Six Degrees of Separation - another example

Benito Mussolini
whom I'm connected to via
Adolf Hitler 

I remember the first time I realized there was something to the claim that we are only six degrees of separation from all other humans on the planet. It was when I met the British Commandant for Berlin (I once thought it was the British Commandant – turns out it was somebody else who played chess with Rudolf Hess) and realized I now knew somebody who knew Rudolf Hess, who knew Hitler. I was only three degrees of separation from Adolf Hitler. How ‘bout them apples?

I have loved telling people ever since, when this topic comes up, that they are now at most four degrees from Hitler.

And five from Mussolini.

And ultimately practically everybody on the European continent, of course.

You can see it’s not a stretch at all that we should be within range of anybody and everybody. All you need is to find the connection. Meet one Tibetan and you’re in touch with the Dalai Lama. Or meet the Dalai Lama and you’re in touch with all of Tibet.

So I probably should not be all that fired up about the latest discovery, that I am only three or four degrees separated from Frank Zappa. And Arnold Schoenberg. And the architect who built the Golden Gate Bridge. All through my connection with Olive Cowell (1887-1984), the stepmother of the American composer Henry Cowell (1897-1965), whose house I lived in back in the 1960s.

Nations have their golden eras. And many of us waste a lot of time going on about the “good old days,” remembering our high school prom or at least the time you could party all night and go to work the next morning and fake it, or whatever. For me the time to idealize would be the time I got out of the army and began my adult life in San Francisco. I had never held a real job before, never rented an apartment, never been in a sink-or-swim situation financially.

I had saved $3000 during my time in the army and lived on that for a year before it ran out and I had to get another job. 1965-66 was a good time. I learned to cook, played bridge eight or ten hours at a time, rode a bicycle all around Golden Gate Park, marched in anti-Vietnam war protest marches, and used the time to recover my mental balance after the army experience.

A couple close friends from army days were living in Olive Cowell’s house on Forest Hill and when they moved out I used the connection and the opportunity to move in, because it was much easier access to San Francisco State, where I had started an M.A. program in TESL (Teaching English as a Foreign Language). I was finally getting things together and planning a career.

The Cowell House
Mine was the lower set of windows

Olive had the house built in 1933 and she and her husband, Harry, had planned ahead. The house was built on a sharp incline with a garage at street level, the main house a floor down, bedrooms a floor below that, and a basement below that, all connected by a staircase and by separate entrances at each level. The bedroom level had been converted into an apartment – two bedrooms, kitchen and bath – which she rented out for "educational purposes" (and a bit of cash) and was actually quite luxurious in terms of space. The house itself was eccentric, as was Olive.  Aggressively “modern” – in what’s called a “Second Bay Tradition” style, all rustic and woodsy. 

street view of the house

Olive was very proud of the house and boasted of the uses she had put it to as a bohemian, with soirées and concerts. It was all wasted on me. I had no idea who Henry Cowell was. I can't remember if she shared the fact that the architect who designed this house had also built the Golden Gate Bridge. I'm sure I would have remembered that.  But then again, I was too busy getting my life started to pay much attention to Olive’s concerns, although I was happy to take advantage of her belief she was doing me a favor, renting to students, as part of her legacy as an educator. And she was doing me a favor. The kitchen sucked and the rooms were dark as hell, but it was quiet and roomy and I loved the trees all around. 

The house today is valued at three and a half million dollars – not a fortune by San Francisco standards, but to be sure a cut well above standard student housing. I also had the run of the house when she was away. She liked having life in the house, and I used to spend hours playing the piano. Again, I had no clue it was Henry Cowell’s piano (one of them) and that I might well be sleeping in his bed.

Olive would bring up his name in conversation, and I knew that he had died not that long before, but she avoided sharing with me the fact that in 1936 he was arrested for having sex with a seventeen-year-old and sentenced to up to fifteen years in San Quentin. He got out, as it turns out, after four years, in no small part due to Olive’s efforts. There is speculation that the prison experience had a devastating lasting effect on his personality and his creativity. He was arguably America’s most avant-garde modern composer in his day, inventing such ideas as playing the piano keys with his entire forearm like a drum and strumming on the strings of the piano, instead of the keys. After he got out of San Quentin, he toned some of that energy down, but still managed to capture the respect and admiration of other musicians for his innovation. John Cage called him “the open sesame for new music in America.” Lou Harrison referred to him as “the mentor of mentors.” All sorts of people lined up – Bela Bartok, Aaron Copland, Charles Ives, Virgil Thompson – to sing his praises. Arnold Schoenberg visited the house.

