Some 691,000 children went hungry in America sometime in 2007, while close to one in eight Americans struggled to feed themselves adequately even before this year’s sharp economic downturn, the Agriculture Department reported Monday.

The department’s annual report on food security showed that during 2007 the number of children who suffered a substantial disruption in the amount of food they typically eat was more than double the 430,000 in 2006 and the largest figure since 716,000 in 1998.

Overall, the 36.2 million adults and children who struggled with hunger during the year was up slightly from 35.5 million in 2006. That was 12.2 percent of Americans who didn’t have the money or assistance to get enough food to maintain active, healthy lives.
…
“There’s every reason to think the increases in the number of hungry people will be very, very large based on the increased demand we’re seeing this year at food stamp agencies, emergency kitchens, Women, Infants and Children clinics, really across the entire social service support structure,” said James Weill, president of the Food Research and Action Center, an anti-hunger group.

Weill said the figures show that economic growth during the first seven years of the Bush administration didn’t reach the poorest and hungriest people. “The people in the deepest poverty are suffering the most,” Weill said.

This is disgraceful, to say the least. We’re spending trillions between Iraq and Afghanistan and the bank robbery-cum-bailout, but we can’t manage to keep our populace from hunger - one of the hallmarks of a “first-world” country.

As Rachel Maddow has so often said, we are Birkina Fasso with cable.

When the Walk & Knock bag comes in your Columbian in the next few weeks, please fill it up with canned & boxed goods (if you can - these are tough times, I know), and remember to leave it outside by 8am on December 6th. If you don’t subscribe to the Columbian, please mark the date on your calendar and use any old bag. (Almost all neighborhoods in Clark County will be covered by Walk & Knock teams.)

You can find more information and volunteer for the Walk & Knock and prep activities before December 6th here.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

shouldn’t we be able to do it in Washington, D.C.?

A Texas grand jury has issued indictments against Vice President Dick Cheney and former attorney general Alberto Gonzalez over abuse at privately run prisons, court documents showed.

The three-page indictment Tuesday alleges that Cheney profited from the abuse because he invested 85 million dollars in a mutual fund company which holds shares of for-profit prisons.

It said this is a “direct conflict of interest” because Cheney had influence over the federal contracts awarded to the prison companies.

The indictment also accused Cheney of committing “at least misdemeanor assaults” of inmates by allowing other inmates to assault them.

The indictment further alleges that Gonzalez “participated by further having used his position … to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings which includes the assaults committed in the prison for profit in Willacy County, Texas.”

Cheney and Gonzalez were charged with engaging in organized criminal activity.

Music to my ears.

I know what Obama said, that prosecutions for torture are not on his to-do list. But to say otherwise while Bush still has the power to pardon everyone in his whole goddamn administration would be stupid. And he said nothing about war crimes, which would include, of course, the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

If Obama fails to bring justice for the 1,000,000 Iraqis who have died as a result of BushCo’s murderous gambit, we’ll just have to make sure that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfled, Gonzales et al. take a vacation in one of the many countries that are parties to the Geneva Conventions.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

The trick will be getting that git Lieberman to ride along with 58 + Bernie Sanders to cut off debate. But I think Obama’s got that covered.

Buh-bye, Ted! Have fun riding the tubes!

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

That’s 4,284.5 BILLION dollars, or $4.2845 TRILLION.

And not a single dollar for infrastructure repair or job creation.

Time for shrillness, anyone?

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

2 Comments

• At November 18, 2008, David Carrier wrote:

  I never thought I would see the day when the Secretary of the Treasury in a right wing Republican Administration would heed the advice of someone like Barney Frank, the only Socialist member of Congress (who has been saying this very thing for a year now):

  Fighting the Financial Crisis, One Challenge at a Time

  By HENRY M. PAULSON Jr., NYT, November 17, 2008

  The answer to the second question is that more access to lower-cost mortgage lending is the No. 1 thing we can do to slow the decline in the housing market and reduce the number of foreclosures. Together with our bank capital program, the moves we have made to stabilize and strengthen Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and through them to increase the flow of mortgage credit, will promote mortgage lending. We are also working with the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the F.D.I.C. and others to reduce preventable foreclosures.

• At November 19, 2008, missy wrote:

  Actually Barney Frank is a Democrat. Bernie Sanders (Senator from VT) is a Socialist.

