Monthly Archives: October 2020
Anti-LGBTQ+ Dog Whistles
During yesterday’s Senate confirmation hearings for Amy Coney Barrett, Senator Dianne Feinstein of California asked the nominee whether she shared her late mentor Justice Antonin Scalia’s hostility toward gay rights. During her nomination ceremony last month, Barrett stated that she has adopted the “judicial philosophy” of the Scalia, a conservative judge who delivered the dissenting opinion in the 2015 landmark decision requiring states to grant and recognize same-sex marriages. If confirmed, Feinstein asked, would Barrett, like Scalia, “be a consistent vote to roll back hard-fought freedoms and protections for the LGBT community”? Barrett responded that she had “no agenda,” a line Scalia also used during his confirmation hearing. She then elaborated: “I do want to be clear that I have never discriminated on the basis of sexual preference and would not discriminate on the basis of sexual preference.”
Barrett wouldn’t say whether she agrees with Scalia on the issue of same-sex marriage, adding that no one should “assume” she would make the same decisions Scalia did. “It’s rather a fundamental point for large numbers of people I think in this country,” Feinstein pressed her. She added: “You identify yourself with a justice that … would be a consistent vote to roll back hard-fought freedoms and protections for the LGBT community. And what I was hoping you would say is that this would be a point of difference, where those freedoms would be respected and you haven’t said that.”
Senator Mazie Hirono of Hawaii schooled Barrett on her use of “sexual preference” later in the hearing. “Sexual preference is an offensive and outdated term. It is used by anti-LGBTQ activists to suggest that sexual orientation is a choice. It is not. Sexual orientation is a key part of a person’s identity,” Hirono said. “That sexual orientation is both a normal expression of human sexuality and immutable, was a key part of the majority’s opinion in Obergefell.” Hirono ended her remarks saying, “Which, by the way, Scalia did not agree with,” without allowing Barrett to respond. After the next committee member, Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, began, Barrett asked to speak directly to Hirono’s comments. Barrett then attempted to clarify that she intended to suggest no hostility with her use of the term and offered an “apology.” “I certainly didn’t mean and would never mean to use a term that would cause any offense to the LGBTQ community,” Barrett said. “So, if I did, I greatly apologize for that. I simply meant to be referring to Obergefell’s ruling with respect to same sex marriage.” The problem with Barrett’s clarification is that she says she had not intended any hostility to the LGBTQ+ community; however, she did not apparently say sexual orientation is not a choice.
Even with this weak apology, Barrett’s use of “sexual preference” is alarming for good reason. The archaic phrase suggests that sexuality is a choice, that gay and bisexual people simply prefer to partner with people of the same sex—a preference that, with enough willpower, can be changed. This is an argument I have had for many years with my family. I did not choose to be gay. I love being gay because I have come to accept myself, but if there had been a choice, I would not have chosen it. I dated several women who would have loved to have had me as a husband, and the only choice I ever made was that I would not marry a woman because I would make her and me miserable. This may not be the case for everyone, but it was the case for me. I knew I would never be happy married to a woman.
Journalist Kyle Griffin sums up the issue very well:
American psychologist, writer, and academic Jesse Bering explained in 2013 that the term “sexual preference” is similar to other expressions, like “the gay lifestyle” or “avowed homosexual,” that were once common but are now considered offensive. These phrases play into the anti-gay fabrication that sexual minorities are not a discrete and insular minority deserving of constitutional protections but rather deviants who should not be rewarded for their abnormal sexuality. Today, the term “sexual preference” has almost universally been replaced with “sexual orientation,” which acknowledges that sexuality is a fundamental human trait. But the religious right often refuses to use “orientation,” fearing that it will legitimize homosexuality. For instance, when Scalia dissented from the Supreme Court’s first ruling in favor of gay rights, he put the word “orientation” in scare quotes, speaking only of “homosexual ‘orientation.’ ” Scalia also refused to use the phrase “sexual orientation” in the court’s next three gay rights decisions. Instead, he deployed the term “homosexual conduct.” Like “sexual preference,” this expression implies that homosexuality isn’t something you are but something you do—and, by extension, something you can (and should) stop doing. Consider this passage from Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence v. Texas, which legalized same-sex intimacy:
Many Americans do not want persons who openly engage in homosexual conduct as partners in their business, as scoutmasters for their children, as teachers in their children’s schools, or as boarders in their home. They view this as protecting themselves and their families from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive.
