Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

While enjoying a very good game between my beloved St. Louis Cardinals and the Atlanta Braves this evening, I was struck by comments made by the Fox Sports Midwest announcing crew.  Al Hrabosky and Rick Horton were covering the game this evening, and made a point of lifting up the success of Braves’ pitching coach Roger McDowell for the success of a very young Atlanta pitching staff.  While this credit is no doubt deserved, I found myself taking exception with comments made to the effect that McDowell was an “example” for his young players.  After his inexcusable behavior earlier this season prior to a game against the San Francisco Giants in which he made homophobic comments and gestures towards fans (actions for which he was suspended and fined by Major League Baseball), McDowell shouldn’t be paid the compliment of being an “example.”

And frankly, if we want to see positive change made surrounding the bigotry, we need to hold our media and its personalities accountable for lapses such as this.  So I’ve emailed the booth live during the game (through the FSMidwest website) and sent the following email to their rather generic contact email: midwest@foxsports.net.  I hope you’ll take a moment to draft your own letter – feel free to lift liberally from mine if that’s helpful – and make it clear that we won’t accept the excusing of bigoted behavior in the public square.

To the staff at Fox Sports Midwest, a letter to the broadcast team for the September 9, 2011 game between the St. Louis Cardinals and the Atlanta Braves.

Dear Mr. Hrabosky and Mr. Horton,

I want to thank you for your well informed and enjoyable coverage of the game this evening.  I’m a die-hard Cardinals fan and look forward to tuning in every chance that I have.  However, this evening I was disappointed by your praise for Braves’ pitching coach Roger McDowell.  While his record as a player is strong and it is hard to argue with his results considering the youth of the Atlanta pitching staff, I have to take exception with your comments lifting him up as an example for the team.  His behavior earlier this season in San Francisco for which he was suspended and fined by Major League Baseball for homophobic comments and gestures is not the type of example I would like to see set for young players or for young fans of the game.  While we all understand that there are certain provisions of the old “gentleman’s game” that allow for less than gentlemanly behavior, this type of bigotry should never be applauded, and surely should not be lifted up as an example.

I don’t expect a personal response, nor do I necessarily expect that any retraction or further comment will be made, but I feel personally that it is necessary to bring this contradiction to light regarding your words concerning Mr. McDowell.

Respectfully,
Clint Collins

It’s long past time that we demand accountability from our public figures.

I am an atheist.  Sure lots of people have heard me talk about God, write favorable things about God, pray and worship.  And it was all sincere.  Still I am an atheist.  I’m an atheist the way the members of the early church were atheistic.  Atheism was one of the central charges officials of the Roman Empire made against Christians.  They were vilified for “irreligiosities” and “sacrilegium.”  Christians were regarded atheists because they rejected the gods of the state.  They refused to honor the religion of the empire.  The charge of atheism was at least as much – if not more – about politics as it was religious.

I am an atheist in the same way.  I reject the religion of the state, the civil religion.  This religion is expressed in the national motto “In God We Trust” which is printed on currency.  It is found in the words of the Pledge of Allegiance, “under God.”  It is expressed in the incessantly evoked phrase, “God Bless America.”  It is reflected in the claims of those who say that the constitution was inspired by God. It finds its way into speeches of politicians and proclamations of Presidents.  This god is more form than substance, more decoration than an expression of spiritual depth.

Consequently, I can’t fret alongside those who fear that the word “God” will be dropped from the Pledge of Allegiance.  I don’t share the concern of those who worry that “In God We Trust” won’t appear prominently enough on coins.  I have no investment in such things and wonder why any Christian would see them as important.  I don’t believe in the god of flag pledges and national mottos.  Such a god is not the God revealed in Jesus Christ.

Read the rest of this article here.

Craig M. Watts in the minister of Royal Palm Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) in Coral Springs, Florida, a member of the DPF Executive Committee and the author of the book Disciple of Peace: Alexander Campbell on Pacifism, Violence and the State (Indianapolis: Doulos Christou Press, 2005).

