Trump Versus the Constitution and Free Speech

One of Donald Trump's latest Twitter tirades - it is difficult to keep track since there are so many - involves flag burning.  Per Der Fuhrer, " . . . .there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”  I have always found it telling that for the far right - including most evangelical Christians - they find burning an American flag much more distressing than seeing starving children or Muslims being murdered by brutal dictators in the Middle East and elsewhere. It speaks volumes about their moral bankruptcy and the toxicity of their foul version of Christianity.  But back to Der Fuhrer.  Trump's Twitter outburst reveals many things, not the least of which is that the man is clueless on constitutional rights of citizens or the fact that a Supreme Court ruling upheld flag burning as a right of freedom of speech.  The New York Times, with which Trump has love/hate relationship schools Trump on constitutional realities.  Here are excerpts:

When Donald Trump, hand on the Bible on Jan. 20, swears to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, we the people will have good reason to doubt he knows what he’s talking about. Consider what he tweeted out on Tuesday:

“Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail!”

Here’s where we explain what shouldn’t need explaining. Flag-burning is constitutionally protected speech. The Supreme Court has made this clear, in a ruling joined by Mr. Trump’s favorite justice, Antonin Scalia. It’s popular to want to punish flag-burners — pandering politicians, including Hillary Clinton, have tried. But the First Amendment exists to protect unpopular, even repulsive forms of expression. As the Supreme Court said in a 1990 decision finding a federal law against flag-burning unconstitutional, “Punishing desecration of the flag dilutes the very freedom that makes this emblem so revered, and worth revering.” It’s interesting that so many of the people who are eager to punish flag-burners, like Mr. Trump, are at the same time so untroubled by speech that offends minorities, women and other Americans. They rail against any concern about that kind of speech as “political correctness.” But in this country, flag-burning is about as politically incorrect as anything you can do. Where is their courageous defense of speech now? Isn’t Mr. Trump the man who stood up for the freedom to say brutally unpleasant things? Who said, at the Republican convention: “I will present the facts plainly and honestly. We cannot afford to be so politically correct anymore.”

The court, by the way, has also declared that citizenship cannot be stripped away, not by Congress or the president, not in this democracy.

But we don’t have the luxury of merely mocking someone who is now as powerful as Mr. Trump. Before you tune him out, remember what the right-wing propaganda site Breitbart was celebrating on Tuesday — that Mr. Trump’s social-media presence allows him to get his message to millions, bypassing “corporate media.” He has more than 16 million Twitter followers. With Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, he can feed lies and ignorance directly to 36 million people.

He tweets, he posts, he incites. He trolls. He commands a global platform and will soon be America’s commander in chief. But it has to be said, and said again: This is not normal. It demeans the presidency.

 Be very afraid of this man and what his gang of henchmen and Republican sycophants in Congress are poised to do to this country and the rights of citizens.

The Mindset of the Christofascists [and GOP Base]

Admittedly, this blog does not treat Christofascists and fundamentalist religion kindly.  Why?  Because in my view they are decidedly not nice people and arguably have some significant mental health issues.  And then there is the rank hypocrisy that one sees on display daily along with the pervasive hatred of others.  There are few less loving people despite their protestations that they "love" everyone, even gays, as they go about their agenda of stigmatizing their targets and making their lives as hellish as possible.    Bob Altemeyer, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, has a piece entitled "The Authoritarians" that looks at the fundamentalist Christian mindset after a study that used a series of tests to question evangelicals, Christian Fundamentalists, and mixed groups to determine the values held by these people, their knowledge of the Bible, and their reasoning skills (ethical reasoning).   His conclusions about Christian fundamentalists - those I call the Christofascists were not pretty:

They are highly submissive to established authority, aggressive in the name of that authority, and conventional to the point of insisting everyone should behave as their authorities decide. They are fearful and self-righteous and have a lot of hostility in them that they readily direct toward various out-groups. They are easily incited, easily led, rather un-inclined to think for themselves, largely impervious to facts and reason, and rely instead on social support to maintain their beliefs. They bring strong loyalty to their in-groups, have thick-walled, highly compartmentalized minds, use a lot of double standards in their judgments, are surprisingly unprincipled at times, and are often hypocrites.

