Waiting and hoping for a miracle

May 29, 2012 progressive living No comments

Kelly and me in the Green Room of the Ed Shultz Show on MSNBC.

I have hoped for miracles before. Sometimes I’ve been disappointed, like when I could do nothing for my son as I watched him get sicker and sicker.

Then there’s my friend, Kelly Cuvar, who has had a rare form of cancer for 13 years. Pretty much everything about her is a miracle. Knowing her has made me believe miracles are possible.

Kelly has never been in remission. She is from Ohio (from John Boehner’s district, of all places), but she lives in New York, where she is able to get care for her disease.

But, she says, worrying about health care has caused her more angst than her cancer. What if she loses Medicaid? What if she had to find care on her own for some reason? What if the Supreme Court overturns the Affordable Care Act and Paul Ryan gets his way on Medicaid and Medicare?

Kelly and I don’t talk as often as I would like — we tend to keep up on Facebook and via e-mails these days. She’s pretty upbeat most days. Often, she’s downright irreverent. She has a right to be.

Kelly has said time and again that dealing with our broken health care system is more difficult than dealing with cancer. In most other countries, she wouldn’t have to worry about whether she would be thrown to the curb. In most other countries, she would get care. Period, end of discussion.

In the US, however, she never knows whether the doctor she’s seeing will stop accepting Medicaid, forcing her to find another doctor who will. Her well-being depends on which way the political, and lately, judicial, winds will blow.

Every decision she makes about her life revolves around her health care. It determines whether she’ll marry (she can’t now), where she’ll live, whether she can work (she can’t) … Just about every decision most of us make without thinking, Kelly has to make with an eye to whether it will affect her health care. Worrying about her care causes her more distress than her illness, Kelly says.

Kelly and I were fellow travelers along the road to getting the Affordable Care Act passed. We met in Washington, DC, when we both went there for rallies and lobbying. I carried my picture of Mike; Kelly carried her cane. We realized very quickly that we share a similar twisted sense of humor and the guts to speak truth to power.

When the ACA passed, Kelly and I were on the phone to each other, laughing and crying.

Sure, the law didn’t give us everything we wanted, but it was a start and we vowed to continue working to improve the system. We had won a battle, but there would be more and we knew it then. We would work for a public option, for the ability to buy into Medicare. Someday, insurance companies will have competition and people will be able to gain access to the care they need.

We didn’t believe we might have to start from scratch, though, and if the Supreme Court overturns the law, we’re back to Square One.

Kelly has cancer and I’ll turn 60 later this year. Neither of us has unlimited time. But neither of us is willing to give up, either.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides, Kelly and I will keep advocating for access to quality care for all Americans. Getting sick shouldn’t mean having to choose between bankruptcy and death.

If the ACA is upheld, Kelly will be able to buy insurance in 2014, as will others who have had cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, acne … all the things the free market has used to deny insurance coverage to people. We will be able to go to the doctor with the assurance that our needs will be met.

Some 20 million people will remain uninsured, however, and Kelly and I will continue to fight for improvements to the system. We may get tired because she’s sick and I’m old, but we won’t quit. I assure you, we’re in this for the whole race.

It may take a miracle, but Kelly and I have seen miracles; we believe in them.

 

 

Why is this still happening?

May 25, 2012 progressive living No comments

Before mountaintop coal removal and after.

Back in the 1960s, coal companies discovered they could get at coal seams more cheaply by blasting off the tops of mountains. This removes the land, or “over-burden” in coal company jargon.

It also removes all the trees and wildlife, pollutes the air and valleys and leaves toxins in its wake.

As the price of oil rose, more mountaintops were removed, sending a toxic sludge sliding down into the valleys to cl0g streams and kill wildlife.

People in the valleys began to see more birth defects among their children. In fact, a 2011 study showed that  babies born to mothers who live in areas with mountain top removal mining have a 26 percent higher rate of birth defects than the national average. The study also found the risk is 42 percent higher over the course of the study from 1000 to 2003, and 181 percent higher during more recent years, specifically for a heart or lung defect, which suggests that the effects of living near mountaintop removal sites may be cumulative.

