leftlibertarian.org

The issue dusted up last week when U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the European Union Commissioner for Agriculture Marian Fischer Boel blamed the global food shortage on people in India and China who are shifting their diet toward meat and away from vegetables.

But the facts get in the way: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization reported in response that grain consumption went up in the last year by just over four million tonnes in India and slightly less than seven million tonnes in China, while in the U.S. it climbed more than 33 million tonnes. And the bulk of that increase has gone into the subsidized biofuel crop - a demand that has driven corn prices in the U.S. from $2 per bushel when President George Bush began his ethanol push to $5 per bushel today.

In Canada, where production of biofuel has tripled since 2003, the federal government - which has been otherwise resistant to any policy that might address climate change - has tried to paint the new farm subsidy as an environmental gesture.

"Good for the environment and good for farmers," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said as he announced a $1.5-billion ecoENERGY plan last summer to get more ethanol and biodiesel pouring into Canadian gas tanks. "Our government's investment in biofuels is a double win."

But the spin gets worse. In the same story that included the above quote, Gordon Quaiattini, president of the Canadian Renewable Fuels Association, calls criticism of the diversion of foodcrops to biofuels, "intellectually dishonest."

Quaiattini says biofuels have nothing to with growing world hunger, that there is plenty of food to go around. The problem, he says, is the world's poorest citizens can no longer afford to buy rice, corn and wheat.

Unable - or unwilling - to connect the rising price driven by his own industry to affordability in the developing world, Quaiattini instead tries to blame the whole thing on rising oil prices, which are certainly a consideration, but a minor one compared to the competitive effect of tens of millions of tonnes of food being diverted to make a "green" energy source that is not even very green.

The push for biofuel is nothing short of a huge farm subsidy, a traditional corporate boondoggle that is putting unforgivable pressure on global food stocks.

More unforgivable yet, however, is the cheap political points that some people are trying to score as a result. For example, Rex Murphy, the self-styled Canadian iconoclast, cuddles up to government and corporate position makers once again, arguing (accurately) that biofuels are partly to blame for world food shortages, but then blaming, of all people, Al Gore for the whole problem.

10 May 2008

Wilson Armistead, who edited an edition of the Memoirs of James Logan (for more on Logan, see 1 May 2008), relates an interesting example of Quaker tax resistance from 1706-7:

Governor Hamilton being deceased, John Evans came out to the province as his successor. Governor Evans was young and proved inexperienced. He treated the non-resisting principle “as a mere notion, which would never endure a serious trial.” He not only granted a commission for privateering, but in 1706, finding Friends very averse to military requisitions, he determined to quicken them by a false alarm, of a hostile armament coming up the river. His measures were so well concerted for this purpose, that upon the arival of the express bringing the pretended intelligence, the city was thrown into a disgraceful state of alarm; many of the people hastily secreting their valuables, and getting away in boats to the creeks and upper parts of the Delaware, while Evans rode about with his sword drawn, cheaply acting the hero.

Governor Evans also determined, on his own authority, to impose a tax or toll on all outward-bound vessels when leaving the river. The principal inhabitants became alarmed at this innovation of their chartered privileges, which guaranteed that no tax or other impost should be levied but by consent of a majority of the people’s representatives. The council remonstrated again and again, but without effect; and the Governor, being determined to carry his point, ordered a fort to be erected on the banks of the river, and furnished with guns and ammunition. An officer and some men wore stationed there to stop every vessel outward-bound, and to claim a toll according to her tonnage. The toll exacted was half a pound of gunpowder per ton measurement. Should the ship not drop anchor and send on shore for a pass, she was to pay £5 for contempt; besides 20s. for the first gun, 30s. for the second, and 40s. for every subsequent one fired to bring her to.

After this had been endured for a while, and all remonstrance on the part of the peaceful community proving ineffectual, a consultation of some of the principal merchants was held, when Richard Hill…

Here, a footnote: “Richard Hill was a native of Maryland, and a useful member of the Society of Friends. He settled in Philadelphia, and was twenty-five years a member of the Governor’s council, and several times Speaker of the Assembly. He also filled the office of Commissioner of Property, and was, for the last ten years of his life, one of the provincial judges. Proud, in his History of Pennsylvania, says respecting him:—‘His sound judgment, his great esteem for the English constitution and laws, his tenderness for the liberty of the subject, and his zeal for preserving the reputable order established in his own religious community, with his great generosity to proper objects, qualified him for the greatest services in every station in which he was engaged, and rendered him of very great and uncommon value.’”

