Be Careful Who You Piss Off

The Huffington Post reports that several officers of the Susan B. Komen Foundation have resigned in the wake of what can only be described as the debacle of that organization’s effort to defund Planned Parenthood.

When the Foundation decided to play abortion politics at the expense of poor women who depend upon Planned Parenthood for their annual breast exams, it set off a reaction of epic proportions–not to mention a level of scrutiny that the organization had formerly escaped. Questions were raised about the outsized executive salaries, the organization’s habit of suing other nonprofits that had the temerity to use the color pink or the term “cure” in their own efforts, and the percentage of overall funding that found its way to actual breast cancer research. According to the Huffington story, fundraising is down, morale is low, and management is in disarray.

There are a number of lessons to be learned from this exercise in self-destruction, but I think the most hopeful sign has little to do with the Komen Foundation and a lot to do with Planned Parenthood.

Planned Parenthood has been the object of unremitting attack by the Right for many years now. Those of us who are older can remember when Planned Parenthood boards drew their members from civic leaders of both political parties; indeed, George H.W. Bush served on the national board until he decided to accept the nomination for Vice-President. The organization was not particularly controversial, because it was understood to be in the business of providing health care and family planning to women who needed those services but lacked the resources to access them.

The abortion wars and the rise of an extremist Right Wing willing to play dirty undermined the formerly widespread recognition of the importance of Planned Parenthood.

Despite the fact that abortion never exceeded 3% of Planned Parenthood’s services, despite the fact that no tax dollars were used for abortion services, and despite the fact that economic pressures made the organization’s provision of women’s health services more critically important than ever, Planned Parenthood’s reputation took a real hit–the result of unremitting attacks and dishonest characterizations.

The response to Komen’s clumsy effort to further de-legitimize Planned Parenthood may have marked a turning point.

When the “abortion wars” were seen as genuinely limited to the question of abortion, most women–even the most pro-choice among us–could recognize and respect the deep moral ambivalence many people feel about the issue. But recent political assaults have torn the mask off of much of the “pro-life” movement, displaying a profoundly anti-woman agenda. It is one thing to oppose abortion; it is quite another to attack women’s right to contraception and reproductive health as a violation of the religious prerogatives of those whose theologies subordinate women.

Women are waking up to the very real threat to our hard-won equal rights. In the process, we are recognizing the attacks on Planned Parenthood for what they really are–attacks on us.

Let’s hope that the people perpetrating those attacks–the Rick Santorum’s and the Eric Miller’s and their ilk–learn what the Komen Foundation has learned: be careful who you piss off. Because–as the saying goes–if Mama ain’t happy, ain’t NOBODY happy.

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Love It or Leave It

When I was growing up in the 1950s (yes, I’m THAT old), anti-communist crusaders had a handy phrase with which they shouted down any criticism of American government: “Love it or leave it.” There was, in their view, no room for middle ground–if you weren’t a patriot, defined as someone who defended 100% of what America was and did, then you needed to move elsewhere.

Apparently, the love it or leave it folks are back–albeit in slightly different philosophical garb–and they are enthusiastically supporting Rick Santorum for President. This time, it is those of us who are unwilling to identify America as a “Christian Nation” –and behave accordingly–who are being invited to leave.  

Despite the efforts of all of the GOP candidates to pander to the religious fringe of the party, the Santorum campaign has been the most explicitly tied to religious doctrine, and Santorum himself is quite obviously the most sincere in his beliefs. It should come as no surprise that he has attracted those elements of the electorate who feel aggrieved by the respect for diversity that characterizes modernity.

In fact, Santorum’s campaign has operated to shine a light on a campaign element that political operatives usually manage to obscure–judging (accurately, one hopes) that too much attention to it will repel more voters than it will attract. Most campaigns that have chosen to court the Christian Nation folks have done so through carefully targeted appeals and the use of “dog whistle” terminology in campaign speeches. (George W. Bush was a master at this–he would sprinkle phrases through his speeches to signal the faithful that he was one of them–knowing that the majority of Americans were unfamiliar with the phrases and their context and would fail to “get” their significance.)

Santorum, however, has chosen to run as a theocrat. He makes no bones about his desire that American law should reflect his religious beliefs.