And while it’s tempting to see in Henry Cowell a repeat of the injustice done to Oscar Wilde – and for the same reason – some have argued Cowell actually put the experience to good use.  He spent his time at San Quentin directing the prison band and teaching music to his fellow inmates, as well as composing over sixty pieces. He also used the time to study Japanese and familiarize himself with Japanese and other non-Western music, an interest he maintained thereafter.

This passing like ships in the night with a well-known composer would not be my only experience. In the late 70s, I lived in Santa Cruz where there was a very active gay group which would hold parties which Lou Harrison would sometimes attend. Lou Harrison, who became known for his compositions for the gamelan, credited Henry Cowell with his interest in non-Western music. I didn’t know it at the time. If I had, I would have mentioned that I had a connection with Henry’s mother and picked his brain on what he knew about Cowell’s sexual history. Harrison was open about his relationship with his partner and musical collaborator, William Colvig.

So much more information I might have picked up, if only I had known to ask the right questions.

But that’s the thing about the six degrees of separation. They mean nothing if you don’t know what the connections are. You can’t do anything with them.

But they keep coming in. I’m a great fan of the photographer Ansel Adams and have three of his Yosemite nature shots hanging in my living room. And there’s the letter to Olive by Virginia Adams, Ansel’s wife, asking if there is anything she can do to help poor Henry in jail. Bert Bacharach is listed among Cowell’s students. Frank Zappa was connected to Edgard Varese who was best man at the wedding of Nicholas Slonimsky. Not familiar names to most people, but if you get into modern music they all show up. All interconnected. Everybody, it seems, knows everybody.

Henry Cowell and Pepper

If you are not familiar with Henry Cowell, and especially if you think that “modern” or atonal or electronic music is a turn-off, let me suggest you have a listen to his musical autobiography. It might not turn you around and may not make you want to bang on the keys with your shoe and call it music. But it may give you reason to give it closer consideration.

I went to a concert of Hawaiian music the other night, and almost enjoyed it. Came closer than ever before. I understand there are people who can't stand bagpipe music, but when I was sixteen I was in a hospital bed for a month with nothing else to listen to and I've loved it every since. Japanese enka used to creep me out. Now I'm a fan. A kind-hearted friend once indulged me when I told him I hated Richard Strauss and loved the music of Grieg by telling me that my musical tastes will mature in time. Today I love Richard Strauss with a passion. Music is beauty and very much in the eye, or ear, of the beholder.

How come I didn’t know about this guy, Henry Cowell?

After all, for more than a year I slept in his bed.

Photo credits:

- Olive's house - my apartment was the downstairs section
- view from the street, screen shot from Google Maps

- Henry Cowell - screen shot from YouTube video
- Mussolini 

Religion on U.S. 44

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First Church, Winsted

If you hop in a car in Plymouth, Massachusetts, where the Pilgrims landed seeking not so much religious freedom, as we were taught in Sunday School, as the right to establish their view of what Christianity should look like when molded into everyday practice, and head out on U.S. Route 44 to Providence and Hartford and beyond, just before you leave New England you'll pass through a town called Winsted, where Route 44 (known here as "Main Street") will suddenly fill with one old stone church after another – if not right on the highway and with a Main Street address, not far off the highway.

 I grew up in Winsted, Connecticut. I didn't know anybody who didn't go to church or synagogue, except for my father. His worldview was that “churches are where you find all the hypocrites.” He may have believed in God – he never spoke of things religious, so I’m not sure – but he saw no reason to put on his Sunday-go-to-meetin’ clothes when he could use the time for hunting and fishing.

My mother came from a Lutheran family, my father from a (Northern) Baptist one, but when my mother married in 1938, women still took direction from their men. She gave up her German family name and took on a Scottish one, and she gave up her Lutheran church and became a Baptist. In form, at least. Doctrine never figured large in my mother’s life in the church. Every Sunday morning is was roast in the oven at 9 o'clock, kids to Sunday School by 10, church at 11, home and roast out at noon, mash some potatoes, open a can of peas and boil them for ten minutes, and obey the commandment to rest on The Lord's Day. For my sister and me it was school and church, for my mother work and church. When we met new people it was never, "Do you go to church?" It was "Which church do you go to?"

