Enemy

No Amnesty For Americans. Part 2

Marie Justeen Mancha was home alone in Southeast Georgia when four federal agents stormed into her house, shouting "police! Illegals!"

No Amnesty For Americans

Truth Out recently posted this item about Thomas Warziniack, who was born in Minnesota and grew up in Georgia, but immigration authorities pronounced him an illegal immigrant from Russia.
The Vera Institute of Justice, a New York nonprofit organization, has identified 125 people in immigration detention centers across the nation they believe to be American citizens.
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Latinos Are All Racist!

I think the truth behind the "Latinos are all racist" news blitz is a subconscious desire on the part of whites to deal with their own race issues by projecting them onto minorities who don't have (the) necessary media access it would require to issue a comprehensive rebuttal.
-- Jack and Jill Politics

The 'T' Tree

The Enemy promises to move past the ENDA family feud, but it's not easy when people continue to write thoughtful (and thought provoking) pieces like Rex Wockner's post on gay identity, trans identity, and what those terms might mean.

ENDA Passed

From Joe My God:

"We are deeply disappointed that House leadership decided to ignore the position of a vast majority of LGBT organizations, ignore the legal assessment that this bill may not even provide adequate protections for gays, lesbians and bisexuals, and ignore the fact that this vote might make it more difficult to persuade members of Congress to support a fully inclusive bill in the future. We are also disappointed that House leadership forced many members of its own caucus to choose between voting for a bill not supported by most in the LGBT community, or voting against a civil rights bill. This entire process has been painful, divisive and unnecessary. And worst of all, we went through all of this on behalf of a bill that the president has already said he would veto.

HRC head Joe Solmonese called the move a "pragmatic and strategic decision."  Yesterday, the HRC released a poll which claims that 70% of the LGBT community supported ENDA without gender identity protections.

The Enemy is not surprised. What is sorta' surprising though is the amount of venom being spat – particularly by our community *leaders* – at those of us who dared to discuss/consider/beg/demand an inclusive ENDA.

ENDA Postoned

The Enemy has not yet commented on the ENDA meltdown because, in all honesty, The Enemy is not sure where he comes down on the issue. On the one hand, yes, it seems to be the height of perversity to struggle for 30 years to enact history making (so we're told) civil rights legislation, only to scuttle it at the 11th hour over some arguably last minute addition.

On the other hand, full inclusion of transgendered folk is simply nonnegotiable, at least it is to a significant portion of the LGBT community.

Either way, it seems to The Enemy that an open discussion about the inclusion of the 'T', both as part of LGBT identity and in the pending ENDA legislation, is reasonable enough.

It was in this spirit of open and frank discussion that The Enemy read the

John Aravosis piece on Salon and found his argument compelling...until he read Susan Stryker's responding piece and exclaimed "oh, snap!".

Finally, after mulling over James Kirchick in the Washington Blade The Enemy has arrived at a crossroads. Yes, it makes total political sense to proceed with ENDA as originally conceived. Politics is compromise and postponing the inclusion of the 'T' for another day and another battle would be pragmatic and politicaly savvy. The Enemy thinks we, the LGBT community, can make this 'Demonic Deal' and walk away with a clear conscience, if a little regret.

But should we?

The Enemy, as crazy as it sounds, believes every marginalized group that strives for inclusion gifts something essential and unique to the civil-rights struggle. Maybe this is our opportunity to contribute that something. To state clearly and concisely, this  time through action instead of rhetoric, that none of us will eat until all of us can eat.

What's wrong with a little ideological purity now and then? An historic 'Big Gesture' that elevates the discourse above mere pragmatism. Whether sitting at a lunch counter getting the crap kicked out of you, or dying alone in some filthy Victorian prison for the right to vote. These seemingly futile sacrifices serve as reminder to ourselves, and the world at large, that the human dignity that we demand is about more than a legislative process or 'winning'.

