Category Archives: civil rights

August 3, 2017 · 06:30

Going to War Against Neighborhood Racists and the Kempsville Lakes Homeowners Association: The Kids are Still Alright


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Last week I wrote about the lady who came to my door trying to get me to join her in trying to get recently installed basketball hoops removed in our neighborhood. Yesterday, after the National Night Out  gathering in our neighborhood on Tuesday where at least 30 kids were playing basketball, those hoops were taken down with no notice to anyone. So now, the kids of of neighborhood have no safe place to play. If you want to read the details of the history behind this just go back a week or so on this site. I’m not going to rehash details today. 

I found out about this while talking to a couple of my neighbors after a pretty shitty day at work with multiple bomb threats and a couple of shit bombs left by one of my contractors. It was the whipped cream on my shit sundae for the day. 

My neighbors and I are all going to complain to the association tomorrow since the association office was already closed. But besides complaining to people who a few years ago objected to the idea of basketball courts by telling my wife Judy that they didn’t want “unwanted elements”  and tried to tell her that we have a “gang problem” I plan on doing more. 

The fact of the matter is that our homeowners association board which is composed mainly of older white people does not like the fact that we have a mixed race community and that most of the younger families with kids in the area are minorities, many who are military families. I am career military, having spent 36 years in the Army and Navy and having grown up as a Navy brat, where I was always an outsider. I am white. I am 57 years old. We have lived in this neighborhood for almost 14 years, though I have been deployed or assigned elsewhere much of that time. We like our neighborhood, we like our neighbors. Our town home block has been very stable with good neighbors, quite a few, including Larry, a junior high teacher and coach who has lived here longer than us, are African American. Crime is low and kids are well behaved, the biggest problem is that they have to play in the street because when this area was developed the land that could have been used for parks or playgrounds was turned into lakes. 

Today I am going to war. I will call the association, then I will call my local city councilman, the I will call the local chapters of the NAACP, and the ACLU, the latter which I am a member of at the national level, as well as local media, including television news outlets. What is happening is not right. When I was a kid we were allowed to play in our neighborhood and we were a lot less well behaved than these kids, but then most of us were white, living in predominantly white neighborhoods. Race does have its privileges. 

I am going to protest the overt racism of our homeowners association as well as some of our neighbors, especially the old bitch who showed up at my door last week complaining about the kids. They are going to get a fight from me and as much as I hate doing it I will probably have to run for one of the vacant seats on the homeowners association board. 

I’ll be damned if I let them get away with this. I am going to fight for the kids. I am going to war for them. They deserve better than this. 

Pray for me.

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

6 Comments

Filed under civil rights, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as ,

July 29, 2017 · 06:30

The Transgender Soldiers of the American Civil War


Friends of Padre Steve’s World

President Trump let loose a series of tweets yeasterday morning saying, based on the advise of his generals,  that he was going to kick out transgender soldiers from the military. The irony was not only that the military, immersed in a six month long study of they issue was blindsided by the President, and yesteryear General Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff announced that nothing had changed regarding the treatment of transgender military personnel, and instructed the military to continue to respect every military member. 

So, today I am posting an article about the women soldiers of the Civil War, many of who based on their personal narratives would be considered transgender today. I hope that you enjoy.

Peace

Padre Steve+

Of course when the Civil War broke out the logical end of this train of though was that should women be allowed to serve in the military. Legally and socially it was not possible for women to serve in the military in 1861, but this did not stop women in the Union or the Confederacy from doing so. Quite a few women on both sides of the conflict chaffed about not being allowed to fight for their countries, their families and their causes, and despite official prohibitions that kept women from serving in any capacity but nursing, a good number of women found their way to go to war. While men in the North and South “were expected to enlist, any woman actively participating in the Civil War was an oddity if not a renegade.” In some cases this involved hundreds of women taking male identities in order to fulfill their desires to serve their countries.

The motives of these women varied. In some cases women wanted gain the economic privileges of full citizenship, and for others the glory reserved to only to men. In our modern parlance those that took male identities would be considered transvestites or possibly transgender, but for them “transvestitism was a private rebellion against public conventions. By taking a male social identity, they secured for themselves male power and independence, as well as full status as citizens of their nation. In essence the Civil War was an opportunity for hundreds of women to escape the confines of their sex.” 

During the war hundreds of women went to war, taking on the identity of men. They enlisted under male names and pretended to be men. Unless they were discovered to be women, or unless they confessed to their wartime service either during or after the war, most women managed to serve without being caught. Sadly, most of their service records were lost. In 1861 Private Franklin Thompson “enlisted in Company F of the 2nd Michigan Infantry…unknown to comrades, Thompson actually was Sarah Emma Edmonds.” Edmonds served in the illustrious Iron Brigade until the disaster at Fredericksburg. Well known for her courage as Franklin Thompson, Edmonds participated in some of the bloodiest combats of the war. At Antietam she was caring for the wounded when she came upon a soldier who had been wounded in the neck. That soldier informed Edmonds that she was dying and after a surgeon came by and confirmed what the soldier said the dying soldier told Edmonds:

“I am not what I seem, but I am female. I enlisted from the purest motives, and I have remained undiscovered and unsuspected. I have neither father, mother nor sister. My only brother was killed today. I closed his eyes about an hour before I was wounded….I am Christian, and have maintained the Christian character ever since I entered the army. I have performed the duties of a soldier faithfully, and am willing to die for the cause of truth and freedom….I wish you to bury me with your own hands, that none may know after my death that I am other than my appearance indicates.”

