"Death By Bike"

I don't mean to pick on one political party or another.  But I simply must ask:  Why do some conservatives go totally apopleptic when the subject of bicycles comes up?

I think Dorothy Rabinowiz's rant about the New York's new bike share program takes the cake:


Now I will say, in her defense, that I used to respect and even admire Ms. Rabinowitz.  Sure, she has always been more "conservative" (whatever that means) than I am on most issues.  However, she took a courageous--and, as it turned out, correct--stance back in the days when it seemed that every week, some hapless day care worker was  being incarcerated over testimony that included "recovered memories" and other since-discredited evidence.

Please note that I am as disgusted as anyone can be by adults who abuse children sexually or otherwise. However, I also don't want to see people punished for crimes they didn't commit.  That, in essence, was Ms. Rabinowitz's stance when Kelly Michaels and others lost years or decades of their lives over the wildest stories imaginable.

What's happened to her since?  Why exactly does she think bikes are such a scourge?  While I agree, to some degree, with her criticisms of Mayor Bloomberg, I think that she doesn't represent the majority of citizens, as she believes she does.  

Why Is The Catholic Church Fighting Gay Marriage?

I'm sure you've read--or heard-- Queen Gertrude's observation in Hamlet: "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." 

It's often misquited:  People often move "methinks" from the end to the beginning of that line.  But more important, most people misuse the quote. "Protest", in Shakespeare's time, meant "avow" or "affirm" rather than "object" or "deny".  

Whether it's used as intended or misused, the quote is apt for at least one current situation. Once again, the Catholic Church is spending lots of money and other resources to oppose same-sex marriage.   In fact, earlier this month, Cardinal Francis George of Chicago launched a last-ditch effort to convince the lame-duck Illinois legislature not to legalize unions between people of the same gender. Whether or not his efforts were a factor, the vote in the Land of Lincoln has been delayed and the bill will be re-introduced after the new legislature is seated.

Why do you think the Church is so adamant in its opposition to gay marriage? Well, some will say that it's a matter of Church doctrine.  As it's hardly an area of my expertise--and because I'm sure that my reading of the Bible is very different from that of any member of the College of Cardinals--I'm not going to discuss that.  Those anti-gay priests may well be motivated by what they believe to be divinely-inspired tenets of the faith.

Being a, shall we say, very lapsed Catholic, my view is a bit different.  You might say it's more cynical.  Here goes:  Much of the Church's opposition to same-sex unions is, I believe, a smokescreen.  They have far, far more serious problems to consider right now, including the elephant in the Vatican chambers:  pedophile priests.  

The damage they've done is incalculable.  You begin to realize that when you hear people talking--for the first time--about they experienced two and three decades earlier. When you're a small child, you simply don't have the language or frame of reference to tell anybody about such an ordeal.  I know this from my own life:  I was well into my thirties before I talked about the sexual molestation I experienced as a child.  

For most children--especially altar boys--being sexually abused by a priest  has to be even more devastating than molestation by anyone else because many kids are taught to trust men of the collar even more than they trust any other adult, save perhaps for their own parents.  Even if nobody tells them they should hold priests in such esteem, a lot of kids learn to do so through implication and osmosis.  That is to be expected when you realize that young children are capable of believing and trusting more completely in God or anyone who is supposed to represent Him.

I don't know how many children have been so damaged by priests, but I'm sure that for every one we hear about, there are many, many more.  I don't think the Church will ever die out completely, but I wouldn't be surprised to see dioceses in the United States (and, possibly other countries) go bankrupt and parishes close because of lawsuits on behalf of the victims.  Plus, the church is in trouble in other ways:  It's in decline in much of Europe because the populations of such predominantly-Catholic countries as Spain, France and Italy aren't growing--or, if there is growth, it's in non-Catholic populations.  Plus, people in those countries and the US aren't attending church, or sending their kids to Catholic schools, nearly as much as they have even in the recent past.

And the Church is spending its spending its money to fight gay marriage?

You know what they say about gay marriage:  If you don't believe in it, don't marry a gay person.  Likewise, all the Church has to do is what it's done for 2000 years. More precisely, it doesn't have to start doing what it hasn't done in that time:  perform gay marriages.  Let Illinois and Rhode Island and other states join New York, Massachusetts, Iowa, Vermont and the other states that have legalized gay marriage.  As those states are still part of the United States, they still have (at least in law) a separation between Church and State.  So, no matter what laws are passed in those or any other states, no Catholic priest is going to perform same-sex wedding ceremonies--not in the confines of a consecrated church building, anyway.

