Authoritarian follow-up

Sara Robinson at Orcinus posted Part III: Escape Ladders of her brilliant series on authoritarians based on John Dean's book, Conservatives Without Conscience. You can read Part I: Defining the Authoritarian Personality here and Part II: Listening to the Leavers here or excerpts with my comments on RealSpiel here and here, plus an Olberman interview with John Dean about authoritarians here.

In Part III, Sara begins her essay with an explanation that:

Assorted polls ...have in recent years put the number of hard-core religious and political conservatives at somewhere between a quarter and a third of American voters. Wherever the number actually falls within that range, there are certainly enough of them in the voting base to dominate our political landscape. (To put it in a historical perspective: in 1932, when Hitler was elected president of the Reichstag, the Nazi party was consistently garnering 31 to 38 percent of the German vote. That's all it takes for an organized, passionate group to take control of a country.)

John Dean says that 23% of the population are pure right-wing authoritarian followers but Sara asks for a pointer to data whether "hard-core religious and political conservatives" have decreased or increased over the past 30 years. According to The Public Eye Magazine, Summer 2003:

In one recent study, about half of the people in the United States in the year 2000 reported they were adherents of an organized religious belief system.[1] Depending on how the question is asked, some 25-45 percent of the population report that they see themselves as either Born-Again Christians, or, in the broadest sense of the word, Christian "Evangelicals." ...

[...]

In the broadest sense, according to Gallup polls, the number of persons in the United States who described themselves as either Evangelical or Born-Again between 1976 and 2001 fluctuated between 33 percent and 47 percent with a reasonable estimate being 35 percent of the population or just over 102 million people in 2003.[6] There seems to be a small long-term increase in the number of people reporting themselves in this category with 34 percent in election year 1976 and 45 percent in election year 2000. Using a different methodology and set of definitions, Barna Research has found that 41 percent of the population identifies as Born-Again using a broad definition, but only 8 percent accept all the tenets in a list of strict conservative doctrinal beliefs.[7]

Significantly, Christians, including Evangelicals, do not vote as a bloc, even within specific denominations. In the year 2000, when 45 percent of the population told the Gallup poll they were Evangelical or Born-Again, 84 percent of White Evangelical Protestants who voted cast ballots for Bush and 16 percent for Gore. One study found that 40 percent of the total vote for Bush in 2000 came from Christian Evangelicals, making it the largest single voting bloc in the Republican Party. However, Black Protestant voters, a majority of whom are Evangelical, voted 96 percent for Gore and only 4 percent for Bush. Contrast this with Jewish voters who voted 77 percent for Gore and 23 percent for Bush; and Roman Catholic voters who voted 57 percent for Bush and 43 percent for Gore.[8]

When all Evangelicals were polled regarding their Party and voting preferences, some of the results were surprising. Not surprising is that almost half of all Evangelicals are Republicans, while only one-quarter are Democrats. Yet, the single biggest bloc (among all Evangelicals) in 2000 was non-voters at 52 percent, followed by Bush voters at 37 percent and Gore voters at 11 percent. Even among Republican partisans (comprising 47 percent of all Evangelicals), while 77 percent voted for Bush, 33 percent chose not to vote; making non-voters the second biggest voting bloc in the Christian Right. Independent Evangelicals gave 19 percent and 18 percent of their votes to Bush and Gore respectively, but the biggest bloc for Evangelical Independents was also non-voters at 41 percent.[9] Many Evangelicals are "swing voters" oscillating between the Republican and Democratic Party; and many more simply feel neither Party represents their interests.

While on average older Evangelicals tend to lag slightly behind the average U.S. resident in education and income, there is a "continuing trend toward the GOP, as younger, better-educated, and wealthier Evangelicals replace an older, less upscale Democratic political generation."[10] Evangelicals who are politically or socially active, especially conservatives, seem to be increasingly upwardly mobile, suburban, highly-educated, and with above-average incomes, contrary to many popular stereotypes.[11] One group of scholars found that between 1978 and 1988, "Christian Right activism occurred predominantly in rapidly growing—and relatively prosperous—suburban areas of the South, Southwest, and Midwest."[12] Conservative Evangelicals also do a better job at rallying their own forces to vote. In 2000, 79 percent of Evangelicals who voted for Bush had been contacted at least once by a politicized religious group or individual, as compared to 36 percent of Gore voters.[13]

Many in the Christian Right tend to get their information—and thus their political worldview—not from major corporate media, but from alternative media produced within the large Christian Right subculture.[14] The most exclusionary and antidemocratic members of the Christian Right are often members of Christian political action groups such as Concerned Women for America.[15] These are groups that regularly spread alarmist and frequently inaccurate claims about liberals, radicals, gays, and feminists. The more frequently a self-identified Evangelical/Born-Again person attends church functions, and the more conservative the theological doctrine and social beliefs they follow, the more likely they are to vote Republican.[16] This especially stands out on the issue of abortion, with 73 percent of Evangelical Bush voters responding that abortion should be illegal in all cases, compared to only 23 percent of Evangelical Gore voters.[17]

Protestant churches with socially conservative agendas, that also require a high level of participatory commitment, are the fastest growing sector of religion in the United States. For example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) increased its membership between 1990 and 2000 by 19.3 percent to a total of over 4.2 million. Following in order of growth are the Churches of Christ and the Christian Churches, both with 18.6 percent growth rates; the Pentecostal Assemblies of God with 18.5 percent; and the Roman Catholic Church with 16.2 percent. At the same time, traditionally more liberal denominations—such as the Presbyterian Church USA and the United Church of Christ—are losing membership. The Catholic Church is still the nation’s largest single religious belief system, with over 62 million adherents in the year 2000 (some 22 percent of the population), but if all Protestant religious groups are combined, they number 66 million adherents (some 23 percent of the population).[18]

One study has suggested that as the more socially conservative and doctrinaire Christian Right Evangelicals have expanded their control of the Republican Party, members of more liberal major Protestant denominations have backed out of being active in the Party, and many have stopped voting Republican, some going so far as to declare themselves as Independents.[19] They are reluctant, however, to vote Democratic without a compelling reason.

The arguments from the Democratic Leadership Council that Democrats need to move to the center to attract these and other voters and thus win elections, however, are not based on persuasive factual evidence. Teixeira and Rogers have found that when Democratic candidates offer clear leadership and stress progressive and liberal issues such as economic fairness, health care, education, and the environment, that many voters will set aside their conservative social issue concerns and reject Republican candidates. According to Teixeira and Rogers, many of these voters are part of the White working class.[20] This is the same demographic group among Christian Evangelicals that tend to vote Democratic or not vote.[21]

While we unequivocally defend reproductive rights, women’s rights, and gay rights, we have to leave some space in the public square for those who disagree with us. Veteran organizer Suzanne Pharr, director of the Highlander Center in Tennessee, urges progressives to find ways to challenge the ideas of the Christian Right while agreeing to disagree with individual followers in a respectful manner that would allow us to trade a cup of sugar with them if we shared a backyard fence as neighbors.[22] When we ridicule those who have spiritual values and conservative politics, we force them to defend themselves by challenging us. Why antagonize them when our goal is resisting oppression?

We need to distinguish between people who believe abortion is a sin and those who attack clinics—a tiny fraction of Christians who oppose abortion. We can challenge both groups without unfairly lumping them together. We need to abandon focus group phrases such as "religious political extremist" that demonize observant Christians by falsely implying they are linked to neonazi race hate groups. Every direct mail letter that raises funds by demonizing Christian evangelicals in general as "The Radical Right" sets back the movement for progressive social change.

In election 2000 in state level races, when Blacks and labor union members turned out and voted for a specific candidate, the Christian Right and conservative candidates often lost the election.[23] This shows that if we build truly democratic progressive coalitions that include Blacks and other people of color, labor union members and other wageworkers, women, people in LGBT communities, environmentalists, and progressive people of faith, we can consistently outvote the Christian Right.

I hope some of these statistics help Sara Robinson and I will resume excerpts commenting on her terrific Part III on authoritarians in a subsequent post.

A Christian conservative's legacy of child abuse

Another sexocrite bites the dust:

The longtime leader of the Oregon Christian Coalition and staunch opponent of gay rights admits in a newly released police report that he sexually touched three underage girls years ago, despite denials of such behavior to a newspaper.

Lou Beres denied sexual-molestation allegations when the Oregonian newspaper first reported them in October. But a Gresham (Ore.) Police Department report released as part of a lawsuit said Beres "readily admitted sexually touching" one girl when she was 13 or 14 years old.

