February 2014 – The Dish (2024)

[Re-posted and updated from earlier today]

We passed that milestone in subscriptions a few minutes ago, marking a great end to a great February here at the Dish. Revenue for February is up 25 percent over last year; and traffic hit a post-independence peak of 2.2 million unique visitors and 6.6 million pageviews this month, fueled in large part by interest in the anti-gay religious liberty bills in Kansas and Arizona.

Thanks for making this experiment in subscriber-supported online journalism possible. And if you are still procrastinating on subscribing, it couldn’t be quicker or easier. Subscribe here and help forge a web with fewer ads, ads masquerading as articles and countless distractions.

Update from a “nutty Kansas Democrat” and Founding Member of the Dish:

I renewed last night for $4.48 a month. Given what the 48th state (Arizona) did on Wednesday just seemed right. It’s amazing how fast this is changing isn’t it? (Wasn’t it just 10 years ago that Bush had a primetime speech pushing for marriage protection?) I think what you’re doing is worth a cup of coffee a month. Keep up the good work.

Now make me some Dish swag!

We’re on it. Another Dish supporter:

I know you have probably receive a billion letters from subscribers and I’m a bit late to the party, but I’ve been really busy recently, which I’ll explain below.I’m a “founding member” subscriber and have been following your blog since the white-font-on-purple days, a somewhat liberal Democrat who found your approach to conservative thought refreshing and eye opening. What caught me most at the time was your push for marriage equality, which as a gay man I yearned for.

I still remember coming out of the closet in 1986, a twenty-year-old college student who realized he couldn’t ignore who he was or would risk being alone his entire life. The only grief I felt during those first exhilarating and challenging steps of coming out was the knowledge I would never be able to marry the man I loved, no matter who that man would turn out to be.

I met the love of my life on Valentine’s Day in 2006. In November of 2012 we drove from our home state of Arizona to Iowa and were married in the city of Clinton. We drove because my husband-to-be is a Mexican national who let his visa expire years ago so we could remain together here in the States, so attempting to fly there was too big a risk. We didn’t know what the future would have in store for us, but we knew we wanted to spend our lives together and marriage was important to both of us.

My husband had been unemployed since the restaurant he worked at went out of business, and we decided it was too risky for him to attempt to find another job (this is Arizona, after all, and we live in Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s county). I was blessed to have employment with a company that allowed me to cover him on my health insurance as my spouse, and an income that was comfortable for me to support the two of us.

We’ve lived for years unable to make long-term plans due to the uncertainty of where we might end up. I was making plans for how we would begin a new life in Mexico should that become necessary and was saving money like crazy. My Spanish is poor, and leaving a career I spent twenty years building wasn’t something I wanted to do, but I was planning to do just that if it was the only way to stay together. My husband hasn’t been able to see his parents in the past seven years. Both are in their mid-eighties, so there was always a sense that he might not ever see them again. I made a trip in January 2012 – alone – to see them, which was a wonderful experience, but challenging as well due to my lack of Spanish skills. Still, they and my brothers and sisters-in-law (my husband has a large family), were delighted with my visit. They have always accepted me as part of the family, even before we were married.

Needless to say, the Supreme Court decision on June 26th was a life-altering event. Since that amazing day, we filled out our paperwork and submitted the various applications needed so I could sponsor my husband as my legal spouse. The past few weeks have been especially eventful as we prepared for our green card interview with USCIS, which took place on February 12th. Everything went extremely well and my husband is on his way to having a green card. He received his work permit and a social security number a few weeks ago and has recently found a job. As soon as he has his green card in hand, we will plan to travel together to see the family he hasn’t seen in seven years.

Thanks for reading our story. You have been a leader in the idea that same-sex marriage was perhaps the most important goal we, the gay community, could achieve if we want true equality. Thank you for being vocal about this in your blog and elsewhere, long before the “official” gay rights organizations dared to try. We have a ways to go but, my God, what a year of change 2013 turned out to be! For the first time my husband and I are entering a life we don’t have to fear, where we can actually make plans and build our life together here in the United States because now there isn’t a threat he will be forcibly taken away.

