And maybe we are.
A week from Tuesday, Arkansans will go to the polls in a primary election. In the 2nd Congressional District race (which covers central Arkansas), three Republicans are vying for the chance to face Patrick Henry Hays, the former longtime Democratic mayor of North Little Rock, in November's general election.
The Republican candidates are French Hill, a banker who founded Delta Trust & Bank (soon to be sold to Simmons) and who is the "establishment" GOP candidate; State Rep. Ann Clemmer, a UALR political science professor who lives in Benton; and military consultant Col. Colonel Conrad Reynolds of Conway. That last bit isn't a typo. Reynolds legally changed his first name to "Colonel." I am fairly certain that makes him the wacko candidate, but his presence adds a little color to an otherwise boring race.
Hill has a large lead in both fundraising and the polls, and he's almost certain to earn the nomination without a runoff. His main television ad is a nice piece of political theatre. In it, over some pleasant banjo music, his kids talk about how cheap he is--relating the story of "Ol' Blue," the car Hill drives, which is falling apart. Hill ends the ad by saying that he doesn't spend money that he doesn't have, that the government shouldn't either, and that Washington is bankrupting the country.
Look, even though French Hill is a banker who lives in Little Rock's tony Heights neighborhood, he seems like a fairly nice, down-to-earth guy. I am naturally suspicious of someone who hangs on so tightly to a dollar when he obviously doesn't need to--that kind of person tends to treat the people who supply him with goods and services very poorly--but I have no direct or indirect knowledge of Hill's character in that regard.
The problem with Hill, besides the fact that he's a Republican, is that I expect him as a banker to understand how money works. His sound-bite approach--at least as he puts it in his ads--is that Washington is "bankrupting" us. It's not. It's irresponsible for someone who ostensibly understands money to suggest that it is.
The federal government cannot become bankrupt. First, it is unconstitutional for the federal government to default on its obligations. Second, the federal government has the capacity and legal authority to create money at will, even if it does so only for the purpose of paying off those obligations. Third, the appropriations process is controlled by the House of Representatives, which has been in GOP hands since the 2010 election. If Hill joins the House, he will be a rank-and-file Republican, at best, who will be unable to do anything to prevent the runaway spending he supposedly derides.
I suspect that Hill knows all of these things. If he doesn't, that makes him essentially incompetent in his profession. If he does, that makes his campaign fundamentally dishonest and reliant on a strategy of fooling people. And maybe we're collectively easy to fool. People frequently respond to financial analogies between a family budget and the federal government's budget that are superficially attractive but ultimately ridiculous in practice. That doesn't make it right to offer those analogies.
If you drill down into Hill's comments, you'll see how utterly ridiculous they are. Hill is a banker. Bankers make money by taking in deposits and by lending those deposits to others for interest. It may well be that Hill personally doesn't spend money that he doesn't have. But most Arkansans do--they borrow money to buy houses and cars and other expensive items, and to cover unexpected expenses. Virtually everything that Hill has can be attributed to a business model that fundamentally depends on other people's borrowing.
That undermines the only business case for his candidacy that Hill has yet articulated and makes him a hypocrite. Arkansans deserve better.
Monday, May 12, 2014
Sunday, May 11, 2014
Marriage equality in Arkansas, Part II
On Friday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza issued an
opinion holding that Arkansas's ban on same-sex marriage is
unconstitutional. This is the second of two entries today on marriage
equality in Arkansas. The first focused on setting up the dispute. This part deals with the opinion itself and "popularity" versus
"constitutionality."
So, the big day is finally here. On Friday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza issued a 13-page opinion that invalidates the various laws on Arkansas's books that ban same-sex marriage. Those who read my blog know where I stand on this issue. I'm not afraid to admit that I cried like a baby--tears of joy--when I read Judge Piazza's masterful, brilliant opinion [PDF].
As of yet, a stay on the ruling has not been issued. In cases that are particularly controversial, in which appeal is a certainty, and in which the ruling creates changes that would be hard to undo if the ruling is overturned, it is common for a stay to be issued. Although the defendants in the case asked Judge Piazza to stay his ruling pending appeal, he did not do so in his order, and he has not as yet done so.
The Arkansas Supreme Court can issue a stay as well, and the safe bet is that they will--but it takes time for that to occur, and it won't occur until Monday at the earliest.
However, the first legal same-sex marriages in Arkansas have already occurred. The Carroll County Clerk's Office in Eureka Springs was, like many clerks' offices around the state, open Saturday for early voting (there is a primary election in a little over a week), and with a little cajoling, the clerk was convinced to issue marriage licenses to the 15 or so same-sex couples who appeared in order to apply.
If the Supreme Court issues a stay, those marriages--and any others that get issued between now and the time the stay is issued--will be somewhat in legal limbo. It is even more unclear what would happen to them if the Supreme Court should overturn the ruling--something that won't happen for months at the earliest.
I think these are interesting questions, and I happen to think they are likely to be mostly academic questions. Judge Piazza's opinion--which is worth reading; it's not larded up with a lot of legalese--is a brilliant expression of the dichotomy between what is "popular" and what is "constitutional."
Without doubt, Amendment 83 was an expression of the popular will: Some 75% of voters approved the constitutional ban on same-sex marriage just 10 years ago. I don't think the same amendment would garner that much support today, and recent polling suggests plurality support for marriage equality in the South (there are no recent polls in Arkansas, to my knowledge). But it is the last time voters expressed their view, and it was overwhelming.
But marriage is a fundamental right, within the scope of the right to "liberty" found in the Fourteenth Amendment, having been routinely found to be so by the Supreme Court. We do not live in a direct democracy. There are limits on what even a referendum of the people that results in supermajority passage can accomplish.
It is easy to uphold "popular will" as a justification on an issue on which you believe you have a permanent majority. I believe that we could garner substantial majorities in this state for adopting Christianity as the official religion of Arkansas, for example. But such an act would violate the First Amendment.
