Rachel Maddow on Franklin Graham's Recent Facebook Hissy Fit: "The Universe Has a Way of Making Things Work Out, Big Guy!"

Here's an example of the kind of sassy from-the-margins political discourse that the Controllers of Significant Conversations have long sought to keep at bay — since apocalypse will, they tell us, ensue if the conversation moves beyond their control. Rachel comments on Rev. Franklin Graham's recent Facebook hissy fit about a Wells Fargo ad featuring a gay couple, and his . . . odd . . . decision to move his money to BB&T bank in protest:

Rachel Maddow on Lawrence O'Donnell's Report re: the "Mistake" Made by St. Louis Assistant Prosecutor in Ferguson Grand Jury Hearing

In a news segment yesterday, Rachel Maddow noted the importance of Lawrence O'Donnell's hard-hitting questions about the mistake St. Louis assistant prosecutor Kathi Alizadeh made in the Ferguson case, when she gave grand jurors a 1979 law declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1985. I discussed this story a few days ago, linking to O'Donnell's commentary about this incident. 

Rachel Maddow on Post-Hobby Lobby: "It's Already Started. Justice Ginsburg's Dissent . . . Is Already Coming True"

While the centrists who are always predictably infatuated with the rulings of powerful men continue to find all kinds of ways (and here) to parse the recent Hobby Lobby ruling by five Catholic Supreme men as, well, not so bad a thing, because freedom, after all, Rachel Maddow tells it like it is:

Contraception, Five Catholic Supreme Men, and the U.S. As One Big Piggie Park

When the issue was the sincerely held belief that slavery was ordained by God and that racial segregation is the divine will, the Supreme Court was clear about the fact that it's unconstitutional to use religion to discriminate. When the issue was the sincerely held belief that God has placed men over women and the workplaces should favor men economically and in provision of healthcare, the Supreme Court was clear about the fact that religion can't be used to discriminate.

Grim Situation for LGBT Folks in Russia: A Petition to NBC to Make Rachel Maddow Human Rights Correspondent for Olympics

As a footnote to what I posted earlier today about the dire situation LGBT citizens of Russia now face, I want to note this: 

Illinois Catholic Laity Reject Bishops' Lead about Marriage Equality, Robert Mickens on Benedict's Resignation, Rachel Maddow on Hubris and Iraq War

End-of-week news items that I couldn't shoehorn into other postings today, but which strike me as eminently worth paying attention to:

News Tidbits: Maddow on Gay Marriage, Alabama Immigration Law, Occupy Wall Street

A number of disparate news stories that have caught my eye in recent days, which I'd like to mention as the week ends:

1. I like Rachel Maddow.  But I do think James Peron makes a valuable point about her misgivings re: marriage equality and the end of gay culture.  As I've noted before on this blog, while affluent gay folks living in educated, powerful cultural centers of the nation entertain the question of whether gay culture is waning (and/or should wane), a large number of us live in the heartland.  Where just being gay and out of the closet is still problematic and sometimes dangerous, especially for younger folks.

Anderson Cooper, Rachel Maddow, and Craig Ferguson on Dr. Rekers: Why His Business Is Our Business

A quick follow-up to what I posted last evening about the Rekers story: Anderson Cooper did, indeed, do a segment on Rekers last night at his CNN 360 show.  In the clip, Randi Kaye interviews Jo-Vanni Roman, who confirms that his contract with Rekers as they traveled in Europe specified that he provide daily massasges for at least an hour in their shared room.  Roman characterizes the massages as “sexual massages.”

As Roman tells Randi Kaye, Rekers, of course, did not want Roman divulging information about the massages.   And he denies that any sexual behavior took place.

Continuing Ugandan Coverage: Rachel Maddow Interviews Jeff Sharlet Again

A quick update to yesterday’s posting about Rachel Maddow and Bob Hunter of The Family: but before I get to it, I want to say that I hope readers don’t think I’m beating a dead horse with this Ugandan coverage. As Rachel Maddow said in the clip from last night to which I will link in a moment, the situation in Uganda is unfolding day by day, and deserves constant monitoring (she calls it a “fight” that she remains in the midst of).

And valuable coverage is now, for the first time, spotlighting the Ugandan situation in the American mainstream media. I’ve noted the recent articles by Jeffrey Gettleman in the New York Times, and the powerful editorial with which the Times followed them.

Yesterday, the Washington Post went on record with an equally powerful editorial statement calling the Ugandan kill-the-gays bill “an ugly and ignorant piece of legislation.” Like the Times, WaPo characterizes the Ugandan proposal as “barbaric” and says that Uganda will be a “pariah among nations” if it proceeds down this path.

And Rachel Maddow remains fearless in her pursuit of the truth about the involvement of the American religious right in Uganda. Last night (click down to the “Uganda Be Kidding Me” section of the article), Rachel interviewed Jeff Sharlet, author of The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power.

It was Jeff Sharlet’s extensive research that broke the story of the thick ties of the American religious right to anti-gay movements in Africa. Rachel’s interview with him is a must-listen item. It sets the record straight regarding several claims made in the Bob Hunter interview to which I linked yesterday.

