A Word On The Establishment Clause

The so-called "Establishment Clause" of the 1st Amendment protects all of us - those who are religious, and those who are not - from a government establishment of religion. The 1st Amendment's protection from government interference in any person's religion is inextricably bound to its prohibition against governmental establishment of [ some person's ] religion. Of all points government can pronounce upon, there are no significant points on which all major religions unite. Why, some religions even sanctify murder - with damnable and abominable justifications!

Now I personally believe there is only one blasphemy. It is: "God says kill." However, I wouldn't enshrine even this into the Constitution. Why?

Well first, I trust God. Great Lord God will strike those blasphemers down, or failing that, God will judge them eternally - each according to the justice God has. In the meantime, I say: "Let 'em all live! And let God sort 'em out."

Second, because there's no need to enshrine sins. We already have the crime of murder. God can prosecute sins: let go, and let God. Meanwhile, we have the crime of murder. Murder includes all killings of homo sapiens not officially sanctioned by government. Nice, right? There are a ton of ways to get your killing of a homo sapiens sanctioned by the government - check your federal, state and municipal codes of law for details. Yet God-based killings probably don't ever meet the criteria for government sanctioned approval. If someone wants to test it in a given case, of course it falls to the D.A., the judge and the jury - but ultimately, I doubt they will find in law any blessing for a killing whose sole claimed basis is supernatural ("God says!").

For one thing, the Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment forbids laws whose basis consists solely in the supernatural.

So it would be so weird if there were an exemption on the books for a specific type of killing where "God says." Now when I say "Let 'em all live! And let God sort 'em out," I don't mean I'm against letting them live behind bars. Society can show basis to deprive a person of liberty, if they meet the usual and not-too-cruel standards. If accused, tried, and found guilty - the usual penalty is fair to apply. Forfeit liberty - fine. Forfeit property - fine, literally. Throw the book.

We don't need God-based law to put someone away. Any one of those "render unto Caesar" type laws will work. We have tons of these, and the law prohibiting murder is one of them. It's one of the easiest of all laws to justify, even using purely secular means. There's ample and compelling non-supernatural basis, to demonstrate the compelling necessity of murder being a crime.

Which is a very important point. Because in a society where there is liberty, no law of prohibition, no law of confiscation, no law of compulsion can be allowed - except where government can show the compelling necessity of that law.

In our society, in our Revolution which continues to roll, the 1st Amendment and its Establishment Clause forbids that government make any establishment of law whose basis consists solely in the supernatural. For the protection of the religious and the non-religious alike, law whose basis consists solely in some person's or persons' idea of what God wants is invalid. Such law is very simply and clearly, an establishment of religion - and nothing else.

Get that shit out of here.

My Sexuality: Silent No Longer

I just want to take a moment here to come out as straight. And not to mince words, I do mean: heterosexual. I am a cisgendered (folks, this is a term that means the sex you were born as is the same as the gender you identify as, for example: I was born chromosomally XY, a sexual male, and today I gender-identify as "male") male, and I am attracted, heterosexually, to females. Heterosexual is a term that means you are sexually attracted to another sex, not your own sex. Homosexual, of course, would mean you are attracted to your own sex. We've all heard that one!

So I was prompted to come out with this open declaration for a reason. I heard there was recently some news story about a kid, high-school age I think, who came out as gay, and was apparently supported in doing so by the website Twitter.com. And the report I heard was that some of the reaction to this story was: "What's the big deal? I don't go around telling people I'm straight."

Well guess what, whoever said that? I do. I go around telling people I'm straight. Maybe this is the first big declaration I've done online, but for years now I have in my life openly, proudly declared myself and my sexuality. Openly, I say. Do you have a problem with that? What, am I going to shut up about it? NO. Why should I? Because you have a problem with it?

