a boy named sue

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The new URI for this blog is

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Please UPDATE your bookmarks, etc.

John A. Harnick

A thoughtful posting appeared yesterday on a United Methodist Church mailing list.

In Simcoe and Norfolk County — as in much of the rest of Canada — gay, lesbian and trans persons are being told to just shut up and go back into the closet — or as I’ve been frequently told “Go and live with your own kind.” Anything but just go away and stop making a fuss about your so-called rights. We don’t want to hear about it. We like things the way they are. We like using you all as scape goats and beating on you and watching the results of the stress and pain that we are inflicting on you — that we enjoy inflicting on you. IOW our comfort is more important than justice for you all.

One has to ask, “Who are the REAL perverts here?”

When I read the phrase “white moderate” my first thought was of Norfolk County Councillor Charlie Luke for some reason.

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From NewsDesk
Date Fri, 11 Apr 2008 16:56:45 -0500

Commentary: Avoiding sexuality issue is not true peace

Apr. 11, 2008

NOTE: A photograph is available at http://umns.umc.org.

A UMNS Commentary By Steven E. Webster*

Many voices from across The United Methodist Church are suggesting there is no way forward in the 36-year-long dialogue about the role and status of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in the church. Declaring an impasse, these voices call for an end to this dialogue in the name of peace and unity.

Forty-five years ago, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote a now-famous letter from a jail cell in Birmingham, Ala., to a group of white clergy (including two Methodist bishops) who–in the name of “unity” and “peace”–had publicly called on King and his allies to cease their disturbing nonviolent protests against racial segregation.

King wrote that the “great stumbling block” in the African-American struggle for equality was not blatant bigotry, “but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice, who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.”

I embrace our Wesleyan Christian vision of “making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world” and applaud the General Conference for seeking to build unity around four focus areas: 1) developing principled Christian leaders for the church and the world; 2) reaching new people in new places by starting new congregations and renewing existing ones; 3) engaging in ministry with the poor; and 4) stamping out killer diseases by improving health globally.

Yet we undercut these same goals when we continue to: 1) reject the gifts and graces of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons and their allies; 2) turn off a younger generation that views the Christian faith as “anti-homosexual;” 3) push LGBT youth into poverty and homelessness as families reject them because church and society stigmatizes LGBT persons; and 4) fail to address the role that ignorance and stigmatization of homosexuality (and other sexualities) play in the global AIDS epidemic.

Biblical peace

The United Methodist Church cannot enjoy true peace and unity while it engages in injustice and spiritual violence against some of its members. Biblical peace does not refer to the apparent absence of conflict, and still less to the suppression of dialogue. In the Bible, “peace” (”shalom” in Hebrew) is a holistic concept that includes justice and total well-being.

To fail to address the issue of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in the church now would leave in place the status quo in church law that includes Judicial Council Decision 1032, which normalizes the exclusion of LGBT persons from membership in the church. Decision 1032 has never yet been the subject of discussion at a General Conference and runs counter to a (non-binding) plea in our Social Principles that “we implore families and churches not to reject or condemn lesbian and gay members and friends.”

Even if lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people are allowed to attend or join the membership of The United Methodist Church, Decision 1032 further legitimates the widespread practice of “shunning” such persons as unworthy to serve in any of the ministries of the local church. This is spiritual violence, the misuse of religious authority to demean and diminish LGBT Christians.

I know LGBT persons who have been denied the opportunity to serve in the church as leaders of adult education classes, choir members, committee members, or readers of Scripture in worship. It is not unheard of for committed same-gender couples to be denied baptism for their babies and gay youth to be shunned from youth groups in The United Methodist Church.

These acts, justified by labeling LGBT people as “unrepentant sinners” inferior to all the “repentant sinners” in the church, are acts of spiritual violence, harming the souls of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. It is tragic that being from a devout Christian family has been identified as a risk factor for suicide among LGBT youths.

A thorn in the flesh

Some have described the church’s long dialogue over these issues as “a thorn in the flesh.” Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12:1-10 that he endured a painful “thorn in the flesh” that would not leave him even though he pleaded with God to remove it. God’s answer to Paul applies to us: “My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.”

We feel weary and weakened by this long dialogue over homosexuality, a dialogue in which I have actively participated in many ways these past 36 years. The faith that sustains me is that God intends to perfect us through these trials, and we, the people of The United Methodist Church, look forward to a real peace which is, in King’s words, the presence of justice and not merely the absence of tension.

*Webster is chair of the church council of University United Methodist Church in Madison, Wis., and has attended the 2000 and 2004 General Conferences as a volunteer with Soulforce, an organization that describes itself as working for freedom for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people from religious and political oppression. He legally married Jim Dietrich, his partner of 27 years, in a civil ceremony in Toronto in 2006.

News media contact: Marta Aldrich, Nashville, Tenn., (615) 742-5470 or newsdesk@umcom.org.

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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org

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Later.

Novelist Isabel Allende visited TED this year. Take a little break and listen to her fascinating presentation and then investigate the other equally interesting ones. Listen to one a day and be inspired.

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Why you should listen to her:

As a novelist and memoirist, Isabel Allende writes of passionate lives, including her own. Born into a Chilean family with political ties, she went into exile in the United States in the 1970s — an event that, she believes, created her as a writer. Her voice blends sweeping narrative with touches of magical realism; her stories are romantic, in the very best sense of the word. Her novels include The House of the Spirits, Eva Luna and The Stories of Eva Luna, and her latest, Ines of My Soul and La Suma de los Dias (The Sum of Our Days). And don’t forget her adventure trilogy for young readers — City of the Beasts, Kingdom of the Golden Dragon and Forest of the Pygmies.

As a memoirist, she has written about her vision of her lost Chile, in My Invented Country, and movingly tells the story of her life to her own daughter, in Paula. Her book Aphrodite: A Memoir of the Senses memorably linked two sections of the bookstore that don’t see much crossover: Erotica and Cookbooks. Just as vital is her community work: The Isabel Allende Foundation works with nonprofits in the SF Bay Area and Chile to empower and protect women and girls — understanding that empowering women is the only true route to social and economic justice.

_____”Allende can spin a funny, sensual yarn, but she can also use her narrative skills to remind us that parallel to our placid and comfortable existence is another, invisible universe, one where poverty, misery and torture are all too real.”

Patricia Hart, The Nation

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Later.

Over at The Progressive Economics Forum, Andrew Jackson shares the latest entry to his reading list — The betrayal of Africa. A ‘must read’, for a certainty.

