12.11.2010
Remembering Gay Victims of The Nazi Holocaust
Remembering Gay Victims of The Nazi Holocaust
It is estimated that 1.2 million homosexual men were living in Germany in 1928. Between 1933 and 1945 100,000 men were arrested and charged with being homosexuals, 50,000 were officially sentenced. Most were sent to regular prisons, while an estimated 5,000-15,000 were sent to concentration camps.
In Nazi Germany, homosexuality was persecuted to a degree unprecedented in history. In 1935, the National Socialists issued an order making all male homosexuality a crime; the provisions governing homosexual behaviour in Section 175 of the Criminal Code were significantly expanded and made stricter. A kiss was enough reason to prosecute. There were more than 50,000 convictions. Under Section 175, the punishment was imprisonment; in some cases, convicted offenders were castrated. Thousands of men were sent to concentration camps for being gay; many of them died there. They died of hunger, disease and abuse or were the victims of targeted killings.
The National Socialists destroyed the communities of gay men and women. Female homosexuality was not prosecuted, except in annexed Austria; the National Socialists did not find it as threatening as male homosexuality. However, lesbians who came into conflict with the regime were also subject to repressive measures. Under the Nazi regime, gay men and women lived in fear and under constant pressure to hide their sexuality.
For many years, the homosexual victims of National Socialism were not included in public commemorations -- neither in the Federal Republic of Germany nor in the German Democratic Republic. In both East and West Germany, homosexuality continued to be prosecuted for many years. In the Federal Republic, Section 175 remained in force without amendment until 1969.
Because of its history, Germany has a special responsibility to actively oppose the violation of gay men's and lesbians' human rights. In many parts of the world, people continue to be persecuted for their sexuality, homosexual love remains illegal and a kiss can be dangerous.
With this memorial, the Federal Republic of Germany intends
to honor the victims of persecution and murder,
to keep alive the memory of this injustice, and
to create a lasting symbol of opposition to enmity, intolerance and the exclusion of gay men and lesbians.
Das Denkmal für die im Nationalsozialismus verfolgten Homosexuellen ist eine Gedenkstätte am Berliner Tiergarten, die am 27. Mai 2008 eingeweiht wurde. Das von dem dänisch-norwegischen Künstlerduo Michael Elmgreen und Ingar Dragset entworfene Denkmal ist ein 3,60 m hoher und 1,90 m breiter Steinquader, in dem ein Fenster eingelassen ist, durch das zwei kurze Filme mit zwei sich küssenden Männern bzw. zwei sich küssenden Frauen im zweijährigen Wechsel zu sehen sind. Die Errichtung des Denkmals wurde im Zuge der Diskussion über die Gestaltung des Denkmals für die ermordeten Juden Europas im Jahr 2003 vom Deutschen Bundestag beschlossen.
May 27th 2008 has been announced to be the date of the official publication of the Berlin memorial for the persecuted homosexuals of the Nazi period of time.
Estimates vary wildly as to the number of gay men killed in concentration camps during the Holocaust ranging from 5,000 to 15,000. Larger numbers include those who were Jewish and gay, or even Jewish, gay, and communist. In addition, records as to the specific reasons for internment are non-existent in many areas, making it hard to put an exact number on just how many gay men perished in death camps. See pink triangle.
Gay men suffered unusually cruel treatment in the concentration camps. They faced persecution not only from German soldiers but also from other prisoners, and many gay men were beaten to death. Additionally, gay men in forced labor camps routinely received more grueling and dangerous work assignments than other non-Jewish inmates, under the policy of "Extermination Through Work". SS soldiers also were known to use gay men for target practice, aiming their weapons at the pink triangles their human targets were forced to wear.
El monumento fue diseñado por los artistas Michael Elmgreen y Ingar Dragset. Es una estructura de hormigón en forma de ortoedro. En la cara frontal hay una ventana a través de la cual los visitantes pueden ver un vídeo con dos homosexuales besándose.
When the war ended, the persecution under the Nazis of homosexuals was not acknowledged. Homosexuals did not qualify for state pensions and reparations available to other groups, and continued to be classified as criminals simply for being gay.
Although both East and West Germany liberalized the criminalization of homosexuality in the 1960's the official Nazi anti-gay law was not repealed until 1994.
In some instances they were freed only to be re-imprisoned by the Allies for their sexual orientation. Under the Allied Military Government in Germany, many homosexuals were forced to serve the remainder of their prison sentence, regardless of any time spent in a concentration camp. Gay Holocaust survivors still had to live in fear of re-imprisonment for "repeat offenses" and were kept on the registered "sex offenders" list.
12.09.2010
US Calls The Shots In Australian Elections, Wikileaks
By Patrick O'Connor
"... Gillard has gone out of her way to assist the embassy... Although warm and engaging in her dealings with American diplomats, it’s unclear whether this change in attitude reflects a mellowing of her views or an understanding of what she needs to do to become leader of the ALP.”
These comments outline who really calls the shots in Australia’s so-called parliamentary democracy.
These comments outline who really calls the shots in Australia’s so-called parliamentary democracy.
The latest batch of the several hundred leaked US diplomatic cables concerning Australia, provided by WikiLeaks to the Fairfax company’s Sydney Morning Herald and Melbourne Age, provide further extraordinary evidence of Washington’s direct involvement in the anti-democratic coup against former Prime Minister Kevin Rudd last June.
Key coup plotters in the Labor Party and trade unions—including senators Mark Arbib and David Feeney, and Australian Workers Union chief Paul Howes—secretly provided the US embassy with regular updates on internal government discussions and divisions within the leadership. As early as June 2008, the American ambassador identified Julia Gillard as the “front-runner” to replace Rudd. In October 2009, i.e., eight months before Gillard was installed in unprecedented circumstances, Mark Arbib informed American officials of emerging leadership tensions. The Australian people, on the other hand, were kept entirely in the dark about any differences between the prime minister and his colleagues until after Rudd was ousted.
Gillard was described, some two years before the coup, by US diplomatic officials as the “rising star” within the Labor government. They made various enquiries into Gillard’s foreign policy sympathies, receiving assurances from government sources that her origins in the party’s “left” faction had no policy significance whatsoever. Arbib told the embassy that Gillard was “one of the most pragmatic politicians in the ALP”; Victorian senator David Feeney added that “there is no longer any intellectual integrity in the factions” and that “there is no major policy issue on which he, a Right factional leader, differs from Gillard”. When embassy officials checked on Gillard with Paul Howes, Australian Workers Union boss and subsequent anti-Rudd coup plotter, observing that “ALP politicians from the Left, no matter how capable, do not become party leader,” he responded immediately: “but she votes with the Right’.”
The Sydney Morning Herald and Age have published parts of the latest material in excerpted form, ahead of their full public release expected in coming weeks. They focus today on Mark Arbib’s role as a “secret US source”. One of the key apparatchiks in Labor’s powerful New South Wales right-wing faction, Arbib reportedly made several requests to US officials that his identity as a “protected” informant be guarded.
The cables refer to Arbib as early as mid-2006, when he served as NSW Labor Party state secretary. After being elected to the senate in the November 2007 federal election, the factional leader deepened his relationship with Washington. A US embassy profile, authored in July 2009, noted that Arbib “understands the importance of supporting a vibrant relationship with the US” and that officials “have found him personable, confident and articulate”. The profile also recorded that he “has met with us repeatedly throughout his political rise”. Other cables referred to the senator as a “right-wing powerbroker and political rising star” and noted his influence within both Labor’s factions and “Rudd’s inner circle”.
The cables make clear that Arbib and the other identified MPs function not simply as mere US “sources”, as characterised in the media today—but rather as agents. Within the Labor and trade unions apparatuses, these party members serve as conduits for Washington’s agenda. The embassy communications reveal the extent to which the US government determines Australian foreign policy and dictates who will hold senior government posts, including the office of prime minister.
A precise chronology of Washington’s sordid, behind-the-scenes manipulation of Australian political affairs, between the Labor Party’s election victory in November 2007 and Rudd’s axing in June 2010, is likely to emerge once WikiLeaks releases the full cache of relevant cables.
Already, however, it is now beyond dispute that Washington began cultivating Gillard at the same time as embassy officials were issuing damning assessments of Rudd, above all over his stance on Beijing. In June 2008, the same month Gillard was named as the “front-runner” to succeed Rudd, the prime minister unveiled his Asia-Pacific Community project, attempting to mediate the escalating strategic rivalry between the US and China. An American embassy cable lambasted this proposal as yet another Rudd initiative launched “without advance consultation”. (See: “WikiLeaks cables cast fresh light on coup against former Australian PM Rudd”)
Beginning at this time, the Fairfax press reports: “US diplomats were anxious to establish Ms Gillard’s attitudes towards Australia’s alliance with the United States and other key foreign policy questions, especially in regard to Israel. Numerous Labor figures were drawn by US diplomats into conversation concerning Ms Gillard’s personality and political positions with ‘many key ALP insiders’ quickly telling embassy officers that her past membership of the Victorian Labor Party’s Socialist Left faction meant little and that she was ‘at heart a pragmatist’.”
