SCOTUS decision on LGBTQ employment

I was profoundly relieved and happy this morning that the Supreme Court announced its decision in three interrelated cases regarding LGBTQ employment rights. By 6-3 margin, the court ruled that protection against discrimination on the basis of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also confers protection to gay, lesbian, and transgender people.


Many states and local jurisdictions have explicit laws regarding employment discrimination, but there has never been nationwide protection passed by Congress. Various versions of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) were debated in Congress between 2007 and 2014, but they were never passed.

There had been some differences in opinions in court cases as to whether Title VII applied to gay, lesbian, and transgender people. It took a number of years for these specific cases to make it through various courts and finally have their cases heard before the Supreme Court. Unfortunately two out of the three plaintiffs have died during this passage of time. I am profoundly grateful to them and their families for continuing to push forward through the court system. I’m also very grateful that they had the energy and resources to pursue this exhausting battle. 

As I have stated before, when I started activism and advocacy for LGBTQ issues decades ago, I truly thought that employment and housing protections would be the first and most obvious rights granted to LGBTQ people. I was extremely surprised when same-sex marriage was passed before employment and housing protections were in place. The right to marry a same-sex partner still seems rather precarious when someone might be fired or thrown out of their home because they have exercised this right to be married.

I’m also relieved and grateful that two members of the court who are generally considered conservative were on the side of legal protections for LGBTQ people in this instance. Neil Gorsuch, a Trump appointee, wrote the majority opinion. 

There are still many legal issues which need attention to protect LGBTQ people, so the struggle is far from over. As I mentioned housing protections are not in place nationwide. “Gay panic” and “trans panic” defenses are still allowed in many courts. Damaging “conversion therapy” is still allowed in many parts of the country.

Just last week, the administration removed protections for healthcare for trans people. The administration has also removed guidance intended to protect trans students.

So, let’s celebrate today’s victory, but keep in mind there are many more struggles ahead.

My experiment in not buying anything

As I am coming to the end of my January experiment, I feel like I can share it. I set out to go through the entire month of January without buying anything. I still paid my mortgage and utilities. I stocked up on a number of things like perishable groceries, and I filled my tank of gas and my public transit fare card. 

But the idea was that I was not going to purchase anything. I am living off the groceries and health/beauty products that I already have in my home. I am not dining out or ordering delivery. I am not making any other types of in-store or online purchases.

Part of this is a test of financial discipline. I am avoiding impulse purchases and eating home-cooked meals. I am being more thoughtful about what I bring into my home and what I use.

I have a pretty steady stock of groceries and health/beauty products, as well as commonly used medications. I have long felt that our “just in time” delivery system is more brittle than people will let on. My area is less prone to certain types of natural disasters than many others. We don’t tend to have earthquakes or hurricanes. But we do have snow storms, although granted this year the winter has been fairly mild. We do get flooding and strong winds and other hazards. Long power outages are not out of the question.

There’s also the possibility of personal issues, like illness or injury that would make it difficult for me to get to a store.

And just as I am giving my own personal preparedness a test, a dramatic illustration of another hazard is on display on the other side of the globe. The Wuhan Corona virus epidemic is raging and causing a major city to be shut down in a quarantine and steps are being taken to try to prevent the spread of this deadly virus.

Right now for me, “this is only a test”, as they say on the emergency broadcasting system. I’m nearly out of fresh fruit and I’m rationing my favorite almond milk, but my experiment is mostly been a success. I have noticed a few things that I used more of than I expected. I’ve been a little bit creative in using some of the non-perishable things that I keep around and use infrequently. I was also surprised that I didn’t have another bottle of maple syrup in the back of my cupboard. My life is structured so that it is no problem for me to use less than a tank of gas in a month, since I do not use my car to commute to work.

My biggest cheat was something quite unexpected. A friend invited me as her guest to a show, and I planned to drive. Unfortunately, the bottom edge of the door to my rented garage was solidly embedded in ice, and my car was trapped. I ended paying for a Lyft, since by the time I figured out I couldn’t solve the door problem, I didn’t have time for public transportation. 

I quit my scouting career in Webelos, the bridge between Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts. I guess in spite of that, I managed to absorb the lesson to “be prepared”. But being prepared is an ongoing and ever-changing challenge.

Food out of thin air

I had some thoughts about that new/upcoming Finnish protein made from lab-grown bacteria.

Here’s the news story about it. https://vegnews.com/2019/7/finnish-startup-makes-clean-vegan-protein-from-carbon-dioxide.

And another one. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/protein-solar-foods-air-renewable-energy_n_5e15ae04c5b6c7b859d32d47 (Have I mentioned that I seriously dislike the overused phrase “game changer”?)

