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Category: Women & Justice

The Poem Challenges Torture

Katrina’s Dream published a new poem today by Malcolm Boyd about torture in American prisons. The poem connects torture in our American jails and prisons with Jesus’ suffering. The publication is timed to encourage the Episcopal Convention in Anaheim this July to pass a resolution asking Congress to outlaw torture in American jails and prisons. It is on the internet at http://www.opinion.katrinasdream.org/?p=114

Change Us
By Malcolm Boyd

We’ve mainstreamed torture, haven’t we, Jesus? Turned it into just another word in the clutter of everyday news. Not something to work up any sweat about. It seems to me our worst sin is to torture people who are already in our power as prisoners. Like people in our prisons. Like Bobby Dellelo.

The 33 years you spent with us here, Jesus, including when we nailed you, still hasn’t taught us what we need to know about love and justice, has it? Our prison system seems an agonizing and endless system of crucifixion. Why don’t we wake up, Jesus? Prison torture is torture of flesh and blood beings. It’s not unlike our torture of you when you dwelt among us.

Please convert us, Jesus, to work against prison torture. Change us into community organizers for peace, justice, nonviolence and your love. Thank you, Jesus.

Boyd, 86, is poet/writer-in-residence at the Episcopal Cathedral Center of St. Paul in Los Angeles. After a career in Hollywood and television, Boyd, was ordained an Episcopal priest. He founded a college coffee house in Colorado and opposed segregation in Louisiana in 1959. He joined 27 other Episcopal priests, Black and white, in a Louisiana Freedom Ride in 1961, and registered voters in Mississippi and Alabama in 1965, the year “Are You Running with Me, Jesus?” was published. A fortieth anniversary edition has been published with additional poems.

In 1966 national media reported on his gig reading prayers and his dialogue with audiences about God in the San Francisco nightclub, the hungry i. He performed with Dick Gregory, Vince Guaraldi and Charlie Byrd. The New York Times wrote, “Malcolm Boyd is a latter-day Luther or a more worldly Wesley, trying to move religion out of ‘ghettoized’ churches into the streets where people are.” In 1968 Boyd was with Martin Luther King, Jr. in a nonviolent protest against the Vietnam War inside Arlington Cemetery, directly below the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. He was arrested in the Pentagon for being part of a Peace Mass protesting the Vietnam War.

Bobby Dellelo, 67, spent 40 years of his life in reform schools and prisons, five years in solitary, with three escapes. He works on the American Friends Service Committee Criminal Justice Program. He was featured in the March 30, 2009, New Yorker Article “Hellhole” about torture in solitary confinement.

Katrina’s Dream was founded in memory of the late Katrina Martha Swanson, one of the “Philadelphia Eleven” ordained priest irregularly in 1974. When the Equal Rights Amendment was voted down, Katrina always said the Pledge of Allegiance, “With Liberty and Justice for Some.” Katrina’s Dream is dedicated to the full inclusion of women in society and Liberty and Justice for All.

Among other justice issues, Katrina’s booth at the Episcopal Convention will support a resolution that “requests the Congress of the United States to prohibit torture including long-term solitary confinement and every cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of prisoners in all prisons, jails, and other places of confinement within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction, following the definition of torture in the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment.” Bobby Dellelo will help staff the booth at the Episcopal convention and speak at the legislative hearing on the resolution which he helped write.

Contacts
Katrina’s Dream:   George Swanson,   415 464 7744, george@katrinasdream.org
Malcolm Boyd:    malcolmboyd@ladiocese.org
Boyd is on the web at
http://malcolmboyd.com/nineties.htm
Bobby Dellelo:   339 226 0475,   bdellelo@yahoo.com
Dellelo is described in the New Yorker Article “Hellhole”
Click Here

No Comments by George Swanson on June 26, 2009

filed in Church Politics, Indigenous Women, Peace & Justice, Torture No Prisoners, Women & Justice

KatrinasDream.org Booth at July 2009 Episcopal General Convention

Our Agenda at General Convention

We will strive for justice and peace build respect for the Dignity of Every Human Being.
Baptismal Covenant—Prayer Book page 305

The booth will pursue the church’s mission: to restore all people to unity with God and each other in Christ and promote justice for women, prisoners, Indigenous Peoples, and students in Africa. The words in italics are from the first two questions about the church on page 855 in the Prayer Book.

We will promote justice for women by disseminating information from organizations such as the EgualRightsAmendmend.org. Click her for the ERA organization.

We will promote the newly formed network, Connecting Anglican Women in Theological Education (CAWTE) by handing out their brochures and bookmarks. CAWTE was recognized and endorsed at the recent Anglican Consultative Council meeting in Jamaica: Click Here for Article on CAWTE.
We will promote justice for prisoners and respect for their dignity as human beings by lobbying for our resolution asking Congress to outlaw torture in all American jails and prisons. Bobby Dellelo, a victim of fives years torture in solitary confinement will be at the booth to educate deputies and bishops about prison torture. He will also speak at the convention’s legislative hearing on the resolution. Bobby is quoted in a March 30, 2009 New Yorker article “Hellhole.” Click Here for the New Yorker Article.
We will promote a resolution would put the Episcopal Church on record condemning the doctrine of discovery and supporting Indigenous People’s call for repudiation of the 1496 Royal Charter granted to John Cabot and his sons and other similar Royal Charters which sanctioned European invasion of the Western Hemisphere.

We will promote justice for students in Africa by publicizing the work of Think Tank Thuto. Click here for Think Tank Thuto’s Web Site.
Last summer we asked the bishops at Lambeth to welcome women and children and men, straight and gay, equally in Jesus name. We will Ask General Convention to do the same. We will give away pins with Katrina’s picture and the words “God is Beyond Gender” that we gave to hundreds of bishops in Canterbury at the Lambeth conference last summer. We will also give away the story of Katrina’s lifelong pilgrimage into inclusiveness that we distributed at Lambeth.

No Comments by George Swanson on June 3, 2009

filed in ERA, Peace & Justice, Torture No Prisoners, Women & Justice

Is Rape Serious?

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
Published: April 29, 2009

The New York Times

When a woman reports a rape, her body is a crime scene. She is typically asked to undress over a large sheet of white paper to collect hairs or fibers, and then her body is examined with an ultraviolet light, photographed and thoroughly swabbed for the rapist’s DNA.

It’s a grueling and invasive process that can last four to six hours and produces a “rape kit” — which, it turns out, often sits around for months or years, unopened and untested.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn’t tested at all because it’s not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren’t using them properly — and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn’t justice; it’s indifference.

Solomon Moore, a colleague of mine at The Times, last year wrote about a 43-year-old legal secretary who was raped repeatedly in her home in Los Angeles as her son slept in another room. The attacker forced the woman to clean herself in an attempt to destroy the evidence.

Tim Marcia, the detective on the case, thought this meant that the perpetrator was a habitual offender who would strike again. Mr. Marcia rushed the rape kit to the crime lab but was told to expect a delay of more than one year.

So Mr. Marcia personally drove the kit 350 miles to deliver it to the state lab in Sacramento. Even there, the backlog resulted in a four-month delay — but then it produced a “cold hit,” a match in a database of the DNA of previous offenders.

Yet in the months while the rape kit sat on a shelf, the suspect had allegedly struck twice more. Police said he broke into the homes of a pregnant woman and a 17-year-old girl, sexually assaulting each of them.

“The criminal justice system is still ill equipped to deal with rape and not that good at moving rape cases forward,” notes Sarah Tofte, who just wrote a devastating report for Human Rights Watch about the rape-kit backlog. The report found that in Los Angeles County, there were at last count 12,669 rape kits sitting in police storage facilities. More than 450 of these kits had sat around for more than 10 years, and in many cases, the statute of limitations had expired.

There are no good national figures, and one measure of the indifference is that no one even bothers to count the number of rape kits sitting around untested.

Why don’t police departments treat rape kits with urgency? One reason is probably expense — each kit can cost up to $1,500 to test — but there also seems to be a broad distaste for rape cases as murky, ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, particularly when they involve (as they often do) alcohol or acquaintance rape.

“They talk about the victims’ credibility in a way that they don’t talk about the credibility of victims of other crimes,” Ms. Tofte said.

Charlie Beck, a deputy police chief of Los Angeles, said that there was no excuse for the failure to test rape kits, but he noted that integrating a new technology into police work is complex and involves a learning curve. Since Human Rights Watch began its investigation, he said, the department had resolved to test rape kits routinely — and as a result, cold hits have doubled.

While the backlog and desultory handling of rape kits are nationwide problems, there is one shining exception: New York City has made a concerted effort over the last decade to test every kit that comes in. The result has been at least 2,000 cold hits in rape cases, and the arrest rate for reported cases of rape in New York City rose from 40 percent to 70 percent, according to Human Rights Watch.

Some Americans used to argue that it was impossible to rape an unwilling woman. Few people say that today, or say publicly that a woman “asked for it” if she wore a short skirt. But the refusal to test rape kits seems a throwback to the same antediluvian skepticism about rape as a traumatic crime.

“If you’ve got stacks of physical evidence of a crime, and you’re not doing everything you can with the evidence, then you must be making a decision that this isn’t a very serious crime,” notes Polly Poskin, executive director of the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault.

It’s what we might expect in Afghanistan, not in the United States.

No Comments by George Swanson on May 3, 2009

filed in Injustice to Women, Sexual Abuse

WELCOME DIANA RAMSDELL NEWMAN!

From Sea to Shining Sea

by Diana Ramsdell Newman

Note by George: This is the first piece by Diana here on Katrina’s Dream web site. I wanted to get this up as soon as possible. In the future we will have a special page (something like “Just Words”) which will focus on Liberty and Justice for Indigenous Women. I am so grateful to Diana for beginning this. Those of you who were at the Weekend for Liberty and Justice for Women in 2006 will remember Diana and her husband Crow Suncloud who participated in the Saturday Congress and shared their music with us on Saturday night.

Traditionally, Native American women were integral to native governance. In fact, the majority of tribes were matrilineal. Women were not viewed as being inferior to men. They were entrusted with vital, respected decision making positions. Men’s and women’s roles were viewed by both genders as being distinctive but complementary and of equal importance. Even in patrilineal tribes women were held in esteem as equals. Violence against women was unusual and was not tolerated by tribal communities. Women were valued as being uniquely powerful, practical, reasonable, strong, and spiritually discerning.

Elizabeth Cody Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage, women’s rights advocates of the mid-nineteenth century, expressed great admiration for the egalitarian worldview modeled by the Iroquois. Whereas these two women felt disenfranchised by men in their own patriarchal culture, they witnessed firsthand the dignity with which Iroquois women were treated. Iroquois women were not similarly marginalized but exercised considerable influence. Stanton and Gage noted that the nomination of chiefs was entrusted to Iroquois women. Women were likewise free to initiate definitive, corrective actions if they became disenchanted with the actions of an errant chief.

