Add "Law" And "Consent" To The Encyclopedia Of Things Right-Wingers Don't Understand

With the announcement the Cuyahoga County prosecutor's office might seek homicide charges against Ariel Castro because he beat one of the women he held captive until she miscarried, the fetus-huggers are turning this horrible story of abduction, rape, and violence in to some gruesome anti-choice commercial because they can't help themselves.

Never mind that we are dealing with two different laws- abortion law on the one hand; criminal law dealing with homicide on the other - and in the specific case in question the legal question of responsibility for the destruction of the fetus hinges on consent, specifically the consent of the woman.  Never mind that so much of the talk on the right talks about "aborting babies", which doesn't happen, ever.  Babies are born then murdered, as in the Gosnell case.  In Cleveland, a psychopath beat a pregnant woman until she miscarried, which under Ohio law is covered by homicide statutes; it doesn't make the fetus a "baby", just a beaten, dead fetus.

Along with science and education and empathy and compassion and family and human sexuality and economics and race relations and civil rights and American history, it isn't so much that folks on the right don't understand so much as they find this a convenient stick with which to beat others who disagree with them.  Pointing out the murky waters of reality in which we all swim doesn't really matter all that much, because, as in most other things, they are far more interested in themselves being right and their opponents wrong than anything as messy as facts and law and real human lives.

Most folks who nod their heads approvingly don't quite get that it is precisely the choice and consent of he woman that makes all the difference in the world between a legal abortion and an illegal homicide (at least under Ohio law).  Which is why it's called "pro-choice".  That's why we are a nation of laws, not "morals" or "values".

The howling and frothing and charges of "baby killer" will continue, regardless of reality.  Because, twas ever thus.

The Walking Wounded

To believe in Christ’s rising from the grave is to accept it as a sign of our own rising from our graves. If for each of us it was our destiny to be obliterated, and for all of us together it was our destiny to fade away without a trace, then not Christ’s rising but my dear son’s early dying would be the logo of our fate. - Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son

"You can't know how I feel!"  If ever a phrase should be banished from our lexicon, it is this.  Well, OK, maybe not the phrase; rather, a defense of the attitude that creates conditions in which the phrase becomes some kind of meaningful defense of selfishness.  We've all heard it before, of course. The declaration from someone who insists that others cannot speak to their current emotional state because they inhabit some space above their interlocutors.  "Do you know what it's like to have lost a job/a spouse/a child/a parent/a lover?  If not, then don't try to talk to me because you can't know what it's like."  It is often physically painful for me to restrain the urge to dope-slap people who wield this phrase, insulating themselves both from very real consolations from others as well as from participation in the normal run of human life.

We who inhabit a particularly small, very privileged subset of humanity for some reason believe with all the passion once reserved for things like the pearly gates or The White Man's Burden that our status protects us from the simple human reality of suffering.  Whether it is the personal loss of a loved one who dies out of time, the communal loss of a sense of security due to economic disaster or natural disaster, or perhaps that not-so-rare event that impacts whole nations such as a violent attack or even civil war, most human beings who have lived go through one or more - and perhaps all! - during the course of their lives.  That suffering is a shock and a surprise is as much a result of our insular, individualistic ideology as it is a consequence of our abundant means of protection and (mostly false) security.  Far too many of us really and truly believe we are safe.

Not only is suffering a reality for most people most of the time in most places.  Joy and love and family and, most of all, the support of communities of extended family and friends are also part and parcel of human life. Indeed, these realities exist side-by-side with the pain and loss precisely because they, rather than any material security we possess in which we invest far too much effort and hope, are what prevent us from the worst pits of despair in the midst of grief.

This is not to say that I would say or do something so crass to those whose wounds are fresh.  On the contrary, it is important to remember that this impulse only arises when some refuse to allow these wounds to become old.  Notice I do not say "heal".  We never really recover from the loss of those we love.  Those spaces are always empty now.  The difficult thing, in the midst of our grief and pain, is to keep living; the beautiful thing down the road is that we've kept living.  And we keep living, immediately, because there are others around us who hold us up even if we are too blinded by pain to realize it.

I recently contacted an old friend who rendered such aid to me a long time ago.  I let him know how much his friendship meant to me precisely because, in the long years since, it was his simple kindness, his offer of friendship at a time when I felt friendless and alone, that I remember far more than any pain in which I was then wallowing.  The years since have deadened the pain.  I have carried on, loved and lived and rediscovered joy and the simple pleasures of life precisely because someone took the time to be there for me.

Which is where I return to those who insist, for some odd reason, that the pain in which they live is somehow unique.  It is not.  It is a human reality, this grief and sorrow, this emptiness that eats away at us, wanting to tear our hearts out of our chests and feed on our aching, self-centered blood.  This is how monster death thrives: by whispering in our ears that our pain is ours alone, not to be shared, and most definitely not to be understood by those who have not lived our loss.  From there, our grief sweetens the meal, rendering our lives open to devouring.

We are, all of us, walking wounded.  Even the most buoyant among us has sat alone in the dark, our eyes sore and red from weeping, wondering if it will ever be possible to live as we once did.  The fact is no, we will not.  We will, should we open ourselves to the friendship and kindness of others, learn to live in new ways, live on with our loss with us but no longer defining us.  This is our challenge and our hope. 

The Blast From The Past Tour

The things of the past are never viewed in their true perspective or receive their just value; but value and perspective change with the individual or the nation that is looking back on its past. - Friedrich Nietzsche

[W]e need to distinguish between nostalgia and the reassuring memory of happy times, which serves to link the present to the past and to provide a sense of continuity. The emotional appeal of happy memories does not depend on disparagement of the present, the hallmark of the nostalgic attitude. Nostalgia appeals to the feeling that the past offered delights no longer obtainable. Nostalgic representations of the past evoke a time irretrievably lost and for that reason timeless and unchanging. Strictly speaking, nostalgia does not entail the exercise of memory at all, since the past it idealizes stands outside time, frozen in unchanging perfection. Memory too may idealize the past, but not in order to condemn the present. It draws hope and comfort from the past in order to enrich the present and to face what comes with good cheer. It sees past, present, and future as continuous. It is less concerned with loss than with our continuing indebtedness to a past the formative influence of which lives on in our patterns of speech, our gestures, our standards of honor, our expectations, our basic disposition toward the world around us. - Christopher Lasch, The True and Only Heaven, pp. 82-83

This is a special year for our family.  For that reason, we are taking a vacation this summer that I have dubbed "The Blast From The Past" vacation.  30 years ago this June, I graduated from high school, so my class is having a reunion.  After that, we are driving from my hometown down to the nation's capital where we will spend a few days touristing around.  Lisa and I will also be showing our daughters some of the places we went, and places that became special to us during our courtship and first year of marriage.

The whole memory versus nostalgia thing; the way memory works and doesn't work; the way our memories, and our thoughts about those memories, change over time; the way impressions we carry with us for so much of our lives can be wrong; all this and so much more is a fascinating topic for me.  My wife often remarks that I have an uncanny memory; she insists that I can give not only the year, but the month and date and day of the week a particular event occurred; I can recall whether it was sunny or cloudy, what I and others were wearing, and what song was playing on the radio.  The fact of the matter is this is true, for the most part.  I do have that kind of memory.  The thing is, however, it isn't comprehensive, nor does it escape the trap of them being my memories.

No matter how detailed a recollection might be, no matter the vivid colors and smells recalled from a walk through a field on a summer afternoon, or the sound of a lover's breathing while sleeping beside you, these are, for all their life-likeness, partial, a snapshot rather than a panorama.  For all that I can recall events and people and places with a particular kind of accuracy, I rarely rely on these memories because they are just that: my memories.

Furthermore, while the sensory information is complete down to the small tear in an item of clothing or that it occurred on a hot rather than just warm day, because I can remember the feel of the sweat on my face, a crucial aspect of these events is lost forever: the emotional backdrop against which they occurred.  Thus, for example, I can recall, say, being at a dance in the Junior High Gymnasium back when I was in high school; I cannot nor will I ever be able to recall what I was thinking and how I was feeling at any of those particular events.  What I and others did, how we looked, what we said - all that is there.  Why we did these things and not others; how we felt when we asked this girl to dance and were turned down, or when that girl asked us to dance and we said yes, beyond the assumption that the former felt bad while the latter felt good, how is it possible to recall the roller-coaster of emotions that is adolescence?  How is it possible, to delve back a bit further, to recall the emotional life of preadolescence?  I can remember events from when I was 7, 8, even younger; I cannot, nor should any claim that I could do so be accepted with any credibility, recall at all what it felt like to be such an age.

