White bigots have maintained they were right to keep blacks enslaved, killed, tortured, barred from voting, from restaurants, from certain sidewalks, and lunch counters, and bathrooms and bridges and yes, from marrying whites. But they lost. Just a few years ago, a bigoted white man refused to marry a couple in Louisiana because they are interracial. The spark of outrage has been so huge that the conservative governor of this Southern state has asked for this man’s resignation.

Some Harry Potter fans have not liked what the HPA has to say about marriage equality. But I believe that those in the LGBTQ community will be granted that right. One day conservative governors from Southern states will look at those against marriage equality with the same disdain that the Louisiana conservative governor looked at those who opposed interracial marriage in 2009.

From the Huffington Post

And while there are many Harry Potter fans against equal marriage who have asked us to look at “both sides” of the argument, as if an argument had only two sides and that was it, I’d prefer it if you and I together could look at our privilege for being heterosexual in this society.

We’ve never had to deal with the isolation of keeping a secret of our sexuality or gender identity. We’ve never had to reach for the courage to come out of the closet and face whatever isolation comes from that to say, “Mom and dad, I’m heterosexual or exactly the gender that you thought I was.”

We’ve never had to again, and again, and again, when we meet people for the first time, wonder if they won’t like us if and when they find out that we’re heterosexual. We’ve never had to hear about heterosexuals murdered for being heterosexuals and to fear for our lives on account of our sexuality. We’ve never had to fear for our jobs based on our sexuality. We’ve never heard about heartbreaking tales of countless men who mainstream society allowed to die of AIDS without trying to do anything to help – because they were heterosexual.

We’ve never had to be told that we have no right to marry a person that we love. That if they are dying in the hospital that we cannot visit them and that our children that we’ve been raising together could be removed from us and given to someone else. We’ve never been told that we are not allowed to adopt on the grounds that we are heterosexual.

Such privilege could make us pause. Could make us realize that when we talk down to people who are in the LGBTQ community, when we deny them their rights, we are denying people who have done nothing but acted on courage that we have had the privilege to not have to reach for in regards to our sexuality. We are discriminating against people who by their very existence to the injustices bestowed upon them have shown true courage, bravery, and yes, MORAL fiber.

We are discriminating against our doctors, our soldiers, our artists, our police, our teachers, our ministers, our rabbis, our neighbors, our sisters, our brothers, our parents, and anyone we know who is LGBGTQ, including potentially our own children and grandchildren. Let us not skewer those who are LGBTQ any longer against a cross of social crucifixion. Let us instead look at each other as equals and learn from each other and take the lessons that we have learned from Harry Potter about the power of love, to heart.

Harry Potter’s eleven years living in a cupboard for his identity as a Wizard reminds us that no one should have to live inside of a closet for their identity. Dumbledore, and we as readers, understand with great sympathy those like Hagrid a half-giant and Lupin a werewolf, struggling to live in the closet because of their identity. Dumbledore allows for them to come to Hogwarts despite the objections of those who know of their identities – in the HPA we have spent years working to create an environment where those still living in and out of the closet because of their sexual orientation will not be legally subjected to existential intolerance and irrational prejudice.

In Half-Blood Prince page 624, when in the middle of discussing the prospect of a marriage that would challenge the status quo’s “perfectly normal thank you very much” definition of “marriage” McGonagall says, “Dumbledore would have been happier than anybody to think that there was a little more love in the world.”

I think we all know deep down that one of the reasons Harry Potter is so popular is because it artfully conveys a message that is so very needed at this time – that the forces of fear, intolerance, and hatred come and go but they are no match for the power of love. In the Harry Potter Alliance we are proud to be standing on the side of inclusion, Civil Rights, and love. Standing for equal marriage is therefore an obvious fit for us. We believe in building a society that demonstrates to this nation and to this world that human connection can be based on the expansive principles of love rather than the contracting delusions of fear. We believe in working hand in hand, for a world based on human rights as well as the right to be human.