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> I have just ordered what sounds like an excellent new book from an old friend and former colleague, Gerry Caplan.
>
> Review from AfricaFiles follows:
>
> AfricaFiles
>
> Title: The betrayal of Africa
> Author: Gerald Caplan
> Category: Africa General
> Date: 4/5/2008
> Source: Groundwood Books
>
> Source Website: http://www.groundwoodbooks.com
>
> Summary & Comment: “There is a widespread assumption among rich countries that Africa is the problem and that we in the rich world are the solution. This book turns this complacent, conventional wisdom on its head. It argues that the policies of rich countries, though couched in benevolent terms, are in fact responsible for many of the ills in Africa… For Africa to move forward, the citizens of rich countries must be aware of the false premises on which their own leaders deal with Africa.” DN
>
> The betrayal of Africa
>
> http://www.groundwoodbooks.com/gw_titles.cfm?pub_id=1270
>
> Think Africa, and many people think of brutal war, endless famine, pervasive corruption, unworthy rulers, universal poverty, an AIDS epidemic out of control. These characteristics are both true and a caricature at the same time. While Africa faces a daunting list of challenges, the vast majority of the continent’s citizens live ordinary lives with the hopes and dreams that all of us share.
>
> There is a widespread assumption among rich countries that Africa is the problem and that we in the rich world are the solution. This book turns this complacent conventional wisdom on its head. It argues that the policies of rich countries, though couched in benevolent terms, are in fact responsible for many of the ills in Africa. Every year, contrary to what Western leaders and the media tell us, far more of Africa’s riches flow out to the rich world than we plough into Africa. In this systematic process of exploitation, leaders of the rich world work in happy cooperation with most of the leaders of the African continent, who are ready accomplices in accepting the destructive policies demanded by the outside world.
>
> For Africa to move forward, the citizens of rich countries must be aware of the false premises on which their own leaders deal with Africa. Only by reversing the policies that have done such grievous harm to Africa over the past decades do the continent’s new leaders and activists have the chance of making serious progress.
>
> Reviews of The Betrayal of Africa
>
> “This is a riveting panorama of African history and experience, the best of analytic and polemical writing. The arguments are unanswerable, the depth of feeling unmistakable. Gerry Caplan knows his subject as few others do; he illumines the contours and contradictions of Africa with immense skill. He encapsules superbly, in a short book, the cascading tragedies of the continent. It’s a splendid piece of work and a great read.” - Stephen Lewis, former UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa
>
> “Gerry Caplan has written a compelling, comprehensive and swift-moving guide to the politics and challenges of modern Africa. . . fascinating. . .”
> - Stephanie Nolen, author of 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa
>
> A must read for students, scholars, educators and anyone else who cares about the human family, our interconnectedness and our interdependence. Gerry Caplan cuts through the myths, stereotypes, and platitudes to give both a thoughtful and thought provoking look at Africa, its history, its many peoples, and its role–often as pawn–in world politics. His book details the interference, the indifference, and the utter contempt–often under the guise of “doing good”–that has defined how the world continues to betray Africa.
>
> Barbara Coloroso, educator and author, Extraordinary Evil, A Brief History of Genocide…and Why It Matters
>
> Hardcover; maps and graphs
> 144 pages
> Ages 14 and up
> 978-0-88899-824-8
> $18.95 CDN
>
> Paperback; maps and graphs
> 144 pages
> Ages 14 and up
> 978-0-88899-825-5
> $11.00 CDN
>
> AfricaFiles :: Website: www.africafiles.org :: E-mail: info@africafiles.org
>
> A network of volunteers relaying African perspectives and alternative analyses to promote justice and human rights.

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Later.

I had a bit of a problem this afternoon right outside the front door at Wal-Mart in Niagara Falls. There was a gang of older youth standing around beside the front entrance and I thought that I was going to be swarmed. I noticed when I drove by and parked that they were following the car with their eyes — creepy. There was no way that I was going to back down and run away from these bastards. So I kept right on walking while they followed me with their eyes — creepy. The same thing happened when I left and they followed the car with their eyes as I drove away from the store — creepy. Wal-Mart security needs to keep an eye on what’s going on outside the store as well as inside. This kind of bullshit could have developed into something quite nasty and dangerous. And I know from past experience that nobody would have helped me if I had been attacked.

This is of course all of a piece with the increased level of harassment and intimidation that has been going on outside my home here in Simcoe — again by a gang of older youth and young adults — one of whom lives across the street from my home.

This ongoing harassment is taking an increasing toll on my health and wellbeing and now I face surgery in an attempt to repair some of the internal damage caused by the stress of coping with this homophobic crap.

John A. Harnick
Norfolk County, ON

There is no such thing as a ‘limited’ nuclear confrontation. Most of today’s conflicts revolve around a fight for limited resources like water and food. Really solve the problem of global poverty or we ALL die. We are all in this mess together and greed is the real enemy. And dying from exposure to nuclear radiation is painfully slow and very unpleasant to say the least.

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Think you might escape the aftereffects of a limited nuclear war that happens on the other side of the globe from you? Think again.

Imagine that the long-simmering conflict between India and Pakistan broke out into a war in which each side deployed 50 nuclear weapons against the other country’s megacities. Karachi, Bombay, and dozens of other South Asian cities catch fire like Hiroshima and Nagasaki did at the end of World War II.

Beyond the local human tragedy of such a situation, a new study looking at the atmospheric chemistry of regional nuclear war finds that the hot smoke from burning cities would tear holes in the ozone layer of the Earth. The increased UV radiation resulting from the ozone loss could more than double DNA damage, and increase cancer rates across North America and Eurasia.

“Our research supports that there would be worldwide destruction,” said Michael Mills, co-author of the study and a research scientist at the University of Colorado at Boulder. “It demonstrates that a small-scale regional conflict is capable of triggering larger ozone losses globally than the ones that were previously predicted for a full-scale nuclear war.”

Combined with the climatic impact of a regional nuclear war — which could reduce crop yields and starve hundreds of millions — Mills’ modeling shows that the entire globe would feel the repercussions of a hundred nuclear detonations, a small fraction of just the U.S. stockpile. After decades of Cold War research into the impacts that a full-blown war between the Soviet Union and the United States would have had on the globe, recent work has focused on regional nuclear wars, which are seen as more likely than all-out nuclear Armageddon. Incorporating the latest atmospheric modeling, the scientists are finding that even a small nuclear conflict would wreak havoc on the global environment (.pdf) — cooling it twice as much as it’s heated over the last century — and on the structure of the atmosphere itself.

Mills’ work, which appears online today in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science, used a model from National Center for Atmospheric Research to look at the impact of throwing 5 million metric tons of black carbon, or soot, into the atmosphere. He found that when a cluster of cities are burning together, they end up creating their own weather, pumping soot 20,000 feet into the atmosphere. Once there, sunlight would heat the smoke, and drive it up 260,000 feet above the earth’s surface.

Along the way, the hot soot would cause a variety of atmospheric changes with a net result of huge reductions in ozone, which in the stratosphere serves as sunblock for the earth. In the middle latitudes, the researchers found the ozone layer would be reduced by 25 to 45 percent, with the polar regions losing 50 to 70 percent of their ozone coverage. This thinning is known as a “hole” in the ozone layer, and would be many times the size of the famed hole over Antarctica.

According to research cited by the paper, the increase in ultraviolet light falling to earth at the 45-degree latitude — a little south of Portland, Oregon — would cause damage to DNA to increase 213 percent.

“It would have a dramatic effect on skin cancer and cataracts and be very damaging to crops and ecosystems,” Mills said.

The reduced levels of ozone would persist for five years, with substantial reductions in ozone continuing for another five years after that.

Even if the cause of the war were local, its impacts would be felt across the globe.

“Pretty much everywhere [would be] affected,” Mills concluded.

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Later.

The Globe & Mail’s Michael Valpy takes a cold, hard look at M. Dion and his performance so far as leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition.

Like Joe Clark, M. Dion is too nice a guy to be an effective/affective prime minister. Soon he — like Hillary Clinton or Barak Obama — must take the loneliest walk of all — the walk to resignation. M. Dion, just do it. Let us all move on from this disaster.

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The playground bullies are waiting for him.

It is the first day of the resumption of Parliament, this Monday just past at 2:15 p.m. Stéphane Dion stands up in the House of Commons to ask the traditional first question afforded the Leader of the Opposition.

He begins in his awkward, heavily accented English: “Mr. Speaker, Canada is a country – .” And he gets no further, his words drowned out by braying male laughter from the Conservative MPs across the aisle, by their mock thunderous applause and chants of “More! More!”

It happens again the next day. Mr. Dion rises to his feet at the commencement of Question Period. “Let me read – “ he begins, and the rest of his sentence is obliterated by the same shouts of “More! More!” until the Speaker comes to his rescue.

He doesn’t once look at his tormentors. His expression is wooden, devoid of emotion. His head bobs slightly, as if he’s in a conversation with himself. Stéphane Dion does not engage with this cheap dramaturgy of parliamentary democracy.

But the question increasingly amplified over the past 16 months since his election as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and prime-minister-in-waiting is who does Mr. Dion engage with?

Although increasingly unlikely, there remains the possibility of an election mere weeks from now, and the jury is still out on who Mr. Dion is. Is he a capable leader challenged by the difficulties inherent in being a new opposition leader? Are his problems, for the most part, fixable and will they largely evaporate once an election is called? Or is he an out-and-out disaster for the Liberal Party?

