Be Cool Honeybunny: On Henry Gasparian and the Inglourious Basterds of Health Care Reform

I didn’t enjoy Inglourious Basterds. As much as I’m a fan of most of Taratino’s derivative salutes to reckless celluloid abandon, I also, for better or for worse, hold a great deal of deference for the sights, sounds and stories of the World War II era. As such, for me, the caricatured depictions of Nazi-occupied France didn’t simply bring to bombastic life our polarized post 9/11 views of how we should treat enemy-occupied anything, it also illustrated the perils of the world’s most famous former video store clerk creating a densely Hollywood-occupied war.

Despite spaghetti western smatterings of cinematic genius in every tense conversation between Austrian actor Christoph Waltz’s hammy “Jew Hunter” and his prey, at its best, Inglourious Basterds is largely a comedy without a cause: Basterd’s Hitler is more insecure boob from a Mel Brooks fever dream than diabolical dictator deserving of Swastika-carved shenanigans from Brad Pitt’s hillbilly-turned henchman and his largely-absent Dirty Dozen.

In short, unlike Kill Bill, this Tarantino revenge epic’s lack of any moral seriousness makes it incongruous with any semblance of solemnity deserved for the time and place it depicts.

I’m no Pollyanna. I understand Basterds wasn’t meant to be Band of Brothers.

And I get the joke. I just don’t think it’s funny.

I was reminded of these same impressions when I heard the story of Henry Gasparian.

Henry Gasparian

As a child in Armenia, Gasparian witnessed firsthand the horrors of Nazi Germany. Two uncles were killed, his father wounded and a brother starved to death during the German invasion and occupation of the Soviet Union.

So, when Gasparian, 70, saw a poster of President Obama with a Hitler mustache near the entrance to a Washington state farmers market on September 5, he admitted that his reaction was “personal and emotional.”

As The Seattle Times reported this week: Gasparian tried to grab the fliers being passed out by supporters of Lyndon LaRouche, a perennial presidential candidate who has likened Obama’s health-care proposals to the Nazi extermination of Jews and other “undesirables.” Two young LaRouche supporters told police that Gasparian repeatedly pushed them and grabbed one of their arms. Gasparian said it was they who first pushed him. Now, Gasparian is charged with two counts of fourth-degree assault in Edmonds Municipal Court for what he describes as an attempt by “an old man to say you cannot insult the president with this outrageous campaign.”

This incident echoed similar ones across the country over the past few months. LaRouche supporters and others have disrupted town-hall meetings on health care, including most famously, the young woman who asked U.S. Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), (a Jew as in ‘Anne’), in August why he supported a “Nazi health care plan.” Frank replied, “On what planet do you spend most of your time?”

The answer to Rep. Frank’s question about how someone, anyone, can equate health insurance reform to Nazism may lie squarely in the same disconnect that led Tarantino’s camera to linger long and hard on the murder and mutilation of Nazi and Ally alike, and, in turn, explains why some, in this country, don’t support health care for all: we sometimes appear detached from the suffering of others.

To my mind, reform meant to cover millions of uninsured people is far less equivalent to Hitler’s “final solution” than the purported preexisting conditions clauses insurance companies use to deny seriously ill Americans of proper treatment. Especially when, based on an article in today’s Washington Post, these same companies cite acne, pregnancy, and even the intention to adopt, as justifications to deny or cease coverage. This only adds insult to injury (pun intended) with discoveries that one big insurer was found to have refused to issue individual policies to police officers and firefighters, along with people in other hazardous occupations. Can we imagine Americans being in line with this latest policy in insurance co. status quo on September 12, 2001?

And while it’s a stretch to compare Big Insurance to the Third Reich, we do know that not having insurance kills: nearly 45,000 people die in the United States each year — one every 12 minutes — in large part because they lack health insurance and can not get good care, Harvard Medical School researchers found in an analysis released on Thursday. Keep in mind, too, that Americans didn’t begin dying from lack of insurance last year. So, when you count up a decade or so’s worth of uninsured years, the current American health system, as is, looks a bit more like a holocaust.

And yet, this argument is less about negative depictions of Obama, a fate that also fell upon his predecessor (albeit for different reasons), but rather, what, in us, thinks it’s acceptable to compare changes in the way we care for our people to the systematic extermination of millions? What now makes Hitler’s face so easy to throw around and graft on our own leadership in a time of relative prosperity and peace? Could it be tied to similar reasons an angry man is willing to destroy an image of civil rights icon Rosa Parks at a town hall event? The same motivation for Americans, not satisfied with the incendiary messages of their protest signs, to now openly bring guns to Presidential appearances? The same McCarthy-era justifications that have us silencing our public servants during local Q&As, calling each other liars, and aiming guns at our leaders, rather than simply taking this opportunity to improve, and sometimes, save, the lives of our fellow citizens? And with it, the sad fact that rioting, toting pistols in public meetings, and heaving images of Hitler are now no more than today’s measure of passive resistance?

To shed light on this phenomenon, The Seattle Times found David Domke, a UW professor who specializes in political communication, [who] said that while people have been saying terrible things about politicians since the country’s beginnings, “the intensity and depth of feeling today seems to be at a dangerous point. We have conversations now in the same way we go to war. We have to demonize the other person.”

But don’t we already have enough demons to contend with? Just ask Henry Gasparian.