Beres also acknowledged sexually touching a 16- or 17-year-old friend of his daughter in 1976 or 1977.

[...]

In March, Beres, 70, was sued in Multnomah County circuit court for $2.1 million by a relative who said he molested her repeatedly between 1963 and 1966.

Gresham police last fall investigated the allegations that Beres had molested underage family members. But Multnomah County District Attorney Michael Shrunk said the statute of limitations would prohibit any criminal charges because the allegations occurred so long ago.

[...]

However, other relatives expressed concern to police that the abuse continued for several years through more than one generation of the family, according to the report.

In a telephone call with an investigator, Beres "made admissions to three separate victims at three different times," the police report said. "All involved underage females. The offenses ranged from kissing to touching the breast of an underage girl.

Beres identified the victims as his sister-in-law and two friends of his daughters, said one of the investigators, according to Det. Lee Gosson of the Multnomah County Sheriff's Department. "It should be noted that Mr. Beres said his activities with the girls were in a playful fashion," Gosson said. "I told him that the acts were sexual, and he agreed."

Kaempf said that in addition to disputing the statements in the police report, Beres also denied the allegations in the lawsuit. A hearing is scheduled next month on a motion by Kaempf to dismiss the lawsuit.

When asked about Beres's relationship with the Oregon Christian Coalition, Kaempf said Beres would ask the coalition to "file the necessary paperwork with the state to formalize Mr. Beres's resignation as its chairman."

[...]

The Oregon Christian Coalition shut its office last year and does not appear to have any paid staff. Tim Nashif of the anti-gay Oregon Family Council said the coalition is "not doing anything" in the state as far as he can see. Nashif noted that Beres, once active in Republican politics, got almost no support when he tried to win a seat on the Republican National Committee. (AP)

Beware of sexocrites who oppose lesbian and gay sexuality. It's as if their condemnation of a legit sexual minority whom they deride as an aberrant and immoral "lifestyle choice" (ignoring the scientific evidence that lesbian and gay sexuality is normal) magically rids them of their own disowned and chosen deviant behavior. Are all religious conservatives pedophiles? No, but to uncover sex offenders, let us scrutinize religious conservatives who denounce gays and lesbians. I can personally attest to the anti-gay perverts that populated my family's fundie church. Projection is a powerful tool for denial of a pervert's own crimes. See here and here and here.

The Bible is not the source

Reviewing Wayne Grudem's book, Evangelical Feminism & Biblical Truth: An Analysis of More Than 100 Disputed Questions, more errant Biblical literalism:

Click here for the first post in this series.

Chapter two looks at what roles Scripture states men and women ought to perform in the church. This week, we’ll look at the theoretical case now, and then next week we’ll look at the second half of the chapter’s practical application.

The first point, as it ought be, is that the church should recognize the equal value and dignity of men and women. “Both men and women are in God’s image, and we share that status equally. We are equally valuable to God and equally important to God’s work in the world and in the church. In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit is poured out in a new kind of fullness on both men and women.” (62) However, equal value does not mean equal function. [With emphasis added in boldface.]

I disagree with the equal but separate function philosophy. When did Christ present two separate roles: One for women and one for men? He didn't as best as we can tell given the way the church patriarchy altered New Testament scriptures. More from the review:

With Scripture as our foundation, we should consider where the lines in church practice should be drawn. “We should not make rules that the Bible does not support, and we should not add restrictions to ministry positions when the Bible does not justify these restrictions. Where the Bible allows freedom, we should encourage ministries by women as well as men.” (63)

I strongly disagree with "Scripture as our foundation" thinking. God is the source--not the Bible. From the first post in the series comes...:

This Biblical model can only be worked out when husband and wife each avoid errors of distortion in either being too passive or too aggressive with their roles. Apart from headship, the man’s responsibility is to provide for and protect his family. Apart from support, the woman’s responsibility is to care for the home and nurture the children.

Wrong. The woman's responsibility is to listen to God--not to the Bible, not to the alleged "headship" of men, not to a patriarchal church with an ax to grind. Women have equal access to the Creator, the Source of All Life, for divine guidance. Looking to men for women's roles in life, church, and family, is asking the wrong source. And that's a sin and a waste of time.

People taking the Bible literally without knowledge of how the New Testament was edited by scribes who had a particular sexist viewpoint of women's roles in life and the church is tragic. To cling to the ancient past not realizing the agenda that men had in writing, copying, and altering the Gospels for ideological purposes is truly sad. A reminder from textual scholar Bart Ehrman (an evangelical who started his training at the Moody Bible Institute, not exactly a hotbed of subversiveness) not to take the Bible literally:

I became interested in the manuscripts that preserve the New Testament for us, and in the science of textual criticism, which can supposedly help us reconstruct what the original words of the New Testament were. I kept reverting to my basic question: how does it help us to say that the Bible is the inerrant word of God if in fact we don't have the words that God inerrantly inspired, but only the words copied by the scribes––sometimes correctly but sometimes (many times!) incorrectly? What good is it to say that the autographs (i.e., the originals) were inspired? We don't have the originals! We have error-ridden copies, and the vast majority of these are centuries removed from the originals and different from them, evidently, in thousands of ways.

God is still speaking and alive in our hearts and minds. Why turn to a document that has no original manuscript and is a reconstruction filled with tens of thousands of errors from 1000s of years ago for spiritual guidance when we have access directly to the Living God today? Puzzles me. Do some based-on-the-Bible-only Christians think God is dead and the Bible is the only source of wisdom? I rely on the Living Word of God directly given, inspired, moment by moment of everyday. Look within. Pray and listen. That's my advice. I don't need a flawed idiomatically peculiar book written by men with their agenda to tell me how to serve God or what a woman's role is. That's for God to say.

UPDATE: I realize that atheists or agnostics who may wander in here may take issue with some of my statements because I believe in God as the source of All That Is. The context of my post was addressed to believers. However, I am clear that my personal faith is not scientific fact. I don't believe in imposing my spiritual ideas on anyone, and that freedom of religion and free speech are best served under the separation of church and state. Substitute the word, God, with the word, Self, and that's the common ground we share. Bottom-line for me...does one's belief or non-belief serve us in making our world loving, peaceful, just, more prosperous, and free from fear for us all equally? Doesn't matter to me if you believe in 20 gods or none at all, to paraphrase Jefferson. The God I hold in my being offers no condemnation either way.

Next, I recognize that some Christians do not follow the Bible word for word. But if you have questions, pray, meditate, and listen to the inner voice. You will get answers by calling forth the Christ that is within you. Seek and you will find. Peace be unto you.

Sculpting Hillary's boobs

In the tradition of objectifying women sexually, male artist Daniel Edwards sculpted a buxom Hillary Rodham Clinton to present, as his describes, the "first" presidential portrait of Hillary:

"I've depicted Hillary Clinton in the traditional manner as befits the head of state -- with head held high and face matured with wisdom," says Edwards, "but with unmistakable 'sexual power' as a nod to Sharon Stone." The bust prominently portrays Mrs. Clinton's cleavage spilling from a lacy, low-cut inaugural gown with her bare shoulders enhanced by a "delicate" nape.

Head of state...sexual power...Sharon Stone...huh?! Stone said, "...a woman should be past her sexuality when she runs. Hillary still has sexual power and I don't think people will accept that. It's too threatening." Isn't it sad when women parrot patriarchal poppycock?

I bet Nixon, FDR, and maybe even Lincoln had some fierce man bosoms and, um, sexual power. How did they get elected? Let's talk about how sexy JFK was. Where are the topless busts of male heads of state? I truly think Bush has too much sexual power...and way too much of another kind. He led conservatives to discriminate against a sexual minority.

Hat tip to Pam who entitled her post, "sHillary..." which I take to mean that the bust is a stunt for attention. Quite possibly.

Seriously, though, what is it with men and boobs? Envy? Possessiveness? Immaturity? Objectification? Male entitlement? All of the above? Sheesh. What a world.

2008 UPDATE: Apparently, Pam's use of "sHillary" isn't what I thought, instead a smear against Hillary. Gawd! Took me a bit to catch up to her hatred for HRC, unthinkable to me as a lesbian feminist. It's not like Hillary Clinton is a colonized acolyte of male entitlement like Phyllis Schlafly, one of the Women of the Poison Peds.

