Why is it that people in the United States, the land where ‘all men are created equal,’ the land where ‘constitutional patriotism’ was born, have been pulling their hair out over an issue that appears nowhere in the Constitution or the Federalist Papers? For Spain’s Diario Exterior, columnist Carlos Alberto Montaner examines one of the most vexing issues in the U.S. today, and why America’s ‘ethnic neurosis’ is destined to dissipate if people simply wait.

For the Diario Exterior, Carlos Alberto Montaner starts off this way:

The New York Times front page has announced that in the previous year, more than half the children born in the United States (50.4%) were non-White. Of that percentage, 26 percent were Hispanic (mostly Mexican), 15 percent were Black and 4 percent were Asian.

Why was it on the front page? Pure ethnic neurosis. Fear of the other. The same thing happened a few years ago when Samuel Huntington caused such a stir with the publication of his The Hispanic Challenge. This type of information causes a certain anxiety among “Whites.” They think they are losing control over and the direction of America. They fear becoming a minority.

The first bit of nonsense is classification. Hispanics are defined by the language they speak, or by what language they are supposed to speak, regardless of skin color. A Chilean of Basque origin or a Cachiquel Guatemalan are Hispanics, even if the language of the latter isn’t Spanish. Blacks, evidently, are classified by race. Asians, by geography, be they Chinese or Indian.

I have no idea, for example, if an Israeli-American of Sephardic origin is Asian, White or Hispanic. Nor do I know if that brilliant engineer called Rafael Reif, a Venezuelan son of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who was recently named President of MIT, is Hispanic, White, or if by chance the census allows it, simply Maracucho. [Maracucho is the Zulian dialect in northwest Venezuela].

Thoughtful, civil comments are welcome at TMV. Please read the Commenters Rules at the top of the masthead. Thank you. Eds.

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Contrary to the narrative in the West, in Beijing’s alternate reality, Russia and China are the real heroes of the Syria story. According to this editorial from China’s state-controlled Global Times, only Russia and China stand in the way of an even more horrific conflict brought on by selfish Western determination to remake the Middle East in its own image.

The Global Times editorial says in part:

China and Russia have called for a resolution by peaceful means, as this is obviously the least painful path toward transition. Western powers, however, insist that unless Assad leaves, there can be no solution. What this in fact amounts to is calling for bloodshed rather than peace. It will force the Syrian parties to decide their fate through war.

But the regime is not without roots. Half the Syrian population remains loyal to Assad, and if this support is to be eradicated, it will cost Syrians dearly. The West’s strategy is built on Syrian flesh and blood. It is a political kidnapping of the destinies of over 20 million people.

If one country is permitted to intervene in another’s domestic affairs at will, our world would be plagued by a long series of wars driven by the subversion of regimes. However history judges such events, they would be a nightmare for the people of our age.

The West should not expect cooperation from China and Russia if it insists on dictating its values and mindsets to the world by all means possible. For it if does, it will find China and Russia standing in its way.

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This is significant because Syrian President Bashar Assad is a Russian protégé in the tussle for influence in the region between Washington and Saudi Arabia on one side and the new Vladimir Putin regime on the other. Despite his distrust of Washington, Putin is shocked at the weekend massacre of 108 people in the poor farming villages of the Houla municipality, including some 49 children and 34 women.

Syria is an important client state for Russia and a major buyer of arms and other exports. A large shipment of weapons was delivered just days ago and Moscow is concerned that pro-government fighters, not necessarily members of Assad’s army, may turn more of them against civilians. The Syrian government has flatly denied involvement in the Houla slaughter. But the villages are interspersed with army bases and killings might have been the work of pro-government militia hunting rebels hiding among the civilians. It is common during armed uprising for villagers to give shelter to rebel guerrillas because of coercion or sympathy.

Moscow is seeing Syria as a zero sum game. It thinks that Assad’s fall will lead either to chaotic tribal violence or put the country in the hands of Washington-backed elements or Saudi-backed radical Sunni Muslims. That would end Russia’s only toehold in the region. It would also make Russia’s Muslim territories more vulnerable to radical Islamists trained by Salafi preachers from Saudi religious centers.

Yet, setting aside misgivings, Moscow stepped forward today to strongly condemn the Houla massacre although it is not yet clear whether Assad was behind it. Following a meeting with his British counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said Russia is not interested in propping up Assad. Instead it wants Assad to implement a plan brokered by UN special envoy Kofi Annan. He endorsed a UN report earlier this week that put most of the blame for the deaths, currently estimated at 12,000 over 15 months, on the Syrian government while noting that opposition, too, has caused many deaths.

This changed tone backed by a joint Russian-British-French effort to boost Annan might allow the UN Security Council to approve tougher words against Assad. In the past, it has been stymied by a Russian veto. China may also stop saying no and say yes or abstain.

However, nothing is likely to change inside Syria until the US and the NATO allies threaten military force to topple Assad, similarly to Libya when Muammar Gaddafi began killing his own people. That kind of credible threat seems unlikely at this time because of war-weariness in the US and President Barack Obama’s election season. Neither the US nor Europe has the money required to finance another relentless air campaign even if no boots are placed on the ground.

Still, withdrawal of Russian support from Assad, or even equivocation in that support, could severely weaken the Syrian President’s position in the eyes of his backers inside Syria. That might persuade him to follow the Annan plan, provided that he does not lose his head to bullets or a hangman’s rope, or end up serving life after a verdict of the World Court. In that case, he might prefer to die in the civil war. His British wife and children are already safely in the UK.

Annan arrived in Syria on Monday for more talks and to meet some of the over 250 UN peacekeepers who entered in May to monitor the violence. Before the Houla tragedy his peace plan, which calls for a cease-fire and dialogue, was floundering without hope. It might now become the starting point of a slow crawl away from full civil war and anarchy.

It’s pretty clear to me, however, that money isn’t the only Big M explanation for Walker’s apparent current lead in the polls. Perhaps not even the most important one. The more important M Factor at work here is Mean-spiritedness.