What stacks the decks against him is his legacy of having been the compromise candidate at the December, 2006, Liberal leadership convention, the first choice of fewer than 18 per cent of the delegates.

“I have seen a number of people like him rise because they’re not someone,” says a behavioural scientist who studies politicians, and who spoke on the condition that his name not be used. “It’s because they offend the least number of people and they’re almost always bland.”

In other words, the Liberals might have been more careful about what they wished for.

Whatever support he may have had in Montreal, Dionistas in the influential suites of the party now are as scarce as Beothuks. And, says Toronto pollster Allan Gregg, “he came in with a pretty small tent to begin with.”

The scarcity of Dion loyalists has led to what one senior Liberal calls “an intractable paralysis between leadership and followership.”

It’s almost impossible, the senior Liberal says, to find people working for him who are not on the leader’s office payroll. “He’s built up no loyalties. He’s raised no money for the party.”

Mr. Dion has forged few, if any, new bonds with influential party members, one of whom described meeting the leader for the 17th or 18th time and still being asked what his name is. Moreover, Mr. Dion has not asked for help from the backroom technicians and none – according to the protocol that no one pushes himself in on the leader uninvited – has been offered.

The result is that he’s been left twisting and isolated.

What a change from the image he started out with. Mr. Dion emerged from the leadership convention in Montreal as a fresh-out-of-the box anti-politician of integrity and high-minded values who had brilliantly seized the number one issue in Canada – the environment – and made it his own. A bit nerdy, yes, but Canadians found that appealing. At first.

But looking back over the past 16 months, a senior Liberal today characterizes Mr. Dion’s leadership as a “frightening litany of errors.

LOSS LEADER?

The immigration issue will be the litmus test. His image as a leader of high-minded integrity will be badly bruised if he does not – as he has hinted – force an election over immigration legislation: The minority Conservative government is proposing to give the minister powers to decide which immigrants to fast-track into the country.

Then there is Afghanistan. Environics pollster Michael Adams says that Mr. Dion allowed himself be convinced that he could not be the peace candidate in anglophone Canada, thereby denying himself the mantle of Lester Pearson.

He was then outmanoeuvred by Prime Minister Stephen Harper, who appointed former Liberal minister John Manley to inquire into Canada’s continuing role in Afghanistan, and he was subsequently neutralized by the joint Conservative-Liberal resolution to extend the Afghanistan mission to 2011.

Finally, his appointment of Senator Céline Hervieux-Payette as his lieutenant in Quebec – where, not uncoincidentally, open rebellion against his leadership has broken out – has been described by party insiders as a maladroit act of political judgment matched only by Ontario Conservative Leader John Tory’s fatal decision to enter the last provincial election promising to extend public funding to faith schools.

Ms. Hervieux-Payette, in addition to being labelled by her party critics as intolerably abrasive, has been fingered by at least one senior party source as the loose cannon who sought a court injunction to prohibit Montreal’s La Presse from publishing a list of party candidates. Moreover, many anglophone Liberal delegates to the leadership convention now realize that they may have underestimated Mr. Dion’s personal unpopularity in Quebec.

Former Liberal prime ministers Pierre Trudeau and Jean Chrétien were disliked by the Quebec intelligentsia, but there was always a degree of respect for Mr. Trudeau and, among ordinary Quebeckers, a significant amount of affection for Mr. Chrétien. Mr. Dion appears to be liked by neither Quebec elites nor ordinary people.

WHO’S THE MAN

But it’s Mr. Dion’s comportment that is considered the black hole of his problems.

Environics’ Michael Adams puts it bluntly: “This man has to be more masculine. He has to think about how to be more masculine.” And the behavioural scientist who characterized Mr. Dion as a “risen not-someone” agrees: “Primitive leadership – you’ve got to have it.”

In politics, strong but wrong beats weak but right. And it is Stephen Harper, not Stéphane Dion, who is seen as having carved out the territory of the archetypal male. Mr. Dion, up close, looks untouched by life – not boyish but untouched. A too-smooth face.

Bryant Boulianne, a graduate student in immunology from Halifax, says of the Liberal leader: “I liked his emphasis on the environment, I liked that he was from Quebec, and I liked his stance on federalism. However, he has seemed to be weak and ineffectual. He is meek and fails to stand up to the Conservatives, and he lacks the charisma and passion that a politician needs to get people excited. I think he can be summed up in one word: lukewarm.”

And Natalie Papoutsis, a doctoral student in drama at University of Toronto, says, “Maybe it’s just the theatre kid in me, but I like a leader with character, charisma and evident guts. While this could probably also describe most of the dictators in history, I think we know that when we look back at the history of our nation, it’s the leaders with these qualities who we remember. We need someone who we can trust, admire and like, but also someone who can get us fired up.”

COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN

Mr. Dion’s language difficulties cannot be overstated. He may be the worst speaker of English of any major party leader in Canada’s history, which should help anglophone Canadians understand why politicians who are poor French-speakers go over badly with francophones.

Mr. Chrétien may speak equally fractured English. But whether it is because he uses shorter, less complex sentences, or because he throws so much passion into what he’s saying, many anglophones gloss over his actual words and syntax, and get the message. With Mr. Dion, the lack of clarity throws up a wall between him and anglophone Canadians. Bruce Anderson, president of Harris/Decima research, says that in contemporary politics, “you need great communications skills – so much depends upon how crisply and memorably you can get across your point of view – and he doesn’t meet that test.”

A perfect example of how a successful communicator can attract support is U.S. Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama. His eloquent speeches, Mr. Anderson notes, are stirring emotions on both sides of the Canadian-American border. People are looking for visions of optimism, he said, and Mr. Dion has difficulty conveying eloquently what his vision for Canada might be.

THE FIXERS WEIGH IN

His friend Peter Russell, professor emeritus at University of Toronto and one of Canada’s outstanding political scientists – the two fish together – says he is puzzled by the media images of the Liberal leader, citing Mr. Dion’s impressive effectiveness at meetings.

Prof. Russell says part of Mr. Dion’s problem is simply that of being opposition leader in a minority Parliament, dealing with highly complex problems of how long to let a government live.

Mr. Anderson says most of the “tendencies” in Mr. Dion are fixable.

For example, Mr. Gregg suggests that he could address his image of nerdyness and blandness head on – as former Ontario premier William Davis once did, with his famous line: “Bland works.”

If he can’t be the tough-guy leader, Mr. Gregg says, he can talk about a leadership of values. Or, Mr. Adams says, he can have himself photographed doing things physical. The Liberal leader fishes. His Facebook site says he also cross-country skis.

Mr. Adams says he has to work on telling jokes, on showing more interest in people and he must run, not walk, to language school.

Mr. Anderson suggests the anti-politician, full-of-integrity image is still within Mr. Dion’s grasp. For one thing, he remains the Liberal leadership candidate who most clearly emphasized the urgency of environmental issues. And the Liberal Party brand, he adds, remains surprisingly strong – for all Mr. Dion’s perceived problems, the Conservatives aren’t profiting from them. The two parties are in a virtual deadlock, he says, and Conservative support looks to be softer than Liberal support.

Mr. Dion can still increase his appeal to Quebec, Mr. Anderson says, because he is more in line with Quebec views than Mr. Harper on matters such as Afghanistan, the environment, social issues such as same-sex marriage and curbing the excesses of a laissez-faire economy.

Influential Saskatchewan Liberal Tony Merchant is convinced that Mr. Dion will “wear well with the voters” once he is on television every night during an election campaign. Echoing Peter Russell, Mr. Merchant says Mr. Dion will be “liked by crowds.”

He says: “I regret the decision that has been made to hold off on an election. That’s not really playing to Dion’s strength – his passion over issues. The waiting hasn’t been helpful to him.” As an opposition leader, Mr. Dion has to wait until an election is called before he can vend his issues to the public. Otherwise he won’t get the media’s attention.

