By: Paul S. Marchand
If you’ve been out of the closet for twenty-plus years, and if you live in a community where between a third and two fifths of the population is gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered, it can be easy to get blasé about National Coming Out Day.
So I’d like to thank House Armed Services Committee Chair Buck McKeon, the Republican -and Mormon- Congressman from California’s 25th District for reminding me why NCOD still matters. Today’s edition of The Hill reports that McKeon “would rather go without a defense spending bill this year than compromise on allowing military chaplains to conduct gay marriages.” (http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/186363-house-armed-services-chair-i-wont-compromise-on-gay-marriage-detainees)
So, let me get this straight, all puns intended.
McKeon would harm and hamstring this nation’s entire defense in order to push his personal anti-queer agenda.
I must be in an alternate universe. I thought it was the Republicans who were supposed to be the hawks, while Democrats were supposed to be dovish wusses, unable to commit to our national defense.
But no, McKeon apparently really does believe that anti-queer bigotry is more important than making sure that our nation has a defense capability.
Whose side is he on?
Certainly not the side of America, that’s for sure.
A Congressional back-bencher, a Mary Bono Mack or a Michelle Bachmann, for example, might be allowed a little leeway in making crazy pronouncements; Bono Mack is considered little more than a lightweight, and Bachmann’s appeal to her like-minded base has little crossover appeal to rational America.
Howard “Buck” McKeon, on the other hand, does not -or should not- have the luxury of crazy talk. As a committee chair, he should understand that his utterances carry weight, and that he owes the nation a higher duty than sacrificing the national security of the United States to his personal, religiously-motivated, ideology.
I guess you could say I’m a little angry.
I’m angry not just because I’m tired of social and religious conservatives insisting that America needs one last minority against whom it should be legal to discriminate; I’m tired of the lavender Jim Crow of Buck McKeon and his ilk.
I’m also angry because Buck McKeon happens to be a senior member of a religious denomination that contributed millions to Prop 8 campaign whose clear intention was to keep us uppity queers as far in the back of the bus as possible.
Finally, I’m angry because I believe the defense of the United States should never, repeat never, be held hostage to ideology so crudely or so cynically. We do have enemies who wish us ill, against whom this nation must be defended. More importantly, we have servicemembers whose livelihoods and well-being depend on passing the defense authorization bill, livelihoods and well-being that are too important a thing to be treated as a political football.
The double standard Mr. McKeon and his fellow travelers apply to their own actions is reprehensible. If a Democratic House committee chair had even suggested holding up the annual defense authorization, even for a compelling and justifiable reason, the Republicans would be screaming “treason,” or worse.
Yet, by McKeon’s lights, the thought of an armed forces chaplain joining Ruth and Naomi or Jonathan and David is so awful as to justify laying this country open to its enemies and starving its defenders. We would be right to question -and we should question- such a person’s patriotism and commitment to this country, to say nothing of questioning his fitness to serve in the Congress.
Whose side is he on?
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney in Cathedral City, where he lives and works. The views expressed herein are his own, including his view that Howard McKeon is an embarrassment to the Golden State.
Tuesday, October 11, 2011
Sunday, October 9, 2011
WHOSE SIDE ARE THEY ON? How the Religious Right’s War on Science Represents a Threat to the National Security of the United States
By: Paul S. Marchand
Steve Jobs, who died this week, was one of those people Who Change The Way We Do Things. If today we take for granted devices and technology that barely a generation ago seemed the stuff of science fiction, it is at least in part because Steve Jobs helped make it happen.
Thus, one cannot help but notice the irony inherent in the use of Jobsian technology by reactionaries and obscurantists of every stripe whose vision of the world could not be further from that which Steve Jobs articulated, as when one receives an e-mail or a link to some science-damning, flat-earther website.
We seem to be caught up in a headlong retreat from scientific literacy in this country. From the right, we see a climate of scientific denialism that rejects not only the possibility of anthropogenic climate change, but also the reality of Darwinian evolution itself; notwithstanding enormous evidence to support both theories, right-wing denialists insist, contrary to the enormous, overwhelming, weight of the evidence, that climate change is a hoax and Darwin was wrong. Indeed, so great is the right-wing denial of reality that there are actually websites out there denying that the earth revolves around the sun: Copernicus and Galileo were wrong.