It may warrant mentioning that although early white feminists are rightly celebrated for their awareness and courageous initiative in relation to gender issues, many Native American women view the impacts of racial discrimination and class status as far outweighing gender bias as being the primary determinants of oppression in the lives of women of color. A fuller view of the causes of their oppression must take into account the pervasive and debilitating impact of the Manifest Destiny and colonization upon Native Americans.

With colonialism came the wholesale importation and imposition of a hierarchical, Eurocentric model of governance that ran counter to Native American practices. Its patriarchal view and biased suppositions claiming the inferiority of women had far-reaching and devastating consequences in the lives of countless Native Americans. For instance, white government officials and settlers typically refused to talk with tribal women regardless of the women’s leadership roles and status within the tribe. The undermining of kinship traditions, the persistent lack of acknowledgement of female leadership, the forced displacement, abuse, and annihilation of native peoples, and the violation of indigenous homelands served to cut off at the very roots much that had successfully sustained the integrity of traditional cultural values.

The sense of place, a profound kinship with the land, and its inhabitant’s respect for the reciprocal nature of relationship between all living beings was of paramount importance to Native American spirituality. The natural homeland as a place of reverence was a kind of sacred geography as essential to Native Americans as was the primacy of the church building to many European immigrants.

In direct relationship with nature, life, and death Native Americans viewed time as cyclical and reciprocal. The prevailing mindset of the invading Europeans was by contrast given over to linear thinking and concepts of ownership that were the antithesis of indigenous experience and values. To the Native American the living, the generations to come, and the ancestors were inextricably and holistically connected as a sacred ecology from which a natural theology was recognized. While there was much diversity among tribal groups, a common hallmark of the over 500 tribal nations is that its land-based experience spawned sensibilities and cosmologies that embodied a deeply informed awareness of the relational interconnectedness of all creation. Thus native religion was naturally and intrinsically bound in vibrant relationship with specific bioregions. Within the rich and multidimensional circumference of bioregion all was considered sacred. Thus, to witness exploitation of nature was to native peoples nothing short of utter disregard for the Creator, and was equivalent to seeing the desecration of one’s beloved church or violation of one’s mother. Pervasive displacement of native peoples from their ancestral homelands was a vehicle of religious persecution and genocide.

An undeniable part of the legacy of the dominant culture is that the sovereignty of over 500 indigenous nations on this continent called Turtle Island has been violated and its lands have been largely desecrated! So it is understandable that contemporary Native American women activists often articulate and exercise a distinctive feminist ideology that takes into account the necessity of environmental justice, reclamation of displaced kinship traditions, and the concept of “birthright’ in relation to homelands.

Remarkably the strong oral tradition integral to traditional native culture has survived and continues to uniquely inform and rekindle native women’s vision and activism today. In fact, indigenous women from all parts of the globe are gathering, networking, and articulating their concerns and hopes. Future installments will address issues specific to indigenous women, their struggles, and their vision.

Many people in the United States continue to rationalize or understate the magnitude and unjust impact that the legacy of the Manifest Destiny has had on indigenous populations including its contemporary incarnations (economic usurpation and environmental degradation of ancestral lands) which continue to violate indigenous peoples. Do nations of our earth actually share a consensual view about any of this? In 2007, after twenty years of study and dialogue, The United Nations passed a landmark Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. 143 nations endorsed the resolution which affirms and upholds the rights of self-determination to the world’s indigenous groups.

Even though the Declaration is legally nonbinding and cannot be enforced by international law it does clearly articulate the predominant and unequivocal sentiment of the participants that native people’s throughout the world deserve authentic redress of grievances and the rightful exercise of sovereignty. There is some optimism that the resolution is an indication that several nations will now be willing to voluntarily engage in negotiations with indigenous groups whose lands have been acquired though domination and colonization. But in keeping with the United State’s current propensity to dig in its heels and exempt itself from global responsibilities and protocols, it was one of only four nations that voted against the resolution. Given the sheer enormity of the amount of land and resources acquired at the expense of native sovereignty on Turtle Island “from sea to shining sea” is it really any surprise that countries opposing the resolution such as the U.S. and Canada would shy from the accountability of colonizers implicit in the Declaration? No doubt Article 26 of the Declaration poses a bit of a problem to big time land grabbers: “Indigenous peoples have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired.”

If returning an entire continent to the descendants of over 500 indigenous nations is untenable how then will the United States begin to make authentic restitution? Perhaps one way is for its citizens and governing bodies to reach beyond tokenism and make a steadfast commitment to foster true freedom and justice for all.

No Comments by George Swanson on December 10, 2007

filed in Indigenous Women, Injustice to Women, Peace & Justice, Uncategorized, Women & Justice

Bob Coolidge Remembers July 29, 1974

[The Rev. Robert Coolidge was a friend of Katrina and George Swanson at Harvard/Radcliffe in the early 1950’s, graduating with George in 1955. I’m grateful for his sharing these recollections with Katrina’s Dream. Until we got married Katrina was known by her nickname, Keppy. – George]

I don’t clearly recall how Ellen and I got to Philadelphia or what else we did there. We were at Squam [New Hampshire] of course, and probably drove. At our hotel, we had dinner at a table next to the one occupied by the party who intended to protest the ordination. As we listened to their talking, I remember trying to decide whether to interrupt them and get into an argument. Finally we decided to make a remark to each other which revealed our position, and they just clammed up for the rest of the meal.

The hour or two we spent in church before the service was not too pleasant because of the tension and rumours of violence. I do remember meeting Madame Picard and her grand-daughter. I heard George express his concern by joking about wanting to see her ordination not her funeral. I also remember seeing and speaking to Olof in his acolyte’s vestments. I also was feeling a bit guilty for declining Keppy’s request to read the Gospel, since I don’t think Bishop Millard would have bothered to take action or give Montreal permission to do so. All I could lose was my permission to officiate. I remember of course the great scrum of priests laying hands, and receiving communion from Keppy (for the first time, since I had not visited you in Kansas.)

The first Eucharist, of course, was the highlight, for me at least. We went out to an apartment by train, but I don’t remember whether it was the day of the service or the day after. [I believe it was the afternoon of July 29th. George] I had the job of opening the mail, and to read aloud or otherwise pass on the contents, most of which were congratulatory. Some nasty comments were also read out, with due notice and permission. I recall receiving instruction as to what to do with a letter or telegram from Bishop Vogel, but I don’t remember whether I was actually asked to reveal a direct order not to proceed, or to withhold it until after the service. Luckily, we didn’t get such an order. During the service, I was Keppy’s deacon and George and Bishop Welles [Keppy’s father] were acolytes. I suppose someone else read the Epistle, but I don’t remember who it was. One thing I remember noticing is that Keppy’s voice sounded just like her father’s, but then, I reminded myself, she didn’t have a female model to follow, and presumably didn’t want to imitate her husband.

2 Comments by George Swanson on October 19, 2007

filed in Church Politics, Women & Justice

Cancel the War for Mother

Mother’s Day Proclamation

Thanks to Lydia Thayer for this

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
“We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.”

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: “Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.”
Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

The “Mother’s Day Proclamation” by Julia Ward Howe was one of the early calls to celebrate Mother’s Day in the United States. Written in 1870, Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation was a pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco Prussian. The Proclamation was tied to Howe’s feminist belief that women had a responsibility to shape their societies at the political level.

The proclamation is included in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal, Singing the Living Tradition

Source: CLICK HERE

No Comments by George Swanson on May 9, 2007

filed in Peace & Justice, Women & Justice

The First Mother Priest

Celebrating the First Woman Priest Li Tim-Oi

By Mary Frances Schjonberg, May 04, 2007

The Rev. Li Tim-Oi met with then-Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie in 1984.

[Episcopal News Service] Special services in the countries where the Rev. Florence Li Tim-Oi, the first woman ordained a priest in the Anglican Communion, began and ended her ministry will be held in honor of the 100th anniversary of her birth on May 5.

One service is planned at Morrison Chapel in Macau on May 5. Tim-Oi served at the chapel during World War II. Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. It borders Guangdong Province and is about 60 kilometers (37 miles) from Hong Kong, China’s other Special Administrative Region.

The other will be held May 6 at All Saints’ Chinese Anglican Church in Markham, Ontario, near Toronto. Bishop Victoria Matthews of Edmonton, the first woman bishop in the Anglican Church of Canada, will preside at the service; retired Massachusetts Suffragan Bishop Barbara Harris will preach.

Harris, who served the diocese of Massachusetts before retiring in 2002, was the first woman bishop in the Anglican Communion. Tim-Oi was a concelebrant at her consecration. Matthews was recently nominated as a candidate for the election of Canada’s new Primate. If elected, she would become the second woman primate in the Anglican Communion after Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori.

Tim-Oi, whose name means “much beloved daughter,” was born in Hong Kong. When she was later baptized she took the name Florence in honor of Florence Nightingale. She studied at Union Theological College in Guangzhou (Canton). After she graduated in 1938, she served in lay ministry first in Kowloon and later in Macao. She was ordained as a deaconess in May 1941.

Later that year, Hong Kong fell to the Japanese and priests could no longer travel to Macao to celebrate the Eucharist. According to her biography in the 2003 edition of “Lesser Feasts and Fasts,” Tim-Oi continued her ministry, and her work drew the attention of then-Hong Kong Bishop Ronald Hall, who decided that “God’s work would reap better results if she had the proper title” of priest. Hall ordained her on January 25, 1944.

On the 60th anniversary celebration of her ordination, Canon Christopher Hall, Hall’s son, said during his sermon, that his father talked with Tim-Oi on the day of her ordination about lifelong priesthood, not of the momentous step they both were taking.

Her ordination caused much controversy after the end of World War II and Tim-Oi decided not to continue exercising her priesthood until it was acknowledged by the wider Anglican Communion. Hall had appointed her rector of St. Barnabas Church in Hepu and said she was still to be called a priest.

The 1948 Lambeth Conference refused to recognize her ordination, as did two successive Archbishops of Canterbury. The Conference, in Resolution 113 rejected a request from the then-Diocese of South China brought to it by what was known as the General Synod of the Church in China to experiment with ordaining deaconesses to the priesthood.

“The Conference feels bound to reply that in its opinion such an experiment would be against the tradition and order and would gravely affect the internal and external relations of the Anglican Communion,” the resolution said.

In resolution 114 of that meeting, the Conference reaffirmed a decision made in 1930, saying that women were only qualified to be deaconesses. The bishops said it was not time to reconsider that position (Resolution 115) but said that deaconesses ought to be honored and encouraged in their work (Resolution 116).