Gasparian immigrated from Armenia in 1993, the same year both his parents died. A classically trained musician with degrees in English and journalism, he settled in the Seattle area and found jobs in sales until health concerns forced him to retire. “I saw Hitler’s soldiers. I saw swastikas every day. To call Obama stupid, even criminal — OK, that’s politics. But Hitler? It’s hurting to anyone no matter who is president,” he said.

And so, I would argue, we all need to chill, take deep breath, and, ironically, pull a lesson from the classic Tarantino playbook. Cuz, you happened to pull this shit while I’m in a transitional period.

So be cool. Chill. It’s going to be alright, honeybunny.

“Leave the House We Must”: An Apology to Liberal Assholes From A Liberal Asshole

What you get when you Google "liberal assholes."

Dearest Liberals,

For a while now, I’ve been relatively quiet about the “choose your own adventure” topic of health care and/or health insurance reform.

Quiet, in the sense that I’ve embargoed any personal blogging during a period in which it (a) was tough to hear myself think over the vitriolic and incendiary propaganda being hurled about by Rosa Parks poster-ripping town hallers and tea baggers alike; and (2) was therefore difficult to believe that Americans were actually thinking. Period.

As a result, because I was so sick (pun intended) of the so-called health-tear dialogue of partisan demagogues, I just didn’t believe anybody would want to read about anyone else’s personal health care biases, no matter how well-supported by facts, figures, and research. If anything, this debate has shed light on the fact that the media’s majority, or, at the very least, an actual vocal minority, wants absolutely nothing to do with any of the three.

In short, I thought if a sitting President could be accused of lying [by an Old Yeller from Mouth Carolina] while he addressed Congress, citing virtually word-for-word truths from his health care plan, who would believe me?

Then I realized, it doesn’t really matter if you believe me—with the “you” being the same vocal minority that loves their healthcare the way it is (I have to think because you’ve never used it), is willing to somehow compare Obama to Hitler as a result, and likely also believes that Glenn Beck is a really masterful artist, that death panels are composed of chupacabra or that Sarah Palin cares about people.

Truth is, I, like our President, need only heed the advice of none other than television’s own equal-opportunity “Real Time” roaster: Bill Maher. On Friday night, Maher closed his show with some sharp words for the Obama administration with regards to how they have responded to criticism from figures such as Beck and Palin. He called the White House “cowards” for allowing green-jobs czar Van Jones to resign following a series of right-wing attacks and for capitulating to those who complained about the nature of Obama’s benign back-to-school speech.

“The Democrats just never learn. Americans don’t really care which side of an issue you’re on as long as you don’t act like pussies,” Maher said. Maher then criticized Obama for trying to win over those who vehemently disagree with him, insisting that the president should instead “stand up for the 70 percent of Americans who aren’t crazy.”

With this blog, I had hoped that some, more conservative visitors would show up, read, and, in the process, possibly learn something about other vocal minorities, albeit the truly subjugated ones, and would feel willing to join a healthy online debate about issues of the day. Since I have been told on more than one occasion via this blog that I am not only “wrong,” but also [more subtlety] that “I will burn in hell,” I think I may have succeeded in, at a minimum, the “debate” part.

But, today, I’ve finally heard enough from the other side. And given the dismal state of Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.)’s long-awaited health care reform bill, I’m no longer willing to listen to anyone from my own party who doesn’t stand for true health care reform, single-payer’s current stand-in: the public option.

While I joined the President in waiting for Americans to come to their senses, fortunately, to my mind, two real health reform heroes have emerged of late for the wingnut-deprived 70%: Representative Anthony Weiner (D-NY) and former insurance villain, Wendell Potter.

Rep. Weiner, who belies his unfortunate surname with his unflappable non-stop appearances on the

Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY)

24/7 news show circuit, provides honest, open, and well-articulated reasons for why the public option is the only option—all from one of the few true single-payer spokespeople who, of late, is likely stabbing himself under the proverbial political table with the “couldawouldashoulda” fork of universal reforms lost.

A fan of the plan, but not always the plan’s man, Weiner offers full-tilt, no-holds-barred progressive views on health care reform, and I encourage you to hear him out as much as possible.

Wendell Potter, a former Cigna exec, in turn, slept with the enemy and is now kissing and telling for the benefit of a confused Congress—redeeming himself by fighting hard for reform and the public option. Speaking today before the House Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, the former health insurance industry insider-turned-whistleblower warned that if Congress “fails to create a public insurance option to compete with private insurers, the bill it sends to the president might as well be called the Insurance Industry Profit Protection and Enhancement Act.”

Wendell Potter, Former Insurance Executive

“A public option must be created to provide true choice to consumers or reform will fail to fix the root of the severe problems that have been caused in large part by the greedy demands of Wall Street. By creating a strong public option and restricting the insurance companies’ ability to enrich executives and investors at the expense of taxpayers and consumers, HR 3200 [the House health bill] will truly benefit Americans,” Potter said in his opening statement.

“The Baucus plan, on the other hand, would create a government subsidized monopoly for the purchase of bare bones high deductible policies that would truly benefit big insurance. In other words, insurers would win, your constituents would lose.”

Having peddled it for years, the man knows his shit.

