Did anyone see Sarah Palin’s interview this evening on The CBS Evening News? It was actually frightening thinking that this is someone who could soon be — as the saying goes — a “heartbeat away” from the presidency.

Here are a few highlights:

COURIC:  Do you consider yourself a feminist?

PALIN:  I do.  A feminist who believes in equal rights.

As opposed to…what? Are there feminists who don’t believe in equal rights?  I sort of thought that the feminist movement’s very purpose was to address gender inequality.  It was one of the few times Palin actually answered the question, even if the answer was a bit laughable.

COURIC:  It will take about ten years for domestic drilling to have an impact on consumers.  So isn’t the notion of “Drill, Baby, Drill” a bit misleading to people who think this will automatically lower their gas prices and quickly?

PALIN:  Well we shoulda started ten years ago, tapping into domestic supplies that America is so rich in.  Alaska has billions of gallons of oil, hundreds of trillions of cubic feet of clean, green natural gas onshore and offshore.  Shoulda started doing it ten years ago, but better late than never.  It’s got to be an “all of the above” approach to energy independence.

So if we had started ten years ago on a project that would take ten years’ time for consumers to start feeling the benefits, we’d be feeling the benefits.  I think that’s what she’s saying.  And I think we already could have figured that much out.

What many of us still can’t seem to figure out is what happens ten years after that, when we’re suddenly getting plenty of oil — assuming that works out — and we’re just as dependent as we ever were on a commodity that still has a limited supply.  Human nature would dictate that we’d just blindly go on enjoying the use of the newly-obtained oil, without regard for what happens next.  And that’s reckless.  Environmentally and economically.

Couric then asked about Palin’s swipe at Joe Biden, when, speaking at a political rally, she said, “I’ve been hearing about his senate speeches since I was in, like, second grade.”

COURIC:  When you have a 72-year-old running mate, is that a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden’s been around a while?

PALIN:  Oh, no, it wasn’t negative at all.

Stop the music.  That was a lie.  You can tell, from the way she said the remark, that it was not intended as a positive remark.  She continued:

PALIN:  He’s got a lot of experience, and just stating the fact there that we’ve been hearing his speeches for all these years.  He’s got a tremendous amount of experience, and you know, I’m the new energy, the new face, the new ideas.  And he’s got the experience.

Seriously.  She really said that.  This, coming from the woman whose running mate’s entire campaign is centered on the relative lack of experience of Barack Obama.  So if she’s now trying to portray experience as a bad thing, and the “fresh face/new idea” person as the good thing, what, exactly is she saying about that 72-year-old, experienced running mate of hers?

COURIC:  In establishing your world view, I was curious: what newspapers and magazines did you regularly read before you were tapped for this to stay informed and understand the world?

PALIN:  I’ve read most of them, again, with a great appreciation of the press, of the media —

COURIC:  Which ones specifically?  I’m curious.

PALIN:  Um, all of ‘em.  Any of them that have been in front of me all these years.

COURIC:  Can you name a few?

PALIN:  I have a vast variety of sources where we get our news.  Alaska isn’t a foreign country where it’s kind of suggested, it seems like, “Wow, how could you keep in touch with what the rest of Washington, DC may be thinking and doing when you live up there in Alaska?”  Believe me, Alaska is like a microcosm of America.

Wow.  Just wow.

Asked about whether she feels global warming is manmade, (and Katie had to ask more than once to get an answer), she eventually got around to saying this:

PALIN:  …There are man’s activities that can be contributed [sic] to the issues that we’re dealing with now with these impacts.  I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical and over history we have seen changes there.  But, um, kinda doesn’t matter at this point as we debate, “What caused it?”  The point is, it’s real, we need to do something about it.

It kinda doesn’t matter what caused it?  Can someone please explain to me how we can do something about it if we don’t get definitive answers about what caused it?  I agree that there are cyclical weather patterns that are in the mix; that, however, does not mean that we should not be working to identify the elements of global warming that are manmade and to deal with them immediately.

Then there was this, when asked about homosexuality:

PALIN:  I am not going to judge Americans and the decisions they make in their own personal relationships.  I have one of my absolute best friends for the last 30 years who happens to be gay.  And I love her dearly.  She is not my “gay friend,” she is one of my best friends who happens to have made a choice that is a choice I haven’t made.

