This Fucking Snow

A couple of weeks ago, I watched this PBS show --- "The American Experience", I think it was --- about The Donner Party.

I watched it late at night, just before I turned off the lights and went to sleep with my cat, Marsha, curled up at my feet. I had nightmares about Marsha and I stalking each other at night for mealtime purposes ...

For those who skipped American history class on the days they covered the 1840s, the Donner Party was a group of California-bound American emigrants caught up in the "westering fever" of the 1840s. After becoming snowbound in the Sierra Nevada in the winter of 1846–1847, some of them resorted to cannibalism.

Near the end of this blog, I've included some Wikipedia information about The Donner Party. But I just wanted to post some thoughts about winter.

The secret to surviving it is getting fresh air, I'm convinced. It means leaving the warmth of one's home and going out and breathing some fresh air. The alternative is staying indoors and occasionally looking outside and glaring at The Fucking Snow, which I know our members in the Mid-Atlantic states are having in abundance.

I live in the East Tennessee mountains and we have had our share. I got up at 6:15 a.m. today and there was just a dusting of this white crap. It's 8:02 a.m. now and all but a little bit of the yard is covered. And it's still coming.

Winter makes us crazy. A lot of it has to do with not enough sunlight. Some of it has to do with staying indoors too much and being isolated from each other. When you read the details of The Donner Party incident below, imagine being in a hastily-built log cabin in the Rocky Mountains, not enough food available --- and very little to season and cook it with --- and your loved ones around you on the verge of death.

As Norman Bates (played by Anthony Perkins) said in Alfred Hitchcock's "Psycho", "We all go a little bit crazy now and then." Isolation, starvation and winter depression undoubtedly drove the survivors of The Donner Party mad. I can't imagine being in such a situation.

So once a day, I try to go outside to run errands or visit one of my kids (my daughter Tracy and her husband and her four kids just adopted three pit bull puppies; fortunately, they have a large apartment so they can get away from each other once in a while.)

I even kick Marsha out of the house for a while every day. She's one year old, fat as a cow, and doesn't like the cold very much. But she always comes back in, having worked off some nervous energy and ready to settle in and appreciate her nice warm home.

Folks who grumble about having to get up and face the elements to go to work are justified in feeling it's a pain in the ass. But it's also a blessing --- they have a sense of purpose and they have something to look forward to every day: coming home to where it's warm and there's food they can fix to feed themselves. And they have a sense of knowing they're going to make it through the winter.

The Donner Party didn't have that reassurance.

The nucleus of the The Donner Party consisted of the families of George Donner, his brother Jacob, and James F. Reed of Springfield, Illinois, plus their hired hands, about 33 people in all, with nine covered wagons. They set out for California in mid-April 1846, arrived at Independence, Missouri, on May 10, 1846, and left two days later.

On May 19, 1846, the Donners and Reeds joined a large wagon train captained by William H. Russell. Most of those who became members of the Donner Party were also in this group. For the next two months the travelers followed the California Trail until they reached the Little Sandy River, in what is now Wyoming, where they camped alongside several other overland parties. There, those emigrants who had decided to take a new route ("Hastings Cutoff," named after its promoter, Lansford Hastings), formed a new wagon train. They elected George Donner their captain, creating the Donner Party, on July 19. At its height, it numbered 87 emigrants with 23 wagons.

The Donner Party continued westward to Fort Bridger, where Hastings Cutoff began, and set out on the new route on August 31. They endured great hardships while crossing the Wasatch Mountains and the Great Salt Lake Desert, finally rejoining the California Trail near modern Elko, Nevada, on September 26. The "shortcut" had taken them over three weeks longer than had they used the customary route. They met further setbacks and delays while traveling along Nevada's Humboldt River.

When they reached the Sierra Nevada at the end of October, a snowstorm blocked their way over what is now known as Donner Pass. Demoralized and low on supplies, about three quarters of the emigrants camped at a lake (now called Donner Lake), while the Donner families and a few others camped about six miles (ten kilometers) away, in the Alder Creek Valley.

The emigrants slaughtered their remaining oxen, but there was not enough meat to feed so many for long. In mid-December, fifteen of the trapped emigrants, later known as the Forlorn Hope, made snowshoes and set out for Sutter's Fort, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) away. This group consisted of ten men and five women. When one man gave out and had to be left behind, the others continued, but soon became lost and ran out of food. Caught without shelter in a raging blizzard, four of the party died. The survivors resorted to cannibalism, then continued on their journey; three more died and were also cannibalized. Close to death, the seven surviving snowshoers—two men, and all five of the women—finally reached safety on the western side of the mountains on January 18, 1847. Two Native Americans, called Luis and Salvador, who helped bring supplies from Sutter's Fort were found near death from exposure a few days after they left the group upon learning that William Foster, one of the members of the "Forlorn Hope" group, wanted to kill them for food. Over the objections of some members of the group, Foster shot Luis and Salvador and cut up their bodies for meat.

Some Californians rallied to save the Donner Party and equipped a total of four rescue parties, or "reliefs." When the First Relief arrived, 14 emigrants had died at the camps and the rest were extremely weak. Most had been surviving on boiled ox hide, but there had been no cannibalism. The First Relief set out with 21 refugees on February 22.

When the Second Relief arrived a week later, they found that there had been no more deaths, but some of the 31 emigrants left behind at the camps had begun to eat the dead. The Second Relief took 17 emigrants with them, leaving 14 alive at the camps. When the Third Relief arrived later in March, they found nine left. They rescued four children, but had to leave five people behind. By the time the Fourth Relief reached the camps on April 17, only one man was left alive. After salvaging property from the Alder Creek camp, the relief left, taking Louis (or Lewis) Keseberg with them. The last survivor of the Donner Party arrived at Sutter's Fort on April 29.

Of the original 87 pioneers, 39 died and 48 survived. Five died before reaching the Sierra Nevada, 14 at the lake camp, eight at Alder Creek, and 12 while trying to escape the mountains.

