And the Beat-em-up Goes On….

What is it with the homophobia?

It’s one thing to believe–based upon a (highly selective) version of the bible–that gay people are immoral. You want to think that, fine. It’s a free country. As I used to say, if you don’t like gay folks, don’t invite any of them to dinner.  Your loss.

Of course, most of these religious warriors aren’t “live and let live” people. So we have weird efforts to hurt the GLBT community by passing legislation that would deny them an equal opportunity to participate in the state specialty license plate program. We are treated to the seriously hateful spectacle of legislators refusing to pass an anti-bullying bill because it might protect gay children.

And now, there seems to be a movement to roll back human rights ordinances around the country.

I find it impossible to understand the animus felt by these people. I do understand not liking someone. I understand disapproving of the policies or tactics of a group of people. I even understand that people who are uncertain of their own sexuality, or unable to deal with social changes, may feel threatened by the emergence of gays from the closet. But for the life of me, I don’t understand people who seem motivated solely by the desire to make the lives of others miserable.

On the other hand, considering just how much time and effort these “Christians” are spending on their campaign to marginalize and demean gay people, maybe they don’t have lives of their own.

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No Real Post Today

There won’t be a real blog post today–I’m spring cleaning.

Yesterday, my best friend told me that I’m the only person she knows who still does a full-scale, top-to-bottom spring cleaning. Maybe she’s right, but for me it is as close as I get to performing a religious ritual.

Part of it is rooted in religion: spring is the Passover season, and generations of Jewish women have internalized the yearly search for “chometz”–i.e. yeast–during which they scrubbed the premises not only of the forbidden breadcrumbs, but for dirt of any kind.

But for me, the satisfaction I get from ensuring that my closets and drawers are tidy, my baseboards dust-free and my windows washed is in direct contrast to the degree to which I am unable  to control anything else.

I may not be able to stem the recent tide of anti-woman rhetoric. I may not be able to wave a wand and achieve equal civil rights for GLBT folks. I obviously can’t control the public’s tendency to vote for reality-challenged politicians. Hell, I can’t even control my weight.

But dammit, one thing I can control is how clean my closets are!

See you tomorrow.

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I Was Wrong

Yesterday I blogged about something I’d gotten right. Today, I’m going to admit being wrong.

When people first began talking about a “war on women,” I thought the rhetoric was over the top. Sure, there were some retrograde legislators in statehouses around the country–not to mention Washington–but that’s always been the case. Attacks on Roe v. Wade have been a staple since the case was first decided, and the persistent efforts to roll back a woman’s right to terminate a pregnancy have long been an unpleasant but relatively minor part of the political landscape.  I never believed those who insisted that–given a chance–the attacks would intensify, and even extend to contraception.

Boy, was I wrong!

The elections of 2010 that swept conservative and Tea Party Republicans into office were evidently seen as authorizations to engage in a full-scale and increasingly demeaning attack on women’s reproductive rights.

It wasn’t just the offensive transvaginal ultrasound bill that has been characterized as “legislative rape.” During the first six months of 2011, 19 states enacted 162 new provisions aimed at reproductive health. There were “counseling” and extended waiting periods for abortions–including a South Dakota measure that requires “counseling” to include risk factors even when those risks are not supported by medical evidence. In Kansas and Arizona, laws working their way through their respective legislative processes would allow doctors to withhold accurate information about fetal abnormalities or risks posed by the pregnancy from women who might decide, on the basis of that information, to abort.

Fifteen states banned abortions after 20 weeks unless the woman’s life is endangered. Ohio went even farther, banning abortion once a fetal heartbeat can be detected, usually between six and ten weeks. Still others passed measures making medication abortions difficult or impossible.

Then there have been the truly bizarre efforts aimed squarely at birth control and women’s health.

The recent Congressional effort to characterize contraceptive coverage as a religious liberty issue has been widely debated, but there have been other, less publicized efforts to deny women access to birth control. Several states have considered so-called “personhood” amendments that would effectively ban the most effective forms of contraception by equating a fertilized egg to a “person.” There have been repeated efforts at both the federal and state level to de-fund Planned Parenthood, despite the fact that huge numbers of poor women depend upon the organization for basic health services like pap smears and breast exams.

The (male) politicians who favor these and other punitive measures used to pretend they were operating out of a concern for women’s “informed” consent–since, as we all know, women are too stupid to make these intimate decisions unaided. But even that pretense is disappearing. We have a Republican Presidential candidate, Rick Santorum, on the record saying contraception is wrong because it allows people to do “wrong” things–i.e., engage in non-procreative sex.

If this avalanche of misogyny isn’t a “war on women,” I’d hate to see the real thing.

Gail Collins recommends investing in burqa futures. I think she’s on to something.

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I Told You So

There’s nothing as annoying as someone who tells you “I told you so.” It’s a taunt that’s anything but gracious. So I’ll try to throttle my desire to do just that, but it won’t be easy.

