If I Were Chief Justice Roberts...

Don't get me wrong, today was a wonderful day for marriage equality. DOMA was rightly struck down as unconstitutional, and we got perhaps the best ruling on Prop 8 we could expect from a conservative court such as this (the 5-4 majority on Prop 8 was the oddest combination of justices, too).

Now people are celebrating, and for good cause, but there's something unsettling about the people out there who are celebrating Anthony Kennedy's role in the DOMA decision. Yes, he was key vote in overturning DOMA. He was also the key vote in yesterday's ruling gutting the Voting Rights Act, a disappointing ruling to say the least.

If I were Chief Justice Roberts and wanted to help out the Republican Party as much as I could this court session, a session taking place not long after an election landslide victory for my opponents, I would prioritize my major issues. The major docket issues this June, or at least the ones that proved to attract the most public attention, were: affirmative action, voting rights, and marriage equality. If Chief Justice Roberts could chose just one of these issues to claim as a victory, on behalf of the Republican Party, which would it be?

Voting rights, without a doubt. It would grant the Republican Party a great deal of lasting political power. The other two issues could be sacrificed without the loss of Republican power. And let's not forget that Prop 8 and affirmative action were decided on very narrow grounds that don't change much at all. Only DOMA and the Voting Rights Act were irrevocably changed.

And, with a stroke of political genius, if I were the Chief Justice I would release the decision on marriage equality last, knowing it would eclipse the Voting Rights Act decision's public importance (save the best for last) and wipe it from many memories.

After the Voting Rights Act was hobbled yesterday, many people pointed out that the decision left room for Congress to enact similar legislation using modern-day statistics. Indeed, the Supreme Court gave Congress clear instructions on how to refashion the law in a manner in harmony with the Constitution. Yesterday there was a sizable amount of support for this sort of solution and it looked as if an effort might be made in Congress to follow these instructions and create a new Voting Rights Act. However, even if the Voting Rights Act was a top priority for Congress it would be hard to imagine that it would make it through to Obama's desk without a herculean effort. After today's DOMA ruling, I doubt even the traces of that effort exist anymore.

What's Happening in Turkey Right Now

There's a chance you haven't heard about it yet, which is astounding considering that a city with a population of 18 million is more or less in chaos. My friends have been keeping me updated on what's happening, so let me give a run-down for those who are new to this situation:

This is how I understand it. The Turkish government plans to take down a park (Gezi Park) near Taksim Square, more or less the center of Istanbul, and transform it into a mall with an Ottoman-style architecture. To offer some form of comparison, imagine if New York City were going to tear down Union Square to build high rises. But this particular park in Istanbul has some historical significance, especially regarding the act of protesting. So now imagine a park as centrally located as New York's Union Square with the historical meaning of People's Park in Berkeley, California. Naturally, there were protests.

The protests were nonviolent. There is no indication that the protestors provoked the police officers, even in the information given by the government. But the police reaction to this first small demonstration was over the top. They raided the park, beat people, and sprayed tear gas.

So the protests grew the next day, taking on a new feeling of speaking out against the police brutality, which continued as the police flew in helicopters (yes, helicopters) into Taksim to spray tear gas, which could be felt across the Golden Horn (that would be like gassing Union Square from helicopters and people in Brooklyn feeling their eyes sting).

Thing is, the police didn't legally have this power a 5 years ago. In the past few years the ruling Turkish party has expanded the powers of the police significantly while edging away power from the other branches of government. For example, when I was teaching in Istanbul there was a special vote that amended the country's constitution to drastically cut back the power of the military - the main secularizing force in modern Turkish history - and the courts (later that year the immensely popular Prime Minister Erdoğan became just the third Turkish prime minister ever to receive an absolute majority of the vote). So all these police actions are completely legal, no matter how despicable.

So now the protests have spread throughout the country and beyond (I've seen photos of people protesting in Canada) taking on the form of a broad outrage against the practices of Erdoğan's government over the past decade, ranging from his power grabs to his arresting of journalists who speak against him to his pushing the Turkish legal code closer to an Islamic code with moral laws, such as the regulations against alcohol and the prohibition of street seating at cafés.

Here are some articles about it in the American press, which is a little reserved about the whole thing: NPR, NYTimes, CNN. Erdoğan is an important ally, after all: a secular Muslim! (although barely) And this is only the first time he has been publicly humiliated on the word front like this. And here's a Turkish blog about the protests that's quite a bit more sensationalist. 

Here's a quote from the NYTimes article that reveals the attitudes of Prime Minister Erdoğan and his aims for control over culture as well as government:

In his remarks, Mr. Erdogan criticized Twitter, which became an important conduit of news — and unfounded rumors — about the demonstrations, which were not covered aggressively in the Turkish news media.

“Now we have a menace that is called Twitter,” he said. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.” 

 And here's a poem I threw together ion solidarity for the cause:

"Fear Not! (Korkma)"

Fear not!

O!

Drag me from Gezi Park

I dare you!

Pull me by my feet

While my fingernails scratch rows into the soil

And watch as sunflowers spring forth

So tall and thick that your machetes dull felling them

See my friends and I sitting cross-legged in the field that results

Laughing together and eating sunflower seeds.

Spray chemicals into my watery eyes

Burn the sight from them

And watch as anguished tears spill from my face

Onto your deserted concrete streets

Boring into the ground like acid

And watch the magnificent junipers

Jump eagerly from the holes

Their roots tearing up your barricades

Their branches smashing through your malls.

Pummel me with your rods

And watch your weapons sprout a thousand hands

That reach down to help me to my feet once more.

Declare me a liar, a spreader of false rumors

And watch all the skeptical heads turn your way instead.

Afix a blindfold to my eyes

A gag to my mouth

And watch as the world hears me speak

In a language you cannot comprehend

With the volume of a cannon.

Fear not!

O!

Drag me from Gezi Park

I dare you!

Photos From the 2012 Beach Vacation/For the Victims of the Clackamas Mall Shooting

These North Carolina photos have been a long time coming, I know, and most of my readers have already seen these shots, having been there when I took them. But I would like to share anyway because there are some photos in the group I am particularly proud of, and now that I've fixed my photo problem from earlier I can flaunt my artist's ego a bit.

