A Text Message for Republicans... http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=108356952517874&ref=mf Editor’s note – X rated language
April 15, 2010: Tea America http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-april-15-2010/tea-america
Have Republicans Been Out-Foxed? Some conservatives are beginning to question whether Fox News is good for their movement
By Eve Conant
© 2010 Newsweek
Apr 13, 2010
http://www.newsweek.com/id/236309
GOP Sen. Tom Coburn scored a perfect 100 on the American Conservative Union's rankings for lawmakers last year. That makes him one of the last people you'd expect to criticize what liberals see as the GOP's most notable media mouthpiece, Fox News, but that's exactly what he did at a recent town-hall meeting in Oklahoma. When an audience member fretted about going to prison for not buying health insurance, Coburn responded, "The intention is not to put anyone in jail. That makes for good TV on Fox, but that isn't the intention." When discussing disagreements with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, he described her as a " nice lady" and warned the jeering crowd to be civil and to get their news from more than one source: "Don't catch yourself being biased by Fox News that somebody is no good."
Coburn's calling out of Fox was notable precisely because it's rare for Fox and Republicans to find their messages out of sync. The image of Fox that one gets from liberal critics such as The Daily Show's Jon Stewart is that it parrots Republican talking points, pushes conservative ideas into the mainstream, and keeps the base animated. But some conservatives are asking whether the news channel has become too extreme and whether, by angering and agitating the base, it may be making it harder, rather than easier, for Republicans to win elections.
David Frum, a prominent conservative pundit and former speechwriter for George W. Bush, led the charge last month when he lambasted Republicans’ handling of health-care reform. In a piece about the health-care vote titled “Waterloo,” Frum wrote, "We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible…By mobilizing them with hysterical accusations and pseudo-information, overheated talk has made it impossible for representatives to represent and elected leaders to lead." On Nightline, Frum noted, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us, and now we're discovering we work for Fox…The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican Party."
A Fox News representative declined to comment for this story. Despite the criticism, Fox News is hardly suffering. It has seen its best quarter yet in terms of ratings, even as CNN suffers a steep decline in viewership At the National Press Club last week, Rupert Murdoch was asked if it was appropriate for Fox News to be promoting tea-party events, including—according to one questioner—one Fox business host's directing viewers to a tea-party Web site to buy merchandise. "No, I don't think we should be supporting the tea party, or any other party," Murdoch responded, adding that he would investigate the tea-party coverage.
Fox's promotion of tea-party protests might be a case in point. While publicizing anger at President Obama may have seemed to serve the GOP's short-term interests, there are now prominent Republican officeholders with strong chances in a general election, such as Charlie Crist and John McCain, battling in competitive primaries against tea-party favorites who might be less likely to win over Democrats and independents this fall.
Bruce Bartlett, a veteran of the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, notes that when Fox News first began airing, it presented itself as a counterweight to the left-leaning mainstream media, but as the mainstream media moved more to the center in recent years (CNN, for example,just hired prominent right-wing blogger Erick Erickson), Fox, to maintain its distance, moved further to the right. "I have no problem with a network that wears its politics on its sleeve," says Bartlett. "What bothers me is [Fox] pretends not to be that." With so many conservatives watching only Fox, says Bartlett, "people are wearing blinders; they hear no fact that conflicts with their world view. All day long their views are reinforced that Obama is a socialist crackpot."
And, as Coburn and others have recently learned, Republicans who challenge Fox may be picking a fight they cannot win. GOP Rep. Bob Inglis was booed by the crowd at a town-hall meeting in South Carolina last August when he suggested people turn off their TVs when Glenn Beck comes on. Beck's adoption of fringe claims seems to particularly irk moderate, establishment Republicans. "Bill O'Reilly might look like a clown compared to a traditional news anchor," says Bartlett, "but compared to Glenn Beck he looks like Edward R. Murrow."
Bartlett wonders if ultimately "an inherent conflict of interest is growing, in which the very success of Fox makes it harder for Republicans to get out of the echo chamber, to have arguments that go beyond their base, and to reach out to independents and Democrats who might vote for them."
At least one Republican seems unwilling to surrender to Fox just yet. John Hart, a Coburn spokesman, explained the senator's comments at that town-hall meeting and hardly backed off: "A lot of politicians are afraid of offending or alienating people who cater to their base. Coburn is one of the few people in Washington who says what he really believes." And, Hart added, "he wishes that other senators would spend more time on the floor and less time on talk shows."
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Are Catholics in denial as much as The Church?
Are Catholics in denial as much as The Church?
By Carlos T Mock, MD
April 16, 2010
Chicago, IL
I had a very troubling interchange with my sister, who is a practicing a Puerto Rican Catholic in Connecticut. The conversation started because a bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure. My sister is strongly opposed to the law and, as we talked, she accused The New York Times of starting a smear campaign against the Catholic Church. I pointed out to her that this was not a vendetta from the NYT against the church. The article that talked about the law in CT was written by CNN News. I even brought up an editorial from the Financial Times which stated: “The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is ‘hopelessly inadequate’. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times. Serious sexual crimes against defenseless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.”
I tried to appeal to her motherly instincts—”you have young children, don’t you want them protected from pedophiles?” Her answer was that: “If you go to the Bridgeport website (her parish) and look under ‘safe environments’ you will see exactly how the Connecticut church is protecting our children.”
I pointed out to her that rules have been in place for many years but that they don’t get enforced—she went ballistic: “How quickly you dismiss the efforts of others. And how harsh is your sentence. The Church is not perfect and the people in it are not either. But, from my perspective, I believe their effort is sincere. Connecticut is a very liberal state and the legislature has a slant specifically against the Catholic Church. The state has no business in meddling with the ‘sanctity’ of The Church”
I am still baffled by her response. When Catholics are willing to put the welfare and reputation of the Church ahead of their own children—does this constitute brainwashing? I am a Christian, not a Catholic—I was tortured by The Church for my sexual views. As I grew up in San Juan, I saw them abuse children in my Catholic High School and was always too afraid to talk for fear of being expelled.
When I came out as a gay adult, this same pious sister asked me to give up homosexual sex because Christ died on the cross for my sins. My mother disowned me, I’m no longer in her will. Yet, my mother married a divorced man, so she lived in adultery most of her adult life, and my sister married while pregnant. See a pattern?
Unfortunately I grew up with the Catholic Church's values, so I can only feel remorse as I watch the spectacle of the hypocrisy in which The Church finds itself embroiled. As a gay man, I strongly believe that the cover-up of child molester priests—either heterosexual or homosexual—has no place in The Church.
True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. I find the letter to be as hollow as the institution of The Church itself. The letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold—and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing what is in their view an attempt to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.
To put it in simple to understand words: “This is an authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality—all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped. They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one—at least on earth.”
At first, I was puzzled by Pope Benedict’s response. Now, I think I understand. The pontiff is a globalizer. He can feel the world’s geopolitical plates shifting. The dismal reality is that the Pope does not care. If the eventual choice is one between the implosion of the church in the west and a dilution of the blind obedience he sees as an anchor of papal authority, Pope Benedict is ready to stand in the ruins. The thread that runs through all this—the reactionary dogma and the refusal to admit any complicity in the cover-ups—is a willingness to sacrifice truth to an unthinking, and futile, defense of the authority of the church. It is my condemnation for being a practicing gay against Church doctrine, and my sister’s salvation, because she confessed her premarital sex and got absolution.
Catholicism is booming in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europeans and North Americans now number only 350m in a church of some 1.2bn. About two-thirds of Catholics live in what is the emerging world—about 400m of them in Latin America. Brazil boasts twice as many communicants as Italy. Mexico and the Philippines have larger congregations than Germany or France.
This perhaps is where Pope Benedict’s gaze is fixed. Catholics in the emerging nations, after all, have been largely untroubled by the scandal that has rocked his authority in the west. They are less inclined to challenge the pontiff’s moral absolutism and his demand for unquestioning obedience to Rome—just look at my mother and sister.
The future lies beyond the decadent materialism and moral bankruptcy of the richest societies. In the manner of a corporate executive reaping the rewards of globalization, the pontiff is gathering new recruits in the spiritual markets of the emerging world. The pews may gather dust in Europe and the US, but elsewhere—albeit for a few skeptics—the future of The Church is secure and untouched by any laws of man. If they have to sacrifice a few children, so be it!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Carlos T Mock, MD
April 16, 2010
Chicago, IL
I had a very troubling interchange with my sister, who is a practicing a Puerto Rican Catholic in Connecticut. The conversation started because a bill in Connecticut's legislature that would remove the statute of limitations on child sexual abuse cases has sparked a fervent response from the state's Roman Catholic bishops, who released a letter to parishioners Saturday imploring them to oppose the measure. My sister is strongly opposed to the law and, as we talked, she accused The New York Times of starting a smear campaign against the Catholic Church. I pointed out to her that this was not a vendetta from the NYT against the church. The article that talked about the law in CT was written by CNN News. I even brought up an editorial from the Financial Times which stated: “The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is ‘hopelessly inadequate’. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times. Serious sexual crimes against defenseless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.”
I tried to appeal to her motherly instincts—”you have young children, don’t you want them protected from pedophiles?” Her answer was that: “If you go to the Bridgeport website (her parish) and look under ‘safe environments’ you will see exactly how the Connecticut church is protecting our children.”
I pointed out to her that rules have been in place for many years but that they don’t get enforced—she went ballistic: “How quickly you dismiss the efforts of others. And how harsh is your sentence. The Church is not perfect and the people in it are not either. But, from my perspective, I believe their effort is sincere. Connecticut is a very liberal state and the legislature has a slant specifically against the Catholic Church. The state has no business in meddling with the ‘sanctity’ of The Church”
I am still baffled by her response. When Catholics are willing to put the welfare and reputation of the Church ahead of their own children—does this constitute brainwashing? I am a Christian, not a Catholic—I was tortured by The Church for my sexual views. As I grew up in San Juan, I saw them abuse children in my Catholic High School and was always too afraid to talk for fear of being expelled.
When I came out as a gay adult, this same pious sister asked me to give up homosexual sex because Christ died on the cross for my sins. My mother disowned me, I’m no longer in her will. Yet, my mother married a divorced man, so she lived in adultery most of her adult life, and my sister married while pregnant. See a pattern?
Unfortunately I grew up with the Catholic Church's values, so I can only feel remorse as I watch the spectacle of the hypocrisy in which The Church finds itself embroiled. As a gay man, I strongly believe that the cover-up of child molester priests—either heterosexual or homosexual—has no place in The Church.
True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. I find the letter to be as hollow as the institution of The Church itself. The letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold—and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing what is in their view an attempt to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.
To put it in simple to understand words: “This is an authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality—all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped. They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one—at least on earth.”
At first, I was puzzled by Pope Benedict’s response. Now, I think I understand. The pontiff is a globalizer. He can feel the world’s geopolitical plates shifting. The dismal reality is that the Pope does not care. If the eventual choice is one between the implosion of the church in the west and a dilution of the blind obedience he sees as an anchor of papal authority, Pope Benedict is ready to stand in the ruins. The thread that runs through all this—the reactionary dogma and the refusal to admit any complicity in the cover-ups—is a willingness to sacrifice truth to an unthinking, and futile, defense of the authority of the church. It is my condemnation for being a practicing gay against Church doctrine, and my sister’s salvation, because she confessed her premarital sex and got absolution.
Catholicism is booming in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europeans and North Americans now number only 350m in a church of some 1.2bn. About two-thirds of Catholics live in what is the emerging world—about 400m of them in Latin America. Brazil boasts twice as many communicants as Italy. Mexico and the Philippines have larger congregations than Germany or France.
This perhaps is where Pope Benedict’s gaze is fixed. Catholics in the emerging nations, after all, have been largely untroubled by the scandal that has rocked his authority in the west. They are less inclined to challenge the pontiff’s moral absolutism and his demand for unquestioning obedience to Rome—just look at my mother and sister.
The future lies beyond the decadent materialism and moral bankruptcy of the richest societies. In the manner of a corporate executive reaping the rewards of globalization, the pontiff is gathering new recruits in the spiritual markets of the emerging world. The pews may gather dust in Europe and the US, but elsewhere—albeit for a few skeptics—the future of The Church is secure and untouched by any laws of man. If they have to sacrifice a few children, so be it!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
The Catholic church Pedophilia Scandal - The forgotten victims
The Catholic church Pedophilia Scandal - The forgotten victims
By Carlos T Mock, MD
April 3, 2010
I was never molested by a priest.
To this day I feel inadequate that I did not meet the criteria—it feels like my biggest failure in life.
I grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I went to a Catholic High School. Late in my junior year I had a very public crush on a classmate. I confessed it to a priest—unbeknownst to me he was gay and reveled in all the gory details.
After that, I was invited to the night parties at the high school swimming pool. There was lots of sex going on between priests and students, but I was too afraid to act on my impulses. I was on the swimming team, so I developed a crush on a young Jesuit seminarian who was also a swimmer. At the parties, we both spent time swimming together. Let’s call him Larry for sake of this article. He was six foot one, dark straight hair that he wore short and preppy. He had a Greek nose—he bragged to me that it was a “perfect” nose—he had done sexual favors to the head of the order to have it shaped by a plastic surgeon. He had the deepest blue eyes—those that looked into your soul and immediately unarmed you. To this day, those eyes haunt me.
At the pool, we had hugged and developed some sort of rapport. One night, he invited me to come to his residence for a drink. I drove my mother’s beaten up station wagon. Once inside his small quarters, he offered me a drink. I told him I was in love with him and that I wanted to hug and kiss him. Abruptly, he stopped the conversation and asked me to drive him to Old San Juan. I was more than happy to oblige, excited that he was finally paying attention to me.
We went to a gay bar—of course I did not know that ahead of time. He ordered rum and cokes for both of us and, about five minutes into the conversation, he excused himself and disappeared to a back room. I got plenty of attention, either because of sympathy, or pity—since everyone in the bar saw what happened; but I had no idea what was going on and I was afraid to leave the bar without my “friend.” Finally, I walked inside the dark room with a lit match and saw him having oral sex with several people. I started to cry and told him I was going home. I ran out. He followed me and asked for a ride back, which I obliged. All the way home, not a word was spoken. I dropped him back at the seminary and cried for days—never understanding what I had done wrong. We never talked to each other again, and I never went back to the swimming pool parties.
I came out as a gay man at the age of 23 in New York City while I was doing electives in my senior year of medical school. I was helped by my uncle Henry and his lover, Peter, who built my damaged self esteem by hosting parties in their wonderful flat in the Upper West Side in Manhattan. At every party they held, they made sure I slept with the boy of my choice.
Peter even came up with the idea to write a questionnaire for people who rejected me, so I could figure out why I was being rejected and avoid future Larry’s. (I published the questionnaire in my first book: Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual odyssey.) Slowly the damage was repaired. My confidence grew—I now was able to go to any man and seduce him. However, in all the faces attached to the bodies I had conquered, I was looking for Larry’s eyes. I could not get them out of my head.