Gillard was undoubtedly aware that she was being sounded out. One cable sent to the State Department in mid-2008 stated: “Although long appearing ambivalent about the Australia-US Alliance, Gillard’s actions since she became the Labor Party number two indicate an understanding of its importance. [US embassy political officers] had little contact with her when she was in opposition but since the election, Gillard has gone out of her way to assist the embassy... Although warm and engaging in her dealings with American diplomats, it’s unclear whether this change in attitude reflects a mellowing of her views or an understanding of what she needs to do to become leader of the ALP.”
These comments outline who really calls the shots in Australia’s so-called parliamentary democracy. Labor leaders must understand “what they need to do”—that is, kowtow on every major strategic and foreign policy issue to Washington. They need to recognise that Australia is an obedient servant of US imperialism, and that its political superstructure must function accordingly.
Arbib issued a terse statement today, simply outlining that he was an active member of the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and “like many members of the federal parliament, have regular discussions about the state of Australian and US politics with members of the US mission and consulate”. Contained here is a fairly clear warning, by Labor’s key backroom operator, to anyone in the government thinking of using the revelations against him. Arbib has helpfully reminded them that he enjoys Washington’s support, and that others are sure to be implicated as more cables are released.
The Fairfax press has already named former Labor national secretary and Rudd government cabinet member Bob McMullen and current backbencher Michael Danby as among those named in the WikiLeaks documents. Others likely to be named are starting to come out of the woodwork, in an effort to pre-empt the fallout. Health Minister Nicola Roxon today volunteered that she is likely to be identified, as she “meets with US diplomats from time to time”. Greens’ leader Bob Brown has foreshadowed similar revelations—though he was at pains to point out that he was always “very careful” in his responses, and spoke with diplomats “from all over the world, from Bangladesh to the US to New Zealand, Taiwan and Beijing”.
The cables will no doubt reveal similar relationships between Washington and senior Australian media personnel. Editors, journalists, and broadcasters are routinely nurtured through the Australia-American Leadership Dialogue, and other such forums.
The excerpted cables also expose the close working relationship between the US government and Australia’s trade unions. The Fairfax press noted that “senior union leaders have privately briefed US officials about how they use their influence over the Labor Party to shape federal government policies”, and cited an August 2009 cable, which stated that the trade unions “continue to play a significant role in the formulation of national policies that can impact the United States”. Discussions between US embassy officials and senior figures in the Australian Workers Union and the National Union of Workers were reported, with one cable declaring that the leaders of the right-wing unions were “dynamic and forward thinking”.
The same cable reportedly described the declining influence of the “left” unions within the Labor Party, a conclusion that was “drawn partly through briefings from CFMEU [Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union] national secretary Dave Noonan and Victorian secretary Bill Oliver”. These two figures—often hailed as great militants by the various middle class pseudo-left outfits—were described by US embassy officials as “capable leaders”.
12.08.2010
12.02.2010
Wikileaks Loses Its .org Domain, Killed by US everydns.net
Read Write Web
It's not our normal beat to cover so much breaking news on ReadWriteCloud but U.S. Senator Joseph Lieberman has changed that a bit with his attacks on Wikileaks and threats to the technology community.
Now in part due to his reactionary ways, we've seen a cascading series of events culminating tonight with Wikileaks losing its DNS. That means if you are in the United States at least, you can't access the Wikileaks Web site. According to EveryDNS.net:
" EveryDNS.net provided domain name system (DNS) services to the wikileaks.org domain name until 10PM EST, December 2, 2010, when such services were terminated. As with other users of the EveryDNS.net network, this service was provided for free. The termination of services was effected pursuant to, and in accordance with, the EveryDNS.net Acceptable Use Policy."Wikileaks confirmed the news tonight on its Twitter account:
"WikiLeaks,org domain killed by US everydns.net after claimed mass attacks KEEP US STRONG https://donations.datacell.com/"
EveryDNS.net serves about 500,000 Web sites that could be in jeopardy due to the continuous DDOS attacks on the Wikileaks site. They say the attacks threaten the stability of the EveryDNS.net infrastructure.
We're the losers out of all this. In the name of security, our government has decided to block us from information that they fear would have terrible, terrible impacts.
The next step? It looks like Sen. Lieberman has decided to attack journalists and the technology community with legislation that would outlaw the right to publish the name of a U.S. intelligence source.
Russian Intelligence Calls US Bluff on Iranian Nukes, Wikileaks
By Gareth Porter
A diplomatic cable from last February released by Wikileaks provides a detailed account of how Russian specialists on the Iranian ballistic missile program refuted the U.S. suggestion that Iran has missiles that could target European capitals or intends to develop such a capability.
In fact, the Russians challenged the very existence of the mystery missile the U.S. claims Iran acquired from North Korea. But readers of the two leading U.S. newspapers never learned those key facts about the document.
The New York Times and Washington Post reported only that the United States believed Iran had acquired such missiles - supposedly called the BM-25 - from North Korea.
Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the U.S. view on the issue or the lack of hard evidence for the BM-25 from the U.S. side.
The Times, which had obtained the diplomatic cables not from Wikileaks but from The Guardian, according to a Washington Post story Monday, did not publish the text of the cable.
The Times story said the newspaper had made the decision not to publish "at the request of the Obama administration".
That meant that its readers could not compare the highly- distorted account of the document in the Times story against the original document without searching the Wikileaks website.
As a result, a key Wikileaks document which should have resulted in stories calling into question the thrust of the Obama regime's ballistic missile defense policy in Europe based on an alleged Iranian missile threat has instead produced a spate of stories buttressing anti-Iran hysteria.
Gaaaaaah why do you people like Sarah Palin so much?
I get it, you're mad at the establishment, so am I. But are you people really so blind? When liberal intellectuals refer to Sarah Palin as an idiot, I get it, you identify with her more because you don't consider yourself much of an intellectual elite. Yet, she really is in idiot. Really! She's actually an idiot! I'm not saying that because she's a "rogue" or a "maverick", I really mean it, she just so...ugh. I get that people are upset with the establishment and Sarah paints herself as being this "outsider" who can be a..."moma grizzly" but seriously she's really, really an idiot. And as for her being a "rogue" or "anti-establishment" she is incredible pro establishment. I mean, to the extent that she is aware of an establishment.
Seriously though, it scares me that her Alaskan reality TV show (It's a not a documentary), has actually succeeded in convincing ordinary low-income Americans that she's somehow one of them. And since they're angry with the way politics in general is being done by just about every elected official in our government, when they point out that she's an idiot, they take it as a code word to mean that she's an "outsider". But no...wake up people...she really is an idiot. And yes, she'll run in 2012, just you wait and see.
Guuuugh, I don't understand why people are so enamored with her.
Seriously though, it scares me that her Alaskan reality TV show (It's a not a documentary), has actually succeeded in convincing ordinary low-income Americans that she's somehow one of them. And since they're angry with the way politics in general is being done by just about every elected official in our government, when they point out that she's an idiot, they take it as a code word to mean that she's an "outsider". But no...wake up people...she really is an idiot. And yes, she'll run in 2012, just you wait and see.
Guuuugh, I don't understand why people are so enamored with her.
11.29.2010
Conservative Carry Out Assulat on Britian's Working Class
Morning Star Online UK
In one very real sense, it's redundant to describe the present Conservative assault on Britain's working class as "ideological."
Because all political parties' solutions to problems are by definition ideological, being based on that party's world-view, on the preconceptions and ideas that are at the root of its approach to government.
And, Conservative or Socialist, ideology is at the heart of those approaches. It's just a very different ideology.
But when people refer to the Conservative's position as ideological they mean much more than that it's a coherent set of ideas based on a specific analysis of society.
So let's cut through the confusion and call a spade a spade. The right-wing assault is not merely ideological.
It's an ideology that is utterly selfish, is furiously anti-working class and relies for its moral justification on the morality of the wolf pack, where the alpha male dominates absolutely and the lesser animals cluster around hoping for a bit of "trickle down" benefit.
But there's not just one wolf pack, of course and therefore we are treated to the sight of capitalist alpha males ( and they generally are males) routinely savaging each other for the champion's portion of the kill.
They call it competition and it's as distasteful a sight as one could wish to see. Whatever else capitalism is, even it's most ardent supporters couldn't call it pretty. It's combative, it's vicious and it automatically targets the weak and the vulnerable.
