by notesfromachair

The Pro-Ignorance Movement

There is the pro-choice movement – meaning an organized effort in favor of a woman’s right to choose whether or not to terminate her pregnancy.

These days there is also the pro-ignorance movement – meaning a willful determination to stay uninformed on any subject one chooses while simultaneously speaking out about it.

Meet Mr. Know-it-all

Dr. Ben Carson, a world-renowned neurosurgeon– which means he operates on the one organ of the body responsible for thought – gave this explanation on CNN Wednesday morning when asked by Chris Cuomo about homosexuality:

CC: Do you think being gay is a choice?

Dr. C: Absolutely

CC: Why do you say that?

Dr. C: Because a lot of people who go into prison…go into prison straight and when they come out they’re gay. So did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.

Ummmm.. what?!

It’s unclear whether Dr. Carson is referring to prison rape turning the average inmate gay or whether it’s the temptation of solely being around so many people of the same sex so consistently over so long a period of time that causes the great change. If the latter, it certainly does cast a giant rainbow flag over the world of professional sports, not to mention the military. If the former then as an MD is he prescribing extended confinement and sexual relations with members of the opposite sex in order to turn a gay person straight? Or does it not work the other way around? One’s mind reels at any of the possibilities.

Before one writes off Dr. Carson as a right wing crazy, it is important to note he graduated with a psychology degree from Yale prior to attending medical school. He then became a pediatric neurosurgeon who in 1987 led a 70-member team that successfully separated conjoined Siamese twins; was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Pres. George W. Bush in 2008; and wrote six best selling books, the last of which, One Nation, was on the 2014 NY Times bestseller list for 20 consecutive weeks where it outsold Hilary Clinton’s Hard Choices. It is also relevant to report that last month he formed a well-financed exploratory committee to run for US president and was one of the most popular speakers at the recent CPAC Convention, the first great test for all emerging 2016 Republican Party presidential hopefuls.

I’m not even sure how to react to this

The fact that Mr. Carson issued a long apology for his CNN interview that very night, admitting he can’t claim to know how every individual came to their sexual orientation, meant little because he never admitted the most crucial point under discussion – that his original statement was incorrect. There was no denial that going to prison or the right involuntary gay encounter behind bars could soon make said individual long for a voluntary one. There was only the pronouncement that he (Dr. Carson) was a supporter of gay rights (Note: Though only up to a point) and that he couldn’t possibly know what made EVERYONE gay.

For one to counter that rape is considered by almost every medical expert across the board as a crime not about sex but one of violence and control or to cite the overwhelming consensus from the AMA on down that sexual orientation is not a condition that can be changed is truly beside the point. What is more to the point is that Dr. Carson, who is certainly a learned man with at least an above average IQ, seems to have somehow been absent when the general subject of human sexuality was covered not only in medical school but out in the Zeitgeist over the last, oh, say 30 years.

So it’s not this simple?

The truth is that as s a public speaker, writer and man about town with all of his five senses intact – not to mention his admitted lifelong almost superhuman hand-eye coordination – it is more than likely that Dr. Carson has heard a lot of the above scientific facts and anecdotal evidence about human sexuality during that time and has willfully chosen to ignore them. Either that or he has followed some sort of doctrine of alternate magical thinking that he has instead willfully chosen to believe in.

James Randi is an 86-year-old retired illusionist, writer and professional debunker of magicians and charlatans who try to pass themselves off as clairvoyants and faith healers. I remember him as The Amazing Randi – a guy who was often featured on one of my favorite weekend TV programs of the 1960s, the kid’s show Wonderama – where he performed tricks I could believe in and escaped from the most seemingly inescapable boxes, ropes and otherwise confined spaces I’d ever seen.

Preach!