Sure, it would be easy enough to dismiss such a sacrifice as a pointless exercise in martyrdom. A very real suicide jump from some exalted point of principle for no real gain. Hollow Heroics? maybe,  But this country was conceived by a lot of people scaling some pretty lofty ideals, dismissing such efforts as 'naive' seems to weaken the very foundation on which we — The People — base any of our claims to freedom and justice .

Pragmatism has an essential place in the quiver of strategies we deploy in our day to day battle for full equality, but so should principle and idealism.

To forget these values in practice diminishes us all.

If you're in any doubt, just watch the evening news. For too long now we've endured an administration that seems hell bent on bringing this nation to it's knees with it's culture of expedience, realpolitik and compromise. The so called opposition, the Stockholm-syndrome Democrats, deflected and trapped as they are in an OCD loop of fun-house mirrors, insist that our only hope lies in reflecting the same behavior but hoping for a different outcome. Madness.

Andrew Sullivan complains that:

Of course, the United ENDA trans-first'ers still have a chance to beat President Bush's advisers to the punch, and derail historic gay rights legislation because it doesn't also expressly protect transsexuals, cross-dressers and transvestites as well.  If they succeed, whether in the House or by scaring the Senate away from the legislation, the president will owe them a debt of gratitude.

Part of Sullivan's complaint seems to be that 'we' would be effectively doing the Republicans dirty work if we withdrew our support the ENDA. That that's exactly what 'they' want us to do. Perhaps, but The Enemy asks should we really let significant internal decisions like this be defined by Republicans? Are we're focusing to much on conservative wants and needs?.      

Perhaps the LGBT community has inadvertently helped itself to a larger moment here, larger than it's own immediate, and very real, needs. Whether you spell 'we' with a 'T' or not, there is a teachable moment here in which the LGBT community can (re)connect it's own needs to those of the greater population, and remind 'The People', ourselves included, of our better angels.

Not because we should, but because we can.

   

Hamjensbaz

So, The Enemy swore he'd put the 'Columbia Speech' puppy to bed, but this little nugget unearthed by Rex Wockner can't be ignored. While A.J. was issuing press statements through his 'presidential media adviser' claiming that the thrust of his comments on Iranian Homosexuals had been lost in translation. A little rudimentary fact checking reveals that – while it's true the interpreter had altered A.J's words somewhat – the alteration was only done to make A.J's actual meaning more primetime palatable:

"Absolutely not. We in Iran -- we in Iran, firstly, we don't have hamjensbaz  [a derogatory term for homosexuals meaning people with loose morals who chase people of the same gender for sexual pleasure] like you have in your country. In our country, there is no such a thing. In Iran, such a thing does not -- in Iran, in Iran, absolutely such a thing does not exist as a phenomenon. I don't know who told you otherwise."

more here.

My Dinner With A.J.

The Enemy has turned up a little late to the Columbia dinner. Initially The Enemy's reaction to the  guest list was more inline with Andrew Sullivan's, particularly in light of statements like this, issued by "The Columbia Queer Alliance"

(...) would like to strongly caution media and campus organizations against the use of such words as "gay", "lesbian", or "homosexual" to describe people in Iran who engage in same-sex practices and feel same-sex desire. The construction of sexual orientation as a social and political identity and all of the vocabulary therein is a Western cultural idiom. As such, scholars of sexuality in the Middle East generally use the terms "same-sex practices" and "same-sex desire" in recognition of the inadequacy of Western terminology.

this helpful instructional goes on to encourage

"...us all to examine a number of issues, but most relevant to our concerns are the complexities of how sexual identity is constructed and understood in different parts of the world."

And there's the rub, the assumption that the rest of us haven't been thinking about "these issues" for the past several years, and that, unlike "The Columbia Queer Alliance" have managed to  achieve a perspective  beyond dial-up identity politics. Grrrrrrrr, this is why The Enemy no longer calls himself a Leftist.

