Justice Stevens makes some good points in Rasul v. Bush

(from The Nine, by Jeffrey Toobin)

 The Bush legal team, led by Ted Olson, the solicitor general, brought the same moral certainty to the Supreme Court that the Republican political operation put forth to voters. The issues were straightforward, the choices binary: the United States or the terrorists, right or wrong. Standing up to argue in Rasul, Olson laid the same kind of choice before the Court. "Mr. Chief Justice, and may it please the Court: The United States is at war," Olson began with heavy portent. "It is in that context that petitioners ask this Court to assert jurisdiction that is not authorized by Congress, does not arise from the Constitution, has never been exercised by this Court."

But if this kind of talk was intended to intimidate the justices, as it cowed so many others, the tactic did not work. Indeed, it backfired. "Mr. Olson, supposing the war has ended," Stevens jumped in, "could you continue to detain these people on Guantanamo?" Of course we could, Olson said. In other words, the military could detain Rasul and the others whether or not there was a war.

"The existence of the war is really irrelevant to the legal issue," Stevens said.

"It is not irrelevant because it is in this context that that question is raised," Olson replied weakly.

"But your position does not depend on the existence of a war," Stevens insisted, and Olson had to concede it did not. So in just the first moments of the argument, Stevens had shown that the Bush administration was claiming not some temporary accommodation but rather a permanent expansion of its power for all time, in war or peace. And Stevens was showing further that Olson's rhetorical flourish--"The United States is at war"-- was nothing more than posturing. (p. 231)

...

So, it turned out, was the preposterousness of the administration's key argument in Rasul. Olson had maintained that the navy base in Guantanamo was really Cuban soil and to allow a lawsuit there was inviting litigation on a foreign battlefield. But as Stevens put it in his opinion, "By the express terms of its agreements with Cuba, the United States exercises "complete jurisdiction and control' over the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base and may continue to exercise such control permanently if it so chooses." The entire reason that the military took the detainees to such a remote outpost was because the base offered total freedom from outside interference. Allowing lawyers to visit prisoners in Guantanamo and letting them conduct litigation offered no risk at all of escape or disruption--something that could not be said for many prisons within the United States. (p. 235)

Silent Warriors

On my last day in Maui, I noticed a dusty framed certificate in the living room. 

I doubt it had been looked at for years.

I knew that Grandpa Yamada had had a brother who served in World War II in the US Army, and who had died in France. I knew his name was Hideo. I also knew that his family did not want him to go, but he did. His family wasn't interned -- Japanese-Americans in Hawaii were largely exempt.

I remember finding his name on the monument to Japanese-American WWII servicemen in Little Tokyo, Los Angeles. I remember making a pencil etching of his name, paying the recommended donation, and hesitating to send it home. Someone suggested that it was unwise to bring him up to Grandpa.

And so, like so many things in my family, it was discarded and unspoken, and the opportunity to hear the story died. How ironic that we would be so cowardly when it came to discussing frankly the brave and honorable death of a relative.

And so here was an artifact from that past. Here was the thing I kept in mind every time I heard a Jap joke, the thing that I thought about every time a Korean or Chinese client or stranger grew slightly brittle upon learning that I am of Japanese ancestry. I have been told that in Asia, a conception of nationality distinct from race is challenging. My exposure was limited, so I can't say if that's the case. But if it is, it is one more reason I am grateful to have been born on this side of the ocean.

But here was new information. I assumed, being Hawaiian, Hideo served in the 100th Battalion. But it appears he served in the storied 442nd Regimental Combat Team, in F Company -- a distinguished company within a legendary regiment.

In high school, I read Silent Warriors: A Memoir of America's 442nd Regimental Combat Team. The author, Jack Wakamatsu, served in F Company.

I think Hideo was mentioned in passing -- just a sentence. At the time I wasn't sure if it was my great-uncle... Hideo is a common enough name.

The certificate indicates he died October 15, 1944, which would put it at the beginning of the attack on Bruyères.  So he died before the regiment rescued the "Lost Battalion".

My father claimed that he was killed by a sniper. But my father had a terrible habit of embellishing stories -- it would be a shame if he chose to embellish this one, for surely it doesn't need artificial drama.

His awards, and brief mention in Silent Warriors, perhaps suggests that he wasn't an exemplary member of the unit. But I'm not sure that means much if the unit itself is the most decorated, for its size and duration of service, in the history of American warfare.

I know nothing else about the man. I can't claim any pride for his service. But I do hope to keep his service in mind as I try to be a more decent man.

Doing something

I do not intend for the previous post to be nothing but self-indulgent emoting. I've been thinking a lot about what I can do.

In the discussions about what to do with any of the migration and humanitarian issues of the day, I've seen lots of criticism that we must look to our own citizens first. I've also seen critiques of aid agencies as being corrupt, or concerns about moral hazard exacerbating the power of smugglers and criminal elements, or -- in my view -- less rational arguments about racial or religious purity, terrorism, and claims that "we shouldn't have to do more if country/group X isn't doing anything".

I find all of them inadequate. Some may be grounded in a speck of truth. But I believe that ultimately, we as individuals shape our values and destinies by our actions and inactions.

I know that not everyone feels equally able, or equally responsible. The discussions tend to focus on one extreme or another, all-or-nothing views of service and duty.

I know, in my heart of hearts, that even images of drowned children will not cause me to part with everything I have, with the life I am building here. Nor, perhaps, should it. Philosophically, intellectually, and perhaps even at a bare emotional level, I do feel that our first duty is to our own citizens.

But it is not our only duty. And all-or-nothing thinking tends to rationalize inaction on all fronts.

So I've decided to be a bit more systematic, to explore and define where that line lies with me. It's potentially shameful how little I might find myself willing to do, but by looking for that line, and choosing to go up to that line, I'll do more. And that might have to be enough.

Direct Involvement:
Volunteering in Syria for at least a year
Volunteering in Syria for any amount of time
Volunteering in Turkey/Egypt/Jordan for at least a year
Volunteering in Turkey/Egypt/Jordan for any amount of time
Volunteering in the EU for at least a year
Volunteering in the EU for any amount of time
Volunteering at a local NGO for at least a year
Volunteering at a local NGO for at least 4 hours a week.
Volunteering at a local NGO for less than 4 hours a week.
Searching for a local NGO involved in relief efforts

That's all I feel capable of doing for now. It's depressingly low on the list, but it's more than I would do otherwise.

Financial:Donate life savings to an appropriate nonprofit
Donate $5,000
Donate $2,000
Donate $1,000
Donate $500
Donate $250
Donate $100
Donate $50
Donate $20
Donate $10
Donate $5
Donate nothing

I had Donate $500 highlighted for a good minute. But I struggled, and caved in to a lower amount. I'm not proud of that. It's been a good year for me. But it's more than I would do otherwise. I think I'll donate it to Doctors Without Borders -- they appear to be working at train stations directly, which seems like a good place for the money to work.

Now what about Americans? Don't I have an obligation to people here? Absolutely.

Direct Involvement:
Volunteer for more than 10 hours a week
Volunteer for 5-10 hours a week
Volunteer for less than 5 hours a week.
Look into volunteer opportunities.
Don't volunteer.

It's not a lot. I don't know how I found more time to volunteer at Mudd and carry a full courseload. Maybe I'm underestimating how much unpaid work I do. Maybe I am rationalizing my laziness. But I'm willing to cut out some Youtube and Wikipedia time to do so.

Now, what specific volunteering action should I take? I've long wanted to tutor children in shelters. I'm not sure if it's the best approach, given the limitations on shelter stay -- perhaps a long-term tutoring commitment at a local library or school is more important. But maybe I'm focused too much on my current skills/job. Brush clearance and trail cleanup might be a better option, though I think food pantry work would be more important.

Financial Involvement, Domestic:Donate life savings to an appropriate nonprofit
Donate $5,000
Donate $2,000
Donate $1,000
Donate $500
Donate $250
Donate $100
Donate $50
Donate $20
Donate $10
Donate $5
Donate nothing

$100 to the Inland Valley Hope Partners. Done. Sorry Bernie, but I'll give you something later.

Now, psychological research says that saying you're going to do something makes it less likely that you'll actually do it. To avoid that, I've submitted the donations before I posted this.

***

Look, I didn't do this to be a goddamn Pharisee about the thing. I don't think I did much. But again, I did more than I would've done otherwise. I had to grapple with just how little I was willing to do, but I made sure to do that.

