Category Archives: politics

torture…pffft…let’s not get carried away

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A couple weeks ago, while nobody was paying attention, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a lower court’s decision permitting convicted terrorist José Padilla to sue John Yoo.

Padilla, you may recall, was arrested in May of 2002. The government claimed he was planning to build and detonate a ‘dirty bomb’ in the United States. He was held in a military prison without charge or due process for three and a half years, during which time he was subjected to ‘enhanced interrogation’ techniques which included prolonged isolation, sensory deprivation, sensory overload (extreme variations in temperature, loud noises, long periods of absolute darkness or light, exposure to noxious smells), administration of psychotropic drugs, sleep deprivation, prolonged shackling, stress positions and threats to his family–all of which have long been considered either illegal or torture.

The Bush administration was eventually required to release Padilla from military custody. In 2007, he was tried and convicted in a civilian criminal court. He was sentenced to serve 17 years for conspiracy to kill or maim, and for providing support to a terrorist organization. The accusation about the ‘dirty bomb’ for which he was originally arrested? No charges involving such a bomb were ever filed.

José Padilla

After his conviction, Padilla sued John Yoo, asking for US$1.00 in damages. That’s right, one dollar. Padilla wasn’t looking for actual justice; he just wanted to make a point.

Yoo, of course, is the former member of the Office of Legal Counsel (the office tasked with assisting the U.S. Attorney General in giving legal advice to the President) who wrote the infamous ‘torture memos’ which stated President Bush had the legal authority to order ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ to be used on suspected terrorists. A subsequent review of Yoo’s memoranda by the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility stated Yoo had committed ‘intentional professional misconduct’ when he claimed the president could authorize torture; they recommended he be referred to the his state Bar Association for possible disciplinary action (i.e., disbarred). That conclusion was overruled by a more senior Bush administration lawyer.

And now Padilla’s suit against Yoo has also been dismissed. Why? Because according to the Ninth Circuit Court, “There was at that time considerable debate, both in and out of government, over the definition of torture as applied to specific interrogation techniques.” In other words, although there was universal agreement in the international legal community about whether those practices constituted torture, disagreement about the definition of torture in the Bush administration means Yoo can’t be held accountable. The court stated they “cannot say that any reasonable official in 2001-03 would have known that the specific interrogation techniques allegedly employed against Padilla, however appalling, necessarily amounted to torture.”

John Yoo

By the way, those ‘torture memos’ are also referred to as the ‘Bybee memos’ because although Yoo wrote them, the memoranda were signed by his superior, Jay Bybee. Bybee left the Office of Legal Counsel in 2003 to become a judge on the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals–the court that just dismissed the suit against John Yoo. While Bybee wasn’t on the panel of judges who heard the case, one can’t help but note the irony.

Yoo’s response to the dismissal of the suit? “For several years, Padilla and his attorneys have been harassing the government officials he believes to have been responsible for his detention and ultimately conviction as a terrorist. He has now lost before two separate courts of appeals, and will need to find a new hobby for his remaining time in prison.”

That’s right…John Yoo is finally free of the years of cruel harassment he’s had to endure at the hands of José Padilla.

happy birthday edward r.

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Today is Edward R. Murrow’s birthday. Murrow is lionized by journalists and students of journalism–and rightly so. He had the sort of career people make movies about (and, in fact, they did: Good Night, and Good Luck, 2005).

His first real brush with fame took place in 1940 during the Blitz, when the German Luftwaffe indiscriminately bombed England. Murrow, a reporter for CBS Radio, was stationed in London when the bombing began and he remained at his post, broadcasting live during the height of the Blitz. He ended each broadcast by saying “Good night, and good luck.” It wasn’t just a catchphrase; more than a million homes and buildings in London were destroyed during the Blitz, and some 20,000 Londoners were killed. Luck played a big role in who would still be alive come morning.

But it was Murrow’s stand against McCarthyism that sealed his fame. In the early 1950s, Senator Joseph McCarthy was using his position on the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations to browbeat anybody he even remotely suspected of treason, disloyalty, or subversion (which appeared to include anybody who disagreed or questioned Sen. McCarthy). Very few people were willing to stand up against McCarthy. Murrow was one of the few, broadcasting two special reports on McCarthy and his tactics. He ended the second report with this:

     We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men—not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular.