These questions were fundamental at the founding of the Republic. In the Federalist, No. 10, James Madison addressed the issue of "faction," which he defined as "a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or a minority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adversed to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community." The problem of a faction of the majority is inherent in a democratic system:
When a majority is included in a faction, the form of popular government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to its ruling passion or interest both the public good and the rights of other citizens. To secure the public good and private rights against the danger of such a faction, and at the same time to preserve the spirit and the form of popular government, is then the great object to which our inquiries are directed.Madison's view was that the solution to this problem was the formation of a representative republic, whereby the levers of power would be entrusted to a group of elected officials from all walks of life, sufficient in number that it would be difficult for them to form a cabal, but few enough that they would legitimately represent a wide array of constituents of differing views.
Our experience has shown that having a republican form of government was insufficient to the protection of minority rights. What followed were two efforts, about 75 years apart, to set forth and define certain rights that stood outside the whims not only of the democracy but also of the representatives themselves. The first was the Bill of Rights, adopted by the First Congress and ratified in 1791. The second was the Fourteenth Amendment, ratified in 1868, and by far the broadest and most sweeping restriction on governmental action in the Constitution.
The Fourteenth Amendment moved away from attempts to enumerate specific rights and into the sphere of more fundamental, broad categories of rights: the rights to life, liberty, and property, protected by the due process of law. For my money, the Fourteenth Amendment is the finest, strongest statement of freedom that has ever existed; its adoption, in the aftermath and disarray following the Civil War, was perhaps the finest hour our country has ever seen. That one amendment has done more to "secure the blessings of liberty" than any other legislative act in the history of the world.
While no opinion is bulletproof, especially on a subject as controversial as this one, and while creative courts motivated to reach a particular result will find a way if they like, overturning this ruling will require a Herculean effort. Judge Piazza's opinion pays special heed to the long American tradition of expanding personal freedoms. Liberty is a luxury that, once sampled, becomes a necessity.
There are many Arkansans who have expressed disappointment, anger, defiance, and horror at what happened on Friday. What is popular is not always right, and what is right is not always popular. But anyone can support the Constitution when it mandates what we like. It is when the Constitution produces an unpopular, if principled, result, that the strength of our commitment to it is tested.
But I believe that people want to do the right thing. I am optimistic that once they see the effects of this ruling, opposition to it will dissipate. Until that time comes, I could not be happier that this judge, this court, has determined to act as a bulwark against oppression. It is a good day for Arkansas.
Marriage Equality in Arkansas, Part I
On Friday, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza issued an opinion holding that Arkansas's ban on same-sex marriage is unconstitutional. This is the first of two entries today on marriage equality in Arkansas, and it focuses on setting up the dispute. The second will deal with the opinion itself and "popularity" versus "constitutionality."
Marriage equality is not a popular concept in Arkansas (although here, as everywhere it seems, support is growing). This state is full of deeply religious Christians--people for whom prayer is the most essential act of every day, whose social lives center upon the church, and many of whom take their views about law and government based upon laws set down by God as they understand him.
These people are not merely nominal Christians; they have firmly rooted their lives in their religion. Because they form a wide majority of the electorate, it is relatively easy for leadership organizations--not just churches, but religious groups that advocate for Christian positions on governmental matters--to summon majorities to elect politicians and to pass referenda that stake out some rather activist positions in the law. In the last decade, Arkansas's citizens have passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and an initiated act that banned homosexual couples from adopting children or serving as foster parents. It took numerous tries to legalize any form of gambling (other than the long-running racing operations at Hot Springs and West Memphis). More than half of Arkansas's counties are "dry," and even in wet counties, Sunday alcohol sales are banned, with only a handful of limited exceptions. If there were a referendum to restrict abortion rights, it would likely pass without much consideration of the actual contents.
One of the hallmark motivations of the framers of the federal Constitution was the avoidance of "mob rule," something they considered to be the chief danger of direct democracy. I'm not especially a fan of referendum, although in a state like Arkansas, which has a history of corrupt and incompetent government* as well as some quirky features in its governmental structure,** the referendum can be an appropriate tool for undoing the work of politicians that get off track.
* - Arkansas has defaulted on its debt obligations three times--the only state to do so. Arkansas's first default almost killed the Smithsonian Institution before it started; a large portion of Smithson's original endowment was invested in Arkansas bonds in the 1830s--bonds on which the state defaulted in 1841. Only a timely appropriation from Congress to replace those funds enabled the Institution to begin operating in 1846.
** - For example, the General Assembly can override the governor's veto with a simple majority vote, which effectively neuters the governor.
The problem of referendum, and more generally of popular rule, is when what is popular seeks to invade the general freedoms that belong to all people.
The court case that was resolved on Friday, at least for now, is an expression of two radically different views of what is going on. I doubt very much that the people who voted for Amendment 83 (the same-sex marriage ban) did so thinking that it was an instrument of oppression of gays. For almost all of the people who voted for it, it was an endorsement of what they view as the biblical approach to marriage. Yes, of course, it disappointed those who wanted to enter into same-sex marriages, but the Bible has an answer for that as well, and the solution--as these people see it--is to choose not to be gay.
Homosexuals view their sexuality as inherent and immutable, whether you want to think of it as inborn, or the product of an environment, or the work of God. There is no solace in the admonition to "choose differently." Therefore, the decision to use the apparatus of government to enforce an arbitrary religious principle that leaves them out in the cold is indeed oppressive, whether it was intended that way or not.
In that way, this issue is very much like to struggle for racial equality. One of the confounding things about how most people understand white people in the South during the Civil Rights Era is that there is the assumption that whites hated blacks and sought to keep them down. I'm certain that there were some, maybe many, white people who were motivated in their views by outright hatred of blacks. But the wider majority were motivated by something different: the preservation of the traditional value of racial purity by enforcing racial segregation. That comes across as hate, but what it really was, was indifference to what Jim Crow did to blacks, in service of what Jim Crow's proponents viewed as a higher principle.
I strongly suspect that very few of the fervent opponents of marriage equality have spent any significant, direct time with homosexuals. The church environment--especially in churches that describe themselves as focused on biblical principles--does not seem to be very welcoming to gays. When substantially all of your social life revolves around such a church, the effect is to exclude homosexuals from your experience. It is easy to be indifferent to an abstraction. This is particularly true if what knowledge you do have of homosexuals is based on caricature.
When you have access to more ordinary homosexuals--the boring kind, who have long-term, monogamous relationships, who work as farmers and insurance adjusters and human resources professionals and plumbers and computer programmers--and you see more directly the pain that these policies cause, it is much easier to see these policies as oppressive, and much harder to support them.
