Nut Up or Shut Up

“I’m not going to be caught around here for any fool celebration. To hell with birthdays!”

Norman Rockwell

So yeah, today is my birthday.  Well, technically today today isn’t, because I’m writing this two days in advance of my birthday due to the fact that I’ll be in (am in?) Savannah with my lovely wife for a mini-vacation.  Anyway, I wouldn’t ordinarily make a big deal out of my birthday, except for the fact that this one is my thirtieth.

**hhhuuurrrrcchhh**

Beg your pardon, that was just the sound of me throwing up.  What I meant to day is that I need to nut up or shut up and just accept the damn fact that I am THIRTY FREAKIN’ YEARS OLD, and no amount of pity parties is going to change that sad fact.  I even hate getting haircuts now because they expose all my gray hairs to the cursed Southern sun.  If you’re going to pity a fool, as Mr. T does, pity this poor one.

I just figured I’d be a little bit more ahead than I am now when I turned thirty.  You know the drill: kids, house, career, newish car, paying on my student loans, that sort of thing.  Check me off for none of the above.  Le Sigh.

Whatever, though.  I’ve recently gotten a nibble or two on the job front, so I might be sitting a tad prettier this time next year.  My wife and actually have a savings account with a fairly significant positive balance, which is a welcome change, and I’ve been looking into some promising home ownership programs that make me believe that even if I don’t get a full-time teaching job this year, we might be able to get a house anyway, especially given the cheap-ass real estate in the area where we live.

I’m not a believer in fate or destiny; there are too many random things that happen to people for me to feel that way, and overall I think that sort of belief is a coping strategy for people who just can’t handle the idea that life is shitty for absolutely no reason sometimes.  However, I do feel that sometimes you just have to let things go and trust that they will work themselves out, because there are so many variables outside of your control that it’s pointless to worry yourself sick about them.  Just do as much as you can, and then roll them bones.

So yeah, this is another one of those posts where I write my way out of a depressing mood, but so what?  If you’ve gotten this far then I’ve stolen my five minutes of your time anyway, and I have a no-returns policy, so what are you going to do about it?

Nut up or shut up.

Today is Our Day

“To the wise, life is a problem; to the fool, a solution.”

Marcus Aurelius

It’s a special day today–our day, the day when we celebrate all that is foolish in this world.  Happy April Fool’s, everyone!

As you are probably aware, the origin of April Fool’s Day reportedly comes from the adoption of the Gregorian calendar in the Middle Ages, before which the new year was celebrated on or around March 25–the beginning of spring–with the festivities lasting for eight days, culminating on April 1.  When the calendar was changed, the new New Year was celebrated on January 1; of course, not everyone made the switch, and those people were mocked by their more progressive neighbors as April Fools.

We used to have two days, you know–back in the day there was also a winter festival known as the Feast of Fools.  This day was basically a remnant of the Roman Saturnalia and featured a brief social upheaval as its primary hallmark.  Costuming, drunkenness, excess, and buffoonery of all kinds were celebrated at this time (kind of like Mardi Gras), and the commoners chose among themselves a mock pope/bishop/whatever to reign over the day as the Lord of Misrule.  The feasters would barge into the church or some other important building and engage in mock church rites, bordering on the profane, and just having an all-around blasphenomenal good time.  Alas, though, the Church got sick of being mocked (big surprise), so they made lots and lots of severe condemnations of the event, which eventually killed it off sometime in the 1600′s.  And interesting side note: Victor Hugo featured a Feast of Fools celebration in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, with Quasimodo as the King of Fools (another name for the Lord of Misrule).  For those of you who are checking my homework, yes, I basically paraphrased this whole section from Wikipedia.  Deal with it.

I’m rambling now, though.  My original point was that we should all take this license to engage in foolish behavior and run with it.  Play a prank, tell some jokes, sure–but as for me, I vow not to hold my tongue today.  If some one pisses me off, or makes a bigoted statement around me today, they’re getting an earful.  I’m a proud fool, and this is my day.  Today, I speak my foolish mind to everyone, whether they want to hear it or not.

