It’s about grappling with something that hurts

Cesar Chavez is considered a civil rights icon. He is a hero to the labor movement, particularly farm worker’s rights. There are a large number of streets, schools, and other things named for him and in 2024 Obama designated March 31 as Cesar Chavez Day in honor of his birthday. But about three weeks ago the New York Times published a yearslong investigation that revealed Chavez abused women and underage girls. Lisa Needham of Daily Kos discussed the report and the fallout. The allegations by the NYT is more than rumors and unsourced accusations, so can’t simply be dismissed. Since the publication Dolores Huerta, cofounder of the United Farm Workers, revealed she had two pregnancies because Chavez raped her. The children were adopted. The left then had to grapple with what to do. Many issued statements condemning Chavez while expressing grief at the downfall of an important man. Efforts began to rename streets and schools, pull down statues, and cover over murals. March 31 was renamed as Farm Workers Day.

Overall, Democrats accepted the revelations and moved to cancel all gestures honoring Chavez while wrestling with heartbreak. Contrast that with how Republicans deal with sexual abuse allegations on their side of the aisle.

When Brett Kavanaugh was nominated to the Supreme Court, women came forward with allegations of abuse. Republicans worked to discredit the victims and gave Kavanaugh a lifetime seat on the Court. The nasty guy was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll and there was no Republican condemnation.

But Democrats aren’t distancing themselves. They are taking accountability—a thing that the GOP simply doesn’t believe in. It’s about grappling with something that hurts, but realizing that Chavez hurt people far more. ... Denouncing a man who was a hero to many is hard, and it’s sad, and it’s what has to be done.

Last week an Associated Press article posted on Kos reported:

Transgender women athletes are now excluded from women's events at the Olympics after the IOC agreed to a new eligibility policy on Thursday which aligns with U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order on sports ahead of the 2028 Los Angeles Games. ... In the U.S., President Trump signed the executive order “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports” in February last year, and pledged to deny visas to some athletes attempting to compete at the L.A Olympics. The order also threatened to “rescind all funds” from organizations that allowed transgender athletes to take part in women’s sports. Within months the U.S. Olympic body updated its guidance to national sports bodies citing an obligation to comply with the White House.

Transgender World tweeted the reaction of Sophie Labelle to the IOC’s announcement. That was in the form of a bit of history. Gender policing of Olympic women began in the 1936 Nazi Olympics.

Naked parades in front of a jury, gynecological inspections, chromosomal testing, certifications that only richer countries could issue... These were all attempts at gender policing by the Olympic Committee between 1936 and 1996. One after another, these practices were outlawed. They were all found to be flawed, misleading, humiliating, discriminatory, racist, misogynistic. Since 2003, strict guidelines have allowed intersex and trans women to participate. Despite 20 years of inclusion, there has only been one trans women who competed. She did not win any medal. However the I.O.C. has decided to go ahead and bring back gender policing to ban intersex and trans athletes in time for the Nazi Germany Olympics of 2028. Oops, I mean the United States.

Earlier this week Needham reported on a Supreme Court ruling that went against us. It is especially annoying because the decision was 8-1. In 2019 Colorado adopted a law banning conversion therapy for minors. Kaley Chiles, an evangelical Christian therapist, sued in 2022, saying her free speech rights were being violated.

Here’s the logic behind the decision, such as it is: Talk therapy is simply speech, and telling evangelical Christian therapists that they can’t traumatize children into denying their sexual orientation or gender identity therefore restricts those therapists’ speech.

The idea that a law restricting what she can say in therapy restricts her viewpoint brought Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan on board.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the lone dissenter, called out why that’s bulls---, writing, “Chiles is not speaking in the ether; she is providing therapy to minors as a licensed healthcare professional.” Exactly. Colorado isn’t stopping Chiles from speaking out in non-therapy settings about how groovy it is to force kids to be straight. Colorado isn’t stopping Chiles from doing conversion talk therapy with adults who can consent to such a thing. Colorado isn’t even fully banning conversion therapy for minors, because the law applies only to licensed therapists and carves out an exemption for those “engaged in the practice of religious ministry.” All Colorado sought to do was stop licensed therapists from using an inherent position of power to force an objectively harmful treatment on a minor child.

Part of why the majority opinion is so bad is it frames the issue as helping the minor person with their own desires to not be queer or trans. And they have those desires because their religious community beats into them that being queer or trans will send them to hell. Robert Ito, in an article for Capital & Main posted on Kos, discussed the increasing difficulties in teaching LGBTQ history. In California some high school history teachers do quite well in integrating our history into their national history courses and other classrooms. It’s a topic important and relevant, especially since more people died of AIDS than died in Vietnam. The effort has been helped by California’s FAIR Education Act, passed 15 years ago. But the law has no penalties for non-compliance and a lot of districts never heard of it so only 37% of self-reporting districts are using FAIR-approved materials across all grade levels. Add to that the nasty guy’s forceful attacks against DEI coupled with people (who may not be parents) who complain to school boards. Then there is the Supreme Court ruling of last June that says parents can opt their children out of LGBTQ instruction. Many teachers become wary of the topic or afraid of the pushback they might get if they start teaching it. So they don’t. Of course, the people hurt most are the LGBTQ students who feel more isolated. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin included a tweet by Shanaka Anslem Perera:

JUST IN: You do not fire your Army Chief of Staff in the middle of a war for no reason. You fire him because of what comes next. Pete Hegseth called General Randy George on April 2 and told him to retire immediately. The Pentagon confirmed it within hours. No reason was given.

Randa Slim responded, quoting @fordrs58:

“The question is not why George was fired. Every general in the building knows why. The question is what order is coming in the next fourteen days that required removing the one man in the chain of command who might have said no.”

Pam Bondi has been fired as Attorney General. Glad to see her go, though I doubt her replacement will be any better. That prompted Aaron Blake of CNN to comment:

Attorney general may be the most impossible job in President Donald Trump’s Cabinet. Trump demands things that are not only ethically problematic, but also that reside somewhere in the space between highly difficult and impossible. Nobody has gotten the balance right.

Bondi served “the shortest tenure for a confirmed attorney general in 60 years.” Dan Pfeiffer, tweeting a discussion of the nasty guy’s recent TV speech to the nation.

The most damning revelation is that the public and the markets have tuned out Trump. Oil prices spiked, and stock markets sank as Trump was speaking. When the public tunes out a 2nd term president, they rarely tune back in.

Another Dan Pfeiffer tweet:

The thing to understand about Pam Bondi’s firing is that she was ousted for incompetently executing on Trump’s corrupt wishes, not resisting them.

In the comments is a cartoon by Mike Luckovich showing Musk telling the world’s poorest “No more free lunch!” while behind him is a huge mound of bags of money marked as “Fed. funds Musk gets.” Dr. Art Garfunky added commentary:

Elon Musk had DOGE defund USAID, the largest humanitarian organization in the world, causing HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of deaths from starvation and disease - and Trump GLEEFULLY approved it. It’s the single most evil act in US history.

A tweet by Mehdi Hasan shows a video of Bondi at a Congressional hearing. Hasan added:

Watch shameless sycophant Pam Bondi, who Trump just fired as AG, heap endless and ridiculous praise on Trump. And he still fired her. Amazing. So, so humiliating

. Lady Haha posted a cartoon by Jeff Danzinger. It shows what appears to be a blind man labeled The Draft tapping forward while carrying manacles. Young men, throwing away their red hats, are trying to step out of his way. The caption says, “Young Trumpers Realize They May Face the Draft for Trump’s War.” Just below the cartoons is a comment by learn:

Bondi was fired for not being vindictive enough. From the Republican’s approval they knew she was a bad manager, unqualified for such a large operation and was chosen for putting Trump way before justice. The criticisms about “mishandling” Epstein files meant she wasn’t able to redact and hide fast enough. And her main “failure” was in not effectively persecuting [sic] Trump’s enemies much less forcing indictments. She was fired for not being good at bad.

