Month: December 2011

Today is World AIDS Day. The day comes with a mixed message; encouraging reductions in the number of deaths and new infections from the HIV virus, while funding for the efforts are reduced in a difficult world economy.

You will probably (maybe I should say ‘hopefully’) find articles on the subject in most media today, with all the latest issues and statistics – here are some.

I simply wanted to share a poem/rap written by the daughter of a colleague a few years ago when she was 9.

The ultimate objective:

Happy World AIDS Day to everyone

I have been married to a wonderful woman whose parents came over to the United States from Japan in the mid-1950’s. I met her in law school, we fell in love (my story) or “he just wouldn’t go away” (her story) and we ultimately married in 1986. We have two children, and have survived the end of my career due to a rare autoimmune disorder and the end of her career due to pancreatic cancer and brain damage due to the harmful chemotherapy that was used to treat her after her surgery.

I’ve never regretted that I married her. She is still a strong and independent woman who has rebuilt her life despite her many difficulties, one of them no doubt her wastrel husband. However, I just saw this article that a group pf people in Kentucky, specifically a group of people at a church in Kentucky has taken it upon themselves to ban any members who are or intend to marry someone not of the same race and yes, I am mightily offended.

A small church in Pike County, Kentucky has voted to ban interracial couples from most church activities “to promote greater unity among the church body.”

Melvin Thompson, former pastor of Gulnare Freewill Baptist church, proposed the ban after Stella Harville brought her fiance, Ticha Chikuni, to services in June. Harville, who goes by the name Suzie, played the piano while Chikuni sang.

So what you might say. Big deal. Who cares if a few small-minded bigots at a small church think in small-minded ways about the value of every human being. You might claim that they have a right after all, as a religious institution to determine who can and cannot belong to their congregation, even if that means discriminating on the basis of race. However I’m not here to argue the legal merits of their actions.

What I do wish to make clear is the symbolic effect that such actions have. Anyone who has been paying attention already knows that there is a small, but powerful conservative Christian movement known as dominionism, that is actively engaged in bringing all aspects of our society under the rule of Christian leaders and Biblical Law. That includes a ban or at a minimum, heavy restrictions on interracial marriage, as called for by many of the founders of this movement, such as John Rushdoony.

Rushdoony believed … that interracial marriage, which he referred to as “unequal yoking”, should be made illegal.

He also believed that segregation and slavery should be permitted, and that the death penalty should be imposed for homosexuality, adultery, and witchcraft among other sins. His version of Biblical Law should be enforced strictly, and there are many Dominionist acolytes of Rushdoony out there waiting for their chance to impose their “laws” upon the rest of us and deny us the fundamental freedoms guaranteed under our Constitution. As a person joined with my wife in an interracial marriage I do not take actions like these, no matter how ridiculous they might appear to some, lightly.

Neither should you.

Here’s some more tenets of Rushdoony’s theology that modern day Dominionists are striving to accomplish:

We’re talking about “elect Christian officials so we can turn this nation into a theocracy.” If you don’t believe me, take it from R.J. Rushdoony, the founder of Christian Reconstructionism, who likened democracy to cowardice and openly disdained it: “One faith, one law and one standard of justice did not mean democracy. The heresy of democracy has since then worked havoc in church and state … Christianity and democracy are inevitably enemies.”

Under this philosophy, anyone elected under a democracy is duty bound to overthrow it. The Dominionist form of Christianity and democracy simply cannot coexist because, in Rushdoony’s words, “the state is a bankrupt institution. The only alternative to this bankrupt ‘humanistic’ system is a God-centered government.”

And the idea that Christian supported Republican politicians would work toward a ban on interracial marriage is not that far-fetched. A recent poll in Mississippi found that more Republicans in that state oppose interracial marriage than support it — today, in 2011.

[R]esults from a Public Policy Polling survey conducted in late March reveal that 46 percent of Mississippi Republicans not only oppose interracial marriage but believe it should be legally banned. So, how many Mississippi Republicans actually think that interracial marriage should be legal? Shockingly, just 40 percent. That’s right. In the year 2011, more Mississippi Republicans support a ban on interracial marriage than support the legality of it.

Both Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann relied heavily on dominionist christian support for their candidacies. Make of that what you will, but we know the Christian Right has been working assiduously since the 1960’s to “restore” America to its status as a Christian Nation, one nation under a Christian God and Biblical Law. What that means for you and I, should they ever accomplish that task (and I don’t see them ever giving up on that goal, do you?) bears repeated discussion and education of fellow Americans who are unaware of this threat to their liberties. Because as economic hard times grow worse, as climate change irrevocably changes the way we must live on this planet, more and more people are going to be sucked in to this ideology of hatred, bigotry and lust of “dominion” over the lives of others.

As seen by the German magazine Der Spiegel (translation courtesy Harper Magazine’s Scott Horton; bold emphasis mine):

“Africa is a country. The Taliban rule in Libya. Muslims are terrorists. Immigrants are mostly criminals, Occupy Wall Street protesters are always dirty. And women who claim to have been sexually molested should kindly keep quiet.”

Welcome to the wonderful world of the Republican Party. Or rather: to the distorted world of its presidential campaign. For months it has coiled through the country like a traveling circus, from debate to debate, from scandal to scandal, contesting the mightiest office in the world — and nothing is ever too unfathomable for them… These eight presidential wannabes are happy enough not only to demolish their own reputations but also that of their party, the once worthy party of Abraham Lincoln. They are also ruining the reputation of the United States.

They lie, deceive, scuffle and speak every manner of idiocy. And they expose a political, economic, geographic and historical ignorance compared to which George W. Bush sounds like a scholar. Even the party’s boosters are horrified by the spectacle…

Platitudes in lieu of programs: in serious times that demand the smartest, these clowns offer blather that is an insult to the intelligence of all Americans. But as with all freak shows, it would be impossible without a stage, the U.S. media, which has been neutered by the demands of political correctness, and a welcoming audience, a party base that seems to have been lobotomized overnight. Notwithstanding the subterranean depths of the primary process, the press and broadcasters proclaim one clown after the next to be the new frontrunner, in predictable news cycles of forty-five days.

As Horton notes, the real takeaway from this is what the Republican primary circus is doing to seriously damage America’s reputation abroad. One of Barack Obama’s biggest accomplishments has been the normalization of US foreign policy and bilateral relationships after eight years of the profoundly alienating ignorance and arrogance of the Bush administration. (It hasn’t made US policy much less bloody on the ground, however.) Now, without even holding high office, eight clowns are dragging the US back into that Bush-era image morass, and actually doubling down on it, with the eager complicity of a stenographic US media that would never, ever, ever lay it out like this.