More Reviews Needed

I need two more reviews for Reconstruction if anyone is interested:

The website:

"Forest Park: A Journal" by Joel Weishaus

This would be for the Rhetorics of Place issue and would need to be reviewed in 7 days (next wednesday), but would be published at the end of this month!

The novel:

Sweetwater
by Roxanna Robinson

Would be included in the "water" theme issue in the spring of 2006

Leave a message in the comments with an email if you are interested.

Reviewers Needed

I need reviews of these two books (to be published in Reconstruction http://www.reconstruction.ws ):

City of Flows: Modernity, Nature, and the City
by Maria Kaika (NY: Routledge, 2005)
ISBN 0-415-94715-4

Water, Race, and Disease
by Werner Troesken (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004)
ISBN 0-262-20148-8

If interested leave me a message in the comments with an email to contact you.

I'm also seeking reviews of books, films or websites in regards to the theme of "place" for a special issue on the "Rhetorics of Place."

Amanda Marcotte: On the Supposed Problems With the "F" Word

(Courtesy of Evan Derkacz)

Nothing To It
by Amanda Marcotte
Pandagon

"The problem with feminism is not the word. The problem is that equality for women is a controversial idea. When I write about specific feminist issues, the bile comes out not at the word "feminist" but at the idea that women exist for our own reasons and not at the disposal of men. You could call it "suckacockism" and people would still hate it as long as you were calling for women's social, economic and political equality."

Rest of the Post

James Moore: Karl and Karma

(Courtesy of Evan Derkacz)

Karl and Karma
by James Moore
Huffington Post

Down here in Texas, many of us have almost given up on obscure concepts like justice and the ephemeral notion of karma. Since the late 1970s, we have watched Karl Rove push so hard on ethical boundaries that he has turned lying into a conventional political tactic. Instead of being prosecuted or humiliated, he has risen in the Republican Party. And there are already signs he is a few steps ahead of the federal investigators trying to resolve the mysteries of the Valerie Plame affair.

He always starts his evasions by parsing language and law. Rove's attorney has quickly conceded that his client spoke to Matt Cooper of Time, and other reporters. This is the presidential advisor sending forth his minions to frame the ensuing discussion.

"Of course, I talked to the reporters," the reasoning goes, "I've got the same First Amendment rights in the White House as every other citizen."

Positioning is Rove's favorite political sport and that's the purpose of this admission. It's a metaphorical "so what" shrug of the shoulders. But the sub text of Rove's words shows another strategy. The presidential advisor undoubtedly knows he is guilty of a federal crime but, for obvious political reasons, he needs it to be something less than treason. Perjury will be his default position. The political harm to be done to his president and his party for a conviction of treason is incalcuable.

And the federal investigators appear to be making a case for perjury. The American Prospect has already reported that, in his 2003 appearances before the federal grand jury, Rove said he had not spoken to reporters about Valerie Plame's identity until after her name was published in Robert Novak's column. Unfortunately for Rove, early reports indicate that the e-mails being turned over to the federal prosecutor by Time magazine apparently show Rove was in communication with reporter Matt Cooper well in advance of Novak's piece. Sending such e-mails directly from his West Wing computer is not the kind of mistake Rove can be expected to make but Cooper's identification of his source through Time communications ought to facilitate a simple case of perjury against Rove, particularly if Judith Miller of the New York Times can be compelled to stop protecting a source who appears to have betrayed the entire country.

Rest of the Essay

Karen Armstrong: The Battle For God

Karen Armstrong's introduction to her history of fundamentalism:

Excerpt:

One of the most startling developments of the late twentieth century has been the emergence within every major religious tradition of a militant piety popularly known as "fundamentalism." Its manifestations are sometimes shocking. Fundamentalists have gunned down worshippers in a mosque, have killed doctors and nurses who work in abortion clinics, have shot their presidents, and have even toppled a powerful government. It is only a small minority of fundamentalists who commit such acts of terror, but even the most peaceful and law-abiding are perplexing, because they seem so adamantly opposed to many of the most positive values of modern society. Fundamentalists have no time for democracy, pluralism, religious toleration, peacekeeping, free speech, or the separation of church and state. Christian fundamentalists reject the discoveries of biology and physics about the origins of life and insist that the Book of Genesis is scientifically sound.