A majority of book challenges come from organized movements

My Sunday movie was Lover of Men: The Untold History of Abraham Lincoln. Several years ago I saw stories in the press about Lincoln perhaps being gay. This is a documentary exploring that possibility in more detail. The movie shows many letters by Lincoln and others that are evidence of his relations with other men. The letters are authentic. The movie uses actors to portray scenes. We see emotions (mostly tender glances) but hear no words. Where possible the scenes are enacted in the location where the original happened. From what I heard before Lincoln shared a bed with four men at various times, the most famous was Joshua Speed. This movie says Lincoln shared a bed with Speed for four years, declining housing where he would have a room and bed of his own. The two men were seen as great friends. Speed was instrumental in turning Lincoln from a country bumpkin into a man ready for national politics. This was at a time when mattresses were rare and men sharing a bed, especially in a tavern, was common. It was also a time that was homosocial – men and women socialized separately and all of one’s friends were of the same sex. Photos with fingers intertwined and with hands on thighs were not seen as strange. Letters mentioned Lincoln as being uncomfortable around women, perhaps having an aversion to them. But to get anywhere in politics one needed a wife. Speed introduced Lincoln to Mary Todd and they became engaged. But since that caused a rift with Speed Lincoln broke the engagement. Speed soon inherited the family plantation in Kentucky. Lincoln went to visit, which is where he saw the Speed family wealth and the human cost of slavery. Back in Illinois Lincoln resumed courting Todd and married her. There was another man, Billy Greene, who shared a cot (even smaller than a bed) with Lincoln for 18 months. They really had to want to share it. There was Elmer Ellsworth when Lincoln campaigned for and became president. And there was David Derickson who was Lincoln’s personal bodyguard and shared his bed at what became the “Lincoln Cottage” when Mary was away. The history of Derickson’s regiment mentions that Derickson was seen wearing Lincoln’s nightshirt and the mention includes no shame. Towards the end of the 19th century science replaced religion as the source of morality (well, to some extent). But science institutions were led be white men. And we get eugenics, the effort to “prove” scientifically that black people were inferior. Also a part of that effort was to show sexual difference also meant inferiority. Science supported hierarchy. Sigmund Freud said that doing a certain type of thing showed that you were a certain type of person. Have sex with men and you were a homosexual, which according to their “research” claimed homosexuality was not natural and homosexuals were inferior to heterosexuals. So sexuality became performative. One had to act in a way that removed all doubt one was straight. That’s why images of the American West of the time were filled with rugged men. Since homosexuality was said to be not natural it became punishable. There were brutal and abusive treatments in hopes of turning men straight. Lincoln is easily seen as the best president our country has had. He was the most invested in the country and in democracy. He is the closest we have to a national saint. How could one be so masculine as to win a war and also be queer? One of the historians is tired of that question because it implies stereotypes. Was Lincoln gay? There is strong evidence and no proof. Also, there was no concept of sexual orientation at the time. I quite enjoyed this movie and recommend it. There is, of course, a lot more information than I can include in my discussion of it. I finished the book The Wings Upon Her Back by Samantha Mills. This is a good science fiction novel that mirrors our current political climate. The story is about Zemolai, nicknamed Zenya. She lives where there is a domain of five gods. Arthur C. Clarke’s phrase “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” might be useful here or maybe, “... indistinguishable from divine intervention.” The gods are in charge of creation (engineering), scholarship, workers, farming, and security (mecha). Those that follow the mecha god, if they’re good enough, can earn mechanical wings to help with their security duties. The story begins with an incident 26 years after earning her wings that causes Zemolai to lose them. The rest of the novel has alternate chapters on how she earns her wings and what she does after she loses them. With this alternating format the two parts of the story highlight and parallel each other. When Zenya is young she is captivated with the idea of flying. When old enough she leaves her father and brother to begin training. She becomes a student of Vodaya, the top teacher who seems to be in direct contact with the mecha god. Vodaya drives Zenya to excel, and she does, and also becomes a tender mother to her. The five parts of the society are supposed to be an interrelated community. But rivalries develop. The scholars want to know all about the gods, even if the knowledge can upset current understanding. The mecha don’t want to disrupt the current stability, though the rivalries do exactly that. And the mecha shift from protectors against external threats to enforcers of internal doctrine. Spoiler alert: After Zemolai loses her wings she is cared for by rebels while her body recovers from the withdrawal of drugs that made control of the wings possible. As she maintains her devotion to Vodaya there is a long process to understand how abusive Vodaya had been to her and the rest of the community. Zemolai had earlier interpreted that abuse as just a tactic to make her stronger and more fit to receive the wings. She also begins to realize the abuse she doled out to stay in Vodaya’s favor and stay within the theology Vodaya upheld. Zemolai’s desire for the wings blinded her to the abuse. I enjoyed and recommend this book. I saw similarities to the nasty guy supporters. They also want something desperately – a restoration of the middle class and the hierarchy that places straight white Christian men at the top. They see the nasty guy getting it for them, certainly he’s blaming and hurting the people they want blamed. But their lives are being made worse as the nasty guy’s policies are implemented. They may need a long time to see he is abusive and has always been abusive. I found a page of Arthur C. Clarke quotes. A few:

The goal of the future is full unemployment, so we can play. That's why we have to destroy the present politico-economic system. Before you become too entranced with gorgeous gadgets and mesmerizing video displays, let me remind you that information is not knowledge, knowledge is not wisdom, and wisdom is not foresight. Each grows out of the other, and we need them all. In my life I have found two things of priceless worth - learning and loving. Nothing else - not fame, not power, not achievement for its own sake - can possible have the same lasting value. For when your life is over, if you can say 'I have learned' and 'I have loved,' you will also be able to say 'I have been happy.’

While I’m discussing a book... The American Library Association is marking Banned Books Week by releasing the list of the top ten most challenged books of 2024. From their top ten page:

The 2024 data reported to ALA’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) shows that the majority of book censorship attempts are now originating from organized movements. Pressure groups and government entities that include elected officials, board members and administrators initiated 72% of demands to censor books in school and public libraries. Parents only accounted for 16% of demands to censor books, while 5% of challenges were brought by individual library users. The 120 titles most frequently targeted for censorship during 2024 are all identified on partisan book rating sites which provide tools for activists to demand the censorship of library books. The most common justifications for censorship provided by complainants were false claims of illegal obscenity for minors; inclusion of LGBTQIA+ characters or themes; and covering topics of race, racism, equity, and social justice.

There were 821 attempts to ban books, down from 2023, but up from 2021. Those 821 attempts included 2,452 unique titles. That’s significantly up from 2001-2020. The LGBTQ books in the list. 1. All Boys Aren’t Blue by George Johnson. This had 39 challenges. 2. Gender Queer by Maia Kobabe. 3. The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky. 10. Flamer by Mike Curato. All of them on the list, including those above, were challenged for a claim to be sexually explicit. Also related to literature is the end of the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest. I realized that I hadn’t heard about this year’s winners, which had usually been announced around Labor Day, so I looked for the website. That’s where I learned Scott Rice, the guy who created and ran the contest since 1983 announced his and the contest’s retirement back in March (sheesh he’s older than Biden). The archive of winners will be maintained. In August Deena Prichep of NPR talked to Rice about the contest and retirement. He explained the contest (which I’ve mentioned several times over the years) is to create the worst possible opening sentence for a novel. The rest of the novel is irrelevant. Last year Rice got 6,000 entries. The contest is named for Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton, a 19th century author who wrote best sellers, but is remembered for the bad opening sentence of his novel Paul Clifford, “It was a dark and stormy night.” An example of a contest winner included in Prichep’s report:

For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil.

I never submitted to the contest, though thought the worst first sentence would be one where there was no possible second sentence.

I could tell you about my life but thought it’s none of your damn business.

I searched previous blog posts for contest winners. I found these:

This dishonorable mention in the Fantasy category from the 2009 winners is by Shannon Gray of Wichita, KS. Detective Pierson mentally reviewed the group of suspects milling around the recent crime scene – two young siblings eating gingerbread, a young girl in a red hoodie, a beautiful girl with narcolepsy, and seven little people with the profession of miners – then gave his statement of "It's a grim tale" to the press. A winner in the Vile Puns category for 2015 is by Matthew Pfeifer of Beaman, Iowa: Old Man Dracula forgot to put his teeth in one night, and so had to come home hungry, with a sort of “nothing dentured, nothing veined” look on his face.

From 2018:

In preparation for visits by African dignitaries, we had redecorated the West Wing of the White House in an African motif with numerous artificial plants and animals, but the President asked that we remove the papier-mache wildebeests, saying he was "tired of fake gnus." Wm. "Buddy" Ocheltree, Snellville, GA

From 2023 and working with the inspiration for the contest:

It was a dark and stormy night at the harbors of Sydney, where wind whipped the seawater across the docks and the torrents of rain soaked everything that the waves could not reach, but luckily for James Tyche this story begins at a beach in Southern France, where it was currently day and James was gradually developing a healthy tan and less healthy sunburn. Robin Alberts, Ludenscheid, Germany

And from last year’s contest:

Stepping outside just after dawn, Chef Billingsworth was pleased to discover that for once the morning fog was not as thick as pea soup—or even lobster bisque for that matter—but was more a chicken velouté, or perhaps a beef remouillage. Mark Meiches, Dallas, TX

I’ll miss this fun. A while back I wrote about Kat Abughazaleh, who is Gen Z and running for Congress in a district that’s a long strip in Chicago’s northern suburbs. Alix Breeden of Daily Kos interviewed her. She’s a person I’d very much want to see in Congress right now, willing to take on the fascists (she’s been taking on ICE) as well as the stodgy Democratic leadership.

