The limitations of hindsight....

 79 Years ago this week, the United States and Japan both earned singular places in world history. The U.S. as the first and only nation to ever use atomic weapons in war, and Japan as the first and only country ever to be attacked with such weapons .

It has become rather fashionable in some quarters to debate the decision by President Truman to drop the Atomic Bombs on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In recent years it has even become commonplace to hear the bombings referred to as “American War Crimes”. The arguments range from saying Japan was already defeated and the bomb was dropped partly as some grotesque military science experiment, and partly as a geo-political shot across the bow of Soviet Russia. A warning to Stalin to mind his manners and place in the world.

How much of that is true, and how much of that is ideological historical revisionism, we will never know. The only man who can truly answer those questions is Harry Truman, and from the day the first bomb fell to the day he died Truman maintained that his decision was the correct one.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/X-aXwokBdL8

Truman's statement after the Hiroshima bombing

To say that by August 1945, Japan was defeated is both accurate and overly simplistic. The question was not was the Japanese military defeated. but rather would Japan stop fighting in spite of the reality of that defeat The overwhelming evidence at the time, including statements by the Japanese high command clearly indicated the answer to that question was No. Japan would fight on, and a full-scale invasion of the Japanese home islands would be inevitable.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/HKD-0mJ94B4

BBC Documentary "Hiroshima"

I often tell the story of friends of mine in Europe and in Asia and the different questions they have asked me about this moment in American history. German friends of mine will ask with genuine curiosity why did the US drop the atom bomb? While friends in Korea, Thailand and Philippines will ask with equally genuine curiosity why The United States only dropped two atomic bombs?

The argument that use of the Atomic Bomb was immoral and inhumane is something of a straw-man. ALL acts of war, even those that can be militarily justified are immoral and inhumane. The firebombing of Japan by American B-29’s had already killed more Japanese civilians than would die in both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki attacks combined. Japan had already killed more Chinese civilians than Jews killed by the Nazis in Hitler’s death camps.

The atomic bomb was not dropped to win the war, but to end it. Ending it without having to invade Japan,. The best estimates held that the invasion of Japan would cost 268,000 casualties. Personnel at the Navy Department estimated that the total losses to America would be between 1.7 and 4 million with 400,000 to 800,000 deaths. The same department estimated that there would be up to 10 million Japanese casualties. As opposed to the roughly 200,000 deaths from the atomic attacks on both cities

I find this perennial argument flawed on so many levels. NOBODY thinks dropping the Atomic bombs on Japan was a GOOD thing to do. The issue is was it the correct choice at the time.? To employ hindsight driven hypothetical scenarios is remarkable easy in 2024 and blithely dismisses what the otherwise inevitable invasion of Japan would have cost in lives on both sides.

The desire by some to cloak this debate in terms of were the bombings “justified” or moral is an overly simplistic attempt in hindsight to avoid the more relevant and complex hypothetical questions of what were the real alternatives at the time? War is not a moral act. The causes that compel nations to war have underpinnings of morality. Be it to end slavery or, free an oppressed people, or even self-defense. But war itself is killing on a mass scale. There is no getting around that.

To try to view Hiroshima and Nagasaki solely in that one dimension, and to frame it as a critique of the 40 years of an atomic arms race that followed, may be ideologically satisfying to some, but it is both intellectually lazy and factually dishonest.

The Annual Pride Debate....

  Well it's June... So you KNOW what that means.

Like the rainbow flags going up on Market Street in San Francisco , the annual debate over the merits of LGBT Pride celebrations re-surfaces like a perennial weed that just won't stay down.

It's a debate that rages  inside and outside the  LGBTQ community. Inside the community, the question is; does some of the imagery of Pride celebrations hurt the cause of equal rights? Also, in the wake of legal victories such as Marriage Equality; some ask  do we even need pride celebrations anymore?

While critics and opponents of equality love to point to that same imagery as evidence of Gay folks wanting "special rights", and then pull out their favorite chestnut, of asking why are Gay Pride Celebrations acceptable but Straight Pride celebrations are not?

Sigh.... Really? It's like asking why isn't there a "White History Month". I get tired of trying to explain to people who really do know better, just how stupid they sound whey they try to make these types of arguments. But fine, since clearly there is some "genuine" confusion out there as to the reason for LGBT Pride celebrations , allow me to clarify.

States in the USA where you can be fired for being Straight =0
States in the USA where you could have been fired for being Gay = 28
Countries that will execute you for being Straight = 0
Countries that will execute you for being Gay = 11 (actually 12 Uganda just re-joined the list)


Growing up, how many books, songs, television programs, and movies did you see that featured straight couples meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after? Pretty much all of them. Ask someone who is LGBT how many positive images in popular culture they had growing up that affirmed who they are? The answer is, none, or at best few, if any at all.

