I got back from the theatre last night just in time to hear Maggie Gallagher from the National Organization for Marriage, an anti-marriage equality group, say on CNN that the ruling yesterday by Judge Vaughn Walker in the California Prop 8 case was (paraphrasing here) "granting a whole new right" in the Constitution for gays and lesbians to get married. This voice added to the chorus of other conservatives who accused the judge of "extreme judicial activism" and "judicial tyranny" in finding that the ban on same-sex marriage in California denied gays and lesbians equal protection under the law and due process, and that the proponents of the ban could not make the case for the ban on fact.
This is the kind of reaction that I expected from the anti-gay-marriage contingent if the court had ruled the way it did. They are not responding at all to the ruling itself and the facts that were presented when both sides had their chance to make their case. The proponents of the ban were given ample opportunity to prove that same-sex marriage is bad for California or harms straight people. Beyond voicing disapproval of gay people in general and basically saying that they're icky, the proponents could not cite a single case in which it could prove that granting marriage licenses to same-sex couples was harmful and therefore the state had the right to single them out for exclusion. Judge Walker wrote, "Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gays and lesbians for denial of a marriage license."
That's the whole argument right there. Since they cannot make the case based on fact, they are going for the emotional and bigoted approach, claiming that gays and lesbians want "special rights." Brian Brown, another spokesperson for NOM, told Kathryn Lopez of the National Review: "You know what real equality is? One man with one woman, that’s equality." Gays and lesbians are not, in his view, equal to straight citizens under the Constitution of the United States. Therefore they are not worthy of its protection. Gays and lesbians can be singled out for discrimination in employment, in housing, in adopting children, in receiving spousal benefits, and the idea of allowing them access to such fundamental rights would disrupt the entire social fabric of America. The fact that neither Mr. Brown, Ms. Gallagher, or the proponents in the trial before Judge Walker could cite any evidence of this is irrelevant. Gays and lesbians are second class citizens. What Judge Walker found is exactly the opposite: gays and lesbians are entitled to all the same rights and responsibilities as every other citizen under the law and that fundamental rights are not subject to the whim of the electorate.
Seeing as how the gay and lesbian community has been denied equal rights in the matter of marriage, granting them the same rights as everyone else is not a "special right." It is bringing them up to equality with everyone else.
Crossposted from Bark Bark Woof Woof.
I'm dealing with some family medical issues (not Iain), so I won't be around for most of the day again today.
Please remember that when I'm not around, we're down one moderator, so take extra care in commenting, and be patient with and respectful of the other mods who will be picking up my slack.
See you soon.
It's Shark Week. That's, for those of you who don't know, is Discovery Channel's week-long tribute to the wily fish. It's been a thing of theirs for, oh, I dunno, like 9000 years. (In ancient Egypt, Shark Week was on papyrus.) Anyway, it's a week of all-things-shark. It's cool, if you like sharks.
But suppose you don't.
If you had your druthers, what other animal would you rather had its own week?
I pick nutria.
With respect to Liss' suggestion, I think I've a good candidate too for the worst thing you'll read today, if you live in or travel to the US and have any privacy concerns.
My Google-fu is weak today, so I can't find the link, but I'm pretty sure I wrote about this before, with particular attention to the problems of this technology for trans-identified people, as well as for the public in general. For trans people, this software could lead to a dangerous "outing" in a place where the person cannot avoid it, and with the person unable to even determine whether information has been kept, let alone by whom or for what purpose.
Combine it with the part where trans people are not infrequently killed* after being outed...yeah.
I wonder how much more evidence we need that the "rituals of security" atmosphere in the US has become corrosive of rights to dignity and privacy. And note this isn't just airports: this tech is being used in government buildings, courthouses, all sorts of places that the average public - and disproportionately with courthouses, POC, due to the racism of the justice system - need regular access to.
* Reinforcing the importance of intersectionality, my siblings who die in this way are highly disproportionately POC living with poverty.
Stop the people you love from making you fat.
Submitted without comment.
Via Andy:
In a 136-page ruling, Judge Vaughn Walker has declared Proposition 8, the measure banning same-sex marriage in California, unconstitutional under both the due-process and equal-protection clauses.
Says the ruling:
"Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8."
Karl Rove is still a lying sack of shit, which goes to prove that we really do need to change the word we use to categorize these Republican fucknecks:
No, using the word "hypocrite" should really be stopped altogether. It’s become a meaningless insult like "Nazi," "bias," or "environmentalist." It actually has some spray back onto its user anyway. Basically pointing out someone is a hypocrite makes you sound like an angsty emo tween. It’s a word we learn in junior high to apply to grownups.
Instead of "hypocrite" I recommend the word "fraud." It sounds bad. Fraud is illegal. Fraud is immoral. And it’s an accurate way of describing hypocrisy without sounding like an irate Justin Bieber fan.
This blogaround brought to you by K. Blogginz & Co., entirely legal though potentially shitfaced purveyors of the finest in jello beer cubes and rental vehicles, though never to the same customers. We're not that shitfaced. Really, we just kind of have a buzz on.