It's important to really not give in to helplessness and figure out what exactly you will do. Not what you can do, but what you will do. And then do it. It's humbling, but it's necessary. It's perhaps not optimal, but what is in this life?

Make a spreadsheet. Conduct a more rigorous audit of your nonprofits. By all means conduct a more nuanced budget, building in persistent support instead of one-time gifts. But whatever you do, do something. Our values are reflected in both our actions and our lack of action.

Remember: you have something to give this world. Those who are most bitter, who are most angry -- they are the ones who feel the world owes them something, who feel, in their heart of hearts, too vulnerable to say, "I am of value, I have value to offer, and I give it with the confidence that, after I have given, I will be elevated, not diminished, as a human being." I know this because I struggle with it as well.

You do have value. Within my calculations of distant offerings, I am mindful of my need to also look nearer, and embrace you. I am rediscovering my better nature, and so I hope it will be manifest in my friendships, too.

Sorry for my long, lonely absence. I'm back. After a long, long journey, I'm back.

The Drowned Boy

Once upon a time, there was a father, a wood carver, who lived alone with a cat and a fish. He carved a wooden puppet of a boy and named it Pinocchio. He sighed and dreamed about what it would be like if he had a real son. That night, a fairy godmother, hearing the father's prayers, and recognizing him as a good man, gave life to the wooden boy, and enlisted a vagabond cricket to serve as his conscience and guide. She promises that if he proves himself "brave, truthful, and unselfish", she will transform Pinocchio into a real boy.

The father, upon waking, couldn't believe his eyes. He rejoiced and celebrated. He sent Pinocchio to school, with the cricket following. But Pinocchio was tricked by bad men, kidnapped and enslaved, and forced to perform as a stringless marionette to enrich his enslaver. He escaped with the help of his fairy godmother, who forgives his lies. But then was convinced by the same bad men to take a boat to Pleasure Island, where he indulged in vice and began transforming into an ass. He escapes, and flees toward home.

When he returns home, he finds that his father has gone looking for him, and was now trapped in a whale named Monstro. Pinocchio goes in search of him, but also becomes trapped. With his father, he hatches a plan to escape. They escape, but Pinocchio is found in shallow water, face down, dead.

He is mourned and honored for his sacrifice, but his fairy godmother, honoring his fulfillment of her command to be brave, truthful, and unselfish, restores him to life as a real boy.

By now, you have probably seen the images of the body of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year old boy who drowned off the coast of Turkey.

I've been thinking a lot about him. My grandmother died the same day, and yet I find myself mourning this unknown boy, not the mother of my father. This image, of a boy, face-down, in shallow water, is heartbreaking.

It's probably offensive to connect a real tragedy with a Disney story.

But is it so off the mark? 

Didn't his father celebrate when he was born? 

Weren't his attempts to explore the world or go to school cut short by evil men? 

Didn't he have to leave home, and, with his father, escape certain death of one type, only to meet it in the sea?

And finally, most shamefully:

If we are honest with ourselves, wasn't he not quite a real boy to us, not real at all, a construction, an idea, an abstraction -- was this boy not a real boy to us, until he washed up on a beach? 

Is he real enough now?

Today is a good day to love

Today, our expectations are probably raised, perhaps prematurely, perhaps unrealistically, for the SCOTUS to resolve one of the great issues of our time in the manner in which we'd prefer. 

But our expectations should be raised, and raised now, for ourselves. We should love more completely, behave more responsibly, and be better at supporting and caring for both our friends and distant strangers -- unknown to us, except as human beings, which should be enough for us to do what is good and right.

I wanted to write some soaring polemic. But increasingly, I can't. And that might be a good thing. You've helped me as a human being grow beyond the love of abstract justice and care more about individual people, and how the laws of this country affect you. Your goodness to me has helped me grow from a homophobe to someone who cares more about this social justice issue than any other. 

Like any new convert, I've had to learn wisdom-- I can't bully or argue equality to my conservative religious family members anymore. I can advocate, gently. But I have to listen as well. It is difficult, even painful at times, but it is probably far less painful than perhaps some of the conversations some of you have had with loved ones. 

Here, love triumphs as well. Contrary to my fears, I haven't had to pick between them and you. And I think, if I were gay, they would still love me. It's perhaps small comfort to those of you dealing with Prop 8, but it's no exaggeration that I believed same-sex marriage and equal rights had the potential to split me from them.

So I have no expectations for the hearings today or tomorrow, or even the ruling in a few months. What I will expect of myself is to be somewhat more generous, somewhat more kind, somewhat more thoughtful to my LGBT kin. Some of you I consider family. It is time for me to behave like family, and let you know, more regularly, and more clearly, how much you are loved -- not as a cause, but as a person.

Science fiction, Ender's Game, and the nature of art

An excellent article:

Before he became a voice of the American right, Orson Scott Card wrote a really good book.

I wasn't aware of the controversy surrounding Orson Scott Card when he gave the 2003 commencement speech at Harvey Mudd. At the time, I hadn't even read Ender's Game. But I did read it, eventually, and loved it -- it rivals Dune as my favorite science fiction book of all time. (Sorry Foundation, but I think you'll be stuck with third billing.) It even made my 15 most influential books list. (Dune is absent.)

I am a firm believer that all good science fiction illuminates something about us as human beings. Often, it tricks us into thinking about psychology, or philosophy, or justice. It dazzles with an exotic setting or technology, or even different rules of physics, to get us to suspend our disbelief. And with that belief suspended, with our defenses lowered, we can more honestly look at ourselves, our societies, and our past than in any other art form.

Disarmed, we learn, even as we are treated to a fantastic story.

So it is with Ender's Game. How else could we view children as potential murderers? When I read A Long Way Gone: Memories of a Child Soldier, I brought along all my mental baggage and assumptions about Africa, foreign conflict, resource wars, and recent world history. And as well-written and powerful as it was, I wasn't fully able to immerse myself into the world of war-torn Sierra Leone, as seen through the eyes of a child. It was still a bit alien to me, because it was real.

But in Ender's Game, it seems more plausible, almost natural that the selection process and jealousy inspired by Ender's rise would lead to murderous impulses. And it seems equally natural that Ender, a fundamentally good boy, would kill, twice, to protect himself. It also seems plausible that adults would manipulate the circumstances to force this test of his mettle -- because we knew, as children, how adults manipulated us all the time, and not always for our own benefit.

So it's tragic, but it's true: I can better empathize with this boy in a science fiction novel than a real boy in the real world telling me about the real horrors of war.

Ender's Game treats children as equal to adults. The children are bright; sometimes, they are brighter than the adults. They learn, adapt, and strategize. They engage in war games, and, as we find out, real warfare. They feel emotions that are sometimes as sophisticated as those of an adult.

The sci-fi elements also help break down that wall between child and adult. In zero-g, standard measures of strength and size matter less, and a child can be the equal of an adult in combat. Those of us who read the book remember vividly the scene where Ender shouts triumphantly at Graff in the zero-g room. "I beat you! I beat you!"

But Graff held the wand that unfroze Ender. It was impossible to beat the adults.

And that is how they remain children. Unlike a lot of lesser children's literature, it doesn't make kids adults, or make the adults kids. The children of Ender's Game are capable and brilliant. But they are still subject to the control of adults. The adults determine their lives, even as those same adults place the fate of humanity in the hands of those same children.

***

So what about the politics of Orson Scott Card? Should that color how we view this book? How can we enjoy it fully if we know that this man campaigns actively against the identity of some of the same children who find, in his book, some strength and security from the complexity and hostility of real life?

For this the tragedy of Ender's Game. Or, it is the triumph of that book to transcend its author and become something else.

Ender's Game means a whole lot to precocious, nerdy children. I didn't have the privilege of finding this in my youth. But a lot of my Mudd friends did read it as children and young adults, and credit it for being both entertaining and inspirational. Some said it helped them deal with the ways adults usually treat children, especially bright, precocious ones.

And, yes, some were gay.

How ironic that it helped gay men and women, bright as hell, deal with misunderstanding long enough to break out and become who they were meant to be!

Except that it's not ironic at all: that's how art works.

Sometimes, a book (including That One), can become agents of change in ways directly contrary to the author's intent. That's what happens when art is created. It no longer belongs to the artist -- it belongs to us. All of us. (Especially That One.)

Ender's Game now belongs to my gay friends, and there's not a damn thing Orson Scott Card can do about it.

