R.I.P. Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens has died. Already. No one can say he didn't rage against the dying of the light. But what a loss.

He was certainly one of the handful of writers who left a permanent impact upon my life. An extraordinary mind, a scathing wit, with a voluminous vocabulary. Compelling even when I believed him wrong. A fine exemplar of the pen as mightier than the sword.

His writing came at a point in my life, in my early twenties, when because of the environment I found myself within, I felt that my burgeoning thoughts about the world around me were in a distinct minority. When I knew no one who I could share my doubts with. He was an illuminating discovery for me then, along with a few other great minds, living and deceased, who helped me learn there was another way to look at the world, one which still roiled with majesty and meaning. Who shone a light into my life, and helped me to walk away from the darkness with the confidence that I was not alone.

Christopher Hitchens - 1949 - 2011.

Why Should a Muslim Community Center Be Built in Lower Manhattan?

After I linked to the twitter feed for the Muslim community center in Lower Manhattan, where the center responds to its critics, a friend on Facebook asked me to explain "why the mosque SHOULD be built in this location as opposed to somewhere else, when clearly whatever side you are on it is a divisive thing?" My response follows.

I think it should be built there for a number of reasons:

• Because it's not a mosque and it's not at Ground Zero, it's 4 blocks away
• Because some folks have drummed up fear around this being a Mosque (false) at Ground Zero (also false) where it needn't exist, so why cave into them? The community center location wasn't a controversy until some very radical anti-Muslim individuals began to paint this fictitious version of what it is to be (more on the real origins of this debate here on Salon)
• Because although saying it's insensitive and divisive for it to be there may be the most civilized argument being offered against it, that argument still sort of tacitly conflates Islam as practiced by this really pretty liberal Imam with the radical ultra-violent Islamicists, who attacked us on 9/11, as much for political reasons, as religious
• It's not really insensitive for Rauf to place his community center there (even if it were a mosque) because he's been working in the Tribeca area of Lower Manhattan for about 20 years, a long time before 9/11 - this fact is never mentioned by the folks trying to describe it as a "victory mosque" or whatnot because it would undermine their theory about why it's being built in the first place
• Rauf is precisely the sort if Imam Bin Laden *wouldn't* want building a mosque near Ground Zero because he stands against the violence of Bin Laden and actually encourage communication among the world's religions in ways Bin Laden would despise and denounce (read more about him here)
• The Constitution - specifically freedom of religion and freedom of speech. It's precisely because we don't want to become like Saudi Arabia that we allow a religious center to be built near Ground Zero (along with all the other religious centers, shopping centers, bars, sex shops and strip clubs), even tho we may not agree with every single thing that's going to be said there. In this way, we say, Bin Laden, no, you don't win.
• Many Muslims died in 9/11. They have as much right to grieve and memorialize the 9/11 event, as the rest of us Americans - a listing of Muslim victims on About.com

It's a sensitive subject, I know, so I appreciate that my friends on Facebook were able to engage in a civil conversation about it. But I think it's also a great opportunity for us all to engage in a great dialogue on the subject. It's the folks comparing Imam Rauf's building a community center to Nazis placing a sign at the Holocaust Museum - those folks aren't helping. (Looking at you New Gingrich!)

I think all the arguments above, by the way, can be made irrespective of political party or religious background.

So, in short: I don't think the center has to be built there either. But "there" isn't Ground Zero. And it ain't a mosque, but if it were, no big deal. We believe in freedom of religion. We don't throw in the towel or chuck out the Constitution because a bunch of nutjobs attacked us on 9/11. What an opportunity to prove that to the world.

I decided to post my thoughts on this subject here because I think this event has become a touchstone for so much of what's going on in the United States right now - especially in regards to 9/11, terrorism, and hostility towards Muslims and people of other religions and ethnicities - and I'd like to track my own thoughts on the subject.

Feel free to share your own in the comments.

Marriage, The Constitution & Religion

Some folks argue that California's provision against gay marriage is a matter of state's rights. That California has a right to uphold its Constitution, as declared by its citizens. Those folks are wrong. When we have gay marriage in all 50 states - and we will - it'll be precisely because it is unConstitutional for states to “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” That and the Declaration of Independence proclaimed each person's right to the "pursuit of happiness." Individual states have no say in what amounts to a human rights matter - nor should they. See slavery, segregation, suffrage, etc. The U.S. Constitution supercedes California's. That may not be recognized now, but I believe it will be in the future.

Further, contrary to what many folks say, allowing for gay marriage is not encroaching on religious territory; it is not trampling on line between church and state (which oddly some of the same folks aren't usually particularly concerned with). In fact, if you read about the origins of marriage, they were not religious. Marriage simply acquired religious accoutrements over the ages. Marriages began as a civil and legal affair, not as a religious affair and it essentially involved the the acquisition of women as property. Hardly admirable. Marriage has continued to evolve, however, into a more enlightened arrangement and the addition of gay marriage to the tradition is only another step in the right direction.

