This one has been sitting in my drafts for a while now. Greta Christina wrote a couple months ago about being an atheist in the LGBT community, and gay in the atheist community:
In a lot of ways, I think the atheist movement today is very much where the queer movement was in the early ’70s — newly visible, newly vocal, pissed off as hell, still finding its voice, just beginning to gain real strength. I think the two communities could learn an enormous amount from each other, and I think that they’re natural allies.
And yet, I’m having a realization that I’m finding extremely unsettling.
I’ve been an out queer, and an active participant in the queer community, for over 20 years now. I’ve felt for years like the LGBT community was my home base. I’ve only identified as an atheist for less than two years.
And yet I’m finding that I feel more at home — more welcomed, more valued, more truly understood — as a queer in the atheist community than I do as an atheist in the queer community.
In addition, I look forward to working with Congress to restore U.S. financial support for the U.N. Population Fund. By resuming funding to UNFPA, the U.S. will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries.
However, an investigation into Warren’s involvement in Africa reveals a web of alliances with right-wing clergymen who have sidelined science-based approaches to combating AIDS in favor of abstinence-only education. More disturbingly, Warren’s allies have rolled back key elements of one of the continent’s most successful initiative, the so-called ABC program in Uganda. Stephen Lewis, the United Nations’ special envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa, told the New York Times their activism is “resulting in great damage and undoubtedly will cause significant numbers of infections which should never have occurred.”
As I rode the shuttle into the office this morning – later than usual, because I was up late and overslept – I realized that, for the first time in years, I was not ashamed to be an American. This election was so much more decisive and satisfying then the last two, and I finally feel like maybe the rest of the world will no longer see us as a nation of warmongering racist illiterates. I can’t remember ever feeling this hopeful about the future.
The polls in DC open at 7 AM, so I got to the polling place at about 5:45 to make sure I could get through there quickly and get into work. There were already about 15 people there, including a few on lawn chairs or folding stools. By the time the doors opened, there were probably about 300 people behind me.
The voting part only took about 15 minutes. DC uses paper ballots with a scanner machine, so it was a lot less eventful than the big curtained booths I remember my parents voting in when I was a kid (you know, the ones with the big KA-CHUNK levers).
I probably could have voted three times if I really wanted to. My dad told me a couple weeks ago that I got some things about voting in the mail at their house, and I was on the voter roll today twice, as both Randy and Brock. I kind of figured NY would un-register me when I registered in DC, and I DEFINITELY thought DC would just change my registration when I changed my name, but apparently they make it pretty easy to commit voter fraud.
And now we wait and hope and pray that we, as a country, have smartened up a bit since 2004. I think I’ll spend the rest of my lunch break researching Canadian citizenship just in case.
Sometimes, I feel like I’m having an ideological war with myself.
Half of me is the capitalist. I want nice things. I want enough money in the bank so that I never need to think about it, so I can buy gadgets and the occasional plane tickets without having to worry about the impact on my budget. I want to be able to go out for dinner and drinks with friends whenever I feel like it.
The other half is sort of a socialist. I want everyone to get fair wages. I want everyone to receive the health care they need. I want a college education to be available to anyone who wishes to pursue it.
Those are the reasonable parts of socialism, the parts that don’t conjure images of a hippie commune where everyone shares all the money and belongings – and work. Let’s be honest, something like that could never work on the big scale, simply because enough people would take advantage of it to make it impractical. Even now, we have issues with people exploiting welfare and other public services. The liberal part of me would like to believe that people on welfare have just fallen on some hard times and need a hand getting back on their feet, but there’s no doubt that some percentage of beneficiaries are just gaming the system.
So where is the middle ground? I think everybody wants health care and education for all, but no one is willing to pay for it. The American Dream is to work hard, be successful, and live a good life – forfeiting your hard-earned gains for the sake of someone else’s good life has never been part of the Dream.
In the grand scheme of things, I’m pretty comfortable. I’ve got a nice apartment, where I keep my college diploma. I’ve got a steady job, with health insurance, that pays pretty well. If I want to pursue the fair, socialist utopia, I should be more than happy to give my share to the greater good. But that diploma came with one hell of an invoice, and weddings don’t come cheap, and Erin and I would like to buy a place of our own before too long, so I’ve got a lot of incentive to keep working to pursue the Dream and amass as much wealth as I can get my hands on.
