Summary: As Americans around the country rally for “Justice for Trayvon,” queerfolk should think carefully about the structural similarities between the successful “black boy in hoodie panic” defense George Zimmerman’s lawyers ran in his trial and the so-called gay panic defense so often proffered in crimes of violence against queerfolk. Zimmerman was one of a crop of armed human failures wandering aimlessly through our society, attempting to work out their own insecurities through the barrel of a gun. Trayvon Martin represented the kind of Other that formed the sum of all of George Zimmerman’s fears, as he might well have done had he been not a 17-year-old African-American teen, but an obviously gay adolescent boy. At all events, the Zimmerman verdict reinforces that for we who are Other in American society, our citizenship in the commonwealth remains contingent, probationary, and very much second-class.
AUTHOR'S NOTE. As this post was in preparation, Cathedral City municipal clerk Patricia Hammers died, apparently of natural causes, at her residence in Cathedral City. I send condolences to her sister Pearl, and to her family and friends. It is much too soon to engage in any kind of instant or other analysis of the implications for Cathedral City of Ms. Hammers' unexpected passing.
By: Paul S Marchand
As “Justice for Trayvon” rallies spread around the country, I found myself trying to take some time to think a little bit more deeply about the implications of the acquittal of George Zimmerman.
Almost from the moment the prosecution implicitly accepted the defense’s framing of the events that led to Trayvon Martin’s death, I predicted a defense verdict. So, I was not surprised when the jury came back with a “not guilty” verdict. The prosecution’s performance was not poor, it was piss poor, making the prosecution effort in the O.J. Simpson matter look like a masterpiece of competence by comparison. The defense, by contrast, turned in a masterful performance, wasting no opportunity to plant seeds of doubt in the hive mind of the jury.
Still, when the verdict was announced, I felt a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach. For, in a larger sense the Zimmerman verdict may very well come to mean what many leaders in the African-American community have suggested it betokens: it’s open season on young black men.
Because the entire gravamen of George Zimmerman’s defense was that seeing a young African-American man in a hoodie walking through a gated community (where, presumably, black people don’t live) was enough to reduce him to a state of quivering fear, sufficient to justify the use of deadly force by him in a confrontation he himself had initiated.
By saying, essentially, “I saw this black dude and he frightened me so badly my balls retreated back up into my abdomen,” not only did George Zimmerman manage to cut a pathetic, unmanly figure, but he also managed to legitimate unreasonable panic as a perfectly acceptable trigger for deadly force under Florida’s “wild West” stand-your-ground law of self-defense. If the presence of an unarmed black teenager armed with nothing more than a bag of Skittles and an iced tea comes close to being enough to make George Zimmerman shit himself, then clearly Zimmerman has a whole series of issues even a psychotherapist might have difficulty helping him resolve.
But for queerfolk, the Zimmerman verdict raises other, more troubling issues than the extent to which George Zimmerman was a timorous wuss with serious Freudian issues packing a pistol. (“Please, George, by all means, demonstrate for us the insufficiency of your penis.”) For us, the Florida jury’s finding that Zimmerman could, in effect, probably about his gated community and shoot “dangerous” strangers with impunity, causes us to wonder how long it will be before some other fearful wretch with a gun shoots dead a queer person and invokes the so-called gay panic defense.
The gravamen of the gay panic defense is that the accused was so shocked, panicked, or angered, by an ostensible homosexual advance that the accused lapses into a state of violent temporary insanity and kills or injures the victim. Gay panic defenses are often tacitly encouraged by a law enforcement mentality which has historically tended to regard the civil rights of queerfolk as lesser things, less deserving of protection, than the civil rights of our straight neighbors.
Indeed, to the extent that law enforcement tends to regard itself as the conservator, curator, custodian, and enforcer of what it considers ought to be “correct” social values, law enforcement often tends to view queerfolk and queer sexuality as in some way “wrong,” and a proper subject for muscular police interdiction. A police force that regards itself, even unconsciously, as an enforcement body for a heteronormative paradigm may well be receptive to claims of “gay panic.” Certainly, crimes of violence against queerfolk often get short shrift from law enforcement agencies whose institutional culture prejudices them a priori against even investigating. If you are a faggot, you got what was properly coming to you. (For additional analysis, please visit the Cathedral City Archived blog at the following link: http://cathedralcityarchived.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-expandable-other-neither-justice.html
Would the Sanford, Florida Police Department has been as willing to give George Zimmerman what amounted to a pass in their initial investigation of the death of Trayvon Martin had Trayvon Martin been a young gay man? If George Zimmerman had shot Matthew Shepard, would the result have been the same? Would Zimmerman have been able to sell a gay panic defense to an all female jury? In all three cases, the answer might well have been “yes.”
For, in truth, a gay panic defense, like a “brotha in a hoodie” defense ultimately depends for its success upon the sheer Otherness of the victim. Otherness often encapsulates the sum of every fear that clouds the minds of cowards and fools like George Zimmerman.
For African-Americans, this Otherness generally expresses itself in the most obvious way imaginable, by color. Trayvon Martin was Other —and thus a target--- from the instant he came into this world, marked ineluctably not by the content of his character, but by the color of his skin. For queerfolk, our Otherness is a harder thing to ascertain. That many queerfolk can pass for straight, confounding the rudimentary gaydar of fearful straight folk, can often trigger primitive, reptilian-brain, penetration-anxiety emotions. “You mean you’re… gay!?” The gay panic defense turns upon the proposition that when the contents of the book differ from the cover, the mind necessarily will turn and thought depart.
What makes the Zimmerman defense and a gay panic defense so disturbingly similar is that such defenses necessarily put the victim (who, if dead, a fortiori is unable to testify) on trial. In the Zimmerman case, the defense sought, with measurable success, to portray a dead black teenager as essentially a “thug for life,” prowling through a gated, largely white, condominium complex, “up to no good,” wondering, to borrow Cleavon Little’s line from Blazing Saddles, “where de white women at?”
Cleavon Little, Trayvon Martin.
If Cleavon Little could send up white sexual insecurities in the context of the Mel Brooks movie, Trayvon Martin paid the ultimate forfeit for George Zimmerman’s similar white insecurities. If, in fact, George Zimmerman saw in Trayvon Martin a robber, a burglar, or potential rapist, then we may reasonably infer that Zimmerman’s perceptions were informed by a whole witch’s brew of racial, cultural, and even sexual insecurities, all of which were in play as Zimmerman, a wannabe cop, attempted to police and enforce a thoroughly retrograde racial dispensation in which a black boy like Trayvon Martin had no place crashing the gated communities of a white overclass. We may justifiably wonder whether Zimmerman would have attempted to enforce his own sexual insecurities had encountered a young, obviously gay, 17-year-old boy. At all events, George Zimmerman represented an epic fail of American manhood.
In a post-Trayvon dispensation should we queerfolk now worry about where we walk and how we interact with strangers? Should we ditch the hoodie, the Skittles, and the iced tea? If I choose to go walking in my gated community in the evening, should I forbear from donning the hooded sweatshirt with the Vanderbilt University logo that is part of my wardrobe? I like Skittles; should I avoid them? Should I leave my iced tea in the fridge when I take my walk? Do I need to worry that some of the neighbors in my own gated community may be packing heat?
Here in the Coachella Valley, where we queerfolk live and participate in large numbers in the larger community of which our own is a part, and where two cities actually have LGBT-majority councils, I can probably go walking in my gated community with some confidence that I will return home alive. Indeed, we can probably feel a little bit less nervous than in, say, Oklahoma or certain rural parts of our own state. Nonetheless, it takes only one emotionally, racially, culturally, or sexually insecure fraction of a man like George Zimmerman to blow away that paradigm of integration and inclusion.
If nothing else, the jury in the Zimmerman matter certainly sent a clear message to America’s Others that, notwithstanding years of struggle for civil rights, the status of the Other in American society remains probationary and contingent. If, as an Other, you frighten some of the weak, contemptible, insecure men who -- like George Zimmerman -- wander aimlessly through our society, packing heat and looking to police retrograde racial or sexual paradigms, you should expect to be assaulted, injured, or even killed. That, plain and simple, is the message the Florida jury sent when it gave a pass to an entitled coward like George Zimmerman. As long as George Zimmerman remains free, Others like us remain second-class citizens of the commonwealth.
A year ago, many of us declared our solidarity with the Martin family in their loss, declaring “we are Trayvon Martin.” At the risk of attracting contumely, it’s one thing to “be” Trayvon Martin as a gesture of solidarity, it’s quite something else to be Trayvon Martin dead on the ground at the hands of some weedy, needy, Freudian loser with a pistol.
-XXX-
Paul S Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
Sunday, July 21, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
Andy Hall leaves City Hall and a raft of unanswered questions behind him
Summary: After just seven months of a three-year city manager contract, Andy Hall is leaving Cathedral City for Imperial Beach. His sudden departure has engendered much speculation. Did embattled mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa engineer his departure? Did he antagonize a non-DeRosa Council majority? Does he know of some great disaster about to befall the city? Or did he just decide to take himself out of the knife fight that is our municipal politics during this 10th bitter winter of the reign of Kathleen Joan DeRosa? Given City Hall’s penchant for secrecy, and given DeRosa’s well-known status as an information-management control freak, residents may never know the whys and wherefores behind Andy Hall’s departure, at least not until DeRosa decides it is in her best political interest to disclose the truth, or some spun version of it that advances her interests. Sunlight is the best disinfectant in politics, and the mayor’s office needs a healthy dose of it; it is infected.
By: Paul S Marchand
The sudden departure of Cathedral City city manager Andy Hall, just seven months into a three-year contract, certainly has the city abuzz with speculation. For perhaps the first —--and hopefully the only--- time in my public life, I find myself agreeing with embattled Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, that Mr. Hall’s departure, while shocking, may not be entirely surprising.
