When the NY Times began to add same-sex couples to their reporting of weddings (or other similar ceremonies), one of things that struck me was the difference between the pedigree information of straight couples vs. those of lesbian and gay couples. It seemed, even to me, a little odd that two guys or two women with unremarkable jobs or educational backgrounds or parental achievements made it past the editors. I realize that there is a great deal of elitism out there - sometimes epitomized by the NY Times in years past - but the Times is read nationally and internationally so I tend to forgive it when it looks like it's pandering to elite straight couples and not-so-elite same sex couples. I have noticed that the Times is beginning to apply the same standards to both groups.
It may be entirely frivolous to even notice these kinds of things but it is meaningful to me. Our close friends - two doctors who had been together for 22 years before their marriage in Massachusetts - took the time to go through the process of noting their marriage in the Times. I thought it was important because younger same-sex couples or someone who is gay but isolated in a non-coastal community could see that many of us live very similar lives to straight couples.
I am certainly not advocating that same-sex couples go out of their way to copy their straight friends' relationships, even if it were possible to do so. I am, however, advocating that more of us pull back the curtains and fight for the right to have every option that everyone else has. We live in a civil society based on laws that are sometimes unconstitutional. Religious conservatives will continue to block or chip away at what I and many others consider to be universal civil rights. The struggle for full equality is a team effort and some of us will lose a job, a friend or a family member's acceptance when we stand up to be counted. I was lucky to have had no real problems in the aftermath of my coming out experience. Maybe I just thought that whatever risk there might have been was outweighed by the possibility that one more name on the list would help move things along a little bit. On a more personal level, it can be very freeing all by itself.
In the roughly 20 years that have passed since then, it is clearer than ever to me that the most important way to achieve equality is to have as many people as possible demand it. There is a reason that activists are accused of inflating the number of marchers that appear in D.C. and that the government is accused of minimizing those numbers. There would be no argument if both sides did not believe that numbers matter. Who among us can say that the civil rights movement to end racial and ethnic discrimination would have been as effective if there were not millions of people publicly demanding it? Dr. Martin Luther King understood this very well. A beautifully delivered speech is impressive but King's 1963 speech was delivered on television with powerful images of many hundreds of thousands of supporters. The Kennedy administration was undoubtedly moved by the speech but what it really looked for was how much support it would have to begin drafting the law that became the 1964 Civil Rights Act. We can't deny that democratic institutions are swayed by numbers and the laws under which we live originally come from voters who put men and women in positions of power to pass new ones or change old ones. The Obama administration is no different. It knows that their success in support of us depends to a large extent on our open support of them, including support on issues that do not touch us in the same way as basic civil rights do.
If you haven't already, speak up. It often works.
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Friday, October 9, 2009
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize
Congratulations to President Obama on receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. It was a great idea but the timing was not so helpful to President Obama or the United States.
I hope that people try to remember that in the last 9 months President Obama's international travel schedule, his speeches and the work being done by his surrogates - especially Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - represent a renewal of the notion that in order claim being the leader of the free world we must promote diplomacy, attempt to find common ground, nurture relationships among nations and not simply stand in front of a military arsenal as our sole source of power. Preventing war is sometimes more difficult than waging one. There are too many nuclear powers out there to believe that military strength alone can win the day.
I already believed that President Obama could be a strong contender for the Prize during his presidency but awarding it to him this early opens the door for Republicans and Obama haters to minimize the value of the Prize. This is one topic where there are plenty of rational reasons to engage in some debate about what the Prize means, who deserves it and why we should care.
Woodrow Wilson won the Prize in 1919 not because he joined allies to fight WWI. He won it because he spent countless hours attempting to establish the League of Nations - the doomed precursor to the United Nations. He ultimately failed in that endeavor but those who bestowed the honor did so not because he won the war (he had plenty of help from other nations to do that) but because he made a huge effort to prevent future wars through the development of solid relationships and dialogue among nations. He spent months in France in the aftermath of that war to establish principles on which all free nations could agree. He got bogged down when some of those nations could not give up the idea that Germany had to be forced to pay reparations that bankrupted the country. Germany's humiliation had a role in the emergence of National Socialism. As Germans used wheelbarrows full of currency in order to buy bread during the 1920s, they permitted the emergence of Adolph Hitler to tell them what they wanted to hear. The winning allies in WWI not only got reparations. They also changed borders, cut off ethnic groups from each other and got their revenge. It took fewer than 20 years for Axis powers to build up a new arsenal of weapons and exploit the frustration and fears of their citizens to justify another World War.
