Lambda Legal at 40

This video shows some of the highlights of the first forty years of Lambda Legal, one of the MOST important groups working to win the equality of LGBT Americans. It’s been a long march toward freedom, but Lambda has been there. I hope one day they outlive the need for them, but we’re far from that day. Until then, I heartily endorse them.
Via Joe.My.God.

Thatcher

They say if you can’t say something nice about a person who’s just died, you shouldn’t say anything. Not very useful advice for a blogger.

So: Margaret Thatcher died. What can I say about her that’s nice? Well, as a Member of Parliament she was one of the few Tory MPs who voted to decriminalise homosexuality in Britain in 1966. That same year, she also voted to legalise abortion. Those are two good things I can note.

Let’s see, what other nice things can I say? Um… well… um…

The fact is, there is very, very little about Margaret Thatcher’s career that was positive, and a huge amount that was absolutely horrible. Of course she’s notable for being Britain’s first female Leader of the Opposition and first female Prime Minister, and, politics aside, those are achievements for which she should receive recognition.

However, when talking about a politician, one can’t put politics aside, and I found hers to be mostly reprehensible. Like her good friend, Ronald Reagan, she believed that if you cut taxes on the rich and well-off, the benefits would “trickle down” to everyone else. It was, and has been amply proven to always be, an utterly daft idea, but for the rightwing (then and now), it’s a core principle.

She also had unshakeable dedication to selling-off state owned assets—the people’s property—as well as fervour for destroying unions and workers’ rights. Also carried forward by today’s conservatives.

As bad as all that is, she, like Reagan, also unleashed not just intellectually bankrupt ideas, but also hard right ideologues. And it was in pandering to them that she cemented her position on my list of reprehensible politicians, especially through the imposition of one law: She backed Section 28.

Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1988 said:

Local authorities shall not intentionally promote homosexuality or publish material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promote the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship.

It was motivated by anti-gay animus, and born of the outrageously loony rightwing belief that kids can be “recruited” into homosexuality. Thatcher herself backed Section 28. She told the Conservative Party Conference in 1987: “Children who need to be taught to respect traditional moral values are being taught that they have an inalienable right to be gay.” Her party would continue to defend the bill, even as the then-Labour government got ready to repeal it in the early 2000s (they succeeded in 2003, after earlier attempts were rejected by the conservative House of Lords, and after Scotland repealed it from applying to Scotland).

Section 28 had no criminal penalties, and there were no successful court challenges relying on it. However, many councils and schools engaged in self-censorship to be safe. LGBT student groups folded after the bill was passed, rather than risk legal trouble. Still, Tories continued to back the bill right up until repeal (and some long after).

Campaigning in 2009, and as part of a series of apologies for Thatcher’s policies, Conservative Party Leader David Cameron (now Prime Minister) acknowledged Section 28 was "offensive to gay people", and went on to say “I'm sorry for Section 28. We got it wrong. It was an emotional issue. We have got to move on and we have moved on.”

So, whether out of political necessity or genuine contrition, many in the modern Conservative party are clearly backing away from Thatcher. Apparently, she is as divisive a figure for her own party as she was for Britain and the world beyond. Still, I doubt any Tories took part in the reported celebrations of Thatcher’s death.

Despite everything, I don’t celebrate her death, not that I’m above doing so for true enemies (as I did here, and especially here). It’s just that awful as her politics were, they had nothing to do with me personally—and that’s kind of a prerequisite for me to be actually pleased a politician has died.

Still, you might think that neither am I the least bit sad that she’s died. "You might very well think that; I couldn't possibly comment."
_____
The photo at the top of this post depicts US President Ronald Reagan and Nancy Reagan greeting UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and Denis Thatcher at the North portico of the White House prior to the State Dinner held 16 November 1988. As a photo taken by a government employee as part of the of their official duties, it is in the public domain. It is available through Wikimedia Commons.

The final quote in this post is a related, but possibly obscure pop culture reference.

Reclaiming the republic

In this video, Lawrence Lessig talks about the corruption at the heart of American politics. He says it was caused by the dependence of Congressional candidates on funding from the tiniest percentage of citizens. I don’t know anyone who would argue with that, but what next?

It seems to me that Lessig argues, basically, a Nike-esque “just do it” response, and I think that’s a cop out. Of course people should do something, but what?! That's why I think his response is ultimately a cop-out.

I like TED talks—a lot. At their best, they’re thought-provoking, challenging, even infuriating. At their worst, they’re shallow, empty and ill-focused, and for me, this is one of those times: WTF are mainstream people supposed to DO?!

Still, I think there’s some value in at least merely talking about the issues. But talk is not enough.

If Americans really want to reclaim their republic from the oligarchs, then they need to DO something. This video doesn’t provide the needed tools.

Jake is 6

Today is our puppy Jake’s Sixth Birthday—where HAS the time gone?! I snapped the photo above early this morning, at an hour that didn’t exactly impress Jake. Before that, I also took photos of both him and Sunny with my phone, but by the time I got back with the real camera, Sunny had apparently had enough. Or, maybe she decided to let her brother have the birthday spotlight. Yes, I’m sure that’s it.