Another 2011 study found the odds for reporting cancer were twice as high in the mountaintop mining environment as in non-mining areas in ways not explained by age, sex, smoking, occupational exposure, or family cancer history.

People have complained, people have sued, people have taken it to Congress, but nothing has changed. Big coal is allowed to devastate the Appalachian Mountains because it has the money to buy Congress and regulatory agencies. No matter what the residents of eastern Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia do, the mountains keep being blown up by coal companies.

Residents’ homes are shaken and weakened, valleys flood and dust fills the air, and the coal companies keep blasting.

Meanwhile, coal companies say they can “reclaim” the land. In fact, the law requires they do so. Perhaps they can bring in topsoil and replant trees, but the trees don’t grow well in the reclaimed soil, so non-native plants are sown to hold the soil in place and the original bio-system is gone forever. The streams are gone, animals have disappeared and people are sick and dying.

Coal companies also talk about “clean coal.” There is no such thing. It is dirty. It is messy. It pollutes.

But coal companies and oil companies can’t own the sun or the wind, so the politicians they do own refuse to invest in clean energy. Instead, they’re allowed to destroy the planet, mountaintop by mountaintop, waterway by waterway.

An entire mountain culture is being destroyed by the rape of the mountains for cheap energy, and no one seems to be able to stop it, although people are still trying.

This weekend, a group of West Virginia women will go to the state capitol in Charleston to protest the practice of mountaintop removal.

Army veteran and registered nurse Marilyn Mullens is leading the march. She and a group of coalfield mothers, daughters and activists will shave their heads to “call out the bald face complicity of Big Coal-bankrolled state politicians and the denial of the devastating health and human rights violations in coal mining communities,” AlterNet’s Jeff Biggers reports.

Like Big Oil, the arrogance of the coal companies and the politicians and regulators they have bought is hard to stomach. Their short-sighted pursuit of profits is destroying ecosystems that can’t be replaced or recreated. It won’t stop unless we the people take back our government from corporate control.

 

 

 

Where’s the thanks?

May 24, 2012 progressive living No comments

Imagine being yanked from your home and family for a year at a time, three, four, or even five times, shipped to a war zone where you never know who might be trying to kill you and having to kill other human beings just to stay alive. You watch friends die, see children maimed, witness suffering all around you.

Then you come home and you’re expected to pick up where you left off.

Of course, the more deployments you have, the more difficult it is to return to a “normal” life.

I know how it was for my contemporaries who served in Vietnam and they only served one tour for the most part. They had nightmares. One vet in his 50s told me he hadn’t slept through the night since he came home. A friend’s brother insisted on sleeping under his bed for months. Any loud noise would set off a panicked reaction.

I can’t imagine what it must be like to endure that four times.

The war in Afghanistan is the longest in our nation’s history, and never have we waged a war with such a small percentage of our young men and women carrying on the fight. They’re coming back with post-traumatic stress disorder and major depression, traumatic brain injuries, missing limbs … and we’re not caring for them, even though the promise of care was something they were counting on when they signed up to fight.

Now, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has concluded that the Department of Veterans Affairs’ treatment of vets with psychiatric illnesses is so bad it’s unconstitutional.

Two groups, Veterans United for Truth and Veterans for Common Sense, brought the suit against the Veterans’ Administration, charging that veterans returning from war aren’t getting the care they need and are committing suicide at alarming rates as a result.

In fact, more than half of all veterans treated by the VA since 2002 have psychiatric issues — some 330,000 so far, according to Veterans for Common Sense. And there’s plenty more out there waiting, not to mention the fortunate few who have health insurance that will cover what they need.

About one-third of the veterans who commit suicide are under the VA’s care. When they call asking for help, they’re met with wait times that stretch into weeks, and the times are getting longer. They can’t even make a case for expedited care because the VA doesn’t have the capacity to deal with all of them.

