More on the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act

 More on the Gutting of the Voting Rights Act

April 30, 2026

The more I think about what the Supreme Court did yesterday to the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the madder I get. That decision is white supremacy in action and nothing else. It undoes decades of work on overcoming American racism. It slaps all who marched in the Civil Rights Movement in the face, and it says to those who gave their lives in that movement that their martyrdom doesn’t matter. It takes the US back decades in time, to an era when white supremacy was unchecked and Blacks has essentially no rights at all. At least it does that with regard to voting. Will the bigoted majority on the Supreme Court attack the Civil Rights Act of 1964 next? I would be more than appalled if they do, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised. Strict constructionists want the Constitution to mean only what it meant in 1789. But in 1789, our so-called Founding Fathers owned slaves as did nearly every wealthy person in the south and some wealthy persons in the north. The Constitution said a slave was only 3/5 of a person. People were owned, held, and sold as chattel property. We’ve still got a long way to go, but we have nonetheless come a long way since then. The racist majority on the Supreme Court wants to take us backwards not forward, and, because the Supreme Court has the final say on what the law is and what the law means, there isn’t one God-damned thing we can do about it. A Supreme Court decision that is only a ruling on a federal law can be overcome by changing the law; but a Supreme Court decision based on an interpretation of the Constitution can be overcome only if the Court itself overturns it or the Congress and the states amend the Constitution. That certainly isn’t going to happen. So Black Americans are fucked when it comes to voting, and that means we’re all fucked when it comes to voting. I don’t actually believe in damnation, but nonetheless I’ll say: God damn the majority of justices of the United States Supreme Court.

SCOTUS Guts the Civil Rights Act

 This is the text of a letter I sent today to our local newspaper;

On April 29, 2026, the United States Supreme Court delivered what may turn out to be the final, fatal blow to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. It ruled that states may not adjust congressional districts to improve the chances minority communities have of having actual representation in Congress. That result completely ignores the reality of racial discrimination with regard to voting in this country, but it's even worse than that. We can be sure that the Supreme Court will do nothing to stop states from gerrymandering districts to see that minority communities do not have representation in Congress. That too is racial gerrymandering, but it is a type of it of which the Supreme Court majority, Donald Trump, and Trump's MAGA supporters approve. The issue is not racial gerrymandering. It is who benefits from a state's racial gerrymandering. The Supreme Court says whites do, and we all have to live with that unconscionable conclusion, a truly tragic result.

On Human Sexuality

 On Human Sexuality

April 26, 2026

Just saw once again a TV Allstate ad in which two young people who want to spend time together don’t because her family roots for North Carolina and he roots for Duke. I mean, how stupid can you get? I thought: Two young people want to spend time together. That’s a good thing. Will they go somewhere and have sex? Well, as long is the sex is consensual and done safely, what’s wrong with that? Sorry Christian tradition. You have handled human sexuality so badly that all I can do is reject nearly everything you’ve ever had to say about it and adopt an ethic based love that doesn’t say sex is inherently sinful. It’s not. It can be one of life’s greatest joys. We are, after all, sexual people. That’s how God created us. Yes, sex has to do with reproduction, but there is a whole lot more to human sexuality than that. It is physically more pleasurable than anything else; but, beyond that, it is the most intimate thing two people can do together. It can bring two people closer together better than anything else can. Yes, it is emotionally fraught. It can be and far too often is abused, used for harm rather than for good. But that doesn’t make sex inherently sinful. It isn’t. Misuse of it it, but all kinds of things that are good can be misused for evil. Sex is not unique in that regard. Christianity has for so long seen sex as something inherently evil, something the church has to control and limit, something people really shouldn’t want to do except with a marriage between one woman and one man. In other words, Christianity has for ages, perhaps always, so gotten human sexuality all wrong, that we really do need to reject traditional Christian sexual dogma and get real about what human sexuality really is and about the constructive role it can play in people’s lives beyond the very narrow context in which Christianity has said it’s morally permissible.

April 7, 2026

 I am taking a new antidepressant for my clinically diagnosed depression. It may be working. But my asshole president Donald Trump has me plunged into depression nonetheless. He has said he will destroy Iranian civilization tonight if they don’t open the Strait of Hormuz, which was, of course, open before he began his illegal and sinful war. I don’t know if he’ll order it done. I don’t know if the US military will obey him if he does, any order he may give for them to do it being, obviously, illegal under both domestic and international law. I just know that even if he doesn’t or they don’t, I live in a pariah country. I live in a country led by a madman and in which no one is willing or able to stop him. I live in a country in which something like 40% of its people support this madman and his insane actions and statements. I fear that my tax dollars, already being used for grossly immoral purposes, will be used to finance genocide. I pray for peace. I wish I had better hope that it will come.