National Rifle Association leadership, and some GOP congressmen, oppose efforts to close the loophole in the nation's gun laws that allows people on the federal terrorist watch list to buy guns and explosives from licensed gun dealers in the U.S.
Let me repeat: you can be on the watch list that keeps you from boarding an airplane because you are considered a possible terrorist -- and you can still walk into a gun show and buy guns and explosives material.
When NY mayor Michael Bloomberg called for this to be fixed in his testimony at a congressional hearing, there was some opposition from Republicans. The NRA strongly objects and calls such restrictions "21st Century McCarthyism."
However, a recent poll shows that rank and file NRA members don't agree. One member simply refused to believe that it was possible, while 82% of gun owners and NRA members support “prohibiting people on the terrorist watch lists from purchasing guns.”
I do not share that deep-seated psychological urge to own guns and to fight any effort to limit my right to carry them anywhere -- now including airports, if the latest effort in Georgia becomes law. (It awaits the governor's signature.) So I just don't get it -- why some people feel so vehemently about being able to purchase, own, and carry weapons of rapid, mass murder.
When it's just as easy to buy a high-powered, people-killing, assault weapon as it is to get a public library card, and even easier than getting a driver's license -- something is crazy in our society. And I don't think it's me -- at least not on this one.
Ralph
Saturday, May 15, 2010
Friday, May 14, 2010
Even better news
Better news than the blog below about changes in Cobb County is the followup to stories a few weeks ago about the teenage Derrick Martin in Cochran, GA, who was given permission to take his boyfriend as his date to the school prom -- and created a media storm and protests from some teens at school, who organized an alternate prom.
Here's what he told the gay newspaper GAVoice:
How sad that his parents could not celebrate with this courageous young man, who has handled all the publicity with grace and maturity. Otherwise, it does sound like a perfect evening and an encouraging outcome -- you have to believe that a few people in Cochran had their prejudices challenged and, just maybe, they began to think.
Ralph
Here's what he told the gay newspaper GAVoice:
"The whole town turned out this year, and we were both making ourselves sick thinking of all the outcomes . . ,. All eyes were on us as we walked to the podium, and the start of the "red carpet" [each couple was introduced as they walked down the red carpet]. I braced myself for an onslaught of hate and shouting, but what we were greeted with surprised me more than I ever could have imagined.The only think missing, Martin wrote, was his parents. They told him he could no longer live at home after he went public with being gay and brought on all the media attention.
"People I didn't even know were there just cheering for us, smiling and telling us things like, "be true" and "keep on baby." I couldn't even believe it. All this time I had considered all of the bad things that could have happened, but I never gave a second thought to the night actually going perfectly."
How sad that his parents could not celebrate with this courageous young man, who has handled all the publicity with grace and maturity. Otherwise, it does sound like a perfect evening and an encouraging outcome -- you have to believe that a few people in Cochran had their prejudices challenged and, just maybe, they began to think.
Ralph
Conservative senators vs Cobb County
There's good news and bad news. First the bad.
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), one of the most ignorant, repugnant, reactionary senators on the right, is now making a public display of his homophobia -- only he doesn't seem to realize it, since he lives in the past and thinks everyone else thinks as he does.
Not so. In a 2006 poll of service members who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 73% said they were comfortable with gays and lesbians.
Nevertheless, on American Family Association radio, speaking about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Inhofe said this (quoted by Jason Linkins on Huffington Post):
Linkins then raises the cogent question: If our heterosexual soldiers are so scared of battlefield bonding with the gay guy in the next foxhole that they would go into "gay panic" and desert their comrades, which are the ones that should be discharged?
Now the good news.
Jay Bookman, in today's AJC, reminds us of 1993 when the good folks in Cobb County were so opposed to anything gay that the Cobb County Commission passed a resolution stating that "the gay lifestyle" was "incompatible with the standards to which this community subscribes" and thus had no place in Cobb County. [Sidebar: In response, the mayor of Decatur issued an invitation to Cobb County gay people to move to Decatur, which would welcome them.]
The provocation for this self-righteous piece of county business? The Theatre in the Square in Marietta had just had a very successful run with the play, "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." It's offense? The play takes place in the home of a man who had recently died from AIDS, and the talk among his straight family and friends who have gathered naturally includes the devastating disease and its effects on society. But there is not even one gay character on stage during the play. But, you know, you start allowing such things to be talked about and . . . it could spread and infects us all, I guess.