…a Friend of considerable abilities and influence in the province, offered at his own risk to test the governor’s power or authority to tax the people without their consent. Having a ship ready to sail with produce for the West India market, with which a considerable barter-trade was already established, Hill determined to see his vessel safely down the river himself. He first dispatched two Friends, Isaac Norris and Samuel Preston with the ship’s papers to the fort, to show that the vessel had been regularly cleared at the custom-house, and to endeavour to persuade the officer to suffer her to pass without molestation. Their remonstrance, however, proved unavailing, and the deputation were given to understand what they might expect if they persisted in their determination. Notwithstanding this threat, Hill boldly taking the helm, which the captain was afraid to do, proceeded with a fair wind and a brisk breeze down the river, steering as near to the opposite side as he safely could. On nearing the fort, a gun was fired to bring the vessel to. No notice was taken of this warning, the ship continuing her course under full sail, when all the guns at the fort were discharged, until she got out of their reach, having escaped without damage, except the main-sail, which was shot through.

Here, another footnote: “The firing of the guns were distinctly heard in Philadelphia, so that the feelings of the Friend’s wife on the occasion may be better conceived than expressed.”

The officer at the fort, not willing to miss his prize, immediately had his boat manned and went in pursuit. The ship’s sails were now slackened, and the boat was allowed to come alongside, and having fastened a rope to the ship, the officer and his men came on board. Whilst engaged in a warm controversy with the owner and his friends, some one on board (no doubt advisedly) quietly loosed the boat and let her drift astern. The ship was now under full sail, and when the officer at length discovered that he was in danger of a voyage to the West Indies, and that all his hopes of retreat were cut off, his courage failed, and he suffered himself to be led as a prisoner into the cabin. Richard Hill now determined to land his captive on the Jersey side of the Delaware, and deliver him up to Lord Cornbury, the governor of that province, who claimed in his own right the exclusive jurisdiction of the river.…

For more on Cornbury, see 3 May 2008.

…Cornbury, a proud and haughty man, on hearing the case, was quite indignant at this encroachment on his prerogative, and he threatened the officer in no measured terms of rebuke, who now became seriously alarmed at his situation, and sued for pardon, making many professions of sorrow for the offence he had committed. At length, having promised never to attempt the like again, he was suffered to depart. The Friend and his companions now returned back to Philadelphia, and the ship proceeded on her voyage. The illegal tax, in consequence of this patriotic but peaceful resistance, was thenceforward abandoned.

Hard to tell your pirates from your emperors without a scorecard.

This case is perhaps only tangentially related to Quaker war tax resistance. It seems that the major dispute was over the fact that the tax was being extorted without legal authorization by a governor who was widely disrespected, with the potential subsequent military spending and the armed fort only being an ancillary reason for dissatisfaction.

But when William Penn, who was back in England at the time, heard about this, he shot off a letter of rebuke to Evans, which also chastised him for trying to draft Quakers into the military or to fine those who refused:

…[T]he sufferings our Friends lie under, as well as are exposed to, in the Lower Counties, on account of not bearing arms [is] a thing which touches my conscience as well as honor. “He must be a silly shoemaker that has not a last for his own foot.” That my Friends should not be secure and easy under me, in those points that regard our very characteristics; but that fines, or a forced disowning of their own principles they must stoop to; for one Brewster says in his letter to one Child (come to my hand), that Oliver Matthews was plundered of no less than six pounds for fifteen shillings, which very fine is a violation of our constitution and customs too, since my interest was there; all which I desire may be rectified forthwith…

(Via Lew Rockwell 2008-05-09: Young Heretics vs. the Flag Religion.)

