a-changin.

"Ever since I saw your last name '***-***' on the roster, I've been wondering if maybe you got married in Massachusetts or something."

-- a chorus member

The New Yorker on gay men, crystal meth, and HIV

To the editor:

Michael Specter's vivid account of the current resurgence of risky sex among American gay men frankly addresses the effects of drugs and the Internet on gay men's sexual decision-making ("Higher Risk," May 23). But it leaves out a crucial actor: the Bush administration.

It is remarkable that Specter describes a meeting of Gay Men's Health Crisis volunteers, yet fails to mention the administration's cuts to funding for gay-oriented HIV prevention organizations, under new Department of Health and Human Services guidelines that make it much more difficult for them to obtain federal grants.

The effects are not abstract. In some cities, gay men have noticed that there just aren't as many free condoms available at gay establishments and events as there were just a couple of years ago. The return to risky sex practices is troubling, but so is the return to the politics of the Reagan years. Then, as now, many gay men will suffer.

Two steps forward, one step back in fighting the right

It's hard to know exactly what to think of the Great Senate Compromise and the Return of the Moderates. However, in this situation it is important to remember some things about the context. By we, I mean all Americans who were troubled by the Republican leadership's political attacks on the judiciary and direct attacks on the procedural rights of the minority party in the one place, out of the entire federal government, where it really has any power at all.

The compromise isn't perfect. But one really good thing about it is that seven relatively powerful Republicans said a very loud, formal, public "fuck you" to the religious right. They also specifically stated that it is their opinion that the "advice and consent" clause regarding judicial nominations means that the President should consult with members of the Senate, from both parties, before nominating an individual, and that they thought President Bush should do that in the future.

Let's also remember:

1) what the other side had to say about it. It's true that NARAL sent me emails about how this was a flawed, partial victory that could hurt us in some ways, but let's start off with what Gary Bauer had to say about the compromise:

"This is a sad day for our nation. The desire of millions of Americans to restore balance to our federal courts has been thwarted behind closed doors by 14 senators. Only three of President Bush's appointees are guaranteed an up or down vote under this sell out.

"Under this agreement it is now more likely that radical social change will continue to be forced on the American people by liberal courts committed to same sex marriage, abortion on demand and hostility to religious expression. The Republicans who lent their names to this travesty have undercut their President as well as millions of their most loyal voters. Shame on them all."

2) what Jeremy Posadas had to say about it (forwarding an article in an email, by which I first heard about the compromise):

This is FAR, FAR from perfect, but it preserves the most desperately important things: the right to filibuster itself, and a critical mass of Senators who can block extremist SCOTUS appointees.

3) what Geoffrey Stone had to say about it, which is really smart, I think

4) what the National Association of Manufacturers had to say this week, which suggests that OUR side should be using social issues as a wedge issues:

Some gripe GOP isn't taking care of business

By Jonathan Weisman and Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- John Engler, the former Republican governor of Michigan who now heads the National Association of Manufacturers, vowed before the November elections to use his trade association's might to back President Bush's judicial nominees. But as the Senate showdown plays out, the business group is delivering a different message: Judges are not its fight.

NAM's decision to sit out the brawl may be indicative of a broader trend. From Wall Street to Main Street, the small-government, pro-business mainstay of the Republican Party appears to be growing disaffected with a party it sees as focused on social issues at its expense.

5) That's it. Enough congratulating ourselves. Now get back to fighting the right some more. Cause there's more coming, lots more.....

Should women---already banned from direct combat----be banned from combat support roles, too?

This article, and the controversy it describes, is fascinating. It reminds of Ned Rorem's complaint that, as far as he was considered, being banned from military service was one of the few real "perks" that comes along with being gay.

It's pretty remarkable that Republicans are making this proposal - and worrying about whatever problem it's supposed to solve - in the face of the hideous personnel crisis that the Iraq war has created for the U.S. military. The vehemence of the military's reaction is pretty striking, too.

***

May 20, 2005
Chauvinism at the Battlefront

Female soldiers are barred by national policy from direct ground combat in Iraq, but that has not saved the lives of 34 American women killed so far in that lethal battlefield bereft of front lines. In a remedy steeped more in misplaced gallantry than wisdom, House Republicans ran into Pentagon opposition this week with a sudden proposal to protect women by cutting back the jobs they could hold in support units stationed to the rear of ground combat soldiers. The net effect, Army leaders properly warned, would hurt women's careers by shutting them out of more than 20,000 vital support jobs in a military effort that is already hard-pressed to keep its ranks filled with fresh volunteers.

