Midnight Oil: Forgotten Years
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on May 10, 2012
President Obama Supports Gay Marriage
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on May 9, 2012
It’s also a huge freaking deal. Barack Obama is the Abraham Lincoln of gay rights. History rhymes. It’s powerful that an African American president should do so.
Sisters of Mercy – Lucretia, My Reflection
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on May 8, 2012
Vancouver’s Supervised Injection Site
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on May 7, 2012
I remember hearing about the supervised injection center in Vancouver a few years ago and I haven’t given it any thought since then. It seems like an idea worth trying:
There was a big push to get a facility like this opened in the late ’90s when overdose rates in British Columbia were reaching epidemic proportions. I think in 1997 we had something like over 450 overdose deaths in the province. Those are absolutely needless deaths.
Participants at InSite have their own booth, which is clean and sanitary. We offer them new needles, alcohol swabs, a sink to wash their hands and medical care. We can dress their wounds and address chronic health issues. We can also link them up with income assistance and housing.
At our front desk, people can pick up equipment such as condoms, lubrication, needles, cookers, filters and everything you need for injecting safely. We give out as much as people think they need. You could take hundreds of needles if you want. There’s no limit. It’s not a one-for-one needle exchange.
Also, we ask that participants maintain the confidentiality of others who use the site.
They use the harm reduction model:
Well, first, we’re trying to reduce harm any way we can without requiring abstinence. We’re not trying to push things on people. I mean, we want people to be abstinent, but that’s not our expectation. Our push is to promote safety and harm reduction.
The approach we take is to promote self-respect. We’re trying to get people to respect themselves regardless of their addictions or whatever’s going on. It’s pretty much unconditional. We’re not going to meet these people with a bunch of shame. We’re not going to lump our expectations and our hopes onto them. Usually they feel shitty enough themselves. They already know that they fucked up. They’re already their own worst enemy.
We’re in this beautiful position where we’re not family and we’re not friends. We have the capacity to accept them again, easily and openly.
And why should tax payers support such a center?
People often ask why taxpayers should be paying to enable others to get high. It’s really backward. Research supports that InSite is cost-effective in preventing the spread of Hepatitis C and HIV, which are really expensive to treat and maintain. So it’s cost-saving. Every cost-benefit analysis I’ve seen has supported InSite.
The war on drugs has failed. It’s incarcerated god knows how many people with treating their addiction, it’s costs untold amounts of wealth and the drug problem isn’t going away. Drug addiction is a medical problem with legal aspects, not a criminal problem with a medical side. It’s time we stopped pretending we can jail everyone whose ever smoked a joint and think that we’ve solved the problem of drugs.
Bob Mould: It’s Too late
Posted by Glenden Brown in This Blog on May 6, 2012
Most Utah Women Want Government Up Their Vaginas
Posted by Cliff Lyon in Holly Richardson, Laugh, Mitt Romney, Mormon LDS, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Republicans on May 6, 2012
Finally, I understand why there are woman who vote Republican.
Giving Utah Leaders What They Want
While most women might find it distressing that legislation has popped up across various states that would restrict affordable birth control and enforce invasive ultrasounds before going through with an abortion, these women find them to be refreshing.
Why I Love Iowans
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Equality on May 6, 2012
While attending Grinnell, I fell in love with Iowa and Iowans. The concepts of basic fairness are deeply entrenched in the state and its people. When Iowa’s Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage it was a big deal. Today’s NY Times has an interesting profile of one of the judges – Marsha Ternus – that reminds me why I love Iowans.
The first woman ever to preside over the Iowa Supreme Court, she was asked three years ago to rule on a challenge to an Iowa statute banning same-sex marriage. She looked at the case and at the law and deemed the ban a violation of equal-protection language in the state’s Constitution, which said that no privileges should be reserved for a limited class of citizens. Her six fellow justices agreed. Their unanimous decision is why Iowa is among the minority of states in which two men or two women can marry.
I found this passage revealing:
As for the decision itself, they learned in the first hours of discussion that none of them saw any way to square the marriage ban with equal-protection language. “Everyone’s jaws dropped — that we had a unanimous decision,” she recalled.
