I met my friend and fellow Recipient Mehran at Tehran airport. He drove me into town and we had a delicious supper at a pleasant little Armenian restaurant. I noticed various portraits of volcanoes hanging on the walls. “Why all the volcanoes?” I inquired.

Mehran explained to me that the featured mountains were the symbols of Iran and Armenia: the mountains Damavand and Ararat, respectively. “It’s a message of peace,” he said. I nodded several times in approval.

We chatted innocuously, careful not to broach any political controversies, in the spirit of obedience. It was just as well. The current Islamic uprising, led by Ruhollah Khomeini, was something of an embarrassment. After all of the sacrifices and martyrdoms of the Gatebreakers, why did all the protesters who followed this man find it necessary to start an entirely new uprising? It seemed like an incredible waste of effort, to say nothing of blood.

The mansion at Takor

Mehran drove me to my hotel after dinner. He gave me a day to let my clock catch up, and then he dropped in the next morning, and he drove me out east of the city toward Damavand. We drove over a couple high ridges into the Caspian Sea watershed and wound around the eastern shoulder of the mammoth mountain. We stopped and drove up the side of the mountain to get out and stretch our legs. I wasn’t about to challenge the summit.

As we descended to the car, Mehran spotted something in the grass and bent down to pick it up. It was a huge reddish-brown feather. It looked like an eagle feather. Mehran handed it to me and declared, “We welcome you to Iran!” I bowed playfully, received the feather, and held it as we returned to the car.

Our first destination would be up the Noor River. We made a left at the confluence of the Noor and the river we’d been following since well before Damavand. The Noor River is well named. The canyon that it follows is broad and sunny. Though the river flows through the heart of the Alborz Mountains, it’s cut deep into the range, so the day gets warm. The road is narrow but doesn’t wind much, so we got to Takor in good time. We sat on the front porch of the holy mansion in the warm shade and watched the river until the caretaker walked up. I was holding the feather that Mehran had found on Damavand, and the old caretaker glanced at it and said a few words with a wink. Mehran translated, “You have a Seemorgh feather. Good luck!”

“I have a what?” I asked Mehran.

“A Seemorgh feather. It’s a legendary bird, like a phoenix, only it doesn’t burn up. It just gives you its feathers to burn.”

“What for? Good luck?”

“Sure. It’s like a genie. Burn the feather and the Seemorgh helps you with your problem.”

I gazed out over the river, and I imagined two boys playing catch down in the floodplain past the riverbank. One was a teenager, a young man, and the other was a little boy. Each had his baseball glove and cap, though their faces and voices were very Iranian. They were speaking Persian. The little boy had good form for his age. I figured his big brother had taught him well.

Husayn and John never played baseball, of course. When they were boys, baseball could hardly be said to have existed in America, much less Iran. That was just my American mind imagining two American archetypes; the older brother looking after the younger, making sure he grew up straight, and more importantly, got his baseball mechanics down. Of all the biased and contradictory accounts of these brothers’ lives, all agree that the boys were close, that the older nurtured and spoke well of the younger. But the trials of adulthood, family, upheaval, power, and exile would exact a heavy toll on their brotherhood.

Continue …

“my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.”
—Thomas Paine, 1791 C.E.

1795. The sun burned above the high Iranian plateau, and its heat rolled over the land. It gave heat and only heat. It was a dark sun, for there were no eyes to see it. It burned upon the city of the blind; a city of people without eyes. All the eyes of the city had been plucked out and piled in the city square by the shah.

Abbas of Noor

The shah destroyed the city, and the survivors among the blind scattered into the darkness around them.

This shah was the founder of a new dynasty, so he established a new capital city for his new dynasty. His chosen site was far to the north, near the holy mountain Damavand, out of whose heart the ancients said the evil Dahhak would rise at the end of the world.

Tehran has remained the capital of Iran ever since.

The creation of the new capital at Tehran was an economic bonanza for the locals, and many men from the surrounding villages profited. The modest town grew into a great city, and eventually became one of the most populous cities in the world.

In the heart of modern Iran’s highest mountains, just beyond the holy one, there is a river called Light, and the country that the river flows through is also called Light. In that high country lived a man named Abbas, who was to play a role in a great upheaval though he would not live to find out about it.

Abbas moved down from the mountains to seek his fortune in Tehran. He got work as minister to a prince, and then he was promoted to governor of two provinces. Abbas enjoyed substantial wealth until he made the mistake of criticizing the Prime Minister.

