So What?

Apparently Adam Lambert's performance at the American Music Awards has touched off a bunch of controversy.

Not on ABC, which apparently didn't approve of Lambert's stage show in which he French-kissed a band member and simulated oral sex.

Meh - whatever. Madonna did things like that back in the 1990s. What's the big deal? Oh right - Lambert's a guy - I suppose that makes all the difference in the world.

After all, Madonna and Britney Spears kissing is just hot - or so it seems; apparently when it's two guys it's suddenly a horrible moral failure.

Just as society holds women up to some nearly impossible double standards, this is one of those double standards for men - showing any kind of physical affection is taboo; showing it towards other men is beyond taboo. It's time we looked at some of these arbitrary rules and tossed them in the dustbin where they truly belong.

Frankly, Lambert's performance wasn't my cup of tea - but I don't really care what he does on stage - or off it come to that. It's up to me if I watch it or ignore it.

Why Do Conservatives Hate Public Accountability?

Perhaps it really is unique to the brand of political conservative that has arisen in Alberta, but whether we look at the federal scene or the provincial scene in Alberta, we see the same basic patterns emerging.

In Alberta, the provincial government has been steadily whittling away at anything that resembles meaningful accountability to the public for years. Alberta's legislature barely sits long enough to execute the semblance of parliamentary process; the government is awarding itself discretionary powers to act above and beyond the regulatory processes it created itself not so long ago.

Federally, what do we see? We see Mr. Harper trying to render critics - real or potential - mute. Either by force of law, such as making anything at all to do with Afghanistan prisoner handling secret documents, or by simply claiming that anyone who criticises the government's actions is lying or making claims with no merit.

Looking back over the history of the Harper government, I have not seen a government so focused on hiding reality from the Canadian people in years - with the possible exception of the Klein and now Stelmach governments in Alberta perhaps.

Whether it is Harper's intransigence in his handling of Omar Khadr, the Isotopes Affair, his abuse of prorogation of parliament, the costs of his Softwood Lumber Deal or the spending cuts he instituted in 2006, Harper has done everything in his power to avoid being accountable to Canadians when it matters.

It has become harder, not easier, under Harper to get information out of the government, and he has carefully pared down the ability of the public to get any visibility into the government and its actions - what is he hiding?

Bill 50 - And What It Tells Albertans

So, the legislature passed Bill 50 yesterday.

I have all sorts of problems with Bill 50, but in particular what it represents. Essentially, the Alberta Government has just removed public process from the creation of power transmission lines. If the minister decides that a given transmission line is "critical", then there is no regulatory process to vet whether the line is in fact critical, or whether it unreasonably affects people living along its route, or will unnecessarily hike electricity costs for Albertans.

This is a serious problem - the Stelmach government is setting things up so that they are even less accountable to the public than Klein was ... and Klein was pretty awful for accountability. Klein didn't like accountability much, and it appears that under Stelmach, it's about to take a turn for the worse.

We've already seen the first steps in this with Liepert's "Health Services Superboard", which both Stelmach and Liepert hide everytime something controversial is being done with the health care system in this province.

Now we have a situation where cabinet wants to appropriate the power to be the regulator and the lawmaker with respect to large infrastructure projects. This has the potential to be extremely destructive to participation in Alberta's democracy (which is already depressingly poor).

Last election, over 80% of the seats were decided by 22% of the eligible voters - Stelmach won on apathy. Think about it.

Inquiry Time

With the partisan nonsense that has been bouncing around this week regarding Afghan prisoner/detainee transfers, it's past time to call a public inquiry - one that isn't bounded by arbitrary rules that the HarperCon$ have come up with.

Harper has tried very hard to muzzle, or render ineffectual, the current parliamentary investigation, and I think in this case Amnesty International has it right:

We are, however, shocked, that at least 12 of his reports were not disclosed by the government during the course of Federal Court proceedings in 2007 and 2008, despite the fact that they were obviously of direct relevance to the issues before the Court and were certainly covered by requests for disclosure of documents that had been made by our legal team. Equally troubling has been Richard Colvin’s testimony as to the ways in which he indicates his reports were dismissed and ignored by senior officials. That your government has responded primarily by seeking to discredit and impugn Mr. Colvin’s credibility has been, frankly, wholly unacceptable.
...
In our view, therefore, there is no other option open other than to immediately convene a full, public Commission of Inquiry into all aspects of the laws, policy and practice that has governed Canada’s approach to handling prisoners in Afghanistan. We call on you to do so without delay.

