We Must Be Free At Last!!

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Friday April 29, 2005 · 6:27 PM PDT

2005/04/29 · 18:27

Great news! Civil Rights in this country are in such great shape that The Civil Rights Commission is closing a significant portion of its offices:

Citing mounting debt and projected budget shortfalls, the U.S. Civil Rights Commission announced Friday it will close two of its six regional offices, lay off four staff members and request free rent on its office space for one month.

I'm so happy. I never thought I'd live to see the day where I lived in a culture so free of prejudice that the nation's watchdog agency would be able to relax its guard. I mean. That must be the reason, right? That things are so great for minorities and gays and women and old guys that there's no reason to go around protecting civil rights anymore. Hell. It's a perfect culture. Read More

Help--A Call for Some Dialogue

lorraine

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Thursday April 28, 2005 · 6:29 PM PDT

2005/04/28 · 18:29

As I mentioned a couple of days ago on Cheers and Jeers, I've been feeling really overwhelmed, scared, and generally shitty the past few weeks. It has felt as if there's been one damn thing after another from this administration and its adherents. I don't need to go through the list: I'm sure we could all come up with a multitude of events that have felt icky.

I've been aware that there is a part of America that wants to tie us to a Christian fundamentalism for 25 years now. I became aware of them in 1980, when I was 17, and I watched the Republican party in Washington state get taken over by Pat Robertson's followers.

During the Clinton years, I believed that things would settle down. I didn't think Bill was a perfect president, and I'll probably never forgive him for the Welfare Reform Act, or our failure to intercede in Rwanda, but the fact is, I didn't feel under attack all the time. Personally, as a white woman, I felt okay. Read More

Hell is for Teenage Girls (with update)

lorraine

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Thursday April 28, 2005 · 9:33 AM PDT

2005/04/28 · 09:33

The House voted to make pregnant teenagers' lives a living hell today.

And hell's ambassador, our beloved president, welcomed them:
In a statement, President Bush praised the House for passing the measure. ''The parents of pregnant minors can provide counsel, guidance, and support to their children and should be involved in these decisions," he said. ''I urge the Senate to pass this important legislation and help continue to build a culture of life in America." Read More

Religion in Schools: Free Exercise versus Establishment Clause

lorraine

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Wednesday April 27, 2005 · 9:47 AM PDT

2005/04/27 · 09:47

Okay. So apart from the fact that Odessa is in West Texas and not East Texas, the thing I'm mystified by in the response to my posting about Odessa's decision to allow a course on the Bible in high school, is the idea that using tax dollars to pay for religious education in public high schools is benign, okay, and doesn't harm anyone.

A few years ago, I wrote an extensive (8000 word) article about the benign practice of public prayers before high school football games in Texas. This practice was ordered stopped by the Supreme Court in the decision, Doe v. Santa Fe Independent School District.

When I conducted the interviews with FCA (Fellowship of Christian Athletes) football coaches, FCA officials, I was dumbstruck by both their complete lack of understanding of why the practices they endorse are offensive--nay more than offensive--harmful--to non-believers, and how little regard they have for the US Constitution. Other than wanting to wipe their collective asses with it, they seem to think that the Free Exercise clause means that they get to establish a state religion and the government can't say squat about it. Read More

East Jesus Texas, meet the First Amendment (update)

lorraine

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Wednesday April 27, 2005 · 7:02 AM PDT

2005/04/27 · 07:02

The Bible will now be offered in Odessa, Texas as a high school course. According to AP wire reports, the school board voted unanimously to adopt the course for its curriculum.

Of course, this isn't a religion class, per se. This will be one of those famous "bible as literature/history" classes, where the Bible will be used to teach geography, literature, and history.

Proving that the Theocrats are getting to be masters of obfuscation (some of us see obfuscation as "lying," but what do us godless heathens know about telling the truth anyway?) the official reasoning for adding the course is this:
Read More

Jesus, Homoerotics, and the Theocrats

lorraine

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Tuesday April 26, 2005 · 10:26 AM PDT

2005/04/26 · 10:26

This diary is not intended to offend anyone, and yet, I have a feeling it will. It's not intended as a criticism of Christianity; it's an attempt to understand why theocrats hate and fear homosexuality so much. If we lived in an Islamic country, I'd be making similar arguments, but the majority of the theocrats in this country are Christian. Therefore, I ask these questions of the relationship between Christ and those men.

