An overly-long response to Elizabeth Marquardt regarding gay marriage

posted by ampersand

(You know, any reader who isn't interested in the same-sex marriage debate is probably going to be driven off my blog this week. Sorry, folks.)

(Please note, as you read this post, that I am not accusing Elizabeth of being personally homophobic. For all I know, Elizabeth is gay herself and genuinely loves all gay people - but even if that were so, it wouldn't change how harmful her preferred policies are).

Part One: A quick note about stigma.

On the Family Scholars Blog, same-sex marriage opponant Elizabeth Marquardt sums up one of Eve Tushnet's posts like so:

Two things caught my attention. First, Elizabeth is putting words into Eve's mouth - Eve's post didn't say anything about not stigmatizing families.

Secondly, and more importantly, Elizabeth in fact favors stigmatizing gay and lesbian families (although she wisely avoids using the "s" word herself). Maintaining that stigma is her primary reason for opposing same-sex marriage. In Elizabeth's view, it is essential - and worth paying a considerable price in inequality - that the symbolic difference between "the norm" and same-sex partnerships be maintained, and that same-sex families be understood to be less ideal than the norm.

To try and dodge this rather obvious aspect of her case, Elizabeth distinguishes between "good" and "bad" norms, and implies that only the "bad" norms involve stigmas. But this is nonsense. Elizabeth wants to maintain the "legal and cultural idea" that families with a biological mother and father are superior to those with two mothers or two fathers. How could that not be stigmatizing? Norms which point to a class of people and say "your families and your lives are inferior to the norm" stigmatize; that's what a stigma is.

Part Two: What Elizabeth has to prove to justify her proposals.

Of course, just because Elizabeth favors stigmatizing gay families - and denying them equal rights under the law - doesn't prove she's wrong. Stigmatizing gay families might be worth it, if the result is to greatly improve the lives of American children.

To my mind, however, justifying stigma and inequality under the law would require a very substantial benefit. First of all, we already know that stigmatizing gays does tremendous harm, most especially to gay teens, who suffer from mockery, self-esteem problems and high suicide rates. Furthermore, denying same-sex families the security of legal recognition does enormous harm to those families - and especially to the children of those families (for more on that harm, read the two posts previous to this one). Anything at all that maintains that harmful stigma needs to do an awful lot of good to be justifiable.

Secondly, I assume Elizabeth would agree with me that equality between heterosexuals and homosexuals is "a legal and cultural ideal" worth striving for. To deprive a person of equal protection and rights merely because of their sex - or their sexual preference - is a terrible, immoral thing. It should never be approached lightly.

Now, that doesn't mean that the desire for legal equality must necessarily overturn all other considerations. But to overcome the value of legal equality, Elizabeth needs to provide proof of a very large and substantial harm that would be prevented by favoring legal inequality (in this case, unequal access to marriage) instead.

Elizabeth is asking us to embrace the harms to gays - and to their families and children - of maintaining a stigma against same-sex families. She's also asking us to oppose the enormous good of legal equality. What is she offering us in return?

Part Three: Elizabeth's proposed solutions won't actually solve the problems

Here's where Elizabeth - like most opponents of same-sex marriage - gets vague. In order to justify her anti-gay stigma, and to justify opposing equal rights, Elizabeth has to prove that children will suffer some colossal harm if gays are permitted to marry. But what, exactly, is the mechanism of that harm - and, more importantly, the mechanism by which Elizabeth's policy will solve the problem? She's long on rhetoric but short on specifics:

It all sounds great - but trying to parse some sense out of it is like trying to knit mittens out of water. Elizabeth writes that "many children will be affected, not just the children of gays and lesbians. I write about children of divorce."

Okay, let's bring this down to Earth: In what concrete way are children of divorce helped by denying gays equal rights? Does banning gay marriage prevent divorce, for instance? No, it doesn't. Will gays who enter opposite-sex marriages and find it makes them so miserable they seek divorce, be inexplicably made less miserable (or more heterosexual) if we prevent equal rights for gays? No.

In short, Elizabeth brings up a problem - "divorce harms children." But her proposed solution to the problem - stigmatizing same-sex families and opposing equal rights - does not solve the problem in any way. But why should we embrace stigma and inequality, if they won't actually solve the problems she's talking about?