Rest of the introduction:

The Battle For God

Happy Fourth of July!: Here Is What I Think of Trickle Down Economics

(Courtesy of the newly wed Rob and Linda)

Reconstruction: 5.1

(I'm the new review editor for Reconstruction--so if anyone is interested in writing for us let me know. I'm looking for reviews of books, films, music and websites. The only requirement is that you make a strong statement for its cultural significance--whether positive or negative or somewhere in-between--leave a message in the comments if you are interested)

We are proud to announce the latest issue of Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture (vol.5, no.1) at Reconstruction ISSN:
1547- 4348. With this issue we introduce a "new look" thanks to the technical wizardry of Benjamin Lefebvre.

Included in this issue are:

Camelia Elias, "The Graveyard of Genre: David Markson's Postmodern
Epitaphs"

Philip Leonard, "Spivak after Marx after Derrida"

Simone Roberts, "Burn the Panopticon: Irigaray's Ethics, Difference, Poetics"

Jake Kennedy, "'But who is any longer interested in the possible?': Kathy Acker in Hell Failing Fuck You"

Anthony Lambert, "I Connect Therefore I Am: Connectivity and Networking in Bodies, Technologies, Communities, and Selves"

David Houston Jones, "The Body Eclectic: Viewing Bodily Modification in David Nebreda"

...as well as several new book reviews and review essays.

Additionally, submissions for our future issues are also being actively
solicited: Reconstruction Info

Please see editorial guidelines as published on the site for further
information regarding contributions to Reconstruction. Reconstruction is a peer-reviewed journal, and indexed in the MLA International Bibliography.

We are also currently seeking reviewers: Contact Thivai in the comments below and he will hook you up.

If you would like to receive our newsletter, with important updates, new reviews, and notifications about calls for papers and forthcoming issues, please join our community list at:

Reconstruction Community

Another Infected Cow is Found in Texas

My thinking is that it is sort of similar to cockroach infestation in houses, if you see one you should worry, as you know there are thousands more hidden behind the baseboard:

Experts Don't Expect More Cases of Mad Cow

Moderate Christian Group Asks: "Since When Was God Pro-War and Pro-Rich"

'Reclaim our faith': America's pulpit politics take a left turn
Posted at Yahoo

America's moderate and progressive evangelists, outgunned for years by the mighty "religious right," are demanding their own share of the political action.

Their mantra, in a building campaign against conservative Christians, a key constituency of President George W. Bush, is: "Since when was God pro-war, and pro-rich?

"There is a silent majority of moderate and progressive Christians out there and other people of faith who have felt completely left out of the conversation," Jim Wallis, a leading evangelical activist, told AFP.

Christians opposed to Bush, the most overtly religious president of modern times, say his war in Iraq, and tax cuts which they claim favor the rich, do not square with a faith which teaches followers to love their neighbor.

"We can no longer stand by and watch people speak hatred, division, war and greed in the name of our faith," said Patrick Mrotek, founder of the new Christian Alliance for Progress. "We must reclaim our faith."

Left-leaning Christians shudder at the prominence of conservative televangelists like Reverend Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who preside over vast political empires.

They are seething over comments Robertson made on the ABC News Show "This Week" in May, which implied "liberal" judges were more of a threat to America than "a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."

But Republicans say their politics are deeply rooted in faith.

"We are called by our Creator to use this gift of freedom to build a more compassionate society -- where families are strong, life is valued and the poor and the sick can count on the love and help of their neighbors," Bush said in a satellite address in June to the Southern Baptist Convention, one of the most influential conservative evangelical groups.

Pulpit politics in America came under renewed scrutiny after exit polls suggested that voters prioritising "morals" may have swung last November's election to Bush over Democratic challenger John Kerry.

And they are about to be thrust right back into the political arena, as religious groups of all stripes blitz the airwaves in the fight for the Supreme Court seat left vacant on Friday by Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement.

Nomination battles could turn on issues like the separation of church and state and the fight over whether abortion should remain legal.

