Month: May 2006

A reader responds to the email from a soldier in Iraq:

I would ask your erstwhile military reader that if a car bomb in Detroit today killed five policemen, as happened today in Mosul; if the president was forced to declare a state of emergency in Dallas because 140 people were kidnapped and killed this month, as was the case in Basra; if a priest was gunned down in Washington D.C., as was the case today in Baghdad where a Shiite muazzin was killed; if the major of a Westminster, Md., was killed by a bomb hidden in his air conditioner, as was the case in a city 60 miles north of Baghdad today; if jittery police forces fired upon and killed two women, one of them pregnant, north of the capital – if all of these related events happened in the United States this day, May 31 – a day after another 54 were killed by a car bomb in Washington – do you think the news media would, or should, report that despite the violence, all was well in most of America?

"I think it’s largely true that the GOP is picking up the gay marriage card as a cynical ploy during an election cycle. If you think gay marriage is the threat to Western Civilization many Republicans claim, why wait to talk about it at election time? If gay marriage isn’t a big enough deal to actually do something about it before election season rolls around, why campaign against it at all?" – Jonah Goldberg, stating the obvious.

One small point about the charade next week. We have had equality in civil marriage for a while now in Massachusetts. It’s the only state that allows it; and no other state has been forced to recognize such marriages. Long-standing constitutional and legal precedent, as well as the 1996 "Defense of Marriage Act", prevent that. In contrast, seventeen states have passed amendments to their own constitutions, preventing gay couples from having any legal rights at all. Five more have such amendments on the ballots this fall. By definition, no state court can affect those constitutions. Maybe at some distant point in the future the Supreme Court will rule on this. But the idea that SCOTUS, with Roberts and Alito on high alert, is going to pull a Roe vs Wade on marriage for gay couples is paranoia verging on fantasy.

So what exactly is wrong with the process as it has played out? In a diverse country, states get to decide their own marriage policies, as has always been the case in the U.S. The FMA or MPA is essentially saying: this process is irrelevant. Why? Why should there be a federal imposition of a single rule on a question which provokes genuine disagreement? On an issue where public opinion is in flux, and where the next generation seems to have a very different view than seniors, it is prudent and conservative to let states take the lead. Besides, no one believes the FMA stands a chance of passing. So why take valuable time to debate something federally that has already been debated and dealt with by the states? We know the answer: it’s a naked political attempt to appeal to some voters by whipping up fear and prejudice against others. It’s despicable – and a sign of how degenerate American conservatism now is.

A military reader chastises me:

I saw your statement about how one reader can longer read your blog because it is too depressing. I agree that you are not in denial and believe that you’re a fantastic writer. But as I could tolerate your views on Iraq when I was in the U.S., now that I am here, I too find your blog difficult to read. You are co-dependent with the vast majority of journalists who hang around the Green Zone and eventually try to figure this country out by riding in a convoy or going from camp to camp. Just like any experience, you must work to achieve full understanding and the stories you parse together as indicative of what is going on in Iraq is just flat out wrong.

That you have missed the true story here in Iraq and don’t realize it is perfectly understandable to me. I was blissfully ignorant while back in the US a few months back, gorging on the Green Zone press menu of car bombs and massacres. Of course these are news-worthy stories, but do little to show how the overall war effort is going here. Al Anbar has changed dramatically just since I have been here and not for the worse, but just different. I wish I could recount to you how things have changed, but for operations security reasons, I can’t. But, I shouldn’t have to. There is enough information about what is going on here that I think you should be able to look at all of the sensational stories that play so well in New York, but also do a little bit of digging and find the true story.

I have tried hard to inform you about Afghanistan, but you don’t seem to get that struggle either. I even told you prior to this spring that the Taliban regularly stir things up this time each year by sending groups of 100 down from the mountains to fight near Kandahar. I also told you that these fighters die by the score and are finished by July if the past yearly pattern is any indication.  Each year, the press jumps on the story and uses "resurgent Taliban" to describe the rag-tag forces that cross the border from Pakistan not knowing most will be dead in a few months.  Again, go back and read stories from 2004 when everyone predicted the Taliban were back until they were all dead by July.  Of course they will be back next spring in limited numbers to attack poor farmers around Tarin Kowt and you will all get depressed again because you think everything is lost.

All I can say is that I do my best to figure out what’s actually going on. Maybe there’s a reality out there that no journalist has understood or uncovered – but the fact that they cannot find out without a real risk of being murdered is surely testimony to something awry. Readers know I have sought out slivers of hope wherever I can find them; and still desperately want success in Iraq. History will eventually sort it all out. All I can say is that I’m doing my best with a modem a few thousand miles away. And more journalists have been killed in the line of duty in this war, including an old friend, than were killed in Vietnam or World War II. If the good news is out there, many have died trying to discover it. 

A reader writes:

When naughty-word filters were first put into use, they were not particularly sophisticated and as a result I found myself most cruelly treated.  My last name is "Dick", and for a few months couldn’t send any email at all.  Still my wife’s email client marks almost every email with little chili peppers to indicate spicy language when clearly there is none.
I’ve even been refused logins on newspaper sites from time to time based on my name.
Apropos of nothing other than the stmvirgin.com story.
Regards,
Matt Dick

And, yes, he’s not making it up. His name was in the email address.

