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Today's
Stories
March 4, 2004
Tariq Ali
Notes on Anti-Semitism, Zionism and
Palestine
March 3, 2004
Jack McCarthy
Guy's
Our Guy: "I am the Chief. My Hero is Pinochet."
Robert Sandels
The
Purloined Label: The Struggle Over the Havana Club Trademark
Juliana Fredman / James Davis
Israeli Organized Crime
JG
The Yuppie Silence on Haiti
Emilio Sardi
The
Colombia/US Free Trade Deal: It's About More Than Trade
Alan Farago
Swimming in Sewage
Mike Whitney
"Blood
Will Have Blood": 143 Murdered in Liberated Iraq
CounterPunch Wire
Nader's Legislative Record in the 1960s
Steve Perry
Kerry
Advisory: Remember Lena Guerrero
Nelson George/ Marcus Miller
Miles Davis & Hip Hop: a Conversation
Website of the Day
$10,000 Is Yours for the Taking: The USS Liberty Challenge
March 2, 2004
William Blum
If Kerry's
the Answer, What's the Question?
Conn Hallinan
Haiti:
the Dangerous Muddle
JoAnn Wypijewski
The Bravo
H-Bomb Test: One WMD They Couldn't Hide
Mike Whitney
Regime Change in Haiti: the Bush Dominos Keep Falling
Ra Ravishankar
Afghanistan, the Liberation That Isn't: an Interview with Mariam
from RAWA
Dan Bacher
Merle Haggard & the Politics of Salmon: "Clearcutting
is Rape"
Greg Moses
Oscar White
Brandy Baker
Mel Gibson's Minstrelsy Show
Little Tucker Carlson
What I Did on My Vacation
Robert Fisk
All This
Talk of Civil War, Now This
Merle Haggard
Kern River
Website of the Day
Rebel Edit
March 1, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Morris
Thanks War Criminal in Front of Billions
Richard Oxman
Oscar's
Obit: Thanking Bob McNamara
Elaine Cassel
Writing and Reading as "Terrorism"
Mickey Z
Thomas Friedman's Education
Mike Whitney
George Will and Anti-Semitism: a Cul-de-Sac of Prejudice
Heather Williams
Haiti
as Target Practice: How the US Press Missed the Story
Cathy Crosson
Chanson d'amour haïtienne
Website of the Day
God Hates Shrimp
February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
February 27, 2004
Thomas C. Mountain
A
White Jesus During Black History Month?
Laura Carlsen
Americans
Abroad: Bush is Persona Non Grata
John B. Anderson
Nader's Campaign Brings Back Memories: Creating an Open Electoral
Process
Jason Leopold
Spying
on Kofi Annan
John Chuckman
Nader,
Risk and Hope
Standard Schaefer
An
Interview with Michael Hudson on Putin's Russia
Ray McGovern
Punished
for Honest Intelligence
Saul Landau
The
Haiti Redux
Website of the Day
Bush: Why I'm Running for Re-election
February 26, 2004
Brandy Baker
Is Nader
on to Something?
Jacques Kinau
AEI
to Colombia: "Can't Give You Anything But Guns, Baby"
Norman Solomon
Bugging Kofi Annan: UN Spying
and the Evasions of US Journalism
Greg Weiher
A Purloined Letter: the Zarqawi Gambit
Walt Brasch
Janet Jackson, Bush & No. 542: There are No Halftime Shows
in War
Shadi Hamid
The Music World Explodes in Anger
Norman Madarasz
As Canadian as Corruption
Chris Floyd
Bullets and Ballots
Virginia Tilly
The
Deeper Meaning of the Wall
Amy Goodman / Jeremy
Scahill
Haiti's
Lawyer Says US is Arming Haiti's Anti-Aristide Paramilitaries
Website of the Day
Clear Channel Sucks
February 25, 2004
Dr. Susan Block
Saddam's
Sex Therapist and the Rape of Free Speech
Bruce Anderson
Treacherous Bastards: The Greens and the Dems and Nader
Ron Jacobs
Our Power is on the Streets and
in Our Hearts
Mike Whitney
Bush
and Gay America: the Politics of Duplicity
Sam Husseini
Jesus in 100 Words
John L. Hess
Kick Off or Flub?