I’d like to be a fly on the wall the next time these two dear friends get together for coffee.  I’d love to know how her friend would react to the asinine notion that being gay is a choice.  Anyone who genuinely believes that homosexuality is merely a matter of choice must, by definition, believe that they themselves could just have easily “chosen” to be gay, too.  Could you have gone the “other way” — whichever that way is — on a whim?

The only “choice” when it comes to homosexuality is whether or not to act on the urges you feel.  But being gay or straight — being attracted to whomever you are attracted to — is not something that you just choose to do one morning like one chooses what color shirt to pull out of the closet.

Thursday night’s vice presidential debate ought to be a hoot.

South Carolina has dropped out of an ad campaign that was designed to lure gay tourism dollars to the state. The state’s Parks, Recreation and Tourism Department had previously agreed to spend $5,000, not a huge amount of money as ad dollars go, to market to gays in London.

Charleston’s Post and Courier describes one ad that appeared in a London tube station as showing a historic rural home under the headline, “South Carolina is so gay.”

True to form, bible-belt red-state South Carolinians reacted by flying off the deep end. Sure, they want tourist dollars, but just not from them. Even though “them” is a relatively powerful tourist force, according to a Philadelphia study a few years ago, which revealed that for every dollar that city spent on gay tourism advertising, gay tourists spent an average of $153 on hotels, shops and more. At the time, gay tourists were said to spend about $54 billion a year on travel. That’s billion. With a B.

And it’s just a guess on my part, mind you, but I’ll wager those billions are still green like everyone else’s. And still spends, in a sluggish economy, the same.

The problem, according to PRT excuses, was that international advertising wasn’t subjected to the same review process that national advertising is because in this case, a third party firm developed the ad. Does that explanation make any damn sense to anyone? PRT only cares enough to be mindful of the image it is projecting to places like Iowa or Oregon or Minnesota, but doesn’t give a hoot about pulling in tourism dollars from the rest of the planet? And unless PRT has its own ad agency and never uses any third party firms here in the state — which is unlikely — most of their ad projects are ultimately produced or executed by third parties.

And isn’t that what we’d expect, no matter what an international ad said? Who’d know what would appeal to any specific segment of London’s population better than a London-based firm, or at least someone here is from there?

Sounds to me like an excuse about as logical as something a kid would make up after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

Is the ad wrong to use the term gay? Well, let’s look at it this way: would there be any objection from gay groups if South Carolina hoped to attract bible belt tourists to the state with the line, “South Carolina is so straight?” If anyone would have a problem with that, but not the gay line, then what we’re dealing with here is a nice little double standard.

Of course, then there are the ones who’ll try to downplay the whole thing by hiding behind dictionary definitions. Gay has different meanings, they’ll say.

True.

Gay means happy and carefree, although it is used less and less for that these days because “them homasexshals” took over the word.

Gay is also used, mostly by people who aren’t, to refer to something that is screwed up, backwards.

Some would argue after this little display of homophobia and/or sloppy procedure and/or poor judgment, depending on your personal point of view, that maybe, one way or another, the headline isn’t so inaccurate after all.

This almost sounds like a joke straight from Jay Leno or David Letterman. Sadly, it isn’t.

Two of the latest lawmakers to co-sponsor one of those ridiculous “Defense of Marriage”-type laws that define marriage as a union between man and woman have themselves demonstrated a somewhat unconventional standard within their own commitment.

First, there’s Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the man arrested a little more than a year ago in a Minneapolis airport terminal on charges of lewd conduct. Craig entered a guilty plea to a reduced charge of disorderly conduct after allegedly attempting to signal a male in the next stall that he wanted to engage in sexual activity. He has since attempted to withdraw the plea, but has so far been unsuccessful. He never even told his wife about the arrest, according to reports, until the story was made public.

The second lawmaker with the odd background is Louisiana Sen. David Vitter. In July of last year, Vitter was identified as a client of a prostitution firm owned by the woman dubbed “The DC Madam.” In a statement, he apologized for what he called a “a very serious sin” in his past for which he had apologized to God and to his wife.

I realize that there are a lot of people out there who still believe that marriage needs to be “protected” via the male-female definition. Until a few recent court rulings making way for same-sex marriage in a few areas, this country’s long history of the male-female definition by practice still managed to rack up a divorce rate somewhere around 50% or higher (depending on whom you ask). You’d have to believe, if you think same-sex marriage would destroy the institution, that these men and women who are so committed to fighting for the right to marry the person they want to spend the rest of their life with will somehow forget every ounce of commitment they displayed once the ring is on their finger.