I say all of this not as an apology for those who oppose marriage equality, but to try to explain why we have such a disconnect between the two camps. It is far too easy for each side to demonize the other--and that leads to entrenchment, not understanding and reconciliation. What is needed is more interaction and more empathy.
I have stated before that the reason why marriage equality has come to be favored by a majority of Americans so quickly is because same-sex marriage was finally legalized somewhere and the world didn't end. The key to building popular support for same-sex marriage in Arkansas will similarly be the experience we have with it.
Part II appears here.
Marriage equality is not a popular concept in Arkansas (although here, as everywhere it seems, support is growing). This state is full of deeply religious Christians--people for whom prayer is the most essential act of every day, whose social lives center upon the church, and many of whom take their views about law and government based upon laws set down by God as they understand him.
These people are not merely nominal Christians; they have firmly rooted their lives in their religion. Because they form a wide majority of the electorate, it is relatively easy for leadership organizations--not just churches, but religious groups that advocate for Christian positions on governmental matters--to summon majorities to elect politicians and to pass referenda that stake out some rather activist positions in the law. In the last decade, Arkansas's citizens have passed a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage and an initiated act that banned homosexual couples from adopting children or serving as foster parents. It took numerous tries to legalize any form of gambling (other than the long-running racing operations at Hot Springs and West Memphis). More than half of Arkansas's counties are "dry," and even in wet counties, Sunday alcohol sales are banned, with only a handful of limited exceptions. If there were a referendum to restrict abortion rights, it would likely pass without much consideration of the actual contents.
One of the hallmark motivations of the framers of the federal Constitution was the avoidance of "mob rule," something they considered to be the chief danger of direct democracy. I'm not especially a fan of referendum, although in a state like Arkansas, which has a history of corrupt and incompetent government* as well as some quirky features in its governmental structure,** the referendum can be an appropriate tool for undoing the work of politicians that get off track.
* - Arkansas has defaulted on its debt obligations three times--the only state to do so. Arkansas's first default almost killed the Smithsonian Institution before it started; a large portion of Smithson's original endowment was invested in Arkansas bonds in the 1830s--bonds on which the state defaulted in 1841. Only a timely appropriation from Congress to replace those funds enabled the Institution to begin operating in 1846.
** - For example, the General Assembly can override the governor's veto with a simple majority vote, which effectively neuters the governor.
The problem of referendum, and more generally of popular rule, is when what is popular seeks to invade the general freedoms that belong to all people.
The court case that was resolved on Friday, at least for now, is an expression of two radically different views of what is going on. I doubt very much that the people who voted for Amendment 83 (the same-sex marriage ban) did so thinking that it was an instrument of oppression of gays. For almost all of the people who voted for it, it was an endorsement of what they view as the biblical approach to marriage. Yes, of course, it disappointed those who wanted to enter into same-sex marriages, but the Bible has an answer for that as well, and the solution--as these people see it--is to choose not to be gay.
Homosexuals view their sexuality as inherent and immutable, whether you want to think of it as inborn, or the product of an environment, or the work of God. There is no solace in the admonition to "choose differently." Therefore, the decision to use the apparatus of government to enforce an arbitrary religious principle that leaves them out in the cold is indeed oppressive, whether it was intended that way or not.
In that way, this issue is very much like to struggle for racial equality. One of the confounding things about how most people understand white people in the South during the Civil Rights Era is that there is the assumption that whites hated blacks and sought to keep them down. I'm certain that there were some, maybe many, white people who were motivated in their views by outright hatred of blacks. But the wider majority were motivated by something different: the preservation of the traditional value of racial purity by enforcing racial segregation. That comes across as hate, but what it really was, was indifference to what Jim Crow did to blacks, in service of what Jim Crow's proponents viewed as a higher principle.
I strongly suspect that very few of the fervent opponents of marriage equality have spent any significant, direct time with homosexuals. The church environment--especially in churches that describe themselves as focused on biblical principles--does not seem to be very welcoming to gays. When substantially all of your social life revolves around such a church, the effect is to exclude homosexuals from your experience. It is easy to be indifferent to an abstraction. This is particularly true if what knowledge you do have of homosexuals is based on caricature.
When you have access to more ordinary homosexuals--the boring kind, who have long-term, monogamous relationships, who work as farmers and insurance adjusters and human resources professionals and plumbers and computer programmers--and you see more directly the pain that these policies cause, it is much easier to see these policies as oppressive, and much harder to support them.
I say all of this not as an apology for those who oppose marriage equality, but to try to explain why we have such a disconnect between the two camps. It is far too easy for each side to demonize the other--and that leads to entrenchment, not understanding and reconciliation. What is needed is more interaction and more empathy.
I have stated before that the reason why marriage equality has come to be favored by a majority of Americans so quickly is because same-sex marriage was finally legalized somewhere and the world didn't end. The key to building popular support for same-sex marriage in Arkansas will similarly be the experience we have with it.
Part II appears here.
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Bennnnnnnnnghaziiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!
I know next to nothing about Libya. I mean, I can find it on a map, and I know it used to be run by Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi, whose name has so many different English spellings that spelling theorists do not expect to run out until 2204. Ol' Muammar proved that he wasn't as egocentric as most evil dictators, since he styled himself a colonel instead of a general.
President Reagan hated Gaddafi so much that he sent bombers after him and killed his daughter. But the feeling was mutual; Gaddafi was probably behind the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed a lot of Americans. In the end, Gaddafi died at the hands of revolutionaries who hunted him down after driving him from power.
And there is one other thing I know about Libya. Libya is where Benghazi is, and we're about to start hearing a lot more about Benghazi because the Republicans have literally nothing else to talk about now that Obamacare is proving to be a success.
Now, what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, is a tragic occurrence. Armed militants overran the American facility there and killed four Americans, including the Ambassador. It is true that the building was undersecured, and because of some communications confusion about what was going on, it took longer than it should have for American forces to respond.
Indeed, I think it's very appropriate to react with anger to what happened. Diplomatic work is dangerous, especially when it is undertaken in countries with unstable political systems, in which terrorist organizations can operate more freely because of the breakdown in civil authority. It would therefore make sense to spend money on making our foreign missions--embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic installations--as secure as we reasonably can, while recognizing that this work is both important and hazardous.