Fighter aircraft and surface warship postings were opened to women a decade ago in a heated but progressive national debate after the Persian Gulf war. The overall policy entrusted to the Pentagon provided larger job opportunities for women in the services. Right now, with a war raging, female soldiers vital to the effort need no demoralizing intrusion into the gender issue by impulsive lawmakers.

As it turns out, the job cutback proposal created such a furor from military professionals and opposition Democrats that Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee had to retreat at the last minute, but not entirely. They approved a face-saving substitute that is less sweeping but would still give Congress excessive power to control future advancements for women in the military.

The amendment would hobble service commanders and deserves to be stricken next week in the House floor debate on the defense authorization bill.

The gruesome truth remains that war is hell, even as its front lines become viciously vague. The daily car bombings, suicide atrocities and insurgent raids show that no area of Iraq, from Humvee patrols to chow halls, is a safe haven for the occupation troops, male or female. Women have volunteered for the full range of opportunity and risk implicit in their military careers. They are proving their valor in Iraq and need no demeaning protections from Congress.

HRC. They are such ****-ups!

Date: Wednesday, May 18, 2005 7:20 PM
From: Timothy ***
Subject: Membership letter from Joe Solmonese dated May 11, 2005
To: Steven Fisher

Dear Mr. Fisher,

I wrote to you last October to tell you that I had decided to
join HRC because of the Board's change of position regarding
version of ENDA that did not include gender identity.
Although I am a non-transgender young gay man, I had been
upset for years that HRC did not include my transgender
friends and loved ones as full members in a united struggle.

I just received a letter from Joe Solmonese asking me to renew
my membership. In it, Mr. Solmonese states that in traveling
the country, he has realized that "we are all connected by a
common thread---the simple belief that every American deserves
to be treated equally, regardless of sexual orientation." I
am deeply offended by the omission of gender identity-based
equality in this most visible statement of purpose, directed
to the organization's membership, by its new President.

The letter also lists four gay or lesbian individuals and one
heterosexual couple that he met in Middle America, but no
transgender people, to whom "your support matters." While it
is true that the letter mentions transgender people (along
with straight people) in a postscript acknowledging
"collective efforts," and the enclosed profile of eight HRC
staff members includes a staffer in your department who is
identified as transgender (and thanks HRC for "stepping up in
a big way on transgender issues"), I am disturbed that HRC's
leadership apparently do not feel that---given the
organization's checkered past on trans issues---they must go
out of their way to make sure trans people are visibly and
fully included.

If the wording of the letter is simply about pandering to
members who may be transphobic, then clearly HRC has not fully
adopted its new, more inclusive mission. If, on the other
hand, there was an oversight, then I presume that Mr.
Solmonese will issue a formal, public apology for the
non-inclusive wording of his statement regarding the "common
thread" by which "we are all connected." How else can he
possibly avoid giving the impression that HRC's change in
policy was simply window-dressing?

I look forward to hearing from you regarding this matter.


In struggle,
An angry 25-year-old member,
Timothy ***
Chicago, Illinois

* * * * *

Date: Thu, 19 May 2005 14:06:03 -0400
From: Steven Fisher
Subject: RE: Membership letter from Joe Solmonese dated May 11, 2005
To: Timothy ***

Hi Timothy -- Thank you so much for alerting me to this. We're looking
into this now. Please be assured that Joe and HRC are fully committed
to equality based on gender identity and the entire gay, lesbian,
bisexual and transgender community. Someone from our membership team or
I will get back to you with more information. Once again, thank you
forwarding this to me. Steven

Call moderate Republicans TODAY

Susan Collins (R-ME)
(202) 224-2523

Chuck Hagel (R-NE)
(202) 224-4224

John Warner (R-VA)
(202) 224-2023

"I am calling to urge Senator _____to vote "NO"
on the so-called "nuclear option" that would
prevent the filibuster of nominees to federal
courts."

