Tag Archives: politics

The Bathroom Debate

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Are you kidding me?

Let me start with a story.

About four years ago, I met a fellow helicopter pilot who had just finished up her training. I’ll call her Alice. Alice was slender, kind of pretty, and friendly, with an upbeat personality and a positive outlook — the kind of person I like to help when I can. Like most new pilots, she needed to build flight time. When it came time for me to fly my helicopter from my old home in Wickenburg, AZ to my new home in the Wenatchee area of Washington, I invited her to come along for the 8-10 hour flight. Although she wanted to come, a logistical misunderstanding prevented it and I made the flight alone.

Not long afterwards, Alice and I became friends on Facebook. That’s when I noticed that she shared a lot of links to LGBT-related articles. I assumed she was a lesbian — I know quite a few! — and was very surprised when I realized from her Facebook posts that she had been born male.

We had a conversation going in Facebook Messaging and even though that was back in 2013, it’s still there for me to consult. Here’s a pared down part of that conversation:

Me: Honestly, I didn’t even know you were transgender until you started mentioning it on Facebook. While I know it’s important to you that everyone accept transgender people as just regular people, I had already accepted you as a regular person — a woman.

Alice: First let me say thank you! You have just given me an amazing compliment (probably without realizing it). To be recognized and accepted as a woman is really a huge compliment to me and means so much that it’s really hard to explain. I have worked incredibly hard towards the goal of being accepted as a woman and the journey has been the most difficult and challenged thing I’ve ever encountered.

There’s more to the conversation, including me urging her to just be a woman and not identify as transgender and her concerns about bathroom use. I guess I was displaying my naivety when I said:

Me: In your public persona, be the woman you are. I can’t imagine anyone challenging you if you use a ladies restroom. Why worry about it?

Her response was chilling:

Alice: It’s been a problem for me in the past, and being arrested as a sex offender for using a restroom is very high on my list of nightmares. Especially in Maricopa County where Sheriff Joe’s reputation for treating Trans* people in his jails is abysmal. I’ve been told by an employer that I have to leave their property to find a unisex bathroom. I’ve been asked to leave the bathroom in a restaurant. I’ve been physically blocked from using a bathroom in a restaurant with the owner threatening to call the police on me if I entered the women’s room. To this day, even though I feel that I generally ‘pass’ as a woman, I’m still scared to use a public restroom without first having a friend ‘check it out’ to see if it’s empty. The ‘bathroom’ issue is actually one of the most prominent in my everyday life. Statistically speaking, it’s also one of the most dangerous activities a trans* person does in any given day. Again, I ‘pass’ pretty well so it’s not that much of a safety concern for me, but the anxiety from when I didn’t ‘pass’ is still very much present in my mind.

I have the entire conversation saved and if I thought it wouldn’t be violating her privacy, I’d share it here to help people understand more about what transgender people are dealing with. But I’ll stick to the issue at hand: bathrooms.

First let me sum this up. Here’s a person who looks like a woman, talks like a woman, acts like a woman, and is thrilled when she’s recognized as a woman. (I honestly had no idea she wasn’t born a woman.) Clearly, she identifies as a woman. Why on earth wouldn’t she use a woman’s bathroom?

I can’t even imagine her using a men’s room.

The Conservative Sex Problem

The problem is this: Conservatives in America have a problem with sex.

They’re completely hung up on it. They think they’re supposed to believe that sex is for one purpose: making babies. They think they’re supposed to believe that sex for enjoyment or to feel closer to their mate or because it’s a natural part of being alive is bad and dirty.

So it follows that any kind of sex that isn’t to make a baby is bad.

Premarital sex? Can’t have a baby without being married. Bad! (This also explains why they rely so heavily on abstinence sex education rather than teaching kids about condoms and safe sex. Shouldn’t be doing it at all because it’s bad!)

Gays or lesbians having sex with someone of the same gender? No way to make a baby there so it’s bad!

Boy feeling more like a girl than a boy? How can he make babies if he turns into a girl? Bad!

