Connections that matter

My friends who track matters Anglican are following with gusto the rather obscure question of whether the Church of England will decide to adopt something called the Anglican Covenant. This document would try to lay out for the various progeny churches of the English state church worldwide a statement of belief and a procedure for disciplining or even expelling branches off the imperial tree that stray from or embarrass other branches.

Though the Archbishop of Canterbury promotes the Covenant, it is not popular anywhere. In particular, it seems designed to vote the rambunctious colonials in the United States off the island for including gay people in the clergy and moving toward marrying us. At present the initiative looks to be limping badly, probably failing -- and even if the C. of E. did manage to sign on to the document, it would not make a hill of beans difference to U.S. Episcopalians struggling to be faithful bearers of the good news of God's love in our own backyards.

But in this context, it was interesting to read Tony Judt's description of the Anglican Church in Thinking the Twentieth Century. Tudt, a Jewish Brit and the unequaled chronicler of Europe in the second half of the 20th century in Postwar, grew up in the shadow of this strange institution.

The Church of England was and is a weird animal: at its most conservative, it is far more ornate and tradition-bound than its Episcopalian brethren here in the U.S. In essence, High Anglicanism was Catholicism without the Pope (and without the Latin, until the Catholics themselves abandoned it). On the other hand, at its low end, the Anglican Church -- as embodied in village communities, particularly in certain parts of eastern England where Catholicism was weakest -- can resemble (except in its liturgy, long since formalized under episcopal authority) Scandinavian Protestantism: under-adorned, its authority vested in a single, often rather gaunt and morally and sartorially restrained pastor -- the kind who figures so prominently in much English literature of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Protestant in all but name.

What unites this weird religion is its long-established identification with power. From that little church in a Norfolk village through the High Anglican cathedrals of Liverpool or York, this is the "Church of England." Historically, the link between church and state in England has been unusually intimate, the ruling elite overwhelmingly drawn from Anglican families and the church itself umbilically attached to the political establishment -- not least via its great bishops, all of whom sit in the House of Lords and have in past times exercised real clout. The bishops and archbishops were typically born of a small network of families, reproducing across the years a class of ecclesiastical administrators who might just as easily have been army officers, imperial governors, royal ministers and so on. The establishment identity associated with Anglicanism is thus of far greater significance than its rather nebulous theological markers. This was above all an English church; its Christianity could at times appear almost secondary.

It is bracing to see oneself as others see one. This description sure accords with my view of the Covenant kerfuffle. Any U.S. Episcopalians clinging to nostalgic Anglophilia are likely having a tough season. ***More indicative of church life in the United States these days is probably this report via Reuters.

Banks are foreclosing on America's churches in record numbers as lenders increasingly lose patience with religious facilities that have defaulted on their mortgages, according to new data.

The surge in church foreclosures represents a new wave of distressed property seizures triggered by the 2008 financial crash, analysts say, with many banks no longer willing to grant struggling religious organizations forbearance.

Since 2010, 270 churches have been sold after defaulting on their loans, with 90 percent of those sales coming after a lender-triggered foreclosure, according to the real estate information company CoStar Group.

Yes, there are quite a few large, rich religious institutions in this country. But the deeper story is that many congregations of all sorts are in economic trouble, no longer the sole or even major community-building institution in their neighborhoods and unable to bring in the cash to support their activities.

The financial meltdown is wiping out the weakest. Lots of people probably think that is fine; religion has too often been a nasty, cramped imposition on too many of us. But these institutions are where people have met and made fellowship; I don't think virtual connections can replace the sort of face to face connections these institutions created. Even when I don't like their beliefs, I worry.

Why Daylight Saving Time?

Don't forget to spring forward tonight.

Saturday scenes and scenery: Accessible bathrooms

Bathrooms are where people whose gender is not immediately obvious on first glance most frequently experience other people's gender anxiety. Humans apparently are something like hard-wired to want to know which gender anyone we meet might be, especially in the a public restroom. This can be hard on people whose gender is not immediately obvious -- and, as a woman, I don't think women are completely crazy to want to know there aren't men in "our bathroom." Stray males can be dangerous.

The ACLU of Northern California has a solution:

Here's the door to one of two restrooms on a floor.


Just in case you are icon-challenged, this hangs alongside the door. Apparently we can be trusted to know what the wheelchair icon means.


This sign explains.


Should this seem all too much, there's always this one down the hall.

I like it. It's going to take awhile, but I suspect most of us could get used to this inclusive set up.

The national GOP through a California lens

Representation of California political geography from a new Public Policy Institute of California report.

An article by Jonathan Chait in New York Magazine headlined 2012 or Never has been the buzz of the blogosphere this week. Chait describes the Republican presidential primary as revealing a GOP sensing its own demographic annihilation and gyrating accordingly.

