Response to a Critique of "The Reader"

I’m glad your friend’s grandmother survived the camps. Nobody in my German Jewish family did. Some, including my grandparents, were lucky to get out early. The rest didn’t. I grew up on stories of my great-grandmother, uncles, aunts, cousins disappearing into ghettos and camps. Some of these I confirmed myself at Holocaust museums and at Dachau. I’ve known survivors socially and from working for years at a Jewish Community Center, but none of my own family…

And I’ve wondered how an illiterate got into that SS job – well, it was late in the war, maybe they were desperate, who knows? One can quibble over what may be simply artistic license. And can the shame of illiteracy be worse than the shame of killing so many other people? All too easily. I know people with reading disabilities and the stigma is tremendous. In contrast, in Michael Moore’s “Sicko” we see insurance executives and bureaucrats who think nothing of letting people die for the sake of profit. From gay bashings and reports on racial lynchings we see how easy it is for people to dehumanize others, to trivialize murder, even turn it into a sport, or entertainment.

While “The Reader” can provoke all kinds of questions about historical accuracy and credibility of motivation (neither of which necessarily invalidates a work of fiction) the real difficulty of the movie is that it asks us to see this SS guard who casually, thoughtlessly participated in mass murder as a human being. And this is the challenge, to see Nazis as human.

We see other genocides all too often, from Armenia to Cambodia to Rwanda, the annihilation of Native Americans, and of Bosniaks. Yes, the Nazis were monstrous in the extreme, but inhuman?

I make no defense or justification of Nazism. Anyone trying that would infuriate me. I am profoundly disturbed by any ideology of hate and this one in particular fills me with revulsion that goes to my earliest childhood, the stories from those who survived, and those who didn’t. The sight of a swastika makes me sick. And yet, the most horrifying thing about them is that indeed they came from the same DNA as any of us, they and we are made of the same stuff, and as much as they debased humanity they are still a part of it. What really separates us but upbringing, character, and circumstance?

The human capacity for what Hannah Arendt called “the banality of evil” the casual disregard that allows us to justify and shrug away murders is not limited to one horrific aberration of the mid-twentieth century. Was that even an aberration in anything but its mechanical devotion and efficiency? History suggests not.

And this is the hardest part of it. If we fail to see the humanity of the Nazis we fail to guard against the human capacity for evil, and can fall into replicating that evil all too easily.

The historic suffering and persecutions of the Jewish people are deep in our experience and the trauma of the Shoah is all too powerful. But what to do with that power? There are two general paths that trauma victims tend to take. (And they’re not entirely mutually exclusive.) One is the path of the healer, seeking to identify one’s suffering with others. A lot of Jews got into the anti-racist struggle and worked with Black leaders for civil rights. Jewish participation with blacks in the post-war era was big! And there has been lots of Jewish participation and support of other civil rights struggles.

The other path is to identify the trauma as unique. “Nobody’s suffered as I/we have,” and that can become license to act out. It doesn’t always. Some people carry their “special and unique” wound through life, causing no harm to anyone else. We also see it with abused children who become abusers, spouse-beaters, and criminals. They identify so deeply as a victim, that no matter how they harm others, how strong and aggressive they may become, it is they who are being victimized. We see it with Israelis who shoot Palestinian children and drop white phosphorus into crowded neighborhoods.

Yes, Nazis have rejected their own humanity so profoundly that the notion that they can be dehumanized seems redundant. But it’s not about them; it is, at this point, about us. We have to recognize the evil of dehumanization as part of the omnipresent peril of being human. We have to recognize what is human in Hannah Schmidt if we are ever to protect our own humanity from falling into the same pit that swallowed hers.

The Gay Liberation Front 40 years later!

This June will mark the 40th anniversary of the Stonewall Uprising and the Gay Liberation Front that started out of that. Members of the GLF are organizing and participating in events marking our history. I just learned this morning that we've been given the best spot in the SF Gay Pride Parade, and I damn well think we deserve it. What a 40 years it's been!

But it's a profoundly bittersweet occasion as I remember all the many men who did not survive the AIDS crisis. I can only think of a few from our group in Washington DC that might still be alive. Maybe. Where are they? Oh, yes. There's Tim. Thank God for Tim; dear, sweet, kind, beautiful Tim. As for the rest, the only ones I am sure of are those who have passed: friends, lovers, beautiful, brave, and brilliant young men who soared like Icarus daring things that few would even dream of, and they changed the world.

I hope and pray that others from our group will surface, but who knows? Other men and women from other GLF chapters are coming together and we will have a chance to share our histories, recalling great events and amazing people, so much gained, so many lost, the pride, the joy, the wonder of it all, and the grief are all beyond measuring.

