to conclude that he or she is anti-Marriage and anti-Family (TM) and therefore presumably in support of every brand of debauchery, perversity, and hedonism that you can imagine. He/she probably holds nightly screenings of Caligula for the neighborhood children during which they are encouraged to suck on vodka-flavored phallus-shaped lollipops. Or worse, he/she supports gay marriage. Which is not Marriage, regardless of what the government might say. Unless the government agrees with The Family Leader and passes a federal prohibition on gay marriage (support for which is included in the Vow) in which case the law is presumably binding and just.

So. Let’s fisk The Family Leader’s Marriage Vow for candidates, shall we?

Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow to do so through my:

  • Personal fidelity to my spouse
This goes to hypocrisy. It’s typical for conservatives to accuse everyone else of hypocrisy for not properly upset about the dalliances of people like John Edwards, Bill Clinton, or Anthony Weiner, but the reason why we aren’t is because those aren’t the politicians who were going on about the sanctity of marriage as an inviolate institution which no one deserves but people like them. That is, they’re not hypocrites. The number of Republicans, on the other hand, who have made precisely such speeches and advocated legislation in “protection” of this institution?  Caught red-handed all of the time. So often it has become a joke– identify the ones speaking most loudly about the sanctity of marriage, and they will be the next one caught cheating. Sexting, hiking the Appalachian Trail, affecting a wide stance in an airport restroom….I can understand why advocates of The Marriage Vow would want to ensure that such embarrassments are not recruited to their cause. I am also skeptical that they can attract anyone else.  
  • Respect for the marital bonds of others
…unless they’re gay, or their marriage is otherwise not officially condoned as supportive of Family (TM).
  • Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices
This one struck me as out of place, considering that the Constitution says exactly nothing about marriage. Then I read the footnote to this provision: 

It is no secret that a handful of state and federal judges, some of whom have personally rejected heterosexuality and faithful monogamy, have also abandoned bona fide
constitutional interpretation in accord with the discernible intent of the framers.  In November, 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected three such justices from the
state Supreme Court in retention elections.  Yet, certain federal jurists with lifetime appointments stand poised, even now, to “discover” a right of so-called same-sex
marriage or polygamous marriage in the U.S. Constitution.      

Aha! Yes, that pesky 14th Amendment. The reasons for eliminating that bothersome guarantee of the equality of all American citizens to be protected at both state and federal levels just keep adding up, don’t they?  After all, it has been used as justification for ending segregation and legalizing miscegenation. First the blacks got to marry whites, and now the gays are getting to marry each other. Clearly this amendment must be eliminated. In order to protect the Constitution from those who would change it, we must…change it first, before they can get to it.

  • Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage– faithful monogamy between one man and one woman– through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Or, conservatives from 1967 would like to note, mixed-race.  
The definition of the Institution of Marriage used here strikes me as odd….it uses a non-legal concept of marriage (faithful monogamy not being a requirement) to enforce a legal prohibition.  If the authors of the Vow want non-monogamy to be outlawed, they’ve chosen a very roundabout way of expressing that. As it is, the mention of monogamy here is superfluous at best. Certainly it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that they would like to lock up adulterers, but perhaps refrained from including that because it would be impossible to find anyone willing to sign off on it.  After all, it’s one thing to pledge to be true to your spouse– it’s quite another to agree to your own arrest and prosecution if you fail.  
Also, including both polygamy and polyandry is redundant, polygamy being the word for multiple spouses in general and polyandry for multiple husbands specific. Bigamy is okay to include as to my knowledge it refers to duplicitously marrying multiple spouses. But that goes to the issue of consent, and people making this argument generally don’t seem to factor in consent at all.  That’s how they can compare gay marriage not just to polygamy but also pedophilia and bestiality, as signatory Rick Santorum has done.  
  • Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy. 
The footnote to this rather startling claim cites Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions From the Social Sciences, a 2005 report from the Institute for American Values. As its sole evidence. This report is also entirely about comparing the welfare of children raised by two parents as opposed to a single parent, rather than those raised by married straight parents as opposed to married gay parents. An omission about as subtle as a freight train.
  • Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Well, I suppose making it harder for people to get divorced certainly supports the goal of marriage as an end unto itself. In the same way that opposing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who are in great pain supports the goal of preserving life as an end unto itself.  
  • Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Of course. Even rabid states’ rights advocate Ron Paul (whom The Family Leader supports) has abandoned that position to advocate for a federal ban on same-sex marriage. I am not a states’ rights supporter myself and in fact consider the notion to be abhorrent, but it’s particularly sad to see a libertarian abandoning principles in favor of personal prejudice. When your entire claim to legitimacy is based on the fact that you stick to your principles come hell or high water, and can at least be consistent if nothing else, and then you take a stance like this, well…you’re no longer even a stopped clock, are you?
  • Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Yes, yes….and a big banner across the White House that reads “Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve,” and a formal repudiation of rainbows, triangles, and the color pink to be included in the presidential oath of office, and the establishment of internment camps for anyone found to be in possession of a Barbara Streisand album, and a national ban on mullets for women. We get it already.

  • Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy– our next generation of American children– from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion, and other types of coercion or stolen innocence. 

The mind boggles on how a provision such as the above could be enforced. I wonder if The Family Leader even know(s)? The footnote to this plank doesn’t specify– it just contains a very thorough and detailed rejection of abortion and infanticide. Okay, so the latter is already illegal and we’ll outlaw the former. Then what? Human trafficking is already illegal. Slavery, sexual or otherwise, also illegal. Prostitution is illegal. How do you ban pornography and “seduction into promiscuity”? At least, without turning into Saudi Arabia?  
And what counts as “stealing innocence”?  Can I bring charges against George Lucas for bringing the first three chapters of Star Wars into the world?  How about the creation of Garfield, the movie?
  •  Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
But not, presumably, when such acts are committed by our guys.
  • Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
…such as laws banning abortion, pornography, adultery, prostitution, and gay marriage. All of which Sharia Islam also forbids, does it not? What a coincidence.
  • Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security. 
Clearly the most controversial and divisive plank by far. With their record on emphasizing the importance of raising children properly and healthily, Democrats would never sign off on something like this.
  • Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA’s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Smaller government = happier families. Umm, okay? I suppose that means happier advocates for smaller government, and therefore they will be kinder to their spouses and children, and so….wait a minute; this argument could work for committing to anything at all that will make anyone with a family happy!  By that rationale all presidential candidates should commit to legalizing marijuana, because Willie Nelson has seven kids who could sure use some bonding time with Dad. Get on it!
  • Fierce defense of the First Amendment’s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.

Great! Fantastic. I’m glad to hear that The Family Leader and all signatories of The Marriage Vow are fully behind protecting freedom of of expression for everyone who agrees with them on everything. Now let’s hear how they feel about those who don’t.

“All great leaps forward in liberty and equality”

“All great leaps forward in liberty and equality” published on No Comments on “All great leaps forward in liberty and equality”

Ed Brayton has a very moving (to me) post today about the progressive acceptance of equality in the face of absolutist proclamations that the faith of the majority rejects it. Using an argument from Southern Baptist Al Mohler which appeals entirely to tradition and biblical exegesis as an example, he notes that advancements in equality for virtually every minority have been faced by the objection that a person who takes his/her Christian faith seriously could never accept this “moral inversion” in which what was formerly considered sinful is now acceptable, and those who object considered the immoral ones:

The same thing always happens when society struggles to leave behind a traditional prejudice and embrace equality instead. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, slavery went from being a God-ordained institution that had existed from the earliest human civilizations with little to no doubt about its moral standing to being viewed as perhaps the single most inhumane thing one can do to another person, the greatest immorality of all. In a remarkably short period of time in this country, miscegenation went from being viewed as a great moral evil — preached as such by the very same Southern Baptist church that now stands against same-sex marriage — that society had outlawed for centuries, to being declared a protected right by a unanimous Supreme Court. And guess what? The same exact arguments were used against that ruling as are used against same-sex marriage today. The constitution itself is a perfect example of this dynamic in many ways. Prior to the constitution the norm was for all governments to be built upon a religious foundation. All written charters or constitutions prior to that time were expressed as covenants with God, complete with punishments for blasphemy and heresy. All of the colonies with the exception of Rhode Island had official churches prior to the constitution and forbid and punished even the preaching of other Christian denominations. In Massachusetts, one could be arrested, banished and even put to death (and many were) for preaching the Baptist or Catholic brand of Christianity, much less preaching Judaism, Islam or — God forbid — atheism. In Virginia, Anglicanism was the official religion and Baptists were thrown in jail. And nearly all of them had religious tests for office, requirements that one be of the right brand of religion in order to hold public office. The constitution rejected all of those things. It guaranteed freedom of religion and outlawed religious tests for office. Instead of a covenant with God, it forbid all such establishments of religion. It guaranteed freedom of speech, including the right to blaspheme and preach what others might consider heresy. and in a remarkably short period of time, everything changed. One by one the states did away with their religious establishments and adopted new constitutions without religious tests and protected free speech. This is the way it is with all great leaps forward in liberty and equality, what was previously seen as terribly immoral was legalized and legitimized — leaving conservatives making the same old arguments from tradition that Mohler is making now.