Note, in particular, how organized (and well-funded) the right-wing American neocolonialist attempt to use Africans in Western culture wars is. Sharlet reports that Hunter has told him that The Family has deliberately wooed African political leaders in a well-planned attempt to draw their countries into the web of right-wing American political interests. As Jim Burroway reports at Box Turtle Bulletin, Hunter brazenly admits that the U.S. government is at the beck and call of The Family (and see here).

As I listen to Rachel Maddow relentlessly pursue the truth about the involvement of the American religious right in Uganda, I have to agree with Liz Newcomb’s recent recommendation at Americablog Gay: Rachel Maddow should be made our hero of the month.

Meanwhile, for any readers who may be interested, my dialogue with Maazi at the National Catholic Reporter site continues. Note my posting yesterday and his responding to me today. I’ve just posted a response to Maazi’s statements to me today. Whether NCR will grow tired of the back-and-forth here (and I wouldn’t blame them, if they did) or will post my response remains to be seen.

What I really want to say to Maazi, in conclusion: hate is hate is hate. Anywhere it occurs in the world.

Health Care Reform and Don't Ask, Don't Tell: Making the Connections--Moral Imperatives and (Non-Existent) Leadership

I’ve been holding onto bits and pieces of commentary for some days now. Today, I want to post these in a series of interconnected postings. What binds these disparate postings together is that most of them follow up on issues about which I’ve posted previously at Bilgrimage. Several of the new items I’ll be posting today bring some of my previous stories up to date.

First, the ongoing health care . . . well, what to call it . . . except a debacle? As I see it, the American people are being held hostage. A significant majority of us want decisive, unambiguous health care reform including a plan to cover every citizen, particularly those who cannot afford basic care. We’re being held hostage by Republicans intent on blocking health care reform, because they know that if the administration succeeds in providing us with a sensible health care plan that covers all of us, they will decisively lose their grip on the nation.

But we’re also being held hostage by a group of blue dog Democrats from places like my home state of Arkansas, who have sold their hearts, souls, and hides to special interest groups (the medical and the insurance industries, for instance). These elephants in donkey disguise want in every way possible to act as a ball and chain on any progressive reform promoted by the new administration. This group has made the rest of us hostages to the wealthy special-interest elites they serve, and to the benighted constituents who elect them, who resist progressive change because it conflicts with their ideological and religious outlook.

I know these folks. They're my folks. I come from a state run by blue dog Democrats, who would rather be hog-tied and horse-whipped than admit that a gay human being is a human being. One just like them. With the same level of humanity, deserving the same human rights they enjoy.

I know, too, that even while they tout their profound commitment to God and the bible and moral values, they are utterly tone-deaf to the moral implications of health care. Health care as a human right? Not in their moral playbook. Morality is about bared breasts on television and barring the sale of beer on Sundays. It's not about health care. Not about children needing regular check-ups and good nutrition so that they can succeed in school and become productive adult citizens.

That's not in the bible. And don't get me started on the fact that many of those children denied basic health care under our present system are black. Because race is not in the bible, either. The bible's about breasts and beer. And gays. About keeping the gays down and out as long as possible. Because God tells us to do that, in the name of Christian love.

To these blue dogs, Steve Hildebrand issues a challenge:

Stop holding Americans hostage. Stop placing the economic interests of wealthy elites before the well-being of the nation, and ahead of the mandate you have received in the last election to change things substantially. Stop treating the entire nation like you treat members of the benighted constituencies that elect you. We don’t all share the peculiar reactionary views of your constituents about human rights issues.

Begin acting like Democrats for a change. Be leaders for a change.

And in my view, that challenge applies as well to the Obama administration itself. Lead. Stop the b.s. about pragmatism and bipartisan inclusion of every possible “idea” before we finally struggle to do what's clearly right. As Maxine Waters tells Carlos Watson at MSNBC, the reason the blue dog Democrats now have a death grip on the nation, through the health care reform process, is quite simple: pragmatist-in-chief Rahm Emanuel has given them that power.

They’re in the control seat, these folks whose primary goal is thwarting change we can believe in, because the new administration has put them in the control seat—in the name of pragmatic consensus-building and bringing every “idea” to the table, as if every idea is morally and rationally equal to every other idea. In the health care debacle, we’re seeing the consequences of the president’s penchant for pragmatism and amorphous bipartisan “consensus” playing themselves out. We're seeing his refusal to exert clear leadership playing itself out.

With very unhappy consequences for the nation. What we’re likely to get, when we finally get health care “reform” (and we’re the very last developed nation in the world to consider offering access to fundamental health care to all citizens as a basic human right) is a watered-down, bewildering, patched-together mess that will serve the economic interests of the medical and insurance industries before it serves the needs of citizens.

As Andrew Sullivan notes, the president’s messaging job on health care is his worst messaging job in a long time. Nobody knows what he wants or intends with health care reform:

It's the worst selling job he's done in a long time. I can't tell what's in it, not in it, what he's for, what he's against.

I can’t tell what’s in it, not in it, what he’s for, what he’s against. Precisely as with don’t ask, don’t tell. As I have noted in posting after posting on this blog that predicted the muddle this administration was headed into because it refuses to honor its moral imperatives and exercise leadership based on those moral imperatives, no one now knows what the president wants, intends, or will do with don’t ask, don’t tell.