Santorum and the people he has attracted cling ever-more tightly to a revisionist history that justifies the past privileging of white, heterosexual Christian (formerly only Protestant) males. The more society changes, the more they reject the generators and markers of that change–science, globalization, diversity.

It is hard to believe that in the 21st Century we are watching a credible candidate for a major political party’s nomination reject evolution, deny the existence of global climate change, criticize women who work outside the home, oppose the use of contraceptives and advocate second-class citizenship for gays–a candidate who rejects the principle of separation of church and state, and welcomes the support of pastors who tell non-Christians they should leave the country if they disagree.

In the (thankfully highly unlikely) event that Santorum becomes President, I think many of us would seriously consider that invitation.

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We Need a Prime Directive

My husband and I recently watched a re-run of Star Trek: Voyager. The story-line revolved around the application and importance of the “Prime Directive.”

For those of you unfamiliar with Star Trek (is that even possible??), the Prime Directive is the guiding rule developed by the future’s Federation of Planets: officers of Starfleet are expressly forbidden from interfering with the internal affairs of other planets and civilizations, no matter how well-meaning that interference or how potentially disastrous the results of non-intervention. The difficulty of complying with the Prime Directive has obvious dramatic possibilities, most of which have been mined extensively by the various Star Trek spin-offs.

On rare occasions, where the provocation was overwhelming, interference with other civilizations worked out, but usually in episodes where the Prime Directive was ignored, things ended badly.

Americans could learn a few things from Star Trek. At this stage of planetary development, we are the “big kahuna’s,” the analogs of the sheriffs in the old westerns, or the Federation forces in Star Trek. We are all too easily seduced by the temptations–and delusions–that come with power.

A Prime Directive might have kept us out of Viet Nam and Iraq. It might have kept us from confusing self-interest with self-defense.

At the very least, the existence of a Prime Directive would require serious public consideration of the  reasons being offered to justify a proposed intervention, the adequacy of those reasons, and the validity and reliability of the facts offered to support such justification.

When I hear Santorum, Gingrich and Romney rattling sabers at Iran and spouting nationalistic bromides in an effort to pander to the least thoughtful elements of the electorate, I can’t help marveling that an old science-fiction series displays more substance, more gravitas, more maturity, than the Republicans who are currently competing for their party’s nomination for President.

I can’t imagine Santorum, for example, a man who feels no compunction telling other people and other nations how (his) God wants them to live, and who promises to impose (his version of) “morality” on the rest of us should he be elected, embracing–or even understanding–a Prime Directive.

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Disturbing Questions

We woke this morning to news reports that five teenagers had been shot while walking along Indianapolis’ downtown canal. The shots evidently came from the parking lot of the Historical Society–where a wedding was taking place at the time.

As I write this, little is known except that two of the teens are in critical condition and no one is currently in custody.

It may be that this was one of those random acts that no city, no matter how safe or well-run, can prevent. We deceive ourselves if we believe that police can guard against every sudden eruption of violence. But this shooting, in the heart of our city and next to the canal that so many of us routinely walk or bike, raises sobering questions.

First, what is the relationship–if any–between the recent “discovery” of fiscal shortfalls in public safety and what some people living along the canal claim was a diminished police presence? (The fiscal situation itself raises very troubling questions about the honesty of the Administration’s budgeting process during an election year.)

Second, if there were fewer police in the area, was that due to deliberate decisions about deployment, and if so, what were those decisions and why were they made? One story suggested that a number of officers were called to a brawl at the fire station at West and Ohio; do we have so few police that an incident in one place necessarily leaves other areas unprotected?

We don’t know the answers to these questions, and asking them is not meant to assume the answers. But the questions need to be asked, because this event will have repercussions far beyond the personal tragedy it represents.

Civic and political leaders have been nurturing the rebirth of downtown since the 1970s. The canal is one of the “jewels” of that effort–a jewel that has been sadly neglected the past few years, as I have previously noted. It is an important amenity in a city without oceans or mountains. Developers have been enticed to make significant investments along its banks; museums and public buildings adjoin it. Maintaining it and keeping it safe for the residents and tourists who enjoy it is an important responsibility and should be a high priority of the current Administration.

When the media is filled with stories of shootings, when on-camera interviews feature onlookers declaring they no longer feel safe in the area, the result is to undercut years of painstaking effort, and to reinforce inaccurate stereotypes about the “dangers” of downtown.