great lakes naval training station

SRisk1979: i have looked at their station journal from the ww2 era
SRisk1979: which chronicles sailors phoning from chicago to say they were overstaying leave, coming back trashed out of their minds, phoning from chicago to say they missed the last train
*tim’s friend*: hehehe
*tim’s friend*: sailors are hot.
SRisk1979: i'm serious.
SRisk1979: i know i just watched "on the town" with jessica tonight
SRisk1979: (1949) with gene kelly
SRisk1979: about sailors on leave in NYC
SRisk1979: and then we watched the theatrical trailer which was a DVD special feature
SRisk1979: trailers were fucking long in 1949
SRisk1979: like five minutes or something
SRisk1979: and at the end of it it said:
SRisk1979: in bold letters across the screen
SRisk1979: THREE SINGING SAILORS!
SRisk1979: THREE DANCING DAMES!
SRisk1979: TWICE AS GAY AS "ANCHORS AWEIGH"!
SRisk1979: and we just about died laughing

ahhhhhh, biopolitics.

This is so interesting. My friend Corey knows Leland Traiman (quoted in the article) really well. Corey tells me the scientific evidence supporting this regulation is far weaker than that used to keep the ban on gay blood donors. (In college Talia and I organized a petition drive against the FDA's ban on gay men donating blood, but in fact, after learning a fair amount about the AIDS crisis and the scientific arguments, I softened my stance somewhat.)

I must say I love the FDA's statement that "The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors." And would prevent some lesbian couples who want a gay male sperm donor from doing so.

BTW, an attentive reader (care to introduce yourself, Ryan?) brought up in a comment the recent incident at NYU in which a law student asked Antonin Scalia, during a question-and-answer period, whether or not he sodomizes his wife. The student's message to his classmates about the incident was published on the Nation's website, and it's very articulate (and, I think, right).
-tim


May 5, 2005
F.D.A. to Implement Gay Sperm Donor Rules
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 11:26 p.m. ET

NEW YORK (AP) -- To the dismay of gay-rights activists, the Food and Drug Administration is about to implement new rules recommending that any man who has engaged in homosexual sex in the previous five years be barred from serving as an anonymous sperm donor.

The FDA has rejected calls to scrap the provision, insisting that gay men collectively pose a higher-than-average risk of carrying the AIDS virus. Critics accuse the FDA of stigmatizing all gay men rather than adopting a screening process that focuses on high-risk sexual behavior by any would-be donor, gay or straight.

''Under these rules, a heterosexual man who had unprotected sex with HIV-positive prostitutes would be OK as a donor one year later, but a gay man in a monogamous, safe-sex relationship is not OK unless he's been celibate for five years,'' said Leland Traiman, director of a clinic in Alameda, Calif., that seeks gay sperm donors.

Traiman said adequate safety assurances can be provided by testing a sperm donor at the time of the initial donation, then freezing the sperm for a six-month quarantine and testing the donor again to be sure there is no new sign of HIV or other infectious diseases.

Although there is disagreement over whether the FDA guideline regarding gay men will have the force of law, most doctors and clinics are expected to observe it.

The practical effect of the provision -- part of a broader set of cell and tissue donation regulations that take effect May 25 -- is hard to gauge. It is likely to affect some lesbian couples who want a child and prefer to use a gay man's sperm for artificial insemination.

But it is the provision's symbolic aspect that particularly troubles gay-rights groups. Kevin Cathcart, executive director of Lambda Legal, has called it ''policy based on bigotry.''

''The part I find most offensive -- and a little frightening -- is that it isn't based on good science,'' Cathcart said. ''There's a steadily increasing trend of heterosexual transmission of HIV, and yet the FDA still has this notion that you protect people by putting gay men out of the pool.''

In a letter to the FDA, Lambda Legal has suggested a screening procedure based on sexual behavior, not sexual orientation. Prospective donors -- gay or straight -- would be rejected if they had engaged in unprotected sex in the previous 12 months with an HIV-positive person, an illegal drug user, or ''an individual of unknown HIV status outside of a monogamous relationship.''

But an FDA spokeswoman cited FDA documents suggesting that officials felt the broader exclusion was prudent even if it affected gay men who practice safe sex.

''The FDA is very much aware that strict exclusion policies eliminate some safe donors,'' said one document.

Many doctors and fertility clinics already have been rejecting gay sperm donors, citing the pending FDA rules or existing regulations of the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.

''With an anonymous sperm donor, you can't be too careful,'' said a society spokeswoman, Eleanor Nicoll. ''Our concern is for the health of the recipient, not to let more and more people be sperm donors.''

