Midlife Meditation

No, I will not issue you a marriage license. Now leave me alone. Her name is Kim Davis, and what she's doing is seriously messing with my head. As a county clerk, part of her job is issuing marriage licenses to any applicants who meet a short list of requirements: be at least 18, bring your driver's license to apply, swear to not being married to anyone else, and don't be more closely related than second cousins. Being straight is no longer on that list. Kim Davis wishes it still was. She'd really rather not issue marriage licenses to gay couples. I know something about wishes. I wish summer was a week longer. I wish I had a classroom of my own to teach music in. I wish I didn't have to drive 35 minutes to get to work. I wish I could afford to travel more. I wish, I wish, I wish... As the saying goes, "If wishes were fishes, we'd all swim in riches." Since they're not, we don't. (Though given the state of the world's ...

In the wake of the Hobby Lobby ruling, which permits corporations to deny health benefits to employees if providing those benefits conflicts with the religious beliefs of the owners, "religious exemption" has become the strategie du jour of the radical right to justify bad behaviors for which American society no longer has patience. While the wedge issue is health care, specifically contraception, it's easy to see why LGBTQ activists are nervous about the ruling. Don't want gay people working for you? Claim religious exemption from non-discrimination laws. Don't want to sell your services or rent an apartment to gay people? Religious exemption to the rescue! Want to keep gay people from visiting their partners in the hospital, or having a say in their care? Again, religious exemption. These two words put at risk every gain in civil rights that sexual minorities have eked out of a cluelessly bigoted culture over the last half century. The US Constitution prov...

In the late winter of 1990-91, I watched my country go mad. It really began in December 1989, with the invasion of Panama. I watched it unfold on British TV: the almost literal saber-rattling of Noriega (I believe it was actually a machete he waved in that press conference), followed by the lightning strike of American forces. The message was clear: don't mess with American interests. Apparently Iraq wasn't listening, as just eight months later Iraqi troops invaded Kuwait, once again putting the American economy at risk. Of course there would be another strike, but this time it would have to be an international coalition. Unilaterally deposing Noriega could be explained as the U.S. acting in the world's behalf, policing its own backyard to protect global commerce. Going into a Middle Eastern country to liberate oil wells would be a much tougher act of aggression to spin. President George H.W. Bush went to work on American allies, building a case against Saddam Hussein, ...