But Queen’s University political historian and vice-principal David Mitchell isn’t sure that Mr. Dion can be reinvented.

At one point, Prof. Mitchell says, he thought the duo of Mr. Harper and Mr. Dion in the House was potentially exciting. They represented generational change, they were both very bright.

Now, he says, “I’m not as excited. Stéphane Dion is not fulfilling any kind of role. He doesn’t appear to be an obvious leader, he doesn’t inspire confidence” – he’s not Chrétien, a Trudeau, a King or a Laurier.

Mr. Dion has been compared to John Turner, who was once described as having so many party knives stuck in his back that he could never get through airport security. Moreover, Mr. Turner, like Mr. Dion, felt alienated from a lot of the party’s establishment. Although, unlike Mr. Dion, Mr. Turner had an intensely loyal cadre of supporters.

THE LEGACY OF JOE

Where the similarities are “overwhelming” – to quote pollster Allan Gregg – is between Mr. Dion and former Conservative leader and short-lived prime minister Joe Clark.

Mr. Clark was a man who was consistently underrated, says Geoffrey Stevens, former managing editor of The Globe and Mail and Maclean’s magazine who now teaches political science at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo and the University of Guelph.

Mr. Stevens recalls that immediately after mr. Clark’s election as party leader in 1976, he was portrayed in the media as coming from the wrong part of the country (Alberta), as someone who had never held a real job, a fumbling incompetent several litres short of testosterone – an image he couldn’t shake.

He submitted his leadership to party review in 1983 and even though two-thirds of Conservative delegates endorsed him, he decided the support was insufficient and called for a leadership convention – where he was replaced by Brian Mulroney.

It’s safe to say Mr. Clark’s departure 25 years ago is on some Liberals’ minds today.

The senior party member who has described Mr. Dion’s leadership as a “frightening litany of errors” says there will be no coup against him. “Because a coup is not a solution.” The optics would be terrible.

But a noble call for a leadership review followed by a dignified leave-taking?

Then again, it may not need ever come to pass. An election campaign could reveal Mr. Dion to be the shiny 21st-century leader many Canadians thought the Liberals chose 16 months ago.

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Later.

It appears that the harassment with loud noise that we were subjected to for nearly 10 years is starting up again. Coincidentally I learned this morning that I must undergo surgery to fix an internal problem ASAP. Like law enforcement officers I don’t believe in coincidence. So somewhere along the line this morning from the Delhi Medical Center to the West Street Medical Center my existence must have riled someone.

John A. Harnick
Norfolk, ON

Jonathan Fast writing at The Huffington Post examines the constant, vicious bullying of teenager Billy Wolfe. The original article appeared in The New York Times a few weeks ago.

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On March 24, the New York Times published a profile of a boy named Billy Wolfe who had been brutally bullied since middle school. What made this case unusual was not the frequency or brutality of the beatings, but the fact that Billy’s parents, having exhausted every other option, had decided to sue the parents of one of the bullies.

The following day Matt Lauer interviewed Billy on the Today Show. After watching a series of video clips: Billy being beaten up at the bus stop, Billy being beaten in the school bus, Billy being humiliated on a Facebook page called, “Everyone that Hates Billy,” Lauer posed the following question:

“Anybody who just watched that piece has to be sitting at home asking the same questions: Why this young man? What is it about Billy Wolfe that gets the kids to pick on him, these bullies to target him?”

“I’m not completely sure,” Billy replied, and stammered something about moving to a new neighborhood and being the new kid in the class.

“Are you doing anything?” Lauer pressed him. “Are you a wise guy… the kind of guy who makes comments to kids as they pass by? Are you provoking this in any way?”

One is reminded of the prosecutor who asks the young lady what she did to get herself raped. Was it the short skirt, the provocative walk, the heavy makeup?

While these activities — being a wise guy, etc. — may make kids angry, they do not justify repeated beatings or even a single beating. Let us remember that the beatings we see on TV every night are simulations. In real life a single punch to the head may result in long-term problems such as double vision; a sharp blow to the sternum has been known to cause death.

While I’ve never met Billy Wolfe, I can make a few educated guesses about why he is bullied. I’ve spent the last six years studying school rampage shooters, many of whom were bullied relentlessly from a very early age, and all of whom eventually became bullies themselves — bullies of the very worst sort; bullies who tormented and killed their victims.

“Childhood was the germ of all mistrust,” Graham Greene wrote. “You were cruelly joked upon and then you cruelly joked. You lost the remembrance of pain through inflicting it.”

In the “basement tapes” — the video tapes recorded by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold during their preparations for the assault on Columbine High School — Eric talks about moving around the country with his family, from one army base to the next, starting over from zero, socially, at every location. He recalls how classmates made fun of him, his face, his hair, and his choice of shirts; and how they called him “The scrawny white kid” Dylan Klebold even recalls being snubbed by the “stuck-up” kids at the Foothills Daycare Center, which he attended when he was three years old!

Eight months after the Columbine shooting, Regina Huerter, Director of Juvenile Diversion for the Denver District Attorney’s Office, prepared a report on bullying at Columbine for the Governor Owen’s Columbine Review Commission. Interviews with 28 parents and 15 current and former students, confirmed that bullying at the high school was sadistic in nature, frequently committed, and often went unpunished because teachers feared losing their jobs.

The bullying at Columbine High School was terrible, but perhaps no worse than the bullying at any other school.

The principal of Columbine, as well as most of the deans and assistant principals had been coaches or had coaching backgrounds and were biased toward the athletes, who received the preferential treatment we usually associate with movie stars. Some of them were bullies and their acts of brutality often went unpunished. It is not uncommon for gym teachers and athletic coaches to be promoted into top administrative positions because of their ability to handle large groups of unruly kids.

The Fayetteville School District, where Billy attended school, stated that they consistently punished the boys who had beaten him, but they could say no more because of federal privacy laws.

Dan Olweus, a Norwegian psychologist who is considered the authority on children who bully, and the creator of the anti-bullying program on which most programs around the world are modeled, makes the point that bullying cannot be prevented unless the school (and preferably the community, and city, and state) have a zero tolerance policy toward all acts of bullying and that punishments are dispersed immediately and equally upon all. Any failure to report an act of bullying, any delay in reporting it, any inequity in its punishment can be interpreted as compliance in the bullying. The nature of bullying is such that even a wink, or a half smile, can give the okay. Once a community discovers that it can harass an individual, or a group of individuals, without consequences, the behavior is hard to stop, particularly in stressful times, when identifying a scapegoat can act as a valve to lower pressure — at a terrible expense. We see it in schools, in tribal conflicts, in ethnic hostilities that have persisted for hundreds of years; in colonialist-style takeovers of smaller countries with valuable resources.

If we tolerate bullying in any way, at school, in our homes, or workplaces, or in the greater theater of international politics, we are demonstrating our complicity.

So Matt Lauer asks, what is it about Billy Wolfe that gets the kids to pick on him?

The answer is: Because they can.

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Later.

In the region where I live the local medical fraternity is working with Norfolk General Hospital to create a comprehensive database of all local patients and their medical data that will be available to any doctor on an on-demand basis.

Personally I struggle with the matter of personal privacy. No database is ever 100% secure from snooping — it’s technologically impossible because the human element cannot be factored out entirely— and I’ve already had a problem with this issue since I moved back here to live [in a doctors' office at the West Street Medical Center to be precise]; and when all available personal medical information is stored in a central facility snooping will only become more of a problem and easier to accomplish.

Oaths of confidentiality are no solution. They mean nothing to the locals who see themselves as being possessed of a god-given right to snoop on those whom they dislike or don’t approve of — this region’s gay and lesbian citizens for example.

Then of course there’s the matter of homophobic doctors. I was sent on to one a few months ago by my personal physician. This database will provide these creeps with even more power to attack and intimidate us and to “bend” the official record as it were.