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Is it just me, or was this a lackluster Super Bowl year for you, too? No, no, not the game – the commercials! I didn’t really find myself just terribly amused by any of them. The E*Trade baby is getting old, the monkeys are beyond passe, and beer sales must be flat since Budweiser commercials keep getting fewer and less funny. Of course, at a reported $3 million per 30 second slot, what’s to laugh about? These commercials have become big business for all the companies involved, and have evolved into a form of “high” entertainment for the rest of us. But I have to ask myself, what’s the messages lying just underneath all the laughter?

E*Trade wants us to laugh away the economic crisis of the last three years and forget that it was financial institutions just like E*Trade that played a part in the pushing of subprime loans, the commoditizing of bad debt, and the uncontrollable orgy of imaginary wealth creation that led to this flat-lining economy. Hollywood wants you to continue to ignore reality by flocking to theaters to pay for previews and a grand collection of unoriginal movie remakes that will fill the marquee this season. Oh, and don’t forget that GM/OnStar want you to think that it’s not only safe, but necessary that you be able to update your Facebook status while driving in your car. Has our culture really come to this?

When our focus on a Sunday has turned to a football game, what we’re planning on eating during it, and whether or not its multi-million dollar commercials will entertain us, I’m left to wonder about a perhaps even more important set of priorities: has our faith really come to this? I remember being entertained a few years back by the commercial for some financial services group with 30 seconds of monkeys jumping around saying something like, “We just wasted $2 million – what are you doing with your money?” Now I’m wondering, why we couldn’t build enough interest to convince these companies to boycott these outlandish outlays and spend the estimated $3 million on something that will make a difference? Like financial institutions using that money to restructure bad loans so their mortgage clients can stay in their homes, or car companies putting that money into energy efficiency research so we might save fuel and make our commute a little more green? I’d like to ask a lot of companies what they could do with $3 million.

And I’d like to ask all of us as Christians: if we put our money where our mouth is, what is it saying?

Seeking God’s justice in a new year,
Clint

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It seems that the idea of “belief” has become the battleground for the question of faith. If you are not a “bible- believing” Christian who “believes” in God, or more specifically, the God that fundamentalist Christians uphold, then you are not a real Christian. Or, if you “believe” in any form of mystery outside the bounds of scientific inquiry, as the equally loud and belligerent fundamentalist atheists suggest, then you are a delusional, intellectual lightweight who has fallen victim to a fairy tale. Being someone who claims neither of these positions, I find myself in the sometimes problematic place of making my own meaning – and I suspect that for many of us, we face the same dilemma.

The problem for many of us, is that we are Christians, followers of Jesus, but we don’t understand it in the same way as the Christian fundamentalist camp. And equally problematic, we sometimes agree with some of the scientific principles of atheist fundamentalists, but can’t follow them to their rather narrow conclusions regarding that which we cannot know. So here we are, somewhere in the middle between these two (very close-minded) extremes, and the problem of making meaning (sometimes translated as faith) becomes very real.

As smart as I’d like to believe I am, there is no way that I can resolve this problem in the course of one pastor’s column – it’s doubtful that I can even resolve this for myself in the course of a lifetime – but I think we can begin learning how to live in this middle. I think it begins by starting to stake out the frontiers of what “faith” means to us, and this was a project I alluded to during last week’s sermon on the nature of “Epiphany,” or the revelation of God. This week, I’d like to continue working on those frontiers, by taking an approach similar to the “This I Believe” project that you might have heard on NPR. I plan to engage in a set of sermons that will present some ideas about what I believe, and what I do not believe, and most importantly – how it applies to that whole “faith” question.

And I’d like to get all of you involved in the process as well, so come join us on Sunday and be prepared with your own thoughts on “this I believe,” and equally as valuable, “this I don’t believe.” I’ll see you at church.

Seeking God’s justice in a new year,
Clint

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War is brutal and impersonal … If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be harder to embrace the myth of war.