On the other side of the political divide, we find a different kind of obscurantism, a sort of post-scientific rejection of what, by now, ought to be the basic commonsense view that vaccinating your children against common childhood diseases is a good thing. Instead, we have so-called empowered parents placing their children and children around them at risk by refusing to agree to simple, basic, sound, prophylactic health measures.
While it might be easy to postulate a moral equivalency between right and left when it comes to America’s headlong retreat from scientific literacy and understanding, the fact remains that much of the blame must go to the religious right and their fellow travelers, who have spent generations trying to convince Americans that there is something evil and suspect in all of that scientific book-learning, in all of that knowledge that seems to be the province of so-called "elites," which has become the pejorative right wing codeword for anyone possessing some degree of advanced learning or education.
Such a rejection of science, whether it comes from the religious rightist (like far too many of the current Republican presidential hopefuls) who rejects evolution or climate change, or whether it comes from so-called empowered progressives who won’t vaccinate their kids because they have listened uncritically to long-discredited, fraudulent, gossip masquerading as good science, has dangerous ramifications for the immediate and long-term national security and interests of the United States.
We would do well to remember that our leadership in the world is very much a function of our long and honorable heritage of innovation, invention, and scientific inquiry. The United States has long been regarded as a place to which people come to do science free from the kind of ideological blinders and fetters which so often oppress scientists in other parts of the world.
When Hitler and the Nazis declared war on so-called Jewish science, the resultant exodus of world-class scientists from Europe to the United States brought to this country many of the men and women who helped make the Manhattan Project a success. By the same token, strong scientific education in much of the United States helped produce a generation of young scientists who also played a critical role in the success of the Manhattan Project. The history of the world would have been much different, and much worse, had Germany been victorious in the race to build The Bomb.
In the years since World War II, particularly after the-kick-in- the-butt humiliation of Sputnik helped jump-start the effort that took us to the moon barely a dozen years after that first Soviet satellite, American innovation, inventiveness, and scientific leadership have helped preserve American preponderance in the world, to say nothing of creating the kind of climate in which Steve Jobs and the other giants of his generation could give rise to a technological revolution of unprecedented magnitude.
During the years when I was in elementary and high school, between the late 60s to the early 80s, the whole concept of scientific, Darwinian evolution was regarded as settled. We did not view Genesis, nor was Genesis taught to us as, a scientific text, even though a part of my elementary and high school education took place in schools affiliated with the Episcopal Church, of which I continue to be a member. We did not have to contend with reactionary preachers proclaiming that “if the science conflicts with the Scripture, the science must be wrong.”
Since then, however, the religious right has been frighteningly successful in implanting in the minds of many Americans a profoundly regressive and medieval view of the sciences. For the religious right, and for far too many politicians who pander to it, science has become not a means for establishing and maintaining American preponderance, but a positive enemy of the faith.
Such a view is dangerous to our national security and national interests, both at home and abroad. The syllogism is simple: America’s preponderance in the world depends upon the America’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation. It’s no accident that people like the late Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg should have come out of a climate which fosters and cherishes innovation. America’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation, depends in turn on ensuring that the next generation of American schoolchildren receives sound scientific education, based upon sound scientific learning and knowledge, and not upon the dogma of any particular religious denomination.
Those in the religious right who would turn us backward, and who would substitute their own denominational dogma for sound science do not --- or refuse to --- understand the clear and direct linkage between our national security and our commitment to ensuring that our children attain the same level of scientific literacy as do children in such countries as China, India, and Pakistan, to say nothing of children in Singapore, Japan, or Germany.
When American schoolchildren test anything less than first in the world when it comes to scientific literacy, the religious right, and their enablers in the political culture, ought to hang their heads in shame. Instead, they proclaim that they are in some way doing God’s work. In truth, they are harming the national security of the United States, they are undercutting our competitive position in the world, and they are leaving our children a damnosa hereditas composed in equal measure of medieval thinking and misplaced faith in American exceptionalism.
Such misplaced faith in our so-called exceptionalism is akin to the story the man who lived in a floodplain. When he was warned that a great flood was on its way, he said “I am a righteous man, so surely God will save me.” As the floodwaters rose, the local Sheriff’s Department sent out deputies in a Humvee to the man’s home. He sent them away when they offered to give him a lift, proclaiming his faith that God would save him. A short time later, as the waters were now two feet deep in his front yard, more Sheriff’s deputies came by, this time in a boat, yet still the man spurned their offer of rescue, proclaiming again that God would save him. A few hours later, as the man was on the roof of his house, a Coast Guard helicopter came by, and again, the man refused their help and reiterated his faith that God would save him. The man drowned. As he arrived at the Pearly Gates, God Himself was there to meet the man, and he rebuked him asking, “why are you here?” And the man replied “you said you would save me and you didn’t.” God replied “you idiot; I sent you a Humvee; I sent you a boat; and I sent you the Coasties in a helicopter. What were you waiting for?”
