After New York

I wasn’t at all surprised by the failure of the New York State Senate to enact marriage equality: The body is dominated by Republicans and conservative Democrats (the lower house, by comparison, has passed the measure three times). But that doesn’t make it any less disappointing, and I had hoped for a closer margin than 38 to 24.

So the question, at a time like this, is what now? Certainly the battle in New York isn’t over, and the measure will be back and will, eventually, be passed. But we face a well-organised and extremely well-funded opposition that can rely on the nationwide infrastructure (and members' money) from the Mormon, Roman Catholic and fundamentalist Protestant churches. One would think that politicians (and voters) wouldn’t be so easily swayed by such an obviously religious-based attack on human rights, but they often fall for it.

Part of the reason is that the extremists are expert at framing the issue in their terms alone. Consider the gloating message issued by the head of the leading anti-gay hate group focusing on this issue, the National Organization for Opposite-Only Marriage (or whatever):

"I hope this loss causes Democratic leaders to reconsider their fanatical commitment to an issue that is a priority for only a small number of wealthy donors and activists in their party.”

Did you notice the very sophisticated and subtle framing in their propaganda? She said the only Democrats supporting gay marriage are "wealthy donors and activists", which neatly frames all of us as "elites". She also talked about the "fanatical commitment" of Democratic leaders (if ONLY!!), which frames Democratic leaders as irrational. This is standard rhetoric for them, just as they always claim to be victims of some sort of hate whenever anyone dares to criticise them or points out their deliberate lies.

Like all the other far-right christianists, their propaganda tries to portray us as "the other"—weird, scary, icky people who it's okay to hate. Our job isn't to tell them to STFU—they expect that, and it only reinforces their meme—but to take the power out of their framing so that it's so obviously wrong that it no longer works.

The only way to do that is to make sure everyone is out everywhere—we MUST define OURSELVES and not let the bigots and their hatefest do it for us. These hate groups only succeed because America doesn't know us: If every gay person in the US came out to at least one person every single day within a few weeks it would be as obvious to Middle America as it is to us that these people are clowns in a circus of hate.

The choice is really that clear and obvious: If we want to stop ranting at the bigots, then we MUST take the initiative and introduce ourselves as the real face of GLBT America, and our straight allies MUST stand up and declare their support for us. If we don't, we'll be carrying on like this for years—perhaps decades—to come.

The bigot’s quote was found at Joe.My.God., where this post began as a comment.

First time for everything

Since I began this blog, I’ve never linked to far rightwing websites. There are two main reasons for this: I don’t want to help them get any publicity and I don’t want to help them get higher search rankings based on unique links to their sites.

There’s a third reason: I really don’t want to deal with the wingnuts who come pouring out like cockroaches to attack anyone who dares criticise their favoured site. I generally don’t delete comments, unless they’re spam or particularly vile, and I really don’t want all that negativity clogging up my comments sections.

This has applied to wingnut websites, not necessarily to conservative sites in general, and I’ve linked to such general sites here in New Zealand. However, I can’t remember linking to any US-based conservative sites—until now.

There was a post on a conservative site that was so unexpected and, frankly, so interesting that it demands a wider readership than merely those who believe as the author does.

Today Charles Johnson published a post on his Little Green Footballs site titled “Why I Parted Ways with the Right”. He says they support fascists, bigotry, hatred, white supremacism, homophobic bigotry, anti-government lunacy, conspiracy theories—among other things.

Predictably, the wingnuts, who loudly proclaim that they alone are “the conservative movement”, have been vicious in their attacks (the tags used by one leading wingnut site are especially vile). He posted that he’d received a lot of hate mail, but later posted that supportive emails outnumbered hate mail by two to one. In that same post he wrote:

“Call me independent, and I won’t be unhappy. I have bones to pick with both sides, and big issues with the extremists on both sides. And if you’re a politician, you need to prove to me that you deserve my support, because it’s not a given just because you’re on ‘my team’.”

