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Minor Details
In December, the U.S. Supreme Court took up a challenge to Texas' sodomy law. Among other states, Texas currently makes it a crime to engage in "deviate sexual intercourse"- oral and anal sex - with a person of the same sex. Whether the Court's interest in the law is a good thing or not, we'll have to see. A slim majority will decide the case. But it will be outside societal pressure that will force their decision more than real questions of fairness, justice, equality, humanity, and compassion. Remembering the very manner in which they chose a "president" should scare us when sodomy is in the hands of these justices. This Court is a highly political entity searching for judicial reasons to shore up its prejudices.
And nothing they've done to distract the public has slowed their efforts to undo women's choice, to ensure advantages for rich white males, to shift the tax burden away from their upper-class friends, to subsidize churches (mostly right-wing ones), to eliminate any control on big business, and to re-define the U.S. as a military-economic "American Empire." The march to war proceeds with every distraction in the book. Colin Powell is probably the administration's most trusted spokesperson. So he gets the out-on-a-limb assignment of convincing U.S. citizenry that war for the American way in inevitable. But he'd better come up with more impressive information than he was fed for his February 5 speech to the UN Security Council. Powell actually quoted a British intelligence report that, instead of being based on whatever "British intelligence" is supposed to do, plagiarized three previously printed papers, one a decade old research paper by a student at the Monterey (California) Institute of International Studies. Not only did Powell attempt to pawn this off as the fresh work of intelligence sources, but the British report didn't even bother to correct the typographical and grammatical errors in the original. France, Germany, and Belgium, NATO allies least dependent on U.S. economic and political coercion for their survival, balked at the administration's distractive strategies. They want real evidence, while our administration tries to bully, shame, and marginalize dissenting nations as weak, effeminate, stupid, even quite queer. U.S. administrations have never had much use for Europe anyway, unless, like the current British government, they saddle up to ride along with us.
And how long has it taken our media to recognize what U.S. historians like Howard Zinn are calling the largest anti-war movement in U.S. history? They've tried to downplay it. They continue to underestimate its numbers even though it's one of the few that has gathered such steam before a war has begun. And how often have we seen "the left" on debate shows like CNN's Crossfire represented by a "from the left" host who's anti-war? There's much that this war is supposed to distract us from. We're not supposed to care about the largest budget deficit in history - even without adding in the up-coming additional appropriations to pay for the war itself. We're not supposed to care about the curtailing of our freedoms in the "USA Patriot Act" and it's proposed additions. We're not supposed to complain when our states struggle to cut social services and throw more of the already poor into shelters and food lines. And we're not supposed to care that building that unchallenged American empire, a goal of the new US foreign policy in this administration, is how we're being known throughout the real world. We're not supposed to believe that defeating Iraq and replacing it with a "friendly" regime has anything to do with taking control of the world's second-largest, most-valued oil fields. Or that a U.S. general running Iraq will mean a U.S. vote on oil-prices in OPEC. Even the Iraqi opposition to Saddam Hussein, which welcomed U.S. military pressure, is now beginning to realize that they won't be in charge when it's over, unless they kowtow to U.S. demands. And it's certainly a way to include LGBT people in the distractions while the same people at the center of doing so are planning new measures to make sure we are excluded from the reality of U.S. life. I was watching a CNN reporter compare the current advice to stock up on duct tape, plastic sheeting, dried food, and water so we're prepared for inevitable terrorist gas, chemical, or nuclear attacks. Replaying the old "duck and cover" films, she noted that our government knew then that ducking under a blanket or school desk after "you see a bright light" would do nothing to save us. But, she said, that was okay because: "It made people feel better. We felt like there was something we could do." And she said it with a very straight face. We're being distracted by something that will accomplish nothing for us. We're being told there is something that we can do that will save us, while what will really save us is very different and has nothing to do with Iraq. We are really being threatened with losing our rights, as humans and as LGBT people. And we're forgetting what American investigative journalist I. F. Stone declared the first rule of journalism: "All governments lie." 
Robert N. Minor is author of Scared Straight: Why It's So Hard to
Accept Gay People and Why It's So Hard to Be Human (HumanityWorks!, 2001)
and Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Kansas in Lawrence.
He may be reached through www.fairnessproject.org.
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Words of wisdom from the Department of Homeland's Security's response poster to a nuclear attack: 'Minimize time spent exposed will also reduce your risk' 
In case of a chemical attack: If you see dead fish, call authorities 
The government's warning in a radiological attack: Get as far away as possible from the attack. Really?