[With reference to Look Mummy, below]
Something very weird is happening at Blogger. In response to my ramblings about Pride, a kind reader left this comment:
It feels like Obama has been in office for a looong time, but there is still no way the equivalent of this could be seen in the homeland of our US "allies", who continue with the idea that there are no queers in their Goddamn man's military. It must be utterly galling for them to have to serve alongside the lezzers and woofters in the British forces.
Quite the opposite. There are many in the military who wish to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, including General Petreaus, James Jones, Colin Powell and certain members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Don't lump the mouth-breathing troglodytes with the rest of us Yanks, ok?
It frustrates me when others paint Americans as unenlightened inbred hill folk, since the rest of the world isn't so much better. We did elect an Obama, after all. When will the British elect a Prime Minister of Pakistani descent? Or the French a Senegalese President? The Dutch a Moroccan Prime Minister? The Germans a Turkish leader?
See, you got me all worked up, and not in the way I'm usually worked up when I visit your blog! Oh well, I'll scroll down and look at the pretty pictures again.
I replied, with this -- but for some reason Blogger refuses to publish this comment:
There are many in the military who wish to end Don't Ask, Don't Tell, including General Petreaus, James Jones, Colin Powell and certain members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Well now I'm really confused. If all those powerful people want to end it, and if the saintly Commander-in-Chief also wants to end it, er... why hasn't it ended? Are they all just completely inept? Or is it that they don't actually care that much about this issue because, as Clinton found, queer rights don't play so well in the electoral heartlands?
Really, I'm struggling to reconcile the picture you've painted of all the views of all these lovely enlightened people with the fact that "don't ask, don't tell" is still in place.
You should in no way think this is an attempt to diminish your people and Big Up my own -- as you'll have seen on numerous occasions, I am much, much harder on British politicians than I am on any others.
But we've got to stop letting Obama off the hook just because he comes from a different racial group. That would be like letting Thatcher get away with stuff because she just happened to be a woman.
Of course these break-throughs are to be celebrated. But either these people are fit and proper to do their jobs or they are not -- and their particular circumstances should not be an excuse for mistakes or under-performance.
The whole point of Pride is to (or was to?) underline that queer rights are basic human rights. My post was a reflection of the fact that, for almost every practical purpose, we have finally managed to achieve queer equality in the UK. Other places are not so fortunate -- and we can either make excuses for that or we can keep the pressure up.
For sure, there are much worse places than the US for queer rights. But since we are supposedly the closest allies in the current insane wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and since I was commenting on the British military's always rather popular presence at Pride, it seemed a logical swerve to the US. I'm sorry you don't see it that way.
On reflection, I thought I'd not properly responded to another point, so I left a second comment -- which, for some reason, Blogger also refuses to publish. Here it is:
Oh, and I'm rather with you on the racial background of elected politicians. I'd like a world in which these things don't matter, any more than gender or sexuality or disability.
But if you want to prove the US is more enlightened because it has elected a leader from a different demographic background, most of us can play similar games: a few decades back both Britain's Head of State and Head of Government were women -- when will the US elect a woman President?
I've lost track of the number of lesbian and gay ministers that have served openly in the British Government. But I'm struggling to think of a single lesbian or gay US Secretary.
Race is one issue, and an important one (though I suspect more important in the US than in the UK, for all sorts of historical reasons). But it's not the only one.
I'm very suspicious about why these wouldn't publish. Very strange.
Incidentally, I might also have done a bit of demographic sleuthing -- don't minority ethnic groups in the US make up around 40% of the population (and heading for majority status in a few years)? In the UK the equivalent figure is about 7%, so if you want to do "what proportion of UK Prime Ministers should come from minority ethnic groups" it will be very, very much lower than the equivalent for US Presidents. Women, of course, make up a majority in both countries...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
14 comments:
As an American, I couldn't agree with you more. GLBT people think that since America elected a minority, that he will care about minority rights. Yes, he did sign an Executive Order requiring hospitals to allow visitation in hospitals to GLBT partners the same as they would a husband and wife, but what else has he done. Obama says that he wants to repeal DADT but has dragged his feet. The real problem is that it must be approved by Congress, a group of homophobic, bigoted, dimwitted, assholes who have no right being in office in the first place, but most Americans are so stupid that they elect them.