They didn't stop with the resolution. They also cut off funding for all local arts groups lest any tax payer money should be used to support something that offended "community standards."
Now 17 years later, "Avenue Q" (with a happy, very accepting gay theme) has just had a successful run at the Cobb Energy Center's auditorium. A few years ago, Theatre in the Square also mounted a production of "Take Me Out," which includes an openly gay baseball player and a shower scene with full frontal male nudity on stage. And not a ripple of protest.
Changed times, different County Commissioners. Cobb County grew up.
But Inhofe? I don't think there's any hope for Inhofe changing. Sometimes, with some of these homophobic troglodytes, you just have to wait until they . . . Well, let's just say, "until the demographics no longer include them."
Ralph
Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), one of the most ignorant, repugnant, reactionary senators on the right, is now making a public display of his homophobia -- only he doesn't seem to realize it, since he lives in the past and thinks everyone else thinks as he does.
Not so. In a 2006 poll of service members who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan, 73% said they were comfortable with gays and lesbians.
Nevertheless, on American Family Association radio, speaking about repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Inhofe said this (quoted by Jason Linkins on Huffington Post):
You have women, men, then you have a third group to deal with, and they're not equipped to do that. And you know -- you hear the stories all the time. A military guy -- I happen to be Army, and Army and Marines always feel that when we're out there, we're not doing it for the flag or the country; we're doing it for the guy in the next foxhole. And that would dramatically change that.Senator, could you please tell us what equipment is needed to deal with gay soldiers? Steel jock straps? Armor-lined undershorts? Mace spray? Don't flatter yourself.
Linkins then raises the cogent question: If our heterosexual soldiers are so scared of battlefield bonding with the gay guy in the next foxhole that they would go into "gay panic" and desert their comrades, which are the ones that should be discharged?
Now the good news.
Jay Bookman, in today's AJC, reminds us of 1993 when the good folks in Cobb County were so opposed to anything gay that the Cobb County Commission passed a resolution stating that "the gay lifestyle" was "incompatible with the standards to which this community subscribes" and thus had no place in Cobb County. [Sidebar: In response, the mayor of Decatur issued an invitation to Cobb County gay people to move to Decatur, which would welcome them.]
The provocation for this self-righteous piece of county business? The Theatre in the Square in Marietta had just had a very successful run with the play, "Lips Together, Teeth Apart." It's offense? The play takes place in the home of a man who had recently died from AIDS, and the talk among his straight family and friends who have gathered naturally includes the devastating disease and its effects on society. But there is not even one gay character on stage during the play. But, you know, you start allowing such things to be talked about and . . . it could spread and infects us all, I guess.
They didn't stop with the resolution. They also cut off funding for all local arts groups lest any tax payer money should be used to support something that offended "community standards."
Now 17 years later, "Avenue Q" (with a happy, very accepting gay theme) has just had a successful run at the Cobb Energy Center's auditorium. A few years ago, Theatre in the Square also mounted a production of "Take Me Out," which includes an openly gay baseball player and a shower scene with full frontal male nudity on stage. And not a ripple of protest.
Changed times, different County Commissioners. Cobb County grew up.
But Inhofe? I don't think there's any hope for Inhofe changing. Sometimes, with some of these homophobic troglodytes, you just have to wait until they . . . Well, let's just say, "until the demographics no longer include them."
Ralph
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Vatican XI -- Not to be outdone
Not to be outdone by his own slight success in taking a more principled and responsible position on the sexual abuse scandal, Pope Benedict snatched defeat from the jaws of victory today with his hyperbolic pronouncements about gay marriage and abortion.
At the shrine in Fatima, Portugal, speaking to thousands of social workers and health care providers, Benedict proclaimed abortion and same-sex marriage some of the most "insidious and dangerous" threats facing the world today.
On a par with, or worse than: famine, starvation, global climate crisis, global financial crisis, global energy crisis, AIDS in Africa, terrorism and war, denial of equal rights to women?
Really ???
Are the pope and his inner circle so sheltered from the real world, or just that dumb? Or is it really a theological/philosophical position that they truly believe? In trying to understand people, I find it useful to think: what core belief would make this piece of nonsense seem right and logical to them)? The Church's positions make sense if they really believe that the RC Church and its clerics, all the way up to and including the pope, operate in a different world, where ecclesiastical law is supreme and the law of the land is secondary?
