Not Enough Rope

Well, being a bear of very little brain, it took me a while to realize that, even if I wasn’t particularly proficient in Polish (though I do know the word pederastia which is…), the computer is! And so all you have to do is hit the little “translate this page” and the computer, after some thought, will give you a charmingly literal translation. Here’s a nice sample:

In the Vatican's diplomatic career structures could envy him many a clergyman.

Got that? What could be clearer? Definitely better than this, the Polish homologue:

Kariery dyplomatycznej w watykańskich strukturach mógłby mu pozazdrościć niejeden duchowny.

OK, so the syntax is a little screwy, but if you can wait until the end of the sentence to figure out what we’re talking about—both grammatically and logically called the subject—all will be well. Think of it as a game, perhaps, or a linguistic who-done-it. Keeps you in suspense!

And so I realized, yesterday, that the Polish press, unlike the Dominican press, is playing up the story. And they are embellishing their articles with photos like this:

Yup, Wesolowski himself….

And so I spent an interesting afternoon in Poland, yesterday, learning that Padre Alberto Gil, a fellow Pole working in the little mountain town of Juncalito, had taken 3 trips to Poland with about ten boys each time. My first reaction, of course was, “yeah?”

I had an interesting conversation this week with a friend who had been sexually abused by a Baptist minister while his parents slept in the room next to the minister, who was “sharing” his bed with my friend. And Carlos, my friend, swears that in most cases, the mothers either know or suspect that abuse is going on. But why don’t they speak out? Is it fear? Is it a lifetime of poverty, which grinds in the lessons of helplessness and despair and futility?

At any rate, Gil made three trips to Poland with assorted kids—where did the money come from? I’ve been through towns in the Dominican Republic that must have been the equivalents of Juncalito—for all I know, I’ve been through Juncalito. Didn’t look like there’s much money there. And if there is, they hide it well.

So were the Poles sponsoring the trip? And where was that money coming from? How wonderful, those Poles welcoming with open arms (in how many senses, one wonders?) those cute Latin kids!

Even so, it’s a little hard to wrap my mind around the how a parent would allow a child to go off with a priest for over a month. But as I think of it, it makes more sense. First, of course, the parents must have been dazzled by the idea—Europe! My child’s going to Europe! The world is opening for him, who knows whom he could meet, what door could open for him! How wonderful that Padre Alberto….

Then, of course, there’s the reverence for the Catholic Church. Over eighty percent of Puerto Ricans are Catholic—what percent of Dominicans? Probably much higher. Watching videos of families affected by the abuse in Juncalito, I got a visceral sense of the betrayal these families suffered.

Lastly, maybe we should ask if the abuse in the church isn’t structural. The organization is set up in a way that fosters abuse. There’s the hierarchical structure. There’s the control of power at the top, and the demand for complete obedience. There’s the demand to defend the church at all costs, and the terrible consequences doled out to anyone who blows the whistle. Even the pomp, the rituals, the fancy clothes—all contribute to the belief that they are special, invincible, infallible.

I look at Wesolowski, in the photo above—this man who was dressed in all his finery, this man surrounded by all the devotion of his parishioners, this man who, hours after the ceremony, would be chasing limpiabotas (shoeshine boys) on the malecón of Santo Domingo.

He thought he could have everything, could get away with anything.

Sadly, for the most part, he has….

Nine Cowards

OK—I admit it. I’ve spent most of the morning contemplating this one sentence, drawn from The New York Times:

In the trial court, the state had argued that restricting marriage to a man and a woman would make heterosexual couples act more responsibly when they had sex.

The state is Utah, which for two brief weeks allowed—well, was forced to allow—1,300 same sex couples to marry. In a state that is heavily Mormon, that didn’t sit well with the majority of residents, and the attorney general of the state lost no time getting up to the US Court of Appeals for the 10^th Circuit. And they said, “no dice—we’re not giving you a stay until you can appeal.” And why? Here’s The Salt Lake Tribune:

According to the order, the state failed to demonstrate it was suffering "irreparable harm" as a result of the legalization of same-sex marriage and also failed to show it had a "significant likelihood" of prevailing in its appeal to the circuit court.

Right—that’s pretty clear. So then the state, desperate to get the ruling on hold, went to the Supreme Court. Nor is that word “desperate” only mine: google “Utah desperate” and you get the following Christian Science Monitor headline:

Utah, growing desperate, to ask Supreme Court to halt gay marriages

The request went to Sonia Sotomayor, who oversees the 10^th court. And she had the choice to rule on it alone, or give it to the entire court. And what did she do? Turfed it to the entire court. And they, late last week, finally gave Utah what it wanted. So for less than 20 days same sex marriage was legal.