- Chris Hedges, columnist at TruthDig

Frame grabs from a video posted on WikiLeaks.org, showing a U.S. Army Apache helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad on July 12, 2007. UPI/WikiLeaks.org Photo via Newscom Content © 2010 Newscom

The fog of war has cleared to reveal a storm of controversy raging around the publication of a classified video footage of an attack by U.S. Army Apache helicopters against Iraqis in 2007. The air strike resulted in the wounding of two children and the death of at least a dozen people, including two Reuters employees, Namir Noor-Eldeen and Saeed Chmagh. In Dialogic’s News and Analysis section, we took a look at the discussion from around the blogosphere. However, the narrative begs further discussion as to what it says about our society and culture.

While the responses to the attack range from moral outrage to unqualified support, I want to highlight a middle voice. Anthony Martinez, writing at his personal blog, A Look Inside, gives us his response to events of the video. Claiming his experience as both an infantryman on the ground as well as hours spent at consoles directing aerial traffic in Iraq, he offers what I feel is a thoughtful and mediated response to the events of this helicopter strike:

All in all, the engagement clearly went bad. I would have objected when I was a private first-class pulling triple duty as an RTO, driver, and vehicle gunner. I would have objected when I was a sergeant working well above my pay-grade as the Brigade Battle NCO. My assessment is based on my experiences in that very theater of operations. I did not see a threat that warranted an engagement at any point. I did, however, see the elements indicating such a threat could develop at any moment. (note: As I did, in fact, already know several things about the situation when I viewed this footage I cannot say with any certainty that had I viewed the exact same footage at the time of the incident that I would not have concluded the camera was an RPG as well.) People can make their judgements however they wish, but what is clearly visible is not the entire picture.

In my non-professional tactical opinion, I tend to agree with Martinez. The threat wasn’t imminent, but there was definitely the potential for one to develop. This is the fog of war — the complexities of modern warfare* that this video reveals to us. The new battlefield fails to provide a clear enemy or even limit itself to a bounded “field of battle,” choosing instead to spill into the ambiguity of urban areas where combat zones and homes occupy the same place; where insurgents and innocents routinely wear the same clothing. War no longer takes place on the grand battlefields of some bygone “Stratego” age of Napoleonic armies facing off in remote locations with colorful uniforms and flags to clearly delineate friend or foe, civilian or military. Writing for The American Prospect, Matthew Yglesias puts the problem on the ground into perspective:

It’s not that our troops are bad people. It’s that war is dangerous. The consequences of not pulling the trigger when you think you see someone swinging a rocket launcher in the direction of your helicopter are extremely severe — you die. Your friends die. On the flip side, the consequences of being a bit too trigger-happy are, of course, terrible for the people who wind up dead and bad for the mission but not so severe for you personally.

In a way, this video reminds us of the brutality of the wars in which we as a nation are engaged. A caller’s comments on Talk of the Nation highlight the unfortunate surprise we seem to receive every time the gruesome experience of war comes home to confront us and our relative safety. When asked by host Neal Conan what he had learned from the video, the caller responded:

Well, I guess I – what I think mostly, it’s how far removed we are from that world and how it isn’t on our radar and basically, how I feel we bury our heads in the sand and we don’t hear about it. And when something like this comes out, it’s very clear that things are going on that we’re not really tied into.

What the caller describes as a type of head-in-the-sand ignorance, Tom Engelhardt at Tomdispatch.com equates to a form of Olympian arrogance. Noting that we as a nation have not lived the experience of war in our own neighborhoods, he discards the argument that we suffer from a failure of imagination, describing it instead as a failure of empathy, driven by romantic notions of our role in the world:

We prefer to think of their deaths as so many accidents or mistakes — “collateral damage” — when they are the norm, not the exception, not what’s collateral in such wars. We prefer to imagine ourselves bringing the best (of values and intentions) to a backward, ignorant world and so invariably make ourselves sound far kindlier than we are. Like the gods of Olympus, we have a tendency to flatter ourselves … while creating a language of war that suits our tender sensibilities about ourselves.