Elizabeth worries about a time when she could be asked “Why does it matter if a kid’s parents are divorced, or never married at all? After all, same sex couples don’t have the child’s mother and father in the same home. Are you saying there’s something wrong with them?” But she can be asked that exact question right now - nothing about the question presupposes legal gay marriage. We already live in the time Elizabeth fears (and is it really so terrible?) And opposing equal rights for gays will not magically transport us to a world in which Elizabeth couldn't be asked that question. Once again, Elizabeth's proposed solution does not solve the problem she brings up.

(To digress a moment, may we consider how unimportant the problem Elizabeth brings up here really is? Elizabeth wants us to oppose equal rights because she doesn't want to live in a world in which her belief that marriage is important can be questioned. I can sympathize with Elizabeth's distress - it sometimes distresses me that I live in a world in which my own fundamental values [such as the right of all humans to decent food and shelter - or, for that matter, the rights of gays to full legal equality] are often questioned. Like Elizabeth, I’d prefer to live in a world in which my fundamental values were so widely acknowledged as to be beyond question.

(Nevertheless, if we compare Elizabeth's understandable anxiety with real-life problems same-sex families face - problems like needing false I.D. just to take care of your helpless child in the hospital - it becomes obvious that the harm Elizabeth discusses here is not remotely as serious as the harms caused same-sex families by their extra-legal status.)

Finally, Elizabeth calls on us to "admit there are competing rights in question – the rights of adults to form relationships however they please, and the rights of children to have what they need."

But what about the rights of children of same-sex families to have secure, legally acknowledged families? What about the rights of lesbian and gay children of straight marriages, who would be better off growing up in a world in which they could look forward to equal legal rights?

(Please don't talk to me about civil unions. Civil unions aren't equality, any more than separate water fountains are equality.)

Returning to my main theme, Elizabeth claims that "children of straights and gays have a right to live in a society that firmly recognizes their fundamental need for their mother and father." But how will denying gays equal rights give children that right? The fact is, children don't have that right in today's society (if they did, adoption, sperm banks, and divorce wouldn't exist). Whether or not gay marriage is legalized, children will not have that right, because the problems Elizabeth refers to are much larger than the question of gay marriage. Once again, Elizabeth's proposed solution won't solve the problem she brings up.

(Another digression, regarding Elizabeth's claim that children of gays would be harmed by equality: Please recall that virtually no peer-reviewed study of children raised by same-sex parents supports Elizabeth's claim.)

Part Four: I speculate wildly on Elizabeth's possible replies

Of course, Elizabeth might reply to all this (and here I'm putting hypothetical words into her mouth), I admit that banning gay marriage won't solve all these problems in and of itself. Equal rights for gays is only a small part of the problem, so banning gay marriage will only have a small, incremental beneficial effect. But just because it doesn't solve the problems completely doesn't mean that it doesn't address the problems at all. Maybe opposing equality will only do a little bit of good, but isn't that better than nothing?

But if she did say that - or something along those lines - I'd have to remind her that her plan causes substantial harms. Maintaining a stigma against same-sex families hurts lesbians and gays everywhere, and hurts their children as well. Opposing equality not only harms gays and their families, it's positively un-American.

Balanced against those harms, doing a little bit of good isn't nearly good enough. Elizabeth must offer enough good to more than cancel out the harm her proposals will cause. If the best Elizabeth can offer is a vague, unsubstantial, small good done - rather than really solving the problems she's talking about - then Elizabeth's policy does far more harm than good, and doesn't deserve any support.

Of course, Elizabeth might claim the opposite - that maintaining the stigma and opposing equality will in fact do a huge amount of good, more than enough to justify the harms caused by her policies. But if that's the case - if gay marriage alone makes a large difference - then she should put her money where her mouth is. If she or any other opponent of equal rights claims that gay marriage alone will cause tragic results, then let them answer this question: in what specific, measurable ways will Canada and Massachusetts have gone downhill a few years from now?

If gay marriage alone is such a destructive thing that it's worth the stigma and inequality to block it, then it must have an effect large enough to be measurable. In a few years time, we should see civilization collapse - or at least, a huge, measurable increase in the rates of divorce and one-parent families - in both Canada and Massachusetts. Is Elizabeth willing to make a prediction on paper - a prediction of real, measurable harm to children in Massachusetts that we won't see in (say) New York or Connecticut? And if it fails to come true in the time period she specifies, will she then admit she was wrong to oppose gay marriage?