The Republican Party had increasingly found itself confined to white voters, especially those lacking a college degree and rural whites who, as Obama awkwardly put it in 2008, tend to “cling to guns or religion.” Meanwhile, the Democrats had ­increased their standing among whites with graduate degrees, particularly the growing share of secular whites, and remained dominant among racial minorities. …Every year, the nonwhite proportion of the electorate grows by about half a percentage point—meaning that in every presidential election, the minority share of the vote increases by 2 percent, a huge amount in a closely divided country. One measure of how thoroughly the electorate had changed by the time of Obama’s election was that, if college-­educated whites, working-class whites, and minorities had cast the same proportion of the votes in 1988 as they did in 2008, Michael Dukakis would have, just barely, won. By 2020—just eight years away—nonwhite voters should rise from a quarter of the 2008 electorate to one third. In 30 years, nonwhites will outnumber whites.

…Obama actually lost the over-45-year-old vote in 2008, gaining his entire victory margin from younger voters—more racially diverse, better educated, less religious, and more socially and economically liberal,

Yup, that's the national future, a structural Democratic majority for at least a generation.

This is not news here. I'm a Californian who has worked in state politics off and on since the 1990s. That Republicans here find themselves confined to a dwindling base of the old, the white and the aggrieved is no news. We're been there and done that and mostly the national media have missed it, written the California experience off as some left coast oddity. We're living in the world on the other side of this transition; maybe the rest of the nation would be smart to look at where California has landed, for good and ill.

Chait points out:

A strategy of managing slow decay is unpleasant, and history is replete with instances of leaders who persuaded themselves of the opposite of the obvious conclusion. Rather than adjust themselves to their slowly weakening position, they chose instead to stage a decisive confrontation. If the terms of the fight grow more unfavorable with every passing year, well, all the more reason to have the fight sooner. This was the thought process of the antebellum southern states, sizing up the growing population and industrial might of the North. It was the thinking of the leaders of Austria-Hungary, watching their empire deteriorate and deciding they needed a decisive war with Serbia to save themselves.

That last reference is to launching World War I. I think this the instinct in the dwindling Republican party as as choosing, repeatedly, to shoot holes in a leaking ship that carries them as well as everyone else. If you can't rule it, bring it down. Here in California, this took the form of enacting obstacles to taxation that ensured that the state would have a structural deficit -- it is impossible to capture a reasonable share of the wealth of the state for the purposes of the general welfare. That's a gift from the shrinking Republican rump. Our various anti-democratic obstacles to taxation -- rules adopted by white voters long gone that bar the legislature from simply enacting fiscal solutions by majority vote -- are the cause of California's notorious ongoing money crisis. The results include a once great state university system that is crumbling; crumbling canals and freeways; destitute urban centers.

You'd think that Republicans, seeing a growing non-white population, would attempt to attract the growing groups to their views. But they can't help themselves; they have to try to stomp on a rising demographic tide rather than channel it their way. Chait names their national strategy:

None of this is to say that Republicans ignored the rising tide of younger and browner voters that swamped them at the polls in 2008. Instead they set about keeping as many of them from the polls as possible. The bulk of the campaign has taken the form of throwing up an endless series of tedious bureaucratic impediments to voting in many states—ending same-day voter registration, imposing onerous requirements upon voter-registration drives, and upon voters themselves.

In California, they took an even more direct route to try to hang on for dear life. They tried to subvert demographic reality by popular vote while they could, creating structural barriers to citizen participation by the emerging majority. In 1994 they demonized immigrants (Prop. 187); in 1996, they outlawed affirmative action in state institutions (Prop. 209); in 1998, they outlawed bilingual education (Prop, 227); in 2000, they fought back against browning among the young people by pushing juvenile offenders into adult courts and prisons (Prop 21). Oh yeah, the same year they outlawed gay marriage (Prop. 22), not for the last time.

This sequence of barely veiled attacks on the emerging majority helped make California reliably and completely Democratic at the state level since 1998. Oh, but didn't you have Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger as governor for eight years? Yes, we did. The Terminator's elevation through a gubernatorial recall election is a perfect example of Chait's caution about his conclusions:

... short-term shocks, like war, recession, or scandal, can exert a far more powerful influence than a long-term trend ...

Republicans can break through as the currently configured party dwindles, but only in freakish ways. And it is worth nothing that the Governator in office could only rule by making some level of compromise with the overwhelmingly Democratic legislature; not even an action hero could turn back the demographic tide.

If the California experience is the paradigm, what's ahead for the nation at large? We're still in the denial stage nationally, much akin to 1994 here when Pete Wilson thought it was good politics to demonize Latinos in order to get elected. So expect ugly days, more figures like Sarah Palin, Rick Santorum and the Newt. But there is a glimmer of hope from the California experience as well. It doesn't seem to require demographic change to advance to numerical non-white majorities to get over the hump. A growing section of younger white voters, raised in a different world, shrug their shoulders at their elders and wonder "what is the problem?"

These folks elected Barack Obama in 2008; a smaller but similar coalition seems likely at the moment to re-elect him this year. Given the economic storm he has weathered and the rabid opposition he has encountered from Republicans fighting demographic death, that's a testament to the strength of the tide of change in the country. Though I cannot forgive him for his abandonment of any limits to extra-judicial executive power (ain't drone assassination of U.S. citizens a fun new tool?) he may well have been a more politically sure-footed president than I sometimes give him credit for, navigating the fraught waters of demographic change and drawing the crazy so personally to himself. We live in frightening, terrible times -- but I think everyone believes that of their times.

