Law and Order Reviews I

 I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Scoundrels” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

To a large degree this is about a convicted white-collar swindler (who headed a mainstream “Savings and Loan” financial institution) who arranges for a threat to him to be eliminated (killed). The Assistant DAs prioritize prosecuting the swindler over the man who actually pulled the trigger. Earlier, when we first hear about the swindler, one of the detectives says that instead of being sentenced to a short stay at “Club Fed” (a very minimum-security prison) he should have gotten life.

“Progeny” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This episode is about abortion and is generally pro-choice. The commanding officer of the two detectives speaks briefly about how massive chunks (probably less than 100% but still a large majority) of the pro-life community don’t care about what happens to babies after they are born. SO MANY of these pro-lifers consistently support centrist or center-right economic policies which make it very difficult for children born to poor people (and to a large degree you could say something very similar about the children of working-class people).

“Seed” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

There was a gay couple.

“Wannabe” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is generally about classism. I don’t talk a lot about classism on my blog because A) it’s not the same thing as Capitalism, and B) I don’t believe it’s quite as dehumanizing as racism or homophobia or sexism, etc. But I think it’s usually a good thing to expose it once in a while.

There is one minor aspect of this episode that I want to talk about. Towards the very beginning there’s a brief reference to unions by someone who is a corporate opponent of unions and the senior detective cautions him to watch what he says because the cops are in a union. I get the impression that occasionally it’s a good thing that cops are unionized (i.e. when there’s some kind of attack on public sector workers below the federal level, they MIGHT, to a SMALL degree stand in solidarity with the other public sector workers in that area). But I also get the impression that a big part of the contracts negotiated by cop unions make it easier for cops to get away with murder, etc. And cops are FREQUENTLY mobilized in support of management during strikes, organizing drives, and lock-outs.

Sometime around 2004 “The Labor Exchange” (the pro-labor bi-weekly show on Boulder’s progressive KGNU radio station) interviewed a representative of the cop union in a nearby city (Longmont). It was very non-confrontational and I’m open-minded that maybe it was okay. As I said, I am not in favor of constant hostility towards cop unions. But I also remember reading, at some point between about 2002 and about 2008, that when a strike in Longmont was broken, management had the local SWAT team present when the workers first came back to work. On one hand, the strike was already broken, so in all fairness this probably wasn’t as offensive as it would be if they had tried to intimidate pickets with the police DURING the strike. But it still pisses me off (and it’s possible they DID try to intimidate pickets but the article I read left that out for some reason).

“Bad Faith” Season 5. See this for a plot summary.

This is about the Catholic Church sex abuse scandal.

Law and Order Reviews B

I have done reviews of many episodes of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and published some more general thoughts about it here. In that post I offer a smaller number of general thoughts about the original Law and Order show (the one that went from 1990-2010). Although I do not like L&O as much as I like the SVU version, I do like it. There’s some liberal or even progressive stuff here and there and they’re good detective stories, and they’re homicide detectives- if they were narcotics, I’d probably be a lot less fond of the show.

Although I’m not sure I have done and will do this consistently, with the original Law and Order show I will make a note and maybe offer some comments when the issues that are at the core of Law and Order: SVU appear on this show.

“Life Choice” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

Although it’s a little mixed, this episode leans heavily towards being pro-choice.

“A Death in the Family” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

In this episode the detectives and the ADAs see things differently. The ADAs ask if the life of a cop is worth more than the life of a civilian. They find themselves investigating the death of a corrupt cop. Most damning of all, the senior ADA says that a lot of cops carry an untraceable gun that they can plant on someone if they shoot a suspect and it turns out the suspect was not armed.

“Mushrooms” Season 1. For a summary see this. 

The Black woman whose sons are killed or wounded doesn’t get along perfectly with the police. But that’s just realistic (MANY people of color don’t get along with cops) and I don’t think it dilutes what I’m about to say- she’s not seen as a suspect or an enemy of the police or something (you’re supposed to sympathize with her). She says at one point that her supervisor (she’s a janitor) wouldn’t allow her to go to the morgue and the hospital about her two sons. First, that’s just messed up in general. But people of color are more likely than white people to be in a financial situation where they cannot afford to lose their job in a crisis like that. Poverty is a more common problem among people of color than it is among white people. Part of this means that they are less likely than white people to know someone who can loan them some money until they get a new job after they lose their job (for leaving work during a family emergency). And, even more damning of some supervisors and employers, in some cases like this it’s a job that probably can be skipped for a day.

“The Troubles” Season 1. See this for a plot summary.

This is largely about N. Ireland. There are so many statements that are demanding I comment on them that this review would be about 3,000 words if I commented on all of them. The short version is that there’s a lot of nonsense.

There is one thing I’m going to comment on, something that, for some weird reason I haven’t really commented on before. One of the two cops buys the IRA member’s PR effort for America, and is sympathetic to him, basically because he (the cop) is Irish-American. Does law enforcement and the intelligence community in America go easy on the IRA because the vast majority of IRA supporters here are white Irish-Americans? First, as I explain here and here, the IRA was not a terrorist organization, and that has nothing to do with their skin color or their political goals. Second, the US government was largely on the side of the British, as I explain in note #17 of the poem here.                              

Are there or were there racist NYPD cops who supported the IRA but not the armed wing of the African National Congress? Yes, and there may have been a few FBI agents like that (although probably just a few- I imagine the FBI was less tolerant of IRA supporters than the NYPD were). Was there something racist about the fact that the IRA was never on any US list of terrorist organizations? Although I’m not real familiar with those lists, as I explaIn above, the IRA were, objectively, not terrorists.

If you look beyond the white privilege of most IRA supporters in America, globally their supporters were mostly what we would call in America “progressive.”

Law and Order: SVU Reviews U

 This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

(I’m temporarily skipping the publication of 4 reviews from Seasons 4 and 6 that I’ll come back to in about a week)

“Raw” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A six-year-old boy who was adopted by parents (Myk Watford and Marin Hinkle) of a different race is killed in a school shooting. When detectives trace the rifle used back to a gun shop, Munch and Tutuola face hatred from a neo-Nazi group using the shop as its headquarters. The group consists of a white supremacist (J.C. MacKenzie), his son (Cody Kasch) and a woman (Marcia Gay Harden) who is not what she appears to be. When detectives arrest the shooter (Joel Marsh Garland) and put him on the witness stand, the group retaliates by starting a shootout in the courtroom that claims the life of a judge (John Rubinstein).”

In this episode the bad guys are neo-Nazis.

“Name” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “After the bones of a boy who disappeared in 1978 are found at a playground, Stabler, still visibly recovering from a recent gunshot wound, teams up with a CSU technician (Paula Garcés) who is taking the case personally. When a woman (Lisa Emery) comes forward, claiming that the boy was her brother, they reopen a cold case involving three murdered Puerto Rican boys in which the prime suspect (Richard Bright) worked with an accomplice (Ruben Santiago-Hudson).”

A crime scene tech believes that the disappearance of 4 Puerto Rican boys in 1978 wasn’t thoroughly investigated because they were Puerto Rican. It’s also stated that a lot of undocumented immigrants don’t report crime because they’re afraid of being deported. That’s one more reason to reform immigration policy in this country and until that happens it’s another reason for local governments to instruct local law enforcement to ignore the immigration status of people they interact with.

“Rockabye” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A sixteen-year-old (Keri Lynn Pratt) loses her unborn child due to a severe abdominal beating. Her father (Skipp Sudduth) insists that she must have been raped and this leads detectives to the baby's father (John Patrick Amedori). The squad later learns that the girl was an active party in her own beating and that the teens found it necessary to do this after an abortion clinic deliberately stalled for time.”

This episode is about something I have never heard of before but which might exist- fake abortion providers. Clinics that stall for time with patients until the fetus is so old that an abortion is illegal. When two teens (boyfriend and girlfriend) get that treatment they decide to try to abort the fetus by hitting (with fists and a lamp) the girl’s belly. I think the point is that those who deny women an abortion force a lot of such women into doing something that must be even more difficult than having an abortion.

A few other notes:
1. The teens travel to NY from VA because in VA minors have to get parental approval to have an abortion, something I oppose.
2. The girl says that she was suicidal. In Ireland in recent decades if two psychiatrists agree that the female is suicidal, she is allowed to get an abortion. It’d be nice if something like that were done here if (or when) access to abortion is restricted.
3. One of the detectives implies that an OH high school that saw a lot of teenage pregnancies taught abstinence-only sex ed, which doesn’t include encouraging teens to practice safe sex.

“Alien” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “A school boy (Daniel Manche) becomes paralyzed after being stabbed in the back and detectives learn that the alleged perpetrator (Sasha Neulinger) was trying to protect his half-sister (Raquel Castro). While attending a Catholic school, the girl had been tormented continuously for having two mothers. One of her guardians (Amy Pietz) who never legally adopted her, is accused of sexual molestation by the girl's biological grandparents (Edmund Genest and Mary Beth Peil). While trying to decide if the claims are real or frivolous, Novak begins to suspect that their lawyer (Stephen Bogardus) is committing perjury.”

