Aman Yala

Fin

2007-09-27T14:53:00.000-04:00

It’s been so long since I posted, is anyone even reading this anymore? I have a few things to say, I guess, to those who continue to check in.

First off, I’d like to offer my sincere apology for disappearing so abruptly. At first, the time that passed after my last post seemed normal, seeing that sometimes a week or more elapsed between posts. Then as weeks became months, I realized that I had entered into a new relationship with my blog—one of neglect. At that point, so much time had gone by that I was embarrassed to pen an explanation. Partly, I felt that most of my readers had probably long since given up on me, so why bother?

In reality, I don’t really know who’s still reading. Therefore, I’m writing this final post for myself, for some closure; however, if I can give closure to any remaining loyal readers, so much the better. Perhaps I’ve always been writing primarily for myself. This blog has been a valuable tool for me, not just to vent and voice an opinion, but as an exercise in writing and self-expression. I began it on a lark after returning home from a failed adoption attempt in Ukraine in the fall of 2005, and it turned into a fun and stimulating outlet for me.

While that outlet became no less necessary in recent months, the time I had to devote to it became more and more scarce. Playing music, working, parenting, taking care of a home, having a social life all took me away from blogging. It’s not that I had less to say; just less time in which to say it.

It should come as no surprise that maintaining a good blog takes lots of work. Moreover, one cannot blog sporadically and hope to have anything resembling a solid readership. I tried to be as regular as I could and I am grateful for the readers that I had; but as much work and thought as I put in, I realized that I was never going to attain any degree of popularity or notoriety in the blogosphere. It’s not that I was shooting for that, not really. I mean, it’s great having an audience, but there are so many wonderfully insightful blogs out there, I began to wonder whether I really had all that much to add.

To be honest, though, my stopping wasn’t at all deliberate or planned; it came as a surprise to me. As I said above, before I knew it, weeks had gone by, and I found myself wondering why I’d stopped, just as others might too have been wondering what the hell had happened to me.

I will say that it’s probably no accident that my stopping coincided with my decision to return to school to complete my doctoral work. By early summer, I’d already begun to work things out with my former program (at a university here in Boston). It’s not that school and research took me away from blogging per se. As it is, I’ve yet to resume work on my dissertation with any regularity. However, the mere prospect of having a new outlet for my writing and an exciting new project on the horizon doubtless had an impact on my subconscious decision to stop blogging. That’s just a hunch, but I’m pretty sure there’s some truth there.

I will surely look back on my many posts and the comments they received years from now and have a wonderful snapshot of my life during a time of great transition for me, the transition to fatherhood. However, because the vast majority of my posts were not about my personal life, it will also serve as a record of my thoughts and actions during what arguably has been the most disastrous administration the United States has ever seen and how I, as a horrified liberal, managed to stay sane during the Bush years. At the very least, it will serve as a potent testimony to the Culture Wars, which I hope will be long over by the time anyone looks back on this blog from the distant future.

I’m certain that I will miss blogging. I already do. I will probably regret my decision to stop. Many times over the past few months I’ve thought about posting a picture or two from my summer travels; or a topic in the news would catch my eye and I’d find myself mentally penning a blog post. I felt, however, that if I couldn’t commit to regular posting, it really didn’t make sense to throw a random something out there just to have my say or get something off my chest. I have a husband and son who are happy to let me rant, provided I don’t prattle on too long.

Of course, it’s also possible that I’ll revive this blog again someday. It’s not likely to be in the near future, but who knows? For now, I am comfortable with saying a long overdue adieu and a most sincere and heartfelt

Aman Yala!

Pink Ladyslipper

2007-05-28T22:51:00.000-04:00

The Pink Ladyslipper, or Moccasin Flower, (Cypripedium acaule) is a wild orchid, native to many parts of the central and eastern United States as well as central and eastern Canada.

I saw a couple at Walden Pond on Friday and then a bunch more in the Stony Brook Reservation, where I took the above photograph.

A Piano Should Fall on His Head

2007-05-24T16:24:00.000-04:00

Just when imbeciles and bigots thought it was safe to step outside, out of nowhere comes a piano and, WHAM, right on the head.

Monica Goodling’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee yesterday provided an opportunity for conservative Republicans to defend not simply the Bush administration’s impact on the Justice Department, but also the academic credentials of Regent University, Goodling’s alma mater.

Goodling, former senior aide to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and Justice Department liaison to the White House, was granted immunity in exchange for her testimony under oath into the ongoing imbroglio surrounding the firing of nine U.S. attorneys. Democrats allege that the attorneys were fired because they weren’t aggressive enough in targeting Democrats for prosecution in cases of corruption and voter fraud or were too aggressive in prosecuting Republicans. The committee is currently investigating what role the White House played in the firings.

Goodling has been criticized for her role in the firings, but also for her lack of prosecutorial experience and for what many perceive to be her substandard legal education. Regent University, which was founded by televangelist Pat Robertson in 1978, boasts 150 alumni in the Bush administration. Many have questioned the quality of the “spirit-filled” education offered by Regent and its influence on the White House. Regent’s law school, from which Goodling graduated in 1999, has been accredited by the ABA only since 1996.

Others, like Iowa Representative Steve King (R), have praised Regent’s excellence, comparing the school to none other than Harvard, which was founded in 1636 (a full 342 years before Regent), making it the nation’s oldest college. During yesterday’s hearing, King declared:

“I would submit that Regent… is a successor to Harvard in being founded upon religious principles… and this nation was founded upon religious principles, as was our Constitution. And so I think it is a laudable thing, not a derogatory thing.”

I would submit that King is a colossal idiot. His statement makes him an embarrassment to his fellow Iowans and to the House of Representatives.

Incidentally, Harvard was founded by strict Calvinists. Pat Robertson rejects Calvinism with its emphasis on predestination as a distortion of the gospel, which, he argues, depends upon unimpeded free will. If the founders of Harvard were alive today, they’d regard Robertson as a heretic and would be burning his books and DVD’s in Harvard Yard.

Um, Reagan?

2007-05-23T15:50:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if anyone else caught Jeff Jacoby’s article “Look in the Mirror, Jimmy Carter” in today’s Globe. In it, Jacoby takes Carter to task for his recent comments to the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in which he claimed that “as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” referring to the Bush administration.

Jacoby argued that it was actually Carter’s own administration that was the worst in history, or at least the worst of the 20th century. He points to Carter’s departure from the aggressive anti-Communism of his predecessors and what Jacoby sees as Carter’s appeasement of Communist leaders, like Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the Soviet Union’s Leonid Brezhnev.

Now I’m not saying Carter was one of our best presidents (and I was too young to have voted for him at the time) but I have a difficult time criticizing Carter’s policy of rapprochement with some of the world’s leading Marxists—heck, didn’t Nixon normalize U.S. relations with China?—especially in light of how many times the U.S. has chosen to support (often covertly) brutal, ruthless, and undemocratic dictators purely on the basis of their anti-Communism.

Worse yet is Jacoby’s criticism of Carter’s response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the Iranian Revolution, and the subsequent Iran hostage crisis (1979 – 1981). In what can only be considered a thoroughly cock-eyed analysis of what he terms “the fruits of Carter’s spinelessness,” he concludes (quoting Stephen Hayward, a member of the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative think tank):

“The fall of Iran… ‘set in motion the advance of radical Islam and the rise of terrorism that culminated in Sept. 11.’ By doing nothing to prevent the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, Carter invited an evil from which grew the jihadist violence that is such a menace today.”

Only the most biased (and blind) individual would reach such a conclusion. Far more accurate is an analysis that looks to the damage done by Carter’s successor, Ronald Reagan, whose administration funneled billions to Afghanistan in support of the mujahedeen’s jihad against the Soviet Union. Thousands of Arab counterrevolutionaries fled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets, among them Osama bin Laden. They were trained and aided by the CIA, who “devised special recommendations ‘for the use of religious movements and groups in the struggle against the spread of Communist influence.’”

Reagan’s shortsighted policy of supporting militant Islam as part of his strategy for winning the Cold War was to have devastating results. In effect, he helped create a threat far more lethal to American security than the Soviet Union. Both the Taliban and Al-Qaeda grew in strength as a result of Reagan’s interference in Afghanistan. His simplistic formula of “the enemy of my enemy of my friend” was a grave miscalculation, the full impact of which was witnessed on 9/11. To ignore the connection between the Reagan administration’s foreign policy and the rise of militant Islam, while placing the blame on Carter’s shoulders isn’t merely bad history. It’s utter foolishness.

A Jihad for Love

2007-05-15T13:31:00.000-04:00

The story of Islam told by its most unlikely storytellers...

Filmed in twelve different countries and in nine languages, A Jihad for Love is the first-ever feature-length documentary to explore the complex global intersections of Islam and homosexuality. With unprecedented access and depth, the film brings to light the hidden lives of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender Muslims and goes where the silence has been loudest, to countries such as Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, Egypt and Bangladesh, as well as to Turkey, France, India, South Africa, the United States and the United Kingdom.

In many nations with a Muslim majority, laws based on Quranic interpretations are enforced by authorities to monitor, entrap, imprison, torture and even execute homosexuals. Even for those who migrate to Europe or North America and adopt the Western personae of “gay,” the filmmaker says that relative freedoms of new homelands are mitigated by persistent racial profiling and intensified state surveillance after the terrorist attacks in New York, London and Madrid.

As a result, many gay and lesbian Muslims end up renouncing their religion. But the real-life characters of A Jihad for Love are not willing to abandon a faith they cherish. Instead, they struggle to reconcile their ardent belief with the innate reality of their being. The international chorus of gay, lesbian and transgender Muslims brought together by A Jihad for Love does not seek to vilify or reject Islam, but rather to negotiate a new relationship to it.

It was a difficult decision for the subjects under threat of violence to participate in the film. According to the filmmaker, Parvez Sharma, those who came forward to tell their stories felt that Islam is at a tipping point and thus they were willing to take the risk. The documentary will create a new language of affirmation, break down walls of silence and re-address the role of religious fundamentalism in daily life.

Producer Sandi DuBowski is director/producer of the award-winning and groundbreaking film Trembling Before G_d. A Jihad for Love is co-produced by five major international broadcasters, Channel 4 (UK), ZDF/ARTE (France/Germany), SBS (Australia) and LOGO (USA).

Sandi DuBowski and Parvez Sharma have expressed the need for immediate funding as they wrap shooting and edit the film to premiere in early 2007. All donations for the production and distribution of A Jihad for Love are tax-deductible to the fullest extent of the law. If you would like to make a donation via the Hartley Film Foundation, the film’s fiscal sponsor, please click here.

There will be a gala reception in Boston on Monday, May 21 at 6:30pm with selected clips from the film and a Q&A with the director and producer. For more information on this event, please click here.

Says WHO: Don’t get hooked on the hookah.

2007-05-14T16:27:00.000-04:00

I don’t know if anyone else caught the Globe’s article on hookah smoking a couple of Sundays ago. The jist of the article was that health officials are becoming alarmed by the rise in hookah smoking among young people who erroneously conclude that it’s a relatively safe alternative to cigarettes. I’m not sure that there’s much of a trend here—or if there is, it’s not really all that new.

Sure, you can order a hookah at Tangierino in Charlestown, but that’s been the case for over a year, at least. A new hookah bar, The Nile Lounge, is set to open in Allston soon, and there are a handful of establishments that offer hookah smoking on their outdoor patios. Mantra built a cool, but pricey hookah den right in the middle of their restaurant about eight years ago, but Boston’s smoking ban killed it shortly thereafter. Do these few instances really amount to a trend? I think a small minority of non-Middle Eastern Americans have been using hookahs for a while, and I’m not sure there numbers are increasing all that much.

On the other hand, Americans of Middle Eastern descent have been using them for decades. My grandfather (OK, he was Greek, but he was also an Ottoman subject) used to smoke one. I smoked one at a Palestinian restaurant in San Francisco about five years ago, but long before that, I noticed a line of ornate hookahs on a shelf at Sevan bakery in Watertown, which is run by an Armenian family from Istanbul. Virtually every Middle Eastern grocer I’ve ever encountered—including the one on Shawmut Ave in the South End—has been selling hookahs and hookah paraphernalia (i.e. tobacco, coals, mouthpieces, etc.) for years.

Whether or not hookahs are truly on the rise in the United States, it is true that they have caught the attention of health officials, who have begun to rail against the dangers of hookah smoking and have raised the regulatory battle cry. This past March, the American Lung Association published a new report entitled An Emerging Deadly Trend—Waterpipe Tobacco Use. They cited a 2005 study by the World Health Organization’s Advisory Note on Waterpipe Tobacco Smoking, which concluded that hookah smoking is 100 times more dangerous than cigarettes. Well, actually, they concluded that smoking the hookah for an hour is more dangerous than smoking a single cigarette. Well, duh. I could have told you that.

Among their findings:

“A waterpipe smoking session may expose the smoker to more smoke over a longer period of time than occurs when smoking a cigarette. Cigarette smokers typically take 8 – 12 40 – 75 ml puffs over about 5 – 7 minutes and inhale 0.5 to 0.6 litres of smoke. In contrast, waterpipe smoking sessions typically last 20 – 80 minutes, during which the smoker may take 50 – 200 puffs which range from about 0.15 to 1 litre each. The waterpipe smoker may therefore inhale as much smoke during one session as a cigarette smoker would inhale consuming 100 or more cigarettes…

A typical 1-hour long waterpipe smoking session involves inhaling 100 – 200 times the volume of smoke inhaled with a single cigarette.”

The operative wording here is “a cigarette.” I don’t know that many smokers who smoke a single cigarette. Don’t smokers typically smoke several cigarettes, spread out over their entire day? Moreover, don’t they typically smoke every day? I’m sure there are plenty of “social smokers” who don’t consume nearly as many cigarettes as their chain-smoking counterparts, but I’m sure even this group doesn’t stop at just one. I think it would have been more accurate to compare the effects of hookah smoke vs. cigarette smoke over the course of a month. Even this would be an exaggeration, however, as many hookah smokers, like myself, don’t smoke every month, unlike cigarettes smokers who probably do.

The key, of course, is moderation. I agree that hookah smoking is not risk-free, and that people should be aware of the risks. The WHO study points out that myths about the harmlessness of hookah smoking are as old as the hookah itself (centuries in other words). It’s important to separate myth from reality. For that reason, it doesn’t really make sense to replace the old myths of harmlessness with new myths of deadliness, based on a questionable methodology. My suggestions:

• Limit your hookah smoking to once a month, at the very most.
• Don’t smoke for more than an hour.
• Don’t smoke alone.
• Use natural coals instead of quick-lighting briquettes.
• Always separate the tobacco from the coal with a layer of perforated tin foil.
• Always clean out the hose and the neck after every use.
• Don’t allow smoke to collect above the water in the base. Use the valve (good hookahs have them) to blow out excess smoke.

Of course, the real danger here isn’t so much to one’s health, but to one’s wallet. Most establishments charge $30 a pop for a hookah on the outdoor patio, in which case what you’re really paying for to look oh-so-hip. No thanks. Just go out and buy your own for Chrissake and smoke at home with your friends. You can find a great selection here or here. Click here for natural coals. The hookah’s special mixture of tobacco, dried fruit or flowers, and molasses (called tabamel or shisha) can be purchased here. For some really cool hookah smoking music, click here.

In spite of the fact that the hookah is making inroads into places where it has historically had less of a presence (I saw hookahs in Kiev last year), it is undeniably a Middle Eastern phenomenon in its origins and remains so in the popular imagination. It’s the exotic associations that make it cool to some, but dangerous to others. Let’s face it, the backlash against hookah smoking cannot really be separated from its post-9/11 context in which anything Middle Eastern has become suspect.

haiku

2007-05-13T23:46:00.000-04:00

I love getting text messages from friends. This one came today from my friend J, just as the Joes and I arrived home after being in the car for three hours. It was just what I needed.

Seventeen lilacs
encountered meandering
fragrant poignancy

I love that J texts me haikus. Thanks, J.

Take That, Reunion!

2007-05-02T17:14:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago I posted about Reunion Christian Church and an article in the Weekly Dig about their uber-hip approach to saving your soul. Of course, they’re not the only ones trying to make church fun and cool. I’m happy to report that some Episcopal churches are trading in their incense for overhead projectors as part of something called a U2charist.

From the project’s website: “A U2charist is an Episcopal Eucharist service that features the music of the rock band U2 and a message about God’s call to rally around the Millennium Development Goals.”

A set of eight goals set by the United Nations, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) endeavor to end poverty, hunger and disease, lack of adequate shelter, and exclusion while promoting gender equality, education, and enviromental sustainability, all by 2015. Bono is widely recognized as the project’s global ambassador.

While the Episcopal Church is a denomination that contains both liberals and conservatives, I believe the conservatives are in the minority, at least in the United States (in Africa, it’s a different story). In the U.S. Episcopalian sermons are far more likely to emphasize ethics, social and economic justice, and human rights than sin, salvation, or personal holiness. I doubt you’ll find many of them talking about hell and who’s going there. Instead, they address the hell that the poor, exploited, and disease-ridden experience every day, right here on earth.

A U2charist might sound a bit hokey. I myself haven’t been to one. I am, however, glad to see someone other than the fundies drawing large crowds to their worship and using that opportunity to promote something genuinely positive in the process. Amen.

A Page Straight from the Haggard Playbook

2007-04-30T14:20:00.000-04:00

As soon as I read about the resignation of Randall Tobias (shown left with George W. Bush) last week, I immediately thought of Ted Haggard. Tobias was the U.S. State Department’s top foreign aid advisor and resigned after admitting that he was among the clients of a well-known Washington prostitute. Tobias, who served as the director of foreign assistance and the administrator of the Agency for International Development, required foreign recipients of AIDS assistance to explicitly condemn prostitution. He is a former chairman and chief executive of Eli Lilly and of AT&T International. He was chairman of the board of Duke University from 1997 to 2000. He has also been a major donor to various Republican campaigns.

Naturally, Tobias is claiming that he hired the prostitutes to give him massages, not sex. Wasn’t that Ted Haggard’s defense?

A Page Straight from the Romney Playbook

2007-04-27T11:27:00.000-04:00

In an appalling, but not at all surprising, change of heart, Rudy Giuliani announced this week that he opposes civil unions for same-sex couples. In response to New Hampshire’s imminent civil unions law, a spokesperson for the Giuliani presidential campaign issued a statement saying that the law goes “too far.”

While considered a longtime supporter of GLBT rights, Giuliani has never expressed support for same-sex marriage. At the same time, he has explained his opposition by pointing to the existence of civil unions, which, he has argued, effectively replicate marriage for same-sex couples:

“That’s why you have civil partnerships. So now you have a civil partnership, domestic partnership, civil union, whatever you want to call it, and that takes care of the imbalance, the discrimination, which we shouldn’t have.”

So why the sudden change? There’s really no mystery here. For months, political commentators have been saying that Giuliani’s liberal positions could make him poison for more conservative Republican voters, who would reject him in favor of Romney. Because God knows, Romney’s conservatism is genuine.

If you ask me, it’s a disgrace. But is it more disgraceful than the about-face of so many Democrats whose vocal opposition to the war in Iraq belies the fact that it was their failure to oppose Bush’s October 2002 Iraq War Resolution that put us there in the first place? Bush couldn’t have done it alone. He needed Congressional approval to send our military into Iraq. Fearful of appearing un-patriotic so soon after 9/11, Democrats in Congress fell into line and authorized the disastrous war in which the United States now finds itself. Is their change of heart any less politically expedient than Giuliani’s?

Naughty Fruits

2007-04-26T13:15:00.000-04:00

Last night I played Boggle with the Joes. Little Joe loves games. He wants every night to be game night, and we are happy to oblige if it means we can keep him from spending hours in front of the television or computer. His favorites are Life, Monopoly and, more recently, Risk. On a regular basis, however, he’s just as likely to choose Scrabble, which he loves, or Boggle because it’s easier to squeeze these games into the hour space we have between dinner and his bedtime.