When Communists came to power in 1949, Tim-Oi studied theology in Beijing to understand the implications of the Three-Self Movement which had been instituted to govern church life in China. She moved to Guangzhou to teach and serve at the Cathedral of Our Savior.

When the government closed all the churches in China between 1958 and 1974, Tim-Oi was forced to work on a farm and then in a factory, and was required to undergo political re-education when she was deemed to be a counter-revolutionary. She was allowed to retire from factory work in 1974. Christopher Hall recalled in his sermon that Tim-Oi went to the mountains to pray during the years when she did not dare be seen with her Christian friends. He also said her re-education nearly drove Tim-Oi to suicide. She was forced by the Chinese Red Guard to cut up her vestments with scissors.

Tim-Oi was able to resume her public ministry in 1979 and, two years later, she was allowed to visit family in Canada. While there, she was licensed as a priest in the Diocese of Montreal and later in the Diocese of Toronto. She eventually settled in Toronto. She received doctors of divinity at New York’s General Theological Seminary in 1987 and at Toronto’s Trinity College in 1991. Tim-Oi died in Toronto on February 26, 1992.

The Episcopal Church’s General Convention agreed in June 2006 via Resolution A059 to annually commemorate Tim-Oi’s ordination. Her feast day was set as January 24. Tim-Oi’s actual ordination date is the Feast of the Conversion of St. Peter the Apostle.

The collect appointed for her feast day prays “Gracious God, we thank you for calling Florence Li Tim-Oi, much-beloved daughter, to be the first woman to exercise the office of a priest in our Communion; By the grace of your Spirit inspire us to follow her example, serving your people with patience and happiness all our days, and witnessing in every circumstance to our Savior Jesus Christ, who lives and reigns with you and the same Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.”

Tim-Oi’s legacy continues with the Li Tim-Oi Foundation, which has helped 200 women from 67 dioceses in 11 provinces of the Anglican Communion train for ministry, including more than 50 for ordination.

Controversy over Tim-Oi’s ordination came to a Lambeth Conference that had been pondering the issue of women’s ordination for nearly 30 years. It was the 1920 Lambeth Conference that called for the restoration of women to the diaconate (Resolution 47) but said it was the only order to which women could be ordained (Resolution 48). The bishops outlined the elements of a deaconess’ ordination in Resolution 50 and Resolution 51. The conference also called for inclusion of women in the councils of the Church to which lay men were admitted (Resolution 46).

The bishops meeting in 1920 also called for a study of women’s work in the Church and their compensation (Resolution 54).

The 1920 gathering was the first time that the bishops dealt with the role of women in any way other than as it related to marriage. The emphasis came in a series of resolutions at the 1908 Lambeth gathering. Women are not mentioned at all in any of the resolutions from the first four Lambeth gatherings (1867, 1878, 1888, and 1897).

At the 1930 Lambeth gathering, the bishops outlined the duties of deaconesses (Resolution 70 and Resolution 71) and reaffirmed a 1920 resolution, which said that the office was primarily for ministry to other women and did not require celibacy.

That conference also called for women to be able to use whatever specialized training they had received in “posts which provide full scope for their powers and bring to them real partnership with those who direct the work of the Church, and genuine responsibility for their share of it, whether in parish or diocese; so that such women may find in the Church’s service a sphere for the exercise of their capacity.” (Resolution 66).

The bishops said, in Resolution 72 that “every stipendiary woman worker, whether parochial or other, should receive formal recognition from the bishop, who should satisfy himself not only of her general fitness, but also that an adequate stipend is secured to her with provision for a pension, and that she works under a definite form of agreement.”

In 1968, the Lambeth Conference refused to accept women’s ordination but passed five resolutions (Resolutions 34-38) suggesting, among other things, further study and provisions for “duly qualified women to share in the conduct of liturgical worship, to preach, to baptize, to read the Epistle and Gospel at the Holy Communion, and to help in the distribution of the elements.”

At the first meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council (ACC) in 1971, the ordained and lay members of the group considered a proposal from the Council of the Church of South East Asia. The ACC advised the then-Bishop of Hong Kong that “acting with the approval of his Synod, and any other bishop of the Anglican Communion acting with the approval of his Province, that, if he decides to ordain women to the priesthood, his action will be acceptable to this Council; and that this Council will use its good offices to encourage all Provinces of the Anglican Communion to continue in communion with these dioceses.”

At the 1978 Lambeth Conference, the bishops recognized that the Diocese of Hong Kong, the Anglican Church of Canada, the Episcopal Church in the United States of America, and the Church of the Province of New Zealand had begun to ordain women to the priesthood and noted that “eight other member Churches of the Anglican Communion have now either agreed or approved in principle or stated that there are either no fundamental or no theological objections to the ordination of women to the historic threefold ministry of the Church.” Resolution 21 passed by a vote of 316-37 with 17 abstentions.

The resolution said the conference accepted the stance of all of its member provinces on the issue and encouraged “all member Churches of the Anglican Communion to continue in communion with one another, notwithstanding the admission of women (whether at present or in the future) to the ordained ministry of some member Churches.” The bishops also called for “further discussions about the ordination of women be held within a wider consideration of theological issues of ministry and priesthood.”

And the resolution recommended that that no decision to consecrate women as bishops be taken “without consultation with the episcopate through the primates and overwhelming support in any member Church and in the diocese concerned, lest the bishop’s office should become a cause of disunity instead of a focus of unity.”

In the Anglican Communion today, eight of the 38 member provinces do not ordain women to any order of ministry. Fourteen provinces currently make provisions for women in the episcopate.

Tim-Oi’s birthday commemoration comes nearly 31 years after the Episcopal Church voted at its 65th General Convention to open all three orders of ordained ministry to women.

Today, the ordination of women is widely — but not universally — accepted in the Episcopal Church. An entire generation, both in chronological age and in terms of their membership in the Episcopal Church, has known nothing but a church in which women serve as priests.

Many, if not most, in the church have “come to the conclusion that there is a rich diversity brought by women to the church,” the Rev. Margaret Rose, director of the church’s Office of Women’s Ministries, said in an ENS story leading up to the 75th General Convention in June 2006.

Rose suggested that women, both lay and ordained, are continually changing the Episcopal Church by “the way in which they exercise ministry in a hierarchical church.”

She said that women have a relational style of ministry to the church. “I think the whole church is richer for it,” she said.

In the Episcopal Church, only the dioceses of Fort Worth, Quincy and San Joaquin do not permit the ordination or deployment of women as priests.

A more complete look at the history of the movement towards women’s ordination in the Episcopal Church is available here.

– The Rev. Mary Frances Schjonberg is national correspondent for the Episcopal News Service.

Source: http://www.episcopalchurch.org/79901_85617_ENG_HTM.htm

No Comments by George Swanson on May 8, 2007

filed in Evangelism, Women & Justice

This is Katrina’s Dream

Today is Equal Pay Day.

The date—Tuesday, April 24th—symbolizes the fact that on average, a woman must work for a year and four months to earn the same wages as a man receives in a year.

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 made it illegal to pay women less than men for work that is “substantially equal,” unless the pay difference is because of legitimate factors such as seniority or experience.

However, 44 years later, the gap still exists. According to recent data, a woman earns an average of 77 cents for every $1 a man earns at an equivalent job. This pay gap adds up: On average, a 25-year-old working woman will lose about $455,000 to unequal pay during her working life.

CLICK BELOW – Tell your senators and representatives to help close the pay gap by supporting two important bills to step up efforts to end wage discrimination:

· The Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 766 and H.R. 1338), which would provide more effective remedies for victims of wage discrimination on the basis of sex.
·
· The Fair Pay Act (S. 1087), which would prohibit sex-based wage discrimination and would address the issue of comparable worth by calling for equal pay for equivalent work.

TELL ‘EM BY CLICKING BELOW:

Click here.

Over the weekend, Congress came to an agreement on the first federal minimum wage increase in 10 years. But raising the minimum wage isn’t the only way to help working people struggling to get by–closing the pay gap would help the growing number of dual-earner families.

Equal pay is not only about basic fairness; it’s also about basic family economics. The average U.S. family loses $4,000 a year because of the pay gap. More wives and mothers are working than ever before. (In 2003, both parents were employed in 61 percent of two-parent families with children under age 18.) The earnings of these working women are essential to supporting a family. Pay discrimination hurts husbands and families, too.

Tell your senators and representatives to support the Paycheck Fairness Act (S. 766, H.R. 1338) and the Fair Pay Act (S. 1087).

In solidarity,

Working Families e-Activist Network, AFL-CIO

No Comments by George Swanson on April 25, 2007

filed in Injustice to Women, Money, Women & Justice

A White New Orleans?

This May Be From Katrina

Today, Congress has the opportunity to help thousands of New Orleans
residents come back home. The Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery
Act of 2007 would re-open desperately needed public housing units and
make sure there is no loss of affordable public housing in New
Orleans.

The bill quickly passed the House of Representatives, but the two
people who should be leading the charge in the Senate–Louisiana
Senators Landrieu and Vitter–are stalling, and without their support,
the bill will go nowhere. I’ve signed on with ColorofChange.org to
call on Senators Landrieu and Vitter to stop dragging their feet, and
lead on this important legislation, now. Will you join us?

http://www.colorofchange.org/hr1227/?id=2157-153822

Preserving Affordable Housing in New Orleans

Since Hurricane Katrina hit, public housing residents have been
fighting to return home. Unfortunately, HUD (Department of Housing
and Urban Development) is planning to demolish most of the available
public housing units–apartments that were minimally damaged by the
storm–and replace them with far fewer units of affordable public
housing.

In response to residents’ protests, Congresswoman Maxine Waters held
hearings in New Orleans, giving residents a chance to voice their
concerns to Congress. Around the same time, Governor Blanco met with
Congressman Barney Frank–head of the committee that oversees HUD–to
discuss the need to re-open housing not damaged by the storm. The
result of these meetings was H.R. 1227, The Gulf Coast Hurricane
Recovery Act of 2007.

H.R. 1227 honors the right to return of all New Orleans public housing
residents and takes steps to preserve affordable housing in New
Orleans. It requires the reopening of at least 3,000 public housing
units and ensures that there is no net loss of units available and
affordable to public housing residents. The bill swiftly passed the
House of Representatives, but it won’t pass the Senate unless
Louisiana senators take the lead.

Why haven’t Senators Landrieu and Vitter stepped up?

