Debate This!

The L.A. Times has a neat article on the growing trend of "performance debate," roughly speaking, debate that utilizes unconventional "guerilla" tactics to subvert doiminant debating paradigms and offer new ways of looking at topics. The simplest version is the kritik. But several teams go well beyond that:

At a recent Malibu contest, Brett Beeler of Cal State Fullerton stopped mid-sentence in a debate and asked teammate Caitlin Gray for a document.

As she rummaged around, Beeler impatiently left the podium and whispered heatedly at her. The tiff escalated, and suddenly he slapped her.

The judge of the debate came unglued. "You need to leave right now!" he shouted at Beeler.

But the slap was an act — a way to breathe life into the otherwise dry debate topic, a court case involving domestic violence.

"I really did believe it was an incident of domestic abuse," said the judge, Orion Steele, a professor at the University of Redlands. "It took me a good half-hour to cool down." Then he awarded the victory to Fullerton.

Each of Fullerton's two-person debate squads uses a strategy tailored to individual members' backgrounds.

Puja Chopra and Parija Patel, both of Indian descent, sit down and meditate in debates to symbolize that arguing over legislation is pointless because true change must come from within.
[...]
When performance teams face each other, things can get pretty weird. Long Beach State once faced two women from Concordia College in Minnesota who stripped down to G-strings and talked about reclaiming their bodies from objectification by men.

The all-male California team couldn't get past the distraction. "Their brains left them," said Neesen, their coach.

Another contest pitted a Fort Hays student dancing with a chair against a Northwestern team reading the script of "Dr. Strangelove." The topic was federal control of Native American land.

Another prominent tactic is quoting rap lyrics in rounds.

Kevin Drum says that actions such as this "better suited for a career on Fox News than the debaters of my parents' generation."

I don't think that's true, and I think it mistakes the role of these performative debates. Although the L.A. Times tries to pitch performance debate as in opposition to obscure post-modern philosophers, there are actually very deep theoretical roots to this sort of debate. Much of the argumentative justification for why this sort of debate is legitimate, what its impacts are, etc, stem directly from the most cutting edge philosophy out there today. In other words, it isn't just theatrics--it's got a real and sustained connection to important educational concepts. To take the rap lyrics example, I've quoted with approval Professor Paul Butler's stellar article Much Respect: Toward a Hip-Hop Theory of Punishment. That rap music, as an expression of the lived-experience of at least portions of Black America, may have something to tell us about policies and procedures that disproportionately impact Black Americans shouldnot surprise us. Ultimately, the use of rap lyrics is not meaningfully different from, say, the law and literature movement. Many scholars have discussed the importance of narratives as a means of giving credance to suppressed voices--driving home the oppression they face and the horrors they've realized. Dry debate over abstractions, they argue, makes it easy to rationalize oppression--but it's much harder to say that this person in this story has been treated justly and fairly.

One can argue that this type of debate isn't ideal, or find flaws in it. And that's fine. One could also argue that certain judges tend to fetishize it at the expense of fairly adjudicating rounds, and I'd probably agree with that too. But I still think that the presence of performative strategies in debate is legitimate, and it catches way more flack from traditionalists than can really be warranted based on the educational precepts debate claims to uphold.

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Even performative debaters still want you to cast a ballot...

Stalag 2006

I'm going to excerpt this piece about the classic movie Stalag 17 the exact same way Andrew Sullivan does:

While Stalag 17's [American] prisoners are planning their escapes, and the Germans are trying to stop them, both sides keep referring to this dopey sort of rulebook called "the Geneva Conventions." These appear to be rules about the fair treatment of prisoners - I dunno, not torturing them, for instance - and even the Nazis obey them. Weird, huh?

A lot hinges on them, as a plot gimmick, but the characters seem to take them for granted. Even though it's a war, there are still things you don't do. Which, if only for story purposes, explains why the movie isn't two hours of Otto Preminger holding William Holden's head under water ...

This isn't supposed to take anything away from the Nazis as the villains of the piece --you can see it in the kommandant's beady little burgher eyes that he wishes he could get around the Conventions - but the rules are the rules.

Even if the rules are - how did the Attorney General put it? - "quaint."

But here's the thing. If you accept that the Geneva Conventions are just an annoying formality, like recycling - and I guess we do now - it ruins the whole movie. There's no drama in it. Because the Third Reich isn't even trying. The prisoners get mail from home. They get visits from the Red Cross. They aren't even kept in cages. No one hoods them, or electrocutes them, or pretends to execute them, or places them in a "stress position" or walks them around on a leash. At one of the darkest points in the story, one of them is forced to stand for a few days without sleep. Like that even hurts.

Don't the guards want their country to win? ...

It is rather amazing, when you think about it.

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In some places, people aren't allowed to vote. They should click the link:

Resigned To Corruption

According to Paul Mirengoff, there is a simple and profound difference between Democrats and Republicans on corruption:

One of the fundamental differences between Republicans and Democrats usually becomes evident when there's a scandal. When Republicans are caught misbehaving, they normally resign. Recall Rep. Livingston who immediately called it quits over a sex scandal. By contrast, Bill Clinton, with the solid support of his party, was clinging to power even though he had committed perjury in connection with a sex scandal. If such Republicans aren't inclined to resign, the odds are good that either their caucus or their constituents will promptly toss them overboard.