While Mr. Hall may be playing his cards very close to the vest, there is nonetheless much speculation in the community about the whys and wherefores of his sudden exit. Given Cathedral City’s penchant for cultivating a culture of secrecy and stonewalling, the public may never know what motivated Andy Hall to take the city manager’s job in Imperial Beach.
Was there a falling out between the city manager and the incumbent mayor? It’s an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa does not like to take “no” for an answer, and prefers to surround herself with compliant yes-people. Did Andy Hall prove less tractable than Donald Bradley, his more compliant predecessor as city manager, ? Did he say “no” once too often to a mayor with a strongly monarchical conceit of herself? Was he advised by DeRosa or her loyalists in City Hall or on the Council that he should start putting out resumes?
Or did Mr. Hall have a falling out with other members of the Council? Did he do, say, or fail to do or say something expected of him by majority of the council members? Is it possible that there might have been three votes to hand him his walking papers?
Did Mr. Hall had advance knowledge of some significant shit-storm about to befall Cathedral City, and choose to flee while the getting was good, taking flight lest he be consumed? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Is it possible that Desert Sun dirt-digger and shit-stirrer Tamara Sone had targeted him for the same kind of hatchet work she has been obsessively eager to perform against Greg Pettis?
Or is it simply possible that Andy Hall got fed up with a municipal politics that at least one local resident has likened to a knife fight? Did Mr. Hall, at the last, simply have too much integrity --- unlike Desert Hot Springs city manager Rick Daniels, who is also leaving his job--- to allow himself to be drawn into the vortex of the political infighting and nastiness that has characterized Cathedral City’s municipal government during the nine bitter winters of Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s reign?
At this stage, there are certainly more questions than answers, and it is unlikely that Cathedral City residents will get any answers anytime soon. I noted earlier that Cathedral City has tended for years to cultivate a municipal culture of secrecy, stonewalling, evasion, and nondisclosure. No doubt the mayor, the Administrative Services Director, and the city Clerk will seek to deploy over Andy Hall’s departure the same cloak of secrecy they have so often deployed in the past, employing threats and intimidation to prevent the truth from getting out.
As much as it’s been an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa doesn’t like to take “no” for an answer, it’s also been an open secret that she is a compulsive information-management control freak. She has a reputation for assiduously cultivating the print and broadcast media in our Valley, losing no opportunity to try to get favorable ink or airtime for herself. Indeed, her obsessive need for publicity expressed itself in her tacky, but successful effort to obtrude herself into the Desert Sun’s coverage of the unfortunate death of photographer Ken Rambo earlier this week. DeRosa’s penchant for publicity-seeking runs exactly contrary to her equally strong desire to control in the minutest degree any information about Cathedral City and about what is actually going on in City Hall. What happened with Andy Hall in City Hall will remain concealed from a curious public unless and until it is in Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s political interest for her to allow the truth, or some politically useful spin on it, to be disseminated.
US Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis once observed, in sum and substance, that sunlight is the best disinfectant. It’s time for some sunlight to pierce the dark veils of secrecy in City Hall, so that the people of Cathedral City can have a clearer understanding of what their hired help have been doing behind that veil. For there is an infection in the mayor’s office that demands a healthy, prophylactic dose of sunlight.
-XXX-
Paul S Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City, California. He served two terms on the city Council there, and is not unfamiliar with the antics and actions of the incumbent mayor. The views set forth herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization, and are not intended as legal advice.
By: Paul S Marchand
The sudden departure of Cathedral City city manager Andy Hall, just seven months into a three-year contract, certainly has the city abuzz with speculation. For perhaps the first —--and hopefully the only--- time in my public life, I find myself agreeing with embattled Cathedral City mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, that Mr. Hall’s departure, while shocking, may not be entirely surprising.
While Mr. Hall may be playing his cards very close to the vest, there is nonetheless much speculation in the community about the whys and wherefores of his sudden exit. Given Cathedral City’s penchant for cultivating a culture of secrecy and stonewalling, the public may never know what motivated Andy Hall to take the city manager’s job in Imperial Beach.
Was there a falling out between the city manager and the incumbent mayor? It’s an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa does not like to take “no” for an answer, and prefers to surround herself with compliant yes-people. Did Andy Hall prove less tractable than Donald Bradley, his more compliant predecessor as city manager, ? Did he say “no” once too often to a mayor with a strongly monarchical conceit of herself? Was he advised by DeRosa or her loyalists in City Hall or on the Council that he should start putting out resumes?
Or did Mr. Hall have a falling out with other members of the Council? Did he do, say, or fail to do or say something expected of him by majority of the council members? Is it possible that there might have been three votes to hand him his walking papers?
Did Mr. Hall had advance knowledge of some significant shit-storm about to befall Cathedral City, and choose to flee while the getting was good, taking flight lest he be consumed? “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” Is it possible that Desert Sun dirt-digger and shit-stirrer Tamara Sone had targeted him for the same kind of hatchet work she has been obsessively eager to perform against Greg Pettis?
Or is it simply possible that Andy Hall got fed up with a municipal politics that at least one local resident has likened to a knife fight? Did Mr. Hall, at the last, simply have too much integrity --- unlike Desert Hot Springs city manager Rick Daniels, who is also leaving his job--- to allow himself to be drawn into the vortex of the political infighting and nastiness that has characterized Cathedral City’s municipal government during the nine bitter winters of Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s reign?
At this stage, there are certainly more questions than answers, and it is unlikely that Cathedral City residents will get any answers anytime soon. I noted earlier that Cathedral City has tended for years to cultivate a municipal culture of secrecy, stonewalling, evasion, and nondisclosure. No doubt the mayor, the Administrative Services Director, and the city Clerk will seek to deploy over Andy Hall’s departure the same cloak of secrecy they have so often deployed in the past, employing threats and intimidation to prevent the truth from getting out.
As much as it’s been an open secret that Kathleen Joan DeRosa doesn’t like to take “no” for an answer, it’s also been an open secret that she is a compulsive information-management control freak. She has a reputation for assiduously cultivating the print and broadcast media in our Valley, losing no opportunity to try to get favorable ink or airtime for herself. Indeed, her obsessive need for publicity expressed itself in her tacky, but successful effort to obtrude herself into the Desert Sun’s coverage of the unfortunate death of photographer Ken Rambo earlier this week. DeRosa’s penchant for publicity-seeking runs exactly contrary to her equally strong desire to control in the minutest degree any information about Cathedral City and about what is actually going on in City Hall. What happened with Andy Hall in City Hall will remain concealed from a curious public unless and until it is in Kathleen Joan DeRosa’s political interest for her to allow the truth, or some politically useful spin on it, to be disseminated.
US Supreme Court Justice Louis D Brandeis once observed, in sum and substance, that sunlight is the best disinfectant. It’s time for some sunlight to pierce the dark veils of secrecy in City Hall, so that the people of Cathedral City can have a clearer understanding of what their hired help have been doing behind that veil. For there is an infection in the mayor’s office that demands a healthy, prophylactic dose of sunlight.
-XXX-
Paul S Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City, California. He served two terms on the city Council there, and is not unfamiliar with the antics and actions of the incumbent mayor. The views set forth herein are his own, and not those of any entity or organization, and are not intended as legal advice.
Sunday, July 14, 2013
LIBERTÉ, ÉGALITÉ, FRATERNITÉ: Reflections on Bastille Day.
Summary: On Bastille Day, it is appropriate to celebrate a common American/French revolutionary heritage. Our two revolutions have set a standard for, and made a tour of, the world, establishing revolutionary democracy as the default political ordering of most of the planet. Yet here in the United States, American rightists, Beltway Bourbons in the worst sense of that phrase, have waged war against the Jeffersonian proclamation that “all men are created equal.” Yet our American and French Revolutions have a better reputation beyond our borders and outside the French Hexagon than they do in their homelands. Like the traitors who supported Vichy France and collaborated with the Nazi occupiers, many American rightists would happily destroy America’s middle and working classes, binding then in chains of debt-servitude and grinding them into the dust. There was a good reason the people of Paris stormed the Bastille, and on this day when France, the Francophone world, and America, celebrate the Revolution, we should remember our commitment to the Rights of Man and the Citizen, and to those hallowed words of the Declaration of Independence that assure us of our fundamental equality. A toutes les gloires de la France, et vive la Révolution française.
By: Paul S. Marchand
A toutes les gloires de la France.
On Bastille Day, we celebrate a revolutionary heritage, a common gift of America and France to the world.
224 years ago today, on July 14, 1789, Parisian revolutionary insurgents, moved by a trend of revolutionary events, events themselves engendered by the conduct of the slow-moving train wreck France’s ancien régime Bourbon dynasty had become, stormed the Bastille, a medieval fortress on the right bank of the Seine.
Originally constructed during the 14th century, the Bastille had served as a royal prison since the early part of the 1400s. By 1789, the aging fortress had become a detested symbol of French royal absolutism. To this day, the storming of the Bastille has been regarded as one of the turning points of the events which led to the French Revolution --- and to the overthrow of the ancien régime and the Bourbon dynasty.
Today, Bastille Day is France’s official national day, commemorated and celebrated by one of the last -- and only -- significant, all-arms, muscle-flexing military parades in the West. The Bastille Day parade represents the granddaddy of all of the vulgar, kitschy military extravaganzas regularly played out in such East-Bloc capitals as Moscow, Beijing, and Pyongyang, but because it celebrates a great revolution of liberty, it gets a pass.
Bastille Day is quintessentially the French Revolutionary day, and we who honor the republican revolutionary tradition which has made democracy the default political ordering of the nations of the world should stop for a moment and remember just how critical the role of the French and American revolutions has been in the progress of liberty, equality, and fraternity.