Listen up, people. My sexual orientation is every bit as natural, every bit as acceptable as any other person's is. Am I proud? You bet I'm proud. Hell yes I'm proud! What's there to be proud of as far as my sexual orientation goes? Plenty. For one thing, I'm attracted to women. Now, nothing to be proud about, there, necessarily. Okay, I can admit that. But it's a huge source of pride that on occasion, I've been able to "get with" some of them! I'm straight, and fuck yes I have occasionally been able to "get with" women! And you bet I'm proud of that - damn proud. Because that's something to be proud of. Because take one look at me! Hairy. Gangly. Muscular in all the places that I myself would find - off-putting, to say the least. Big and lumbering of gait, yet lithe of limb and graceful at the extremities! Fingers like a ballet tosser. A born dancer! In fact, except, born by accident into the body of a casino rec league linebacker. If I were to look at myself from a sexual standpoint, I'd find myself borderline revolted! No offense, self-confidence, but I just can't be into me that way. So proud? Proud that in some way, some how, I've managed to be and present a whole package that together could be attractive to women, in spite of my baseline physical appearance? That's a big source of pride for me, that a woman would want to be with me despite all that. And I don't mean to brag, but - more than one woman. Several, in fact. Close to five or six, over a lifetime. Maybe more or less, but not by a ton. Who's counting, honestly? I'm not some pig, racking up notches.

But I am proud of my sexuality. I'm openly, actively (within a very selective company, to be sure, but very actively within that select company), flamboyantly straight - and to anybody who doesn't know it, HELL YES HALLELUJAH! YOU KNOW IT NOW.

I wasn't always this open. I used to be silent.

I was silent for too long.

I was silent in solidarity with those who felt they needed to be silent. And if somebody asked me what I was, persuasion-wise, I'd sometimes even take a cue from Michael Stipe and say, "it's none of anybody's business who you like on your lap." True dat, Stipey. That's a true thing. It *IS* none of anybody's business. It's certainly none of Michael Stipe's business! And well, why would it be? For that matter, it's probably none of Michael Stipe's busines who I tell about who I want on my lap. Including nobody but prospective lap-mates if I wish, but including the whole wide world, if I want to.

At some point I realized silence is the wrong message, for me. I respect anyone's privacy and desire for it. Those who choose to remain private, be so. But for me, I realized I needed to change my silence. I need to come out and SHOUT. I need to throw my weight around, and let it land on and support the side of those who say: "Sexuality is a thing to proclaim! It's a thing to celebrate, and demand equal recognition!" YES. TELL IT.

So am I straight? Mother love, I was born straight. Am I proud? Oh, hell yes. I'm proud. I laid out the reasons already.

But here's something else I can acknowledge, and that I want to acknowledge. There is an extra reason and an extra aspect, where I do not have the same cause another may have, to be proud. To have and display and shout: PRIDE.

We are all of us in this life in this same boat: we are human beings, and at the ground level of those we know, those we deal with, those in whose circles we move and from whom we'd wish for love and respect, friendship, acceptance, or at a minimum tolerance and recognition of our right to exist, to be who we are and to pursue happiness with like-minded consenting adults - we are all in that same boat.

But some of us get it. Every day, and largely without even question. And some of us don't.

Those of you who have to do without, and who are brave and soldier on in the face of active hostility and dismissal, in the face of even the open disgust and contempt and derogation and detestation - of strangers! And even of acquaintances, and even of family, and who consequently have learned to fear to lose friends, and to be shut out of love, of business, of life if they admit who they are, all because of ... what? genitalcentric interaction issues?


You who have that to deal with, and who manage despite that to keep human, you have a reason and a cause to be proud that I do not have, and could not have. I can't have pride like the pride you have, and deserve.

Of you, I am proud. When I see you put the haters to shame, I am proud. When I see you throw the weight of your pride around, heedless of shamers - I am more proud. When I see you say things and do things to lift up all of us, despite the shameful ways of too many of us, who put you down - I could not be more proud.

And I can't share in what you have to go through, and I won't insult you by saying I wish I could. I don't wish I could. I'm glad as hell and fortunate as fuck to be spared having to go through what you have to go through, every step forward of your life. I don't want to share your burden, because it is a burden that no one should have in the first place. But what I should wish is that I could help lift it off of you.

