As I follow the firestorm debate regarding a major reform of America’s healthcare system, I wonder aloud why such a grand nation of  highly evolved and educated people cannot figure it out. A capability for resolving major national problems, which we possessed in the past, is now gone.   Come hell or highwater, some simply will not allow change no matter what the consequences might be.  Special interests are so flush in money and influence and political threat that we are a nation in paralysis.

Civil rights legislation, establishing Social Security or Medicare, or safety rules in the workplace are some of the issues where a Congress in 2009 would be stalemated and impotent.  We have morphed into gridlock, helped in large part by the frenzy that talk show demogogues especially have accomplished.  Their pinhead followers, non-thinkers and trogloydytes march to their beat, and you just feel sorry for their being stooges.  Yet they storm Congressmen’s meeting and are only intent in killing dialogue for change.

A solution to expand health care  really would seem doable. Yet, any observer of the American scene recognizes that we have a huge segment of  the population that simply oppose social policy changes in the U.S. in the 21st century.  Not even a perfect new system would be allowed.   Their only goal is to discredit and throw roadblocks in the way so that the major party cannot and will not succeed at leading.

The polarizing of America seems complete. Among my friends on both sides, there are clear indicators by how they think, what the react to, what they say that determines which side of the line of demarcation they fall on.  I wonder so often about what made them that way — why they cannot see.  I have largely concluded it is how they are wired, with their family rearing and degree of intellectual environment secondary.  I can easily spot the “conservative, authoritarian types” that see genius in Dick Cheney, Bob Burns, Joe Arpaio, Russell Pierce or Karl Rove.  Order and no taxes are paramount for them.

For starters, I sometimes think that President Abraham Lincoln and the Union should have just let the South go and have not fought the Civil War.  Maybe The Great South, with its haves and have-nots,  should have been allowed to implode, shamed into change, treated to harsh trade sanction by the rest of America and the world. What might  such a nation look like today?  Would its hardcore conservative values have made it a kind of  reactionary world of all-white, continued servitude, a place where there are black-and-white answers to everything?  A kind of Taliban-light world?  So often, I regard the Old South as a drag on American development and progress.  The rogues gallery of political demogogues that have come ouf the South is immense.   Nixon took full advantage of the “Southern Strategy” to win the White House.  Surely, under that scenario of having let the South go its own way, the  intelligentsia and the best and brightest would have escaped north and west like has happened all through history, whether it was Europe in World War II or Iran today.

Alas, the American media has allowed the health reform debate to move from discussing the merits of proposed legislation to coverage of the organized disruptions of Town Hall meetings. It’s been quickly evident that the mostly angry white “agin’ it” folks have the same talking points — spew the same tripe full of fear of their medical fate and financial ruin.  They don’t offer constructive ideas to accomplish legislation that will remove us from the International Hall of Shame as the only major First World nations without comprehensive health coverage.

They whine and fuss at Town Halls — diverting discussion from real issues of health care to extremist issues about abortion or those phantom  ”death panels” that would choose which people would bee no longer worthy for care. For the most part, all who are interviewed spout that the system needs to be reformed.  Conservatives say it should be a measured, slow-moving, thoughtful process —taking it to the 2010 or 2012 election cycle where any major legislation dies because all lawmakers sights are on geting re-elected.

Bottom line, we all have bodies.  We all want to be healthy. Good health is a right of  humanhood.  Why should we develop the most sophisticated gadgets like GPS that can guide us through streets but no sound system to lead us through life – healthy, wealthy and wise?

The Rev. Chris Carpenter, the former priest of Christ the King Catholic Church and one-time “Father Flick” movie reviewer for The Catholic Sun newspaper, tells his story about breaking with the Roman Catholic Church on public radio KJZZ (FM 91.5) at 6:33 and 8:33 a.m. Tuesday August 11.

Carpenter was excommunicated by Bishop Thomas Olmsted in May for “putting himself in scism” with the church by affiliating with the Reformed Catholic Church in California where he is in the process of becoming the tiny Catholic movement’s vicar for the state.  He had served Christ the King from 1997  to 2006, then abruptly resigned as  parish priest and moving to California. Carpenter had spoken out publicly against policies of Olmsted including the bishop’s position against homosexuaity.  Carpenter, for example, was one of nine priests ordered by the bishop in 2004 to remove their names from the Phoenix Declaration, a letter Arizona clergy signed calling for full acceptance of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered people in the life of faith communities.   “Something died as a result of the personal and public showdown” with the bishop, Carpenter would say.  Since Olmsted arrived to lead the diocese in 2003, his actions have had a ‘chilling effect … throughout all Catholic parishes and institutions concerned about outreach and ministry to LGBT persons,” he wrote.  Olmsted made public his letter of excommunication in May and said he was praying for Carpenter’s “reconciliation with Christ and His Church.”

The KJZZ feature which can also be seen and head on the Web site, www.kjzz.org, is titled, “Ousted Catholic Priest Starts Over.”

Just as the so-called “Birthers” have continued to insist President O’Bama was NOT  born somewhere in the United States, there have been those who have kept insisting that homosexuality is a choice and can be purged from oneself through therapy and prayer.   This is the same kind of thinking that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the destruction of the Twin Towers in 2001.

On Wednesday, the  American Psychological Association went on record by saying the therapies to change proclaimed gays into straights is not only useless, but harmful.  The processes that groups like Exodus International or Love Won Out have insisted are effective, in fact , are not credible and no scientific evidence can be put forth to give it credence.  So it is a sham that can have very harmful impact on those gays who are put through it by their choice or pressure from others.

The APA, meeting in Toronto, urged mental health professionals not to tell gay clients that they can become straight through the series of steps and treatments that supposedly turns their compasses from a kind of sexual south to north and become forever attacted to the  opposite sex.  In fact, therapists are advised to offer other choices to gays who are still not accepting of their sexual status — things like celibacy and even changing from churches and religions that are not ready to accept gays, lesbians, bisexual and transgendered people for who they are.

So if they find their Baptist, Catholic, Mormon or Muslim faith communities intolerant to their lifestyles or status, they could well bail and find those religions who have come to understand the realities about human sexualities.  The APA’s governing council drew from two years of research to issue the report.  Michael A. Jones, communications director of the Human Rights Program of Harvard University Law School noted, “The association puts itself firmly on record in oppoistion of so-called ‘reparative therapy’ which seeks to change sexual orientation.”

He noted that there is solid evidence “that efforts to produce change could be harmful, inducing depression and suicidal tendencies.”  Jones said gay human rights activists are encouraged that the top group of psychologists  questioned the tactic of using so-called ex-gays to promulgate the you-can-change notion.  They have said they convereted, even though, in fact, they are still gay.

“This ideas is equivalent to wanting to play professinal basketball, so I begin to identify as a member of the New York Knicks,” he said. “Never mind that I am too short, too old and not good enought to make the roster. If I embrace this surreal existence long enough, I will one day be dunking  the ball under the bright lights of Madison Square Garden.”

The Associated Press quoted Judith Glassgold, a Highland Park, N.J., psychologist who chaired the task force. Glassgold said she hoped the document could help calm the polarized debate between religious conservatives who believe in the possibility of changing sexual orientation and the many mental health professionals who reject that option.

“Both sides have to educate themselves better,” Glassgold said in an interview. “The religious psychotherapists have to open up their eyes to the potential positive aspects of being gay or lesbian. Secular therapists have to recognize that some people will choose their faith over their sexuality.”