At the conclusion of WWII, Wilson's vision became much more attractive to the victors. Instead of demanding reparations from Axis powers, the Roosevelt and Truman administrations hatched the Marshall Plan to help rebuild the vanquished nations. We stopped being stupid for a minute and realized that we would be better off paying billions to rebuild so we could actually trade with some of these countries and, at the same time, deprive the Soviet Union of establishing dominion over Western Europe. Had we decided to ignore the lessons of the aftermath of WWI and leave Europe in ruins, I believe we would all be speaking Russian today - and not by choice.
Obama understands this history. His predecessor apparently did not. If you don't think President Obama deserves the Prize (at least now), then we must look to history. Wilson's Prize came after a spectacular failure but he made the effort and was later proved to be right about what he hoped to accomplish. If Obama's Prize is inappropriate, so was Wilson's.
I hope that people try to remember that in the last 9 months President Obama's international travel schedule, his speeches and the work being done by his surrogates - especially Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton - represent a renewal of the notion that in order claim being the leader of the free world we must promote diplomacy, attempt to find common ground, nurture relationships among nations and not simply stand in front of a military arsenal as our sole source of power. Preventing war is sometimes more difficult than waging one. There are too many nuclear powers out there to believe that military strength alone can win the day.
I already believed that President Obama could be a strong contender for the Prize during his presidency but awarding it to him this early opens the door for Republicans and Obama haters to minimize the value of the Prize. This is one topic where there are plenty of rational reasons to engage in some debate about what the Prize means, who deserves it and why we should care.
Woodrow Wilson won the Prize in 1919 not because he joined allies to fight WWI. He won it because he spent countless hours attempting to establish the League of Nations - the doomed precursor to the United Nations. He ultimately failed in that endeavor but those who bestowed the honor did so not because he won the war (he had plenty of help from other nations to do that) but because he made a huge effort to prevent future wars through the development of solid relationships and dialogue among nations. He spent months in France in the aftermath of that war to establish principles on which all free nations could agree. He got bogged down when some of those nations could not give up the idea that Germany had to be forced to pay reparations that bankrupted the country. Germany's humiliation had a role in the emergence of National Socialism. As Germans used wheelbarrows full of currency in order to buy bread during the 1920s, they permitted the emergence of Adolph Hitler to tell them what they wanted to hear. The winning allies in WWI not only got reparations. They also changed borders, cut off ethnic groups from each other and got their revenge. It took fewer than 20 years for Axis powers to build up a new arsenal of weapons and exploit the frustration and fears of their citizens to justify another World War.
At the conclusion of WWII, Wilson's vision became much more attractive to the victors. Instead of demanding reparations from Axis powers, the Roosevelt and Truman administrations hatched the Marshall Plan to help rebuild the vanquished nations. We stopped being stupid for a minute and realized that we would be better off paying billions to rebuild so we could actually trade with some of these countries and, at the same time, deprive the Soviet Union of establishing dominion over Western Europe. Had we decided to ignore the lessons of the aftermath of WWI and leave Europe in ruins, I believe we would all be speaking Russian today - and not by choice.
Obama understands this history. His predecessor apparently did not. If you don't think President Obama deserves the Prize (at least now), then we must look to history. Wilson's Prize came after a spectacular failure but he made the effort and was later proved to be right about what he hoped to accomplish. If Obama's Prize is inappropriate, so was Wilson's.
Monday, October 5, 2009
Don't Ask, Don't Tell, Don't Pursue and, apparently, Don't Think
The Obama administration has announced that it will review and attempt to overturn the 1993 'don't ask, don't tell' law that keeps openly gay people out of the military. They claim that they will do it at 'the right time'. I hope the 'right time' is soon.