Vegans have been extremely enthusiastic about it. It is an interesting idea, certainly: a high protein food made in a lab environment with sustainable ingredients and power sources. But it really sounds to me like a solution to a problem that doesn’t actually exist.

Just getting my bias out of the way, I don’t lean toward techno-optimist. Technological developments rarely make meaningful changes in the world. But rarely doesn’t mean never, so let’s take a look.

They are going to be manufacturing a tasteless food additive that will be able to boost protein content with minimal ecological impact, assuming that the real impact of process is consistent with their projections.

I’m envisioning something like a high-protein cookie, where the additive isn’t really noticeable, but it’s marketed to people to address their (almost certainly non-existent) protein shortage or a way to reduce their carb count. And call me a skeptic, but I don’t actually see that as transformative.

We already have many readily available high protein foods which have a fraction of the environmental impact of meat (i.e. many kinds of grains, pulses, nuts, and seeds) and yet people are still eating meat in mass quantities. I don’t see a scenario where the cookie in question is going to actually change anyone’s mind about whether or not to have a steak for dinner.

One of the articles mentions the product being used in a plant-based burger, which sounds fine, but just one more variant on a popular trend. Various new plant-based burgers have gained fans lately and are available in many outlets where they were not available in the past. I’m all for people switching out meat for plant-based options, but I’m not sure exactly how a tasteless powered additive changes that particular “game”.

Kurt Cobb also wrote this article questioning whether the (what I consider unlikely) transformation of the food supply to lab grown sources would be a desirable outcome. https://www.resilience.org/stories/2020-01-12/soylent-yellow-is-artificial-protein-really-a-solution-to-food-production/

Don’t misunderstand my skepticism. I’m not calling for a halt to this project. I would probably be willing to try a product using this additive. I just can’t get on board with the excitement over its transformative power.

Generational War! (of words, anyway)

As I am turning 50, which puts me squarely in the Gen X camp, there is a generational struggle going on around me. It’s interesting that Gen X is largely ignored in this and the most vocal combatants are Baby Boomers and Millennials.

I suppose in large part Gen X is ignored because we sit statistically in between the two generations in many ways. Most ways that I can think of where I have it better than the Boomers, it is actually better still for the Millennials. and the ways where I have it better than the Millennials, the Boomers have it still better.

There are a few distinctive characteristics of Gen X that are shared neither with Millennials nor with Boomers, like the prevalence of the “latchkey kids”. I don’t feel like most of those have a great impact on my life at the moment though.

The Boomers had some significant financial advantages that my generation did not have. Pension plans for private employers vanished between my parents generation and my own. I entered the job market at a time when, although my peers were able to find jobs, they were often considered temporary workers, and therefore ineligible for benefits like health care and paid vacation, and that status could continue for years. That trend continued and escalated for the Millennials, who started in a job market with opportunities as independent contractors, part time workers, or even unpaid interns – with even less security and access to benefits.

Higher education costs and student loans for my generation we’re much higher then they had been decades earlier, but that burden continued to escalate dramatically, and has been far worse for the Millennials.

On the other hand, my own journey coming out as a gay man in the late 1980s would have been infinitely more difficult decades earlier. The social, legal, and institutional support for people with non-traditional sexual identities has improved greatly for people younger than myself.

Acceptance of religious and spiritual identities outside-the-mainstream has also continued to grow. It would have been very difficult for me to openly embrace a pagan identity decades earlier, and it appears to continue to grow in acceptance.

My personal attitudes around social justice and environmental issues are closer to the stereotype of Millennial and Gen Z attitude than the stereotypes of what Boomers believe. At the same time, I realize that there are Millennial racists and Boomer environmentalists and individuals whose attitudes run a whole range in all generations.

Gen Z has apparently woken up and started lobbing generational insults with the “OK Boomer” phenomenon. Of course, many Boomers have completely overreacted to this, referring to the phrase as a slur, some even comparing it to the n-word.

Let me digress for a moment and describe what I think is a more apt analogy (and why it’s not a slur). I personally have a distrust of storing my data in “the cloud”. I may express this to someone and they will respond “OK, Grandpa”. They are dismissing my concerns, and they are implying that I am old and out of touch. I could choose to interpret that as an insult. But the term “Grandpa” has not somehow turned into a slur because of this insult. “Boomer” is still just a descriptive term for people born during a certain time period. It may or may not be a literally accurate description, but it is not a slur. And to compare it with the kind of racial or ethnic slur that has long-standing institutional prejudice and power behind it is truly absurd.