I spent my first few years of school in a Montessori co-op school with a large contingent of aging New Leftists and burned-out hippie types among the parents. But after that it was all government schools, and, as far as I can remember, every government school I ever attended started business each day with the Pledge of Allegiance. I started having problems with the Pledge around the time I got to junior high school; I didn’t like being expected to chant out one nation, under God, and I figured it violated my religious liberty, so I stopped saying that. In high school I refused to say the Pledge of Allegiance at all, and I usually wouldn’t stand up, either, unless I felt like someone in the room was eyeing me. It’s not that I was trying to make some kind of anarchist protest; I was a fairly boring sort of Democratic Party-identified state Leftist for most of the time I was in high school, and didn’t become an anarchist until after I spent a couple years kicking around more radical forms of Leftism in college. But even then I considered the whole ritual Strength-Through-Unity exercise stifling and creepy, and I didn’t want to participate. So I feel a lot of personal, not just political, solidarity for these three teenagers in western Minnesota:

Three small-town eighth-graders were suspended for not standing at the start of the school day Thursday for the Pledge of Allegiance.

My son wasn’t being defiant against America, said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in western Minnesota. She said her son offered no reason for sitting.

Brandt told the Fargo Forum that Thursday’s one-day in-school suspension, was kind of dumb because I didn’t do anything wrong. It should be the people’s choice.

Kim Dahl said the punishment didn’t fit the crime. If they wanted to know why he didn’t stand, they should’ve made him write a paper.

—Paul Walsh, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribue (2008-05-09): Principal who punished 3 who sat pledge foresees policy rewording

I understand the desire to try to protect your son from abuse in a case that’s sure to draw the howling attention of the Patriotic Correctness bellowing blowhard bully brigade. But, in all honesty, what would it matter if he were being defiant against America? Everyone’s got the right their convictions and nobody should be forced to participate in theo-nationalist rituals that violate their conscience. I also understand the desire to try to get a lighter punishment for your kid when the school is so clearly throwing its weight around in an attempt to bully and intimidate through a heavy punishment. But, in all honesty, what possible justification could there be for forcing this kid to take on extra academic work or to explain himself any further than he cares to do so freely?

She said that Brandt has not been standing all year, and all of a sudden it became an in-school suspension.

The district today is defending the punishments. The school’s handbook says all students are required to stand but are not obligated to recite the pledge. The same is true for all four schools in the district, a school official said.

These three [students] didn’t, and they got caught, said Mel Olson, the district’s community education director. He said he backs the punishment, being a veteran and a United States of America citizen, absolutely. Olson served in the Marines in Japan during the Vietnam War.

—Paul Walsh, Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribue (2008-05-09): Principal who punished 3 who sat pledge foresees policy rewording

Another thin-skinned Veteran Against Individual Freedom, I guess, who has nothing better to do with his time than rant and cry about how nobody gives the military and its obsessive flag protocol the respect they allegedly deserve.

One of the things that makes me happy to see is that there is vigorous debate in the comments section on this story, with many posts from people who condemn the school’s actions (and the very idea of forcing children to recite a pledge of loyalty to the federal government on a daily basis), with reasonable argument and also, at times, with the ridicule and withering sarcasm that this asinine school administration deserves. The only thing there that’s irritating is the number of people who feel compelled to say things like, Oh, I think that everybody ought to jump up and shout Sir, yes Sir! when it comes time to say the Pledge, but I’m not sure that it’s really right to force people…. Whatever your personal views about flag protocol may be, this is an argument that can and should be made without doffing your hat to Patriotic Correctness.

As for the commenters who have posted in defense of the school’s actions, they’ve offered three different sorts of arguments, each one of which is beneath contempt. In order of increasing outrageousness, here are some examples of each.

First, there’s the standard Patriotic Correctness argument, along with several direct invocations of love it or leave it, some bizarre non sequiturs about caring about the Constitution (which is nowhere mentioned in the Pledge of Allegiance, has nothing to say about the Pledge or about flag protocol, and seems to mean absolutely nothing in the mouths of the people citing it except as a synecdoche for the authority of the United States federal government), and the usual long litany of demands for unearned respect in return for unasked-for services. The idea here is that the kids ought to be punished for daring to hold, or at least to express, anything other than glassy-eyed unquestioning loyalty to the federal government of the United States of America:

Out of respect for our country..