Part Five: How Elizabeth's solution could make things worse, even from Elizabeth’s point of view

It's obvious, of course, that maintaining a stigma against same-sex families is a bad thing. And opposing equality is bad, too.

But those are my measures - what about Elizabeth's? Well, even by Elizabeth's preferred measures, Elizabeth's solutions may make things worse.

First of all, Elizabeth's proposals could increase divorce. Why? Because the longer the stigma against gays and lesbians is maintained, the more likely it is that young queers will grow up "closeted," and the more of them will therefore wind up in heterosexual marriages that they will come to regret.

The more our society accepts same-sex couples and families, on the other hand, the fewer people will ever be closeted in the first place. If we want to reduce divorce caused by lesbians and gays "coming out," then we should do everything possible to decrease stigma and increase equality and acceptance.

Secondly, because Elizabeth - to her credit - is too nice a person to offer same-sex couples nothing at all, she favors civil unions. Personally, I oppose civil unions, except as a transitory step on the way to marriage; like separate water fountains, they're about maintaining stigma, not about equal rights.

But even by Elizabeth's standards, civil unions are a bad idea. Why? Because once they’re established in law, civil unions will sooner or later become available to straights. And once heterosexuals have that option, many young couples will choose to be civil-unionized rather than married. After all, it's the perfect chance to get most (albeit not all) of the legal benefits of marriage - but without accepting a connection to the cultural traditions that Elizabeth so badly wants to uphold.

Personally, I'm not convinced that would be entirely bad (the harm of reduced traditionalism might be outweighed by the good of increased options for individual couples). But, given Elizabeth's concerns, I don't understand how supporting civil unions can be justified, since they will harm the institution she wants to protect.

Part Six: I summarize like a mad thing

Elizabeth is correct when she says that the goods and bads of both sides need to be weighed against each other. She's mistaken, however, to imagine that doing so supports her case.

Elizabeth wants us to oppose equal legal rights for gays, in order to maintain a society in which same-sex families are understood to be inferior to "the norm." Both of these things - opposing equality and maintaining an anti-gay stigma - are very harmful, and also opposed to bedrock American ideals of equality and fairness. They would be particularly harmful, in my opinion, to gay children and to children of same-sex families.

Elizabeth must demonstrate that her policies would do so much good that they'd completely outweigh those harms. To date, she hasn't even come close to doing so (and nor have the other equality opponents I've read). Instead, she brings up a lot of problems - divorce, lack of commitment to kids – that, while serious, will in no way be solved by her proposed solution of opposing equal legal rights for gays and maintaining a stigma against same-sex families.

Alternatively, if her proposal actually would do an enormous amount of good, then she should be able to prove it by pointing to measurable ways equality in Massachusetts will make life worse in Massachusetts, compared to relatively unequal places like Connecticut. That she and other opponents of equality have been unwilling to back up their opinions by making concrete, measurable predictions suggests that they don't really expect gay marriage to cause substantial, measurable harm.

Given the weakness of her arguments so far, the irrelevance of the problems she cites to the solutions she proposes, and the substantial harms her policies would bring about, I see no reason for any logical person to support Elizabeth's views on gay marriage.

In the eyes of the goverment our family never existed

posted by ampersand

In the comments to an earlier post, an Alas reader asks, in essence, what is the purpose of marriage?

In my opinion, the purpose of marriage is to allow people to form new families, and to have our new families recognized by society. This is beneficial for adults (who get the security and benefits of choosing their own family - from the moment of marriage on, one's spouse is universally recognized to be one's closest family member), and for children (who get the security of growing up in a legally and socially acknowledged family).

Of course, lesbians and gay men aren't allowed these benefits - and neither are their children.

Over on the Family Scholar's Blog, Elizabeth Marquardt wonders why "almost all of the pro-SSM opeds writers I'm reading, and the activists I'm seeing on TV and hearing on the radio, are gay men" rather than lesbian mothers.

My suspicion is that the reason the media publishes more male opinions on same-sex marriage is that the media publishes more male opinions, period. (But aren't women more involved with same-sex marriage than with other issues, you might ask? Well, I might answer, it's not as if we see more female voices op-editorializing on (say) poverty or the minimum wage - issues that, statistically, involve women more than men .)

