Alternatively Speaking

Courage, Clarity and Conscience: An Anectodal Guide To Quitting Your Job

2010-12-08T12:10:00.000-08:00

Below, a dear friend expresses concerns over my decision to split from an institution I had worked for over five years. My position appears below my friend's message. I post it here on this public blog for the sake of both posterity and as a humble guide to anyone else contemplating leaving his or her job in these dark times. If the people are to prevail, courage, clarity and good conscience must be cultivated and nurtured.

Q

Well. I finally read the letter. It feels bad, is all I can say. She obviously invests in Authority as a concept. This faith of hers will catch up to her. It is clearly a weakness that she thinks is a strength. I do wish you were a little bit more willing to deal with (manipulate) other people's weaknesses and needs. I know you are taking the high road here, but no one else knows this, and you're the one who's out of a job. This could be considered your weakness, you know: the moral ground. It just might kill you. Be careful, because its not worth that. Not this kind of fight. Maybe others, but not everything stands for everything. M_____'s stance maybe emblematic of The Man, but your silence and refusal to 'play' makes you more of a threat to yourself than The System. Why don't you work for a political organization? Have you ever?

talk soon, H.

“Each time society, through unemployment, frustrates the
small man in his normal functioning and normal self-respect, it trains
him for that last stage in which he will willingly undertake any
function, even that of hangman.”

"The corporate employee “does not regard himself as a
murderer because he has not done it out of inclination but in his
professional capacity.”

--Hannah Arendt from "Organized Guilt and Universal Responsibility”

"The mass of those who serve systems of terrible oppression
and state crime are not evil. They are weak."

--Chris Hedges

Hi H_____

Well, the passages quoted above essentially capture why I felt I had
to resign my position at the school. Don't get me wrong, I have no
martyrdom complex though it may appear that way on the surface. But as
the quotes above by Hannah Arendt so clearly put it, unemployment, or
the threat of it, can make monsters of any one of us . . . if we, both
collectively and as individuals, allow it. By quitting the way I did,
I accomplished several important goals: First, I denied her the
further ability to put me through the wringer. Second, I left under my
own power. Third, as I expressed to B____, I denied her, and
unfortunately B_____, the continued benefits of my skills. Finally, I
kept my self-respect, which is devalued in class societies in general
but especially under Capitalism, but at least to me, is more important
than any individual job or benefit I may have to forsake in order to
preserve it. For me, my mental health and self-worth is a
pre-condition for anything else I may do in life.

This really hit home to me earlier today after reading these pieces in
the New York Times (see here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/10/education/10education.html and
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/08/nyregion/08schools.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a2)
on the streamlining of the process that in the past have kept teachers
run afoul of the system, for whatever reason, in these so called
"rubber rooms." What struck me is how most of these people allowed
themselves to be subjected to this demeaning practice of being stuck
in legal and professional limbo until their fates are decided. For
some, like the individual close to retirement, I could fathom it. But
for most of the rest, I could only think of that passage, I believe
from the bible, that goes "what does it profiteth a man all the riches
of the world, if he loses his soul" and of the above quote of Chris
Hedges that " those who serve systems of terrible oppression and state
crime are not evil. They are weak." M_____ is weak. I am not and that is
why I need not stand behind authority, especially at this point in the
accelerating descent of Capitalism and its institutions into the
dustbin of history, if we are lucky, or, if not, the abyss with all of
us going along with it. Capitalism is dead. It killed itself.

Now, to be fair, I would not quite go as far as pegging M____ as an
outright participant in state crime and evil. However, she has
certainly placed herself, seemingly squarely, in the camp of the
establishment. To extend the point further, her romantic involvement
with a tried and true member of the security apparatus of the state to
me shows that, while not quite there yet, there likely is a latent
capacity for her to become a willing executioner. I simply cannot
fathom, even as supposedly a liberal-progressive as she fancies
herself, much less a radical-progressive, that one would have or
establish a link to to someone (a CIA Interrogator!) working in
perhaps the darkest corners of the security apparatus of this country.
The stench, to me, would be too great and simply should be anathema to
any thinking, aware and conscientious person.

You are absolutely correct in that M_____ sees her attachment and service
to the establishment as a strength and a means to assert her
conditional (thus tenuous) authority. However, as you also said, she
is in for some major disappointment and, more immediately, my
semi-forced departure is going to cost her in the long run. Yes, I
could have manipulated the situation but that simply means I would
have had to go along with the game and out-maneuver her within it. I
did not want to give any legitimacy to the process by my participation
(sort of what I think should happen with the dog and pony show that
are elections in this country) and I normally do not like to contest
something on my opponent's home floor. Besides which, there was
nothing for me to contest as I had already decided during the summer,
as you are aware, that I was not staying on at the school. All that
happened is that I left a wee bit sooner than I planned. Such are the
plans of mice and m . . . people :-).

Overall, as the situation with Julian Assange (wikileaks) shows, there
is a price to be paid for defying authority. If we truly want to
overturn this rotten order, we must practice paying the price. This
includes acts of defiance both large (like Assange's) and small (my
own). Again, no martyrdom complex; just the realization by me that a
stand had to be taken no matter what the short . . . or long term
consequences are. I hope you now can understand why I acted as I did.
For me more was at stake than a job. A gauntlet had been thrown and if
I didn't respond forcibly now why, and under what wherewithal
(emotional, intellectual, ideological . . . etc.) would I do so when
the stakes are higher. Like anything else, using your resolve and
relying on your integrity takes practice. Use it or lose it.
Unfortunately, for most Americans, it seems, the path of least
resistance seems to be the norm. For example, appearing in Scientific
American "Professor Emeritus of Natural Resources and Ecology &
Evolutionary Biology Guy R. McPherson points out, “79.6% of
respondents to a Scientific American poll are unwilling to forgo even
a single penny to forestall the risk of catastrophic climate change."
This from a supposedly more intelligent and enlightened audience. It
does appear that "good Americans" are going to outdo and put to shame
"good Germans" doesn't it?

Postscript: While I did not respond to it directly, I will do so now. Far from my silence and refusal to "play" being more of a danger to me than the system, the existence of this creative space does show I do have a voice. In addition, you try as best as is possible, as I said in the main post also, to not fight on your enemy's "playground" or strictly speaking imitate plays from his or her playbook.

This is precisely what has been the tact of so-called progressives for years now epitomized by the strategy of lesser-of-two-evil voting. In practice, what that has meant is many a movement suffering death by strangulation or suffocation within that graveyard of movements: the Democratic Party. Now, we find ourselves without a party, movement, advocate or whatever that speaks for the mass of the politically and economically excluded. At this point in history that encompasses the bulk of the population.

Similarly, I did not wish to be buried by a process that is rigged for my defeat and that I could more efficiently and effectively neutralize by dispensing with altogether. Far from being silent, my actions, and not just quitting, but doing so resolutely and decisively in spite of the state of the present economy, speak much louder than words. Basically I said "Take This Job and Shove it!" (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnhhjGavEq8). Actions always speak louder than words.

As far as my activism, the closest I've come since departing Internationalist Socialist Organization years ago to being part of anything is considering joining the Socialist Equality Party (International Committee of the Fourth International). Their grasp of the present state of things is, I feel, impressive. However, I do have some differences with them and honestly I am not sure if anything can be done at this point except brace oneself and let things run their course. This reminds me of Villanova versus Georgetown in the 1984 basketball NCAA championship game. Not only would the masses have to be very well organized, but also, like Villanova that year, they would have to play the perfect game to win. Interesting that this happened in 1984.

I must say, this has all been worth it, no matter what else comes, just for the experience. It is interesting how cowed people have become(and just 40 years after the Civil Right's Movement and 30 Years after Johnny Paycheck) that rather than simply supported I've met with, well, fear. Like if a job is the most precious of things and it is eternal or, at least until death anyway. Also, like I should place no confidence in my skills and abilities which, considering the obstacles placed before me, have always seen me through. Sure we all have to eat but is that simply what we want to be reduced to; survival at all costs. Even if that means stripping away what it means to be human? Can we all say moooooooo! I have to wonder if Julian Assange (wikileaks) had thought the same way, was affected by his more cautious supporters or even detractors, we would have ever seen the material his organization obtained see the light of day or if it even would have been made available to wikileaks at all. As Mark Jackson, former Knicks player and now NBA commentator on TNT would say, "come on Man! Y'all better than that! I am, so I did. Yes I did say "take this job and shove it!"

My Review of MX622AB

2009-05-14T21:41:00.001-07:00

Onlineshoes.com

The MX622 leather shoe is a versatile trainer for your athletic activities. From working out at the gym to a run around the park, this sporty shoe makes a comfortable choice. The durable leather and breathable mesh upper keep feet cool, while the rubber outsole delivers traction on a variety of ter...

Nice

justanavgjoe Brooklyn, NY 5/14/2009

Sizing: Feels true to size

Width: Feels true to width

Pros: Good Traction, Comfortable

Best Uses: Walking, Pavement

Describe Yourself: Gym Rat

Arch Type: High Arch

I already had a pair of these and bought two more. I use these for everyday wear and they're comfy. I painted the "N" icons white to add a bit a flair to the shoe. Too bad New Balance does not produce them like this out-of-the-box. At least not that I know of with this model. Bottom line, good athletic shoe for daily wear as well as workin' out.

Personalized For Me By Me (FMBM)

: Picture of Product

Personalized For Me By Me (FMBM)

: Picture of Product

()

The Hierarchy Of Needs and Thermo-dynamics

2008-12-16T14:09:00.000-08:00

Below are my comments on Maslow's "Hierarchy of Needs" model for human fulfillment. According to Maslow's model, humans have five basic needs that can be arranged in a pyramid like fashion. These are: Physiological Needs (at the top), Safety Needs, Needs of Love, Needs for Esteem and, finally, Needs for Self-Actualization (at the bottom). After the top tier need is secured, according to Maslow, we seek in successive order the fulfillement of the rest. Here is what I had to say:

I like the scheme presented here describing and contextualizing the basic human, and I might add, at least with the top tier need for survival, the animal instinct for survival.

I would only extend it further to explicitly take into account the laws of thermodynamics (i.e. matter cannot be created or destroyed, the universe tends toward a state of disorder or entropy). The implications of these Laws for, to use a dated term, mankind hit me a number a years ago.

It seems to me that from law of entropy one can draw a direct line to our present predicament. Because all creatures strive to ensure their survival and that means securing food, shelter and, in the case of our species, clothing, then it follows that the best way to do that from an individual standpoint is to, on one hand over-produce (preferably by exploiting others) so as to never run out and, on the other hand to hoard. This to me is the material basis of greed; The instinctual fear of not having enough and starving.

Moreover, is this not the basic defect of market economies or ooooh Capitalism? The system over-produces, the elite hoard as much of the surplus as they can get away with and the masses are left increasingly gasping. However since it is the masses that produce the surplus, squeezing them ever harder tends to reduce the rate of surplus creation because the masses cannot consume (buy) at the increasing levels necessary to raise the rate of profit. It is in the forms of profits, after all, that the Capitalist elite hoard the surpluses created within the system. Thus new means have to be introduced to keep it all going. This is where debt and financialization come in. Through these techniques or mechanisms the elite can continue their hoarding and the masses can keep up consumption. Except that, as we see today, this is a edifice built on quicksand and will eventually sink into the depths. This is partly because of the exhaustion, in its many forms, of the masses and, of course, resource limits (i. e. Peak Oil, Climate Change, water, soil and air pollution . . . etc.). In sum, while we as species have created these massive economic edifices so that only a few can delusionally believe that through the hoarding of massive wealth they could permanently stave off entropy, in actuality they have succeeded in accelerating the effects of the law of diminishing returns as well as entropy on an individual and planetary scale. This, by a supposedly intelligent species.

Stunning Liberty

2007-09-20T09:50:00.000-07:00

Below are comments (on an article by Noami Wolf) I posted on the commondreams.org comments section regarding the tasering and arrest of Andrew Meyer after he had attempted to ask 2004 Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry why he allowed his victory to be stolen away by Republican electoral shenanigans. After seeing him in complete non-action while a citizen's right to free speech was stunned out of him, I think we all know the answer.

Yeah this guy just wanted to be “youtube famous.” I guess the same people that are saying this as well as belittling Ms. Wolf want to be “commondreams comments section famous.” If they are not progressive minded, why then not attend to websites that more closely match their points of view? Why, go to websites looking to be offended or looking for opportunities to be hipper-than-thou? Dudes, if this was a prank by the student this means the cops are doubly stupid. First, for showing everybody what brutes they really are and, second, for allowing themselves to be drawn in by this supposed prankster. Any way you slice it, this was an attack on not only this student, but the body politic. If by by body politic we mean the the people and their right to self-rule.

I agree with Ms. Wolf. Like Kent State over 40 years ago, this incident represents a litmus test for the American people. it is either Fight or Flight! From all appearances, the choice, flight, has already been made. Forget about Kerry, he ’s an elite tomato can. Rather than see one of their own dismantled like that, the other students could have all placed themselves between the Gestapo wannabes and the student being attacked. They could have also just surrounded the cops and let them know they will be hurting no one today. I know that is challenging authority. But so was the Declaration of Independence challenging established authority. So was the Civil Rights Movement challenging authority. Authority that has turned tyrannical should and can be challenged. None other than Abraham Lincoln stated that:

“This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or exercise their revolutionary right to overthrow it.”

and

“The people are the masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert it”

How about that radical Thomas Jefferson:

“And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that his people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms…The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

Whatever their warts these men understood that liberty comes at a price. Often a very steep one. The time, as Ms. Wolf noted, has arrived. Will we as free people individually choose to be the next Crispus Attucks or the next Anne Frank?

Reflections On Keith Olbermann And The President Who Cried Wolf

2007-01-14T12:08:00.000-08:00

Recently Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s "Countdown" in his monologue entitled “Bush's Legacy: The President Who Cried Wolf” (found here: http://www.truthout..org/docs_2006/011207A.shtml) weighed in on the course the Administration will follow in pursuit of its aims in the Middle East as laid down by President Bush in a nationally televised address to the country. While Mr. Olbermann’s indignation and incredulity over the path of escalation over diplomacy chosen by the Bush Admistration is certainly deserved, there are some real weaknesses inherent in his line of thinking. We can start with how he seperates the two party duopoly from the course the Admistration has followed since . . . well even before 9/11 and that he gives the mythical American people more credit than they're probably due.

The two party duopoly has supported all that this Administration has done from the start. They are not concerned about the lives of American soldiers, much less the lives of Iraqis. Put simply, both wings of the SINGLE party are committed to the maintainance and expansion of the American Empire. Their concerns are two fold. On one hand, they realize their "Project for a New American Century" has hit a major road block and, on the other hand, are deathly worried about the ramifications domestically and internationally of this massive failure of American Imperialism. As Black Commentator put it a while back; "the pirates are lost at sea and don't know how to find their way back."

I wonder if the war had been a "cake walk,” as originally claimed by the desktop warriors in Washington, The NY Times and The Washington Post, would the American People (meaning mostly white folks of course) have soured on the War? I would surmise, probably not. As Scott Ritter, of UN Weapons Inspector fame, put it: "the American people are not against war, they're against losing." A comment that succinctly captures the White Supremascist mindset not only of the American elite but also a major part of its White subjects who not having quite the same stakes at risk within the Empire will want to cut and run when things do not go smoothly. I think it is this glaring weakness that is at the heart of the tepid and frankly inane so called anti-war movement. A truly principled anti-war movement would be animated by a desire for restitution and justice FOR THE VICTIMS of this war. That the American military is hemorrhaging badly (not a bad thing in my estimation) would be a tertiary rationale not the core motivation. Regardless of failure or success, this war, like the war it is most frequently compared to: Vietnam, would not be any less a "Crime Against The Peace." It was began on the basis of lies and is simply about lucre and power. For this offence against humanity several Nazis were executed or imprisoned for life following their trials at Nuremburg. This is a truism that I think is frequently lost within the debate, centered as it is on American losses, amongst the so called Left in the US.

This brings me back to Mr. Olbermann. As indignant and on point as he sounds, the stance he takes in his commentary ultimately leads to a blind alley. He gives out free passes to some of the Republicans and essentially the entire Democratic Party who, by the way, could stop this war on a dime at this point by withholding funding or initiating impeachement proceedings. The problem is that the Republicans would blanch at such moves and, in any case, the mealy-mouthed Democrats have already made clear neither de-funding of the war nor impeachment is remotely on the table. They're just trying to cover their asses and tamp down dissent on their Left. In addition, Olbermann has nothing to say about the larger socio-economic system (YES, CAPITALISM!) that is at the heart of this resource war as well as many of the coming catastrophes of this 21st century. In the end, Olbermann's protestations, much like FDR's actions during the Great Depression of the thirties, seek more to contain the System's self-destructive tendencies and save it from itself than killing the disease that the System is upon humanity.