Actually, in that photo you can just make out how the fur around his mouth turns sort of reddish in the summer, when he’s outside more. You can also see the barest glimpse of an eye. Trust me, he does have eyes.

I said last year…

I know that animals are oblivious to birthdays as such, but they do notice when their people make a fuss over then and give them lots of attention, as we did—of course we did: Jake may have cat and dog sisters now, but he’s still our special boy, who came to live with us at a very sad time and then changed everything.

That’s still as true as ever.

Today is also the birthday of Jake’s blood brother, Doyle. Jake’s adopted sister Sunny’s birthday is in three months, and his other adopted sister Bella’s birthday is three months after that. Whether they take any notice of them is beside the point.

I’m too busy with work commitments to blog right now, but nothing will stop me from acknowledging a furbaby’s birthday—priorities!

Happy Birthday, Jake!

Related posts:
Jake turns 5
Jake is four
Jake turns three
Jake’s Birthday 2-day
Jake is one year old!
A new arrival

This blog by the numbers

April 1 is the first day of the new tax year in New Zealand (no foolin’), so I thought I’d look at some numbers of my own today—blog numbers.

I don’t usually pay attention to stats for this blog or any of my other sites, but sometimes I get curious about things like what’s most popular, whether promotion on social networks has any value, those sorts of things.

I’ve had StatCounter tracking statistics for most of the time this blog has existed. Blogger itself has counted stats from the very beginning. Google Analytics counts stuff, too. They all measure things differently and give different information. To get a fuller picture of what’s going on with this blog, I have to consult all three. Here’s some of what I learned.

Aside from Google itself, and internal referrals from one page on the blog to another, the number one site for referring visitors in the past month was Roger Green’s blog. Considering how much we interact and talk about each other’s posts, that’s probably to be expected, but I still think it’s interesting.

Speaking of Google searches, stats tell me that the most popular search word for people who end up here is amerinz. That makes sense, since if one didn’t know the blog’s URL, how else would they find it? However, I assume the people that search for amerinz.blogspot.com merely type that in the wrong place—at least, I hope that’s the case.

In the past couple weeks, other popular searches bringing people here have been about topics I actually blogged about: “Michelle Shocked” (here and then again here), “rosa parks” and her bus (on the centenary of her birth), “15th gayest city Auckland” (that one was back in 2009). But there was also “According to HRC, why aren't ‘civil unions’ enough for same-gender couples?”, which I did not blog about—though I have addressed the more general topic, especially in this blog post last year.

For me, pageviews are among the most useless information I get because the numbers just don’t tell me much. That’s because numbers for specific posts, as I’ve noted before, are sometimes skewed by spambots. For example, my most-viewed blog post of all time is the one about the use of the lower case omega (I don’t want to put the title in this post or it might attract bots, too). Nevertheless, it turns out that among my more viewed posts are also many found through popular searches, like those above, and also my recent post on the Auckland earthquake a couple weeks back.

I also found out some traffic does indeed come in through social media, but Google Analytics only counts Twitter. This means that it doesn’t include visitors coming from Netwoked Blogs, which is where my Facebook readers come from (it’s the only place where that link goes, since I turned off the Twitter version because I didn’t like it). That’s actually generally a bigger number. You can also follow this blog directly through that service.

To end this stroll through numbers, how about seem truly geeky stats? According to Google Analytics, the top ten mobile devices accessing this blog are: 1. Apple iPhone: 67.11%; 2. Unknown: 7.89%; 3. Samsung GT-I9300 Galaxy S3: 5.26%; 4. Tie: Apple iPod, Motorola MOTXT912B Droid Razr 4G and Nokia Lumia 800, each with 2.63% and 7. Tie: Apple iPad, HTC A8183 Desire, HTC Desire and HTC z710a Sensation, each with 1.32%. That’s interesting to me mainly because it’s tracked so specifically, something that’s a relatively recent phenomenon.

Okay, one last one: This blog is ranked 124th among 280 New Zealand blogs with publicly available site statistics and written by New Zealanders who choose to participate in the ranking. This is the second month this blog has been included in the rankings, and it moved up four spots from 128th in the February ranking. Thank you to everyone who helped that happen, however you got here!

True words

In this video, Jon Stewart eviscerates the rightwing arguments against marriage equality as presented to the US Supreme Court and advocated by its most hard right and ideological members. Scalia’s arguments were, as usual, ignorant and lacking in any concern for fact. Alitos’s were, too, but Stewart’s retort to him was dead-on correct: "You don't have to beta test rights."

I don’t expect this video—low resolution though it is—to remain in YouTube for long, so if you’re in the USA, you can view it via Hulu on the Huffington Post.

Accidental ignorance

Last night, we had a vegetable for dinner and I thought I’d blog about it. That means links, and that led me to an American’s ignorance.

The vegetable is known in New Zealand as kamo kamo (or also as kumi kumi), and it’s a cultivar of the Cucurbita maxima family of summer squash which, if you follow the link, you’ll see it really is “one of the most diverse domesticated species” of squash.

The vegetable is often boiled or steamed and is quite bland, so I was told to put butter and salt/pepper on it. That was nice enough, but I think it would be good in a casserole, where it can absorb flavours. It’s most similar to courgette/zucchini/marrow, and can be used in pretty much any recipe that calls for that vegetable.