But for those of you who still are so convinced of such a preposterous notion, does it at least seem odd to you that the institution of marriage needs the help of people who have been accused of either being unfaithful or taking the first steps toward infidelity?

Sure, I know what they say about forgiveness and redemption, and it’s great that these two politicians have seen the error of their ways and are surely committing themselves, through acts like these, to be good boys for the rest of their lives.

But if you are really interested in protecting the institution of marriage from all its various threats, and if you really want everyone to believe that you aren’t just being homophobic or blindly toeing a party line just so you can ignore really important issues like the economy or Iraq, you might wonder why there’s no proposal to punish adulterers; it seems to me that marriage needs a shot in the arm to protect the institution from them first.

As if South Carolina ranking #1 in text messaging while driving, we’re also getting national attention because a high school principal has decided to resign after being asked to allow the formation of a club he says goes against his “professional beliefs and religious convictions.”

The club in question is a Gay/Straight Alliance. His resignation will take effect in June of 2009, at the end of the 2008-2009 school year. I can’t help but wonder, if he’s so offended, why he didn’t set his date of separation to be June of this year.

The organization that creates such clubs nationwide describes its vision of the future as “a world in which every child learns to accept and respect all people, regardless of sexual orientation and gender identity/expression.”

Doesn’t sound so terrible, does it?

The principal in question says his school focuses on abstinence-based curriculum, and feels that a Gay/Straight Alliance would imply “that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

¿Que?

First, let me get the abstinence issue out of the way. Abstinence-based curriculum stresses the importance of waiting for sex until after marriage. It’s what most Christian organizations like to push for in our schools, because it allows parents to sit back and feel that kids are getting the “right” message. But as everyone who has ever been a teenager knows, being told that you should wait for something almost certainly guarantees that you don’t want to wait for it. Add to that the typical peer pressure students face, and a curriculum that urges abstinence with less-than-realistic instruction on protection for those students who choose not to wait, and you have a scenario that is basically facilitating the real possibility of unwanted pregnancies and sexually-transmitted diseases. It doesn’t take a college degree to see that.

The opposite of abstinence-based sex ed is comprehensive sex ed:

“There is good evidence, from studies of programs implemented in the US, UK and other European countries and countries in Africa and Asia, that comprehensive sex education can reduce behaviors that put young people at risk of HIV, STIs and unintended pregnancy. Studies have repeatedly shown too that this kind of sex education does not lead to the earlier onset of sexual activity among young people and, in some cases, will even lead to it happening later.”

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s move on to the rest of the quote:

“…that students joining the club will have chosen to or will choose to engage in sexual activity with members of the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes.”

I can guarantee that every student in this principal’s school will choose to engage in sexual activity with the same sex, opposite sex, or members of both sexes at some point…whether there is a Gay/Straight Alliance or not. The only exceptions will be those who decide to be celibate for life, or those who prefer relations with something other than humans, and I’d as soon think no more of that. If he could just figure out what needs to get said to make the members engage in sexual activity one day with members of the opposite sex only, his little “problem” would be solved, wouldn’t it?

If the formation of a Gay/Straight Alliance is enough to make people want to have sex, shouldn’t even abstinence-based sex education be banned as well? After all, if just the mere mention of the topic — which is apparently this principal’s concern — is enough to send students over the edge, isn’t sex education itself also a danger? Even if students are pressured not to have it until later, they’re still telling them something about having it, and that must be asking for trouble!

Maybe sex education in his school should be replaced by good old Home Ec. Baking chocolate chip cookies and sewing on buttons probably wouldn’t get anyone all that hot and bothered. (Unless they got too close to the hot oven.)

The executive director for Faith in America, a group that fights religious bigotry against gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered Americans, issued a statement that read in part:

“We truly believe it is unfortunate that this principal cannot see the immense harm that is caused when a social climate of rejection, condemnation and violence is justified with misguided religious belief. To make such a choice over simply allowing gay youth a forum to meet and talk, alludes to the apparent deep-seated prejudice that must exist in the religious mindset of this person.

