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 Ice
Cube 
 "Bush's
lame response to North Korea has made it quite clear that all he
wants is to invade Iraq again. North Korea may be more dangerous
in fact, but there's no oil there, and it simply doesn't figure
in the grand eschatological design of Bush's theocratic circle.
Pyongyang isn't even in the Bible!" "Word
comes that brother Cat Stevens refuses to lend his support to
our virtuous jihad. May this turncoat's Peace Train be laden with
explosives and rammed into the Mountain of Mohammed, peace be
upon him. "
 "'When
it comes to learning from its mistakes, corporate America has
fallen off the rehab wagon more times than Robert Downey, Jr.
A quick glance at last week's papers reveals that it's monkey
business as usual on Wall Street."
 "'People
are more aware of the world that they want to live in, and
now they have to realize that they can actually create that
world and fight for the things that are worth fighting for
and not feel apathetic. We are all going to die. There is
no point in holding anything back. ."
 "The
idea -- if we may use so flattering a term -- was that the
Pentagon would monitor the site and the betting, and thus
get a jump on terrorist acts to come. After all, as the theory
goes (and never mind the whole dot.com fiasco), if people
are willing to put money on something, they must have a pretty
good idea what they're doing."
 "Well,
well, well. President George was in one hell of bind when
it turned that that Saudi Arabia funded Al Qaeda, not Iraq.
Realizing we'd invaded the wrong country, Bush did the honorable
thing: he's come out against gay marriages."
 "Voters
are sick and tired of having their electoral choices severely
limited by a ruling class that has done everything in its
power to maintain the status quo -- including the latest round
of under-the-radar redistricting deals that make it all but
impossible to unseat incumbents."
 "There's
some thing in our psyche, this kind of right or privilege
to resolve our conflicts with violence. There's an arrogance
to that concept. To actually have to sit down and talk, to
listen, to compromise, that's hard work. To go for the gun,
that's the cowardly act."
 "The
music business is run by lawyers and accountants, and they
don't really care about the integrity of art."
 "In
a segment that seems designed to honor yet another one of
rock and roll's seminal yet fallen heroes, MTV just can't
help talking about why it, not Nirvana, mattered so much."
 "I
don't give a fuck about that. I feel comfortable being called
a punk band, because I feel that's what we came out of."
 "That's
an issue I'm dealing with here: what is going to happen with
this next generation of kids? What is their culture but media
culture? What hasn't been sanitized and homogenized?"
 "Even
though Sonic Youth grabbed Cobain by his hypodermic needles
and helped foist him into the spotlight, alterna-fans
du jour didn't return the favor when the New York noisemakers
lobbed this bottom-soaked missile their direction." |
by Ross Levine Lately, we've had an interesting situation unfolding down South, one that seemed to split the American public as thoroughly as Moses bifurcated the Red Sea. Back in the summer of 2001, Chief Justice Roy Moore of the Alabama Supreme Court "snuck" a two-and-a-half ton granite sculpture of the Ten Commandments into the courthouse lobby, and steadfastly refused to remove it even under orders from a federal district court judge. Although some have argued that the Ten Commandments are as American as apple pie, it does seem a little presumptuous to assume that all Alabamans shall have no other God but the one quoted on Moore's monolith. Moore appealed the judge's decision and lost, but still wouldn't 86 his "rock." In response, his fellow supreme court justices, some of whom are Republicans, suspended him, making it hopeful that church and state will remain two separate entities down in the "Heart of Dixie." The monument was finally relocated on August 27, 2003, a fact not to everyone's liking, of course; the judge has many advocates, some of whom have been holding vigils outside the courthouse, invoking the name of God at every opportunity, as if Christians were a besieged minority that the federal government was conspiring to persecute. Let us pray. Meanwhile, to the North, the U.S. Episcopal Church is now threatened with schism over its confirmation of Gene Robinson as the bishop of New Hampshire. Robinson is openly (as opposed to "closetly") gay, and the fact that the church hierarchy would approve a gay person's election as New Hampshire's bishop has some in the Episcopal fold talking about breaking away from the church leadership. This group, claiming the leadership is out of touch, wants to form its own "true" Anglican church, where any who publicly acknowledge their homosexuality will be unwelcome as immoral defilers of God's word. Again, let us pray.
