After Jeff died my life changed in many ways; which of them have anything to do with his absence I don't know; I'm too close to tell.
(News flash to everyone because no one really knows this!)This last year has been tough in a lot of ways and I knew changes would have to be made. I might have to-get a job! A change was made, a chapter in life is over and a different one begun.
Jeff's death put a stopper in the verbal narrative of my life. I have wanted to resume writing on Studio Notes and felt that the first entry needed to be about his death. I felt a need to memorialize him, to honor him, but I couldn't, and so hadn't done anything beyond that point. It was seven months until I could say something. A lot happened in that time, and yet, not much as well.
A week or so after I got back from S.F., and really came out from myself into the world at large, I met, and soon went to work for, (unknown to me when I met him), a maniac, helping him remodel a house. Fortunate timing in the face of a long, lean summer filled with nothing regular in the way of modeling or shows. So I spent the summer building someone else's dream. The oddness of having my life take such a big turn for the worse and then the better, experiencing such loss, then getting work when people are losing their homes and jobs, making good money when the financial world is collapsing, I was humbled and weirded out.
One of the more challenging aspects of my brothers death was inheriting things: his car, a Toyota 4Runner and the nicest machine I've ever owned, the Mac I'm writing this on, several good books and more styling clothes than I have had in years. I hate it, feel nauseous thinking about it, and sometimes like it, and that too makes me feel sick.
The computer Robin let me have is an older Mac and I don't yet have administrator access (getting passwords when someone is on their death bed isn't something I anticipated) but it is a good enough learning curve to be on, and I hold out hope that his files will be a good piece of him to have.
I have been too tied down and busy, as well as dealing with the aforementioned technical challenges, to pay any attention to all but the most glaring outrages of this election. All I want to say is- we can change today, “Si se puede!” Now more than ever, we have to adapt or die, extreme, but true. The work has just begun.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Sunday, November 2, 2008
My Brother Jeff
died April 15.
Today, November 2nd was his birthday. He would have been 51.
He was brilliant, stellar, and thus illuminating. Lest you think I am idealizing him too much- an easy thing to do from many perspectives- those closest to him could get too much infrared and U.V.s and be burned. Noble and generous when things were going well and not afraid to ask and expect the same from others on the rare occasions when he was in need. He could be toxic, dangerous, and loving and occasionally all at the same time. He saved me and hurt me and I will never be the same without him. I miss him more than I can say. In many ways, he was as powerful as a black hole and as influential on my life, and many, many, others, as can be. He was my hero and my antihero, the center of the universe in many ways to me; an example, guide, and cautionary tale all in one. He respected me in ways that I rarely got from others. If a cynic is an idealist whose ideals are so high they are never attained, and thus are forever let down Jeff wasn’t a cynic but he often demanded much more than this world could deliver.
He shared windows into his world that continue to color my life with the light of his passion and insights, introducing me to a host of transformational experiences and people in such a way as to change my life forever. He was hyperbolic. He was superlative. For me words don't work yet to convey his essence. He was my leader and example in more ways than I have been able to recount, something I have been trying to do for the last several months, been trying to put into words what his death has meant to me and even now I am challenged by the effort. To some degree the difficulties that this involves come from the similarities and childhood we shared and putting this into words requires a large measure of self-examination, some of which is pretty uncomfortable.
He was a challenge and a blessing from the start. He tormented my sister, Kristin, to the point of violence too many time to count and helped put food on the table with his paper route money after my parents’ divorce. He gave me my first Charlie horses because he wanted to watch my flesh bulge out when I could do nothing to stop him and stood up to my father when the fighting between my parents began in earnest. Victimizer and redeemer, tormenter and hero. These were roles he played throughout his life until the very end. All his family and lovers will attest to this.
He was a tech geek from the beginning: doing science fair projects with lasers (only invented twelve years earlier!) around the age of 12, dissecting a shark and gathering top honors from it.
I was as overjoyed as he was when he and a friend came home with their newspaper carrying bags overflowing with a couple of bull frogs and hundreds of baby frogs. My mother was horrified and made him take them back to the pond they came from. What he had planned for them I had no idea, but how cool.