And then it wasn’t.

In the process of getting to the Supreme Court, Utah dropped its insane contention that barring same sex marriage would force heterosexual couples to “act more responsibly when having sex.” Instead, according to The New York Times, they fell back on the old argument: children do better when raised in father / mother household.

What was the problem? Well, here’s the Times itself:

 Lawyers for the couples challenging Utah’s ban on same-sex marriage responded that the assertion “is not true.” For evidence, they cited “the scientific consensus of every national health care organization charged with the welfare of children and adolescents,” and listed nine such groups. The view of the groups, the challengers said, “based on a significant and well-respected body of current research, is that children and adolescents raised by same-sex parents, with all things being equal, are as well-adjusted as children raised by opposite-sex couples.”

Utah responded that it would not be swayed by “politically correct trade associations,” referring to, among others, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association. “We are not ruled by experts,” the state’s brief said.

OK—I agree with the last line….

Finally, Utah cooked up one last argument. The Supreme Court had ruled in favor of diversity in deciding who could attend public universities, and so they announced something called “gender diversity.” Scratching your head? A man and a woman—that’s diverse. Two guys or two women? Not so much.

The three arguments are breathtaking in their absurdity. But does it surprise me? Of course not—the state is hardly going to come out and say the truth, which is that the idea of two men or women married is repugnant to them. But what does bug me? Well, here are the first two sentences of the Times’s article:

The Supreme Court’s order last week halting same-sex marriages in Utah was two sentences long. It was provisional and cryptic, and it added nothing to the available information on where the Supreme Court stands on the momentous question of whether there is a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.

Well, who am I to tackle the Times, and especially Adam Liptak, the author of the article? But I think this stay tells us a lot about the Supreme Court. And tells us that the court, like Utah, is also desperate. They know perfectly well that all of the states who have passed laws defining marriage as between a woman and a man have disenfranchised five to ten percent of the population. They know perfectly well that history will find it amazing that we could have believed in such a thing. They know that all but the most conservative of them would have to find the defense of marriage laws unconstitutional.

In fact, the “victories” in June were anything but. What did the court do? Nothing—they ruled on technicalities. And they’ll do it again—because the 10^th Court of Appeals put it pretty plainly: Utah didn’t have “a ‘significant likelihood’ of prevailing in its appeal to the circuit court.”

They’re buying time. But here’s the question: how will they get out of it this time?

Cut the Bullshit

He does it every year, and every year I froth at the mouth.

The “he” above is Jorge Raschke, and the “it” is an event called “Clamor a Dios,” which thousands of Evangelicals attend, as well as local “dignitaries” and shameless politicians. None of that bugs much less surprises me—so what is it that makes me crazy?

It’s held on the steps of the capitol, the very building that I, an atheist, help pay to maintain.

“Do you think they’d ever let a bunch of faggots hold an event on the capitol steps?” said my friend Pablo, as we passed the event one year.

I saved my breath.

Well, the rumor on the street is that the event is getting less crowded every year, which may have prompted Raschke to turn up the heat. And that may be why he announced recently that—owing to his Godless agenda—the governor may be the victim of hit men brought in from outside.

And the gov should take this seriously because guess what? This isn’t just Raschke talking; rather, God him-or-herself revealed it directly to Raschke. Take a look at this….

“En las escuelas trataran [sic.] de enfermar a nuestros niños con la ideología de género, como ya está ocurriendo en el estado de California, donde ni los inodoros se escapan de esta agenda que acapara a las escuelas, colocando en peligro a nuestros niños”, adujo el evangelista. 

El controvertido religioso afirmó que el presidente Barack Obama lleva a la nación estadounidense a su peor destrucción y aquí nuestro gobernador García Padilla sigue ese mal ejemplo.”

(“In the schools they are trying to poison our children with gender ideology, as is occurring in California, where even the bathrooms don’t escape this agenda that monopolizes the schools, putting our children in danger.

The controversial religious affirmed that president Barack Obama is taking the United States to its worst destruction and here governor García Padilla is following the same bad example.”)

Good news—it’s not too late. According to the reverend, García Padilla has a chance: it’s late, but not too late. What does the gov gotta do? You got it—repent and apologize to the people of Puerto Rico.

And what, you ask, has the governor done?

Well, he and his party have come out in favor of LGBT issues, and this has put us all in jeopardy.

OK—my father got after me and made me watch 6 minutes of pretty dreadful eternity in which Raschke bangs the usual drum: the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle. And he drags out the usual bromide, too—he loves the sinner, but hates….

No.