Few people pay much attention to the importance of eyes when it comes to seduction. To me, eyes are essential, just like music to a good opera, or the image captured in a painting—I needed to find Larry’s eyes. I had left my soul in there! I believe that I slept with everyone available in New York during my three month stay there but I never found eyes like Larry’s.
Finally I found Larry’s eyes in my present lover—the day we met, I knew he had been hurt in his youth just as badly as I was. That’s why we connected immediately. I finally got my soul back at age 44. Ten years together they are still there comforting me and guiding me.
The funny thing is that it was always the straight boys who had sex with the priests. Was I not good enough? Was I a burden? Perhaps because they knew I would not keep my mouth shut? I think the Church needs to address the needs of those of us who never made the cut and were crushed by their rejections. I’ve often thought of starting a support group—as I said I was never molested by a priest.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He's had several OP-Ed published at the Chicago Tribune. Inducted in the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame October 18th, 2007
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Carlos T Mock, MD
April 3, 2010
I was never molested by a priest.
To this day I feel inadequate that I did not meet the criteria—it feels like my biggest failure in life.
I grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. I went to a Catholic High School. Late in my junior year I had a very public crush on a classmate. I confessed it to a priest—unbeknownst to me he was gay and reveled in all the gory details.
After that, I was invited to the night parties at the high school swimming pool. There was lots of sex going on between priests and students, but I was too afraid to act on my impulses. I was on the swimming team, so I developed a crush on a young Jesuit seminarian who was also a swimmer. At the parties, we both spent time swimming together. Let’s call him Larry for sake of this article. He was six foot one, dark straight hair that he wore short and preppy. He had a Greek nose—he bragged to me that it was a “perfect” nose—he had done sexual favors to the head of the order to have it shaped by a plastic surgeon. He had the deepest blue eyes—those that looked into your soul and immediately unarmed you. To this day, those eyes haunt me.
At the pool, we had hugged and developed some sort of rapport. One night, he invited me to come to his residence for a drink. I drove my mother’s beaten up station wagon. Once inside his small quarters, he offered me a drink. I told him I was in love with him and that I wanted to hug and kiss him. Abruptly, he stopped the conversation and asked me to drive him to Old San Juan. I was more than happy to oblige, excited that he was finally paying attention to me.
We went to a gay bar—of course I did not know that ahead of time. He ordered rum and cokes for both of us and, about five minutes into the conversation, he excused himself and disappeared to a back room. I got plenty of attention, either because of sympathy, or pity—since everyone in the bar saw what happened; but I had no idea what was going on and I was afraid to leave the bar without my “friend.” Finally, I walked inside the dark room with a lit match and saw him having oral sex with several people. I started to cry and told him I was going home. I ran out. He followed me and asked for a ride back, which I obliged. All the way home, not a word was spoken. I dropped him back at the seminary and cried for days—never understanding what I had done wrong. We never talked to each other again, and I never went back to the swimming pool parties.
I came out as a gay man at the age of 23 in New York City while I was doing electives in my senior year of medical school. I was helped by my uncle Henry and his lover, Peter, who built my damaged self esteem by hosting parties in their wonderful flat in the Upper West Side in Manhattan. At every party they held, they made sure I slept with the boy of my choice.
Peter even came up with the idea to write a questionnaire for people who rejected me, so I could figure out why I was being rejected and avoid future Larry’s. (I published the questionnaire in my first book: Borrowing Time: A Latino Sexual odyssey.) Slowly the damage was repaired. My confidence grew—I now was able to go to any man and seduce him. However, in all the faces attached to the bodies I had conquered, I was looking for Larry’s eyes. I could not get them out of my head.
Few people pay much attention to the importance of eyes when it comes to seduction. To me, eyes are essential, just like music to a good opera, or the image captured in a painting—I needed to find Larry’s eyes. I had left my soul in there! I believe that I slept with everyone available in New York during my three month stay there but I never found eyes like Larry’s.
Finally I found Larry’s eyes in my present lover—the day we met, I knew he had been hurt in his youth just as badly as I was. That’s why we connected immediately. I finally got my soul back at age 44. Ten years together they are still there comforting me and guiding me.
The funny thing is that it was always the straight boys who had sex with the priests. Was I not good enough? Was I a burden? Perhaps because they knew I would not keep my mouth shut? I think the Church needs to address the needs of those of us who never made the cut and were crushed by their rejections. I’ve often thought of starting a support group—as I said I was never molested by a priest.
Dr. Carlos T Mock is a native Puerto Rican who resides in Chicago, IL and Three Oaks, MI. He has published four books and is the GLBT Editor for Floricanto Press in Berkley, CA. He contributes columns regularly to Windy City Times in Chicago, Ambiente Magazine in Miami, Camp Newspaper in Kansas City. He's had several OP-Ed published at the Chicago Tribune. Inducted in the Chicago Gay & Lesbian Hall of Fame October 18th, 2007
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
March 30, 2010: 2 Girls 1 GOP/Lady and the Gramps/This, from the man who defeated Cynthia McKinney - Daily Show
March 30, 2010: 2 Girls 1 GOP http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-30-2010/2-girls-1-gop
March 30, 2010: Lady and the Gramps http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-30-2010/lady-and-the-gramps
This, from the man who defeated Cynthia McKinney …http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg&feature=player_embedded
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
March 30, 2010: Lady and the Gramps http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-30-2010/lady-and-the-gramps
This, from the man who defeated Cynthia McKinney …http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zNZczIgVXjg&feature=player_embedded
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Vatican’s evasions on child abuse/Pope Benedict has turned his back on a church in crisis
"Pope Opera" Daily Show http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-april-7-2010/pope-opera
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Vatican’s evasions on child abuse
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 2 2010 19:29. Last updated: April 2 2010 19:29.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb61ca12-3e7d-11df-a706-00144feabdc0.html
The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is “hopelessly inadequate”. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times.
Serious sexual crimes against defenceless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.
True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. There is no reason to doubt his contrition or his anguish. But, even though the letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold – and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. This week, clerical documents going back nearly 50 years discussing “problem priests” were produced in the US. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing attempts to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.
This is all of a piece with the authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality – all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped.
They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one – at least on earth.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope was the Church’s chief enforcer as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005. It seems he was better at pursuing dissident theologians than child molesters. By his own lights, he has acted honourably in protecting the Church from scandal. That will not do. The Church must account fully and transparently for these abuses of minors, in co-operation with the courts where there are well-founded charges. That is how to restore the honour of the Church.
Pope Benedict has turned his back on a church in crisis
By Philip Stephens
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 15 2010 20:11 | Last updated: April 15 2010 20:11 http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2010/04/pope-benedict-has-turned-his-back-on.html
For a time I was puzzled by Pope Benedict’s response to the crisis in the Catholic church. We might disagree about the course of Catholicism. In uncharitable moments, I might mutter that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was politician as much as priest; his piety merged with ambition some time ago. Yet the Pope indisputably was highly intelligent. Surely he could see what was happening.
Now, I think I understand. The pontiff is a globaliser. He can feel the world’s geopolitical plates shifting. He grasps as well as any politician or business leader that the west has had its day. The opportunities to spread the gospel lie elsewhere – in societies more respectful of authority and less questioning of past crimes.
Pope Benedict, after all, cannot be blind to the crisis of faith among his flock in Europe and North America. He must have known as well as anyone else how many tens of millions had walked away even before the revelations of clerical child abuse and episcopal cover-ups.
He has seen what has happened in Ireland where unerring fealty to Rome has given way to revulsion and disillusionment. He knows seminaries across Europe are empty, and Catholicism in the US convulsed.
No, the dismal reality, I now think, is that the Pope does not care – or at least does not care enough to bend from the unflinching defence of temporal power that described his personal path to the throne of St Peter. If the eventual choice is one between the implosion of the church in the west and a dilution of the blind obedience he sees as an anchor of papal authority, Pope Benedict is ready to stand in the ruins.
The future lies beyond the decadent materialism and moral bankruptcy of the richest societies. In the manner of a corporate executive reaping the rewards of globalisation, the pontiff is gathering new recruits in the spiritual markets of the emerging world. The pews may gather dust in Europe and the US, but elsewhere – albeit for obvious reasons with the exception of China – business is booming.
The storm engulfing the Vatican predates the latest allegations of paedophilia and the efforts at concealment in the church’s high echelons. Pope Benedict has been waging a war against liberal Catholicism for many decades. What has happened now is that the backlash against his doctrinal absolutism has merged with growing disgust about the handling of the controversy over paedophile priests.
As a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope warned anyone who challenged the authority of the Holy See that they were putting themselves outside of the church. Man-made laws – about personal relationships, contraception or clerical celibacy – were elevated into sacred truths. Those who challenged this self-serving primitivism were told to take their faith elsewhere.
Pope Benedict dates the beginning of the church’s decline to the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s; to the passing of the age of deference and the concomitant challenge to traditional authority. It was the secularisation of society, he once said, that had seen Catholic ethics and morals fall into grave decline.
This message was evident in his recent pastoral letter to the church in Ireland. The stated purpose of the address was to express “shame and remorse” about the abuse of Irish children by predator priests. It did so with sincerity. Yet Pope Benedict felt compelled to make another connection – this time between paedophilia among the clergy and the “rapid transformation and secularisation of Irish society”. One problem, he implied, had been the liberalising instincts of the second Vatican Council.
The absurdity of this supposed link is exposed by a simple chronology. Most of the crimes against children uncovered by investigations in Ireland long pre-dated that country’s embrace of what the Pope sees as a lethal moral relativism. To the contrary, it was the opening of Irish society that exposed the sins that had been inflicted on its children.
The Vatican narrative casts the church as victim – as an institution assailed by secularism, the media, and just about everyone else. Thus the Pope’s insistence that his faith will shield him from the “petty gossip of dominant opinion”. One close adviser has compared recent criticism to anti-semitism. Others, just as scandalously, have sought to blame the crisis on Jews and homosexuals. How much further can they fall?
The thread that runs through all this – the reactionary dogma and the refusal to admit any complicity in the cover-ups – is a willingness to sacrifice truth to an unthinking, and futile, defence of the authority of the church.
The right response would be to abandon victimhood and extend to all communicants the apology offered to Ireland’s Catholics. Even the authority of an absolute monarch rests ultimately on legitimacy. The Vatican should abandon the pretence that someone other than the church is responsible by opening the Vatican’s secret archives to full public scrutiny.
But this is a step too far for the present occupant of the Holy See. John Allen, a biographer of Pope Benedict and analyst for the US National Catholic Reporter, recently told the FT’s Rome correspondent that the Holy Father was untroubled by crises of the moment because he had the “great gift of thinking in terms of centuries”.
Mr Allen, as it happens, has also charted the shift in the church’s demographic centre of gravity. Catholicism is booming in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europeans and North Americans, Mr Allen calculates, now number only 350m in a church of some 1.2bn. About two-thirds of Catholics live in what is the emerging world – about 400m of them in Latin America. Brazil boasts twice as many communicants as Italy. Mexico and the Philippines have larger congregations than Germany or France.
This perhaps is where Pope Benedict’s gaze is fixed. Catholics in the emerging nations, after all, have been largely untroubled by the scandal that has rocked his authority in the west. They are less inclined to challenge the pontiff’s moral absolutism and his demand for unquestioning obedience to Rome.
So what of the Catholics left behind in a declining west? Many will join those who have already departed. Others will conclude that Pope Benedict can rob them of their church, but not of their faith.
Send your comments to philip.stephens@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/philipstephens
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Financial Times Editorial Comment: Vatican’s evasions on child abuse
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 2 2010 19:29. Last updated: April 2 2010 19:29.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/bb61ca12-3e7d-11df-a706-00144feabdc0.html
The response of the Roman Catholic Church to the wave of shameful child abuse revelations engulfing it across Europe and the US is “hopelessly inadequate”. That is the view of Diarmuid Martin, Archbishop of Dublin, who has worked courageously to bring the history of abuse in the Irish Church into the open. It is also the view of the Financial Times.
Serious sexual crimes against defenceless children by priests entrusted with their care are an outrageous crime. The betrayal is deepened by a pattern of covering up for these child molesters, who were in some instances left free to keep preying on their charges. The responsibility for this goes to the top: not only of local hierarchies but to the Vatican itself.
True, Pope Benedict last month issued an unprecedented apology in a letter to the Irish Church. There is no reason to doubt his contrition or his anguish. But, even though the letter promised an investigation, it stopped substantially short of a mea culpa. Instead, it appeared to blame “secularism” for the phenomenon of child abuse. This is intellectually dishonest. The pattern of abuse was detectable in Ireland long before an identifiably secular lifestyle took hold – and when Church authority went virtually unquestioned. This week, clerical documents going back nearly 50 years discussing “problem priests” were produced in the US. The Vatican is in denial, denouncing attempts to discredit the Church and to smear the Pope.
This is all of a piece with the authoritarian isolation in which Benedict and his predecessor, John Paul II, have lived, surrounded by like-minded dogmatics possessed of their infallible truth. They have rolled back the reform process set in train by the Second Vatican Council of 1962-1965. With flinty doctrinal rigidity they have shut down debate on married priests and celibacy, the ordination of women, sexual relations outside marriage and homosexuality – all issues germane to the scandal in which they are now enveloped.
They expect unquestioned obedience to their authority, and in the case of these crimes, they imposed absolute secrecy and resisted co-operation with the properly constituted civil authorities. In practice, that means being accountable to no one – at least on earth.
As Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, the Pope was the Church’s chief enforcer as Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith from 1981 to 2005. It seems he was better at pursuing dissident theologians than child molesters. By his own lights, he has acted honourably in protecting the Church from scandal. That will not do. The Church must account fully and transparently for these abuses of minors, in co-operation with the courts where there are well-founded charges. That is how to restore the honour of the Church.
Pope Benedict has turned his back on a church in crisis
By Philip Stephens
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010
Published: April 15 2010 20:11 | Last updated: April 15 2010 20:11 http://iretiredfromnewsletters.blogspot.com/2010/04/pope-benedict-has-turned-his-back-on.html
For a time I was puzzled by Pope Benedict’s response to the crisis in the Catholic church. We might disagree about the course of Catholicism. In uncharitable moments, I might mutter that the former Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger was politician as much as priest; his piety merged with ambition some time ago. Yet the Pope indisputably was highly intelligent. Surely he could see what was happening.
Now, I think I understand. The pontiff is a globaliser. He can feel the world’s geopolitical plates shifting. He grasps as well as any politician or business leader that the west has had its day. The opportunities to spread the gospel lie elsewhere – in societies more respectful of authority and less questioning of past crimes.
Pope Benedict, after all, cannot be blind to the crisis of faith among his flock in Europe and North America. He must have known as well as anyone else how many tens of millions had walked away even before the revelations of clerical child abuse and episcopal cover-ups.
He has seen what has happened in Ireland where unerring fealty to Rome has given way to revulsion and disillusionment. He knows seminaries across Europe are empty, and Catholicism in the US convulsed.