A reader writes to the Seattle Times:

A letter published May 29 ["The domestic bond is strengthened by traditional beliefs," Northwest Voices], urging passage of a constitutional amendment against gay marriage, was not the work of the woman who signed it, Elisa Baggenstos, of Renton. It actually emanated from Focus on the Family, a far-right-wing political organization purporting to espouse "Christian values" in America.

Baggenstos assembled "her" letter from a form that she accessed over the Internet. Then she changed a few words and sent it to The Seattle Times. It is an example of "astroturf," the faking of grass-roots political sentiment by special-interest groups across the political spectrum.

In recent years, newspapers have been deluged with this sort of fakery and propaganda. "We’ve made it easy for you to compose a letter advocating for the Marriage Protection Amendment ‚Äî by pulling together some talking points you can assemble into a completed whole," says the Focus on the Family Web site. "Just use the tool below to select one paragraph from each of four sections ‚Äî be sure to select the one that reflects your own views. No matter which paragraphs you select, the result will be a letter of fewer than 200 words."

It is especially ironic that so-called "conservative Christians" who spend so much of their time parading their devotion to eternal truth would engage in willful deception. It would seem that, in their world, the Commandment against bearing false witness was intended to apply to everyone but themselves.

It wasn’t your letter, Ms. Baggenstos. Why did you tell us it was?

— Charles Pluckhahn, Seattle

Just keep flushing these hysterical phonies out.

It was a little trippy last night at the 92d Street Y. Sitting with an old friend, Dan Savage, and a seventies icon, Erica Jong, talking about sex in front of a few hundred Upper East Side denizens is not something you do every day. I said the f-word first, I’m happy to say, and after that, it was all downhill. For me the interesting point came when Dan and I agreed that moderate hypocrisy – especially in marriages – is often the best policy. Momogamy is very hard for men, straight or gay, and if one partner falters occasionally (and I don’t mean regularly), sometimes discretion is perfectly acceptable. You could see Jong bridle at the thought of such dishonesty. But I think the post-seventies generation – those of us who grew up while our parents were having a sexual revolution – both appreciate the gains for sexual and emotional freedom, while being a little more aware of their potential hazards. An acceptance of mild hypocrisy as essential social and marital glue is not a revolutionary statement. It’s a post-revolutionary one. As is, I’d say, my generation as a whole.

It’s a match made in heaven. There is, however, a serious point here. America’s long experience of religion as essentially suspicious of government power is an anomaly in the Western world. For much of European history, religion and government have always been interwoven. And as European governments have grown, European faith has withered. As a Catholic growing up in a country where the state church was Protestant, and where I attended Anglican services and listened to the Book of Common Prayer as an integral part of receiving a government-financed education, I saw this first hand. And, as an immigrant, I found America’s religious life a contrasting marvel. In America, faith seemed unconstrained by the compromises of government power and enmeshment, more alive because it was less enfeebled by the temptations of Caesar. 

So much of that is now being lost, almost casually. We fight over faith because we disagree over politics. And one response has been to construct a religious leftism that also appeals to one political party – compounding the problem. The result is not simply the corruption of religion, but the inevitable expansion of government. If good is to be done, and government can do it, why limit the government at all? And so we drift from the wisdom of the founders, and risk losing something uniquely, quintessentially American. It’s called limited government, and the individual freedom that has made this country such a refuge for those who look beyond this earth for meaning and beyond their government for salvation. It is becoming less of a refuge for those types; and more of a battlefield of phony certainties and expanding government. I wish I knew how to resist this better, other than pointing it out. But I’m afraid to say I don’t.

A priest writes:

Your link to the Guardian article on spam blockers not allowing the word "erection" through caused me to laugh. My parish is the Church of St. Mary the Virgin, in Manhattan. Our Web address used to be stmvirgin.org, but because we used the word "virgin," many spam blockers would not allow our messages to go through. So we have changed to stmvnyc.org, and now we have no problems.  Apparently Our Lady through her intercessions was not able to fix this problem related to the word "Virgin," even though we were referring to her!

Call it the web’s immaculate misconception.

"It’s difficult to have gay partnerships fully accepted by the Church, a Church in which evangelicals are a valued part, if they are so strongly opposed to it. There has to be a conversion to a new way to see that gay partnerships are not contrary to biblical truth. They are congruous with the deepest biblical truths, about faithfulness and stability," – the Rt Rev Richard Harries, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford, England, yesterday.

I forgot to mention in my reference yesterday to the new "Left Behind" Christianist video game that the Anti-Christ has an identity. (I was joking about the Democratic nominee.) In the novels, which have sold over 65 million copies in the last ten years in America, the Anti-Christ is one Nicolae Carpathia, a Romanian who, after the Rapture, becomes head of the United Nations. An important detail:

Marilena’s husband, Sorin, and his gay lover, Baduna Marius, provide genetic material to facilitate Nicolae’s conception.

So gay people literally spawn Satan. No wonder Christianists want us eventually wiped off the face of the earth.