Why have so many people in Wisconsin bought into the Walker way of political thinking? Why have public service unions proven such a popular target? Are members of the public service unions Walker has been bashing so successfully wallowing in luxury at the public’s expense?

Of course not. These union members have simply enjoyed, through the process of collective bargaining, a traditional American standard of living no longer accessible to so many others.

A growing number of these others in Wisconsin have lost many of the rights and perks that make up our traditional standard of living. The job security. Wages that grow faster than inflation every year. Benefits like health insurance paid for by employers.

The Walker mean-spirited pitch? These union people are getting something you don’t have. I won’t make your own lives better, but you’ll at least feel better if state employers can be brought down, that the unions protecting rights and perks you no longer have protected can be undermined.

Similar billionaire underwritten mean-spirited politics is at work in other realms like with food stamps and Medicaid. Why should others get free food when you work so hard to buy food for your your own family, just because these others are so poor? Why should others get free health care with Medicaid when your own health care costs are so high, just because these others are so poor?

You can govern in difficult times by bringing people together, by appealing to their better angels. Or you can take the 50-percent-plus-1 approach to governance, turn a tad more than half the voters into a nasty-minded mini-majority conned into identifying their own interests with those of their financial betters, while also turning them hostile towards anyone less well-off than themselves.

A line from a famous poem by W.H. Auden runs: “We must love one another or die.” The State of Wisconsin has died a little since Scott Walker took office. The cruel mean-spiritedness of many Republic Party nostrums these days is driving the whole country further and further away from communion with our better angels.

With a couple of exceptions, most of the readers saw no problem with this change in policy or had some reasonable, practical reasons for opposing women serving on our submarines.

One woman gave several reasons for her opposition. In addition to bringing up the cost (in dollars and in space) to separate the men and women and the “sexual tension” factor, she suggested, perhaps playfully:

As a woman I know it is very hard for women to get along. Women are catty. Women get jealous. This would be ten times worse if they were on cramped close quarters unable to get away from each other. No work would get done.

One of the main reasons men go submarines is to get away from women. How are they going to do that if we let women on them? That is just a random point that may not make a lot of sense to the argument but it is valid for those who really make it a point is choosing where to go with their Navy Career.

There was one reader — no longer with us — who not only strongly opposed women serving on submarines (“Suck it up folks, war is serious. Who really gives a darn if 500 or so women get to tell their grand kids they rode around in a submarine in the Navy? So we do this just for the sake of equality?”), but who also took the opportunity to launch into one of his tirades against gays in the military: “We have no homosexuals in the military what-so-ever. If you know one, post his name here please. He has lied to the military upon joining and that is a crime and must be reported.”

Another reader declared: ‘Suck it up, folks. We have women – and homosexuals – who serve with honor in our military. The ignorance of holding people back from reflexive objections needs to stop.”

In a related event, in April 2010, the Navy announced that a smoking ban would go into effect on submarines no later than December 31, 2010.

The reason why I bring up “gays in the military” and smoking aboard submarines should become obvious shortly.

But back to the present.

Today, May 2012, Navy women are serving successfully on our fleet ballistic missile submarines.

Just as with gays serving openly in the military, the sky has not fallen because of this.

According to Vice Adm. John Richardson, commander of submarine forces, the integration process has been “very successful.” The Stars and Stripes adds:

Twenty-four women have already reported to guided missile and fleet ballistic missile submarines and about 20 more will report each year. Fast-attack submarines, which are smaller and would require more modifications to allow women aboard, are still men-only.

The Navy is moving very deliberately with the integration process and will gather information from the first gender-integrated submarines before determining whether to modify submarines to allow enlisted female sailors to serve aboard, or to allow women on fast-attack submarines.

“We want to open this opportunity as widely as we can, but we want to make sure it’s sustainable,” Richardson said.

As a matter of fact, one of the first women to serve on U.S. submarines — delicious irony — is Lt. Rebecca Dremann, who is an openly gay naval officer and a smoker.

The Stars and Stripes:

As an openly gay naval officer, a smoker and one of the first women to serve on a submarine, Lt. Rebecca Dremann joked she was “the triple trifecta coming onto the submarine.”

“I’m a total culture shock to the submarine force and they handled me just fine,” Dremann said Thursday after a roundtable hosted by the Navy to discuss the integration of women into the submarine force.

Other women — and men — who are completing their qualifications and have already spent time underway aboard submarines echoed Dremann’s sentiments, saying the biggest “problem” they’ve faced is sibling-like squabbles over the bathroom.

If this is one of the bigger problems we have in our “gender-integrated submarines,” I say that we are doing pretty good.

Now, let me ask again: What do you think?

The New York Times has an interesting and, I am sure, controversial opinion piece, which from the beginning (Title: “G.O.P. Nightmare Charts”) to its conclusion (see below) suggests that present trends “do not bode well for Republicans.”

All sarcasm aside and keeping in mind that the Times is called a “liberal newspaper” and worse, that it is written in “a place for opinionated political thinkers from all over the United States to make their arguments about everything connected to the 2012 election”, that polls and surveys are meaningless, unless they support one’s position; that it is still a long time before the elections and that the writer bringing this to your attention is a biased Democrat, here is a thumbnail.

The author, Charles Blow, has selected two questions “tucked away” in two polls that caught his eye but do not grab the headlines.

Questions that, according to Blow, “get us away from the presidential race, both of which highlight just how much trouble the Republican brand continues to find itself in despite the party’s many legislative and statehouse victories in 2010.” Blow adds: “Public sentiment is slowly drifting away from the Republicans in a way that must be giving the party’s long-range strategists sleepless nights.”

What are the two questions?

The first question comes from the NBC News/Wall Street Journal Survey released on Tuesday (question number 27). It read:

“When it comes to (READ ITEM), which party do you feel is most attuned and sensitive to issues that affect this group.”

Among the “Items” are groups such as religious conservatives, men and women in the military, retirees, stay-at-home moms, Hispanics or Latinos, Gays and Lesbians.