Abbas was stripped of his governorship. Having lost his livelihood, he had to sell most of his properties to support his large household. He died only five years after losing his government office.

Now the family that survived Abbas was not itself blacklisted by the government. We know that at least one of his eight surviving sons was offered an office in the ministry, but that son, Husayn, declined the offer, perhaps out of loyalty to his deceased father. It is not known what Husayn did do for a living in lieu of the ministry. He was known to have once said that a puppet show that he had seen as a child inspired him to live a life of detachment from the trappings of the world. On the other hand, we know that he had two wives and about six children by age 34, so we know for a fact that he failed to avoid that particular trapping. We might consider that as a young nobleman, he may not have had many marketable skills outside of the ministry. Maybe he had his sights on a political career. As a nobleman, he could possibly get a position in government if power were to change hands. Perhaps he could lead an opposition movement.

Five years after Abbas died, Husayn and his brother John joined the Gatebreaker uprising, a militant millenarian movement that shook Iran for many years. The violent aftershocks of the rebellion shake Iran to this very day.

The shah died and another shah took his place, but that change did not change the outlook for the rebellion. Husayn and John remained steadfast to the Gatebreaker cause, and being of the noble birth, both took positions of leadership in the movement. John was appointed to become the leader of the movement once its founder was executed. He was in command of the uprising by age nineteen.

The execution of the founder shook the movement but did not stop the uprising, rather it served to feed the flames of rebellion. Under John’s command, two Gatebreakers attempted to assassinate the new shah, and the royal reprisals began. Husayn was thrown into prison and John fled to Baghdad. Once released from prison, Husayn followed his brother and leader into exile.

John continued to lead the military campaign against the shah. He did so from hiding, disguised as a dervish. Husayn also went into hiding, leaving his wives and children and living as a mystic under an assumed name in the mountains of Kurdistan. Husayn, seemingly content with his peaceful, unentangled life among the Kurds, had no intention of ever returning to the Gatebreaker community in Baghdad. He could surely see that the militant movement was doomed, but he was eventually convinced to return. After his return, he tried to lead the Gatebreakers down a nonviolent path less antagonistic to the shah, but his brother, though growing less and less involved in the movement, would have nothing to do with nonviolence and alas, the damage was done. Husayn was unable to turn the tide that was about to carry him farther still from his home country.

In an attempt to mitigate the trouble that often arose around the militant Gatebreakers, the Ottoman Sultan moved the brothers and their families farther west to Constantinople, and then across the Bosphorus Strait into the European city of Adrianople.

Husayn saw that his attempts at effecting positive change were not bearing enough fruit. As the unofficial leader of the Gatebreakers, he lacked sufficient authority. Considering that his brother was undeniably the head of the movement—if only a figurehead, Husayn decided that he would have to stake a claim that would not contradict the title of his brother, so he leapfrogged John and declared himself the leader of a new movement and a new revelation. He claimed to be the Promised One whom the Gatebreakers had been fighting and dying for. That would make him the world-messiah; the Promised One, it followed, of all religions—at least the legitimate ones. He commanded the Gatebreakers to turn to him, and to obey him as sheep, and many did just that. His new flock adopted his name as theirs. He commanded them to be obedient to all authorities, to their parents and governments as well as to him. He commanded them to be peaceloving and nonviolent. He saw this as crucial for the survival of the movement.

John rejected Husayn’s claims and resisted his efforts, and matters between the brothers went from bad to worse.

In Adrianople, hard feelings and violence arose between the brothers, so they were separated from one another; one imprisoned on Cyprus and the other imprisoned in Palestine. Neither brother lived to see Iran again.

Continue …

As it turned out, I had a good time, though the work involved a lot of standing around.

I fondly recall the moment when a man passed by with his daughter. I humbly offered them a “No on 8″ card. The little girl took the card and pointed to it, looked up to her dad and said “Obama!”

Now I’m not a the biggest Obama fan, but that was a sweet thing to behold.

Republic? Well, not exactly.

I also enjoy the memory of the “mature” lady who shook her index finger at me scoldingly. That wasn’t the only finger that was shaken at me that day. Every finger was a little birdie of liberation. It all felt great.

Then there was the older lady who stopped her car to inform me that my hand was blocking the “8″ on my rally placard. Oops!