The vegetable is native to South America, and was eventually brought to New Zealand by early European settlers. It was adopted as staple food by Maori, and remains popular among Maori today, though it’s fallen a bit out of fashion.

All of that I pretty much knew. I’d probably already tried the vegetable, too, though I don’t think I’d had it in quite that traditional way before. It’s part of the culinary heritage in New Zealand, which is why I wanted to mention it, and that led me to search for more detailed information to link to—and to my temporary diversion into American ignorance.

I happened on a web page where people can ask questions, and one was from an American who was apparently married to a Kiwi. She wrote, “it is found in new zealand, and can't find out anything about it, bought it to try, but don't know how to cook it.” Bad capitalisation and grammar aside, a pretty straightforward question. A New Zealander answered with some helpful suggestions on how to cook it. All good.

Two days later, an American who claims to be passionate about cooking wrote: “No such thing. Kiwi is a fruit they produce. kumi Kumi is however an illegal liquor brewed in Kenya from sorghum, maize or millet.” Neither the questioner nor the person who answered ever used the word “Kiwi”, so I have no idea why this person so arrogantly lectured them on what the person clearly perceived as the only “correct” use of the word. While “kumi kumi” is indeed such a beverage, that doesn’t mean the same name isn’t used for something entirely different. To me, it’s the height of ethnocentric arrogance to declare that kamo kamo (kumi kumi) doesn’t exist because the person had, apparently, never heard of it (keep in mind, the comment was added AFTER a New Zealander talked about it and offered cooking suggestions!).

I mention all that because it’s an object lesson in how Americans so often get caught out on the Internet by assuming that their way of seeing things is universal, that the entire world follows the lead of the USA and does things the way Americans do. Sometimes they just look hilariously stupid—like declaring a vegetable doesn’t exist when it does—other times their ignorance leads them to make really stupid declarations about other countries they so clearly know nothing about (the healthcare debate is a prime example, or this hilarity, or when Americans declare in Internet comments that “the whole world” is converting to the US system of weights and measures—yes, they’re still claiming that).

For the record, kiwifruit (not “kiwi”) is the correct name of the fruit to distinguish it from the bird and people. When referring to the people of New Zealand, it should be capitalised, both to distinguish it and because it’s a proper noun. Kamo kamo (or kumi kumi) does indeed exist. It’s nice and also versatile. And, related, what North Americans often call “winter squash” is called pumpkin in New Zealand. I bet that American would deny that, too.

I tried the vegetable because I prefer to find out about things myself—and that includes countries and their culture. It’s disappointing that more people don’t do the same.

Easter shopping

Easter is a four-day weekend in New Zealand, with public holidays on Friday and Monday, and bans on most trading on Friday and Sunday. Is it time for change?

Interestingly, the debate isn’t one of Right v. Left, since folks on both ends of the spectrum oppose change. For the right, it’s mainly about religion or tradition (or both), and for the left it’s mainly about exploitation of workers.

Yesterday, Stuff published a story about stores illegally trading on Good Friday and quoted one retailer who said opening in defiance of the law was “a victimless crime". One of my Leftist friends posted it to Facebook, commenting that in such cases workers are victims.

Retail workers are often victims: They’re more likely to be part-time, low-skill and easily replaced, all of which means that they have very little power in the employee/employer relationship. So, most retail workers can’t easily negotiate with their employers to take a public holiday off—but this powerlessness is equally true for any of the 361½ days a year when all stores may be open, so why is Easter weekend any different?

Enter the traditionalists who argue that it’s been this way for a long time and, in any case, workers deserve to have time off with their families. Both are true—but should they determine what public policy will be into the future?

What about people in an increasingly busy world who have no more time available than do retail workers? Should they be forbidden to do their shopping on 3½ days a year because it’s “tradition” or because retail workers are powerless?

Honestly, I don’t know the answer. In general, I’m sympathetic to workers, as well as to the argument that if people can’t do without shops for 3½ days a year, then they need to re-evaluate their lives. But is that any of government’s business?


For me, it’s not about the religious origins of three of those public holidays (Christmas Day, Good Friday and Easter Sunday; the half day is ANZAC Day morning, which is not religious). Those days now have very little religious significance to most Kiwis, so the origins are kind of irrelevant.

Ultimately, I think that the Internet Age will make shopping restrictions irrelevant, too, when we order things online: It doesn’t matter if the shops are open or not, or whether we value religion or tradition.

Still, every year this debate comes up, and every year the malls are packed on Saturday (they were today) and on Monday. I also wrote about this way back in 2007, on the first Easter after I started this blog.

Still, there’s one thing that I definitely DO like about the 3½ days a year that shops are closed: There are no TV commercials (apart from promos for programmes). Actually, there are no TV commercials on Sunday mornings, either (also a hold over from the days in which religion mattered more), but I’m either not up or watching TV to take much notice of that.

Whatever the days are or should be or how they came to be or if that matters, they are, at the very least, a four-day holiday weekend. That, too, is a good thing, with or without shopping.

Equal justice under law

In last week’s oral arguments on the infamous Defense [sic] of Marriage Act (DOMA) before the US Supreme Court, Chief Justice Roberts seemed to suggest that LGBT people were politically powerful.

