Across the Great Divide

Kersten Parades Her Pharisee Pride.

Joining an argument with someone like Katherine Kersten is like agreeing to an eating contest with a pig. Sure, a pig has a bigger appetite and capacity, but that's not what makes the contest so impossible. To stay in the contest, you will have to gulp down all manner of offal.

This is an eating contest, grunts the pig. Who said anything about food?

There is way too much for me to swallow in Kersten's lecture on the real story behind gay pride. I finally choked on this fishy passage.

The theologian C.S. Lewis called pride "the great sin" — the root of almost every other transgression. Pride, he wrote, "has been the chief cause of misery ... since the world began."

So "gay pride" is out of place in church. But so is straight pride, black pride, white pride — or any kind of pride.

And gay pride is especially bad because, well, you know, it's really just about sex:

In recent years, however, a different vision of sexuality has grown fashionable. In this view, sex of all kinds — whether straight, gay or otherwise — is best understood as a vehicle for pleasure and self-expression. Today, this vision of sex dominates our entertainment industry, is taught in our schools and inspires events such as gay pride celebrations.

Kersten wants you to demands you accept Lewis's sinful pride as the proper definition of what these movements are about and denies this meaning: "the correct level of respect for the importance and value of your personal character, life, efforts, or achievements."

Gay pride, like black pride, Irish pride and even southern pride are expressions of solidarity, not individualistic claims of superiority. They're a response to oppression, discrimination and the feelings of diminished self-worth that a dominant culture seeks to instill and that Kersten cannot see because she is a part of it.

This was the same point that made Spot stop and sniff:

But Katie is right; it's just like the blacks. First they just wanted to own themselves. Then they wanted jobs and an education. And they they wanted to vote. Can you believe that?

Next thing you know, they'll want a parade.

"We need to do this."

One of my favorite all-time clients got married this week.

Though I liked all the clients I worked for more than once, Tom had a special place because he only called me when he wanted something new. Having interesting problems to solve is half of being a great client and trusting you to solve them is most of the other half.

Although he was always working hard himself, it seemed, he wanted my mind instead of just an extra pair of hands, and he never failed to show his appreciation. Mutual respect, I'd say.

So when I read about Tom's and Kelly's wedding today, I admit, I shed a couple tears.

Here's their blog created to commemorate the decision and the event.

Marriage Amendment: Farsighted Mean-spiritedness.

To some people, any bit of middle ground is a slippery slope. Exhibit A: Katherine Kersten's Strib column on a California Supreme Court ruling that says California's initiative defining marriage as one man/one woman is unconstitutional.

Kersten sets up civil unions or domestic partnerships "as a way to preserve traditional marriage while bestowing many of its government benefits on gays" and then sorrowfully concludes "the court made clear that, far from preserving traditional marriage, domestic partnerships are actually likely to hasten its demise."

Funny, I thought domestic partnerships were never about preserving traditional marriage. They were simply a compromise offered in the face of an intransigent, moralistic insistence on discriminating against gays.

Kersten sees it differently, of course. Now that the courts have usurped the right of the people to define marriage, the ruling "vindicates the approach taken by the proposed Minnesota marriage amendment, which [...] would have prohibited both same-sex marriage and civil unions. Opponents sometimes slammed this dual prohibition as mean-spirited, but the California decision now reveals it to be far-sighted."

Spot had the same reaction I did to Kersten's opening paragraphs, and he has already taken up the legal aspects of her argument, so we'll leave that to him. He also notes that this is not the first time judges have gone about, in Kersten's phrase, "disregarding the will of the people" when that will tries to deny someone else a right the majority currently enjoys.

But as Spot says, "Without a number of second class citizens, it is not nearly as much fun to be a first class citizen."

Alert readers may have noticed I refer to the woman I married 33 years ago as my "domestic partner." That's in part out of solidarity with my friends who are unable to marry, but also a truer reflection of our relationship and union that nevertheless fits Kersten's definition of marriage. That institution will not be killed by gays who want to express love, commitment and spirituality, or even by people like me who'd choose a non-sacramental version of one+one. Intolerance, hypocrisy and irrelevance are the real enemies of marriage.

Meanwhile, if American voters want to be in the business of anointing some and denying others, tonight they'll have a more appropriate outlet for expressing their will.

*****

I still agree with conservatives on occasion. At my other blog, I spell out one example, subsidies for Mall of America.

Eyesore or Inspiration?

I never got around to posting this folly from Colorado that expresses something profound about the west, at least for me.

