Victoria Brownworth

Dorothy Height died today. She was 98.

Height’s name is not well-known outside civil rights circles, but she was one of the movers and shakers of the black civil rights movement–a movement that many still think of as all male–plus the footnotes of Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King. But Height was one of the “Big Six”–the organizers of the 1963 March on Washington–and the only woman of the most important civil rights group in American history..

She was, in the words of many of her colleagues, the matriarch of the civil rights movement.

Height didn’t just break ground for African Americans, though–she also broke ground for women. She was as devoted to gender equality as she was to racial equity. For decades she worked to link black and white women through the common ground of their shared gender inequality. She was as much a radical feminist as she was a civil rights leader.

At 17, Height was admitted to Barnard College. Unfortunately, there was a quota system for blacks at that time–1929: two black “girls” a year. So Height went to New York University. By the time she was 22 she had a master’s degree.

At 25, she became involved with the National Council for Negro Women (NCNW) which sparked her life-long commitment to and involvement in the black civil rights movement. In 1957, she was named president of NCNW and remained in that post for 40 years.

Throughout her long career as an activist, Height worked to secure the rights of African Americans and women in the workplace and society.

One of Height’s key missions in the 1950s and 1960s was to bridge the gap between North and South (she was raised in Pennsylvania, but born in Virginia and lived most of her adult life in Washington, D.C.). Height was responsible for organizing “ Wednesdays in Mississippi.” These were intensive dialogues about the apartheid that existed in what was then the nation’s most racist and oppressive state. She brought white and black women from the North to the South to gain a keener understanding of the impact of racism and racial inequality on blacks in Mississippi.

Rep. John Lewis (D-GA), one of the other Big Six organizers, has said that Height’s work on informing people about Mississippi was a pivotal element of the movement and garnered so much attention that it helped trigger national response to the civil rights cause. On learning of her death, he said Height was ” a feminist, and long before there was a women’s movement.” Lewis called her, ”A  great American, a brave and courageous woman who worked tirelessly for the cause of civil rights and social justice.”

The work that Height did was manifold–she was both street fighter and board-room organizer. By the time she was 30, she was advising national leaders, starting with Eleanor Roosevelt. She was an advisor to numerous presidents, advising Eisenhower to desegregate the nation’s schools and Johnson to add black women to his cabinet and other positions of power in his administration. Height was a friend and supporter of and advisor to both Hillary and Bill Clinton.  

In 2004, George W. Bush awarded Height the Congressional Gold Medal  for her civil rights work. She was 92. Of Height, Bush said, she was a “giant of the civil rights movement” and that she had advised presidents–whether they wanted her advice or not–for more than 50 years.

The prestige that accrued to Height over her long life was earned through the dligence and hard work that first got her accepted to Barnard as a 17-year-old in a highly segregated world. But it was not diligence and hard work alone–essential as those things were–that led her to the place in history she now holds. She was first and foremost a woman of immense integrity, compassion, fire and vision. If Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. saw a future where racial equality was a commonplace, Height envisioned the steps it would take to get there and began taking them early on, dragging others along with her, whether, as Bush noted, they wanted to go or not.

Height had been at Howard University Hospital since March 25, suffering from what was to be her final illness. To die at 98  is itself an accomplishment. But Height lived to see the desegregation of the schools and the end of Jim Crow. She lived to see a time when there was no quota on the number of black women entering Barnard College and she lived to see that those entering were no longer called “girls.” She lived to see Shirley Chisholm, a black woman, run for president. She lived to see Condoleezza Rice be named the first black woman Secretary of State. She lived to be among those sitting front and center at the Inauguration of Barack Obama. She lived to become the embodiment of Gandhi’s dictate: Be the change you want to see in the world.

Dorothy Height was that change. She augured that change. Thus while her passing is sad, it also gives time to reflect on the grand scale of her long and meaningful life.  She was an extraordinary woman of style, grace, wit and intellect and her vision–and her implementation of that vision–utterly changed our world. –VAB

The Catholic priest sex abuse scandal won’t go away. The Vatican can twist and turn, dissemble and outright lie and it still won’t go away.

This week the Pope’s second in command, Secretary of State for the Vatican, Cardinal Tariscio Bertone, thought he was making things better on Monday when he said that celibacy was not the source of the problem of pedophile priests. It was all the fault of homosexuality. Bertone asserted that there were numerous studies proving a connection between homosexuality and pedophilia.

Well, no, actually, there aren’t.  In fact, the studies in question say just the opposite: Heterosexuals predominate among pedophiles just as girls predominate among their victims. As Ireland’s Ryan Report made abundantly and horrifically clear when it was released last year, abuse of girls was even more prevelant than abuse of boys in the Church sex scandal there.

What made the Ryan Report so important was the fact that in no other country is the social welfare system and the Church as inextricably tied. The Ryan Report was ten years in the making and in its 3,000+ pages details the most astonishing level of abuse of children and teens by priests. 

Irish journalist Mary Raftery wrote a play, No Escape, based on the Ryan Report, which debuts today, April 14, at the prestigious Abbey Theatre in Dublin.

In an interview with BBC’s Dan Damon this morning, Raftery addressed Bertone’s comments, noting that the Ryan Report proved without a shadow of a doubt that homosexuality had absolutely nothing to do with the ongoing abuse in Ireland perpetrated by the Church against Irish children and teens.

The Ryan Report is perhaps the most damning of all the documents to surface in recent weeks about the Church and its cover-up of the endemic–some would say pandemic–abuse of children by priests. Most disheartening is the fact that the so-called good priests and nuns did nothing to stop what they had to know was utterly wrong and debased behavior toward what the Ryan Report asserts were hundreds of thousands of Irish children.

The details that have come to light regarding Pope Benedict’s involvement in the cover-up have been significant. But one need only take a cursory glance at the Ryan Report to see how abuse of children became quotidian–it was a part of growing up Catholic in Ireland. If you were in a Catholic school or an orphanage or were a client of some other social service agency run by the Church, you could expect to be physically and sexually abused. Period. It would be easier to count the children such abuse didn’t  happen to, rather than those who were the victims. Almost no one escaped, according to the report.  Hence Raftery’s title.  