Recovering from authoritarianism

Sara Robinson posted Part II in her series on authoritarianism with an emphasis on the followers who recover and some reasons why: betrayal by authority, permission from authority, contact with people outside an authoritarian system, neutral ground to meet others, travel, resolution of fear, and turning points that can act as a "path into authoritarianism" or a "path out." She describes the "wall" between authoritarian followers and the rest of us. Her essay is worth the click.

As a recovered fundie, I would describe my authoritarian experience like living within a segregationist community--not in the racial sense of segregation although a streak of racism ran through my family system--but more as an ideological conclave. The work of recovery entails the proverbial changing hearts and minds. Sara:

We know, for example, that fear can transform the behavior of otherwise rational and not particularly authoritarian people. Fear creates physiological changes that impair the brain's ability to reason, and drives people to fall in behind whatever leader presents himself without asking too many questions. Like all herd animals, we are biologically driven to close ranks tightly behind the alpha in times of trouble. Resisting that impulse sometimes means fighting our own evolutionary imperatives. And, as we are now too well aware, unscrupulous leaders will not hesitate to create, manipulate, and perpetuate fear in order to activate that instinct and keep their followers at heel.

Thus, some people who've never been natural followers sometimes get caught up in authoritarian religion and politics in the wake of deep personal losses: unemployment, divorce, a death in the family, arrest, and so on. Entire populations (or, at least, a good fraction of the whole) can take the same path when faced with large collective losses. Kevin Phillips, in American Theocracy,, points out that the South's authoritarian streak (which always ran deep) grew rigid and hard after their loss in the Civil War. Karen Armstrong, in The Battle for God, points out that fundamentalist movements commonly begin in communities that perceive themselves under economic, political, or geographic siege. The way America came together under FDR after Pearl Harbor is the stuff of national legend. And the Bush Administration has exploited this tendency shamelessly in the wake of 9/11.

Cut loose from our moorings, in over our heads, we all look for something solid to hold onto. No matter how strong we are, we've all got areas where we are brittle and vulnerable. It's hard for any of us to say for sure that we'd walk away from an authoritarian leader who promised us precisely the right kind of salvation in precisely the wrong moment. This is something to bear in mind whenever we deal with authoritarian followers: they have simply responded to an impulse that exists -- at least to some degree -- in all of us.

Ah, compassion. If we can but respond compassionately to people who have fallen into fear, isn't a return to love the way out? And if our brothers and sisters can't do it for themselves, who among us has been inspired to reach out and extend the hand of compassion? I included the above drawing, Walking On Water, because symbolically, it reminds us that "love wakes us up, causes us to rise above that which we fear and keeps us whole." Such an idea isn't exclusively Christian. How can we reach out in the midst of a threatening storm and overcome fear? How can we respond compassionately to those who have persecuted us? That's the challenge I face, we all face.

John Dean on authoritarians

In my previous post, I cited Sara Robinson whose insightful summation of John Dean's latest book is a must-read at Orcinus. To complement Sara's work, I thought I'd post excerpts from a Keith Olberman interview of the former Nixon White House Counsel about Conservatives Without Conscience.

Dean says that 23% of the population are pure right-wing authoritarian followers. He elaborated:

It‘s a remarkable analysis of the authoritarian personality, both those who are inclined to follow leaders, and those who jump in front and want to be the leaders.

It was not the opinion of social scientists, it was information they drew by questioning large numbers of people, hundreds of thousands of people, in anonymous testing, where they conceded, you know, their innermost feelings and reactions to things.  And it turned out that these people were—most of these that came out of the testing were people who had been prequalified to be conservatives, and then they found that this, indeed, fit with the authoritarian personality.

OLBERMANN:  Does it really—do the studies indicate that it really has anything to do with the political point of view?  Is it—would it be easier to essentially superimpose authoritarianism over the right than it would the left?  Or is it theoretically possible that they could they have gone in either direction, and it‘s just a question of people who like to follow other people?

DEAN:  They found—they have found really—maybe a small, 1 percent of the left, who follow authoritarianism, probably the far left.  But as far as widespread testing, it is just overwhelmingly our conservative orientation.

OLBERMANN:  There is an extraordinary amount of academic work that you quote in the book.  A lot of it is very unsettling.  It deals with psychological principles that are frightening and that may have faced other nations at other times, in Germany and Italy in the ‘30s coming to mind in particular.

But what—how does it apply now?  And to what degree should it scare us?  And to what degree is it something that, that, that, that, that might still be forestalled?

DEAN:  Well, to me, it was something of an epiphany to run into this information.  First, I‘d never read about it before.  I sort of worked my way into it until I found it.  It‘s not generally known out there what‘s going on.  And I think, from best we can tell, these people, the followers, a few of them, will change their ways when they realize what they‘re doing,  not even aware of their behavior.

The leaders, those who were inclined to dominate, are not going to change a second.  They‘re going to be what they are.

So by and large, the reason I write about this is, I think we need to understand it, we realize, when you take a certain step and vote a certain way and head in a certain direction, where this can end up.  So it‘s sort of a cautionary note.  It‘s a warning as to where this can go, because other countries have gone there.

OLBERMANN:  And the idea of leaders and followers going down this path, and perhaps taking a country with them, requires—this whole edifice requires an enemy, communism, al Qaeda, Democrats, me, whoever, for the two minutes hate.  I mean, there is—we overuse—I overuse the Orwellian analogies to nauseating proportions.  But it really was, in reading what, what, what, what you wrote about, and especially what the academics talked about, there was that, that two minutes hate thing.  There has to be an opponent, an enemy, to coalesce around, or the whole thing falls apart.  Is that the gist of it?

DEAN:  It is one of the things that, believe it or not, still holds conservatism together, because there are many factions and conservatisms, and their dislike or hatred of those they portray as liberal, who will be anybody who basically disagrees with them, is one of the cohesive factors.  There are a few others, but that‘s certainly one of the basics.

There‘s no question that the—particularly the followers. they‘re terribly, they‘re very aggressive in their effort to pursue and help their authority figure out, or their authority beliefs out.  They will do whatever needs to be done, in many regards.  They will blindly follow.  They stay loyal too long.  And this is the frightening part of it.

Dean and Olberman discussed the Republican politicization of terrorism to retain control of the presidency through "ever-increasing threats of terrorism" and fear-mongering, an extremely poignant subject with the midterm elections less than 90 days away and given the exploitation of the recent British terrorist arrests:

DEAN: What I‘m saying is that there has been fear-mongering, the likes of which we have not seen in a long time in this country.  It happened early in the cold war.  We got accustomed to it, we learned to live with it, we learned to understand what it was about and get in proportion.  We haven‘t done that yet with terrorism.

And this administration is really capitalizing on it and using it for its political advantage.  No question, the academic testing shows, the empirical evidence shows, that when people are frightened, they tend to go to these authority figures, they tend to become more conservative. So it‘s paid off for [Bush-Cheney] politically to do this.

[..]

I focused in the book not on the Bush administration, and Cheney and the president, but I—because they really—I‘ve been there, done that.  But I wanted to understand is the—what they have done is, they have made it legitimate to have authoritarianism.  It was already operating on Capitol Hill.  After the ‘94 control by the Republicans of the Congress, it recreated the mood, it restructured the Congress itself in a very authoritarian style, in the House in particular.

Now, the Senate hasn‘t gone there yet, but it‘s going there, because more House members are moving over.

This atmosphere is what Bush and Cheney walked into.  They are authoritarian personalities, Cheney much more so than Bush, and they have made it legitimate, and they have taken it way past where anybody‘s ever taken it in the United States.

[...]

The lead researcher in this field told me, he said, I look at the numbers in the United States, and I see about 23 percent of the population who are pure right-wing authoritarian followers.  They‘re not going to change.  They‘re going to march over the cliff.  The best thing to deal with them—and they‘re growing.  And they have tremendous influence on Republican politics.  The best thing, the best defense is understanding them, to realize what they‘re doing, how they‘re doing it, and how they operate.  Then it can be kept in perspective, then they can be seen for what they are.

OLBERMANN:  You‘ve been a historian, you‘ve been a part of history, you‘ve been to the (INAUDIBLE) -- one of the central moments of history in the 20th century.  What kind of danger—are we facing a legitimate threat to the concept of democracy in this country?

DEAN:  I don‘t think we are in a fascist road right now.  We are so close to it, though, Keith, that‘s why I wrote the book, because I want people to understand exactly what is going on, and why it‘s going on.

Thank you, John Dean.