No, the dismal reality, I now think, is that the Pope does not care – or at least does not care enough to bend from the unflinching defence of temporal power that described his personal path to the throne of St Peter. If the eventual choice is one between the implosion of the church in the west and a dilution of the blind obedience he sees as an anchor of papal authority, Pope Benedict is ready to stand in the ruins.
The future lies beyond the decadent materialism and moral bankruptcy of the richest societies. In the manner of a corporate executive reaping the rewards of globalisation, the pontiff is gathering new recruits in the spiritual markets of the emerging world. The pews may gather dust in Europe and the US, but elsewhere – albeit for obvious reasons with the exception of China – business is booming.
The storm engulfing the Vatican predates the latest allegations of paedophilia and the efforts at concealment in the church’s high echelons. Pope Benedict has been waging a war against liberal Catholicism for many decades. What has happened now is that the backlash against his doctrinal absolutism has merged with growing disgust about the handling of the controversy over paedophile priests.
As a cardinal and prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the Pope warned anyone who challenged the authority of the Holy See that they were putting themselves outside of the church. Man-made laws – about personal relationships, contraception or clerical celibacy – were elevated into sacred truths. Those who challenged this self-serving primitivism were told to take their faith elsewhere.
Pope Benedict dates the beginning of the church’s decline to the social and sexual revolutions of the 1960s; to the passing of the age of deference and the concomitant challenge to traditional authority. It was the secularisation of society, he once said, that had seen Catholic ethics and morals fall into grave decline.
This message was evident in his recent pastoral letter to the church in Ireland. The stated purpose of the address was to express “shame and remorse” about the abuse of Irish children by predator priests. It did so with sincerity. Yet Pope Benedict felt compelled to make another connection – this time between paedophilia among the clergy and the “rapid transformation and secularisation of Irish society”. One problem, he implied, had been the liberalising instincts of the second Vatican Council.
The absurdity of this supposed link is exposed by a simple chronology. Most of the crimes against children uncovered by investigations in Ireland long pre-dated that country’s embrace of what the Pope sees as a lethal moral relativism. To the contrary, it was the opening of Irish society that exposed the sins that had been inflicted on its children.
The Vatican narrative casts the church as victim – as an institution assailed by secularism, the media, and just about everyone else. Thus the Pope’s insistence that his faith will shield him from the “petty gossip of dominant opinion”. One close adviser has compared recent criticism to anti-semitism. Others, just as scandalously, have sought to blame the crisis on Jews and homosexuals. How much further can they fall?
The thread that runs through all this – the reactionary dogma and the refusal to admit any complicity in the cover-ups – is a willingness to sacrifice truth to an unthinking, and futile, defence of the authority of the church.
The right response would be to abandon victimhood and extend to all communicants the apology offered to Ireland’s Catholics. Even the authority of an absolute monarch rests ultimately on legitimacy. The Vatican should abandon the pretence that someone other than the church is responsible by opening the Vatican’s secret archives to full public scrutiny.
But this is a step too far for the present occupant of the Holy See. John Allen, a biographer of Pope Benedict and analyst for the US National Catholic Reporter, recently told the FT’s Rome correspondent that the Holy Father was untroubled by crises of the moment because he had the “great gift of thinking in terms of centuries”.
Mr Allen, as it happens, has also charted the shift in the church’s demographic centre of gravity. Catholicism is booming in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Europeans and North Americans, Mr Allen calculates, now number only 350m in a church of some 1.2bn. About two-thirds of Catholics live in what is the emerging world – about 400m of them in Latin America. Brazil boasts twice as many communicants as Italy. Mexico and the Philippines have larger congregations than Germany or France.
This perhaps is where Pope Benedict’s gaze is fixed. Catholics in the emerging nations, after all, have been largely untroubled by the scandal that has rocked his authority in the west. They are less inclined to challenge the pontiff’s moral absolutism and his demand for unquestioning obedience to Rome.
So what of the Catholics left behind in a declining west? Many will join those who have already departed. Others will conclude that Pope Benedict can rob them of their church, but not of their faith.
Send your comments to philip.stephens@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/philipstephens
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Get Equal: Major New LGBT Civil Rights Organization Formed/Is This The Birth Of A Civil Rights Movement....?
Get Equal: Major New LGBT Civil Rights Organization Formed
Copyright by David Mixner
Mar 17, 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/03/get-equal-major-new-lgbt-civil-rights-organization-formed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
On Monday, the LGBT community saw a major new civil rights organization formed in our struggle for freedom.
Kip and robin at march Kip Williams and Robin McGeehee, Co-chairs of the National Equality March in October, announced the formation of"Get Equal." The talented organizers have spent months since the March on Washington, carefully putting together an effective national network of activists to battle for civil rights for the LGBT community. They have traveled across the country, held retreats with young leaders and worked with march participants to create an entity that will fill the vacuum of the absence of a 'direct action' organization in our movement.
In many ways, this is the first major "Prop 8 Generation" to emerge on the national level. Williams and McGeehee (photograph) have already proved they are two of the new bright young talents to emerge from that generation. In just two days, over 2,500 young activists have joined the group. Many expect Get Equal to have significant impact on the tactical direction of the LGBT civil rights movement.
You can sign up for this new organization by going to the"Get Equal Facebook Page" or to their website. Don't forget to stop and check out their amazing 'store'.
Without a doubt it is one of the largest organizations to form outside the Beltway of Washington, DC.
In their press release this past Monday they stated:
Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBTQ community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality and to hold accountable those who stand in the way.
"All over the country we are under attack," said McGehee. "From the recent actions of the Attorney General in Virginia to strip away protections for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people on college and university campuses to the young lesbian student in Mississippi who is being denied the right to take her date to the prom. Nearly, every day there is a new story, but the subject is always the same: we are being bullied. We are no longer willing to sit back and wait - we want change now."
Get Equal GetEQUAL's organization model is based first and foremost on empowerment. The organization will provide vehicles for people to take action around key moments and connect the narrative of those moments into a powerful movement for change. Tactics will be multifaceted, including centralized online campaigns that build up and empower the LGBTQ and allied national base, and coordinated offline actions that allow people to collectively take to the streets.
"When properly served, we believe these people can create a groundswell of energy that will fundamentally change the current political dynamic, restrict support for those who stand in the way of full equality, and embolden those who want to do the right thing," said Williams. "No longer must we settle for empty promises while our young commit suicide, our rights are stripped away at the ballot box, and we are treated as second class citizens. The time has come to unequivocally say that we are more than a political movement � we are a civil rights movement."
Is This The Birth Of A Civil Rights Movement....?
Copyright by David Mixner
Mar 19, 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/03/is-this-the-birth-of-a-civil-rights-movement.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
There will be temptations within the LGBT community to have decisive and strong opinions on the effectiveness of the campaign of civil disobedience launched by GetEqual.org in Washington, DC and San Francisco. Like a wildfire, the news of the arrests in front of the White House and the occupation of both of Speaker Pelosi's offices spread across the Internet and major blogs. The images were startlingly powerful with two soldiers, each in a crucified position, chained to the fence of the White House willing to bear great sacrifice for this community.
Are these the beginning stages of a new civil rights movement? Are we willing to escalate our tactics in order to press those in power to show leadership and demand our freedom? I honestly don't know. But I have hope. I have hope that over the next months these initial actions will build to a modern day civil rights movement that is as unique as our community. The stirring for non-violent civil disobedience has been building since the National Equality March late last year. Most of it has originated within the ranks of our youth. Their impatience is a powerful message that the failure to make our freedom a priority in Washington is just no longer acceptable.
As I write this, Lt. Dan Choi and Captain Jim Pietrangelo are still in jail. GetEqual.org CoChair Robin Pelosio McGeehee has been released from jail. Kip Williams and those who have occupied Pelosi's office have been arrested. Kip is the other CoChair of GetEqual.org.
Getting arrested in uniform is serious business with real consequences. These men give new definition to courage and bravery in our community. Dan could face a Court Martial and military prison. I am, at this time, not sure of Captain's Pietrangelo status. Having visited at length with Dan Choi on the phone before he made his fateful decision, I was totally comfortable that he understood the consequences and was willing to bear this burden on behalf of us. Anyone who belittles their sacrifice, even if they disagree with their tactics, belittle bravery and honor.
Pelosi22 Not only was their message to the decision makers in Washington but it was to all of us as well. Hopefully their acts of sacrifice will inspire all of us to make greater efforts for our own freedom. Clearly what has been happening up to now is simply not enough. Robin McGeehee upon being arrested shouted, "It is time to fight back" and I couldn't agree with her more. My educated guess, based on near 50 years of activism, is that we are indeed seeing the beginning stages of a new civil rights movement. With our young leading the way with courage, conviction and honor, By autumn we might very well see non-violent civil disobedience on behalf of LGBT freedom occurring in most states.
When I struggle to find the words why this is important and why these young brave leaders from GetEqual should be heard, I hit a dead end. Then Marylouise Oates reminded me of Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" and that I didn't have to create new words. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr still resonate today for all those around the world struggling against oppression. The greatest honor I can bestow upon these bright young minds is to put their actions in context with Dr. King's words.
For those of you who view their actions as ineffective, grandstanding or even ego-driven, I ask you to listen carefully to these words written by Dr. King in "The Letters From A Birmingham Jail":
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.......
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro (LGBT) with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.
Many have said to me that civil disobedience is not the way. King said,
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham(Washington and San Francisco). But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.,....
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all...
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
And of course there are the apostles who caution us to wait, insist now is not the time and predict we can only hurt ourselves by being forceful in our actions and demands for freedom. Listen carefully to these words. Please savor them carefully:
...who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro (LGBT) to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro (LGBT) passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
These dedicated, brave and inspirational protesters who came of age yesterday have my unequivocal support. No longer will I be silent in the face of this growing injustice. Whether they are the beginning of a new wave and new tactics for this community has yet to be seen. This much I do know: I plan on giving money, signing up and supporting GetEqual.org to see where it leads us. They have proven to me they deserve a chance. After all, eighteen years later we still have "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". What are we waiting for?
The issue isn't just DADT, it is freedom for LGBT people. The issue is full and complete equality. The time is now. In fact, it is long overdue. As Dr. King said:
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
Thanks to Pams House Blend for the Pictures and Omar Clarke of GetEqual.org. They are greatly appreciated. Pam has the scope all the time!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Copyright by David Mixner
Mar 17, 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/03/get-equal-major-new-lgbt-civil-rights-organization-formed.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
On Monday, the LGBT community saw a major new civil rights organization formed in our struggle for freedom.
Kip and robin at march Kip Williams and Robin McGeehee, Co-chairs of the National Equality March in October, announced the formation of"Get Equal." The talented organizers have spent months since the March on Washington, carefully putting together an effective national network of activists to battle for civil rights for the LGBT community. They have traveled across the country, held retreats with young leaders and worked with march participants to create an entity that will fill the vacuum of the absence of a 'direct action' organization in our movement.
In many ways, this is the first major "Prop 8 Generation" to emerge on the national level. Williams and McGeehee (photograph) have already proved they are two of the new bright young talents to emerge from that generation. In just two days, over 2,500 young activists have joined the group. Many expect Get Equal to have significant impact on the tactical direction of the LGBT civil rights movement.
You can sign up for this new organization by going to the"Get Equal Facebook Page" or to their website. Don't forget to stop and check out their amazing 'store'.
Without a doubt it is one of the largest organizations to form outside the Beltway of Washington, DC.
In their press release this past Monday they stated:
Emphasizing direct action and people power, the mission of GetEQUAL is to empower the LGBTQ community and its allies to take action to demand full legal and social equality and to hold accountable those who stand in the way.
"All over the country we are under attack," said McGehee. "From the recent actions of the Attorney General in Virginia to strip away protections for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people on college and university campuses to the young lesbian student in Mississippi who is being denied the right to take her date to the prom. Nearly, every day there is a new story, but the subject is always the same: we are being bullied. We are no longer willing to sit back and wait - we want change now."
Get Equal GetEQUAL's organization model is based first and foremost on empowerment. The organization will provide vehicles for people to take action around key moments and connect the narrative of those moments into a powerful movement for change. Tactics will be multifaceted, including centralized online campaigns that build up and empower the LGBTQ and allied national base, and coordinated offline actions that allow people to collectively take to the streets.
"When properly served, we believe these people can create a groundswell of energy that will fundamentally change the current political dynamic, restrict support for those who stand in the way of full equality, and embolden those who want to do the right thing," said Williams. "No longer must we settle for empty promises while our young commit suicide, our rights are stripped away at the ballot box, and we are treated as second class citizens. The time has come to unequivocally say that we are more than a political movement � we are a civil rights movement."
Is This The Birth Of A Civil Rights Movement....?
Copyright by David Mixner
Mar 19, 2010
http://www.davidmixner.com/2010/03/is-this-the-birth-of-a-civil-rights-movement.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+DavidMixnerCom+%28DavidMixner.com%29
There will be temptations within the LGBT community to have decisive and strong opinions on the effectiveness of the campaign of civil disobedience launched by GetEqual.org in Washington, DC and San Francisco. Like a wildfire, the news of the arrests in front of the White House and the occupation of both of Speaker Pelosi's offices spread across the Internet and major blogs. The images were startlingly powerful with two soldiers, each in a crucified position, chained to the fence of the White House willing to bear great sacrifice for this community.
Are these the beginning stages of a new civil rights movement? Are we willing to escalate our tactics in order to press those in power to show leadership and demand our freedom? I honestly don't know. But I have hope. I have hope that over the next months these initial actions will build to a modern day civil rights movement that is as unique as our community. The stirring for non-violent civil disobedience has been building since the National Equality March late last year. Most of it has originated within the ranks of our youth. Their impatience is a powerful message that the failure to make our freedom a priority in Washington is just no longer acceptable.
As I write this, Lt. Dan Choi and Captain Jim Pietrangelo are still in jail. GetEqual.org CoChair Robin Pelosio McGeehee has been released from jail. Kip Williams and those who have occupied Pelosi's office have been arrested. Kip is the other CoChair of GetEqual.org.
Getting arrested in uniform is serious business with real consequences. These men give new definition to courage and bravery in our community. Dan could face a Court Martial and military prison. I am, at this time, not sure of Captain's Pietrangelo status. Having visited at length with Dan Choi on the phone before he made his fateful decision, I was totally comfortable that he understood the consequences and was willing to bear this burden on behalf of us. Anyone who belittles their sacrifice, even if they disagree with their tactics, belittle bravery and honor.
Pelosi22 Not only was their message to the decision makers in Washington but it was to all of us as well. Hopefully their acts of sacrifice will inspire all of us to make greater efforts for our own freedom. Clearly what has been happening up to now is simply not enough. Robin McGeehee upon being arrested shouted, "It is time to fight back" and I couldn't agree with her more. My educated guess, based on near 50 years of activism, is that we are indeed seeing the beginning stages of a new civil rights movement. With our young leading the way with courage, conviction and honor, By autumn we might very well see non-violent civil disobedience on behalf of LGBT freedom occurring in most states.