But they are also Teflon-coated when it comes to guilt. They are blind to themselves, ethnocentric and prejudiced, and as closed-minded as they are narrowminded. They can be woefully uninformed about things they oppose, but they prefer ignorance and want to make others become as ignorant as they. They are also surprisingly uninformed about the things they say they believe in, and deep, deep, deep down inside many of them have secret doubts about their core belief. But they are very happy, highly giving, and quite zealous. In fact, they are about the only zealous people around nowadays in North America, which explains a lot of their success in their endless (and necessary) pursuit of converts.

Despite all the things in scriptures about loving others, forgiving others, leaving punishment to God, and so on, authoritarian followers feel empowered to isolate and segregate, to humiliate, to persecute, to beat, and to kill in the middle of the night, because in their heads they can almost hear the loudspeakers announcing, “Now batting for God’s team, his designated hitter, (their name).”

 One of his conclusions from his study?  This:

[T]he greatest threat to American democracy today arises from a militant authoritarianism that has become a cancer upon the nation.

Given the nastiness and hypocrisy of these folks, I ask again, why do we give any deference to them or their "deeply held religious beliefs"?   These folks are a clear and present danger to constitutional government and the rights of those they deem "other."

The Dangers of Waiving Constitutional Rights Due to Prejudice

In general, George Will has increasingly become one of the angry old white men of the Republican Party.  But on occasion he still nails it and comes across with a logical and common sense op-ed that counters some of the ugliest inclinations of the GOP and is fellow conservatives.  One such column appears in the Washington Post in which Will argues against the waiving of constitutional rights favored by many of the anti-Muslim, foaming at the mouth members of the GOP and its racist and religious extremist base.  In doing so, he looks at one of America's less shining moments of the past: the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II which ultimately was fueled by plain racial prejudice.  Here are highlights which should be read by those seeking to waive constitutional rights in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings:

Two of the three most infamous Supreme Court decisions were erased by events. The Civil War and postwar constitutional amendments effectively overturned Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), which held that blacks could never have rights that whites must respect. Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which upheld legally enforced segregation, was undone by court decisions and legislation.

The third, Korematsu v. United States (1944), which affirmed the president’s wartime power to sweep Americans of disfavored racial groups into concentration camps, elicited a 1988 congressional apology. Now Peter Irons, founder of the Earl Warren Bill of Rights Project at the University of California at San Diego, is campaigning for a Supreme Court “repudiation” of the Korematsu decision and other Japanese internment rulings. Such repudiation, if it occurred, would be unprecedented.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt authorized the military to “prescribe military areas . . . from which any or all persons may be excluded.” So some 110,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry, two-thirds of them born here, were sent to camps in desolate Western locations. Supposedly, this was a precaution against espionage and sabotage. Actually, it rested entirely on the racial animus of Gen. John DeWitt, head of the Western Defense Command.

Using government records, Irons has demonstrated that because senior officials, including Solicitor General Charles Fahy, committed “numerous and knowing acts of governmental misconduct,” the Supreme Court based its decision on “records and arguments that were fabricated and fraudulent.” Officials altered and destroyed evidence that would have revealed the racist motives for the internments.  

Also kept from the court was a report, prepared for the Chief of Naval Operations and made available to DeWitt, estimating potentially disloyal Japanese as just 3 percent of the Japanese American population and declaring that these were “already fairly well known to naval intelligence” and could be quickly apprehended, if necessary. The suppressed report’s conclusion: “The entire Japanese problem has been magnified out of its true proportion, largely because of the physical characteristics of the people (and) should be handled on the basis of the individual. . . and not on a racial basis.”

The Korematsu decision reflected perennial dangers: panic and excessive deference, judicial and other, to presidents or others who would suspend constitutional protections in the name of wartime exigencies.

It is less important that the decision be repudiated than that it be remembered. Especially by those currently clamoring, since Boston, for a U.S. citizen — arrested in America and concerning whom there is no evidence of a connection with al-Qaeda, the Taliban or other terror network — to be detained by the military as an “enemy combatant.” The Korematsu case is a reminder that waiving constitutional rights is rarely necessary and rarely ends well.

Very well said.  Not that logic and reason or even past mistakes mean anything to the Christofascist/Tea Party elements of the GOP.