But these photos are especially pertinent for today because of the recent tragedy that took place yesterday here in Portland. While I have never been to the mall where the shooting took place, apparently it's not far from where I live and Courtney and our roommates go there from time to time. It's times like this when something horrible happens close to home like this when I think of how precious my family is to me and how devastating it would be to lose someone I love in such a gruesome manner. It was emotions like this that inspired me to write "Unraveling" and even though the song is old it's still relevant. So let's enjoy the photos of a group of precious people, listen to the song of mourning, and keep the victims in our minds as we celebrate how lucky we are that our loves ones are safe.

Unraveling

Austin, the newest member of our family!

Little Sophia playing with my brother

Mad Antz: Aunt Marsha and Aunt Jan

The ocean outside the house where we stayed in North Carolina

Nana, the star of the show!

Four generations: Shira holding Sophia, Aunt Marsha, and Nana

Another sunset beach shot

Another adorable shot of Austin

Throwback Photos: Crater Lake for the Perseid Meteor Shower

It seems that the photo experiment in the last post went off with a smash, so now there's nothing holding me back from posting my photos on the blog anymore (for those of you who don't remember, I ran out of space on Blogger to upload new photos, as described here). So I'm going to go back in time to this summer when Courtney, Rebecca, and I all headed down to Crater Lake for a weekend to watch the dazzling Perseid Meteor Shower at its peak.

I'd like to get started by sharing an article, though. Cory Booker, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, is taking what's called a SNAP/Food Stamp Challenge, which asks people to try eating as much (or little) food as someone can get with food stamps. In New Jersey it's $30 a week, or about $4 a day. The idea is to raise awareness about the struggles of the poor who rely on food stamps and demonstrate the argument that food stamps should provide a greater benefit. I don't think I'd have a chance to stick to this challenge, but kudos to Booker for his efforts (remember, this is the guy who rescued a neighbor from a burning house, too). And it only took a couple additional clicks of research to learn that Barbara Lee has also taken the challenge. As if I needed another reason to like her. Sweet!

Anyway, onwards to photos and memories!

Crater Lake is the deepest lake in the United States. It was once a volcano, but the crater filled up with water (hence the name). Geologically speaking, this happened rather recently, only a few thousand years ago. This makes it one of the most pristine and haunting bodies of water I've ever seen.

The soil is also apparently very fertile.

This is called the "Phantom Ship." You can just make out the other end of the shore. Often Crater Lake is clear as can be and you can see everything, but when we visited forest fire season was in high gear. A lot of the sediment was trapped in the crater and made viewing difficult. But when we made it to the shore, we could see under all the haze. The water cleaned up the air just above it and we could see clearly across to the other side. Remarkable.

This is where we swam. Yes, we swam in a volcano. You're allowed to be jealous.

The walls of the crater. They keep dropping like this even in the water. Swim out about the length of a pool and you can't even see the bottom anymore, even though the water is crystal clear. It was the smallest and weakest I've ever felt. It was like I was a tiny hovering speck above an abyss, especially since I could see the gigantic rock walls shoot down and down farther than vision. A highly recommended experience!

I didn't get any photos of the meteors themselves - my nighttime super long exposure photography isn't quite up to par yet - but I did get this shot of Watchman Point, where we watched from, as we waited for the sky to blacken. The stars shot across the entire sky throughout the night in all sorts of colors: blue, orange, red, white, and green. Just dazzling! My buddy Kirk took a shot of the shower you can see here.

Sympathy for the Devil

It seems that quite a few people in power think that the definition of rape is too broad, and the law should offer greater protections for accused rapists. This issue has been gaining popular attention especially after the Todd Akin comments about "legitimate rape" containing egregious factual inaccuracies about women's health that seem to inform a lot of current right-wing policy. Since then, there has been a great deal of right wing statements supporting a stricter view of rape - presumably in order to eventually do away with abortion exceptions in case of rape and/or incest - including one defender of Akin who stated that rape victims are "blessed" with a child (and said the popular phrase of those who don't want to take back their disgusting opinions but instead are expressing their disappointment that they weren't able to trick the public better: that Akin "spoke badly").

Today the Connecticut Supreme Court decided that a woman with severe cerebral palsy was not in fact raped because she did not communicate her refusal of consent. Apparently the demonstrated facts that she "cannot speak and has little body movement" is not enough evidence that she was physically incapable of expressing her refusal. The court indicated in their 4-3 decision that biting or kicking would have been an acceptable form of communication.

Let's set aside the ready-made belief that the victim should have been considered physically incapable, as an unconscious rape victim would be, of communicating her refusal - an argument I agree with. The real issue here is the purpose sexual assault law is supposed to play. The Connecticut Supreme Court upheld a legal understanding of rape that promotes the idea that sex is always consensual unless one party, usually the woman, explicitly declines. This case hinges on that interpretation. If the law instead stated that a sex act could be legally considered rape if it was committed without obtaining consent, then the need for the handicapped to bite or kick would be irrelevant. But with the law as it is, it is the duty of the victim, again, usually the woman, to unequivocally say no to sex - in this case, even if she is incapable of doing so. Men can coerce, force women to give partial consent, bully them into willing sex acts under threat of violence, and if the women do not refuse for fear, confusion, disorientation, uncertainty, or whatever, the man is completely justified under this interpretation of the law.

Despicable.

It should not be solely the woman's duty to definitively express, sometimes in a unclear, rushed moment, her adamant refusal. Women do not need to take responsibility for the depraved actions of a sexual assaulter. The value system of the Connecticut ruling places all onus of "legitimate" rape on women - only they can determine whether rape has occurred, and the violent and destructive behavior of the assaulter is barely important. This is wrong. The interpretation of the law that informed this ruling lets men have sex without consent and forces women to decide in the moment whether it's a crime. The crime is not a crime because of the actions of the perpetrator but the cries of the victim. It would be as if someone who broke into your house was acquitted because you hadn't told him to leave as he was burglarizing your possessions. Completely despicable. Expressing this style of legal sympathy for rapists, such as the man in today's ruling, is sympathizing with sexism and subjugation of women.

Facts Aren't Dead, But They Aren't Relevant Either

I came across this graphic the other day and thought I'd share it:

Now the fun thing about this little equation is looking at the thousands of comments it has on the web of people reporting their answers (The correct answer is 7, by the way). After quickly browsing, I saw the most popular answer to be 1, although 5, 3.5, and 7 were also prevalent.