“It is unfortunately very similar to the time in our history when segregation in schools was once allowed to flourish because of the deep-seated prejudice that existed in our institutions and the religious mindset of many people during that period.”

Or, to put it another way, discrimination is discrimination, no matter what makes the targets of it different from the “rest.”

The article from Columbia television station WIS-TV also quotes the parent of a student at the school:

“We are not putting them like, ‘ugh. You know you’re lepers.’ But we have to stand for what our foundation of our nation was about.”

Huh?

I might have to go dig up my history book, because I don’t recall reading that our country was founded to discriminate against gay high school students. I do, however, happen to vaguely remember something about the desire for religious freedom being a motive.

Religion does play a big role in this. There are plenty of Christians who refuse to call homosexuality anything other than an abomination. Many of them latch on to issues like this so that they can deflect their own sins that they don’t like to talk about. It’s human nature, after all. Rather than take the blame for something you’re doing that’s wrong, it’s so much easier to point a finger at someone else you feel is worse.

They also are convinced that homosexuality — and heterosexuality for that matter — should be the classifications of one’s sexual preference, not sexual orientation. As if anyone really wakes up one day and chooses which he’ll be.

Think about this for a second.

How old were you when you decided to which gender you were attracted? How many long days and nights did you labor over the decision? How long was your list of pros and cons for each gender?

Surely, if it was solely a function of choice, you must have spent a long, long time carefully considering which “team” you’d be “playing” for.

I can’t help but wonder why these religious zealots who are so against a club designed to open dialog wouldn’t welcome it. They should want straight students talking with gay students. They should want gay students — or in their minds, students who are choosing to be gay — to be exposed to straight students, those who are doing the “right” thing, so that they may see how happy and perfect the straight students’ lives are, and be positively influenced to rethink their “choice.”

That is to say, they should want those “good, sinless” straight students to rub off on those gay students. (No pun intended.)

Dialog, they should believe, could make all the difference in turning these gay students’ lives in the “proper” direction, right?

If they’re so convinced that it works for abstinence, then what’s the hang-up about homosexuality? They should be eager to quash two “problems” at once.

That is, if they’re giving it any real thought at all.

On Friday, Barack Obama said, “It has been a rough couple of weeks.” Truer words have rarely been spoken by a politician.

Religion and politics shouldn’t mix. You need look no further than the campaigns of John McCain or Barack Obama recently for classic examples of why. By now, surely everyone has heard about Barack Obama’s pastor, the very wrong Rev. Jeremiah Wright, and the fiery soundbites from a 2003 sermon that have made their way across all media platforms and the blogosphere.

You have probably also heard of the controversy with John McCain caused by the also-wrong Rev. John Hagee, who made eyebrow-raising remarks about Hurricane Katrina’s real purpose in the grand scheme of things.

One of my closest friends, my “adopted mom,” Linda, whom I have mentioned and linked before, wrote an article over at Huffington Post about the double standard in the coverage of the Obama-Wright and McCain-Hagee stories.

Back in 2006, Hagee had this to say about Hurricane Katrina:

“I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they are — were recipients of the judgment of God for that. The newspaper carried the story in our local area that was not carried nationally that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other Gay Pride parades. So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know that there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the day of judgment. And I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.”

Here’s what Linda had to say about Hagee’s train (wreck) of thought:

“In the Gospel According to John Hagee, God got fed up and hurled Hurricane Katrina at New Orleans in a raging fit of divine retribution.

“Trouble is, thousands of folks along the entire Gulf Coast suffered and died. Whole towns, innocent communities, were wiped out; folks who had nothing to do with Sin City, had never been there and never intended to go. Thousands of them lost their homes, their schools, their jobs. Their families. Many of them are still suffering, still displaced.

“If Hagee’s right about God’s direct and purposeful involvement, we have another problem. God’s aim is not so good. He hit the Ninth Ward, home of the city’s poorest citizens. Hit ‘em hard. Nothing much was left of it but debris and dead bodies. God got middle class neighborhoods, too. But He missed the French Quarter; the black heart of Louisiana’s Sodom (or Gomorrah, take your pick) was left unscathed. And that makes no sense at all.

“Unless John Hagee’s a hate-mongering hot-head who uses the pulpit badly…and God had nothing to do with the disaster that struck the Gulf Coast. Sometimes you just can’t go along with every word you hear on Sunday morning. Pastors are human, they’re flawed like the rest of us–and sometimes they’re wrong.”