That unknown woman was not alone, at least nine women, eight Union and one Confederate, fought at Antietam and of those five were casualties. Five women, two Federal and three Confederate took part at Gettysburg. All three Confederate women at Gettysburg were either killed or wounded, or captured, including two women who took part in Pickett’s Charge.


Sarah Edmonds published a book Nurse and Spy in the Union Army while recovering from malaria in 1863. The book, which was published the following year, sold 175,000 copies, the proceeds that she donated to care for sick and wounded Union veterans. After the war, Edmonds attended Oberlin College, married, had three of her own children and adopted two more. She “became a member of the Grand Army of the Potomac, the organization for Union veterans of the Civil War. She applied for, and received, a military pension, and upon her death in 1898 was buried with full military honors.” She was the only women admitted to the Grand Army of the Republic.


Another of the women to serve was Frances Louisa Clayton. Fighting for the Union as a member of the Minnesota State Militia Cavalry and 2nd Minnesota Battery, serving under the command of Ulysses S. Grant she was wounded at Fort Donelson. Like many other women soldiers, Clayton mastered the art of behaving as a man. She “became “a capital swordsman,” but also commanded attention with her “masculine stride in walking” and “her erect and soldierly carriage.” After the war she promoted her service in a book.


However, most women were more discreet during and after the war regarding their true sexuality. Private Albert Cashier hid his sexuality identity for his entire term of service. He enlisted in August 1862 as a member of the 95th Illinois. Cashier was born in Ireland as a woman, Jennie Hodgers. He fought in forty battles and was discharged with the regiment in August 1865. At Vicksburg he was briefly captured by the Confederates while conducting a reconnaissance “but managed to escape by seizing a gun from one of her guards, knocking him down, and outrunning others. Comrades recalled Private Cashier climbing to the top of their fieldworks to taut the enemy into showing themselves.”

After the war “Albert” returned home and lived as a “farmer and handyman and served as a caretaker in his church. He never married.” In 1890 he applied for and received a military pension and in 1911 the now elderly “man” was struck by a car and suffered a broken leg. The doctor threating him discovered that Albert was not a man, but a woman. But the doctor kept his confidentiality and without revealing “Albert’s” secret had the Union veteran admitted to the local Soldier’s and Sailors’ Home at Quincy, Illinois.” A few years later the elderly “man” began to exhibit erratic behavior and was “committed to a public mental hospital and the word was out.” With her story now sensational front page news and “old comrades in arms came to her defense.” Her comrades had never known that “Albert” was a man during or after the war, while the news was a surprise to them they came to her defense. To combat some of the sensationalism in the media Albert’s fellow soldiers testified “to Albert’s bravery in combat and public good works in later life. Albert/Jennie died at Watertown State Hospital in 1915 at age seventy-one. The local post of the Grand Army of the Republic arranged for her burial. Her headstone reads: “Albert D.J. Cashier, Company G, 95th Illinois Infantry.”

Wartime records are sketchy but as a minimum it is believed that “between 250 and 400 women disguised as men found their way into either the Federal or Confederate armies.” Women known to have served had a “combined casualty rate of 44 percent” including the fact that “eleven percent of women soldiers died in the military.”  Some of those women are now well known but many others are lost to history. Most women tried to keep their sexual identities secret, even to the point of their death on the battlefield. Most of the women who served in the armies returned home to resume relatively normal lives after the war.

Of the women that served in the ranks, some were discovered, and many remained protected by their fellow soldiers. Quite a few received promotions and even served as NCOs or junior officers. With women now serving in combat or combat support roles in the U.S. Military since Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the stigma and scandal that these cross-dressing women soldiers of the Civil War has faded and as scholars and the public both “continue probing cultural notions of gender and identity, the reemerging evidence that women historically and successfully engaged in combat has met with less intellectual resistance and has taken on new cultural significance.” As the United States military services examine the issues surrounding further moves to integrate the combat arms we also should attempt to more closely examine the service of the brave and often forgotten women who served on both sides of the Civil War.

1 Comment

Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, LGBT issues, Military, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , ,

July 27, 2017 · 06:30

My Doctrine: “Give Every Other Human Being the Right You Claim for Yourself”


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Another day and another adventure in Trumpland. 

Theodore Roosevelt, the Republican that modern Republicans love to hate said: “I am an American; free born and free bred, where I acknowledge no man as my superior, except for his own worth, or as my inferior, except for his own demerit.” 

After Trump’s announcement in which he said that he was going to bar transgender men and women from military service, including combat vets, I am fighting back in every legal way that I can as an active duty officer. Thankfully I am senior enough that I don’t have to deal with the threats that a number of junior Army chaplain friends are dealing with from their fundamentalist Christian supervisory chaplains. 

