I’ve been feeling uninspired to write anything recently. I could write about politics, but everyone writes about politics. I could write about Kim Jong-Il, but he’s crazy (sorry, he’s a non-rational actor) and everyone’s talking about North Korea (and not enough people are talking about how we can’t take North Korea on because we’re overextended elsewhere … oops, did I say that?).

I’m not giving Mark Foley another thought. There comes a point in your life when claiming that you were abused by a priest in no way makes up for discussing penis size with one of your 16 year old pages. (Check it out over at Towleroad if you haven’t seen the unedited version of that little bit of correspondence…) He’s now a disgrace to gays and people who were molested as children.
What’s a blogger to do when faced with being a Writer’s Blockhead?

Time for another random round-up. (For the record, I don’t know anyone who uses the term ’round-up’. This is Texas, but I grew up in Ohio, and I’m doing it for the alliteration.)

What the hell is up with the Argentine death cult?

If you’ve seen Evita (and don’t deny it — even I’ve seen Evita, and I’m not that big a fan of Madonna) you’re probably aware that the Argentines sure do love their Peróns. In fact, they’re moving Juan Perón to a big new $1.1 million crypt away from the center of Buenos Aires where he can rest in peace … until the next time they decide to dig him up and move him around. Juan Perón died in 1974. Just so we’re all clear on this. Loyal Perónists want to move his beloved wife (Eva, not Isabel, and certainly not his first wife whose name no one seems to know) to be out there with him. Evita’s family seems to think she’s been through enough already (what with her body having been moved to Italy under an assumed name for a few decades), and would like her to stay where she is, in the family crypt.

I suppose that the title that I just gave this section might be a little misleading — the Argentines don’t have a death cult so much as a slightly bizarre (to the outside observer) obsession with two dead people. Someone was so obsessed with Juan’s corpse that they broke into his crypt in the late 1980s and stole his hands. WTF? We have some pretty revered folks in our history, too, and as far as I am aware, George Washington, Abe Lincoln, and Ben Franklin still have their hands. What on earth would possess someone to decide that their life wouldn’t be complete unless they owned Juan Perón’s hands? I mean: ewwww.

All I’m saying here is: let the poor couple rest in peace. Haven’t they been moved about enough? Or do we need to do it one more time, just for old time’s sake?

On Tony Blair and the Veil

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has an opinion on Muslim women’s fashion. This may surprise many of you, as it did me, given that I was previously unaware of Blair’s academic background either in Women’s and Gender Studies or in Islamic Studies, but since he has issued an opinion, I guess I must be wrong. After all, no political leader would stand up and make an assertation that they weren’t qualified to make, would they?
At the heart of Blair’s newly revealed talents is a national debate raging in Britain about the Muslim population and the alienation and ostracization that’s been taking place since the July 11, 2005 bombings (which, as you will recall, were carried out by members of the British Muslim community). There’s a lot of talk about the need to integrate and assimilate the Muslim community into the greater population and society (resistance is futile), which can be a good thing, so long as Britain (and other western nations) realize that this is a two-way street–the host populations are often just as unwilling to assimilate the newcomers as the newcomers are to be assimilated.

However, as is usual with debates like this that become highly politicized, the national dialogue appears to have run off the road and into a tree. At the center of this particular tangent is the niqab, the full face veil with the slit for the eyes that ultra-conservative women wear in the Middle East and some other Islamic countries. A couple of weeks ago, Jack Straw, ex-Foreign Minister and now leader of the House of Commons, said that Muslim women visiting his office need to remove their veils. A teaching assistant in northern England has been suspended for refusing to remove her veil while she works because it ‘impedes her ability to perform her job.’ I’ve seen women in grocery stores in Saudi Arabia juggle three children and a useless husband all while wearing a niqab, but I suppose that’s different.

Check this out:

And any woman who prays or proclaims God’s message in public worship with nothing on her head disgraces her husband; there is no difference between her and a woman whose head has been shaved. If the woman does not cover her heard, she might as well cut her hair. And since it is a shameful thing for a woman to shave her head or cut her hair, she should cover her head.

That’s not from the Qur’an, by the way. (I have the source here in invisi-text: 1 Corinthians 11:5)

I get the idea behind a veil being some sort of symbol of respect for a higher power. I also happen to find the niqab a little creepy, and I’m all for fewer women wearing them as a general rule of thumb. (Of course, I also happen to be gay and am not treating the women in question like a sex object, which is the whole raison d’etre for the thing in the first place.)

The following quote from Dr. Blair is what gets me:

People want to know that the Muslim community in particular but actually all minority communities have got the balance right between integration and multiculturalism … when people do integrate more, they achieve more as well. There is a reason why minority communities that have integrated well then end up doing better, achieving more, attaining more.

The question here is this: how does a government ‘encourage’ integration without doing something like legislating which languages we speak at home? Or passing a national dress code? Or — wait for it — regulating public and private behaviors?  If we start down this road, where does it end?  And does anyone else see how this could easily become an issue for other communities than British Muslims?
As Chandler Bing once said: Can–open.  Worms–everwhere.

I raise the question because there are no easy answers.  I don’t have the answer.  I recognize there’s an issue that needs resolving, and I am happy to stand here and say: this is a tough one. I don’t know what the answer is.
And you, my friends, would do well to mistrust any politician who tries to tell you otherwise.