I point this out because one of the reasons why the facility at Benghazi--not a consulate, by the way, but an "annex" that was largely a CIA facility, and for which security responsibility fell largely to the CIA--was undersecured is a lack of funding. The situation is more nuanced than a simple failure to fund. It's true that the GOP-led House trimmed about $300 million from the State Department's proposed $2.15 billion budget for diplomatic security. That meant that some facilities, particularly a "temporary" facility like the Benghazi mission, were not as hardened against security threats as they might have been. The CIA, however, was the lead agency on security.
It's understandable why the GOP would want to talk about what happened. They need fodder for the midterm elections, and Hillary Clinton, whom they (correctly) perceive is likely to run for President in 2016 (and win) was the Secretary of State during this tragedy. It's a simple case of two birds with one stone. But they also correctly perceive that the tragedy itself is unlikely to gain them any political traction.
What has the GOP up in arms is not what happened so much as what was said about it in the aftermath. A few days after the incident, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows and said, among other things, that the best available intelligence indicated that the attack was spontaneous and ultimately motivated by a YouTube video, "The Innocence of Muslims," that had some very unfavorable things to say about Islam.
It turns out that the video had little if anything to do with the attack. The video was the catalyst for some protests in Egypt around the same time, and for some protests in Libya, but the attack in Benghazi was itself an organized terrorist operation.
Which, by the way, is what President Obama called it a couple of days after the attack.
But that is not what the GOP is whining about. It can't be. The reason? The day before Ambassador Rice went on the Sunday talk shows, the CIA issued a report saying that the best available intelligence indicated that the attack was spontaneous and motivated by the video.
In other words, what Rice actually said was exactly true.
But even if what she said had been false, so what? What difference does it make?
Four separate congressional committees have looked into this issue. There are more than 25,000 pages of documents that have been generated as a result of the inquiry. But the GOP needs a campaign issue. Because they were planning to campaign on how miserable a failure Obamacare is, and that has turned out not to be the case, they need something else to talk about, and Benghazi is it.
Never mind that [u]no one[/u] who thinks this is an important issue--not Benghazi per se, but whether the Obama administration's public statements were accurate or not in the immediate aftermath of the attack--would [u]ever[/u] consider voting for a Democrat in any election.
The purpose is to try to motivate the GOP to vote in November's midterm elections, and to score some pre-emptive damage against the Hillary Clinton juggernaut.
And they only need this because their sole legislative record over the last two years has been failing to repeal Obamacare--which becomes more and more popular as time goes on. They have literally nothing to run on, so they are manufacturing an issue.
But, by all means, investigate away.
President Reagan hated Gaddafi so much that he sent bombers after him and killed his daughter. But the feeling was mutual; Gaddafi was probably behind the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, which killed a lot of Americans. In the end, Gaddafi died at the hands of revolutionaries who hunted him down after driving him from power.
And there is one other thing I know about Libya. Libya is where Benghazi is, and we're about to start hearing a lot more about Benghazi because the Republicans have literally nothing else to talk about now that Obamacare is proving to be a success.
Now, what happened in Benghazi on September 11, 2012, is a tragic occurrence. Armed militants overran the American facility there and killed four Americans, including the Ambassador. It is true that the building was undersecured, and because of some communications confusion about what was going on, it took longer than it should have for American forces to respond.
Indeed, I think it's very appropriate to react with anger to what happened. Diplomatic work is dangerous, especially when it is undertaken in countries with unstable political systems, in which terrorist organizations can operate more freely because of the breakdown in civil authority. It would therefore make sense to spend money on making our foreign missions--embassies, consulates, and other diplomatic installations--as secure as we reasonably can, while recognizing that this work is both important and hazardous.
I point this out because one of the reasons why the facility at Benghazi--not a consulate, by the way, but an "annex" that was largely a CIA facility, and for which security responsibility fell largely to the CIA--was undersecured is a lack of funding. The situation is more nuanced than a simple failure to fund. It's true that the GOP-led House trimmed about $300 million from the State Department's proposed $2.15 billion budget for diplomatic security. That meant that some facilities, particularly a "temporary" facility like the Benghazi mission, were not as hardened against security threats as they might have been. The CIA, however, was the lead agency on security.
It's understandable why the GOP would want to talk about what happened. They need fodder for the midterm elections, and Hillary Clinton, whom they (correctly) perceive is likely to run for President in 2016 (and win) was the Secretary of State during this tragedy. It's a simple case of two birds with one stone. But they also correctly perceive that the tragedy itself is unlikely to gain them any political traction.
What has the GOP up in arms is not what happened so much as what was said about it in the aftermath. A few days after the incident, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice went on the Sunday talk shows and said, among other things, that the best available intelligence indicated that the attack was spontaneous and ultimately motivated by a YouTube video, "The Innocence of Muslims," that had some very unfavorable things to say about Islam.
It turns out that the video had little if anything to do with the attack. The video was the catalyst for some protests in Egypt around the same time, and for some protests in Libya, but the attack in Benghazi was itself an organized terrorist operation.
Which, by the way, is what President Obama called it a couple of days after the attack.
But that is not what the GOP is whining about. It can't be. The reason? The day before Ambassador Rice went on the Sunday talk shows, the CIA issued a report saying that the best available intelligence indicated that the attack was spontaneous and motivated by the video.
In other words, what Rice actually said was exactly true.
But even if what she said had been false, so what? What difference does it make?
Four separate congressional committees have looked into this issue. There are more than 25,000 pages of documents that have been generated as a result of the inquiry. But the GOP needs a campaign issue. Because they were planning to campaign on how miserable a failure Obamacare is, and that has turned out not to be the case, they need something else to talk about, and Benghazi is it.
Never mind that [u]no one[/u] who thinks this is an important issue--not Benghazi per se, but whether the Obama administration's public statements were accurate or not in the immediate aftermath of the attack--would [u]ever[/u] consider voting for a Democrat in any election.
The purpose is to try to motivate the GOP to vote in November's midterm elections, and to score some pre-emptive damage against the Hillary Clinton juggernaut.
And they only need this because their sole legislative record over the last two years has been failing to repeal Obamacare--which becomes more and more popular as time goes on. They have literally nothing to run on, so they are manufacturing an issue.