And finally, I’d be remiss in reaching out to led-astray-liberals if I didn’t re-post a video from

Robert Reichs that features the former Labor Secretary and all-around great guy explaining the public option…in only 70 seconds. If you are confused, or haven’t given up on schooling others in the ways of truth, justice, and the American right to health care, Reichs’ clear and succinct health care Cliffs Notes are all you need to sound well-spoken at your next charity dinner for another person you know who got sick without health care:

Maher was right, Mr. President. We don’t need civility right now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, please, be that asshole. And until then, I’ll be happy to join with other vocal progressives who show up and stand in.

Apologies for being gone for so long.

East of Eden – A Word on Compromise From the Last Standing Female Groomsman.

This past weekend, I had the distinct honor of being the only female groomsman in what might be considered—with the exception of my presence—a traditional, Southern wedding in the smallish hamlet of Eden, NC.  And through the year-long process of being coaxed into the wedding party (“of course you don’t have to wear a dress”), hand-held, bachelor-partied, tux-fitted, and well-rehearsed, I learned some valuable lessons I’d like to share on compromise, the importance of reveling in your own dumb luck, and how Jagerbombs, straight people, and pleated tuxedo pants can send you on an unexpected course toward humility and happiness.

Many people in my life have pointed out that I drink too much and don’t have enough gay friends.

Agreed.

And maybe that all goes hand in hand (sometimes the breeders’ harps about the hardships of life only make sense to me after approximately three beers). But, for the most part, I have few regrets in my waking, intoxicated hetero-centered life because I realize that it is by the light of the neon Bud Light sign, bar jukebox and karaoke stand at the straightest bars in my small Southern town, where I have met some of the people who have gone on to not only change the course of my life, but to make it a life that surpasses expectation (not to mention, as I learned this spring, that only straights seem to appreciate my oft-used “to clits, tits, and softball mitts, may your hand always be on one” toast).

It is in precisely this type of toast-friendly setting where I met Elizabeth “Red Liz” Stultz and Adam Tucker: at once separately and, over time, together—like so many other couples who have paired off whilst enjoying a Thursday night “Big Boy” either on a stool eying Danny Green’s latest dance moves, moments before Aaron Cecil spins the night’s crooner-friendly playlist, or participating in a not-so-quiet game of 25Flip—defying the bar copulation-cum-cohabitation odds with the simple pledge to love each other in and out of the dark.

Like so many others, Red Liz and Adam embraced the gay notch in their Bible Belt midst, even dropping my “lesbian friend” moniker over time to embrace me as just “JenJones,” (always one word), and like so many straights before them, shared me with friends, siblings, and even parents, making me feel like just another part of their surprisingly straight-but-not-narrow family.

While some would argue, and while I would often agree, that in this day and age, this type of acceptance should be seen not as an aberration, but rather an expectation, from the height of a second-story bar one block from our beloved Carolina, where, only fifteen years ago I was the only out gay person I knew, much less anyone else, it still means more than I can say.  The bonds formed between these people and myself are forged from something Southern shared, despite something sexuality adhered. We drink beers, we watch basketball, we quote Steel Magnolias and Talladega Nights; and while it makes me sad that I feel certain sometimes I am  not owned outside of their presence, that “fag” is still used liberally among many of the men I have grown to love in all the wrong places, and that many traits of liberalism and/or political correctness are lost on them as it seems to be as biologically inherited or not as the gayness under my skin, progressions towards progressiveness are all I can ask, and all I’ve seen, in these people over the years.

Dylan was right. The times, they are, a’changin.’

Fast forward to June 19, 2009: the night before the Stultz-Tucker wedding, at the rehearsal where the presiding pastor went out of his way to offer, “we are so glad you could be here,” a line not-so-subtlety tinged with genuine disbelief that I didn’t burst into flames as soon as I walked through the church doors.  While there, I stood among Red and Tucker’s families and friends, all of whom seemed to know, with various degrees of comfort, about my carpetmunching proclivities either from my newly-shorn haircut (thanks Greg!), choppy gait or an endless supply of lesbian-laden stories passed down over the years from Red’s mouth to God’s ears. There, I too met Annadell, Red’s cousin and the height-disadvantaged bridesmaid who would have the unfortunate task of walking arm-in-arm with me down the aisle in front of 250 or so God-fearing Christians.

Amid the meet and greets, I noticed my old high school choral music teacher taking pictures from every angle of the church—the same man who twenty years before, had patiently endured while my voice deepened from alto to tenor and who forced me to wear gum on my nose throughout a day’s worth of class when I innocently forgot his golden rule against chewing and singing.  I would come to find out that not only was Mr. Stultz Red’s grandfather, but that her dad, Lee Jr., had grown up a couple of miles from me, regaling stories of mutual family friends and decades-old experiences in the heart of Warren County. It filled the room with the sense that not only were these people trying to accept me, but that, well, these were my people, and I settled in at the end of the groom’s party line, waiting for what sat in store at a rehearsal dinner, not-so-coincidentally kegged with light beer and anchored by Aaron’s karaoke magic.

Upon our arrival at the rehearsal dinner, we all acquired name tags assigning our proverbial “place at the [wedding] table” during which Adam’s father, a congenial fellow closer to my height than either of his tallish offspring, explained that he and Adam’s brother had toiled over what to call me, finally settling on “groomsperson;” moments later Adam’s ever-kind mother stumbled over what to call,  in an apparent concession of terms,  my “guest,” following what seemed to be a lengthy internal struggle on whether girlfriend/partner/magical companion et. al, was most politically-correct.

