Category: Political culture

Altoona, Iowa, to Auburn, Indiana

Carol had to do some business last night after I went to bed, so I got up before her and went to the truck stop restaurant next to our motel to buy a protein-filled and fat-filled breakfast of bacon and eggs. While I ate, I read The Des Moines Register. The 90 point headline proclaimed: “A BANNER DAY FOR GAY RIGHTS”. Three quarters of the front page was devoted to articles on Monday’s Supreme Court rulings. Four of the inside pages, and half the editorial page, were devoted to gay marriage. The Des Moines Register made sure to point out the important role Iowa has played in the recognition of equal marriage rights:

“In 2009, Iowa became the third state to legalize same-sex marriage, when the Iowa Supreme Court ruled that a state ban on same-sex marriage violated equal rights embedded in the state constitution.

“The Iowa case, Varnum v. Brien, helped pave the way for Wednesday’s Supreme Court decisions, said Randall Wilson, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa.

“It was only after (Varnum) that we saw that opinion was starting to change around much of the country,” Wilson said. “And it’s the Iowa tradition of being on the forefront of civil rights.”

It was so green in Iowa! I couldn’t get over how green the gently rolling hills looked as we drove through the Iowa landscape. The trees were astonishingly green; the grass by the side of the road, although it showed just a little bit of summer gold, was green; the corn, not quite knee-high, filled the cultivated fields with deep green; the soybeans were green; everything looked green except for the occasional white farm house, silver silo, gray-brown weatherbeaten and collapsing barn, and the white cement roadway stretching in front of us. The great drought of the past few years is over; and the open water standing in the bare, low corners of the fields showed that an excess of rain, while making everything green, has given the farmers the opposite problem: wet and flooded fields.

We decided to stop in Iowa City to buy lunch at the coop. We didn’t know where the coop was, nor if there even was one any more; when we made this trip in the opposite direction ten years ago, we thought that there would be a coop in a college town, and we navigated to it by instinct; but now Carol just consulted her phone, which gave the address and phone number of the coop. We decided to call the coop for directions, and a nice young man asked if we were coming from the east or the west, and then told Carol to take exit 249. Exit 249 was a good five miles east of the main Iowa City exit, but we took it anyway, thinking that a polite young man who worked at the coop would have local knowledge that we should take advantage of. The directions he gave us had us drive in on Rochester Avenue and turn left on Jefferson, but we discovered that Jefferson paralleled Rochester. We gave up on the directions. By instinct, we found the Unitarian Universalist church, and parked beside it. New Pioneer Food Coop was just behind the church parking lot; this was not unexpected, since fifty years ago there were many Unitarian Universalists were involved in helping to start food coops.

We stocked up on lunch food at the coop, and then drove to the next Iowa rest stop, where we ate at a shaded picnic table, while watching clouds building up to the north. The clouds kept building as we drove through Illinois and then entered Chicagoland, the vast sprawling mix of suburbia, industry, and occasional fields of corn and soybeans that extends nearly halfway across Illinois from Chicago itself. It was nearly rush hour. Traffic started getting heavy, and the drivers started getting more aggressive and ruder. We thought of pulling off the highway and eating dinner somewhere. We took the exit to Minooka, Illinois. There was nothing in Minooka; nothing, that is, except for sprawling housing developments with big stone gates inscribed with the name of the housing development. One development was called Indian Ridge; the name was a blatant lie, for the Indians had all been killed off in the Blackhawk War of the 1830s, and this particular housing development stood on a particularly flat stretch of ground.

We gave up finding food in Minooka, and braved Chicagoland rush hour. Chicagoland was so soul-suckingly dreary that we drove clear through to Chesterton, Indiana, where we stopped to have dinner at a Round the Clock restaurant, where our waitress called us “sweetie,” and where we had free wifi and apple pie.

By now it was dark, and we drove through intermittent rain and darkness until at last we reached Auburn, Indiana. We had hoped my sister could drive up an meet us here for breakfast, but she came down with Clostridium difficile, one of those very unpleasant illnesses which makes you want to stay close to home, and which makes your friends and relatives choose not to visit you just in case you forget the sterilization protocols. We decided to wave to her from here: Hi, Jean!

