Month: April 2016

Curt Schilling has stepped in it again. The former Boston Red Sox pitcher and ESPN baseball analyst posted a truly disgusting meme concerning the controversy involving laws enacted to prevent transgendered people from utilizing the rest rooms they identify with and added his own misanthropic bigoted commentary to the issue.

It’s not the first time that Schilling has stepped in it. Last August he was removed from ESPN’s analyst chair during the Little League World Series for comparing Muslims to Nazis. Whether that will result in his being named to Donald Trump’s team of National Security Advisers remains to be seen. On the other hand, Trump has endorsed the right of transgendered people to use the restroom of their choosing before changing his mind and declaring it should be left up to the states. So, he may view Schilling as being too extreme.

My initial reaction was that for Shilling, to have been caught up in two such controversies this close together, after the NBA and NCAA publicly announced they might move championship games out of states enacting such laws, tells me that he has the brains of a soil sample.

Schilling has sought to ameliorate his offensive postings by labeling them as his opinions. Implicit in this defense is the suggestion that he should not be sanctioned for expressing them.

This leads us to a larger question. What should be the consequences for posting or expressing truly bigoted, hateful views?

Schilling has a constitutional right to express his disgusting opinions but he does not have a right to sit in the ESPN analyst chair and be richly compensated by the network who must be concerned that their analyst’s views on social issues are anathema to much of their viewers. This past Wednesday ESPN fired Schilling.

Good riddance to bad rubbish.

We have seen this debate emerge before. The Westboro Baptist Church claimed a constitutional right to picket the funeral services of dead soldiers carrying signs proclaiming that those dead were killed because God hates America because of gay rights. At another time The American Nazi Party litigated its right to march through the predominantly Jewish city of Skokie, Illinois. In each case both of these hate groups prevailed in court.

After giving it some thought, I think the way these groups were handled was wrong headed.

I think they should be informed that while they had a constitutional right to picket and march, they have no right to police protection. Our police departments have more important tasks to perform.

If Westboro offended the Hells Angels by their picketing or the Nazi’s offended a much larger group of Jewish citizens in Skokie or the Ku Klux Klan decides to march through Harlem and things get rough, well, perhaps they should have thought about that in advance.

On his blog, Schilling says “opinions are like buttholes.” He must have discovered that by looking in the mirror.

I love seeing people engage in self-awareness.

One hundred years ago, this weekend, the men and women of the Irish Republican Brotherhood were occupying the General Post Office in Dublin in the “Rising” for Irish independence from Britain.

It wasn’t the first “rising” of that sort. The Irish had attempted to throw off the cloak of British oppression on an almost regular basis every fifty years.

The previous one had occurred in 1865 and 1867 and had a unique twist to it. Many of the participants had just returned home from fighting in the American civil war where they had fought either for the Union or the Confederacy. Some of them had gone to America for the sole purpose of learning military skills they could utilize in this quest for freedom.

That the British ultimately put down that rising and either executed or imprisoned the rebels did not stamp out their efforts to achieve freedom. The Fenian movement lived on and one of its most fervent champions was Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa. Rossa had been prosecuted for Treason and sentenced to life in prison. He was later paroled and exiled from Britain to America and would write of the horrors he endured in the British jails.

Despite being barred from Britain for twenty years, he worked tirelessly, utilizing all means, legal and illegal to wage war on the British Empire. He died in Brooklyn, New York on June 29, 1915 and his body was returned to Ireland where the largest funeral procession to that day was held.

On August 1, 1915, at Rossa’s grave site Padraig Pearse, uttered these words;
“Our foes are strong and wise and wary; but wary as they are, they cannot undo the miracles of God who ripens in the hearts of young men the seeds sown by the young men of a younger generation. And the seed sown by the young men of ’65 and ‘67 are coming to their miraculous ripening today. Rulers and Defenders of the Realm had need to be wary if they would guard against such processes. Life springs from death; and from the graves of patriot men and women spring living nations. The Defenders of this Realm have worked well in in secret and in the open. They think they have pacified Ireland They think they have purchased half of us and intimidated the other half. They think they have foreseen everything, they think they have provided against everything; but the fools, the fools, the fools!-they have left us our Fenian dead, and while Ireland holds these graves, Ireland unfree shall never be at peace.”

Six months later on April 16, 1916 Pearse stepped out of the Dublin General Post Office and read a proclamation declaring Ireland to be free and independent.

In a few days, the rising was put down and its leaders, including Pearse, were executed but the people in Ireland and the Irish in America would not accept that Ireland was not free and independent.

Many battles would be fought and many lives would be lost as the Irish fought the British and each other to obtain freedom and independence.

Ireland would be known as the “Free State,” a twenty-six county Dominion in the British Empire from 1922 until 1937 when Eamon de Valera abolished the Oath of Allegiance and began an economic war with England.

In 1937, de Valera wrote a new constitution adopted by referendum and the Republic of Ireland was officially born. Although from the day that Pearse had proclaimed a Republic in front of the General Post Office, it had existed in the hearts and minds of the men and women who worked tirelessly, many giving their lives, to bring it into existence.

Another six decades would pass before the sectarian violence that continued in Northern Ireland would subside and the island would be at peace.

As we look around the world and see the many places torn apart and ravaged by sectarian violence and atrocities being committed in the name of religion or economic oppression, it is well to remember that if peace can come to Ireland after centuries of strife, it can happen anywhere.