I hardly ever challenge in either Scrabble or Boggle, but last night, Joe (my partner, not Little Joe) made “sot,” which I thought was incorrect, so I took out the dictionary to challenge him. He claimed it refers to a fool and he ended up being right, but in the midst of looking up the word in question, I came across something that I would never have believed had I not seen it with my own two eyes.

I must admit that I thought I knew all there was to know about squirting cucumbers. I was wrong. The definition of a “ripened fruit [that] forcibly ejects the seeds and juice” is priceless, and I cannot help but think there’s a little camp involved here. One (or more) of those crusty old editors loved the idea of a squirting cucumber so much that they just had to include an illustration! Surely, they must have been aware of the naughty nature of it all. Joe and I had a good laugh over it.

Little Joe just rolled his eyes.

I have prayed for that very thing many times.

2007-04-26T00:08:00.000-04:00

Christine Bakke is a lesbian who was recently interviewed by Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America. On the show, she talked about her traumatic, disappointing, and often bizarre experience during four years of ex-gay “reparative therapy.” Read the story here.

She recalled how one of her stranger moments occurred in the midst of a prayer meeting when a fellow church member asked God to give Bakke the ability to accessorize. Apparently a tried and true method of identifying a lesbian is her inability to accessorize. It also appears that it’s not enough for lesbians to stop having sex with other women. They need to be fabulous as well.

It’s a humorous example of the pathetic way the ex-gay movement continues to conflate sexuality with gender. I wonder if that same church member, recruited to pray for gay men (as opposed to lesbians), would ask that God strip them of their ability to accessorize!

How many times I have prayed for the ability to accessorize! Perhaps I’m not really gay after all. Hallelujah, I’m cured!

Bravo

2007-04-25T14:11:00.000-04:00

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has been issued a subpoena to appear before House of Representatives’ Oversight and Government Reform Committee next month to testify about the Bush administration’s case for the war in Iraq and their false claims that Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium from Niger.

Read the full story here.

Sinking Buildings + Rising Seas = We’re Fucked

2007-04-19T12:55:00.000-04:00

There’s an inescapable irony in being comforted by truly discomforting stories that serve to remind me that I’m not alone in worrying about the sort of things that could easily be (and often are) dismissed as neurotic. It’s nice to know that at least I’m not alone in my neurosis.

I love Boston. Although I went away to college and I’ve lived abroad on two separate occasions, I always knew that I’d settle here, where my roots are. My grandparents came to Boston from Greece almost a century ago, and my family and friends are here. It’s more than that, however. I love the city and the region that surrounds it. Boston is far from perfect, but as a built environment, it stands out as one of America’s loveliest cities.

Which is why I cannot help but be alarmed when I read stories about dwindling ground water supplies that threaten to erode the foundations upon which so much of Boston is built. Perhaps it would be done differently today, but back in the 19th century, the way they approached construction atop landfill was to drive wooden pilings into the muck and build atop those. When groundwater levels drop leaving those pilings exposed to air, they rot, and that’s bad news for the structures sitting on top of them. This isn’t speculation either. It’s already happening.

If that wasn’t frightening enough, we have the spectre of massive flooding as a result of rising sea levels. A study done by Applied Science Associates of Narragansett, Rhode Island, created a hypothetical model to simulate the effects on Boston’s topography in 100 years if a) sea levels rise by 15 inches, b) the city settles 6 inches, and c) a storm surge hits during high tide. It’s not a pretty picture. Neither was the one painted by an EPA-commissioned study back in 2005. The flooding that was produced just this past week throughout coastal areas should give us an unpleasant taste of what’s to come.

I don’t want this post to be all problem and no solution. The first and most important step is to be aware. Far too few are aware of the threats facing our city and it’s easy to dismiss fears of sinking buildings and rising seas as alarmist melodrama. Take some time to learn about the Boston Groundwater Trust and the city’s Groundwater Conservation Overlay District (soon to include the North End and Fort Point area). Take some time to learn about climate change and environmental sustainability.

Otherwise, we might be forced to do what Chicago did in the mid-19th century. It was drastic, but it did the trick.

Dear Leon and Anonymous:

2007-04-14T11:11:00.000-04:00

Thank you for your comments. They are much appreciated.

There is a subtle distinction between my warning young people not to be taken in by the laid back, hip atmosphere of Reunion Christian Church and accusing them of deception. My point was simply to praise the Dig article for its juxtaposition of Reunion’s more progressive and non-traditional worship with their theology, which is far from progressive and quite traditional.

I don’t believe that Reunion is being deliberately deceptive. I think they are being strategic. They consciously strive to reach a younger audience and have created a vibe that they feel will resonate with that audience. They’re trying to reach those who feel church is dry and boring by offering a worship that isn’t dry and boring. And that is fine.

But it doesn’t change the fact that they are still evangelicals. Ask them if Muslims are going to heaven (no, not if they accept Jesus, but as believing Muslims). Heck, forget Muslims, ask them about Catholics. Ask them about the final destination of a person who thinks Jesus was pretty cool, but doesn’t believe that he was the Son of God or that he came back from the dead. I could be wrong, but I’d place my bet on their answer being the eternal flames of hell. Ask them if it’s OK in God’s eyes to be gay.

If those things (along with the other medieval stuff that evangelicals believe) are OK with you, that’s your business. And, frankly, it’s none of my business, unless of course you start lobbying the civil government to adopt laws that marginalize me and all those others who don’t conform to your vision of a Christian nation. Then it is my business to criticize you and to do so loudly.

I’m all for live and let live, but I’m not going to sit back while the Religious Right tries to impose creationism (or is it “intelligent design?”) on the public schools, while undermining diversity training in those same schools, or tries to pass laws preventing same-sex couples from obtaining the same rights and privileges as other couples. I will fight those who do these things and whatever else is on their wacky (and very dangerous) political agenda, and I’m not above lampooning them for the buffoons that they are.

Admittedly, I don’t know where Reunion stands on political engagement. For a long time in America, evangelicals and fundamentalists avoided politics. Many historians have argued that the fundamentalists’ retreat from the public sphere had to do with their humiliation during the Scopes trial in 1925 (even though they won the case). All that began to change in the late 1970s, when evangelicals reemerged as a political force. Perhaps Reunion belongs to that older, apolitical strain of evangelicalism, but there’s an awful lot on their website about “transforming society.” Often that is code for “take back your government for Christ.”

Frankly, without knowing for sure where Reunion stands on the political involvement of Christians or whether they have been among the thousands of angry bigots to descend upon the state house every time same-sex marriage is debated, it’s bad enough knowing that they teach homosexuality is sinful. That kind of teaching contributes to the marginalization of GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender—in case you don’t know) people. And marginalization results in discrimination and violence. That’s not cool, no matter how cool Reunion’s worship is.

I think others will recognize that. For those committed evangelicals looking for a less-stuffy and more hip worship, Reunion is clearly the place for them, and they know exactly what they’re getting into (and won’t like what I’ve said). I’m concerned more with the vast numbers of young people who don’t really know what evangelical Christianity is all about (just like I was in college). Maybe a young person looking for friendship and a laid back approach to spirituality will be drawn to Reunion. And maybe Reunion’s laid back, hip and high tech worship will be enough to make their conservative worldview palatable. That will surely be the case for some, but not for others, who, once they see (if they didn’t already know it going in) how terribly narrow and not at all laid back Reunion’s theology is, will decide that Reunion’s not for them, in spite of the cool, laid back vibe.

Civil Unions are the (arm)pits

2007-04-13T12:12:00.000-04:00

Something stinks in America’s armpit, and it’s the distinctive, rotten funk of inequality. Although New Jersey’s highest court ruled last October that the state’s constitution requires “that every statutory right and benefit conferred to heterosexual couples through civil marriage must be made available to committed same-sex couples,” the ruling left it up to the state legislature to determine exactly how those rights and benefits would be made available. New Jersey rejected same-sex marriage in favor of what they deemed the less offensive alternative of civil unions for same-sex couples.

Civil unions, once hailed as a momentous step forward in Vermont, were just as quickly repudiated as inherently unequal by GLBT advocates in neighboring Massachusetts a few years later as part of their bitter struggle with conservatives who mounted a fierce campaign to challenge the 2003 Goodridge decision, which guaranteed marriage for same-sex couples.

It was perhaps because of the rancorous nature of the debate in Massachusetts that lawmakers in New Jersey chose what they felt was the safer route. As feared by many GLBT leaders, the resulting civil unions law has proven less than adequate, producing a whole host of problems ranging from confusion over inheritance and property rights to problems with health insurance coverage as it pertains to partners in a civil unions, who do not qualify as spouses under many policy guidelines. One woman was denied a mammogram by her HMO, who changed her designation to “male” after she added her female partner to her insurance. The company claimed the change in designation was necessary because their forms did not accommodate civil union spouses.

The New Jersey Lesbian & Gay Coalition has a special section on their website dedicated to this issue and while they encourage their constituency to send an email thank-you to Governor John Corzine, who signed the civil unions bill into law, they are very clear to remind lawmakers that their “priority is 100% marriage equality for all” and they “will not stop until full marriage equality is achieved.” As a result of complaints from same-sex couples who have found that their civil unions have not provided them with the equality promised them by the October ruling, GLBT advocates are considering a legal challenge to the civil unions law that would effectively petition the New Jersey Supreme Court to grant them same-sex marriage.

To learn more about the messy situation created by civil unions in New Jersey, click here.

To learn more about the New Hampshire’s civil unions bill, click here.

This is Progress?

2007-04-12T10:35:00.000-04:00

Would someone please explain to me how the troop surge is supposed to secure Baghdad when we can’t even secure the Green Zone? Today’s blast wasn’t the first time the security around the heavily fortified Green Zone was breached. In spite of past attacks, it seems that security there has not improved.

In a separate incident, a truck bomb detonated during rush-hour brought down a huge section of the al-Sarafiyah bridge, killing 10 and sending cars plummeting into the Tigris River below.

At the risk of sounding defeatist, does it really matter how many troops we have there?

What do Evangelicals and War Profiteers Have in Common?

2007-04-11T12:58:00.000-04:00

Over the course of the past few weeks, I’ve been incensed by Bush’s incessant whining and tough-talking as part of his ongoing battle with the U.S. Congress over funding for the war in Iraq and whether or not the new funding bill will contain necessary benchmarks and a timetable for the withdrawal of our troops.

On a seemingly unrelated note, I read an article yesterday about the prominent role in the Bush administration played by alumni (approximately 150 of them) of televangelist Pat Robertson’s Regent University. For example, in 2001 Bush made Kay Coles James, the dean of Regent’s government school, director of the Office of Personnel Management, effectively opening the door to Regent alumni looking take back the government for Christ. More recently, Monica Goodling, a ’99 Regent Law School alumna and former top aide to Alberto Gonzalez, has found herself at the center of the controversy over the firing of U.S. attorneys.

These two stories have more in common than simply being two examples of the current administration’s screwy priorities. Sure, Bush wants to continue fighting the Iraq war in spite of the fact that even the Pentagon is beginning to refer to conflict as a civil war; and, yes, he wants as many evangelicals in the U.S. government as possible in spite of their blatant disregard for the separation between church and state. As disturbing as these things are, the real unifying theme here—and one of the central problems with the Bush administration—has to do with its unsettling ties to those who do not have our collective interests at heart, but rather are using their influence with the president to advance their own self-serving agenda.

In his standoff with Congress over the war funding bill, Bush’s principle tactic has been to accuse the Democrats of depriving the troops of supplies. To be sure, this will resonate with many Americans who, in spite of whether they are for the war or against it, don’t want to see the troops put in harm’s way. A classic example of the sleazy spin I’ve come to expect from the Bush administration, such an argument belies the fact that Bush, not Congress, will be depriving the troops of resources if he vetoes the bill that will arrive on his desk.

More importantly, the Bush administration lacks the necessary credibility and moral authority to chastise Democrats (or anyone else) for undermining the troops in light of what we now know about the no-bid war contracts that have allowed companies like Halliburton/KBR, CACI, and Blackwater to make billions off the war. I posted about this last October after seeing Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers. The film documents not only exorbitant cost overruns, but how high prices are being charged for substandard and poor-quality services and supplies being given our troops. It also shows how inadequate oversight of private contractors and a lack of accountability have lead to a breakdown of law and order, as evinced by tragedies like Abu Ghraib.

Make no mistake: these companies are getting rich at the expense of the military and our soldiers. If Bush were truly concerned about the fate of our troops and making sure that they were adequately supplied, far more attention would be paid to how this war is being outsourced. Moreover, executives of companies like Halliburton and Blackwater have close ties to the Bush administration and they have used their influence not for the common good or the good of the troops, but for their own personal gain. I wonder how much of the $100 billion for which Bush is currently haranguing Congress will end up in the pockets of private contractors?

The cozy relationship between Regent College and Bush bears an eerie similarity to the above situation. Although Regent’s inroads into the U.S. government are admittedly less about money than power, that so many Regent alumni have found a home in the federal government demonstrates just how insidious and pervasive is the influence of the Religious Right over the current administration. The issue isn’t simply that Regent alumni are under qualified or incompetent (though this is clearly the case in many instances). It’s not simply that their behavior is unethical, as in the case of Monica Goodling (shown left) who was one of several Gonzalez aides who oversaw the firing of U.S. attorneys who didn’t tow the party line.

The real problem is that they are taking advantage of the current administration’s conservatism and openness to “faith-based” everything (i.e. Christian fundamentalism) to weasel their way in and dismantle those things—everything from sex education and stem cell research to environmentalism and the protections afforded GLBT people—that have no place within their narrow vision of a “Christian nation.” America is so much bigger and more diverse than Regent alumni are willing or able to admit. Similarly, the war in Iraq should be viewed as more than a marketplace opportunity for big companies trying to get rich(er).

Whether in the arena of who gets hired and who gets fired or in the theater of war, our government’s policies need to reflect what is good for the many, not the few. The irony is that conservatives are always the loudest to decry “special interests.” Until we go to the polls in November 2008, we must look to Congress and the courts to confront this tyranny of special interests that has hijacked our government.

And incidentally, for more information on what the war in Iraq is costing the American people—including a breakdown by city and state—please visit the National Priorities Project’s Cost of War counter.

Putting the Fun in Fundy

2007-04-11T00:25:00.000-04:00

I usually want to vomit when I read about insidious evangelical strategies to save the godless bastion of secular humanism otherwise known as Boston. But that wasn’t how I felt when I read “Emo for Jesus” in Boston’s Weekly Dig. They deserve kudos for producing a wry and insightful look at the newest breed of Christian missionaries to try their hand at saving our souls.

With subtlety and humor, they were able to capture the central irony of the pseudo-hipster holy-rollers at Boston’s Reunion Christian Church; namely, that being considered progressive within the narrow world of evangelical Christianity does not a progressive make.

It really doesn’t matter how cool they dress, how rockin’ their Sunday morning worship is, or that they can appreciate the humor of the “Buddy Christ” in Dogma. Under all the superficial veneer of urban coolness, Reunion represents the same dogmatic “We’re right and everyone else is wrong (and hellbound)” variety of fundamentalism that regards other religions and worldviews as dangerous, soul-destroying lies. On a more personal note, their belief in the inherent sinfulness of erotic love between two people of the same sex (among their laundry list of sins) makes them, as far as I’m concerned, the ultimate Anticool.

It saddens me that some curious (and lonely) 20-somethings will be lured in by Reunion’s high-tech and laid-back approach. I’m optimistic, though, that their numbers will remain small and that the vast majority of young Bostonians will see right through their deceptive outward appearance and recognize that underneath it all, the only things separating these guys from uptight dickwads like Pat Robertson, James Dobson, and George W. Bush are their haircuts, eyebrow piercings, some laptops, and a couple of electric guitars.

Easter Treats

2007-04-09T12:16:00.000-04:00

A few items from our Paschal table this past weekend. Joe and I didn’t host Easter this year like we did last year, so there was no lamb slowly turning on a spit in our yard. We did, however, dye our eggs and make traditional Greek κουλουράκια (koulourakia). As you can see, Joe hellenized his panettone as well.

Next Stop, Extinction

2007-04-06T14:43:00.000-04:00

Sowing the wind to reap the whirlwind.

blood red

2007-04-04T15:10:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow night I’ll introduce my son to the Greek Orthodox tradition of dying eggs red (using onion skins) as part of the Easter celebration. Old-school Greek homes don’t usually dye eggs pastel colors the way mainstream American families do. My mother did both when I was a kid because she wanted my sister and me to have the full Easter egg experience (even though we didn’t do an Easter egg hunt). That meant we had our teacups filled with Paas dye on the table while she had her vat of blood red dye simmering on the stove.

Greeks dye their eggs red to symbolize the blood of Christ. I learned this early on as a kid. However, there is another more apocryphal story that is told to Greek children about why eggs are dyed red, and it goes like this: On Easter Sunday morning, Mary Magdalene was returning to Jerusalem after discovering the empty tomb and then the risen Christ. She was carrying a basket of eggs (I’m not sure why) when she encountered some of the disciples on the way to the tomb themselves. When she informed them that the tomb was empty and their beloved Jesus, alive and well, they reacted in disbelief. Not one to back down, she confidently declared that if the words she had spoken to them were true and Christ truly risen, the eggs in her basket would turn red. Naturally, they did.

When I saw the above picture of a stretch of Route I-495 in Littleton taken this morning after a truck spilled red dye all over the road, I immediately thought of the story my mother used to tell me as a child. While I’m not one to argue the cosmic primacy of Christianity over other religions, I couldn’t help but feel that a red road is appropriate during Holy Week when so many are caught up (myself included) in commemorating the Easter story. It struck me not as a symbol of any objective spiritual reality or historical event, but rather as evocative of the very potent religious myths that occupy such a central place in Western thought.

Verily I say unto you, if Christ is risen, this road shall turn red.

Καλή Ανάσταση, φίλοι μου.

Tea Anyone?

2007-04-04T11:14:00.000-04:00

United States Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi met with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in Damascus today to discuss, among other things, Syria’s role in Iraq, its support of Palestinian militants, and the future of U.S.-Syrian relations in the post-9/11 world. President Bush is quite displeased because, well, it’s clear he doesn’t want a liberal (woman) talking to the Syrians. That’s a task better reserved for tough-talking cowboys, not a progressive, San Francisco grandmother.

Syria is one of six countries designated by the U.S. State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism. Washington has regularly accused Syria of doing nothing to stop the flow of insurgents and suicide bombers into neighboring Iraq. The U.S. withdrew its ambassador from Damascus following the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri in February 2005.

On a lighter note, check out that lovely tea table. It’s fab, no? My friend Kate has been looking for one of these forever, but the problem is the good ones tend to be pretty pricey, especially when they’ve got all that beautiful mother of pearl inlay. Syria may be on America’s list of state sponsors of terrorism, but you must admit, they do have a keen eye for interior design.

Simple Pleasures

2007-04-02T22:21:00.000-04:00

On Friday, the Joes and I spent the day exploring Martha’s Vineyard. Readers of this blog will surely know that Joe and I go there often; it’s one of our favorite spots. What might be less obvious was that it was our son’s first time on the island. He loved it. The next day he told our friend Kate that it’s like no place he’s ever been.

We began the day by exploring the collection of 19th-century Gothic cottages that make up the Martha’s Vineyard Camp Meeting Association. I explained to Little Joe that the cottages and large tabernacle replaced the tents erected by revivalists during the early camp meetings. Most of the cottages were constructed around the same time as the house we live in, which helped give him a better sense of chronology.

From there we drove to Aquinnah, where we had a wonderful picnic lunch. There were lots of potential annoyances for Little Joe to complain about: the long walk from the parking lot down the Moshup trail to the beach, the chill in the air, the fact that the beach was almost entirely covered in stones, which made walking difficult. He never complained once. He was immediately enchanted by the beauty of the place, how serene it is, and how majestic the cliffs are.

After lunch we dozed a bit and then went for a walk. We picked up some shells and rocks and talked about the clay, how the cliffs were formed, and why they are sacred to the Wampanoag people. Joe already knows why they are sacred to us. He knows that when his social worker asked us to write a letter introducing ourselves to Joe last fall right after we were matched with him, we wrote that letter in the shadow of Moshup’s cliffs. With the letter we enclosed a few bits of wampum that we found on the beach, and explained that the Wampanoag people often gave wampum when entering into covenants with one another and that we were giving wampum to him because of the covenant that we were entering together.