Interesting theory. Let's test it, shall we?

In the last congress, there were 18 Senators and Congressmen who were under federal investigation. 14 were Republicans. Of those, four resigned while in office. For two (Bob Ney and Duke Cunningham), it occurred roughly concurrent with a criminal conviction, so no props. Tom DeLay did resign prior to any criminal conviction, but only after trying to seize even more power for himself, and certainly (as his new blog shows with no sense of shame or remorse. Still, we will count Rep. DeLay as having resigned in the face of scandal. That's one. And Mark Foley also resigned pretty much as the scandal broke, so that's two.

Of the 10 remaining Republicans, two (Sen. Bill Frist and Rep. Jim Kolbe) had announced their retirement at the end of the term, but did not resign (and were not popularly thought of as having been forced into retirement due to scandal). Two more (Sen. Conrad Burns and Rep. Curt Weldon) ran for re-election but were defeated, while Katherine Harris became the GOP's Senate candidate and lost her seat that way. The five remaining GOPers are still in Congress. They are Reps. Rick Renzi, Jerry Lewis, and John Doolittle, and Senators Ted Stevens and Arlen Specter. Lewis was the chair of the House Appropriations Committee, Doolittle was the House Republican Conference Secretary, Specter was the Senate Judiciary Committee Chair, and Stevens was the Senate Appropriations Committee Chair (and Senate pro tempore). So these aren't small fish. With the exception of Senator Specter (where it is happening for reasons wholly unrelated to corruption), I am aware of no calls for any of these people to relinquish their committee assignment.

Of course, this list does not include politicians whose scandals have not yet prompted a federal investigation (like Dennis Hastert). Still, even with the limited data that we have, some interesting themes develop. On the one hand, 9 of the 14 officials under investigation are no longer in Congress. So that's a point in the GOPs favor. On the other hand, only four of those nine left voluntarily, and only two of those left because of scandal. So that's a point against. There also has been no discussion of action against those Congressmen who have refused to relinquish their seats, as there has been in the case of three of the four Democrats under investigation (Reps. Jane Harman, Alan Mollohan, and William Jefferson; the fourth is Sen. Bob Menendez). At least one corrupt politician was given the opportunity to be promoted (Harris in Florida). Ultimately, only 2 of 14 GOP elected officials under investigation left office due to scandal, or 14%. That isn't a great margin, and certainly not enough to warrant Mr. Mirengoff's claim.

Though none of the four investigated Democrats has left office, there have been significant actions taken against them. Harman was denied a coveted chair of the Intelligence Committee, in part because she was seen as too close to Israel (which is related to the federal investigation into her connections to AIPAC). Jefferson, of course, was stripped of his committee assignment, and many prominent Democratic voices have urged that he be denied reseating come 2007. Compare that Republicans, which tried to specifically protect Tom DeLay from punishment in the event he was indicted. Moreover, since there are 3.5x as many Republicans as Democrats under investigation in the first place, and Republicans only resign due to scandal at a rate of 1 in 7, there are simply fewer Democrats available to do the "right thing", because fewer are doing the wrong thing in the first place.

In the end, the most even-handed assessment I can make is that: a) there are more corrupt Republicans than Democrats; b) when caught, individual Republicans may be marginally more likely to resign than Democrats who are caught; and c) Democrats are more likely to punish their non-resigning corrupt politicians than are Republicans. Any corruption, of course, is too much corruption, and both parties are not nearly committed enough to rooting it out for my tastes. But to suggest that the GOP is more responsive to corruption in its midst is simply fanciful, and the data does not bear it out.

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Urging once-a-day voting seems oddly appropriate now...

Drug War

Despite my hippie reputation, I'm a pretty straight-laced guy. I don't smoke, drink, or do drugs, and I never have. I also do not buy libertarian arguments that drug laws are per se immoral as a "victimless crime," and agree that in theory, drug distribution is something the government can regulate and/or criminalize.

That being said, the manner in which the drug war has been prosecuted is so destructive, militarized, and excessive as to deprive it of any legitimacy it otherwise would possess. It is discriminatorily targeted at minority communities, it takes away needed resources from other law enforcement priorities, it leads to absurd political competitions amongst elected officials to appear "tough," and it has ushered in a police culture of complete disregard for law, legal restrictions, and basic norms of justice in the pursuit of conviction at any cost.



I got this picture from The Agitator, whose coverage on drug war excesses has been stellar. Tell me, does this picture represent the America you and I think we live in?

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Crossing Poland

A long while back, I wrote a post positing that if Hitler had not invaded Poland, nobody would have cared about his genocide. Obviously, had Hitler not been expansionist, the death toll of the Holocaust would have been greatly reduced, but it still would have been horrific--the number of German Jews alone killed was around 200,000. The "it's not our problem" line of thinking allows us to ignore atrocities that are contained within one country's borders, and thus sanctions the mass killing going there. This dynamic, I argued, was going on in Darfur. And without any sort of regional implications, the Sudanese regime apparently would be allowed to continue killing with impunity.