This is largely about homophobia and sort of about the Catholic Church. The detective Stabler says that being a Catholic means agreeing with the homophobia of the Church. First of all, the priest in this episode seems anti-homophobic. But more generally, the Church hasn’t in recent decades gone after anti-homophobic or LGB Catholics. It’s even more tolerant of such Catholics than it is of pro-choice Catholics, and as far as I can tell, the Church rarely THREATENS to go after pro-choice Catholics, and even then it’s just aimed at those who are elected politicians (and they don’t go through with the threats to ex-communicate).  

“Manipulated” Season 7. Wikipedia summary is: “The body of a young woman is found and when Benson and Stabler delve into her private life, they learn that in addition to being a respected lawyer, she was also a stripper. Her co-worker at the club (Faina Vitebsky) is later found murdered as well. Surveillance footage and DNA evidence implicate the lawyer's boss (Chris Potter) who appears to live with a disabled wife (Rebecca De Mornay). Further investigation reveals that the wife is living a lie and that she exacts revenge on her husband by hiring a hitman (Holt McCallany) to kill his sexual partners.”

Two notes.
1) There’s a fairly positive reference to efforts to unionize the dancers at strip clubs. That’s been tried in real life in at least one case- there’s a documentary about it called “Live, Nude Women Unite.”
2) There’s a less-than flattering reference to private military contractors (mercenaries of the sort used by the US government).

Law and Order: SVU Reviews S

 This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Risk” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “When a baby dies after drinking baby formula found to be laced with cocaine, the detectives clash with Sgt Ed Tucker (Robert John Burke), who has been pursuing a drug syndicate smuggling cocaine in baby formula. Tutuola's experience in the Narcotics Division proves useful and Stabler is sent undercover as a potential dealer. The team is led to one of their own, Detective Greg Kendall (Matt Mulhern), a highly-decorated cop who has gone rogue. However, the operation hits a snag and Stabler is faced with a choice to either kill or be killed.”

This is about a corrupt cop.

“Rotten” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “In their investigation of a prisoner's death, Benson and Tutuola learn that he was assaulted before being incarcerated. They subsequently discover several killings of drug dealers in the precinct where the man was arrested, and that two cops (William Mapother and Terry Serpico) from this precinct had a connection to every case.”

First, there’s a gay jail guard.

This story was obviously inspired by the real-life NYPD assault on Abner Louima in 1997 (they raped him with the handle of a toilet plunger or a broom- he survived and the cops who attacked him were convicted). SVU pursues not just the cop easiest to convict, but another cop who they believe was also involved. While investigating that officer they learn that the two suspects were killing drug dealers in summary executions and that one of them was getting paid for it by drug dealers. In this fictional version, SVU successfully indict both cops.

“Mercy” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “When the body of a baby girl is found inside a cooler, the detectives need to investigate just who she is, and how she got there. They soon learn that the little girl had a genetic disorder known as Tay–Sachs disease that would lead to a painful death in childhood. When the parents (Elizabeth Mitchell and Gregg Edelman) admit to having killed their daughter humanely to spare her that fate, Cabot has to prosecute them for murder, despite reservations. Taking an interest in the case, Detective Munch sits in on the trial.”

There are two minor things I want to note:
1. A character who’s innocent mentions that he has a high-paying union job. I wouldn’t say that people will be surprised to learn that union jobs pay well, but at the same time it can’t hurt to mention that here and there.
2. One of the detectives reminds people, positively, that in NY a teen doesn’t need to tell their parents that they want an abortion, they can just get it.

“Tortured” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “A Tibetan woman who was tortured in her home country is found murdered, with her foot missing. After an exhaustive search of potential suspects, the killer (Charlie Hofheimer) is found to be a victim of torture at the hands of his mother (Margaret Colin) who tried to use violence to cure him of his shoe fetish.”

There are two minor things and one big thing.
1. The FBI psychiatrist tells us that he’s a member of something called “Physicians for Human Rights.”
2. There’s a small aspect of the story that involves a gay couple.
3. Although it turns out to be irrelevant to why the victim was killed, she was Tibetan and there’s a lot of stuff about Tibet in the first half of the episode and you get the impression that most of the main characters are pro-Tibet. There’s talk from various sources about how bad China is to Tibet (for example the use of torture). To be honest until about 5-10 years ago I didn’t care much about Tibet. Then I watched the movies “Seven Years in Tibet” and “Kundun,” and I read a small amount about it when events there were big enough to be reported on by the BBC. I’m concerned about Tibet and believe they should have independence. I believe I have read that the Chinese are forcing some Tibetans to move elsewhere in China and are moving Chinese settlers into Tibet, which is pretty genocidal.

“Fallacy” Season 4. Wikipedia summary is: “Benson and Stabler try to prove self-defense when a rape victim (Katherine Moennig) kills her attacker. Events take an unusual turn when they learn that the victim is transgender. The victim's boyfriend (Chad Lindberg) is shocked to learn this and commits suicide. When the woman's lifelong anguish is detailed in court, Cabot begins to feel guilty about sending her to prison (which would be a male prison for a pre-op transgender woman). “

If you include the DA (a regular character on the original Law and Order show) most of the main characters are sympathetic to the transgendered woman who killed a man who had learned she had male genitals. At one point the ADA offers her a fairly good deal considering a man died, but when she realizes she’ll be in a male prison, she has the deal cancelled and goes to trial. She’s convicted. Her lawyer seems a little unethical and looking forward to the publicity he’ll get for defending her, but I don’t think that takes anything away from his statement that when people learn the truth about a transgender person they’re often just killed.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews Q

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Sacrifice” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “An unidentified man (Mark-Paul Gosselaar) is found shot and sexually assaulted in an alley outside of a gay bar. Detectives Benson and Stabler learn that the victim and his wife (Elizabeth Banks) have a young daughter (Audrey Twitchell) with cystic fibrosis and that they worked in the porn industry to pay for her medical bills. The lead witness (Kevin Geer), who is a recovering drug addict, angers Fin, causing him to re-think his police role.”

A witness at the beginning is an off-duty detective exiting a gay bar. The SVU detectives offer to keep his name out of their report if he’s worried about people learning that he’s gay. And he’s Black (I mention that because of the significance of intersectionality- he's both Black and gay).

Another witness is a homeless man who sleeps near the gay bar and who says that the patrons of the establishment treat him well. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s true. I imagine that even today a lot of gay teenagers either run away or are expelled by their parents and they spend a lot of time homeless.

“Inheritance” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A young Asian woman (Lynn Chen) is severely beaten and raped at a burglary site. Benson and Stabler initially suspect rival Asian gang members, who are in dispute over the victim's loyalty. This theory is disproven when they find another Asian victim and track down serial rapist Darrell Guan (Marcus Chong). Guan was ostracized throughout his childhood and feels that even his own mother (Wai Ching Ho) did not love him. The case hits close to home for Benson because Guan is also the product of a rape. The trial focuses on the impact of genetic predisposition versus environmental upbringing on the nature of violence.”

There are four things worth a note each.
1. An Asian-American detective says “Chinatown’s got no love for cops.” If that’s true, it’s very interesting to me. I have heard very little about conflict between (East) Asian-Americans and the police, and about 1/3 of my Bachelor’s degree is Asian-American Studies.  Asian-Americans DO overwhelmingly vote Democrat, but I had no idea there was widespread hostility towards the police among Chinese immigrants. If this is true it just means that the internal problem police have to overcome (racism) is even bigger than I thought.
2. At one point the detectives assure an Asian-American man they need help from that they’re not Immigration. I haven’t spelled this out when doing a comment like this before, but the point I’m trying to make is that they’re acting like the cops of a sanctuary city, which is what NYC is.
3. There is a fair amount of material about racial conflicts between Blacks and Chinese in America. I think there is some evidence of that in reality and I think it’s partly because the right-wing part of the establishment want to create a schism between Asian-Americans and other people of color, by, for example, pushing the model minority theory and pushing the idea that the former don’t need or support Affirmative Action (in the 2nd and 3rd paragraphs of a post here there’s some info about Asian-Americans and Affirmative Action). There’s also the fact that a significant minority of Blacks are anti-immigrant.
4. This episode also brings up the issue of abortion and rape. I am 100% pro-choice but if I were pro-life I would make an exception for rape- if a woman chooses to avoid being frequently reminded of such a nightmare by having an abortion, she should have that right.

“Monogamy” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A pregnant woman (Tricia Paoluccio) is attacked and has her baby ripped from her womb. Detectives Benson and Stabler quickly look for the baby hoping he's still alive. The woman's husband (John Ritter) seems shocked, but it is soon discovered she may have had an affair with a construction worker (Bobby Cannavale). In the resulting trial, ADA Alex Cabot tries to find a way to charge the husband while avoiding the controversial territory of reproductive rights.”

You get the impression that all the main characters (the detectives and the ADA) are pro-choice.

“Prodigy” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A man and a woman are stabbed during a supposedly romantic park encounter. The woman's head as well as her hands are missing, which makes it difficult for detectives Benson and Stabler to identify the victims. They soon learn that the crime scene was staged and that the woman was an officer of the Manhattan Federation for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. This leads them to various people from her organization, as well as its opposers, and a young sociopath (Michael Pitt) who had a troubled relationship with the woman. However they soon uncover a more violent suspect (Brian Sullivan) much more close.”