Sam Hamod
Bush's Newest Red Herring
Cockburn / St. Clair
Winning
with Nader
Website of the Day
VotePact
February 24, 2004
Ralph Nader
Why
I'm Running for President
Greg Moses
Rally
the Mob! Bush, Gay Marriage and the Constitution
Douglas O'Hara
The
Merchants of Fear: Smearing Nader
Phillip Cryan
Frozen in Time: The WSJ's Paranoid
Lens on Latin America
David Lindorff
John Kerry's China Connection
Jason Leopold
Cheney's Shame: Halliburton Faces New Charges
Gary Younge
Haiti: Throttled by History
Kromm, Masri & Purohit
Why No Democracy in Iraq?
Steve Perry
Tangled Up in Red and Blue: Beware the Electoral College
February 23, 2004
Neve Gordon
Israel's Apartheid Wall on Trial
at The Hague
Kurt Nimmo
Richard Perle, Executioner: "Heads Should Roll"
Jonathan Franklin
US Soldier Seeks Refugee Status in Canada
Al Krebs
The Liberal "Intelligentsia" v. Nader
Josh Frank
Nader's Nadir? Not a Chance
Bruce Jackson
Nader, Another View: "He's as Evil as Bush"
Gary Leupp
A Misguided
Attack, The Passion, Rabbi Lerner and the Gospels
February 20 / 22, 2004
Cockburn / St. Clair
Kerry:
He's Peaking Already!
Derek Seidman
Chasing
Judith Miller from the Stage: Watch Her Run!
Ghada Karmi
Sharon is not the Problem
Vanessa Jones
This Week in Redfern, a Boy Dies, Chased by Cops
Ben Granby
Anatomy of a Night Raid on Balad, Iraq
John Holt
An Air That Kills: Greed, Apathy, Dead People
Saul Landau
Entry from a White House Diary
Tom Jackson
Why They Couldn't Wait to Invade Iraq
Frederick B. Hudson
Slave Power and the Constitution: Jefferson, Slaves, Haiti and
Hypocrisy
Roger Burbach
Argentina Fights Back
Kate Doyle
Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
Mike Whitney
Operation Enduring Misery: the Afghanistan Debacle
Greg Moses
What Gives Texas A&M the Right to Trample the Civil Rights
Act?
David Krieger
US Elections: an Opportunity to Debate Nuclear Weapons
Sam Bahour
Palestinian Issue Riddles Bush's Budget
David Grenier
You Could Get 10 Years in Prison Just for Reading This
Charles Sullivan
Corporatism vs. Single Party Politics
Poet's Basement
Hilda White, Larry Kearney & Stew Albert
Website of the Weekend
The Rumsfeld Fighting Technique
February 19, 2004
Cecilie Surasky
Anti-Semitism
at the World Social Forum? That's Not What I Saw
Ray McGovern
Iraq
Hawks and Deceptive Intelligence: Did They Really Think They'd
Get Away With It?
Tariq Ali
How Far
Will Bush Go in Iraq?
Ralph Nader
Whither
the Nation?
Wayne Madsen
Would Kerry Purge the Neo-Cons?
Norman Solomon
The Collapse of Dean's Cyber-Bubble
Christopher Brauchli
Cheney, Halliburton and the NYT
Mike Whitney
Bush's Iraq Strategy: "I Hope They Kill Each Other"
Lewis Carroll
Bush the Mighty Helmsman from Yale
Website of the Day
Sex Toy Horoscope
February 18, 2004
William Wilgus
Bush:
AWOL and Dereliction of Duty
William Blum
Mush-Minded
Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Bush's China Syndrome
Greg Weiher
Why
is Kerry Getting a Pass?
Mike Griffin
Killing the Messenger: the AFL-CIO's Attack on Harry Kelber
Mark Hand
Kerry Tells Peace Movement to "Move On"
February 17, 2004
Mike Ferner
The
Countryside Murders in Iraq
Mokhiber / Weissman
Corporation
as Psychopath
Marjorie Cohn
DrakeGate:
a Victory for Free Speech
Kurt Nimmo
Bush's
Endgame: a Review of Chalmers Johnson's "Sorrows of Empire"
Greg Bates
Nader Ambush: a New Low for The
Nation
Ximena Ortiz
A Bush
Doctrine, of Sorts
Gary Leupp
Whatever Happened to Gen. Khazraji?
