Pope Rehabilitates Holocaust Denier

Okay, so again Joseph Ratzinger, aka Pope Benedict XVI, has managed to botch the historically significant works of Pope John Paul II toward interfaith dialogue. My list of complaints about Ratzinger's narrow view of the world certainly doesn't begin here (I have a previous post complaining about his views on the Christianizing of indigenous peoples). What most of this list have in common was correctly identified today by another blog with Religiondispatches.com. On that blog Professor Louis Ruprecht correctly, in my estimation, notes that the former member of the Nazi Youth has not in fact been roaming the world seeking to alienate Jewish, Muslim, and Amerindian populations. The papal axe to grind is about modernity.

Years ago, I heard Israeli scholar Emmanuel Sivan speak about fundamentalisms. He said the one thing they all had in common was that they were a response to modernity. At their core, they were a response to the possibility that people could live in their midst as atheists. Fundamentalisms express a fundamental insecurity in the heart and mind of a religious believer. They cannot handle the rational challenge to the very foundation of their faith and identity. Ratzinger/Benedict would do well to recognize that his anti-modernity and religious fundamentalisms share a common thread. That common thread suggests it is no mere coincidence that a rehabilitated (or no longer ex-communicated, just in case you're unfamiliar with oddities of Vatican law here) anti-modern bishop would also be a Holocaust-denier. Anti-modernity (as opposed to post-modernity and the others who exist along a modern spectrum) has as its core a fundamental rejection of others in their midst, others who threaten carefully constructed, dare I say "modern" identities. Perhaps the Pope would be well-advised to visit his own anti-modernity for the ways in which it is constrained by peculiarly modern limitations, like all strains of fundamentalist anti-modernity.

Papal Damnability

Fluffing up the Christmas spirit of love and giving as he always does, once-Cardinal-Ratzinger-now Pontiff of the Roman Catholic Church (otherwise known as Pope Benedict XVI) decided that environmentalists can care about the earth, but we also need to care about the future of human beings. In papal estimation, nothing is more dangerous to human beings than, wait for it, gender theory! That's right, Judith Butler, you're doubly dangerous to the future of the human race. Ideas about the social construction of gender, ideas that also accommodate and accept homosexuality and transgender identities, these are real threats to humanity. (For more details, read the BBC articles on papal statement and responses to it).

Of course, as Virginia Burrus has argued, the great bishop known for converting Augustine, Ambrose of Milan, depended upon the power of gender bending revealed by gender theory. And all Catholic popes, bishops, priests, and other monastics have likewise drawn power from this gender bending ability.

And speaking of dangers to the future of the human race, if the Pontiff's concern is reproduction, maybe he should look into his own lifestyle choices, which have certainly terminated any tangible role he could have had in the propagation of the human race.

I, for one, think the monastic lifestyle has been a great thing, something for which the Catholic Church is to be commended rather than reprimanded as many Protestants and seculars like to do (see for instance How the Irish Saved Civilization for a sense of some of the benefits of Catholic monastic life for the future of humanity, even if few scribal monks produced actual offspring). Especially in the earliest Christian centuries, monastic life provided women a way to escape the pervasive ownership of patriarchal marriage (still a problematic institution as elucidated by Breanne Fahs in the latest issue of The Public Sphere, an issue worthy of review for its three other pieces querying marriage and sexuality in the U.S. today). So why is it so difficult for the leader of such an institution to offer up some love and welcome to the peoples who live within the complexities of gender and sexuality? If anyone should understand the important role of non-reproducing populations to the future of humanity, then he should.

--
Image taken from The Public Sphere's article by Fahs. The Public Sphere supplies the following information about the image: "Image: Allusion aux Agences matrimoniales, Croquis californien par Cham. Wood engraving from the New York Public Library collection. Created by Cham (1819-1879), originally published in Le Charivari magazine."

Litigious Ridiculous

In Article II, Section 1 of the U.S. Constitution states that "No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President." Well it seems pretty clear that you have to have been born a citizen of the U.S. to run for president. Too bad for Governor Schwarzenegger. But apparently there is some ambiguity in interpretation. I remember as a child reading this passage of the Constitution in elementary school and being taught that I could not ever run for President of the United States. I was born a U.S. citizen to a mother who was a natural-born citizen (though my father was not a U.S. citizen), but I was not born in the United States or on U.S. soil . But this is where the ambiguity of the passage seems to confuse some people; Senator John McCain was not born in the U.S., but he was born on U.S. soil in a section of Panama then controlled by the U.S. government. I wonder if he had won the presidency if people on the Left would be pursuing legal cases to bar his installment as President?