But the thing about "contained" catastrophes is that it's hard to contain them. Refugee pressure, ethnic allies in neighboring countries, and generic instability can all push an intramural conflict into an interstate conflaguration. And it appears that might be what's happening in Darfur:

The crisis in Darfur has exploded in recent weeks, and now threatens to drag fragile neighboring countries into a regional war.

Both Chad and the Central African Republic (CAR) have become engulfed in fighting that involves a toxic mix of rebel groups, government forces, armed militias, and civilians.

"It's not a steady deterioration," Jan Egeland, the outgoing UN humanitarian chief, told reporters last week. "It's a free fall, and it includes Darfur, eastern Chad, and northern Central African Republic."

In the past month alone, nearly 60,000 Darfurians have been forced from their homes to escape massacre at the hands of Arab militias known as the janjaweed. Aid workers, UN personnel, and independent observers say the janjaweed are backed by Sudan's government, but Khartoum has repeatedly denied this charge.

In eastern Chad, hundreds of aid workers have been evacuated due to increased hostilities between military forces and anti-government rebel groups, while Arab militiamen have ventured deeper into the country to conduct assaults, resulting in the displacement of nearly 100,000 Chadians.

And atrocities committed by a variety of rebel groups and armed bandits over the past few months have forced tens of thousands of people from the CAR to cross the border into Chad.

"The internal conflicts in Darfur, Chad, and the CAR are now linked by the regional presence and movement of armed groups, arms, and civilians across the three borders," said Georgette Gagnon, deputy director of the Africa division of Human Rights Watch. "And of course, the regional governments are using these insurgencies to carry out a proxy war against each other."

It would indeed be ironic if the prospect of an all-out regional war is what finally motivated the international community to get serious about ending the killing (when it's probably too late). But what lesson do we take from this? When we try to ignore internal conflicts as "not our problem", they become "our problem" because they metastasize into major threats to international stability. Had we not been locked into this short-sighted mindset, we could have nipped the Darfur situation before it got out of hand (and saved hundreds of thousands of lives in the process). Now, it may very well be too late. As with when Hitler crossed into Poland, the only way to stop the genocide now, in all likelihood, is to hope the right parties win the war.

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Vote, if you'd like:

God's Work

Jeffrey Goldberg has a fascinating review of Jimmy Carter's new book, Peace Not Apartheid, which has come under withering fire for its anti-Israel slant. This passage made me smile:

Carter, not unlike God, has long been disproportionately interested in the sins of the Chosen People. He is famously a partisan of the Palestinians, and in recent months he has offered a notably benign view of Hamas, the Islamist terrorist organization that took power in the Palestinian territories after winning a January round of parliamentary elections.

There are differences, however, between Carter's understanding of Jewish sin and God's. God, according to the Jewish Bible, tends to forgive the Jews their sins. And God, unlike Carter, does not manufacture sins to hang around the necks of Jews when no sins have actually been committed.

But the more interesting part of the review was about the interplay between the book and evangelical support for Israel. Conservatives have tried to tag Carter's book as a sign that Democrats no long support the Jewish State. The problem is that there is no evidence that Democrats care a whit what Carter has to say on the subject. When questioned on the issue, Nancy Pelosi remarked:

With all due respect to former President Carter, he does not speak for the Democratic Party on Israel. Democrats have been steadfast in their support of Israel from its birth, in part because we recognize that to do so is in the national security interests of the United States. We stand with Israel now and we stand with Israel forever. The Jewish people know what it means to be oppressed, discriminated against, and even condemned to death because of their religion. They have been leaders in the fight for human rights in the United States and throughout the world. It is wrong to suggest that the Jewish people would support a government in Israel or anywhere else that institutionalizes ethnically based oppression, and Democrats reject that allegation vigorously.

That's a pretty strong repudiation.

But Goldberg claims that the primary targets of Carter's book (in terms of who he's trying to persuade) are not liberals but fellow evangelicals, whom he wants to pull away from pro-Israel politics. The right-wing love for Israel always struck me as a rather odd position--it's not like there is a long history of Christian love for Jews, and Jews have steadfastly refused to ally with the evangelical right on pretty much any substantive issue they care about. Carter may think that they might be crackable:

Why is Carter so hard on Israeli settlements and so easy on Arab aggression and Palestinian terror? Because a specific agenda appears to be at work here. Carter seems to mean for this book to convince American evangelicals to reconsider their support for Israel. Evangelical Christians have become bedrock supporters of Israel lately, and Carter marshals many arguments, most of them specious, to scare them out of their position. Hence the Golda Meir story, seemingly meant to show that Israel is not the God-fearing nation that religious Christians believe it to be. And then there are the accusations, unsupported by actual evidence, that Israel persecutes its Christian citizens. On his fateful first visit to Israel, Carter takes a tour of the Galilee and writes, "It was especially interesting to visit with some of the few surviving Samaritans, who complained to us that their holy sites and culture were not being respected by Israeli authorities -- the same complaint heard by Jesus and his disciples almost two thousand years earlier."

