whyinthehell

RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A federal judge in Southern California has declared the U.S. military’s ban on openly gay service members unconstitutional because the ban violates the First Amendment rights of gays and lesbians.

U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips said Thursday she will issue an injunction that would halt the enforcement of the government’s ”don’t ask, don’t tell’’ policy nationwide.

Phillips says the policy doesn’t help military readiness and instead has a ”direct and deleterious effect.”

The Log Cabin Republicans filed the lawsuit in 2004. Phillips says she will draft the injunction with input from the group within a week and the government will have a week to respond.

(Source: The New York Times)

Many of the world’s religions — including Christianity — supported same-sex unions, a reality obscured by modern-day shrill, conservative commentary.

    “Through much of history, especially prior to the Fourteenth Century, many Christians did not share the view that marriage was a reward for being heterosexual, nor that a same-sex union was objectionable.

An icon from St. Catherine’s monastery on Mount Sinai illustrates this point. It shows two robed Christian saints getting married. Their pronubus (official witness, or “best man”) is none other than Jesus Christ.

It is a standard Roman portrayal of a wedding. The difference: the two saints are both male, Fourth Century Christian martyrs, Saint Serge and Saint Bacchus, close friends in the Roman army who were purportedly singled out for their secret adherence to Christianity before being tortured and killed.

Their unity, considered romantic by some historians and depicted through the image of marriage at St. Catherine’s monastery, was commemorated in many subsequent liturgies. The late Yale historian John Boswell found evidence for other Christian same-sex marriage ceremonies continuing even into the Eighteenth Century.

It is broadly and falsely assumed that the world’s religions uniformly condemn same-sex unions. That error is even repeated in the recent favorable decision on same-sex marriage by Chief Judge of Federal District Court in San Francisco, Vaughan R. Walker. 

It is true that all major religions exhibit some heterosexism, a bias in favor of heterosexuality over homosexuality. However, religions also have shown openness to same-sex unions, a reality that shrill conservative commentary, which dominates the public square on matters religious and sexual, has blocked from public view, even from the view of Judge Walker.

Many Buddhist authorities insist that privileging one sexual orientation over another is not the path of wisdom and insist that the successful management of sexual desire is the moral issue, not the orientation of that desire or the gender of your lover.

Jewish scholars show that compulsory hetero-normativity is not supported by basic Jewish values.

Pioneering scholars in Islam argue that in spite of the negative Qur’anic texts on homosexuality, a solid Muslim case, based on Islamic justice, can be made for same-sex unions. Observant Muslim lesbians, known as the Samadiyyah, are living out this expression of Muslim life and tolerance.

Some Native American religions portrayed “two-spirited,” persons, i.e. sexual minorities, in a very positive light.

Hindu scholars have shown that respect for diversity is at the heart of Hindu cultures.  Since early times, the Hindus saw that persons were not divided neatly into male and female and spoke of a “third sex” which opened space for and normalized gender and sexual variety and same-sex unions.

Lawmakers take note: because religions give this warranty and allow for this freedom of same-sex unions, laws that would legalize only the conservative religious view are in violation of religious freedom.

Religions are pluralistic on same-sex unions. It is not the function of law to curtail freedoms granted and authorized by mainstream religions.

Conservative Christians who insist that “traditional marriage” has always been “between a man and a woman” are wrong and historically uninformed. Thus, they are poor guides for lawmakers and judges.

There is strong support in world religions for the view that homosexuality is not the problem; heterosexism is.

The principles of justice and equality that pulsate through those flawed but powerful classics that we call the “world religions,” are moving toward seeing heterosexism, with its resistance to same-sex loving unions, as a prejudice in a class with sexism, racism, anti-Arabism and anti-Semitism.

Humanity needs its exuberant diversity but humans shrink from it.

As theologian William Sloane Coffin said: “Diversity may be the hardest thing for a society to live with — and perhaps the most dangerous thing to live without.” “

Also, Facebook page The New Civil Rights Movement and website.

(via @DavidBadash and Harrison Brace/@Vautrin)

Did You Know?

• The U.S. government kidnapped over 1,800 civilians in Peru and held them in internment camps during World War II …more
• World War II divided the Brazilian Nikkei community into Kachi-gumi who believed in Japan’s victory and Make-gumi who believed Japan could not win …more
• Many Japanese Canadians were imprisoned during World War II and were not released until 1949—four years after the war ended …more
• Japanese Americans served in the U.S. armed forces to fight against Germany and Japan and prove their loyalty as U.S. citizens …more
• A large number of second and third generation Nikkei from Latin American countries have migrated to Japan since the mid-1980s …more

For that matter, what does an enemy look like? And what can happen to those people who look like the enemy?

In 1943, President Franklin D. Roosevelt said, “The principle on which this country was founded and by which it has always been governed is that Americanism is a matter of mind and heart; Americanism is not, and never was, a matter of race or ancestry.” 

A year earlier, however, Roosevelt had authorized incarcerating more than 110,000 innocent people based on their ancestry, in what he called “concentration camps.” Although two-thirds were U.S. citizens, they were targeted because of their ancestry and the way they looked. How could this happen?

In 1941 the United States entered World War II after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Without evidence, key U.S. leaders claimed that all people of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast of the U.S. posed a risk to national security. Justifying it as a “military necessity,” the government forced U.S. citizens and their immigrant elders to leave their homes and live in camps under armed guard.

In 1983, however, a U.S. congressional commission uncovered evidence from the 1940s proving that there had been no military necessity for the unequal, unjust treatment of Japanese Americans during WWII. The commission reported that the causes of the incarceration were rooted in ” … race prejudice, war hysteria and a failure of political leadership.”

“We need you to act immediately to undo a disturbing decision from the Obama administration. Remember all the hard work you and other ACLU activists did to defeat Rep. Stupak’s draconian abortion coverage ban during the health care debate?

Well now, the White House has decided to voluntarily impose the ban for all women in the newly-created high risk insurance pools. What is disappointing is that there is nothing in the law that requires the Obama administration to impose this broad and highly restrictive abortion ban. It doesn’t allow states to choose to cover abortion and it doesn’t even give women the option to buy abortion coverage using their own money.”

Ask President Obama WHY his administration is restricting coverage for vulnerable women.

ryking:

azspot:

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed today what is now the most punitive and sweeping anti-immigrant state law in the nation. This law’s full effects will not be measurable for months to come, but it is already clear that it will be challenged in court because it denies rights guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. And until the legal issues are settled, the new law will have a detrimental effect on Arizona’s economy, as well as city and state budgets.

Fucking hell….