This is almost entirely about cruelty to animals.

“Popular” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “Detective Stabler's wife (Isabel Gillies) tells him that her nurse friend (Laura Duncan) at a local hospital treated a fourteen-year-old rape victim (Brittany Slattery), who refused to report the crime to the police or her family. Stabler decides to investigate her unofficially with the help of Detective Benson. They find out she and her classmates were involved with drugs and alcohol, a fact which troubles her family.”

In a Teacher’s Lounge at a Jr. High there’s a bulletin board below the words “Union News.”

Law and Order: SVU Reviews P

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m watching the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Pixies” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The investigation of a gymnast's murder involves her strict trainer (Philip Casnoff), a wealthy benefactor (Armand Schultz) and a competitor (Kate Mara).”

There’s one point where one of the detectives talks about how little labor is paid in the tennis shoe industry compared to how much the shoes cost. I don’t know what’s been happening with that in the last 20 years but around 1999 I did some political activism on the sweatshop issue, including some small contributions to the effort by WAAKE-UP  at CU-Boulder.

“Consent” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “College girl Kelly D'Leah (Tammy Blanchard) is raped during a frat party, but can't remember anything that happened. The detectives find that she had a date rape drug in her system, leaving the squad with many suspects and accomplices. They ultimately discover that the boy who had sex with Kelly (Zak Orth) was unaware that she had been drugged.”

I think this may be the only episode that mentions in a significant way the oral contraceptive that is part of a rape kit (the exam done to establish that rape took place and to gather evidence used to identify the rapist). In 2008 John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his running mate for the White House. There were a lot of horrible things about her but perhaps the most damning allegation failed to stick in the eyes of most of the voters. And that is the fact that when she was mayor of Wasilla, the Police Dept. there charged for the rape kit to be done, and either the survivor or her insurance company had to pay.

At some point I read somewhere that the inclusion of an oral “morning after” contraceptive might be why Palin didn’t want to pay for the rape kits. I read some more about that in a blog post here. It seems that Palin only supports abortion when the life of the woman is in danger, not when she’s been raped.

“Paranoia” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The rape of a veteran police officer (Khandi Alexander), who trained Benson, is first linked to her ex-husband's gambling debts and then to her fellow officers.”

This story is about a rape committed by a cop.

“Scourge” Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “The team searches for a serial killer (Richard Thomas) who justifies his crimes with paranoid religious motivation set on by a rapidly deteriorating medical condition. Even though she knows that he has been driven to kill, his wife (Karen Allen) begs the prosecutors to show leniency because of his condition (Neurosyphilis).”

I’m not sure I do this every time it comes up, but in this episode a corporation (or its CEO) is targeted by the cops at the end for the indirect role it played in four murders and it’s action was sort of motivated by greed.

“Rooftop” Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “A series of rapes, each more violent than the previous, takes place in a community of African-Americans. Detectives Benson and Stabler promptly suspect a known HIV-positive sex offender (Dorian Missick) who was recently released from jail, however he dies of an overdose and is found on a rooftop. The attacks continue and Detective Tutuola's childhood friends' daughter is killed. As they find nothing, her brother Rodney Thompson (Todd Williams) accuses the police of limiting the budget put on the case. Only when a fifth victim is killed, do her final moments alongside Thompson's persistence give them what they need to find the killer.”

There are two things worth mentioning.

1) There’s a reference to how serial killers often start with harming animals.

2) The detective played by Ice-T agrees with some angry young black men that the media are less concerned about black females being raped and killed than they are concerned about white females being raped and killed and criticizes the police for responding to the series of rapes and murders with an insufficient number of officers when there would be more officers if the victims were white. He even takes a pretty hard-line on the issue in a conversation with his captain.

Law and Order: SVU Reviews M

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

 

“The Burden of Our Choices” Season 21. Summary is here.

 

Abortion 

This is more about abortion than it is about a sex crime (in this case sexual abuse of a minor by her step-father). Until the end all of the pro-lifers are more concerned about the girl having an abortion than they are concerned about the abuse that resulted in the pregnancy. One refers to abortion as a “modern-day genocide” which should be seen as an insult to those who have seen their population almost wiped about. There’s the tiniest bit of dissent but in general the main characters are pro-choice.

One says that money is a factor, that women with money can get abortions easier than women without. And that’s true in multiple ways. First, it’s usually not a free procedure and there is great opposition among pro-lifers to using federal money to pay for abortions. Second, in many states only a minority of counties have an abortion provider and that means women have to travel, some times great distances, to get an abortion. And some states have a waiting period which means spending days in whatever city they have to travel to for the abortion. Poor women can’t afford the gas money and motel room needed.

The 13-yo rape victim (and that’s another thing, the pro-lifers in this episode are the sort who don’t make an exception for rape) tries to kill herself. In the Republic of Ireland, abortion is about 99% illegal. In the 1990s there was at least one court case that decided that if the woman is suicidal and that’s certified by two psychiatrists, she can have an abortion. In 2002 a referendum almost over-turned that by constitutional amendment but it was narrowly defeated. Although Sinn Fein was more or less pro-life, they believed in making several exceptions and the woman being suicidal was one of them and they not only called for a NO vote, they joined a coalition for that purpose with the Green Party, the Labour Party, and a feminist organization.

“At Midnight in Manhattan” Season 21. Summary is here.

A big chunk of this is about transphobia.

“Murdered at a Bad Address” Season 21. Summary is here.

This is about clearing an innocent man who spent 16 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Although it’s not clear, I think that when the detective who originally investigated and arrested the man is interviewed by SVU, he refers to the wrongly convicted as PRs and I think that means Puerto Ricans (both of them have Spanish last names). An SVU detective suggests a class and racial dimension to the original investigation, hence the episode title (they lived in the housing project the murders took place in).

The Queens Assistant DA who gets the wrongly convicted man (his alleged accomplice died shortly before SVU started investigating) out of prison is a gay man. So are/were the two wrongly convicted men and the homophobia of our society kept them from explaining that they were having sex with each other when the rape/double murder took place- they probably could have gotten out of the rape charge and therefore the murder charge as well just by telling the truth about their sexual orientation.

“Counselor, it’s Chinatown” Season 21. Summary is here.

There’s one bit that's pro-immigrant. When they raid a massage parlor that involves sex-work, they offer the women working there help with immigration.


“The Longest Night of Rain” Season 21 See this for a summary.

This is about a cop who was raped by a superior in the NYPD.

Roseanne Reviews H

This is a set of reviews of Roseanne episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I will focus only on the political aspects and will mention what percent of lines spoken by non-family members are spoken by people of color.

“Fender Bender” Episode 21 Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “Roseanne is rear-ended by Mrs. Wellman, injuring her neck, and must rest for awhile. When Mrs. Wellman does not apologize, Roseanne considers suing her.”

There is definitely a class dimension to this and although it doesn’t seem like a crushing defeat, it’s about the rich winning. Roseanne gives up on the idea of suing Mrs. Wellman when the latter asks if Roseanne has a good lawyer. Roseanne knows that Mrs. Wellman, as a rich person, has a good lawyer and that she and Dan don’t have a good lawyer. There’s also the issue of respect. Mrs. Wellman doesn’t apologize after the accident because her lawyer advised her it would be admitting guilt. But, when Roseanne considers responding to that lack of respect by suing her, Mrs. Wellman, as I said, wins.

There’s about 65-70 lines by non-family members and only about 10% are by people of color.

“April Fool’s Day” Episode 22, Season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “It is tax season and Roseanne and Dan contemplate how to make the process easier. Dan eventually stresses out when he is unable to complete the tax form. Roseanne tries her hand but they end up traveling to the IRS office.”

This is kind of mixed. There’s a lot of non-partisan criticism of the tax system. There’s one very brief apparent suggestion for a flat tax. But there is also a part where Roseanne talks for about half a minute about how rich people pay less tax than the working and middle-classes because they have accountants and tax lawyers that can identify the loop-holes in the tax code.

There’s about 40 lines by non-family members and about 20% are by people of color.

“Happy Birthday” Episode 24, season 2. Wikipedia summary is: “Roseanne, though only turning 37, feels she has hit a dead-end in her life. Always wanting to be a writer, Roseanne makes a wish on this birthday that she had more time to write. Dan and the kids surprise Roseanne with her own writing studio in the basement and leave her alone so she can write. Unfortunately, Roseanne is hit with a severe case of writer's block.”

Out of about 25 lines by non-family members, about 20% are by people of color.

“The Test” Episode 1, Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “Set in the middle of a hot summer day Dan is reluctant to give Becky driving lessons. Meanwhile, the whole family awaits the results of a more serious test being taken by Roseanne.”

There’s a very brief argument about abortion, with Jackie taking a pro-choice position and Crystal taking the pro-life position. Roseanne appears neutral but later in the series  expresses a pro-choice position at least once. As I have said elsewhere on this blog, my thoughts about abortion are:

“I’m pro-choice for the following reasons: I don’t know whether or not the fetus is alive but I am sure that A) women should control their own bodies, B) without the right to choose they can’t have full equality, and C) if men could also get pregnant there would be a massive pro-choice majority in this country.”