But, by all means, investigate away.
Monday, May 5, 2014
Lost their minds
Earlier today, the Supreme Court handed down a decision that found, among other things, that a New York town's practice of inviting various town clergy members to deliver an invocation before each meeting of the town council was constitutional, even though in practice the prayers were delivered exclusively by Christian ministers, and those prayers almost always invoked Jesus, sometimes in an expressly exclusive manner.
The decision was 5-4 along the usual lines. The conservative justices endorsed the practice--even concluding that it was unnecessary, and perhaps even impermissible, for the Town to impose content limitations on the prayers, such as a requirement that the prayers be made inclusive of and acceptable to all faiths--largely based upon what it termed a long tradition of such prayers before legislative assemblies. Indeed, the conservative justices seemed horrified at the prospect of adopting a ruling that would cast doubt on the legitimacy of that long tradition.
The liberal wing, for its part, would have been prepared to accept the prayers if only the town had either made more of an effort to include prayers from other religious traditions, or had instructed those chosen to make their prayers inclusive of all faiths.
I think they have all lost their minds.
"Tradition" is not a sufficient reason to uphold any practice as constitutional. After all, there was a long tradition of racial segregation in public life; that did not stop the Supreme Court from deciding Brown v. Board of Education unanimously to end that tradition. As our society evolves, we develop new experiences that inform our understanding of the principles our Constitution establishes.
What I found curiously missing from each of the opinions released today--there were five--is any discussion of the essential conditions that would have led the Court to a decision that honors the Constitution, rather than cheapens it as a statement of principles. In fact, the assumption underlying all of the justices' views was that this is a matter of ecumenicism, because all comers have a faith to speak of.
To see what these prayers really should be discontinued, first we must ask why they exist in the first place. If we take the proponents of the prayers at their word, these prayers are meant to solemnize the process of lawmaking by acknowledging the guidance of a supreme being. I suppose that if you believe in a supreme being who is involved in human affairs, such an acknowledgement might make good sense.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that such an acknowledgement should be prohibited. Every person who attends a town council meeting in Greece, New York, is free to make that sort of acknowledgement on his or her own. Where the wicket gets sticky is that the proponents of this measure aren't satisfied with that acknowledgement being "on your own." They insist that it be not only public but also an officially recognized ceremonial act that precedes every meeting.
There is a similar push among those who want official prayer in schools. Children are free to pray in schools all they like. What is prohibited is the thing that advocates want most: The ability to use the school's seal of approval as an element of coercion to a particular religion.
And, despite the Court's Kabuki-like effort to couch these prayers as an innocuous practice rooted in longstanding tradition, the fact that the Town of Greece hosts these prayers at all is to give special status to religious belief--and Christianity specifically--as the mark of a "good" participant in the political process.
The assumption underlying both sides of the Court is that the perception by anyone of a problem with public prayer is that it is simply not inclusive enough. One side of the Court, the majority, seems to think that a lack of inclusiveness in these prayers, as long as it is not purposeful, is A-OK. The other side, the minority, believes that the problem is that an expressly Christian prayer excludes Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious minorities, so the solution is to force the prayers to become something that everyone's religion can tolerate.
The Court is made up of six Catholics and three Jews. All five in the majority are Catholic. What seems not to have crossed the minds of any of these people, all of whom identify with a religious community, is that it is definitionally impossible to craft a prayer that includes everyone, because there is some segment of the public, however small, that is atheist and that will never find any prayer to be inclusive of them.
But there is a process that would be inclusive. Until 1999, when the Town of Greece began its current practice, the council began each meeting with a moment of silence. That moment could be used by those present to pray, or to focus their attention on the solemnity of lawmaking, or to think about what they wanted to eat for breakfast. That was truly inclusive, and it was in fact the only way that could accommodate the religious sensibilities of the majority while respecting the rights of those who dissent from the majority religion.
In the absence of a public prayer, all are free to pray, or not to pray, individually as they see fit. When there is an official, public prayer, those who prefer not to pray are faced with an uncomfortable choice: participate in the prayer, or risk being seen as disrespecting those who do. When that uncomfortable choice is coupled with a legislative and/or public comment process, it amounts to coercion. The coercion is inescapable; there is simply no way to avoid it, no matter how inclusive that prayer becomes.
The decision was 5-4 along the usual lines. The conservative justices endorsed the practice--even concluding that it was unnecessary, and perhaps even impermissible, for the Town to impose content limitations on the prayers, such as a requirement that the prayers be made inclusive of and acceptable to all faiths--largely based upon what it termed a long tradition of such prayers before legislative assemblies. Indeed, the conservative justices seemed horrified at the prospect of adopting a ruling that would cast doubt on the legitimacy of that long tradition.
The liberal wing, for its part, would have been prepared to accept the prayers if only the town had either made more of an effort to include prayers from other religious traditions, or had instructed those chosen to make their prayers inclusive of all faiths.
I think they have all lost their minds.
"Tradition" is not a sufficient reason to uphold any practice as constitutional. After all, there was a long tradition of racial segregation in public life; that did not stop the Supreme Court from deciding Brown v. Board of Education unanimously to end that tradition. As our society evolves, we develop new experiences that inform our understanding of the principles our Constitution establishes.
What I found curiously missing from each of the opinions released today--there were five--is any discussion of the essential conditions that would have led the Court to a decision that honors the Constitution, rather than cheapens it as a statement of principles. In fact, the assumption underlying all of the justices' views was that this is a matter of ecumenicism, because all comers have a faith to speak of.
To see what these prayers really should be discontinued, first we must ask why they exist in the first place. If we take the proponents of the prayers at their word, these prayers are meant to solemnize the process of lawmaking by acknowledging the guidance of a supreme being. I suppose that if you believe in a supreme being who is involved in human affairs, such an acknowledgement might make good sense.
I don't think anyone is suggesting that such an acknowledgement should be prohibited. Every person who attends a town council meeting in Greece, New York, is free to make that sort of acknowledgement on his or her own. Where the wicket gets sticky is that the proponents of this measure aren't satisfied with that acknowledgement being "on your own." They insist that it be not only public but also an officially recognized ceremonial act that precedes every meeting.
