Gay Rights Are Civil Rights, Too

I have come to the realization that the struggle for gay civil rights in this country is analogous to the past generations struggles with the racial aspect of civil rights in almost every way. The same arguments are made again and again, the same false fears are instilled in the people, and politicians are still grappling with the difficulties that come with pandering to bigoted and resistant constituents while still upholding the "self-evident truths" written 200 some-odd years ago. If I were my parents age, I would be proud to say that I had put my best efforts into the fight for equal rights in the 1950s and 60s. Honestly, I'd feel a bit smug about the fact that I had been on the good side in that fight. Equal rights have come and our country is better off for it. True equality may not exist yet, and it's difficult to argue that it ever will, but at least our government has done it's part in granting official rights and recognitions to every group, regardless of race, gender, creed or sexual orientation. Or maybe just the first three. Yeah, sexual orientation is still an issue, eh?

Why the foot-dragging, government? We've almost, almost got all the civil rights covered. Why stop now?

Some history: The push for equal civil rights for racial minorities was due do a strong push by the federal government. Truman issued an executive order in 1948 requiring the desegregation of the military. It took three years for this to come into effect, but it lead the way for school desegregation and the fall of the concept of "separate but equal". Many southern states fought back - Arkansas called out the National Guard to block black students, and Alabama governor George Wallace blocked the doors at the University of Alabama to keep out two black students. Blocked the doors, personally, that is. JFK had to order the National Guard to remove the Governor! We can see that a motivated federal government can quickly erase institutional discrimination even in the face of disgusting, outright racism and bigotry.
More specifically, the concept of anti-miscegenation laws (laws prohibiting whites from marrying non-whites) persisted until 1967! Your parents or grandparents could have been arrested in a roughly a third of the states just for being in an interracial marriage! It seems crazy now, right? Well, the Supreme Court (federal...) ruled those restrictions as unconstitutional in the Loving v. Virginia case.
We've flipped that concept today. The states are spearheading the "new" civil rights movement.
Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and Washington D.C. now allow same-sex marriage. The federal government has stayed out of the issue, considering marriage laws to be under the jurisdiction of the states. But, it has set the example with the discriminatory Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy of the military. The federal government has put full equality in jeopardy with this military rule. Recently, a district court judge in California ruled DADT to be unconstitutional, but the Department of Justice is asking for an extension to allow the military to operate under DADT.

The military is the first place the federal government can (and eventually, will) take a stand on gay rights and equality. I think the results of a change in the military's policy on LGBT service will have a profound effect on this country and it's policies, and I only hope that it happens sooner than later.

Creationsim Is Not A Scientific Theory

I hear this argument over and over again and it really, truly makes me crazy: "Evolution is a theory" - I.E., all the geneticists and biologists and paleontologists are just making a glorified guess. This is a general misunderstanding about the difference between a theory you or I or anyone might make, and a true scientific theory. Here is a non-scientific theory: "Hmmm, my leftover ham sandwich is missing. I'll bet it was Jon, he loves ham sandwiches." This is what is known as a hypotheses, just an attempt to explain a situation or phenomenon. In the scientific method, however, this is just the first step. Then you take that hypotheses, and put it through tests and experiments. And here's what makes it true science - you don't just have the person who made the hypotheses test it, you let everyone test it with the intention of disproving it. This is what makes it science, and by that I mean that it is the closest to the absolute truth we can attain at a given time. This is also what disqualifies any type of creationism-based curriculum from being taught in classrooms. Besides the fact that it does indeed push a religious agenda, it is not science. There is no possible way to test out the hypotheses that god created this earth and everything on it.

And on to the last point before we get into the politics and legal side of the argument, the true function of evolution has been shown over and over again. Everything we eat, from hybrid tomato plants to domesticated cattle, has been cultivated through the mechanisms that led life to evolve. Evolution is something we see around us in action every day, not just an unproven theory.


The Establishment clause and Free Exercise clause of the First Amendment state very clearly that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...", almost precisely what you have written that it does not say. We can argue that because Congress passes laws and bills and budgets that fund schools, the Government would be promoting a particular religious doctrine through the educational system. Even without the "Seperation of Church and State" line in the Constitution (Which, by the way, was penned by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a group of Baptists to relieve a concern that the government would become overly involved in their religion), the Constitution clearly states that this sort of teaching in a government funded school is absolutely unconstitutional.