However, some sperm banks, notably in California, have welcomed gay donors. The director of one of them, Alice Ruby of the Oakland-based Sperm Bank of California, said her staff had developed procedures for identifying gay men with an acceptably low risk of HIV.

Gay men are a major donor source at Traiman's Rainbow Flag sperm bank, and he said that practice would continue despite the new rules.

''We're going to continue to follow judicious, careful testing procedures for our clients that even experts within the FDA say is safe,'' said Traiman, referring to the six-month quarantine.

The FDA rules do not prohibit gay men from serving as ''directed'' sperm donors. If a woman wishing to become pregnant knows a gay man and asks that he provide sperm for artificial insemination, a clinic could provide that service even if the man had engaged in sex with other men within five years.

However, Traiman said some lesbian couples do not have a gay friend they know and trust well enough to be the biological father of their child, and would thus prefer an anonymous donor.

Dr. Deborah Cohan, an obstetrics and gynecology instructor at the University of California, San Francisco, said some lesbians prefer to receive sperm from a gay donor because they feel such a man would be more receptive to the concept of a family headed by a same-sex couple.

''This rule will make things legally more difficult for them,'' she said. ''I can't think of a scientifically valid reason -- it has to be an issue of discrimination.''

^------

On the Net:

FDA site: http://www.fda.gov

Exceptions

At dinner at a friend's house on Saturday night, I had a conversation with a guy who said, and I quote, "I'm straight, but, you know, every now and then I'll make an exception." It made my night. I told him I wanted to to have a party soon, just so that he could come and other people ther ecould hear him describe himself that way.

Development of Gay and Lesbian Subcultures

I was flipping through the table of contents of a college US History textbook today, and was startled to find a subsection called "Development of Gay and Lesbian Subcultures," within a larger section on "Patterns of Ethnicity, Race, Class, and Gender," itself within a chapter on "Prosperity Decade, 1920-1928."

I've seen US History textbooks that include a mention of the Stonewall Riots in a section on 1960s social movements, but I've never seen anything like the four paragraphs covering this period in queer history.

What's even more remarkable is that they're covering the social history of queers, not just political history:

In the 1920s, gay and lesbian subcultures became more established and relatively open in some cities, including New York, Chicago, New Orleans, and Baltimore. The Captive, a play about lesbians, opened in New York in 1926, and some movies included unmistakable homosexual references. Novels with gay and lesbian characters circulated in the late 1920s and early 1930s. In Chicago, the Society for Human Rights was organized to advocate equal treatment. A relatively open gay and lesbian community emerged in Harlem, where some prominent figures of the Renaissance were gay or bisexual. In the early 1930s, the nation's largest gay event was the annual Hamilton Lodge drag ball in Harlem.....

And then, three paragraphs later:

The late 1920s and early 1930s brought increased suppression of gays and lesbians. New state laws gave police greater authority to prosecute open expressions of homosexuality....In 1929 Adam Clayton Powell, a leading Harlem minister, launched a highly publicized campaign against gays. Motion-picture studios instituted a morality code that, among its wide-ranging provisions, prohibited any depictin of homosexuality....

There are at least three reasons why it's exciting that this stuff appears on p. 737 of Making America, 4th edition, copyright 2006 (!) by Houghton Mifflin. Well...okay...four reasons, since it would be kind of weird if I didn't note the remarkable fact that the textbook's authors - rightly or wrongly - based by far their longest discussion of a queer topic in large part on the work of my advisor. I mean, that's pretty cool.

Beyond that, though, there's nothing remarkable about the standard academic habit of judging broad survey textbooks in terms of how much weight it gives to one's own small subspecialty and by how faithfully it seems to represent it. But it's not a standard academic habit that queer historians have, up to now, generally had many opportunites to exercise. You wouldn't have expected to find anything at all about gay, lesbian, or queer people or experiences. In fact, I would have guessed we'd be struggling to prevent the brief mentions of the Stonewall Riots from being excised from textbooks upon the demands of red-state local school boards. (And, I might add, we are struggling in many places to keep health curricula that don't consist of rhapsodic paeons to abstinence before marriage - or worse, that doesn't "teach" kids about condoms in terms that somehow, mysteriously seem to imply that they pretty much always break and are no protection at all. And, I mean, after all, the best way to get teenagers not to do something is to tell them not to do it. Right? Those religious-right folks sure do have the teenage mindset down pat.)