On June 26, 2015 the United States Supreme Court in Obergefell v. Hodges, decided that same sex marriage was a constitutional right and ordered the states to issue marriage licenses to all couples applying for one.

In the wake of that decision we have seen repeated attempts by some states and public officials to frustrate and, in some cases, defy the Court’s mandate.

In Kentucky, the Rowan County Clerk, Kim Davis, refused the issue the licenses and was ordered to jail by a United States District Court judge for five days until she relented and authorized her staff to issue the licenses.

In Alabama, the Chief Judge of the Alabama Supreme Court, Roy Moore, who is renowned for erecting monuments to the Ten Commandments in State courthouses, ordered the lower court not to issue licenses to same sex couples. A number of lower court judges refused to abide by the ban and issued licenses in accordance with the Obergfell decision but the ban continues to be a subject of continued litigation. One can only hope that Moore, a committed homophobe, gets a dose of the Davis treatment.

We have gone a long way down since President John F. Kennedy eloquently made the case for the separation of church and state and discrimination based on religion before the Houston Ministerial Alliance during the 1960 Presidential election.

Perhaps more subtle but equally egregious are the laws that have been enacted or considered by several states which would permit businesses to refuse services to same-sex couples and bar transgendered people from using rest rooms according to their gender identity.

Last month, when I was in Asheville, North Carolina, the state legislature passed a law that invalidated the city of Charlotte’s local law prohibiting discrimination against Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgendered (LGBT) people. Charlotte’s local law also permitted transgendered people to use facilities based on their gender identity. This state ban was signed by Governor Pat McCrory, who had been elected on a platform of returning power to the state’s localities.

In the aftermath of its passage some of the state’s largest employers such as Pay Pal, Google Ventures and other businesses have announced that they will no longer invest in expanding their businesses in the state.
The NBA is considering whether it will move next year’s championship game from Charlotte to another state and is being encouraged to do so by former NBA star Charles Barkley.

Yesterday, the iconic rock star, Bruce Springsteen, cancelled a concert scheduled for April 10 whose venue was Greensboro, North Carolina.

Governor McCrory remains obstinate about repealing the measure and the world awaits the state’s plan on how it will enforce the restroom portion of the ban.

Mississippi enacted and even more aggressive anti-LGBT law called the Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act which allows individuals to refuse services to LGBT individuals, same sex couples and single women who offend their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Somehow single men were omitted from the class who could be discriminated against.

It remains to be seen how the law will affect tourism and convention traffic to the cities and casinos on the Gulf Coast.

Other states have considered such laws but cooler heads have prevailed.

The Georgia state legislature passed a “religious liberty” bill that would enshrine the right to discriminate against LBGT people but it was vetoed by the Governor after outcries from some of the State’s largest employers including Apple, Disney, Intel and others and after the NCAA and NFL suggested it could hinder the state’s prospects of hosting championship games. Business leaders in Indiana forced a revision to similar legislation although the failure to repeal it entirely did not satisfy the employer, Angie’s List, which put an expansion of its facility in Indianapolis on hold.

It is often said that money can’t buy love or happiness.

That is undoubtedly true.

An economic boycott and the withholding of money that promotes or achieves equality and tolerance is good.

My wife, Terri, and I spent this past month of March in Asheville, North Carolina. It was the second time we had been there. Three years ago we had visited Asheville for a week.

I had graduated from the University of Tennessee thirty-five years before our stay. Asheville is eighty miles to the east of Knoxville, Tennessee. During the period when I was attending U-T, as the University is known, Asheville was a decrepit, decaying city replete with empty buildings in the downtown area and had no manufacturing or industry to speak of.

Asheville did have the Biltmore Estate and the Grove Park Inn as its two major tourist attractions but little else to offer. It also had a literary history as the birthplace of Thomas Wolfe and the residence of F. Scott Fitzgerald who lived at the Grove Park Inn for two years while his wife Zelda was treated at a local insane asylum.

Four decades later, Asheville has become a jewel of the South. It is home to the University of North Carolina-Asheville which offers courses and programs to retirees. The downtown area boasts plenty of stores, shops and eclectic restaurants catering to every taste.

The area known as the “South Slope” is home to almost twenty craft breweries that serve delicious meals. Adjacent to the South Slope is the River Arts district in which many of the old abandoned factories now house artist studios of every kind.

The Biltmore Estate, built by George Washington Vanderbilt at the end of the 19th century remains a major tourist attraction. Set on 8,000 acres the mansion has two-hundred and fifty rooms still utilized by the family today. Visitors see the Gilded Age in all of its glory. The Estate has its own winery and a high-end restaurant in what were formerly stables.

The Grove Park Hotel is now owned by the Omni Chain. It has terraced balconies where you can watch spectacular sunsets over the Blue Ridge Mountains and the Asheville skyline. Ten U.S. Presidents beginning with William Howard Taft up through President Obama have been guests there along with countless other celebrities.

During the month we lived there, we rented a small house in the North Asheville neighborhood which allowed us to walk to the center city every day. North Asheville was, at one time, a crime infested neighborhood but today is in the throes of gentrification. Renovated houses are selling for over three-hundred thousand dollars. Like the rest of Asheville, it is becoming a much sought after place to live.

F. Scott Fitzgerald once famously observed in his work The Last Tycoon that “There are no second acts in American lives.”

He might have thought twice about that if he could see the city of Asheville today.

To see some photographs I took at the Biltmore Estate and the sunset at the Grove Park Inn, go to my Facebook page and click on “Photos” and “Your Photos”.