He was an Angry Young Man when he was a boy and I clearly recall joining the anti-Nixon/anti-war protest rally he had organized the neighborhood kids around one summer night, irritating our Republican, and former Nixon campaign worker, father. In high school he was busted for streaking, after being identified when someone pulled off the paper bag he had over his head. One of the first, and almost last, times he was caught for his transgressive behaviors. He was a quick study to say the least.
Starting with his irritation at my changing the station on the clock radio (we shared a bedroom growing up) from KDKB to KUPiD, his musical tastes fundamentally formed mine and turned me on to the depth and breadth of experiences that music has to offer.
All of the musical highlights of my life, the most amazing experiences, the most spectacular performances, and the most memorable events involved him: a free ticket to my first concert-Al Stewart when I was 14, Fela in Los Angeles, Bowie, my first Dead show and all that entails, The Talking Heads and The Tom-Tom Club, many Meat Puppets shows, The Phillip Glass Ensemble at The Scottsdale Center for the Arts (he almost cried when I gave him the tickets for his birthday, and was pretty much speechless when we met Glass back stage.), a champagne brunch he made the morning of a Stones concert (his enjoyment of food expressed itself in his excellent cooking). He taught me the opening chords to Brown Sugar and gave me my first Led Zeppelin album, Houses of the Holy.
Just as in Scottsdale and Tempe, then Seattle and lastly in San Francisco, a number of remarkable personalities coalesced around him. I will venture a guess about places he lived but I didn't visit him at- Bozeman, Montana and Denver, and include them as well- Jeff was always just left of the center of, if not spot on, the most exciting scenes around-the heart of the budding punk/alt/whatever music scene in Phoenix in the eighties and the Meat Puppets, then Seattle and Nirvana. Finally, San Francisco and the dot com thang. Lots of dots. Usually content to be shining the light on others, sometimes chagrined to be, in his own words to me “Always a bridesmaid, never a bride”.
He was admitted to San Francisco County Hospital in late March with his most serious bout of ulcerative colitis, a disease he developed several years ago but kept this from most everyone for a few years and many people, even very close ones, until immediately before his death. He died from an unstoppable M.R.S.A. infection contracted the day he was scheduled to leave the hospital.
The last couple of times that he was hospitalized because of it, my efforts at understanding and support were met with a degree of irritation and diffidence that he could express quite well; if it wasn't of value to him it shouldn't be to anyone else either. He was never one to complain about what ever difficulties turned up in his life, and by and large, was fiercely independent and powerful. His was a power that was expressed as intensely passionate anger, and overwhelming act of love.
Now a bit about Ulcerative colitis (U.C.) M.R.S.A. or, Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aurus and his end, no pun intended. U.C. is an immune system disease where-in your body doesn't distinguish between food and your own intestines and, if left untreated, will result in your body literally digesting itself. This is first expressed as pits and eventually holes in your colon, or as he said to me, “I’m ripping myself new assholes.” The consequent massive infections are treated by assaulting your body with antibiotics. One of the many results is the destruction of your immune system, leaving it open to the smallest infections.
M.R.S.A. is a relatively new version of a virus, a “superbug” that is on 90% of all humans, most commonly found in the nose, which is why you are more likely to contract it when you have a tube up it for extended periods. There are four major strains, his was the toughest of them. It is survival of the fittest which means you or it. I would love to hear Darwin hold forth on it. I have a friend who is a doctor and, in his words, if he were in the hospital, as soon as he was physically able, would crawl from the hospital to avoid this. When MRSA started to be an issue, Sweden got on the ball and now has a .10% infection rate. In the richest nation in the world, where we let the "free market" make the decisions, because "greed is good", if you are in ICU for over two weeks, you have a 50% chance of becoming infected; you have a 27% chance of dying from it. But at least we have low taxes, right?! He was diagnosed with it on the day before he was scheduled for release.