To me, there are two primary reasons to take another look at this law. The first is that it doesn't work the way it was promised. There were supposed to be no witch hunts and that gay soldiers who kept their mouths shut about their sexuality were free to serve and die for their country. (The law was initially explained as "dont ask, don't tell, don't pursue" - meaning that the military was not supposed to conduct investigations into soldiers' lives who were thought to be gay but never said anything or did anything to violate the law.) Many of those who lived up to their end of the bargain were discharged because they were unlawfully pursued because they were perceived to be gay.
The second reason is that it has been reported many times that many of the military's best language interpreters happened to be gay and many were discharged during what is perhaps the most critical time given the terrorist threats against our country.
If your argument against changing the law is that President Obama is not keeping his eye on the ball, you have it wrong. Keeping his eye on the ball absolutely includes paying attention to the effect of this law. If your argument is that gay men and lesbians are more sexually predatory than straight men and straight women, at least take the time to show us some numbers. If your 20 year old son is in the same barracks as a gay soldier and can't handle someone who expresses an unwanted interest in him, how in the world do you expect him to come out of the Middle East alive or uninjured?
The soldiers discharged under this unworkable policy have not been charged with any crime. They have been discharged for being who they are.
Would it change your mind if an interpreter who happened to be a gay soldier was able to warn us in time of another 9/11 plot that was ultimately thwarted because of his or her hard work, skills and intellect? How do you know it hasn't already happened? Do you have a direct line to the Pentagon?
If you have a religious belief that homosexuality is sinful or that sexual acts that gays and lesbians engage in are sinful, please take an inventory of your own sins. Confess and seek absolution for your own transgressions, pray for us if you want to, but please don't pretend that you are living a more biblically-correct life than the rest of us. As far as I know, there is no point system in the Bible or whatever religious text you read that makes one person better than another in the eyes of God. To me true believers are humble and rarely speak about their beliefs outside of their churches, synagogues or temples unless it is to actually help another person. I don't trust people who wave bibles at me. All it shows me is vanity and a possible superiority complex that should keep some psychologist busy speaking with them for years to come.
To me, there are two primary reasons to take another look at this law. The first is that it doesn't work the way it was promised. There were supposed to be no witch hunts and that gay soldiers who kept their mouths shut about their sexuality were free to serve and die for their country. (The law was initially explained as "dont ask, don't tell, don't pursue" - meaning that the military was not supposed to conduct investigations into soldiers' lives who were thought to be gay but never said anything or did anything to violate the law.) Many of those who lived up to their end of the bargain were discharged because they were unlawfully pursued because they were perceived to be gay.
The second reason is that it has been reported many times that many of the military's best language interpreters happened to be gay and many were discharged during what is perhaps the most critical time given the terrorist threats against our country.
If your argument against changing the law is that President Obama is not keeping his eye on the ball, you have it wrong. Keeping his eye on the ball absolutely includes paying attention to the effect of this law. If your argument is that gay men and lesbians are more sexually predatory than straight men and straight women, at least take the time to show us some numbers. If your 20 year old son is in the same barracks as a gay soldier and can't handle someone who expresses an unwanted interest in him, how in the world do you expect him to come out of the Middle East alive or uninjured?
The soldiers discharged under this unworkable policy have not been charged with any crime. They have been discharged for being who they are.
Would it change your mind if an interpreter who happened to be a gay soldier was able to warn us in time of another 9/11 plot that was ultimately thwarted because of his or her hard work, skills and intellect? How do you know it hasn't already happened? Do you have a direct line to the Pentagon?
If you have a religious belief that homosexuality is sinful or that sexual acts that gays and lesbians engage in are sinful, please take an inventory of your own sins. Confess and seek absolution for your own transgressions, pray for us if you want to, but please don't pretend that you are living a more biblically-correct life than the rest of us. As far as I know, there is no point system in the Bible or whatever religious text you read that makes one person better than another in the eyes of God. To me true believers are humble and rarely speak about their beliefs outside of their churches, synagogues or temples unless it is to actually help another person. I don't trust people who wave bibles at me. All it shows me is vanity and a possible superiority complex that should keep some psychologist busy speaking with them for years to come.
Thursday, October 1, 2009
Is it time to rethink how we deal with unemployment?