Girl feeling more like a boy than a girl? How can she make babies he she turns into a boy? Bad!

So rather than try to understand these things and recognize the fact that there are all kinds of natural differences in sexuality, conservatives fall back on what they think they’re supposed to believe and they act (or react) accordingly.

It’s ironic to me that the political party that whines the most about government interference in our lives is the same party that unceasingly tries to enact laws governing sex and gender related issues. But I digress.

Not Everyone is as Creepy as Mike Huckabee

Back in February 2015, then presidential candidate Mike Huckabee, in a speech to fellow conservatives, made the following comment:

Now I wish that someone told me that when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in PE,” Huckabee continued. “I’m pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, ‘Coach, I think I’d rather shower with the girls today.’

Apparently, he made a similar comment back in 2013.

You see, in the small, closed minds of conservatives, the only reason a male might want to go into a woman’s bathroom or locker room is to peep at (or do worse to) a woman. They can’t imagine a person who honestly identifies as a member of the opposite gender just wanting to do what’s natural: use the restroom for the gender he or she identifies with.

Conservatives hung up on this issue seem to think that gender identity is something that a person can switch on or off based on convenience or motives. Teenage Mike Huckabee wants to peep at girls so he finds his feminine side for the day. (I guess looking at porn isn’t enough.)

To them, it’s all about sex and ulterior motives and creepy guys wanting to do something nasty in a ladies room.

Funny how they’re never worried about women who identify as men wanting to use the men’s room, huh?

I don’t profess to know all the answers, but I do know this: I’m a woman who identifies as a woman and can use a women’s restroom. If Alice walked in, I probably wouldn’t look twice at her. If someone who was not quite as feminine looking as Alice but who clearly identified as a woman walked in, I would try not to stare and would certainly not challenge her. She has enough crap to deal with; why add more?

But if Mike Huckabee walked in, I’d scream “Rape!” at the top of my lungs. You have to keep creeps like that out of the ladies room.

What’s the Solution?

The solution is to do away with gender-specific restrooms.

Ladies

I heard a great story on an NPR program, PRI’s The World, yesterday that explains how gender-specific bathrooms came into being in the United States. Called “Why a 1920s legal move is responsible for the gender-segregated bathrooms we have today,” it discussed the cultural ideology of women’s place in the home and, later, in the workforce.

Terry S. Kogan, a University of Utah law professor explains it this way:

“American regulators began figuring out ways of trying to, in effect, protect women in the public, since they could not be forced back into the home,” Kogan says. “So you find a range of architectural solutions, all of which was, in a way, an attempt to create a private haven and protective space for women in the public realm.”

But the idea of protecting women has often been used as an excuse to advance other agendas. For example, many lawmakers argue that strict abortion laws will help keep women safe, but advocates point out that putting barriers in front of reproductive services actually make things more dangerous for women. Additionally, those that favored bathroom segregation laws that discriminated against black Americans during the Jim Crow era also claimed such laws were designed to protect white women and children.

Nevertheless, gender-segregated bathrooms were written into the fabric of American society in the 1920s with the rise the uniform building code.

“It was a movement aimed at various building officials — engineers, architects, contractors, building material dealers,” Kogan says. “[They were] coming together, trying to adopt a code that could be enacted hook, line, and sinker by cities around the country and ensure adequate public safety, health, and welfare in new construction. Hidden in the midsts of the first uniform building code from 1927 is a provision that says, ‘Where there are public restrooms in buildings, they shall be separated by sex.’”

With those words, Kogan says, the “Separate Spheres Ideology” was written into law and carried into the 20th century. Today, many advocates of HB2 argue that women and children must be “protected” from transgender people in public bathrooms.

Listen to the story. There’s a lot more.

Another thing I heard on NPR yesterday — although I can’t seem to track down a link to it — is a discussion of possible alternatives. For example, why not have a urinal room that would obviously be used by people capable of using a urinal? And then have a restroom for every other bathroom use by either gender? If privacy is a concern, make the bathroom stalls fully enclosed with lockable doors — like they already are in many high-end hotels and conference centers. (And apparently in the U.K., according to one friend who was appalled by the metal bathroom stalls to be found in U.S. restrooms.)

