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Much religious celibacy stems from the same neurotic impulse that gives rise to eating disorders. The idea that one is purer for not having had sex belongs alongside the belief that one is purer for not eating, or for endlessly washing one’s hands. There are plenty of good reasons for remaining celibate, but purity is not one of them. It is possible to do much good for the world if one does not have a family to care for, but it is also possible to want to be alone with God because one is afraid to be intimate with human beings.

Religious celibacy is often the anorexia of the heart.

Hillary Clinton finally limped across the finish line officially supporting of gay marriage yesterday.  Now that the topic is polling well, candidates from both parties are finally willing to endorse full human rights for same sex couples.

Human Rights Campaign President Chad Griffin said Monday that it will be “very difficult for any ultimate nominee, Republican or Democrat, to be against marriage equality” in the 2016 election.

Like most Democrats Bill and Hillary Clinton supported gay rights privately but showed less courage on the political front. Bill Clinton supported the tepid “Don’t ask don’t tell,” but then also signed the “Defense of Marriage Act” making same sex marriages invalid. Not long ago, President Obama dodged an opportunity to support marriage equality said he was “evolving” on the issue. Now it appears the President, too, has left the world of jellyfish and evolved a spine on the subject of same sex marriage.

Polls show that public opinion on gay marriage has shifted perhaps more rapidly than on any other major issue in recent times. In Gallup polling last November, 53 percent of adult Americans said same-sex marriages should be granted the same status as traditional marriages, while 46 percent felt they should not be valid.

In 1996, when Gallup first asked about gay marriages, 27 percent felt they should be valid.

The shift among the major political parties has been equally swift. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton and rival Barack Obama both backed civil unions for gay couples, but not same-sex marriage. In the lead-up to the 2012 election, Obama announced his support for gay marriage and Democrats backed the right of same-sex couples to wed in their party’s official platform.

I think we should bear two things in mind as gay marriage becomes a distinct likelihood in our time. First, we should be thankful for everyone who supports justice for all persons no matter how late they come to the party. But, second, we should never confuse such political calculations with a genuine courageous commitment to human rights. One reason that civil rights and women’s rights are still not fully realized is that they succeeded as political victories, not as ethical realizations.

When a right is technically legal but not universally recognized, the people in question can live in limbo. They never know when such rights will apply and where. It is very important to realize that very few politicians in this country are champions of human rights, which means the protections of today may become the bargainings chip of tomorrow.

The best hope of the oppressed is not to find political protectors, but to live in solidarity with other human rights movements. Soon equality for gay, lesbian, bi-sexual and transgender persons will be the law of the land, but grassroots groups like Equality Texas will be more important than ever making sure that no person’s rights are contingent on the waning and waxing courage of politicians.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/18/hillary-clinton-gay-marriage_n_2900557.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false#sb=3773840,b=facebook

Is anyone else suspicious of this story? I will admit to being a cynic when it comes to US foreign policy, but do we really need more missles to counter North Korea? We have a wall of very expensive missles on the west coast that we have been told will protect us from Russia and China. So, why do we need to spend more on missles just because North Korea has done a few tests? If our missles protect us from the giants, why wouldn’t they also protect us from the lapdog? And if they won’t protect us from North Korea, why should we believe they will protect us from the super powers?

I realize the nations need to posture at times, but I’m tired of cutting domestic spending so the boys can keep playing tin soldier abroad. When will we stop letting defense contractors make a killing every time a two bit dictator shoots a firecracker? I will admit North Korea is dangerous, but what have we been spending all that money on if our missles don’t protect us from a nation that doesn’t even have a delivery system yet?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-21807067

Rev. Jack Schaap was pastor of a huge megachurch in Indiana. While there, he convinced a teenager that God’s plan for her was to have sex with him. He wrote her:

“That is exactly what Christ desires for us. He wants to marry us + become eternal lovers!”

The teen was living through a time of confusion and trusted her pastor. She listened to his sermons three times a week and considered him to be “the voice of God.” The church itself supported his claim that she needed to spend time alone with him in his Michigan cabin.