In fact, up till now I could pick out the "inclusive" textbooks just by looking up Stonewall in the index; if there was a sentence on it somewhere, it was one of the good textbooks, and if there wasn't, it was unfortunate. And while the Stonewall Riots a well-known and important event, of course, but, as Terence Kissack once put it in the Radical History Review, almost the entire corpus of scholarship on the gay and lesbian movement has sought to argue against the idea that gay freedom was born at the Stonewall.

A third reason is that maybe I'll get a job someday?

By the way, at the back of the book, which even covers the country's vocal debate over same-sex marriage in 2004, there is one of those little shaded textbook "boxes" that defines key terms - and the terms being defined are Defense of Marriage Act and civil unions.

Microsoft's reversal on lgbt rights

Microsoft has already gotten some bad press, but it's important that they keep hearing from people. I'm pasting in a list of contacts below.


********** TAKE ACTION **********

1. Call Microsoft's director of Government Relations,
Jack Krumholtz, at tel. 202-263-5900

2. Contact these other contacts for Microsoft and its
public relations reps

- Jim Desler, Microsoft US
425-703-6061
jdesler@microsoft.com

- Dirk Delmartino,
Microsoft Europe
+32 (0)2 550 06 21
dirkdelm@microsoft.com

- The firm handling public policy for Microsoft in DC:
The Glover Park Group
Washington, DC
202-337-0808

- The firm handling Microsoft's "rapid response" to
questions:
Waggener Edstrom Rapid Response Team
rrt@wagged.com
503-443-7070

- Media Relations for Microsoft
Global Communications & Television
(212) 339-9920
mediarelations@gctv.com

- Microsoft Investor Relations
Curt Anderson
(425) 706-3703

- Walt McGraw, Edelman, (206) 223-1606,
walt.mcgraw@edelman.com

- Shon Damron, Edelman, (323) 857-9100,
shon.damron@edelman.com

- Carlos de Leon,tel. 425-703-3824, or
carlosde@microsoft.com

- Katie Goldberg, tel. 206-268-2244, or
katie.goldberg@edelman.com

3. Demand that Microsoft return the award it received
from the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Center. We don't
give corporate bigots awards, and we don't expect them
to keep such awards under false pretenses. If
Microsoft has now rethunk its position on defending
civil rights, then give back the damn award:

Per Microsoft's own Web site:

"Microsoft has been honored for its pioneering work on
behalf of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
community with the annual Corporate Vision Award of
the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center."

Sex roles - or more bizarre deviant behavior

"When students tell me that they picked the 'wrong'--say, sociology--topic, I related them to the agonies and ennui that fellow candidates who chose 'in' topics on sex roles or more bizarre types of deviant behavior are experiencing."

- David Sternberg, How to Complete and Survive a Doctoral Dissertation (1981)

NGLTF assails new pope's record of "venomous hatred"

>Tuesday, April 19, 2005
>The Task Force On the Election of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope
>
>MEDIA CONTACT:
>Task Force Communications Department
>Roberta Sklar, Director of Communications
>media@thetaskforce.org
>646-358-1465
>
>National Gay and Lesbian Task Force On the Election of
>Joseph Ratzinger as Pope
>
>"Today, the princes of the Roman Catholic Church elected as
>Pope a man whose record has been one of unrelenting,
>venomous hatred for gay people, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger.
>In fact, during the reign of John Paul II, Cardinal
>Ratzinger was the driving force behind a long string of
>pronouncements using the term 'evil' to describe gay people,
>homosexuality, and marriage equality. As a long-time
>Catholic from a staunchly Catholic family, I know that the
>history of the church is full of shameful, centuries-long
>chapters involving vilification, persecution, and violence
>against others. Someday, the church will apologize to gay
>people as it has to others it has oppressed in the past. I
>very much doubt that this day will come during this Pope's
>reign. In fact, it seems inevitable that this Pope will
>cause even more pain and give his successors even more for
>which to seek atonement."
>
>- Matt Foreman
> Executive Director

thoughts on friendship

"And yet it is perhaps in the nature of friendship, as opposed to love, that we can think of it as a constancy that requires no nurturing, and from which we can withdraw when we choose, certain that, like the affection of our mothers, it will be there to welcome us back whenever we return. Alas, this is not how it is with friendship...."
- David Leavitt, Martin Bauman

"People don't do right because of the fear of God or love of him. You do the right thing because the world doesn't make sense if you don't."
— Dorothy Allison, Bastard Out of Carolina

my mom is pretty cool

My mom is mentioned in a New York Times article on women in the sciences...and it's a front-page story.