Race and class seem to explain Landrieu and Vitter’s refusal to step
up. Some have expressed a desire to see a “richer” and “Whiter” post-
Katrina New Orleans, and many of them have a great deal of political
influence. From what we can tell, Senator Vitter is playing to those
interests by ignoring this legislation–but as a senator for all
Louisiana residents, it’s his responsibility to ensure that everyone
who wants to come home can–not the just the wealthy, privileged,
and White. Insiders tell us that Senator Landrieu is being cautious
for the same reason: that she doesn’t want to offend “moderate”
supporters who have a similar vision for New Orleans.

The Gulf Coast Hurricane Housing Recovery Act is the last great hope
for New Orleans public housing residents who want to come home. By
urging the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs to
take up H.R. 1227, Senators Landrieu and Vitter can make it a reality.
But if the senators from Louisiana don’t lead on this issue, others
simply won’t follow.

It’s time to do what’s right for New Orleans public housing residents
and pass this bill in the Senate. Will you join us and demand that
Senator Landrieus and Vitter support H.R. 1227.

http://www.colorofchange.org/hr1227/?id=2157-153822

No Comments by George Swanson on April 25, 2007

filed in Money, Peace & Justice, Racism, Women & Justice

One Beggar to Another

St. Saviour’s is Beautiful People

A Sermon by George Swanson

Second Sunday of Easter, 2007

Jesus said to Thomas, “Happy are those who have not seen me.”

In the name of Jesus, our dead and risen Saviour.

Chilton Knudsen, the Bishop of Maine, visited St. Saviour’s this winter. At a meeting before the service she was asked, “Why is the Episcopal Church declining in Maine? Our membership has really gone down.” The bishop answered the question then – and in the sermon at the Eucharist – encouraging us to take charge of our situation. That afternoon I found myself almost in tears. I thought of the expensive work that was going on in our building – repairing the Tiffany windows and repointing the Victorian stone walls. Huge buckets of money are being spent to preserve the building. I remembered an impressive brick church I saw in the Kalahari Desert in Botswana years ago. Totally empty. Not even a single house or building near it. It must have been thirty or forty feet high, with a beautiful tower, nicely proportioned, maybe capable of holding a thousand people. It had been built at great cost most likely when Victoria ruled. British people had probably given their money, maybe even imported good British bricks, to build NOT A CHURCH, but a home for the church. For a church is the people.

Here we are today in this building. What will this building (it’s not a church – we’re the church) what will this beautiful pile of expensive stones be like a hundred years from now? Most of us are old here. At 73 I am middle aged! None of us will be alive 50 years from now. Will God’s people gather here? Will it be converted to condominiums? A disco? Or turned into a municipal parking lot?

I almost wept.

I phoned Jonathan on Monday and told him I had some completely wild ideas of how we might welcome people into our beautiful church, which is US! WE ARE THE BEAUTIFUL CHURCH. The building isn’t bad either.

I offered to walk through the building and grounds with him and share my off-the-wall ideas. Jonathan said, “Why don’t we invite everyone to join us.” I said, “Sure.” And that is what we will do on Saturday, April 28. Morning Prayer is at 8:30 a.m. George’s “Pipe Dreams” will start at 9 a.m. in the parish hall with coffee.

Then Jonathan sent me a great booklet by Charles Fulton and James Lemler. It’s called Faith and Hope. I would have bought copies to give to you all, but it costs $3 for heaven’s sake. So I’ll tell you about it – later. I’ll end up with some of their ideas of what we can do to keep the disco out.

So far this has just been an introduction. Setting the scene. Why I am talking to you today.

I’m going to raise three questions and SUGGEST some answers. Your answers will be better because you know the parish and Bar Harbor better than I ever will. Here are the questions:

Who’s hurting?

What do they need?

How can we help?

ONE – Who’s hurting?

You’ll be able to answer this so much better than I can. I am FROM AWAY. I have very shallow roots here. I’m a transplant from San Francisco, Botswana, Kansas City, Jersey City and other blessed points on this revolving planet. Yet I love it here, I love you. Katrina and William and Hélène and I have received your love here. I know what it is to be welcomed and included by beautiful people. I like it.

Who is hurting in Bar Harbor? On Mt. Desert Island? Well let me suggest three groups of people I think are hurting. Check me out. You may think of more.

PARENTS AND KIDS – How hard it is to raise children! God, it is so hard. It was not easy for me and Katrina. I suspect it is harder now. Two families left St. Saviour’s because we do not have a Sunday school. One of my crazy ideas is that BECAUSE we do not have a Sunday school we can welcome many families with children into our beautiful Church – not the building! But into the circle of our love and relationship with God and with each other – helping them in their difficult and eternally important work of raising their children. They will become OUR children too.

I’ll offer my suggestions at the end.

GAYS AND LESBIANS – Yes, I have rejected gays and lesbians as REAL Christians. Not publicly. But in my mind. “They must not be QUITE RIGHT.” I should be kind to them. Etc Etc Etc. Racism all over again.

Katrina and I had – and I have now – gay and lesbian friends – dear friends – people who stood with us in our troubles and with whom we attempted to stand in theirs. But deep down I wasn’t sure. I mean, the BIBLE and all that!

Newspaper people can really be a pain right where we sit. They ask so many questions that they make a person THINK. That happened to me.

Seven year of trouble began in 1986 after a wooden gothic Victorian building in Jersey City burned almost to the ground. This was where the beautiful people who were Ascension Church had worshipped for generations in Jersey City. Newspapers, TV, and the radio described the conflict between the people of Ascension and our bishop over the fire insurance settlement. Big bucks.

Ari Goldman, the religion editor of the New York Times quizzed me on the telephone – asking why we would not just let the bishop and the diocese have the money. Were we against him because he welcomed and ordained gays? Goldman came to Jersey City and continued that line of questioning. “Would I marry gays?” “I don’t want to marry anyone. If they end up getting divorced and hating each other, they may hate me too.” “What about lesbians?” “I don’t know. Some young women asked me about that. I happened to have a priest staying in the rectory next door who had publicly identified herself as a lesbian – so I got them together.” On and on with the questions. Finally I lost my temper and shouted very very slowly and distinctly to make him understand. (I think God was really trying to make ME understand.) WE’RE IN THE BLESSING BUSINESS, WE’RE NOT IN THE CURSING BUSINESS!

The article in the New York Times accurately explained our reason for fighting the diocese’s attempt to take the money: “Father Swanson says, ‘The people of Ascension Church paid the insurance premiums and they expect to receive the settlement.’”

And as a gift from the dear God – I learned what business we are really in!

I have since read James Alison’s beautiful books. He is at once firmly rooted in the Bible, in Catholic theology, and with the gift of a seeing what God is doing today. I have had the pleasure of becoming a friend of his. His viewpoint is, I think, a gift from our dear God to a world that has persecuted and rejected and marginalized gay and lesbian people IN GOD’S NAME. Alison is a Roman Catholic priest, is he openly gay, he is able to show reasonably and theologically and biblically that the Bible verses about men-sleeping-with-men and women-sleeping-with-women are most likely talking about worshipping other gods with sexual intercourse. Idolatry and blasphemy is condemned – not gay and lesbian relationships.

So – are gays and lesbians hurting in Bar Harbor? I expect so – both them and their families and friends. I subscribe to a gay-lesbian-bisexual-transgender email sharing. The suffering is real. So much rejection.

Probably 10% of the people in Bar Harbor and MDI are gay or lesbian. They are certain not welcome AS THEY ARE in some congregations.

PEOPLE WITH ADDICTIONS – What suffering here! I live in the Heroin capital of Hancock County, Southwest Harbor. How about that. Actually that was a few years ago. Today it may be oxycontin. Or meth.

Think of our beautiful, promising teenagers who die every year in alcohol driven automobile accidents! And the “drain board drunks” – women who nip all day to cope with unbearable inner pain. Some of our neighbors suffer from addiction to alcohol.

We can be addicted to food – harming our bodies, shortening our lives, and numbing our enjoyment of life itself. Some of our children are obese.

There is so much pain around us in town and on the island.

We, the wounded people of St. Saviour’s can welcome, embrace, and love many hurting people into our healing family.

TWO – What do they need?

They need HOPE.

And to get hope they need to know the TRUTH.

Here’s the truth about God and every human being. The Episcopal bishops wrote it on March 20th, this year. Hey, it ain’t perfect, maybe, but it’s pretty good. Here it is:

We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God.

Like good listeners our bishops have observed where WE were going. They have spoken and we can ratify what they said. We can say to the world, to MDI and to Bar Harbor, THIS IS THE GOOD NEWS FROM JESUS!

How do we share this TRUTH with Bar Harbor? With our island?

In their booklet, Truth and Hope, Fulton and Lemler imply “Don’t tell them that this building is a church!” Here’s an adaptation of what they say about us folks over 50.

When St. Saviour’s embraces evangelism fully, it will be different from TV evangelism. It will be respectful and graceful, inviting mutual sharing.

Americans see religion differently now – especially those under 50.

Over 50, we want to talk about where we go to church, about the sacred place which is reverenced, decorated, and “close to God.”

Those under 50 are interested in everything but where. They ask, How do you pray? What difference does it make in your life? How do you experience God?

So . . . if we want St. Saviour’s to grow (or even survive after we all die) us old dogs will have to learn new tricks. We will have to learn how to tell anyone in Bar Harbor how we pray, what use it is to us, and listen to their experience.

THREE – How can we help?

Finally! You thought I would never get here. These are just suggestions. These thoughts came to be on that afternoon in February when my eyes were moistening with tears.

PARENTS & KIDS – We can make our worship a REAL thanksgiving meal. Eucharist means Thanksgiving. None of us would send our kids away from the table on thanksgiving. But when we have little children and grandchildren we make some adjustments so they don’t suffer too much. We don’t force them to act like adults.

What changes would that be? I don’t know. Together we can find what works. It might be more repetitions in the music: possibly Taize responses sung to the Prayers of the People. Maybe a Bible story told in contemporary language rather than a lesson read in boring language. Maybe processions, marching around. That’s an old Christian tradition. Young or old, can march around (if they wish) at the opening hymn, and when we perhaps all go to the altar for the great thanksgiving, etc. Maybe less stuff from a book and more call and response as in the Black church. Less paper and more soul.

GAYS & LESBIANS – First of all we have to be sure what the good news is. Can’t fake it. I have had some beautiful conversations with exceedingly patient gay and lesbian friends – as they answer my blunt and basic questions.

We had these sorts of conversations after Katrina’s ordination. Good people were offended or at least really uncertain about what we had done on July 29, 1974. And with many people the conversations were special and sacred and sometimes painful.

St. Paul says we should be ready to give a reason for the hope that is in us. It may take some discussion for us to understand that hope.

What can we do? As we come to KNOW that this is the Gospel of our dead and risen Saviour:

We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church.

Then we will be led, I believe, to embrace and love and accept gays and lesbians as ordinary cussed parishioners like the rest of us. Just family.