It seems to me that multi-person restrooms have two parts: the toilet part where you do the business you likely came in for and probably want privacy for and the sink/mirror part where you’re hopefully washing your hands and possibly fixing your face or hair or maybe adjusting your slip (do people still wear those?) or bra strap. I’ve never seen a woman expose herself in the sink/mirror part of a ladies room. So who cares if there are men in there?

Oh, that’s right. Conservatives. So worried about creepy men.

I’ve got news for conservatives: I’ve seen more creepy men out in the open — including a guy in a business suit masturbating on 40th Street near the corner of 6th Avenue in Manhattan at 4:30 in the afternoon — than I ever will in a ladies room. And I’m not even counting the last time I saw Mike Huckabee on television.

But I guess this problem won’t be resolved until the close-minded sex-obsessed conservatives lose this battle, too. Like the one for gay marriage.

If only they’d learn to mind their own fucking business. (No pun intended.)

On the Misinformed

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When lies make us stupid.

Mark Twain Quote

This morning, a typical quote + image meme appeared in my Twitter stream, shared by @Phillipdpl1974. The illustrious person in the photograph who was being quoted was none other than my favorite author of all time, Mark Twain.

The quote hit hard, primarily because of the events of the night before, which I’ll get to in a moment. It said:

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they have been fooled.

Later in the day, while surfing Facebook, my friend Stewart shared a link to an article on Five Thirty Eight titled “Trump Supporters Appear To Be Misinformed, Not Uninformed.” It also hit hard because of the previous night’s events.

What Happened Last Night

It started innocently enough. I’d mentioned to my two companions — we’ll call them Sally and Joe — that I’d talked to guy at the concealed weapons permit booth at Quartzite. They were both familiar with him and both seemed to agree that the guy was a jerk. I told them that in the course of our discussion, he’d insinuated that California was not part of the United States. He apparently thought that was funny. But with all the NRA signage around his booth and his obvious close-minded, anti-liberal attitude, I didn’t think it was funny at all and let him know before turning my back on him and walking away. (In all honesty, the NRA signage was enough to prevent me from spending any money at all at his booth.)

My discussion last night with my friends naturally segued to the topic of the President’s recent executive orders related to gun controls, specifically those new rules for background checks. Joe immediately got testy. He said he didn’t understand why the president was making laws that already existed. When Sally and I asked him what he meant, he told us that background checks were already required for all gun purchases.

Sally reminded him that he’d bought a gun in Arizona at a gunshow and no background check had been required. I told them my wasband had done the same thing.

“When was that?” Joe demanded? “Twenty years ago?”

We admitted that it had been quite a while ago but that we didn’t think the laws had changed. Joe insisted that background checks were required in all states for all gun purchases. The discussion elevated to shouting, which really surprised me. Already yelled at by Joe for interrupting him “all the time,” I shut up.

While Sally and Joe continued arguing, I pulled out my phone and Googled, “In which states can I buy a gun without a background check?” Then, when there was a gap in the shouting match, I began to read:

Eight states require background checks at the point of sale for all —

Joe cut me off. “Where does it say that?”

“Wikipedia,” I replied.

“Oh, Wikipedia,” Joe responded in a tone of voice that made it clear he thought I was an idiot for relying on anything I read there.

I clicked another link. This one displayed the Gun Show background Checks State Laws page on Governing.com. I mistakenly identified it as “a government website,” but I still believe the information there is accurate. I read:

Known as the “gun show loophole,” most states do not require background checks for firearms purchased at guns shows from private individuals — federal law only requires licensed dealers to conduct checks.

I held up the phone to show him a map with states colored depending on whether they required background checks for all gun purchases, including gun shows and private sales.

“It’s on the Internet,” Joe said sarcastically. “It must be true.” He then started a rant about how you couldn’t believe anything you read in the media.