In her play, Raftery details the inventiveness of the abusers. Almost every implement since the Stone Age was used to abuse children. If that conjures harrowing images in one’s imagination, it should–because this happened to real children. No Escape is a play, but it is taken directly from testimony in the Ryan Report. Nothing is exaggerated–incidents in the play are taken directly from the report.

The impact of the scandal on Ireland has been so dramatic that the Abbey Theatre will have counselors on hand throughout the run of No Escape. Concern that some members of the audience might be former victims or the parents/family of victims led the theater to seek people who specialize in counseling rape and abuse victims to talk to any audience members stricken during a performance.

Imagine.

Bertone’s comments are just more in the obfuscation game the Vatican is continuing to play despite growing anger worldwide at the inability of any member of the Church hierarchy to address the victims, rather than merely protect themselves and the Church. Thus far the Pope himself has referred to responses to the scandal as “petty gossip,” another Cardinal in the Pope’s inner circle compared media attention to the scandal with Nazi propaganda against the Jews, yet another Cardinal called news reports part of a Zionist conspiracy. And now Bertone–blaming homosexuality. 

The tone-deafness of the Vatican is simply shocking. Five years ago Pope Benedict tried to pass the American pedophile priest scandal off as a problem with homosexuality. But then as now, there were countless female victims. 

 What’s more, nuns have not been involved in these scandals. Yet no doubt there are at least as many lesbian nuns as there are gay priests. So if homosexuality were indeed the issue–which it so clearly is not—then wouldn’t there be countless cases of nuns abusing the girls in their care? And yet there are none.

I spent nine years in a Catholic girl’s school and was taught by nuns. While corporal punishment was still in vogue then and I received my share (and possibly more) of cheek and arm pinching as well as knuckle rapping from various nuns, there was never a hint of sexual abuse at my school or any other school friends of mine attended at the hands of any nun.

Conversely, we all had tales of the priests who couldn’t help but rub your shoulders and back or touch your hair or “mistakenly” touch a thigh or a buttock or a pre-pubescent breast while one was studying in First Holy Communion or Confirmation classes. That our interaction with priests was so infrequent as opposed to our interaction with nuns, yet the “friendliness” of the priests was duly noted by all of us, young as we were, was indicative of how flagrant the priest abuse was. And also indicative of how it had nothing to do with homosexuality and everything to do with an abnormal attraction to children–pedophilia.

The priest sex abuse scandal isn’t going away. It isn’t going away because for every child who was “merely” fondled as some of us were, others were raped and sodomized and even impregnated. For every girl or boy who was the victim of an “overly friendly” priest, there were others who were traumatized for life by the events at retreats or individual classes or even confession (an 11 year old girl in Philadelphia was raped in the confesssional repeatedly by her parish priest–who later procured an abortion for her when she became pregnant. That priest was shuffled from parish to parish for 20 years, abusing who knows how many other child victims).

The Ryan Report puts the lie to Bertone’s vicious calumny. But it also serves as a document of horrors that represents one of the Church’s darkest periods. That children–the most innocent of all members of the Church flock–were treated as vessels to be passed from pedophile to pedophile and that the Church was most concerned about its own image and could not have cared less about the damage being done to these children is enough to shake one’s faith.

Bertone can pick up where Cardinal Ratzinger–now Pope Benedict–left off, but it means nothing. Catholics worldwide know the score–the Church has protected pedophiles for decades. The Church has turned its back on victims when it hasn’t outright blamed them for the crimes committed against them. One Spanish cardinal said last week that young girls often lure priests. He was talking about a five year old at the time.

That kind of talk smacks of the same kind of crazy that prompted the Spanish Inquisition when priests thought women could spirit their penises away in the night.

The reality is that only pedophiles think that children are sexual aggressors. Adults with normal sexuality–be it heterosexual or homosexual–want peer relationships, not rape and sodomy with children who can’t fight back and who must be threatened into silence.

The scandal won’t go away until the Church does what it should have done ages ago: confess its sins, beg for forgiveness and turn the perpetrators over to real law, not canon law. Pope Benedict and Cardinal Bertone should be the first in line to recant their lies and for once speak the truth about what really happened:  The Church created a playground for pedophiles and did everything concievable to protect those miscreants from paying for their crimes. And is still trying to do so. —VAB