After a brief stop at Chilmark Chocolates, we drove to Edgartown, which is much more enjoyable in the off-season. We strolled along the waterfront to the Chappaquidick ferry crossing, where we explained to Joe that the tiny span of sea before him had once cost a man the presidency. I also explained that there had once been a bridge, but that the locals believed it cursed and replaced it with a ferry.

As we drove back to Vineyard Haven to catch the ferry back to Woods Hole, we stopped at the East Chop light house for a few quick photos. We told Little Joe that we’d be back several times before the end of the year. He seemed delighted. Grant it, until we get a sidecar for the motorcycle, we we’ll have to retire that means of transportaion; and without the motorcycle, it’s a longer trip and we’ll need to rely on the island’s bus system. We’ve done it without the motorcycle before, however. We might revive our old pattern of camping in Falmouth in order to avoid the long ride back to Boston after a day at the beach. Whatever we decide, we’ll be back there soon enough.

The top picture shows Aquinnah’s clay cliffs; the middle picture, the steeple of Edgartown’s Federated Church (1828); and the bottom picture, the East Chop light house.

Small Step

2007-04-02T12:27:00.000-04:00

In a 5-4 decision, the United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Clean Air Act gives the Environmental Protection Agency the authority to regulate auto emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Naturally, all four of the Court’s conservative justices (Roberts, Alito, Scalia, and Thomas) all offered dissenting opinions.

I posted about this last November after oral arguments were made before the Court by attorneys representing Massachusetts and 11 states who sued the EPA for its 2003 decision that carbon dioxide emissions are not subject to regulation by the Clean Air Act.

In this specific case, the Supreme Court was asked to rule on whether the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that they (auto emissions, for example) constitute “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” Also at issue is whether or not Massachusetts and the 11 other states have legal justification to challenge the EPA in court.

The Supreme Court held that the 12 states do have the right to sue the EPA. Based on the conclusion that auto emissions (and other greenhouse gases) are rightly considered “air pollutants,” the Court also held that the Clean Air Act authorizes the EPA to regulate auto emissions; the more subtle question was whether or not the Clean Act compels the EPA to do so. In response to the question of whether or not the EPA has the discretion not to regulate those emissions, the Court ordered the agency to reconsider its current laissez faire position.

While this is an important symbolic victory, I doubt that there will be any substantial policy changes for the duration of the current administration. However, a new and improved EPA as part of whatever Democratic administration wins in 2008 will be able to fall back on today’s decision to defend itself against criticism by industry leaders that the agency is overstepping its bounds by regulating greenhouse gases.

Ζήτω η Ελλάς

2007-03-26T12:30:00.000-04:00

Yesterday was Greek Independence Day (in addition to being the Greek Orthodox feast of the Annunciation), which commemorates the beginning of the Greek uprising against the Ottomans in 1821.

The Greek struggle for independence was long and bitter. Many of the fighters were recruited from bands of brigands from the mountains, known as klephts (κλέφτες). Long-standing rivalries between clans meant that they were sometimes more interested in fighting each other than their Ottoman masters.

After the war, brigandage continued to plague the modern Greek state, though there was often a tacit understanding between the brigands and corrupt local authorities who allowed the brigands to operate with impunity in exchange for bribes. This situation was parodied in Le Roi de Montagnes, written in 1856 by the French novelist Edmond François Valentin About (1828 – 1885), during his stay in Greece as an archaeologist for the French School at Athens. The satirical novel went on to become a classic and the best-known of About’s works. La Grèce Contemporaine, which About wrote in1855, was also very successful.

Son Shine

2007-03-25T23:39:00.000-04:00

A special day. Joe and I are now raising a teenager.

I took the above photo today during our walk to the top of Hammond Hill in the Blue Hills reservation.

Sudan Suspends Aid Workers in Darfur

2007-03-23T12:53:00.000-04:00

The Sudanese government has temporarily suspended fifty-two local non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in South Darfur after an investigation found they were not complying with regulations. Read the full story here.

Good news for us, bad news for them

2007-03-20T07:45:00.000-04:00

Although the announcement that Massachusetts Senate President Robert E. Travaglini will resign his post tomorrow caught me by surprise, it has apparently long been anticipated by political insiders. It is virtually certain that Travaglini will be succeeded by Plymouth Democrat Therese Murray (pictured left), who will become the first woman ever to preside over the Massachusetts Senate as president.

Murray, a liberal who presided over the Senate Ways and Means Committee, has been an ardent advocate of social programs and liberal issues, such as same-sex marriage. Her rise to the Senate presidency is sure to be greeted with dismay by those hoping to amend the state constitution to ban same-sex marriage, effectively reversing the Goodridge decision, which recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry back in 2004.

Last November, it appeared as if the issue were dead when the legislature recessed without voting on a petition initiative to place same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2008. I myself thought that the fight was finally over. However, Romney’s grandstanding paid off when, as a result of a lawsuit he brought, the state’s Supreme Judicial Court held on December 27 that the legislature had a constitutional obligation to vote on the petition. Although the court also conceded that they lacked the authority to force a vote, the court’s talk of “constitutional duty” was enough to scare legislators into voting on the petition when the constitutional convention reconvened on January 2.

The result, as expected, was that the petition received enough votes to advance to the next legislative session, after which it would—if it received 50 votes—be placed on the 2008 ballot. Travaglini was among those who voted to advance the petition. Murray voted against it. Moreover, Travaglini could have used his authority as Senate president to adjourn the convention without voting on the petition. After all, the court’s ruling that the legislature has a constitutional duty to vote on all ballot questions brought by petition initiative wasn’t compelling enough to produce a vote on another citizen-led ballot initiative, the Health Care Amendment, which sought to amend the constitution to ensure “that every Massachusetts resident has access to affordable, comprehensive and equitably financed coverage for medically necessary health and mental health care services.”

A date for the next constitutional convention has not yet been set, but it will most likely begin this Spring. I myself have been dreading it, as it seemed unlikely that a convention presided over by Travaglini would almost certainly put same-sex marriage on the 2008 ballot. With Travaglini gone and Murray in his place, all bets are off. Although it’s much too soon to declare victory—I learned my lesson last November—it doesn’t look good for opponents of same-sex marriage.

Murray promises to be much more amenable than Travaglini to derailing the amendment by legislative maneuver—in other words, what Deval Patrick referred to as “whatever means appropriate.” In his statement to the legislature the day before his inauguration, Patrick encouraged the legislature to adjourn as a means of killing the petition once and for all. Although such a move would be controversial, Murray’s past support of same-sex marriage strongly suggests that with her in the president’s chair, an amendment turning same-sex couples into second-class citizens stands a much better chance of being defeated for good.

General Asshole

2007-03-13T12:45:00.000-04:00

There once was a general called Pace
whose views on gays were a disgrace;
with thousands of dead civilians
and misspent billions,
he needs to be put in his place.

A Piano Should Fall on Her Head

2007-03-06T12:14:00.000-05:00

Dropping a piano on Ann Coulter’s head would, one could argue, be a waste of a good piano. It’s probably unnecessary, since at this point in her career she appears to be self-destructing, choking on her own vitriol. She was excoriated by all three of the top Republican presidential candidates after referring to John Edwards as a “faggot” at last week’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). Her response was to conclude that Giuliani, McCain, and Romney “aren’t that smart.”

Since then, she has vehemently defended her use of the derogatory term “faggot,” which demonstrates not only a total lack of empathy, but the cruel, hate-filled mentality that is at the heart of the far-right, no matter how compassionate they wish to appear to rank-and-file voters. Coulter, however, insists that her use of the term was acceptable because everyone knows that Edwards is married with children. I guess in her world, those qualify as impeccable credentials for being straight. She must’ve been busy feasting on babies during the whole Haggardgate scandal. But that’s not really the point here.

The point is that “faggot” is a slur regardless of the (perceived) sexual orientation of the recipient. To argue, as Coulter has, that she “didn’t use an insulting word” just because she didn’t use it to describe someone she knew to be gay ignores the fact that the word “faggot” is, regardless of the context in which it is used, a slur that derives its power from its association with a despised minority, the GLBT population in this case. By using the word “faggot,” Coulter was attempting to invoke the scorn associated with that minority in the mind of her audience and attach it to the person at the receiving end of the insult, who in this case happened to be John Edwards.

Clearly, her intention was not to praise, but to insult Edwards, and to do so by attacking his masculinity. Her comment would lack meaning if “faggot” were a neutral term. It’s not as if she called him, say, a radish or a Volkswagen. Coulter was well aware of the word’s negative connotation and was deliberately trying to cash in on it in order to malign Edwards. Moreover, by using using the term “faggot” to attack someone, gay or straight, Coulter not only reinforced its potency as a slur, but also the idea that the population associated with the slur is vile enough to render them an effective insult.

Even Ann Coulter is smart enough to understand that. Verizon, Sallie Mae, and Georgia-based NetBank certainly are. In response to Coulter’s most recent act of bigotry, all three companies have pulled their ads from her website.

Aman Yala

2007-03-05T00:02:00.000-05:00

The 22nd Annual Balkan Music Night, this coming Saturday beginning at 7:30pm at the Friends of the Performing Arts Center in Concord, MA.

I’m playing two sets; the first is upstairs with Joe, Mike the drummer, and our friend P (on violin, vocals). It will feature songs from the islands of Lesvos and Kalymnos, which is one of P’s specialties. Right after that I do another set with all of the above plus K on accordion in the main dance hall downstairs.

I hope we have as good a gig as we did in New York at Golden Fest.

fog

2007-03-03T00:32:00.000-05:00

Today on the Boston Common at 5 o’clock.

A Little Taste

2007-03-02T12:29:00.000-05:00

The recent controversy at Regent College over Pat Robertson’s choice of Mitt Romney as keynote speaker at the evangelical school’s May 5 commencement should give Romney a little taste of the chilly (if not downright hostile) reception he’ll receive from the evangelicals he’s tried so hard to court in the last few years in anticipation of his presidential bid.

I have said many times that Romney is in for a rude awakening if he thinks that evangelicals are going to embrace him as their candidate in 2008. To be sure, some will. Most, however, will not. It simply doesn’t matter how aggressively Romney engages in gay bashing or how passionately he defends his pro-life position. Even his former liberalism won’t harm him as much as his Mormon faith, which in the eyes of many evangelicals (and not just them) ranks as suspect at best. In 2004 the World Religions and Religious Movements class offered by Regent’s department of Renewal Studies classified Mormonism as a “contemporary cult.”

Moreover, if Romney thinks he can pull off a JFK-style victory, he’s fooling himself. While there may be superficial similarities between the obstacle presented by Romney’s Mormonism today and that posed by Kennedy’s Catholicism in 1960, there really is no parallel.

According to the 1961 Statistical Abstract of the United States (the U.S. Census does not include statistics on religion), Roman Catholics constituted approximately 26% of the population in 1957. By way of contrast, the 2001 Statistical Abstract put Mormons at a mere 1%.

Add to those numbers the fact that by 1960, Catholics had been prominent in state and local politics in many parts of the country for the better part of a century and had built a powerful political machine. Conversely, it was only a little over a century ago that Mormonism officially rejected polygamy.

Opposition from America’s evangelicals may not break Romney’s campaign, but his shift to the far right suggests that he is strongly counting on their support. It will be interesting to see if, once he realizes that the Religious Right doesn’t want him, he moves back toward the moderate to liberal positions he once espoused to try his luck with those closer to the center. I for one am not convinced that this slippery chameleon’s conservative views are etched on golden tablets.

The politics of hate

2007-02-28T00:05:00.000-05:00

While it’s difficult not to be at least a little amused by the finer points of Romney’s presidential campaign strategy outlined in a leaked PowerPoint presentation that lumps together France, taxes, Massachusetts, Hollywood values, moral relativism, Hillary Clinton, and jihadism as the “bogeymen” from which he’ll save America, if we ignore his thinly veiled hatemongering, we do so at our own peril.

Let’s be honest here: “Massachusetts” in this case is really just Romney-speak for “same-sex marriage.” And “same-sex marriage” in the minds of conservative voters and the Religious Right whom Romney is eagerly courting is really just code for the so-called “gay agenda,” which they believe threatens to destroy this country. That the gay agenda would get lumped together with jihadism (i.e. the terrorists whom on a daily basis we are told America is hunting down and killing) is not really about how serious a threat Romney perceives GLBT people to be, but rather how seriously he wants you to take the threat.

Romney’s PowerPoint sheds light on how he might spin the gay issue during his campaign. He will present GLBT people as a danger, as much a danger as the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11. Moreover, his inclusion of Massachusetts is telling because it demonstrates his belief in the power of homosexuality to mobilize voters. How do sleazy politicians like Romney mobilize voters? The answer is by scaring them. He realizes full well the power of the GLBT bogeyman to frighten voters. The leaked document demonstrates that Romney understands conservative America’s fears and is ready and willing to enflame and exploit those fears.

We all know what happens when a despised minority is vilified and held up as a bogeyman. Innocent people get hurt. Sometimes they even get killed.

Stay Tuned

2007-02-23T12:27:00.000-05:00

On February 28 (next Wednesday), the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Hein v. Freedom from Religion Foundation. “Hein” is Jay F. Hein, who directs the White House Office of Faith-Based & Community Initiatives, which was created by means of an executive order issued by George W. Bush in 2001. The office encourages religious groups to provide federally, funded social services and works to increase support and decrease bureaucratic barriers for such groups.

The Freedom from Religion Foundation claims that faith-based initiative violates the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause, which says that “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion.” At issue on February 28 is the plaintiffs’ standing to bring the case and whether they have the right as taxpayers to challenge the White House’s faith-based office.

The Foundation and its three taxpayer plaintiffs—Dan Barker, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and Anne Nicol Gaylor—filed suit in 2004, challenging the faith-based office at the White House and at several Cabinets. A federal judge dismissed the challenge, saying that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue over something the executive office did with general appropriations, if Congress had not designated those actions.

In 2006 the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated the lawsuit, ruling that it is a violation of the Establishment Clause when tax money raised by Congress, which is passed on to executive officials, is used to support religion. The Bush Administration appealed the Foundation’s victory to the Supreme Court.

Read the full story here.

Iraq Index

2007-02-16T09:00:00.000-05:00

Today on NPR’s morning edition, there was a piece on the Brookings Institution’s Iraq Index. I was not familiar with it, but found their method of measuring our success in Iraq to be compelling. More specifically, they make a compelling case that our reconstruction effort is not succeeding.

In their own words, the Iraq Index

is a statistical compilation of economic, public opinion, and security data. This resource will provide updated information on various criteria, including crime, telephone and water service, troop fatalities, unemployment, Iraqi security forces, oil production, and coalition troop strength.

The index is designed to quantify the rebuilding efforts and offer an objective set of criteria for benchmarking performance. It is the first in-depth, non-partisan assessment of American efforts in Iraq, and is based primarily on U.S. government information.

I do not rejoice in the fact that our reconstruction efforts in Iraq appear to be a failure. Rather, I am grateful that there is reliable information to demonstrate the failings of the current strategy in order to make a compelling case that a change in course is needed.

Love Hurts

2007-02-14T19:50:00.000-05:00

In honor of Valentine’s Day, I thought I’d post The Death of Hyacinth (oil on canvas, 1801, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Poitiers) by the French painter Jean Broc (1771 – 1850).

The work shows Apollo cradling his dead lover Hyacinthos, who was killed after being struck in the head by a discus blown off course by Zephyros. According to one version of the myth, Zephyros loved the beautiful youth who spurned him for Apollo.

Apollo is shown with a quiver of arrows because he was the god of archery, but the arrows made me think of Cupid. Also, I thought the tragic scene was a fitting tribute to Valentine’s Day, seeing that sometimes love hurts.

Rembetiko of the Month

2007-02-14T12:42:00.000-05:00

I’ve been listening to and playing music more than I’ve been writing about it these past few months. Caring for a child, I’ve found it challenging to get in practice time, let along blogging time, in spite of the fact that the ensemble in which I play has gigs coming up. The weekly rehearsal isn’t the problem. It’s practice time on my own that has proven difficult to squeeze in. I did, however, steal about a half hour to jam a bit on my own and then with Joe last night, which was lovely.

Still, a Rembetiko of the Month is long overdue. Since we’re in the dead of winter, I chose Κουβέντα με το Χάρο (Conversation with Charon), which was written by Panagiotis Toundas and recorded in 1935 by Kostas Roukounas (shown above) and features a bunch of dead guys down in Hades.

There is an entire genre of Rembetika tunes portraying a dialogue between a group of rembetes and Charon, a shadowy figure who is the personification of death. One such tune is Atraïdis’ Manes Neva Tsifte Telli, which I wrote about last June. In ancient Greek mythology, Charon ferried souls across the Acheron (a tributary of the River Styx) to Hades, who was the god of the Underworld. In later Greek folk cosmology, Charon replaced Hades as the ruler of the dead, while Hades became the designation for the Underworld itself.

Click here to listen (When the download window opens, click on “Save”).

Το Χάρο τον αντέμωσαν πέντ’ έξι χασικλήδες
να τον ρωτήσουν πώς περνούν στον Άδη οι μερακλήδες.

Πες μας, βρε Χάρε, να χαρείς, στο μαύρο σου σκοτάδι:
Έχουν χασίσι, έχουν λουλά οι βλάμηδες στον Άδη;

Πες μας αν έχουν μπαγλαμά, μπουζούκια και γλεντανε.
Έχουν τεκέδες, έχουν τσαρδί που παν και την τραβάνε;

Πες μας αν έχουν γκόμενες, μανίτσες και γουστάρουν,
τον αργιλέ να κάνουνε ντουζένι να φουμάρουν.

Πες μας, βρε Χάρε, να χαρείς: Τι κάνουνε τ’ αλάνια;
Βρίσκουν νταμίρα, έχουν λουλά, ή κάθουνται χαρμάνια;

Πάρε δυο δράμια προυσαλιό και πέντε μυρωδάτο
και δώσε να φουμάρουνε τ’ αδέρφια μας ‘κει κάτω.

Κι όσοι μαχαιρωθήκανε και πήγανε στον Άδη,
για πες μας, γιατρευτήκανε ή λιώσαν στο σκοτάδι;

Κι’ όσοι από καρασεβντά τρελλάθηκαν και πάνε,
πες μας, τους πέρασε ο νταλγκάς ή ακόμα αγαπάνε;

Πες μας, τι κάνουν οι φτωχοί, πρεζάκηδες, και κείνοι;
Πάρε να δώσεις και σ’ αυτούς λιγάκι κοκαΐνη!

Fifty-six hash addicts went down to Hades
to ask Charon how their buddies were doing.

Tell us, Charon, do those bums have hashish
and a hash pipe down there in the black darkness?

Tell us if they have the baglama and the bouzouki.
Do they have hash dens down there where they’ve gone?

Do they have pretty girls and nancy boys
to keep them company? Do they have the narghile to smoke?

Tell us, Charon, how are those bums doing?
Have they found good stuff to smoke
or are they stuck down there unable to get high?

Take two drams of Bursa hash and then another five
and give it to our brothers down there.

And all those who were stabbed and went down to Hades,
tell us, did they heal or are they suffering in the darkness?

And all those who died of a broken heart,
tell us, did the heartache pass or are they still lovesick?

Tell us, how are the impoverished, the cokeheads,
and all the rest? Take a little cocaine and give it to them all.

The fictionalized Underworld of Hades serves as a powerful metaphor for the real-life underworld in which the early rembetes lived. The rebetes and the community of refugees from which many of them came lived a kind of social death on the margins. While I have written about this before, I recently finished Mark Mazower’s Salonica: City of Ghosts, which gave me an even greater appreciation of the dark and squalid conditions experienced by the destitute refugees who arrived in Greece during and after the First World War.