Sidney, Nebraska, to Altoona, Illinois

We left Sidney, Nebraska, at about ten in the morning. Our first stop was the Buffalo Bill Ranch State Historical Park out side North Platte, Nebraska. Buffalo Bill’s house was set up the way I remember historical houses being set up when I was a child, with no influence from the cadre of trained museum professionals. No trained museum professional would have a life-sized mannequin dressed as Buffalo Bill greeting you from the parlor on the right as you entered the door of the house; no trained museum professional would have a slightly moth-eaten buffalo head hanging in one of the horse stalls in the barn; no trained museum professional would let you wander around in the hay loft without any signs explaining exactly what you were seeing. We ate lunch at some picnic tables in the shade of tall trees, within sight of four young buffalo the state arranges to have living in a pen a hundred yards from Buffalo Bill’s house. The entire state historical park was utterly delightful, and I got the sense that Buffalo Bill’s ghost (if he has one) must like the whole arrangement very much.

We tried to stop for dinner in Lincoln, Nebraska, but got lost, and finally just grabbed a cup of coffee and a sandwich to go at a bookstore that seemed to sell more tchotchkes and coffee and snacks than books.

As we drove further, everything began looking so very green. It is not green this time of year in California, it is brown. And the air began to feel humid. We were approaching the midwest.

We stopped again at the Pottawattamie rest area in Iowa. From a display on the wall, I learned about the 200 foot high loess hills of Iowa, amongst which the rest area was sited, and which are a geographical marvel. I found a mulberry tree which, by the evidence of the stains on the sidewalk, had dropped all its ripe fruit. Carol found something that looked like blueberries, though the plant was a definite tree, and the leaves didn’t quite look like blueberry leaves:

BlogJun2613

But the rest area attendant assured her that he and the local FedEx delivery man ate lots of the fruit, so Carol did, too. What a great rest area — a geology lesson, fruit for the picking, a clean and pleasant rest area, with free wifi to boot — and it made me think that Iowa must be an enlightened state, to treat passing strangers as honored guests. Somehow this reminded me that Iowa is one of the states that ratified same-sex marriage. Then Carol got email from one of the people with whom she sells solar panel leases: the Supreme Court struck down Prop 8, and same sex marriage is now legal in California.*

Then we drove and drove until we reached Altoona. And here we are, late at night, in another Motel 6.

———

*Though the BBC Web site reports that “the San Francisco appeals court has said it will wait at least 25 days before allowing same-sex marriages to resume in California.” But that delay means I will be back in California in time to perform weddings — Amy, the senior minister at the Palo Alto church, and I have talked about doing free weddings for anyone of any gender who wants one, probably on the first day that they are allowed. More on this as the situation develops….

Finding a new direction

Sara Horowitz, founder of the Freelancers Union (my union!), published an edited conversation she had with Gar Alperovitz, professor of political economy at the University of Maryland. Horovitz is one of the more interesting people out there trying to make the world more humane for workers, so it’s an interesting, albeit short, conversation. Here’s one interesting comment by Alperovitz from this conversation:

“I come out of liberalism. That whole movement is largely over — and that needs to be said. I say that with one caution: they’re holding the line in certain areas, importantly, against a lot of pain. But it’s not the way of the future. It’s a decaying and dying system of politics. It needs to be said.”

This is an important critique for religious liberals to think about, because (for better or worse) religious liberalism has tied its wagon to the horse of political liberalism. Like political liberals, religious liberals favor social tolerance (not a bad thing) coupled with a highly regulated form of consumer capitalism. But liberalism, whether religious or political, seems unable to move forward in the face of global climate change and an increasingly exploitative economic system. This is not to diminish the efforts of political liberalism or religious liberalism, for both forms of liberalism are striving mightily to keep us from moving backwards into worse exploitation, and moving backwards into global climate disaster. But we’re in a place in history where just holding steady is not going to be good enough.

Speaking of political liberalism, Alperovitz says, “A whole new direction needs to grow” — a new direction that is not conservatism, nor that offshoot of conservatism, libertarianism. But neither Alperovitz nor Horowitz can yet say what that new direction will be. I think this is true for religious liberalism as well — what we’re doing now isn’t moving us forward, we don’t want to go back to dogmatic religion, nor do we want that offshoot of dogmatic religion, individualistic religion. But what our new direction will be is not clear to me.

