Category Archives: culture

Changing Attitude, Nigeria

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are reporting that the Same Sex Marriage . . . Act 2006 seems stalled in the Nigerian House of Representatives. This, apparently, does not mean that the bill will not pass; but there seems to be hope that it will die after elections currently scheduled to take place on April 21. I think the following paragraph from the Changing Attitude press release is particularly interesting.

What we are hearing from CAN members in Anglican congregations in Nigeria is that the church leaders have been feeling big pressure on them and some are very angry because they expected the bill to be voted on prior to the end of this session. There are also rumours that money has exchanged hands, American money, and yet it has not proved easy for the Anglican Church leaders to push the bill through the House of Representatives. Corruption remains widespread at every level of Nigerian society. (emphasis added)

And I wonder who in the United States might be interested in pushing this bill through the Nigerian House.

At the same time, Ruth Gledhill reports she has spoken with a friend of the Archbishop of Nigeria who argues that Archbishop Akinola has been demonized in the western press, “There is a demonisation of Peter Akinola taking place which really is not fair, and sits very ill at ease with the remembrances on the abolition of slavery,” said Gledhill’s informant referring to the current bicentenary celebration going on in Britain; “It seems that Africans are to be welcomed and apologised to, unless we happen to disagree with them.”

Gledhill is aware, as well, that one aspect of this story which has had scant attention in the west is the Same Sex Marriage Act’s possible relation to fears within Nigeria that coming elections might result in an expansion of the sway of Islamic Law. Three somewhat different takes on prospects for the coming elections in Nigeria may be found here, here, and here.   

fry street, etc.

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In one of my former home towns a group has organized to try to protect part of a street on which I once lived from developers. They have a nifty blog with pictures and all sorts of info. I am thinking of something I wrote some years back about one of the first Fry Street businesses to close during the present era. Fry Street, of course, goes way back, but in the past it has always been funky: that is, back when we still referred to the former teachers’ college that is Denton’s largest employer as North Texas.

Nowadays North Texas is UNT. The institution is growing and gentrifying. With SMU vying for the George W. Bush presidential library to be, and the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex turning istself into a right-wing theme park, Denton and North Texas seem destined to be homogenized into the same stream of dollars that has littered I-35 with car dealerships, strip malls, and restaurant chains. There’s even a Hooters in Denton, now, though the Save Fry Street website threatens nothing more dangerous than Borders and Starbucks.

I’m uneasy about gentrification, being a latter day urban pioneer and living in a St. Louis neighborhood that I somewhat guiltily hope continues to gentrify fairly rapidly (last week somebody was robbed at gunpoint half a block from my house around 10:30 pm). But I wish the folks on Fry Street success in fighting the wowsers. It’s always too bad that a developer with money can force perectly viable businesses out of a neighborhood. We say we believe in property rights in the United States, but I think what we really believe in is bucks. Bucks trumps it all, and everything from sex to God is for sale, including my alma mater.

Back to war news. Here’s a clever little anti war video. I begin to think things have turned. Op eds by Anne Applebaum, Richard Cohen, and E. J. Dionne push limits of discourse that were pretty solidly in place only recently.

I’ve said I think continued engagement in Iraq is morally required of us Americans, but I’m not sure what I think that should look like. I believe we have to clean up the mess we have made to the best of our ability, and I think we must try to determine what our country’s real strategic interests are in the Middle East, given the rise of Islamic militancy outside Palestine since the 1960s. Here’s a link to a pretty good Middle East discussion site.

“The national snarkfest

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is on its way out,” according to Anna Quindlen, in a wonderful optimistic piece in this week’s Newsweek that could apply just as readily to the US Congress as to Quindlen’s media targets. Here’s what she says, in a nutshell:

If, as many suspect, this is either a moment for the United States to prevail or to implode, a radio program, a column or a TV talk show really matters. It’s a valuable piece of public real estate that should be earned every day, by engaging rather than interrupting, by reasoning rather than rabble-rousing. Maybe even by doing the really unthinkable in the civic auditorium and trying to move the conversation in fruitful directions. 

On another front, it’s an old and odd expression, funeralize, as in ‘We funeralized my daddy yesterday’; and of course it means what you think it means. I’ve not heard it for a long time, but I thought of it today when I read Bill McClellan’s take on the Thomas Eagleton funeral.

I had a dear friend named Joe whom we funeralized back in 2002. Like Eagleton he had left elaborate instructions for the celebration of his departure. The service included lots of New Orleans music as well as the singing of his (and my) old school song: “Oh, we see the varsiteee . . . .” I’ve always thought Joe planned his funeral because he wanted to be there, and he didn’t want a whole lot of talk about what a fine gent he was.