Ergo, they have sin, repentance, and forgiveness; we have crime, fair trial, and justice. The two systems can co-exist; but the former must not replace the latter. That would be a theocracy, and that could be very bad. Think Iran, Saudi Arabia.
Ralph
At the shrine in Fatima, Portugal, speaking to thousands of social workers and health care providers, Benedict proclaimed abortion and same-sex marriage some of the most "insidious and dangerous" threats facing the world today.
On a par with, or worse than: famine, starvation, global climate crisis, global financial crisis, global energy crisis, AIDS in Africa, terrorism and war, denial of equal rights to women?
Really ???
Are the pope and his inner circle so sheltered from the real world, or just that dumb? Or is it really a theological/philosophical position that they truly believe? In trying to understand people, I find it useful to think: what core belief would make this piece of nonsense seem right and logical to them)? The Church's positions make sense if they really believe that the RC Church and its clerics, all the way up to and including the pope, operate in a different world, where ecclesiastical law is supreme and the law of the land is secondary?
Ergo, they have sin, repentance, and forgiveness; we have crime, fair trial, and justice. The two systems can co-exist; but the former must not replace the latter. That would be a theocracy, and that could be very bad. Think Iran, Saudi Arabia.
Ralph
GOP hypocrisy
How boring . . . to talk about Republican hypocrisy. I would like to ignore it, as it deserves to be ignored. But when it is as blatant as Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and other senators are being over Elena Kagan's lack of experience as a judge, it demands comment.
Yesterday Elena Kagan paid her courtesy call on the Senate Minority Leader, who went to the Senate floor to express his concern that she might not be independent enough as a Supreme Court Justice to say no to an administration in which she currently serves as Solicitor General.
This is the same Mitch McConnell who was effusive in his support of George Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, who was Bush's legal counsel in the White House and who played a crucial role in many dubious attempts to expand executive power, when the legal counsel should have said no to the president -- and didn't. The same Harriet Miers who was frequently pictured looking lovingly at her boss and whose entire career had essentially been in positions she owed to him, guaranteeing her loyalty to him.
Here is John Cornyn in 2005 speaking about Harriet Miers, saying approvingly that 40% of Supreme Court Justices had not had prior judicial experience. "One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers' qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court, because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives or academicians."
And here is John Cornyn in 2010 speaking about Elena Kagan: "Ms. Kagan is ... a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. . . . Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."
As they used to say in my home town: It's enough to make a preacher cuss.
Ralph
Yesterday Elena Kagan paid her courtesy call on the Senate Minority Leader, who went to the Senate floor to express his concern that she might not be independent enough as a Supreme Court Justice to say no to an administration in which she currently serves as Solicitor General.
This is the same Mitch McConnell who was effusive in his support of George Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers, who was Bush's legal counsel in the White House and who played a crucial role in many dubious attempts to expand executive power, when the legal counsel should have said no to the president -- and didn't. The same Harriet Miers who was frequently pictured looking lovingly at her boss and whose entire career had essentially been in positions she owed to him, guaranteeing her loyalty to him.
Here is John Cornyn in 2005 speaking about Harriet Miers, saying approvingly that 40% of Supreme Court Justices had not had prior judicial experience. "One reason I felt so strongly about Harriet Miers' qualifications is I thought she would fill some very important gaps in the Supreme Court, because right now you have people who've been federal judges, circuit judges most of their lives or academicians."
And here is John Cornyn in 2010 speaking about Elena Kagan: "Ms. Kagan is ... a surprising choice because she lacks judicial experience. . . . Most Americans believe that prior judicial experience is a necessary credential for a Supreme Court Justice."
As they used to say in my home town: It's enough to make a preacher cuss.
Ralph
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Miranda
Obama's Department of Justice has taken some positions that I am not too happy with -- wanting to continue some Bush DoJ policies about executive power, surveillance, trials for terrorists suspects, defending some laws that need to be changed (DOMA, DADT) -- and now wanting to "modify" the Miranda rights of suspects.
Truth be told, we don't yet know the details of the modifications they are proposing. It may be only to allow for rare exceptions in rare, crisis circumstances. I'll wait for more information before making a final judgment.
But a letter in today's AJC clarifies what the argument is all about and challenges those on the right (and not so right) who are wringing their hands about coddling terrorists. He says this about the position of those who oppose giving rights to detainees:
1. It assumes guilt, that the arrested person is, in fact, a terrorist.
2. They decry it as protecting the guilty. In fact, Miranda is designed to protect the innocent. Fokes is right: to protect the innocent, we have to give this same right to everyone.