Linda goes on to criticize the media for giving McCain what she says amounts to a free pass on his association with Hagee. Hagee endorsed McCain, but McCain does not attend Hagee’s church. As Linda points out, McCain sought Hagee’s endorsement to impress the religious right, and even more importantly, to get their votes.

But since McCain himself says he doesn’t agree with everything Hagee says, it’s all supposed to be okay, right?

Wrong. Continue reading “Four Wrongs Don’t Make Anyone Right”

John Cook, an 88-year-old retired teacher and school counselor, served in the Army during World War II, and was part of the second wave of troops that stormed Omaha Beach on D-Day. That was on June 6, 1944.

It would be another 14 years before he would meet the love of his life. Now, this still-happy couple is preparing to celebrate their golden anniversary.

There’s just one minor detail that unfortunately turns what should be an inspiring story about the endurance of love into story that disgusts some. Continue reading “The Threat”

Actors Van Hansis and Jake Silbermann aren’t a gay couple, but they play one on TV. Actress Cate Blanchett isn’t male, but she played one in a movie. Actor Robert Downey, Jr., isn’t black…

Can you guess where this is going?

Yes, Downey is now portraying a black man in a new motion picture directed by Ben Stiller. The film, Tropic Thunder, is about a group of actors hired for a movie about Vietnam who find themselves dropped in a real jungle in the middle of a battle they don’t realize is real. Downey plays a black actor.

But it isn’t the same scenario as the 1980s flick Soul Man, in which C. Thomas Howell’s character made himself up as a black man to be able to attend college on a black scholarship; the audience is supposed to assume from the beginning that the character — and presumably the actor portraying him — is indeed black.

A still released ahead of the movie shows the successful make-up job and I suspect that the casual observer would never recognize Downey if they didn’t know who he really was. But fancy disguises aside, the casting is already causing controversy, and Downey has prepared himself for more, according to The Daily Mail, which reports some initial reactions:

“I’m not black and I find it offensive; are there not any talented enough black actors out in the world that they feel the need to hire a white guy to do a black guy?”

“They are infering that there are no good enough black actors to play a black person.”

There were similar reactions in 2006 when producers of CBS’s soap As The World Turns introduced a storyline in which Hansis’s character, Luke, came out to his parents, longtime characters Lily and Holden. And as the storyline has heated up, including the appearance of a love interest in the form of Silbermann, who plays Noah, so has the controversy.

But in this case, time has changed the direction of the talk, from questioning why the 52-year-old soap couldn’t hire actors who are actually gay to why the show hasn’t allowed the couple more than a single attention-getting kiss. It seems that not only gay fans of the show, but women as well, want to see more sparks between the characters, whom they have nicknamed “Nuke.” (That detail provides men with the answer to a question they’ve wondered for years: apparently there are some women for whom the thought of guy-on-guy action is as appealing as girl-on-girl action is to some men…but I digress.)

Then there was Blanchett, who revealed last year that she strapped down her breasts and “went for it” to portray rock icon Bob Dylan in the biopic I’m Not Here. She was one of seven to play Dylan in the film, and was the only female.

I don’t recall any men complaining about that casting. If anything, I heard that people actually were looking forward to seeing the performance, though I suspect many anticipated it the way a Nascar fan goes to a race anticipating a major pile-up.

Is it reasonable that only black actors should play black characters? Or that only gay actors portray homosexuals? Or even that men can’t play women and vice versa?

I don’t think so. I think different performers can bring different things to the table in a roll. And firsthand familiarity isn’t a necessity for other aspects of an actor. An actor need not kill someone before he can play a murderer on CSI:. An actress isn’t required to cheat on her real-life husband just so she can play an adulterous vixen on Days of Our Lives.

It’s supposed to be about what an actor brings to a role, even when that roll might be a bit of a stretch.  It’s so ridiculous to suggest that a situation like Downey’s is an admission that there are no black actors “good enough” to play a black man that I am amazed anyone would make the argument; how does a black actor “play” black?

The question should be about how a white actor would “play” a black man: I can understand the potential for offense if he were to portray a black man as a jive-talking “brotha” right out of 1970s stereotypes.  It doesn’t appear from what has been said so far that this was the intent in Downey’s case.  But I wonder how many who are protesting will actually go see the film to find out for themselves.