But I'm not writing this to complain about the education level of the US; in fact, this situation seems much more similar to a headline in The Onion that reads: "Parents Don't Remember Enough Colors To Help With Kindergartener's Homework." Completely understandable. It would seem that there are a lot of people who don't use the order of operations in everyday life, myself included, so it wouldn't be surprising that people would forget.

Except that's not the entire problem. There were comments, written in combative, didactic, lecturing tones, explaining the order of operations and applying to this equation, conclusively asserting the answer to be something other than 7 (usually 5). One such commenter gave showed his work as:

6-1x0+2/2
6-0+2/2
6-0+1
6-1
5

Others, usually those who chose 1 as the answer, entirely ignored or forgot the order of operations, blurting out their left-to-right methodology, as in this example:

Anything x 0 = 0, and 0 + 2 = 2 and 2/2 = 1, so the answer is 1.

So the problem is only partly that many people either don't know or have forgotten how to do simple math equations. But there is another problem here, and I think it offers insight into a phenomenon that took place recently in Tampa Bay.

Paul Ryan earned the nickname "Lyin' Ryan" for his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention, a speech with "another level" of dishonesty. A Romney aide once commented that the campaign will not be "dictated by fact checkers," a statement many have taken to mean that the Republican Party intends to say whatever it wants in order to win the election.

So are facts dead? Well, if you read the title of this post you'd know my opinion about that. There is an important NPR article that argues that facts are indeed dead, and in my last post I agreed with the article and discussed how politicians sticking to statements they know to be false and have been publicly exposed as false. I suppose they believe it's more humiliating to be wrong than to lie, that the most importantly quality in a political leader is uncompromising stubbornness, masculinity at its worst. The biggest casualty of this stubbornness is reality.

According to my history research at New York University, a big development towards the dying of facts occurred during the Reagan presidency with regards to state massacres conducted by El Salvador (my historical focus was Central America, after all). The US-supported government, supported essentially because it wasn't communist, had slaughtered entire villages and buried hundreds in rural mass graves, which were found by journalists along with at least one witness. Of course this would disgrace the Reagan presidency since they had supported the Salvadoran regime and intended to continue doing so to fight communism, so they took a strategy that hadn't been used before: they denied the facts. But it wasn't as simple as that. They discredited the journalist who originally brought the story to light, claiming he either had dubious motives for publishing the story or that he didn't understand what he found, and also claiming that the main witness was not reliable. This strategy worked well, and there wasn't a consensus about what really happened in El Salvador until long after Reagan left office, if there even is a consensus or if anyone still cares. And this method of doubting the source of evidence has justified a lot of misinformation.

This tactic is more effective now because of all the corroborating right wing "journalistic" sources eager to rush in and support a false claim that benefits their ideology. Now, this is where the math comes back in (you were wondering if I'd forgotten about it, weren't you?). Suppose you see this equation and have never worked with anything like it before:

6-1x0+2/2 = ?

Now there are three methods for solving this equation: the two I mentioned above and the correct one:

6-1x0+2/2
6-0+1
7

Supporters of each answer are giving reasons for their beliefs, and they all seem plausible Left-to-right makes sense because that's how we read, and so does solving using order of operations one at a time instead of in pairs. Some express disbelief at other plausible answers (one answer read, "How do you get 7 from that?!").

The fact is that if you use the order of operations correctly the answer is 7, but if you've never encountered the order of operations before how would you choose what to believe? You might think the correct answer is 1 simply because more people chose it - even though I know 7 to be the answer I still doubted myself for a moment when I saw the sheer number of 1s.

In the meantime, Bill O'Reilly is repeating again and again that the answer is 5 because only a pin-head wouldn't use pemdas in order one at a time, and Sean Hannity says that only mooching welfare queens would get an outlandish number such as 7 from that equation, and Rush Limbaugh insists that only someone with a woman's intelligence would get 1. Each bring on their guest "experts" who they claim to be mathematicians who diagram the answer to be 5 with holographic numbers floating in the air, and Glenn Beck cries at the beauty of the "correct" answer and Ann Coulter scoffs at the idea of sitting down with a believer of 7 and having a conversation about mathematics. Gerardo Rivera blames social problems on people who have a dangerous belief in 7 and Gretchen Carlson laments that if everyone would just see the correctness of the answer 5 then the country would be great again. Karl Rove moans that scaling back on public service and creating huge tax breaks for millionaires is the only way to stop the problems caused by 7-believers and Dick Cheney insists only a non-patriotic 7-believer wouldn't want to take military action in Iran. And now, what was once a fact (that the answer is 7) is now a dangerous political ideology.

And because believing in 7 is a political ideology, anyone supporting a belief in 7 is biased and not to be trusted. Fact-checking organizations, journalists, and Nobel Laureate mathematicians try to call attention to the factual inaccuracy, but since they are seen to be supporting a political agenda and not a fact they are either ignored or actively resisted. Here a fact has been politicized.

If a person is presented with two conflicting and plausible sets of information, how does he choose which to believe? I'll trust even Wikipedia to deliver the answer here: selective perception, the subject of much research showing that when people are offered many different media sources they will gravitate towards sources that correspond closely with their political views.

Now let's say the debate is not about this equation and the number 7 but instead about, say, the effectiveness of gay therapy programs such as Pray Away The Gay, or the existence of climate change, or the harmful results of deregulation and trickle-down economics, or the dangers of fraud in elections, or whether Trayvon Martin was a bad kid and he was mostly responsible for the events that led to his death, or that women can biologically shut down a pregnancy while being raped (Akin was not the first to make this claim, ladies and gentlemen), or that Obama is Muslim and wasn't born in America, and so on.

In each of the above instances, either facts or expert consensus is available, and in each instance the facts have been distorted, ignored, or viewed as opinion rather than fact. So it's not that the facts aren't there. It's that they're being facts isn't very important in determining what a person believes.

To close, we get an understanding of why the Republican Party can be so out of touch. In each of the above instances (and many more) the Republican Party takes the position that is not supported by facts or expert consensus but a hypothetical, even fringe interpretation more or less created out of thin air mixed with political perspective. So the GOP is out of touch because they're acting in a world that doesn't exist, a world where women's bodies' "juices don't flow" during rape, where election fraud is widespread and threatening, where homosexuality can be cured and climate change is a hoax, where cutting government services to almost nothing and granting huge tax breaks to the wealthiest in the country is actually better for all citizens, and so on. The country the GOP wants control over is hypothetical, based on ideologically and religiously based laws of nature that don't apply in reality. And to win power in reality, the party increasingly needs to convince voters of the falseness of the facts governing the real country and drag us all into its twisted fantasy rather than confront the accuracy of truth.