Any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped

Yeah, just yesterday I wrote about a book I read. Today’s book has been my “car book.” I keep one in the car to read when I am in a place where I may need to wait, like a doctor’s waiting room. I’ve been reading this one since last August and my trip to Stratford, Ontario. The book is Bad Gays, a Homosexual History by Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller. There are profiles of fourteen men who showed homosexual activity and also did bad things. In the Introduction the authors discussed Oscar Wilde and his lover Lord Alfred Douglas, known as Bosie. He caused a rupture between the two and Bosie’s father, the Marquess of Queensberry, sued Wilde for slander. Wilde lost. He was sent to prison that broke his health. We talk about Wilde’s importance to LGBTQ history. Why don’t we talk about Bosie? That’s the question that prompted this book. We should talk about the good and the bad. Some of the people profiled in the book are obviously bad. J. Edgar Hoover and Roy Cohn. Ronnie Kray who, with his twin brother, lived a gangster life in the mid 1900s in London. And the gay men of Germany’s Weimar Republic who promoted the rise of the Nazis. But some of them don’t sound bad. Roger Casement railed against the brutality of King Leopold of Belgium in his treatment of the people of the Congo. And Pietro Aretino, who wrote bawdy poems to criticize the actions of the Pope and Florentine officials in the 1500s and through his writings changed how sex was discussed. Other famous people profiled in the book are Hadrian, James VI and I, Frederick the Great, Lawrence of Arabia, and Margaret Mead. In addition to a profile of the person the authors also discussed how homosexuality was treated in that person’s time period and location. In some times and places men loving men was considered quite foul and illegal, in others it was approved of under certain circumstances. The last profile in the book is of Pym Fortuyn. He was a politician in the Netherlands in the 1990s and some of his rhetoric inspired far right groups around the world, including in America. Fortuyn was openly gay and became the head of his own political party. Muslims had been invited to the Netherlands as guest workers. When the economy was doing well and guest workers were no longer needed these Muslims decided to stay. That caused friction, as we well know here. Fortuyn and his followers were able to claim we are tolerant – so tolerant the head of our party is gay. But those people, the Muslims, are intolerant. We have to do something about them. Yeah, that is tolerance that isn’t. From page 290 of the book:

A new “benevolence” towards gays and lesbians in the public sphere on issues like marriage, [queer theorist Jasbir K Puar in her book Terrorist Assemblages] writes, “is contingent upon ever narrowing parameters” – of whiteness, of class position, and of adherence to gender norms. The married gay subject can then be defended by the state, and set off against supposedly terrifying terrorists who threaten the liberal freedom these subjects embody. This neat trick of reversal, familiar today as a key part of the far-right playbook in debates about the provision of healthcare to transgender children and the supposed scourge of “cancel culture” at universities, was pioneered by Fortuyn.

I enjoyed the book and recommend it. The story of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Maryland dad mistakenly deported to El Salvador, generated a lot of news this week. A week ago his case came before the Supreme Court. They ruled all people to be deported must have due process rights respected. They upheld a lower court ruling saying Abrego Garcia must be returned to the US and the nasty guy’s administration must “facilitate” that return. On Monday Lisa Needham of Daily Kos wrote about the nasty guy’s response, which has been refusing to do so.

On the one hand, the Trump folks are too powerful and cannot be told what to do. On the other hand, they’re just widdle guys and cannot tell El Salvador what to do. On the third hand, sure, they made a mistake in removing Abrego Garcia, but it no longer matters because they changed the rules after deporting him. Oh, and on the fourth hand, they can’t tell you anything about the secret agreement to deport people to El Salvador, because it’s secret, duh. And on the fifth hand, they actually are following the order, so there. No matter which explanation is trotted out, they’re all equally disingenuous and unconstitutional.

The nasty guy’s minions also gave various reasons (again, all of them disingenuous) on why the nasty guy, as powerful as he is, just isn’t able to tell El Salvador what to do. Put another way, the administration can’t be bothered to invent a passable explanation. On Monday afternoon Franco Ordoñez and Danielle Kurtzleben of NPR reported that El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele visited the nasty guy in the Oval Office earlier that day. In addition to reviewing the meeting they reported:

During Bukele's Oval Office visit on Monday, Trump and his team said it was up to the Salvadoran government to decide whether to return him. Bukele said he would not do that. ... Secretary of State Marco Rubio and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said the matter was up to Bukele. "He's a citizen of El Salvador, so it's very arrogant even for American media to suggest that we would even tell El Salvador, how to handle their own citizens," Miller said.

I see a little detail here that didn’t register at the time and I hadn’t noticed any other news story talk about it until I had NPR on this afternoon. The detail is that Abrego Garcia is indeed a citizen of El Salvador. He came to the US about 15 years ago to escape gang violence and is a legal US resident. And none of the claims the nasty guy and his minions have said against Abrego Garcia are true. Also on Monday afternoon Walter Einenkel of Kos discussed the meeting between Bukele and the nasty guy. He titled his piece, “Bukele and Trump pretend they can’t return wrongfully deported man.” I see now he also said Abrego Garcia is a citizen of El Salvador. In the comments of a pundit roundup on Kos exlrrp included a tweet from Will Stancil:

They’ll pressure a NATO ally to release a sex trafficker and racketeer but they won’t pressure a tiny dictatorship to return a man it’s holding on our behalf, who they admit they sent there by accident.

Stancil includes headlines from a story of the nasty guy pressuring Romania to return brothers Tristan and Andrew Tate, charged with sexual misconduct, organized crime, and money laundering. Beside it is a story saying, “The Trump administration contends it has no duty to return illegally deported man to the US.” Hasn’t the nasty guy’s rhetoric included a lot about deporting the people who have committed crimes (or his minions have accused of crimes), yet they wanted actual criminals to be returned to the US? I’ve never considered this logical. A bit further down in the comments Steve Inskeep of NPR has similar sentiments:

If I understand this correctly, the US president has launched a trade war against the world, believes he can force the EU and China to meet his terms, is determined to annex Canada and Greenland, but is powerless before the sovereign might of El Salvador. Is that it?

On Sunday Scott Detrow of NPR discussed the case with Harvard Law Emeritus Professor Laurence Tribe, who cowrote a New York Times op-ed about the case and included the line, “we should all be very, very afraid of the implications of this case.” Detrow asked him to explain. Tribe said:

The reason I think was made even clearer by Justice Sotomayor in her concurring statement. She said the government's argument implies that it could deport and incarcerate any person, including U.S. citizens, without legal consequence, as long as it does so before a court can intervene. Think about what that means. What that means is that literally any of us - whether we are from Venezuela or were born in the United States, whether we are immigrants or not, whether we are citizens or not - any of us is vulnerable to basically being kidnapped by masked agents of the United States government who don't tell us why they're picking us up, perhaps never to be seen again because we are located somewhere in a dungeon, a prison cell, rotting away, whether it's in El Salvador or anywhere else in the world. ... They've taken the position that even if it's clearly illegal and the government admits it, they say too bad, too late, oops. The person is gone, and we cannot get him back. And all nine justices reject the idea that suddenly, the greatest nation on Earth is powerless and its courts are powerless just because someone is outside the country. That's not the law.

The Supremes may have unanimously said what the nasty guy did was against the law, but Tribe says they wrote the opinion in yellow. The Supremes said the lower court should clarify the situation and include the deference towards the executive branch in executing foreign affairs. But this isn’t a foreign policy issue. Also, the courts have demanded the administration explain the steps it’s taking to make the return happen. To that they are saying we haven’t done anything. Tribe:

If he is not released in the next few days, that will be a signal to everyone in the country that they can be detained indefinitely by stalling maneuvers on the part of the Trump administration, or any future presidential administration, unless courts get there before the government can move. It's a very deadly game in which the government is told, if you take people who are perhaps ideological opponents of the administration, immigrants, citizens, what have you - people that the government would like to get rid of the way people have been disappeared to gulags throughout history - if you want to get rid of them, here's how you do it. You just grab them quickly and disappear them. That's where we will be if he's not returned.

That’s true also of citizens. This scenario is based on avoiding due process. Without it the administration can claim the person isn’t a citizen. Due process is to make sure the claims are true. Even if Abrego Garcia is returned soon, the nasty guy is so extreme that unless he says he won’t do it again, there isn’t much solace.

The whole point about a police state isn't that it always acts to silence people or to imprison them or to torture them. It's that the sword of Damocles hangs over all of us all the time. That has an enormous chilling effect. We've seen it with law firms. We've seen it with respect to universities. And sure, it would be good if Mr. Garcia were released, but until the government begins to recognize and act in accord with the recognition that it is bound by the law and not just by its own preferences, we will all be in great danger.