There is a similar push among those who want official prayer in schools. Children are free to pray in schools all they like. What is prohibited is the thing that advocates want most: The ability to use the school's seal of approval as an element of coercion to a particular religion.
And, despite the Court's Kabuki-like effort to couch these prayers as an innocuous practice rooted in longstanding tradition, the fact that the Town of Greece hosts these prayers at all is to give special status to religious belief--and Christianity specifically--as the mark of a "good" participant in the political process.
The assumption underlying both sides of the Court is that the perception by anyone of a problem with public prayer is that it is simply not inclusive enough. One side of the Court, the majority, seems to think that a lack of inclusiveness in these prayers, as long as it is not purposeful, is A-OK. The other side, the minority, believes that the problem is that an expressly Christian prayer excludes Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and other religious minorities, so the solution is to force the prayers to become something that everyone's religion can tolerate.
The Court is made up of six Catholics and three Jews. All five in the majority are Catholic. What seems not to have crossed the minds of any of these people, all of whom identify with a religious community, is that it is definitionally impossible to craft a prayer that includes everyone, because there is some segment of the public, however small, that is atheist and that will never find any prayer to be inclusive of them.
But there is a process that would be inclusive. Until 1999, when the Town of Greece began its current practice, the council began each meeting with a moment of silence. That moment could be used by those present to pray, or to focus their attention on the solemnity of lawmaking, or to think about what they wanted to eat for breakfast. That was truly inclusive, and it was in fact the only way that could accommodate the religious sensibilities of the majority while respecting the rights of those who dissent from the majority religion.
In the absence of a public prayer, all are free to pray, or not to pray, individually as they see fit. When there is an official, public prayer, those who prefer not to pray are faced with an uncomfortable choice: participate in the prayer, or risk being seen as disrespecting those who do. When that uncomfortable choice is coupled with a legislative and/or public comment process, it amounts to coercion. The coercion is inescapable; there is simply no way to avoid it, no matter how inclusive that prayer becomes.
Sunday, May 4, 2014
What we deserve
One of the cultural touchstones of my youth is an anti-drug public service announcement that features a stern, mustachioed father confronting his teenage son with the drugs he found in his son's room. In a scene thick with melodrama, at the end of a series of plantive questions, the father thunders, "Who taught you how to do this stuff?" Reluctantly, tearfully, the son replies, "You, all right? I learned it by watching you!" The tagline? "Parents who use drugs have children who use drugs." For people of a certain age, around mine, that anti-drug PSA is probably second in our memories only to "This is your brain; this is your brain on drugs; any questions."
My memory of this ad was jogged last week, in a most unlikely way, by events in Oklahoma.
Deep-red Oklahoma is hot and heavy to prove its essential conservatism, and it scheduled for this week a rare double-execution that I think must have been designed to put the spotlight on just how far Oklahoma would go to prove its bona fides. Instead, Oklahoma found the spotlight a little hotter than it expected.
The trend in recent decades has been to shift away from the use of the electric chair and the gas chamber for executions, in favor of lethal injection. The theory behind using lethal injection, as opposed to more violent means of execution, is that it is more humane. Instead of having thousands of volts of electricity passed through your body--something that is likely very painful, based upon the reports of people who have been struck by lightning--or being put into an airtight room with a poison gas, the executed person is given intravenous drugs that first anesthetize them, then stop the heart.
In order to conduct a lethal injection, you of course need the drugs to do so. Drug manufacturers make billions of dollars saving lives, and they depend somewhat upon the goodwill associated with being life-saving companies in justifying those hugs sums. In recent years, many of the companies that make the drugs routinely used in executions have decided that they did not need the public relations headache of being associated with the death penalty, and that being peddlers of state-sanctioned death doesn't exactly fit with the "lifesaver" public image, so they stopped making them.
(Perhaps they should have gotten some pointers from the GOP, which has no problem billing itself as the "pro-life" party despite being pro-death penalty and largely pro-war.)
The last American maker of sodium thiopental, Hospira, quit making it in 2011. About the same time, the European Union banned the export of sodium thiopental and other drugs that can be used in executions. That has put Oklahoma and other states in a quandary. They have laws on the books that mandate lethal injection, and they desperately want to execute people, but they have had difficulty getting the most effective drugs to do so. That has resulted in some changes to the "cocktail."
On Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Oklahoma was scheduled to execute Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively. Lockett and Warner committed particularly heinous crimes that earned them death sentences. Lockett was convicted of forcing a woman to watch the gang-rape of a friend, then shooting her and ordering accomplices to bury her alive. Warner was convicted of raping and beating to death an 11-month-old baby.
Faced with a shortage of execution drugs, Oklahoma decided to administer Lockett and Warner a three-drug cocktail that had only once before been used in an execution. The cocktail consisted of midazolam, a sedative; vercuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant; and potassium chloride, a salt that when injected intravenously stops the heart. The cocktail had been successfully used by Florida in an execution last year, but with five times as much midazolam as Oklahoma had been planning to use.
When Oklahoma began the execution of Lockett, an IV was inserted into a vein in his groin. The drugs were administered in sequence, and Lockett was rendered unconscious. After a few minutes, however, he appeared to awake, according to witnesses, and spoke several halting phrases. The execution was stopped, and on inspection it was determined that Lockett's vein had collapsed--something that the executioner had not been able to see. Lockett's groin had been draped for modesty, and in any event the executioner, who controlled the injections by pushing buttons in another room, would not have seen the problem anyway. When the drugs were injected, they were pushed into the surrounding tissue, not into the vein.
The doctor who was monitoring the execution determined that all of the drugs had been injected, if ineffectually; that the dose was insufficient to be immediately lethal; and that there were not enough drugs remaining to complete the execution effectively. While prison officials debated what to do--including whether to take Lockett to a hospital for treatment--Lockett suffered a heart attack and died. His execution was undoubtedly painful and frightening.
Warner was granted a two-week stay of execution pending a review.
I won't waste time crying any tears for Lockett. He was a criminal of extraordinary sadism. He died much as his victim did, cruelly and with great pain.
But Oklahoma's experience with Lockett has lessons for us as a society. Our historical legal tradition extends as far back as Hammurabi, a Babylonian king who lived 38 centuries ago and who, in his innovative written code, prescribed that the punishment for crime should fit the crime: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. (It is likely that Jewish law, which contains a similar rule, was strongly influenced by Hammurabi, or depending on who you ask, by a common ancestral principle.)