When I struggle to find the words why this is important and why these young brave leaders from GetEqual should be heard, I hit a dead end. Then Marylouise Oates reminded me of Dr. King's "Letter From A Birmingham Jail" and that I didn't have to create new words. The words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr still resonate today for all those around the world struggling against oppression. The greatest honor I can bestow upon these bright young minds is to put their actions in context with Dr. King's words.
For those of you who view their actions as ineffective, grandstanding or even ego-driven, I ask you to listen carefully to these words written by Dr. King in "The Letters From A Birmingham Jail":
My friends, I must say to you that we have not made a single gain in civil rights without determined legal and nonviolent pressure. Lamentably, it is an historical fact that privileged groups seldom give up their privileges voluntarily. Individuals may see the moral light and voluntarily give up their unjust posture; but, as Reinhold Niebuhr has reminded us, groups tend to be more immoral than individuals.......
We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to engage in a direct action campaign that was "well timed" in the view of those who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro (LGBT) with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied.
Many have said to me that civil disobedience is not the way. King said,
You deplore the demonstrations taking place in Birmingham(Washington and San Francisco). But your statement, I am sorry to say, fails to express a similar concern for the conditions that brought about the demonstrations. I am sure that none of you would want to rest content with the superficial kind of social analysis that deals merely with effects and does not grapple with underlying causes.,....
One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all...
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
And of course there are the apostles who caution us to wait, insist now is not the time and predict we can only hurt ourselves by being forceful in our actions and demands for freedom. Listen carefully to these words. Please savor them carefully:
...who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro (LGBT) to wait for a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.
I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and that when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress. I had hoped that the white moderate would understand that the present tension in the South is a necessary phase of the transition from an obnoxious negative peace, in which the Negro (LGBT) passively accepted his unjust plight, to a substantive and positive peace, in which all men will respect the dignity and worth of human personality. Actually, we who engage in nonviolent direct action are not the creators of tension. We merely bring to the surface the hidden tension that is already alive. We bring it out in the open, where it can be seen and dealt with. Like a boil that can never be cured so long as it is covered up but must be opened with all its ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.
These dedicated, brave and inspirational protesters who came of age yesterday have my unequivocal support. No longer will I be silent in the face of this growing injustice. Whether they are the beginning of a new wave and new tactics for this community has yet to be seen. This much I do know: I plan on giving money, signing up and supporting GetEqual.org to see where it leads us. They have proven to me they deserve a chance. After all, eighteen years later we still have "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". What are we waiting for?
The issue isn't just DADT, it is freedom for LGBT people. The issue is full and complete equality. The time is now. In fact, it is long overdue. As Dr. King said:
We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.
Thanks to Pams House Blend for the Pictures and Omar Clarke of GetEqual.org. They are greatly appreciated. Pam has the scope all the time!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
An open letter to conservatives By Russell King. Copyright bhy Filtered News. March 22, 2010.
An open letter to conservatives
By Russell King
Copyright by Filtered News
March 22, 2010
http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/an-open-letter-to-conservatives/#com-head
Dear Conservative Americans,
The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.
First, the invitation: Come back to us.
Now the advice. You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from yours; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples – by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.
If you’re going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you’ll have to start by draining this swamp:
Hypocrisy
You can’t flip out — and threaten impeachment – when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that’s centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.
You can’t vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it’s done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against is especially ugly) — 114 of you (at last count) did just that — and it’s even worse when you secretly beg for more.
You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.
You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.
Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.
You can’t refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn’t meet with you.
You can’t rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.
You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.
You can’t be for immigration reform, then against it .
You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.
You can’t flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush. Ford.
You can’t complain that the president hasn’t closed Gitmo yet when you’ve campaigned to keep Gitmo open.
You can’t flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush. Nixon. Ike. You didn’t even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed leaders of a country that’s not on “kissing terms” with the US.
You can’t complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent. (And, no, Newt — the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)
You can’t attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn’t issue any condemnation). *The Obama administration did the day of the event.
You can’t throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when — in fact — only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.
You can’t condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.
You can’t mount a boycott against singers who say they’re ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he’s ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.
You can’t cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it’s too short.
You can’t support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.
You can’t demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it. Repeatedly.
You can’t praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it “treasonous” under a Dem president.
You can’t propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.
You can’t be both pro-choice and anti-choice.
You can’t damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you’ve paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.
You can’t condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harm’s way, then attack the president when US troops are in harm’s way , the only difference being the president’s party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).
You can’t be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.
You can’t vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of ‘open debate’.
If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it’s 2004 or 2010. This is true, too, if you’re taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN. Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution. This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God’s stand, too.
When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can’t send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).
You can’t criticize Dems for not doing something you didn’t do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.
You can’t decry “name calling” when you’ve been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.
You can’t spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare
You can’t praise the Congressional Budget Office when its analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it’s unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don’t.
You can’t vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president. Either you support X or you don’t. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.
You can’t call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.
You can’t spend tax-payer money on ads against spending tax-payer money.
You can’t condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.
You can’t demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don’t.
You can’t whine that it’s unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party’s former leader admits you’ve been doing it for decades.
You can’t portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.
You can’t complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you’ve routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain — threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it. Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.
You can’t question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn’t object when your own Republican president appointed them.
You can’t preach and try to legislate “Family Values” when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer’s wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife’s mother;
Hyperbole
You really need to disassociate with those among you who:
* assert that people making a quarter-million dollars a year can barely make ends meet or that $1 million “isn’t a lot of money”;
* say that “Comrade” Obama is a “Bolshevik” who is “taking cues from Lenin”;
* ignore the many times your buddies use a term that offends you and complain only when a Dem says it;
* liken political opponents to murderers, rapists, and “this Muslim guy” that “offed his wife’s head”;
* say Obama “wants his plan to fail…so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy”;
* equate putting the good of the people ahead of your personal fortunes with terrorism;
* smear an entire major religion with the actions of a few fanatics;
* say that the president wants to “annihilate us”;
* compare health care reform with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot , the attack on 9/11, or reviving the ghosts of communist dictators;
* equate our disease-fighting stem cell research with “what the Nazis did”;
* call a bill passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, by members of Congress each elected by a majority in their districts, as “the end of representative government”;
* shout “baby killer” at a member of Congress on the floor of the House, especially one who so fought against abortion rights that he nearly killed health care reform (in fact, a little decorum, a little respect for our national institutions and the people and the values they represent, would be refreshing — cut out the shouting, the swearing and the obscenities);
* prove your machismo by claiming your going to “crash a party” to which you’re officially invited;
* claim that Obama is pushing America’s “submission to Shariah”;
* question the patriotism of people upholding cherished American values and the rule of law;
* claim the president is making us less safe without a hint of evidence;
* call a majority vote the “tyranny of the minority,” even if you meant to call it tyranny of the majority — it’s democracy, not tyranny;
* call the president’s support of a criminal trial for a terror suspect “treasonous” (especially when supported the same thing when the president shared your party);
* call the Pope the anti-Christ;
* assert that the constitutionally mandated census is an attempt to enslave us;
* accuse opponents of being backed by Arab slave-drivers or being drunk and suicidal;
* equate family planing with eugenics or Nazism;
* accuse the president of changing the missile defense program’s logo to match his campaign logo and reflect what you say is his secret Muslim identity;
* accuse political opponents of being totalitarians, socialists, communists, fascists, Marxists; terrorist sympathizers, McCarthy-like, Nazis or drug pushers; and
* advocate a traitorous act like secession, violent revolution , military coup or civil war (just so we’re clear: sedition is a bad thing).
History
If you’re going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they’re NOT synonymous!)
You can’t cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you’ve decided you don’t like his ideas.
You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word “terrorism” or say we’re at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.
If you’re going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.
You can’t just pretend historical events didn’t happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn’t make it less of a lie.)
You can’t say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from “socialist utopia”; is not “reparations”; and does not create “death panels”.
Hatred
You have to condemn those among you who:
* call members of Congress n*gger and f*ggot when they disagree with them on policy;
* elected leaders who say “I’m a proud racist”;
* state that America has been built by white people;
* say that poor people are poor because they’re rotten people, call them “parasitic garbage” or say they shouldn’t be allowed to vote;
* call women bitches and prostitutes just because you don’t like their politics ( re - pea -ted - ly );
* assert that the women who are serving our nation in uniform are hookers;
* mock and celebrate the death of a grandmother because you disagree with her son’s politics;
* declare that those who disagree with them are shown by that disagreement to be not just “Marxist radicals” but also monsters and a deadly disease killing the nation (this would fit in the hyperbole and history categories, too);
* joke about blindness;
* advocate euthanizing the wives of your political opponents;
* taunt people with incurable, life-threatening diseases — especially if you do it on a syndicated broadcast;
* equate gay love with bestiality — involving horses or dogs or turtles or ducks — or polygamy, child molestation, pedophilia;
* casually assume that only white males look “like a real American”;
* assert presidential power to torture a child by having his testicles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk, order the massacre of a civilian village and launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;
* attack children whose mothers have died;
* call people racists without producing a shred of evidence that they said or done something that would even smell like racism — same for invoking racially charged “dog whistle” words (repeatedly);
* condemn the one thing that every major religion agrees on;
* complain that we no longer employ the tactics we once used to disenfranchise millions of Americans because of their race;
* blame the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks for their suffering and losses;
* celebrate violence , joke about violence, prepare for violence or use violent imagery, “fun” political violence, hints of violence, threats of violence (this one is rather explicit), suggestions of violence or actual violence (and, really, suggesting anal rape with a hot piece of metal is beyond the pale); and
* incite insurrection telling people to get their guns ready for a “bloody battle” with the president of the United States.
Oh, and I’m not alone: One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.
So, dear conservatives, get to work. Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bald-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred. Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America. We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we’ll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms. We need you.
Update: I’ve cross-posted this at TalkingPointsMemo and Street Prophets. Someone has written a DailyKos diary about it and Lizz Winstead, creator of the Daily Show, and formerly on Air America (She did the morning show with Rachel Maddow and Chuck D when Air America started) put link to my TPM post on her fan page. Apparently this piece has gone viral through Facebook, email and other blogs. This is fun, but — man! — you should read what some people who have never met me but disagree with my post are saying about my character!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Russell King
Copyright by Filtered News
March 22, 2010
http://filterednews.wordpress.com/2010/03/22/an-open-letter-to-conservatives/#com-head
Dear Conservative Americans,
The years have not been kind to you. I grew up in a profoundly Republican home so I can remember when you wore a very different face than the one we see now. You’ve lost me and you’ve lost most of America. Because I believe having responsible choices is important to democracy, I’d like to give you some advice and an invitation.
First, the invitation: Come back to us.
Now the advice. You’re going to have to come up with a platform that isn’t built on a foundation of cowardice: fear of people with colors, religions, cultures and sex lives that differ from yours; fear of reform in banking, health care, energy; fantasy fears of America being transformed into an Islamic nation, into social/commun/fasc-ism, into a disarmed populace put in internment camps; and more. But you have work to do even before you take on that task.
Your party — the GOP — and the conservative end of the American political spectrum has become irresponsible and irrational. Worse, it’s tolerating, promoting and celebrating prejudice and hatred. Let me provide some examples – by no means an exhaustive list — of where the Right as gotten itself stuck in a swamp of hypocrisy, hyperbole, historical inaccuracy and hatred.
If you’re going to regain your stature as a party of rational, responsible people, you’ll have to start by draining this swamp:
Hypocrisy
You can’t flip out — and threaten impeachment – when Dems use a parliamentary procedure (deem and pass) that you used repeatedly (more than 35 times in just one session and more than 100 times in all!), that’s centuries old and which the courts have supported. Especially when your leaders admit it all.
You can’t vote and scream against the stimulus package and then take credit for the good it’s done in your own district (happily handing out enormous checks representing money that you voted against is especially ugly) — 114 of you (at last count) did just that — and it’s even worse when you secretly beg for more.
You can’t fight against your own ideas just because the Dem president endorses your proposal.
You can’t call for a pay-as-you-go policy, and then vote against your own ideas.
Are they “unlawful enemy combatants” or are they “prisoners of war” at Gitmo? You can’t have it both ways.
You can’t carry on about the evils of government spending when your family has accepted more than a quarter-million dollars in government handouts.
You can’t refuse to go to a scheduled meeting, to which you were invited, and then blame the Dems because they didn’t meet with you.
You can’t rail against using teleprompters while using teleprompters. Repeatedly.
You can’t rail against the bank bailouts when you supported them as they were happening.
You can’t be for immigration reform, then against it .
You can’t enjoy socialized medicine while condemning it.
You can’t flip out when the black president puts his feet on the presidential desk when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush. Ford.
You can’t complain that the president hasn’t closed Gitmo yet when you’ve campaigned to keep Gitmo open.
You can’t flip out when the black president bows to foreign dignitaries, as appropriate for their culture, when you were silent when the white presidents did the same. Bush. Nixon. Ike. You didn’t even make a peep when Bush held hands and kissed leaders of a country that’s not on “kissing terms” with the US.
You can’t complain that the undies bomber was read his Miranda rights under Obama when the shoe bomber was read his Miranda rights under Bush and you remained silent. (And, no, Newt — the shoe bomber was not a US citizen either, so there is no difference.)
You can’t attack the Dem president for not personally* publicly condemning a terrorist event for 72 hours when you said nothing about the Rep president waiting 6 days in an eerily similar incident (and, even then, he didn’t issue any condemnation). *The Obama administration did the day of the event.
You can’t throw a hissy fit, sound alarms and cry that Obama freed Gitmo prisoners who later helped plan the Christmas Day undie bombing, when — in fact — only one former Gitmo detainee, released by Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, helped to plan the failed attack.
You can’t condemn blaming the Republican president for an attempted terror attack on his watch, then blame the Dem president for an attempted terror attack on his.
You can’t mount a boycott against singers who say they’re ashamed of the president for starting a war, but remain silent when another singer says he’s ashamed of the president and falsely calls him a Maoist who makes him want to throw up and says he ought to be in jail.
You can’t cry that the health care bill is too long, then cry that it’s too short.
You can’t support the individual mandate for health insurance, then call it unconstitutional when Dems propose it and campaign against your own ideas.
You can’t demand television coverage, then whine about it when you get it. Repeatedly.
You can’t praise criminal trials in US courts for terror suspects under a Rep president, then call it “treasonous” under a Dem president.
You can’t propose ideas to create jobs, and then work against them when the Dems put your ideas in a bill.
You can’t be both pro-choice and anti-choice.
You can’t damn someone for failing to pay $900 in taxes when you’ve paid nearly $20,000 in IRS fines.
You can’t condemn criticizing the president when US troops are in harm’s way, then attack the president when US troops are in harm’s way , the only difference being the president’s party affiliation (and, by the way, armed conflict does NOT remove our right and our duty as Americans to speak up).
You can’t be both for cap-and-trade policy and against it.
You can’t vote to block debate on a bill, then bemoan the lack of ‘open debate’.