Homosexuality and the Boy Scouts of America

CNN: Gay Scout's request for Eagle rank rejected

These cases are often more complicated than first appears, so I'm willing to accept that the BSA may have rejected an application for other reasons. So I will tread very carefully here.

I attended an Eagle Scout induction recently. It was impressive; I am told that not all can be expected to be like this, as parental involvement plays a huge role in the scope and majesty of the induction ceremony. It did strike me as a bit more martial than I expected, which was a bit unnerving. And the Scoutmaster's Minute was clearly delivered by someone who was on the wrong side of the election and sounded overly apocalyptic about how this scout was part of the "last line of defense" against American collapse. 

But it was impressive to meet a host of young men -- based on names, many of them Muslim -- with a variety of accomplishments. All the boys, to a one, were unfailingly polite and helpful. And I gained a new respect for this young man, who I honestly did not know as well as I thought I did. To be an Eagle, you have to complete, among other things, something like 120 (or 180?) nights of camping, a major service project, and a host of other things.

The BSA have, of course, been rocked by the scandal involving pedophilia and their internal database on reported cases. And the gay issue is not new. What may be new is that a majority of Americans might support either a change in policy, or the creation of a more open version of the BSA-- maybe one that enables young women to rise to the equivalent of eagle scout.

I don't think reform would happen anytime soon. I doubt it would effectively come from outside pressure; all that could happen is sufficient numbers of lawsuits could cause funding problems and the closing of some or all of the organization, which would be a huge waste. Reform would have to be grass-roots, and involve some rather precocious organizing by teenage boys, not particularly known for their autonomous political activism. (Somehow, I don't see it as coming from the parents, and definitely not from the scoutmasters.) 

Perhaps the coming out of prominent men who are also eagle scouts would help-- imagine the impact of a Jim Lovell coming out and encouraging the BSA to change its policies.

A side note: the induction ceremony I attended took place in a UCC church. The first thing one would notice, even before walking through the front doors, was a big table draped with a rainbow flag with some LGBT material. I thought it was fitting, somehow, that everyone in attendance would register at some level an awareness that the troop was a guest in God's house, and, in this house, the LGBT community was not just welcomed and embraced as fully equal-- they're family, family worth fighting for.

Brief thoughts on boycotts

As with many things, my energy and interest are flagging on a post regarding boycotts, examining boycotts of franchises specifically. Might get to it later if enough people think it's worthwhile.

For now, here's what I've discovered/reasoned:

1. Boycotts can be morally tricky, and boycotts of franchised business are especially so. That's because it's harder to punish the parent company without inflicting collateral damage (the franchisees).

2. Franchises usually pay the parent company a fixed sum for franchise rights, and a variable amount based on gross sales (not profitability or other things). An incompetent or unlucky franchisee can have a ton of sales and lose money after paying the parent company.

3. There's a difference between a company where (1) a franchisee makes a political statement, and (2) a CEO makes a political statement.

4. There's also a practical difference between a food service company that does takeout/delivery and a dine-in restaurant. On a practical basis, we might feel more empathy and concern for servers at a dine-in restaurant we regularly patronize than at a fast food joint with changing staff, or a series of delivery people. I think it probably has to do with frequency, duration, and intimacy of interaction.

5. Given these things, I think the Chik-Fil-A boycott might make sense, as it dealt with statements made by the CEO, though most of those who would boycott it probably didn't eat there (sales numbers appear to remain robust). I think the Papa John's boycott might be defensible because it, again, involves a CEO wading into public policy. However, I'm willing to see how and if his classroom comments were misrepresented. The Denny's boycott is absolutely moronic, as it involved comments made by a franchisee in Florida, and not the CEO. However, I note that it did get results (CEO statements and scoldings) that might not have happened had sales not dipped nationwide. Ignorant outrage can still get results -- not condoning, just observing.

6. Target's getting off relatively lightly compared with Wal-Mart, as far as I can tell. There are probably a few books that look at how Target managed to brand itself in opposition to Wal-Mart, even if functionally it is quite similar.

7. If you're a well-paid CEO, it makes sense to assume that any comment you make in a classroom, on a company email, or anywhere outside of your meetings with trusted companions can and will get out. Don't pretend to be, or actually be, so ignorant that you think you're never "on the record". It's a price you pay as pitchman-in-chief. It's presumably a small price to pay for substantial compensation.

This is more, not less, true when you are a CEO of a company with franchisees. I would be incredibly pissed if I had paid an up-front sum of money, and handed over a portion of revenues (not profits) to a parent company, and was committed to a long-term venture, in which most of my personal assets are invested, only to have some asshole CEO say something that will affect my sales, regardless of either parent company or franchise policy.

This is mitigated to some extent in Chick-Fil-A's case, as its origins and history make it clear that franchisees know what they're getting themselves into. (Also, franchisees have comparatively little skin in the game -- the parent company retains ownership of the restaurant and collects a larger share of revenue in exchange for surprisingly little start-up investment (~$5000!) from the franchisee.)

John Schnatter is founder and CEO of Papa John's, so I guess he retains enough shares and legitimacy that he gets more of a pass to say controversial things. However, Papa John's franchisees, unlike their Chick-Fil-A counterparts, might not have foreseen the risk of having a founder CEO feel entitled to air his opinions -- especially when subsequent analysis found he overestimated the costs of the Affordable Care Act by about 400%.

8. If you're a well-paid CEO who can keep his or her mouth shut, take joy from the idiots who don't, because they provide the think-tanks and lobbying groups with enough ammo that you don't have to speak up. KEEP YOUR DAMN MOUTH SHUT.

Unless your brand--personal or corporate--explicitly internalizes externalities in the social welfare or environmental realms, it's implied you want lower taxes, less regulation, and no healthcare mandate. It's understood that the major shareholders don't give a damn whether a dollar is made from selling pizza or building munitions or making toilets, and so your flexibility in the politics of morality, one way or another, is limited. Don't feel compelled to make the case unless you absolutely need to, and if you do, do it in concert with your industry peers as a matter of policy, not as a personal opinion. I'm assuming they taught you in B-school about the advantages of a fast second over being first.

9. There's a broader lesson for franchisees -- check your contracts, and check the ownership. If the CEO is also a founder, or has been around for a long enough time, consider whether their track record and statements might give you trouble. Maybe they won't -- maybe they align with what you consider to be both good business practices and morality. But don't claim ignorance or innocence -- you are buying into a brand, and the brand is your shield and cloak.

10. I'd worry more about companies that tried to make their employees vote for Romney. But it's harder to boycott Murray energy coal than it is to boycott pizza. Boycotts have to get more specific and selective for them to become effective at changing policy.

Memories of a gay stepfather and mentor

There is a news story out about how Romney has been pretty rotten/tone-deaf to gay people. Yes, they do have children.

I don't want to focus on that. Instead, let me tell you a story.

By my second year of grad school, I was pretty depressed for a lot of reasons. It made it difficult to plan at any level, and I found myself desperately casting about for housing when my previous residence was sold. Fortunately, I had a friend who lived in a remarkably beautiful house near downtown Ithaca. My room was a 10x10 coffin, but that's all I really needed. Rent was very cheap.

The dining room gives an impression of the overall house. There was a table for eight, with wonderful wooden chairs that were comfortable and stylish. The tablecloth was white - always white - some sort of synthetic, with doilies beneath a candle centerpiece. Above, there was a small glass chandelier. The windows looked out to a yard with modern stone sculptures. An antique credenza housed the plates and cutlery. Most remarkably, the flooring had bits of a composition painted on the borders -- I can't remember which piece -- with phrasings in German.

He was a piano professor at Ithaca College -- a liberal arts school often overshadowed by Cornell, but one with an outstanding music program. I heard him play Rhapsody in Blue, which was, as expected, wonderful. Given his hand span, I think it would've been great to see him play a Rachmaninov piano concerto (2 or 3).

Despite my very comfortable living situation, I was pretty depressed out of my mind at this point in grad school. I was lonely. I was lost. My landlord noticed this, and we had a chat. We talked about fathers. He shared about how it was challenging dealing with a very macho Brazilian father, and empathized with my struggle to define my relationship with my dad.

 He, refreshingly, talked openly about therapy, and celebrated it -- "I think everyone should have it!" He isone of the most cheerful, optimistic, kind-hearted individuals I had ever met. He was one part father figure, one part older brother, at a time when I desperately needed it.

He is also gay.

Perhaps a mark of age, or maturity, or just his special type of patience: he wasn't easily angered or bothered by ignorance about homosexuality.