Holy Week is the most solemn and reflective period on the Christian calendar. But in the wake of a global sex-abuse scandal, many Catholics are wondering if their church hierarchy is even capable of reflection.
 The near-daily revelations about priest sex abuse has Catholics like myself reeling. Reporters were camped outside St. Peter’s Basilica in Philadelphia on Palm Sunday querying local Catholics about their response to the widening scandal. Philadelphia had been one of the flash points for pedophile priests and former D.A. Lynne Abraham empaneled a three-year Grand Jury investigation of the Philadelphia Archdiocese.
 That investigation, which ended in 2005, had uncovered 63 pedophile priests engaged in what Abraham called, “systematic and sadistic rape, sodomy and abuse” of boys and girls in the Archdiocese.
 Among the nearly 300 reports of abuse, some of the more horrific revelations from the 418-page report included an 11-year-old girl whose priest obtained an abortion for her after his repeated assaults on her resulted in pregnancy, a girl sexually assaulted by her parish priest while she lay in traction in a hospital and two boys repeatedly assaulted by a priest who forced them into his rectory bed on a near-daily basis. 
 The pattern that has been revealed in numerous subsequent investigations–offending priests being moved from parish to parish without notifying the new parish that the priest was a pedophile–was perpetrated for more than 40 years in the Philadelphia archdiocese, according to the report.
 In 2005, newly elected Pope Benedict XVI, virtually dismissed the priest abuse scandals as an American problem associated with homosexuality. His response was to issue orders regarding homosexual priests in the U.S., which in no way addressed the scandal.  
 Over the past five years, more and more child abuse has been revealed, culminating in last month’s discovery that the Pope himself, while a Cardinal and an Archbishop, may have covered up serious cases of child sexual abuse in Germany.
  The stories from the past few weeks have been particularly gruesome, including as they do details about a priest who assaulted more than 200 deaf boys in Wisconsin and a priest in Germany who targeted numerous children, male and female, over a period of 20 years. 
 For years the Pope has behaved as if the priest abuse scandal was confined to the U.S. and what the Vatican has always portrayed as a somewhat renegade component of the Catholic Church. Americans are known for their “cafeteria style” Catholicism–choosing tenets to accept and ignoring others, most notably in the areas of reproductive rights and homosexuality.
 Thus the Pope’s chastizing of the American church and wrongly linking the pedophile problem to alleged gay priests, as if the priest abuse scandal were anomalous to the U.S. and caused by rampant homosexuality in the American Catholic priesthood, suddenly seems even more false than it did when the Pope first leveled those charges.
 The psychiatrist who treated Father Peter Hullerman from Essen, Germany, whose case has raised questions about the Pope’s own involvement in covering up the scandal, told NPR on March 29 that it was the worst case he had ever seen, noting that the priest considered himself the victim of the Church because he was told to enter therapy and that he never stopped abusing children, even after he was sentenced to probation and ordered into treatment.
  Pedophilia is a mental illness in which adults obsessively choose child sexual partners. While all pedophiles have gender preferences, many choose their victims based primarily on availability rather than on specific gender.
 Media and the Vatican have focused on the male victims of pedophile priests. But, as was discovered in the grand jury investigation into the priest abuse scandal in Philadelphia, nearly half of all priest abuse victims have been girls. Boys have simply been more accessible to pedophile priests than have girls.
 That accessibility of children to priests in Catholic schools, Catholic youth programs and choirs has made it even easier for pedophile priests to abuse the children in their care. As the revelations of the past few weeks have made painfully clear, the hierarchy of the Church aided and abetted the crimes against thousands of child victims.
 In March, the Pope issued a letter about the broadening scandal which has now revealed thousands of victims in Ireland, Brazil, Australia, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and other countries. Last year’s reports from Ireland and those of the past few months from Australia and Germany show that the abuse is global and as pandemic in these other countries as it has been in the U.S.
 For those victims and other Catholics hoping for comfort or leadership from the Pope in this Church crisis, none has been forthcoming. In his Palm Sunday sermon, the Pope barely mentioned the scandal and when he did, noted that he would not be “intimidated by petty gossip” and likened himself to Christ suffering.
 The day before his sermon there had been protests in various cities worldwide demanding both the Pope’s resignation and his arrest. There are serious allegations facing not just the Church, but the Pope himself.
 It was the Pope–formerly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger–who approved the move of Fr. Hullerman from Essen to Munich for therapy. But once in Munich, Hullerman abused other children. Hullerman continued to serve as a priest–and in proximity to children despite his actual legal conviction for child sexual abuse and his own psychiatrist’s admonition that he never be around children–until March 14, 2010.
 The story about his abuse of children–as well as the Pope’s involvement in the crimes–had broken in German newspapers a few days prior to Hullerman’s final dismissal over 30 years after he was first moved to Munich.
 I want the Pope to resign. But a pope has not been removed from the papacy in nearly 600 years, and it seems unlikely that Pope Benedict XVI will resign, even though he has shown repeatedly throughout this scandal that he is unable to lead the Church and is, as his Palm Sunday sermon indicated, oblivious to the implications of the scandal or even his own involvement.
 Reports–not simply allegations without substantiation–of thousands of children being sexually assaulted by priests, including some directly under then-Cardinal Ratzinger’s watch, represent a horrific pattern of crimes. And let there be no mistake: were these men not priests, they would all be in prison. Imagine a lay teacher sexually assaulting girls and boys for years. Would that teacher be moved by the school district from school to school to avoid prosecution? Or would the local principal and school district have that teacher arrested and charged?
 The Pope is acting as if sexual assault by a priest is part of growing up Catholic. Many survivors of this abuse–male and female–have stated publically how damaging it has been to them throughout their lives. Not merely the pain, secrecy and shame, but the knowledge that their own Church failed them.
 At the very least, Pope Benedict XVI has shown himself to be dismissive about the victims of this pandemic abuse of children which was, if not outright sanctioned by the Church, covered up, with the offending priests protected from prosecution–always at the expense of their many victims.
 It must be recalled that the Pope was the man in charge of dealing with the pedophile priest scandal while he was Cardinal Ratzinger. But other than paying off victims to avoid court actions, what exactly did then-Cardinal Ratzinger do to end the abuse and bring the perpetrators to justice? 
 Apparently, as Fr. Hullerman’s case makes quite clear, nothing.
 That the Pope would use the occasion of Palm Sunday to absolve himself and refer to the very real charges of sexual crimes against children as “petty gossip” is outrageous. Were the Pope a politician instead of a religious leader, he would be forced to resign on the basis of that statement alone. Given the compendia of charges leveled against both the Pope himself and the Church in this scandal, it is difficult to imagine how he continues to stay on as Pope in any effective way. Or why Catholics would want him to do so.
 I am one of many Catholics who do not. I think the Pope should resign immediately. I think he should apologize to the thousands, possibly millions, of victims of priests who were rarely even admonished by the Church and who were allowed to continue–as in the case of Fr. Hullerman–to abuse children for ten, 20, 30 or more years while continuing to benefit from the Church’s protection and succor while their victims were left to suffer, some to the point of committing suicide.
 Pope Benedict XVI’s hubris in implying that his suffering from this scandal was in any way comparable to Christ’s suffering is yet another outrage. Catholics believe that Christ died for their sins, that his suffering was from the sins–or crimes–of others. The Pope’s suffering, if there is any, has been brought on by the revelations of the sins/crimes he has allowed to continue under his watch, first as cardinal, now as pope.
 A leader takes responsibility for those he leads. At every turn Pope Benedict XVI has shirked his responsibility and blamed priests, bishops and archbishops and even victims for this scandal. The Pope is the leader of the Catholic Church. If he cannot lead, if he cannot take responsibility, then he needs to step down. The victims deserve no less. —VAB
     
 