Why I’m Getting Bored With Zombies

“You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders – The most famous of which is “never get involved in a land war in Asia” – but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go against a Sicilian when death is on the line’!”

Vizzini, The Princess Bride

Hey, you know what I really don’t have time for?  Updating this blog.  I should be grading some student papers, or applying to one of the sixteen or so jobs I have lined up for Round 2, or filling out my student loan deferment renewal paperwork, or resigning myself to the fact that I’ll be 30 in a few short weeks.  But I can’t bring myself to do any of those things right now, so I’m going to write about one of my other loves: zombies.

I’m sad to admit that the glow has started to disappear from our relationship.  The heady days of infatuation are waning swiftly with every new crappy zombie movie that comes out, and with every red-tempera-paint-splattered old one that I force myself to watch again, hoping to recapture that old magic.  I can only see the same zombie survival horror schtick so many times before it becomes staler than a condom in Abe Vigoda’s wallet.

I want something new.  I want a fresh take on zombies, one that isn’t just generic zombipocalypse sans cause with a group of survivors trying to stay alive.  *YAWN*.  Even Zombieland, though clever and funny in its delivery, couldn’t come up with any true innovation on the same old zombie story.   I just watched Dead Snow the other night, and even copious Evil Dead references and Nazi zombies being dismembered couldn’t lift my spirits ( though I will give the film credit for inventive use of a snowmobile as a weapon).

The only zombie films I’ve seen in the past year or so that really did something unusual with the subject are American Zombie and Fido, in order of quality and creativity.  American Zombie is a faux-documentary in the direct cinema style (if I’m remembering correctly) that purports to chronicle the lives of several “High-Functioning Zombies” living in Los Angeles.  The end result amounts to a somewhat foreboding look at what the events leading up to a zombie apocalypse might look like if there were already walking corpses living acknowledged among us.  Fido, on the other hand, is an inventive boy-and-his-dog story wherein Lassie has been replaced with a middle-aged revenant.  Instead of being set before or during a zombipocalypse, however, Fido is set in 1950′s suburbia where zombies made an aborted attempt at overrunning things before it was discovered that their flesh-eating desires could be controlled by radio shock collars.

See what I mean?  These ideas are interesting, not the same old survival plot that’s been recycled over and over.  I want to see more of these kind of zombie movies, ones that take advantage of the versatility that zombies can provide.  Wait, what?  Did he just use “zombies” and “versatility” in the same sentence?  Damn right I did.   Zombies can be used to explore pretty much any of the classic narrative conflicts–George Romero already knew this.  Don’t believe me?  Check this out.

Most of your typical zombie movies go like this: someone does something stupid and creates/releases a zombie virus or chemical (this step may or may not be handled in backstory).  Then the zombie infection spreads, becomes a zombipocalypse, and everything goes to shit.  A small group of survivors holes up somewhere they think is safe but really isn’t, then people start having pissing contests over who gets to be the mayor of “We’re-All-Fucking-Screwed-Ville.” Betrayal ensues, and everyone dies except the plucky hero/heroine and maybe one or two more.  It’s all classic Character vs. Character conflict, nothing really exciting.  Sure, you could look at it as Characters vs. Nature in a way, since that’s basically all the zombies are, a force of nature, but the real conflict usually lies between the characters.

Yes, Romero’s zombie films do that sort of thing, but they’ve also got more complex things happening.  Are you going to tell me that the original Dawn of the Dead isn’t also about the characters’ internal conflicts with materialism?  Or that Land of the Dead isn’t about Man vs. Society against a zombie backdrop?  There’s social commentary here, people, and that what makes these movies interesting.  Hell, even Shaun of the Dead had Shaun in conflict with his own infantilism, and the Return of the Living Dead movies definitely had their share of commentary about the military-industrial complex (as did Day of the Dead).

All I’m saying is that it takes a little more than just some shambling corpses and some intestines flung about to make a good zombie flick, and I’m getting tired of wading through mindless dreck in the vain attempt to find it.  Zombies are best used as the backdrop to larger conflicts, to highlight other things that are already wrong with human life.  Zombies exert pressure, make little things more difficult; they tear at the soft, fleshy face of our lives and make us confront the uncomfortable truth that we are little more than mobile devourers ourselves, that when the chips are down we almost always to revert to our baser natures.   Just please, God, no one show me any more zombabies.