GOP and Far Right: Constitutional Rights for Only Some Americans

While Phyllis Schlafly was penning her batshitery, a Fox News commentator got to the heart of what the wing nuts and their political whores in the Republican Party really want: limiting full constitutional rights to only some citizens.  Yes, you guessed it.  Limit such rights to white conservative Christians who are "real Americans."  The rest of us, including gays who already have been deprived of equality under the civil laws in most states, would be given whatever scraps are thrown to us.   Media Matters looks at the segment on Fox News where Brian Kilmeade put this agenda on full display.   Fortunately, Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr.,  gave much needed push back against this shredding of the U. S. Constitution.  Here are excerpts:

KILMEADE: Although many consider him an enemy, according to the White House, the remaining suspect, the remaining suspect, in the Boston Marathon attack will not be considered an enemy combatant. But will justice now be served anyway and how will the civil liberties be affected? He is now a American citizen. Fox News legal analyst Peter Johnson, Jr. here. Peter: when we talked yesterday, we didn't know what the administration was going to do. Now we know. Not an enemy combatant and he was already Mirandized so the whole public safety issue is out the window. Next thing you know, a high profile defense attorney will be waltzing in here, making a zillion dollars off of him.

KILMEADE: What do we do? We sit there -- F.B.I. Interrogators sit down with him for a week or two until they feel as though they got accurate information.

JOHNSON: Do you believe in indefinite detention of Americans? Because I don't. I don't believe we should detain -- No matter how loathsome, disgusting, vile, contemptible.
KILMEADE: Two different issues.

JOHNSON: No, it's the same issue, an American issue. No, no, no. Either we believe in the Constitution or we don't believe in the Constitution.

KILMEADE: Not everyone is worthy of the constitutional rights that we have.

JOHNSON: Senator Graham is an expert on military commission and on the law of war.

KILMEADE: Yes.

JOHNSON: But what he's saying is, let's suspend civil rights and constitutional law.

KILMEADE: For public safety.

JOHNSON: In this particular case and then later we'll reinstate it. Now, what if someone decides to do that to Brian Kilmeade, or maybe his family?

KILMEADE: What if? I'm not blowing up the subway! I'm not doing it -- neither is your family.

JOHNSON.: It's not the president's determination nor Senator Graham's nor anyone else other than a U.S. attorney to decide how someone will charged or will they be charged. I believe in the public safety exception. I believe in doing everything we can to get terrorists. But at the same time, I'm saying: don't let the terrorists trample our rights going forward.

Kathleen Parker - who will probably receive threats from the "real American" crowd - gives similar push back to this agenda in a column in the Washington Post.  Here are highlights:

Whom do we hate when the enemy is a composite of our own diverse ecosystem? When “them” is “us?”

Our Boston (alleged) mass murderers were foreign-born, but the younger brother is an U.S. citizen. (The older brother, who died in a police shootout, was a permanent resident.) Given that one in eight U.S. residents is foreign-born, according to the Census Bureau, it is difficult to infer that being born abroad makes one more likely to become an anti-American terrorist.

[T]his is not a comparative religion seminar but an examination of the difficulties ahead as we wrestle acquired biases into submission and resist the urge to demonize groups of people. Discrimination is a life-saving tool in the jungle — steer clear of the hyenas — but it has no place in American jurisprudence. A U.S. citizen gets the full slate of equal rights and responsibilities, including a presumption of innocence, no matter which God he invokes.

Thus, although it is tempting to declare the surviving Boston suspect an “enemy combatant,” as suggested by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), it is essentially a means to deny rights accorded any other citizen who commits a crime. The only justification now would be that the suspect is believed to be Muslim, which isn’t a crime, or that he and his brother may have found inspiration among others of like intent.

Once we begin to discriminate in the assignment of rights to citizens and legal residents based on their thoughts, religious affiliation, assemblage — or our own assumptions — we risk becoming our own worst enemy.

At this juncture, the light-skinned, foreign-born, Muslim-leaning brothers who are suspected of inflicting terror on Boston fit neatly into no category we can define with certainty other than evil, which is, sadly, the unique provenance of the human race. Rooting it out will require more than tighter security or better immigration laws.