The real issue here is what is the Harper Government trying to cover up? I can think of a few possibilities.

If Colvin's Testimony is so "unbelievable" ...

Then we should be asking some really tough questions of Defense Minister Mackay in light of his top General's recent comments.

"We indeed did stop the transfer more than one time," he said. "At the same time, I don't want to throw out more information. There's a process that's undergoing and I know that the witnesses will be called forward for that process and give their testimony."

So ... Mr. Mackay, would you care to square last week's knee-jerk attempt to dismiss Mr. Colvin's testimony with the actions of the very department you are the minister for? Clearly the Canadian Armed Forces believed that something wasn't entirely right in the first place, so that tells me that Mr. Colvin's concerns had their share of validity - even in the absence of "absolute proof".

Just one more example of the Harper gov't lying to Canadians for political gain.

From Ideology Comes Sloppy Logic

I've heard about You're Teaching My Child What? for quite a while now and mostly dismissed it as yet another anti sex-ed book.

So, when I spotted this book review, I decided to spend a few minutes reading it to see if there was any reason to think that the book was anything worthwhile.

It isn't.

Although the author is an MD, it's pretty clear that the book is written to reinforce most of the complaints that the anti-sex-ed crowd loves to throw about.

Society has now gone from two STDs, syphilis and gonorrhea, to more than two dozen, some incurable and even fatal. Chlamydia is a common bacterial STD that can cause sterility, but can have no symptoms and is readily transferred back and forth between males and females unnoticed. The protection advocated by sex ed groups is a misnomer; condoms are little protection against many of these STDs. On the other hand, as the good doctor notes, all STDs are 100 percent avoidable, through abstinence, and then monogamy.

Uh huh. We all know just how well that policy works in reality.

Of course, when they turn their attention to sexual minorities, the argument degenerates into the usual "oooh - look how creepy this is".

...keep in mind that most of the “experts” spewing forth information on these websites are not physicians or psychologists or psychiatrists or educators, but are activists, and many are so gender confused because of their own behaviors and sex changes they don’t know who they are. Some are “peer educators,” and the rest would have been described as sexual deviants just 50 short years ago, as they dabble in every kind of unnatural behavior, then describe it, and share it with teens, encouraging imitation.

Oh yes, people who are GLBT are just soooo strange aren't they? Not so much in reality. But this has been part of the anti-gay arsenal for decades - an attempt to erase the person by lumping them into the category of "alien" and "bizarre".

Chapter Seven in the book, devoted to “Genderland” is a real eye opener. Blaming society’s culture for what they described as an assigned bipolar male and female gender system, the transformers described here make a serious departure from reality as they try to address the gender identity issues they have created. On some teen websites there are quizzes to help one determine one’s gender. (Gender is no longer biological fact, you see, but how one identifies oneself, e.g., female at birth now male or transgender, or intersex but identify as male.) This goes far beyond even the homosexual/heterosexual/transgender labels we’ve come to know, and is accompanied by new language; “ze” to replace “he” and “she”, and “hir” an alternative for “his” and “her.”

Let me point out a couple of things here - puberty - and therefore teen years - are when cross-gender identities become real issues for those who have them. There is little more horrifying than to see your body turn into something that you weren't meant to be.

Second, the language of "ze", "hir" etc. is not a commonly used construct in the transgender world. Those are terms that have emerged out of the world of gender and queer theory studies, and are not commonly used - even within the communities that would benefit from them in principle. Again, this is little more than more of an attempt to signal to the reader how unimaginably bizarre the world of cross-gender identities must be.

It’s hard enough, says Doctor Grossman, when teens and pre-teens feel mixed up about many issues, but the question “Who am I?” needs to be answered before the challenges of adulthood present themselves. Teens are not miniature adults. Theirs is a world of emotional intensity, with strong drives and hormone overloads. Documented in the book are expert findings showing adolescents have a lesser ability to reason. One neuropsychologist explained: “adolescents are more prone to react with ‘gut instinct’ when they process emotions but as they mature into early adulthood they are about to temper their instinctive ‘gut reaction’ response with rational reasoned responses.” Hard science reveals that it’s not a lack of information, but a lack of judgement that gets teens into trouble.

I'll agree that lack of judgment frequently does get teens into trouble. However, lack of information - especially about matters related to gender and sexual identity is asking for even more trouble. It's the teen years when sexual awareness and identity develop, and to blithely tell them to "wait until you're 20" is beyond daft, it's unrealistic. For those who struggle with gender identity issues, there are good reasons to make the information - along with access to appropriate therapists - available. Teens aren't stupid, and contrary to the popular fear-filled mythology of the religious right wing, hiding sexuality related subjects from them doesn't stop them from exploring. It never has, and likely never will.