Religion and politics are perhaps more intertwined in the intensely religious United States than in any other developed Western nation.

"Religion has enormous political power -- it is very loud, it gets access to the press and to government power," said Marci Hamilton, author of the book "Religion and the Rule of Law."

A Newsweek poll in December 2004 found that 79 percent of Americans believed the Virgin birth was literal truth.

A national exit poll after the election found that 59 percent of Protestants and 52 percent of Roman Catholics voted for Bush, along with 78 percent of evangelicals and 61 percent of people who go to church weekly.

Each constituency was carefully courted by Bush in his first term, and Republicans have been far more proficient than Democrats at God talk.

But activists like Wallis, who heads the Sojourners national faith-based group, see a huge silent majority that could benefit Democrats in future elections.

"If Democrats just talk policy and don't talk about moral issues, they are going to keep on losing," warned Wallis, whose book "God's Politics" camped out in The New York Times bestseller list for 16 weeks.

But can a fledgling "religious left" movement take on the conservative Christian establishment, which boasts television stations, newswires and a direct line to the White House?

The religious right's allies in the powerful conservative talk radio sector are ready to smother any progressive Christian movement at birth.

"The religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else," the high priest of conservative talk radio, Rush Limbaugh, said on his show April 27. "They despise it because they fear it and it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes, that God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance."

AFP 2005

Article Link

For a good example of progressive Christians check out the excellent publication Sojourners

Eminent Domain in Action, Pt. 3: Oakland Seizes Small Businesses' Properties

The new Supreme Court ruling has now opened up the opportunity for cities, in collusion with large corporate interests, to target individual and small-business properties, so that huge sprawling complexes of hotels, condos, ballparks and corporate headquarters can be erected (supposedly in the public interest). Harry at Scratchings supplies us with another example of a small business owner whose family has owned a property in downtown Oakland since 1949:

OAKLAND: City forces out 2 downtown businesses. Action follows high court ruling on eminent domain

Previous reports:

Eminent Domain in Action, Pt. 2

And the Rockets Red Glare...

Each firework going off in the sky... what does it represent?

(Courtesy of Bill at Thoughts on the Eve of the Apocalypse)



Z Communications

A Seriously Good Rant

Ricia over at Impetus Java House blows off some steam by writing one of my favorite rants this year. Check it out:

Open Letter to Known Shit Heads, Pt. 1

Rebecca Solnit: The Silence of the Lambswool Cardigan

The Silence of the Lambswool Cardigans
By Rebecca Solnit
Originally printed in Orion
Reposted at Alternet

There was a time not so long ago when everything was recognizable not just as a cup or a coat, but as a cup made by so-and-so out of clay from this bank on the local river or woven by the guy in that house out of wool from the sheep visible on the hills. Then, objects were not purely material, mere commodities, but signs of processes, human and natural, pieces of a story, and the story as well as the stuff sustained life. It's as though every object spoke -- some of them must have sung out -- in a language everyone could hear, a language that surrounded every object in an aura of its history.

"All commodities are only definite masses of congealed labor-time," said Marx, but who now could dissolve them into their constituent histories of labor and materials, into the stories that made them about the processes of the world, made them part of life even if they were iron or brick, made them come to life? For decades tales have circulated of city kids who didn't know that milk came from cows, and more recently the inability of American teenagers to find Iraq on a map made the rounds, but who among us can picture precisely where their sweater or their sugar comes from?

I've been thinking about that because a new shopping mall has opened up at the eastern foot of the Bay Bridge, in what was once, according to the newspaper, the biggest shell mound in northern California (though the town I grew up in claimed the same distinction for the Miwok mound it bulldozed -- without excavation for a shopping center -- in the 1950s). From the 1870s to the 1920s, this place was Shellmound Park, an amusement park, racetrack, dance hall, and shooting range, but Prohibition put the pleasure grounds out of business and the mound was bulldozed for industry. The remains of seven hundred Ohlone people that an archaeologist snatched from the construction site in 1924 are still at the University of California at Berkeley. Meanwhile, the industrialized site hosted paint and pesticide factories that eventually made it into a wasteland so toxic that those venturing into it wore moonsuits. It was reclaimed for shopping, and the cleanup disturbed the Ohlone remains that hadn't already been bulldozed.