The Party's Over

The few, if any, people who read what I write on these blogs, may remember that I lean left of center and tend to support Democrats, since I regard the Republicans as a party who have sold their souls to the devils on the religious right and are now controlled by the bigotries of that political fringe, particularly in regards to gay rights.

So I would hope that it would come as a surprise that I encourage anyone who gives a damn about whether gay people are treated the same as straight people to not vote for Democrats. Or Republicans. Neither party is committed in a significant way to helping the gay community.

That said, I think it's OK to donate to individual candidates who specifically come out in support of issues of importance to the gay community. And those candidates, while mostly coming from the Democratic party, may also include an occasional Republican who is willing to stand aside from the lock-step marching of his or her party and do the right thing for the queers.

That's the policy being adopted by Garden State Equality, New Jersey's largest gay rights group, which has suspended donations to the organizations after Democratic lawmakers failed to pass a gay marriage bill.

According to a Feb. 9 article by Shruti Mathur Desai of the Camden, N.J., Courier-Post, Garden State Equality has asked its 65,000 members not to contribute to political parties after Democratic lawmakers in that state, did not vote to legalize gay marriage. Garden State Equality will continue to donate to individual candidates and other nonparty organizations that further equality for the LGBT community, however.

The organization's leaders expected lawmakers would legalize gay marriage last month. But they saw support erode after Republican Chris Christie was elected in November.

Fourteen senators voted in favor of the bill that went to state Senate on Jan. 7, 20 voted against, and five, of whom two were absent, did not vote, including Sens. Stephen M. Sweeney, D-Gloucester, and James Beach, D-Camden.

Barbra Casbar Siperstein, President of the NJ Stonewall Democrats, said she and other LGBT groups were disappointed in the senators that voted no, "or, perhaps more of a slap in the face was those who didn't vote, and some of those certainly were in South Jersey," she said.

Siperstein echoed Steven Goldstein, chairman of Garden State Equality, saying the rejection of the bill was a slap in the face.

"The Democratic Party recognizes the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender community as its second-most-loyal constituency," Siperstein said. But out of about 100 voting members of the New Jersey Democratic State Committee, not a single member is an out LGBT member, Siperstein said.

Siperstein, who once served as vice chair for Garden State Equality, said the Stonewall Democrats support the activities of the Democratic party, but mainly focus their giving on individual politicians.

This makes sense to me --- Garden State Equality's members donated to the Democrats presumably to get some positive progress toward gay issues, such as same-sex marriage. And the Democrats, specifically a couple of cowards who skipped the vote, didn't come through. If Garden State Equality continues to support the Democrats as a party, the Dems will just continue to take them for granted. I don't see that Garden State Equality has any other choice, in terms of letting the Democrats know that the party screwed them over, and not in a nice way.

New Jersey was top-ranked in the United States in 2009, tied with California, Iowa and Vermont, in a survey by eQualityGiving.com. It is one of two states that provides paid family leave for same-sex couples.

I think at this point, the Democrats as a national party need to be told that they need to clean up their act, in terms of gay people, and take sanctions against party members whose failure to support gay rights is costing the party gay dollars.

I don't have a lot of disposable income myself, but I do have a big mouth, which I'm willing to use for traditional nice gay activities and also for the purpose of scolding and working against politicians who fuck gay people, and not in a nice way. And those politicians can be Democrats or Republicans.

The next time the Democrats send you a global e-mail or a fund-raising letter, write them back and tell them it's time for them to DO something for the gays besides just asking for our money. And the same thing goes for the Republicans.

Snort.

Obama and National Prayer Breakfast

While President Obama has been kind of wishy-washy on some issues during the past year, he seems to be ready to play hard ball on some issues.

Or if he isn't, he at least hit home runs on two issues that I think are important, and both of them at today's National Prayer Breakfast.

The National Prayer Breakfast, for the past eight years, has been dominated by right-wing religionists who shared President George W. Bush's fundamentalist view of religion. Bush, like everything else he touched, tended to drive the short bus on the subject of religion. He had a basic understanding of Christianity, just like he had a basic understanding of foreign and domestic policy, and that was good enough for him. He just drove straight forward down the theological highway, never looking back at the philosophical roadkill he left behind him for others to clean up.

Today, President Obama, a far more in-depth thinker than his predecessor, chose to discuss the importance of civility at the National Prayer breakfast and urged his fellow politicians in Washington to use the tenets of their spiritual beliefs to create a less-rancorous political environment.

He also roundly condemned the pending law in the nation of Uganda which would allow the death penalty to be imposed if anyone is caught being a homosexual person there. Choosing to make this condemnation at the National Prayer breakfast was significant because Uganda's proposed law was heavily influenced by U.S. right-wing evangelicals --- evangelicals whose influenced peaked during the George W. Bush administration.

"SPIRIT OF CIVILITY"

The Associated Press reported that while he was speaking at the annual National Prayer breakfast, Obama said divisions in Washington are nothing new, but "there is a sense that something is different now, that something is broken, that those of us in Washington aren't serving people as well as we should."

Obama said America's leaders are quick to unite in times of crisis, such as last month's devastating earthquake in Haiti. But when it comes to long-term problems, he said, lawmakers can become absorbed by ideology and power contests.

He urged leaders to be empowered by faith to bridge divisions.

"You can question my policies without questioning my faith. Or, for that matter, my citizenship," Obama said, referring to critics who have questioned whether he was born in the United States.

President Obama also said his Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships had "turned the faith-based initiative around" from its previous incarnation under the Bush administration to "find common ground among people of all beliefs."

The Americans United for Separation of Church and State and 25 other organizations sent a letter to Obama protesting these remarks and saying Obama has failed to protect the boundary between church and state.

"In all significant ways, the Obama faith-based initiative right now is the same as the Bush faith-based initiative," Rev. Barry W. Lynn, the group's executive director, said in a statement.

Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Florida Gators quarterback Tim Tebow also participated in the breakfast, which has been held in Washington for more than 50 years. Every president since Dwight Eisenhower has participated.

THE FELLOWSHIP FOUNDATION

The Fellowship, also known as The Family, is an international organization founded in 1935 and has been led by Douglas Coe since 1969. Its members include scores of high ranking U.S. government officials, corporate executives, heads of religious and humanitarian aid organizations, and non-U.S. leaders and ambassadors. It has been described by prominent evangelical Christians as one of the most politically well-connected fundamentalist organizations in the US.

The core purpose of this group is to provide a private forum for public officials to hold Bible Studies, prayer meetings, worship services, or to share their troubles. In Newsweek, Lisa Miller writes that the common love for the teachings of Jesus binds this group together and all approaches to understanding him are acceptable.

The group is most widely known for organizing prayer groups throughout the United States and around the world, including the Presidential Prayer Breakfast, later renamed the National Prayer Breakfast. Every sitting United States president since 1953 has attended the event.

The Fellowship generally practices strict secrecy about its members or activities and eschews publicity and asks its members not to speak about the group; some members have denied that the Fellowship exists.

Prominent evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, and the Family themselves, have described it as one of the most, or the most, politically well-connected fundamentalist organization in the US.

D. Michael Lindsay, a Rice University sociologist who studies the evangelical movement, says “there is no other organization like the Fellowship, especially among religious groups, in terms of its access or clout among the country’s leadership.” He also reports that lawmakers mentioned the Fellowship more than any other organization when asked to name a ministry with the most influence on their faith.

In 1977, four years after he had converted to Christianity, Fellowship member and Watergate conspirator Charles Colson described the Family as a “veritable underground of Christ’s men all through the US government."

The Reverend Robert Schenck, founder of the Washington, D.C. ministry Faith and Action in the Nation’s Capital, describes the Family's influence as "off the charts" in comparison with other fundamentalist groups, specifically compared to Focus on the Family, Pat Robertson, Gary Bauer, Traditional Values Coalition, and Prison Fellowship. (These last two are associated with the Family: Traditional Values Coalition uses their C Street House and Prison Fellowship was founded by Charles Colson.) Schenck also says that "the mystique of the Fellowship" has helped it "gain entree into almost impossible places in the capital."

A series of taped seminars from 1970 for young male members of the Fellowship describes their access to power: “If you want doors opened... there are men in government, there are senators who literally find it their pleasure to give any kind of advice, assistance, or counsel.”

Lindsay also interviewed 360 evangelical elites, among whom “One in three mentioned Doug Coe or the Fellowship as an important influence."

Douglas Evans Coe, 82, is the reclusive leader and "first brother" of The Fellowship. Coe also has been referred to as the "stealth Billy Graham." In 2005, Coe was named one of the 25 most influential Evangelicals in the United States by Time magazine. Although Coe is not an ordained minister, D. Michael Lindsay surveyed more than 300 top evangelical politicians in Washington and one in three said The Fellowship was one of the most influential Christian groups in the nation's capital.

The Family also has relationships with numerous non-US government leaders. Lindsay reports that the Family "has relationships with pretty much every world leader— good and bad— and there are not many organizations in the world that can claim that."

“The Fellowship’s reach into governments around the world is almost impossible to overstate or even grasp,” says David Kuo, a member of the Family and former special assistant in George W. Bush’s Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

The following politicians are among those who have publicly acknowledged working with the Fellowship or are documented as having done so: U.S. Jim Inhofe, R-OK; John Ensign, R-NV; Tom Coburn, R-OK; Sam Brownback (R-KS); Chuck Grassley, R-IA; Bill Nelson, D-FL; and U.S. Reps. Joe Pitts, R-PA; Zach Wamp, R-TN; Frank Wolf, R-VA; Randy Forbes, R-VA; Bart Stupak, D-MI; and Gov. Mark Sanford, R-SC. There are also several other former government elected officials who have been a part of the Fellowship.

The Fellowship, through Senator Brownback and Representative Pitts, redirected millions in US aid to Uganda from sex education programs to abstinence programs, thereby causing an evangelical revival, which included condom burnings, and doubling the incidence of AIDS.

In a November 2009 National Public Radio interview, the author Jeff Sharlet alleged that Ugandan Fellowship associates David Bahati and Nsaba Buturo were behind the recent proposed bill in Uganda that called for the death penalty for gays.

Sharlet reveals that David Bahati, the Uganda legislator backing the bill, reportedly first floated the idea of executing gays during The Family's Uganda National Prayer Breakfast in 2008. Sharlet described Mr. Bahati as a "rising star" in the Fellowship who has attended the National Prayer Breakfast in the United States and, until the news over the gay execution law broke, was scheduled to attend this year's U.S. National Prayer Breakfast.

Family member Bob Hunter gave an interview to National Public Radio in December in which he acknowledged Bahati's connection but argued that no American associates support the bill.

UGANDA

The AP also reported that this year's National Prayer Breakfast also drew controversy when an ethics group asked the president to boycott the breakfast over objections to the sponsor, The Fellowship Foundation.

In a letter to Obama and congressional leaders, the watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington said The Fellowship Foundation has "been cultivating an unorthodox brand of Christianity amongst the political, military and economic elite of America." The group says the foundation is also linked to efforts to pass strict anti-gay laws in Uganda.

In response, Obama, at the Prayer Breakfast, denounced as "odious" the Ugandan proposed anti-gay law.

"We may disagree about gay marriage, but surely we can agree that it is unconscionable to target gays and lesbians for who they are -- whether it's here in the United States or ... more extremely in odious laws that are being proposed most recently in Uganda," Obama told the National Prayer Breakfast.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, speaking before Obama at the annual bipartisan gathering of religious and political leaders, also criticized the draft law being considered by Uganda's parliament.

Clinton said she recently called Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni and expressed the "strongest concerns" about the proposed legislation. The call was made on December 20, a State Department official said.