“Friends and Relatives” Episode 2, Season 3. Wikipedia summary is: “Dan lends Arnie $1,500 to buy Nancy an engagement ring. He instead spends it on her breast implants. When Dan falls behind on the bills, Jackie wants to lend him money, but he refuses because she is a relative. DJ starts peeping on his sisters.”

Out of about 15-20 lines by non-family members, none are by people of color.

Law and Order: Special Victims Unit Reviews E

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

(Now that I’m getting into some of the episodes that involve the character John Munch, I’m going to ignore most of his political statements)

“Closure Part 1” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “Benson does her best to help a rape victim (Tracy Pollan), who is able to describe her attack, but not the attacker (Neil Maffin) in perfect detail. When the detectives revisit the case a few months later, they find the woman even less willing to talk about what happened, as she claims she has moved on. Things turn uncomfortable within the squad when Benson and Cassidy, who spent a night together, argue over whether the relationship should be continued. “

They somehow know that she smokes pot and decide to not bust her for it (this is 1999 or 2000)

“Bad Blood” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “The death of a young gay man initially leads Benson and Stabler to investigate his homophobic father, but once they start looking into the young man's living arrangements, they realize the person they're looking for may be closer than they think. Munch tries to help Benson find the man who raped her mother. “

There’s some stuff about homophobia in this episode. The detectives promise to respect the confidentiality of a gay NYPD witness, and in the show (maybe in real life?) there’s something called the “Gay Officers Action League.” There’s also a swipe taken at former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s ethics problems.

“Limitations” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “At the request of a victim, the police commissioner comes to Cragen with a special request: close the case of the man who raped three women (Jenny Bacon, Judith Hawkins and Seana Kofoed) nearly five years ago before the statute of limitations expires. The detectives finally get a lead when they realize one of the victims knows the rapist, but she is not willing to talk. Following Cassidy's departure, Munch is partnered with Jeffries.”

There are two political aspects to this. The survivor who gets the police’s attention is clearly a successful businesswoman and that might have something to do with her getting their attention. The second one is that the progressive Quaker religious community comes close to being endorsed by the show.

“Misleader” Season 1. Wikipedia summary is: “After the pregnant daughter-in-law of a prominent Christian right leader (Robert Foxworth) is found murdered in her hotel room, the detectives investigate a rash of hotel burglaries, only to discover that her adultery (and the probable father of her child) was what led to her death.”

A small aspect of this is the moral hypocrisy that exists in some members of the religious right.

“Remorse” Season 1. wikipedia summary is: “Television reporter Sarah Logan (Jennifer Esposito) refuses to let her recent rape get her down, and talks about her experiences on the air, leading to the arrest of a young man that the team feels is responsible. Over the course of the investigation, Munch and Jeffries become unusually affected by the case, albeit in different ways.”

There are two progressive elements to this. First, East Timor is referred to (East Timor was occupied by Indonesia between 1975 and 1999 or 2000 and it was a cause taken up by progressives in America). Second, one of the detectives is a fan of Noam Chomsky.

Women's Equality in Ireland

At one point one of the detectives says that Irishmen are raised to respect women. I’m not sure exactly where that line comes from, but there is some truth to it. Although I don’t know exactly what the current situation is, abortion has been in recent decades about 99% illegal in the Republic and before that it was completely illegal. But as far as I can tell, women there do okay in terms of equality. For 21 years starting in 1990 three Presidential terms were filled by women. During the last 30 years half the time the Deputy Prime Minister was a woman. I generally got the impression that Irish women do okay in terms of equality. Unfortunately, I think a majority of them are pro-life. I’m pro-choice but the point I’m trying to make is that there are pro-lifers who nonetheless are feminists or at least believe in equality for women, as flawed as such a combination of stances is. And I think it’s found in Ireland because a lot of Catholic pro-lifers don’t want women to “stay in their place” or something like that, they just believe that the fetus is alive, THAT’S why they’re pro-life, not sexism. (you see something similar with the membership of Sinn Fein, a party that is or was basically pro-life but which has also seen a lot of women involved as party activists or politicians and whose current leader is a woman) (You might see it a little bit with some other religious groups that are pro-life, but I think it’s mostly a Catholic thing)

Law and Order Special Victims Unit Reviews C

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

“Missing” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit are called in after a little girl is found in the trunk of an abandoned car. The girl says her kidnapper wore yellow the same color as Big Bird and the detectives discover that she was adopted by two gay men after a surrogacy arrangement. After interrogating many suspects, the detectives find the girls kidnapper but they also learn that her kidnapper may not be who he claims to be and uncover a years kept secret kept by his mother, who may not be as innocent as she says she is.”

There is a gay male couple and this time it goes a bit further than the normal anti-homophobia of the show, because they have a child (one artificially inseminated a surrogate and the other adopted). Although that stopped being controversial about 15 years ago, it still is more significant than if they were child-less.

“Dearly Beloved” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is “The Special Victims Unit are called in after a woman crashes a wedding claiming that the groom, a therapist, raped her. The detectives talk to several people, who claim that the woman has stalked them at times after sending inappropriate messages on Facebook and Instagram, which challenges the woman’s integrity. However, when it is discovered that the woman is pregnant with her alleged rapist's baby, the woman confides to Benson that she doesn’t know if she can have the baby due to being unable to love it and an upset Benson tells Rollins something that she overheard her mother say years ago.”

Abortion

There are two minor things and one bigger thing worth commenting on. First, the villain, a white man, is at the beginning about to get married to an Asian-American woman. Second, there a brief appearance by another Asian-American woman who is gay

The episode kind of brings up the subject of rape and abortion, even though there is no attempt made to stop a rape victim from having one. As I wrote elsewhere on this blog,

“I’m pro-choice for the following reasons: I don’t know whether or not the fetus is alive but I am sure that A) women should control their own bodies, B) without the right to choose they can’t have full equality, and C) if men could also get pregnant there would be a massive pro-choice majority in this country.”

If I were a pro-lifer, I would believe in making some exceptions and the very first one would be for rape survivors. As the show states, some survivors who get pregnant by their attacker choose to have then child, but if they choose to have an abortion that should be an option. It’s one reason I support Sinn Fein, now the largest party in Ireland. I’m not sure what their current position on abortion is, but they used to be the kind of pro-life party that made a lot of exceptions, including for rape.

“The Good Girl” Season 20 Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit are called in to investigate a complicated pregnancy case involving a thirteen year old girl. Benson works to try and find out who the baby’s father is, but getting the answer becomes complicated when the teenage girl is reluctant to expose the baby’s father. She refuses to speak to Benson and the Special Victims Unit, prompting Benson to believe that the baby’s father might be someone close to the teenage girl who may have taken advantage of her.”

There’s a bit about homophobia where a gay teacher at a Catholic Middle School is in the closet because he would be rejected by them. It’s also noteworthy that he’s a white man in a relationship with a black man.

I also learned something pretty sick. In  Missouri, adults can marry children, I think starting at around 10. It’s sick.

“Diss” Season 20 Wikipedia summary is: “When a pop star is assaulted in her own home, the Special Victims Unit are called in to investigate what happened. The detectives soon find out that the pop star’s husband had a heated public feud with another competing recording artist, which could easily have been the motive for the assault. Just as Tutuola gets deep into the case, it is discovered that his family ties to one of the suspects of the assault and as a result, Stone, who is taking the case seriously, orders Benson to take him off the case.”

One of the characters is a bi-racial man and another is his mom. I know that’s not as unusual as it was 20 years ago, but still…. There’s also some stuff about how cops treat black people.

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit Reviews A

This is a set of reviews of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit episodes. My general thoughts about that show are here. I’ll often do no more than make brief notes about an episode, although occasionally I’ll go deeper. Also, often there are dissenting main characters on almost any political issue, but you can usually tell what the general position of the show is. All the rest of the reviews are available by clicking on the l&osvu label at the bottom.

The first episode is a two-parter, the first called “Man Up” and the second part called 
“Man Down.” The wikipedia summaries are:

“The Special Victims Unit is called in after a fifteen-year-old boy (Bryce Romero) is sexually assaulted. Despite having evidence, he is too scared to name his attacker (Dylan Walsh), making things complicated for the detectives. When the identity of the attacker is discovered, the detectives do their best to protect the teenager from being abused again. Meanwhile, Rollins talks things through with her ex-boyfriend who cheated on her with an escort and also confides in Benson that she is pregnant for a second time. Benson expresses concern to Tutuola that she is not as strong or fast as she used to be.”

and

“The case involving a teenager who was sexually assaulted continues and Stone takes the rapist to court. However, an unexpected verdict comes back, shocking everyone involved. The victim ends up making a tragic decision which results in several people dead and injured and the Special Victims Unit must charge the victim. An upset Stone along with the rest of the squad decide to try their best to charge the boy's rapist as well in order to get justice for all the victims who were killed or injured in the attack. Meanwhile, Rollins starts having doubts about her pregnancy.”

 

Feminism

There are two feminist aspects of this. Overall it’s slightly about taking the idea of pushing someone to “man up” to a point where it becomes sexist. There’s also a moment when Benson says to Rollins about abortion: “This is your decision to make, alone, and I will defend to the death your right to make it, but regret is an awful thing to live with.”