The fact is, I find it difficult to reconstruct the emotional weather of my life two or three years ago; ten years ago; twenty years?  Hardly.  So it is that I plan on spending some time with people and in places from my past.  By and large, this won't be in service either of nostalgia or memory.  I'm attending my high school reunion not because of who any of the people were; rather, I want to celebrate who we've become, now that we've reached what I call the safe shore of middle age.  So, too, while Lisa and I will share stories and places with our daughters while in DC, we will also be enjoying all the changes that have occurred there over the years, seeing the sights and visiting the museums and such because they are enjoyable in and for themselves.  Memory will help; nostalgia, too, won't be a horrible guide because, as Lasch says, it freezes moments in time.  As such, I should be able to navigate a confusing city without too much effort because I have a fondness - one might say even rose-colored - for the mess of north/south and east/west streets intercut by the angular state-named avenues.

I hope I never forget the limits of memory, even one that works as well as mine seems.  I also hope I never forget the difference between real memory, which includes the horrible and the boring and the mundane, and nostalgia.  Even as we take nine or ten days and revisit the past, I want it to be in the service of the present.

The Last Enemy

Elements of the gospel which I had always thought would console did not. They did something else, something important, but not that. It did not console me to be reminded of the hope of resurrection. If I had forgotten that hope, then it would indeed have brought light into my life to be reminded of it. But I did not think of death as a bottomless pit. I did not grieve as one who has no hope. Yet Eric is gone, here and now he is gone; now I cannot talk with him, now I cannot see him, now I cannot hug him, now I cannot hear of his plans for the future. That is my sorrow. - Nicholas Wolterstorff, Lament For A Son

But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. - 1 Cor. 15:20-26

There are few things more pleasing than discovering a new thing that surprises at its beauty and power.  So it is that my occasional reading of the blog Eclectic Orthodoxy has turned to awe as the blog's author, Fr. Aidan Kimel, exposes the never-to-heal wound of his son's suicide for the world.

This is Holy Week for those of us in the Orthodox Church. I had intended to provide daily patristic citations from Holy Wednesday through Easter Sunday. But I have changed my mind.

This morning I drove past the parking lot from which my son Aaron jumped to his death on 15 June 2012. I began to weep. When I got home I found myself sobbing on the floor for twenty minutes. I had not cried like this for several months.

In his inaugural blog post, he is up front about how blogging and the death of his son are related:

There is one other reason I have decided to begin blogging again—for the sake of my sanity. On June 15th my second son Aaron died by suicide. His death has shattered my life and the lives of my wife and children. On June 22nd I preached his funeral homily and prayed the committal over his casket. Aaron’s death has changed and traumatized me at the core of my being, in ways that I have not yet begun to fathom. On most days I am overwhelmed by sorrow and grief. Curiously, only two things seem to provide some measure of respite—walking my dog, Tiriel, and theological reading. And so I continue to read St Gregory, for my sake and for the sake of my beloved son, Aaron Edward Kimel. Memory eternal.

 A bit further above this paragraph, Fr. Kimel writes the following:

I used to read theology ravenously. I had even reached a point where I thought I was fairly fluent in the language of faith. For a few years I wrote a now defunct blog, Pontifications. Through the culpable negligence of those who hosted it, the original Pontifications has been lost; but some of the constructive pieces that I wrote for it have been archived at a resurrected Pontifications. But God has broken me. The Pontificator is dead. Much of what I thought I once knew has been, quite literally, stripped from me. Five years ago I became incapable of reading theology of any sort. When I tried to read a theological article or book, the words did not make sense. I almost lost my faith.  Six months ago this began to change. Suddenly I had a desire to read theology again. It was as if a cloud slowly lifted from my mind and I could finally make sense, at least a bit, of the theological reflections and arguments of others. My brain has not returned to its previous level of functioning, but I am finally enjoying theology again.(emphasis added)

Many people believe the great un-talked-about issue in the Christian churches is sex.  I do not believe that is the case.  We talk about it, just not very well, or clearly, or honestly.  I am of a mind that the real elephant in the sanctuary is death.  When we speak of it at all, we limit our talk to those special worship services called funerals.  We skirt around the matter of Jesus' death on Good Friday, consoling ourselves that Easter is coming so as to mitigate our reflection on the possibility of death being taken up in to the life of God.

I do not exempt myself from this.  On the contrary, I think I have by and large avoided the topic, or been far too glib, perhaps even thoughtless, on what rare occasions I did write about it.  Part of the reason for that is fear.  What Christian wants to admit fear of death?  After all, aren't we supposed to face death without fear?  As we read or hear the words of the twenty-third Psalm, aren't we reminded that even in the valley of the shadow of death, the LORD is with us?

Last year, while leading the Christian Believer class, we had a discussion of death in the section dealing with "eschatology", or "the last things".  Death itself, for all we try to manage it - the whole "stages of grief" business that, while real enough, makes death something to get through rather than an event in the lives of families and communities - or wish it away or fantasize about either clouds of joy and streets of gold or lakes of fire; for all that, the experience here and now for far too many people is this: death is a monster.  The deepest faith, the calmest mind and heart in the face of the death of a loved one, cannot shield anyone from the gaping jaws of death.  Never satisfied with a single life, it works its way in to our lives, destroying joy and sense and hope.

Death will rip apart families, even whole communities.  It has, on occasion, grabbed hold of whole nations, making a meal of millions of lives before something, some Other from outside with the power to bring death to heel, cries, "Stop".  From my own family's history, I know the terrible toll death will wreak when it strikes a child.  I have watched adults break under the weight of grief death heaps upon them when a parent passes, even when that death was long in coming and a final rest from suffering.

Talking about death is considered "morbid" in our society.  For some reason, it is a social faux pas to admit that a final end comes to all of us, to all things; it is declasse to admit that our peculiar, human reality as creatures both social and communicative, create a situation in which death can spread like a virus, engulfing us in waves of sorrow and emptiness and even terror.

I long for the day when the last enemy lies under the boot of God.  I hope and pray for the courage and strength to face the inevitable deaths of my family and friends without allowing death's insidious hunger to touch me before I am ready.   Along with hope and faith, or perhaps a part of them, is the honest communication to others the toll death takes upon us.  For that reason, I invite you to travel through the Orthodox Holy Week with Fr. Kimel, as he shares his own pain, using the words of Wolterstorff to say what he wishes he could but cannot say.  One would need to be heartless not to be moved by the power of Wolterstorff's honesty, and know the silent tears Fr. Kimel sheds as he shares his grief with the world.  In our turn, all we can do is demonstrate to them and all those who know that monster death far too well that they are heard, and that we grieve with them.

No Worries

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are beneficial. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up. -1 Corinthians 10:23

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery. - Galatians 5:1

If I have a theme for my life, it's my oft-repeated "It's not about me".  Whether or not I'm happy on any given day; whether or not my wife says or does something that makes me sad or angry or happy; whether or not my children are or are becoming the people I want them to be; whether or not the world conforms to my wish or demand that it be a certain way; these things, even any one of them, would be an indication I was in need of some kind of therapeutic intervention.

The same is true when it comes to my faith.  The whole Christian story, the person and work of Jesus on the cross and the empty tomb, the movement of the Holy Spirit through my life in the body of Christ and the friends and loved ones who have made a difference for me - none of it took place with me in mind; none of it would be any less real, any less true if I didn't exist, or if I refused to believe it.  Were I to utter the words, "God does not exist.  I am in no need of the salvation wrought in Jesus on the cross and in the resurrection.  The Church is a group of deluded fools pouring money down a rat hole," it would be as meaningless as claiming I danced on the Moon with Gene Kelly.  The great mistake, the great sin, is the insistence that our professed beliefs make any difference.

It is with this in mind that I find Mike Lindstrom's musings at United Methodist Insight more than a bit disturbing.