Shortly thereafter, Jager, our wedding party’s acquired “shot of choice” (thanks to bad decisions in the first five minutes of the bachelor party) began to flow freely from a pewter stag shooter in a series of toasts to bride and groom alike from the comfort of the dinner table. Thereby all thoughts of political correctness evaporated, along with much of our bodies’ levels of hydration, as we joined together to shag with people twice our age and enjoy soothing renditions of “Living on a Prayer,” “Bust a Move,” and, my personal favorite, “Shoop,” the former dedicated to the choral music teachings of one Mr. Lee Stultz, Sr.

From there, flowery dresses and pleated slacks were ditched for swimming trunks at the Stultz homeplace, and the remainder of the night was spent poolside, all floating together in the metaphorical tour de force of the evening, whereby “diving in head first” became less afterthought than mantra. The next morning, hours from the wedding, Red made breakfast for 27, (there were ten of us), and more tales of the night, and all the nights, were told and resold, bonding the boys and girls of the Stultz-Tucker shenanigans, including me forever to Red’s mother, who will live in legend for handily taking me down in arm wrestling the evening prior. (Rematch shown):

Hours later I paced with Adam and Aaron in the church parlor, waiting for the ceremony to begin when my girlfriend showed up—in my day’s biggest “WOW” moment—wearing a stunning black dress that any and all groomsmen, gay or straight, could appreciate. And, whether it was the tux, or the dress, or the tenor of the weekend, I forgot myself in front of God and everyone, kissing her without reservation in the hallway of the Leaksville United Methodist Church. Like straight people do: without thinking much about it.

Later, as I stood in my suit and tie, looking up at the beautiful bride and her adoring groom, and then back at my gorgeous “guest” in her church pew, I could not help but feel a little sad knowing that, in my state, a state where I found couples like Red and Adam, Taylor and Dave, Lizzie Lou and Chase, Randall Elmo and Kevin Bacon (don’t ask), I could not have them stand in my own legal ceremony, as I pledged the same vows of love, honesty, care, trust, and compromise.

It is in the latter sentiment where I, as a gay woman swimming in straights, have stood to lose and learn the most.  Everyday I have had to compromise as people struggle to understand the nature, value, and depth of my relationships. In every setting where I am the minority, I unwittingly compromise conviction for the slow and steady lessons in “more than mere tolerance” that I hope my presence can provide. Every time I am your “lesbian friend,” I am placed in a category that excludes me from the closest place in your heart, a home only friends and family [proper] and “proper” can reside. When it is a suit and tie that give me the courage to kiss my girlfriend in her own dressy costume, solidifying arbitrary roles to make it easier for us (and everyone else) to understand, I lose.  And whether I am closer to Chaz than Chastity, this weekend, I was just a girl kissing another one. And I liked it. And it’s always there, in the back of my mind, that others don’t.

Yet, as the actress Patricia Clarkson so eloquently put it this weekend, “all across this country, regular Americans who were born and bred in towns where a gay couple wouldn’t dare walk down a street–all over these American Main Streets–something is changing.”

This was never clearer than in Eden. The compromise both pays off and ceases to become one, when surrounded by people like the Stultz-Tucker wedding party and people like them.

More signs of progress became clear at the reception, where many an older attendee came up to the woman sitting next to me to introduce themselves and to say how happy they were that we could make it (unfortunately, my actual girlfriend was seated a few chairs down);  A mere two men total propositioned my girlfriend and I for a threesome, (and had she not been wearing that dress, I presume the number would have been much lower); and I was only mistaken for a man once (that I am aware of).

Yet, in a remarkable stroke of luck, my groomsman gift was an engraved flask, and the night drunkenly continued from reception back to the hotel, without homophobic incident, where I capped the evening feeling luckier than ever with my girlfriend and 20 of the best people I know [straight or gay] packed in Room 203.

It was draped across one of the double beds where several guys even asked if I’d be in their own wedding parties.

Perhaps in some strange way, the Stultz-Tucker wedding experiment created some sort of progressive cache for gay gals as groomspeople, and in the future, all traditional Southern weddings will include at least one dyke willing to test her strength on the bride’s mother and the bounds of tuxedo tailoring.

Until then, I will gladly save their spot with the boys on the side.  Waiting impatiently for my place up front.

Yesterday’s Prop 8 Protests: Our Tiananmen Square?

For those who don’t remember, or, [ahem], were not alive, the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in Beijing in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) beginning on April 14. Led mainly by students and intellectuals, the protests occurred in a year that saw the collapse of a number of communist governments around the world.

The protests were sparked by the death of pro-market, pro-democracy and anti-corruption official, Hu Yaobang, whom protesters wanted to mourn. By the eve of Hu’s funeral, 100,000 people had gathered on the Tiananmen square. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants were generally against the government’s authoritarianism and voiced calls for economic change and democratic reform within the structure of the government. The demonstrations centered on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, but large-scale protests also occurred in cities throughout China, including Shanghai, which stayed peaceful throughout the protests.