Dish poetry editor Alice Quinn writes:

The poet Ai is quoted in Angles of Ascent: A Norton Anthology of African American Poetry, “I write about scoundrels: my speciality is generally scoundrels.” She burst onto the poetry scene in 1970 with a stunning book entitled Cruelty, which included the poem below. This is our final poem celebrating Black History Month.

“The Anniversary” by Ai:

You raise the ax,
the block of wood screams in half,
while I lift the sack of flour
and carry it into the house.
I’m not afraid of the blade
you’ve just pointed at my head.
If I were dead, you could take the boy,
hunt, kiss gnats, instead of my moist lips.
Take it easy, squabs are roasting,
corn, still in husks, crackles,
as the boy dances around the table:
old guest at a wedding party for two sad-faced clowns,
who together, never won a round of anything but hard times.
Come in, sheets are clean,
fall down on me for one more year
and we can blast another hole in ourselves without a sound.

(FromThe Collected Poems of Ai © 1973 by Ai. Used by permission of W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. Video of Susan Wheeler reading Ai at a Poetry Society of America event, “Yet Do I Marvel: Iconic Black Poets of the 20th Century“)

In the latest video from theZealot author, he considers the negative response to his book as well asclaims that he cherry-picked his research:

Readers have contributed their own criticisms as well. One warns that Zealotis riddled with historical inaccuracies, quoting fromone of Christianity scholar Bart Ehrman’s many posts challenging the book:

Aslan maintains that the fundamental charge against Jesus, leading to his death, is one that in fact never appears in any of our sources.He argues that because Jesus was zealous for the land to be returned to Caesar, this was “enough for the authorities in Jerusalem to immediately label Jesus as alestes,” that is as a bandit/zealot opposed to the political forces in control of his land. This then is what led to his arrest and crucifixion.

And what’s the evidence that Aslan cites for the authorities designating Jesus as alestes? None. And why? Because there is none. In none of our accounts of Jesus arrest, trial, and crucifixion is he ever called alestes, by the Jewish authorities, by the Roman authorities, by his friends, by his enemies, by the Gospel writers, by himself, by anyone. So why does Aslan maintain that this is how Jesus was described by his enemies as the reason for killing him? Because it is central to his thesis. Itisin fact his thesis.

Another reader addresses Reza’s claim that Jesus was a revolutionary:

Jesus also opposed the different approaches that various other Jewish groups adopted to confront Rome: the Pharisees, the Essenes, the Temple cult and Herod, and the Zealots. He opposed collaboration with the values of Rome, but also armed attacks against them – which was also a kind of collaboration! These were the ways Israel had betrayed God’s will centuries earlier, leading to its conquering by Babylon. If it kept going down this road, he felt, they’d face the same divine judgment, this time at the hands of Rome.

Jesus was thus more revolutionary than the others because he insisted – contrary to all Jewish notions of the messiah – that Israel’s goal was not to gain its own nation with a political king. Rather, it’s mission was for the whole world – God’s promised land was the entire earth, not just Judea. He took that mission on himself. He offered God the obedience of the ideal Israel. Likewise, Israel’s means for achieving God’s purpose was not to be armed revolution – violence was the tool of their oppressors, after all, and against God’s will. Jews were to stand for God’s desire for reconciliation, and thus were to practice love of enemy to the point of death – even as they struggled zealously to stop their enemies from committing injustice.

Again, Aslan’s right that Jesus called for radical social justice – the inverting of social and economic relationships. But this critique was aimed at both the Jewish state as much as the Romans. And a key component of this new society was the laying down of the sword and the welcoming of the outsider and the enemy. His was a revolution of love – love of God and other.

He also responds to Reza’s assertions about the role Paul played in forming Christianity:

Aslan presses the old saw that Paul “invented” Christianity by turning Jesus’ social movement that fixated on the kingdom of God and the salvation of the poor into a religious group that worshiped him as the Son of God. He wants to cleave the two so as to put distance between Jesus and the church. Again, there is a critical distance, for sure. But belief in the divinity of Jesus did not develop gradually. Larry Hurtado has demonstrated that the claim that Jesus was God did not evolve after decades of pagan influence and philosophical speculation. It existed as an existential part of the community within a few short years of his death/resurrection. From the beginning, Jesus was associated with the devotion reserved for the One God. This never had happened with any of the prominent figures in Judaism before. Hurtado uses historical tools to demonstrate the inexplicability (at least in terms of history) of this event. These were strict monotheistic Jews who exploded in worship of Jesus soon after his death. No other historical factors can account for this change, except that something happened to those people.