This matters because of what’s called “heightened scrutiny”, which concerns the equal protection provisions of the US Constitution, especially as it pertains to the political powerlessness of minorities. The standard has always been about historic powerlessness, not current events, but Richard Socarides had this to say in the New Yorker about the supposed political power of LGBT Americans:

“…going directly to Chief Justice Roberts’s point about the success gay-rights advocates had in last year’s election—winning ballot initiatives in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and Washington—I hardly think having to raise tens of millions of dollars to obtain your rights, when they are free to everyone else, would suggest a lot of political power in the first instance. It’s more like good survival skills and ingenuity.”

And talking about how historically LGBT people have suffered from discrimination at the hands of the majority, he pointed out that DOMA was passed in 1996, a time when LGBT people obviously didn’t have political power. He also noted:

“Proposition 8, California’s anti-gay-marriage ballot initiative, was passed not in 1978, or even 1998, but in 2008. And in May 2012—less than a year ago—voters in North Carolina approved a state-constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Rob Portman is still the only sitting Republican senator to express his support. He didn’t have to fall over any of his colleagues.”

[snip]

“Just because a group is able to marshal its resources to undertake what is essentially a Herculean effort to protect itself, in a very limited and targeted way, does not mean it is unworthy of constitutional defense. Or think of it this way: just because the gay teen-agers on ‘Glee’ are accepted, well-adjusted, loved by their peers, and able to kiss on television without consequence in their fictionalized reality does not mean that a poor, young, gay teen-ager living in the red-state South is not having a hard time of it. It doesn’t mean that he doesn’t deserve a day in court.”

I think those are important points, especially because it highlights the fact that some recent political successes for LGBT people doesn’t change the fact that LGBT have suffered from historic oppression and political powerlessness. That is precisely the context in which DOMA was first passed in 1996: The intent of Congress to deliberately target LGBT people for discrimination back then is indisputable.

So, I think it’s obvious that DOMA must be struck down or the equal protection provisions of the Constitution mean nothing. Recent political victories for LGBT people don’t change that fact—or erase the historic discrimination that led to DOMA in the first place.

Equal justice under law, and all that.

Harvest time

We have two olive trees in our yard. The photo above shows what we got this year.

The truth is, we don’t actually care if the trees produce olives or not—I couldn’t be bothered processing them if they did. All we really care about is that they’re big, leafy evergreen trees that provide shade and screen us from the neighbours.

Last year the trees dropped one tiny green olive. This year, it also dropped two black ones, which had already moved well past their peak by the time I found them. In both years, they may have produced more and I just never saw them, but I think it’s funnier to think that three is our “bumper harvest”.

And there we have it: Our big harvest, complete with photographic evidence.

Harsh scrutiny

Conservative Christians make one claim that cannot be allowed to stand: That they’re “victims” because of their religious beliefs. Their assertion isn’t just wrong or stupid, it’s offensive.

Rightwing Christians have been using this ploy for years in somewhat different contexts. However, the one thing that remains consistent is their outrageous claim that they’re somehow being “oppressed” because they’re losing the culture wars.

Writing for MaddowBlog, Steve Benen put it really well:

As much as I hate to break up a good pity party, it's worth noting that conservative evangelicals are not actually oppressed, at least not in this country. They're losing public debates—failing to persuade the American mainstream is not the same thing as persecution—but no one has proposed stopping social conservatives from getting married, or adopting, or serving in the military. When conservative evangelicals get elected to Congress, it's not a historic breakthrough. When social conservatives look for equality, they don't wait patiently for a Supreme Court ruling to decide whether they'll get it.

They're eager to make others second-class citizens, but as these efforts stumble, conservative evangelicals have convinced themselves that they're the real second-class citizens. [emphasis in the original]

Exactly! Their losing doesn’t turn them into “victims” because they’re not experiencing what they do to LGBT people. Benen adds:

It appears social conservatives just don't take criticism well. I'll gladly concede that a growing number of Americans find the religious right's views offensive and narrow-minded, and, conservative evangelicals occasionally find themselves the subject of criticism.

But that's not oppression or discrimination; it's the result of a spirited public discourse. These conservatives have presented their vision to the public, and increasingly, the public is responding with disapproval.

And that’s at the heart of this and my last two posts: Religion itself is not an enemy, but political opinions based on religious views are NOT exempt from being criticised simply because they’re based on religious beliefs. When one’s political opinions are criticised, one is not a “victim”; instead, one is merely a participant in a vibrant democratic process.

I would hope that all sides in any public debate would stick to verifiable facts and keep mocking and dismissiveness to a minimum. When the debate veers into the false or irrelevant, then strong criticism is and should be the result.

But when considering who is a victim, look at who presently has political power and who is trying to deny the human rights—the very humanity—of their opponents. It’s not conservative Christians who are the victims in that equation, and they never will be.

No free pass

Just because someone is religious doesn’t mean they’re not wrong. Or stupid. All it means is that they’re religious.

In my previous post, I said that religion is not the enemy—because it’s not. But that doesn’t mean religious people have a free pass to be stupid: Stupidity demands to be challenged, whatever it’s based on.