In my life I began to realize that God wasn’t trying to control my actions, God was trying to capture my heart. God didn’t want me to figure out the best way to be a “good” Christian; God wanted me to spend my life with Him. I began to see it more like a marriage or a friendship. Instead of asking my wife: “what can I do to make certain you don’t divorce me?” I ask: “What can I do to honor you and love you?” Instead of asking my friend: “what can I do so you’re not mad at me when I call every few months?” I ask: “What can I do to make your life better or help you accomplish your goals?”

For me, the question had to change. If I wanted to have a relationship with God in Jesus Christ and through the power of God’s Holy Spirit, if I wanted to know the love and peace and strength of God in my life then the question had to change. Instead of ”Why can’t I____?” or “Can I____?” My question has become: “What would you have me do?”

First of all, I cringe whenever I hear or read the words similar to "God was trying to capture my heart." Even as metaphor, this is an epic fail.  The heart is a pump.  God doesn't want a pump.  God isn't interested in any of our internal organs.  God has zero interest in Mike Lindstrom's or Geoffrey Kruse-Safford's "emotional center", as if somehow it were a "thing" that, should we just allow Divine access, then things like "salvation" and "new creation" will follow for us regardless of other circumstances in our lives and the world.

Second, the phrasing here - "God was trying to capture . . ." - is more than problematic.  Really?  God was trying to capture your heart, Mike, but kept failing for some reason?  What about the power of the Holy Spirit, moving through the lives of the faithful around you, and the testimony of the witnesses to the Passion as the once-for-all Divine work of salvation for the world?  All that, yet something in you or about you managed to prevent God "capturing" your "heart"?

Finally, and no disrespect to Mike, I a quite sure he is, as are all of us Christians, living his life as faithfully as he can, I can only wonder about the constant first-person pronoun.  Part of the freedom granted us through the Spirit in the Son for the Father is the freedom from ourselves.  From that peculiarly American obsession with what "I" say or do or think.  The Christian story, the event of salvation for the broken, sinful world, is not our story.  It is first, last, and middle God's story.  Whether or not Mike Lindstrom prays every morning, or every other morning; whether or not my wife and I give eight-and-a-half percent of our income or ten percent of our income; whether or not someone somewhere says just the right words about who God is; these are all evidence we are still trying, desperately and rooted in love to be sure yet nevertheless also a broken, sinful love, to earn the salvation that has come to the world freely in Jesus Christ.

Living in the light of that event, in the light of the salvation granted all of us, the judgment that is pardon frees us - or should, anyway - from worrying about ourselves.  Freedom, real freedom, the kind of freedom Paul writes about in Galatians, then clarifies and qualifies in 2 Corinthians, is the freedom from fear that we might be doing something wrong.  We have been granted our lives.  Our lives for God.

The dichotomy "Religion versus Relationship", like most dichotomies, is wrong precisely because it assumes itself the answer to a question that isn't even asked; furthermore that every question has only one right answer.  Thus the spiral down the rabbit hole of "I", which is much like Nietszche's abyss.

We are free.  We are free by God, for God.  It isn't about me, so I neither worry nor care whether or how I live will be pleasing or acceptable because that is no different than trying to perform all the works of the Law and earn salvation.  The only thing God wants from me is praise in and through a life lived with and for others to make known the simple message of the Gospel, summarized in 1 John: God is love.  The rest, to quote St. Thomas, is all straw.

He Doesn't Like This World We're Making

Why I clicked the link at this post at Feministe I don't know.  I knew it went to National Review Online, specifically to a rant by Victor Davis Hanson about how our world is going to hell in a smart car because . . . Actually, after reading Hanson's thingy, I'm still not quite sure what he's on about.  He's upset that fake sex in film is OK but real sexual harassment is now bad.  He's upset that birth-control is available for girls and women who are sexually active, but wished our military leaders actually followed the UCMJ, which makes it a dischargeable offense to commit adultery?  Apparently, some of that traditional morality included winking and smiling at some folk's marital indiscretions.

Hanson seems to be whining and moaning that things are different.  Well, sure they are.  In some ways they're worse.  In other ways, they're better.  We haven't eliminated the things that are bad; what we have done is registered our social displeasure at certain behaviors, such as harassing women in the work place, while recognizing certain other realities as in need of a certain kind of intervention, i.e., that girls sometimes get pregnant and are in need of emergency contraception.  This help the girls and young women, it helps society - they would be pregnant whether the emergency contraception was available or not; making it available is the whole ounce of prevention thing - and it demonstrates that we are, if nothing else, a grudgingly compassionate society toward some in need.

If I didn't know better, I'd swear that Hanson is upset that some people who had an expectation of a certain kind of social deference no longer do.  Isn't that . . . could it be . . . is Hanson writing about a sense of . . . entitlement?

How silly of me.  Of course he is.

I have said it before and I will say it again.  Despite the many things wrong in our world, in many ways our times are better, with more people willing to work to make it even better than it is, than any other historical moment.  These are good things.  The folks moving forward can look at the Victor Davis Hansons of the world, sitting in the corner holding their breath until they turn blue, and feel sad they cannot celebrate the good things about our place and time.  There's also pointing and laughing involved, and that's OK, too.

Entitlement

Words get bandied about in our national conversations without too much thought.  Social Security, for example, is often called an "entitlement" program in a way that sounds disparaging.  In fact, recipients of Social Security benefits - not just retirement benefits, but the Supplemental Security Income program and other benefits Social Security pays - are, indeed, entitled to them.  Because they've paid in to the system.  It's their money, after all, and so it isn't exactly something people are receiving for no reason.

According to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary and Thesaurus, the word entitlement has three distinct definitions.  It is the third on which I prefer to focus attention at the moment: belief that one is deserving of or entitled to certain privileges.  With all the discussion recently about rape, one thing emerges quite clearly.  Too many men, young and old, feel a sense of entitlement when it comes to women.  If they've taken a woman out on a date, they are entitled to something in return.  If a woman has had sex with other men, then they are entitled to have sex with her.  If a woman begins an intimate encounter with a man, the man is entitled to full consummation.

If a young man, or young men, are accused of raping a woman, the man is entitled to defend himself, this is true.  Too often, that defense assumes a certain air of entitlement.  Consider the young men in the Stuebenville rape case.  The assumption was the town would rally to their defense; their coach, their parents, the teachers and school administration, all would come to defend them.  The victim in this case, however, was entitled to no such presumption of social care and concern.  She was attacked online and in the press.  She received death threats, threats of further sexual assault, her reputation was attacked.  When the young men were convicted, the best they could come up with as an apology was an admission that passing around photos of the young woman's violated body wasn't a good idea.  Not that forcing a young woman to drink to unconsciousness, then raping her, then putting her in a car and taking her elsewhere to do it all again, sharing the event with friends; not that any of this was wrong.

Or consider some concern-trolling Beyonce has received.

When Beyonce kicked off her Mrs. Carter Show World Tour two nights ago, wearing her sheer bodysuit with nipples showing, to me she performed the final degradation of her talent; a retrogressive transformation that has taken someone stellar and otherworldly, and made them into something dreadfully familiar and sad.

Variations of Beyonce's body suit can be found in brothels, strip clubs and red light districts across the world - where sex is for sale and it happens to be dispensed through a woman's body. That she is a human being with feelings and dreams, perhaps a sister, a mother, a leader, a teacher, a student - ALWAYS - a daughter - all of this can be forgotten. In those surroundings a suit like Beyonce's would look far from glamorous. Maybe just downright heartbreaking as a woman somewhere becomes an object, available for the gratification of a desire - at a price dictated by her 'managers'.

She has been the target of a lot of discussion, beginning in February with her performance at the Super Bowl halftime show.  There was this near-universal shriek of horror at a woman daring, among other things, to display her body and include her sexuality as an attribute not for delectation but of inherent power.  Consider for example, Madonna, who's decades-long metamorphoses have always seemed rooted in an assurance that she will be yours; unlike, to take another example, Britney Spears, who was offered up as fodder for older men to ogle a too-young girl, insisting she wasn't "that innocent" in a way that came far too close to the edge of child pornography; and like a contemporary of Ms. Knowles, Lady Gaga, whose sexuality is simultaneously on display and downplayed precisely because it is part and parcel of a far larger set of attributes she wishes to show the world; like these - and so many other female performing artists - Beyonce always stands on the thin blade of a very sharp sword.  Regardless of what she does or how she presents herself, there will be those who either insist she overplays her sexuality; or, conversely, that by not emphasizing her sexuality enough, she is losing an opportunity, variously, to be a "role model"* for young women, or be a bad "role model" for young women.  Through all this, there is the assumption that women's sexuality is not their own but rather a thing to be used and manipulated by and for men.  As one commenter wrote at Raw Story:

Women are like a beautiful work of art, they should never be hidden behind a curtain (burka) - Iranians are making their country less beautiful by covering women.