And I do wish that. But what I find myself wishing more often is that I could tear the rest of the world a new one, for putting it on you in the first place.

People who are "like me" in that cis-regard, in that hetero-sex way, born in the "right" body, and to sexually dig the "right" side, and so able to sidestep, to not be subject to all the societywide bias and taboo that hits you daily, daily, daily and you have to STEEP in it - people "like me" in that respect, so fortunate! We should have some kind of beautiful humility and gratitude, for being spared so much grief! Yet far too many of us cisborn heterofuckers choose instead to create your grief. To add to your grief. It makes me furious. I am more than ashamed of them.

But I am not ashamed of "us," though. Because those intolerant cisborn heterofuckers...they opt out of any "us" that I care to be a part of. Because I am a cisborn heterofucker. And as I already said, I am proud of it. As proud as I am of you. You keep strong.

Anybody who has a problem with that, the problem is all theirs.

Every Two-Party System Has Its Silent 3rd Party, Pt.2: The Marginal Parties and Their Role

Your marginal parties like Green, Libertarian - they, too, are important. When I said in the previous post "The third party in any 2-party system is: your conscience," that is not to dismiss these two, but to uphold them.

Green and Libertarian are each - with respect to their own core issue - the self-appointed party of conscience. They each form a locus, to focus public debate, to lobby for public pressure and to pull as much public will as they can to their key cause. This includes pulling public will from the other two parties, and from those parties' supporters. These marginal parties have strong arguments that effectively pull that will towards their cause, since each of their separate causes affects us all - and each could arguably be called the single most important cause there is. Green stands for planet earth: for defense against wanton rapacity of it, and against the negligence of our stewardship of it. Libertarian stands for humanity itself, and for defense against tyranny by means of the neverending fight to secure the human rights of the individual as paramount.

The Democrats and Republicans each claim to embrace, embody, or be "the real party of" key pieces of each of the Green team and the Liberteam's platforms. The bigs dismiss those marginal parties as irrelevant, small-time players unable to do the real job of a political party because they can't think broadly enough. The littles accuse the big parties of being functionally identical, equally corrupted by their shared hegemony, and unable to effect real good in the most crucially-important areas (two guesses what those are).

The real state of affairs is closer to this: a marginal party can do its part by being a very focused, single-cause party. It can serve effectively as a pressure group to marshall the public will that its single cause's strong merit draws. A marginal party can afford to attack either side as it sees it needs to. It is beholden to no compromise, and if it is well-run and its mission is kept on-focus, then practically speaking, it can serve as the party of conscience - for only its one cause.

A party of conscience occurs everywhere an individual person - a legislator, for instance - unites on an issue with others who believe conscience comes ahead of party. In most cases, one's conscience is perfectly in accord with one's party and its position, and there your party is the party of conscience. For other cases, you find you must cross the aisle, because you believe something bigger is at stake than solidarity with one's party and its official position.

That "something bigger" may be a necessary compromise - to sacrifice something now, in order to secure something urgent for now, but with pains taken to preserve the fight in the future for that point you cede today.

That "something bigger" may also be a real disagreement between one's conscience and a specific party plank. One presumes that if you disagree with your party on most things, you'll leave it.

For those who find that one particular point is always more important than all others, it falls to those thinkers to form up with those of like mind, in a marginal party whose purpose is to dedicate all to that one cause. Together you can make it your mission to be - on that one point - the "party of conscience," as you see fit. Not everybody's going to agree with you, but at least they will know what you stand for. Also, good news: there's probably already a marginal party in place, for whatever cause seems all-important to you. If not, you can start one, but why do all that work if there's already one going?

Now if the Green party and the Libertarians could only see eye-to-eye on this whole climate-tax deal, together, with that combined pressure - maybe we could force those damn big-timer Redempublicrats to come off the dime!

