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by Eric Byler

Thank you Andrew Sullivan for your radio interview on NPR's All things Considered today.  Everyone in American needs to hear this beautiful, heartfelt, and nuanced response to President Obama's statement calling for marriage equality. 

The interview lasts only a few minutes, and the moment that grabbed me emotionally is in the first few seconds.  So please, LISTEN TO THIS!!

I dare not quote from it because I want the words to sneak up on you as they did for me.  Mr. Sullivan's voice helped crystallize the issue for me (even though I've been outspoken on equal rights for the gay community since I was in high school).

Let's not look to televangelists, politicians, or high-priced media campaigns in order to share in the cultural shift that we are making as a nation toward equality for all Americans.  Let's not rely on our President either, even though his words today are welcome.  Let's look into our hearts, our very own human hearts, and ask ourselves how we feel when we hear a fellow American, and a fellow human being express himself this way.  Andrew Sullivan!  You nailed it.

Below is the blog Sullivan wrote on this historic day, "Obama Lets Go of Fear."

I do not know how orchestrated this was; and I do not know how calculated it is. What I know is that, absorbing the news, I was uncharacteristically at a loss for words for a while, didn't know what to write, and, like many Dish readers, there are tears in my eyes.

So let me simply say: I think of all the gay kids out there who now know they have their president on their side. I think of Maurice Sendak, who just died, whose decades-long relationship was never given the respect it deserved. I think of the centuries and decades in which gay people found it impossible to believe that marriage and inclusion in their own families was possible for them, so crushed were they by the weight of social and religious pressure. I think of all those in the plague years shut out of hospital rooms, thrown out of apartments, written out of wills, treated like human garbage because they loved another human being. I think of Frank Kameny. I think of the gay parents who now feel their president is behind their sacrifices and their love for their children.

The interview changes no laws; it has no tangible effect. But it reaffirms for me the integrity of this man we are immensely lucky to have in the White House. Obama's journey on this has been like that of many other Americans, when faced with the actual reality of gay lives and gay relationships. Yes, there was politics in a lot of it. But not all of it. I was in the room long before the 2008 primaries when Obama spoke to the mother of a gay son about marriage equality. He said he was for equality, but not marriage. Five years later, he sees - as we all see - that you cannot have one without the other. But even then, you knew he saw that woman's son as his equal as a citizen. It was a moment - way off the record at the time - that clinched my support for him.

Today Obama did more than make a logical step. He let go of fear. He is clearly prepared to let the political chips fall as they may. That's why we elected him. That's the change we believed in. The contrast with a candidate who wants to abolish all rights for gay couples by amending the federal constitution, and who has donated to organizations that seek to "cure" gays, who bowed to pressure from bigots who demanded the head of a spokesman on foreign policy solely because he was gay: how much starker can it get?

My view politically is that this will help Obama. He will be looking to the future generations as his opponent panders to the past. The clearer the choice this year the likelier his victory. And after the darkness of last night, this feels like a widening dawn.

Please join our on-going national conversation at Coffee Party Equality.

by Eric Byler

I have a fondness and an appreciation for Chris Matthews because he is thorough, factual, and so unmistakably and genuinely in love with the subject that he covers: politics.  I listened to the latest episode of Hardball with Chris Matthews, and I liked it so much that I might watch it as well.  The show covered three issues about which I'm very passionate.

One percent economic policy vs. 99 percent economic policy with guests Paul Krugman and Jon Heilemann.  Krugman makes the point that private sector employment has returned to levels before the Great Recession, but that public sector employment is way down because of One percent economic policies (austerity).  Krugman says unemployment would be at 7 percent if we had pursued 99 percent economic policies.  Heilemann points out that such policies were not attainable during the past three years because of fiscal conservatives in both the Republican and Democratic parties.  And Matthews adds that if Obama had tried to do more for jobs and the economy, it might have backfired on him, and no legislation would have been passed at all.

The "Citizens United" decision with Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer, who, along with his Republican Lt. Governor, is pushing Ballot Initiative 166, directing Montana's Congressional delegation to move to amend the United States Constitution to clarify that corporations are not people, and that they cannot legally bribe our politicians and purchase our government.   Matthews asks Gov. Schweitzer if We the People have a chance against multi-national corporations and their representatives in Congress and on the Supreme Court.  I rather liked his answer, but I'll let you watch it below and not expand because I've already written and spoken out about Montana and Citizens United quite a bit.