If you push anti-gay legislation and make anti-gay speeches, you should probably take a pass on having gay sex, regardless of whether it’s 2004 or 2010. This is true, too, if you’re taking GOP money and giving anti-gay rants on CNN. Taking right-wing money and GOP favors to write anti-gay stories for news sites while working as a gay prostitute, doubles down on both the hypocrisy and the prostitution. This is especially true if you claim your anti-gay stand is God’s stand, too.
When you chair the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you can’t send sexy emails to 16-year-old boys (illegal anyway, but you made it hypocritical as well).
You can’t criticize Dems for not doing something you didn’t do while you held power over the past 16 years, especially when the Dems have done more in one year than you did in 16.
You can’t decry “name calling” when you’ve been the most consistent and outrageous at it. And the most vile.
You can’t spend more than 40 years hating, cutting and trying to kill Medicare, and then pretend to be the defenders of Medicare
You can’t praise the Congressional Budget Office when its analysis produces numbers that fit your political agenda, then claim it’s unreliable when it comes up with numbers that don’t.
You can’t vote for X under a Republican president, then vote against X under a Democratic president. Either you support X or you don’t. And it makes it worse when you change your position merely for the sake obstructionism.
You can’t call a reconciliation out of bounds when you used it repeatedly.
You can’t spend tax-payer money on ads against spending tax-payer money.
You can’t condemn individual health insurance mandates in a Dem bill, when the mandates were your idea.
You can’t demand everyone listen to the generals when they say what fits your agenda, and then ignore them when they don’t.
You can’t whine that it’s unfair when people accuse you of exploiting racism for political gain, when your party’s former leader admits you’ve been doing it for decades.
You can’t portray yourself as fighting terrorists when you openly and passionately support terrorists.
You can’t complain about a lack of bipartisanship when you’ve routinely obstructed for the sake of political gain — threatening to filibuster at least 100 pieces of legislation in one session, far more than any other since the procedural tactic was invented — and admitted it. Some admissions are unintentional, others are made proudly. This is especially true when the bill is the result of decades of compromise between the two parties and is filled with your own ideas.
You can’t question the loyalty of Department of Justice lawyers when you didn’t object when your own Republican president appointed them.
You can’t preach and try to legislate “Family Values” when you: take nude hot tub dips with teenagers (and pay them hush money); cheat on your wife with a secret lover and lie about it to the world; cheat with a staffer’s wife (and pay them off with a new job); pay hookers for sex while wearing a diaper and cheating on your wife; or just enjoying an old fashioned non-kinky cheating on your wife; try to have gay sex in a public toilet; authorize the rape of children in Iraqi prisons to coerce their parents into providing information; seek, look at or have sex with children; replace a guy who cheats on his wife with a guy who cheats on his pregnant wife with his wife’s mother;
Hyperbole
You really need to disassociate with those among you who:
* assert that people making a quarter-million dollars a year can barely make ends meet or that $1 million “isn’t a lot of money”;
* say that “Comrade” Obama is a “Bolshevik” who is “taking cues from Lenin”;
* ignore the many times your buddies use a term that offends you and complain only when a Dem says it;
* liken political opponents to murderers, rapists, and “this Muslim guy” that “offed his wife’s head”;
* say Obama “wants his plan to fail…so that he can make the case for bank nationalization and vindicate his dream of a socialist economy”;
* equate putting the good of the people ahead of your personal fortunes with terrorism;
* smear an entire major religion with the actions of a few fanatics;
* say that the president wants to “annihilate us”;
* compare health care reform with the bombing of Pearl Harbor, a Bolshevik plot , the attack on 9/11, or reviving the ghosts of communist dictators;
* equate our disease-fighting stem cell research with “what the Nazis did”;
* call a bill passed by the majority of both houses of Congress, by members of Congress each elected by a majority in their districts, as “the end of representative government”;
* shout “baby killer” at a member of Congress on the floor of the House, especially one who so fought against abortion rights that he nearly killed health care reform (in fact, a little decorum, a little respect for our national institutions and the people and the values they represent, would be refreshing — cut out the shouting, the swearing and the obscenities);
* prove your machismo by claiming your going to “crash a party” to which you’re officially invited;
* claim that Obama is pushing America’s “submission to Shariah”;
* question the patriotism of people upholding cherished American values and the rule of law;
* claim the president is making us less safe without a hint of evidence;
* call a majority vote the “tyranny of the minority,” even if you meant to call it tyranny of the majority — it’s democracy, not tyranny;
* call the president’s support of a criminal trial for a terror suspect “treasonous” (especially when supported the same thing when the president shared your party);
* call the Pope the anti-Christ;
* assert that the constitutionally mandated census is an attempt to enslave us;
* accuse opponents of being backed by Arab slave-drivers or being drunk and suicidal;
* equate family planing with eugenics or Nazism;
* accuse the president of changing the missile defense program’s logo to match his campaign logo and reflect what you say is his secret Muslim identity;
* accuse political opponents of being totalitarians, socialists, communists, fascists, Marxists; terrorist sympathizers, McCarthy-like, Nazis or drug pushers; and
* advocate a traitorous act like secession, violent revolution , military coup or civil war (just so we’re clear: sedition is a bad thing).
History
If you’re going to use words like socialism, communism and fascism, you must have at least a basic understanding of what those words mean (hint: they’re NOT synonymous!)
You can’t cut a leading Founding Father out the history books because you’ve decided you don’t like his ideas.
You cant repeatedly assert that the president refuses to say the word “terrorism” or say we’re at war with terror when we have an awful lot of videotape showing him repeatedly assailing terrorism and using those exact words.
If you’re going to invoke the names of historical figures, it does not serve you well to whitewash them. Especially this one.
You can’t just pretend historical events didn’t happen in an effort to make a political opponent look dishonest or to make your side look better. Especially these events. (And, no, repeating it doesn’t make it less of a lie.)
You can’t say things that are simply and demonstrably false: health care reform will not push people out of their private insurance and into a government-run program ; health care reform (which contains a good many of your ideas and very few from the Left) is a long way from “socialist utopia”; is not “reparations”; and does not create “death panels”.
Hatred
You have to condemn those among you who:
* call members of Congress n*gger and f*ggot when they disagree with them on policy;
* elected leaders who say “I’m a proud racist”;
* state that America has been built by white people;
* say that poor people are poor because they’re rotten people, call them “parasitic garbage” or say they shouldn’t be allowed to vote;
* call women bitches and prostitutes just because you don’t like their politics ( re - pea -ted - ly );
* assert that the women who are serving our nation in uniform are hookers;
* mock and celebrate the death of a grandmother because you disagree with her son’s politics;
* declare that those who disagree with them are shown by that disagreement to be not just “Marxist radicals” but also monsters and a deadly disease killing the nation (this would fit in the hyperbole and history categories, too);
* joke about blindness;
* advocate euthanizing the wives of your political opponents;
* taunt people with incurable, life-threatening diseases — especially if you do it on a syndicated broadcast;
* equate gay love with bestiality — involving horses or dogs or turtles or ducks — or polygamy, child molestation, pedophilia;
* casually assume that only white males look “like a real American”;
* assert presidential power to torture a child by having his testicles crushed in front of his parents to get them to talk, order the massacre of a civilian village and launch a nuclear attack without the consent of Congress;
* attack children whose mothers have died;
* call people racists without producing a shred of evidence that they said or done something that would even smell like racism — same for invoking racially charged “dog whistle” words (repeatedly);
* condemn the one thing that every major religion agrees on;
* complain that we no longer employ the tactics we once used to disenfranchise millions of Americans because of their race;
* blame the victims of natural disasters and terrorist attacks for their suffering and losses;
* celebrate violence , joke about violence, prepare for violence or use violent imagery, “fun” political violence, hints of violence, threats of violence (this one is rather explicit), suggestions of violence or actual violence (and, really, suggesting anal rape with a hot piece of metal is beyond the pale); and
* incite insurrection telling people to get their guns ready for a “bloody battle” with the president of the United States.
Oh, and I’m not alone: One of your most respected and decorated leaders agrees with me.
So, dear conservatives, get to work. Drain the swamp of the conspiracy nuts, the bald-faced liars undeterred by demonstrable facts, the overt hypocrisy and the hatred. Then offer us a calm, responsible, grownup agenda based on your values and your vision for America. We may or may not agree with your values and vision, but we’ll certainly welcome you back to the American mainstream with open arms. We need you.
Update: I’ve cross-posted this at TalkingPointsMemo and Street Prophets. Someone has written a DailyKos diary about it and Lizz Winstead, creator of the Daily Show, and formerly on Air America (She did the morning show with Rachel Maddow and Chuck D when Air America started) put link to my TPM post on her fan page. Apparently this piece has gone viral through Facebook, email and other blogs. This is fun, but — man! — you should read what some people who have never met me but disagree with my post are saying about my character!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Comedy Central does Glen Beck
March 18, 2010: Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/intro---progressivism-is-cancer
March 18, 2010: Conservative Libertarian http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/conservative-libertarian?xrs=eml_tds
Colbert Report - Glenn Beck Attacks Social Justice - James Martin http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267673/march-18-2010/glenn-beck-attacks-social-justice---james-martin
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
March 18, 2010: Conservative Libertarian http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/thu-march-18-2010/conservative-libertarian?xrs=eml_tds
Colbert Report - Glenn Beck Attacks Social Justice - James Martin http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/267673/march-18-2010/glenn-beck-attacks-social-justice---james-martin
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
American Women—The weakest link in American Health care—and the most compelling reason for health care reform.
American Women—The weakest link in American Health care—and the most compelling reason for health care reform.
By Carlos T Mock, MD, F. A. C. O. G.
March 18, 2010
As my grandmother used to say in her 50 years as a midwife, “If men got pregnant there’d be an abortion clinic in every corner instead of a bar, and morphine would be legal, sold at every pharmacy.”
The truth is that American women have the most to gain from health care reform. Amnesty International issued a report Friday in which it claimed that: “deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years. About 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications, most of them occurring among minorities and women living in poverty. Minorities, women living in poverty, Native Americans, immigrants and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected.”
According to the report, "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA," the lifetime risk of maternal deaths is greater in the United States than in 40 other countries, including virtually all industrialized nations.
Figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts. White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.
The CDC analysis shows that deaths during pregnancy and childbirth have doubled for all U.S. women in the past 20 years. In 1987, there were 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. The number of deaths had climbed to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the last year for which figures were available. Statistics for other highly industrialized countries show that the U.S. goal of four deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies is attainable. Great Britain, for example, has fewer than four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies.
Women's health is at risk. We spend the most, and yet women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries. And that disconnect is what makes it such a problem. Sadly, Up to 40 percent of these deaths are preventable with better quality of care, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Thirteen million U.S. women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years old), or one in five, do not have health insurance. Minorities account for 32 percent of all women in the United States but 51 percent of uninsured women. Good maternal care should not be considered a luxury available only to those who can access the best hospitals and the best doctors. Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies. Furthermore, one in four women do not receive adequate prenatal care, starting in the first trimester. The number rises to about one in three for African-American and Native American women.
Other factors that have increased the number of maternal deaths include the increase in Cesarean Sections in the country. In 1980, the U. S. Cesarean section rate was less than 3%. Today, one out of every three pregnant women now has a C-section, the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. The skyrocketing C-section rate has been hotly debated in birthing and medical communities, yet little attention has been paid to one of the consequences: Once a woman has a C-section, she often has to fight to deliver subsequent babies the old-fashioned way, if a hospital or obstetrician allows her to try it at all.
Repeat C-sections have become so routine that 90 percent of pregnant women who have the surgery give birth that way again. That is a concern to health experts, who say vaginal births after a cesarean, or VBACs, should be far more common.
VBAC has long been the subject of heated debate. For decades, the mantra was "once a cesarean, always a cesarean." Doctors were concerned that the scar left in the womb from a previous cesarean would tear during labor, leading to life-threatening bleeding. But in 1980, an NIH conference panel suggested that the chance of uterine rupture was small in most women and that VBAC was as safe as other vaginal births. Maternity wards soon began embracing VBAC as a means to slash high cesarean rates.
As more and more women gave birth vaginally, however, reports of uterine ruptures increased, and VBAC rates began to slump in the mid-1990s. By 2004, they had dropped to less than 10 percent, despite high overall success rates between 60 and 80 percent for the procedures. It is important to stress that even though uterine rupture occurs in less than one percent of the women who attempt VBAC, and fewer than 4 in 100,000 women die, the risk of maternal death for any Cesarean Section is about three times higher. Women who undergo several cesareans also seem to have a higher risk of having their womb removed.
Finally, the failure to provide adequate birth control to women—either for religious or economic reasons—places high risk women at risk for unwanted pregnancies. This, combined with the decrease access to pregnancy termination for unwanted or high risk pregnancies—adds to the maternal mortality in the USA.
There is no doubt that mothers die not because the United States can't provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good reproductive care is available to all women.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Carlos T Mock, MD, F. A. C. O. G.
March 18, 2010
As my grandmother used to say in her 50 years as a midwife, “If men got pregnant there’d be an abortion clinic in every corner instead of a bar, and morphine would be legal, sold at every pharmacy.”
The truth is that American women have the most to gain from health care reform. Amnesty International issued a report Friday in which it claimed that: “deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years. About 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications, most of them occurring among minorities and women living in poverty. Minorities, women living in poverty, Native Americans, immigrants and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected.”
According to the report, "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA," the lifetime risk of maternal deaths is greater in the United States than in 40 other countries, including virtually all industrialized nations.
Figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts. White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.
The CDC analysis shows that deaths during pregnancy and childbirth have doubled for all U.S. women in the past 20 years. In 1987, there were 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. The number of deaths had climbed to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the last year for which figures were available. Statistics for other highly industrialized countries show that the U.S. goal of four deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies is attainable. Great Britain, for example, has fewer than four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies.
Women's health is at risk. We spend the most, and yet women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries. And that disconnect is what makes it such a problem. Sadly, Up to 40 percent of these deaths are preventable with better quality of care, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology. Thirteen million U.S. women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years old), or one in five, do not have health insurance. Minorities account for 32 percent of all women in the United States but 51 percent of uninsured women. Good maternal care should not be considered a luxury available only to those who can access the best hospitals and the best doctors. Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies. Furthermore, one in four women do not receive adequate prenatal care, starting in the first trimester. The number rises to about one in three for African-American and Native American women.
Other factors that have increased the number of maternal deaths include the increase in Cesarean Sections in the country. In 1980, the U. S. Cesarean section rate was less than 3%. Today, one out of every three pregnant women now has a C-section, the most common surgical procedure in the U.S. The skyrocketing C-section rate has been hotly debated in birthing and medical communities, yet little attention has been paid to one of the consequences: Once a woman has a C-section, she often has to fight to deliver subsequent babies the old-fashioned way, if a hospital or obstetrician allows her to try it at all.
Repeat C-sections have become so routine that 90 percent of pregnant women who have the surgery give birth that way again. That is a concern to health experts, who say vaginal births after a cesarean, or VBACs, should be far more common.
