Facets of Our Lives

The complexities of the current state of international conditions and relations are compounded by the occupant of the White House. This article will not focus on him, because there are larger issues that have nothing to do with his lack of qualifications or immature behavior. My hope is to give us a few things to think about about diplomacy and foreign affairs more generally. The United States has been a successful experiment in nation-building. Here we are, 240+ years after our Declaration of Independence, and 230 years after our Constitution was ratified. There are very good reasons to feel that the US is exceptional, because our people represent the people of the world, thanks to our history of immigration, innovation, cooperation, collaboration, and exploration. But we're not the only ones to be ground-breaking, and we're not the only great country on the planet. Americans have a well-earned reputation around the world, and not all of it good. I lived in Eur...

I had originally intended to title this post "On Religion", but upon introspection, the issue is dogma as much as it is religion, and I believe I'll explain this adequately later. If you've read the prior posts in this series, you will probably have many assumptions about what I intend to say. You're probably right. Let's dive in. Merriam-Webster defines dogma as follows: a :something held as an established opinion; especially :a definite authoritative tenet b :a code of such tenets pedagogical dogma c :a point of view or tenet put forth as authoritative without adequate grounds a doctrine or body of doctrines concerning faith or morals formally stated and authoritatively proclaimed by a church Dogma, in a non-religious sense, is not damaging in and of itself. It is only as benign or malignant as its content, as well as how it is applied directly and indirectly to a population. For that matter, secular humanists subscribe to a certain level of non-re...

Much has been made in the last year or two regarding free speech in the United States. The United States is one of the few countries where the freedom of speech is codified in the constitution. It might surprise many Americans to know that Europeans do not enjoy the same latitude. For one example, in France, it is illegal to deny the Jewish holocaust. However, in the United States, the right to free speech is also not clearly understood. Many colleges and universities, most notably the University of California at Berkeley, have been in the news for their response to controversial speakers coming to their campuses. UC-Berkeley has invited then disinvited speakers across the spectrum, and in cases where they have not, there has sometimes been violent protest against the presence of these speakers. I strongly disagree with violence of any kind in response to an individual speaker, but I certainly understand and support the right to protest. There are some in this discourse who do no...

I went back and reviewed prior posts on politics that I had published on this blog to sort of look back and see how thing had changed. My most recent post concerned President Obama’s re-election, and a perusal back through my history revealed what seems now to have been a much simpler time – simply advocating for equality for LGBT, lamenting the ideological makeup of the SCOTUS, and commenting on the general state of the Congress. You know, back when America was great. The bombastic current occupant of the White House has been described as a misogynist a white supremacist a narcissist petty and vengeful unfit for the office And I can’t say that I disagree with any of these observations. There has been much discussion as to how and why Hilary Rodham Clinton lost the 2016 election. She, herself, identifies a number of reasons, but without actually taking blame herself. She came into this with significant baggage and controversy, and I think she and many o...

On November 6, 2012, the United States re-elected Barack Obama to a second term as President. While the rejoicing was not as euphoric as 2008, this came as a great relief to many across the country and the world. Despite living in a traditionally red state (Arizona) and working in a very blue state (California), I know many from the opposite party in both locations. It has given me a new respect for Republicans and conservatives in general, and encouraged me on the issues that are important to me. I am a civil rights voter. It's not that I don't care about energy, the environment, or the economy, but in my opinion, until we get beyond certain serious civil issues, things are not going to improve. One party has a decidedly better record in this area. And I think this is where the future lies, more than many might expect. As citizens, as human beings, we are stewards of our country and our world. We are only here temporarily, but we all leave a legacy. We can choose to le...

When I started writing the posts for this week, I had planned my usual diversity of articles discussing all the topics I usually do. But it's been a remarkable week politically. Tuesday saw the resignation of Karen Handel from Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure , after the defunding then refunding of Planned Parenthood . The Republican voters also handed victories to former Pennsylvania Senator and far-right conservative Rick Santorum (R), giving renewed life to his campaign. Wednesday saw the Ninth Circuit of Appeals affirm the federal court ruling that California's Proposition 8, banning same-sex marriage, is unconstitutional. And all week, the talking heads on the various networks have been discussing the Obama Administration's decision to require insurance coverage for birth control, even for so-called religious institutions who may believe differently. Since this post is prepared in advance, who knows what today may bring? But if nothing else is true, it is a f...

‎ "Proposition 8 serves no purpose, and has no effect, other than to lessen the status and human dignity of gays and lesbians in California, and to officially reclassify their relationships and families as inferior to those of opposite-sex couples." -Judge Stephen Reinhardt, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, 07-Feb-2012 Proposition 8, voted into law in 2008, was California's ban on same-sex marriage. The campaign was largely bankrolled and supported by the Catholic Church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, various Protestant evangelical sects, and various conservative groups from around the country, including the National Organization for Marriage. The ruling yesterday upheld the earlier federal court ruling that the law violates the U.S. Constitution. As I discussed yesterday with respect to the liberal/conservative paradigm, this is another case of conservatives denying rights to someone. For the moment, this is a losing proposition with res...