And this despite the fact that he promised, as Candidate Obama, to end a policy he himself regards as unjust. As unethical. As morally indefensible.

Just as he promised to reform health care and provide access to basic health care to all citizens. Because it’s a moral imperative. Because it’s the right thing to do.

Because leaders do what is right rather than what is expedient. Even when they pay a price.

The grand irony of this moment in the history of the Obama administration, however, is that polls show a huge majority of Americans favoring the abolition of don’t ask, don’t tell. And they show a strong majority favoring the kind of health care reform—centered on access to basic care for all citizens—the administration is permitting Republicans and blue dog Democrats to block.

This is a moment in the honeymoon period of this presidency when these progressive changes—when these promises made by Candidate Obama as part of the change we can all believe in—could have easily been enacted without the deal-cutting folderol we see going on with both DADT and health care reform. Without the compromises and stasis. Without the mixed messages and refusal to stand on promises that reflect moral imperatives.

Representative Alcee Hastings of Florida has just announced he’s withdrawing a defense spending bill that would have challenged DADT. He's withdrawing the bill because of pressure from colleagues and the White House. And the White House: the same White House that, prior to Mr. Obama’s election, promised a speedy end to this unjust and immoral policy preventing the military service of openly gay soldiers.

Commenting on the story, Rachel Maddow, notes that we really do want the administration to ask. And to tell. Do ask. And do tell.

Ask us what we want, and listen when you ask. And tell us what you intend, what you want, what your strategy is. Don’t make promises us to us that you yourself tell us are based on moral imperatives, on the fundamental canons of justice and decency that govern our democracy, and then waffle on those promises. Not when you now have the power to change things. To make your words mean something.

To do more than talk about change we can believe in. You have the power to make change we can believe in.

Why, then, do you keep inviting the lions to the table of the lambs, in the name of bogus inclusion and pragmatism? Please lead, for a change. For God’s sake. It’s what we elected you to do.

Rachel Keeps on Keeping On: Let Me Count the Ways Pat Is Wrong about Race

As a follow-up to my previous posting about Rachel Maddow's refusal to allow Patrick Buchanan to spew racist nonsense unchallenged: yesterday, Maddow summarized the many ways in which Buchanan was flatly wrong with his assertions that white men built America.

Maddow argues brilliantly and persuasively that democratic (and ethical) societies have an obligation to overcome structures of oppression and marginalization, which work against the ability of members of targeted minority groups to pursue their goals and contribute to the rest of society as long as discriminatory barriers impede the self-fulfillment and social contributions of a marginalized community.

Once again, I think it is very important to point out that Maddow refuses to allow Buchanan to disseminate racist disinformation because, from her vantage point as a member of the LGBT community, which experiences social marginalization precisely like that of people of color, she makes the connection between her own oppression and that of African Americans.

And she is not content to permit people like Buchanan to do to people of color what is commonly done to gay and lesbian citizens in the U.S. It is lamentable that some people of color and some members of the LGBT community refuse to admit the points of connection between the oppression both communities experience.

But despite that refusal of some members of both communities to make solidarity with each other, courageous members of both communities are willing to recognize that unjust discrimination against anyone for innate traits such as sexual orientation or race harms all of us, and ought to be combated.

Rachel Takes on Pat: Many Hands Built America, Not Just White Men's Hands

Patrick Buchanan tells Rachel Maddow that white men built his nation (see here and here):

White men were 100% of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100% of the people that signed the Declaration of Independence, 100% of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100% of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built basically by white folks.

But as those white men who wrote the foundational documents of the United States penned those documents, many of them—Jefferson chief among them—sat in houses built, brick by brick, by black men. They fueled their minds for study and writing with food grown by the labor of black men and black women in their fields and gardens.

They ate meals prepared and served by the hands of black women. They had the leisure to study and to write because black women cleaned their houses, spun the cloth for their clothes, tailored and mended their clothes, and raised their children, including unacknowledged sons and daughters by those same women of color. They prayed to God in churches erected by black men.

And white men built the country?

Is Patrick Buchanan so completely ignorant of the history of the nation he claims to love, that he really believes it was white men—white men alone—who built that nation? How does anyone ever achieve any non-material goal without a material base undergirding that non-material goal?

And whose labor produces that base? Whose unacknowledged labor has permitted men, century on century, to think, write, govern—do anything at all that goes beyond drudgery?

Thankfully, Rachel Maddow refuses to allow Buchanan's ugly racist nonsense to go unchallenged. And I have to conclude that her experience as a member of the LGBT community, a community whose countless contributions to the building of this nation are overlooked just as the contributions of people of color have been, engenders her critique of Buchanan’s racism.

Gay men and gay women have historically stood side by side with African Americans as both communities struggle for the American dream to be realized in their lives. It is tragic to see some members of both communities willing to permit the Patrick Buchanans of the world to play them against each other.

And it’s heartening to see some members of both communities refusing to permit that game to be played anymore. People of color and LGBT citizens have everything to gain by refusing to permit their solidarity, as marginalized minority groups, to be broken by those intent on playing the game of divide and conquer to assure their dominance over and control of others.