Parker is correct.  That doesn't mean her views will sit well with the Christofascists and Tea Party crowd in the GOP base.

Conservatives Against North Carolina Amendment 1

Click image to enlarge.

These arguments set out above speak for themselves. It's time to get religious extremism out of the civil laws - and state constitutions.

Career GOP Staffer - The Party Is Full of Lunatics

As a one time Republican from a family of long time Republicans, I note frequently the mental illness like state that has over taken the Republican Party. Ignorance is now celebrated, self-centered partisanship trumps the interests of the nation, and individuals who not too many years ago would have been viewed as lunatics are potentially viable presidential candidates by the party base. Add to that the reality that the GOP is now a de facto sectarian party and it adds up to a truly toxic brew. I'm not the only one who fled the GOP because of the sickness - and that's what it is - that has turned a once rational and respectable political party into a veritable insane asylum. Mike Lofgren, a retired 28 years veteran GOP Congressional staffer, has a piece on TruthOut.org that explains why he has now fled the GOP like so many others. It is a lengthy piece and I urge all readers to look at his full discussion of the three current tenants of the GOP. Here are some excerpts:

Both parties are rotten - how could they not be, given the complete infestation of the political system by corporate money on a scale that now requires a presidential candidate to raise upwards of a billion dollars to be competitive in the general election? Both parties are captives to corporate loot.

But both parties are not rotten in quite the same way. The Democrats have their share of machine politicians, careerists, corporate bagmen, egomaniacs and kooks. Nothing, however, quite matches the modern GOP.

To those millions of Americans who have finally begun paying attention to politics and watched with exasperation the tragicomedy of the debt ceiling extension, it may have come as a shock that the Republican Party is so full of lunatics. To be sure, the party, like any political party on earth, has always had its share of crackpots . . .

But the crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

It was this cast of characters and the pernicious ideas they represent that impelled me to end a nearly 30-year career as a professional staff member on Capitol Hill.

The debt ceiling extension is not the only example of this sort of political terrorism. Republicans were willing to lay off 4,000 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) employees, 70,000 private construction workers and let FAA safety inspectors work without pay, in fact, forcing them to pay for their own work-related travel - how prudent is that? - in order to strong arm some union-busting provisions into the FAA reauthorization.

It should have been evident to clear-eyed observers that the Republican Party is becoming less and less like a traditional political party in a representative democracy and becoming more like an apocalyptic cult, or one of the intensely ideological authoritarian parties of 20th century Europe. This trend has several implications, none of them pleasant.

John P. Judis sums up the modern GOP this way: "Over the last four decades, the Republican Party has transformed from a loyal opposition into an insurrectionary party that flouts the law when it is in the majority and threatens disorder when it is the minority. . . . If there is an earlier American precedent for today's Republican Party, it is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John Calhoun who threatened to nullify, or disregard, federal legislation they objected to and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery."

The media are also complicit in this phenomenon. Ever since the bifurcation of electronic media into a more or less respectable "hard news" segment and a rabidly ideological talk radio and cable TV political propaganda arm, the "respectable" media have been terrified of any criticism for perceived bias. Hence, they hew to the practice of false evenhandedness.

Undermining Americans' belief in their own institutions of self-government remains a prime GOP electoral strategy. But if this technique falls short of producing Karl Rove's dream of 30 years of unchallengeable one-party rule (as all such techniques always fall short of achieving the angry and embittered true believer's New Jerusalem), there are other even less savory techniques upon which to fall back. Ever since Republicans captured the majority in a number of state legislatures last November, they have systematically attempted to make it more difficult to vote: by onerous voter ID requirements

This legislative assault is moving in a diametrically opposed direction to 200 years of American history, when the arrow of progress pointed toward more political participation by more citizens. Republicans are among the most shrill in self-righteously lecturing other countries about the wonders of democracy; exporting democracy (albeit at the barrel of a gun) to the Middle East was a signature policy of the Bush administration. But domestically, they don't want those people voting.

You can probably guess who those people are. Above all, anyone not likely to vote Republican. As Sarah Palin would imply, the people who are not Real Americans. Racial minorities. Immigrants. Muslims. Gays. Intellectuals. Basically, anyone who doesn't look, think, or talk like the GOP base. This must account, at least to some degree, for their extraordinarily vitriolic hatred of President Obama.