Women are not people, who can choose how to live their lives, including the manner, time, and place during which they may or may not display their sexuality among their other attributes.  Rather, women are a thing, a product to be seen gazing through a store window or museum, to be judged not by whatever merits they might possess, but rather on how they add to the beauty of the world.**  The point is not the integrity of the women, their agency in the world, or the freedom to live their lives as they see fit.  Rather, the point is that men are entitled to enjoy women as they see fit.  Women step out of line by displaying their sexuality in a way men disapprove?  They get slut shamed, like Beyonce was at Huffington Post, and all around Twitter and Facebook after the Super Bowl halftime show.  Women in positions of power and authority who dare to act like the boss?  Obviously, they're bitchy, unapproachable harridans who just aren't feminine enough.  Because, you know, men know what it is to be "feminine" and any woman who isn't "feminine" needs a stern talking-to.

We swim in a sea of male entitlement, and fighting back against it takes a lot of work.  The first thing we need to do is get men to understand that we do not deserve anything from anyone just because our genitals are different.  If we really want a different world, a better world, the first thing we need to do is give up the idea that we are entitled to dictate the terms of that change.

*And could we please just dispense with the idea that public figures are role models?  This on-going, desperate search for idols to worship is really quite troubling.  Most young people are intelligent enough to know their role models are their parents; that's who they rebel against, after all.  Celebrities, athletes, politicians are NOT role models.

**When Beth Spencer highlighted this comment at Lawyers, Guns, & Money, there was a whole lot of manspalinin' in the comment section.  At a liberal blog.  Which, again, shows how far we still have to go.

Back To Basics

I was going to avoid the story, because, honestly, how is it possible to say something on the topic of rape that isn't an easy way to make oneself look good?  Like the whole kitten-burning trap, one would think it takes zero moral imagination to speak out against rape.

Sad to say, we are in one of those historical moments when a basic lesson of moral life needs repeating: Don't rape.

I don’t think that we should be telling women anything. I think we should be telling men not to rape women and start the conversation there with prevention.

Full stop.  No more needs to be said, one would think.  Except, as the sign above and the young man holding it make clear, more seems in need of saying.

Dean Saxton — also known as Brother Dean Samuel — regularly preaches on the UA Mall in front of Heritage Hill and the Administration building. On Tuesday, his sermon drew the attention of onlookers, several of whom either personally confronted him or complained to the Dean of Students Office.

--snip--

Saxton, a junior studying classics and religious studies, said his sermon was meant to convey that “if you dress like a whore, act like a whore, you’re probably going to get raped.”

“I think that girls that dress and act like it,” Saxton said, “they should realize that they do have partial responsibility, because I believe that they’re pretty much asking for it.”

With the Steubenville rape case still a fresh wound; a young woman in Canada committing suicide after her sexual assault was photographed, with the pictures shared around among those involved, while the town rallies to the boys' defense; with Republican candidates last year tripping over their own tongues trying to explain their . . . um . . . unique theories about rape and women's physiology; with the mounting evidence that women who have spoken out about sexual violence in recent months face a virulent backlash in the form not only of death threats, but rape threats, as well; with a Republican candidate for the office of Mayor in Omaha, NE facing sexist attacks from Democrats (including one local Democratic pol smiling while holding a t-shirt showing Ms. Stothers as a stripper; douchebaggery is no respecter of party); all this along with all the normal run of sexism and sexual violence that pervades our society, it seems we need to return to square one and repeat, without qualification: "Don't rape."  There aren't any extenuating circumstances that mitigate that; there is no escape clause because the society or culture within which one lives dehumanizes women and permits rape to occur without punishment (see India for recent examples); and, no, there most definitely isn't a religious exemption, as in, "I can tell these dirty sluts who dress like whores they deserved it because God told me to."

Don't rape.

Don't rape.

Don't rape.

Existential Threats

It's only Wednesday in the week after a series of events that, coming within close proximity to one another, tried our emotional ability to comprehend.  A bombing in Boston; letters laced with poison sent to state and federal officials, including the President; a fertilizer plant exploding, the explosion large enough to register on seismographs as a small earthquake; the denouement in Boston that included killing a police officer, a shoot-out, and massive manhunt.

I'll leave to others to join in the shouting back and forth about whether or not Dzhokhar Tsarnaev should be treated as an enemy combatant.  Obviously, I do not believe he should for one simple reason: since the legislation defining who is and is not an enemy combatant explicitly exempts American citizens operating on American soil, it seems it would be a violation of the law for the Justice Department to make that declaration.

Which isn't stopping perennial bed-wetters John McCain and Lindsay Graham - the Senators from the Sunday Talk Show Green Rooms - from insisting over and over again that the law Graham wrote should be ignored.  What's been most interesting, in particular, is McCain carrying on about what we don't know about  Tsarnaev.  It's interesting because on the one hand he is quite right; on the other hand it has nothing to do with the case against Tsarnaev.  What we have, and have had since Friday, is an abundance of information specifically related to the potential legal case against him.

I'm fascinated by the show on the right both in the public and in Congress.  Somehow, the whole idea of "terrorism" has become limited not so much to a method of political violence as to who perpetrates the violence.  Thus, for instance, the harassment, bombing and arson campaign, and occasional murder of abortion doctors is not, for those on the right, a case of terrorism.  Dr. George Tiller's murderer, who just a couple weeks back was interviewed in prison, gleefully talking about the threats Tiller's replacement has received, is a good example of a terrorist.

As is Eric Rudolph who bombed abortion clinics, a gay bar, and then the Atlanta Olympic Games.  While hiding from authorities, this perpetrator and lover of political violence was supported by locals as he hid in the foothills of North Carolina's Great Smoky Mountains; apparently some terrorists are just more likable than others.

During the online "search" for the bombers last week, it should hardly surprise anyone that sites on the right kept insisting they "found" a "suspect" and it turned out to be someone with dark skin.  That is the face of fear in America, the example of terrorists.  As Rick Perlstein writes in The Nation:

Instead, the nation has surrendered to an inherently right-wing idea, one that I've written of here in the context of the gun control debate: the notion that the world is easily parsed into god guys and bad guys, never the twain should meet—and the corollary notion, which I've also written about recently, that once the world has been so divided, vanquishing the bad guys licenses any procedural abuse.

This is also why Rush Limbaugh can compare Tsarnaev to Trayvon Martin and his audience understands exactly what he's talking about.  Being Muslim, Tsarnaev is an other, some strange being different from Americans, just as Trayvon Martin, being African-American, was different, not belonging in the neighborhood in to which he'd wandered, posing a threat merely by his presence.

Which leads me to the other case of mass death last week.  Oddly enough, the explosion at the West, TX fertilizer plant isn't getting the kind of traction one would think such a story would, beyond obvious and much-deserved praise for the firefighters and others who died doing their duty.  Death in the workplace is relatively common; death by terrorists extremely rare.  There is abundant evidence the Texas plant was in violation of many federal laws and reporting regulations, and worked feverishly to get rid of those same regulations they devoutly ignored.  Rather than a "tragic accident" - which hints at unpredictability; uniqueness; and finally something to mourn and then pass over - the explosion in Texas is a case study in industrial malfeasance, a kind of policy-and-procedure manual in ignoring safety regulations in pursuit of profit.

The news media is enamored of the Boston bombing story and its Byzantine intricacies because the perpetrators seem exotic, and the event itself was so dramatic.  The events in Texas are droll, involving violations of arcane codes and regulations as well as examination of how well, or even if, the town of West and the surrounding county controlled residential growth around an industrial site that posed an inherent risk. The latter story, for all its dullness, is being played out in communities around the country.  The former story offers an opportunity to delve in to exotic locales, the psychology of two young men, the current politics of immigration reform; in other words, to make of this event a Movie Of The Week without having to pay any actors.