      Women’s History Month, first celebrated in 1987, gets little attention. Local TV stations no longer even bother to run public service spots about notable women during March. Yet how much do we know about women’s achievements–past and present–and how much are our children being taught about what women have accomplished?
      Anthropologists agree that it’s been about 12,000 years since the first women arrived in North America via the Bering land bridge from Asia. That would seem to be long enough time for women to have established themselves historically.
      But the efforts of historians and feminists in the past few decades notwithstanding, there are many accomplishments by women that may never come to light. How many more undiscovered women who should have been famous have yet to be revealed because until very recently history was written by men about men?
     The feminist theologian Mary Daly, who died in January, wrote extensively about the importance of uncovering the heretofore hidden achievements of women and devoted her academic life to that end. Daly also cited the importance of cataloguing the work of women as it happens, as well.
     Nevertheless, how many singular women have our schoolchildren, female and male, been taught about?
    One of the most important women in American history is Jane Addams. The founder of the modern social work movement, co-founder of the American Civil Liberties Union, co-founder of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom and first American woman to win the Nobel Peace prize, Addams revolutionized American life with her Settlement movement.
     Sojourner Truth was a former slave who became one of the leading abolitionists and women’s rights advocates of the 19th century. Her speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” became a rallying point for both abolitionists and suffragists.
     Elizabeth Blackwell was the first woman doctor in the U.S. and with her sister Emily, also a doctor, founded the first women’s health clinics. Dr. Alice Hamilton’s work in occupational health led to the founding of OSHA. Hamilton investigated the health problems faced by factory workers and also worked extensively with immigrant populations in tenement housing to get them much-needed health care.
       Maria Mitchell was the first woman astronomer in the U.S. But it would be 140 years later that Sally Ride would become the first woman astronaut to enter space. It was another 12 years–1999–before Lt. Col. Eileen Collins became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.
       Anne Bradstreet was the first woman writer to be published in the U.S.–in 1650. But it was nearly three centuries–in 1921–before a woman writer would receive a serious literary award in the U.S. That year Edith Wharton became the first woman to win the most coveted American literary award, the Pulitzer Prize. And it was 1992 before the first woman, Mona van Duyn, was appointed Poet Laureate of the U.S.
       In Philadelphia in 1795, Anne Parrish established the first charitable organization for women in the U.S. In 1881, a nurse, Clara Barton, founded the American Red Cross.  
      There are many other names to list of notable women. Madame C.J. Walker was an African-American entrepreneur whose line of beauty products became so successful that Walker was the first woman in the world to become a millionaire through her own work.
       As profound as these achievements are, it’s important to note that women are still struggling to break through various barriers because discrimination has held women back for centuries. (It wasn’t until the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act that discrimination on the basis of race and gender was made illegal.)
       Consider, for example, that Elizabeth Blackwell received her medical degree in 1849, but that it would be 1960 before the first woman, Sofia Ionescu, became a neurosurgeon.
       In 1707, Henrietta Johnston became the first American woman professional painter, but it wasn’t until 1848 that the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia became the first art college to admit female students. It would be another 20 years before women would be allowed to attend life classes at the school.
       In 1896, Alice Guy Blaché, the first American woman film maker, shot the first of her 300 films. It wasn’t until a few weeks ago that Kathryn Bigelow became the first woman to win an Oscar for Best Director.
        In 1916, Jeannette Rankin, of Montana, became the first woman to be elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. It was 1922 before Rebecca Felton of Georgia became the first woman senator. In 2010, a record number of women are currently serving in the Congress–74 in the House and 16 in the Senate. That number is far less impressive, however, when one considers that there are 435 members of the House and 100 senators–and that women represent 53 percent of the U.S. population.
        It wasn’t until the Clinton Administration that the two most important posts in the Cabinet–Secretary of State and Attorney General–would be held by women for the first time. Bill Clinton nominated Madeleine Albright for Secretary of State in 1996 and Janet Reno as A.G. in 1993.
       In 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman to run for president in the U.S. She was nominated by the National Radical Reformers and women had yet to win the vote–that wouldn’t come until 1920. Yet it was 2008 before a woman, Hillary Clinton, would be a candidate from a major political party, winning the popular vote but losing the delegate count in the closest political primary in U.S. history.
        March 18, one more first was added to the list of women’s achievements when Rev. Canon Mary Glasspool became the first lesbian to be consecrated as a bishop in the Episcopal Church in the U.S.   
       Women continue to struggle against discrimination, which makes achievements like these all the more impressive. But unless we teach our children–and ourselves–what women are and have been capable of, then Women’s History Month is nothing more than lip-service to equal rights and March is more about NCAA basketball than it is about what women have done for America and the world.  —VAB    

In 1994 I was rushed to the hospital by ambulance. I was having a severe episode of atrial fibrillation, a life-threatening heart irregularity. I have had a life-long congenital heart problem, but it didn’t start to really cause problems for me until I was in my 30s.

There is nothing more frightening than being in a life-threatening situation and being alone, surrounded only by strangers and no familiar, loving face.

Except I was not alone. I had a partner: we lived together, owned a house and a car together, had published books together, fostered a child together. But because we were lesbians, not husband and wife, hospital personnel said she could not be with me as I lay in critical condition in the cardiac intensive care unit. 

Doctors worked on me for several hours in the ER, but there was no change. My irregular and rapid heart rate (280 beats a minute makes you feel like your heart will explode) had not responded to the usual treatments. I was put on IVs with two different drugs that were supposed to re-convert my heart rate to normal within 24 hours. Until then, I would be admitted to the cardiac intensive care unit for round-the-clock monitoring.   

Eventually the doctors had to shock my heart (it’s nothing like on TV–it’s like having someone toss a flaming truck at your chest repeatedly) several times to re-start it properly. At one point the head of cardiology was standing over my bed with students explaining how AF is one of the major causes of stroke, partficularly in people under 40, like I was.

I spent several days in CICU. I was about 40 years younger (or more) than every other patient in the unit. I was also among the sickest while I was there. But unlike everyone else in CICU, I had to fight to have my partner with me. Why? Because I am a lesbian and my partner was another woman.

At the time I was in the CICU, I was a columnist for the Philadelphia Daily News and I the only lesbian in the country writing a column about being a lesbian for a daily newspaper. My editor, who was a straight married man, thought it was time to have a lesbian voice at a daily.

So from my bed in the CICU, I wrote about what it was like to have to fight to be with your spouse when you were also fighting for your life. I was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize that year, in part for that column. 

Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell had been law for about a year when I had my non-battlefield life-threatening experience. I wasn’t in the military, obviously. But in the years since the U.S. invaded Afghanistan and Iraq I have often thought how awful it must be for our gay and lesbian soldiers to be alone when they are fighting for their country.