In any case, since Elizabeth is interested in reading more lesbian voices on this issue, I recommend she begin with this essay, originally published by Lady Sisphus' livejournal. (Because I know most readers don't follow most links, and because this essay needs to be read by as many people as possible, I'm reprinting the entire thing here).

This is what the same-sex marriage debate is all about: the equal right to form a family. Lesbians and gays - and their children - need the same right to form recognized families that straights take for granted.

Same-Sex Marriage is needed to protect children

posted by ampersand

Although opponents of equal rights for gays claim to be concerned with the best environment for raising children, their policy goals in practice only harm children. There is no legitimate evidence that children are harmed by being raised in a household with same-sex parents; the assumption that two fathers or two mothers are by definition incompetent or lesser parents is nothing more than sexist, homophobic ideology.

On the other hand, opponents of same-sex marriage don't hesitate to favor policies that, without any doubt, harm the real-world interests of children raised in same-sex households. By denying their families legal recognition, anti-equality activists deny children in same-sex households the stability and benefits of being raised by married parents.

The following passage comes from "The Need for Full Recognition of Same-Sex Marriage," by Charlene Gomes, in the Sept/Oct 2003 Humanist.

What social science says about gay parents

posted by ampersand

Over on the MarriageDebate blog, Eve writes:

However, the link Eve provides is to an anti-gay-equality site, which - surprise, surprise - links only to papers which conclude that there's no evidence that kids of gay parents turn out as well as kids of straight parents. Both of the papers Eve links to were commissioned by anti-gay-equality activists; neither one has been subjected to peer review. Neither link Eve cites provides any evidence that children raised by lesbian or gay parents have any negative outcomes, compared to the children of straight parents.

To balance things out, Eve might want to add the following links, which summarize the social science evidence and conclude that the children of gay parents don't suffer any ill effects:

• "(How) Does the Sexual Orientation of Parents Matter?" (pdf link), from American Sociological Review April 2001.

• The brief written by the American Psychological Association in Delong v. Delong.

• The brief written by the APA and the National Association of Social Workers in Boswell v. Boswell.

• This pro-same-sex-marriage site, created by the ACLU, usefully summarizes 22 studies (including their shortcomings).

But what about the studies Eve links to? They make some serious points - the studies that exist in the real world do have shortcomings, such as small sample sizes. However, the conclusion that therefore all the social science data should be ignored entirely is too extreme. As social scientist Judith Stacey argues:

New Cartoon!

posted by ampersand

(Originally published in Dollars and Sense magazine).

Angels in America on HBO

posted by ampersand

I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm damned excited about this. I'm definitely a Tony Kushner fan (among the quotes that no one ever reads on the right-hand bar of this blog is one from Kushner). I saw part one of Angels in America on Broadway in the mid-eighties, and at the time I found the show funny, politically on-target, human and thrilling.

I'm curious how it'll play now. New York City in the mid-eighties, for anyone who was even remotely paying attention to the AIDs crisis in the gay community, felt genuinely apocalyptic, and that feeling is very present in the play. But of course the world didn't end (it never does), and I wonder if the tone won't make it seem bizarre or overstated nowadays. Still, I'm looking forward to it.

A very productive argument

posted by ampersand

This Slate article isn't the best I've ever read, but if you're a Tolkien fan - or a C.S. Lewis fan - you might enjoy it. The author, Stephen Hart, argues that both Tolkien's and Lewis' careers were set in motion by an all-night argument they had in 1931.

Want a new parlour game? From Iraq, try Mahabis

posted by ampersand

Well, you'd need to have an awfully large parlour. From an article in The Economist (and via Calpundit):

I'm astounded and fascinated by this game... the skill of the sheikh at observing involutary tells must put American poker players to shame.

Thanksgiving report

posted by ampersand

It was a fun Thanksgiving; a different crowd than usual, since Becca, John, Aaron and Dawn didn't join us, but "new" housemate Phil was here (I put "new" in quotes because, although Phil only recently moved in with us, he was also our housemate for a period in the late 1980s, when we lived in Ohio.), as was Phil's friend Elizabeth. Our ex-housemates Jenn and Kip were also there - their first Thanksgiving with us in some time (how I've missed Jenn's astounding mushroom pie their company!). Plus Anne, and Sean, and Jake, and the "regular" Thanksgiving crowd of me and Bean and Sarah and Charles and Matt and Kim. Plus Sydney Quinn, who is new in every sense of the word.