Every Two-Party System Has Its Silent 3rd Party.

Dan and I were talking politics the other day, while drinking and he and I rarely do that. Anyway, between us I think somebody brought up a pretty good point: our two party system works pretty well, but it does have one FLAW:

We need to have GOD,

...in our classrooms,

...PERFORMING ABORTIONS

...with a FULLY-AUTOMATIC FIREARM -

- and then getting the death penalty for it.

If we had that, I think we'd have a pretty good system, one that has all its extremes brought right back into balance with some necessary, albeit regrettably-evil, checks. Apart from that, though, the system we have works pretty well. People vote for what they'd vote for, some vote the slate (of one party's candidates), others pick and choose on issues or person or other basis.

In our legislatures, the same goes to a large extent: people vote for what they'd vote for. They've joined their party for a reason. Most of them espouse all or most, or at least, much of its platform stances, so most of the time, they'll vote those. Other times, they may disagree with this or that plank of the platform - so they vote the other way. If they're honest, then they've admitted that disagreement with that plank during their career, or during their campaign - assuming they were questioned about it, which is kind of supposed to happen with candidates for service at state and federal levels. So if they were honest about their position and got in anyway, then the will of the people simply was that they wanted a person in that position who believes in things for reasons, and who doesn't just swallow platforms whole and vote the slate.

Not a bad thing to want, if you're the will of a people.

Of course, sometimes it's not a case of disagreement with the party plank, when you vote the other way as a legislator. Sometimes you - or a bunch of you together, in strategy - decide that a trade is needed, for some bigger thing. So you decide you need to bite the bullet, and trade away, for now, a thing you want - as long as we can do so without damaging what we want later on that important score! You trade it off, in order to get that bigger thing. That thing we need even more, right now. You've preserved that other, smaller fight for the future, because you were careful to do no damage to it by what you accepted today. And that's compromise. Compromise is also a matter of conscience. Compromise is conscience with a sense of proportion.

Anyone - public servant or not - can subscribe to all, or most, or even only much of a given party platform, and still identify as this or that party. You can do this because you believe there's value in coming together, and because you find the party supports most of your core points, or you support most of its. As someone who identifies as that party - whether you are or aren't a registered member, or even if you're an elected legislator - you don't necessarily swallow the whole platform. You will criticize it, to your fellow party members or sympathizers, where you find a stance wanting. You'll work within, with like minds, to make the party a better organization as you see it. But ultimately in the meantime, you accept the planks you dislike. You that see others dislike yours, too, and you see that you all still have a great deal to gain, by coming together on most of it.

Never will a meaningful or powerful number of people come together on all of it. Let pipsqeaks, weaklings and noncomformists wail on the sidelines and "opt out," much good may it do them. And much good it does do - to wail and rail in protest, to refuse to join in any part of it, does do much good.

Yet coalitionists know the value of common cause, and so they make it. Painfully, bitterly sometimes, they make it, because they believe in a greater good that we can make together despite our points between of painful difference. Sometimes we make common cause painfully even in victory, often we make it bitterly in defeat.

A party platform is not a thing that demands a thinking, caring being to subscribe to it all, always in every case, as if it were an absolute, a fixed ideal - and the being, a slave to it. No. When a given case demands compromise, the sacrifice of immediate gain to a greater need and goal for the cause, you make that sacrifice as part of your fight for the bigger picture. And when a given case demands no compromise with conscience is possible, because you disagree too strongly with this point of the plank - you vote the other way, and for reasons you can passionately state.

Whether out of a measured, needful compromise, or real disagreement with a point, you vote your conscience. They call it bipartisanship, they call it compromise, when Rightists or Leftors cross the aisle. But really, it is simply conscience. You know that what's right in this case is not the cut-dried point-by-point stance of your party, so - painfully, perhaps; knowing you sacrifice solidarity, and that some will fault you for it - you vote what's right in this case.