Are any of these scenarios — gender-bending, race-bending or orientation-bending — particularly offensive to you?

In an election year, there are actually some groups of people who find themselves on the receiving end of more blame than those of us who work in the media. In the latest edition of The Blame Game, we find an Israeli official blaming recent earthquakes in the region on the Israeli government’s apparent “acceptance” of homosexuality:

Shlomo Benizri, of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish Shas Party, said the tremors had been caused by lawmaking that gave “legitimacy to sodomy”.

Israel decriminalised homosexuality in 1988 and has since passed several laws recognising gay rights.

Two earthquakes shook the region last week and a further four struck in November and December.

So by this line of reasoning, bad things aren’t happening because gay people exist and go “gay” things. Bad things like earthquakes only happen when a government grants equal rights.

That’s an interesting excuse to discriminate, isn’t it?

Hat Tip to Signal 46

In an upcoming article, Mike Huckabee, who has surged ahead in the GOP polls, is questioning the Mormon faith:

“Huckabee, an ordained Southern Baptist minister, asks in an upcoming article, ‘Don’t Mormons believe that Jesus and the devil are brothers?’

“The article, to be published in Sunday’s New York Times Magazine, says Huckabee asked the question after saying he believes Mormonism is a religion but doesn’t know much about it.”

Has Huckabee ever heard of the internet? Or the Information Age? It’s amazing what one can find in just .0013 seconds in a good Google search. Like this article from the homepage of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints about their beliefs on the subject of Jesus Christ. Or their official definition of Satan, which makes no mention whatsoever of him being the brother of Christ.

Of course, there’s the other side of the coin, that we are all children of God, and thereby brothers and sisters of each other in a spiritual sense. So Christ and Satan are spiritual brothers, just as I am your spiritual brother as children of God. Unfortunately for Huckabee, even Southern Baptists believe that.

This little blunder comes on the heels of his unsatisfactory explanation of his own words from 1992, when he urged the “isolation” of “carriers” of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. He also opposed increased funding for finding a cure and said homosexuality could pose a public health risk.

He now says that today, he might phrase his answers “a little differently,” but doesn’t define exactly what those differences would be. Of course, Huckabee has “flip-flopped” on the funding issue, and now claims that his remarks were made at a time when little was known about how the AIDS virus was transmitted.

And here’s where that dreaded “Information Age” comes in, again. Sorry, Mike, but that just doesn’t ring true, unless you were as uninformed about AIDS in 1992 as you seem to be about other religions in 2007.

Let’s review a little history, shall we?

• It is interesting to note, however, that as far back as 1959, scientists isolated what they believe was the earliest known case of AIDS, and that in 1978, gay men in the United States and Sweden, and heterosexuals in Tanzania and Haiti began showing signs of the illness.
• In 1980, the year Ronald Reagan was elected and 12 years before Huckabee’s remarks, 31 people died of the illness. The following year, there were 234 known deaths.
• In 1982, a full decade before Huckabee didn’t seem to know much about it, the illness became known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome and the Centers for Disease Control linked it to blood. There were 853 known deaths attributed to AIDS that year.
• In 1983, during which 2,304 people died from it, the AIDS virus was identified. The CDC warned of a potential problem with the blood supply.
• By 1985, the first antibodies test for AIDS was developed, and the blood supply was checked for signs of the virus. That was the first year that Reagan mentioned AIDS in public.
• AZT, the first anti-HIV drug, hit the market in 1987, five years before Huckabee’s call for isolation. In April of that year, Reagan, speaking to a group of physicians in Philadelphia, refers to AIDS as “public enemy number one.”
• In 1988, the United States mailed out more than 100 million copies of a booklet written by then-U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop called Understanding AIDS. Huckabee’s copy, undoubtedly, was lost in the mail.
• In 1990, Reagan apologized for neglecting the crisis during his eight-year presidency. That same year, teenage Ryan White, a hemophiliac who contracted AIDS from a blood transfusion, died. Notables like Rock Hudson, Liberace, and Amanda Blake are already gone.
• An alarming statistic came in 1991, when the World Health Organization estimated that 10 million people worldwide were HIV-positive. That was the year before Huckabee opposed funding for a cure and wanted to ship HIV+ patients somewhere else.