Let this be a truth that is echoed in the United States Congress, the Supreme Court, the Oval Office, and the desk of every journalist, politician, and preacher. Let it be a truth that echoes far beyond US borders, into every corner of our world.

In the words of the greatest Wizard in the world, “Differences of habit and language are nothing at all if our aims are identical and our hearts are open.” Let our hearts remain open and our aims be for a world where we all have that very basic right to be human.

And in the words of Harry and the Potters and the Harry Potter Alliance, “The Weapon We Have Is Love.”

As the Commissioner tells Batman, the Joker has no name, no identity, no clear motive, no fingerprints. In fact, the only thing that the Joker has is an ability to channel Batman’s unconscious. We know this not only because he implies this again and again, but because of the way he tells the story of how he got his scars.

Photo Courtesy of Screen Rant

But that’s not the only piece to this perverse puzzle. The Joker’s playfully sadistic nihilism happens in layers. Peel it back and we begin to see that the Joker seems to have accessed a direct line to Batman’s unconscious. To the Joker, Batman completes him, defines him, is his kindred Nietzschean brother and “boyfriend.” They are both gods. One an unstoppable force, the other an unmovable object. They both come from the Underworld – not simply the Underworld that is the mob. That’s surface BS. No. They come from the Underworld of Gotham’s unconscious.

Let’s start with the version of the origin story he tells Rachel at the fundraiser. His wife, he tells Batman’s beloved Rachel, his wife had hung out “with the sharks.” And they cut her up. The Joker claims that this caused him such despair that he felt forced to inflict horrific wounds upon himself.

Now let’s go to Bruce Wayne in Batman Begins. Rachel is furious with him when she learns how mean and apathetic he had become – how little he resembled her best friend in childhood. She is one of the only two people that Bruce loves and she is ashamed of the cowardly, angry child that he has grown up to be. Here she’s fighting the good fight against the mob (Gotham’s terrible underworld) – something that Bruce’s father had tried to do – and here he is not helping. Yes, Rachel is quite literally “hanging out with the sharks” as a prosecuting attorney, trying to clean up Gotham. By the time Bruce returns from his time away, “the sharks” want her dead, and it’s just a matter of time before they kill her. This inspires Bruce to wear a mask and go from human to god, from Bruce Wayne to Batman.

Bruce has been forced under a deep coat of armor. A suit that belonged to the shadows, inspired by the League of Shadows, and that elevated him to a god. In the process of becoming a Nietzschean superman, a god amongst gods, the real Bruce disappears behind the armor–as all of us victims of trauma are apt to do from time to time. The Batman suit is the full-on manifestation of the scars of Bruce Wayne, and the Joker knows it. He smells it. And he reveals that, scenes before the fundraiser, when talking to the mob boss Gambol.

Before he slices Gambol’s face off, he breathes into his ear, “want to know how I got these scars?” It wasn’t his wife in this instance. It was his father.

Bruce Wayne truly became Batman because of his father’s death. It was the death of Bruce’s father that caused him to hide behind an armor of toughness and indifference, and eventually turn back to Gotham as Batman–in a suit entirely made of the armor of gods and scars where underneath lie intense suffering and sorrow.

The City of Gotham, the city that Bruce’s father saved (at least temporarily), also killed Bruce’s father. Not one lowlife killer, but the entire Falcone underworld that Gotham was allowing itself to be sucked into hell by. Gotham gave Bruce his scars by murdering his father and his mother right in front him as an innocent child.

Like the Joker, Batman is no one. Even underneath the armor, Bruce is no one. The scars are too deep.

Even his public identity as Bruce has him running around as a rich playboy, escorted by things that the shallow elements of our culture strive for: money, models, and any thing that he could possibly “want–though not what he needs, and not what he truly deserves (I’ll get back to that in another post regarding the difference between what we want and what we deserve). Bruce deserves to be human, but his heart is cut up and scarred.