Imagine, for example, being Eric Alva, a Marine staff sargeant in Iraq. Here’s what Alva told the House Armed Services Committee hearings in July 2008:

I joined the military because I wanted to serve; I joined the Marines because I wanted a challenge. I was 19 years old. I was patriotic, idealistic. I was also gay.

For 13 years I served in the Marine Corps. I served in Somalia during Operation Restore Hope. I loved the discipline and the camaraderie, what I hated was concealing part of who I am.

My military service came to an end on March 21, 2003. It was the first day of the ground war in Iraq; mine was one of the first battalions in. Three hours into the invasion, we had stopped to wait for orders. I went back to the Humvee to retrieve something — to this day I can’t remember what –and, as I crossed that dusty patch of desert for the third time that day, I triggered a landmine.

I was thrown through the air, landing 10 or 15 feet away. The pain was unimaginable. My fellow marines were rushing to my aid, cutting away my uniform to assess the damage and treat my wounds. I remember wondering why they weren’t removing my right boot — it wasn’t until later that I realized it was because that leg was already gone.

Alva was discharged from the Marines after losing a leg and part of an arm to that landmine.

Alva is just one of about 13,000 men and women discharged from the military since DADT was initiated. But he’s representative of the valor with which so many lesbians and gay men have served in the military despite the often gruesome repression of DADT.

Majority America and even the majority of the military don’t have to consider what it means to be isolated from everything familiar and safe in moments of crisis or pain. If you are ill, you have your husband or wife with you in  the hospital. If you are serving in Afghanistan, Iraq or Pakistan  and you are injured,  your wife or husband can visit you in the hospital or at the very least  talk to you on the phone or on Skype.

Not so for gay men and lesbians.

There are five states in the nation where same-sex marriage is legal, several others where civil unions are the law and in California, 18,000 gay and lesbian couples are also legally married. Yet if any of these married couples is serving in today’s military, their spouse cannot contact them if they are injured, no matter how severely.  

I know what it is like to be fighting for your life and not be able to have your spouse with you because of institutionalized bigotry. But I wasn’t also serving on a battlefield. My story, while harrowing, was not the same as Staff Sgt. Alva’s story. Imagine your leg blown off and not being able to talk to the person you love because of the segregation in today’s military.

One of the most disappointing voices in the renewed debate over DADT has been that of Sen. John McCain. McCain knows better than almost any other member of the Senate what it is to be a wounded warrior alone and suffering. And yet he would continue to impose that on gay men and lesbians giving their limbs and lives for this nation. As the new hearings begin on DADT, McCain’s voice has been among the strongest in opposition to changing the law.

Contravening McCain is Rep. Patrick Murphy. I would suggest we listen to him, rather than McCain.

Not to impugn McCain’s service, but Murphy served in Iraq, and the 40 years of difference between McCain’s years of service and Murphy’’s are telling. Like McCain, Murphy had devoted his life to the military until he ran for office.

Except Murphy sponsored a bill last term to overturn DADT. When he made the announcement in Philadelphia, he noted that his wife had given him great comfort and he could not imagine depriving other soldiers of the support of a loved one.

Murphy also noted that  he served with gay and lesbian military personnel. He noted that everyone knew that gay men and lesbians were in the military already and so the only real issue was allowing them to serve without lying.

Lt. Dan Choi has been an outspoken opponent of DADT and last May wrote to President Obama to ask that his incipient discharge be stopped. Choi had come out on the Rachel Maddow Show in March 2009 when he was discussing DADT.

The U.S. military really cannot afford to lose Choi, an engineer and an Arab linguist. Like Murphy, Choi, 29, has spent his entire adult life in the military since his gradutation from West Point. His discharge is still pending.

Choi was speaking to BBC World News on Monday about the new hearings on DADT. He noted that the discourse over morale was specious: Everyone is already serving with gay men and lesbians; an estimated 16 percent of the current military is gay or lesbian.

Choi is especially concerned about “foot dragging” among those, from President Obama to Secretary of Defense Gates to the Joint Chiefs who say that it’s time to change the policy. Since Obama took office 644 lesbians and gay men have been discharged under DADT. How many more will be discharged in another year? How many will be lying every hour of every day as they risk their lives for this country and their fellow soldiers?

Of particular outrage for me were yesterday’s comments by Saxby Chambliss (R-GA). Chambliss argued that straight men would essentially freak out at the prospect of homosexual sex acts in the military.

Let’s just look at Chambliss for a moment, shall we? Chambliss avoided serving in Vietnam by taking deferrments. Then he ran against incumbent Max Cleland, a Vietnam vet who was also a triple amputee. When he ran against Cleland he ran a campaign targeting Cleland as unpatriotic, superimposing the face of Osama bin Laden next to Cleland’s.

So let’s just pretend Chambliss isn’t that guy already. If Chambliss had ever been in the military or knew anything about the military, he’d know that sex between military personnel is against the rules. Period. So it’s not an issue. And Chambliss might also have noticed that women now comprise more than 20 percent of the Armed Forces. Is he also objecting to women being in the military? Because the likelihood of sexual acts between male and female personnel is far greater than that between straight guys and gay men. Really.

But let’s ignore the human component altogether. The cost of training and then losing people like Alva and Choi has cost, according to the Pentagon, upwards of $400 billion. Even Gen. Colin Powell who authored DADT now says it is time to repeal the law.

Salon’s Glenn Greenwald quotes the following in an update on his column on DADT today:

Admiral Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, testified today that “it is his ‘personal and professional belief that allowing homosexuals to serve openly would be the right thing to do’.”  On Twitter, he added (yes, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs is on Twitter):

Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do. Comes down to integrity.

The bottom line in this debate is decency–or as Admiral Mullen notes, integrity. Last week the Woolworth’s lunch counter that was the site of a major civil rights action in 1960 was turned into a civil rights museum  in downtown Greensboro, N.C.

Fifty years ago it was unthinkable that blacks and whites eat at the same lowly Woolworth’s counter. Today most people can’t imagine why people of different races eating at the same lunch counter was ever an issue.