Assuming guilt without legal proof is fundamentally un-American. Until we find a better way to protect innocent people, we should keep Miranda as it is.
Ralph
Truth be told, we don't yet know the details of the modifications they are proposing. It may be only to allow for rare exceptions in rare, crisis circumstances. I'll wait for more information before making a final judgment.
But a letter in today's AJC clarifies what the argument is all about and challenges those on the right (and not so right) who are wringing their hands about coddling terrorists. He says this about the position of those who oppose giving rights to detainees:
1. It assumes guilt, that the arrested person is, in fact, a terrorist.
2. They decry it as protecting the guilty. In fact, Miranda is designed to protect the innocent. Fokes is right: to protect the innocent, we have to give this same right to everyone.
Assuming guilt without legal proof is fundamentally un-American. Until we find a better way to protect innocent people, we should keep Miranda as it is.
Ralph
Franklin Graham
Pulitzer winning Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker is too conservative for me to agree with much of the time, but her opinions are more reasonable than most conservatives. Today, she provides some good background for the Franklin Graham, National Day of Prayer controversy.
Graham was dis-invited from participating in the Pentagon's observance of the NDP (why they have one is another question) because of prior statements he has made critical of Islam. He is not backing down; and, unlike his more famous father, he is not diplomatic about his belief in the exclusiveness of the Christian route to heaven.
According to Parker,
For Graham, efforts at ecumenicism are wasted; only Christian prayers are heard by God. And no amount of cooperative spirit among people of various faiths is worthwhile. Only if they listen to him and accept his version of god would it be meaningful.
Doesn't this prove that his participation in a government sponsored day of prayer would be a violation of the non-establishment clause of the Constitution? And wasn't the Obama administration correct, then, in having him dis-invited?
Parker goes on the examine the changing views of religion in this country (nearly two-thirds of evangelicals under 35 believe non-Christians can go to heaven), as well as some neuroscience evidence that all prayers and meditation affect the brains similarly.
Quoting from a book by NPR's religion reporter, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God, Parker reports that brain-scanning techniques have shown that, whether one is a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim, the brain reacts to focused prayer and meditation much in the same way. She concludes that "spiritual experience is a human phenomenon, not a religious one."
I'm sure there will be arguments from the other side, saying that brain activity has nothing to do with a concept of God. But it is an interesting piece of information that raises questions for some and confirms long-held ideas for others.
Ralph
Graham was dis-invited from participating in the Pentagon's observance of the NDP (why they have one is another question) because of prior statements he has made critical of Islam. He is not backing down; and, unlike his more famous father, he is not diplomatic about his belief in the exclusiveness of the Christian route to heaven.
According to Parker,
Graham's offense was expressing his belief that only Christians have God's ear, that Islam is evil, and that Muslims and Hindus don't pray to the same God he does. . . . We are fooling ourselves if we think we can have some big kumbaya service and all hold hands and it's all going to get better in this world. It's not going to get better."Parker's asks: then what is the point of a National Day of Prayer?
For Graham, efforts at ecumenicism are wasted; only Christian prayers are heard by God. And no amount of cooperative spirit among people of various faiths is worthwhile. Only if they listen to him and accept his version of god would it be meaningful.
Doesn't this prove that his participation in a government sponsored day of prayer would be a violation of the non-establishment clause of the Constitution? And wasn't the Obama administration correct, then, in having him dis-invited?
Parker goes on the examine the changing views of religion in this country (nearly two-thirds of evangelicals under 35 believe non-Christians can go to heaven), as well as some neuroscience evidence that all prayers and meditation affect the brains similarly.
Quoting from a book by NPR's religion reporter, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God, Parker reports that brain-scanning techniques have shown that, whether one is a Sikh, a Catholic nun, a Buddhist monk or a Sufi Muslim, the brain reacts to focused prayer and meditation much in the same way. She concludes that "spiritual experience is a human phenomenon, not a religious one."
I'm sure there will be arguments from the other side, saying that brain activity has nothing to do with a concept of God. But it is an interesting piece of information that raises questions for some and confirms long-held ideas for others.