But the three judges, one of whom was appointed by Ronald Reagan and the other two by Jimmy Carter, said veterans and their families have a constitutional right to receive care for illnesses and injuries sustained in the course of duty.

Here is what the court concluded:

The United States Constitution confers upon veterans and their surviving relatives a right to the effective provision of mental health care and to the just and timely adjudication of their claims for health care and service-connected death and disability benefits…their entitlements to the provision of health care and to veterans’ benefits are property interests protected by the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment. The deprivation of those property interests by delaying their provision, without justification and without any procedure to expedite, violates veterans’ constitutional rights. Because neither Congress nor the Executive has corrected the behavior that yields these constitutional violations, the courts must provide the plaintiffs with a remedy.

It’s not going to be cheap to fix this, but we have to try. In fact, men and women are coming home so broken that there’s nothing we can do to heal them, but we can’t let them suffer without trying to ease their pain.

Too many people talk big about supporting our troops, but they don’t want to end the war and they don’t want to pay for proper care. Well, it’s time to pay for what we’ve done.

This is what happens when we try to fight wars on the cheap, with borrowed money, while we cut taxes on the wealthiest Americans and rob the neediest Americans of programs they need to live. Our military people don’t come from wealthy families. Most of them joined for the benefits they were promised — health care, an education, job training, and a chance to defend their country. They can’t afford to pay for the care on their own.

We sent these people out, not just once, but up to five times. We have an obligation to fix what we broke.

 

Reminds me of 1968

May 22, 2012 progressive living No comments

Looking at photos of the demonstrations in Chicago reminds me a little of the Democratic National Convention in 1968. During that steamy summer, Chicago exploded as protesters gathered there to show solidarity against the war in Vietnam.

Once again, we the people are pissed off about our money being spent on wars abroad instead of people in need both here and abroad. Many of us see this as a gathering of warmongers. Veterans marched to return their medals and people  by the tens of thousands supported them.

While news outlets were describing the “hundreds” who came out to protests, we see pictures of tens of thousands filling the streets.

We see photos of unruly crowds, just as we did in 1968, but we also see people who are peaceful, who want nothing more than to express their thoughts in a land that boasts freedom of expression and freedom of assembly.

I have been to many demonstrations in my time. I wish I could be in Chicago today.

In 1968, we were told we couldn’t leave Vietnam because the Communists would overrun South Vietnam and then all the neighboring countries and then go on to conquer the world, known as the “Domino Theory.” It was “fight ’em there or fight ’em here.” Today that same argument is being used to keep us in Afghanistan for 11 years and counting. Terrorists will come and kill us in our sleep.

Well, the Commies didn’t show up on our shores, and if we stop meddling with the governments of the Middle East, the terrorists will have no reason to come after us.

War is a very profitable endeavor when it’s not your country that’s being shot up or bombed back to the stone age.

The most important difference between our most recent wars and the war in Vietnam is the lack of information Americans today receive about what’s really happening. Correspondents in Afghanistan have to fight to get any stories on the evening news. Reporters are “embedded” rather than allowed to go in search of the truth.

During the Vietnam war, we saw the horrors every night on the news. We watched as American soldiers torched villages where they suspected Vietcong soldiers were hiding. We saw a man executed by a gunshot to the head, we saw children lit afire with napalm. We saw our own gravely wounded soldiers loaded up into helicopters.

We aren’t allowed to see that now, because if we did, we would demand this slaughter in our name be stopped immediately. This war isn’t as unpopular at home as the Vietnam war was because we’re not seeing the destruction being wrought in our name. That’s how NATO wants it, and that’s why we have to stop it.

Average Americans aren’t being asked to contribute anything to the war effort except our sons and daughters, who may be deployed three, four or five times before they are too broken to be deployed again, unless, of course, they die.

Like Vietnam, it isn’t the wealthy whose children are going to fight. During Vietnam, the wealthy could buy spots for their children in the National Guard after they had run out their college deferments. Back then, the Guard didn’t deploy overseas; we had the draft to fill the ranks of the regular military services. But the draft is so unpopular politically we now recruit poor kids out of high school and promise them a college education when they get back — if they get back.