Evidence for the Shifting (Progressive) Moral Consensus in American Political and Cultural Life

In a posting yesterday (and in previous postings), I note that many Americans seem to be moving towards a tipping point that represents a new moral consensus re: human rights issues and how those issues interface with political considerations.

A number of recent articles make a similar point, citing polls that provide strong empirical evidence that such a tipping point is now occurring in American culture—though it is not being reflected in our political sphere or in the mainstream media’s assessment of political issues. In a recent Huffington Post in article about how left is the new center, Nancy L. Cohen cites results of a new Pew survey on American political values. This study shows a majority of Americans to the left of what has previously been considered the center on a wide range of issues, including abortion and gay rights.

Cohen notes that the Pew survey data contradict the conclusion of some political thinkers and much of the mainstream media that Americans are fleeing the GOP because of its economic stances. The Pew data suggest, instead, that Americans are repudiating the extreme positions the GOP currently takes on social issues.

Despite these findings, even Pew itself is reluctant to conclude that its survey represents a turn to the left. As Cohen notes, Pew reports that the survey indicates Americans’ political and cultural centrism—without noting that “centrism” is an “empty political category” whose substance changes, and that “at this moment, Left is the new Center.”

Cohen concludes that the future of the Democratic party lies in its ability to listen to its constituents on the left: these constituents represent the solid center of the Democratic party now, and demographic indicators indicate that this center is not likely to move right, but left, in the foreseeable future.

Joshua Holland seconds Cohen’s analysis in a recent Alternet article citing a report recently released by the Campaign for America’s future and the media watchdog group MediaMatters.

Holland notes that this report shows that a “sea-change is happening in America's political culture”:

On issue after substantive issue, significant majorities of Americans favor progressive solutions to the nation's problems and reject the right's worldview. That's true whether the issue at hand is taxes, war and peace, the role of government in the economy, health care, and on and on.

Despite these findings, various political groups and the mainstream media persist in speaking of the United States as a “center-right” nation. As Holland notes, the persistence of this mythic narrative about where our political center lies, in the face of abundant evidence to the contrary, “has very real consequences on our political discourse.” It assures that our discourse is constantly skewed to the right, and provides right-wing thinkers who do not represent the center with gate-keeping and veto power in our political deliberations.

As does Cohen, Holland sees the trajectory of the future tracking left:

What's more, the country's changing demographics suggest that America will continue to be a center-left country in the coming decades. The most progressive (or at least solidly Democratic-leaning) constituencies in the country -- single women, African Americans and other minority groups, young people -- are growing as a share of the electorate, while the "Reagan Democrats" -- older, working-class whites -- who were the backbone of the conservative movement are declining as a share of the population.

One among many indicators (to me) in recent days confirming Cohen’s and Holland’s analysis is what happened Sunday night in New York: at the Times Center, General Ricardo Sanchez, former commander of coalition forces in Iraq, called for a truth commission to investigate the torture that happened there.

As Jack Hidary notes in a Huffington Post article about this event, in the panel discussion following General Sanchez’s statement, journalist Ron Suskind “made an impassioned plea for the restoration of ‘American's moral energy’,” and in an interview with Hidary after this, Rachel Maddow stated, “We have to rescue our institutions and restore faith in them. With every passing day we are hemorrhaging moral energy.”

Hidary notes that this is the first time a senior military officer from the Iraqi theater has called for a truth commission. And in my view, when a general from the Iraqi theater calls for a truth commission to investigate our legacy of torture (while the current administration continues to resist that proposal), something momentous is happening in our nation—a shift in the moral consensus underlying our political and cultural life is clearly underway. And it is tragic that a new administration which came to power with promises of change based on precisely that moral consensus is behind the curve of the people who brought it to power with such strong hopes for progressive change.

In the area of gay rights, that tragedy grows more apparent with each passing day. As Andrew Sullivan noted this weekend in a CNN interview with Anderson Cooper,

The truth is that this is a civil rights movement and the president is not living up to his promises. He is ducking the most core civil rights challenge of his times.

And, I would add, he is rejecting the growing moral consensus, based on presuppositions about human rights, of those who elected him to office—and in that respect, he is radically undermining his own platform of progressive change.

At the Crossroads: White House Meeting with Human Rights Groups Yesterday

A number of news reports today link to what I wrote yesterday about the divide between progressive idealist and pragmatist wings of the Obama administration and its supporters. I ended my posting with a prediction:

The energy and passion feeding the election of Barack Obama to the presidency have been extraordinary. The energy level behind the new president remains high.

I predict, however, that it will gradually diminish and slowly wane—and not only among gay citizens—if the president continues to listen to his progressive pragmatist advisors to the exclusion of his progressive idealist supporters. In coming months, we may see an increasing selectivity among the president’s supporters about offering support to his platform—particularly as he continues to back-step on his promises to address injustice to gay and lesbian Americans.

Waning energy when it comes to any aspect of Mr. Obama’s yes-we-can platform for progressive change, as the president chooses the pragmatist path over the idealist one: so it seems to be happening. As I blogged yesterday, I did not know that the White House had set an off-the-record meeting with human rights and civil libertarian groups to address precisely the problem I was outlining: the growing split between the president’s pragmatist and idealist supporters, and increasing loss of energy to support the president’s progressive agenda, as he appears to back-step on his promises to uphold human rights.