Oddly enough, the real existential threats aren't Chechen refugees radicalized in no small part because of the constant clamor of anti-Muslim rhetoric of some Americans.  No, the real existential threats are the things we miss because they're boring.  Why aren't John McCain and Lindsay Graham insisting the owners and operators of the fertilizer plant be treated as enemy combatants?

Because they all look the same.

A Musical Interlude

I've written about my enjoyment of the internet music/radio site Spotify.  There are all sorts of things I could write about this morning, but, really, I just feel like listening to music.  What I like most about Spotify is that it is social.  Not only can you link it to Twitter and Facebook, but you can follow others, check out their playlists, share music, and (what I do) steal when someone listens to a song you forgot about.

I have 6 different playlists.  The shortest is a mock-up of the soundtrack to  the film Almost Famous.  For some reason, that's not on Spotify, so I cobbled one together based on the music in the movie.  It ranges from the obscure - "Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman - the truly classic, including "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath and "Tiny Dancer", featured in a memorable scene.

I have a jazz playlist and one of choral music, to both of which I listen at work.  The jazz playlist has 217 tracks, spanning from early Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington up through Weather Report, with a heavy reliance on Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bird, and Trane.  The choral music is heavy on the Renaissance composers, but also includes Rachmaninoff's Vespers, Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, and some choral renditions of traditional hymns.

I have one I call "Morning Mix".  That's music for Lisa and me, in the mornings.  Quiet, probably banal, but it is pleasant enough, and it makes us both smile.

The big one I call "Eclectic Mix of Favorites".  785 songs, spanning funk, soul, pop, rock, and, well, pretty much whatever.  Here's a sample thanks to the "shuffle" button:

The Real Thing - Faith No More
Furry Sings the Blues - Joni Mitchell
Talk Talk - Talk Talk
Wilderness Heart - Black Mountain
Torment of the Metals - Black Math Horseman
Pull Me Under - Dream Theater
Meanwhile - Moody Blues
Save It For Later - The Beat
Rosalita - Bruce Springsteen
Heart of Gold - Neil Young

And because a post like this wouldn't be complete without something extra:

I'm planning on putting together a Gospel playlist, with some help from some friends who know the genre better than I do.  Because the soul can be fed in all sorts of ways, am I right?

Did We Lose It Last Week?

No one would deny that, for America, last week sucked.  Trying to sift and strain a bombing, an attempted murder on two federal officials, and the explosion of an entire freaking factory in a small Texas town left most of us wishing mightily for a weekend filled with nothing to do but relaxation.  And, probably, some booze.

Even before Dzhokhar Tsanaev was in custody, however, the Monday-morning quarterbacking began.  If it can be called that since, to carry the analogy along a bit, the game was still on-going.  In any event, some folks just weren't happy with America and, specifically, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

While I appreciate that police work is made easier by completely immobilizing the population of a major metropolitan area, this sort of massive over-reaction to the failure to apprehend one 19-year-old amateur terrorist (I doubt Al Qaeda types and the like would consider knocking off a 7-11, shooting a security guard, and carjacking an SUV to be the smart play a few hours after having their faces spread all over the internet) is what gives the performers of what are essentially bloody publicity stunts ever-more motivation to engage in their crimes.

And Campos wasn't finished, revising and extending these thoughts at Salon:

As [Friday] drew to a close, Boston-area residents must have wondered why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev was being treated as if he was some sort of existential threat to the entire region – especially since treating him in this way caters to the grandiose fantasies that fuel what, for now, remain extremely rare outbursts of murderous pseudo-political theater, that depend for their very existence on the overreaction of the political and media establishments.

In both posts, Campos compares the Boston Marathon bombing to what has become a typical day of violence in the City of Chicago.  He wasn't alone.  On my Facebook newsfeed, I had several people compare what happened in Boston to events in Iraq (in particular), Syria, and other places experiencing high levels of domestic terrorism and violence.  The conclusion, if there was one - I was never quite sure if the people posting things like this had any point other than to show off how connected they were to the rest of the world - was that we as a people were over-reacting to an event that was, in the end, isolated, relatively rare here in the United States, and less costly in lives and damage than daily occurrences in other places even here in the United States.  In other words, "Suck it up, Boston, and deal!"

First of all, I think criticism of official action is necessary, even in the midst of a crisis.  That's the only way to figure out why decisions are made the way they are made, as well as make sure folks in charge understand they are accountable to the people.  Even if an official action is entirely appropriate, consistent both with common practice as well as applicable state and federal laws and regulations, we can only know this for sure if we are willing to ask questions.  We gain nothing by being supine and nodding our heads when officials say, "Do this," or, "Don't do that."

Second, I agree with Campos that, by Friday morning anyway, it was clear the perpetrators of the bombings on Monday posed no threat to the city of Boston or its people.  The biggest danger came from a willingness to engage in gun battles, along with the use of whatever explosive devices they were tossing at the police.  Bullets have a habit of missing their intended target; folks in New York City not too long ago learned that lesson when, during a shoot-out between a criminal suspect and police, eleven civilians were injured by "stray" bullets (as if there was some kind of "bullet fence" they sneaked over or under, escaping out to the wild screaming, "I'm free!").

Finally, I also agree that, after taking a couple deep breaths, most of the rest of the country should have been able to consider the events in Boston, in West, TX, and the mailed ricin letters with a bit more perspective.  A perspective that included measuring the event itself both against the terrible toll violence takes in other cities here in the United States and around the world, as well as whatever possible motivations the perpetrators might have had for carrying out the bombing.

That, however, is the extent of my agreement with Campos.  First of all, the claim that terrorism is "political theater" and thus we give terrorists what they want when we pay attention to terrorist acts, misses a couple important things.  While true enough as far as it goes, we should also be aware that, in this instance, authorities weren't clear who had committed the bombings or why.  No one took responsibility for them.  None of the usual suspects stood up and said, "I did it and here's why."  Which could lead some to suspect it wasn't "terrorism" of the usual sort.  Also, a terrorist act is designed to kill, maim, and destroy.  Finally, precisely because they are such rare occurrences, they are bound to attract attention in and for themselves.

Despite CNN jumping the gun and announcing an arrest on Wednesday, while authorities probably had narrowed the suspect list substantially by then, they had not given the public the information on who probable suspect or suspects might be.  Indeed, that didn't come until the next day, at which point it appears - and let me stress "appears" - the Tsarnaev brothers panicked and bolted.  Prior to then, the public wasn't sure if the perpetrators were foreign or domestic; we didn't know what motivated them, if anything other than  a desire to kill and destroy; we had no idea if those responsible were still in the Boston area. Until the Tzarnaev brothers were offered up to the public as suspects, the public - and officials, too - had no idea how we could begin to understand the events in Boston on Monday.  Context is everything.  With faces and names, officials could begin to piece together possible reasons for the bombing.

By Friday morning, a couple things were clear enough.  Whatever their motivations, the Tsarnaev brothers were continuing to demonstrate a callous disregard for their own lives and the lives of others.  They killed an MIT police officer.  They shot it out with police officers in Watertown.  Tamerlan Tsarnaev rushed police officers, shooting and detonating an explosive device attached to his body so his brother could get away, but also to continue to kill and/or wound police.  Even though Dzhokhar Tsarnaev appears to have gone to ground, wounded either during the early Friday morning firefight or subsequently, no one knew for sure if that was what happened.

Was Boston "locked down", as we heard over and over?  The transit system, run by a publicly-owned and operated corporation, was closed.  Other than that, officials did not "order" people in and around Boston and its suburbs to stay inside.  They suggested it and most Boston residents, Cambridge residents, and those in surrounding communities were willing enough to comply; for those folks, it had been a rough week, and getting an extra day off plus a long weekend probably seemed a good thing, all things considered.  While I doubt anyone even up to and including the Governor of Massachusetts imagined the Tzarnaevs were "an existential threat" to the city and suburbs, it was certainly clear enough they posed a danger and hazard, willing to continue killing people in an effort to evade authorities.  Neither the Boston Bruins or Red Sox games were postponed by outside authorities; rather, the owners and management decided, independently and based on common sense that turn-out would be low, it might be better to put the games off until a later date.