I cannot believe who quickly these people will throw fellow servicemen and women under the bus for a President who despises them and what they believe all because he hates LGBTQ people more than them. 

Although I don’t need to I am going to start doing all the preparatory actions that I will need to do to retire from the military on my own terms with 36 or more years of service in peace and war so I don’t have to serve under what if left unchecked will become a fascist dictatorship, in large part due to fundamentalist Christians. I am not going to drop my retirement papers yet, just get things in place so that I can retire at any point that I chose. I will never surrender my honor to willingly prostitute myself to a regime that rejects the rule of law, the Constitution, and the principles of the Declaration of Independence that so many people have fought to preserve. 

Since I posted two articles yesterday this will,suffice for now. But for me the issue is liberty for all. As Robert Ingersoll, a Civil War hero and prominent atheist said: “This is my doctrine: Give every other human being every right you claim for yourself.”  If you can’t do then don’t claim to support the Constitution or revere the Declaration of Independence, because you are simply a liar. Enough said. 

Until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+ 

4 Comments

Filed under civil rights, History, laws and legislation, leadership, LGBT issues, Military, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 26, 2017 · 17:00

A Gigantic Step Backwards: Trump Bans Transgender People from the Military on the Anniversary of Truman’s Desegregation of the Armed Forces


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Russian dissident Gary Kasparov said this on Twitter yesterday shortly after President Trump announced on the same platform that Transgender people, even those currently serving honorably would not be allowed to serve in the military. Kasparov noted:

“The autocrat always requires enemies to protect his base from. If real enemies don’t exist, they will be created. Minorities preferred.”

Yesterday I was debating whether to write about President Harry Truman’s courageous decision sixty-nine years ago yesterday to desegregate the U.S. Military. I didn’t because first I have written about it before and I couldn’t come to a decision on how I wanted to approach it. So I wrote an article combining baseball that the principle of interiorizing public rules, norms, traditions, and behaviors that are necessary for our Republic to survive.

But this morning when I saw the series of three Trump tweets about excluding transsexuals from the military citing that the military “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail” I knew that I had to address it.

The timing of Trump’s tweet was ironic especially because of when he tweeted it. It appeared to be a deliberate action to let civil rights advocates know exactly where he stands. Doing it when he did was not only a blatant move against transgender people, but a shot across the bow of other minorities. Be assured that this is just his first move against the newly acquired rights of LGBTQ people. 

The argument Trump and other opponents of transgender people serving in the military is the same type of argument that was used against Truman’s decision to desegregate, as well as the same argument against women serving, not to mention Gays and Lesbians. Truman, a combat veteran of the First World War had to face the opposition of some Generals, but also much of his political party base which came from the South and which supported Jim Crow, sometimes violently. The fact is that there is almost no truth in anything that the President tweeted today. The additional medical costs are minimal. Likewise, these transgender soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen are already serving honorably, and many times with distinction because they know that there are people who want them to fail in order to make an example of them to do exactly what the President has said that he is going to do.

However, President Trump is continuing to show that he lacks a moral center and personal courage. Unlike Truman who went to war, the President used multiple deferments and a heel spur to dodge the draft during the Vietnam War even though he was fit enough to play multiple sports in college. Unlike President Truman who showed courage against political opponents in his own party to do the right thing, Trump caved to the anti-LGBTQ activists of the Christian Right led by Vice President Pence. To paraphrase Kasparov, Trump and Pence need enemies to protect their base and to ensure its loyalty. Transgender people are an easy enemy to demonize because there are so few of them and most people are too ignorant to even understand who try are and what is different about them. 

I do not know if the President will attempt to use an executive order, or attempt to get Congress to include this in the Defense Appropriations Bill currently winding its way through Congress. Either way there is bound to be legal opposition to this and based on court precedents, and the 14th Amendment which has been at the heart of all previous measures to allow different minorities to openly serve in the military and have the same opportunity to defend their country as any other citizen. I expect court-challenges to any executive order and I wonder, based on the statements of a number of Republican Senators if such a prohibition could make it through the legislative process.

Depending on which estimate you reference there are between 7,000 and 15,000 transgender persons currently serving in the U.S. Military. Many are combat vets, and some are special operators. They have made the courageous decision to both serve their country and to risk their careers to admit to others their struggle with their gender identity. As a veteran of 36 years of service including combat tours I have much more respect for them than a President who did all that he could to dodge the draft and then would have the nerve to kick these brave men and women out of the military.

Jackie Robinson, who broke the color barrier in baseball a year before President Truman issued his executive order said: “There’s not an American in this country free until every one of us is free.”

I echo his remarks and I will continue to speak out for the transgender persons who are now the target of egregious and blatantly religiously based discrimination that has no place in our society if we believe the words of our Declaration of Independence, the Preamble of the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

7 Comments

Filed under civil rights, LGBT issues, Military, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , ,

July 23, 2017 · 06:30

Battling Racism at the Local Level: The Kids are Alright 

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I had an interesting experience Friday evening. As Judy and I were relaxing and hanging out with our dogs the was pounding on my front storm door. The dogs of course reacted beautifully, the ran to the door and started to defend the manor. Three madly barking and snarling Papillons can be frightening. At the door there was a short woman who lives down the street from me. I’ve said hello when walking but don’t really know her so I was surprised to see her at my front door. 

