Thursday, June 8, 2006

BLINDNESS SFGate: "The Senate easily defeated for the second time in two years a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, a measure that opponents dismissed as an attempt by Republicans to excite conservatives increasingly disenchanted with President Bush and the GOP-led Congress." BBC: "The Dutch ambassador to Estonia, Hans Glaubitz, is leaving the country, complaining of persistent racist and homophobic abuse. Mr Glaubitz said he and his partner, a black Cuban man, were regularly insulted when they went out." The situation in the 'new' European countries reminds me of Die Blendung (Auto-Da-Fe), a novel by Elias Canetti. "The protagonist is Peter Klein, a forty-year-old sinologist. He knows much of ancient languages but is unable to decipher contemporary voices. He himself was the owner of the most important private library in the whole of this great city. However, he allows himself to get into the clutches of his ignorant and grasping housekeeper Therese Krummholz, nearing 60, whom he marries, and who robs him of everything." Klein is an abstract thinker who doesn't understand reality and as a result that which he so desperately tries to protect is destroyed. The housekeeper he marries only wants to profit from him and chase him from the house. Klein is blind to reality. Since the fall of Communism in eastern Europe, some groups are taking advantage of their 'freedom' to attack Jews and gay people. And Bush and his neocon fundamentalists also are intolerant hooligans. NewsFromUnderground: "In a June 5 letter to counsel for Servicemembers Legal Defense Network (SLDN), the National Security Agency (NSA) says it will 'neither confirm nor deny the existence or non-existence' of information that may have been obtained through agency surveillance of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community." 11:35:20 AM

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