The East African country has faced intense pressure from Western governments and human rights groups over the draft legislation, which was presented as a private members' bill last year.

It would prohibit sexual relations between people of the same sex as well as the recognition of homosexual relations as an acceptable lifestyle, Navi Pillay, U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, said last month.

Pillay said the draft law would breach international standards and it "proposes draconian punishments for people alleged to be lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered -- namely life imprisonment, or in some cases, the death penalty."

It could lead to a prison sentence of up to three years for anyone failing to report within 24 hours the identities of any lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgendered person, she added.

Uganda's Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo has said a revised law would probably limit the maximum penalty for those convicted to life in prison rather than execution.

Obama's statement against the Ugandan pending anti-gay policy is the strongest made by an American leader to date. The fact that he made it at the primary public event organized by the religious organization which gave aid and comfort to Uganda's discriminatory proposal is significant, not only because it rebukes Uganda, but also puts The Fellowship on notice that their days of influencing the presidency are waning.

Overall, Obama's remarks, in my opinion, can be seen as a call not only to Washington policemakers to step beyond rancor, but also to Americans, who, having become accustomed to being isolated from each other through increased usage of communication through Internet blogs and tweets, are becoming less civil and less caring and aware of each other's feelings.

Take the Long Way Home. Right.

One of the sixth-graders in the altercation in the Lamoni, Iowa, school lunchroom was the son of my family doctor. The other was my son, Jonathan. Both families went to church together every Sunday. It was an awkward situation, to say the least.

It was a fairly typical schoolboy fight. The other boy had deliberately knocked the food off my kid's cafeteria tray. My kid responded by smacking the other boy with the tray. The adults in charge didn't see what started it, but they saw the end of it. Consequently, Jonathan's mother and I were called and told that Jonathan was being suspended for the day.

I knew the other boy. While I liked and trusted his dad, I knew his son was a bullying piece of shit. When I got to the school, I camped out at the assistant principal's office and stayed there for 90 minutes. I did not raise my voice. I just very calmly refused to leave and switch from my position that if he was going to suspend one student for fighting, he should suspend the other.

His main argument was that Jonathan was the only child who was seen. I countered that it takes two to tango, a couple to quarrel, and that the other kid had been bullying my son on his walk home for some time. About halfway through the conversation, the assistant principal said he would look into it but for now Jonathan had to go home.

I needed to get back to work. I said I would be checking in on the matter tomorrow and started to rise.

Then the assistant principal made the remark that caused me to extend the conversation for another 45 minutues:

"You know, if your kid is being bullied on the way home, maybe he should choose another way to walk home."

I sat back down and the lecture began.

I informed him that my son had been given specific instructions about the shortest way home. This was an age where parents were being tormented by news stories of children kidnapped on the way home. Taking a different way home could put my child at risk. It would shorten the time he had after school to get his homework done, do his chores, and have some free time to play before dark. And he was, by the way, the victim in this situation.

It did not matter, I continued, whether any school official had observed the beginning of the fight. The other kid had a reputation for bullying other kids, including his own younger brothers. I could bring witnesses from our church who had seen the big brat in action. My kid was just the one who fought back and got caught. My kid said it was so, and that was that. We had raised him not to lie and he was a lousy liar, anyway, so he usually told the truth. And by the way, if my kid said he was the victim, he was the victim, and telling him to walk another way home --- against the wishes of his parents --- amounted to blaming the victim.

And furthermore, I said, I intend to stay here until I get a promise that the other kid will be suspended for as long as my kid is suspended. Protecting the bullies --- no matter how prominent a doctor their father may be --- is going to end today. Now, if you don't want to discuss it with me, Sir, I said, I can go home and get my son's mother. She has nothing better to do in her life than stand up for her child. She, like any decent mother, is like a mama lion when her child is threatened.

You don't, Sir, want to fuck with my son's mother, I said. She's not nice and calm and medicated like me. She will poke her finger in your chest and rip your chest hair off if you don't do the right thing toward our son. She's crazy that way.

There was a pause while the assistant principal digested this. He got up and excused himself. He did not return, but the principal herself --- a sweet-faced, stout woman who had been there for years and years --- came in and sat down in the assistant principal's chair. She explained that he had some urgent business and that she would be finishing the conversation.

I started to explain the situation to her. She stopped me by raising her hand in a "halt" signal.

"I know your son," she said. "I make it a point to know a little bit about all the children in this school. I don't know him well, but from what I've seen, he's a nice, gentle boy. Maybe a little bit of a loner. But he's not a troublemaker.

"And I also know the other kid and his family. Would you mind shutting the door a minute, Mr. Spires?"

I got up and shut the door and returned to my seat.

"Thank you. The other boy, well, let's just say, he's just like his father was. Maybe a little worse. He's a little piece of shit, if you'll excuse me for putting it that way."

I relaxed. She and I were going to get along just fine. The upshot of the conversation was that Jonathan would finish the day away from home and the other boy would be sent home tomorrow with a letter to his parents explaining his part in the altercation.

And then the principal added, "And your boy should keep walking home the way he always does if that's what you and he want him to do. The school is not responsible, of course, for what happens off the school grounds and he may continue to be bullied. But it's his right and your right to have him take the route you request. It was wrong of the assistant principal to suggest otherwise.

"We do not approve of bullies at our school, but there is only so much we can do about them. I can assure you that bullying will not be tolerated at the school, however, and you and your son can speak to me about any such incidents anytime."

I could see why she was the principal and why she had held onto her job for two generations.

That was when Jonathan was in the sixth grade, back in the early 1990s. He's now 27 and so is the other boy, if someone hasn't killed him in a drive-by shooting or if he hasn't been a victim of friendly fire in his own military platoon. It was a transitional time in public awareness of bullying. When I went through similar problems in the sixth grade, I was told by both my father and teachers that such experiences were a part of growing up for all boys and I should "man up" and learn to fight back.