And the Conservative/Liberal coalition attack on the social welfare system is a beautiful example of wolf-pack capitalism at its reddest in tooth and claw. Because it unerringly targets the poor and the disadvantaged at every available chance.
This government is remaking the underclass of poor, disenfranchised, alienated and abused people that the trade union and progressive movement has been fighting to eliminate for over a couple of centuries.
Now whether it is doing it consciously is debatable. Probably not, because, in the main, the Conservative ruling class have swallowed their own lies about socially conscious capitalism - an oxymoron if ever there was one.
But, conscious or not, it's real, it's happening and it has to be fought, because this Con-Dem wolf pack will otherwise drive us back into a condition that our forefathers (and mothers) spent their lives lifting us out of.
Woman Now "Owns" The Sun, Says She'll Charge Usage Fee
By Paul M. Sweezy
Though it is neither written nor marketed as such, Who Owns the Sun? by researcher/activists Daniel Berman and John O’Connor, is a devastating indictment of capitalism.
As it has developed in the last two centuries, this system is an enormous user of energy, most of it derived from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas).
An additional—and in some parts of the world increasing—source is nuclear fission. Both of these forms of energy are dangerous and environmentally destructive to life on the planet.
Burning fossil fuels generates almost all of the greenhouse gasses that have already begun to change the planet’s climate and, if continued at anywhere near the present rates, will trigger a chain reaction of lethal disasters, not in some vaguely distant future but in the next century or so—historically a relatively short span of time.
Nuclear fission leaves a legacy of radioactive waste that cannot now, or perhaps ever, be safely disposed of.
Clearly if humanity, not to speak of other forms of life, is to have a future, nothing could be more important than phasing out these sources of energy. So much, I believe, is what can be appropriately called ecological common sense.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is an available, renewable, and unlimited source of energy to take the place of fossil fuels and nuclear fission: solar power.
This is truly not only in theory but also, given the present state of our scientific knowledge and technological know how, in practice. Why, then, are we not already living in the period of transition from a proven deadly to a proven safe form of energy production?
The short answer is capitalism. This is in two complementary senses. First, in capitalist society power is in the hands of capitalists and their acolytes. They cannot be assumed to be ignorant of the energy situation and the dangers it portends for the future.
Yet they have never used that power to take remedial action. Second, when faced with the energy crises of the 1970s and the widespread popular reaction, they did their best to confuse the real issues and limited themselves to making soothing promises.
They then promptly forgot and obviously never intended to honor them when things calmed down.
By the late 1980s what had seemed to be a snowballing popular movement for an energy new deal was effectively scotched and by now is hardly more than a fading memory.
Capital won that battle hands down. But the issue will not go away. As the catastrophes of environmental degradation unfold, the need for an energy revolution will become increasingly obvious and urgent.
In Who Owns the Sun? Berman and O’Connor have made a straightforward, hard-hitting contribution to the understanding of the issue. And, by implication, of the lessons to be learned from the rich experience of the last few decades.
An energy revolution is both possible and necessary, but it will be achieved only as part of a broader revolution that takes power away from capital and puts it in the hands of the people where it belongs.
Though it is neither written nor marketed as such, Who Owns the Sun? by researcher/activists Daniel Berman and John O’Connor, is a devastating indictment of capitalism.
As it has developed in the last two centuries, this system is an enormous user of energy, most of it derived from the burning of fossil fuels (coal, oil, natural gas).
An additional—and in some parts of the world increasing—source is nuclear fission. Both of these forms of energy are dangerous and environmentally destructive to life on the planet.
Burning fossil fuels generates almost all of the greenhouse gasses that have already begun to change the planet’s climate and, if continued at anywhere near the present rates, will trigger a chain reaction of lethal disasters, not in some vaguely distant future but in the next century or so—historically a relatively short span of time.
Nuclear fission leaves a legacy of radioactive waste that cannot now, or perhaps ever, be safely disposed of.
Clearly if humanity, not to speak of other forms of life, is to have a future, nothing could be more important than phasing out these sources of energy. So much, I believe, is what can be appropriately called ecological common sense.
That’s the bad news. The good news is that there is an available, renewable, and unlimited source of energy to take the place of fossil fuels and nuclear fission: solar power.
This is truly not only in theory but also, given the present state of our scientific knowledge and technological know how, in practice. Why, then, are we not already living in the period of transition from a proven deadly to a proven safe form of energy production?
The short answer is capitalism. This is in two complementary senses. First, in capitalist society power is in the hands of capitalists and their acolytes. They cannot be assumed to be ignorant of the energy situation and the dangers it portends for the future.
Yet they have never used that power to take remedial action. Second, when faced with the energy crises of the 1970s and the widespread popular reaction, they did their best to confuse the real issues and limited themselves to making soothing promises.
They then promptly forgot and obviously never intended to honor them when things calmed down.
By the late 1980s what had seemed to be a snowballing popular movement for an energy new deal was effectively scotched and by now is hardly more than a fading memory.
Capital won that battle hands down. But the issue will not go away. As the catastrophes of environmental degradation unfold, the need for an energy revolution will become increasingly obvious and urgent.
In Who Owns the Sun? Berman and O’Connor have made a straightforward, hard-hitting contribution to the understanding of the issue. And, by implication, of the lessons to be learned from the rich experience of the last few decades.
An energy revolution is both possible and necessary, but it will be achieved only as part of a broader revolution that takes power away from capital and puts it in the hands of the people where it belongs.
11.27.2010
Afghans, "What's 9/11?"
Daniel Tencer
Fewer than one in 10 Afghans are aware of the 9/11 attacks and their precipitation of the war in Afghanistan, says a study from an international think tank.
A report (PDF) from the International Council on Security and Development (ICOS) shows that 92 percent of those surveyed had never heard of the coordinated multiple attacks on US soil on September 11, 2001. It also shows that four in 10 Afghans believe the US is on their soil in order to "destroy Islam or occupy Afghanistan."
To be sure, the survey can't claim to be definitive: It only canvassed men, and relied primarily on respondents from Helmand and Kandahar, the two most war-torn provinces in the country. But the results nonetheless show that Western forces fighting insurgents in Afghanistan have largely failed to connect with the local population.
“We need to explain to the Afghan people why we are here, and both show and convince them that their future is better with us than with the Taliban,” ICOS lead field researcher Norine MacDonald said in a statement.
The survey also suggests that Afghans are skeptical of their own government's ability to protect them, and have little regard for the fledgling democratic institutions the country is building. Fully 43 percent could not name one positive aspect of democracy, and nearly two-thirds -- 61 percent -- said they didn't think Afghan forces would be able to keep up the fight against the Taliban if and when Western forces withdrew.
The ICOS study recommends a publicity campaign to explain to Afghans why foreign forces are fighting on their soil. The think tank also proposes a number of other initiatives meant to improve the image of foreign forces in the country, including having NATO forces deliver humanitarian aid where aid groups fear to travel, providing farmland to the poor, setting up women's councils, and "safe village convoys" which would see foreign troops escort villagers in dangerous rural areas.
ICOS has a permanent presence in Afghanistan and has been studying the nearly decade-long war's impact on Afghan society. The think tank has previously proposed that Afghanistan license the growing of opium. The group argues that eliminating the opiate trade from Afghanistan is virtually impossible due to its entrenched place in the culture. At the same time, Afghan farmers could earn money by selling opiates to painkiller manufacturers.
Opponents of the idea say that Afghanistan is not stable enough to develop a proper opium-manufacturing industry, and a licensing scheme would only encourage the sale of opium to heroin manufacturers.
11.24.2010
Iraqi Veteran Talks About His Addiction to Violence, Gets Expelled
By Charles Whittington
War is a drug. When soldiers enter the military from day one, they begin to train and are brain washed to fight and to handle situations in battle. We train and train for combat, and then when we actually go to war, it is reality and worse than what we have trained for. We suffer through different kinds of situations. The Army never taught how to deal with our stress and addictions.
War is a drug because when soldiers are in the Infantry, like me, they get used to everything, and fast. I got used to killing and after a while it became something I really had to do. Killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive. I had a really hard time with this problem when I returned to the United States, because turning this addiction off was impossible. It is not like I have a switch I can just turn off. To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.
Over in Iraq and Afghanistan killing becomes a habit, a way of life, a drug to me and to other soldiers like me who need to feel like we can survive off of it. It is something that I do not just want, but something I really need so I can feel like myself. Killing a man and looking into his eyes, I see his soul draining from his body; I am taking away his life for the harm he has caused me, my family, my country.