In Vietnam, the majority of draftees were from the working class. The wealthier you were, the better your chances for avoiding the draft, either through college deferments or medical deferments (I’m thinking of Rush Limbaugh’s anal cysts). It’s no coincidence that George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the chicken hawks never served in the military (well, George’s daddy got him into the National Guard, where we all know his record of not showing up).

Meanwhile, military contractors are lining their pockets with billions of our tax dollars. The rich are getting richer while the rest of us are getting screwed.

Is it any wonder Americans are crowding into the streets of Chicago to protest?

 

 

 

No, we won’t go back!

May 21, 2012 progressive living No comments

This is what the extreme right wing wants for women.

On the last day of the legislative session, the Missouri legislature passed a bill allowing employers and health plan providers to opt out of covering contraception or abortion in health plans if such health services violate their religious convictions. The bill also gives the state Attorney General the authority to sue any government official or agency that overrules the state law. The legislation,  modeled after the failed Blunt Amendment in the US Senate, passed the state Senate 28-6 and the House 105-33.

There’s no word yet on whether the governor will sign the bill into law, but things are getting worse and worse for women as state legislatures pass increasingly insane bills to limit women’s access to birth control, abortion — even basic health care services like annual exams.

What they want, apparently is to re-enslave women. No birth control, no abortions — they’ll just keep us so busy with pregnancy and child-rearing that we won’t have time or energy to challenge their authority. And we’ll be worn out before we’re 40 and dead before we’re 50 because they want to keep cutting our access to health care too.

There’s this in Missouri, the closing of women’s health clinics in Texas, the attempts at “personhood” laws, the bill in Tennessee that would make women prove their miscarriages weren’t abortions.

Next up? Employers will be able to ask you whether you’re using birth control and fire you for it.

These decisions are intensely personal and I don’t think anyone but the person who might get pregnant and the potential father of her child should have a say in them. My employer has no business in that decision, nor does my pastor or any state or federal lawmaker.

In a nation that is supposed to offer me freedom from your religious edicts, this is just nuts.

But here’s the thing. I grew up in a church that held many of these beliefs. Women were not equal to men, we were not allowed to teach men, meaning we couldn’t hold any position of authority in the church, we were to submit to the authority of men in all things.

We were supposed to welcome as many children as God would bless us with and vote the way we were told by our husbands. We went from our fathers’ authority to our husbands’ and then if we outlived our husbands, our sons or sons-in-law could take over telling us what to do.

This didn’t appeal to me, so I left that church. But now, state legislators are trying to impose those same religious views on women across the country.

The Establishment Clause in the Bill of Rights exists to keep this from happening. We aren’t supposed to be governed by the religious views of anyone, least of all a bunch of creepy old white men who want to re-enslave us.

We can fight this. All we have to do is get out and vote against these clowns. It’s time for them to go because their time is long gone.

We no longer live in Victorian times, we don’t need to be put on a pedestal. We need to be treated as equals, capable of making our own decisions about our own bodies. We, alone, own ourselves. Anything less is enslavement.

What happened to the Bill of Rights?

May 18, 2012 progressive living No comments

This week, a federal judge found indefinite detention to be unconstitutional, but this morning, the US House of Representatives voted to keep it anyway.

I mean, what’s a 200-year-old, dried up piece of parchment anyway when a terrorist might be able to light his exploding underpants on fire? The Founders never envisioned exploding underpants, did they?

We have to protect ourselves from threats, and if that means you or I might be arrested and held for months or years without charges, then so be it, right?

Wrong.