There are, of course, no references to "Israeli authorities" in the Christian Bible. Only a man who sees Israel as a lineal descendant of the Pharisees could write such a sentence. But then again, the security fence itself is a crime against Christianity, according to Carter; it "ravages many places along its devious route that are important to Christians." He goes on, "In addition to enclosing Bethlehem in one of its most notable intrusions, an especially heartbreaking division is on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives, a favorite place for Jesus and his disciples." One gets the impression that Carter believes that Israelis -- in their deviousness -- somehow mean to keep Jesus from fulfilling the demands of His ministry.

I'm not sure how much credibiliy Carter has in the evangelical community these days, so I'm not sure how effective his plea will be. Nevertheless, it does perhaps foreshadow a worrisome trend.

At the end of the day, Leon Hadar remarks:

I'm not sure whether Carter doesn't like Israelis or hates Jews but from my perspective, he would go down in history as someone who made a huge contribution to Israel's security through his successful mediation of the Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.

That should be true. Obviously, Carter did Israel a great service in brokering the peace treaty with Egypt. I am perfectly content to remember him for that, and proceed to forget every thing else he does in the region for the remainder of his life.

Jefferson Morley has a round-up of folks talking.

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That's New Orleans

Corrupt Congressman William "$90,000 in the freezer" Jefferson won re-election in a run-off against fellow Democrat Karen Carter. Given the controversy, he won surprisingly comfortably--57% to 43%.

Obviously, this is a black-eye to Democrats trying to claim the mantle of fighting corruption. On the other hand, he may not be an embarassment for that much longer. Anyone want to venture an over/under on how long he'll remain in Congress?

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It don't mean a fink, if you don't vote Debate Link (shout out for Ella Fitzgerald!)

Elections. Yay.

The Washington Post reports that Palestinian President Abbas may call for early elections. Palestinian government has been in an state of gridlock--both because the West refuses to recognize it so long as it refuses to recognize Israel, and because there is bitter internal feud by Abbas' Fatah Party and the ruling Hamas.

Might I inquire what this is supposed to accompolish?

Obviously, I know the theory behind it: A new election might shake up the status quo enough so their can be some movement on the peace process. The problems, though, are

1) There is no guarantee that pro-peace elements will win a new election. Indeed, I'm not exactly sure what party a Palestinian would vote for if they are pro-peace, as neither Fatah nor Hamas really have expressed much of an interest in stopping terrorism. The lack of viable peace party in Palestine does not signal that a majority of Palestinians don't want peace, merely that a majority of Palestinians in organized gun-bearing groups don't want peace, and are willing to intimidate others to insure it doesn't happen.

2) There is no guarantee that any major shift in electoral power will take place peacefully. Hamas and Fatah are already on the verge of a civil war. Any internal instability could easily spill into Israel, prompting their own intervention.

3) It is supremely unlikely that a new government would be stable enough to meet the key demands of the West--recognition of Israel. Groups willing to entertain the notion simply don't have enough power vis-a-vis rejectionist groups (who certainly won't lay down arms just because they come up on the wrong side of a vote).

I'm a big fan of democracy generally, but democractic action in Palestine right now is not necessarily going to lead to peace. Let's not get too excited.

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As a certain rapper would say...VOTE OR DIE

An Anti-Heteronormative Reading of Leviticus 18:22

Thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. Lev. 18:22

It is not good for man to be alone. -- Gen. 2:18

I just got back from services today, where I had the pleasure of listening to Marilyn Wind, a congregant and lay member of the Committee on Jewish Laws and Standards (CJLS), discuss the committees recent debate and Teshuvot on the issues of gay rights. I also got the opportunity to read the (still unreleased) opinion by Rabbi Tucker, and it was (as expected), phenomenal. I had to give Ms. Wind the opinion back, but she promised to make and send me a copy--as soon as I receive it, I'll be able to go into more depth as to Rabbi Tucker's interpretative schema.

But as I was reading his opinion, I was struck with an interesting paradox in how we read the biblical prohibition against homosexuality. The relevant line is, as quoted above, thou shalt not lie with a man as with a woman, for it is an abomination. This passage is considered to be the largest barrier against religious reconceptualization of gay rights. We interpret it as an absolute bar against homosexual (or at least gay male) activity. "As with a women" supposedly refers to sexual activity. This is a heteronormative interpretation--only for heterosexual males (and homosexual females) are one's lyings with a women sexual. Cross-applying the rule to homosexuals means taking the heteronormative viewpoint and transplanting the rule (as opposed to the text) to homosexual persons.

But is that necessarily the proper interpretation? The prohibition is not phrased directly--it does not say "men should not have sex with men." The first thing we must observe is that the mandate of the text depends very heavily on who it is speaking to. Even if we accept that the prohibition is on having sex with men, it is facile to suggest that a female Jew is prohibited from having sex with men. In its normative frame, the verse makes no sense applied directly to women. This does not in itself prove anything--one could extrapolate an inverted rule prohibiting lesbian activity for women (though such extra-textualism strikes me as a dangerous maneuver for a traditionalist). It does establish, however, that the standpoint of the reader matters as to the meaning of the phrase. At its most conservative, 18:22 means two entirely opposite things for men and for women: men should not have sex with men, and women should not have sex with women.