The street that goes out there is still called Shellmound, but the mall itself hosts all the usual chains that make it impossible to know if you're in Phoenix or Philadelphia: Victoria's Secret, Williams-Sonoma, Express, all three versions of the Gap corporation, including Old Navy and Banana Republic, all laid out on a fake Main Street. Anti-Gap protestors haven't arrived yet, though they are frequent presences in downtown San Francisco, decrying both the Gap's reliance on sweatshop labor and the clearcutting of old-growth redwood forests in Mendocino owned by the Gap's CEO (see Gap Sucks ). But the day the mall opened, activists from the International Indian Treaty Council handed out flyers protesting the desecration of a burial ground. As a substitute for protecting the actual site, the city of Emeryville has offered a website with information about it, as if a place could be relocated to cyberspace. The mall is a distinctly modern site, a space that could be anywhere into which commodities come as if out of nowhere.

In "The Making of the English Working Class," Engels recounts the crimes behind the production of everyday things -- ceramics, ironware, glass, but particularly cotton cloth. He wrote in a time when objects were first becoming silent, and he asked the same thing that the activists from Gapsucks.org do, that we learn the new industrial languages of objects, that we hear the story of children worked into deformity and blindness to make lace, the story of the knifegrinders with a life expectancy of thirty-five years, or nowadays the tales of sweatshop, prison, and child labor. These industrial stories have always been environmental stories too, about factory effluents, cotton chemicals, the timber industry, the petrochemical industry.

Somewhere in the Industrial Age, objects shut up because their creation had become so remote and intricate a process that it was no longer readily knowable. Or they were silenced, because the pleasures of abundance that all the cheap goods offered were only available if those goods were mute about the scarcity and loss that lay behind their creation. Modern advertising -- notably for Nike -- constitutes an aggressive attempt to displace the meaning of the commodity from its makers, as though you enter into relationship with very tall athletes rather than, say, very thin Vietnamese teenagers when you buy their shoes. It is a stretch to think about Mexican prison labor while contemplating Victoria's Secret lavender lace boycut panties. The Western Shoshone rancher and land-rights activist Carrie Dann, whose own family graveyard has been flooded by a goldmine pumping out groundwater to get at the gold below, once remarked to me that everyone who buys gold jewelry should have the associated spent ore delivered to their house. At Nevada's mining rates, that would mean a hundred tons of toxic tailings for every one-ounce ring or chain you buy.

The objects are pretty; their stories are hideous, so you get to choose between an alienated and ultimately meaningless world and one that makes terrible demands on you. Most consumers prefer meaningless over complicated, and therefore prefer that objects remain silent. To tell their tales is to be the bearer of bad news -- imagine activists as Moses coming down from Sinai but cutting straight to Leviticus, the forty thousand prohibitions: against shrimp (see Monterey Bay Aquarium), against strawberries (methyl bromide, stoop labor; see Eric Schlosser and Strawberries), against gold (see Great Basin Mine Watch), and on and on. It's what makes radicals and environmentalists seem so grumpy to the would-be consumer.

Maybe the real question is what substances, objects, and products tell stories that don't make people cringe or turn away. For the past half century the process of artmaking has been part of its subject, and this making becomes a symbolic act that attempts to substitute for the silence of all the other objects. But nobody lives by art alone. There's food from the wild, from your own garden, from friends, ancient objects salvaged and flea-marketed, heirlooms and hand-me-downs, local crafts, and a few things still made with the union label, but it's not easy for anyone to stay pure of Payless and Wal-Mart. Good stories, too -- pricey organic and free-range and shade-grown food that is only available in the hipper stores of the fancier regions -- can be a luxury.