Among the GOP base, there is constant harping about somebody else, some "other," who is deliberately, assiduously and with malice aforethought subverting the Good, the True and the Beautiful: Subversives. Commies. Socialists. Ragheads. Secular humanists. Blacks. Fags. Feminazis. The list may change with the political needs of the moment, but they always seem to need a scapegoat to hate and fear.

[T]he faux-populist wing of the party, knowing the mental compartmentalization that occurs in most low-information voters, played on the fears of that same white working class to focus their anger on scapegoats that do no damage to corporations' bottom lines: instead of raising the minimum wage, let's build a wall on the Southern border (then hire a defense contractor to incompetently manage it). Instead of predatory bankers, it's evil Muslims. Or evil gays. Or evil abortionists.

How do they manage to do this? Because Democrats ceded the field. Above all, they do not understand language. Their initiatives are posed in impenetrable policy-speak: . . . It was not always thus. It would have been hard to find an uneducated farmer during the depression of the 1890s who did not have a very accurate idea about exactly which economic interests were shafting him. An unemployed worker in a breadline in 1932 would have felt little gratitude to the Rockefellers or the Mellons. But that is not the case in the present economic crisis.

Thus far, I have concentrated on Republican tactics, rather than Republican beliefs, but the tactics themselves are important indicators of an absolutist, authoritarian mindset that is increasingly hostile to the democratic values of reason, compromise and conciliation.

As for what they really believe, the Republican Party of 2011 believes in three principal tenets I have laid out below. The rest of their platform one may safely dismiss as window dressing:

1. The GOP cares solely and exclusively about its rich contributors. The party has built a whole catechism on the protection and further enrichment of America's plutocracy.

2. They worship at the altar of Mars. While the me-too Democrats have set a horrible example of keeping up with the Joneses with respect to waging wars, they can never match GOP stalwarts such as John McCain or Lindsey Graham in their sheer, libidinous enthusiasm for invading other countries.

3. Give me that old time religion. Pandering to fundamentalism is a full-time vocation in the GOP. Beginning in the 1970s, religious cranks ceased simply to be a minor public nuisance in this country and grew into the major element of the Republican rank and file. Pat Robertson's strong showing in the 1988 Iowa Caucus signaled the gradual merger of politics and religion in the party. The results are all around us: if the American people poll more like Iranians or Nigerians than Europeans or Canadians on questions of evolution versus creationism, scriptural inerrancy, the existence of angels and demons, and so forth, that result is due to the rise of the religious right, its insertion into the public sphere by the Republican Party and the consequent normalizing of formerly reactionary or quaint beliefs. Also around us is a prevailing anti-intellectualism and hostility to science; it is this group that defines "low-information voter" - or, perhaps, "misinformation voter."

It is my view that the rise of politicized religious fundamentalism (which is a subset of the decline of rational problem solving in America) may have been the key ingredient of the takeover of the Republican Party. For politicized religion provides a substrate of beliefs that rationalizes - at least in the minds of followers - all three of the GOP's main tenets.

Some liberal writers have opined that the different socio-economic perspectives separating the "business" wing of the GOP and the religious right make it an unstable coalition that could crack. I am not so sure. There is no fundamental disagreement on which direction the two factions want to take the country, merely how far in that direction they want to take it. The plutocrats would drag us back to the Gilded Age, the theocrats to the Salem witch trials.

It is this broad and ever-widening gulf between the traditional Republicanism of an Eisenhower and the quasi-totalitarian cult of a Michele Bachmann that impelled my departure from Capitol Hill. . . . . I left because I was appalled at the headlong rush of Republicans, like Gadarene swine, to embrace policies that are deeply damaging to this country's future; and contemptuous of the feckless, craven incompetence of Democrats in their half-hearted attempts to stop them.

If Republicans have perfected a new form of politics that is successful electorally at the same time that it unleashes major policy disasters, it means twilight both for the democratic process and America's status as the world's leading power.

Sadly, I believe the analysis is correct and that if something isn't done to stop the increasingly dangerous lunatics now in control in the GOP, the future of this country does not look promising either economically for most citizens or in terms of sustained personal freedoms.

