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Archive for the ‘Public Life’ Category

Marriage Equality comes to Pennsylvania!

Posted in Politics, Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , on May 20, 2014| Leave a Comment »

My heart is rejoicing as marriage equality finally comes to Pennsylvania!  On the BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship website, I published the following statement:

Special Statement on Pennsylvania Marriage Equality
May 20, 2014

This afternoon a Federal court declared Pennsylvania’s ban on same sex marriage unconstitutional. In so doing, Judge John E. Jones III wrote, “We are a better people than what these laws represent, and it is time to discard them into the ash heap of history.”

Unitarian Universalists have long supported equal rights and equal protection for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people. The BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship has a long tradition of celebrating same sex marriages, and we now look forward to the opportunity to perform these marriages legally in our own sanctuary. For us, this is a matter of deep conscience and religious freedom, and we are proud to have been part of the movement that has led to this moment.

We also recognize that our work is not finished. Aside from possible appeals of this ruling, Pennsylvania’s laws continue to allow housing and workplace discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and identity. Legally married citizens of Pennsylvania could still lose their livelihoods for the act of putting wedding pictures on their desks. We urge the Governor to drop all appeals to the marriage equality ruling and the Pennsylvania House and Senate to quickly pass HB and SB 300, guaranteeing protection from discrimination. Further, we look to the day when marriage equality will be enshrined nationally as the law of the land.

Today has been a powerful day for justice; there will be more such days to come. In the meantime, moved by love, we continue to work for justice and compassion, celebrate diversity, and honor the worth and dignity of all people.

In faith,
Reverend Daniel S. Schatz,
Minister, BuxMont Unitarian Universalist Fellowship

To paraphrase Dr. King, “Justice anywhere is an aid to justice everywhere.”  Today’s ruling makes the lives of all Pennsylvanians and all people everywhere better.

pride-flag-feature

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How Not to Celebrate Cinco de Mayo

Posted in Music, Public Life, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 5, 2014| 4 Comments »

This morning I read an eloquent and powerful article on Cinco de Mayo by Sudie Hoffman at the Zinn Educational Project.  In this must-read blog post, Hoffman correctly names the damaging ethnic stereotypes embodied in the commercial appropriation of this day as it is celebrated in the United States.

I remember discussing Cinco de Mayo in a Mexican Studies class at the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute of Latin America Studies, back in 1992 when I was a student there.  Henry Selby, then the Director of the Mexican Center, went over the history of the holiday – the 1862 Mexican victory in a battle with France, which delayed (but did not prevent) the French march into Mexico City.  The details of this battle are still celebrated in the state of Puebla, but largely ignored in the rest of the country.  “Now why, ” he asked, “would a minor military victory become a national holiday?”

The answer lies in the name of one of the principal Mexican officers in that battle – General Porfirio Díaz.  The elevation of Cinco de Mayo was an essential part of his political rise to power, and fourteen years later, Díaz seized control of Mexico, beginning the Porfiriato – a brutal thirty-five year rule that ended only with the Mexican Revolution.  Perhaps it is not so surprising, then, that relatively few actual Mexicans pay much attention to the day.

Cinco de Mayo in the United States recalls none of this.  Instead, people here drink large amounts of beer, wear fake sombreros, eat North American versions of Mexican food that would never be served in most of Mexico, and imagine they are celebrating “Mexican Culture.”

Why do we do this?  Why do good, thoughtful people who would never think to celebrate African American culture with fried chicken, watermelons, and Sambo figurines nevertheless feel it perfectly appropriate to “honor” Mexico with racist stereotypes?

I don’t have an answer to this.  I hate to think people actually believe those stereotypes, but it’s likely many do.  Or maybe they simply don’t stop to think about how hurtful and damaging those kinds of images can be.

On the other hand, there is a reason Cinco de Mayo came to the United States, and it wasn’t to celebrate a dictator.  In the 1960s Chicano activists thought that this day might become a bridge to better understanding and acceptance of Mexican Americans in the United States, and a window to authentic Mexican culture.  It didn’t turn out that way, but there is no reason we cannot return to that initial intent.

If you want to celebrate Mexico on Cinco de Mayo, here are some things you can do:

  • Read up on Mexican history – there are lots of good primers online.
  • If you want Mexican food, try to find a good non-chain Mexican restaurant owned by people actually from Mexico – otherwise look up some authentic recipes online.
  • Read a classic Mexican novel – Pedro Páramo or Como agua para chocolate (Like Water for Chocolate) are readily available in translation – or see the movies.
  • Listen to authentic Mexican music.
  • Set yourself firmly and publicly against racist laws and policies that target Mexicans and other Latino people.
  • Learn about Mexican Americans in the United States.
  • Support organizations that work for immigrant justice.
  • Consider celebrating 16 de Septiembre – Mexican Independence Day – instead.