Not all of the refugees from Asia Minor and Eastern Thrace went to Athens and Piraeus. Many of them landed at Thessaloniki (Salonica), which was still recovering from a massive fire that destroyed about three-quarters of the old town in 1917. Mazower describes the appalling conditions characterizing the Tin Neighborhood (Τενεκέ Μαχαλά) in which some of the refugees lived:

“Between the shacks snaked constricted alleys carrying smells, vermin and sewage; paper-thin walls made sleep and privacy rare commodities. The Tin Neighborhood was among the poorest and most wretched quarters of all, a zone of disease, overcrowding and poverty, which the state appeared to have forgotten” (p. 342).

In addition to offering us a metaphor for the poverty, lawlessness, violence, and marginalization that characterized life in the refugee shantytowns well into the 1930s, Κουβέντα με το Χάρο also highlights those things—sex, drugs, and music—that formed an essential part of the refugee experience, brought them joy, and helped make their miserable existence more tolerable. In asking whether those things exist in the Underworld, the songs helps us understand their importance to the underworld.

Recommended Listening:
Rough Guide to Rebetika

Pundit in Chief?

2007-02-14T11:54:00.001-05:00

Bush during this morning’s press conference:

“I will resist the temptation to become the pundit in chief.”

Not much danger there, I think.

For the full transcript, click here.

Isn’t that sweet.

2007-02-13T23:21:00.000-05:00

Another photo from New York.

The Joes and I did a lot of walking around NYC during our trip last month and we inevitably ended up in Times Square, where there is an entire store devoted to M&M’s. Little Joe loves them, so we went in.

The whole thing was a rather shameless and unsettling display of M&M’s. No, I’m not talking about the candy. I’m talking about merchandising and materialism. But Little Joe was fascinated by it all, so we tried to be good sports about it.

The very first thing he said is that he wanted to get some peanut M&M’s for our housemate D who likes them, so we did. He also wanted to get some plain M&M’s for himself and he was mesmerized by the wide variety of colors that they had, way beyond the standard colors you find in a normal bag.

While he was trying to fill his bag with each and every one of the colors, I was looking at some of the wall displays, among which was the one shown in the above photo. I had mixed feelings about it. Couldn’t figure out whether it was shallow or profound.

postscript

2007-02-13T12:40:00.000-05:00

A friend drew my attention to the fact that there is actually a long-standing urban legend positing that Colonel Sanders stipulated in his will that 10% of KFC profits go to the KKK in perpetuity.

That’s fascinating to me, because I had no idea that such an urban legend existed when I jokingly told my son that he should avoid KFC because Colonel Sanders was a grand wizard of the KKK. I guess I should have expected that a pop culture icon like KFC would naturally be the focus of some urban legends.

Anyway, my recounting a story about what should be obvious to everyone was a tongue-and-cheek statement to my son is not the same as actually stating something as fact.

It appears that some of my more hot-headed and less sophisticated readers failed to grasp that distinction. If only people got as angry over the lies our president has told us.

I also think that if Chef Boyardee and Colonel Sanders were alive today—and both were real people, not corporate creations as held by urban legend—I think that they would be less concerned with what I tell my son than with what Con Agra Foods and KFC have done to their original products, which, I imagine were probably very different before being acquired by soulless mega-corporations. There is some truth to this, at least in the case of Colonel Sanders, who, after selling out to corporate investors in 1964, engaged in some legal battles with KFC over the quality of their product.

Moreover, it’s no urban legend that this food is crap.

Meat

2007-02-12T23:48:00.000-05:00

I meant to post this photo a couple of weeks back. I took it during a dinner party Joe and I had to celebrate the birthdays of some friends and the engagement of our former housemate G.

Joe made homemade manicotti (Fuck you, Chef Boyardee!) and his famous “Sunday Sauce,” also referred to as “gravy,” which I understand is both a (New) Jersey thing and an East Boston thing. Red sauce without meat is simply “marinara.”

I was on seconds at that point and I asked G to load me up with some more meat. He was being cute.

Stick-Style

2007-02-11T17:06:00.000-05:00

This house was once a graceful Stick-Style duplex when it was built ca. 1885. It stands around the corner from where I live. “Stick-style” refers to a style that was popular during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Its name derives from the fact that it incorporates decorative vertical and horizontal elements—“sticks”—into the exterior, mimicking the house’s frame. The result is a more refined version of the half-timbered effect usually associated with Elizabethan and Tudor architecture.

The house is pretty much a wreck now. It was inhabited for the past few decades by an old woman who had neither the resources nor the inclination to care for her property. That she let her home fall into such disrepair would have been more tolerable were she a sweet old lady, but she wasn’t. She was a battle-axe who liked to know everyone else’s business, frequently said insulting things about gay people and people of color, and was in the habit of throwing her garbage on neighboring lawns. I caught her in the act once.

When she finally sold the house about six months ago, I heard from neighbors who attended the open house that she lived in utter squalor. I could not bring myself to brave the interior. They also said that she had like a gazillion cats. I suspect that Neretta was born in her basement. In spite of the fact that she was pretty much a hag, I felt bad for her. She was a widow with limited resources, and the family members that lived with her were pretty dysfunctional.

The house sold for over $500K, a sad testimony to an inflated real estate market. Worse still is that after paying such an exorbitant price, the new owners proceeded to begin their half-assed renovations without pulling any permits whatsoever. The city quickly shut them down, but not before the jackasses had ripped off the front porch, which—even though it had fallen into disrepair—was quite lovely with fluted Doric columns. Now it’s gone, and in its place is an ill-suited, poorly designed, and shabbily constructed deck.

Whenever that happens in my neighborhood, I always console myself by saying that when the right owners finally come along, porches are pretty easy to restore, especially with the internet making businesses that sell historically appropriate millwork easy to find. Joe and I did a huge job on our porch last year. We found a local millwork supplier who was able to reproduce exact replicas of the porch’s turned balusters to replace those that were missing or damaged.

When the new owners resumed work about a month ago, they began ripping off the asbestos shingles, revealing the original clapboards and shingle-work along with the house’s Stick-Style features. I always knew it had been built as a Stick-Style because I have an old postcard showing my street back in its heyday. In the photo, the original Stick-Style details are clearly visible on this house, as well as on the house next door.

I have no idea what their intentions are. Will they leave it exposed and restore it? Will they cover it over again in vinyl siding? If they do, I hope that they at least leave the original details in situ so that they’re waiting underneath for the next owner, who will perhaps be someone who understands that period details are what make these houses special.

Pier A

2007-02-10T23:41:00.000-05:00

I took this photo on Monday, January 15 while visiting New York with the Joes. We were at Battery Park’s Castle Clinton National Monument (formerly Castle Garden) waiting for the ferry to Liberty Island. The photo shows all that remains of Pier A and the 1886 grand marine firehouse.

3.46

2007-02-08T12:35:00.000-05:00

An airstrike today by U.S. forces on a volatile area west of Baghdad has killed either 13 insurgents or 45 civilians, depending on whose account is to be believed. U.S. armed forces claim the airstrike targeted insurgents holed up in safe houses and took place following an initial raid that uncovered a cache of weapons. Local officials are claiming that the victims were all civilians, including women, children, and the elderly.

Even if we concede that both accounts are correct, that still amounts to 3.46 civilians killed for every insurgent eliminated. This does not seem to me like an effective strategy. It seems to me that given such numbers, U.S. forces in Iraq are three times more likely to be viewed as murders than liberators.

The above Associated Press photo shows the body of a boy killed in today’s airstrike on the village of Zaidan, west of Baghdad.

All Better

2007-02-06T12:04:00.000-05:00

I didn’t think it was possible for Ted Haggard to become any less dignified, but he managed to pull it off by declaring after a mere three weeks in counseling that he is “completely heterosexual.” Wow. His counselors must be more powerful than the god he prayed to all those years for deliverance from his unnatural desires. Shock therapy anyone?

Haggard has consistently claimed that his sexual contact with men was limited to former male escort Mike Jones, who outed Haggard back in October. His counselors argue that such a claim is credible because since the story of Haggard’s sexcapades broke, nobody else has come forward.

Explained the Reverend Tim Ralph, one of the overseers chosen to guide the transition of Haggard’s former church: “If we’re going to be proved wrong, somebody else is going to come forward, and that usually happens really quickly. We’re into this thing over 90 days, and it hasn’t happened.” I guess Ralph and the other overseers don’t know much about the myriad opportunities for anonymous gay sex that a major city like Denver offers. Or at least that’s what they’d have us believe.

Ralph also described the episode with Jones as “acting out,” as opposed to “a constant thing,” meaning that Haggard is truly a straight man who chose, for some unknown reason, to “act out” by sleeping with another man. Act out. Isn’t that the term of choice these days for describing when children misbehave? What on earth could have caused Haggard to “act out” by purchasing crystal meth and having gay sex? His wife must be a real bitch.

Frankly, Haggard is better off in the closet. I mean, did we really want to see Haggard in drag at the next Denver Pride? Or making a spectacle of himself on the dance floor of one of Denver’s gay clubs, with his shirt off, belting out the lyrics to the newest gay anthem? And who’d want to date him? All that baggage? Puh-lease.

Haggard’s pretty harmless at this point anyway. Let’s face it, in spite of his lightning fast restoration to heterosexuality, he’s too wacko and controversial to be held up as a paradigm of hope by the ex-gay movement. I think the only people he’s actually convinced are the members of his “restoration” team (good work, boys!) and his poor wife Gayle, though I suspect she’s pretty gullible. He’ll never regain the influence and trust he once had. His days of advising presidents on the moral course of the nation are over for good.

Φάμε, αγάπαμε

2007-01-30T12:30:00.000-05:00

An interesting article from my friend G.

Pursuing Happiness, Greeks and Turks Find One Another (New York Times, 1.30.07)

The Doomsday Clock and Chef Boyardee

2007-01-30T00:40:00.000-05:00

Parenthood has been a real joy thus far. I mean it. Little Joe is an amazing boy. The biggest challenge is being able to fit in all my old activities, like blogging, with all the new activities associated with raising a child, like reading with him, game nights, and teaching him the Greek alphabet.

Some highlights from the past few weeks: Our ensemble was a big hit at Golden Fest. Even though we went on two hours later than last year, we had what everyone agreed was an even bigger crowd dancing. Little Joe took lots of photos and videos of us. He said afterwards that he didn’t really like the rest of the music too much, but he seems to like ours. He’s still getting used to the unusual sounds. I think he was also a bit overwhelmed by the variety of bands and the large crowds. I was a bit overwhelmed myself, even though I’ve been many times before.

Our Boston friends L and M were down in New York for the weekend, so we had brunch with them on Sunday. We also got to spend some time with Dr. Mike. Little Joe has become very attached to our friends in a short span of time, and they all adore him. After brunch we walked around the city, but it was overcast and foggy, so we didn’t do as much as we’d planned. On Monday we visited the Statue of Liberty, and I was disappointed to learn that one can no longer climb up into the crown. I suppose I should have known that was to be the case in the aftermath of 9/11 and the ever-present War on Terror. Feh.

Somewhere in Connecticut on the way home on Monday (Martin Luther King Day), Joe was listening to the radio, channel surfing, and because we had been talking about MLK’s legacy, when he came to an NPR station broadcasting an excerpt from on of MLK’s speeches condemning the Vietnam War, he stopped on his own and turned up the volume. I didn’t ask him to stop and listen. He did it on his own. I’m not sure how much he understood, but we chatted about it afterwards. I’m glad we listened. Although I knew about MLK’s condemnation of the Vietnam War, I don’t think I’d ever heard one of his speeches on the subject. It was very powerful and very timely.

Since that time, Joe and I have had many conversations about the war in Iraq, the situation in Afghanistan, the War on Terror, and the Bush administration. We usually talk about these things in the morning when I’m driving him to school. I have the radio tuned to NPR and he often asks questions about something in the day’s news from the Middle East. We’ve also had many conversations about the Doomsday Clock and how it was pushed five minutes to midnight a couple of weeks ago.

He became a bit obsessed with it, not in an alarming way—it wasn’t keeping him awake at night—but he seemed fascinated with the idea of a symbolic clock whose minute hand reflects the variety and severity of threats to human existence. He seemed to understand that the purpose of the Doomsday Clock isn’t simply to frighten us, but to raise awareness of the need to change our behavior. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed about parenthood in general and Little Joe in particular is that we can joke about farts and boogers one minute, but then have a serious conversation about current events.

We have had many humorous moments as well. One such occurred the other night at dinner when Joe was recounting how at the supermarket last week, to his horror Little Joe went and got a couple of cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli for the cart. Joe would make all his pasta by hand if he had the time, and while he isn’t able to do that every day, he’s certainly not going to turn to Chef Boyardee for his pasta needs.

Rather than simply explaining to Little Joe that Chef Boyardee is ghetto—and potentially hurting his feelings as well as coming off as food snobs—I told him that during World War II Chef Boyardee was a Nazi sympathizer and that if you google him, you’ll find pictures of him standing side-by-side with Mussolini on the Palazzo Venezia in Rome.

Little Joe also likes KFC, and although we’ve indulged him a few times, he’s not going to be having it very often. So in addition to telling him that Chef Boyardee was a Nazi, I also informed him that Colonel Sanders was a grand wizard of the KKK. I think it went over his head.

Karma Chameleon

2007-01-18T08:58:00.000-05:00

I know that this clip has been getting lots of hits on YouTube. It would be great if even more people saw it, so I’m posting it here. It’s quite amusing.

Romney is clearly an ideological chameleon. That’s bad karma for someone trying to win a national election. I believe that he’s going to come across to the vast majority of voters as someone with an obvious lack of credibility and integrity.

It really doesn’t matter that he’s disavowing his former positions, telling everyone to trust him now that he’s “wiser.” Back then, he told voters to trust him that he wouldn’t waver on issues like a woman’s right to choose, but that didn’t stop him from moving to the far right on abortion. You simply can’t trust someone who promises you he’ll be steadfast, when his past promises obviously meant nothing.

Check out the very humorous op-ed entitled “Romney vs. Romney” by Scot Lehigh in today’s Boston Globe.

wanna rassle?

2007-01-17T00:27:00.001-05:00

my good friend j sent me this today. it’s wicked hot, no?

A Ho Chi Minh Trail for the 21st Century

2007-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

In last night’s speech announcing the much anticipated U.S. troop surge in Iraq, President Bush declared: “We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria.” This is a far cry from the more conciliatory tone that one would expect were the United States serious about heeding the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group, which called for negotiations with Iran and Syria as a way of bringing greater stability to Iraq and the region.

Instead, what we got from Bush was talk that was eerily reminiscent not only of escalation in Vietnam, but of spreading the conflict into neighboring countries suspected of providing supply lines to enemy forces. In the case of Vietnam, the neighboring countries were Laos and Cambodia, through which the Ho Chi Minh Trail ran. Situated along Vietnam’s western border, the trail was vital to the movement of men and supplies from the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam) to Viet Cong forces battling U.S. forces in the south.

The result was a covert war in Laos conducted by the CIA and merciless bombing of the trail beginning in 1965. To U.S. forces, Laos constituted what was referred to as the “extended battlefield.”

In the case of Iraq, the Ho Chi Minh Trail runs through Iran and Syria. In last night’s speech, Bush accused both countries of aiding attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq:

“These two regimes are allowing terrorists and insurgents to use their territory to move in and out of Iraq. Iran is providing material support for attacks on American troops.”

Those accusations might be true, but the solution is not expanding military operations into neighboring countries. After all, bombing Laos didn’t lead us to victory in Vietnam. Instead, it fueled the resistance. Our bombs were useless against a well-organized and dedicated insurgency. This is the situation we are facing in Iraq. For those who doubt that the insurgency in Iraq is well-organized, consider how they have infiltrated the country’s security forces.

As poorly conceived as a troop surge might be, the real danger here is not simply escalation, but a widening of the conflict. In spite of the lessons of Vietnam, last night’s speech hinted at just such an “extended battlefield”:

“We will disrupt the attacks on our forces. We will interrupt the flow of support from Iran and Syria. And we will seek out and destroy the networks providing advanced weaponry and training to our enemies in Iraq.”

The very ominous suggestion that the U.S. is on the verge of a much wider war involving Iran and Syria should be taken very seriously. Were that to happen, the results would be disastrous, given how overextended our military is at the present time. More importantly, the subsequent radicalization of moderate elements in the Muslim world and the intensification of anti-American sentiment is not going to make us safer, or the Middle East more fertile for democracy.

hawk

2007-01-10T22:47:00.000-05:00

A couple times a month I have a close encounter with one or more of the red-tail hawks that live in or near Boston Common, but I never seem to have my camera with me. But this morning, I took it with me, feeling somehow that this would be the day. And it was.

I took a bunch of photos and some videos of a beautiful specimen. I’ll be posting more of the photos in the coming weeks along with the videos once I’ve uploaded them to YouTube.

I guess the photo below shows that hawks and squirrels can be friends after all.

Thank you, Rabbi.

2007-01-09T14:46:00.000-05:00

Rabbi Jonah Pesner was kind enough to send me the text of the invocation that he delivered at last week’s inaugural ceremonies for Deval Patrick. Rabbi Pesner is the founding Director of Just Congregations. He has graciously allowed me to post his inspiring words here.

Rabbi Jonah Dov Pesner
Founding Director
Just Congregations
Union for Reform Judaism

Invocation
Inauguration of Deval Patrick
Governor of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts
January 4th, 2007

Governor Patrick, Lieutenant Governor Murray, elected and civic leaders, people of the commonwealth, I am most deeply honored to offer these words of invocation to open this sacred assembly.

In the Talmud, the ancient rabbis teach that whenever we encounter a large gathering of people, it is appropriate to offer the following blessing:

“Blessed is the Wise One
Who understands secrets
For the mind of each
Is different from the other
Just as the face of each
Is different from the other.”

Source of all life,
Out of many,
You have made us ONE.
You have created us splendidly
In our distinctiveness:
You have made us a spectacular,
Living tapestry
Many colors and complexions
Rich in languages and beliefs,
Varied in our blessings,
And challenged by our curses.

Indeed the face of each one
Is different than the other –
And here we gather
Meeting,
Face to face.

Look around! See the beauty of the faces,
Each one unique
Reflecting the very image
Of the divine
Each one from a common source
A single, sacred family.

Yet behind every face
Hide so many secrets.
Private, painful secrets of suffering.
If only we would find your Wisdom O God
Revealing all the secrets,
The pained suffering
Of parents who watch helpless
As their children are plagued
By guns, drugs, and gangs
The private pain
Of children struggling to care for their parents
As they age and grow frail,
The secret suffering of immigrants
Who like us came to this place
To seek a better life
And labor hidden and underpaid in jobs
Upon which the rest of us depend,
But won’t do ourselves
Of our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters
Who daily confront blatant discrimination,
Inequality and humiliation
Of those who sleep in the streets,
Those who are overworked and underpaid,
Those who are abused in their own homes
Those who are left behind
By their disabilities.

So many secrets,
Private sufferings.

Yet we have hope.
Yes we have faith.
Because we have each other.

Assembled here in the light of day
Bathing in the unseasonable warmth of your presence,
We affirm that democracy
Is not built with bricks and mortar;
We know your ancient wisdom
Is found in no cathedral,
Temple,
Nor shrine –
It is here,
Face to face
It is everywhere humanity gathers
And out of many,
Makes one.

Let our secrets of suffering
Give way to stories of
Rebuilding
Repair
And Redemption

Stories of redemption
Like a kid from the South Side of Chicago
Becoming the governor of Massachusetts
Representing the people

We the people;

Let us never forget the faces
The secrets
And the stories

God, grant us your wisdom
That we may never forget that
Democracy happens out here –
Face to face –
Among the people
As we join together
In one spirit
And write one shared story:

The story of a commonwealth
That acts like a commonwealth
Where secrets of private suffering
Where tales of lonely languish
Are joined
Through the power of the people
Rising up
Together
Encountering one another
Face to face
And writing a new story
One story

Echoing Isaiah’s ancient call:

“If you banish the yoke from your midst
The menacing hand
And evil speech
And you offer your compassion to the hungry
And satisfy the needs of the afflicted,
Then shall your light shine in the darkness
And your gloom shall be like noonday…

You shall be like a watered garden
Like a spring whose waters never fail.
And you shall rebuild ancient ruins
You shall restore the foundations of many generations
You shall be called the repairer of the breach…”

This is the story of redemption;
The story of a true commonwealth
Rebuilt
Repaired
And Redeemed.

