Jay Michaelson 2013-06-19T13:04:55-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=jay-michaelson Copyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Jay Michaelson Good old fashioned elbow grease. Mission Not Accomplished: The Anti-Gay Murder of Mark Carson Should Be a Wake-Up Call tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3302960 2013-05-19T20:03:15-04:00 2013-05-20T04:28:59-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ murder of Mark Carson, targeted for being gay, is the third, and most serious, in a recent string of attacks against gay men in New York City. The horrific act, under investigation as a hate crime, has brought appropriate condemnations from all quarters.

But what it should not have brought is surprise. On the contrary -- Carson's murder highlights the shortcomings of a rights-based, marriage-based approach to LGBT equality, and cries out for deeper, and more difficult, forms of engagement.

With states falling like dominos into the marriage-equality camp, many have expressed shock that homophobic hatred and violence is "still" possible. But why is this shocking? The advent of civil rights for African Americans did not end racial violence, still widespread nearly 50 years after the Civil Rights Act. Feminism has not ended violence against women. Indeed, from Seneca Falls to Selma to Stonewall, to echo President Obama's historic turn of phrase, legal inequality is only the tip of the iceberg. Submerged beneath it are deep-seated patterns of injustice, privilege, prejudice and fear.

In an astonishingly short period of time, homophobia has gone from commonplace to contemptible. To take but one example, star athletes are today punished for saying a word - "faggot" -- that was one of the most common slurs of 'trash talk' just five years ago. Indeed, in coverage of Carson's murder, the word, like the 'n-word,' was referred to only euphemistically, as an "antigay slur."

This change is welcome, but it is also so rapid as to induce whiplash. And banning language from polite speech does not remove it from consciousness. On the contrary: the tamping down of hatred only increases its intensity, leading to tragic bursts of rage.

So too the advances in same-sex marriage, the cultural acceptance of LGBT people, and other hard-earned markers of the normalization of sexual diversity. All of these are crucial signposts on the path to equality, and they did not come about overnight; they were, in fact, the culmination of decades of struggle. But none of them, nor all of them altogether, can uproot the roots of homophobia, which lie (among other places) within religion, culture and psychology.

In social struggles, legal equality is not the beginning of the end, but the end of the beginning. Yes, the state's imprimatur upon animus is now being, gradually, removed. But the animus itself remains. Carson's murder; the other acts of violence against LGBT people in New York; and, further from the camera's lights but more tragic and more prevalent, the spree of violence against transgender people -- particularly transgender women of color, some of the most vulnerable members of the LGBT community -- are not vestiges of bygone days we thought we'd left behind. Rather, they are a reminder that most of the work still lies ahead.

The work to come is different from what's come before. To be sure, legal inequality still persists in most states; in my home state of Florida, for example, I can be fired from a job simply for being gay, and my husband and I cannot adopt a child. But the real debates take place not in legislatures but in living rooms, locker rooms, and, yes, churches as well. For example, religious leaders cannot stand on the sidelines, or equivocate between 'sin' and 'sinner.' You're either opening hearts or closing them, fighting hatred or abetting it. Unfortunately, neutrality is not an option.

Nor is blissful ignorance. It's fun to live in "gay ghettos," or closed bubbles of like-minded friends. But these spaces are permeable. They are not as safe as they seem. And if we want to fight the causes of violence, LGBT folks and our allies need to venture out of them, and have more difficult conversations with those who aren't yet allies. This is more difficult than winning lawsuits; it takes time, and requires vulnerability, dialogue, and persistence. It is the responsibility of all of us, not just a few lobbyists and lawmakers. But personal relationships, personal stories, and personal experiences are the water that will erode the stone of the hardened heart. Nothing else will.

Nor can we imagine that because some of us are secure, all of us are secure. Progress has been uneven. It has not reached LGBT people in red states, in conservative religious families, in many communities of color, or in economically disadvantaged communities. It has not encompassed those whose gender presentation is different from the norm, or who do not "pass," or who are not "just like everyone else." These are people who live in constant threat of violence and marginalization, often intersecting with other forms of oppression.

Carson's murder reminds us that violence can strike anyone, anywhere. But it should also remind us that some people live with this fear every day.

Some privileged pundits have recently opined that the gay mission has been accomplished, that gay organizations should shut their doors, that victory may now be declared. To them, I suppose, Carson's murder is just an anomaly -- and those of more marginalized people, like Ce Ce Acoff, the most recent transgender woman of color victimized by hate, are simply invisible.

But this violence is neither anomalous nor invisible. It should not even be surprising. Rather, it is a reminder that hate doesn't disappear when discriminatory laws are taken off the books. For those of us who need reminding.]]> Darkness Dancing: Why Peter Rauhofer Mattered tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.3233955 2013-05-10T12:10:49-04:00 2013-05-10T12:10:52-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
Consider, for example, what Rauhofer does with one of the biggest hits of 2012, Gotye's "Somebody that I used to know":



The first ninety seconds, there's no Gotye. Instead, Rauhofer sets the tone himself; with his unmistakeable combination of deep house beats, minor-key keyboard riffs, and tribal repetition. Finally a line or two of vocals, a snippet, really, just a bit player amidst the music. Two minutes in, there's a crescendo break - now cliché but mostly invented by Rauhofer himself - which for those of us who were there conjures a frozen moment with the dance lights shining out like rays of moonlight and a thousand shirtless men, hormones pulsing so fiercely that they scent the air, waiting for the drop, waiting, waiting, waiting - until it finally comes in at 3:45. Now, no more vocals, just more tribal energy, reverb, echoes, a shorter crescendo. The way Rauhofer treats this infectious little pop song, its words melt into a ecstatic blur. Even listening to it alone, you're taken into a space of community, into a culture that spans the globe and bonds together disparate gay boys searching for one another.

Now think of how someone else might've done it: a cutesy remix, some peppy dance beats, maybe a dubstep break here or there. Or think of one of the DJs who don't deserve the name, spinning pop songs on a Saturday night.

Rauhofer's sound offers the possibility of transcendence and community - experiences that are usually polar opposites (one is individual, the other collective; one goes beyond, the other connects between) but which find their union in dance clubs, churches, and similar liminal, spiritual spaces. When combined with the right setting, lighting, and, yes, intoxication, the endless one-two-three-FOUR that Rauhofer helped pioneer becomes a kind of shamanic ritual. Circuit parties, though denuded of overtly spiritual vocabulary, retain the grammar of ritual, and its transcendent possibility. This is a pagan spirituality - reveling in the body, rather than in its abnegation. But it is spirituality nonetheless.

Of course, neither the scene nor Rauhofer himself was ever so idyllic. Some men are just there to get high, others to get laid, and there's plenty of the bitchiness, misogyny, drug abuse, narcissism, and superficiality that marks "A Gay" culture. A lot of what Rauhofer's denizens are trying to transcend is their own unworked-out stuff, usually featuring a toxic mix of internalized homophobia and unresolved pain. Underneath the laser-smooth pectorals (in the 1990s, anyway), there's often a lot of unresolved muck, a lot of darkness.

Yet I think Rauhofer's sound captures this too. Like Radiohead's soaring "Creep," in which Thom Yorke's soaring vocal undermines his claims of pathos, Rauhofer's remixes, from Whitney and Madonna to Danny Tenaglia and Offer Nissim, usually convey an ambivalent blend of grandiosity and shadow. There is a sense, in the best of Rauhofer's deeper work -- for example, this awesome remix, under the Club 69 moniker, of Tenaglia's "Ohno" :



-- of celebration and ecstasy. Yet there is also a darkness in the music that reflects the darkness that is often part of the communities in which it is played. Somehow, the beats include the pain.

Greil Marcus wrote, of punk rock, that the immediacy of art is the sudden recognition that, in fact, "This Is Actually Happening." I had that realization over and over again under Rauhofer's spell - usually at the Roxy, sometimes at parties elsewhere. At the times when I could forget about chasing tail and let go into the music, there were mergings, emergings - senses, at times, of an eros that possessed all of us, rather than something that we possessed. The music would take control, past four, five in the morning, and the only words to disturb the trance were tiny snips of language, rendered meaningless by cut and paste.