I told him that some sources were definitely better than others.

He asked me where I got my information from.

“NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post. These are all pretty reliable as far as facts go.” (If asked again today, I’d add the Economist, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, BBC World News, and the Guardian.) I know better than to trust far right or far left media sources like FoxNews or Mother Jones.

He then went off on another tangent related to whether it was legal for felons to buy guns. Sally and I said no.

“So in these states where there’s no background check required, it’s legal for felons to buy guns?”

“No,” we both repeated.

“But can they buy guns?”

“Yes,” I said. “Because they can lie because there’s no background check. That’s the point. The background check would help prevent people who shouldn’t buy guns from buying guns. That’s why Obama made the executive order.”

Joe responded by telling us that he didn’t trust the president. That shocked the hell out of Sally and me. While Sally continued arguing with Joe, I took a huge step back, out of the conversation. I knew then that Joe was a lost cause.

Life’s just too short to argue wait people who can’t form their own opinions based on facts.

Oh, and I should mention that what I reported above is only part of a much longer, very angry conversation about laws, guns, truth, the media, and the president. Honestly, it went on a lot longer than it should have.

The Misinformed

This morning, after reading the Five Thirty Eight piece Stew shared, I realized that my friend Joe had become one of the misinformed.

We all get crap shared by our Facebook friends — crap pushing one opinion or another, often through the use of misleading or inaccurate data, charts, quotes, or statements. A lot of it is hateful or even racist. I’ve seen some pretty bad stuff and, in most cases, I simply stop following or even “unfriend” the person who shared it. I’ve blocked more than a handful of friends of friends who share inappropriate comments on my public posts. I have zero tolerance for hate.

Some of us get angry when we get crap we don’t agree with but cling to the crap we do agree with. Others disregard the obviously misleading crap — “Obama is a Muslim” or “Syrian refugees are part of a terrorist sleeper cell” — and spend time researching the crap that might just be true. Nine times out of ten, that “might be true” crap turns out to be just as wrong as the rest of it. But that one time it isn’t — well, then we can learn from it.

My friend Joe was from the first camp. He got a lot of crap from people who thought like he did — Sally confirmed this suspicion later that night — and he believed it. Yet ironically, he claimed that you couldn’t believe anything on the Internet.

How could you argue with someone like that?

The Five Thirty Eight piece discusses the differences between uniformed and misinformed people:

Uninformed citizens don’t have any information at all, while those who are misinformed have information that conflicts with the best evidence and expert opinion…. In the U.S., the most misinformed citizens tend to be the most confident in their views and are also the strongest partisans. These folks fill the gaps in their knowledge base by using their existing belief systems. Once these inferences are stored into memory, they become “indistinguishable from hard data”…

… When misinformed citizens are told that their facts are wrong, they often cling to their opinions even more strongly with what is known as defensive processing, or the “backfire effect.”

The article goes on to discuss various studies and actual examples of the use of misinformation as a way to more firmly connect with supporters. It’s not a very long piece, but it’s a fascinating look at psychology. I highly recommend it.

How Lies Make Us Do Stupid Things

If we believe things that aren’t true, we form opinions based on that misinformation. Those opinions can guide actions. If we follow a course of action based on bad information, we run the risk of following a bad course of action.

There’s a pretty good example of this from my own life. My wasband somehow got the idea that he had a legal claim to everything I owned, despite the fact that I’d acquired most of it before marriage and through my own efforts. He firmly believed that he was entitled to half of everything and, for the life of me, I can’t understand why his lawyers didn’t set him straight. Or maybe they tried and he refused to believe them. His misinformed belief caused him to launch a lengthy and expensive divorce battle that he eventually lost. Still believing he was right, he couldn’t accept that loss and appealed the judge’s decision, thus launching another lengthy and expensive court battle that he also lost. Clearly, his belief in incorrect information cost him a lot of money that would have been better spent rebuilding his life with the woman who likely misinformed him and goaded him to going after my money in the first place. (Talk about irony.)