Amen. May this be God’s will.

Bid on this.

2007-01-09T11:52:00.000-05:00

I love eBay. I don’t spend hours on end or a ton of money on it, but I have managed to find quite a few gems there, including some lovely old maps and Joe’s Christmas gift, which consisted of a dozen or so old 78rpms featuring Greek and Turkish oud masters.

However, I found out this morning that Meg Whitman, President and CEO of eBay Inc., was chosen last week by Mitt Romney to serve as a national finance co-chair for his presidential exploratory committee. She was present at yesterday’s Mitt-a-thon, where $6.5 million was raised to finance his bid for the White House in 2008.

I simply cannot stomach the thought of contributing even one cent to the salary of someone who turns around and uses that wealth to further the campaign of a dishonest, bigoted, homophobic, xenophobic fascist like Romney. Until such time as Romney is defeated in the Republican primary (he’ll never make it to the ballot in 2008), I am hereby boycotting eBay.

I invite you to do the same.

water

2007-01-08T23:50:00.000-05:00

Saturday was unusually warm. Everybody who lives here knows that already. But if you’re not from here, you might not realize that it reached 70º Fahrenheit. A record high, I believe. Maybe it made the news in other parts of the world, who knows.

I thought that the weather was going to be lousy, so when it turned out to be such a lovely day, the Joes and I took off to Walden Pond. I grabbed two towels before we left, hoping for a swim if the sun stayed strong.

The sun did stay strong, and I did go for a swim (the Joes did not), and basically froze my nuts off. The water was much, much colder than I thought it would be. Cold, but exhilarating. And very painful. It was worth it though.

Saturday, in addition to being unseasonably warm, was also Epiphany. For Greeks Epiphany is a celebration of water, commemorating Christ’s baptism in the Jordan. In certain parts of the Greek-speaking world (including the Greek islands, Istanbul, and Tarpon Springs, Florida, where there is a large Greek community from the island of Kalymnos), crowds gather at the pier, from which a priest hurls a gold cross into the sea, whereupon dozens of adolescent boys and young men―women are excluded from this ritual―dive into the water hoping to retrieve the cross as it sinks to the bottom. Whoever returns to the surface with the cross in his hand receives a special blessing and the accolades of the community.

At Walden this past Saturday, there was no gold cross, no priest, no cheering crowd. Just me in wet boxers, my Joes, and a few curious onlookers. But I’m glad I did it. I felt amazing afterwards. The air was warm and as soon as I dried off, my skin felt all tingly. Afterwards, we went for a lovely walk around the perimeter of the pond. Little Joe loved it, even though he thought I was nuts for swimming.

Aman Yala

2007-01-08T12:39:00.000-05:00

I’ll be performing with my ensemble at Golden Festival in New York this Saturday. We’ve put a nice (albeit short) set together, but as much as I’m looking forward to playing, I’m even more excited to see and hear all the really great performers that will be there. The dancing is fun too.

Check it out if you’re in the area.

Save Pinebank

2007-01-05T23:09:00.000-05:00

I only recently discovered Pinebank (pictured above) during a walk along Jamaica Pond this past summer. I was instantly taken by its grandeur, even in its current state of severe disrepair. The City of Boston is planning to demolish it and has already begun to dismantle the structure, but an eleventh hour effort to save the historic building is underway.

Pinebank was completed in 1870. It remains the only original building in Boston’s Emerald Necklace Park system designed in the 1890’s by Frederick Law Olmsted.

I took the above photo today at dusk, while walking around Jamaica Pond with Little Joe.

Hello, gorgeous

2007-01-05T00:31:00.000-05:00

Little Joe (my son) and I listened to today’s inauguration from my workplace across from the State House. Today’s ceremony was about a fresh start for Massachusetts, just as Little Joe is getting a fresh start.

We listened to Deval’s speech, and it was moving for what it said, disappointing for what it left unsaid. Although I wanted to feel upbeat, I found myself wondering why he neglected to mention the GLBT community, which he also left out of his victory speech on election night.

Far more inspiring, I felt, was Rabbi Jonah Pesner’s invocation. His words represented all that is good—in fact, the very best—within the Judeo-Christian tradition. Integral to Pesner’s faith is a longing for social justice and a deep awareness of our connectedness. For me, these are the most important elements of divinity. I tried to find the text of his prayer online, but met with no success, so I’m going to write him a letter.

I took the above photo as the crowds were gathering on Beacon Street. I don’t know if the man asleep here even knew that such a historic event was taking place less than a hundred feet away while he dozed. I do not know his story. Nor do I know if Deval Patrick’s promises of hope and change will improve his situation and the lives of those like him. I suppose that depends upon whether or not Patrick wil repair the holes left by the Romney administration in our Commonwealth’s safety net.

Buh-bye, douchebag

2007-01-03T21:58:00.000-05:00

Sitting in my office on Tremont Street just after 5pm, I heard Romney’s nineteen gun salute as he left the State House and for a brief moment, I thought that a bomb had gone off in Downtown Crossing. Then I realized what it was and suddenly I wished it were a firing squad.

Good riddance. I am so looking forward to this douchebag getting his ass kicked in the Republican primary.

No Crystal Ball

2007-01-03T13:02:00.000-05:00

I can’t predict the future. Now that the Massachusetts legislature has voted to advance a ballot initiative banning same-sex marriage, it is not clear (at least not to me anyway) what will be the future of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts. The initiative still needs to survive another round of voting on Beacon Hill before it can be placed on the 2008 ballot.

I don’t share the optimism of some who believe that in spite of yesterday’s setback, those defending marriage equality will prevail in the end. At the same time, I was somewhat bolstered by Jon Keller’s analysis of yesterday’s vote as the end of the “rogue court” argument against same-sex marriage.

While Keller’s assessment might be true, the court’s December 27 ruling that legislators have a constitutional duty to vote on initiative petitions also means that during the next constitutional convention, legislators will be much more reluctant to kill the initiative by a parliamentary maneuver (such as adjournment), which seems to be the only way this thing will be prevented from going before the voters. Even with Deval Patrick in the governor’s seat and some new GLBT-friendly legislators being sworn in, marriage equality does not seem to have gained enough support on Beacon Hill to survive another vote like yesterday’s.

Certainly, some of the newly elected legislators to be sworn in tomorrow—seven of them, I believe—favor marriage equality. Yesterday’s final vote—there were two votes—was 62 to 134. Only 50 yeas were needed to advance the ballot question. Seven more marriage equality votes would make that 55 to 141, but I’m not sure where the four legislators who didn’t cast their vote yesterday stand on the issue (For a list of how the legislators voted, click here). Over the course of the next six months, there will be lots of lobbying on both sides, but whether or not the balance on Beacon Hill will tip in favor of marriage equality before the next constitutional convention is difficult to say with certainty. It’s too close to call at this point.

More importantly, if same-sex marriage is put to a popular vote in 2008, I honestly don’t know what the end result will be. I would like to believe that there are enough fair-minded and progressive citizens in Massachusetts to uphold the validity of the Goodridge decision. However, as a gay man, I know firsthand what a powerful force bigotry is. Anti-gay sentiment may not be as strong here as in other places, but I can’t really say with any certainty how comfortable my fellow citizens are with gay marriage. It certainly doesn’t help that 2008 will be a presidential election year and is likely to see higher than normal voter turnout at the polls.

With so many other pressing needs, it is truly a shame that we need to spend more time and energy on this issue. However, I reserve that criticism for those who have lead the crusade against same-sex marriage. For those of us committed to GLBT equality, we have no choice but to fight on.

hope

2007-01-02T23:59:00.000-05:00

“Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, Malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.”

Virginia trial court judge Leon Bazile in 1958 after sending an interracial couple, Mildred Jeter and Richard Perry Loving, to jail for one year for violating Virginia’s Racial Integrity Act of 1924.

“Marriage is one of the ‘basic civil rights of man,’ fundamental to our very existence and survival... To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law.”

Chief Justice Earl Warren in Loving v. Virginia (1967)

new

2007-01-01T01:14:00.000-05:00

Joe and I just put our son to bed.

One year ago, we rung in the new year with friends and said goodbye to what had been our most challenging year together. The memories of our experience in Ukraine were still fresh in our minds. After three long years trying to adopt from overseas, we found ourselves no closer to parenthood than when we first met.

Part of Ukraine is still with us, so much so that we returned to Kiev this past September. We did not return for a second shot at adoption. Rather, we went back in order to strengthen a connection that we forged while we were there last year—a connection that was both transformative and, in many ways, prophetic.

A year later, almost everything has changed. We are parents to a twelve-year-old boy from Maine, who has turned our lives upside down. Our time is no longer our own. All of our priorities have shifted. We have no idea what new parenting challenges tomorrow will bring. We couldn’t be happier.

What has not changed is that our home is still a place where our friends gather and connect with one another. We still depend as much as ever upon our friends and family for support and encouragement, and they have not let us down. There were a few bumps—nothing that a little patience and understanding can’t fix in due time. As always, new people entered our lives. These human connections, new and old, are no less than our sustenance.

Goodbye, 2006. You were a year that changed us forever. We will never forget you.

The top photo was taken at Cape Elizabeth in Maine. The bottom picture shows the coffered dome of the seventeenth-century Boyim Chapel in Lviv, Ukraine.

Monks Gone Wild

2006-12-21T14:33:00.000-05:00

I prefer news reports about cross-dressing Greek monks holding secret drag shows in the seclusion of their monastic retreats over stories about crow-bar wielding monks and brawls over property rights.

This past week rival groups of Greek monks clashed violently over ownership of the Esphigmenou Monastery on Mount Athos, the normally serene and self-governing monastic republic located in northeastern Greece. Apparently, the thousand-year old monastery is occupied by a group of zealots who are hostile to any attempt to improve relations with the Vatican. Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I has repeatedly tried to evict the maverick faction.

The fighting broke out when Bartholomew, who recently met with Pope Benedict at the patriarchal seat in Istanbul, sent a group to seize control of the monastery. Bartholomew’s group tried to force their way in and were met with armed resistance. For centuries Orthodox monasteries in Greece dealt with marauding pirates and brigands, though I don’t know how often they engaged in armed resistance. As a result of this week’s imbroglio, Seven monks were injured and had to be taken by boat to area hospitals.

It’s a sign of too much pent-up sexual energy, if you ask me.

Travaglini the Eloquent

2006-12-19T12:30:00.000-05:00

Christ, where the hell did Massachusetts Senate President Robert Travaglini (shown left) learn English? Watching The Sopranos? I don’t mean to nit pick, but reading the text of his remarks at last Friday’s press conference with governor elect Deval Patrick made me cringe. After issuing a stern warning to Patrick last week, he threatened to withdraw the legislature’s support of Patrick’s agenda, Travaglini backed down, explaining:

“The relationship between Deval and I is important not only to he and I but to everyone who resides in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts…”

The relationship between Deval and me. You don’t use the nominative case after a preposition. And to whom is it important? Certainly not to he and I, but rather to him and me.

I’ve noticed something of a trend in the erroneous use of the nominative case in instances where the accusative case is required. Ironically, I get the feeling that those who are guilty of butchering the English language in this fashion do so because they feel it makes them sound more intelligent.

A Class of its Own

2006-12-15T12:25:00.000-05:00

Although afforded an opportunity by its highest court to allow same-sex couples to marry, New Jersey has chosen instead to pass a civil unions bill for same-sex couples. New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine has stated that he will sign the bill, which was approved yesterday by both houses of the state’s legislature. By stopping short of marriage for same-sex couples, New Jersey has reserved marriage as a special right for heterosexual couples, a move that seems blatantly unconstitutional and discriminatory.

This leaves same-sex couples in New Jersey in a dilemma. By offering something less than full marriage equality, civil unions relegate same-sex couples to second class status; for that reason, perhaps they should be boycotted. On the other hand, many same-sex couples would benefit from the benefits offered by a civil union. I am honestly not sure what I would do in that situation.

I guess I’d pass seeing that I haven’t even taken advantage of my right to marry my same-sex partner here in Massachusetts. Seems kind of futile to me without federal recognition attached to it on account of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). That’s not to belittle the great step forward taken by Massachusetts, which remains in a class of its own as far as marriage equality is concerned.

A Piano Should Fall on His Head

2006-12-13T12:32:00.000-05:00

It’s been a while since I’ve given out one of my pianos, not because there are fewer assholes in the world, but because I’ve been too busy to bother with them. However, the following little tidbit caught my eye this morning, and when I read about the pastor in question, my first thought was, “a piano should fall on his head.”

It seems that the Reverend Vincent Fields, pastor of Greater Works Ministries in Absecon, New Jersey, used his invocation yesterday morning before the start of New Jersey’s Senate session to engage in some good old fashioned gay bashing. “We curse the spirit that would come to bring about same-sex marriage,” Fields prayed as the senators bowed their heads.

Last week, the New Jersey legislature chose to draft a civil unions bill for same-sex couples in response to an October decision by the state’s highest court, which held that same-sex couples cannot be denied marriage rights. In its decision the court stipulated, however, that it was up to the legislature whether to call the unions “marriages” or something else. The legislature chose something else.

Notwithstanding the New Jersey legislature’s decision to forego same-sex marriage, Reverend Fields felt the need to call upon his wrathful god to curse “the spirit” of same-sex marriage. What spirit is that, exactly? The spirit of tolerance? The spirit of equality? The spirit of inclusion? The spirit of justice? It seems to me that these are the very principles for which (the Historical) Jesus stood.

If the spirit of Jesus can be said to exist today, it is to be found in movements for social justice, just like the movement for equal marriage. If Fields curses that spirit, then he is cursing the spirit of Jesus. I guess that would make him the anti-Christ.

More importantly, I wonder why Fields felt it was appropriate to use an invocation to endorse his own particular brand of religious bigotry. In case you were wondering, that was a rhetorical question to which I already know the answer. The answer is that fundamentalists like Fields have no sense of propriety when it comes to politics. They mix politics and religion like Ted Haggard mixed gay sexcapades and crystal meth.

Reverend Fields is free to invoke from his hellish pulpit a curse upon whatever spirit deemed the enemy du jour by his blackened, hate-filled heart. What he may not do, however, is take advantage of an invitation to make what was supposed to be a non-sectarian invocation in order to champion his personal religious views within the halls of government.

Another piano should fall on the head of whatever imbecile invited Fields to make the invocation in the first place. Perhaps it’s time to rethink the whole invocation before a legislative session thing, no?

More News from New Jersey

2006-12-07T17:45:00.000-05:00

I really don’t know what New Jersey’s highest court expected would happen when they opened the door for the state’s lawmakers to draft a bill creating civil unions for same-sex couples as an alternative to marriage. Back in October, the court held that same-sex couples could not be denied marriage rights, but left it up to the legislature to decide whether marriage or civil unions would be the final product, declaring that “[t]he name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.”

Fearing the backlash that has occurred in Massachusetts, the New Jersey legislature has chosen the same course chosen by the Vermont legislature when it found itself in a similar situation following Baker v. Vermont, which said that the state could not deny the benefits of marriage to same-sex couples, but left it up to the legislature to decide how to proceed around this thorny issue.

Predictably, New Jersey lawmakers have chosen a compromise bill that satisfies neither the GLBT community nor social conservatives opposed to any validation of same-sex couples, however half-assed. The only difference is that back in 2000, most people hailed Vermont’s civil union bill as a victory. That was before Massachusetts chose to extend marriage rights to same-sex couples. In the aftermath of that historic decision, civil unions pale by comparison.

Many are tired of hearing it, but it needs to be repeated: the name matters. It simply won’t work to set up two separate institutions, one of which is recognized at the federal level, the other of which is not. To be sure, even if the New Jersey legislature chose to extend marriage rights—and called it marriage—to same-sex couples, the federal government would not be required to recognize those marriages.

However, a same-sex marriage coming out of New Jersey, like a same-sex marriage coming out of Massachusetts stands a much better chance of challenging the 1996 federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in federal court. Two people united by a civil union are arguably much less likely to be granted standing in a challenge to DOMA because civil unions do not exist at the federal level. I would be curious as to whether (non-homophobic) legal experts agree with me on that. I welcome correction if I am wrong in my assessment.

Perhaps both New Jersey’s highest court and its legislature felt that civil unions would create a more manageable uproar than same-sex marriage. Right now, that remains to be seen. The proposed bill has angered both sides. I myself would like to applaud civil unions as a step forward, but my heart just isn’t in it. By reserving marriage as a special right for straight couples, New Jersey is offering same-sex couples prejudice masquerading as progress.

Aw, geez…

2006-12-04T00:09:00.000-05:00

Massachusetts lame (duck) governor Mitt Romney has announced a new policy that will authorize state police to arrest illegal immigrants. But only after they’ve finished cutting his lawn.

It was revealed last week that a local landscaping firm that Romney used for about 8 years to manicure the lawn at his Belmont home hired illegal immigrants as laborers. Romney never bothered to ask the company’s owner about the status of the Spanish-speaking workers, though he did occasionally greet them with a cheerful “Buenos dias!”

The Boston Globe tracked down four of the company’s workers, all of whom worked on Romney’s property. The workers said they were paid in cash at $9 to $10 an hour and sometimes worked 11-hour days, typical of America’s vibrant underground cash-economy of which illegal immigrants are the lifeblood. Although the Globe was able to confirm that three of the four were in the United States illegally, Ricardo Saenz, the owner of the Chelsea-based company, Community Lawn Service with a Heart, maintains that all of his workers are legal.

When asked by reporters if he screened his workers to verify their status, Saenz said he had never requested any proof from his employees to show they are here legally: “I don’t need to tell them to show me documents,” he explained. “I know who they are, and they are legal.” Community Lawn Service also provides landscaping for a Massachusetts Port Authority property in Revere and public school grounds in Chelsea.

Romney was hosting the Republican Governors Association conference in Miami last Thursday when he was asked by a reporter about his use of Community Lawn Service with a Heart. He uttered, “Aw, geez,” and then walked away. He later claimed to have been unaware that the workers were in the United States illegally.

During the summer, a state trooper posted outside Romney’s home is reported to have asked to see the papers of one of the workers he suspected of being illegal, but Saenz explained that he’d left the worker’s papers at the office. The trooper never inquired again, but Romney’s new policy would have allowed the trooper to arrest the worker on the spot for a suspected immigration violation.

Personally, I was not at all surprised to learn that Romney has been hiring illegals on the cheap while simultaneously grandstanding about the need for stricter border controls. This is classic American conservatism at its cruelest: Exploit the labor of the poor and desperate while depriving them of the rights and protections afforded citizens.

I have no doubt whatsoever that there are hundreds of thousands of Romneys who rant and rave about the need to curb the flow of dark-skinned illegals into the United States while their houses are being painted, their lawns are being cut, and their children are being cared for by those same illegals who work longer hours for lower wages. That has always been the irony of the immigration issue. Moreover, this is a type of hypocrisy with which the conservative Right is very familiar: Condemn publicly what you engage in privately.

The new agreement spearheaded by Romney between Massachusetts and federal immigration officials authorizes state troopers to arrest suspected illegal immigrants after an encounter as routine as a traffic stop. Governor-elect Deval Patrick has vowed to review the policy carefully. In the meantime, Mitt, you got some splainin’ to do…

Eski Kavgalar

2006-11-30T18:53:00.001-05:00

It’s so nice to see the Roman pontiff and the spiritual head of the world’s Eastern Orthodox Christians getting along together after that nasty tiff back in the eleventh century. Now if only we can get Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan to end their little cat fight, the world can breathe easy again.

Still, the historic rivalry between the eastern and western branches of Christendom was apparent on Thursday when Pope Benedict XVI joined Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I in Istanbul to celebrate the Orthodox divine liturgy at the patriarchal church of Saint George, a modest structure compared to the opulence of Saint Peter’s and the Vatican. Bartholomew certainly outshone Benedict in the vestment department. I mean, just look at that hat and those sleeves!