Well, two separate individuals have pursued legal cases to bar the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, though these cases appear, thankfully, to be getting very little traction as reported in today's Los Angeles Times. In one case, Leo C. Donofrio of East Brunskwick, N.J. did in fact sue against both McCain and Obama. In another case Philip J. Berg of Lafayette, Pa. sued against Obama specifically. Of interest to me is that, in my view, where McCain might occupy something of the muddy ground I occupy in my own birth location, Obama's birth certificate clearly locates him in Hawaii, when it was already a state in the United States. While both cases have been largely ignored because you can't just bring a suit unless you can prove personal harm, it still gives me pause: what did the founding authors mean by "natural born Citizen"? Surely, all historical legal precedents recognize Obama to be one because he was born on U.S. soil, which has always been enough to make someone a citizen. You add to that the fact that his mother was a natural-born citizen, and you would think his citizenship should be unassailable. That's the beauty of the U.S. as opposed to a country like Kuwait where you and your children could all have been born there, and you would still not be citizens. Why is it that people in this country need to persist in imagining U.S. citizens to be something they have never been (except in the case of the original Americans who predate Plymouth and Jamestown), people whose ancestors have all lived and died on this land? What does it mean to be a citizen of the U.S. now or ever?

I guess because of my own background, I think that being a U.S. citizen is an enforced choice. Most of us have no choice but to be here, but some of us do actively choose it. Putting aside the specific desires of some to make Obama an absolute other, a non-citizen, what is the deeper desire to disinherit those who think differently about being a U.S. citizen? Whose very ancestry may show up the complexity of calling oneself a citizen of the U.S.?

--
Image of Article II, Section 1 taken from the U.S. National Archives website.

If you tanked the world economy, would you deserve a bonus?

If you work for a major bank in the industrialized world, from Tokyo to New York, then the answer to the question should be an outright NO. Do you deserve a bonus for tanking the world economy? No. Do you deserve a bonus in the U.S. where the average individual is now in increasing peril of filing for bankruptcy because of your stupid mismanagement of the housing market, mortgage backed securities, credit default swaps, or any number of bad banking decisions that led to the current situation? No, you do not. You get bonuses for a job well done, not for drunk driving the world headlong into the worst financial disaster since October 1929.

I could not believe it when I read about the estimated bonuses for bankers working at top companies. I have to agree with another web user, JLP: some people claim bonuses are necessary to keep top talent, but I doubt that's true. I think it's more likely the people saying that want their own bonuses. I also feel like Joe Mysak described in his editorial, I want the bankers heads after even the suggestion that they should get bonuses. First of all, the extreme bonus system of big investment banks was probably a bad idea to begin with and needs to be reformed as both Mysak discussed in his editorial (and as William D. Cohan suggested in today's New York Times). Second, if a bank was just given some cash by the U.S. government, I don't care if the bonuses come from a different pile of money, you don't get bonuses when you need to borrow money.

Once I had a friend who was sick and in financial straits. She asked me if she could borrow $50 to buy her medication. Of course I willingly lent her money I figured I wouldn't see again. My willingness to help though was tinged with anger when I learnt that she had gone to a tanning salon the day before. Sorry, but if you have money for a tanning salon then you don't need a loan from me for medication, end of story. People with the kind of thinking evidenced by my friend then and bankers now have met grim fates in past troubled times. Just think Marie Antoinette and Revolutionary France. You can eat your cake, but if you're not careful, your head may in fact roll as Maureen Dowd suggested. So all that money these banks have stashed away for bonuses, they may want to view that as a source of cash flow and bailout funds, rather than turning to the U.S. government for handouts.