Speaking of the stupid American electorate, Mr. Obama was the least qualified of any of the 2008 presidential candidates, but many in America,like you commentator voted for him so that they could say they voted for the first African American candidate and that America is more enlightened than the rest of the world. It is a mistaken thought.
Mr. Obama has shown his ineptitude to rule on several occasions. 1) Stating that America will get out of Iraq. What good will this do? Until the country is rebuilt and is prosperous again, what gives America the right to conquer and destroy a country, then leave it in total turmoil. Finish the job, then leave. 2) He and his flunkies in Congress rammed a health care bill down America's throat when it is a completely worthless bill that does nothing to reform the true problems of health care costs in America. Don't allow doctors to charge the non-insured more than the insured. Subsidize the cost of research and development of new drugs. Bring down the cost of health care instead of forcing everyone to get insurance. They did not legislate universal health care, but all they did was require everyone to be insured. 3) The current Gulf of Mexico crisis with BP oil. There has never been a more inefficient handling of a major disaster in the United States than the way Obama as treated this catastrophe. Even George W. Bush handled Hurricane Katrina with more speed and efficiency than Obama has the Gulf oil crisis (and that is saying a lot considering he did very little for New Orleans or the Mississippi Gulf Coast).
Okay, so one last thing. I love your blog and you make some very valid points about American hubris when we shouldn't have any. I consider myself a political moderate, though in the very conservative Deep South where I live, I am seen as a total liberal. I think we should have equality for all and most Americans don't agree.
Hi JoeBlow -- thanks for taking the time to comment, though I can't say I agree with all of it.
Starting with the last first, I can't see how Obama's handling of BP has been in even the same league of incompetence as Bush's handling of New Orleans post-Katrina. The death tolls alone, spread out over days and weeks in the case of Katrina, should tell us something about the relative magnitude of these two problems.
This is not to diminish the BP problem (you might think I was being partisan -- au contraire). BP is an evil oil company but, hey, the US is not short of those either, and it's probably more bad luck that it was BP that got caught out first rather than one of the others.
Interestingly, no-one seems to give a fuck about the far worse catastrophes caused by oil companies elsewhere (Shell in the Niger Delta might be one. Another may well come soon from anyone gearing-up to extract from Canadian tar sands. In some ways, the horrific death toll in Iraq might be put at least in part at the door of our thirst for cheap oil).
Health care is very interesting: the last stats I saw from the US showed total spending on health as running at around 15% of GDP. The UK has much better health outcomes across pretty much every measure (I'm comparing the whole populations to each other here, not the super-care bought by the rich few), for total healthcare spend of about half -- 8% of GDP. So spend half, and get better results? Sounds like a no-brainer to me.
I particularly loved the dumb legislator who stated as "fact" that Professor Stephen Hawking would be dead if he'd had to rely on the UK's National Health Service when, in fact, he receives all his care from them.
And now I'm just ranting. Sorry.
Back to cock.
I will admit that I overstated my case about BP and Katrina. Katrina cost many lives. I lived through it and lost my own house (I was in the much more devastated part of Mississippi, where whole cities disappeared), so I remember quite well the devastation. I really didn't mean about the lives in New Orleans and Mississippi (an important and terrible part, don't get me wrong), I meant the clean-up process. Much of the disaster in New Orleans can be attributed to the ineptitude of the city of New Orleans itself as much as to Mr. Bush and his administration. Bush was ineffective, but from someone who is down here seeing the coast and the effects of the oil spill, I can't see that Obama has done anything about it yet. I agree that other oil spills have been ignored, but this is one that is still growing and no one knows when it will stop. At least Bush allowed foreign aid to come in and help in the aftermath of Katrina. Obama has refused help from other countries.
