Search at Google Images for “left arrow.” Check the 21st image, which with my configuration is the first one on the second page. You’ll be able to tell that you have the right one because it is the only one pointing right.

Now notice what page the image comes from. So maybe it does run in the family.

[Thanks to Hanan Cohen for the find.]

Ralph in the comments notes that the image is at #18 and rising because of the increased linkage.

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Here‘s a transcript of a speech by Justice Michael Kirby of the Australian High (= Supreme) Court on his Christianity and homosexuality. (Thanks to Vergil for the link.) Excerpt:

So how did my relationship with God survive this experience of self-discovery?

First, I never doubted for an instant the surrounding love of my parents, my brothers and sister. I knew, in my heart, that they would always love me as I was. For years we did not confront the subject verbally. We did not really need to do so. When we did, it was exactly as I expected. No big deal. Not everyone is so lucky.

Secondly, I was greatly blessed by having many loving friends and companions, homosexual and heterosexual. Especially in finding a loving partner, Johan. He is not here tonight. He has very little time for religion and churches. He has often said to me: “I don’t understand how such an intelligent person can take seriously religions that all oppress women, people of colour and gays”. He prefers to be out there helping his Ankali. He volunteers to clean and cook and scrub the toilet-bowl for a patient living with HIV. That is his “religion”…

AKMA blogged this speech a couple of weeks ago (d’oh!) and wrote”

As I read the Justice’s words, it seemed increasingly likely that the present stresses over sexuality in the church will not be resolved by new arguments, or even by new attention to arguments that presently have been relegated to the sidelines of the public strutting contest. Rather, I think that it will settle out based on people’s sense of with whom they would want to align themselves. Most of the facile arguments have already been drilled into our heads; most of the subtle arguments fail to command the kind of traction that could make someone change the direction of their thinking; but sooner or later, people will begin to say, “Aw, they can’t be that bad,” or “I just have to stick with this group no matter what.””

Well put! Here in Massachusetts we have two years before the vote on an amendment to ban same-sex marriage. That’s two years for residents of the Commonwealth to decide that they’d rather align themselves with the loving gay couples in their neighborhood. That’s what I’m hoping for, anyway.

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This issue has had me on the verge of tears for days. And sometimes I’ve gone over the verge. Why?

The feeling is immediate. I don’t have to think myself into it by imaginging that I’d been prevented from marrying my wife for 25 years. The feeling isn’t connected to any particular friends who are getting married. Yet it’s got a direct line to my heart.

The best I can figure, it’s about hope. Here is something I never thought would happen in my lifetime. And it isn’t just an issue like legalizing marijuana. This is about a deep cultural prejudice (IMO) against one of the forms love takes. With the bang of a gavel, it’s done. A set of people have been embraced by the law and will, I believe, be embraced by our neighborhoods as well.

All that I hope for is finding expression in this one moment of liberation. If gays can marry, who knows what else is possible? What other freedoms might we grant? What other ways might we find to accept love?

I think that’s why today I’m crying at the weddings of strangers.

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“We’re giving them the street.” So the police officer said as my daughter and I arrived at Central Square in Cambridge at 11:30 this evening. The police pulled back the restraining fences and the crowd packed Massachusetts Ave. solid where we watched couples enter the Town Hall — the first same-sex couples in America to be issued marriage licenses fully legal according to state law. (Oh, stop your quibbling! We’re the first state to do it right and I’m going to enjoy that.)

WOOHOO!

The crowd was enormous. We were crammed together from the street all the way up the long steps to the very entrance of the building. The protestors across the street (“God hates fags” read one particularly charming sign) were outnumbered and totally ignored; by midnight, they’d left.

Songs rippled through the crowd: “Going to the Chapel,” and “America the Beautiful” and “This Land Is Your Land.” Every couple that went up the stairs was cheered and applauded by all of us. “It’s Woodstock,” I said to my daughter. (“It’s the Summer of Love,” I thought.)

Then, at midnight, people threw rice, clapped, shouted, cheered. At least one of us laughed and cried at the same time. A chant began further up the hill and I couldn’t tell if it was “We are equal” or “We are legal,” but, well, that’s the point, isn’t it?