Did authorities over-react?  That's a harder call.  I think some things they did were excessive.  The city of Boston could have been open for business as usual on Friday.  While having an increased police presence in and around the Watertown area was most definitely necessary, parading around in armored vehicles, having sniper points set up around town, was probably a bit much (although, to be fair, snipers do have the training and ability to look and see things that others might miss; if nothing else they can serve as eyes that see further and clearer than some).

As for comparing the actual violence and its toll to events in other cities both here and abroad, well, that kind of makes me angry.  For one thing, the events in Boston and the on-going violence in Chicago - used twice by Paul Campos to try and shame people in to carrying on about the bombings - are completely different types of events.  Let me repeat myself: Until late Thursday/early Friday, no one really knew who had set the bombs or why.  Figuring it all out was necessary precisely because, if the perpetrators were linked to international terrorism, that might well necessitate a response from the federal government beyond using law enforcement.

Chicago is currently undergoing a long-term series of gang-related murders.  I suppose it is at least theoretically possible Mayor Rahm Emmanuel could use tactics similar to those used in Massachusetts, i.e., calling out massive amounts of heavily armed and armored paramilitary police units to sweep through areas of the city where the violence is worst, round up people involved in gang activity, and let the chips fall where the courts toss them once it is over.  Hell, I'm figuring most of the people living in those areas might welcome it.  All the same, it is both impractical, unworkable - we're talking potentially hundreds of criminal defendants in Chicago as opposed to two in Boston - and, most important of all, not touching the underlying causes (poverty, the lucrative nature of criminal activity exploited by the Chicago gangs, racism, the sense that the gangs provide structure to areas of the city officials have neglected far too long) of events in the Windy City.

In other words, in this case with this example, it is really quite impossible to compare the events using simple numbers.

Which doesn't mean that we can't now focus on the endemic violence in Chicago, say, or the death toll from unregulated and criminally negligent corporate activities that also take a toll on life and health and property, such as occurred in West, TX.  In a suburb of Little Rock, AR, the press is still barred from the scene of a massive oil pipeline rupture that may well render that suburb uninhabitable.  Stories that seem far away and, well, boring, such as the expanding "dead zones" in the world's oceans; the collapse of commercial fisheries that are creating both economic chaos as well as potential shortages of food; the toll global warming is taking on agriculture both here in the United States and around the world, again creating both economic hardship as well as threatening food supplies (and the insurance industry is pressing Congress to get busy on climate change legislation precisely because they understand how much they stand to lose in payouts due to global warming damage); all these and so much more have far more potential impact on all our lives than a couple stupid, scared kids or some nutty Elvis impersonator sending letters that had no hope of reaching their intended target (while certainly still threatening the lives of the people down the line who came in contact with them).

This last, however, is not so much an indictment of public officialdom as it is an indictment of our news gathering and disseminating bodies.  American broadcast journalism crashed and burned in a big way this past week; it wasn't helped all that much by internet sights that kept banging the drum that the people responsible were "dark-skinned", which should tell people all they need to know not about the perpetrators as much as the websites and the people who run them.  It would be nice if we the people relied for our news not so much on sources either beholden to a particular political agenda or on sensationalism to drive ratings but rather on news sources that were interested in providing real news, up to and including looking in a camera and saying, "Well, we don't have anything new, so we're going to tell you some other stuff that's going on."  That would demonstrate both responsibility and balance on the part of journalists; by and large, the events of this week demonstrated our ongoing need for real journalism rather than TV personalities and pretenders on the internet.  The best of these were - despite the New York Post - print media, especially the Boston Globe.  Other print outlets were doing good work making sure the stories stuck to facts, leaving speculation to John King and Wolf Blitzer at CNN and Jim Hoft and Michelle Malkin on the internet.

Did we "lose it" this week?  Some of us did, I think.  I think officials on the ground in and around Boston should be given some - not a lot but some - slack and benefit of the doubt, while still being willing to answer some tough questions about actions and decisions.  While this was a tough week for all of us, I think after a weekend to release some of the tension, it might not be a bad idea if, on Monday morning, we jumped right in and started asking some tough questions about all sorts of things, whether it's sensational stuff like bombs exploding or really pedestrian stuff like zoning laws and community planning.  Maybe, too, we can start turning off the 24/7 news channels and start reading our news again.  Precisely because print media doesn't have to "be first on the air" with information and news, they can take a bit more time to get stories not only right, but get the right stories.

Crime & Punishment

A friend of mine posted the meme below once it was learned the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing were from Chechnya:

Just as we had armchair forensic experts examining photographs online and identifying anyone with brown skin as "the suspect", so now we'll have to put up with closet foreign affairs experts and, now, Constitutional experts who will weigh in with their sober judgments about the ensuing legal proceedings against Tzokhar Tsarnaev.

This post at LGM demonstrates  why it's important to let real lawyers deal with legal matters.  Of course, it also demonstrates why so many people detest lawyers, because there is much hair-splitting and focus on minutiae.  All the same, this is the legal system we have, and I wouldn't trade it for the world.  Far better, at least in my view, to have this clunky legal machinery do its thing than shout with one voice, GUILTY! and hang him from the nearest tree.

Because we're Americans, we do things differently.  Or at least we should.

And isn't it funny how so many of the same people who froth at the mouth at the mere mention of gun control or abortion suddenly dismiss long sections of the Constitution dealing with the treatment and processing of criminal defendants?  Well, funny as in, "Wow, you're kind of whackadoodle, aren't you?"

And in the midst of it all in Boston, let's look southwestward for a moment and remember the people of West, TX, and those brave young volunteer firefighters who ran in to that burning fertilizer plant moments before the thing exploded.  I don't care what kind of people they were in their private lives; at that moment, in those circumstances, they showed the rest of us what real courage is.  God bless them, and be with their family and friends and everyone down there.  Let's let Boston party this crappy week out of its system and remember another American town that's hurting.

Here's to West, TX:

		Jesu redeemer of the world,
		mercifully deem worthy and accept
		praises and prayers from your supplicants.
		Who once was clothed in the flesh
.		for those who are lost.
		Allow us to become members of
		your holy body.

Always Some Good

Actor Patton Oswalt dragged out a chestnut from the late, great Fred Rogers this week.  There's something about the admonition to "look for the helpers", heard in our inner ears in Rogers' comforting, child-like voice, that reminds us that in the midst of all sorts of horrors it may yet be possible to find people being the best kind of people there are.

This week, alas, has made the need for such a search that much more important.  It's only Thursday morning, and I think most of us would prefer the week be over.  The cities of Boston, West, TX, and Washington are not doing so hot.  The guy who sent ricin-laced letters to Sen. Wicker and Pres. Obama has been caught, which, in a normal week, would be major news.  As is the story of the guy arrested for carrying a firearm on the Capitol grounds (I sometimes wonder if people like this know how stupid they are, or if they think they're some kind of martyr for the cause of stupidity); that, too, would be a major story.  As would be the US Senate managing to demonstrate all the political savvy of a coatamundi and voting down a series of mild gun-control measures the vast majority of the American people support.

If there's a theme to the week, it's cowardice.  The person or people who planted the bombs in Boston are cowards.  The folks who took to social media to blame everyone from North Korea to the International Islamic Caliphate to our own government for the bombing; those folks are pretty much cowards.  The Senate's action is a case study in cowardice.  Glenn Reynolds going after Gabby Giffords on Twitter?  Oh, hell, yeah.  Nothing demonstrates cowardice like going after someone like former Rep. Giffords on social media.

I would be remiss if I didn't highlight something Erik Loomis noted about the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, TX.  Loomis said, accurately enough, that Texas's efforts to demonstrate to the world that "Third World" can be a local phenomenon, and thus we have the spectacle of a nursing home close enough to a fertilizer plant that, with the explosion, it has collapsed.  Among other horrors.  Alas, for pointing out the obvious - that we have things like zoning boards and safety regulations and unions for good reasons - Michelle Malkin dispatched her Flying Monkey Brigades who demonstrated all the wisdom and spelling acumen of third grade repeaters.