Nowadays, in the aftermath of the Columbine High School school massacre and other such incidents resulting, in part, from kids snapping after being bullied by other kids, bullying is less tolerated by school officials and parents alike. With one exception.

The conservative propaganda machine Fox News, of all places, reported today that gay and lesbian teens are still bullied more than heterosexual kids. It reports a
new study shows these adolescents get bullied two to three times more than their heterosexual peers.

The Fox report notes that while the researchers aren't sure why this sexual minority gets bullied more than others or the type of bullying, which can include various verbal insults and physical assaults, they suggest in general those who are different from the social norm are often bully targets. Whatever the cause, the researchers say, the results have implications for parents and schools alike.

"Students, parents, schools and community organizations can work to create environments that are supportive and accepting of all students, regardless of their sexual orientation," said lead study author Dr. Elise Berlan, a physician in Adolescent Medicine at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Ohio and faculty member at Ohio State University. "Schools, in particular, need to work to increase the awareness of bullying."

The research adds to accumulating results on the topic of bullying, with studies showing kids who bully at school are more likely to do the same at home; workplace bullying can wreak havoc at the office and is worse than sexual harassment; and key nonverbal cues could identify children who are likely to be bullied and rejected by others.

The new results also suggest older kids are still vulnerable to bullies, even though past studies have shown the prevalence of bullying declines after middle-school years. Fox reports that lesbians and gays were the least likely to bully others, with none of the girls who identified as lesbian saying they had bullied others in the previous year.

The data analyzed by Berlan and her colleagues came from 2001 information collected in an ongoing study of American teens, which included more than 7,500 adolescents, ages 14 to 22. The participants were children of female registered nurses who took part in the Nurses' Health Study II, and they may not be representative of the general population. The results are published online in the January issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Of the male teens, about 0.5 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 1.4 percent as gay and 4.5 percent as "mostly heterosexual." For teen girls, 1.9 percent identified themselves as bisexual, 0.3 percent as lesbian, and 9.5 percent as mostly heterosexual. The rest reported they were heterosexual.

No group was immune to bullying. Nearly 44 percent of gay male participants said they had been bullied in the previous year, compared with 26 percent of heterosexuals who reported the same. For girls, 40 percent of lesbians indicated they had been bullied in the past year, while just over 15 percent of heterosexuals reported such. About 35 percent of bisexual and mostly homosexual guys had been bullied and about 25 percent of their female counterparts.

Scientists have known that gay, lesbian and bisexual kids are more likely than their peers to experience any kind of victimization, whether at school or in other parts of their lives, Berlan said. Now bullying can be added to the list.

"The importance of that is we know that it's not just that they're bullied and that's a normative experience for young people," Berlan said. "We know kids who are bullied have health consequences of those bullying experiences. Kids who are bullied are more likely to have physical and mental health problems."

Though the study didn't get at the content of bullying, some research has shown that regardless of the target's sexual orientation, bullies tend to spout disparaging homosexual content, according to Berlan.

To my knowledge, the doctor's son didn't say anything homophobic to my son Jonathan, whom I assume is not gay, although he, like all the kids who call me dad, has been called "queer," "faggot," "bitch" and other pejoratives by other kids at some point. It seems to be something that kids are learning early --- and learning that it's a way of getting under each other's skins.

In any case, there is a new generation of children coming along. Some are my daughter Tracy's kids, who call me Papaw James. The older ones know they have a gay grandpa, and some other gay family members, too. And to the credit of their parents, they won't be among the bullies who use "gay" as an epithet for other kids.

That's some comfort. But how long will it take before such good behavior is exhibited by a majority of kids toward each other?

Haitian Orphans and a Bunch of Baptist Dumbasses

The Associated Press photo of a group of frightened Baptist church women being held in a Haitian jail cell is very moving.

The women, part of a group of men and women from Central Valley Baptist Church in Idaho, were only trying to do the right thing: Rescue some orphans from the devastation of Haiti following last month's horrible earthquake.

People from around the world, like these women, have been moved by pictures and video of crying and injured children in Haiti and reports that many of them have lost their parents. These women, moved by their Christian faith --- and maybe just a little bit of Christian arrogance --- went to Haiti to "help the children". They ended up getting arrested for trying to smuggle the kids across the border into the Dominican Republic without a permit.

Today, according to Frank Bajak of the Associated Press, this group of missionaries faced more questioning by a local judge, while an orphanage director said many of the children had parents.

Bajak reported Haitian Minister Marie-Laurence Jocelyn Lassegue as saying the evidence from the judge will be presented to a Haitian district attorney who will decide whether to file criminal charges against the 10 Americans.

The Baptists reportedly claim they were only trying to help orphans survive the earthquake. But legal experts say taking children across a border without documents or government permission can be considered child trafficking.

And at the SOS Children's Village orphanage where authorities are protecting the 33 children, regional director Patricia Vargas said none who are old enough and willing to talk said they are parentless: "Up until now we have not encountered any who say they are an orphan." Vargas said most of the children are between 3 and 6 years old, and unable to provide phone numbers or any other details about their origins.

The Americans apparently enlisted a clergyman who went knocking on doors asking people if they wanted to give away their children, the director of Haiti's social welfare agency, Jeanne Bernard Pierre, told The Associated Press.

"One child said to me, 'When they came knocking on our door asking for children, my mom decided to give me away because we are six children and by giving me away she would have only five kids to care for,'" Bernard Pierre said, according to Bajak's report.

So here's the deal: A bunch of good-hearted Baptists, apparently sincere in their desire to "help" the Haitian orphans, decided they were above the law and just loaded a bunch of kids in a bus and drove off with them, presumably to place them in some nice Baptist homes in America or somewhere else.

And because it was easier to do it that way than deal with the bureaucratic paperwork that is made more difficult by the loss of records during the earthquake, the Baptists just decided to skip all that.

In the process, they've created an international incident, embarrassed themselves and their religion, and caused more stress for the kids they were trying to help.