Benjamin Franklin wrote: “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” I love that quote.
For the last 11 years, we have tripped merrily toward a police state in exchange for that elusive guarantee that terrorists won’t be able to hurt us. We have entered two costly and immoral wars, killed or mailed hundreds of thousands of people and lost our reputation in the world as a people of justice.
We have given up our right to privacy by not forcing our government to stop following us and listening to our private conversations.
We have elected people who would trash the Bill of Rights in the name of safety and security, promising that each reduction in our civil rights brings us closer to that guarantee of security.
Well, there is no guarantee of safety, and taking away the personal freedoms and right to privacy that Americans have long enjoyed won’t make us any safer; in fact, it will endanger us more.
I’m old enough to remember the Cold War. I remember my mother telling me that citizens could report each other and people were arrested and jailed for saying anything against the state. Children reported their parents; you could trust no one, and that’s what the Communists wanted to do to us.
Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev said the United States would not be taken from without, but would fall from within.
What my mother feared is coming to be, although Communism as an enemy is long forgotten. Today we use the word “terrorist” to scare people into believing their security can be guaranteed if only they will give up their Constitutional rights.
We are headed in the wrong direction, heading merrily down the path to fascism, defined as: “the political movement, doctrine or system of Benito Mussolini in Italy, which encouraged militarism and nationalism, organizing the country along hierarchical authoritarian lines.”
Militarism and nationalism. Look around you; it’s happening, and indefinite detention without charges or trial is a good place to put our collective foot down and say no.

The myth of government dysfunction

May 17, 2012 progressive living No comments

By my friend and former colleague Matt Davies.

As a Supreme Court announcement on the Affordable Care Act nears, the volume on the rhetoric is rising almost to the pitch it was before President Obama signed the bill into law. House Speaker John Boehner is promising to eviscerate the law if it is upheld so that President Obama won’t be able to boast about success during the coming election season. GOP nominee Mitt Romney is denying he had anything to do with the Massachusetts plan on which the federal law is based. He now says he would work to repeal the ACA.

So, what about the good of the American people? Is our current “system” really worth defending? Are we really OK with more than 45,000 unnecessary deaths a year and hundreds of thousands of bankruptcies because of massive medical bills?

Big Insurance is fighting anything that will pinch its profits, and the GOP spin machine is talking about how the ACA will remove all control of their health care from people, and how the system will drown in an avalanche of paperwork.

But over here on the left with the ghost of Ted Kennedy, we’re talking about how to expand coverage, possibly to single-payer.

Here’s a little truth for you: Medicare spends 97 percent of its funds on direct services; health insurance companies are whining about having to spend 80 percent of the money they take in from customers on care. Why? Because of executive pay and bonuses, lobbying, advertising, marketing.

Here’s another uncomfortable fact for the right: Since 1970, the number of physicians has less than doubled, while administrators’ jobs have grown by about 3,200 percent, according to figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor statistics. Those administrators work for insurance companies and for doctors’ offices, mainly because doctors need so much help coping with the different forms, codes and requirements of each insurance company. In the US, we spend more than $700 per person on health care administration than they do in Canada, which has a national system.

About 31 percent of everything we spend on health care goes to this administrative mess, and the worst of it comes from the private sector. Under an improved Medicaid-for-all system, bills would go to one place; forms and codes would be universal instead of having a different set for each of dozens of companies.

If everyone has the same coverage, there will be no tricks to deny people coverage, such as denying a claim for a colonoscopy because it was done in a doctor’s office instead of a free-standing clinic.

Doctors and patients can make decisions based on the needs of the patient, not on what the insurance company will or will not pay for. The bureaucrats who interfere with doctor-patient decisions work for the insurance companies, not the people.

A nurse complained to me a couple years ago that she was on the telephone with a Medicare representative for almost two hours as they tried to come up with a code that would pay for what the patient needed.

I told her a private insurance company would have denied the care and hung up, and she agreed that likely would have been the case. The bureaucrats in the government might be somewhat burned out, but they aren’t eligible for a bonus just for denying you care.

We could save somewhere between 45,000 and 101,000 lives every year because we all would have access to appropriate health care, not to mention the money saved by managing chronic illnesses so they don’t become crisis care.

Insurance companies are spending billions to avoid letting everyone have access to care because there’s no money in it for them.

We are the only one of the so-called wealthy nations that does not see health care as a basic human right.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides in June, we all need to demand a better solution — one that puts people before corporate profits.

 

Yes, we do!