Letter to Joe Bageant - Liberals And The Anti-War Movement: Enablers For Empire

2006-11-15T04:55:00.000-08:00

What’s up Joe! It is your friend from Brooklyn wanting to say hello as well as weigh in on your latest piece. As always, you express your opinions in the most colorful manner. I am glad that in your piece prior to the present one you connected with folks from the other side of town so to speak. My parents are from Dominican Republic and when I was there last summer I witnessed the extreme poverty but also the greater sense of community. I mean people actually visit each other’s homes for no particular reason and social life is not mediated through the mall, the mass media/entertainment complex or cell phones. I tell you every time I see someone with a cell phone or the earpiece to one sticking out of their ear I cannot help but cringing. I’ve always felt that much communication is lost during a phone conversation. You cannot read the other individual’s body language, which in turn impacts, no so positively, tone and delivery. Then, with cell phones, there is the added ingredient of being always within reach but not necessarily in touch. As a result, conversation tends to become staid, banal and just plain mindless. This is why Kurt Nimmo (you’ve probably heard of him, his blog is at http://www.kurtnimmo.com/ ) derisively calls the 40 and under crowd “the cell phone generation.” A group by and large wrapped up in its own self-centeredness and thus unable and unwilling to engage the pressing issues of the day. Even if it’ll ultimately result in great harm befalling them.

Which brings me to your latest piece where you bemoan the state of the nation and its somnambulant inhabitants. I kinda feel that, like me, you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired! Perhaps I mentioned this in one of my earlier messages to you but after the rot (and I don’t mean the actual physical rot but the social rot) that was laid bare by hurricane Katrina, I’ve never felt the same. I just felt this deep despair coupled with rage. Black people were largely abandoned and left to drown. Meanwhile that goddamn witch Barbara Bush looks around the Dante’s inferno that was the New Orleans Superdome at that moment and says:

And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them. (1)

All I could think of was how do White folks continually allow the worst elements from amongst them to rise to the top, or remain there, and lead them. These people are barbarians and represent the most backward sections of humanity. There should have been riots in every major city in this country! Yet, what did we get? Yep you guessed it, hand wringing by the so-called Left and outright hostility or indifference by all these compassionate conservatives (sic) we have around here. More recently, after the suicide of three prisoners in the notorious Guantanamo concentration camp, we get some of these nuggets:

Colleen Graffy (the US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy on the BBC’s Newshour):

It does sound like this is part of a strategy—in that they don’t value their own lives, and they certainly don’t value ours; and they use suicide bombings as a tactic. Taking their own lives was not necessary, but it certainly is a good PR move.

Guantánamo base commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris:

I believe this was not an act of desperation, but an act of asymmetrical warfare waged against us.

Wait a minute let me get this straight, three men who were being held incommunicado, subjected to torture both physical and mental for several years and robbed of all hope took their own lives as a PR move or as a way of attacking their captors! Do Americans really buy this bull crap! It is the absolute epitome of hubris, denial and just plain bone-headedness that someone could think the suicide of these desperate men was something other than their choosing the only means of escape they felt left open to them. Any one of us would likely do the same considering the situation.

Like you, I lament the condition of what passes for the Left in this country. This morning I was reading about the eviction of the urban farmers in LA from their land and saying to myself will the people in this country ever learn or will the Barca lounger approach to resistance continue to be the norm. Yeah, we’ll just chain ourselves together, engage in peaceful civil disobedience and have a party while we’re at it. Uh hugh, that’ll stop’em. Here is what Daryl Hannah, speaking on Democracy Now, describes what happened next:

There has been a massive show of force. I can see hundreds of police cars and I can't even tell you how many police and storm trooper outfits. And they're executing an eviction, which is -- seems to be unnecessary. Because there was a deal on the table -- the Annenberg Foundation and the Trust for Public Land had put an offer on the table for Mr. Horowitz. And I don't know why they're wasting taxpayers' money this way. These are families who depend on this food. Literally, they're subsistence farmers.

I see hundreds of police officers. They've got band saws, they've got a teargas canister pointing right at us, a big gun with a teargas thing on it, bolt-cutters, generators, and cables, and climbing people in climbing gear. The officers -- some of them are putting on rubber gloves. I don't know if that's to handle some of the people down below the tree who are in lockdown mode. But hopefully they won't be using chemical weapons. (2)

Later in the program Tezozomoc, the elected representative of the South Central Farmers says:

We basically continue today, we’re going to court. One of the things that will happen is that as usual, Mr. Horowitz's arrogance will probably get him in a lot of trouble. One of the things that he has done is the destruction of personal property. The bulldozing of the plots is -- we are going to go challenge that situation in court today, because that is destruction of personal property. When somebody is evicted, you can't destroy their property. You have to give people an opportunity to take that property with them. Even after the eviction. And that happens – you know, if you're evicted out of an apartment, they can't just destroy your stuff. They tell you, “ok, you have 10 days, and in 10 days you'll have three hours to get everything out of there.” And that's one situation that he obviously has overestimated his authority. (3)

I quoted them at length Joe because both speakers are indicative of what’s wrong with the supposed Left. Hannah can’t understand why they, the powers that be, are doing this and that “hopefully they won’t be using chemical weapons”. Is she really that naïve? They do not give a flying fuck about the little people. The money on the table is not the issue in this particular instance. Whenever they, the peons, even slightly get out of line, we’ll have to show them who’s boss. Just like we did with the Transit workers in NYC. Yeah, and we can *only hope* that the same folks that justify and applaud torture and collective punishment won’t resort to chemical weapons. Hell, let’s take them to court! That’s what we’ll do! Great Plan Edison! Nevermind, that the court system is part and parcel of the system of domination and serves the interests of private power, it’ll be fair and balanced. Sorta like Fox News.

What a crock of shit man. I’ve come to the conclusion that the supposed Left in this country has gotten so fat off the New Deal and the over-arching golden age of capitalism, that they have lost their “cojones.” They seem to have forgotten how power works. It’s like they keep getting their asses kicked and still insist on the same tactics that just failed them. Whenever el Pueblo has won anything in this country fighting the system it has seen blood spilt. That remains true today and will remain forever true as long as class societies exist. Fredrick Douglass once said, “power yields nothing without a demand.” That was his way of saying if you want something you’re gonna hafta kick some ass. The Right clearly understands this and this is why they are consistently against gun laws. Just picture someone like Al Franken or Leslie Cagan on the eve of the American Revolution talking about moderation. Shit if the American patriots didn’t bayonet both of their asses the redcoats surely would have. It is not by accident that our right to bear arms is enshrined in the Constitution. Even the “Founding Fathers,” greedy Mercantalist Capitalists that they were, understood the dangers of a tyrannical government with no hard means of reining it in. At this point reasoning with the system will not work and barely ever did before. Reforms, even if possible, only buys the system time and are short-lived anyhow. Things have gotten way too far out of hand. I have friends who, though meaning well, go to the latest anti-war demo and think they are doing something other than making a meaningless spectacle. Hello! Your puppets, teach-ins, snazzy placards, street theatre and such are being met with rubber bullets, sometimes live ones, mace and batons. Yet, the war went on and goes on. Then again, maybe that is the point. Go out let yourself be fenced into designated free speech zones while “protesting”, call the whole smelly shitty surreal scene a demonstration of popular resistance and then go home and ask “mirror mirror on the wall who is the fairest of them all?”

I am of the opinion that since the state is consistently pulling a Tiananmen Square on us we are going to have to eventually Iraqify this joint. I just do not see any other way out. Yes, build those grass-root organizations and initiate the movement. However, be ready to fight it out because power will most certainly not be relinquished peaceably. That has never been the M. O. of any ruling class and the American one seems to be particularly nasty and brutish. In the end, those who close off all avenues to peaceful change invite violent change. In the neo-con’s warped version of this adage, they did just that with Iraq and now, even more distinctly, it is happening with Iran. We desperately need a change in course confronted as we are by Peak Oil, global warming, economic meltdown, when the real estate bubble goes POP, and Fascism and its handmaiden military adventurism. For the good of themselves as well as the rest of humanity, U. S. citizens must put on the brake big time on the grasping planetary hegemon that is their country.

In any case, one way or another we will see civil war or revolution here when the contradictions and looming ecological disasters come to a head. In the not so distant future there will be no more big-box stores full of cheap crap from countries paying slave wages. No more, as James Howard Kunstler put it, “easy motoring within this drive-in utopia.” Certainly, there in no room any longer for a set of folks such as American liberals who function as a faux opposition and are movement killers rather than movement makers. Move-on, whom I sorely wish would do just that, comes to mind here. We are essentially at the point now where this regime in particular, but also the system as a whole, gangster-like character has become readily apparent. Trouble looms ahead, from all angles, for the U. S. Capitalist ship of state. They’ve tacitly acknowledged as much by getting Kellogg Brown and Root to build these so-called “detention and processing camps” to supposedly deal with “an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S.” (4) Why, one might be led to ask, would they be expecting such a large movement of people thus ostensibly necessitating these camps and are these camps reserved just for “illegal immigrants?” No, like the Iraqi people we’ll have to fight if we are to rid ourselves of this oppressive system. Otherwise, it will keep trudging along until it self-destructs like the tape recorder in Mission Impossible after being played.

I know you realize all this shit Joe but for one thing, I know you’ll understand what the fuck I mean and for another, I just want to show you the love. Heaven knows, the way things are going, we may find ourselves shoulder to shoulder in one of KBR’s detention centers waiting for the Grand Ole Opera to play our exit tune while munching on Soylent Green. Let’s just hope it doesn’t come down to that and people in this country rise up and throw the bums out if not give’em the Lenin treatment.

Your Brother in Arms,
Johnnie Q

Letter to Joshua Frank

2006-11-14T07:33:00.000-08:00

Below is a letter written to Joshua Frank in response to his article entitled " It's 2004 All Over Again . . . " Nothing that I have seen in the days following the elections, including Rumsfeld's resignation, has changed my mind about the socio-political situation in the country and what will have to happen for progressive change to happen here. Considering how prolific a writer Mr. frank has been, I thought I would get a more sanguine response other than a message thanking me for writing. My guess is that although Mr. Frank clearly knows what is up with the two party duopoly, he still cannot quite bring himself to see what the utlimate implications are. As I've mentioned before in previous blog entries, the crisis within global Capitalism in general, and American Capitalism in particular, will utlimately lead to an explosion. In the next few months to a year the Democrats will be exposed for what they are; the ruling class's B-Team. As such, they will simply deal with aesthetics rather than a real change in course whether it has to do with Iraq or the ongoing economic race to the bottom U. S. workers are in the thick of. Eventually, we'll see either civil war or revolution in the streets in this United States of America.

Dear Mr. Frank,

I just finished reading your article on the DV website and I could not agree with you more. I have been reading your pieces for some time now and I think with this piece in particular you really hit the nail right on the head when you accuse the Liberal intelligencia of covering their corporate subsidized asses rather than call a spade a spade. I have long since (from the beginning of the Clinton years at the latest) gotten wise to the game of the Democratic Party. Its role, much like that of what in the electrical business we call an "explosion proof fitting" which dampens electrical sparks in volatile conditions (such as in an auto body shop), is to dampen and derail movements from below. Otherwise, revolutionary sparks could lead to an explosive revolution and the overturning of the now clearly obvious rot at the center of the Capitalist system. The system will not make it out of the 21st century. The question is will humanity not make it out with it. Things do not look to peachy as it stands now.

I would add that I think part of the problem with liberals, in addition to what you mentioned in your article, is that deep down they understand that at this point, real change in this country which assuredly means overthrowing the rule of Capital is likely, ala Mao, only going to come from the barrel of a gun. For obvious reasons, this is something they fear and I fear also because of the likely enormous bloodshed. However, paraphrasing what someone once said, if you close all avenues to peaceful change, then all that remains are violent ones. Again, Please do not read me wrong, I am not so much advocating change through violent means as I simply recognize we've been hemmed in really good. Now we'll have to fight and essentially Iraqify this place if we and likely the rest of humanity hope to see the other side of the 21st century. I believe the 60's were probably the last chance in this country to change things relatively peacefully. Things have gone way too far down that slippery slope at this point and the ruling class understands that. This is why it has braced itself for the violent upheavals that will inevitably come (perhaps afer the "pop" in the real estate bubble) by putting the finishing touches on the fascist/police state.

As a person of color I, as well as other people of color, have never really been allowed a permanent seat at te table of American prosperity. What Katrina exposed, other than the apparently worsening effects of global warming, was this very fact. This is why it did not surprise me in the least when in numerous newscasts, black folks were referred to as "refugees." From the very founding of this country when African slaves were calculated to represent 2/3 persons, there has been an unspoken but evident truth within the mainstream that we are not Americans; we are a people without a country. Thus, abandoning us to the whims of the fates, to borrow a bit from Greek mythology, came easy to the rulers, who may have also seen it as a convenient backdoor pogrom much like, I suspect, many white folks. I speak of all of this only as way of explaining my next point. That is, people of color in this country, and studies have bore this out, in general have not seen this country as the shiny city on a hill; a beacon to the world. We never could afford to. This why people of color in this country have always been in the thick of progressive change and why by and large, except for some sellouts (think Condosleeza and Colin cancer here) never bought into the bit about spreading democracy or eliminating WMDs. We saw it as the Willie Hortinization of a whole country!

All I can say is keep on hitting the Fat Democats. If by some miracle a third party presidential candidate could get past the grossly unfair ballot placement laws, raise enough bread, survive the Diebold voting machines, stave off capital flight, a military coup or an assassination attempt, this country might have chance.

Peace, Q

Demanding Democracy

2006-06-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

Below is a letter written to the mayors of Champaign and Urbana, Illinoise. Both of these officials have decided that efforts of the Socialist Equality Party to get candidate Joe Parnarauskis on the ballot, through the collection of signitures on a petition, can be restricted by Champaign Public Library administrators who maintain this activity cannot occur on a public sidewalk in front of the library. Nevermind that the gathering of signitures is required by law for anyone seeking to be placed on the ballot in elections in that state and that such activity is constitutionally protected as free speech. It is quite ironic, as I also note in the letter, that while U. S. soldiers are fighting and dying abroad to bring democracy to the Middle East, here at home it is democracy that is fighting to live.

Dear Mayors Schweighart and Prussing,

For the past few weeks I have been monitoring the situation in your respective cities concerning the signature gathering process by the Socialist Equality Party in its efforts to be placed on the ballot. As a person of color it pains me very much to see that 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement, we are still seeing citizens right to choose restricted or even denied. As you surely realize, more than just fighting for the rights of people of color, one of the fundamental points of the Civil Rights Movement was the demand that all citizens be accorded the same rights. By unconstitutionally hindering the efforts of the SEP to collect the required signatures its candidate, Joe Parnarauskis, needs to be placed on the ballot, you are denying Mr. Parnarauskis’s right under the banner of the SEP to present himself as a candidate and the people’s right to vote for him, or, not to vote for him.

I find it quite curious that the leadership of this country continuously trumpets its commitment to democracy and even goes so far as launching wars in an effort to spread it yet, in the recent past there has arisen, to put it mildly, questionable circumstances surrounding elections in this country. The Florida recount fiasco in 2000 and the murky situation in Ohio in 2004 immediately come to mind here. The elections in your cities cannot be allowed to become another example of faulty democracy here at home. Because of the rationale, based supposedly on spreading “freedom and democracy,” now used to justify our country’s wars abroad, the whole world is watching to see if rhetoric matches reality.

Finally, if hypothetically speaking, assuming Mr. Parnarauskis gets on the ballot and he were to win the election, this would mean that had he not been allowed to run because of fundamentally illegal or unconstitutional actions by authorities such as yourselves, a sizeable portion of your respective counties citizens, who would have voted for him, would be denied representation. This would thus amount to taxation without representation and we all know what happened last time there was taxation without representation in this country.

As a concerned citizen, I therefore demand that both of you as elected representatives allow the democratic process to play itself out. It is not only constitutional, legal or rational to do so, but it is the right thing to do.