Thankfully this has been changing dramatically in the past few years.

But until those recent advances, Gay characters in movies and television were either creepy villains or camp comic relief. If you doubt that, you really should check out the groundbreaking HBO documentary, "The Celluloid Closet".It shows clearly the disparity in popular culture where messages about sexual orientation were concerned.

 
The Celluloid Closet - Trailer

Then there is the area of religion. The number of straight kids who have been told they are going to hell simply for being heterosexual = 0. The number of LGBTQ kids who have been told that they are going hell simply for being who they are?  = Too many to even try to count.

To my Straight friends, I have to ask, how many times have "respected" public figures, politicians, pundits and clergy gone on national television demanding that everyone be given the chance to VOTE on your civil rights?

How often has someone told you that not being able to discriminate against you was somehow an attack on them? When was the last time you heard a member of the Supreme Court saying that simply by being allowed to exist, you were "an attack" on the moral fiber of America?

Anyone?? Yeah...I didn't think so...

I have a flash of the obvious for you, EVERY month is Straight Pride Month." There is a word for someone who truly feels that equal rights for people they don't like is somehow an attack on them. That word is "Bigot".

Saying LGBT people are human too, isn't an attack on straight people. Those people who really think it is, are, quite simply, bigots. People who say LGBT Pride celebrations need to be stopped, are in fact, the exact reason they all started in the first place.

In 2024 one would think such battles would be long over, but in the light of LGBT rights victories in the U.S. over the past few years, the American Talibangelicals have turned their sights to new targets; Trans Kids and Drag Performers.

The rhetoric on the American cultural Right Wing,  would have you believe a man in a dress and high heels reading  books to kids, is a greater threat than the LEADING cause of death for children in the United States: Gun Violence.

Are Pride celebrations good or bad for the cause of equality? The answer is both. With visibility comes closer examination.  

Opponents of equality love to show images of drag queens, leather daddies and shirtless men   dancing on parade floats, and scream "See! it's not about equal rights! They just want to recruit your kids into THIS!! They never show the families, advocacy groups, welcoming and inclusive religious denominations, and workplace affinity groups who participate in Pride parades.    After all, that wouldn't fit their desired narrative.

Media coverage is often complicit. CNN loves to show the drag queens and gogo boys, but when straight allies like the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest non-profit health care company in the U.S.rides on a float in the SF Pride parade every year, with over 1,200 employees, their families, friends and colleagues, you'd think we all were invisible.

You never see CNN asking Tony Perkins, head of the certified Hate-Group, the "Family Research Council" on Fox News about the deadly cultural fetishization of guns and violence towards minorities on the cultural right, and how that had led directly to lethal antiemetic and homophobic attacks.

That would be admitting something of an inconvenient truth. 

It's much easier to just point at a group of shirtless men on a flatbed truck or women on motorcycles and say that they are the real threat to families.

I have always said that Pride celebrations are not really for the people who attend them. Instead, they are for the people who cannot attend them. Growing up as a Gay kid in a small town in South Central Wisconsin, there were times when I was convinced, I was the only gay person on Earth.

The constant message from popular culture, religion, family and peer groups was "boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married (or not) and have kids and live happily ever after". There was no happily ever after for someone who felt what I was feeling.

Then, for one weekend in June, I would turn on the TV News and see thousands of people just like me, in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago saying "No, that's not true, you are not alone, and there is a big wide world out here beyond Sun Prairie Wisconsin. So hang in there .... we're here and we're waiting for you!"

1986 Pride Television Coverage

Now more than three decades  later, I watch coverage like this, and it seems so endearingly cheesy. Yet at the time, it was a lifeline to people like me, living with the fear and isolation of being "in the closet".

Pride Celebrations are the original "It Gets Better Project".

My straight friends never needed to be told that being straight was okay, and that they were okay because nobody ever told them they weren't.  

Pride isn't about celebrating being Gay, it's about publicly showing that being LGBT is just as much a part of the human experience as being straight is. I for one would love to see the day when Pride is obsolete. When that scared closeted gay kid, in some small town doesn't need to be told that he or she is fine just the way they are.

So this month we will see joyous crowds gathering in places like Market Street in San Francisco, Oxford Street in London, Halsted Street in Chicago, and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Hillcrest in San Diego, Montrose in Houston, and so many more.

And there is reason to celebrate. We have a President, and administration that honors the idea of "E Pluribus Unum" - that America is one out of many. So in this Pride Month , it is still vitally importing to add our voices voice to the chorus celebrating the diversity of America and the American Experience.

If for no other reason to let that one scared kid know, it really does get better. There is a world where "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl", where you can be the person that every fibre of your being is screaming for you to be. A world where yes, you can fall in love and (if they want to) get married, and even live happily ever after...

Happy Pride Everyone.