During the protests, several photographs were taken of a man who came to be known as “Tank Man” or the “Unknown Rebel,” who stood in front of a column of Chinese Type 59 tanks, preventing their advance. One of the most widely reproduced versions of the photograph was taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel (see right), about half a mile (800 meters) away from the scene, through a 400-millimeter lens.

The still and motion photography of the man standing alone before a line of tanks reached international audiences practically overnight.

The photo and others (see left), headlined hundreds of major newspapers and news magazines and was the lead story on countless news broadcasts around the world.

In April 1998, Time magazine included the “Unknown Rebel” in its feature entitled Time 100: The Most Important People of the Century.*

On Tuesday, the California Supreme Court upheld the state’s Proposition 8 ban on gay marriage in a 6-1 decision; the ruling left intact the union of over 18,000 same-sex couples who married before Prop 8 passed in November. The night of the ruling, gay marriage advocates took to the streets across California and in major cities throughout the country.

The court’s ruling marked the next phase in the battle over marriage, with gay rights activists vowing to take the fight to “win marriage back” to California voters in 2010. Like the ones in Tiananmen Square, protests lasted through the night. Unlike the Chinese version, the Prop 8 protests quickly changed to early morning parties. Organizers said the festivities were proof that the movement has not been deterred.

During one such rebellion-turned-revelry (in Hollywood, no less), Prop 8 protesters appeared to have adopted their own version of Tank Man**, a brave soul I chose to dub “Cop Car Connie.”

You’ve just gotta love the gays.

Photo by Mathieu Young.

Despite the fact that Connie likely faced no clear and present danger other than the heightened odds of chipping her acrylics on a protest sign or running dangerously low on baby powder mid parade, much less a stampeding by PLA tanks, let it be known that I would like to nonetheless nominate her for one of The Most Important People of the [NEW] Century.

At the very least, Connie, myself, and people like us, do face the danger of losing our equal rights in a state that had always represented a living, breathing sanctuary for not only the gay movement, but for human inclusivity in general. Now we must go back to our happily married gay lives in places like Iowa? Connecticut? and Maine? And Nepal?…left wondering why the future was California.

Yet, California’s “Cop Car Connie,” stands, nay drag steps, for the proposition that public deliberation and democratic action are not only needed, but demanded, to move forward human rights. And with popular adoption of gay marriage on the rise, it is ballotry like Prop 8, and not Connie, that is tanking.

*As always, special thanks to Wikipedia, for making plagarism quick and easy.

**Lori Petty was unavailable for comment.

Where Were You Eight Years Ago, Anti-Government Tea-Baggers (or for that matter eight months ago)? And Other Tea Party Ironies.

Attention all Brits, Americans who fought the Brits circa 1773, little girls age 3 to 6, members of the rising GOP nutter brigade (including people who hate the current President, taxes, government, state workers, teachers, reproductive rights, Democrats, and all of the straw men that leap from the imaginations of talk radio jocks), and others interested in tea parties:

It’s now time for me to take a break from my regularly-scheduled pro-gay propaganda, to point out a top ten of more obvious April 15 observations completely missed and/or ironies nailed by Tea-bagging conservatives at Tax Day rallies.

1. Protesting against public funding for stuff is a bit less bathed in hypocrisy when not performed in publicly-funded parks and town squares.

2. To the elderly: when decrying socialism in your tea-bagging parade, avoid using your Medicare-subsidized power chair scooter.

3. When shouting that Obama is a “Communist Fascist!” for posing a minor tax increase for a tiny fraction of Americans, try to remember that it is ideologically impossible to be both, as blogger Bob Cesca points out, “in the same way it’s impossible to be both informed and a FOX News host.”

4. Try not to attack labor unions and chant  “down with card checks!” (a reference to the Employee Free Choice Act), when you, and the people you are tea partying with, are clearly working class.

5. Rallying against wasteful spending is better executed when you haven’t just purchased millions of teabags.

6. “Taxation Without Representation” is normally not the best rallying cry when your favorite political party has been elected into power 22 of the last 30 years, including the previous eight. In fact, avoid this battle cry altogether when not protesting in crowds composed entirely of people who make more than $250,000/year.

7. It is always easier to believe “the sky is falling” conservative propaganda if  the sky had not been the limit on government spending during your elected leader’s binge on war, giveaways to Wall Street, lavish contracts for shoddy or nonexistent “government” services, corporate welfare and so on and on.

8. When your “clowny hirsute governor” suggests your state engage in civil unrest and secede from the union, it might be best to also tone down the Republican rhetoric protesting purported administration concerns about right wing extremist violence.

9. When attending what you believe to be an “organic uprising of like-minded citizens” protesting government spending, corporate welfare and government bailouts, double-check to make sure that your tea party isn’t actually sponsored by rich folks fronting corporations receiving corporate welfare and government bailouts.

10. And last, but not least: It’s probably more effective to protest against liberal immorality when not also enjoying a teabag.

So while planning your next tea party, take into consideration “The Ten Most Offensive April 15 Signs.”

Come on tea baggers! You can outdo them. After all, you’re American. And hindset is 20/20. Or was that $8.5 trillion…

Part I: Hospital Visitation for Gays (and the Special Rights Afforded Redheads…Oh, and Married People)

Most people think redheads look alike.