Sincerely,

Johnnie Quezada

Brooklyn, New York

June 24, 2006

Tawana Brawley and the American Imperial State

2006-05-29T08:04:00.000-07:00

The following is a comment posted to the blog (www.reinstatealtonmaddox.com) of ALTON H. MADDOX JR. of Tawana Brawley fame. To this day the case is held up in the mainstream press as an audacious hoax by a Black female teen of questionable standing. At his website Mr. Maddox sets the record straight.

For a long time I wondered about the facts surrounding the Brawley case. I was barely out of my teens myself when the case hit the news. It is good to finaly hear the facts from the "horses mouth" himself. One of the things that stands out for me, and perhaps Mr. Maddox will agree, is the symmetry between the Brawley case and the case made by the Bush regime for war without end.

In both cases, unwanted facts are suppressed, people are smeared, official misconduct is endemic and widespread, the Democrats, the supposed defenders of the people, are knee deep in the couldron of lies, innocents are punished while the perps run free and, finally, good old fashioned racism and white supremacy rule the day. While the rest of the world my be shocked and alarmed over the actions of the US post 9-11, Black people were hardly shocked or surprised at all. White folks in this country have been running plays from this playbook for centuries now. It is just that in this post 9-11 dystopia we are living in, this United States of AmeriKKKa have decided to export and expand their M. O. to cover the entire planet and done so, unlike during the wonder years before 9-11, in a no holds barred and explicit manner. Thus, as Ms. Brawley can surely attest to, Abu Ghriab was no abberation, for the White American mindset by and large has always been quite accomadating to this sort of thing (http://www.withoutsanctuary.org/). Fortunately, the Iraqi people and leaders such as Hugo Chavez are saying Ya Basta! to Yankee imperialism and depradations. When will we see the same here?

Reinventing the Wheel and the Coming Attack on Iran

2006-05-19T14:50:00.000-07:00

Genocide seems to be something that our species have been at for some time. For example, new anthropological evidence suggests that while Native American peoples were victims of genocide following the arrival of Europeans in the “New World,” Native Americans themselves displaced, through genocide, the originally of African descent residents of the lands they settled. It is in this sense that the Nazi implemented genocide (The Holocaust) of European Jews during WW II is nothing unique. Many more Africans died during the Middle Passage to the so called “New World” than the Nazis were able to kill. What the events of the 20th century, from the carnage of WWI and II to the gulags of Stalin, the killing fields of Vietnam and on to Pol Pot's Cambodia and Gulf War I highlight is not the invention of genocide, but its perfection. The Nazis industrialized the killing process. Stalin's gulags represent a model for the genocidal totalitarian state. The Nazis cousins, the Americans, (can any serious knowledgeable observer doubt the relation, both historical and at present, between the USA and Nazi Germany) have virtualized the killing. A reinvention of the wheel? Hardly, just one that rolls along a lot more smoothly. So while Los Angeles gained some noteriety in the late 1980's and early 1990's (via its insipid gang wars) for its “drive by shootings,” the American military state has given us “fly by shootings” otherwise known as “shock and awe.” No need for nasty concentration camps, cattle cars or tedious record keeping; raining death and destruction from above without leaving the comfort of home is the American innovation in the art of mass killing. More than terrifying weapons of mass destruction, cruise missiles, so called tactical nuclear weapons, daisy cutter bombs, remotely controlled air drones and the like are typically American in their Lazyboy (of recliner fame) approach to warfare and genocide. The resort to war and the return of naked imperialism as opposed to the growing untenability of neo-colonialism is a surefire sign of an economic system attempting to keep it legs underneath it. Though history does not repeat itself or at least not in the same way, Capitalism's inherent contradictions leaves few options in overcoming the crisis that are forthcoming from the system's shortcomings. As in times past, it is war at both home (in the form of economic austerity and loss of civil and political freedoms) and abroad that the Capitalist class has turned to in order to stave off collapse.

If Capitalism's mantra is “grow or die” its caretaker's, militarism, motto is “attack or die. The rationale for the coming attack on Iran by the American hyper-State will no doubt include control of the Oil, defense of the dollar, protecting Israel and, the catchall reason, upholding US hegemony. However, imperialism is an integral part of Capitalism's schizophrenic personality. The US, being the leading capitalist state, cannot, in the end, act otherwise. The system is in crisis. Its bare cohesion is maintained in the US by, on one hand, the real estate bubble that is propping up consumer spending and, on the other, massive inflows, largely from China and Japan, of foreign capital that, so far, has permitted the continuing ballooning of the massive US trade and fiscal deficits. How long can this last without some correction? What will the correction look like? Well, the correction is here and it looks awfully like the correction of an earlier time. The same solution Germany and Italy turned to in the 1930s: war and imperialism. Rather than an anomaly, it is part and parcel of the logic of the system for states at the center to react to threats to the viability of the system by turning to military adventurism abroad. For the US, again, the leading capitalist state, this will allow it to divert attention from the gathering Katrina size economic storm with its accompanying steep class stratification at its center, bolster its weakening economic standing vis a vis the rest of the world and, most critically allow it, under the guise of fighting “the war on terror” to put the final pieces of the puzzle in place for a police state. It is no wonder that the US more and more with each passing day looks like a fascist state. Mussolini himself said fascism can be better defined as corporatism; the melding or joining of the corporation and the state. Clearly, this is what has happened in the US and what is really behind the push to attack Iran just like it was in the run-up to the attack and occupation of Iraq.

All this smoke being blown over Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program is just that – smoke. Much of the liberal commentary, while warning off the US from attacking Iran, argues from the standpoint that Iran, even if it were after the bomb is still 5 to 10 years away or that doing so without the imprimatur of the UN would be against international law. For this reason it is imprudent to attack Iran now though, of course, perhaps not in the future. This is little more than American Exceptionalism (1) and racism all rolled into one. Obviously, Iran, has no less right to nuclear weaponry than the US who still stands as the only country to ever have used the devices, at present is brandishing these weapons left and right (especially against Iran) and even now, in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty as well as the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, is hard at work developing the next generation of these terrible weapons. It is also a bit peculiar (sic) that the Western (read white) countries object most strenuously when it is a black or brown, especially if non-Christian, country that aspires to join the nuclear club. Supposedly the mullahs (a term that acquires distinctly bigoted undertones in Western usage) are too wild eyed and irresponsible to be trusted with the bomb. Unlike the Western countries who reserve that privilege for themselves despite public pronouncements by at least a few of their number (the US and France), attesting to their sober and ponderous decision-making (sic), that they would seriously consider using nukes even on non-nuclear states!Getting UN approval is no bargain either since rather than upholding international law, the UN (owing especially to its undemocratic structure that allows any of the five permanent members of the Security Council to submarine any resolution or initiative arising out of the much more inclusive General Assembly) is little more than a nuisance to be thrown aside when in the way of one of the major powers or a rubber stamp faithfully nodding its head in approval of decisions already arrived at by them. The law, whether international or domestic, comes down to enforcement. Who is it that will enforce international law and rein in the two most egregious outlaws , the US and Israel, in the world today? For now, it seems that, much like the lead-up to WW II a policy of appeasement, at least by the European members of NATO, is being pursued in regard to an implacable US administration's drive toward yet another fiasco of a war. Iran would be wise to brace themselves because an attack is in the offing for reasons having to do with present day realities as well as because this what our species has somewhat reliably, even if not consistently, done in the past.

Instead of presenting self serving arguments against Iran's supposed quest for nuclear weapons that preserve American Exceptionalism and hegemony, commentators of all stripes would do well to argue for, in the short term, the restraining of the American juggernaut by the rest of the world, the complete elimination of nuclear weapons (they should never have been invented in the first place) and the construction of mass movements that can eventually overturn the Capitalist order so that its crisis inspired wars can be avoided from the get go. Otherwise, the question will remain for humanity, as Noam Chomsky put it, as one of hegemony or survival.

____________________________________________

(1) American Exceptionalism is the notion held by many in the US that the country is a beacon onto the world. That it alone can stand above all others and serve as a model to others of a democratic society based on free market principles. In an earlier incarnation, when the US had not yet arrived at the top of the Capitalist order, American Exceptionalism was known as Manifest Destiny. The idea here is that God bequeathed the North American Land mass to white Europeans and that it was their destiny to build a strong nation that would one day stand above all others socially, economically, politically and, of course, militarily.

Bidding Adieu To Pope John

2006-05-16T14:10:00.000-07:00

A relative of mine asked me what I thought of Pope John Paul II's passing a while back. Here is how I responded:

The Pope? Well, the best I can say is that I’ll miss him not too much more than I’ll miss George W. Bush when he’s gone. I mean, other than Bush, the Pope, whoever he may be, has always been prime material for my jokes. May the good Pope rest in peace if not piss. I guess I should have some respect for the dead but hey it is not like he showed poor Terry Schiavo any mercy. While he was allowed to die on his own with some dignity, Ms. Schiavo was forced to exist in a vegetative state for years long after every reputable physician not paid by her side of the family or the forces that were backing them said she had mailed it in. The good Pope would have none of it however. As God’s right hand man he claimed that it was wrong before the eyes of God for “man” to take another’s life. Nevermind that in Ms. Schiavo’s case “man” was not taking a life but extending it way beyond the point nature would have otherwise allowed. I think the good Pope should have looked all around him. This way he would have realized there is not much respect for the sanctity of life on display in this tortured world of ours. Why just a few blocks away from the Vatican [until recently] sits Silvio Belusconi who found it more convenient to kiss up to our frightful leader George W. Bush and back his war of choice than worry about some nosey Italian journalist begging for her life after being kidnapped in Iraq by a resistance group. Fortunately, her safety was secured even if her escort, who died in a hail of bullets fired by American occupation forces as they approached a checkpoint, was not so fortunate. Perhaps his traumatized soul will meet up with the good Pope and ask him about the respect for the sanctity of life being shown by good Christians in Iraq. My guess is that the good Pope is too busy making sure he isn’t rear ended by many of the boys who, through the ages, were victimized by their fine parish priests. All of whom, as is obvious, did their dirty deeds under the watchful eye of the Church. I would thus advise Pope John, now that he is in the great holy city in the sky, to watch his back; those robes come with a quick release.

King Kong (Or How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Blonde Bombshell)

2006-02-12T16:49:00.000-08:00

When I first caught the trailers for the latest version of the 1930's classic “King Kong” all I could do is roll my eyes. 'Not this again,' I said to myself. While I have yet to see the latest version of the movie, from what I saw from the trailer and heard from those who saw the latest edition of the movie, except for the special effects, the basic plot has not changed much from earlier incarnations of the movie. In all its editions, whether the 1933, 1978 or the new 2005 version, the movie remains a story about an over sized ape living on a isolated island with all kinds of pre-historic creatures who falls for a blonde bombshell that had arrived as part of an expedition to the island. While the big ape has love on his mind, others in the in the expedition see a business opportunity and use the Blondie bombshell (Fay Wray) to lure the ape onto a ship that transports him to NYC where he ultimately meets his star-crossed end. Interestingly, the original “King Kong” appeared in 1933 the same year Hitler rose to power in Germany. I make the connection because while Hitler rose to power in part by demonizing Jews, a major part of the allure of “King Kong” to the largely white American audiences of the time was the coded messages appealing to the racist sexual taboos prevailing in American society, then and now, against inter-racial romances.

The movie's plot can be seen as warning to both whites and blacks of the consequences, mostly borne by blacks, of crossing the racial boundaries etched onto the map of American society. In his review of the 1933 classic Tim Dirk writes:

The major themes of the film include the struggle for survival on the primitive, fog-enshrouded, tropical Skull Island between the ardent and energetic filmmakers (led by Robert Armstrong), the hero (Bruce Cabot in a part originally offered to Joel McCrea), the voodoo natives, and the forces of nature (the unique Beast creature); unrequited love and the frustration and repression of violent sexual desires. However, the primitive, giant ape must also struggle against the forces of urban civilization and technology when it is exploited for profit and returned for display in New York City during a time of economic oppression.

While the movie can certainly be seen in this light, it is conspicuous by its absence that Mr. Dirk does not pick up on the racial undertones emanating from the movie. Historically, black people from the time of slavery in this country have been presented as less than human and more akin to apes. Black men in particular seem to act as a lightning rod for white male sexual fears and insecurities while at the same time, paradoxically, the black body, in the mind of many whites, is exoticized and desired. I remember well how during the protest marches following the murder of Yusef Hawkins in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn by a group of white teens who mistakenly thought he was the same guy having a relationship with a neighborhood girl, white residents lined the streets holding aloft water melons and yelling “monkeys go home.” Out of all the lines a black man dare not cross, to have relations or even think about having relations with a white woman remains one of the strongest taboos in American society. Allegedly violating this taboo was the reason Emmit Till, accused of raping a white woman, lost his life and the case of the Scottboro Boys, who were also accused, wrongly, of raping a white woman, became a cause celebré and one of the most important cases in trial law in American Jurisprudence.

Some of the major themes Mr. Dirk misses are first, that Kong has always been shown in all three pictures without genitals. This may be simply a nod to the MPAA (to avoid an X rating) and an effort to avoid controversy in light of the hypocritical American squeamishness about dealing forthrightly with human sexuality. However, it could also be the case that if Kong is symbolically standing in for all Black men, then what better way to convey black male impotence than by emasculation? Also, to hammer the point home, Kong's demise will come about by way of his toppling off the largest (at the time, The Empire State Building) phallus symbol for whites. Second, much like Africans who were ripped from their ancestral homes and brought to the “new world” to exploit their labor, Kong was lured from his island abode to serve as a freak attraction, as Dirk correctly notes, and make his handlers boatloads of money. Third, the strongest undertone in the movie is Kong's (read black man) heavy infatuation with blonde haired, blue eyed Fay Wray. In the original he battles giant snakes, spiders and even a pterodactyl in keeping her from harm. Strangely, there is no female Kong, Queen Kong if you will, nowhere to be seen in the film which bespeaks of the historic invisibility of black women and the deification of white women in American society. The object of Kong's desires then is not a female of his own species, much like black men's desire not for their own, as imagined by many white people, but for white women. Finally, all does not end well for Kong, once in NYC he finds himself in a world completely alien to him and lashes out. That and cavorting with a white woman is too much for the powers that be and so, much like the bestial black man he likely symbolized in the minds of most white audiences of the film, Kong needed to be made an example of. As the PBS “Lynching in America” website notes:

Although rape is often cited as a rationale, statistics now show that only about one-fourth of lynchings from 1880 to 1930 were prompted by an accusation of rape. In fact, most victims of lynching were political activists, labor organizers or black men and women who violated white expectations of black deference, and were deemed "uppity" or "insolent." Though most victims were black men, women were by no means exempt.

Sadly but not unpredictably, for his transgressions Kong is run up the highest pole in town and brought down hard. What Mr. Dirk failed to realize was that as the chart found here shows, especially in the American South, lynching after Reconstruction became the preferred method of dealing with black people who committed transgressions, real or perceived, against white folks.

Audiences, whatever their race, of the original film (and even of the most recent edition if they're historically conscious), would likely not have failed to notice the parallels between Kong's violent demise and the practice of lynching. The handwriting on the wall would be clear even if not openly spoken of; if you are a black man and you mess with a white woman, you may wind up like Kong! No doubt that “King Kong” as a film, no matter what version, does encompass the contrast between modernity and primitiveness, “unrequited love and the frustration and repression of violent sexual desires,” as well as the dangers of commodification. However, next to all of that, there is also an undercurrent in the Kong films of white racial superiority and its concomitant stake in maintaining racial purity which, in turn, leads to strong policing of racially defined sexual boundaries. This film, to my mind, represents just one more of those instances where a work embodies a number of messages. However, a few of these messages do their work sublimely rather than explicitly. My new title for the film would thus be (with all due respect to Stanley Kubrick) “King Kong (Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love The Blonde Bombshell).” Kong, though I grant a simple minded creature, threw caution to the wind and for that he paid with his life.

My Reaction

2005-10-01T14:10:00.000-07:00

Do you see the same fallacy I do? I never said I am necessarily advocating violence, individual or otherwise. When one finds oneself in struggle with an implacable enemy that is supremely ruthless, the enemy dictates the form that one’s response takes by necessity. If one's enemy resorts to the most brutish forms of violence then one is compelled, on pain of death for failure to do so, to respond in kind. Unlike other forms of conflict resolution, violence demands reactions on those it is practiced upon based on necessity, in order to live another day. not choice. It is either flight or fight. Except that in this case, the long overdue overthrow of a decayed and decrepit socio-economic order, otherwise known as Capitalism, there is no place to run if the better part of humanity is to avoid its continuing brutalization at its hands.