I remember we were discussing it, and I said something expressing confusion how homosexuality would fit in the larger biological picture, and whether it really was a human cultural phenomenon. Instead of getting angry, or expressing shock, he smiled, quietly went to a bookshelf, and handed me Biological Exuberance, documenting homosexuality and bisexuality among many different species. I paged through it, was surprised, and learned something. We talked a bit more. From his admittedly ever-present smile, I think we were both glad that he trusted me to be open-minded and to update my views in the face of new information.

My friend is also a stepfather.

I forget where he met his partner - it could've been in an airport (how Hollywood!), but it was definitely abroad somewhere. He visited Ithaca a couple times, and it was clear that they were serious.

The third or fourth time he visited, he brought his eight-year old son.

I still remember how nervous my friend was about making a good impression when his partner and his son came to visit. The ice was broken via finger-painting -- not the kindergarten variety. He used high-quality paints and a real canvas. I could tell the kid enjoyed it. It wasn't a breakthrough -- but it was the beginning.

Eventually, he left a tenured position at Ithaca College to move to Germany for love. Some probably thought he was crazy, either for leaving a highly prized position, or for moving to Germany, a nation which is culturally and climatically pretty different from Brazil. He probably was -- love makes people crazy. But I think he's still happy there.

So, I know one gay man who is doing a damn fine job of being a father. I know this, in part, because he was a fantastic mentor to me in my hours/months/years of need. Surprisingly, to my American self, he still keeps in touch at least once a year. I know this because I saw how much he worried about making a good impression on his partner's kid.

He's in Germany still, so he can't be an advocate and representative of the human decency of gay fathers. So I suppose it falls to me, and the others whose lives he touched, to be advocates for him. In the unlikely event that he could be seduced from Europe to bring his talent and great heart back to America, I'd like to see him welcomed as a scholar, a gay man, and a father.

My dad taught me a little bit about being poor

The story of my father is long, but interesting. I'm truncating it here - it deserves several posts.

My father worked as a mechanical engineer for about ten years for Hughes aircraft in California. He was grateful for the opportunity - jobs on Maui, where he grew up, were almost nonexistent, even for, and perhaps especially for, a college graduate. (He was an insurance policy salesman for a few months after graduation.) The new job meant $900 a week - about a 400% raise from what he was expected to earn in five more years at his old job.

He was charismatic and competent, and got to work on satellites -- including Marisat and some secret military projects that, bless him, he still feels are secret and won't talk about. (I doubt any of the projects are operational, or classified, but I don't press him about it.)

He fell in love, married, bought a house, a car, a ridiculously expensive fishing boat he rarely used, and occasionally bought classic cars he started to fix, but usually ended up selling for a loss. He hosted dinners, and was well-liked.

He was also bipolar.

He began to have problems in high school and college. But they didn't come to a head until he was around 32. He started missing work. At some point, he began using drugs - a lot of them. He once handed me a list of two pages, double-column, of all the drugs he had used. No doubt some barbiturates probably were repeats under different names - but it included angel dust, cocaine, heroin, and things called yellow jackets and little bennies.

It was during this time that my mom became pregnant. They had tried for nearly ten years, and finally, during this time of crisis, they were successful.

Meanwhile, my dad lost his job. He was admitted to just about every mental health hospital in Southern California. At one facility, he told my mom he met Brian Wilson. She thought it was a schizophrenic delusion, until she stopped by and saw that it was, indeed, Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

Eventually, my mom decided, reluctantly, to get a divorce. It's kind of tragic -- I think if I hadn't been born, she might've been tempted to stick it out. I think sometimes she still regrets it -- even though I've told her she made the right choice, and even her traditional Japenese parents supported her. Divorce is always at least sort of sad -- but it's quite sad when the parents still love each other.

We moved into my grandparents' house for a few years. He lived with his sister for a while. But it was too much to manage a man with unmanaged bipolar disorder. He lived in his own apartment, but that didn't work out well.

Eventually, he found some stability in a series of board and care facilities, large group homes, sometimes numbering about a hundred mentally disabled adults.

I visited him every other weekend. Sometimes he was a scary nut. Other times, he was lethargic and barely responsive.

Due to frequent visits at these large institutions, I learned patience and tolerance of aberrant behavior, which, oddly enough, served me very well at Havery Mudd College, and, I believe, in life at large.


The rooms were small, with musty air, but they were clean. He always had a roommate - some of whom were really creepy.

I remember Ed, a schizophrenic with a knack for guitar. Once, we walked in, and he had only a hand towel over his genitals, as he giggled having whatever conversation/experience he was having in his own head.

Believe it or not, I liked Ed overall, even if I was reluctant to shake his hand after that.

He was better than Tom, who was always drunk and/or angry.


He was always broke, and dependent on Social Security Disability payments for rent, and Medicare-Medicaid for treatment/medication.

Dad spent what spending money he got from his sister and my mom on cigarettes. Everyone smoked there - I probably inhaled tons of secondhand smoke, but I was honestly more worried about my dad busting out his (fake, but I didn't know at the time) kung fu during his manic episodes. He'd buy the cheapest, nastiest cigarettes available. He quit periodically -- sometimes because he ran out, and sometimes because he promised me. It's from him that I learned about clove cigarettes, that extremely rare luxury -- they were expensive, incredibly bad for your health, and wonderfully aromatic.

He outlived three girlfriends, all of whom died of lung cancer. Two were in their mid-fifties, and one was in her late-thirties.

For a man who loved food, I was surprised how he adjusted to the kind of boring food. When he moved from one of these large facilities to a smaller halfway house, he was treated to home cooking. He still didn't have any money, but he was happier. We would go to Taco Bell, or Winchell's, where he would relish unlimited refills and enjoy a beef Meximelt, or a glazed donut, courtesy of Mom.

Those who know me may be surprised to know that my dad is an eternal optimist. Every time he moved, he said, "This is the best place! The FOOD is amazing!" Every time. He was either a liar, delusional, or an optimist. Over the last decade, his medication balance got reasonably good, and so I'm willing to conclude that it was optimism. He was definitely not a liar, at least not a habitual one.

He is currently living in a larger facility in Long Beach, an odd mix of mental institution and retirement home.

Through the years, he'd been hospitalized many, many times -- and not just for mental health reasons. There were many of those -- unpleasant rants, either in person or over the phone, were something that was painful, but eventually expected. I was surprised -- after many years of relative calm, he called in October 2008 to tell me I was a horrible son, that he was a four-star general Aztec emperor, etc. Even at the age of 26, I admit, I cried, but I managed to keep my voice calm, and tell myself that this was not my father talking, this was The Disease.

He almost died many times. But because it happened so frequently, I eventually got used to visiting him in a hospital. Apparently he has a very strong heart, one which has saved his life multiple times.

There were good times, too. He taught me gin rummy. He had an interesting (read: vulgar) sense of humor. I'm lucky -- many sons can't poke fun at their fathers like I can.

We almost lost him last year from kidney failure. My relationship with him, even as death approached, has always been a conflicting set of emotions.

But it was only today, as I was picking up a hot-n-ready $5 pizza for our lunch, that I realized he taught me about poverty.

***

As long as I can remember, he was always poor. He didn't have money for gifts; his sister would send me a bit of birthday and Christmas money. I don't know when or how I understood this, but I did, and didn't ask him for stuff, even as I was spoiled rotten by my maternal grandfather. Mom never asked him to help with anything, including college -- and how would he have helped anyway? Asked his sister?

I think it was hard for him to take bits of spending money from my mom, and, for many reasons, hard for my mom to give it.

He'd borrow money. He'd borrow from Peter to pay Paul. A couple times, he borrowed money from me; much later, his sister would find out and yell at him. He'd apologize, and give me the money that his sister gave him to pay  me back.

My mom and I remember only one time when my dad was scared. We were at Winchell's, and he approached a tough-looking guy. He told him that he would return his $20 as soon as he could. Later, he asked my mom for that money. At the time, he lived in a neighborhood where getting beat up, badly, over $20 was pretty likely.

He wasn't a saint, and, even in his poverty, would sometimes use what he had recklessly. At one point, he got admitted to the hospital for a ridiculously high blood pressure - it was something like 220/180. I'm not joking. He claimed it was caffeine -- later on, I found out he had bought meth from a dealer somewhere in the neighborhood.

He never wanted to walk in the park down the block. I don't remember if he had been jumped, or harassed. We'd go by car from Norwalk to Cerritos to nice parks.