The third party in any 2-party system is: your conscience, together in a coalition of all those who agree with you on what is right, on what must be done in the hard case at hand. In every 2-party system that works, there must be that third party that exists both within and across party lines. It will have different members based on different issues, and at different times. Party bloc loyalists will decry every little defection across the aisles, but party bloc loyalists are not the problem. They too are voting their consciences.

Oh, I was kidding up there, about there being a need for God to be in our classrooms performing abortions with an assault weapon. If God did that, I do believe we should try and execute God, because talk about hypocrisy.

A Proposal, in re: the Sick and the Murderous.

Imagine if our press corps banded together on a new ethical principle: to make the perp of mass-killing crimes anonymous.

Pick an alias, a boring and bad one, and leave all the personal detail and glory out of it. Report the grossest most embarrassing personal problems you could unearth. Make it a general practice in the industry - I don't mean legislate, I mean adopt an ethical business principle. Didn't it used to be that victim's names of certain horrible crimes were not reported? Well - aren't these sick scumbag motherfuckers also victims, horrible victims of society? We can bend a point for the greater good, here, I think. We can get the media on board with the ethical journalistic need to stop heaping glory on the perpetrator's person, as they report fully on the story and all its other aspects.

We could at least try. Media coverage is a piece of this.

If we make it a practice and make it stick, that if you do that mess, if you go kill a bunch of people with a gun, or a homemade bomb, or a billowing cloud of some chemical agent, anyway you do it - the national/major news media isn't going to be trumpeting your name, or plastering your face, or dissecting your theories and opinions, but they are going to trumpet your full medical history and your permanent record from school, and what a loser you are, and how fucked up you were.

Now of course, your maverick amateur you tube journos and etc. can flout the ethic if they wish. You can't stop sick people on the margins from spreading what they wish. You can't stop sick people on the margins from being the free, unpaying audience to it. Seeking it out. But who's going to care in the mainstream? In the world in general, and in public acclaim?

You reduced yourself to a horrific act. What does it matter to us what your name was, and your face, and who you were? Your atrocious act did not make you significant. It only made significant the wish in others' minds to not be like you.

Or so it should be.

Our compassion and help to those who are in trouble and crisis will always be urgently needed, and well spent. But it's time for us to grow the fuck up, as a society, and get over this question: "What could make a person DO something like this?"

We already know what could - and what does. We also know that of all the factors that could and do "make" a person do the inexcusable, tons of people undergo those same factors and do not kill. It's time to stop fetishizing those who do.

Against Sensitivity!

I rail against sensitivity, and I do it for the sake of compassion.

The expectation of sensitivity is to expect the sensitive person to see the other in pain before it happens, and to act so as to avoid doing anything to cause it. Where we don't share the same vulnerabilities as the other, sensitivity entails a deliberate and false identification with the other's perceived weakness. We can only know how to act by estimating the degree to which the other person is too weak to take what we ourselves would have no problem with. Sensitivity is a form of contempt.

Sensitivity is deemed a wonderful thing, and if in some moment you find you are possessed of it, thank your stars! But have pity on the miserables who were born bereft of that psychic sense, and so are sentenced to spend years over uncomfortable lifetimes being rebuked, accused of being insensitive, and feeling utterly alienated. If you think these lost souls enjoy their exile, you are simply cruel, that's all.

Compassion springs forth in the moment we see that another is in anguish, in pain. We rush to save and and aid that one. Our heart has known suffering too, and we see it - we leap. If we were the cause of it, we weep. We weep on the inside, one hopes - so as to not affront the one who we wronged! Still we rush to save and aid, and make amends. Compassionate beings, we strive always not to be cruel.

Sensitivity run amok can cause total shutdown of most generous and surprising gifts or outpourings. The paralysis brought on by the desire and requirement not to be offensive, or uncomfortable, or unwanted, or objectionable, can be quite suffocatingly complete.

Compassion, oddly, can not cause this. Compassion cares deeply what it means, and it means well, and can answer for itself. But compassion does not insult the other beforehand, with the presumption that maybe the other can't take what one means.