Elevated Terror Threat for LGBT Community
The Department of Homeland Security needs to raise the terror threat level to Severe Bloody Red. The escalation of attacks, intimidation and threats against the LGBT community is on the rise and taking a bloody toll. The most recent consequence of escalating harassment have resulted in the tragic suicides of two young teenagers and the curiously deranged and dangerous social media stalking of a gay university student leader by an assistant attorney general from the State of Michigan. These attacks pose a clear and present danger to the physical safety and emotional wellness of the LGBT community. It exemplifies the prevailing climate of intolerance and bigoted hatred exponentially spawning in the polluted vitriol of America’s political culture. It is clothed in the righteous banality of religious fundamentalism. Justified with the certainty of theological platitudes and enforced with the zealous sword of biblical scripture. It presents an extreme risk to the civil liberties of all citizens. It assails our right to freely associate, compels behavior and demands conformity of thought and adoption of a common belief system. It is a grave and looming threat to our democratic way of life.
Tyler Clementi was a college freshman at Rutgers University. Tyler, a gifted musician, diligent student, good friend and loving son jumped off the George Washington Bridge after Dahrun Ravi, his roommate of three weeks, surreptitiously videoed a sexual encounter Tyler had with another male and broadcast it on a social media site. To ensure the video attracted wide exposure, Mr. Ravi Tweeted to his followers that they should log on to the live stream. The horror and shame of being victimized by a vicious hate crime and personally violated in such a manner was too much to bear. Mr. Clementi chose to end his pain by taking his own life.
Understanding this event as the result of a misguided college prank gone wrong or an unfortunate consequence enabled by the misuse of powerful social media technologies misses the point. To do so would absolve Mr. Ravi’s distorted and heinously warped value system. His punitive glee in perpetrating the offense. His demonstrative lack of capacity to feel empathy or acceptance of his roommates sexuality. His failure to recognize his right to privacy. His lack of any sense of compassion. Mr. Ravi’s prurient pursuit of degradation and defamation of his hate crime victim and his intent to do extreme harm to Mr. Clementi is evidence of his deep rooted and socially acceptable homophobia that is shared with many people.
It is curious that one would expect that as a person of color, Mr. Ravi would have a heightened sensitivity to the poison of prejudice and the destructive capacity of hate crimes. Trying to understand Mr. Ravi’s motives for his action is an impossibility for anyone to fathom save himself; but one can surmise that as a person of color Mr. Ravi may have experienced a situation where he was cast as “the other”. The other is always an uncomfortable and dangerous geography to inhabit. The alien outsider, one who stands apart and is different from the dominate ethnic, racial, creed or sexual orientation is usually cast in shrouds of suspicion, fear and ridicule. Perhaps Mr. Ravi’s attempt to revile an LGBT person because of their sexuality was an attempt to gain acceptance with his classmates by victimizing Mr. Clementi in league with other straits? Mr. Ravi gets a pass and is welcomed into the inner circle as one of the good ole boys whose prejudices, fears and bigotries mirror the dominant culture. The price of admission for Mr. Ravi was the death of his roommate.
The other disturbing factor in Mr. Ravi’s assault was the use of social media technologies. Many youths enabled with powerful communication platforms like You Tube, Facebook and Twitter have a difficult time perceiving the boundaries of private and public life. The domain of the public persona and private life has become obscured and confused by the ethical vagaries and accessibility of a multichannel digital life. Since the time of their birth, today’s youth have been totally saturated, empowered and enraptured in the world of digital technologies and media. It has become the necessary open source to project your ego, display your passion and live out your angst as a real time avatar. The reality of interpersonal connections and human skills erodes in a universe of self seeking holograms guided by a radical social ethos to project power through the aggressive pursuit of self will with the ultimate objective to seek aggrandizement and demand instant gratification. Mr. Ravi used that power to devastating effect.
Mr. Ravi may believe that his technical prowess provided him license to pursue the character assassination of his victim. Questions will arise about the harm these social media technologies can cause. Many believe the power of the technology is to vast and dangerous for teens and children and provides tools for stalkers, predators and criminals to aid their enterprise to exploit others to do harm. A great example being the recent clamor about Craig’s List and its promotion and support of child prostitution and sexual slavery. The proliferation of online bullying, sexting and other pernicious uses of social media technologies are problems with no easy solutions. No doubt these are real concerns but it is not the inherent nature of the technology that is at fault it is the values and intent of the users of technology that are cause for concern.