Unprecedented thoughts…

With the unanimous thirty four count guilty verdict in Donald Trump’s criminal fraud trial in New York this week,  the media as been stumbling all over itself to find new and novel ways to use  the word  “unprecedented” .   The context of course, being that having a  former President of the United States,  and presumptive  nominee for his party to run to be the next President charged, tried and convicted of multiple felonies  is  something that  we as a nation have never been faced with before.

Yeah ok….  So what.

I mean it, so what.     You know what else is unprecedented?  Having  a former and wannabe again President who is so singularly focused on his own enrichment and self-aggrandizement. So it can be said that everything about  the sad,  sordid  dismal legacy of Donald Trump the political figure has been  outside of what we knew as precedent .

The implication from folks like House Speaker Mike Johnson is clear; The uncharted territory of all this means normal rules, and even laws should not, and must not apply.   Johnson went so far as to suggest that the United States Supreme Court, (which itself is not having a very good week). should ‘weigh in’ on the matter.   The fact that there is absolutely no legal, constitutional or even common-sense basis for such a thing is irrelevant to Johnson because Trump actually being held accountable for crimes he committed is for him and the GOP, too unprecedented.

Trump himself has stayed entirely true to form.   In 2016 when he lost the Iowa Caucuses and the Wisconsin Primary, he claimed both races were “rigged against” him.   When his fake charity and bogus scam university were shut down for blatant violations of the law, he decried the “rigged court decisions”.   When his TV show “The Apprentice” would drop in the ratings he said the Nielsen system is rigged, and when he didn’t get nominated for an Emmy Award claimed it was a vast Hollywood conspiracy to deny him one.

Lastly, Trump was so unable to process his 2020 election loss that he literally tried to have a mob of his supporters overthrow the Government and kill the Vice-President, and to this day still can’t admit the reality of that loss.  Desperately clinging to the lie the election was rigged and stolen from him.

For Trump, life is only fair when he wins.  

Is it any surprise that his only way to deal with the reality of his current situation was to throw daily tantrums  outside the Manhattan Courthouse, overflowing with delusional accusations of corrupt judges and prosecutors, biased jurors and the entire thing  orchestrated from the shadows by the Biden-Harris Campaign.

Because that is what all this is about.   For Donald Trump, having to face reality, devoid of the protection his personal fantasy world has long provided him, is perhaps the most unprecedented thing of all.

That is why Donald Trump desperately wants to be President again, to keep reality at bay. 

Not to DO the job.  He never DID the job.  During his disastrous four years the vast majority of his time was spent, not actually being President, but playing President.  Constant MAGA rallies of the same recycled grievances and dog whistles.  Hours upon hours of “executive time” spent in the White House residence, waiting for  Fox News hosts to say nice things about him so he could retweet it.    And more time spent golfing than the last three Presidents combined.

Not to rehash traumatic recent history, but the last time Trump was in the White House he was so disengaged from the job that by the time he noticed the Covid Pandemic wasn’t going away, the best he could muster was to suggest we all inject bleach into our bodies and shove lightbulbs up our asses.     Trump’s inability to deal with reality cost the lives of over half a million Americans and did trillions of dollars of damage to our economy we are still trying to recover from.

Being convicted of falsifying business records so voters wouldn’t find out he paid off a porn actress to keep quiet bout their hook up is the least unprecedented thing about all this.   

What is really beyond the realm of precedent is that there are people in this country who think returning this delusional, corrupt, incompetent narcissist to power would be a good idea.

The fact that the grand experiment of American Democracy may come to an end, not via the evil our politicians  but through the ignorance of  our own citizens, that... is what I call  unprecedented.

God Bless America?

WARNING! This is going to be about religion… So if that makes you uneasy feel free to skip this post.

I don’t often write about my own faith. I tend to subscribe to the advice of the late Waite Phillips who once said he’d “rather see a sermon than hear one any day.” Faith is something that should always be seen more than heard. So I find myself watching the loud exhortations by the new Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, proclaiming his version of Christianity with a increasing feeling of frustration and yes, dismay.

It is tempting in times like these when a national political figure waves their religion around like a cape at bull fight; to reference Jesus’ own words on this sort of thing. How in Matthew Chapter 6 Jesus makes it very clear the “See how holy I am!” crowd have missed the entire point of the practice of faith. Or how in Luke, Chapter 18 Jesus tells the story of how people who claim how their faith makes them better than someone else, are anything but.

Yet I am reminded about a common question that politicians often get asked, especially at events like the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where a common query to would-be Presidents of the United States, is; “What is your favorite bible verse?”

When conservative radio host Bob Lonsberry asked Donald Trump that question in 2016, the resulting word salad was…. Impressive.