Here's a comic about hypothetical situations. Enjoy much of our government's operating as if we're all living in one.

Explination of Hiaitus

I'm currently trying to figure out a problem I've been having with blogger, namely that I've run out of space to post photos. I don't know how this is surprising to me. Until I find a way to back up the posts I've made I won't be able to delete them to make room for new photography posts, so hang in there while I take a short break.

In the meantime, sink your teeth into this depressing NPR article. I don't know what to do when logic fails, and yet here we go: despite overwhelming factual proof - that's factual proof, not opinion - the Romney campaign continues to stick by their blatant lies about welfare, a strategy that they must assume will be successful.

And they're probably right. According to a study (in another article I somehow failed to post here that brilliantly analyses the effects and causes of Representative Allen West declaring that 80 members of the Democratic Party in Congress were members of the Communist Party, then standing by that ridiculous claim after it had been proven again and again to be false), a fact's accuracy does not have a primary effect on its believability. If one hears a political and factual lie, then hears the correction, he is most likely to believe whichever coincides most with his prior political opinions (specifically the study deals with fabricated information regarding Bush tax cuts).

In short, it doesn't matter if it's a fact or not. Just saying whatever you want about an opponent will make a large portion of your base believe the slander. This insults my intelligence and panders to fear and hatred - once again.

Is it true that the Republican Party's platform now is so outlandish that they have to rely on hearsay (and voter ID laws, another story) to win votes? What will these candidates do once they're in office and have to deal with the reality of a world where facts are important? People, we have to vote in November!

One Of Many Effects Of The Health Care Ruling

The above quote from Rand Paul has been circulating around the internet, and for good reason. That statement shows a laughable ignorance with regards to how the United States government works.

But that's not what stands out to me the most. That nifty graphic was posted on Facebook by an organization that had recently posted these two graphics:

Among others, these two graphics hint at questioning the legitimacy of the Supreme Court's rulings, in the first case by asserting that it has been "bought out" by the infamously rich Koch brothers, and in the second that the then-impending ruling on health care would be illegitimate should Clarence Thomas not recuse himself.

Yet those doubts are completely reversed in the Rand Paul graphic that not only asserts the legitimacy of the court's ruling but take it for granted. In fact, the hilarity of Paul's quote rests on the assumption on the part of the reader that the court's word is lawful and compelling.

However, if the health care ruling had gone the other way, I'm sure we would have seen more graphics like the second two crop up around the internet, and the court's legitimacy in the eyes of the left would shrink. The court's legitimacy is affirmed and reinforced because of the side on which the ruling fell in the eyes of the left.

And only the left, it appears. Some state governments, including Scott Walker's Wisconsin, have already announced that they will not implement the health care law, going against the decision supported by all three branches of the federal government. Since the Supreme Court has no power of enforcement, Wisconsin could get away with it if the federal level executive branch were uninterested or in agreement with Wisconsin. My guess is that there will be a conflict between state and national government if Walker sticks to his words. But the main point is this: the court's power to decide the constitutionality of laws isn't enough for Walker, and while the court is going to enjoy enhanced standing among the left (and center), it will suffer in the eyes of conservatives. Another example would be the bizarre explanations some on the right have been concocting for why Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the liberal majority.

And so goes the turbulent life of the Supreme Court.

Kansas Free From Religious Establishment

I'll get to the second part of my Seattle adventure shortly.

It's now ripe news that Kansas recently passed a law banning Sharia Law (more or less Islamic religious codes) from being used by "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," in an apparent attempt to prevent foreign laws from taking over the Kansas democratic system.

This law has been made fun of its fair share of times - one headline reads "Governor Brownback Turns Attention to Non-Problem of Sharia Law." Indeed, the law seems intended to solve a problem that isn't there, as the New York Times iterates:

There are no known cases in which a Kansas judge has based a ruling on Islamic law. But the new law’s supporters have cited a pending divorce case in Sedgwick County in which a man has asked for property to be divided in line with Shariah.

Beyond the obvious fun that can be poked at this new law and its 20 siblings still in state legislatures around the country (including in Arizona, Michigan, and Tennessee, surprise surprise), there is something valuable to be gained from the xenophobia, chiefly in the way the law's writers worded it in order to appear non-discriminatory. The law specifically forbids "courts, administrative agencies and state tribunals [from basing] rulings on any foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." Still, the bill's supporters made it very clear the intention is to stave off the non-existent "infiltration" of Sharia Law.

I wish we could take this law at face value. Forgetting the veiled racism of the intention, I believe the country and each state really should be governed and managed exclusively by the federal and state constitutions. What I see in the law's wording is an attempt to prevent religious establishment, aimed primarily at Islamic establishment but, in its effort to seem non-discriminatory can and should apply to all religious doctrine.

For religiously based doctrine has fed much law making that has deprived American citizens of many rights guaranteed them in the constitution (I'm thinking of women's rights and LGBT rights specifically, among others). After all, what explanation besides a religiously-based one is there for abstinence-only sex education, especially considering that the research that suggests that not only does abstinence-only sex education not prevent teen pregnancies but actually the opposite? What explanation besides a religious one defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman, not to mention all the other rights homosexuals have been deprived of thanks largely to bible passages?

But the juicy thing I really love about this legislation is that in fighting against foreign religious doctrine it also fights against most Christian doctrine. To claim Christianity as American would be amazing folly - the bible is a translated document. Only American-based sects such as Mormonism could legally pass under this law's nose (did Mitt Romney dream up this legislation?). Legal arguments against marriage equality would crumble since equal protection is a protection given the American people under the federal constitution, so revoking one demographic's right to marry would be illegal discrimination. Abstinence-only sex education, the withholding of important health information, would disintegrate as its purpose, to prevent premarital sex (and teen pregnancies, but we've already seen how well that's worked out), has no basis in the constitution and is a biblical-based value - plus, as I've argued before, it's sexist and can therefore be construed, once again, as discrimination.