There are many Americans who’d share that view. I know I’d count myself among those he refers to when he said there are “quite a few liberals who miss having opponents who aren’t insane”.

So I hope that he gets a lot of support from his non-insane fellow conservatives. How nice it would be to once again be able to debate issues, and not the hatred, bigotry and extremism of opponents on the right. There’s no need for the screaming bitter partisanship that infects the American body politic, and maybe if more conservatives like Charles Johnson speak out against the lunatics we might be able to return to reasoned debate. There’s a first time for everything, after all.

Tip o' the hat once again to Joe.My.God.

World AIDS Day 2009

A few things are better this year: The Obama Administration is working to reverse the Bush/Cheney regime's idiotic efforts to not really combat HIV/AIDS, and the US is about to join the rest of the developed world and allow HIV-positive people visit the country.

But much work needs to be done, and the chief task is to fight the complacency that sets in when an epidemic goes on and on, and when expensive drugs make it manageable in rich countries. Prevention, after all, is still the best—and for some, only—option. Now is not the time to rest or relax. We owe it to all those we lost too soon.

Previous related blog posts:

World AIDS Day 2008

World AIDS Day 2007

World AIDS Day 2006

Posting the evidence

This is the final blog post for November, 2009. Big deal, I know, but between being so busy and also under-the-weather, this month had among the lowest number of posts since I started the blog.

In general, I average slightly better than one post per day; that doesn’t mean I actually do a post a day—some days I do several, and several days I do none at all. But the average over a year is about one a day. My lowest number of posts in a full-month was December 2007 (when I was overseas for part of the month); the partial month in which I began this blog, September 2006, was similarly low.

None of which matters at all. While it provides evidence of my barriers to blogging this month, the dearth of posts is completely irrelevant to, well, anything. But here’s a little secret: When I first began this blog, I wondered what it would be like to be a daily columnist, so in order to find out the only way I could, I tried to post every day. I got over that curiosity long ago, but it was the original reason I posted every day. So the current question is why I still blog, and that’s a question I can’t answer except with, I still have things to say. Usually that’s enough; just not once-per-day this month, apparently.

Old dog, old tricks

Don Brash apparently learned nothing from his defeat in the 2005 election, a failure that saw him dumped as National Party Leader. He’d moved the party so far to the right, it co-opted the policies of the neo-conservative ACT Party; the voters didn’t buy it.

Now head of a “productivity” task force, Brash has said the only way to “catch up” with Australian “wealth” is to slash $9 billion from government spending. And how would he do that? By repeating the failed policies of Reagan/Thatcher/Douglas/Richardson, of course.

Here’s the destruction they would wreak:

Reduce benefit numbers with "ambitious" welfare reform (presumably including kicking people off the dole, whether they have any way of surviving or not);

Reduce the minimum wage (which would hurt low-skill workers, including those now on welfare) and reintroduce a lower minimum youth wage (to exploit youth). The minimum wage “should be reduced to the same ratio to average wages that prevailed in 1999”. So, they want to get the poor off welfare and cut their wages so they’re far worse off.

Extend probationary employment periods to a year for all workers. This extends the controversial 90-day probationary period National enacted. Basically, this would allow an unscrupulous business owner to hire workers then sack them within a year without much in the way of recourse for the workers (my home state had this as part of its union-busting laws, but there was no time limit).

Raise the age of superannuation eligibility (because they don’t want the elderly loafing when they could still be wage slaves) and slow the increases in the amount the elderly get;

Scrap the New Zealand Superannuation Fund and use the money to pay off debt (because Brash and the business elite believe elderly baby boomers can jolly well look after themselves, even though their pensions will be reduced year after year);

End Kiwisaver subsidies (because even though New Zealanders have among the lowest household savings rates in the developed world, Brash and his fellow troglodytes believe that government should never—ever—do anything to help encourage people to do something that’s good for the country);

Cut universal subsidies for health and education (because the American model of privately funded healthcare works so well, why not do that and add privately funded education, too?). They’d end subsidised prescriptions so that those “generally in good health and not on low incomes” pay the full price, and they’d end universal subsidies for doctors’ visits (they appear to want New Zealanders to be sicker);

In addition to privatising education, they ‘d charge full market interest rates on student loans (without an interest-free period) and end all caps on university fees.

