Month: August 2013

by Brendan James

Laura Williams welcomes more attention for a lesser-known hero of the Civil Rights Movement:

He helped organize and participated in the first freedom ride, 1947’s “Journey of Reconciliation” (for which he and several other participants were jailed and put in a chain gang). In the 1950s, he advised, strategized, and raised money behind the scenes for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, helping to direct King’s rise to national prominence. He’s also credited with honing the King’s nonviolent strategy. Later, Rustin was the mastermind of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (now simply known as the March on Washington), organizing it in just two months.

But Rustin was kept in the shadows by the homophobia of both his enemies (segregationist Strom Thurmond used Rustin’s sexuality to denigrate the movement) and his allies.

In November, Rustin will be posthumously honored with the Medal of Freedom. It comes after decades of marginalization, in no small part due to his homosexuality. In a profile worth reading in full, Steven Thrasher interviews Rustin’s longtime partner, Walter Naegle:

In his final years, by the time he was sharing his life with Naegle, Rustin was marrying the fight for racial civil rights with the emerging gay rights movement. He challenged the terrain of contemporary prejudice in a speech in which he said, “The new ‘niggers’ are gays.” Rustin, being so much older than Naegle, wanted to protect him legally for inheritance purposes. But “gay marriage” was almost unheard of, and any kind of legal status like domestic partnerships for legal couples was many years away. So Rustin, ever the creative problem solver when it came to outwitting discrimination, adopted Naegle as his son. …

In 1986, just a year before he died, Rustin gave a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in which he exhorted gay people to “recognize that we cannot fight for the rights of gays unless we are ready to fight for a new mood in the United States, unless we are ready to fight for a radicalization of this society.”

Previous Dish on Rustin here, here and here.

by Chris Bodenner

A reader writes:

Your thread on churches transformed into alternative spaces reminds me of a beautiful building in my hometown, Colorado Springs (arguably the most religious city in America). It was the original home of Grace and St Stephen’s Episcopal Church, which quickly outgrew the space and sold the building. After a couple permutations, it became a nightclub called Syn, and then another called Eden (a particularly sleazy 18+ club, if my high school memories are to be believed). Sometime in the mid 2000s, an ultra-conservative faction of the very same Grace and St. Stephen’s, lead by this guy, broke with the Colorado Episcopal Diocese and formed a new church, St George’s Anglican. After briefly (and dramatically) occupying the newer Grace and St. Stephen’s building and a few other spaces, they bought the original building and reconsecrated it. Amazing how cyclical these things can be.

Another points to the post that started the thread:

Andrew may not have frequented it, since he lived in D.C. at the time, but before this former church in NYC was a gathering of shops, it was a nightclub – Limelight – where I saw things at all hours of the morning that I probably shouldn’t discuss on my work email.

Another sends the above screenshot:

No post about repurposed churches would be complete without a mention of the “Church of Skatan,” a skate shop in the old Second Baptist Church (“Founded Sept 1, 1910; Erected 1925; H. B. Thomas Pastor”) in the heart of downtown Santa Barbara.

Many more entries from readers:

The Netherlands has many deconsecrated churches which have been put to new uses, especially as venues for the arts. Here’s one in Maastricht converted into a bookstore.

Another:

The grand-daddy of deconsecrated churches has to be Mare Nostrum (Our Mother): In a chapel on the campus of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), this is the Barcelona Supercomputer Centre, one of the 10 largest non-military supercomputers in the world. Google for pictures.

Another reader:

Chris posted about wanting to find a church that had been converted to a film house. We’ve had one in Houston since 1998. It is currently 14 Pews, which bills itself as a microcinema, and it was previously operated by the Aurora Picture Show.

Another movie theater:

I give you the Bijou Art Cinema in Eugene, Oregon. It is definitely my favorite theater in town. You should come check it out sometime!

Well I am currently visiting family out in Portland, so I just might. Another:

I’ve got a former church that is now an old fashioned movie theater: Wilton Town Hall Theatre, in Wilton, New Hampshire. Facebook page here. It has been at its present location for over 30 years, and trust me, this has it all: two movie theaters, one called the screening room, which is like your own private home theater that seats about 40; the second theater is about four times as large and still has the original choir balcony in back.  For more than 20 years they had seating in “the upper balcony” (choir loft) for patrons of the theater. The cost of a ticket is five bucks anytime, and the concession stand has fresh-popped popcorn, drinks and candy, which are all priced very reasonably.