Its really not that hard to stand up and show some respect- not merely for the flag, but for the values that the flag represents: liberty, justice, and truth. Yes, this is a free country, but that also means that these families are free to leave if they cannot respect our nation.

—olin157 @ 9 May 2008, 10:07 AM

And:

Snot Nosed Brats

These snot nosed brats should not only stand but they should gladly participate in the pledge. At a minimum they should obey the rules of the school which means get off you rear and stand. You don’t have to harm your little sensibilities by actually pledging allegiance to the only country you have, just stand up for goodness sake. The school was right, ACLU and these punks are legally wrong.

—seanintucson @ 9 May 2008, 12:21 PM

Not to mention:

Idol Worship?

Are you people serious? It has nothing to do with the sort. You are not idolizing anything by standing up during the pledge. Hey, you don’t have to say it, the all powerful Supreme Court has brought that commandment down, if you will. Have we forgotten so soon what the Standard represents? Have you Baby-Boomers forgotten your parents who fought to raise that same flag during WWII? How about the current generation, your grandparents fought for it in WWII or Korea, parents in Vietnam and your friends now in Iraq and Afghanistan. I AM a current soldier, not retired, and HAVE served two tours in Baghdad. I truly believe you have the right to free speech, which is why you can go ahead and not say the pledge, but for the sake of my brethren who have fallen and those in the past who have died, show THEM the respect they deserve. Parents, you need to be teaching that this country isn’t about the government, but the people, and the people who formed it. This country’s freedom has, and is, constantly being paid for with the lives of its fighting men and women. While you may have the luxury of sitting back and saying its a free speech thing, just remember who gave you that same free speech.

—SGT_M on May. 9, 08 at 12:26 PM

I should pause to note that my father was indeed in the Army in Vietnam, and my father’s father was in the Army in Korea. The claim that either my father, or my father’s father, fought for free speech, or this country’s freedom, is absurd. Neither the North Korean government nor the North Vietnamese government, let alone the occupied countries of South Korea and South Vietnam, ever posed any threat to free speech or freedom in the United States of America. They did nothing in the Army to give me free speech because freedom of speech in the U.S. was not at risk in the first place.

The claim that either my father or my grandfather fought to raise a damned flag on the other side of the world is also absurd. The reason that my father and his father were in the Army is because the federal government sent each of them a letter announcing that if he did not join the Army, he would be arrested and thrown in prison. I’ll be damned if I sit around and listen to some sanctimonious volunteer soldier talk about how the United States Army, which conscripted both my father and my grandfather against their will, deserves my respect and gratitude for guarding individual freedom during the wars on Korea and Vietnam

As for the statement Parents, you need to be teaching that this country isn’t about the government, but the people, and the people who formed it, I’m inclined to agree, but I think the upshot is not quite what SGT_M takes the upshot to be. And I certainly don’t know what any of it has to do with standing during the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge of Allegiance is not about the country, much less about the people; it’s about loyalty to the government, and it says so right at the beginning:

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America.

And to the republic, for which it stands.

Anyway.

For the second argument, there’s the These snot-nosed punks got no respect line. This is, honestly, even worse than the belligerent appeals to American theo-nationalism, because, as disgusting as the latter is, the former involves singling out harmless kids for sneering speculation on their motivations and character. And also because they are is no longer attacking a difference of view and an exercise of liberty because they think something more important (love of the government and its symbols, or whatever) overrides it, but rather attacking difference and liberty just as such, because these teenagers are acting like free human beings instead of doing as they’re told by the wise and powerful authorities. Thus:

Respect!

Even if you do not like the Pledge of Allegiance for what ever reason. You should respect others who care and stand! The lack of respect is the main part of our trouble in this rough times.

—hussman02 @ 9 May 2008 10:05AM

And:

If it’s a school rule and he doesn’t have an answer as to why he didn’t stand - then he clearly is just being obstinate. I can’t believe a parent would support their kid in this situation!!!

