Well. I'm glad to see that the release of President Obama's long-form birth certificate has put a stop to all that birther nonsense.
Number of the Day
[Trigger warning for sexual violence.]
$45,000: The amount of money the Supreme Court has agreed, by virtue of declining to hear an appeal of the lower court's decision, that the cheerleader forced to cheer for her rapist must pay in restitution to the school district for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit against it.
The United States Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a review of the case brought by the woman, who is known only as HS. Lower courts had ruled that she was speaking for the school, rather than for herself, when serving on a cheerleading squad – meaning that she had no right to stay silent when coaches told her to applaud [for the classmate who pleaded guilty to assaulting her].Sure.
[When HS refused to cheer for him at a game, school superintendent Richard Bain] told HS to leave the gymnasium. Outside, he told her she was required to cheer for Bolton. When the girl said she was unwilling to endorse a man who had sexually assaulted her, she was expelled from the cheerleading squad.
...HS and her parents instructed lawyers to pursue a compensation claim against the principal and the School District in early 2009. Their lawsuit argued that HS's right to exercise free expression had been violated when she was instructed to applaud her attacker. But two separate courts ruled against her, deciding that a cheerleader freely agrees to act as a "mouthpiece" for a institution and therefore surrenders her constitutional right to free speech. In September last year, a federal appeals court upheld those decisions and announced that HS must also reimburse the school sistrict $45,000, for filing a "frivolous" lawsuit against it.
"As a cheerleader, HS served as a mouthpiece through which [the school district] could disseminate speech – namely, support for its athletic teams," the appeals court decision says. "This act constituted substantial interference with the work of the school because, as a cheerleader, HS was at the basketball game for the purpose of cheering, a position she undertook voluntarily."
[H/T to Shaker Kate217.]
That Ain't a Voice I Want to Hear
[Trigger warning for homophobia and violence. Note: My apologies to Deeks, who gave this a quick post while I was writing this one, and neither of us realized the other was doing so. Whooooooooops!]
Well, I've been considering watching NBC's The Voice, the peacock network's answer to American Idol. I've heard a few good things about it, and there's Christina, so.
But then last night, one of the judges on The Voice, country star Blake Shelton, took to Twitter to tweet this classic in paranoid, violent homophobia: "Re-writing my fav Shania Twain song.. Any man that tries Touching my behind He's gonna be a beaten, bleedin', heaving kind of guy..."
Oh, hello, Predatory Gay Trope. How awful to see you again.
Shelton's violent homophobia would be contemptuous enough on its own, but the contestant on The Voice who is getting the most attention—and whom the show has used most prominently in its promotions—is Nakia, who is himself gay.
Clearly, NBC has a problem on its hands if it's going to continue to rely on a gay contestant to generate buzz for its fledgling show, while handsomely paying the dividends to a celebrity judge who engages in violent homophobia for fun in his spare time.
Who, by the way, has engaged in homophobic humor before, so it's not like NBC can claim ignorance of his ignorance.
Contact NBC and let them know you object to their employment and promotion of people who express violent homophobia. The Voice doesn't appear in their dropdown list of shows yet, so choose "Other" at the bottom, which will open up a contact form.[Via Andy.]
Tweet of the Day
[TW for homophobia and violence.]
"Any man that tries Touching my behind He's gonna be a beaten, bleedin', heaving kind of guy..." — Blake Shelton, in reference to rewriting his favourite Shania Twain song and, I guess, turning it into an ode to gay bashing. Nice.
More on this story from Liss here.
(Via Andy.)
251-175
HR3 has passed the House 251-175.
As Shaker Mod Scott Madin just said on Twitter: "Shorter House of Representatives: 'We're pretty sure owning a uterus and being a person are mutually exclusive.'"
The fight now goes to the Senate. Contact your Senators and ask them not to support the Senate version of the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act."
Fuck.