As many of you know, I’m a gimp, born with one hip socket. After a spica cast and 3½ surgeries I am able to walk and practice tae kwon do and live life pretty normally. But I can’t jog or run or stand in one place for long periods, and during tkd classes in which we’re doing nothing but kicking drills, the fact that my glute on the left side is attached at the wrong place means throwing my left leg over and over with all the contracting power of a flaccid rubber band. All the other muscles in my lower back, pelvis and leg have to compensate, and I end up sucking air like an emphasemic Marlboro junkie.

After 4 years of tae kwon do, and having achieved my black belt, I still cannot walk more than one flight of stairs without stopping to catch my breath. There’s simply not enough oxygen getting to all the muscles that are necessary for me to try to repeatedly haul up my gimpy left leg.

Last Thursday, after 45 minutes of kicking drills and sparring, I didn’t know which would come first: throwing up, passing out, or collapsing into a puddle of frustrated tears. The school spun around me as I stepped out of the drills and tried to catch my breath. Every fourth week at our school is “sparring week,” and I approach it each month with dread, waiting for the moment when I’ll have no choice but to suffer the indignity of bowing out of a drill or a sparring match.

So I’ve been trying to figure out which is better: to go all out until I feel that hypoxia is just one more roundhouse kick away, hoping that this will somehow improve my stamina in the long run but knowing it’s at the cost of 2-3 days of limping and sleepless, charlie-horse nights, or to skip sparring, train on my own those weeks and forgo the pain and humiliation all together.

I still haven’t figured this out, not least because our son L. - while fully functional in all his various parts - hates sparring week, with its padded sparring gear that turns him into a beet-colored, sweaty mess by the end of each class. So if I drop out, L. will try to beg off, too. Not good for a boy who has his mom’s tendency toward ass-sofa magnetism.

Another thing I’m currently puzzling over: my husband J. and my Mom & Dad’s desire that I stop using profanity on this blog.

I’m tempted to quote the former Bassist for Harry Chapin, Big John Wallace, who would finish Harry’s proffered “For those of you looking for a family show…” with “…that’s too goddamn bad.”

This is definitely not a family show, in the sense that 1,000,000 dead Iraqis is a profanity much more horrific, and Hank Paulson’s recent robbery at Treasury a profanity much more brazen, than anything my fevered brain could ever come up with.

And yet, the thought that some of my older relatives may have found this blog when looking for information about my recently-deceased Aunt Camilla does give me pause. If they looked beyond those individual posts, these opposite-of-crass Canadians may have been shocked by their cousin to the South, and I know that at least my Mom and Dad do not feel comfortable with their daughter projecting herself internationally as a foul-mouthed harpy.

While I do understand that profanity is a big part of the patois of the internet (especially on the left), and while I am completely comfortable with it, other people are not. And maybe I am, as J. said, driving off people who might be more open to my message if I stayed away from Carlin’s 7 Words.

So, lots to think about coming to the end of this year and looking into the next.

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Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

See, Ed, I was right:

The real problem is on the demand side of the economy.

Consumers won’t or can’t borrow because they’re at the end of their ropes. Their incomes are dropping (one of the most sobering statistics in Friday’s jobs report was the continued erosion of real median earnings), they’re deeply in debt, and they’re afraid of losing their jobs.

Introductory economic courses explain that aggregate demand is made up of four things, expressed as C+I+G+exports. C is consumers. Consumers are cutting back on everything other than necessities. Because their spending accounts for 70 percent of the nation’s economic activity and is the flywheel for the rest of the economy, the precipitous drop in consumer spending is causing the rest of the economy to shut down.

I is investment. Absent consumer spending, businesses are not going to invest.

Exports won’t help much because the of the rest of the world is sliding into deep recession, too. (And as foreigners — as well as Americans — put their savings in dollars for safe keeping, the value of the dollar will likely continue to rise relative to other currencies. That, in turn, makes everything we might sell to the rest of the world more expensive.)

That leaves G, which, of course, is government. Government is the spender of last resort. Government spending lifted America out of the Great Depression. It may be the only instrument we have for lifting America out of the Mini Depression. Even Fed Chair Ben Bernanke is now calling for a sizable government stimulus. He knows that monetary policy won’t work if there’s inadequate demand.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Ed Schultz said today that governors and state legislatures should do what they can to prop up the auto makers to give consumers an incentive to buy cars. He was suggested a tax credit for buying a car made in the U.S.

In the first place, Ed, most states are looking at budget deficits right now - the last thing they need is a revenue killer. A tax credit that would be sufficient to tempt a consumer today would have to be so large that it would overwhelm any ability of sales tax, tag and title fees to make up for it.