Rachel Maddow offered exclusive coverage of the White House meeting last evening. (Sam Stein also has a report today at Huffington Post.)

According to Maddow, the White House invited representatives of human rights and civil liberties groups to discuss disappointing backsteps by the administration as it addresses human rights issues. These include, Maddow notes, the decision to maintain a system of essentially lawless detention in the legal no-man’s land of Bagram Air Force Base, the refusal to appoint an independent commission to investigate the Bush administration’s violation of laws against torture, reneging on the promise to release additional photos of prisoner abuse, and the continuation of the previous administration’s cobbled together system of military tribunals at Guantanamo.

Maddow notes that these steps backwards on human rights issues have been an “escalating series of disappointments” for human rights supporters and civil libertarians. Her sources also tell her that the administration is concerned about the disaffection of many of the president’s staunchest progressive supporters, and called the meeting because it feels the need to reach out and bring these supporters back into the fold.

Maddow reports that yesterday’s meeting was at times tense. One of those present told the president that he is now making Mr. Bush’s policies on human rights his own, and is accepting some of the premises of that administration.

According to Maddow, the president was “demonstrably not pleased with that characterization,” and gave no ground. In Maddow’s view, the president’s relationship with his supporters on the left has never been more strained than it is at present, because of his perceived reversals on human rights issues and his refusal to move forward on his campaign promises.

Newsweek journalist Michael Isikoff joined Maddow to discuss yesterday’s meeting. He noted that the meeting included Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, Attorney General Eric Holder, advisors Valerie Jarrett and David Axelrod, foreign policy hand Dennis McDonough, and counter-terrorism chief John Brennan. Among the human rights and civil libertarian groups represented at the meeting were the ACLU, Human Rights Watch, and the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Isikoff notes that the choice of the White House to call this meeting, and to invite to it these White House staff, is an indication of how seriously the administration takes the “rebellion from the left” it is experiencing at the same time it’s being pummeled by the right.

I’m fascinated in particular by some of Maddow’s and Isikoff’s analysis, because it so strongly reflects the analysis I offered in yesterday’s posting on the practical consequences facing the administration (and the country), as the new administration appears to choose a pragmatist rather than an idealist path for its policies.

For instance, Maddow and Isikoff report that when the human rights representatives pressed Mr. Obama on his refusal to establish a truth commission to investigate torture under the Bush administration, the president characterized this pressure as a “distraction.” He noted that congressional deliberations are taking place regarding these matters.

And when the progressive spokespersons invited to the meeting urged the president to consider criminal prosecution of those who broke the law under the previous administration, as a symbolic gesture that our nation will not tolerate this kind of activity in future, the president “curtly dismissed” the proposal.

Several of those present were struck by the fact that Mr. Obama looked at Mr. Holder, the attorney general, at this point, but did not solicit a statement from him. According to Mr. Isikoff, this gave some of those present the impression that the steps the president is taking about issues like prosecution of lawbreakers in the previous administration are his own steps, and not those advised by his staff. As Mr. Isikoff notes, Mr. Obama has stated publicly that questions about prosecution of lawbreakers in the Bush administration should be referred to Mr. Holder. What he seemed to say in private in yesterday’s meeting stood in contrast to these public statements.

Mr. Isikoff sketches some of the pragmatic considerations that appear to be underlying Mr. Obama’s waffling on these human rights issues. As he notes, there seems to be a strong determination not to alienate the Republicans and the right. In Mr. Isikoff’s view, however, these are not helpful considerations, when law-breaking is at stake.

I’m struck by several points here, because of their parallels to what is happening with the administration in that other arena of human rights, the rights of gay and lesbian citizens. First, there’s the insistence that the president should defer to Congress before moving forward on these human rights issues. In the area of gay rights, this insistence is striking many observers as a punt, one that tries to kick hot issues to Congress, rather than asserting presidential leadership in these areas.

Underlying this appears to be some political theory that consensus is necessary, if we expect to move forward productively in any area, and that such consensus needs to be demonstrated by legislative vote before the president stamps that consensus with his approval. As I have noted repeatedly on this blog, that theory overlooks the important role that the presidency has played throughout the history of our nation—particularly in the area of human rights—when it comes to charting the course and pointing the way. A leadership role, which pulls resistant groups forward into a consensus that they will otherwise continue to resist, and which they will express by legislative votes: matters of human rights ought not to depend on votes.

I’m also struck by the president’s statement (assuming the veracity of these reports) that it would be a “distraction” to move forward on some of these human rights questions now. In my view, that statement starkly reflects a pragmatist approach to human rights issues, which evacuates those issues of their moral force.

As I have noted previously on this blog, this is also an insistence that seems strong in the new administration’s justification for its dilly-dallying and backsteps on human rights for gay citizens. There is the suggestion that, in addressing gay rights issues, the administration is attending to an insignificant distraction as the country faces “real” challenges like the economic downturn. There is also the intimation that, in addressing issues like gay rights, the administration is furthering, rather than eclipsing, the culture wars, with their tendency to distract us from what is important.