Like Batman, the Joker…the Joker is no one. He is imitating Batman. Their dancing duality connects them in a way that, to the Joker, is the only thing worth caring about. Many people lament the fact that Bruce Wayne/Batman are the main character in Batman Begins, but in Dark Knight are completely upstaged by the Joker. Only thing is, the Joker is nothing but a shattered, bloody reflection of Batman.

As for the Joker’s stories about how he got his scars are not his stories – they belong to Bruce Wayne.

And I am willing to bet that the Joker secretly knows that.

More soon! Curious to hear your thoughts!

I’d like to start with Harvey Dent’s fundraiser, thrown at the Wayne mansion. Throughout the film, the Joker continues to obsessively claim that he and Batman are cut from the same cloth. Their relationship to Dent, displayed at the fundraiser, illustrates just how much.

Let’s start with their entrance. Both Wayne and the Joker enter the fundraiser theatrically, shouting, “where’s Harvey Dent?!” And though it’s for seemingly different reasons, they both sound awfully contemptuous of Harvey.

Now let’s go to the champagne. They both waste it.

Photo Courtesy of Kenichi Nobusue

Bruce spills it over the sky scraper. The Joker spills it into the air and then playfully drinks from the empty glass. We all know what that champagne is, because the film’s sage, Alfred, refers to it moments earlier as “liquid courage.” Harvey is very nervous and uncomfortable at the fundraiser. Alfred walks over to him and offers him the “liquid courage” and Harvey takes it gladly.

But Batman and the Joker do not need “liquid courage” in order to break away from fear. They both dwell in a world of shadows whose threshold requires the eradication of fear, so much so that mere “liquid courage” in a fancy glass at a fancy fundraiser has absolutely no power.

A lot more coming soon. Curious to hear your thoughts!

Time: 7pm ET
www.livestream.com/imaginebetter

Join me tomorrow on International Women’s Day at 7pm ET on www.livestream.com/imaginebetter as we launch our Hunger Is Not A Game campaign and discuss the amazing contributions of female characters, female storytellers, and women around the world.

Special Guest, Evanna Lynch, will share with us the characters that have inspired her and honor a particular female storyteller who has moved us all.

We will also be joined by leaders of the Hunger Games fandom, including hosts of The Hunger Games Fireside Chat Adam Spunberg and Savanna New.

More guest to be announced!

www.livestream.com/imaginebetter

The cocoa industry is unfortunately plagued by the exploitation of cocoa farmers whose children continue to go hungry. In extreme circumstances, children are kidnapped from their families and trafficked as slaves on cocoa plantations in the Ivory Coast. The entire cocoa industry is so corrupt that unless there is a transparent way (such as the process required by the Fair Trade label) to prove that chocolate comes from ethically grown cocoa, there is a chance that it funded the market for the trafficking of children and an almost definite chance that it funded the perpetuation of global hunger amongst children.

We in the Harry Potter Alliance only want to see Harry Potter’s name used to promote products that come from values that Harry Potter, the members of Dumbledore’s Army and the Order of the Phoenix would stand by. In short, we want to see all Harry Potter chocolate become Fair Trade – so that we know that our delicious chocolate frogs are not coming at the expense of the messages that JK Rowling imbued in the series, of the goodwill in the Harry Potter fandom, and most certainly, in the lives of children across our world.

Given Warner Bros. statement that they are opposed to the exploitation of farmers and to child slavery under all circumstances, this should have been a no brainer for them. But when we showed Warner Bros. that Behr’s Chocolate, the company they use to make all Harry Potter chocolate got an “F” in human rights by our partners at Free2Work, Warner Bros. ignored us. Finally upon further inquiry, Warner Bros. released a statement that they had conducted an internal investigation that proves that Behr’s Chocolate is ethical in how they come by their cocoa.

We asked them to send us the results of this investigation and they ignored us.  Over 16,000 of us Harry Potter fans have asked. We have sent video howlers, letters, and more, all demonstrating how important it is that we see the results of their investigation.