Read about the history of marriage in Wikipedia, where it's currently described as "a social union or legal contract between individuals that creates kinship." No mention of religion in defining marriage there.

Or try Merriam Webster if you prefer: "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law." Again, no mention of religion. Whatsoever.

See also, About.com on the history of marriage.

Pattern Recognition

This blog tends to focus on human rights, politics, and whatnot - all those serious, grave controversial subjects - as well as photography, literature, science and whatever else randomly strikes me.

If things get too heavy here, check out my Tumblr blog, Pattern Recognition: I make a concerted effort to keep it colorful, positive and entirely non-political. It consists mainly of quotes, which inspire me in the moment and photos of stuff which amuses or touches me, and which I've generally taken and uploaded on the spot with my cell phone.

I do write about politics and sometime religion on this blog pretty openly because I'm convinced that as a society we've made it a taboo to discuss the three topics we should probably be having the most dialogue around: sex, politics and religion. Because we're not always sure how to handle these subjects delicately and diplomatically and because some people can't engage in debate respectfully either without taking offense or quickly descending into ad hominem attacks, we've kinda thrown up our hands and decided not to discuss such things, unless we feel pretty safely that we're preaching to the converted.

As a result, in the 21st century we have

• Kids getting pregnant at 17 and then forced into marriage because their parents didn't want them told explicitly how their privates function
• Folks believing and fiercely defending the idea that Iraq attacked us on 9/11 and that Barack Obama is a covert Muslim/terrorist/communist/all of the above
• Folks believing the Bush administration engineered the events of 9/11 in order to justify its hawkish, pro-Democracy agenda
• Folks believing that our gay friends aren't deserving of the same civil and human rights as the rest of us
• Folks believing all sorts of other superstitious nonsense - often to the detrimental effect of the health and well-being of others

What part of any of that is any good? So I'm a believer in open but civil dialogue. Sometimes it might get a little rough and tumble, sometimes there might be a healthy injection of humor or satire, but, hopefully, it remains civil and respectful. Otherwise, we're just preaching to the converted. 

We all - liberals and conservatives, Republicans and Democrats, Christians and Muslims, and so on - suffer from a tendency to focus upon only that information, which reinforces that which we already believe.  To ignore that is to misunderstand the human condition. But it'd be nice if we could recognize that pattern of thinking and work to overcome it.  

P.S. I just added comments to Pattern Recognition. Like many, I love the minimalist approach to Tumblr, but I think the ability to comment creates more community.

Maintaining a Healthy Constitution

Seems Obama has offended the religious right with his irksome preference for Constitutional law:

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asks in [a 2006] speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is okay and that eating shellfish is an abomination. Or we could go with Deuteronomy which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount."

"So before we get carried away, let's read our Bible now," Obama also said to cheers. "Folks haven't been reading their Bible."

How refreshing to hear an American politician state the obvious. That it's the Constitution and not anyone's holy book that establishes rule of law in this country. Of course, Obama gave that speech two years ago, so I wonder if he'd speak quite so frankly now.

James Dobson, naturally, is incensed.

Google Bombing Scientology

According to The Guardian, hackers have been Google bombing Scientology by linking to their site via the phrase "dangerous cult." I would never, of course, promote such a juvenile use of the Web.

Child Bride

This photo by Stephanie Sinclair, a UNICEF Photo of the Year 2007, depicts an 11-year-old Afghani girl and her 40-year-old groom. Writing in Spiegel Online, Dutch writer Leon de Winter bluntly critiques the West's reaction to images like this one.

There are people who will look at this image and be able to continue with business as usual -- without disgust, nausea and rage. We are beholding the fiercest barbarism imaginable. But a carefree cultural relativism -- which this age has donned as its outward manifestation of decadent indifference -- allows many to simply look away. They turn away from the sight of an 11-year-old girl, who is about to be raped by the man sitting next to her.

The girl was sold by her parents, even if they probably wouldn't use that word. The caption that came with the photo quoted the parents as saying that they "needed the money."

De Winter points out that, at some level, this girl probably knows what is happening to her is wrong, but she also sees it as her fate. The man, on the other hand, is just sticking to tradition, which works decidedly to his advantage. He argues that we in the West have a responsibility, despite the trappings of political correctness, to do something about the situation.

Our eyes behold an abomination. Our eyes have learned to see the world from the perspective of a slowly acquired sense for humanity. And although more and more voices tell us that we -- the former colonialists and imperialists -- have lost the right to judge other cultures, we know just as well as this girl that this marriage is wrong. ...

Many of us in the West are convinced that our presence in Afghanistan cannot be justified, that our troops should withdraw and that Afghanistan should be left to the Afghans. They ask themselves: Who are we to believe that it is inhumane to sell an 11-year-old girl? Who are we to impose our values so vehemently on the Afghans, on this man and on this girl?