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Doctors may soon be tracking patients with high blood pressure or asthma over the Internet using online tools launched yesterday by the Canadian Medical Association.

The web portal, called mydoctor.ca, is geared to help doctors and patients work more closely together, especially to manage chronic diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. The secure portal also allows patients to input health information and lets them track their blood pressure, asthma and weight loss.

Billed as the first physician-driven Canadian electronic patient health record platform, experts say the portal will likely encourage patients to be more involved in their health care, but caution that Canada is still a long way from having a complete electronic health record in the country.

“This is a small intervention. This is not going to radically change medical care or patients’ health,” said Walter Wodchis, professor of health-care finance in the department of health policy, management and evaluation at the University of Toronto.

Created by Practice Solutions, a CMA company, the portal will be marketed to member physicians and will cost $240 a year for them to buy the entire suite of tools for their practice. Right now, there are about 200 Canadian doctors using the portal.

It’s not yet clear if – and how – physicians will bill patients since most online services are not yet covered by provincial health plans, said Larry Mohr, president and CEO of Practice Solutions Ltd., at the news conference yesterday.

CMA president Dr. Brian Day said the web portal might help reduce health-care costs in the long term since it will allow doctors to better manage patients with chronic diseases.

“Over 70 per cent of health costs stem from chronic care,” he said, adding he predicts compensation for online consultation will come as the technology advances.

“This could be an investment for them,” Day said.

As the portal develops, other tracking tools will likely come online, including tools specifically for diabetes, smoking cessation and mental health, said Mohr, who points out the portal was designed to be as secure as online banking.

Scheduling patients online, prescription renewals and linking a patient’s personal health record to hospitals and regional health systems might also be options, he said.

U of T’s Wodchis said patients who use the portal must be vigilant about security and careful in how they input health data to ensure the tool is accurate and reliable. He also wondered how doctors will bill to use the portal.

Dr. Timothy Foggin, a Vancouver-based family physician with some 2,000 patients, started using the portal three months ago and said it has since become an invaluable tool for patient care and has helped his patients participate more actively in their health care.

And, he added, the portal helps save time in his practice because it allows him to efficiently monitor some patients without having to have office visits.

For example, an elderly homebound couple does not have to come into the office as often because he can monitor them online with the help of their children, Foggin said.

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Later.

I for one will not permit a pack of bloody-minded religious fanatics to dictate to me what I can and cannot watch on the Internet — or anywhere else for that matter.

Fitna the Movie

What part of the word NO do these creeps not understand?

. . . he’s stomping on his “friend’s” fingers as Pastor Wright tries to crawl out from under.

David Sirota over at The Huffington Post examines the virtually total dis-connect that the media experiences when talking — or not talking — about racism in America and about those who really perpetrate it and actually pander to it.

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Is Jeremiah Wright right about racism? There, I asked the question - a question that should be at the center of the “controversy” surrounding Barack Obama’s former pastor, but which has been completely ignored. Somewhere deep down, I am guessing Wright feels some shred of vindication, because the entire “controversy” surrounding him now answers that question resoundingly. As I discuss in my newspaper column out today, Wright has become the latest target of the media lynch mob - and in becoming that target, he has proven his very assertions about the persistence of racism in our culture.

There are some things Wright has said that I strongly disagree with, and I certainly may disagree with more of his statements that come to light in the future. However, as the column shows, the specific statements at the center of the Wright “controversy” today are rooted in undeniable fact. Yes, there is a black community in America - and acknowledging that does not make one a “black separatist.” Yes, terrorist attacks are often the product of what our own government calls “blowback” - even if that “blowback” is undeserved, criminal and immoral. And yes, bigotry is still a powerful force in American culture - and our society would do well to understand that bigotry makes African-Americans unhappy. As archconservative Mike Huckabee (R) said, “I grew up in a very segregated South and I think that you have to cut some slack…we’ve gotta cut some slack to people who grew up being called names.”

But the intolerance the media lynch mob has shown toward Wright - and the tolerance the same media has shown toward the real extremists around John McCain and Hillary Clinton - is a telling double standard proving Wright’s fundamental thesis correct. While Wright has dominated the news, anti-Catholic pastor John Hagee and anti-Semitic Reverend Billy Graham have received scant attention for their close relationships with McCain and Clinton, respectively. The Serious Media have followed modern day Bull Connors like Sean Hannity, Pat Buchanan and Charles Krauthammer into the ugliest gutter - the gutter of racial politics. And these three racist lynch mob leaders will undoubtedly retain their perches on cable networks and on the op-ed pages of Serious Newspapers. They will continue championing what one expert calls “colorblind racism” - the kind of racism that hides itself in platitudes against racism and extremism itself.

Clinton, of course, has fueled the fire. Just this week, she granted an interview to the fringe right-wing Pittsburgh Tribune Review - the tiny newspaper owned by the same Richard Mellon Scaife who financed Republicans’ anti-Clinton infrastructure in the 1990s. Clinton used the interview to specifically stoke the Wright “controversy” ahead of Pennsylvania’s primary. Her much-vaunted political “firewall” that she says will stop Obama has very clearly become a “race wall” (more on this in a new In These Times article set for release on Monday).

This was a very difficult column to write. It took a long time to craft, because racial and foreign policy taboos (especially those that question American exceptionalism) are such sensitive topics - and I’ve gotten some hate email already this morning. But I’m glad I wrote this. With so much of the well-heeled, white Establishment simultaneously preening around like they oppose racism while pushing this story in a fundamentally racist way, I felt it was important to make the basic point that started out this post. And that is, again: This whole “controversy” has confirmed Wright’s fundamental assertion that our culture is still deeply afflicted by bigotry. If the media is a mirror reflecting what we as a society consider acceptable and unacceptable, then that mirror is right now telling us just how powerful racism still is in American life.

You can listen to my discussion about the column on Colorado radio this morning here. Or, read the whole column at Creators, Credo Action, The Denver Post, The Vail Daily, The Ft. Collins Coloradoan, In These Times, TruthDig or Alternet. The column relies on grassroots support, so if you’d like to see my column regularly in your local paper, use this directory to find the contact info for your local editorial page editors. Get get in touch with them and point them to my Creators Syndicate site. Thanks, as always, for your ongoing readership and help contacting local editors. This column couldn’t be what it is without your help.

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Later.

Over at The Progressive Economics Forum Marc Lee ponders the current economiic ‘downturn’ that threatens to engulf and consume “the good life” so many Canadians have been enjoying. To paraphrase John Tory, “Recession is NOW.”

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Andrew Jackson closes his lengthy and excellent post on the fallout of the US financial crisis with this paragraph (which I repeat here only because Andrew’s post was so comprehensive):

______We are at a moment when progressives will have to move from critique to prescription. As Naomi Klein argued in the Shock Doctrine, neo liberalism took advantage of past crises by having a set of coherent prescriptions ready to hand to advance to policy-makers. We are just beginning to define a new global agenda to replace the neo liberal prescription which has led into the current crisis.

And in a recent National Post article, Canadian historian Michael Bliss goes even further and thinks the policy mix will be strongly progressive:

______As in the 1930s the consequence of this awesome failure of free enterprise is going to be a massive rejection of faith in the capacity and competence of the private sector. It turns out that only the public sector, i.e. taxpayers and their representatives, has the resources to pay the piper and keep the system going. So now government is going to call the tune. Ordinary people in the United States are blazingly resentful at the apparent privileging of the rich and powerful, both individuals and corporations, and that resentment will increasingly steer public policy. In the next few years there will be massive new regulation of business, massive new taxation of wealth and sustained vilification of the values that have driven Wall Street and Bay Street. If you want a bizarre straw in the wind, check out the vicious Capital One credit card company TV advertisements that portray bankers as greedy vermin, pests to be exterminated.