"Well, I think many. I mean when we get into the Bible, I think many, so many. And some people, look, an eye for an eye, you can almost say that. That's not a particularly nice thing. But you know, if you look at what's happening to our country, I mean, when you see what's going on with our country, how people are taking advantage of us, and how they scoff at us and laugh at us. And they laugh at our face, and they're taking our jobs, they're taking our money, they're taking the health of our country. And we have to be very firm and have to be very strong. And we can learn a lot from the Bible, that I can tell you."

Um…. Okay.   Wow.

The new Speaker of the House in his own podcast in 2022, framed his Christian faith in terms of a battle that needed to be waged. Saying that God wanted more aggression and less turning of the other cheek. "Obviously, this is an increasingly hostile culture," Johnson told the audience. "We all know that. We need to understand why that is, and we need to commit to do our part to confront it. The kingdom of God allows aggression."

He then referenced Scripture from Matthew 11:12, which according to a more recent translation, states: "From the days of John the Baptist until now, the kingdom of heaven has been forcefully advancing, and forceful men lay hold of it."

Johnson sees his elevation to the office of Speaker as part of some divine battle plan. A Christian nationalist blueprint for an America where reproductive rights, birth control, divorce, LGBT people, and all separation of (his) church and the state is done away with.

Also, according to Speaker Johnson, God wants everybody to have guns. Lots and lots of guns. Telling Sean Hannity in 2016 that God is big supporter of the Second Amendment. And he is not alone in that belief. A 2021 survey found that “among Whites who said America should be a Christian nation, more than 4 in 10 named the right to keep and bear arms as the most important right. Not freedom of speech. Not even freedom of religion, but gun rights.”

The concept of “Christian Nationalism” has had a resurgence of popularity on the political and cultural right these days. The belief that the United States is or should be a Christian Nation first and foremost and the secular idea of any kind of separation of (Christian) church and state is the work of the Devil.

A conservative friend of mine recently asked me what my favorite bible verse was. I was tempted to pull out something ridiculous from the book of Numbers just to see his reaction, but instead I answered honestly. Proverbs 3:6

I’ll save you the effort of googling it. It reads: “In all your ways acknowledge God, and God will make your paths straight.”

My friend was really surprised by this, responding that it was an odd choice for a Gay man. Saying “that verse sounds like an endorsement of conversion therapy!” Clearly thinking “make your path straight” could refer to becoming heterosexual. I laughed and said if he was going to take every word in the bible literally, then he was clearly going to hell for eating shellfish and wearing cotton blend.

For me, one of the core tenants of my Christian faith has always been “Emanuel” or God with Us. The idea that we do not walk alone through life. But if we listen for God, we will find God. Not in the Mike Pence “God told me to run for President “way, but in the sense of knowing the right thing to do when it matters most.

Hearing God speak to us not as a booming voice out of parted clouds but in opportunities we find in our path. That verse in proverbs has always been for me, an invitation to be open to opportunities to live my faith, rather than just talk about it.

I remember the bedtime prayer I would say a child. Many of you may have said the same or a similar one. There are multiple variations on it. We said the 1932 Grace Bridges version:

Now I lay me down to sleep,
I pray my lord my soul to keep,
In the morning when I awake
Help me the path of love to take.

I have always found the difference from the New England Primer version, the “if I should die before I wake” version to be significant. The path of love wasn’t some celestial escalator to a gated heavenly community in the sky. But rather the choices and opportunities that I would face that next day.   The path of love is the “straight path” Proverbs 3:6 invites us to be open to.

And to be clear, it’s an UPHILL path. Unlike the opposite. The path of pointing fingers at others, the path of “lets build a wall to keep THOSE people out”, the path of some voices mattering more than others because of the color of faces they come out of, or how they vote, or because they don’t come from people who loudly pray as they kneel on the House Floor for the CSPAN Cameras. 

That path is easy. Because that path leads downward.

And like most downward paths, when you start on it, gravity kicks in and helps propel you faster. The more people you can claim are less than, or are less ‘favored’ by your version of God the faster that downhill journey goes. The path of hate, the path of exclusion the idea that the Grace of God is a zero-sum proposition. America is God’s favored Nation so clearly other nations aren’t. That path is very easy.

The path of love is about the work of the Kingdom of God, here and now. Not about building a wall and hiding behind it waiting for Blond-haired, blue-eyed Caucasian Jesus to magically beam you up and all the people you don’t like are ‘left behind’. 

It is being open to things as simple and as complex, as looking for God in the people and situations we encounter every day. You will find work to do if you follow that "path made straight'. You will find people who are very different from you, who think different, act different and live differently.

Yet being open to a path made straight, can lead to lots of other things. Even to finding a sense of purpose. In the Lutheran liturgy in the service of Baptism there is wonderful moment when the congregation speaks words of welcome to the newly baptized:

"We welcome you into the lord's family, we receive you as fellow members of the body of Christ, children of the same heavenly father, and workers with us in the kingdom of God.”