In 1998, Andrew Wakefield, who was then a medical doctor in the U.K., published a fraudulent research paper that linked the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine to autism. It was later discovered that the patients in his study were recruited by lawyers suing MMR vaccine makers and that those lawyers had paid both Wakefield and the hospital he worked for large sums of money. Further, Wakefield had applied for a patent on a measles vaccine to be used instead of the MMR vaccine; discrediting that vaccine would certainly benefit him financially. All of these situations were a huge conflict of interest for his research paper and probably explain his motivations for committing the fraud. The report was formally withdrawn in 2010 but the damage of his misinformation was already done: a huge group of people believed — and continue to believe — the now debunked results of his research. Although there is no link between the MMR vaccine — or any other vaccine — and autism, an alarming percentage of parents around the world refuse to vaccinate their children. The result: thousands of deaths and illnesses that could have been prevented by vaccines.

Nowadays, we’re seeing opinions based on misinformation dividing Americans and filling them with hate. These people are voters and many support candidates such as Donald Trump who, in the words of the Five Thirty Eight piece’s author, Anne Pluta, “has a consistently loose relationship with the truth.” This is a man who has made many public derogatory remarks about women, wants to discriminate against people based on their religion, and claims he’ll get a foreign government to pay for the cost of a border wall that is impossible to build. He’s a narcissist with a crass personality who makes the American people look like idiots in the eyes of the world every time he opens his mouth. Very little this man says is true, but the misinformed believe him and eat up every word he utters. I think it’s safe to say that the action they might take — actually voting for this man to be our president — is a foolish one.

My friend Joe’s concerns about trusting the media aren’t outrageous. There are many, many media sources that I can’t trust to present facts that are not tainted by opinion. I already mentioned two of them — FoxNews on the far right and Mother Jones on the far left. These two media outlets present opinions supported by cherry-picked “facts” and quotes often taken out of context. But they’re only two of the thousands of sources people — including voters trying to stay informed — trust every day.

What’s the solution? If you can’t find a truly objective source of factual information, there isn’t one.

I’ve got to think that it’s better to be uninformed than misinformed.

Enough Already with the Boston Marathon Bombers!

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Seriously — most of us only care about a few important details.

I need to start out by agreeing that the Boston Marathon bombing last week was a despicable deed rooted in hate and terror. The loss of life and limb — and I mean that quite literally — is a horrible, horrible consequence. I can’t sufficiently express my outrage — outrage that all Americans feel.

That said, does the media have to keep ramming irrelevant details about the bombing, bombers, and capture down our throats?

You all know what I’m talking about: endless speculation all week long about who the bombers were and what their motives were and what color their skin was and what their religion was. Then the FBI releases the pictures and the whole thing starts all over again.

Along the way, an absolutely insensitive and moronic state senator from Arkansas makes a crack on Twitter:

I wonder how many Boston liberals spent the night cowering in their homes wishing they had an AR-15 with a hi-capacity magazine? #2A
— Nate Bell (@NateBell4AR) April 19, 2013

That triggers a wave of responses and he subsequently deletes the tweet and offers a lame apology.

And then Friday: hours of live and looped video all day, reporting the death of one bombing suspect and the manhunt for the other. This went on all day long.

Even NPR was caught up in it. After a while, I just had to turn off the radio. I got sick of hearing that the FBI would be making a statement in “just a few minutes” and then having to listen to them try to fill the dead air with inane commentary that just restated the same few facts over and over in different ways.

And since then, coverage has shifted to the backgrounds of the two bombers. Media outlets have dragged out every single person the two men knew. Hell, I even read or saw or heard an interview with a man who lived in the same building but never even met them! All of these people are asked to tell the audience what they know about the men and it’s the same crap over and over and over.

Pardon me, but who the fuck really cares?

Now that the men have been taken off the street, I only care about a few things:

  • Did they act alone?
  • Are more attacks by associates possible?