A father, interviewed by Melissa Jeltsen at the Children's Hospital Boston's pediatric health blog, discusses the change in his understanding necessary for his transition from the father he was raised to be, to the father his daughter needs and deserves in Father of a transgender tween speaks out.
The story of that father's daughter and her treatment to halt puberty until she is old enough to decide on what further medical steps she wants to take in her transition, is here: Children’s gives transgender tween new hope
(H/T to Helen Boyd, via FWD)
Womanist Musings — Guest poster Lisa invites submissions for "an anthology of letters and other works created for survivors of sexual violence, from other survivors and allies" which she is editing. Call For Submission - Dear Sister
Womanist Musings — Sparky took a nasty spill at work, and needed the comfort of his Beloved to soothe his pain. Naturally, his colleagues and the hospital staff immediately set about bringing them together. Oh, wait — they're gay. Spark of Wisdom: Gay Men Have Husbands as Next of Kin.
Womanist Musings — Renee combs through the many layers of fail which have been piled on to a story of a woman who was attacked and the brother who came to her aid. Brother Saves Sister From Rapist and Now Antoine Dodson is an Internet Sensation.
Consortiumnews.com — Big Oil has been threatening the coastal Louisiana homeland of Native Americans for years. Dennis Bernstein talks to members of several tribes about their struggle to protect their homes and sacred sites from the BP spill and the maneuvering of outsiders: BP Oil Spill Threatens Bayou Tribes.
Forward/FWD — s.e. smith writes about the vulnerability of impoverished communities to HIV: CDC Study Reveals Poverty as Major Contributing Factor for HIV Infection.
Forward/FWD — s.e. also encourages us USians to urge our Senators to support HR3101, the House version of legislation which will move us closer to the provision of captions on video content generated for the internet. s.e. provides an explanation and a sample letter for guidance. US Action Item: Encourage the Senate to Adopt HR3101
What sort of thought process goes on in the minds of evo-psych cultists proponents, you may have asked yourself on occasion. Then, if you're like me, you have concluded that those are dark and scary caverns which you don't care to venture far into. But Shaker Flewellyn is more intrepid, has followed the intellectual droppings as far as the cliffs of reason, and lived to tell the tale in Late night thoughts: Evo-psych in a nutshell
(H/T to CaitieCat)
Please leave links you'd like to share, to your own posts or others', in comments.
The New York Times reports that the GAO is set to release a terribly unsurprising study of the US' for-profit colleges and universities. It turns out that a lot of them are in it for the financial aid. A lot of financial aid.
Here's the abbreviated version:
For-profit colleges place recruiters under pressure to deliver consumers, er, students, or face being fired. In order to increase market share, er, enrollment, counselors help fudge financial aid forms. Or they make shit up without students' knowledge. The colleges then collect massive amounts of tuition, er, taxpayer money. Students are frequently left with debts accumulated from attending overpriced institutions of questionable rigor.
This is what happens when you treat education like a commodity.
I don't think that US society properly values education. Politicians talk about the need for everyone to get a college degree, but they don't talk about why. Education is good, I suppose, but what about content? In an economy where employers frequently demand that job candidates have a degree, any degree, there's a huge incentive to get a quick degree in whatever.
Focusing on quick degrees over content devalues the development of skills like writing, reading, and critical thinking. These things take time. The humanities are all about time. Feminism, for that matter, is all about time. Intellectual development is time consuming, and while it need not take place in a classroom, it does take resources.
And what of technical education? Insistence on college degrees devalues traditional methods of apprenticeship and worker-led training.
Community colleges can provide both liberal arts and technical education, but only if they have the money to do so. Despite speeches from the likes of President Obama, US community colleges are serving more students than ever while attempting to balance shrinking budgets.
This is what happens when you treat education like a commodity.
Needless to say, non-profit colleges are in on the action, too. Recruitment is big business. Colleges spent top dollars on housing, rec centers, and other aspects of student life. Not that there's anything wrong with this. But there is something wrong with cutting programs in the social sciences and humanities. Frequently, colleges' focus appear to be giving students what they want: quick, easy degrees in a fun environment. If these students have fond memories of fun times at the stadium, they'll make potential donors to alumni associations.
The US' elite colleges do have a one-up on some for-profit institutions: research. Patentable knowledge brings huge dollars to university-affiliated research foundations and their corporate partners. Overhead from government grants fills university coffers, paying administrative salaries and plugging huge budgetary holes caused by shrinking public funding.
Actual education? It's not so much a priority when money is the driving force.
Have I mentioned that it doesn't have to be this way? There are plenty of nations on Earth (most of them?) where education isn't treated as a commodity.
Does this sort of entitlement program lead to fraud?
No.
Do you know what entitlement fraud looks like?"At one college in Texas, a recruiter encouraged the undercover investigator not to report $250,000 in savings, saying it was 'not the government’s business.' At a Pennsylvania college, the financial representative told an undercover applicant who had reported a $250,000 inheritance that he should have answered 'zero' when asked about money he had in savings — and then told him she would 'correct' his form by reducing the reported assets to zero, a change she later confirmed by e-mail and voicemail." NYT
This.