Military personnel are trained to create psychological distance between themselves and their enemies, providing them with the ability to override their natural refusal to kill a fellow human being. Perhaps we at home suffer from our own form of distance, removed from the harsh realities of warfare. Aided by Yglesias’ charge that this new type of warfare shields the public from its harsh reality, we may be seduced by a more sanitized understanding of combat, where terms like “collateral damage” damage hide the stark reality that people are dying. Chris Hedges, a veteran war correspondent elegantly describes the inelegance of war and how it is represented to us back at home:

Filmic and most photographic images of war are shorn of the heart-pounding fear, awful stench, deafening noise and exhaustion of the battlefield. Such images turn confusion and chaos, the chief element of combat, into an artful war narrative. They turn war into porn … This is why we are given war’s perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war’s consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining. And the press is as guilty as Hollywood.

It is this artful narrative of war that is undermined by the ambiguous reality presented in leaked videos such as this one. We are allowed to see the messiness of the battlefield, a place where cameramen mingle with combatants, that frustrates the myth of war as a glorious and good. Instead of a necessary evil that occasionally leads to “collateral damage,” we learn that war is always marred by indiscriminate violence. This video reminds us that we cannot neatly package our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan into a simple, sanitary box and push it into the recesses of our minds. Instead, videos like this remind us that the price of war is always more than we bargain for.

The question that confronts us now is: how do we respond?

Will we continue to bury the real price of war between our incessant debates between left and right, hawk and dove, conservative and liberal, as people continue to die in our name? Will we chastise these helicopter pilots for making crude jokes and callous remarks in order to ignore the thought that day in and day out, our soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen continue to suffer the dehumanization of combat because we sanction it – or worse, because we demand it? Will we continue to deny the connection between our national self-interest and our rapacious appetite for resources and wealth that implicates us in the deaths portrayed in this video, along with countless others?

Or will we overcome our ignorance, set aside our arrogance, and grasp our inherent agency to become peacemakers and work toward a just and equitable world where we might put an end to our need for violence and war?

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* In reality, we should probably be using the term postmodern warfare given that combat now blurs the clear boundaries of the modern nation-state. Combat takes place between large, militarized nations and small, covert insurgent groups that claim no certain political nationalities and do not play by what they see as the arbitrary geopolitical “rules” of the modern era.

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These past few weeks and months have been interesting on the political scene. The national picture has witnessed massive legislative and foreign policy shifts that will likely mark significant changes in how we understand ourselves as a nation. And while this may turn out to be a good thing, in the short run it may leave us feeling uncertain, unsettled, and perhaps even confused. For some, this is already the case, and the results have become chaotic.

The recent reports of violence should be quite disturbing to us as Christians. Vandalism of congressional offices and private homes – even a potential anthrax threat to a U.S. Representative – mark a rise in what can only be described as hateful acts. While I am sympathetic to the idea that many people have great concerns about the changing political landscape (meaning most specifically health care reform), I find myself in disbelief every time I turn to the news and receive yet another report of violence in response to a Congressional bill.

All of this has only served to turn me back to my bible and reread the words and stories of Jesus. I’m reminded of that great commandment, where Jesus reminds us to love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength – and the equally important second part, to love neighbor as self. It seems that this should speak with clarity to the present situation: we’re not always going to agree, but we are all children of God, and we need to recognize that in one another.

However, as I was contemplating this even further, I was struck by another aspect of Jesus – his numerous associations with tax collectors. There are perhaps no better examples of someone becoming that dreaded “other” than a fellow Hebrew who would “turn traitor” and work for the Roman occupational government. Yet even here, Jesus defied the going discourse of distrust and made friends with tax collectors. (Matthew and Zaccheus come quickly to mind.)

It occurs to me that we are in a period of cultural instability and political change, and this is becoming uncomfortable for everyone, both for and against. And as a religious leader, I’m reminded on a daily basis that this climate of hostility and sometimes even hatred calls for us as Christians to live out our faith principles even as we live out our political principles. We don’t all have to agree with one another about health care, or immigration reform, or whatever the issue of the day may be, but we are called to disagree with one another in a manner that respects our common dignity and humanity.

