Let them eat cakes!

It appears that Kim Davis has exhausted her fifteen Andy Warhol minutes.  She might be gone from our news radars, but the struggle between faith-based personal values versus the larger collective, social policies will continue on for a very long time.

Here in the US, we might struggle through the issues, yes.  As that cigar-chomping English racist remarked, Americans will always do the right thing, only after we have tried everything else.  Makes me wonder why we always have to take the long, long, long road to do the right thing.

But, at least here we end up doing the right thing.  I increasingly worry that the trend in the old country is one of doing the wrong things.  Today's exhibit:  vegetarianism.

Of course, this is not the first time that I am blogging about the vegetarian existence.  But, here is an important distinction to keep in mind: I don't make an "ism" out of a preferred way of life.  The moment an "ism" is framed, it immediately leads to an us-versus-them, which is what is rapidly unfolding in India.

The problem is that when vegetarianism—and what you eat in general—is associated with morality, it serves to strengthen distinctions, marking class, education and other indicators of status.

Any holier-than-thou approach, especially in the political space, is bound to be disastrous.

In a national landscape moving towards a narrow definition of what it means to be Indian—specifically, Hindu and high caste, and specifically not Muslim—such distinctions have potentially serious consequences.

Ah, yes, the caste issue comes up again.  The religion issue comes up again.  And you thought food is an easy topic, eh!

We can already see its effects in cities such as Mumbai, where the discourse of purity and pollution around what you eat is so powerful that certain groups are denied access to the housing market on account of their dietary choices. If you belong to the “non-vegetarian” groups—including anyone from Muslims to Christians to Maharashtrians to Dalits—it can be difficult to purchase or rent an apartment. Potential buyers are turned away, presumably, because smells from their kitchen might pollute a neighbour’s flat. With vegetarianism used as a distinguisher between “us” and “them”, Mumbai is becoming an increasingly hostile place for religious minorities.

The struggle will not be resolved anytime soon in the old country.  Nor here in the US.  When individuals claim that their "faith" prevents them from supporting a commercial transaction, societies will have quite a struggle trying to resolve the incompatibility between a secular political democracy with those faith-based practices.  Here in the US, chances are high that the food fight will end up in the Supreme Court.  Remember the bakery here in Oregon that refused service to a same-sex couple?  The baker in Colorado?

The ACLU (yes, I am a card-carrying member) argues:

There’s a growing body of court decisions saying that while religion is central to what makes America America, religion can’t be used as an excuse to discriminate

The other side argues:

Government has a duty to protect people’s freedom to follow their beliefs personally and professionally rather than force them to adopt the government’s views

Here it is cakes.  There it is meat.  All I know is this: we Americans will always do the right thing, only after we have tried everything else.  I can't say that about the old country, however.

To love whom they please and to marry whom they love

As a kid, as a teenager, and later even as an adult in India, I hadn't known a single gay person.  For that matter, I hadn't known a single black, or a Mexican, or an Arab, or a white ...  But, I had at least seen black and Mexican and white characters in movies, and read about them in fiction.  I had no idea about gays.  Well, the only thing I knew about gays was when in college there was a "wink-wink" about a guy.

Sex and sexuality was not talked about in the old country.  An old Tamil saying captures well the essence: "மன்மதக்கலை சொல்லி தெரிவதில்லை" (the art of the (god of) love is not taught and learnt.)  What I knew, messed up and incorrect that was--as I would find out much later in life--I knew from friends and fellow-classmates, who were also equally ill-informed.

And then I came to America.

I distinctly recall being shocked, intrigued, a month or so into my life in the new country, when I saw two young women locking lips in the public, outside the apartment building, just like how a young man and woman typically displayed their affections in public.

Since that first exposure, it has been one heck of a rapid education about love, homosexuality, and the politics of it all.

It is not only I who have moved, and moved rapidly, from not knowing anything to getting to know gays and becoming very good friends with them:

In the 1950s gay sex was illegal nearly everywhere. In Britain, on the orders of a home secretary who vowed to “eradicate” it, undercover police were sent out to loiter in bars, entrap gay men and put them in jail. In China in the 1980s homosexuals were rounded up and sent to labour camps without trial. All around the world gay people lived furtively and in fear. Laws banning “sodomy” remained in some American states until 2003.
Today gay sex is legal in at least 113 countries. 

A remarkable transformation in our collective attitudes.

What could help spread tolerance? If the past half-century is any guide, the prime movers will be gay people themselves. The more visible they are, the more normal they will seem. These days 75% of Americans say they have gay friends or colleagues, up from only 24% in 1985. But it is hard to be the first to come out in a country where that means prison or worse.
...
For those who cling to the notion of progress, it is hard to believe that tolerance will not spread. After all, gay people are not demanding special treatment, just the same freedoms that everyone else takes for granted: to love whom they please and to marry whom they love.

How are things in the old country?