This is no time for men who oppose Senator McCarthy’s methods to keep silent, or for those who approve. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of a republic to abdicate his responsibilities. As a nation we have come into our full inheritance at a tender age. We proclaim ourselves, as indeed we are, the defenders of freedom, wherever it continues to exist in the world, but we cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.

What made this remarkable, aside from the courage it took to confront McCarthy, was the fact that Murrow was known as a reporter–a newsman. Not an analyst, not a commentator, not a pundit–a reporter whose job was to report facts.

I’m mentioning this mainly because that approach to the news seems to have largely disappeared. Modern journalists tend to report what news-makers say; they rarely bother to report whether what is said is truthful or accurate. This allows folks like Mitt Romney to make outrageous claims (like, say, Romney’s claim that the Obama administration is engaging on a systematic assault on people of faith) without any fear of contradiction (or any fear of being revealed as a lying sack of shit).

Modern journalists seem to have abdicated their role as reporters of fact and have become instead mere recorders of statements. They do this in the mistaken belief that they’re being objective–that objectivity means reporting ‘both sides of a story.’ And to be sure, nonpartisanship is something to which journalists should aspire. But it’s not partisan to point out the facts when one side of the story is utter bullshit. For example, when gun rights advocate John Lott claims that “laws allowing for the concealed carrying of handguns causes levels of violent crime to drop,” it’s not partisan to point out that the report on which he bases that claim has been debunked because of fabricated data. Allowing a subject to make a statement that’s patently untrue and that relies on ‘data’ that somebody just made up isn’t being nonpartisan; it’s being stupid. Worse, it’s contributing to the stupidization of the general public.

I wouldn’t presume to put words in Edward R. Murrow’s mouth–no, wait. I will, in fact, be that presumptuous. If Murrow were alive to celebrate his 104th birthday, I suspect he’d be likely to say something like this: “Journalists,your job is to report, not just repeat.” And then he’d say “Good night, and good luck–and stop being such useless dicks.” I’m pretty sure that’s what he’d say.

bullshit is not news

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So a couple of days ago a political pundit name Hilary Rosen was talking about the whole constellation of policies that have been labeled as the ‘Republican War on Women.’ She mentioned that Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney often cites his wife as his source of information about women’s issues, including how the economy affects women in particular. And then she said this:

His wife has actually never worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the kinds of economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school and how do we — why we worry about their future.

It seems obvious from the context that what Rosen was saying was that Ann Romney has never been employed a day in her life–which is accurate. But of course the conservative media immediately pilloried Rosen for ‘insulting stay-at-home-moms’ and ‘attacking Ann Romney.’ The other news outlets responded like sharks in chum-filled waters.

Mrs. Romney went on FOX News (the safe conservative ‘news’ channel) to defend herself. She said this:

My career choice was to be a mother, and I think all of us need to know we need to respect choices that women make. Other women make choices to have a career and raise a family, which I think Hilary Rosen has actually done herself. I respect that, that’s wonderful. But there are other people that have a choice, and we have to respect women and all those choices that they make.

It doesn’t need to be pointed out that a parent (father or mother) electing to stay home and care for children is a legitimate choice. It apparently DOES need to be pointed out, though, that it’s not a choice every parent has. A lot of parents who would like to make that choice simply can’t–sometimes because there’s only one parent, sometimes because it takes two incomes to pay all the bills. When Ann Romney says “I think all of us need to know we need to respect choices that women make,” I can agree with her wholeheartedly. But I can also say that for a lot of women those choices include affordable contraception and, if necessary, easy access to safe abortion services.

Hilary Rosen’s choice of words may be unfortunate, but she was right. Ann Romney has never had to face the choices made by most working moms. She’s never had to wonder how to pay the bills at the end of the month, she’s never had to worry about finding affordable day care, she’s never had to worry about being late to work (and possibly risking her job) because of an unexpected kids car pool crisis, she’s never had to choose between having lunch or running a necessary errand over the lunch hour, she’s never had to feed her children breakfast and prepare their lunch and insure they’re properly dressed while preparing herself for the work day and getting everybody out the door on time. Ann Romney has never had to lose a day of pay in order to stay home with a sick child, or worry about affordable health care. When she was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis, she included riding dressage as part of her treatment plan (her horses are valued at over US$250,000). She’s never had to worry about being refused health insurance because she had Multiple Sclerosis as a pre-existing condition.