Living the hope of resurrection,

Clint

The language of violence always presages violence. I watched it in war after war from Latin America to the Balkans. The impoverishment of a working class and the snuffing out of hope and opportunity always produce angry mobs ready to kill and be killed. A bankrupt, liberal elite, which proves ineffectual against the rich and the criminal, always gets swept aside, in times of economic collapse, before thugs and demagogues emerge to play to the passions of the crowd. I have seen this drama. I know each act. I know how it ends. I have heard it in other tongues in other lands. I recognize the same stock characters, the buffoons, charlatans and fools, the same confused crowds and the same impotent and despised liberal class that deserves the hatred it engenders.

“We are ruled not by two parties but one party,” Cynthia McKinney, who ran for president on the Green Party ticket, told me. “It is the party of money and war. Our country has been hijacked. And we have to take the country away from those who have hijacked it. The only question now is whose revolution gets funded.”

Read the rest of the article.

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Last week the Pentagon made a not entirely unexpected move to raise the standards for prosecution of military personnel under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy. Not surprisingly, voices within the military immediately began creating a stir about issues of conscience and freedom of religion, using the same tired logic surrounding hate crimes legislation here in Oklahoma. This was paralleled by the logistical argument enunciated by Air Force Gen. Norton A. Schwartz while testifying before Congress, in which he asked that legislators not “perturb the force” in time of war. While I have a difficult time understanding how the removal of over 13,000 service members under DADT since its inception doesn’t qualify as perturbing the force, especially considering that over 800 of those removed from service had critical skills such as Arabic, I find it even more frustrating that those opposed to removing this unjust policy continue to trot out the same collection of unfounded arguments. Ruth Marcus at TruthDig appears to share my frustrations:

WASHINGTON - MARCH 18: People sign their names during a rally in support of a repeal of the 'Don't Ask, Don t Tell' policy March 18, 2010 at the Freedom Plaza in Washington, DC. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

Perturb the force? Of course, the same arguments could be—in fact, they were—made about racial integration. It is particularly infuriating that the generals would invoke the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as an excuse for not lifting the ban. If anything, “don’t ask, don’t tell” has been an impediment to the military during these operations. In an era of stop-loss recalls because forces have been stretched so thin, thousands of service members have been discharged because of their sexuality.

Yet the problem with these arguments is that “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is far more than a logistical matter. Even though Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen is correct to be “troubled” by a policy that “forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens,” the issues that he and the Congress are failing to consider are the personal ramifications of this policy. Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point grad and Arabic linguist who was discharged for outing himself, points out how DADT cuts much deeper than military politics:

“What’s inhumane about ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is the fact that soldiers have to lie. It’s the only federal policy that enforces shame, particularly because these are soldiers willing to risk their lives to protect America … The fundamental reason to get rid of ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ is that it sacrifices, violates and compromises the integrity of all soldiers, not just gay soldiers.”

However, we must acknowledge that the problems created by this policy extend far beyond the scope of the military. The social ramifications of DADT speak directly to the heart of the discourse over sexuality in the national culture. Bradford Schmidt at Technorati sheds light on the broader issue:

“Don’t ask, don’t tell” is not just an invasion into the private thoughts and lives of American servicemen and women, it’s a federal policy that defines the relative worth of human beings based on how they live their private lives and whom they chose to love … It is absolutely indefensible that a time when human beings are still berated, insulted, discriminated against, and beaten because of their sexuality, there are laws on the books that reaffirm in the minds of bigots everywhere that gay men and women have less value than straight men and women.