What ever you do, think about what you are doing and leave the racist stereotypes behind.

Here, to give you a taste of the beauty of Mexican culture, is the legendary Mexican group Los Folkloristas, in a 2011 performance on tour in (of all places), Wisconsin.

 

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The Pink Triangle – A Symbol for Our Time

Posted in Politics, Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on February 25, 2014| Leave a Comment »

I wore a lot of buttons in high school, but none of them excited so much comment as the pink triangle.  At the time it was rare for anyone who wasn’t gay, lesbian or bisexual to wear the symbol, and national progress toward justice was slow.  The Supreme Court had just ruled sodomy laws constitutional, and the right to marry was a distant dream.  The AIDS epidemic in the United States was at its deadliest moment, and the enduring image of the time, created by AIDS activists, was a big black poster with a pink triangle and the words “SILENCE = DEATH.”

pinktriangle
The pink triangle itself came from Nazi concentration camps, in which gay men were identified with a pink triangle on their shirts.  Tens of thousands were imprisoned, many were killed, and some were not released even at the war’s end.  (Lesbians were not identified by pink triangles, but many were arrested for “antisocial behavior” and made to wear black triangles in the camps.)  In the 1970s, the triangle began to appear as a symbol of gay pride and a warning of the dangers of oppression.

During the 1990s, the pink triangle began to fade from use.  The rainbow “welcoming flag,” celebrating diversity, appealed to straight allies as well as bisexual, lesbian and transgender people.  It was a less harsh, more positive symbol, a way of saying, “all kinds of people are welcome and valued equally.”  Today the pink triangle seems all but consigned to history.

With the news of draconian anti-gay measures in Russia, Nigeria and Uganda, a new ban on gay sex instituted by the Supreme Court of India, and nouveau Jim Crow laws proposed in Arizona and elsewhere, I wonder if it might be time to bring back the pink triangle.  While the world has made great progress in the struggle for equality, the current backlash is proving powerful and dangerous.  In the United States, measures permitting discrimination on the basis of “religious freedom” will inevitably prove unable to withstand constitutional scrutiny by even the current Supreme Court.  More pernicious are the American religious extremists who have given up on the United States and turned their energies toward countries that offer no such protections, or who have weak governments in need of distraction or scapegoats.  Ironically, both Russia and Uganda have couched oppressive new laws as reactions to colonialism by Western gay culture when the truth is exactly the reverse.

I love the welcoming flag, and fly it proudly – but maybe we need to hold onto the pink triangle as well.  Maybe we need a reminder of the cost of hatred, in real human lives and livelihoods.  Maybe we need to remember that silence really does equal death, and the worst thing we can do is remain silent in the face of oppression.

Our voices matter, and we can save lives.  Sometimes what matters most is a word of encouragement and welcome to a teen just coming out.  Sometimes it’s our support of equal marriage rights, and equal protection in housing and employment.  At other times we need to raise our voices for those around the world whose sexual orientation places them in far more immediate jeopardy.  We can do this not only by campaigning against anti-gay laws, and supporting sanctions towards nations (and states) that pass them, but also by calling to account those who would export hatred.

I pray for a world in which a symbol like the pink triangle is can be a historical curiosity, when people are simply regarded as people, whoever they are and whoever they love.  I believe in my heart that such a world is both possible and likely – but it will take years of work, and history must never be forgotten.

Meanwhile, it’s time to find that old button.

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A Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance

Posted in Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , , on November 20, 2013| 1 Comment »

trans day of remambrance

A Prayer for Transgender Day of Remembrance

On this day set apart for memory,
we remember and honor the struggles and the sacrifices
of those who have come before us,
leading us to equality, dignity, and justice.

We remember and honor those who have suffered discrimination or violence,
those whose lives have been lost,
those whose bodies or spirits have been wounded,
those who were made to feel less than whole,
less than beautiful,
less than they are.

We remember and honor
the gifts of wisdom and courage
brought forth by ancestors and companions in spirit.

We remember and honor those who walk proudly,
who love themselves and others,
who teach by their being,
and who reach to help others along the way.

We remember and honor friends, neighbors
and those we do not yet know,
revering the wholeness and dignity
within every human soul.

This day
and every day,
may all of us,
transgender and cisgender alike,
dedicate ourselves unflinchingly
to respect for every human being,
to justice,
to equality,
and to the transforming power of love.