...tyin' up my white tie...puttin' on my tails!

The pope left very elaborate instructions about what everyone should wear at his funeral.

After the millions had filed past the pope's body, his face was covered with a white cloth by his faithful aide Archbishop Stanislaw Dziwisz, who was also JPII's closest companion for twenty-five years and the only individual he thanked in his last will and testament.

Later, the pope's coffin was carried by 12 pallbearers wearing white gloves, white ties, and tails.

Where was gay liberation born?

Jason sent me a very interesting article about a controversy that has resulted from a decision by the folks who sponsor Philadelphia's PrideFest, a sort of secondary gay pride event held each spring there for many years. This year, they've decided that the event will honor the 40th anniversary of the annual picket held outside Independence Hall beginning in 1965.

The question of course has become which city is the "birthplace of gay liberation," or something. Within the admittedly ridiculous terms of the question, Philadelphia actually has a pretty strong case. The first commemmorations of the one-year anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which eventually became that which we know as Pride, was (as Marc Stein has described) the outcome of a decision by the East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) to replace the annual Independence Hall picket (begun in 1965) with the Stonewall observance.

Of course, what's really at stake here is money, at a time when cities are starving. Equality Forum, which was called PrideFest at the time I lived in greater Phila, seems to have decided to hold this big 40th-anniversary party for the 1965 pickets, when they didn't really have a 35th or 30th anniversary party. They basically want to create a new anniversary.

This of course is within their rights. We celebrate all kinds of anniversaries that were long unrecognized; Roe v. Wade didn't make the front page of the NYT when it was decided in 1973. But they shouldn't imagine no one will object.

"We can't permit anybody to come and make the Holy City dirty"

From the Times:

International gay leaders are planning a 10-day WorldPride festival and parade in Jerusalem in August, saying they want to make a statement about tolerance and diversity in the Holy City, home to three great religious traditions.

Now major leaders of the three faiths - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - are making a rare show of unity to try to stop the festival. They say the event would desecrate the city and convey the erroneous impression that homosexuality is acceptable.

The article goes on to talk about a number of very interesting points, but one is especailly striking: the opposition of these Israeli religious leaders is being engineered, even literally paraded, by the American leader of an evangelical church that holds its services in a southern California hotel. But the article doesn't even quite give you the whole story when it calls this an internationalization of "the American culture wars over homosexuality," since in fact BOTH sides of the Jerusalem debate are profoundly contingent on developments in US political culture. We might ask why, that is, it makes sense for cities the world over celebrate the anniversary of an a civil disturbance that took place in lower Manhattan.

At the same time, for me at least, no amount of cultural relativism or historicity changes the fact that this is a question about whether or not gay people have full citizenship rights in Jerusalem. Remember, in 1970, when the first gay pride celebrations were organized in the United States, getting a police permit for a gay event was impossible in any city. The LAPD chief compared the idea to sanctioning a "parade of thieves and burglars." Today, when big-city governing regimes have become the locus of by far the greatest level of gay political power, even Republican mayoral candidates in many cities can't afford to skip the annual pride parade.

As for the religious leaders and their "unity"...it's always touching when folks put aside their differences to make sure full citizenship rights don't get into the wrong hands.

Raise gas prices to $4/gallon, and give feeding tubes to poor countries

1) Although I have questions about Thomas Friedman's strong support for nuclear power, which he bases on assessments made by "chairman of Global Business Network, a leading energy and strategy consulting firm," I think Democrat talking heads should be using his Sunday column as bullet points. He makes a really forceful case that the defects in the Bush administration's foreign and domestic policies are tightly interrelated, while drawing attention to the kinds of energy solutions that are wrongly taken off the table by powerful, issue-framing constituencies within both parties - like higher gas taxes, which are opposed by the entire right and by, on the left, the unions and people who sympathize with workers.