I had had several late night talks with him over the course of his previous stays in the hospital. Colitis treatment involves steroids; one of the side effects was being wired and, knowing I am a night person, he would call me in the middle of the night. He had told me a couple of times when it was particularly bad, that, while, yes, he wanted to stay around, he had lived a full life and was as ok as one could be with leaving. His biggest regret was leaving Zoe, his stepdaughter of 13.
The infection was in his blood and thus was spread throughout his body. The body’s response is to produce clots that are themselves infected. In the doctors’ words, "they (the clots) have spread throughout his body and set up shop." Blood thinners are the standard treatment for clots, but because they were infected, dissolving them simply spread them throughout his body which caused at least three strokes.
San Francisco County Hospital was described to me as "the Harvard of the West coast" by a couple of his doctors. A pause to praise his docs and nurses; they were all amazing. A couple of them went to his wake and several told me and my family that he was their favorite patient; he was so on the ball, so knowledgeable and engaged about everything that was going on. He signed consent forms to the last.
As is only fitting of Jeff, the way that this disease progressed was so rare that only one similar case could be found from around the world, a man in Australia had a similar set of conditions (technically termed-Cavernous sinus thrombosis, or doctor speak for a blood clot between his eyes, in the front of his brain) and he made a full recovery. By the time I got there (a Thursday morn) he was blind in one eye and had bruises and sores covering his body.
Two weeks after he was diagnosed, he was dead.
The first week was a series of ups and downs, on the path downhill. Robin, his girlfriend of the last several years had been staying with him during his U.C. treatment as much as she could while keeping home and hearth (and job) (and motherhood) intact. She was an unsung hero for the whole of his dealing (or not, as the case was so often) with his disease.
Through the time I spent with him he was a fighter, dealing with it stoically and with eyes wide, so to speak. A quintessentially Jeff moment went like this- He told me how wonderful his team of nurses and doctors were, then praised them in front of me with all the sincerity that was in him (a lot). He then asked me to brush his teeth for him (Robin had been shaving him during his stay as well), which I happily agreed to. Soon after I started he became irritated at my ineptness (I’ll cop to that-I’ve never done it for someone else before.) yelling at me as best he could in his weakened state “Figure it out Steve! It’s not fucking rocket science!” Quintessential Jeff, to the last.
The morning of the second Friday I was there (all the while, all of us playing tag-team staying with him) the hospital called and suggested we come to discuss with him as best he was able to what he wanted to do. We went down to tell him we would support him in whatever he wanted to do, fight or not… the tests on his blood had come back positive for MRSA for eleven days and they were doing everything they could think of but it kept getting worse. That evening he let us know he wanted to keep fighting but by Saturday morn the doctors called just before we were all heading down there. He had told the attending doctor that he knew he was dying and he wanted to quit. Focus shifted to comfort and he was given triple the amount of morphine had been on for the previous two weeks, all tubes were pulled and tests stopped. He had been given his own drip button to control the morphine several days before. He was as comfortable as could be.
As word got around to his friends the ICU became so full, ten or twelve of us rotated in and out of his room and were told that we had to stay in his room and out of the halls of ICU. "Only two people are allowed in a room at a time." They saw more life and energy in that unit that they had had in God only knows how long and I think they liked it. He took his time and was aware for most of what came and went till Tues morning.
Tues night I left at 10:00 P.M. to take my mother back to Robins. At 10:35PM his heart stopped. Kris, my older sister was holding his hand and Allen, my younger brother was standing by his side. MY brain completely seized up when I got back from Robins and I turned right around, unthinkingly and went back to get my Mom, thinking for some reason she would want to come down. No, she had to stay with Zoe. I turned back around and went to the hospital, all this time not crying, and for the tenth time, got lost. When I got there most everybody had left. I went in and joined Robin, Allen, and Kris.
He had had an oxygen mask and tube up his nose the entire time I had been there, right eye swollen shut and in crippling pain, a grip in his hand and a corresponding fight in his face the entire time I was there. And now, I saw no pain and a calm. And one last glimmer of his beauty. I was the last one out.