VBAC has long been the subject of heated debate. For decades, the mantra was "once a cesarean, always a cesarean." Doctors were concerned that the scar left in the womb from a previous cesarean would tear during labor, leading to life-threatening bleeding. But in 1980, an NIH conference panel suggested that the chance of uterine rupture was small in most women and that VBAC was as safe as other vaginal births. Maternity wards soon began embracing VBAC as a means to slash high cesarean rates.
As more and more women gave birth vaginally, however, reports of uterine ruptures increased, and VBAC rates began to slump in the mid-1990s. By 2004, they had dropped to less than 10 percent, despite high overall success rates between 60 and 80 percent for the procedures. It is important to stress that even though uterine rupture occurs in less than one percent of the women who attempt VBAC, and fewer than 4 in 100,000 women die, the risk of maternal death for any Cesarean Section is about three times higher. Women who undergo several cesareans also seem to have a higher risk of having their womb removed.
Finally, the failure to provide adequate birth control to women—either for religious or economic reasons—places high risk women at risk for unwanted pregnancies. This, combined with the decrease access to pregnancy termination for unwanted or high risk pregnancies—adds to the maternal mortality in the USA.
There is no doubt that mothers die not because the United States can't provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good reproductive care is available to all women.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
March 17, 2010: Don't Mess With Textbooks
March 17, 2010: Don't Mess With Textbooks http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-march-17-2010/don-t-mess-with-textbooks
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Holy Sh*t Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal goes global/ Ratzinger intervened in Arizona priest's abuse case, then waited for years to defrock him
Holy Sh*t Catholic Church's sex abuse scandal goes global http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-march-16-2010/holy-sh-t
Ratzinger intervened in Arizona priest's abuse case, then waited for years to defrock him
By MATT SEDENSKY
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
9:22 a.m. CDT, April 3, 2010
http://www.startribune.com/nation/89788772.html
The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church's insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.
Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.
In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.
The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict — as a Vatican cardinal — was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality.
"There's no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of dangerous priests who were deemed `satanic' by their own bishop," Lynne Cadigan, an attorney who represented two of Teta's victims, said Friday.
Meanwhile, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno's replacement, defended the Vatican's handling of the Arizona cases, citing the prolonged process of internal church trials that he acknowledged could be "frustratingly slow because of the seriousness of the concerns."
Kicanas said suggestions that Ratzinger resisted addressing the issues of sexual abuse in the church were "grossly unfair."
"Cardinal Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was always receptive, ready to listen, to hear people's concerns," Kicanas said. "Pope Benedict is the same man."
In the 1990s, a church tribunal found that Teta had molested children as far back as the 1970s, and the panel determined "there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys."
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Ratzinger intervened in Arizona priest's abuse case, then waited for years to defrock him
By MATT SEDENSKY
Copyright 2010 Associated Press
9:22 a.m. CDT, April 3, 2010
http://www.startribune.com/nation/89788772.html
The abuse cases of two priests in Arizona have cast further doubt on the Catholic church's insistence that Pope Benedict XVI played no role in shielding pedophiles before he became pope.
Documents reviewed by The Associated Press show that as a Vatican cardinal, the future pope took over the abuse case of Rev. Michael Teta of Tucson, Ariz., then let it languish at the Vatican for years despite repeated pleas from the bishop for the man to be removed from the priesthood.
In another Tucson case, that of Msgr. Robert Trupia, the bishop wrote to then-Cardinal Ratzinger, who would become pope in 2005. Bishop Manuel Moreno called Trupia "a major risk factor to the children, adolescents and adults that he many have contact with." There is no indication in the case files that Ratzinger responded.
The details of the two cases come as other allegations emerge that Benedict — as a Vatican cardinal — was part of a culture of cover-up and confidentiality.
"There's no doubt that Ratzinger delayed the defrocking process of dangerous priests who were deemed `satanic' by their own bishop," Lynne Cadigan, an attorney who represented two of Teta's victims, said Friday.
Meanwhile, Bishop Gerald Kicanas, Moreno's replacement, defended the Vatican's handling of the Arizona cases, citing the prolonged process of internal church trials that he acknowledged could be "frustratingly slow because of the seriousness of the concerns."
Kicanas said suggestions that Ratzinger resisted addressing the issues of sexual abuse in the church were "grossly unfair."
"Cardinal Ratzinger, as the head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, was always receptive, ready to listen, to hear people's concerns," Kicanas said. "Pope Benedict is the same man."
In the 1990s, a church tribunal found that Teta had molested children as far back as the 1970s, and the panel determined "there is almost a satanic quality in his mode of acting toward young men and boys."
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
The 41st best health care system in the world - Doubling of maternal deaths in U.S. 'scandalous,' rights group says
The 41st best health care system in the world - Doubling of maternal deaths in U.S. 'scandalous,' rights group says
From Stephanie Smith
Copyright by CNN News
March 12, 2010 4:46 p.m. EST\http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/12/maternal.mortality/index.html?hpt=T1
One-third of pregnant women in the United States suffer from pregnancy-related complications each year, the report says.
(CNN) -- Deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years, a development that a human rights group called "scandalous and disgraceful" Friday.
In addition, the rights group said, about 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications.
Most of the deaths and complications occur among minorities and women living in poverty, it noted.
Amnesty International issued a report Friday that calls on President Obama to take action.
"This country's extraordinary record of medical advancement makes its haphazard approach to maternal care all the more scandalous and disgraceful," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
"Good maternal care should not be considered a luxury available only to those who can access the best hospitals and the best doctors. Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies," Cox said in a news release.
The report, "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA," notes that the lifetime risk of maternal deaths is greater in the United States than in 40 other countries, including virtually all industrialized nations.
The report also noted that severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death -- known as "near misses" -- have increased by 25 percent since 1998.
Up to 40 percent of near misses are considered preventable with better quality of care, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Video: Pregnant women die needlessly
Minorities, women living in poverty, Native Americans, immigrants and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected, Amnesty International said.
"The thing that really struck us was that these problems hit women of color, low-income, particularly hard," said Nan Strauss, researcher and co-author of the Amnesty report. "But every woman who is going through pregnancy in this country is at risk."
Figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.
White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.
"This has been known for a while and no one has a good handle on it," said Dr. Elliot Main, chairman and chief of obstetrics at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. "This is a national disgrace and a call to action. Both numbers are a call to action -- maternal mortality and racial disparity."
The CDC analysis shows that deaths during pregnancy and childbirth have doubled for all U.S. women in the past 20 years.
In 1987, there were 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. The number of deaths had climbed to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the last year for which figures were available.
A report called "Healthy People 2010" by the Department of Health and Human Services says that number should be around four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies.
Statistics for other highly industrialized countries show that the U.S. goal of four deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies is attainable. Great Britain, for example, has fewer than four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies, Main said.
"Women's health is at risk," said Strauss. "We spend the most, and yet women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries. And that disconnect is what makes it such a problem."
Amnesty International points out that nearly 13 million U.S. women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years old), or one in five, do not have health insurance. Minorities account for 32 percent of all women in the United States but 51 percent of uninsured women, the rights group said.
Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies.
--Larry Cox, Amnesty International
Furthermore, Amnesty International said, one in four women do not receive adequate prenatal care, starting in the first trimester. The number rises to about one in three for African-American and Native American women, the human rights group said.
Amnesty International also cited what it called "burdensome bureaucratic procedures in Medicaid enrollment [that] substantially delay access to vital prenatal care for pregnant women seeking government-funded care."
In addition, the group said, a shortage of health care professionals poses a serious obstacle to timely and adequate care, especially in rural areas and inner cities. In 2008, 64 million people were living in "shortage areas" for primary care, Amnesty International said.
"Obstacles to care are widespread, even though the USA spends more on health care than any other country and more on pregnancy and childbirth-related hospital costs, $86 billion, than any other type of hospital care," the rights group said.
In its call for Obama to take action, Amnesty International said a health care reform proposal before Congress does not address the issue.
"Reform is primarily focused on health care coverage and reducing health care costs, and even optimistic estimates predict that any proposal on the table will still leave millions without access to affordable care," said Rachel Ward, one of the authors of the "Deadly Delivery" report.
"Mothers die not because the United States can't provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women," said Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director.
Medical professionals and researchers note that although the percentage of maternal deaths is increasing, the overall number still remains low.
"They are low in absolute number sense," said Main in San Francisco. "These are rare events. They serve as a canary in the mine shaft -- tell us that we need to look more carefully at the system of maternity care. Overall, childbirth is very safe."
More of an alarm is not sounded, analysts said, because most practitioners don't see many -- if any -- deaths each year.
There is now approximately one death for every 6,000 to 10,000 births, Main said. A typical hospital has about 1,500 births a year, so any hospital can go years without a maternal death, he said.
"It's still, thank heavens, quite rare," said Debra Bingham, executive director of California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
But that doesn't mean there's not a problem, she said.
"When you see trends worsen in such a short period of time, it requires thoughtful examination," said Bingham. "And you can't just dismiss that."
Rivka Gordon, director of strategic initiatives at the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, also believes something should be done.
"It's unacceptable in a resource-rich country like the U.S. that we are seeing maternal- and pregnancy-related deaths trending upward," she said. "We have to look very, very carefully at this."
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
From Stephanie Smith
Copyright by CNN News
March 12, 2010 4:46 p.m. EST\http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/03/12/maternal.mortality/index.html?hpt=T1
One-third of pregnant women in the United States suffer from pregnancy-related complications each year, the report says.
(CNN) -- Deaths from pregnancy and childbirth in the United States have doubled in the past 20 years, a development that a human rights group called "scandalous and disgraceful" Friday.
In addition, the rights group said, about 1.7 million women a year, one-third of pregnant women in the United States, suffer from pregnancy-related complications.
Most of the deaths and complications occur among minorities and women living in poverty, it noted.
Amnesty International issued a report Friday that calls on President Obama to take action.
"This country's extraordinary record of medical advancement makes its haphazard approach to maternal care all the more scandalous and disgraceful," said Larry Cox, executive director of Amnesty International USA.
"Good maternal care should not be considered a luxury available only to those who can access the best hospitals and the best doctors. Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies," Cox said in a news release.
The report, "Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Health Care Crisis in the USA," notes that the lifetime risk of maternal deaths is greater in the United States than in 40 other countries, including virtually all industrialized nations.
The report also noted that severe pregnancy-related complications that nearly cause death -- known as "near misses" -- have increased by 25 percent since 1998.
Up to 40 percent of near misses are considered preventable with better quality of care, according to a 2007 study in the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.
Video: Pregnant women die needlessly
Minorities, women living in poverty, Native Americans, immigrants and those who speak little or no English are particularly affected, Amnesty International said.
"The thing that really struck us was that these problems hit women of color, low-income, particularly hard," said Nan Strauss, researcher and co-author of the Amnesty report. "But every woman who is going through pregnancy in this country is at risk."
Figures compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, show that black women are three times more likely to die from pregnancy and childbirth than their white counterparts.
White women have a mortality rate of 9.5 per 100,000 pregnancies, the CDC said. For African-American women, that rate is 32.7 deaths per 100,000 pregnancies.
"This has been known for a while and no one has a good handle on it," said Dr. Elliot Main, chairman and chief of obstetrics at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. "This is a national disgrace and a call to action. Both numbers are a call to action -- maternal mortality and racial disparity."
The CDC analysis shows that deaths during pregnancy and childbirth have doubled for all U.S. women in the past 20 years.
In 1987, there were 6.6 deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies. The number of deaths had climbed to 13.3 per 100,000 in 2006, the last year for which figures were available.
A report called "Healthy People 2010" by the Department of Health and Human Services says that number should be around four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies.
Statistics for other highly industrialized countries show that the U.S. goal of four deaths for every 100,000 pregnancies is attainable. Great Britain, for example, has fewer than four deaths for each 100,000 pregnancies, Main said.
"Women's health is at risk," said Strauss. "We spend the most, and yet women are more likely to die than in 40 other countries. And that disconnect is what makes it such a problem."
Amnesty International points out that nearly 13 million U.S. women of reproductive age (15 to 44 years old), or one in five, do not have health insurance. Minorities account for 32 percent of all women in the United States but 51 percent of uninsured women, the rights group said.
Women should not die in the richest country on earth from preventable complications and emergencies.
--Larry Cox, Amnesty International
Furthermore, Amnesty International said, one in four women do not receive adequate prenatal care, starting in the first trimester. The number rises to about one in three for African-American and Native American women, the human rights group said.
Amnesty International also cited what it called "burdensome bureaucratic procedures in Medicaid enrollment [that] substantially delay access to vital prenatal care for pregnant women seeking government-funded care."
In addition, the group said, a shortage of health care professionals poses a serious obstacle to timely and adequate care, especially in rural areas and inner cities. In 2008, 64 million people were living in "shortage areas" for primary care, Amnesty International said.
"Obstacles to care are widespread, even though the USA spends more on health care than any other country and more on pregnancy and childbirth-related hospital costs, $86 billion, than any other type of hospital care," the rights group said.
In its call for Obama to take action, Amnesty International said a health care reform proposal before Congress does not address the issue.
"Reform is primarily focused on health care coverage and reducing health care costs, and even optimistic estimates predict that any proposal on the table will still leave millions without access to affordable care," said Rachel Ward, one of the authors of the "Deadly Delivery" report.
"Mothers die not because the United States can't provide good care, but because it lacks the political will to make sure good care is available to all women," said Cox, Amnesty International USA's executive director.
Medical professionals and researchers note that although the percentage of maternal deaths is increasing, the overall number still remains low.
"They are low in absolute number sense," said Main in San Francisco. "These are rare events. They serve as a canary in the mine shaft -- tell us that we need to look more carefully at the system of maternity care. Overall, childbirth is very safe."
More of an alarm is not sounded, analysts said, because most practitioners don't see many -- if any -- deaths each year.
There is now approximately one death for every 6,000 to 10,000 births, Main said. A typical hospital has about 1,500 births a year, so any hospital can go years without a maternal death, he said.
"It's still, thank heavens, quite rare," said Debra Bingham, executive director of California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative.
But that doesn't mean there's not a problem, she said.
"When you see trends worsen in such a short period of time, it requires thoughtful examination," said Bingham. "And you can't just dismiss that."
Rivka Gordon, director of strategic initiatives at the Association of Reproductive Health Professionals, also believes something should be done.
"It's unacceptable in a resource-rich country like the U.S. that we are seeing maternal- and pregnancy-related deaths trending upward," she said. "We have to look very, very carefully at this."
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
What's wrong with America
What's wrong with America
By Carlos T Mock, MD
March 4, 2010
From Paris, France
Nothing like being out of the country, see how other nations solve their problems, and reflect what's ailing our country.
President Obama has been our commander in chief for slightly more than a year. We have been in Paris for two weeks. As we return to Chicago/Michigan tomorrow we are facing the same problems that we face when we boarded a plane to Europe February 15, 2010.
According to the right, "All of our problems are because Obama--who is not an American citizen--is a radical left wing ultra liberal Socialist/Communist who is surrounded by Hitler styled Chicago mafia czars hell bent on destroying the Constitution and our way of life."
According to the left, "All of our problems were caused by the brainless George W. Bush--a cocaine addict and an alcoholic--who allowed Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, and their neo-con mafia to abuse every power in our Constitution and got us into two wars and the biggest financial mess since the 1929 depression.