Here is a different look at what knew about AIDS and when we knew it:

• By 1982, the CDC had identified four primary risk factors: male homosexuality, intravenous drug abuse, Haitian origin and Hepatitis A.
• In 1983, the U.S. Public Health Service had released recommendations to prevent transmission of HIV through sexual contact and blood transfusions. The CDC added female sex partners of HIV+ men as a fifth high-risk group. (They probably didn’t have to think too long about that one.)
• In 1985, the U.S. Public Health Service issued its first recommendations for preventing the transmission of HIV from mother to child.

By 1992, it was clear to most people — other than Huckabee or those who continued to rule out AIDS as anything but a “gay disease” — how HIV was transmitted. It was not some mystery illness that had people wearing masks to prevent airborne infection.

Yet somehow, despite the fact that women and children were getting the disease in manners that had nothing to do with gay sex, Mike Huckabee opposed funding to find a cure, and apparently didn’t understand the basics about how it was spread.

If he could miss a decade of scientific data, a kind of “intelligence information,” can you imagine what he might do with Iraq?

It’s funny how discrimination is perceived. Sometimes, we’re sure we’re the targets of it, even when those slights we are so convinced are directed at us aren’t really slights at all.

Earlier this month, a federal judge expressed concern over the suggestion that our current system of currency discriminates against the blind. Blind people have difficulty distinguishing between the dollar bill and, say, a $50 dollar bill. That presents an obvious problem, and forces them, pretty much, to rely either on caregivers, the kindness of strangers, or debit/credit cards.

Some courts have determined, therefore, that our system of currency discriminates against the blind.

The aforementioned judge wasn’t so sure:

“‘Where does this stop?’ asked Judge A. Raymond Randolph. Are postage stamps illegal? Government Web sites? When mail carriers leave handwritten notes on front doors, are they discriminating against blind people?

“‘The National Gallery is having a Hopper exhibit,’ Randolph said. ‘Those paintings, do they violate the Rehabilitation Act?’”

What lengths have to be taken to create completely equal access without “discriminating” against the sighted?

Should art galleries close their doors or be penalized because the blind cannot use their services? Sure, it seems like a silly question. But here’s one that maybe isn’t as silly: should such institutions lose governmental funding because a certain percentage of the population is unable to use them?

The sad reality is that not everyone is equal: there are handicaps. (I’m sorry if that word is offensive, but I’m not sure what the current “politically-correct” substitute for handicap, when used in general terms, is at this particular moment.) Maybe, if I were blind, I might feel differently. I suspect, however, that I would accept the fact that there are limitations that I just have to deal with. Just as I must deal with certain limitations based on my size and fitness level. I don’t demand, for instance, that local municipalities stop funding events like marathons because I haven’t always been in good enough shape to participate.

Our constitution says that all men were created equal. But everyone does have his own unique set of gifts and deficiencies, and no matter how hard society works to equalize those disparities, there’s only so much that can be done.

Am I comparing apples to oranges? Maybe…I’m not sure.

Meanwhile, NBC’s Brian Williams recently came under fire after a comment he made on the air and on his Daily Nightly blog over at MSNBC.com. Continue reading “When Is It (Really) Discrimination?”

Author J.K. Rowling has announced, to “gasps and applause,” that one of the characters in the seven ridiculously successful Harry Potter books just happens to be gay.

The character she drop-kicked out of the literary closet was Professor Dumbledore.  She made the announcement at an appearance at Carnegie Hall when she took questions from the audience that included a query about whether Dumbledore would ever find true love.

I haven’t read any of the Potter novels and have yet to find any overwhelming motivation to do so.  This little surprise makes me neither more likely nor less likely to pick up one of the tales.

But I do note this:  how odd it is that people find out that the character is gay after the novel series was concluded.  There are some writers who would have shoved his sexuality down the readers’ throats from the first chapter.

Everyone doesn’t feel so defined by their sexuality alone that they make issue of it to everyone they encounter, and that’s true for some straights and gays.  Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with being open, but I wonder why some people feel the need to be as open as they sometimes are.

Sometimes, there’s nothing wrong with keeping your business private.

Jerry Lewis says it was a bad choice of words.

During his big MDA telethon earlier this week, while walking around the stage, joking with a crew member, he dropped the six-letter f-bomb, an anti-gay slur.