______Here in sleepy Canada, we seem to be particularly prone to beliefs that we are somehow insulated from all this trouble. No housing bubble here, we tell ourselves, no seriously imperilled banks, no trade problems with the U.S. because of our energy resources, no problems with our manufacturers that can’t be solved by more subsidies and bailouts. But what if the real problem is that we are deluded, misled by our culture of fawning business journalism, fawning business schools (what might be called the Florida effect) and profoundly faulty securities regulation? We think we will only suffer a ripple-effect from the crashes on Wall Street and other financial centres. One of the lessons of the 1930s was that for resource-based economies ripples have a way of morphing into tidal waves.

______We Canadians can thank our lucky stars, however, that in the years when our financial “leadership” was squandering billions of investors’ money in stupid risk-taking, our much-vilified politicians have actually put our public finances in order. The government of Canada is in far better shape to help us get through hard times than the U.S. administration, which has become imperilled by years of mindless, reckless deficits and unsustainable imperial overstretch. Even here in the Great White North, though, we should realize that an age has ended, and that we are headed toward a fundamental rethinking of our public-private balance.

______The quiet times of easy affluence are over. The next few years will be characterized by turbulence, deficits, new taxes, populist demands for more regulation and a surge of neo-egalitarianism and resentment of conspicuous wealth. Generally we will see an immense backlash against the greed is good school of economics and conservatism.

______Many business spokesmen will find these developments extremely discomfiting, and will try to warn against the dangers of heavy-handedness, stifling controls and abuses of public and regulatory power. Sadly, as happened in the 1930s, no one will believe them. If they had credibility we would not have a liquidity crisis. The fact is that the members of the financial community do not trust one another’s judgment or capacity to understand the world they live in, which goes to the heart of the matter.

So, here’s the question: what’s your ten-point plan? Keep it short and sweet, and we’ll compare notes and see what common themes emerge. I’m still mulling over mine. Over to you.

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Later.

Wal-Mart’s reputation as an employer leaves a lot to be desired — both in Canada and anywhere else in the world that they decide to set up shop. There are many things I appreciate about Wal-Mart but there are many more things that I despise.

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Debbie Shank breaks down in tears every time she’s told that her 18-year-old son, Jeremy, was killed in Iraq.

The 52-year-old mother of three attended her son’s funeral, but she continues to ask how he’s doing. When her family reminds her that he’s dead, she weeps as if hearing the news for the first time.

Shank suffered severe brain damage after a traffic accident nearly eight years ago that robbed her of much of her short-term memory and left her in a wheelchair and living in a nursing home.

It was the beginning of a series of battles — both personal and legal — that loomed for Shank and her family. One of their biggest was with Wal-Mart’s health plan.

Eight years ago, Shank was stocking shelves for the retail giant and signed up for Wal-Mart’s health and benefits plan.

Two years after the accident, Shank and her husband, Jim, were awarded about $1 million in a lawsuit against the trucking company involved in the crash. After legal fees were paid, $417,000 was placed in a trust to pay for Debbie Shank’s long-term care.

Wal-Mart had paid out about $470,000 for Shank’s medical expenses and later sued for the same amount. However, the court ruled it can only recoup what is left in the family’s trust.

The Shanks didn’t notice in the fine print of Wal-Mart’s health plan policy that the company has the right to recoup medical expenses if an employee collects damages in a lawsuit.

The family’s attorney, Maurice Graham, said he informed Wal-Mart about the settlement and believed the Shanks would be allowed to keep the money.

“We assumed after three years, they [Wal-Mart] had made a decision to let Debbie Shank use this money for what it was intended to,” Graham said.

The Shanks lost their suit to Wal-Mart. Last summer, the couple appealed the ruling — but also lost it. One week later, their son was killed in Iraq.

“They are quite within their rights. But I just wonder if they need it that bad,” Jim Shank said.

In 2007, the retail giant reported net sales in the third quarter of $90 billion.

Legal or not, CNN asked Wal-Mart why the company pursued the money.

Wal-Mart spokesman John Simley, who called Debbie Shank’s case “unbelievably sad,” replied in a statement: “Wal-Mart’s plan is bound by very specific rules. … We wish it could be more flexible in Mrs. Shank’s case since her circumstances are clearly extraordinary, but this is done out of fairness to all associates who contribute to, and benefit from, the plan.”

Jim Shank said he believes Wal-Mart should make an exception.

“My idea of a win-win is — you keep the paperwork that says you won and let us keep the money so I can take care of my wife,” he said.

The family’s situation is so dire that last year Jim Shank divorced Debbie, so she could receive more money from Medicaid.

Jim Shank, 54, is recovering from prostate cancer, works two jobs and struggles to pay the bills. He’s afraid he won’t be able to send their youngest son to college and pay for his and Debbie’s care.

“Who needs the money more? A disabled lady in a wheelchair with no future, whatsoever, or does Wal-Mart need $90 billion, plus $200,000?” he asked.

The family’s attorney agrees.

“The recovery that Debbie Shank made was recovery for future lost earnings, for her pain and suffering,” Graham said.

“She’ll never be able to work again. Never have a relationship with her husband or children again. The damage she recovered was for much more than just medical expenses.”

Graham said he believes Wal-Mart should be entitled to only about $100,000. Right now, about $277,000 remains in the trust — far short of the $470,000 Wal-Mart wants back.

Refusing to give up the fight, the Shanks appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. But just last week, the high court said it would not hear the case.

Graham said the Shanks have exhausted all their resources and there’s nothing more they can do but go on with their lives.

Jim Shank said he’s disappointed with the Supreme Court’s decision not to hear the case — not for the sake of his family — but for those who might face similar circumstances.

For now, he said the family will figure out a way to get by and “do the best we can for Debbie.”

“Luckily, she’s oblivious to everything,” he said. “We don’t tell her
what’s going on because it will just upset her.”

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Later.

To paraphrase Tom Barnes up in Ottawa, “Forget the truth, just give me the facts.” And the facts are that the Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a man with a keen sense of historical context, as well as a man whose life and work are built upon an impenetrable ethical base. Shockingly Barak Obama has pushed his old ‘friend’ under the bus of public opinion.

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Fox News. You corrupt mouthpiece for a corrupt administration. I usually just ignore you and your leader Rupert Bush, but now you’ve gone too far. Several days ago you aired a clip of Jeremiah Wright - Barack Obama’s former Spiritual Advisor. The clips you found were incendiary, hateful, and taken out of context…anti-American. I was shocked to hear such words coming from the mouth of a man whose sermons I had listened to for at least three years as when I was a resident of Chicago and a member of the Trinity congregation.

I LOVED going to Trinity for several reasons. I found the congregation to be inviting, accepting of ALL people, ALL colors, ALL backgrounds. I found Jeremiah Wrights teachings to be progressive in nature, surprisingly political, informative, and sometimes funny. When Obama said he’d never heard Wright say things like he said in that video, I believed him. In three years, I never heard anything like that either. I heard him tell a story about how he told a woman that if she didn’t like homosexuals in the church - she should leave, because he wasn’t making anyone else leave. I heard him systematically break down poverty in the black community, I heard him build up a congregation hungry for knowledge, and inspiration, but I never heard him say the things Fox News found. That should have been the moment it occurred to me that something was wrong. Fox News.

This video is the full version of one the now infamous sermons of Jeremiah Wright. In it he discusses government, slavery and politics. But that’s not all. He talks about how “blacks had an intelligent friend in the oval office” under the Clinton administration and continues to say that we went from an intelligent friend from a dumb Dixie-crat; a rich Republican who has never held a job in his life. That’s pretty funny. He then talks countries and their failed attempts at imperialism, which brings us to the section we all know and love. But I don’t want to give it all away, you should watch it yourself.

I can see why Fox News would want to take Obama, the first black man with a shot at the White House, a man that has a groundswell of support from not just black voters, but white voters - I can see why they would want to take him down when he bashes the dumb Dixie-crat in office and reminds us all that the election was stolen. Can’t you?

Another “clipped” sermon here

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Later.