Original First Baptist, as it appeared in 1890

The Baptists of Winsted, Connecticut had once had to mingle either with the Methodists or the Congregationalists of a Sunday morning, but managed by 1890 to put enough shekels together to build a building of their own. It was located in the very center of town, on Case Avenue, just around the corner from the post office.  I have no idea why it was called the “First” Baptist Church; it was the only Baptist church. Perhaps, being Baptists, they expected there would likely be a split at some point, Baptists being notorious for going their own way at the slightest pretext, and they didn’t want to have to put up all new signs and change the stationery. In any case, when I started school, I also started Sunday School at First Baptist and less than a year after Hitler was defeated in Europe I was already learning about Joseph and his coat of many colors and Jonah in the belly of the whale.

Second Congregational Church, from a 1909 photograph

By 1949, however, the Baptists no longer had the numbers to maintain their church and were forced to merge with one of the two Congregational churches – we had one at each end of town – the First Congregational Church on the East End, where the Still River met the Mad, and The Second Congregational Church on the West End, where U.S. Route 44 leaves New England on its meandering from Plymouth, Massachusetts, through Providence and Hartford and Winsted to the ignominy of Kerhonkson, New York, population 1684.

Once in bed with the Congregationalists, the Baptists didn’t stand a chance maintaining a distinct identity. They were way outnumbered. I still got dunked (had to go to the Baptist Church in Torrington for that) and I still learned we were the proud inheritors of a tradition established in Providence by Roger Williams – who threw off the tyranny of the Congregationalists when he left Massachusetts to start his own church there. But mostly I was sucked into the community who prided themselves on being the children of the Pilgrims. Not really. We didn't know much about church history, although “Pilgrim” lived on in our use of the Pilgrim Hymnal, and I came to be active in the youth group known as the “Pilgrim Fellowship.” Officially, we were “The First Church – Baptist and Congregational.” If anybody asked, I was a Congregationalist.

Church life dominated my home town in the 1940s and 50s, as I was growing up. Most of my friends

St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church, Winsted

were Catholics and I used to go to mass with them every morning at 6 a.m. during Lent. We made a big deal of it, and got together for breakfast afterwards before school. I felt drawn to this place of mystery before St. Joseph's spent a fortune on new lighting only to discover when they turned them on, mysterious had become dingy and they now had to paint the place. It smelled of incense and was dark and cavernous compared to the “meeting place” environment of my Congregational Church home. It was the hocus-pocus, the "magic show," the liturgy probably more than anything else, that led to my leaving the Pilgrim folk behind once I had left my small home town for college. I also wanted to be told what to believe, and “be nice” just didn’t do it for me. “Be nice” was all I understood Congregational “doctrine” to be.

I had shopped around before joining the Lutherans.  Winsted’s downtown is basically one long Main Street. Starting on the East Side was the First Church. Then came the Episcopal Church. Then the giant “queen on the hill,” St. Joseph’s Roman Catholic Church. Then what was the First Baptist, then the Methodist Church, and finally the Second Congregational.

I knew them all. I was hired at sixteen to be the organist at the United Methodist Church. My piano teacher was the organist at Second Congregational, and I went there from time to time just to hear her play, and my boy scout troop met there, as well. Outside of my own home, life was school and church and precious little else.

United Methodist Church, Winsted

Once away at college I was free to explore other possibilities, and the day I discovered the Lutherans beating the drum over how everybody knows Christ comes “in, with and under” the Eucharist, as Luther explained it, and not the way the Catholics had it, I found what I was sure was the Promised Land. Did the Catholics really think it turned into the  “actual” body and blood of Christ? How ridiculous could you get?

I was finally home, defending truth against falsehood. What more could one ask of life. I would spend a weekend in New York at some point, checking out Union Theological Seminary. Finally, I had some real religion I could sink my teeth into. And, whether I was just covering all the bases or simply avoiding the dark suspicion there was something too scary to face going on in the sexuality department, I sought refuge in piety. Because there was no Lutheran Church in Middlebury, Vermont, and we had access to the Lutheran Eucharist only once a month when the pastor from the Dartmouth Campus in Hanover made his rounds, I got special dispensation from the Episcopal bishop of Vermont to take communion at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Middlebury, where I started attending every Sunday with my Episcopalian roommate.