And that something happened to Paul, too. He went from being a zealous Pharisee in conflict with this new Jewish movement, to adopting its very core belief that Jesus was the chosen one of God, resurrected and alive as Lord. And, contrary to Aslan, Paul did not seek to pacify Jesus to make him more palatable to Romans and his Gentile listeners. Quite the opposite. Michael Gorman argues persuasively in books like Reading Paul that the Apostle desired to create Christian communities that would exist as counter-cultural enclaves within the Empire. Where the state proclaimed Caesar as Lord, these house churches proclaimed the Crucified Christ as the only Lord. Where Rome exercised slavery, violence, and subjugation of women, these communities were places of freedom, equality, and love among all races, sexes, and classes. There was a political aspect to all of this, even as it was religious. Such a movement was in accord with what the historical Jesus sought to bring about.

It’s worth remembering, too, that Paul’s writings are the earliest texts in the New Testament. If the Gospels highlight more of Jesus’ message of justice for the poor, they came through oral tradition added to the existing Passion narratives, and at a later date. Paul wrote just a few years after Jesus and he’s already developed a high Christology. He didn’t deviate from the message of the first generation of Christians. Both the message of Jesus as God and God’s love for the poor were part of the oral tradition and immediate reaction to Jesus.

But another reader not only foundZealotconvincing, but that it bolstered his overall faith in people:

I’ll start off with a little background. I’m the son of a Walsh and a Callahan – both, obviously, very Catholic. I was the kid who wanted to become a priest, and imagined blond, blue-eyed Jesus scowling whenever I felt guilty about some minor transgression. I can’t remember the exact turning point, but it may have been when Father Moriarty berated a girl with cancer for not taking her hat off in Church. Or when my friend who was getting interested in Buddhism, but still taught CCD, was banned from attending Mass. In any case, I drifted from the Church.

As it stands now I’m just not a person who accepts any aspect of the supernatural. But I’ve still got a deep cultural grounding in Catholicism and I’m very interested in religious history. So when my folks gave me a gift certificate to the Strand for Christmas, I bought Reza Aslan’s book.

I loved it. I found it entirely credible, and it made sense of a lot of things I’d read that didn’t quite seem to add up. And it actually made me more positive toward Christianity (or, at least, toward Christians). The fact that the Church took the teachings of “a Jewish itinerant preacher swept up in apocalyptic fervor” and turned them into a message of universal love, peace, equality, and forgiveness is an incredibly optimistic statement on humanity. And not even modern humanity! This was an era where people were nailed to a post for political dissent! How crazy is that?

I don’t think I’ll ever be a Christian again, because at a fundamental level God doesn’t make sense to me. But understanding what Jesus was actually about makes the Gospel interpretation of his message fill me with a bit more hope for people.

Watch all of Reza Alsan’s videos here. Our full Ask Anything archive is here.

A reader writes:

I got a kick out of this. I’m a loyal subscriber who has read the Dish at work with no problem for years, but all of a sudden today I get a message that the site has been blocked because it falls under the category of marijuana:

Congratulations, you have reached the point that you have written enough words promoting sane drug policy that your site is now being filtered by corporate IT departments for being a drug site.

Of course, as we all know, prohibition doesn’t work. I’ll just read the Dish on my phone.

The thread continues:

Although I am a Christian, I generally sympathize with the desire of atheists not to have religion assumed or forced upon them in various ways. But I have to respond to the reader who was embarrassed by Christian exhortations … at a Catholic funeral service.Perhaps one could argue that a funeral (or a marriage), bringing together many disparate friends and relatives of the deceased should be a more neutral occasion than a regular church service, but just how sensitive to the feelings of the irreligious do we need to be in our own houses of worship? Atheists who cannot deal with calls for affirmation of belief in a church probably need to think very hard about going into them in the first place.

