Teenagers (straight, queer, or otherwise) are going through vast changes in their bodies and minds. Since they are completely indecisive, they easily succumb to outside pressure and the opinions of others. This includes the bullies. But where do you think all of this teenage homophobia comes from? From adults who spew hateful rhetoric over television, radio, the internet, on street corners, and anywhere else you can imagine. These self-righteous bigots easily influence kids, including the bullies who pass on the hatred the hatred of their fellow humans that adults claim is somehow commendable, that being queer is a sin, that it’s unnatural and immoral. But you know what?

They’re wrong.

Completely, undeniably, irrationally, utterly wrong. After seeing scores of teenagers – unable to grasp why their the rest of humanity can’t empathize with their sexuality – shoot themselves, hang themselves, lock themselves in garages with the car running, or to commit suicide in any other way, I have this to say: claiming the immorality of homosexuality, and advocating against gay marriage and other civil rights, is simply inhumane.

I had a similar debate with a conservative Christian friend of mine once, and upon giving my opinion, he said that I was insulting his religion; while, in fact, he and every other homophobic church attendee out there are insulting my religion. Raised Catholic, I can’t believe that God would put people on this earth –  people who are genuinely good, altruistic, and good-hearted by nature – purely to have society torment them. I can’t believe God creates a human who is damned simply for how he or she chooses to love. I can’t believe God is an irrational being that somehow disapproves of two men or two women loving, and approves solely of heterosexual relationships, that he is so fickle that he demands that we love in a certain way. I just can’t believe that is how God is. And, frankly, if you can believe that, then obviously there is a serious disparity between your beliefs and the basic tenants of the Bible’s more overarching, prevalent themes, rather than the two or three references to homosexuality. I’m sick and tired of religion being a way for people to justify their bigotry. It’s a stain upon everything Christ stood for and real Christians aspire to be.

I don’t mean to exhibit the same sort of anger and hatred that the other side uses, but I honestly believe that Christ is looking down at these “followers” and is disgusted. Perhaps it doesn’t register to the same magnitude of using his name to justify the Crusades or other “holy” wars or other injustices. But to use the name of the most holy person to ever walk on the earth to justify some sort of inner-demon, to put homophobia and hatred on a pedestal, to exult intolerance is repugnant and appalling. But past that, the damage that they do is tragically immense: the despair that one feels to actually end their own life, to think that to be dead and to feel absolutely nothing is somehow preferable to your own life brings me to the edge of tears. And to actually end it is such a waste of life, especially when it is ended so needlessly, simply because some cannot accept how another feels. So, as far as I’m concerned, to be so revoltingly indifferent to the well-being of those around you – or outwardly and personally malicious towards them – couldn’tan’t be construed as “Christ-like” in a million years.

I’m not queer, and I’ve never been tormented the way Jamie Hubley and other victims have been,  but even for those who can, at the most, empathize, it’s enough to scream. I suppose this is my scream. It’s my scream to people who bully queer youth. You have no idea the damage you unfurl. It’s my scream to homophobic adults: realize the consequences of your hatred, that what you do in the name of religion isn’t a holy war, but rather a war against the holy. It’s my scream to school officials, parents, and those who have power and influence over these victims: do your job, protect them, and nurture them. We’re not tinkering with passages of the Bible and fighting over rhetoric, we’re dealing with the mental health and physical well-being of thousands of youth who question their sexuality, who are going through enough tumultous times without being subjugated to homophobic individuals overcompensating  with their senseless malice.

Richard Carozza is a U1 physiology student. He can be reached at richard.carozza@mail.mcgill.ca

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Don’t get me wrong, I have no sympathy for child rapists and kidnappers, but legislators need to get out of the courtroom. If they continue down this path, they will follow the same endless road of incarceration that former US President Ronald Reagan did in the US during the 1980s. Statistics and common sense point to the fact that Reagan’s “tough on crime” policy was a failure. Indeed, when the movement began after Reagan’s inauguration in 1981, the population in prison due to nonviolent drug convictions was 50,000; by 1997, the number of inmates exploded to 400,000. Total incarceration quadrupled.  This was the culmination of irrational policies such as instituting a minimum five-year sentence for possessing five grams of crack cocaine – a few sugar packets worth.  The United States now incarcerates not only a higher percentage, but a higher actual number of people, than the Soviet Union did under the authoritarianism of the USSR. 80 per cent of people in American prisons are convicted for nonviolent, drug-related offenses.  And evidence, such as escalating drug abuse alongside harsh sentencing and increased incarceration levels, supports the theory that locking up small-time drug dealers does not lower crime, as another dealer comes and fills the void.

Harsh crimes deserve harsh sentences, and, if there were empirical evidence that longer sentences correlated to significant drops in crime, I would support them for all crimes, but they don’t. All evidence points towards reform. Rehabilitation costs one-fourth as much as locking somebody up, and has a much better chance of succeeding in preventing subsequent offenses.  Indeed, reforms in New York decreased the incarceration rate by 15 per cent and violent crime by 40 per cent, an achievement of a calibre mandatory minimums cannot boast.