Beyond the philosophical technical issues in dealing with violence, particularly state violence, things have gone way too far for even a solid mass movement to prevail over the system. We've foolishly allowed the government to amass too much power. The legal framework for military dictatorship is about complete, elections can be counted on to be rigged (as Stalin infamously said: "it is not who casts the votes but who counts them"), traditional mass organizations such as unions have been decimated from both within and without, the two party system is nothing more than a sham and the masses have not shown an ability to snap out of the collective hypnosis engineered by the mass media. I think the folks at WSWS are crazy to think there is even a glimmer of hope for a mass movement to succeed in terminating the Capitalist system in a relatively peaceful manner. If by some miracle it were to happen, it would be the first time in its history that Capitalism did anything even resembling "going quietly in the night."

It is always important to know your enemy. The neo-nuts are OK with the use of torture, have bombed two countries back into the stone age as some of them have gleefully put it, engineered a backdoor pogrom targeting black folks in the wake of hurricane Katrina, are apparently about to attack their next victim Iran and did not hesitate to have Cindy Sheehan arrested. The people in power are not simply negligent or even simply criminally negligent; they are simply criminal. Like any hardened criminal, and they've proven this hands down already, when push comes to shove, they will kill. Moreover, they will kill en masse if they have to in order to stay in power. In the year 1989 Tiananmen Square was immortalized as a symbol of how the state reacts when seriously challenged. Ultimately the system's contradictions will explode and we will either have civil war (meaning a struggle between opposing Right wing forces) or revolution (meaning a struggle between opposing Right and Left wing forces) in this country. Either way, it is going to be painful and bloody. I believe the people at WSWS are either incredibly naive, simply want to position themselves to replace the current rulers or are simply holding their cards close to the vest. I guess we'll find out.

The WSWS Responds

2005-10-01T14:06:00.000-07:00

Dear Johnnie,

The Socialist Equality Party and the International Committee of the Fourth International, which publishes the World Socialist Web Site, is the organizational continuation of revolutionary socialism, or Marxism. We are indeed fully aware of the determination of the ruling class to maintain power. Some of the issues you raise in your letter were addressed in a response to very different letters from yours, published at: http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/exch-d271.shtml and http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/rad-a12.shtml. The WSWS is opposed to the perspective of individual violence, and we see the essential task of socialists today as the education of the population and the development of a mass, conscious, independent, democratic and socialist movement of the working class. This is the purpose of the WSWS. However, we do recognize the inevitability of revolutionary upheavals as the ruling class seeks to crush any such movement with counterrevolutionary violence.

I hope these links answer your questions. If you have any further questions, please let us know.

Regards,

Joe Kay for the World Socialist Web Site

Here comes the pain

2005-09-24T17:41:00.000-07:00

Well, it looks like Iran is indeed the next stop on the traveling road show called “the war on terror” Today, The International Atomic Energy Agency, in consultation with Washington passed a resolution to bring, albeit at some undisclosed date, Iran in front of the U. N. Security council for possible sanctions over its nuclear energy program. Do you think the likely aftermath of Hurricane Rita has anything to do with this? You bet it does. The one, two combination of hurricanes Katrina and Rita spell disaster for U. S. domestic energy production. CNN is reporting that there has been “substantial damage” to the Port Arthur oil refinery. If it turns out that the U.S. is facing oil and gas shortages of 20 to 40 percent in domestically produced energy, then that means that energy has got to come from somewhere else. The only obvious candidate, other than Iran, is Venezuela who, by the way, was the lone vote against the IAEA resolution referring Iran to the U. N. Security Council. Chavez, however, has proven a tough nut to crack and he is not quite the drop of poison in the soup that Iran represents to the Zionist cabal in Washington. Besides, he is actually offering to give oil away directly to those in need in places like the South Bronx. So that leaves us with Iran, who have threatened to cutoff oil and pull out of the Non-Proliferation Treaty if those supporting the E. U. 3 and its master the U. S., dragged it in front of the U. N. Security Council. Iran, rightfully, sees this as an affront and provocation and has said repeatedly it will not back down from its legal right under the Non-Proliferation Treaty to produce nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. A treaty which its neighbor Israel has refused to sign and who has ignored numerous U. N. resolutions relating, among other things, to its possession of nuclear weapons. With the looming political and economic turmoil yet to come in the wake of the two most devastating natural disasters in U. S. history look for the neo-nuts in Washington to resort to their tried and true method of distracting attention to their self made debacles, at home and abroad, by initiating another war. Never mind, that this may plunge the world over the precipice since China and Russia do not look like they will go along with Washington’s designs. The neo-nuts have made up their minds and have apparently twisted enough arms and paid enough people off to set the stage for an escalation of hostilities against Iran. It seems whether natural or man made the only response to disasters that can from the neo-nuts is to lash out and attack. For Iran and the rest of us, we better brace ourselves because, as the WWE’s Brock Lesnar’s entrance theme put it, here comes the pain.

What's it going to take?

2005-09-23T08:54:00.000-07:00

Your article “Katrina, the Iraq war and the struggle for socialism” certainly gets to the point. It echoes my complaints about United for Peace and Justice whose political stances, for me, represent a political dead end. What is the classic definition of insanity? Answer: doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. WSWS is absolutely correct in that the system cannot be reformed or rehabilitated. Protests, marches, vigils, petitions, conferences, teach-ins and the like are fine and dandy for raising awareness. However, as, again, the above named article spells out this did not work to stop the present war in Iraq before hand and will not stop it from continuing. If humanity is to survive, as Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez forthrightly noted in his speech at the U. N., Capitalism must die. The sooner, the better.

My only concern, and it is a big one, even should a mass political movement develop here in the U. S., does anyone at WSWS really believe the ruling class will simply go away? The above named article does not hesitate to note the brutality of the U. S. ruling class in attempting to subjugate Iraq and we all saw what is in store for us in New Orleans. In short, what I want to know is that, even with a reasonably coherent mass movement, what happens when the momentum of a mass movement is met by the road block of the National Guard, The Police and, not to mention, the Blackwater mercenaries? The state understands what is at stake and this is why it quickly moved to confiscate people’s weapons in New Orleans in the same way it is seeking to make sure Iran is relatively unarmed as well. If you are not armed you are defenseless and therefore easy pickins’. Let me make myself clear, I am NOT advocating violent revolution but as someone once said, “when you block the path to peaceful revolution, you open the doors to violent revolution.”

What I have come to suspect over the last several years is that one of the hidden, but key reasons, the Left in this country has been so weak is that deep down we all know what is going to take to change things in this the belly of the beast and frankly few of us are up to the task. For many years now the Left has engaged in little more than symbolic protest at best and, at worst, narcissistic showboating (largely engaged in by privileged white middle class folks who make up much of the “official" Left and have much less to fear from the police). They really do not want to fight because that would involve, at least for the preponderantly white middle class Left, losing their privileges, tenuous as they may be at present, and real pain or even death. Nevertheless, I can’t say I blame anybody. No matter how noble the cause, nobody wants to die. However, let us be honest and frank, before this the most brutal ruling class of all gives up power, there will be rivers of blood spilled. This is the lesson I’ve learned from the whole mess in Iraq and was confirmed in my mind by the scenes in New Orleans. For the American ruling class, it appears force is now the only option. Again, the question is, can the Left deal with that?

Trouble With Those "Little Eichmanns"

2005-02-19T09:01:00.000-08:00

Hearing Ward Churchill on DN!, I can only affirm that I wholeheartedly agree with his characterization of some of those working in the WTC as “little Eichmanns.” The way I see it, many of these traders and analysts would very likely be the same people running the slave trade 300 years ago. Also, by the Pentagon’s own criteria, as Ward explains, of what constitutes a legitimate military target, the WTC and certainly the Pentagon are targets that can be struck at will. As far as his choice of words, the reaction to how he chose to put into words his analyses of 9/11 is interesting in itself. I find it very perplexing that someone like Tom Frank (In a piece that was published in The New Republic) can say things like:

What I needed was a Republican like Arnold [Schwarzenegger] who would walk up to [Goff] and punch him in the face.

these weren’t harmless lefties. I didn’t want Nancy Pelosi talking sense to them; I wanted John Ashcroft to come busting through the wall with a submachine gun to round everyone up for an immediate trip to Gitmo, with Charles Graner on hand for interrogation.

Maybe sometimes you just want to be on the side of whoever is more likely to take a bunker buster to Arundhati Roy.[1]

And is cheered on. He is actually putting out hits on people. This is something Churchill has not done. Yes Churchill used provocative language but the Right says things that are much worse and I do not hear anyone, other than progressives and the victims of the venom, who are promptly muted by the mainstream press by the way, crying bloody hell over it. At bottom what this really is about is that many in America can dish it out but cannot take their own medicine. It speaks volumes about the double standards prevailing in this country when people such as Bill (phone Sex) O’Reilly, Michael (just a plain) Savage and Rush (that big fat idiot) Lindbaugh can make whole careers out of verbally bludgeoning Left and progressive folks. These guys can be as ugly as they want to be and not worry about winning people over while the Left must be nice and walk on eggshells. Well, I don’t think so. You must fight fire with fire because if you don’t, the steamroller is simply going to bowl you over all the more easily and quickly. This is going to be the case whether you are “nice” or not. The Left has to realize that we must be tough and uncompromising when it comes to our principles and how we choose to express them. If our opponents don’t like what we say in whatever way we choose to say it, although it’s the truth, then tough. If the shoe fits . . . wear it!

A guy like Tom Frank likes to talk a lot of trash but he cannot personally back it up. Instead he calls for proxies to do what he is too much of a punk to be able to do himself. Taking this mindset of talking tough because someone else will actually have to do the dirty work and extending it over the whole country we find, as Black Commentator notes (in an article calling for the draft) that

Anti-war appeals based on morality have only marginal impact on those who believe they are the living embodiment of human civilization – or even God’s plan on Earth. White America is largely unmoved by the deaths of foreigners, especially people of color. Indeed, a huge slice of Euro-Americans actively revel in punishing dark people in lands they cannot find on a map – a vicarious thrill experienced from a great distance.[2]

What BC’s comments note here is the reason why Ward Churchill said what he said and in the manner he did it. This is not about being nice and simply trying to win people over. Many people cannot be won over no matter how sane and erudite the reasoning is. As BC’s comments explain, moral appeals are meaningless when they fall on deaf ears. Ears, by the way, who suddenly regain their ability to hear when the call for murder and destruction, or at least the acceptance of it when it occurs, are directed against official enemies or the demonized other. American Blacks have understood all to well throughout their history in America how whites that were not part of the ruling elite would nevertheless carry out, often with glee, the racist prerogatives of that ruling class with whom they often only shared a similar skin color. For Blacks, as well as Native Americans, this often translated into slavery and death. Moreover, as Churchill pointed out during his DN! Interview, Eichmann was not only a person onto himself but symbolized all the many Germans, who like him were average, everyday people “simply doing their jobs,” who kept the Nazi war and death machine going. They were many “little Eichmanns” in

Germany

then just like there are many “little Eichmanns” in this country today. Any way one puts it, it all adds up to death and suffering for millions of people around the world.

[1] "Mr. Frank's Fatwah" http://www.gnn.tv/A01120

[2] “Threat of Draft Will Tame Warlike U. S. Populace” http://www.blackcommentator.com/126/126_cover_draft_pf.html

Liberals and Hot Air America

2004-12-22T21:26:00.000-08:00

What can be made of something like Air America? For those that do not know, Air America is the liberal answer to the right-wing dominated talk-radio world. Here in New York it airs on WLIB and has replaced programming that was geared to the Afro and Caribbean American community which had been a staple for years. Listeners from these communities, however, are crying foul! Instead of being able to listen to news, announcements, music and discussion of issues relevant to the Black community, whether Afro or Caribbean, we are treated to white liberals holding court. Only two of the hosts broadcasting during Air America’s allotted hours here in New York are black and they are stuck with white co-hosts. Why is it that in a city with a large population of people of color we get so little representation over the airwaves? This is not to say that Air America is not a better alternative to the right-wing crap, along with sports talk, that dominates radio. But surely, at least in the case of WLIB, there is programming that would better serve local communities than having the likes of Al Franken carry water for the Democratic Party. It appears that Air America will mostly play like a long moveon.org ad devoted to trashing, no doubt deservedly so, the Republican Party while bringing up the rear of the cowardly and servile Democratic Party. Talk about blowback; now progressive folks have their own to deal with in the guise of Hot Air America. It is too bad liberals either can’t or won’t recall the words of Malcolm X 40 years ago when he spoke of the twin headed hydra that these bourgeois parties really are: ‘One comes along and stabs you in the back (The Republicans), the other one (The Democrats) comes along and pulls out the knife a wee bit and says they done something.’

Rather than recognizing the truth of Malcolm words, liberals, like Linus of the children’s cartoon Peanuts who forever is clinging to his blanket, cling to the Democratic Party. So then, what is Air America? Air America is Chock-Full O’ White liberals; served fresh every day. They say: listen to us because we give you a Rush without the bitter aftertaste. O’Reilly, you can Factor us in to your day and not worry about making stuff up. We guarantee you no one will dare get Howard Stern with us here at Chock-Full O’ White liberals . . . er we meant Air America. Yeah, we here are all just doubting Thomas Friedman or is that Thomas Friedman has no doubt about us. We’re all Americans by golly! Well, on a more serious note, not too long ago I reached the conclusion that, as bad as the neo-cons are, it is the liberals that have been the principle obstacle, before even getting to the neo-cons or right wingers, standing in the way of true progressives. I say “true” not in some dogmatic holier than thou sense. I say true in the sense that true progressives stand on simple principles such as ‘do onto others as one would have them do onto you” or Kant’s moral maxim that "Act on that maxim and that maxim only, which you can at the same time will to be a universal law of nature." Liberals in deed and in thought violate this simple maxim. Imagine that just this one slogan of U. S. liberals were taken to its logical conclusion. That slogan is the cry to “let’s take our country back!” Following Kant’s maxim it is easy to see that, should this cry be taken seriously and universally applied, after liberals finish taking back “their country,” Native Americans can then, and with all justification, say ‘now we want back our country.’ Likewise, African Americans can say we want back our freedom and full restitution made for taking us out of our country and stealing our labor. Surely liberals would not be square with that because their opposition to the status quo has evermore been cosmetic and thus concerned with appearances and tactics.

Ultimate aims, such as overturning the rotten capitalist order and embarking on the path toward an open and egalitarian society, is not what they are after. They just make it seem like it is. This is why Michael Moore proceeded to endorse the killer of the Balkans Wesley Clark (a tactical move, he claimed on WBAI’s Democracy Now!) and why an atypical liberal organization like moveon.org can, without a sense of historical irony, wrap themselves in the flag, declare “anyone but Bush,” and support an open imperialist like presidential candidate John Kerry. This supposedly all in the name of defeating G. W. Bush. Never mind that his ostensible replacement is fellow Skull and Boner John Kerry who dutifully did his genocidal part in Vietnam and, more recently, when he voted for both the Patriot Act and the war in Iraq. For liberals, the bizarre call to ‘take back our country’ and the chant of ‘anyone but Bush’ takes precedence over everything. Liberals also seem to miss the point that for many around the world, most recently Haiti and Iraq, the U. S. flag, as a symbol, is little different than the Nazi swastika. In many places where it has flown death and destruction on a mass scale have accompanied it. Indeed, in his book “Rogue State,” William Blum writes that “Since World War II, the U.S. military has been involved in over 200 military operations that have resulted in a conservative estimate of between 10-17 million people killed.

As damning, and it is in this aspect that they have been the bane of radical/progressive movements, is that liberals have continually posed as being on the right side of history and so have been able to funnel change from below within the U. S. into a completely bankrupt electoral system. It is the Democratic Party that has been the vehicle of choice in this game of bait and switch. Once properly contained within the Democratic Party many a radical/progressive movement in the U. S. has languished there and finally disappeared. At key points throughout U. S. history even those movements that have been able to keep from being trapped by the blandishments of the liberals, such as the Black Panther Party, have been so hostiley met by the liberal establishment that it compromised their survival and left them totally, rather than partially, open to the worst depredations of the hidden fist, as Thomas Friedman of the New York Times put it, inside the glove of the state. Like fish, movements need a welcoming sea to swim and thrive in. Liberals have invariably either poisoned the sea or changed the water. The killing of Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition at the behest of the Democratic Party in the late 80’s (with Jesse’s help no less!) comes to mind here.