This devaluing of human life carries real freight in the social and cultural discourse. It functions like a double edged sword that cuts the LGBTQIA community in both directions. While codifying “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” provides a legal justification for bigotry and hatred, it also stabs at the heart of community and dialogue. As Leyla Farah at Cause+Effect points out, the ability to share one’s stories is critical:

At a basic level, it could be argued that our community only exists as a function of our personal, shared stories. LGBT people grow up, often with a vague feeling that we’re somehow different, but we’re not sure why. We come out, often in turmoil and fear. We live and love, often in the face of real danger and hardship.

It’s these shared experiences, and our varied and personal stories about our journeys through them, that form the foundation of our community. We don’t share gender or skin color or geography or language. There’s nothing visibly apparent that binds us together. It is the telling of our stories – and our ability to find ourselves in each others experiences – that makes us who we are.

When we can neither ask about, nor tell, our stories we are effectively cut off from community. We are robbed of our ability to connect with one another. We are left isolated and vulnerable.

Whether President Obama addresses the military policy or not … the fact remains that LGBT people must have the right, and the ability, to tell our stories before we can truly make progress.

This is a sad reminder that the power of discourse belongs to those who control the discourse. As Farah reminds us, people of varying sexual orientations are simply seeking safe space in which to create communities where stories might be shared and identity might be explored. Unfortunately, the hetero majority continues to use policies like DADT to enforce the arbitrary binaries of “gay” and “straight,” and in doing so freezes not only the discourse between both communities, but the internal discourse within these communities as well. Simply unclenching the fist of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” isn’t good enough. Now we have to extend the open hand of dialogue in mutuality and respect.

Oklahoma currently has tough, good laws that include hate crimes laws. Any murder or brutal assault is hateful. That is the problem with singling out something more with this federal law.  I believe this legislation far exceeds the powers of government over states as outlined in the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.  I am also very concerned that this loosely defined and ill-conceived legislation could be used to target people’s belief, freedom to associate in groups, right to assemble on issues, as well as target people’s right to free speech.

The Oklahoma State Capitol building. (Photo by Daniel Mayer, used under Creative Commons 3.0)

What Russell fails to mention is that Oklahoma’s current statute does not include a victim’s actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity as motivations for a hate crime.  In his rush to defend the privileges of the empowered, Senator Russell runs roughshod over the basic human rights of members of the LGBTQIA community.  As a commenter on my previous post pointed out, the failure to prosecute the perpetrators of hate crimes creates an environment of fear that robs all potential victims of an ideologically motivated crime of their very human dignity.  The Leadership Conference provides another devastating example of the non-prosecution of hate crimes in their publication, Confronting the New Face of Hate: Hate Crimes in America 2009:

In Greenville, South Carolina on May 21, 2007, Sean Kennedy, a gay man, died of injuries sustained after he was attacked outside a bar. While making derogatory comments regarding Kennedy’s sexual orientation, the assailant fatally beat and punched him until he fell, hitting his head on the pavement. The killer was originally charged with murder, but his charge was reduced to involuntary manslaughter. He was sentenced to five years in prison, which was suspended to three years with credit for the seven months he had already served. He was also ordered to attend both anger management and drug/alcohol management classes. No hate crime was charged as South Carolina is one of only five states (along with Arkansas, Georgia, Wyoming, and Indiana) that do not have a penalty-enhancement hate crime law.

To defend the rights of so-called straight people when the lives of LGBTQIA people are at stake is a slap at true justice.  Yet the manner in which Russell proposes to deny human dignity as he defends the privilege of empowered people adds further insult to injury.  While he quibbles over freedom of speech and expression, victims of hate crimes are left to wonder if those oft quoted words; “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness,” hold any meaning for them at all.  If we are to take that declaration seriously and acknowledge that all humans are created equally, then these tactics of shutting people out of the discussion about their own sexuality and/or identity are no longer acceptable nor morally defensible.  SB 1965 is just another method by which freedom of speech is used to avoid the relationality of dialogue and uphold the privileges of the oppressors while destroying the lives of the oppressed.

