|
|
 Call 215-248-8800
|
Scouts’ anti-gay policy is un-American The city wanted to kick the Boy Scouts out or charge them $200,000 a year to lease the property. In 2007, the city told the Cradle of Liberty Council that it would not continue the Scouts’ lease unless the council renounced the Boy Scouts of America national charter that prohibits homosexuals, agnostics and atheists from applying for Scout jobs or membership. The Scouts refused and sued to keep their lease. Their victory last week keeps them in the property at the current $1-a-year rate. The jury believed it was following the law. And by the letter, it was. In 2000, the Supreme Court ruled in Boy Scouts of America v. Dale that the scouts are a membership organization and, therefore, legally allowed to determine who gets to “associate” with the group. The city’s decision, the jury determined, violated the Scouts’ First Amendment right of expressive association. The Scout membership is expressive in that Scouts are taught a system of values – values that prohibit gay and atheist members. Unfortunately, constitutional law protects the scouts’ choice to discriminate in this instance. There are two good reasons, however, to be upset about this ruling despite the fact that the jury reached its decision rationally. The first is pragmatic and logical; the other is purely ethical. First, Philadelphia should not have to continue a lease with an organization that has values with which the city is at odds. Under the current arrangement, taxpayers are footing the bill for an organization that has claimed its rights of association as a private organization. Taxpayers should not have to subsidize a group that chooses to discriminate. Sure, it can do so legally, but not on the public dime. Second, how much longer will Americans of conscience tolerate the subtle endorsement of discrimination that is “don’t ask, don’t tell,” the infamous military policy many of the Boy Scouts’ apologists pointed to as precedent for the Cradle of Liberty’s practices? The organization has long tried to have it both ways. It stubbornly hews to the national organization line on excluding gays and atheists but claims to be inclusive because it is not actively looking to oust those who are. The court win for the Scouts means more of the same. It allows the organization to claim that it is not discriminatory while its policies clearly say otherwise. “Don’t ask, don’t tell” doesn’t pass as tolerance. It’s denial. It’s a tacit refusal to acknowledge someone for who they are. Exclusions based on sexual preference – from membership in an organization to basic civil rights like marriage – should be eradicated. The constitutional protection of association may be, in spirit, a way to allow organizations to retain their values, but in this case it authorizes a form of bigotry that we would find intolerable in almost every other application. The Scouts may be an organization that does a lot of good for many, but its policy on gay membership does nothing but perpetuate second-class citizenship for gay Americans. It’s a situation that is more than unethical and unconscionable. It’s completely un-American. Pete Mazzaccaro
Where’s the outrage? And if not now, when? But there is another, darker reason for my silence. I dislike writing “negative” articles. Yet that’s what I feel I have to do when I contemplate the deepest effects of the economic crisis of the past two years, which is tearing apart the social fabric of our community and nation. So I have muted my voice – probably a moral flaw on my part – rather than express over and over again how profoundly appalled I am at how easily so many of us seem ready to jettison our obligations to one another in order to preserve our own economic positions. Now, I do understand that our obligations start with ourselves. If I don’t have enough self-respect to preserve my own vitality and the welfare of my family, how can I possibly help others? As Hillel, a first century BCE Pharisaic sage, said: “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” It’s important to note, however, that Hillel went on to say, “But if I am only for myself, what am I?” As generally understood, that question raises issues of social responsibility. We are social beings whose own potential can be realized only in relationship with others – and not just those with whom we share a roof. Yet from regulatory policy to social support systems to education to infrastructure, the US has instituted policies and procedures that consistently favor the financial gain of the few over the well-being of the many. There is, I am afraid, no other way to put it: Both political parties have been complicit in turning the government into a tool for the rich, and we’ve used rhetoric about the Constitution to protect the wealth of some rather than the welfare of the many. Every day – in the name of “freedom,” tax cuts, and deficit reduction – we read about some plan that will cut school budgets (without, of course, affecting those in elite private schools, or even in affluent suburban schools), lower childcare subsidies (but not eliminate the requirement that poor mothers work), curtail