Here’s an example: If a rightwing religionist quotes one of those fake online polls as if it’s real, then it’s fair game to point our how silly they’re being for doing so. The issue isn’t their religious beliefs, it’s their exploiting an entertainment device to pretend it has any real-world validity whatsoever. Because such polls never do.

Similarly, if they use discredited social science research as if it’s legitimate, then calling them out on that is not the same as attacking their religious beliefs. Instead, it’s simply pointing out that their supposed “evidence” is no evidence at all.

All of which should be obvious, since no church I’m aware of worships social science research. For that matter, no religion places empirical research ahead of its own dogma. That’s not a criticism, just a fact.

The point is this: When religionists make secular claims—using research, history, reference to law, etc.—then those claims are subject to the exact same scrutiny as any other claim would be. No exceptions.

The reason this is an issue at all is that some conservative religionists take any challenge to their truthfulness or accuracy as an attack on their religious beliefs, and that’s just plain silly. No one really cares what beliefs people hold on matters religious or spiritual, but what they think on matters of verifiable science matters rather a lot: I can’t claim gravity doesn’t exist, to cite an extreme example.

So when religious people claim things about LGBT people generally, or LGBT parents specifically, they should expect to be challenged on those claims. Quite honestly, if they can’t stand such challenges, then they shouldn’t be engaging in debate on public policy because such debate demands harsh scrutiny.

Religion and politics/public policy are uneasy cohabitants. I think that’s as it should be—religion should not dictate public policy any more than government should dictate religious dogma. However, it’s also true that neither one is exempt from the criticism of the other.

In a free society, all ideas are debated freely and openly and those that make the strongest case prevail. Religious-based arguments don’t get a special pass or a leg up on the competition just because they’re religious. I believe that religious dogma must demonstrate intellectual vigour to compete with secular ideas, and not the other way around. That’s because secular ideas start with the presumption of inclusion and fact-based origin, while religious ideas, rightly or wrongly, are perceived to be lacking in those areas.

Secular people get things wrong all the time. The main difference between them and religionists is that secularists are generally more willing to consider the possibility that they’re wrong. As before, your mileage may vary.

Still, just because someone is religious doesn’t mean they’re not wrong. Or stupid. All it means is that they’re religious. And others are not. This is a healthy thing—really, it is!

Religion isn’t the enemy

Religion is not an enemy, though some of its adherents may be. Pedantic, semantic or even romantic, I think it’s an important distinction.

In the battle for the human rights of LGBT people, our richest, strongest and most powerful adversaries are religious people, right? Sort of. Many of those who don the cloak of religiosity are clearly frauds—a kind of “pray for pay”, in which they use religion to make money or to gain political power, or both. Those people are no more religious than I’m from the planet Mars, but their claiming to be “true” Christians (or whatever) sullies the name for everyone else.

That’s the first important distinction. Because for every loud-mouthed religious bigot who tries to use their religion as a weapon to beat others into submission, there are calm, rational people who would never even think of forcing others to accept their beliefs—even when they think the other person is wrong.

Similarly, not all religious belief is equivalent—not even among the most fundamentalist religious believers, the vast majority of whom are not out in the streets trying to make homosexuality illegal, for example, though many probably believe it should be.

What all of this means is that belief isn’t the issue—actions are. That’s because what a person thinks, feels or believes may or may not be interesting to anyone else, but neither is it a threat to anyone until it becomes action.

I mention all this because the most common feature of the fight over marriage equality between religious activists and our side is that there’s too much heat and not enough thought.

I could list all the thousands of ways those religious activists are wrong about LGBT people, I could debunk their claims (and I often do), but they wouldn’t hear me—they probably don’t want to.

The same thing is true especially among some of our friends on the left: They spend so much time attacking the religious beliefs of the right—saying their god is a myth and their religion a fraud—that they don’t even stop to look for a way they might be able to reach their adversaries, to crack the seemingly impregnable shield of religious certainty to connect with the human behind it.

Will Portman found a way: He came out, and now his father—a Republican US Senator from the State of Ohio—backs marriage equality. Sen. Rob Portman is the first—and so far ONLY—sitting Republican US Senator to do so. He didn’t change his mind because some activist screamed that his religion is a fraud, he changed because he loves his son.

The simple fact is that homophobia disappears when heterosexuals find out that someone they like, admire, respect—LOVE—is LGBT. The amount of formal research that proves this is staggering: The best way to achieve equality for LGBT people is for LGBT people to come out everywhere to everyone. It is our humanity that is our strongest weapon in this war, not our slogans, and certainly not shouted insults.

Our adversaries lose when their slogans and shouted insults come up against the reality that we LGBT humans present—our humanity trumps their caricatures of us every time.

Our side’s urge to lash out comes from frustration and also from a real hurt that is caused when our adversaries not only lie about us, but win when they do so. But I suspect that at least some of the fury among our religious activist adversaries (the people, not their leaders) is based on their hurt at having their most basic, core beliefs mocked and dismissed.

Debating religious belief sometimes does involve mockery and dismissiveness. I can attest from personal experience that this is evident among the religious themselves (Protestants mocking Roman Catholics, for example). In a religious debate, that’s probably understandable. Maybe it’s even okay, at least sometimes.