Yes, it seems it's not only strangely garbed folks in the Middle East who believe they have a special relationship with God that elevates their beliefs above the beliefs of others. Perhaps it's the nature of religion itself, that, unless you believe your way is the right way, you are being false to the God you worship. In this respect, monotheism may have been a step backward for the human race (finally, something anti-Semites can legitimately blame on the Jews), since, when there's a panoply of deities, it's easier to tolerate a panoply of ideas, and let the gods fight over which are more valid. When there's only one God, you invite the tyranny of the "one way" mindset, with we mortals conscripted to do battle over which "one way" that should be. But isn't morality an absolute? I happened to be at a Bar Mitzvah the other day, and during a lull in the ceremonies, I flipped through my copy of the Torah (the "Old Testament," to those who believe there's a new one) and ended up lost in Leviticus, in the abomination department. According to the translation in question, adulterers, homos and "animal lovers" (literally speaking) deserve death, amorous siblings and men who sleep with menstruating women merit banishment, and if you plant a fruit tree, you better wait four years before eating from it (no punishment stipulated -- your tongue cut out perhaps?). Zealots, it seems, make more of some passages and less of others, while scholars and religious liberals pounce on every ambiguity in order to put a kinder and gentler spin on all the "thou shalt nots." Regardless of whether God wrote the Bible or employed rather chauvinist human males as ghostwriters, would it be possible to substitute it for the U.S. Constitution, and then run the country on this new power source? They tried it in Iran with the Koran and ran into some serious problems, which is why they've been slowly secularizing ever since. And you could argue that they tried it in the Third Reich, too. Hitler, of course, had his own "bible," Mein Kampf, also full of "crimes" punishable by death, and because Nazi society was based on inflexible, "faith-based" canons (faith in der Fuehrer, that is), a lot of people died with no rule of civil law to protect them. In other words, any "religion" or "religion-like" system, applied to a society where not everyone subscribes to it or is included in its tenets, wreaks destruction on those who either beg to differ or are pegged to differ. Whether our founding fathers meant to separate church and state, or were happy to mix a little God with their politics, the fact is that religion and government, in a heterogeneous culture, cannot be applied together. Look at Israel -- and I don't mean to be crass by bringing her up after mentioning Nazi Germany. Including the "occupied" territories, she's now about 40% Arab, and given that particular population's proclivity for large families, it won't be long before Arabs outnumber Jews. For Israel to maintain herself as a Jewish state governing a minority of Jews is democratically impossible. Either this Siamese society splits -- soon -- into two distinct nations, or an apartheid system must return to the world scene. The only other answer is for Arabs and Jews to live together equally in a secular state, but this would mean acknowledging that no nation, not even Israel, can run on faith. Given the circumstances of the country's founding, that's not going to happen until no living Israeli Jew remembers the Holocaust or its aftermath. But the fact is that Israel is not the Vatican -- it's not a religion's headquarters -- it's a diverse and diversifying nation that, sooner or later, will have to come to grips with its own inescapable demographics. Although it might be hard to accept that a nation founded and fought for by Jews after the world had abandoned them might lose its singular Jewish identity, it will be even harder to accept a Jewish government playing the role of a tyrannical oppressor. And now let's move on to gay marriage. No matter how hard U.S. liberals try to point out that a civil union has no religious ramifications, the majority of Americans continue to confuse the two. They seem to believe that if gays are allowed to get "married" in ceremonies sanctioned by government, the religious code that seeks to punish homosexuals as immoral is somehow eroded. To give homosexuals civil rights then, is to take them off God's hit list (let's be thankful the Bible didn't say anything about "darkies" or we'd surely still have slavery). The Bible, unlike the Constitution, cannot be amended, which, to my mind, renders it unfit as a document of governance. A person chooses to belong to a church and to accept that church's teachings. But because U.S. citizens have the right to freedom of religion, no religious belief system of any kind can be forced upon them. Civil law reflects a growing, changing society, and must be, to some degree, progressive. Civil fundamentalism is unworkable because let's face it, with a population of 300 million people of diverse origins, a one-size-fits-all government would make national socialism look permissive. Religions, on the other hand, can choose between a fundamentalist and progressive approach, but once some of the membership becomes too dogmatically rigid, the end result is inevitably spiritual mitosis.