One last thing, I think the health care issues should have been handled with less political partisanship than it was. What it will accomplish in the midterm elections this November will be radically conservative Republican candidates being elected and we will just take several hundred steps backwards, since Republicans will not cooperate with Democrats.
Ok, no more ranting, I look forward to more cock, LOL.
Oh boy, here I go again sticking my toe in where it doesn't belong. I am also very, very tired, I don't feel well, haven't felt well all day in fact, so thinking is a disctraction, and I'm not particularly certain why I feel moved to speak up here or what it is I want to add to this discussion that I am not a part of.
I should be in bed. That will be evident soon enough.
OK, here goes. Let me think first. Well, I guess what I always hear people fail to mention, what no one seems to notice, is just how complicated America is. Things here are overly complcated no matter how simple they seem or seem like they should be. Nothing is simple here.
It must have to do with this whole freedom and individuality stuff we cherish so much. There are 300 million people here and most have a say in how things get done. No one runs this place. Everyone does. And that is why no one here is every happy.
No matter what you want in America there is always someone who will come along and open their big mouth and fuck it up. Compromise is involved in everything we do. Everything is compromised.
"Don't ask, don't tell" is hardly the most pressing problem for or within our military, nor is it at the top of the list of problems for or within the gay or lesbian communities. The military and the LGBT communities are riddled with problems here, just like everything is here.
America is a mess. I believe that DADT will end soon, and that is surprising given the sad state of our abilities to correct any problems we have. Problems just fester and fester and fester around here with no end in sight.
There is no good, rational reason to keep DADT in place - there was no good reason for it in the first place - but that hardly matters. All sides in matters here have too much power in every debate, so things rarely conclude quickly or satisfactorily. And in the meantime, people get screwed over and things like communities and environments pay dearly. It's the American way.
We still haven't resolved Native American isues. Equal rights for women has never completed. Racism is still prevalent. We are still bickering over what the f-in' Constitution says.
DADT will end. And it will piss off people for a full generation or more, but eventually it will be a settled issue. Gay marriage is another issue altogether because religion has a lot to say about that one.
Somehow, sometime between when Christ walked the earth and the 1950s, religion decided that marriage was their baby and they are not about to adopt it out to the gays and lesbians.
Yes, America is woefully complicated. We are divided on everything possible. And all sides have powerful friends in high places, so we argue and debate and conduct studies and take pills to make us feel better, but few things ever truly work out the way they should.
DADT will end, but what we get instead might not be much better.
I'm going to bed now. Good night. Mike
I agree with much of what you wrote. Although it's always easy to see complexities in a system of which you are part and simplicity elsewhere. The UK has all sorts of checks and balances in the system, as well as a supranational body (the European Union) that has precedence over most domestic law, and a whole range of international courts (European Court of Justice, European Court of Human Rights, International Criminal Court, WTO Arbitration Courts, etc, etc) that have the power to overrule British ones -- even the US doesn't have that much complexity, not least because it refuses to ratify treaties on, for example, the International Criminal Court).
The issue of marriage is more interesting to me: if it were simply a religious institution then I would be utterly indifferent to it -- what religions get up to is up to them.
But the fact is that it is not just a religious thing: there are differences in the way that citizens who are married couples are treated compared to other citizens.
And the state must not entrench unjustifiable discrimination by supporting an institution which is not open to lesbians and gay men. It must either open the institution to us, or remove all legal differences between married citizens and everyone else (which, in practice, would mainly mean the abolition of tax breaks such as tax-free inheritance, as well as some "priority" rights such as the right to make medical decisions for your spouse, the right to live in the family home after the death of your spouse, the right for your partner to get a visa to live with you, etc).
So the question for these religions should be simple: do you want to protect the sanctity of "your" relationship-recognition system, or do you want to keep the tax breaks (let's not forget, a tax break for person X means everyone else has to pay more).