Friday critter blogging: meet Nuzzle

When you live with a spinning and knitting fanatic, creatures like this may turn up in your home.

I'm told she is named "Nuzzle."


I think she looks better after acquiring ears, don't you?

What it took for U.S. women to win the vote

On International Women's Day, let's remember that advances toward women's equality have not come without struggle.

This video tells the story of women who dared to demonstrate for the right to vote during another time of national anxiety, the dark days of World War I. They would have fully appreciated Sergeant Pepper Spray's run in with UC-Davis occupying students -- threatened authorities instinctively turn to force to repress offenders. This doesn't always work, though the injuries and the pain are real.

The Bible viewed through an inverted telescope

Reading Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why by Bart D. Ehrman felt to me like trying to see an object looking through the wrong end of a telescope. Ehrman is a textual critic of the New Testament, a professor of Religious Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill. He began his scholarly odyssey at the fundamentalist Moody Bible Institute, moved on to evangelical Wheaton College, and shed any remnant of belief in an inerrant, unquestionable scripture at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Perhaps because of his own intellectual trajectory, Ehrman writes with a view to showing that changes entered the Biblical text as soon as any particular manuscript was manually copied, were magnified by improvements and amplifications that supported the theological directions of dominant interpretations of the Christian faith, and became further muddled as the Greek original language became more distant from later readers in European vernacular languages. Only when he has worked his way up from the sort of minuscule (though perhaps important) textual changes that came misreadings of individual letters through technical changes in copying methods and in languages does he mention where my thoughts about Biblical textual interpolations would start: with the convenient way that what became the canon ratified existing power arrangements, including the principle of obedience to authority and the exclusion of women from influence within faith communities.

This author is clearly an accomplished scholar yet there are elements to this exposition that seem simply odd. For example, Ehrman writes as if we should assume that there lived a real (individual) Mark, Matthew, Luke and John who wrote full, original books of the Bible that later suffered distortion. He can't really mean that given what he explains about the evolution of the texts. But he writes as if the convenient authorial names referred to individuals whose historical reality was far more established than I imagine we have any reason to assume. Further, nowhere in his considerable discussion of the meanings of texts does he suggest that whoever these authors were, they probably were more concerned to share metaphorical truths than the sort of scientifically verifiable truths that moderns look for. There seems no reason to assume that first century C.E. understandings of "reality" were the same as ours. I'm not saying these ancient authors were ignorant or liars -- just that they had different intellectual furniture than we have.

These criticisms should not suggest that I got nothing from Ehrman's book. In fact, it was interesting to learn a little about the general principles that textual critics use to weigh ancient texts. And it was fun to learn that the classical scholar and theologian Richard Bentley (1662-1742) engaged in a style of academic polemic that exuded quite remarkable venom when he disagreed with another student of the Bible. Ehrman expresses my sentiments exactly here:

Such controversial pamphlets are a marvel to behold in our own day of subtle polemics; there was nothing subtle about personal grievance in those days. Bentley remarks that "We need go no further than this paragraph for a specimen of the greatest malice and impudence, that any scribbler out of the dark committed to paper." And throughout his reply he provides a smattering of rather graphic terms of abuse, calling Colbatch … a cabbage-head, insect, worm, maggot, vermin, gnawing rat, snarling dog, ignorant thief, and mountebank. Ah, those were the days.

Though I rapidly concluded Ehrman's book was not for me, I have no doubt that it might be eye opening to a person approaching the Bible through the other end of the telescope, a person breaking free from the effort to believe that the text was the wholly true, directly revealed, inspired word of God. It takes all kinds …

Too pooped to blog today ...

after contributing to the planet's excess carbon yesterday by flying to Los Angeles and back within 12 hours for a meeting. Maybe later.

This does my heart good

Professional hockey is one tough sport. Here NHL players step up to assert that if a gay athlete can hold his own, he can play. In that hyper-butch arena, that's a breakthrough statement. Enjoy.

Equally amazing is a report that 22 sitting Democratic Senators are calling for the Democrats to include support for marriage equality in the Democratic Party platform. Here's the list:

The 22 senators are Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), Chris Coons (D-Del.), Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.), Carl Levin (D-Mich.), Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Patty Murray (D-Wash.), Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.).

Note that Diane Feinstein is among them. True, she's running for office this year, but you know an idea has gone mainstream when she's among the supporters.

Because these guys are the experts

A little comic relief; how else to bear it?

Women's Health Experts Speak Out from Judd Nelson

H/t Time Goes By.

Wars and rumors of war: "But when have the leaders of empires been sensible?"

Guest post today from Alicia Garza, via War Times/Tiempo de Guerras. If you find this kind of wide ranging analysis of global developments helps keep your head from spinning, sign up for monthly updates at WarTimes.

SHORT FUSES ATOP POWDERKEGS
The post-9/11 Neocon dream of Washington running the entire Middle East is crumbling before their eyes. But lunatic as it seems, Republican presidential hopefuls are beating the drums for still another Middle East war.