I imagine Bartholomew was trying to compensate for his more humble digs. He must have felt that by donning his ecclesiastical finery he could draw attention away from the fact that the patriarchal complex in Istanbul’s Phanar (Fener in Turkish) district sits in the middle of what is pretty much a Turkish slum. Back in the summer of 2000 when I visited, it was pretty ghetto. It didn’t look to me like gentrification was right around the corner. Perhaps a Starbucks has opened up since then.

In all seriousness, Benedict’s visit to Turkey has been enormously controversial, sparking protests among many Turkish nationalists who are still seething over his comments back in March when he quoted the 14th-century Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos who said: “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by sword the faith he preached.” On Wednesday a group of 40 nationalists briefly occupied the Haghia Sophia in opposition to the pope’s planned visit to the 6th-century church turned mosque turned museum, once the spiritual center of Eastern Orthodox Christianity. The protesters, members of the Great Unity party, were later detained by the police.

Some in Turkey have argued that Benedict has no business praying in the Haghia Sophia, and that doing so would be an affront to Turkish sensibilities, since any religious gesture would be interpreted as a Christian claim on the edifice, which became a museum in 1935 as part of Atatürk’s campaign to secularize modern Turkey.

“The risk is that Benedict will send Turkey’s Muslims and much of the Islamic world into paroxysms of fury if there is any perception that the Pope is trying to re-appropriate a Christian centre that fell to Muslims,” said an editorial in Turkey’s independent Vatan newspaper on Sunday. Pope Paul VI’s decision to drop to his knees in prayer when he visited the museum in 1967 shocked his Turkish onlookers.

This baffles me in light of the fact that Benedict joined Mustafa Cagrici, Istanbul’s chief cleric, in prayer at the Blue Mosque on Thursday. Why is Benedict allowed to pray at the Blue Mosque, but not the Haghia Sophia? It’s difficult for me to understand why some Turks would be offended by prayer at the Haghia Sophia, since one could just as easily claim that the pope’s decision to pray in the Blue Mosque shows that the Christian West has designs on that building as well. Such an interpretation would be ridiculous, but to me it’s equally ridiculous to ascribe any political meaning whatsoever to a brief prayer inside the Haghia Sophia. After all, it is an awe-inspiring structure.

It’s not as if the Vatican requested to hold mass there. That would probably piss off Istanbul’s Greek minority as much as it would Turkey’s ultra-nationalists.

The Latest from Massachusetts

2006-11-30T14:32:00.000-05:00

Massachusetts Supreme Court Justice Judith Cowin has granted the Romney administration’s request for a hearing before the full seven-member court to decide whether Secretary of State William F. Galvin will be directed to put a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage to the voters on the November 2008 ballot. The hearing date has been set for December 20.

Romney and opponents of same-sex marriage were outraged when the state’s legislature recessed on November 9 without voting on an initiative petition proposing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. They tabled the vote until January 2, 2007, the last day of the legislative session, two days before Deval Patrick, a supporter of same-sex marriage, is to be inaugurated as governor.

Cowin was one of the 4-3 majority that issued the November 2003 Goodridge decision, which recognized the right of same-sex couples to marry in Massachusetts.

Supreme Denial

2006-11-30T13:54:00.000-05:00

Obviously U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia hasn’t seen Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth.

In his ignorance, Scalia (shown left) might be surprised to learn that those of us who did see Gore’s film and believe that global warming is going to have a devastating impact on our planet aren’t able to predict the cataclysm, which is what he sarcastically demanded of James R. Milkey, the top environmental lawyer in the Massachusetts attorney general’s office, who argued before the Supreme Court on Wednesday that the EPA’s failure to limit greenhouse gases has had a detrimental effect on coastal areas in Massachusetts and worldwide. Massachusetts is one of 12 states suing the EPA for its 2003 decision that carbon dioxide emissions are not subject to regulation by the Clean Air Act.

Environmental advocacy like Gore’s film and the science of global warming aren’t about predicting the precise moment of the cataclysm, and neither is the current case before the Supreme Court. People like Scalia think they are scoring points when they get us to acknowledge that we don’t know exactly when our coastlines will be inundated by rising sea levels or when the Greenland ice sheet will melt to the point that the Gulf Stream shuts down. We have no problem admitting that we don’t know these things.

The science of global warming isn’t about predicting the precise moment when climate change will produce a cataclysmic event. It’s about documenting climate change that has already taken place (and continues to occur) and making predictions based upon those scientific observations. Scientists have offered some models based on past and current patterns, but the business of predicting future climate change and the impact it will have is tricky, though still within the realm of science. It is important to remember that evidence of past and current climate change offers clues to the future, not a crystal ball.

Contrary to what Scalia would have us believe, however, the inability of scientists to predict “the precise when” of climate change does not undermine the scientific findings that since the Industrial Revolution, atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide have increased 30 percent and that rising levels of carbon dioxide produce a “greenhouse effect,” otherwise known as global warming.

In this specific case, the Supreme Court will decide whether the Clean Air Act requires the EPA to set stricter limits on greenhouse gas emissions on the grounds that they (auto emissions, for example) constitute “air pollution which may reasonably be anticipated to endanger public health or welfare.” Also at issue is whether or not Massachusetts and the 11 other states have legal justification to challenge the EPA in court. The Court questioned whether or not Massachusetts could demonstrate that it has suffered sufficient harm because of the EPA’s current standards on greenhouse gas emissions.

Gregory G. Garre, the deputy solicitor general representing the Bush administration, argued that stricter limits would have no appreciable impact on the various states, since the subsequent reduction of greenhouse gases would be small. Newly appointed justices Roberts and Alito seemed to go along with that argument. However, that kind of thinking shifts the burden of proof onto the regulations themselves, when in reality the Clean Air Act was written to place the burden on the pollution. If a form of air pollution can be reasonably expected to cause harm, then, the law states, it can be regulated.

Garre’s argument seemed to rely on the fact that the United States alone cannot solve the problem of global warming. He is correct in his assumption that global warming is a complex problem requiring a global solution. However, that should not cause us to conclude that because the United States alone cannot solve the problem, we should do nothing. Changing our policies is not enough to reverse global warming if, for example, China does nothing to address its own greenhouse emissions. That type of reasoning should not be used as an excuse for inactivity, and, in fact, the text of the Clean Air Act was written to prevent that kind of inactivity. The Clean Air Act does not require that we singlehandedly solve the problem. The standard it sets for legal regulatory action is much lower than that.

Regulations such as limits on auto emissions do not have to demonstrate their ability to eliminate air pollution or reverse global warming. They must only show that they reduce air pollution that can be reasonably anticipated to cause harm. This should be relatively easy to prove based on patterns of climate change over the course of the last half century.

The United States cannot hide behind the fact that we are not lone players on the global stage. Nor can we sit idly by while temperatures and sea levels continue to rise. What is required is leadership, not denial. The United States cannot afford to adopt a custom-fit version of the classic “I’m only one person, what can I do? How could I possibly make a difference?” approach, the way someone might when choosing to ignore the homeless, but that is precisely what Garre seemed to be saying. Sure, we are one nation among many and we are not required to solve the problem by ourselves. However, we are required to stop contributing to the problem, so that we become part of the solution.

Activist Judges to the Rescue

2006-11-20T17:09:00.000-05:00

Is Romney nuts?

That was more of a rhetorical question, folks. After being thwarted by the legislature just two weeks ago, our lame (duck) governor is now looking to the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts to intervene in the same-sex marriage debate—yes, that’s right, the same seven judges who started it all back in 2003 with the Goodridge decision that extended marriage rights to same-sex couples. Romney announced yesterday that he will ask the state’s highest court to order onto the November 2008 ballot a question putting same-sex marriage to the voters if the legislature fails to take up the issue when they reconvene in joint session on January 2, 2007, the last day of the legislative session.

You will recall that a few weeks ago on November 9, the legislature voted to recess their joint session without actually voting on whether or not a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage should be put to the voters as a ballot question in November 2008. Romney, who hopes to run for president in 2008, wants desperately to see the question of same-sex marriage puts to the voters and is probably having weekly wet dreams in which on the morning following the November 2008 elections, he opens the newspaper to learn that not only is he the new president elect, but that the people of Massachusetts have done the Lord’s will by voting to amend their constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage.

Clearly Romney’s decision to call upon the state’s highest court shows that he is out of ideas. It is the legislature’s prerogative to determine which constitutional amendments are put to the voters in the form of ballot questions. That is the way our representative democracy works. For someone who has been screaming about activist judges for the past three years, Romney ends up looking like a shrill, bigoted fool when he asks the state’s highest court to step in and play referee between the legislature and the 170,000 homophobes whose signatures on the original initiative petition brought the issue of same-sex marriage to the legislature for the second time in three years.

Opponents of same-sex marriage regard the legislature’s failure to vote on the initiative petition as a subversion of democracy. In fact, it is too early to make that determination. The legislature still has one more opportunity in January 2007 to decide whether or not to put the ballot question before the voters. However, it is clear that they have no intention of voting on the issue at that time. It is in response to that eventuality that Romney has asked the court to intervene, but clearly he is premature. How can he ask the court to rule on a contingency? I’m not a legal expert, but I’d be shocked if the court agreed to rule on what they’ll do if the legislature fails to vote in January.

I’m not even certain that the court even has jurisdiction here. The constitution talks about what happens if the legislature adjourns without having taken action on the initiative petitions put before them. In that case, the governor can call them back into session:

“and if the two houses fail to agree upon a time for holding any joint session hereby required, or fail to continue the same from time to time until final action has been taken upon all amendments pending, the governor shall call such joint session or continuance thereof” (Article XLVIII, Part IV, section 2).

It says nothing about the court’s role in this process. It is the governor’s prerogative to call the legislature back into session if they fail to vote on the petitions put before them. In this case, however, the legislature has agreed to reconvene on January 2, the last day of the legislative session. Deval Patrick will be inaugurated two days later on January 4.

What Romney is basically asking the court to do is compensate for the fact that he will no longer be governor and therefore no longer be in a position to order the legislature back into session. In effect, he’s asking the court to usurp the governor’s role, since the man who will become governor on January 4 has made it clear that he has no intention of doing anything if the legislature fails to vote on same-sex marriage in January.

I might be wrong, but I don’t really see the court helping him out here. Perhaps he should have thought of that before he decided not to seek a second term.

Victory

2006-11-09T22:38:00.000-05:00

This evening the Massachusetts legislature effectively killed an initiative petition proposing a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage by postponing their vote on the measure until January 2007. Because they did not adjourn, but simply recessed, Governor Romney cannot order them back into session. Romney was understandably pissed and accused the 109 legislators who voted to recess until January of disgracing their oath of office. By January, however, we will have a new governor, Romney will be soon forgotten, and same-sex marriage will have become a permanent feature of our landscape.

The above photo shows a group of anti-gay protesters across the street from the Massachusetts state house on Beacon Hill in Boston. They stood with their signs and their chants and their prayers, while for the most part, it was known since late last evening that the legislature would recess without voting on the issue of same-sex marriage.

In the background is the Robert Gould Shaw (1837 – 1863) memorial. Shaw led the very first African-American regiment to be formed in the North, the hallowed Massachusetts 54th, during the American Civil War. Although Shaw and many of the brave men under his command were cut down at the battle of Fort Wagner (South Carolina) in 1863, their legacy is one of freedom and courage in the face of inequality and injustice.

In the photograph, it almost looks as if Shaw and his regiment are marching over the protesters.

Those who made their slogan “Let the people vote” believed that they could win by masking their bigotry as democracy. Despite the appeal that their false populism had for many in Massachusetts, there is absolutely nothing democratic about relegating an entire class of people to second class status. Democracy can never allow itself to be subverted in order to inflict inequality and injustice upon a minority group. Our legislators in Massachusetts demonstrated today their grasp of this basic truth. They did the right thing.

Rembetiko of the Month

2006-11-07T21:46:00.000-05:00

As a favor to a friend, I was all set to post Κουβέντα με τον Χάρο, written by Panatiotis Toundas (ca. 1885 – 1942) and recorded by Kostas Roukounas (1903 – 1984) in 1935. It’s going to have to wait until next month, however, because the sordid business of Haggardgate brought to mind the lyrics of Μπαμπέσα, which Roza Eskenazi (ca. 1880s – 1980) recorded in 1934 with the great violinist Dimitris Semsis, aka “Salonikios” (ca. 1883 – 1950) along with an unknown mandolin and guitar.

Click here to listen.

Σ’αγάπαγα καί έλεγα πως είχες λίγη μπέσα,
Μα σύ μου την κοπάναγες γιατ’ ήσουνα μπαμπέσα.

Chorus:
Μπαμπεσικά τα μάτια σου, μπαμπέσα καί η καρδιά σου,
Μμαμπεσικά με κοίμιζες μέσα στην αγκαλιά σου.

Καθημερνώς μπαμπεσικά μ’εμέ συνεννογιόσουνα,
καί μ’είχες καί περίμενα καί μ’άλλον εξηγιόσουνα.

Φτάνει πλέον τις μπαμπεσιές καί βάλε λίγη μπέσα,
γιά νά σ’αλλάξω τ’όνομα νά μη σε λεν’ μπαμπέσα.

Μη μου το λες μπαμπεσικά, πες το με την καρδιά σου.
Ξηγήσου μιά φορά σπαθί μπαμπέσα στο νταλγκά σου.

I loved you, though I had my doubts about you;
but with you it’s always the same, you’re always unfaithful.

Chorus:
Your eyes tell lies, and so does your heart;
and every night that I fell asleep in your arms was a lie.

Everyday you conspired to betray me;
even though I was yours, you were off gettin’ some on the side.

Enough backstabbing, I want to trust you,
so that the whole world won’t call you unfaithful.

Enough lies, tell me what’s in your heart;
for once in your life, tell it to me straight.

Μπαμπέσα (bam-BEH-sa) literally means “unfaithful,” but in Rembetika, it often has the connotation of “backstabber.” That makes it an apt song for the pain that disgraced ex-pastor Ted Haggard has caused with his lies. The lyrics remind me the betrayal his wife must be feeling right now, thinking that the man she’s called her husband for so many years has suddenly become a stranger to her.

However, the gay community also has a right to feel betrayed by Haggard. The rantings and political machinations of the Religious Right are bad enough, but when we learn that one of our most vocal opponents was someone who secretly turned to the gay community for personal gratification, we cannot help but feel betrayed by his μπαμπεσιές.

Μπαμπέσα is a good example of a Smyrnaïc song in makam Rast with a very Western sound (notwithstanding its periodic forays into makam Houzam), both in its overall melodic structure and in its instrumentation. It features an especially dulcid Eskenazi (pictured left) and is more reminiscent of an Italian-inspired καντάδα (cantata) than the oriental melodies and αμανέδες that were the mainstay of Eskenazi’s repertoire.

Recommended Listening:
Roza Eskenazi: Rembétissa 1933 – 1936

Repulsive and Dark

2006-11-05T23:28:00.000-05:00

Having been dismissed as senior pastor of New Life Church, Ted Haggard has finally admitted that he lied about his relationship with Mike Jones and in a letter to his former congregation, confessed to “sexual immorality,” by which we can be fairly certain that he was referring to his homosexual desires. He went on to speak of his urges as “repulsive and dark,” calling them “the dirt that [he] thought was gone” but that “would resurface.”

Haggard clearly considers himself as having been a slave to his “unnatural desires.” In reality, he is a slave to a backward and inhumane religion that deems love between two people of the same sex to be “sexual immorality.” Haggard is as much a slave as he ever was.

Though he has confessed to being “a deceiver and a liar” for not being forthcoming about his relationship with Jones, his biggest deception is yet to come; namely, he will now join the ranks of those pathetic, self-loathing ex-gays who sing the praises of reparative therapy and claim to be cured.

Next stop: Exodus International. Don’t worry, Ted. I’ve heard that lots of guys hook up there.

No Hypocrisy There

2006-11-05T00:43:00.000-05:00

“Confronting society with the relevance of the gospel by being salt and by reflecting Christ’s light is one of our missions.”

From the National Association of Evangelicals on their “Witness to Society”

Rob Brendle, an associate pastor at New Life Church, recently said he sees no hypocrisy in former pastor Ted Haggard’s indiscretion:

“To my knowledge, Mike Jones has not alleged that Ted asked him to marry him... No, I do not see this instance as hypocrisy. I do see it as indiscretion, and I am grateful that Ted is repentant and humble.”

Yes, that’s right. Ted did not ask Jones to marry him. He paid him for sex and illegal drugs. While Haggard has been publicly condemning those who live “the gay lifestyle” as sinners and campaigning to prevent respectable same-sex couples from receiving legal recognition for their stable, loving, and in many cases long-term unions, he has been deceiving his family, his friends, his colleagues, and his church by privately engaging in the very acts he condemns. This is a classic case of “Do as I say, not as I do.” But, according to Brendle, that’s not hypocrisy.

Haggard wanted his congregation to believe that he was filled with the Holy Spirit, but in reality his high came from someplace else. What’s worse, Haggard lied about his involvement with Jones and continues to lie about the full extent of their relationship. While it is natural for his flock to circle their wagons, it is just as natural for intelligent, thoughtful people to recognize a brood of vipers when they see one.

Haggard and his people have been ruthless and mean-spirited in their attacks on the GLBT community. They accuse us of immorality. They say we are dangerous to children. They talk about the transformative power of God, about how they are different. It’s true; they are different. They are worse. Much worse.

They never tire of prophesying the demise of traditional marriage that will follow in the wake of same-sex marriage, yet Haggard’s lies and double life have done more damage to his marriage than any gay couple ever could. Like the Roman Catholic heirarchy’s protection and coddling of those who endanger children by knowingly and repeatedly placing pedophiles in parishes, the failure of Haggard’s church to condemn his hypocrisy demonstrates their moral bankruptcy. With each day that they refuse to acknowledge the hypocrisy of Haggard’s misconduct and lies, the credibility of the Religious Right erodes a little bit more in the eyes of the general public.

Haggardgate demonstrates that evangelical religion is theater, and men like Haggard, mere actors. The problem is that they are not content to stand at the pulpit and enact their drama for their own personal entertainment and edification and be done with it. They want our laws to reflect a morality that they themselves are unwilling and unable to follow.

Haggardgate’s witness to society is of a god that is a lot like Santa Claus. He’s useful for keeping wayward children in line, but grown-ups don’t really believe in him themselves. The Religious Right clearly wants others to believe in their god. The question is, do they believe in him? I find it difficult to believe that Haggard for one takes his god very seriously. And yet, he wants his congregation and the larger society to do just that. Haggard’s reputation and the lies he’s telling to protect it have become his gods.

But, according to Brendle, that’s not hypocrisy.

Meth and Massage

2006-11-03T16:03:00.000-05:00

The latest in the Haggardgate affair has Haggard admitting that he purchased crystal meth because he was curious, but never used it, and that he received a massage from Jones, but that no sexual intercourse took place. Click here for the full story.

Why do these guys always exacerbate their difficulties by lying?

Haggard, who has been extremely vocal in his opposition to same-sex marriage has, like many of the Religious Right, relied on the argument that marriage between a man and a woman is the best situation for children, while same-sex marriage is harmful to children.

I wonder what kind of harm Haggard’s purchasing of crystal meth and hiring a male escort is going to do to his five children.

More on Haggardgate

2006-11-03T10:36:00.000-05:00

In a not entirely surprising turn of events, Ross Parsley, the acting senior pastor of New Life Church, has revealed to KKTV 11News that Ted Haggard has admitted to “some” of the indiscretions alleged by former escort Mike Jones, but not all of them. “I don’t have an accurate description about the precise details,” explained Parsley. “I just know that there has been some admission of indiscretion, not admission to all of the material that has been discussed, but there is an admission of some guilt.”

In an email that Parsley (pictured right) sent to congregants, he wrote: “It is important for you to know that he confessed to the overseers that some of the accusations against him are true… He has willingly and humbly submitted to the authority of the board of overseers, and will remain on administrative leave during the course of the investigation.”

Mike Jones, who underwent a polygraph test this morning on Denver’s KHOW 630 AM, failed the test, though he has volunteered to retake it. To listen to the broadcast, click here.