A time of growing cruelty

In a recent post on her blog, Alice Walker writes about how the FBI has called Assata Shakur a terrorist. At one point in the post, Walker, being a poet, diverges from commentary on current events into a meditation on the prevalence of cruelty in the United States today:

“What is most distressing about the times we live in, in my view, is our ever accelerating tolerance for cruelty. Prisoners held indefinitely in orange suits, hooded, chained and on their knees. Like the hunger strikers of Guantanamo, I would certainly prefer death to this. People shot and bombed from planes they never see until it is too late to get up from the table or place the baby under the bed. Poor people terrorized daily, driven insane really, from fear. People on the streets with no food and no place to sleep. People under bridges everywhere you go, holding out their desperate signs: a recent one held by a very young man, perhaps a veteran, under my local bridge: I Want To Live….”

In recent months, I’ve been trying to understand why I feel there is something morally unsound in our society recently — and yes, I know that every era thinks their time is morally unsound. But every era does have its own particular moral unsoundness, and I think Walker is on to something: our time is a time when we are increasingly tolerant of cruelty, even amused by cruelty.

Why we still need OWL, part II

The school newspaper controversy in nearby Mountain View, which I reported on in this post, got picked up today by the San Jose Mercury News in an article written by Sharon Noguchi: “Mountain View High School newspaper’s sex stories raise parents’ ire”.

The Merc tries to remain objective, but they’re obviously on the side of the student journalists who dared to report on some of the realities of teen life today. In her news article, Noguchi writes: “But the debate also illustrates the gap between adult and teen conversation and mores.” As a columnist, Scott Herhold was able to state his opinion boldly: “A group of parents crawled from their caves to protest that the student journalists had taken things too far — that the stories promoted unprotected sex and imperiled futures. In truth, the articles in the Oracle, the student newspaper, were fairly tame….”

Herhold goes on to point out the heroes of the story, the people who protected the rights of student journalists, and who stood up for what was right instead of caving to intolerant parents and religious views: “The heroes were the administrators and educators who stood up for the paper, led by Superintendent Barry Groves. At the meeting, Groves praised the journalism department and said, ‘There’s nothing I would have taken down.'”

Residents of Los Altos and Mountain View might want to take a moment and write a note of support to Barry Groves. You can find his email address on the school district Web site.

Further reading: You can read the Oracle online here. The Los Altos Town Crier published my letter to the editor on this topic, under the title “Minister supports sex education for teens” (“Look, Mildred, those crazy Unitarians are at it again”), and for the sake of the record I’ll include the full text below the fold.

Continue reading “Why we still need OWL, part II”

UU kid on Obama’s Facebook page

One of the middle schoolers from our congregation went to a gun control rally, and a photo with him in it appeared on Barack Obama’s Facebook page. How cool is that?

Obama's Facebook page

Click on the image above to see the caption inserted by Obama’s social media staff: “Harrison Frahn listens to a speech on reducing gun violence at a candlelight vigil in Palo Alto, CA.” I’m sure Obama never even saw this post; I’m sure Obama has forgotten the year or two he spent in a Unitarian Universalist Sunday school; I’m sure that Obama’s social media team merely posted this because it’s a good photo to further their political goals. Nevertheless, it’s really fun to see a UU kid recognized in this way — recognized for taking a public stand on something he cares about.

Quote of the month

From the article “Flea market capitalists: disaffected and disenchanted,” by Arthur E. Farnsely II:

Disaffection is not going to be repaired by politicians, business leaders, or pastors trying harder. Over the decades the modern West has built a consumer society in which people get more personal choices and lifestyle freedom in exchange for a loss of community, tradition, and stability. We are still interdependent, of course, but the connections are complex, malleable, idiosyncratic.

Some people still live in tight-kint communities; others are lucky enough to have the education and money needed to pursue their “lifestyles choices.” But the people at the bottom have limited choices, and some choose to be left alone. Flea market dealers are an extreme example of this segment, but poor and lower working class people all across America have tenuous relationships to the institutions of family, school, business, and government.

A recent Pew study confirms the rising number of people who claim “no religious affiliation.” People are also increasingly choosing “no political affiliation.” (Many people who say they are politically independent reliably vote conservative or liberal, but this only proves the point — they have opinions but resist membership commitments.)