I know these moments of unity and transcendence are possible across all genres of music. I've even seen them happen with dubstep, which I mostly can't stand. But Rauhofer's untimely passing does mark the end of a certain era, in which a certain kind of music marked a certain kind of underground gay culture that is no longer possible in the age of acceptance, integration, and normalization. Today's outré gay productions are pastiche - they quote deviance, rather than embody it - while the mainstream of gay culture long ago abandoned the smoke-machine haze of vast warehouse spaces. Today the edges are elsewhere: queer cultures which mix and match, smaller undergrounds far away from the $200-per-person circuit world. These and many other subcultures are vibrant and inspiring. But for a while there, that kind of adventurousness was almost a mass phenomenon. It was a global community, and Rauhofer taught it to dance.]]> Genesis 23:1-25:18: The Life Of Sarah? tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2077489 2012-11-06T08:40:22-05:00 2013-01-06T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ The name of the Torah portion known as Chayei Sarah, "the Life of Sarah," is bitterly ironic. Sarah dies in the first verse, offstage, as it were, and the action quickly shifts to Abraham's bargaining for her burial place, and then to the story of the next generation, Isaac and Rebecca.



Is this what Sarah deserves? Even in death, she is a mute object, much as the text depicts her throughout her life. In the entire Torah she speaks only eight lines, most of them ignominious. When Abram and Sarai (before their names are changed) go down to Egypt, Abram allows Sarai to become a part of the Pharaoh's harem in order to try and save his own life (Genesis 12) -- and she says nothing. Sarai proposes that Abram have a child by her handmaid Hagar, and then jealously mistreats Hagar. When angels come to announce to Abraham and Sarah that they will at last have a child of their own, Sarah laughs at the notion (as Abraham had earlier) and then lies and says she didn't. A second time, Sarah is given as a concubine to a foreign king, and again she says nothing. She utters words of praise when Isaac is born, but then demands that Abraham cast out Hagar and Ishmael, "for the son of that slave shall not share the inheritance with my son Isaac" (Genesis 21:10). And she is absent during the episode in which her husband almost sacrificed their son to God.



Such is the life of Sarah, as recounted by the text itself. Commentators, classical and modern, have tried to fill in the gaps. One popular tale is that Sarah died upon hearing that Isaac had been sacrificed, that she perished with a cry of anguish (see Genesis Rabbah). More contemporary voices, like Anita Diamant in "The Red Tent," have pointed out that the Torah is a document written (or written down) by men for men. Of course the text spends more time on Abraham's funeral arrangements than Sarah's actual death; that's what mattered to men of the time. To recover Sarah, we must re-imagine her.



I am certainly sympathetic to the politics of such a reading. And yet the remainder of the Chayei Sarah portion undermines it. Because here, in the character of Rebecca, the text presents us with a woman who is assertive, heroic and talkative. In the first chapter of Rebecca's story (Genesis 24), she utters more words than Sarah does in her entire recorded life. Encountering Abraham's servant, sent to find a wife for Isaac, she offers food, water and shelter. True, she is still not given control over her life; her male relatives arrange her marriage to Isaac. But already in Chayei Sarah she is presented as a different kind of woman than Sarah.



As readers of the Bible know, this pattern would only grow over the years. When Isaac is near death, for example, Rebecca engineers the giving of the blessing to Jacob rather than Esau (Genesis 27). She, not Isaac, is the agent who ensures that the line clearly favored by the text of the Torah is maintained and enlarged.



If Rebecca is a different kind of woman, Isaac is a different kind of man. When Rebecca is brought to him, he says nothing, bringing her into his mother's tent and, the text says, being comforted by her. He was 40 years old when he married -- unusual in our age, shocking in biblical times. He speaks very little; apart from the blessings he gives his sons, he speaks only a few words in the two parshiot (portions) that tell his story. (One legend holds that he was so traumatized by almost being sacrificed that he was rendered a near mute.)



In other words, in the gender binarism of the Hebrew Bible, Isaac is "feminized" and Rebecca "masculinized." This, too, was embellished upon by later traditions; the Kabbalah understands Isaac as embodying one of the feminine qualities of God, in contrast to Abraham, who was masculine. The Zohar, the masterpiece of the Kabbalah, even says that Isaac knew what it was to be a woman.



These two couples -- Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca -- teach us much not only about biblical conceptions of gender, but our own as well. Isaac and Rebecca are, in modern parlance, "queer." This doesn't mean that they're gay; it means that the way they perform their genders is non-normative. Supposedly, men are to take action, not be acted upon; women are to be passive objects. This is the pattern of Abraham and Sarah, as the text records it. But it is not the pattern of Isaac and Rebecca. These ancient biblical texts seem to recognize something that many people today do not: that gender roles are constructed by society, and do not necessarily match the rainbow of gender identities that people take on in their lives.



Interestingly, these polarities recur in the next generation, that of Esau and Jacob. Esau is more like Abraham: a manly man, with a deep voice and hairy flesh, and a talent for hunting game. Jacob is more like Isaac: an "effeminate" man, with a soft voice and smooth flesh, and a talent for cooking and staying home. Only after Jacob's quest-experience wrestling with "the man" can he embrace the masculine within himself, re-embrace Esau after years apart and change his name to become the patriarch Israel (Genesis 35).



All of this begins in Chayei Sarah, with its namesake dying offstage and her successor matriarch entering the scene in a surprisingly gender-transgressive way. Fundamentalists may point to the Bible to justify all kinds of simplifications of the human experience. But when one reads the text closely, in fact the Bible defies all such attempts to flatten into categories the infinite complexity of human experience.



ON Scripture -- The Torah is a weekly Jewish scriptural commentary, produced in collaboration with Odyssey Networks and Hebrew College. Thought leaders from the United States and beyond offer their insights into the weekly Torah portion and contemporary social, political, and spiritual life.]]> Straight Talk About Gay Marriage: 4 Points for Undecided Voters to Consider tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2047589 2012-10-31T23:41:00-04:00 2012-12-31T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
One thing we've learned is that a lot of Minnesotans (and Marylanders, Washingtonians and Mainers) are sincere in supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians and simultaneously sincere in their misgivings about same-sex marriage. Yes, there are absolutely-sure people on both sides, but there are also a lot of people sincerely in the middle. If you're one of those people, I'd like to share some of what I've learned as someone involved in this issue for several years now -- and as someone who married my same-sex partner in New York a year ago.

First, I want to say that I get it. I know many people in the gay community who say that if you don't support marriage equality, then you must be a bigot or a homophobe, but I know that that isn't true. I know plenty of people who are sincerely concerned about the consequences of same-sex marriage for their communities and their values -- and some of them are my friends. So this is not about bashing people who disagree. (Of course, it's also true that there are some bigots and homophobes out there, too. But I'm not really speaking to them, because they're not interested in what I have to say anyway!)

To those sincerely wrestling with this issue, I offer four points to consider.

1. Your church will never have to hold any kind of wedding it doesn't want to.

Polls have told us that the number-one concern of "undecideds" is that their church, pastor, minister or rabbi would have to officiate a gay wedding if marriage equality passed. Let me be clear as a lawyer and a religious leader: This is absolutely 100-percent false. In every state with same-sex marriage, there are "ministerial exemptions" and other protections that ensure that this will never, ever happen.

There's also the U.S. Constitution. The exact boundaries of the First Amendment have been debated since it was passed 223 years ago, but every justice on the Supreme Court, and every judge on every federal court, agrees that no church can be compelled to solemnize a wedding (or baptism, or funeral) that it finds religiously objectionable. It's way, way beyond the pale of the law.

Unfortunately, anti-gay zealots have deliberately distorted this issue. They have taken a small handful of borderline cases and twisted them beyond their meaning, or warned of a "coming storm" that will happen in the future. This is misleading, and it's led to confusion. But it is a fact that no church will ever have to perform a same-sex wedding if it doesn't want to. Period.

2. You're right to be stuck on the word "marriage."

Another thing we've learned in Minnesota is that a lot of folks support civil unions for gay couples but not marriage. Why? Because the truth is that "marriage" is a religious term. The state has taken it over, but the word, the concept, is religious. It's true that this debate is about civil marriage, not religious marriage, but it's also true that the word "marriage" itself is derived from religious concepts.