Do we really need to sacrifice more for the greater good? A couple hours ago, I would have said no. I remembered seeing figures that put our defense spending significantly above all social services, and was going to say that more of that money should be used elsewhere. But, if Wikipedia is to be trusted, the 2008 federal budget is a lot better than I would have guessed. Some highlights from mandatory spending:
$608 billion (+4.5%) – Social Security
$386 billion (+5.2%) – Medicare
$209 billion (+5.6%) – Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
The percentages are the percent change from the 2007 budget. Not bad, really: according to this list, these programs are getting more money than I expected. At some point, I saw a pie chart of federal spending that led me to believe these programs got considerably less money than they do, but I was mistaken. Well, mostly; here’s the discretionary spending:
$481.4 billion (+12.1%) – United States Department of Defense
$145.2 billion (+45.8%) – Global War on Terror
$69.3 billion (+0.3%) – Health and Human Services
$56.0 billion (+0.0%) – United States Department of Education
Spending on the “Global War on Terror” is up 45% from last year? I mean fine, I can sort of understand the DoD budget, even if I preferred it were scaled back and actually used for defense. But another $145 billion for the War on Terror – up a whopping 45% from last year! – when only $56 billion is going to education? Seems to me we should be able to spare another $25 or so to make sure our kids can at least find the countries they’ll be sent to fight in someday. Even so, I can’t get too fired up about it, because it’s not as bad as I thought. If you expect the worse of your government, it’s easier to avoid disappointment, I suppose.
But let me bring it back to my original train of thought for a minute here: do we need to sacrifice more so that everyone can have enough? Maybe, maybe not. It seems that a hell of a lot of money is going into public health programs already, but honestly, I don’t know enough about them to say whether or not it’s working (my gut says “no”). I would love to see more money put toward education. Our schools are falling apart as it is, and college just isn’t even an option to a lot of people, financially speaking.
I guess I don’t really have a conclusion. I didn’t really have anything in mind when I started writing, sort of how Paul Graham described essays, a concept I really like:
An essay is something you write to try to figure something out.
Figure out what? You don’t know yet. And so you can’t begin with a thesis, because you don’t have one, and may never have one. An essay doesn’t begin with a statement, but with a question. In a real essay, you don’t take a position and defend it. You notice a door that’s ajar, and you open it and walk in to see what’s inside.
Please don’t vote for McCain. Unless you’re over 60, you have no excuse. McCain is older than the Golden Gate Bridge, chocolate chip cookies, Alaska, and Bugs Bunny. Is that ageism? Maybe, but I don’t think it’s too much to expect a president to survive his term. And come on, the world is changing faster and faster every day – we need someone that can keep up and has a chance of understanding the technology that drives it. If a president has to be over 35, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to say they should be under 70, too.
Vote for Barack Obama. You know, unless you hate America.
“In contrast to earlier times, our state now recognizes that an individual’s capacity to establish a loving and long-term committed relationship with another person and responsibly to care for and raise children does not depend upon the individual’s sexual orientation,” the court said in the 120-page ruling, “and, more generally, that an individual’s sexual orientation — like a person’s race or gender — does not constitute a legitimate basis upon which to deny or withhold legal rights.” (emphasis mine)
For those of you in Virginia, CNN has a statewide summary available. There’s nothing there yet, but it will probably be more interesting in a few hours when exit polls start coming in.
I was talking to my Dad on the phone yesterday when he wrapped up on the conversation with, “Well, I think I’m going to go online and check my e-mail. I haven’t looked at it in a few weeks.”
“I know, I haven’t gotten a barrage of forwards in a while.”
My Dad doesn’t use the computer much, so I always known when he’s been online because I’ve got a bunch of forwards. In any five e-mails, it’s usually one that’s funny, two political, and two religious (usually something like “we’re always so willing to forward jokes, but hesitate when it’s about Jesus” sort of things). The funny ones are usually nothing new, but entertaining to read in a “I haven’t heard that joke in six years” sort of way. Sometimes I’ll scan the religious ones quick before archiving them – religion just isn’t something that I’m going to respond to either way (one of these days, I’ll write a piece about my take on religion).
My favorites are always the political ones. I’m not politically involved – I don’t watch the news, I don’t read newspapers, I don’t take part in any kinds of rallies or groups of any sort. For the most part, my notions of current politics come from what I read in dozens of blogs every day, including sites like Fark and Sploid, which mostly just link to important news stories. I don’t follow things closely, but I hear about the big stuff and try to get some details about it. As such, I don’t really consider myself to be highly political, but I know that I’m still more in touch than most of the American population.
This is part of the reason I love reading the stuff my Dad sends me. Some of it is so over the top, so incredibly wrong and ignorant, that it’s just fun to read. I’ve seen essays purporting to be the writing of Robin Williams and a half dozen other celebrities, along with all sorts of diatribes about how we shouldn’t buy gas from Sunoco or BP for one reason or another.
Almost every time I get these, I get all fired up about it and find a bunch of articles that refute whatever thin arguments it might make, or find the Snopes page discrediting whatever by-line that might be attached. I’m always THIS close to responding and just tearing the whole thing apart, but I never do because I love my Dad and I don’t want to be a dick.