Meanwhile, I lived a relatively comfortable middle-class life. My mom was a public school teacher, and therefore not at all rich, but it was just the two of us. I never went hungry; I always had clothes to wear; I always had shoes. It wasn't extravagant, but it was comfortable. Hell, I even had a NES and, a couple years after it came out, a SNES. We never owned a computer until some time in high school, and to my everlasting shame and regret, it was a Macintosh Performa.

So I wasn't poor.

My dad was.

But he didn't starve. He had adequate medical care. He was able to live with some dignity - once he accepted he was never going to be an aerospace engineer ever again. He had fantasies of going back, even after Hughes got absorbed and resold and redundancied and everything else during the passing decades.

He was dependent on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid (in California, Medi-Cal).

He's a flawed man, even ignoring his bipolar disorder. And, to be honest, I don't know if he's an example of what's wrong with the social safety net in this country, or what's right.

The only thing I do know for certain is that, without exaggeration, he would've been homeless, and ultimately dead, without those programs.

It's not because his family didn't love him enough to house him -- his sister, a schizophrenic, lived with my grandparents her entire adult life.

I believe that because, without the luck we had with treatment and facilities, he would've found some way to disappear and die.

Had he continued to live in his apartment, he would've had an overdose, or done something that would've gotten him shot by a drug dealer, or a cop. Even at his sister's house, he was unsupervised during the day; I don't know if he did run off during that time, but he definitely engaged in self-destructive behavior including drugs, alcohol, and reckless driving. (He once zig-zagged on the freeway with toddler me in the backseat. Perhaps fortunately, I thought it was a game at the time.)

So I can say, with a measure of confidence, that my dad would've died decades ago without that safety net.

***

I'm writing this mostly because I want to. He's an interesting person, and, quite frankly, it helps me to process my emotions and thoughts in written form.

There's a part that's also writing this because I've seen many criticize welfare, Medicaid, and other programs designed to help the poor. Most do not cite any numbers, and some cite numbers without context, e.g., the number of people on food stamps does go up during a recession. It's designed to do that: that shows the program is doing its job, regardless of whether you think it should be doing it or not.

He's not a "welfare queen". But he's as close as it comes in my personal experience. And so, it's tough for me to disentangle conversation about the poor, and about welfare, from these thoughts about my dad.

In my volunteering in college, I've met homeless people who would drink chunks of their Social Security checks and buy electronics. I met homeless kids for whom homelessness was, at least part, an ideology -- quasi-hippies/anarchists, sharing and creating cheaply made magazines containing their literature. I cleaned human shit out of a food pantry, which means someone -- assuming it was a client, not a volunteer -- decided taking a shit in the storeroom was a good idea. I met two guys who were, in retrospect, probably doing a drug deal, whom I cluelessly interrupted, offered sandwiches to, and left alone to their meal, realizing at some point that one held an almost-but-not-quite-concealed blade in his hand the whole time.

I know poor people who seem so helpless and hapless that I sometimes want to scream at them and hit them and tell them to get their shit together, because they have kids and grandkids who depend upon them. I know friends whose parents worked in sweatshops, in the United States, and never forgot it as they went off to college, got good jobs, and participated actively in public service. I met illegal immigrant, the occasional homeless woman, and a de facto leader in the group at Pomona that showed up at the HMC graduation in an old, but clean, suit -- not for me, but perhaps just to wish the graduates well.

Being poor is simple and complicated.

It restricts opportunity, which can be simplifying. It's complicated, because there are multiple stories, multiple reasons, and multiple outcomes.

Anecdotes don't lend themselves well to analysis, even as they reveal things about the people we meet, and ourselves. But they do inform our values.

I admit -- my support of these programs are a product of the distillation of these experiences, and not based upon statistics of efficiency, fraud rates, longitudinal progress, or anything that's really needed to analyze poverty programs objectively.

But that's not how we decide whether we think something is good or not. We don't start from the statistics -we start from principles, formed by our experiences, our learning, and our environment. I think its the same for the critics of these programs.

It comes down to a moral assumption about certain things:

Do the poor deserve it?

Does it lend itself to abuse or dependence?

Can the country afford it?

I think that anyone claiming, one way or another, that their views on these programs don't rest upon some assumptions on these questions, based on our personal feelings, is not being completely honest. Objective metrics inform whether something works or doesn't - but our values determine the definition of "works" or "doesn't".

Maybe in the coming days, I'll investigate the statistics of these programs - how much they cost; the detected rate of fraud; the specific conditions that must be met; the proportion of funds, if any, that go to illegal immigrants. I suppose these are things I should know, as someone who has, in the past, advocated for the poor, and who continues to believe that the measure of our nation is in part based on how we care for the most vulnerable of our people.

For those who care, I do ask that you consider that, in my case, there is a real person who I care about in these figures.

Based on what I've said, maybe he's part of the problem. Maybe I should feel guilty for having had help taking care of my dad.

If it makes you feel better, I do have guilt.

But I'm also glad that they, and he, continue.

The Real Empty Chair

By now, Clint Eastwood's "Empty Chair" speech has become a legend.

But in searching for "empty chair" images, I came across an interesting sculpture.

It's called "The Empty Chair". Amnesty International commissioned artist Maarten Baas to make this sculpture in honor of Liu Xiaobo, the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate.

It commemorates his absence at the awards ceremony. Neither Liu nor any members of his family were able to attend because he is currently being held by the Chinese government for "incitement to the overthrow of the state power and socialist system and the people’s democratic dictatorship." He is serving an 11 year sentence.

Liu was represented by an empty chair.

The last recipient who went unrepresented was Carl von Ossietsky in 1935. He was unable to attend because he was incarcerated in one of Hitler's concentration camps.

Liu was unable to even present a speech in absentia. 

Instead, Norwegian actress Liv Ullmann recited his "Final Statement", authored in 2009 just prior to the start of his 11-year sentence.

It is an eloquent statement, gracious to the government and the people responsible for his detention. I wonder whether the naming of specific people was deliberate in the attention it focused on certain individuals. But the overall tone is one of personal resignation coupled with quiet confidence in China's ability to evolve into a truly humane and great nation. It is worth reading in its entirety.

Perhaps the most poignant part is when he talks about his wife. Somehow, it reminds me of "Tu Risa", by Pablo Neruda. Even through translation, one can tell he is a poet:

Ask me what has been my most fortunate experience of the past two decades, and I’d say it was gaining the selfless love of my wife, Liu Xia. She cannot be present in the courtroom today, but I still want to tell you, sweetheart, that I’m confident that your love for me will be as always. Over the years, in my non-free life, our love has contained bitterness imposed by the external environment, but is boundless in afterthought. I am sentenced to a visible prison while you are waiting in an invisible one. Your love is sunlight that transcends prison walls and bars, stroking every inch of my skin, warming my every cell, letting me maintain my inner calm, magnanimous and bright, so that every minute in prison is full of meaning. But my love for you is full of guilt and regret, sometimes heavy enough hobble my steps. I am a hard stone in the wilderness, putting up with the pummeling of raging storms, and too cold for anyone to dare touch. But my love is hard, sharp, and can penetrate any obstacles. Even if I am crushed into powder, I will embrace you with the ashes.

Given your love, sweetheart, I would face my forthcoming trial calmly, with no regrets about my choice and looking forward to tomorrow optimistically. I look forward to my country being a land of free expression, where all citizens’ speeches are treated the same; here, different values, ideas, beliefs, political views… both compete with each other and coexist peacefully; here, majority and minority opinions will be given equal guarantees, in particular, political views different from those in power will be fully respected and protected; here, all political views will be spread in the sunlight for the people to choose; all citizens will be able to express their political views without fear, and will never be politically persecuted for voicing dissent; I hope to be the last victim of China’s endless literary inquisition, and that after this no one else will ever be jailed for their speech.

This election season, we are, predictably, intensely focused inward. The election will likely not hinge upon foreign policy, and perhaps it should not. But it would be a tragedy for the idiom of the "empty chair", representing one man's struggle -- one generation's struggle -- for freedoms we take for granted to be defined by twelve minutes of Eastwood on a stage.

The history behind "Bad Romance: Women's Suffrage"

If you haven't yet seen this spectacular parody/tribute of Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance", then do yourself a favor and watch it immediately. It uses the famous song to tell the story of first wave feminism - specifically, Alice Paul and the Women's Suffrage Movement.