Afghan "allies" are shooting NATO troops every other day and the U.S. war in Afghanistan is falling apart. In The End in Afghanistan? Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse report that "American officials are talking about not panicking (which indicates that panic is indeed in the air)."

Evidence piles up weekly that the war against Iraq was not only a human disaster for the Iraqi people, but an embarrassing failure for the U.S. Plans for "the largest Embassy" in the world in Baghdad have to be cut in half, and the Iraqi government is closer politically to Iran than the U.S.

But on the campaign trail here, the foreign policy discussion is dominated by Republicans attempting to whip the American public into a frenzy over Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons (which U.S. intelligence says Iran has not even decided to build!) and pledging 1,000% support for Israeli settlements and threats to attack Iran.

So at the end of this shortest month of the year the world is on an increasingly short fuse. The danger of war against Iran is front and center. But there is also the tense standoff on the Korean peninsula and upped threats for of military intervention in Syria where the powderkeg mix of a brutal regime, a divided population, sectarian tensions and Western and Israeli ambitions could engulf the whole region. And background to it all is the slow motion military redeployment toward strategic positions in the Pacific to keep China under surveillance and encircled to counter what Washington regards as the main threat to its power in the 21st century.

BRINGING IT ON: U.S. BUILD-UP IN THE PACIFIC
As analyzed in previous War Times columns, China’s continued ascent has been of great concern not only to the U.S. but to other countries that are skittish at what they consider China’s aggressive stance. Since 2009, China has surpassed the U.S. as Africa’s most important trading partner, making massive investments in Africa’s infrastructure. It has a growing military and has been increasingly assertive in staking claim to valuable disputed territories such as the energy rich South China Sea. This rise has Washington on guard, and putting the pieces in place to make sure U.S. supremacy is secure against the only power that Washington believes could become a global "peer competitor."

Underneath is the U.S. elite's growing awareness of declining U.S. economic and political power. China’s continued ascent as an economic and military power alongside increasing tensions in the Pacific region between the Koreas has had the US quietly increasing its maritime presence and troop deployment in the region.

One result is Washington's move back into the Philippines. This marks a shift from recent policy in the Philippines, which has rejected the U.S. military from its shores for the last 15 years (even though the U.S. military continues to train troops there allegedly to fight al-Qaeda-linked forces). However, with China adopting a more aggressive stance in the region, the U.S. is finding many Pacific leaders receptive to the idea of a larger U.S, military presence. Thus Reuters reports that "U.S. and Philippine officials are discussing the expansion of military cooperation" as part of a U.S. "'pivot' toward economically dynamic Asia." Similar agreements have been reached or are being negotiated with Australia, Japan, and Singapore.

Meanwhile, tensions between North and South Korea are mounting, where the powderkeg is especially explosive because there are nuclear weapons on both sides. The death of Kim Jong-il late last year was thought to perhaps usher in a new era between the two countries; however, North Korea recently began aggressive military exercises again, with orders coming from Kim Jong-un to retaliate against South Korea if provoked. And South Korea is cracking down on advocates of peace and demilitarization, especially those supporting the grassroots resistance of Gangjeong villagers to the naval base on Jeju Island.

Increasing geo-political tensions in the Pacific region have spurred the demand for drones, weapons of mass destruction that are generally used for combat and surveillance. Interest in purchasing drones is increasing from India, Japan, Korea, Singapore and Australia. As the demand increases, new companies are flourishing, spurring stiff competition with established industry giants. Suddenly, more and more governments are looking to get their hands on weapons that allow them to keep an eye on their neighbors and engage in destructive combat if necessary - creating a dangerous cycle in which everyone is gearing up for the potential of war.

DANGER: HIGHLY FLAMMABLE
While dangerous militarization grows in the Pacific region, shifting political dynamics in the Middle East create tremendous volatility. The U.S.’s failed strategy in Iraq is now quickly and visibly being repeated in Afghanistan, as anti-US sentiment spreads like wildfire throughout the country. And the threat of an attack on Iran looms over the region like a dark cloud, with Israel working in tandem with U.S. conservatives to encourage pre-emptive strikes based on exaggerated or made-up reports that has or is actively building nuclear weapons.

The ongoing outrage coming from Neo-conservatives portrays Obama as being “soft on terrorism,” despite the fact that under the Obama administration, sanctions against Iran are been the strictest that they’ve been. As the U.S. becomes increasingly de-stabilized by an ongoing recession and the effects of over-extension in the Middle East - and as popular movements like Occupy rise up to fight back - the Republicans up the volume on fear-mongering and the need for the U.S. to "Remain Number One" at any cost.

So far the Obama administration's policy has been to tighten pressure on Iran via sanctions but try to avoid a military conflict that U.S. realists see as a potential disaster for their own interests. But the administration's constant pledges of "100% support" for Israel combined with its electoral calculations about both the "Jewish vote" and need to "appear strong" could result in an about-face. With the unraveling of the U.S. position in Afghanistan, an Obama campaign that hoped to run on "victory in Iraq, success against Al-Qaeda and achievement-leading-to-withdrawal-(someday) from Afghanistan sees its plans in tatters. With it increasingly obvious that Afghans do not want foreign troops there, and a majority of U.S. people now telling pollsters that the war there "is not worth it," the sensible course would be to get out and fast. But when have the leaders of empires been sensible? History tells us that in moments like these, there is great danger of re-escalation in Afghanistan - or an attack on Iran to "show strength."

