October 11, 2008 archive

Today is national coming out day.

I’m hetero.  But I’m highly supportive of GLBT rights.  I’ve never been able to figure out why I should care what two consenting adults do with each other, or how they get their jollies.  I’ve never been able to figure out why some people want to limit other people’s joy, when that joy does no one any harm.  In general, I’d say I am about as pro-GLBT rights as anyone.

There’s one topic, though, that I do disagree with some of my GLBT friends on, and that’s outing.

Obviously, I support the idea of people being free to out themselves.  I would wish for a day when being ‘out’ is no big deal.  But that day, obviously, is not here.

I oppose outing of other people.  ANY other people.  Now, most of us will have no problem with this idea for most people … most of us would not out a friend.  Where it gets controversial, among pro-GLBT people, is when we talk of outing of anti-GLBT people, especially when those people have some power (politicians and clergy, in particular).

Some will argue that, since those people have the power to hurt GLBT folk, and use that power in that way, then outing them is only exposing their hypocrisy, and outing them is therefore justified.

But just as I support the right of a friend to be private about his/her sexual life, so I must support the right of my enemy to be so private.  Noam Chomsky said “If we don’t believe in the right of free speech for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all”.

I feel that one could substitute ‘privacy’ for ‘free speech’ in the above.  In America, we have a system for depriving people of their rights.  It’s called the criminal justice system.  It is, I know, a system that is far from perfect, but it is the system we have, and it is one area where the USA is better than a lot of other places (not the best place, for sure, but not nearly the worst).  People are deprived of their rights when they are convicted of committing a crime.  Being a jerk is not a crime.  Being a hate-mongering jackass is not a crime.  Crimes are defined in the penal codes of the country and the various states.  Until someone is convicted, he or she should have the right to privacy, no matter how hypocritical they are; just as they should have the right to speak, no matter how obnoxious they are.

Yeah yeah, I know, and I will even laugh along with you. Humans not warring against each other? Hahahaha! As long as there are tree branches and rocks to hit each other over the head with….or we evolve….there will never be an end to war.

Howz dis, The End Of Imperialism? Naw, Empire will happen again, sometime, somewhere down the road. Ok, one more shot… The End Of Foreign Adventurism, temporarily. Maybe. Until, as history will remember it, if there is still someone writing history, the Great Resource Wars of the 21st Century?

The point being, that after the Soviet Empire went broke in Afghanistan and collapsed, and the Bush Empire went broke in Iraq and Afghanistan and collapsed(?), Superpowers (what is left of them) MAY (if we are incredibly lucky) learn their lesson. Lest we forget(and it is OUR job to make sure no one forgets) the current worldwide financial crisis IS a direct result of Bush’s and the Neo-cons brief  American Empire. If we were not (by some estimates) spending up to 3 trillion dollars on Iraq and Afghanistan, our economy would not be in shambles. If ‘we’ didn’t have a Ponzi scheme economy going to give the illusion of prosperity for the last 6-8 years, support for the war would have evaporated much sooner. Neither the American people or Congress would have allowed those trillions to be spent. If not for the housing bubble propping up the house of cards, we would not have had the ability to borrow trillions of dollars. And while we are not forgetting things, let us not forget that we have not yet paid for these wars, the bills will come due.

China (and everybody else that has financed our Imperialism) has stopped loaning us money. They have taken away the war heroin that America has been shooting up by taking away the ability to pay for it. And….they own us now. The Chinese Godless Commies only have to call in all the money that America has borrowed from them to end/destroy the American economy, the world economy. George Bush and the Republican Rubber Stampers has handed world economy to the Chinese on a platter. The Chinese, if they need or even want it, have an end game. We don’t. The Republicans have mortgaged the future of America to the Chinese…to the Godless Communists! And destroyed Americas moral authority in the bargain.

Ya don’t say?

NTT’s Communication Science Laboratories compiled a list of the 50 most common first words in Japanese spoken by babies. Not surprisingly, results showed that manma (food) was first, with mama at No. 4 and papa eighth.

For the first time ever, the Fisheries Agency successfully caught wild parent eels in the spawning season off the Mariana Islands. Researchers hope the discovery will lead to a stable supply of larvae. We just hope those newly orphaned eel kids make out all right.

“Sento-kun,” the official mascot of a 2010 festival celebrating the transfer of Japan’s national capital to Nara 1,300 years ago, made his debut. Sento-kun looks like a young Buddha with antlers sprouting from his bald head.

Researchers at Fujita Health University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology announced they had succeeded in almost destroying a cancerous tumor in a mouse after injecting the animal with a medicine-filled carbon “nanohorn.”

Two medical workers affiliated with the aid organization Medecins du Monde, including a Japanese woman, were kidnapped in eastern Ethiopia.

Fifteen short-tailed albatross chicks were moved from their breeding grounds on Torishima, one of the Izu Islands, due to fears of a volcanic eruption.

Speaking of natural disasters, earthquakes and global warming are the problems Japanese people most often fret over, according to a survey by Tezukayama University and the National Research Institute of Police Science. Illnesses and accidents were also prominent, as were abnormal weather and wars.

Ya don’t say?

NTT’s Communication Science Laboratories compiled a list of the 50 most common first words in Japanese spoken by babies. Not surprisingly, results showed that manma (food) was first, with mama at No. 4 and papa eighth.

For the first time ever, the Fisheries Agency successfully caught wild parent eels in the spawning season off the Mariana Islands. Researchers hope the discovery will lead to a stable supply of larvae. We just hope those newly orphaned eel kids make out all right.

“Sento-kun,” the official mascot of a 2010 festival celebrating the transfer of Japan’s national capital to Nara 1,300 years ago, made his debut. Sento-kun looks like a young Buddha with antlers sprouting from his bald head.

Researchers at Fujita Health University and the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology announced they had succeeded in almost destroying a cancerous tumor in a mouse after injecting the animal with a medicine-filled carbon “nanohorn.”

Two medical workers affiliated with the aid organization Medecins du Monde, including a Japanese woman, were kidnapped in eastern Ethiopia.

Fifteen short-tailed albatross chicks were moved from their breeding grounds on Torishima, one of the Izu Islands, due to fears of a volcanic eruption.

Speaking of natural disasters, earthquakes and global warming are the problems Japanese people most often fret over, according to a survey by Tezukayama University and the National Research Institute of Police Science. Illnesses and accidents were also prominent, as were abnormal weather and wars.