To pose an analogy, if radical/progressive movements were a prizefighter, liberals would be the equivalent of a bought off corner purposely giving all the wrong advice while giving only superficial support to “their” fighter. Meanwhile, the opposing fighter, representing the neo-cons or right wingers, is winning practically every round handily. But is this not the point? Liberals primp and pose as a better alternative while all the while leaving untouched the fundamental structures of power that are at the root of the ills plaguing both U. S. society and the world. With friends like liberals we do not need enemies. It would be much wiser, for black people in particular, and the working class in general, to forget about the cheap wares proffered by liberals and their Democratic Party backers. We need to develop an independent political perspective along with a movement to express it that then seeks to go to the root of the problem which, for those who want me to name names, is the class and racial caste system embodied by the Capitalist order. As events in

Argentina

, and

Venezuela

in reaction to the abortive Coup, showed recently, when the people decide to take matters into their own hands, it does not matter whether this or that politician is in power. Whoever it is either has to respond to the will of the people or he or she will find him or herself out of office or, if need be, dead.

Superman No More

2004-12-14T11:11:00.000-08:00

Well the Military-Media-Industrial complex has been caught at it again. After months of legend making and narcissistic bereavement, it officially has been finally revealed that ex-Cardinals football player Pat Tillman died from friendly fire. Though alternative media outlets months before had reported that Tillman had died not from enemy fire, as had been claimed by the military and trumpeted by the mainstream media, but at the hands of his own fellow troops, only now has it become official. Like the Kleenex snatching story of Jessica Lynch that came before it, the Tillman saga is yet another public relations stunt gone sour.

Whoever he may have been as a person, and it appears that he, to put it succinctly, was a real life Captain America who believed in justice, truth and the American way, Pat Tillman was presented as this supremely un-selfish individual who gave up a lucrative professional football career in order to serve his country. Clearly his motivations cannot be questioned. However, his naïvetivity and lack of historical memory is clearly apparent to anyone who knows the history of U. S. interventions that typically are not undertaken to protect citizens at home but instead to protect private elite interests and power abroad. Had Pat Tillman familiarized himself with U. S. history he would today be making tackles playing in the NFL instead of being dead and buried.

The fact that the Military-Media-Industrial complex is ever vigilant for a story, any story, which will prop up the ideological and emotional underpinnings of the U. S. global war on terror says much about the way this war is going and the shakiness of the support for this war amongst the U. S. population. While Bush barely won (by cheating at that), the recent elections clearly showed that a large portion of the U. S. population either has doubts about this global war on terror as it is currently being run or is outright opposed to it. So, a hero or heroine is needed to capture the hearts and minds of the masses. Jessica Lynch was the first in line to play that role and then when that blew over Tillman arrived just in time to, like Superman, save the day. Even more so than Jessica Lynch, who was more damsel in distress saved from those savage Iraqis (sic), than heroine, Pat Tillman, because of his prior fame and physical attributes (white, male and blond), could be easily presented as Superman; a Superman who had gone down fighting for the love of country. Unfortunately, this Superman was brought down by kryptonite shot from the weapons of those on his own side.

The Military-Media-Industrial complex understood intuitively, and likely consciously as well, that Tillman, because of the intersection of race and celebrity he embodied, represented the opportunity to give the white masses, especially of the fundamentalist right, a hero they could truly embrace. Here was an individual who could proudly bear the S of Superman’s outfit on his chest. He had the physique, projected the right attitude, died seemingly in a blaze of glory under enemy fire, was already well known, had proved his manliness on the toughest of all gridirons; the NFL and most importantly was white. But like all heroes, it is all about who is the beholder. While the S painted on Tillman might have meant Superman to most of the white masses living in the U. S., to others, such as those oppressed by the

U. S.,

whether directly or indirectly, that S stands for supremacy; as in white supremacy. Any perceptive reader of the comic book, especially the older issues that are closer to the original, can pick up on the white supremacist undertones conveyed by the character.

The Superman of comic book lore could do no wrong, he was as strong as 200 men or better, faster than a train and could fly . . . like an eagle. Being created in 1938, only seven years before the U. S. would stand virtually alone out of the ashes of World War II, Superman as a character embodied the can do spirit of America but also the American exceptionalism (and its distinctly racist flavor) that had always been that spirit's companion. Like Superman, America was/is invincincible and can do no wrong. It is these two qualities (we can do anything and only we are fit to do so) that ultimately lied at the heart of who Tillman was as a person (why else would he leave fame and millions on the table) and lies at the heart of America's psyche (i. e. 'we are bringing democracy to Iraq and only we are uniquely qualified to do so'). While Tillman’s death was a tragedy on human terms because he died in a war that has little to do with actually combating terrorism (even recently Bush said he was unconcerned about Osama bin Laden!) and thus was needless, his passing showed once again the pusillanimous nature of the Military-Media-Industrial complex and that Superman or Superwoman does not really exist. It is up to us to get through the lies and obfuscations and free ourselves.

Gary Webb Remembered

2004-12-13T19:57:00.000-08:00

As I read the news of reporter for the San Jose Mercury News Gary Webb’s death I felt deeply saddened. Here was a solid reporter whose life, as have been countless others, was snuffed out by the system in general and the mainstream press in particular. Whether or not his death was really a suicide or not, it is clear that one way or another, it was the system that killed him. For simply doing what any good investigative reporter should do, Webb was dragged through the mud by the mainstream press who, because they purposely overlooked the story Webb broke and because they also serve as guardians of what is and is not acceptable public discourse, had to make an example of him as a warning to all who would dare cross the line.

For those who may not know, Gary Webb was the reporter who broke the story in 1996 of CIA involvement in the drug trade sweeping Los Angeles in the 1980’s. His series of articles under the title "Dark Alliance" appearing in the Mercury News exposed the sordid details of CIA backed drug running in L. A. whose ultimate center of motivation rested within the Iran/Contra scandal that shook the Reagan administration. Later, after being pilloried in the press and by self-serving politicians alike, Webb dug in and published in book form ("Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion") a more thorough and scathing account of CIA drug related activities during the 1980s. Many, specifically among the mainstream press, will hardly mourn the passing of Webb but to many others on the Left and in Black communities across the U. S. he will be remembered for providing a window into the sordid activities of the CIA during a time the agency was involved in numerous operations all across Latin America and, apparently, in the good old US of A. It is too bad that it is the likes of Dan Rather and Thom Brokaw, news readers at best and suck ups to power at worst, that are instead lionized and revered. For the sin of truth telling, however, Webb paid with his career, his marriage and, ultimately with his life.

Decency Should Not Be Assumed

2004-12-13T17:53:00.000-08:00

As I’ve read much on the material on blackcommentator.com I’ve been impressed with the focus and dead on analysis of U. S. society. Specifically, on the current misadventure in Iraq, much of the commentary focused on the enabling character of the white U. S. population. Although there is some truth to Noam Chomsky’s assertion that the high levels of support for the war is a result of the massive and unprecedented propaganda campaign unleashed on the North American populace, I have always maintained that the strength of the propaganda campaign is not solely based on its intensity and pervasiveness but on the receptiveness of the white American audience that it is directed at. It does not take much to convince a population who are inured to violence (witness the popularity of professional wrestling and reality TV), mesmerized by popular media that consistently and unabashedly define democracy and freedom as uniquely American values and finally, are heirs to three plus centuries of fashioning a national identity based on white superiority and privilege.

What is disturbing is that much of the rag tag left in this country continue to insist that if only the American public were better informed by the media then a movement would arise to challenge the neo-con’s plans specifically and all injustices generally. But the truth does not get through the filters of the corporately controlled media and naturally, the color red or orange or any other color can mean something only to someone who can see to begin with. Clearly, the white U. S. population by and large has been blinded by centuries of racism. As, indeed, historically is the case with settler states which typically have genocidal origins. The pogroms (what else can they be described as) carried out in Tulsa and Rosewood should be a lesson to those who believe in the inherent goodness or benevolence of white U.S society as a whole. As a people, sectors of the white population throughout the long and tortured history of the country, have personally engaged in genocide or ethnic cleansing. Many of those that have not, which may be the majority, have either cheered from the sidelines or tacitly agreed through their silence. The main difference between the genocide of the past and that ongoing today being that for much of the country’s existence it was accomplished by the settlers themselves and now its labeled “the war on drugs” and carried out by the various state institutions comprising the prison-industrial complex.

Even if one charitably assumes that the U. S. media can and will accurately report on U. S. adventures or misadventures abroad, will as racist society such as the U. S. be able to muster the appropriate moral outrage and countervailing action appropriate to the slaughter and maltreatment of black and brown peoples? Not likely since so much of their identity is based on the domination of and perceived superiority over black and brown peoples. Then, when someone among their own, such as Eugene Debbs, decides to stand with humanity and attempt to move the white U. S. masses away from their allegiance to the brutish U. S. ruling class, he is either quickly marginalized (ala Noam Chomsky) if he or she is lucky or simply murdered or imprisoned if not. But lets also not forget the economic dimension. Much of the wealth of not only the U. S. but of the global North as a whole originated and continues to originate with the destruction and exploitation of people of color. Racism is integral to the maintenance of a modus vivendi with the conscience (such as it may be) of whites individually and collectively. This is why poor whites consistently vote against their material interests by voting for the most reactionary politicians. Abandoning racism would simply mean the destruction of their collective identity. An identity that while having spelled doom for non-white peoples and perhaps ultimately whites themselves cannot be easily discarded. Apparently, the psychological comfort of their white skins is more valuable than decent healthcare, wages and schools. In short, if the Iraqis, or the rest of the world for that matter, is waiting for the white masses in the U. S. to wake up from their stupor and put the clamps on their ruling class, we all should collectively not hold our breath.

The Argument for Gay and Lesbian Rights

2004-12-13T17:49:00.000-08:00

Gay and Lesbian rights over the last 40 years has been a contentious issue within the United States. From former Bill Clinton’s misguided “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy in the armed forces to Actress Ellen DeGeneres “coming out” on the sitcom Ellen to Stonewall the fight for gay/lesbian rights has had many ups and downs. In this essay I will provide a rough sketch of the struggle for gay and lesbian rights in the United States as well as deal with some points of philosophical import. My objectivity will not stem from any notion of the “detached observer” carefully noting the facts. Although I will present the facts as best I can in the strongest light possible, I will do so as an advocate for gay/lesbian rights. Moreover, this essay will provide a brief historical sketch combined with a philosophical backdrop.

Here it is important, for purposes of clarity, to define some terms: A homosexual is someone whose sexual inclination is towards that of that individual’s own sex rather than the opposite sex. A lesbian is a homosexual woman. A transvestite is a man who derives sexual pleasure by dressing in the clothes of the opposite sex. An effeminate person is someone possessed of qualities generally attributed to women such as weakness, gentleness, delicacy . . . etc. A pedophile is someone who is sexually attracted to children. A trans-gendered person is someone who was born a female and was surgically converted to a male or vice versa. Finally, the generally accepted definition of a hermaphrodite is someone born with both male and female sex organs. But in reality, there are three types: True, Male pseudo and Female Pseudo. “A True hermaphrodite is a person born with both ovary and testicular tissue, this could be 2 separate gonads ( one of each) or a combination of both in one (an ovotestes). The genitalia can vary from completely male or female, to a combination of both or even ambiguous looking. A Female Psuedo is a person born XX with normal female internal organs but with "masculanized" genitalia. They can appear more male then female or a combination of each. Finally, a Male Psuedo is a person born XY with testes (usually in the abdominal cavity). The external genitalia are usually female but can be ambiguous.” [1]

I have defined these terms because frequently when I am arguing for or speaking of gay rights I invariably get comments like ‘I don’t want my child taught by no homo!’ The implication being that the child will be either taught a gay lifestyle, to accept a gay lifestyle or, what is usually meant, the child will be sexually molested. Many times people confuse homosexuality with pedophilia, a person who is hermaphrodite, effeminate, trans-gendered or a transvestite with the end result that I am talking about apples, so to speak, and they are talking about oranges. Granted a homosexual can have any of the qualities described by the terms I’ve just defined but he or she cannot possess them by definition. So, in other words, making an objection to homosexuality because you fear your child will be molested is an invalid inference because a homosexual by definition or necessity is not a pedophile anymore than a heterosexual is.

There is, however, another classification that does not get as much press but more than heterosexuality and homosexuality exemplifies the fluidity of human sexuality. This is bisexuality. Being bisexual means having many options. Such an individual likes men and women alike. In her book Bisexuality and the Eroticism of Everyday Life Marjorie Garber noted that “when an interviewer asked Dr. Wardell Pomeroy, co-author of the Kinsey report, what made someone bisexual, he replied that it was the wrong question. You should ask, ‘why isn’t everybody?’”[2] Indeed, considering the obvious suppleness of human sexuality that is an interesting question. Likely, a large part of the answer is the power of Western civilization to enforce rigid gender roles. But also likely is the difficulty in settling on what one is. Are you straight or are you gay? Answering neither seems to be a bit too equivocal or ambiguous. Sort of like being left adrift at sea and not knowing which way to face before starting to row. It is thus not surprising that Kinsey institute research has found that “at least 25 percent of all American men had a sexual experience with another male as teenagers or adults. [However,] the majority of these men think of themselves as heterosexual.”[3] From a societal standpoint bisexuality, in relation to heterosexuality and homosexuality, can be heard as saying ‘ruin on both of your houses.’ It can be seen as radical in that it rejects the defined roles projected from either camps or conservative in that it appears as a “glass half full” to both sides. Perhaps it is this inability to be classified one way or another that adds to the appeal of stars such as Mick Jagger and Madonna. Gore Vidal explained it this way:

It is an underlying assumption of twentieth-century America that human beings are either heterosexual or, through some arresting of normal psychic growth, homosexual, with very little traffic back and forth. To us, the norm is heterosexual; the family is central; all else is deviation, pleasing or not depending on one’s own tastes and moral preoccupations. Suetonius reveals a very different world. His underlying assumption is that man is bisexual and that given complete freedom to love—or perhaps more to the point of the case of the Ceasars, to violate—others, he will do so, going blithely from male to female as fancy dictates . . . It is an odd experience for a contemporary to read of Nero’s simultaneous passion for both a man and a woman. Something seems wrong. It must be one or the other, not both.[4]

For those bisexual folks who are not stars their ambiguous sexuality likely will draw fire upon themselves. As Gore Vidal noted, theirs is a sexuality that the contemporary American, if not European, cannot pin down. It is easy to see how bisexual people would not be welcome in either the men’s locker-room or the women’s locker-room. For perhaps what is loathed more than being different, is being different with no place to go. Bisexuals don’t fit; there is no easy way to categorize them and so no easy way deal with them. Most heterosexuals view them as homosexuals plain and simple while many gays see them as phonies and fakes for not “going all the way.” To borrow a line from the present discourse over terrorism, bisexuals have to decide whether “you’re either with us or against us.” These types of attitudes have the effect of splintering the categories of sexual identity and adding to the confusion over sexuality and identity.

Indeed, sexual identity itself involves more than just a set of practices and notions about sex that a society ascribes to this or that group. Sexual identity is forged through the crucible of history and where and when one finds oneself. Being a homosexual in Ancient Greece, for example, is of a different character than being a homosexual in the contemporary U. S. In the former homosexuality in certain forms was not only accepted but even elevated above heterosexuality. In the latter homosexuality is condemned and heterosexuality made compulsory. No one, however, sits still and passively allows him or herself to be labeled or categorized. While one is being defined, one also consciously or unconsciously reworks this unsolicited definition and reflects this back onto one’s society. This reflection in turn redefines the social and cultural terrain where these identities are continually contested.