This incident is very typical of the simplistic thinking of many fundamentalist religious types. They view the world in black and white --- "straights" are good, gays are bad; "Christians" have good intentions, "non-Christians" don't.

I had a friend a few years back who was a Presbyterian minister with a degrees in religion, theology and divinity from Princeton University. Obviously, a high-brow type, although he had a sense of humor. He told of having to deal with a small town ministerial association with an ecumenical mix of members. Some, like himself, had spent years getting their religious credentials from Methodist, Catholic, Episcopalian and other institutions of higher learning. Other participants were pastors of small fundamentalist or evangelical churches whose paths to the pulpit started with tent revivals and snake handling.

"We have a deal with them," he said. "We'll call them ministers if they promise to call us theologians. Of course, we have to teach some of them how to pronounce 'theologian'."

The Idaho Baptists, like so many on society's religious right wing, refused to acknowledge life's complexities and got themselves into trouble. They were impatient to "save" children and assumed, because they believe they have God on their side, that God would make it easy for them to just snatch up Haitian orphans like the prizes at an Easter Egg hunt and cart them off to a better life and salvation.

They were naive, to put it politely. Less charitable observers would call them dumbasses.

Did they really think that it would be easy for a group of amateurs to come in and fix one of Haiti's biggest problems in one swoop? Their ignorance of the island nation's troubled history is obvious --- it wasn't the earthquake that created all these orphans. Haiti is a ecobiological mess --- poverty, bad weather, few natural resources have plagued the country for centuries. There is very little birth control. People have their babies and when there are too many at home, many of the oldest ones are turned out on the streets, no matter how young they are.

Haiti's government --- embedded with corruption for decades --- has made some efforts to provide for orphans. There are government-run and private orphanages in the country. But, as one child welfare official put it in another news report after the earthquake --- "We only have room for a few hundred orphans. Before the earthquake, we were turning away 80 a day."

And that person was a director of an orphanage that had been destroyed by the earthquake. The children who survived were being sheltered --- and guarded from predators --- by a few employees of the destroyed building as the kids slept on the streets.

The misguided Idaho Baptists deserve kudos for the what appears to be a sincere desire to help. But they have just created more problems by their presumptions that they could be saviors.

According to the AP report, Prime Minister Max Bellerive has suggested the Americans could be prosecuted in the United States because Haiti's shattered court system may not be able to cope with a trial.

"It is clear now that they were trying to cross the border without papers. It is clear now that some of the children have live parents. And it is clear now that they knew what they were doing was wrong," Bellerive told the AP.

The White House has said the case remains in Haitian hands for now, according to the AP report. Apparently, the U.S., with its high unemployment, health care crisis, wars in the Middle East and prosecutions of assorted terrorists, has other legal priorities than having to deal with the headache of a bunch of religious loons who inadvertently committed an act that some might describe as kidnapping.

The Lessons We Don't Learn on the Playground

I was one of those kids who got his school lunch money stolen, who was shoved into school lockers, who was last picked in gym class, and who had his books knocked out of his arms when he walked down the school halls.

I was one of those kids whose name was used when mean girls, wanting to hurt another girl, wrote notes that said "Carol likes him." "Susan kisses him." "Linda wants to marry him."

I also was a kid who, at age 15, was dragged into a car one night by four "straight" older boys, driven around and beaten up and forced to perform oral sex while the assailants forcibly masturbated me.

From the moment I entered first grade through most of high school, education was a living hell for me. By fifth grade,it became obvious that even my teacher, Mrs. Bonna Teichert, regarded me with the same contempt as my classmates --- and in fact, her contempt fed the students' contempt and dislike. Somewhere around that point, I stopped wondering why everybody hated me and just went through the days of my life wanting to survive. By junior high, if Reba McEntire's song, "I Can't Even Get the Blues No More," had been written, I would have adopted it as my theme song.

By ninth grade, when the rape incident occurred, I knew there was something wrong with me. I knew that I had been sexually assaulted because of some kind of behavior of my own and I accepted that. I also decided to change myself as best I could. It was too late to become a jock, but I could at least start dressing like one. I changed the way I walked and talked as best I could, and I made sure I had a girlfriend at all times.

When an older girl asked me to take her to the senior prom, I said I would if she would fuck me and talk about it. Apparently the offer was enticing to her because she did. By my senior year, I was outwardly as straight as they come.

After high school, I married --- twice --- and breeded, lots of times. In addition to the two wives, there are assorted baby mamas out there, at least one of whom sent our son Patrick out on a mission to find his real dad --- me --- after he came out as a gay man. When he showed up on my doorstep, I was surprised --- his mother had neglected to tell either him or me that we existed.

I have only one son who was in my arms on the day he was born. There are other children, adopted and fostered, but the only son who was born during one of my marriages is Jonathan, who is now a 27-year-old college student majoring in mass communication, just like his dad. God help him.

Jonathan, like me, was a very happy, sunny-dispositioned child until he got into school. And then he started to experience some of the same things I did --- while he would have some friends, there were other kids who just didn't like him. One kid in particular --- a boy two years older who came from a very different, less stable family background from Jonathan --- went out of his way to beat up Jonathan on the playground. Jonathan, who had been taught by his parents that fighting was wrong, would just take it and come home crying.

I finally told him he had a right to defend himself, even though the school's policy was to paddle all participants in a playground fight, no matter who was the aggressor and who was the victim.

The next day, Jonathan beat the shit out of the older boy. The adults supervising the playground said that he was still swinging when they yanked him off the kid. He got paddled, and took it like a man.

And he was never the same sunny kid that he had been. His grades went down. He rebuffed attempts at friendship. Today, he's regarded as a gentle, sweet-natured guy and is genuinely liked and respected by his professors and fellow college students whom he lets get close to him. But he's still a loner --- a pattern that looks to be his for the rest of his life.