Killing is a drug to me and has been ever since the first time I have killed someone. At first, it was weird and felt wrong, but by the time of the third and fourth killing it feels so natural. It feels like I could do this for the rest of my life and it makes me happy.
There are several addictions in war, but this one is mine. This is what I was trained to do and now I cannot get rid of it; it will be with me for the rest of my life and hurts me that I cannot go back to war and kill again, because I would love too. When I stick my blade through his stomach or his ribs or slice his throat it's a feeling that I cannot explain, but feels so good to me, and I become addicted to seeing and acting out this act of hate, and violence against the rag heads that hurt our country. Terrorists will have nowhere to hide because there are hundreds of thousands of soldiers like me who feel like me and want their revenge as well.
______________________________________________________________________________
The Huffinton Post
Charles Whittington's essay, which can be seen in full here, was also published in the Community College of Baltimore County's campus newspaper. In the essay, Whittington, a former infrantryman, wrote that "war is a drug," and that "killing becomes a drug, and it is really addictive:"
To this day, I still feel the addictions running through my blood and throughout my body, but now I know how to keep myself composed and keep order in myself, my mind. War does things to me that are so hard to explain to someone that does not go through everything that I went through. That's part of the reason why I want to go back to war so badly, because of this addiction.According to the Baltimore Sun, Whittington received an A for the essay from his teacher, who encouraged him to publish the piece. But after it appeared in the campus paper last month, Whittington was told by school officials that he would not be allowed on campus until he had a psychological evaluation.
Whittington told the Sun that his violent impulses are controlled by counseling and medication.
Community College of Baltimore County spokeswoman Hope Davis said that the school was acting in the interest of safety. "When you look in the era of post-Virginia Tech and the content and the nature that he wrote about in the article, it caused us concerns," she told CNN.
Whittington's psychological evaluation is scheduled for Tuesday.
What do you think? Is the school in the wrong? Or did they do the right thing? Weigh in below.
11.23.2010
Powerful Palin
By Frank Rich
With Murdoch, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity on her side, Sarah Palin hardly needs the grandees of the so-called Republican establishment. They know it and flail at her constantly.
Unnamed “party elders” were nearly united in wanting to stop her, out of fear that she’d win the nomination and then be crushed by Obama.
Their complaints are seconded daily by Bush White House alumni like Karl Rove, Michael Gerson, and Mark McKinnon, who said recently that Palin’s “stock is falling and pretty rapidly now” and that “if she’s smart, she does not run.”
This is either denial or wishful thinking. The same criticisms that the Bushies fling at Palin were those once aimed at Bush.
Someone with a slender résumé, a lack of intellectual curiosity and foreign travel, a lazy inclination to favor from-the-gut improvisation over cracking the briefing books. These spitballs are no more likely to derail Palin within the G.O.P. than they did him.
As Palin has refused to heed these patrician Republicans, some of them have gotten so testy they sound like Democrats.
Peggy Noonan called her a “nincompoop” last month, and Susan Collins, the senator from Maine, dismissed her as a “celebrity commentator.” Rove tut-tutted Palin’s TV show, “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” for undermining her aspirations to “gravitas.”
These insults just play into Palin’s hands, burnishing her image as an exemplar of the “real America” battling the snooty powers-that-be. To serve as an Andrew Jackson or perhaps George Wallace for the 21st century, the last thing she wants or needs is gravitas.
It’s anti-elitism that most defines angry populism in this moment. Populist rage on the right is aimed at the educated, not the wealthy. The Bushies and Noonans and dwindling retro-moderate Republicans are no less loathed by Palinistas and their Tea Party fellow travelers than is Obama’s Ivy League White House.
When Palin mocks her G.O.P. establishment critics as tortured, paranoid, sleazy and a “good-old-boys club,” she pays no penalty for doing so. The more condescending the attacks on her, the more she thrives.
This same dynamic is also working for her daughter Bristol, who week after week has received low scores and patronizing dismissals from the professional judges on “Dancing with the Stars” only to be rescued by populist masses voting at home.
Revealingly, Sarah Palin’s potential rivals for the 2012 nomination have not joined the party establishment in publicly criticizing her. They are afraid of crossing Palin and the 80 percent of the party that admires her.
So how do they stop her? Not by feeding their contempt in blind quotes to the press — as a Romney aide did by telling Time’s Mark Halperin she isn’t “a serious human being.”
Not by hoping against hope that Murdoch might turn off the media oxygen that feeds both Palin’s viability and News Corporation’s bottom line.
Sooner or later Palin’s opponents will instead have to man up — as Palin might say — and actually summon the courage to take her on mano-a-maverick in broad daylight.
Short of that, there’s little reason to believe now that she cannot dance to the top of the Republican ticket when and if she wants to.
11.17.2010
America, Meet The Israeli Settlers
Abuses against the Palestinian people by Israeli Settlers
Keep your anger in check as you watch. It is important to know what is going on in this part of the world.
Keep your anger in check as you watch. It is important to know what is going on in this part of the world.
“To understand everything is to forgive everything” - Buddha
Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. - Plato
14If you forgive others for the wrongs they do to you, your Father in heaven will forgive you. 15But if you don’t forgive others, your Father will not forgive your sins.
Matthew 6:14-15
Caution: strong language, violence
Israel's murderous attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla has served to focus international attention on its longstanding, immoral siege of Gaza. Since the election of Hamas in 2007, Israel has tightened its hold on Gaza's borders, blocking essential goods from entering and Gazan products from leaving, effectively destroying Gaza's economy. Eight out of ten Gazans depend on international food aid to survive, and ninety-five per cent of its drinking water fails to meet safety standards for consumption. Seventy per cent of the population suffers from food insecurity. Thirteen per cent of the children of Gaza suffer stunted growth from malnutrition.
Do American liberals care about the fact that Gaza is a concentration camp? Some do. Some criticize Israel. But the prevailing image that continues to dominate is that of the vulnerable Jew, the perennial victim. Liberals are complicit in this myth.
The ostracism of Helen Thomas, the doyenne of the White House press corps, over her comment that Jews should “get the hell out of Palestine” and “go home” to Poland, Germany, America and elsewhere is revealing in several ways.
In spite of an apology, the 89-year-old has been summarily retired by the Hearst newspaper group, dropped by her agent, spurned by the White House, and denounced by long-time friends and colleagues.
Ms Thomas earned a reputation as a combative journalist, at least by American standards, with a succession of administrations over their Middle East policies, culminating in Bush officials boycotting her for her relentless criticisms of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
But the reaction to her latest remarks suggest that, if there is one topic in American public life on which the boundaries of what can and cannot be said are still tightly policed, it is Israel.
It is true, as she says, that Palestine was occupied and the land taken from the Palestinians by Jewish immigrants with no right to it barring a Biblical title deed.
But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter.
But Ms Thomas did apologize and, after that, a line ought to have been drawn under the affair -- as it surely would have been had she made any other kind of faux pas. Instead, she has been denounced as an anti-Semite, even by her former friends.
The reasoning of one, Lanny Davis, counsel to the White House in the Clinton administration, was typical. Mr. Davis, who said he previously considered himself “a close friend”, asked whether anyone would be “protective of Helen's privileges and honors if she had been asking Blacks to return to Africa, or Native Americans to Asia and South America, from which they came 8,000 or more years ago?”
It is that widely accepted analogy, appropriating the black and Native American experience in a wholly misguided way, that reveals in stark fashion the moral failure of American liberals.
In their blindness to the current relations of power in the U.S., most critics of Ms Thomas contribute to the very intolerance they claim to be challenging.
Ms Thomas is an Arab-American, of Lebanese descent, whose remarks were publicized in the immediate wake of Israel’s lethal commando attack on a flotilla of aid ships trying to break the siege of Gaza.
Unlike most Americans, who were half-wakened from their six-decade Middle East slumber by the killing of at least nine Turkish activists, Ms Thomas has been troubled by the Palestinians’ plight for much of her long lifetime.
She was in her late twenties when Israel ethnically cleansed three-quarters of a million Palestinians from most of Palestine, a move endorsed by the fledgling United Nations.
She was in her mid-forties when Israel took over the rest of Palestine and parts of Egypt and Syria in a war that dealt a crushing blow to Arab identity and pride and made Israel a favored ally of the U.S.
In her later years she has witnessed Israel’s repeated destruction of Lebanon, her parents’ homeland, and the slow confinement and erasure of the neighboring Palestinian people.
Both have occurred under a duplicitous American “peace process” while Washington has poured hundreds of billions of dollars into Israel’s coffers.
It is therefore entirely understandable if, despite her own personal success, she feels a simmering anger not only at what has taken place throughout her lifetime in the Middle East but also at the silencing of all debate about it in the U.S. by the Washington elites she counted as friends and colleagues.