The problem is not about having too much freedom, or having access to enabling technologies we don’t yet know how to tame. Twitter, Facebook, and blogging sites empower the user. Like the Luddites of old who believed machines were enslaving them the crux of the matter lied in the intent, use, control and deployment of the technology. These technologies are powerful tools to enlighten, cultivate, uplift and empower individuals but it can also just as easily be used as tools to harm, denigrate, enslave and oppress. Its all about human values. The values of a society that believes it has the license and the moral conviction to defame and destroy the lives of others because they have the means and tacit consent to do so is terrorism. The fact that one can quote Leviticus, or find the appropriate passage from the Quran or St. Paul does not justify nor confer the right to “righteously” expose, denounce or shame a perceived moral depravity in a secular society.
That brings us to the other tragic suicide, 13 year old Asher Brown, returned home from school last week, walked into his closet and used a handgun to end his life as a result of being terrorized by his Middle School classmates in Houston. Classmates of Asher bullied him and taunted him about his perceived homosexuality. On the day Asher took his own life, he admitted to his parents that he was gay. It is startling and comforting to learn that Asher felt safe enough in his own home to admit his sexual orientation to his parents. Asher’s mother and father accepted their son’s sexuality and did not scorn or condemn him. They continued to unconditionally love and embrace their son as all good parents do.
It is unfortunate that the boy’s tormentors did not share the same understanding and practice the acceptance of Asher’s parents. Children live and emulate what they learn from their parents and communities they participate and live in. If children are prisms of the families and communities that create them the bullying behavior and bigoted hated must have been a keystone of Asher’s tormentors homes. Public education is under sever pressure. Homophobia and bullying is not on the curricula of the public school system. Tolerance, diversity and secularism are values that public schools try to promote and are often the ideals that are derided by indidivuals and institutions that condemn public schools as propagators of these “liberal values”. In response to their abhorrence to these unsavory ideals they choose to home school their children and teach them to fear Ungodly secularism, be wary those who are different and condemn the sinfulness and moral depravity of same sex relations. Demonizing homosexuals and preaching distrust for people and persons who may not look or think like you do is fertile ground for a violent reaction to express the pent up fear and resentment of the alien and reprobate other.
Since No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the public school system has been directed to be a “value neutral” institution. It is pressured to reform its curricula to better reflect the prevailing conservative culture that demands creationism be taught as a science, Darwinism is dangerous and unionized teachers are fonts of liberal ideology that needs to be silenced. The learning experience in the public school system has devolved into a mundane exercise of preparatory drills to take commercially developed state examinations. Teachers and institutional effectiveness is quantitatively measured by a students ability to retain a series of specious facts. The quality of the educational experience, love of discovery, pursuit and exchange of ideas, respect for diversity and different points of view are lost in the “value free” world of pedestrian test taking and fact retainment. Had these children been schooled in the value of tolerance and the reality of diversity or had time and opportunity to interact with other children unlike themselves, the fear and resentment of Asher may have been lessened and the young boy may still be with us.
The crowning jewel in this trinity of hate has to be the State of Michigan’s Assistant Attorney General Andrew Shirvell. Mr. Shirvell has engaged in a cyber bullying of University of Michigan Student Assembly President Chris Armstrong. Mr. Armstrong is openly gay and was elected by the university’s student body to represent them. This has not sat well with Mr. Shirvell a University of Michigan alumnus and a fundamentalist Christian. Mr. Shirvell has started a website, Chris Armstrong Watch where he unleashes a consistent homophobic fueled diatribe against Mr. Armstrong’s alleged “radical homosexual agenda”.
As a private citizen, Mr. Shirvell closely peruses Mr. Armstrong’s Facebook page to pick out posts and photo’s that raise his ire and uses the material as grist for his Chris Armstrong Watch website. The accompanying comments and altered reproductions of Mr. Armstrong photo’s scream about his elitism, sexual degeneracy and Nazi like political tactics Mr. Armstrong employs in service to the advancement of a radical homosexual agenda.
This is truly frightening stuff. A state Assistant Attorney General scouring Facebook pages and setting up a blog site dedicated to attacking and undermining a student leader because of his sexual identity is sickening and comes dangerously close to the abuse of office which I understand Mr. Shirvell was relieved of today. Mr. Shirvell defends his actions on the grounds that he is exercising his rights of free speech as a private citizen. Driven by his Christian fundamentalist faith and a reactionary political ideology, Mr. Shirvell’s political fixation and strident personal vilification of Mr. Armstrong are classic Rovian attack politics. Mr. Shirvell stands shoulder to shoulder with James O’Keefe and Andrew Breitbart. All three have shown a disdain for the truth, law and private rights of their targets in pursuit of a radical right wing agenda.