She asked me if the kids who play basketball at a newly installed temporary court on our development’s mostly unused tennis courts were too loud. Mind you I live about a hundred yards from the courts so her question seemed to be strange, so let me fill you in on a little background before I go into the conversation that ensued.

We live in a middle class, mixed race community. Many people are military families and most of the rest work in fairly decent jobs or are self-employed. I would say about 35-40 percent of the residents are African American.  Our white population includes a lot of older people and retirees who have lived here a long time. There is little crime and people maintain their property pretty well. I have always felt safe in this neighborhood and have never had a problem with any of the kids in it and we have lived in the neighborhood for about 14 years, my wife living here the whole time while I deployed, traveled, or was assigned on geographic bachelor tours out of state. 

A few years ago a suggestion was made that the neighborhood association turn one of the two seldom-used tennis courts into basketball courts so the kids would have a safe place to play. Since we have lakes that occupy areas that otherwise be parks that could have ball fields, or other places for kids to play it was not an unreasonable request, especially because the closest city recreation center is about two miles away. That initial request was turned down because some people objected saying that basketball courts might “attract the wrong kind of people.” My reaction, as wel, as Judy’s when we heard about that was that it was obvious that the “wrong kind of people” happened to be black kids. 

Well it took a few years but finally a couple of months ago the homeowners association agreed to put up a basketball hoop on one of the tennis courts. It’s actually not much but it is something and there are restrictions on its use. Those who play on it have to be family members of the homeowners association, and have to be issued a key and have to lock up at 9 PM. When the court is not in use it is locked up. So  now instead of unused tennis courts we have a basketball court when any night of the week kids are playing. They aren’t causing any trouble, just playing basketball. It is a joy for me to see. The fact that the majority of the kids playing are black doesn’t bother me, they’re good kids who need a safe play to play. 

So anyway, back to my encounter. The woman began to tell me that she had heard that “people were complaining” about the noise, and she said that she wanted the city to force the kids to go to the recreation center. I told her that I had never noticed anything inappropriate or too loud and that I often walked around the clubhouse area where the court is in the evening and was pleased to to see well behaved kids playing on a court that was almost always vacant before. The woman didn’t appear happy with my answer and I realized what the meddlesome bitch was doing, she wanted people to support her in her attempt to kick the kids out of their own neighborhood. 

She then asked me if the kids were ever disrespectful to me and I got upset. I told her that I see the kids playing all the time and that they are always respectful to e and that I had no complaints. I then told her that I would fight any attempt to close down the basketball court. I defended the kids and asked her “what kind of people would demand that kids not to be allowed to play in their own neighborhood?” I asked, “what do we do when we were kids? Did we not play in our neighborhoods? Were we forced to have to play at a recreation center two miles away from home?” I then preached her a sermon about how for years those courts had been almost never used and that as a dues paying member of the homeowners association that I thought that we had the responsibility to provide a safe place for the kids of this neighborhood to play. I told her that because of the lake and the lack of a real park that the kids don’t have a place to play football, baseball, or soccer other than in the streets and that I wouldn’t let her or anyone else try to shut it down. I told her that I would go to the association, the city council, write the local newspaper, and contact the local television news stations if I heard of anyone trying to shut it down. 

I really don’t think that she expected my response, she backed away and apologized for bothering me. But now I am on guard. I’m going to stand up for our neighborhood kids who need that safe place to play. I am not going to let racist people like her take away one of the few safe places that our kids have to play. 

When I was a kid we played in our neighborhoods, and yes, there were people that didn’t want us playing, but we could play, and we did. I dare say that we were probably worse behaved than the kids on the basketball court. My God we had fights, threw rocks and black walnuts at each other, and ran our bikes into each other’s bikes like we were Greek or Roman galleys. Yes, our parents disciplined us, but we still could play in our neighborhoods, and I’ll be damned if some old racist fogeys try to chase these kids off that court. 

I have been asked a few times to serve on the homeowners association council but never wanted to do it because of my schedule. Maybe I need to run for the next vacancy on it to be a voice that speaks for the kids. 

So anyway, until tomorrow.

Peace

Padre Steve+

4 Comments

Filed under civil rights, Loose thoughts and musings

Tagged as , ,

July 18, 2017 · 06:30

“We Fight for Men and Women Whose Poetry has Not Yet Been Written…” Remembering Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

When it learned that the Federal Government was recruiting African Americans, both free men and former slaves as soldiers the Confederate Congress issued this proclamation:

“Any negro taken in arms against the Confederacy will immediately be returned to a state of slavery. Any negro taken in Federal uniform will be summarily put to death. Any white officer taken in command of negro troops shall be deemed as inciting servile insurrection and shall likewise be put to death.” 