Unfortunately, my input on this question is probably moot. To fulfill a Gen X stereotype, I fully expect to be ignored by the louder voices around me.

A little family history to reckon with

I have been doing some research into family history on and off over the past few years. My ancestors have been in the US since before the Civil War on all sides.

I have to admit that I have been a little relieved as I’m looking through family history that I have not discovered any slave owners, Confederate soldiers, or KKK members in my family history. I even have Union soldiers in my direct ancestry.

I mean, I realize we don’t control what our ancestors did, but I was a glad that I didn’t have the weight of being on the wrong side of those particular racist chapters of our country’s history.

However, I did come across a bit of family history that seems to be linked with another racist chapter in our history.

My great-great grandmother going through the maternal line was noted in various sources as “the first white child born in Palo Alto county, Iowa” in 1856. I was well aware that my mother’s family had homesteaded across various areas of Iowa and South Dakota. Of course, these areas had once been lands populated by native groups who had been moved west through various wars and treaties (many of which were later broken).

But I never quite put it together.

I took a look at the demographics of Palo Alto County, Iowa today on Wikipedia, which is a rural county in Northwestern Iowa with a population of less than 10,000. And it is more than 98% white and less than a quarter of a percent Native American.

My ancestors were at the very leading edge of complete displacement and replacement of the native people from that land.

I’m going to have do a bit more research to figure out the historical events and mechanisms at work in this specific area that cause the displacement. I believe the area was Sioux territory, but this is where my research begins.

On this Indigenous Peoples’ Day, I will pledge to learn what I can of this history.

Thoughts on James Howard Kunstler’s A World Made By Hand

 
I realize that this is not exactly a timely book review, since this novel was published nearly 10 years ago. I found it thought-provoking, though – in positive and negative ways, so I thought I would share my thoughts.
 
 
A World Made By Hand is a work of speculative fiction about the near future when most of the mechanisms of modern technology begin to fail from electricity to Communications, and modern food practices, and everything in between.
 
 
We follow a small town in Upstate New York which is populated buy an older generation who remembers the world we know today, and the younger generation who only knows the current reality. Due to war and disease and climate change, resources are dramatically reduced.
 
 
In some ways I am fascinated by the exercise of rebuilding a world in the event of such a collapse, and this is in some ways an admirable attempt at imagining different scenarios for organizing communities. There is a small town that is trying to function in a way reminiscent of perhaps early 19th century New England communities. There is a community run buy a prosperous and resourceful wealthy man that is compared to a plantation and a feudal Village run by a lord. There is a community of scrappers and gearheads who live in a chaotic and rough community digging up things that were cast off in the past and living on the resale. And finally there is a devout religious community that has a charismatic leader and some spiritual abilities that are perhaps not quite what we would expect
 
 
There are some fascinating details about what people eat and what resources they use and have available, and what they use to make their lives comfortable and safe when many of the things that we expect are gone.
 
 
But there are a couple of huge problems, and mostly I think that the author’s social prejudices is have gotten in the way of a broad imagination about the capability of people. First off, non-English-speaking people, and non-white people appear to have vanished completely from these communities. There are references to racial strife in other areas of the country. And there’s no acknowledgement that for many communities people of varying backgrounds are well incorporated into those communities and one would expect that they would continue to be so, particularly after such a short period of time. People of differing sexual identities appear to be completely invisible or non-existent as well. Same-sex relations only exist in this narrative as a way for bullies to humiliate others.
 
 
What is most striking though, is the way that women are depicted in this new version of the world. Women are not decision-makers or power wielders in any of these four types of communities. Women fall entirely into traditional female roles of cooking, child-rearing, food gathering, and comfort giving. There are a few examples of non-traditional sexual relationships between men and women, but they seem to be relegated to heterosexual relations outside of marital norms.
 
 
I would find it hard to believe that women of my age, and some of the characters in this work appear to have been born around the time that I was, would simply give in and follow traditional gender Norms without any question. Certainly some would, but others would undoubtedly feel driven to take on visible leadership roles, to work in physical labor roles that are more traditional for men, and to also develop families that don’t fit into traditional forms. No matter what the social changes that have occurred, I find it hard to believe that literally all women would be happy to fall back into the strictures of society from literally centuries earlier – particularly when there doesn’t appear to have been any severe punishment for anyone who steps outside of social norms.

Hope and Community

From that title you might guess that this is one of those uplifting posts about what is good in the world. It is not.

That’s not where I am at the moment. I feel like I’ve completely lost the thread on these two big concepts: hope and community.