The real problem here isn't same-sex marriage; it's the state deciding what marriage is in the first place. Many people, religious and secular, liberal and conservative, have argued that the state has no business deciding what "marriage" is. The state should just issue a civil union license to everyone and leave it to churches and other institutions to solemnize marriages.

In my opinion this is a good point. The trouble is that "marriage" is the word we use right now. It's how the state, and our communities, recognizes families. It's how we decide who gets to visit their lifelong partners in the hospital or leave their property to their loved ones. More importantly, this is the word we use to decide which families count and which don't.

If we as a society want to change that, fine. But in the meantime, there's a group of people -- around 5 percent of people -- who are excluded from being counted as families because of this definition. Unless we're going to change the whole system, that isn't fair.

So if you're stuck on the word "marriage," you're right. It is a word that comes from religious traditions. But words take on new meanings all the time, and this is one of them. That's what we're voting on now: not the original, religious meaning but this new, secular one. It really is a different question.

3. Marriage has always evolved.

I know that two men getting married may seem like a huge, radical break from a tradition as old as the Bible, but it isn't. In fact, the tradition has always changed.

For a start, let's look at the Bible itself. Biblical marriage wasn't monogamy; it was polygamy. Abraham had two wives; King Solomon had a whole harem. And that's just the beginning. In biblical societies, when you conquered another group, the victorious men would "win" their defeated foes' wives as part of the spoils. Is this "traditional marriage"?

But let's not stop there. Right up until the 20th century women were considered the property of their husbands -- something the Bible explicitly states. Until the 19th century girls were married off at the age of 12. Is that "traditional marriage"?

Of course, let's also remember that in some places, interracial marriage was seen as a "crime against nature" up until the 1960s. In the 19th century African Americans weren't even considered fully human. As revolting as it is to even remember this fact today, some people at that time would have considered interracial marriage a marriage between a human and an animal. Is that the "tradition" we're protecting here?

Thank God we have come a long way. Our society doesn't treat women as property. All people are seen as fully human, equal in the eyes of God and the state alike. But getting from point A to point B was a radical change -- no less, I submit, than including gay couples in the institution of marriage today.

Gays and lesbians aren't trying to change marriage. We're trying to join it. And marriage itself has grown and changed as long as the institution has been around. Yes, this can seem like a big step, but look where we'd be if we hadn't taken such steps in the past.

4. It really is about "separate but equal."

Finally (and I think this point will probably be the one that carries the day in Minnesota), this really is about "separate but equal." Slice it, dice it, see it from every perspective, but at the end of the day this question is about whether your gay uncle or the lesbian in your church is a real person, to be treated fairly or not.

Let me speak from my own experience. When our families and friends gathered to celebrate our wedding a year ago, and when the state recognized it, they were affirming us as human beings. We are people, and our love is real. The joy in my mother's face revealed the pride any mother would feel at her son's wedding. And yes, it mattered that it was legal.

Civil unions fulfill the legal technicalities of marriage, but we all know that separate can never be equal. Anything less than marriage tells gay people that they're second-class citizens.

I really do understand the complicated religious questions that same-sex marriage brings up, but make no mistake: A vote for so-called "traditional marriage" is a vote against the dignity of gay and lesbian people. It is deeply hurtful and deeply unfair. And unfortunately, there's just no getting around that.

A person's sexuality isn't some kind of choice, a vice or a psychological defect. It's a part of who they are, and the diversity of sexualities is part of the incredible diversity of nature. The question now is whether we can open our hearts to those who are different from us, and whether we can see them not only as God's children but as God's adults: fully human, deserving of respect and thankfully blessed with love.

Related on The Huffington Post:
]]> Still Undecided? Take This 15-Question Quiz tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.2000853 2012-10-29T10:10:02-04:00 2012-12-29T05:12:02-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
1. Should taxes be raised on those making more than $200,000 per year to help balance the budget?
A) Yes
B) No

2. Is Medicare better as is, or should people receive a voucher for a set amount per year to keep costs under control?
A) As is
B) Voucher

3. The economy is still struggling, though there have been 31 months of job growth. Should we continue with current policies, or try ones similar to those of George W. Bush's in the 2000's?
A) Stay the course
B) Try Bush's policies

4. Should earnings from investments be taxed less than job wages, or the same?
A) The same
B) Less

5. Should Roe v. Wade be overturned and should abortion be illegal in all cases (including rape & incest)?
A) No
B) Yes

6. Is climate change a real problem?
A) Yes
B) No

7. Should businesses be regulated for health, safety and environmental reasons? Or is there too much regulation?
A) Regulate business
B) Too much regulation

8. Should America take a tougher foreign policy, even if that means more wars, or avoid wars, leave Iraq and leave Afghanistan?
A) Avoid wars, leave Iraq, leave Afghanistan
B) Get tougher, stay in Iraq and Afghanistan

9. Is 'Obamacare' a good way to provide health insurance for all, or is it too expensive, and people should just get the healthcare they can afford?
A) Obamacare
B) Just what people can afford

10. Should gay people be able to serve in the military?
A) Yes
B) No

11. Should Wall Street be more closely regulated?
A) Yes
B) No

12. Should the government help pay for programs like PBS and Sesame Street?
A) Yes
B) No

13. Should the government provide loans to college students, or cut the program?
A) Maintain loans
B) Cut the program

14. Should corporations and Super PACs contribute unlimited amounts to campaigns, or should they be limited?
A) Limited
B) Unlimited

15. Who upsets you more: secular liberals like Nancy ("San Francisco values") Pelosi, or religious conservatives like Todd ("legitimate rape") Akin?
A) Religious conservatives
B) Secular liberals

Remember to vote on November 6!]]> Why Big Bird Matters tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1955073 2012-10-11T12:06:34-04:00 2012-12-11T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ showed that 55 percent of voters oppose cuts in spending on public television. In other words, Big Bird is a winner.

Many of my liberal friends have groused about this situation. They want to go back to talking about dull, numerical, substantive issues like the wealth gap or the Romney tax cut. They're wrong. This symbol is a winner for Democrats, both in particular and in general. Big Bird is exactly the conversation we should be having.

First, there's that 55 percent. Voters may still overestimate how much that spending really matters -- public television accounts for 0.00014 percent of the national budget; if your household income is $100,000, it would be like spending 14 bucks a year. Nonetheless, yesterday's poll found, they support it -- not just PBS, but also the government funding of it.

More generally, though, Big Bird is a potent symbol for a larger discussion about the role of government, one which points to a much more important opinion gap between the Republican party and mainstream Americans. For 30 years now, conservative think tanks (CTT's, in beltway-speak) like the Cato Institute, American Enterprise Institute, and Heritage Foundation have created an entire counter-discourse of arch-conservative political theory. This enterprise, funded by the usual coterie of corporations and billionaires, has been wildly successful. The output of CTT's has shaped environmental policy, tax policy, and military policy.

But no one asked mainstream America what it thinks of Milton Friedman, Ayn Rand, and libertarian ideals. Of course, few Americans even know who these people are -- but when their ideas are translated into everyday language, poll after poll rejects them. Yes, Americans believe in "live and let live," and in eternal verities like hard work and an honest day's pay. But they don't believe in shredding the social safety net, or hanging our seniors and veterans -- who make up half of the 47 percent -- out to dry.

This is why, for the last two decades, Republicans have had to hide their conservative wolves in liberal sheep's clothing. "Compassionate conservatism," it used to be called: the idea that Mitt Romney actually cares more about the poor than Barack Obama does, which is why he wants a smaller government and lower taxes. As a factual matter, this is outrageous -- but as a rhetorical game, it works quite well. It dovetails with the Republicans' conservative social message -- guns, God, and gays -- and it works.

Until it comes to the details. When the rubber hits the road, mainstream Americans -- not Rush Limbaugh's fans, but the Reagan Democrats, soccer moms, and other swing voters -- don't actually like the consequences of CTT/Beltway libertarianism. They appreciate some basic environmental regulation (Republicans have had to greenwash themselves here too), they want good teachers (hence Romney's about-face), and they like Big Bird. They don't agree with conservatives who say that this is "welfare" -- they think it's the kind of collective endeavor that government should be involved in.