The Look

I can tell them from a mile away.  They're the ones who want to take you aside to talk to you.  They think they're doing something wrong, and they're waiting for--and fearing--your reaction.  And that's exactly the reason why they talk to you, and hope that you don't react the way others have screamed at, scolded or even beat them.


I first noticed that look--They're looking to you even when they can't look into your eyes, and they won't look into you--in a woman I dated a long time ago.  I was about 24; it was not long after I returned from France and my grandmother had died, and not long before an uncle would die and a friend would commit suicide.  She was a dozen years older than I was, and had divorced a few years earlier. For me, that was an eon:  I was still in high school when her alcoholic husband was beating her.  


We got into an argument about something I've long since forgotten.  Having almost no coping skills for such situations, I suggested that it might be better if I left.  "No," she insisted.  "At least you didn't beat me."


"Well, that just makes me a human being."


"That's not true.  Besides, you don't use sex on or over me.  You don't use sex, period."


I didn't quite understand what she meant.  I take that back: I knew full well what she meant, but I was sure that I couldn't have learned it in the same way she did.


Or did I?


Over the years, before and since I became sober, before and since my transition, females have come to me with that same look.  One was eight years old; another was seventy-nine and others were ages in between.  Of the in-betweens, I dated a few and had long-term relationships with two.  In the words of one, "My brothers used me for sex."  A student who talked me today said the same thing about her father.  Somehow, I knew, before she opened her mouth.  Another student, who did a tour of duty in Iraq before taking a class with me last semester, had that same look and confided a similarly appalling and terrifying story.  She and the student with whom I talked today spent time in foster care as a result of their sexual abuse and, in their new homes, were subject to more and new kinds of sexual violation.


I was spared the foster-care experience; my family was actually  stable, though it had its tough times.  And I was not abused by any family member.  However, I was molested by a close family friend.  Even when I wasn't consciously thinking of it--which was most of the time, for many years--the echoes of it still muttered like thunder through my sleep.   I can think of no other reason why other females wanted to talk about their experiences with me long before I was conscious of my own, and my own experience.  It seemed that wherever I looked, I saw their look.

Understanding His Girlfriend

Today, I went to Bicycle Habitat again to bring Hal some small parts for the bike I’m building.  Hal, whom I’ve known for a long while, is putting it together.  Raul, another mechanic whom I haven’t known quite as long, but with whom I worked briefly in a Brooklyn shop, was putting together a not-bad but not-quite-as-nice bike.  We chatted about one thing and another, and he started to talk about his girlfriend.

He’s about my age, and his girlfriend is “a few years younger,” he said.  “She gets weird sometimes,” he added.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, sometimes she doesn’t want me to touch her breasts.  And sometimes she doesn’t want me to touch her at all.”

“Really?”

“Yeah…but this is the weird part:  She says, ‘It’s not your fault.  It’s not about you.’”

“Well, listen to her,” I said.

From the expression on his face, I could tell what he was thinking:  “She’s really gone over to the other side!”—or something like that.

“It probably isn’t about you,” I started to explain.

“You’re right,” he said.  “And I know why she’s that way.”

I anticipated, verbatim, what he said next:  “She was abused, by her ex-husband and by her family."

“That’s terrible.  And it takes a lot of time to get over it.”

“But she should get over it.”

Now, I am a layperson.  But I might know a bit more than the average layperson about the kind of trauma his girlfriend is suffering.  So I felt confident in saying what I said next:

“She needs to heal at whatever pace she needs to heal.  It’s not about you; all you can do is to be supportive.”

For an instant, his eyes narrowed and his jaw slackened.  On one hand, he seemed to be thinking, “She’s really gone over to the other side.”  But he also seemed to want to hear more.

“It won’t be easy.  You probably have seen that already.  But just remember…She’s not rejecting you.  She’s fighting something that won’t leave her so easily.”

He sighed.  “You’re right.”  Then, after thinking some more, he said, “You really understand this.”

“Well…” I said. After a very long pause, I continued, “I know something about these things from experience.”

“What do you mean?” 

I had an instant debate with myself.  It ended when I decided that I had nothing to lose by saying what I said next: “I was abused, too. I understand how she feels.”