It is imperative that Congress not listen to the McCains and Chamblisses in this debate, but to the Murphys, Alvas and Chois. Or even to someone like myself, who knows what it is to fight for one’s life all alone Not because your spouse doesn’t want to be with you, but solely because of bigotry and segregation.

I simply cannot bear the thought of one more Eric Alva lying in a bed, wounded, unable to call his boyfriend or husband because it will mean dismissal. Or having to lie on his deathbed. Dragging this debate out for yet another year—it’s already been 17–is useless. Listen to Alva, Choi and Murphy: they just came from the war zone. Murphy didn’t care that he was serving with gay men. Choi and Alva wanted to serve with valor—and lying about who you are isn’t valorous.

DADT must end. President Obama still retains the power to end discharges under DADT with a stop-loss order. He could, as I wrote here  after he appeared at HRC in October, do it now, today. That would force the hands of the Chamblisses and McCains.

Today’s military needs people like Alva and Choi. The idea that we would sacrifice the lives of other military personnel just to maintain segregation and institutionalized bigotry is not just absurd, it’s obscene. DADT must be repealed.—VAB

Like most political junkies, I await  President Obama’s State of the Union address tonight with an uneasy anticipation. I doubt I will hear anything that will make me happy or contented or even less angry. I doubt there will be new promises that I can believe in or excuses for promises not kept that make sense.

The decline and fall of political figures is one of the least pretty things to witness. But I’m not thinking about Obama now, since I think he still has a second and even third act in him. I’m thinking about John Edwards.

I used to like John Edwards. A lot, actually. His placement on the ticket was the only way I was able to actually vote for John Kerry, who I found politically tone-deaf  in the way John McCain would be in 2008. Making the 2004 election a referendum on Vietnam was simply stupid and lost Kerry the election.

But John Edwards easy populism was both engaging and believable as a counter-point to Kerry’s heavy-handed elitism cum militarism. I liked what Edwards had to say and what’s more, I thought he meant it. Did he get his ass handed to him in the debate with Dick Cheney? Sure. But who wouldn’t have? Not too many people have gone up against Satan and won, after all.

I still liked Edwards in 2007. His message continued to include a segment of the population everyone else seemed to ignore: the poor. He seemed in touch in ways that were compelling. It was clearly the wrong year for him, but I thought he’d end up in either a Clinton or Obama administration in a serious post like Attorney General.

I was surprised when he and wife Elizabeth announced that her cancer was back, but he was staying in the race. It was the first time I felt a frisson of  discomfiture. Surely they weren’t putting politics above her very survival? Or–the thought crossed my mind more than once—were they counting on a sympathy vote?

The press conference left me with a feeling of ickiness that only intensified in the coming weeks. By the time Edwards seemed to be tag-teaming Obama to take down “the girl,” Hillary Clinton, in New Hampshire, I had started to feel real dislike for him. There was a combination of arrogance and desperation that I was beginning to see in his attitude, which I wrote about in a column after New Hampshire. It was, I noted, just a matter of time before he had the sense, since it was too late for grace, to withdraw.

He did–later than he should have done, and with a kind of nasty fanfare that put a sour note to all the good he might have done supporting either Obama or Hillary.

And then he held them hostage. Waiting to use his endorsement to do the most harm to one of them—and secure a solid place for himself with the other. It was creepy and not a little pathetic.

And that was all before the bombshell hit that he’d been having an affair with a staffer, paid her enormous amounts of money, snuck into hotel rooms after hours to see her–and that the woman had a new baby. The unraveling had begun in earnest.

The lesson of the Lewinsky scandal should have been more than cautionary for every cheating politico: Don’t lie about it. When half the world has a camera/video phone, what level of arrogance do you have to have to think you can lie and get away with it?

So today the Edwards’ have officially split. Elizabeth Edwards told People that she’d “had enough.”

I don’t feel the least bit sorry for her. Three and a half years ago I would have felt sorry for her as I would have for any woman who was battling cancer and whose husband was cheating on her with a much younger woman. But not now.

I never like to see women be humiliated. I watched Gayle Haggard on Oprah yesterday explaining how she loves the straying gay Ted too much to leave him (not coincidententally she was plugging her book Why I Stayed).  It was cringeworthy, to be sure. And made more so by Ted asserting that he wasn’t gay anymore and that there was ample proof of that, wink wink, nudge nudge, ew ew.

Elizabeth Edwards was more refined, or so it seemed. She had a classiness and a sweetness that belied her hard-edged political ambitions for her husband. As for Edwards, he was clearly being punished and it showed. While he didn’t seem capable of true contrition, he certainly seemed sorry. Living with St. Elizabeth could not have been easy.

But what neither Edwards seemed to get, and why I have no sympathy, empathy or anything but anger toward them, was that they both colluded  in the most hubristic fashion to lie to the American people for their own personal goals. Both of them wanted the White House or at the very least, the closest they could get to it. And in concert–very much as a couple, not as estranged partners–they decided to stand in a press conference together and lie. And then lie again, and again and again–on Oprah and every other TV show they could get onto.

Did Elizabeth Edwards really not believe that Frances Quinn was her husband’s child? She told Oprah the baby “doesn’t look like my children.” But did she look like her father?

What if John Edwards had won the primary? What if he had come as close to winning as Hillary did? How much damage were both John and Elizabeth Edwards willing to impart on the Democratic Party and the country to advance their own political ambitions?

It’s ugly to watch a marriage fall apart. It’s ugly to watch a political figure who once shone tarnish almost overnight. But one thing we have learned–without the help of F. Scott Fitzgerald–is that in American politics there are indeed second acts if one is honest and forthright and does some modicum of penance and tries not to screw the citizenry the way they screwed their spouse.

The Edwards’ are not those people. The Edwards’ still don’t get it. John thinks he can acknowledge his daughter publicly two years after the fact and all will be forgiven. Elizabeth thinks she can pull the victim card yet again and we will buy it just because People  put her on their cover.

No one doubts at this point that John Edwards is a cad. He seems incapable of telling the truth, even now, and it’s the children who are suffering. And Elizabeth seems to have left her marriage solely because there was no way to redeem it publicly. She didn’t leave three and a half years ago, she left this week when Andrew Young’s tell all book became available with rumors of a sex tape.