What has always resonated for me in those words, is the idea that the  Kingdom of God is not, some distant Asgardian realm with glowing sidewalks and flying chariots. But is the here and now, with work to do. The path of love is an uphill one. Accepting that invitation in Proverbs 3 to be open to letting God make paths straight, is to accept that we need to do the work of the kingdom of God here, today.

We often hear religious figures talk about “Sharing the Good news” I have always defined that as trying to live a life were others “see a sermon” rather than hear it. Mike Johnson defines sharing the good news as telling people he disagrees with that God loves them less because of where they were born, who they love or how they vote. 

I like how Luther defined Evangelism as one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. Its not about having all the answers it’s about helping others look for them along with us.  

Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson and I have very different ideas about what “evangelism” is. For him it’s about who and what he needs to oppose. For me it’s always been about what is it that I need to try to do today, to move just a little father up that path made straight,  the path of love.

One my favorite versions of the Easter story is found in John’s gospel. Where after finding the tomb empty Mary Magdalene lingers looking for clues as to where the assumed grave robbers have taken Jesus’ body. Then encountering Jesus, she doesn’t recognize him, until Jesus says her name. It is upon hearing Jesus call her by her name, she recognizes the risen Christ and is given instructions to take back to the disciples, she is given work to do. A path made straight.

In the weeks and months ahead, there is going to be a lot of noise. People like Mike Johnson will loudly proclaim they speak for God. That God has a preferred choice in the 2024 election, and people who don’t agree with that choice are enemies that God wants destroyed. I hope that in the year ahead we can listen for our name to be called. That we look for that uphill path and the work to be done here and now.

If America IS God’s country, shouldn’t we try harder to act like it instead of just saying so?

When the Enemy you Never Met Dies...

 

The Annual Pride Debate...

 Well it's June... So you KNOW what that means.

Like the rainbow flags going up on Market Street in San Francisco , the annual debate over the merits of LGBT Pride celebrations re-surfaces like a perennial weed that just won't stay down.

It's a debate that rages  inside and outside the  LGBTQ community. Inside the community, the question is; does some of the imagery of Pride celebrations hurt the cause of equal rights? Also, in the wake of legal victories such as Marriage Equality; some ask  do we even need pride celebrations anymore?

While critics and opponents of equality love to point to that same imagery as evidence of Gay folks wanting "special rights", and then pull out their favorite chestnut, of asking why are Gay Pride Celebrations acceptable but Straight Pride celebrations are not?

Sigh.... Really? It's like asking why isn't there a "White History Month". I get tired of trying to explain to people who really do know better, just how stupid they sound whey they try to make these types of arguments. But fine, since clearly there is some "genuine" confusion out there as to the reason for LGBT Pride celebrations , allow me to clarify.

States in the USA where you can be fired for being Straight =0
States in the USA where you could have been fired for being Gay = 28
Countries that will execute you for being Straight = 0
Countries that will execute you for being Gay = 11 (actually 12 Uganda just re-joined the list)


Growing up, how many books, songs, television programs, and movies did you see that featured straight couples meeting, falling in love and living happily ever after? Pretty much all of them. Ask someone who is LGBT how many positive images in popular culture they had growing up that affirmed who they are? The answer is, none, or at best few, if any at all.

Thankfully this has been changing dramatically in the past few years.

But until those recent advances, Gay characters in movies and television were either creepy villains or camp comic relief. If you doubt that, you really should check out the groundbreaking HBO documentary, "The Celluloid Closet".It shows clearly the disparity in popular culture where messages about sexual orientation were concerned.

 
The Celluloid Closet - Trailer

Then there is the area of religion. The number of straight kids who have been told they are going to hell simply for being heterosexual = 0. The number of LGBTQ kids who have been told that they are going hell simply for being who they are?  = Too many to even try to count.

To my Straight friends, I have to ask, how many times have "respected" public figures, politicians, pundits and clergy gone on national television demanding that everyone be given the chance to VOTE on your civil rights?

How often has someone told you that not being able to discriminate against you was somehow an attack on them? When was the last time you heard a member of the Supreme Court saying that simply by being allowed to exist, you were "an attack" on the moral fiber of America?

Anyone?? Yeah...I didn't think so...

I have a flash of the obvious for you, EVERY month is Straight Pride Month." There is a word for someone who truly feels that equal rights for people they don't like is somehow an attack on them. That word is "Bigot".

Saying LGBT people are human too, isn't an attack on straight people. Those people who really think it is, are, quite simply, bigots. People who say LGBT Pride celebrations need to be stopped, are in fact, the exact reason they all started in the first place.

In 2023 one would think such battles would be long over, but in the light of LGBT rights victories in the U.S. over the past few years, the American Talibangelicals have turned their sights to new targets; Trans Kids and Drag Performers.