Which is sort of odd, because we argue this shit all the time when I’m home. More than once, my Mom has had to yell at us when we get to hollering at each other out in public. I quite enjoy it because I’ve always been fond of arguing, but she doesn’t like us making a scene.
Anyway, I finally responded to one of my Dad’s e-mails – one about the immigration issue. Assuming he’s actually behind all the arguments made in the article he sent me, we agree on a lot of points. I’m not sure where I stand on thing, really, but at least it was a non-partisan “shit needs fixing” take on it. Of course, given the arguments I made against the parts I’m sure he agreed with, he may never send me anything ever again, but I’m hoping he does. I figure, fighting on the Internet is less offensive to Mom, and I love arguing, even if it’s more typing than shouting and table-pounding.
I love America as much as the next guy. This country was founded on strong principles and the flexibility for cultural change. For the most part, it’s full of hard-working, honest people that love their families and strive to be good people. We haven’t quite gotten over that Jesus business, but I can overlook that for the time being. America is a powerful world leader, and considered against other countries around the word, I’m glad I was lucky enough to be born and raised here.
However, it has come to my attention that some 40% of American voters still think that our ignorant brow-furrowing idiot king hasn’t driven this country straight into the ground. How he slipped in there for another four years is beyond me, but the fact that anyone still thinks he’s a competent leader focusing on the important issues just makes me want to punch random mid-westerners.
I was struck this afternoon by the absurdity of his justification for the War on Terror – because the terrorists “hate our freedom”? Are you serious? Granted, this was five years ago, but I’ve been a little behind in my e-mail, so shut up.
Allow me to craft an analogy for you, if I may.
There are quite a few people in the area who, for one reason or another, don’t work during the day. Maybe they’re rich, maybe they’re on vacation, maybe they’re just layabouts – it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is that these people enjoy a daytime freedom I can only dream of. Am I jealous? Sure, a little. But do I spend my mornings waiting in Starbucks, sucker-punching anyone who comes in to read the paper? Do I hang out by the pool all afternoon, using sunscreen to write dirty words on the backs of napping sunbathers?
As much as I’d enjoy it, I don’t. Their freedoms, though enticing, do not interfere with my life in any way. If these people showed up where I spend my day, though, I’d probably be pissed. I don’t want someone sunning on the floor of my office by the big windows. I don’t need some guy sitting in my chair, interrupting every few minutes to read me a particularly interesting tidbit from the Post.
America is sort of like a fat guy in a Speedo, stretched out on your desk, sucking down a Big Mac. Also, he’s drunk and keeps singing the chorus of American Pie as loud as he can, even though he can’t remember all the words. We trounce around the rest of the world’s daily life, playing with the copier, stinking up the bathroom, and bumping off upper management so our buddies can get the job.
If the terrorists hated freedom, we’d be pretty far down on their list of targets (remember checks and balances? Those were neat). I’m reasonably confident that our insistence of thrusting the proverbial crotch of our Speedo’d freedom into the face of foreign nations is the reason for discontent.
Though I must say, Mr. President, that taking away our freedoms was a creative means of defending us from those who hate us for them. Good thinkin.
Oh, and for everyone who gives me the “he’s still your President and Commander and Chief!” bullshit (usually followed by a slack-jawed look of blind patriotism), just go to hell. There were people who said the same thing about King George, and do you know where that got them? UP AGAINST THE WALL WHEN THE REVOLUTION CAME, BEYOTCH.
Join us next time for Please Tell Me That You Realize How Corrupt Bush And His Cronies Are (But Did You Hear That One Guy Died Before He Could Be Sentenced?).
Nothing says “We’d like very much to be citizens” like refusing to work for or buy from any American company for a day.
Seriously, who thought that “Nothing Gringo” was a good way to support the immigration movement in the US? Remember how everyone was upset about all the Mexican flags at the protests, so people started carrying American flags instead? Good move! A national boycott, though? Not helping.
I suppose this means that Mexico will be refusing a day’s worth of American aid, and Mexicans in the US will not be taking advantage of our assorted welfare programs and other benefits extended to those living here. So hey, thanks for that. Oh, and I guess the kids won’t be attending classes at our public schools tomorrow either, huh.
I drive to work, but I’m sure the fellas at the office will appreciate the fact that the Metro won’t be as crowded. Really, that’s about the only good thing that will come out of this.
I’m assuming everyone heard about the guy who jumped the White House fence. What if he DOES have intelligence information for the President? Remember how we found out after the fact that people had intelligence pointing to a terrorist attack on 9/11?
It’s sort of like the second coming of Jesus: he can tell everyone he sees, but we’ll all just think he’s crazy.