The traditional argument that Democrats make is that gas taxes are regressive, that they hurt poor people more than they hurt rich people. That is almost certainly true if you assume nothing else changes when the gas tax goes up - which is a pretty weird assumption. Because it's hard to deny that at least two things would change if the country adopted a $4/gallon floor on gas prices, as Friedman advocates: 1) the energy habits of private citizens, governments, and companies, and 2) the direction of research and investment in high energy-consuming industries. Within ten years, the built environment and consumer practices of our society could look markedly different, so different that it becomes difficult to say who benefits, and in what ways. In other words, it doesn't make sense to say that gas taxes hurt poor children without admitting that cars also hurt poor children.

Right now, I think what the Democrats need to do is sit down with the unions, the environmentalists, the antiwar and peace movements, and the liberal internationalists, and crucially those portions of corporate America with relatively low energy needs and that might have something to gain from cleaner air and water. This kind of very mundane coalition-building is how the New Deal was created and fought for, and it's also how Clinton generated backing for his single-payer health plan - which, yes, failed, but which really almost passed. (Nelson Liechtenstein argues that Clinton's single-payer health plan really did have, e.g., powerful corporate advocates among those old-line companies that already provided generous benefits - and it really might well have worked.) Clearly Clinton is not my model, but let's not forget the one ambitious thing he really did attempt. Obviously the Democrats can't afford to put all their eggs in one basket, but in order to avoid that, they do need to come up with more than one egg. They need to speak for something more than staving off for another year the crumbling of decades-old benefits and job security protections.

And Friedman also rightly ties Bush's failures to his ludicrous - dare one hope, ill-strategized? - fixation on privatizing Social Security. Because, after all, let's remember where Social Security comes from. It comes from this moment when the country faced devastating crises and progressive leaders put forward thoughtful new schemes for solving them. As my profsesor Jim Sparrow likes to point out, we tend to equate Social Security with the New Deal primarily because it's one of the only major New Deal innovations left; most of the others you know about, the WPA and so forth, were just sacrificed for WWII defense spending.

And Friedman's chosen rhetorical device is cute, too: "How will future historians explain it?"

2) I have always been drawn to the genre of "fake news," which is really just satire adapted to a world of mediatization and spectacle. Last year I became very interested in the kind of media-genic political satire that many progressive activists were trying very hard to cultivate (Billionaires for Bush may be the best example). Actually, the two major party organizations were doing the same thing on their own websites (think "Kerry Gas Tax Calculator").

I was recently sent the following long transcript, of slightly uncertain provenance, of an "April Fool's News" program recently aired on a program called "Out FM" on New York's WBAI radio. Despite the remarkably many spelling errors and the length and wordiness, I love this piece. It's full of images that just cry out to be created in styrofoam and cardboard and paint and brought to demonstrations. Since I couldn't find the text on the web, I forwarded it to Queer to the Left and I'm pasting in the whole thing:

In an an act of protest against the military's don't ask, don't tell policy of lesbian, gay, and bisexual exclusion, Private Sponge Bob Square Pants and (third) Leutenent Tinky Winky Teletubby held up Pride banners and openly booed Dick Cheney during his visit to "Massacres R Us" recruitment center in Waukashau, Wisconsin yesterday. Private Square Pants spoke from behind the 8 foot sound proof wall and under the 2 inch mesh netting surrounded by a radioactive force field of the heavily surveilled free speech zone set up 50 miles away from the recruitment center for the safety and security of called activists to engage in their constitutional right to abuse their freedom by incessantly wailing unappreciatively about the best nation on earth. Citing the 200 million dollars spent to expel 10,000 soldiers since Clinton's policy was implemented 10 years ago, Private Square Pants grew teary eyed as he told his own story: "When the recruiters came to my beloved deep sea town of bikini bottom, yes, I am a proud bottom, it was then that I knew I could find my place. Employee of the month at the Crusty Crab was not enough. I wanted more." The square panted sea sponge then explained how he was outed by a taped conversation Ms. Linda Tripp conducted with his friend Gary the snail outside of Private Square Pants' Pineapple home. According to embedded reporters, he was subsequently given a dishonorable discharge after a brief hearing by a completely fair and impartial military tribunal in an undisclosed compound near Bagdad. "But I uphold my honor," he proclaimed, hitching up his square fatigues as Officer Tinky Winky Teletuby, another don't ask don't tell casualty, took his magic red Marry Poppins handbag and pulled out an M-16 draped in a pride flag. "We will win this fight of gay liberation," the pore bearing bottom dwelling creature yelled, holding up the assault weapon of pride with his arm around the giant, purple, out and proud techno-baby. "And we will win the right to sacrifice our gay lives as we wreak terror, torture and mayhem to liberate the forever grateful Iraqi people!" A bill to repeal the don't ask don't tell policy is currently in the house. Cheney was unavailable for comment, apparently in an undisclosed location undisclosed to himself.