We finally asked Warner Bros. to send us the results of their investigation by midnight on New Year’s Eve heading in to 2012.

Well, now it’s 2012 and we have received nothing but silence from Warner Bros. They have no intention of sending us their investigation – assuming there even was an investigation in the first place.

I feel saddened by this. Our world has so much suffering in it but I was hoping that Warner Bros. realized it’s amazing power in changing that. I was hoping that in dark and difficult times, they would make a choice between what is right and what is easy, and their choice would be what is right. Unfortunately, they seem to have chosen what is easy in place of what is right. They seem to have calculated that as a giant company there is little recourse that we ordinary folk have in challenging them.

But I think they calculated incorrectly. Time Magazine made the 2011 Person of the Year, “The Protestor” as we have seen a year where the power of ordinary people has created an Arab Spring, an Occupy Movement, and more. Forty year old dictatorships have been brought down thanks to ordinary people who have had nothing but will, creativity and access to social media.

Well, my fellow Harry Potter fans in this Dumbledore’s Army for our world, we have those things in spades. The Harry Potter Alliance is a community that went from nothing but the hope and inspiration of the Harry Potter series to winning first place in the Chase Bank Community Challenge out of over 10,000 organizations, sending five cargo planes of supplies to Haiti, donating about 90,000 books across the world, building a library for an elementary school in Brooklyn, funding the protection of thousands of civilians in Darfur and Burma, and breaking records in advocacy efforts for LGBTQ equality.

In their arrogance, by ignoring us, they are not realizing the power they are about to awaken. Because Harry Potter fans are not going to walk away without ensuring that Harry’s name is being used for the liberation and not exploitation of children. The longer Warner Bros. ignores us, the more they will realize that while they thought they were sacrificing what is right for what is easy, they actually were sacrificing what is right for what is hard.

We will not flinch from a Goliath who believes it can intimidate us with its size. We have magic. We have used it before. We will use it again. Get ready my fellow Wizards. We are about to invite a giant to dance. And get ready Warner Bros. Hagrid has our backs. And he knows how to teach a giant to do just about any thing.

We will not back away until we see the report that you supposedly did. And we will not back away until  we reach the day when we all can know that what is sold in Harry Potter’s name is consistent with the values in the books we have treasured and grown up with.

Happy New Year everyone! This fight has now begun.

I was overjoyed. “Kate Looby,” I said, “ you just became the most important activist in my life.” And she did.

From that point forward Kate built our volunteer staff from the ground up to a point where now it has eight teams, each with it’s own manager, and over 70 volunteers in total.

Kate helped lead this staff in sending five cargo planes to Haiti, donating about 90,000 books across our world,  in winning the Chase Bank Community Giving Challenge that awarded the HPA $250,000, pulled off our five year anniversary, our presence at conferences, breaking records in phone banking for LGBTQ equality, staffing Project for Awesome 2010, and more.

Kate reminded me once that the real leader of the Harry Potter Alliance was its staff. And she is right: our staff make up the heart and soul of our organization,  accomplishments, and vision for the future. And they would not be here were it not for the work and ingenuity of Kate Looby.

So it with a mixture of sadness and gratitude  that I inform our community that Kate Looby will be leaving the HPA as Director of Operations. We wish her well in all of her exciting future endeavors knowing she will make a truly positive difference in all of the lives she touches.

I feel incredibly confident in the infrastructure that Kate has helped build. There is no way to do any justice to describing what she has given this community in a simple blog entry so I will simply close this as I opened:

Nearly four years ago, I got an email from a random person named “Kate Looby” inquiring about how she could volunteer for the Harry Potter Alliance.

But Kate is no longer in any way “random.” She is a crucial part of this organization’s history and foundation. A part of this movement’s history. And she will remain in our hearts as we continue to change the story of our world  with the magic of story.

Thank you Kate Looby.