Real Life Intrudes

“I’m a success inasmuch that I enjoy my life, which is an enormous blessing and that doesn’t depend on commercial success (though I wouldn’t be such a fool as to deny that it helps).”

Bernard Cornwell

When I started this thing I thought keeping up with a blog, even just once a week, would be a lot easier than it’s turned out to be.  Despite my protestations to the contrary, I have found myself committing time and again that most grievous of internet sins, the blogfail (one would think it would be violating Godwin’s Law, but I suppose the hubris of blogging in the first place takes precedence).  I can only protest that Real Life intrudes (See the capital letters?  How can I hold up against that?), as It always does.  Recently, Real Life has reared its ugly, malicious head in the form of spring semester classes and job applications.   Ugh.

The beginning of the semester always gets me, even though I’m teaching introductory composition for the third time, and the other class is developmental (read: remedial) English.  How hard could that be, right?  Harder than you think, but I’m not here to write about that.   Oh, I might allow myself one small nibble of spite by opining that if one can’t write well enough to be placed in normal freshman composition then one should probably not be in college in the first place, but to complain any more than that seems a tad petty.  No, I’m going to reserve the lion’s share of my bitching for job applications.

I hate applying for jobs.  Not that everyone else doesn’t, but it’s not everyone else’s blog, now is it?  It’s not even really the applying that gets to me, but more the sheer tediousness of it, and especially the online application forms.  DEAR GOD, THE ONLINE APPLICATION FORMS!!  Riddle me this: why am I required to re-type every single job I’ve ever held for every single job I apply for?  This information is already on my CV.  It’s been on my CV since day one, because I am not an idiot.  Anyone who turns in a résumé or CV without a job history or references is likely too stupid to even be considered for hiring, so why not simply use that first glance at the CV as a filter?  No job history?  File under “Trash.”  No references?  Trash.  Vóila! I could work in HR.  It’s even more aggravating because they want me to attach my CV anyway. Someone please tell me what the friggin’ point is.  I detest redundancy as a rule, but I hate it even more when it creates extra work for me, for no good reason.

(As I sit here looking over my post, I realize that I probably shouldn’t write things like this when I’m actively seeking gainful employment.  Employers do have access to Google, after all.  Considering that even I couldn’t find my blog when I googled myself, though, I think I’m safe.  Also, I’m terrible at censorship, especially when I’m the subject.)

Ah, well.  So it goes.

I just need a full-time job.  I just got my W-2′s from 2009 and was depressed to realize that I’m technically impoverished.  I don’t feel impoverished, but maybe that’s because I don’t have time.  I have a Master’s degree and work three part-time jobs, my wife works full-time, and we still live paycheck to paycheck.  I just need to get out of the slave-wage racket that is adjunct college faculty.  If I had realized that my grad school assistantships paid more than I make now, I would not have been in a rush to graduate.  It’s pretty sad that one of my students works at Sam’s Club and makes more money than I do.

What can you do, though?  Just keep on truckin’, that’s all.  Maybe I’m a sucker for doing it, but I love teaching, even when I get my shitty, oh-so-shitty paychecks.  I spent twenty-seven years of my life trying to puzzle out what I wanted to be when I grow up, and I’m not going to hang it up just because I’m having a little difficulty out in the real world.  I’ll piss and moan about it, sure–but I’ll still get up and stand in front of my class and pound away at their numb little brains until a crack opens up and I can slip some knowledge in.  And then, when that light appears, that look in their eyes that teachers live for, that look that tells me they get it–well, then I’ll just smile.

Hope is the thing with feathers, but perseverance has teeth.

Foolish Notion of 2009: Going Home for Christmas

“The family of fools is ancient.”

Ben Franklin

Sweet Tap-Dancing CHRIST.