In FDR's famous inaugural speech, he stated that "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself." When conservatives cannot control their own fear--imagined or real--the reflexive drive to control others becomes great, their need to feel strong and safe almost pathological. Let's hope we can assuage that fear. And soon before the fear-mongering escalates into World War III.

Authoritarians: who are they?

I've been meaning to blog about John Dean's, Conservatives Without Conscience, and the authoritarian personality, but Sara Robinson at Orcinus already did and quite well. Dean based his book on academic studies from 50 years of research, which Sara handily summarizes. First, the basics (with emphasis added in bold):

Authoritarians come in two flavors: leaders and followers. The two tiers are driven by very different motivations; and understanding these differences is the first key to understanding how authoritarian social structures work.

Leaders form just a small fraction of the group. Social scientists refer to this group as having a high "social dominance orientation (SDO)" -- a set of traits that can be readily identified with psychological testing. "These are people who seize every opportunity to lead, and who enjoy having power over others," says Dean -- and they have absolutely no qualms about objectifying people and breaking rules to advance their own ambitions. High-SDO personalities tend to emerge very early in life (which suggests at least some genetic predisposition): you probably remember a few from your own sandbox days, and almost certainly have known a few who've made your adult life a living hell as well.

High-SDO people are characterized by four core traits: they are dominating, opposed to equality, committed to expanding their own personal power, and amoral. These are usually accompanied by other unsavory traits, many of which render them patently unsuitable for leadership roles in a democracy:

Typically men
Intimidating and bullying
Faintly hedonistic
Vengeful
Pitiless
Exploitative
Manipulative
Dishonest
Cheat to win
Highly prejudiced (racist, sexist, homophobic)
Mean-spirited
Militant
Nationalistic
Tells others what they want to hear
Takes advantage of "suckers"
Specializes in creating false images to sell self
May or may not be religious
Usually politically and economically conservative/Republican

I suspect that SDO leaders are typically male due to the way we socialize boys differently than girls. Boys have been taught to be more achievement-oriented, to win, to beat the competition, to fight, and to lead. Girls are socialized to be more relationship-centric, caring, nurturing, deferring to authority and males, and to follow, even changing their identity at marriage in taking their husbands surnames. For a quick example, look to the outmoded patriarchal influence in some religions. By "God's authority," men can be priests and are the heads of households while women can't be priests and should submit to their husbands. The gap in "leadership" indoctrination impacts careers, self-worth, and other areas of life. I'm offering a simplistic explanation but I'll address these distinctions in the future.

Dean notes: "Although these collations of characteristics…are not attractive portraits, the are nonetheless traits that authoritarians themselves acknowledge." In other words, these guys know what they are, and are often quite unabashedly proud of it.

High-SDO people are drawn to power, and will seek it ruthlessly and relentlessly, regardless of the consequences to others. Many cultures (including ours, up until a few decades ago) have found these people so dangerous that they've evolved counterweights and backstops that conspire to either keep them away from the levers of power, or mitigate the damage they can do (and I'll discuss some of those in the last installment). However, modern America seems to have lost all vestiges of this awareness. Now, we celebrate our most powerful social dominants, pay them obscene salaries, turn them into media stars, and hand over the keys to the empire to them almost gratefully. They have free rein to pursue their ambitions unchecked, with no cultural brakes on their rapacity. They will do whatever they can get away with; and we'll not only let them, but often cheer them on.

We’re now at the point where these sleek Machivellian manipulators are recognized around the world as the face of American business and governmental authority. While the bulk of "Conservatives Without Conscience" goes on to explain the ways in which various members of the Bush administration have demonstrated classic high-SDO behavior, I'd also argue that our willingness to accept high-SDO leadership also accounts for toxic bosses, incompetent business planning, crooked accounting, political graft, and many of the other dysfunctions that afflict American corporate life as well.

Let me pause for a moment and express my agreement in Sara's last statement. I've been in discussion with Genet about the destructiveness of the conservative movement over the past few decades. I certainly don't blame the "Bushies" for everything when a complicit and incurious mindset has passively allowed or actively participated in the neocon's political rise to power. And there's more to life than politics--careers, family, religion, culture, community, and self-actualization, the latter or lack thereof, being more critical to generation after generation of people who don't think.

For explanations, I turn to Alice Miller whose wealth of psychoanalytical writings and study can be summed up (although not adequately) as the legacy of our upbringing; how we discount, humiliate, and subvert the autonomy of children as individuals and beget adults seeking external power and approval outside of themselves, a constant endeavor that can never fully be satisfied. Rather than looking within for empowerment, children and later adults look for objects and others to act as "love object" substitutes to fill the void that's missing inside for a healthy, well-nurtured self-identity, a key ingredient being self-awareness. Indeed and regrettably, parenting too often demands that children "shalt not be aware." Do as I say or as they say robs the child of developing the ability to think for herself or himself. Do I blame parenting entirely? Mostly, yes, I do, but with the caveat that education, religion, and society-at-large has a major "parental" influence; also, at anytime, an adult can chose to heal and take responsibility, whereas children as dependents cannot without assistance or an "enlightened witness." That's why I advocate an entirely different approach to parenting, education, and mentoring. Liberating women from the chore of child-rearing would also be fundamental and transforming the patriarchy, which is itself by its primary definition a parental authority. But that's for another blog entry. Now, back to Sara (her emphasis in bold):

And yet, while these leaders are compelling, they will not be the main focus of my discussion of authoritarians. As I said: these personality traits emerge as early as three or four, and people who have them are almost always well beyond the reach of change. They have always been with us, and probably always will be. Since they represent a very small slice of the population, dealing with them effectively will, in practice, largely involve strategies to recognize them, isolate them, and prevent them from aggregating large hordes of followers.

It's those followers that we need to look at -- because they are sometimes capable of change, if you know where the leverage points are. The next two parts of this series will focus exclusively on them; for now, let's look at what Dean and Altemeyer have to say.

While the high-SDO leaders are defined by Dean as dominating, opposed to equality, desirous of personal power, and amoral, right-wing authoritarian followers have a different but very complementary set of motivations. The three core traits that define them are:

1. Submission to authority. "These people accept almost without question the statements and actions of established authorities, and comply with such instructions without further ado" writes Dean. "[They] are intolerant of criticism of their authorities, because they believe the authority is unassailably correct. Rather than feeling vulnerable in the presence of powerful authorities, they feel safer. For example, they are not troubled by government surveillance of citizens because they think only wrongdoers need to be concerned by such intrusions. Still, their submission to authority is not blind or automatic; [they] believe there are proper and improper authorities…and their decision to submit is shaped by whether a particular authority is compatible with their views."

2. Aggressive support of authority. Right-wing followers do not hesitate to inflict physical, psychological, financial, social, or other forms of harm on those they see as threatening the legitimacy of their belief system and their chosen authority figure. This includes anyone they see as being too different from their norm (like gays or racial minorities). It's also what drives their extremely punitive attitude toward discipline and justice. Notes Dean: "Authoritarian aggression is fueled by fear and encouraged by a remarkable self-righteousness, which frees aggressive impulses."

3. Conventionality. Right-wing authoritarian followers prefer to see the world in stark black-and-white. They conform closely with the rules defined for them by their authorities, and do not stray far from their own communities. This extreme, unquestioning conformity makes them insular, fearful, hostile to new information, uncritical of received wisdom, and able to accept vast contradictions without perceiving the inherent hypocrisy.

Conformity also feeds their sense of themselves as more moral and righteous than others -- a perception that's usually buttressed by the use of magical absolution techniques that they use to "evaporate guilt," in Dean's words. Because they confessed, or are saved, or were just following orders, they can commit heinous crimes and still retain a serene conscience and sense that they are "righteous people." On the other hand, when it comes to outsiders, there is no absolution. Their memory for even minor transgressions is nothing short of elephantine (as Bill Clinton knows all too well).

Dean lists other traits of right-wing authoritarian followers, most of which flow directly from the three core traits above:

Both men and women
Highly religious
Moderate to little education
Trust untrustworthy authorities
Prejudiced (particularly against homosexuals, women, and followers of religions other than their own)
Mean-spirited
Narrow-minded
Intolerant
Bullying
Zealous
Dogmatic
Uncritical toward chosen authority
Hypocritical
Inconsistent and contradictory
Prone to panic easily
Highly self-righteous
Moralistic
Strict disciplinarian
Severely punitive
Demands loyalty and returns it
Little self-awareness
Usually politically conservative/Republican

Remember this list, because these specific characteristics form the foundation of the discussion that will unfold in the next two posts. It is these traits that we will find the cracks in the wall.