For instance, despite the fact that my face (eyes, nose, mouth, cheek bones) and body (resembling a Tonka truck) look exactly like my raven—haired father’s—envision Joneses lumbering around with the gait of a Kodiak wrestler from Northern Mongolia—because my dainty mother has red hair and is fair-skinned, and I have red hair and am fair-skinned, I am often told, in a voice reminiscent of anyone from the television series Square Pegs, “OMG, you look totally like your mother!”

Unlike some, I firmly believe people are not stupid. Rather, I have come to understand that red hair has a funny way of bending light rays to create the same deceiving, refractive power of a desert mirage. It helped a lot getting into bars in college with various fake IDs; but, alas, gets really annoying when people think I’m wet all of the time.

Long story long, being a ginger and purportedly looking like other gingers has worked out well for me in my recent years as I explore my narcissistic, or possibly, Oedipal side: dating several Irish-blooded, fair-skinned dandies with a penchant for calling me Daddy.*

*no one really calls me “Daddy.”**

**except maybe my cat Harry, but he doesn’t see very well.

These relationships work/ed out well for me, in the sense that, if my flame-haired girlfriends faced an emergency situation, we agreed that I would be “sister,” and, as sisters, being the “immediate family” of hospital visitation policy fame, would allow me to remain with said partner through their convalescence, unimpeded by a lot of Gandalf–style “you shall not pass” from most hospital officials seeking to cut off visitation for same-sex solace-providers. I would simply point to my ginger coif and part the sea of institutional bureaucracy like Moses at the Red Sea DMV.

Now, I am not from West Virginia and to tell people I am family, by blood, when I am not, is, of course, a lie. And I hear tell that lying is wrong. And while we’re talking frank, so is preventing loving couples from comforting one another during any hospital stay.

Because we are prohibited from marrying, gay and lesbian partners too often have to argue their right to hospital visits with ill loved ones.  National standards for hospital accreditation allow visitation to family members and can include non-legally related individuals as family members if they play a significant role in the patient’s life and are documented as such. Yet, even with proper documentation, same-sex couples still can never be sure under current law in most states that their intentions will be honored.

Flanigan v. University of Maryland Hospital System illustrates the ongoing need for hospitals to recognize the legitimacy of same-sex relationships so that loved ones are not kept apart at a time when they most need each other.

On October 16, 2000, on a cross-country trip to visit family, Bill Flanigan’s partner Robert Daniel was admitted to the University of Maryland Hospital’s Shock Trauma Center with a serious illness. Despite the fact that Flanigan and Daniel were registered as domestic partners in California and that Flanigan had with him a Power of Attorney to make health care decisions for Daniel, hospital personnel prevented Flanigan from seeing his partner. Hospital staff told Flanigan that only “family” members were permitted to visit and that “partners” did not qualify. Flanigan was unable to consult with doctors or to tell surgeons of Daniel’s wish to forego life-prolonging measures such as a breathing tube. Several hours later, when Flanigan was finally allowed to visit, Daniel was no longer conscious, his eyes were taped shut and doctors had inserted a breathing tube. Daniel never regained consciousness and died three days later. On behalf of Bill Flanigan, Lambda Legal unsuccessfully argued before a local jury that the hospital was liable for damages.

Things have gotten no better in the last decade, as witnessed in the ongoing case of Langbehn v. Jackson Memorial Hospital. Just as Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond were about to depart from Miami on a family cruise with their three children, Pond suddenly collapsed. From the moment Langbehn and the children arrived at Jackson Memorial Hospital, they encountered prejudice and apathy. Even though Langbehn held Pond’s durable health care power of attorney, the hospital refused to accept information from Langbehn regarding Pond’s medical history. The hospital also informed her that she was in an antigay city and state and that she could expect to receive no information or acknowledgment as family. A doctor finally spoke with Langbehn, telling her that there was no chance of recovery. Despite the doctor’s acknowledgment that no medical reason existed to prevent visitation, neither Langbehn nor her children were allowed to see Pond until nearly eight hours after their arrival. Soon after Pond’s death, Langbehn attempted to obtain her death certificate in order to get life insurance and Social Security benefits for her children. She was denied both by the state of Florida and the Dade County Medical Examiner. Lambda Legal filed a lawsuit against Jackson Memorial Hospital, on behalf of Janice Langbehn and her three children.

While my red hair could get me in the door, my partner’s true “immediate family,” even if distant, estranged and/or disapproving, can keep me out; additionally, despite forward-thinking family planning, a medical power of attorney, as seen from the cases above, can be summarily dispatched by hospital staff, willing to ignore love and law, for an antigay policy all their own.

In law, I have learned that even the easiest questions sometimes have no easy answers. Dealing with LGBT issues within the confines of the law, is, without a doubt, even more difficult. While it seems more states are “coming out” every day, still only a small percentage of states have recognized some form of same-sex marriage or civil union, but already those measures are creating a patchwork of laws and court decisions with little uniformity.

The short-term action? More paperwork.

The most powerful is a form designating an agent: giving a partner such rights as hospital visitation, decision-making authority for health care, and even control over the disposition of remains.

