Religous Freedom or sanctioned hatred

With the veto of the “religious Protection” bill, the conservatives need to admit, they may like to talk about the US Constitution, but they’ve never read it.

For those of you in the dark, earlier this week, Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed the bill which would have allowed discrimination against same sex couples, by allowing businesses to cite “religious confliction”.  This all stems from a wedding photographer who declined to shoot the wedding of a same sex couple, citing her religious beliefs.

Now, the very first amendment says, and I quote “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or of the right of the people peaceably to assemble, to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Take a moment, and re-read that if need. Right now, we’re going to skip to the 10^th amendment, because it connects with what we are talking about.

Amendment X reads: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.

It is quite clear within the framework of those two amendments to the US Constitution that any law that allows a business to hide behind the skirt of religious beliefs is not constitutional! Seeing how the first amendment has already established that not a single law can be made to favor one religion over another, it’s clear that the issue is not left up to the states; the question has already been answered!

Did Governor Brewer make the right decision in vetoing the bill, yes she did, but let’s not cast her as some kind of hero. Coca-Cola, Home Depot, The NFL, MLB, NHL, and NBA all laid pressure for her to kill the bill. The NFL said that if the bill wasn’t vetoed, that they would pull the Super Bowl from Arizona. By the way, that would have marked the second time the NFL yanked the Super Bowl from the state of Arizona. The first occurred when the NFL expressed concern over the state refusing to acknowledge Martin Luther King JR. Day as a Federal holiday. The NFL was given a resounding middle finger by the state. So the NFL yanked the Super Bowl, and the dye was cast to show that Arizona was perhaps the least tolerant state west of the Mississippi. And it’s an image that Arizona has actually done its best to cling hard to.

The very notion of a company having the ability to decline to serve someone based on the sexual orientation is nothing but 21^st century Jim Crow laws, it is has simple as that. To claim otherwise is simply being intellectually disingenuous. For centuries, segregating whites and blacks was viewed as a religious rite. One would think that we’d have evolved since then, but shocker, we haven’t.

Anyone who’s seen my Facebook page, seen my twitter page knows that I wholeheartedly support gay rights.  I found the very notion of the law that Arizona attempted to pass offensive. And I will not allow anyone to hide behind their excuse of “it will conflict with my religious beliefs if I provide a business service to a same sex couple”. I wonder really love to test these people. See how many of them keep the Sabbath holy, and refrain from eating meat on a certain day. I’d love to see how many of them actually follow the doctrine that they so claim to cherish. I’ll bet the farm that 100% would fail badly if such test was administered.  

Let’s be blunt, and call it what it really is: Religious sanctioned hatred. Bottom line, that’s all it really is folks. A bunch of people upset over the way others lead their lives because a book of fairy tales told them to be upset.

I worked retail for nearly a decade, and I dealt with some pretty shady customers. I bit the bullet, understood that I worked in a position that dealt with the public. I never refused service to anyone. I did so because I was a professional at what I did. If my EBay business was a brick and mortar store, I still would never refuse serve anyone based on their sexual orientation, religious dogma bottom line.

To quickly round back to an earlier point, I mentioned the 10^th amendment earlier for a reason. It clearly states that if a question or right hasn’t been explored. Since the first amendment clearly address the issue of favoring one religion over another, you cannot have a law enacted by a state that favors one religion over another.  In short, religious freedom laws like what Arizona tried to enact, are in violation of the US Constitution.

So, in closing, I hope that everyone can see past the “Protect religious freedom” crap that the right is trying to fling around. This is just another attempt to make it okay to discriminate against a group of people. Just another attempt to make them seem less than human, so whatever we make them endure doesn’t seem wrong. In reality, the only thing these “religious freedom” laws are missing is the ghost of Roger Taney saying that gays aren’t a full citizen of the US.

Giving walker his due

It is February, which is also Black History Month. And I decided that when I got the chance, I was going to do a blog that honors one of the historic figures in African-American History. And I could think of no other person that I would like to talk about than Moses Fleetwood Walker.

For those of you unaware of Moses Fleetwood Walker, consider this your introduction. Walker was a star baseball player for the University of Michigan in 1882. Walker also at the time was playing semi pro baseball, and it was here that Walker began to experience racism. Many times Walker would be refused entry into a hotel, or allowed to eat with his teammates based on his skin color. Based on Ohio’s proximity to Kentucky, on many occasions, Walker won’t even be barred from playing, because the opposing teams would often refuse to take the field against any team that had on its roster, a black ball player. Some teams would relent, mainly because Walker’s back-up was a below-average player who was not a catcher by trade, and would often muff pitches tossed to him. That player’s ineptness would be a catalyst for Walker to take the field as a defensive replacement.

In 1884, Toledo signed Walker, and the team was set to make its debut in the American Association. The Toledo Blue Stockings had been a minor league team, but looked to make the jump to the big leagues by joining the AA. The American Association was one of the first main competitors to the National League, considered by everyone to be the highest level of ball of player could reach. Walker took his nature position of catcher, and made quite a battery with Toledo ace Tony Mullane. Mullane, however, was not a fan of African-Americans, and would often cross up the signals that Walker gave him, many times resulting in passed balls, or Walker himself being struck with a pitch. Mullane’s racist views many times would cost Toledo a game.

Being struck by a pitch from a racist teammate wasn’t the worst Walker had to endure. The most vulgar treatment of Walker would come from Cap Anson. Anson was a hot headed racist who had been kicked out of both Notre Dame and the University of Iowa based on his hot headed temper. Anson was also an amazingly gift baseball player, and quickly found himself playing in the major leagues. Anson’s hatred of African-Americans got him into hot water plenty of times, including one incident that took place against Walker’s Toledo squad.

