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My day begins with a cup of coffee as I watch some morning news, and then I move on to getting my blog together so I will have much of it done before noon when I go out into the world.
While working at my drawing table I have cable news droning in the background. Since there is no plot to follow, I can draw and listen without having to pay attention to what’s on the screen. This doesn’t work with plotted shows that would call for multiple rewinds to see what I missed. Definitely does not work with horror films where a lot of mumbling and silence is followed by a loud musical blare.
With Cable news, it’s just narrative with no plot, and sometimes it gets so repetitive that I will switch to C-SPAN and C-SPAN2 where during votes there is blessed silence with the promise of pending action and speeches, some of which are almost satire in their representation of reality.
In the effort to cover a 24hour news day, it seems at times that the stations are looking for anything to fill the time.
Last week, when the missing women turned up dead and her fiance’ missing, the cable stations began their non-stop coverage of the story with interviews, and anyone with an opinion on it seemed to get the opportunity to have their say. It was the lead story, the constant go-back-to story.
By the end of the week these same stations and talking heads lamented how Americans had become obsessed with the story they had been throwing at us. It was the broadcast equivalent of those annoying “News” articles that pop up on Facebook newsfeed where we are told all of America is obsessed with someone, something, or some event which makes me have to do a Google search to see what I am so concerned about.
And, just to be clear, I do not land on one channel and stay there, nor do I turn only to those that agree with me. I surf the channels and have often gone to the questionable channels like OAN just to hear from them what a certain segment of the population believes already or will soon.
I have found that each hour of news has at least 5 guests on, usually many more, to cover various items and that does not include panel discussions. I feel safe in saying with an extremely low speculation that at least on each station there are 120 people in that 24 hour time period. I know my numbers are low, but I wanted to use an easy one.
News can be boring if it just covers important things. That’s why the local morning news usually begins with a house fire that is of no consequence except to those involved, car crashes that, again, really are not news but the video is great, and to get to the weather they skim over important stories that affect all of us with few details that would give substance to the report.
I, like most thinking Americans, was glad when Joe Biden won because something substantial could now be done for the benefit of citizens and some of the circus acts would no longer be in the center ring. There was much that had to be cleaned up after four years of the previous person who sub-let the White House, and much we hoped would be corrected.
However, we have to be realistic.
Going back to that modest number of show guests, the pattern is that each comes on with their issue and each demands that Biden handle it now, or they condemn him as a failure because, in 8 months, he has not dealt with every concern (120 x number of cable news channels) immediately.
Everything is a crisis until it isn’t, and when it is revealed that something had been dealt with and solved, rather than acknowledge that, they will ask why he did not already handle something else.
Leaving Afghanistan was dealt with as a huge failure until the last plane left and things were rough but accomplished. The sudden surge at the border was the end of Biden until he handled it, but even then, although his approach on this had addressed the concerns of both friend and foe, the media just went running to find some other border problem they could predict would be Bidens demise.
They demanded the Haitian refugees be moved and then found fault that they were.
When mounted border patrol agents on horseback were rounding up Haitian refugees and using their reins as whips, the moment the word got out and the videos were seen, people were demanding something that had ended before anyone knew about it should be handled by Biden, which he had, but they did not wait to learn that, but spent time in useless discussion of hypotheticals about what should be done, as it was being done.
According to too many, all the problems that existed on January 20, 2021, should have been fixed by January 21. 2021 and not having happened Biden’s effectiveness came into question.
My mother would often refer to the “Sha-doos”, those things everyone else tells someone they should do while competing in who can make the most demands and whose time limit is the shortest.
Any time anything has been happening nationally or internationally, the media speculates if Biden will handle it correctly, will he do it now, and will this be what brings his presidency down.
They are like magpies who, after having endured starvation, gorge themselves when presented with food and kill themselves by continuing to eat as much as they can as fast as they can even when they are full.
I have seen shows on all outlets that are basically a string of people voicing their own issue while ignoring those of others each demanding that theirs be the priority, like birds in the nest when the mother shows up with a worm, keeping with a bird analogy.
And then they speculate why the population is confused.
The country would be less divided if those who are supposed to be presenting the news do that without speculating on things yet, or never to happen and how bad that is for America.
