American Girls: Dolls and Scouts

Girl Scouts of America is 100 years old this year. 

As part of their celebrations, 100,000 US Girl Scouts will gather next week on the Mall in Washington DC, for “Girl Scouts Rock the Mall.” They hope to set a new world’s record for largest “sing-a-long” with their new theme song: “Girl Scouts ignite a dream, ignite your hope, ignite the world on fire.” 

No wonder the US Catholic Bishops are so terrified of the Girl Scouts.  Last month the bishops joined in the celebration of this venerable organization by launching an official church investigation into whether faithful Catholic girls should keep joining up.

Scouts no longer just sell cookies and earn badges for sewing and cooking. They learn leadership skills and study global issues facing girls and women today.  Some of the criticisms of the Girls Scouts are:

• Their web sites link to groups like Doctors without Borders and Oxfam and Planned Parenthood, which support family planning and emergency contraception.    
• Unlike the Boy Scouts, which require adult leaders to be straight, and fire them if they’re not, the Girls Scouts have no such policy.  
• And when the girls recite their Promise, saying they will “serve God” (and country and help people), they now have the option of substituting a different word, like Allah, or the Creator.  Their website describes this 1993 change:

 "For some individuals, the word 'God', no matter how broadly interpreted does not appropriately reflect their spiritual beliefs. Since the belief in a spiritual principle is fundamental to Girl Scouting, not the word used to define that belief, it is important that individuals have the opportunity to express that belief in wording meaningful to them. It is essential to maintain the spiritual foundation of Girl Scouting, yet be inclusive of the full range of spiritual beliefs. This [policy change] does not take the word 'God' out of the Girl Scout Promise. It gives those individuals who wish to do so the option to state their commitment to the spiritual concepts fundamental to the Movement with a word or words more appropriate to their own beliefs. For instance, an individual may say 'my faith' or 'Allah' or 'the Creator'."

I guess the bishops don’t like hearing “Girl Scouts” in the same sentence as contraception, gay and Allah. 

When I was a local church pastor I was approached by a Boy Scout leader to see if our church would sponsor a troop.  I expressed concern about their exclusionary policies, which my denomination opposed.  Oh yes, he sighed, God, gays and girls. Today the bishops are concerned about the Girl Scouts on God, gays and giving choices.

“Bishops Search for Condoms in Cookie Boxes” is a great recent article in Religion Dispatches by my friend and wise Catholic feminist Mary Hunt. Unlike the current Catholic investigation of another subversive group, nuns, which is worldwide, started by the Vatican, this one is “just” American.  Maybe it’s easier to investigate the 3 million US Girl Scouts than the 10 million worldwide.  That’s a lot of girls. 

Or maybe it’s just one more example of American confusion, paranoia or outright fear about women.  Especially women’s power.  And women’s sexuality. 

The Girl Scout motto is “Courage, Confidence, Character.”  We Americans are nervous about brave and confident women of character, let alone girls. 

We want our girls to sell cookies, not learn how to use a chain saw.

Neither I nor my daughter joined the Girl Scouts. We thought we would be bored.  We don’t do well in groups.  But darn, I just found out they offer badges in subjects like Aerospace and Ms. Fix-it and Stress Less.  I missed out.

And they celebrate each year “Worldwide Thinking Day” where they commit to thinking about their values and especially their sister scouts in another country.  That should become a national American holiday – Worldwide Thinking Day.  Not enough of that going on these days.

“American Girl” is the name of two very different US magazines.  One is the Girl Scouts magazine.The other American Girl magazine supports the marketing of a very popular doll, called “American Girl” for girls 9-13. American Girls copyrights its material so we can't show you pictures - click the link for photos.  The historic dolls are actually sort of cute.

The first American Girl dolls, in the 1990’s, with accompanying easy-read books, depicted girls from different times in US history, like an African-American slave girl, a Jewish girl in 1914 Lower East Side.  I did get my daughter one of the books, but the dolls, even in her eyes, seemed pricey. They start at $105 and with accessories can cost up to $600. After some controversy about the accuracy of their depiction of black and Hispanic girls and their stories, the line now features diverse contemporary girls. (There was more controversy around the cost when one of the diverse contemporary dolls depicted a homeless girl, and the $105 didn’t include her shelter bed.)  The $500 million AG empire includes the magazine, stores across the country, specialty boutiques, theater movies, an online virtual world and a clothing line for the girls to dress like their dolls (also pricey.)