News from Gaza

This is not for the squeamish. It is one of the most disgusting, awful things I've ever read -- a letter from Barbara Lubin who is in Gaza bringing medicines and food. I've long said that Israel is better than the Nazis, but that's too low a standard. Now I can't give Israel even that much credit.

You can help get food and medicine to the Palestinians by donating to the Middle-East Children's Alliance

January 23, 2009
Dear Jack,

I entered the Gaza Strip on Wednesday night with my friend and fellow activist Sharon Wallace after waiting ten hours at the Egypt/Gaza. The destruction and trauma is even greater than I expected.

In just two short days I met with families who were given minutes to evacuate their homes and are now living in overcrowded UN schools; I saw the ruins of bombed greenhouses; I looked out the window at fields and roads torn up by the tread of Israeli tanks; and I visited two universities where MECA supports students with scholarships-severely damaged by Israeli bombs.

Out of all the devastation I have seen so far, there is one story in particular that I think the world needs to hear. I met a mother who was at home with her ten children when Israeli soldiers entered the house. The soldiers told her she had to choose five of her children to "give as a gift to Israel." As she screamed in horror they repeated the demand and told her she could choose or they would choose for her. Then these soldiers murdered five of her children in front of her. The concept of "Jewish morality" is truly dead. We can be fascists, terrorists, and Nazis just like everybody else.

I spent the first morning visiting Rafah then drove north to Nuseirat Refugee Camp where our partner organization Afaq Jadeeda Association is buying food a delivering cooked meal to displaced families with funds MECA provided. Then to Gaza City.

Today I visited Jabaliya Refugee Camp and the Zaytoun neighborhood of Gaza City, two of the areas hardest hit by Israel's brutal attacks. Pharmacies, schools, and homes were indiscriminately hit in Jabaliya. Mohammed, one of our volunteers in Gaza, and his family were forced to evacuate their home because of intense bombing in their area.

In Zaytoun, I saw families gathering wood from charred trees. The almost two-year blockade of Gaza has deprived people cooking gas, so these terrified families build fires to keep warm and cook the little food they can get.

I talked to people on the street who told stories of wild dogs coming to eat their dead neighbors, relatives bleeding to death because Israel would not allow emergency workers into the area, and Israeli soldiers entering homes to beat and kill.

But despite the immense mourning and devastation, people are starting to put their lives back together. Sabreen, a young woman from Rafah, told me, "We are a strong people. No matter how many times Israel bombs us we are not leaving. We will keep trying to live as normal a life as possible."

Sincerely,
Barbara Lubin
Gaza City, Gaza, Palestine

Hope and Change

Assalaamu Aleikum

I sat at my desk this morning watching the inauguration of President Barack Hussein Obama, and after the historic event itself I had to turn off the TV, ostensibly to get to work, but who can work? Since this morning I’ve been on an emotional roller coaster, sometimes crying, sometimes ecstatic, sometimes exhausted with the relief of waking up from a horrible nightmare. Several horrible nightmares.

President Barack Hussein Obama. Saying that aloud, or just repeating the phrase in my head, it’s like listening to the angels sing. I remember attending Dr. King’s march on Washington. I remember the TV news with Sheriff Clark in Selma Alabama attacking civil rights marchers with dogs and fire hoses. I remember the freedom rides, the marches, black friends telling me how they couldn’t get service at a restaurant or a hotel. Only two years before I was born my mother went to the only public high school in her county, and black students were not allowed. Any who wanted a high school education had to go to the next county, and their family had to make any arrangements for travel, lodging, etc… And with such segregation, what kind of school would be awaiting those who made the effort? In my lifetime we have gone from Jim Crow segregation to having a black President, no less one with an African name reflecting his Muslim roots.

I remember coming out in 1970 when Illinois was the only part of the US where lovemaking between two men wasn’t a criminal act, when being gay was a shameful secret, when the only ones who were out were the few weirdos too flaming or radical not be in a closet. And how they paid the price! Bashings were common, even murders. Forget getting a decent job, and you were very lucky if your family wouldn’t banish you.

Things do change. In fact change is the only constant.

Now in contact online with GLBT folks in Muslim countries I hear their stories and try to offer hope. “Oh, but here is not like in America” they tell me. No, it’s not like America now. It’s like America 40 years ago. And it will change. We have changed. You will change.

The world is all about change, and today we have seen a change that is a culmination of centuries of striving and sacrifice on the part of so many African Americans who worked so hard to give their children better chances than they ever had, not to become president, but sometimes just to get their kids a decent education or a decent meal, and all too often just to survive the slave market and the whip, to escape the dogs and the lynchings.

President Barack Hussein Obama. Oh, how I love saying that! I have my reservations and doubts about this particular man. I’ve followed his record, and as we should regard any politician I only trust him so far, but after what we’ve had, we can at least count on President Barack Hussein Obama to be a huge improvement. He has a very tough road ahead of him and I hope and pray that he is up to the challenges. Jimmy Carter, a good, humane, and very intelligent man stumbled under the load of wreckage he inherited from his Republican predecessors. We enter uncertain times with the handicaps of the last eight years of hideous malfeasance. And for all that the mere fact that we have a president named Barack Hussein Obama and that suddenly our White House is not so entirely white, all inspires hope beyond reason.