I read a report, "Studies Reveal Why Kids Get Bullied and Rejected," this morning by a writer named Robin Nixon, a contributor to LiveScience.com. Nixon writes that kids who get bullied and snubbed by peers may be more likely to have problems in other parts of their lives, past studies have shown. And now researchers have found at least three factors in a child's behavior that can lead to social rejection.

The factors, apparently, involve a child's inability to pick up on and respond to nonverbal cues from their pals.

According to Nixon's article, in the United States, 10 to 13 percent of school-age kids experience some form of rejection by their peers. In addition to causing mental health problems, bullying and social isolation can increase the likelihood a child will get poor grades, drop out of school, or develop substance abuse problems, the researchers say.

Nixon quotes Clark McKown, lead researcher at the Rush Neurobehavioral Center in Chicago as saying this public health issue is "under-addressed."

According to the study, unstructured playtime - when children interact without the guidance of an authority figure - is when children experiment with the relationship styles they will have as adults. It is a time when kids are on their own and are winging it without much knowledge of the basic rules of operating in society. They make mistakes in the way they deal with each other --- usually unintentional.

I can see that. I avoided contact with my fellow classmates for nearly 30 years after graduation --- a time in which I became a Type A control freak, always needing to be in charge of all aspects of my life, especially those parts that affected my self-image. It resulted in an emotional breakdown at age 40 and some time spent in counseling, during which I finally acknowledged that despite all my efforts to appear otherwise, I was a gay man.

Even after that acknowledgment, I continued to have problems. I started having nightmares about being back in high school. I would be a man in my 40s, but everyone else looked just as they did in the 1960s.

In 1999, I forced myself to go to my 30th class reunion. At this event, I realized that I was not the only one who had aged. The mean girls had turned into mothers and young grandmothers. The boys, like me, had thinning hair and soft waistlines. Everyone seemed --- mellower. One of the more popular mean girls actually came up to me and apologized for something she remembered doing to me that I had completely forgotten.

"I was so scared all the time," she said. "I hurt people before they hurt me." And she was a cheerleader, I thought. She was popular.

And some of them told me they were intimidated by me. I always seemed so confident in high school, they said. Always had a girl on my arm. Always seemed to know what I was doing and what I wanted out of life.

Apparently, I had been something of a "mean girl," too. I learned my lessons well.

In the study reported on by Robin Nixon, 284 children, ages 4 to 16 years old, watched movie clips and looked at photos before judging the emotions of the actors based on their facial expressions, tones of voice and body postures. Various social situations were also described and the children were questioned about appropriate responses.

The results were then compared to parent/teacher accounts of the participants' friendships and social behavior.

Kids who had social problems also had problems in at least one of three different areas of nonverbal communication: reading nonverbal cues; understanding their social meaning; and coming up with options for resolving a social conflict.

A child, for example, simply may not notice a person's scowl of impatience or understand what a tapped foot means. Or she may have trouble reconciling the desires of a friend with her own, according to the report.

When children have prolonged struggles with socializing, it creates a vicious cycle. Shunned children have few opportunities to practice social skills, while popular kids are busy perfecting theirs. The researchers concluded that just having one or two friends can help a child develop the social skills he needs.

Parents, teachers and other adults in a child's life can help, too, Nixon reported. Instead of reacting with anger or embarrassment to a child who, say, asks Aunt Mindy if her new hairdo was a mistake, parents should teach social skills with the same tone they use for teaching long division or proper hygiene. If presented as a learning opportunity, rather than a punishment, children usually appreciate the lesson.

I'm a believer that kids, whether minors or adults, have to learn how to deal with their own mistakes. But it's hard not to want to protect them. When Jonathan started withdrawing from contact with other kids, it broke my heart, because I knew EXACTLY what he was going through. In junior high, he would come home every day complaining about some kids not leaving him alone. One day, I took some time off work and went to the playground during the lunch break. Sure enough, two boys started following Jonathan around and making comments behind his back. At one point, he started running to get away from them and they started running in pursuit.

At that point, I got out of my car and walked onto the playground. I am a big man and I was a bigger man then. I took long strides through the hordes of children on the playground and grabbed both of my son's pursuers by their coats and took them to the principal's office with Jonathan following us.

I made all three boys tell their versions of what had happened. Jonathan said, "I just wanted to be left alone."

The other two boys said they didn't realize Jonathan wanted to be left alone and that they hadn't intended to hurt him. Just tease him a little because he always kept to himself.

The principal, who was a friend of mine and knew that Jonathan had a crazy dad, smiled and said he would handle it from there. Apparently some discussions about social boundaries took place. Jonathan was advised that not everyone is his enemy and the other two were told to respect other people's rights to privacy.

No further incidents were reported. But Jonathan still has issues with trusting other people, even though he makes what are obviously painful efforts to socialize. He is just one of those people who, for whatever reasons, is happier being alone.

It breaks my heart sometimes, but at this point, it has to be his choice about how he wants to live his life. I see him acting out many of the same behaviors I went through, just in different ways. I liked having people around me, but didn't let them close. He seems to just like being alone because it's easier --- human interaction is messy and he likes his life tidy. I guess all that yelling about him needing to clean his room sank in, although it's his life, not his dorm room, that stays sparse and free of clutter.

More than 800 service members could lose jobs under DOMA while Obama administration dithers

Dumb right-wing joke of the day: What special weapons do gay soldiers receive as standard equipment?

Answer: A Swish-Army Knife.

Can someone explain to me why the U.S. government needs a YEAR to STUDY the U.S. military's very stupid "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy when top officials of the U.S. government have already stated their beliefs that it is a dumb policy that never should have been implemented in the first place?

Members of the gay and gay supportive communities across the nation this week were heartened when President Obama, in his State of the Union address last week, called for an end to the 17-year-old policy that has cost an estimated 14,000 gay and lesbian American military personnel their jobs. However, their reaction was cautiously optimistic at best, considering the Obama administration in its first year pretty much adopted a policy of putting the interests of the gay and lesbian community --- which played a big part in helping elect Obama and increasing the Democrat majorities in Congress --- on the back burner.