More than 50 years ago, a journalist at an international conference asked Chinese statesman Zhou Enlai his views on the French Revolution. Zhou, who had been educated in France, and who had imbibed some of the perfect ancien régime courtesy of French society, to say nothing of the elegant Confucian courtesy of Qing China, urbanely answered the journalist’s inquiry with the suave assurance that it was “too early to tell.”
Half a century later, as we Americans still struggle to think out the implications of our own revolution, we know that for us it is no longer too early to tell.
Our American Revolution, insofar is it has inspired copycat revolutions including the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution, the Mexican Revolution, and other revolutions around the world, has made a tour of the world and upset ancien régimes on every continent. Beyond our borders, and outside the Hexagon that is France, our common revolutionary heritage has changed our world beyond all measure. Outside of the United States, the American Revolution has been an inspiring success
Yet, here at home, the American right often shudders at the implications of what an authentic American revolution might be. The idea that a revolution might actually demand a commitment to liberty, equality, and fraternity, leaves many American rightists ice cold, and engenders in them a poisonous hatred of the French Republic, its revolutionary heritage, and its revolutionary mission. In that, the American right resembles nothing so much as the French traitors and collaborators who supported Vichy France and cooperated with the Nazi occupation during World War II.
To listen to American rightists, one would think that the French Revolution was the most awful political development in history. Hard-right pundit-wretch Ben Shapiro was attacked the French Revolution as having “viciously” “introduced democracy.” French readers of Shapiro’s fulminations quite rightly wondered how this arrogant young American columnist could have embraced such shameful, anti-French, anti-democratic, neo-Vichy sentiments.
Indeed, the views and conduct of much of the American right are such as to justify characterizing it as I have done in the past: as “Beltway Bourbons.” Charles Maurice de Talleyrand, who was perhaps the ultimate survivor of the French Revolutionary era, once acidly eviscerated the Bourbons as having “forgotten nothing and learned nothing.” Certainly, American conservatives seem to fit Talleyrand description perfectly. They have indeed lost touch with American history and with America’s revolutionary heritage.
The American right’s war against America’s middle class --- against the very people upon whom our national survival depends --- bears a curious resemblance to the efforts of the French ancien régime to hold onto power during the mid-to late 1780s, and certainly suggests the American right neither accepts nor believes in the Jeffersonian proposition that “all men are created equal.” For example, by removing food stamps from their recent farm bill, Congressional Republicans have adopted in their fullest and foulest form the mentalities and values of the pre-revolutionary French nobility: what does it matter if the working poor and destitute starve?
Of the Parisian poor, Marie Antoinette is said apocryphally to have declared “let them eat cake.” It would be more accurate to remember the similarly inciendary 1862 declaration of Andrew Myrick, sometime Indian agent among the Santee Sioux, who when informed that his charges were starving, dismissed their plight by casually consigning them to starvation, saying “let them eat grass,” or, in the alternative, Myrick declared, they could eat their own shit
Further example: by allowing student loan interest rates to double, and by imposing ferocious and draconian penalties upon those who are not able to muster the wherewithal to repay, Congressional Republicans and the American right have demonstrated their indifference to the danger of creating a permanent debt-bound underclass. Yet, in France at the end of the 1780s, the permanent debt-bound underclass dared to raise its hand against the nobility and the wealthy and the hierarchy of the church.
That thudding sound which soon echoed out from Revolutionary Paris to the provinces was the sound of aristocratic heads landing in baskets -- heads which had thought to bind in chains of permanent indebtedness a bourgeoisie upon whose economic prosperity the security of France depended.
It might also be useful to recall that when the Santee Sioux, goaded beyond endurance, finally rose, the first white they killed was Andrew Myrick, whose mouth they stuffed with the grass he had so dismissively told them to eat.
A short, what we have seen in the last generation in this country --- as middle-class wages have stagnated, and as the share of the national economy controlled or possessed by the wealthiest one percent among us has increased to almost obscene degree --- has been a process by which the have-mores have sought to grind the middle-class into permanent poverty. As George W. Bush so infamously declared at the 2000 Alfred E. Smith Memorial dinner, “"This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base". Since then, the Republican Party has been at the service of the right wing war of the haves and the have-mores against America’s have-nots, against the everyday working stiffs whose ill-compensated labor is the lifeblood of our economy.
On this Bastille Day, we may conclude that the American right have been some Karl Marx’s best disciples. Buying fully and fearfully into a Marxian class-war analysis, the American right has been waging a nasty, preemptive class war against those who may not be as wealthy as they; the object of this preemptive class war has been nothing less than to undo once and for all Thomas Jefferson’s ringing statement of our national faith that “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal,” and to create a permanent class structure in the United States that not only socializes risk and privatizes reward, but which also makes social mobility a thing of the past.
The victory of the Parisians over the defenders of the Bastille goes a long way toward establishing the proposition that the Rights of Man and the Citizen are not to be bought, sold, or bartered away in the interests of the most well-connected and well-off among us. That is the lesson we ought to remember on Bastille Day.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité!
A toutes les gloires de la France.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, California. He has a name that would not be out of place in any French phonebook. The views contained herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
Tuesday, July 9, 2013
LITTLE SUMMER SNAPPERS: Rants and Raves for July
Summary: From time to time, your author feels the need to let fly with some Little Snappers, brief rants or raves about things that have intruded upon his personal serenity or commended themselves to his attention. Today, I find myself ranting about the Desert Sun’s tiresome vendetta against my friend and former colleague Greg Pettis, about the way it carries the water for Cathedral City’s unbelievably vindictive embattled incumbent mayor, trying to destroy one of the most effective public servants in the Coachella Valley. I also find myself ranting about queer separatist rejection of marriage equality, about the solipsistic attitude that because marriage may not be important to some separatists, it shouldn’t be important to queerfolk at all. Finally, I rejoice in the coming of marriage equality to California. As our couples stand before altars or in courtrooms or in other wedding venues to plight to one another their troth, one would have to be amazingly hardhearted not to let the tears come; we have fought so very hard, for so very long, for so very much, and we are still so much the target of so much hate, that when love conquers, the waterworks necessarily begin.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Readers of this blog may recall that like sometime Chief Justice Warren Burger, I occasionally feel the need to fire off “Little Snappers,” brief rants or raves about things that have attracted my attention, yet which don’t merit extensive treatment. A number of things have pressed some buttons of late, and I feel the need to unburden myself of some Little Summer Snappers.
THE DESERT SUN’S TIRESOME VENDETTA AGAINST GREG PETTIS
Once again, our local Gannett newspaper puts us in a position of wondering whether New York Times v. Sullivan was correctly decided. Reporter Tamara Sone, who apparently wants to be consequential when she grows up, has been trying desperately to contrive some sort of coherent narrative of wrongdoing by Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. Apparently, Sone believes that by stringing together a series of essentially unconnected allegations, she can create the impression that, taken cumulatively, Mr. Pettis’ activities must somehow constitute actionable wrongdoing. Unfortunately for her, the law --about which she knows nothing and cares less-- does not recognize the proposition that unrelated acts can ever constitute a cumulative crime.
Of course, what has become fairly clear is that this reporter has declared her allegiance to vindictive and embattled Cathedral city Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa (herself a subject of investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for campaign wrongdoing), in DeRosa’s long-standing, ongoing effort to try to destroy Mr. Pettis, whom she views as not merely a political rival, but as a deadly enemy. Sone’s reliance upon such equivocal and problematic sources as DeRosa, or former councilmember Bud England (a notorious DeRosa ass-kisser), together with her solicitation of comments on the matter from third parties to whom she has offered essentially one-sided representations, has earned her the well-deserved contempt of a community that has grown tired of seeing the Desert Sun attempt, by any means necessary, to support DeRosa, carry her water, and play kingmaker in the local politics of Cathedral City. The clear message of such coverage in the Desert Sun is: don’t be an elected public official in Cathedral city and get crossways with DeRosa, or the Desert Sun will do its level best to destroy you.
Is it any surprise that long-suppressed rumors about DeRosa and her prior marriages have started to circulate? When, not if, evidence begins to surface of the more unsavory aspects of the incumbent mayor’s life and prior activities, will the Desert Sun spike the story to protect a woman who has apparently cultivated a very close personal relationship with the Desert Sun’s managing editor? As Rachel Maddow might say, “watch this space.”
QUEER WEDDINGS, REDUX
I didn’t think I would find myself reduced to stuttering, spluttering, sputtering, splenetic, fulminant rage by a comment I saw in a recent Desert Sun story headlined “Not All Gays Heading to Altar.” In the story, a lesbian interviewee in Chicago explained why she and her partner were disinclined to marry: “The institution of marriage has a really bad history in terms of feminist issues— women exchanged as property.... I think the idea that rights are determined on the basis of whether you’re married is a bad way to run a society.”
Whatever may have been prior history, times change; dispensations change; paradigms change. The idea that somehow the option of marriage is unimportant for all because two lesbian separatists in Chicago think it is unimportant for them seems curiously solipsistic, self-referential to a fault. Then I might be a commitment-phobic confirmed bachelor, not necessarily inclined to rush to the altar or down the courthouse to get hitched to another dude doesn’t mean that that marriage is “a bad way to run a society.”
When I was first fighting in the trenches for marriage equality, two decades ago, there were a number of so-called separatists who passionately opposed the idea that Ruth or Naomi, or Jonathan or David, should have access to the institution of marriage. Their opposition sounded not so much in appeals to traditional social dispensations, or even to Scripture, but in their belief that marriage was a “patriarchal,” “heterosexist,” institution with which queerfolk should have nothing to do. I viewed then, and view now, such attitudes as self-destructive and nonsensical. The separatists, who had very much hijacked much of the agenda of the queer civil rights movement at the time, strongly disapproved of my efforts secure marriage equality.