While she has many long-standing Jewish friends in Washington -- making the anti-Semite charge implausible -- she has also seen them and others promote injustice in the Middle East.
Doubtless she, like many of us, has been exasperated at the toothless performance of the press corps she belongs to in holding the White House to account in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon and Israel-Palestine.
It is with this context in mind that we can draw a more fitting analogy. We should ask instead:
How harshly should Helen Thomas be judged were she a black professional who, seeing yet another injustice like the video of Rodney King being beaten to within an inch of his life by white policemen, had said white Americans ought to “go home to Europe”?
This analogy accords more closely with the reality of power relations in the U.S. between Arabs and Jews. Ms Thomas is not a representative of the oppressor white man disrespecting the oppressed black man, as Mr. Davis suggests.
She is the oppressed black man hitting back at the oppressor. Her comments shocked not least because they denied an image that continues to dominate in modern America of the vulnerable Jew, a myth that persists even as Jews have become the most successful minority in the country.
11.09.2010
MLK: "Why I Am Opposed to the War in Vietnam."
"Let me say finally that I oppose the war in Vietnam because I love America. I speak out against this war, not in anger, but with anxiety and sorrow in my heart, and, above all, with a passionate desire to see our beloved country stand as the moral example of the world. I speak out against this war because I am disappointed with America. And there can be no great disappointment where there is not great love. I am disappointed with our failure to deal positively and forthrightly with the triple evils of racism, economic exploitation, and militarism. We are presently moving down a dead-end road that can lead to national disaster. America has strayed to the far country of racism and militarism." -Martin Luther King Jr.
Capitialism's War on Education
By Charles Sullivan
There is a widespread notion among neoconservatives, neoliberals, and civil libertarians that government is the enemy of the people. Many people believe that government is incapable of serving the public, that it is incapable of doing good.
This attitude owes more to propaganda than truth. After all, government grudgingly provided social security, the minimum wage, Medicare and Medicaid, and it restrained corporate power.
This came as a response to social unrest fostered by social agitators, but it was not enough. Government that serves the needs of the people rather than corporate interests is good government.
The problem isn’t big government. It's the merging of corporations and big business with government and the philosophical system that engenders it: the market fundamentalism spawned by rapacious capitalism.
When corporations, which are motivated by profit rather than regard for the public welfare, merge with government, people are removed from the equation and they are replaced by capital.
Thus money is equated with free speech and corporations are given the rights of human beings without the social and moral responsibility of citizenship. This is what capitalism does. Free markets are not an expression of democracy; they are a manifestation of corporate fascism and belligerence.
Ideally, from a purely capitalist perspective, corporations socialize costs and privatize profits. We saw this policy in action with the public bailout of banks deemed too big to fail. There will be more bailouts, many more, to come. And there will be millions more foreclosures that leave people living in the streets.
Earlier in American history capitalism produced fabulous wealth for a few at the expense of the many through the institution of chattel slavery.
Ever since the emancipation of the slaves, multinational corporations and the captains of industry have sought to recapture those glorious days of prosperity when plantations dotted southern landscapes and the crack of bull whips and screams of agony filled the air.
To the capitalist ear, that was the sound of fortunes being made via free labor, socialized cost, and privatized profit. The high priests of capital on Wall Street are pining for a return to the plantation.
11.07.2010
On Being Gay In The Eastern Orthodox Church
ON BEING ORTHODOX AND GAY
By Nicholas Zymaris
May 1997
Christ is Risen! Truly He is Risen!
"You're gay and Orthodox? How could you possibly reconcile the gay lifestyle
with Orthodoxy?"
Have you ever heard anyone say this? All too often, we see this sentiment
expressed; the implication is that this "lifestyle" is so heinous that it
should be self-evident that it cannot be compatible in any way with our faith;
the phenomenon is found in most other denominations as well.
I don't see what seems so strange about being gay and Orthodox. It is hardly
a new thing for Orthodox to be gay; if you talk to actual gay people you will
see that this is not something chosen, but an innate thing which is
discovered. To throw around terms like "the gay lifestyle" is best left to
the fundamentalists who don't know any better. To the general population, it
evokes images of evil rituals, orgiastic back rooms, and the like, and
encourages the mistreatment of gay people.
What is the reality? What is the typical "gay lifestyle"? The typical gay
person gets up in the morning, has breakfast, goes to work (or church if
it is Sunday or a feastday, and he/she is Orthodox), comes home, does the
laundry, errands, etc.; if he or she goes to a bar, chances are it's to do
nothing more than chat with some friends. Yes, some of us have sexual
relationships. Even though society fails to support the relationship as it
supports heterosexual relationships, life goes on; and I look in admiration
at the many truly devoted and loving gay and lesbian relationships I have
seen over the years. Whereas many a heterosexual grudgingly stays with
his/her spouse till the children are grown, then divorces when the
"obligation" is past, these devoted gay couples stay together for no other
reason than love and devotion. And there are many times when a couple loves
each other but is pressured by society, family or even the church to break up
because the love is of the same-sex variety. Some are encouraged to have
short-term relationships, or even one-nighters, because at least that can be
confessed, and is not "living in sin" like a committed relationship would be
considered. That is not healthy either from a physical or spiritual
perspective, and the fault lies in antigay attitudes of society and the
church, and the individual's internalization of same. Even in these
situations, despite the cause of it, there is still much tenderness and
goodwill shown between the partners, who often become lifelong friends (if
they are not ordered by their confessor to avoid the other on account of
there being an "occasion of sin"). It should be noted that for many gays
living in isolated areas, this is the only way to achieve any kind of human
contact with someone who understands. It's a fallen world and a fallen
situation, but by God's grace, sometimes good comes of it.
This, then, is the "gay lifestyle". To suggest otherwise is to encourage a
slander against our community which has gone on for too long, and by the
grace of God is beginning to lose its credibility, finally (Needless to say,
when heterosexuals cheat on their spouses, this is not condemned as "the
heterosexual lifestyle", but when one talks about gays, it is assumed that
every gay person performs uniquely evil deeds which no heterosexual does; "we
are all equally sinners but some sinners are more sinful that others",
especially if they can be rationalized away as some marginal group existing
only in urban gay ghettoes with their bathhouses and raunchy bars.).
Does our Holy Tradition oppose these things? Yes -- it opposes slander, and
has nothing bad to say about what the real "gay lifestyle" involves. If one
wants to cite extreme cases like that of Jeffrey Dahmer (or even the leader
of the "Heaven's Gate" cult, which the _Philadelphia Gay News_ reported was
strict in his celibacy rules owing to his being closeted and at odds with his
own homosexuality), then one would have to make the same condemnations of "the
heterosexual lifestyle" based on the fact that the great majority of
criminals are heterosexual, and most heinous crimes by far are committed by
heterosexuals. Heterosexual rape is also much more common than homosexual
rape. As you see, it is obvious that only prejudice could permit one to
condemn all heterosexuals for the sins of a few. Does not the same seem
obvious with regard to homosexuals?
Are gays inclined to molest or otherwise corrupt children? From the
statistics I've seen, 99% of child molestations are heterosexual, so when one
considers that 4%-10% of the population is gay, and an additional percentage
are bisexual, child molestation is up to 10 times as prevalent (maybe more)
in the heterosexual community.
Regarding our Tradition, it should be noted that much can be found
criticizing rape, pederasty and fornication. Fornication, like the Greek
"porneia" found in the New Testament and the Fathers, refers literally to
prostitution, and is extended in meaning to refer to forms of sexuality which
do not involve money payment but nevetheless resemble prostitution. It is as
relevant pastorally to gay couples as rape is to heterosexual couples. Even
St. John Chrysostom states, about Romans chapter 1, that "ou gar eipen oti
erasthesan kai epethimisan allilon, all' `exekauthisan en ti orexei auton eis
allilous' " (P.G. 60:417, col. 1, near bottom of the column). The part in
single quotes is a quote from Romans 1:27; the full translation of the above
being: "for he did not say that they fell in love [< "eros"] or had passion
for each other, but rather that they `burned in their appetite for each
other' ". Because of this distinction, St. John Chrysostom says they had no
excuse. If they actually did love each other, or even "had the hots" for
each other (an admittedly colloquial translation of "epethimisan") it would
have been a different thing.