Is marriage, in fact, more about money and property than religion?
As it happens, I'd rather abolish state recognition of "marriage" and set up civil partnerships or some such which would be the only thing the state would recognise, but which would be open to all (straight, gay, lesbian, friends, relatives... anyone, in fact).
That way religious people could have two ceremonies if they choose, or they could forgo the tax breaks and just have the purity of their religious ceremony.
Otherwise, straight people are demanding that lesbians and gay men subsidise through their taxes something which is not open to them. It is an outrage.
Is DADT the biggest issue facing lesbians & gay men in America? I dunno -- you're much better placed than me to judge that one.
But in the context of my post, where I was writing about the British military, it seemed apposite to contrast it with the stance taken by the "allies" with whom we are supposedly in some sort of "special relationship".
And here's a cute news item just published:
Gay and lesbian asylum seekers have won the right not to be deported from the UK if they would be persecuted in their home countries.
The Supreme Court unanimously allowed appeals from two men, from Cameroon and Iran, whose claims had earlier been turned down because officials said they could hide their sexuality by behaving discreetly.
The government accepted the ruling and said that policy on gay and lesbian asylum seekers would be changed with immediate effect.
Lord Hope, heading the panel of five judges, said that to force a gay man to pretend his sexuality did not exist or should be suppressed was a breach of his fundamental rights. The court also laid down a framework on how asylum claims by gay and lesbian people should be determined.
The ruling was welcomed by the Home Secretary, Theresa May, and equality campaigners. May said: "We have already promised to stop the removal of asylum seekers who have had to leave particular countries because their sexual orientation or gender identification puts them at proven risk of imprisonment, torture or execution.
"I do not believe it is acceptable to send people home and expect them to hide their sexuality to avoid persecution. From today asylum decisions will be considered under the new rules and the judgment gives an immediate legal basis for us to reframe our guidance for assessing claims based on sexuality, taking into account relevant country guidance and the merits of each individual case."
Hurrah! But how shocking that a Labour government allowed that to happen, and it was a Tory government (with this powerful shove from the courts) which has stopped it.
Odd that the comments didn't go through, but thank you for your well-reasoned and well-articulated response.
I don't want to drag this out any longer than I need to, but I felt compelled to answer one point - you asked why DADT hasn't been repealed yet.
The short answer is - they're working on it ;-) I believe it was Winston Churchill who once said, "The Americans can be counted on to make the right decision once they've exhausted all the other options" (or something to that effect). It'll get repealed, it's a bit of a process, but it's getting repealed. That is the important thing.
By the way, I never once suspected you of diminishing Americans (or any other nation) in order to boost the United Kingdom. I have noticed how harsh you have been. I didn't mean to imply otherwise, and I apologize if I had.
One final point: I haven't let Obama "off the hook" because there's no hook I've held him on. He's done precisely what he's campaigned on, and I, for one, cannot be happier with the job he's doing. I have other priorities besides letting gays serve in the military, and Obama's done, in my humble opinion, a terrific job of shouldering the burden of the mess that was left behind to him and has risen admirably to the task of fixing its problems.
Certainly, he's made some missteps along the way, but I am very, very glad he's my president. I haven't felt this secure with a president in a very long time.
Oh - and there are quite a few openly gay/lesbian members of Congress... the most prominent, I believe, would be Barney Frank, who holds a rather powerful position. Arne Duncan, our Education secretary, is also gay. There are others, but I wanted to raise those two examples.
You like getting comments? Well, here's another. A response to a response comment.
Firstly, let me agree with another commenter that you come across as harsh in some of your writings here. That is most likely due to how words appear on a page. They are one-dimensional. We don't know your tone.
Maybe you are harsh. So be it. Maybe you would stand in my face and scream these same words at me if we were in person. If so, in dramatic fashion, I would slap your face, then whip my head around and storm off with my nose in the air.