PEOPLE WITH ADDICTIONS – This is so hard. So painful. There is a young man, perhaps even today, in a British jail. He is addicted to cutting himself. He is covered with scars. He says that he has so much pain inside himself that when he cuts himself he really hurts LESS. As someone with an addiction to food, I can understand that. Inner pain requires medication.

Now-a-days he is not cutting himself. He has found silent prayer. How about that? The pain within him is not gone but it is much less. We have had this available all our lives from the beautiful people who have told us about God. Some of these beautiful people are here around us today – like those who went before us. They built a building and invited God into their lives for US. Pretty good. We get medication here that is better than cutting ourselves or overeating.

A bishop in India said that inviting people into the Christian family is like one beggar telling another where to find food. We might say it is like one sick person telling another where to find a really good doctor. The treatment is free. One doesn’t have to sign anything. It is given without any cost to us. There are no requirements for joining the family. Jesus saved every human being. Already done.

Pope John Paul was not one of my heroes. However, he has been quoted as saying something like this:

Is there a Hell? Yes. Hell is certainly here on earth. And, yes, there is hell after death. But I think the hell after death is probably empty.

Sure, it’s good to let AA and other Twelve Step groups meet free in our building. But what is so much more healing is our welcoming, embracing, and sharing the incredibly wonderful medication that God gives us here – sharing it with others who suffer as we do.

There are 75 places to sit at the 7:30 a.m. thanksgiving meal. There are 25 to 50 empty seats every Sunday. They belong to the people in Bar Harbor who desperately need what God has given us. Without a word from us they will never enter the door.

There are 325 places to sit at the 10 a.m. thanksgiving meal. More than one hundred seats are always empty. They do not belong to us. They belong to people on Mt. Desert Island who have not yet found what God has given to us. There is only one way they will find it. You or I will tell them what God has done for us.

Summing it all up:

We can share with others – listening & talking – beggar to beggar – wounded to wounded – the beautiful God who is within us ALL.

We can grow – for our own sake and for the sake of those around us who are still hurting so much – we can grow closer and closer, always closer to the dear God who is at the center of who we really are. And closer to each other.

Thanks to Bishop Knudsen, I am in touch with Maggie Ross, an Anglican teacher of prayer. Ross recommended a book to me, Into the Silent Land, by Martin Laird. It is helping me get close to God who has always been within me. There are slips in your bulletins about the book. The Archbishop of Canterbury likes it. Desmond Tutu likes it too.

Next Sunday I will have copies of the book to loan or sell after each service. I will meet with you at 9 a.m. in the Rectory Commons next Sunday and we can talk about silent prayer.

Aren’t we lucky to be St. Saviour’s Church!

Happy are we who have not seen.

Amen

Into the Silent Land

Martin Laird

“This book is different. There are plenty of books on contemplation that feel tired—either wordy and labored or unhelpfully smooth and idealistic. But this is sharp, deep, with no clichés, no psychobabble and no short cuts. Its honesty is bracing, its vision utterly clear; it is a rare treasure.”

— Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury

“Often they say ‘you learn how to swim by swimming’ but a good coach or swimming manual is essential. Equally, we could say ‘you learn how to be contemplative by contemplating’ and a good guide or mentor is necessary. Into the Silent Land is just that. I tried it and it works. Try it.”

— Desmond Tutu, Nobel Prize Winner & Former Archbishop and Primate of South Africa

“We are built for contemplation. Communion with God in the silence of the heart is a God-given capacity, like the rhododendron’s capacity to flower, the fledgling’s for flight, and the child’s for self-forgetful abandon and joy. If the grace of God that suffuses and simplifies the vital generosity of our lives does not consummate this capacity while we live, then the very arms of God that embrace us as we enter the transforming mystery of death will surely do so. This self-giving God, the Being of our being, the Life of our life, has joined to Himself two givens of human life: we are built to commune with God and we will all meet death.” — Martin Laird in the Introduction

3 Comments by George Swanson on April 15, 2007

filed in Evangelism, Lost in the Stars?, Peace & Justice, Silent Prayer, Women & Justice

ERA Resurrected?

Do Something Useful for the Majority

By Martha Burk

The new Congress has been busy, what with scandals in the Justice Department and votes to reign in war spending with some accountability and better training for the troops. Both are good things, and rightly priorities. But both are likely to end with standoffs as they go head-to-head with the White House, no doubt because the 2008 election season is already well underway, and the President is determined not to give Democrats an edge with voters.

But some members of this Congress are already looking ahead to boost the party’s stock with the majority of voters – women. They are going beyond non-binding resolutions and bills that won’t get past the President’s veto pen. They are now talking about passing The Equal Rights Amendment. The ERA states that “Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.” Recently renamed the Women’s Equality Amendment and introduced March 27 by its chief sponsor, Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) to a standing-room-only news conference, the ERA would grant equal constitutional rights to women — something we have yet to achieve. A simple concept that had the blessing of both political parties until the Republicans struck it from their platform in 1980, with the Democrats following in 2004.

The ERA was first introduced in Congress in 1923, but was not passed and sent to the states for ratification until 1972. Unlike the 27th amendment, ratified after hanging around for 200 years, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed with a time limit of only seven years for approval by the states. In that brief time it was ratified by 35 states, but was stopped three states short by millions of corporate dollars backing Phyllis Schlafly’s anti-woman storm troopers, who feared unisex toilets more than they valued freedom from discrimination. (Schlafly always resurfaces at the Republican platform committee hearings leading a band of zealots campaigning for their own constitutional amendment banning abortion. She says Republican women want to ban abortion. A few do. We saw just how few last November, when 100% of anti-abortion ballot initiatives were defeated.)

Much has changed in the 35 years since Congress first passed the ERA. Women have become the majority of the population and of the electorate. Most are now in the work force full time, including nearly three quarters of mothers with children between six and eighteen. Women head one third of all households, and a whopping 61% of single parent families.

While much has changed, little progress has been made. On the average women still make only 76 cents to a man’s dollar, working full-time and year-round. They hold 98% of the low paying “women’s” jobs and fewer than 15% of the board seats in major corporations. Three quarters of the elderly in poverty are women. And in every state except Montana, women still pay higher rates than similarly situated men for health, annuity, disability, and auto insurance.

Congress, only 16% female, has stifled the ERA year after year, even though it has been reintroduced in every session since time ran out on ratification. But now with renewed energy and front-page coverage of the new ERA push, John Conyers (D-NY) Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, promises fast-track hearings and reporting the amendment to the floor for a vote.

The framers of the Constitution could not have foreseen the modern political posturing, but surely they would cringe at a body that is so willing to soapbox on such sham amendments as gay marriage, yet unwilling to release one that directly affects the well being of 52% of the population.

Nine out of 10 Americans believe that the constitution should make it clear that women and men should have equal rights. The Equal Rights Amendment won’t cost taxpayers a dime, and it will benefit not only the women of America but also the men, in this and all generations to come. That would be a real legacy for the new Congress.

Martha Burk is the Money editor for Ms., and Director of the Corporate Accountability Project for the National Council of Women’s Organizations.

No Comments by George Swanson on April 6, 2007

filed in ERA, Women & Justice

Day Care

Day Care Debate Misses the Point

By Ruth Conniff March 28, 2007

From the headlines about the latest day care study you’d think something big had happened. For the report click here;

The Fox News story was typical: “Study Links Child Care and Bad Behavior”. Click here for Fox story:

Local television news ran teasers like “Day Care Takes a Beating,” and “Today’s Hot Topic: Are You a Bad Parent If You Put Your Child in Day Care?” Click here for story.

Instead of focusing on the rather modest results of a study that shows the difference between kids in child care and those not in it, the media would do well to focus on the extreme scarcity of quality care, and what a huge difference there is between the good and bad places for parents to leave their children.

So ready are U.S. audiences for a rehash of the stay-at-home versus working mom debate, the story fit neatly into a media niche: Score one for stay-at-home parenting–down with day care!

It might come as a surprise, then, that the National Institutes of Health press release describing the study actually led with the good news: Children in high-quality day care score significantly higher on vocabulary tests than their peers. The headline was “Early Child Care Linked to Increases in Vocabulary, Some Problem Behaviors in Fifth and Sixth Grades.” With all the recent emphasis on testing and grade-schoolers academic skills, you’d think that this news might jump out at people.

The long-term, NIH-funded study recruited new mothers of 1,364 babies in hospitals at ten different locations in the United States, and monitored their child care until they were four and a half years old. “Child care” was defined as care by anyone other than the child’s mother — including fathers — for at least ten hours a week. Researchers followed up with tests that showed vocabulary gains in the children from higher-quality child care backgrounds in grade school, and with teacher surveys that showed greater aggressiveness and other problem behaviors in all kids who came from some kind of child care.

Keep in mind that the types of child care arrangements measured included families in which children stay with their dad or a grandparent for two hours a day, go to an enriching morning preschool program, and those who are in low-cost, high-turnover, chain day care centers from seven in the morning until seven at night. It’s quite a range. Children who had been in center care scored higher on teacher evaluations of aggressiveness and disobedience.

“The study authors suggested that the correlation between center care and problem behaviors could be due to the fact that center-based child care providers often lack the training, as well as the time, to address behavior problems,” the NIH press release notes. “For example, center-based child care providers may not be able to provide sufficient adult attention or guidance to address problems that may emerge when groups of young children are together, such as how to resolve conflicts over toys or activities.”

On the other hand, in high-quality child care settings, these are exactly the skills that children learn.

How often do we parents marvel at our favorite preschool teachers’ calm, patient, skilled handling of toddler tantrums and scuffles over toys? A good teacher not only shows little children how to use their words, master their emotions, and solve conflicts peacefully, she (or, less frequently, he) models these critical social and emotional skills for parents. Having the support and good example of someone who really knows how to handle children is a precious resource for parents. After all, how often do stay-at-moms and working parents alike go to bed feeling guilty because they lost their cool when their willful tots tested their patience one last time after a long day? And how often does the image of the calm, good-humored, professional child care teacher float into our heads to help us remember the right way to deal with our children? Use your words, don’t yell, calm down, take a break, keep your sense of humor–above all, when confronted with toddler rage, remember that you are the adult. All of that is a lot easier said than done. But if we want our kids to learn to control themselves and turn into the kind of people others can live with, we have to give them a good example. Good preschool teachers do it every day, under battle conditions.

But here is the real news, obscured by the flap over the NIH study: there aren’t enough good preschool teachers. The chaotic center environment that the researchers postulate might account for children’s anti-social behavior is the norm in this country. So much the norm, in fact, that it would be hard to find a significant number of truly high-quality child care settings even in a group of 1,364 children.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children has a set of standards for judging quality and awarding a kind of Good Housekeeping seal to centers that meet its criteria. But the child care centers that meet NAEYC standards represent only about 10 percent of all child care in the United States. For standards click here.