But in the world of secular politics, we ought to at least try to engage humans, not stereotypes, and we ought to respect the right of people to hold whatever beliefs they want to, no matter how strongly we disagree with them—and even when we think their ideas are stupid.

Clearly our adversaries need to learn this, and many will struggle to do so. Accepting the humanity of LGBT people will require them to re-examine some of their basic beliefs. But their inability to easily move beyond their cartoon views of LGBT people, to grow in their own humanity as they accept ours, is no excuse for our side engaging in the very tactics we deplore when they’re used against us.

What I am saying is, as I have so many times before, we must be the change we want to see. If we want our adversaries to accept our humanity, and our human rights that are ours because of it, we must first act like human beings—even when our adversaries don’t—hell, because they don’t! The vast majority of people who are not religious activists are watching the show; which side do we want them to see as being more decent and human?

Religion isn’t the enemy, even if individuals acting under it sometimes may be. I believe we must be careful to not be our own worst enemy, either.

Rage of Thrones

There are times one must put a stake in the ground: The book was better. This video, the latest from the Axis of Awesome (some language NSFW), pokes fun at the folk who have discovered “The Game of Thrones”, perhaps unaware that the story first appeared as books. As so many stories have.

The repeated chant, “Hollywood cannot live up top to the power of imagination” is appropriate enough much of the time, but sometimes Hollywood gets it right. For me, the first “Lord of the Rings” was as I imagined it—but each subsequent one strayed more and more (I haven’t seen “The Hobbit” yet).

Each of us can point to a story that was better in the book or the movie. It’s to be expected. But to be unaware that a movie was a book first—well, that’s kind of a deal breaker, I think.

What do you say? Movie or book: Does it matter to you which is better?

Related: The last time I posted a video from the Axis of Awesome was July of last year.

Imagining a world without hate

This is probably my most pessimistic post ever. Your mileage may vary.

The above video is from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and asks people to imagine a world in which some of the best-known people who were murdered because of hatred were still alive. It asks further for people to imagine a world without hate.

Is that even possible?

I’m not sure I believe that it’s possible for humanity to end hatred for one simple reason: We don’t want to. We humans seem to need to hate other people—the person who has different religious beliefs, who has different skin colour, who was born in another country, who loves someone of the same gender—someone who is not like us, in other words. All human societies are built on a long history of hating “the other”, whoever is not of our clan, our village, our nation—whatever we think is acceptable at the moment.

Even if we wanted to overcome millennia of hatred, the people in power don’t want us to. If they keep us afraid of others, if they keep us hating other people, we won’t notice what they’re doing to us, and then they can do pretty much whatever they want. To keep ourselves and our family “safe”, we will accept terrible restrictions on our freedoms that we would otherwise fight to prevent. We also accept acts against the “enemy” that we would never tolerate in our homeland. Until we do.

Organised religion also has a vested interest in keeping hatred alive. If there’s only “one true religion,” then by definition all others are enemies of one’s god(s). This is the mindset used to justify wars, pogroms, inquisitions and ordinary political oppression. No religion has yet demonstrated a willingness—or capacity—to abandon that mindset; I don’t expect that to change.

The song used in the background for this video, John Lennon’s “Imagine,” begins by asking people to imagine there’s no heaven or hell—central tenets of the world’s dominant religions—“Imagine all the people living for today”. Then he also asks,

Imagine there’s no countries
Isn’t hard to do.
Nothing to kill or die for,
And no religion, too.
Imagine all the people,
Living life in peace.

I don’t think people can imagine that, not really. The point of the song, like the video above, is for people to imagine such a world. But because I don’t think we humans are truly capable of doing that, I certainly don’t think we’re capable of taking the next step: Making a world free from hatred, oppression, violence and war.

All the voting and politicking in the free world won’t change that, nor will the collected prayers of the people who believe in such things. The imagining will happen only when humanity is ready for it, and to date we’ve given precious little evidence that we’re ready.

Still, I can imagine a day when we might be ready. Imagine it, yes, but only just.

What say you?

Now she’s sorry…

Michelle Shocked has broken two days of silence to say she’s “damn sorry”. Does she mean it? Does it even matter?

I’ll admit that the cynic in me notes that the apology and explanation came after most (10 of 11, last I heard) of her upcoming concert venues had cancelled her shows. So, there’s an obvious need for financial self-preservation here (my first thought was, "Oh, NOW she's sorry!").

But let’s suppose she’s sincere in her remarks—and I have no reason to doubt that she may be sincere—does it even matter? She wrote, “I don't always express myself as clearly as I should.” Obviously! All the more reason she shouldn’t have ventured into that rhertorical territory, trying to, well, what, exactly?

As one of the commenters at the BuzzFeed link above put it:

So she spews homophobic hate quite a bit, but she is just stating opinions that some people in the world have. They aren't her actual opinions… She just wants the world to hear those opinions… kind of like preaching… WTF IS SHE EVEN SAYING I CAN'T EVEN…

Exactly. Her excuse is as rambling and confused as her original outburst was. So, her “I don't always express myself as clearly as I should” isn’t just a huge understatement, it’s an after-the fact excuse that itself isn’t expressed clearly.