As an earlier comment mentioned, there is no way to remove religious overtones from creation-based teaching. And as a quick side note, our country was not built on religious principles, as you wrote. That is exactly why the guys that built the country threw in those two clauses in the very First Amendment.

The Tea Party v. The True Nature Of Congress

I am loving Delaware senator (Vice President Joe Biden's temporary replacement) Ted Kaufman these days. After his appearance on The Daily Show yesterday, I've been feeling that this is exactly the type of person that should be working in the Senate. He's bright, he's clever, and he has a very clear idea of how Washington was designed and how it works today. But, after a mere two years of filling Joe Biden's empty seat, he's getting out. And I think this is a beautiful example of the old adage that those that seek political power are some of the least deserving of it. At his appearance, he makes a mention of the Founding Father's intentions of both the House and the Senate: The House is a direct voice of the people, with new members every two years, and is much quicker to pass legislation, while the Senate is essentially put in place to stop the majority of this legislation from proceeding. The framer's of the constitution set out to create a deliberative body that slowed or stopped the more fiery and inconsistent influence of the people (the House of Representatives), while still giving people an active role in government legislation.

This reasoning flies in the face of what most people want or expect from Washington. Most politicians claim that they are working to streamline the Congress, to "fix the system", and to allow the people more direct access to the mechanics of government. I really wonder if they truly believe it, or if it's just election strategy designed to drum up some anger from constituents. The most recent development in this line of thinking is the "Tea Party" movement - a group of (mostly) true Washington outsiders running on a platform of a combination of conservative issues, the allure of electing a Washington "outsider", and more and more of this idea that Congress is broken and needs to be fixed. At first, I wondered what this country was coming to. Why would a ridiculous movement like this gain any traction, and what sort of people would be there to support it? But, as I delve deeper into the history of this country, I can see a very real trend of movements similar to (most even more radical than!) the Tea Party. Going all the way back to the beginning, several factions were very (very!) divided on the role that state, local, and federal government should take. The country split up in 1860, which isn't really that long ago. Third parties have gained widespread support at certain points in the last century. The president has claimed more and more power relative to other branches at times, and then the Congress steps up and takes it back. The point I'm getting at is that as crazy as times seem right now, it is all just part of the ebb and flow of our government. And, it's all happened before. Everything bizarre and unsettling that is happening in this current mid-term election has happened before,and will no doubt happen again. We will all just have to put our faith in the fact that Democracy won't stay too far from the equilibrium that keeps everfything in line.

Parallels between the War On Terror/Drugs: According to Glenn Greenwald

Glenn Greenwald wrote last week on the issues of both the War On Drugs and the War On Terror. The focus of the linked article was that both "Wars" are loosely defined, extremely expensive, and have led to an erosion of the basic civil liberties guaranteed in the constitution. Greenwald is an unabashed liberal, and his columns are certainly aimed towards like-minded liberals (although I'm sure many libertarians and quite a few conservatives would agree with the assertions of this article as well.)

Eisenhower warned this country against the the rise of the "Military Industrial" complex, meaning that the people that work for and build weapons to assist with war will, obviously, lobby in favor of war. And, given that a few major wars had built up a massive industry for the creation of munitions and other military goods, the investors in this industry had a vested interest in keeping the status quo, and an enormous amount of money with which to lobby politicians to continue using their goods and services. This continual cycle of private business propped up by government funding, Greenwald argues, is the background of a wide assortment of essentially unnecessary wars and unnecessary government programs. He makes the point that more and more, prisons have been privatized, providing financial incentive to increase the number of inmates, and to increase their sentences. The owners (and shareholders) of these prisons are paid per prisoner, per day. It goes without saying that an business built on incarceration will lobby for harsher laws and longer sentences. Greenwald then compares the American prison system with the rest of the world, and shows that we have by far the highest level of incarceration in the world, and American prison inmates account for 25% of all inmates in the world, coming from a country that makes up just 5% of the world's population.

Glenn Greenwald makes an argument for an end of the War On Drugs, and an end to the system that both imprisons these non-violent criminals and props up both the drug cartels and the owners and lobbyists of private prisons.