I don't have a clue who we are. But I know that this universe is not only a universe of iPods, Disneylands, CO2 penalties, tax write-offs, and New Year's sales in our department stores. No, I know that this is also a universe of human rights. I know that this universe is deeply shaken -- right down to its core -- by the suffering of this lonely, lonely little girl.

Elsewhere, I find that De Winter supported the invasion of Iraq. I can't agree that we should invaded Iraq, and I still don't believe we did it in the name of human rights. That's a revisionist history the Bush administration sold us after they failed to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. But I do agree that if we're in Afghanistan, and ostensibly rebuilding that country, we should be doing all we can to maintain the rights of the people living there.

For the same reason, I find myself in the unenviable and unpopular position of being against the war in Iraq, but also against leaving any time soon. We should never have gone there in the first place, but we created the mess that's over there; we should be ashamed to leave it for the Iraqis to clean up. In other words, there's is a price to pay for the Bush administrations ineptitude. I don't think we can in good conscience create such a problem, then simply walk away, complaining about how the Iraqi leadership should've gotten their act together. We, as a country, voted for Bush - twice - and we should take the consequences that came with his administration's barbaric response to 9/11. Iraq isn't an iPod that fickle Americans can return because they decided they couldn't afford it after all. We have our starter marriages, we flip houses, we get liposuction instead of dieting and exercising. We want the quick fix. It's in our DNA. Well, that attitude will mean tragedy for Iraq.

I understand how some could perceive thoughts like this as a sort of 21st Century White Man's Burden. But I'm not suggesting we change people's cultures, that we make them all speak English and read the Bible. And I'm certainly not suggesting that we invade every country that has what we perceive to be human rights violations. Butt what do we do? Where do we draw the line? Do we ignore every transgression, equipped with the cloudy strain of moral relativism that de Winter angrily describes? Or do we decide as humans beings (not Americans, not Caucasians, not Christians) what the essential human rights are? I think so. And then we strenuously defend them.

One simple way to do that would be to support UNICEF.

American Taliban

Rolling Stone recently featured an article entitled "Teenage Holy War" about 45-year-old Christian youth crusader Ron Luce. There's a lot of material in the article that's cause for concern, but this scene positively sent a shiver down my spine.

Luce ends his rallies with an illustration from the Book of Judges: the story of a man who, after he gives over his concubine to be gang-raped, kills the disgraced woman and cuts her into twelve pieces, then sends one to each of the tribes of Israel as a reminder of what happens to the ungodly. For a finale, Luce or one of his junior pastors dissects a mannequin labeled "with the sins of secularism and then - to the cheer "Cut up the concubine!" -- sends his assistants into the crowd to distribute the pieces.

In Cleveland, one sensible fourteen-year-old boy snorted at the sight of a girl hugging her prize, a naked male torso labeled PORN. "Imagine carrying that home," he whispered. Thousands of kids had envisioned it; they shrieked for the prize of the head. Such teens are likely prospects to join the 800 interns who pay $7,800 a year, plus mission fees, to attend Luce's Honor Academy.

Why is it that these extremists call themselves Christians but frequently reach for the Old Testament's grimmer, more anti-human segments to support their points? [cc: Fred Phelps] Don't they recognize that, whatever little we know about Jesus Christ, we do know that he clearly repudiated Old Testament law? And that when presented with a prostitute, traditions says his response was to tell the surrounding crowd, "Let he who is without sin cast the first stone"?

How can these guys claim to be Christians, when they're clearly ignoring Christ's teachings and reaching for the most decrepit teachings to support their blood lust?

4000 kids attended that single rally.

Here's the whole Rolling Stone article.

Related:

Did you know there was a narrowly averted terrorist attack on American soil within the last couple of weeks? No? That's because when religious extremists attempt to blow up buildings in the United States, we don't refer to them as terrorists if they're just Christians trying to blow up abortion clinics. Nonetheless, such acts clearly meet the definition of terrorism.

Massive Hypocrisy

Yet another darling of the far right and opponent of gay marriage Ted Haggard has been revealed as a hypocrite, soliciting sex from a male escort. If he ain't guilty, why'd he quit?

I already knew Haggard as an astonishingly arrogant man from this interview Richard Dawkins conducted with him in The Root of All Evil, a documentary that'll never see the light of American commercial TV over here. Of course, Dawkins owns quite an arrogant streak himself. But he ain't out there telling people what they can and can't do in their own bedrooms, whilst making the very whoopy he decries himself.

------

"There is part of my life that is so repulsive and dark that I've been warring against it all of my adult life." - Ted Haggard in a letter of apology to his church.

Even in his eventual confession, Haggard speaks only with contempt and a visceral disgust for homosexuality. It's sad that because of the indefensible beliefs which have infected his mind, beliefs which run rampant in our society, this man will probably never be a fully integrated human being. If he didn't do so much to hurt other gay people, it'd be even easier to feel sympathy for him.

Also makes you wonder when some young guy's gonna out Fred Phelps.