“He told me to confide in him, to trust him, and he made me feel safe and comfortable around him as a man of God. He preyed on that trust and my vulnerability.”

The story above is obviously reprehensible, but it raises a larger question. Is it ever right to justify an ethical decision on the basis that it is the “will of God?”  Are some churches right to deny women leadership roles simply because they believe God has established men as the only proper leaders? Should contraception be withheld, or gay marriage denied because someone claims to know the mind of God?

While the idea of the will of God may be a wonderful symbol for the highest possible ideal, is it ever a justification for a particular action? Think of the wars, the oppression and the superstitions that have been justified because someone could find a Bible verse somewhere on some topic. Can any mortal human brain house the infinite knowledge of what what God would do in a given situation, or are we more often like Pastor Schaap projecting our petty desires and opinion upon other innocent people?

Political speechwriters have the unenviable task of making  dull minds seem bright and vicious ones seem noble. Without their help, it would be much more difficult to persuade nations to do dumb or evil things. When we vote in a modern election, we are often voting for who has the best speech writer and PR team. The candidates themselves are often a mystery to us.

David Frum was a speech writer during the Bush years. In the Newsweek article linked below he discusses his role in the rush to war with Iraq. Here is a brief excerpt:

I was less impressed by Chalabi than were some others in the Bush administration. However, since one of those “others” was Vice President Cheney, it didn’t matter what I thought. In 2002, Chalabi joined the annual summer retreat of the American Enterprise Institute near Vail, Colorado. He and Cheney spent long hours together, contemplating the possibilities of a Western-oriented Iraq: an additional source of oil, an alternative to U.S. dependency on an unstable-looking Saudi Arabia.

You might imagine that an administration preparing for a war of choice would be gripped by self-questioning and hot debate. There was certainly plenty to discuss: unlike the 1991 Gulf War, there was no immediate crisis demanding a rapid response; unlike Vietnam, the U.S. entered the war fully aware that it was commencing a major commitment.

“The rhetoric of American empire comprises three main aspects: the assumption of the unique moral virtue of the United States, the assertion of its mission to redeem the world by the spread of republican government and more generally the ‘American way of life,’ and (184) the faith in the nation’s divinely ordained destiny to succeed in this mission. The rhetorical triad of virtue, mission, and destiny suggests the messianic dimension of the American experience in which foreign policy issues are not subject to reasoned debate but rather reduced to a choice between Right and Wrong, Good and Evil, pro- and anti-American, ‘us’ and ‘them.’ In this rhetorical context, opponents to the advance of the American empire have been considered to be misguided, if not depraved and traitorous.”

“The theological aspect of these narratives has meant that facts that contradict the narrative are either explained away or ignored.”

“Beneath this rhetoric of empire there has consistently been an elite reluctance to trust the nation’s foreign policy to the uncertainties and vacillations inherent in democracy.”

“While the universalistic rhetoric of American foreign policy has frequently masked realities distinctly less honorable than advertised, American statesmen (sic) have been of the conviction … that serving what they perceive to be the national interest is the greatest good.”

“The public’s tacit acquiescence in this duplicity is explained by the fact that its desire to believe is stronger than its desire to know, and by its perception that beneath the patriotic fictions its concrete interests are being served. This being so, statesmen (sic) have been able to define morality as that which serves the American nation and, more generally, the global republican revolution. Rather than following a ‘double standard’ as is sometimes charged, they have actually adhered to one standard throughout the nation’s history: the standard of American national self-interest. The potential ethical pitfalls of this formulation are obviated by the assumption of congruity between the progress of humanity at large and the survival and success of the United States. God bless America. Or so the thinking goes.”

William Earl Weeks, John Quincy Adams and American Global Empire (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 1992).

Andrew Young is usually credited with the term, “Socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor.” The point is, in modern America some businesses are able to keep their profits as private, and pass their failures off as public debt. For example, if a company is designing a jet for the military, it passes off the cost of research and development onto the public sector. After the plane is perfected, it is easily adapted into a private model that then becomes pure profit. If bank management wants to run scam mortgages that are enormously profitable, but which damn the customer to bankruptcy, that banker will still get a golden parachute when all is said and done. If they are good enough, they may even end up as a regulator in the Bush or Obama administration. It’s a shell game that makes some incredibly rich, and others undeservedly poor.

