Years ago, back in Georgia, I was cutting up with the other “support staff” for a wedding I was officiating. All of us — the bed-and-breakfast (site) owners, the caterers, the pianist, the soloist, and I — were gay men or lesbians. All, of course, but the couple. And this was long before Massachusetts began issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples. We joked — but only joked — that we could shut down the local wedding biz.

There’s something to be said about using the strength you have, and at the very least not being co-opted into forces that hurt you. Take the current Administration’s “keep the people distracted by fear” gambit, which I’m glad to say seems to be getting threadbare. I don’t buy it, and live better without it. Be not afraid.

That’s how I’m reading the firing and sympathy resignation of a cantor and organist in a Massachusetts Catholic parish. Philocrites wrote about it, follow a story in the Globe. Good for them, and I suspect they’ll land on their feet which is more than I suspect will happen to the parish’s music program.

How could you sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? And Boston Catholicism — by all accounts — is getting stranger by the second.

The BBC is hammering away at the situation of New Orleanians where the dead aren’t being gathered and where some continue to stay in their flooded homes; one reporter called the city “delusional.”

Perhaps, perhaps not. While I don’t think I would resist armed troops trying to extricate me, I can see

• how some people might value their pets more than their government’s promises.
• how some people might think a city of the dead might be safer than relocation to parts unknown.

I think it’s time to write letters. Here’s the address.

The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

I think Terrance is right: the anti-Bush forces will be tarred with whatever failures or undesirable outcomes because we didn’t support the war, and didn’t “support the troops.” How the Left undercut “the troops” is a part of the folk-wisdom of the United States; somehow this was a greater evil than, say, the carpet-bombing of Cambodia. Go figure. Just remember that facts themselves don’t constitute a debate or a defense.

But the really galling part is how hostile the current Administration is against the very troops they profess to need and defend.

If the Adminstration is unwilling to fulfill its just obligations for the veterans we have as to their health needs and benefits, then the Administration is hurting the troops today.

If the Administration leaves some low-ranking troops so underpaid that their families need food aid or other public aid, then the Administration is hurting the troops today.

As a member of the anti-war Left, I care precisely because I grew up in a military family and know that the federal government will try to make economies with those who risked everything for our nation. I know I’m not the only blogger with this background.

Before we get tarred with unpatriotism, those who care for justice, fair and transparent government, peaceful international relations, the strategic alternatives to terrorist sympathies, and the rights of those who serve need to make it loudly and publically clear that we really do support the troops with more than cheap slogans.