Sen. John Kerry
"The Cause of Israel is the Cause of America"
Steve Perry
Kerry
1, Drudge 0
February 16, 2004
James Johnston
Huddling
with the Cheeseheads in a NASCAR World
Sara Eltantawi
To
Wear the Hijab or Not
Bruce Anderson
Kevin
Cooper and the Midnight Needle
Elaine Cassel
Feds
on Campus: the Drake Subpoenas
Rahul Mahajan
Bush,
Is the Tide Finally Turning?
Kevin Cooper
The Ritual of Death
Stan Cox
Goodbye, Howard Dean
Larry David
My War
Steve Perry
Bush and the Guard: the Cover-Up's the Thing
Website of the Day
Prison Patriots: Help This Vital Film Get Made
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
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March
4, 2004
It's
a Family Affair
Ideals
and Sex Rules
By DIANE CHRISTIAN
"I believed it was important to
act because the institution of marriage was being changed by
courts. . . .I believe that marriage has served society well.
And I believe it is important to affirm that, that marriage between
a man and a woman is the ideal. And the job of the presidency
is to drive policy toward the ideal."
President G. W. Bush explaining his opposition
to gay marriage & his promotion of a Constitutional amendment
limiting marriage to a man and a woman.
President Bush's job is not to enforce his ideals
but the Constitution's. He attempts to make the two one by proposing
to amend the Constitution. Many argue he's pandering to his political
religious base, much as his father (and mother) disavowed abortion
which they had formerly supported. The issue of ideals and sexual
legislation is more serious than political positioning and very
volatile. The conservative instinct to value privacy often conflicts
with a moral desire to safeguard society.
With regard to marriage, what ideal does
President Bush invoke? Adam and Eve I presume, as strengthened
by Christ and amended by Protestantism. That is, according to
the Genesis story, man and woman, the heterosexual couple, forms
the radical base of society. Opposers of gay unions often say,
'it's not Adam and Arthur, or Edna and Eve.' the Genesis text
is seen to embody the original ideal and to ordain the root social
bond. The Genesis text comments "thus it is that a man leaves
his father and mother and cleaves to his wife and they become
one flesh." This is not what happens in the actual Adam
and Eve story where God makes Adam out of red clay and later
puts him to sleep to make Eve from his rib. It's prescriptive,
not descriptive; the story itself is interpreted as a paradigm
immediately.
Many philosophers like Thomas Aquinas
commented that woman was obviously made for procreation as for
any other purpose a man would be a better companion. That 'one
flesh' was taken both as the marriage bond whereby two become
one, and the one child which comes from the union of two. So
traditionally in both Hebrew and Christian interpretations, marriage
is seen as divinely ordained, as male/female, and linked to offspring.
People have opposed gay unions as 'unnatural' on the grounds
of not being able to produce children. Conservative forces in
many religions have opposed any interference with the 'natural'
sex act and child production-contraception, artificial insemination,
in vitro fertilization, implantation, surrogate parentage, stem
cell research, abortion, and cloning to name some.
Even people who read the biblical stories
as symbolic rather than literal often see the marriage ideal
as deeply religious and cultural code necessary for human development.
Unlike our near DNA kin the bonobo apes, for example, we curb
our sexuality. They have highly sexualized communities, multiple
partners, same and different sex coupling, extensive solitary
and social sexual activity. We have far more violence and infanticide
and anxiety, but we own the zoos and travel to Mars and consume
Madonna and 'Sex and the City.' Darwin and Freud, who didn't
believe in Genesis, 'scientifically' thought that sexual restriction
and control were worthwhile and necessary prices of civilization.
Christ reinforced the Genesis pair ideal
when he was queried about the acceptability of divorce. When
asked the question of whether he allowed divorce as Moses had,
he replied that Moses allowed it because of the hardness of their
hearts but that it wasn't ideal, not as in the beginning, male
and female, "And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore
now they are not two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined
together let no man put asunder." That became the mouth-of-Christ
standard that most orthodox positions still enforce. Henry the
VIII in England created the Anglican Church to legitimize his
divorcing. The Catholic Church, despite a Byzantine annulment
sophistry which allows the wealthy to reorganize nuptially, officially
refuses the legitimacy of divorce and remarriage. Where Judaism
and Islam have historically legitimized divorce, especially for
males, most Christianity came later to it (with some colorful
exceptions). The rationale was to interpret Christ's stricture
as ideal, and therefore as exceptionable. The idea is
it's the ideal, but we're fallible. Many things Christ commanded
got the same treatment. Consider how "love your enemies,
do good to those that hate you" has been followed. There
is far more emphasis on sex in Bush's Christianity than on violence.