The values of a society that believes it has the right and the moral conviction to defame and destroy the lives of others because they have the ideological conviction, means and tacit consent to do so is the definition of tyranny and its pursuit is terrorism. The US Constitution protects all citizens from zealots emboldened by personal truths derived from their holy scrolls. A secular democracy protects the civil rights of its citizens and frees them from the righteous tyranny of others. The Constitution stipulates that there is a single law of the land and it is a violation of civil rights and a crime to expose, denounce or shame a person based on a theological interpretation of moral depravity. The Constitution is the final arbiter and surest protection of individual liberty for all; damning the psychological culture of extreme political egoism advanced by Shirvell, Breitbart and O’Keefe.
Character assassination and appeal to the baser instincts of fear and loathing help propagandists to demarcate the lines that separate groups, reinforce prejudice and make dialog and the formation of consensus all but impossible. Consider if you will a government administration populated with individuals with the temperament of Shrivell, O’Keefe and Breitbart. America would be ruled by a government that edits reality to conform to their ideology. It would propagate a political narrative that blindly pursues ideology by running rough shod over the personal life of citizens while resorting to character annihilation and entrapment tactics. It would truly be an embodiment of an Orwellian nightmare
The terror threat must be raised. Terrorists are harming our citizens. The world will miss the gracious presence of Asher’s beautiful smile. Asher will never anoint another with the promise of renewal again. The dear gift of youthful transformation is now lost to a world deeply in need of a rebirth. The precious resource of Asher is squandered and silenced by those clinging to the old ways of ugly bigotry. Asher’s spirit will remain with all who loved him and venerated by all who respect individual liberty.
We have also lost the exquisite melodies of Tyler Clementi’s music. Tyler’s silence will never weave harmony into a cacophonous world crackling in ugly dissonance. Tyler’s violin now entombed in its case will never sing the sounds of joy, enlightenment, revelation and transcendence to those who refuse to listen to the symphonies of understanding, acceptance and appreciate the celebration of love. The beautiful music Tyler created and brought into the world will never be heard again. Tragic that the wonderful harmony of Tyler’s life was quieted by the deaf ears of those refusing to listen and most needing to hear it.
Rest in peace beloved.
Youtube Music Video: Janine Jansen, Lark Ascending
Risk: LGBT, civil rights, constitution, free speech
Ramadan 2010
As-Salaam-Alaikum
Tomorrow marks the beginning of Ramadan. Ramadan is a holy month of observances for Muslims. Ramadan encourages the faithful to fast, give alms to the poor, read selections of the Quran and recite prayers that bring Muslims into a deeper faith engagement to draw closer to Allah.
This years Ramadan comes at a time when relations between Muslims and Christians are severely strained over issues such as The Ground Zero Mosque, continued war in Afghanistan and Iraq, Palestinian/Israeli politics and the challenges of assimilating Islamic practices into the cultural traditions of secular western societies. The evidence of strain often manifests in ugly displays of intolerance and xenophobia that are exacerbated by economic duress and eagerly exploited by reactionary politicians. Religious rightists seize on the opportunity to gnash away at the racial wounds and cultural divide to arouse suspicion to advance an intolerant Falangist agenda.
We hope that people of good will welcome Ramadan in a spirit of tolerance and recognize it as an opportunity to develop a greater understanding of Islam and to build bridges with the Muslim community. Religious tolerance and the protection of the free practice of faith is a principal pillar of secular democracy. The protection of this right is the surest safeguard that personal liberty and the free expression of thought remains central to the democratic culture of the United States.
We welcome Ramadan and offer a blessing to our Muslim brothers and sisters that they grow to understand the gift that secular democracies confer on the free practice of religion. And we hope people of faith and people of conscience recognize that Ramadan is an opportunity to bring all the great faith traditions together in a deep and rich engagement guided by the light and unifying love of the Beneficent One.
Amen
You Tube Video: Azan, Islamic Call To Prayer
risk: tolerance, religious liberty, secular democracy,
Convergence and Innovation Inhibitors: 011110
As we start the second decade of the new millennium, innovation is understood as a critical driver to overcome the economic malaise plaguing the global economy. Economic stasis and political factionalism has made it increasingly evident that faltering economic and social institutions cry out for sweeping reform. These reforms can only be achieved with innovative approaches in policy and practice. Innovation is realized by giving flight to uninhibited thought and the clear application of ideas with decisive action. Though most agree that we badly need reform, we remain at painful odds as to what those reforms should be and how to implement them. The destructive legislative debates on health care and the ugly political theater of town meetings that occurred in the United States over the summer accomplished little in regards to meaningful reform. The exercises only served to drive a deepening wedge into the ability of a democratic culture to form a transformative consensus.