In his first action as newly appointed president of the World Bank, Project for a New American Century's Paul Wolfowitz answered to activist groups such as "Drop the Dept" when they claimed at a press conference that unpayable depts from loans to corrupt dictators as well as so called solutions of dept repayment such as programs of forced privatization, cyphen over half of the wealth out of developing nations, maintaining an oppresive cycle that keeps their citizenry severely impoverished and in the control of wealthier nations. In response to such accusations, Wolfowitz offered to use his new control of global wealth to open his bleeding heart by handing out pre-emptive unilateral attacks of charity. In a profitic demonstration of his pro-life intentions, Wolfowitz offered a generous life sustaining gift of one free kit containing one bible and one feeding tube for each and every global citizen who, due to massive depts, are denied food, clothing, shelter, medicine, and other basic necessities of life.

After the heroic "feeding tubes for all" act was carried out to ensure the sanctity of life for those less fortunate, Wolfowitz announced his generous new plan to provide dept relief while at the same time ridding the world of evil. In the faith based "Aid the Rightous and Pios" program, all deptors of good Christian countries, i.e. peoples of real religions, will enjoy a 10% cut in their monthly payments for five years. The gift surplus will be invested in the war on terror via god fearing corporations such as Halliburton, GE, Boeing, and Bechtel. All non-christian evil-doer nations who for some unknown reason can't seem to get it together to keep up with their loan payments will be severely punished with eternal penalty fines of evil. Nations may purchase salvation from evil status with favorable UN votes authorizing unilateral invasions by the US, the use of their torture facilities for outsourcing, and conversion to christianity.

All nation applicants to the "aid the rightous and pios" program will be reviewed by Pope John Paul the second, whose recent book, "Memory and Identity," clarifies evil with prime examples such as abortion and communism. As a staunch spokesperson and advocate of human rights, the Pope commented on the same-sex marriage movement when he ACTUALLY referred to it as quote "part of a new ideology of evil, perhaps more insidious and hidden, which attempts to pit human rights against the family and against man."

Human Rights Campaign responded to the Pope's declaration of such clear and unquestionable distinctions between good and evil with an add campaign featuring James Earl Jones in Darth Vador garb proclaiming life is good on the dark side, especially for those who are willing and able to traditionally marry. HRC spokesperson I.M. Cronie cites the evil they embrace with support for Pfizer, a price gouging multi-billion dollar drug company who refuses to make life saving HIV medications affordable to the vast majority who need them, and HRC's proposed endorsement of Bush's social security plan in exchange for marginal same sex marriage rights that will benefit mostly those of middle and upper class. When questioned about HRC ignoring the needs of the majority in the LGBT community, Jones breathed heavily, grasped his light saber, referred vaguely to the force, and laughed maniacly.

Meanwhile, on the dark side, the force is also with newly appointed FCC chair Kevin Martin, who in an historical leap forward in gay and lesbian liberation, signed a joint contract with Human Rights Campaign and Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez, which will provide an official decency stamp for any TV or radio content containing same-sex as well as opposite sex marriage. HRC spokesperson I.M. Cronie applauded this milestone of inclusion into morality for gay and lesbian married couples. For the safety, security and sanctity of the one and only way to live decently, heretics who air content containing healthy depictions of non-conventional relationships, non-nuclear families, transgender existence, black empowerment, pacifism, civil disobedience, alternative scenes, or intentional communities of any type other than cults of militant christianity will be fined heavily, permenentantly banned from the free airwaves, and condemned to eternal damnation. Activist judges who attempt to uphold so called constitutional rights and thus aid and abet sabateurs of the free media by defending so called free expression of such unspeakable hedonism and debauchary, will be severely discredited, humiliated, and legally tortured by the decency tribunal.

And lastly, this just in: the gay agenda is still missing.

This is Peter Jonas with April Fools News.
www.outfm.org (ask them to post the audio files? it looks like a pretty laid-back operation)

Finally, a cute bumper sticker, if not always accurate in the age of alternative reproductive technologies, from a company called CarryABigSticker.com:

san francisco, home of the queer cutting-edge

Capitalism is so gay



end marriage



end marriage
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