 

Gun Control and Politics

The main element of the second half is a school shooting and this brings up the issue of gun control, something I largely support. I was in college when the Columbine incident took place in 1999 and I think if the “gun show loophole” had been closed it might not have happened. I was surprised to learn recently that in recent years increasingly law enforcement opposes gun control, which seems to me to mean that more than usual they have a double standard and want guns out of the hands of some of the population but are fine with conservatives having guns. They continue to introduce people of color, disproportionately, to the criminal justice system, which seems to usually have a negative effect on your second amendment rights, and search Black people for weapons more than white people, and shoot Black people who don’t even have a gun, but generally are okay with “open-carry” and more specifically treat white people who pose an armed threat to the State with kid gloves while they call for Antifa to be declared a terrorist organization (Antifa and it’s predecessor, the Anti-Racist Action Network, without arms focuses(d) on grassroots fascists (in the past that usually meant Nazi skinheads), not cops).

 

Homophobia

There’s also two bits about homophobia. First, in the first half, the father suggests that if someone is gay they need counseling. In the second half the son is interviewed by a psychiatrist who refers to her wife and the son just says he isn’t gay, but without any hostility, like he rejects his dad’s homophobia.

“Zero Tolerance” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is: “A nine-year-old girl (Scarlett Lopez) is taken from her mother at the U.S.–Mexico border and ends up in a child sex trafficking ring in New York, which quickly comes to the attention of the Special Victims Unit. Benson and Stone try their hardest to reunite the girl with her family within the court system but meet many obstacles along the way. Eventually, Stone decides to ask for help from an old friend. Meanwhile, Rollins decides to give her rocky relationship with Pollack another chance.”

 

Immigration

Even before the main story about immigrants kicks in, there is one minor pro-immigrant thing. Probably an average of 5 times a season, the detectives make it clear that they’re not “la migra” (immigration) when seeking witnesses, and that sort of thing happened here. It just occurred to me that it would be good if about 20-30% of the time that involved white immigrants who are undocumented because it wouldn’t hurt if white people understood that amnesty would benefit, for example, undocumented Irish.

The main story is about separating undocumented children from their undocumented parents, something that became a hall-mark of Trump immigration policy in recent years. The show is extremely critical of that. When someone from the Office of Refugee Resettlement comes to take the girl back to a camp, he is identified as the one who took her from her mother’s arms and Benson has him arrested for kidnapping. It doesn’t survive the courts of course, but it’s still a powerful statement.

As usual there is some probably realistic disagreement among the detectives about the issue. The Black detective (“Finn”) is less than totally pro-immigrant and unfortunately when the “we’re all the descendants of immigrants” argument is made, he (kind of reasonably) describes Black history. I think that when it comes from pro-immigrant black people, it’s a reasonable response to a flawed pro-immigrant argument, but otherwise it’s a bullshit response to a flawed pro-immigrant argument. He DOES make a good point about how Black people are treated today (but again, it really has nothing to do with a less-than-totally pro-immigrant position). (a colleague refers to immigrants “yearning to breathe free” and then Finn says “I still can’t breathe free,” likely a reference to the last words of Eric Garner, a black man who was killed in a chokehold by the NYPD)

“Exile” Season 20. Wikipedia summary is: “The Special Victims Unit is called in to investigate the sexual assault of a young homeless woman (Aimée Spring Fortier). The squad soon realizes that the woman has a dual personality which makes things complicated. However, when she goes missing, the squad becomes challenged to not only uncover her whereabouts but also her real identity. The detectives later discover that someone from her past may be responsible and that the assault may have happened a long time ago. However, the squad meet a dead end in their investigation and Benson makes a generous decision to help the victim recover from her ordeal.”

There are two main aspects of this that are abnormal (normal being about sex crimes).

 

Homelessness

First, it touches on homelessness. Like almost everyone I’m concerned about homelessness. I have done very little to help the homeless compared to what I’ve done to help those who just have food insecurity (the last 8-10 years I have spent an average of about 4-6 hours a week volunteering at a food-bank) but about 1% of that work was for the benefit of homeless people and probably a lot of food bank clients would become homeless if not for the food bank, and then the resources available for homeless people would have to be shared by a lot more people than is currently the case- i.e. there would be more competition for beds in shelters.

It also touches a little on the subject of homeless people with mental illness. I think that’s a major cause of homelessness- even moderate (let alone severe) mental illness makes it difficult to function and work and pay bills and stuff. Without Social Security disability programs SSI and SSDI there would be even more homelessness. Also, mental illness can be made worse by anxiety, stress and depression and I’m sure gets worse with becoming homeless. (I describe my mental illness here)

 

Marijuana Legalization

The subject of legal marijuana comes up, and the show expresses support for this when Finn buys a legal marijuana snack. I can’t believe that there are still states where even medical marijuana remains illegal. And when it comes to recreational marijuana, I believe there are still federal obstacles for businesses, especially when it comes to banking. Marijuana is much less deadly than alcohol or tobacco and I believe it is less addictive, although driving stoned is probably as stupid as driving drunk. In general I fully support medical and recreational marijuana, especially the former. I can’t believe how many people our nation sentenced to the hell that prison must be for marijuana-only non-violent “crimes.” It’s sick.

Lastly, the gay or bi-sexual psychiatrist working with the DA’s office has a brief appearance.

In Memory of JFK

I know that, according to Noam Chomsky, JFK may have been more into escalating the low intensity conflict in Vietnam (it wasn’t much of a war until after he was killed) than Oliver Stone would have us believe. And he was more of a capitalist than FDR was, and he was a Cold Warrior (I don’t know if Stone was right about his attitude towards anti-Castro Cubans). But I still think that he was one of our better Presidents. Although I’m not real familiar with his civil-rights record, a LOT of Black people and Chicana/os and Latina/os greatly admire(d) him (what he was about). He was a mainstream Dem back before the party shifted towards the center, and back when the rich and corporations were taxed more than they have been in the last 45 years, and when privatization was a bad word.

And he was the only Catholic President we have had. And until about the time he was elected, there was a massive history of anti-Catholic bigotry in this country. I’ll get back to that soon.

This post is about the Catholic population of the US (and to some extent elsewhere), the Catholic Church, anti-Catholic bigotry of the sort we find in America, MY relationship to Catholicism, and to a very small degree, Catholicism (although I won’t get theological or philosophical). It might not be incredibly well integrated, so please read the entire post.

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I’d been thinking of doing this post for about 2-4 years. What convinced me to do it recently is that I have become more sensitive to the existence of anti-Catholic bigotry in this country, I think because I have become even more sensitive to anti-Semitism than I used to be (it’s come up frequently on my blog in the last 4 months, and between when Trump revealed his “peace” plan for Israel and the Palestinians and early March I read an average of 5 articles a day in the Times of Israel (before COVID-19 it looked like that conflict was going to explode and I wanted to be very informed, and TTI is only slightly pro-Israel)). The most immediate cause of me typing this now instead of two months from now is a joke in a movie I generally like. It’s called “Five Feet Apart” and it’s the perfect combination of comedy, tragedy, and romance. At one point one of the characters says that his life-time to-do list includes having sex in the Vatican. The Vatican is much more religious than political- the Vatican barely counts as a State. I know people will try to wiggle out of this by pointing to differences in hierarchy, but what if he said “in a mosque” or “in a synagogue?” What about the Dalai Lama’s residence? I know people will say that Tibetan Buddhism isn’t as offensive as the Catholic Church, but overall that’s only sort of true, and it doesn’t matter. I know people will point to the differences in hierarchy, but if you identify the politics of the average Muslim, and compare that to either the official positions of the Vatican and/or the politics of the average Catholic, I find the Muslim population more politically offensive (before you get the wrong idea, A) wait till I describe the Catholic part of that comparison, and B) see this and C) see this). And like I said, what if it were a Mosque? I would find that just as offensive.

I have experienced anti-Catholic bigotry 2-3 times.

1. A woman who is clearly more right-wing than left-wing said something in my presence that was anti-Catholic. It was about 5 years ago and I can’t remember what it was but it was not a reasonable criticism of the Church or a reasonable theological disagreement. I am not giving her name, and if I have to, the next time I see her I’ll casually ask her how she feels about Catholics and will be able to provide more solid evidence that she’s anti-Catholic.

2. After a Northern Ireland event I organized, a fairly prominent, progressive local activist came up to me and said that it was weird to think of Catholics as the good guys (she only showed up because a prof. she really likes was supposed to speak). Now, in all fairness, she also said that, as someone who's half Jewish and supports the Palestinians, she considers Jews to be the bad guys, too (that is, she's an equal opportunity idiot). And to a large degree her comment indicated some degree of concern for the Catholic population in the North. But it does indicate a problem.

3. I'm not sure this really counts as anti-Catholicism, in fact this person was fairly interested in     Northern Ireland and fairly concerned about the Nationalist (Catholic) community in N. Ireland. In all fairness, when she said this I don't think I knew anything about what she raised that I know now. But she indicated she wasn't real enthusiastic about a United Ireland because Protestant women would be disadvantaged in terms of access to abortion. The thing is, while abortion is something like 99% illegal in the Republic, it was about 95% illegal in the North. That conversation was in the late 1990s and only very recently has the Abortion Act has been extended to N. Ireland. And it was done over the objections of a majority in N. Ireland. And in fact, the Protestant population is a little bit more pro-life than the Catholic population (at a political level as evidenced by statements made during an Assembly debate on the subject in 2000).