Probably the most misunderstood and marginalized group of gay and lesbians as a distinct class are queers of color. White middle-class gay men are quite visible in comparison to their colored, usually non-middle class, counterparts. This is no accident as from the start sexuality in general in U. S. society had been racialized. Beginning almost immediately following the “discovery of the New World” people of color where marked as, at best, beings living in a unmediated natural state (meaning uncivilized) or, at worst, simply savages or barbarians in need of the civilizing hand of Europeans. For example, often Africans and Native Americans were depicted in woodcuts, drawings and paintings with hardly any clothes on in subordinate positions to Europeans. These images cemented in the minds of Westerners notions that those depicted were uncivilized people on the one hand and exotic sexual objects on the other. Siobhan B. Somerville quotes Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien as saying:

The prevailing Western concept of sexuality . . . already contains racism. Historically, the European construction of sexuality coincides with the epoch of imperialism and the two inter-connect . . . The personage of the savage was developed as the other of civilization and one of the first “proofs” of this otherness was the nakedness of the savage, the visibility of its sex.[5]

Race thus has to be understood as

a historical, ideological process rather than fixed [on] trans-historical or biological characteristics: one’s racial identity is contingent on one’s cultural and historical location. Processes of ‘racialization’ [are] the extension of racial meaning to a previously unclassified relationship, social practice or group. ‘Racialization’ is an ideological process, an historically specific one[6]

It is through this prism, which this legacy of conquest and imperialism represents, that gays and lesbians of color are seen. While most people of color in U. S. society to this day have two identities, one African-American and the other simply American[7], gays and lesbians add a third; their identity as homosexuals. Not being able to exist outside of the society in that surrounds them, African-Americans and Latinos show little more tolerance for their gay and lesbian brothers and sisters than the larger society. Homophobia runs deep in communities of color like in the rest of society. Prison is one of the few places where one sees a peculiar breakdown in this area. There a man is considered homosexual if he plays the role of “catcher” rather than the role of “pitcher.” So in prisons we are left with a situation within the sphere of homosexuality where the stigmatized other is feminized in the absence of the ability, because of objective conditions, to racialize the other.

In terms of relations between gays and lesbians themselves, race adds another layer of complexity and ambiguity. For example, earlier in the twentieth century psychologist Margret Otis, in an article appearing in a medical journal in 1913 and entitled “A perversion not Commonly Noted,” wrote of the pervasive “love-making between white and colored girls” in all female institutions such as reform schools. She drew attention to what she deemed the “peculiar moral code” that governed these relationships:

In particular, she noted that the girls incorporated racial difference into courtship rituals self-consciously patterned on traditional gender roles: “one white girl . . . admitted that the colored girl she loved seemed the man, and thought it was so in the case of the others.”[8]

Already segregated by gender these girls apparently replicated traditional gender roles through the use of race. In this case black skin became synonymous with masculinity while white skin represented femininity. A curious development since Black men practically from the beginning of slavery were painted as sexual predators always looking for a white woman to take. In this instance, however, it is the black woman that is recast as the black man. This being early in the twentieth century when Victorian norms of sexuality between women still held on one hand and “Jim Crow” was alive and well on the other, Ms. Otis’s readers were likely appalled by the inter-racial nature of these relationships rather than the homosexual aspect of it. In essence the fear and loathing heaped upon the Black man for his supposedly uncontrollable sexual urges, could, through homosexuality, be transferred to the Black woman. But more telling is the adaptability and pragmatism of human relationships. The lessons that need to be learned here is that race and homosexuality can combine in a peculiar social cocktail that can lead to not easily resolved tensions in sexual identity and that one’s identity, as discussed earlier, is as much about what one does with what is handed down.

From a constitutional perspective one of the more important cases dealing with the legal status of gays and lesbians in the last ten years is the case of Romer v Evans. This suit was launched as a result of the passage of a law known at the time as Amendment 2. Amendment 2 was a state-wide anti-gay initiative prohibiting all branches of state government in Colorado from passing legislation or adopting policies prohibiting discrimination against lesbians and gay men based on their sexual orientation. This measure was passed by a slim majority of Colorado voters in 1992. In 1996, however, as a result of this suit the U.S. Supreme Court in a landmark 6-3 ruling struck down this law. There was very little choice for the Court to do otherwise unless it was willing to destroy a century of legal precedent and law. The 14^th Amendment clearly states that

all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In essence the court simply upheld the “equal protection clause” of the Constitution that had been in place since 1866. Writing in “Women, Gays, and the Constitution” Professor of Law Daniel A. J. Richards states:

The strongest constitutional argument for constitutional limits on antigay/lesbian rights iniatives has been the one least explored in the available literature and the one all other arguments impliedly depend on for their force: namely, the initiatives in question express constitutionally forbidden sectarian religious intolerance through public law against fundamental rights of conscience, speech, and association of lesbian and gay persons protected by America’s first and premier civil liberty, the liberty of conscience.[9]

While I certainly can agree with Mr. Richards that the right arguments need to be presented I think that it should be kept in mind that, like the “Jim crow” laws existing between the era bracketed by the end of Reconstruction and the apex of the Civil Rights Movement, anti-gay initiatives find their force during times most favorable to their enactment and enforcement. Arguments need to be presented yes. Also, legal recourse can be pursued such as the strategy of the NAACP that challenged the legal basis of segregation. But ultimately it is mass movements, rather than lawsuits, agitating for overarching social change that will transform the political climate where these initiatives germinate. In addition, while the U. S. Constitution states, “that all men are created equal,” this was certainly not true, at the time the constitution was ratified, for enslaved African-Americans, Native Americans, Women and the property-less. They were to remain outside the loop for some time to come. My point being that laws are as much a function of political expediency as they are guarantors of our rights as citizens. It all depends on the alignment of political forces outside the legislative chambers of Congress and the courtrooms of the legal system.

For gays and lesbians living in the United States the defining moment and point where their fight for equality took off occurred in a small bar on Christopher Street in New York City called Stonewall. This event has taken on mythic proportion so stories vary as to what exactly happened that fateful night in 1969. David Bianco writing for www.planetout.com gives one of the more credible accounts:

In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the police raided the Stonewall Inn, a dingy, Mafia-run "private club" on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village with a predominantly gay clientele. The charge was illegal sale of alcohol. It was the second time that week the bar had been targeted by the police, and other gay bars had also been raided in prior weeks. Police officers lined up the Stonewall's 200 patrons to check identification. Most were free to leave, but the staff, as well as three drag queens and two male-to-female transsexuals, were detained.
Eyewitnesses recalled that the scene outside the bar was at first campy and festive. Tourists and passers-by joined patrons and everyone cheered when a gay person emerged from the bar, dismissed by the police. But when a paddy wagon arrived and the police loaded the bar's staff and the three drag queens inside, the crowd on the street grew surly. One person threw a rock through a window, and eventually garbage cans, bottles, and even a parking meter were used to assault the building. Someone set a fire with lighter fluid. By newspaper accounts, 13 people were arrested and three police officers sustained minor injuries in the confrontation.
Later that night and into Sunday morning, a crowd again gathered in front of the ravaged bar. Many young gay men showed up to protest the flurry of raids, but they did so by handholding, kissing, and forming a chorus line. "We are the Stonewall girls," they sang, kicking their legs in front of the police. "We wear our hair in curls. /We have no underwear. /We show our pubic hair." Police cleared the street without incident this time, but another street altercation occurred a few days later.[10]

Coming as it did during one of the most politically charged periods in U. S. history (the Civil Rights Movement and the anti-Vietnam War Movement were in full swing); the Stonewall riots ushered in a new era in the struggle for gay/lesbian rights. Clearly the message being sent by gays and lesbians was that they were no longer going to tolerate being marginalized and abused. The time had come to push back hard against the old ways of thinking and doing. But as mentioned earlier, the alignment of political forces at the time was quite favorable to any kind of progressive politics. While before “Stonewall” there were only a few dozen gay/lesbian rights groups, after a few years following “Stonewall” they numbered in the hundreds. One of the more important and long-lived organizations formed was founded in July of the same year and took the name “Gay Liberation Front.” The “Gay Liberation Front” and organizations like it fought for repeal of sodomy laws, legal protection from discrimination in housing and employment as well as against the spread of hate speech and anti-gay violence.

Undoubtedly, the history of the fight for gay/lesbian rights has been a long, tortuous and winding road in the United States. While progress has been made there is still much to be done. Comments, made in the aftermath of the September 11^th attacks in New York and Washington, such as those of Jerry Falwell and his fellow traveler Pat Robertson (quoted below) on the September 13^th edition of their television program “The 700 Club” show that anti gay/lesbian sentiment is still strong and has an audience. Here is what they had to say:

[Falwell] "What we saw on Tuesday, as terrible as it is, could be miniscule if, in fact, if in fact, God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the Pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say, ‘You helped this happen."

[Robertson] “Well, I totally concur, and the problem is we have adopted that agenda at the highest levels of our government. And so we're responsible as a free society for what the top people do. And, the top people, of course, is the court system.”[11]

From a philosophical standpoint, these comments, their illogic and venomous invective aside, expose the paradoxical ideological and political framework that underpins United States society. It is within this framework that, on the one hand, comments, such as those of Falwell and Robertson, are protected and, on the other hand, numerous other voices, while also having the formal right to be heard, are all but shut out because of the manner in which power is allocated. Understanding this framework will shed much needed light on both sides of the struggle over gay/lesbian rights and progressive causes in general. While many thinkers contributed to this framework, it is the views of John Locke and J. S. Mill that standout. I will therefore briefly discuss the contributions of these two men before going on to argue forthrightly on gay/lesbian rights.

In the realm of political--economic theory, no one, other than Adam Smith, had as much influence as John Locke. John Locke was an English philosopher born on August 29, 1632 who came to be best known for his book “Two Treatises of Government (1690).” In it he argued that, labor is the origin and justification of property; contract or consent the nexus of government. However, the state of nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law, which is the law of God. Men, as he puts it, are born free and equal in rights. However, whatever a man "mixes his labour with" is his to use and “by his labor does, as it were, enclose it from the common.”[12] Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which there was enough for all and "the whole earth was America." Locke sees that, when men have multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or law of nature supplies. Oddly, for Locke, the origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but to another cause. He admits that while the moral law is always valid it is not always kept. Consequently, in the state of nature all men equally have the right to punish transgressors and civil society originates when, for the better administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus, government is instituted by a "social contract"; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal obligations. Moreover, these powers and obligations can be modified or rescinded by those that originally entered into this social contract. Nevertheless, from here Locke goes on to argue more strongly from the premise that the state exists in order to protect the rights of property holders than for its role as an arbiter between men who in their “natural state” would all be at odds with each other. His statement that man:

. . . hath by nature a power not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty, and estate against the injuries and attempts of other men . . .[13]

would make its next appearance 86 years later, almost to the word, in The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) where Thomas Jefferson wrote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Locke’s arguments however rest on some shaky assumptions. First, he assumes that “though the things of nature are given in common, man . . . had still in himself the great foundation of property.” [14]This is an argument from nature. Are “men”, by nature greedy or possessive? Second, while it is true people have a right to the product of their labor, it does not follow that land, being the means through which one realizes the product of one’s labor, entitles one to exclusive possession of both the means (the land) and the product (born of one’s labor). Third, because he sees only the consensual aspect of community he is mistakenly led to argue that “it is necessary the body should move that way whither the greater force carries it, which is the consent of the majority.”[15] Of course, this leaves the minority at the mercy of the majority. Finally, more a mistake born from the era in which he lived, where America stretched out as a great frontier awaiting “improvement”, Locke believed “men” could always depart or dissolve whatever community they found themselves in and start afresh in any part of the world “they can find free and unpossessed.”[16] Of course today, that is out of the question. You can move to another part of the world but in general you just cannot simply start your own nation-state. Perhaps sensing some of the weaknesses in Lockian political theory, Thomas Jefferson when writing The United States Declaration of Independence (1776) replaced “life, liberty, and property” with “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

It is with J. S. Mill that we find a somewhat different conception of the individual, his or her role in society and, in turn, society’s function and the form and role of government. John Stuart Mill was born in London on May 20, 1806, and was the eldest of son of James Mill. He was educated entirely by his father, James Mill and from his earliest years was subjected to a rigid system of intellectual discipline. He was profoundly affected by, at least early in his life, Utilitarianism and its main proponent Jeremy Bentham. His early works are tinged throughout their entirety with the philosophical determinism of utilitarianism.

Here, what concerns us is his works “On Liberty” and “Considerations On Representative Government” where he argued for the freedom of the individual from undue government intrusion and what government’s role should be. For Mill, the individual was sacrosanct. The individual had the natural right to pursue his own aims without hindrance as long as in pursuit of these aims he did not keep others from doing the same or cause harm. Furthermore, he recognized that human beings, while possessing a nature, are still very much conditioned by the social context in which they exist. Thus, the free flow of information and ideas is paramount not only to guarantee individual freedom but also to precipitate the mental growth of the individual and by extension raise the cultural or intellectual milieu. The best form of government, he believed, was one of proportional representation. To his credit, Mill recognized that proportional representative government, characterized by checks and balances along with separation of powers, could still fall prey to a tyranny of the majority, a “general ignorance and incapacity, or, . . . insufficient mental qualifications in the controlling body [and] the danger of its being under the influence of interests not identical with the general welfare of the community.”[17] No doubt, he would see the oligarchic nature of present day “democracy” in the United States as an affront to his ideals.

Locke’s legacy in the United States has meant winner-take-all elections through the concept, put in practice, of majority rule, a highly punitive justice system, by way of the over-zealous mis-application of the rule of law, and the large gap that exists between rich and poor, built upon the deification of property so prominent in Locke’s writings. While Locke would be aghast by the means and ends of the United States since its inception, his conception of government as the ultimate protector of property rights played no small part in the construction of United States political institutions. To be fair, Locke’s intent may not have been what has evolved in the United States, or in the nations of the West generally, but certainly the logic of his ideas pointed to few other alternative outcomes. Mill’s impact is evident in the guarantees of personal freedom contained both in the “Bill of Rights” and “The Constitution,” and the representative form, albeit formal at this juncture, of government in the United States. Unfortunately, rather than challenge laissez faire economics he instead drew from other political theorists of his day, such as David Ricardo and Adam Smith, and attempted to humanize these extant theories.[18]

Because Mill’s contributions were reformist and did not seek, as Karl Marx did, to transform the socio-economic relations that grew out of bourgeois political and economic theory, it is now up to others to complete this project of transformation. It is precisely this project, or at least a piece of it, that the gay/lesbian community, along with other groups, such as people of color and the working poor, must persevere in completing if they are to gain the rights that Locke and Mill spoke of.

Here I’ll just mention, in regard to homophobia (which can be defined as a fear or hatred of homosexuals) that studies have been conducted, of which the most recent I came across appeared in a 1996 issue of Journal of Abnormal Psychology, that appear to show that "Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies," In sum, this study of 64 volunteers, strongly indicate[s] that most homophobic males (54%, but up to 80%) have a detectable homosexual component in their psyche and that their homophobia reflects the concept called "projection" [or the transfer of qualities or features one hates in oneself onto others] in psychiatry”. [19] I make mention of studies such as this one not to present their conclusions as verity, though the evidence seems strong, but as “food for thought”. My hope is that my readers can put into perspective or gain some insights into the virulence, vehemence and violence that seem to characterize anti-gay/lesbian forces. If we are to wage a successful fight for gay/lesbian rights we need to be aware of all the contours of this issue.

There are some common misconceptions and faulty arguments put forth by anti-gay forces. Here I will deal with some of these. The most common argument used to condemn gay people is the idea that same sex relations defeat the purpose of reproduction. Closely related to this idea is the notion that female sex organs are expressly to be used for intercourse with that of males and vice versa. This begs the question as to how much of the time humans engage in sex for purely reproductive purposes? Also, when humans engage in heterosexual intercourse, do they always engage in the activity in a manner that would lead to pregnancy?

Furthermore, both male and female sex organs also act as conduits for the ejection of urine. An elephant uses its nose both to breathe and to bathe. Humans use their limbs in many different ways. In soccer, players frequently use their heads to hit the ball. My point is that people as well as animals use their body parts in many different ways. So to say that people can only use their genitals in a certain way and only with the opposite sex is, in fact, not only unnatural but also myopic. In fact, there is ample evidence that homosexuality has existed throughout human history in diverse cultures, societies and places. However, it was something was considered an activity one did rather than a main marker of identity. Michael Foucault described this phenomenon within Western culture, in regard to sexuality, of becoming what you do in the following way:

Homosexuality appeared as one of the forms of sexuality when it was transposed from the practice of sodomy onto a kind of androgyny, a hermaphrodism of the soul. The sodomite had been a temporary aberration; the homosexual was now a species.[20]

This is not to say that this makes homosexuality right but it does show that its occurrence is not uncommon and that therefore its supposed uncommon occurrence makes it abnormal. Moreover, humans as a species have separated themselves more than any other from the animal or “natural” world exactly because we seek to shape our surroundings to our will rather than allowing the opposite. Automobiles, cellular phones, private property and nuclear weapons all stand as monuments to both our genius and our folly.