Yes, I will remember. Again, I am stricken with how the list encompasses so much of what Alice Miller has written from Drama Of The Gifted Child, to Banished Knowledge to Thou Shalt Not Be Aware to her more current book releases, The Truth Will Set You Free and The Body Never Lies. Sara concludes her terrific post:

As a final point: Dean's book puts to rest once and for all the right-wing shibboleth of "liberal fundamentalists" and "liberal authoritarians." Altemeyer and his colleagues have found, through decades of research, that authoritarians almost universally skew toward the far reactionary right on the political scale. This very much includes Stalinists and other "left-wing" totalitarians: though these men used socialist rhetoric to create "Communist" political orders, they're classic examples of high-SDO leaders taking control by whatever means they had at hand, and using them to create archetypal far-right authoritarian states. Dean and Altemeyer make it clear that authoritarianism is, by long-accepted definition, overwhelmingly a right-wing personality trait.

Dean is also emphatic that authoritarianism, in all its forms, is completely antithetical to both classical conservatism (he still considers himself a Goldwater conservative), and to the founding ideals of America. We must be clear: when right-wingers threaten liberals, they are directly threatening the seminal political impulse that created our nation. An operative democracy depends on having a populace that is open to new ideas, able to think for itself, confident in its abilities, willing to take risks, and capable of mutual trust. America was founded as the world's first radically liberal state. History has shown us that the nation's best moments, past and future, are created by people with a strong liberal orientation.

Authoritarians aren't merely constitutionally incapable of this kind of cultural and political openness; they are actively hostile to it, and seek to stamp it out wherever they find it. Everything in their souls drives them to dismantle the democratic impulse, and bring people under the heel of hierarchical authority -- which is why history has also shown us that the nation's worst moments, past and future, are created by people with a strong right-wing authoritarian orientation.

So true. And I'm looking forward to to Sara's next two parts in the series and her ideas about how to "[map] the cracks in the wall, find effective ways to widen them, and eventually exploit them to help both afflicted individuals and our larger culture break through the insanity." Hopefully, I contribute to the discussion having been a person who "[survived] to tell the tale." For now, I hold two thumbs up to Sara. Let us spread the word.

Thou shalt not be aware, Andrew Sullivan

From Andrew Sullivan (with emphasis):

...the proclaimed Bush policy was not mere deployment of brute force, torture, bombs and swagger as a response to the civil war within Islam. It was ostensibly to create a beach-head for modernity and democracy in Iraq. That, at least, was the rationale I signed onto. Now, maybe in retrospect, the idea of a beach-head for democracy was always just a cover for Rumsfeld and Cheney to try to terrify a bunch of "barbarians" with brute force. And in so far as the war was designed this way, the Bush administration's general incompetence and brutality has, of course, done the precise opposite. It's actually emboldened the enemy, made the West look weak, and lost us potential support in the vital center of Muslim opinion. Send too few troops into Iraq and of course the Islamists think we're unserious. That's why I couldn't support Bush again last time around; and why I hope the Democrats take back at least one chamber this fall - if only to put a break on the Queegs and Strangeloves in the Pentagon and the Veep's office.

But, for all Cheney's and Rumsfeld's flaws, they are at least proposing something serious, however ineptly carried out....

I won't dignify Sullivan's post with a link. I don't take him seriously enough to dialogue, an assessment backed by the lack of comments on his blog. However, you can read the rest of Andrew's rumination by visiting his blog and looking for The War and the Democrats dated, Aug. 10, 2006, at 8:22 PM.

Basically, I get the feeling that he's miffed at Democrats who don't wish to clean up the mess on Aisle Iraq that the Bush Administration broke. See, that's the problem, within the framework of how conservatives think, Iraq is a place, a location, a geography. When in truth, Iraq is comprised of different types of minds--Sunni, Kurds, and Shia--who have disagreed with each other for decades. Or more. Conservatives see Iraq as a "beach-head" for their ideals, not a group of divergent people who have their own set of ideals.

Military action cannot change the way people think. Freedom is a state of mind, and for those who have forgotten, review Maslow's hierarchy of needs. If one can't satisfy the basics of survival, who cares about self-actualization when the greater concern of staying alive eclipses being free and democratic? Replacing a force with another force is merely a lateral move with zero progress in the transcendence necessary to create a nation of free people. The Iraqis didn't invite us. Bush's war was predicated on the false pretense that Saddam was a threat to our national security that's been so thoroughly disproved. Collectively, Iraqis weren't ready for democracy and who knows when they will transition into embracing the idea of equality and freedom for all. Our continued occupation isn't inspiring them. Nonetheless, even after the initial mistake of invading Iraq, we could have left the Iraqis alone--respecting their process rather than inserting our will upon them--after deposing Saddam. Imperialists aren't capable of thinking this way because they have an agenda--theirs. Civil war would have ensued, you say? Ha! Civil war escalates by our very presence. Murtha's plan to redeploy our troops has always made sense, and too bad, such an idea wasn't grasped initially before proceeding to occupy Iraq and impose the inherently self-serving neocon plan for its reconstruction--an approach that has failed miserably.

And yet, Andrew fails to understand the operating fallacy beneath "the rationale" he "signed onto."

My friend Genet advises not to waste time by getting sucked into the patriarchy's agenda lest you, too, get colonized. Andrew Sullivan exemplifies her argument. Although Sully is a gay man, he supports the patriarchal neocon delusion that a democratic state can transform the Mideast into a coalition of democratic-leaning Islamic nations through imperialism. For all the Republican rhetoric about the pre-9/11 mindset--a mode of thinking often blamed on liberals--conservatives (who think as Sully) are stuck in some century long, long ago. Neocons don't realize how un-modern the proposition of invasion and occupation is. As if heterosexuality by force would suddenly, Poof! Turn Andrew straight. I'm sure some heterosexuals would seriously advocate "liberating" Sully from his ho-mo-sex-u-al-i-ty. Tragically, Sullivan cannot see the parallel futility of "liberating" Iraq.

Neal Boortz, hate speech of the week

Winning hearts and minds:

Boortz continued smearing Muslims on the August 10 broadcast of Cox Radio Syndication's The Neal Boortz Show, during which he stated, "It is perfectly safe to say all terrorists are Muslims. All of them. If it was not for the religion of Islam, this world would be a much, much, much more peaceful place today. If it were not for the religion of Islam, there would be many thousands, maybe tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people alive today living peaceful, happy, and fulfilled lives than there are. Agony, misery, death is occurring all over this world, brought to us by the wonderful, peaceful religion of Islam."

Although Media Matters for America has not documented Boortz using the specific term "raghead," on the July 19 edition of his radio program, he called the prophet Muhammad "a phony rag-picker" and stated that Islam is "a religion of vicious, violent, bloodthirsty cretins."

On the August 4, 2004, edition of his radio program, Boortz mocked Shahada (the Islamic creed), which reads, "There is no true God but God, and Muhammad is the messenger of God." Boortz then stated, "Say that with conviction, folks, and the next thing you know, you're strapping on a suicide bomb." During the same broadcast, Boortz read from a book titled A Brief Illustrated Guide to Understanding Islam. Boortz read a list of topic headings -- "It goes into things like the universe, and the cosmos, and how wind moves clouds" -- before making his point: "I'm looking for the part in here where it tells them to go out and kill people who aren't Muslims. And then I don't see it." Boortz then dismissed Muhammad as "a guy who got bored selling secondhand clothes," and then started a religion.

Apparently, Neal didn't get the White House memo.

Exploiting the latest terror alert, part 2

Good grief! Talk about exploitation. Will the press report it? Ha!

Ann Coulter and fiction

After James Frey's A Million Little Pieces controversy, one would expect a publisher such as Random House to carefully scrutinize a manuscript before it went to print. Steve Ross, senior veep and publisher of Crown Publishing Group and publisher of Crown Forum, divisions of Random House Inc., defended plagiarism charges leveled at Ann Coulter and her Godless book by calling them, "trivial," "meritless," and "irresponsible." But are they?

Capable of heavy-lifting, Media Matters answered with the facts identifying a "plethora of problems" that ranged from invented fictions to misrepresentations. This caught my eye in particular although so many more examples illustrated Coulter's distortions of the truth:

2. On Page 248, Coulter wrote:

In an article in the New York Times on intelligent design, the design proponents quoted in the article keep rattling off serious, scientific arguments -- from [Michael J.] Behe's examples in molecular biology to [William] Dembski's mathematical formulas and statistical models. The Times reporter, who was clearly not trying to make the evolutionists sound retarded, was forced to keep describing the evolutionists' entire retort to these arguments as: Others disagree. 2

That's it. No explanation, no specifics, just "others disagree." The high priests of evolution have not only forgotten how to do science, they've lost the ability to formulate a coherent counterargument.