And the arguments from hawks for escalation are already being marshaled. Despite claiming victory in Iraq, it is clearer than ever that the U.S. did not achieve its goal of a pro-Western regime and that Washington spent eight years, billions of dollars, thousands of U.S. lives and hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives on a war that was both wrong and lost. And now the same anti-U.S. outrage that eventually forced the U.S. out of Iraq is boiling over throughout Afghanistan. The trigger was the burning of the Qu’ran in a trash dump outside of the largest U.S. military base in Afghanistan. But beneath that are the murderous night raids, the civilians killed by U.S. bombs, the daily humiliations of foreign occupation. It is, as Engelhardt and Turse write, "an explosion a decade in coming."

The U.S. elite - Obama administration included - fears that the Afghan outrage will only fuel further anti-American sentiment in a region forever transformed by the ongoing Arab Spring. (The Qu’ran burning and response has already been front-page news throughout the Islamic world.) This makes it difficult to achieve their objective of stabilizing the area and minimizing the damage done by ten years of over-stretch and lost wars. They are scrambling.

One place they see opportunity is Syria. Since that country's outbreak of the Arab Spring a year ago, the regime's brutal repression has killed several thousand protestors; reports vary with pro-dissident forces on the ground estimating up to 7,500 deaths. But overlaid on, and perhaps increasingly intertwined with, the popular protest are the ambitious of the Western powers and pro-Western regimes like Saudi Arabia. This month Obama released a statement intimating that the international community needed to become involved in order to halt the killing of civilians and noted that the al-Assad regime had to come to an end. Washington pressed for a UN resolution that might have authorized foreign intervention; Russia and China vetoed citing what had happened in Libya, where a mission authorized as humanitarian saving of lives turned into an operation for regime change. The U.S., Israel and Saudi Arabia want to install in Damascus a government that, unlike the current regime, is not allied with Iran or a supporter of Hezbollah in Lebanon. The threat of U.S. intervention is increasing. (Most of the left has taken a position of solidarity with the anti-dictatorship movement while opposing all foreign intervention.) How the situation will play out, what will allow the Syrian people to determine their own destiny, whether or not Syria will become another bead in the thread of disastrous U.S. interventions- all this remains to be seen.

WILL THE POWDERKEGS EXPLODE?
Events this month on the war and peace front could supply the script for a Horror Movie Award Show. The award for the “Most Dangerous Developing Situation” goes to Israel's threat to attack Iran, with Washington winning "Best Supporting Role for Another Illegal War." The “Longest Running Conflict with the Shortest Fuse" Award goes to the standoff on the Korean Peninsula; Washington gets a "Supporting' if not "Producing and Directing" nod there too.

Both situations win the “Scariest Sub-plot” award, since while all war is destructive, there are no wars quite as destructive as those that involve nuclear weapons. With political relationships and the balance of forces shifting quite dramatically in both the Middle East and in the Pacific, this awards show ends with a cliffhanger: Will antiwar movements in the U.S. and around the world be able to organize and mobilize sufficient strength to win a "Stopped the Descent Into Madness" Award by helping resolve these conflicts in the interests of peace as opposed to ongoing, endless war?

An Islamic Reformation?

Reza Aslan wants a "Reformation" within Islam; he has said that the world is watching such an upheaval within Muslim societies at this time, though outsiders may not recognize what we are seeing.

His 2005 book No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam tells the story of Islam carefully, lucidly and with warm affection for his faith's core.

Explaining Islam to western Christians requires historical narrative. After all, for Muslims, God's revelation through the Prophet Muhammed happened in known locales (trading centers on the Arabian Peninsula) at known dates (between 610 and 622 C.E.) and led to material consequences that are fully documented (one of the worlds great empires extending from Spain to the Hindu Kush). The Muslim story makes the tales of that Jewish Galilean carpenter's perambulations around ancient Palestine seem vague, mythological, in the modern pejorative sense.

Aslan is an Iranian-American, a refugee from his native country's harsh theocracy; in this book he is exploring whether his faith can be compatible with the contemporary wider world. He makes a strong case that the history of Islam contains episodes of great openness to diversity, as well as a core commitment in establishing justice and equality among people. But whether Muslim peoples can find their way to Islamic democracies remains hard for him to envision. Here's a sample of this sort of wrestling with possibilities not yet born:

Islam has had a long commitment to religious pluralism. … And despite the ways in which it has been interpreted by militants and fundamentalists who refuse to recognize its historical and cultural context, there are few scriptures in the great religions of the world that can match the reverence with which the Quran speaks of other religious traditions. …[A]cknowledging human rights in Islam is not simply a means of protecting civil liberties, it is a fundamental religious duty.