The rhetoric on the American cultural Right Wing,  would have you believe a man in a dress and high heels reading  books to kids, is a greater threat than the LEADING cause of death for children in the United States: Gun Violence.

Are Pride celebrations good or bad for the cause of equality? The answer is both. With visibility comes closer examination.  

Opponents of equality love to show images of drag queens, leather daddies and shirtless men   dancing on parade floats, and scream "See! it's not about equal rights! They just want to recruit your kids into THIS!! They never show the families, advocacy groups, welcoming and inclusive religious denominations, and workplace affinity groups who participate in Pride parades.    After all, that wouldn't fit their desired narrative.

Media coverage is often complicit. CNN loves to show the drag queens and gogo boys, but when straight allies like the CEO of Kaiser Permanente, the largest non-profit health care company in the U.S.rides on a float in the SF Pride parade every year, with over 1,200 employees, their families, friends and colleagues, you'd think we all were invisible.

You never see CNN asking Tony Perkins, head of the certified Hate-Group, the "Family Research Council" on Fox News about the deadly cultural fetishization of guns and violence towards minorities on the cultural right, and how that had led directly to lethal antiemetic and homophobic attacks.

That would be admitting something of an inconvenient truth. 

It's much easier to just point at a group of shirtless men on a flatbed truck or women on motorcycles and say that they are the real threat to families.

I have always said that Pride celebrations are not really for the people who attend them. Instead, they are for the people who cannot attend them. Growing up as a Gay kid in a small town in South Central Wisconsin, there were times when I was convinced, I was the only gay person on Earth.

The constant message from popular culture, religion, family and peer groups was "boy meets girl, they fall in love, get married (or not) and have kids and live happily ever after". There was no happily ever after for someone who felt what I was feeling.

Then, for one weekend in June, I would turn on the TV News and see thousands of people just like me, in places like New York, San Francisco and Chicago saying "No, that's not true, you are not alone, and there is a big wide world out here beyond Sun Prairie Wisconsin. So hang in there .... we're here and we're waiting for you!"

1986 Pride Television Coverage

Now more than thirty years later, I watch coverage like this, and it seems so endearingly cheesy. Yet at the time, it was a lifeline to people like me, living with the fear and isolation of being "in the closet".

Pride Celebrations are the original "It Gets Better Project".

My straight friends never needed to be told that being straight was okay, and that they were okay because nobody ever told them they weren't.  

Pride isn't about celebrating being Gay, it's about publicly showing that being LGBT is just as much a part of the human experience as being straight is. I for one would love to see the day when Pride is obsolete. When that scared closeted gay kid, in some small town doesn't need to be told that he or she is fine just the way they are.

So this month we will see joyous crowds gathering in places like Market Street in San Francisco, Oxford Street in London, Halsted Street in Chicago, and Fifth Avenue in New York City, Hillcrest in San Diego, Montrose in Houston, and so many more.

And there is reason to celebrate. We have a President, and administration that honors the idea of "E Pluribus Unum" - that America is one out of many. So in this Pride Month , it is still vitally importing to add our voices voice to the chorus celebrating the diversity of America and the American Experience.

If for no other reason to let that one scared kid know, it really does get better. There is a world where "boy meets boy" and "girl meets girl", where you can be the person that every fibre of your being is screaming for you to be. A world where yes, you can fall in love and (if they want to) get married, and even live happily ever after...

Happy Pride Everyone.

The Power of Truth

The Congressional Committee investigating the January 6th attack on the US Capitol and the related issues surrounding the attempt to overthrow the 2020 election has finally, completed and released its final report (Linked below).

The author Joe Klaas, in his book "Twelve Steps to Happiness", writes; "The Truth with set you free... but first it will piss you off." There is plenty contained in the final report of the House Select Committee to do both.

 
Those Americans who value our 246 year-old experiment in representative democracy will be rightly horrified and then quite justifiably angry at what we as a nation have now learned about both the attack on the Capitol and the lies, high crimes and misdemeanors that let up to it.

 
Those who in the aftermath of Donald Trump's election defeat, chose for whatever reason, to believe that Democracy is only valid when it delivers results that they like, will of course also find reasons to be angry. For some it will be anger that the race war they so desperately hoped would be sparked on that day never happened.

 
Yet I hope some of those people who cheered the domestic terrorists who stormed the seat of our government, hoping to thwart the peaceful democratic will of the American People, will read this report and get angry for different reason. I hope it is the righteous anger that stems from the clear indisputable discovery that you were the victim of a con man.

 
Like that person who clicks on a Facebook "friend request" from someone they thought they know. Only to discover their in box and that of all their contacts flooded with bitcoin spam. Who then makes it their mission to expose the hacker and ruin their life.; I hope there are Republicans who now will throw away that red (made in china) MAGA hat and channel their anger to purge the Republican Party of the Trump poison and its associated criminals, grifters and yes... Traitors to the United States.