May 12, 2012 progressive living No comments

Amy and Lauren run Be Loved House, which ministers to homeless and poor people. They take no salary, but live on donations of food and clothing. They want the legal rights and protections that marriage offers. They were among the eight arrested Friday.

I cry at weddings. What can I say? I’m a mush.

But yesterday, I cried because a dozen of my friends were rejected when they asked to make the same legal contract my husband and I made 29 years ago.

The Campaign for Southern Equality sponsored a “We Do!” rally here in Asheville. More than 300 people, including more than a dozen members of the clergy, turned out to support them.

It was a perfect day for a wedding, sunny and warm with just a slight breeze. Spring flowers are in bloom and the couples were surrounded by friends and family.

The only catch was that they’re not full citizens because they happen to love people of the same gender, so they were turned away.

Amy and Lauren run Be Loved House in Asheville. They’ve dedicated their lives to helping people who are homeless.

Elizabeth and Kathryn have been together 30 years and raised two daughters. They were arrested last year when they tried to get a marriage license and then refused to leave the Register of Deeds office. They were convicted of second-degree trespass and fined. So they’re convicted criminals. I tell them often I hope to dance at their wedding on the day they finally are allowed full rights.

Elizabeth and Kathryn have been together for 30 years and have raised two daughters together. Their friends call then The Llama Mamas because Elizabeth rescued two llamas several years ago. They and their menagerie of animals live atop a mountain outside of Asheville.

“I hope I don’t need a walker to get to the altar,” Elizabeth told me. That was a few minutes before Kathryn stepped up to the microphone to sing “You are so Beautiful” to all of us who were there for them.

I told Elizabeth if she’s 90 and in a wheelchair, I’ll wheel her down the aisle.

I’ve known them for 10 years and sang with them in the choir for the first five of those years. I’ve prayed for them and members of their family as Elizabeth went through breast cancer and members of Kathryn’s family suffered the loss of a baby.

I’ve snuggled their dogs, petted their llamas and hugged both of them when they’ve been looked down upon because they love each other.

I think they’re two of the most beautiful women I’ve ever met.

And finally, Patrick and Mark. I met Patrick when he was executive director of the Red Cross chapter here. I was working for the newspaper and a former employee was arrested for stealing from the agency.

Unlike most executive directors caught up in something like this, Patrick took my call because he wanted to reassure donors that everything would be OK. In my decades of experience in the newspaper business, few executives had the courage to say anything other than, “No comment.” So I liked Patrick right away.

Mark and Patrick. I'm calling this their official engagement photo.Patrick spent his career working for nonprofits, including the Red Cross. They were turned away Friday when they asked to be granted a marriage license.

He and Mark lived several hours apart and were able to be together on weekends and holidays until Patrick retired earlier this year. Now they’d like to be married. I can’t see any reason why they shouldn’t.

I want people to see these faces and know these stories because these are real people who are being denied the right to the same legal protections and benefits I have, and the only reason they’re seen as legally less deserving than I am is because they happen to love someone of the same gender.

These are only six of the hundreds of thousands of North Carolinians who are the targets of the discrimination the voters of this state etched into their constitution this week. Look at their faces, look at the way they look at each other and then tell me again why I can’t dance (and cry) at their weddings.

 

A class in genocide

May 10, 2012 progressive living, progressive media center No comments

Muslim women break the fast of Ramadan. US soldiers have been taught by the military that civilian populations of Muslims are fair game for attack.