It is obvious from Romans, in fact, that the sin was idolatry, and giving up
the truth of God for a lie, for which God allowed their errors to permeate
the rest of their lives; it strongly suggests pagan cults of the time where
men as well as women engaged in frenzied rites which were indeed sometimes of
a same-sex character (much like the Eleusinian or Bacchanalian mysteries),
which culminated in the men being castrated and thus literally "receiving in
themselves the penalty" for their error (Rom. 1:27). Again, how could one
claim that this is even remotely relevant to a loving gay or lesbian
relationship? Does the typical gay man today engage in frenzied rituals and
call out the name of various pagan deities as he castrates himself? Do
lesbians lacerate themselves into a bloody mess while dancing around an idol
of some fertility goddess (a very persistent and heterosexual form of
idolatry, I might add)? People dedicated to the slander of gay people might
want us to think this, but I'd rather pursue the truth. And please keep in
mind that these revelers in Romans chap. 1 "exchanged" the natural for the
unnatural; it should be clear that a gay person is already gay, and has not
"exchanged" anything; St. Paul is not only referring to idolaters, but to
people who are not engaging in same-sex activity out of love or passion, but
gave up what is in their nature (loving heterosexuality; they were
_heterosexuals_) to engage in depraved acts. The fact that these acts were
depraved and loveless is shown by St. Paul's and St. John Chrysostom's
description of how they got to doing such things. To say that all homosexual
acts are this way is ridiculous, however.
If one wants to cite I Cor. 6:9 and I Tim. 6:10 which condemns "malakoi" and
"arsenokoitai", I would advise the reader to note that "malakos" is an
adjective meaning soft, and is used to refer to a number of morally neutral
things; to use "soft" in a negative sense is hardly a condemnation of
homosexuality; as for "arsenokoitai", it is strange that this feminine plural
is used to condemn gay males; some even have taken it upon themselves to
consider "malakoi" as feminine homosexuals and "arsenokoitai" as masculine
homosexuals; they obviously don't know their Greek. St. John the Faster notes
that "some men even commit the sin of arsenokoitia with their wives" (P.G.
88:1893) so one can hardly consider it as something uniquely homosexual.
The first known usage of the word "arsenokoitai" (always a plural, by the way)
is in the apocryphal Sibylline Oracles (Oracula Sibyllina) where it is
prophesied that the arsenokoitai will come from the north and steal the
children. Kidnapping or child molestation, perhaps; a relationship it's not.
As for the Old Testament, the King James Bible's condemnations of "sodomites
and whores" refers to "qedeshim" and "qedeshot"; i.e. male and female temple
prostitutes, respectively. We know that service as a temple prostitute was
often forced, that the victims had to "perform" regardless of their gender or
inclinations, and that sometimes this involved castration or other
effeminization of males. It makes the condemnation in Leviticus of "men lying
with men as with a woman" make more sense; in a gay relationship there is no
imitation of heterosexual intercourse, and a man having sex with a man as with
a woman (i.e. vaginally) is a biological impossibility. Furthermore, why are
lesbians not mentioned, is this then permitted while male-male sex is not?
And the proponents of anti-gay uses of Leviticus don't care to observe its
other precepts on avoiding mixing of fabric types, seeds and the like. I
don't think even Orthodox Jews nowadays would check a potential synagogue
member to see if his "stones" have been crushed, another O.T. cause for
excommunication. Christ, of course, had no problem with eunuchs in the kingdom
of heaven, and the account of the Ethiopian eunuch's conversion is inspiring
to all. Why are we so selective, and ignore these O.T. rules if they can't be
made to apply to gays? Could it be simple prejudice and misunderstanding?
What about David and Jonathan in I and II Samuel? Such was their love for
each other than they exchanged their garments, their souls were knitted
together as one, and when Jonathan died, he was eulogized with the words "My
love for you was pleasant, passing the love of women". Doesn't this remind
you of another place in the O.T. where it is said "the two shall become one"?
And don't forget Ecclesiastes chapter 4 (KJV used):
8 There is one [alone], and [there is] not a second; yea, he
hath neither child nor brother: yet [is there] no end of all his
labour; neither is his eye satisfied with riches; neither [saith
he], For whom do I labour, and bereave my soul of good? This [is]
also vanity, yea, it [is] a sore travail.
9 Two [are] better than one; because they have a good reward
for their labour.
10 For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe
to him [that is] alone when he falleth; for [he hath] not another
to help him up.
11 Again, if two [men] lie together, then they have heat: but how
can one be warm [alone]?
12 And if one prevail against him, two shall withstand him; and
a threefold cord is not quickly broken.
What an eloquent way of describing the need for companionship! In fact, this
very passage is used by a 19th century saint who feared that his beloved would
leave him (see the life of Ss. Zosima and Basilisk, published by St. Herman of
Alaska Press, Platina, CA).
If one wants to cite Sodom, then just get out your online Bible and check
every single mention of the word "Sodom" in the O.T. and N.T.: it is very
clear what Sodom does and does not represent. Look at what Ezekiel and Our
Lord have to say in particular; also note that a mob gathering around Lot's
house shouting "Bring them out that we may know them" (Gen. 19:5) looks
awfully like an attempted gang rape; hardly relevant to a _loving_
relationship. And if that passage was about sexual morality, why is it that
as soon as the family escapes Sodom, being the only righteous there, each of
the daughters in turn get their father drunk and commit incest with him?
Shall we say that incest is permissible, heterosexually, because Righteous
Lot permitted his daughters to do what they did? (I don't think one can argue
that Lot was unconscious and did not know what happened; after all, each
daughter conceived, and this means that he had to be able to get aroused
enough to sustain an erection and to ejaculate, _twice_, which is difficult
for many a sober man with an adult, nonfamilial partner). Or shall we
condemn all heterosexuals because of this incident?
Also from our Tradition, it is right there in the Patrologia Graeca, that the
relationship between the martyrs Ss. Sergius and Bacchus was described using
the term "o glykys hetairos kai erastes" (sweet companion and lover; erastes
is derived from eros and has the expected meaning) (P.G. 115:1024B; i.e.
paragraph 15, which begins with "O synathlos de Sergios...")
It is not just one phrase either; read the whole Life of these saints and see
what you think.
If it was good enough for St. Simeon Metaphrastes, it's good enough for me.
By the way, this was not the edition that John Boswell used. There is a
faction of scholars who seem to suspend normal scholarly objectivity when it
comes to John Boswell, and dismiss anything that he has written. Having
talked with him, I know he made some errors, but there are some things that
the anti-Boswell faction tends to ignore:
1. Years before Boswell published anything on this subject, gay Orthodox knew
about our tradition. He did not invent the idea of same-sex union, but merely
made a wider audience familiar with it. The Protestant Metropolitan
Community Church has been doing what it calls "Holy Unions" since the late
1960's, and though they used to think they invented such a ceremony, we know
now that a union ceremony has existed since before the ninth century A.D.
And since all the editions of Adelphopoiia refer to Ss. Sergius and Bacchus,
it is safe to assume that their relationship was an example to those engaged
in similar relationships (their martyrdom was in 296 A.D.).
2. Much is said about Boswell's errors. We all know that he wasn't even
Orthodox, but most of the material he cites is Orthodox, and as he doesn't
understand it too well, he makes some errors, such as interpreting a
Trisagion as "Holy, Holy, Holy", where of course it is not a "Sanctus" but a
"Holy God, Holy Mighty, Holy Immortal, have mercy on us".
3. What the critics of the Rite of Brotherhood and of Boswell's work always
fail to adequately explain is: if these ceremonies are not for the blessing
of same-sex love, what exactly _are_ they for? The answer is invariably a
very jittery and unscholarly "We don't know, but it's anything but THAT!"
As you will see below, some of these critics constantly change their story as
to what the rite is, starting by saying it's a holy rite of the church so it
could never have anything to do with THAT; and ending up by denying it ever
existed, because they realize that it does indeed deal with THAT.
Critics of Boswell even chose to write two reviews of his last book a year
after his death, to "eulogize" him with slander in _Touchstone_ and
_Sourozh_, as well as an article in St. Sophia Quarterly, which had so little
of substance to say that it began by saying it found the picture of Boswell
on the back cover of the book to be ugly, and supposed that the university
scene behind him is to lend academic legitimacy to the book (actually,
Boswell was a popular history professor at Yale; why should he have pretended
otherwise?). There was also an article in the New Republic. All of these
articles cited lots of opinions, and had a few references; all theorized that
Boswell was mad to come to the conclusion he did; all of them repeat like a
mantra that Boswell is a terrible scholar whose work is worthless (if they
just came out and said that they dislike gays, they'd be labeled as bigots,
but this way they appear as "legitimate scholars"); none offer a credible
explanation of what the rite is, if not a same-sex union. One even suggests
that Boswell's work is terrible because the actual ideal for Christians is
some sort of super Platonic love which seems suspiciously like a homosexual
relationship without the sex; the imagery used by this proponent of total
celibacy among gays is surprisingly erotic; and it would seem likely that the
author is just another frustrated closet homosexual who sadly does not
realize that what he advocates does not work.