I knew precious little about the American Women's Suffrage Movement prior to this video and the research it inspired. But I guess that's the point of videos like this - to raise awareness and interest into the stories that are at least as interesting as this music video. Based on comments on Youtube and elsewhere, it appears lots of people are as ignorant as I was of the rich history in this video. This brief post will hopefully provide some context.

Alice Paul was a spectacularly remarkable woman. She grew up in a Quaker community that believed in equality of the sexes. As the eldest, she displayed remarkable responsibility and intelligence - she has enough degrees to make everyone else in America feel like complete morons. (They include a Bachelors in Biology, a Masters in Sociology, a PhD in Economics. She also earned a LL.B., LL.M., and  D.C.L. - law degrees). She learned how to be a "militant suffragist" in England, and was beaten and jailed during protests. She and others protested their confinement by engaging in hunger strikes. The institution guards tried to break the strikes by forcibly feeding raw eggs. The spit move isn't just a tribute to Gaga's original video - it is a reflection of what actually happened while Paul was incarcerated.

She later brought her knowledge of tactics and protest to the United States, experiencing similar handling by the police, but ultimately successful in pressuring the Wilson administration for a vote. She organized the National Woman's Party (NWP), an independent organization from both political parties and the National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA).  Interestingly, the split came about because the NAWSA leadership didn't feel it was the right time to push for a Constitutional amendment. Paul led a march the day before Wilson's first inauguration and organized the "Silent Sentinels" outside of the White House. Her full biography, definitely worth reading in its entirety, appears at the Alice Paul Institute website.

She was unflinching in her commitment, and reminiscent of Lenin in her belief in a small, motivated group to move mountains.

I never doubted that equal rights was the right direction. Most reforms, most problems are complicated. But to me there is nothing complicated about ordinary equality.

It is better, as far as getting the vote is concerned, I believe, to have a small, united group than an immense debating society.

Alice Paul, as it turns out, was also a vegetarian.

It occurred to me that I just didn't see how I could go ahead and continue to eat meat. It just seemed so... cannibalistic to me. And so, I'm a vegetarian, and I have been ever since.

Update: Mary Jane Lindrum of Soomo Publishing, the producers of the music video, informed me that the anti-suffragist vignette is actually taken from a contemporaneous political cartoon.

I just want to provide a little more information about the anti-suffragist scene in the video. It's based on a political cartoon that appeared in Puckmagazine in 1915. You'll see that it features a satirical anti-suffragist and pokes fun at those who did not support voting rights for women. You can find it here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:POTD/2011-08-18 and here:
http://www.nwhm.org/online-exhibits/rightsforwomen/cartoons.html 

The second major story arc concerns the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment. President Wilson was initially reluctant to push the issue of women's suffrage - however, after persistent protests, and influence by his strong, intelligent wife (arguably the first female president, if one considers the time when Wilson was incapacitated by a stroke), Wilson decided to push for its passage as a "war measure". (Both WWI and WWII saw gains by women, socially and economically.) The proposed amendment passed in the House but failed in the Senate; a year later, it squeaked by in both chambers. The amendment was sent to the states for ratification.

It came down to Tennessee, in which the pro-suffragists (the yellow roses) squared off against the anti-suffragists (the red roses). Gail Collins of the NYTimes describes the vote with her typical combination of humor and insight in a 2010 Op-Ed. But here's the gist of the story. Alcohol manufacturers and distributors, worried that women's suffrage would lead to Prohibition, handed out samples on the day of the vote. Both pro- and anti-suffragists were pretty piss drunk by the time the vote happened. After initial deadlocks, Harry T. Burn, a 24-year old legislator, and the youngest member of the Tennessee House, changed his vote from "nay" to "aye". The measure carried by a single vote. It is said that Mr. Burn had to escape out a window and hide in the roof for a few hours. The anti- forces tracked down his hotel, but he had fled town by that point.

He later justified his vote by saying it was the right thing to do, and also cited a letter from his mother that told him to vote for suffrage.

Page 2 of 7 of the letter Harry's mom sent him.

Page 6 of 7 of the letter Harry's mom sent him. 

The letter is about a wide range of things, but the parts relevant to the suffrage debate are these:

From page 2:
Hurrah and vote for suffrage! Don't keep them in doubt! I notice some of the speeches against. They were bitter. I have been watching to see how you stood, but have not noticed anything yet. 

Page 6:
Don't forget to be a good boy and help Mrs. Catt put the "rat" in ratification 

Burn directly cited his mother's letter as a reason for why he voted for suffrage.

 [T]hird, I knew that a mother’s advice is always safest for a boy to follow and my mother wanted me to vote for ratification.

(More details available in this pdf.)

On the video itself:

One thing I was asked a few times: why no women of color? That's actually an interesting question. From what I've gathered, African-American women formed their own groups (the National Association of Colored Women), partly because, outside of New England, women of color were not allowed to be members of white suffrage groups. Also, these groups had slightly different priorities - they were concerned with Victorian sexual morality, temperance, and economic social rights of women. But they were also actively working against Jim Crow laws and lynchings. W. E. B. du Bois came out in favor of women's suffrage, while other African-American males, including Booker T. Washington, were against it. This source has some good background on the position of African-Americans on the issue of women's suffrage.

As far as Asian-Americans and other races - well, it's notable that women received the vote in California in 1911. However, Asian-Americans, even citizens, faced increasingly severe restrictions, economically and politically, throughout the period leading up to World War II. I've written a bit about those in a previous post.

The video cleverly illustrates that women didn't stop baking, raising children, and doing laundry after they received the vote. The fears raised by anti-suffragists that women would desert the household en masse proved unwarranted.

I forgot to include this earlier - the phrase "Remember the ladies" is a reference to a letter Abagail Adams wrote to her husband, John, pushing him to support women's suffrage at the birth of the Republic. She was unsuccessful - however, it's fair to say that she was a prototype for empowered American women.

Finally, I'd like to point out the differences in the opening and closing scenes.

Opening Scene

Closing Scene

Note that in the opening scene, the husband and wife are on opposite sides of the shot. However, in the closing scene, they are together, and actually moving. The husband puts an arm around his wife and plays with the child, suggesting that suffrage actually brought some families closer together.

The policeman, in the beginning, is standing in an aggressive posture. At the end, he is seated. This perhaps reflects the end of hamfisted police action (at least when it came to white women).

In the opening scene, the suffragists have their faces covered. At the end, they have their faces revealed. They have come out from under the shadow of anonymity, and can now proudly, openly, be empowered women. (Or, is this commentary on the covering of Muslim women?)

It was prudent to display the male politicians in the back. Sometimes, we forget that real history is made in the streets, not the statehouse. Politicians, even those of courage and vision, are often merely confirming what was created by those in the trenches of the fight.

I was a bit confused that the anti-suffragist woman disappeared. Was she merely a symbol? If she were converted to the suffragist cause, wouldn't she appear in the final scene? There were probably a not-inconsequential minority of women who were anti-suffrage, just as there is a not-inconsequential minority of women today who claim to be anti-feminist.

Again, this isn't meant to be a comprehensive review. But I loved this video too much to just let it pass without comment. I strongly encourage you to read up on this fascinating chapter - there are obvious parallels to today.

Day of Remembrance

Yesterday was the 70^th anniversary of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the mandatory relocation of mainland Japanese-Americans to camps sprinkled across the United States. It is called a day of remembrance. The optimistic slogan, used prior and since, is “Never forget”. But I can say, without sarcasm or humor, I have forgotten why I remember.

The Japanese Relocation Camps were not special. They were neither the most brutal, or the first, or the largest. They are not worthy of remembrance solely because I am Japanese, or because they directly affected my family. (Indeed, my family history of relocation predates February 19, 1942.) We cast off all manner of personal and familial history, either willingly or because the years put enough distance between us and the experience. One day, we look at it as one looks at a painting in a museum. We can still appreciate it, even be moved and shaped by it. But it is coded as non-life and external.

So it is not important to remember for those reasons that I believe I remember, or ought to remember.

So why do I remember?

I remember, and they are worthy of remembrance, because the camps were American.

For that reason alone I measure its tragedy and its place in history. For that reason alone I believe it is worthy of remembrance, a place in the heart, even as other, more violent, more brutal, more destructive, more identity-altering events from those crowded years clamor for the right to be remembered first, remembered best, even to escape non-life and be the cause, justification, and scapegoat for foreseeable tomorrows.