Ralph Nader announced that he supports
gay marriage because he thinks love and commitment are valuable
and in short supply. The real underminer of marriage, he said,
is divorce. California, in openly sparking challenges to the
law prohibiting same-sex marriages follows a general philosophy
of encouraging marriages. You can perform marriages in California
with almost any credential because California, like Nader, believes
it's in the interests of the state to encourage marriage.
Many are nervous about that, however,
saying yes to civil unions but no to marriage. They are comfortable
giving partners legal couple benefits without religious sanction
for sex. Because marriage is in a deep way about ideals of sexual
practice and family. In Catholic sacramental teaching the real
officiants of marriage are the couple, and without the consummating
sex act the marriage is not solemnized and can be annulled. This
follows a biblical notion of sex as relation-forming and societal.
The incest taboos in Leviticus, for example, are given apodictically-absolutely:
don't do it-but also socially. God says you shall not uncover
the nakedness of your mother, she is your mother, I am the Lord.
But the text elaborates-you shall not uncover the nakedness of
your mother, to uncover the nakedness of your mother is to uncover
the nakedness of your father. That is, the act is forbidden,
wrong and also destroys family.
Similarly today. Warning of sexually
transmitted disease, people say every sex act you have with someone
is with all the people that someone had sex with. Sex makes fluid
family. The biblical injunction is more like Freud's--the whole
family is involved in sexual encounter and part of the social
fabric which you rend or weave.
If sexual acts create bonds of marriage
outside the present norm and drive legality, many are terrified
of the consequences. The current panic about gay marriage is
partly about the fear of sexual power and losing control of the
control of it. This is not just from a pragmatic psychological
anxiety that suddenly everyone's fair game, but from a worry
of where it will lead. 'Don't ask, don't tell' is a version of
this.
The President not too long ago thought
the government should fund education for marriage, to stem the
divorce rate. He is answering deep social and religious worries
about sexual and social change. But the President may find sexual
terror as tricky as terrorism. He promised us a humble foreign
policy and became an arrogant warrior, believing God on his side.
He promised us compassionate conservatism and can't speak beyond
his narcissistic righteousness. He's promising an ideal now which
sounds narrowly prescriptive and intolerant.
Good intentions are useless. We must
not impose religious ideals. We need to renounce cruelty and
affirm kindness. We need as a complex society to figure out sex
and violence. It is not as easy as making love not war-though
that may well be an ideal worth striving for.
Diane Christian
is SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor at University at Buffalo
and author of the new book Blood
Sacrifice. She can be reached at: engdc@acsu.buffalo.edu
Weekend
Edition Features for February 28 / 29, 2004
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: Neo-Cons, Israel and the Bush Team
Gary Leupp
Another Senseless Bush Battle: Defining and Protecting Marriage
William A. Cook
Israel:
America's Albatross
Ron Jacobs
Kucinich: Good Fight; Wrong Battlefield
Ben Tripp
A Nosegay of Posies: Queer Weddings at Last!
Leilla Matsui
Dances with Crucifixes
Mike Whitney
Dismantle
the Military Goliath
Yoel Marcus
Down and Out in the Hague
Uri Avnery
The Dancing Bear
Linda S. Heard
Britons and Americans Condemned to a Hobson's Choice
Al Krebs
Unmasking a Secret American Empire: Land, Water & Cotton
Stan Cox
Life (Pat. Pend.): Genetic Commandeering
JG
The Haiti Boomerang: "After The Looting & Pillaging,
Your Hunger Will Remain"
Rick Giombetti
Censorship at the Seattle P-I on Forced Psychiatry
Keith Hoeller
The Bankruptcy of Mental Health Insurance Parity
Dave Zirin
Colorado Football: Buffalo Swill
NADERAMA
Alan Maass
Nader and the Politics of Lesser
Evils
Michael Donnelly
Regime
Rotation: Anybody But Bush...Again?
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Exeunt Serenaders; Enter Nader
Doug Giebel
So Nader's Running? Get Over It
Bruce Jackson
An Open Letter to Naderites
CounterPunch Wire
Stalinists for Kerry! and Other Roars from the Crowd
Poets' Basement
Davies, Scarr, Kearney & Albert
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