LOL FOREVER
Rep. Chris Smith (R-Isible), author of HR3, pleading his case during the House debate, said that he imagines future generations "will note with deep sadness, some of our politicians, while they talked about human rights, never lifted a finger to protect the most persecuted minority in the world: the child in the womb."
Leaving aside that children don't exist in wombs, and the fact that each cis woman or trans man who has an abortion would need to terminate at least three pregnancies before Smith's claim would even begin to make sense in terms of numbers alone (i.e. more "persecuted" fetuses than people whose rights he's attempting to erode), I can do nothing but howl with bitter laughter at the idea that fetuses are "the most persecuted minority in the world."
How much time has the GOP spent trying to chip away at Roe just in the last year? Fetuses aren't wanting for advocates.
I can, however, think of a lot of genuinely persecuted marginalized populations of actual human beings in this nation who could use one-tenth the attention the GOP gives to fucking abortion, though.
[Via.]
Daily Dose of Cute
Tilsy is telling stories again—but looks very cute with her new lion cut. [Please note: This video contains images of Tilsy's fangs when she yawns.]
Video Description: Tilsy sits on the couch with her newly trimmed shag, looking like she's wearing fuzzy Uggs. She stares at the camera glaikishly. "What are you doing?" I whisper. I zoom in. She stares at the camera glaikishly. She yawns. I zoom out. She stares at the camera glaikishly. "Mwah!" she says. "Really?" I respond. "Mah!" she says. "Are you sure about that?" I ask. She looks away, then back. She stares at the camera glaikishly. "I don't know if that's true," I say. "Sounds to me like another one of your made-up stories, ma'am." She lies down and stares at the camera glaikishly. Then she attacks the camera. Fin.
OMFG
I am listening to the House debate on HR3, and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Eprehensible) just said, "We are a culture that values life."
NO. YOU. FUCKING. DON'T.
If you are willing to compromise the physical health, psychological health, job, education, safety, relationships, sense of self, sense of security, dignity, autonomy, agency, free will, and/or right of self-governance of a cis woman or trans man in order to force that person to carry to term a pregnancy zie does not want or cannot be sustained, you have officially ceded your right to claim you value life.
I am a human. Denying my right to abortion does not in any way make me feel like my life is being valued, or the quality of my life, or the agency over my life to which I am meant to have a public (and, according to Cantor and his cohorts, divine) right.
No one can argue, with any honesty or credibility, that they value life if they would force a person to carry to term an unwanted or unviable pregnancy against hir will. That is the opposite of a respect for life, if the definition of "life" is to have any meaning at all.
That's it and that's all. The fucking end.
Quote of the Day
"If you volunteered more, you'd probably lose weight!"—Portly Dyke, being Very Helpful (jokingly so, of course) during our regularly scheduled Wednesday phone call, when we were talking about a project on which I was working for local animal rescue, and I said I can't seem to find enough hours in the day to give as much time as I'd like to volunteering.
This chirpy conveyance of Very Helpfulness made us both LOL for approximately ten years.
(For the benefit of those who aren't fat, and can't appreciate why this is funny: When you are a fat lady—and possibly a fat man, but that is not a body in which I've lived—you spend your life receiving many absurdly nonsequiturial suggestions under the auspices of Very Helpfulness about all the many things you could do to lose weight. Like: Create more hours in your day to volunteer more!)
Specious Sloganeering
The other day I noticed a picture on Facebook of a young (white, middle-class, Tea Party-supporting) man that I know proudly/happily holding a sign which reads: Men Regret Lost Fatherhood.
To state the obvious: are there men who regret not going onto fatherhood after an abortion occurs? Sure. Of course there are.
However.
This pithy sloganeering is not just some pseudo-sympathetic, vaguely passive-aggressive acknowledgment. It is part of a larger, mendacious narrative.