Those who doubt that the leaders of the Confederacy fought the war for any “state right” other than the maintenance and expansion of slavery needs to look at the actions and words of that racist republic. 


One hundred and fifty-four years ago today one of those African American regiments went into action against the Confederate works at Battery Wagner, outside of Charleston, South Carolina. The 54th was raised in Boston and Frederick Douglass was instrumental in recruiting men to serve in it, two of which were his sons, and another the grandson of Sojourner Truth. The regimental commander, Colonel Robert Gould Shaw was the son of wealth abolitionists. When the call for volunteers was made in 1861 joined the 7th New York, and later commissioned in the 2nd Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, with which he fought at the battle of Antietam. After that battle he was offered the command of a black regiment then being raised in Boston. He initially declined the offer but on second thought decided to take it. 

Later tonight I will probably watch the film Glory about that regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. It was one of the first African American Regiments raised for service in the Civil War. I have seen the movie a number of times, and it never fails to bring tears to my eyes. Of course I have written a number of articles about the 54th and other African American units in the Civil War, the later “Buffalo Soldiers” and African American military pioneers, but I cannot forget the 54th. These were men who volunteered and remained in service knowing that the Confederate Congress had condemned them to death should they ever be captured. They also endured the mocking of some White Union soldiers as well as pay inequity with whites, for doing the same dangerous job as infantrymen.

When it was decided that an attack would be made on Battery Wagner the 54th was chosen for the mission. General Thomas Seymour provided this rational for leading the attack the the 54th: they “were in any respect as efficient as any other body of men; and as one of the strongest and best officered, there seemed to be no good reason why it should not be selected for the advance”


During their attack on the night of July 18th 1863, 272 members of the 600 men of the 54th who made the attack including their commander, the twenty-six year-old Colonel Shaw were killed or wounded in a bloody but unsuccessful assault on Battery Wagner. Following the assault, “Sergeant William H Carney staggered back from the fort with wounds in his chest and right arm, but with the regiment’s Stars and Stripes securely in his grasp. “The old flag never touched the ground, boys,” Carney gasped as he collapsed at the first field hospital he could find.” He would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.


Thinking that it was an insult the Confederates stripped Shaw’s body of his uniform and robbed him of his possessions, including his sword. They threw Colonel Shaw’s body in a mass grave with his African American soldiers. When Union commanders asked for the return of his body were told by Confederate commander General Johnson Hagood:

“Had he been in command of white troops, I should have given him an honorable burial; as it is, I shall bury him in the common trench with the niggers that fell with him.”

Union officers sought to have his remains returned but Shaw’s father wrote to implore them not to continue the effort. He wrote to the regimental surgeon:

“We would not have his body removed from where it lies surrounded by his brave and devoted soldiers….We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies, among his brave and devoted followers, nor wish for him better company. – what a body-guard he has!”

When Shaw first went to war he wrote to his mother words that should be in all of our hearts when we fight for the rights of others, especially those who are despised due to their race, national origin, color, religion or lack thereof,  gender, or sexual orientation:

“We fight for men and women whose poetry is not yet written but which will presently be as enviable and as renowned as any.”

That is what we fight for when we stand for the civil rights of others. That is why it is important to remember the example of the men of the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry. 

Peace

Padre Steve+

5 Comments

Filed under civil rights, civil war, History, Military, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 17, 2017 · 06:30

When the Unthinkable Arrives


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

There are times that is terrifying to be a historian who has specialized in the study of tyrannical regimes. This is the case with me. Even since my undergraduate study working under Dr. Helmut Huessler at California State University Northridge I have studied the transition of society from democracy to dictatorship. While my studies then and ever since focused on the rise of National Socialism in Germany, the fact is that what happened in Germany was not unique, it is a part of the human condition and the people of any country can find themselves under the foot of a dictatorship if the conditions are right. I believe that conditions in the United States have never been more ripe for dictatorship than they are today. 

As chaos continues to engulf the House of Trump, as investigations regarding Trump’s relations with Russia gain steam, and as his poll numbers crash, I become more concerned that the unthinkable will happen and we will suddenly be in a major war or hit by a major terror attack. I believe that if or when one or the other happen that the Trump regime will use it to suspend civil rights and liberties and maybe even suspend Congress and the courts in the name of security. Sadly, I think that in such a case that very few people would resist. Of course the 35-40% of people that would support him as he said, even if he shot someone on 5th Avenue would be at the forefront, but many other people would follow all because they are afraid and desire security more than freedom. 

Now this is not all Trump’s doing as for the last three decades many of those that now support him, especially the leaders of the Religious Right, Fox News, and radio and internet demagogues have prepared the ground for his rise. 

Dr. Timothy Snyder, the historian from Yale has warned us in his book On Tyranny. He noted:

“Be calm when the unthinkable arrives. Modern tyranny is terror management. When the terrorist attack comes, remember that authoritarians exploit such events in order to consolidate power. The sudden disaster that requires the end of checks and balances, the dissolution of political parties, the suspension of freedom of expression, the right to a fair trial, and so on, is the oldest trick in the Hitlerian book. DO NOT FALL FOR IT.”