You can analyze the responses and charts yourself. Blow summarizes:

The chart illustrates just how narrow Republican support is. Respondents viewed Republicans as more sensitive to religious conservatives, people in the military and small business owners. That’s not enough for a winning coalition. For everyone else — including the middle class, young adults and Hispanics — Democrats won out. Democrats even scored higher than Republicans among some groups that conventional wisdom associates with supporting Republicans, like retirees and stay-at-home moms. (I wish that the pollsters had also asked about men and racial groups, but unfortunately they did not.)

The second question comes from a Gallup morality poll that was also released on Tuesday. The question read:

“Next, I’m going to read you a list of issues. Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, for each one, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong.”

Some of the issues in the list are divorce, gambling, sex between an unmarried man and a woman, birth control, medical research using embryonic stem cells, gay or lesbian relations, abortion, pornography, the death penalty and suicide.

Again you can do your own analysis. Among Blow’s comments:

Of the 18 moral issues, Democrats were more permissive than Republicans on 14. No surprise there. But what was a bit surprising was that on seven issues, independents eked out a small margin of permissiveness over Democrats. (This may be due in part to the fact that some devout Democrats like blacks are rather conservative, socially speaking.)

Republicans were only more permissive than Democrats and independents on three measures and they all had to do with the killing of people and animals — the death penalty, buying and wearing clothing made of animal fur and medical testing on animals. Interpret that as you will.

Independents were closer to Democrats than to Republicans on 13 of the 18 issues outlined. The only exceptions were medical research using embryonic stem cells, the death penalty, suicide and human cloning. (On cloning animals, Democrats and Republicans were both less permissive than independents, and in equal measure).

When people are asked to identify themselves by political ideology, Americans may appear to be center-right, but independents look more like Democrats than Republicans on moral issues.

Ergo, Blow’s verdict that all this does not bode well for Republicans “as the composition and conscience of the country continues to change” and as “we are slowly becoming less religious, more diverse and increasingly open-minded.”

Analyze it all for yourself here.

Image: www.shutterstock.com

Are Arab states weak because they lack the spirit to fight against enemies other than themselves? For Iraq’s Kitabat, Nashwan al-Jurayssi writes that the ‘Arab nation’ have been knocked off balance by the West, and in order to revive itself, Arab attentions should be turned toward building a martial spirit focused not on one another, but on those who seek to contain them.

Fir Iraq’s Kitabat, Nashwan al-Jurayssi starts off this way:

Days ago, the Russians held an impressive and solemn military parade to commemorate their victory over Nazism and the defense of their country. This was an exhibition of clout and state power that serves as a deterrent to anyone tempted to threaten the security of the Russian homeland, since military force is one of the key attributes of advanced and powerful states.

All through history, the most powerful nations have been more martial than civil, because their mindsets see things offensively rather than defensively. Ancient Rome was a military state. So were the Persians, French and British. The United States, too, has a military spirit, say what one will of a more passive approach.

Even that monstrous entity Israel is a military state. And while vibrant and powerful nations become increasingly militarized, we have become increasingly demilitarized. They go on the offensive and we go on the defensive.

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WASHINGTON — There is a healthy struggle brewing among the nation’s Roman Catholic bishops. A previously silent group, upset over conservative colleagues defining the church’s public posture and eagerly picking fights with President Obama, has had enough.

The headlines this week were about lawsuits brought by 43 Catholic organizations, including 13 dioceses, to overturn regulations issued by the administration requiring insurance plans to cover contraception under the new health care law. But the other side of this news was also significant: That the vast majority of the nation’s 195 dioceses did not go to court.

It turns out that many bishops, notably the church leadership in California, saw the litigation as premature. They are upset that the lawsuits were brought without a broader discussion among the entire membership of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops and wanted to delay action until the Conference’s June meeting.

Until now, bishops who believed that their leadership was aligning the institutional church too closely with the political right had voiced their doubts internally. While the more moderate and liberal bishops kept their qualms out of public view, conservative bishops have been outspoken in condemning the Obama administration and pushing a “Fortnight for Freedom” campaign aimed at highlighting “threats to religious freedom, both at home and abroad.”

But in recent months, a series of events – among them the Vatican’s rebuke of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious encouraged by right-wing American bishops — have angered more progressive Catholics and led to talk among the disgruntled faithful of the need for a “Catholic spring” to challenge the hierarchy’s shift to the right.

Bishop Stephen E. Blaire of Stockton, Calif., broke the silence on his side Tuesday in an interview with Kevin Clarke of the Jesuit magazine America. Blaire expressed concern that some groups “very far to the right” are turning the controversy over the contraception rules into “an anti-Obama campaign.”

“I think there are different groups that are trying to co-opt this and make it [a] into political issue, and that’s why we need to have a deeper discussion as bishops,” he said. “I think our rhetoric has to be that of bishops of the church who are seeking to be faithful to the Gospel, that our one concern is that we make sure the church is free to carry out her mission as given to her by Christ, and that remains our focus.”

Clarke also paraphrased Blaire as believing that “the bishops lose their support when the conflict is seen as too political.”
Blaire’s words were diplomatic. But in a letter to the national bishops’ conference that has not been released publicly, lawyers for California’s bishops said the lawsuits would be “imprudent” and “ill-advised.” The letter was not answered by the national bishops’ group before the suits were announced.

Already, there are reports that some bishops will play down or largely ignore the Fortnight for Freedom campaign, scheduled for June 21 to July 4, in their own dioceses. These bishops fear that it has become enmeshed in Republican election-year politics and see many of its chief promoters, notably Archbishop William E. Lori of Baltimore, as too strident.

The irony in the current acrimony is that Catholics were broadly united last January across political lines in opposing the Department of Health and Human Services’ initial rules on contraception because they exempted only a narrow category of religious institutions from the mandate.

Facing this challenge, the president fashioned a compromise under which employees of Catholic organizations such as hospitals and social service agencies would still have access to contraceptive services but the religious entities would not have to pay for them. This compromise was accepted by most progressive Catholics, though many of them still favor rewriting the underlying regulations to acknowledge the religious character of the church’s welfare and educational work.