I love its vernacular meshing of a rail car, recycled bridge section, pioneer cart wheels, storage buildings behind, log cabin carpentry, passive solar heating, observatory and "fuck you if you don't like it" attitude. You could almost install it in the Walker Art Center Sculpture Garden, except it would lose something in that setting.

And since the residents built this place out in ranch country, they probably wouldn't take kindly to the Minneapolis traffic.

Such freedom of expression needs big spaces, of course. I'd probably have less affection for this or some other  farmyard junkyards I have shown here if they sat 15 feet off my lot line. But much of my acceptance would have to do with whether I knew the owner, and how. I don't believe most things that annoy me were created for that purpose, and so I approach annoyance as an opportunity to learn, preferably, two-way.

It's easy to advocate for freedom of thought and words you don't agree with, to wear flag lapel pins and support the troops from the next county who thought the Army was some kind of patriotic prep school for poor kids. For most of us, coexisting with China is an abstraction.

The best test of values and of tolerance usually occurs right in your own back yard.

More Studies Prove I'm Right.

Nicholas Kristof writes about research into how our biases filter the information we will accept as authoritative.

[Farhad Manjoo, Salon staff writer and author of True Enough: Learning to Live in a Post-Fact Society] cites a more recent study by Stanford University psychologists of students who either favored or opposed capital punishment. The students were shown the same two studies: one suggested that executions have a deterrent effect that reduces subsequent murders, and the other doubted that.

Whatever their stance, the students found the study that supported their position to be well-conducted and persuasive and the other one to be profoundly flawed.

“That led to a funny result,” Mr. Manjoo writes. “People in the study became polarized.”

Other experiments demonstrated how people seek out information that confirms their prejudices and resist information that doesn't fit their beliefs — certainly not news in the blogosphere. Kristof says the blinkering "afflicts both liberals and conservatives, but a raft of studies shows that it is a particular problem with conservatives."

Well, of course! I say, as the conservatives start googling "liberal bias."

It takes conscious work to overcome these perceptual habits and, I will confess as someone who has taken this up as my semi-sacred duty, it is work not consistently undertaken here. One reason, aside from the cognitive stuff, is when the opposition doesn't play that way, you concede a point or enlarge your understanding at the expense of appearing weak or getting run over.

Do not mistake my equanimity and quest for personal enlightenment as Buddhist detachment. I still don't accept people trying to run me off the road — especially if it's someone who can't accept the Truth!

Why Won't Godless Liberals Help the Poor?

Thursday's Why Do Conservative Christians Kill Their Kids? could've been an early April 1st post, but it was actually a bad reaction to an overdose of "liberals are [bad/unethical/unpatriotic/hypocrites/can't count to numerous] and here is my carefully selected fact to prove it."

This impulse welled up after spending far more time on John McCain's mouth than any non-member of the American Academy of Cosmetic Dentistry should, and then reading George Will's "Liberals speak of generosity; conservatives actually have it."

"The surprise is that liberals are markedly less charitable than conservatives," he intones, sounding not very surprised at all, while the headline writer follows right along.

Will picked this week to write about a book published 16 months ago that forwards a premise that liberals give financial lip service to their social values. You've probably heard this already, in a far less affected manner than Will manages:

While conservatives tend to regard giving as a personal rather than governmental responsibility, some liberals consider private charity a retrograde phenomenon — a poor palliative for an inadequate welfare state, and a distraction from achieving adequacy by force, by increasing taxes.

In other words, we substitute other people's taxes for our personal charity.

You'd think in honor of tax time Will would at least congratulate us Blue Staters for taking smaller deductions, thereby paying more to the government. Isn't that living your values?

Okay, seriously. My annoyance with Will's piece starts with how he slants the evidence even further to the right than what's in Arthur C. Brooks's Who Really Cares: The Surprising Truth About Compassionate Conservatism. Will says:

Although liberal families' incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227).

Will notes the importance of religion as an underpinning of conservative values, but he neglects to mention that religious giving accounts for most of this disparity.

Brooks found religious donors gave about 3.5 times the amount secular donors did — on average $2,210 versus $642 — and most of that giving went to religious causes. That tracks with a recent report from the Minnesota Council on Foundations, which says individual religious giving in the state dwarfs all other categories at about 60% of charitable dollars.

But according to a review in Philanthropy, when Brooks measured only giving to non-religious causes, the difference between religious and secular givers fell to $88. He also found that religious conservatives gave slightly more than religious liberals, while secular liberals were more generous than their conservative counterparts.

I could further question the size and source of any giving gap, but what really got me was the divisive set up. Like asking "why do conservatives kill their kids?" Will's formulation of the research is presented in a way that incites argument rather than invites exploration by the "accused."