I’m please to add my find. This is a nifty thread.

Many more readers add to the discussion thread:

I can relate to the readers gawked at by Chinese tourists and gawked at as tourists. When I was traveling in Xian, I was stared at and pulled aside for photos by domestic Chinese tourists quite frequently for being tall and white. However, the most disconcerting manifestation of Chinese curiosity was men peering around me at a urinal. Not in a sexual way, but they were obviously just curious if my genitalia was the same. Perhaps a diet of Western pornography had given them a false impression of what normal was in the US.

Another reader:

When traveling, one of my favorite ways to learn about a new culture is to visit a zoo on a weekend, where you can observe families. How they interact, and how they treat animals, can be revealing.  In the developing world, these visits can be thoroughly depressing – a reminder of a time when American zoos kept animals in small cages with no enrichment.  But even at such places, it can be heartening to see the joy on children’s faces when they see the animals.

Then there are the Chinese.  A few years ago, I visited the zoo in Hong Kong.  The facilities were quite modern and the park was extremely well kept. However, the design of the animal exhibits departed from the standard in other First World zoos. Instead of trying to find ways to bring the animals closer, great effort was taken to keep the animals away from people. Animal enclosures were kept several feet back from the public and the cages had an unusually tight mesh. When you watched the people, you knew why. It seemed like the favorite pastime of the Hong Kong Chinese visiting the zoo involved throwing rocks and  jeering at the animals. It was appalling.

Another:

I just have to put in a few words on this topic, which I always find more amusing than vexing.  I have three stories.

First, my husband and I traveled to Hong Kong in 1997.  We took a flight from Hong Kong to Bangkok and there were many Chinese passengers.  We boarded the plane by walking across the tarmac and climbing the stairs to the plane.  As we exited the building, all the Chinese passengers just started pushing and shoving to get on the plane first.  I found it baffling, because we had assigned seats, the plane wouldn’t take off until everyone had boarded, and this was when people still checked their luggage, so finding overhead compartment space was not an issue.  But everyone (but us, and the other non-Chinese passengers) did it, and we were probably last on the plane.

Then as the plane got ready to land, the flight attendants instructed, as they always do, that the passengers stay seated with their seat belts fastened until the plane was at the gate and the captain had turned off the seat belt sign.  They announced this in multiple languages, including, presumably, Chinese.  The second the wheels hit the runway, the Chinese passengers all stood up and started opening the overhead bins, even though we were still traveling quite quickly down the runway.  The flight attendants were shouting at the passengers to sit down, but they ignored them, and just crowded the doorway, and pushed and shoved their way off the plane.

Next story is not about Chinese tourists, but is along the same lines.  I was going through infertility treatments, and had to have a blood test on New Year’s Day, which I believe also happened to be a Sunday.  One of the few labs open in the city on that day was in Chinatown.  I got on the elevator with a crowd of people, and when the door opened, I was shoved right off.  I picked up the clipboard with the paperwork I had to fill out, and sat down in a chair to complete it.  I had a book with me, as I always do, and put the book on the arm of the chair, and my pocketbook at my feet.  I filled out the paperwork, and stood to hand it to the woman behind the reception desk, which could not have been more than two steps away.  I left my bag on the floor in front of the chair, and my book on the arm of the chair, and expected to sit back down.  When I turned back to the seat I had vacated for 5 seconds, there was someone sitting in it.  I know that if you move your feet, you lose your seat, but in my regular blood lab, if you stood up from your seat for a moment, and left your things on the seat, it was understood that your seat is saved for you.  Not there.

My last story is more recent.  For some reason, the very narrow subway platform at my regular stop was very very crowded.  There must have been some problem with the trains.  I was walking with the crowd down the platform when I felt two hands flat on my back pushing me faster, which made me push the person in front of me.  Considering how narrow the platform was, and how close I was to the edge, I found this particularly unpleasant.  I didn’t want to fall on the tracks.  I turned to see who was pushing me, and it was an older Chinese woman.  I gave her a look, and she rolled her eyes and kept pushing.  I think she thought she was helping.

I don’t think Chinese people are inherently rude.  I think Chinese culture just defines rudeness differently than Western culture does.

Another:

A family member of mine traveled alone on a tour of China a few years back.  On more than one occasion, she was in a group that included tourists from Hong Kong.  Now, I know that some consider people from Hong Kong different than those from mainland Chinese, but bad manners must be something they have in common. At almost every tourist stop, the Hong Kong tourists would push themselves to the front of every group, jostling others out of their way so they could get a better view.  One elderly woman hit my family member with her cane, hard, more than once.  My family member turned around and, with a face full of rage, said, “Stop hitting me!”  The woman’s response?  Hit her again!