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Frontline's college, inc. was an amazing documentary on this subject. I thought about working bits of the (transcribed) interviews into this post, but I can't do them justice.
[Trigger warning for fat hatred, discussion of dieting and body image, and dehumanization of fat people.]
Sometimes people ask me why I don't fund the site with content-driven advertising, and I explain that content-driven advertising is incompatible with maintaining Shakesville as a safe space. Below the fold is an example of the would-be-hilarious-if-it-weren't-so-tragic content-driven advertising that is served to my email.
[Click to embiggen.]
On left, the black silhouette of a fat woman whose body is not totally dissimilar in shape to my own. Over the silhouette, across the torso, is printed in white text: "30+ Pounds Overweight?" Next to the silhouette is text reading: "Lose 30 lbs during summer? Try [redacted] free. Thousands of Women are dropping pounds with [redacted]! Try it free! Click to lose." On the right, is the image of a thin, young, white woman, smiling. She appears after a flash animation wipes away the fat silhouette, leaving her in its place.
Now, apart from the fact that there is significantly more than a 30-pound difference between those two figures, and the fact that this is an advertisement for some weight loss product that doesn't work and/or will do damage to the bodies of its users, and the fact that the "free" has an asterisk next to it, indicating that women will end up paying money for the privilege of potentially destroying their bodies with this product (remember Fen-Phen?), let us just take a moment to appreciate the message here: Fat women are just shadows, just monstrous shapes, not even human, and they only become real people with faces and smiles and clothes and happiness if they stop being fat.
This is the ad content I get served because I talk about fat people being deserving of love and respect, from themselves and everyone else.
lolsob.
U.S. district chief judge Vaughn Walker will file his decision in Perry v. Schwarzenegger between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. (Pacific time) today.
Prop 8 is the "controversial" (i.e. fucked up) ballot initiative that stripped gay and lesbians in California of their marriage rights.
Regardless of whether or not Walker overturns the law, it is likely to be appealed.
[Via.]
And I want to be clear here: while this is funny, it's also (for me) very much what it's like to have serious ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder - I don't have the H for Hyperactive bit, but wow do I have the rest). Try having a brief one-topic (LOL!) conversation with me sometime, it's like trying to get from Uxbridge to Woolwich Arsenal on the Tube in the morning rush: I'll get there, but it takes a while and I have to change trains a few times.
The actor is veteran Canadian comedian Rick Green. From my brief perusal, the site appears to be a legitimate resource centre for people with ADD (and for parents of children with it). I have no association with the site, but I'm all for resources being available to people to deal with this - though I do welcome any news about the organization if I'm mistaken, of course.
Transcript below the jump.
(A garden scene, with an older white apparently cis man actor wearing a black t-shirt with the letters AD/HD in an AC/DC - the rock band - style, and a towel wrapped around his waist in parody of the Old Spice ads; title is "Old Spice meets ADHD"
Man: Hello ladies. Look at me. Now look at your man. Now look at me. Now look at your man. Now look at that red bird.
Man indicates small plastic bird on birdbath behind him
What is that orange circle?
pan to orange paper circle hanging from tree
Now look at me and oh, look, there's another bird down there, that's what it's like to have ADHD.
pan back to second bird beside first bird
Does your man have ADHD?
man holds up two tickets
If he does, then here are those tickets he bought to that thing you love but then he forgot about them and never gave them to you because he got interested in model trains.
man holds up model train box
He didn't find them again until a year later when he took up welding.
man holds up some sort of welding apparatus
Now he's thinking 'I should go out in the back yard and seed things a little!'
man indicates wheelbarrow with bag of seed, then picks up gift box and shakes it
I have ADHD and I could never wait at Christmas to open things, I'd always want to know what things are.
pan to fez on top of push lawnmower
Oh! Did you know that the fez comes from Turkey?
man exchanges fez for canoe paddle
This year at the cottage, I want to go paddling, and I should remember to bring my guitar.
man indicates purple guitar leaning against something behind him
I don't play it very well, but I should exercise too so I can be in shape when I'm there.
at "exercise", he begins using some sort of arm exercise thingy
And how come they don't make pasta in different colours?
man is sprayed with - silly string, maybe?
And I'm behind in my tax paperwork but I've become interested.
man shuffles paperwork and throws it aside, before mounting recumbent bicycle
I'm also interested in bicycling and I spent $2000 on a recumbent bicycle, it's interesting, but uh-oh -
man is handed ice hockey stick
- the hockey season's started so I'll never go biking on it.
Fade to black, text on screen: GOT ADD?
We're okay with that.
Man offscreen: How did I get on a bicycle, did I buy this? Y'know what's a great movie? Mumford.
meanwhile, the screen text changes to the website logo for totallyadd.com.)
Tip of the CaitieCap to she who sent it to me with great and genuine fondness, my ex, J.