I don’t care about the Miranda rights issue, either. The guy purposely set off two bombs that killed or maimed fellow Americans. He might have information that would prevent future attacks and save lives. As far as I’m concerned, he gave up his rights when he committed an act of terror against Americans. While I respect the ACLU, I wish they’d just realize that this goes beyond an American citizen’s rights. An act of terrorism is a game-changer.

Why can’t the media just stick to the facts in this case and stop filling the airwaves with bullshit?

Is it because they’re incapable of real journalism? Because they’ve blurred the lines between news coverage and entertainment so badly that they don’t know what’s important anymore? Is it because they think we’re stupid and all we care about is the sensationalist bullshit they keep feeding us?

Why don’t more of us speak up and say something about this?

A Bit More about the Republican Party

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It’s the science, stupid.

The 2012 Presidential campaign — and its aftermath — continues to weigh heavily on my mind. The other day, I finally got around to blogging my thoughts on the Republican Party, aided, in part, by yet another excellent blog post by Jim Wright on Stonekettle Station. I thought that would be enough to get it off my mind. But no, I still had some more mulling over to do.

You see, it bothered me that I really didn’t clearly indicate why I have such bad feelings about the GOP. I mentioned that I thought certain elected representatives and senators were “batshit crazy” and gave some examples. But I didn’t really connect the dots to explain exactly what bothered me personally about these people.

Thinking a little harder about Florida Senator Marco Rubio’s comments about the age of the earth helped me better understand what was going on in my subconscious about this. From the GQ interview, “All Eyez On Him,” where they were first made:

GQ: How old do you think the Earth is?

Marco Rubio: I’m not a scientist, man. I can tell you what recorded history says, I can tell you what the Bible says, but I think that’s a dispute amongst theologians and I think it has nothing to do with the gross domestic product or economic growth of the United States. I think the age of the universe has zero to do with how our economy is going to grow. I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that. At the end of the day, I think there are multiple theories out there on how the universe was created and I think this is a country where people should have the opportunity to teach them all. I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says. Whether the Earth was created in 7 days, or 7 actual eras, I’m not sure we’ll ever be able to answer that. It’s one of the great mysteries.

This is, of course, outrageous. Scientists have accumulated enough evidence to estimate the earth’s age at 4.54 million billion years old. There are not “multiple theories” that dispute this. There’s only science and religion. Science is based on research, facts, and analysis. Religion does not have “theories” about anything. All it has are sacred texts written hundreds or thousands of years ago. Sacred text that believers, by definition, must believe.

So when I read about this, I used it as an example in my post of the craziness of certain Republicans.

And then an article by Daniel Engber in Slate Magazine, “Rubio and Obama and the age of Earth: Politicians hedge about whether universe was created,” suggested that Obama had made a similar statement in an interview back in 2008, when he was running for president. The quote:

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did god really create the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?

A: What I’ve said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that’s what I believe. I know there’s always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don’t, and I think it’s a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I’m a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don’t presume to know.

The article goes on to compare the quotes from these two men, claiming that they’re not very different. The argument is compelling — at first. But bloggers at the Maddow Blog had no trouble picking it apart and zeroing in on what made the comparison fail. In “Those Who Celebrate Science (and Those Who Don’t),” Steve Benen says:

Rubio was asked a scientific question in a secular setting, offered an ambiguous response as to whether he believes the planet is billions or thousands of years old, and suggested an objective, scientific truth may be unknowable, though reality shows otherwise.

On the other hand, Obama was asked a theological question in a religious setting, offered a response that rejected young-earth pseudo-science, and suggested spiritual, philosophical truths may be unknowable.

That blog post then went on to give good examples of how Obama embraces science.

Paul Krugman’s article in The New York Times, “Grand Old Planet,” takes this news tidbit to the next level:

By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.

What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence. (emphasis added)

Mr. Krugman goes on to point out several other examples where Republicans have suppressed hard facts that challenge their faith-based preconceptions. I won’t repeat them all here; go read the article. It’s short and very worthwhile.