But perhaps our problems stem from the fact that the American political landscape has become a conspiracy of ignorance and invective, in which no problems get solved because everyone is too busy calling each other names. They are too busy passing the blame to the other, side that nothing gets done. The arguments presented by both political parties--for every important issue--has become ever more infantile. Our citizenry has been alienated--they've developed eyes that don’t see, ears that don’t hear and brains that don’t work. We are too tired and defeated to care.
The truth is:
It was Republicans, led by Phil Gramm, who started de-regulating the banks and investment houses.
It was Democrats who insisted we provide mortgages to folks who couldn’t really afford them. The result was adjustable rate mortgages provided to people who could not pay, and then their mortgages were bundled into securities--known as derivatives--that were sold as investments, which became worthless.
This was a bipartisan effort that crashed the housing market and collapsed the banks and investment houses.
It was Republicans who used the Big Lie of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to conjure up an illegal war and Democrat lemmings who voted for both the war in Iraq and the abhorrent destruction of our Constitutional protections.
What no one wishes to hear, why we keep playing a blaming game is the fact that:
There have been two wars with a death toll exceeding 6,000 Americans, with nearly 35,000 wounded -- many grievously.
There was a bipartisan effort that led to both Wars that neither party knows how to end.
We have caused the death of over several hundred thousand innocent Iraqi people--and score of Afghans--and have displaced over two million of them--and when they helped us fight our war we abandoned them to a certain death. The USA has granted asylum to less than 1000 of the affected individuals in the region, leaving the surrounding countries--Jordan, Syria, and Iran--to deal with the three million refugees created by the two wars.
And in the meantime, The Bill of Rights is in shambles. We have a Constitution that no longer protects its citizens from an intrusive government. Elections are for sale to the highest bidder--thanks to the recent Supreme Court election finance decision--soon Congress will be controlled by corporations and not their constituents.
It may have been Republicans who were gung ho to outsource American jobs overseas to help their big business friends. But it was Democrats who supported unsustainable contracts in several industries to help their big labor friends. Both parties have caused manufacturing jobs to disappear by the millions and harmed the labor unions they tried to protect in the process.
It was a bipartisan effort that has turned us into a nation that exports waste and imports foreign-made goods we can’t afford because our economy is crippled.
And to make matters worse, intransigent incompetence is now the rule. You’ve likely heard of the U.S. Senate needing 60 votes to pass legislation. There is no law that requires 60 votes--a simple majority of 51 is sufficient. Not anymore. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has placed a "blanket hold" on at least 70 of President Obama's nominations until he receives over $40 billion worth of earmarks for his state, and it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster so a vote can be taken. In a scene that would have made Hollywood director Frank Capra proud. Republican Sen. Jim Bunning stood up courageously to stop Congress from committing a very popular move: sending unemployment checks to hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans. Democrats could hardly believe their good fortune.
It was one of those congressional moments that tell you everything you need to know about why Washington doesn't seem to work these days: Neither side sounded like they were listening to themselves, let alone to anybody else.
The Republicans needed 60 votes when they were in power because the Democrats wanted to stop everything in its tracks and the Democrats now need 60 votes because the Republicans are engaged in the same shameless cause.
To me, what is most discouraging is that we know the root cause of our problems. It isn’t Rush Limbaugh and it isn’t Sarah Palin. It isn’t the Liberal pundits or the Liberal media.
We elect these folks and then re-elect them over and over. Instead of demanding they listen to us, we keep listening to them. Instead of demanding solutions, we keep accepting their excuses. We form Tea Parties and listen to eloquent speeches from our President searching for bipartisanship solutions. However neither of these actions will solve our problems.
We look at the source of this farce every morning in the mirror. The Truth is that we have met the "problem"; and it is us. There is no one else to blame.
We'll be back home on March 4th, 2010; nothing has changed since we left. What the hell is wrong with our country? I'll tell you what is wrong with America; get rid of the two party system and change our government to the Parlamentary system. You'll see how soon politicians learn to work with each other and get the country back to work. That's change you can believe in!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Carlos T Mock, MD
March 4, 2010
From Paris, France
Nothing like being out of the country, see how other nations solve their problems, and reflect what's ailing our country.
President Obama has been our commander in chief for slightly more than a year. We have been in Paris for two weeks. As we return to Chicago/Michigan tomorrow we are facing the same problems that we face when we boarded a plane to Europe February 15, 2010.
According to the right, "All of our problems are because Obama--who is not an American citizen--is a radical left wing ultra liberal Socialist/Communist who is surrounded by Hitler styled Chicago mafia czars hell bent on destroying the Constitution and our way of life."
According to the left, "All of our problems were caused by the brainless George W. Bush--a cocaine addict and an alcoholic--who allowed Dick Cheney, Carl Rove, and their neo-con mafia to abuse every power in our Constitution and got us into two wars and the biggest financial mess since the 1929 depression.
But perhaps our problems stem from the fact that the American political landscape has become a conspiracy of ignorance and invective, in which no problems get solved because everyone is too busy calling each other names. They are too busy passing the blame to the other, side that nothing gets done. The arguments presented by both political parties--for every important issue--has become ever more infantile. Our citizenry has been alienated--they've developed eyes that don’t see, ears that don’t hear and brains that don’t work. We are too tired and defeated to care.
The truth is:
It was Republicans, led by Phil Gramm, who started de-regulating the banks and investment houses.
It was Democrats who insisted we provide mortgages to folks who couldn’t really afford them. The result was adjustable rate mortgages provided to people who could not pay, and then their mortgages were bundled into securities--known as derivatives--that were sold as investments, which became worthless.
This was a bipartisan effort that crashed the housing market and collapsed the banks and investment houses.
It was Republicans who used the Big Lie of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to conjure up an illegal war and Democrat lemmings who voted for both the war in Iraq and the abhorrent destruction of our Constitutional protections.
What no one wishes to hear, why we keep playing a blaming game is the fact that:
There have been two wars with a death toll exceeding 6,000 Americans, with nearly 35,000 wounded -- many grievously.
There was a bipartisan effort that led to both Wars that neither party knows how to end.
We have caused the death of over several hundred thousand innocent Iraqi people--and score of Afghans--and have displaced over two million of them--and when they helped us fight our war we abandoned them to a certain death. The USA has granted asylum to less than 1000 of the affected individuals in the region, leaving the surrounding countries--Jordan, Syria, and Iran--to deal with the three million refugees created by the two wars.
And in the meantime, The Bill of Rights is in shambles. We have a Constitution that no longer protects its citizens from an intrusive government. Elections are for sale to the highest bidder--thanks to the recent Supreme Court election finance decision--soon Congress will be controlled by corporations and not their constituents.
It may have been Republicans who were gung ho to outsource American jobs overseas to help their big business friends. But it was Democrats who supported unsustainable contracts in several industries to help their big labor friends. Both parties have caused manufacturing jobs to disappear by the millions and harmed the labor unions they tried to protect in the process.
It was a bipartisan effort that has turned us into a nation that exports waste and imports foreign-made goods we can’t afford because our economy is crippled.
And to make matters worse, intransigent incompetence is now the rule. You’ve likely heard of the U.S. Senate needing 60 votes to pass legislation. There is no law that requires 60 votes--a simple majority of 51 is sufficient. Not anymore. Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) has placed a "blanket hold" on at least 70 of President Obama's nominations until he receives over $40 billion worth of earmarks for his state, and it takes 60 votes to end a filibuster so a vote can be taken. In a scene that would have made Hollywood director Frank Capra proud. Republican Sen. Jim Bunning stood up courageously to stop Congress from committing a very popular move: sending unemployment checks to hundreds of thousands of jobless Americans. Democrats could hardly believe their good fortune.
It was one of those congressional moments that tell you everything you need to know about why Washington doesn't seem to work these days: Neither side sounded like they were listening to themselves, let alone to anybody else.
The Republicans needed 60 votes when they were in power because the Democrats wanted to stop everything in its tracks and the Democrats now need 60 votes because the Republicans are engaged in the same shameless cause.
To me, what is most discouraging is that we know the root cause of our problems. It isn’t Rush Limbaugh and it isn’t Sarah Palin. It isn’t the Liberal pundits or the Liberal media.
We elect these folks and then re-elect them over and over. Instead of demanding they listen to us, we keep listening to them. Instead of demanding solutions, we keep accepting their excuses. We form Tea Parties and listen to eloquent speeches from our President searching for bipartisanship solutions. However neither of these actions will solve our problems.
We look at the source of this farce every morning in the mirror. The Truth is that we have met the "problem"; and it is us. There is no one else to blame.
We'll be back home on March 4th, 2010; nothing has changed since we left. What the hell is wrong with our country? I'll tell you what is wrong with America; get rid of the two party system and change our government to the Parlamentary system. You'll see how soon politicians learn to work with each other and get the country back to work. That's change you can believe in!
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Puerto Rican Tales: No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano. (Getting earlier does not guarantee a sunrise)
Puerto Rican Tales: No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano. (Getting earlier does not guarantee a sunrise)
By Carlos T. Mock, MD
January 31, 2010
“Can Juan come out to play?” I heard Tito’s voice. Tito was my alpha, the leader. He and his brother Willie were my closest friends. Tito was a year older at 14, two years ahead in school and tall for his age. His blue eyes set him apart from the local crowd; his wavy bangs gave away his northern gene pool. He had a high forehead, long nose, and a confident face. Although not buff, his figure asserted his authority. He was the oldest in our group with a reserved, almost formal manner until he smiled, and then his eyes nearly shut, his skin stretched as thin as parchment across his face, and something Romanesque appeared. His voice was thin and faint, contrasting with his muscular, thick necked, powerful body. He was completely masculine. Willie, one year my junior, at 12 was the perfect balance for us. Always cheerful, always enthusiastic, he complemented the strong brother with the feeble me. Willie was as slender and as smooth as I was. He had large blue eyes; a long face and he exuded sweetness, a quality that I found irresistible. He was shy, and always trying to please his brother, another reason why I identified with him: we both were always trying to please Tito.
I had not seen them since way before exams. I was wary of sharing my secret about my ability to ejaculate, yet, I always thought of Tito as the wise one, and the energy generated from my anticipation of the summer ahead was an easy introduction to the theme.
Tito was quite sympathetic. He told me that there was nothing wrong with me and that I should be proud of my developments. Tito, while he already had the changes that came with puberty, was still unable to achieve orgasm. He was very proud as he showed me all the hair in his crotch.
We lived in Santa Maria, a middle class development in the outskirts of San Juan. Back in the late 60’s there had been a surge in construction and most of the lots were already being built on. In hurricane country, and since there aren’t enough trees left on the island, houses are built with as much concrete as possible (concrete is actually considered a status symbol.) It was not unusual for the work to start and then the concrete shell would be left unfinished until more financing became available. When Papi bought property in the new sub-division, my grandfather made fun of him for moving into the country and out of the city (San Juan). That subdivision is now in the center of the city and the country is many miles away.
Tito led us to an abandoned lot. The past school year had seen a huge rush in construction. Somehow, this lot, which was parallel to my house four blocks east, was unfinished. It had the skeletal four walls and no roof.
As soon as we were inside with all the privacy provided by the four walls, Tito wanted proof of my newfound talent. He was as helpful as he was curious. As soon as all three of us had our pants down to our knees, Tito insisted on helping me. I screamed like a young girl when he touched me (my voice was still changing).
Tito tried to soothe me by informing me that he and Willie were always doing this. It was as normal as changing your underwear and I should be learning to enjoy it. Wary at first, I discovered the pleasure of my friend’s hands. Somehow, it was a lot better than when I did it on my own; either with my left or, my much preferred right hand. While all three of us were able to get erections, I was the only one who was able to ejaculate. The warm fluid that shot out of me amazed both Tito and Willie. They were immediately jealous. It was as if somehow, by beating them to this rite of passage, I had inherited the power of the most powerful army. I was suddenly the new general and these were my loyal soldiers
The empty lot was soon christened “el fuerte” (the fort) and these meetings became as much a part of this hot summer as the smell of chlorine left over from the pool had been the last year. Tito, as alpha, would call meetings to the fort and we boys were soon to follow. Trying to get both Willie and Tito to ejaculate, I soon learned to reciprocate in the manual activities: with both hands.
Around this time, I named my hands, Rosie and Louie. I would have Rosie days and then I would have Louie days. It was as if I was dating two separate people. I even had the courage to introduce them to my friends. I would either give them Rosie jobs or Louie jobs. Tito had a love affair with Rosie, while Willie was head over heels over Louie. This was the extent of our little family for a good while….
Tito and Willie, bragging of my prowess, were soon to introduce another fellow to the club. Tabito was already fifteen and in Tito’s class. He was what you might call a sex maniac, but he was an amusing and generous one. He was like a lovable, mischievous cartoon character; a giant anvil might fall on him, but he would just pop right back up, dust himself off, and go on to find more trouble. He was never repentant for his actions because he never saw any of them as bad. Because he was a year older, he was always boasting about his ability to ejaculate.
The first time that Tabito was invited to the fort, he was not only eager to drop his pants, but forceful in trying to engage in closer physical contact. It was the second time that I looked at a fully developed organ (first time being my brother Manny) and I was both impressed and scared of its size. While Tito calmed Willie and me by saying we would have ours grow that big some day, I had my reservations. Tabito’s eagerness drove Tito to such a state of excitement, that he joined that day in the exclusive club of those boys that had become men. (Gay Latinos, latent or otherwise, maintain aggression as a way of life strictly due to a society that sees aggression as a normal way of dealing with the world around them. Indulging in pain – seeking it for itself or afflicting on others can become quite erotic. As he breaks away from the adolescent sex games where it’s easy to have “sex” with other boys without much societal restraint, the Latin male has to fundamentally become a top. As long as he is the active one, he does not have to think of himself as gay. He may even have a wife and kids. As if by being very aggressive, he can hide his homosexuality and survive.) All three of us were taken aback as Tito ejaculated, and the rules of engagement were formalized. Since Tito now possessed the gift, he was soon to become the true alpha-male of the group again.
Somehow, rumors spread of the club’s activities and other members joined. Since Tito was ahead in school, he was the one who brought new pledges to our fraternity. Soon we were six or seven boys: the contests were organized in a circle, and were determined by the speed of the deed, the size of the member, and the number of times the deed was achieved (ties were decided by distance shot). One argument was resolved by convening at a later time to bring a ruler to measure organ size and it could not be resolved because Tito was unsure as to whether width or length was more important. It didn’t matter that I thought the shorter, yet much wider one was very cute.
As summer vacation ended, the fort was lost to the returning construction crew and the club dissolved due to lack of meeting facilities.
I was transformed by this summer. Soon the frequent dreams of arousal had a recurring male theme, and my lieutenant pillow/lover was replaced by memories of classmates. One boy in particular would come back to haunt me next year at school.
Confessions at church were also transformed. Now I was shamed by the fact that I had done sexual activities in the company of strangers. Unable to justify them with my usual confessional jargon of impure thoughts only, and taken aback by the transfer of good Father Roberto to another parochial district, I was soon to endure this Sunday purification ritual with a new priest.