Some of the enthusiasm for farmer's markets, which are springing up like mushrooms after rain, is of meeting objects that aren't mute, because you see the people who grew the produce and know the places they come from are not far away. This alternative economy feeds people who want to be nourished by stories and connections, and it's growing. Some farmer's markets are like boutiques with little bunches of peas or raspberries displayed and priced like jewels, but I go to an intensely multiethnic mobscene called Heart of the City Farmer's Market. The food, even some of the organic stuff, is pretty cheap and everyone is present, including the homeless who hang out in that downtown plaza all week anyway, and the locals who use the market to make up for the way supermarkets boycott poor neighborhoods. Seeing the thorn scars on the hands of the rose growers there was as big a step in knowing what constitutes my world as realizing that, in this town where it never snows, our tapwater is all Sierra snowmelt.

What bothers me about the mall is its silence, a silence we mostly live in nowadays; what cheers me are the ways people are learning to read the silent histories of objects and choosing the objects that still sing.

Rebecca Solnit wrote the essay for photographer John Pfahl's new book Extreme Horticulture. It's titled "The Botanical Circus, or, Adventures in American Gardening."

This article originally appeared in Orion, 187 Main Street, Great Barrington, MA 01230, 888/909-6568, ($35/year for 6 issues).

© 2005 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online

Eminent Domain in Action, Pt. 2

On June 23 Supreme Court Rules Cities May Seize Homes and already Cleveland has begun the charge to claim private property for corporate use, in this case Progressive insurance (from a post on Scratchings):

Eminent domain: Progressive seeks man's land in Mayfield Village

Most telling is the city's condemnation of the private property as not being used effectively (the man uses it for storage, work and research, not for a residence--is Progressive planning on housing its executives in their headquarters?) and the city's rosy understanding of Progressive's benefit to the community structure (when we know the tax breaks that are cut for corporate move like this).

More and more Corporations Rule the World

NOW: Milton Glaser and the Design of Dissent

NOW



Intro to the show which I am watching as I write this--Highly Recommended!:

The careful crafting of images and messages on TV, in advertising, and in politics is shaping the way Americans think and act. In uncertain times, legendary graphic artist and marketer Milton Glaser is questioning how people's responses to these symbolic messages is affecting democracy. David Brancaccio interviews Glaser for his thoughts on what the intersection of design and politics has done to the way Americans discern between truth and propaganda and how it's affected our ability to question the politics of the moment. "Everything is spun in terms of achieving a certain result," he says. "The fascinating thing about it is that the public, who's grown up conditioned by advertising, perfectly accepts political misrepresentation this way." For over 50 years, Milton Glaser has not only influenced the world of graphic design, but has had an impact on American culture. A founder of NEW YORK MAGAZINE, which became the model for city magazines around the nation, Glaser has worked in a wide range of design disciplines including print graphics and corporate identity, environmental and interior design, as well as design in publishing, music, theater, film, and civic enterprise. His 1976 "I ♥ NY logo" has been described as "the most frequently imitated logo design in human history." Glaser's work has been exhibited world-wide, and he is represented in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. His recent exhibition and book THE DESIGN OF DISSENT, which showcases over 100 political posters and other graphic art from around the world, examines the graphic response to the constraints of government to expose the truth beneath the surface of public discourse.

The NOW site which includes many other sources



The Design of Dissent Exhibit

Stan Goff: It's Time To Build a Mass Movement

(Courtesy of Scratchings and The River)

It’s time to build a mass movement
by Stan Goff
Feral Scholar

Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy. It’s time to re-learn those lessons and build a new progressive mass movement in the United States.

Mass movements are against the law

Mass movements exist outside electoral politics, and outside the law, or they don’t exist at all. Mass movements are never respecters of law and order. How can they be? A mass movement is an assertion of popular leadership by the people themselves. A mass movement aims to persuade courts, politicians and other actors to tail behind it, not the other way around. Mass movements accomplish this through appeals to shared sets of deep and widely held convictions among the people they aim to mobilize, along with acts or credible threats of sustained and popular civil disobedience.

Politicians are elected and selected, but mass movements transform societies. Judges uphold, strike down, or invent brand new law, but mass movements drag the courts, laws and officeholders all in their wake. Progressive and even partially successful mass movements can alter the political calculus for decades to come, thus improving the lives of millions. Social Security, the New Deal, and employer-provided medical care didn’t come from the pen of FDR. The end of “separate but equal” didn’t come from the lips of any judge, and voting rights were not simply granted by the Voting Rights Act of 1965. All these were hard-won outcomes of protracted struggle by progressive mass movements, every one of which operated outside the law and none of which looked to elected officials or the corporate media of those days for blessings or legitimacy.