Dr. Grossman makes clear in the book, which is very well documented, that the real goals of the sex education lobby are not to prevent pregnancy or disease, but to indoctrinate the young. It is this politicization of sex that will morally bankrupt our nation. The sex-obsessed want to spread their unnatural behaviors as they curry favor for dangerous and unhealthy sexual activity by relying on emotions and pleasures. They craft a false perception of the realities of free and open sex, desensitizing our youth to subject matter that used to be avoided in conversation among polite company.

And these sex transformers want to start earlier and earlier, with your child. Anatomically correct verbiage is to be used in kindergarden, and feelings expressed. Third graders are to have an exaggerated version of the birds and the bees talk. And teens, who are scared into avoiding tobacco and alcohol, are to be made to understand the pleasures of all types of illicit sex.

Oh yes, sex education is all about a political agenda. That's right up there with the alleged "Gay Agenda" (which I've never seen a copy of, but every homophobe out there is absolutely convinced it's real). This is another strawman argument, and by the sounds of this review, the entire book is essentially built on the same kind of silly, sloppy and hysterical reasoning.

Under All The Bluster ...

Is a reality.

The HarperCon$ have struggled mightily to silence Richard Colvin, failing that they then attempt to discredit not just what he says but the man himself.

Peter Mackay's attempt to discredit Colvin's sources and interviews is an interesting exercise in missing the point:

"There has not been a single, solitary proven allegation of abuse involving a transferred Taliban prisoner by Canadian forces,” he said.

However, there is considerable evidence out there of prisoners being turned over to the Afghan government, and being tortured.

We also know that we suspended prisoner transfers at one point, and the HarperCon$ tried to cover up the reasons for that.

So ... what precautions, if any, did the HarperCon$ order Canada's Armed Forces to undertake regarding the handover of prisoners? I'm putting better than even odds that the sum total of those precautions was nothing. In short, they continued to do exactly as Bush II did, and turn a blind eye to the abuse that prisoners were (and likely as not, are) being subjected to when turned over to the Afghan authorities.

In short, through a series of acts of omission, the Canada has become complicit in what are internationally recognized as war crimes - and Harper will do just about anything to cover it up.

I'm not saying that everything that Mr. Colvin has said is true - but the viciousness of the government's response, along with the desperation that has been quite apparent in their actions to suppress the current (and very limited) inquiry, leaves something lying about that does not pass the "smell test".

If it takes a judicial inquiry - and one that is unfettered by desperate politicians trying to save their electoral hides in particular - then we should undertake one on Afghanistan immediately. Canada cannot, and should not, ever be party to war crimes - or even have the appearance of being party to them.

A Little Window Into The World Of The Anti-Gay Conservatives

I have often wondered what really makes the religious conservatives so rabidly hate-filled when it comes to homosexuality. It has often seemed to me that the anti-gay message is rooted in a particularly narrow, literalist view of scripture.

After reading this gem ... and in particular the comments over at No Apologies, I'm afraid I must revise my opinion.

The vitriol is not really rooted in any meaningful understanding of Scripture - at best, that seems to be an excuse - something that they can point to that allows them to justify not taking personal ownership of their feelings and reactions.

What needs to be understood about these people is that they are not content to be sodomites and just carry on with life. They want to promote that wicked lifestyle. We know this because God says so.

Hmmm...what an interesting set of inferences. First of all, there's an underlying wish that GLBT people would quietly stay in the closet - after all, why on earth would anyone that was GLBT want to be a full participant in society? When someone from the GLBT community does participate in our society's government, they are immediately accused of "promoting their wicked lifestyle" or "recruiting".

Underlying this seems to be two basic themes:

(1) A desire to keep the unknown ("the Others" in society) from being full and equal participants in society.

(2) Fear - plain old fear. Once you make another human being "the Other", it becomes easy to think of them as less than human; of being capable of all sorts of malfeasance and misdeeds.

In short, although the mask they draw over their words and deeds is made of the fabric of faith, it is but a mask. Underneath it lie attitudes steeped in fear and ignorance. When confronted with evidence that contradicts their assumptions, they will inevitably dismiss it out of hand, rather than trying to assimilate it.

12 Letter Synonym For Two-Faced

According to Runesmith, the word would have to be "C o n s e r v a t i v e".

I can't believe how utterly hypocritical the HarperCon$ are.