They’d allow mining on or under sensitive government-owned land, just as long as it met some sort of cost-benefit analysis (environmental and cultural issues are clearly irrelevant), but that mining can only be done by private companies. In fact, all government-owned enterprises would be sold off “where competition is actual or feasible” (emphasis added; in other words, always).

It’s not just ordinary New Zealanders they want to screw over: They want to privatise Fonterra, which is a cooperative owned by New Zealand Dairy Farmers; this would inevitably transfer the ownership of New Zealand’s dairy industry to foreign ownership and encourage American-style corporate farming.

And what do they want to do with the $9 billion they’d shave off government spending? Why, cut taxes for the rich and corporate elites, of course! They want a maximum top tax rate for personal income taxes and corporate and trust taxes of 20 percent, and a dramatically flatter tax rate overall.

What all of this means is simple: When they say they want to increase the wealth of New Zealanders relative to Australians, they mean they want to increase the wealth of those who are already rich, as well as the wealth and power of the business elites. Ordinary New Zealanders—who would suffer greatly under these proposals—don’t matter to Brash and the business elites behind this “report”.

Brash is held up by the right as some sort of demi-god, as if he has wisdom handed down from the gods. Brash is really just another hard-right ideologue whose antique ideas were long ago discredited worldwide and repeatedly rejected by New Zealand voters—and will be again (and if you doubt that, consider that ACT is barely in Parliament at all now and, on current polling, faces possible annihilation in the next general election).

Perhaps the best example of how irrelevant the extremist views of Brash and the elites are, even Prime Minister John Key has rejected adoption of what he called “absolutely radical big bang reform”. He acknowledged that "It would certainly have a dramatic effect on New Zealanders and in the short term it would feel very much like we were pulling the rug out from underneath them." Precisely.

The task force was established as part of National’s agreement with the ACT Party, which espouses a neo-conservative economic agenda. The Opposition asks, as it should, if this is all a “straw man” move, so the National-led government can implement most of the policies but stop short of the whole thing. Certainly Finance Minister Bill English did nothing to dispel that notion when he said, "The Government intends to pick its way through the report to see what recommendations it could implement." Could, not should—implying, certainly, a desire to implement the whole thing, but perhaps avaluating what it thinks it can get away with.

Still, Key promised New Zealanders that there would be no asset sales in a first term, and he keeps dismissing any radical changes. New Zealand voters will hold him to those promises, or else this National-led government may find it only gets the one term. After all, despite what radical extremists like Brash and his buddies among the business elites want, New Zealand is still a democracy.

This is some of that change

It’s almost impossible to convey how huge this development is, and how important: The Obama Administration doesn't want federally-registered lobbyists appointed to agency advisory boards and commissions.

While the president doesn’t make such appointments (the agencies themselves do), they’re incredibly important in providing advice on public policy. If lobbyists are on the boards and commissions, they can help shape that advice—and so, public policy—to the advantage of their clients, all without any democratically-elected oversight. Barring them will mean that public policy may start to reflect the desires of the elected government, and not the business elites.

The president has been moving to both open up government and shut-out the influence peddlers. He issued Executive Order 13490, which bars any Presidential appointees who have been federally-registered lobbyists within the past two years from working on particular matters or in the specific areas in which they lobbied or from serving in agencies they had lobbied.

That Executive Order doesn’t apply to the agency boards and commissions, but this move is designed to ensure that the spirit of it does. The Washington Post said this “may turn out to be the most far-reaching lobbying rule change so far from President Obama”, and they’re probably right, as hundreds or even thousands of lobbyists are booted off these advisory bodies.