Meanwhile we are trying to deal with the reality that exists.
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As a kid, I wanted to be a priest, not just your run of the mill parish priest, but something with a little more heft. I was raised Boston/Irish Catholic in the 1950s, went to a Catholic elementary school, and was an altar boy, so the idea was natural.
For high school I entered a Junior Seminary, something in the church that seems to have gone the way of the Latin Mass, that was run by a religious order of priests headquartered in Turin, Italy. Over those years, being as this was not too far after World War II, many of the faculty were not only from Europe, but some had fled first the Nazis and then the Communists as the Iron Curtain fell. These men knew from experience what was wrong with dictatorships, fascist governments, and the ill effects of brainwashing a population to become compliant in their own suppression.
They spoke of their experiences often, and this made studying Twentieth Century live.
I had one teacher who arrived from his assignment in Palestine because the signs showed there was a build up for a war in the area, and a few months later the Israeli/Arab war of 1967 broke out.
We met clerics from around the world who would visit either specifically or as part of a larger visitation trip.
Being assigned to make up the room in which one visitor would be staying, I was in the process of making the bed when in walked Cardinal Raul Silva Henriquez SDB of Chile who, as an Archbishop and then a Cardinal, advocated for social justice and democracy and was a vocal critic of the military dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, driving him crazy.
As Cardinal he gave parcels of land from large estates owned by the Church to the peasants who worked on them, and explained his action simply,
“There are more of the Gospel’s values in socialism than there are in capitalism.”
He issued a statement on behalf of Chile’s bishops denouncing Pinochet’s regime for political persecution and economic policies that burdened the poor, and calling for the restoration of democracy. He initiated legal assistance for the growing number of political prisoners and helped victims of political persecution find employment.
While ministering to political prisoners he collected the names of more than 3,000 Chileans who were killed in prison or disappeared.
The response from government supporters was to desecrate his parents’ graves and shoot at his house.
When Cardinal Silva died, Pinochet’s widow proclaimed that prayers had been answered. He died at 91, so God works slowly.
Also, at that time, the Archbishop of Boston was Richard Cardinal Cushing, a story in himself, and the strongest advocate of Vatican II, its modernizations, and for social Justice. He is the reason that in Boston Special Ed kids were referred to as Exceptional Children that removed the less complimentary terms at the time and initiated better care and education for these people.
My Parish priest had made our parish one of the first to have mass facing the people in English, and when the old church was found to be in need of extensive repair, found it better to replace it and included in the new structure’s plans the configuration of the sanctuary to reflect all the changes to the liturgy.
So as old fashion as the era might have been, the clerics from Cardinals to parish priests with whom I had been familiar were moving the church forward while also respecting the pope and putting people over politics.
When I see the Catholic Bishops acting more like politicians than spiritual leaders while they put politics over people and Christ, I see an attempt to bring society back to the Middle Ages when the Church was an earthly political power equal to or better than secular powers.
Bishops in the United States seem to be more concerned with aligning themselves with conservative ideology, no matter how misguided, creating Catholic beliefs to do so.
Ignoring their own history of participation in dictatorial governments, not denying any sacraments to any of the worst rulers in the past, supporting rulers in distorting Christian teachings to justify even their most un-Christ-like behavior, and after praising Trump as a gift from God who will defend traditional Christian beliefs when he is not lying, stealing, or playing the field, They want to deny the Eucharist to Joe Biden, a man who lives his faith, because he is able to separate his personal religious beliefs from his civil and secular obligations.
The American bishops are attempting to make the Body and Blood of Christ into a political tool.