It was Benjamin Franklin who declared that “God helps those who help themselves.” By failing or refusing to understand the importance of scientific literacy, the religious right --like the “righteous” man drowned in the flood-- has fallen into a dangerous trap into which it would lead the rest of America, the trap of believing that we don’t need to look out for ourselves, that we don’t need to cultivate a climate of scientific and intellectual inquiry, because God will save us from ourselves even when we do nothing.
Rubbish.
Our competitors are outcompeting and outperforming us in indices and areas in which America had been, and still ought to be, the undisputed leader of the world. If the religious right believes that somehow God will save us from the consequences of our own unwillingness to acquire scientific literacy for ourselves and inculcate it in our children, then they are as foolish and disconnected from reality as the flood victim who spurned the Humvee, the boat, and the Coasties in their helicopter.
Until the religious right gets out of the way of scientific inquiry and technological innovation in this country, they cannot in good faith claim to have national security of the United States at heart. Until the religious right stops trying to lead this country backward; until the religious right stops carrying the water for our rivals and potential enemies, they do not deserve a place in the body politic.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not those of any entity, board, or organization with which he is associated.
Steve Jobs, who died this week, was one of those people Who Change The Way We Do Things. If today we take for granted devices and technology that barely a generation ago seemed the stuff of science fiction, it is at least in part because Steve Jobs helped make it happen.
Thus, one cannot help but notice the irony inherent in the use of Jobsian technology by reactionaries and obscurantists of every stripe whose vision of the world could not be further from that which Steve Jobs articulated, as when one receives an e-mail or a link to some science-damning, flat-earther website.
We seem to be caught up in a headlong retreat from scientific literacy in this country. From the right, we see a climate of scientific denialism that rejects not only the possibility of anthropogenic climate change, but also the reality of Darwinian evolution itself; notwithstanding enormous evidence to support both theories, right-wing denialists insist, contrary to the enormous, overwhelming, weight of the evidence, that climate change is a hoax and Darwin was wrong. Indeed, so great is the right-wing denial of reality that there are actually websites out there denying that the earth revolves around the sun: Copernicus and Galileo were wrong.
On the other side of the political divide, we find a different kind of obscurantism, a sort of post-scientific rejection of what, by now, ought to be the basic commonsense view that vaccinating your children against common childhood diseases is a good thing. Instead, we have so-called empowered parents placing their children and children around them at risk by refusing to agree to simple, basic, sound, prophylactic health measures.
While it might be easy to postulate a moral equivalency between right and left when it comes to America’s headlong retreat from scientific literacy and understanding, the fact remains that much of the blame must go to the religious right and their fellow travelers, who have spent generations trying to convince Americans that there is something evil and suspect in all of that scientific book-learning, in all of that knowledge that seems to be the province of so-called "elites," which has become the pejorative right wing codeword for anyone possessing some degree of advanced learning or education.
Such a rejection of science, whether it comes from the religious rightist (like far too many of the current Republican presidential hopefuls) who rejects evolution or climate change, or whether it comes from so-called empowered progressives who won’t vaccinate their kids because they have listened uncritically to long-discredited, fraudulent, gossip masquerading as good science, has dangerous ramifications for the immediate and long-term national security and interests of the United States.
We would do well to remember that our leadership in the world is very much a function of our long and honorable heritage of innovation, invention, and scientific inquiry. The United States has long been regarded as a place to which people come to do science free from the kind of ideological blinders and fetters which so often oppress scientists in other parts of the world.
When Hitler and the Nazis declared war on so-called Jewish science, the resultant exodus of world-class scientists from Europe to the United States brought to this country many of the men and women who helped make the Manhattan Project a success. By the same token, strong scientific education in much of the United States helped produce a generation of young scientists who also played a critical role in the success of the Manhattan Project. The history of the world would have been much different, and much worse, had Germany been victorious in the race to build The Bomb.