What, I asked the separatists when they excoriated me, would you substitute for marriage, a contract whose paradigms and outlines are broadly understood throughout society, among both its queer and straight members?
How, I asked the separatists, would you avoid the inevitable Plessy v. Ferguson problem in which “separate but equal,” ineluctably becomes “separate and unequal?”
Given, I asked the separatists, that society understands the rights and obligations that arise inter se between the parties to a marriage, and the rights and obligations of the couple with respect to outsiders, how would you create a “non-patriarchal,” “non-heterosexist” institution for joining two persons that society can understand?
The response from the separatists? Crickets.
Yet, a generation later, we still see separatists wanting to impose their theories and images of perfection upon pragmatic practice. Marriage may not be for everybody, but it is certainly for an awful lot of people, and for separatists to take the line that because marriage is not for them it shouldn’t be for anybody, is just self-sabotaging nonsense.
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE
Grouchy separatists notwithstanding, there was something truly uplifting about watching the joy of most of the queer nation as marriage equality became a reality in California after a four-plus-year hiatus inflicted upon us by religious sectarians seeking to recast California in their own hateful and intolerant image.
On my Facebook newsfeed and in my e-mail inboxes, news of old friends celebrating weddings long denied to them came in almost daily. Even old friends I didn’t expect to be in the marriage market have been tying the knot, and I can’t help but smile at the almost giddy happiness I detect in them. Even a curmudgeon like me can’t entirely escape a sense that a good part of our community is feeling some “crazy stupid love” right about now.
As I suggested a while back, the dynamics of the queer nation are changing, and nothing in our queer lives will ever be quite the same again. For the commitment-phobic or the confirmed bachelors among us, the existence of the marriage option will no doubt impose upon some of us the challenge of learning how to say “no” as gracefully as possible. Nonetheless, not every dude who sacks out with another dude will necessarily expect to be made a so-called honest man. (And pace, flame warriors, I’m not implying that queerfolk are unethical who don’t marry their bed partners right off, so chill.)
At least for now, many of us queerfolk can still venture to rejoice that DOMA is dead and marriage is very much alive in the Golden State. As we prepare to wed, or as we prepare to attend the weddings of friends, rummaging through hope chests for “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” we should remember how far we’ve come, how fast.
Today, as our couples stand before altars or in courtrooms or in other wedding venues to plight to one another their troth, one would have to be amazingly hardhearted not to let the tears come; we have fought so very hard, for so very long, for so very much, and we are still so much the target of so much hate, that when love conquers, the waterworks necessarily begin.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. He has been in the trenches fighting for marriage equality for two decades, and rejoices in this new day for California couples. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Readers of this blog may recall that like sometime Chief Justice Warren Burger, I occasionally feel the need to fire off “Little Snappers,” brief rants or raves about things that have attracted my attention, yet which don’t merit extensive treatment. A number of things have pressed some buttons of late, and I feel the need to unburden myself of some Little Summer Snappers.
THE DESERT SUN’S TIRESOME VENDETTA AGAINST GREG PETTIS
Once again, our local Gannett newspaper puts us in a position of wondering whether New York Times v. Sullivan was correctly decided. Reporter Tamara Sone, who apparently wants to be consequential when she grows up, has been trying desperately to contrive some sort of coherent narrative of wrongdoing by Cathedral city councilmember Greg Pettis. Apparently, Sone believes that by stringing together a series of essentially unconnected allegations, she can create the impression that, taken cumulatively, Mr. Pettis’ activities must somehow constitute actionable wrongdoing. Unfortunately for her, the law --about which she knows nothing and cares less-- does not recognize the proposition that unrelated acts can ever constitute a cumulative crime.
Of course, what has become fairly clear is that this reporter has declared her allegiance to vindictive and embattled Cathedral city Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa (herself a subject of investigation by the California Fair Political Practices Commission for campaign wrongdoing), in DeRosa’s long-standing, ongoing effort to try to destroy Mr. Pettis, whom she views as not merely a political rival, but as a deadly enemy. Sone’s reliance upon such equivocal and problematic sources as DeRosa, or former councilmember Bud England (a notorious DeRosa ass-kisser), together with her solicitation of comments on the matter from third parties to whom she has offered essentially one-sided representations, has earned her the well-deserved contempt of a community that has grown tired of seeing the Desert Sun attempt, by any means necessary, to support DeRosa, carry her water, and play kingmaker in the local politics of Cathedral City. The clear message of such coverage in the Desert Sun is: don’t be an elected public official in Cathedral city and get crossways with DeRosa, or the Desert Sun will do its level best to destroy you.
Is it any surprise that long-suppressed rumors about DeRosa and her prior marriages have started to circulate? When, not if, evidence begins to surface of the more unsavory aspects of the incumbent mayor’s life and prior activities, will the Desert Sun spike the story to protect a woman who has apparently cultivated a very close personal relationship with the Desert Sun’s managing editor? As Rachel Maddow might say, “watch this space.”
QUEER WEDDINGS, REDUX
I didn’t think I would find myself reduced to stuttering, spluttering, sputtering, splenetic, fulminant rage by a comment I saw in a recent Desert Sun story headlined “Not All Gays Heading to Altar.” In the story, a lesbian interviewee in Chicago explained why she and her partner were disinclined to marry: “The institution of marriage has a really bad history in terms of feminist issues— women exchanged as property.... I think the idea that rights are determined on the basis of whether you’re married is a bad way to run a society.”
Whatever may have been prior history, times change; dispensations change; paradigms change. The idea that somehow the option of marriage is unimportant for all because two lesbian separatists in Chicago think it is unimportant for them seems curiously solipsistic, self-referential to a fault. Then I might be a commitment-phobic confirmed bachelor, not necessarily inclined to rush to the altar or down the courthouse to get hitched to another dude doesn’t mean that that marriage is “a bad way to run a society.”
When I was first fighting in the trenches for marriage equality, two decades ago, there were a number of so-called separatists who passionately opposed the idea that Ruth or Naomi, or Jonathan or David, should have access to the institution of marriage. Their opposition sounded not so much in appeals to traditional social dispensations, or even to Scripture, but in their belief that marriage was a “patriarchal,” “heterosexist,” institution with which queerfolk should have nothing to do. I viewed then, and view now, such attitudes as self-destructive and nonsensical. The separatists, who had very much hijacked much of the agenda of the queer civil rights movement at the time, strongly disapproved of my efforts secure marriage equality.
What, I asked the separatists when they excoriated me, would you substitute for marriage, a contract whose paradigms and outlines are broadly understood throughout society, among both its queer and straight members?
How, I asked the separatists, would you avoid the inevitable Plessy v. Ferguson problem in which “separate but equal,” ineluctably becomes “separate and unequal?”
Given, I asked the separatists, that society understands the rights and obligations that arise inter se between the parties to a marriage, and the rights and obligations of the couple with respect to outsiders, how would you create a “non-patriarchal,” “non-heterosexist” institution for joining two persons that society can understand?
The response from the separatists? Crickets.
Yet, a generation later, we still see separatists wanting to impose their theories and images of perfection upon pragmatic practice. Marriage may not be for everybody, but it is certainly for an awful lot of people, and for separatists to take the line that because marriage is not for them it shouldn’t be for anybody, is just self-sabotaging nonsense.
SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW, SOMETHING BORROWED, SOMETHING BLUE
Grouchy separatists notwithstanding, there was something truly uplifting about watching the joy of most of the queer nation as marriage equality became a reality in California after a four-plus-year hiatus inflicted upon us by religious sectarians seeking to recast California in their own hateful and intolerant image.
On my Facebook newsfeed and in my e-mail inboxes, news of old friends celebrating weddings long denied to them came in almost daily. Even old friends I didn’t expect to be in the marriage market have been tying the knot, and I can’t help but smile at the almost giddy happiness I detect in them. Even a curmudgeon like me can’t entirely escape a sense that a good part of our community is feeling some “crazy stupid love” right about now.
As I suggested a while back, the dynamics of the queer nation are changing, and nothing in our queer lives will ever be quite the same again. For the commitment-phobic or the confirmed bachelors among us, the existence of the marriage option will no doubt impose upon some of us the challenge of learning how to say “no” as gracefully as possible. Nonetheless, not every dude who sacks out with another dude will necessarily expect to be made a so-called honest man. (And pace, flame warriors, I’m not implying that queerfolk are unethical who don’t marry their bed partners right off, so chill.)
At least for now, many of us queerfolk can still venture to rejoice that DOMA is dead and marriage is very much alive in the Golden State. As we prepare to wed, or as we prepare to attend the weddings of friends, rummaging through hope chests for “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue,” we should remember how far we’ve come, how fast.
- Just a generation ago, we were keeping vigil for the uncounted thousands we had lost to an illness that was once a guaranteed death sentence, but which has now been roped and hogtied to the point of being a manageable, long-term, chronic condition.
- Just a generation ago, our government was declaring that the mark of our queer differencing categorically unfitted us for military service, yet today queer Americans serve openly and proudly in our armed forces.
- Just a decade ago, queer couples aspired to nothing more than “civil unions,” a kind of second-class, Plessy v. Ferguson “marriage lite.”