Links!

Links! published on No Comments on Links!
  • Pat Robertson declares that just as every other country to accept homosexuality and gay marriage has failed, so shall the U.S. One wonders exactly how Robertson defines failure, given that Denmark legalized civil unions in 1985 and many other countries have embraced gays as equal to a similar or greater extent since. They seem to be doing all right…
  • Rich Swier of Tea Party Nation declares that anti-gay bullying is simply peer pressure of the helpful variety also used to discourage immoral behavior such as drug abuse. Because all of us look back with fond memories on those helpful schoolyard bullies who guided kids away from developing addictive habits via tough love. Or as Ed Brayton put it more succinctly, “What an asshole.”
  • 51 floats had their tires slashed before Chicago Pride Parade on Sunday. Almost all, however, were repaired in time and made it into the parade anyway. So sorry, vandals…the show must go on.
  • Thoughtful piece from Brian Palmer at Slate asking why, in light of the recent Supreme Court ruling that laws banning the sale of violent video games to children are unconstitutional, we are so much more willing to expose children to images of violence than sex.
  • Elizabeth Weingarten, also at Slates, is cautiously optimistic about the fact that heroine Merida of Pixar’s upcoming Film Brave has curly hair, but notes that generally curly-haired women in films tend to be of the nerdy variety who (if they are major players) inevitably seem to get some makeover that involves a serious encounter with a flat iron by the end of the film. I hadn’t considered this as I was too busy being over the moon about how well Pixar had rendered said curly hair. But she has a point– let the curly girls stay curly. Some of us actually (gasp) prefer it that way!
  • PZ Myers is less than impressed with a recent Salon article touting health benefits as offering legitimacy to male circumcision.  Have to say, so am I. This is a practice that is on its way out in the United States, so that eventually hopefully even the “But he will wonder why he doesn’t look like his dad!” argument will die a natural death due to public bafflement and derison.
  • All Star Trek series are apparently going to be streaming on Netflix starting in July. Wow….I might have to work through the entirety of TNG, just because.  

Favorite reactions to New York legalizing gay marriage

Favorite reactions to New York legalizing gay marriage published on 1 Comment on Favorite reactions to New York legalizing gay marriage

From Radley Balko: “New York legalizes gay marriage. In protest, Newt Gingrich promptly divorces his third wife.”

From Popehat: “I felt a great disturbance in the derp, as if millions of derpers suddenly wharrgarbled at once in rage and were suddenly less relevant.”
“Enjoying quiet evening with amazing wife. Annoyed at suggestion that NY vote could somehow weaken or diminish my marriage.”

From Dave Holmes: “As we celebrate tonight, let’s spare a warm thought for our opponents, who lost absolutely nothing.”

From David Burge: “I think NY’s married gay couples should be able to carry handguns legally.”

Rich Juzviak of FourFour tweeted at one point “I CANNOT WAIT TO GET MARRIED TO MY TWO CATS!!!!!!!!!” which apparently earned him the ire of a lot of people on Twitter. A little later he said “Ugh, people are just outrageously humorless. That is sad. NOW IS THE TIME TO BE HAPPY AND STUPID. We’ve earned it.”

I agree. You see, the common joke is that if we allow gay marriage people are going to want to marry their pets, and Rich is gay, and a comedy/pop culture writer, and…..oh, hell. People who are offended by that sort of thing probably shouldn’t be following him anyway.

George Takei: “Same-sex marriage was passed in NY by a Republican-controlled Senate. Equality has no party, freedom no partisans. #GayRightsAreHumanRights”

Congratulations to you, New York. The cause of equality was just advanced in a big way, of more significance to more people than can be properly reckoned right now.

Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal

Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal published on 6 Comments on Being rude to the police: dumb, not criminal

…and it is only dumb because it will be treated, often successfully, as criminal. But not this time:

Man who gave trooper the finger has charge dropped
A harassment charge has been dropped in the case of a 35-year-old Colorado man who faced prosecution for displaying his middle finger to a Colorado State Patrol trooper. The State Patrol said in a statement late Friday that it asked that the case be dropped. The American Civil Liberties Union had argued that while the gesture may be have been rude, it amounted to protected free speech. According to the ACLU, Shane Boor was driving to work in April when he saw a trooper pull over a car. As Boor passed by, he extended his middle finger in the trooper’s direction. Boor was later stopped and received a criminal summons ordering him to appear in court to answer a criminal charge of harassment, which carries a possible six-month jail term.