…the Islamic vision of human rights is neither a prescription for moral relativism, nor does it imply freedom from ethical restraint. Islam's quintessentially communal character necessitates that any human rights policy take into consideration the protection of the community over the autonomy of the individual. And while there may be some circumstances in which Islamic morality may force the rights of the community to prevail over the rights of the individual for instance, with regard to Quranic commandments forbidding drinking or gambling-these and all other ethical issues must constantly be reevaluated so as to conform to the will of the community. …

… any democratic society -- Islamic or otherwise -- dedicated to the principles of pluralism and human rights must dedicate itself to following the unavoidable path toward political secularization. … An Islamic democracy is not intended to be a "theo-democracy," but a democratic system founded upon an Islamic moral framework, devoted to preserving Islamic ideals of pluralism and human rights as they were first introduced in Medina, and open to the inevitable process of political secularization. Islam may eschew secularism, but there is nothing about fundamental Islamic values that opposes the process of political secularization. Only the Prophet had both religious and temporal authority, and the Prophet is no longer among us. …

Those who argue that a state cannot be considered Islamic unless sovereignty rests in the hands to God are in effect arguing that sovereignty should rest in the hands of the clergy. Because religion is, by definition, interpretation, sovereignty in a religious state would belong to those with the power to interpret religion. Yet for this very reason an Islamic democracy cannot be a religious state. Otherwise it would be an oligarchy, not a democracy. From the time of the Prophet to the Rightly Guided Caliphs to the great empires and sultanates of the Muslim world, there has never been a successful attempt to establish a monolithic interpretation of the meaning and significance of Islamic beliefs and practices. …

I've read quite a few accounts of the history and beliefs of the Islamic faith. When Muslims get to hoping for a Reformation -- a struggle within the faith to both preserve and accommodate its core within a contemporary context -- I feel like I'm being a Peeping Tom. This is up the believers, not outsiders. But we live in a world where outsiders can and will see in; a Muslim Reformation, if one is accomplished, will happen in full view of all others. Given this reality, I can heartily recommend Aslan's depiction of Islam to others peering in the global window.

What was Fort Gunny-Bags?

While toting yet another mail bucket of petitions seeking a vote on the death penalty through San Francisco's Financial District the other day, I noticed a plaque I'd somehow missed on previous trips:

These days, when downtown is a granite wind tunnel that empties out when the commuters go home at night, it is hard to visualize the area as the vibrant center of civic life. But that is exactly what it once was, when San Francisco was a bumptious frontier port in the midst of the gold rush.

Not all the money floating about was in gold nuggets. Urban crooks made out like -- well -- bandits. According to the Virtual Museum of the City of San Francisco:

Politics and the government of the city and State were neglected by the residents, and naturally the offices and emoluments fell to the criminal elements who came west. Some of the worst characters driven from New York's Bowery and from Botany Bay, Australia, held office and wallowed in corruption and graft.

Trials in the courts were a farce, and those in power made no pretense of shielding their friends when charged with crimes.

An honest man's vote was worthless at the polls, and ballot box stuffing was openly practiced.

James King-of-William (that really was his surname) launched a newspaper in protest. When the gambler Charles Cora killed a U.S. marshall, King denounced him. Then a corrupt politician, James P. Casey, shot and fatally injured King.

The reforming Committee of Vigilance, made up of prominent citizens, vowed to defend life, liberty and property by punishing Cora and Casey. They holed up in a warehouse building on the present Sacramento street that became know as Fort Gunny-Bags because of the cloth sacks filled with sand which they stacked around their redoubt.

They seized Casey and Cora from the sheriff, gave the men a public "trial" and, on May 22 1856, publicly hanged them in front of their fort. The crowd watching the double hanging was called "immense."

So apparently I'm working to end the death penalty around the corner from the site of one of early San Francisco's most notorious hangings.

The old pictures come from NoeHill in San Francisco.

Sign of spring

Yes I can nest among your 2 ton behemoths! Nice sunny day we're having!

799,589 voter signatures!

Yesterday the SAFE California campaign submitted some 799,589 voter signatures to place our initiative to replace the death penalty with sentences of life without parole for terrible crimes. Above, retired Superior Court judge LaDoris Cordell speaks while some of the folks who collected petitions for the measure listen in San Francisco. After small armies of workers at the 58 country election departments validate the signatures (we need 504,000 good ones), the measure will be certified for the November ballot.

"California voters are ready to replace the death penalty with life in prison with no chance of parole," declared Jeanne Woodford, who oversaw four executions as warden of San Quentin State Prison.

San Francisco Chronicle, March 1, 2012

The idea that Californians "are ready" evoked some skepticism from the assembled reporters. Our state likes to present an image of historic wild west swagger; sure we'll string up the bad guys and achieve rough and ready justice.

But the media hasn't been out on the street gathering these signatures, an experience that amounts to experiencing a huge sample of public opinion. Voters readily understand that there is something wrong; along with the state's quite conservative Chief Justice, they know the execution system is "not working," "ineffective." They are ready to listen to the established facts about the insane costs: California has spent over $4 billion on the death penalty since we enacted it in 1978 -- and executed only 13 people. People want safe communities, not legal theater that fails to solve rapes and murders or to help their kids make it off the streets. And they worry when they hear stories like that of Angeleno Franky Carillo who spent two decades in prison for a murder he didn't commit. We don't want to get this wrong!