Today, as our couples stand before altars or in courtrooms or in other wedding venues to plight to one another their troth, one would have to be amazingly hardhearted not to let the tears come; we have fought so very hard, for so very long, for so very much, and we are still so much the target of so much hate, that when love conquers, the waterworks necessarily begin.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City. He has been in the trenches fighting for marriage equality for two decades, and rejoices in this new day for California couples. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
Thursday, July 4, 2013
OUR PENNSYLVANIA PARADOX: THE NEAR COINCIDENCE OF INDEPENDENCE DAY AND THE 150TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE BATTLE OF GETTYSBURG
Summary: Our American Revolution is a paradox. The relatively conservative protesters of 1775, whose merely sought to cleave to what had been prior political dispensations in British North America, had been radicalized by 1776, articulating in the Declaration of Independence such revolutionary ideas as the equality of all persons. 87 years later, battle was joined at Gettysburg between that ideal and another, fundamentally oppositional view which professed the inequality of persons of color. The hundred 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg has called forth a revisionist romanticization of the so-called Lost Cause of the Confederacy, giving impetus to right-wing efforts to repeal the civil rights advances of the second half of the 20th century. The metastasizing cancer of the neo-Confederate thinking represents nothing less than an effort to redress through political means what the Confederacy could not gain on the battlefield. As patriotic Americans, we have a moral responsibility to take a hard line against such militant neo-Confederate tendencies.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Independence Day is a paradox. For all of our civic piety and our nostalgic talk about our revolutionary heritage, it’s easy to forget that the Revolution we celebrate began as something rather different than what it became. In the words of novelist Ernest K. Gann, we started out, as it were, looking to purchase a hot air balloon and returned home with a helicopter.
Our Revolution did not begin as a great struggle to bring forth “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Instead, it began as essentially a series of conservative, localist protests against new and unacceptable centralizing tendencies emanating from London and from the Imperial Parliament.
The American rebels of 1775 were not nearly so interested in casting off the shackles of the British Empire as they were in preserving intact existing political dispensations under which they had enjoyed significant degrees of autonomy and home rule, and which they felt were being invaded in every sense of that word by an overreaching Imperial Parliament. Their revolt was about maintaining the lucrative and congenial status quo to which they and their ancestors have become accustomed.
It would take much blood and anguish for the relatively conservative rebels of 1775 to become the nation-builders of 1776, who dared to articulate in the Declaration of Independence some of the most soaring political ideals ever committed to paper or adopted as national founding principles. There is an unbridgeable gulf between polite remonstrances to King and Parliament and the blunt, uncompromising language of the Declaration of Independence:
What a paradox, then, that a group of relatively conservative, well-off, white men of property and influence, should have produced one of the most revolutionary documents in history, not even excepting the Communist Manifesto.
From these words Abraham Lincoln drew inspiration for the opening lines of his immortal address at Gettysburg:
For it was given to Abraham Lincoln to link, with awesome compassion and insight, the expressed ideals of our national foundation with the great Union-saving purpose of the Civil War, and to articulate, in barely three minutes, not merely the high moral purpose of saving the Union, but also of placing into context the value of the vicarious self-sacrifice offered by the Union boys in blue who laid what Lincoln would later describe in his unforgettable letter to Mrs. Bixby as “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
The near-coincidence of the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a little more than 100 miles distant, is, candidly, somewhat unfortunate.
Over the last few days, we have seen what can only be described as a somewhat distasteful orgy of re-enactment, reminiscence, and revisionist history about one of the most sanguinary battles ever joined on the North American continent.
The battlefield at Gettysburg has been swarmed by regiments of re-enactors engaged in do-overs of the 20th Maine, Buford’s shadowing of the rebel cavalry, or George Pickett’s idiotic frontal charge into emplaced Union artillery and pre-prepared firing positions. While there may be, as noted japanologist Ivan Morris once put it, a certain “nobility of failure,” it does seem a little feckless to raise George Pickett’s military incompetence to the level of an event worthy of reenactment.
Perhaps more troubling about the reminiscences of Gettysburg in 150 is the extent to which such reminiscence has engendered or reflected something of a fashion for neo-Confederate thinking. In recent years, we have seen the gains of the Civil War steadily chipped away by both the Republican Party and a Supreme Court that, by handing down nakedly partisan decisions, has managed to fritter away much of the worldwide moral authority it once possessed. When an Egyptian or Russian interlocutor can declare with some degree of justice that our high court is just as much the servant of political factions or ideologies as comparable tribunals along the Nile or in the Kremlin, we ought to know that something is wrong.
Certainly, the creeping cancer of neo-Confederatism has metastasized its way through much of the American body politic. The revisionist romanticization of the so-called Lost Cause has certainly given impetus to right-wing efforts to repeal the civil rights advances of the second half of the 20th century. When the Supreme Court of the United States gutted the Voting Rights Act, right-wing legislators in former Confederate states such as North Carolina and Texas rushed to enact restrictive voting laws aimed squarely at African-American voters. Jim Crow, as Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau has so trenchantly noted, is back.
Moreover, in other former Confederate states, such as Virginia, Republican legislators and educators have tried diligently in recent years to try to burnish the tarnished image of the Confederacy, and to sugarcoat the ugly realities of the Peculiar Institution. (“Slavery wasn’t that bad, the Negroes liked being slaves.”)
Against such cancerous, treasonable, neo-Confederatism, patriotic Americans should take a clear, bright-line, hard-line position.
These are not easy words to say for someone raised after the Southern way, and educated in the South. For certainly, there is much to be appreciated about the Southern way of life, about the premium it places on manners, about its sense of itself, about its understanding of its place in time, and about all the other little douceurs that contribute to life below the Mason-Dixon line. As that great Southern storyteller Pat Conroy has observed, there is something “magnificently fey” about the Southern character.
And indeed, much of the Southern character, and much of the South’s sense of itself as a distinct regional society, has depended upon the South’s willing, even desperate, embrace of the myth of the so-called Lost Cause, a myth as powerful below the Mason-Dixon line as the Pilgrim/Plymouth Rock myth is throughout the rest of the country, even if Pilgrim/Plymouth Rock myth is nothing more than a triumphalist Yankee narrative.
But if the Yankee narrative is a triumphal, largely nationwide narrative, there is a reason. When the South willfully took itself out of the Union in order to preserve, protect, and defend the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery, it forfeited any moral justification it had for its cause. The Confederate cause suffered at its inception from an original sin which doomed it to inevitable defeat, an original sin which consisted in a searing rejection of the most basic American ideal of equality, and equally in a ringing proclamation that all men were in fact not equal, but that some were fated on account of their color to be held in perpetual bondage.
Having nailed their colors to the mast of slavery, the men of affairs who called the Confederacy into existence condemned their enterprise to inevitable failure in a western world that had increasingly adopted a moral consensus that slavery could not be reconciled with the evolving liberal values of western society. And so was that the Civil War the South so incontinently inflicted upon the nation continued until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil was sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash was paid by another drawn with the sword. And indeed "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
By deliberately trying to break the union over the issue of slavery, Southerners also consciously rejected the very evolving 19th-century liberal values that have been so instrumental in forming the values of our own time. Indeed, Southern political thought has often tended to embrace conservatism, and indeed what Pat Conroy referred to as “conservatism of a particularly fevered strain.” Yet, the historical record is full of clear and convincing evidence that bodies politic which deny the possibility that values may evolve, or which deny the place of liberalism in society, inevitably doom themselves to falling behind and being overtaken by bodies politic which are more prepared and more willing to embrace ineluctable change.
A society that cannot acknowledge the first-class citizenship within the commonwealth of women, people of color, queerfolk, and the disabled and the poor, among others, is a society that inevitably find itself at a disadvantage. Yet, when we look at those parts of American society that display the greatest degree of resistance to acknowledging the first-class citizenship of women, people of color, queerfolk, and the disabled and the poor, among others, the South always seems to be at the top of that unhappy list. The states of the old Confederacy seem unwilling or unable to liberate themselves from their allegiance to a dispensation which proclaims absolutely and exclusively the primacy of straight white, wealthy males.
It is as if for nearly 150 years since General Lee went to see General Grant at Appomattox to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia a militant and unreconstructed Confederate tendency has been working behind the scenes to undo the effects and incidents the victory of the Union, and to restore --- if not fully, then very substantially --- the political, sexual, racial, and social dispensations of the antebellum South.
Those are not the dispensations of modern America; these are not the dispensations a majority of the American people find acceptable.
It is one thing for the South to have a view of itself as being a unique regional society within the United States. It is quite another for irreconcilable neo-Confederates to want to undo a century and a half of progress in civil rights. And because my commitment to an America in which “all men are created equal” far exceeds whatever little sympathy I might have for the Southern way of life, I take a hard-line position against essentially neo-Confederate efforts to roll back the civil rights clock.
It’s simply not acceptable to romanticize the so-called Lost Cause on this 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. It’s simply not acceptable to equate gray with blue, or to apotheosize rebel leaders like Jefferson Davis (though I’m still willing to cut Marse Robert Lee some small amount of slack). As patriotic Americans, we have a moral responsibility to take a hard line against such militant neo-Confederate tendencies.
On this Independence Day, on the 150th anniversary of the aftermath of Gettysburg, we should cast our minds forward to November 19, the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the national cemetery there.
As a corrective to revisionist neo-Confederate thinking, and as a reminder that the nation Lincoln called the “last best hope of earth” is worth defending against all enemies foreign and domestic, the Gettysburg Address merits verbatim repetition:
In the end, to the extent that we remember Gettysburg on this 150th anniversary of that great struggle, let us honor the Union dead, and be thankful to a merciful Providence for the success of their efforts.
God save the United States.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City, California. Among his ancestors are both Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, including the Danes brothers who fought in the Ohio volunteer infantry. In his closet hang both blue and gray suits, but he is still a Union man in every sense of the word. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice, and should not be so construed.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Independence Day is a paradox. For all of our civic piety and our nostalgic talk about our revolutionary heritage, it’s easy to forget that the Revolution we celebrate began as something rather different than what it became. In the words of novelist Ernest K. Gann, we started out, as it were, looking to purchase a hot air balloon and returned home with a helicopter.