The New York Times article Coulter cited -- "In Explaining Life's Complexity, Darwinists and Doubters Clash" -- appeared on August 22, 2005, as Part 2 of a three-part series on the debate over the teaching of evolution. Coulter's claim that the article's author, reporter Kenneth Chang, offered "[n]o explanations" and "no specifics" from the proponents of evolution is flat-out false. Chang offered detailed explanations of how evolutionary mechanisms gave rise to blood-clotting systems, modern whales, and speciation among birds on the Galapagos Islands ("Darwin's finches"). Chang also noted: "Darwin's theory ... has over the last century yielded so many solid findings that no mainstream biologist today doubts its basic tenets, though they may argue about particulars." Finally, and most egregiously, the phrase "others disagree" appears nowhere in the article.

Did you notice Coulter's conflation of religion and science in the high priests of evolution? Interesting propaganda ploy. How many readers will question whether Ann's book contains false information or make the effort to find out? Just for fun and for demonstration purposes, let me give Coulter's fictional technique a spin...

In an article about sexual minorities by Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family, religious leaders and Biblical textual scholars quoted in his piece cited several errors most often used to condemn the lesbian and gay lifestyle--Pauline texts from the New Testament that have proven not to have been authored by the apostle and other scriptures that were altered by copyists with a ideological agenda to advance--none of which Dobson was able to dispute. He did not address the belief that gays and lesbians are part of God's plan or the scientific evidence that all sexual minorities are a naturally-occurring, biologically-induced inclination within the human species just as heterosexuality is. The doctor, who didn't like church homophobes appearing ignorant or bigoted, was reduced to arguing in his defense: "God told me so."

Say! That felt good. Sign me up, publishers. I could write a book as good as Ann Coulter can! But shucks. No such Dobson article has ever been published. Well, I could make stuff up. Ann did. No worries. Godly: The Church of LGBT. However, my writing would be original, reality-based, and I could finish in a month or two.


UPDATE: Oh, what was I thinking? Godly: The Church of the Lesbianati. Ah, much better!

Exploiting the latest terror alert

Sheesh! But, oh, so predictable.

Terror plot disrupted: British police arrest 21 suspects

Something oddly familiar about the latest GWOT news. As I've watched CNN, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and DHS Michael Chertoff discussed how a law enforcement investigation foiled an imminent plot to blow up planes inbound from the UK or outside the US. New details from British authorities said that electronic devices such as iPods or key fobs could have been used to detonate a liquid or gel explosive disguised as Gatorade or in toiletries. They were banning airline passengers from bringing such items in carry-on bags onto flights. The plan involved "mass murder on an imaginable scale" on as many as 10 planes. Law enforcement officials believe that the British-born suspects in custody may have ties to al Qaeda and some of the would-be terrorists were of Pakistani descent. The plot was reminiscent of a 1990s conspiracy that targeted jumbo jetliners, to explode them as they flew over the ocean. President Bush took a moment during his travels to state that the plot was a "stark reminder that there is still a war...that this nation is at war with Islamic fascists who will use any means...to hurt our nation."

I can't put my finger on it...but, something seems very familiar. Oh, yes, now I remember. Is the GWOT a "war" or a global law enforcement and intelligence gathering effort?

REAL

British police acted urgently overnight, arresting 21 people who were plotting to carry liquid explosives onto as many as 10 jetliners in what U.S. government officials said privately could have been the biggest terrorist attack since 9/11.

Information gathered after recent arrests in Pakistan convinced British investigators they had to act urgently to stop the plot, sources told CNN.
--CNN, Air travel in chaos after terror threat 'busted', August 10, 2006

REAL

...they are really misleading all of America, Tom, in a profound way. The war on terror is less -- it is occasionally military...

But it's primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world...
--John Kerry, Transcript: Democratic Candidates Debate in South Carolina, moderator Tom Brokaw, Janary 29, 2004

SPIEL

...Senator Kerry has questioned whether the war on terror is really a war at all. Recently he said, and I quote, "I don't want to use that terminology." In his view, opposing terrorism is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law enforcement operation. As we have seen, however, that approach was tried before, and proved entirely inadequate to protecting the American people from the terrorists who are quite certain they are at war with us - and are comfortable using that terminology.
--Vice President Dick Cheney, Remarks by the Vice President at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, March 17, 2004

SPIEL

Terrorism is not a law enforcement matter, as John Kerry repeatedly says. Terrorist activities are not like gambling. Terrorist activities are not like prostitution. And this demonstrates a disconcerting pre-September 11 mindset that will not make our country safer. And that is what we see relative to winning the war on terror and relative to Iraq."
-- Republican Party Chairman Ed Gillespie, on CBS' "Face the Nation, CNN, Bush campaign to base ad on Kerry terror quote, October 11, 2004

Isn't it ironic that good old-fashioned police work and intelligence gathering would foil a terrorist plot and stop a "mass murder" from occurring?

So why did we invade Iraq exactly?

UPDATE: Of course, I didn't raise the question of whether the non-stop GWOT news currently hyped on all the TV channels is a political manipulation. Is it Real or is it Spiel? Banish the thought. American leaders would never do such a thing.

UPDATE II: Ivo Daalder at TPM Cafe makes the case, "...more proof that America and the world need to stay the course in their global war on terror. But, of course, it proves no such thing."

And in the comment thread at FDL, McGee @ 51 snips a response from former CIA analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who's stuck in Europe, watching British Authorities meltdown in the face of an alleged terrorist plot.

Why would I vote for a Democrat?

I'm taking a stand. I am sick of holding my nose to vote for Democratic challengers or incumbents who continue to be intimidated by the Republican Party's apartheid stance on lesbians and gays. Initially, my disenfranchisement grew after President Clinton's 1993 flip-flop over lifting the ban on gays and lesbians in the military. He broke his promise after courting pink votes during his 1992 presidential election. Perhaps more egregiously for a Georgia voter such as me, my Democratic senator opposed Clinton's changes to the military policy from the Reagan-Bush Administration and threatened to legislate a permanent ban.

Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with a cabal of military commanders attacked Clinton's initiative to rescind the anti-gay ban just after Bill entered the Oval Office. After Judge Hatter's decision that stated...

...[t]he Department of Defense's justifications for its policy... are based on cultural myths... very similar to the reasons offered to keep the military racially segregated in the 1940s...

...and a flurry of judicial, legal and political maneuvers, the newly-minted president caved in to tenacious pressure as a congressional statute authorized, Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The march to codify gay discrimination didn't stop there. In 1995, after Republicans swept into power, Congress enacted and Clinton signed the Solomon Amendment, legislation that denied DOD funds to schools (some people resist discrimination) that barred military recruiters from campuses. In 1996, the law was amended to include funds from the Departments of Education, Labor, and Health & Human Services.

Consequently, in protest, I did not vote after 1992 until the 2000 election when I got a whiff of what Texas Republicans such as George W. Bush would envision for our future (not a pretty picture.). However, I did not remain silent through the 1990s. A blessing in disguise, Clinton's 1993 reversal and the resultant bigotry over gays in the military motivated me to finally undertake painting queer and feminist Christology, art that I had conceptualized in 1991. I decided to answer gay apartheid with artistic courage and foster my spiritual belief that God created who we are albeit a sexual minority. Exercising my faith, I believed that Christ did not condemn lesbians and gays and conceivably could have had a male lover.

Since the fateful 200o election, I have rallied to support Democrats with my money and my vote to blunt the advance of Republicans who pandered to homophobic voters and the Religious Right's anti-gay agenda. I also vehemently opposed the invasion of Iraq and later voted for John Kerry in 2004 both in the primary and the general election. I had put aside my grievance with the Democratic Party over DOMA and its sometimes wishy-washy attitude towards gay equality. But, on Tuesday, my patience ran out.

When Georgia Democratic voters in the 4th District delivered a victory to Hank Johnson by more than 12,000 votes over Cynthia McKinney in the runoff election, I was absent from the approximately 70,000 voters who turned out. My partner and I participated in the primary to stop Ralph Reed (which I'll explain in a minute) and in the 2004 primary when McKinney barely edged out five other contenders. Yet, 33,591 less Democratic voters went to the polls in this July 18 primary compared to the one in 2004. Why?