Hospital Visitation Authorization

A hospital visitation authorization is a document that instructs your doctor, care providers and hospital staff about who is allowed and given priority to visit you if you are hospitalized. Many hospitals only allow biological or legal family members to visit a patient in the hospital unless you have a hospital visit authorization. Gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender partners are not considered family under most state law. But this document allows you to make clear that you want your partner to have the right to visit you if you are hospitalized.***

Medical Power of Attorney

Married, domestic partnered, or not, all committed same-sex couples should consider a power of attorney for health care or medical matters, which appoints a person to make medical decisions for you when you cannot do so. It is also known as a health care proxy, among other things, depending on where you live. The document should include an authorization under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act to provide access to medical records. You may also include a hospital visitation directive to specify who can visit you in the hospital.***

***May be void in Maryland, Florida, and your state.

The short answer? Marriage.

Married people get rights automatically through long-established common law: not special acts, statutes, or other legislation, but just “by virtue” of being a married couple. Under the laws of all states, marriage equals “immediate family” and immediate family equals hospital visitation.

And, by corollary, marriage equals basic human rights. So, while I have to present 14 pounds of paperwork to see my Gaelic gal in triage, you heteros need only show your wedding band.

I’ll give you that “hospital visitation by long-time partners” is a pretty easy side to have in this whole equal rights/gay marriage debate. Just look back at the phrase. It reeks of tear-stained “let me visit my dying loved one, you inhumane person, you.” In fact, I thought a lot about this issue around the time the public expressed outrage when a Dallas police officer prevented NFL player Ryan Moats from seeing his dying mother-in-law.

I wondered if any folks who felt obliged to express their outrage in this case would do the same if the person kept from their dying loved one was instead Bill Flanigan, Janice Langbehn, or me. And why aren’t they?

I would ask that you think about this double-standard when watching today’s “National Organization for Marriage” response to the amazing marriage equality victories in Iowa and Vermont in the form of a national TV ad filled with fear about a same-sex marriage “storm” gathering across the country.

This disturbing ad–airing across the country and 8 times a day in California–uses actors to push lies claiming that marriage equality threatens personal freedoms (see below).

The whole damn thing makes me want to pull my hair out.

But until I know I can visit my partner in the hospital, I’m afraid I can’t.

The Art of Equal Protection: Defining “The Same Rights”

On Tuesday, April 2, 2009, Vermont, the state that invented civil unions,  became a pioneer once again as the first state to legalize gay marriage through a legislature’s vote. Vermont is now the fourth state to approve same-sex marriage. The decision comes one week after the Iowa Supreme Court cleared the way for gay-marriage in that state.

Today,  in its characteristically timely fashion, The Diane Rehm Show took a candid look at gay marriage in America, taking its usual phone, e-mail, Twitter and Facebook questions/comments from its nationwide audience.

One such *comparatively*-benign Facebook  comment came from a gentleman named Gary Cepeda:

Dear Diane
It seems that homosexuals do not care about having a legal union which will give them the same rights but it seems that there is an underlying plot to degrade the marriage union

All purported attempts to “degrade the marriage union” aside, as one of Gary’s homosexuals, I recognize it might seem that I do not care about legal unions, and for homosexuals generally, with all of our marching in the streets, chanting, and flag-waving, that these displays are just another failed attempt to show off our latest purchases from the REI (lesbian) or International Male (gay) collections. It might even seem greedy to our largely heterosexual nation that gays and lesbians continue to pursue marriage benefits when a whopping three, oh wait (thanks again, Vermont), two states New Jersey (since 2006), and New Hampshire (since 2007) allow Gary’s “legal unions.”

But I assure you Gary et. al., nothing could be further from the truth.

Oh, I am well aware that separate but equal works (just look at school segregation!); but Gary, the real problem for me rests squarely with the “equal” in “separate but equal” to marriage–and civil unions are not that.

Yes, a Civil union is a category of law that was created to extend rights to same-sex couples.  However, these rights are recognized only in the state where the couple resides.

But, the most significant difference between marriage and civil unions (or domestic partnerships) is that only marriage offers federal benefits and protections.

According to the federal government’s General Accounting Office (GAO), more than 1,100 rights and protections are conferred to U.S. citizens upon marriage. Areas affected include Social Security benefits, veterans’ benefits, health insurance, Medicaid, hospital visitation, estate taxes, retirement savings, pensions, family leave, and immigration law.

And, to add insult to injury, because same-sex marriages, civil unions, and domestic partnerships are not federally recognized, any benefits available at the state or local level are subject to federal taxation. For example, a woman whose health insurance covers her female partner must pay federal taxes on the total employer cost for that insurance.

So, Gary, you got me thinking. If you didn’t know these important gaps between marriage and civil unions, maybe other nice hetero folks out there don’t either. Heck, maybe even more than a few gays don’t even know the extent of our separation from equality.

And maybe it might help if we all tried to understand. Together.

I’ll begin tomorrow with the simple topic of hospital visitation.

The Rush to Apologize: And Other Brilliant Republican Strategies

Rush Limbaugh is NOT the leader of the Republican Party any more than moveon.org is the mouthpiece for the DNC. But, as a liberal Democrat seeking the failure (yes, I said it) of most Neocon line items, it is really fortuitous to be able to point to the future of the Republican party in the form of a closely-followed conservative figurehead whose largely ugly, mocking, racist, sexist and homophobic rhetoric is, as author Mike Lux put it, “eerily similar to the worst right wing demagogues in American history, people who opposed ending slavery and Jim Crow, denying women the right to vote, and attacking immigrants who were not of European descent.”

Yay!

