That’s a very nice and welcome change, say liberals, but marriage equality is Good and Right even if it doesn’t affect your direct family members. Your job is to represent your non-family constituents in Congress, too.

Sen. Portman shows no sign that he gets it, makes no apology or concrete steps toward restitution (let alone voicing support for any conrete legislative or judicial action), and shows no evidence of reevaluating the basis of his policy decisions to consider what else his lack of empathy may cause him to take an immoral and unjust view towards.

But surely that’s asking too much of him, no? Was reading a few articles about it (one of the best of which, and the one that immediately prompted these thoughts, being Slacktivist) and landed on this great quote:

“The right way to take the slogan ‘We have obligations to human beings simply as such’ is as a means of reminding ourselves to keep trying to expand our sense of ‘us’ as far as we can. That slogan urges us to extrapolate further in the direction set by certain events in the past – the inclusion among ‘us’ of the family in the next cave, then of the tribe across the river, then of the tribal confederation beyond the mountains, then of the unbelievers beyond the seas (and, perhaps last of all, of the menials who, all this time, have been doing our dirty work). This is a process which we should try to keep going. We should stay on the lookout for marginalized people – people who we still instinctively think of as ‘they’ rather than ‘us.’ We should try to notice our similarities with them. The right way to construe the slogan is as urging us to create a more expansive sense of solidarity than we presently have.”
– Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, p. 196, qtd here

I guess I’ve become a grumpy, cynical radical, for whom no good deed is ever enough.

I’m okay with that.

I applaud Sen. Portman for his evolution, but can’t help from thinking that the step from “Fuck you I got mine” to “Fuck you my kids & I got ours” is pretty infinitesimally small. Let’s continue to expand that “us”.

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Ban This Book

“As for your term papers, I should like them to be both cynical and religious. I want you to adore the Universe, to be easily delighted, but to be prompt as well with impatience with those artists who offend your own deep notions of what the Universe is or should be.”
– Kurt Vonnegut

“Man’s task is thus to liberate God.”
– Elie Wiesel, from a collection of thinkers answering, “Does the Universe Have a Purpose?”

“I, myself, always like to remember that I’m writing actual people, who were more than happy to give us some sense of precisely how it feels to be among the So Whats of America.”
– Ta-Nehisi Coates ‎

“I can’t apologize for the whole Christian nation, but I can for me.”
– Pastor Jerris Duncan

“Our marriage is about love and faithfulness irrespective of gender and my gender transition. Our marriage reaffirms our ongoing, nearly lifelong commitment that strengthens our family and society.”
–JamieAnn Meyers, “Marriage: It’s About Love and Commitment (A Transgender Perspective)”

“If we did this right, people would come out of presidential elections exhilarated, maybe even stoked to get involved in their local races for county sheriff or D.A.”
–Matt Taibbi, “How the Hype Became Bigger Than the Presidential Election”

How Does Homeopathy Work?

“Poor man! gone to meet the spirits of my poor, outraged and murdered people, in a world where Liberty and Justice are MASTERS.”
–Jarm Logue via Ta-Nehisi Coates, “The Hyperlinked Ballad of Jarm Logue”

“I support this law because it doesn’t force any church to perform a same-sex marriage if it’s against their beliefs. And that’s what this is about—protecting religious freedom and all [citizens] equally under the law.”
–Rev. Donté Hickman, Southern Baptist pastor, endorsing Maryland’s Question 6 marriage equality bill

In the entire history of the United States of America, from George Washington’s election in 1789 on down, has there been a single candidate as unmoored from ideological principle or belief as Mitt Romney?
–Paul Waldman, “The Emptiest Candidate in Presidential Election History”

“Romney is ready to make the deep roll-backs in healthcare, education, social services, reproductive rights, — that will guarantee poverty, unemployment, overpopulation, disease, rioting, — all crucial elements in creating a nightmare zombie wasteland.”
–Joss Whedon’s endorsement of Mitt Romney