More common is the revolving door of overworked, underpaid staff who receive little or no training in children’s social, emotional, and intellectual development. The harried staffers at the average for-profit center, or the family day care providers with little training or support who take on tons of kids whose parents rush to work all day, are not
necessarily great models for parents.
But in our nonsystem of child care in the United States, the kinds of places where kids are stashed while parents go to work is of very little interest. Instead of focusing on the rather modest results of a study that shows the difference between kids in child care and those not in it, the media would do well to focus on the extreme scarcity of quality care, and what a huge difference there is between the good and bad places for parents to leave their children.

Instead of talking about stay-at-home motherhood versus child care, reporters and policymakers should take a look at what we are doing for a group of kids who have received a lot of media attention in the last two decades–the children of women on welfare.

Under welfare reform, supports for child care in states across the country have been frozen or are going down. In some states, the government will dock child care payments if a child doesn’t attend at least half time in any given week–which can happen easily due to illness and other temporary problems. As federal pool of money for child care has been shrinking, parent co-pays and child care rates are going up. Without adequate child care, welfare reform is nothing but punishment for parents and children alike.

Aggressiveness and inadequate social, emotional, and intellectual stimulation and learning are bigger problems for kids from the poorest families. But the lack of good child care is a problem that reaches way up into the middle class.

If only our society could get more interested in that problem, instead of an imagined cat fight between working and stay-at-home moms, which, in my experience, ended a long time ago.

No Comments by George Swanson on March 29, 2007

filed in Injustice to Women, Peace & Justice, Women & Justice

Bishop Katharine, Copy the Brits

Reforming Bishop to Head up Prison Monitoring Group

By Ekklesia Staff Writers 21 Mar 2007

A network of prison monitoring groups is to be headed up by the Bishop of Worcester when he leaves his current post.
Dr Peter Selby’s move will take place when he retires in September after 10 years in charge of his diocese.
He was appointed by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams as the Church of England ‘Bishop to HM Prisons’ in 2001, and will become the President of the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards in January 2008.
Dr Selby has spoken out firmly in favour of the retention of an independent inspectorate of prisons, forcing the government onto the back foot on the issue.
He is also an advocate of methods of restorative justice – which the Church of England has backed in a recent Synod report that he made a major contribution to, and he has been a critic of prison privatisation.
Peter Selby, a former research professor in practical theology at the Universities of Durham and Newcastle, said he had worked in prisons since 1965.
His first eucharist as Bishop of Worcester was at Long Lartin prison. The prisoners there sent him a wall-hanging.
He said that he had decided to take the National Council for Independent Monitoring Boards job because he felt it was “a bullet with my name on it”.
He added: “Although I wasn’t actually looking for a retirement task at this stage I didn’t really think I could say no to it.”
Each prison has an independent monitoring board made up of ordinary members of the public whose role is to monitor the day-to-day life within the jail and ensure inmates are treated correctly.

No Comments by George Swanson on March 21, 2007

filed in Injustice to Women, Peace & Justice

They Get It Right!

Bishops’ ‘Mind of the House’ Resolutions

Tuesday, March 20, 2007

[Episcopal News Service] The following resolutions were passed by the House of Bishops March 20 during its annual Spring retreat meeting in Navasota, Texas.
Mind of the House of Bishops Resolution Addressed to the Executive Council of the Episcopal Church

Resolved, the House of Bishops affirms its desire that The Episcopal Church remain a part of the councils of the Anglican Communion; and
Resolved, the meaning of the Preamble to the Constitution of The Episcopal Church is determined solely by the General Convention of The Episcopal Church; and
Resolved, the House of Bishops believes the proposed Pastoral Scheme of the Dar es Salaam Communiqué of February 19, 2007 would be injurious to The Episcopal Church and urges that the Executive Council decline to participate in it; and
Resolved, the House of Bishops pledges itself to continue to work to find ways of meeting the pastoral concerns of the Primates that are compatible with our own polity and canons.
Adopted March 20, 2007
The House of Bishops
The Episcopal Church
Spring Meeting 2007
Camp Allen Conference Center
Navasota, Texas

To the Archbishop of Canterbury and the members of the Primates’ Standing Committee:
We, the Bishops of The Episcopal Church, meeting in Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas, March 16-21, 2007, have considered the requests directed to us by the Primates of the Anglican Communion in the Communiqué dated February 19, 2007.
Although we are unable to accept the proposed Pastoral Scheme, we declare our passionate desire to remain in full constituent membership in both the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church.
We believe that there is an urgent need for us to meet face to face with the Archbishop of Canterbury and members of the Primates’ Standing Committee, and we hereby request and urge that such a meeting be negotiated by the Presiding Bishop of The Episcopal Church and the Archbishop of Canterbury at the earliest possible opportunity.
We invite the Archbishop and members of the Primates’ Standing Committee to join us at our expense for three days of prayer and conversation regarding these important matters.
Adopted March 20, 2007
The House of Bishops
The Episcopal Church
Spring Meeting 2007
Camp Allen Conference Center
Navasota, Texas

A Statement from the House of Bishops – March 20, 2007
We, the Bishops of The Episcopal Church, meeting at Camp Allen, Navasota, Texas, for our regular Spring Meeting, March 16-21, 2007, have received the Communiqué of February 19, 2007 from the Primates of the Anglican Communion meeting at Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. We have met together for prayer, reflection, conversation, and listening during these days and have had the Communiqué much on our minds and hearts, just as we know many in our Church and in other parts of the world have had us on their minds and hearts as we have taken counsel together. We are grateful for the prayers that have surrounded us.
We affirm once again the deep longing of our hearts for The Episcopal Church to continue as a part of the Anglican Communion. We have gone so far as to articulate our self-understanding and unceasing desire for relationships with other Anglicans by memorializing the principle in the Preamble of our Constitution. What is important to us is that The Episcopal Church is a constituent member of a family of Churches, all of whom share a common mother in the Church of England. That membership gives us the great privilege and unique opportunity of sharing in the family’s work of alleviating human suffering in all parts of the world. For those of us who are members of The Episcopal Church, we are aware as never before that our Anglican Communion partners are vital to our very integrity as Christians and our wholeness. The witness of their faith, their generosity, their bravery, and their devotion teach us essential elements of gospel-based living that contribute to our conversion.
We would therefore meet any decision to exclude us from gatherings of all Anglican Churches with great sorrow, but our commitment to our membership in the Anglican Communion as a way to participate in the alleviation of suffering and restoration of God’s creation would remain constant. We have no intention of choosing to withdraw from our commitments, our relationships, or our own recognition of our full communion with the See of Canterbury or any of the other constituent members of the Anglican Communion. Indeed, we will seek to live fully into, and deepen, our relationships with our brothers and sisters in the Communion through companion relationships, the networks of Anglican women, the Anglican Indigenous Network, the Francophone Network, our support for the Anglican Diocese of Cuba, our existing covenant commitments with other provinces and dioceses, including Liberia, Mexico, Central America, Brazil, and the Philippines, our work as The Episcopal Church in many countries around the world, especially in the Caribbean, Latin America, Europe, and Taiwan, and countless informal relationships for mission around the world.
Since our General Convention of 2003, we have responded in good faith to the requests we have received from our Anglican partners. We accepted the invitation of the Lambeth Commission to send individuals characteristic of the theological breadth of our Church to meet with it. We happily did so. Our Executive Council voluntarily acceded to the request of the Primates for our delegates not to attend the 2005 meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham. We took our place as listeners rather than participants as an expression of our love and respect for the sensibilities of our brothers and sisters in the Communion even when we believed we had been misunderstood. We accepted the invitation of the Primates to explain ourselves in a presentation to the same meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council. We did so with joy.
At the meeting of our House of Bishops at Camp Allen, Texas in March, 2004 we adopted a proposal called Delegated Episcopal Pastoral Oversight as a means for meeting the pastoral needs of those within our Church who disagreed with actions of the General Convention. Our plan received a favorable response in the Windsor Report. It was not accepted by the Primates. At our meeting in March 2005, we adopted a Covenant Statement as an interim response to the Windsor Report in an attempt to assure the rest of the Communion that we were taking them seriously and, at some significant cost, refused to consecrate any additional bishops whatsoever as a way that we could be true to our own convictions without running the risk of consecrating some that would offend our brothers and sisters. Our response was not accepted by the Primates. Our General Convention in 2006 struggled mightily and at great cost to many, not the least of whom are our gay and lesbian members, to respond favorably to the requests made of us in the Windsor Report and the Primates’ Dromantine Communiqué of 2005. We received a favorable response from the Joint Standing Committee of the Anglican Consultative Council and the Primates, which found that our effort had substantially met the concerns of the Windsor Report with the need to clarify our position on the blessing of same sex relationships. Still, our efforts were not accepted by the Primates in the Dar es Salaam Communiqué.
Other Anglican bishops, indeed including some Primates, have violated our provincial boundaries and caused great suffering and contributed immeasurably to our difficulties in solving our problems and in attempting to communicate for ourselves with our Anglican brothers and sisters. We have been repeatedly assured that boundary violations are inappropriate under the most ancient authorities and should cease. The Lambeth Conferences of 1988 and 1998 did so. The Windsor Report did so. The Dromantine Communiqué did so. None of these assurances has been heeded. The Dar es Salaam Communiqué affirms the principle that boundary violations are impermissible, but then sets conditions for ending those violations, conditions that are simply impossible for us to meet without calling a special meeting of our General Convention.
It is incumbent upon us as disciples to do our best to follow Jesus in the increasing experience of the leading of the Holy Spirit. We fully understand that others in the Communion believe the same, but we do not believe that Jesus leads us to break our relationships.

We proclaim the Gospel of what God has done and is doing in Christ, of the dignity of every human being, and of justice, compassion, and peace. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ there is no Jew or Greek, no male or female, no slave or free. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including women, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that in Christ all God’s children, including gay and lesbian persons, are full and equal participants in the life of Christ’s Church. We proclaim the Gospel that stands against any violence, including violence done to women and children as well as those who are persecuted because of their differences, often in the name of God.