Our society is a complex ecosystem comprised of many competing interests. The classic definition of politics, “the means to decide how limited resources are allocated to disparate interests” is clearly a truism that must be applied if we are to realize the reform that we desperately need. In a post scarcity society that definition may seem a bit crude or antiquated. America’s history is marked by a culture of innovation and the incubation of industry. Innovation and its commercial expression in entrepreneurialism is a national asset that tempers the hard edges of stringent allocation or resources and has been the source of our great social wealth. Democracies continually require citizens to arbitrate how competing interests are reconciled and converge. As a self professed democracy the United States must break down the barriers that inhibit innovation by confronting the challenges posed by convergence.
Convergence has been the watch word in the tech industry for the past few years. Convergence aggregates, joins and aligns discreet trends, competencies, technologies and missions to spawn innovation and progress. Masters of business innovation understand that a precondition of convergence is the ability to collaborate. Collaboration requires extended conversations and dialog to understand how competing interests can be reconciled and brought together so that innovation and progress can be achieved. Marketeers invent neologisms like coopetition to brand the idea and lend heft to its thrust. We believe that innovation borne from convergence is the path to rebuild our economy, heal cultural wounds and take a step toward political maturity the United States needs to sustain the great experiment of our democratic republic.
With that in mind we offer a list that outlines the inhibitors to innovation. It is hoped that our nations leaders and people can begin an earnest conversation to address these barriers to growth. Maybe I’m wrong with offering this modest list but I remain willing to discuss it, hopeful that people of good will with a different viewpoint will be open to correct my thinking and contribute to my enlightenment.
1. War: War is inherently wasteful. The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are grievous examples of waste and national distraction that hampers the United States economic recovery. At an Ecumenical Memorial Service held at Yankee Stadium following the 9/11 terror attacks a Buddhist Monk stated that he believed “it was wiser to drop refrigerators on Afghanistan then bombs”. Almost a decade later and two wars on I can’t help but to think what a meager $100 billion investment in Afghanistan would have returned to the United States tax payers. More importantly it would have shown the world that above all else America values the sanctity and preservation of life. It would have also minimized the rising toll of casualties of both citizens and soldiers. We developed some great bunker buster bombs but we can’t figure out a way to stop a suicide bomber with exploding underpants. We succeeded in stirring up a hornets nest of angry insurgents and failed to build innovative pathways to peace with steadfast bridges to secure allies and pacify combatants.
2. Politics: To be sure politics is omnipresent but the politicization of faith institutions and government functions is a great separator of people. When politics infects faith institutions their ability to breach the social divide and join people together is seriously compromised or downright destructive. The Catholic Church’s practice of denying the Eucharist to parishioners based on political biases of the communicant places politics at the center of the Lords alter. The recent occurrences of radical Islamists burning down Christian Churches in Malaysia is tragically ironic. The violence, a response to the Christians appropriation of the word Allah as a name for God; is a violent rejection of language convergence of two great faith traditions. It would seem that unity is a threat that God cannot abide and is a growing threat that must be abolished. In the secular world government agencies were instructed to withhold scientific climate change research of the National Science Foundation because it did not conform with the politics of the party in power. The extent of the politicization of the judicial branch of government under the Bush Administration was a seditious move worthy of dictatorships. Innovative application of constitutional law in defense of civil liberties is one of the greatest challenges the war on terror poses to this country. The creation of kangaroo courts to support the politics of the ruling party would undermine our system of justice. It would transform our judiciary into a repressive apparatus of the state, our laws into stale dogmas ill suited to meet the legal challenges of our time and a justice system that is indistinguishable from the justice offered by our opponents.
3. Ideology: Only good ideas need apply. Deng Xiaoping said it best “does it matter if its a communist or capitalist mouse trap. The question is, does it catch mice?” Seeing this as a threat, Mao Zedong unleashed the cultural revolution and routed the capitalist roaders as a threat to the Great Proletarian Revolution. After the death of Mao, Deng would be rehabilitated and play a key role in China’s adoption of a market economy and its current ascendancy as a world economic power. In my mind there is a striking resemblance to the debate about heath care. Socialized medicine is bad. Do you want to turn into France? Canadian health care is too expensive. UK heath care system is overloaded and can’t cope with demand. These problems would be solved however after the death panels had a chance to meet and decide who shall live and who must walk the plank.