When asked about the denial of Communion to pro-choice politicians and if he supports it, Pope Francis called on bishops to be “pastors,” not politicians, pointing out,
“No, I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone, to anyone. I don’t know if anyone in that condition came, but I never, never refused the Eucharist. As a priest, that is. Never. I have never been aware of having a person like the one you describe in front of me, that is true. Simply, the only time I ever had a bit…an interesting thing, was when I went to celebrate Mass in a rest home and we were in the living room, and I said: ‘Raise your hand if you want to receive Communion,” everyone, the old men, the old women, everyone wanted Communion, and when I gave Communion to one woman, she took me by the hand and said to me: “Thank you, Father, thank you: I’m Jewish.” I said: “No, the one that I gave to you is Jewish, too…”
He went on,
“Communion is a gift, a present, the presence of Jesus in his Church and in the community. This is the theology. But the problem is not the theological problem—that is simple—the problem it is the pastoral problem: how do we bishops deal with this principle pastorally. And if we look at the history of the church we will see that every time the bishops have dealt with a problem not as pastors, they have taken a political stance on a political problem. Think of St Bartholomew’s Night: “Oh, heretics, yes. But it’s a serious heresy…let’s cut all their throats….” No: it is a political matter. Let’s think of Joan of Arc, about that vision, let’s think of the witch-hunt…. Let’s think of the Campo de’ Fiori, of Savonarola, of all those people.”
He also recalled the history that the American bishops in their scramble for political standing need to recall,
“if we look at the history of the church, we will see that every time the bishops have not dealt with a problem as pastors they have taken sides politically.”
He gave some examples where religion and the persecution of people for heresy had more to do with supporting the powers that be over religious teachings. Who can forget all the religious upheaval in Europe when many denomination of Christianity that did not bolster the power of the state were declared enemies of it and the bishops went along with the subsequent carnage.
He continued.
“When the church defends a principle in an unpastoral manner, it acts on a political level. And this has always been the case, just look at history. What must the pastor do? Be a pastor. Be a pastor and don’t go around condemning, not condemning… God’s style is closeness, compassion and tenderness. The entire Bible says so. Closeness is already there in Deuteronomy where he says to Israel: “Tell me what people has its gods as close as I am to you?” Closeness, compassion. The Lord has compassion on us as we read in Ezekiel, in Hosea. Tenderness was there already in the beginning. It is enough to look in the Gospels and the things of Jesus. A pastor who does not know how to act with God’s style, is slipping and does many things that are not pastoral.”
And he is right about this when it comes to America’s Catholic bishops. To the pope they are ceasing to be pastors who reach out and pull people to Christ, but are looking for reasons to push them away, and becoming promoters of political viewpoints.
A so-called Catholic cable station has been freely condemning Francis based on politics, and the Catholic bishops who should be loyal to the pope and should be explaining why the claims on the channel are not in accordance with Catholic teachings and are, therefore, the ones in correct have been silent.
The main complaint has been that Pope Francis criticized unrestrained, free market capitalism and the Catholic elite who want both the things of God but more importantly those of Caesar do not like that. These are the ones who support the station.
The thing, though, is that the pope, not being an elected position with a tenure that requires reelection campaigns, is free to speak as the leader of the Church without worrying about the popularity of his words no matter how difficult the theological concept is to grasp or whether it is what people want to hear.
Sadly, many bishops and cardinals in the United States are looking to be the U.S. Version of Cardinal Wolsey by cozying up the politicians and ideologies that will bestow power by association.
“Render to Caesar the things that are Caesars and to God the things that are God’s” has become contrary to the goals of conservative, American, power-seeking bishops.
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“Billy Pilgrim has become unstuck in time.”
Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter House 5
Well. Slap me silly and call me Billy for I, too, have become similarly unstuck it appears.
In my younger years I attended rallies, marched in marches, wrote articles and drew cartoons for various publications, and made sure my cartoon picket signs were clear in their message that Gay people are covered in the Declaration of the Independence and should not be denied the rights acknowledged in the Founding Document.
I was even wiling to face opprobrium and dismissal from employment to get public school students who were Gay openly protected in school district policies
The Declaration of Independence tells the world who we are and what we believe, the Constitution tells us how to live according to what is in it.
We went from being denied full citizenship to where our love for someone is recognized publicly, not a secret to be hidden in a closet and punished if discovered.
Some have grown comfortable with this very short moment in time.
With a conservative Supreme Court, certain conservative states have seen an opportunity to attack the rights off all minorities, including all the letters of the Gay Alphabet, by passing laws that will be challenged all the way to that Supreme Court or by going directly to it to file suit.
Texas, the inspiration for other red states, has already suppressed voting rights, has outlawed a woman’s right to choose while empowering private citizens to spy on each other for financial reward, and is dealing with an anti-Trans students playing school sports law.