President Obama has said that he wants to change the way business is done in Washington, and this is an example of delivering on that promise. This, then, is some that change we can believe in.

And these people vote…

If ever there was a video to motivate rational people to vote, this would be it. The ignorance and the prejudice displayed by these fans of Sarah Palin is bad enough, but to be so ignorant and proud of it is something else again. It’s enough to make one fear for the future of American democracy.

Tip o’ the hat to Mark from Slap Upside the Head for pointing me to the vid.

An abhorrent law is gone

Thursday night, Parliament acted correctly and repealed the use of provocation as a partial defence for murder. The repeal was passed 116-5—only the Neo-Troglodyte ACT Party voted against it.

Predictably, lawyers were condescending in their dismissals, with one calling the repeal “political grandstanding” and another calling it a “knee-jerk reaction”. Of course lawyers opposed the repeal: They want whatever tools they can use. That doesn’t make them correct.

One layer said he believed that juries were capable of making informed decisions, which is absolute rubbish. The whole point of the partial defence of provocation is to trash the reputation of the murder victim so as to make the defendant seem justified in taking a life. Far too many times, defence lawyers played on the anti-gay prejudices of juries to get their client off a murder charge. There’s no justice for the murder victim in that.

The argument against repeal has been mainly around the idea that there are some cases in which someone may understandably lose control (for example, as one lawyer put it, finding someone in the act of molesting your child), But it seems to me that those rare occasions can be better dealt with in other ways, like arguing self-defence, rather than by allowing a murderer to trash his victim’s reputation or play upon the anti-gay prejudices of jurors.

The ACT Party, echoing the Law Society’s stand, argued that the defence shouldn’t be repealed until there was a replacement defence (such as diminished capacity). However, the party’s spokesperson, David Garrett, went beyond that and argued, “contrary to recent claims—victim's sexual orientation is irrelevant. It is not—and never has been—a 'gay panic' defence”. Garrett is either stupid, wilfully ignoring history or he’s being purely partisan—most likely, all three. Garrett has a reputation as a homophobe, so one suspects his position reflects his personal prejudices and not any principled stance. (This is actually the second time I’ve mentioned this moron by name, and the first time was just as scathing.)

Conservatives constantly argue that modern criminal law is weighted completely in favour of the defendant, not the victim. That’s nonsense, but in this one case, it definitely was. Now, it isn’t. That should be considered progress.

Pseudo Santa

Today I need to take a look at the most important issue I’ve discussed this week: Auckland’s Santa.

I was in the Auckland CBD today, and I had to take a look at the recently refurbished Santa at the corner of Queen and Victoria Streets (photo above). He was the recipient of a $200,000 make-over, which he was probably due for: He’s 49 years old. He made his debut on the old Farmer’s Department Store in Hobson Street (now a Heritage Hotel, in the photo at the bottom of this post) in 1960. This year for the first time he was joined by 14.5 metre high replicas of the reindeer that joined him a half century ago.

Old Santa was very different. The index finger on his right hand moved, beckoning shoppers into the store. His right eye also winked. By last year, the finger and the eye were a bit wonky and the whole effect was kind of creepy. In fact, many people (me included) called him “Paedophile Santa”. Yep, he was really that creepy. And yet, that was part of his “charm”, for lack of a better word.

New Santa is so different that I call him “Pseudo Santa”: The finger no longer beckons, the eye no longer winks. Sure, the new Santa is far cheerier than the old one—the colours are brighter, the face is friendlier and he’s decidedly not creepy. But he’s also not the old Santa.

Things are as they are, and so is Santa. We will adapt. Just don’t try to convince me it’s the same Santa.

Will ENDA discriminate?