Little did I know that in the 1980s Randi would do some of his most important work in the field of magic. As the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) and recipient of a Macarthur Foundation genius grant he became a full time debunker (Note: He prefers the more polite term, investigator) and set his sights on televangelists such as Peter Popoff – a man who was making $4 million per year in a nationally syndicated show where the sick, the elderly and many young people who were either handicapped or suffering from terminal cancer diagnoses would attend tent-like revival meetings (albeit in an air-conditioned soundstage) where they came to him desperately hoping for a cure. As Mr. Popoff preached about the healing powers of The Lord and pranced from one side of the stage to the other he’d forcefully hit audience members on the forehead and pull away their crutches and walkers, banishing The Devil from their bodies and presumably restoring them to health.

As preposterous as this may sound, Mr. Popoff convincingly evoked Bible passages with the smoothness of a saint or, well, at least a would-be politician. He also made a fortune doing it and had audiences traveling from all over the world to his studio so he could save them from clutches of death.

Put down your purse!

It took The Amazing Randi’s sharp magician’s mind to quickly prove these people were not being saved by God but were instead being taken in by a phony. Attending one taping, he was able to pick up a high radio frequency and overheard Popoff being fed private information about each of his subjects that turned out to be transmitted via a small earpiece he wore that his wife was speaking to him through from backstage. The setup was that people had to fill out audience cards prior to the show with pertinent information about their maladies and the best TV ready ones were carefully chosen to be candidates for his – or as he would put it, The Lord’s – magical cure.

This might not be the same thing as Mr. Carson’s magical assumption of how a person might be turned gay but it is certainly follows just about the same type of creative, non-scientific logic. Oh, and side note: it turns out that James Randi himself is gay and recently married his partner of almost 30 years. Having grown up at a time when coming out was impossible in a career like his, he says he was inspired to finally give up that final illusion after seeing the 2008 film Milk, the biopic on slain San Francisco supervisor and early LGBT advocate Harvey Milk. (Note: This and a lot more is revealed in a new documentary about his life — An Honest Liar – now playing at a theatre near you).

The Amazing Randi today

As for Dr. Carson, he is a lifelong devout Christian and though I am not privy to his most deeply personal beliefs, he has frequently spoken and written about his close relationship with God, proclaiming to Sean Hannity on Feb. 8 that he will run for president If the Lord grabbed me by the collar and made me do it.

He has also spoken out in the last decade in favor of what he terms traditional marriage – until recently equating those who engage in homosexuality to individuals who practice bestiality or advocate the sexual unions of adults and children. At the very least this appears to be it’s own kind of magic thinking. At the worst, it’s insulting, vicious and dangerously guilty of inciting those far less educated and intelligent than him to more potent hate speech, not to mention hate crimes.

Still, it’s a free country so the man can say what he wants. But what he cannot do is twist his words into a kind of poisonous pretzel logic and go unchallenged. In a speech on Friday, Vice-president Joe Biden began to address Dr. Carson’s views on the subject but at one point became frozen in his tracks:

…Every ridiculous assertion — from Dr. Carson on…

Biden stops mid-sentence, laughs to himself, shakes his head incredulously, presumably at those assertions.

I mean Jesus, God.

Silence as the veep thinks some more, then tries to stifle a guffaw. And continues.

I mean — oh, God. It’s kind of hard to fathom, isn’t it?

It is reassuring to have rational thought on this issue in the current White House when Oklahoma state lawmakers have just proposed the Oklahoma Religious Freedom Restoration Act of 2015 which would allow anyone, including religious and secular businesses, to discriminate against LGBT people as long as not doing so would violate their sincerely held religious beliefs.

where do I even begin?

To say nothing of the oral arguments next month scheduled before the US Supreme Court on whether states lawmakers can ban same-sex marriage in Ohio, Michigan, Kentucky and Tennessee despite the shifting legal rulings and national tides to the contrary.

Dr. Carson has famously said in the past that in advocating same-sex marriage, its supporters are trying to tell him that two plus two equals five when everyone knows the correct answer is four. Well, he does have the correct answer to the mathematical problem but as comedian Russell Brand countered back to him in a YouTube vlog last July, you can’t compare a social and civil idea like sexuality to an objective system of signs like arithmetic.