America is complicated. Don't argue. We make everything as difficult as can be on ourselves and others. I think that is a big part of the reason that our favourite past-time is escapism.
There are countless examples of how we make everything overly, and unnecessarily, complicated. And arguing about it does not simplify matters!
DADT is dying before our eyes. Even those who wish for it to remain know it's days are numbered. They are accepting defeat.
Gay marriage will be a long time in coming. Religion has an enormous foothold here and the various cults that comprise religion hold back progress at every turn. They are even attempting to reverse gains made in domestic partnerships that have been hard-won, by doing so state by state.
Religion complicates everything it touches in America.
So does ignorance.
As does bigotry.
But mostly, fear complicates things. Fear dominates too many peoples' lives here and it impedes progress at every turn. Progress itself is feared by many.
Those 4 elements that impede progress are inexorably intertwined. So simple, yet so complicated.
Accept it. Mike
And you thought I was finished? HA! Hardly. I'm just getting started.
Obama. The greatest black president America has ever had. And hands down the best president we've had in this 21t century. Give him a full 8 years in office and he will achieve with his pinky finger nearly as much as George Bush destroyed.
His 1st 18 months in office have been full of achievements, but he does not brag and boast, so most of them go barely noticed. That is part of his greatness. He is step by step disarming the opposition by being low-key.
If Americans were not so reactionary, and we are, we would keep him a Democratic majority in both houses of Congress so he can more easily push for the things we need done.
Obama walked into office under the worst set of conditions since Truman. He has performed well under the circumstances.
If I have a complaint about Obama, it is that he has lost one of his great talents - the ability to orate masterfully. He does not have time to write incredible speeches like he used to and it shows. He does not inspire now when he speaks. He needs to rekindle that magic touch.
I'm sure that Britain is complicated. We are your offspring. We likely got our bad habits from you. Hell, I think half of the white folk in America came from the British Isles. In fact, lets just spit it out - you, Britain, are the cause of all of our problems here. You sent your puritan, cold, tired huddled, masses here and look what it's led to.
No, really, there are countless reasons why we are too complicated for our own good here. I just wish things could start simplifying. I thought that technology was suppose to assist with that, but so far it has just made things even more complicated.
I might be done now. Mike
Firstly, let me agree with another commenter that you come across as harsh in some of your writings here.
I am utterly mystified. No-one is forcing you to come here and read my bullshit, so if you don't like it here I suggest you piss off to another blog which is more congenial.
Honestly, I really don't know why you're here. Either you like it -- which is great -- or you don't -- in which case bugger off. As one of my many great-aunts used to say: when you are a guest in someone else's home, "if you can't say anything nice, keep your fucking mouth shut".
You may prefer me to be soft about queer human rights. Yes, perhaps I should roll over and accept gratefully the odd bone that may be tossed our way. Or perhaps I should stand up against the bigots who try to control and limit our lives purely on the basis of their prejudice about our sexualities. I have to say, the latter position feels more comfortable to me.
Then again, I grew up in a world in which gay sex was a criminal offence, and where the Police dressed up in ripped jeans and hung out in public toilets waving their cocks about, only to prosecute with all the vicious harshness of the law any old queen who took the bait.
DADT is dying before our eyes. Even those who wish for it to remain know it's days are numbered. They are accepting defeat.
Really? Rush Limbaugh is accepting defeat? Blimey -- I am hugely looking forward to that.
America is complicated. Don't argue.
I'm not arguing with that. Most countries are indeed extremely complicated.
And that's the point -- what I'm arguing about is this assumption, once again, of American Exceptionalism. You can't just be complicated, you have to be The Most Complicated, and Special, and Rather Marvellous. Guess what -- you aren't. This is not to argue that I think my country is, either.
But I am interested how a simple observation ("It feels like Obama has been in office for a looong time, but there is still no way the equivalent of this could be seen in the homeland of our US "allies", who continue with the idea that there are no queers in their Goddamn man's military") now appears to be taken as a "harsh" criticism of the saintly Commander-in-Chief.