In India the past decade has brought considerable change. The first national magazine for gay people, Pink Pages, was launched in 2009. Gay-pride marches, if not necessarily very large ones, are a common sight in big cities. Bollywood has produced sympathetic films.
Yet even if it is becoming slightly easier among India’s elite to be openly gay, almost no one in public life dares declare it. And the legal position for homosexuals is in flux. In July 2009 a high court ruled that the ban on “carnal intercourse against the order of nature” in the penal code violated India’s constitution, a ruling which in effect decriminalised gay sex. In December 2013 two Supreme Court judges overturned the ruling. They said that parliament could pass a law to legalise gay sex; at the moment, that looks unlikely.

 With a party that actively talks up Hindu nationalism, odds are far from favorable for India's parliament to pass laws legalizing homosexuality.  But then politics works in strange ways.

While I can claim ignorance of youth for the errors that I made in plenty, I have always felt awful about the "wink wink" comments about that college guy.  I have no idea whether he was/is gay; but, in any case, I suppose I can come clean with a public apology via this post.

No lefties and gays in India? Where are they?

Having lived in the US for 25 years means that I naturally draw comparisons based on what I might expect to typically experience here.  Thus, for instance, I felt rather strange to be amidst a whole lot of male passengers when in local flights in India--the passengers were overwhelmingly male, with very few female passengers, in contrast to the typical flight here in the US where there isn't that kind of a gender imbalance.  It was similar gender ratios in restaurants.  Of course, it does not mean that there are no women in India; it is just that they are not as "visible" as their numbers would suggest.

If females are flying under the radar (yes, a bad pun!) then could it be a similar situation with gays and left-handed people in India? 

I rarely ever met a lefty during the hundred days in India, and nobody I interacted with was any self-declared gay either.  Surely they do exist, no?

Even way back in my school days, left-handed students were rare.  One classmate, "K," I do remember favoring his left hand and he was so much an exception that even when we recalled him at the reunion, to brush up one's memory all we had to say was "remember, he was the lefty?" 

Using the left hand was considered gauche by many cultures and perhaps more so in India where eating was/is also with hands.  No utensils--no forks or spoons or chopsticks--means that there is a sensitivity to making sure that the the hand that delivers food to the mouth is not the same as the one that cleans one's bottom in the traditional ways without toilet-paper. 

That age-old shying away from using the left hand is understandable to some extent, particularly in olden times where many kinds of irrational beliefs prevailed.  But, we live now in a world that is very different from the past.  In India too.  Yet, even left-handed children were rarer a sight than a polar bear walking down the road in Chennai.

If that is the case with left-handedness, then what about gays and lesbians?  Surely not everybody in India is heterosexual! 

Of course, it is always possible that I have zero gaydar abilities and, therefore, was oblivious to the loud gay classmates at the reunion, for instance.  After all, I still remember that one funny episode during my second year in graduate school when apparently I was the only one who had no idea that another student in our group was bisexual. 

A few months ago, India's courts declared that homosexuality is not a crime.  While the legality has been cleared, I suppose there is very little public acceptance of homosexuality. Not surprising, given that even a divorce is spoken of in hushed tones as if it is the "d" word.  After a few instances when I joked about my divorced state, I realized that the jokes were simply falling flat--not something to be joked about.  If that is the case with the "d" word, then perhaps it is a long way to go for the "h" word?

Imagine then the complicated life for a left-handed lesbian in India!

I dare you: watch this without cracking up :)

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It gets better

First Hillary Clinton, and now Barack Obama. Am mighty glad they did the videos

It gets better

Conservative judges are ruling pro-gay ... cool!

Factoids about the judge who overthrew California's Prop 8 (ht):

Judge Walker was first appointed to the federal bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1987, at the recommendation of Attorney General Edwin Meese III (now the Ronald Reagan Distinguished Fellow in Public Policy and Chairman of the Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at the Heritage Foundation). Democratic opposition led by Sen. Alan Cranston (D-CA) prevented the nomination from coming to a vote during Reagan’s term. Walker was renominated by President George H. W. Bush in February 1989. Again the Democratic Senate refused to act on the nomination. Finally Bush renominated Walker in August, and the Senate confirmed him in December. ...
... coalitions including such groups as the NAACP, the National Organization for Women, the Human Rights Campaign, the Lambda Legal Defense Fund, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force worked to block the nomination.In other words, this “liberal San Francisco judge” was recommended by Ed Meese, appointed by Ronald Reagan, and opposed by Alan Cranston, Nancy Pelosi, Edward Kennedy, and the leading gay activist groups. It’s a good thing for for advocates of marriage equality that those forces were only able to block Walker twice.