Ed Brayton notes:

We’ve got a whole lot of police officers in this country who truly believe that they cannot be questioned or criticized the way any other citizen can, that their tender feelings being hurt allows them to harass and arrest people who have broken no law. If you dare to question them, they’ll arrest you for “disorderly conduct,” that famous catch-all crime that really means “annoying a police officer.”
If you flip off another person, you can’t be arrested for it. Yet this officer actually believed that flipping him off was an arrestable offense. We need some serious retraining for police officers in this country. And we need to start penalizing those who overstep their legal authority in a big way.

Let’s unpack…

Is flipping off a police officer rude? Yes, because flipping people off is a deliberately rude act.
Is being rude always bad? I don’t think so.
Was it wrong to be rude to a police officer in this instance? Probably, because a person doesn’t deserve contempt simply for being a cop.
Was it dumb? Probably, if you think it’s dumb to endanger yourself.
But, should such an act be considered endangering oneself? Not in a better world.
Is this a better world? Sadly, no.

Was flipping off the cop an act of civil disobedience? Maybe; there’s no way to tell from the article. But if that is why Boor did so, then my hat’s off to him. To my rather odd civil liberties-loving mind, the idea of one person being rude to a cop because he hates cops is repellant. But the idea of everybody doing so, to make a point, is awesome. Forget Everybody Draw Muhammad Day; let’s have Everybody Flip Off a Cop Day.

Police are, or are supposed to be, public servants.  It does not amount to advocating hatred or denigration of them to say that expressing contempt for them is no worse (and no better) than doing so for anyone else. Certainly not to say that the idea of someone being arrested for it, let alone imprisoned, is absolutely insane.  Yet it is also insane how many officers do not appear to realize that “contempt of cop” is not a crime.  And, most disturbing of all, how many people don’t realize it.

Dumb, not criminal. Thanks again, ACLU.

I love this. Muchly.

I love this. Muchly. published on 1 Comment on I love this. Muchly.

“It would be nice if we remembered that torture is immoral.”

“It would be nice if we remembered that torture is immoral.” published on 3 Comments on “It would be nice if we remembered that torture is immoral.”

That was a quote from a comment about one man’s experience of solitary confinement in prison. I would say it sums it up for me, but it has become all too clear to me that there are many people who are not able to remember it. They never knew it to begin with. The man in question is Thomas Silverstein, who has been in solitary for 28 years so far. He is serving life without parole for having killed two fellow inmates and a guard (he says in self defense) after having originally been imprisoned for armed robbery at 19. Here’s his description of what he has experienced since then:

The cell was so small that I could stand in one place and touch both walls simultaneously. The ceiling was so low that I could reach up and touch the hot light fixture.  My bed took up the length of the cell, and there was no other furniture at all…The walls were solid steel and painted all white.  I was permitted to wear underwear, but I was given no other clothing.  Shortly after I arrived, the prison staff began construction on the side pocket cell, adding more bars and other security measures to the cell while I was within it. In order not to be burned by sparks and embers while they welded more iron bars across the cell, I had to lie on my bed and cover myself with a sheet.  It is hard to describe the horror I experienced during this construction process. As they built new walls around me it felt like I was being buried alive. It was terrifying.  During my first year in the side pocket cell I was completely isolated from the outside world and had no way to occupy my time. I was not allowed to have any social visits, telephone privileges, or reading materials except a bible. I was not allowed to have a television, radio, or tape player. I could speak to no one and their was virtually nothing on which to focus my attention.  I was not only isolated, but also disoriented in the side pocket. This was exacerbated by the fact that I wasn’t allowed to have a wristwatch or clock. In addition, the bright, artificial lights remained on in the cell constantly, increasing my disorientation and making it difficult to sleep. Not only were they constantly illuminated, but those lights buzzed incessantly. The buzzing noise was maddening, as there often were no other sounds at all. This may sound like a small thing, but it was my entire world.  Due to the unchanging bright artificial lights and not having a wristwatch or clock, I couldn’t tell if it was day or night. Frequently, I would fall asleep and when I woke up I would not know if I had slept for five minutes or five hours, and would have no idea of what day or time of day it was.  I tried to measure the passing of days by counting food trays. Without being able to keep track of time, though, sometimes I thought the officers had left me and were never coming back. I thought they were gone for days, and I was going to starve. It’s likely they were only gone for a few hours, but I had no way to know.  I was so disoriented in Atlanta that I felt like I was in an episode of the twilight zone. I now know that I was housed there for about four years, but I would have believed it was a decade if that is what I was told. It seemed eternal and endless and immeasurable…  There was no air conditioning or heating in the side pocket cells. During the summer, the heat was unbearable. I would pour water on the ground and lay naked on the floor in an attempt to cool myself…  The only time I was let out of my cell was for outdoor recreation. I was allowed one hour a week of outdoor recreation. I could not see any other inmates or any of the surrounding landscape during outdoor recreation. There was no exercise equipment and nothing to do… My vision deteriorated in the side pocket, I think due to the constant bright lights, or possibly also because of other aspects of this harsh environment. Everything began to appear blurry and I became sensitive to light, which burned my eyes and gave me headaches.  Nearly all of the time, the officers refused to speak to me. Despite this, I heard people who I believed to be officers whispering into my vents, telling me they hated me and calling me names. To this day, I am not sure if the officers were doing this to me, or if I was starting to lose it and these were hallucinations.  In the side pocket cell, I lost some ability to distinguished what was real. I dreamt I was in prison. When I woke up, I was not sure which was reality and which was a dream.