On Monday morning Michel Martin of NPR spoke to Kim Wehle, professor at the University of Baltimore School of Law. Wehle said part of the issue is the Supreme Court ruling that made a distinction between “facilitating” and “effectuating” and seemed to say Abrego Garcia doesn’t need to be returned as long as the nasty guy can cite foreign policy. But, Wehle said, foreign policy does not supersede the core constitutional right to due process. About Lawrence Tribe saying not even citizens are safe... Emily Singer of Kos wrote on Monday:

In yet another disgusting display in the Oval Office, President Donald Trump said he wants to send U.S. citizens to El Salvador’s notoriously violent prison where he's currently sending immigrants without due process and against court orders. During his Monday meeting with El Salvador President Nayib Bukele, Trump was caught on camera saying that "homegrowns are next" to be sent to CECOT, the Salvadoran prison where people are housed in inhumane conditions, including without mattresses, pillows, proper nutrition, time outside, and access to family or lawyers. "The homegrowns. You gotta build about five more places. It's not big enough," Trump told Bukele, apparently referring to U.S. citizens who he wants to send to CECOT. When Trump was later asked if he would send U.S. citizens to CECOT, he didn’t hesitate to say yes. "If they are criminals, and if they hit people with baseball bats over the head, if they rape 87-year-old women, yeah. Yeah. That includes them. I'm all for it," he said.

Sending citizens to CECOT “should send shivers down the spine of every American.” In the US incarcerated people are still protected by the Constituion’s 8th Amendment prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and the 14th Amendment requiring due process. Singer then detailed how CECOT would definitely be cruel and unusual punishment.

If Trump is refusing to comply with court orders to return immigrants from El Salvador, who’s to say he won’t send journalists or political adversaries there next?

On Tuesday Oliver Willis of Kos reported that several Democratic members of Congress are preparing to go to El Salvador to try to get the release of Abrego Garcia. Willis also reported:

Garcia is a father of three. His wife, Jennifer Vasquez Sura, has said she is “very scared” for his safety while he is being held in El Salvador. Garcia was granted protected status in 2011 after a U.S. court determined he “could be persecuted by gangs” if he returned to his native country.

The gangs didn’t get their chance to persecute him. Dictator Bukele and his cruel prison did. One of those Democrats wanting to go to El Salvador was Sen. Chris Van Hollen. This afternoon Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to Van Hollen who was in El Salvador. He said he got about three miles of the prison when he was stopped by security and told he wasn’t allowed to go any farther. He said this trip was only to check on the health of Abrego Garcia. On Wednesday Singer reported that GOP Rep. Riley Moore of West Virginia did go to El Salvador and did get into the notorious CECOT prison. But his trip wasn’t to try to free, or even see, Abrego Garcia. This trip was so that he can appear in photos with prisoners as background. In one photo he even gave two thumbs up. Singer called this “torture porn.” Moore wrote on X, “I leave now even more determined to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our homeland.” Singer wrote:

According to the Holocaust Museum's definition, CECOT is a concentration camp. A concentration camp, the museum says, “is a site for the detention of civilians whom a regime perceives to be a security risk of some sort. What distinguishes it from a prison (in the modern sense) is that incarceration in a concentration camp is independent of any judicial sentence or even indictment, and is not subject to judicial review.” Indeed, 90% of those sent to CECOT had never been convicted of a crime, while 75% have never even been arrested, according to Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, a senior fellow at the American Immigration Council.

This nasty guy dictator may not build concentration camps on US soil. Instead, he may pay El Salvador to do it for him. That way the disappeared lose their Constitutional rights – though by then the Constitution will have been shredded.

The GOP's collapse into dysfunction and disinformative theatrics

I finished the book Drapetomania by John Gordon. The book defines the word as a noun meaning, “The pathological psychological condition wherein a slave feels compelled to escape his master, however well that master treats him. Recommended treatment for this condition: firm discipline.” When I bought the book I had wondered if it was based on true events, perhaps even a novelization of a bit of history. But the author doesn’t provide any notes or acknowledgments of the history at the story’s core. So I assume the whole thing is fiction. The story is about a slave that ran from his master, though it appears his treatment as a slave was enough reason to run. That slave is Cyrus. The primary reason for running is his love has been sold to another plantation. So Cyrus works to find out where his love was taken and to go there. That part of the story is about the first 60% of nearly 500 pages and at times seems to document every step. Cyrus, of course, encounters many slave hunters, though also an abolitionist and helpful black people. I’m sure a bit reason why this book has been getting attention is because Cyrus loves Abednego. Few books deal with the possibility of gay slaves. They surely existed, though that concept was not understood at the time. I mention it here rather than at the top of my review because little of the story depends on whether that love interest is male or female. This is a story about slavery. It doesn’t have any homophobia – the white people don’t know (that wasn’t the reason for Abdednego’s sale) and the few fellow slaves that do don’t care. Another 15% of the story is what happened to Abednego after he is sold and before Cyrus finds him (what, you were thinking that after 300 pages Cyrus didn’t find him?). And the rest of the story is about what they do together. In my genealogy work I had heard of black people facing that their family tree included rapist owners. Part of Cyrus’ life as a slave is being forcibly taken to a nearby plantation for the purpose of impregnating one of the young women there – as their white overseers watch and take bets on which of their bucks will finish first. The young woman is being raped – she did not (could not) give consent. In this case Cyrus is too because he also didn’t give consent. The plantation Abednego is sold to has the reputation of being among the cruelest. Life expectancy is about five years. Not only are the slaves beaten for mere whims of the overseers, but the slaves are underfed. It’s cheaper to buy more slaves than to keep the current ones properly nourished. When Abednego and the new group of slaves get to that new plantation the owner greets them with a speech about how his great grandfather and grandfather built the place into the flourishing enterprise it is now (not mentioning it was the slaves who did the actual work) and that the Big House is all about elegant living. When the field hands see the inside of the Big House they aren’t awed, as the white owner intends for other white people to be, they are disgusted. All that opulence for white people while slaves are given starvation rations. Spoiler alert: After a while the slaves realize there are 400 of us and 20 of them. I noticed the rich language of the narrator and its contrast with the much simpler dialogue of the slaves. An example of the rich language is the description of Cyrus and Abednego fitting together as two halves of a broken geode. A small annoyance in that the dialogue is not marked with quotes. I think I could always tell between narration and dialogue, but using quotes would have saved me the bother of rereading passages to sort out what is spoken and what isn’t. The story is not exactly the type one enjoys. Even so, it is a worthwhile and important story into what slave life was like and the gay angle, as slim as it is, is rarely used elsewhere. I recommend it. A historic day yesterday – the Speaker of the House was removed. I have a few posts that describe the day. I start with Joan McCarter of Daily Kos who discussed what happens if the speaker’s chair is vacated. In particular there is a “speaker pro tempore,” an interim. The position was created following the 9/11 attacks. That means, unlike in January, the work of the House (such as it is) can continue while a new Speaker is selected. However, this person is not in the presidential line of succession. McCarter also reviews possible replacements and the choices don’t look good. They don’t even look good by enough House members to be elected. Kerry Eleveld of Kos discussed all the reasons Democrats have to vote for McCarthy’s ouster. Their reasons include McCarthy reneging on deals with Democrats, his demonizing Democrats, his launching an impeachment inquiry into Biden, and from a couple years back his refusal to participate in the Jan 6 investigations. There is also Democrat’s insistence that the far right caucus should not be able to control anything, and their belief that the world should witness Republican dysfunction. Yesterday’s morning session was to approve the vote to take up the question of removal. McCarter did liveblogging of what happened. That included speeches both for McCarthy and against. And many of those, both for and against, demonized Democrats, giving them less reason to bail out a Republican. In an afternoon post McCarter liveblogged more of the speeches, then the actual vote. The speeches included more trashing of Democrats. There is also one more reason – the California delegation asked for a delay in House business so they could attend Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s funeral. McCarthy ignored their request. The final vote is 216 for removal, 210 against with all Democrats voting for along with eight Republicans. Kos of Kos summarized the day and included this little bit. There are Republicans claiming it was Democrats who are sending the nation into turmoil because they didn’t save McCarthy’s butt. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin had a few interesting quotes. From Alex Rouhandeh:

Reaction to McCarthy’s ousting from @SenatorRomney: “One thing it shows us is that President Trump abandoned Kevin McCarthy. He didn’t come to his support. Had he come down hard, I presume Congressman Gaetz and others would have would have followed suit.”

Politico noted that the name of the Speaker pro tempore is kept secret until needed. And this one, Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-NC), was chosen by McCarthy. James Fallows:

This is a really important point. NYT (et al) relentlessly present GOP fracture as broader failure of "politics" and "Washington" and "institutions" and "governance." No one did it; it just happened. Then reports that public has lost confident in governance, Washington, etc

With a response from David Simon:

Agreed. The asymmetrical reality of the GOP's collapse into dysfunction and disinformative theatrics is ignored in favor of an unevidenced claim of overall institutional collapse. It ain't so.

And in the comments are a string of cartoons about the day, including one of Matt Gaetz enacting the shower scene from Psycho.