It is the fundamental willful ignorance of who is having abortions. These signs are about That Woman. That Woman who is selfish. Who had sex with a Nice Guy and is cruelly going to abort his child. She probably tempted him into the sex, too. It's about That Woman--the one MRAs have built up into being Every Woman: she has no age or individuality or circumstance. Note: this is the same woman who "traps" a man into fatherhood and having to pay child support. Occasionally she is also the same woman who upfront refuses to give her partner what he wants in regards to children.
This sloganeering ignores, entirely, the fact of reproductive coercion. The cynical side of me reacted to the slogan wondering if all those regretful dudes are the same dudes poking holes in condoms or hiding his partner's birth control:
Overall, rates of reproductive coercion among family-planning-clinic patients are surprisingly high: about one in five women report their partner having attempted to coerce them into pregnancy.Did I say cynical? I meant realistic. The slogan shoves reproductive coercion to the side, under the rug, out of sight--as if it doesn't exist. Which it doesn't, to them. Not really. It's not "reproductive coercion", it's a man asserting his rights to achieve his great and good desire to be a father. The man is the sympathetic character, the woman? Well, she is That Woman.
So it it really about regretting "lost fatherhood" or lost control? Hmmm.
Also, it's not just a slogan lamenting what about the menz?! and how men should be able to have control over the medical decisions made by another person, as if that wasn't obnoxious and morally reprobate enough.
It's the partner slogan for a campaign--yes, a campaign--to force the idea into our collective societal consciousness that "Women DO Regret Abortions", as I discovered when I googled the "Men..." version. Are there women who regret having an abortion? Sure there are. Women are individuals with individual reactions and circumstances. To say that no women, ever, regret having an abortion would be folly. However, is more than folly, it is an outright lie to assert that Women, all of them, who have abortions feel regret. According to the most recent (Jan '11) publication from the esteemed Guttmacher Institute (.pdf):
Another comprehensive review of the scientific literature, conducted in 2008 by researchers at Johns Hopkins University, likewise found that “the highest-quality research available does not support the hypothesis that abortion leads to long-term mental health problems. Lingering post-abortion feelings of sadness, guilt, regret, and depression appear to occur in only a minority of women.”4(p. 449)Guttmacher notes that relief is the most common emotion experienced.
But back to the fatherhood thing. You know, I do know a couple men, personally, who have expressed regret at their own lost chance at fatherhood. Neither of them were talking about abortion--they were talking about their own behavior. Their own neglect or abandonment of their children. But that sort of regret doesn't make for a pithy protest sign, does it?
Open Thread on HR3 Debate
The House session on HR3, the "No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act," which seeks to redefine rape (yes, they're still trying to sneak that in) and make the Hyde Amendment permanent law has begun. You can watch it live here.
If you can't watch the live feed, Nick Baumann is live-tweeting it here. And scatx's feed, here, has excellent coverage, too.
The House will vote on the measure this afternoon. It's not too late to contact your representative and ask hir not to support this garbage legislation.
UPDATE: And HR3 has passed. Crap.
The good news is that it has a very real likelihood of failing in the Senate.
UPDATE 2: Whoops, I was wrong. It was just the rule that passed. The vote will still come later this afternoon (and will almost assuredly pass then).
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, proud distributors of Spudsy Brand Sock Garters, for the discerning sock-wearing gentleman, or trouser-fancying lady.
Recommended Reading:
s.e.: The Class War That Dare Not Speak Its Name
Sean: Dark Matter Is Just Messing with Us Now
Fannie: [TW for homophobia] Bigot Accidentally Makes Our Case
Renee: [TW for image of implied violence] Gay and Torn
Lisa: Obama on bin Laden
Mustang Bobby: Quotable Condi
Andy: Friendfactor, Web-Based LGBT Advocacy Group Launches; An Interview with Founder Brian Elliot, Remarks by Chelsea Clinton
And Happy Blogiversary to Angry Asian Man!
Leave your links in comments...