Our Revolution did not begin as a great struggle to bring forth “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” Instead, it began as essentially a series of conservative, localist protests against new and unacceptable centralizing tendencies emanating from London and from the Imperial Parliament.
The American rebels of 1775 were not nearly so interested in casting off the shackles of the British Empire as they were in preserving intact existing political dispensations under which they had enjoyed significant degrees of autonomy and home rule, and which they felt were being invaded in every sense of that word by an overreaching Imperial Parliament. Their revolt was about maintaining the lucrative and congenial status quo to which they and their ancestors have become accustomed.
It would take much blood and anguish for the relatively conservative rebels of 1775 to become the nation-builders of 1776, who dared to articulate in the Declaration of Independence some of the most soaring political ideals ever committed to paper or adopted as national founding principles. There is an unbridgeable gulf between polite remonstrances to King and Parliament and the blunt, uncompromising language of the Declaration of Independence:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it...”
What a paradox, then, that a group of relatively conservative, well-off, white men of property and influence, should have produced one of the most revolutionary documents in history, not even excepting the Communist Manifesto.
From these words Abraham Lincoln drew inspiration for the opening lines of his immortal address at Gettysburg:
“Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.”
For it was given to Abraham Lincoln to link, with awesome compassion and insight, the expressed ideals of our national foundation with the great Union-saving purpose of the Civil War, and to articulate, in barely three minutes, not merely the high moral purpose of saving the Union, but also of placing into context the value of the vicarious self-sacrifice offered by the Union boys in blue who laid what Lincoln would later describe in his unforgettable letter to Mrs. Bixby as “so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.”
The near-coincidence of the 237th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, and the 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg, a little more than 100 miles distant, is, candidly, somewhat unfortunate.
Over the last few days, we have seen what can only be described as a somewhat distasteful orgy of re-enactment, reminiscence, and revisionist history about one of the most sanguinary battles ever joined on the North American continent.
The battlefield at Gettysburg has been swarmed by regiments of re-enactors engaged in do-overs of the 20th Maine, Buford’s shadowing of the rebel cavalry, or George Pickett’s idiotic frontal charge into emplaced Union artillery and pre-prepared firing positions. While there may be, as noted japanologist Ivan Morris once put it, a certain “nobility of failure,” it does seem a little feckless to raise George Pickett’s military incompetence to the level of an event worthy of reenactment.
Perhaps more troubling about the reminiscences of Gettysburg in 150 is the extent to which such reminiscence has engendered or reflected something of a fashion for neo-Confederate thinking. In recent years, we have seen the gains of the Civil War steadily chipped away by both the Republican Party and a Supreme Court that, by handing down nakedly partisan decisions, has managed to fritter away much of the worldwide moral authority it once possessed. When an Egyptian or Russian interlocutor can declare with some degree of justice that our high court is just as much the servant of political factions or ideologies as comparable tribunals along the Nile or in the Kremlin, we ought to know that something is wrong.
Certainly, the creeping cancer of neo-Confederatism has metastasized its way through much of the American body politic. The revisionist romanticization of the so-called Lost Cause has certainly given impetus to right-wing efforts to repeal the civil rights advances of the second half of the 20th century. When the Supreme Court of the United States gutted the Voting Rights Act, right-wing legislators in former Confederate states such as North Carolina and Texas rushed to enact restrictive voting laws aimed squarely at African-American voters. Jim Crow, as Doonesbury’s Garry Trudeau has so trenchantly noted, is back.
Moreover, in other former Confederate states, such as Virginia, Republican legislators and educators have tried diligently in recent years to try to burnish the tarnished image of the Confederacy, and to sugarcoat the ugly realities of the Peculiar Institution. (“Slavery wasn’t that bad, the Negroes liked being slaves.”)
Against such cancerous, treasonable, neo-Confederatism, patriotic Americans should take a clear, bright-line, hard-line position.
These are not easy words to say for someone raised after the Southern way, and educated in the South. For certainly, there is much to be appreciated about the Southern way of life, about the premium it places on manners, about its sense of itself, about its understanding of its place in time, and about all the other little douceurs that contribute to life below the Mason-Dixon line. As that great Southern storyteller Pat Conroy has observed, there is something “magnificently fey” about the Southern character.
And indeed, much of the Southern character, and much of the South’s sense of itself as a distinct regional society, has depended upon the South’s willing, even desperate, embrace of the myth of the so-called Lost Cause, a myth as powerful below the Mason-Dixon line as the Pilgrim/Plymouth Rock myth is throughout the rest of the country, even if Pilgrim/Plymouth Rock myth is nothing more than a triumphalist Yankee narrative.
But if the Yankee narrative is a triumphal, largely nationwide narrative, there is a reason. When the South willfully took itself out of the Union in order to preserve, protect, and defend the Peculiar Institution of chattel slavery, it forfeited any moral justification it had for its cause. The Confederate cause suffered at its inception from an original sin which doomed it to inevitable defeat, an original sin which consisted in a searing rejection of the most basic American ideal of equality, and equally in a ringing proclamation that all men were in fact not equal, but that some were fated on account of their color to be held in perpetual bondage.
Having nailed their colors to the mast of slavery, the men of affairs who called the Confederacy into existence condemned their enterprise to inevitable failure in a western world that had increasingly adopted a moral consensus that slavery could not be reconciled with the evolving liberal values of western society. And so was that the Civil War the South so incontinently inflicted upon the nation continued until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil was sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash was paid by another drawn with the sword. And indeed "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
By deliberately trying to break the union over the issue of slavery, Southerners also consciously rejected the very evolving 19th-century liberal values that have been so instrumental in forming the values of our own time. Indeed, Southern political thought has often tended to embrace conservatism, and indeed what Pat Conroy referred to as “conservatism of a particularly fevered strain.” Yet, the historical record is full of clear and convincing evidence that bodies politic which deny the possibility that values may evolve, or which deny the place of liberalism in society, inevitably doom themselves to falling behind and being overtaken by bodies politic which are more prepared and more willing to embrace ineluctable change.
A society that cannot acknowledge the first-class citizenship within the commonwealth of women, people of color, queerfolk, and the disabled and the poor, among others, is a society that inevitably find itself at a disadvantage. Yet, when we look at those parts of American society that display the greatest degree of resistance to acknowledging the first-class citizenship of women, people of color, queerfolk, and the disabled and the poor, among others, the South always seems to be at the top of that unhappy list. The states of the old Confederacy seem unwilling or unable to liberate themselves from their allegiance to a dispensation which proclaims absolutely and exclusively the primacy of straight white, wealthy males.
It is as if for nearly 150 years since General Lee went to see General Grant at Appomattox to surrender the Army of Northern Virginia a militant and unreconstructed Confederate tendency has been working behind the scenes to undo the effects and incidents the victory of the Union, and to restore --- if not fully, then very substantially --- the political, sexual, racial, and social dispensations of the antebellum South.
Those are not the dispensations of modern America; these are not the dispensations a majority of the American people find acceptable.
It is one thing for the South to have a view of itself as being a unique regional society within the United States. It is quite another for irreconcilable neo-Confederates to want to undo a century and a half of progress in civil rights. And because my commitment to an America in which “all men are created equal” far exceeds whatever little sympathy I might have for the Southern way of life, I take a hard-line position against essentially neo-Confederate efforts to roll back the civil rights clock.
It’s simply not acceptable to romanticize the so-called Lost Cause on this 150th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg. It’s simply not acceptable to equate gray with blue, or to apotheosize rebel leaders like Jefferson Davis (though I’m still willing to cut Marse Robert Lee some small amount of slack). As patriotic Americans, we have a moral responsibility to take a hard line against such militant neo-Confederate tendencies.
On this Independence Day, on the 150th anniversary of the aftermath of Gettysburg, we should cast our minds forward to November 19, the 150th anniversary of President Lincoln’s address at the dedication of the national cemetery there.
As a corrective to revisionist neo-Confederate thinking, and as a reminder that the nation Lincoln called the “last best hope of earth” is worth defending against all enemies foreign and domestic, the Gettysburg Address merits verbatim repetition:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that
nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate— we can not consecrate —we can not hallow— this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us— that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom —and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
In the end, to the extent that we remember Gettysburg on this 150th anniversary of that great struggle, let us honor the Union dead, and be thankful to a merciful Providence for the success of their efforts.
God save the United States.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices and Cathedral City, California. Among his ancestors are both Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, including the Danes brothers who fought in the Ohio volunteer infantry. In his closet hang both blue and gray suits, but he is still a Union man in every sense of the word. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended to constitute legal advice, and should not be so construed.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
MUNICIPAL APOSTASY: Kathleen DeRosa conducts a same-sex marriage ceremony
Summary: When Jim Cox and Tom Aubrey got married yesterday, and embattled Cathedral City Mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa officiated at the wedding, that smacking sound you heard was DeRosa’s open hand slapping the face of Cathedral City’s thousands of queer residents. While it might be gauche not to wish the newlyweds a long and happy wedded life together, or to rain on their parade, DeRosa’s participation in the ceremony was itself stupefyingly gauche, and merits being held up to critical analysis. Having opposed marriage equality on the basis of her Roman Catholic religion, DeRosa now needs to explain her light-speed, politically-motivated “evolution” on the issue. At the same time, should she ever desire to receive the grace of the Sacraments again, she might want to explain to her church why she apostasized and accepted a form of ordination from a so-called online ministry. At all events, her conduct was, in the words of Mayor pro tem. Chuck Vasquez, in poor taste. Unbelievably cynical, and clearly intended as part of her 2014 reelection bid, DeRosa’s conduct gives cynical politicians everywhere a bad name.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Yesterday, Jim Cox and Tom Aubrey of Cathedral City got married. That, in and of itself, comes as no surprise. Since the Ninth Circuit lifted its stay on same-sex marriages last Friday afternoon, queer couples have been lining up to get licensed and wed throughout California.