—Cartert1 @ 9 May 2008, 9:55 AM

And:

$10 says these are pain-in-the-rear kids with pain-in-the-rear parents that hover around their kids and never make any acknowledgment that their kids could ever do anything wrong. If these kids were formally and legitimately protesting the United States they should not have been punished, but the tenor of the article suggests they are just smart asses and that they did not have any political/personal convictions when they sat out the pledge.

—pipress1487 @ 9 May 2008, 10:23 AM

I don’t think that Brandt Dahl’s statement that I didn’t do anything wrong. It should be the people’s choice. suggests they are just smart asses without any political/personal convictions. But suppose this were true. Then so what? Freedom of speech and expression don’t depend on you having something to say that fits some highly stylized model of formal and legitimate protest. The chief value of freedom of association just is being able to be a lazy smart-ass and live your ordinary life as you see fit, rather than spending your time protesting and fighting an overbearing, invasive government. While the right to speak out against injustices is vitally important, what’s even more important, and in fact what makes the right to speak out against injustices as vitally important as it is, is the right to just be left the hell alone and not be subjected to the officious demands of busybodies and blowhards on your time and energy.

If these kids are just trying to be pains in the ass over a ritual that they find stupid and tiresome, I support them and salute them. I can think of no better reason to refuse to participate.

The third, and worst, of the arguments seems (surprisingly, for me, anyway) to be the most common: the idea that even if the school policy is unjustified, and even if schools oughtn’t force students to stand, and even if the kids have got a legitimate beef with the school board, it does not matter, because they broke The Rules, and you got to punish anybody who steps out of line, even if they had a perfectly good reason to object. Now it’s no longer a matter of attacking them for having the wrong beliefs about public political devotion, and no longer a matter of attacking them for being thoughtless or not following orders that the authorities had good reason to hand down. It’s a matter of attacking them for not subordinating their own considered judgment and obeying orders which are admittedly arbitrary and perhaps even wrong in themselves. (If you have some free time and a high tolerance for pain, feel free to count the number of times that people repeat, verbatim, the phrase rules are rules.)

Thus:

he wasn’t protesting.

he didn’t have a reason why he didn’t stand, he just didn’t want to! what happens when mom and dad have house rules that he doesn’t want to follow? should they force him to follow their rules? life is full of rules that different people think are pointless, it just depends on whose ox is being gored. so now he’s learning that he doesn’t really need reasons for his actions, just whether he wants to do it or not. and we wonder why our youth have become so complacent today!

—K_Zemlicka @ 9 May 2008, 10:37 AM

And (all-caps is from the original):

RULES ARE MEANT TO BE FOLLOWED!

RULES ARE RULES, FOLLOWED THEM OR YOU’LL DEAL WITH CONSEQUENCES. BOTTOM LINE ! THAT CHILD DESERVED IT, I BETCHA HE’LL STAND NEXT TIME.

—securpo on 9 May 2008, 10:43 AM

Of course, there are two kinds of consequences in this world. There are the natural consequences of an action, and then there are the artificial consequences that people attach to an action by their chosen responses. In this case the only natural consequence of not standing for the Pledge is getting to spend a minute longer sitting rather than standing. The consequences that these three teenagers are being forced to deal with are better described as the choice of school administrators to flip out and try to make teenagers suffer in the name of Old Glory. In any case, statist logic aside, the fact that school administrators flip out when you don’t obey this stupid policy can hardly be used as a justification for their flipping out, without making your argument do doughnuts around the parking lot.

And then there’s this:

I find it interesting that the school has a policy that students must stand during the Pledge. But, policy is policy and rules are rules, so I agree that the students should be punished. I do think it’s an anti-patriotic policy though and standing for the Pledge would be made more meaningful if kids are allowed to do it through free will.

—ttepley @ 9 May 2008, 10:28 AM

In other words, God forbid that anyone should sit down when there are rules to be followed. Students should be punished for refusing to co-operate with a policy which you yourself believe to be foolish and wrong, because rules and authority need no rational justification, and indeed can defy any rational justification, and they ought to be obeyed nevertheless.