And in the second place, who has the money - or credit - available to buy a car today? Adult Americans are holding an average of about $50,000 of debt a piece, and with unemployment at a generational high and more added to the rolls every week, who are going to buy these cars, Ed?

We have to start smaller, truly with Main Street, as annoying as that term has become. Maybe in a year or two or three we’ll work our way up to $25,000 durable goods, but right now we just have to give consumers enough breathing room to buy groceries and clothes for their kids again.

UPDATE:

Retail Sales Collapse in October

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that advance estimates of U.S. retail and food services sales for October, adjusted for seasonal variation and holiday and trading-day differences, but not for price changes, were $363.7 billion, a decrease of 2.8 percent from the previous month and 4.1 percent below October 2007. Total sales for the August through October 2008 period were down 1.3 percent from the same period a year ago.

Retail trade sales were down 3.1 percent from September 2008 and were 5.0 percent below last year.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

5 Comments

• At November 13, 2008, John wrote:

  Yea, I turned Ed Schultz off today which I do every so often because I can only take so much of his BS.

  The way I see it, the car companies are in trouble mostly because:

  1. Poor trade policies, ie NAFTA causing outsourcing and erosion of competitiveness.

  2. Lack of single payer, universal health care making the cost to hire US employees non-competitive as compared to other countries.

  Once again, our government's failure to regulate and enact good regulatory policies is coming back to bite us.

  We may have to bail out the automakers but the root causes must be addressed or they will just keep bleeding us dry due to not having a sound business model.

  All the money in the world will not fix an unprofitable business model.

  A bean counter once told me when I asked why a certain company was losing money, "They are selling dollars for 80 cents." That is quite simply what the automakers are doing. And if they keep selling dollars for 80 cents, one bailout is just going to lead to another and another.

• At November 14, 2008, Pat Campbell wrote:

  Yes, first start with ourselves (Work on a debt reduction/elimination program. Dave Ramsey's book Total Money Makeover is great.).

  Work also on mainstreet (no speculation with tax money on Vancouver's waterfront is a good start). Elect officials who try to inact economically sound policies or urge those who don't to do so.

• At November 14, 2008, missy wrote:

  Re: the car companies and their unprofitability... Does anyone know why they could make the EV-1 go 40 miles on a charge 15 years ago, and now they're bragging about the Volt coming out in 2010 and how they're still working on the 40-mile batteries to make it possible? I understand it's a sedan (not a compact), but haven't they had 15 years to upgrade their battery technology?

  I guess shit happens when you spend 15 years selling gas hog SUVs to the exclusion of everything else.

• At November 15, 2008, Chad Lupkes wrote:

  What I think we need our states to do is to focus their resources on infrastructure, specifically energy production, distribution and conservation. Especially here in Washington State, we need Olympia to contract for the construction of Wind, Solar, Geothermal and Tidal power stations, giving people jobs. The Sound Transit Proposition passing in the Puget Sound also helps, but that's pretty localized. The new state Treasurer should review the buyout of Puget Sound Energy, and force some infrastructure development projects as part of the deal.

• At November 15, 2008, admin wrote:

  I think I fixed the commenting not posting issue. Thanks for letting me know it was messed up.

  John

And here is a not so kind monologue by Pat Condel who provides an explanation that it is the “The Tyranny of Scripture” rather than genetics that causes the errant behavior of voting for Proposition 8 and other such atrocious acts.

It is amazing how primitive and inflexible we are towards one another.  We truly are “are own worst enemy”.  And if you don’t think so just read this article about stealing from a “little ol’ lady”.  Right now I would like to forget humanity exists altogether.

When it was Amaro’s turn to speak, he wiped his eyes, cleared his throat and talked about his own concerns. They were all about himself.

This makes me hope there is a hell.  That is where Amaro belongs.

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Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

3 Comments

• At November 13, 2008, Holly Forrest wrote:

  Good post, John. I liked Olbermann's comments. And I was equally outraged by the Columbian story about that scum Amaro and his concern about himself rather than any repentance.

• At November 13, 2008, John wrote:

  Holly,

  Thanks

  I read the Amaro article after posting about prop 8 and it incensed me to the point of adding the link and commentary to the post.

  It may sound simplistic, but if someone could come up with a medication that cures greed and selfishness, most, if not all, of the other maladies that afflict us would miraculously disappear.