Noam Chomsky often points out that the top 100 corporations in the Fortune list of transnationals, all received government subsidies, and many of them received government bailouts. So he says, “the wealthy use free-market rhetoric to justify imposing greater economic risk upon the lower classes, while being insulated from the rigors of the market.”

Even free market fanatics like Newt Gingrich play the system. All the while he was ranting about big government spending, his own district received more subsidies for business than any other in the nation. A typical Republican administration usually spends as much if not more than a Democratic one, they just slash public sector spending and give it all to private businesses.

We have lived through a time of unprecedented business profits, but stagnant wages. That means that the rich have used the rest of us and kept the money. So allow me to make a brief list of how the rich have run up the debt and now blame government spending for their own mischief:

Bailouts where individuals got rich and the public had to pick up the tab

Stimulus packages and incentives where individuals got rich and the public had to pick up the tab

Questionable wars where individuals got rich and the public had to pick up the tab

Lost revenues from tax cuts for the wealthy where individuals got rich and the public had to pick up the tab

Lost revenues from underpaid and unemployed workers where individuals got rich and the public had to pick up the tab

Blaming government for our debt is like blaming a kidnap victim for any robberies that took place while he was tied up in the back of the van. Picture a modern multinational corporation as Godzilla and our government as the Japanese army. The libertarian answer to our debt is to shrink the Japanese army and to deregulate Godzilla. Our democratic government has been taken over by corporate money, which means we need to restore democratic control over our lives, but only democratic government can do that. So we need to wean government from corporate money, not further deregulate the corporations that are being used to rob us and drive our nation into the ground.

This is a nice story about GOP Senator Rob Portman humanizing the issue of gay marriage as soon as he had a face to put upon it. When it comes to any human rights cause, much of the struggle is to help people realize we’re not talking about an issue, we’re talking about people. As soon as we realize that someone we love is affected by injustice, our hearts and minds begin to open.

“It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that’s of a Dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have — to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years.” Rob Portman, speaking of his gay son.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/15/rob-portman-gay-marriage_n_2881805.html

America is staggering under the cost of several unnecessary wars. President Obama did not publicly investigate the questionable information given by the Bush administration which led into the Iraq war. The President said he wanted to let bygones be and to focus on the future; but, for that reason, past lies will now be  the foundation for future policies. Wars that made a few unspeakably rich, will make most of the rest of us undeservedly poor. And, of course, it will be the poorest who die in future wars based on unexamined history.

By not even trying to punish those bankers who swindled America, masses of people will suffer economically. The President claimed that everything the bankers did was legal, but then why not press Congress for a drastic overhaul making it illegal for banks to lie and steal? Why not at least publicly condemn it as robbery and name names so people know how to protect themselves? The Wolves of Wall Street, likewise, remain uncaged. The President even brought many of the guilty parties into his administration to help regulate. Theories that he brought the foxes into the hen house so he could use their craftiness to undo the damage are running out of time.

The debt facing our nation was caused in part by a decades long binge by the very rich. It is they who should restore balance by paying much higher taxes, by being forced to pay fair wages and by being held accountable for their past deeds. America’s debt belongs in large part to the very rich. If President Obama does not force them to pay for it, then he has redistributed the pain from those guilty rich and placed it on the back of America’s most needy.

No religion has a right to criticize its neighbor and then, when others rise in protest, to say it is being persecuted.  If a religious group does not wish to risk having its own words condemned as “homophobic” or “sexist” or “racist” or “anti-Semitic” or “Islamophobic” or anything else, it is best not to make such charges in the first place. For, when one group bears witness against another in the public sphere, the rest of us have a duty to protect our neighbors from unwarranted slander. No group should be allowed to hurl public accusations, and then retreat behind the protected velvet curtain of private religion. Democracy has no room for hit and run pietists.