A law can only have force against those it is meant to speak to. A prohibition that only refers to Kohenim should not be expanded all Jews. If we understand the prohibition of 18:22 to be against male-male sex, then it can only apply to men, it does not "speak to" female activity in any sense, either (obviously) prohibiting them from having sex with men, or prohibiting them from having sex with women.

It is possible to make the law apply to women, however. From a (heterosexual) female perspective, "not lying with a man as one lies with a women" does not mean "don't have sex with men," because heterosexual women do not have sex with women when they lie with them. For straight women, the analogy "as one lies with a women" does not and cannot refer to sexual activity. Indeed, it means the opposite--presumably, heterosexual women would lie with other women completely platonically. So the law as applied to heterosexual women is that they should not (artificially) be barred from having sex with men they wish to "lie with", for that would imply they must lie with men as they lie with women (non-sexually or platonically). Now, even though I think that for women it is better to interpret 18:22 in a "does not speak to" manner, hold that thought.

As noted above, the law can only have affect against those to whom it speaks. If 18:22 does not speak to homosexual men, then it has nothing to say to them, and its prohibition is inapplicable to them. And it is rather clear that the traditional reading of 18:22 is heteronormative--it is not just speaking to men, but heterosexual men. This is true for the same reason applying the law to females is troublesome--"as with a women" does not mean the same thing for a homosexual male as it does for a heterosexual male. How does a homosexual male lie with a women? Platonically, not sexually. If the law is speaking to homosexuals, not lying with a man as with a women is telling them they should not lie platonically with men. Phrased more sensibly, it says that gay men should not be forced to be in platonic relationships with other gay men, for that forces their relationships to be as they would be with women. (Of course, just as the metaphor "as with a woman" in the normative case does not mean that heterosexual men sleep with every women and cannot have a platonic relationship, neither does its use in this case imply that homosexual men must have sex with every man they encounter.).

The upshot of this is astounding: 18:22 is read as an affirmation that every person should refrain from attempting to engage in sexual relations--not with those of the same sex--but with those whom they are not attracted to. It is a prohibition against bearing false witness against oneself. Interpreting the passage in this manner allows for its universalizability and, more importantly, it is the only way the passage can be made intelligible to someone with a same-sex sexual orientation. It also seems to be more thematically consistent with the human dignity and companionship norms that undergird Jewish ethical thought: it reinforces the notion that forcing gay men and women to live a life alone is not just inadvisable, but wrong--just like it was not good for Adam to be alone, so it is not good for gay men to be trapped in the closet, forced to deny themselves and unable to reach complete fulfillment as human beings.

The orthodox reading of 18:22 falters because it takes a heteronormative viewpoint it expands it to all men, homo- or heterosexual. It presumes that for all men, sex is how one lies with a women, draws a rule from that inference, then applies the rule against those for whom the original supposition does not apply. This likely stems from the belief that homosexuality was a aberration from the heterosexual norm--that for all men (including the supposedly gay) the natural inclination was a sexual preference towards women, and gay men were voluntarily choosing to deviate from that norm. Now that we know that this is not true, and that for many men sexual attraction to women is not their default state, we can no longer read "as with a women" as necessarily referring to sex for all men. That is not a tenable interpretation in the modern era. And given what we now know about sexuality, a liberal, humane alternative emerges that celebrates sexual equality and rejects false heteronormative bindings that consign gay Jews to a life of oppression and degradation.

Again, the preceding analysis doesn't mean you have to read 18:22 expansively (as prohibiting gay men from having sex with women). Such a reading is only required if one believes the passage speaks to (can be read against) gay men. If one does not care about that, a narrow reading would just say that the passage does not speak to gay men at all, and the prohibition is only against heterosexual male-male sex, perhaps meant as a bar against certain cultic rituals (as Rabbi Brad Artson has forwarded). Either way 18:22 poses no bar to homosexual males being granted equal standing in the community and full recognition of their sexual orientation. The claim that 18:22 does not speak to homosexuals would mean that the Bible is agnostic toward homosexual activity among homosexuals. That's radical enough. What makes my alternative reading so incredible is that it would suggest that not only is homosexuality okay, but attempting to suppress it--making gay men lie with women as they would lie with men--is qualitatively wrong. 18:22 is thus rendered precisely opposite its orthodox stance: a ringing endorsement of gay equality and a condemnation of the closet.

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Synagogue Services

I'm attending Synagogue Services tomorrow. Since I go to a Conservative (capital "C") congregation, the focus will be on the recent Teshuvot our movement issued on gay rights (blogged here and here). There's no real drama on which policy we'll follow (it's a very liberal congregation), but the discussion should be interesting. I'll let you know if there are any particularly trenchant insights to be had.

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And don't forget to vote!

Firefly's Back!

As an online RPG! I've never actually played a MMORPG before, but I may have to make an exception, for Firefly is a truly special series that deserves all the support it can get.

Via Instapundit, who says: "Shiny"!

Guess Who?