Now, a supporter of the Kansas law might say that Christianity is not foreign in order to extricate it from the law's grasp. How come it's not foreign? It's explicitly not established as a national religion in the first amendment in the Bill of Rights. If that supporter says it's not foreign because the vast majority of Americans are Christian, then we have yet another case of disenfranchisement of a minority in favor of a majority, the kind of mob rule the federal constitution was expressly designed to protect against. And of course, the constitution does not allow for the establishment of religion even in the event that the majority of its citizens share that religion. In my mind there is no way Kansas courts can allow disturbingly prejudiced legislation fashioned with Christian values in mind to remain legal, thanks to this new law.

Now, I'm getting a little ahead of myself with excitement. This law only applies to "courts, administrative agencies or state tribunals," so it does not prevent the enactment of laws based upon Christian theology. But maybe it will come, a law preventing the enactment of legislation with any basis on "foreign law or legal system that would not grant the same rights guaranteed by the state and federal constitutions." And then Christian lawmakers would be miffed as their destructive pet bills with no constitutional basis get struck down, rightly and legally, for having violated the very law they had championed thanks to their own bigotry.

Oh, their own flaws would be their downfall! It's so poetic! I can't wait!

Implications of Austerity

A couple of days ago economist Amartya Sen - the Nobel Prize winner who theorized that famines may not be the result of supply not meeting demand but of unequal access to resources - wrote an opinion piece in the New York Times addressing his concerns with the European economic crisis and the proposed austerity measures. I'm a fan of Amartya Sen's work, some of which I used in research at New York University where I argued that free market economics is a set of socio-cultural expectations rather than an empirical science that can be applied indiscriminately to any population, like an experiment, with predictably similar results.

In the article, Sen makes two major points. In solving the economic crisis, Sen argues, expediency is not the correct way to solve the problem, even if the hastily found solutions are well-intended, writing, " Reform on a well-thought-out timetable must be distinguished from reform done in extreme haste."

This argument reminds me of Naomi Klein's depressing analysis of what she terms "disaster capitalism" in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She finds that free market economic theory thrives in the wake of a disaster - be it unexpected as was the case for Hurricane Katrina or the September 11th attacks, or state-manufactured as was the case in Margaret Thatcher's England - when the population is in shock and less willing to resist radical economic reform. Klein argues persuasively that the goal of "disaster capitalists" is to pounce on these disasters in order to enact economic reform that is drastic, wide-reaching, and permanent before the population can recover its will to exercise its democratically-endowed voice.

Sen's discomfort with the feeling of hasty urgency in Europe combined with Klein's conclusions regarding drastic free-market economic reforms leads me to worry that the austerity possibilities in Europe are the work of opportunist neo-liberal economists aiming to further the lasting impact of a damaging economic philosophy.

How damaging is the potential? In his second point, Sen argues that "sudden and savage cuts in public services" is not in Europe's best interests, no matter how urgent the economic crisis may be, because it will go against some of Europe's core values. The most important of these values is the democratic voice of the population. Sen writes,

Both democracy and the chance of creating good policy are undermined when ineffective and blatantly unjust policies are dictated by leaders... This is a surely a far cry from the “united democratic Europe” that the pioneers of European unity sought.

The austerity measures are not only drastic, but they will damage democracy itself (jump back to Naomi Klein, who argues that disaster economics is not compatible with democracy and the only way a democracy would permit such policy is in the event of a disaster - such as what's going on in Europe right now). Indeed, Sen worries that a quick solution might "conflict with a more urgent priority — in this case, the preservation of a democratic Europe that is concerned about societal well-being." Sen all but spells out the notion that these economic reforms are not only opposed to democracy but also a government concerned with its population.

Here we see, as I wrote back at NYU, that free-market capitalism is a set of cultural values and should be thought of as such before blindly applying it to populations as if it were a universally empirical science.

Judicial Activism? A Conservative Phenomenon

While I have not been taking full advantage of my subscription to the New Yorker Magazine, I did get the full experience in the latest issue with popular law journalist Jeffrey Toobin's article "Money Unlimited: How Roberts Orchestrated Citizens United." I encourage anyone interested in law or current events to read it, as it describes how one of the most pertinent modern supreme court decisions came about, and with it the controversial establishment of corporate personhood and relaxing of campaign finance restrictions.

There are a number of very interesting and somewhat depressing insights presented in the article, the most interesting to me is something Toobin brings up briefly, almost in passing. Judicial activism, a point of outcry among conservatives, is in reality a largely conservative phenomenon that the proceedings from the Citizens United case providing an illustration. Toobin uses the term "conservative judicial activism" to refer to efforts of conservative justices to influence the law in manners not necessarily within the parameters of the court's intended constitutional purpose, that of being an independent mediator of power between different institutions of government. This case of Citizens United is a perfect demonstration of this conservative judicial activism in action, with some of the justices grasping a procedural technicality to create drastic and undesirable effects on the law in favor of the right wing cause.

Go ahead and read it.

Religious Does Not Mean Conservative

Barack Obama's announcement that he supports gay marriage, while of course being a political gamble (conservatives have referred to the announcement as a "gift" for Romney), was made with a genius stroke of tact through his appeal to religious voters when he said:

The thing at root that we think about is, not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it's also the Golden Rule, you know — treat others the way you would want to be treated.

Now, I am personally disgusted how religion has wormed its way into everyday national politics, and there seem to be daily violations of the First Amendment's establishment clause, including gay marriage bans such as the one recently approved by voters in North Carolina. Policy should not be faith-based since theocracy is inherently limiting to a diverse population, both for those of varied faiths and those within a given faith.

However, I think Obama made the right call when he cited his faith in support of gay marriage because he demonstrated that being a Christian doesn't mean one has to be right wing. Fundamentalist and extreme religious views have been receiving a lot of attention lately thanks to the emergence of the Tea Party, the bizarre candidacy of Rick Santorum and his equally offensive predecessors, the rolling back of women's rights in states, and so on. It has been disheartening to witness the extent the silence of more tempered religious views in the face of outrageous biblical (and in my view unlawful) claims and policy. Yet now, finally, Obama supports gay marriage for reasons that include the bible.

The result? Instead of alienating Christians by pitting a secular, humanist political view against an evangelical Christian one, the debate present within the Christan community concerning biblical interpretation gains momentum. A valuable moderate Christian counterargument to exaggerated homophobic claims is now in the spotlight.