One could say that the Edwards’ deserve each other. One could say that they both need a good ass-whipping and a lesson in civic responsibility and pride. One could say that their children are the real victims here—and they are. But mostly one can only say as bad as things might shake out to be after Obama gives his State of the Union speech, at least John Edwards didn’t win the nomination. Obama still has time for another act, even if the Edwards’ do not.—VAB

     Democrats were jettisoned into a political spin last week and the fallout will likely be felt right up until the mid-term elections in November. 
     In a special election, the bluest state in the nation, Massachusetts, elected a Republican to fill the Senate seat held for decades by Ted Kennedy. 
      There are many reasons why Scott Brown beat Martha Coakley in Massachusetts. Some had to do with personality, since voters still are easily charmed by things other than facts. Brown is personable; Coakley, not so much. Brown campaigned hard while Coakley virtually stopped campaigning after winning a hard-fought primary, presuming–wrongly–that the general election was a mere formality since the big fight had been among several Democrats. There were no exit polls, but voters ignored Brown’s far right politics on many key issues–despite the fact that the majority of Massachusetts voters are Democrats. 
       There were other variables in the truncated race, but the only one that is truly relevant to Pennsylvania voters is this: Democratic voters outnumber Republicans four to one in Massachusetts and Brown could not have been elected without Democratic voters.
      Democrats outnumber Republicans two to one in Pennsylvania where a pivotal Senate seat is at stake in November. Only two to one.
      The other problem raised for Democrats last week was a decision by the U.S. Supreme Court on corporate money, free speech and elections. In Citizens United  v. FEC (Federal Election Commission), the narrow majority opinion ruled that First Amendment rights trumped existing campaign finance reform restrictions. The 5-4 decision left progressives reeling for the second time in two days.
      The complicated Supreme Court case stems from the contention of the conservative group Citizens United that their First Amendment rights were violated when an attack film they had prepared on Hillary Clinton during the primary was not allowed to air on TV. The legal argument was predicated on whether the film could be considered a campaign ad under the McCain-Feingold Act which restricts corporate and union funding of campaign contributions.
      The Court split on ideological grounds: the five conservative justices voted in favor of Citizens United while the four more liberal justices voted for the FEC.
      Conservatives celebrated the ruling. Progressives decried it, calling it nothing less than judicial activism. (It should be noted that Chief Justice John Roberts had cited judicial activism as one of the major issues he would fight against during his confirmation hearings.)
      The ruling resonated on both sides of the aisle.  Rush Limbaugh told his audience, “Freedom is awaking from its coma today because of a huge, huge, huge Supreme Court decision—huge. I cannot tell you how big this is.”
       President Obama, himself a constitutional law professor, held a different view, stating that the ruling “gives the special interests and their lobbyists even more power in Washington–while undermining the influence of average Americans who make small contributions to support their preferred candidates.”
      In his weekly radio address Obama said “this ruling strikes at our democracy itself” and “I can’t think of anything more devastating to the public interest.”
      Hyperbole? Perhaps, but for Pennsylvanians, the impact of the ruling may be felt sooner rather than later, as political ads for the Senate race are slated to begin running in the coming weeks.        Corporate interests, as well as union interests, are profound in the state, which is anticipating a brutal primary and dicey general election for the Senate seat currently held by newbie Democrat Arlen Specter. The primary is in May and one can only vote for the party one is registered for in primaries in Pennsylvania.
        Much was made of the New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races back in November. Republicans wrested both seats away from Democrats. What was roundly ignored was what happened in Pennsylvania.
        In the off-year election last November, vacancies on the state Supreme Court, Superior Court and Commonwealth Court went overwhelmingly to Republicans who won six of seven seats, among them the controversial conservative Superior Court Judge Joan Orie Melvin, who was elected to the state Supreme Court.
        In 2008, voter registration in Pennsylvania hit an all-time high in anticipation of the presidential election, which included an increase of 1.5 million more registered Democrats than Republicans.
       Yet in the November 2009 election, even though Republicans were outspent by Democrats and Democrats control the State House and the Governor’s office, Republicans still won handily. That win was also without anti-Democrat momentum or access to soft money through corporate or union entities.
        Democratic pundits note that November is a long way off–and it is. But May is not and in Pennsylvania, primaries tend to determine which party will win the general election.
         In April 2009 when Arlen Specter switched parties, the move was roundly seen as blatantly political. Specter, considered moderate by Republican standards and with a strong voter base among Democrats in Pennsylvania, faced stiff competition from Pat Toomey, the far right contender for the Senate seat who came close to unseating Specter six years ago.
        Rep. Joe Sestak is Specter’s Democratic competition now. Or wants to be. But Sestak isn’t even popular in his own district where the former Naval commander’s pro-war sentiments have been at odds with Democratic values there. What’s more, when the health care debates broke out in force last spring and summer in Pennsylvania, it was Specter rallying for Obama’s health care reform plan and becoming a champion of the public option, not Sestak.
       Last week Democratic Party leaders in Pennsylvania requested that Sestak withdraw from the race as Toomey’s numbers continued to rise. Concerns are that a bruising primary will give Toomey even more momentum and end up in the unseating of whichever Democrat, Specter or Sestak, is the candidate in November.
        Could Pennsylvania go the route Massachusetts took last week? Absolutely. Those of us who have covered politics in Pennsylvania for decades have not forgotten that it was ultra-conservative Rick Santorum who unseated progressive Harris Wofford in 1994 in the Republican congressional sweep. The November 2010 election has the potential to replicate that sweep and Pennsylvania is one of the key states Republicans are angling to win.
        Now they have way more available money to help in that fight, thanks to the Supreme Court ruling. Corporate interests in Pennsylvania are strong and Toomey has solid corporate support while neither Specter nor Sestak does. What’s more, Toomey is already trying to pivot off the Massachusetts win. And with record unemployment in Pennsylvania, Toomey has a ready-made platform for the kind of “change” message Brown ran on in Massachusetts.
      It may be too early to discern how much of an impact a wide-open campaign ad policy will have on the Senate race, but Pennsylvania voters witnessed the propagandistic ads that ran in New Jersey in the gubernatorial race–and that was without the lid being lifted on corporate interests.
      Will a primary with soft money tossed into the mix and a Republican groundswell benefit Toomey? It may be too early to tell, but Toomey’s lead increased this week. Toomey now leads both Specter and Sestak in polling, by four and nine percent, respectively. Specter handily leads Sestak 53 to 32 percent.
       Numbers shift, of course. But Pennsylvanians are strongly against health care reform–Specter’s key issue–and two-thirds say the country is going in the wrong direction.
        Money and issues could reprise 1994 for Democrats. It may be a long time until November, but political time is fluid. Martha Coakley thought she had her seat sewn up. Pennsylvania Democrats who ignore that cautionary tale do so at their peril.—VAB
 

Today is supposed to be a day of service in tribute to Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. Even in a recession, the corporate sector is respectful: there are no MLK sales going on. Throughout the nation people are doing work in their communities in honor of Dr. King, who gave his life in an effort to change this nation. 

