Privilege?

For a long time I have struggled with the issue of privilege. As a fairly well educated white heterosexual man I have had privileges that many people in this country don't have, and most of those privilges are unearned. I have been hoping that there would be more honest discussion of privilege in our country, but recent comments about privilege made by Gov. Rick Perry are not what I would call honest. In attacks on the President, Gov. Perry has made the claim that Pres. Obama has had a privileged life, one that makes it impossible for him to understand hard-working Americans (like Gov. Perry?).  I would never deny that the President enjoyed some privileges as he grew up - the privileges of a mother committed to seeing to it that he had a good education and of scholarships that allowed him to get that education. He also appears to have intellectual gifts that Gov. Perry doesn't have.

What makes Gov. Perry's comments less than an honest contribution to a discussion of unearned privilege is his total lack of any acknowledgement of his own privileges as a white male heterosexual evangelical Christian in Texas, nor any acknowledgement of the less than privileged aspects of the President's early life. I know what it is like to be raised by a single mother, but I have no idea, nor does Gov. Perry, of what is like to be a biracial child growing up in America.

Perhaps there are Americans who will buy Gov. Perry's assertions about the President's privileged childhood, but I hope that most Americans will scratch their heads and wonder, as I did, about whether Gov. Perry has finally lost touch with reality.

On My Watch

At first I felt sorry last night as I watched Syracuse University's basketball coach Jim Boeheim asserting that it was not yet clear what had happened on his watch. But after he repeated the phrase "on my watch" for the umpteenth time I began to wonder why he wasn't watching on his watch. If the allegations of sexual abuse by his assistant coach are found to be true, then I expect Boeheim's words may come back to haunt him and he may find himself unemployed.

Transgender Rights

Yesterday the General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (the legislature) passed the Transgender Equal Rights Bill and Governor Patrick has said that he will sign it. It is a good beginning, but there are still areas, e.g. public accommodation, where discrimination is still permitted. The opponents of the bill should be ashamed of some of the arguments that were used in opposing it, especially the references to it as "bathroom bill."

At 65 I am too old to put up with much more of the nonsense of those who want to preserve white male heterosexual privilege. As a friend and an ally I will keep working to get an even better bill passed.

The Proper Matter

I got myself involved in a very unproductive exchange of comments over at Mark Harris's blog Preludium. The exchange prompted me to think - once again - about the very different reactions that there have been to the ordination of women and to the blessing of same-sex unions. I suggested that both controversies involved disagreements about the proper matter for a sacrament. Traditionally the proper matter for the sacrament of holy orders was an adult male and there were those among the faithful who believed - and still do - that ordaining a woman was not only wrong but simply impossible. Traditionally the proper matter for the sacrament of holy matrimony has been an adult male and female couple and there are some among the faithful who believe that the uniting of two men or two women in holy matrimony is simply impossible.

I am still puzzled by the way in which Anglicans have found themselves unable to maintain relationships with those who disagree about the proper matter of holy matrimony when they had been able to live with diversity of convictions about the proper matter of holy orders. Is there a logic to this that is beyond my capacity to understand? Or is this simply heterosexism, a clinging to heterosexual privilege? If it is heterosexism, perhaps the way forward is a path quite like that which many opponents of the ordination of women followed a generation. My bishop at the time said that his mind was changed when he met women who exhibited the same kind of gifts and sense of calling that he saw in men preparing for ordination. I know that the witness of the lives of the same-sex couples that I have been blessed to know have helped to change my mind - along with some serious reading of Scripture.


The traditionalists are right in asserting that this way of understanding marriage is a departure from the past, a new thing. Changing our thinking about matters, especially matters of importance like holy matrimony and holy orders, is clearly a big deal, and not, to paraphrase the marriage rite itself, to be done hastily, but soberly and deliberately. We know that we may get it all wrong, that decades later we may come to realize that we made a mistake. But for me the greater mistake, the one that does incalculable damage to God's beloved children, is to cling to the old understandings.

Taxes, Anyone?

There has been some talk about continuing the payroll tax cuts that have put a bit more money in the pockets of working people. Some members of the GOP, who seem to like every tax cut, are not so happy about this one, or the tax credits that have help working people get out of poverty. Their argument is that everyone should pay taxes as a way to have a stake in the game. But nearly everyone, even those who don't pay income tax, pays federal taxes. For every tank of gas that I buy, the federal government gets $2.76 in fuel tax. That's not much, but it is a stake in the game. And if I didn't own a car, I would still be contributing to some trucking company's tax payments every time I bought anything. Put simply, we all have a stake in the game.

When I was a teenager my politics began to shift to the left. This got me in some trouble with my unwavering Republican grandmother. I wasn't allowed to wear Democrat's campaign pins in her house and I quickly learned to keep my politic convictions to myself. For a long time the memory of being told to take off a campaign bothered me. Years after her death, I found a way to make a kind of peace with my grandmother. I put a bumper sticker on my car: FRIENDS DON'T LET FRIENDS VOTE REPUBLICAN! 

Over the years that I drove that car and even after I passed it on to our son, I got a few negative responses to the bumper sticker, to which I always responded by saying that the bumper sticker was only a joke, and a very mild one at that. But this year I'm not so sure. With many Republicans in Congress unwilling to see that spending cuts alone won't eliminate the federal budget deficit or that spending increases for infrastructure would help the economy, I'm beginning to think that friends should not let friends vote for some of these Republicans.