Republican War on Science(By the way, Mr. Krugman also mentions Chris Mooney’s book, The Republican Brain: The Science of Why They Deny Science–and Reality. He doesn’t mention Mr. Mooney’s earlier book, The Republican War on Science, “the New York Times bestseller that exposes the conservative agenda to put politics ahead of scientific truth.” I think both are worth a read if you care about science and how politics can affect our future.)

And this is why I’m so opposed to the Republican way of thinking. These people are, for the most part, putting their religion before science and everything else. They’re trying to force a faith-based educational and political agenda on everyone in this country — no matter what everyone else believes. They seem to forget the doctrine of separation of church and state. They’re willing to sacrifice our ability to lead the world in science and technology so as not to offend a god that their fellow Americans may or may not believe in.

Personally, I’m horrified at the suggestion that creation (or “intelligent design”) be taught in public schools alongside evolution. I think it’s tragic that people are still trying to deny that climate change is real and likely caused by man. And it pisses me off to no end that public proceedings such as Town Council meetings often begin with a prayer and that I’m asked to “swear to God” in court. As if nothing can be done in the legal world without acknowledging a supreme being that has the power to guide or punish us.

(Let’s not forget that the original Pledge of Allegiance did not include the phrase “under God” until 1954.)

And don’t get me started on the hypocrisy of a political party that’s constantly whining about how our freedoms are being compromised wanting to regulate what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes.

Anyway, I think this post finishes the thought I started in my previous blog post. I think it connects the dots to clearly state what bothers me most about the Republican way of thinking.

I’m willing to bet that this way of thinking is turning off a lot of otherwise conservative people. I think that if the GOP would stop its faith-based crazy-talk and get back to reality, it will likely attract a lot more voters in the future.

Again, I’ll leave comments open until moderation becomes a chore. If you want your comment to appear, keep it civil.

The Problem with the Republican Party

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Jim Wright at Stonekettle Station said it best.

This post is a bit late…it should have been written and posted at least a week ago when we were still pumped up by post-election euphoria or misery. But I don’t want to skip the topic — it needs to be addressed in this blog so I have a record of it in years to come.

Although I might be considered a fiscal conservative, I cannot wear a “conservative” label. I lean more to the left in social policies and I’m libertarian as far as government involvement in our private lives goes. Without going into detail about my specific beliefs — because they just don’t matter as far as this post is concerned — it’s pretty safe to say that I identify more with the Democrats than the Republicans in this country.

As a thinking person who values true freedom and wants very badly to love her country, I have a serious problem with the way this country has become divided along party lines. To be fair, there’s always been a certain split, but it’s only recently — perhaps since Clinton’s presidency? — that the split has become wide with a lot of hate on both sides. The result: a governing body that spends more time obstructing the other side than getting anything done for the country as a whole.

“Freedom,” by the way, isn’t some idealistic concept that means flag waving and invokes images of Revolutionary War battles and heroes. Freedom means the ability to do as you please, within certain widely accepted social limitations. You might be free to stand on a street corner and lecture passers by about your religious beliefs, but you can’t grab people and take them, against their will, to church with you. You might be free to carry a gun, but you’re not free to shoot your next door neighbor with it because his dog barked all night. You might be free to have sex with a consenting adult, but you can’t have sex with a child (consenting or otherwise). Silly that we need laws to limit our freedoms, but some people don’t quite understand what’s socially or morally acceptable.

No matter which side you’re on, it’s easy to find fault with the other side. Maybe because I lean left, I find a lot of problems with the right. They claim they want small government, yet they want laws to prohibit many too many things that affect our private lives — abortion and same-sex marriage come to mind. And although this country was founded by deists who were in favor of religious freedom, the right wing has somehow twisted that to mean that Christians should have preferential treatment and be able to push their beliefs on the rest of us. They’re pushing hard to include non-scientific, faith-based information — such as creationism (often poorly disguised as something called “intelligent design”) in public school curriculums.

