After my D.C. book reading last night at the fabulous Busboys and Poets (visit it if you are in Washington! www.busboysandpoets.com), I had dinner with some friends. One of them is a former student, Muneer Ahmad, who is a now professor at American University’s Law School (see above photo: although he looks 19 still, the fact that he is a professor, well, boy, do I feel old). In his “spare time,” Muneer has been pro bono counsel representing a young man who was interned at Guantanamo Bay five years ago, when he was 15 and living in Afghanistan (see the Rolling Stone article The Unending Torture of Omar Khadr online at www.rollingstone.com). This young man has now spent ¼ of his life in a prison camp, yet has not been convicted of any crime

Muneer’s client is actually lucky: of the 450 people held at Guantanamo, only 10 have actually been formally charged. The other 440 have never been charged, and can be held indefinitely as they are deemed “enemy combatants” who might “return to the battlefield” and thus can be held for as long as our government likes. Since the “War on Terror” can never be declared over or won, this means they could spend the rest of their lives there. In fact, this could happen to Muneer’s client, even if he is found innocent, and he too could be held for the rest of his life as well.

As someone raised to believe in due process and the concept that the law is fair, I found all this horrifying. Our government seems to be completely willing to compromise our values in order to “save them.” It eludes me.

Another friend at the dinner, Jerry, also grew up in the South and had a brilliant idea. He remembers, like I do, our little Sunday school textbooks, where we would be told stories and be asked what Jesus would do in this situation. Well, what would Jesus do here, in the Guantanamo situation? Perhaps Matthew Chapter 25 offers us some guidance:

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come ye, blessed of my Father; inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I hungered and ye gave me meat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in. Naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison and ye came unto me…Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of these the least of my brethren, ye have done it unto me…Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment; but the righteous into life eternal.

Seems to me like our leaders, despite their fervent and frequent protestations of their piety and their Christianity, have chosen a path which conflicts with this guidance. In the current fevered climate, one would have to say that the inmates at Guantanamo are the “least of our brethren.” I am enormously proud of Muneer for representing one of them. It’s what Jesus would have done, I think.

Kevin Says... | 1 Comment »

In an inaccurate rant published at http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=52116, Mr. White Bucks Himself goes after my organization, GLSEN, using the tried and true “big lie” approach, as I have found is typical of fundamentalist extremists (as my colleague Daryl puts it, “it’s so much easier when you can just lie”). In short, he makes it look like our Boston chapter was responsible for handing out an age-inappropriate sexuality education brochure at a conference over a year ago, when the facts are that a volunteer from an outside agency, Fenway Community Health Center, who was unaware of our policies on age-appropriateness, took upon himself to put a small stack of five or six of these on an exhibit table, where they were found by a fundamentalist extremist who was hunting or material to use against us. The fact that basically no one picked these up, that they were brought by an outside agency that apologized for so doing, and that they contravene our policies, means nothing to Mr. Boone: it’s ironclad evidence of our “reprehensible” tactics which include being as “active in their recruitment as the ROTC” and seeking to “promote the homosexual lifestyle in middle and high schools.”

Blah, blah, blah, Pat. I’m not taking seriously criticism based on misrepresentations or from someone who routinely wears white after Labor Day.

More fascinating to me, as a former history teacher, is Mr. Boone’s interpretation of the history of the family, which to him is as follows:

“Mom and Dad and kids in a normal family evening. Add to that other snapshots of Mom showing Sis how to make a beautiful omelet, Dad coaching Billy and his buddies in Little League, the whole happy brood on vacation in the Smoky Mountains – and slipping into their usual seats at church or synagogue. Pretty much the way it’s always been, not just in our country, but in virtually every part of the world since humanity began.”

Interesting, Pat. I didn’t know that God built churches and synagogues at the Creation (did I miss that part of Genesis?) or that human beings always lived in nuclear families (actually, Pat, extended families living in tribal groupings are much more typical of human history than nuclear families in single-family homes on suburban cul-de-sacs, but never mind, Pat, historical facts just get in the way, don’t you agree?). Even more fascinating is Mr. Boone’s presumption of middle class affluence, where Mom doesn’t have to work outside the home, of traditional gender roles where Mom can make an omelet but throws a baseball like a girl (so Dad has to coach Little League, in which Sis has no interest apparently), and everybody’s got the money to go on a nice vacation. Maybe that’s your family, Pat, but most American families have had and still have to work hard, long hours to make a living so that these “normal” evenings tend to be the province of a relatively small, privileged number of families.

Pat Boone longs for good old days that never existed for most people. Nostalgia won’t solve the very real problems families face, Pat – like declining wages or troubled school systems – and neither will attacking us. Focus on your own Family, Pat, unless you’ve got some real solutions, which you must not, if this is the best you’ve got.

Kevin Says... | No Comments »