Looking back, I am surprised it took as long as it did for me to realize that there was something suspect about all these different religious denominations struggling for dominance. One attended church because one was a member of a particular cultural group – Italian, Polish, Irish or French Canadian meant you were Catholic, Scandinavian or German meant you were Lutheran. One went for the identity first. Only then did one stop to figure out what one was given to believe. From the priest, minister or rabbi – or perhaps the Sunday School teacher. Tell me what I believe, please. I'll write it down and try to remember.

St. James Episcopal Church, Winsted, with the spire of
the neighboring St. Joseph's RC Church in the background

The religious foundation I had built up around me in Winsted, Connecticut began to fall apart my junior year in college when I went off to Munich. By now an ardent convert to Lutheranism, I sought out the Lutheran dormitory as a place to live. In no time, my culture shock at being in a country that was not my own was multiplied when I discovered the Lutherans of Munich were nothing like the Lutherans of New England I had known. I finally had to admit it was the outer trappings, not the doctrine, which had drawn me in to church membership. The doubts about doctrine took a while to blossom into a full-fledged non-belief, but by the time I returned to the U.S., I was no longer the kid I was growing up; the mind set of my youth, saturated with organized religion, was no more. I had moved from Stage 1 – ardent “believer” to Stage 2 – “doubter.” It would take the painfully slow discovery of my homosexuality to move me to Stage 3 – “ardent” foe of any and all organized religion. And not all that chummy with religious faith of any kind, actually.

Temple Beth El - across the street from First Church

At some point in my struggle to face the loss of certainty that religion had once provided I mentioned – just in passing, I thought – to a therapist I had sought out that “religion was no longer a part of my life.” He had a response which gave me serious pause: “I think you got rid of the golden calf that was religion; you still have to deal with the mould it came in.”

In the fifty years since Winsted might well have been called “Religion along Route 44” things have changed mightily. Then, in my world at least, the big dividing line was between Catholics and Protestants (Jews didn't really count - we didn't know where to put them when it came to doctrine), with the Protestants divided among liturgically focused and non-liturgically focused denominations, and non-believers being pretty much out of the picture. Today the divisions are very different. I live almost exclusively among secularists, people for whom it matters little whether one comes from a catholic or a protestant or Jewish background. Religious people divide into “seekers” and “bashers.” Seekers are searching for spiritual meaning; bashers are intent upon forcing the rest of the world to see things their way. The former are “open,” inclined toward rational and critical thinking and live comfortably side by side with secularist non-believers; the latter are “closed” and inclined, as I was as a youth, to want somebody to take over to dictate precisely what it is they (and everybody else) should believe.

Politics these days, to use that very apt expression Omar’s father uses in speaking of India in  My Beautiful Laundrette, has been “sodomized by religion.” As usual, the religious seekers, inclined as they are to modesty and to allowing their opponents a full hearing, are at a disadvantage, and the bashers have taken center stage. Not only are they in possession of the naturally autocratic (single-belief) religions – the Mormons, the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Pentecostalists – but they have infiltrated the mainstream large-tent religious organizations, as well. The Roman Catholics are split right down the middle, the authoritarian, hierarchy-based church on the one hand, and – in a concept articulated in Vatican II – the ecclesia – the “body of believers” focused less on absolutes, more on pastoral care and the Sermon on the Mount values of love and compassion.

Lutherans in America divide similarly. Ardent traditionalists, descendants of the German Lutherans who resisted Frederick William III of Prussia’s attempt to create a union with the Reformed Church, created the Missouri Synod, known for its claim of biblical inerrancy. Other Lutherans have a more ecumenical orientation.

Once I came to recognize my sexual nature as nothing more than an arbitrary point on the spectrum of sexuality (were I still a Christian, I’d no doubt call my homosexuality “God-given”), I began the long journey of siding with other LGBT people in their struggle to get out from under condemnation of the authoritarian bashers. I no longer march in protest, but enjoy the fruits of the labor of gay liberation activists of years gone by (including my own, modest as they were) most of the time. But I still celebrate the victories and pay attention to the setbacks, like the recent one when the Supreme Court granted permission to that baker in Colorado to use religion as an excuse to discriminate against gay men, when you know they would not have permitted that license if the victims of his bigotry were blacks or Jews.