And then there’s this:

My son wasn’t being defiant against America

My son wasn’t being defiant against America, said Kim Dahl, mother of one of the students, Brandt, who attends Dilworth-Glyndon-Felton Junior High School in western Minnesota. Yet The school’s handbook says all students are required to stand but are not obligated to recite the pledge. So her son wasn’t being defiant against America, but defiant to the school policy itself. Ignorance is not a justifiable defense.

—pizann0 9 May 2008, 12:12 PM

I can’t stand flag creeps. I think that kind of belligerent theo-nationalism is absurd, contemptible, and dangerous. But what’s even worse than those who believe that every individual conscience should be turned towards a servile worship of the State, are those who believe that whatever your individual conscience is turned towards, you damn well ought to ignore it and follow the rules, because being defiant to authority is itself a mortal sin, whatever that authority may be and however pointless or wrong may be the rules that they are trying to impose. Where the complaint is not that they ought to be worshipping the one true God, but rather that they had damn well better bow down, no matter what may be before them at the altar.

Incidentally, the state ACLU says that punishing these students is against the rules, as set out in the U.S. Constitution and in rulings by the Supreme Court. I don’t care, and neither should anybody else.

See also:

• GT 2008-03-09: The purpose of government schools is to train your children to love the government.
• GT 2007-12-03: Veterans Against Individual Freedom
• GT 2006-06-14: Festive occasions
• GT 2005-03-09: The Most Depressing Photograph in the World

LabourStart informed me of two important things today.

And I quote:

ZIMBABWE: UNION LEADERS ARRESTED

Unions around the world are condemning the arrests yesterday of Lovemore Motombo and Wellington Chibebe, respectively President and General Secretary of the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU). The two trade union leaders were charged with “inciting people to rise against the government and reporting falsehoods about people being killed” in speeches given on May Day.

The International Trade Union Confederation’s statement is here:

http://www.ituc-csi.org/spip.php?article2107

The IUF is calling for messages of protest to be sent to the Mugabe regime:

http://www.iuf.org/den5018

And the Education International is concerned about rising violence directed against teachers in Zimbabwe, noting that many teachers in rural areas are being killed, maimed, tortured and abused. Read more here:

http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/show.php?id=771&theme=rights&country=zimbabwe

I haven’t been following the recent events in Zimbabwe, but I know a repressive action when I see one. And these arrests are most definitely a cause for concern. I urge people to investigate the incidents.

You should also consider this message:

BURMA: UNIONS APPEAL FOR HELP FOLLOWING CYCLONE

Unions have begun to raise money to support the Burmese people following the catastrophic cyclone which hit the country several days ago. Here are links you can follow to donate in your country.

USA:
http://blog.aflcio.org/2008/05/06/help-provide-relief-to-burmese-workers/

UK:
http://www.tuc.org.uk/international/tuc-14740-f0.cfm

Australia:
http://www.apheda.org.au/news/1210217214_29405.html

If your national trade union center is raising money, let us know and we’ll publish the link on LabourStart.

Show these folks that mutual aid can work!

9 May 2008

Two things kept rattling around in my brain after I got back from the NWTRCC conference in Birmingham last weekend.

One was Joffre Stewart’s a capella “Oh-Ba-Ma!” song. I don’t remember the lyrics, but only the general tone of blasphemy, in which Barack’s virgin birth was denied, and the miracles attributed to him were cast into doubt.

The other was something Clare Hanrahan said about redirection.

“Redirection,” in which war tax resisters take all or some portion of what the IRS claims they owe and send the money instead to charity, is a very popular war tax resistance tactic. Some would say “tactic” is the wrong word — it’s not really the means to an end but is itself the end they’re aiming for: being able to use their money to support their own idea of community needs, rather than the Pentagon’s wasteful and immoral priorities.

But those of us who are doing tax resistance by reducing our incomes below the income tax line can sometimes feel left out when redirection is given a big priority, or when, as sometimes happens, those resisters who do redirect their tax money talk as though they assume that’s what all of us do or should do.

But we don’t have an amount to redirect because our strategy has been to reduce that amount to zero. Furthermore, because we may have had to squeeze our budgets in order to do tax resistance this way, we may not have much left over with which to make a big donation in April.