In a related development, KUSA 9News is reporting that a voice recognition expert, Richard Sanders, compared a recording of Haggard’s voice with a voicemail provided by Jones and found that they matched, supporting Jones’ claim that Haggard was one of his clients.

Naturally, James Dobson (Focus on the Family) has come to Haggard’s defense: “Ted Haggard is a friend of mine, and it appears someone is trying to damage his reputation as a way of influencing the outcome of Tuesday’s election—especially the vote on Colorado’s marriage-protection amendment, which Ted strongly supports,” Dobson argued.

I hope that even more of these wingnuts for the Religious Right—including Bush—come forward to defend him. There’s plenty of egg here to go around.

The Surest Sign of Guilt

2006-11-03T00:28:00.000-05:00

Ted Haggard has resigned from his post as president of the National Association of Evangelicals and has placed himself on “administrative leave” as pastor of New Life Church, pending an internal investigation of the accusations made by a former male escort that he and Haggard had sex over a three-year period.

While this is not proof that the allegations are true, it suggests to me that they are.

Something Stinks

2006-11-02T11:54:00.000-05:00

Caught this little tidbit this morning. It could amount to nothing or it could turn out to be something big. I’m going to keep an eye on this one.

I mean, how great would it be if Ted Haggard, the homophobic pastor of one of the nation’s most successful mega-churches—a guy who’s president of the National Association of Evangelicals (NAE), was voted one of “The 25 Most Influential Evangelicals in America” by Time, and who participates in a weekly conference call with the White House—turned out to be a closeted homosexual who carried on a three-year affair with a male prostitute?

The former escort, Mike Jones, called into a Denver radio show (KHOW 630 AM) last week during a segment on same-sex marriage—Colorado will vote on a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage on November 7—and during the course of the conversation, he explained that most of his clients (surprise, surprise!) were married men, some of them prominent (conservative) politicians and clergy, though he always exercised the utmost professional discretion.

He was later interviewed by Denver’s KUSA 9News, explaining that he chose to come forward with his story because of the hypocrisy demonstrated by closeted politicians and clergy who pay to have gay sex and then, as soon as they’ve zipped up, turn around and attack the GLBT community and work to undermine the rights of GLBT Americans.

Haggard has vehemently denied the allegations. Jones, who claims to have voicemail messages and correspondence from Haggard, has offered to undergo a polygraph test on the air this Friday. Stay tuned.

To listen to recordings of the radio broadcasts, click here. Registration on the site may be required in order to listen, but registration is free.

Κουρασμένος Νοέμβρης

2006-11-01T00:08:00.000-05:00

This Νοέμβρης (November) looks tired (κουρασμένος ) to me. I can relate. I’m feeling very tired. September and October were exhausting. I’d explain what made them so, but there are some things about which I don’t feel compelled to blog. Too personal, I guess.

I began this blog last November after a frustrating trip abroad, which had me in a bit of a funk upon my return. A friend had started a blog (now dormant) while I was away, which eventually intrigued me enough that I created one on a lark. It wasn’t something I ever saw myself doing. I ended up enjoying it and I still do.

I guess I’ll keep doing it.

All Tricks and No Treat

2006-10-30T20:43:00.000-05:00

If this doesn’t scare the crap out of the kiddies this Halloween, I don’t know what will. I can think of few things more frightening than four years of Kerry Healey as governor.

Healey’s spent the past few weeks trying to scare the people of Massachusetts into voting for her, but recent polls show that an overwhelming majority feel she’s a helluva lot scarier than her ads attacking Deval Patrick.

Of course, the youngsters approaching my door for candy to fill their sacks might not be politically savvy enough to recognize the Lieutenant Governor’s frightening visage on my Healey-o-lantern; they might conclude that it’s just a plain old witch.

And the problem is…??

Sausage Fest

2006-10-30T12:54:00.000-05:00

No, not that kind of sausage fest (though we did attend a Halloween party on Saturday that was chock full of cute boys). Our good friends L and M—who are foodies on a level that Joe and I only dream of—invited us over for dinner last night after making their own sausage on Saturday with pork shoulder from a locally-raised pig (purchased in Groton, MA).

The sausage was delicious, and the ingredients simple: just salt, pepper, garlic, and wine (and natural casings). They served it pan fried on a bed of caramelized onions with a side of sautéed Roxbury Russet apples, a hearty brown bread, and an Aglianico from Basilicata (our contribution). What a meal. Thanks, boys.

Göz Lokumu

2006-10-27T17:07:00.000-04:00

Last month Will of Designer Blog asked me whether young men alone qualified as göz lokumu (eye candy). My response was to invite him to compose this month’s post. He has written a wonderful piece on the Poseidon of Artemision (ca. 460 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens), so named because this amazing work (shown above) was raised from the sea, off northern Euboea’s Cape Artemision in 1928.

He begins, however, with an allusion to figures like the Youth of Antikythera (ca. 340 BCE, National Archaeological Museum, Athens), another fine bronze (shown right) depicting a well-built youth (possibly Paris). Like the Poseidon of Artemision, it too was raised from the sea floor, off the island of Antikythera in 1900.

The well-known Greek admiration for the human form resulted in some of the most beautiful images of young men ever created. But the Greeks had equal veneration for the male body as it passed through life, as muscles grew and hardened, bones developed and lines of character formed in the face, the languorous beauty of youth attaining the confident power of middle age.

I was in my early 20s when I realized that my personal standard for male beauty was directed at men a good ten to fifteen years older than myself—experienced, centered men who’d maintained their bodies, were at the height of their powers, sexual and otherwise—men who knew their way around.

When I first discovered the great bronze Poseidon in Athens, I recognized him immediately as my ideal: a handsome, beautifully proportioned and totally believable god poised to hurl his iconic trident (that has unfortunately) not survived antiquity. He stands today as fresh and powerful as the day he was created.

Poseidon’s brother Zeus, King of he Gods, generally gets the major credit for divine philandering, but Poseidon more than holds up his end. According to one source, he impregnated twenty-six women in addition to his sister-wife, resulting in a total of at least fifty-two children. Among these are some very famous names like Pegasus, the winged horse (conceived with the gorgon Medusa while he was disguised as a stallion in what must have been a truly remarkable sexual encounter); Polyphemus, the Cyclops; Byzas (the legendary founder of Byzantium, which became Constantinople and eventually Istanbul); and Pelops and installing him on Olympus as his lover, eventually settling on him the gift of a great winged chariot as a token of his passion.

Poseidon is credited with causing earthquakes (or was that just the bed shaking?). He was he god of horses, seducing several women as a stallion (or was he just “horse-hung”?). And most of all he was god of the seas, ruler of the middle layer of the Greek cosmos with Zeus the Thunderer ruling the sky above, and Pluto ruling the Underworld below. Like his brother Zeus, Poseidon took as wife a sister, Demeter, the goddess of wheat and grain; together they reigned jointly as god and goddess of fertility.

In my adulthood I began seriously to question just what’s supposed to be so “advanced” and superior about monotheism. I look at the Greek pantheon as a veritable guidebook to all aspects of human emotion and psychology from which we can learn far more about ourselves and our fellow beings than from the watered-down or thinly disguised versions that Christianity provides (Ares or Mars as St. Michael the Warrior Archangel, for example). When I visited Apollo’s sanctuary at Delphi, as a gay man I felt instantly and completely at home there, as if embraced by the spectacular site and its ancient cult. When I look at the strong, handsome and majestic head of Poseidon, I have the same feeling and know that this is a god (in company with his modern day human descendents) I could truly adore.

Alluring

2006-10-27T10:57:00.000-04:00

That might seem like a strange word to apply to Grace Ross, who is running for governor on the Green-Rainbow Party ticket. To the consternation of many of my friends and neighbors, I often vote third party. Yes, I’ve heard all of the standard arguments: “Don’t throw your vote away,” “You’re giving votes to the opposition!” Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Perhaps when I have more time, I’ll devote a post to the importance of third party politics, but for now, I’m simply including a link to a great article on Grace Ross in today’s Boston Globe. I’ve liked Grace Ross from the very start of the race. She is the candidate that most closely represents my values. She won’t win. But paradoxically, that’s exactly why I’m thinking of voting for her.

She has no chance of winning because the electorate has been trained to think that third-party/independent candidates aren’t viable. Perhaps if more people (like me) vote for them, they’ll begin to seem more viable and as a result will receive a larger share of the votes. By voting for Ross, I’m challenging the two-party system, which is as important a strategy to me as who becomes the next governor. It’s not all about the short term. Besides, if casting a vote is based solely on the likelihood of a candidate’s winning, then even a vote for Kerry Healey is likely to be a wasted vote, given Deval Patrick’s commanding lead in the polls.

Click here to read the article.

According to the article, “[d]uring Ross's visit to Massasoit [Community College], a custodian, a campus security officer, and a cafeteria worker sought her out to tell her they were thinking of voting for her.” Therein lies the key to success. Her message resonates with the working class, who rightly feel that they’ve been given the shaft by the political establishment.

Ross’s greatest asset is her message and its appeal to working class voters. Her biggest liability, as shown by recent opinion polls (above), is her lack of visibility (which is a direct result of her lack of funds). Compare the 46% of those polled who don’t know anything about Grace Ross to the less than 15% for each of the other candidates. However, the fact that 28% of those surveyed viewed her favorably, compared to the only slightly higher 34% for both Kerry Healey and Christy Mihos is quite telling.

The real challenge facing any third-party candidate is getting noticed and getting what is often a very appealing message out in front of the voters. All the more reason why Healey should shut her damn profiterole hole about a one-on-one debate with Patrick.

Although Ross has only about 2% of the vote this time around, if she and other populist candidates like her can continue to mobilize large numbers of the working class and those who feel disenfranchised and alienated by the political process, then the poll numbers might look very different down the road.

News from New Jersey

2006-10-25T16:06:00.000-04:00

Mark Lewis and Dennis Winslow, et al. v. Gwendolyn L. Harris, etc., et al.

“HELD: Denying committed same-sex couples the financial and social benefits and privileges given to their married heterosexual counterparts bears no substantial relationship to a legitimate governmental purpose. The Court holds that under the equal protection guarantee of Article I, Paragraph 1 of the New Jersey Constitution, committed same-sex couples must be afforded on equal terms the same rights and benefits enjoyed by opposite-sex couples under the civil marriage statutes. The name to be given to the statutory scheme that provides full rights and benefits to same-sex couples, whether marriage or some other term, is a matter left to the democratic process.”

Read the full text of the decision here.

I’m happy, but I can’t help but feel that the Supreme Court of New Jersey chose the easy way out, effectively giving the people the right to undermine (if not overturn) this decision by creating a legal relationship between two people of the same sex that is something other than marriage. In a way, I can’t blame them. They have doubtless seen the divisive and bitter fight that resulted from the 2003 Goodridge decision here in Massachusetts.

The court knows very well that this is not simply a matter of semantics. What the relationship is called matters. The federal government is not obligated to recognize civil unions because civil unions do not exist at the federal level. Of course, the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) already exempts both the states and the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriages performed in other states. However, this can be challenged by legitimately married same-sex couples suing in federal court. If they are not married, however, but merely are joined by a civil union (like what exists in Vermont), I don’t believe they would have standing to challenge DOMA.

Call me cynical, but while I would like to see this as a victory for marriage equality and GLBT rights, I feel that the Supreme Court of New Jersey has opened the door to separate but equal.

What Goes Around, Comes Around

2006-10-25T09:50:00.000-04:00

While I myself detest Kerry Healey’s race baiting and fear-mongering tactics, I don’t have much sympathy for the Reverend Jeffrey Brown (pictured left), pastor of Union Baptist Church in Cambridge, who’s been crying foul over Healey’s most recent attack ad—you know the one, a woman walking alone in a parking garage, it ends with a sanctimonious “Deval Patrick should be ashamed, not governor.”

I think it’s safe to say that the ad, which continues to air, has backfired and resulted in much consternation. In Brown’s own words: “When I first saw [the ad], the effect for me as a black male, it just killed me. It’s the kind of race-baiting ad that plays to the worst fears of suburban America. It has crossed the line, as far as I’m concerned.”

Those of us who consistently oppose the politics of fear and division can rightly be outraged at what Frank Phillips referred to in the last gubernatorial debate as the ad’s “racial subtext.” When Brown expresses his outrage, however, he just sounds like a hypocrite.

But wait—isn’t it reasonable for black leaders to be outraged at an ad that just about everyone (other than Healey herself) finds offensive? Of course it is. But it’s far less reasonable for someone like Brown to cry foul amidst what he calls race-baiting after engaging for so long in gay-baiting.

Brown has been a vocal critic of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts and affixed his name to the “Joint Statement in Support of Constitutional Amendment Initiative,” signed by the state’s conservative clergy back in 2004. Moreover, as co-founder of the Boston Ten Point Coalition, he was one of three co-authors of the “Black Clergy Statement on Marriage,” which urged the Legislature to define marriage as the union between a man and a woman.

Brown didn’t stop there, however. He went on to express his personal outrage that GLBT people would have the unmitigated gall to define their struggle as a battle for civil rights: “I’m offended that they’re comparing this to civil rights. Marriage is not a civil right, and the struggle of gay and lesbian people cannot be compared to the struggle of blacks.”

The fear-mongering tactics employed by the opponents of marriage equality are not simply equal to, but surpass Kerry Healey’s fear-based attack on Deval Patrick. They talk about the destruction of marriage as an institution, the negative impact that same-sex marriage will have on children, and the dreaded gay agenda. In their opposition to same-sex marriage, they have demonized GLBT people, and Reverend Brown is part of that equation. It’s easy to demonize, and back in 2004, Brown was quick to jump on the anti-gay bandwagon. Now, the shoe is on the other foot, and Brown is being given a painful reminder that it’s not as much fun when you’re the one being demonized.

The moral of the story for Brown and others like him is that just because conservative Republicans zealously court the African-American community in the battle over same-sex marriage, it doesn’t mean that deep down they’re not racists.

Tax the Rich

2006-10-20T17:30:00.000-04:00

Thus far during the gubernatorial race, the citizens of Massachusetts have heard a lot of talk about the high cost of living in Massachusetts, which is easy to understand, combined with a lot of talk about the state income tax and property taxes, which is not so easy for the average layperson to understand.

While property taxes have certainly risen in Massachusetts—as a resident of the City of Boston, I know mine have—I think it’s important to recognize a few basic things up front:

First of all, there is a cap on both the amount of property taxes cities and towns can raise and also on the amount property taxes can increase from one year to the next. It’s called Proposition 2½, and Massachusetts residents have been living with it for the past 26 years. Proposition 2½ places two constraints on the amount of property taxes a city or town can levy:

1. A community cannot levy more than 2.5% of the total full cash value of all taxable property in the community (called the levy ceiling).

2. A community’s allowable levy for a fiscal year (called the levy limit) cannot increase by more than 2.5% of the maximum allowable limit for the prior year, plus certain allowable increases such as new growth from property added to the tax rolls in that year.

I think it’s important to remember this when discussing taxation in Massachusetts. People talk about property taxes as if they’ve gone through the roof and will climb higher still as a result of Healey’s plan to roll back the income tax. In reality, Proposition 2½ limits how much property taxes can rise.

That’s not meant as a defense of Proposition 2½, which I suspect gives incentives to cities and towns to favor new housing developments (which often contribute to sprawl and eat up open space) over historic preservation and rehabilitation. The point is that in the conversation about what’s causing people to leave Massachusetts, we need to spend less time making false assumptions about property taxes and shift the emphasis back onto housing costs, the lack of affordable housing, and the lack of employment opportunities. These are the true factors in the exodus, not property taxes.

Nor do I wish to see the income tax rolled back. While it won’t produce the spike in property taxes that figures so prominently into Deval Patrick’s argument, we will see more cuts in state aid to cities and towns. With so many cities and towns in need of more state aid, we cannot afford to roll back the state income tax rate from 5.3% to 5%, as Kerry Healey has proposed. A rollback isn’t where the conversation needs to be. What we should be discussing is scrapping our flat rate income tax once and for all.

Massachusetts is one of only six states without a variable tax rate. Call me a socialist, but I think that’s a mistake (Oh wait, I am a socialist). California has six tax brackets ranging from 1.0% to 9.3%. Closer to home, Maine has four tax brackets ranging from 2.0% to 8.5%. I agree with Grace Ross: it’s time to overhaul our tax system in Massachusetts and institue a progressive tax. With so many of our cities and towns continuing to suffer from economic blight and high crime rates—have you driven through Roxbury, Lawrence, or Springfield recently?—we can’t afford more budget cuts.

It’s time to reverse the cuts to cities and towns that in recent years have had a devastating impact on our local schools, public safety, and basic services. In January 2003 Romney cut state aid to cities and towns $114 million below the amount that had been appropriated for the fiscal year. While a balanced budget is great, the answer is not to reduce the amount of state aid to cities and towns as the Romney-Healey administration has done. Rather, we need to tax the rich.

Third Debate

2006-10-19T19:58:00.000-04:00

Watching the third gubernatorial debate right now, and I’m happy to see Kerry Healey getting her ASS KICKED all over Faneuil Hall.

Kudos to Deval Patrick for retaining his poise and composure and delivering an eloquent defense of his candidacy. How inspiring to see the bust of Frederick Douglass over his shoulder.

Greater kudos to Grace Ross for her steadfast defense of the working poor and for reminding us all that by giving tax breaks to the wealthiest of the wealthy, we are starving our democracy.

And Christy Mihos is an idiot.

To read the entire transcript of the debate, click here.

Sick to My Stomach

2006-10-19T12:30:00.000-04:00

Rarely do I judge the quality of a film by its ability to make me want to vomit. After watching Iraq for Sale: The War Profiteers, however, I felt sick to my stomach. It wasn’t just the detailed accounts of war profiteering and the sad fact that war makes some rich and many more miserable. What made me even sicker was a feeling deep inside me that there is no remedy for this bleak situation because humans are innately greedy and cruel and predisposed not only to slaughter each other, but to try to get rich in the process.

Iraq for Sale tells the story of how Halliburton/KBR, CACI, and Blackwater (to name a few) have been given no-bid contracts to handle logistical support and reconstruction in Iraq and have reaped billions in the process. While many Americans have probably heard some of the allegations of how this outsourcing has led to cost overruns and substandard services, fewer are probably aware of how outsourcing has contributed to the breakdown of the rule of law.

The film examines, for example, the role played by private contractors in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and points to the fact that private workers are not subject to the same laws and regulations as military personnel. The film also documents specific instances of how cost cutting and attention to the bottom line have repeatedly put employees at risk, often with devastating results.

There is no doubt that privatizing the Iraq war has opened the door to enormous profits. Sadly, the relentless pursuit of profit in Iraq has taken place at the expense of the American taxpayers, the Iraqi people, and the lives of rank and file workers. And it sickens me to think that not a damn thing will be done about it.

If you want to feel sick, go see Iraq for Sale. It’s currently screening at multiple locations throughout the greater Boston area and elsewhere in Massachusetts through November 11. The screenings are free, but you need to sign up in advance. To do so, click here.

If I thought I could stomach it again, I’d sign up to host my own screening.

Les censeurs ont tort.

2006-10-17T23:32:00.000-04:00

Last Thursday, France passed a law making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide perpetrated by the Ottomans during the First World War and its aftermath. This leaves me frustrated, in spite of the fact that I have recently had a series of unpleasant and caustic encounters with several very angry readers of this blog who denied that what happened to Armenians during the last years of the Ottoman Empire constituted genocide.

I do not believe that censorship is the answer. Rather, those who deny the Armenian genocide should be treated with the scorn and derision that they deserve. The solution is to deprive them of their legitimacy, not their voice. I would make the same argument about the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is illegal in many European countries as well as Israel.

To me, these laws are no better than the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code under which the “Public denigration of Turkishness” is punishable with a prison sentence ranging from six months to three years. Under the terms of the law, the celebrated Turkish author Orhan Pamuk (Snow, My Name is Red), who was recently awarded the 2006 Nobel Prize for Literature, was brought to trial last December for comments he made about the Armenian genocide during an interview with a Swiss newspaper in which he stated: “30,000 Kurds and a million Armenians were murdered. Hardly anyone dares mention it, so I do. And that’s why I’m hated.”