• At November 14, 2008, missy wrote:

  The world is not all bad; proof: the juror in the case who is sending her jury pay to the victim. It's not much but it's a start.

  I hope everyone remembers her when the Walk & Knock food drive bags come out in the Columbian in the next few weeks...

The $700 Billion Dollar Man gave a report on the progress of the “TARP” program this morning, and unsurprisingly the benefits are all going to the banks, while the individuals who are in debt to those same banks get bupkis. If you’ve ever seen the movie House of Games (or even The Sting), you’ll have a good roadmap to Paulson’s signature moves.

Start with that time-honored con, the Bait and Switch:

We asked for $700 billion to purchase troubled assets from financial institutions. At the time, we believed that would be the most effective means of getting credit flowing again.

During the two weeks that Congress considered the legislation, market conditions worsened considerably. It was clear to me by the time the bill was signed on October 3rd that we needed to act quickly and forcefully, and that purchasing troubled assets - our initial focus - would take time to implement and would not be sufficient given the severity of the problem… I determined that the most timely, effective step to improve credit market conditions was to strengthen bank balance sheets quickly through direct purchases of equity in banks.

Next, make the beneficiaries (in truth, your partners-in-crime) seem like a tough sell; this is a variant on the con-man’s trust-aversion gambit:

As we planned a capital purchase plan to support the overall financial system by strengthening balance sheets of a broad array of healthy banks, the terms had to be designed to encourage broad participation, balanced to ensure appropriate taxpayer protection and not impede the flow of private capital.

Then, hype your success at getting these hard-sells to participate in the program, without letting the mark ever sense that it was easy:

By October 26th we had $115 billion out the door to eight large institutions. In Washington that is a land-speed record from announcing a program to getting funds out the door. We now have approved dozens of additional applications, …[but] it will take time to complete legal contracts and execute investments in the significant number of institutions who meet the eligibility requirements and are approved…

Keep the pressure on to make sure no one gets the troublesome idea of clapping eyes on what you’re doing:

During times like these with a slowing economy and some deterioration in credit conditions, even the healthiest banks tend to become more risk-averse and restrain lending, and regulators’ actions have reinforced this lending restraint in the past. With a stronger capital base, our banks will be more confident and better positioned to play their necessary role to support economic activity.

Mix up news of your successes with mentions of probable failures to make your mark think throwing good money after bad is all part of the program, and that we’re on the right track:

First and foremost, because the system remains fragile, we must continue to stand ready to prevent systemic failures. That is the basis for Monday’s action to purchase preferred shares in AIG. The stability of our system remains the highest priority.

…The injection of up to $250 billion of capital into individual banks, the FDIC’s temporary guarantee of bank debt and the Federal Reserve’s multiple liquidity facilities for banks, money funds and commercial paper issuers have all significantly enhanced liquidity and helped improve market conditions.

While your mark is absorbing this avalanche of information, throw out another “must do” project that the mark would have never approved at the beginning, and push him over the brink and into the mindset that he’s put too much up already to stop now:

Second, the important markets for securitizing credit outside of the banking system also need support. Approximately 40 percent of U.S. consumer credit is provided through securitization of credit card receivables, auto loans and student loans and similar products. This market, which is vital for lending and growth, has for all practical purposes ground to a halt. Addressing these two priorities will have powerful impacts on the overall financial system, the strength of our financial institutions and the availability of consumer credit.

(Here you also neglect to tell the mark the obvious, that the U.S. consumers’ capacity to service all of the nation’s consumer debt has long since exceeded its limit.)

Finally, explain why it’s strictly necessary to help all of your associates, but never the mark’s associates or friends:

Over these past weeks we have continued to examine the relative benefits of purchasing illiquid mortgage-related assets. Our assessment at this time is that this is not the most effective way to use TARP funds, but we will continue to examine whether targeted forms of asset purchase can play a useful role, relative to other potential uses of TARP resources, in helping to strengthen our financial system and support lending.

Our only hope is that Obama, being from Chicago, has seen this con game run before, and will shut it down - that is, if Congress manages to get through its lame duck session without approving the release of the final $350 billion. (Bush’s release of the second $100 billion is a given at this point; he’s got nothing to lose, and his and Cheney’s buddies in the banking sector have everything to gain.)

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

This Saturday, there will be protests simultaneously (10:30 Pacific Time) at City Halls across the country protesting California’s passage of Proposition 8 and demanding marriage equality in every state.