But where the progressives favor pursuing further negotiations with the administration, the conservative bishops have acted as if it never made any concessions at all. Significantly, Blaire identified with the conciliatory approach. As Clarke wrote, “Bishop Blaire believes discussions with the Obama administration toward a resolution of the dispute could be fruitful even as alternative remedies are explored.”

For too long, the Catholic Church’s stance on public issues has been defined by the outspokenness of its most conservative bishops and the reticence of moderate and progressive prelates. Signs that this might finally be changing are encouraging for the church, and for American politics.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group

Okay, so this is what I want: I want, when someone changes their mind about something, for them not to go ideologically swinging to the far other side. I was reading some reviews of Mark Simpson’s Male Impersonators: Men Performing Masculinity, and there are some of former feminists writing about it. And when I say “former” I mean “anti.” We’re taking PhDs in women’s studies who have suddenly realized men are people, too, and they are also oppressed by our patriarchal structure, and so that means we have to wipe out decades of feminist thought, because obviously the two cannot coexist.

Someone can explain to me why this is later, I have tickets to the opera tonight and I have a feeling it’s going to take a while.

Quiet Riot Girl, the ex-feminist with the PhD in women’s studies whom Ms. Crispin refers to, has a short, simple, eloquent response:

That is easy. It is because feminism is fueled by misandry and a need to present men as the oppressors of women.

In that one pithy sentence, Quiet Riot Girl (should we call her “Dr. Quiet Riot Girl?”) manages to encapsulate what I’ve often inarticulately felt since I was a boy growing up in the 1970s and 1980s.

In the meantime, Girlwriteswhat, herself a sharply intellectual critic of the Patriarchy Theory of female oppression, appears to have gotten herself a new fan club. Complete with bloodied pictures of her face, attacks on her boyfriend, and abusive distortions.

You know, there’s nothing some people hate more than a woman speaking her mind. Funny how often that turns out to be people who call themselves “feminists.”

I think the old guard feminists are mostly aging Baby Boomers with foolish assumptions who are not used to having their prejudices challenged, but a new generation of women who don’t accept all their doctrines as dogma is starting to slowly appear–and to speak out because they know the men in their lives love them, and they love them back, and that the “Patriarchy Theory” of women as oppressed and men as oppressors isn’t just oversimplified, it’s blatantly insulting to many of the women, and men, of history.

The funny part is I think it’s going to have to be women to do the heavy lifting on changing these attitudes. Men who complain about it are dismissed as whiners, losers, and more. We’re going to need women to speak up if anything’s really going to change.

(This item cross-posted to Dean’s World.)

*Update*: Quiet Riot Girl responds with more on the often ruthless attacks on women who dare to dissent.

I collect and look at black and white photos, garage sale cast offs, collections of oddities of our world that someone chose to immortalize in what used to be called ‘film.’

This is a photo of two men piling spent howitzer shells at a sandbagged gun emplacement at Song Be. On the back of the photo is writ: Song Be, less than a hundred miles from Siagon, near the Cambodian border… US 1st infantry.

What is not written is these gunners on the ground who have direct contact with gunfire, inhabit one of the most dangerous places in war: infantry, on the ground, without wings…. other than their own angels.

I’ve a dear cousin who went to Nam, a Marine. He came back. But he wasnt able to carry all of his young self back. Part of him still lies on the ground, dead, with the rest of his squadron, from near 40 years ago.

I’ve been a military wife for 21 years. My hubby, 21 years USAF (ret.) and working now at VA helping old soldiers and young soldiers with prostheses. Once you have a prosthesis, whether for hearing or for a limb, the fittings and refittings go on for life.

I’ve worked in post trauma recovery with vets returned from war since 1965 when I began at Hines VA, with an entire ward of brave Italiano boys who were reeling from two things; abandonment by sweethearts and wives– and loss of two or more limbs in war. Not one, two or more limbs.

Had I been able, I would have gathered them all up and taken them home with me forever. Brave beyond brave to endure, they all were, each in his own way. In my care, I could see in their hearts they still were wanting to walk the perimeters in life for all vulnerable others. They didnt want to come home with me to be taken care of. They wanted to come home with me to watch over me. Still, even though so deeply injured.

They were souls who loved children, a pretty woman, a loyal friend. And they poured their stories of mayhem and monsters in war out where we both could hold those images and see and validate the reality, mend the burned eyes of their images, help mend the ears of their unbearable sounds…. and move slowly forward on the way back to the true home of the heart broken open.

I’ve been a poet, a painter, and a woman all my life. When I look at these old black and whites of war, I see several things: the intense beauty of the young males who here in all their muscles and grace could often as easily be in a ballet as they move and arc and leap, as on a battlefield. But there the similarity ends. Ballet and battlefield both begin with B. But then, so does Blood.

Every time I look at these old pictures of men and women in war, civilians and forces, I often put my hand over the image, and pray different prayers over each: This is one…

I so dearly hope you came home.
I hope you are now in your 60s and 70s,
fat and happy, eating bar-b-que,
enjoying your fishing, your buddies,
your grandchildren, the sunrise and the stars …
that you can still see beauty through your stars and scars.

And for those who did not make it home,
from any and all– I say
as long as I and others.
who know your stories up close,
remain alive,
your young years on earth
will never be forgotten.

[Some say such is sentiment,
foolish, and soft in the head.
I say it is a requirement,
to thank the young and the dead.]

CODA
Different soldiers remind me of siblings all in the same family. They often, at the same engagement/gathering, have different stories to tell, each from their own vantage point, each from their own heart. I hope we ever will listen. It is never too late to listen to any and all sides, never too late to listen to the living… and to the stories of the dead told by the living.

If you have black and white pictures to share of Viet Nam from any side, during the 1960s and 1970s: projectscreener@aol.com I’ll be glad to hear from you.

dr. clarissa pinkola estés
certified psychoanalyst, post-trauma recovery specialist, author, teacher of writing.

