Bowie, Rickman, and Cancer

On Tuesday, January 12, 2016, when President Obama said that he wants a “moon shot” for cancer, comparing it to the “space race” of the 1960s, I paused the television,[1] turned to my husband and brought up the recent death of David Bowie, who had died of liver cancer at the age of 69 only two days prior.[2] “We need, not a ‘moon shot,’ not a ‘war on cancer’ (because “war” is always the wrong metaphor), but a global research initiative, so that one day people say, ‘yes, there was a time when sixty-nine-year-olds died of cancer.’”[3]
There is a problem with President Obama’s metaphor of the “moon shot.” The space race[4] might as well have been called the space war, since it was almost a proxy war with national pride at stake. The Soviet Union had launched Sputnik, leading to fears that the Soviet Union was technologically superior to the United States. We’re really not worried that someone—China, Russia, France, or Liechtenstein—is about to find the cure for cancer before we do.

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Minnesota Republican Candidate Warns of the Danger of Semen

Bob Frey. Thinks enzymes in
semen causes AIDS

Bob Frey, who is running for the Minnesota legislature, has come up with an explanation of how AIDS happens. It’s so completely ignorant that anyone who ever attempted (and clearly failed) to teach Mr. Frey science should be ashamed. Or in need of a stiff drink. Or both.

The Minneapolis Post reports that Frey did not get his party’s endorsement, nor did his rival in the primaries. He claims to be devoted to keeping government accountable and limited. Then there’s that sodomy thing.

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Voter Registration in Sodom

Surely you didn't
say that, Governor!

The Locofocos were a faction of the Democratic Party in the decades before the Civil War, sort of the Tea Party in today’s Republican Party. This was probably largely skipped over when, during high school, classes covered the period between the Constitutional Convention and the Civil War. (Compromises. I remember it treated as a period in which Henry Clay brokered a series of compromises.)

The Locofocos were in favor of the gold standard (like Tea Partiers today), but in other ways they were liberal, supporting labor unions (unlike the Tea Party). They were formed in New York, and though the Democrats were the conservative party of the day (generally speaking), some of their aims were fairly liberal.

The Whigs (the progressive party), of course, hated them. Like the Locofocos, the Whigs had the North as a stronghold. Unlike the Locofocos, the Whigs where opposed to Andrew Jackson (whom the Locofocos supported). Henry Clay ran against Jackson in the election of 1824 (that election was contested and Clay had his supporters vote for John Quincy Adams), and again in 1832.

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The religious freedom the right never talks about

I've been following the marriage equality movement for 20 years now, and sometimes being involved on a fairly low level. During that time, I have heard religious conservatives frequently make the argument that allowing other people to have same-sex marriages somehow compromises their religious freedom. This is one of the worst arguments against same-sex marriage, exceeded probably only by the claim that if we allow gay couples to marry, then bisexuals get to have two partners.

Despite following this for about two decades, I've only recently found that some same-sex marriage bans actually violate religious freedom. And it's even one that gets bandied about as a potential compromise by the right. One of the claims that opponents of same-sex marriage have frequently made is that they have no complaint about private religious ceremonies with no legal effect. But if that were true, then why is it illegal in at least two states for clergy to officiate at an unlicensed same-sex marriage?

I'm coming a little late to this in that the lawsuit was filed on April 28. I'm using the excuse of not having a blog title at that time. But when North Carolina voters were approving Amendment 1 in 2012, I don't remember hearing that one of its effects would be to criminalize blessing same-sex unions. Elsewhere I read of the Wyoming law. In both states, a member of the clergy who blesses a same-sex couple – no state paperwork involved – is guilty of a misdemeanor.

Clearly, when you tell a member of the clergy that he or she can't even bless the same-sex couple you were violating  religious freedom. Of course, the opponents of same-sex marriage have a rather narrow view of religious freedom. The New York Times quotes Tami Fitzgerald of the North Carolina Values Coalition as saying that:

It’s both ironic and sad that an entire religious denomination and its clergy who purport holding to Christian teachings on marriage would look to the courts to justify their errant beliefs. These individuals are simply revisionists that distort the teaching of Scripture to justify sexual revolution, not marital sanctity. (North Carolina's Gay-Marriage Ban Is Challenged by Church)

Does Ms. Fitzgerald get to the be the Pope all religions? I mean, really. Okay, so she's clearly not a member of the United Church of Christ, but if she calls their beliefs "errant," it's probably not going to go too smoothly at the interfaith gathering.

Ms. Fitzgerald seems to be one of the few to comment on this denial of religious freedom. And she's all for denying religious freedom when it's a freedom to hold a different religious view than hers. From the usual crowd that cries that religious freedom is being denied when gay people marry comes an utter silence. This is not a religious freedom that they are willing to fight for. Sadly, in their view weather may be a religious liberty to discriminate against gay people, there doesn't seem to be a religious liberty to celebrate the lives of gay people. No matter what your religion says on the matter.

I'm a supporter of both religious freedom and marriage equality. But that means that while I think that every congregation can decide whether or not they're going to celebrate same-sex unions without the interference of state, it also means that they don't insist that the state discriminate against gay people in granting marriage licenses. And it certainly means that they can't ask the state to stop people from blessing same-sex couples.

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