(Ir)religiosity

Two things up front: 1.) I believe quality health care is a fundamental right that should be afforded to all persons regardless of _________, 2.) I believe governments have a moral responsibility to ensure that said care is provided to its citizens.  For me, these are non-negotiable.  Period.

Our country is the closest it has ever been to ensuring the most of its citizens have access to quality health care.  I will be outraged, not to mention deeply disappointed, if we fail to push it through.  At this point we’re our own worst enemy.  As Jon Stewart pointed out in a recent episode of The Daily Show, it wouldn’t be all the surprising if President Obama’s approval rating of the American people has plummeted over the last month or so.  The lack of civility and reasonableness in our public discourse on this issue would be disappointing if it weren’t so pathetic.

I’m continually perplexed at the various ways in which people either hear or see what they want to or intentionally caricature what is said by resorting to scare tactics (I’m looking at you Sarah Palin and Glenn Beck).  Most people simply aren’t working with the facts and if they are the choose to sideline them in favor of something that sounds controversial and may gain some shock value or media attention.¹

Health care is too important of an issue for us to play games.  I’m afraid if we keep screwing around we’re going to miss our chance.  Then we will be responsible for the lack of care and ensuring that the uninsured remain uninsured.  There won’t be any passing the buck.  The blame will rest squarely on our shoulders.

Yesterday President Obama published an op-ed in the New York Times that clearly and carefully articulates his position yet again.  You should stop right now and read the whole thing.  Here’s what I think is the nucleus.

This is what reform is about. If you don’t have health insurance, you will finally have quality, affordable options once we pass reform. If you have health insurance, we will make sure that no insurance company or government bureaucrat gets between you and the care you need. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor. If you like your health care plan, you can keep your health care plan. You will not be waiting in any lines. This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance. I don’t believe anyone should be in charge of your health care decisions but you and your doctor — not government bureaucrats, not insurance companies.

But let’s make sure that we talk with one another, and not over one another. We are bound to disagree, but let’s disagree over issues that are real, and not wild misrepresentations that bear no resemblance to anything that anyone has actually proposed. This is a complicated and critical issue, and it deserves a serious debate.

I read that and I simply don’t understand what the great end-of-the-world, apocalypse inaugurating problem is that I keep hearing about.  What is so wrong with providing a public option for those who can’t afford it?  Please tell me.  Or better yet, let’s tell those who currently can’t afford care why it is that they were just dealt the wrong hand and don’t have the right to the same quality care that the rest of us enjoy.

It is deeply disturbing, I think, when this idea is met with such anger and hate by people (mostly white people who can afford health care, by the way) at town hall meetings and not accepted with a sense of great urgency.  Perhaps the health care debate is what racism and classism looks like in the 21st century.  It looks more and more like Gordon Marino was right when he wrote that “the fact that a significant number of Americans do not feel any urgency to revamp a system that leaves millions of our sick without care is symptomatic of the fact that we must be suffering from a hardening of more than our arteries.”  Indeed, our irrational and childish behavior is demonstrative not only our compassion deficiency but our collective moral bankruptcy.

Perhaps the recent recession extends to more than our economy.

1. One of the best places to keep up with what is fact and what is fiction is http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/ [↩]

How will support for same-sex marriage change over time?  Significantly.  The generation gap is huge right now.  Some gurus at Colombia University have broken down the statistics by age and state.  Money quote: “If policy were set by state-by-state majorities of those 65 or older, none would allow same-sex marriage. If policy were set by those under 30, only 12 states would not allow-same-sex marriage.”

May we remember the whole King.

Today as we celebrate the divine rupture in human history over and against the narratives of consumption and rugged individualism, I find the words of the late Oscar Romero especially poignant.

No one can celebrate
a genuine Christmas
without being truely poor.
The self-sufficient, the proud,
those who, because they have
everything, look down on others,
those who have no need
even of God – for them there
will be no Christmas.
Only the poor, the hungry,
those who need someone
to come on their behalf,
will have that someone.
That someone is God.
Emmanuel.  God-with-us.
Without poverty of spirit
there can be no abundance of God.

(ht)

An interesting take:

[L]et us debate about sex and marriage rather than war and violence. Let us concentrate on the bedroom rather than the war room. Let us liberals get trapped — as always — on the right side of the wrong question. I write this in protest against that deviation from what fundamentally concerns the Bible, the biblical God, and Jesus, namely, that escalatory violence that by now threatens our world with destruction.

I think he does have a point.  But — I can see this line of thought leading us to ignore the problem altogether.  And we don’t need that.  We have enough religious people using the bible and religion in general as a weapon to deny persons their civil rights; we need more religious people actively challenging that position.  And yes, maybe even more religious people to say enough with the bible for a while.