Little hopes are still working for me. I’m hopeful about friends recovering from illness. I’m hopeful about certain creative projects that I’ve heard about coming to fruition. But I have lost hope about the big picture of our society, and really our planet. We face a set of dramatic crises and even though many of us see that action is required, I don’t see any indication that broad social and cultural changes will happen to avert great suffering and destruction.

Climate catastrophes are on the way. Sea levels will rise. Droughts and wildfires will get worse. Tropical storms will become more aggressive. Crop failures will increase.

I’m not one of those who believe that these will cause the end of the human race, but I do think they will cause mass suffering, widespread environmental damage, and the destabilization and collapse of many of the social and political institutions that we count on.

I may have some privileges in my position that will allow me to ride out some of this protected from the worst effects. I have to admit, that does not feel like hope.

When it comes to community, I’m not sure how I have lost the thread so badly on this one. I have lived in the same city for 25 years and in the same home for 15. I’ve been involved with many community organizations, and I have even had leadership positions in some of them. I should be well connected to community.

But the truth is, today I feel as isolated from real face-to-face community as I have ever felt in my adult life. I have been making a point to walk around my neighborhood more frequently lately, and I rarely see people who I would think of as friends or allies. People on the streets of my neighborhood see me as a target, a puzzling anomaly, or they don’t see me at all.

Several of the groups I was involved with over the past few years have gone into either phases of inactivity or identity crises.

I don’t have any gathering places where I might go and likely see a friendly face. Part of this is that I no longer hang out at bars, but I’ve also had coffee shops and restaurants where I felt this way at times in my life.

I definitely feel a lack of community in the sense of people coming together to support one another or build something together, and this particularly feels like a sting, given my lack of hope. I know that having a supportive community could help in the face of the challenges we are going to face, but I don’t know how to plug into any such community right now.

So, that’s where I am. I will try to connect with some kind of community. I have had my social connections fall apart before, and I was able to find new networks. Can I dare to hope to do that again?

Community, Safety, and My Future

I will apologize that this blog post is a case of me worrying “out loud”. I don’t really expect any of you to have a solution to the situation I am describing. I don’t even expect that many of you will agree with the predictions that underpin the worry. But I’m going to lay it out there anyway.

A good friend of mine has a theory that as our country’s central authorities are increasingly broken down, effective authority outside cities will start to look more like feudalism.

In places where there is a valuable resource or infrastructure, there will be company towns, where governance and security will be controlled by corporations who will protect their employees and property. Many areas will be dominated by groups like biker gangs or religious cults – where again insiders are protected and cared for, but outsiders are excluded.

Resources for those outside these umbrellas will shrink, and state and county governments will be puppets or so underfunded as to be ineffective.

Larger communities may or may not continue to have functioning governance and infrastructure, depending on how their competing interests can cooperate to create a functional city.

In this vision of the future, becoming a known and valued member of a local community will be an increasingly important shield against chaotic forces. There will be fewer baseline protections that we can count on just because we are a citizen, or even just a human.

The more I think about it, the more I feel like this is a likely (but far from certain) vision of the future of our country. We are already seeing federal and state authorities being defunded and dismantled by pushes toward austerity. People’s attitudes reflect increasing hostility toward outsiders, highlighted particularly in the anti-immigrant sentiments and unwelcoming attitudes towards those seeking asylum. Openly stated racism, sexism, and anti-LGBTQ and anti-Semitic attitudes seem to be on the rise.

In any case, the advice of taking root in place and strengthening connections to community seem like a good advice in general. But, the same time, I feel like it’s a challenge at this time particularly, as our society has certain dysfunctions that seem to obstruct community building (but that’s a big enough issue for its own post). I am reflecting on what this means in my own life.

I should be at a point when I am well rooted, and in some ways I am. I have lived in Chicago for 25 years. I have lived in my condo for 15. I have professional connections and I have been involved with many community organizations. I have a handful of close friends who help to provide some of my important support mechanisms. Of course, I could do better. I am very introverted and independent by nature. I am not great about attending neighborhood meetings or getting to know new people.  

But in the larger picture, there are many aspects about my current life that I don’t like. I do not have a garden of my own. At the moment, a neighbor lets me use his yard for a modest garden, but if my neighbor moves or there is some other change, I could lose this wonderful situation. Every time I go for a walk in the forest preserve, I feel like I’ve made a giant mistake by not living near a forest. I feel so connected and, well, better, when I spend time in the forest, but it’s not convenient for me where I live now to get to one. I am also sensitive to noise, and I would love to get away from having neighbors and busy streets so close to me that I can’t escape hearing other people’s loud music or revving engines (or other such noises), even with my doors and windows closed.