Nothing is organized for Vancouver yet, but if you would like to help get something going for Vancouver you can sign up here. Otherwise, we Vancouverinos can join the protest in Portland at PSU.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

1 Comments

• At November 14, 2008, John wrote:

  This is now organized for Vancouver tomorrow"

  Join the Impact

source

Automaker average wage comparisons (click image for source article)

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Evidently Obama is trying to stay above the fray in the ongoing battle over what to do about Trader Joe. It’s understandable, his wanting to concentrate on Presidential matters and not get dragged down to the level of mere legislators by participating in the Lieberman melodrama (and maybe his point is to put Lieberman squarely where he belongs: beneath contempt), but one good bitch slap could go a long way towards heartening Obama’s supporters and telegraphing his intolerance for traitors to any blue dogs who might feel like straying from the herd.

Especially when Lieberman is agreeing with fuckwads like Glenn Beck that an Obama presidency plus a filibuster-proof Democratically-controlled Senate may destroy the country:

BECK: But do you agree that Senator Hatch said to me that if we don’t at least have the firewall of the filibuster in the Senate that in many ways America will not survive?

LIEBERMAN: Well, I hope it’s not like that, but I fear.
…
LIEBERMAN: And I think the filibuster is the key. You know, it gets a bad name, but it was really put there, a 60-vote requirement, to, as somebody said to me when I first came to the Senate, stop the passions of a moment among the people of America from sweeping across the Congress, the House, through the Senate, to a like-minded President and having us do things that will change America for a long time. So the filibuster is one of the important protections we have.

I know the wisdom with such treachery is to keep your friends close and your enemies closer, but I think when your enemy is as cowardly and faithless as Bush & McCain’s pet Droopy Dog, dropkicking Lieberman is a risk you can well afford.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver

Because we’re doing it again.

Today is the 70th anniversary of the end of the two-day race riot known as Kristallnacht, “the night of broken glass,” when Nazi brownshirts and the Aryan equivalent of the KKK destroyed 276 synagogues across Germany, along with hundreds of Jewish businesses, with 91 Jews being killed in the process. This was in 1938, eight years into Hitler’s consolidation of power and mounting propaganda effort to blame all of Germany’s ills on the Jews (with lesser roles for Gypsies, Communists, leftists, homosexuals, labor union leaders and “race traitors”.

Two years earlier, Hitler’s regime instituted the Nuremburg Laws, stripping German Jews of their citizenship, banning them from political participation of any kind, and prohibiting Jews from marrying German citizens.

While nothing on this scale has happened in the U.S. since the decimation of Native Americans in the 19th century, Californians took a step toward their own Nuremburg laws last Tuesday, stripping a select portion of residents of one of the rights most important to human beings: the right to bind oneself, with the legal recognition of the state, to the individual of one’s choosing.

This is the first time in U.S. history that any government has stripped existing rights away from citizens who have done nothing to forfeit those rights.

And it was done with a simple majority vote, by self-identified church-goers who believe marriage is inextricably tied to the sacred rites of their faith, rather than being a simple contract recognized by the state to in order to classify the individuals involved for purposes of taxation, parental rights, and healthcare decision-making, but most of all for determining property rights and responsibility for debts.

This is how marriage started in the West: not as the solemnizing of a union under the aegis of one religion or another, but to say to the community at large “A and B are now a unit.” (And, for most of the history of marriage, and where B was female, to say “B, and all of her property, are now the property of A, to dispose of as he wishes.” Marriages before this point were all of the common-law variety: A just picked B and brought her home (or more likely negotiated with B’s father on the price to be paid for, or the dowery to be transferred with, ownership rights to B).

Then the Catholic Church got involved in marriage as it gets involved in every area of its adherents’ lives: for purposes of control. This was not just to quash divorce (which left women to be cared for by the Church, a drain on profits) and to enforce the Biblical decree to “be fruitful and multiply” (Rome was forever in need of more bodies with which to expand its Empire), but to protect the Church’s assets from the demands of wives and children. By deciding who could and could not marry, the Church could reinforce the laws of primogeniture, take 2nd born sons for priests and condemn them to celibacy, and pair up the rest to best serve the Church itself. It was not much different than breeding livestock.

As civilization progressed and the power of the Church declined with the Protestant movement and the rise of the individual both politically and commercially, it became all the more important to vest symbolic power in the sacraments and rites. You may not be a serf tending the Bishop’s fields anymore, but God would strike you down if you didn’t continue to obey His laws, as delineated by the Pope. And while the Catholic Church was more limited in the parts of the Bible they chose to enforce, the Protestants put the Bible in the hands of the flock, and the number of possible transgressions multiplied by orders of magnitude. The hellfire and brimstone of the Protestant church made sins against these newfound Biblical laws even more frightening.

