Romney concedes!

It seems that Romney has just called Obama to concede, and he's about to speak at his headquarters in Boston. "I have just called President Obama to congratulate him." "I pray that the President will be successful in guiding our nation." Clapping from the audience. Now thanking Paul Ryan.

President Obama Reelected!

It appears that all our worrying is now followed by relief - President Obama has won reelection according to the New York Times and all the television networks, with up to 332 electoral votes, depending on what happens in Ohio and Virginia.

Another exciting victory - gay rights has won in several states. Maryland has approved gay marriage (51.7%-48.3%), Maine has defeated a referendum to overturn gay marriage (currently 54%-46%). It also looks like Washington State has approved gay marriage, although there's only 50% of the vote reported thus far. And Minnesota may have defeated an anti-gay marriage amendment (only 53% reporting).

Tammy Baldwin seems to have defeated Tommy Thompson in Wisconsin, thus becoming the first open gay person in the Senate.

And here's a great picture of Barack and Michelle -

Mitt Romney - petty and creepy hater of lesbians and gay men

According to the Boston Globe, when gay marriage became legal in Massachusetts, Governor Romney opposed creating new birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. "The box for 'father' would be relabeled 'father or second parent,’ reflecting the new law."

Romney rejected the new plan and "insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word 'father' on individual birth certificates, and then write in 'second parent,' in ink."

Romney’s interventions mostly resulted in delays awarding birth certificates for women married to same-sex partners who gave birth. Gay men seeking parental rights were required to take a different route, by obtaining a court order. By law, birth certificates must be issued within 10 days of birth, and in some instances, those deadlines were not met.

Most of the birth-certificate reviews by the governor’s office appeared cursory. For example, health department deputy counsel Wiesenberg e-mailed Brian Leske and Nielsen on Dec. 23, 2004, to ask permission to issue a certificate regarding one birth: “Birth at UMass Memorial Medical Center. Facts (married mother, same sex spouse, anonymous donor) are similar to 23 other cases that Mark has reviewed . . . [and] instruct[ed] the hospital to list mother & same sex spouse as the second parent on the child’s birth certificate.”

Leske e-mailed back: “You are authorized to inform the Medical Center that may list the same sex spouse as a second parent on the birth certificate.”

In one instance, in which a couple asked that the handwritten alteration for the second parent say “wife” instead of second parent, the request was denied. In another, Leske refused to allow a birth certificate to be issued listing a same-sex couple as the parents because they were not married.

All of this footdragging came about directly as a result of Romney's personal intervention, growing out of his adamant opposition to gay marriage and even more adamant opposition to gay people raising children.

He spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee:

“The children of America have the right to have a father and a mother,’’ Romney said in his prepared remarks. “What should be the ideal for raising a child? Not a village, not ‘parent A’ and ‘parent B,’ but a mother and a father.’’

Romney also warned about the societal impact of gay parents raising children. “Scientific studies of children raised by same-sex couples are almost nonexistent,’’ he said. “It may affect the development of children and thereby future society as a whole.’’

Romney expressed similar beliefs during a speech in 2005 to socially conservative voters in South Carolina, as he was beginning to be viewed as a serious candidate for president.

“Some gays are actually having children born to them,’’ he declared. “It’s not right on paper. It’s not right in fact. Every child has a right to a mother and father.’’

"Some gays are actually having children born to them" - as if lesbians were not like every other woman who is capable of bearing children. The detachment from the real lives of lesbians and gay men in his statements is chilling. He just does not see us as a real living, breathing human beings with the same needs and desires as other people - including the desire for children and a family that most people want.

Third debate - supposedly on foreign policy

Word of the day: "tumult"

Surprise of the evening: Mali?

This was supposed to be a debate about foreign policy - so why no discussion of Europe (although Greece got a shout out)? Of India? Of any sub-saharan African country? South America was mentioned by Romney but only as a trade counterweight to China.

Judith Butler gets a taste of her own politics

Judith Butler gets a taste of her own politics

Eva Illouz on the award of the Adorno prize to Judith Butler - an excellent article. Good criticisms of Butler herself, and a principled defense of the committee that awarded the prize to her. A sample:

Criticism of Butler
At first blush, the case against Butler seems strong. Her anti-Zionism does not always seem to be fully aware of the tangled history of this country, and her calls to boycott and divest from Israel would disempower the groups most likely to help fight the cause of justice here. More perplexing is the fact that she has made statements expressing partial support for Hezbollah and Hamas. In response to a question at a public talk, she claimed that the two well-known Islamic military and religious groups are members of the global left. The syllogism behind this stunning proposition is that anti-imperialism and anticolonialism, in all its forms, define the global left, that Hamas and Hezbollah fight against Israeli imperialism, ergo they belong to the “global left.” ‏(What is the mysterious entity called “global left,” I cannot say). 