Homophobia, Not Homosexuality Is the Western Import to Africa

Ignorance and revisionist history are the most powerful allies of Christianists who seek to inflict their toxic form of Christianity and anti-gay hatred on all other citizens. And in Africa, American Christianists are busy brainwashing indigenous Africans to the myth that homosexuality did not exist in pre-colonial Africa. Like so much of what the Christianists disseminate, it's a lie that too many Africans in their gullibility are accepting from the lips of less than holy and pious preachers. If I often show contempt for Christianists it is the willingness to constantly lie and deceive that I find so despicable - especially in those who falsely claim to honor the Ten Commandments. A op-ed in New Zimbabwe looks at the real historic truth of sexuality in Africa before the colonial conquest and it's a very different story than what the Christianists and their puppets in African governments are peddling to the masses. Here are some highlights:

But of course, as historians of Africa are beginning to learn, we now know that the basic assumptions underlying these African attitudes towards homosexuality are wrong and quite clearly ahistorical. At the very dawn of history in southern Africa, when there was a transition from the hunting-gathering economy of the Khoisan to the cattle-based economy of Bantu-speaking people that brought more male control over the sexuality of women, dissident sexualities such as hungochani began to emerge or were already known.

The Shona of Zimbabwe, for example, like other societies, observed a culture of discretion around sexual matters, and actually recognised various forms of queer sexualities. Examples of pre-colonial gender variance and sexual inversion included ritual incest and celibacy, such as the mbonga, a female guardian whose celibacy protected the Shona chief, and the chibanda, a caste of male diviners possessed by female spirits and referred to in early European sources as “passive sodomites”.
Among the Lovedu people, the gender inversion involved women. The “rain queen” kept her virginity but married girls.

In the nineteenth century, Ndebele and Ngoni warriors introduced the practice of ritual male-male sexuality as part of war preparations. The argument here being, therefore, that in pre-modern Zimbabwe, as in other pre-modern African states, Africans did not conform to the idealised heterosexuality that contemporary African leaders like Mugabe prefer to claim as “African tradition” (see especially Marc Epprecht, Hungochani: The History of a Dissident Sexuality in Southern Africa).

Sexuality in Zimbabwe on the eve of European conquest was more diverse than so far recognised. This is a critical point to acknowledge if we are to honestly confront and debunk the ahistorical view of homosexuality as something “foreign” and un-African.

Secondly, it is important to appreciate the real roots of our current homophobia. There is little connection between the revulsion we have as Zimbabweans towards homosexuality with our pre-colonial ancestors who, despite having strict rules that governed all sexualities, did not really see homosexuality as “evil” or deride gays as “worse than dogs and pigs”. In fact, the roots of our homophobia can actually be traced, paradoxically, to the influence of European colonial rule!

If we want to argue that homosexuality is “un-African”, it is better not to use “tradition” as a justification for our homophobia because it was actually European colonists who introduced homophobic sentiments in colonial Zimbabwe.

[T]he extreme homophobia of Zimbabwean nationalist leaders during the 1960s and beyond had its origins in their colonial Christian schooling and middle-class aspirations of seeking bourgeois respectability.

It is fallacious, therefore, for present-day Zimbabweans to claim that “tradition” dictates that homosexuality is “un-African”, or that homophobia is very modern and it has colonial roots. And so it is very wrong, actually, to blame colonialism for introducing homosexuality in Africa because, to the contrary, European colonists were notoriously homophobic.

Drafters of our new constitution need to set aside their own prejudices (just as they would in reference to ethnic or racial minorities) and accommodate sexual minorities in the envisaged new constitution of Zimbabwe. It is only fair and just!

So now you have the rest of the story as Paul Harvey used to say and it is very different from what Christian extremists are claiming. The column was written by Dr. Munya Munochiveyi, a professor of African History based in Boston, Massachusetts.