Sounds pretty American to me.

But gosh, Catholic groups also protested the American Girl doll company for donating funds to a group, Girls, Inc. that supports abortion rights and acceptance of homosexuality. 

Maybe the bishops will try to stop American girls, including Scouts, from bringing their American Girl dolls to church.  Back to the kitchen and the cookies.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter

Should All Americans Have the Same Civil Rights?

President Obama had some trouble in the last election when his opponents used controversial sermon tapes of his long-term pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright to try to scare voters. Wright, then pastor of 8500-member Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, is a highly respected preacher whose black preaching style and black liberation theology stand firmly in the Christian prophetic tradition, but scared the shit out of some white Americans. Go back and look at the tapes – most of what Wright said about American is true; many people didn’t want to hear it, or to hear it said so emphatically; they want sweet soft “Jesus loves you” on Sunday morning.

Otis Moss IIIWright had already retired by the time Obama was running. But the age of You Tube never forgets. And like a lot of recently retired pastors, Wright missed the spotlight, and the press went crazy, and at some public events Wright talked too much and too long, and Obama had to distance himself from him, which was regrettable, and he lost a dear friend, and….it’s a long hard sad story.

I’ve worshipped at Trinity. I have never been so warmly welcomed, so personally prayed for and with, and heard such an inspiring and intellectually challenging sermon. And the music! Check out the tapes.

The church thrives, and their new pastor Otis Moss III is an extremely worthy successor. This past week Moss read a letter to his fellow black clergy about Obama’s statement in support of gay marriage. The African American religious community is torn on this issue. Much of the press assumes all Christians are anti-gay and that all blacks agree. Not true. I encourage you to read or watch Moss’s letter.

The letter video.
The letter text.

Here are some quotes:

“To claim the President of the United States must hold your theological position is absurd. He is President of the United States of America not the President of the Baptist convention or Bishop of the Sanctified or Holiness Church. He is called to protect the rights of Jew and Gentile, male and female, young and old, Gay and straight, black and white, Atheist and Agnostic.”

“The question I believe we should pose to our congregations is, ‘Should all Americans have the same civil rights?’ This is a radically different question than… “Does the church have the right to perform or not perform certain religious rites.” There is difference between rights and rites. We should never misconstrue rights designed to protect diverse individuals in a pluralistic society versus religious rites designed by faith communities to communicate a theological or doctrinal perspective. These two questions are answered in two fundamentally different arenas. One is answered in the arena of civic debate where the Constitution is the document of authority. The other is answered in the realm of ecclesiastical councils where theology, conscience and biblical mandates are the guiding ethos. I do not believe ecclesiastical councils are equipped to shape civic legislation nor are civic representatives equipped to shape religious rituals and doctrine.”

“The institution of marriage is not under attack as a result of the President’s words. Marriage was under attack years ago by men who viewed women as property and children as trophies of sexual prowess. Marriage is under attack by low wages, high incarceration, unfair tax policy, unemployment, and lack of education. Marriage is under attack by clergy who proclaim monogamy yet think nothing of stepping outside the bonds of marriage to have multiple affairs with ‘preaching groupies.’ Same-gender couples did not cause the high divorce rate, but our adolescent views of relationships and our inability as a community to come to grips with the ethic of love and commitment did. We still confuse sex with love and romance with commitment.”

“Emmett Till and the four little girls who were assassinated in Alabama during worship did not die for a Sunday sermonic sound bite to show disdain for one group of God’s people. They were killed by an evil act enacted by men who believed in doctrine over love. We serve in ministry this day because of a man who believed in love over doctrine.”

Moss was very clear that he was not telling people how to vote, but was seeking dialogue with his fellow religious leaders and encouraging everyone to engage in serious public conversation. “November is incredibly important to our community,” Moss said.

November is incredibly important to the world community.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter

Today a Great American Died

I was in France when Ronald Reagan died in 2004. 