In 1994, shortly before Boswell's _Same Sex Unions_ book came out, news of
its impending publication was leaked to the Orthodox internet list at Indiana
University, which is dominated by fundamentalist-like Synodal (ROCOR) Russian
Orthodox, many of whom are actually recent converts from actual Protestant
fundamentalism and don't seem to have shaken it very well (As an example, one
of them admitted that he considered pastoral concerns "irrelevant" to
homosexuals and that most of his peers would rather that all gays just die off
of AIDS. Of course the gay community is not only not dying off, but
flourishing, despite all the obstacles people try to put in our path. There
are still, of course, plenty of gays in isolated areas who live in constant
fear of violence, estrangement from family and friends, and the like, not to
mention eternal damnation from the slightest thought about their orientation.
Truly, they are in great need of a little genuine pastoral support, not
phariseeism).
At the same time, a translation I made of the adelphopoeia rite (this is the
Greek name for Rite of Brotherhood, literally "Brothermaking") in 1989 was,
without my knowledge, scanned or typed into a computer with internet access
and entered into the discussion on that same list. I should note that my
translation was from Jacobus Goar's Euchologion of 1730, which is easily
available at many theological and university libraries in the U.S. and
abroad; it is not some recent invention of gay activists, nor is it
particularly inaccessible. It is and has been familiar to many researchers of
this subject in the U.S. and abroad, before and after Boswell's research. When
Boswell's book came out, he revealed that his research was also started when a
friend mailed him a copy of the rite from the same Euchologion. My interest
in this edition of the rite was sparked when an Orthodox bishop in San
Fransisco said he used Goar's text when his parish performs the rite (this was
in 1988).
Now, if it seems strange that "brotherhood" is used in a spousal fashion,
consider that the term has several meanings aside from this: brother by
common mother ("a-delphos"); (2) brother by common Father ("brother in
Christ"); (3) brother by common abbot (monk); (4) brother by common situation
("brother in struggle"), or (5) common race ("brother" in the black
community). No one disputes that one word refers to these different
relationships. Now look at the Song of Songs where the phrase "my sister, my
spouse" occurs repeatedly (So. 4:9-12, 5:1). Are we talking about incest
here? No, we are talking about fraternal terminology being used for a
relationship of eros between two persons not related by blood. The term
"brother" is also seen in the aforementioned account of the relationship
between David and Jonathan in I and II Samuel. Boswell has his own theories
on the use of the term "brother"; he considered it a synonym for "lover" among
medieval gay lovers; one might compare this to the term "warme Bruder" ("warm
brother") in modern German which precisely means a gay person.
To return to the discussion of adelphopoeia on the net, how did the Orthodox
on the list react to this? A few desired to look into it, and saw that the
rite's content did seem to suggest a same-sex blessing. The others at first
did not take this seriously, and used the standard argument I had heard for
years from most of those who knew about this rite: it is merely mutual
adoption. But wait, said the others, adoption is "yiothesia", not
"adelphopoiia", and canonists make an explicit distinction between the two.
Well, then, it must be a ceremony for two monks to do missionary work
together (where does the rite mention that? And they say Boswell was picking
at straws? Indeed the pot was calling the kettle black). No, said the other
side, it is specifically forbidden to monks, which makes sense since they had
to be celibate. OK then, it was a rite to pacify two warring kings, and they
cited one king who united himself with a rival. One advocate self-conciously
said that he realizes many will just think that they were too busy having sex
with each other to bother fighting each other; like "make love not war".
The anti-gay side was losing its credibility. Drastic measures were taken.
First of all, the list owners denied access to anyone they hadn't previously
screened; this was explicitly to weed out any gay-sympathetic voices.
Second, the new party line was declared: this rite never even existed; it
was invented by Paul Halsall (a professor at Fordham University) and Axios.
Third, all proponents of this view, especially Halsall, were to receive
physical threats by phone, private e-mail, and U.S. mail. Such Christians!
Fourth, a priest from a Serbian jurisdiction pronounced an anathema on
Halsall, which is strange since Halsall has nothing to do with that
jurisdiction (more to the point, the anathema was simply a smokescreen to
avoid dealing with the implications of the existence and use of adelphopoeia
in Orthodoxy). I was apparently the only critic of them who did not get
threatening phone calls and other forms of harassment, etc.; even a straight
professor who said he's against homosexuality but thinks one can't just brush
this under the rug got harassed. Those tactics prove that they had not a
foot to stand on. Their lie that the rite never existed after all was
made more ridiculous by the posting of the passage from the Pedalion
(Rudder), which even has a section devoted to Adelphopoeia; it is a
subsection of the chapter on Impediments to Marriage, and is separate from
and after the section on Impediments from Adoption. The commentary states
(this is not a canon but a commentary compiled by the Chicago businessman
Aristotle Makrakis; the original author may be St. Nicodemus of the Holy
Mountain) that this rite should be prohibited because it is the cause of much
abuses; it is against nature (you know what _that_ means) because adoption
creates a son not a brother, and we all know why people do this, to satisfy
their carnal desires. There, he said it. It's not just 20th-century gay
advocates who know about this, and it's not for monks, friends, or whatever;
it is for, as the rite says, "love not of nature, but of the Holy Spirit".
This love does not have biological reproduction as its end, but is still love.
But I am not merely relying on books. There are parishes both here and abroad
which have never stopped doing adelphopoeia, and know exactly what it is for,
particularly in Albania. Now, John Boswell knew many languages, but not
Albanian, but even he found some references in translation to what went on
there. I know Albanian, and interviewed Albanian Orthodox in 1991, when the
churches were just reopening after decades of communist oppression. In the
same year, there were rites of vellameria (the Albanian name for the rite)
performed in the Orthodox church in Elbasan. All Albanians I spoke to (not
Albanian Americans, I might add, who do not seem to generally be familiar with
vellameria) knew about the rite, but only the ones from Elbasan had witnessed
one. I talked with an individual from the late dictator Hoxha's birthplace,
Gjirokaster (also known as Argyrokastro, Greek for "silver castle") who gave
a simple but moving account of how Hoxha's attempts at promoting both atheism
and homophobia miserably failed; in his hometown people now practiced their
religion, and as far as the anti-gay violence and sentiments found elsewhere,
"that is unknown where I come from; everyone eats at the same table and those
differences don't matter". As far as vellameria and the fact that some
researchers in the U.S. think it is a gay marriage, he simply said, "Yes,
that's what it is for". No shock, no need to explain it away or make
elaborate theories to obscure the fact. Other Albanians had no difficulty,
despite their heterosexuality, with going over my translations, word for
word, of a number of Albanian gay love songs and giving their insights on the
terms. Not one of over 20 Albanians I spoke to about this was uncomfortable
with this, unlike most Albanian Americans who seem to have acquired American
homophobia in many cases.
(Note: the former communist government of Albania passed a law banning all
"marredhenie seksuale ndermjet meshkujve", i.e. "sexual relations between
males"; in the 1990's this law was repealed and homosexual relations are now
legal for males or females of 14 years of age or higher, as with heterosexual
relations; and there is also an advocacy group, the Gay Albania Association
[Shoqata], which was also legalized, it is located in the capital, Tirana).
In fact, the rite continues to be performed even in N.W. Greece, as the Church
of Greece noted in _Adelphopoeia from a Canonical Perspective_ (Athens, 1982).
(It was written by Fr. Evangelos K. Mantzouneas, the Secretary of the Greek
Synod Committee on Legal and Canonical Matters of the Church of Greece). An
English translation is available on the Axios website or via e-mail, as is
the discussion on the Orthodox list and other items I refer to. The author
links the underlying relationship historically with the Sacred Band of Thebes
(an all-gay military unit which required its members to swear they were not
"addicted to women"; it was the embodiment of the widespread belief that "an
army of lovers cannot fail" because the love would motivate them to ever
greater heroism and a desire not to be disgraced in front of their beloved),
as well as the _Erotikos_ of Plutarch and various historical manifestations
of blood-brotherhood.