— in Christian Century, 23 January 2013, p. 25.

If you want to adequately explain why people are choosing to have no religious affiliation, you have to take into account the effects of consumer capitalism on the way we perceive and live in the world. We expect to have choices these days, and institutions of any kind limit the kinds of choices we have come to expect as consumers.

The year in review, pt. 1

It has not been a great year in liberal religion.

In one ongoing negative trend, most Unitarian Universalists continue to act as though we are part the ruling elite in this country. Mind you, as recently as the 1950s, Unitarian Universalists actually could claim to be part of the ruling elite. Back then, Unitarians and Universalists were considered mainline Protestants, and the United States was run by mainline Protestants, for mainline Protestants. And while the Universalists were marginal at best by the mid-twentieth century, the Unitarians could claim to have some real influence. Most notably, A. Powell Davies preached to a congregation containing a number of high-level functionaries in the federal government, as well as a few elected officials; and the Washington newspapers supposedly held their Monday morning editions until they could get the text of his Sunday sermons. Also worth noting: Adlai Stevenson II, Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, was a Unitarian, as were a number of other politically influential people.

Today, however, the mainline Protestant coalition that long dominated the United States is crumbling, and Unitarian Universalists have moved themselves out of, and been pushed out of, mainline Protestantism. As a result, politicians either don’t care about us, or they can dismiss us since we represent such a tiny minority (about half a percent of the total U.S. population). As a religion, we have no real power or influence.

Yet we continue to act as if we do have political influence. The most blatant example of that was the “Justice General Assembly” in June of this year. A few thousand Unitarian Universalists from across the country went down to Phoenix, Arizona, and protested unjust and discriminatory state law. Sheriff Joe Arapaho of Maricopa County used our presence to bolster his carefully cultivated image with his voters — here come these out-of-state leftist hippies, telling me what to do, but I’m standing up to them! — and I’m sure our interactions with him did nothing to weaken his political position; indeed, our presence in Phoenix probably strengthened his political position. As far as our influence on state politics, I could find no evidence that we were even noticed — OK, we made it into the local newspapers, but honestly who cares about newspapers any more? In short, we’re doing social justice as if it’s 1955. Justice GA made us feel good, but had little positive impact beyond that.

On the other hand, there are some Unitarian Universalists who have moved beyond social justice c. 1955. For example, I continue to be impressed with the organizing efforts of groups like the Unitarian Universalist Legislative Ministry of California (UULMC). But UULMC represents a quite different approach to influencing politics — UULMC is a separate nonprofit organization that employs ministers who are not serving a local congregation, as well as other staffers, to do organizing around specific legislative issues. UULMC can not only build coalitions with other advocacy groups, it can use the skills and abilities of ordained ministers to influence legislators, without those ministers having their time and attention divided between politics and a congregation.

This approach to influencing public policy is significantly different from the 1950s approach in which Unitarians assumed they were part of the ruling elite and deserved special access; it’s also very different from the 1960s model of protest politics, where the grounding assumption was to disrupt the ruling elite. Justice GA remained mired in the 1950s and 1960s — you have to pay attention to us because we’re important! and — we’re going to be angry protestors just like in the 1960s! UULMC have moved forward into the very different realities of the 2010s.

Tomorrow: The year in review continues, with thoughts on why UU ministry to children and youth sucks

Supreme Court will hear Prop 8 appeal

The Supreme Court has announced that it will hear the appeal regarding the lower court decision to strike down Proposition 8, which repealed same-sex marriage in California.

So there will be no free weddings at the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto — at least not until June, 2013, assuming the Supreme Court upholds the lower court’s ruling.

Free weddings in Palo Alto, if Prop 8 goes down!

If the Supreme Court declines to hear the appeal on the lower court’s ruling overturning Proposition 8, same-sex marriage will be legal again in California. And if that happens, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto (www.uucpa.org) will offer free weddings for one day about a week after the Supreme Court announcement — we’re saying about a week afterwards, because it’s unclear how long it will take Santa Clara County clerks to issue marriage licenses. The deal goes for opposite-sex couples, too.

We can’t set a firm date yet, for obvious reasons. In the mean time, please help spread the word — if Prop 8 goes down, we’ll do free weddings for a day!