However, as he stated at the top of the post, this was The Enemy's initial reaction. It has been somewhat tempered by this post from a Columbia student.

 

The Tearoom Stall As Confessional

The Enemy has a confession to make. Sometime ago, after one of the many conservative-caught-with-pants-down playing 'cum-guzzle-chuga-lugz' incidents, The Enemy pointed to an article by David Frum on Haggard as irrefutable evidence of the kind of lunacy afflicting certain fundamentalist "thinkers" on the topic of morality. Frum's argument was that, despite all the gleeful braying from the left, in no way could Ted Haggard be considered a hypocrite. In fact, none of the  closeted and/or addicted bastions of conservative virtue who've been recently exposed are necessarily hypocrites, including the most recent darling of the mens room stalls Larry "Lorraine" Frank.      

The Enemy's confession is that while he loudly dismissed Frum's logic as a form of cognitive dissonance, he actually understood the point being made — didn't agree with it — but understood it.

It goes something like this... suppose I'm a recovering opium addict, I travel the length and breadth of this Great Nation warning the youthz about the  pernicious evils of opium.

Now, let's suppose for a moment  that, for a host of reasons, not the least of which is a fathomless sense of shame, I have neglected to mention to anyone, not even my husband, that all the selfless passions of my crusade spring entirely from personal experience. 

What good would it serve, I rationalize, it's ancient history. It would only subject my family to the same humiliations I struggle with everyday, and my council on the subject of addiction could be — would be — dismissed by friend and foe alike as nothing more than the ramblings of an addled Opium eater. No, my community would be better served if I kept my pain private, between me and god, while I did my penance and made amends by fighting the good fight.

Now suppose one lonely night (for reasons I cannot imagine) I fall off the opium wagon, and from then I continue to relapse with alarming frequency. Do I now publicly step forward as an addict? Absolutely not, the circumstances may have changed but the rational remain the same, what possible good could come from the revelation? It would serve no constructive purpose and only provide a cache of ammunition to the "legalize everything" crowd, further endangering the impressionable young souls that I have sworn to protect.

The best I could hope for would be to (privately) acknowledge my mistake and learn from the relapse. Self flagellate to my hearts content behind closed doors, but publicly I re-double my efforts to keep others from making my mistakes. Steeled, I push my crusade forward with even greater conviction.

Is this Hypocrisy? not really. Does it make a weird kind of sense? maybe, but only as far as the behavior in question is understood to be inherently wicked or dangerous. Which homosexuality is not.

This from a study published in 1970 called Tearoom Trade: Impersonal Sex in Public Places

Men he had observed having anonymous sex in a public place often turned out to be ardent champions of law and order. Unable to control themselves in that part of their lives, they put on the defensive “breastplate,” redoubling their efforts elsewhere: “Motivated largely by his own awareness of the discreditable nature of his secret behavior,” wrote Humphreys in his dissertation, “the covert deviant develops a presentation of self that is respectable to a fault. His whole lifestyle becomes an incarnation of what is proper and orthodox.”

Much more on the hypocrisy question here and here.

And while we're on the subject of confessions and anti-gay crusaders, is it just me or is Rick Santorum kinda'hot? I mean, sorry, I know he's been out of the public eye for a while now, but I realized this morning that I miss him.

Don't you get the feeling he'd be a "in for a penny, in for a 'pound" sort'a crazed dirty monkey?  The kind who'd figure, since he's going to hell anyway, he'd best make it worth his while...just asking.

Thinking of you Ricky (call me)

Teachable Moments

Now, some of you on The Enemy's left are gonna get all Circus Phreak Krazy on this and start howling about stereotyping and calling The Enemy a night riding racist––fine!. But this blog by an African American/Korean living in  South Korea is just plain riveting in light of recent events. So put the placard down for a moment, grab a soy/chai latte (or whatever it is you people drink), take a deep breath, and read. May The Enemy recommend this post, and this, for starters.