So it’s time for Oklahomans who are in favor of dignity and dialogue, relationship and justice, to stand together and oppose this bill.  Through some legislative trickery (which I hope to blog more about later), this proposed legislation moved very rapidly through the Senate and has already made its way into the House.  After being second read, SB 1965 was referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where it must pass a committee vote before it can be debated before the entire House of Representatives.  The Equality Network has already established a website where you can email the membership of the Judiciary committee and urge them to vote against SB 1965.  However, with the next scheduled meeting of the Judiciary committee on Monday, March 29 and no posted  agenda for which bills will be considered,* now is the time to make the most of your voice and snail mail an old fashioned letter to the members of this committee.  Repeated activist workshops have stressed the value of sending actual letters, and I would encourage you to join me in doing so.  I’m including a link to a copy of my letter to Representative McCullough to offer you some thoughts as to how you might address the subject in your own correspondence and a listing (below) of the representatives on the Judiciary committee along with their mailing addresses and phone numbers.  You might also find helpful talking points and examples at the aforementioned email link from The Equality Network as well as at an email advocacy website set up by Human Rights Campaign that may offer insights into composing your own letter or email.

If you don’t write a letter, send an email.  If you don’t send an email, consider making a phone call.  Legislation like Senate Bill 1965 is destroying dialogue and it will destroy lives.  It’s time for those of us who support community, restorative justice, and true equality to be in one voice in opposing hurtful and hate-filled legislation like SB 1965.  When we fail to stand in opposition to injustice and in solidarity with its victims, our inaction becomes our indictment.  I hope that you’ll join me in speaking against this bill that is bad for all people, and bad for Oklahoma.

* At the time of writing this post, no committee agenda had been set for the upcoming meeting of the House Judiciary Committee.

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Cross posted at the Xenia Institute.

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The following table includes all of the members of the House Judiciary Committee.  For your information, their party affiliation has been included in parenthesis following their names, but this is not actually part of their mailing addresses.  I’m also linking each representative to her/his page at the House website.

WASHINGTON - APRIL 12 (2007): Judy Shepard, mother of hate crime victim Matthew Shepard, wipes away tears during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

An Act relating to criminal investigations … which relates to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation; limiting disclosure of certain investigative information; prohibiting state employees from assisting a federal agency under certain circumstances.

What the summary fails to shed light on is the specific “circumstances” under which state employees are prohibited from disclosing information to or otherwise assisting federal law enforcement agencies. However, the blogosphere has rushed to the rescue with posts like these from the GLAA Forum, Unfinished Lives, and Metro Star News representing just a small sampling of web response. Comment has also come in from traditional media, with the editorial staff at the Tulsa World joining the conversation:

The bill apparently does not seek to repeal federal or state hate crimes protections in place that are based on race, national origin, religion or disability. But it excludes hate crimes perpetrated on the basis of actual or perceived sexual orientation or gender identity, two categories added to a federal hate crimes law last fall.

It also sets a chilling precedent … that Oklahoma will only enforce certain federal laws and cooperate only with selected federal agencies.

This editorial prompted a response from Senator Russell himself, offering arguments about free speech in addition to his original claims of protecting religious freedoms. However, Edge Boston appears to have spelled it out more clearly than the Senator himself:

Russell also worried that The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was signed into law by President Obama last year, might be used to prosecute Christians who speak out against gays because of their religious convictions. Though the measure includes guarantees designed to protect First Amendment freedoms, opponents have blasted the Act for creating a new class of “thought crimes,” and worried that the law would be used to suppress religious expression, including readings of anti-gay Biblical passages.

While one dissenting opinion argues that an error in this bill may opt Oklahoma out of federal intimidation statutes instead,* the intention behind Senator Russell’s bill is clear – to obstruct the investigation and prosecution of hate crimes against LGBTQI persons. If this intention becomes law, whether through passage of this bill or another, Oklahoma will effectively become the first don’t ask, don’t tell state. When it comes to hate crimes, Federal agencies need not ask, and state law enforcement better not tell.

*The Matthew Shepard Act and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act is actually codified in 18 USC 249, not 18 USC 245 as presented in this bill.

This article cross posted at the Xenia Institute.