For the one article of faith – or the shadow of a piece of the faith – that I retain and cling to in my desperate casting about, is this: that we must not only judge ourselves against the standards of others, or, worse yet, their actions. We have our own standards, higher standards, and it is against those that our actions and inactions are to be measured.

The mass, forced relocation of Japanese-Americans isn’t comparable to the Nazi concentration camps. It doesn’t have to be. The American camps were wrong according to the standards we have, or ought to have, for ourselves.

Other nations do not engage in our occasionally self-consuming, debilitating, and masochistic self-analysis. And we skip it when exploring our past and present when it is expedient. But, in the end, it is a vital, even essential, part of the American identity. We must know. Failure is punishing. But willful ignorance of our principles and where we fall short is unforgivable and irredeemable.

This piece of history is perfectly placed for me, because those who were children there now walk slowly, burdened not by the legacy of a miscarriage of justice, but rather arthritis and cancer. Their eyes are not haunted by their experiences. They, too, have forgotten and moved on. I am not reminded of that past when I see them. It is distant enough that they, and I, are free of its shadow. 

And yet it is close enough to be unfree of its lessons.

Instead, I remember when I see, or hear, or feel, the shifting of the tide of expeditious and opportunistic prejudice against another. I remembered when, after 9/11, some called for the incarceration of Arab Americans. I remembered when, naïve but passionate, I marched in protest of the invasion of Iraq at a point when invasion was inevitable. I remembered when I saw Hurricane Katrina bring images of the Third World in America, to America. And I remembered when I argued with a relative, a child in Rohwer, in defense of gay marriage and civil rights.

I forgot at points in my life. When I did, and I failed to be my best, failed to live up to my responsibilities as caretaker of a small, but real, part of the dream.

So I remember, because it is a part of America, and I am American. 

The relocation of Japanese-Americans is a failure that has, and will continue, to pave the way toward greater successes, greater triumphs, that will vindicate the delicate blend of caution, wisdom, optimism, and patriotism that I believe is my duty and my true and better nature. I remember not to shame, or out of shame, but as a necessary part of embracing the identity, legacy, and responsibility of being an American, to take ownership of disappointments as well as progress.

I remember because I am a proud American, and remembering will make me a better one.

United Methodist Sermon on gay rights

(This is a sermon I have not yet given before a congregation. But I present it here, with the hope it may be of value to the congregation of friends, religious or not, I am privileged to know. -R)

The Lord be with you. (And also with you.)

Today’s story comes from the headline news. On Monday night, Anderson Cooper interviewed Andrew Shirvell, who is an assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan. Mr. Shirvell has created a blog, in which he singles out and attacks the student body president of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, a 21-year old openly gay man named Chris Armstrong. On his blog, titled “Chris Armstrong Watch”, Shirvell has called him a “radical homosexual activist”, a “racist, elitist, and liar”, and “Nazi-like”. Shirvell has also called him “Satan’s representative on the Student Assembly”, and depicted him with a multicolored peace flag on which appears a Nazi swastika. He attacked the reputation of Armstrong’s friends and family, and protested outside of his residence.

Gender norms, advocacy, medicine, and the law - Cornell case study

When I first read that a friend had joined a group called "End Female Genital Mutation at Cornell", I braced myself for a report of an international student's child being subjected to mutilation according to their culture of origin. What I found was a different story that is currently taxing my vocabulary for appropriate descriptors.

I'm very bothered by this group and what it discusses on many levels. This is the kind of thing I would ordinarily ignore or otherwise not speak about - I really don't know how others, or even I, will respond to this.

But that's precisely why I am writing about it. It's a frontier I hadn't considered, with some pretty substantial stakes. And even though I am pretty damn far from an expert on gender/identity issues, I decided it was important for me to share this, and solicit opinions from my bright friends.

Only Nixon Could go to China - Sunday service at a UCC church on the conversion of St. Paul

Today’s sermon was, as usual, a masterpiece by Pastor Mitch. He piqued the historian in me when he discussed The 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Persons in History, a 1978 book by Michael H. Hart. Mitch asked all of us to pick our top three, then solicited our responses. (I chose, somewhat incoherently and with buyer’s remorse, “Jesus, Genghis Khan, and Abraham Lincoln”.) He then went through Hart’s top ten, with Muhammad listed as number one, Isaac Newton at two, Jesus Christ at three, and so on.

He said that one name that surprises a lot of people was St. Paul, at number six, just below Confucius and above Cai Lun (the inventor of paper). Mitch points out that without St. Paul, Christianity could have remained a localized sect, one of many “mystery religions”, to borrow a term from a Roman history class.

Resurrected Facebook Post No. 4: Thoughts on the 40th Anniversary of Assassination of RFK

(Originally posted Thursday, June 5, 2008; updated March 30, 2010 with info on a new documentary commemorating RFK's Indianapolis speech.)


1968 is considered by many historians as an amazing year. It seems a moment in which people felt a decade's worth of emotion in a single year. Revolutions in France and Czechoslovakia. The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. Race riots in America. Vietnam.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy.

A letter to Asian-Americans in California Regarding Proposition 8

Update 05/27/2009: Thanks to David Coyne for catching an error I made. I had stated that Asian-Americans were the only minority group to have voted as a majority for Proposition 8. This is false. According to a CNN exit poll, Asian-Americans were evenly split for and against Proposition 8, with a slight plurality voting no. The post has been edited to account for this.

That said, the post's intent and content remain valid; it is still troubling to me that a full 49% of Asian-Americans supported Proposition 8, given this history.


To my friends in California -

I heard about the Supreme Court ruling. And while it may have been consistent with expectations, I know it was not consistent with your hopes.

I am reminded of the many instances of separate but equal justice that California in particular, and nations in general, have visited upon their citizens.

California Proposition 8, Christianity, Science, and America

Today I had a long conversation with a friend from Harvey Mudd. He, like many of my friends, is excited that Barack Obama won the presidency on Tuesday. And he, like many, is dismayed that the voters in California decided to pass Proposition 8: “Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry.” In our conversation, I realized that the issues surrounding whether or not same-sex couples should have the right to marry is tied to an aspect of religious belief in a way that reminds me of another area of social conflict – the fight over evolution. I thought it was time for me to share my experiences and thoughts on this other battle, and then see if I can apply the lessons inferred to this present conflict.

On April 15, former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee spoke at Cornell. I was struck by how likable he was. He was charismatic and well-spoken. I thought he made a wonderful and correct point talking about how his experiences as a minister were distinctly valuable, and very different from his fellow candidates. As a pastor, he said, he saw every form of human frailty, and spoke with men and women from all walks of life. I have been, and remain, in favor of the separation of church and state. But considering that the legal profession (as I imperfectly understand it) is focused on specificity, precedent, and argument, I believe there is something to be learned from the shepherd-leader who knows how to listen, to make those around him or her feel heard and cared for, even if there is no final resolution of the difference of opinion.

I found one brief portion of the talk particularly enlightening. Throughout his talk, he poked fun at himself and the controversy he generated—Eisenhower, Sherman, and other impressive American leaders have been very effective at the art of disarming self-deprecating humor while maintaining decisive leadership and command. When the topic of evolution came up, he relieved the potential tension with a joke. He pointed out that “he didn’t know…. He wasn’t there.”

It struck me a bit odd, and it took a few days for me to realize why that brief, rather mild joke was so important. It goes to a point Phil Muirhead at Cornell Astronomy once pointed out – that there was a world of difference between scientists, whose work depends upon trusting the results of other experiments that they did not personally conduct, and individuals for whom the threshold of truth is personal experience.

This is odd because Governor Huckabee does trust the custodianship of another set of events for which he has no personal experience—namely, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

I point this out not to highlight inconsistency, but to underline a key point that is missed during the talking past one another that secular scientists and religious community members seem to have, or conservative Christians and homosexuals, or Democrats and Republicans.

There is a deep disagreement on the sources of truth, legitimacy, and authority between the great cultural divides in our society.

A good scientist will study and question the custodianship and legitimacy of the set of experimental and theoretical work that has led to modern evolutionary biology. And a good Christian will examine the ecclesiastical and temporal histories that shaped, and were shaped by, Christianity. And ideally, both are willing to study outside their areas of competence, and discover and construct a more complicated, subtle and meaningful identity for themselves than existed before.

Yet it is the nature of power to react against the threat posed by other sources of truth and legitimacy. Though human beings are complex, our limited resources often cause us to focus on specific salient aspects of ourselves. At any given moment I may be a man, an Asian, a scientist, a job seeker, a Christian, a Democrat, a writer, a son, an American citizen, and a trader. But rarely do I retain awareness of all those aspects. Even if I did, I might underweight or overweight the contributions of any one in my actions and reactions to a given situation.