The Texas Blitzkrieg against Gay Rights is moving on now that Texas Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton has sued the Biden administration for protecting Gay people in the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.
The lawsuit was filed in a federal court as a quicker way to get it to the Supreme Court and names of EEOC Commissioner Charlotte Burrows and Attorney General Merrick Garland as defendants.
Paxton claims that Biden’s EEOC guidance
“misstates the law, increasing the scope of liability for the State in its capacity as an employer.”
Applying the Declaration of Independence to American life seems to be too expensive for his taste.
And since the Biden guidelines apply to Transgender people, what would any objection be if toilets are not thrown. Paxton claims without evidence that allowing Transgender people to use the restroom appropriate to their gender identity “puts many women and children at risk.”
Back in June 2020 the Supreme Court ruled that sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination is sex discrimination, and the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission used that ruling to clarify the guidelines accordingly and they covered the all-important concern of who can use which restrooms.
The Texas Department of Agriculture has a policy that states,
“TDA has both unisex single-occupancy bathrooms and bathrooms that are designated by sex. It interprets ‘sex’ as referring to biological sex rather than gender identity. If any employee wanted to use the bathrooms designated for the opposite sex, TDA would reject such a request.”
Paxton included it in the case like one would include a settled law or precedent case because it says that sex means biological sex, rather than gender identity, that in the event any employee showed up for work dressed as a member of the opposite sex it would be considered a violation of standards, any employee wanting to use the bathrooms designated for the opposite sex would be denied permission, and ” and any request for preferred pronouns would not be allowed.
Policies are not law especially in areas outside their application.
So, we have had a few good years with rights.
While someone is still protecting those rights, the majority does not notice as they enjoy what some have always had, and some are finally enjoying what had been won for them, there are those who just assume once won, the rights were permanent while others are continuing to make sure we didn’t go back.
In my case, I moved from Massachusetts to California when things were just beginning in one state and were further along in the other. After working to help the Gay Community in California move further along, I ended up in Oklahoma which was by and large what Massachusetts had been long before what little progress had been made when I moved away. I fought old battles in a new place, sometimes merely repeating what had worked elsewhere and had paid off and saw the progress.
When I retired, another story for another day, I returned to Massachusetts where I could enjoy the rights that I had fought for in other places along with many rights not yet able to fit on the agendas of those other places. I was getting to live as I knew those other places would eventually get to, but growing older, it has been nice experiencing the end product.
I know people will not like it if we go back in time and many will be shocked if we do as it was not in their life experiences, but Texas is working very hard to recreate the past by having other states follow its example of taking away people’s rights.
Abortion. Voting. Transgender rights.
It’s not De je vu.
It’s real.
We are unstuck in time.
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As a person grows older, they begin to realize how swiftly time flies and how the distance they assumed must have been between events really wasn’t all that large of a gap.
Whatever messages were sent in the 2016 presidential campaign about what lessons the “Progressives” needed to teach the “Moderates”, “Liberals”, and “Neo-Liberals”, the reality that many kept their eyes on was that Important elections are not the times to have ideological arguments, many demanding purity, about the need to get all or nothing, especially when the choice was not between two evils, but between a woman who for some reason still undefined was considered an evil while the other guy was a known narcissist and unstable individual. Yes, he was a good television talk show guest, but not much of substance beyond that.
The gamble was to give tepid support to the woman or actively take action by voting for her opponent or let fate handle things and do absolutely nothing.
Either way we got three new conservative justices on the Supreme Court, many rights the GLBT Community, immigrants, and other minorities had fought for were lost, the crazies came out of the woodwork, and, because they didn’t get their way, voting rights and women’s rights are being assaulted by all those who got into or were reelected to the positions they have because that misguided hissy fit let them in.
Auditing the 2020 election by one state to find any shred of voter fraud has spread to others, spread by some of the very same people who were voted into office during the election they doubt.
States rewrote voting laws in many states to make sure the people in power stay there.
And then, Texas passes the most restrictive anti-choice law that other states who love that stuff are lining up to get for themselvdes or make one even stricter.
In Texas, they have passed their voter restriction laws and anti-choice laws encouraging citizens to spy on their neighbors for a potential financial reward. They got away with it, so they can now go after other targets, not because it is best for the common good and welfare, but because, well, the exercise of power and forcing your ideology onto everyone is pretty self-esteem building.