It is probably too early to determine whether the current federal stimulus money that has been appropriated to save the banking and auto manufacturing industries will have its intended effect. Most economists predict that even if the stimulus money is effective, the unemployment rate will either remain where it is or even increase for a period of time because adding employees lags behind improvement in business conditions.
Without throwing a monkey wrench into the ambitious legislative agenda being pushed by the White House, I believe it is time to think ahead, on the theory that the U.S. will experience more cycles of growth and recession and the unemployment increases that accompany those cycles. It is even more critical if this latest recovery will be legitimately characterized as a "jobless recovery". The current system is nearly a century old, born out of the New Deal in the 1930s and has not been significantly changed since then. The nation's needs at that time are different from today's needs. For the most part, the jobs are different. As jobs became more complex, we have necessarily credentialized a large part of the labor market. Let's not forget that a person in the 1930s without more than a high school diploma was considered qualified to get a responsible banking job (if one existed), get promoted and have a lifetime career. Barack Obama's grandmother was one of them. Of course, that's very different from today's reality.
Over the last decades, federal and state governments have tried to blunt the impact of many of the problems associated with unacceptably high unemployment, including COBRA options, training programs, government-sponsored public works and numerous other strands of an improved safety net.
I still recall very vividly the conversation I had my with my high school guidance counselor over 25 years ago, when he realized that I had included in my academic schedule an auto mechanic's class that I wanted to take. Whether he had the authority to do so I'll never know, but he forced me to take another "academic" elective to replace the trade-based class. He bluntly told me that it would be a waste of my time and would not be viewed favorably by the best universities that he assumed would accept me. My motive, by the way, was not to become an auto mechanic. I just wanted to be able to do basic work on my old car and thought it was a good idea to have a skill other than writing a good essay. If I was told that I was barred from the class because it was already full with students who intended to pursue a career in that area, I would have backed away and probably forgotten about it. In my counselor's defense, I was accepted at Cornell University as he expected and went on to law school. I admit that I was offended that he seemed to assign little value to BOCES programs.
In New York State the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) has for decades offered trade-school education for high school students who are not college-bound. The reality is that a huge part of the 18 year old population is either not college-bound or will never finish a degree program. They are locked out of many jobs but not all of them, particularly skilled trade jobs provided they get those skills during high school. BOCES and institutions like it around the country, in my view, are extremely important. People like me own cars that need repair from time to time. We need welders, nurses' aides, and many other service providers that are immune from having their jobs shipped overseas but don't require 4 year (or sometimes even 2 year) college degrees.
Others have written about the value of community colleges and suggest that those colleges offer more skilled-trade coursework. In theory, that makes sense. The problem is not that community colleges are incapable of enhancing or creating those kinds of courses of study. The problem is the lack of funds to establish or improve those courses and the lack of funds of potential students that would benefit from those offerings. Community college appears pretty cheap to many people but for some potential students, they don't have the money to enroll and even if financial aid made it possible, they often must work full-time jobs as soon as they receive their high school diplomas, either to become independent of their parents or to assist their families in meeting their financial obligations. [After I initially posted this piece, the NY Times reported on the exact same dilemma faced by college students. Jump to this link if you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/education/10graduate.html?ref=us
Obviously, many skilled trade jobs include a required apprenticeship to achieve journeyman status and may not have to attend much traditional classroom instruction in order to develop the skills necessary to get real jobs. Some employers will do all of their own training but many will pay a "trainee rate" in the meantime. That doesn't necessarily work for a kid who needs more than that for transportation, food and housing.
There must be more creative ways of giving skill-development opportunities to high school kids while they are in high school. I am sure that some high schools do a pretty good job with the resources they have but many lack the funds to provide those opportunities.
How should we deal with this? If we ignore a race to the bottom, there will be millions more kids who throughout adulthood get stuck in minimum wage jobs. If that is acceptable to you, congratulations. You don't need to do a thing, but we all should remember that these kids and their employers will be paying much less in payroll taxes that keep Social Security and Medicare intact. Scrambling for work or living on the economic edge in general doesn't leave much time for political awareness or participation. To me, that makes participation in a democracy a privilege, not a right. I would hate to think that few people care about that. I am not a conspiracy theorist but there are plenty of people who believe that we consciously stack the deck against these kids because we're afraid that the pool of potential fast-food employees will shrink and it will end up costing us more for a Big Mac. If that's true, it's a tragedy.