But as a more recent wise man, Mohandas K. Gandhi, is said* to have said, "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind."
* - There is actually no historical evidence that Gandhi ever actually said this, although it is entirely consistent with his philosophy.
And if you care about the Constitution, you might look to the Eighth Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Personally, I've been generally opposed to the death penalty on pragmatic grounds. The legal process necessary to make the death penalty legally, constitutionally legitimate is so expensive that it would be better simply to decline to impose it. There is also little evidence that the death penalty is more effective as a deterrent to future crime than imprisonment, and on top of that, the death penalty imposes finality where there is always room for uncertainty. I have, however, resisted concluding that there is no crime so heinous that the death penalty should be imposed for it.
Lockett and Warner, especially Warner, have committed crimes for which I think reasonable people could conclude that the death penalty is appropriate.
But last week's travesty in Oklahoma, brought on as it was by bloodthirsty officials eager to kill, damn the cautions and consequences, has moved me over into staunch opposition.
When we see men like Lockett and Warner and the unspeakable evil they have committed, it is a most human reaction to want vengeance, to desire to take an eye for an eye. These despicable humans stir in our hearts a visceral anger, a yearning for compensatory revenge. How many of us, on hearing how Lockett suffered and died at our hands, reacted with favor instead of disgust? More than a few, maybe more than didn't.
At the outset I mentioned that 1980s PSA that came to mind. Is it any wonder that parents who are cavalier about detrimental behavior--be it drug use, or stealing, or whatever--teach their children by example to do the same? The government is not our parent, but when the government acts as it has in this instance, is it any wonder that the line between the right thing and the wrong thing becomes so blurred in the minds of our citizens? "Do as I say, not as I do" can only go so far, whether it is a parent or the government speaking.
We deserve a government that appeals to our better selves rather than to our basest instincts. There are many ways in which we hamstring the government into ineffectiveness because we value certain principles. This, however, seems to be a blind spot for many people, who insist that justice requires the ultimate punishment. But if we are going to act as an instrument of justice, we must seek to be better than those whom we would punish. "An eye for an eye" just isn't good enough.
My memory of this ad was jogged last week, in a most unlikely way, by events in Oklahoma.
Deep-red Oklahoma is hot and heavy to prove its essential conservatism, and it scheduled for this week a rare double-execution that I think must have been designed to put the spotlight on just how far Oklahoma would go to prove its bona fides. Instead, Oklahoma found the spotlight a little hotter than it expected.
The trend in recent decades has been to shift away from the use of the electric chair and the gas chamber for executions, in favor of lethal injection. The theory behind using lethal injection, as opposed to more violent means of execution, is that it is more humane. Instead of having thousands of volts of electricity passed through your body--something that is likely very painful, based upon the reports of people who have been struck by lightning--or being put into an airtight room with a poison gas, the executed person is given intravenous drugs that first anesthetize them, then stop the heart.
In order to conduct a lethal injection, you of course need the drugs to do so. Drug manufacturers make billions of dollars saving lives, and they depend somewhat upon the goodwill associated with being life-saving companies in justifying those hugs sums. In recent years, many of the companies that make the drugs routinely used in executions have decided that they did not need the public relations headache of being associated with the death penalty, and that being peddlers of state-sanctioned death doesn't exactly fit with the "lifesaver" public image, so they stopped making them.
(Perhaps they should have gotten some pointers from the GOP, which has no problem billing itself as the "pro-life" party despite being pro-death penalty and largely pro-war.)
The last American maker of sodium thiopental, Hospira, quit making it in 2011. About the same time, the European Union banned the export of sodium thiopental and other drugs that can be used in executions. That has put Oklahoma and other states in a quandary. They have laws on the books that mandate lethal injection, and they desperately want to execute people, but they have had difficulty getting the most effective drugs to do so. That has resulted in some changes to the "cocktail."
On Tuesday, April 29, 2014, Oklahoma was scheduled to execute Clayton Lockett and Charles Warner at 6 p.m. and 8 p.m., respectively. Lockett and Warner committed particularly heinous crimes that earned them death sentences. Lockett was convicted of forcing a woman to watch the gang-rape of a friend, then shooting her and ordering accomplices to bury her alive. Warner was convicted of raping and beating to death an 11-month-old baby.
Faced with a shortage of execution drugs, Oklahoma decided to administer Lockett and Warner a three-drug cocktail that had only once before been used in an execution. The cocktail consisted of midazolam, a sedative; vercuronium bromide, a muscle relaxant; and potassium chloride, a salt that when injected intravenously stops the heart. The cocktail had been successfully used by Florida in an execution last year, but with five times as much midazolam as Oklahoma had been planning to use.
When Oklahoma began the execution of Lockett, an IV was inserted into a vein in his groin. The drugs were administered in sequence, and Lockett was rendered unconscious. After a few minutes, however, he appeared to awake, according to witnesses, and spoke several halting phrases. The execution was stopped, and on inspection it was determined that Lockett's vein had collapsed--something that the executioner had not been able to see. Lockett's groin had been draped for modesty, and in any event the executioner, who controlled the injections by pushing buttons in another room, would not have seen the problem anyway. When the drugs were injected, they were pushed into the surrounding tissue, not into the vein.
The doctor who was monitoring the execution determined that all of the drugs had been injected, if ineffectually; that the dose was insufficient to be immediately lethal; and that there were not enough drugs remaining to complete the execution effectively. While prison officials debated what to do--including whether to take Lockett to a hospital for treatment--Lockett suffered a heart attack and died. His execution was undoubtedly painful and frightening.
Warner was granted a two-week stay of execution pending a review.
I won't waste time crying any tears for Lockett. He was a criminal of extraordinary sadism. He died much as his victim did, cruelly and with great pain.
But Oklahoma's experience with Lockett has lessons for us as a society. Our historical legal tradition extends as far back as Hammurabi, a Babylonian king who lived 38 centuries ago and who, in his innovative written code, prescribed that the punishment for crime should fit the crime: an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. (It is likely that Jewish law, which contains a similar rule, was strongly influenced by Hammurabi, or depending on who you ask, by a common ancestral principle.)