The Dar es Salaam Communiqué is distressingly silent on this subject. And, contrary to the way the Anglican Communion Network and the American Anglican Council have represented us, we proclaim a Gospel that welcomes diversity of thought and encourages free and open theological debate as a way of seeking God’s truth. If that means that others reject us and communion with us, as some have already done, we must with great regret and sorrow accept their decision.
With great hope that we will continue to be welcome in the councils of the family of Churches we know as the Anglican Communion, we believe that to participate in the Primates’ Pastoral scheme would be injurious to The Episcopal Church for many reasons.
First, it violates our church law in that it would call for a delegation of primatial authority not permissible under our Canons and a compromise of our autonomy as a Church not permissible under our Constitution.
Second, it fundamentally changes the character of the Windsor process and the covenant design process in which we thought all the Anglican Churches were participating together.
Third, it violates our founding principles as The Episcopal Church following our own liberation from colonialism and the beginning of a life independent of the Church of England.
Fourth, it is a very serious departure from our English Reformation heritage. It abandons the generous orthodoxy of our Prayer Book tradition. It sacrifices the emancipation of the laity for the exclusive leadership of high-ranking Bishops. And, for the first time since our separation from the papacy in the 16th century, it replaces the local governance of the Church by its own people with the decisions of a distant and unaccountable group of prelates.
Most important of all it is spiritually unsound. The pastoral scheme encourages one of the worst tendencies of our Western culture, which is to break relationships when we find them difficult instead of doing the hard work necessary to repair them and be instruments of reconciliation. The real cultural phenomenon that threatens the spiritual life of our people, including marriage and family life, is the ease with which we choose to break our relationships and the vows that established them rather than seek the transformative power of the Gospel in them. We cannot accept what would be injurious to this Church and could well lead to its permanent division.
At the same time, we understand that the present situation requires intentional care for those within our Church who find themselves in conscientious disagreement with the actions of our General Convention. We pledge ourselves to continue to work with them toward a workable arrangement. In truth, the number of those who seek to divide our Church is small, and our Church is marked by encouraging signs of life and hope. The fact that we have among ourselves, and indeed encourage, a diversity of opinion on issues of sexuality should in no way be misunderstood to mean that we are divided, except among a very few, in our love for The Episcopal Church, the integrity of its identity, and the continuance of its life and ministry.
In anticipation of the traditional renewal of ordination vows in Holy Week we solemnly declare that “we do believe the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation; and we do solemnly engage to conform to the doctrine, discipline, and worship of The Episcopal Church.” (Book of Common Prayer, page 513)
With this affirmation both of our identity as a Church and our affection and commitment to the Anglican Communion, we find new hope that we can turn our attention to the essence of Christ’s own mission in the world, to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to liberate the oppressed, and to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor (Luke 4:18-19). It is to that mission that we now determinedly turn.
Adopted March 20, 2007
The House of Bishops
The Episcopal Church
Spring Meeting 2007
Camp Allen Conference Center
Navasota, Texas

No Comments by George Swanson on March 20, 2007

filed in Church Politics, Gay & Lesbian, Injustice to Women

$lavery Today

Slavery not yet Abolished, Say Archbishops

By Ekklesia Staff Writers 17 Mar 2007

Forsaking the formalities of officialdom in their attempt to reach a new audience, the Archbishops of Canterbury and York have gone online to talk about the nature of the slave trade in readiness for the Walk of Witness to take place in London on Saturday 24 March 2007.

They highlight those elements of slavery that have not yet been ended – including the debt burden on the poorest and sex trafficking.

The joint reflection has been posted on YouTube. CLICK ON: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBTErUDIcz8

It is also accessible through the Archbishop of Canterbury’s web site. Go to: http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.org/sermons_speeches/

It was filmed at the site of the Slave Market in Zanzibar, now the island’s Anglican Cathedral, during the recent Anglican Primates Meeting – where the media focus had been more on the church’s row over sexuality.

The Archbishops were shown two small preserved slave pits, where up to 175 men, women and children were held in appalling conditions, chained and in darkness, often without food and water. Dr Sentamu spent some time at a memorial to the slaves which features some of the original chains used when the market was operating.

In the film, Dr Williams says that the experience brought home the reality of the trade: “You see there the fetters that were used for slaves, the fetters used to bring slaves in convoy, so that they could barely stand and walk, they were so closely shackled together; and to see some of the real, the actual shackles that were used until really very recently in this part of the world as part of the paraphernalia of the slave trade, it’s a reminder that it really happened, it really happened not very long ago.”

He says that the instinct to enslave is still very much present in the modern world: “It’s as if slavery is a kind of compulsion for human societies, people go back again and again to treating people as objects, as possessions, and I don’t think we can simply sit back and say ‘it’s a thing of the past and no more’. All those modern forms of slavery, economic slavery, debt slavery in effect, the slavery of sex trafficking; these things are still with us.”

Dr Sentamu says that holding the original chains was a harrowing experience: “I found the whole experience heart-rending … When I went outside and actually saw those figures – how slaves were tied together – and touched the actual chains that were used, I was rendered absolutely speechless. I felt I was going back in history, but I was also in the present where still slavery in some parts of the world still happens.

He declares: “Every person is made in the image and likeness of God, of great worth and of great value and to be treated with great dignity. In that place was almost I felt, almost like an altar where you couldn’t but take off your shoes … you were on holy ground – holy ground.”

The Archbishops’ YouTube talk has been issued in the run up to the Church’s Walk of Witness, to be held in London on 24 March. The walk will be led by both Archbishops and will culminate in an act of public worship in Kennington Park, where the two Anglican leaders will offer further reflections on the nature of the slave trade and its modern legacies.

More details of the walk can be found at http://www.makingourmark.org.uk/. The event has been organised by the Church of England’s Committee for Minority Ethnic Anglican Concerns (CMEAC).

Other church and civic leaders will join in, though there has been some criticism that the Established church is putting itself to the fore – just as there have been concerns that the focus on William Wilberforce has overlooked others who played a key role in ending the transtlantic slave trade – from which the Church of England itself profited at the highest levels.

Black historians and activists are furious that slave rebellions in the Caribbean are being marginalised in the way the story of abolition is being told. Indeed, black people are virtually invisible in the film Amazing Grace – even though there were 20,000 of them in London at the time, many taking an active interest in ending the iniquitous trade.

No Comments by George Swanson on March 19, 2007

filed in Injustice to Women, Money, Peace & Justice

Flowers of Evil

Most Mother’s Day Flowers
Will come from Exploited Workers says Report

By Ekklesia Staff Writers 15 Mar 2007

Flowers handed to mothers this Sunday will come from workers in developing countries who have risked their health for unsafe, insecure jobs supplying UK supermarkets, a new report suggests.

‘Growing Pains’ by anti-poverty charity War on Want investigates the human cost of cut flowers in British supermarkets, and calls on consumers to buy fair-trade flowers.

Supermarkets sell 70% of all the flowers bought in the UK – the highest proportion in Europe. But the workers in Colombia and Kenya supplying those flowers to the supermarkets face low wages, health problems and miscarriages through exposure to pesticides the report alleges.

Marks & Spencer, Tesco, Waitrose and Sainsbury’s are all named as sources from one or both of these countries. The report suggests that they have enormous influence over flower producers and ultimately the health and safety of workers.

Many UK businesses have adopted voluntary standards for their suppliers, but these are still failing to protect the health and safety of workers, the charity says.

War on Want is calling on the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry Alistair Darling to urge the government to introduce binding legislation to enforce corporate accountability. This, campaigners say, should give overseas workers the right of redress in the UK, i.e. the ability to seek compensation for damage to their health and loss of earnings as the result of actions of UK companies or their suppliers.

Flowers are likely to be the most popular Mother’s Day gift with £225m lavished on seven million bunches.

Although shoppers are increasingly aware of the environmental damage caused by pesticides and air miles, the report said they were “largely unaware” of the human price paid for their flowers by workers in poor countries.

A study of 8,000 flower workers in Bogota in 2002 found they had been exposed to 127 different pesticides, one fifth banned in the US for their toxicity.

Colombian flower workers – 65 per cent of whom are women – are being paid 50p an hour. In Kenya, the wage is £23 a month. Overtime is “compulsory” and workers have to put in longer hours in the run-up to celebrations such as Mother’s Day. Sexual harassment is “widespread”.

No Comments by George Swanson on March 16, 2007

filed in Injustice to Women, Money, Peace & Justice

Sex Trafficking in America

As you read these words a young man is waiting to pick up his next sex slave outside a group foster home near you. He is a pimp. He knows his job. He learned it when he was in jail for dealing drugs. “What you do,” he was told, “is find a group home for girls in a city a couple of hours away from where you live. Hang around there. Get to know one of those girls (ages 9 through 16) and treat her right for six to eight months. Take her to a movie. Buy her a steak dinner. Nobody’s ever treated her nice in her whole life. She’ll love you. Give her presents, whatever she wants. She’ll be eager to sleep with you. So do it often. Then, tell her you’ve had a bad month. Can’t pay the rent. Because you both would do anything for each other, ask her to sleep with a man who’ll pay your rent. Then take her back to your city and put her to work. Beat her up. Starve her a couple of days. She doesn’t know anybody to complain to. Cops don’t bother you. The competition won’t kill you like when you were dealing. She’ll do $500 worth of tricks a day. She gets busted and you bail her out. You get some more girls. You’re a rich man.”

I heard this from two speakers at Theological Opportunity Program meeting at the Harvard Divinity School on October 19, 2006. Lisa Goldblatt-Grace spoke about her work at the Home for Little Wanderers in Boston. Mei-Mei Ellerman spoke to us abut the Polaris Project.

Goldblatt-Grace speaks to girls at schools and in group homes, telling them the story in my first paragraph. Warning them. Ellerman is an academic whose children drew her into a new career of activism against the sex trade – here in America as well as world-wide.

Ellerman described a district in Washington, D.C., with 200 brothels, guarded by the police to keep things “orderly.” Leading male citizens are the regular Johns. Only the slaves get arrested on the occasional police “raids.” The Johns go back to their leadership roles in our democracy and the pimps post bail for their victims.

Check out:
http://www.polarisproject.org/polarisproject/
for information on the Polaris Project.

Stories from some of the victims are at:
http://www.slaverystillexists.org/

The Home for Little Wanderers is at:
http://www.thehome.org/site/content/index.asp

Katrina was right when she recited the Pledge of Allegiance, “With Liberty and Justice for Some.”

No Comments by George Swanson on October 22, 2006

filed in Injustice to Women, Sexual Abuse

What does God want PECUSA to do?

In each generation, the real ‘sacred’ of the Gospel will emerge quietly and gently, usually at the hands of those whom the strongest supporters of the sacred regard as inimicable to faith and good customs.

– James Alison in “Faith Beyond Resentment” page 181

James Alison’s many admirers will find in this book [Faith Beyond Resentment] . . . wit, clarity, depth and surprises.

– Rowan Williams

James Alison is the most fascinating theologian I have read for ages, both courageous and intellectually irresistible….

– Monica Furlong

Jesus may be calling the Episcopal Church to preach the Good News! How about that!