If there really was such a thing as The Gay Agenda™, then the top item on it would be passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). If passed into law and signed by the president (who has pledged to sign it), ENDA would ban discrimination against GLB and T people in employment. Naturally, there are exceptions—neither state nor federal governments can get away with making GLBT people fully equal citizens.

GLBT Americans have gotten used to having an asterisk attached to their rights. But now there are indications that the very bill designed to end discrimination against gay and lesbian people may, in fact, ensrhine it.

According to The Advocate online, lawyers are now going over the language of ENDA to make it acceptable to Republicans and business elites (as if they’d ever support it, anyway). Specifically, they’re looking at three areas:

1. Disparate Impact: This is a type of case filed against an employer who doesn’t appear to have specifically discriminatory policies, but which nevertheless discriminates. Lawyers want to deny GLBT people the right to file such a case. By contrast, Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act allows such cases to be brought in the event of discrimination on the basis of race, colour, gender, religion or national origin.

2. Attorney’s Fees: The move is to forbid GLBT people from collecting attorney’s fees as part of the settlement in a successful case by restricting the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from awarding it; discrimination victims under Title VII face no such restriction.

3. Ban double recovery. The lawyers want to make sure that discrimination victims cannot sue under both Title VII and ENDA (as could be the case, for example, with gender discrimination) because filing two claims could lead to two judgements (double recovery). Of the three, this is the only one that seems like it may be reasonable.

If people who are the victims of discrimination based on their race, colour, gender, religion or national origin are able to file a claim of disparate impact, how can preventing GLBT people from doing so be justified? Where is the justice in that?

Denying attorney’s fees is an especially bad move: Poor and working people often rely on that to be able to bring their cases. If the fees have to be paid out of their award, they’re likely to get little or nothing in the end (contrary to rightwing myth, such judgements are generally not very big). That means that potentially only the wealthy will be able to bring cases.

Added up, at least two out of three of these seem like efforts to prevent GLBT people from actually bringing successful suits. It’s like the politicians are saying to GLBT people, with a wink and nod to the corporate elites, “we’ll ban discrimination, but good luck actually enforcing that.”

If Barney Frank allows that to happen, we should expel him from the gay community. That, and force him to return his copy of the The Gay Agenda™.

When worlds collide

Every once in awhile, online worlds that are completely separate merge together in unexpected ways, and yesterday was that sort of day.

The day before, I’d finished posting about the Missouri billboard, and I fired off an email to Joe Jervis of Joe.My.God. blogging fame to send him the link to the story and to my post. He wrote back and thanked me and said he’d be mentioning it and giving me a credit. I expected a hat-tip and was thrilled.

I was shocked when I went to his site yesterday and found his post had an excerpt from my post. Talk about a major w00t! The comments were interesting, and aside from one self-described libertarian who called me treasonous (for suggesting the language of the billboard was treasonous), they were generally positive.

Joe.My.God. is my one never-miss sites on the web, a daily read. He posts all sorts of stuff about gay and political news, as well as pop culture items. Many times I post about things I find there, or repost videos, but other times I’ve followed his links to go even deeper into a story. Sometimes I post about what I find (like here), other times I don’t. The stories and links, Joe’s comments (often complete with a dry humour that really appeals to me), along with his own stories, are what keep me coming back.

The photo accompanying this post is of Joe (at right) with one of my favourite people, Tim Corrimal, when they met at Gay Pride in New York City this past June (Tim lent me the photo; I wasn’t there). So, thinking about unexpected connections, and for a bit of irrelevant fun, here’s a little six-degrees-of-separation I did:

Joe met Tim Corrimal. Tim met Ramble Redhead (one degree). Ramble met me (two degrees). I met George HW Bush (three degrees). Bush the First was GW Bush’s father (four degrees). GW Bush’s vice president was Dick Cheney (five degrees). Dick Cheney’s chief of staff was Scooter Libby (six degrees). Therefore, Joe is separated from Scooter Libby by six degrees of separation.

Sometimes, personal blogging should just be fun. This week, it was.