The thing is, she was making this assumption about Catholic and Protestant attitudes on abortion that is evidence of anti-Catholicism on the Left. Her statement ignored all the CATHOLIC women who would like access to abortion. (she also suggested that the abortion issue for Protestant women is more important than all the issues that argue in favor of uniting Ireland)

Here are some other things that convince me there is anti-Catholic bigotry on the Left.

1) In 2003 there was a survey done of American non-Catholics which found that some significant minority (I'm almost certain it was 30%) believe that Catholics go along with whatever the Vatican says. Although I'm going to keep this fairly brief, that's ridiculous. There's plenty of dissent. For example, Spain is a leader in gay rights. As I describe here, Catholics in Ireland support gay rights, and in 2015 same-sex marriage was legalized (by a Constitutional Amendment, so it would be difficult to reverse (there wasn’t anything in their Constitution about “a man and a woman”)). As far as I can tell, about 1/3-1/2 of European Catholic majority countries are pro-choice (outside of Europe, it's not as good, overall it's probably some small minority of majority Catholic countries). According to polls by the Pew Research Center, in America in 2013, 76% of Catholics believed the Church should permit birth control, 54% supported same-sex marriage and only 33% believed that homosexual behavior is a sin . As far as I can tell, overwhelmingly the worst the clergy do is inconsistently harass pro-choice Catholic politicians.

The thing is, the liberal positions of the Church (the death penalty, national oppression, war, economic justice) are not nearly as well known as the conservative positions (abortion and homosexuality). Odds are a significant percentage (maybe 30%) of the Left (and liberals, too) assume that all Catholics are conservative, and I've found evidence of that.

2) I've heard at least one comment from a leftist that they're surprised to learn that on most issues, most American Catholics are liberal.

3) This one will take some time. I'll explain shortly why this should have been condemned. First though, as far as I can tell, the Left failed to condemn the Dec. 11th 1989 disruption of a Catholic Mass in New York City by AIDS, pro-choice, and gay rights activists. Now, the Cathedral targeted was ridiculously bad on those issues. But it should have been condemned as a violation of the right to religious freedom, and that doesn't just refer to the Cardinal, but all the parishioners. If Palestinians and their supporters had identified a very anti-Palestinian synagogue and did the same thing, the left would have mostly condemned that. The differences in the situations facing Catholic Americans and Jewish Americans are not big enough to justify that double standard.

If anyone has heard that the Mass was only disrupted by one demonstrator, that's not true.

I have heard nothing to indicate that the Left condemned this protest. All I have heard from the Left is good stuff about the group most associated with the protest- ACT-UP.

4) According the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, in 1996 "by a margin of 44% to 33% the public thinks that Protestants should have less rather than more political power. Somewhat greater margins want to see Roman Catholics (53% to 27%), evangelicals (51% to 27%) and Jews (49% to 27%) have less power." Odds are about half those people saying that Catholics should have less power (and that figure is greater than it is for any of the other main religious groups mentioned) are to the left of center, and the figure for people on that side of the political spectrum is probably 53%. I'm going to keep this brief, but most or all of these people probably under-estimate what percentage of Protestants (Protestants are almost three times more numerous than Catholics are in America) are pro-life and certainly must be exaggerating the percentage of Catholics who are pro-life- one Pew poll found it was a minority. Catholics are probably no more than a large minority of pro-lifers in America. When it comes to gay rights, Catholics look even better-  the homophobic ones are a small minority of homophobes in America (a 2008 Pew poll found that 45% of American Catholics support gay marriage, and I'd estimate there's probably a bloc of 10-20% who oppose gay marriage but nonetheless are difficult to call homophobic). These leftists I'm referring to probably look at conservative Supreme Court Justices and think Catholics having power is a greater threat to liberal goals than Protestants having power is. But look at, for example, conservative Presidents of the US and you'll see just Protestants. The Bible Belt is Protestant. And in general I'm not a fan of talking about this religious group or that religious group being the problem, I'm simply trying to point out how wrong these leftists and liberals are about Catholics being the problem.



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There is also the question of equality for Catholics in America. As I explain in another post, NO I DON’T THINK CATHOLICS IN AMERICA ARE OPPRESSED. But overall there is a small degree of inequality for Catholics here.

In an average Presidential election year here, Catholics were about 15% of the population. IF, in some bizarre hypothetical political system that I DO NOT ADVOCATE FOR, Presidential election victories were distributed based on figures for religion and population, there should have been about 9 elections won by a Catholic. Instead we have had one election where a Catholic won. Also, we have only had two elections where a Catholic running for Vice President won.

On the other hand, on the Supreme Court, Catholics have a surplus of power. I am not going to re-do the math I did 1-2 years ago, especially because there are different time periods to look at, but if we look at the last 20 years, about 40-60% of the Supreme Court has been Catholic. Some would point to this as evidence that I am greatly exaggerating anti-Catholic bigotry in this country. But, bearing in mind that the vast majority of such Justices in the last 20 years are conservative and the Dems have a better history (in the last 100 years) of nominating Catholics for President or VP and electing them and admiring them, I think it's similar to anti-Semitic Christian Zionists putting Jews in the spotlight- it's harder for supporters of the Palestinians to attack Jewish supporters of Israel and it's easier for conservative Catholics than it is for conservative WASPs to counter-attack when liberals and leftists call them bigots.

I don’t seriously believe this is because of anti-Catholic bigotry (it’s because a massive chunk of American Catholics are Chicana/o or Latina/o), but it’s not irrelevant that (according to the Pew Research Center) in 2016 only 19% of Catholic households earned $100,000 or more. The following groups were ahead of Catholics- Muslims, Mormons, Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod, Unitarian Universalist, Presbyterian Church in America, United Method Church, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, United Church of Christ, Orthodox Christian, Agnostic, Atheist, Presbyterian Church (USA), Episcopal Church, Hindu, Jewish (and ALL US ADULTS (I think that means that Catholics are below average)). (I mention this partly because it says something about how much ECONOMIC power Catholics in America have)

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Although this may not qualify as anti-Catholic bigotry, I’m going to say it anyway.

Elsewhere on my blog I offered this description of the Irish “Famine.”

During the Famine, 10-15% of the population died and 10-15% of the population would have died if they hadn’t emigrated. This was concentrated in the South and West of Ireland where there very few settlers- if you ignore the settlers and their descendants, it was probably closer to 15-20% and 15-20% of the population. Why did a potato blight result in something close to genocide? First, the indigenous Catholic population was still recovering from about 1.5 centuries of political and legal disempowerment that occurred because of the Penal Laws which denied them most of the rights enjoyed by most or all Protestants (it varied from right to right). “Catholic Emancipation” was only made about 90% complete about 15 years earlier. Because of this and general poverty, the indigenous population was largely dependent on land owned by land lords and the potato crop. For about 45 years before the Famine and during the Famine, Ireland didn’t have a devolved parliament, they were completely ruled from London. Crucially, during the Famine, MASSIVE amounts of food were being shipped from Ireland to Britain, something that involved seventy-five British Army regiments. …  the deaths only stopped when the blight stopped. … The British were more or less racist towards the Irish at that point in Anglo-Irish history and were more concerned about practicing Laissez-faire economics and feeding the British population than they were concerned about mass starvation among the Irish

Tony Blair was the first British Prime Minister to apologize for British policy during the Famine.

Consider this. Although it’s true that America, in terms of immigration policy, opened its door to the Irish during the Famine, there was incredible nativism and anti-Catholic bigotry at the same time. And, although the UK may have been much less than a fully fledged democracy (today, the monarchy, as far as I’m concerned has got so little power in practice that it almost doesn’t matter, but I think that during the Famine, the monarchy may have been more powerful than it is today, and I’m pretty sure that the un-elected and elitist House of Lords had more power than it does today) and was an imperialist power and was occupying a foreign nation where it’s policies were resulting in something close to genocide, no country in the world militarily took on the UK. America took on Nazi Germany, but not the UK during the Famine. Back then the US was, admittedly, perhaps not as strong militarily as the UK, but they could have assembled a coalition with some European nations, probably some of the Catholic ones, and landed troops in Ireland to kick the British out and stop the shipment of food out of Ireland. (Some would say it was a different USA back then, but has any American President ever apologized for the failure of the US to do something? In some bizarre alternate history where the US sat out WWII and Nazi Germany was defeated anyway and there were a whole bunch of Holocaust survivors, the US would have at some point between then and now apologized for their inaction)

Catholics in N. Ireland went through a nightmare 1969 to 1998 or 2005 (for more information than I provide in this post, you should read all of this).