We had a mini-wake Thursday afternoon in Golden Gate Park for my sister, father, and his wife before they had to leave. The weather was gorgeous until 5-ish, when the fog rolled in, which is when it was to end.
My mother left that evening.
Friday night Robin, Zoe, Allen, and I went to the wake his friends had hurriedly put together at "The ranch", a collection of studios in the east end of SF and listened to stories, looked at pictures in a slideshow and assorted activities that people do at a wake. I was struck time and again by the people who shared stories of his compassion and generosity to, in some cases, complete strangers. Those closest to him got burned the most and everyone near him got fire and warmth. One of the most honest, truthful, and thus loving things I heard all night, and I heard many expressions of love that evening, came from someone whose name I regretfully don’t remember, when she said “Just because Jeff is dead doesn’t mean we can’t say he wasn’t an asshole!” He would have loved it.
I was all grins when, when throughout the evening, and indeed, throughout the time I was in S.F., his friends were shocked at how much he and I looked and sounded alike. One friend had to have me turn sideways so she could be reminded of his nose in my profile, which she proceeded to kiss.
Haikus about him and flowers for him were placed throughout the place and music we all recalled him loving was played.
Somewhere out there he is rearranging the ions till they’re as right as he knows they need to be.
I'll have more thoughts to share here, but for now it's time to let this be and go on.
Friday, January 4, 2008
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CHRISTIAN RIGHT, MITT ROMNEY & MIKE HUCKABEE
If you’re going to proclaim that you govern based upon your values, I will demand that you define your values and the foundation of your values. Is it the Bible or reason? If it is the Bible, as you have claimed, when an American subscribes to values that are in opposition to those expressed in the Bible will you feel disinclined to support their claim to liberty and human rights as well as equal treatment under the law? Are your religious values superior to their secular values?
We point proudly to the long tradition of tolerance as an aspect of our American legacy; we are a moral people with a deeply ingrained sense of fair play. This is in fact, a legacy, not of our Judeao-Christian foundation, but, in spite of, and even in opposition to the evils of organized religion that were the fallow ground for the enlightenment to germinate.
What is referred to as the Old and New Testament is a deeply paradoxical set of beliefs. The Old Testament, or as you would have it, “The Word of God” is to a large degree, a set of prohibitions, guides, rules and laws that constitute an extortion letter wherein God says “If you don’t do x y and z, you and yours will suffer the consequences: stoning, banishment, total devastation of your land, cities and people, fire and brim stone, eternal damnation to hell etc. (as well as a few juicy, scatological and racy passages that are too obscene to be repeated on the public airwaves lest someone’s delicate sensibilities be offended). On the other hand, if you do these things, you’ll experience the good that I can bestow, it’s your free choice.”
This is in diametric opposition to the Bible 2.0 (the New Testament version of “The Word of God” ) which throws out the whole intimidation factor and says “You have been told that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But what I tell you is this; do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you turn and offer him the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5: 38-39). Instead of smiting your enemy and conducting a campaign of total war, a scorched earth policy, you are now commanded to “Love thy enemy” (Matthew 5:43)
It seems that there are a few bugs to be worked out. The word of God contains some contradictory dictates and as such it doesn’t seem too good for settling differences. It is this very range of interpretations that allows one to selectively pick and choose from a wide array of opinions. As such it is a defacto demonstration of moral relativism, a quality you loudly decry as a cause of this nations moral decay and something endemic to those secular humanists. I would say that is a pretty big plank in your eye (Matthew 7: 3-5).
Either way it makes no difference because your behavior is coerced . They aren’t freely chosen because it is “self evident" but because you want to get into heaven or avoid hell; not simply because it is good to be good, but because of fear. You have to get your guidance from the Bible because you don’t know what is good; it has to be imposed upon you.