Amen,
and blessed be.

– Rev. Dan Schatz
November 20, 2013
Transgender Day of Remembrance

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A Sweet Lasting Peace

Posted in Music, Politics, Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , , , on November 11, 2013| Leave a Comment »

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2B-sfe5X9k

Note – the video doesn’t play directly from the blog, but does from YouTube.  Click the link and watch it; you’ll be glad you did.

Veteran’s Day can be a challenging observation for those of us in the peace movement. As a committed pacifist, I deplore all war. The very existence of armed conflict is, in my view, the most colossal and self-defeating waste of resources ever devised by humanity. At the same time, I recognize the sacrifices of women and men who have gone to war – some voluntarily and some not so. I’ve seen minds damaged and families destroyed by the aftermath of battle. I’ve seen good people walking around with physical and emotional injuries that will never show. And I cannot help but honor these women and men, not because of the injuries, but because of the sacrifices they made out of love of country. I may not agree with the need for those sacrifices, but I surely honor the people who made them.

Utah Phillips once said that the way wars can end is when soldiers start talking about what it was really like. He has said that his time in Panmunjom immediately after the treaty was “absolute life amid the ruins.”

On today’s Morning Edition, National Public Radio’s political commentator Cokie Roberts talked about the effect of fewer veterans serving in Congress. “You see it in debates about taking the United States into military actions where you don’t hear the voices of those very experienced veterans.” I wondered how eager politicians would be to enter wars if more of them understood it better.

I’ve always appreciated A. L. Lloyd’s Seamen’s Hymn. In its brief simplicity it captures both the honor of sacrifice and the cruelty of war:

Come all you bold seamen
Wherever you’re bound
And always let Nelson’s
Proud memory go round.

And pray that the wars
And the tumult shall cease
For the greatest of gifts
Is a sweet lasting peace.

May the Lord put an end
To these cruel old wars
And bring peace and contentment
To all our brave tars!

There are several videos of performances of “The Seamen’s Hymn,” but to my ear this recording from a pub sing captures it best. This is how the song should be sung – by the people, often and loudly.

On this Veteran’s Day, may we honor sacrifices made in war, recognize its cruelty, and join together in prayer for the greatest of gifts – a sweet lasting peace.

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Change the Name of the DC Football Team

Posted in Public Life, tagged , , , , on October 18, 2013| Leave a Comment »

Growing up around Washington, DC, I never thought much about the name of our football team.  This was for two reasons – one, I really didn’t care much about sports, and two, it was the Washington Redskins, had always been the Washington Redskins, and it was what I was used to.  Being raised in a community of folk musicians gave me a respect for long-held tradition at a young age.  There was even a song:

Hail to the Redskins
Hail victory
Braves on the warpath
Fight for old DC!

But some traditions have to change, and this is one of them.  We have passed the era of 1950s cowboy movies, in which the stereotypical “Indian” was a collective cultural icon of savagery and violence.  Today people everywhere, we hope, recognize that Native Americans are people, not stereotypes, and that it is hurtful and racist to use those stereotypes to market football teams (or anything else), however long and storied a history those names might have.

Look at it this way – would you name a team the Washington N-words?  How about the “Blackskins,” the “Yellowskins,” the “Brownskins” or even the “Whities?”  If the answer is “No,” then it’s time for a change.  Just because  something is what we’re used to doesn’t make it right.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to be a Native American child in this country.  I suspect that, like most things, the experience depends on where you are, what nation you belong to, and what your family and community are like.  Every experience is unique – but I do know that “Indian” war whoops, tomahawk chops, fake “Indian talk” (“Me want plenty….” ugh) and images of indigenous peoples as savage warriors make it a whole lot worse, wherever you are.  It’s racist; it’s wrong, and it’s time to let it go.

So let’s change the name (although some have suggested keeping the name and changing the logo to a red potato – I like that).  I’m sure we can come up with something that better honors the capital city of the United States, and that respects the people who first lived there.  Set up a big contest.  Make it a promotion.  Have fun with it – but let “The Redskins” go.

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Shutdown

Posted in Politics, Public Life, tagged , , , , , on September 30, 2013| 2 Comments »

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, but the news of the week has had me calling my Congressman and Senators, more than once.   The prospect of a government shutdown appalls me.

I grew up in the Washington, DC area. My parents worked for the government, as did my neighbors and our family friends.  I remember the last shutdown, 17 years ago, when my family had to go without a paycheck from my stepmother’s job at the Agency for International Development for three weeks.