Kansas Congressman Dennis Moore (Democrat of course) keeps an update on his website about the size of the U.S. debt (as of October 15, 2008, that would be $10,326,055,380,264.11). That is $33,807.90 per person in the U.S. So, bankers, if you get your bonuses, perhaps some small redemption might be sought by paying down your and several others' share of the national debt. Or, perhaps you can bail out the educated classes, as suggested by one Facebook group, by paying off all $17 billion of outstanding student loans. Or maybe they can have a lottery of homeowners to bailout so that fewer people have to live out of their cars come spring. But if bankers give themselves these bonuses and keep it, they better hope it's enough to purchase a hideaway in a remote location where the angry mob can't show up with torches, pitchforks, and a guillotine.

You are asked now to stand on a question of love

This video of Keith Olbermann was sent to me, and it did bring me to tears. His reflections on Prop. 8 eloquently capture many of mine. I had to pass it on in the small ways I can.

Perhaps Our Long National Nightmare is Finally Over!

I was sitting in the lovely Wisconsin home of another Obama volunteer on Tuesday night. We had spent the afternoon knocking on doors, supplying people with the information on where they could go vote. That afternoon had left me cautiously optimistic of the results. Though Wisconsin was no longer an official swing state, there were enough McCain-Palin signs in the neighborhood to suggest that it had once been an area with strong Republican tendencies. Yet it was also a neighborhood with a large number of "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs as well as blatantly vacant and foreclosed upon homes. Many of the people we encountered were so fed up with President Bush, whom they equated with Senator McCain, they could not wait to vote for Senator Obama. After talking with them, seeing that neighborhood, and living in the U.S. as I have for most of the last eight years, it was with great relief that at 10pm CST, I watched the numbers tick up next to Obama's name. He went from being the front-runner to being Mr. President-Elect as soon as the polls closed in California, Oregon, and Washington.

While I cannot express to you my complete joy and relief at the outcome of the presidential election, I find myself dismayed by the outcome of California's vote on Proposition 8, which bans gay marriage. This dismay was increased when I learned that a friend of mine went to vote in the Vista Samoan Seventh Day Adventist Church. Let's leave aside the momentary question of why churches are valid polling locations (as opposed to public institutions like say, schools). My friend informed me that this church actually violated California Elections Code Sections 18370-18371. All over the polling location, inside, next to the voting booths, the church had local newsletters advocating for Proposition 8, and the logic of these newsletters made false suggestions, like somehow gay marriage will threaten their tax-exempt status (which only would have increased my support of gay marriage were it true, but alas it is not). No advocacy for anything on the ballot should take place inside or within 100 feet of the polling location, and this is a law I am familiar with as someone who has volunteered on previous campaigns.

So though Colorado stepped up and voted down an amendment defining human life as the moment of conception, California proved itself home to homophobic bigots willing to lie and break the law in order to prevent gay couples from experiencing the same marital miseries as the rest of us. When I looked over the list of reasons given for support of Proposition 8 on that website I linked to earlier, I couldn't help but wonder why these groups were so willing to lie. I also couldn't help but wonder about how their mind works on such domino-effect logic, that if "A" happens, it will topple through the alphabet and destroy "Z." If you oppose gay marriage, then don't marry a gay person, but it has absolutely nothing to do with your daily life. And, I also need to comment on one final thing said by Orange County's own Rick Warren: "For 5,000 years, every culture and every religion – not just Christianity – has defined marriage as a contract between men and women...There is no reason to change the universal, historical definition of marriage to appease 2% of our population." This is actually historically inaccurate. First of all, marriage has in much of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic world been defined as a contract between one man and multiple women. Secondly, even in the state of California, cultures have existed within the last five hundred years with different views. Certain indigenous Californian tribes actually had chieftains who married transvestite men, and these men were believed to have special powers and were selected as one of the chief's "wives" to bring blessings upon his household. In his book Converting California, James Sandos eloquently describes many of the customs of indigenous Californian tribes regarding marriage that Warren would no doubt find scandalous. But just because they scandalize Warren doesn't mean that these practices did not take place.

--
photo from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/world_news_america/7712138.stm

Please Vote If You Can

The McCain/Palin campaign sent out one last effort at over-simplification and pure lies today, so I attempted to make my own corrective.

I was recently helping someone study for U.S. naturalization, and while the booklet does not necessarily contain the questions I would chose, Question 93 suggested one thing: the most important right granted U.S. citizens is the right to vote. Please vote.