Former Texas solicitor general and Federalist Society member Jonathan Mitchell filed an amicus brief representing Texas Right To Life in the case, THOMAS E. DOBBS, M.D., M.P.H., STATE HEALTH OFFICER OF THE MISSISSIPPI DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH, ET AL. v JACKSON WOMEN’S HEALTH ORGANIZATION, filed in June 2021 with the U.S. Supreme Court.
According to the brief,
“Founded in 1973, Texas Right to Life is the largest Texas Christian non-profit organization dedicated to legally, peacefully, and prayerfully protecting the God-given right to life of innocent human beings from fertilization to natural death. Texas Right to Life is opposed to abortion 1. All parties have consented to the filing of this brief. No counsel for a party authored any part of this brief. And no one other than the amicus curiae, its members, or its counsel financed the preparation or submission of this brief. 2 and spearheads the legislative efforts in the Texas State Capitol to protect innocent human life.”
The suit seeks to reverse Roe V Wade and argues that to “control their reproductive lives”, women should just abstain from sexual intercourse,
“One can imagine a scenario in which a woman has chosen to engage in unprotected (or insufficiently protected) sexual intercourse on the assumption that an abortion will be available to her later. But when this court announces the overruling of Roe, that individual can simply change their behavior in response to the court’s decision if she no longer wants to take the risk of an unwanted pregnancy,”
and argues that
“Women can ‘control their reproductive lives’ without access to abortion; they can do so by refraining from sexual intercourse.”
The brief equates same-sex marriage and abortion by labelling both a “judicial concoction” that could be so easily swept away.
After arguing that if the Court reversed Roe v Wade, since it is not in the Constitution and has been historically disfavored by some people who went to the extent of passing laws to enforce their opinion over any number of those who did not share them, interracial marriage, being nothing more than “supposed rights” is, therefore, similarly legally dubious, but could be supported or rescinded by a good weaving through various laws and Constitutional Amendments so it wins by lack of the energy to pursue the complicated trail, the brief goes on to say,
“The news is not as good for those who hope to preserve the court-invented rights to homosexual behavior and same-sex marriage. These “rights,” like the right to abortion from Roe, are judicial concoctions, and there is no other source of law that can be invoked to salvage their existence.”
As far as a court case about same sex marriage it would require
“federal courts to employ a “careful description” of conduct or behavior that a litigant alleges to be protected by the Constitution, and forbidding resort to generalizations and abstractions”.
A Gay person’s rights would be uniquely based on sexual conduct on a position by position, giver or receiver basis without regard to the words about equality in the Declaration of independence because if that were to apply,
“long-prohibited conduct can be made into a “fundamental right” that is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition,” so long as a litigant is creative enough to define the “right” at a high enough level of abstraction. The right to marry an opposite-sex spouse is “deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition”; the right to marry a same-sex spouse obviously is not. This is not to say that the Court should announce the overruling of Lawrence and Obergefell if it decides to overrule Roe and Casey in this case. But neither should the Court hesitate to write an opinion that leaves those decisions hanging by a thread. Lawrence and Obergefell, while far less hazardous to human life, are as lawless as Roe.”
As I was writing this on Monday, September 20, the Supreme Court announced it will hear the Mississippi case to which Texas attached that amicus brief. The ruling will be made by a strong conservative majority court and could lead to overturning twhat has been settled law for almost 50 years.
We, as Gay people, are about to be again reduced to sexual acts sans humanity as Roe v Wade is attacked and along with it anything else the American Taliban wants to ban.
Unlike Roe v Wade, our rights, at best, have been honored for a far shorter time.
So, you young people, you young Gay ones whatever letter is yours, the struggle is not over.
All those wonderful things you have so enjoyed doing for most, if not all of your life, those things older Gays gave up their youth to get for wherever you fall on the spectrum or what letter is yours but, while successful, are too old to enjoy the life they had made possible for the future, are under attack a little more boldly now than the below the surface lurking they had been doing since our humanity was recognized.
If you enjoy the life you have, you do not want the old life we were allowed.
The future is yours. What that future will be is up to you.
Believe me, you don’t want to go back in time.
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