Human beings are the one constant in history, and human nature is very consistent when it comes to how we respond when under attack. One only has to think of the fear that followed the 9-11 attacks and the willingness of people to give the government vast new powers, including an authorization for the use of military for against Al Qaida which has not been updated or supplemented since 2001, despite the fact that many of the places our military are operating in today have nothing to do with Al Qaida. 

I believe that the chances of such a think happening have gone up exponentially since the President and the Executive branch have not filled many critical ambassadorships, as well as thousands of key billets in the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Department of Justice, and the Department of Homeland Security. Likewise, despite all it’s bluster about strengthening the military nothing significant has occurred and will not occur because it cannot. This is because of the the policy of sequestration enacted by Congress in the 2011 Budget Control Act. Likewise, with its callous treatment of our allies and lack of concern about Russian interference in American elections, and in Europe the administration has weakened us at home and abroad. 

This is a very dangerous time and every day I wake up wondering if this will be the day that our Republic as we knew it dies. I do not know if this will be the result of a war with North Korea or Iran, or possibly a major terror attack, but as things spiral out of control I cannot shake the feeling that we are going to have our Reichstag Fire moment, and that we will not rise to the challenge. Instead I think that most Americans will give up freedom in the name of security simply because that is human nature and has been demonstrated throughout history on every continent. James Madison noted: 

“The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.”

Now is a time that we must all be awake and aware of what is going on in our country and the world. The storm clouds are building and we most be cognizant of the times or be engulfed and overwhelmed when the unthinkable arrives. That may not be pleasant to contemplate, but it is necessary. 

I would like to believe that I will be proven wrong and honestly I want to be proven wrong because I do not want our nation to have to endure war, terrorism, and a tyrannical despotism. 

So, until tomorrow I wish you a good day,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

1 Comment

Filed under civil rights, History, national security, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , , , , ,

July 16, 2017 · 06:30

If Christ was Here Today… 


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

On this Sunday I want to impart a short thought. The great American humorist Mark Twain once noted “If Christ were here there is one thing he would not be—a Christian.” 

Last week I preached about separation of church and state at my chapel and pretty much said the same thing. One think I noted was that if I wasn’t already a Christian that nothing I see in American Christianity could ever convince me to become a Christian. 

The reality is that  people are fleeing the church in record numbers and non-believers don’t even want to darken the door and I don’t blame them. The illusion of packed out mega-churches betrays the reality that if things continue apace that within a generation the American church of all denominations will be as bad off as the state churches of Europe which are empty, and no amount of the craven lust for political power of those who call themselves “evangelical” or “conservative” Christians will change that, instead it will make it worse. 

Big name preachers rush to the side of a President who has measured them and found that by doing very little for them except say what they want to hear, that they will prostitute themselves to gain political power. George Truett, who served as Pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, and President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary wrote something that should serve as a warning to such people: 

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

But it seems we don’t learn and the Millenials, as well as others, particularly combat vets like me, have looked behind the purple curtain of the Church’ Oz and found that Jesus isn’t there. What comes to mind when most people are asked to describe the Church? Let’s check the polls of evangelical pollster George Barna which have been corroborated time after time by Pew, Gallup, and other polls. 

These polls find people are leaving Christian churches of all denominations in droves and that non-believers want nothing to do with the church. For most of these people it is not about God or Jesus, or even the Bible. It is due to the lack of love, care, compassion exhibited by Christians and the institutional corruption, lack of transparency, double standards and political machinations of churches over people that are not of their faith or under their institutional control. The surveys conducted by Christian pollsters like George Barna bear this out. When asked what words or phrases “best describe Christianity” the top response of 16-29 years olds was “anti-homosexual” while 91% of all non-Christians surveyed said this was the first word as it was for 80% of Christians in the survey. Here are those words that describe Christians. Personally I don’t like them but it is what it is.

Hypocritical: Christians live lives that don’t match their stated beliefs;

Antihomosexual: Christians show contempt for gays and lesbians – “hating the sin and the sinner” as one respondent put it

Insincere: Christians are concerned only with collecting converts

Sheltered: Christians are anti-intellectual, boring, and out of touch with reality.

Too political: Christians are primarily motivated by a right-wing political agenda

That is the future and honestly I think that it is too late to turn this around and it is not the fault of academics, liberals, homosexuals, scientists, educators, or the media. It is the fault of Christians who love power, position, and prosperity more than they love people; the same people that Jesus supposedly died and rose again to save. In fact many Christians spend so much of their time hating and preaching against people they have never even met that and allying themselves with the government to ensure that they can discriminate against LGBTQ people, women, Muslims, and a host of others solely based on their interpretation of cherry-picked Bible verses that no one listens to them anymore. 

The great American patriot, free thinker, and atheist Robert Ingersoll wrote something that goes to the heart of the matter: “Christians tell me that they love their enemies, and yet all I ask is—not that they love their enemies, not that they love their friends even, but that they treat those who differ from them, with simple fairness.” 