Another is alsoincredulous:

Your reader actually suggests alternative things the priest could have said to allow the believers in the church to acknowledge their love of Jesus without embarrassing the non-believers in the room. Because that’s who’s important here – not the Catholic woman who died.

Not the Catholic family who grieves for her. Not the friends and fellow congregants who are there to to pay their respects. But the non-believing brother-in-law, who chose not to inform his wife’s family of his beliefs, who chose to attend the funeral knowing it could get all Catholic in there (it being a church) and who lacked the common sense to realize that maybe just standing at that moment would prevent causing pain to his wife and injury to his marriage.

How would a better understanding and acceptance of atheism among the general populace have changed that moment?

A “non-theist” reader argues that the nonbeliever hadless of a reason to remain sitting than a hypothetical Jew or Muslim would:

If he had an alternative religious belief,I could understand his refusal to participate(and I’m sure his in-laws would have too).But as an atheist –one who is “without god” –there’s nothing sacred that would be profaned by his participation in this instance.

I have no particular problem going along with religious gestures that don’t especially harm me, and don’t contravene any particular moral code I have, if it helps people in situations like this. In fact, because I tend to think of religion as a social phenomenon–as something that gathers together a community, regardless of the truth or falsity of the metaphysical claims behind it–I am happy to go along with these kinds of acts. That’s the rational response –the one that tries to understand the needs that these beliefs serve, rather than getting hysterical over the fact that other people have them.

Another shifts gears:

I think we need to make another distinction among atheists: by region.It was immediately clear to me that your first batch of readers to respondare not from the Northeast. I grew up in Connecticut and live in New York City, and the persecution or ostracism of atheists here is practically nonexistent. The most you will get is some disapproval expressed behind closed doors. I remember my pastor saying once that atheists had no moral framework, and I thought it was the most offensive thing I’d ever heard in my (fairly liberal) church. On the other hand, I frequently had to bite my tongue growing up Christian when friends would openly mock Christian beliefs and traditions. So I can relate to the idea of the new atheist; what I would call the evangelistic atheist. But I imagine things are very different in the South, where religion is taken for granted and is much more a part of public life.

Pro-Russian Cossacks share a laugh next to a war monument at a gathering of pro-Russian supporters outside the Crimean parliament building in Simferopol, Ukraine on February 28, 2014. Crimea has a majority Russian population and armed, pro-Russian groups have occupied government buildings in Simferopol.According to media reports, Russian soldiers have occupied the airport at nearby Sevastapol while soldiers whose identity could not be initially confirmed have stationed themselves at Simferopol International Airport in moves that are raising tensions between Russia and the new Kiev government. By Sean Gallup/Getty Images.

While the men’s rights movement may be a running joke in some progressive circles,Emily Matchartakes it seriously, particularly when it comes to rape:

Take the issue of false rape accusations, which gets endless play on MRM [men’s rights movement] websites and YouTube channels. Women falsely accuse men of rape for “lots of reasons,” Karen Straughan, a 43-year old Canadian mother-of-three who has become a major figure in the MRM, told me when we spoke on the phone.Straughan mentionsthe case of Praise Martin-Oguike, a Temple University football player falsely accused of rape last year by a woman who was apparently angry that he wouldn’t have a relationship with her. There is also the Hofstra University student whofalsely accused five men of rape in 2009, allegedly to keep her boyfriend from finding out she’d cheated on him. (The Hofstra case has become a touchstone in the MRM community, viewed as proof that a woman will ruin five men’s lives to cover her tracks if she needs to.)

The most reliable statistics available place the number of false rape reports at between2 and 8 percentof all rape reports. Yet most people, both in and out of the MRM community, believe these numbers to be much higher. One survey found that both male and femalecollege students believe that about 50 percent of rape allegations are false.

So while the substance of the MRM’s claims are false (false reports of rape take place much less frequently than they claim), they have identified a flashpoint issue that progressives disregard at their peril. False reporting of rape can be a life-destroying crime. It may not be especially common, but it is serious.