For me personally, this changes nothing. As I said two days ago, for me she’s become, basically an item of nostalgia, and really nothing more. You could even say I was basically an “ex-fan” long before this all happened. So, while I won’t be spending any money on her work, that won’t exactly be a sacrifice.

The bigger lesson in this is that when artists treat their fans—their customers—with disrespect, they shouldn’t be surprised when there’s a strong reaction. Nor should they be surprised if that reaction costs them financially. People have a right to react—or to ignore the whole thing if they want to.

I have no idea if Michelle really meant her apology—or even what she was trying to say in it. Maybe if she finds a way to expresses herself more clearly she can win back some of the fans that she’s lost. By the sound of it, she’ll have some time on her hands to do that. This is a case where the fault lies in the star herself.

Democracy in action

In the USA, I used to lobby my elected representatives all the time. Here in New Zealand, I haven’t. In fact, the only time I’ve ever contacted my electorate MP about a bill before Parliament was to urge him to vote for the pending marriage equality bill.

He did—on the first reading. Then he voted against it on the second reading, which I didn’t expect. So, I wrote to him again. That email is below, followed by his response and my final response. In the interests of transparency, I’ve included the timestamps from the headers. I haven’t edited the text of any of the emails.

Here’s my “please explain” email:

Date: Friday, 15 March 2013 10:40 a.m.

Dear Dr. Coleman,

Late in August of last year, I wrote to you expressing my support for the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Bill. I urged you to vote in favour of this bill at all stages in order to enact it.

I was pleased that you voted in favour of the bill at its first reading. When I read that Prime Minister John Key had told the National Caucus to vote on the First Reading the way they intended to vote on final passage, I was again pleased because I assumed it meant you would vote for it at the Second Reading.

So, I'm writing to ask why you changed your vote on the Second Reading—why did you vote no when you voted yes on the First Reading? As you know, you're one of a handful of National MPs who changed their vote, and I'd like to know why.

Related, do you intend to vote against the bill at final passage?

Thank you for your time.

Kind regards,

Arthur Schenck

He replied:

Date: Wednesday, 20 March 2013 9:40 AM

Arthur,

Thank you for your email. I always said I would not guarantee my vote beyond the first reading. I supported the bill to the first reading as I believed a clear and factual debate at the select committee stage was in the public interest. My view is that it is too important an issue for parliament to be driving through, and that is why I voted for a referendum. I also took into account the clear tone of the feedback I received from the electorate. I will be voting against the Bill at the third reading.

Kind regards

Jonathan
Hon Dr Jonathan Coleman
MP for Northcote
Minister of Defence, Minister of State Services, Associate Minister of Finance

As is to be expected, I replied again. I tried to be as civil as my passions would allow. You’re free to judge on whether I succeeded or not.

Shocked by Michelle

What do you do when an artist whose work you like offends you by their words or deeds? Do you reject them and flush them from your life? Do you shrug and forget it? Or, something else?

1980s folk rocker Michelle Shocked has, some people are saying, ended her career with an anti-gay rant in San Francisco. It’s a bizarre story, documented fully by Chris Willman on the music blog of Yahoo! (the fullest recounting I’ve seen so far).

In a nutshell, the singer launched into what witnesses called “a tirade” against marriage equality and homosexuality generally. Accounts suggest that it was a pre-meditated attack. What is certain is that it was a stupid thing to do.

Leading credence the suggestion it was premeditated is that she made her remarks in San Francisco—the place where she could be guaranteed to cause the maximum amount of offence. She also was encouraging the use of Twitter, suggesting she wanted her remarks to have maximum impact—and cause the most offence, I’d add.

What confuses so many people is that she has identified in the past as bisexual (in an interview with Chicago’s LGBT Outlines, now merged with Windy City Times) and as lesbian. She has recanted the first and said the second was in error. Regardless, her fanbase has always been largely made up of LGBT fans and heterosexual leftists, sympathetic to the political causes of the LGBT fans.

Michelle’s leftist political activity is well known: She was arrested at an Occupy protest in 2011, she denounced George W. Bush and her best-known album, Short, Sharp, Shocked, has as the cover art a photo of her at a protest, being held in a choke hold by police.

For some fans, it seems impossible to reconcile Michelle’s politics with her rightwing religious beliefs, so they assume some sort of breakdown was involved. But Michelle belongs to an African American evangelical church, and it’s not unusual for them to be leftist on political issues—except for LGBT rights, where they can be as hard rightwing as their white counterparts. In that sense, Michelle seems to fit right in.

So: Where does this leave us? Some are pledging to throw out their CDs (or, these days, delete her from their iTunes playlist…), but I think that’s a little silly, since they’re already paid for. Donating the CDs to a thrift shop so a charity might make some money from them might make sense, but to me, throwing them away seems kind of pointless.

On the other hand, I won’t be giving any of my money to her NOW. One of my favourite albums back in the day was Short, Sharp, Shocked, which I had on vinyl. I’d planned on eventually buying it through iTunes, but I won’t be doing that now. In fact, today I deleted the album from my “wishlist” on iTunes (basically, a sort of shopping list of things I may eventually buy). And, I’m done—nothing more I need to do.

I don’t really care what she says or thinks based on of her religious beliefs. She’s entitled to them, and she’s entitled to express them. But she’s not entitled to expect me to subsidise her tirades against me and my human rights.