As I noted on FB this morning, there have been examples of real heroism this week.  People showing the rest of us how to live and act in the midst of chaos and confusion.  Yet again, and sad enough to say, it has been our first responders, EMTs, firefighters, and police officers who show us what courage is.  It isn't haranguing people on the internet; it isn't selling out 90% of the American people because Wayne LaPierre might say something bad about you; it isn't pretending to be a combination of Gil Grissom and Leroy Jethro Gibbs and looking at photographs on the internet and discovering who the "real" culprit or culprits in the Boston bombing are; it isn't telling the world an arrest has been made then having to admit you had no idea what the hell you're talking about.  And, of course, despite the repeated admonitions over the past four months, it isn't owning a gun to defend oneself against invisible enemies.

No, real heroism is seeing a fire and going toward it.  Real heroism is knowing there are people hurt, people who need your help, and also knowing it might well not be safe to go to them and going anyway.  Real heroism is kneeling on a sidewalk or street and while all around you people are running and screaming and you really want to run and scream but you can't because there's a woman lying on the ground whose leg has been blown off and the only thing between her and death is you doing your job.  So, you stay.

In the midst of what could hardly be described as a banner week for the United States, we can look at people like this and say, "Thank you."

An Image Of The Kingdom

I have been leading a class at church since last autumn. The class meets on Tuesday nights.  We're using Abingdon Press's "Jesus Collection", a series of studies centering on various aspects of Jesus' life and ministry.  The volume we are using in this, our last section of our study, is entitled The World-Shattering Ministry of Jesus, written by Anne B. Crumpler and John O. Gooch.  Tonight, we're studying sin through the lens of Matthew 9:9-13.

On pp. 29-30, the authors offers the following thought-experiment:

Imagine.  Walk down a city street at night.  Gray buildings fade intro gray sidewalks.  The streets are wet with rain.  Streetlights turn the clouds an eerie pink.  No one's in the city at night.  Businesses are closed.  The theater crowd's gone home.  You hear the clatter of your own footsteps.  Up ahead, light from a window floods the sidewalk, like a porch light welcoming you home.  You walk closer and peer in the window - your nose on the glass of an all-night restaurant.

Inside, a group of people sits at the table.  A woman sits drinking coffee, briefcase open, going over reports.  Nearby, a couple who have apparently just left the theater treat themselves to a snack.  A man with his son, still in his sports uniform, laugh over sundaes.  Good; a safe place.

You go inside, only to see a man with a knit cap, his skin slick with rain and lined with dirt, shoveling in a plate of eggs.  A woman makes a pass at him.  An old man sips on a bottle in a brown paper bag.  A teenager with Coke-bottle glasses play cards; his companion lays a gun on the table.  A man sits with one foot on the edge of the table, talking to a woman in black with a rose tattoo on her breast.  A man in a blue tattered suit pulls up a chair.  A waitress leans over a counter, watching.  Do you go back out or stay there?  Tell the ragtag bunch to leave?  Sit only the the "nice" folks?

I can't imagine a more beautiful description of the Kingdom of God.  Precisely because it challenges me to think what those three words really mean, this little sketch demands we ask ourselves uncomfortable questions.  Questions such as, "Am I one of those 'nice' folks?"  Questions like, "Who has turned and walked out of church because of something I've done/said/how I appeared?"  Questions like, "The Bible says Jesus probably would have been right at home in a scene like this; why am I not at home here, too?"

I'm really looking forward to my class tonight.  And, boy, am I glad the volume I wanted to use is in between printings.

Offered Help In A New Role

With Lisa appointed District Superintendent, we all face many changes in our lives.  First and foremost, we're moving.  That means a new house, a new neighborhood, a new city (well, an actual city because we currently live in the country; Lisa and I still laugh it took two decades for her to be appointed to a place that has its own grocery store), a new school for our children (which could but won't be the subject of a post all on its own; my kids' struggles are for us, thank you very much).  I'm losing my pastor of 19 years, because she won't be serving a local church.  Which means my kids and I have to find a church home.  Our older daughter told me a couple weeks ago it will be "weird" going to church and not having her Mom lead the service; so that's another layer of change and different and new with which we'll all have to deal.

Yesterday, Lisa received an email about new DS training the United Methodist Church offers.  It takes place at Lake Junaluska.  Along with being a beautiful retreat center, the area is famous among United Methodists as a place where retired bishops have homes, so it's kind of a UM hub.  What fascinated me as I listened to Lisa read off the information about the training was that spouses are encouraged to attend, and there will be "training" for the spouses for their new "role".

I would be the last person to suggest clergy spouses have no special role in the ministry of their wives and husbands.  On the contrary, it's something with which I've struggled every day since July 1, 1994.  Back then, as much as we imagined we were so advanced, local churches just weren't sure what to do with us clergy husbands.  We weren't expected to play the piano or teach Sunday School or work all the pot luck dinners, although I did what I was comfortable doing.  I enjoyed, and have enjoyed, singing in the choirs, teaching adult classes, including Christian Believer and team-teaching Disciple with my wife, along with other classes.  Beyond that, it's kind of like a map with large empty spaces.

My experience has been that I would be, well, a man.  I'd have a job, perhaps even a career, that was my own and separate from whatever Lisa was doing.  By and large, that assumption has created all sorts of pressure on me - pressure I was surprised to experience, and with which I've struggled the whole time I've been in this position - as I have always identified first and foremost as Lisa's husband rather than by whatever occupation I currently have.*  Who I am is defined far more by my domestic relationships - husband and father - than whether I worked at a hotel or WalMart or whatever my occupation might be.

And I received all the training the United Methodist Church brought to bear on this role: Zero.  None.  Zilch.

I do know there are clergy wives who struggle with their roles, a position with which I feel much sympathy.  Their struggles, however, are very much the opposite of mine.  Usually, especially over the past couple decades, the struggle has been to escape the straight-jacket of the traditional role, as clergy wives have jobs and careers outside the home and local church that push back against the expectations too many people have of what they "should" be doing.

And now, with this new position to which Lisa will be going, the church is turning to us spouses and saying, "Hey, you've got a job to do, too!  Come!  Let us help you!"

All I can think is, "Really?"  I've been married to a minister for 20 years.  I've been making it up as I go along, and only now you care about how I live my life as a clergy spouse?  Because, I have to say, if the denomination has expectations for the spouses of District Superintendents that differ in any substantial way from that of regular clergy, all I can say is, "That's just swell!"

Will it be that my wife won't be around much because she'll be at meetings, whether at the local churches in the District, on the District, or the Conference level, or even for the General Church, all I can say is, "Been there, doing that."  Will it be that clergy and their spouses will be looking at me as if I'm some kind of role model, all I can say is I've never considered our District Superintedents' spouses to be any kind of role model.  I'm at a loss as to how my position as the spouse of a DS will be qualitatively different from that as the spouse of a minister under local church appointment.

While I'm disinclined to accept the invitation - only because I'm already taking too much time off from work this summer; plus, this will be my kids' second week at a new school, and I think my place is with them - I am curious as to what, exactly, the planners for this training think we spouses "should" do that we haven't been doing all along.  And I wonder why there aren't support networks for clergy spouses that include help from the District, Annual Conference, and General Church.

*That's changing slightly with my current job as Office Manager at a United Methodist Church.  I'm in a place and space where I'm serving the people of God, and I'm so happy to do so.  Perhaps a preacher's spouse being a church secretary is as much a cliche as a preacher's spouse leading Sunday School or something, but it's a cliche that feels right for me now, so who am I to complain?

The Kermit Gosnell Story And Meta-Story: Two Very Different Things (UPDATE, UPDATE II, UPDATE III, UPDATE IV)

Let's just get something right up front here.  The facts in evidence in the case against Philadelphia Dr. Kermit Gosnell are a nightmare.  The clinic he ran wasn't an abortion clinic by any accepted understanding of the term; it was a house of horrors.

I know this because I read the indictment (.pdf).

What fascinates me is the meta-story, which began when Kirsten Powers* wrote a piece in USA Today insisting the story has national implications and should be covered that way.  Since then, both Conor Friedersdorf and Dave Weigel, the former at The Atlantic and the latter at Slate have chimed in, insisting that the cries of a media blackout rooted in a pro-abortion ideology on the part of the liberal media is keeping this story out of the national news.