unemployment payments (which the elected officials who vote on these matters never need), or reduce expenditures on older adults (even their homes are collapsing around them and the state doesn’t pay for assisted living arrangements). Need I go on? I am not an economist. But I can read, so I know that there is plenty of disagreement among economists about stimulus vs. debt reduction. Why not, therefore, choose the option that lifts up people, saves and creates good jobs, and moves us towards energy independence (building new rail lines, solar panels, windmills etc., plus some new schools)? Businesses require well-educated employees or they cannot run; people need work or they cannot eat, or buy the products that keep businesses going. Yet the past few decades have so clearly favored business over people that we have a growing underclass and an uneducated populace incapable of holding down 21st century jobs. Congress and, it seems, the majority of voters, apparently believe that supporting individuals is not the job of government, while supporting businesses is. The governor of Louisiana opposes federal expenditures on health care but not on oil cleanup. Politicians who encourage deficit spending for wars suddenly become deficit hawks when it comes to social programs. We eviscerate banking regulations in order to maximize profits and balk at the very regulations that might forestall another financial meltdown. We build prisons rather than spend money on schools and decent housing. In this “most religious” of Western countries we seem to have lost our moral compass. Taxpayers have a right to demand that their hard-earned money is spent wisely. But spending money to create opportunity for the most vulnerable among us not a waste. Nor is it ethically acceptable to take out our frustrations at our current financial woes on those who did absolutely nothing to create the crisis. The greed of individuals and mismanagement at the highest levels of industry and banking brought us to our knees, not public spending on roads, schools, and Medicare. Our car industry faltered because of stupid and short-sighted decisions by boards of directors, not because the government demanded better mileage. The Gulf of Mexico is a multi-billion-dollar ecological disaster because a private company decided to maximize profits instead of taking necessary precautions and because our underfunded regulatory system is often run by the very people it is supposed to police. Recently a number of pundits – and just plain citizens – have criticized President Obama for reacting too slowly or unemotionally to the oil spill, not to mention to unemployment. “Where’s the outrage?” they ask. Better, I think, would be for us to ask ourselves – and the legislators we have elected – that question: “Where’s the outrage?” Have we grown so selfish as a nation that we can actually contemplate cutting funding for schools and human services? Are we blind to the threats to real lives when we do that – and to the social as well as economic costs of our failure to raise people out of poverty and ill health? I suggest that every citizen and certainly every legislator who contemplates making cuts that affect our most vulnerable citizens should spend a week living amongst the latter. Giving up a dinner at a restaurant is not the same as giving up dinner. We act as a nation as if some of our citizens are expendable. Do we mean to do that? I certainly don’t! After Hillel called upon us to look out for our own welfare and that of others, he added, “And if not now, when?” Ditto that.
Rabbi George Stern is executive director of Neighborhood Interfaith Movement (NIM), a coalition of 60 Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Unitarian congregations and faith institutions dedicated to “engaging staff, volunteers, and people of all ages … in service and social justice advocacy.”
A bittersweet Fathers Day: Filling the shoes of a father lost long ago I felt that the opprobrium might have been a bit premature, akin to President Obama receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for efforts yet to come. So far, I haven’t dropped my son or otherwise permanently injured him, which sums up my present accomplishments as a dad. So the inclusion of my name on the Father’s Day list of honorees was very new and felt quite strange. I’d like to imagine that if Henry could read and write, he would fill out the Father Parental Review Form in a mostly favorable manner. I believe I would get high marks in the aforementioned “hasn’t dropped me yet” category and he’d admire my ability to hand him off to his mother moments before he starts to cry, a skill of mine that is becoming legendary in the small circles I keep. What’s my secret? His eyebrows turn red before he bawls. But most importantly, my most noteworthy achievement as Dad so far is to not get between Henry and his preferred parent: mom. His favorite thing in this bright, new world is his mother’s voice. He dances in utter joy to the sound of it, his mouth agape with his head tossed back, like Snoopy dancing a limb-shaking jig atop a piano while Schroeder plays Guaraldi’s “Linus and Lucy.” When I