How cool is that!  This was the judge whose nomination was opposed by the liberal bastion of the late Kennedy, and Pelosi, when Biden was the Senate Committee's chair ... the successful attorney in this California case is a Republican lawyer who represented Bush against Gore ... even Hollywood could not have scripted this any better :)
But, apparently that is not all:

Josh Green of the Atlantic notes a pattern: the federal judge in Boston who struck down a significant portion of the Defense of Marriage Act, ruling that it denied gay and lesbian couples the federal benefits afforded to straight couples, was appointed to the bench by President Richard Nixon. And the chief judge of the Iowa Supreme Court who wrote the unanimous decision striking down that state’s marriage ban was appointed by Republican governor Terry Branstad, who was just renominated for governor by Iowa Republican voters.

Who would have thought this would be the case!  But then Conservatism that is of the libertarian and states-rights flavor will bring such results, no?

Another anti-gay Republican .... is gay

I lived in Bakersfield (CA) for almost a decade.  A highly socially and politically conservative place that was. Here is an example: the local college invited to campus a well known poet, Frank Bidart, for, well, poetry reading and Q/A.  There was a great deal of protest because ...he was gay!  And the icing on this crazy cake?  He was a local guy--was born and brought up in town before he moved to the East Coast, and he still had family in town.  Yet the protests ....

One of the local politicians was Roy Ashburn, who systematically contested and won election after election.  At one time there was even speculation that he might head to the Congress.  The guy was typical of the local pols who were highly successful--ultra conservative Republican talk.  (Not "Conservative" but Republican.)  Ashburn was also, as one can then imagine, anti-gay.

So, there I was checking with the newspaper from Bakersfield and I almost fell off the chair when I read a series of reports on Ashburn and his homosexuality:

“I am gay. Those are the words that have been difficult for me for so long,” a sometimes emotional Ashburn told local talk radio show host Inga Barks 

So, why was he vehemently anti-gay, and why did he support anti-gay policies?

Ashburn has taken heat in the last week for having been both closeted and a consistent voter against gay-rights related legislation. In the interview, Ashburn repeatedly argued he voted the will of his constituents in his conservative 18th Senate District, which includes much of Bakersfield.

“I took a position based on what I believed was the will of my constituents, not mine, necessarily,” Ashburn said. “We have a representative form of government ... where citizens select people to cast votes on their behalf.”

Bah!  It was strictly a game he played in order to win re-elections?  How awful! The Fresno Bee editorial has the best line on this:

For Ashburn, being part of the club of elected officials apparently was more important than voting his conscience. That's disturbing. It's also extremely hypocritical, no matter how Ashburn tries to spin it.

But times are changing. Most younger voters don't care about sexual orientation. Ashburn could have shown leadership by trying to change the minds of others. He never gave his constituents the chance.

I wish Ashburn well .... but, I also hope he will understand how much his anti-gay politics caused pain and hardship to gays. I look forward to reading his apology in a future issue of the Bakersfield Californian.

Quote (excerpt) for the day!

Hysterically funny, if only this weren't true!

New Hampshire state Rep. Nancy Elliott, at a recent state Judiciary Committee meeting on a proposal to repeal the state's same-sex marriage bill, described the issue of gay marriage as follows: "taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man and wriggling it around in excrement." Rep. Elliott continued, irrelevantly, "and you have to think, I'm not sure, would I allow that to be done to me?" (Elliott has since apologized for the portion of her remarks in which she falsely claimed that because gay marriage had been legalized, New Hampshire's fifth-graders were being taught to have anal sex in the public schools.)

This is the best introduction, I have read in a long time, to an essay .... in this case, the essay is by my favorite legal issues commentator, Dahlia Lithwick, writing about Martha Nussbaum's book From Disgust to Humanity

Time and again, Nussbaum argues, societies have been able to move beyond their own politics of disgust to what she calls "the politics of humanity," once they have finally managed to see others as fully human, with human aspirations and desires.

I can relate to one of the examples of disgust cited there--that of untouchables in India.  My grandmothers grew up in a world where they believed that they ought not to even accidentally touch one, or be touched by one .... and, it was fantastic to watch them go through a transformation and they shed that thought.  It was wonderful in fact that the doctor who treated my grandmother--this was back in the late 1970s--when she was in the hospital was not a person whose physical touch would have been appreciated fifty years prior .... this doctor later was elected as a member of the Parliament as well.  With the other grandmother, the moment I knew she had let go of the old ways of thinking was when we were watching on television a movie (can't recall the name!) about the very caste issues--it featured a phenomenal actress, Sharada, who was a Meryl Streep in her own ways.  Somewhere along in the movie, I heard my grandmother comment very sympathetically towards the lower caste character.  That empathy for the lower caste character in a movie meant a lot to me ... I think this is the humanity that Nussbaum refers to ....

We might have our own biases--because of the contexts within which we grew up.  I suppose the key is what happens when we are presented with evidence to the contrary.  It is those folks who refuse to discard their biases who worry me--not any bias by itself. 

An age limit for the Senate? Why not, eh!

Jon and Jon dissect the DADT discussions .... Try your best not to laugh :)

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