What Republican said this in 1994?

There's something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation. When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he's seen as an extremist. When [I] speak[] on gay rights [I'm] seen as a centrist and a moderate. It's a little like if Eugene McCarthy was arguing in favor of recognizing China, people would have called him a nut. But when Richard Nixon does it, it becomes reasonable. When Ted says it, it's extreme; when I say it, it's mainstream. I think the gay community needs more support from the Republican Party and I would be a voice in the Republican Party to foster anti-discrimination efforts.

The other thing I should say is that the gay community and the members of it that are friends of mine that I've talked to don't vote solely on the basis of gay rights issues. They're also very concerned about a $4 trillion national debt, a failing school system, a welfare system that's out of whack and a criminal justice system that isn't working. I believe that while I would further the efforts Ted Kennedy has led, I would also lead the country in new and far more positive ways in taxing and spending, welfare reform, criminal justice and education. That's why I believe many gay and lesbian individuals will support my candidacy and do support my candidacy.

Hint: He's a favorite of the Christian Right today.

Counter-Mobilization: Myth or Reality?

Over at Tapped, Scott Lemieux argues that the experience of Canada disproves the "counter-mobilization" myth with regard to gay rights. The counter-mobilzation theory holds that aggressive gay rights litigation and court decisions lead to a backlash from the populace at large, ultimately harming the movement. Lemieux says that Canada proves no such thing occurs:

Gay rights litigation has been very successful in our neighbor to the north, with major victories at both the federal and provincial levels (including with respect to marriage benefits. According to oft-cited conventional wisdom, this success should have been a disaster for the gay rights movement, mobilizing a huge backlash and setting the cause back for generations as citizens were incensed by decision by "activist" courts. The problem is that this is not, in fact, true. Not only did Parliament end up formally recognizing gay marriage, but gay marriage has continued to become more popular, now commanding the support of almost 60% of the Canadian public.

That may well be, but I'm not sure this totally disproves the counter-mobilization theory. My observation was that pathbreaking gay rights judicial decisions do spark a backlash, but not in the jurisdiction their made in. The response to the Goodridge decision, for example, was far more hostile around the country than it ever was in Massachusetts specifically. The anti-gay impacts were felt most acutely in Ohio or Oregon, not that Bay State. Massachusetts denizens, of course, got to observe the effects of gay marriage first hand and were able to conclude that the sky didn't fall. But voters elsewhere had no such direct experience and thus only saw gay marriage presented by demagogic figures through the prism of a grave, imminent threat to the family.

Hence, I think the counter-mobilization hypothesis still makes sense when outsiders hear of a path-breaking gay rights decision elsewhere. Without the countervailing factor of actually observing gay families, counter-moblization can still occur. This doesn't mean abandoning litigation as a strategy, but it does mean that progressives must push harder for the visibility of gay and lesbian families across the country, not just in the stereotypical "hotspots."

Throwing It In

Tom Friedman on the Imus radio show, via Atrios:

We need to set a date, a clear and defined date, circled on the calendar, for us to leave there.

So, he's finally calling it quits. Tom Friedman, who has supported this war from the beginning, who has stuck through all of Bush's mistakes and catastrophes in the vain hope that we could find the magic bullet, has said we have to withdraw.

I think now would be a great time to revisit one of the most poignant quotes from his interview with me last August:

People come up to me now, because I've written an article basically saying Iraq's not working, and they say "Oh, thank you. Thank you for finally seeing the light." And my attitude is rather hostile to those people. Because I don’t think these people understood the problem from the beginning, and I don't want their thank you now. I feel terrible about Iraq. But I don't feel terrible because I'm going to be seen as someone who was on the wrong side of the war. I feel terrible first of all for all the casualties, and the incredible human devastation--American and Iraqi. But what I really feel terrible about, David, is this project. I thought it was really important. I still think it's important. And I have no apologies to make about thinking it's important. It's still important. I still hope we can salvage something. And so, I don't want anyone to say "Thank you for seeing the light." I haven't seen any light at all. All I've seen is darkness. Because if this project fails, only bad things will come of it for the world that my girls are going to grow up in.

A few days ago, Glenn Greenwald wrote a vicious critique of Mr. Friedman's contribution to Iraq War discourse. While I thought it far harsher than it needed to be, there was one point that I thought legitimate: Supporting the war based on the theoretical "best policy", when this administration has shown no interest in adapting that policy (or even trying to figure out what a "best policy" might look like) is wrong. It is delusional, it is folly, and it is wrong.

It may well be there is the magic combination of policies that can set Iraq right. I have no confidence that the Bush administration will adapt those policies. It is also true that the best reason for both staying in and leaving Iraq is what happens if we do the opposite. Staying in Iraq means being stuck in the middle of a mid-grade civil war that we cannot fix or end, while our global position degrades each day and our military grows more disillusioned and bogged down. Leaving Iraq means plunging it into a brutal bloodbath that could possibly pull the entire region into war--and it would be our fault. There is no good option. But I cannot continue to support a failed policy on the grounds that some administration, somewhere, could still solve the Iraqi dilemma. This one can't. And I can no longer ask American soldiers to die for our leadership's mistakes.