In all of the content we have posted since President Obama declared his support for same-sex marriage, it is the content from Africa that has proven the most disturbing. In this 3,000 word investigative report by Modern Ghana correspondent Stephanie J. Wearne, we are offered a glimpse at the bizarre and frightening reality for homosexuals in the nation of Uganda.

For Modern Ghana, Stephanie J. Wearne writes in small part:

While the debate in other parts of the world is about legalizing gay marriage, in at least one east African country, the discussion is about imposing the death penalty on those found guilty of homosexual acts.

To substitute for public executions, which were the daily norm under Idi Amin’s tyrannical regime; the trademark of the country of Uganda is now homophobic attacks.

Back then, Ugandans disappeared at the hands of the State Research Bureau due to their political beliefs. Now it is homosexuals who have no one to turn to for safety. And with so many security organs handling suspects, relatives find it hard to locate their loved ones.

In Uganda, there are two kinds of suspects: those who are arrested and make it to the courts; and those who are arrested and will never see a judge. And not everyone being arrested, tortured, and persecuted or who disappears is gay or lesbian. People who render them assistance also face persecution.

According to information obtained by Modern Ghana, the family of Norman Walugembe is living in fear, panic and despair. They think he may have been killed.

According to one family member who preferred to remain anonymous for fear of reprisal, Walugembe, 34, had been giving medical care to gays and lesbians. “It is true, his source of income was the small amount he earned from medication he provided to gays. He is been a bridge between gays and medical professionals who provide medicine to the homos,” the family member said, adding that: “I know he is not a gay, because he has a wife and a child.”

“He’s is the kind of character who doesn’t want to see a certain group of people persecuted. That is the why he could sometimes went all out to get them some medication.”

Although the controversial anti-homosexuality bill was widely criticized outside Uganda soon after it was submitted to Parliament, the bill has strong appeal among all of the country’s religious leaders.

Parliament Member David Bahati, now a minister from the ruling National resistance Movement (NRM), sponsored the anti-homosexuality legislation in 2009, which carries penalties as severe as death. After it was condemned by a number of donor governments, to which Uganda is heavily dependent, the legislation was pulled.

The recent reemergence of the proposed legislation is no surprise. It is the direct and defiant result of the Obama Administration’s recent move to use foreign aid to push gay rights. “Gay rights are human rights,” declared Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper criticized the legislation, and President Obama labeled it “odious.”

READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

What a pyrrhic victory. What a sop to the GLBT community and the slight majority of Americans across the U.S. who favor such a nationwide change in our laws. There still exists a wide disparity in the many polls that measure the support or opposition to this change depending upon which State is being polled. This empty announcement by the President was pathetic – particularly since it occurred just before he attended a large Hollywood fundraiser that politically and socially required such a statement.

Since being in office, President Obama has established a pattern of doing practically nothing on any issue or making any efforts to move Congress on any legislation until it is absolutely necessary – and then he capitulates into doing the very least possible. Any person in (or who supports) the GLBT community that favors marriage equality is a delusional and desperate fool to suddenly support this President’s re-election as a result of this minor change of opinion.

The more pressing issue is whether the President will ever act towards repealing DOMA and stating that Marriage rights are a national issue concerning equal protection under the law – and not state mealy-mouthed that the issue should be left to the states to decide (if and when they might find the time or local desire.) This is not the same as naming State Flowers, Birds, and other useless things. If we are not a unified nation from the Atlantic to the Pacific (plus Alaska and Hawaii) then why would anyone – least of all a President who taught Constitutional law before taking office – continue to endorse an un-constitutional, unfair and idiotic patchwork of 50 conflicting state laws (still governed by DOMA) when it comes down to fundamental civil rights? Was the Civil Rights movement for Blacks and former slaves really effective on a state-by-state method over 100 years (1865-1965) or did not President Johnson effectively push Congress in 1965 to finally protect these civil rights nationwide? But what else would one expect from El Presidente sin Cojones? (corrected Spanish – I speak French. Thanks DDW.)

I have already come out in opposition to this President’s re-election on a variety of other issues. He has utterly failed to have the many departments and agencies in his Administration thoroughly investigate and prosecute the nationwide wave of serious crimes consisting of massive fraud, theft, deceit, accounting tricks, illegal lending and foreclosing procedures, and the gambling of depositor funds perpetrated by the financial and real estate cartels. Sadly, most politicians in Washington DC and the President himself have been, are, and will be totally beholden to the owners and executives of these huge corrupt industries for re-election. He did not need any Congressional support for performing his Executive Duties under the Constitution but he chose to ignore crime. His inaction has permitted massive crime to continue to this day.

This President – despite his crafty intelligence in political theatrics and his diligent service to the most corrupt crony capitalists in the Nation’s history – is simply incompetent and unwilling to serve the best interests of the vast majority Americans. He has expanded the unconstitutional homeland security spying on U.S. citizens, continuing a needless war in Afghanistan, and wasting billions of dollars on the Defense Industrial Complex are just more reasons not to re-elect him. There are even many other reasons to throw this President to the dung-heap of history this November.

Sadly, the Republican Party is offering a candidate who is even a more shallow, craven and callous servant of this nation’s 1% oligarchy – but at least Mitt Romney and conservatives do not lie about their true intentions, loyalties and policies. President Obama is a smiling, empty suit who will say anything to gullible and delusional Democrats, progressives, liberals, moderates and independents, but whose policies are just a variation on those of the Republicans. Both parties are mere puppets of the same oligarchy and voting for a candidate from either is a completely waste of time and effort.

This rapidly-declining nation of misinformed, intentionally ignorant, congenitally stupid, easily distracted, and generally disinterested, selfish, delusional and apathetic citizens probably deserves the full wrath of Republican and Ayn Rand Conservative policies that are a complete anathema to ethically-minded and critically-thinking Christians, Jews, Muslims, and even most non-believers. Many people who lack education, information and intelligence, and who are easily misled, confused and duped need to see the full destruction of their political and economic system and society itself to finally understand and learn even the basics of human behavior, ethics and clear thinking. They are not unlike some beasts of burden that need a sharp whip and other physical pain to finally wake up and move.