Ann Romney is a fortunate woman, and nobody should criticize her for her good fortune. But if her husband is going to cite her as a source of information about how the economy affects women, then it’s appropriate for people to point out that even if she’s a really nice woman, she doesn’t know jack-shit about being a working mom. She’s never had to struggle with the crises that face employed mothers on a daily basis. Hilary Rosen, on the other hand, actually IS a working mom. She HAS had to face those issues. When she points out that Mitt Romney advocates policies that make life more difficult for women in general and working women in specific, policies that restrict their choices and limit their options, and when he cites his wife as an adviser, then it’s okay for for people to evaluate whose opinions are more valid: Hilary Rosen or Ann Romney.

For this non-story to be turned on its head, for Ann Romney to be portrayed as a victim and Hilary Rosen as a villain, is an example of how the modern news media is less about delivering the news and more about creating controversy to drive up viewership and guarantee advertising revenues. This is not news. This is just bullshit being reported as news.

a lot to ask

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I feel a little like Michael Corleone in that horrible third Godfather movie. “Just when I thought I was out…they pull me back in.” I keep thinking I’m done writing about Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman, but then something happens…and they pull me back in. I really didn’t think the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, would charge Zimmerman with a crime. But she did, and here I am again.

I’m here again because a lot of people I know seem to think Zimmerman’s conviction is almost guaranteed. After all, he clearly shot and killed a young, unarmed man who’d done absolutely nothing wrong. Even more egregious, he did that after being informed by a police dispatcher than he shouldn’t follow the soon-to-be victim. And still worse, he was apparently following Trayvon in large part because of what appear to be racist suspicions. How could Zimmerman NOT be convicted?

Here’s what most folks don’t understand: our court system isn’t about justice. It’s about procedure. It’s about rules of evidence and interpretations of law; it’s about a process that deliberately tries to remove as much passion as possible from the consideration of the evidence. And that’s a good thing. It’s a good thing because passion leads folks to make really stupid decisions, and in a courtroom passion almost always works against the accused. Of course, the accused is usually guilty–but on those occasions when the accused is factually innocent, passion is anathema. Down at the bone, what takes place in a criminal court is–and should be–about protecting the innocent. And as I’ve said elsewhere, when he walks into that courtroom George Zimmerman has to be considered an innocent man.

Normally, almost all the advantages in a criminal trial belong to the prosecution. They have more investigative manpower, they have crime labs and technicians, they have more lawyers, they have the entire power and authority of the State on their side. The defense, in most cases, consists only of an overworked lawyer and maybe, if they’re lucky, an investigator.

To counterbalance that inequity of power, the State has the burden of proof in a criminal case. They have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant committed all the elements of the crime of which he’s accused. Zimmerman is charged with Murder in the Second Degree, which is the “unlawful killing of a human being, when perpetrated by any act imminently dangerous to another and evincing a depraved mind regardless of human life, although without any premeditated design to effect the death of any particular individual.”

In this case, the prosecution will have to prove two things that will likely be difficult. First, that the killing was unlawful and second, that Zimmerman had a ‘depraved mind’ at the time of the shooting. Depravity of the mind generally means the crime was committed with ill will, hatred, spite, or an evil intent, even if the crime wasn’t premeditated. My guess is the prosecution will use Zimmerman’s use of the racial epithet ‘coon’ and his comment that ‘these assholes always get away’ combined with his continuing to follow Martin even after being told he shouldn’t as evidence of a depraved mind. It could work–though the defense will surely point out that if Zimmerman had possessed a depraved mind at the time of the crime, he wouldn’t have called the police to report what he thought was a suspicious person.

It’s that first element–that the shooting was unlawful–that will be most difficult for the prosecutor to prove. Unless there’s some evidence or a witness to counter Zimmerman’s claim that he was in fear for his life at the time of the shooting, the case could collapse before it goes to trial. It’s possible, though unlikely, the case could be dismissed during a pre-trial hearing on the ‘stand your ground’ law.

My guess is the prosecutor will argue that the justification defense doesn’t apply because Zimmerman provoked Martin. In Florida law, provocation trumps justification–with a couple of exceptions, one of which is if the “force is so great that the person reasonably believes that he or she is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and that he or she has exhausted every reasonable means to escape such danger other than the use of force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm to the assailant.”