Kassim Ouma

In one of the odder twists of my life, attending to Carleton has made me into a pro boxing fan. Not because Carleton is some hotspot of boxing activity (not even close!). Rather it is for the far more mundane reasons that the old boxing matches on ESPN Classic were often the only thing on late at night, and with my hours I found myself watching. And I became hooked.

This weekend, a fighter by the name of Kassim Ouma (25-2-1, 15 KOs) will fight Super Middleweight Champion Jermain Taylor (25-0-1, 17 KOs) for the world title. Taylor I last saw in a bout against Winky Wright (one of my favorite fighters), where Taylor escaped (in the most literal sense--I thought Wright won the fight) with a draw. Ouma I knew little about other than his recent victory over the highly regarded Sechew Powell.

In boxing, there are a lot of hard stories. But Ouma's stands out as particularly heart-rending. Forced to fight as a child soldier in Uganda's brutal civil war, Ouma was endured atrocities most of us can scarecely imagine:

"The thing is Kassim has to learn to realize that he was a victim then and he's a victim now. He has to learn to let go of the guilt for the decisions he had to make in order to survive. I really believe he has massive issues of post-traumatic stress that he's dealt with as best he could. But the memories are never far from the surface, and almost anything can dredge those memories up" [says manager/translator Tom Moran].

In Ouma's case, those memories are like scars upon his psyche. He was just 6 years old when rebels stormed into his grade school in Busia, Uganda, in 1984 and abducted all the boys. Ouma and his frightened classmates were herded into the back of a garbage truck and driven into the bush, where they were forced to fight with the guerrillas.

Handed an AK-47 that was larger than he was, Ouma suddenly found himself a kadogo in Yoweri Museveni's rebel army.

The first day, Moran relates, the adult soldiers told the children that "there's no more mommies and daddies now" and that "if you cry something's going to happen to you."

Some of the kids cried and, true to their word, they did not live long enough to fathom the high cost of their tears. Ouma was even ordered to shoot one of his friends, or run the risk of suffering the same grisly fate. Simultaneously terrified and repulsed, he complied.

"Can you imagine?" Moran said, aghast that such atrocities can exist and be forced upon the youngest and most vulnerable members of even a violent society. "This is what Kassim has locked up inside him.

"When he finally is ready to agree to it, I hope to get him some professional help so that he can learn to forgive himself. He made a conscious decision as a child to do things, terrible things, which no one should ever have to do. He feels responsibility and guilt for, well, still being alive. That's what torments him and he can't let go of."

Ouma escaped from combat by joining the Ugandan national boxing team, and defected to the United States in 1998, leaving behind his wife and children. His father was beaten to death by the Ugandan army as a result. He was homeless. And this weekend, he's fighting one the best boxers in the sport for the Super Middleweight crown.

I'll be rooting for him.

Teshuvah of Rabbis Nevins, Dorff, and Reisner

I'm still working my way through the 55 page opinion, but if you want to take a look, it's available online. There's is the liberal teshuvah of the three passed, which allows for same-sex commitment ceremonies, rabbinic ordinations, and lifts the prohibition on all homosexual sex but male-male anal sex (oral sex and lesbian sex is still okay).

Rabbi Nevins also released a journal of remarks after the vote which sheds significant light on the other (as yet unreleased) opinions. I was particularly interested in his description of Rabbi Levy's opinion that has been described as recommending reparative therapy for homosexuals:

It has been reported that Rabbi Leonard Levy called for "reparative therapy" for gay and lesbian Jews to function as heterosexuals. This is, as Len likes to say, a "sweeping generalization." In fact, his point was that while most people who experience same-sex attraction may never be able to change that, even if highly motivated, a small percentage nevertheless may, and they should be offered that opportunity. I don't think anyone disagrees that people should be able to understand their sexual orientation with the assitance of open minded counselors. Where we disagree with Len is in his claim that you can maintain an exclusive public policy that bans all homosexual intimacy and the recognition of homosexual families while also creating a welcoming and respectful environment for people who identify as gay or lesbian. I voted against Len's paper, but I don't think it should be distorted.

I think this may be too kind to the reparative therapy position, but I am curious to read Rabbi Levy's opinion in full to get the complete picture. Unlike the other two passed opinions, which both garnered a majority of 13 out of 25 (one Rabbi voted yes for both positions), Rabbi Levy's teshuvah only received 6 votes--the bare minimum necessary to be considered legitimate.

Rabbi Nevins also talks about the two opinions which were labeled "legislation" (thus requiring 20 votes instead of 6 to pass) and thus were not passed. In this category I am particularly interested in the opinion of Rabbi Tucker:

Rabbi Gordon Tucker, submitted a general essay about theories of Jewish law, citing many modern legal theorists, especially the late Robert Cover, to argue that the law must not be immoral, and that the narrative ethical values of Judaism should direct the law in this case, rather than the reverse.

Robert Cover was a brilliant legal and Jewish theorist, and I expect Rabbi Tucker's opinion to be quite intriguing and hopefully lay the groundwork for developments in Jewish law to come.