And so I look to great storytellers like Dickens and Seuss with the hope that maybe this Christmas whatever mysterious force opened the heart of Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch will open the heart of those at the top of Warner Bros.: CEO Barry Meyer and Senior Vice Presidents Barry Ziehl and Ana de Castro. Not simply for the sake of one underprivileged child like Tiny Tim who at least had the support of his family and the children of Whoville who always had each other, but for scores of kids who have experienced something far more brutal: being kidnapped from their families and forced to work as slaves on cocoa plantations.

On behalf of the Harry Potter Alliance, I have informed Mr. Meyer that given that our partners at Free2Work gave the chocolate company that WB uses an “F” in human rights, there is a reasonable chance that Harry Potter chocolate is being made by child slaves. If we could, we would phone the police about this situation and have them bring these children back to their parents and their perpetrators to justice. But apparently Mr. Meyer and the others at Warner Bros. would do no such thing even if there were a police to call. Because this Christmas they aren’t lifting a finger to aid these children.

When presented with the facts – and there are lots of them – Warner Bros. has simply ignored us. Not at first. No. At first Barry Meyer praised us for the way we’ve protected so many children in the past. He told us that their ethical sourcing guidelines are a “contractual component of every product licensing agreement” and any violation of that licensing agreement would result in Warner Bros. taking “corrective action immediately.”

So when I showed Mr. Meyer, Mr. Ziehl, and Ms. de Castro the “F” report card and explained what it meant regarding child slavery, I thought they were going to take “corrective action immediately.” They did not. Instead they acted like the Grinch who had “a heart two sizes too small” and ignored us. After months of this, I finally told them that I would have to report their uncooperative behavior to JK Rowling. They replied immediately, saying they did an investigation and everything with Harry Potter chocolate is consistent with their ethical sourcing guidelines. Great! Almost. I asked them for evidence. They refused to give me any. I said, “come on, you do realize this is for children right?” Their stony silence was as bad as a “bah humbug!” in the face of Bob Cratchit advocating for Tiny Tim.

So the Harry Potter Alliance has given them until New Year’s to show us their findings. With the clock winding down, however, things are looking grim. If they can’t prove that their cocoa sourcing is indeed above board, if they continue to ignore us without word or explanation, then they are in for a rude awakening. They will soon understand how the Harry Potter Alliance went from nothing but the hope and inspiration of the Harry Potter series to winning first place in the Chase Bank Community Challenge out of over 10,000 organizations, sending five cargo planes of supplies to Haiti, donating about 90,000 books across the world, building a library for an elementary school in Brooklyn, funding the protection of thousands of civilians in Darfur and Burma, and breaking records in advocacy efforts for LGBTQ equality.

I haven’t given up hope just yet. I believe in Christmas miracles. Perhaps Warner Bros. will be visited by the ghosts of Public Relations Errors past, present, and future and realize that being pro-apathy in the face of child slavery is bad PR. Or perhaps like the Grinch, their hearts will simply grow three sizes larger.

At this point, with the attitude they have shown us thus far, it may really take a Christmas miracle. But I’m a story lover and I think miracles are possible, so here’s hoping that Warner Bros. comes round to caring about children. It would be quite a Christmas present for humanity.

The fact that it took a heterosexual athletic celebrity to come out, however courageous Magic Johnson was in doing so, is in itself a tragedy. The worldwide AIDS epidemic could have been severely limited had it not been for homophobia. The greatest legacy of homophobia is NOT the prevention of marriage equality, it’s people in poor nations dying of AIDS without any medicine and dying alone, stigmatized by their communities. And it’s a legacy of gay men in New York City and San Francisco dying miserably and alone watching an American public watch them suffer and die without caring at all.

The next time that someone says they are against marriage equality for religious reasons, perhaps it would make sense to let them know the legacy within which they speak. The greatest contribution that this legacy has ever provided is not the “protection” of “traditional family values” (they didn’t stop Kim Kardashian from getting married and divorced within 72 days) but the worldwide AIDS epidemic and socially crucifying people who were dying as well as those who loved them.