The tour guide stepped in and prevented this woman from winding up on the ground with a bloody nose. Her children and grandchildren did nothing to intervene. As the tour guide explained, Chinese people do not travel well, and they just think it’s normal to fight for everything.

Another observation from a guide:

When we were touring China, we noticed many tourists taking photos in public places where “No Photo” signs were posted. When we asked our guide about this, he said that here, these signs were more like “suggestions.” Then after a pause he said: “In China, traffic laws are also more like suggestions.”

Another reader adds to the previous post on the Chinese obsession with blond hair:

These things don’t just happen in Asia. Years ago my husband and I were visiting France with our two-year-old son. We were relaxing in the vast courtyard at the Palace of Versailles when an Asian woman came up to us, spoke something to me in a language I didn’t understand, and proceeded to pick up my young son and run away with him. Frantic, I chased after her. After wondering through crowds of people, I emerged to find my son being held in the center of a very large group portrait with Versailles in the background. I didn’t grab my camera before I bolted to go chasing after them, so I don’t have a picture to commemorate the event. Several of the Asian tourists took pictures, and somewhere on the other side of the world my son is a star, along with the Palace of Versailles, in someone’s photo album.

Years later while visiting the Great Wall of China, Chinese women twice stood next to me while their friends took their pictures. We were traveling with a family that had a very blond little boy. He had so many pictures taken of him on the trip, he took to crying whenever someone brought a camera near him.

What a funny world.

by Brendan James

Tony Capaccio recalls the intense state surveillance brought down on MLK for his activism, his radicalism, and his socialism:

Initially approved in October 1963 by then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy, the FBI’s wiretap and hidden-microphone campaign against King lasted until his assassination in April 1968. It was initially justified to probe King’s suspected, unproven links to the Communist Party, morphing into a crusade to “neutralize” and discredit the civil rights leader. … At a time when the nation is absorbing revelations of telephone and e-mail surveillance by the National Security Agency, the FBI’s spying on King — which had no court authorization or oversight — stands as an example of domestic security gone to excess.

David Corn observes that King’s famous “Dream” speech (above) sent J. Edgar Hoover into a new stage of panic:

For years, Hoover had been worried—or obsessed—by King, viewing him as a profound threat to national security.  … The August 1963 march, which captured the imagination of many Americans, further unhinged Hoover and his senior aides.

The day after the speech, William Sullivan, a top Hoover aide, noted in a memo, “In the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech… We must mark him now, if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this Nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security.” Six weeks later, pressured by Hoover, Bobby Kennedy authorized full electronic surveillance of King. FBI agents placed bugs in King’s hotel rooms; they tapped his phones; they bugged his private apartment in Atlanta.

Let’s not forget the anonymous letter the Bureau anonymously sent to King in November 1964, accompanied by audio tapes of his extramarital escapades. The letter implied that King should commit suicide:

King you are done.

The American public, the church organizations that have been helping — Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done. The American public, the church organizations that have been helping — Protestant, Catholic and Jews will know you for what you are — an evil, abnormal beast. So will others who have backed you. You are done.

King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have just 34 days in which to do it (this exact number has been selected for a specific reason, it has definite practical significance). You are done. There is but one way out for you. You better take it before your filthy, abnormal fraudulent self is bared to the nation.

by Matt Sitman

After his coming out in favor of same-sex marriage drew the theocons’ scorn, Joseph Bottum clarifies his position, arguing that he was “not dissenting from Church doctrine…in any way”:

While wanting to make clear that “there’s no doubt” he accepts that marriage as being between two persons of the opposite sex, Bottum said merely wanted to write the piece about his thinking having come to the position that, in the U.S., “the Church just needs to get out of the civil marriage business, because the culture is just too bizarre to hear” her teaching about marriage.

“In the short-run anyway,” Bottom said, Catholics should tolerate the civil recognition of same-sex unions. “I also think we need to re-evangelize the culture, but, in the short run … I think we have to accept that the facts on the ground is, it’s here, and it’s going to be here for some time.”

“I was always very careful to, any time I said something affirming of same-sex marriage, I was very careful to put in the word ‘civil’, ‘state recognition of’, some kind of qualifying phrase like that.”

