Author Archives: Sheila

Sex, Lies and Politics

It isn’t just the hatefulness. It’s the hypocrisy.

 

By now, Indiana citizens have heard all of the justifications for SJ 7, the Indiana constitutional amendment to “defend marriage” against the assault of all those gay terrorists who just want to participate in it. And we’ve heard all of the pious assurances that the language in “part B,”(forbidding any court from interpreting any law in any way that might confer the “incidents of marriage” on unmarried couples) isn’t meant to deprive gays of health benefits or hospital visitation rights. It’s just an effort to “clarify” that marriage is only between a man and a woman.

 

Really?

 

Then why have courts in other states, when construing similar language, all held otherwise? In the most recent ruling, just this month, a Michigan court stated "The marriage amendment’s plain language prohibits public employers from recognizing same-sex unions for any purpose."

 

Those who were challenging that interpretation of the Michigan amendment pointed to all the statements by Michigan legislators that the language absolutely didn’t mean what it obviously said, but the Court dismissed that as political posturing and instead gave effect to the “plain language” of the amendment. Darn those activist judges!

 

If anyone harbors a lingering doubt about the real motives of the legislators who support SJ 7 and similar measures, I suggest they log on to the web sites of the right-wing organizations supporting them. One such organization, the Alliance Defense Fund, has absolutely denied suggestions that Part B-type language in these amendments would interfere with the rights of universities and private employers to extend benefits to their employees’ partners. According to the ADF web site, “Preying on these and similar fears, advocates of same-sex ‘marriage’ argue that proposed state marriage amendments will undermine the ability of government and even private entities to grant benefits to unmarried people. This false argument is being used to confuse many people…”

 

And what did that same organization have to say about the Michigan ruling? Under the heading “Michigan Court Does the Right Thing,” they wrote “The benefits plans violated the Michigan marriage amendment, the Court of Appeals rightly reasoned, because the government plans at issue extended health insurance benefits to the same-sex partner of an employee…Whether the benefit is health insurance or season tickets to the U. of Michigan men’s’ water polo team,  governmental units in Michigan may not condition receipt of the benefit on being in a relationship that tracks with the state statutory requirements for marriage.”  

 

Let’s be clear about this: the people pushing for SJ 7 want to make life as difficult as possible for Indiana’s gay citizens. They know same-sex marriage is already illegal in Indiana, and that Indiana courts have upheld the current law. There is no reason to pass this amendment except to void those few benefits that gay couples now enjoy.

 

They may get SJ 7 passed, but no one who believes in equal rights should let them get away with pretending that they don’t mean what they say.  

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The Colors of Bigotry

Boy oh boy—we’ve barely gotten beyond the 2006 midterms, and the 2008 mud is already flying.

 

Last month, Fox News reported, with a straight face, a charge that had been floating around the right-wing internet the previous few days: Barack Obama is really a Muslim, and possibly a Muslim with terrorist sympathies! He was educated in a fundamentalist Muslim school when he lived in Indonesia!

 

Never mind that it was Obama himself who wrote in his first book about his attendance at that particular school for two years while he was a young child living in Indonesia, his stepfather’s place of birth. Never mind that anyone visiting the school—as real reporters working for CNN subsequently did—found it to be a perfectly ordinary, secular public school, attended by children from a wide variety of religious backgrounds. Never mind that Obama has been a member of a United Church of Christ congregation in Chicago since 1988—clearly, that was just part of his sly dis-information campaign! Remember—he’s black, and his name sounds foreign! What more evidence do you need?

 

Of course, it isn’t only Muslims, African-Americans, gay citizens and assorted others whose less-than-wildly-popular views are met with innuendo, conspiracy theories and blatent bigotry. As many readers of this column know, I write a twice-monthly column for the Indianapolis Star, and evidently I’m not the most popular girl on the block. (Okay, so I haven’t been a girl since the early Ice Age—cut me some slack here, I’m making a point.) The other day, the Star forwarded (as is their practice) a letter addressed to me care of the paper. The letter read, in its entirety, as follows:

 

You’re not half as bright as you assume. Why don’t you go back to the land of your ancestors and live with the progeny?

 

Lest my lack of “brightness” cause me to miss the point, the writer closed with a Star of David. Marginally preferable to “shut up you dirty Jew”—but only marginally.

 

The bigotry, of course, is unfortunate. But it’s the refusal to engage the argument at hand that is most dangerous.