In other words, if Zimmerman provoked Trayvon into assaulting him (by, say, following him around in the dark with a handgun) then Zimmerman can’t rely on the ‘stand your ground’ law…unless the level of violence that resulted from the provocation was enough to put Zimmerman in fear of his life. And if both Trayvon and Zimmerman believed they were in fear of their lives, then the law still protects Zimmerman. In the absence of eyewitnesses to the actual confrontation between the two, anything is going to be difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.

I suspect the prosecution brought the Murder in the Second Degree charge against Zimmerman in the hope that the judge will allow the jury to consider what’s called a “lesser included offense.” That’s a lesser crime whose elements are also encompassed by the larger crime. In this case, the jury might not be willing to find Zimmerman guilty of Second Degree Murder, but might find him guilty of the lesser crime of Manslaughter, which doesn’t require the ‘depraved mind’ element.

If this case goes to trial and the trial goes to the jury, it will revolve around the willingness of the jurors to decide what George Zimmerman was thinking and feeling at the moment the shooting took place. That’s a lot to ask of a jury.

But the killing of a young man who’d done nothing wrong gives the prosecutor the right to ask it.

Update: The prosecutor has released the affidavit of probable cause in the Zimmerman case. In it she states Zimmerman “profiled” Trayvon Martin, which sounds pretty accurate. She also says the police dispatcher “instructed Zimmerman not to” follow Martin, which is a little less than accurate. Most importantly, she says “Zimmerman confronted Martin,” which is something we’ve suspected but never had any evidence to support it. However, she also says “Witnesses heard people arguing and what sounded like a struggle,” which suggests there are no eyewitnesses to the confrontation. That’s pretty critical. Nor did she refer to any racial epithet, which seems an odd omission.

stupid piled on stupid

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Honest, I do NOT want to keep writing about this ‘stand your ground’ stuff. But I declare, it seems like every twenty minutes something completely predictable and completely stupid happens–and what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t take a moment out of the day to point out the effect stupidity has on the world around us?

You might have heard about the series of shootings in Tulsa Oklahoma over the weekend. A couple of white guys drove through a predominantly black neighborhood the night before Easter and shot five random black guys, killing three of them. Two men–Alvin Watts and Jake England–have been arrested and charged with the crimes. The motive appears to be generally racist and generically vengeful. The shootings took place on the second anniversary of the killing of England’s father. The man who shot and killed England’s father was black; he wasn’t charged with murder because Oklahoma is another ‘stand your ground’ state and he claimed self-defense.

It seems fairly certain that the earlier ‘justified’ killing, fueled in part by some non-specific racism, has led to these recent ‘unjustified’ killings. This is stupid piled on top of stupid.

But stupid appears to be in unlimited supply. There are people who see all these unrelated shootings as engagements in some undeclared race war being implemented by President Obama. I’m not kidding–there are folks actually claiming that. Here are four examples taken directly from four different members of freerepublic.com:

“Much like the ‘War on Terror’, there won’t be any actual declaration that the race war has begun. Just a series of incidents like this. The number of incidents will grow and then a spark will set off a riot in a city or a number of cities.”

“This race riot that Obama and Holder started is sickening. I feel so sorry for all my friends in America that remember what our country used to be.”

“It’s just what Obama wanted too. Another way to divide the country, and this is all part of his grand re-election scheme. Think about it, if he loses he’ll blame all the racist whites and spark the final wave of a giant race war in this country.”

“It’s a been a small scale guerrilla war for now. The shootings in Tulsa show that the whites have begun to engage. Look out this summer. A hot summer, high gas and food prices, possible government shutdown over the debt ceiling, war in the mid east, financial meltdown in Europe. Throw in a presidential campaign where the incumbent seems perfectly comfortable orchestrating a racial Götterdämmerung. They’ll be lucky to keep the trucks rolling and the interstates open.”

These folks are as unhinged as the people who keep declaring the world is going to end on a specific date. They’ve been predicting race wars and religious wars and communist invasions across the Mexican border and other lunatic apocalyptic crises for half a century. It’s always on the verge of happening–and even though it never does happen, these folks are waiting for it. They’re armed and prepared and waiting.

And the really truly stupid thing about all this–the stupid conspiracy theories, the stupid laws, the stupid shootings–is that they’re all grounded in nothing but free-floating fear. It’s a volatile feedback loop: stupidity leads to fear, fear leads to a desire for protection, that desire leads to stupid laws based on fear and the stupid belief that guns are a solution, easy access to guns makes lethal violence more likely, lethal violence leads to more fear, and the green grass grows all around, all around.