Big Bird is the symbol for a government that actually helps. For conservatives, this is pure heresy. Government is evil, squelching innovation and taxing us to death. For liberals, this is obvious; if anything, liberals propose too many governmental solutions, rather than too few. But for moderates, this is a vague, diaphanous belief that only becomes visible under certain circumstances. Sesame Street is one of them.

And think about it for a moment: who needs Sesame Street? Not upper-class elites who can send their kids to private pre-school, but a whole host of others: two-career families who depend on TV to occupy their kids, and who are grateful that not all of it rots their brains; immigrant families whose kids learn English from Big Bird; regular, middle class families for whom Big Bird is as American as apple pie.

Which brings me to my final point, which is Big Bird's importance as a symbol. For the last several years, conservatives, rather than liberals, have benefited from big, broad symbols. The stars and stripes, yellow ribbons supporting our troops -- Republicans have done a better job in associating themselves with the symbols of America, and it has served them well. They practically own the notion of patriotism.

But amid candidate Obama's many stumbles, there has also been a rhetoric of a new patriotism, or a new notion of citizenship, that involves some degree of caring for one another. Substantively, this is more about health care than public broadcasting. But symbolically, Big Bird is the symbol for this alternate notion of patriotism that the Obama campaign is trying to communicate. It (he? she?) is as American as apple pie -- and that's the point. A citizenship of caring about one another is actually more American than CTT libertarianism.

Let's not run away from Big Bird. Let's have the conversation about what kind of society we really want to live in, and let our yellow, avian friend be the focus for it. The numbers are on our side, justice is on our side, and just imagine: this campaign might be about what matters after all.]]> An Elegy for Brooklyn, in the Shadow of Barclays tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1920637 2012-10-02T13:50:29-04:00 2012-12-02T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
North Park Slope, where I live, is now literally in the shadows of the Slug (as some of us call it). And now, we will be overrun almost every night by cars searching for parking, by drunk fans spilling out of the center late at night, and, eventually, by large-scale commercial development to give them a place to eat and drink.

But let's take a moment to remember what's here now, on October 02, 2012, right before it disappears.

North Slope and Prospect Heights are multi-ethnic, multi-class neighborhoods. You see everyone on the street here, from all kinds of backgrounds: yuppies and young parents to the south, immigrant families to the north and east, lesbians and gays and straights, creative types, 9-to-5ers, workers. Within a mile of Barclays Center, there are over 100 restaurants, mostly local and independent, many of them serving local and organic food in literally every cuisine of the world (there's a fantastic French Caribbean place right in the shadow of the Slug). There are co-ops and quirky thrift shops, Pentecostal churches, brownstones and city housing; there are lots of bicycles on the street.

All this will soon be gone. No neighborhood can withstand an onslaught of a Barclays Center and all it brings with it. Already many businesses have been forced out by increased rents, and we know what they will be replaced by: the same chain-restaurants and sports bars, the same monotonous culture (if that's the right word) of expensive skyboxes for some and cheap thrills for the rest.

It's fitting that the Slug is named after a corrupt international bank, recently implicated in massive financial scandal in Britain. Barclays has about as much to do with Brooklyn as the Slug does, which is to say, nothing at all. The name Barclays also connotes the wheeling and dealing that marked the Slug's genesis: shady deals involving officers of Bruce Ratner's Forest City Ratner company, a Russian billionaire saving the project with a ridiculous infusion of cash, payoffs and bribes of city and state officials.

And tonight, when the bright-blue illuminated Barclays sign will be visible down fifth avenue, past the falafel place and the second-hand store, the Mexican restaurants and the Chocolate Room, it will remind us all who's the boss in this town: money.

What were we thinking, really, building this little island of diverse and community-led institutions? Park Slope, and the North Slope in particular, is a precious and unique bubble, an experiment in a different kind of urban renewal, one led by community gardens and neighborhood institutions. Did we really think we could survive the money machine? Sure, when rents were low and crime was high, the developers stayed away. But as soon as what was built here became attractive to the moneyed classes, the writing was on the wall. Once again, something unique is being displaced by something ordinary and crass.

Today, the Slug is the tip of a pincer of Manhattanization, reaching down from the Manhattan Bridge along Flatbush Avenue: high-rises filled with expensive co-ops, the antithesis of a neighborhood. The people who can afford to live in them, and who want to live in such places, are professionals with no time for community-building. Judging by their taste in real estate, they want to be catered to, to have things be convenient and exclusive: a gym in the building, a quick walk to the subway. Many of them probably believe the free-market economics that says that Barclays Centers are good things, that they create jobs and growth, that they "revitalize" areas with a lot of "potential."

Really, of course, there was nothing free market about the Barclays Center. Real capitalism was already here, in the form of bodegas and boutiques. The Slug is the bastard child of real-estate leverage and government subsidies. It was concocted by people who never lived here, one of whom (Mikhail Prokhorov, the Russian billionaire) has hardly even been here. Tens of billions of dollars were thrown around: buying the Nets basketball team (the lynchpin of the whole project, since only a sports franchise could justify the expense of the center), fighting endless lawsuits from scrappy community organizations, paying off public officials, and building a huge arena out of scale with its neighborhood. Real capitalism is about small businesses creating a diverse market ecosystem. Mega-capitalism is about big money squashing all of it like a bug.

I'm a renter here in the North Slope, and when things get really bad, as they inevitably will, I'll relocate to somewhere else. New York is always changing, and this is not the first neighborhood to be plowed under by greedy developers. But before this one dies, let me add one more elegy to the many that have already been written for this place. It was beautiful, while it lasted.]]> LGBT New Yorkers Need to Hold Our Enemies Accountable (And Let's Start With Greg Ball) tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1911621 2012-09-26T16:53:00-04:00 2012-11-26T05:12:02-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ this week that two of the three Republicans who backed marriage equality have won their hotly contested primaries, LGBT folks and our allies have reason to be glad, or at least relieved. If we are serious about building a nonpartisan alliance for equality in states across the country, then we have to be sure to support our friends when they support us.

It's also important for our community to hold accountable those who betray us, undermine us, and sell us out. And this year, if you're a gay New Yorker, there is one man who should be at the top of that list: State Senator Greg Ball.

For those of you not addicted to Albany political gossip, let me take you back to June 2011. Marriage equality had already passed the Assembly (the equivalent of the House), but its fate in the Senate hinged on eight Republicans who were on the fence. Senators Saland, McDonald, Grisanti, and Alesi eventually came over to the side of marriage equality. (Saland and Grisanti were the ones who just won their primaries; Alesi didn't run, and McDonald was defeated.) Three senators confirmed their "no" votes amid heavy lobbying on all sides.

And then there was Greg Ball. Ball held out until the 11th hour, garnering national television coverage, and meeting with politicians and activists behind closed doors. What he did behind those doors was outrageous: He made a series of absurd demands and promised he'd vote "yes" if those demands were met. Among the most ridiculous? He asked one noted New York lesbian politician to "get Dick Cheney to support me in the next election." As if she had Cheney's home phone number. As if Cheney would campaign on behalf of a state senator, in any case. As if that was in any way a principled request.

But wait, it gets worse. After Senator Ball finally voted "no," he had the gall to issue a statement saying that he was never undecided in the first place. "Knowing that marriage equality was likely to pass," Ball wrote, "I thought it important to force the issue of religious protections. Over the past few weeks, I've had the distinct opportunity [sic] of listening to literally thousands of residents, on both sides of this issue, by holding an undecided stance... Now that the final text is public, I am proud that I have secured some strong protections for religious institutions and basic protections for religious organizations. The bill still lacks many of the basic religious protections I thought were vital, and for this reason, and as I did in the Assembly, I will be voting 'no.'"