And what about the homophobia of the hockey players themselves? And more to my point the homophobia of our youth who play hockey? It too poisons the atmosphere both in the locker room and on the ice.

A few years ago we had an ‘incident’ with our local hockey team — The Simcoe Storm. The ‘incident’ was serious because it resulted in a lengthy suspension from their league. Well as is usual down in this neck of the woods dear old Simcoe circled the wagons and managed to get the suspension lifted. So in the final analysis the young men on the team learned nothing except that it’s ok in Simcoe to abuse a fellow player. Dangerous, homophobic crap. So what else is new.

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During the final 10 minutes of many Rangers home games, the spotlights focus on Section 407 as Larry Goodman, a longtime season-ticket holder, pumps up the crowd with a goofy dance.

As Goodman’s routine is broadcast on the giant monitors above the ice, a familiar chant picks up momentum. “Ho-mo Lar-ry!” the crowd shouts. “Ho-mo Lar-ry!”

The chant is one example of what several gay hockey fans describe as a toxic atmosphere during Rangers games and that Madison Square Garden, which owns the team, is not doing nearly enough to address their concerns.

Kevin Jennings, a Rangers fan who is gay, said he stopped attending home games for about a month this season because he felt so uncomfortable with the homophobic epithets that are shouted to the players.

Ray Stankes, 50, of Bayside, Queens, said he canceled season tickets he had had for 25 years in part because of the antigay environment.

“This is a place where I grew up, and I never really felt uncomfortable at the Garden,” Stankes said. “I didn’t wear it on my sleeve that I’m gay. If I take a friend who is also gay who, for lack of a better term, is not as masculine, I’m always sitting there a little tense. Like, is somebody going to say something to us? And it’s made it not quite as fun as it used to be.”

Other fans recalled that the crowd booed when the name of the New York City Gay Hockey Association, a recreational league, flashed briefly across the jumbo screen.

“It’s a pervasive problem,” said Jennings, who is the executive director of the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network, a nonprofit group that promotes tolerance of gays and lesbians. “I took my godson a few months ago. I won’t take him again. He’s 6. I don’t want him looking around and seeing other men engaging in this behavior and thinking this is the way you behave.”

Jennings and Jeff Kagan, the director of the gay hockey league, wrote to Rangers General Manager Glen Sather in November and asked him to create a fan-education program that denounces antigay remarks.

Christine C. Quinn, the City Council speaker, who is gay, joined them in January and in her letter urged the Rangers to take “swift action to educate their fans about the importance of tolerance and diversity — qualities that have made this city great.”

Since then, the Rangers have broadcast warnings that they will remove fans who behave offensively and said they have posted additional security throughout the arena.

Barry Watkins, a spokesman for Madison Square Garden, said in a statement that while the majority of Rangers fans behave respectfully at games, “homophobic or racially or culturally insensitive behavior is unacceptable at any event at Madison Square Garden, and we have taken aggressive steps to deal with the offensive behavior of a very small minority of game attendees.”

Several people who violated the Garden’s policy against using offensive language have been ejected from the arena, and more have been given written and verbal warnings, he said, adding that some of those ejections were for antigay remarks.

The Rangers turned down Jennings’s offer to help M.S.G. create a public-service announcement urging fans to be more respectful. Jennings’s group has produced similar announcements for MTV and other outlets.

John Rosasco, the vice president for public relations for the Rangers, wrote Jennings that the team limited its public-service announcements to those that promoted its charity, the Garden of Dreams Foundation. “The P.S.A.’s we produce are centered on those initiatives,” Rosasco wrote.

Several spectators interviewed at a Rangers home game Tuesday spoke proudly of the fans’ high-intensity devotion to their team. Some fans noted with pride that brawls break out in the stands nearly as often as they do on the ice.

Historically, Ranger devotion to off-color ritual only grows stronger when management tries to stop it.

Rangers fans still shout a derisive chant about Denis Potvin at home games, a reference that dates to 1979, when the Islanders’ Potvin hit the Rangers’ Ulf Nilsson and broke Nilsson’s ankle. The chant was always shouted after the organist played the song “Let’s Go Band.” But in the 1980s, in an attempt to crack down on the chant, the Rangers stopped playing the song. More than 20 years later, fans still whistle the song as a lead-in to the chant.

“It’s a hockey game,” said Ricardo Pereira, 25, a season-ticket holder from Huntington on Long Island. “Hockey players are tough. Deal with it.”

Hockey has a loyal fan base within New York’s gay community, including the members of the New York Gay Hockey Association, which oversees 5 teams and claims 150 members. Many gay Rangers fans grew up attending games with their families and say they make a distinction between raucous tradition and comments that single out a specific group.

Stankes said he turned down an invitation by the gay hockey group to attend a Rangers game en masse a few years ago. As he feared, the crowd booed when the name of the group flashed on the monitors. But Kagan said the fans’ reaction surprised and hurt him. “I never expected that at all,” he said.

One of the most visible examples of the fans’ antigay behavior is the chant directed at Goodman, which according to him began in 1998 or 1999, when the Rangers were doing poorly and some fans claimed Goodman’s dancing was jinxing the team.

“The fans were looking to vent their frustration on somebody and unfortunately it was me,” said Goodman, 38, who lives in northern New Jersey and said he was not gay. Goodman is a celebrity at Rangers games and appears frequently on television and in local newspapers, but was reluctant to comment on the chants and told a reporter he prefers to be called Dancin’ Larry.

He said lately that he did not get invited to dance as often as he used to. “They’ve been trying to crack down on it,” Goodman said of the chanting. A Madison Square Garden official noted that some fans chanted only “Go Home, Larry,” and said the organization was evaluating whether to continue including Goodman in the game routine. Although he is hugely popular with fans, the team official acknowledged his dancing invited derogatory remarks.

Goodman said he had learned to live with chants. “That’s how it will always be and that’s what makes it part of the fun in going to a Rangers game in New York City, for God’s sake,” Goodman said.

“It comes to a certain point, it is sort of like, you’ve got to have freedom of speech.”

Because Madison Square Garden is privately owned, several free-speech lawyers said that First Amendment rights do not apply within the arena.

This is not the first time gay and lesbian groups have confronted Madison Square Garden. In 2002, two lesbian fans at a Liberty W.N.B.A. game said a security guard asked them not to display a sign reading “Lesbians for Liberty,” according to news reports. Lesbian fans criticized the Garden for not acknowledging that lesbians represented a large part of the Liberty’s fan base, and staged a “kiss-in” at a home game, drawing national news coverage.

Not all gay hockey fans say they are troubled by fan behavior. Stankes said he had learned to take much of the shouting with a “grain of salt.”

Chris Brand, an Islanders fan who says he is gay and occasionally attends Ranger games, said he thought few people who use derogatory remarks were actually antigay.

“It’s sort of a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Brand said. “People are riled up. I don’t think people have thought about it too much.”

But Quinn, the City Council speaker, said even if some gay hockey fans were not bothered by the comments, the Rangers needed to take a more aggressive role in setting an inclusive tone. She said the public announcements and extra security guards represented progress but did not go far enough.

Quinn said she planned to invite Garden management to meet with her, Kagan and Jennings to push for more remedies.

“I’d like to see more,” Quinn said.

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Later.

. . . passed through two email servers with connections to the catholic church. Why am I not surprised.

John A. Harnick
Norfolk, ON

Several people have recently asked me why I’m putting myself out there and running the risk of retaliation by a community already known for violence acts committed against its gay, lesbian and trans citizens. Indeed one gay person asked me early on if I were not afraid that THEY would burn my house down.

The reality is that my boat has well and truly sunk already. I’m 63, in poor health and have increasingly limited mobility.

I am also very aware of the fact that I am/was not the only gay, lesbian and trans person to suffer these indignities at the hands — and feet — of the local bigots. Many of the other abuse victims are dead or dying and for obvious reasons are unable to stand up for or speak for themselves. Others are genuinely fragile people and still others have little or no backbone.