Barrett’s use of “sexual preference” yesterday brought Scalia’s words to the mind of many LGBTQ+ activists and the news media. The term indicates that she might share the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) positions, which opposes LGBTQ+ nondiscrimination laws. They support the criminalization of homosexuality, and they consistently reject the validity of LGBTQ+ identities. Barrett has given paid speeches to the organization on five occasions. When Al Franken questioned her during the September 6, 2017 confirmation hearing for the Appellate Court about whether she supports the organization’s full agenda, she said she did not look into the group’s beliefs before agreeing to the speaking engagement:
ADF regularly asks the Supreme Court to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ people and roll back our constitutional equality. The group is currently urging the Supreme Court to rule that Philadelphia must provide public funding to a foster care agency that refuses to work with same-sex parents. SCOTUS will hear the case in November—shortly after Barrett is confirmed if Republicans’ current timeline holds.
In yesterday’s hearing, Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont also brought up Barrett association with the ADF program, Blackstone Legal Fellowship. She has given paid speeches to Blackstone fellows, law students from around the nation, on five occasions. Leahy mentioned that ADF had celebrated the recriminalization of gay sex in India, and told Barrett, “Whether you believe being gay is right or wrong is irrelevant to me, but my concern is you worked with an organization working to criminalize people for loving a person that they’re in love with.” Barrett said her Blackstone lectures were on constitutional law and had nothing to do with any type of discrimination.
What’s more, Barrett’s claim that she has “never” discriminated based on sexuality drew scrutiny given her ties to Trinity Schools Inc., a group of private Christian schools that has spoken out against same-sex marriage. Barrett served as a trustee on the board of Trinity Schools from 2015 to 2017, and some of her children attend the Trinity School at Greenlawn in South Bend, Indiana. In 2014, Trinity Schools adopted an admissions policy that effectively excluded children of same-sex couples, former Trinity staffers told The New York Times. A person involved in Barrett’s confirmation process said Barrett did not participate in creating the policy, but former Trinity staffers said it was enforced during her tenure, according to the Times.
A “cultural statement” issued by the school during the 2018-19 school year stated, “the only proper place for human sexual activity is marriage, where marriage is a legal and committed relationship between one man and one woman,” reported Politico. It also defined “homosexual acts” as “at odds with Scripture.” According to Politico, a spokesperson for Trinity Schools said the language was changed around that time, suggesting it was in place during Barrett’s tenure on the board and well after the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage nationwide in 2015.
In light of Barrett’s long affiliation with anti-gay organizations, we cannot dismiss her coded language as a poor choice of words. She knew exactly what she was saying. She strikes me as a woman who chooses her words very carefully. If there is any way that she didn’t know exactly what she was saying, she needs to withdraw her nomination for being a complete idiot and an insensitive human being, but I have no doubt she knew. Republicans selected her, in part, to reward the Christian right for its loyalty to Donald Trump. Eroding constitutional equality for LGBTQ+ people is a key priority of the Republican Party platform. Barrett has given us every reason to expect that she will shore up a conservative majority that is ready and willing to condemn gay Americans to second-class citizenship once again.
The Second Coming
The Second Coming
By W. B. Yeats – 1865-1939
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.
The darkness drops again; but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
“The Second Coming” is a poem written by Irish poet W. B. Yeats in 1919, first printed in The Dial in November 1920, and afterwards included in his 1921 collection of verses Michael Robartes and the Dancer. The poem uses Christian imagery regarding the Apocalypse and Second Coming to allegorically describe the atmosphere of post-war Europe. It is considered a major work of modernist poetry and has been reprinted in several collections, including The Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry.