I am frigging tired, and 2009 just keeps kicking me in the balls every chance it gets.  Good riddance to you, you stupid-ass year!  The only real good thing that I can point to this year is that I finished grad school and got my MA in English, though the jury’s still out on how much good that will do me compared to the debt I’ve incurred as a result.  I suppose I should apologize for committing blogfail and taking over a month to update, but anyone who lives the life of an academic knows that once Thanksgiving hits everything goes crazy.  I had to scramble to get papers graded and handed back before the end of the semester, then scramble some more to get exams grades and final grades posted, then clean the house, shop for gifts, and drive home for Christmas.  And that is a story all in its own.

Between December 21st and 30th, my wife and I drove 3000 miles, had NINE family Christmas visits, crammed in two very brief dinners with old friends who happened to be on our travel routes, celebrated one 70th birthday, attended one funeral, and saw one very newborn baby.  In ten days.  We are rock stars, and I don’t mean the fresh-faced, look-how-much-of-an-immortal-god-I-am kind of rock star.  We are the dead-ass tired, leathery-skinned, drug-addled, stroke-faced, love children of Keith Richards and Ozzy Osbourne kind of rock stars.  In the words of George Orwell, “We are the dead.”

This is exactly why my wife and I didn’t go home for Christmas last year.  It’s just too much, and we decided to take a year off and finally have a honeymoon (four years overdue).  Last year we got a cabin in the mountains near Chimney Rock, NC, and spent an idyllic week putting together jigsaw puzzles in from of the fireplace, horseback riding, visiting the lovely and historic Biltmore estate, and drinking champagne in our hot tub while watching the fog roll off the mountains.  If I’d had my druthers, we’d have done the same thing all over again.

It’s not that I don’t love my family–far from it.  There are so few of us that getting four heads under one roof is pretty much a family reunion, and we’re pretty close when we do see each other (mostly).  My wife’s family, on the other hand, is pretty large, and they all live in a fifty mile radius of each other, with few exceptions.  In either case, though, we all pretty much like each other.   I even got to discover how much I like my youngest cousins, now that they’re all grown up and can have real conversations, so I’m not unhappy that we went home this year.  I’m just tired of the hassle of it.

We really have only ourselves to blame.  We’re the ones who decided to move 700 miles away to eastern North Carolina, so Christmas break is about the only time we get to see everyone we left behind.  If we were still living in Ohio, we could space these visits out, but now they just stack up and come crashing down after we skip a year, especially when we both have aging relatives who may not be around too much longer.  I know from experience that sometimes you’ve just got to put aside your own wishes and wants, and spend some good quality time with your relatives.  When I was sixteen, I watched my grandmother dwindle away to nothing–mentally and physically–and I’ve never forgiven myself for the ways I behaved towards her before she died.

I know I often seem wishy-washy or ambivalent in my feelings on here, but that’s because I use this blog as a sounding board to work out my thoughts.  I don’t really edit it, because it’s mostly for me, and for those few people who read it and want to chime in occasionally.  Writing this down won’t dispel my conflicted feelings about family visits being such a pain in the ass, but they might make me feel better about them.  If anything, it really emphasizes to me how much my wife and I need to get ourselves out of this area and move back closer to home.  There’s really nothing keeping us here anyway, we just need to line up some jobs first, which is the tricky part now.

I guess what I’m saying in my rambling way is that I’m glad 2009 is over.  I’ve rarely been poorer in my life, and we just got screwed into spending almost $400 dollars on our SUV to fix the tail light that some asshole busted as soon as we got back home yesterday, and to replace an impossible-to-access thermostat so that we can pass vehicle inspection.  Even though I’m working three jobs, neither my wife nor I will receive a decent paycheck until the end of January, so we really can’t afford it, but there’s no way around it.  Here’s hoping that 2010 will result in a full-time job for me, and maybe relocation to someplace closer to Ohio, so that we don’t have to go through the same bullshit again next year.

Cue “Auld Lang Syne.”

Okay, so I didn’t really make it off the high horse…

“Any fool can criticize, condemn, and complain, but it takes character and self control to understand and forgive.”

Dale Carnegie

As I’m finishing up the home stretch into Thanksgiving, I can’t help but think about an argument I had with one of my cousins a few weeks back, about why she doesn’t like Thanksgiving.  Since that argument resulted in her getting scolded for being ungrateful by another relative, I won’t name her here (and ALL my cousins are girls, so that doesn’t narrow it down for anyone).  So that I can refer to her as something other than “my cousin,” though, let’s call her “Z.”