But as a more recent wise man, Mohandas K. Gandhi, is said* to have said, "An eye for an eye will leave the whole world blind."
* - There is actually no historical evidence that Gandhi ever actually said this, although it is entirely consistent with his philosophy.
And if you care about the Constitution, you might look to the Eighth Amendment: "Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
Personally, I've been generally opposed to the death penalty on pragmatic grounds. The legal process necessary to make the death penalty legally, constitutionally legitimate is so expensive that it would be better simply to decline to impose it. There is also little evidence that the death penalty is more effective as a deterrent to future crime than imprisonment, and on top of that, the death penalty imposes finality where there is always room for uncertainty. I have, however, resisted concluding that there is no crime so heinous that the death penalty should be imposed for it.
Lockett and Warner, especially Warner, have committed crimes for which I think reasonable people could conclude that the death penalty is appropriate.
But last week's travesty in Oklahoma, brought on as it was by bloodthirsty officials eager to kill, damn the cautions and consequences, has moved me over into staunch opposition.
When we see men like Lockett and Warner and the unspeakable evil they have committed, it is a most human reaction to want vengeance, to desire to take an eye for an eye. These despicable humans stir in our hearts a visceral anger, a yearning for compensatory revenge. How many of us, on hearing how Lockett suffered and died at our hands, reacted with favor instead of disgust? More than a few, maybe more than didn't.
At the outset I mentioned that 1980s PSA that came to mind. Is it any wonder that parents who are cavalier about detrimental behavior--be it drug use, or stealing, or whatever--teach their children by example to do the same? The government is not our parent, but when the government acts as it has in this instance, is it any wonder that the line between the right thing and the wrong thing becomes so blurred in the minds of our citizens? "Do as I say, not as I do" can only go so far, whether it is a parent or the government speaking.
We deserve a government that appeals to our better selves rather than to our basest instincts. There are many ways in which we hamstring the government into ineffectiveness because we value certain principles. This, however, seems to be a blind spot for many people, who insist that justice requires the ultimate punishment. But if we are going to act as an instrument of justice, we must seek to be better than those whom we would punish. "An eye for an eye" just isn't good enough.
Thursday, May 1, 2014
A positive outlook
There was a time when we Arkansans, lamenting our state's lack of fortunes in statistical measures of greatness, as measured by various state rankings, would put a brave face on things by saying, "Thank God for Mississippi!" Mississippi was often 50th as we were 49th. (Some wags would respond, "Don't blame God for Mississippi!")
Lately, Mississippi has distinguished itself in the race to make life harder for homosexuals, bucking the recent trend toward equality. Couching it in terms of a "freedom of religion" bill, Mississippi has a new law that protects business who refuse service to homosexuals. Arizona's legislature considered and passed a similar bill some time ago, but its governor succumbed to pressure and vetoed that bill.
I have previously discussed why such a law is problematic. It is unfortunate that some people hate homosexuals so much that they would risk public humiliation to go out of their way to protect those who harm homosexuals. But businesses in Mississippi have hit upon a great way to show that they don't need that kind of protection. Equality Mississippi has begun distributing window stickers, like the one at the right, that Mississippi businesses can use to show that they are ready to serve anyone who wants to buy.
It's a positive approach to something that has the potential to be very ugly. Equality Mississippi--and the businesses that display this sticker--are to be commended for that.
Predictably, the American Family Association is crying foul. The AFA--the name of which is at least two-thirds deceptive, since what they stand for has nothing to do with American values and is hurtful to many families--contends that making these stickers available is "bullying" by pressuring Christians who run businesses to choose between their values and being driven out of business by conscientious shoppers who vote with their dollars.
That position invites a very unfavorable comparison, but it's an apt one. Much like members of the KKK, who conduct their activities behind the cloak of white hoods, the AFA would prefer that the "victims" of this "bullying" not be so easily identified; they want to conduct their bigotry in secret.
Well, too bad. If you are going to ensconce the protection of bigots into a law under the guise of protecting "religious freedom," then you are just going to have to suffer through when the majority of us, who oppose bigotry, use our freedom of speech to make it clear that we're open for business to everybody, not just those who meet the warped sense of morality of a bunch of prudes and repressed-homosexual homophobes.
Come to think of it, this kind of thing ought to be the subject of a national campaign. After all, there are bigots everywhere. Maybe it's time for the rest of us to stand up affirmatively to say we don't discriminate.
Lately, Mississippi has distinguished itself in the race to make life harder for homosexuals, bucking the recent trend toward equality. Couching it in terms of a "freedom of religion" bill, Mississippi has a new law that protects business who refuse service to homosexuals. Arizona's legislature considered and passed a similar bill some time ago, but its governor succumbed to pressure and vetoed that bill.
I have previously discussed why such a law is problematic. It is unfortunate that some people hate homosexuals so much that they would risk public humiliation to go out of their way to protect those who harm homosexuals. But businesses in Mississippi have hit upon a great way to show that they don't need that kind of protection. Equality Mississippi has begun distributing window stickers, like the one at the right, that Mississippi businesses can use to show that they are ready to serve anyone who wants to buy.It's a positive approach to something that has the potential to be very ugly. Equality Mississippi--and the businesses that display this sticker--are to be commended for that.
Predictably, the American Family Association is crying foul. The AFA--the name of which is at least two-thirds deceptive, since what they stand for has nothing to do with American values and is hurtful to many families--contends that making these stickers available is "bullying" by pressuring Christians who run businesses to choose between their values and being driven out of business by conscientious shoppers who vote with their dollars.
That position invites a very unfavorable comparison, but it's an apt one. Much like members of the KKK, who conduct their activities behind the cloak of white hoods, the AFA would prefer that the "victims" of this "bullying" not be so easily identified; they want to conduct their bigotry in secret.
Well, too bad. If you are going to ensconce the protection of bigots into a law under the guise of protecting "religious freedom," then you are just going to have to suffer through when the majority of us, who oppose bigotry, use our freedom of speech to make it clear that we're open for business to everybody, not just those who meet the warped sense of morality of a bunch of prudes and repressed-homosexual homophobes.
Come to think of it, this kind of thing ought to be the subject of a national campaign. After all, there are bigots everywhere. Maybe it's time for the rest of us to stand up affirmatively to say we don't discriminate.
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