I wish there was more attention paid to Christians like Mel White. He used to work for evangelical Christian groups, actually ghost-wrote Jerry Falwell’s autobiography, and felt tormented by the attraction he felt toward other men. Heeding the message preached by the people he was working for, he sought counseling and various purported cures for his sexuality, including electro-convulsive therapy. Finally, he accepted his orientation, and sought to square it with his religion. In 1993 Mel was named dean of the largest gay-friendly Christian congregation in the United States, and said to those gathered to witness his installation, “I am gay. I am proud. And God loves me without reservation.”

Mel and his partner Gary Nixon founded Soulforce in 1999, a ministry devoted to advocating gay rights in general, and specifically to opposing anti-gay bigotry within the Christian community. That’s one hell of a job, as the recent passage of anti-gay amendments to the state constitutions of California, Arizona, and Florida reminds me, and I sometimes wonder why it’s a battle Mel White is so determined to fight. 

( Read the rest . . . )

Is Connecticut really a more enlightened and compassionate place than California, Arizona, or Florida? Or is its population of contemptuous bigots just too small and poorly organized to stir the public against the cause of gay equality? The recognition of same-sex marriages came there just as it did in California, through judicial decree. Does that mean it can be undone by a similar popular referendum to the ones just passed in California, Arizona, and Florida? Will it?

I really, really hope not. The passing of amendments to the state constitutions of California, Arizona, and Florida banning same-sex marriage was the biggest blight on what will be long remembered as one of America’s brightest days. It’s especially hard to make sense of writing one form of bigotry into the law on the same day that we repudiated centuries of another form.

Federalism is a great idea. Not only has it proved to be a decent form of government, but it’s also provided the perfect excuse to politicians too gutless to take a stand on the gay marriage issue one way or the other. “I think it should be up to the states to decide” has become the favorite euphemism for (usually Republican) politicians who don’t want to come right out and say “Fuck no, those queers shouldn’t be able to get married!” because they have the nutty idea that might make them sound like contemptible, ignorant, backwards fucking throwback cavemen. This is an issue where leaving it to the states is the wrong thing to do. This is an issue where, as it did when it guaranteed women the right to vote, and a whole plethora of citizenship rights to blacks, including the right to not be dragged around a cotton field on the end of a chain unless you’re into that sort of thing, the federal government has to step in and lay down some new rules that everyone will have to play by.

It won’t be easy. Fuck, it might even be impossible. Still, it must be done. Democracy is the greatest form of government every devised, and the only fair and just one known to me. But human rights can’t be left up to the whim of the people. They have to be established, and protected, period.

By the way, it’s especially fashionable lately for opponents of same-sex marriage to argue that marriage is not a fundamental human right, and never has been. Rather, they say, it’s a privilege that governments bestow on certain members of society, like a drivers license. Fine. Let’s say, for the sake of argument, I agree with that. Marriage is not a right; it’s a privilege, like driving a car. Great. Explain to me why that privilege should be denied to same-sex couples. Give me one reason that is rational, that is not founded in bigotry or some arbitrary, religiously derived moral code. I’d love to hear it.

By the way again, have I mentioned that Arnold Schwarzenegger is now my favorite Republican? He was on Late Edition over the weekend where, among other things, he expressed his disappointment over the passage of Proposition 8, and advised his party not to get stuck on ideology. Good on you, Arnold. His admirable defense of gay rights pissed off Laura Ingraham so much that she suggested that he switch his affiliation to Democrat, and that California secede from the United States.

Laura, do you really want opposition to same-sex marriage to be a prerequisite for being a Republican? Broadminded, inclusive attitudes like that are the reason the Republicans are close to becoming a dying party. You can’t continue to shrink your base and grow ever narrower and more exclusive and expect to keep winning elections. Thankfully, there aren’t that many close-minded zealots left in America.

When American doughboys began arriving in France in 1918, the war had been raging through Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for four years. Fighting along the Western Front in France and Belgium was especially bloody. Allied and German soldiers dug in, constructed long lines of trenches fortified with barbed wire and protected by machine guns, withstood constant artillery bombardment, and tried not to choke to death on the mustard gas, chlorine, and phosgene. There were major losses on both sides, over three million Allies and Germans killed on the Western Front alone, with no major advances for most of the war.

The names are probably familiar, even if you don’t remember what they mean: the Marne, the Somme, Cambrai, Ypres, the Ardennes, the Argonne, Flanders, Verdun.

The terms introduced or popularized by the war may only evoke a faint recognition today, but they still carry a chill. They have been stamped on our collective subconscious: trench foot, devil’s paintbrush, U-boat, stormtrooper, zero-hour, over the top, no-man’s-land.

It was a long war, and a bloody war, and ultimately a vain war. It was called the war to end all wars, yet just twenty years after it officially ended with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, Adolf Hitler’s army invaded Poland, igniting the Second World War.