When the Ballard Administration entered into a fifty-year contract to manage the city’s parking meters with a consortium headed by ACS,  a lot of us were highly critical. The length of the contract was excessive. ACS had a horrible reputation nationally. There was really no good reason we couldn’t manage our own parking meters (other cities seem capable of doing so) and keep all the profit, rather than giving the bulk of it to ACS. The terms of the contract favored ACS over Indianapolis taxpayers.

Many City-County Councilors shared those criticisms. Even after the administration engaged in considerable reported arm-twisting, the contract was only approved by one vote–and the deciding vote was cast by then-Council President Ryan Vaughn, a lawyer employed by the law firm that represented ACS.

After the new meters were installed, we were treated to a series of press releases–uncritically accepted by the local media–telling us how well everything was going. Revenues were up! (As a cynical friend noted about one of these glowing reports, of course revenues were up; hours had been extended and rates had been raised. For this you need a contractor??)

This week, the Star (finally) examined the numbers, rather than repeating the Administration’s hype. And guess what?

The first year of Indianapolis’ 50-year parking meter lease brought doubled rates in some areas as a tradeoff for a wholesale upgrade of equipment and the convenience of paying by credit card or smartphone.

Was it worth it?

New financial data provided by the city shows its share of revenue from the vendor in 2011 — nearly $1.4 million, or 30 percent — fell well short of the city’s own projection of $2.1 million.

And the city didn’t end up seeing the full amount: After the vendor subtracted $286,000 in charges to compensate for the city closing metered spaces, often for RebuildIndy road construction work, the city pocketed $1.1 million.

The contractor, by contrast, made 3.5 million.

And we’re stuck with this bit of crony capitalism for the next 49 years. Forty-nine years of foregoing 3.5 million plus–money that could be used to pay for paving streets, improving parks or plugging budget shortfalls at IMPD.

This was a very bad deal. And I did tell you so.

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Tell Me Again How These People Got Elected

In North Carolina, according to Talking Points Memo, you can’t join the Laurens County Republican Party and get on the primary ballot “unless you pledge that you’ve never ever had pre-marital sex — and that you will never ever look at porn again. Evidently, the LCGOP unanimously adopted a resolution requiring all candidates who want to get on the primary ballot to sign a pledge containing 28 “principles.” Those principles, according to the Clinton Chronicle, include the following somewhat difficult to enforce provisions.

“You must favor, and live up to, abstinence before marriage.You must be faithful to your spouse. Your spouse cannot be a person of the same gender, and you are not allowed to favor any government action that would allow for civil unions of people of the same sex.

You cannot now, from the moment you sign this pledge, look at pornography.”

I can almost hear you chuckling. That’s the South for you. Retrograde. Homophobic. Bible belt.

Well, choke back that chuckle, Hoosiers, because we have nothing to feel superior about. Our homophobes are every bit as crazy and obsessed as those in North Carolina’s backwoods. And it is highly unlikely that their legislators could be any more craven than the sorry lot that we’ve elected to the Indiana Statehouse.

I posted before about the recent effort to prevent the Indiana Youth Group from having a specialty license plate. If you are a sane individual, you might wonder why anyone would care that a nonprofit organization applied for a specialty plate to use in its fundraising? To ask that question is to demonstrate conclusively that you are not the sort of good Christian that Eric Miller and Micah Clark believe should live in our fine state. You clearly don’t understand that allowing a GLBT teen counseling center to have an Indiana license plate is the first step to damnation. It might even send a message that gay people are citizens.

That’s the first step down a slippery slope that will turn all of Indiana gay!

After a good deal of lobbying and grass-roots organizing, that mean-spirited effort appeared to have failed.  But you can’t keep good “Christians” down! Micah Clark of the American Family Association of Indiana and Eric Miller of Advance America have evidently regrouped, and persuaded legislators to kill off the specialty plate for IYG when the bill comes to conference committee. I’m told that the proposed conference report that will be offered for consideration on Senate Bill 257 –the Motor vehicle law–will contain some version of the language that was defeated earlier, and will eliminate the IYG license plate. (I’m also told that they’ll have to suspend the rules in order to get this done, since the language to be inserted didn’t appear in either the House or Senate versions–but hey, what’s a little rule suspension among the godly?)

Because, you know, we really can’t have Indiana license plates acknowledging the existence of gay people. Think of the children!

Some of Indiana’s most prominent citizens have lobbied this legislature for such things as a comprehensive smoking ban, public transportation, a more equitable tax code, fairness for working people and similar matters of substance. Our Senators and Representatives have had no problem shrugging off the requests of those civic leaders. But evidently, they just can’t ignore Eric Miller and Micah Clark, with their seductive–albeit whackadoodle–agenda of bigotry and extremism.

It’s like that line from Brokeback Mountain–they just can’t quit them.

And evidently, we can’t quit electing them. The question is, why?

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