Stupid. Stupid piled on stupid, piled on still more stupid. Stupid is George Zimmerman following Trayvon Martin because he ‘looks suspicious.’ Stupid is a law that allows Zimmerman to legally shoot that young man. Stupid is a pair of guys ‘avenging’ a death by randomly shooting people who are the same general color of a person who committed an earlier stupid act of violence.

It’s so easy to be stupid. And stupid is so hard to root out.

the law is a ass

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An online friend made an interesting comment yesterday. Patrick is an intelligent guy–he’s no wide-eyed innocent, he’s been alive long enough to know how the world works and he’s traveled widely enough to see it works differently in different places. His comment about the Trayvon Martin case is astute and it would have made perfect sense, except for one thing: this took place in Florida. Here’s what Patrick said

I really don’t understand how this isn’t so clearly seen as what it is… a failure to investigate.

What also is striking about this is that Zimmerman was simply taken at his word. Had the dead boy been a white kid, Zimmerman probably would have been held until all evidence was in. But, of course, had the boy been white, it’s likely this never would have happened.

As I said, Patrick is an intelligent guy, but he’s making a mistake that a LOT of intelligent people are making. He’s assuming the police either fucked up or didn’t care enough to investigate.

The problem as I see it is less about the Sanford Police Department and more about the law. The police must have probable cause to believe a crime has been committed before they’re allowed to conduct an actual investigation. In the U.S., citizens have always had the right to use lethal force to defend themselves and their homes. If the police arrived at your home and found a dead body on your lawn, they’d be legally allowed (even required) to ask you questions–but they can’t truly investigate you in a serious, methodical, intensive way without some sort of cause to believe the shooting wasn’t justified. They have to have a positive reason to believe the shooting was against the law.

And that, believe it or not, is a good thing. We don’t want to give the police the authority to initiate an investigation of a citizen based on anything other than probable cause to believe a crime has been committed. The police have too much investigative power as it is.

The problem is the so-called Stand Your Ground laws have extended that right of self-defense in the home to–well, to everywhere. So while the police were able to temporarily detain and question George Zimmerman, they had no power or authority to begin an actual investigation into the matter. That step was precluded the moment Zimmerman said he believed his life was in danger and that he acted in self-defense. Without some obvious indication that Zimmerman was lying, the police response was necessarily limited.

It’s easy to blame George Zimmerman for killing an unarmed and completely innocent Trayvon Martin–because that’s exactly what he did. But it’s pointless to blame Zimmerman without looking at the social context that shaped the killing. Florida has very loose gun laws, which makes it possible for people like Zimmerman (who was arrested in the past for assaulting a police officer) to legally obtain a handgun. Florida’s laws also allowed him to obtain a permit to legally carry that weapon. Florida’s laws also allowed him to legally use that weapon in a situation that, until 2005, would have been considered criminal on the face of it. And finally, Florida’s laws limited the police response to the shooting.

There’s no doubt George Zimmerman is guilty of homicide–the killing of another person. But the law in Florida is such that he may not be guilty of murder–which is an illegal killing.

In Oliver Twist, the character Mr. Bumble is informed “the law supposes that your wife acts under your direction”. Mr. Bumble’s response: “If the law supposes that…the law is a ass—a idiot. If that’s the eye of the law, the law is a bachelor; and the worst I wish the law is that his eye may be opened by experience—by experience.”

The law in Florida (and some two dozen other states) is “a ass.” It’s to be hoped that the law may have its eyes opened by this experience. It’s to be hoped, but not to be expected.

one fact we know for certain

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A couple weeks ago I wrote a brief piece reminding folks about the presumption of innocence, and how it has to be applied to everybody–including George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin. I also noted that the way the Florida law is written, it probably doesn’t matter legally that Zimmerman almost certainly provoked the incident that allowed him to shoot and kill Martin. The sad fact is that the law in Florida is almost designed to create situations in which lethal force can be legally used.

(photograph by PressTV)

A few hundred people read that. Not a lot by internet standards, but enough to spark a bit of a fuss–including a comment by somebody named Jonathan Ledlester (his complete comment can be seen in the original post). Ledlester begins his comment with this:

Crayon Martin caused his own death.

You almost don’t have to read any farther to know what direction the comment will take. It’s all right there–the sneering, the dismissiveness, the need to justify, the need to find a way to interpret or invent facts to fit a worldview. The simple refusal to use the dead boy’s name–to give him even the least bit of respect–is telling.