President Barack Hussein Obama. Why does a black man in that White house matter to gay kids in Pakistan, Yemen, and Malaysia? Exactly because he does show that there is change, there is reason to hope, that things can eventually get better, and that there is a historical wave washing humanity of its prejudices, all our most stupid bigotries.

When I was a little boy with my family at Martin Luther King’s March on Washington, I had no idea that one of the organizers at that march was a man named Bayard Rustin, an African-American community organizer who helped Dr. King learn the ways of Mahatma Gandhi. Rustin had been arrested and exposed as a homosexual 10 years earlier and it hurt his career in the movements for peace and racial equality. He was much kept away from the cameras for fear of scandal, but Dr. King kept him close and never shied away from Rustin’s friendship, never pushed him out of sight.

And just a few months ago we saw a movie about Harvey Milk, a gay community organizer in the 1970’s. He learned organizing tactics from the example of Martin Luther King who had learned from Bayard Rustin who learned from Gandhi’s followers in India. And Harvey Milk came to the same end as Dr. King, and Mahatma Gandhi, and so many others, and perhaps that’s part of why I’ve been crying today – for Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, for the four little girls in Montgomery, for Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Viola Luzzo, and so many others who were murdered on this terrible road of necessity. And make no mistake, racism is still strong in America and there is so much work left to do, but here we are with our president Barack Hussein Obama, showing that for all the work ahead of us there is so much that is truly, at last behind us.

And with President Barack Hussein Obama we already have four open gays and lesbians in high posts in the White House. Just twenty years ago that would have been impossible. Change happens. Wherever you are, whenever you are living, change happens!

Never forget that. Never forget that God is compassionate and merciful and that no matter how bad things are, and however slow and difficult the road is, change happens.

Alhamdulillah!

Gays for Gaza Demonstration in the Castro

Saturday 10 January 2009

The rally for Gaza at the San Francisco Civic Center went well, pretty much as expected and by the numbers. Over a thousand, maybe 2 thousand ofr us rallied, we marched around downtown, came back to Civic Center. There were maybe a hundred Zionist demonstrators across the street by City Hall.

My signs were much photographed and appreciated. On one side

“Never Again”
must be a cry in defense
for all humanity.
If it is used to justify brutality against others
it makes us no better than our past oppressors.


And on the other:


German Jews 1939
Palestinians 2009
Property confiscated and destroyed
Food & basic medical care denied
Deprivation of jobs & livelihood
Religious discrimination/Racism
Mass Round-ups & Detentions
Mixed marriages outlawed
Squalid relocation camps
Children murdered
Checkpoints
Resistance labeled as “terrorists”
Settlements = Lebensraum
“Never Again” is for everyone!
What did we learn from the Holocaust?


The “Never Again” side, in larger print was clearly visible across the street when I held it up to the Zionists.

Where it got a little more interesting was in the Castro at 3:00 where Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism in Palestine (QUIT Palestine) led a demonstration of GLBT support for Gaza. We had several dozen, maybe 50 people at Harvey Milk Plaza. What would have been a nice little hour, maybe an hour and half of waving signs and chanting was energized into so much more by a group of about a dozen Zionists across the street from us. We really should thank them for giving us so much focus and energy.

Having taken a lunch break between the two demos I got to the Castro a little late and when I arrived some of our folks were on both sides of the street. I decided to go where the fun was. The anger and vehemence were so – well, scary. They weren’t seriously dangerous then and there, but they were spitting out insults and names, making odd assertions and screaming “Lies!” at any disagreement.” One guy instantly asked me when was my last therapy appointment. One woman said, “Did you know all the Gay Arabs are fleeing to Israel?” A few, yes, most no. (And never mind the absurdity of her statement!) “Oh, you’re such a liar!” she yelled. Some of the women kept shouting “Remember Mumbai!” Which has what to do with Israel and Palestine? I guess that Muslims are scary terrorists – unlike the IDF bombing schools and hospitals in Gaza.

We eventually went back to “our” side of the street and not only did we have many more people, but we clearly had more gay people, and we even had more Jews on our side of the street. As for all those gay Arabs fleeing into Israel from oppression in their own lands, all the gay Arabs present were on our side.

Finally they rolled up their flags and went home, and after a little bit longer, so did we.

An Intefaith Appeal For Equality and Justice -- No on 8

An interfaith community has to be open to considering a great variety of viewpoints, often some very contradictory ones. The Interfaith Movement is predicated on recognizing our differences and diversity. Where the arguments against same-sex marriage are based on theology any church or other religious group may indeed choose not to perform or recognize those marriages. But why should this affect others?