I almost never get to Winsted, Connecticut anymore. It takes too much out of me to squeeze into the ever tighter seats of a transcontinental jet liner and run with too-heavy carry-on luggage from one terminal to another when changing planes. (I know I could pack better, but give me a little space here). But I can still visit online, as I did the other day when trying to recall some detail about my piano teacher because I woke one morning, dying to know whatever happened to her. Trying to track her down led to the discovery that the Second Congregational Church (my piano teacher's organist job, remember) was now called “The Second Church – Baptist and Congregational.”

Wait a minute. It was the First Church that the Baptists joined. It was always the First Church – Baptist and Congregational and the Second Congregational Church.

Turns out the Baptists are still doing their thing. You remember how the Southern Baptist Convention got started, right? Separated from the Northern Baptists over the right to own slaves.

I told you that the Baptists of Winsted joined the First (not the Second) Congregationalists in 1947, but I didn’t tell you what happened after that. Ten years later, in 1957, after a flood had caused severe damage in both churches, they decided to merge and put all their money into just the Second Church building. But too many First people decided they had made a terrible mistake and both congregations went back to their old homes. And here’s where doctrine suddenly reared its head in this most unlikely of places. The First Church became associated with the United Church of Christ (UCC), a “liberal” church body which, along with the Unitarians, were among the first American churches to embrace gay people. The Second Church chose instead to declare themselves more biblical, biblical being anti-gay, to their way of thinking. Makes you wonder. Were they embarrassed at having gone to all the trouble to put the two churches together and now had to come up with a better reason than that they were too lazy to cross town (many living equidistant to both churches, actually)?  Then, on top of it all, the “biblical” Baptists decided to split on doctrinal grounds as well. The result is that Winsted, Connecticut now has, in addition to its several churches along Main Street (U.S. Route 44) one on each end of town: both with Baptist and Congregational subgroups.

This little incongruity reflects the larger absurdity of politics in an America sodomized by religion. Winsted is a small out-of-the-way New England town with a large Catholic Church forced against its will to be a big-tent church home to both the likes of the Knights of Columbus, who believe they are doing God’s work in slaying sexual perversion, and Vatican II catholics, who want everybody to know they are leaving the decision of who’s a sinner and who’s not up to God. And two distinct protestant churches, one on each end of town, carrying two denominational names. Officially, they are now the First Church, Baptist and Congregational and the Church of Christ, Baptist and Congregational, but the Second church still uses that name, if their web page is any indication.

Who’d ever guess that “First” would be a code-word for gay friendly and “Second” a code-word for homophobic?

Who’d ever guess that Christians could be such a confused and confusing lot?

The Red Men's Hall (IORM), the
erstwhile First Baptist Church of Winsted

And who'd ever guess that my father, who so assiduously avoided the church that he nonetheless thought it proper that my mother should attend (despite the hypocrites), would find his way back there one day once it was no longer a church?  

The IORM is a fraternal organization of pseudo-Indians who considered themselves the sons of the original guys who dumped the tea into Boston Harbor back in the day. They had dressed up as Mohawks, you see. Noble patriots, they considered themselves in time, even though they had evolved into a white-man only organization. Section 1 of their charter reads:  

Sec. 1. No person shall be entitled to adoption into the Order except a free white male of good moral character and standing, of the full age of twenty-one great suns, who believes in the existence of a Great Spirit, the Creator and Preserver of the Universe, and is possessed of some known reputable means of support.

 My father, bless his heart, thought he was doing me a favor, when I told him I was gay, by introducing me to the bartender at the Red Men's. It wasn't somebody I could relate to, but I had to give my father points for trying. The Red Men's Hall was once known as The First Baptist Church of Winsted, Connecticut.  The Baptists sold it to them when they merged with the First Congregationalists, back when my father decided he'd prefer not to associate with hypocrites.

Drinkers, well that's a different story. My father had no beef with drinkers.

photo credits

1. St. Joseph Roman Catholic Church - http://historicbuildingsct.com/st-joseph-roman-catholic-church-winsted-1916/

2. First Baptist Church of Winsted as it appeared in 1890, now home to the Improved Order of Red Men http://www.firstchurchofwinsted.org/History.html

3. First Baptist Church building now being used as the IORM, from a Google Maps screenshot

4. First Church of Winsted (FCOW) - http://www.firstchurchofwinsted.org/History.html 

5. St. James Episcopal Church of Winsted - https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/st-james-episcopal-church-winsted-connecticut-news-photo/564102077#/st-james-episcopal-church-winsted-connecticut-picture-id564102077
6. Second Congregational Church (now Church of Christ, Baptist and Congregational):  https://sccwinsted.org/
7. United Methodist Church of Winsted  - http://www.unitedmethodistwinsted.org/
8. Temple Beth El - https://www.facebook.com/TBIwinsted/photos/a.1104751802924639.1073741827.1104735709592915/1104751726257980/?type=1&theater 

It's not about the cake

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The struggle LGBT people in America are engaged in for dignity and equal standing before the law slogs on, and there was another setback this morning in Trump’s America. The Supreme Court decided that a baker of cakes should have the right to refuse a gay couple a wedding cake on the grounds that his religion considers them sinners.