“The more you focus, the more that focus becomes a habit.”
–Charles Duhigg, “How Not to Spend Your Whole Day on Facebook”

“If they really cared about eradicating poverty, as good Jews, they knew what to do. Moses told them the strategy – regular debt cancellation and economic empowerment would end poverty. But if they weren’t up to radical restructuring then they better be up for a lifetime of generous giving to the poor.”
–Kelley Nikondeha, “The Poor You Will Always Have with You”

“What the author quickly realized was that the “biblical view on abortion” had dramatically shifted over the course of a mere 15 years, from clearly stating life begins at birth to just as clearly teaching it begins at conception.”
–Jonathan Dudley, “When Evangelicals Were Pro-Choice”

“The only way for a zombie to have his will and soul return is for him to eat salt.”
–Amy Wilentz, “A Zombie Is a Slave Forever“

According to a report by the American Academy of Pediatrics, “A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with 1 or 2 gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.”

Overview of the research literature by the Australian Psychological Society (pdf):

“As detailed in this review, the family studies literature indicates that it is family processes (such as the quality of parenting and relationships within the family) that contribute to determining children’s well-being and ‘outcomes’, rather than family structures, per se, such as the number, gender, sexuality and co-habitation status of parents. The research indicates that parenting practices and children’s outcomes in families parented by lesbian and gay parents are likely to be at least as favourable as those in families of heterosexual parents, despite the reality that considerable legal discrimination and inequity remain significant challenges for these families.”

Also of interest may be an Amicus Curae brief (pdf) from the American Psychological Association, The California Psychological Association, The American Psychiatric Association, and the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, regarding the Perry v. Schwarzenegger case (the challenge against California’s Proposition 8 ban on same-sex marriage):

“The research literature on gay, lesbian, and bisexual parents includes more than two dozen empirical studies. These studies vary in the quality of their samples, research design, measurement methods, and data analysis techniques. However, they are impressively consistent in their failure to identify deficits in parenting abilities or in the development of children raised in a lesbian or gay household. In summarizing the findings from these studies, amici refer to several reviews of empirical literature published in respected, peer-reviewed journals and academic books and empirical studies.”

The idea that the profits of capital are really the rewards of a just society for the foresight and thrift of those who sacrificed the immediate pleasures of spending in order that society might have productive capital, had a certain validity in the early days of capitalism, when productive enterprise was frequently initiated through capital saved out of modest incomes. The idea, as a moral justification of present inequalities of privilege, has become more and more dishonest, since the increased centralization of power and privilege makes it possible for those who make the largest investments in industry to do so without any diminution of even the most luxurious living standards. Since we are living in a world in which there is too much capital for production and too little for consumption, the argument that economic inequality is necessary for the accumulation of capital resources has lost even its economic validity. Yet it is still used by privileged classes to establish a specious connection between virtue or social function and privilege.

Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society, 1932

To be clear, I’m not saying that when people disagree with me they don’t have good reasons or solid arguments. It’s just that I don’t find those arguments persuasive. Largely, and this is key, for a host of emotional reasons. Consequently, until I feel differently about things, until my affections change, exchanging self-justifications in the comments section of a blog isn’t going to move the conversation forward. It’s a dumbfounding situation.

xkcd: Error Code

Ta-Nehisi Coates: On Making Yourself Right

It is natural to think of the damage [a liar and opportunist] did to people [] by embracing lying as a weapon. But I found myself thinking of the great injury he must have ultimately done himself, for by the end [], he was a man lying only to himself and other liars.

Six-Legged Giant Finds Secret Hideaway, Hides For 80 Years

Kickstarter: A Show with Ze Frank

Extreme Makeover: The story behind the story of Lawrence v. Texas.

“The cause was greater than the facts themselves. Lawrence and Garner understood that they were being asked to keep the dirty secret that there was no dirty secret. That’s the punch line: the case that affirmed the right of gay couples to have consensual sex in private spaces seems to have involved two men who were neither a couple nor having sex.”