The poem was written in 1919 in the aftermath of the First World War and the beginning of the Irish War of Independence that followed the Easter Rising, at a time before the British Government decided to send into Ireland the Black and Tans (constables recruited into the Royal Irish Constabulary as reinforcements during the Irish War of Independence to Ireland). The poem is also connected to the 1918–1919 flu pandemic. In the weeks preceding Yeats’s writing of the poem, his pregnant wife Georgie Hyde-Lees caught the virus and was very close to death. The highest death rates of the pandemic were among pregnant women—in some areas, they had up to a 70 percent death rate. While his wife was convalescing, he wrote “The Second Coming.”
“The Second Coming” has become perhaps the most plundered poem in the English language. At 164 words, it is short and memorable enough to be famous as a whole, but it has also been disassembled into its various phrases by books, albums, movies, TV shows, comic books, computer games, political speeches, and newspaper editorials. If you don’t know the poem, you will certainly recognize some of the phrases contained within. While many of Yeats’s poems have contributed unforgettable lines to cultural imagination (“no country for old men”; “the foul rag and bone shop of the heart”), “The Second Coming” consists of almost nothing but such lines. Someone reading it for the first time in 2020 might resemble the apocryphal theatergoer who complained that Hamlet was nothing but a bunch of quotations strung together. Whether or not it is Yeats’s greatest poem, it is by far his most useful. As Auden wrote in “In Memory of WB Yeats” (1939), “The words of a dead man / Are modified in the guts of the living.”
A 2016 analysis by research company Factiva showed that lines from the poem were quoted more often in the first seven months of 2016 than in any of the preceding 30 years. In the context of increased terrorist violence (particularly in France), political turmoil in the Western world after the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, and the election of Donald Trump as the US President shortly thereafter, commentators repeatedly invoked its lines: “Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold.” The post-2016 turn to Yeats is no surprise, because the image of the centre not holding has long made the poem a touchstone for frightened moderates. Shortly before running for president in 1968, Robert F Kennedy warned: “Indeed, we seem to fulfil the vision of Yeats.”
As the world is wrenched out of joint by the coronavirus pandemic, many people are turning to poetry for wisdom and consolation, but “The Second Coming” fulfils a different role, as it has done in crisis after crisis, from the Vietnam war to 9/11 to the election of Donald Trump: an opportunity to confront chaos and dread, rather than to escape it. Fintan O’Toole has proposed the “Yeats Test”: “The more quotable Yeats seems to commentators and politicians, the worse things are.”
It would be unwise to claim that “The Second Coming” is more relevant than ever because that has been said so many times before. If it feels especially compelling now, perhaps it is because we have become painfully accustomed to the idea that progress is fragile, and it is all too easy to fall back. In an age of shocking reversals, Yeats’s theory of historical cycles – “day & night, night & day for ever,” as he once put it—rings true. The only consolation the poem offers is the knowledge that, for one reason or another, every generation has felt the same apocalyptic shudder that Yeats did 100 years ago. That’s why it is a poem for 1919 and 1939 and 1968 and 1979 and 2001 and 2016 and today and tomorrow. Things fall apart, over and over again, yet the beast never quite reaches Bethlehem.
Presidential Health
In the last week since Trump was released from Walter Reed, there have been speculations about the effects COVID-19 may have had on his mental health. Part of the speculation has been because his doctor was caught lying to the press and the number of lies Trump and his administration routinely tells. All of the lies naturally have a lot of people questioning the truth about Trump’s health. The problem with someone lying in almost everything they say makes it hard to believe them even when they may be telling the truth. Think of the fable, “The Boy Who Cried Wolf.” Of course, Trump is not the first president to lie about his health, and he is unlikely to be the last.