Except, as Irin Carmon notes in today's Salon, the accusation is false (imagine Big Dead Breitbart and Michelle Malkin being wrong about something!):

If you’ve never heard of the Gosnell story, it’s not because of a coverup by the liberal mainstream media. It’s probably because you failed to pay attention to the copious coverage among pro-choice and feminist journalists, as well as the big news organizations, when the news first broke in 2011. There would be something rich, if it weren’t so infuriating, about these (almost uniformly male, as it happens) reporters and commentators scrambling to break open this shocking untold story. You know, the one that was written about here, here and here, to name some disparate sources.

In other words, the story was and continues to be covered.  The issue on the right isn't really the coverage; Google could clue in any interested party as to the extent of coverage.  No, the real issue on the right is the fact that these outlets and others - the Philadelphia Inquirer has been covering the story from the get-go, and doing a fine job at that - aren't covering the story the way those on the right want it covered.

For anti-abortion forces, the differences between the horror show at Gosnell's clinic and a clean, safe, fully accredited facility that works within the laws and regulations of the municipality and state within which it operates is one merely of degree rather than of kind.  Anti-abortion foes want this story to boil down to this: "This is abortion, folks."

Except, really, this isn't abortion, at least not as practiced in facilities that abide by the laws and regulations that govern the practice.  The charges against Gosnell include the murder of at five children who were born after the legal limit Pennsylvania imposes.  Anti-abortion activists want to scream and shout about the arbitrary nature of the cut-off for abortions; what makes a fetus at 23 weeks substantively different from a fetus at 24 weeks? they will ask.

The short, simple, and to-the-point answer to that question, at least in this case is: the laws of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.  With abortion a legal medical practice, with regulation and limitations permitted under a series of Supreme Court decisions, Pennsylvania has determined there is a cut-off point, after which abortions cannot be performed except under certain extreme conditions (none of which are even alleged in the case against Gosnell).

Since the case first arose two years ago, left-wing, feminist, and other journalists (especially those closest to the case) have noted again and again the fact that Gosnell's "clinic" and practices were allowed to run on far longer than they should, despite repeated inspections by various Public Health and accrediting agencies (Gosnell sought acceptance and approval by the NAF; they denied it, but like the rest of those outside agencies, they dropped the ball and didn't push for any investigation), because it operated for women who were largely poor, minorities, or were recent immigrants or perhaps even in the United States illegally.

Which brings us around to the fact that those outlets who have covered the story make the case - and one far more compelling than the whole "baby-murdering by any other name and practice" bunch - that in fact the story is about the need for greater access to safe abortion providers; more investment in public health, in particular women's health; more money to hire more inspectors; more money spent on training and inter-agency communication to catch horror-shows like this before the bodies pile too high for anyone to ignore.  Finally, the story is about the need to keep abortion safe, legal, and create even more vigorous oversight and inspection regimens to ensure that those populations most vulnerable - the young, the poor, minorities, immigrants whether here legally or otherwise - do not resort to death traps like Gosnell.

Death-traps that will surely metastasize should abortion ever be made illegal.

UPDATE: I just published this, but I think a point of clarification is needed.  I do not and will not quote at length from the indictment on the details of the events at Gosnell's clinic.  Doing so is a form of exploitation, even pornography.  One can read the indictment to learn the details, but be warned: you'll need a strong stomach and a box of tissues.

UPDATE II: (This is getting to be like a Glenn Greenwald post, but what can I do?)  I cannot make the point often enough that while this may be the view of many on the right:

The real complaint is that the story isn't being covered in order to protect the concept of abortion. Abortion itself is way past the indictment stage and honest people see it for what it is, and we'd be happy to explain it to the rest of you. 

The reality is quite different:

Whether the mainstream national media has given adequate attention to the Gosnell case is a matter of judgment, although claims that it's been entirely ignored are incorrect. (Consider, for example, Sabrina Tavernise's lengthy New York Times story from 2011.) But it should be remembered who hasn't been ignoring the story: feminist writers. Many prominent feminists, for obvious reasons, reacted with horror to the charges against Gosnell. To the extent that the mainstream media has not been as attentive, there's a clear reason: Gosnell's victims were predominantly poor women of color. As Salon's Irin Carmon puts it, "How often do such places devote their energies to covering the massive health disparities and poor outcomes that are wrought by our current system? How often are the travails of the women whose vulnerabilities Gosnell exploited—the poor, immigrants and otherwise marginalized people—given wall-to-wall, trial-level coverage?" The lack of coverage by broadcast networks is simply part of a larger trend of ignoring the problem of massive inequality in the United States.

As for the last sentence in the first quote above, I'll again turn it over to Limieux:

Finally, the Gosnell case is an illustration of a deeper problem with abortion politics in the United States. A number of pundits—most notably Slate's William Saletan and The Daily Beast's Megan McArdle—have argued that even though it's best that abortion remain formally legal, pro-choicers should concede that abortion is an icky, immoral procedure that should be discouraged. But the stigmatization of abortion, as it functions in the United States, greatly harms women. In most other liberal democracies, the Gosnell clinic wouldn't be an issue because even poor women could obtain safe abortions in a public hospital. In the United States, even where abortion is legal the constant stigma attached to the procedure—up to and including acts of violence against abortion providers and clinics—contributes to a making safe abortions less accessible. The best way to prevent future Gosnells is to treat pre-viability abortions like the ordinary, safe medical procedures they in fact are, not to engage in sexist moralizing. 

I cannot emphasize enough that (a) there has been no "silence" in the media on the Gosnell story, so charges there has been out of fear from pro-choice advocates is nonsense especially since it was feminist writers and pro-choice advocates who were on the story the most from the beginning; and (b), which follows from (a), pro-choice advocates are more than happy to have a discussion about the Gosnell case precisely because it highlights everything that is wrong with access to abortion in this country.  I've said it, am saying it, will say it; others who are also pro-choice have said it, are saying it, will say it: The case of Kermit Gosnell's "clinic" in Philadelphia, if it has any national implications at all, are all about how the anti-abortion forces have whittled away safe, legal access to abortion - along, of course, with the illegal harassment, intimidation, and murder of abortion providers and destruction of women's clinics - as well as slashed budgets for oversight and management and regulation of what clinics do exist creating a situation where Kermit Gosnell could perform illegal, late-term, post-viability abortions that resulted in infanticide, in conditions that threatened and eventually ended the lives of the women desperate enough to seek him out.

Because this is the way abortion used to be prior to Roe, let's have that talk.

UPDATE III: And, thankfully, we have Mr. Charlie Pierce.

UPDATE IV: I swear this is the last "update".  I'm only doing this as a service to Art because he apparently has no idea how to use Google to find pro-choice advocates who are happy to write about the Gosnell case.  This last link, to a piece by Jill Filipovic writing at Al Jazeera (she also posts at Feministing), needs to be read in full, but the final paragraph is full of juicy goodness.

The lessons of Gosnell's house of horrors are clear: women in the US need access to good health care, including abortion care. Just like outlawing abortion, stigmatising it and making it unavailable for low-income and rural women does not make abortion go away; it just makes it dangerous and unregulated. The lessons from the Gosnell media criticisms are similarly obvious: Do not trust known liars with an agenda. 

And because I wasn't aware of this detail until today: After the Gosnell was indicted in 2011, the judge issues a gag order on the case.  Now the case is at trial and there has been daily coverage in the Philadelphia press.  Initially, there was a flurry of coverage; now that the trial is underway, there is coverage again.  It makes sense there was silence in between because there was nothing to report and a legal restriction on information.  So, yet again more evidence that the non-existent media blackout on this story actually wasn't a blackout at all but an absence of new information in the long run up between Gosnell's indictment and trial.

So tell me, again, Art, what point am I missing here?

*Full disclosure.  Years ago, when I had my first trial run at blogging on a different blog, as well as doing a lot of dialogue and discussion at Huffington Post and other sites, Ms. Powers contacted me by email and, over some ensuing days, had a very thoughtful, and on her part encouraging, exchange.  When I criticized a piece she wrote at HuffPo, however, the emails and encouragement ended.  I have followed her career with interest nonetheless, and and still glad I received that kind of encouragement from a woman who, despite being controversial among liberals, still has a certain media cachet.