Future leaders in the United States armed services have been taught by the military that Muslims must be wiped out through “total war” before the terrorist threat to America is erased. In classes, they were told that the US needs to use “Hiroshima tactics,” killing not just soldiers, but entire cities and that civilian populations were fair game. It’s true that there are Muslims who hate us; it’s also true that there are Christians who hate all Muslims. Neither religion can boast the love for humanity that both faiths call for, but neither should be condemned as being all evil, either. The Pentagon has cancelled the classes, which were held at held at the Defense Department’s Joint Forces Staff College, but hundreds of young officers have been told that the official position of the US military is that Muslims are all terrorists, and that does real damage to our position in the world. If you want to turn more Muslims into terrorists, then treat all of them as terrorists. The problem here is that millions and millions of Muslims are peace-loving people who have no interest in killing Americans. The ones who hate us are led by hate-filled people, not by God. The same is true of Christians. If you are a Muslim child in a predominately Muslim country with no Christians among your circle of friends and family, you’re not likely to understand that most Christians don’t want to make war on you. We can be painted as villains because we are the unknown. Here in the United States, Muslims are in the minority. After 9/11, we tended to blame all Muslims for the actions of a violent minority and we punished those we knew to be followers of the teachings of the Prophet, Muhammad. But how many of us have spent time with people of the Islam faith? Until I covered religion for a newspaper in New York, I knew little about the faith, just what I could recall from a course in world religions I took many years ago. In 1993, I spent a day of Ramadan with the people of a small mosque in Chestnut Ridge, NY, and it turned out to be one of the most profoundly spiritual experiences of my life. I rose before dawn to eat breakfast and fasted all day, then broke the fast with my new friends at the mosque. The food was fabulous and the company even more so. After dinner, I spent the evening with the women, talking about faith and family, and it was there I learned the real meaning of sisterhood. The experience shattered my feminist delusion that women and men are really the same. We are different, but equal. Our two faiths are more alike than I had ever dreamed. We talked about God’s mercy and grace; we talked about our children and our hopes and dreams. We had much in common. As I rose to leave, one of the women called out to me. “I just want to tell you something,” she said. “The word Muslim means lover of God, and you, my sister, are Muslim.” I have never been paid a higher compliment. A few days later, as the story was about to go to press, a group of fanatic Muslims tried to blow up the World Trade Center. My editor asked me to call my Muslim friends and ask them about the truck bomb. “OK,” I said. “As long as someone calls a Christian and asks about David Koresh and the mayhem in Waco for the Easter story.” He didn’t think the two were the same. After all, Muslims are known to be violent. I pointed out the Crusades, the Inquisition and other well known examples of Christian violence, and he agreed to talk about how we might cover this without offending people. “We need to educate our readers that most Muslims are appalled by this,” he said. The solution was for me to call the Imam and talk to him about the violence in the city and allow him to condemn it, apart from the story on Ramadan. “These are not people who are inspired by Allah,” he said. “These are people who are inspired by earthly power.” The military officers who gave this class in genocide need to meet some of the Muslims I know, and the Christians who condone this hatred need to look into their own hearts to see the reflection of what they’re saying about their Muslim brothers and sisters.

Cry tonight, fight tomorrow

May 8, 2012 a world of progress, progressive living No comments

It’s been a long time since I’ve felt this frustrated.

A minority of North Carolina’s registered voters just robbed hundreds of thousand of people of their rights.

Our state constitution has been amended to discriminate against people who aren’t legally married all in the name of “family values.”

Now we don’t just have a law discriminating against gays and lesbians by denying them the right to marry, we have enshrined it into our constitution and in the process robbed everyone who isn’t married legally of their rights and benefits.

People who were insured by the employers of their domestic partners will lose their insurance benefits and their rights to any say in the care of the people they love.

Parents will lose rights to their children, and children will lose health benefits.

People who suffer domestic abuse will lose their protections because they aren’t legally married to the person who’s beating the crap out of them. Sure, they can charge their abusers with assault, but they won’t have the added protections they had this morning. No order of protection, no arrest if he comes back to the house, unless he beats her senseless again or succeeds in killing her.

Let’s be clear about this: Amendment One will cause people to die — from lack of insurance, from domestic abuse — all in the process of mixing religion and the law. Because nearly everyone who objects to LGBT relationships does so for religious reasons.

We in North Carolina have taken a huge step back. We have placed hate and bigotry into our constitution, and people will die because of it.

I’m sick to my stomach tonight. I’m going to have a stiff drink and a short pity-party, then I’m going to bed because I’ll need my energy in the morning when the fight begins anew.

I want justice, and I can be damned tenacious.

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