Dr. Anonymous is important to LGBTQ history

Two weeks ago I wrote about nuclear fusion as a source of energy, a source that’s quite clean in contrast to highly dangerous nuclear fission. I wrote about it because Lawrence Livermore National Lab announced they had achieved more energy from the fusion than needed to fire that lasers that made the fusion happen – if one ignores the hundred times that energy needed to get the lasers ready to fire. Mark Sumner of Daily Kos wrote a good explanation of what fusion is and what was actually achieved at the lab this month. He reviewed the history of the research, including the different ways that fusion could be triggered. Then he discussed the progress being made by other methods of achieving fusion. He included a few videos for more information. Sumner concluded that the constant refrain of fusion always being “20 to 30 years away” is probably no longer accurate. Clean commercially available fusion energy might happen sooner than that. Joan McCarter of Kos wrote that Republicans seemed determined to continue imposing far right policies even though such policies are quite unpopular. One would think the issue of abortion contributing to their November losses would prompt them to rethink their plans. But no. This discussion was brought on by a South Carolina legislator who proposed an amendment to the state constitution to define gender “without regard to an individual’s psychological, chosen or subjective experience of gender.” Take that you pesky trans people! Wrote McCarter:

Both the midterm results and exit polling from November’s ballot demonstrate just how much the general public doesn’t want lawmakers to be obsessing over anti-LGBTQ+ crap. Just 5% of voters said transgender health care and participation in sports mattered to them in this election. The majority were electing a record number of LGBTQ+ candidates, with 1,065 openly LGBTQ+ people running, and 340 winning.

Trans people aren’t the only ones being hit. There are copycat “Don’t Say Gay” bills and a “Women’s Bill of Rights” (and we know how fake that will be because the right to an abortion isn’t included). It is all part of an effort to be seen as the “protector” of women and children when women and children need protection from them. So why are they doing all this unpopular stuff? Because all of these far right issues will be challenged in court. And many will go all the way to the Supreme Court, which is now stacked in their favor. Adam Zyglis has an appropriate cartoon. It shows an elephant cramming a cork in a teacher’s mouth. As a way of understanding the war in Ukraine Sumner reviewed the TV series Andor. It’s part of the Star Wars universe and Sumner says it is quite good – much better than the usual story in the franchise. I won’t attempt to discuss the story. Instead, I’ll mention some of the things that Sumner says contribute to a Fascist regime. The first is the relationship between capitalism and fascism:

The authoritarian government is happy to tolerate both the corporate structure and the corporate police so long as capitalism is sufficient to keep the people distracted from concerns about the empire. Keeping those workers at the ragged edge, where they worry more about feeding their families is the goal. But the fascists don’t hesitate to directly take the reins when they believe the corporate rulers aren’t being adequately oppressive.

Keeping workers so poor that they’re focused on feeding their families means they’re not focused on the brutality of the regime. The next topic is colonialism.

Notably, the indigenous population hasn’t been killed directly. Instead, they’ve been driven off their land, directed into “enterprise zones” where they can engage in labor that serves the empire. ... The world on which this act takes place is one in which the government has demonstrated it’s ability to erase the local culture. Not only have the indigenous people been removed from their land, their cultural practices have been undercut by limits on important ceremonies. There has also been active cultural appropriation, in which the empire has replaced portions of the rituals of these “simple” local people. ... If all this sounds like what the United States did (and does) to Native Americas, it’s meant to. The forcing of people that were spread thinly across large areas into small industrial zones is also spot on to how colonialism was practiced in Africa and elsewhere. Colonialism serves those in power. Fascism maintains itself by removing any competitors. If religion or cultural traditions can be warped to serve the authoritarian regime, they’re supported. If not, they’re removed.

And there is the prison system.

Once in the prison, Andor learns that even the pretense of his sentence is not maintained. For both those who resist their captivity, and those who cooperate, the end result is the same — a lifetime of doing free labor for the empire; a crushing, mind-numbing, never ending production line in which they are all engaged in building what, pointedly, turn out to be fresh tools of oppression. It’s only here, in this final arc, that Andor steps back from his personal needs to realize that it’s not enough to hate the system. He has to take steps to end that system.

I saw a tweet by Mary Doherty a couple weeks ago mentioning an event important to LGBTQ history that happened 50 years ago. It’s an event I knew about, though it is good to get the background story and be reminded of its importance. The tweet linked to a news article. I decided to read the full article and was surprised it was dated May 2, 2022. The article is on NBC News and is by Jillian Eugenios. That historical event 50 years ago was when Dr. Henry Anonymous spoke to the American Psychiatric Association while wearing a Nixon mask, a wig, and a too big tux and using a microphone that disguised his voice. He began his speech by saying “I am a homosexual, I am a psychiatrist.” The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders is a guidebook for psychiatrists. When the first edition of the DSM was published in 1952 homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder. Acceptable cures included chemical castration, electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy – yeah, severe treatments. A homosexual could be denied a mortgage and insurance, fired from a job, and institutionalized. Same-sex activities were criminialized. Activists were pressuring the APA to change – their refrain was “Stop talking about us and start talking to us!” They had stormed the APA conference in 1970 and 1971. So a panel was created for the 1972 conference. I had heard elsewhere that psychiatrists based their diagnosis on the number of gay men they saw who were in a bad mental place – not catching on the men didn’t want to be gay because of the extreme social pressure placed on them. Psychiatrists didn’t see the gay men who were content and well-adjusted and functioning just fine. That’s why they wanted the APA to talk to them. The organizers thought a gay psychiatrist would be appropriate for the panel. Only one member of the underground Gay-P-A agreed to participate, but only if disguised because he could lose his job. So Dr. John Fryer became Dr. Anonymous. His speech prompted homosexuality to be removed from the DSM in 1973. Declaring homosexuality was not a mental disorder, but just another variation in the spectrum of humanity, the rationalization for discrimination was removed. Bigotry couldn’t hide behind psychiatry. LGBTQ people felt freer in coming out. Anti sodomy laws began to be overturned. The speech by Dr. Anonymous is as important to LGBTQ history as the Stonewall riots.

So the ceremony could proceed, the right syllables could be muttered

My Sunday movie was Cicada. It is the story of Ben, who is white. After a series of one night stands Ben meets Sam, who is black. They fall in love. But there is something in Ben’s past (and it’s not homophobia). And Sam, who grew up in a religious home, is closeted. Along the way they have to work through their pasts and also through situations involving race. The movie begins by saying the story is based on true events. The stars, Matthew Fifer and Sheldon Brown, are also the writers. And the IMDB description says, “A New York love story that toes the line between narrative and doc with two actors reliving parts of their own experiences.” It’s a good declaration the story is autobiographical. It is a good story, though the pace is slower than I would have liked. Dartagnan of the Daily Kos community discussed what Garry Wills wrote for the New York Review of Books back in 2012 after the Sandy Hook massacre. Wills described those who love their guns as worshipers of Moloch. The Biblical book of Leviticus (see 18:21 and 20:1-5) describes sacrifices of living children to Moloch as a sign of a deeply degraded culture. Wrote Wills:

The gun is not a mere tool, a bit of technology, a political issue, a point of debate. It is an object of reverence. Devotion to it precludes interruption with the sacrifices it entails. Like most gods, it does what it will, and cannot be questioned. Its acolytes think it is capable only of good things. It guarantees life and safety and freedom. It even guarantees law. Law grows from it. Then how can law question it? Its power to do good is matched by its incapacity to do anything wrong. It cannot kill. Thwarting the god is what kills. If it seems to kill, that is only because the god’s bottomless appetite for death has not been adequately fed. The answer to problems caused by guns is more guns, millions of guns, guns everywhere, carried openly, carried secretly, in bars, in churches, in offices, in government buildings. Only the lack of guns can be a curse, not their beneficent omnipresence.

I hope you caught the contradiction of a god who cannot kill but is the same god with a bottomless appetite for death. As with the Biblical Moloch this modern idol is getting fed quite regularly. Then Dartagnan wrote about Beto O’Rourke confronting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott at a news conference in Uvalde:

After Beto O’Rourke unexpectedly intruded into the very temple of the god, the inner sanctum where the high priests of the gun cult—call it the cult of Moloch if you want—gathered to perform their ritualistic rending of their robes, as they bemoaned the loss of life and offered platitudes designed to appease their deity. Flanked by burly sheriffs and officials like Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott presided solemnly over this most sacred of catechisms, all faces a study in performative concern. The shocking appearance of O’Rourke impugning this holy mission seemed, at least momentarily, to disturb the assembly, and he was roughly ushered out so the ceremony could proceed, the right syllables could be muttered, and the event consigned to the endless, fickle memory hole always left in the wake of the next news cycle. The gun lovers’ squealing was truly something to behold, for a fleeting moment, anyway. But it will take many more voices than O’Rourke’s to bring down this priesthood, along with its seemingly insatiable thirst for human sacrifice.

A couple months ago Patrick Lyoya was shot and killed by police in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lauren Sue of Kos reported that on May 17 at a Grand Rapids city commission meeting Naiara Tamminga, age 13, had a few things to say. Here’s part of it. She first talked about being told children must not disobey those protecting them.

I don't trust any of you. I don't trust any of the police officers because you have shown time and time again that we cannot trust you. I go to City High Middle School. Just voted the top high school. Top high school in the state. You know what they teach us? Teach us to speak up for yourself. We're IB learners, right? We're smart. None of you are smart? None of you can recognize murderers? You can identify that there is a problem, but you cannot fix it. I don't know much about the law. Again, I'm young, but I'm pretty sure an accomplice to a murder should be arrested. And right now, all of you sitting and doing nothing are accomplices to a murder.