The majority of Americans have decided over the past 30 years to believe all the crap the wealthy Oligarchy has fed them, ignore facts and reality, and have willingly believed the Alger Hiss delusion they also would prosper economically by following the most narcissistic, greedy, selfish, corrupt, short-term-driven, and immoral people that ever lived on Earth. 95% of humanity in the U.S. and across most of the globe have given complete control over their lives and basic civil rights, our shared and finite natural resources, our savings, labor and capital, the global environment, and most aspects of government and public policy to the 5% of humanity that are amoral soulless sociopaths and psychopaths without consciences. These people care nothing for the well-being of the rest of humanity. Our sociopathic leaders are aided by many lower-level control-freak fascists, nasty sadists, ideological fundamentalists, and small-time grasping manipulators who are politicians, entertainers, mass media providers, and many extreme religious leaders.

Thus President Obama’s recent statement in favor of Gay Marriage is just a political diversion without any substance or promise of meaningful actions in the future. For the idiotic voters who principally cast their votes on whether a political candidate shares their irrelevant “social” and “religious” preferences, this may be a defining moment in determining how to vote in November. Sadly both U.S. Presidential candidates of the 2 corrupt and worthless major political parties are completely clueless on (1) how to pursue responsible economic and fiscal matters, (2) how to put tens of millions of Americans back to work, (3) how to address the mess that is healthcare, (4) what to stress in national defense and how to protect the constitutional rights of U.S. citizens, (5) how to deal with the global environment plus energy and resource depletion, (6) what should be the nation’s long-term policies, and (7) most every tax and spending issue that exists in 2012. All these issues (and many more) have been part of our inane national debates for the past 10 to 20 years.

Nothing really changes – only the obnoxious, smiling and dishonest faces we elect – who only worry about pleasing their wealthy masters and winning the next election. We’ve heard all the arguments before (fact-based and totally fact-free) and we will continue to debate them until our nation and society have fallen off the awaiting cliff of complete disaster. Our system is beyond reform, redemption or even minor changes. It has become so gridlocked, paralyzed, corrupt and delusional that only the complete collapse of this suffocating Matrix will provide the long-awaited chance for human freedom and enlightenment for the majority of people in the U.S. and on this planet.

I no longer wish to be a manipulated (and replaceable) actor in this depressing piece of global theatre. I’ll now settle for being a dispassionate observer who has stepped out of the Matrix and who will be preparing to work with many smart, well-informed, ethical and creative people to pick up the pieces after we collectively hit bottom. Until that happens within the next 10 to 20 years, you won’t find me going to the polls ever again.

Submitted on 5/14/12 by Marc Pascal from Phoenix, Arizona. (avenir99pm@yahoo.com) An open point for future discussion (provided that the U.S. Federal Government eventually recognizes same-sex marriages) would be to determine whether “marriage” could extend beyond just 2 adults? That question might open another proverbial “can of worms” but it will eventually become necessary yo resolve in light of many historical and current religious, social, economic, financial and environmental considerations. N.B. Dear Ohioan (I lived there for over 30 years) Please understand that I do not support OWS as they don’t know what they want or how to effectuate any changes to the status quo.

Will gay marriage be just the first of a series of societal issues that the Obama campaign will use to win in November? In this interview with Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, French author, historian and America watcher François Durpaire asserts that Obama’s embrace of the issue of gay marriage betrays a carefully-calculated strategy by a political master to take advantage of emerging changes in American society.

From the Le Journal du Dimanche au Quotidien, here are some excerpts from the interview with François Durpaire:

leJDD: Why would the American president use the word “personal” to describe this right without also wanting to legalize it?

François Durpaire: He has a keen perception of societal issues: he is never very far out in front, even as he maintains himself slightly ahead. In 2008, he didn’t take this position, but was already nuanced on the question (he had declared himself in favor of “civil unions”). We must also remember that with his current position, he incurs no liability, since it is Congress, the Supreme Court and the states of the union that decide on gay marriage. The executive branch has no say in the subject. Nevertheless, the “personal” position of a sitting president six months from reelection is no trivial matter.

leJDD: But can voters understand this change of position?

François Durpaire: Barack Obama has cautiously evolved. Wednesday evening, he said he wasn’t at first strongly in favor of this right, but that his “entourage” convinced him. He spoke of his two daughters [stating "Malia and Sasha have friends whose parents are the same sex"] – and this is important: he meant “our children will understand, they will be living in another America.” That way of demonstrating evolution on issues like these is typical of American pragmatism.

leJDD: But can’t Republicans attack him over this change of position over a period of four years?

François Durpaire: Yes, except that it is better to argue about this when most people think the same thing! Barack Obama is no political fool: he senses the wind direction – the way in which society is beginning to evolve. If he had come out in favor of abolishing the death penalty, he would have been committing political suicide – because the population issue isn’t yet grappling with this issue.

READ ON IN ENGLISH OR FRENCH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

The ad included the usual criticism of Catholicism, but I was most struck by this paragraph: “If you think you can change the church from within — get it to lighten up on birth control, gay rights, marriage equality, embryonic stem-cell research — you’re deluding yourself. By remaining a ‘good Catholic,’ you are doing ‘bad’ to women’s rights. You are an enabler. And it’s got to stop.”

My, my. Putting aside the group’s love for unnecessary quotation marks, it was shocking to learn that I’m an “enabler” doing “bad” to women’s rights. But Catholic liberals get used to these kinds of things. Secularists, who never liked Catholicism in the first place, want us to leave the church, but so do Catholic conservatives who want the church all to themselves.

I’m sorry to inform the FFRF that I am declining its invitation to quit. They may not see the Gospel as a liberating document, but I do, and I can’t ignore the good done in the name of Christ by the sisters, priests, brothers and lay people who have devoted their lives to the poor and the marginalized.