This time it’s worse. This time federal workers have already had to suffer higher workloads and unpaid furloughs because of the sequester. Whatever cushion they might have had to help get them through a week or three without a being paid has already been used up.  There is no fund to help them; they will still be responsible for paying rent, covering bills, buying food, putting gas in the car to get their kids to school. For someone who lives paycheck to paycheck,  as many government workers do, a shutdown could be devastating.

There’s been a lot of attention to the 1.4 million military service members who would normally go without pay during a government shutdown, and the House and Senate have agreed to pay them.  Very little attention has been paid to two million civil servants – almost half of whom will be sent home, and all of whom will remain unpaid.  (It is worth mentioning that in the event of a shutdown, members of Congress still do get paid.  Civil servants do not.)

We don’t hear very much in the national media about the people who will be directly hurt when the government shuts down. This isn’t just about whether we’ll be able to visit a national park or go to the Smithsonian; it’s about ordinary working people’s lives. Nobody should have to lose their credit rating, or heaven forbid their home, or go hungry, because a group of politicians decide to throw a temper tantrum.

I’m glad the Senate has held firm, and hope they continue to – anything else would only encourage a dangerous and destructive pattern in politics. The issue at hand is not the health care law, it’s whether it is ethical to hold ordinary civil servants, the economy, and the American people hostage to unrelated policy demands.

After the last shutdown, Congress voted to make federal workers whole and give them back pay. I can only hope that when the shutdown is over, this Congress will remember the people who did nothing to deserve this punishment.  Unfortunately what I’ve seen does not give me much hope. And it does nothing for the damage that will have been done to peoples’ lives.

Tonight many civil servants are working unpaid overtime to prepare for a shutdown – and they will do so again to clear the backlog of work when the situation is finally resolved.  I’m grateful for their service.  What’s being done to them is morally repugnant, and we owe it to them and their families to treat them well during the days and weeks ahead.

If you care about this issue, as I do, please contact your member of Congress and Senators.  Remember that the people who live in Washington, DC have no vote in Congress. That makes it all the more important that the rest of us make our voices heard.

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Why I Still Do Not Support the Boy Scouts

Posted in Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , , , on May 23, 2013| 8 Comments »

There are a lot of reasons to celebrate the step that the Boy Scouts of America took this week.  Ending the ban on gay scouts is a significant change, and an acknowledgement of just how far our country has come in the past few decades.  It is not, however, enough.  As long as the Boy Scouts continue to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation and religion, I cannot support them.

It pains me to say this.  I have seen how much good the Scouts can do in a boy’s life, watched the Scouts help boys grow into thoughtful, sensitive leaders with an ethic of volunteerism and a love of the outdoors.  I honor these young men for all they have achieved, and will give them all the recognition they are due.  At their best, the Boy Scouts are an organization few others can match.

But discrimination is wrong.  The Boy Scouts now accept gay boys only to tell them implicitly that they are second class – good enough to be grudgingly accepted by the troop, perhaps, but never good enough to be Scout leaders or staff.  These boys may be included, but as long as the Scouts promote this kind of bias, they will never be welcome.

I would love to see the day when the Scouts end all discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, and will honor the move when it (inevitably) happens – but I will still not be able to support the Boy Scouts of America.  How could I, knowing that as a Humanist Unitarian Universalist, I would not be welcome?

With all the attention the Scouts’ policy toward gays has received, few news outlets have focused much on the Scouts’ ban against atheists.  Simply put, if you do not believe in God, you cannot be a Boy Scout.  You cannot work for the Boy Scouts.  You are unwelcome.

I find this unconscionable.  That an organization which purports to represent American values blatantly discriminates on the basis of religious belief violates the most fundamental principles of this country.  It is an insult to our forebears, and a terrible lesson to teach boys and young men.

Theologically, the ban on atheists makes no sense at all, because once you’ve said you believe in God, you haven’t said very much.  My own theology is non-theistic, but it would be easy enough to give what I do believe the name “God.”  I know many people who do; it just isn’t the language I typically choose.

It saddens me that the policy against atheists stands, and also that it has received so little attention.  Does the public really believe that atheist scouts and leaders present some sort of threat?  Do the Scouts?

I suspect the answer is more simple – most people simply do not know about the ban on atheists, and the freedom not to believe in God, while sacrosanct in our Constitution, is seldom lifted and honored.

One day I hope to support the Boy Scouts; I admire what they do.  One day I hope they will find the integrity to let go of policies that belittle boys and men for who they are and what they believe.  When that day comes, I will be the first to applaud.