Reasoning, on the other hand provides a fairly tried and true method of resolving differences. I, using my “God given” capacity to evaluate my circumstances and arrive at decisions that are in my best interests, am able to behave in a “moral” fashion without the reliance upon a collection of writings gathered up over the course of several centuries by a bunch of highly partisan mortal men with, in some cases, very specific political agendas. I reason, it is “self-evident” that I can best look after my own affairs. I am free. In exchange for not doing whatever I choose to regardless of the consequences, I receive your reassurances that you won’t do whatever you want to regardless of the consequences. This is the essence of what philosophers refer to as the “social contract”. In my case the express name of the social contract is “The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America” and the amendments made to that document referred to as “The Bill of Rights.” These documents were arrived at through the exercise of our “God given” capacity to reason-not a collection of ancient texts of uncertain origin, human constructed, long held, traditional spiritual values that shamelessly assert themselves as truth, the one true faith. It is precisely because the Founding Fathers couldn’t agree upon religious matters that we have the first clause of the first amendment.
For someone to assert that I am not entitled to the same rights that the social contract affords others on the basis of their opinion that that my behavior is “an abomination before God” because it says so in your Bible, well, fuck you. And if you feel that you shouldn’t have to explain to your child why two men are kissing and that you resent me parading my “perversions” in front of your eyes, ramming my “sinful life” and values down your throat with my “homosexual agenda” by demanding that I be treated with respect in the courts, classroom, the field of battle, hospitals and every other arena of the public sphere, fuck you. When you, at every turn decry the decay of morality in our culture and claim threat and fear as your justification for what in effect is a process of dehumanization, fuck you. When you attack, threaten, assault, demean, intimidate, degrade, and kill on the basis of fear and God, fuck you.
When I go into a classroom and see your extortion notes “carved in stone” placed up on the wall as a “moral guide“, you are ramming your value system down my throat, rubbing your values in my face; when I go into the court of law to receive justice and see your values in a position of state sanction in the form of your Ten Commandments, you are rubbing your values in my face. When you prevent me from upholding my end of the social contract by defending my country on the field of battle because of my “immoral behavior” you arerubbing your value system in my face. When you deny me the opportunity to be with and care for some one I am committed to on the basis of your “Judeao-Christian traditional values” as expressed in our legal code you are rubbing your values in my face. If your “faith” commands you and provides you with justification for intolerance, your “opinion” is actively corroding the fabric of the social contract. When one party fails to adhere to the terms of a contract both parties are released from their contractual obligations. The contract is null and void. I will put you in my verbal and intellectual cross hairs to defend my life and liberty. Fuck you.
If, as the gun nuts assert, the second amendment is what makes all of the others possible (specifically the first amendment: rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to petition the government), isn’t that in and of itself all the justification I need for the above arguments? Is it in fact only through the threat of force that all the others are possible? Is this not exactly what your God is doing? Telling all of humanity “Do what I say or else!” It kind of throws all the Christians, (Evangelical, Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and every other doctrinarian hair-splitting sects) moral arguments in a weird kinda light doesn’t it? You’re not being moral because it is “self evident” that it is good to be good, you’re doing what you do because of fear. Fear of “eternal damnation”. This is love? Swell guy, that God of yours.
Rights are never given, they are only taken. It is not within anybodies purview to grant me something I am already in possession of. The only thing that can be done is that they can be taken from me, and only then with my consent. By virtue of my humanity I am endowed with “inalienable” rights. To take them from me has the effect of dehumanizing me. Rights exist before government. Government does not grant, bestow or create rights. Rights exist; human beings come together to create a system of government to protect them. That is the function of government. The Presidents role and responsibility is to defend those documents from those, within and without our country, who would attack them. You, Mr. Romney are attacking them. You, Mr. Huckabee, are attacking them. And so is every single person who supports you.
If the Bible, and your selective interpretation and reading of, it is the foundation of your beliefs and values, and you are going to lead this country from that position, you are not fit to govern these United States of America.