To be fair, I don’t think that is what Crossan is suggesting.  He is simply trying to demonstrate how absurd it is that we are even having the argument over same-sex marriage and gay rights at all.  And like I said, that is a valid observation.  But I think we have to be careful that we don’t ignore those that are being marginalized in the meantime by sweeping the problem under the rug.  It should be faced head on.  Those that use religion as a wedge to separate “us” from “them” aren’t afraid to do that.  It’s time that those of us who believe in the “we,” of which all the great religions of the world bear witness, saddle up as well.

What do you think?

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I don’t know what to make of Burger King’s latest ad campaign.  It’s abductive, that’s for sure.  But I can’t help but find it at least a bit arrogant and maybe even culturally imperialistic.  Here’s one of the original commercial that aired a few weeks ago.

It sure got my attention when I first saw it.  Another ad with basically the same format wonders if other “Whopper Virgins,” this time Transylvanian farmers, will chose, as have Americans, the Whopper over the Big Mac.  Even more interesting  is the mini-documentary that Burger King has released on its new “Whopper Virgins” website.

They tried pretty hard to make it seems pure and innocent there toward the end, but I’m not convinced.  The way the whole thing has been marketed, starting with the name — Whopper Virgins, conjuring up sexual imagery that unnecessarily marginalizes those it is applied to  — seems to suggest that these people are just another means to the larger end of promoting Burger King around the globe and raking in more cash that will ultimately be bequeathed to the new transnational empire of consumer capitalism.  And I don’t for a second think that benefits the Transylvanian farmer or the Thai peasant.  It just uses and abuses them — making them the punchline for yet another cutthroat marketing scheme.  Sure, it’s ingenious, but it’s also, in my opinion, immoral.

Maybe I’m way off base here, but I just think that the resources used to fund, manage, and implement this project could be put to much better use in way that doesn’t orientalize or exoticize persons in other cultures.  We don’t need more people in service to American hegemony, transnational corporations, or global consumer capitalism; we need more people to actually take the time to learn about other cultures and communities and intentionally look for creative ways to help local economies.

What do you think?  Does this cross the line, or is just another harmless ad campaign?

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Relations of power are not in themselves forms of repression. But what happens is that, in society, in most societies, organizations are created to freeze the relations of power, hold those relations in a state of asymmetry, so that a certain number of persons get an advantage, socially, economically, politically, institutionally, etc. And this totally freezes the situation. That’s what one calls power in the strict sense of the term: it’s a specific type of power relation that has been institutionalized, frozen, immobilized, to the profit of some and to the detriment of others. (ht)

– Michel Foucault

Very true.  And, I would add, very compatible with the Christian narrative, at least in my interpretation.  I do wonder about his initial claim relations and networks of power are not in themselves forms of repression.  If it is true, then I’m failing to come up with a historical example in which power did not lead to repression and oppression.  That is not to say there are not other creative possibilities, just that we haven’t had the audacity to experiment yet.  So, I think I can say with confidence that until now power, in it’s normative functions and applications, has usually led to destructive dominance.  Hopefully, we can change that.  Hopefully.

Brilliant.  Absolutely brilliant.

“How long? Not long! Because no lie can live forever.”
– Martin Luther King Jr.

I’ve posted on homosexuality before, but I think some of that sentiment bears repeating.

I am a white, married, heterosexual male who attended one private institution for undergraduate work and is now attending another private institution for graduate school.  I was born into and continue to occupy a position of overwhelming privilege.  Simply the mere fact that I have both the time and the money to “blog” rests the case.

I don’t have the slightest idea what it feels like to be oppressed, subjugated, or marginalized.  I don’t know what it feels like to have fundamental rights stripped from me nor do I know the feeling of being told I cannot marry my partner.

That being noted, I feel that the least I can do is speak the truth as I see it and to stand in solidarity with those who struggle.  For me, silence is simply a ghastly affirmation of the status quo.  The written and spoken word are the tools of my trade so I feel that the least I can do is use them to raise my voice in opposition.  It is with that in mind that I wrote this post, because to not speak out would be dishonest on my part.

November 4 was a bittersweet night for me.  I was happy that Barack Obama was elected the 44th President of the United States, but at the same time I was deeply saddened to learn that Proposition 8 was passed in California.  Propositions banning same-sex marriage were put to vote in four states this year: Florida, Arizona, Arkansas, and California.  To be honest, I expected the first three to pass by a wide margin. What I didn’t expect was the outcome in California, where Prop 8 passed 52% to 48%.  I assumed that a state like California, with a high gay population, would maintain it’s open and progressive policy.  But it did not.  It’s one thing to deny a person or group their rights outright, it’s another to strip those rights from them after the fact. Read the rest of this entry »

I’m really looking forward to this movie.

[Ht]