6:45 p.m.
Friday, August 3, 2012
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Not Exactly Chicken Little
Wayne Self says the Chick-fil-A boycott is about more than gay marriage:It’s extremely frustrating that same-sex marriage is the great continental divide. People are judged according to how they stand on this issue, as if no other issue matters. Did you know that a person can be for same-sex marriage and still be homophobic? Did you know that a person can be against same-sex marriage and be gay? We all get categorized very quickly based on the marriage issue and maybe that’s not fair. But here’s what you should know:-- In 29 states in America today, my partner of 18 years, Cody, or I could be fired for being gay. Period. No questions asked. One of those states is Louisiana, our home state. We live in self-imposed exile from beloved homeland, family, and friends, in part, because of this legal restriction on our ability to live our lives together.
-- In 75 countries in the world, being gay is illegal. In many, the penalty is life in prison. These are countries we can’t openly visit. In nine countries, being gay is punishable by death. In many others, violence against gays is tacitly accepted by the authorities. These are countries where we would be killed. Killed.
-- Two organizations that work very hard to maintain this status quo and roll back any protections that we may have are the Family Research Council and the Marriage & Family Foundation. For example, the Family Research Council leadership has officially stated that same-gender-loving behavior should be criminalized in this country. They draw their pay, in part, from the donations of companies like Chick-fil-A. Both groups have also done “missionary” work abroad that served to strengthen and promote criminalization of same-sex relations.
-- Chick-fil-A has given roughly $5M to these organizations to support their work.
-- Chick-fil-A’s money comes from the profits they make when you purchase their products.
Romney And The Death Of Peace
The New York Times profiles Mitt Romney's chief adviser on the Middle East, Dan Senor, who inspired Romney's statements about Israelis' cultural superiority in comparison to Palestinians. Romney has made similar statements about other neighboring peoples, such as Americans and Mexicans.During Romney's visit to Israel, he failed to mention the Palestinians or the peace process in what was dubbed a major foreign policy address. Senor may have been behind that astonishing development as well. Senor told reporters that if there's to be a two-state deal, Palestinians would have to drop their demand for a right of return. The Bush and Obama administrations favored letting Israel and the Palestinian Authority work the issue out during negotiations.
Obama's peace initiative was prematurely hobbled by his and the Palestinians' insistence that Israel suspend West Bank settlement expansion as a precondition for recommencing direct talks. While the president's tactics left something to be desired, he was at least trying to be an honest broker, putting pressure on both sides in keeping with the policies of his recent predecessors. All in for Israel, Romney has no such instincts and intentions. For today's Republicans, empathy for the underdog Palestinians and the nuances of an ancient struggle with plenty of error on both sides have evidently run their course.
Of course the Romney-Senor position -- at least as politically unsustainable for Palestinians as the settlement demand was for Israel -- may be just another sop to U.S. Jewish voters. Let's hope so. As Romney administration policy, it would probably doom the peace process. In that case, having just so fulsomely praised Israel's commitment to democracy, Romney and Senor would need to have a secret plan for figuring out how Israel could continue to call itself a democracy with two million disenfranchised Arabs living under indefinite military occupation.
Iran To Israel: Words Will Never Hurt Us
Weighing the chances of an Israeli strike before the U.S. elections, Amos Harel speculates that war would only set the Iranians back a year or two. He wonders whether Iran's foes in Jerusalem and Washington are just waging psychological warfare and concludes that the Iranians think so, too:[B]ased on the hard line they have taken in their negotiations with the Western powers over the last few months, in which they have not retreated by so much as a millimeter or displayed any willingness to compromise, it seems that Tehran, at least, doesn't believe Israel will attack in the next few months.
New Modes Of A Great Tradition
Gary Hall, the new dean of Washington National Cathedral, on Episcopal future:[I]f the Episcopal Church is to thrive in the 21st century, it must do three things. It must develop a clear, missional identity. It must project that identity outward and invite people into it. And it must take seriously the needs and concerns of those who come toward us and adapt to the new life and energy they bring.Hat tip to Rich StratonDoes that mean that we will no longer continue to worship in our stately Anglican ways? Of course not. But it does mean that we will need to find new modes of liturgical, musical, and theological expression to complement the great traditional strengths we already have. And this is not new behavior for Anglicans. Queen Elizabeth I forged a pragmatic consensus between Catholics and Protestants in 1559. Bishop William White of Pennsylvania led the first General Convention of the Episcopal Church to a uniquely American way of governance in 1789. The church opened itself up to the sacramental ministries of women bishops, priests and deacons in 1976. We have always been a pragmatic, evolving tradition.
What's A Little "Enemy" Between Friends?
I love the can-do optimism that usually pervades the Economist. In this case, I hope its correspondent is right in blaming a crude boilerplate denunciation of Israel on Egyptian President Muhammad Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood men instead of him:[T]he apparent immovability of seasoned officials still running the lumbering bureaucracy can prove embarrassing. When Egypt’s embassy in Israel responded to a Happy Ramadan note from Shimon Peres, Israel’s president, with a faxed thank you letter in the name of his Egyptian counterpart wishing peace upon the people of Israel, Mr Morsi’s office swiftly denied he had communicated in any way with what the Brothers regard as “the Zionist enemy”.
"Tossed, Turned, And Tangled"
Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center / USGSThe Arkansas-Mississippi border, photographed from NASA's Landsat. The square shapes at left are fields and towns. More here, thanks to Discover.
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