Unofficially, the war ended with the signing of an armistice between the Allies and the Germans in a railroad car in the Compiègne Forest. The armistice was signed early on the morning of November 11, 1918. It went into effect at 11 a.m., the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, ensuring generations of future high school history students would get at least one test question correct. Since then, Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, has been marked throughout the western world every eleventh of November. Originally set aside to memorialize the end of the First World War, it has evolved over the last ninety years into a day to honor those who fought in all wars, wherever and whenever. Since 1954 it has been known as Veterans Day here in the United States.

In Belgium they call it the Day of Peace. It’s marked by the display of poppies and recitations of “In Flanders Fields,” a poem written by Canadian Lt. Col. John McCrae on a scrap of paper as he stood in the midst of the Second Battle of Ypres. I first heard it on November 11, 1994, the first of the four Veterans Day assemblies I attended at Clear Spring High School. Jim Hutson, history teacher, Marine, and Vietnam War veteran, recites it every year:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

Millions of French, British, German, Belgian, Italian, and Russian troops were killed during the war, but the final recorded combat death was an American, Henry Gunther. He was a Maryland boy, born and raised in Baltimore. He had been behaving recklessly since being demoted in rank from sergeant to private for writing a letter to a friend that was critical of the Army. On the morning of the armistice Gunther’s company was positioned opposite a German machine gun in Ville-devant-Chaumont, a little village near Verdun. At 10:30 they were informed of the imminent ceasefire. With the end of the war seconds away, Gunther leapt from his position and charged the Germans, firing his rifle through the thick fog. The confused Germans shouted at him to stop, that the war was over. Gunther kept charging. The Germans had no choice. They fired their machine gun, and Gunther fell.

The Germans who killed him rolled Gunther onto a stretcher and carried him back to the American lines, where he was buried. His time of death was listed as 10:59.

There’s a place in New York where they all go when they’re in town. Sometimes it can be a rowdy joint; the great space between those carved and polished oak walls echoing with laughter and slaps on backs, the tinkling of glasses and the clatter of silverware on china plates. Other times it can be a mortuary; dreary, sparsely occupied by patrons who are drearier still, who stuff their mouths with bits of braised mutton or entrecôte, and gulp down Cabernet Sauvignon like water. The Friday following the election it was the latter.

At the center of the dining room, where several tables had been pushed together to accommodate them, the usual circle of gabbers and scribblers had gathered to commiserate. Sean Hannity held up his empty glass, and a waiter appeared and filled it with red wine. He looked at his companions around the table and raised a toast: “To conservatism in exile.”

“Hear, hear!” and “Huzzah!” and “To exile!” they all said. When that toast had been drunk, Mark Levin tapped his knife against the side of his glass and stood up to offer another one. “Since Sean just raised a toast to remaining steadfast in the face of this unhappy, undesirable, less-than-ideal election result, let me propose a few things not to toast.”

There were smiles and pleased murmurs from around the table.

“I do not propose a toast,” Mark continued, “to the president-elect. I do not propose a toast to socialism, to Marxism, to the class warfare, wealth redistribution policies of our Alinskyite incoming chief executive. I do not propose a toast to the weak-kneed, cut-and-run military strategy of our new commander-in-chief. And I do not propose a toast to the gutless, incoherent, and cowardly campaign waged by the nominee of the Re-pubic-an party!”

Mark took his seat to a round of righteous applause. “And here’s to our nominee next time around,” said Rush Limbaugh, lifting his glass but remaining in his chair, “whomever he or she may be.” He grinned as he glanced around the table. “Let’s hope we’ve learned our lesson this time, with the nomination and defeat of the Democrat from Arizona!”

John McCain sat at a small table by the window. He sipped from a cup of coffee, and broke off another piece of pecan pie with his fork.

Three of the four people I voted for on my local school board were elected. That’s good news, sure. The fourth guy, the one I didn’t vote for, is a creationist who told my local newspaper that he was educated at a “faith-based university,” which we all know is a euphemism for Jesus School. The salt in the wound: one of the candidates who lost the election was Jackie Fischer, my old English teacher who gave the strongest response to the science vs. creationism question.

We, the people of Maryland’s 6^th Congressional District, also re-elected Roscoe Bartlett. This will be his ninth term in the House of Representatives. Some sinister combination of apathy and inertia swept him to an overwhelming victory. He beat Democrat Jennifer Dougherty 60% to 40%, which really pissed me off. I thought it might be a close race, so I compromised my “vote for the minor parties” principle and voted for Dougherty, fearing she would need every last vote and wanting to unseat Bartlett more than anything else. She lost by a shitload. Now I wish I’d voted for the Libertarian guy.

The people of Alaska, in their infinite wisdom, have apparently re-elected corrupt, convicted felon Senator Ted Stevens. The election was so close that votes are still being counted, and Ol’ Crazy Ted may still be forced to resign, but it boggles the mind how this man could have won an election, however close, mere days following his conviction on corruption and ethics violation charges. The various minor party candidates on the ballot only managed to poll a few percentage points, meaning that thousands of Alaskans opted to vote for their corrupt, arrogant, increasingly senile incumbent even when presented with a variety of other choices. What’s up, Alaska?