The most significant issue is that we are only now beginning to understand the long-term effects of COVID-19. COVID-19 has been compared to the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic since it began spreading around the world. Luckily, medicine has progressed considerably since 1918, and it is unlikely to cause the number of worldwide deaths that the Spanish flu caused. Five hundred million people were infected with the Spanish flu, which was one-third of the world’s population at the time. Estimates of deaths range from 17 million to 50 million to as high as 100 million. Hopefully, an effective vaccine will be found before too long, and millions of lives will be saved.
Just as with Trump contracting COVID-19, the president of the United States also caught the Spanish flu in 1919 while at the Paris Peace Conference. Several members of the American delegation got influenza, and, like COVID-19, influenza can be transmitted before symptoms appear. Some of my readers may know this, but the United States’ involvement in the First World War is my academic specialty. So, I am very familiar with Woodrow Wilson and the Paris Peace Conference, which was an integral part of my master’s thesis. However, I am embarrassed to say that I had not previously known that Wilson contracted the Spanish flu. I knew he had a stroke while trying to convince Americans to support the United States joining the League of Nations, but there is much more to the story.
On Thursday, April 3, 1919, Wilson suddenly fell ill. White House physician Cary Grayson noted he was seized by “violent paroxysms of coughing, which were so severe and frequent that it interfered with his breathing,” followed by such other symptoms as high fever. Grayson tried to keep the illness secret, but word leaked out that Wilson was sick, and Grayson lied, insisting Wilson simply had a bad cold. Afraid of another leak, Grayson wrote a note to be hand-delivered to Wilson’s chief of staff, which said, “That night was one of the worst through which I have ever passed. I was able to control the spasms of coughing, but his condition looked very serious.”
Like the 1918 flu virus, COVID-19 impacts virtually every organ in the body, including the brain. Most problematic are cardiovascular and neurological impacts. For COVID-19, cardiovascular complications, including stroke, are so common that some experts consider this and not the lung, the primary problem. And according to a study in Annals of Neurology, 25 percent of patients have some neurological dysfunction, and 7 percent have “impaired consciousness.” Another study in Clinical Neurology and Neurosurgery found 36.4 percent of patients to have neurological symptoms. In 1918, it was much the same. The single most comprehensive study of the 1918 pandemic concluded, “The effect of the influenza virus on the nervous system is hardly second to its effect on the respiratory tract. … From the delirium accompanying many acute attacks to the psychoses that develop as ‘post-influenzal’ manifestations, there is no doubt that the neuropsychiatric effects of influenza are profound.”
For Wilson and the world, the effects were indeed profound. He became paranoid, convinced he was being spied on. Herbert Hoover, who was at the time, was in charge of the American food relief efforts for the devastated Europe, believed Wilson’s mind lost “resiliency” and its ability to reason clearly “in coming to conclusions.” Others made similar comments. Nonetheless, after five days in bed and too ill to go out, Wilson insisted on rejoining the peace negotiations. British and French Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau — whose nickname was “the tiger” — came to his room. They, too, found a different man. Lloyd George commented on Wilson’s “nervous and spiritual breakdown in the middle of the Conference.”
Nothing in Wilson’s prior history suggests he would compromise on any principle. Before his illness, he had insisted upon “peace without victory,” his Fourteen Points, and supporting self-determination around the world. But over the next few days, he gave way on almost every point to Clemenceau and agreed to a peace deal that punished Germany and preserved other nations’ imperial ambitions. Historians agree that the treaty contributed significantly to the rise of Adolf Hitler and the start of World War II. A few months later, Wilson’s influenza attack very likely contributed to his debilitating stroke while campaigning across the country to get the support of the American people for the Versailles Treaty.