 

Is Obama wrong about health care, the war in Iraq, his description of the political process—anything concrete? If so, why? What did I say in my column that my correspondent disagreed with? What was the reason for that disagreement? Did I get a fact wrong? If so, which one—and where’s the evidence that it was wrong? Should gay people be prevented from marrying, and gaining access to the 1008+ benefits available to married citizens? Why? If gay unions pose a threat to heterosexual marriages, what is the nature of that threat?

Name-calling as “public discussion” doesn’t illuminate anything. It doesn’t allow us to hammer out our differences. It just makes people angry, and deepens American divisions.

 

When I come across one of these examples, I can’t help remembering an old routine of the Smothers Brothers (a comedy duo that was famous way before most of you reading this were born). One of the brothers (Tommy) would make an outrageous remark (the moon is made of green cheese, or something comparable), and the other brother (Dick) would patiently and reasonably explain why that was semi-insane. Tommy—clearly recognizing the force of Dick’s argument, and having nothing rational with which to counter it—would just get red-faced and sputter his trademark rejoinder, “Mom always liked you best!” A non-sequiter, but hey—it was all he had.

 

As for consistency with the American values these folks claim to be defending—can you picture James Madison or Benjamin Franklin responding to an argument with the equivalent of “Well, your mother wears combat boots!”

 

Me either.

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Embodying Civic Engagement

On January 26th, Phil Rutledge died.

 

I doubt if many of the people reading this knew Phil, although he was an immensely accomplished public servant and scholar. Phil was a black man born in 1925 in Dawson, Georgia. He later moved to Jacksonville, Florida, which he left to join the Navy after refusing the demand of a white man that he give up his seat on the bus they both were riding.

 

Phil’s life was a string of distinctions: an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Sociology, a Masters of Public Health, and a series of increasingly important positions in government, beginning with posts in Detroit city government, then moving to the Department of Labor during Lyndon Johnson’s administration, and Health, Education and Welfare during the Nixon administration. A list of his civic contributions and honors fills four pages.

 

The  credentials and accomplishments impress, but they leave out the essence of the man Phil Rutledge was: a good, profoundly gentle human being, a man who responded to hate with logic and scholarship. I never heard him raise his voice; I never saw him too busy to help a colleague or a student. He was already an emeritus Professor at SPEA when I joined the faculty, a towering figure in academic organizations, and a tireless worker for better understanding among those of different races, religions and orientations.

 

Phil believed in the power of scholarship to improve government and in the power of government to do good. He wasn’t naive. He knew that government power could be—and often is—misused. He was a great civil libertarian. But he also had faith that good government was obtainable, that good people and good will could solve problems. He believed in social equity and fair play, in a whole that really did transcend the sum of its parts.

 

Most of all, Phil preached the importance of civic engagement by the university and those of us who teach here. He believed in using our skills to serve the community, to make  things better than they are. He believed in the possibility—if not the reality—of a fairer system, a more level playing field, a society where human dignity is respected—and he spent his time trying to make it so.

 

Phil Rutledge was a model of what citizenship should be. His professional accomplishments (particularly given the barriers black men of his generation had to overcome) were impressive, but those accomplishments were “extras.” The lesson he gave us was more elemental—and more attainable. He didn’t return hate with hate; he didn’t let a system that was weighted against him keep him down. He got up every day and was a good human being, a good member of society, and a profoundly engaged citizen.   

 

In our current, poisonous political environment, where public service is discounted and cynicism is too frequently justified, we all need to remember—and emulate as best we can—the good guys who are working for a better world. Like Phil Rutledge.     

 

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The Nanny State–On Steroids

Op Ed Submission                                                        Sheila Suess Kennedy

January 21, 2007                                                          500 words

 

A Nanny State on Steroids                                                                                

 

You might think the Bush Administration would reconsider some of its more “creative” constitutional positions in the wake of the midterm elections. You would be wrong.

 

On January 11th, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Charles Stimson criticised law firms for offering pro bono (free) representation to detainees being held at Guantanamo. Stimson not only suggested that such representation amounted to “helping terrorists,” he went further. He urged the CEOs of corporations who employed them to “make those law firms choose between representing terrorists or representing reputable firms.”

 

And how do we know the detainees are really terrorists? Because the Bush Administration says so.