I’m proud of my state and I’m happy tonight.

I’ve posted my photos here.

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Fascinating article by Seymour “Next Pulitzer a-Comin'” Hersh in this week’s New Yorker. It alleges that the abuses at Abu Ghraib happened because a “special-access program” established by Rumsfeld to authorize quick-response kill/capture/interrogate operations took hold there. Hersh does not allege that Rumsfeld knew of or authorized the particular abuses, only that his program of secret, rough interrogation enabled them.

But it’s a far more nuanced article than I’m letting on. And, of course, it’s well-told.

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Ian Brown writes in Canada’s Globe and Mail about how Abu Ghraib looks to someone immersed in The Iliad. It’s impressionistic — at one point, it’s Europe that’s sulking in its tent, and at another Donald Rumsfeld is the modern stand-in for Achilles — but it’s also splendid.

I, too, have been reading the Robert Fagles translation, which is both muscular and lyrical, and it’s hard not to see the Iraq war through its lens. Homer does something that our accounts of our war have not: He conveys the sweep of the war by showing, one at a time, what happens when a spear strikes flesh encased in thin armor. The descriptions are vivid and concise. After telling us that someone’s “limbs went loose,” Homer will often remind us of where the soldier — each with a name — came from, what used to bring him pleasure, who will cry for him. Not for Homer the stupor of the cinematic long shot.

If our own journalists had shown us more of what war means to the soldiers and civilians who are fighting, dying, suffering, our shock at the photos at Abu Ghraib would not have been so great, although our outrage might be the same. We back at home aren’t even allowed to see the caskets draped in honor, much less the corpses of our dead warriors. The photos from Abu Ghraib were one of the first glimpses we’ve had of what war brings us to. We citizens are being treated as if we’re moral cowards, as if we can’t face the suffering of war.

Where is the reporting that is unafraid to embed itself in reality? Where is the story of the broad sweep of the war that proceeds by talking of people, each of whom has a name? Where is our Homer?

A: On the Simpsons. D’oh.

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…be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.”

Monday is the first day same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts. I called the Freedom to Marry group and asked where a well-wisher should go. They expect lots of people in Cambridge at 11pm on Sunday when the office will open to give out forms, etc., so they suggested that I go to my own town hall on Monday morning.

So, I’m planning on showing up at the Brookline town hall with flowers. See you there?

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The murder of Nick Berg was horrible. He seems to have been a good-hearted man who went to Iraq because he wanted to help rebuild the country. But why is it the top headline in newspapers around the country?

If the Iraqis had murdered a civilian hostage, the media certainly would have paid attention, but I doubt it would have been the lead story. After all, Berg’s going missing on April 9 wasn’t deemed newsworthy.

Had the Iraqis murdered a hostage by beheading him, the savagery of the act would have made the story more newsworthy, especially in comparison to the humiliations at Abu Ghraib. But I doubt it would have dominated the news cycle.

This became the lead story because there’s video of the savagery.

There’s video because Al Qaeda wanted it to be the lead story.

Al Qaeda is better at manipulating our media than it is at fighting its war.

Heather knew Nick. Other reactions from Boston bloggers at Boston-online.com.

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Here’s a link to the interview on NPR’s Fresh Air that Bill O’Reilly doesn’t want you to hear.

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The Army Times, the unofficial newspaper of the US Army, is calling for Rumsfeld to resign. Here are some excerpts:

Around the halls of the Pentagon, a term of caustic derision has emerged for the enlisted soldiers at the heart of the furor over the Abu Ghraib prison scandal: the six morons who lost the war.

Indeed, the damage done to the U.S. military and the nation as a whole by the horrifying photographs of U.S. soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious prison is incalculable.

But the folks in the Pentagon are talking about the wrong morons…

The entire affair is a failure of leadership from start to finish. From the moment they are captured, prisoners are hooded, shackled and isolated. The message to the troops: Anything goes.

…On the battlefield, Myers’ and Rumsfeld’s errors would be called a lack of situational awareness — a failure that amounts to professional negligence.

…This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level. This was a failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential — even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war.

[Thanks to Tim Bishop for the link.]

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