Today, the case mortality for a 65 to 74-year-old man — Trump is 74 — is 3.1 percent and somewhat higher for those who required oxygen, as Trump did, so the odds of recovery are strongly in his favor, especially given his immediate treatment with remdesivir and experimental monoclonal antibodies, and now dexamethasone (treatments most Americans do not have access to). But recovery may leave him not only fatigued for an extended time but also with an increased chance of stroke or neurological impacts. Since being released from the hospital, Trump’s judgment has been more in question than ever. Trump could just be desperate because he is behind in the polls, and thus he has increased his efforts to give credence to his base’s wild conspiracy theories. His recent appearances on Fox News and Rush Limbaugh show him seemingly more unhinged than ever. Whatever is going on with the president’s health may take years, if ever, for us to find out the extent of his COVID-19 infection and its effects. Only time will tell, but one thing is for sure, we cannot allow him to get reelected.
National Coming Out Day
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
—1 John 4:7-12
Today marks the 32nd annual National Coming Out Day, a cause for celebration and a time to look back on how far we’ve come. Some look forward to this day to take that big step for the first time and declare who they are to the world. But for many young LGBTQ+ people who are still questioning things, it is a time for quiet reflection and introspective exploration. The day was established to remind society about something positive in the LGBTQ+ community. If more people were aware of out and proud LGBTQ+ individuals living among them, then harmful stereotypes and laws affecting them would hopefully go away. Many hurtful stereotypes have already gone away due to the increased visibility of LGBTQ+ people in society. While LGBTQ+ people and issues are very much at the forefront of American culture today, days like this are still significant.
For every person that is out and proud in their sexual orientation or gender identity, countless others are afraid to share that information. They’re scared to share it because of fear of losing their homes, families, or jobs. Some people don’t come out because they don’t feel like their faith and their sexuality can coexist. Most Christians, myself included, grew up in a church where we were told, at the worst, that gay people are evil and going to hell, and at best (or most hypocritical), were welcome in the church, but not in leadership. Some will even claim they “hate the sin, but love the sinner,” which is a backhanded way of saying that being LGBTQ+ is wrong unless you conform to a heteronormative life. Why would any LGBTQ+ Christian come out in that environment? What does the coming-out process look like for LGBTQ+ Christians, especially when they do not feel safe, affirmed, or supported in their communities? LGBTQ+ Christians can be haunted by feelings of depression, despair, and thoughts of suicide as they try to reconcile their faith with their sexuality. These haunting thoughts are not something that God would want for His children.
Across the United States, LGBTQ+ Christians are coming out of the closet. For many of them, finding acceptance within the church can be a test of faith. Studies show that LGBTQ people of faith are often conflicted. According to a report from the Pew Research Center, many feel unwelcome within most major religions and are much less likely to identify as Christian compared to the general public. For many people who claim to be Christians, “homosexuality” is an issue, when it should not be. It is often considered a matter of “us” versus “them,” or worse, for LGBTQ+, a question of their behavior, not something intrinsic to their identity. A person cannot claim to love someone if they do not accept who that person is. Being LGBTQ+ is not a lifestyle, nor is it a choice. God created us in His image. “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” (1 John 4:8) Christians cannot have it both ways, you either love a person or don’t and if you don’t accept a person, you do not love them. And, if you do not love them, then you do not know God. It is a pretty simple and straightforward concept.
I learned pretty early that, as an LGBTQ+ Christian, I am like a unicorn—something people have heard of but never quite seen in person. However, we are here, we are real, and we don’t navigate this journey without our own unique set of problems. I know so many that have lost their relationship with God and/or the church, not because they no longer believed, but because doing the work to free themselves from oppressive things like patriarchy and shame also allowed them to recognize the space that those same concepts occupy within religion. But as a person raised in the Church of Christ, the idea of divorcing myself from my relationship with God and my Christian upbringing seemed unrealistic.
In church, the preachers always say, “don’t just listen to me, study for yourself!” We are consistently taught to read the Bible, so we can truly understand the meaning behind the scripture for ourselves. This concept of studying is indeed the first step toward freeing yourself from religious oppression. To “rightly divide” means to adequately define what the words that you are reading mean. Biblical texts have been used to oppress. We have to deconstruct those texts for their actual meaning and apply those meanings to our lives.