Having fasted the usual hour before communion, and after a very good thought-out act of contrition, I was presented with the task of choosing a new partner in sanctification. I read the names of all the priests on duty at the confessional, and mysteriously I was drawn to Father Eduardo.
Father Eduardo was new last year and had come to my Religion class. He was clad in black pants and his black robe. When the weather would cool (in PR “cold” means below 75 degrees), he would wear a smartly tailored matching black jacket. He knew how to wear his Jesuit collar with style – if there had been a way to accessorize a priest’s collar, he would have found it. His hair was neatly styled in silky short waves and he wore large Ray Ban gold-trimmed sunglasses as he assessed us from the doorway, as if reluctant to enter or leave the room. He was very sensitive and all the students felt they could trust him with their problems. He had a unique technique in didactics, where he used church teachings only as they applied to regular people’s lives. I had felt very at ease in Religion class, and not being bored like the year before, thought Father Eduardo might bring me back to my lost state of “Grace”. It helped a lot that he was nice to look at.
“Forgive me father for I have sinned” I began. “It has been one week since my last confession,” I continued. “My sins are: I lied to my friend Tito, I forgot to return my friend Willie’s GI Joe rifle and then I lost it. I had impure thoughts and could not contain myself and acted on them”
“Were you alone at the time?” interrupted Father Eduardo.
“I don’t know where I was.”
“You don’t know where you were?”
“Yeah, I lost his rifle sometime, but if I knew where I was, I probably could find it.”
A pause. Then, “No. When you acted on your impure thoughts.”
Long silence. Astounded by the interruption of my ritual and not knowing what to say I added, “No I had company”
“Who was with you at the time?” Father Eduardo inquired.
“My friends Willie and Tito” was all I could get out. Barely, at that.
Miraculously, things got easier very quickly. Not only was Father Eduardo inquisitive of, or shall we say probing into, all the details of the fort activities, but also he showed so much interest and enthusiasm that I almost missed Holy Communion. Father Eduardo kept me for forty-five minutes, almost throughout the entire length of the Holy Mass, and amazingly, was very lenient in the Penance. Instead of Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers, I was told that my sins were forgiven and, I didn’t understand why but, with a subtle increase in his breathing, he requested full reports every week of my activities. And, as his breathing started to return to normal, Father also encouraged me to have my friends Willie and Tito come to him for confession. That was the beginning of a bond that would be present for the next four years of High School.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
By Carlos T. Mock, MD
January 31, 2010
“Can Juan come out to play?” I heard Tito’s voice. Tito was my alpha, the leader. He and his brother Willie were my closest friends. Tito was a year older at 14, two years ahead in school and tall for his age. His blue eyes set him apart from the local crowd; his wavy bangs gave away his northern gene pool. He had a high forehead, long nose, and a confident face. Although not buff, his figure asserted his authority. He was the oldest in our group with a reserved, almost formal manner until he smiled, and then his eyes nearly shut, his skin stretched as thin as parchment across his face, and something Romanesque appeared. His voice was thin and faint, contrasting with his muscular, thick necked, powerful body. He was completely masculine. Willie, one year my junior, at 12 was the perfect balance for us. Always cheerful, always enthusiastic, he complemented the strong brother with the feeble me. Willie was as slender and as smooth as I was. He had large blue eyes; a long face and he exuded sweetness, a quality that I found irresistible. He was shy, and always trying to please his brother, another reason why I identified with him: we both were always trying to please Tito.
I had not seen them since way before exams. I was wary of sharing my secret about my ability to ejaculate, yet, I always thought of Tito as the wise one, and the energy generated from my anticipation of the summer ahead was an easy introduction to the theme.
Tito was quite sympathetic. He told me that there was nothing wrong with me and that I should be proud of my developments. Tito, while he already had the changes that came with puberty, was still unable to achieve orgasm. He was very proud as he showed me all the hair in his crotch.
We lived in Santa Maria, a middle class development in the outskirts of San Juan. Back in the late 60’s there had been a surge in construction and most of the lots were already being built on. In hurricane country, and since there aren’t enough trees left on the island, houses are built with as much concrete as possible (concrete is actually considered a status symbol.) It was not unusual for the work to start and then the concrete shell would be left unfinished until more financing became available. When Papi bought property in the new sub-division, my grandfather made fun of him for moving into the country and out of the city (San Juan). That subdivision is now in the center of the city and the country is many miles away.
Tito led us to an abandoned lot. The past school year had seen a huge rush in construction. Somehow, this lot, which was parallel to my house four blocks east, was unfinished. It had the skeletal four walls and no roof.
As soon as we were inside with all the privacy provided by the four walls, Tito wanted proof of my newfound talent. He was as helpful as he was curious. As soon as all three of us had our pants down to our knees, Tito insisted on helping me. I screamed like a young girl when he touched me (my voice was still changing).
Tito tried to soothe me by informing me that he and Willie were always doing this. It was as normal as changing your underwear and I should be learning to enjoy it. Wary at first, I discovered the pleasure of my friend’s hands. Somehow, it was a lot better than when I did it on my own; either with my left or, my much preferred right hand. While all three of us were able to get erections, I was the only one who was able to ejaculate. The warm fluid that shot out of me amazed both Tito and Willie. They were immediately jealous. It was as if somehow, by beating them to this rite of passage, I had inherited the power of the most powerful army. I was suddenly the new general and these were my loyal soldiers
The empty lot was soon christened “el fuerte” (the fort) and these meetings became as much a part of this hot summer as the smell of chlorine left over from the pool had been the last year. Tito, as alpha, would call meetings to the fort and we boys were soon to follow. Trying to get both Willie and Tito to ejaculate, I soon learned to reciprocate in the manual activities: with both hands.
Around this time, I named my hands, Rosie and Louie. I would have Rosie days and then I would have Louie days. It was as if I was dating two separate people. I even had the courage to introduce them to my friends. I would either give them Rosie jobs or Louie jobs. Tito had a love affair with Rosie, while Willie was head over heels over Louie. This was the extent of our little family for a good while….
Tito and Willie, bragging of my prowess, were soon to introduce another fellow to the club. Tabito was already fifteen and in Tito’s class. He was what you might call a sex maniac, but he was an amusing and generous one. He was like a lovable, mischievous cartoon character; a giant anvil might fall on him, but he would just pop right back up, dust himself off, and go on to find more trouble. He was never repentant for his actions because he never saw any of them as bad. Because he was a year older, he was always boasting about his ability to ejaculate.
The first time that Tabito was invited to the fort, he was not only eager to drop his pants, but forceful in trying to engage in closer physical contact. It was the second time that I looked at a fully developed organ (first time being my brother Manny) and I was both impressed and scared of its size. While Tito calmed Willie and me by saying we would have ours grow that big some day, I had my reservations. Tabito’s eagerness drove Tito to such a state of excitement, that he joined that day in the exclusive club of those boys that had become men. (Gay Latinos, latent or otherwise, maintain aggression as a way of life strictly due to a society that sees aggression as a normal way of dealing with the world around them. Indulging in pain – seeking it for itself or afflicting on others can become quite erotic. As he breaks away from the adolescent sex games where it’s easy to have “sex” with other boys without much societal restraint, the Latin male has to fundamentally become a top. As long as he is the active one, he does not have to think of himself as gay. He may even have a wife and kids. As if by being very aggressive, he can hide his homosexuality and survive.) All three of us were taken aback as Tito ejaculated, and the rules of engagement were formalized. Since Tito now possessed the gift, he was soon to become the true alpha-male of the group again.
Somehow, rumors spread of the club’s activities and other members joined. Since Tito was ahead in school, he was the one who brought new pledges to our fraternity. Soon we were six or seven boys: the contests were organized in a circle, and were determined by the speed of the deed, the size of the member, and the number of times the deed was achieved (ties were decided by distance shot). One argument was resolved by convening at a later time to bring a ruler to measure organ size and it could not be resolved because Tito was unsure as to whether width or length was more important. It didn’t matter that I thought the shorter, yet much wider one was very cute.
As summer vacation ended, the fort was lost to the returning construction crew and the club dissolved due to lack of meeting facilities.
I was transformed by this summer. Soon the frequent dreams of arousal had a recurring male theme, and my lieutenant pillow/lover was replaced by memories of classmates. One boy in particular would come back to haunt me next year at school.
Confessions at church were also transformed. Now I was shamed by the fact that I had done sexual activities in the company of strangers. Unable to justify them with my usual confessional jargon of impure thoughts only, and taken aback by the transfer of good Father Roberto to another parochial district, I was soon to endure this Sunday purification ritual with a new priest.
Having fasted the usual hour before communion, and after a very good thought-out act of contrition, I was presented with the task of choosing a new partner in sanctification. I read the names of all the priests on duty at the confessional, and mysteriously I was drawn to Father Eduardo.
Father Eduardo was new last year and had come to my Religion class. He was clad in black pants and his black robe. When the weather would cool (in PR “cold” means below 75 degrees), he would wear a smartly tailored matching black jacket. He knew how to wear his Jesuit collar with style – if there had been a way to accessorize a priest’s collar, he would have found it. His hair was neatly styled in silky short waves and he wore large Ray Ban gold-trimmed sunglasses as he assessed us from the doorway, as if reluctant to enter or leave the room. He was very sensitive and all the students felt they could trust him with their problems. He had a unique technique in didactics, where he used church teachings only as they applied to regular people’s lives. I had felt very at ease in Religion class, and not being bored like the year before, thought Father Eduardo might bring me back to my lost state of “Grace”. It helped a lot that he was nice to look at.
“Forgive me father for I have sinned” I began. “It has been one week since my last confession,” I continued. “My sins are: I lied to my friend Tito, I forgot to return my friend Willie’s GI Joe rifle and then I lost it. I had impure thoughts and could not contain myself and acted on them”
“Were you alone at the time?” interrupted Father Eduardo.
“I don’t know where I was.”
“You don’t know where you were?”
“Yeah, I lost his rifle sometime, but if I knew where I was, I probably could find it.”
A pause. Then, “No. When you acted on your impure thoughts.”
Long silence. Astounded by the interruption of my ritual and not knowing what to say I added, “No I had company”
“Who was with you at the time?” Father Eduardo inquired.
“My friends Willie and Tito” was all I could get out. Barely, at that.
Miraculously, things got easier very quickly. Not only was Father Eduardo inquisitive of, or shall we say probing into, all the details of the fort activities, but also he showed so much interest and enthusiasm that I almost missed Holy Communion. Father Eduardo kept me for forty-five minutes, almost throughout the entire length of the Holy Mass, and amazingly, was very lenient in the Penance. Instead of Hail Mary’s and Our Fathers, I was told that my sins were forgiven and, I didn’t understand why but, with a subtle increase in his breathing, he requested full reports every week of my activities. And, as his breathing started to return to normal, Father also encouraged me to have my friends Willie and Tito come to him for confession. That was the beginning of a bond that would be present for the next four years of High School.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
2010 census will include question about same-sex marriages, relationships
2010 census will include question about same-sex marriages, relationships
Gay couples will have an option of marking 'husband or wife' or 'unmarried partners' in federal survey
By Kristen Mack
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune.
February 13, 2010
Ellen Meyers and Elena Yatzeck changed the pronouns in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer for their 2008 commitment ceremony.
More than 200 friends and family watched them exchange nuptials on the North Side in a ritual they equated with marriage.
"It was about making a public statement in a familiar way," Yatzeck said. "It changed how they perceived us."
Now, the couple is weighing how they want the country to view their union. For the first time, the census will allow same-sex couples to identify as husband or wife, and will count their responses. The couple is still deciding how they will identify themselves, since their civil commitment isn't recognized by the state of Illinois.
"We have to figure out how we want to do that," Yatzeck said. "(Gay couples) should separate the emotions from the public policy to accurately reflect how we live."
Same-sex couples will have two ways to characterize their relationships on the 2010 census: They can choose "husband or wife" or "unmarried partners." The census will publicly report those responses and recognize demographic differences, such as their ethnicities, where they live, and whether they're raising children, between the two groups.
The modification is an attempt to capture the changing nature of American households. It is part of the evolution of the decennial survey, which adapts to the social climate and is being advertised this year as a snapshot of America.
In response to advocacy from demographers and national gay rights groups, the Obama administration quietly reversed federal policy this summer to allow the Census Bureau to publish tabulations that tell us how many same-sex couples consider themselves husbands or wives.
Previously, if same-sex couples checked that they were "husband or wife," that information was automatically coded as "unmarried partners." The policy was established during the Clinton administration and maintained under the Bush administration because gay couples could not legally get married, and officials said it was more accurate to call them unmarried partners.
In the decade since the last census, however, laws have changed. In 2004, starting with Massachusetts, gay couples were given the right to legally marry. Four other states — Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire — have full marriage equality. And New York and Washington, D.C., recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
Gay couples will have an option of marking 'husband or wife' or 'unmarried partners' in federal survey
By Kristen Mack
Copyright © 2010, Chicago Tribune.
February 13, 2010
Ellen Meyers and Elena Yatzeck changed the pronouns in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer for their 2008 commitment ceremony.
More than 200 friends and family watched them exchange nuptials on the North Side in a ritual they equated with marriage.
"It was about making a public statement in a familiar way," Yatzeck said. "It changed how they perceived us."
Now, the couple is weighing how they want the country to view their union. For the first time, the census will allow same-sex couples to identify as husband or wife, and will count their responses. The couple is still deciding how they will identify themselves, since their civil commitment isn't recognized by the state of Illinois.
"We have to figure out how we want to do that," Yatzeck said. "(Gay couples) should separate the emotions from the public policy to accurately reflect how we live."
Same-sex couples will have two ways to characterize their relationships on the 2010 census: They can choose "husband or wife" or "unmarried partners." The census will publicly report those responses and recognize demographic differences, such as their ethnicities, where they live, and whether they're raising children, between the two groups.
The modification is an attempt to capture the changing nature of American households. It is part of the evolution of the decennial survey, which adapts to the social climate and is being advertised this year as a snapshot of America.
In response to advocacy from demographers and national gay rights groups, the Obama administration quietly reversed federal policy this summer to allow the Census Bureau to publish tabulations that tell us how many same-sex couples consider themselves husbands or wives.
Previously, if same-sex couples checked that they were "husband or wife," that information was automatically coded as "unmarried partners." The policy was established during the Clinton administration and maintained under the Bush administration because gay couples could not legally get married, and officials said it was more accurate to call them unmarried partners.
In the decade since the last census, however, laws have changed. In 2004, starting with Massachusetts, gay couples were given the right to legally marry. Four other states — Iowa, Connecticut, Vermont and New Hampshire — have full marriage equality. And New York and Washington, D.C., recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states.
Dr. Mock has published four books with Floricanto Press, Berklety, CA. His articles have appeared on publications like The Chicago Tribune and several gay and lesbian newspapers. He was inducted in The Chicago GLBT Hall of Fame in 2007. He can be reached at: www.carlostmock.com
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