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Remembering Iraq – Windows onto the Destruction

Posted in Poetry, Politics, Public Life, tagged , , , , , on March 19, 2013| 1 Comment »

Today is the tenth anniversary of the beginning of the Iraq War. The first moments of that war were heavily televised, though we saw very little that our government didn’t wish us to see.  Cameras placed on the bottoms of planes gave us the illusion that bombs could be “smart,” hit only their targets and would never hurt the general population – with whom, we were told, we had no quarrel.  Even those of us who protested the war thought it would be over quickly – though many raised concerns over its longer term impacts.  The nightly television coverage seemed to confirm these predictions, as we dropped bomb after bomb after bomb on Baghdad.  Hearing the blasé attitudes of television reporters chatting cheerfully over footage of death raining on human beings sickened me, and I wrote this poem, which now I give to you:

Windows onto the destruction
propped open in the living room;
Almost game-like in precision;
horrific in carnage.
Only 56 killed, we hear through narrow cracks.
It is a half truth.
When we turn to the window,
pry open the jammed frame,
the smell sickens.
It isn’t the 56 young Americans,
not mostly.
It is the stench of a hundred,
a thousand
two thousand
men
children
women,
fighters or lovers,
death knows no distinctions of
innocence or guilt.
The 20 megatons that would
pulverize a palace
destroy a slum.
“Regrettable.”
The lives of our soldiers
more precious than their children,
our integrity dies in the furnace.

They told us we lost our innocence
the day two towers fell.
It was a lie.
We found our innocence
the day we died.
We lost our innocence
the day
we killed.

– Dan Schatz
March 2003

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I Still Have a Dream

Posted in Public Life, Spirit, tagged , , , on January 20, 2013| 2 Comments »

Each year on Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Kr. Day, we hear part of a great speech – perhaps one of the greatest speeches ever given – “I Have  Dream.”  Sometimes I get frustrated that Dr. King’s legacy gets reduced to one speech (and only the last few minutes of that one), when his work was much more far reaching and complex, and when so much of the work he gave his life to remains unfinished.  Those issues aside, it is a remarkable speech, made all the more so by the fact that it very nearly never got made.

To begin with, the Great March on Washington of 1963 almost didn’t happen.  Nobody had ever tried a demonstration on anything close to that scale, and most people thought it couldn’t be done.  The only way the march could work is if all six leading civil rights groups joined together, and they agreed on very little.  Several leaders viewed the march’s organizer, Bayard Rustin, with deep suspicion, because he had been a conscientious objector, a socialist, and was known to be gay.  Dr. Martin Luther King and others insisted that only Bayard Rustin could do this job, so it was agreed that while Rustin would do all the work, others would take on the official titles of leadership.  Leaders of the younger, more activist Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee worried that the March would be no more than a way of blowing off steam for the African American community, unless it involved some kind of civil disobedience.  The NAACP insisted they would not participate if any civil disobedience were involved.  The groups argued with one another about the texts and the tone of the speeches and several threatened to pull support.  While President Kennedy publicly praised the March and its goals, privately he worried that so many African Americans coming to Washington to protest would lead to rioting, and he asked the leaders to cancel the event.  When they refused, Washington DC declared a “state of emergency,” closing all of the liquor stores, mobilizing every police officer on the force, and deputizing thousands more, in preparation for the descent of one hundred thousand African American protestors on the city.

More than double that number gathered at the foot of the Washington Monument the morning of August 28, while Dr. King, Whitney Young and other leaders met with members of Congress.  At 11:30, somebody in the crowd started singing a freedom song.  Soon others joined in and all of a sudden the people were moving, out onto Constitution and Independence Avenues, walking hand in hand toward the Lincoln Memorial.  Bayard Rustin, looking down from the steps of the Capitol, shouted, “My God, they’re going!  We’re supposed to be leading them!”  So it was that Martin Luther King, Jr., John Lewis, A. Phillip Randolph and all the rest of them ran after the people, eventually stepping into the middle of the march and stopping it so that reporters could take the iconic pictures.

The afternoon was a long series of carefully negotiated speeches.  Mahalia Jackson, the great gospel musician, sang “I’ve Been Buked and I’ve Been Scorned.”  And then Dr. King stood up to speak.  He must have been exhausted, but he read well from his carefully prepared text.  When he reached the end, he paused, and Mahalia Jackson, remembering the words she had heard Dr. King speak at so many churches and rallies across the south, shouted from her seat, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin!”

Dr. King looked up from his text, written as it was in the context of all the contentiousness that had gone into this march, and he looked out at the people, so eager for freedom they had not waited for his leadership to move, and he said, “Even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream.”

The video below includes the entire speech.  It’s worth hearing.

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