The system we have developed in this country has been exceptionally effective at protecting liberty because our cultural foundation was such that there was an understanding that was fairly widely held that we are all ‘created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ (in spite of many reasonably effective and enduring efforts on the behalf of kings, ‘holier than thou’ priests, violent thugs and ignorant, self-righteous politicians.) These are in fact, “self-evident” truths. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition believes that we (human beings) were all created in the image of God (I need to point out that they were neither the first nor were they the only religions or cultures to do so) and this basic belief underpins, in many ways even gave birth to, the cultures that allowed the Enlightenment to ferment. It does not follow however that the ideas contained in all their sacred documents are the sound foundations upon which to form a government. Perhaps the enlightenment would not have come to pass were it not for the three monotheistic religious traditions, and with it the American Revolution but we would still have developed morality and reasonable behavior- in spite of faith. Moral behavior is not the exclusive domain of the West or the three great monotheistic traditions, nor is reason. Both are human qualities; any examination of human history makes this abundantly clear.
It can, and has been, very soundly argued that it is precisely the beliefs contained in the Bible that have been responsible for so much of the tragedy that has been European history and more recently the devastating abuses to our environment . (However ,in another example of why the bible is such a bad basis for decision making and a glorious example of the Christian Right’s capacity to rationalize and twist ‘the good book’ it is also now used to justify protecting the environment as well.) Genesis claims that the whole of the earth and everything upon it is for man to use because God made us lord over all, that mankind has the freedom to choose to do anything we want to, good or evil. But ultimately mankind is above it all in a hierarchical sort of way, separate from the natural world. This is what makes it possible to behave with such disregard for the world around us. Additionally, when you see others as less than or not fully human all manner of hideous acts take place. Witness Islamic suicide bombers, witness fundamentalist Christian abortion clinic bombers and assassins, witness slavery (indeed it was the biblical support for slavery that led to the creation of the Southern Baptist Church). When God sanctions your behavior because you are with him, when you’re his chosen people, you can do anything you want, God will back you up because you’re doing as He commanded.
This nation finally abolished slavery because it is morally reprehensible even though your Bible condones it. We do not use the Bible as the basis of our social contract, we use reason.
Your church and its followers, Mr. Huckabee, exercised it’s freedom of choice and liberty to disagree. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings of “the good book”?
Your church and it’s followers, Mr. Romney as recently as 1977 discriminated against people of “dark skin”. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings as well?
No. Because it is morally reprehensible, in spite if what it say in the Bible.
Are these changes in official religious policies not self- evidently worth doing? Apparently not because you both had to get it from a book of directions, from official authority.
The Bible isn’t grounded in reason; it is an article of faith. Reason and faith-diametrically opposed means of understanding the world around us. To the extent that the Bible is, as I have already said, essentially an extortion letter, it is an embodiment of the same tried and true dynamic that underlies the declaration and constitution; law backed up by the threat of force. You are not behaving in a moral fashion when you use your faith to discriminate against me. Get your ‘values’ out of my face.
Do you have enough respect for me to ‘do unto me as you would have done unto you’?
Yours in democratic enlightenment,
Steve
We point proudly to the long tradition of tolerance as an aspect of our American legacy; we are a moral people with a deeply ingrained sense of fair play. This is in fact, a legacy, not of our Judeao-Christian foundation, but, in spite of, and even in opposition to the evils of organized religion that were the fallow ground for the enlightenment to germinate.
What is referred to as the Old and New Testament is a deeply paradoxical set of beliefs. The Old Testament, or as you would have it, “The Word of God” is to a large degree, a set of prohibitions, guides, rules and laws that constitute an extortion letter wherein God says “If you don’t do x y and z, you and yours will suffer the consequences: stoning, banishment, total devastation of your land, cities and people, fire and brim stone, eternal damnation to hell etc. (as well as a few juicy, scatological and racy passages that are too obscene to be repeated on the public airwaves lest someone’s delicate sensibilities be offended). On the other hand, if you do these things, you’ll experience the good that I can bestow, it’s your free choice.”