I was conceived by a young, poor woman who lived with her mother and stepfather. I am the result of a short-term fling with her stepbrother, about which she always felt guilt and shame. My biological father denies my existence. I was adopted as an infant by a committed, stable, loving couple who deeply wanted to raise children, but was infertile.

I resent the implication that my family is somehow less authentic than it would be if I had been raised by my biological parents—that the love, care, and volition of my adoptive parents is illegitimate because they are not “the people responsible for bringing [me] into the world”. I’m personally offended that Joseph Backholm insinuates that my dysfunctional and ill-prepared natural parents could have better raised and cared for me than the family that provided a caring and nurturing childhood for me.

My family is every bit as genuine, every bit as healthy and successful as one in which the children are related to the parents. To me, it seems like such an obvious statement that it shouldn’t require saying. Of course there’s no substantive difference between adoptive parents and biological parents when it comes to providing happy, safe environments for children. If anything, I’d expect research to show that adoptive families are statistically more likely to be successful by tangible measures, since they will not have the stress of being unplanned or unwanted.

But of course, I know the game that’s being played here. It’s not my family Joseph Backholm is intending to insult and delegitimize—it’s someone else’s. In fact, it’s quite likely that in another context the Family Policy Institute of Washington would be the first to suggest that a woman with an unwanted pregnancy consider adoption.

What I’m saying is that I don’t believe Joseph Backholm believes the words coming out of his mouth. His opposition to marriage equality has nothing to do with the biological relatedness of a family. I’d wager that he would recognize that argument as absurd if challenged on it. His words have no empirical, legal, moral, or historical backing—they are pure specious rhetoric, designed to give post hoc rationalization to a predetermined, unexamined prejudice.

Whether he recognizes it or not, Joseph Backholm insults my family—and thousands of other families—including but by no means limited to families with two mothers or two fathers.

“I feel very strongly that we need to have this conversation between the pro-choice camp and the pro-life camp, because I see a lot of overlap for those of us who care about the issue. [] But I do not think that a lot of people want the issue to end. They want it to continue on, and I think that’s on both sides of the aisle.”

– Former Pennsylvania Congresswoman Kathy Dahlkemper

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Fiction/essays

Robin Cody -  “Miss Ivory Brown” (pdf),  from The Best American Spiritual Writing 2004, originally in Portland Magazine. A simply beautiful story.

Peter Watts -  “The Island”, Hugo Award (sci fi) winner for the Best Novelette of 2010. It’s good.

Atul Gawande – Letting Go: What should medicine do when it can’t save your life? The New Yorker, August 2, 2010. A deeply moving essay about Hospice medical care for dying patients.

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Politics

Bill Moyers – “Welcome to the Plutocracy”. Originally given as a speech at Boston University on October 29, 2010 as a part of the Howard Zinn Lecture Series, this is an unsettling account of the role of corporate money in U.S. politics.

Sean Wilentz – “Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War roots”. The New Yorker, October 18, 2010. An interesting historical look at the origins of Glenn Beck’s (and others’) view of American history. It’s all been done before.

—

Productivity

David McRaney, “Procrastination”. You Are Not So Smart, October 27, 2010. A meta look at procrastination, explaining how it is “fueled by weakness in the face of impulse and a failure to think about thinking”. Encourages long-term thinking and planning ahead of time to trick yourself into working better, through the lens of recent behavioral science, Netflix, and marshmallows.

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Science (!)

Doctor Science, “You’ve never been to the moon But don’t you want to go”, Obsidian Wings, November 01, 2010. An overview of some undertakings by Galaxy Zoo, a collection of crowdsourced science projects.

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I got a window seat at work this week. The plants are happy, as am I.

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(BTW, I highly recommend Instapaper for marking articles and essays to read later. It can sync with your mobile device and all sorts of cool stuff.)

[I]nter- and intra-religious battles aren’t really fought over doctrine, but over freedom.