After the decision, national right wing groups poured millions into an attempt to defeat the judges in their usually pro forma re-elections. Several friends of mine – life long Iowans – were offended at the campaign to remove the judges from the bench. But it was ultimately successful. Right wingers accused the judges of every thing they could think of – labeling them radicals, activists, people intent on destroying the family, members of a radical and arrogant elite. Ternus’ response to losing was to deep clean her house.
Like most Iowans I met, she’s fair, commonsense and grounded in the real world. Which of course is another reason right wingers would hate her.
Some Thoughts on Pastor Sean Harris’ Hatefilled “Beat your sons till they’re straight” Sermon and His “Just Joking” Defense
Posted by Glenden Brown in Bigotry, Bullying, GLBT issues, Homophobia, Human Rights, Queer, Religious Fundamentalism, This Blog on May 5, 2012
By now, Sean Harris’ sermon has made its way around the intertubes. A partial transcript of his comments:
“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.
Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”
You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”
Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”
The immediate gut level response is to be outraged. Justifiably so (the whole transcript is here). Harris issued a notpology in which he said he was only joking about beating your children if they start acting like faggots, dykes and queers. That’s a tired one and conservatives trot it out far too often. ”Sure, I played the song Barack the Magic Negro ten times a day for six weeks, how can you accuse me of being a racist, I’m only joking.” It’s what we hear too often when people realize they’ve said or done something truly awful and it’s not convincing. He did, however, add this important snippet:
“If I had to say it again, I would say it differently, no doubt,” Harris said Tuesday. “Those weren’t planned words, but what I do stand by is that the word of God makes it clear that effeminate behavior is ungodly. I’m not going to compromise on that.”
Sure, cause we all joke about beating children into submission. Acting like a nelly screaming queen makes the baby Jesus cry. Nobody tell Rick Perry that.
Jeremy at Good as You rejected Harris’ notpology, writing:
The thing is? There are certain words that should never be on (or even near) a person’s tongue. There are certain ideas that should never strike a person’s brain. There are certain views that should never find their way to one’s bank of consideration. There are certain jokes that are never funny. There are certain sentiments that should never have the opportunity to spill out of one’s mouth as the sentiments are too out of the ballpark of possibility to ever make their way to verbalization.
Threatening violence against LGBT children falls firmly in that latter category. Especially when said violence is encouraged in a church. Especially during a sermon deliberately designed to foster discrimination (i.e. negative message in to LGBT people) via a proposed state marriage ban. Especially when the violence-fomenting sermon comes from a pastor whose church also operates a school.
The real problem isn’t that Harris is a bigot and a bully. It’s not that he delivered a fire breathing sermon in which he told parents to beat their children until they engage in gender normative behavior. It’s that he’s entirely representative of a whole class of American fundamentalists who embrace the idea that 1950s gender roles and specific types of behavior were ordained by god and that any behaviors or attitudes that vary from those specific gender roles or behaviors anger god.
Suddenly, then, we’re not talking about normal variation in human behavior and attitudes. Suddenly, the whole discussion is distorted by the idea that God is watching us and is judging us. And you can’t have a rational public discussion if the consequences of making the wrong choice is going to hell. That, as much as anything, is what should outrage us about Harris’ sermon.
Recovery From Bush’s Great Recession Has Stalled
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Disaster, Economy, Jobs, National Politics, This Blog, Unemployment on May 4, 2012
Source: Calculated Risk.
There were 115,000 payroll jobs added in April, with 130,000 private sector jobs added, and 15,000 government jobs lost. The unemployment rate declined to 8.1%. U-6, an alternate measure of labor underutilization that includes part time workers and marginally attached workers, was unchanged at 14.5%.
Friday’s jobs report for April was even more disappointing than March. Employers added only 115,000 new jobs, down from March’s number (the Bureau of Labor Statistics revised the March number upward to 154,000, but it’s still abysmal relative to what’s needed). At least 125,000 new jobs are necessary each month just to keep up with an expanding population of working-age people.
That means the hole is getting even deeper.