One of the pleasures of the signature gathering has been working with grassroots Catholics and with the California Catholic Conference. Rather than trying to dictate morals to an unwillingly and largely indifferent broader population, on this issue, the princes of the church have sought to draw their adherents into the democratic process. Their message of congratulations to the campaign tells that story:

"We were pleased to have participated in this effort by encouraging our parishioners to collect signatures and are gratified that we could join the many other individuals and groups who helped the sponsors of this initiative. We would like to personally thank all the Catholic volunteers who stepped forward and worked hard on the effort.

"Now, in November, California's voters will be offered the chance to make this prudent, life-affirming, safety-enhancing and cost-savings change in sentencing law. Moreover, passing this initiative will prevent the execution an innocent person.

"We look forward to the SAFE California campaign as a time when the voting public can learn of the wisdom of replacing the sentence of death with the sentence of life imprisonment."

Market Watch

It takes a big and broad team to pass a California initiative. The success this phase of the initiative process shows that SAFE California has assembled one!

Smart women say smart things

It might be easy to miss this, but concurrent with all the bluff and bluster about the health insurance reform somehow impinging on Catholics' freedoms, the nuns who run Catholic hospitals have filed an amicus brief with the Supreme Court supporting the law. A group representing the leadership of Catholic women's religious orders writes:

Amici believe that a civilized society must ensure the provision of basic healthcare to its citizens regardless of their ability to pay for it. They further believe it is a moral imperative that all levels of government institute programs that ensure the poor receive such care. They believe Medicaid expansion under the Act is critical to the communities they serve.

***

Meanwhile, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been visiting post-Mubarak Egypt. After 19 years on the highest U.S. court, dealing repeatedly with how our Constitution both succeeds and fails to structure a free society, she offered some words of advice on Al Hayat TV to Egyptians struggling with creating a new legal framework for their country:

Q: Would your honor's advice be to get a part or other countries' constitutions as a model, or should we develop our own draft?

A: You should certainly be aided by all the constitution-writing that has gone one since the end of World War II. I would not look to the US constitution, if I were drafting a constitution in the year 2012. I might look at the constitution of South Africa. That was a deliberate attempt to have a fundamental instrument of government that embraced basic human rights, had an independent judiciary. It really is, I think, a great piece of work that was done. Much more recent than the U.S. Constitution: Canada has a Charter of Rights and Freedoms. It dates from 1982. You would almost certainly look at the European Convention on Human Rights. Yes, why not take advantage of what there is elsewhere in the world? I'm a very strong believer in listening and learning from others.

Goodness -- is the woman perhaps not an American exceptionalist? U.S. right wing media think she is nigh on to a traitor. Interestingly, the video of the interview was uploaded by the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.

Warming Wednesdays: Two approaches to why some people are climate change skeptics

Graphic by way of Grist.***
Though I don't think he'd deny the message of the graphic, science journalist Chris Mooney is about to publish a new book, The Republican Brain, that challenges the liberal assumption that it suffices to fight nonsense with facts, or at least entirely with facts. He is exploring the scientific research on persuasion and bias. We need to get to work understanding what the advertising industry knows so well :

A more scientific understanding of persuasion, then, should not be seen as threatening. It’s actually an opportunity to do better—to be more effective and politically successful.

Indeed, if we believe in evidence then we should also welcome the evidence showing its limited power to persuade--especially in politicized areas where deep emotions are involved. Before you start off your next argument with a fact, then, first think about what the facts say about that strategy. If you’re a liberal who is emotionally wedded to the idea that rationality wins the day—well, then, it’s high time to listen to reason.

Go read the whole thing.

No-fly list used as extrajudicial punishment for Muslims

Guest post today. Since this blog's inception, I have frequently written about the "no fly list" having had my own run in with this unaccountable instrument of government overreach masquerading as "security". The post that follows is an oped by Munia Jabbar and Gadeir Abbas, staff attorneys for CAIR, the Council on American-Islamic Relations. What happened to me, a white female peace activist, bears no comparison at all to violation that our government is inflicting on U.S. Muslims who find they have little recourse against anonymous charges against them.

What if you left the United States for a short trip abroad, but when you tried to come home to your job, family and life in America, your government would not let you on the plane? What if, when you asked when you could fly home, you were told "never"?

For some American Muslims, this is not a hypothetical scenario but a brutal reality that destroys families, finances and careers. A growing number of American Muslims have been placed on the no-fly list while they were traveling overseas, effectively barring their return to the U.S. Others are placed on the list while at home, and suddenly find themselves unable to travel by plane.

The list's latest targets were two Portland, Oregon area Muslims of Libyan origin who flew to that nation after the fall of Qaddafi, one to visit family and the other to perform humanitarian work on behalf of an Oregon relief agency.