So I have had an idea of moving out of the city to a more rural or small town setting, where I can have a big garden of my own and I can be close of forested areas and farther from neighbors. I am at least several years away from this being a financial reality, assuming current trends hold (and that’s a quite uncertain assumption).

So, there’s a conundrum, and it makes me rather unhappy. If I move away from my established networks, I will potentially be making myself vulnerable due to a lack of community. If I am honest with myself, trying to embed myself into existing rural and small town communities may be a great challenge, especially as a queer pagan vegan introvert.

Moving on from a leadership role

Friday night was the end of a chapter in my spiritual journey. My two year term as Magister (President) of the Chicago Temple of The Fellowship of the Phoenix ended and a new Council of Guardians has taken over. Since I was on the prior Council that means that for the past four years I’ve been in a leadership position for our group, and now those terms are over. I do have a position on the national board for our organization, but that is a much less active role than the local temple work.

We organized regular rituals and meetings. We had annual retreats. We sponsored workshops. We had a table at our local pagan pride celebration. We maintained a social media presence. We held novitiate courses and initiated a number of new members.

On top of these activities, which was healthy maintenance of our regular presence, I led the group through some major structural and cultural shifts. We changed our name (from Brotherhood to Fellowship) and we changed how we define the core group that we serve from “men who love men” to LGBTQ+ people of all gender identities. We have also dismantled some of the internal hierarchies inside the organization.

I was well aware that these kinds of changes could lead to the group pulling apart. Many pagan religious organizations dissolve after only a few years of operation, and the Fellowship has been active for over 15 years at this point. The group is still stable and we continue to attract new people to events, so I believe we’ve weathered the storm of organizational changes, and we’ve come through it a transformed group.

The Fellowship has succeeded in being a home and safe space for Queer Pagan people, and that is no small thing in a world that often doesn’t welcome us.

As I was listening to the new Magister speaking the text of our ritual, committing to the responsibilities of the role, I felt good about how I had fulfilled those responsibilities. As I’ve been reflecting on the last two years, I found plenty of opportunities to notice shortcomings. I wish we had done more outreach and activism. I wish we had done more education aimed at our own members.

But last night, I feel like I have done what I promised to do, and lead the group in the way we needed. I hope the other members would agree, but I think I am being clear-headed in my own assessment.

Tonight is the first time in four years that I am skipping one of our public rituals. It’s a little odd to think that I’m not going to be there, but I wanted to make a break for a few months, so that when I come back to the group, I can assess it – and my relationship to it – with fresh eyes.

The author has a realization about death

It was a startling moment of revelation from a rather mundane situation. A friend asked on Facebook “What would you do differently if you knew you had just one day to live?”

For some reason the idea of my own death became vivid to me and my reaction to it surprised me. It seems like it would be a profound relief. The idea didn’t frighten me at all. 

I had some little worries about what my home and its contents would look like to loved ones who would come after me. Honestly these seemed like a minor issue in comparison to the invitation offered by my death.

I’ve read that being aware of the presence of one’s death can be a freeing concept. One may no longer be afraid of consequences when the fear of that one great consequence fades. And one may be free to act in a way that is truly brave – and therefore achieve momentous things.

As I sat with that idea, startled by how easily I accepted my death and wondering what exactly it meant for how I should live my life, I realize that I have far greater fears than death. 

Both of my parents suffered long, painful declines in their health. My mother suffered from ongoing nerve damage and gradual organ failure which left her more and more incapacitated and dependent. An avid letter writer, she even lost her ability to write. She spent her final years housebound, frequently hospitalized, constantly trying to heal, but never truly succeeding.

My father also juggled many health issues, but remain functional until is dementia took over. He ended his days confused and often angry, unable to understand how generous those around him had been. When serious illness finally came, he was incapable of cooperating with or tolerating serious treatment. 

So, I could vividly imagine far worse fates than realizing I had one day left to live. And I could greet that possibility with a sigh that would contain at least a heavy part of relief.

Would I regret that I have not left some great legacy? I have no children. I have not created any body of work that will serve as my monument. I have friends and family who would remember me, but that would fade soon enough.

Perhaps it is my own depression and emptiness speaking, and perhaps a reflection of my view of the world and its future, but I don’t feel a great regret in the idea of that loss. When I was younger, I thought I was capable of monumental things – writing great books or perhaps founding meaningful institutions. And yet, none of that has materialized. 

In the face of the great collapse that feels like it’s at hand, I have never had the tools to make any real difference. 

In the face of the warming Earth and rising seas, my abilities are nothing. 

In the face of the extinction of species and destruction of ecosystems, what difference would my tiny death make?

I still fear the suffering that life brings, and the fact of its frequent senselessness. 

But my death? 

No.