Now comes the Mormon Church, with its angel Moroni handing golden tablets to his chosen prophet Joseph Smith, and old Joe - who had an eye for the ladies and had made a living knowing an easy mark when he saw one - understood the power of marriage beyond mere control of women and their property. Get control of sex, and you got control of men, as well - especially if you give them carte blanche and while keeping their wives monogamous.

So, with Joe on the brink of getting himself castrated for dallying with the daughters of his followers, God conveniently revealed to him that the men of the church were to spread their seed far and wide, “should they continue as innumerable as the stars; or, if ye were to count the sand upon the seashore ye could not number them”:

61…[I]f any man espouse a virgin, and desire to espouse another, and the first give her consent, and if he espouse the second, and they are virgins, and have vowed to no other man, then is he justified; he cannot commit adultery for they are given unto him; for he cannot commit adultery with that that belongeth unto him and to no one else.
…
63 But if one or either of the ten virgins, after she is espoused, shall be with another man, she has committed adultery, and shall be destroyed; for they are given unto him to multiply and replenish the earth, according to my commandment, and to fulfill the promise which was given by my Father before the foundation of the world, and for their exaltation in the eternal worlds, that they may bear the souls of men; for herein is the work of my Father continued, that he may be glorified.

Now, we come to Proposition 8, passed into law last week in California.

Eighty percent of the funding in favor of Proposition 8 was provided by the Mormon Church, with much of the remainder coming from Catholics; there is no question that in the minds of those who wanted Prop 8 to pass, there was a religious reason for it.

This is, of course, completely odds with the U.S. Constitution, which preserves to all individuals from of - and freedom from - religion. But because the religious reasoning behind Prop 8 is not explicit, this all-but-overt breach of the First Amendment is not among the bases for legal challenges to this new, hateful and exclusionary part of the California state constitution.

And as to Kristallnacht, and why I brought the Nazis into this in the first place?

Because if California can, by a simple majority vote of the people, and on a surreptitiously religious basis strip a class of its citizens of their right to marry, what is to keep them from stripping other groups of their rights?

For example, atheists like me are the most untrustworthy bunch in the country, if polls are to be believed. Why not stop us from marrying, or from adopting kids and indoctrinating them into our heinous lifestyle?

Granted, it would be a challenge to write a proposition without reference to religion that stripped away the rights of an atheist; nothing is so simple as identifying a person by a physical characteristic.

And that is the true reason behind Proposition 8. As humans, we have some monkey-brain need to hold ourselves above a distinct Other; we must be King of the Hill, at least in our own minds. Most easily-spotted - and therefore easily discriminated against - groups have been protected by the 14th Amendment, at least as far as government treatment and public accommodations are concerned. But, at least at the federal level, we still get to hate on the gays pretty much at will.

This is changing, ever so slowly. But California’s vote last week has been a steel-toed boot in the nuts for those of us who care about genuine equality for all. And that the handmaidens to the passage of Prop 8 were the Catholic Church (no stranger to discrimination or homosexuality) and the Mormon Church (no strangers to discrimination on the marriage front) and African American churchgoers (no strangers to discrimination and hate crimes) is the rotten icing on this moldy and putrefied cake.

The Bible says varied and contradictory things about marriage, sexuality and relationships: it hails both wives as property and priests dismembering their concubines. The Mormon Doctrine and Covenants blesses polygamy and then denounces it.

Every religion denounces some group or another out of an existential need to be the One True Faith.

But in its better moments, religion gives us higher virtues: Judge not lest ye be judged. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

If the evangelicals are correct in saying that this nation was founded by Christian men,* then it was to these commandments that those men adhered when they wrote that all men are created equal, and are endowed with inalienable rights.

“Inalienable” means that those rights cannot be taken away by any man - or woman. Not even when they are in the majority.

The election of Barack Obama to the presidency was a beautiful step in the right direction for this country - but the passage of Prop 8 was an even larger step back, because it took away a basic right of a class of its citizens.

I never thought I would live to see an African American elected President. Now I wonder if I’ll live to see gay marriage given full faith and credit in all 50 states. It seems like such a small thing to ask.

*I don’t believe they are.

Post from: Democracy for Vancouver