Anson noticed that Walker was playing catcher, when he made a protest to the empire. Anson boldly announced that his team would not, under any circumstances, take the field against any team that started a “Negro ball players.” The umpire informed Toledo manager Charlie Morton of this, and Morton marched across the field, and informed Anson that Chicago would not receive any gate receipts if they refused to take the field. It was either player against Toledo with Walker on the field, or go home with no money whatsoever. Anson wasn’t going to call Morton’s bluff, and begrudgingly took the field.

By 1891, Walker was out of baseball, but by no means was he suffering. He owned a hotel and a movie theater. Walker also wrote books that called for the African-America community to return to Africa.  And while Walker was making a name for himself in that respect, Anson was making his name in a whole other light.  He was tied to the White Players revolt of the 1890’s citing that a black man should not be allowed to compete for a White man’s job on the baseball field. It was this action that led to baseball becoming a white man’s only game until the courageous Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson. Robinson endured a lot of hatred, but helped pave the way for the color lines in baseball to be broken forever.

It’s rather sad that Cap Anson has since reached immortality with his induction into the baseball hall of fame, and Walker has faded into obscurity. If Walker had a more successful baseball career, who knows how well Walker would be remembered today. Anson apologizers criticize any notion that Anson is to blame for Walker not continuing his career, or the overall lack of African-Americans being allowed to ever play major league baseball.

I in no way seek to lessen the accomplishment of Jackie Robinson. Robinson if often referred to as the man who broke the color barrio of baseball. Robinson didn’t break the barrier, as much as he kicked down the down that had been locked by bigots like Anson. However, it would be nice to see major league baseball acknowledge Walker’s accomplishments as well. When Robinson first took the field, America had just endured World War II, and it had been some 80 years since the final salvos of the Civil War had been blasted. When Walker took the field, he took it against the sons of the men who fought in the war. He played baseball in front of men who had fought in the war. The wounds were much fresher when Walker took the field, than they were when Robinson took the field.

I write this in hopes of spreading the name of Moses Fleetwood Walker. It’s not fair that he has faded so much into obscurity. Hopefully, in the near future, Walker will finally be recognized by major league baseball. It was Walker who had a hand in paving the way for Jackie Robinson and Larry Doby to take the field 60 years later. Who knows, maybe if walker had never written a book calling for the African-American community to abandon America, maybe history would have treated him kinder. And as we sit here, hundred years after he wrote that book, and close to eighty years after his death, we perhaps need to review how we look at Walker. Maybe it is about time that this trailblazer finally gets his due reward for what he done.

America The Beautiful, a history lesson

Seriously, people just need to get over themselves. In case you’ve been living under a rock, Coca-Cola produced a commercial for the Super Bowl this past weekend that had many people in this country going crazy. It seems that people take pop songs about America very seriously. I hate to see what would happen if a Canadian Rapper did a cover of Lee Greenwood’s Proud to Be an American.

 

Sadly, to show the overall lack of intellect by so called “Proud Americans”, many people complained that the National Anthem shouldn’t be sung in a language other than English. Yeah, it seems these really proud Americans don’t know that this is not the anthem of the country.

But what is the song, you ask, that its mere singing in another language has driven people out of their mind?  The song was based on an 1895 poem called Pikes Peak, written by Katharine Lee Bates.  The title was changed to America, since the magazine in which it first appeared was published on July 4^th. The music behind it, written by Samuel ward, was lifted from another one of Ward’s works, a song called O Mother Dear, Jerusalem. In 1910, the song itself was published, and America the Beautiful was born. Now, several times over the last hundred years, there has been a push to put America the Beautiful on the same pedestal as The Star Spangled Banner. To this date, this has yet to happen. The consensus is that the Star Spangled Banner relies too much on war images, and doesn’t represent America. The song itself has been written and re-written three times since Bates first put pen to paper. So, before everyone loses their collective heads anymore, the song you’re getting so mad about is a third edition re-write.

Because the song got is beginnings as a hymn, which is perhaps why the song has never gotten to the stage of the Star Spangled Banner.  I still can’t figure out why every thinks that a hymn needs to be sung only in English. After all, aren’t we the giant melting pot? Isn’t the sharing of the song a great way to bound with people of other nations?

And therein lays the main issue, which people don’t really have a damn clue about the true meaning of the song. It has at its core, nothing really to do with the flag, mom, and apple pie. The song was written as an ode to the mountain, lakes, rivers, and beauty of the land of America, not the people, not the flag. The song says here is this great land, with these beautiful sites to see, these lakes, these mountains. And there is nothing wrong with someone singing about this country to their native people in their native tongue. They are singing about the purity of America. Why must the onus be placed that you can only sing of America in English?

One thing that I’ve been staying away from is the people who’ve posted on the various social media outlets that song must be sung in English because it is the language of the natives of this land. That couldn’t be further from correct. If you really want to sing America the Beautiful in the first dialect spoken on America’s shores, then you better brush up on your Apache, Seminole, or Navajo. Just a small sample of the many natives that were here long before a group of people boarded a ship called the Mayflower.

I know I’ve pissed off more than a few people today by several times referring to America the Beautiful as a pop song of its day. I can deal with that, because it’s time that the myth is shed, and the truth be known. Despite the folklore attached to it, America the Beautiful was an ode to the land and sites of the nation’s heartland written by a lesbian. It is a song, not the anthem of America. I firmly stand by Coca-Cola for the Super Bowl commercial. Because I know that all of those nations represented in that commercial represent where many of our ancestors came from. Think about that.