…Most of the job gains in April were in lower-wage industries — retail stores, restaurants, and temporary-help. That means average wages continue to drop, adjusted for inflation — continuing their long-term decline. Most of the new jobs that have been added to the U.S. economy during this recovery have paid less than the jobs that were lost during the downturn.
What does all this mean? Together with other recent data showing slower economic growth during the first quarter of this year, it’s safe to say the economy has stalled.
From Calculated Risk:
- There are a total of 12.5 million Americans unemployed and 5.1 million have been unemployed for more than 6 months.
- According to the BLS, there are 5.1 million workers who have been unemployed for more than 26 weeks and still want a job.
- There are now more private sector jobs than when President Obama took office.
- The public sector is continuing to hemorrhage jobs.
- The participation rate decreased to 63.6% from 63.8% (a new cycle low).
The Bush administration crashed our economy so badly that even though the Obama job creation record is better than Bush’s, it’s still not enough. Most new jobs are low-paying, and the middle class just doesn’t have the spending power to help with the recovery. The rich are doing better than ever, but this also does not help the economy – instead, it sets the conditions for the next bubble and financial sector meltdown.
UPDATE: Dean Baker reminds us that the collapse of the housing bubble stuck the American consumer with $8 trillion in lost wealth, and this continues to depress demand.
UPDATE: Presidential candidate Willard (“Mitt”) Romney says “We should be seeing numbers in the 500,000 jobs per month.” Of course, that has only happened four times in 50 years.
UPDATE: Labor Force Participation Is Lower Than It Has Been In 30 Years — Why It Matters And Why It Doesn’t
UPDATE: Robert Reich tweets:
“Rom says unemp shld be 4%. I was Sec of Lab last time it was 4%. We got there by raising taxes on rich and investing in ed and infrstructre.”
UPDATE: CHART: Economy Has Recovered All Private Sector Jobs Lost Since Obama Took Office
liberalism, same sex marriage and social change
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Bigotry, Conservative, GLBT issues, Homophobia, Human Rights, Queer, Religious Fundamentalism, This Blog on May 4, 2012
An article from the The American Conservative is bouncing around the blogosphere. It’s a long and complex article arguing simply that no matter the short term political victories, the right cannot in the long run win the battle over same sex marriage. The author, Daniel McCarthy, offers a basic thesis – once society accepted that gay people existed, that they were in fact people, then the logic of arguments against full legal equality were increasingly tenuous and unacceptable.
Once society was widely conscious of this population, and had an inkling of its extent, there was no question of reverting to the status quo ante. The knowledge itself had changed the political question. Not only were homosexuals not going back into the closet, but the rest of society could not forget that they exist. And there had been little in the way of a “traditional” approach to something that was beyond the margin of public consciousness. So now the question arose of how to think about—and act toward—this alarming new population. Should it be included in or excluded from the body politic, and on what terms?
Yet if homosexuals were not going to be under legal or therapeutic penalty, what would become of them? This is the question to which few conservatives can supply a satisfactory answer because the principles that conservatives affirm point toward policies that conflict with their wishes.
The Conservative Attempt to Stigmatize Anyone and Everyone who Disagrees with Them in Any Way Shape or Form
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, This Blog on May 4, 2012
The right’s faux outrage machine is working at full speed in overdrive to attack Dan Savage. What we’re seeing here is nothing new or out of character for the right. They latch onto someone and gin up outrage until the mainstream media starts saying things like “Controversial columnist Dan Savage . . .” Their goal is to scare everyone else into thinking that the person in question did or said something that is really outrageous. It’s about disrupting public dialogue and shutting out voices with whom the right disagrees.
It goes something like this. Savage said that we can learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about human sexuality the same way we ignore the bullshit in the bible about slavery. The right’s noise machine cranked itself up with claims his comments were an attack on on Christianity. Savage’s criticism of the bible was incredibly modest and common sense. Yet the right has gone into the stratosphere attacking him, spinning his modest criticisms as some sort of rabid assault on all that they hold dear, decrying Savage as the face of left wing hate.
The goal is simple – they’re trying to stigmatize any and all criticism of the right in an attempt to shut down public discourse. It’s wrong, it’s an attack on democracy and it’s fundamentally dishonest.
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