From my perspective as a registered voter in the 4th District of Georgia, Cynthia didn't give me a reason to vote for her. When Cynthia McKinney did not show up to vote against FMA, I did not feel compelled to show up to vote for her. Her scuffle with the Capitol police didn't overly alarm me and I liked her defiance of Bush over the years. She wasn't perfect but who is? What I cared about was whether she would represent me, her constituent, a lesbian, a marginalized minority. Perhaps I wasn't the only voter who felt this way. Cathy Woolard, a lesbian for whom I voted in the 2004 primary, received 18,164 votes--more than enough votes for McKinney to have cinched the Democratic nomination in this year's primary. But I had had enough of Democrats avoiding the "gay wedge" issue. Candidates would now earn my pink vote. And Cynthia hadn't. So on Georgia's July 18 primary election day, my partner and I did what we thought was best: We asked for Republican ballots to vote specifically against Ralph Reed and for every Republican challenger to a GOP incumbent in the field.

When Cynthia did not win a majority of Democratic votes, a predicament that put her in the position of having to face a runoff with Hank Johnson, I emailed Hank asking him whether he supported gay civil rights. Did I get a reply before the runoff? No! So Tuesday, my partner and I stayed home. I wondered if other disenfranchised lesbian and gay voters had done the same. The 4th District has an enormous gay population with Atlanta as the gay mecca of the South. I also pondered when the election results were tallied, did McKinney lose by forgetting lesbians and gays in her district, by failing to reach out to us? Who can say? I can count two votes she lost because she didn't.

Yesterday, I emailed Hank Johnson again about his views on gay rights. Will I get an answer before November? I dunno. But I do know this. I will no longer vote for a candidate who will not stand up for gays and lesbians. I will not vote against myself just to vote ABAR (anybody but a Republican). After reading Billmon's post last night and the out-of-state lobbying money that was donated to Hank Johnson's campaign, I am less inclined to vote for him.

In surveying Georgia's candidates, I don't feel I have a Democratic candidate who supports me. So sad, so true, and so disappointing. Unlike Democrats with principles and a spine such as Russ Feingold, too many have not heeded the call from civil rights voices such as the late, great Coretta Scott King or the NAACP.

I would mobilize to vote against Perry McGuire whose outrageous remarks about gay teens cannot go unanswered. However, the Democrat incumbent for attorney general, Thurbert Baker, will likely win re-election, so I see no need to go to the polls in November. ABAR is like voting for a Republican on gay civil rights in effect, so why vote for Republican Lite? Hank Johnson has already taken an antiwar position but he has not, at the time of this posting--after I have sent two emails requesting his position on gay civil rights--declared that he will support an end of discrimination against me. If he won't declare his support for my gay brothers, lesbian sisters, my partner, and me, I don't feel compelled to move my feet for him. Maybe he'll come around. I can only hope but we'll see.

As for the rest of Georgia's Democrats, I will seek clarification on their positions on discrimination against gays and lesbians. If I receive no answer or a lackluster response, neither will I answer their call to vote for them. It's as simple as that.

Republican Perry McGuire, hate speech of the week

Georgia Republican for attorney general, Perry McGuire (mentioned last night) said...

...that allowing gay clubs to meet in schools is "much like allowing a pedophile club or a gambling club to meet at school." McGuire was responding to a question about a recent federal court ruling allowing a gay-straight alliance to meet at White County High School in Georgia.

....McGuire described [the gay-straight alliance club] as a "gay sex" club. "I think the problem here, and I think where the court substantially erred, is that the intent of the act was never to allow organizations that advocate illegal activity [to have campus access]," he told Agape Press. "And in Georgia, sex between minors is illegal; statutory rape laws apply.

"Homosexual activist clubs in schools are detrimental to students and to the moral well-being of society," he continued. (The Advocate)

Does McGuire think that an exclusively straight club would advocate and engage in illegal sexual activity? And would a court that had ruled in its favor have "substantially erred?" I dare him to make such an assertion.

The fact that McGuire made his statements to a Christian news service tells me he has a theocon agenda to advance in pandering to homophobic conservative Georgians. His remarks elicit the worst in people by appealing to bigotry and superstition ignoring science, psychiatry, and psychology about gays and lesbians. As an attorney general candidate, McGuire dismisses the statistics about sex abuse in his egregiously ignorant statements, something that a potential law official should know. Heckuva job, McGuire!

I've already fired off an email this afternoon to Cynthia Tucker at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Op/Eds--Reg. Req.) expressing my repugnance at McGuire's remarks. In it I stated...

I would hope that a candidate for attorney general would understand the nature of the criminals he would prosecute. By his tying pedophiles to gay teens, he confirms he knows nothing.

Most offenders are "family men" and I have referred to these perverts in the past as "heterosexuals." But in truth, pedophiles are in a class of their own, deviants that have nothing to do with sexuality--meaning a biological trait we are born with. Heterosexuals, as do gays, lesbians, and bisexuals reside in the class of biologically-induced, naturally-occurring sexual orientation. Pedophiles don't rate such a distinction. They suffer from a disorder, a disease, that's acquired, often as victims of abuse themselves, that compels them to offend children. Such despicable acts are not about sex--but about power, control, and violence. Rape is not sex. A body part or device used to violate the private parts of a child or juvenile is the violent weapon of a pedophile. For McGuire to spread ignorance, homophobic, and outright false information transverses beyond the pale.

Examine the majority of sex abuse abuse victims and you will discover that they are overwhelmingly female. The U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (1991-1996 of 12 states--Source) reports on Sexual Assault of Young Children as Reported to Law Enforcement. The findings show:

• Females were more than six times as likely as males to be the victims of sexual assaults known to law enforcement agencies.
• More specifically, 86% of all victims of sexual assault were female.
• The relative proportion of female victims generally increased with age.
• Sixty-nine percent of victims under age 6 were female, compared with 73% of victims under age 12, and 82% of all juvenile (under age 18) victims.
• The female proportion of sexual assault victims reached 90% at age 13 and 95% at age 19.

Furthermore...

• Based on the NIBRS [National Incident-Based Reporting System] data, the year in a male's life when he is most likely to be the victim of a sexual assault is age 4. By age 17 his risk of victimization has been cut by a factor of 5.
• A female's year of greatest risk is age 14. Her risk drops to half the peak level by age 17 and to a fifth of the peak level by age 27.
• At his peak victimization age of 4, a male's risk of sexual assault victimization is just half that of females of the same age.
• In the later juvenile years (ages 14 to 17), the female victimization rates [of high school age] are at least 10 times greater than the male rates for similar age groups.

Got that? The huge majority of children and juveniles of sexual assault are female. And who are the perpetrators? The opposite sex. Again, from the same DOJ source:

• Nearly all of the offenders in sexual assaults reported to law enforcement were male (96%).
• Female offenders were most common in assaults against victims under age 6.
• For these youngest victims, 12% of offenders were females, compared with 6% for victims ages 6 through 12, and 3% for victims ages 12 through 17.
• Overall, 6% of the offenders who sexually assaulted juveniles were female, compared with just 1% of the female offenders who sexually assaulted adults.

And what about age?

Overall, 23% of sexual assault offenders were under age 18 and 77% were adults. Juveniles were a substantially smaller proportion of the offenders in forcible rapes (17%) than in sexual assaults with an object (23%), forcible fondlings (27%), and incidents of forcible sodomy (36%).

The overwhelming demographic profile of a sex offender--adult males who assault females, the opposite sex--does not fit gay high school students. However, lesbian, straight, and bisexual high schoolers, beware of male teachers and men in authority positions who use their access to children to offend!

The Catholic abuse ("sex" is a misnomer) scandal obscured the facts about pedophiles and gave homophobic ideologues an opportunity to speciously tie "gay" to "pedophile." All of this was done with the complicity of an allegedly "fair and balanced" media that did not report the truth about the statistics of sexual abuse among children and their offenders.

Yes, there are men who prey on boys. Yes, there are women who prey on girls. However, they are a minority. Follow the facts. Most sex offenders of children and juveniles are adult men and the huge majority of child victims are female. What's that tell you? It's time to dispel the myth often touted by conservative homophobes that being gay is inexorably connected to child molestation. It is not!

As Rev. Irene pointed out about hate speech aimed at minorities:

The liberation of a people is also rooted in the liberation from abusive language, which is essentially hate hurled at them. Using epithets, especially jokingly, does not eradicate its historical baggage or the existing social relations among us. Instead, dislodging these epithets from their historical context makes us insensitive and arrogant to the historical injustices done to specific group of Americans.