The issue of drug legalization is complicated. There are countless factors, ranging from moral or religious objection, to the concerns that drug legalization will increase addiction rates. Several countries have altered their drug laws with mixed results, but that is no guarantee that any such measure would work in this country.

I find this opinion article to be mostly reasonable, with the concerns very real. This country should reevaluate any industry or law when a part of it (I.E., the ratio of inmates in our prisons) is out of whack with the rest of the developed world. The article has a slight liberal bias, as expected, and many will disagree with his proposed solutions to this problem, but I would argue that most would agree that the prison system in American is a real problem.

Assassination Of A U.S. Citizen?

A week or so back, Ronald Sokol wrote an article regarding the ability of the United States government or military to assassinate a US Citizen living abroad. Really, the article involved the right of the government to assassinate anyone, but in this situation it involves Anwar Al-Awlaki, born on New Mexico, and now living in Yemen as a Muslim lecturer and reported Al-Qaeda recruiter. To begin, Sokol is an American lawyer and author, specializing in constitutional and civil rights law. He is an occasional contributor to the International Herald Tribune and the Christian Science Monitor opinion sections.

The argument Sokol draws upon to illustrate his opinion is something he calls the Nuremberg standard. He outlines the post WWII trials of German and Japanese officers, and how the United States government insisted on a proper trial for those accused, while the Soviet and British leaders would just as soon executed Nazi leaders on sight. The idea at the time was that the rule of law should override any other motivation, and that the principles set out in the U.S. Constitution should be extended to any and everyone, regardless of their alleged crimes or affiliation.

Sokol points out that this standard set 65 years ago has been difficult to abide by, especially by the American government. There were many assassination attempts through the 60s and 70s, and only in 1976 did President Ford specifically outlaw government assassination. This lasted until 2002, when President Bush allowed assassinations of "high level terrorists".

As a civil and constitutional rights lawyer, Ronald Sokol is very much in favor of due process for Anwar Al-Awlaki, and entirely opposed to any assassination attempt. He makes the argument that without proper judicial oversight, the branch of government that authorizes the killing operates without any checks or balances, and effectively disregards the intentions of the constitution. He makes a note that, of course, there are times when killing is necessary for our national defense, and that not every enemy combatant will be allowed full due process of the courts. But, in the case of Anwar Al-Awlaki, the threat posed to our national security is not so dire as to allow an execution without a proper trial.

Ronald Sokol is a very credible author on the subject of constitutional law, and I find his arguments in this case to be quite appropriate. Assassination as a form of justice is a very slippery slope, and there is a reason that many leaders have outlawed it in the past. The "rule of law" is mentioned as something to strive for, but something that is not easy to follow. In our history, we have strayed from the constitutional outlines of the "rule of law", but I have to agree with Sokol in saying that in the case of Anwar Al-Awlaki, there are no grounds allowing an assassination.

Congress Takes A Break

Congress has voted to take an early break from sessions until after the November elections to allow Senators and Representatives to return to their home states for the final weeks of election campaigning. The scheduled date for the adjournment was October 8th, but a motion to adjourn passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 210 for, 209 against. One of the final votes in both the House and the Senate was a spending bill that would provide government funding through December 3rd, as well a bill to continue funding NASA until 2013 that passed in the Senate, and a bill that would provide medical compensation to emergency workers during and after the 9/11 attack. Notably, the future of the tax cuts passed under the Bush administration in 2001 and 2003 (and that are set to expire at the end of this year) were not decided before this adjournment, leaving that decision to be made by what is called the "lame duck" session. This refers to the period after an election but before the newly elected Congressmen (Congresspeople?) replace their predecessors. There is a sentiment that this was going to be a difficult, and quite possibly unpopular decision to make, and many are choosing to avoid it in the run-up to a highly contested election.

This article gives some insight into the actual workings and motivations of Congress. It is a little disheartening that our representatives have postponed difficult legislation in favor of personal campaigning, but there may be a strategy behind the move (I.E. "lame duck" members who have lost their seats may vote differently than they would have before the election...).

First Post!

Welcome! For the next little while, I will be posting to this blog as an assignment in my American Government class. Posts will include summaries and critiques of news and editorial articles, as well as a few of my own editorials from time to time. Feel free to comment, and be sure to explore the blogs of my classmates as well!