We Americans look at the civil war fought between Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq and cluck our tongues at these violent fanatics, forgetting that the freedom of religion we take for granted is not a right enjoyed by most people in this world. Where there is no reliable protection of the freedom of religion its opposite holds sway — the establishment of one official legal religion. Yes, the Sunnis and the Shiites disagree over matters of doctrine, but that’s not why they’re fighting. They’re fighting because they are not protected by something like the First Amendment and without such protections — without the guarantee of free exercise made possible by the prohibition of legal establishment — they lack the freedom and space in which they might peaceably agree to disagree. Someone is going to establish a legally enforced religious hegemony and they’re fighting to determine who will get to do it. They’re fighting for hegemony because, absent the guarantee of the right of free exercise even for minorities,  hegemony is the only way to ensure their own right to worship as they see fit.

You don’t have to be some kind of religious zealot to understand that. You don’t have to be religious at all.

I think some of the more anti-religious zealots forget this when they dismiss sectarian conflicts as wholly the result of dogmatic delusion. I appreciate that someone like, say, Christopher Hitchens doesn’t share the impulse that would lead someone to fight on behalf of Shia Islam. But that person is also, most importantly, fighting for the right not to be a Sunni. And I suspect that the right not to be a Sunni is something that Hitchens himself would readily fight to defend.

Ironically, the existence of sectarian violence is often raised as a rationale for the abolition of religion. If we could just get rid of religion, we could put an end to all that religious violence.

But that’s the opposite of the only solution that has ever worked. It is, in fact, just another variation on the root cause of all sectarian violence — the attempt to impose religious hegemony and to deprive others of the freedom to worship or not worship as they choose. The only way to put to rest the cycle of sectarian violence is to eliminate the threat of imposed religious practice. Prohibit the legal establishment of religion and guarantee religious freedom for all and no one will need to take up arms to defend their freedom not to be something else. Doctrinal disputes will persist, but they will remain only that — arguments and differences of opinion.

- Fred Clark (Slacktivist), embedded in one of his usual deconstructions of the World’s Worst Books.

The first anti-miscegenation law to be struck down in the US was in California’s Perez v. Sharp in 1948. Other states followed suit throughout the 1950s, with the last of them struck down with the Supreme Court case Loving v. Virginia in 1967.

If left up to national public opinion, then, my own parents’ marriage would not have been legal or valid until I was 11 years old. (Leaving aside for now the question of whether the legitimacy imposed by the courts helped to sway public opinion, which I happen to think is very likely.)

Thank you California, and thank you SCOTUS, for overriding “the will of the people” when it unjustly trampled the rights, dreams and desires of families.

If you wish to be wealthy, duck beneath
the topcoat of a well-dressed river
until you come up with a mossy boot
filled with shiners. Spend them wisely.

To tread lightly on the earth,
first breathe in and out slowly
to sense how oxygen walks barefoot,
then observe butterflies, so weightless
even our poetry burdens them.

Avoid mistaking sadness for blueberries,
but if this happens remember only one
of the two tastes like a somersault.

Make nothing more of the moon
than what it is, a great big pebble
hunting for a shoe, not to be confused
with the heart, likewise a vagabond.

Inside of every stray cat lurks a person
who discarded love. Remember this
when you bend over to wind them up.

If you feel compelled to fly a flag,
note how it struggles in vain to be a rainbow
and how envy will make it twist and flap
like a tongue. Consider instead a kite.

If you desire to reach heaven,
have your body buried in an aspen grove.
In time, all of you will wick up
into a loud version of it.

If the din of the human world overwhelms you,
trace the voicebox of an orchid with your finger.
When you get to the aria, listen.
But beware, for beauty can be a lacewing
or a meteor, and lands wherever it pleases.

When you finish reading a poem,
bend it around so you can see
yourself in it. Then laugh out loud.
Everything else now should come easy.

- Malcolm Alexander

Keep smiling, keep fighting, keep thinking, keep loving, keep serving, and keep sacrificing. It’s not about the overnight win, it’s about what kind of human being you choose to be and what kind of legacy you want to live.

- Dr. Cornel West