There are so many slimy statements in there that it's hard to know where to begin. First, Ball admitted that he was merely "holding an undecided stance." Other senators were sincerely undecided, but Ball was just assuming the position. Second, Ball admitted that he did this to "force the issue of religious protections." Not only is that disingenuous -- saying, in effect, "Give me what I want, but I'm still voting against you" -- but it's also not true. Senator Saland, in contrast, really did lobby for religious exemptions, Governor Cuomo and the Democratic leadership worked out the issues with him, and Saland eventually voted "yes." That's legislative process. Ball is just full of hot air.

And what were Ball's demands? Not to drown in the details here, but they were obviously outrageous. They included a demand that individuals be allowed to simply disregard the marriage law if they proffered a religious reason to do so. That's not democracy; it's anarchy, and Ball knew all along that it could never become law. At the time I went into all the details of Ball's demands here on HuffPost, back when I thought they were sincere.

What Greg Ball did was play us. All of us who care about this issue, whose lives are affected by it -- he just used us for publicity and attention. (Incidentally, I was following Ball's Twitter feed throughout June. While marriage was being debated, he tweeted about protections for household pets.) It's one thing to have a principled view against same-sex marriage. We may disagree with that view, but at least it's a principled stand. Ball was just playing games. At a time when personal reflection was called for, Ball chose opportunism.

Oh, and then there's Greg Ball himself. As if his betrayal weren't enough, he's also earned the name "Greg Slimeball" for a reason. An ex-girlfriend who had to get a restraining order against him. Persistent complaints about sexual harassment in Ball's office. A cavalcade of dirty campaign tricks, from calling his opponents names to sending letters under fake names to local newspapers. Fishy dealings with a Ball-managed nonprofit that appears to have funneled money to Ball's political campaign. And really, just check the guy out on YouTube; the man has an anger-management problem that puts Jack Nicholson to shame. Even if it weren't for his cowardly two-step on one of the most important civil-rights issues of our time, Ball's deep, deep character flaws should render him unfit for office.

Ball's opponent, meanwhile, is a moderate Democrat named Justin Wagner. He's straight but not narrow, a lawyer who's lived in the district for years, and he has made fighting against the "war on women" a central plank of his campaign platform.

There are many political causes vying for our philanthropic dollars this year, but I want to urge the members of my LGBT community to remember our friends -- and hold our enemies accountable. Greg Ball cynically manipulated our community leaders and exploited our civil-rights struggle for his personal aggrandizement. He tried to keep us out of City Hall. Now we should throw him out of office.]]> Nan Hayworth Is Not a New York Republican, and the Tea Party Is in the Details tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1910010 2012-09-26T14:14:30-04:00 2012-11-26T05:12:02-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
But also a falsehood. Nan Hayworth is not a Hudson Valley Republican. She's a Tea Partier through and through. She's a stealth candidate who is more in tune with, and dependent on, national extremists than on local moderates.

How do we know? Because of how she voted. This isn't a matter of opinion; it's a matter of congressional record. By way of evidence, I'm going to focus not on the big ticket items -- ObamaCare, tax cuts for the rich -- but on four lesser-known votes. Why? Because during presidential election years, we usually don't hear about these votes, even though they're the bread and butter of what Congress actually does. Underneath all the spin and rhetoric, these kinds of policy decisions are where the rubber hits the road.

So let's take a look.

1. Defunding Legal Services. Unless you're a multi-millionaire like Nan Hayworth (estimates of her family fortune run from nine to 20 million dollars), you know that the cost of hiring a lawyer is often prohibitive, even if you really need one. I should know -- I'm a former lawyer myself. This has real life consequences for people in real need. For example, when the girlfriend of Hayworth's ticket-mate, State Senator Greg Ball, wanted to get a temporary restraining order because he was stalking her, she got a lawyer and got the TRO. But what about poor people whose ex-boyfriends, ex-husbands or current husbands threaten them with violence? What are they supposed to do? Legal Services is the only answer there is. Staffed by underpaid attorneys working long hours for difficult clients, Legal Services is one of the leanest, most effective government-funded agencies in the world. They do more good for less money than any other agency I know. Yet Hayworth voted for HR1, which would defund Legal Services, because that's what the Tea Party Express told her to do. Is that a moderate position?

2. Defunding Amtrak. Here in the Hudson Valley, we rely on Metro North and Amtrak to get to work every day, to get to Boston and D.C. and Philadelphia, and to get upstate on weekends. Fortunately, like every country in the civilized world, our government supports the railroads, just as we support automobile travel by paving roads and building bridges. Multimillionaires like Hayworth have no use for trains, however, which is why the corporate-funded Tea Party Express wants to shut down Amtrak because mass transit is socialism. Nan Hayworth voted to cut Amtrak's funding in half, which observers said would kill Amtrak entirely. Is that a position in line with the needs of the Hudson Valley? Or is it extreme Tea Party ideology?

3. Supporting Unlimited Oil & Gas Drilling. Folks in New York are rightly concerned about "fracking," the new technology to exploit natural gas reserves, which has the unfortunate side-effect of poisoning drinking water. Yet Nan Hayworth voted for HR 1229, which would open up vast new oil and gas fields to government-subsidized drilling. Indeed, she voted to expand offshore drilling right after the BP disaster in the Gulf. This is exactly the wrong vote for her own district. Why did she cast it, then? Well, maybe because the Tea Party Express, Club for Growth, and other out-of-state conservative organizations told her to. No wonder the Koch Brothers (who, by the way, make their money from oil and gas exploration) have donated tens of thousands of dollars to her campaign.

4. Ending the Regulation of Big Business. This was one of the Tea Party's sneak attacks: requiring congressional approval of every major health, safety and environmental regulation. Ideologues call it the REINS Act (HR 10), but let's call this the "Fox News Guarding the Henhouse" bill. What Hayworth voted for was to put the same members of Congress who are currently in the thrall of the oil and gas industry -- in charge of oil and gas regulation. Not the scientists, not the regulators whose job it is to keep these industries in check, but the politicians who owe them their careers. Does that make any sense? Not if your goal is clean water and healthy food. But if what you want is to get re-elected thanks to millions of industry and Super-PAC dollars, sure. Once again: wrong for the Hudson Valley, right for Hayworth's big donors.

I've chosen these four issues because I know they won't be talked about at a presidential debate. They don't fit on a bumper sticker. And they're not cheap political slogans. These kinds of votes -- and there are dozens more that I could describe -- are the evidence that shows a pattern of extremist votes not in the interest of the 18th congressional district.

Let's face it: all politicians sound the same. They all say they're for truth, justice and the American way; for small business and family farms; for more jobs and lower taxes; yada yada yada. The only way you can tell truth from spin is by getting into the details like the ones I've just gone into.

The good part is, you don't have to take my word for it. Check out Hayworth's voting record. If you like, you can even go to a right wing source, like the Club for Growth -- here's their list of her votes. And here's the list from the American Conservative Union. What you'll find is what I found. Nan Hayworth may be from New York, but she's not a New York Republican.]]> Why Burning Man Didn't Suck This Year... and What We Can Learn From It tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1872720 2012-09-12T18:47:56-04:00 2012-11-12T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ Burning Man might suck this year.

There was a ticket fiasco, in which the event sold out and scalpers appeared online selling tickets at five times face value.

There was, we were told, an unprecedented number of newbies, threatening to overwhelm Black Rock City with well-meaning, but clueless, partying -- and, we were also told, accompanied by an increased police presence.

And then there was the bad weather: lots of dust, lots of wind, lots of reasons to stay away this year, which I and my partner almost did.

Yet Burning Man didn't suck. Although larger, it didn't seem that different from past years. It had all the magic, community, sacredness, emotional center and impossible-to-describe otherworldliness that we Burners struggle to convey to outsiders, many of whom still seem to believe this experimental city is just naked hippies getting high in the desert. (At this point, I'm inclined to let folks believe that if they want. Maybe letting go of that kind of assumption is a good prerequisite for participating.) And while the reasons for this non-sucking may largely be mysterious, I think that all of us -- especially those of us involved in building countercultures and cultural enclaves -- can learn a lot from how Burning Man managed to stay vital, and real, this year.