4. Entrenched Commercial Interests: Though we are ardent believers in capitalism as an engine of innovation the dictatorship of ROI, entrenched concentrations of capital and an unwillingness or inability to adopt longer term investment horizons hamper innovation. The failure of the United States automobile industry to develop fuel efficient vehicles is a good example of market intransigence. The development of junk bonds by Michael Milken and Drexel Burnham Lambert dismantled the manufacturing base of the US economy accelerated the countries decline as a net exporter of products creating the foundation of a debtor nation. During the presidency of Jimmy Carter solar panels were installed on the roof of the White House. The succeeding administration had them removed. Imagine where the alternative energy industry would be today had it developed this leading edge idea and capitalized on this first mover advantage.
5. Unbridled free markets: The economic carnage of the banking meltdown is a startling example of the excesses the pursuit of profit will create. The boom in commercial and residential real estate construction created massive stocks of unused inventories that misdirected and wasted enormous resource. The energy and capital expended on these wasteful endeavors misdirected funds and created huge social hazards that requires massive amounts of capital to mitigate. Also worth mention is the development of video gaming. Lots of energy and creativity is being expended on the best techno music to use while your Mafia Avatar bashes open the head of your opponent with a baseball bat. We are not suggesting censorship or a prohibition of video games nor centralized economic planning. Its a compensation and social value issue. Perhaps a communicants denial of participation at the Lord’s Table lead them to leave the church and miss the message about social values.
6. Technology: It may seem odd to include technology as an inhibitor to innovation but technology for technology sake may inhibit the development of innovative applications solutions that are not technological in nature. The technorati of the world is transforming technology into a religion. Deprived of its human dimension it can become a dogma that grows in an antagonistic relationship with its human masters. The United States continues to trumpet its technological prowess as the deciding factors in its war in Afghanistan. But that paradigm was explored during the war in Viet Nam where pungi sticks ultimately trumped napalm bombs. The power of an idea and how it connects and motivates people is force that is mightier then the sword.
7. Fundamentalism: The Pharisees once asked Jesus, “is it lawful to heal on the sabbath?” Jesus answered that it was always the right time to heal those who are sick. The world recoils in horror at the capacity for destruction fundamentalism regularly visits upon the world. The denial of equal civil rights to LGBT people creates a bifurcated system of citizenship. It is an ugly stain on our democratic heritage. The gravest peril to democracy is the abridgment and denial of civil rights to any group of citizens. Democracy necessitates that all republicans enjoy equal access and rights in order for it to function. The denial of that right based on a fundamentalist reading of religious scriptures makes it particularly abhorrent because civil rights of citizens in a secular democracy is not an issue that is decided by theologians or the adherents to a particular theology.
Tolerance and consensus are both antithetical to the precepts of fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is not the sole province of religion. It has its secular and ideological adherents as well. Fundamentalism is a pillar of dictatorship; either of a political or theocratic nature both are enemies of secular democracy. Secular democracies require tolerance to respect the diverse ideas and competing viewpoints require in the democratic process. Secular democracies require the trust to converse and hash out the best ideas that serve the greatest good. This is only possible if consensus can be achieved. It is how “out of many becomes one”. It is the true genius of America. It is a worthy innovation of governance that every freedom loving citizen should jealously guard and consciously pursue.
8. Public Education: The public education system that the United States built is the true arsenal of democracy and the nations source of wealth and its many contributions it has made to the world. Without the vast network of learning institutions built and supported by successive generations of Americans the worlds great experiment in representative democracy would have long ago perished. The public schools sole charter is to create an enlightened citizenship with the skills to discuss, discern and decide in a civil and constructive manner the ever evolving dialectic of a democratic consensus placed at the service of the republic. It is one of the true geniuses of America and remains her enduring strength.
Today public schools are under attack by forces whose agendas are the pursuit of parochial goals that first and foremost seek their enrichment and interests at the expense of the greatest good of the republic. The charter school movement is a trend that threatens the public school system by privatizing some of the systems assets and draining away much needed resource and financial support. It forces public schools to dispense with curriculum offerings like music and arts, sports programs and civic excursions that will convey an understanding of how institutions interact and support the greater social good. This aspect of the educational experience is supplanted by an exacting examination regime that destroys the love of learning. Secular learning is also being threatened through the introduction of theological precepts like creationism into the science curriculum of public schools. Religion and faith are important precepts to offer in a public educational curriculum; however theology that masquerades as science is an ideological stricture that has no place in public schools. These trends are pose great challenges to the public schools mission to form enlightened citizens free to think and free to act in the sole service of liberty and participatory democracy. Innovation and progress is in danger of becoming a secular sin a disease of the soul that needs to be eradicated from the public schools as its threatens to infect the greater body politic.
You Tube Music Video: Louis Armstrong, I Get Ideas
Risk: innovation, convergence, progress, tolerance
Risk Rap 