Z doesn’t like Thanksgiving for several reasons.  She doesn’t like Thanksgiving food, like turkey, stuffing, pumpkin pie, et cetera.  I can’t agree, but maybe that’s why I’m “husky.”  Z also feels that it’s a hypocritical time in America, when we congratulate ourselves about getting along with the Native Americans that helped the Pilgrims make it through that terrible first year, only to repay them with war, atrocity, and stealing their lands.  I can’t blame her for this one, and I definitely can’t blame her for the last reason, which basically boils down to family issues.  It doesn’t make sense to her that we need to use holidays as an excuse to have a family dinner, but I think Z is also uncomfortable with the veneer of happiness that holidays attempt to impose over even the most dysfunctional of families, of which ours is certainly one.

The food isn’t a big deal, or at least it won’t be once Z starts hosting her own Thanksgivings, if she chooses to.  Personally, I hope she does.  I’ve come to appreciate the holiday more since I’ve been out on my own, and she’ll be able to eat whatever food she wants then.  Hell, the Pilgrims probably didn’t even eat turkey at the first Thanksgiving, and they certainly would not have had the sugar and spices on hand to make pumpkin pie.

The revisionist history of Thanksgiving does annoy me a lot, so I can kind of understand her feelings on that matter.  Personally, I try to associate Thanksgiving less with the Pilgrims and more with another important historical context of the holiday, October 3^rd, 1863, when President Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November to be a day of Thanksgiving.  It wasn’t the first time a President had proclaimed such a day—in fact, feasts of thanks had been pretty common over the years.  It was however, the middle of the Civil War, and maybe at no time since the first year of the Plymouth Colony did Americans need so greatly to be reminded of the good things they still had in their lives.

My cousin Z’s last objection isn’t really something I can help her with.  Our family is kind of broken.  Getting four of us under one roof is a major accomplishment anymore, and we’ve never been all that close, emotionally speaking.  I think she’ll come to welcome these times more and more as she get’s older, though.  I certainly did.  I now live almost 800 miles from my immediate family, and I’m lucky if I get to see them twice a year—usually it’s only at Christmas—and I can appreciate now how having a few days when everyone is off from work and school to get together is really a blessing, even with all the stress and negativity that often come with family gatherings.

There are a lot of people out there who agree with Z, though, and I think I know why.  It’s really easy to get overwhelmed by all the trappings of our major holidays, the costumes, the candy, the presents and the food, and when we rebel against those trappings we often ignore the important sentiments that underlie those holidays.

I think that’s a mistake.  Thanksgiving is not about gluttony, or patting ourselves on the back about the one time we were able to sit down with the Indians and not murder them—it’s about gratitude.  Christmas isn’t really about Santa Claus, or presents, or even Jesus—it’s about charity, and giving something to others when things are at their darkest.  Easter’s not about jelly beans, eggs, or chocolate bunnies, it’s about renewal and rebirth, about hope.  And call them what you will, but just about every culture has holidays that celebrate these concepts, and the crassness of the trappings aside, to ignore the deeper meanings of such days is to belittle our souls.  We all need to be reminded of the good things we have, and the good we can share with each other, because otherwise we’re just floating around on a rock without any purpose, and what’s the point of that? If they do nothing else, holidays remind us that we’re not alone, and that we can be good, if we try.

A Brief Segue Off My High Horse…

“A wise man remembers his friends at all times; a fool, only when he has need of them.”

Turkish proverb

Yeah, I know there have been a few important things going on in the news recently, but I just can’t seem to muster up the ol’ fire in the belly about that right now.  Maybe it’s the weather.  Ida’s bastard child has been steadily trying to flood eastern NC for the past several days, which has made it mighty unpleasant to be outside.  Normally this wouldn’t be a problem–I spent the first twenty-five years of my life growing up in northwest Ohio, so believe me when I say that I can handle cold, damp, and gray–but this kind of rain just downright sucks.  I tried to take my dog out Thursday morning before I left for work, and he took one look at the torrents of water blowing sideways and wisely decided to hold it in until later.  I should have taken a cue from him and canceled class, but there aren’t many class sessions left, and I didn’t feel I could spare the time.