First, the Burning Man organization (BMORG or BORG, depending on how sympathetic you want to be) did much more than in past years to educate newbies about the values of Black Rock City. I've never seen Burning Man's "10 Principles" -- including radical self-reliance, radical self-expression, and so on - so prominently displayed as this year, including in the run-up to it. (One theme camp poked fun at all this preaching by depicting the 10 principles as the 10 commandments, stone tablets, thee's and thou's, and all.)

This was a crucially good decision. True, it was a departure from Burning Man's more anarchic, choose-your-own-adventure beginnings. It had a whiff of indoctrination. But compromising on some of that original ethos in favor of maintaining community norms was exactly the right move. The first-timers I met, and they were indeed plentiful, were a little naïve, a little clueless, but also generally enthusiastic, willing and prepared. They were kind of cute, really: like boy and girl scouts in EL-wire, happily replicating the memes of Black Rock City.

In fact, let's face it: Burning Man has always had its share of douche bags, and for my non-commoditized money, I'll take this year's naïve party kids over previous years' drunken frat boys any time. Maybe the event selling out had its upside: the dudes who just want to shout "show your tits!" were almost nowhere to be found, shut out, no doubt, by the sellout crowds. Sure, there were still a few bad apples. But in general, the newbies I met erred on the side of exuberance, not douchiness.

So in addition to congratulating the BMORG for educating the new kids, I want to thank the new people for bothering to take it seriously. Virgins no more, now it's up to you to explore how you are going to radically self-express next year, and how to integrate the peak experience of Burning Man into your lives in the default world. Here's a hint: as Rilke said, you must change your life.

Another thing the BMORG did right was continue its emphasis of non-Black-Rock-City Burning Man culture. As last year, Thursday night of the event was centered around over 30 regional Burning Man communities burning effigies encircling the Man. This, plus printed propaganda, suggested a future for the culture beyond the limits enforced by the Bureau of Land Management in Nevada. Instead of a sense of "how much more can we take," these gestures gave me a sense of "here's where we might go next."

Finally, I think the bad weather actually helped. I don't know if marginal attendees bailed at the last minute, although the glut of below-face-value tickets in the week leading up to the event suggested that they did. (As one of those who criticized the BMORG's policies to fight scalping, I will hereby eat crow and declare the BMORG the victors in that particular battle.) What I do know is that those of us who made the trick had to stick together out there, because it was occasionally quite rough. Anyone who thought they were headed for a party in the desert likely got a rude awakening when their poorly-staked tent blew over in a dust storm.

Mostly, though, the weather seemed to increase solidarity. (We also got lucky: the worst of it came on the Wednesday night after the event, in the form of a heavy rainstorm which wreaked havoc on those still packing up.) It gave immediacy to the "10 principles," especially the parts about communal effort and civic responsibility. And, let's be honest: if more casual burners decided to sit this one out because of the weather forecast -- and, again, I was almost one of them -- that's just fine.

Throughout my career, I've sought to make peak experiences more available to more people. Whether in directing spiritual retreats, or the teaching I do at Burning Man, I try to share with others a little bit of the light that others have shared with me. In so doing, though, I wonder if I fall prey to the marketing mania of our consumer culture. Burning Man sold out this year without having done any advertising at all, and when its organizers realized that things might be getting out of hand, they doubled down on maintaining their values.

Not everything was perfect. There are plenty of gripes to be griped about the BMORG's weird hybrid of communal ethos and centralized decision-making, or this or that project that did or didn't get funded. Fine. The fact is, for this year not to have sucked was a minor miracle that came to pass not because of divine providence or dumb luck, but because of some really smart and sincere people doing some good thinking about a high-quality problem. By allowing the community to evolve, they managed to keep it true to its core principles. As the last motes of dust are washed out of our fuzzy coats and bright blue wigs, it's a value worth contemplating.]]> Beyond 'Letting Go' tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1863497 2012-09-09T10:17:45-04:00 2012-11-09T05:12:01-05:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
Having returned to the pace of New York life in September, there's a temptation to hold onto these wonderful experiences. But which one? As I sit on the subway, do I contemplate the breath and recall the calm and bliss of my retreat? Or do I call to mind the juicy, ecstatic experiences out in Black Rock City? Which great moment should I try to hold onto?

Of course, even a novice at spiritual practice knows the answer to that question: none. Spirituality is all about letting go, surrendering into the present moment -- that kind of thing. Right?

Well, partly. While I have experienced -- and want to affirm -- the absolute centrality of letting go, in profound as well as mundane contexts, I would like to complicate it somewhat also. Because it matters what you're letting go into -- and that, I think, is actually the harder part of the work.

First, the affirmation. Yes, contemplative practice is, in large measure, a process of instructing the mind (and even, we are learning, the brain) in the art of letting go. This is noticeable even in the most minute movements of mind. At this moment, are you being pulled by an interesting link to the right of this story? Are you restless? Is there something, somewhere that you are craving? Sure there is. Five billion years of evolution have ensured that. It's all well and good to just "be here now," but our primate and primal ancestors who did that -- got eaten. The ones who escaped, hunted, and reproduced are the ones who were not satisfied with the present moment, the ones who developed keen senses of desire and aversion. We are the heirs of five billion years of kvetching.

And yet, we also know that kvetching is suffering. Dukkha. Clinging. Once you experience these sensations clearly, you see how unpleasant they are. So there arises a desire for deliverance from them -- even if just for a few minutes on the yoga mat or in front of the television. We are wired to be stressed, but we yearn to relax.

In my experience, this same movement of mind is present in the most profound moments of awakening, of which I'm fortunate to have experienced a few. At such times, the mind really lets go -- of its sense of self, identity, even existence itself. The mind "blinks" and all of experience -- the good, the bad, and the ugly -- ceases. In some ways, this is a profound experience unlike any other. Yet it's also not so different from not reaching for the ice cream in the freezer late at night. It really is just letting go.

But letting go into what? Often, life is so cluttered with demands, to-do lists, and appointments that if I "let go" into that, I become a crazed and nervous wreck. The Hindu sage Ramakrishna once said that the mind is like raw fabric; it takes the color of the dye it's soaked in. Soak the mind in a quiet, relaxing environment and it will become quiet and relaxed. Soak it in New York City, and...

This is why "letting go" is not enough. Sure, if you can really let go of anything that's tugging you, including the annoying emails and the noise of the city, then what you let go into is indeed the present moment -- covered in lots of stormy clouds, but still the sky embracing all of it. This takes a lot of work, though -- so much that I'm not sure it's realistic to even aspire to it. Besides, if you're constantly letting go, you're not engaged, and engagement is often necessary for professional success and personal connection. What's needed for a Western life is more of an oscillation between letting go and sinking in. And that is more complicated.

What, then, is beyond "letting go"? Here are three proposals to consider.

First, practice. Work. Discipline. These old-fashioned values are what gets beyond the New Age into real spiritual life. Every contemplative tradition of which I'm aware talks about the need for regular practice (prayer, meditation, yoga, painting, contemplation, whatever). People laugh at the "WWJD" crowd, with their bracelets asking what Jesus would do, but really, a lot of spiritual practice is just like that: just a reminder of something you already know, but need to remember at key moments. If you are marinating your mind in Bloomberg machines and BlackBerry messages, you need to proactively marinate it in spiritual ingredients as well. After all, you are what you eat.

Second, that practice has goals -- but in a very specific sense. The "goal" of daily practice isn't the same as the goal of intensive practice. You're not trying to have the most exotic samadhi or mystical experience each day; you're trying to increase your spiritual viscosity, that property of slipperiness that enables you to move quickly and smoothly from mortgage payments to spiritual truths, from linear achievement to present-moment love. In other words, the goal isn't to get somewhere, but to improve the capacity to get somewhere. If you've done enough intensive practice, your mind knows where that somewhere is -- after all, it's in the mind itself. You don't need to discover new territory -- only to return with ever-decreasing friction to what you know is truest, most authentic, most real.

Third, and this may be the most difficult piece of all, if you're letting go into a cesspool, you need to get out of the cesspool. Let's revisit that quip from Ramakrishna about the mind being like fabric taking on the color of dye. I've found over the years that this simple teaching is among the most difficult to actually live out. The mind really is malleable. On retreat, in a yoga class, or cuddled up on the sofa with your friends or family, "you" really are compassionate, loving, and wise. So why are you suddenly such a jerk in the parking lot? Well, the mind is adapting to different circumstances, and carrying "you" along with it.