“The gay movement has really brought this on themselves. These African countries have only been concerned about passing these laws after the global hom*osexual movement started pushing their agenda in these very morally conservative countries. What looks like offensive action by these governments is really defensive … We were invited by these African countries when they were confronted with the problem. And frankly, a lot of this comes down to male – you know, white male hom*osexuals from the United States and Europe going into these African countries because the age of consent laws are low and able to take these, you know, young, teenage boys and turn them into rent boys for the price of a bicycle. And that just outraged the people in these countries,” – Scott Lively, the American Christianist, partially responsible for the terrorization of gay people in Uganda and Nigeria.

#BREAKING 2,000 Russian soldiers land in “armed invasion” of Crimea: Kiev official

— Agence France-Presse (@AFP) February 28, 2014

#CrimeaRT @markmackinnon: Russian troop trucks on road north of Sevastopol: pic.twitter.com/P7K91JR45b

— Maxim Eristavi (@MaximEristavi) February 28, 2014

https://twitter.com/KevinRothrock/statuses/439474997594451968

And attack helicopters:

BREAKING: White House: Russian intervention in Ukraine would be grave mistake http://t.co/BZhOPl2RHe #ukraine #crimea pic.twitter.com/SJnCNQNDvy

— Haaretz.com (@haaretzcom) February 28, 2014

Obama: “There will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine”

— Ilya Mouzykantskii (@ilyamuz) February 28, 2014

The Interpreter continues to see Russia’s actions as a prelude to war:

For days we’ve been reporting rumors that the Russian government was expediting passports for ethnic Russians wishing to flee Crimea. There was a draft law debated to this effect in the Russian State Duma. Now, this announcement on the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Facebook page:

Consulate General of the Russian Federation in Simferopol urgently requested to take all necessary steps to start issuing Russian passports to members of the “Berkut” fighting force.

In other words, Russia is now urging the nationalization of Yanukovych’s riot police.Why is this important? Before Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 they issued passports to ethnic Russians.

Somebackgroundon that invasion:

[In 2008], Moscow was accused of stirring up tensions in the separatist regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and goading Mikheil Saakashvili, Georgia’s pro-western president, into ordering his armed forces to retake control of South Ossetia. Russia responded by sending in troops and warplanes and crushing the Georgian military in the five-day conflict.

ButJonathan Marcus doesn’t think comparisons to Georgia are appropriate:

Georgia was a small country that had deeply irritated Moscow and one that could do little to respond against Russia’s overwhelming military might. …Given the size of Ukraine and the divisions within its population, it would simply saddle Russia with involvement in what might rapidly become a bitter civil war.Russian pressure at the moment serves a different goal.Ukraine is heading towards bankruptcy. It needs outside funding. Moscow knows that Western financial institutions must play some kind of role.Its concern is to underline in as clear terms as possible that any future Ukrainian government should tilt as much towards Moscow as it does to the EU.Russia’s bottom line is that Kiev should resist any temptation to draw towards Nato.

Joshua Tucker sideswith Marcus:

Ukraine is a much bigger country, with a much bigger population, anda much bigger military. Georgia has37,000 active military personnel and 140,000 active reservepersonnel. Ukraine has160,000 active, and 1,000,000 reserve. A war with Ukraine would look very different from a war with Georgia. …

What’s really in it for Russia?

Say everything goes as best as it possibly could for Russia: Crimea secedes, Ukraine goes along with it without a fight, and Crimea eventually joins Russia. Russia gets some nice new beaches, but do they really want a Ukraine as a neighbor which now (a) regards Russia as the biggest external threat it has, and (b) has just lost lots of Russian-speaking voters? Wouldn’t that seem to guarantee a hostile Ukraine for years and years to come? And would another region of Russia with a potentially restive ethnic minority, [the Turkey-backed Crimean Tatars,] be worth that price?

Leon Mangasarianaddsthat a full military conflict remains unlikely:

[Eastern European analystAnna Maria] Dyner said economic concerns are an even bigger reason discouraging Russia from overt intervention in Ukraine. The Kremlin doesn’t have “a huge amount of money to spend on such a big operation,” she said. More fundamentally, she added, Russia’s slowing economy is a factor.