Oh, Look. Rick Santorum Is Talking Again.
[Trigger warning for homophobia, misogyny, violence.]
ThinkProgress' Igor Volsky, whose tolerance for covering these barfinating conservative potlucks in Iowa knows no equivalent, reports from GOP presidential pseudo-candidate Rick Santorum's appearance before the FAMiLY Leader, a virulently anti-gay group who host all the best wannabe GOP candidates.
Santorum shored up his homobigot credentials by waxing rhapsodic about the super-duper specialness of two opposite-sex parent families, and reminding everyone that he thinks same-sex parents and single parents (most of whom are women) are garbage. And no way should we allow gay couples to adopt, because Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve, or whatever.
Can you have good stock, solid family with a single parent? Yes you can [but] if you were getting on an airplane and you had a choice between two of them and one airplane would get you there 95 percent of the time and the other plane would get you there 85 percent of the time. What plane would you take? [People in the audience mutter "ninety-five."] Well, sure, single parenthood will get you there most of the time...but it just isn’t as good. It just isn’t as good as having a mom and a dad.He also babbled a whole bunch of nonsense about how households with two parents of the opposite sex with children are the best economy, and two being better than one is basic math, blah blah yawn.
And so: What should society be for? What should society nurture? What should society encourage? It should encourage marriage between a man and a woman, raising children, in a stable environment. That's what's best for society!
...A lesbian woman walked up to me and says, "Why are you denying me my right?" I said, "Well, because it's not a right. It's a privilege." It's a privilege that society recognizes because society sees an intrinsic value to that relationship over any other relationship.
As Igor notes, Santorum is wrong (shocking!) about single-parent households being superior to two-parent households where both parents are the same sex. Two-parent households, irrespective of the parents' gender, are generally better. And I say generally because Santorum's fantasy world doesn't include complications like abusive parents, but reality does.
Any child is better off with two loving parents of the same sex or one loving parent of either sex than two parents of opposite sexes who treat their kids like shit.
But that's not the sort of nuance one can expect a professional dipshit like Rick Santorum to appreciate. Especially when his mind is otherwise engaged with trying to figure out how to force women to have babies they don't want to ensure that more of the single parents he so despises exist in the world.
Osama bin Laden News Open Thread
I am so tired of reading and hearing about the Osama bin Laden assassination that I can't even bring myself to do a news round-up, but Memeorandum has a very extensive collection of coverage linked here.
I don't have a whole lot else to say about the situation, aside from noting that it is problematic that the White House's details about the incident keep changing, if for no other reason than it's bad politics.
I don't believe it's evidence of some huge cover-up, but constantly moving targets feed the perceptions of those who do. The White House should have released the factual details from the start, framed the operation as part of the Afghanistan War, expected and accepted there would be critics, and not felt obliged to respond to them by finessing the details of the story.
Doesn't matter who it is or what they've done: It's never going to be universally well-received, even by people ostensibly on the same side who aren't looking to make trouble or score political points, when an administration assassinates someone.
The administration should just stand by their decision, and leave people to their reactions.
Anyway, feel free to discuss whatever re: this story in comments.
Huntsman 4 Prez
Joining his BFFs Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, Willard Romney, Rick Santorum, and Ron Paul, former Utah governor and current US ambassador to China Jon Huntsman has filed papers with the Federal Election Commission to create a federal political action committee called "H-PAC," which "will allow him to pay for staff and travel to key caucus and primary states as he considers a bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Huntsman will not form an exploratory committee and will simply make a final decision about a White House bid early this summer, a spokesman told CNN Tuesday."
Huntsman is your pretty standard BOOTSTRAPS! fiscal conservative, and obviously he hates women no doy, but he has diverged from the Republican Party line on climate change by believing it exists and on supporting civil unions for same-sex couples. It will be interesting to see if he retains those principles once he jumps into a field where not believing in evolution is considered a desirable attribute by a large swath of the base.