In all these areas, I detect a sidestepping on issues of human rights that is deeply worrisome to me as a progressive supporter of Mr. Obama who sees strong connections between all human rights issues, and who happens to believe that those issues (all of them) have a moral centrality that cannot be overlooked, if we expect to maintain any moral center at all for a progressive agenda.

And lacking a moral center, we will lack the energy to do what is clearly right, when the choice confronts us. In my view, the new administration finds itself already at a significant crossroads, and everything depends—for its future and that of the nation—on the path it chooses to take. That's what moral crossroads are all about: everything, absolutely everything, depends on the choice we make, when we arrive at them. Including (and above all), the future . . . .

The Rachel Maddow Phenomenon and Post-Gay America

In yesterday’s posting on the baby-boom generation, I said,

The people most resistant to the idea of gay rights in the latter decades of the 20th century have been not precisely the religious right, but baby boomers. The very people who themselves benefited from the sexual revolution of the 1960s, insofar as that revolution opened the door to women and to heterosexual couples. Having gotten what they needed from the 1960s cultural revolution, they turned around and decisively slammed the door in the faces of their gay brothers and sisters, while taking full advantage of their own sexual revolution.

The Clintons are the face of a whole generation of people in that respect.

And here’s what Jonanna Widner has to say at Alternet today about the reception of lesbian television journalist Rachel Maddow by that same suburban baby-boom generation:

As Maddow's star has risen, so has the number of editorial inches dedicated to her story. While they don't exactly gloss over her sexuality, most treat it as a sort of incidental factoid, akin to, say, her love of classic cocktails. It's as if we've skipped straight to postgay, without the benefit of the attendant political and social gains, which doesn't make any sense. How can we be postgay, for instance, in a society where Prop 8 passes? How can we be postgay when Rick Warren gives the invocation to an inauguration that's supposed to be about "change"? How can we be postgay in a world where Ann Coulter even exists? But there's a subtler bit to explore. If we're so very post- gay, why does delving into some of the gayer aspects of Maddow's life seem, on the part of mainstream media, verboten? (here).

As Widner concludes, if we let Maddow's marvelous popularity delude us into thinking we've arrived at a post-gay culture, we'll deceive ourselves and ignore the long road we still have to go towards respect, justice, and full inclusion of gay and lesbian human beings in our culture.

Rachel Maddow and Pat Buchanan: Hateful Speech Translates to Hatreful Acts

Back after the long weekend, during which Steve and I spent welcome days with our dogs in the Ozarks, walking, reading, and watching and listening to waterfalls. The butterflies were beautiful. They’re different at different seasons, and always abundant in the little valley where we look for them beside a creek.

On this trip, a dark blue-black one with radiant iridescent blue spots along the lower part of the wings, and orange spots at the wingtips. Along with these, though congregated in separate locations, were a small brilliant orange butterfly with black markings.

And today the remnants of Gustav are with us, raking the state with constant rain and high winds. A day to read, write, listen to music, nurse chigger bites, and be glad that one is fortunate enough to be inside, to have an inside to which to go.

And to the news: today’s Alternet news site has excellent commentary by George Lakoff on some underlying reasons for the failure of progressive political thinkers to reach many American voters where they live and move and have their being. Lakoff notes that radical right-wing activists have been adroit about spinning narratives that engage the emotional-cognitive lives of mainstream voters (www.alternet.org/election08/97193/lakoff%3A_palin_appeals_to_voter_emotions_--_dems_beware).

Where we in the reality-based community who fight for progressive causes emphasize facts, those on the right have been spinning stories—and, in this way, they have succeeded in defining the conversation such that brute facts outside the confines of their narrative frames, no matter how convincing those facts are, fail to reach people’s hearts and souls. Lakoff challenges those of us who want to keep democracy alive at this precarious moment in our history to learn to tell stories and to find metaphors to engage people’s minds and hearts:

Our job is to bring external realities together with the reality of the political mind. Don't ignore the cognitive dimension. It is through cultural narratives, metaphors, and frames that we understand and express our ideals.

Lakoff’s reflections remind me of why I began this blog. I’m spending much of each day blogging because I’m convinced that many stories that don’t get a hearing in the mainstream media deserve a hearing. They have to be told. There’s no way we can understand our experience as a nation unless we hear the suppressed narratives that mainstream news outlets won’t touch, because the truths these narratives contain are inconvenient for those who have spun the dominant narrative.

Narratives from the margins provide facts that challenge the claim of mainstream perspectives to have the final word on what it means to live in America at this point in its history. The stories from the margins unravel the dominant narratives imposed on us from above. They force us to begin thinking differently about who we are, what we have done in the past, and our potential as a nation. They also seduce us into reverie and reflection, just when we think we’ve found a new meta-narrative that explains everything and includes everyone.

They catch us up in our quest for total explanation because they remind us of inconvenient bits of our history we hope to forget, to sweep under the rug when these bits of history become problematic. To a great extent, the political and religious right are trying to do this now with their recent history vis-à-vis their gay brothers and sisters.

As the cultural tide turns in favor of gay rights—as polls indicate younger Americans of all political affiliations rejecting homophobia—the political and religious right are trying to make us forget what they have done to their gay brothers and sisters in recent decades. Those on the right are trying to change the subject, to discover a new all-encompassing meta-narrative that will engage the passion of American voters while sweeping away inconvenient memories of the price we have paid for previous dominant narratives of racism and homophobia.