I cannot agree more with him. Ingersoll saw beyond that purple veils over a hundred years ago, and he asks a question that the purloined preachers of the American church have completely forgotten. If we want to attract people to Jesus we have to treat them with simple fairness and love, if we can’t do that then we forfeit all that we preach about Jesus and we shall be rightfully dmaned. 

So anyway, until tomorrow,

Peace,

Padre Steve+

3 Comments

Filed under civil rights, faith, Religion

Tagged as , , , , ,

July 9, 2017 · 06:30

Pastor Robert Jeffress and the Imperial Evangelical Church of Trump


Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

Well it is Sunday and I’ll be the guest preacher in my Protestant chapel service at the base as I did last week. Since then I’ve been thinking over the week about what it means to be an American Christian at this point in our history. Frankly, based on the words of the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dallas, Texas, Robert Jeffress, I must not be one because according to him Christian critics of Presdent Trump are “irrelevant to Christians.” That may be so and even if it is than I will continue to speak out against the idolatry of Pastor Jeffress and the other proponents of an imperial evangelicalism that is little more than an American version of the German Christian movement that went all in for Adolf Hitler. Pastor Jeffress would be an ideal candidate for the office of Reichs Bishop when President Trump proclaims Evangelical Christianity as the State Church. 

As for me I say the hell with those who want to establish the bastardized evangelicalism that we know today as the official state sanctioned version of Christianity. For those who don’t think that is likely or possible you are wrong. The words and actions of the President, the Vice President, a number of cabinet members, and many members of Congress all point to this. But worst of all men like Jeffress and most of the leading popular evangelical pastors and evangelists in the county are working toward that end and the day that it finally happens is coming sooner than you think. A minority of Christians who are better at making former Christians, agnostics, and atheists than disciples of Jesus want nothing more than to gain political power and are willing to use the most base and unchristian President in recent memory as their vehicle to temporal power. 

Barry Goldwater, the scion of the modern Conservative movement warned us about them over thirty years ago in the Senate chambers when he said: “The religious factions that are growing throughout our land are not using their religious clout with wisdom. They are trying to force government leaders into following their position 100 percent.” After he left the Senate he told John Dean: 

“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”

Sadly, Goldwater was right. Jeffress and others want no more than to use the power that they have with President Trump to rule with an iron fist that is no different than that of the Taliban, and no no different than the inquisition. 

Likewise the late Senator Mark Hatfield, an Evangelical Christian himself noted:

“As a Christian, there is no other part of the New Right ideology that concerns me more than its self-serving misuse of religious faith. What is at stake here is the very integrity of biblical truth. The New Right, in many cases, is doing nothing less than placing a heretical claim on Christian faith that distorts, confuses, and destroys the opportunity for a biblical understanding of Jesus Christ and of his gospel for millions of people.”  

It is time for people who actually believe in the sacred principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, the Gettysburg Address, the Four Freedoms, and the I Have a Dream speech to stand. It does not matter if you are a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, Buddhist, Wiccan, agnostic, atheist, or Free Thinker, or for that matter anything except being an American that cherishes liberty for all. 

The late George Truett, a great Southern Baptist pastor, President of Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and also the pastor of Jeffress’s Fist Baptist Church of Dallas until 1944, wrote something that anyone with any sense and understanding of history and church-state relations should take note of:

“Constantine, the Emperor, saw something in the religion of Christ’s people which awakened his interest, and now we see him uniting religion to the state and marching up the marble steps of the Emperor’s palace, with the church robed in purple. Thus and there was begun the most baneful misalliance that ever fettered and cursed a suffering world…. When … Constantine crowned the union of church and state, the church was stamped with the spirit of the Caesars…. The long blighting record of the medieval ages is simply the working out of that idea.”

President Trump has recognized the same thing and with the help of the vast majority of American Evangelicals he is doing the same thing as Constantine and men like Robert Jeffress are to vain and power hungry to understand that they are sealing the doom of the Christian faith in the United States. That is why I will not stop writing, not stop speaking, and not stop fighting. I may be to use the words of Jeffress an insignificant and irrelevant gnat to him and the President but I’ll be damned if I let men like them use Jesus as a vehicle for tyranny. I’ll be damned when I let a political preacher like Jeffress stand on the same platform as the President and use it to condemn fellow Christians. as his very own church choir debates a hymn entitled Make America Great Again, a song which is a hymn of praise not to Jesus but to the nationalistic jingoism of President Trump. His predecessor in the pulpit of First Baptist, George Truett would be dismayed by the actions of the man who now holds that pulpit. 

Likewise our nation’s founders would be dismayed but not surprised to see this going on. Many wrote about the danger of it and did their best to build up a wall of separation, but that wall is being dismantled before our very eyes. When it is gone we will all regret it, and yes by all I even include the Evangelical Christians who now worship at the altar of Robert Jeffress and Donald Trump. 