Another branch of the argument from nature is that homosexuality is not inborn but a learned behavior. In fact there have been a number of studies done, especially recently because of the rise of bioengineering and the techniques it has spawned, that test whether or not homosexuality is inborn or learned. To cite one study, conducted by Northwestern University psychologist Michael Bailey and Boston University’s Richard Pillard entitled “A Genetic Study of Male Sexual Orientation”, it found, after comparing fifty-six identical twins, fifty-four fraternal twins and fifty-seven unrelated adopted brothers, that “homosexuality is highly attributable to genetics: by some measures up to 70% attributable”. The study broke down its findings thusly: for adoptive brothers there was a gay to gay concordance rate of 11%, for fraternal twins the rate was 22% and finally for identical twins 52%. [21] I must, however, caution that humans are extremely complex creatures that can be affected at least as much by their environment, likely more so, than by genetics. Or as J. S. Mill put it:

Human nature is not a machine built after a model, and set to do the work exactly proscribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing . . .[22]

Also, even if homosexuality is wholly a matter of genetics it seems more likely than not that it involves a number of genes. Thus, trying to isolate “the gay gene” may turn out to be a quixotic quest. Clearly, though, the body of evidence in the field of genetics dealing with this issue has proven its worth. Beyond that, the field of psychiatry has long held that “homosexuality is immutable and non-pathological”.

That homosexuals spread disease is also a part of the rational for denying gays their rights and even recognition of their existence. However, According to a 1998 report covering 25 states by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention:

In the most recent full year from which overall trends in these states can be examined – 1995 to 1996:

· HIV diagnosis declined slightly among men (-3% from 10, 762 to 10,395), but increased among women (+3% from 4,126 to 4,253).

· HIV diagnoses declined slightly among African-Americans (-3% from 8,569 to 8, 300) and among whites (-2% from 5,093 to 4,966), but increased among Hispanics (+10% from 971 to 1,070).

· Amongst young people in these states (13 to 24 year olds), the majority of infections were diagnosed among African Americans and women. Thus of the 7,200 cases of HIV reported . . . from January 1994 to June 1997:

· 44% (3,203) were female

· 63% (4,566) were African-American and 5% (394) were Hispanic

· At least 26% (1, 886) had heterosexually acquired infections, 31% (2, 270) were in men who have sex with men, and 6% (449) were in injection drug users

From these statistics we can see that rates of HIV infection for gay men (31% out of 7,200) is nearly that of heterosexuals (26% out of 7,200) and that the most highly affected groups are women and people of color. In fact, the report later goes on to note that:

Because many cases of HIV infection initially reported without risk information are later determined to be related to heterosexual contact, those numbers likely underestimate the true number of individuals diagnosed with heterosexually acquired infection.[23]

So, if as the religious right, but many others as well, claim that gays are paying for their sins and that we should let them suffer the consequences, then what are these folks to say to women and African-Americans? Should they, as heterosexuals, have to suffer the consequences or just gays? What is to be done about intravenous drug users? Some would say they all should pay for breaking the mores of god and mammon alike but the reality is that such callous and cavalier attitudes not only work to make HIV sufferers in general, but gays in particular, invisible but likely has led to much needless suffering. While it is OK for religion to concern itself with the sexual mores of society, the job of a well-ordered and smooth functioning society is to look after the overall well being of all its members and not, as the religious right would have it, impose the faith based views of one group over everyone else.

Another common argument presented condemning homosexuality from a religious standpoint is that it goes against the word of God. Because Christianity in general, and Protestantism in particular, is the dominant creed within this country I will for the sake of time restrict myself to dealing with Christianity’s condemnation of homosexuality. However, in general, whether it is the god of the Bible or the Koran or any other deity, please keep in mind that what is moral or right ethically is independent of who offers support for or commands it. In other words, moral standards are not set they are either endorsed or not endorsed. Here I will quote Walter Wink, Professor of Biblical Interpretation at Auburn Theological Seminary in New York City, speaking on homosexuality and the bible:

The crux of the matter, it seems to me, is simply that the Bible has no sexual ethic. There is no Biblical sex ethic. Instead, it exhibits a variety of sexual mores, some of which changed over the thousand-year span of biblical history. Mores are unreflective customs accepted by a given community. Many of the practices that the Bible prohibits, we allow, and many that it allows, we prohibit. The Bible knows only a love ethic, which is constantly being brought to bear on whatever sexual mores are dominant in any given country, or culture, or period.

The very notion of a "sex ethic" reflects the materialism and splitness of modern life, in which we increasingly define our identity sexually. Sexuality cannot be separated off from the rest of life. No sex act is "ethical" in and of itself, without reference to the rest of a person's life, the patterns of the culture, the special circumstances faced, and the will of God. What we have are simply sexual mores, which change, sometimes with startling rapidity, creating bewildering dilemmas. Just within one lifetime we have witnessed the shift from the ideal of preserving one's virginity until marriage, to couples living together for several years before getting married. The response of many Christians is merely to long for the hypocrisies of an earlier era.

I agree that rules and norms are necessary; that is what sexual mores are. But rules and norms also tend to be impressed into the service of the Domination System, and to serve as a form of crowd control rather than to enhance the fullness of human potential.[24]

While what the Bible says seems damning at first glance, a careful reading might show something different. It is this “careful reading,” that Dr. Daniel Helminiak gives the bible in his book “What The Bible Really says About Homosexuality.” His overarching thesis is that the Bible does not really condemn homosexual relationships as such. To show this he argues from two supporting thesis: First, that a contextual or historical-critical reading rather than a literal reading of the bible is the way the to get at what is really being said and second, as he puts it, “the Bible does not provide the last word on sexual ethics. In my mind, the matter is more complicated than that. Historical, cultural, philosophical, psychological, sociological, medical, spiritual and personal factors all come to bear on the matter.”[25]

Of course, it is the first of the two points where the issue hinges for the average Christian since how the Bible is to be interpreted has profound implications for belief. The most seemingly damning of the passages in the Bible in regard to homosexuality can be found in Romans Chapter 1, verses 18 to 32. Analyzing these verses Dr. Helminiak looked at the vocabulary the Apostle Paul used, the structure of the writing and the overall purpose of the “Letter to the Romans.” His main point is that the Greek word physis, meaning nature, and its derivatives as used by Paul throughout these passages does not mean “Nature” as in the “Laws of Nature.” Indeed he writes:

For Paul, something is natural when it responds according to its own kind, when it is as expected to be . . . Rather natural refers to what is characteristic, consistent, ordinary, standard, expected and regular. When people acted as was expected and showed a certain consistency, they were acting naturally. When people did something surprising, something unusual, something beyond the routine, something pout of character, they were acting unnaturally. That was the sense of the word nature in Paul’s usage.[26]

To bolster his case Dr. Helminiak points out that in Romans Chapter 11 verse 24 Paul talks of God acting in a para physin (unnatural) manner when he “grafted the wild branch of the Gentiles into the cultivated olive tree that is the Jews”[27] Obviously what is meant is not that God is doing unnatural, meaning bad, acts but that he is doing something, grafting a wild branch into a cultivated tree, which is not usually done. Thus, just as Paul spoke in this manner about God in this instance, he must have been speaking in the same vain when he spoke of homosexuality earlier in the same letter. Or else, why would he use the same terminology if what he really meant was to morally condemn one (homosexuality) and not the other (unusual tree grafting)?

Drawing from his historical-critical perspective, Dr. Helminiak reminds his readers that Paul lived at a time when Stoic philosophy was everywhere in the Roman Empire. Out of this philosophy developed the notion that sex, other than for procreative reasons, was a violation of “Nature.” Consequently, any sexual act that was not procreative in nature was called para physin or “unnatural” (meaning unnecessary or beyond the usual). It is from the influence of Stoicism in early Western civilization where we, in part, get our ideas about “Nature” in the abstract as well as the view of sex as something “dirty.” More on that later. Here, Dr. Helminiak makes clear that:

Paul does not use the term “nature” the way the Stoics did. Paul’s usage is concrete; the Stoic is abstract. Moreover, although Paul is aware that sex para physin would refer to non-procreative sex, including same-sex acts, he certainly is not concerned about procreation. Paul was expecting the speedy return of Christ, the end of the world, so nowhere in his writings does he show concern for procreation.[28]

In sum, when read contextually the supposed condemnation of homosexuality found in Romans is not quite that at all. The vocabulary Paul uses suggest a concern over purity rather than ethics. This is evident by the way the passages are constructed in that what is regarded as a sin or morally wrong is divided from what is socially frowned upon, for reasons of purity, such as homosexual activity. Then, when these verses are placed within the flow of the whole letter it is apparent that “Paul’s purpose is to teach that in Christ the purity concerns of the Old Law no longer matter and they should not be dividing the members of the Christian Community.”[29]

The upshot to all of this is that there are apparent instances of gay love in the Bible itself. I Samuel Chapter 18, verse 1 to 4 (KJV) reads thus:

1) And it came to pass, when he had made an end of speaking unto Saul, that the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul. 2) And Saul took him that day, and would let him go no more home to his father’s house. 3) Then Jonathan and David made a covenant, because he loved him as his own soul. 4) And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him, and gave it to David, and his garments, even to his sword, and to his bow, and to his girdle.[30]

Later in I Samuel Chapter 20, verse 30 King Saul gets mad with Jonathan over his relationship with David:

30) Then Saul's anger was kindled against Jonathan, and he said unto him, Thou son of the perverse rebellious woman, do not I know that thou hast chosen the son of Jesse to thine own confusion, and unto the confusion of thy mother's nakedness?[31]

But it seems that King Saul’s protestations did not have any affect (verse 41 and 42):

41) And as soon as the lad had gone, David rose from beside the stone heap and fell on his face to the ground, and bowed three times; and they kissed one another, and wept with one another, until David recovered himself. 42) Then Jonathan said to David, "Go in peace, forasmuch as we have sworn both of us in the name of the LORD, saying, `The LORD shall be between me and you, and between my descendants and your descendants, for ever.'" And he rose and departed; and Jonathan went into the city.[32]

It would appear that the Bible’s apparent condemnation of same sex love is not the airtight case Falwell, Robertson and his ilk would have us believe. Surely any contemporary reader could not help but “read in between the lines” when looking at these verses and surmise what the nature of the relationship between these two men likely was. Like it or not, the Bible is an imperfect historical document which has many messages. Clearly much depends upon what the reader is looking for rather than what is truly being said. It is difficult to figure out intent or what is meant when dealing with each other person to person much less trying to do so across centuries when the world the writer inhabited has long since ceased to exist. Thus, Dr. Helminiak is certainly correct in assuming that a historical-critical reading of the text is the best way to figure out the intent of those who long ago wrote these words.

Now the question still remains, why should we support gay rights? Well, as Dr. Wink touched upon we live in a highly materialistic and commercialized culture that sends two conflicting notions of human sexuality. On the one side you have the monogamous, heterosexual, two parent, 2.5 kids, nuclear family, commonly pushed by the family values crowd, that is considered the ideal. Of course, if you are gay, lesbian, even single and unattached or single with kids, then you are seen as abnormal, deviant or eccentric. It is with this mindset Jerry Falwell can say:

Minority status for homosexuals will guarantee them an equal place at the table with women, Hispanics and African-Americans in matters like affirmative action, job quotas, financial benefits for same-sex partners and much more. For the first time in American history, it appears we will soon be rewarding persons for their misbehavior. [33]

As I showed previously, claiming that homosexuality is immoral cannot be logically supported. Simply, an act can only be considered bad if it really does harm. What goes on between two consenting adults can hardly be shown to be harmful especially in light of the fluidity of human sexual mores and practices. Notice that Mr. Falwell in his comments expressly seeks to keep gays from, though they’ve also fought for these, benefiting from the hard won redresses from past injustices suffered by other oppressed groups. His comments then are as much of a political and economic nature as they are of a moral nature. He later reveals that:

For Christian schools, churches and other ministries, tax-exempt status could eventually be denied to those who do not hire a quota of gays and lesbians as teachers, pastors and workers.[34]

Moreover, as discussed earlier, the bible at worst frowns upon homosexuality for reasons of purity rather than any moral condemnation. It would be interesting to note how Mr. Falwell would deal with David’s, the greatest hero in the Bible other than Jesus, apparently homosexual relationship with King Saul’s son Jonathan.

Alicia Pedreira is an example of what logic of people like Falwell and Robertson leads to. Alicia was working at the Kentucky Baptist Homes for Children until on October 23, 1998 when she was fired after word got out in her office, because of a photo taken at a 1997 AIDS walk that surfaced at a local fair, that she is a lesbian. Never mind that Alicia liked her job and was well respected by her peers, some of whom quit after her dismissal, “because religious organizations have long been exempted from the provision of Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that forbids religious-based discrimination by employers, on the grounds that they would otherwise be forced to act against their beliefs when hiring personnel”[35], Alicia found herself without a job. Besides the complications introduced by the idea of the separation of church and state, should, as Eyal Press the piece’s author asks, “a group that takes government money . . . be able to fire someone like Alicia Pedreira? Should, as several courts have ruled, the Title VII exemption, allow as well, the right of Christian schools to fire female employees who have had out of wedlock births? The important question to ask is even if certain behaviors, such as drinking, adultery, or fornication, are immoral, should the state be in the business of restricting or eliminating such behaviors considering the difficulty, for obvious reasons, in doing so? As far as President Bush, whether it is the first or the second, is concerned, the government should not only continue to but also to increase funding for religious charities and, among other faith-based policies, also support prayer in schools. I think at this point, the political implications and the alignment of forces are clear.

The rise of capitalism, as Fredrick Engels noted in the “Family, Private Property and the State,” meant that the family had to take on a form and roles unlike any other era. For one, capitalism, being based on private property, needs more than any system prior to it, a way to determine inheritance. Hence marriage, monogamy (to insure paternity) and the cult of domesticity thrust upon women. Two, as a system existing for profit it also uses the family as a way to externalize the cost of replenishing and reproducing labor. What this means is that marriage has become a means of making women responsible for refreshing the current labor force (meaning ensuring workers are fed, come to a clean home, clean clothes . . .etc.) and raising the next generation of workers. All at little or no cost to Capital. It is here where notions such as “the women’s place is in the home,” the man as breadwinner, and “personal responsibility” find their locus. The internal dynamics of the family and its place within the larger society is thus greatly affected by the demands of Capitalism. It is easy to see how homosexuality would throw this important economic site off kilter both because of the lack of literal reproductive ability by same sex couples and the ideological undermining of the desired norm. Moreover, as David Nibert notes:

How people produce and distribute goods and resources strongly affects how they organize their society, and how they relate to one another, as well as the ideas they shape about what constitutes acceptable behavior.[36]

What the fight over gay and lesbian rights has done, looked at still in other ways is to challenge prevailing kinship norms in an even more powerful way than the rise of single parent households. Gay and lesbian couples have increasingly sought to become parents and be recognized as such. As couples, gay and lesbians mirror the nuclear family upheld by societal norms but in doing so underline what I call the ‘commonality of difference.’ Meaning the idea that two people can form a couple, have children, hold middle-class values and yet be gay or lesbian. For many this strikingly similar but yet, in their eyes, twisted model represents an alternative. An alternative that strikes at the heart of their belief on how the world should be ordered and who should be at the pinnacle of that order. Mark Blasius comments that

lesbian and gay politics, then, has problemitized not only the normative status of hetero/homosexuality and the instances of power exercised on the basis of this normativity as hetero sexist domination and homophobic subjection but the entire installation of sexuality into a regime of truth and how historically, it has become a technology of government—techniques through which people are governed and how they come to understand themselves and their own agency.[37]

It is apparent that by hijacking the heterosexual standard of the family, gay and lesbian couples represent a threat to the religious right and their allies in government. For what is feared is the lost of its most powerful mechanism of moral authority through the erosion of the traditional family model and its underlying patriarchal structure.

On the opposite end of what can be termed the “family values-complex” you then have this hyper-sexualization of culture where sex is something everyone is doing and doing a lot. What this means in this society is that sex sells and is sold. Vanity Fair or Redbook sits side by side with Playboy/girl or Hustler. Human sexuality is de-contextualized, depersonalized, objectified and converted into raw materials for profit. The “family values-complex” sits side by side with the sex industry and its fellow traveler Madison Avenue or the advertising industry. Under such conditions, how, specifically, are sexual practices that are deemed deviant or abnormal handled? Until recently, when same sex love is not being parodied it is either treated as too taboo to mention or depictions of it are grotesquely distorted or it is sold, in real life or through images and prose within the confines of a niche market. There also is the overall tendency for sexual practices not acceptable in the mainstream, but not necessarily immoral, such as fetishism or cross-dressing, to be shoved into an underground existence.