Instead, what if we approached Brooks's book in a spirit of discovery? What sorts of questions might we ask? And what might we learn about ourselves that would actually be useful?

For example:

• Am I more generous than other Americans? If not, is that something I want to change?
• Why do I give? To solve social ills or make myself feel good?
• Do my giving patterns show ideological or class biases? Does that matter?
• Is it better to give to the poor than to the arts or environment? How do I make those choices?
• Do my political opinions make it hard for me to see the actual social value in religious giving and faith-based initiatives? Do others discount the value of public investment for similar reasons?
• If we can agree on desired outcomes from fulfilling social needs, will it be easier for the community to agree on a variety of funding methods?

When readers are introduced to issues in a way that accentuates existing political notions — such as government wastes my money or wealth and morality are incompatible — it's very difficult to reach any kind of understanding, either of the other side's beliefs or the deeper complexities of the problem.

This article about fundamentalism expresses in another way the constructive potential of the tension between liberal and conservative thought.

Fundamentalism's conservative impulse wants stability in societies. Liberal impulses serve to give us not stability but civility: humanity. They do this by expanding the definitions of our inherited territorial categories. The essential job of liberals in human societies is to enlarge our understanding of who belongs in our in-group. This is the plot of virtually all liberal advances.

[...]

When liberal visions work, it's because they have kept one foot solidly in our deep territorial impulses with the other foot free to push the margin, to expand the definition of those who belong in “our” territory.

When liberal visions fail, it is often because they fail to achieve just this kind of balance between our conservative impulses and our liberal needs.         

The problem, of course, is that this notion of balance fits better with liberalism. The fundamentalists are less likely to budge.

End of the World as We Know It?

Raul Castro has lifted the Cuban ban on cell phone ownership for regular citizens. So, reportedly, is Korea's Kim Jong-Il. No word on whether they will also follow the U.S. example on monitoring phone traffic.

*****
How is the End of the World like Bill Clinton?

It never shows up on time.

So why go into a cave in November to await the  predicted May arrival of the end? Seems like July would be soon enough. Or better yet, why go into a cave at all and miss the fireworks?

*****
And you thought "price war" was a figure of speech. A Detroit gas station owner was killed in his yard by an unknown assailant.

[Hassan] Masbouth was facing open murder charges. He never denied shooting Jawad Bazzi, his 46-year-old business rival and owner of the BP gas station near Fort and Springwells.

Masbouth was accused of shooting Bazzi in November, after Bazzi and other men walked across the street to confront his competitor about lowering prices at his station. A fight broke out between the two men and Masbouth allegedly shot Bazzi to death.

The November killing was precipitated by a confrontation after Masbouth lowered his gas price by three cents to $2.93 per gallon. Masbouth claimed self defense in shooting Bazzi

[I]n the back of the head and abdomen after Masbouth was hit over the head with a pole used to change gas prices on signs at stations, according to the reports.

The two had been involved in an ongoing price war. And even the shooting did not stop the stations from continuing their fight. WXYZ's Bill Proctor reported at the time that that as soon as Bazzi's body was taken away, workers at his station changed the price-per-gallon of unleaded from $2.96 to $3.09.

 

*****
A new short film by a right-wing Dutch critic of Islam  Geert Wilders is provoking demonstrations in the Muslim world and raising questions about multiculturalism, free speech and conflicts between fundamentalism and Dutch liberalism.

A Pakistani diplomat said the film deeply offended the sentiments of Muslims all over the world and could result in expression of strong abhorrence and outrage. Given the assassinations of Pim Fortuyn and film director Theo Van Gogh, the Dutch have reason to be concerned about how strong those expressions might be.

Dutch immigration expert Paul Scheffer thinks the conflict is "indicative of integration."  

The atmosphere of tolerance that was created in Holland during the 1960s and 1970s was not genuine, Scheffer explains, and should therefore not be mourned. In fact, he says, it encouraged "mutual cultural avoidance" on the part of immigrant and native communities alike. Integration, he argues, involves conflict and change. "When change does not occur, then it's a sign we have cultural avoidance."
 
The Netherlands, with its population of one million immigrants, can be seen as "a laboratory where many of the questions visible everywhere in Europe are debated," according to Scheffer. By contrast, Wilders says he sees the conflict as threatening the country's ability to survive as a free society.
 
"Wilders urges the Muslims to respect our constitution and the separation of state and church, but in the very same sentence he says he's against building more mosques, and advocates banning the Koran," Scheffer complains. "I think he should be publicly confronted about this internal confliction more often and more effectively."
 