And to me, some of the things elected Republican politicians are saying in public are just plain batshit crazy. Want some examples? Try these from just the past few months:

And that’s what really hits home with me. These people don’t just have a different point of view. I think they’re off-the-wall crazy, showing an amazing amount of ignorance or simple denial of what science has already told us. And for what reason? Do they really believe this stuff or are they pandering to an ultra-conservative base?

And what has happened to the Republican Party? They weren’t always this crazy, were they?

Jim Wright of Stonekettle Station blogs regularly about politics. His November 7, 2012 post titled “Hemlock With A Small Side of Schadenfreude” is typically long and rambling, but he brings my point home near the end. I’ve gotten his permission to reproduce the key paragraphs here:

Once upon a time the faces of the Republican Party were Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Ulysses S. Grant, and, hell, Ronald Reagan. 

Today the public face of the GOP is Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, the Koch Brothers, Donald Trump, Sarah Palin, Karl Rove, and a silly old man shouting at an empty chair. 

Once upon a time, the Republican Party stood for freedom, the end of slavery, the extension of rights to all Americans, the reasonable  regulation of business and monopolies and the protection of the little man from the same.  The first president to call for pluralism, i.e. multiculturalism, was a Republican, William McKinley.  The republican who followed, one of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen, Teddy Roosevelt, believed in science, in reason, in the conservation of nature and the husbanding of our natural resources, the protection of our lands, in equality for all, and in peace. Republicans once upon a time believed In freedom of religion and freedom from religion.

Today the GOP would make businesses into citizens and make citizens into property. They squint suspiciously at any non-Christian and seem hell bent on denying others their just and due rights as Americans based on those self-same religious beliefs. Science, natural resources, and the environment seem to share equal contempt among conservatives nowadays. They are the party of drill, Baby, drill and legitimate rape. They’ve got abortion on the brain and are obsessively concerned with what other people might be doing in the privacy of their own bedrooms. The GOP has become the very military-industrial complex  another great Republican once warned us about. The GOP has given up science and become the party of Birthers and creationists and conspiracy nuts – and rather than distance themselves from such crazies, the modern Republican Party embraced them. One has only to look at the 2012 GOP Platform to see just how far they’ve drifted from the once great party of Lincoln.

Once upon a time, there was room in the Republican party. Room for competing ideas, room for reasoned debate and differences of opinion, room for all Americans.

Today, the Republican Party has grown very small – small in mind, small in ideas, small in tolerance.  They’ve become the party of loyalty oaths, purity balls, and secret handshakes.

Once upon a time, the Grand Old Party faced the world with the courage of Roosevelt, of Eisenhower, of Lincoln.

Today, this morning, these last four years, the Republican Party is shrouded in the rank stench of hysteria and fear. They face the future with the false bravado of the coward and the blustering shallow patriotism epitomized by the likes of Ted Nugent.  They cower under their beds, clutching their guns and their bibles, deathly afraid of the future.

And this is exactly what I see.

Jim finishes up by adding:

The GOP is dying a slow death, poisoned by their own bitter tea. They are now firmly on the wrong side of history and unless something changes, they’ll wear that confused expression into oblivion without ever understanding why.

I don’t hate Republicans. I think they’re misguided. I think they’re missing the point. I think they’re not being open-minded and understanding enough to realize that not everyone thinks exactly the way they do.

If they want to move forward into the 21st century with the rest of us, the party needs to change. It needs to get smart and get real. Its pundits need to stop pushing hatred of anything different. It needs to become a bigger party, embracing a wider range of beliefs.

And it needs to remember that we’re all in the same boat — we need to work together to stay afloat, plot a course, move in a direction that’ll help all of us.

June 30, 2014 Update
I’ve finally gotten around to writing up the site comment policy on a regular page (rather than post) on this site. You can find it here: Comment Policy.

I’ll leave comments open on this post — at least for a while. Remember our comment policy — no personal attacks on me or other commenters will be tolerated. If moderation becomes a chore for this post, I’ll simply shut the comments down.