This is in diametric opposition to the Bible 2.0 (the New Testament version of “The Word of God” ) which throws out the whole intimidation factor and says “You have been told that an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. But what I tell you is this; do not resist those who wrong you. If anyone slaps you turn and offer him the other cheek also.” (Matthew 5: 38-39). Instead of smiting your enemy and conducting a campaign of total war, a scorched earth policy, you are now commanded to “Love thy enemy” (Matthew 5:43)
It seems that there are a few bugs to be worked out. The word of God contains some contradictory dictates and as such it doesn’t seem too good for settling differences. It is this very range of interpretations that allows one to selectively pick and choose from a wide array of opinions. As such it is a defacto demonstration of moral relativism, a quality you loudly decry as a cause of this nations moral decay and something endemic to those secular humanists. I would say that is a pretty big plank in your eye (Matthew 7: 3-5).
Either way it makes no difference because your behavior is coerced . They aren’t freely chosen because it is “self evident" but because you want to get into heaven or avoid hell; not simply because it is good to be good, but because of fear. You have to get your guidance from the Bible because you don’t know what is good; it has to be imposed upon you.
Reasoning, on the other hand provides a fairly tried and true method of resolving differences. I, using my “God given” capacity to evaluate my circumstances and arrive at decisions that are in my best interests, am able to behave in a “moral” fashion without the reliance upon a collection of writings gathered up over the course of several centuries by a bunch of highly partisan mortal men with, in some cases, very specific political agendas. I reason, it is “self-evident” that I can best look after my own affairs. I am free. In exchange for not doing whatever I choose to regardless of the consequences, I receive your reassurances that you won’t do whatever you want to regardless of the consequences. This is the essence of what philosophers refer to as the “social contract”. In my case the express name of the social contract is “The Declaration of Independence, The Constitution of the United States of America” and the amendments made to that document referred to as “The Bill of Rights.” These documents were arrived at through the exercise of our “God given” capacity to reason-not a collection of ancient texts of uncertain origin, human constructed, long held, traditional spiritual values that shamelessly assert themselves as truth, the one true faith. It is precisely because the Founding Fathers couldn’t agree upon religious matters that we have the first clause of the first amendment.
For someone to assert that I am not entitled to the same rights that the social contract affords others on the basis of their opinion that that my behavior is “an abomination before God” because it says so in your Bible, well, fuck you. And if you feel that you shouldn’t have to explain to your child why two men are kissing and that you resent me parading my “perversions” in front of your eyes, ramming my “sinful life” and values down your throat with my “homosexual agenda” by demanding that I be treated with respect in the courts, classroom, the field of battle, hospitals and every other arena of the public sphere, fuck you. When you, at every turn decry the decay of morality in our culture and claim threat and fear as your justification for what in effect is a process of dehumanization, fuck you. When you attack, threaten, assault, demean, intimidate, degrade, and kill on the basis of fear and God, fuck you.
When I go into a classroom and see your extortion notes “carved in stone” placed up on the wall as a “moral guide“, you are ramming your value system down my throat, rubbing your values in my face; when I go into the court of law to receive justice and see your values in a position of state sanction in the form of your Ten Commandments, you are rubbing your values in my face. When you prevent me from upholding my end of the social contract by defending my country on the field of battle because of my “immoral behavior” you arerubbing your value system in my face. When you deny me the opportunity to be with and care for some one I am committed to on the basis of your “Judeao-Christian traditional values” as expressed in our legal code you are rubbing your values in my face. If your “faith” commands you and provides you with justification for intolerance, your “opinion” is actively corroding the fabric of the social contract. When one party fails to adhere to the terms of a contract both parties are released from their contractual obligations. The contract is null and void. I will put you in my verbal and intellectual cross hairs to defend my life and liberty. Fuck you.
If, as the gun nuts assert, the second amendment is what makes all of the others possible (specifically the first amendment: rights to free speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of the press, freedom of religion, freedom to petition the government), isn’t that in and of itself all the justification I need for the above arguments? Is it in fact only through the threat of force that all the others are possible? Is this not exactly what your God is doing? Telling all of humanity “Do what I say or else!” It kind of throws all the Christians, (Evangelical, Mormon, Baptist, Catholic, Presbyterian, Episcopalian and every other doctrinarian hair-splitting sects) moral arguments in a weird kinda light doesn’t it? You’re not being moral because it is “self evident” that it is good to be good, you’re doing what you do because of fear. Fear of “eternal damnation”. This is love? Swell guy, that God of yours.