Marketplace spirituality thrives by telling folks they can have spiritual peace simply by buying a product/class/book/technique. But that may not be enough. It's telling that the imperative the statue of Apollo commands in Rilke's poem is not "wow! look at me," but "you must change your life." In that moment of awe, a different self is conceived -- and from that transcendent moment, it is suddenly apparent that real life-changes are needed.

Of course, Rilke doesn't sell as well as the latest spiritual fad at the New Age store. It's a lot easier to tell people they can have their cake and eat it too, all while remaining gluten-free and thin. But in addition to daily practice and a clear sense of where it can take you, sometimes in order to let go effectively, you have to change what you let go into.

For more by Jay Michaelson, click here.

For more on becoming fearless, click here.]]> Apologize, Joe Walsh, for Your Tirade Against J-Street tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1799457 2012-08-17T17:46:07-04:00 2012-10-17T05:12:09-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/
Dear Rep. Walsh:

I write to protest your antisemitic statements, which have no place in public discourse. I demand that you apologize and take them back.

The statements in question were, ironically, when you called the organization 'J Street' (of which I am a supporter, but not a member) antisemitic. This was deeply offensive to all Jews.

Rep. Walsh, I'm not sure where your grandparents were in the 1930s and 1940s, but I'll tell you where my great-grandparents were: in Russia, Lithuania, and Latvia, being murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators. All of them. I'm also quite sure that you did not experience anti-Semitic slurs and violence as a youngster, as I did growing up in Florida in the 1980s. I doubt anyone in your family was ever denied entrance to a club, or a job, or anything else for that matter, because of their religion.

In short, you have no experience of anti-Semitism. Good for you! Your non-Jewish privilege has enabled you to move freely in certain corridors of power where Jews are still seen as "Other." You are part of the Christian majority in this country. You feel no ambivalence when the holiday season rolls around and "we" celebrate Christmas, or when your Tea Party colleagues refer to America as a Christian nation. This is what privilege is -- and you've got it in spades.

With privilege comes certain responsibilities. Rep. Walsh, you don't get to call Jews anti-Semitic -- certainly not without ample support from watchdogs of antisemitism like the Anti-Defamation League, or other reliable sources. That would be like me telling you you're not a good Christian. Certainly, I believe that; your outrageous comments about your opponent, your comments about Muslims, your cruel and un-Christian economic policies that would enrich the super-rich -- I have no doubt that Jesus would have condemned all of these. But it's not my place to say so. I'm not a Christian, and so I don't get to tell you about your religion.

Likewise here. When you call Jews -- like Jeremy Ben-Ami, the head of J-Street, or that organization's hundreds of thousands of Jewish supporters, including me -- anti-Semitic, you cross the line into anti-Semitism yourself. You're saying "I know Judaism better than you do, even though you are Jewish." You're ignoring your non-Jewish privilege. And you're invoking the ghosts of our murdered ancestors, abusing our memories of them to score political points. It's disgusting, Rep. Walsh, that you would ever say such a thing.

You'll notice I haven't said anything about J Street's policies. They are beside the point. It so happens that every J Street supporter I know cares about Israel and supports a two-state solution (which you do not) because they believe doing so is in Israel's best interests. Many of them, like Peter Beinart, are deeply committed Jews who send their kids to Jewish schools. We Jews disagree amongst ourselves as to which policies are better for Jews, for Israel, or for the human race in general. That doesn't make some of us anti-Semitic.

But really, none of that matters. Even if the organization's policies could somehow be construed as anti-Semitic, which they cannot, you don't get to say so. It's not your judgment call to make. It's ours. And stealing that right, for an ethnic group to define and defend itself, is an act of violence.

That's why it's anti-Semitic for you, a non-Jew, to call Jews anti-Semites. Ironically, what you're doing is the same when some pro-Palestine people analogize Israelis to Nazis. It's outrageous when they say it, and outrageous when you say it. Except in the most extreme of circumstances, non-Jews don't get to call Jews anti-Semitic, or Nazis, or anything of the sort.

Think what you will about Israel and Palestine. Your positions are to the right of Israel's right-wing parties, and I hope they will be rejected by your constituents. But those are political views, and you're entitled to have them. What you're not entitled to do is abuse the memories of my murdered forebears, and tell me that I'm like those who murdered them. Please -- reflect for a moment on how offensive that is. And for once, please, say that you're sorry.]]> When Jesus Healed a Same-Sex Partner tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1743947 2012-08-07T14:38:00-04:00 2012-10-07T05:12:03-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ for traditional religious values, such as the importance of companionship (Genesis 2:18) or civil justice (Deuteronomy 16:20), and the value that "love" isn't whatever we say it is but that movement of the heart that is patient, kind, and humble (1 Corinthians 13:4-6).

But, some people argue, what about the fact that the only sanctioned relationship in the Bible is between a man and a woman? Well, in fact, that's not quite the case. The story of the faithful centurion, told in Matthew 8:5-13 and Luke 7:1-10, is about a Roman centurion who comes to Jesus and begs that Jesus heal his pais, a word sometimes translated as "servant." Jesus agrees and says he will come to the centurion's home, but the centurion says that he does not deserve to have Jesus under his roof, and he has faith that if Jesus even utters a word of healing, the healing will be accomplished. Jesus praises the faith of the centurion, and the pais is healed. This tale illustrates the power and importance of faith, and how anyone can possess it. The centurion is not a Jew, yet he has faith in Jesus and is rewarded.

But pais does not mean "servant." It means "lover." In Thucydides, in Plutarch, in countless Greek sources, and according to leading Greek scholar Kenneth Dover, pais refers to the junior partner in a same-sex relationship. Now, this is not exactly a marriage of equals. An erastes-pais relationship generally consisted of a somewhat older man, usually a soldier between the ages of 18 and 30, and a younger adolescent, usually between the ages of 13 and 18. Sometimes that adolescent was a slave, as seems to be the case here. It would be inappropriate, in my view, to use the word "gay" to describe such a relationship; that word, and its many connotations, comes from our time, not that of Ancient Greece and Rome. This is not a relationship that any LGBT activist would want to promote today.

However, it is a same-sex relationship nonetheless. (It is also basically the same as the soldier/armor-bearer in the model of David and Jonathan, which I'll explore in a future article.) And what is Jesus's response? Does he spit in the centurion's face for daring to suggest that he heal the soldier's lover? Hardly. He recognizes the relationship and performs an act of grace.

Now, could pais really just mean "servant"? There are several reasons why this makes no sense. First, one would not expect a Roman centurion to intercede, let alone "beg" (parakaloon), on behalf of a mere servant or slave. Second, while Luke refers to the young man as a doulos (slave), the centurion himself specifically calls him a pais; this strongly suggests that the distinction is important. Third, we know that the erastes-pais intimate relationship was common practice among Roman soldiers, who were not allowed to take wives, and whose life was patterned on the Greek model of soldier-lovers. If pais just means "servant," none of this makes any sense.

If I and dozens of other scholars (some of whom are listed below) are correct, this is a radical act. Jesus is extending his hand not only to the centurion but to his partner, as well. In addition to Jesus' silence on homosexuality in general (he never mentions same-sex intimacy, not once, despite its prevalence in his social context), it speaks volumes that he did not hesitate to heal a Roman's likely same-sex lover. Like his willingness to include former prostitutes in his close circle, Jesus' engagement with those whose conduct might offend sexual mores even today is a statement of radical inclusion, and of his own priorities for the spiritual life.

It also sets up a useful distinction for those who may be struggling with same-sex marriage as a religious act, but who nonetheless want their gay and lesbian family members, friends, and community members not to be discriminated against. Jesus is not conducting a same-sex marriage here. Yet he is recognizing a socially accepted same-sex relationship. Likewise, Christians and Jews today who may not be ready to celebrate same-sex weddings in their own churches and synagogues can and should endorse civil marriage equality in the public sphere. In a very different context, this is exactly what Jesus did 2,000 years ago.