Hence the Episcopalians are now a house divided. And while the Pope vigilantly struggles to ward off any tendency toward progressive change in his own house (if only he'd been so diligent in combating priestly pedophilia), the Catholic Church sacrifices thousands of members to the Mormons, Pentecostals and others whose vision of human behavior has at least inched beyond the realities of the 15th century. If the Episcopalians go into a meltdown over their gay bishop, what does it indicate except that their church is exercising an option -- schism -- that is not available to society at large; in society, schism is known as war -- just ask the Israelis and Palestinians. Are Episcopalians on either side willing to die defending or denouncing their new bishop? Probably a few fanatics are, but for most, this terribly "moral" issue is less about God and more about fear. Those against the bishop's confirmation have their imaginations working overtime -- they see their own sons cajoled into anal sex, and themselves turning into pillars of salt for standing by and watching it happen. Those supporting the bishop see no reason to reject one of their own simply because his mate happens to have a Y chromosome. Bishop Robinson may be just an excuse to call off a rocky marriage instead of trying to work it out for the sake of the flock. If you split up every time you disagree, if you claim the sky is falling every time it hails, you're left with nothing but an organization in which each regulation is more important than the vision that allegedly lies behind it. Which returns us now to Alabama, or first, to another Southern state, Virginia. In 1967, Virginia had a law on the books forbidding the marriage of whites to "coloreds" or American Indians. In order to do this, the state had to define these categories, which it did not shy away from, much the same way the genocidal masterminds at the Wannsee Conference came up with "workable" definitions for non-Aryans. The United States Supreme Court overturned the Virginia law, with then Chief Justice Earl Warren delivering the majority opinion (oh, Earl, if we could only have you back). He concluded with the following: Marriage is one of the "basic civil rights of man," fundamental to our very existence and survival. To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis...is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. I suppose until somebody discovers a specific gland or hormone that determines sexuality, people may continue to use the argument that, unlike race, homosexuality is a matter of choice, and therefore, subject to discriminatory legislation, as if it were akin to shoplifting. But the fact is -- and even the diehard conservatives know it -- the courts, especially in light of the Supreme Court's recent sodomy decision, as well as irrefutable trends beyond our borders, will be more and more hard-pressed to justify biased policies like "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" or the "Defense of Marriage Act" (hell, even Barry Goldwater came around), and that gays will eventually win their equality in the eyes of government, if not in the minds of all their fellow citizens. How various religions respond to this development is anyone's guess, but it seems fairly clear that not far down the line, a gay bishop will cause no more of a stir than an unruly child at a baptism. That is, unless the various religious organizations fail to stand up to their fundamentalist factions, and thus continue to maintain a repressive disconnect between the "word of God" and that of government. Now something tells me that Judge Roy Moore will not be coming out in support of gay marriage anytime soon. I think his misguided efforts to turn a public courthouse into a "Courthouse of God" make it abundantly clear that such changes won't come easy to Alabama. But the fact is, this battle has been fought -- and won -- before.
In 1925, a teacher named John Scopes was tried for teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom, which a state law had made illegal that same year (the law itself was not repealed until 1967, although the Kansas Board of Education saw fit to revive it in 1999). The famous "Monkey Trial" pitted the legal acumen of Clarence Darrow against the steadfast traditionalism of William Jennings Bryan. When Bryan himself took the stand, Darrow questioned him relentlessly on his literal interpretation of the Bible: Did Eve really come from Adam's rib? Did a big fish really swallow Jonah and spit him up? Bryan had to prevaricate, and all agreed that he was made a fool of, and though Scopes was found guilty and fined $100 (his conviction was later thrown out on a technicality, though not, as Darrow hoped, on the law itself being unconstitutional), the trial is seen as an important victory for the forces of, yes, human evolution over those of fundamentalist absolutism. Fifteen other states had anti-evolution laws in the works that year, but only two passed them. The Scopes trial proves that friction between religious doctrine and modern ideas is nothing new, and that whenever "God" is used to inform or control public policy, bitter conflict is likely to ensue. In America, a nation founded in part by religious purists seeking their own utopian social orders, this clash has been significantly more contentious than in nations like Holland or Canada. Nevertheless, seen in totality and over time, America has progressed, and is today a secular nation where, for the most part, religion co-exists with the state but does not define it. We must continue to evaluate our laws based on reason, logic and constitutional definitions of equality, and leave doom-saying, dogma and irrational fears to the pulpits that, for whatever reason, are reluctant to abandon them. That -- not "God-based," disenfranchising edicts -- is the most "fundamental" principle of our American system of government. 01 September 03 Ross M. Levine is an author, Marcel Proust marathoner and manatee-hugger who feels safer on the edge; i.e., in New York or California. He agrees with the King of Brobdingnag that we're "the most pernicious race of odious vermin to crawl the surface of the Earth." He thinks Americans have too much freedom -- fries, that is.
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