The rest of it is pretty good too. Leonard Pitts wrote an editorial for the Miami Herald that was reprinted in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press. In it he talked about readers who complain that he uses the word conservative for people who don’t follow the traditional meaning of small government, strong foreign policy, and minimal regulation. But Pitts will continue to call the extreme actions as conservative because those who complain now were silent when it mattered. He wrote they were silent ...

As newly brazen racism and xenophobia became the heart of the movement. As conspiracy became the voice of the movement. As violence became the good right arm of the movement. As Trump became the face of the movement. They stood by and watched as the values they claimed to venerate were smeared in sludge and the name they used to brand themselves was snatched away like money by a playground bully. What it used to mean, folks, it means no more. The fringe became the mainstream. The game played the player. The tail wagged the dog. Now, along comes that trickle of readers wanting me to know that the Trump cultists are not “real” conservatives. I’m afraid they won’t find me particularly sympathetic. Yes, it’s a good argument. But they’re making it to the wrong audience, about 30 years too late.

I had written about five candidates for the Republican nomination for governor of Michigan who were disqualified from the ballot for not getting enough signatures because the company they hired created fraudulent signatures. M.L. Elrick in the Freep (the article is behind a paywall) wrote that other Republicans have no sympathy. The general view: If you can’t get the signatures right you’re not qualified to be governor. Elrick described that when he ran for Detroit City Council he carefully reviewed the petition forms before turning them in. Garrett Soldano, one of those still on the ballot, said those collecting signatures should be motivated by more than a paycheck.

If you can’t inspire people to go around and get petition signature to get you on the ballot. How can you expect to run the state?

Another Freep editorial, this one from two weeks ago and by Brian Dickerson (and also behind a paywall), discussed that this coming fiscal year the state of Michigan is looking at a $6 billion surplus. It is due to federal infrastructure programs and short term changes in spending habits boosting sales tax collection. I’m not at all surprised at the Republican response to this bounty: Tax Cuts! Dickerson wrote that tax cuts are for cowards. I reply that tax cuts are for supremacists. If money is going to tax cuts it isn’t going to improve Michigan’s bad roads and other infrastructure. It isn’t going to schools or to health programs (physical and mental) or to programs to help people caught in financial difficulties or to lift people out of poverty. Money going to tax cuts means poor people are forced to stay poor. That’s why it’s a supremacist move. That bit about “small government” (mentioned above and implied here) is also a supremacist move. A small government also can’t protect the little guy from the predatory moves of the big guy. In political terms Republicans win by proposing the tax cut and Republicans win if Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer vetoes them. Richard Milne of Financial Times reported that Kaja Kallas, prime minister of Estonia and leader of the Reform party forced the dismissal of seven ministers from the Centre party, the other party in the governing coalition. The accusation is the Centre party is too cozy with the Kremlin, even though formal ties were cut when the Ukraine war started, and that connection threatens Estonia’s independence. The dismissals mean the government collapsed. Kallas will try to build a fresh governing coalition. If she can’t, the leader of the Centre party will be given a chance. The Centre party had recently ruled with the far right Ekre party and may try to do so again. Dartagnan wrote that the Supreme Court is becoming a hostile work environment. The cause is the leak of the draft opinion in the case likely to overturn abortion rights. The focus is on the law clerks, those who assist the justices and probably do most of the work. Since none have confessed there is now intense efforts to investigate the clerks’ phones. And the clerks are concerned about the invasion of privacy and beginning to lawyer up. Wrote Dartagnan:

The irony of the Supreme Court’s law clerks potentially litigating what are essentially privacy issues as a result of a leaked decision that itself overtly revokes the right to privacy is inescapable. The Supreme Court has already affirmed that warrantless smartphone searches violate the right to privacy (in fact, Roberts himself wrote that opinion, for a unanimous court). Any litigation about these issues will simply further highlight the fact that the government can’t intrude on your smartphone communications without a warrant based on “probable cause,” yet can intrude on and dictate one’s right to decide reproductive decisions.

So what happens if Supreme Court v. law clerks goes all the way to the Supreme Court? In other Supreme Court news that’s been in my browser tabs for a while... Three weeks ago Mark Joseph Stern, who writes about courts and the law for Slate, tweeted:

The 5th Circuit just dismantled the SEC's power to enforce securities law. This decision is beyond radical. It is nihilistic. ... The implication of this decision is that most (all?) agency enforcement power is unconstitutional. Which, in plain English, means that the federal government can't enforce a huge swath of regulations. I mean, this is basically striking down the administrative state.

That would eliminate most of the things that protect the little guy from the big guy. From a post two weeks ago Joan McCarter of Kos reported:

The Sixth Amendment to the Constitution is the latest casualty of a rogue U.S. Supreme Court, with the radical extremists deciding that no, not everyone really is entitled to competent legal defense and once again overturning Supreme Court precedent to do it. The court, 6-3, ruled that federal judges cannot hear new evidence from death row inmates arguing that their state-appointed lawyers did not provide constitutionally adequate defense.

If your state appointed lawyers (implying you’re poor) were incompetent and you end up on death row, you no longer have the right to appeal to the federal courts. Meaning: you’re screwed. Sonia Sotomayor for the dissent: “This decision is perverse. It is illogical.” Chrislove of the Kos book lovers community wrote about the book To Believe in Women, What Lesbians Have Done for America – A History by Lillian Faderman. The first issue to tackle is the word lesbian. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries that word was not used and there wasn’t a concept of sexual orientation. Even so, Faderman argued that the word accurately describes the committed domestic, sexual, and affectional experiences described in letters and other documents. Then we get to the core of Faderman’s book:

I also argue that in their eras, lesbian arrangements freed these pioneering women to pursue education, professions, and civil and social rights for themselves and others far more effectively than they could have if they had lived in traditional heterosexual arrangements.

Married to a man these women would have been pressured to create a home for the man. Two women together is a partnership. But a man and a woman isn’t a partnership. She just adds homemaker to any outside job. But in living with a woman they could make of their lives what they wished. Some of these women were: suffrage leader Susan B. Anthony and her lover Emily Gross; Bryn Mawr College president M. Cary Thomas who got the job because her partner Mary Garrett gave large endowments; social reformer Jane Addams was funded by her wealthy partner Mary Rozet Smith; Dr. Margaret Long and suffragist Ann Martin; Dr. Emily Blackwell and Dr. Elizabeth Cushier; Frances Willard and Anna Gordon, both of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union; and Lucy Anthony kept home for suffrage leader Anna Howard Shaw. Faderman wrote:

The individuals who are the subject of this book might all be said to have had “gender trouble,” in the sense that they could not accept the restrictions inherent in the notion of gender: they were dissatisfied with the way the category “woman” was constructed, and they were frustrated by the limitations placed on them as forced members of that category. They desired the privileges that were associated with men. Such desires demanded that they break into the “masculine” public sphere, claim it for their own, and thereby neuter the notion of gender-appropriate spheres.

These women didn’t claim that women were just like men. They declared they were different from men and their special gifts were desperately needed by society. Queen Elizabeth of Britain is celebrating 70 years on the throne. Alas, recent mobility issues have prevented her from attending all of the events. Even so, it looks like she had time for a visitor. Tom Hourigan of BBC News tweeted a 90 second video of the fictional Paddington Bear having tea with the Queen.

They see a future in which their jobs have vanished

Kos of Daily Kos has been writing Anti-Vaxx Chronicles – posts about a person who promotes not getting the vaccine and then dies of COVID. This one is different. It is about a doctor and his encounters with an anti-vaxx family. A summary (which is a spoiler alert): Father is in the hospital and quite ill. Mother and daughters want to visit but refuse to wear masks, so are denied entry. Mother demands her husband be treated with all those miracle things that don’t work. The doctor refuses. Father dies. Mother accuses the doctor of murder and assaults him. The doctor won’t press charges, knowing that will make him an anti-vaxx target. But this was the final incident to prompt him to switch jobs to something adjacent to medicine where he never has to see another patient. Rebekah Sager of Kos reported that while at the far right Turning Point USA Conference Jesse Watters of Fox News called for stochastic terrorism – a kill shot with an ambush – against Dr. Anthony Fauci, our top infectious disease doctor. Fauci, who has 24/7 security, went on CNN to call for Watters to be fired. Fox hasn’t responded. I listened to another Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to subscribers). I’ve been listening because I asked a question and I want to hear the answer. More of that in a bit. The first question was about billionaires. Host Sarah Kendzior said many billionaires are not acting to help alleviate climate change. Instead, they appear to be preparing to ride out the storm. They’re doing such things as hoarding resources and buying land. But why are they doing that? One billionaire bought a big chunk of land in Minnesota, perhaps to build a private bunker. But a fire swept through that land this summer. No place on earth will be safe. Besides, what kind of life would a billionaire, his family, and entourage have if confined to a bunker because the planet’s resources are stretched thin and the restless population is fighting over limited resources? That billionaire would be in a much more comfortable position if he spent a chunk of his wealth on efforts to reduce a climate catastrophe. So, why are they doing what they’re doing? This reminds be of something I wrote about in mid July. Many religious end-time stories say the world will go through hell, then after that a select number will enter heaven. Put another way, triggering a cataclysmic climate will get rid of the lower sections of the social hierarchy while preserving those at the top, or at least make the smaller number of them terrified and thus easier to control. My question wasn’t answered in the way I had hoped. Kendzior has said that many members of Congress, and certainly the leadership, know about Jeffrey Epstein and his sex trafficking of minors. Many of Epstein’s customers were members of Congress. Because of that Epstein had, and now the transnational crime syndicate behind him (see the current trial of Ghislaine Maxwell) has, leverage over those members. My question was what would happen if a member went public with which members were under the influence of this syndicate. The answer was a discussion of how the various news sources of Maxwell’s trial are talking about everything but that. So I reframed the question and asked again. Which means I’ll listen to more bonus episodes. Leah McElrath tweeted a quote from WikiVictorian, which included the photo:

Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, seated on cane chair, both smiling, on board the Imperial Yacht Standart, at Reval, Russia (now Tallinn, Estonia). Photographed in 1908. Royal Collection.

McElrath added:

A decade later, they were both executed by gunfire, and their bodies were disfigured, dismembered, and burnt. Income inequality at these levels does not historically end well. Just saying. Apparently this observation was too real, even for my battle-hardened, generously hearted followers. But it’s the truth. I don’t understand how those with the greatest wealth and power fail to understand that increasing overall well-being is in their best interests too.

They’re willing to give up some of their own well-being to maintain the gulf between themselves and those towards the bottom of the social hierarchy. Marissa Higgins of Kos reported that Jeff Green, CEO of The Trade Desk and in the billionaire league, sent a letter to the Mormon Church leadership saying he and his family were resigning their membership. The reason was, “I believe the Mormon church has hindered global progress in women’s rights, civil rights and racial equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.” Green had promised to donate 90% of his wealth (keeping hundreds of millions) at or before he died. As a step toward that he donated $600,000 to Equality Utah, which supports LGBTQ+ causes. Half of this money will go towards scholarships for LGBTQ+ students, especially those who need to leave the Mormon associated Brigham Young University, which has a ban on same-sex behavior. Joan McCarter of Kos reported more on what the United Mine Workers of West Virginia are saying about their senator, Joe Manchin, and his killing of the Build Back Better bill. McCarter wrote:

The United Mine Workers are telling Manchin it’s time he work for them and support this bill. “We urge Senator Manchin to revisit his opposition to this legislation and work with his colleagues to pass something that will help keep coal miners working, and have a meaningful impact on our members, their families and their communities,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, said in a statement Monday. They see a future in which their jobs have vanished, and want help now. For example, Build Back Better includes tax incentives—which the industry is fighting—to encourage manufacturers to build new facilities at the coal site and hire unemployed miners. ... The bill “provides the potential for good jobs that our members who have been dislocated can get,” Smith said, adding that about 45,000 coal mining jobs have been lost in the past decade. “We’re likely to lose coal jobs whether or not this bill passes,” Smith told Sargent. “If that’s the case, let’s figure out a way to provide as many jobs as possible for those who are going to lose.” He said that the tax incentives in Build Back Better provide a “pathway to do that.” In addition to the job replacement possibilities the bill offers for coal miners, there’s an extension of a fee coal companies have to pay to fund benefits for miners with black lung. ... It’s not just Build Back Better that the union is trying to get Manchin to support, by the way. “I also want to reiterate our support for the passage of voting rights legislation as soon as possible, and strongly encourage Senator Manchin and every other Senator to be prepared to do whatever it takes to accomplish that,” Roberts said in the statement. “Anti-democracy legislators and their allies are working every day to roll back the right to vote in America. Failure by the Senate to stand up to that is unacceptable and a dereliction of their duty to the Constitution.

Several news outlets are reporting Pfizer’s paxlovid has been approved for treating COVID. It has the advantage of being in pill form, rather than IV, so can be taken at home. That prompted Tyler Albertario, an LGBTQ+ historian, to tweet:

Paxlovid contains protease inhibitors, a class of drugs that wouldn't exist without the tireless efforts of ACT UP in the 1980s and 90s. Their thankless activism that was routinely mocked in the media and pop culture is now saving humanity.

ACT UP was an organization that, during the AIDS epidemic, staged noisy and in-your-face demonstrations trying to get government and Big Pharma to pay attention to the needs of gay people. Dr. Ali Nouri explains how paxlovid works. Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, reminded us that today is Festivus. As far as I can tell this unofficial holiday had its origins in a scene in the TV show Seinfeld. A part of the way the day is commemorated is an Airing of Grievances. I’ll summarize parts of Bill’s list (which is close enough I don’t have to create my own): * President Joe Biden is being treated more negatively by the press than his horrible predecessor. * Joe Manchin and his joy in watching people suffer. * We’re not into COVID so it should stop being so into us. * The anti-vaxxers. * The left is always asked to compromise with the right but the right is never asked to compromise with the left. Well, OK, one of my own: * The slowness of the Democratic response to the Capitol attack, the Big Lie, and voter suppression bills. Adam Sharp tweeted a long list of international ways of saying “I don’t care.” Warning, many in his list are not safe for tender ears. I’ll stick to the safe ones. * It’s sausage to me (German) * Narrate that to a tortoise (Filipino) * Even the dog is uninterested (Hungarian) * I don’t give a frostbitten onion (Romanian) * It bothers me like a cardboard duck (Danish) * I don’t give a cabbage (Italy)

Outed gay hero

The program Radiolab, heard on NPR, did an hour-long story on Oliver Sipple. Back in 1975 as President Ford left a hotel in San Francisco a woman shot at him. Sipple was able to grab a gun before she got off a second shot. He was declared a hero.

Over the next few days this hero was outed as gay. It destroyed his life. He had moved to San Francisco so that he could live as gay without his family back in Detroit finding out about it. Once this detail was in the news his parents were hounded by the press for comments. His mother hung up on him.

Sipple was outed so that the press could have a story about a heroic gay man in hopes of destroying the narrative that all gay men are perverts and predators. So in addition to telling Sipple’s story there is a discussion of privacy, freedom of the press, and when a trait, such as a gay orientation, is appropriate for a news story.

A 50th anniversary

Perhaps a year ago someone commented to me that it seemed that gay rights have come along quickly. This person said it took women 70 years to get the right to vote. The Seneca Falls Convention was in 1848 and the 19th Amendment was ratified in 1920, giving women the right to vote. My friend implied it took 70 years for black people as well, but I don't know what came in 1895 that culminated in the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in 1964 and '65.

Yes, lots of people feel gay rights, or at least gay acceptance, has rolled over the country with astonishing swiftness. But these people don't know history and weren't paying attention.

With the arrival of marriage equality, which some say marks the arrival point of our movement, a few media people have been looking back to the Stonewall Riots of 1969. This is usually seen as the start of the gay pride movement because the following year was the start of the Christopher Street Liberation Day event, which was soon copied around the country as gay pride celebrations. Because the riot and the Christopher Street event were in June, most pride parties are in June.

I reminded my friend that though gay acceptance appears to have come quickly, it had been close to 50 years. And today is the 50th anniversary of the start of an important series of protests. The East Coast Homophile Organizations held their first protest outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia on July 4, 1965. There was probably a protest or two before then and protests at the White House followed. The leaders were Frank Kameny and Barbara Gittings. Kameny was the one who insisted participants dress for the office – suits for men, dresses and heels for women (in Philly in July) – because a major complaint was that the federal government banned gay employees and protesters should look employable. Kameny had been fired by the gov't for being gay. It is good to know Kameny, one of the pioneers of our movement.

These protests continued through 1969. That year the protest was just two weeks after the Stonewall Riots and this time some of the protesters were no longer interested in conforming to the society's view of respectability. This tension between "establishment" leaders and those no longer wanting to conform and also the start of the Christopher Street events in 1970 meant the Philly protests became pride parades.

Even so, those Philadelphia protests were considered important enough that in 2005 a historical marker was put in front of Independence Hall to honor them. This was the first such marker for LGBT history.

This year the 50th anniversary of the first march will include a ceremony in front of the Hall, legal panels, and a VIP lunch with Judy Shepard (mother of slain Matthew) and Edie Windsor (whose case overturned the Defense of Marriage Act two years ago). Area museums will have related special exhibits. There will also be parties, especially in the nearby Philly Gayborhood.

There is much to celebrate for 50 years of effort. Inclusion in the national Hate Crimes law. Protection from discrimination in some states. Openly gay and lesbian candidates routinely elected to office. The right to marry. And a lot of societal acceptance.