Hanrahan said that as she sees it, there’s more to redirect than money:

For the most part my redirection of time and personal involvement has been possible by my choice to spend my hours in direct service and solidarity where my heart leads me, rather than in wagework geared to bring in cash. Currently I do literacy volunteer work, stand in solidarity with Veterans for Peace, and with Women in Black, serve on boards and committees, and in years past, founded and managed a homeless advocacy center. I believe that redirection of time and presence provides a personal and potent contribution to the common good, a gift of self that has more dimensions than money alone. I redirect each time I give my time and energy in support of good work within my community. It is a way to share in the work of change, my liberation bound up in that of those I stand with, rather than perpetuating the hierarchy of charitable giving.

That makes a lot of sense to me.

(Via feministe 2008-05-05.)

From a long post by PortlyDyke at Shakesville on the closet and PDAs (I mean Public Displays of Affection, not Private Defense Associations):

When ABC news did their second social experiment about Public Displays of Affection (PDAs) by having a gay male couple and a lesbian couple kiss and cuddle in public (the first experiment used straight couples), the reactions were varied.

There was the woman who called the cops:

Operator: Birmingham Police operator 9283

Caller: We have a couple of men sitting out on the bench that have been kissing and drooling all over each other for the past hour or so. It’s not against the law, right?

Operator: Not to the best of my knowledge it’s not.

Caller: So there’s no complaint I could make or have?

Operator: I imagine you could complain if you like ma’am. We can always send an officer down there.

And they did … . The officer told our couple that the police dispatch received a call because the two of them were making out.

Just don’t do that in public, he told them before leaving the scene.

There was the woman who said:

I would actually want our kids to grow up in a place where they would see various types of people engaging in behaviors that [are] loving.

And then there were the people who took a whole different think of teh childrenz! tack:

I don’t really find it inappropriate, especially during the day when schoolchildren aren’t running around. They might get confused and want an answer for what’s going on, bystander Mary-Kate told us. The majority of the people who spoke about children seemed to echo Mary-Kate’s feelings.

Which means, basically, these folks are fine with Gay PDA — as long as they don’t have to face the uncomfortable, icky business of explaining to their children that not everybody on earth is like mommy and daddy.

[…]

I doubt that most straight, cisgendered people think about, or notice, how frequently they touch their partner in public in ways that are not necessarily sexual (in addition to kissing, cuddling, and the odd bum-squeeze) — ie. holding hands, walking with an arm around the waist, smoothing the other’s hair back out of their eyes — nor do I think that most straight, cisgendered people are probably aware of the fact that when I touch my partner in public, it’s nearly always a considered act.

I don’t obsess about this — as in — it doesn’t eat up my days and nights — and I’m probably about as out as a queer can be in this country — but every single time I take my partner’s hand on the street, or toss my arm over her shoulder or around her waist, hug her goodbye or hello, I do a little, tiny security sweep.

[…]

This friend is the sister I never had. I loved her (and love her still) dearly, and her inability to see how the Measure 8 (which was passed that year) was likely to affect me and my family was incredibly painful to me. I remember weeping in her living room as I tried to explain something that was, to her, completely invisible. I talked to her about how scary it had been to come out publicly after having led a fairly comfortable life as a closeted queer, and she just didn’t seem to get why it should be a big deal at all.

So, I issued her and her husband a challenge (and I’ll issue the same challenge to any straight coupled allies here who want to raise their awareness of LBGTQ issues):

Spend an entire week pretending that you’re not a couple. Don’t write a check from a joint bank account. Hide all the photographs in your home and office which would identify you as a couple. Take off your wedding rings. Touch each other, and talk to each other, in public, in ways that could only be interpreted as you being friends. Refer to yourself only in the singular I, never in the we. When you go to work on Monday, if you spent time together on the weekend, include only information which would indicate that you went somewhere with a friend, rather than your life-mate. If someone comes to stay with you, sleep in separate beds. Go intentionally into the closet as a couple. For a week.

They took my challenge.

They lasted exactly three days.

My friend returned to me in tears on day four and said: I’m sorry. I had no idea what it is like for you.

—PortlyDyke @ Shakesville (2008-04-29): Take My Arm, My Love

Read the whole thing. It’s a simple point, but it’s important, and powerful, and beautiful.