And so what if its supposed rightful leader, RNC chair Michael Steele follows his half-hearted attempt to stand up to Limbaugh with a heartfelt apology to the meaty conservative mouthpiece?

Woohoo!

Yes. Yes. Embrace the sweaty showman, Republican leadership! Fall prey to the rule of Rush. And quickly remain the party of race-baiting, gay-hating, and woman parading from whence ye can never return…or at least not in the next eight years.

Fine.

Heck, I’ll even apologize to Rush myself.

On Fat Tuesday, Louisiana’s Republican Governor Serves as the Nation’s Biggest Party Pooper

“Democratic leaders say their legislation will grow the economy. What it will do is grow the government, increase our taxes down the line, and saddle future generations with debt. Who among us would ask our children for a loan, so we could spend money we do not have, on things we do not need? That is precisely what the Democrats in Congress just did. It’s irresponsible. And it’s no way to strengthen our economy, create jobs, or build a prosperous future for our children.”

- Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, February 24, 2009

Gov. Bobby Jindal delivered tonight’s much-ballyhooed Republican presidential rebuttal, accusing the nation’s Democratic leadership of increasing our taxes “down the line” and saddling “our future generations with debt,” thereby becoming this Fat Tuesday’s version of a “Debbie Downer,” and providing the slimmest of reasons for believing anything this, or any other Republican, has to say.

Jindal’s high profile face time, (and in my opinion, face plant), yielded yet another transparent Republican Party attempt to re-brand itself as just as hopeful and change-y as the Presidential administration that unseated it. But like the Michael Steeles and Sarah Palins before him, Jindal’s brave new face of the Grand Old Party does nothing to reframe the tired old conservative arguments that reek of the same irresponsibility of which they have always accused their progressive counterparts. Jindal speaks of saddling debt, we see trillions lost in the Neocon war for Iraq; Jindal speaks of the perils of big government, but ignores government at its biggest under his own Republican President; Jindal criticizes the Democrats, but gives no discernible plans from his own party in return.

Now, more than ever, we all know better.

We know, as Sam Stein of The Huffington Post points out, the Republican governor’s critique of Democrats for wanting to raise taxes “is a curious one, considering the stimulus, passed with no House GOP support, constituted the largest tax cut in the history of the nation.”

We know, that the “grown” government under the current administration, and not merely the unregulated big government of the previous one, is the only remaining hope of nationalizing what has been our largely privatized economic prosperity. And that, like our President, “we must reject the view that says our problems will just take care of themselves…that says our government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity.” Because, as he so articulately told us tonight, from the G.I. Bill to the moon landing, “history tells a different story.”

Because we must know, that bipartisan strategies, not Republican apathy, represent the lucky baby in our nation’s King Cake. And that Jindal’s home state of Louisiana, like the rest of the nation, deserves a little more luck than was received under this type of outmoded Republican rule.

Happy Days May Not Yet Be Here Again, But it is Time for America to Lead Again

A PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS TO CONGRESS

“But while our economy may be weakened and our confidence shaken; though we are living through difficult and uncertain times, tonight I want every American to know this: We will rebuild, we will recover, and the United States of America will emerge stronger than before. The weight of this crisis will not determine the destiny of this nation. The answers to our problems don’t lie beyond our reach. They exist in our laboratories and universities; in our fields and our factories; in the imaginations of our entrepreneurs and the pride of the hardest-working people on Earth. Those qualities that have made America the greatest force of progress and prosperity in human history we still possess in ample measure. What is required now is for this country to pull together, confront boldly the challenges we face, and take responsibility for our future once more.”

-President Barack Obama, February 24, 2009

Tonight, in his Presidential Address to Congress, Barack Obama most certainly looked “pleased to say” that his hard-fought America Recovery and Reinvestment Act is now law. In a speech that was part policy, part pep talk, the President addressed and met the idea of partisan skeptism in Washington and across the nation, even as the cameras panned to the Act’s biggest critics like John McCain, calling upon Vice President Biden to lead a tough, unprecedented oversight effort.

“Cuz nobody messes with Joe. Am I right?”

And even amid his enthusiastic discussion of his budgetary aspirations for energy independence, healthcare reform, and an education overhaul, he acknowledged that Democrats and Republicans, himself included, “will have to sacrifice some worthy priorities for which there are no dollars.”

Yet, the President’s most compelling and ambitious arguments came when he departed from mere fiscal realism, and instead focused on the reasonableness of the well-worn promise of hope amid the more tired Republican mantra, big government equals bad government.

“I reject the view that says our problems will just take care of themselves. That says our government has no role in laying the foundation for our common prosperity. For history tells a different story,” said Obama. “History reminds us that in every moment of economic upheaval and transformation, this nation has responded with bold action and big ideas.”

Citing much of the last century’s big and bold governmental action, from the successes of the G.I. Bill to innovations of a lunar landing, President Obama pointed out in each case “government did not supplant private enterprise. It catalyzed private enterprise.”

And with these compelling words, President Obama introduced not only an ambitious plan for economic stimulus and growth, but also the nationalization of hope. That government is not only a forum for prosperity, but that our current governance is ripe with populism. And through this governance by the people, we might become the government we want to see.

Truly, as our President told us, “it is time for America to lead again.” And like 8th grader Ty’Sheoma Bethea told Congress, it has never been more clear that, together, “we are not quitters.”