DOMA, The Challenges Ahead

DOMA, The Challenges Ahead

For the record, President Obama's decision to stop enforcing section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in court is a huge deal. What is perhaps an even bigger deal is the rationale behind the Obama decision: he, along with Attorney General Eric Holder, chose to end the court enforcement of section 3 of DOMA because they believe it to be unconstitutional. This administration's decision sets an interesting precedent, should DOMA ever be challenged in court. In the meanwhile, however, Obama has effectively suspended section 3 of the policy by eliminating the only viable means of prosecuting it.
DOMA was enacted in 1996 as a major piece of the big push for the conservative social agenda during the Clinton administration. As a definer of federal marriage law, DOMA attempts to legally end any national campaign for marriage equality by defining marriage as, in section 3, an institution exclusively between a man and a woman.
Over the past year, President Obama has proved himself to be a powerful if lethargic LGBT ally, and what the Obama administration did last week took a lot of political courage. After all, with the upcoming presidential election and an increasingly socially conservative right, many presidents would have simply put it off. However, simply dropping the court defense of DOMA is not enough, as it can still act as a court defense for those who attempt to hinder equality.
President Obama must find the political courage to go further than he has. If he truly believes DOMA to be unconstitutional, then he should challenge it in court, not simply abandon his defense of it.

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This is Not Egypt

This is Not Egypt

Perhaps the Republican Wisconsin State Senator misspoke when he compared Madison to Cairo. For, after all, however misguided Governor Walker may be, he is not former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak; he is no undemocratic, corrupted dictator. No United States governor is. And rallying in opposition to union rule changes, however drastic, is not the equivalent of protesting for democracy. This does not, however, mean that the Wisconsin protesters' cause is any less important or serious.

Why do Republicans demonize unions, especially teachers' unions? It's not as though teachers are overpaid. Besides which, the Wisconsin teacher's unions have already agreed to the financial compromise Governor Walker offered. Now, he holds out on one issue- collective bargaining. A union's main role is to act as a singular representative for a group of people and to bargain with management to maintain or improve the people's rights. What use is a union without collective bargaining?
And this structural attack on unions in Wisconsin is not only confusing (the economic benefits of ending collective bargaining are negligible) but also dangerous. Governor Walker plans to create a condition where workers' rights can be slashed and teachers' paychecks can be shrunk for the benefit of a conservative social agenda against unions, not an economic one.

[Photo Credit: AP/Huffington Post]

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Education Thoughts

Education Thoughts

The State of the Union is generally seen as the most important speech a president makes each year. And this year, amid a faltering economy, an increasingly polarized political climate and in the post-event storm following the shooting in Arizona, President Obama delivered a speech that appealed to America for a renewed sense of respect for education.
In the speech, Obama had an urgent message for America’s students: become teachers. Get educated, he said, and then pass it on to other American children. Help renew a sense of reverence toward teachers. Respect the institution of public education. This generation has to compete with students in Asia who have been selected to receive a world-class education and with European students whose education values math and science more so than its American equivalent, Obama reminded the country, so help them do it.
President Obama is right. Simply put, America cannot compete on a global scale with countries that treat teaching as a widely respected career and pour funding into education. How can American schools expect to retain excellent teachers if they do not approach teaching as the most important career in terms of ensuring American excellence?
Some people worry that America’s days as the world’s superpower are dwindling. America’s great contribution to the world is its support of innovation. The best and perhaps the only way for America to sustain innovation continually is to further education. Unfortunately, some voices in politics continue to undermine this path to a renewed place for America.
Some of the more popular political figures in America got to where they did by being patently anti-intellectual. Take Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, who continually denied even the most basic of recent scientific research. Some Democratic politicians, Obama included, have been accused of being Ivy-league educated or being overly intellectual by conservative radio and television personalities. Suddenly, being smart and well educated is a bad thing in politics.
And attitudes like these undermine the very way that America can, as Obama called it, "win the future." American innovation cannot prosper and future American pioneers cannot succeed in economics, management, entrepreneurship or even simple world leadership without strong educations. Strong educations are impossible without a new sense of respect in America for teaching and a new place in the national budget for it.

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Friday Feature: Spiderman (Spectacular, Spectacular)

Friday Feature: Spiderman (Spectacular, Spectacular)

The setting: the most expensive Broadway play of all time. The draw: in the technical feat of a lifetime, Spiderman and company will soar over the heads of audiences. Enter, stage left: director Julie Taymor, of “Lion King” fame, whose artistic vision of unprecedented technical achievement has left actors in the hospital and leads threatening to quit.
Spiderman: the Musical, based on the comic series, employs the use of never-before seen technology wherein the heroes and villains of the series will fly over the theatre (not just the stage, the entire theatre) using automatic rigs for the actors. Usually, in a show that requires actors to fly, a union technician manually operates the machine. This ensures that actors who get stuck or caught on the rope can be lowered quickly and safely, hopefully without interrupting the performance. However, in the case of Spiderman, the actors who get stuck on the electric path either must be rescued while the entire show is stopped or, if they are unlucky, they fall.
Spiderman: the Musical continues a long tradition of Broadway showstoppers where the main draw is the spectacular spectacle and the sheer drama, not the acting or the play’s theatrical value. This style (a supposed audience-magnet, though the dwindling ticket sales do not exactly confirm this) is not new to the theatre world or even to Broadway, for, after all, most audiences want to get some literal bang for their buck. Miss Saigon, for instance, employed a fully operating helicopter for its Broadway run. The Blue Man Group relies on pounds of toilet paper that fly out the ceiling at the audience as strobe lights run wild.
Let lavish sets and over-the-top (and potentially dangerous) technical feats not be the legacy of Broadway. There is so much more to an excellent performance than just the spectacle. In traditional theatre, a set could be something as minimal as a few seats and a makeshift wall: the focus was on the performance.
If Spiderman is really causing people to go see theatre, then that is fantastic. Mass consumption of theatrical art is always a good thing. However, the returns are not really coming in for Broadway shows in general- the same shows that are trying to pull in audiences with huge spectacles.
It is unfortunate that extreme excess has become the norm in Broadway instead of truly great performances. Especially in this economically rough time, Broadway has the responsibility to ticketholders to produce its best work, rather than a capitalistic explosion of sets and technical extravaganzas.
This post originally appeared in the Rank & File, rank-n-file.com.

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