Late in the day, an equally elderly man stopped his car to cite the Bible and inform me that homosexuality is an “abomination”. I was a little fatigued, so I casually asked whether it was too much to let them decide whether they ought to “abominate” or not. Mainly I was just looking for an excuse to hear myself say “abominate”.

Then I heard the word “Obama-Nation” echo through my head like some demonic forbidden thought. Thankfully I was not the first white boy to think of it.

And all the horns honking and hands waving: I don’t remember ever being so popular with the ladies!

I think my favorite memory is of hearing the word “faggot” screamed from a passing car.

It’s not that such an experience entitles me to claim to know what it’s like to be gay. It’s more about this: when the civil liberties of one of my fellow citizens is systematically attacked, I might as well be the target, because when that person is threatened, we’re all threatened.

The southern Atlantic seaboard is a remarkable sight to behold this morning. Barack Obama has demonstrated his broad appeal from the outskirts of DC, through the Carolinas and Georgia, all the way to Key West.

This is certainly a sign of a broad nationwide appeal, largely due to widespread dissatisfaction with Dubya and the Republican Party, but I think it’s just as much a sign of cultural progress specific to the Southeastern region. Obama didn’t do quite so well in Alabama, the lower Mississippi Valley, Appalachia, the southern Plains States, Utah, or the Northern Rockies.

Let’s hear it for East-Dixie!

I wouldn’t be betting on a counter reconstruction this time around.

Steve Young’s Home Displays ‘No On 8′ Signs.

California is a republic! Not an anarchistic mobocracy!
Let’s defend our constitution!

I attended a No on Prop 8 “visibility” activity at San Jose’s Diridon Station this morning, and was very disappointed in the turnout: three people, including me, and I’m not even gay!

I am, however, a California patriot, and I’m afraid I’m about to see the constitution of my state stained by the graffiti of special interest groups.

In a democracy, people get the government they deserve.

—Adlai Stevenson

Of the ten principal contributors to the Prop 8 campaign, two are based in California. Clearly, this battle is not seen as mere California politics by many Americans. There are significant forces who are doing their best to push Prop 8 through, to see to it that government continues to evolve into a Church-of-State. Californians will have to overcome these powers of bigotry and big government to continue the progress of this land of liberty and equal opportunity; this state that has been said to be “America, only moreso.”

The principal (non-Mormon) contributors to the the Church-of-State Campaign:

1. National Organization for Marriage, Princeton, NJ: $1441k
2. Knights of Columbus, New Haven, CT: $1150k
3. Fieldstead and Co., Irvine, CA: $1095k
4. Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation, Holland, MI: $650k
5. Former state senator Robert Hurtt & Container Supply Co., Inc, Garden Grove, CA: $527k
6. American Family Association, Inc., Tupelo, MS: $500k
7. Focus on the Family, Colorado Springs, CO: $467k
8. John Templeton Foundation, Bryn Mawr, PA: $450k
9. Concerned Women for America, Washington, DC: $409k

Some notes on these principal contributors:

The National Organization for Marriage signs its checks as a resident of Santa Ana, CA, but that is only a branch. The headquarters is in New Jersey.

The Knights of Columbus is “the world’s foremost Catholic fraternal benefit society.”

Fieldstead & Company of Irvine, CA has been called the “Paymaster to the political right” by the Orange County Register.

The Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation is funded with money from Prince Automotive. Edgar Prince co-founded the Family Research Council with neoconservative Gary Bauer. The current head of the foundation, Edgar and Elsa’s son Erik, is also the founder and owner of Blackwater USA.

Two separate contributors from reportedly from Garden Grove, CA, Robert Hurtt & Container Supply Co., Inc, appear to be one and the same: the former state senator from Garden Grove is a perennial contributor to conservative causes, and a big fan of James Dobson.

“The American Family Association exists to motivate and equip citizens to change the culture to reflect Biblical truth and traditional family values.”

The Templeton Foundation is noted for its Templeton Prize, which “honors a living person who has made an exceptional contribution to affirming life’s spiritual dimension.” The founder, John Templeton, was interested in answers to questions such as “How large is God? How are finite beings related to the infinite? What was God’s purpose in creating the universe?” He was also interested in the question “what is the best way to live?” His answer appears to be that the best way to live is for government to dictate to citizens how they must live.

Concerned Women for America is dedicated to bringing “Biblical principles into all levels of public policy.”