When I travel (I go to France every other year) I really try to present a different image of Americans than what folks see on TV or in the press.  We’re not all the ugly American and we are not all Rick Santorum nut cases.  We don’t all approve of our presidents.  Once, talking about Bush with a group of French middle class Catholics where we were all on retreat, I said, “Beaucoups des americains sont stupides,” and a woman replied, “Evidemment.”

Reading about Reagan’s death in the International Herald Tribune, I sort of sunk down in my chair and pretended I was Canadian.

But the next day I saw a local paper headline, in French, “All France Mourns Death of a Great American.”  What would it say about our actor-president?   The story was about widespread national mourning in France because of that day’s sad death of – Ray Charles.

This week two great Americans died and I mourned them both: Maurice Sendak and Nicholas Katzenbach. 

You may have read Sendak’s great children’s books like Where the Wild Things Are and In the Night Kitchen or seen his recent funny and moving interview with Stephen Colbert. The New York Times obituary of Sendak’s death called him a “shtetl Blake” and praised his bold stories of nightmare, kidnapping, and other adventures, saying he honored the “propulsive abandon and pervasive melancholy of children’s interior lives.” In our house we still quote his great line in Wild Things: “Let the wild rumpus begin!”

Nicholas Katzenbach was less well known at the time of his death at 90. He was a key figure in the Kennedy and Johnson administrations and one of what David Halberstam called “the best and the brightest,” young policy makers in the 60’s.  He drafted key civil rights bills and as Attorney General defended the 1964 Civil Rights Act before the Supreme Court, winning a 9-0 ruling.

Katzenbach had a dramatic face to face show down with Alabama Governor George Wallace, as told in the New York Times obituary: 

Perhaps his tensest moment came on June 11, 1963, when he confronted George C. Wallace in stifling heat on the steps of the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa. Mr. Wallace was the Alabama governor who had trumpeted “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever” and vowed to block the admission of two black students “at the schoolhouse door.”

Mr. Katzenbach, in front of television cameras and flanked by a federal marshal and a United States attorney, approached Foster Auditorium, the main building on campus, around 11 a.m. Mr. Wallace was waiting behind a lectern at the top of the stairs, surrounded by a crowd of whites, some armed.  “Stop!” he called out, raising his hand.

Mr. Katzenbach read a presidential proclamation ordering that the students be admitted and asked the governor to step aside peacefully. Mr. Wallace read a five-minute statement castigating “the central government” for “suppression of rights."

Towering over Mr. Wallace, Mr. Katzenbach, a 6-foot-2-inch former college hockey goalie, was dismissive. “I’m not interested in this show,” he said.

About four hours later, with the acquiescence of the governor, Mr. Katzenbach escorted the students to register.”

Nicholas Katzenbach Confronting George Wallace on June 11, 1963Katzenbach’s legacy is more complicated as relates to the Vietnam War.  He defended it publicly, but said later he worked behind the scenes to halt the bombings.  I remember going to anti-war rallies in college and hearing Katzenbach’s son, as well as Robert MacNamara’s son speaking against the war.  Must have been some interesting dinner table conversations in those households.

Another great story in the obit is how as a junior at Princeton, he enlisted right after Pearl Harbor.  Flying B-25 bombers, he was shot down and held in a German camp 15 months, where he read, by his count, 400 books.  On his return he convinced Princeton that this reading qualified him to graduate, and after nine exams and a thesis he got his diploma 2 months later. 

Katzenbach ultimately resigned as Attorney General in 1966 in protest over FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s excessive power, particularly his wiretapping of Martin Luther King.

When I was a kid my father would often start a dinner table conversation with, “An interesting person died today…” and proceed to read us the New York Times obit at the table.  (He told a funny story like my Ronald Reagan/Ray Charles story: in 1943, when he was a young Office of Strategic Services enlistee from a business family, someone ran into the code room shouting, “A great American died today!”  And my father said, “Yes, so sad to lose J.P. Morgan Jr., the great financier.”  And the guy said, “No, you idiot!  I meant the author Steven Vincent Benet.)

I still read obits to this day, thanks to my father’s example, and to learn about great folks like Sendak and Katzenbach.  These days more than 1000 US WWII vets die every day.  In an America with short memories of heroism and service I want to remember these folks.

