Vicious but True

Dan Savage is a sex advice columnist for the Chicago Reader and an advocate for gay and lesbian rights. He is also the creator of the It Gets Better Project, which provides support to gay and lesbian teens who are facing discrimination--and worse--at school and in their communities. Prompted by the recent suicides of several gay teens, it is a powerful, emotional testament to their self-worth and to the promise that it does, indeed, get better.

Recently, someone took exception to one of his columns on the issue, and he called them on their hypocrisy with a fury seldom seen in print. I don't really like to publish someone else's writing, but this is simply too good, and too important. From the October 14th 2010 issue of the Chicago Reader:

Q: I was listening to the radio yesterday morning, and I heard an interview with you about your It Gets Better campaign. I was saddened by and frustrated with your comments regarding people of faith and their perpetuation of bullying. As someone who loves the Lord and does not support gay marriage, I can honestly say I was heartbroken to hear about the young man who took his own life. 

If your message is that we shouldn't judge people based on their sexual preference, how do you justify judging entire groups of people for any other reason (including their faith)? There is no part of me that took any pleasure in what happened to that young man, and I know for a fact that's true of many other people who disagree with your viewpoint. 

To that end, to imply that I would somehow encourage my children to mock, hurt, or intimidate another person for any reason is completely unfounded and offensive. Being a follower of Christ is, above all things, a recognition that we are all imperfect, fallible, and in desperate need of a savior. We cannot believe that we are better or more worthy than other people. Please consider your viewpoint, and please be more careful with your words in the future. —L.R.

A: I'm sorry your feelings were hurt by my comments.

No, wait. I'm not.

Gay kids are dying. So let's try to keep things in perspective: fuck your feelings.

A question: Do you "support" atheist marriage? Interfaith marriage? Divorce and remarriage? All are legal, all go against Christian and/or traditional ideas about marriage, and yet there's no "Christian" movement to deny marriage rights to atheists or people marrying outside their respective faiths or people divorcing and remarrying.

Why the hell not?

Sorry, L.R., but so long as you support the denial of marriage rights to same-sex couples, it's clear that you do believe that some people—straight people—are "better or more worthy" than others.
And—sorry—but you are partly responsible for the bullying and physical violence being visited on vulnerable LGBT children. The kids of people who see gay people as sinful or damaged or disordered and unworthy of full civil equality—even if those people strive to express their bigotry in the politest possible way (at least when they happen to be addressing a gay person)—learn to see gay people as sinful, damaged, disordered, and unworthy. And while there may not be any gay adults or couples where you live, or at your church, or in your workplace, I promise you that there are gay and lesbian children in your schools. And while you can only attack gays and lesbians at the ballot box, nice and impersonally, your children have the option of attacking actual gays and lesbians, in person, in real time.

Real gay and lesbian children. Not political abstractions, not "sinners." Gay and lesbian children.

Try to keep up: The dehumanizing bigotries that fall from the lips of "faithful Christians" and the lies about us vomited out from the pulpits of churches that "faithful Christians" drag their kids to on Sundays give your children license to verbally abuse, humiliate, and condemn the gay children they encounter at school. And many of your children—having listened to mom and dad talk about how gay marriage is a threat to family and how gay sex makes their magic sky friend Jesus cry—feel justified in physically abusing the LGBT children they encounter in their schools. You don't have to explicitly "encourage [your] children to mock, hurt, or intimidate" queer kids. Your encouragement—along with your hatred and fear—is implicit. It's here, it's clear, and we're seeing the fruits of it: dead children.

Oh, and those same dehumanizing bigotries that fill your straight children with hate? They fill your gay children with suicidal despair. And you have the nerve to ask me to be more careful with my words?

Did that hurt to hear? Good. But it couldn't have hurt nearly as much as what was said and done to Asher Brown and Justin Aaberg and Billy Lucas and Cody Barker and Seth Walsh and others—day in, day out for years—at schools filled with bigoted little monsters created not in the image of a loving God but in the image of the hateful and false "followers of Christ" they call mom and dad.

Wikileaks

Wikileaks .The political/diplomatic equivalent of seeing how the sausage is made. And that's all it should be: an embarassing documentary of diplomatic reality. We don't like everyone. Shocking. Not everyone likes us. Even more shocking. But perhaps underlying the hue and cry is the realization that while the general public always thought politicians and diplomats danced around the truth, that much of what they said was polite euphemism, that they banked on our not being smart enough or concerned enough to realize that we were being lied to, now we know it. In redacted black and white.

30 years ago, it was the Pentagon Papers and their publication by the New York Times that provoked similar outrage in Washington. The top secret report on US involvement in Vietnam was not a flattering portrayal of several administrations, and its publication resulted in a similar cry for the head of Daniel Ellsberg, and the Times' editorial board. But on June 30, 1971, the United States Supreme Court ruled in New York Times Co. v. The United States that the government had not proved its case for prior restraint and ruled in favor of the Times.*

To quote Justice Black: "Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell." —Justice Hugo Black

The opposing argument, of course, is that if we don't want deception exposed, we must restrain the press. Just like they do in North Korea. And Eritrea. And Turkmenistan, Iran, Burma, Syria, Sudan, China, Yemen, Rwanda, Laos, Equatiorial Guinea, Cuba, and Vietnam.


*Yes, it is true that while the Supreme Court case is seen as a First Amendment victory, it more narrowly concerned itself with the government's assertion of prior restraint. It did not void the Espionage Act, or permit the wholesale publication of classified documents.

Representative Democracy 1776-2010

Representative Democracy passed away earlier this week, victim of a sudden case of congressional obstructionism and intransigence. "Rep fought the good fight," said close friend Parlimentarianism, "but in the end the combination of self-interest and stubborness and plain old bickering just proved to be too much. He embodied the 'of the people, by the people, for the people' philosphy as much as anyone I knew, and it's hard to believe he has, in fact, perished from the face of the earth."

Doctors were summoned to Congress when Rep seemed to stagger under the weight of tax cuts, arms limitations and gays in the military, a potent confluence that would challenge any system, let alone one struggling in recent years with apathy and gridlock. "The shock to the system was just too great, and the complete failure of bipartisanship just too much," said the Surgeon General, adding "he probably never saw it coming."

A direct yet distant descendant of Athenian democracy, Rep was the latest in a long line of governmental systems that relied on the wisdom of the people as opposed to the will of the elite. Believing strongly that the people can select representatives who would wisely and impartially rule them in a consensus designed for their best interests, he led a long and distinguished life, and his influence can be seen in descendants governing nations the world over.

Family spokespersons Conciliation and Cooperation refused to speculate as to what might take his place. "Truth is" they said, "we have no idea what will happen now."

Aw, Geeeeez. . .

Santo, Kessinger, Beckert and Banks, the infield third to first*
But not any more. So long, Ron.



*Jack Brickhouse