Elowah Falls Photos

Yesterday I took a trip back to the Columbia River Gorge in order to see one of its most magnificent beauties, the 228-foot tall Elowah Falls, which I have somehow avoided seeing until now. The flow was very high and, besides streamside spots accessible only by sketchy spur trails made by trailblazing photographers, very hard to photograph without being covered by mist. But I endured, and here are the results:

Elowah Falls from above

The base of Elowah Falls

Peeking in at the falls

View of the Washington State side of the Columbia River Gorge

Elowah Falls does not come from the sun.

Elowah Falls "Watercolor."

A column of sunlit golden mist

Spying on the waterfall from behind my mist-shield boulder

The Sexism Of Abstinence-Only Sex Education

Thanks to a new study, we now have scientific method to back up the logical claim that abstinence-only sex education does not prevent teens from having unplanned pregnancies - teen pregnancies are highest in states with abstinence-only sex education policies. Now those teen pregnancies may be caused by other reasons, such as a higher percentage of teen marriages in those states or limited access to birth control and safe sex devices such as condoms, but the correlation with abstinence-only sex education makes sense: if you don't teach teens how to behave responsibly when it comes to sex, how can they be expected to know how to prevent pregnancies? Indeed, comprehensive sex education would likely lower teen pregnancy rates, although it probably would have little effect on reducing the number of teens having sex, which seems to be, more than preventing teen pregnancies, the goal of abstinence-only education.

Thus sums up a common argument against abstinence-only sex education. But it is also inherently sexist.

A Tennessee bill will revise the state's already strict abstinence law to prevent any education that uses the word "sex," with the idea of keeping teens from knowing sex exists, I guess. This bill's passage would be a terrible blow to women's rights because it would also prevent education students about sex crimes, the vast majority of which claim women as the victims. Under this legislation, who would teach the new generation of men that rape is wrong? That sexual harassment, bother verbal and physical, is unjust? That coercing an unwilling women into reluctant consensual sexual is immoral?

And so on.

It seems to me that eliminating sex education has more of a negative effect on the female population (and I'm not even going to go into how women have to understand the process of pregnancy while men get a free pass because it's not their bodies - but that's a whole other can of worms). Of course, if the right succeeds in getting teens to forget sex exists, there won't be sex crimes to worry about. More likely, I think, teenage boys will increasingly fail to learn how to properly treat women, both in sexual contexts (ie. date rape is wrong) and personal interaction (ie. verbal harassment). By routing the "immorality" of comprehensive sex education, the right fails to address the sexist immorality of the consequences.

The Other Supreme Court Ruling

I have a few brief words to share about the newest Supreme Court ruling as we steel ourselves for the judicial outcome of health care.

Today the Supreme Court ruled that strip searches are permissible in arrests for any offense, even minor ones. The argument is that a strip search is not an unreasonable search and seizure and therefore not in violation of the 4th Amendment. In addition, the majority opinion argued that the court does not have the authority to regulate this type of activity, leaving many state laws in opposition to the federal norm in place.

The minority opinion, in addition to asserting that these strip searches are indeed a violation of the 4th Amendment, argues that strip searches violate the right to privacy - the plaintiff in this case and Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who wrote the minority opinion, spoke of unconstitutional humiliation. However, the majority opinion disagreed.

That is what really worries me. If the decision is about limiting the right to privacy, then this case may be setting up precedent to offset Griswold v. Connecticut and the more famous Roe v. Wade, the leading cases establishing the judicially accepted constitutional right to privacy in the context of birth control and abortion rights. Perhaps this is the true goal of the conservative court, to pave way for a legal justification for the overturn of those controversial decisions. If so, this ruling may have much deeper political ramifications than first meets the eye.