“Ukraine is an important gas transit country toEuropeand a conflict would probably damage pipelines, further harming ties with the West,” Dyner said. “This would damage the Russian economy, which is the last thing Putin wants right now, just as they’re thinking about reforms amid weak growth.”

But Luke Harding believesthat “Moscow’s military moves so far resemble a classically executed coup” in Crimea:

[S]eize control of strategic infrastructure, seal the borders between Crimea and the rest of Ukraine, invoke the need to protect the peninsula’s ethnic Russian majority. The Kremlin’s favourite news website,Lifenews.ru, was on hand to record the historic moment. Its journalists were allowedto video Russian forces patrolling ostentatiously outside Simferopol airport. …

From Putin’s perspective, a coup would be payback for what he regards as the western-backed takeover of Kiev by opposition forces – or fascists, as the Kremlin media calls them. The Kremlin argument runs something like this: if armed gangs can seize power in the Ukrainian capital, storming government buildings, why can’t pro-Russian forces do the same thing in Crimea?

Meanwhile, Josh Rogin reports that the troops in Crimea may not be official Russian forces, but rather soldiers working for the equivalent of Russia’s Blackwater, probably under the direction of Russia’s military:

[Analyst Dimitri] Simes cautioned that information about the fast moving events in Crimea is hard to verify, but the message coming out of Moscow is that these security contractors were deployed by the Russian military for two purposes; first of all they want to secure the airport to ensure that thousands of pro-western protesters don’t descend into Crimea to push back against the Crimean population’s effort to establish a new government and seek some autonomy from the new government in Kiev, which most Crimeans see as illegitimate.

Second, the forces could be paving the way for Yanukovich to travel to Crimea, where he will maintain that he is still the president of all Ukraine. In fact, Yanukovich was involved in the decision to deploy the security contractors to the airport, he said. …

[T]he private security forces provide a loophole for Vladimir Putin; he can claim there is no Russian “military” intervention while using Russian-controlled forces to exert influence insideUkraine. The plan would be to give the new Crimean government a space to hold a referendum and then elections, thereby establishing a province with some autonomy from Kiev.

Keating doesn’t think anybody would be able to stop Russia from having its way with Crimea:

The fragile new Ukrainian government, whichhas other problems, not the least of which is keepingother parts of the country from splitting off, doesn’t really seem like it’s in a position to retake Crimea by force, risking a full armed intervention by the Black Sea Fleet. These moves likely violate the1994 agreementbetween the U.S. and Russia under which Moscow agreed to respect Ukraine’s sovereignty within its current borders in return for Kiev giving up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons. Beyond verbal warnings, the United States certainly seems extremelyunlikely to intervene.

He nonetheless warns against assuming this would a big win for Putin:

[G]aining de facto control over yet another dysfunctional pseudostate, essentially ensuring long-term tension with Kiev in the process, certainly doesn’t seem as good an outcome as what Russia thought it was getting a month ago: a government of the whole of Ukraine tied economically and politically to Russia rather than Europe. This isn’t really a great outcome for anyone.

Mary Beardspeaks upaboutwomen’s voices being muted throughout history:

[P]ublic speaking and oratory were not merely things that ancient women didn’t do: they were exclusive practices and skills that defined masculinity as a gender. As we saw with Telemachus, to become aman– and we’re talking elite man – was to claim the right to speak. Public speech was a – if notthe– defining attribute of male-ness. A woman speaking in public was, in most circ*mstances, by definition not a woman.

We find repeated stress throughout ancient literature on the authority of the deep male voice. As one ancient scientific treatise explicitly put it, a low-pitched voice indicated manly courage, a high-pitched voice female cowardice. Or as other classical writers insisted, the tone and timbre of women’s speech always threatened to subvert not just the voice of the male orator, but also the social and political stability, the health, of the whole state. So another second-century lecturer and guru, Dio Chrysostom, whose name, significantly, means Dio ‘the Golden Mouth’, asked his audience to imagine a situation where ‘an entire community was struck by the following strange affliction: all the men suddenly got female voices, and no male – child or adult – could say anything in a manly way. Would not that seem terrible and harder to bear than any plague? I’m sure they would send off to a sanctuary to consult the gods and try to propitiate the divine power with many gifts.’ He wasn’t joking.