Rights are never given, they are only taken. It is not within anybodies purview to grant me something I am already in possession of. The only thing that can be done is that they can be taken from me, and only then with my consent. By virtue of my humanity I am endowed with “inalienable” rights. To take them from me has the effect of dehumanizing me. Rights exist before government. Government does not grant, bestow or create rights. Rights exist; human beings come together to create a system of government to protect them. That is the function of government. The Presidents role and responsibility is to defend those documents from those, within and without our country, who would attack them. You, Mr. Romney are attacking them. You, Mr. Huckabee, are attacking them. And so is every single person who supports you.
If the Bible, and your selective interpretation and reading of, it is the foundation of your beliefs and values, and you are going to lead this country from that position, you are not fit to govern these United States of America.
The system we have developed in this country has been exceptionally effective at protecting liberty because our cultural foundation was such that there was an understanding that was fairly widely held that we are all ‘created equal and endowed with the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ (in spite of many reasonably effective and enduring efforts on the behalf of kings, ‘holier than thou’ priests, violent thugs and ignorant, self-righteous politicians.) These are in fact, “self-evident” truths. The Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition believes that we (human beings) were all created in the image of God (I need to point out that they were neither the first nor were they the only religions or cultures to do so) and this basic belief underpins, in many ways even gave birth to, the cultures that allowed the Enlightenment to ferment. It does not follow however that the ideas contained in all their sacred documents are the sound foundations upon which to form a government. Perhaps the enlightenment would not have come to pass were it not for the three monotheistic religious traditions, and with it the American Revolution but we would still have developed morality and reasonable behavior- in spite of faith. Moral behavior is not the exclusive domain of the West or the three great monotheistic traditions, nor is reason. Both are human qualities; any examination of human history makes this abundantly clear.
It can, and has been, very soundly argued that it is precisely the beliefs contained in the Bible that have been responsible for so much of the tragedy that has been European history and more recently the devastating abuses to our environment . (However ,in another example of why the bible is such a bad basis for decision making and a glorious example of the Christian Right’s capacity to rationalize and twist ‘the good book’ it is also now used to justify protecting the environment as well.) Genesis claims that the whole of the earth and everything upon it is for man to use because God made us lord over all, that mankind has the freedom to choose to do anything we want to, good or evil. But ultimately mankind is above it all in a hierarchical sort of way, separate from the natural world. This is what makes it possible to behave with such disregard for the world around us. Additionally, when you see others as less than or not fully human all manner of hideous acts take place. Witness Islamic suicide bombers, witness fundamentalist Christian abortion clinic bombers and assassins, witness slavery (indeed it was the biblical support for slavery that led to the creation of the Southern Baptist Church). When God sanctions your behavior because you are with him, when you’re his chosen people, you can do anything you want, God will back you up because you’re doing as He commanded.
This nation finally abolished slavery because it is morally reprehensible even though your Bible condones it. We do not use the Bible as the basis of our social contract, we use reason.
Your church and its followers, Mr. Huckabee, exercised it’s freedom of choice and liberty to disagree. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings of “the good book”?
Your church and it’s followers, Mr. Romney as recently as 1977 discriminated against people of “dark skin”. Are you still in the thrall of those twisted readings as well?
No. Because it is morally reprehensible, in spite if what it say in the Bible.
Are these changes in official religious policies not self- evidently worth doing? Apparently not because you both had to get it from a book of directions, from official authority.
The Bible isn’t grounded in reason; it is an article of faith. Reason and faith-diametrically opposed means of understanding the world around us. To the extent that the Bible is, as I have already said, essentially an extortion letter, it is an embodiment of the same tried and true dynamic that underlies the declaration and constitution; law backed up by the threat of force. You are not behaving in a moral fashion when you use your faith to discriminate against me. Get your ‘values’ out of my face.
Do you have enough respect for me to ‘do unto me as you would have done unto you’?
Yours in democratic enlightenment,
Steve
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