Sadly, this particular day of service is made more compelling by the tragedy still unfolding in Haiti where more than 70,000 people are now known dead and are being buried in mass graves. The outpouring of response to the crisis has been intense–both multi-faceted and multi-national. 

Only a few sour notes have been sounded throughout the crisis–not surprisingly from the Right (see my post Making Hay of Haiti), which never seems to miss an opportunity to make itself look like the political phalanx of crassness and heartlessness. (I was particularly stunned by a posting on Rush Limbaugh’s website that said “don’t give aid to Haiti, Obama will steal it.”)  

Like so many Americans, I feel a personal connection to Dr. King’s legacy.  My parents–young socialist ideologues that they were then–were civil rights workers throughout the 1960s. This meant I had the honor of  growing up stuffing envelopes, making signs and meeting some of the major players in the black civil rights movement. My childhood years were spent listening in awe to the stories being told by the men and women who came North and stayed in our house, spoke at our church and did organizing with my parents. I have no doubt that these experiences–as well as the concomitant threats against my parents from the KKK and the John Birch Society for what they were doing–informed my own political and social activism which began in those years when I was an elementary school child.

I was still in grade school when Dr. King was assassinated. I had already frequently experienced being called “nigger-lover” without even really understanding what the slur meant, only that it was indeed a slur.

The morning after Dr. King’s murder I got into a brawl with several other girls in the schoolyard. It wasn’t pretty. By the time it was over I had slapped a nun in the face and excoriated her for not standing up for Dr. King against the girls who were making jokes about his death. 

Of course in my child’s outrage, I had lost all sense of Dr. King’s non-violent approach to social change. Pushing, shoving, yelling and slapping was obviously not what he advocated. But I was a child and I was angry, hurt and incensed for Dr. King. I wasn’t in a Gandhi-esque mode.

Like so many other sad days in America it was bright and sunny and warm. But a light had gone out, and even as a child, I felt it. And I still remember what that felt like.

I still have fits of rage like the one I had that April day in the schoolyard in response to the vile racism that still sparks here and there in this country—Rush Limbaugh’s remarks last week about Haiti typified that racism as have so many comments about Barack Obama since his election.

I don’t hit anyone anymore, of course and I am still embarrassed about that scene in the schoolyard. Not that I spoke out, but that I shoved several other girls and slapped a nun. The girls were only repeating what they had learned at home and my response taught them nothing.  As for the nun–there are fewer excuses for her. Likely she was a product of her racist era and really didn’t understand that her role was to inculcate us girls with Jesus Christ’s perspective–which wasn’t racism. She didn’t make the connection between Dr. King and Jesus. But some of us–the children of King’s legacy–were taught that there was a connection, that King was representative of Christ.  I wonder now why that nun didn’t see it–it seems so obvious.

When one reads of the final weeks of King’s life, they pattern Christ’s with eerie similarity. King knew he might be killed and didn’t want to die. He was exhausted from the work he had been doing for years, tired at 39–not that many years older than Christ was at his crucifixtion–of the nights in jail, the separations from his family, the endless losses and the endless attacks. And yet, like Christ, he went on, even as he had premonitions of his own assassination.

I replay that day after King’s assassination  in my head–the fight in the schoolyard which was so not in keeping with Dr. King’s legacy, the poem I wrote for Dr. King as I sat outside Mother Superior’s office waiting to find out if I would be expelled, the men and women from Mississippi and Alabama who would call later at my parent’s house, the overwhelming sorrow and anger we all felt, even children like myself.  I replay that day on every anniversary of Dr. King’s death  and on his day of tribute. Kids like I was then, the children of the Sixties, were being raised on leftist ideology and protest songs. The music of our lives was by Bob Dylan and Joan Baez, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs and Odetta. We were being innoculated with the antidote to generations of racism and Jim Crow laws and “coloreds only” signs. We were being taught that there was indeed no difference between white and black. We were the children of Dr. King in ways that were not biological but sociological. And so the killing of Dr. King seemed for a child like I was then, terrifying as it was incomprehensible. It was one more killing that I didn’t understand–like the murder of four little girls like myself  in a Birmingham church and three civil rights workers only a few years younger than my parents in Mississippi and all those others whose names we’ll never know. Dr. King would not be the last to die for the sins of others, and he wasn’t even the first in my own childhood; I had already watched the funeral of John Kennedy on TV. But I was just old enough when Dr. King was assassinated to feel how terrible his killing was and that it was an event that would touch millions and ultimately inform my own life and my future.

And so on this day of tribute I remember Dr. King in my own, very personal way, as do so many other Americans. But within those personal reminiscences there are also the wishes for the future of today: that we really do move toward a post-racial or at the very least post-racist society. That people like Limbaugh either cease to make their racist comments or cease to be honored with listeners. That we each examine ourselves for any hints of bigotry–and not just racism of whites toward blacks, but any malice that is borne out of racial, ethnic, religious or gender-based stereotypes we have internalized.

The best tribute to Dr. King and all he fought for and gave his life for is that we not hate, that we not perpetuate bigotry and discrimination. We may all be able to sit where we want on a bus today, but we are not all equal—not blacks and whites, not blacks and Latinos, not Asians and Latinos, not Jews and Muslims, not women and men, not queers and straights.

Let us pay tribute the best way we can—not with a fight in the literal or metaphorical  schoolyard, but with understanding and love. Dr. King exhorted us to open ourselves to difference and gave his life in the quest for equality. On this day of tribute, what are each of us doing to carry on his legacy?—VAB