Many lean on the Old Testament’s heavy-handed stories as a reason to take away love, rights, and justice from anyone they do not like. But Christ himself showed that his message was completely different from those negative messages. He loved marginalized people, underprivileged people, and people seen as unworthy by “high class” individuals. He was here for those going through tough times and living their truth even more because those were the ones that, more often, showed true love towards him. The Bible reaffirms that God loves us and created us just as we are.
I took the time to deeply examine what Christ asks of me instead of what church members asked to remember that my choice to have a relationship with Christ is personal. It is not defined by or bound to church or organization. A church is more than just a building or the group of people that gather in that building. Church is perspective and action. My relationship with God makes me feel good. It teaches me about love, charity, hope, faith, joy, strength, and peace. I chose to let those lessons provide me with a path to a more spiritually fulfilled life.
I grew up with people who were often looking down on others, taking notes of all the bad things that they did, and that was especially true of judgmental Christians. The entire church community of Christians where I grew up watched for opportunities to correct, judge, or shame you for living outside of the boundaries they have set. In deciding to study for myself, I had to be willing to take on the burden of releasing fear, shame, and conviction. I would have to believe in myself and not allow myself to be hurt or offended when homophobic Christians rejected me. It’s a tough thing to do because we all hate rejection, but we need to rid our lives of toxic individuals who would reject you for who you are.
Our spirituality is a personal decision and a relationship between God and us. The problems arise when outsiders try to create barriers and rules based on their own biases, prejudices, and ignorance. It takes just a few extra steps to learn that if you allow your heart and mind to step outside of the physical walls of organized religion, you will see that at its root is love and peace. If you have already pulled off the layers of historical oppression, then you have already started the process of defining exactly how to navigate it authentically for yourself.
Moment of Zen: Five Years
Five years ago today, I arrived in Vermont. As I pulled into town, I was forced to make a detour around a train wreck, literally. There had been a train derailment in town a few days before that made the national news. As I got to town, they were transporting the train and had the main road blocked, so I had to take a detour. I made it into the parking lot of my new apartment just a minute or so before they hauled the train right past me. If I had been just a few minutes later, I’d have been stuck at a stop sign for over an hour as they slowly moved this train down the street.
By the way, if you are wondering why I chose a picture of a guy picking apples as my picture today, apples are one of the joys of Vermont, especially the cider made from them. Vermont makes some of the best hard cider in the world. If you like your cider a little dry, I suggest Citizen Cider made in Burlington, especially their Unified Press. If you like it a little sweeter, then I would suggest Woodchuck made in Middlebury. There are ciders made all over Vermont. Stowe Cider is another popular one, but it’s not one of my favorites. It has a very floral taste that I find off-putting in a cider. There are more than a dozen other cideries in Vermont, including Champlain Farms, which I don’t think I have ever had. By the way, Cider is one of the few alcoholic beverages that don’t trigger my migraines. I can no longer drink beer because of the debilitating headaches it causes, and I am not talking hangovers. I mean, before I can finish a bottle of beer, I have a tremendous headache. However, cider doesn’t do that to me, and I like cider better anyway.
The other great thing about Vermont is the cheddar cheese. Most white cheddars are called Vermont cheddar, but not all “Vermont” cheddar is made in Vermont. However, cheese from Cabot Creamery is made in Vermont, and I love their Seriously Sharp brand. I have said before that Vermonters will call anything that they put cheddar cheese and apples on “The Vermonter,” or some variation of the name. I am not thrilled with apples and cheddar cheese together, but independently, they are pretty good. Of course, Vermont is also known for its maple syrup. Vermont is the second-largest producer of maple syrup only behind Quebec.
So, I’ve been here for five years now. If I make it 25 more years, I might be able to retire and find a nice place to spend the rest of my life.
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The Closet Professor 