Clearly, that new meta-narrative will focus on brown people who (in our imagination as it is manipulated by those trying to control the conversation) invade our borders—illegal immigrants, Muslims, the people who planned 9/11. This may be the last federal election cycle in which we see the religious and political right trying one more desperate time to engage the visceral fears of the voting public by waving the gay flag as a warning sign, now that a shift is underway to demonizing narratives about threatening invasive brown outsiders.

Because the cynicism underlying the political use of human beings—gay, brown, Muslim, whatever group is in the sights of the right at any particular time—is so breathtakingly calculating and has been so destructive, I am glad that there are those among us who won’t allow those who have used and demeaned some of their brothers and sisters to forget.

Like Rachel Maddow. Choosing to make her a major political commentator is one of the smartest moves I’ve seen a mainstream news outlet make lately. I was particularly delighted with her comments to Pat Buchanan last Monday (25August) as MSNBC commentators dissected Michelle Obama’s speech to the Democratic National Convention.

In her inimitable nice but honest-to-God way, Rachel Maddow put Pat Buchanan on the hook, right before God and everybody. And let him squirm just a little bit. And he did and said nothing—could not do or say anything without admitting the truth of her damaging charges against him.

Maddow spoke about her reaction to Pat Buchanan’s saber-rattling culture wars speech to the Republican National Convention in 1992. As a young 19-year old who had just come out of the closet, she reacted to what the DNC and the RNC of that year did in personal terms. And how else could she have reacted? How else can anyone react to political speeches, except in terms of her or his own personal experience? Those speeches—the kind Pat Buchanan gave—had a personal impact on her own life and on the lives of people she knew and loved.

Rachel Maddow told Pat Buchanan that when he rattled his saber in 1992 and called for America to declare a culture war on those promoting “homosexual rights,” she felt as if her country were declaring war on her. By contrast, when she watched and listened to the Clintons, she felt drawn to them and their platform because she had the strong sense "they don't want an America that doesn't want me in it." As she told the chastened and silent Mr. Buchanan, "I felt like these people don’t hate me and would respect me if we met."

Indeed. Words make a world of difference. Especially when they are used like stones to hurl at someone—and when that someone is either you yourself or someone you love. Pat Buchanan may not like to be reminded of this today—I have no doubt at all he’d like to forget this—but his words in 1992 had real-life effects on real, living, breathing human beings.

Like Steve. And like me. Listening to Rachel Maddow brought back snippets of my own narrative that I have a responsibility to remember and pass on, because this is a tiny piece of what happened in America in 1992—of what some Americans did to other Americans in that year, as a result of Pat Buchanan’s call for a culture war against gay Americans. Of what some Christian and some Catholic Americans did to other Christian and other Catholic Americans who just happened to be gay.

When Mr. Buchanan (have I mentioned he’s a Catholic?) gave his culture wars speech at the RNC in the fall of 1992, we had just begun our second year of teaching at a small Catholic college in North Carolina. The college could have been anywhere USA—that is, any small Catholic college in the USA owned by a religious community. This one happened to be a Benedictine college.

Well, not quite anywhere. It was and is a college with a reputation for being on the far-right fringes of American Catholicism, and one decidedly in the pocket of the politico-religious right. We knew only bits and pieces of its reputation at the time we were hired to teach theology there—both of us.

What we knew troubled us, but as gay theologians living in a coupled but non-public relationship, we did not have the same freedom of choice in selecting jobs that our straight colleagues had. When the offer of two jobs at the same institution came along in the year after Steve had been denied tenure unilaterally by the rector of the seminary at which he had taught for some six years, we took the offer, cautiously but hopefully, believing the promises made to us by the school’s administration.

I will never forget that 1992 convention and Pat Buchanan’s culture war speech. I have no choice except to remember, because it is now part of my personal history. The small Benedictine college was very different from Xavier University, at which I had taught happily the first seven years of my career, and where I was offered tenure, turning down the offer to take the job in North Carolina.

For one thing, Xavier is owned by a community of religious women. The macho game playing and macho posturing that dominated the life of the male-owned Catholic college simply were not a part of the culture of Xavier.

Xavier is also an HBCU, and the kind of right-wing politics I was to encounter at the Benedictine school in North Carolina was just not in evidence at Xavier. Many faculty, both white and black, had no patience for neo-conservative political and religious thinking. They knew very well what it translates into, in the lives of African Americans.

The climate at the Benedictine college was night-and-day different from that at Xavier. At the Benedictine college, being a “liberal” was considered an oddity, a betrayal of what the school stood for—of the Catholicism that Patrick McHenry, a graduate of this college who now sits in Congress, has called purer and truer than that of other areas of the country.

A vicious, nasty Catholicism, I soon found—one where radical conservative activists on the faculty did not think twice about stuffing my campus mailbox with hate mail, and where I was severely punished for protesting this hazing and trying to get to the bottom of it and stop it.