By any sane reckoning, this man has been tortured. For years. There is no reason that solitary confinement has to be like this. And yet, I’ve seen multiple people already both in the comments on the article and on Dispatches saying that there is nothing wrong with this, that he deserves it…to say nothing of the people who are actually responsible for Silverstein’s treatment.

I’ve written before about how I don’t think anyone deserves life in prison, full stop. That means of course I don’t think that anyone deserves to be confined like this. But that’s really beside the point, because it shouldn’t be about what he deserves– it should be about how we as a society are entitled to treat him. We are entitled to imprison violent criminals to keep them from being violent again, to isolate them if necessary for the safety of others. We are not entitled to determine how to make life as much like hell as possible and then inflict that on them for the rest of their lives. We are not entitled to deliberately and methodically drive them insane. If those statements are controversial, if they make me sound like a “bleeding heart,” something is horribly, horribly wrong. Well, obviously something already is horribly wrong, and it’s government-sanctioned.

What this man did to get into prison in the first place, and what he did to stay there, are likewise irrelevant. If it is not acceptable to torture a terrorist for information, it is not acceptable to torture a criminal for satisfaction. What is on the line is not his ability to be civil, to refrain from barbarism, but ours.

Un-toasted terrorist

Un-toasted terrorist published on 1 Comment on Un-toasted terrorist

Hemant Mehta looks at the revenge party after Osama bin Laden’s killing in which t-shirts, political cartoons, and newspapers exult and proclaim that bin Laden is burning in Hell, which a CNN poll says a majority of Americans actually believe, and says simply:

Osama bin Laden is not in hell. Because hell doesn’t exist. Damn, it feels good to get that off my chest. 

 Heh.

And if it did exist, by the way, I would not wish him there.

“Why I can’t celebrate”

“Why I can’t celebrate” published on 3 Comments on “Why I can’t celebrate”

Valarie Kaur, a third generation Sikh American film maker, writes about why she isn’t celebrating Osama bin Laden’s death:

The last time a sudden burst of nationalism rallied us against America’s turbaned and bearded enemy, an epidemic of hate crimes swept the country.  In the yearlong aftermath of 9/11, the FBI reported a 1700 percent increase in anti-Muslim violence. At least 19 people were killed in hate murders. In the last decade, we have seen resurgences of hate violence whenever anti-Muslim rhetoric reaches a fever pitch, as it has since the firestorm around the so-called “Ground Zero Mosque” last election season confirmed to politicians that they can use anti-Muslim sentiment to win political points.  In the last few months alone, Congressman Peter King held controversial congressional hearings investigating “radicalization” in the Muslim community, Tea Party protesters yelled “Terrorist!” and “Remember 9/11″ at Muslim families at a fundraiser, legislators proposed a flurry of bills banning sharia in more than a dozen states, and Arizona tried to pass a bill that would remove names of victims killed in post-9/11 hate crimes from its 9/11 memorial. It was only a matter of time before we heard news of violence.  Just a few days before the congressional hearings, two turbaned Sikhs were gunned down in likely hate crimes in Elk Grove, CA.  Another was murdered in Las Vegas.  Today, the news of Osama bin Laden’s killing does not bring an end to the hate; it refuels it.  In a decade-long “war” against terror, each time our government decides that some people are so bad that they must be placed outside the reach of law, our national imagination shrinks.  Human beings, in their fullness and complexity, become one-dimensional enemies.  It’s hard to kill people; it’s easy to kill enemies.  Frightened by Islamic fanaticism, we turned Osama bin Laden from a frail sick human being into a mythic super-criminal who embodied pure evil. So, no wonder people are celebrating his destruction.  We would never celebrate the murder of a person.  But thousands are pouring into the streets to rejoice in the death of evil incarnate. And those who “look like” him — especially Sikh men and boys with turbans and beards who have endured a decade of “hey bin Laden!” on our city streets — are waiting and hoping that Americans might change how they see. Update: Breaking News –  5/2/11 at 1PM PST Fears confirmed.  A Portland mosque was vandalized just hours after President Obama announced that the U.S. had killed bin Laden.  The graffiti reads: OSAMA TODAY, ISLAM TOMORROW. 