You slimy bastard, you are NOT getting away with this. Not until every gay kid can come out and be sure that his parents won’t kick him out of the house. And if forty percent of the kids on the street are LGBT—about four to eight the rate of LGBT folk in the general population—well, who do you think is to blame?

You know, Raschke, what’s gonna happen to these kids? Sure, some will be OK, but a lot of them won’t. They’ll fall prey to prostitution, drugs and drink, and crime. And it’s not just the kids that you’re shooting down the drain, Raschke. It’s also families, and however misguided these families may be, is there any parent who could want his or her child out on the street, especially now, when it’s 30 below zero in my hometown, and for much of the rest of the nation?

Because those people listened to you, Raschke, and guess what? The Leviticus got in well enough, but the loving the sinner? Not so much.

You know, Raschke, my parents weren’t religious, but they were very socially conservative, and there were years when I was sure that if I told them I was gay, they’d be devastated. You know how that feels? Two things at least: first, you have some terrible sickness in you, a spiritual or psychological illness worse than cancer. Because the cancer isn’t you, and can be cut or zapped out. But being gay? That’s you, and you think that it’s the worst thing in the world. So you hate yourself.

The second thing? Since your parents would be destroyed if they found out you were gay, it means you’re not worthy of their love. You know, I once decided that it would be better for all concerned if I just faded away from the family, that it would spare my parents if I just disconnected. Surprise? My parents were distraught. You have two daughters, Raschke—could you live with yourself if for some reason one of your daughters drifted away?

Because that’s what we did for a long time. We came home as little as possible; we left our boyfriends and girlfriends at home on Christmas Day. And wondered if we’d still have them when we got back home.

Oh, and another thing about those days. It was generally better to glue yourself to the television, since the last thing you wanted to do was talk to the people you loved. Because yes, you still did, as much as a person who had stopped loving himself could.

The days were bad, the nights were worse. I didn’t have the luxury of a religion, but could I cure myself if I went to a shrink? But how would I get the money?

You have blood on your hands, Raschke—you and everyone else who has trotted out the self-justifying line about hating the sin but loving the sinner. Because telling somebody that the deepest part of him, the most essential part of him, is sinful?

I think that’s a sin.

The Gringo the Next Island Over

OK—so all the talk of baseball didn’t work….

Or maybe it was the bad Spanish, which admit it, had to have been learned within the last months. But that’s hardly likely, since James “Wally” Brewster, Jr. only spoke two sentences (the first being, “¡HOLA, mi nombre es Wally!”)

Right—let’s get to brass tacks. What’s pissing off folks in the Dominican Republic about Wally, the new ambassador for the United States? The fact that his spouse is a guy.

Brewster, according to his account, grew up in a little Texas town; he went into business there and eventually moved to Chicago, where he started in 2010 a company called SB&K. Along the way, he raised funds for Obama, which is a nice way to get to be an ambassador. In fact, The Daily Mail reports that he raised more than a million dollars for the 2012 presidential campaign.

And he’s been active in LGBT issues as well: he’s now serving on the Board of the Human Rights Campaign Fund.

So the reaction to Brewster? Well, let’s put it this way: over 60% of the country is Catholic, so what did the cardinal, the top dog over there, have to say? Well, he referred to Brewster as a maricón (faggot) and gay people as “social trash.”

And then there’s this:

"He has not considered the particularities of our people. The United States is trying to impose on us marriage between gays and lesbians as well as adoption by these couples," said Father Luis Rosario, director of youth ministries for the church.

Then thousands of evangelicals took to the streets, and organized a “black Monday,” urging people to put black ribbons on their cars to protest. But not to worry, because the groups came out with this statement:

Expresaron que aman a los homosexuales y a los drogadictos, pero no  su actuación. “Si hoy aceptamos esa ley que nos quieren imponer, luego tenemos que aceptar una para patentizar las drogas”, señalaron.

(They expressed that the love homosexuals and drug addicts, but not their behavior. “If we accept this law that they want to impose on us, later we’ll have to accept one that patents drugs,” they said.)

Though homosexuality is legal in the Dominican Republic, there is—as you can tell—a strong cultural bias against it. Worse, the situation seems to be getting worse, and not better. Here’s what the French paper Le Monde had to say about it:

“En Haití, la República Dominicana, Jamaica y otros países de la región, los ataques contra homosexuales y transexuales han aumentado en los últimos meses. La homofobia no es nueva en la Cuenca del Caribe”, señala el reportaje.

(“In Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and other countries in the region, the attacks against homosexuals and transsexuals have increased in the last months. Homophobia is not new in the Caribbean basin,” the report indicated.)

Brewster isn’t the first gay ambassador—there have been five or six others. He is, however, the first ambassador to be named to such a homophobic country.

Good luck to him!