Children Are Our Future, If We Let Them Be

And if so, there's hope yet:

TORONTO (Reuters Life!) - The Muggle, or non-wizard, world is agog at author J.K. Rowling's bombshell announcement that one of the main characters in the Harry Potter books was gay.

By Monday afternoon, after a weekend of gossip about Rowling's "outing" of Hogwarts headmaster Albus Dumbledore, there were almost 6,000 comments on the issue on two popular Harry Potter Web sites, www.leakynews.com and www.mugglenet.com.

"Mostly people are happy that she has done this," said Melissa Anelli, webmistress of the Leaky Cauldron site, admitting that the site has seen a small subset of vocal readers unhappy at the revelation.

"I think it's great, I think the way she handled it was that this was just another fact about him, the same way that he's a teacher, he likes bowling, chamber music. And if more people were like that, we'd have less of a problem today."

Take heart, progressives!

I make this admission: I've not read a Harry Potter book. I started to, but thought Rowling's writings to be too cute by half to focus on the story (I mean, come on..."Diagon Alley"????) and so got quickly bored with wordplay that I've seen done better in Mad Magazine.

I have, however, seen the movies. I suspect this is how most adults were exposed to HP.

Albus Dumbeldore always struck me as a kindly old schoolmaster, involved in the schooling of the children and their protection, but not uncomfortably engaged in their lives...like some Republicans we might mention (koffkoffMARKFOLEYkoffkoffTEDHAGGARD
koffkoffSTROMTHURMOND). His sexuality was never in question in my mind: he simply had none because it wasn't relevant to the story.

Apparently, this after-the-fact revelation of inconsequential relevance has already raised the hackles of the predictable:

Why would people applaud? Why would it be necessary to have this as a back story? Maybe the final paragraph in the AP story explains it: “Not everyone likes her work, Rowling said, likely referring to Christian groups that have alleged the books promote witchcraft. Her news about Dumbledore, she said, will give them one more reason.”

Yes, knock the Christians. That will sell books.

One presumes Surber is near-hysterical because he was going to wear a Dumbeldore costume for Halloween, but now has to go for a more overtly butch character...say, Myra Breckenridge.

One wonders why Surber feels the need to spin the facts. After all, Christian groups all across this country have railed long and hard against Harry Potter novels for introducing a sympathetic witchcraft into polite society (like "Bell Book and Candle" didn't???). She spoke a fact, Donbo, yet you bridle at this?

Or are you saying that Christians are more tolerant of gays than they are of fantasy withcraft? I'm sure Matthew Shepard would disagree with you, respectfully of course (and probably in more tasteful clothing), if he could.

It's safe to say that Christian wingnuts have made more hay off Harry Potter than Harry Potter has made by pissing Christians off.

One can only imagine the furor in certain pulpits this weekend over this. In fact, I'm surprised to see that Focus On Family is still silent on this, but maybe they're trying to find a way to spin facts as well.

Unsurprisingly, Focus On family remained stone cold silent when the Roman Catholic Church was under assault for harboring pedophiles. One would think that an organization that has toiled long and hard to equate homosexuality with pedophilia would have said something about celibate authority figures molesting children.

In fairness, FOF did have something to say about Ted Haggard. Curiously, it was supportive...in its own weird hatemongering way.

Speaking of "authority figures", a more astounding admission from Rowling was less noticed:

The books, she said, were "a plea for an end to hatred, to bigotry" as well as a lesson for kids "to question authority.... You should not assume the establishment tells you the truth."

Keith Olbermann admitted on his show last night that, in a private conversation with Rowling prior to this signal event, she revealed that in fact, she intended a metaphor to the Bush and Blair administrations and how the United States and Britain were hoodwinked into war and sheepdogged into place by their authoritarian proxies.

UPDATE: Needless to say, The Borowitz Report has the perfect antidote to all this "outting"...

The Nader Of The GOP

The lessons learned of the 1992, 1996, and 2000 elections apparently did not sink in to the Republican party:

To many values voters, Giuliani's rise is one more insult in the wake of the serial GOP sex scandals in Congress, the failure of George W. Bush's Administration to amend the Constitution to outlaw gay marriage, and a hunch that religious voters register on the Republican radar only when Election Day is in sight.

No duh!

We get a bit of an insight into why Karl Rove bailed out on the Republican party just when they need him most: for the past seven years, his hand-picked choice for President, the man to whom he delivered 3.5 million additional conservative Christian votes in 2004, has failed miserably, not just in imposing freedom in Iraq, but also in imposing a clear, conservative Christian agenda on America.

Sure, he's made inroads, no question about that: the nominations of Justices Roberts and Alito have all but cinched a conservative agenda for the next four decades in the court system, barring a sudden change of heart with a new President.

But look what hasn't happened, what was promised to the religious right: an anti-gay marriage amendment to the Constitution, overturning Roe v Wade, an end to the sex scandals that plagued government during the Clinton administration (suddenly, Monica Lewinski giving the Big Dog a hummer doesn't seem nearly so outrageous, when he was derided by people who "meat up" in men's rooms in airports), and other Christian stances that were, in fact and deed, repudiated by Bush (on issues such as saving the environment and assisting the poor such as in the Katrina tragedy).

There are two dynamics at work here: the first and overarching one is the hubris the Christian Coalition has shown over the past twelve years when in point of fact, its harsh stances and inflexibility has created many of the legislative logjams and moral morasses we see now.

After all, would Larry Craig have been such an huge hypocrite if his constituency, egged on by people who have their own moral matters to contend with-- like Ted Haggard or Ralph Reed-- hadn't insisted he tow a hard line in order to win their votes?

Pardon the pun.