Ledlester goes on to make this observation:

Crayon Martin COULD’VE CALLED THE COPS to report Zimmerman was following him. But Crayon Martin CHOOSE TO NOT CALL THE COPS.

At first glance, this seems to be a rational point. And it is–if you’re white. Ledlester doesn’t seem to be aware that black kids in general may not have the same faith in the impartiality and reliability of the police as do white kids. You can debate whether or not that lack of faith is justified, but it doesn’t change the reality that a lot of black folks don’t believe they can trust the police.

Ledlester then asserts a number of facts not in evidence, describing a scenario in which Martin assaults Zimmerman. That may be true; we don’t know. And that’s just it. We don’t know. But Ledlester omits one fact that we DO know. In his comment, Ledlester states: “Zimmerman told the police dispatcher that he’d lost sight of Martin.” What the recording actually notes is Zimmerman says “He’s running,” and a moment or two later, “He ran.” The reason Zimmerman lost sight of Martin is because Martin was running away. The police dispatcher told Zimmerman “We don’t need you to [follow Martin].”

That should have been the end of the situation. It wasn’t. Zimmerman claims he was returning to his vehicle when he was confronted and assaulted by Martin. Is that likely? Considering Martin was running away moments earlier, probably not. Considering the fact that the shooting occurred only 70 yards away from the townhouse where Martin was staying, it seems improbable that he’d stop, turn around, confront and assault the man he was running away from moments earlier. Is it possible? Sure, anything is possible.

Ledlester ends his comment with this:

Crayon Martin killed himself.

George Zimmerman killed Trayvon Martin. The law might be written in such a way that it allowed him to do so with impunity, but if there’s only one fact we know for certain, it’s this: George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin, who was unarmed, who’d done nothing wrong, and was simply walking back from a convenience store.

much fuss, no point

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There’s a bit of fuss about this photograph. Some of it’s deserved; most of it isn’t. First posted on the Wipeout Homophobia wall on Facebook, the photo is said to depict a gay pride flag being raised at a U.S. Marine compound in Afghanistan.

The fuss seems to take two approaches, one that disputes the authenticity of the photograph and one that objects to the message of the photograph. The former is almost certainly an extension of the latter. I suspect the people who call the authenticity of the photograph into question are also opposed to gay folks serving openly in the military (or serving at all, for that matter).

The authenticity arguments are pretty…well, stupid. For example, this guy: “No American commander in Afghanistan would allow that to happen. The American flag and guidons approved by the Institute of Heraldry are the only banners displayed in a war zone. It’s a great photoshop though.”

Since there are also photos of the Marine climbing up onto the Hesco bastion with the flag in his hand, it’s highly unlikely the images are photoshopped. But the guy is right about the commander and the heraldry issues. It’s highly improbable that any commander would authorize that flag and the flag doesn’t conform to military guidelines. Of course, nobody has claimed this was an authorized act*, or that the rainbow flag remained there for any length of time. It’s almost certainly just some Marine making a personal statement in support of gay rights.

Should he be punished for it? I have to say yes, though I agree with what he did. I’d certainly expect him to receive some punishment if he’d raised a white power flag or a Nazi flag. I can’t condone the behavior just because I agree with it.

Still, I’m glad this guy did it, regardless of how long the flag was up and regardless if he gets punished for it. Sometimes making a point is more important than following the rules. If you break the rules, you have to be willing to accept your punishment, of course. But there are times when it’s worth it. There are times, in fact, when it’s necessary.

The fact is, being gay is no more a matter of pride than being, say, right-handed. Being gay isn’t an achievement; it’s not something people strive for. It’s just what some folks are. The pride comes from announcing you’re gay or that you support gay rights at a time when gay folks are being marginalized, discriminated against, killed. The pride comes from making a big deal out of something that shouldn’t be a big deal at all, and continuing to make a big deal out of it until it’s actually NOT a big deal anymore.

There’ll come a day when the grandkids of gay folks will look at photos like this and wonder what all the fuss was about. They won’t think that because they’re innocent; they’ll think that because they’ll be right–there’s nothing here to make a fuss about.

* That’s not entirely correct; some conservatives have claimed that raising the gay pride flag in that military compound was part of the “Obama agenda” of “salut[ing] the colors of the homosexual lobby by flying a rainbow flag in place of Old Glory.” Note that ‘in place of.’ Lawdy, these people are phenomenally stupid.