Of course, I’ve been down this road before, especially with Donna Summer. Then, too, I backed away from a singer I liked because of anti-gay remarks. Back then, in the pre-Internet Age, the veracity of the claims against her were less certain, and Summer spent many years repudiating the remarks and trying to make amends. Nevertheless, I never again bought any of her albums.

Michelle’s fall is well documented, even if the specific reason or motivation is a bit murky. It will be difficult for her to ever make amends, even if she wanted to (and I don’t know that she does).

The rightwing will claim that Michelle is being made a “victim” for expressing her religious beliefs. That’s utter nonsense—and will be, more often than not, a politically motivated lie. She knew damn well what her fanbase was, she knew how offensive her remarks would be to them—especially in San Francisco!—and she chose to disrespect her fans, anyway. She made her choice, and all choices have consequences—and that includes a choice to express personal religious beliefs.

People must be free to make their own decisions about how to regard Michelle Shocked from now on. Whether they buy her music or attend her shows—or, for that matter, whether they throw out CDs they already own—is and must be a personal choice. As for me, I won’t knowingly subsidise artists speaking out against me and my rights, and that includes Michelle.

Still, the harshest truth is that Michelle Shocked had become for me little more than a bit of nostalgia. Now, she won’t even be that. Nothing shocking about that.

Shaken

Earthquakes are pretty rare in Auckland. This afternoon, we had two within 5 minutes. It was pretty scary.

The first earthquake struck at 4:01pm. It was a light one, only magnitude 3.1, with a depth of 4km and centred about 15km from Auckland. I was sitting at my desk at the time, and felt a couple sharp jolts and rattling in the house, and my computer monitor swayed. It felt much stronger than any earthquake I’ve felt, certainly stronger than the first one I felt in Auckland, just over six years ago.

Roughly five minutes later, we had a second earthquake: It was a moderate quake, magnitude 3.9, about 6km deep and in roughly the same location, 15km from Auckland. This one was a much bigger deal: The house shook and rattled quite a lot and it went on for easily four times the length of the first one, though still only a few seconds (earthquakes seem to last longer than they really do). This one scared me, primarily because it lasted longer, and also because it was stronger. Nigel didn’t notice because he was standing in the kitchen at the time.

What also made the earthquakes scary is that they both happened under Mototapu Island, which is right next to Rangitoto Island—a dormant volcano that was the most recent to erupt, some 700 years ago. Experts say that earthquakes will precede a new volcano for days or weeks. They don’t know where or when one will emerge, just that it’s almost a certainty one will—eventually.

The video at top of the post is of Richard Woods, the Hazard Advisor for the Civil Defence and Emergency Management department of Auckland Council. He explains the earthquake risk for Auckland. In the video below, he talks about the volcano risk for Auckland.

It’s worth noting that the biggest threats to Auckland are still what they are for most of New Zealand: Flooding from storms. Coastal regions are also at risk from tsunamis, something that experts say are a bigger threat than they used to think.

Nowhere is without risk from natural disaster. Life on this planet is far more tenuous than any of us want to realise. So, with the possibility that some disaster could kill us or destroy everything we own, we all ought to live our lives as if it’s our last day—carpe diem, and all that. Most of us don’t do that, of course: We choose to believe that disaster won’t happen.

Disaster didn’t hit Auckland today. It probably won’t the next time the earth shakes here, either. One day, however, it may. And that’s enough to leave anyone a little shaken.



Update: GeoNet's press release has more information about the quakes, including links to information about the 2005 and 2007 quakes.

It rained today

It may seem a pretty ordinary thing to say, but it rained in Auckland today. Sadly, it won’t end the drought—New Zealand’s worst in 70 years.

Last Friday, the New Zealand government declared that the entire North Island is in drought. Much of the South Island is, too. We’ve had a total fire ban in Auckland for weeks (meaning, no open flames/fires, only gas BBQs, no hangi or umu). However, we haven’t yet had any water restrictions.

Other parts of the country have water restrictions as well as fire bans, and the shortage water for irrigation is severely affecting farmers, as shown in the video I posted last week. But, MetService says the rain we received today won’t be enough to end the drought. The Finance Minister said today that the drought could cost New Zealand $2 billion. Consumers have been warned to expect food prices to go up sharply.

We don’t have extensive gardens at our house, so we haven’t had to worry about plants. Still, I did have to water two potted yuccas and some potted parsley. Where we notice the effects of the drought the most is with our fences: The wood has become so dry after weeks of hot, sunny weather that boards have shrunk, making the gaps between the boards much wider—big enough to see through. That hasn’t happened before, but, then, this is a particularly bad drought.

Climate scientist Professor James Renwick told TVNZ’s Q+A programme that climate change means that "what we call a very warm year now will be a cold year in 50 or 60 years' time. What we'd call a dry summer now will be getting closer to the normal summer in another 50 to 100 years' time." I’m unlikely to live to see the worst of it, but that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t care about it. The choices and policies we make now could help prevent or, at least, improve the situation then.

So, the view out the window in the photo above was very welcome. In fact, I sat and watched it rain for a little while; since it’s been so long without it, it was kind of novel.

And that’s why for us it really was news that it rained today.