And their caution has proven wise: This week, while not backing away from the announced plan to end "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," the administration's officials has proven once again that its primary modus operandi, at least toward the gay community, is well-intentioned dithering and delays.

Today, national news wires are reporting that U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he wants Congress to repeal the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy by the end of the year. Great news, that on the surface reemphasizes Team Obama's apparent desire to make things right with a large voting group of Americans that has traditionally voted for the president's party.

HOWEVER ...

Gates also told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he has appointed a "high-level working group" to identify and solve potential issues surrounding the removal of the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the armed forces. And it's estimated that it will take a YEAR for the group to make its recommendations.

Why a year? Opponents of DADT are rightly asking that question. The policy was first imposed by a presidential order made by President Clinton in 1993 --- one of the first orders of his newly-installed administration. Doesn't President Obama have equal authority, as commander-in-chief of the military, to rescind that order?

The answer lies in four numbers which just happen to be the current year: 2010. This year is an election year. While the president himself is not up for re-election, all of the House of Representatives and a third of the U.S. Senate are. And since gay rights issues of any kind tend to be a hot button issue that the Republicans use to their advantage by fanning voter homophobia, it's going to be politically risky business to make this obviously needed change at this time.

Let's see, the president made his announcement on Jan. 20. And today, Feb. 2, Secretary Gates is saying that "a year" is needed to work out the kinks in DADT. That would mean that under the current timetable, there would be no effect on DADT until 2011 --- after the fall election. Is it possible that the delaying move is an attempt to mitigate voter fallout for the Democrats?

If the estimated figure of 14,000 people in the past year who have lost their military jobs because of DADT is true, that would mean that during the coming year --- while Obama, Gates and the "high-level working group" dither and stall the de-implementation of the homophobic policy --- there is still time for roughly 824 American gay and lesbian service members to lose their jobs. That's 824 people, all presumably without any other blemishes on their service records, who could be outed by a policy that most observers, regardless of political persuasion, agree is not working very well, and also having a great effect on all branches of military service during a time of war. Military recruitment has been down, down, down in recent years. The branches of the service cannot afford to lose service personnel who have done nothing wrong except be born gay or lesbian.

There can be no other reason for delaying the end of DADT other than politics. And stupid politics, at that. The people who are going to oppose the end of DADT will do so anyway, so there will be very little gained by delaying. And support for the Obama administration, after one year in office, has dwindled in no small part because of its neglect of a core group of supporters from the gay and lesbian community. One way to get the gay and lesbian public opinion poll numbers up could be a bold and quick move on repealing DADT.

In other words, delaying DADT means no gains and the people who are annoyed by the current administration will continue to be annoyed. Speeding up the removal of DADT means the possibility of regaining some political ground with people who are rapidly becoming disenchanted.

One reason Gates has stated for the delay and the need for the study by the "high-level working group" is that there are a number of issues surrounding an appeal, including questions such as what timeline would make the most sense and whether the Pentagon would begin offering benefits for gay and lesbian partners of military members.

This is all good, but it can still take place after the presidential order. The commander-in-chief can make an order any time he wants to and has plenty of bureaucratic underlings beneath him who can work out the details. That's the way it worked back in 1993, when President Clinton issued the order.

One of the most clinging criticisms of President Obama in the past year is his tendency to call for consensus, to bring as many people into the decision-making process as possible. This amounts to tossing one bone out for all the dogs in a neighborhood to fight over. It just creates chaos. Sometimes consensus is good --- and sometimes a president needs to be presidential and lead.

Defense Secretary Gates says military officials will report back to him in 45 days on ways to relax the policy within the existing law. What are they going to report? What are they going to recommend? That all U.S. military bases will have to build news special shower stalls --- some for the lesbians and some for the gays, so all the straights won't have to worry about being seen naked by openly queer military personnel? That goes back to the discredited presumptions of the mid-20th century that all homosexual people are sexual predators.

U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, who chairs the senate Armed Services committee said he supports the change.

"I agree with what President Obama said in his State of the Union address," Levin was quoted as saying. "The American public overwhelmingly supports the rights of gays and lesbians to serve openly in the military."

Levin and other lawmakers haven't laid out any specific plans for outright repeal of the law, but he did say it was possible a moratorium on the policy could be added to the National Defense Authorization spending bill before Congress.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada, usually the ultimate pragmatist, is on record as saying that a delay in doing away with DADT is unnecessary and that it should be done "now."

"I don't see why we would need a year," Reid said.

U.S. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., whose wife Cindy and daughter Megan are both active supporters of gay rights issues, is an opponent of the repeal. McCain said at the hearing that he was disappointed by Gates' plans to begin planning for the repeal, and indicated he intends to oppose any Congressional move to change the policy. He and other Republicans on the committee cited a letter signed by more than 1,000 former military officials -- dubbed the Flag & General Officers of the Military -- who called for the policy to remain in effect, citing concerns over "morale, discipline, unit cohesion and overall military readiness."

While McCain is a decorated hero of the Vietnam war and is usually deferred to because of his war record, his judgment has not always been flawless. When he ran for president against Obama in 2008, his first decision as a candidate --- to select former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, an inexperienced social conservative whose main appeal was to the extremist fringe of the Republican party and not to more independent voters, as his running mate --- proved to be one of the main reasons he was defeated: He is not in touch with the majority of Americans. McCain would be better off touching base with his wife and daughter on issues relating to gay people and civil rights.

Supporters of the repeal questioned the need for such a long timetable before making the reversal official, according to a news report filed by Nathan Hurst of the Detroit News' Washington Bureau.

"We strongly applaud (Secretary) Gates supporting the President's view that (Don't Ask, Don't Tell) needs to go," said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network. "It's a matter of when and how, he said, not if."

The "when" should be immediately and not a year from now. We need the gay and lesbian service members currently serving their country honorably.