One of these men, Jamal Tarhuni, attempted to fly home in January by way of Tunisia, but was stopped at the airport in Tunis and told U.S. officials were barring him from returning home. FBI agents from the Portland field office flew in to question him. They demanded that Jamal take a lie detector test as a precondition for permission to return to the U.S. He was willing to take the test, but when he refused to sign a waiver of his Miranda rights, the FBI agents told him that the test was irrelevant because they were already convinced of his guilt. His crime? Discussing Sharia, the body of Islam's religious precepts and customs, with other Muslims. These FBI agents seemed to believe that a Muslim discussing Islam was an indicator of criminal wrongdoing.

Mustafa Elogbi, also from the Portland area, was similarly stopped halfway through his return journey at the behest of U.S. officials. Mustafa was detained in London and jailed for two days. Upon his release, he returned to Libya to try to arrange to go home.

Mustafa and Jamal retained a Portland attorney and asked the Council on American-Islamic Relations for help. Both were finally cleared to fly to the U.S., but were told that neither could fly within 24 hours of the other. After a long ordeal and many setbacks, Mustafa and Jamal are now home.

Earlier this month the Associated Press reported that the number on the no-fly list has jumped from 10,000 to more than 21,000 people who now cannot fly over United States airspace.

Mustafa and Jamal's cases demonstrate just how the no-fly list ballooned: by eliminating a rational basis in the criteria for placement on the list. The new standards for inclusion on the no-fly list are not even about aviation security anymore. Instead, anyone who is a "broader threat" to national security will be placed on the no-fly list.

The government's interpretation of this "broader threat" standard has not been publicly articulated. But because CAIR regularly gets calls from American Muslims who find themselves on the no-fly list, we've gleaned a few indicators that provide some insight into how the standard is being applied:

• Doing humanitarian work for Muslims: A traveler working to aid in humanitarian missions serving Muslim populations may be placed on the no-fly list.

• Muslim cultural items: A traveler carrying a typically Muslim food or personal item may be pulled aside for additional screening, questioned about the item, and subsequently placed on the no-fly list.

• Personal and professional travel to Muslim countries: Travelers are frequently placed on the no-fly list shortly after going abroad to study Islam, see family members, or at the direction of a legitimate employer.

• Social and professional relationships with other Muslims: Simply associating with other Muslims on the no-fly list, whether socially or professionally, can get a traveler placed on the no-fly list. The placement may occur mere days or minutes after association with other Muslims becomes known to the government. In these instances, the timing of one's placement on the list makes it clear that it is their association with other Muslims that led to their placement.

A unifying principle of the above criteria is that they punish travelers simply for associating with other Muslims. Another common theme is that they punish Muslims for being Muslim—having Muslim family or talking about or studying Islam.

Unfair targeting of Muslims for placement on the no-fly list is nothing new, but the expansion of the list using the above "criteria" suggests growing government brazenness in its compilation. What happened to Jamal Tarhuni and Mustafa Elogbi are but the latest indicators.

The no-fly list has become a means through which the FBI doles out extrajudicial punishment to Muslims for no legitimate security reason. It is well past time for this approach to be revisited and revised.***
There's a lot of gas being emitted these days in the context of the Republican primary clown show about attacks on religious liberty. If those old white men in the Catholic Church want to see a real assault on religious freedom, they could look at what is being done by the U.S. government to criminalize and terrorize U.S. Muslims.

Voting on marriage equality is "ridiculous and offensive" but we are winning!

The New Jersey legislature recently voted to approve same sex marriage. The Republican governor, Chris Christie, immediately vetoed it. He says maybe it would be okay if the state put gay marriage up for a referendum and voted it in, but he is not going to let mere elected representatives change this law.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker was asked about the referendum idea at a press conference. His response seems far more authentic than what we usually hear from politicians. It's worth watching this nearly five minute clip.

"We should not be putting civil rights issues to a popular vote! No minority should have their rights subject to the passions and sentiments of the majority … we've created a second class citizenship in our state. …Let's stop the ruse. We have two types of citizens in our state … we're not treating everybody equally under the law. …We're talking about equal protection under the law; that was never something that should go out to a popular vote….Thank God -- Jackie Robinson, there wasn't a popular vote whether he should be a professional baseball player. .. [The debate on same sex marriage is] ridiculous and offensive …"

***Since many politicians aren't ready yet to do the right thing, the fight goes on. The current phase includes getting the Democratic Party on record in favor of legalizing same sex marriage. That should happen in the 2012 party platform. For this, there's a clear majority among Democrats. And marriage equality polls well among independents as well. It's fast becoming a non-issue except for some Republicans. (Graphic depicts the results of five recent polls via Daily Kos.)

One obstacle to the Dems doing the right thing on marriage equality is the President's position: though his administration has been very good for LGBT equality, he's personally still weaseling about marriage -- still "evolving." One of the ways we hold the President's feet to the fire on this is to push the Democratic platform committee to adopt a marriage equality plank and to support Dems in states where marriage equality will be on the ballot.

A petition urging the committee to do the right thing seems a worthy cause.

Update on that body on Julian Street

This week while walking to church we encountered new reminders of that disquieting situation we saw last week. It has since emerged that person whose body lay on the curb last Sunday had been murdered.

Friends have put out an altar in the victim's memory. Somehow, it is good to know he had friends.


Meanwhile, down the street, the police are seeking information.