All of which is to say, it’s almost Thanksgiving already, and this time of year never fails to get me grumpy.  Not because I hate Thanksgiving; if anything, I like it too much.  If there is a Hell as Dante described it, I’m positive there’s a spot all warmed for me in the Third Circle, where the gluttons go.  No, what always gets me about this time of year is the Christmas Creep.  I know lots of people bitch about this topic, but almost no one ever does anything about it.   We just shrug and smile weakly, as if to say “What are you gonna do about it?,” as if it’s some uncontrollable thing like the weather.

I say give Thanksgiving its due.  Christmas already wins the holiday popularity contest, so what’s wrong with actually being a little thankful for all the good things in your life, before you forget all about them by acting like a savings-addicted sociopath on Black Friday?  I absolutely, positively refuse to shop anytime during the weekend after Thanksgiving, both because I don’t want to deal with the crowds and out of principle.  Even though it kills my wife, I refuse to put up the Christmas tree until at least December 1st as well.

I think it’s in poor taste to do otherwise.  While the historical aftermath of the original Thanksgiving is nothing to be proud of, the sentiment behind it means a lot to me.  I know that, all things considered, I’m a lucky man.  I have a wonderful wife who’s still with me in spite of my numerous shortcomings.  We’re pretty much able to pay our bills on time each month, barring the occasional financial snafu, and at least I’m working, which is more than a lot of people can say.  I’ve got a family that, while dysfunctional, loves and supports me, and I haven’t lost very many of them along the way.  I’ve got plenty of good friends, I don’t go hungry, and I have a roof over my head every night.  I’m an educated, white, American male, and that right there gives me a whole lot of advantages over most everyone else in the world.  Am I always happy?  Of course not.  Life is a gigantic turd-storm sometimes, but by damn near any standard of measurement, my existence is pretty sweet.

I think it’s human nature to be dissatisfied with your life, or at least it’s the nature of middle-class America.  We have a lot of technology that makes our lives easier, but we marvel so much at what we can do that we forget about what we need to do, which is to put it all in perspective and show a little gratitude that our lives are relatively stable and prosperous.  That, to me, is precisely why it’s so important not to short-shrift Thanksgiving, so that we don’t forget how goddamn lucky we are.  I never have to kill or steal to eat, and I don’t have to worry if some jackoff with a bomb strapped to his chest is going to burst into a store I’m at and blow the place up.  I don’t have to worry if my loved ones are going to make it home safely each night, and I don’t have to worry about not having clean clothes or going without electricity.  I can speak my mind whenever I please, and I can worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster in any fashion I see fit (can I get a “Ramen”?).  I have overall more freedom and security than just about anyone in the history of the world, and on a daily basis I think about that fact not at all.

I shouldn’t be like that, and neither should you.  Don’t let the avarice of corporate Christmas culture take over your life; don’t let things become the focus of your existence.  It’s all right to enjoy the ways in which technology and gadgets make our lives easier, but don’t mistake that for fulfillment.  Your Blu-ray collection won’t mean shit if you’re starving, and you can’t Twitter a dead friend back into your life.  Look around, take stock of all the good things in your life, and be thankful, just for a little while.  Kiss your significant other like it’s the last time; hug a friend; do something nice for a stranger.  Recognize that life is better when you share it, and then share it.  You’ll be glad you did.

Foolish Notion of the Week: Voting on Civil Rights

“Only a fool permits the letter of the law to override the spirit in the heart. Do not let a piece of paper stand in the way of true love and headlines.”

Rod Stewart

Man, I really need to make time to update this thing during the week, or I’m going to end up committing blogfail very shortly.

Election Day 2009 was this past Tuesday, and though it wasn’t a particularly important one for most of the country, it was the source of much frustration for gay rights proponents, mixed with a (very) little taste of joy.  The frustration and disappointment, of course, stem from the referendum that repealed gay marriage in Maine, overturning the state law passed in May which legalized the practice, but never went into effect due to a conservative-led petition drive.  This heart-wrenching blow to gay activists was mitigated only slightly by the passage of Referendum 71 in Washington state, which expands domestic-partnership rights to include non-married couples, both gay and straight.

