The new sexual surrealpolitik

While the Swedes, Brits and US actually move onstage and behind the scenes to extradite a man for possibly failing to use a condom in consensual sex, some US Republicans are threatening to vote against the STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty--the "New Start treaty"--because Obama is still trying to do away with Don't Ask, Don't Tell.

You can't make up this sort of madness.

Getting Interpol involved in extraditing someone from a foreign country to answer for the most minor sexual crimes is surreal. While "corrective rape" is rampant against lesbians and their daughters in South Africa, with approximately 96 percent of the alleged rapists walking free, including young teen girls with lesbian mothers the victims of this egregious conduct, apparently none of that rises to the level of Interpol involvement. But report evidence of US war crimes to the press and suddenly Interpol is just one tool in the box.

Meanwhile, we have the further spectacle of a surreal Senate holding a nuclear bomb to the head of humanity in a Mel Brooks-like moment of bizarre conflation of WMD and homophobia. Bob Corker, a Republican Senator from Tennessee, is "just saying" that repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell might "poison the well" and make the stunningly unrelated New Start Treaty fail.

Our Oregon Senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, may not make each and every decision exactly the way some of us might prefer, but I have to admit I'm so grateful not to be constantly embarrassed by my Senators (since Merkley mercifully replaced Gordon Smith, that is). I mean, New Start only limits Russia and the US from the previously obscene Start treaty levels negotiated in 2002, and each side will still get to kill the vast majority of the other nation's people and ruin the environment of planet Earth with some 1,550 nuclear bombs each. Lindsey Graham, yet another Republican Senator from yet another Southern state--South Carolina--has joined in holding humankind hostage to this homophobia.

I mean, as a pacifist, I oppose all classes and constituencies of citizens serving in a violent organization such as the US military, and I'm very happy to see more classes and categories of citizens barred from such objectionable activities. Women and gays should consider themselves invited without reservation or question into the ranks of anti-militarists. We want everyone. I hope the military revisits all these questions and the Southern-led Senate Republicans decide to really really roll it back to only allow white heterosexual men in the military. Go for it! If you will agree to dismantle all the nukes I'll sign on to both initiatives today.

Tell me our elected representatives aren't loony. Tell me they are only kidding, and they are happy to stop seeking to destroy Wikileaks and stop standing in the way of New Start, which is only an overdue baby step, after all.

For the most cogent public policy deliberations I've seen in a while, watch this. I'm totally with the kid. I want to pipe Bob Marley straight into Interpol and the US Senate. I think we might see them transform from their demonic behavior to mellowness. Hey, compared to the reality show called contemporary politics, this is sensible. Jah.