 

A letter signed by 100 law school deans criticized Stimson’s remarks as “contrary to the basic tenets of American law,” and reminded the Administration that providing such representation protects “not only the rights of detainees, but also our shared constitutional principles. In a free and democratic society, government officials should not encourage intimidation of or retaliation against lawyers who are fulfilling their pro bono obligations.”

 

The Defense Department subsequently repudiated the remarks. But Stimson is still there, and if he has been punished in any way, it hasn’t been reported.

 

If there are any doubts that Stimson’s sentiments are widely shared within the Administration, Alberto Gonzales has been busily putting them to rest. In recent testimony before one Senate committee, Gonzales insisted that Federal judges are “unqualified” to make rulings on national security policy, and should simply defer to the will of the President. At another hearing, Gonzales disputed the existence of the time-honored right to habeas corpus, arguing that habeas is just a “default rule” that can be waived in the interests of national security by the Commander-in-Chief. 

 

Gonzales seems confident that  Presidential power trumps that of both the courts and Congress; last June, he was quite matter-of-fact when he told another Senate committee that the President had personally killed a Department of Justice internal investigation into the process that justified the NSA domestic spying program. Apparently, once the President decides something is legal, it’s legal. (He is, after all, the “decider.”)   

 

And then there was the Signing Statement that accompanied the President’s signature on a postal reform bill on December 20, in which Bush claimed sweeping new powers to open Americans’ mail without a judge’s warrant. That claim was not only contrary to the bill he had just signed, but contrary to existing postal law, leading one commentator to call the Administration “a nanny state on steroids.”

Now, reports are emerging of a “purge” of U.S. Attorneys, most of whom were appointed by this Administration, and their replacement under an obscure provision of the Patriot Act that allows the President to bypass the usual Senate hearings. When questioned by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the White House informed her that at least ten U.S. Attorneys would be replaced in this fashion. No one knows why, although there is speculation that some of those being forced out have been reluctant to follow Administration orders.

 

Checks and balances, anyone?

 

 

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Not So Goode

When James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and the rest of the Founders devised our system of representative democracy, they envisioned a system where persons—okay, men—of temperance, substance and education would hold public office.  

 

They clearly did not envision Representative Virgil Goode.

 

There has been quite a reaction to Representative Goode’s letter decrying the election of Keith Ellison. Ellison, who now represents Minnesota’s Fifth Congressional District, is a Muslim. Goode’s letter criticises Ellison for taking his oath of office on the Koran, and warns darkly that his election is a harbinger of the dreadful things that will happen unless Congress restricts immigration. 

 

Critics of Representative Goode have made two related charges: that he is ignorant, and that he is a bigot.

 

I don’t know whether Representative Goode is a genuine bigot or simply sounds like one. The accusation of ignorance (as opposed, one assumes, to stupidity, which may or may not be equally implicated) rests on several facts that the Congressman is either unaware of, or conveniently overlooking. First, Congressional oaths are not taken on holy texts—neither bibles nor Korans nor any other. Secondly, Congressman Ellison is not an immigrant, nor is he the son, grandson or great-grandson of immigrants. His forebears have been in the United States for 250 years. And thirdly, the United States Constitution explicitly forbids religious tests for office, and protects religious liberty. To put this in language even Representative Goode can understand, liberty means that people are free to hold beliefs other than those held by Virgil Goode.

 

Goode has refused to retract his remarks. Ironically, in a response to the widespread criticism, he reportedly said, “I wish more people would take a stand and stand up for the principles on which this country was founded.” Given the Congressman’s tenuous hold on American history, it’s a remark calculated to make high school government teachers across the nation sob uncontrollably.

 

What seems to have eluded Congressman Goode is the nature of “the principles on which this country was founded.” Even when America hasn’t lived up to those principles—and we frequently haven’t—the  official American vision has been one of a society in which group identity is legally irrelevant, a society where an individual’s conduct is the only proper concern of government. In America, individuals are supposed to be rewarded or punished based upon their behavior. Race, religion, gender and similar markers of group affiliation are simply irrelevant to our legal status. No matter how meaningful those affiliations may be to us personally, the government may not award or restrict our rights based upon them.

The human animal seems to have been hard-wired to see the world as “Us versus Them.”  That’s okay—whether we like to admit it or not, most of us do categorize the world through that lens. The genius of America is that we define “them” by their behavior, not their identity.

 

I hate to tell you this, Congressman Goode, but in my lexicon, you are definitely a “them.”

 

 

 

 

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