Entire Essay

And Then It Got Worse...: The Darkness Before the Storm

O'Connor, First Woman on High Court, Resigns After 24 Years

Cory Doctorow: Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

I haven't read this yet, but I am very interested and will probably get a copy to read on my trip to Banff, Canada in July.

What I want to do here is just say thanks to Cory for staying true to his creative commons philosophy by once again concurrently making the book available online. I still enjoy my books in "book-form," but I appreciate the symbolic gesture and I'll definitely get a hardback copy (something I rarely pay for at cost).

Website for Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town

Also Cory's weblog:

Craphound

Silja J.A. Talvi: Torture Fatigue

Torture Fatigue
By Silja J.A. Talvi
In These Times

“The Christian in me says it’s wrong,” Army Specialist Charles A. Graner Jr. said of torturing prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. “But the corrections officer in me says I love to make a grown man piss himself.”

Photos taken of him demeaning captives at Abu Ghraib exposed Graner as the sadist that his surroundings allowed him to be. But are the differences between brutal correctional officers like Graner and other Americans as stark as we would like to think?

An acquaintance of mine recently admitted how much he enjoyed watching the torture scenes in the new blockbuster, Sin City. “I know it’s strange,” he said, “but there’s something I get out of seeing torture and violence like that on the screen. It’s like it’s some kind of release.”

Entire Essay

Also check out from Psychology Matters:

Demonstrating the Power of Social Situations via a Simulated Prison Experiment

Logo: First American Basic Cable Channel Devoted to Gay Programming Launches Tonight

This is a good move to increase positive representation of homosexuals during a repressive period.

In regards to the article I can sympathize with Monica Mehta's enthusiasm, but it is kind of naive to state that this station is the "kind that doesn't have any 'agenda'"? Doesn't it seek to portray homosexual populations in a positive light? Isn't that an agenda?

Merriam Webster

Main Entry: agen·da
Pronunciation: &-'jen-d&
Function: noun
Etymology: Latin, neuter plural of agendum, gerundive of agere
1 : a list or outline of things to be considered or done {agendas of faculty meetings}
2 : an underlying often ideological plan or program {a political agenda}

Mehta just because you think that Logo is a good idea, doesn't mean that Logo does not have an "agenda" and by stating that it doesn't we are misleading and easily dismissed as liars.

I'm tired of the fake bullshitting that has been going on at all levels of our society, demands that we should honor the rules of polite society and lets keep that for a time when the children aren't around (or for many people groups of people that they may believe lack mature sense: e.g. women, poor, minorities, etc...) The hell with that, look people in the eye and state yes we do have an agenda (if you have faith in your cause, state what it is--even when your cause is simply to entertain gay people). Tell people what it is and why you believe it is a positive agenda.

As for this polite society crap... don't get me started!

A small complaint in regards to an otherwise good posting.

Gay channel comes out tonight

For a more in-depth look at the new cable station and its surprising founder (what a long strange trip its been?), check out Adam Sternbergh's piece in New York magazine:

I Want My Gay TV

and if you are at all confused why I believe this channel is a good development:

Being Gay Is Just As Healthy As Being Straight

It is ridiculous at this point that we have to sit down with adults and explain this to them--look at the language in that last "positive" article which by implication of associating heterosexuals as "straight" it implies, still, even while telling us that they are healthy and well-adjusted, that homosexuals are "crooked" or "bent" (still considering the history of DSM tests and psychology's demonization of homosexuality, this can be viewed as progression?)

One more thing, since I'm ranting, when are we going to evolve to a point where sexuality is viewed as a positive force (while not ignoring its negative impulses) in society that needs to be seriously discussed, represented and studied... as opposed to being kept behind the curtain, exploited for profit and to be used as advertising fodder? I view the repression directed toward homosexuality as just one part of a larger move toward controlling our freedom of creative expression--one of the most basic and powerful is our expression of sexuality identity...