Obviously, if anyone knows where to find the other opinions, I'd love to read them over.

Will of the People

As some of you may recall, the recent November elections were quite good for the Democratic Party. Which makes this bulletin from the American Conservative Union all the more amusing (all emphasis original):

Republicans in the U.S. Senate could have -- SHOULD HAVE -- confirmed John Bolton! They had the majority in the Senate and a majority of Senators supported John Bolton.

Majority Leader Bill Frist and Senate Republicans could have played hard-ball. They had the power to bring the nomination out of committee and to the Senate floor, where Bolton would have been easily confirmed.

Yet they did NOTHING. They cringed behind their desks, determined to sneak out of Washington this week, tails between their legs!

Last month, the American people went to the polls, turned about two dozen RINOs OUT OF office and DEMANDED conservative government! And unfortunately in the process, the GOP lost its majority and a few good men like Rick Santorum, Jim Talent and George Allen.

But apparently our leaders did not get the message!

A landslide Democratic year shows that Americans DEMANDED conservative government? Coming up in 2008: Pat Buchanan cruises to the Presidency amidst a Democratic tidal wave.

You heard it here first.

Two Jews, Three Opinions

So the old saying goes. Anyway, a Conservative Jewish panel on the issue of same-sex sex, ordination, and commitment ceremonies has approved 3 teshuvot (legal opinions) on the subject--two of which uphold the traditional view, and a third which allows for gay commitment ceremonies and ordinations, but still forbids anal sex.

This strikes me as a bit of an odd compromise--like getting Goodridge without Lawrence, but I'll take what I can get. As I noted in my previous post, Jewish teshuvot do not have to mutually compatible, or apparently even mutually intelligible. So, like with Hillel and Shammai, both "these and these are the words of the living God." The Post's article also says that three members of the 25-person panel resigned in protest of the decision, although they did not say which teshuvot they were protesting.

If anyone has links to the Teshuvot, I'd be quite interested in reading them.

UPDATE: Still no links to the Teshuvot. However, according to one site, one of the traditionalist Teshuvot "upholds the ban on gay sexual relationships in Jewish law and mentions the option for gays to undergo therapy aimed at changing their sexual orientation." If so, that is extraordinarily disappointing. I think that there are solid textualist reasons to maintain the ban on homosexual activity as a (not the, but a) teshuvot, but I think that stepping further than that into reparative therapy has no religious or normative justification, and clashes severely with the predominant scientific literature on the issue. It is a perversion of principles of Halakhah, and Rabbis should not be permitted to press for it.

Jeremy Blumenthal also has more.

Best of Luck

Mary Cheney, Dick Cheney's lesbian daughter, is pregnant.

Mary Cheney, the vice president's openly gay daughter, is pregnant. She and her partner of 15 years, Heather Poe, are "ecstatic" about the baby, due in late spring, said a source close to the couple.[...]
Cheney has described her relationship with Poe -- whom she took to last year's White House dinner honoring Prince Charles and Camilla -- as a marriage. The two met in 1988 while playing ice hockey and began dating four years later. They moved from Colorado to Virginia a year ago to be closer to Cheney's family. In an interview with the Post six months ago, when asked if she and Poe wanted children, Cheney said that was a "conversation I think I should have with Heather first."

In November, Virginia voters passed a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage and civil unions; state law is unclear on whether Poe could have full legal rights as a parent of Cheney's child. The circumstances of the pregnancy will remain private, said the source close to the couple. This is the first child for both.

Best wishes to both parents and the child. Hopefully, their new baby will be born into a world where her or his parents will possess all the rights and be afforded all the dignity that every other American has under law.

UPDATE: In reference to Virginia's draconian anti-gay legislation, Andrew Sullivan coins the term (?) homorein.

It's The Final Countdown

I am proud to inform my many, many readers that I have been named a finalist for a 2006 weblog award, in the category of best blog from 3500 - 5000 in the TTLB ecosystem. This is the first such nomination this blog has received, and I am pretty excited about it.

I've actually been spending this winter break filling out scholarship and fellowship applications, and I keep trying to work my blog in because it is something I'm very proud of and something that (I hope) showcases my skills as a writer and thinker. But I feel like outside the community, it's very difficult to make blogging sound impressive. After all, anyone can create one--what makes mine so special? So this is very much a validation for me, and regardless of whether I win or lose, hopefully I can point to this to show that my blog is not just an idle flight of ego-fantasy, but something that people do read and respect.

I won't ask you to vote for me. I will ask you to look at all the blogs in the category and, if you find mine to be the best, then vote for me.

Here are all the blogs in the category:

EagleSpeak
Another Rovian Conspiracy
The Debate Link
InsoluBlog
Martin Andrade Blogs
Right From Left
Better Living Thru Blogging
CDR Salamander
Geeky Mom
Blue Gal

Update: I've looked through all the blogs, and there is some stiff competition! For awhile though, it looked like I was the only liberal! It wasn't until the bottom of the list, with Blue Gal and Geeky Mom that there was some fellow liberal love. Meh. I'm just thrilled to be here, and to have an excuse to find some new blogs to read.

Best of luck to everyone!