The identity of the officiant came to many in Cathedral City’s substantial queer community as a surprise, and an offensive one at that. The officiant was not an LGBT person, but rather Cathedral City’s embattled mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, whose publicly stated religiously-based opposition to marriage equality became an issue in last fall’s mayoral campaign.
It would be gauche not to wish the newlyweds all of the companionable joy that ought to be the incident of a truly happy marriage, and indeed one does wish them great joy. Nonetheless, DeRosa’s officiating the ceremony comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to Cathedral City’s queer community. It was stupefyingly gauche.
Indeed, as much as it might be gauche to rain on the newlyweds’ parade, it is emphatically not gauche to question the motives of the politician who officiated at the ceremony. The community may properly ask DeRosa a number of fairly serious questions she may be unable or unwilling to answer.
First, in the run-up to the fall, 2012 municipal election, DeRosa declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality.
How can she now reconcile her astonishingly rapid volte-face with her earlier position?
While it took Barack Obama a number of years to “evolve” on the issue of same-sex marriage, even the President’s evolution has not gone so far as to have the President of the United States mugging for the cameras in the White House Rose Garden after solemnizing a same-sex marriage, turning what should be a solemn moment in the lives of the newlyweds into nothing more than an act of political theater.
Second, news reports indicate that DeRosa perform the ceremony after receiving some sort of ostensible “ordination” from a so-called online ministry. Has Ms. DeRosa --- who professed her Roman Catholic faith as justification for her prior opposition to marriage equality --- forgotten the plain blackletter of Canon 1364 of the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law? In pertinent part, Canon 1364 provides that “... an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latæ sententiæ excommunication;...”
Arguably, by accepting some kind of ostensible status as a “minister” from some “online ministry,” Kathleen Joan DeRosa has apostasized from the Roman Catholic Church, thus incurring that latæ sententiæ, automatic excommunication provided for in Canon 1364. As an open and notorious apostate, DeRosa will have a lot of explaining to do to her church, particularly if she finds herself repelled from the grace of the Sacraments.
Obviously, DeRosa’s faith sits very lightly upon her apostate shoulders, and means rather less to her then being able to exploit the advent of same-gender marriage for her own political purposes. It is no secret that DeRosa regularly seeks -- with disturbing success -- to bamboozle low information voters, particularly in Cathedral City’s substantial queer and Latino communities. Nonetheless, Scripture reminds us that it profits one nothing to gain the whole world, but lose one’s soul. (See, e.g., Matt. 16:26). Indeed, if it profits one nothing to gain the whole world, but lose one’s soul, what may we say if DeRosa gains only Cathedral City, but loses her own soul in the process?
Cathedral City Mayor pro tem. Chuck Vasquez was quite correct to characterize DeRosa’s actions as having been “in poor taste.” Not only were DeRosa’s actions in poor taste, but they also certainly telegraphed her intention to try to rebrand herself as some kind of friend of the queer nation as she seeks in 2014 to add two more to the nine bitter winters she has been mayor. If she succeeds, Cathedral City’s queer community will have only itself to blame for being so easily bamboozled by so blatantly cynical and opportunistic a political operator.
DeRosa should have had the basic decency to decline to officiate.
Unfortunately, she is nothing more than a political operator who gives political operators a bad name.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council. He remembers DeRosa’s narcissistic behavior and her routine taking of credit for the work of others. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
By: Paul S. Marchand
Yesterday, Jim Cox and Tom Aubrey of Cathedral City got married. That, in and of itself, comes as no surprise. Since the Ninth Circuit lifted its stay on same-sex marriages last Friday afternoon, queer couples have been lining up to get licensed and wed throughout California.
The identity of the officiant came to many in Cathedral City’s substantial queer community as a surprise, and an offensive one at that. The officiant was not an LGBT person, but rather Cathedral City’s embattled mayor Kathleen Joan DeRosa, whose publicly stated religiously-based opposition to marriage equality became an issue in last fall’s mayoral campaign.
It would be gauche not to wish the newlyweds all of the companionable joy that ought to be the incident of a truly happy marriage, and indeed one does wish them great joy. Nonetheless, DeRosa’s officiating the ceremony comes across as a bit of a slap in the face to Cathedral City’s queer community. It was stupefyingly gauche.
Indeed, as much as it might be gauche to rain on the newlyweds’ parade, it is emphatically not gauche to question the motives of the politician who officiated at the ceremony. The community may properly ask DeRosa a number of fairly serious questions she may be unable or unwilling to answer.
First, in the run-up to the fall, 2012 municipal election, DeRosa declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality.
How can she now reconcile her astonishingly rapid volte-face with her earlier position?
While it took Barack Obama a number of years to “evolve” on the issue of same-sex marriage, even the President’s evolution has not gone so far as to have the President of the United States mugging for the cameras in the White House Rose Garden after solemnizing a same-sex marriage, turning what should be a solemn moment in the lives of the newlyweds into nothing more than an act of political theater.
Second, news reports indicate that DeRosa perform the ceremony after receiving some sort of ostensible “ordination” from a so-called online ministry. Has Ms. DeRosa --- who professed her Roman Catholic faith as justification for her prior opposition to marriage equality --- forgotten the plain blackletter of Canon 1364 of the Roman Catholic Church’s Code of Canon Law? In pertinent part, Canon 1364 provides that “... an apostate from the faith, a heretic, or a schismatic incurs a latæ sententiæ excommunication;...”
Arguably, by accepting some kind of ostensible status as a “minister” from some “online ministry,” Kathleen Joan DeRosa has apostasized from the Roman Catholic Church, thus incurring that latæ sententiæ, automatic excommunication provided for in Canon 1364. As an open and notorious apostate, DeRosa will have a lot of explaining to do to her church, particularly if she finds herself repelled from the grace of the Sacraments.
Obviously, DeRosa’s faith sits very lightly upon her apostate shoulders, and means rather less to her then being able to exploit the advent of same-gender marriage for her own political purposes. It is no secret that DeRosa regularly seeks -- with disturbing success -- to bamboozle low information voters, particularly in Cathedral City’s substantial queer and Latino communities. Nonetheless, Scripture reminds us that it profits one nothing to gain the whole world, but lose one’s soul. (See, e.g., Matt. 16:26). Indeed, if it profits one nothing to gain the whole world, but lose one’s soul, what may we say if DeRosa gains only Cathedral City, but loses her own soul in the process?
Cathedral City Mayor pro tem. Chuck Vasquez was quite correct to characterize DeRosa’s actions as having been “in poor taste.” Not only were DeRosa’s actions in poor taste, but they also certainly telegraphed her intention to try to rebrand herself as some kind of friend of the queer nation as she seeks in 2014 to add two more to the nine bitter winters she has been mayor. If she succeeds, Cathedral City’s queer community will have only itself to blame for being so easily bamboozled by so blatantly cynical and opportunistic a political operator.
DeRosa should have had the basic decency to decline to officiate.
Unfortunately, she is nothing more than a political operator who gives political operators a bad name.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives and practices in Cathedral City, where he served two terms on the City Council. He remembers DeRosa’s narcissistic behavior and her routine taking of credit for the work of others. The views expressed herein are his own, and are not intended as legal advice.
Friday, June 28, 2013
AGAINST “CHRISTIAN ENTITLEMENT” IN PUBLIC SERVICE: A BRIGHT-LINE, HARD-LINE POSITION.
Summary: When Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe prevented openly gay Democratic Rep. Brian Sims from speaking in the House by invoking “God’s law,” the Republican opened up a real can of worms. Arguably, Metcalfe’s misconduct constitutes perjury, inasmuch as he violated his oath of office to uphold the Constitution of the United States. Moreover, Metcalfe’s behavior betrays a disturbing sense of so-called Christian Entitlement, which certain so-called Christians use as a vehicle to exclude from the life of the commonwealth those whose views and beliefs differ from theirs. It is improper ever to invoke or appeal to denominational scripture in forming public policy, as it is equally improper to abridge the civil rights of one to assuage the religious discomforts of another, and it is even more wrong to put the civil rights of discrete minorities up for popular vote. So-called Christians who believe in the propriety of any of these things are simply wrong. Daryl Metcalfe is unfit to serve in public office any time, anywhere. Cathedral City’s mayor, who based her opposition to marriage equality on her ostensible and ostentatious Catholicism, should take note.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
By: Paul S. Marchand
In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, “disobeying God” is apparently sufficient grounds to prevent legislative speech.
In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Harrisburg the other day, Pennsylvania State Rep. Brian Sims, (D) Philadelphia, rose to speak on SCOTUS’s ruling in U.S. v. Windsor. As the openly gay legislator (the only one in the Commonwealth’s General Assembly) prepared to comment on the demise of DOMA, Republican State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe invoked a procedural objection to prevent Mr. Sims from speaking. Metcalfe’s objection will go down as one of the most outrageous and astonishing interventions in the history of the Commonwealth, and possibly in American history.
In justifying his astonishing misconduct, Metcalfe declared that
Later, Metcalfe doubled down:
In this country, Metcalfe’s misbehavior symbol represents another manifestation of what has been called “Christian Entitlement.” It is a theory which postulates that the profession of a particularly hard-edged, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” Christian ideological line necessarily trumps the rights of others to believe as they see fit and to articulate ideas which may make ostentatious “Christians” uncomfortable.
Leaving aside for a moment the grave theological error --- to say nothing of the deadly sin of pride --- into which Metcalfe falls with his facepalm-inducing nonsense, Metcalfe’s hard line invocation of “Christian Entitlement” necessarily calls forth an equally hard-line response.