interrupt them and Henry hears my voice, it’s a needle scratching the song to an abrupt end. He stares at me with the nonplussed expression of a man who opens his morning newspaper and realizes his favorite section is missing. That’s usually followed by the red eyebrows and a “rainy” look in his eyes that causes his mouth to bend into an umbrella shaped frown. It goes even further when his mother grins at or sings to him – he flashes a toothless smile until he can no longer stand it and looks away, overcome. Yet when I approach and talk to him, he purses his lips into an angry pucker as if trying to make his mouth disappear and glares at me with intense, lidless eyes. Studies now show an infant prefers the sound of his mother’s voice to all other sounds. If this is the reward the parent who suffered through labor earns over the parent who watched the NCAA men’s basketball tournament during said labor, so be it. Even if fathers are the vice presidents of the parenting world, we still have our own day, and I enjoyed mine. We went to brunch, and when Henry started crying, Steph took him out to the car to tend to a dirty diaper while I stayed in the restaurant and tried to eat my son’s birth weight in pancakes (feel free to take that challenge and start your own Father’s Day tradition). Father’s Day wasn’t always my favorite holiday. My father died when I was in my teens, and the day was mostly a sorrowful reminder of his passing. Sadder still, the day eventually lost almost all relevance for my sister and me, and it went mostly ignored. A few years ago I realized I had experienced more Father’s Days without my dad than with him, which put a fresh coat of melancholy on the holiday. Since getting married I’ve been able to enjoy Father’s Day with my wife’s dad, a good, affectionate man who has been an excellent father to his two girls and an example I hope to follow. But during the past three months, from the day Henry was born until this Father’s Day, I’ve spent many quiet moments thinking about my dad and trying to recall as many details as I can, seeking clues from him on how to be a good father. One of the things I remember is that as a young man, whenever he faced a situation that left him indecisive or troubled, he would write it down on a piece of paper and leave it on the kitchen table for his dad, who worked nights. In the morning the paper was filled with advice or answers in my dad’s father’s tired handwriting. While my dad assured me that he and his father spent time together, this arrangement seemed to suit his father, a serious man who was more likely to find the right words when he was alone at a kitchen table than during the day, in a conversation, in his own voice. It is a shame we usually save the most inconsequential gimcracks of our youth while we discard the true treasures of our past. These correspondences between my father and grandfather no longer exist, and I assume they were tossed away out of carelessness or embarrassment, and there is nothing I wish I owned more than those papers, containing everything my dad didn’t know, and all that his father could tell him. I have recalled so much about my dad these past three months, mostly his advice, which was common, but sound, and much like the advisement I’m sure anyone received from his parents. He was a man with a great sense of humor, but I only remember the serious things he told me, not one of his jokes (this is something I’ll keep in mind with my own son). I have pictures of him, of course, and therefore his image is always with me. He was a construction worker, so sweat and the smell of dirty work boots remind me of him. He was also an avid golfer, and the smell of cut morning grass and the rattle that golf clubs make in their bag when you hoist them over your shoulder always bring him to my mind. The one characteristic of my dad that I no longer recall is his voice. I can remember what he said, word for word, on so many occasions, yet I cannot remember how he said it, or what he sounded like when he spoke. So many years have passed, and this is what escapes me most. The peculiarity of that occupied most of my thoughts as I spent this Father’s Day with Henry. He represents a new beginning in so many ways, and for me it was a new reason to celebrate the future. And yet on that day I talked to Henry about the past and hoped he would become more familiar with my voice. I told him about the grandfather he would only know through stories and pictures. Henry listened, as much as a baby will, but mostly he stared over my head at something more marvelous than his father, perhaps a ceiling fan or the alluring glow of recessed lighting. Soon he became bored and his eyebrows turned red, and I quickly found his mother and handed him over. While she sang to him in a voice I must admit we both love, he smiled and danced in her arms. I stood back and watched, happy as any new dad on Father’s Day. I’m sure that someday Henry will come to me, seeking advice on some sort of matter that confuses young men. At that moment I hope, like every father who’s ever spoken to their child about serious things, I’ll know what to say. And he’ll listen.