DADT Video Message from Lady Gaga - How a "Fierce Advocate" Should Act

One can only hope that Barack Obama is paying attention to Lady Gaga's advocacy for the repeal of DADT. She's demonstrating what a true advocate does - as opposed to talking and and doing nothing. Her new video that was released today is set out below. It's beyond disturbing that Gaga seems to have a better appreciation of Constitutional protections afforded to ALL citizens than does of spineless Commander-in-Chief and members of Congress only to happy to prostitute themselves to religious extremists who seeking to subvert constitutional rights of other citizens. Here are highlights from the Advocate:

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Lady Gaga released a video early Friday that directs viewers to call their senators in advance of next week's vote on the National Defense Authorization Act, which houses “don't ask, don't tell” repeal.

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Gaga addressed the message to her fellow Americans, youths, and Republican senators, including John McCain, who has threatened to filibuster “don't ask, don't tell” repeal.

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“I am here to be a voice for my generation, not the generation of the senators who are voting, but for the youth of this country, the generation that is affected by this law, and whose children will be affected,” said Gaga.

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“We are not asking you to agree with or approve the moral implications of homosexuality. We're asking you to do your job, to protect the constitution,” she said.

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Senator Jim Webb, are you listening?

Nepal to Protect Gays in Constitution

The USA's - in my opinion - false claim of religious freedom and equality for all just took another blow with the announcement that Nepal, a small country in the Himalayas, will grant gay citizens equal protection rights in the new constitution to be adopted by the mountain nation. Meanwhile, gays in Virginia and much of the United States have no employment non-discrimination protections, have no legal recognition of their committed relationships, and are daily demonized by religious nutcases. Is the USA waiting for the majority of banana republics and small third world countries to demonstrate to it what religious freedom and equality truly mean? It certainly seems so at times. Obviously, the status of gays in the USA makes a mockery of the U.S. Constitution. Here are some highlights from The Advocate on developments in Nepal:

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Nepal is scheduled to draft its new constitution by May. It will include antidiscrimination protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and intersex citizens.
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“Rights for LGBTIs have been well drafted in the new constitution. They will ensure nondiscrimination and separate citizenship IDs for third-gendered people,” Sunil Babu Pant, Nepal’s first openly gay lawmaker, said in the article.
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The Hindustan Times has additional details that show how far the USA has fallen from being a leader in equality under the law for ALL citizens:

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Like most people in love Tripti Shah and Darshana Thapa (names changed) want to get married and start a family. But unlike most they will have to wait some more time to get legal recognition for their union.
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In less than five months Nepal will have a new constitution that will be the first in Asia to guarantee equal rights to sexual minorities. And once that happens, Tripti and Darshana, a lesbian couple, can formally wed.
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The couple in their 20s was thrown out of Nepal Army nearly three years ago due to their sexual orientation—albeit ‘disciplinary ground’ was cited as the reason for their removal. It is such kind of discrimination against lesbians, gays, bisexuals, transgendered and inter-sexed (LGBTI) that the Himalayan nation’s new constitution seeks to prevent.
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Antonin Scalia and Barack Obama, are you paying attention??

Spanish Prime Minister Tells the Catholic Church to Take a Hike

I have previously commented on the Roman Catholic Church's recent efforts in Spain and Italy to interfere with the countries' civil laws. Not surprisingly, the Church tried to work against laws allowing for abortion and regarding gay marriage to name a few issues. In effect, the Church believes the civil laws must match the Church's position on issues. Unlike the USA where politicians lack the backbone to take on the Church and Christianists, the prime Minister of Spain stood up to the Church and stood by constitutional protections for all citizens (yes, a truly amazing concept that some of the US presidential candidates might want to ponder). Here are some highlights on the Prime Minister's response(http://www.typicallyspanish.com/news/publish/article_14413.shtml):

The Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, has responded to the criticism launched against government policies at a Catholic Church rally in Madrid last Sunday.Zapatero said that his government was carrying out policies which were supported by the ‘immense majority’ of the Spanish people, and Spain would continue to act in that way.

Making no effort to mask his anger at the Cardinals and Bishops who led the Catholic Church event in the Plaza de Colón, Zapatero reminded them that the Spanish Constitution ensured that there was room for everybody in Spain, that everybody has the right to have rights, whatever they think, and whether they belong to a religion or not. The Prime Minister made his comments at a rally in the Huelva town of Almonte.

A statement from the PSOE Socialist party confirmed that the government had no intention of taking any step backwards, and that in a democratic environment there is no place for legislation regarding faith.