The Catholic community in N. Ireland experienced high levels of inequality in the first 50 years of NI ’s existence (for more on this see this (describes the undemocratic and sectarian creation of N. Ireland, the inequality Catholics experienced, and how the Troubles began)). Around 1970 the situation transformed. Although there were fewer laws that could be compared to Jim Crow, job discrimination continued or got worse (in 1971 Catholics were twice as likely to be unemployed as Protestants and in 1988 they were TWO AND A HALF times more likely to be unemployed as Protestants) repression got worse, and violence against the Catholic population skyrocketed like you wouldn’t believe. During the Troubles (roughly 1969-2005) they went through a nightmare. 856+ Catholic civilians were killed in the years 1969 to 2005 by either loyalist paramilitaries or the security forces (a comparable scenario in America would have meant around 67,000 unarmed people of color killed by cops or Nazi skinheads (etc.) in the same time period). (A: based on what I’ll describe in the very last section, I would guess that the actual number for that was probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000; B: I'm not saying the racist system in this country wasn't, ideologically or programmatically, capable of killing 67,000 people of color in those years if the "rebellion" among people of color here had been as militaristic as the one among Catholics in N. Ireland; but the reality is that as bad as it was for people of color here in those years, it was, in terms of deaths, MUCH worse for Catholics in N. Ireland). Between 1975 and 1998, with practically zero influence on law and policy beyond local government, they were ruled by a state they quite reasonably saw as both foreign and hostile.

And here are my thoughts about US foreign policy on N. Ireland:

The government most responsible for that nightmare (see this) is the most important ally of the US government in the entire world (in addition to some other relevant info, that post exposes the fact that the British were no more concerned by the sectarian slaughter of Catholic civilians (by organizations that did little else) than they were concerned by IRA attacks that almost never resulted in civilian death). I realize that we are not propping them up like we do with Israel, but who helped us patrol the “No Fly” zones over Iraq 1991-2003?; who contributed something like 20% of the military forces for the invasion of Iraq? And who made a similar contribution during the occupation of Iraq? I believe that the British have a problem- an Ireland problem, or an imperialism problem or whatever you would call it. They need an intervention and you get friends, not enemies or strangers for interventions. The US needs to convince the British to begin, ASAP, a decades-long process of getting out of Ireland.

Ways in which Washington DC was bad on N. Ireland:

1) It seems that D.C. never privately put firm pressure on the British to dramatically change its policy in N. Ireland and/or create a significant role for the South in the affairs of the North (or even, better, begin a process of withdrawal). If they did this privately, it didn't work, and they should have done it publicly (it's possible that to some degree it was done privately between Clinton and Blair, and had some small effect on the GFA, but the GFA could have been much better, and then there's the ultimate goal of a British withdrawal).
2) At some point, possibly for a long period of time, an American company was selling the UK the plastic bullets they were using in N. Ireland.
3) Although at some point in the 1970s the President or Vice President of SF did speak at a committee hearing of the US Congress, from 1983 until 1994 the President of SF was Gerry Adams (he continued in that role until a few years ago, but was first allowed into the U.S. in 1994), and he was not allowed into the US. During this time SF was getting 40% of the Nationalist vote and probably about 60% of the vote from the poorest half of the Nationalist community (go here and type "SDLP" and "Ireland" in the first field and "middle-class" in the second field) (remember what I wrote about unemployment, and see this).
4) During the entire conflict, something like 20 former republican Volunteers went through either extradition or deportation proceedings. I think all the extradited were sent back to the UK, I think most of the deportation cases were deported. I know of at least one deportation, and this was probably the case with all of them, where the issue was that he said on the immigration paperwork that he was never convicted of a crime, and the U.S. government said that he in fact had been. The thing is, republican Volunteers don't consider themselves criminals, and even the British government, to some degree, has recognized this by treating them as prisoners of war during most of the conflict. But the U.S. Government disagrees. There's evidence that some very large majority of the nationalist community more or less supported the hunger-strikers of 1981 whose struggle convinced the British to extend status as prisoners of war (or political status, basically the same thing), which makes me think that some very large majority of the nationalist community was more or less unhappy about the extraditions and deportations (see this and the middle third of this).
5) About 17 years ago Bush was putting so much pressure on SF over policing and decommissioning that Blair told him to ease up.
6) Bush's Immigration had Bernadette Devlin-McAliskey deported, claiming she was a "threat" to the U.S. Devlin-McAliskey has little connection to violence, and half of that connection (the Battle of the Bogside) was widely considered completely justified; the other half, there's less widespread agreement about how justified it was, but she was only associated with the Irish National Liberation Army for something between a few months and about a year in the mid-1970s. Although she has no chance of getting elected to parliament, she's still very popular among the Nationalist population.

It’s not like the US didn't have a relationship with the British, they were best friends. I doubt that anti-Catholic bigotry was more than a very small part of it, and Clinton (in contrast to Reagan of the Reagan and Thatcher friendship) played a slightly positive role in the Peace Process, but still…

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After explaining why politically conscious Americans should have seen N. Ireland as an important issue (and I think largely of progressives when I think about this), I should say that very little was done. That’s based partly on America’s policy decisions regarding N. Ireland and the fact that there was never a “million-mick march” and my own experience with the issue. On a liberal-progressive campus in a liberal-progressive city (University of Colorado at Boulder), my activism on the North was about 1/7 as successful as my non-NI activism on a range of leftist issues. On average about 25 people were at the NI events, about 175 people were at the other events (that's between 1994 and 2004; between 94 and 01 it was 30 for NI, 75 for everything else). Also in Boulder, CO, the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center has been a very well-respected and successful progressive organization for decades. They often have some representation among the speakers at the official Martin Luther King Jr. day rally in Boulder. Carolyn Bninski, one of the two main staff people in the last 15-20 years wrote me in an email: “We may have anywhere from 5 to 100 people at an event.” In 2005 RMPJC organized three events about the North of Ireland. On average each one had 2 people in the audience. In 2008 they organized another event which attracted about 5 people. (RMPJC has been involved with at least two earlier events about the North, but in this paragraph I’m only looking at the ones where they were the only sponsor). The point of mentioning attendance at RMPJC events is that among the rank and file of the broad progressive movement there is almost no interest in the subject.

On one hand, very few Catholics, outside about 25% of the Irish-American population  and about 10% of the Chicana/o population, cared about the North. But I believe that what I wrote above about anti-Catholic bigotry and what I write in the next section explains why there was so little interest.

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A lot of Religious Right Evangelical people in America complain about anti-Christian persecution in other countries. I am more or less okay with them being concerned about that, although I think they tend to target countries that they don’t like for other reasons and I wouldn’t be surprised if they sometimes exaggerate the degree of persecution. The main problem though, is that they were silent during decades of Catholics being, to one degree or another, oppressed in Northern Ireland. There WERE other factors that determined how Catholics were treated (anti-Irish bigotry) and some Catholics were Unionists (supported N. Ireland remaining in the UK) but anti-Catholic bigotry was a big factor in how Catholics were treated. Read this and this (the first of those two links is the more relevant one).

The Pope has never visited N. Ireland and there’s a reason for that. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair didn’t convert to Catholicism until AFTER he resigned and there’s a reason for that. And until recently the Monarch of the UK couldn’t be a Catholic or MARRIED to a Catholic (that second part has been changed, but not the first part).

(I’m not saying that Catholics are prevented from practicing their faith, but if you read the first of those posts, you’ll see there were a lot of ways where the government, at every level, was anti-Catholic (bear in mind that the Army was controlled by London and almost the entire time during The Troubles, the police were also controlled by London))

They were also silent during Indonesia’s genocidal occupation of East Timor. The East Timorese are Catholic and the Indonesians are Muslim. When I listened to a recording of Noam Chomsky talking about East Timor, he was introduced by a graduate student who had researched East Timor and who said that it had become a religious conflict (I can’t remember to what degree it had become a religious conflict according to him). But, because the leader of Indonesia was anti-Communist, the US supported Indonesia.


(And these Evangelical people hate Muslims and love talking about Muslims hating Christians, but weren't at all alarmed about Catholics being oppressed by Muslims- they must really be unconcerned about Catholics (see below) (if you're getting the wrong idea, see this))

I did a search and looked at several results and as far as I can tell, a lot of Evangelicals don’t believe that Catholics are Christians.

Here are my thoughts on the idea that Catholics aren’t Christians.

A: With the exception of a tiny minority (about 1% if not less) called “Radical, Traditionalist Catholics,” who I believe have been told by the Vatican to fuck off, we recognize Protestants as Christians.

B: It’s simply sectarian.

C: We believe that Christ was the Son of God.

D: As far as I can tell, these Evangelicals who don’t believe Catholics are Christians recognize other Protestants as Protestant even though they have some different ideas about Protestantism and Christianity in general.

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Some of this is repetitive but I’ll describe the politics of Catholics. We’re all fascist scum.

Seriously, though, overall, looking at the Vatican, the Catholic population (I’m most familiar with their politics in America and Ireland, but have some sort of idea of where the others are politically) and looking at all the issues, if we were to attach numerical values to different positions and find the average, the center of the Catholic world would be significantly to the left of center, somewhere around Barack Obama, if that's not too vague.

Abortion.