And on women’s rights, I take as my guide that early feminist, Pope John XXIII. In Pacem in Terris, his encyclical issued in 1963, the same year Betty Friedan published “The Feminine Mystique,” Pope John spoke of women’s “natural dignity.”

“Far from being content with a purely passive role or allowing themselves to be regarded as a kind of instrument,” he wrote, “they are demanding both in domestic and in public life the rights and duties which belong to them as human persons.”

I’d like the FFRF to learn more about the good Pope John, but I wish our current bishops would think more about him, too. I wonder if the bishops realize how some in their ranks have strengthened the hands of the church’s adversaries (and disheartened many of the faithful) with public statements — including that odious comparison of President Obama to Hitler by a Peoria prelate last month — that threaten to shrink the church into a narrow, conservative sect.

Do the bishops notice how often those of us who regularly defend the church turn to the work of the nuns on behalf of charity and justice to prove Catholicism’s detractors wrong? Why in the world would the Vatican, apparently pushed by right-wing American bishops, think it was a good idea to condemn the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the main organization of nuns in the United States?

The Vatican’s statement, issued last month, seemed to be the revenge of conservative bishops against the many nuns who broke with the hierarchy and supported health care reform in 2010. The nuns insisted, correctly, that the health care law did not fund abortion. This didn’t sit well with men unaccustomed to being contradicted, and the Vatican took the LCWR to task for statements that “disagree with or challenge positions taken by the bishops.
”
Oh yes, and the nuns are also scolded for talking a great deal about social justice and not enough about abortion (as if the church doesn’t talk enough about abortion already). But has it occurred to the bishops that less stridency might change more hearts and minds on this very difficult question?

A thoughtful friend recently noted that carrying a child to term is an act of overwhelming generosity. For nine months, a woman gives her body to another life, not to mention the rest of her years. Might the bishops consider that their preaching on abortion would have more credibility if they treated women in the church, including nuns, with the kind of generosity they are asking of potential mothers? They might usefully embrace a similar attitude toward gays and lesbians.
Too many bishops seem in the grip of dark suspicions that our culture is moving at breakneck speed toward a demonic end. Pope John XXIII, by contrast, was more optimistic about the signs of the times.

“Distrustful souls see only darkness burdening the face of the earth,” he once said. “We prefer instead to reaffirm all our confidence in our Savior who has not abandoned the world which he redeemed.” The church best answers its critics when it remembers that its mission is to preach hope, not fear.

E.J. Dionne’s email address is ejdionne@washpost.com. (c) 2012, Washington Post Writers Group. This column is licensed to run on TMV in full.

In ethical and political parlance, the moral high ground refers to having the status of being respected for being moral and adhering to and upholding universally recognized standards of justice and goodness. But alas, there are no commonly accepted universal standards in these divisive times and the result is not unlike a wrench that is ratchetable to any setting that conforms with a person’s own standards.

That is why people who believe there should be no restrictions on ownership and use of firearms and are obsessed with threats to their safety, real and imagined, as an unhealthy number of Americas are, believe that they have the moral high ground. They would take heart in the illustration above of Jesus instructing a young disciple on the proper use of a 9mm Glock pistol. Oh, and they believe Mahatma Gandhi was a wuss.

On the other hand, people who believe that ownership and use of firearms should be restricted if not banned outright and are convinced that the proliferation of guns and increasingly lax laws on their use are responsible for the epidemic of gun violence, including incidents like that which took the life of Trayvon Martin, believe that they have the moral high ground. They would be appalled at the Jesus image and revere Gandhi’s commitment to nonviolence.

The term moral high ground is being used with indiscriminate abandon by both supporters and opponents of Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage (while unconscionably adding that he also supports states deciding the issue on their own), while he used the term himself early in his presidency.

In a veiled reference to the Bush-Cheney interregnum and its use of torture, Obama declared shortly after his inauguration that America would now be “willing to observe core standards of conduct not just when it’s easy, but also when it’s hard. We think that it is precisely our ideals that give us the strength and the moral high ground to be able to effectively deal with the unthinking violence that we see emanating from terrorist organizations around the world.”

As it is, supporters of the use of torture to extract information from terrorism suspects — and these often are people who wave their religious credentials around like glow sticks — believe that they have the moral high ground. Never mind that it has been proven that torture is counterproductive when compared to less coercive interrogation techniques. And one could only hope, these self-righteous supporters would feel extremely uncomfortable when it is pointed out that Jesus guy himself was tortured.

But Obama’s hands are not exactly clean. While his first official act as president was to prohibit the use of torture, the Guantánamo gulag remains open, military tribunals are alive and well, albeit a bit cleaned up from years past, and the CIA and military still operate secret prisons in Afghanistan and God knows where else.

Then there is the matter of medical marijuana, a proven and safe pain reliever for victims of cancer, glaucoma and other diseases.

In this instance, the Obama administration — as opposed to the president himself, who has said little about the matter since he came off the election trail in 2008 — has taken the view that federal drugs laws, which still classify marijuana in the same category as heroin and cocaine, trump states like California where voters approved ballot issues decriminalizing its use. (Irony Alert: As opposed to states where voters approved ballot issues that essentially criminalize same-sex marriage.)

And so in the end, the moral high ground turns out to be more of a slippery slope.

Republicans on the House Armed Services Committee, just hours after the President gave his opinion on same-sex marriage, passed two measures contradicting both their “support the troops” and their religious freedom clarion calls.

The New York Times:

Just hours after Mr. Obama tried to lead the nation forward, the House Armed Services Committee was turning the clock back. On a 37-to-24 party-line vote, the committee approved an amendment to the annual military budget bill that would bar the use of a “military installation or other property owned or rented by, or otherwise under the jurisdiction or control of the Department of Defense” for a same-sex marriage or “marriage-like ceremony.”

According to the Times, this measure “is intended to undermine the law that lifted ‘don’t ask, don’t tell,’ and to interfere with the laws in states that allow same-sex marriage.”