I mean, I can understand hero-worship -- God knows, most of my fellow countrymen felt that about Tony Blair waaay back in 1997 (that this man was A Living Saint who could Do No Wrong) -- but the fact is all our heroes have feet of clay. Obama ain't no superman, and he has to balance a whole bunch of conflicting priorities. He decides which are the most urgent. And, given how long this DADT thing has dragged on, it looks to me like he's decided queer human rights are less urgent.
One final question: How many queers have been dismissed under DADT since Obama took office (as Commander-in-Chief)? I dunno -- if it's zero I'll cut him some more slack.
Yours, harshly, LeDuc
In fact, lets just spit it out - you, Britain, are the cause of all of our problems here.
At last, someone writes some sense.
I was in France at the time of their national team's ignominious exit from the World Cup, and it only took them about 24 hours to work out a way in which, miraculously, it was all England's (sic) fault.
I should be proud to be an upstanding member (er...) of a country of such powerful influence...
I don't know where to begin. The beginning seems too far back. Maybe somewhere in the middle. Now I'm beginning to have doubts.
I know one thing, I better not say you were being overly harsh in your condemnation of my thoughts.
And not to be picky, but this is not a home. It's a blog. I get your point, but it's a blog. And nowhere in the fine print did I read that we had to be all kissy and smiley-faces and serendipitous when leaving comments here. Quite the contrary. I thought we are suppose to challenge you, in hopes of creating a more perfect union.
Was I mistaken?
I see that you have mistaken some of my banter as seriousness, which means you don't know me well enough. You should stop by for a drink and get to know me better.
I would like to make some serious points about DADT and DOMA, but I don't have time right now. Same for Obama, the man and the president.
I will just say that no matter how he came into office, which was full-speed ahead, he has to deal with a mighty and united opposition, just as all Democratic presidents must in the modern age.
Clinton tried to end the ban on gays in the military and it damn near destroyed his first-term. Obama is taking a much more methodical approach, and it is working as quickly as it probably can. His approach to DOMA is much more important in the big scheme, and it too is making ground.
Candidates often promise the moon, but once in office they are slapped hard by reality.
America unnecessarily complicates everyone's lives. It is how we live anymore. I did not mean to imply that it is not that way elsewhere or that it makes us special. There really is nothing special about making things extraordinarily complicated on everyone. People are stressed out everywhere you go here. The complications have real life negative effects. All too often, America is not a nice to be.
We complicate things for you guys too. Bush dragged Blair into Iraq. He had to go along, as did many of our allies because it was, "You are with us or you are with the terrorists". It has caused huge headaches in every country that was with "us". Not to mention making all those same countries targets for retaliation by Al Kada and his pals. OK, not all of it was from going into Iraq. Afganistan had something to do with it, but that idiotic war is still bleeding us dry too.
I'm not wrong in my views. I'm not correct either, perhaps. See, that is how complicated things are.
Lastly (for this time), I will never view America and Britain as being in a contest for who is best or who wins the prize. I have the utmost respect for Britain, even with all her flaws.
So, let me pick on you a little. That's how I show that I like you.
Deepest regards, Mike
I see that you have mistaken some of my banter as seriousness, which means you don't know me well enough. You should stop by for a drink and get to know me better.
Snap.
Bush dragged Blair into Iraq. He had to go along.
Now I think you're letting Blair off the hook. How come he had to go along, when a previous British Prime Minister -- Harold Wilson -- took one look at Vietnam and told the US to fuck off? Australia joined the US there and suffered heavily, but Wilson resolutely refused despite almost overwhelming US pressure (and that was at a time when the UK was much weaker economically).
Blair just didn't have the ability to see what a quagmire Bush's Middle East policy was going to create -- or, if he did, he sacrificed Britain's interests to his own.
Now, when are you coming over for that drink?
Post a Comment