He was less surprised than I expected him to be.  “It was a family friend.  That’s why he could do it:  My family trusted him.  So, as a child, I thought speaking against him was an act of betrayal.  That’s why, even though it happened from about the time I was six until I was nine, I didn’t talk about it until I was thirty-four.”

His eyes widened.  “You know, I thought you had a lot of courage.  But I didn’t know how much until now.” 

That, coming from someone against whom I used to race, and with whom I worked.  But it’s still weird to hear things like that.  So I demurred, “Well, you know, I just do what I need to do.  And I only do what I need to do when my back is to the wall, when I have no other choice.”

“Still,” he said, “You’re doing it. Thanks!”

“For what?”

“For helping me to understand.”

The funny thing about getting older is that you end up playing roles you never imagined you could.  What’s even more ironic is that you start relating to people in ways you previously couldn’t when you cross from their side of the street to the other.

William Anderson: The Defense Is Not Resting

William Anderson, I have discovered, is a sort of soul mate.  No, he's not my new beau:  For starters, he's hundreds of miles away and I don't do long-distance romance.  (Been there, done that!)  What I mean is that he and I are skeptical in similar sorts of ways and have a similar distrust for the same sorts of public figures.  I mean, how could I not love someone who can write an article entitled "Why I Don't Trust Prosecutors" and make a solid case for his mistrust rather than lapsing into just another rant about the dishonesty of lawyers and politicians.


He played a very important role in exposing the dishonesty and hypocrisy of the so-called Duke Date Rape Case.   The young men who were falsely accused of the rape weren't the most sympathetic characters, at least to some people.  But, as Anderson showed, that's hardly a reason to assume their guilt, as too many in the media and elsewehere were all too ready to do.


Now he is cutting through the thickets of chicanery that has ensnared Tonya Craft in a child-abuse witch-hunt reminiscent of the one that ruined Kelly Michaels' life.    Unfortunately, the twenty years or so that have elapsed between Michaels' and Crafts' trial have not been free of such travesties of justice.  The causes and reasons for those "witch hunts" will be debated for decades, and possibly centuries, to come.  But Dorothy Rabinowitz has pointed out that in American society, they are all but inevitable:  every fifty years or so, she says, this country is "affected by some paroxysm of virtue--an orgy of self-cleansing through which evil of one kind or another is cast out." In other words, we have never gotten over our Puritan heritage:  the desire to rid ourselves of such "evil" is so great that too many of us will tolerate the prosecution of innocent people in exchange for some illusion of security.


Why do I care about those cases Anderson has pursued?  Well, having been witness to, and victim of, the dishonesty of some people who had one kind of authority or another over me, I distrust anyone who has both authority and ambition.  Even more important, though, is the fact that I also experienced sexual abuse from a family friend when I was a child.  While I want to see the truly guilty punished, I shudder to think that someone innocent could be accused and worse. It is precisely because I know how terrible it is to suffer such abuse that I know how serious it is to accuse someone of having done it.   As someone whose life was constricted by the shame and fear I felt as a result of the abuse, and the self-loathing I developed as a consequence of not talking about it with anyone for about 25 years after it happened, I know that convicting an innocent person will do nothing to heal the physical and emotional wounds of someone who has been abused or assaulted.  


Furthermore, the prosecution of an innocent person doesn't make everyone else safer.  If the wrong person is charged, it means the real perpetrator is free.  Or, if there is no actual crime, as in the case of those young men at Duke, it means that the criminal justice system is wasting its time and taxpayers' money when it tries, convicts and sentences some innocent person.  If anything, I think that going after anyone for the sake of punishing someone, let alone to further the ambitions of some district attorney,  actually makes it more likely that someone else will fall victim to the crime of which some innocent person has been accused.  After all, if those who are entrusted to uphold the law and apply it fairly are engaging in criminal activities (perjury and such), the disrespect for the rule of law and the sanctity of other human beings such behavior engenders can only send the message that, in essence, there are no de facto or de jure regulations or principles preventing the violation of another person.  What respect can anyone, much less some would-be criminal, have for the law if those who are supposed to enforce and apply it are as likely as those deemed criminal to circumvent it, if  not break or ignore it outright?  And what sort of a message does it send when those who are supposed to be the guardians of law and justice can not only behave in criminal activity, but are not held accountable, in any way, for it?


As someone who actually suffered from some of the acts of which Tonya Craft is accused, and for which Kelly Michaels was imprisoned, I am very happy that William Anderson has taken up their cause.  We need more like him!