This week President Obama finally said he supports gay marriage.  I hope Maurice Sendak, who never hid his homosexuality, and the civil rights advocate Nicholas Katzenbach can rest a little easier.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter

The Little House

As you enter Pacific Grove, California the signs read, “Welcome to America’s Last Home Town.”  Of course it isn’t, but the phrase sells its nostalgic tourist economy; a lovely coastline, colorful old houses, retirement homes and antique stores. 

Founded by Methodists in 1875 as a summer campground for religious inspiration and learning, the original Chautauqua Hall still hosts lectures, square dancing and quilt shows.  The many lovely old gingerbread style houses, built quickly for summer pilgrims, without insulation or continuous foundation, now sell, with their precious historic plaques, for more than a million dollars. 

But in a California of strip malls and freeways I like this kind of coastal Brigadoon.  Mercifully the people are warm and real; it’s not a Disneyland.  I live 15 miles south, down the coast in a redwood canyon, but you can find me in PG (as we call it) every year at their cute events like “Good Old Days” with pie contests and tug o’ war and races between local fire departments.  Or watching the school kids dressed up like butterflies in the annual parade that celebrates the monarchs that winter here.  Pacific Grove also bills itself as Butterfly Town USA.

You can also find me in PG every week at another sweet old building in a small park near the center of town.  Across from the old-fashioned gazebo bandstand which hosts summer concerts, there is a small one-room building known as the Little House.  The plaque reads “Built by the PG Rotary Club in 1951”, the year of my birth.  Lots of community groups use it – Boy Scouts, singing groups, various clubs.  I am there most weeks as a member of a 12-step group that has met there for years.

Rotary Clubs are part of the very American phenomenon of voluntary service clubs that bring folks together for shared fellowship and good works. De Tocqueville noticed in 1835 that Americans were crazy about voluntary associations, and the passion has not waned.  Every town has all kinds of clubs.  Rotary, started by a Chicago businessman in 1905, now has 35,000 clubs worldwide, over a million members. They have lunch, raise money for local schools and do good works.   I am particularly impressed with their project Polio Plus that has given oral polio vaccines to 2 billion children worldwide.

Rotary had a notoriously hard time opening up its membership to women.  De Tocqueville also noticed the American tension between liberty and equality; does our freedom include the freedom to discriminate?  Rotary men said a voluntary organization should be voluntary, able to decide who is in and out.  But a California chapter admitted a few women in 1976, and when sued, argued that Rotary was a business and hence subject to a 1959 California law prohibiting discrimination by businesses based on age, sex, race, color, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, medical condition, marital status, or (later) sexual orientation.  (Actually it was the central Rotary headquarters that objected to women members, and sued the local chapter, saying women members would made Rotary “like a motel, having to accept anyone.”) The US Supreme Court agreed with the women in 1987.  (Why is it that in so many organizations a local group has to work so hard to get the central headquarters to remember its real mission, viz church, government...?)

In 2011 the local Rotary chapter closed the Little House for almost a year while they added a continuous foundation, made the bathroom accessible, fixed up the kitchen.  Slowly, with their volunteer labor.  All those 12 Step and Boy Scout and other community groups had to meet elsewhere. My group met at the local youth center, but even with the ping-pong tables and comfy sofas, attendance fell off; our funky old Little House was part of why we went every week. We’d drive by the little park and the construction and long for the day of our return from exile.  Finally the day came and we returned.  Some folks grumbled at the changes (we 12-steppers can be a little stuck in our ways.)  But it was nice to have a reliable toilet and not blow the power with our coffee maker.  There were more windows and insulation.  The plaque now read, “Built by Pacific Grove Rotary 1951.  Restored 2011.”

Curious about those old Rotarians, I did some research.  Their local website notes historical accomplishments: “1951: Built a clubhouse as a meeting place for the older ladies of Pacific Grove.”  This notoriously male centered service club, who also proudly note their first woman member in 1986 (!) and first woman president in 1995, had, like the original PG settlers, quickly thrown up a building so “older ladies” could have community and self-improvement.  Whose idea was it?