Christianity is not inherently equal to homophobia, sexism, or all the other repressive ideologies espoused by most prominent public Christian figures. Those Christians who don't accept such a repressive, rigid understanding of the bible should be relieved to finally see a political alternative to what we've been witnessing for the duration of the 2012 campaign. And I'll bet there are more moderate Christians than extremists out there. Extreme views, by definition, lay on the extremities.

The next step, I hope, is the slow but definite release of the law from religion's choking grasp.

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.

Not Your Average Product

I go back and forth about this issue: is the health care law currently in the Supreme Court constitutional or not?

The answer, as I see it, boils down to an argument not being made to the justices. If access to health care is an inalienable human right, like that of free speech or property, then the law is within Congress's authority to pass. Otherwise, it's difficult to say if it's within legality, but I'm leaning towards not.

First let me be clear that I do believe health care is a human right and therefore national health care is a good idea. However, I also believe in the final say of the United States Constitution, so I'm at odds with myself.

Second, I strongly feel the court should not be even hearing this case. This is the only aspect of the proceedings I am sure about. A grievance cannot be taken to court without something to grieve, specially so far tax laws. The legislative mandate on trial would force a tax penalty on anyone who does not purchase or have health insurance. Until someone is hit with that tax there is nothing to petition against, and therefore the court should not hear the case until 2014 when the tax penalty first goes into effect. The justices claim this tax penalty is not a tax law and therefore gives them jurisdiction over it now, and I don't understand the argument.

However, that point is almost irrelevant since the law's constitutionality won't change between now and when the first tax penalty is levied. So the real question is, where does Congress get the right to force people to buy health insurance? The tax penalty is easy: Congress has the right to "lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay for the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States" (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 1). However, since this tax's purpose is to penalize those without health insurance, the right to tax is not on trial here. Congress is using its taxation power to regulate health care. Is that within its rights?

Health regulation is not explicitly mentioned in article 1 of the Constitution, so Congress invoked the vague "commerce clause" (Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3) which allows it to "regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states, and with the Indian tribes." Originally seeming to refer to money exchanges, very quickly commerce received a wide interpretation from early courts, starting with Gibbons v. Ogden where Chief Justice Marshall argued that commerce is not just trade and traffic but "intercourse" between two states. The only aspect of commerce that is untouchable, then, is something that goes on solely within the borders of one state without affecting the others in any way. This clause with Chief Justice Marshall's influential decision allowed Congress much regulatory power, including that over highways, the Internet, and even the air - the Clean Air Act was argued to be interstate commerce because car pollution travels from state to state, therefore making it a federal issue.

Health care is certainly something that takes place in more than one state, and, as the law's defenders argue, if everyone in the United States uses it, then they would have the power to regulate it under the commerce clause. However, does Congress have the right to force a person to buy it? Is this kind of regulation within its power? As Scalia wryly said on the second day of oral arguments, could Congress then force people to eat broccoli, since food is also an essential item everyone uses in every state?

(Before I go on, I would like to point out on a brief aside that taxpayers essentially are forced to buy specific food thanks to sweeping subsidies for corn, and because of these subsidies nearly everyone is force to eat corn because corn products have worked their way into almost everything we eat - although it is indeed possible, while difficult thanks to these subsidies, to live a corn-free existence. However, besides this being an imperfect analogy, I don't like comparing law making I dislike - corn subsidies - to legislation I do like - health reform. Just because something is legally possible doesn't make it desirable. The opposite is true, too.)

So it all boils down to this: is health care a product or not? If health care is a product then a mandate to purchase it would be like forcing someone to buy a brand name for the sake of public good, whatever the excuse for that might be - broccoli because it "promotes general welfare" by forcing people to eat healthier, I suppose.

But if we can acknowledge that health care is more than a product then the law may just be constitutional. I've argued before that essential services such as health care, education, food, and basic services (such as sewage) do not and should not function in the free market the same way as other products and when they are treated like products people suffer. I won't get into this research now - that's a whole other discussion.

Perhaps we can think of health care as belonging to the rights of "life" part of "life, liberty, and property" that are guaranteed in the 5th and 14th amendments. If so, then the individual mandate to purchase it can be construed to be in violation of the "liberty" and "property" parts by threatening financial penalties.

In conclusion, this law's constitutionality is a tough call. There are a lot of legal issues at play here having to do with a lot of case law history I can't wait to read more of. For now, all I can hope for is what's best for both people's health and for the balance of power as outlined in the Constitution.

Hypothetical Trayvon Martin

Recently information has come out about George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin about a month ago. It’s been said that when he arrived at the police station he was bloodied and he claims this is because Martin assaulted him in the street. Other details have also been circulating, like Martin’s suspension from school because his backpack hadtraces of marijuana, that are so irrelevant to the issue at hand that the only explanation I can think for their release is an asinine attempt to discredit Martin’s character. Likewise is Geraldo Rivera’s opinion that wearing a hoodedsweatshirt is asking for it, sounding strikingly familiar to the laughable argument that rape is the woman’s fault, not the perpetrator – logic that, taken to its extreme, excuses mad gunmen from killing anyone in a hooded sweatshirt or raping any woman wearing a skirt.

 

As far as the allegations that Martin assaulted Zimmerman and prompted him to fire in self-defense, I just can’t see how they could be true. Why would the information come out after the federal investigation, after hundreds of thousands of marches all across the country, after the Miami Heat took a team photo in their hooded sweatshirts in solidarity, and especially after President Obama told the world that if he had a son, he would look likeTrayvon Martin? Obama’s personal speech about Martin is particularly surprising. As I’ve mentioned before, Obama has steered clear of racial rhetoric, but in this case he used a racial connection to make a strong point. Only to be made a fool later because of Zimmerman’s police report coming in a month late? Obama is too calculating for this to be true. He would never have made that personal speech for the Trayvon Martin some want us to believe he was.

However, let’s play the “what if” game for a moment.

1.     What if Martin really had assaulted Zimmerman in the streets? According to the Stand Your Ground law that allowed Zimmerman to fire his gun at someone acting “suspicious,” Martin would have been entirely within his rights. Records of the cell phone conversation he had while Zimmerman was stalking him (recordings that discredit Zimmerman’s previous accounts of the incident) show that he was being followed and made to feel unsafe by the man’s suspicious activity. Therefore, if Martin had decided to attack this stalker – which I highly doubt he did – he would have been acting in self-defense under this law. It doesn’t make the hypothetical assault excusable, but it does make it legal, and it provides a valuable example of how Stand Your Ground laws are not beneficial.