Which begs the question of whether Dr. Carson has truly studied the issue or is just vamping in the public arena until God tells him what to do. I, for one, prefer to think of his situation this way – it’s a choice to remain ignorant in the age of Google – and a bad one. As a physician, Dr. Carson has made a lot of bold, life-saving decisions. But as a rational thinker on the world stage and as a potential policy maker, signing up to the pro-ignorance movement is the poorest choice of them all. And certainly not a good one for the next potential decider-in-chief. Or for, well, any of the rest of us.

10.19.14

by notesfromachair

Marriage… not that there’s anything wrong with that

Gay marriage is now legal in 31 of 52 states in the U.S. This week a federal district judge in Arizona struck down the state’s ban on sex unions and its Attorney General Tom Horne said it would be “an exercise in futility” to appeal the decision given where the courts and general public now stand on the issue. After a speech announcing his decision, Horne then confessed even all four of his children disagreed with him on his own personal opposition to gay marriage “so that tells you something of where the trends are going.”

More than a 1000 miles northeast in Arkansas, former Governor Mike Huckabee followed with a radio meltdown that went viral regarding the Republican Party’s reluctance to continue fighting this nationwide trend. The one time Republican presidential primary contender was positively apoplectic at the undeniable surge towards allowing same sex couples to marry and threatened to leave his own political party if it didn’t stop continuing in a direction that would “guarantee they will lose every election in the future.” To quote him exactly:

A lot of the Republicans, particularly in the establishment and those who live on either the left coast or in the bubbles of New York and Washington, are convinced that if we don’t capitulate on the same sex marriage issue and if we don’t wave the white flag of surrender and just accept the inevitable then we’re going to be losers. I tell you…it is the exact opposite of that. And if Republicans want to lose guys like me and a whole bunch of still god fearing, Bible believing people…go ahead and just abdicate on that issue, and while you’re at it go ahead and say abortion doesn’t matter either, because at that point you lose me, I’m gone. I’ll become an independent. I’ll start finding people that have guts to stand, I’m tired of this!

Wow, you can practically hear the sputtering from here, huh? The Significant Other and I have not yet chosen to walk, skip, dance or even mince down the aisle but I’ll tell you – if anything could provide me with that final push to do so it just might be the sight of Gov. Huckabee’s head exploding live on ABC during one of his numerous early morning political pundit gigs. Yes, I realize that my marriage wouldn’t personally put him over the edge but there is something about contributing to the cumulative nudge that makes it hard for me to resist. Admittedly that’s not the best reason to get legally hitched but let’s face it, it’s certainly not the worst one we’ve all ever heard.

That would do.

The S.O. and I will actually celebrate 27 years of non same-sex marriage status this week and from where we sit the world has changed in many ways. In 1987, the idea of marriage – gay, straight or otherwise, was not even on our radar. Because at that point if we each had to pay for one more present, airline ticket, hotel accommodation or even tank of gas to attend yet another wedding we were convinced our two brains would have actually combusted into what we can now consider to be a Huckabee-like head explosion – though clearly in a far more glittery and stylish fashion. Looking back at it now I want to believe this was subliminal anger at the fact that we knew that we could never get married and therefore have the favor returned. But if I’m totally truthful I think it was only because the ritual was annoying, costly and symbolic of the yuppie-like entitlement of the Reagan era 80s that threatened to engulf you no matter where you turned. That and the fact that truly – we just couldn’t afford it all and hated feeling as if we had to pretend like we could.

This was before we had iPhones to distract us!

As the years and the decades evolved and we began attending the weddings of several couples we mutually loved (Note: Okay, not literally – not all of us gays are THAT evolved) our feelings began to evolve. The whole thing began to seem less like a waste of money and more a declaration and expression of love in front of friends and family. Sure, we still had to deal with the outfits and the gifts, but as two men there were a lot less accessories to buy. Plus, after commiserating with other straight couples also living in sin, we realized there was absolutely no chance of anyone coming up to us and asking that dreaded question:

“So, when are you two going to…you know…..Oh, we don’t to embarrass you but…Oh, come on!!!”