Sadly there are still those in the Republican Party for whom the truth, is too inconvenient. For unpatriotic gargoyles like Marjorie Taylor-Greene, Lauren Boebert, Matt Goetz, Ron Johnson and their media amplifiers like TucKKKer Carlson; This report will be seen as an attack by the "woke" left on all they hold dear.

The report tells us many things. But the standout take-away is this: The 45th President of the United States, when faced with the reality that he had lost his bid for re-election chose to lie and lie repeatedly in an attempt to shred the Constitution of the United States and incite a civil war.

Thanks to the work of the Jan 6th Committee, the truth is here for all to see. That Donald Trump, is a narcissistic sociopath, who saw inciting a mob to attack and kill police officers in hopes of achieving the violent overthrow of American democracy... as a small price to pay to soothe his own ego.

 january6th.house.gov

The Joys of Air travel...

Ok ... can I vent for a minute?

I fully understand that for the Airlines and the travel industry as a whole, the resumption  of  passenger volume at or near  pre-pandemic  levels is a welcome  relief .    For many though,  there is a dark, aggravating  downside  to this.

With the return of wide spread air travel, airports and planes are once again filled with....

The general travelling public.

As I sit here in the San Francisco International Airport. I find myself missing the heydays  of the Covid 19 lockdown.  When if you were flying,,  it was out of necessity not desire.  Consequently, the majority  of travelers you encountered were seasoned  fliers who understood  both the basics and nuances of air travel. 

We are now back to the reality  of masses of people for whom:

-  The  concept of a boarding group number

-  The mechanics  of escalators and moving walkways

-  The ability to form an orderly queue

-  The  basic  physics  of  overhead  storage space 

-  The finite degree to which a seat can recline  

Are all clearly complete  mysteries. 

People who  who think a full sized suitcase somehow meets  the definition  of  a "personal item such as a purse or laptop ".

All those challenges however, pale in comparison to grasping the idea that these folks  and their assorted  family members could have selected seats when they booked their  flight. Or even before they  came to airport using online check in.  

Instead  they have no problem turning  boarding  the plane into an elaborate  game of "Let's Make A Deal".   Delaying the entire process while they  beg, plead, cajole, demand and even try to guilt and bully people who had the foresight to select seats beforehand into giving them up because  they all just HAVE TO BE TOGETHER! 

The reasons for this I can only assume is so they can help each other find their shoes at the end of the flight. Because they consider a pressurized confined semi public space a perfectly acceptable place to take them off.

Now don't get me wrong, very experienced  travelers  can be just as bad .  My personal  favorite  being frequent fliers whose  company  books them  in  economy class and they MUST get an upgrade  no matter what, or the world will  apparently  come to a cataclysmic  end. 

The core issue is, in my not so humble opinion, one of people not understanding the  basic reality  that when you are an airline  passenger  you are NOT in control.... of ANYTHING.   

None of the complex multitude of variables  and logistical elements  that need to all come together  for even the most basic of short haul flights are in your ability to control.

My beef with the "Travelling General Public" is  the entitled  belief many hold that air travel should be as convenient  and geared to their wants  as driving their own car would be.  Car travel is an individual  experience.   Air travel is a collective  group experience.   One where everyone  needs to make small accommodations  for the collective  good.   

Think of checking that clearly  oversized  carry-on, or  making that smallest of efforts  to not jump up and  block the boarding lane when they call for boarding group 2  when you are in group  5 as the post pandemic  equivalent of wearing  a mask or  social distancing. 

Do it for all of us , and we will all get where we are going .

Ok...I feel better now.  Excuse me while I go find an $11 cup of coffee.

Remembering history's first "Zoom Meeting "

 They say the worst thing you can have in live television is “dead air”. Suddenly in front of a room full of government and media dignitaries, with broadcasting history literally hanging in the balance, that is exactly what we were facing. Dead air.

The date was Thursday, October 15th, 1981. Two days earlier, I had boarded an Amtrak train in Columbus, Wisconsin, along with Mike Daugherty, John Garrett, Tom Gehrmann, Chris Kerwin, Anne O'Brien, Becky Weirough, Glenn Zweig, Steve Funk, and Mike Kennedy, Now in the ballroom of the Capital Hill Holiday Inn in Washington D.C. a live satellite demonstration, linking our group of American kids, and a group of young people in Brisbane Australia had just gone on the air.

We were there along with other young people who shared the unique experience of being media users, not just media consumers. We were from the “Kids 4” television project in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. Kids4 had been on the air since 1978, and was an educational partnership between the local public access cable channel and the American Council for Better Broadcasting (ACBB, later renamed as the National Telemedia Council )

Joining us there in Washington, was a group from the KIDS ALIVE! Project in Bloomington, Indiana. Together, we were hosting a live cultural exchange via satellite with a group of young people from down under in Brisbane Australia, who hosted the popular children’s program WOMBAT on Australia's Channel 7.