2.     What if Martin really was a delinquent drug seller and user with a violent history? Does that excuse Zimmerman’s shadowing him and killing him? Of course not. Zimmerman was not a detective or a police investigator. He was not trailing Martin because he saw someone with a criminal past; it was because he saw a black teenager wearing a hoodie. Even if he had known of this hypothetical delinquency, why does he have the right to shoot him and kill him without due process of law, without a trial of his peers? Basically, under Stand Your Ground laws gun owners can execute anyone for the crime of being “suspicious,” which is a grievous violation of the Constitution. Even terrible hypothetical Trayvon Martin deserves due process of law before being sentenced to death, especially if his only crime is appearing like a potential criminal.

3.     What if everything were true, that Martin wastaking a break from all the drug dealing and bus driver assaulting and puppy torturing in order to beat up some guy who happened to be following him down the street? Does that make Stand Your Ground laws okay? No way José. If Zimmerman really killed this horrible not-Trayvon-Martin-hypothetical-person in self-defense as he now has decided to claim, that would not be an example of the Stand Your Ground Law in action. It seems to me that the main goal of whoever has been portraying Martin so maliciously is to take focus away from the injustice of Stand Your Ground laws. 2^nd Amendment activists must be terrified that people have realized that George Zimmerman are allowed to assassinate the other Trayvon Martin, the non-hypothetical Trayvon Martin, with Stand Your Ground’s legal protection. Right now Trayvon Martin the symbol represents everything wrong with Stand Your Ground, a disaster for the NRA. But now we know about these abusive laws, and even if Travon Martin really was hypothetical Trayvon Martin we know what these laws have the capacity to do to real Trayvon Martins.

In other news, Berkeley trumpeter Khalil Shaheed passed away on Friday, March 23. He was one of my first teachers at summer jazz camp, a beautiful player and a more beautiful person. He will be sorely missed.

Also, a bit of housekeeping for you email subscribers out there: sometimes it seems that my emails end up in the spam folder. Ugh, it’s a real drag. Mark one of them not-spam and the problem should be solved, so you’ll get to read every bit of pompous opinionating I’ve got.

And finally, the paperback for A Torn Page, the literary anthology where my short story “Cliché Central” appears, is now available on Amazon.com. It’s cheap – grab a copy!

The Great Race

The recent and horrible killing of Trayvon Martin has brought an undercurrent of racial tensions, previously blatantly referenced only by the left lamenting racism from the right and from the extreme racist factions on the far right (such as the preacher introducing Rick Santorum at a recent rally), into broad daylight. The Obama administration, in fact, despite being the subject of coded racial language in the political sphere, has made an effort to downplay the racial difference as much as possible, as Robert De Niro just found out.

Yet the racial consciousness inside the country was aching to break free. Recently the Justice Department blocked a Texas law that would have required voters to present valid photo ID because the state could not satisfactorily argue that minority voters would not be disenfranchised by the law, while there is no "evidence of significant in-person voter impersonation not already addressed by the state’s existing laws." It seems the only reason for Texas to push for the law would be racist, but not in plainly spoken terms. In Georgia the creator of the famous anti-Obama bumper sticker that reads "Don't Re-Nig 2012," Paula Smith, has come out and defended it, somehow claiming the N-word is not racist. Why? "Because I don’t use it. I have kids here around me that are black kids. I call them my own kids. I’ve helped black families…to guide them in the right direction. Paintball is one of these things. We like to laugh and have a good time. That’s our way of life." I've read this over and over and still can't understand it. The only conclusion I can draw is that we have an example of one more instance of de facto racism that is being covered up as best as possible.

Now we have the death of a young man that cannot be explained without acknowledging racism, even with Paula Smith's bizarre dictionary. And talk about racism may enter the political sphere:

Recently a study was released analyzing the effect the president's race has on public approval of his policies. It's a fascinating study and worth the four and a half minutes of listening; you can listen to it below. The study told the provisions of a policy to two groups, telling one it was Barack Obama's policy and the other that it was Bill Clinton's. The study found that test subjects who had a more liberal view towards race tended to favor the Obama policy and those who were more conservative favored Clinton's, even though they were the same. The study concludes that the race of a president does indeed play some role in his public approval.

I'm going to take the same road as the NPR piece and not jump to the wide-reaching conclusion that Obama's lack of popularity is due to racism - although I kind of imply it by juxtaposing this study with Trayvon Martin's murder. I'm a little skeptical that the study's methods provide conclusive evidence as to the role race plays in approval rating because Bill Clinton is not just a white version of Barack Obama, or visa versa, so it's hard to isolate race as the only difference that mattered to the test subjects. Still, I think it opens up a valuable and interesting question that should be looked into. It would be beneficial to know what role race has in our subconscious political attitudes. And I think it's dangerous to avoid serious thought and discussion as a country about race any longer.

Not What I Meant

I think some Republican lawmakers have been reading my blog, namely my most recent post. In it I looked at an Ohio counter to the rampant and sexist anti-abortion and women's health laws being passed in various states. The counter was to provide equally sexist and damaging regulations, but this time on men's health in order to, it seems, get men to understand what discrimination feels like. I concluded that this approach to fighting back is misguided and destructive.

In the current debate about the Violence Against Women Act's upcoming possibility for renewal some social conservatives have taken to the same kind of argument to justify voting against the legislation's newest form. As Janice Shaw Crouse says, speaking for the Concerned Women for America organization, the legislation "creates an ideology that all men are guilty and all women are victims." It would be against our country's best interests, she is essentially arguing, for us to pass anti-woman or anti-man legislation. Another high-profile conservative woman, Phyllis Schlafly, said the legislation advocates for "divorce, breakup of marriage and hatred of men."

Sounds good enough. That's a lot like what I wrote the other day, arguing against Democrat-supported legislation aimed at men to retaliate, an eye for an eye, for the existing sexist legislation oppressing women. Of course the flip side of that argument is that I believe conservatives shouldn't pass oppressive legislation to begin with, but the main concern of my post was about the direction of the left-wing response.