This is not to even mention what they would say to already married couples at the wedding who had not yet chosen to have children. Since at that time the idea of being a gay parent biologically was at the very least unlikely – and adoptively not all that much talked about generally among wedding attendees – (Note: That would come later as the gay parented kids grew) – I for one considered it a double win.

Of course, somewhere along the line all of that began to change. The escalation of AIDS to an epidemic, along with the AIDS-related deaths of tens of thousands of gay men as well as many millions of others, proceeded to usher in a great deal of sympathy and eventual acceptance. Gays all around the word began to come out en masse, our stories were not only featured on the news but on comedy series like Will and Grace, by celebrities like Ellen and on the faces of politicians who followed the now far less dangerous, trailblazing path of murdered San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk – the man who predicted the whole thing, albeit not spearheaded through the lethal force of a deadly disease.

A better kind of epidemic…

On the latter note, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fantasized about the reaction of deceased, like-minded gay friends of mine to all of this. Not how the ones who longed to be like their parents would feel but by those gay guys who used to grimace and groan about the prospect of attending just one more wedding where they had to buy a gift, an outfit or…well, you already know the drill. Not to mention, what they would think about the possibility of now being questioned about why they were not….a PARENT???? Yes, I’m leaving out serving in the military because the people I’m thinking of, well, um, let’s just say like me they had asthma, clubbed feet, a congenital heart disease or – also like me – could figure out a way to get a doctor to write them a note. (Further Note: This is by no means to cast aspersions on anyone in the military – simply a statement of fact regarding those I knew and loved, who were very much like my cowardly self).

Saturday Night Live’s new Weekend Update co- anchor Michael Che, a straight guy, captured this perfectly last week in a mock editorial about all of the gay guys who have up till now been able to hide behind the injustices of the anti-gay marriage status quo. Noting his happiness for gays and lesbians who chose to tie the knot, Che nevertheless proclaimed:

I feel bad for a group of people that still get ignored in this country – and that’s gay dudes who really, really don’t want to get married and had a really good excuse not to for so long. I know there are some deadbeat gay boyfriends who are like, Yo Carl, you KNOW I want to marry you. But SOCIETY, man…wont let us. Oh well, I guess we just have to keep on boning casually till the world gets its act together.

I see what you did there

Not that it’s a great thing for us homosexuals not to get married but well, if you’re going to be discriminated against you might as well use it for something productive. It reminds me of my dear friend Deb, whose parents were Holocaust survivors and whose grandparents the Nazis murdered, when she used the death of her already deceased grandmother as an excuse to not attend class in high school when she would oversleep. I challenged her on that at the time and was somewhat shocked when she reasoned to me that since she and her grandmother had never met she felt at the very least it was “one small thing she could do for me.” Though now, with the whole marriage thing – well, I think I finally do understand.

According to a recent ABC/Washington Post poll 56% of people in the country support the US Supreme Court ruling to allow gay marriage. This includes majorities in the 11 states affected by the court’s most recent decision earlier this month against the anti-gay marriage statute in Alaska. Incidentally, among those states in the lucky eleven are Arizona, Indiana, Utah, Colorado, West Virginia and North Carolina – hardly the “left coast” and certainly not anywhere near the bubbles of New York or Washington.

… and the soon to be legalization in Scotland has definitely increased my wardrobe choices.

Which means that as far as the marriage between the S.O. and I are concerned – well, it’s no more excuses, at least legally. So we’ve decided to….um, well, at least recognize we are getting older and need to have some legal status. Which is not to say we will be having a surprise wedding on our anniversary on the 24^th. (Note: No Gifts, please). Only that at some point we will very much look forward to contributing to a nationwide movement that will one day cause ex- Governor Mike Huckabee’s head to explode. Hopefully, that will be sooner rather than later. On at least one of the aforementioned counts.

notes from a chair

Category Archives: Gay is the Old Black

The Pro-Ignorance Movement

Marriage… not that there’s anything wrong with that