While marriage is an important part of the religious world, different religions regard it differently. Nor is religion necessarily an element of marriage. Non-believers have enjoyed secular, civil marriage for centuries. Many volumes of family, tax, and property law hang on the legal, secular contract of marriage. Our diverse religions have thrived, separately and collectively with the separation of church and state. Under those principles, no law can interfere with ecclesiastical rites and rules of marriage; but neither does any religious institution have the right to impose its particular rules on the state.

We read the same arguments against same-sex marriage repeatedly, but they ring false. All of the arguments against same-sex marriage are never argued as general principles, but uniquely applied against same-sex couples. Any two drunken, infertile atheists who don’t know each other’s names can get married at the All-Nite Chapel of Elvis as long as they are of opposite sex. And they can get divorced two days later, but two men or two women who are deeply committed, have been building their lives together, and perhaps raising children together cannot obtain the legal, contractual benefits that marriage offers.

Acceptance for gay men and women has been growing steadily. History makes one thing obvious: While same-sex marriage can be delayed it will not be stopped. Fight it with whatever sense of righteousness you like. Yes sometimes there is a religious duty to stand against an inevitable tide, but rather than fighting a divisive battle against people who want to solemnize their love, to take the responsible path of their own love and their own faith, doesn’t your church have other, more serious battles? What if the many millions of dollars supporting Proposition 8 were used to feed the poor, to house the homeless, to provide care for the ill? The money, energy, and resources spent on elections to deprive people of equal rights could instead have been saving lives.

Again, I ask as an interfaith activist to other inter-faith activists, what right does any religion have to force their religious rules and reasons on any other? And what kind of interfaith activists are we if our many agreements to disagree aren’t based on universal values of respect for the rights of others? We can agree to disagree on so many issues, but do not ask me to agree to be a second-class citizen subject to the whims of a majority. We’ve seen too often where that leads.

"Respect" after Proposition 8

One has to wonder whether it’s sheer chutzpah or some utter vacuity that allows so many people who supported Proposition 8 to ask in saccharine tones why I can’t respect their rights when they’ve just dealt a blow to mine? Am I supposed to kiss the boot that just kicked me?

These writers profess that they like gay people but think that marriage is reserved for “one man and one woman” (and God bless the Mormons, relatively new to that concept, who are doing their best to assure us all that they’ve got it down!) But really, Dear, I don’t care if you like me. After all, many slave owners professed that they loved “their people” who were “practically like members of the family.” Of course they were still slaves. It’s very sweet in a condescendingly clueless and offensively hypocritical way. Actually it’s just hollow lip service. I don’t need your love. I got love! And my love and I just want our civil rights.

Your religion can say what it likes about marriage, or about anything. Men hunted dinosaurs into extinction when the universe was only 1,000 years old? Fine. Marriage is only between a man and a woman? Within your church that’s OK, sure!

But the fact is that marriage has been performed – utterly without religion -- in city halls and by justices of the peace all over this country since its beginning. In countries even more secular than ours, even in the atheist Soviet Union, marriage has been performed and recognized as a legal, secular institution, and that has never been questioned – until now.

Once the man I’ve loved and shared my life with for the last 14 years got a chance to make it legal your religious hackles are up. Fine. Have a prayer group about it, but when you’re whining about your religious freedom, remember that has to cut both ways. My religious freedom is not only as valuable to me as yours is to you, but the Constitution says both have to be considered equally. I don’t have the right to make you marry a person of the same sex, and you don’t have the right to force my relationship into your religious rules.

Democracy? Right… Democracy works when the rights of minorities are respected, and all citizens are equal. Majorities don’t get to vote away the rights of minorities. That’s how Jim Crow laws came into place. And it was the courts, not ballot initiatives, that struck them down. Yes, indeedy. _Brown vs. Board of Education_ and _Loving vs.Virginia_ overthrew the popular will of the majority. And thank you, Jesus!

The most amazing feature of this has been the parents protesting that they want to be the ones to decide when and how to inform their children about homosexuality – apparently by having them sing all about it on youtube and waving signs on the streets. OK, you taught your kids about it. Now can I get married?

Heck, all I really want is my rights so I’ll even offer a compromise. If you can change every law in the land that pertains to marriage so that instead of using the precious M-word that you want to keep so exclusively, you can replace it with another term, “civil unions” or whatever… that’s cool, too. But you have to change every law. Every last one. Get that precious M-word out of the law books and reserve it only for ecclesiastical application. Only then will “marriage” not be a legal definition of thousands of specific rights and responsibilities, but strictly a religious rite like you say it is. Then we really will be equal. Then we can really love and respect each other.

Then. Not yet. That’s an awful lot of law, Baby. You better get cracking if you want to feel the love!