The theocrats' hatred of the body is a particular fascination of mine. It's a topic that haunts me, and, as things get increasingly worse in the United States in terms of the attacks on privacy, and as I feel the water getting hotter and the frogs still not jumping out of the pot, I search for answers, for words, for a way to understand them, extend compassion to them, and change their minds. Yes. I want to be the queen of the universe and make these people see the light. I really want to release them from their fears, because I think they are a people driven by fear. Fear is the basis of addiction. And fundies act like addicts in ways that I've articulated before.
Read More

Sugar, Spice, and Uzis: The Plight of Girl Soldiers

lorraine

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Monday April 25, 2005 · 6:22 PM PDT

2005/04/25 · 18:22

The Children's Crusade

Save the Children UK reports today that of the approximately 300,000 child soldiers currently involved in combat, 120,000 or 40 percent of these, are girls, some as young as 8. Like their male peers, girls are kidnapped away from their families and forcibly conscripted. Like their male peers, they are trained in arms use, but unlike their male peers, the majority of these girls and young women are raped by older soldiers.

The report is available for full download at
Girls in War
From the summary:
The findings highlight a worrying global trend and are not unique to one country or continent:

* In Uganda, there are an estimated 6,500 girl soldiers captured in the rebel Lord Resistance Army (33% of the total army)

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, there are thought to be 12,000 girls still associated with armed forces
In Tsunami torn Sri Lanka, 21,500 girls are considered to be associated with armed conflict (43% of all the children fighting). Read More

Thomas Frank, Class, and Masculinity

lorraine

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Saturday April 23, 2005 · 8:18 AM PDT

2005/04/23 · 08:18

Thomas Frank has a piece in this week's NYRB that will serve as an addendum to the paperback edition of What's the Matter with Kansas?. The article is more than worth reading (that goes without saying) but I would like to offer some additional historical and other perspective. It goes without saying that I think he missed something: the crisis of masculinity that I think permeates American politics.

Frank offers his brilliant analysis of the populist politics of the past thirty-five years: the Republicans' mastery of convincing working class people to vote against their economic interests in order to stick it to elitist liberals who seek to destroy the working class's values. By manipulating religion, the right--the party of elitist business concerns--makes an unholy alliance with fundamentalist Christianity.
Read More

Medusa and DB's man parts (a shit rant)

lorraine

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Friday April 22, 2005 · 10:14 AM PDT

2005/04/22 · 10:14

Medusa would like to kick your ass today, Mr. Brooks. I don't often wish for supergirl powers, but today, I'd like to be able to use my superpowers to turn you into a woman. A poor woman. A poor woman living in a county where there are no abortion providers. Oh, and I'd make you about 15. With a daddy who can't keep his hands to himself. I'd make you frightened, and helpless, and wishing that someone would help you figure out what to do.

If I was Medusa, Mr. Brooks, I'd turn your man parts to stone, make 'em inoperable. That way, you wouldn't be able to get any woman pregnant. Of course, that wouldn't stop you from spouting off about how it's all the fault of uppity women that our political system is a fucking personal destruction free-for-all. So, I guess as Medusa, I'd have to turn your head to stone, too. Of course, I wouldn't have to do anything about your heart. Turning it to stone would be a redundancy. Read More

Can You Spare an Aspirin for the Kids of Iraq??

lorraine

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Friday April 22, 2005 · 8:49 AM PDT

2005/04/22 · 08:49

My friend, Maura Stephens, journeyed to Iraq shortly before our invasion. Her writing focused attention on the people of Iraq, not our enemies, but the people struggling to survive in a country strangled by sanctions and facing the prospect of an invasion. Her husband, George Sapio, is a photojournalist, and his photographs of the people of Iraq were devastating, poignant. I've included a link to his gallery above. But if you click on the links at the end of this story, you can see more of them.

Maura is departing today for the Middle East. I asked her if there was anything I could do to help her, and she sent me the following letter. I'm putting it up here, asking you to consider her requests. If you can't make a donation as an individual, perhaps you could talk to your church group, civic association, hell, even your bookclub, to see if perhaps there aren't things that you could do to help.
Aspirin helps at this point. These people have been robbed of so much. Read More

On Pain, Addiction, and Powerlessness

lorraine

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Thursday April 21, 2005 · 10:04 AM PDT

2005/04/21 · 10:04

My name is Lorraine and I am an addict.

These simple words, and a hell of a lot of hard work, have saved my life--hell, given me a life, a life that was lost to me for several years while I struggled with the effects of a debilitating neck injury that caused incessant pain. In part one of this diary, I want to talk about personal addiction. In part ii, I want to talk about the politics of addiction.

I remember what the pain felt like, because I wrote about it one night, while in its toxic embrace:
Read More

Who cares if women die?

lorraine

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Thursday April 21, 2005 · 6:15 AM PDT

2005/04/21 · 06:15

Yesterday, I posted a diary about the Guardian's report that the US Dept of Health and Human Services was applying pressure to the World Health Organization to prevent it from moving two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, on to an "essential drugs list" that would constitute advice to governments about which drugs their country's doctors should have on hand at all times. These two drugs, used in combination,induce abortion, much more safely than surgical abortion.

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