But women will tell us that even with almost a century of voting rights they aren't equal to men in pay and position in society. And blacks will tell us their right to vote 50 years ago didn't end segregation and allow them to escape the slums. So it is with us. Our ability get married nationwide does not end the discrimination against us, as various voices have been saying all last week.

The latest example is from Mike Huckabee's facebook page. It says, "An attack on Christians and their religious liberty is a Hate Crime that must be prosecuted." He vows to implement that as an executive order on his first day as president. Alas, we know that "attack" translates as "even the mildest disagreement" and "religious liberty" translates as "our God requires us to persecute gay people."

A sarcastic commenter (scroll down) on the blog Joe.My.God included the image of Jesus paging through a big Bible and exclaiming, "Oh, here it is... Thou shalt not fixeth the gay cars or serveth the gay pizza."

Celebrate our progress. Honor those who made it possible. Then get back to work.

No cake for you!

During this past week the number of page views of this blog has passed 70,000! That is since May of 2010 when the Blogger system I use started keeping track. Over the last few months the number of views per post has settled in at 40. Recent visitors to this blog are mostly from America, Russia, Germany, Ukraine, France, and Britain.



All the other stuff that has been in my browser tabs...

Roger Denson, writing for Huffington Post takes a look at same-sex relationships during the 4th through 12th Centuries. During this time both the Catholic and Orthodox churches used the same liturgies to bless same-sex and opposite-sex couples. Denson reviews evidence, especially from artwork of this time, then ponders why this tradition stopped and was forgotten.

Part of that forgetting was because of the confusion between erotic and pornographic (the first is both attraction and underlying feelings). Another part is the blurring of sexual desire and same-sex friendship. All fascinating reading.

Denson has a reason for his review. Same-sex couples in Indiana should be able to claim that a strong component of their religion is that they get married. Therefore the state – and other religious institutions – must honor that marriage.



Benjamin Corey takes a jab a bakers who refuse to make cakes for same-sex couples. If they were truly following their religion in declaring, "no cake for you!" there another 10 types of customers who should be getting the same treatment. A proper Christian wouldn't endorse these people either. These include career minded brides (a woman's place is in the home); weddings where there would be gluttonous eating, drunkenness, unwholesome music and provocative dancing, or an expensive gown; and any couple where at least one of them wasn't Christian. A friend responded, don't forget receptions that feature shrimp in the buffet line.



One might think that since polls show black Americans are less supportive of marriage equality they would also be more supportive of Religious Freedom laws. But that is not true. Black people have too much experience with structural discrimination.



Disappointing: The Supremes declined to hear the case about whether the Wisconsin voter ID law is constitutional. However, there are more such cases in progress, and the Texas case might be better because it is much easier to document that it was created in order to discriminate.

Refuse to propagate the race

From a flyer in my email I saw this was a good week to visit the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills several miles north of me. Dad has remarked from time to time that he would like to see it too. So we agreed to visit today as I took a break from grading final exams. Mom came too. We had lunch together, visited the Center for most of the afternoon, then had an early and fast supper before he joined rush hour traffic for the trip home.

We paid for admission (sheesh, even I got the senior discount) and joined a tour that started shortly before we got there. It took us through the main exhibit sequence. I appreciated hearing what the guide had to say but I missed studying some of the displays. At the end of the day we went back into the main exhibit to look in more detail as time permitted.

Displays in the main exhibit are expected for such a place -- a bit of Jewish history and life up through the 1920s (including a list of Nobel prizes held by Jews -- 27% of the total), the rise of Hitler, the development of the Ghettos (especially in Warsaw), the concentration camps (with boxcar), what was found when the camps were liberated, what happened to the Jews when the war was over (some were not welcomed home), and displays of those who defied the Nazis to help Jews. The tour ended with a talk by a survivor, about how she endured and how she came to America. Alas, she was boring.

So I went on to the special exhibit hall (and soon followed by Mom and Dad). The flyer mentioned before was about this exhibit, with indications that it ends this Sunday. This hall had panels describing the Nazi treatment of homosexual men. That all centered around Paragraph 175 of the criminal code, which had been around for a long time and made homosexual acts illegal. There was talk of repealing #175 in 1920s Berlin. But when the Nazis took power they instead made it more severe. One prominent Nazi was gay and helped Hitler to power, but it didn't take Hitler long to turn on his ally.

A few things I learned or understood more clearly today:

A big reason for the rise of the Nazis and WWII was because Germany, the center of civilization (in their eyes), was soundly defeated in WWI. After the first war, Germans started wrestling with how could we, such a great nation, have possibly lost? Who on our side betrayed us? Who didn't believe correctly or strongly enough in our cause to help us win? (That last one reminds me a lot of Christian conservatives and their view of America.) From those questions and others like them came the need to purify the race, to eliminate the undesirables and the weak. That meant the Jews because, well, they're Jews. It also meant homosexuals because they were immoral and by their actions refused to propagate the race. The image was for manly men who ran everything and for women to stay home, support their men, and produce lots of Aryan babies. Lesbians were frowned upon, but not made illegal.

A dark time in gay history

One of the stories that appeared on various news programs today (and it wasn't the same story popping up each hour) was about how the Black Friday sales aren't really all that beneficial to consumers. That 60% off? The "original" price is jacked up for good "optics" -- the discount looks great but isn't all that different from a daily price. So we get "retail theater." Yeah, there are a few loss leader items -- stuff the store sells at a loss to get you in the door (which they probably ran out of just as you reach that aisle). In addition, if you shop on Black Friday, the stores have more time to entice you back to spend more. Better to wait a couple weeks.

So, while I did step into a Whole Foods store for a while, I spent my afternoon at a movie. I haven't been in this particular theater since it was renovated over the last year. I was caught off guard when the ticket-seller asked which particular seat I wanted. No more general admission. The facility now also has a coffee bar in the lobby. They may also sell stronger stuff.

The movie was Dallas Buyers Club. In 1985 cowboy Ron Woodruff finds he has AIDS and is told he has 30 days to live. Since he is highly homophobic he's angry at being diagnosed with the gay disease. This is at the time AZT first appears. It is the first drug with any hope of treating AIDS, but the early dose levels were doing more harm than good. Ron soon heads to Mexico to get drugs that aren't approved for use in America. He becomes partners with Rayon, a transgender, to form a Buyers Club. Since Ron can't legally sell the drugs, he charges a monthly fee for membership in his club and once a person is in all the drugs are free. Ron battles the hospital staff and takes the Food and Drug Administration to court. He lives a lot longer than 30 days.

The transgender is played by Jared Leto. I heard a news story that the director contacted Leto by Skype to talk about the role. Leto turned it into an audition by donning articles of women's clothing and flirting with the director. At the end of the 20 minute call the part was his.

A couple gay heroes

Buzzfeed highlights a trend in hunky opera singers. I guess we've become used to the hefty Luciano Pavarotti, carefully concealed beneath his costume. But when your baritone is hunky the costume can be a lot more revealing, and in modern productions, frequently is. Buzzfeed's post has pictures of 33 of these men, some photos showing the (lack of) costume.


This year's recipients of the Presidential Medal of Freedom have been announced. They include first female astronaut and lesbian Sally Ride and gay Bayard Rustin, who organized the March on Washington (50 years ago this month) and taught Martin Luther King about non-violence protesting.

Acknowledging gays throughout history

Timothy Kincaid of Box Turtle Bulletin takes a look at comments about the anti-bullying law in Calif. and expands it in an unusual direction. The prompt for this commentary is Thomas Sowell, a conservative commentator, who notes that media has a short attention span, even with a problem as urgent as bullying. That allows school officials to claim to "fix" the problem, when the new policy changes don't really do anything other than deflect criticism. Part of the issue is that there isn't a good definition of bullying in the law. What is needed is a broader look at cultural issues that contribute to bullying. The rest of Sowell's comments can be ignored.

Kincaid (with a bit of Sowell's help) notes one of the cultural issues appears to be addressed by California's new law that requires teaching about gay Californians. A repeal of this law was attempted, but the anti-gay crowd didn't collect enough signatures to get the repeal on the ballot. Kincaid has a problem with that law. Most prominent gay Californians aren't all that important to history -- and that includes Harvey Milk, as important as he was. It would be better to acknowledge prominent people in history who happen to have been in a sexual minority, whether or not they were from Calif. Such people as: Alan Turing, Michelangelo, DaVinci, Oscar Wilde, Alexander the Great, Bayard Rustin (he's worth getting to know), and Truman Capote.

Kincaid's list of famous non-hetero people included a few names that puzzled me, including William Shakespeare, Richard the Lion-Hearted, and Daniel of the lion's den. As for that last one, how does he know?

This essay drew lots of comments. One that drew my attention is from someone who calls himself mikenloa. Part of the reason for the Calif. law is to balance the huge buying power of the Texas school system. Because the system is so big textbook suppliers cater to what Texas wants. And that is a heavy dose of conservatism and fundamentalism, even in subjects such as math (If Jesus started with five loaves and two fish…). The Calif. law means that those schools can't textbooks designed for Texas.