For more on the centurion's same-sex lover, see:
  • Theodore Jennings, The Man Jesus Loved (Cleveland: Pilgrim Press, 2009): 131-44
  • Rick Brentlinger, Gay Christian 101, 193-221 (and online)
  • The Jesus in Love blog
  • Jack Clark Robinson, "Jesus, the Centurion, and his Lover," Gay and Lesbian Review, 70 (2007)
  • Jeff Miner and John Tyler Connoley, The Children Are Free, 46-51.
]]> How to Tell Love From Hate: The Bible vs. Pastor Charles Worley tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1536850 2012-05-24T13:37:00-04:00 2012-07-24T05:12:07-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ a viral video, proposed (perhaps in jest) that LGBT people (his term was "lesbians and queers") should be rounded up and imprisoned until they "die out" because they "can't reproduce." Like a number of other such speeches, this clip has received over 600,000 views on YouTube and is undermining the efforts of more moderate gay-bashers like the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins to disguise anti-gay bias as something other than hatred.

Responding to the criticism that he hates gay people, Pastor Worley addressed us directly last Sunday, saying, "Listen, all of the sodomites, the lesbians, and all of the -- what's that word? -- gays (I didn't wanna say "queers") that say we don't love you, I love you more than you love yourself... I'm praying for you to be saved." Unfortunately, for a self-described "fundamentalist," Pastor Worley hasn't read his Bible closely. He's off on three counts: "sodomites," "love," and being "saved."

First, the Bible is quite clear as to the sin of Sodom. Ezekiel 16:49 says, "This was the iniquity of your sister Sodom: pride, fullness of bread, and abundance of idleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy. And they were haughty, and committed idolatrous taboos before me, and I took them away as I saw fit." Similarly, Jeremiah 23:14 states, "I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they commit adultery, and walk in lies: they strengthen also the hands of evildoers, that none returns from his wickedness: they are all of them unto me as Sodom, and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah."

According to the Bible, then, "sodomites" are those who are proud, greedy, lazy, uncharitable, adulterous, and dishonest. The notion that homosexuality is somehow related to the "sin" of Sodom doesn't arise until hundreds of years later, and the word "sodomy" was only coined in the 12th century, by the Catholic church. So, either Ezekiel and Jeremiah are wrong, or Pastor Worley is wrong.

Second, the Bible disagrees with Pastor Worley about the meaning of "love." Now, we all know that love doesn't mean letting someone do whatever they want. If your 3-year-old child is about to touch a hot stovetop, love means holding them back, pushing them away, basically doing whatever is necessary to stop them, even if they cry and shout about it. But what about gay people? Are we like the 3-year-old, unaware of what we are doing? And if not, how do we know if what we're feeling is "love" or something else? Do our religious traditions give us a way to tell real love from false? Sure they do. How about this:

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres. Love never fails. (1 Corinthians 13:4-8)


Or as Romans 13:10 puts it simply, "Love does no harm to its neighbor."

Let's apply these tests to Pastor Worley's professed "love" of gay people. Is calling for my lifetime internment in a concentration camp "patient" or "kind"? Does it "do no harm to its neighbor"? Or, on the other hand, might it "dishonor others" and do a great deal of harm to the vulnerable LGBT kids in Pastor Worley's own congregation, who, if they take his message to heart, would surely hate themselves, repress themselves, perhaps even take their own lives?

So, then, either St. Paul is wrong, or Pastor Worley is wrong. I think I'll go with the Bible on this one.

Finally, the Bible also provides a guide as to whether homosexuality is to be celebrated or condemned -- that is, whether gay people may also be "saved." It does this not in the three verses (out of 31,005 in the Bible) that talk about lust in the context of Roman or Canaanite idolatry; those are vague, unclear, and subject to interpretation. Rather, it offers a simple litmus test, right in the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, "Every good tree bears good fruit, but a bad tree bears bad fruit. A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, and a bad tree cannot bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Thus, by their fruit you will recognize them" (Matthew 7:17-20).

In that particular passage, Jesus was talking about telling true prophets from false ones, but it's been understood to stand for a much wider principle: that good things lead to good results, and bad things lead to bad ones. Well, what does affirmation of LGBT people lead to? More love, relationships, family, holiness, truthfulness, and justice -- all good things. What does rejection of LGBT people lead to? Lying, alienation, suicide, repression, rejection, tearing families apart (I've seen it happen), and the desperate search by gay people for some form of sexual outlet (like those priests and pastors who keep getting caught with male prostitutes, male masseurs, and altar boys) -- all not such good things. So, once again, either Jesus is wrong, or Pastor Worley is wrong. Well, I may be a nice Jewish boy, but on this one, I'm siding with Jesus.

Being gay, and welcoming gay people into our congregations and communities, "bears good fruit." Therefore it is good. Of course, one may still disapprove of some expressions of homosexuality, just like one might disapprove of some expressions of heterosexuality. But just as heterosexuality is not defined by a strip club in Las Vegas, homosexuality is not defined by the lustfulness that Paul criticizes and Leviticus relates to idolatry.

Pastor Worley, I'm afraid your "love" for me does not pass the test of Scripture, nor does your understanding of sodomy, or of salvation. I guess it's not surprising that you've read your Bible so carelessly. If you'd been more attentive, I doubt you'd propose locking up me, my partner, and my community in a concentration camp in the first place. Is that what Jesus would do?]]> Why Bully-Gate Matters tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.1510944 2012-05-14T13:55:50-04:00 2012-07-14T05:12:04-04:00 Jay Michaelson http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jay-michaelson/ Bully, I read the Washington Post story about Mitt Romney's high school bullying. There are some who say this 37-year-old story is irrelevant, but there are at least three reasons why that's not so, and why bully-gate does, indeed, matter.

First, as they say in politics, the cover-up is worse than the crime. Last week, Romney said that he just doesn't remember bullying John Lauber back in high school, but that he apologizes for any "pranks" he may have pulled. This is outrageous. Probably it's yet another Romney evasion of the truth. But if it isn't, that's even worse. He held down an effeminate high school student, forcibly cut his bleach-blond hair, and doesn't even remember it?

If there's one thing Bully the movie reinforced for me, it's that "pranks" are trivial only for the pranker -- that is, for the bully. As someone who was bullied myself, I remember dozens of separate incidents of intimidation, low-level violence, and threats. If this one was so insignificant for Romney, well, that just shows us how callous he was -- or perhaps, how many incidents there were.

I suspect Romney does, like his five classmates, remember this incident, but came up with the lawyerly evasion of "I don't recall" to try to soften the blow. For anyone who's seen Bully or been bullied themselves, this blithe evasion has had the opposite effect.

Second, there is the act itself. Of course, we all do stupid things as teenagers (and beyond) -- but which stupid things we do is relevant in assessing character. Romney's youthful misstep was one of cruelty and callousness. A lot of his contemporary policies seem that way, too. Romney is a plutocrat who enjoys firing people, and who, yes, strapped his dog onto the roof of his car -- which his wife Ann recently said the dog "loved." This is a pattern -- one of cruelty and disregard for the well-being of others. And, as Paul Begala recently noted, of abuse of power. The boy was a prince, the man is a prince, and he seems not to give a damn about the paupers.

Finally, there is the clear linkage that Romney's bullying draws between the meanness of the bully and the meanness of the latter-day conservative. Life is unfair, they say. Sometimes people are just losers. If they can't afford health care, let them die. And if they can't stick up for themselves, well, they deserve to get beaten up.

This is the ethos both of the bully and the bull-market ideologue: the weak, the poor, and the wretched probably deserve it. And in any case, better to let them suffer than to risk too much compassion or care-taking. I've got mine, and too bad that you don't.

Some have juxtaposed bully-gate with President Obama's compassionate statement in support of same-sex marriage -- notable not just for its substance but, as I remarked here a few days ago, for its style as well, which demonstrates introspection, thoughtfulness, and empathy. That is an apt juxtaposition, but I think the one I happened to experience is even more telling. Bully is a film that everyone should see. It shines a light on some of the darkest corners of human nature. And unintentionally, it seems, on the Republican candidate for president.]]>