The future of reading as seen from Montreal by a monolingual Gone with the wind Books, büchen, livres, libros, good old hardbacks, as we know them, are rapidly becoming obsolete, and there’s nothing we can do about it. Their replacements, in the form of glowing electronic screens, have arrived and are not going away any time soon. Like the horse-and-buggy, they had a good run, especially compared to some other message-sending technologies, such as the Pony Express and the Town Crier. Since the invention of movable type in 1450, books have been the primary means for persons with ideas, information, and stories to reach a large audience. Numerous industries have grown up in support of the technology needed to move authors’ words from their written pages to the hands of readers. And tradesmen as diverse as lumberjacks, printing-press operators, truck drivers, and booksellers, have worked the edges of this amazing process of information transfer. But books are expensive objects to produce, distribute, and purchase. The new technology – based on various forms of the electronic page – is so much cheaper that there is almost no chance of the paper-based book surviving. (Though some types of book – illustrated art books and children’s books, e.g. – will take much longer to be outmoded, but will probably become even more expensive.) But not forgotten Like most book lovers, I deeply regret the demise of the book. Books have been my companions, my solace, my joy and my measuring stick for self-improvement since I was a child. I have resisted accepting their passing. Until recently, I have argued against every “death of the book” prediction I’ve ever read. That’s like standing in the surf with seawater sucking at your ankles as the tide goes out, denying that the great swell forming up ahead is not a mighty wave – and coming this way. What does one do? There are probably only three choices: (1) stand and deny, (2) grab your shell collection and run for high ground, or (3) learn to surf. I find myself doing all three. Certainly, if one of my favorite authors creates a new book and it is only available in an electronic format, I will probably try to read it (but most likely by printing it first, if I can). Before long, with the passing of the generation ahead of mine, and then the dying of my own generation, most of the resistance to electronic publishing will be gone. Our generations’ “Facebook,” by and large, is the obituary page of the newspaper. After us, nearly everyone will have grown up with computers and the various other electronic devices that are the hallmark of modernity. On the other hand Let us not confuse books and reading. While fewer books are being manufactured, more people are actually reading more material than ever. Consider the fact that I’m writing this column from the beautiful city of Montreal on my iBookG4, using Microsoft Word for Mac, and that tomorrow morning I will send this “file” as an e-mail attachment to my editor, Pete Mazzaccaro. He and the Local’s layout staff will make up the paper electronically. When the paper is distributed on Wednesday, several thousand people will read it in a traditional newspaper format, i.e., they will hold a piece of printed paper in their hands. But many others, potentially millions (Google picks up some of my pieces), will read this column only in Internet form via the Local’s website (chestnuthilllocal.com). Vacation reading In taking this brief vacation to Montreal, I faced the usual reader’s dilemma: what book(s) to take along. Vacation reading, for some reason, always makes an indelible impression on me. I remember, not only the books I read, but also the chairs or sofas or hammocks on which I read them. My personal choice is always to want to read fiction, especially something grand or important. On our first day here we spent the afternoon happily browsing through the Renaud-Bray bookstore on Rue St. Denis in the Mount Royal district. Regrets à tous, but I am monolingual and the book chain’s Anglo section shrinks a bit more every time I browse there. That makes choice even more difficult for some reason. I did manage to find “The Abyss of Human Illusion,” by Gilbert Sorrentino. I’m a sucker for deep-sounding titles if the book is thin, and this one is a pleasant 151 pages. So far, so good, at least in the “seriousness” vein, but I’ll not recommend it as a page-turner. It is so poetic, imagistic and thoughtful that I’d probably be too impatient to read it back home. I also bought “Love in Infant Monkeys,” a short story collection written by someone – Lydia Millet – whom I’ve not read before. Somehow she’s managed to get along fine without my attention, having written six novels and won a number of important awards. The title story is based loosely on the famous Harry Harlow wire-mother/cloth mother research, a subject I have been obsessed with for years. Crossing boundaries At the border, the Canadian customs officer noticed that I seemed nonplussed by his asking if I had any firearms with me. He rephrased it: “Do you have any weapons, sir? Anything to defend yourself with, if, say, you felt you were under attack?” What must they think of us Americans? Will the question be reversed when I return? Will I be denied admittance to my native country if I try to enter without a blunderbuss? What if I answer by saying, “Yes, I’ll defend myself with these two books recently purchased and tested at the Renaud-Bray proving grounds”?
|
|---|