Wisdom comes from knowledge and experience. Both depend upon two factors:
(1) our ability to analyze and arrive at greater truth
(2) our ability to recognize the limitations of both the processes we use and the scope of our conclusions.

By (2), I mean that we need to depend upon multiple processes for understanding our world and the truth, in both a physical and a moral sense.
As an astronomer, I used multiple wavelengths of light to infer greater knowledge about stars and planets. Were I to limit myself to the one band where I have personal experience (visible), I would be unable to detect brown dwarfs around nearby stars, unable to detect ice on the Moon, unable to track star formation in distant galaxies. Indeed, the different academic disciplines provide different lenses and different toolboxes by which we can analyze and process texts, external events and personal experiences. (This is why I support a broad liberal arts background combined with a rigorous scientific education.)
And as a Christian, I have studied not only the Bible and prominent Christian theologians, but also other major religions, the complicated relationship between temporal and ecclesiastical authority in the Roman Empire and Medieval Europe, and how the evolution and decline of mainline American denominational churches has affected poverty work.

And I have tremendously enjoyed the opportunities afforded by my limited travels, my education, and inscrutable fate to have wonderful conversations with men and women of all walks of life, of varying degrees of power, wealth, charisma, culture, faith, and political persuasion.

Our success—in all senses of the word—in this life is facilitated by a willingness to learn as much as possible from any and all sources, combined—critically so—with a temperament, character, and system of values that change less in response to direct pressure from others than our own desire to change in response to new information and insight.

I don’t know precisely why Proposition 8 appears to be on track to pass. Perhaps those who voted for it are homophobic. Perhaps they value their heterosexual marriages. Perhaps they were concerned about how it would affect what their children were introduced to in schools. Perhaps they believed that their pastors would be forced to perform marriages between gays and lesbians or face legal sanction. Perhaps their faith proscribes homosexuality. Perhaps they were concerned about the already substantial federal deficit, and the implications should homosexual couples receive the same financial benefits that heterosexual spouses enjoy. Perhaps it was a reaction to the focus on sex that often is found in discussion and expressions of homosexual identity.

At the core of the religious opposition to same-sex marriage is a presumption that Christian truth includes a component that explicitly regards same-sex marriage, or same-sex relationships as sinful and proscribed, and that this truth passes through trustworthy custodians cognizant both of the complexities of modern life, the variegated and complicated identity of being gay, and the application of Christian principles and lessons to both of these.

This belief and its implications are at loggerheads with other aspects of our collective identities to restrict or remove rights through means of constitutional amendment.

I do not know for certain whether the state of California, or any other state, has enacted constitutional amendments that restrict or remove the rights of any individual or group. As far as I know, the United States Constitution has only one: the 18th amendment on the prohibition of alcohol, which was enacted in 1917 and repealed by the 21st Amendment in 1933. (I do not count the 22nd Amendment, which limits a president to two elected terms.) All other amendments seek to extend or confirm the rights of its citizens, or to clarify procedural issues.

Let's take a step back. One could easily argue that Caracalla’s extension of Roman citizenship to all free men within the Empire in 212 C.E. was prompted more by necessity as progressivism. The same can be said for the Magna Carta, signed by King John I of England in 1215, which placed limits on the power of the sovereign, or the 1688 Bill of Rights, which created in England a constitutional monarchy. But it is undeniable that all represented steps toward the modern liberal democracy that we enjoy today, which we would regard as superior to the times when none, or one, or the few, were free.

We can look to our own, more recent history, to the liberty, and the enfranchisement, of African-Americans and women, of the removal of restrictions on property ownership by Asian immigrants, and the Miranda Rights. The trend and trajectory of the progress of human civilization is toward greater, not lesser, individual freedom, limited by the harm principle, guided by a state that is, ideally, strong enough to enforce the law, free enough to provide the greatest possible individual and collective liberty, and wise enough not to attempt to legislate tolerance or morality.

It has been a slow path, an undulating, halting journey toward universal liberty, one that perhaps can only poorly described as progress. I have cherry-picked history, glossed over humanity’s recidivist tendencies toward conquest and oppression, the temptation to construct conflict and corrupt the blessing of distinct identities to divide and rule. Who among us is here who cannot look back into our ancestral past, and find a lineage unscathed by our own Trail of Tears?

Proposition 8 is bad on a number of counts. It sets a precedent for constitutional amendment that is low, that will encourage others to codify their vision of how the world should operate in what should be a very difficult document to modify.

It creates the ground for retroactive implementation of the amendment to nullify existing marriages to same-sex couples, further damaging both the letter and the spirit of the legislative process.

Yet perhaps most destructive is the corrosiveness that the bitter electoral battle has created between the different camps.

I note that the Constitution, the Holy Bible, and the Origin of Species are all, in it of themselves, pieces of paper. They contain information and knowledge. Yet they are absolutely worthless in it of themselves. They retain power and influence only insofar as individual humans are able to read and interpret these documents, apply them to their own lives, and attempt, with varying levels of care and wisdom, to shape the course of human progress by the knowledge and wisdom so created by our collective thoughts and actions. We ultimately must judge the success and merits of Christianity, of science, and of America by its living legacy, by those who represent and promote each.

By this metric, I believe this proposition damages this living legacy of extending rights and the Christian values of love and inclusiveness.

Our future depends upon our ability to recognize the merits of our ideas and values, new and old, resolving conflicts where they exist, as best we can, and occasionally subordinating the desire for consistency in one realm with adherence to a broader one. I do not yet know if this means that I must choose between Leviticus or On Liberty—thus far, I feel I have navigated, however imperfectly, the margins of identity of Christianity, science, and American citizen. What I do know is that the greatest burden, and the greatest virtue, is to be honest with the demands of each.

And the demands of what I feel Christianity to be truly about – faith in a benevolent higher power, hope in the potential for humanity to improve itself, and love for the “other” – and what I feel America is about, and what I feel the pursuit of knowledge is about, all indicate that it is damaging to use the authority of the state to eliminate the rights of a minority simply because the majority wishes it so.

Christ’s message of love and inclusiveness, especially for individuals at the margins of society, is at odds with the metaphorical interpretation of the tale of Sodom and Gomorrah. Yet I cannot conclude that the existence of the latter invalidates the former—just as we recognize the precedence of federal law over state statutes, I recognize the supremacy of the spirit of Christianity can, and in this case does, trump the letter of Christian law as interpreted from Genesis 19. (In fact, I tend to agree with the Jewish interpretation that hostility to the “stranger”, and not homosexual relations, is the real sin that is proscribed in the story.)

Each of us is ultimately responsible for the choice of belief and action. We are the heirs of the historical legacy that enables us to live as we do today. But we are not the final heirs. With our limitations, but also our greatest possible ability, we must look to the lessons of the past and the realities of the present. And we must live, lead, and govern with an eye to the world we wish to leave to those who come after us, those who are yet innocent of the conflict and hatred that poison and destroy all it consumes.

As a man who had no father at home, a father who lacked the mental stability to be a father or a husband, I have this to say about the issue of same-sex adoption.

I am far more fortunate than the number of children who enter the sex industry, or are abused by their parents, or have lost their parents to war, famine, or disease. I have seen the triumph of individuals who grew up without support at home, but always in spite of, not because of, their absence of parental leadership and love. I have also worked with, lived with, and laughed with many gay men and women whom I think will be excellent parents.

I have met gay men who were more of a father to me than my biological father. And I will never forget their contribution to my life, to my character, to my conviction that we are far, far more than the simple atomistic identities we frequently apply to others, and ourselves.

If you are worried about what your children will learn, or what it means to have a gay parent living next door, I would encourage you to examine your fears, examine the availability of good parents in society, and consider whether those children deserve the chance to have a parent, of any sex, of any orientation, who cares and loves them. And I would encourage you to focus not just on educating your children in the particulars of right and wrong as you see it, but to give them the character and temperament to live and lead a world of the many, and not the few.

I believe this is how we best serve our God, our nation, our profession, and our future.

I welcome disagreement, and would love to have a dialogue with anyone who agrees, disagrees, or is curious how I came to this conclusion. I will promise to not have the goal of convincing anyone, but rather to listen and learn, as I hope those who read this also learn, if not about themselves, about me and what I believe.