Many tough on crime proponents also espouse the idea that people who commit crimes shouldn’t just be rehabilitated, but punished in a manner in line with the offense. Once again, I agree, but mandatory minimums don’t achieve that. It shifts power from judges, who are by definition supposed to be the unbiased observer, to the prosecutor, who is anything but impartial. The job of the prosecutor is self-defining, and they may be vindictive and self-serving, using the threat of mandatory minimum sentences – without the possibility of a judge’s leniency – as blackmail to coerce a guilty plea.  While obviously there is going to be a level of human error with any human laying down punishment on another, judges exist for the purpose of accurately surveying the situation and doling out the appropriate punishment. Why are we messing with this system?
Harper’s crime bill is so outrageous that even both judges and legislators in Texas – the harshest punishing state in the U.S with 300 in line to receive capital punishment – rejected a similar bill.  Serial killers deserve life in prison without parole. Individuals convicted of less serious crimes should be given a less serious punishment and given an opportunity for rehabilitation  Learn the difference, Canada; America didn’t. Don’t make the same mistakes, otherwise you’ll end up like America, with over 7.2 million people monitored by the criminal justice system,  spending $74 billion on corrections.

Richard Carozza is a U2 Physiology student. You can reach him at richard.carozza@mail.mcgill.ca.

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In the United States, unemployment remains at an appalling 9.1 per cent,  and the poverty rate is at a staggering 15.1 per cent.  In the past 25 years, the inflation-adjusted middle-class income bracket rose a meagre 21 per cent, compared to the top one per cent’s income, which rose 480 per cent, to an average income of $24.3 million. The only real tax increases in recent memory have been on payroll taxes – the ones that the “99 per cent” pay – while taxes on dividends and capital gains – much of the top 1 per cent – have in fact decreased.  The super-rich actually pay taxes on their gross income that borders on 20 per cent (in 2008, the top 400 wealthiest people in America paid 21.5 per cent of their income to the federal government). The middle class pays between 30 per cent and 40 per cent. Perhaps the idea of lowering capital gains taxes was to spur growth of American corporations, but, as Warren Buffett said himself, the rich would never “shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain.”

And, yet, the rich say that they have been vilified, that it is necessary to cut entitlement programmes as a means of balancing the budget. The average income of an elderly, social security-collecting senior is just under $30,000, and for two thirds of retired Americans, social security accounted for half or more of their income – at an average of $1,153 per month. Economists predict that the poverty level of American seniors staying at a constant 8.9 per cent during the recession is largely due to the stability of monthly social security cheques; they also say that another 13.8 million seniors would have entered poverty without said program.  In this economy, while the lower percentages struggle to scrap together a livelihood, the salary of the top 200 American executives has actually gone up 23 per cent to an average of $10.8 million. If this is class warfare, I say that the lower 99 per cent is losing pretty badly.

I’m not saying that entitlement programs don’t need reforming – they do, they’re unsustainable and they have about 40 years left until they run effectively bankrupt. But to say that cutting social programs for the impoverished is a necessary part of trimming the budget, and that raising taxes on the rich – who are growing richer every year – is class warfare, is absurd. To the bank executives that claim that they are “under siege,”  I say this. When you shattered the U.S. economy in 2008 and needed bailing out, it was the taxpayer who bailed you out to the number of $700 billion. The citizens of the United States made an investment in you. Now it’s time to cash in. And as Senatorial candidate Elizabeth Warren once said, nobody in this country got rich on their own. Your goods were moved on infrastructure that we all paid for; your companies were protected from crime and fire by professionals we all pay for; you hired workers that we all paid to educate.  It’s time you paid your fair share for the preferential treatment that you’ve received in this country. Until then, the 99 per cent will continue to occupy Wall Street. Rappallez-vous que nous sommes dans 99 per cent.

Richard Carozza is a U2 Physiology student. You can reach him at richard.carozza@mail.mcgill.ca.

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Why? Because the ‘real’ American was the one man who wasn’t in the room during the debate. It was Stephen Hill, the guy on webcam, the American soldier. Well, you know what I say to you, ladies and gentlemen with the Republican presidential potentials? You are un-American. Un-American for being complicit in the defamation of one of our country’s finest.
I get that the Republicans are passionate about their country and what they think is best for it. It’s the land that they love. But it’s also the land that others love, and some of those individuals were booed and called un-American.

I remember being thought of as against core American values for believing in Obamacare. I don’t appreciate being called un-American, especially when it comes to something like health care, taxes, and regulation. We’re not dismantling the fabric of American society – these are matters of economics, and it is simply a matter of what one thinks is best for the country. I don’t like that the desire to provide the uninsured with medicine became fodder for a campaign of plastering Hitler moustaches on our President. It’s in the same vein as jeering a loyal soldier. That, I have to say, is un-American.

The Right is turning the general Washington debate – that they can’t win with hard logic, considering how Bush’s economic and foreign policies so miserably failed us not long ago – into the sort of culture warfare that has worked so well in the past. Why debate something when you can just brand the other side treacherous? If we’re going to go down that path, then this is my rebuttal to your hypocrisy. It’s American to champion the basic human rights of everyone and claim the moral high ground over the terrorists who wish us harm; it’s un-American to hold prisoners indefinitely and torture them. It’s American to let anybody worship or not worship whichever gods they like, two blocks from Ground Zero or in front of the White House; it’s un-American to call this a Christian nation and stoop to rampant Islamophobia as a means to an end. It’s American to announce to the world that loving persons who love each other should be married, and if those people want to serve in our armed forces, they should receive a standing applause, not a cowardly booing hiss; it’s un-American to deny any of those rights. Remember the next time anybody claims a monopoly on the right to be American: acrimonious and misleading jingoism and vilification of this calibre is really what’s “un-American,” not anyone that serves their country, in whatever capacity.

Richard Carozza is a U2 Physiology student. He can be reached at Richard.Carozza@mail.mcgill.ca

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Richard Carozza is a U2 physiology student. You can contact him at richard.carozza@mail.mcgill.ca.

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