Perhaps this was one of those random events that even the best policing couldn’t have averted. Perhaps it was the result of public safety mis-management.

Or perhaps we are seeing the inevitable results of the anti-tax zealotry that added tax caps to the Indiana Constitution–tax caps that are starving local governments and decimating public services.

Whatever the answer, we need to find and fix it.

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The Bullies’ Pulpit

A few statistics:
  • 9 out of 10 LGBT students experience harassment at school, and LGBT teens are bullied 2 to 3 times as much as straight teens.
  • More than 1/3 of LGBT kids have attempted suicide.
  • LGBT kids are 4 times as likely to attempt suicide than are their straight peers.
  • For every lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth who is bullied, four straight students who are perceived to be gay or lesbian are bullied.

Despite statistics like these, and despite a spate of recent headlines about episodes where tormenting behaviors have pushed GLBT youth to suicide, the Indiana General Assembly has refused to pass the sort of anti-bullying legislation that is law elsewhere; our intrepid legislators have expressed concern that anti-bullying measures might infringe the “free speech rights” of the students who disapprove of classmates they perceive to be gay. That such disapproval tends to take the form of persistent physical and verbal abuse evidently does not merit equivalent concern.

If you are a gay teen in Indianapolis, and you are coming to terms with your sexuality in an environment that not only doesn’t protect you, but does protect the bullies who make your life miserable, you don’t have a lot of options. If your parents aren’t accepting, your situation is even worse. Most of us remember how hard it was just being a teenager, let alone a teenager facing mocking, marginalization and other evidence of social disapproval.

The Indiana Youth Group has been a godsend to so many of those teens. It has provided a “safe place”–an environment in which troubled and/or angry and/or depressed young people can get counseling, make friends, and feel valued.  The 15-year-old girl who was cutting herself because the physical pain made the psychic pain easier to bear; the 13-year boy who was already raiding the family’s liquor cabinet in an effort to blot out classmates taunts; the self-destructive 16-year old boy who rarely spoke–as well as less damaged children who simply yearned for a non-judgmental environment–find their way to IYG. For twenty-five years, the organization has been a safe haven for children who are hurting as a result of thoughtless cruelty and intentional homophobia.

Our Indiana legislators couldn’t find it in their hearts to pass a law that would protect these vulnerable children against bullying in our schools. They also couldn’t find time in their busy legislative schedules to address a number of important issues facing the state. But at least twenty of them managed to find the time to do a little bullying of their own.

Their mean-spirited effort to pass a law that would keep IYG from participating in the State’s specialty license plate program failed–due largely to a grass-roots outcry joined by news media around the state. But these lawmakers weren’t willing to let the matter die. They wrote to the Department of Motor Vehicles, claiming that IYG and two other organizations had “breached their contracts” by giving a small number of plates to donors–a practice that was evidently fairly widespread, and a “breach” that legislators and the BMV had previously ignored.

When you are a state agency, and you get a letter signed by twenty of the people who control your funding, you listen. So IYG’s participation in the specialty plate program has been suspended, and the bullies in the General Assembly have achieved by stealth what they couldn’t manage in the light of day.

It’s worth considering what it is that they have achieved.

Their “victory” has kept license plates with the legend “IYG” off the road.  In their fevered imaginations, such plates would have signaled “acceptance” of the existence and equal civil status of gay people, and thus hastened the decline of Western Civilization As We’ve Known It.

Their “victory” has also kept IYG from participating in a fundraising program, proceeds of which would have supported a staff position. Fewer hurting children will be served if they can’t replace those funds. (But they are gay hurting children, so they don’t matter.)

Studies show that bullies have a quite distinctive mental make-up—what psychiatrists call a hostile attributional bias, a kind of paranoia characterized by attributing hostile intentions to others. The trouble is, bullies perceive provocation where it does not exist. (Think of the persistent accusations from homophobes about the nefarious “gay agenda” or their more recent insistence that groups like IYG are “targeting” children.) Those imaginary provocations are used to justify their aggressive behavior. Bullies pick on people and act aggressively because they process social information inaccurately. Unfortunately, real people get hurt in the process.

If there is one thing we have learned from this distasteful, embarrassing display it is that we’ve elected at least twenty bullies to the Indiana General Assembly. No wonder they wouldn’t pass anti-bullying legislation.

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