So here I am telling my own, very personal story and facing on a daily basis the abuse and ridicule of the bigoted bullies in the community I live in.

Will my sacrifice improve over time the lot of younger gay, lesbian and trans persons living in this community? I don’t know and may never know the answer to that question. Some of you reading this WILL KNOW.

John A. Harnick
Norfolk, ON

I love the phrase “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy”. Right on, except that in my own personal experience the conspirators have been local old-school catholics. I won’t list them all because I don’t have room but the one who comes most often to mind is the late Wynn (?) Butler, a neighbour unfortunately. Several times she ordered me back to my own yard when I was out walking and as well she would walk up to mom and I when we were out shopping and begin beating on me right then and there and demanding that my mom throw me out. And I’m about 99% sure that she was the one calling our house at all hours and keeping my mom in a constant state of upset and worry complete with hand wringing.

The catholic leadership is constantly going on about ‘family values’ but quite obviously they don’t consider families with honest, open and sexually active gay, lesbian and trans members real families and worthy of any kind of respect. For decades various members of the catholic church have done just about everything in their power to tear my family to shreds.

There was even pressure when I returned here to live for me to join their ex-gay therapy group.

I have to say that I and my mom are not catholics, we have never been catholics and will only become catholics on that happy day when hell freezes over. My mom and dad is/was an ‘alienated anglican’ and I’m one of those horrible unitarians that ‘real christian’ love to hate.

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ONE of Scotland’s most senior Catholics has launched an attack on the “gay lobby” in Scotland, claiming there is a “huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy” against Christian values.

The Rt Rev Joseph Devine, Bishop of Motherwell and president of the Catholic Education Commission, said gay rights organisations aligned themselves with minority groups, such as Holocaust survivors, to project an “image of a group of people under persecution”.

He warned that the gay lobby – which he labelled “the opposition” – had mounted “a giant conspiracy” to shape public policy.

He singled out the actor Sir Ian McKellen, who was given a New Year honour for services to gay rights, pointing out that Oscar Wilde was locked up only a century ago for homosexual acts. The bishop said he would “not tolerate” the “behaviour” of a child struggling to come to terms with his or her homosexuality. Last night his views were attacked by gay rights groups, which branded them “unChristian” and “deeply out of step” with the views of ordinary Scots.

In the fourth of the Gonzaga Lectures held at St Aloysius’ College in Glasgow on Tuesday, Bishop Devine said: “The homosexual lobby has been extremely effective in aligning itself with minority groups.

“It is ever-present at the service each year for the Holocaust memorial, as if to create for themselves the image of a group of people under persecution. We neglect the gay movement at our peril.

“I want to ask you if you are able to see the giant conspiracy that’s taking place before our eyes, even if we didn’t see it at the time. I take it you’re beginning to see that there is a huge and well-orchestrated conspiracy taking place, which the Catholic community missed.”

He went on: “In this New Year’s honours list, I saw actor Ian McKellen being honoured for his work on behalf of homosexuals, when a century ago Oscar Wilde was locked up and put in jail. “It’s a very small group of people, but very active and organised – and extremely indulgent. The opposition know exactly what they’re doing. We don’t.”

Calum Irving, the director of Stonewall Scotland, said the bishop was “deluded”, pointing out that the Catholic Church had much greater wealth and political influence than the gay rights lobby. He said: “So Bishop Devine has decided it’s time to have a go at lesbian and gay people again.

“I’m flattered that the bishop thinks we could mount a ‘huge and well-orchestrated’ conspiracy, but he is much deluded. After all, which ‘lobby’ really has the greater resources and political access?

“Such a continued attack on gay people is distinctly unChristian and deeply out of step with the views of most Scots today. There is no war on Christianity – just the bishop’s own fevered paranoia.

“I would defend the bishop’s right to practise his faith and yet he would deny me basic dignity and respect. Worse, he appears to hanker after an age when Oscar Wilde was put in jail for being gay. Worse still, he seems to infer that gay people have no right to be remembered as victims of the Holocaust.”

After Bishop Devine’s lecture, entitled Sectarianism and Secularism: Bugbears for the Catholic Church in Scotland, one audience member asked how Catholic parents should “come to terms with a child’s mission to become homosexual”.

The bishop replied: “This must be a nightmare moment for any parent. There are many days when I’m glad to not be a parent. I would try to handle it with a degree of compassion, but I would not tolerate (it].”

Bishop Devine also cited the battles over Clause 28, legalising civil partnerships and same-sex adoption.

He said prominence had been given to the “supreme moral values of liberty and equality” replacing “truth and goodness” as supreme moral values.

Bishop Devine continued: “It was bound to result in state-sponsored morality at war with Christian values. We must resist being corrupted by secularism.”

Asked about how Christians could influence politics, he commented: “It was once thought that the Labour Party was a Christian democratic party. Sadly, it’s not that anymore. Certainly in terms of leadership, the SNP are much more responsive to us.”

He vowed to fight on against the “forces of secularism”. He concluded his lecture stating: “Like Mel Gibson, who said, ‘I’m going to pick a fight’, so am I.”

A Holocaust Memorial Day Trust spokeswoman said: “Holocaust Memorial Day is about remembering all victims: be they Jewish, gypsy, gay or lesbian.

“The day is also about learning the lessons from the past, encouraging society to tackle all forms of prejudice, such as antisemitism, racism and homophobia.”

A spokeswoman for Sir Ian McKellen said the actor was out of the country and unavailable for comment.

OUTSPOKEN CHURCHMAN

THE Rt Rev Joseph Devine is no stranger to controversy.

Last year, he dealt a blow to Labour’s hopes in the Holyrood elections by saying he would not be voting for the party on religious grounds, as it had a “morality devoid of any Christian principles”.

He had previously branded the Labour administration as “moral vandals” and “politically correct zealots”.

The year before, he became embroiled in a row with other senior figures in the Catholic Church after condemning the actions of a senior Church aide who, he claimed, had failed to express opposition to plans to let gay couples adopt.

In an unprecedented move, the Church’s two most senior clerics, Cardinal Keith O’Brien and Archbishop Mario Conti, moved publicly to rebuff Bishop Devine by releasing a public statement backing the aide.

Previously, he became personally involved in a row with Jack McConnell, the former first minister, over plans for mixed-faith, joint-campus schools in Lanarkshire.

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Later.

Back in the mid-80s I returned to Simcoe to live with my “family” for a period of several years because of poor health — having barely survived a cancer exploratory in Toronto.

I’d only been home a short time when I stopped while out for a walk one evening to chat with Wilf Crittenden — Paul’s dad. This was a man I had known since childhood, looked up to and trusted completely. I won’t make that mistake again.

What he told me that day shocked me to the core of my being and left me a more sober person as it were. It seemed that “THEY” had decided that I could remain in Simcoe just so long as my father was alive to help take care of him. Once he was dead I would have to leave. I want to know who “THEY” were/are. “THEY” have made my life a living hell ever since my father died. “THEY” had waged an on-going campaign of terror against my family over a considerable number of years to the point where they were social outcasts in Simcoe.

Now “THEY” seem determined to dismantle the GayNorfolk-net website. Over my dead body. This project has absorbed nearly 12 years of my life. It’s one of the oldest continually updated websites on the whole World Wide Web and I take considerable pride in this. Indeed I was also one of the very first bloggers on the Web.

An interesting aside is that I required help from the police concerning some items stolen from my father’s car while it was in my care and was told by the interviewing police officer that he didn’t think that what was being done to me was ok. At that point in time I had no idea what he was talking about. Now I do of course.

My life has been turned upside down, my family life virtually destroyed, my health and general well-being compromised and “THEY” are still out there doing as they please to me. The bullshit just never stops in Simcoe and I have to face it every time I leave this house.

And let me tell you that a person cannot run fast enough, cannot run far enough to get away from it. The bullshit even followed me as far as Ottawa. More on that later.

John Harnick
Norfolk, ON