As a number of progressive Christian thinkers, the Rev. Canon Susan Russell among them, have noted, you are not being persecuted when you are prevented from persecuting others. “Christian Entitlement” turns this reality on its head, claiming not only that Christians are persecuted when they are prevented from persecuting others, but that Christians --- being in possession of Truth with a capital T --- are entitled, by virtue of their claims possession of that Truth with a capital T, to silence, intimidate, and even persecute those whose views and ideology are not precisely congruent with their own.
Thus, the need for a hard-line, bright-line response to the misconduct of oath-breakers and moral perjurers like Daryl Metcalfe. A few simple points will suffice.
First, to be authentically loyal to our American ideals and commonwealth, one must reject absolutely the idea that it is ever permissible to appeal to or invoke any denominational scripture or theology when forming public policy. America was founded upon the allied and intertwined principles of freedom of religion and freedom from religion. You cannot be loyal to America’s founding principles and insist that you have the right to invoke what you believe is “God’s law” to shut down speech and debate in a representative chamber.
Second, the right of any individual to authentic, first-class membership in our American body politic, should never be infringed, abridged, or denied to assuage the religious, political, or ideological discomforts of any other individual whomsoever. America is a raucous, vibrantly diverse society, and one of the prices we pay for the freedoms we treasure is that others will believe, think, worship, or speak in ways that may cause us discomfort, and with which we may disagree vehemently. Putting up with differences of opinion and belief is part of our social contract: “I do not agree with what you have said, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We have the right to insist that our elected representatives do us and their colleagues the constitutional courtesy of respecting differences of opinion. For once a religious sanction is invoked, the mind turns, thought departs, and we are a step away from the horrors of the Inquisition or Europe’s stomach-turning Wars of Religion.
Third, the civil rights of discrete and identifiable minorities within the body politic are not properly the subject of popular votes. California has a deplorable history of using the ballot box to pass hateful and discriminatory laws intended to cause harm to disfavored minorities. The Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, African-Americans, and queerfolk have all found themselves on the receiving end of such nastiness, and in every case, the courts have intervened to redress the constitutional imbalance created by such legislation. The so-called will of the people ends where the Constitution begins.
Finally, there is no right, anytime, anywhere, to seek to exclude from the commonwealth those who do not look like us, live like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, or vote like us. When Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives threw a temper tantrum and sought to prevent a Hindu chaplain from delivering an invocation in the cap house, they, like Daryl Metcalfe in Pennsylvania, not only raised serious questions about their own fitness for public service, but also raise serious questions about the extent to which they had perjured themselves in taking an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which very clearly declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of religion prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
So-called Christians who believe that it is ever right to invoke denominational scripture into public policy formation process, or who believe that it is permissible to infringe the civil rights of one to assuage the religious comforts of others, or who believe that civil rights are ever legitimate subjects for popular vote are simply wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
To the extent that the egregious Daryl Metcalfe sought to impose his Christian Entitlement views on his colleague, he was not only wrong, but he also violated his oath of office. If he knew at the time that he took the oath that he intended to violate it in such fashion, then he may well have committed the crime of perjury, of telling a deliberate and material untruth under oath. If so, Daryl Metcalfe may well have committed an impeachable offense.
At all events, Daryl Metcalfe has demonstrated his utter unfitness to hold any office of trust or profit under the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or of any other state or jurisdiction, anytime, anywhere. Having served eight years in public office myself, and having also been throughout that period a confirmed, communicating Episcopalian, I never had the slightest difficulty conforming my conduct as a public official to the requirements of the Constitution.
Why is it apparently so difficult for the Daryl Metcalfes of this world to do so?
The current mayor of Cathedral City, who infamously declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality, should take note.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council. He is a confirmed, communicating member of the Episcopal Church, and has been for more than 30 years. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of TEC, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice. Heretics and haters take note, your comments will not be published.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
By: Paul S. Marchand
In the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, “disobeying God” is apparently sufficient grounds to prevent legislative speech.
In the Pennsylvania House of Representatives in Harrisburg the other day, Pennsylvania State Rep. Brian Sims, (D) Philadelphia, rose to speak on SCOTUS’s ruling in U.S. v. Windsor. As the openly gay legislator (the only one in the Commonwealth’s General Assembly) prepared to comment on the demise of DOMA, Republican State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe invoked a procedural objection to prevent Mr. Sims from speaking. Metcalfe’s objection will go down as one of the most outrageous and astonishing interventions in the history of the Commonwealth, and possibly in American history.
In justifying his astonishing misconduct, Metcalfe declared that
“I did not believe that as a member of that body that I should allow someone to make comments such as he was preparing to make that ultimately were just open rebellion against what the word of God has said, what God has said, and just open rebellion against God's law.”
Later, Metcalfe doubled down:
“For me to allow him to say things that I believe are open rebellion against God are for me to participate in his open rebellion. There's no free speech on the floor.”Were such an event to take place in a Muslim country, hard right wing bloviators such as Metcalfe would have been quick to take the podium to vent theatrical outrage.
In this country, Metcalfe’s misbehavior symbol represents another manifestation of what has been called “Christian Entitlement.” It is a theory which postulates that the profession of a particularly hard-edged, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it” Christian ideological line necessarily trumps the rights of others to believe as they see fit and to articulate ideas which may make ostentatious “Christians” uncomfortable.
Leaving aside for a moment the grave theological error --- to say nothing of the deadly sin of pride --- into which Metcalfe falls with his facepalm-inducing nonsense, Metcalfe’s hard line invocation of “Christian Entitlement” necessarily calls forth an equally hard-line response.
As a number of progressive Christian thinkers, the Rev. Canon Susan Russell among them, have noted, you are not being persecuted when you are prevented from persecuting others. “Christian Entitlement” turns this reality on its head, claiming not only that Christians are persecuted when they are prevented from persecuting others, but that Christians --- being in possession of Truth with a capital T --- are entitled, by virtue of their claims possession of that Truth with a capital T, to silence, intimidate, and even persecute those whose views and ideology are not precisely congruent with their own.
Thus, the need for a hard-line, bright-line response to the misconduct of oath-breakers and moral perjurers like Daryl Metcalfe. A few simple points will suffice.
First, to be authentically loyal to our American ideals and commonwealth, one must reject absolutely the idea that it is ever permissible to appeal to or invoke any denominational scripture or theology when forming public policy. America was founded upon the allied and intertwined principles of freedom of religion and freedom from religion. You cannot be loyal to America’s founding principles and insist that you have the right to invoke what you believe is “God’s law” to shut down speech and debate in a representative chamber.
Second, the right of any individual to authentic, first-class membership in our American body politic, should never be infringed, abridged, or denied to assuage the religious, political, or ideological discomforts of any other individual whomsoever. America is a raucous, vibrantly diverse society, and one of the prices we pay for the freedoms we treasure is that others will believe, think, worship, or speak in ways that may cause us discomfort, and with which we may disagree vehemently. Putting up with differences of opinion and belief is part of our social contract: “I do not agree with what you have said, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We have the right to insist that our elected representatives do us and their colleagues the constitutional courtesy of respecting differences of opinion. For once a religious sanction is invoked, the mind turns, thought departs, and we are a step away from the horrors of the Inquisition or Europe’s stomach-turning Wars of Religion.
Third, the civil rights of discrete and identifiable minorities within the body politic are not properly the subject of popular votes. California has a deplorable history of using the ballot box to pass hateful and discriminatory laws intended to cause harm to disfavored minorities. The Chinese, Japanese, Latinos, African-Americans, and queerfolk have all found themselves on the receiving end of such nastiness, and in every case, the courts have intervened to redress the constitutional imbalance created by such legislation. The so-called will of the people ends where the Constitution begins.
Finally, there is no right, anytime, anywhere, to seek to exclude from the commonwealth those who do not look like us, live like us, love like us, work like us, worship like us, or vote like us. When Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives threw a temper tantrum and sought to prevent a Hindu chaplain from delivering an invocation in the cap house, they, like Daryl Metcalfe in Pennsylvania, not only raised serious questions about their own fitness for public service, but also raise serious questions about the extent to which they had perjured themselves in taking an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution of the United States, which very clearly declares that “Congress shall make no law respecting an Establishment of religion prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
So-called Christians who believe that it is ever right to invoke denominational scripture into public policy formation process, or who believe that it is permissible to infringe the civil rights of one to assuage the religious comforts of others, or who believe that civil rights are ever legitimate subjects for popular vote are simply wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
To the extent that the egregious Daryl Metcalfe sought to impose his Christian Entitlement views on his colleague, he was not only wrong, but he also violated his oath of office. If he knew at the time that he took the oath that he intended to violate it in such fashion, then he may well have committed the crime of perjury, of telling a deliberate and material untruth under oath. If so, Daryl Metcalfe may well have committed an impeachable offense.
At all events, Daryl Metcalfe has demonstrated his utter unfitness to hold any office of trust or profit under the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, or of any other state or jurisdiction, anytime, anywhere. Having served eight years in public office myself, and having also been throughout that period a confirmed, communicating Episcopalian, I never had the slightest difficulty conforming my conduct as a public official to the requirements of the Constitution.
Why is it apparently so difficult for the Daryl Metcalfes of this world to do so?
The current mayor of Cathedral City, who infamously declared that “as a Catholic” she could not support marriage equality, should take note.
-xxx-
Paul S. Marchand is an attorney who lives in practices in Cathedral City, California, where he served eight years on the city Council. He is a confirmed, communicating member of the Episcopal Church, and has been for more than 30 years. The views contained herein are his own, and not necessarily those of TEC, and are not intended as, and should not be construed as, legal advice. Heretics and haters take note, your comments will not be published.
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