Watching the nigh-masturbatory self-congratulating and gladhanding among the conservatives who carried the day in Maine raised a very important question for me: why the hell are we voting on a civil rights issue anyway?  Civil rights aren’t something you get to vote on locally; they’re not fit subjects for the popularity contests that make up most local and state elections.  Civil rights are rights you have simply by virtue of being human–whether or not they are recognized by the government at a particular time, they are endemic to you because you’re a person.  Major civil rights legislation has never been passed from the bottom up in this country.  Why?  Because the average person is small-minded, selfish, and easily misled.  Victories for civil rights issues always come from the top down, through State and the U. S. Supreme Courts, federal courts, or Congress, passed by people who usually have a passion for justice and equality.  Ever since the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gave federal judiciaries the power to force states to grant equal rights to all citizens, civil rights have largely been a top-down matter.

This only makes sense, because these are people who have invested their lives in upholding the tenets of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, like all men being created equal, and possessing the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  Most people don’t care about those things.  They care about their own little corners of the country, their own people, and they are easily duped by emotional arguments telling them that their way of life would somehow be threatened if those people had the same rights as everyone else.  Why don’t we leave those sorts of things to the professionals, eh?  Civil rights are too important to be left to popular vote, because–let’s face it–the popular vote pretty much always gets it wrong when it comes to such things.  Jim Crow ring a bell?  Segregation, laws against miscegenation, womens’ suffrage: these are things that only got fixed from the top down, not by voting on them at the local and state level.

To those who would argue that gay marriage is not a civil rights issue, I say this: “Bullshit.”  Since Loving v. Virginia in 1967, the right to marry who you want to has been a civil rights affair, and the only thing that makes gay marriage any different is the so-called Defense of Marriage Act.  This despicable piece of legislation, passed by a Republican-controlled Congress in 1996, cemented the federal government’s definition of marriage as being “between one man and one woman,” and also allows any state the freedom to ignore marriages between gay couples, even if they were legally married in another state.  This clearly violates the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the U. S. Constitution, and DoMA’s original sponsor, Robert Barr, has even apologized for introducing the bill into Congress, stating that it goes against the principals of federalism. I suppose I can only wait with bated breath until the U. S. Supreme Court is finally stacked with liberals who will overturn this piece of bigotry in sheep’s clothing, as they did forty-two years ago.

I’m not saying that all states should be forced to perform same-sex marriages, although I believe they should; I am saying that all states should be required to recognize same-sex marriages that were performed legally in another state, as the Full Faith and Credit Clause requires them to do with any other marriage.  That way, gay couple can get married in Vermont, or Iowa, and move to whatever state they want, secure in the knowledge that their marriage is legally recognized wherever they wish to pursue their happiness.  Then maybe the average schmuck will see that gay people are not that different after all.  The latest data already recognizes what gay activists have known all along: that gay and straight couples have more in common than not.  All that’s left is to convince everybody else.

Until that day comes, though, let’s recognize that change doesn’t come from the many; all that does is grant opportunities for the small-minded mobs to get riled up about imaginary threats and ruin things for the rest of us.  Change comes when someone in power, one of the few, recognizes that the rights of those in their care (especially the unpopular ones) are being trampled on.  That’s where the power of the many can be best directed: at those we elected to make, adjudicate, and enforce the laws for us in the first place.  Civil rights are too important to be left entirely in the care of civilians.

Love and Hate About Hate Crime Laws

“I have come to the conclusion that one useless man is called a disgrace, two useless men are called a law firm, and three or more become a Congress.”

Attributed to John Adams

As you no doubt already know if you pay the slightest attention to the news, yesterday President Obama signed into law a piece of legislation that expanded federal hate crime laws to include crimes motivated by a victim’s real or perceived gender, gender identification, sexual orientation, or disability.  While I am an ardent supporter of gay rights and equal treatment for all under the law, I have to admit to some mixed feelings about the long-awaited passage of this law.