Between you and me, I don’t give a flying fart if a bicycle shop owner refuses to sell a bicycle chain to Episcopalians. OK, so somebody reads into his Bible a duty to withhold from gay people what he would not withhold from straight people. Wouldn't bother me all that much. I'd leave his shop, scatter a little salt on the doorstep and find another bicycle shop. Maybe send him a nasty note explaining that I'm not actually an Episcopalian. 

Seriously. It’s a new America. Gays are no longer pariahs and the majority of non-gay Americans have come to see gay people’s sexuality as simply evidence that sexuality is more complex than we thought it was in the days of Dick and Jane. Calling it a sin is the business of hypocrites, those who assume the right to throw the first stone.  Most Americans have no interest in the alleged sins of folk who commit no crimes and scare no horses.

OK, so this baker doesn’t want to bake me a cake. All he has to do, as far as I’m concerned, is say so and I’ll gladly take my business elsewhere. Who wants to risk a bigot who might spit into the batter before putting the cake in the oven, anyway?

I know, I know. It’s the principle of the thing. I live in San Francisco and it’s likely that most of the cakemakers are gay themselves or have a friend or loved one who is gay. But there are still places in this country where people live in towns without paved roads or running water, and it is a terrible inconvenience when a God-loves-my-sex-positions-but-not-yours type says, “No cake for you, Jack.” One of the guys in the Colorado case decided this morning, Masterpiece Cakeshop v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, complained he felt like a second-class citizen. I’d like to pull him aside and try to persuade him that he needs to keep his eye on the donut and not the hole.  Remember, we can marry now! Stop fussing about the damned cake!

But that’s only how I would go about things. I also appreciate that the law has to protect all of us. And I need to recognize it's not the cake he's fussing about; it's the right to not be assigned to a class of persons one rolls into a ball and kicks down the stairs.

When the Colorado Civil Rights Commission took up the case before it went to the Supreme Court, one commissioner argued that

religion has been used to justify all kinds of discrimination throughout history, including slavery and the Holocaust. “And to me,” the commissioner said, “it is one of the most despicable pieces of rhetoric that people can use to—to use their religion to hurt others.”

Sounds like a factual reading of history to me. Who in his or her right mind has failed to take note of the evil done throughout the years in the name of religion?

Well, it turns out the Supremes don’t agree. Justice Kennedy, writing the majority opinion, found that this statement “disparages religion.”

Actually it doesn't. It disparages people who misuse religion. But so what if it did disparage religion?  What are we, Saudi Arabia?

This is an alarming turn of events. It suggests the possibility that all sorts of evil may be done in the name of religion in future cases. What’s next? No cakes for Jews? They killed Christ, according to some religious nuts.

If you read today’s decision carefully, you may argue that I’m worrying excessively. The court made a point of leaving open the question of just how much one may use religion to discriminate. They made a narrow decision – one that affects only this case. Next time it could still go either way. The wishy-wash allows the conservatives to call this a victory. It’s actually not, but things could get worse. There were two dissenters – RBG and Sotomayor. Imagine what will happen if RBG resigns while Trump and the Republicans are still in charge and we get yet another conservative on the bench. Next time, if the evangelicals are still calling the shots, it could go seriously downhill for LGBT people.

In the meantime, say a little prayer that Ruth Bader Ginsburg lives to 100 or more. She gave a strong dissent. Showing her usual talent for reducing complexity to language we can all understand, she summed it up like this: “Phillips (the baker) would not provide the same goods or service to a same-sex couple that he would provide to a heterosexual couple.”

Vote.

Our Supreme Court depends on whether and how we all vote.

photo credit

P.S. And lest you think I'm developing a little gay paranoia here, check out who Trump just appointed to head the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (whatever that is). Old Gary "our rights were given by God, not Allah" Bauer.

Buckle up, folks, the road's gettin' bumpy.