However, the Christian form of the blessing of this relationship was distinct
(there was even an attempt to suppress the blood-brotherhood and encourage
the "spiritual brotherhood" in its place; see Aries, P. and Duby, G., _A
History of Private Life_, vol. 1, p. 596). Often, but not always, it
involved the pair receiving Holy Communion together. It caused an impediment
to marriage, and the pair acquired many legal rights including that of
inheritance. He cites the text of a contemporary (1982) rite from Epirus,
which is essentially the same as the Goar text; which he also cites. This is
a very Greek way of saying it without actually using the "G-word" (i.e. "gay");
the rite is still performed and we don't have a problem with that, even though
there were two local encyclicals prohibiting it in the Church of Greece in the
late 1800's (Fr. Mantzouneas admits, like all scholars including the Albanian
Eqrem Cabej, that these encyclicals were generally ignored and the rite
remained popular). Adelphopoeia is even a part of the secular Greek history,
and many of the fighters in the Greek War of Independence of 1821 were
adelphopoitoi ("united with adelphopoeia"); I'd say that if anything, this
helped them win the war, as homosexual love has been associated for millenia
with personal uplifting and the overthrow of tyranny (Plato said, in the
Symposium, that this is why oppressive governments like the Persia of his
time prohibited it, but Athens encouraged it. The same might be said of
modern-day Iran, though there are of course other factors also). Now, please
note that I am supplying these notes on pre-Christian and secular practice in
order to supply background information, and to explain such references which
Fr. Mantzouneas makes. I am not saying that Ancient Greece or Albania or any
other culture is an across-the-board model for what we should do today in
either the Church or society; but it is certainly interesting nonetheless
(However, I certainly think that the ancient view on gays in the military,
not to mention in society, makes a lot more sense than Colin Powell's).
A note about "spiritual brotherhood": This is the term often used to describe
the rite ("akolouthia eis adelphopoeian pneumatiken"), which of course refers
to the spiritual nature of the rite, especially as distinguished from blood
brotherhoods where actual blood was exchanged. Blood brotherhood was
performed by Moslems and other non-Christians, and was discouraged.
Christians (both Orthodox and Roman Catholic) were not to drink each other's
blood, but only to receive the Body and Blood of our Lord, which they did.
In countries like 19th century Albania where Christians and Moslems freely
mixed, there were all sorts of variations: Christian spiritual brotherhood
(with Holy Communion and no blood exchange), interfaith (Christian-Muslim)
marriages with blood exchange, and same-sex concubinage without ceremony
(This was reported by Paul Naecke in 1880 and is not to say that all these
relationships were approved of by the Catholic or Orthodox Churches in
Albania; he is talking about what existed in the society. However, spiritual
brotherhood was indeed common and was performed by a priest in church, and the
relationship was clearly conceived of as a same-sex relationship not excluding
eros; this applied to both male-male and female-female relationships. While
later in the 19th century the Church of Greece issued two local encyclicals
against the Rite of Brotherhood, one must ask why it took the church 19
centuries to ban something like this. It has been permitted much longer than
it has been prohibited). Spiritual brotherhood, moreover, was distinguished
by the phrase in it which stated that the couple's love was "not of nature
but of the Holy Spirit"; which I consider not only a wonderful explanation of
the term "spiritual" (it does not mean "non-sexual"; one should consider that
heterosexual marriage is sexual but is also spiritual) but a rebuttal of the
tired arguments about gay love being "against nature".
Adelphopoeia also was performed in Greece, Russia, Romania, Serbia and
Montenegro (Crna Gora) in the 19th century, and before that even in Italy.
However, in 19th century Albania it seems to have enjoyed a zenith of sorts,
and a number of Europeans note this with incredulity (especially the gay
ones, who left the Victorian era for what seems to be the same matter of fact
attitude that the modern Albanians I spoke with had). There were even gay
love songs, which were compiled by the ambassador from Austria-Hungary to
Ottoman Albania, Johan Georg von Hahn, in 1854. One of these was reprinted in
part (starting with "The sun...") in Havelock Ellis' _Studies in the
Psychology of Sex_ (1928); the translation of the full song from Hahn's 1854
compilation is:
(diacritical marks omitted for clarity)
S'gjen ndonji zok qi kendon, You'll find no bird that sings,
Te gjithe jane e po qajne. They all sit there [lit., "are" ] and cry.
I mjeri ashik sa fort po duron, The poor lover, how strongly he endures,
Prej dyllberit po e dajne. [For] they separate him from [his] beloved.
Dilli, qi len ne mengjes The sun, which rises in the morning
Si ti, o djal, kur me zallandise [Is] like you, boy, when you are near me.
Kur me kthen syt' e zes' When you turn your black eyes to me
Shpirt ment prej kres' mi gremise. You drive me crazy.
(lit.,"destroy the spirit and mind from
my head")
Author: Nechin of Permet, Albania, mid 19th century
(Translated June 1991, Nicholas Zymaris)
(Note: the terms "ashik" and "dyllber" are analogous to the Greek terms
"erastes" and "eromenos", respectively. Also, the gender of both
("lover" and "beloved") here is male. The dialect is Geg, with some
nonstandard spelling).
(See J.G. von Hahn, _Albanesische Studien_ (Jena, 1854) re archaic terms, i.e.
the verb "zallandis" and the derivation of "ashik"; there are also other terms
used for the beloved such as "xhan", which means "[my] soul, [my] darling",
and is still in common use today).
(This is only one of many songs which Nechin composed, and all of them were
about male-male love. Hahn states that he was oriented only towards males.
Naturally, the term "homosexual" (or the German or Albanian equivalents of
this word) was not used since the term was not invented until five years
later, by Benkert in 1859. But that didn't prevent the topic from being dealt
with, with terms like "ashikun le te gezoje" ("let him gratify his [male]
lover", from another song), or "manmaennliche Liebe" in German.
Incidentally, Hahn was a devout Christian who loved to illustrate Albanian
grammar and sayings by using passages from the Old and New Testaments in
Albanian).
This does not directly prove anything regarding what the Church should do or
has done, but is a refreshing change from the obfuscation and slander one
usually sees on the topic of homosexuality. And I fail to see how obfuscation
and slander can have any place in a Christian discussion, even though nowadays
an otherwise intelligent Orthodox writer like Fr. Thomas Hopko or the
(now-retired) Fr. Stanley Harakas can go off the deep end when it comes to
describing homosexuality (according to them, we are all child-molesters who
should be prohibited by law from working with children, and so forth).
There is also the common, more moderate view that gay people are not monsters
and in fact their orientation is more or less morally neutral; however God
help them if they act on it. It assumes that all gay people must, without
exception, never have a relationship and be totally celibate, even when one
cannot avail oneself of the benefits of either marriage or monasticism.
Both from my own experience and the experience of many others, such a view
encourages the fragmentation and compartmentalization of personality. It
literally makes one sick, physically and mentally. Look at the dismal record
of the group Courage, as well as the various 12-step anti-gay groups around
the country; their members have a very high AIDS rate (the NY chapter of
Courage stopped functioning for a while because of this) and are generally
quite miserable. For those whom God has given the grace (charis) to live in
celibacy, such techniques may work. But it is not for most people. We
realize this with straights, and don't begrudge them marriage. For gays,
attempts to totally suppress their orientation lead to misery and
promiscuous, desperate "acting out" when they can't stand it anymore. These
situations are not likely to be conducive to either physical (i.e. re STD's)
or spiritual safety. One expends all one's energy dealing with sexual
issues, and perhaps thinks one has accomplished a great work when having some
small "success" in this, where actually one's spiritual life is impoverished,
because one has no time or energy to deal with any other topic. Orthopraxia
should derive from sound theology; simply spending one's whole life
desperately trying not to masturbate or have any kind of sex or permit
thoughts of same is a little sad (and difficult, because such a person is
made to constantly think about sex by the anti-gay "pelvic theologians" who
are obsessed with the topic and thus expect everyone else also to be obsessed
about it. The end result of this is misery and separation from the life of
the Church as the confessor sees that the penitent is unable to stop having or
thinking about sex; so he is denied the life-giving sacraments of the Church.
If he realizes that it is better to have a committed relationship, he is
shunned for "living in sin". No matter what he does, he is criticized.
To conclude, it should be said that gay people should not have to waste years
of their life being tormented by the idea that their God-given capacity to
love is a sin to be utterly suppressed. As fallen human beings, gay people
can and do sin in many ways, sexually and otherwise, as do heterosexuals. But
we sin because we are fallen humans, not because we are gay. No one in his
right mind would suggest that heterosexuals are sinful by virtue of their
heterosexuality; if one cheats on one's spouse or otherwise sins sexually, the
sin is not due to whether a male or female has been wronged; it is precisely
because someone has been wronged. God calls us to love our neighbor, and this
applies to all relationships and all people. Our Lord said "God is love"; we
should not be so quick to judge a particular form of love as bad. Indeed, the
criterion to use in looking at various relationships should be whether true
love (of whatever form, erotic or not) is present. If love is not present,
then and only then can the moralists talk about something "unnatural",
especially when their harsh antigay attitudes dismiss the idea of a gay
marriage and actually encourage the very promiscuity which they decry. "What
God has joined together, let no one tear asunder".
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(Font: DEC Multinational; applies only to diacritical marks)
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