The Good News is:

EVERYONE IS WELCOME IN GOD’S FAMILY: INCLUDING WOMEN, GAYS, LESBIANS, BI-SEXUAL, AND TRANS-GENDERED!

We kind of fell into this after some ordinations.

First: After years of Anglican rejection of Florence Lee Tim Oy’s ordination in WWII, some Episcopalians ordained the Philadelphia Eleven and the Washington Four. That still causes acid reflux at home and abroad.

Second: New Hampshire chose a well known diocesan priest as its new bishop – and he was “one of those” for heaven’s sake.

The ordinations in Philadelphia, Washington and New Hampshire were done by Christian people following Jesus.

Why should we apologize or compromise or wait hat in hand outside the palaces of ecclesiastical monarchs?

Sure – we owe those who disagree a full, loving explanation of “the hope that is in us” as Paul says. We should explain why we think this is what God wants.

Conservatives do not have to justify their continuing to follow the holy (or unholy) traditions of God’s people.

We – those of us who have done a new thing – we owe it to God who has inspired our action . . .

We owe it to our conservative sisters and brothers who are shocked by our action . . .

What we owe is this . . .

To explain how God called us to do this as part of Jesus’ promise to “draw all people to myself.”

God has not left us without inspired witnesses. For instance: James Alison explains how the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans does not forbid gay and lesbian sexual intercourse. Instead it forbids Christians from going to pagan temples and worshipping false gods with gay and lesbian intercourse.

Check out:

http://www.jamesalison.co.uk/texts/eng15.html

Our conservative sisters and brothers who grieve at our welcoming women and gays and lesbians and bi-sexual and trans-gendered – they deserve our time for loving discussion with them about every verse in scripture that has been said to forbid women and gays and lesbians and bi-sexuals and trans-gendered Christians from 100% full membership in God’s Church.

Our vocation is to be truly evangelical – proclaiming the Good News of God’s welcome to all.

Let’s have some real prayerful Bible study – with people of all opinions – asking God to “open our hearts to your holy will.”

I’d like to study the Bible with you.

Would you be interested?

I’d like to hear from you.

George Swanson
george@katrinasdream.org

5 Comments by George Swanson on September 29, 2006

filed in Gay & Lesbian, Injustice to Women

Democrats: Missing the Boat Again?

Last weekend your fearless reporter was a first time delegate at the 2006 Maine Democratic Party Convention in Augusta.

Before I describe the problem, it was a SPIRITED, COMMITTED, EXCITED group of Americans.

We are determined to throw the rascals out. And may do it.

Great to be with them.

With ONE GLARING OMISSION the leadership was focused, generally not long winded, factual and inspiring. That’s pretty good, really.

Conventions can punish one’s sitting apparatus and mental alertness. The leaders pretty much kept us jumping up to applaud and agreeing with their rhetoric.

We have two excellent challengers for Senator Olympia Snow, probably very difficult to defeat. But either one of these two would be a great senator — Jean Hay Bright and Eric Mehnert.

We heard from party officials, Governor Baldacci, and other elected folk. The attorney general was magnificent. He is the dedicated enemy of injusice. (With one glaring omission.)

Senator Russell Feingold gave passionate, short, punchy reviews of what America needs to clean up the Republican mess – and also significant Democratic achievements. (Same glaring omission.) However, I would vote for him for president. He may be too decent to get elected though.

So what did they do WRONG?

They forgot Abigail Adams once again. It is the American way. The way of the world. We are good at forgetting.

She wrote to her beloved John when he was putting together our nation, “Remember the ladies.” He didn’t. After just barely giving women the vote, America hasn’t remembered much at all

Very, very few speakers at the convention even mentioned WOMEN for heaven’s sake! Not even mentioned.

Where was Laura Fortman, the dynamic head of the Maine Department of Labor? I don’t believe she spoke. She or one of her excellent team could have electrified the convention. Moved us to anger and action to correct the FORGOTTEN 51% of Americans. (And the children they care for – maybe another 20% of the population.)

One would think that a problem for 70% of Americans would get major attention at a wide awake political convention.

Earlier this year I had an exciting conversation with Ms. Fortman and some of her assistants about the ways in which women were still second class citizens. For instance women’s wages are about 25% less than for a man doing the same work.

Boy did I get my ears pinned back when I raised the question at the Hancock County Caucus after lunch.

It went this way.

About 75 good neighbors of mine from Hancock County were sitting idly while the votes were being counted for our representatives to the state Maine Democratic Committee. I raised my hand and asked if I could ask a question. The chair said OK. I said that I was a first time delegate, really impressed with what was happening. Grateful to be there. However I was concerned that I had not heard the men who were speaking raise the issue of injustice to women. I did not know what was in the platform. (Ordinary deleages do not have copies of the platform — we only vote on it.)

The chair deflected my question. He explained the fascinating history of the platform over the last few years. We could revise . . . etc etc etc. I heard a lot about platform and ZERO about women from the chair.

Then an amiable man who clearly has worked hard for the party kindly explained to me how I could propose anything I wanted for the next platform. I would go to the County platform committee and . . . etc etc etc. He explained how to get something into the platform in great detail.

I thanked him but said that my question had not been answered. I said, “Nobody is talking about WOMEN, the injustices they suffer. I had the pleasure of meeting Laura Fortman, Maine’s Secretary of Labor and some of her staff. They showed me the deep injustices to women in Maine (and in America.) Why weren’t WOMEN even mentioned here today?”

A woman said to me, “The Governor’s wife mentioned women’s issues.”

Getting hot under the collar I said, “If women’s issues can only be mentioned by women, then we have sent women back to the THE WOMEN’S AUXILIARY! We are taking the issue and saying ‘The hell with it.’”

A man near me objected to my language.

The chair was relieved to report that the counting was done. As it turned out we had elected two excellent women and an equally first rate man. All three will be a good influence on Maine Democrats and harass the Republicans. The meeting ajourned.

As I left I tried to reach the woman who had mentioned the Governor’s wife to see if we could get a cup of coffee and talk it over, but I missed her.

That wasn’t the end of it.

During the afternoon, I wandered around the hall, looked at the various booths and bought 10 bumper stickers, CLINTON LIED & NOBODY DIED. At different times during the afternoon three different women came up to me out of the blue. I didn’t know them from Abigail Adams. It was easy to find me with my bright red wind breaker. Each one took my hand and said something like, “I am so glad you raised that issue. Nobody else did. Thank you very much.”

Hey, Democrats, WOMEN are no fools. They know they are getting a bad deal. If we Democrats want to improve American – why not remember the ladies?

If we Democrats want to win elections – why not remember the 70%?

If simple justice matters – why not . . . etc.

Why not?

1 Comment by George Swanson on June 8, 2006

filed in Injustice to Women

Sally Hemings & Her Sisters

“When a woman says no to a man, she subliminally looks death in the face. Men have not only more physical strength—and the threat of that strength is always there, consciously or unconsciously—but in today’s society of inequality, men usually have more status and power than women. If women learn not to be afraid of death in all its forms, they will not hesitate appropriately to say no and stand firm. If men learn not to be afraid of death, they will not feel castrated or threatened when women oppose them.”

Maggie Ross, Pillars of Flame, Harper & Row, 1988, Page133

When Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson made love was she being sexually abused? The Episcopal Church would say she was. Under the influence of its primary insurance company, the church has notified clergy that dating parishioners can be sexual abuse. A number of older clergy laughed and said something like, “I dated Hilda in my first parish. It didn’t please the other girls’ mothers much. But most parishioners seemed to enjoy romance in their midst. We got married 39 years ago. It’s been good.” Nowadays it is sexual abuse to have intercourse with someone who is under you. Hey, don’t laugh. We’re talking hierarchy not Khama Sutra. (Another time we’ll take a look at hierarchy, a mental illness like colonialism.)

A college professor who sleeps with his student is committing sexual abuse. A manager at MacDonald’s is guilty of sexual abuse for sleeping with an employee. A wet behind the ears young priest is sexually abusing a parishioner if they sleep together – no matter if she begged him to do it. The priest, the manager and the professor have some authority over the parishioner, the employee, the student. Therefore the women cannot give full, free consent. And so, when Thomas Jefferson slept with his slave, Sally Hemings, this was sexual abuse, as defined by the Church Insurance Company.

Jefferson had authority over Sally Hemings. He owned 100% of her, like the chair he sat in or the porkchop he ate for dinner. When he died she may have been given her freedom while other slaves were sold to pay his massive debts. She had no freedom until it was given to her. This teenager may have enjoyed, desired, appreciated, begged to have intercourse with him. I doubt she could say, “Not tonight, Mr. Jefferson.” That makes it abuse.

OK, try this on for size.

Can an American husband have intercourse with his wife without committing sexual abuse? Stupid question? Consider this. Every American woman is economically beneath every American man. Sure, Sally’s modern sisters are not owned. However, their incomes are reported to be 25% less than any man for the same work. If a wife decides to leaves her man’s bed and become a single woman again, she will earn 25% less than a man. As the only care giver for the children from their nights together, she will raise her kids with 25% less money. She and her children will have 25% less food, clothing, medicine, education, housing — you name it. And in retirement it will get worse. Women understand this. Men generally don’t. That is the nature of hierarchy. (And colonialism.) The higher one is the less one understands.

Sure, an American woman is not a slave like Sally. She is only one fourth a slave. Maybe one eighth? One sixteenth? She doesn’t have to be freed, as Sally may have been, or sold like the other slaves and perhaps Sally’s children to pay for the French wine her sexual partner enjoyed. However, patient reader, can we say that the American wife is 100% free today? In our strange economy, is a woman really able to give full and free consent to her husband? Without blaming men or women or dogs or cats or God or Thomas Jefferson (Thank God for Thomas Jefferson!) – without any thought of blame – can anyone say that every woman is as free as any man to enjoy life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? She is any man’s equal if she has an independent income and a room of her own. Only then.

What do you think?

George Swanson, May 19, 2006

Some Sources: Sally Hemings:

http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/

http://www.monticello-assoc.org/hemings.html

http://www.geocities.com/nstix/jeffersonhemings.html

http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/hemi-sal.htm

http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0206951/

http://www.famouspeople.com/famous/60.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sally_Hemings

http://edition.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0005/07/sm.08.html

http://www.ashbrook.org/articles/mayer-hemings.html

http://www.monticello.org/plantation/lives/sallyhemings.html

http://www.angelfire.com/va/TJTruth/

Women’s Income

http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-databook2005.htm

http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table16-2005.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table17-2005.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table18-2005.pdf

http://www.bls.gov/cps/wlf-table19-2005.pdf

No Comments by George Swanson on May 20, 2006

filed in Life & Death, Sexual Abuse

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