One the explanations that the scholar offers for the Netherlands' immigrant problems sounds uncomfortably similar to Israel's relationship with its population of approximately 200,000 foreign workers and asylum-seekers.
 
"People who came in as 'guest workers' in the 1960s thought they would stay a while, earn some money and go back home," Scheffer said on his visit, which was arranged as a joint initiative by The Royal Dutch Embassy in Israel together with Tel Aviv University.
 
"They didn't think of about the possibility that their children could become Dutch. They lived in a state of suspension and they didn't even learn the language." Dutch society, Scheffer said, shared in this "mutual illusion" to find itself "enormously changed without ever preparing."

Non-Compassionate Conservatives, Here's Your Chance!

Using brain scans, University of Wisconsin researchers have isolated a region of the brain — the insula — that plays a significant role in positive emotions such as loving-kindness and compassion.

"The insula is extremely important in detecting emotions in general and specifically in mapping bodily responses to emotion - such as heart rate and blood pressure - and making that information available to other parts of the brain," says Davidson, also co-director of the HealthEmotions Research Institute.

Activity also increased in the temporal parietal juncture, particularly the right hemisphere. Studies have implicated this area as important in processing empathy, especially in perceiving the mental and emotional state of others.

The study findings suggest that an individual's level of of empathy or compassion can be increased, and that practice — in this case meditation —  people can

develop skills that promote happiness and compassion. "People are not just stuck at their respective set points," he says. "We can take advantage of our brain's plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities."

How soon before certain legislators call for the project's funding to be cut off?

Institutionalized Bullying.

A surprising number of bullying cases involve health care settings, where the problem is said to be endemic, with senior hospital workers, particularly doctors and supervisors, harassing nurses and technicians. The problem is also common in academia and the legal profession, experts say.
— "When the Bully Sits in the Next Cubicle," New York Times

As others have observed, workplaces where status is derived from credentials are the worst. But how does this explain bullying on the blogs, where the biggest bullies have the dodgiest credentials?

*****
Douglas A. Blackmon was on Talk of the Nation today talking about his book, Slavery by Another Name. From a review:

Almost as soon as the Civil War ended, powerful white politicians, plantation owners and industrialists began reinstituting slavery through laws intended "to criminalize black life," Blackmon writes.

Countless thousands of blacks were arrested on the flimsiest of charges, thrown into jail and, in effect, sold to plantations, railroads, mines, factories, mills and lumber camps.

In addition, millions of blacks, if they wanted to work, were forced to do so under labor contracts that prevented them from leaving without written permission from their employers. Many of these men and women were also treated like slaves, subject to the harshest discipline.

To understand the economic and social position of black families in America today, Blackmon says, we can't ignore the impact of this long period of "neoslavery" that didn't effectively end until World War Two, and still cast its shadow over the South into the 1960s.

Gun Logic.

A friend ran across this version of an old fable as she was reading my recent Crosscut series:

An alligator is swimming along in a river, and the water is very swift – too swift for a frog to cross from one side to the other. So the alligator stops on the river bank and says to a frog that is waiting there, "I'll take you across."

"No, no, no," the frog protests. "You'll eat me!" "I just ate lunch," the alligator says. "So I'm not hungry. Besides, you are but a toothpick to me."

So the frog accepts the offer and hops on the alligator's snout for a ride from one side of the river to the other. Then, just before they reach the bank, the alligator flips up his snout and opens his mouth.

"You promised you would not do this!" the frog says. "I'm sorry," the alligator says, "but it's my nature."

She looked into its origins and sent a link from snopes.com, musing about how it applied to the discussion going on here.

The fable has been retold in many cultures, with a menagerie of different creatures. The reassurances vary, too. One version involves a scorpion riding a turtle, so the passenger can play the aggressor, too.

"Are you mad?" exclaimed the turtle? "You'll sting me when I am swimming and I'll drown!"

"My dear turtle," laughed the scorpion, "if I were to sting you, you would drown and I would go down with you. Now where is the logic in that?"

What do we make of it?

One interpretation might be that it is foolish to trust a "natural" enemy. The strong will always devour the weak. Evil will try to destroy good. The devious will capitalize on the arrogance of those who believe their superior logic or boundless sensitivity can overcome baser motives.

A secondary lesson is that negotiation, accommodation, reason and even mutual interest are illusory and futile. Better to kill the enemy now than to talk. (Obama, are you listening?) Iran won't change; it would rather drown than deal.

To think otherwise is to be a victim.