In the years since World War II, particularly after the-kick-in- the-butt humiliation of Sputnik helped jump-start the effort that took us to the moon barely a dozen years after that first Soviet satellite, American innovation, inventiveness, and scientific leadership have helped preserve American preponderance in the world, to say nothing of creating the kind of climate in which Steve Jobs and the other giants of his generation could give rise to a technological revolution of unprecedented magnitude.
During the years when I was in elementary and high school, between the late 60s to the early 80s, the whole concept of scientific, Darwinian evolution was regarded as settled. We did not view Genesis, nor was Genesis taught to us as, a scientific text, even though a part of my elementary and high school education took place in schools affiliated with the Episcopal Church, of which I continue to be a member. We did not have to contend with reactionary preachers proclaiming that “if the science conflicts with the Scripture, the science must be wrong.”
Since then, however, the religious right has been frighteningly successful in implanting in the minds of many Americans a profoundly regressive and medieval view of the sciences. For the religious right, and for far too many politicians who pander to it, science has become not a means for establishing and maintaining American preponderance, but a positive enemy of the faith.
Such a view is dangerous to our national security and national interests, both at home and abroad. The syllogism is simple: America’s preponderance in the world depends upon the America’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation. It’s no accident that people like the late Steve Jobs or Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg should have come out of a climate which fosters and cherishes innovation. America’s leadership in science, technology, and innovation, depends in turn on ensuring that the next generation of American schoolchildren receives sound scientific education, based upon sound scientific learning and knowledge, and not upon the dogma of any particular religious denomination.
Those in the religious right who would turn us backward, and who would substitute their own denominational dogma for sound science do not --- or refuse to --- understand the clear and direct linkage between our national security and our commitment to ensuring that our children attain the same level of scientific literacy as do children in such countries as China, India, and Pakistan, to say nothing of children in Singapore, Japan, or Germany.
When American schoolchildren test anything less than first in the world when it comes to scientific literacy, the religious right, and their enablers in the political culture, ought to hang their heads in shame. Instead, they proclaim that they are in some way doing God’s work. In truth, they are harming the national security of the United States, they are undercutting our competitive position in the world, and they are leaving our children a damnosa hereditas composed in equal measure of medieval thinking and misplaced faith in American exceptionalism.
Such misplaced faith in our so-called exceptionalism is akin to the story the man who lived in a floodplain. When he was warned that a great flood was on its way, he said “I am a righteous man, so surely God will save me.” As the floodwaters rose, the local Sheriff’s Department sent out deputies in a Humvee to the man’s home. He sent them away when they offered to give him a lift, proclaiming his faith that God would save him. A short time later, as the waters were now two feet deep in his front yard, more Sheriff’s deputies came by, this time in a boat, yet still the man spurned their offer of rescue, proclaiming again that God would save him. A few hours later, as the man was on the roof of his house, a Coast Guard helicopter came by, and again, the man refused their help and reiterated his faith that God would save him. The man drowned. As he arrived at the Pearly Gates, God Himself was there to meet the man, and he rebuked him asking, “why are you here?” And the man replied “you said you would save me and you didn’t.” God replied “you idiot; I sent you a Humvee; I sent you a boat; and I sent you the Coasties in a helicopter. What were you waiting for?”
It was Benjamin Franklin who declared that “God helps those who help themselves.” By failing or refusing to understand the importance of scientific literacy, the religious right --like the “righteous” man drowned in the flood-- has fallen into a dangerous trap into which it would lead the rest of America, the trap of believing that we don’t need to look out for ourselves, that we don’t need to cultivate a climate of scientific and intellectual inquiry, because God will save us from ourselves even when we do nothing.
Rubbish.
Our competitors are outcompeting and outperforming us in indices and areas in which America had been, and still ought to be, the undisputed leader of the world. If the religious right believes that somehow God will save us from the consequences of our own unwillingness to acquire scientific literacy for ourselves and inculcate it in our children, then they are as foolish and disconnected from reality as the flood victim who spurned the Humvee, the boat, and the Coasties in their helicopter.
Until the religious right gets out of the way of scientific inquiry and technological innovation in this country, they cannot in good faith claim to have national security of the United States at heart. Until the religious right stops trying to lead this country backward; until the religious right stops carrying the water for our rivals and potential enemies, they do not deserve a place in the body politic.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and works in Cathedral City, California. The views expressed herein are his own, and not those of any entity, board, or organization with which he is associated.
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