The kids from the Australian television show went first, showing an amazing video montage of their studio, the gold coast of Australia and the stories they produced there at Channel 7 in Brisbane. Then it was our turn. Or so we thought...   

Kerri Brinson from KIDS ALIVE!, looked in the camera and cheerfully announced; “Well, here’s our video montage!”  And … nothing.

A technician from COX Cable Television, hurried into the room and whispered in the ear of a nearby adult that the Video tape player in the satellite truck, was not working, and therefore none of the prepared footage we had brought with us to Washington could be shown. So we proceeded to do what we always did when doing live television. We improvised. 

The kids from Indiana looked at us like we were nuts. They were not used to working live. One of the great things about the Kids 4 program is we started out doing all of our shows live. It was only after two years we switched to recording them first, then airing them.

Still, with a ballroom full of media dignitaries watching you , plus trying to fill time  with stuff off the top your head, AND cope with at least a 5 second time delay between you and the people you were trying to interview, it was bit tense, even by our standards. But the end result turned out to be something amazing and unexpected.

That one technical glitch turned what would have been a largely scripted exchange into an actual conversation.

Instead of following a script,  we talked.  Asking each other about school, about hobbies and what was it about working with television that interested them, as well as sharing our own experiences as kids learning to use media and not be used by it.

Of course at the time, it felt like a disaster.

Looking back on that day, now, more than four decades ago, I marvel at how much the world has changed. At the time, what we were doing in Washington DC that day was not all that remarkable from a technical standpoint. Live satellite broadcasts were hardly unusual in 1981. Yet from a cultural and educational standpoint, the Kids-to-Kids interconnect was nothing short of revolutionary.

As much as I say that live satellite television was commonplace in 1981, that isn’t to say the mechanics of it were simple. The path of the satellite interconnect - from Washington, D.C. to , Brisbane, Australia was a complex series of relays starting with a signal carried by cable to trucks parked just outside in the courtyard of the hotel. From there, the signal was  beamed by microwave across town to PBS Headquarters.

PBS then sent  the signal to KQED In San Francisco via a  satellite, 22,300 miles above the Earth. Which THEN transmitted it up to another satellite which relayed it across the Pacific Ocean,  and  down to the an earth station near Sydney, Australia.

Finally from there the signal travelled via land lines to the studios of Channel 7, Brisbane, where the Australian children received it and responded. Their messages back to the U.S. travelled in the reverse direction using landlines and satellites back to Washington, to the on-site satellite dish located in the courtyard of the Capitol Holiday Inn, which fed the signal into the ballroom room where it was seen on  large screens by all of us there.

Whew! Did you follow all that? Don’t worry, there won’t be a quiz. But here is what you need to know, everything that I just described, in all its complicated glory, the average teenager can now do with the phone they carry in their pocket. No trucks needed, no delay and now we don’t even think twice about it.

 .
The Interconnect didn’t radically change the media landscape, or advance broadcast technology. What it did do, was in the space of a few short hours make the world a remarkably smaller place. It showed that live satellite broadcasting could be used for more than breaking news and sporting events

More than that, it laid the foundation for the type of personal inter connectivity that today, we take completely for granted. I know this, because I do it nearly every day. At least three times a week I will face-time, or WhatsApp video call or Facebook messenger video call with friends and family scattered all over the globe.  From London, to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to San Francisco, and  Madison, Wisconsin,  and dozens of points in between.    What is commonplace today,  was nothing short of history making on that day in 1981

The interconnect was the first global Zoom meeting.

The greatest take away from that day for those of us fortunate enough to have been part of it, was the power of broadcast technology to bridge distances and connect people in new and exciting ways. It was, at least for me, a  life changing experience. A live demonstration of the power of broadcast technology to connect people and be a platform for sharing experiences and ideas, in (nearly) real time.

Media Literacy is more crucial now than ever before. Teaching young people how to harness the power of media, and connectivity as tools for education and empowerment is more important today, than it has ever been.

Teaching young people to be media users, not just media consumers has always been at heart of the mission of Kids 4 and The ACBB / National Telemedia Council . That mission, which took a gigantic step forward in 1981 continues today. Now as the International Council for Media Literacy You can find out more about the IC4ML and it's mission and legacy on their website,:  https://www.ic4ml.org

Those lessons of the Interconnect are even more important today than they were four decades ago. In a world where if kids in Sun Prairie, WI  want to talk to kids in Brisbane, Australia , all they need is a smart phone and a decent Wifi signal; 

Forty years on, it remains an experience that played a tremendous role in shaping my path in life I am so very grateful to have been a part of it.