And things only got worse—and decidedly so—with the 1992 RNC. That culture-war speech? Those hateful words uttered by the Catholic neoconservative icon Pat Buchanan? They energized the right-wing faculty at this small college. During the convention, as the anti-gay rhetoric spewed forth, the delight of the faculty—of the male faculty, I should day, for the most part—was tangible in the faculty lounge. It was very similar to the tangible gloating delight the same faculty exhibited when Clarence Thomas was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice and Anita Hill slapped down.

I had never met anything like this. I didn’t know places like this existed in American Catholicism. (I now know better, of course, and I’ve met versions of the same thing on Methodist campuses, where it’s better disguised as treacly “Christian” piety.) It was so . . . ugly. Downright ugly.

During all the time of the convention, when some monks would come daily to the faculty lounge to smoke with and high-five the other old boys as they gloated about how the Republicans were holding the family values line, only one person ever spoke to me about the convention. And about how it might be affecting Steve and me—who were clearly a couple, but also playing the Catholic don’t ask, don’t tell game, because we knew no other options if we were to keep our jobs and continue to function as theologians.

This was a monk who eventually left the monastery, a monk who was himself gay and who was struggling to claim and honor his identity. He left in part due to what the monastery and the college did to Steve and me at the end of that academic year.

As I’ve previously noted, the college gave me a one-year terminal contract and refused to provide any reason for the contract. The college also refused to place my final semester’s evaluation in writing—for understandable reasons, since I had been given a glowing oral evaluation the week before I was given the terminal contract. How to put the two together, and avoid litigation (which really was not an option, as the college’s administrators and monks knew, because 1] NC is a right-to-work state where people can be fired for no reason at all, and 2] NC has no laws protecting the rights of gay persons or gay employees)?

I could go on at length with details of this story. For the purposes of this reminiscence, I want only to note that Rachel Maddow is absolutely correct to try to call Pat Buchanan to accountability for the words—the shameful, anti-Christian words—he spoke in 1992 at the RNC.

Those words had real-life effects on real-life people. For Steve and me, they helped energize a movement within the American Catholic church that has made it almost impossible for gay Catholics to feel welcome today in our churches. The words signaled the start of a culture war within the American church itself, which has had quite a few casualties—gay people hounded out of jobs, gay people whose vocations have been thwarted and whose gifts have been rejected insofar as we have not chosen to remain self-denying, self-hating, and closeted.

Not long after Steve and I left the college in question, the abbot of the monastery took over the leadership of the college and mounted what many gay people living in the region saw as an outright purge of gay folks. He fired some seven or eight “single” faculty and staff members for specious reasons. I have a copy of a letter a local gay person who graduated from the college sent to a monk in the monastery that owns the college, protesting this purge (and identifying it as such), and stating his intent to move from the Catholic church as a result of what he saw the abbot doing.

The abbot justified his actions to the media as an attempt to re-establish Catholic identity in the college, as more lay faculty were hired and vocations to the monastery dwindled. How we who were gay and closeted at the college represented any kind of threat to the Catholic identity of the college was never clearly explained.

For Steve and me, these events were the beginning of the end for our careers as theologians. From that time until now, we have been persistently blackballed by any Catholic institution to which we apply for work. We spent several years living hand to mouth, and it’s impossible to read and write—that is, to do theological work—when you live hand to mouth, struggling to make ends meet, worrying about lack of medical insurance. These were years in which we were also caring for my mother, who was suffering from severe dementia, at home—a time in which we were least prepared to deal with the upheavals in our life the Catholic monastery and college caused when it ran us off.

So yes, Pat, Rachel is right: words make the world of difference in people’s lives. When people throw out words as weapons, those weapons do find targets. And they’re almost certain to wound the targets they find—the flesh and blood and psyches of those they find, when the targets are human beings.

Your words, uttered so casually, gave heart those looking for more reason to marginalize and hate in the name of Christ. In doing so, they had real effects on our real lives. And on many lives. Some of those lives cannot now be recovered, since the people to whom they belonged are no longer with us.

Like young Matthew Shepard, who was beaten to a pulp and then hung on a fence to die. I’m not accusing you directly, Pat, of causing his death. But I am saying—and I want you to hear this, as a fellow Catholic—that the words you uttered in 1992 had an ugly, toxic effect on our culture at large, and increased the proportion of hatred of gay people in our culture.

And it is from those cultural toxins that events like the killing of Matthew Shepard bubble up.

What will you as a Christian, as a Catholic, do now about those words you uttered 16 years ago, Pat? What will all the Christians, all the Catholics, who listened with glee to the family-values rhetoric in 1992, and who acted on that hate rhetoric, do now, I wonder?

The words may now be past for you, and you may want to repudiate them. But the wounds they inflicted still trouble our lives. Now as you try to distance yourselves from the words you once spoke, to pretend you did not speak them or mean them, what will you do about the lives that remain crippled due to the words you no longer want to own?

Christianity teaches us that we remain responsible for the effect of our words on others, even when time has passed. We remain responsible because, at the end of our lives, we must own our words and the effect they have had on others.

It is easy to disown words we have spoken in the heat of the moment. It is so much harder to bind up the wounds those wounds inflict, especially when the wounds go deep and linger for many years.

And yet there is no other option for people of faith, is there? Not if we believe, as people of faith around the world do, that we must give some final accounting for our lives, for the increase of love (or of hate) we have set in motion in the world through our lives.