I imagined one of the wives of those old Rotarians saying, “You guys go off to your meetings every week.  What about us?”  Or, “I’m tired of hosting the sewing circle in this little, cold, gingerbread house.  I wish there was a place we could all get together.”  Or maybe (we are talking 1951 here, not 1890) it was one of the tens of thousands of military servicewomen who came back from World War II and said, “Enough with the cute town, I’ve seen the world and want a place to discuss politics and economics with my sisters.”  Perhaps it was the local chapter of Republican women who wanted to fight the 1950’s communist scourge and Adlai Stevenson.  And just because the men wrote the history and brag about the building, maybe women even did some work with saw and nail.  I love sitting there imagining those feisty “older ladies” and their clubhouse.  I wonder if they let men in?

California official history can be sort of shallow, and white and male.  Mission padres, Gold Rush, the railroad.   But a good historical mural along our coast Recreation Trail (commissioned by the Rotary?) depicts other PG citizens besides the upright Methodists: the native folks who live here for ten thousand years, and the Chinese fishing men and women who escaped a famine in China in the 1850s and settled here, suffered the suspicious burning down of their village and boats, and came back.  Maybe we should add a picture of those “older ladies” meeting in the 50’s at the Little House.  And us today.

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter

Farewell to Manzanar

“One of the amazing things about America is the way it can both undermine you and keep you believing in your own possibilities, pumping you with hope.” Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, author of Farewell to Manzanar. 

 For the past 44 years, on this, the last weekend in April, thousands of people have gone on pilgrimage to the Manzanar National Historic Site.  On this barren landscape near Death Valley, 240 miles north east of L.A. was one of ten rough internment camps in the US western states where over 110,000 Japanese-Americans, mostly native-born American citizens, were relocated and held during World War II in the name of national security and in violation of their Constitutional rights.

The Pilgrimage to Manzanar actually began in 1945, the year 10,000 US citizens at that one camp were finally allowed to go home (to find their homes, farms, and stores stolen or destroyed).  As they left, two L.A. pastors, one Christian, one Buddhist, began returning there each year to remember this incident of shame and pray for its victims, living and dead.  In 1969 it became a group effort, and has grown each year.  Participants have restored barracks, collected stories, built a visitor interpretive center and pressured the government to declare it a national historic site.  Each pilgrimage includes an interfaith memorial service and Ondo dancing. In 2008 pilgrimage organizers invited along 100 southern Californian Muslim leaders, in response to anti-Muslim attitudes and actions post-9/11.  Deep friendships developed.

Farewell to Manzanar is a 1973 account by Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, who was taken at age 7 with her Southern California fishing family to the camp.  It is widely read in California schools; my son read it in high school.  This month I saw the book displayed at my local public library as part of a state wide project “California Reads” which is encouraging communities to read one of five books this spring: two novels, this memoir, one sociology book and one anthology of US documents like the Federalist papers and the Constitution. The effort, called “Searching for Democracy” seeks to spark conversation about our democracy in anticipation of the 2012 elections.  The effort, our tax dollars at good work for once, includes a study guide and questions for discussions.

The Monterey Library chose the Manzanar book, and partnered with the local chapter of the Japanese American Citizens League in a variety of programs, exhibits and school projects.  Last month the author, now 78, spoke at the Library to an audience of 150 adults and teens.  At another event billed as a discussion of the book, the conversation ranged widely about the state of American rights and freedoms.  It was noted that among the 13 recipients of the annual Medal of Freedom announced this week, President Obama named Gordon Hirabayashi, who as a student at the University of Washington in 1942 defied the ordered relocation and was sent to federal prison for a year.  In 1987 a federal court overturned his conviction. Federal legislation in 1988 provided for payments and apologies to Japanese-Americans who were interned during World War II.  Sadly Mr. Hirabayashi died this January at age 93 before being honored by his nation.  Participants at the discussion wonder how contemporary citizens might react to such an order.

So I checked out the book, sat in my car, turned to the first page, and read it in one sitting.  It is a moving and devastating account of the disintegration of a family, especially her father, in shame and powerlessness.  It is a story of hope as well, as the author, after hiding the story for 35 years, tells it to her family who encourages her to write it up, and it becomes a regular part of California curricula. 

This book and the others in the Search for Democracy are giving Californians this spring, in the words of the organizers, an “opportunity to discover new perspectives by inviting us to think about individual responsibility, the importance of a free press, the collective good, and what is needed from each of us to sustain a healthy democracy."

Copyright © 2012 Deborah Streeter