On the flip side, the Republicans bear a lot of the responsibility here, too. Just as Democrats are often accused of taking (pick your minority/interest group) for granted, the Republicans assume that Christians have no alternative, having painted themselves as the final arbiters of Jesus' work here on earth.

*AHem*

If you take abortion off the table, the Democratic positions are much closer in fealty with Jesus' teachings than the Republicans, which is why the GOP is terrified of a Hillary nomination.

She's truly the only candidate of either party who is in a position to take a nuanced stance on abortion, as both a women and a Christian, and her "let's make abortion rare, safe, but legal" stance resonates with many more Christian middle class women than overturning Roe v. Wade does, while maintaining a strong position for liberals to embrace.

Meanwhile, the GOP doesn't have anyone in the race or on the horizon who could accept the full embrace of the Christian Coalition while having a plausible presence in the rest of the country's mind as a President.

In other words, the Christian Coalition is looking at itself in a mirror, thinking it sees the country, which it does not.

The sort of hubris that Ralph Nader's supporters saw in 2000, and look what that got us.

OK, that's not entirely fair. Al Gore lost the election (despite the stealing of Florida) for any number of reasons, not least of which was his failure to win his own damned Congressional district, much less Florida.

And yet, Nader got into the race, as his campaign staff put it "to put George Bush in the White House," in order to punish the Democrats for drifting from the left.

You'll notice they've tacked ever closer to the center and actually started winning some elections, Ralph. You might have done more good for the progressive cause by sitting out the 2000 election.

In many ways, this uprising by the conservative Christians is more damaging than Ralph Nader's was. Having seen the failure for two terms of their hand-picked candidate, and the moral incompetence of their handpicked Congress, for them to pull out now would be like taking heroin from an addict.

But then again, Christians were never particularly tolerant of people's weaknesses, even if their Lord is...

The Curious Quiet

(image courtesy wallyg at Flickr.com)

I want you to close your eyes and imagine you are standing in the middle of Church Square of the blogosphere, at the junction of Piety Avenue and Judgement Boulevard.

Still your mind for a moment. Take a deep breath and exhale completely, and now, listen.

Did you hear it?

The sound of utter, embarrassed silence.

I think we've just witnessed the death of the Christian Coalition. There are, of course, many causes that this can be attributed to: the death of Jerry Falwell had to take a lot of the starch out of its sails, to be sure, but more, I think the marriage of Christianity to the GOP agenda created a monster that ultimately Man could not control.

So Jesus stepped in.

The signal to me that Jesus stepped in was the event of the week in politics: the self-debasement of Senator Larry Craig of Utah Idaho (frikkin' Mormons...always got their Mitts on everything...). Republicans from all across the narrow strip of right wing fascism denounced one of their own, vociferously, loudly, with few objections (curiously, most objections were voiced by liberals, who wanted no part of a rush to judgement).

The evangelical church, the backbone of the Republican-church pairing, was strangely silent. Where was Pat Robertson? Why wasn't he denouncing this "abomination" of a man the way he accused lesbians and witches of causing the terror attacks of September 11?

Where was "Dr." (psychology, not divinity...shame on you, pastor!) James Dobson, the head of "Focus On Family," the organization that just last year skewed research to "prove" that gays and lesbians make bad parents? Larry Craig has received a 100% approval rating from the Christian Coalition, an organization Dobson claims to be a major force in...why is he suddenly silent? He had no qualms about speaking out against Rudy Giuliani.

Where are all those "countless" American Catholic bishops who threatened to excommunicate John Kerry for respecting the rights of women who aren't Catholic and don't necessarily agree with the Catholic Church regarding abortion? After all, the Bible condemns homosexual behavior according the the church, right alongside abortion...and if anything, is even more specific about homosexuality than abortion.

Where they at?

I think what we're witnessing, and not a moment too soon, is the death of the Religious Right as a political force. So many things have piled up over the past two years-- Catholic priests as pedophile, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, David Vitter, as well as Larry Craig and the death of Jerry Falwell, not to mention the absolutely tragic Bush presidency and the waning influence demonstrated during the 2006 midterm elections-- that I think the Religious Right has chosen to sit this one out.

In fact, I'd posit that the major reason Karl Rove left the White House was he realized he'd never be able to duplicate the "perfect storm" that created the Bush presidency in the first place, then managed to eke out a re-election. He knew he couldn't sell yet another load of manure about a Mitt Romney or Rudy Giuliani, and expect that constitutency to figure out how to put enough ketchup on it to make it palatable.

That was the most intriguing part of the Rove strategy: that he found enough suckers willing participants to sell manure as a gourmet meal, such that more than half his work was done before the talking points left the building. He'd pass the points along to select "clergy"men, who would pass them along to legitimate clergymen, who passed them along to pastors and deacons and priests and ministers, who declaimed them from the pulpit, all in the name of keeping America "normal".

Note that only the first wave of prelates got any stroke out of the deal. Your local church only saw the grateful words of those above it.

As a liberal Christian, I can begin to imagine the disllusionment many of the flock are feeling right now: to sit and defend behaviors they find even more abhorrent than the blow jobs they were violently and vehemently protesting just ten years with their "allies" in the GOP must be enormous, and their embarrassment even more so.

After all, they donated money to these men, just like they donated money to Christ. In their minds, these men were the equivalent to Christ for that reason. They must have felt it was that important.

In my heart, I feel for Senator Craig, too. Not completely. Not enough to want to see him not get punished for his comments and votes against tolerance and his hypocrisies. But I can imagine the humiliation he and his family feel, and I feel for them for that. We've all walked a mile in those shoes, most of us never had to walk them on the front pages of the tabloid news with flashbulbs popping in our faces.

And I feel for Senator Craig in another way: how much it must hurt him to hate who he is.