Gay Rights, and the Romney campaign's decision to fire a man for being gay, or rather, for being the target of an anti-gay hate frenzy orchestrated by people the campaign dares not defy.  For those of you who have read my blog over the past few years, I will back any American who shows courage in the face of extremism (and at times, I especially praise Republicans who do so because for them it is simply harder to do and our country needs them desperately).  I lost all respect for Romney when, unlike his rival Newt Gingrich, he decided to pander to anti-immigrant extremists rather than stand up for sound economic, fiscal, and public safety policy.  Bowing before anti-gay extremists is every bit as calculating, and every bit as cowardly. 

For the record, haven't been entirely pleased with President Obama's maneuvering on immigration and gay rights either.  I can't decide which of these two "social" issues annoys me more.  Immigration is only a "social" issue in the minds of people hung up on America's inevitable demographic shift.  For the rest of us, it is an economic issue.  Anti-immigrant electioneering and anti-immigrant policies are hurting job growth and hurting the fiscal solvency of our country. 

Anti-gay electioneering is annoying because it is fueled by a juvenile phobia that has no place in adult society, or adolescent society for that matter, let along public policy.  If President Obama is truly "evolving" on this is issue, then, as Matthews says, we all know that he is evolving toward equality.  I would prefer to have a president who is already there.  Polls show that America is evolving that way too (the only demographic still opposing marriage equality is senior citizens).

Whether or not the real Mitt Romney is anti-gay or anti-immigrant is not as important as the fact that, when he decides how to present himself to the public, he has more regard for people who are hateful about those issues than for people who are not.  Elections should be about the future, and Romney is evolving backwards on both social issues and economic policy.  That's a problem. [MORE]

LISTEN to Eric Byler's interview with Carlos Miller on Coffee Party Radio

by Eric Byler

Carlos Miller reports in Pixiq.com that a bipartisan vote in the Connecticut State Senate has approved a Senate Bill 245 which would allow citizens to sue police officers who arrest them for taking photos or video in public.  As the number of people who carry cameras on their person increases, there have been increasing incidents in which officers arrested people for documenting law enforcement activities.  Legislation is needed to clarify the rights of officers and the rights of citizens.

As someone who was arrested while documenting a police crackdown on an Occupy camp in Los Angeles, I would like to say: I approve of this legislation.  Mine was a political arrest.  I was swept-up in the Nov. 29, 2011 Occupy Los Angeles crackdown designed to demonstrate power, and discourage dissent, by achieving a large number of arrests [read my account of my arrest here, or, hear me talk about it on The Bottom Line with Jessica English).  The People do have a right to witness and document the activities of law enforcement, especially in politically charged situations like the one I documented last fall.  But also, in an age when it seems that everyone has a mobile phone, and mobile phones very often include cameras, a federal law like this is needed to clarify this for everyday police encounters as well.

Police officers can feel threatened by cameras, and that is understandable.  And, officers know that they have a right to take action when they feel physically threatened.  But a camera does not pose a physical threat.  Officers need to be instructed that they must distinguish between a physical threat and a psychological threat before taking action against innocent bystanders, journalists, and other citizens. 

Watch the video below, and ask yourself if the woman arrested in Rochester, NY last year for video taping from her front yard posed a physical or psychological threat to the officer who decided to arrest her.  If the officer had been trained to ask himself that question, there probably would not have been an arrest.

Police officers need to understand that a camera is no threat to them as long as they conduct their duty according to the laws they are sworn to uphold.  A decade ago, a federal racial profiling suit was resolved with a consent decree that required the New Jersey State Police to install cameras into police cruisers to ensure that new regulations meant to protect minorities from racial profiling would be followed.  At first the officers resented having "Big Brother" looking over their shoulder.  But as time went on, they came to appreciate having the cameras on patrol with them.  The cameras often provided exculpatory evidence proving that racial profiling had not taken place (the traffic stop took place at night, for instance, and the car and zoomed by at such a rate that determining the ethnicity of the driver was not possible).  The cameras often provided evidence that was useful in obtaining a conviction.  Before long, officers began insisting on having cameras in their cruisers.  If they found themselves in a cruiser that had a malfunctioning camera, they would bring it back and ask for one with a camera that worked. [MORE]