The other amendment passed by the Republican controlled House Armed Services Committee says the military must accommodate “the conscience and sincerely held moral principles and religious beliefs of the members of the Armed Forces concerning the appropriate and inappropriate expression of human sexuality,” according to the Times.

Noting that the sponsor of this measure, Missouri Republican Representative Todd Akin, is “competing in a three-way primary to run against the state’s incumbent Democratic senator, Claire McCaskill, in the fall,” the Times concludes:

Mr. Obama said his support for same-sex marriage was motivated in part by his recognition of the injustice of not recognizing the right of gay soldiers, airmen, Marines or sailors fighting for their country to marry the people they love. It is sad that Mr. Akin and his colleagues share no similar feeling.

The Senate needs to strip the two offensive amendments from the final bill.

Read more here.

It is hard to believe, but according to this news roundup from around the Western Hemisphere from Spanish-language U.S.-based news aggregator La Informacion, just one Latin American head of state – Argentina President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – has come out in support of gay marriage. According to the article, thanks largely to the influence of the Roman Catholic Church, the few that have spoken out are hedging their bets or are decidedly against.

The La Informacion news roundup starts out this way:

President of Argentina Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is the only Latin American leader to openly support gay marriage – an issue that raises passions and has the potential to significantly add or subtract votes.

In 2010, a year before her reelection and almost two years before U.S. President Barak Obama, President Fernández pushed legislation in favor of gay marriage – a legal project that made Argentina, on July 15, the first country in Latin America to do so. With the law, passed on that day, Argentina became a “more egalitarian society,” in the words of Fernández.

Apart from the president of Argentina, few Latin American presidents have spoken on the subject, and those that have are adversaries of equal rights for homosexual couples.

Today Puerto Rico Governor Luis Fortuño argued against the views of President Obama on promoting the legalization of gay marriage.

“I reaffirm that marriage is a union between a man and a woman,” said Fortuño, president of the Nuevo Progresista Party, who like Obama, seeks to retain his position at the polls this November.

READ ON IN SPANISH OR ENGLISH AT WORLDMEETS.US, your most trusted translator and aggregator of foreign news and views about our nation.

U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention statistics predict 42 percent of the population will be obese by 2030, with 11 percent severely obese, at health care costs of $550 billion.

How do we set the price of moral obesity, as reflected in the uproar over the President’s conversion into a supporter of gay marriage?

Just as we have been stuffing our bodies with too much poor nourishment and exercising them too little, are we doing the same with our minds and hearts?

In this election year, opinions are as ubiquitous as fast food and most are just as nourishing. Political debate swerves from contraception to the sanctity of marriage in an eyeblink, although neither subject is on the legislative agenda after a meaningless North Carolina vote Tuesday.

Yet, a New York Times editorial asserts that the President “took the moral high ground on what may be the great civil rights struggle of our time” while other pundits calculate both the timing and political impact of his coming out on the issue.

Where is all this litmus-testing on issues great and small taking America? What was wrong with the President’s previous “Yes, but” position on gay marriage? What’s next on the agenda for splitting us into “for” and “against” factions?

Human beings have doubts, ambivalence, uncertainties, zigzags, and, yes, prejudices on many questions. That’s what makes them human.

MORE.

When Obama made the decision one year ago to go after Osama bin Laden, he took tremendous risks. If anything had gone wrong, if the daring mission had failed, he could pretty much kiss his re-election chances goodbye. It took courage, and he did the right thing.

When Obama declared on Wednesday that he supports same-sex marriage, he once again made a decision that comes with tremendous political risk. It could very well cost him his re-election. But once again, it took courage and he did the right thing.

Explaining his decision to ABC’s Robin Roberts, the President said:

At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.

Mr. President, while I applaud you for your courageous and right decision, I have to point out that millions of Americans came to that “certain point” a very long time ago, and — if the polls are right — that a good majority of Americans have now come to that “certain point,” too.

I personally haven’t “just concluded” that gay and lesbian Americans should be treated fairly and equally.

I concluded this a very long time ago when the most loved person in the world to my wife and me, our young son, told us that he was gay.

As our son grew up, I concluded that he deserves all the rights that you and I enjoy, Mr. President.

As our son met another young man and began a relationship, I concluded that he ought to be able to marry his partner when and if he wished to do so.

At a certain point in our history, Americans concluded that slavery was abominable and abolished it.

Similarly, at other points in our history Americans concluded that discrimination based on gender and race were wrong and unconstitutional and ended it.

I know it has taken you a long time to come to this conclusion, Mr. President, partially based of your dealings with friends and members of your staff who are in long-term, committed, same-sex relationships; partially from talking with your beautiful daughters and discovering that “it wouldn’t dawn on them that somehow their friends’ parents would be treated differently;” partially from discussions with the First Lady about values and about treating people equally. But you also mention the Golden Rule and how in being true to those precepts the better you’ll be as a dad and a husband and, hopefully, the better you’ll be as president.

You will be better, Mr. President.

Take it from the father of a gay man — a beautiful, loving, caring human being — whose heart breaks to see his son being “treated differently.”

Take it from the millions of gays and lesbians in America, from their parents, their brothers and sisters, their friends, who have come to this point, to this conclusion, a long time ago.

Mr. President, by speaking out in support of marriage equality you will certainly face a tsunami of vicious attacks from many quarters, you might even lose the election in November.

However, just as history has vindicated, honored, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon B. Johnson and other presidents and leaders who faced similar excruciating, sometimes very unpopular decisions but did the right thing, history will look very kindly on the first sitting U.S. President with the courage and the principles to take the right stand on one of the last vestiges of institutionalized hate, prejudice, discrimination and injustice in America.

Charles Blow puts it so well in his “Liberty and Justice for All,” in today’s New York Times:

History will remember this president in this moment. He stood up for personal liberty and publicly affirmed what should have needed no affirmation: that in a just society the rights of some must be the rights of all, that we do not condemn those who love differently, that we are all made greater when we are all treated equally.

Thank you, Mr. President.