So, what is the legislation that victimizes women and makes men out to be evil-doers? And here's the rub, the reason I am so upset with how Republicans have twisted the logic they've ripped from my blog:

The legislation would continue existing grant programs to local law enforcement and battered women shelters, but would expand efforts to reach Indian tribes and rural areas. It would increase the availability of free legal assistance to victims of domestic violence, extend the definition of violence against women to include stalking, and provide training for civil and criminal court personnel to deal with families with a history of violence. It would also allow more battered illegal immigrants to claim temporary visas, and would include same-sex couples in programs for domestic violence.

Most upsetting to Republican lawmakers, like Senator Jeff Sessions who said the above "are matters put on that bill that almost seem to invite opposition," are probably the last two, expanding coverage of the law to include homosexuals and non-citizens. It's amazing that such a blatant acceptance and support of gays would not come up as the most divisive issue. No, instead it is sexism: the conservative women's groups feel that expanding the definition of domestic violence persecutes men and victimizes women.

It seems like a common Republican tactic to demonize Democrats and liberals. When conservatives are unwilling to compromise on anything, ranging from taxes to reproductive rights, it's actually because liberals are intolerant of other ideologies, despite social conservatives exhibiting far more dangerous, uncompromising, and outspoken intolerance - is there a liberal equivalent to Rush Limbaugh, who said "I tell people don't kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus—living fossils—so we will never forget what these people stood for," or his dozens of other hateful prominent cohorts? When Democrats and liberals champion themselves on being supportive of the LGBTQ community, social conservatives claim this support is actually evidence of their intolerance for religious freedom of expression, and their discrimination against non-straight sexual orientations is excused by the perceived discrimination of their religion and ideology from the left. And now, with Santorum's unfortunate recent successes and the Democrats increasingly being seen as the party that supports women's rights, conservatives fire back with trumped up charges of sexism towards men.

They're creating two sides to issues with more than just two sides. Just because Republicans favor anti-woman legislation doesn't mean their Democratic opposition is anti-man. Just because conservatives vilify the poor doesn't mean that liberals do the same for the rich. Just because Republicans advocate religious rights doesn't mean that Democrats are godless, as Santorum seems to think about Obama and most Christians in America. And just because Republicans are intolerant of so many demographics - gays, poor people, non-Christians, foreigners and immigrants, liberals, and so on - does not mean that Democrats and liberals have to, by default, oppose the "opposites" of those demographics. But the right continues to frame these issues as two dimensional only so as to place the left firmly on the opposing side, effectively creating the image of two parties of "no" when there is really only one.

Granted, liberals and Democrats are not free of their individual prejudices, being humans, and, like everyone else, address individual and unique bigotry. But a general mass of slightly like-minded people, the left is not as opposed to things as the right would like us all to believe. In fact, just by calling them "left" and "right" I partake in the same misconceiving - I have been separating conservatives from Republicans and liberals from Democrats as often as convenient in order to weakly alleviate the limited understanding of politics right-wing strategists want us to have.

So that is my objection to the application of my previous logic: conservatives are using it to create a false impression of liberal sexism towards men. The changes to the Violence Against Women Act - namely to expand coverage to meet the needs of more demographics of women and to include stalking as a definition of violence against women - are not measures that will change any of the "ideology" that Crouse is worried about, nor will it lead to the "divorce" Schlafly fears. But because the legislation is obviously designed to protect women, it can be portrayed as discriminating against men, precisely what I argued against in my previous post.

My argument is being applied in a situation it doesn't belong for the purpose of spreading misconceptions. When I urged Democrats not to be reverse-sexist in their response to sexist legislation as in the Ohio example I gave, I did not mean that all Democratic legislation pertaining to women's health is dangerous and equally oppressive. Do not confuse something that occasionally happens for something that is inevitable. The Violence Against Women Act will (and has already) protect many people and benefit America, and it would be a terrible shame to lose it to falsified accusations of sexism.

So, social conservatives who are using my logic: that was an insulting reading of my last post. Despicable.

An Eye For An Eye?

It's a common response from mischievous children when asked why they hit a classmate: "Because he hit me first!" An Eye For An Eye is not only one of the oldest written laws in human history, it makes a lot of intuitive sense. It's fair, it's punishment for wrongdoing, and it follows a natural reaction to being wronged.

And humans never seem to grow out of it.

Example:

A bill has been introduced in the Ohio state senate as a counterbalance to the strict and sexist anti-abortion laws by Senator Nina Turner. The bill would regulate men's reproductive health by requiring men looking to obtain erectile dysfunction, drugs such as Viagra, to first "see a sex therapist, receive a cardiac stress test and get a notarized affidavit signed by a sexual partner affirming impotency."

While there is a very thin front of concern for male reproductive health, the biggest purpose of the legislation seems to be a strike back at legislators pushing for the same kinds of regulations on women's reproductive health, especially the supporters of the controversial "Heartbeat Bill" that would make abortion illegal as soon as the fetus has a detectable heartbeat (about 6 weeks after conception at the earliest). If men are going to impose egregious regulations on women's health, Senator Turner's supporters reason, they might change their minds if men's health faces similarly bizarre regulations. The Occupy Wall Street movement has already voiced support for Senator Turner for this very reason.

And these regulations really are bizarre, and probably harmful. Impotence might be caused by medical or psychological reasons, and a sex therapist trying to resolve a medical problem may only augment the existing problem. Not to mention that many sex therapists are sex-negative, as Dan Savage points out repeatedly on his show and column, and could add new problems to a sexual relationship. And the requirement for an affidavit signed by a partner seems to have no purpose beyond humiliating men much the way women are under some abortion laws, and therefore forcing men to confront their own unfairness in passing those abortion laws.

This bill makes intuitive sense - and only intuitive sense. Give men a taste of their sexist medicine. If they could only see just how draconian and humiliating their "pro life" legislation is to women, then perhaps they might change their minds. But that's the funny thing about the mischievous children who are asked why they hit a classmate: without the teacher, most often neither he nor the kid initiated the fight would realize that hitting is wrong. The bullied's lesson on why violence is bad - "now you know how it feels" mentality - only increases tension and anger. Both children suffer, and both children get in trouble.

If Senator Turner and her supporters understand how wrong the laws oppressing women are, they should know better than to try and mimic them. The answer to oppressive women's health laws is not oppressive men's health laws. Then Ohio would become a land of oppressed men and women, where instead legislators should be fighting against oppression. Senator Turner's legislation is just as dangerous as the legislation she is retaliating against.

If this is the strategy we use to fight for women's rights, then neither side, like the two children, will win.