So until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+ 

9 Comments

Filed under christian life, civil rights, faith, History, ministry, nazi germany, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , , ,

July 7, 2017 · 06:30

Race Hatred and the Comfortable Contemporary American Christian

 

KKK-Nast

Friends of Padre Steve’s World,

I ran across a blog yesterday that sickened me. It is written by a woman in Louisiana who claims to be a Christian, but based on her own words wonder. Her article was to defend as a martyr a white woman in Texas who killed her daughters when she discovered that her eldest daughter desired to marry a Latino man. It wasn’t enough for the woman to merely punish her daughters but she had to kill them. The woman had long standing mental illness issues and had been denied a permit to own a weapon because of them. But according to this supposedly Christian blogger she killed her daughters because race-mixing is a sin. How the blogger superimposed her racist ideology on the murderer is beyond me. There may be more to the story that I don’t know, if there is, and if the woman that this blogger idealizes as a Christian martyr held those same beliefs the case is even more chilling.

The words of the blogger are chilling. The woman describes herself in these words:

My name is Jennifer Juanita Mayers. I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  I am happily married and a mother to three wonderful daughters.  I enjoy graphic design, interior design, luxury furniture and an overall fashionable lifestyle.

I demand the best things in life because I deserve it.  When you expect the best, you receive the best.

Some people find me and my opinions abrasive but I live for Jesus Christ and every single word that I speak, think, or type is done in His name.  He chose me as his Messenger incarnate when I was a small child.

Few will ever know the pain and suffering of crucifixion.  We share that pain together.  We are ONE.

Without getting into details the woman obviously has some delusions about the Christian faith which are shared by many Christians of our era, but I am not going to dissect that faith today as I have written much about it in the past.

What I want to discuss is her passionate race hatred and her justification of cold-blooded murder in the name of racial purity. Her words reminded me of the Nazi laws on racial purity as well as American laws which forbade inter-racial marriage up until Loving v. Virginia overturned them in 1967. She writes in her article “America’s Martyr: NO Race Mixing:”

Friends, I invite you to ponder the image above.  The beautiful woman is Christy Sheats.  The Texas wife and mother who is being vilified in the media for shooting and killing her teenage daughters.  It makes for a great headline in mainstream media but what goes unsaid is even more powerful.

A devout Republican and gun rights advocate, she no doubt discovered that both of her daughters had been promiscuous and were sleeping with black boys and she took it upon herself to put an end to that cycle.  She was brave enough to stand up and say ENOUGH!  Not in MY house! And she should be lauded.

Race mixing is not only an ungodly thing, it causes such confusion and humiliation.  Not only for the children born of this sin, but for the grandparents who would have to carry this burden. Mrs. Sheats was the picture of elegance and I know she would not want to have to explain to her friends why she was carrying around a yellow mixed baby that her promiscuous daughters had created.

Rather than be forced into this life of depravity and sin, she chose to go down grasping her weapon in the name of God.  As far as I am concerned, she is a martyr for Christ.

 “It would be horribly tragic if my ability to protect myself or my family were to be taken away, but that’s exactly what Democrats are determined to do by banning semi-automatic handguns,” she wrote in March, along with an anti-gun control video.

She was just your typical wife and mother, doing everything she could to protect her children from the promiscuous and sinful life that they had become sucked into.

Before we slander her name or make her out to be a villain, I think we should take a moment of silence and appreciate her bravery and her devout Will to die for Christ.

A martyr indeed, my friends.  And Glory be to God, as always for HE is in control.

xoxo

Jenn

I don’t know about you friend, but what I see in this is absolutely frightening. The fact that this woman argues that a murderer is justified for racial purity and calls the person who does it a martyr when she dies in a shootout with the police is truly either mentally ill herself, or embodies an evil that is unimaginable for most people.

I did some checking around and this woman has a Twitter account which was suspended at least for a while last year. When it was she posted a short blog post saying that it was “a discrimination of my FREE SPEECH that Jesus Christ died in order for me to have. This is a crime against my faith.  Against my beliefs.  This is a crucifixion in the highest order.  President Trump will NEVER stand for this.”

The fact that she is both ignorant of the Constitution and the Christian faith is par for the course nowadays but her screeds put her in a fairly small cloud-cuckoo land that is usually inhabited by a small number of neo-Nazis.

But her blog (in between her tips on how to live a luxurious life) contains even more racist rants than the article I have cited. Her posts read like Julius Streicher’s Der Sturmer. She has other posts including one calling Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. “black trash” on the MLK holiday, writing about “lesser races” and going into anti-Islamic and pro-Muslim ban rants in support of the President. In another she calls abortion as being the only thing worse than being black but approves of it “if the baby is mongoloid.  That is a true burden that I would not carry, nor would I expect any woman to suffer.  It would be an embarrassment to me and my family and I could not allow an imperfection like that in my hone.  And I do not have the time or patience to raise one of those.”

She also writes anti-LGBTQ screeds, and about deporting all blacks from the country. The sad thing is that with the advent of President Trump such thoughts and actions are again in vogue.

I looked through some of the comments on her page and quite a few were supportive of her. I guess that is even more concerning to me. I will not provide the link to her blog, but you can Google her and find it.

Anyway… Try to think some happy thoughts,

Until tomorrow,

Peace

Padre Steve+

7 Comments

Filed under christian life, civil rights, News and current events, Political Commentary

Tagged as , , , , ,