For gays and lesbians, as for other historically oppressed groups, the role that class plays is to greatly limit progressive change whether it is social, political or economic. Specifically, the class divisions generated by capitalism, a system characterized by the enrichment and dominion of a few over the many, necessitates a continual war, sometimes hot or sometimes cold, between classes. Granted, Capitalism did not invent nor does it hold exclusive rights to racism, sexism or homophobia, it does however, continually breathe new life into the worst in us because of its unique and historically unprecedented imperative to insinuate itself into all aspects of nature and human life in ways that lead or lend themselves toward social, political and economic stagnation not to mention environmental degradation. The end result is a culture characterized by extreme commercialization and alienation that is ripe for scapegoating, discrimination and violence (remember Mathew Sheppard) when what is desperately needed is the opposite. Capitalism, however, must continually create divisions within society or exacerbate existing ones in order to survive. Consequently, “citizens . . . allow themselves to be oppressed in proportion as hurried by blind ambition, and looking rather below than above them, they come to love authority more than independence.”[38] But in the end, as George Bernard Shaw put it:

...Capitalism drives the employers to do their worst to the employed, and the employed to do the least for them. And it boasts all the time of the incentive it provides to both to do their best! You may ask why this does not end in a deadlock. The answer is it is producing deadlocks twice a day or thereabouts.... The reason the Capitalist system has worked so far without jamming for more than a few months at a time, and then only in places, is that it has not yet succeeded in making a conquest of human nature so complete that everybody acts on strictly business principles.”[39]

What this means for gay folks is the same as what it as meant for people of color, immigrants and women, the denial of basic political, social, and economic rights accompanied by a state that increasingly exhibits its authoritarian face. Human rights does not only include political rights such as the right to free speech, freedom of association, freedom of religion and so forth but, the right to adequate food, housing, clothing and medical care. [40] In other words, the acknowledgment of social and economic rights as being on par with political rights. Not, as John Locke would have it, the inviolability of property rights to the point of stripping democracy of its content if not its procedures but, as Mill would have it, individual freedom, though not of the hyped up and distorted strain prevalent in United States culture, and social cohesion overseen by representative government.

It is precisely because the political structure of the United States has, in practice more than in form, denied many groups a say that struggle is necessary. As “African American scholar and activist W.E.B. Dubois once noted that the attitudes of an "imprisoned" group could take three forms: "a feeling of revolt and revenge; an attempt to adjust all thought and action to the will of the greater groups; or, finally, a determined attempt at self-development, self-realization, in spite of envisioning discouragements and prejudice." While the first two options may be attractive and the only ones available, realistically speaking, depending on the circumstances, it is the last option that presents a long term solution because it neither breaks up on the rocks of vengeance nor does it die the slow death of conformity. It calls for the “imprisoned” to continuously and strongly affirm their humanity while not denying, in the process, the same to others.

Taking the last of Dubois’s options to be the correct path, there then are a number of reasons to support gay rights. First, if homosexuality is inborn or hereditary, as science at present seems to affirm, then denying gays their elemental rights is no more rational or morally correct than denying these same rights to someone for being short or bald or for any other genetically determined attribute.

Second, a successful fight for gay rights would mean the end of the stigmatization and concomitant discrimination over what essentially is a lifestyle choice. No more half measures like ex-president Bill Clinton’s disastrous “don’t ask, don’t tell policy” that actually led to more gays and lesbians being unfairly booted from the military. No more “coming out of the closet” or worse staying locked in and living in fear. No more fractured families and lives. No more violence against gays and lesbians. More, however, freedom of sexual expression for gays and lesbians that likely would also mean freedom of sexual expression for all. To paraphrase J. S. Mill, freedom of thinking is not necessary simply to create great thinkers but to “enable average human beings to attain the mental stature which they are capable of.” Likewise, freedom of sexual expression is required not only for the liberation of gay/lesbian people but for the sexual emancipation of all whatever their sexual preferences and as long as these do not harm or impinge on others.

Third, gay and lesbian rights would mean that a public health issue would be dealt with as just that. This means the de-politicization of HIV/AIDS which, in turn, would fully allow society to deal with the public health crisis that is HIV/AIDS though education, proper treatment and well-funded research.

Finally, as a system that seeks to divide and conquer, capitalism uses homophobia, as well as racism and sexism, to both super-exploit the victims of discrimination and as a way of throttling social change by keeping working class people divided. The “Willie Horton” presidential ad campaign of George Bush sr. is a perfect example of this strategy at work through the use of racism that tapped into white fears of the black male as predator. Alicia Pedreira shows what this means to gays and lesbians in terms of life’s opportunities killed and The “Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996” by supposedly getting single, largely Black and Latino women to find non-existent jobs or jobs at poverty wages, shows what this amounts to for women. In short, it means an attack on the rights and conditions of life for these groups and ultimately for all of us, because of the continual creation of a reserve army of the poor driving down wages and, more to the point, the greatly diminished ability on our part to even hope to combat the consequences of the system, such as the yawning gap between rich and poor, because of lack a of solidarity. As Jean Jacques Rousseau warned,

despotism tolerates no other master, wherever it reigns; the moment it speaks, probity and duty lose all their influence, and the blindest obedience is the only virtue to slaves.[41]

If it is true, as Karl Marx remarked, that the dominant ideas of any age are the ideas of its ruling class, then the divisions nurtured by Capitalism amongst the groups that would oppose it, namely the working class, are very destructive for two important reasons. First because of the lack of solidarity and concomitant isolation these divisions themselves represent and second, because of the internalized oppression the system’s victims acquire from the prevailing notions, mindsets, perspectives and outlooks that are projected upon them from on high. Under these conditions all oppressed groups must first cut through the thicket of ideologies that serve the interests of the ruling classes before taking the path, whether revolutionary or reformist, toward social and economic change.

Some have argued that, by approaching the fight for their cause as separate entities, historically oppressed groups, such as gays and people of color, weaken themselves by highlighting their separateness from society at large as well as from humanity in general. As a result, it is maintained, their struggle in time becomes a demand for special rights. While I fully recognize the weaknesses within what is commonly referred to as “identity politics”, it must be remembered that these groups are compelled to fight for their rights precisely because they have been excluded by the larger society and that, therefore, this struggle invariably must, out of necessity and because of “the facts on the ground”, originate from outside the predominant or mainstream discourse and structures of society. Trying to do otherwise more often than not leads to frustration, half-measures, co-option, or, at times, complete capitulation. What should occur is that the struggles of gays/lesbians coalesce with those of other groups, such as the anti-war movement and the global economic justice movement, in the fight against elite hegemony and oppression. Support for gay rights is not only the moral or ethical course of action because all of us deserve the same rights and protections as any other member of society but also because solidarity among blacks, whites, women, gays and other groups, which the system must seek to continually undo if it is to survive but we must reinforce and expand, is the only way we are going to achieve a fair, just and environmentally sustainable society. Ultimately, the fight for gay and lesbian rights is a fight for human rights.

Bibliography

1. Stewart, Robert M. ed. Readings in Social and political Philosophy (Political Obligation and Consent). New York, Oxford University Press 1996

2. Helminiak, Daniel A. What The Bible Really Says About Homosexuality. Alamo Square Press, New Mexico 2002

3. Holy Bible, King James Version (1611). American Bible Society, New York, 1973

4. Garber, Marjorie. Bisexuality and The Eroticism Of Everyday Life. Routledge, New York 2000

5. Blasius, Mark. Gay and Lesbian Politics: Sexuality and the Emergence of a New Ethic. Temple University Press, Philadelphia 1994

6. Richards, David A. J. Women, Gays, and the Constitution: The Grounds for Feminism and Gay Rights in Culture and Law.University of Chicago Press, Chicago 1998

7. Reinisch, June M. The Kinsey Institute New Report On Sex. St Martin’s Press, New York 1990

8. Burr, Chandler. Homosexuality and Biology. The Atlantic Monthly, Mar. 1993. Volume 272, Nos. 3

9. Press, Eyal. Faith-Based Furor. New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2001.

10. Somerville, Siobhan B. Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture. Duke University Press, Durham 2000

11. Nibert, David. Hitting the Lottery Jackpot: Government and the Taxing of Dreams, Monthly Review Press, New York 2000.

[1] http://www.jax-inter.net/~help/sexdiff.html

[2] Garber p 249

[3] Reinisch p 13

[4] Garber p 320

[5] Somerville p 5

[6] ibid p 7

[7] For an interesting exposition of this duality of identity amongst transplanted African peoples refer to Black Skins, White Masks by Franz Fanon.

[8] Somerville p 34

[9] Richards p 377

[10] http://www.planetout.com/pno/news/history/archive/06211999.html

[11] Americans United for Separation of Church and State. http://www.au.org/press/pr91701.htm

[12] Stewart p 20

[13] Stewart p 27

[14] Stewart p 24

[15] Stewart p 29

[16] Stewart p 31

[17] Stewart p 351

[18] See his work “Essays on some Unsettled Questions of Political Economy (1844)”

[19] Is Homophobia Associated With Homosexual Arousal? http://www.virtualcity.com/youthsuicide/adams.htm

[20] Somerville p 3

[21] Burr pp. 47 - 65

[22] Stewart p 122

[23] Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Trends in the HIV and AIDS Epidemic, 1998 www.cdc.gov

[24] Wink, Walter. Homosexuality and the Bible. http://www.melwhite.org/index.html

[25] Helminiak p 19

[26] ibid p 79

[27] ibid p 80

[28] ibid p 84

[29] ibid p 77

[30] Holy Bible (KJV) p 289

[31] ibid p 292

[32] ibid p 293

[33] Falwell, Jerry. http://www.liberty.edu/chancellor/nlj/July1999/Coverstory3.htm

[34] ibid p 1

[35] Press, Eyal. Faith-Based Furor. New York Times Magazine, April 1, 2001. p 62

[36] Nibert p 15

[37] Blasius p 46

[38]Stewart p 207

[39] Shaw, George Bernard. http://www.zmag.org/

[40] For an expanded description of what exactly are “human rights” please refer to United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, NEW YORK December 10, 1948. http://www.hri.org/docs/UDHR48.html

[41] Stewart p 209

Movie Review: "The Affair"

2004-12-13T17:42:00.000-08:00

In "The Affair" Courtney Vance gives a strong performance as a Black G. I. stationed in England during W. W. II who meets and falls in love with a married Englishwoman. It is a compelling story because it dramatizes how dangerous love, whether extra-marital or not, could be between a Black man and a White Woman. It should be recalled that during W. W. II black and white soldiers in the U. S. still served in separate divisions. Racism, though somewhat less pronounced, still was rampant within the U. S. military and with that came the usual strong prohibition against sexual relations between the races. However, war, perhaps more than any other setting, allows for all kinds of situations. It was within this volatile mix of war and entrenched racism that a Black G. I. meets and falls in love with a White Englishwoman.

This is a movie that engages its audience at many levels. It can be seen as a Romeo and Juliet type of love tragedy, as a cautionary tale of the effects of war on both soldiers and civilians alike or, finally, as a reminder of the long road that U. S. society had yet to travel on the road to racial equality. Unfortunately, U. S. society is still on this road and has not yet reached its end. Perhaps, fine movies such as this one can spur faster movement toward the end of the road where there lies the racial equality that MLK spoke of forty years ago.

Colin Powell: Exhibit A for the Black Bourgiosie

2004-12-13T17:11:00.000-08:00

On B. J Sabri's "The Splendid Failure of Occupation." A series appearing on the website Online Journal:

You hit the nail right on the head Mr. Sabri:

As an opportunist Zionist and violent imperialist craving to subjugate the Iraqis to his monovision of the world, Powell did not learn anything significant about the struggle against slavery, colonialism, and imperialism.

This is what I have been waiting for. Powell and that now even more powerful "awful bitch" are a complete disgrace. What I have long since recognized is that people of color in this country often enough seem to forget where they, as part of a historically oppressed group, come from. Once they join the ranks of the upper or upper middle classes (Oprah being another prime example in my view) they become Cosbyites (coined in honor (sic) of Bill Cosby). All of a sudden they discover the rhetoric of individuality and personal responsibility. Except that rather than pointing at those of the Class they have joined, who tellingly do not apply the edifying wonders of personal responsibility on themselves, they instead point the finger at those below them that they have left behind. If I had my druthers , Colin Powell would be tried , along with the rest of the Bush criminal Junta, in The Hague for crimes agaist humanity .

The Blind Spot at the WSWS

2004-12-13T17:00:00.000-08:00

I commend Bill Van Auken On his piece "America on a Killing Spree" (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/nov2004/kill-n18.shtml). He is absolutely correct in saying that "That the massacre of an innocent people more than 5,000 miles away can be promoted as a means of boosting public morale and fostering national unity is an indication of a society suffering from protracted and profound degeneration." This degeneracy was again made perfectly apparent domestically with the uproar over football player Terrell Owens and "Desperate Houswives star Nicollette Sheridan's plug for her T. V. show before the start of MNF (ABC's intro showed Sheridan wearing only a towel and provocatively asking Owens to skip the game for her as the two stood alone in a locker room. She then drops the towel and jumps into Owens' arms). Never mind that Sheridan's show is a monument to trash and that football is a very violent sport that glorifies war and militarism. What most of the mainstream press concentrated on instead was the trashiness of the plug while little was said of the raced based sexual taboos raised and the violent culture that helps make the NFL the most popular sport in the U.S. This whole episode is yet another example of how far off the moral compass of U. S. society is. This is particularly true in regard to race and this is where I believe Mr. Van Auken falters. While he touches upon many bases he does not directly address the endemic racism within U. S. society. It is racism, as well as militarism, nationalism and cultural hubris, that is a defining characteristic of the face that American society is now perhaps more clearly than ever presenting to the world.

A British newspaper noted how American forces view Iraqis as "|ntermenschen." As a white settler state, genocide of native peoples of the continent came along with the founding of the country. The mindset that allowed for the carrying out of this genocide, as well as the enslavement of African peoples, has been handed down from generation to generation amongst most, if not all, white ethnic people in the country. This not to say that racism cannot be challenged and minds changed, but that the "peculiar and malevolent element within the conduct of this US policy" that Mr. Van Auken sees is a product of the widespread racism that is part and parcel of the white American experience.

It seems to me that in its rush to defend those who voted for Bush, particularly in the so-called 'Red States', WSWS ignores that those who voted for Bush did so based on his appeals to their bigotry and xenophobia. To claim that these voters were simply confused and mislead or voted for Bush in the absence of a real alternative, is to say that these folks do not have a mind of their own. This is to say that rather than being led this way, they can be led that way. Of course, the point is that either way they are to be led and that for the most part they are not active agents themselves. Historically we know this not to be the case as their great great grandparents, great grandparents and grandparents personally engaged in genocidal acts (i. e. The Trail of Tears, Tulsa, Oklahoma, Rosewood, NYC Draft Riots) against Native and African American peoples in this land. What we are witnessing in Iraq is little more than a play that has been going on for some time.

No, those who voted for Bush did so willingly and cognizant of what they were getting. To claim otherwise is to ignore a long history of white near unanimity on issues of race and to deny people their freedom to choose. Moreover, by claiming ignorance as an excuse for these folks it also implies that they should be somehow absolved for the actions of the man they help put in office as well as the consequences of their own bigotry. Recall that ignorance is exactly what ordinary Germans claimed when directly confronted with the crimes of the Nazi regime following W. W. II. Can ignorance be rationally claimed with crimes of such magnitude? Has it never occurred to WSWS, or much of the liberal Left for that matter, that perhaps the likes of Bush et al rather than being just a few bad apples at the top of the cart are really representative of what is inside the whole cart (or at least, arguably, half of the cart)? White folks have been benefiting from the 'wages of whiteness' for a long time now and for many, particularly in the so called Red States who apparently only benefit mostly from a psychological standpoint, this will continue. Rather than rationalizing and absolving the behavior of these people, many of whom may be irredeemable; it makes more sense to accept that they made exactly the choice they wanted and that we need to instead work with those who can be moved however few in number. It is clear to the rest of the world, even if not to some of us, that rather than being a captive audience, at least half of the American population is down with Bush's program. They are not simply dupes, even if they are not too bright. They are willing partners in the destruction of other peoples lands, the robbing of their resources and in genocide.