bin angry– a rant

bin angry– a rant published on 3 Comments on bin angry– a rant

If there’s something that could inspire me to the kind of nationalistic joy that prompts a person to dance in the street waving a flag and chanting “USA! USA!,” I don’t know what it is. But Osama bin Laden’s death it isn’t.  As eloquent as Obama’s address last night was, the phrase “justice has been done” and the ensuing interviews by news anchors with the friends and family of people who died on 9/11 turned my stomach. It’s as though they were being asked to give official approval to everything the U.S. has done in the name of the “war on terror” since that day, now that finally the attack’s ringleader has been located and summarily blown up. Osama bin Laden has become a caricature of ultimate evil– now that he is dead, the ends justify the means and we can celebrate. Justice has, after all, been done.

Aside from the generally repellent idea of dancing in the street because a man– any man– was found and killed, there remain all of the concerns that Radley Balko outlines in a post this morning grimly titled “He won.” America has not become better toward its own citizens or the citizens of the world post 9/11. We have sacrificed liberty for security in spectacular and unnecessary ways. We have displayed the full colors of our fear and willingness to clamp down on the freedom of expression and religion when prompted with an outside threat. In seeking revenge for the deaths of almost 3,000 Americans we have offered up the lives of almost 6,000 soldiers and $1 trillion dollars in order to occupy two countries which did not threaten us, not to mention who knows how many lives of the residents of those countries. None of these revelations about America’s character gets to be wiped from the slate now that bin Laden has been located living in a mansion in Pakistan, shot in the eye and buried at sea somewhere. Congratulations to the soldiers who accomplished it, and it’s good that it happened– though it would have been better to take him alive, so that he could have received a trial and been held accountable for the full extent of his actions. Being handed the kind of death that so many better human beings from so many countries have unjustly received (and which I might guess some currently languishing in Guantanamo would prefer to receive) seems like rather a cop-out. Though I suppose it’s fitting considering that like most residents of Guantanamo, he didn’t get to face his accuser and be confronted with the evidence against him.

So I propose this: let’s be glad bin Laden is dead, but not pretend that his death satisfies some kind of karmic debt to 9/11 survivors. That presumes that bin Laden bears the full responsibility for the deaths of their loved ones and that the suffering they have been experienced can only be assuaged by his own death. It portrays them as simple revenge-seekers. And let’s also not pretend that all or even most of what America has done in response to 9/11 has been about locating the guilty parties and punishing them. New justifications have been invented and accepted until the War on Terror became an everlasting battle between Oceania, Eastasia and Eurasia, with everyone’s freedoms scattered by the wayside. You can’t treat bin Laden as an essential kingpin, an Arabic Wicked Witch of the West, and then turn around and say “Killing him was great, but nothing will change.”

Bring the troops home– all of them. Restrict any intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq to humanitarian efforts to repair all of the damage caused.  Make it possible for people to migrate to (heck, even visit) the country without being suspected of being 9/11 terrorists Part 2. Own up to the fact that the U.S. government has approved torture and extradition, and hold responsible parties responsible. Acknowledge for each Guantanamo prisoner the right of habeas corpus, or send them home. And stop using the “we’re at war” excuse to daily invent new ways to deprive American citizens of their dignity and privacy. Make America into the place our popular imagination still celebrates without irony, a land of the free and home of the brave. Do this, and then maybe you’ll catch me waving a flag. I don’t currently own one, but am pretty sure there’s plenty of time to head to the shop.