It allows all Americans to become numb to the use and abuse of the power of hate speech because of the currency these epithets still have.

The epithet of pedophile assumed about gay teens by McGuire smacks of ugly hate speech, the underlying message being that gays are bad, their sexuality illegal and deviant. Deputy Legal Director Judith E. Schaeffer of The People For the American Way criticized McGuire saying:

Gay-straight alliances exist to create safe, supportive environments for gay and lesbian students who all too often are victims of bullying and discrimination, to combat harassment and discrimination, and to provide information. To suggest that they exist to advocate illegal activity is just plain wrong. It’s an attempt to appeal to bigotry and exploit Georgia teens for political gain...

Research indicates that many students who are gay or perceived to be gay are verbally or physically harassed or assaulted in school. Divisive, erroneous, and mean-spirited comments like McGuire’s could increase anti-gay sentiment and lead to even more bullying of gay and lesbian young people. That’s unacceptable. All students, gay and non-gay, should be able to feel safe, and be safe, when they go to school.

For this, Perry McGuire earns recognition for Hate Speech of the Week.

RESOURCES:
Perry McGuire Website
Who endorses Perry McGuire
Perry McGuire Mailing Address:
Perry McGuire for Attorney General
PO Box 658
Douglasville, GA 30133
Telephone: 404.805.8006

Mel Gibson, hate speech, and media

The Stoning of the Drag Queen, graphite on paper

I swore to myself that I wasn't going to join the furor over Mel Gibson but Rev. Irene Monroe tied the subject to hate speech and how name-calling has become mainstream:

Hate speech is not a passive form of public speech. And one of the signs of an intolerant society is its hate speech, whether used jokingly or intentionally, aimed at specific groups of people. When this form of verbal abuse becomes part and parcel of the everyday parlance between people, we have created a society characterized by its zero-tolerance of inclusion and diversity, where name-calling becomes an accepted norm.

Lately this Republican political era of “compassionate conservatism” has brought forward an unabashed no-holds-barred attitude when it comes to passionate invective hurled at queers, African-Americans, and Jews.

In an interview with Ann Coulter, author of Godless: The Church of Liberalism, on the July 27 edition of MSNBC's Hardball with host Chris Matthews, Coulter called former vice president Al Gore a "fag,” and she hinted that Bill Clinton might be gay.

[...]

Let us not forget that the word and image of fag derives from the word faggot, which is a bundle of sticks for burning, and that LGBTQ people were supposedly righteously burned at the stake in medieval England.

And let us not forget Matthew Shepard, the openly gay Wyoming student who in 1998 was bludgeoned and left to die in near-freezing temperatures while tethered to a rough-hewn wooden fence.

Or 1999, when Billy Jack Gaither, a well-respected and beloved textile worker in Alabama, was bludgeoned with an ax handle, burned, and left to die on a pile of tires because he was gay.

And some claim the Bible refers to us stoking the fires of hell.

But the real hell we LGBTQ people confront from this type of name-calling and stereotyping is a societal disparage of sexual relations between people of the same gender, in a society where both the church and government bar us from marriage, many states bar us from adoption, and the federal government forbids our serving in the military.

According to the National Mental Health Association, gay teens hear "anti-gay slurs such as 'homo', 'faggot' and 'sissy' about 26 times a day or once every 14 minutes." Why aren't schools stopping this verbal abuse? Or worse. Almost a third of "gay youth had been threatened or injured at school in the last year alone!" Unbelievable! Can you imagine such a situation today for African-Americans? For Jewish kids? Just for being who they are? Well, maybe. And yet our society turns a deaf ear especially to bigotry and bullying that targets gays and lesbians--child or adult. Shame, shame.

More shameful, gay news media report Georgia's Republican candidate for attorney general compared gay teens to pedophiles. Where are traditional media's outcry? The local newspaper story? A candidate for the state's top law official doesn't understand who the overwhelming majority of child molesters are or the difference between a pervert and a gay or lesbian teenager! Is this conservative ignorance and bigotry to the tenth power or what? And what about the media's complicity by not reporting homophobic McGuire's remarks? I checked Google News a minute ago and not one U.S. non-gay news media outlet (except for Christian news) popped up in search results. Maybe later.

OTOH, if you've seen the news about Gibson (how could you miss it?), you've heard the anti-Semitic, sexist, vain, and profane spew that Catholic conservative Mel drunkenly gushed at police officers during his arrest. But I hadn't heard Gov. Mitt Romney's tar baby remark. Rev. Irene comments in response:

The relationship between homophobia and racism is shown in how LGBTQ and African-American civil rights struggles are pitted against each other by our enemies. It also appears in the federal government’s new HIV/AIDS supposed prevention program, which requires all public-health authorities and agencies to report the identities of HIV-positive patients. It’s a program in which African-Americans—straight or queer—will ostensibly feel profiled.

Language is a representation of culture, and it perpetuates ideas and assumptions about race, gender, religion, and sexual orientation that we consciously, and unconsciously, articulate in our everyday conversations about ourselves and the rest of the world—and, consequently, transmit generationally.

The liberation of a people is also rooted in the liberation from abusive language, which is essentially hate hurled at them. Using epithets, especially jokingly, does not eradicate its historical baggage or the existing social relations among us. Instead, dislodging these epithets from their historical context makes us insensitive and arrogant to the historical injustices done to specific group of Americans.

It allows all Americans to become numb to the use and abuse of the power of hate speech because of the currency these epithets still have.

Any kind of hate speech, sugarcoated with humor or irony or not, thwarts the daily struggle in which many us engage in trying to ameliorate human relations.

I can't decide which medium offers the worst examples of hate speech: online or offline, the blogosphere or conservative TV, radio, or newspapers? Bloggers and their comment threads host some of the most vile language I've ever read (More examples here and a diatribe here. H/t to Pam). Yet, the insidious, subtly-parsed bigoted speech--in the case of Ann Coulter types, blatant defamation--disseminated by the talking heads at Fox News, Chris Matthews, et al may cause far more damage than the blogosphere with its perceived credibility, its frequency, and its sheer reach into the public realm. As always, Media Matters can supply a regular dose of harsh language broadcasted on any day of the week. A few examples:

Boortz: Adults earning minimum wage are "incompetent", "ignorant", "stupid", "worthless," and "pathetic"

O'Reilly blasts "smear merchants" and "vampires" criticizing Mel Gibson; Rivera smears Olbermann, Stewart, and Colbert

Coulter put "even money" on Sen. Clinton "[c]oming out of the closet"

And then we have the examples of deceptive disinformation, specious propaganda, and downright ugly lies.

I'll confess my errors of referring disparagingly to "wacky doodles," the "Codpiece-in-Chief," and other sarcastic names aimed at Republicans and the Religious Right in my fondness for Hunter Thompson and Gonzo journalism. I promise to temper my rhetoric without diluting my criticism or passion for cutting-edge art. Sometimes telling the unvarnished truth is all that's needed to expose a lie, an atrocity, a grievance, or an injustice. May not cut through today's shrill atmosphere but sometimes pictures can communicate more quickly.

Earlier today, TMZ reported that Rabbi David Baron invited Mel Gibson to the Temple of the Arts for a Yom Kippur appearance so the celebrity could deliver a public apology. In his letter to his congregation (PDF), Baron wrote that he would pre-screen Gibson's penitence and sincerity, address his father's Holocaust denials, and examine whether Mel had the adequate "willingness to take the necessary steps to heal the pain he has caused." The good rabbi then closed his letter with a remembrance:

Lastly, our tradition teaches us that when someone offers a direct personal apology, in public no less, we should be prepared to open ourselves to forgiveness. This is especially true if the offending party is prepared to make amends and promises not to repeat the same offense. Please remember we are not dealing with Yasser Arafat or Hezbollah whose words and actions have resulted in the deaths and maiming of hundreds of innocent people. We are dealing with a celebrity whose alcoholic problem has exposed out latent anti-Semitism. Better a repentant sinner than an unrepentant one.

What are the chances Mel will follow through with an apology at the temple? I dunno but I wish that a major Christian church or minister would bravely invite right-wing homophobes--religious and/or political leaders--to his or her services to make amends to the LGBT community. Wouldn't that be something? More astounding, what if the news media actually covered it? Without hate speech.

IMAGES: At the top, The Stoning of the Drag Queen with cropped close-ups. Plus, the mug shot of Mel Gibson from his arrest.