Naturally, gay rights advocates weren’t pleased.  The dust had just settled on the Isaiah Washington case, in which the actor finally admitted that he used the same word on the set of Grey’s Anatomy.

But there’s a big difference between Lewis and Washington, and no, I don’t intend to use Lewis’s age (he’s 81) or the possibility that he could have just been punch-drunk after 18 hours of running the telethon as an excuse.  I’m not offering any excuses for Lewis, who already said he shouldn’t have said what he said.

Because that’s the point:  unlike Washington, who first denied having said the word, then said he found such words unacceptable, then used the word at an awards ceremony photo op while denying having used the word, then apologized for having offended anyone when he used the word previously, Lewis chose a different path:

“I apologize to anyone who was offended. Everyone who knows me understands that I hold no prejudices in this regard. In the family atmosphere of the telethon, I forget that not everyone knows me that well. That something like this would distract from the true purpose of the telethon pains me deeply. … I accept responsibility for what I said. There are no excuses.”

Anyone who works in television knows that when you’re live, there are no do-overs.  You can wish for them all day, but once it’s said, it’s said.

At least Lewis apologized upfront.  That’s pretty refreshing by today’s standards.

Merv Griffin was gay.  Or he wasn’t.

I’m not sure why it matters to anyone at this point, since the 82-year-old impresario is no longer with us.  But there are some people who are certain that he was.

Some of them are angry and feel justified in their anger because Griffin never came right out and said he was a homosexual. He never campaigned for gay rights. He never tried to make homophobics believe that there is nothing wrong with being gay.

(If Griffin really was gay.)

Now that I have given you this piece of information, I’d like for you to set it completely aside for a moment. Instead, I’d like for you to focus your attention on a scene from a December afternoon in 1955. Continue reading “There’s No Draft For Social War”

I haven’t commented, yet, on Sen. David Vitter’s name appearing in the records of a woman nicknamed a D.C. “madam.”

Unlike many Democrats — and Republicans who are fed up with certain aspects of their party — I am not particularly happy that Vitter was caught up in such a scandal. It does, after all, provide a painful bit of embarrassment for his family, especially his wife, who Vitter says forgave him years ago for whatever he might have done.

On the other hand, I do point to a page on Vitter’s own website, in which he comments about protecting the “sanctity of marriage:” Continue reading “Sanctity”

Sometimes, I’ll take a long virtual jog through the blogosphere. I’ll start off at a blog from my sidebar, for example, read some recent entries, then click on a title in that blog’s sidebar. Then I’ll continue that process for a while and see where I end up.

While I still lived in Richmond, I found a local blogger there who once worked in television. His name is Kelly, and his blog, Rambling along in life…with a Stern point of view, chronicles his life with his partner, Jeff.

Kelly points out that June is Gay Pride Month, and he has posted a photo of a rainbow he captured at Richmond’s Byrd Park and is challenging others to post the same image as a way to celebrate diversity.

Diversity comes in many forms. There is the diversity of political views, the diversity of religion, the diversity of race and culture, and the diversity of sexual orientation.

Some of those qualities are easier for many of us to accept than others. I’m not sure why that is; if we are willing to accept the idea that no two people are alike, we should be able to accept those basic qualities that make us different.

Though the rainbow has been most often associated with the LGBT community, game show host Richard Dawson used it in his farewell message to viewers on the final episode of the original run of Family Feud. Addressing those viewers who had spent the previous nine years being “outraged” because he kissed people of different races, he told this story:

“The first time I saw people of any color was when D-Day left from my hometown in England to go and free Europe in the war and there was every color you could imagine, and I’d not seen that in England. And I asked my mother, I said, ‘Is something wrong?’ She said, ‘God, God makes people. You understand that, don’t you?’ And I said, ‘Yeah.’ She said, ‘Who makes a rainbow?’ I said, ‘God.’ She said, ‘I’d never presume to tell anyone who could make a rainbow, what colour to make children.’ And she changed my life with that statement.”

As Kelly points out in his blog entry:

“[This challenge] is about societies around the world learning to accept people for being themselves… diversity. Gay, straight, Christian, Muslim, skinny or fat… we need to be a little more accepting these days.”

One doesn’t have to be gay to accept people who are gay. One doesn’t have to be black to accept people of color. I could go on and on…but you get the idea.

Will you take his challenge?