The Church is certainly pro-life. I’ll be honest, I’m not sure to what degree it’s flexible in terms of less harshly condemning abortion in the following cases: rape, incest, when the woman’s mental or physical health is in danger, or when the physical health of the fetus is in serious doubt (i.e. a fatal fetal abnormality). I’m not sure if they believe that women who have abortions should be criminalized. As I’ll mention below, they’re pretty good on economic justice issues and they probably support free or subsidized child care and other financial measures that address the financial motivation that is often part of why in some cases women have an abortion. In Ireland, there is a minority of Catholics who are more or less pro-choice (as I mentioned above, a majority of American Catholics are pro-choice).

Homosexuality.

The Church considers homosexuality a sin but there is a concept that I think most homophobic Catholics (and there aren’t many left) believe in. That is, and these are not my words: “hate the sin and love the sinner.” Ireland has had gay marriage since 2015 and the last few years the Prime Minister has been an openly gay man. UPDATE 10/21/20 The Pope recently came out in support of same-sex unions, according to this.

Economic Justice

The church is only intermittently bad about this sort of thing. In 1995 when I asked my church to take up a labor struggle, they declined and said they had done that sort of thing not long before I asked. When a grocery store strike in the greater Denver, CO area was either in effect or on the horizon, I read that there were concerns that the area’s Catholic Church might (abnormally) not support it because the owner of the chain had donated a lot of money to the Church. During the 2016 American Presidential primaries, the Vatican had Bernie Sanders take part in a conference it had organized about economic justice but didn’t extend an invitation to Hilary Clinton. There’s also the actions that El Salvador’s martyred Archbishop Oscar Romero took in support of the poor.

War

The Vatican intermittently takes the wrong position on this, in my opinion, but that includes their condemnation of the IRA. They did, correctly, oppose the invasion of Iraq.

The Death Penalty

The Church is very much against it. In America I’m not sure how many of them are partly motivated by the fact that the death penalty here is racist, but the Church opposes it.

National Oppression

In general the church is very good about this, although I’m not sure how consistently white clergy in America oppose racism, but the non-white clergy do. The Vatican has expressed a lot of support for the Palestinians, and as far as I can tell very few if any Palestinian are Catholic. The Church in East Timor was, starting 1-3 decades before their arrested achievement of independence, in favor of independence and during the Indonesian occupation I think the Vatican was fairly concerned about the East Timorese.

Anti-Semitism

Although I can’t remember the details, during the Nazi era in Germany there were two popes, first one and then the other and one was more or or less pro-Nazi. I read recently that the archives of his tenure as Pope are being opened to researchers and soon we’ll know more about his attitude towards Jews. No, 1920s Munich wasn’t Catholic. Okay, yes it was.

I recently came across an article here about the current Pope’s positive opinion of things Jewish.

 

UPDATE 10/31/20 Fratelli Tutti: The Pope released a new Encyclical a month ago called Fratelli Tutti. It touches on a lot of issues and is a good example of the progressive tendencies at the Vatican. There's a good opinion column about it here by EJ Dionne in the Washington Post or if you don't want to pay the Post to read it, read this.

The Mary-Knoll Sisters

They are a Catholic Congregation that is greatly concerned about injustice. They take a very multi-cultural and inter-faith approach to their work. I’m not real familiar with them but I know that in the 1990s a LOT of their work was against The School of The Americas (a training center the US Military provided for officers from various Latin American countries and that had a reputation for graduating people who either committed massive human rights violations before they attended the school or after they graduated).

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When I was around the age of 11, I read the children’s Bible three times. I’ve never read the whole normal version, although I’ve certainly been exposed to it in other ways. There are a lot of things in the New Testament (and maybe some in the Old Testament) that sowed the seeds which 5-7 years later became my belief in socialism. On the other hand I have never identified as a religious socialist, which is a branch or caucus of the broad socialist movement that bring their religion into it quite a bit. In general, outwardly I’m a pretty secular person and I don’t make religious arguments about politics.

I have not been to a regular Mass since my Mom’s funeral in 2000. A few weeks later I went on a retreat at a monastery in southern Colorado that had been very important to my mom (it's part of the Carmelite Order or a branch of that order that brings Brothers and Sisters together (last I heard that branch had a place in the South of Ireland) (when I briefly browsed their library I found a copy of Michael Harrington’s socialist anti-poverty book “The Other America”)). A year later, I spent a few days around the anniversary of her death at the monastery again. But besides the two retreats I have not been to Mass in 20 years.

When I was 18 I went to Confirmation class, which is one of the things Catholics do like Baptism or Communion. I was faithful and probably one of the more interested students- I think some of the others were doing it just because their parents made them. One of the volunteer lay teachers told us that he was shortly going to get a Masters in Social Work. I decided to not get confirmed. Rightly or wrongly, and I kind of regret that decision, I felt like I didn’t need the ultra-official stamp of approval by the church to be a Catholic and I wasn’t told to stop receiving communion of anything like that, I kept going to Mass (although I almost never went to Mass on my own initiative, I went with my family almost every Sunday until I left for college and after that I went on my own a few times and occasionally with my Mom).

Recently I had two thoughts that developed at roughly the same time: A) going to Mass again and B) converting. I started to wonder if I was even still considered a Catholic since I wasn’t confirmed and hadn’t been to Church in a long time. I spoke with a senior lay staff person at my old Church and he said that I was still a Catholic, but, because of the 18 years of not going to Mass I was technically a bad Catholic. We had a good talk. I was thinking that if I DID go to Mass on a regular basis, I might even get involved beyond that somehow. I have not made much progress on going to Mass- my life has been interrupted here and there since then and I have kind of dragged my feet as far as making a decision and right now, for multiple reasons, is not a good time.

(I have decided that in some ways I was a good Catholic while not going to Mass. In the last 8-10 years I have volunteered an average of 4-6 hours a week at a food-bank and I believe that my political activity on the subject of Northern Ireland also erodes the idea that I’m a bad Catholic)

Why have I considered converting? There are four things I don’t like about the Catholic Church and the fourth one is just too much because I don’t think a lot of Catholics are mad about it.

1. Abortion. I’m pro-choice for the following reasons: I don’t know whether or not the fetus is alive but I am sure that A) women should control their own bodies, B) without the right to choose they can’t have full equality, and C) if men could also get pregnant there would be a massive pro-choice majority in this country. There are of course tons of pro-choice Catholics so this isn’t a big deal as far as me continuing to identify as Catholic.

2. Homosexuality. Again, there are plenty of Catholics who don’t believe it's a sin, so I can feel at home in the Catholic Church on this issue.

3. The sex abuse scandal. First, although the Church really screwed up by moving pedophile priests around instead of turning them into the police, it’s not like the Church approved of what these priests were doing. And I think that practically all Catholics are pissed off about it and I haven’t heard of a massive number of the victims leaving the Church. So I’m not really thinking of leaving for that reason.

4. The fact that women can’t become priests. This really pisses me off and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of Catholics who agree with me. The volunteer lay teacher of the Confirmation class told us that he and some others would wear black arm-bands to Mass as a protest on this issue, but I don’t think I have EVER SEEN someone doing that at Mass. And a few years ago, after defeating a bunch of Nuns in a intra-church conflict, the Vatican announced there would be no change in this policy.

So, at some point in the next 1-2 years I might either go back to Mass on a regular basis or convert. If I convert it’ll be to a progressive Protestant Church. I think I know which one but I can’t remember the name, but I will look into the whole idea of converting and identify two Protestant churches and take a close look at them and talk with them.

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UPDATE 5/5/21 There's a great article about Catholic politics here.

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What makes me confident about my statement “probably somewhere around 7,000-8,000”?

1. Between 1996 and 2005 according to the FBI there were 38 racist murders. I have read that the Department of Justice officially estimates that for every hate crime reported to the FBI there might be 20-30 that aren’t reported because not all local law enforcement agencies report such crimes to the FBI. So I came up with 1,140 for those years.
2. I heard (from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest) that in a 12 month period during a 2014 (apparent) surge in police murders of black people including those of Eric Garner in NY, Tamir Rice in OH, and Michael Brown in MO among other highly publicized such cases, that around 200 black people armed or unarmed, had been killed by cops in America. Although I’m very open-minded about accusations that cops plant guns, this country also has a ridiculous number of guns.
3. Bear in mind that decades ago the number of people of color and the number of cops in this country were both smaller or much smaller than they are today.
4. If it’s worth much, about 10 years ago I read a huge amount of what the Southern Poverty Law Center put on their web-site in the previous 10-15 years. I also got an Ethnic Studies degree if that’s worth much.
5. There was little or no talk about “Brown Lives Matter” so I get the impression that very few Latinos/Latinas/Chicanos/Chicanas have been killed by cops in recent years (as far as I know, even Arpaio’s sheriff’s department in AZ didn’t kill a single such person) and that might reflect the situation in earlier decades. I have practically never heard of Asian-Americans being killed by cops. And if Native Americans were being killed at a high rate in the 80s and 90s I would have heard (a massive chunk of my major was Native American Studies).

UPDATE 6/9/21 I just found a Democracy Now! story relevant to this. It's about the last 20 years, but there's a small overlap between that and the period I was looking at Catholics and people of color (1969-2005), and it's possible that what I said about this comparison is off a little. Bear in mind that the figure I refer to in item #2 above came from organizers of a Black Lives Matter protest.