Without throwing a monkey wrench into the ambitious legislative agenda being pushed by the White House, I believe it is time to think ahead, on the theory that the U.S. will experience more cycles of growth and recession and the unemployment increases that accompany those cycles. It is even more critical if this latest recovery will be legitimately characterized as a "jobless recovery". The current system is nearly a century old, born out of the New Deal in the 1930s and has not been significantly changed since then. The nation's needs at that time are different from today's needs. For the most part, the jobs are different. As jobs became more complex, we have necessarily credentialized a large part of the labor market. Let's not forget that a person in the 1930s without more than a high school diploma was considered qualified to get a responsible banking job (if one existed), get promoted and have a lifetime career. Barack Obama's grandmother was one of them. Of course, that's very different from today's reality.
Over the last decades, federal and state governments have tried to blunt the impact of many of the problems associated with unacceptably high unemployment, including COBRA options, training programs, government-sponsored public works and numerous other strands of an improved safety net.
I still recall very vividly the conversation I had my with my high school guidance counselor over 25 years ago, when he realized that I had included in my academic schedule an auto mechanic's class that I wanted to take. Whether he had the authority to do so I'll never know, but he forced me to take another "academic" elective to replace the trade-based class. He bluntly told me that it would be a waste of my time and would not be viewed favorably by the best universities that he assumed would accept me. My motive, by the way, was not to become an auto mechanic. I just wanted to be able to do basic work on my old car and thought it was a good idea to have a skill other than writing a good essay. If I was told that I was barred from the class because it was already full with students who intended to pursue a career in that area, I would have backed away and probably forgotten about it. In my counselor's defense, I was accepted at Cornell University as he expected and went on to law school. I admit that I was offended that he seemed to assign little value to BOCES programs.
In New York State the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) has for decades offered trade-school education for high school students who are not college-bound. The reality is that a huge part of the 18 year old population is either not college-bound or will never finish a degree program. They are locked out of many jobs but not all of them, particularly skilled trade jobs provided they get those skills during high school. BOCES and institutions like it around the country, in my view, are extremely important. People like me own cars that need repair from time to time. We need welders, nurses' aides, and many other service providers that are immune from having their jobs shipped overseas but don't require 4 year (or sometimes even 2 year) college degrees.
Others have written about the value of community colleges and suggest that those colleges offer more skilled-trade coursework. In theory, that makes sense. The problem is not that community colleges are incapable of enhancing or creating those kinds of courses of study. The problem is the lack of funds to establish or improve those courses and the lack of funds of potential students that would benefit from those offerings. Community college appears pretty cheap to many people but for some potential students, they don't have the money to enroll and even if financial aid made it possible, they often must work full-time jobs as soon as they receive their high school diplomas, either to become independent of their parents or to assist their families in meeting their financial obligations. [After I initially posted this piece, the NY Times reported on the exact same dilemma faced by college students. Jump to this link if you're interested: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/10/education/10graduate.html?ref=us
Obviously, many skilled trade jobs include a required apprenticeship to achieve journeyman status and may not have to attend much traditional classroom instruction in order to develop the skills necessary to get real jobs. Some employers will do all of their own training but many will pay a "trainee rate" in the meantime. That doesn't necessarily work for a kid who needs more than that for transportation, food and housing.
There must be more creative ways of giving skill-development opportunities to high school kids while they are in high school. I am sure that some high schools do a pretty good job with the resources they have but many lack the funds to provide those opportunities.
How should we deal with this? If we ignore a race to the bottom, there will be millions more kids who throughout adulthood get stuck in minimum wage jobs. If that is acceptable to you, congratulations. You don't need to do a thing, but we all should remember that these kids and their employers will be paying much less in payroll taxes that keep Social Security and Medicare intact. Scrambling for work or living on the economic edge in general doesn't leave much time for political awareness or participation. To me, that makes participation in a democracy a privilege, not a right. I would hate to think that few people care about that. I am not a conspiracy theorist but there are plenty of people who believe that we consciously stack the deck against these kids because we're afraid that the pool of potential fast-food employees will shrink and it will end up costing us more for a Big Mac. If that's true, it's a tragedy.
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