Bottum blames Mark Oppenheimer’s NYT piece for the way the essay’s been interpreted:

“Much as I was grateful for the publicity” of the Times article, he said, “I think one of the problems with that was our conservative Catholic friends read the New York Times essay first, and then read the Commonweal piece, and it’s effect was, ‘Catholic deserter comes to our side.’”

“They look at it through the lens of ‘Catholic deserter’, and the first blog posts about it really blocked me into a position.”

Similarly, he said, that the left’s first reaction, “based on the New York Times profile” was “’hooray, hooray, we’ve got a defector’; and then they actually read the essay, and now they’re all out after me.”

I certainly understand Bottum’s frustrations over how conservatives greeted his essay. His basic point, which barely seems to have been grappled with at all, was this: why, in a culture and political order as secularized as ours, should Roman Catholics (and religious conservatives more broadly) insist that our laws correspond with the way churches conceive of the sacrament of marriage? Why should one religion’s particular understanding of marriage dictate our civil laws?

I’m not sure it was taken seriously enough that Bottum wrote his essay primarily as a Christian, as a religious person considering his faith’s waning power over our culture and imaginations. Bottum is asking what kind of culture we’d have to have, what the preconditions must be, for the Christian understanding of marriage to have broad purchase in our society – and therefore be able to garner the kind of consensus necessary to be a part of our legal order. Here’s a key passage from his essay:

The campaign for traditional marriage really isn’t a defense of natural law. It revealed itself, in the end, as a defense of one of the last little remaining bits of Christendom—an entanglement or, at least, an accommodation of church and state. The logic of the Enlightenment took a couple of hundred years to get around to eliminating that particular portion of Christendom, but the deed is done now.

For the traditional, sacramental meaning of marriage to make sense, it must be embedded in a decisively Christian culture – this is what Bottum means by Christendom, or, as he says repeatedly in his essay, an “enchanted” world, a world in which earthly acts are assumed to reflect a deeper spiritual reality.  The Church only looks like a moralizing bully when it insists on having its way legally and politically apart from such a context. Never once does Bottum suggest the Church should change its own definition of marriage; he merely says that in our current context, it makes no sense for the Church to fight this battle by means of the coercive power of the state. It’s like shouting at someone in a language they don’t understand – you gain nothing by growing louder and more exasperated. Instead of pouring money and energy into fighting rear-guard actions on behalf of traditional marriage, he tells Catholics to do the harder, perhaps Quixotic, work of evangelizing and rebuilding a Christian culture that would allow their arguments about marriage actually to be heard and understood. To borrow a phrase, to focus on first things. To do otherwise only distracts an already skeptical age from the core message of Jesus.

I’m an Episcopalian, not a Roman Catholic, and don’t agree with Bottum on the substance of the Church’s teachings on homosexuality and same-sex marriage – I hope, and actually believe, these teachings eventually will change. But at least he’s bringing a message of political sanity to this debate, and trying to create a space, apart from the heat of the culture wars, for considering the deeper theological and spiritual issues raised by gay people, so that, in a pregnant phrase, the Church can “decide where same-sex marriage belongs in a metaphysically rich, spiritually alive moral order.”

Ross Douthat’s response (NYT) to Bottum’s essay adds some important context to all this. It seems to me right on the mark as to why the essay’s been misunderstood, reading it as the product of a “literary Catholic, a poet and critic and essayist with a sideline in history and philosophy,” rather than a culture warrior:

[T]he more aesthetically and culturally-minded that Catholic, the more ridiculously frustrating it seems that their faith of all faiths (the faith of Italy! of France!) should be cast as the enemy of bodily pleasure — that their church, with its wild diversity of weirdo, “dappled” saints, should be seen as a purely conformist and repressive enterprise — and that the religion of Wilde and Waugh and Manley Hopkins and so many others would be dismissed as simply and straightforwardly homophobic.

That’s how I read Bottum’s essay, at least in part: As a literary Catholic’s attempt to wrench the true complexity of his faith back out of the complexity-destroying context of contemporary political debates. He’s writing as someone who loves his church, and wants everyone else to love it as he does — and I don’t blame him for imagining that perhaps, just perhaps, ceasing to offer public resistance on the specific question of gay marriage would liberate the Church from some the caricatures that the culture war has imposed upon it, and enable the world to see its richness with fresh eyes.

The entire post is worth reading in-full, and I think Douthat goes a long way toward explaining why Bottum approaches this issue the way he does and why he’s faced such difficulties in finding sympathetic readers.