Given the current state of our economy and that the debt ceiling debate has dominated our news for the last week, I am doing my political post a day early and leaving food for Tuesday. But I am not actually going to talk about the "crisis". I am going to talk about how we got here. We can blame party politics, we can blame the patterns in place for the last 30 years of US governance, we can blame the Tea Party. But the blame really rests with ourselves. The table below compares the elections of 2008 and 2010. 1 2008 2010 Total Number of Voters 130 million 82.5 million Liberal 22% (28.6 million) 20% (16.5 million) Moderate 44% (57.2 million) 39% (32.175 million) Conservative 34% (44.2 million) 41% (33.825 million) Ages 18-29 18% (23.4 million) 11% (9.075 million) Ages 65 or older 16% (20.8 million) 23% (18.975 million) White 74% (96....

On Friday, 22nd July 2011, Norway endured coordinated terrorist attacks in the city of Oslo and the nearby island of Utoya. I am writing this post on Saturday, as information is still being discovered, determined, and evaluated. The death toll is currently 93* as of this writing, with the vast majority of the victims being teenagers at a youth camp. The man suspected to be responsible for this chaos has been additionally identified as a Christian fundamentalist, concerned about non-Christians being present in the country. A friend on Facebook wrote, Well when we stop focusing on important issues like banning marriages, smoking, and the right to live as individuals maybe we will find time to stop the hate. My response was, It's not the hate, it's the continued arrogance and ignorance. Do away with those, and the hate goes with it. And it's just that simple. Humanity continues to work under the premise that one group is inherently better than another, and we al...

I have been trying to identify political topics to discuss for this blog, and I have been enormously discouraged and depressed about what I have found. It isn't just a question of my own personal politics, but the patterns that have emerged from our government and the electorate. The facts are out there, if you can find anyone willing to report them on a larger scale; but even if people are presented with incontrovertible evidence, they continue to vote for the same candidates who successfully manipulate them, usually by pandering to a "hot" issue or worse, simply lying. And no matter how bad things get, people still don't get the message. Obama may have beaten McCain in 2008, but he should have won by a much wider margin, if anyone was paying attention. And the only conclusion I can come to -- as much as I hate to say it, or some might find it cliché -- the electorate is stupid . The men who designed our government were concerned about this, also, but because the...

I was listening to the Leslie Marshall Show online last week, and the guest was a representative of the families of the 9/11 victims. The discussion surrounded our current situation in Afghanistan, and whether American troops should still be there now that Osama bin Laden is dead. The premise was that our goal of taking out our enemy had been accomplished. The guest also felt that our involvement in Afghanistan was primarily to support the military-industrial complex and specific military contractors, rather than achieve a more altruistic or emotional goal. While I agree that the Bush Administration tricked us into Iraq and squandered the planetary goodwill we enjoyed following 9/11, Afghanistan was a very specific and special situation. The American media did not pay much attention to Afghanistan prior to 2001. The Taliban had come to power around 1995, and I was living in Europe at that time. There were already deep concerns as to how women were being treated, as well as the lac...

One of the things I miss about living in the New York media market are stations like 1010 WINS. The Phoenix market has no such station. The closest we get is KTAR 92.3 FM, which is euphemistically publicized as "news talk"; it is primarily conservative talking heads, but they do have local weather and traffic. I went out to grab some lunch last week and was flipping through the stations when I found myself listening to Glenn Beck, formerly of Faux Fox News. His guest for those few minutes was a conservative writer who claimed to have been unofficially blackballed in Hollywood due to his conservative political views. Apparently, he had written a series pilot, secured representation, and then was dropped by that representation for being an unsellable quantity, again, due to his conservative political views. The interview continued and included a soundbite from Marc Cherry, the creator of Desperate Housewives , as he discussed the inclusion of gay neighbors on Wisteria Lane a...

A Facets Reader asked me to do an article in response to this Op-Ed piece from The New York Times . In a nutshell, the author of this article, Rich Benjamin, advocates an LGBTQ boycott of all heterosexual weddings this summer. Benjamin, a gay man, believes that such a boycott would drive home the point that while the LGBTQ community has allies among heterosexuals, they are not fighting hard enough for marriage equality, and LGBTQ people should not be asked to participate in an event which they are specifically excluded from having themselves as a matter of law in all but five US states and the District of Columbia. But in my view, the author contradicts himself as the column progresses. As it happens, the only wedding to which I've been invited this summer is a lesbian one. I am also an ordained minister with the Universal Life Church, specifically to perform marriages for LGBTQ individuals (although I wouldn't discriminate against heterosexuals who asked me). In jurisdict...

This article isn't going to make me any friends. In fact, I might even lose a few readers. I know it will surprise a great many of you. In any case, I urge you to read the entire article, and engage me in the comments if you disagree. That's what this experiment is supposed to be about. On May 14th, Arizona State University held their hispanic convocation, graduating Latino students. Many of these students are illegal immigrants, and were concerned about their prospects following graduation as they would not only have difficulty finding work in this economy, but by law, are not permitted to work. Many of these students explained to local news reporters that they were brought here as children by their parents, and had no choice in the matter. The same week, the DREAM Act was re-introduced in Congress, and if passed, would give these students a path to citizenship. The DREAM act website lists the following criteria for conditional permanent residency, should the act be passe...