The official name of the law is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, after two of the most famous victims of brutal hate crimes in recent years, and further expands the 1969 Federal Hate Crimes Law, which enacted additional penalties on crimes that were motivated by the victim’s real or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex.   These extra penalties were increased for violent crimes by the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.

I think these laws are good things, in many ways.  The original law was aimed at protecting racial and ethnic minorities during the tumultuous civil rights era, and I think it’s only right that the law has been expanded to include other persecuted minorities such as gay and transgendered people.  However, I have a lot of problems with the situation surrounding the Matthew Shepard Act’s creation, not so much because of the law itself, but because of our cultural attitudes.

I hate that such a thing as hate crime laws are even necessary.  We shouldn’t have to enforce extra penalties for crimes based on a victim’s very identity, because such things shouldn’t happen in the first damn place.  I hate that it took forty years after the original federal hate crime law was passed to include attacks on sexual orientation and gender identification under its umbrella, and I really hate that this law had to be tacked onto a must-pass defense bill in order to finally make its way past Congress to the President’s desk.  I believe that we are better than that, and I wish more people would just wake up and realize that it costs them nothing to treat everyone with equal dignity, but it costs us all a lot when we don’t.

I also have concerns, though, that the Matthew Shepard Act could conceivably be used as a tool to silence free speech, because intimidation is specifically covered under the wording of the original 1969 hates crimes law.  That’s a thin line to walk for some people opposed to homosexuality, and although I find their lack of acceptance distasteful (to say the very least), I can’t help but admit their right to hold those opinions and express them publicly.  My other issue is that these types of laws don’t address the root causes of bigotry and intolerance, they just address the most extreme symptoms.  Laws don’t change minds, only people do.

With that being said, though, the most important thing about this new law is that it makes a clear statement–that all citizens deserve to remain safe from harm, even the ones that dress in drag and cross the streams (that’s a two-fer, y’all).  I can only hope that the passage of this law heralds the downfall of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the reprehensible Defense of Marriage Act.  Our entire system of laws is based around equal protection for minority groups, and it’s high time we lived up to those promises our dead, white forefathers made so many years ago.  We are all created equal, and we should treat each other that way.

Foolish Notion of the Week: Vatican seduces Anglicans

“Before God we are all equally wise – and equally foolish.”

Albert Einstein

According to this article here, the Roman Catholic Church is taking steps to woo disaffected Anglicans and Episcopalians (the American branch of the Church of England) who are not happy with the liberal path that the denomination has been in for the past few decades.  Events along this liberalizing course include allowing female clergy in the 1970s, the election of openly gay bishop Gene Robinson in 2003, and increasing support of gay rights and gay marriages in Episcopalian churches.  The Church has just passed a new set of canon laws called an “Apostolic Constitution,” which wil allow entire congregations of Angligan churchgoers to switch over to Catholicism.

This seems to me like a (ahem) Hail-Mary Pass by the Vatican, to combat the staggering losses of followers the Church has sustained in recent decades.  I don’t think it will have much effect, though.  At most, it’s a bandage that will keep the Church going a little while longer, but I’ve been long convinced that the Roman Catholic Church will die away to almost nothing if it fails to adapt to the changing world around it.  Pope John Paul II showed a lot of wisdom, in my opinon, by taking the stance that Roman Catholicism was not the only pathway to God, a stance that Benedict XVI reversed shortly after his inauguration to the papacy.  However, while this new tactic may bring in a lot of Anglicans, I feel it will simply slow the process, not reverse it.  The Catholic Church lost me very young, at nine years old, because I discovered that the Church I loved had refused to marry my parents due to my father’s previous divorce.  I couldn’t belong to a Church that preached God’s love while technically disapproving of my very existence.

It seems highly ironic that members of the church that split from Catholicism over its refusal to grant and recognize divorces would now return to the fold.  There are still a lot of things that the Vatican takes a lot of heat for, and a simple invitation to come on home isn’t going to make that all go away.  Personally, I halfway hope the Anglican Communion does split, because I’d love to see the Episcopalian church become the first major Christian denomination to fully embrace women’s rights and gay marriage.  That might even get me to take up Jesus again.