The charges were eventually dismissed on a technicality, but during his trial Pamuk offered the following defense, which deeply resonates with me: “What I said is not an insult, it is the truth. But what if it is wrong? Right or wrong, do people not have the right to express their ideas peacefully?”

I agree with Pamuk and I applaud his bravery and his integrity. Pamuk did not choose his conscience over his country. He did not betray his patriotism; he obeyed it, by choosing to acknowledge the darker episodes in his country’s past. And while acknowledging them should not be a matter for the courts, neither should denying them.

Rembetiko of the Month

2006-10-16T13:27:00.000-04:00

Αμάν, αμάν.
Στην ξενητειά, την ορφανιά, την πίκρα, καί την λύπη—
Όλα μου τ’άδωσε ο θεός• κανένα δεν μου λείπει.

Aman, aman.
In exile, to be an orphan with bitterness and grief—
God has given me all of these; not one of them have I avoided.

Click here to listen.

I believe this melancholy song was recorded in Athens between 1935 and 1937. It features vocals by Stratos Payioumdzis (ca. 1902 – 1971), who was born in the port town of Aïvali (Ayvalik) in Asia Minor and fled to Greece as a refugee during the First World War, a few years before the massive population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Payioumdzis did not begin recording until 1934, prior to which he worked as a laborer in Piraeus.

Payioumdzis (pictured left) is generally regarded as belonging to the Piraeus School of Rembetika, which refers to the male-dominated subgroup whose songs featured gritty themes and had a much less polished sound than the songs of the Smyrnaïc School. The most common instruments of the Piraeus School were the bouzouki and baglamas, though other instruments, such as the oud and accordion, were sometimes used. The Piraeus School flourished in the 1930s, during which time it gradually began to eclipse the popularity of the Smyrnaïc School.

While I don’t contest the main points of this narrative (and have relied on it myself to distinguish between Rembetika’s different sub-genres), I am beginning to see its inadequacy. For one thing, the Smyrnaïc School continued to enjoy widespread popularity with the Greek Diaspora in the United States during the 1940s. Furthermore, while the Greek popular songs (λαϊκά) that emerged after the Second World War drew heavily on the bouzouki-dominated Piraeus School, they also looked to the Smyrnaïc School as well. In reality, the first generation of postwar Greek popular singers like Yiota Lydia and Stelios Kazantzidis were influenced by both subgenres of Rembetika, and this dual parentage can be heard in their music.

Of greater importance in deciding whether to stick to the main contours of the Piraeus- Smyrnaïc School dichotomy is whether or not it is flexible enough to accommodate all that we know about Rembetika. For example, we know that αμανέδες, a mainstay of the Smyrnaïc School, were being sung in Athens in the Sandouri Café/Café Aman establishments that had appeared as early as the 1880s. The same could be said of Jannina to the north, though this city was not incorporated into Greece until 1913.

Similarly, there were edgier, bawdier songs being sung in Constantinople (Istanbul), Syros, and probably Smyrna as well that had much in common with the feel (though not necessarily the instrumentation) of the so-called Piraeus School. These were songs of the male-dominated τεκέδες (te-KE-dhes)—or hash dens—prisons, and bordellos. While the Piraeus School moniker may seem a useful term to describe the recordings produced in the 1930s by a specific group of male musicians, the style of music recorded by Markos Vamvakaris, Yiorgos Batis, Stratos Payioumdzis, and Andonis Kalivopoulos (to name a few) traces its origins to the underground music that existed on both sides of the Aegean as early as the 19th century.

Perhaps the division is less one of Smyrna and Piraeus, which places too much emphasis on geography, than one of τεκές (te-KES) and Café Aman, which shifts the emphasis to one of setting and mood. As a genre, Rembetika mixes underground songs with bourgeois songs. The irony is that as the sound of the underground songs became more popular, it took on a more bourgeois feel and arguably lost its edge.

I chose Payioumdzis’ Ουσσάκ Τραγούδι της Ξενητειάς (Song of Exile in makam Oussak) this month because, while it is common to classify this song as belonging to the Piraeus School, it has many elements that are more characteristic of the Smyrnaïc School. For one thing, it is an αμανές. Also, it features the oud as well as the bouzouki. It may belong in the τεκές, but it simultaneously pays homage to the Café Aman. Such is the beauty of Rembetika.

Recommended Listening:
Rembetika: Greek Music from the Underground

Hubris

2006-10-12T00:13:00.000-04:00

A couple of news items caught my eye last week, but I didn’t have a chance to post about them until now. Certainly, they’ve been eclipsed by other stories (like North Korea’s nukes), but that’s perhaps all the more reason to revisit them. Even when they appeared, they were small stories, not garnering much attention, but they are significant in that they highlight a sickness that has infested our government and our nation, and that sickness is something that the ancient Greeks called hubris (ύβρις).

Last Wednesday Bush signed the new homeland-security bill. Among other things, the bill also included provisions pertaining to our neighbors to the north and south: it allows Americans to import a 90-day supply of prescription drugs from Canada (thumbs up), while calling for $1.2 billion in fencing along the U.S.-Mexico border (thumbs down).

One important provision that was attached to the bill called for minimum qualifications for the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). Congress was responding to the fact that in the aftermath of FEMA’s slow and poorly coordinated response to Hurricane Katrina, it was revealed that Michael Brown, Bush’s choice to lead FEMA, had no prior experience in emergency management. Congress is requiring “a demonstrated ability in and knowledge of emergency management” and “not less than five years of executive leadership.”

Bush’s response was to issue a signing statement declaring his authority to bypass the provision and ignore the minimum qualifications set forth by Congress. His reason: the law “purports to limit the qualifications of the pool of persons from whom the president may select the appointee in a manner that rules out a large portion of those persons best qualified by experience and knowledge to fill the office.”

What a slap in the face to the people of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast who lost their homes and loved ones and whose suffering was made worse because of FEMA’s mishandling of the crisis. It’s as though Bush wants to reserve the right to hire someone who is inexperienced and incompetent. I guess he had no choice really. To accept that provision and the prerogative (and responsibility) of Congress to set minimum standards for so important a position would be a tacit concession that “Brownie” had no business serving as FEMA chief.

While Bush is trying to beat the law, Guantanamo guards are busy beating prisoners. In a two-page statement issued to the Inspector General at the Department of Defense by a high-ranking Marine Corps defense lawyer, it was revealed that guards at Guantanamo have been bragging about the beatings they routinely give prisoners. Stories about the abuse of prisoners at Guantanamo have surfaced before, and this recent development adds to the mounting pile of evidence pointing to the mistreatment of Guantanamo detainees.

On one hand we have the President of the United States defending his right to hand pick the head of FEMA without any restrictions imposed by Congress in spite of the fact that his last pick was an abysmal failure that caused enormous suffering among hundreds of thousands of Americans. On the other hand we have soldiers actually bragging about the inhumane manner with which the treat prisoners at Guantanamo. I’m not sure I know which one is worse. Each of these episodes demonstrates hubris and is a disgrace to our president and our nation.

Aristotle defined hubris as

doing or saying things that cause shame to the victim, not in order that anything may happen to you, nor because anything has happened to you, but merely for your own gratification. Hubris is not the requital of past injuries; this is revenge. As for the pleasure in hubris, its cause is this: men think that by ill-treating others they make their own superiority the greater (Rhetoric 1378b).

It’s easy to see how the above definition relates to the maltreatment of prisoners at Guantanamo. One might argue that the hubris lies in not so much the beatings, but the very act of holding men prisoner without any formal mechanism in place for adjudication.

In the case of Bush’s signing statement, the link to hubris is less clear, but it’s there. Bush believes not only that his presidential prerogative is greater than the power of Congress, but also feels that it’s more important than the victims of Katrina and, really, all Americans, whose safety depends on there never again being a Michael Brown in charge of FEMA.

Garconaire

2006-10-05T00:06:00.000-04:00

The other night Joe took Neretta to Angel Memorial in Jamaica Plain. Neretta is a little black cat that has taken up residence on our front porch. She was feral when we found her several months ago and she’d run away if we got too close, but we’ve managed to tame her and she’s become quite affectionate. The problem is that we both have allergies, and a cat indoors is out of the question. We’re trying to figure out if she can survive outdoors during the winter months. So far, we’ve not been able to find a suitable home for her and we’d rather keep her outdoors than hand her over to an animal shelter. In the meantime, we thought we should get her checked out by a vet. We’re taking her to be spayed next week.

While sitting in the waiting room at the vet’s office, Joe picked up a small neighborhood newspaper (the name of which he could not recall) and came across an article from which he tore out the following excerpt:

“Hooking-up and having friends with ‘benefits’ is very common among students in schools and colleges throughout America.

In earlier times, affluent Americans had a place on their property called a ‘garconaire’ where young boys learned about sex. We ought to have it today for everyone…”

He found that quite amusing and brought the scrap home to me, suggesting I do a little research into the whole garconaire thing. Not having the complete article in front of me, I’m not sure if it was part of an editorial of some kind or what. The author went on to reminisce about the era of Doris Day and John Wayne, lamenting the libertinism of our own day, which, s/he argued, has lead to a rise in sexually transmitted diseases.

Regardless of the veracity of that argument, I too was intrigued by the concept of the garconaire as a place where boys go to learn about sex. These days that seems to be Capitol Hill.

I decided to google the term and discovered that the term is actually “garçonnière.” Apparently, during the 19th century, separate living quarters akin to small cottages were set up on the grounds of large estates for the family’s teenage sons. They seem to have been more common in the antebellum South, where they were referred to as garçonnières.

I myself was not familiar with this practice, so I probed a bit further. I didn’t find much, but I did manage to locate an entry on Wikipedia’s German mirror site:

Eine Garconniere (von frz. garcon für Junggeselle) ist eine voll ausgestattete und möblierte Kleinwohnung, die zumeist von Junggesellen oder Studenten bewohnt wird. Eine Garconniere dient jedoch auch Verheirateten manchmal als Zufluchtsort für Seitensprünge. Der Begriff ist vor allem in Österreich gebräuchlich für eine Einzimmerwohnung.

Not being a German speaker, I ran the text through altavista’s Babel Fish translator, and this is what came out:

A Garconniere (of fr. garcon for bachelor) is a fully equipped and furnished small flat, which is inhabited mostly by bachelors or students. Sometimes, however, a Garconniere also serves married men as place of refuge for side jumps. The term is particularly common in Austria for one-room dwelling.

Not bad for an online translator. It’s pretty readable, with the exception of the phrase “side jump,” which I found kind of amusing. Clearly a mistranslation, I isolated the word, “Seitensprünge,” and googled that. Here’s what I found:

Upon further investigation, I discovered that Seitensprünge refers to a fling or dalliance, which is kind of what I suspected all along and probably why I shouldn’t have googled it at work. Moreover, if that’s what used to go on in the garçonnières, I wish my parents had built one for me.

Ευμετάβλητος Οχτώβρης

2006-10-01T00:01:00.000-04:00

I initially thought this October looked a bit melancholy, as October is apt to be, but then I concluded that he just looked moody. I didn’t know the word for moody in Greek, however, and when I went to look it up, all I could find was the word for “changeable” (ευμετάβλητος).

I think that’s equally appropriate.

Whose Art?

2006-09-28T12:18:00.000-04:00

While I believe that the looting of art and the illegal trafficking of antiquities are to be condemned, I think hypocrisy is also to be condemned. This week, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts transferred to the Italian Ministry of Culture thirteen objects from its collection that the Italian government determined to have been looted and sold illegally to the MFA. A similar transfer occurred in February of this year when New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art returned twenty objects, including the 2500-year old Euphronios krater, to Italy.

Naturally, the objects were not returned because it was determined in principle to be wrong for an American museum to possess antiquities from Europe. The issue was that the lawful provenance of the objects themselves could not be demonstrated. The Italian government argued that they had been looted and were subsequently sold to the MFA by dealers who had themselves acquired the objects using sketchy means.

However, a case can be made that many of the world’s antiquities residing in museums were, at some point in their history, removed illegally from their place of origin. Certainly this is true of the Parthenon Marbles (aka the Elgin Marbles) and many other antiquities from Greece that were unlawfully taken from Greece during the era of Ottoman rule and earlier.

For example, it should be noted that six of the thirteen objects returned to Italy this week were originally produced in Athens during the fifth century BCE. I doubt very much that the Italian government can prove that these six objects were lawfully removed from Greece in the first place. It cannot possibly be demonstrated that they were legitimately purchased from the Greek state (since the Greek state did not exist prior to the first quarter of the 19th century) or from the artist or the original Greek owner (since no bill of sale exists).

While it is possible that they were transferred to Italy by means of legitimate trade at some point during their long history, there is no documentation demonstrating this to be the case. What is perhaps more likely is that these six objects were looted from Greece before they were looted from Italy and later sold on the black market. In that case, shouldn’t they be returned to Greece, rather than Italy?

Shown above is one of the thirteen returned objects: a two-handled jar (pelike) depicting Phineus with the sons of Boreas (Ceramic, Red Figure, Greek, Classical Period, ca. 450 BCE, the Nausicaa Painter, Place of Manufacture: Athens, Attica, Greece).

A Piano Should Fall on His Head

2006-09-27T12:45:00.000-04:00

I’m sorry, but Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley’s recent attempt to appear relevant to the next generation of young Catholics is just too lame. He’s created a blog to record his recent trip to Rome, and the entries are peppered with cutesy little anecdotes, photos, and lots of “LOL’s”. In a recent entry he writes: “I also think it’s amusing in a way because I feel like I’m on some reality television show on MTV…lol.” Gag. What would that MTV reality show be called, I wonder? “Newlyweds: Sean and Mitt”? “Womb Raiders”? “Pimp My Altar”?

I know I’m not alone when I say that it makes me want to vomit when the bastions of backwardness try to show how hip and cool they are with meaningless gestures and nods to pop culture. Perhaps it’s just me, but spreading religious bigotry and marginalizing queers and women just ain’t cool.

Of course, there are plenty of gullible young Catholics who think otherwise, as demonstrated by this comment from a student at Boston College High School:

“Wow those pictures are awesome! Cardinal Sean, you rock. Honestly, you’re the coolest cardinal in the whole church.”

I bet you wouldn’t think that if you were gay, dude. Or maybe you are and just haven’t realized it yet.

As is customary for a blog, his contains a link to his profile, which brings you to a brief bio and a list of his turn-ons, which include self-mortification, the rosary, incense, and sandals. His turn-offs include women and gays. Just kidding (though I’m sure I’m not far off the mark).

And what is with the accent mark in Seán?? It seems a tad bit gay to me.

Because O’Malley was in Rome to attend the Padre Pio Masses, his blog contains many photos of Padre Pio-related events and locations. Below is one of the photos he took at a Padre Pio shrine in Rome with the caption: “A beautiful marble sculpture of Jesus and Padre Pio. It was created from a single block of marble.” Notice the position of the padre’s hand on Jesus’ groin. You cannot tell me that the sculptor that produced this wasn’t gay:

Joking aside, let’s not forget what O’Malley stands for and the kind of fanatical, hate-filled rhetoric that he’s spread from his Boston pulpit in recent years:

“The recent ruling of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court which radically redefines marriage is a national tragedy” (in a statement that was to be read at all Masses celebrated in Massachusetts’ four dioceses during the weekend of Nov. 29-30, 2003).

“The concerted campaign of movies and TV to reshape the public opinion into accepting same sex marriages has been a great disservice to the American people… Any redefinition of marriage must be seen as an attack on the common good” (Oct. 2, 2003).

“Despite the experience of all human cultures and the empirical data of sociological studies, the court ignores the fact that the stable, permanent relationship of a husband and wife is the optimal basis for child rearing. The court’s decision will harm our children, who are entitled to be able to count on their parents’ marriages as the secure foundation of their family lives” (Feb. 7, 2004).

“Should the Supreme Judicial Court’s decision to redefine marriage as any voluntary union of persons become the law of the land, it would have an enormously negative impact on our society…

We are further concerned with proposals to give same-sex couples identical benefits and protections to those given to husbands and wives that pose a grave threat to religious liberty and the freedom of conscience. Whether the name used is same-sex marriage or civil unions, an equal treatment requirement in the constitution may be used to coerce private and public entities to adopt practices that would violate their values and understanding of the family and social justice” (March 10, 2004).

“An expansion of the definition of marriage will not benefit families but rather further erode the unique and important role that marriage plays in contributing to society. Much is at stake as we consider this matter, may God grant us the wisdom to do what is right” (Sep. 21, 2005).

Don’t Miss It

2006-09-27T11:06:00.000-04:00

Ambassador Afif Safieh
head of the PLO Mission to the United States

The Cathedral Church of St. Paul
138 Tremont Street, Boston

Wednesday, September 27 at 6:30pm.

Afif Emile Safieh was appointed head of the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization) mission to the U.S. following 15 years as the Palestinian representative to the United Kingdom and the Vatican. Born in Jerusalem in 1950, he later studied at Jerusalem’s College Des Freres. In 1972 he obtained his degree in political science and international relations from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium. Between 1976 and 1978, he was deputy director of the PLO Observer Mission to the United Nations in Geneva. Later he became a staff member in President Arafat’s office in Beirut, where he was in charge of European affairs and U.N. institutions.

Between 1981 and 1985, he was a researcher at the Center for European Studies in the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, after which he was a visiting scholar at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard University until 1987. From 1987 until 1990, Safieh was the PLO representative to the Netherlands during which time he was also involved in the November-December 1988 negotiations in Stockholm that led to the official and direct American-Palestinian dialogue. From September 1990 to 2005, he was the Palestinian General Delegate to the United Kingdom.

Göz Lokumu

2006-09-26T18:02:00.000-04:00

Regular visitors to Aman Yala will know that many of my entries focus on art and music. I write about a genre of Greek music known as Rembetika and also works of art, some well know and others lesser known, that strike me as homoerotic or simply celebrate the beauty of the male form.

The point of these posts is not to mimic an encyclopedia entry. I often provide some basic background information usually in the form of historical context or biographical information about the artist. However, that information is secondary, and those who wanting a more thorough or academic treatment should probably look elsewhere, perhaps Wikipedia.

The purpose of these posts is simply to share my subjective response to the work, my observations and feelings when I see or hear the work in question. Naturally, a different person might respond differently. S/he might make different observations, might think and feel something different than I do. For example, a man might look at the Mona Lisa and be reminded of his wife, or mother, or co-worker. Such is the evocative power of art. Moreover, those who are not interested in my observations are under no obligation to read further.

Now that I’ve said that, I’ll turn to September’s Göz Lokumu. As you might recall from a previous post, I recently visited the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. I was frankly blown away by their collection and I took many photographs (don’t worry, it’s allowed). I suspect that some of the works I photographed will show up in future Göz Lokumu posts.

The museum’s central barrel vault features an impression sculpture collection with a few by sculptor Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) thrown in. One of them, The Age of Bronze (1877), is shown above. His John the Baptist (1878) can be seen in the background.

If you like lean, muscular builds, then you’ll like The Age of Bronze. I stood looking up at the fig-leaf clad figure for several minutes, my gaze lingering over his abdomen and then drawn upwards past his navel, to his chest, into his armpit, and then over to the rapturous look on his handsome face.

Is he waking up? Is he bathing? It’s not clear. What I see, however, is pleasure. I see none of the agony suggested by the work’s earlier title, The Vanquished. I do not see the dejection observed by the anonymous critic writing for L’Etoile Belge (January 29, 1877), which caused him to write that “it seems as if the artist wanted to represent a man on the point of committing suicide.”

For The Age of Bronze, Rodin chose a twenty-two year old Belgian soldier, Auguste Neyt (shown left). When the sculpture was first displayed in Brussels, critics were suspicious of its incredible realism and accused Rodin of making a cast from a live model, a charge that caused him no small amount of anguish. Rodin vigorously defended himself against the rumors, which followed him to Paris. He made sure that his next sculpture was larger than lifesize.