To all of my gay friends and artist friends and other friends who are over the age of something like 40 and had to be subjected to a horrific climate of watching your loved ones die from a terrible “plague” in the 1980′s without the nation so much as lifting a finger, I am so truly sorry for the pain, torment, and alienation that you and your loved ones were subjected to. I hope that one day we can collectively honor the grave errors of America’s homophobia in a way that celebrates the lives of those who were killed and those who still love them and keep them in their hearts – keeping them alive to this very day.

My main point was not to dismiss the scientific method but to walk away from the fundamentalism that it is somehow the great key that can or can’t unlock all mystery. I would argue that the scientific method and its findings are an important moment within a specific context of a specific moment in human history but does not comprise the whole of human history – it does not comprise our past or necessarily our future.

She was very kind and open minded. She said, “well the reason inherent to science is obviously different than the other human faculties.” I argued, “yes, but art and religion call on different faculties as do driving and scuba diving. There are a lot of faculties to human beings – reason is only part of this.”

She countered, “okay fine. But from a point of view of an evolutionary biologist, human beings have the highest intellect out of all creatures on the planet and we should use it.” I countered, “well I’m not even sure if that’s true. Do we have a higher intellect than an octopus?” She said, “well, yes. We can think about our existence, etc.” I countered, “but we have no idea of the kind of gravity of consciousness that comes with being an octopus. We have no idea how they think and no proper vehicle to truly measure their intelligence because their unique intelligence remains a mystery. Bats as well. So I’m not even sure what it means that we have the “highest” intellect because we have such a limited ability at measuring the various facets of consciousness. We left and I said, “Given that you are so responsive and respectful to my crazy line of questioning, I can only assume that you are an excellent scientist.” She smiled, thanked me.

But, who cares if human beings have the highest intellect on Earth any way? All that and 25 cents can’t even pay for a pay phone call (if you’re lucky enough to find a pay phone any more). The world is a lot bigger than many scientists want to have it. We really do not know if we even exist and/or if this is all a dream or some kind of grand illusion. If it is, it does not necessarily matter that it is, because we are all one with the illusion but my basic point is that we should acknowledge that the scientific method is highly limited and should be contextualized as a tool within history. By telling ourselves that it is the solution to all of history, we are making the same error that she claimed humans make to begin with: putting so much importance on what we think at this point in time and not realizing the larger forces at play that are inextricably interconnected to us – and that we can connect to through other faculties besides our highly limited, yet exciting ability to reason and expand on reason/scientific questioning.

Ultimately, LIFE is ALIVE and mysterious and all of our interpretations, even the concept that it exists at all requires an article of faith. And though the scientific method expresses faith differently than religion, it still rests and depends on faith and it’s immature to not acknowledge this truth in the grand mystery. That’s why my favorite scientists continue to be theoretical physicists because their jobs are to open their minds so wide that they question the very existence of the mind at all. And that’s cool.

Science is a beautiful craft and faith but limited like all organized religions but also, like all organized religions, a tool toward the unlimited. But the ones who are going to get us there are not our rank and file scientists and certainly not our fundamentalist scientists but our scientific mystics like Einstein who understand that all assumption can be challenged and is an article of faith and that faith is to be celebrated and not dismissed or reduced as a human weakness, but instead we can have faith in faith – that somehow, rather than a lock that has chained us down, faith is our key that if we allow it, can unlock us from the slavery of perpetual suffering that our perception has allowed the “negative ego” to subject us to.

There is nothing silly or foolish about faith – that isn’t entirely human. And I believe it is our role as humans to be fully, authentically, and entirely human. Doing so is an art, a craft, a science, a faith – and it is truly challenging, painful, pleasurable, delightful, boring, exciting, and leads toward that which we humans have referred to as God or the unified field and what Dorothy unconsciously called “hOMe.”