Defense of the committee
3. While I fully understand the source of the distress expressed by the German Jewish community, their interference represents a tactical and moral mistake. The place to fight opinions like those of Judith Butler is in the public sphere. Increasingly, Jewish groups inside and outside Israel are using what can be easily interpreted as bullying tactics to silence their opponents. Israeli policies toward Palestinians, Eritrean refugees and non-Jewish immigrants are morally indefensible; the critiques against these policies will be increasingly strident, and among these critiques some will be worthy, some unworthy. Muzzling critiques, even the unworthy ones, cannot be a valid response. In fact, it only proves the main point of the critiques, namely that Israel and the people supporting Israel are increasingly relying on undemocratic politics and tactics. Democracy is nothing more than agreeing to oppose both worthy and unworthy opinions in the same way. Some of Judith Butler’s political opinions are unworthy, but the only proper way to fight them is through argument and debate, not through institutional muscle power.

The Contested Color of Christ

The Contested Color of Christ - a fascinating article on the way that Jesus has been figured as white in the US for a couple of centuries. Apparently the LDS church (the Mormons) have depicted him as even whiter than other popular portrayals - light colored hair and blue eyes. I went to the wedding of two women this weekend at the local American Baptist church, and I was struck by the stained-glass window in the front of the church depicting Jesus in a long white robe, with long blond hair (I didn't notice what color his eyes were), and white skin, arms wide to welcome people.

The article discusses how some African-American churches began to picture Jesus as black. The African-American Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama is the church where four little girls were killed in 1963 by a bomb set by white racist terrorists. In this church Jesus was depicted as white.

In a world filled with images of Jesus, this one made headlines. He stood in a stained-glass window wearing a simple white robe and a dark tunic. When sunlight struck the glass just so, kindness radiated from his white face and warmth from his brown eyes.

The bomb destroyed the stained glass image, and was replaced by a black Jesus: "This one seems sad, his arms stretched out, crucified. His hair is short, cropped; his face black."

The article also discusses a popular LDS image of Jesus - the Christus statue, made by a Dutch artist and often reproduced for LDS visitor centers. Here's a photo of the one at the Visitor Center in Temple Square in Salt Lake City:

Photo is by Pedro Szekely - http://www.flickr.com/people/pedrosz/, and published here under a Creative Commons license.

(Aside from the overwhelming whiteness of the white marble Jesus, this is an absolutely fabulous background to the statue in the North Visitors' Center in Temple Square).

After reading this article, I started to wonder about images of a Jewish Jesus. The popular American Christian depictions of Jesus have always struck me as being almost totally unrealistic, since Jesus was not a midwestern white American with blond hair, but a Jew from Judea who was probably olive-skinned or darker with curly dark or black hair. By searching on Google Images I found quite a few images.

Here's one, from a blog called "Ideas of a Black WASP." This image comes from a 2001 BBC program called "Son of God."

Tablet Magazine published an article a couple of years ago about Jewish depictions of Jesus. Here are two cited in that article.

Marc Chagall's famous "White Crucifixion": Jesus is clearly white-skinned, but he has a brown beard, and his loincloth is a tallit. It was painted in 1938 and is currently in the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Israeli artist Adi Nes depicts Jesus:

Rebellion in Ramallah - can the outsourced occupation survive?

Excellent article by Gershom Gorenberg, Rebellion in Ramallah?, on the protests against the Palestinian Authority by people in the West Bank. 

Thousands of Palestinians take to the streets. In Hebron, demonstrators burn an effigy. In Tul Karm, Ramallah, and other cities, they block streets and set tires ablaze. Teens hurl stones. All of the West Bank's bus, truck, and taxi drivers go on strike for a day. In Bethlehem, truckers park sideways, blocking streets. In Nablus, kindergarten teachers join the strike; elsewhere storekeepers shut their shops. Universities announce they, too, will strike.  

These are updates from the West Bank over the past week. They sound as if taken from the start of the first Palestinian uprising against Israel 25 years ago. But the leader burned in effigy in Hebron was Salam Fayyad, prime minister of the Palestinian Authority. The Palestinian government in Ramallah, rather than Israel, is the direct target of protest. Economic frustration sparked the fury. This sounds like a variation on revolts in other Arab states—except the Palestinian Authority isn't an independent state. Set up as to provide short-term, limited autonomy until a peace agreement, it has become the lasting means by which Israel outsources its rule over Palestinians in occupied territory. Donor countries foot the budget; the PA provides local services. Israel's current government acts as if the arrangement can last forever. The protests show how unstable it really is.... 

The outsourced occupation depends on the whims of donors; it produces high prices, hunger, unemployment, and unpaid salaries. Economically, it cannot be sustained.

When I was in Israel earlier this year, there were a number of warnings that a third intifada was on the way - a committee of outside experts even arranged a special meeting with Netanyahu to warn him of this. Of course, nothing changed. I would expect that an uprising against the PA would quickly turn to the real culprit - the Israel government's unwillingness to negotiate any change to the status quo that would risk the settlement project. I hope it doesn't happen - the second intifada was terrible, and got the Palestinians no closer to an independent state - but Israel has to be willing to offer something to the Palestinians in order to prevent a third uprising in 25 years.