Ralph
Anti-gay activist plays with rentboy
Mickey Nardo followed the story of George Rekers thoroughly, and anyone who wants to know more can go to >1boringold man.com<. Besides the schadenfreud of seeing an antigay bigot get caught with a rentboy, for me the really significant thing is how much damage someone of his prominence has done to the safety and well-being of gay teens and adults, while hiding his own gay desires and activities in the closet.
Besides helping to found the Family Research Council, he has been a board member of NARTH, a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, a White House adviser; and he was paid over $100,000 in tax payer money by the states of Arkansas and Florida to give "expert" testimony in court cases. In the Florida case, the judge dismissed his testimony as not credible because of the lack of reliable scientific studies to support it.
Preachers uneducated in scientific method may actually believe some of the "junk science" they quote; but a "professor of neuroscience" has no excuse for peddling studies whose methodologies are so flawed as to make them meaningless -- especially in court at taxpayers expense.
Rachel Madow did the best job of skewering Rekers on her show, culminating in reading the letter that his "imitation" organization, the American College of Pediatricians, sent to every public high school principle in the country, urging them to tell parents of teens struggling with same-sex desire that it can be treated with therapy. Four days after the letter was mailed, Rekers himself left for his erotic-massage trip with the hunky rentboy.
Contradiction? No, Rekers denies that he himself is gay. He just needed help with his luggage, and besides he tried to convert the rentboy to accept Jesus and give up his homosexuality. Let's see, now, was that while he giving him the erotic nude massage? Then after the scandal broke Rekers emailed advice to his rentboy on how to handle the media inquiries, saying "I have been through this before." Wonder why he's been through it before, if he's not gay?
Rekers and his cohorts hope that people will confuse their 200 member American College of Pediatricians with the prestigious 16,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics, to give an aura of credibility to their scare tactics and mis-information. In contrast, the Academy has been at the fore-front of professional organizations in promoting the acceptance of gay youths and debunking the misguided attempts to change their sexual orientation through therapy.
This is far bigger than closeted gay congressmen who vote against gay rights, or nutty Kansas preachers who picket funerals. Rekers has been an influential crusader, one of the leading anti-gay-rights activists. For him to go down in flames (pun intended) can only advance the cause of exposing the anti-gay movement to cleansing fresh air.
Ralph
Besides helping to found the Family Research Council, he has been a board member of NARTH, a distinguished professor of neuropsychiatry at the University of South Carolina, a White House adviser; and he was paid over $100,000 in tax payer money by the states of Arkansas and Florida to give "expert" testimony in court cases. In the Florida case, the judge dismissed his testimony as not credible because of the lack of reliable scientific studies to support it.
Preachers uneducated in scientific method may actually believe some of the "junk science" they quote; but a "professor of neuroscience" has no excuse for peddling studies whose methodologies are so flawed as to make them meaningless -- especially in court at taxpayers expense.
Rachel Madow did the best job of skewering Rekers on her show, culminating in reading the letter that his "imitation" organization, the American College of Pediatricians, sent to every public high school principle in the country, urging them to tell parents of teens struggling with same-sex desire that it can be treated with therapy. Four days after the letter was mailed, Rekers himself left for his erotic-massage trip with the hunky rentboy.
Contradiction? No, Rekers denies that he himself is gay. He just needed help with his luggage, and besides he tried to convert the rentboy to accept Jesus and give up his homosexuality. Let's see, now, was that while he giving him the erotic nude massage? Then after the scandal broke Rekers emailed advice to his rentboy on how to handle the media inquiries, saying "I have been through this before." Wonder why he's been through it before, if he's not gay?
Rekers and his cohorts hope that people will confuse their 200 member American College of Pediatricians with the prestigious 16,000 member American Academy of Pediatrics, to give an aura of credibility to their scare tactics and mis-information. In contrast, the Academy has been at the fore-front of professional organizations in promoting the acceptance of gay youths and debunking the misguided attempts to change their sexual orientation through therapy.
This is far bigger than closeted gay congressmen who vote against gay rights, or nutty Kansas preachers who picket funerals. Rekers has been an influential crusader, one of the leading anti-gay-rights activists. For him to go down in flames (pun intended) can only advance the cause of exposing the anti-gay movement to cleansing fresh air.
Ralph
Back
I've been on a week's hiatus from ShrinkRap -- and, as usual, a lot has happened that cries out for comment. I probably won't catch up with it all, but here are a few short takes.
Well, maybe not so short.
Ralph
Well, maybe not so short.
Ralph
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