This is also the first time we've had a crowd over at our new house; it's still a work-in-progress, but we worked hard to have at least the main rooms unpacked and looking reasonably pretty by Thanksgiving.

In the end, there were thirteen at dinner (fourteen, counting Sydney Quinn, but Sydney isn't yet eating anything that doesn't come out of a boob). Despite how grim we all look in the photos, we actually had a lot of fun - too much food, lots of conversation, and Mao was played until the wee hours of the morning. (Since eight of the folks attending were Oberlin College Alums, we played the Oberlin rules, which are not quite the same as the rules for Mao I've seen described elsewhere on the net).

Fortunately, Jenn took photos! Here's the cake I baked:

For the rest of the pictures - including some pictures of the house, and pictures of Bean and myself - go visit Jenn's post.

So a Jewish Prime Minister, a Spanish Painter and a Cartoonist walk into a bar...

posted by ampersand

So almost a year ago, British cartoonist Dave Brown caused a stir with a cartoon showing a King Kong sized Ariel Sharon eating Palestinian babies (the image was riffed from a Goya painting). It's back in the news new, because the British Political Cartoon Society has just given it the cartoon of the year award.

Sheesh.

A few folks have asked me what I think. My opinion hasn't changed since I wrote about the cartoon in January. The cartoon still strikes me as anti-Semitic; and like Trish Wilson, I make a distinction between the cartoon and the cartoonist, and suspect that the anti-Semitism was unintentional.

I also think this is a mediocre cartoon; the award is apparently given for controversy, not for quality. As Dirk Deppey writes on ¡Journalista!:

Raznor of Raznor's Rants (and frequently of Alas' comments) disagrees about the quality of the cartoon, and also with charges of anti-Semitism:

I don't follow Raznor's argument here; because the image is based on Goya, he is saying, it can't also be anti-Semitic. Why not? It's as if Raznor believes that it is impossible for a work of art to reference two things at once; the cartoon draws from Goya, therefore (Raznor concludes) it cannot also draw on the anti-Semitic blood libel myth.

My guess is that Raznor is confusing the cartoonist's intent with the cartoon itself; if the former isn't anti-Semitic, then the latter must not be anti-Semitic either. But I don't think this is always how things work. As I wrote back in January:

Some things Amp has read lately

posted by ampersand

• Post-Feminst Swill Redux, a good Susan Douglas take-down of a fairly mediocre New York Times Magazine article.

• Harry Brighouse in Crooked Timber has a useful discussion of daycare and stay-at-home care; "useful" because he lays out some of the issues very neatly. I do disagree with some particulars, and might post more on this later.

• Philip Rosenbloom considers the question of bias in reporting about Israel and Palestine, and concludes that no reporting could ever be seen as unbiased on all sides. More generally, this is a symptom of the way neither side seems capable of recognizing the other side's realities.

• A University of Virginia employee is being criticized for using the word "nigger" in a context that no one present found racist or offensive (the statement was, "I can't believe in this day and age that there's a sports team in our nation's capital named the Redskins. That is as derogatory to Indians as having a team called Niggers would be to blacks.") In response, the "Staff Union" is organizing a protest, and Julian Bond calls for the employee to be given sensitivity training.

  There is no lack of real racism to protest and fight in America today; over-the-top responses to acts of non-racism, like this one, trivialize race problems and wastes everybody's time.

• "Hate and Hypocrisy," a really interesting and intelligent article from the Southern Poverty Law Center examining anti-Semitic Jews. (Real anti-Semitism, that is, not just criticizing Israel).

• An interesting Foreign Policy article discusses the problems of women in Japan, where women's understandable refusal to take on repressive homemaker roles - and the larger Japanese society's refusal to make other roles available for mothers - has led to an enormous decline in the Japanese birthrate. (Via Family Scholars Blog).
  Japanese women have three choices, says Haruka: have no career and get married; abandon a career and get married; or plan a life without men. Japan, she says, has perfected the exploitation of women by combining patriarchy with the country’s odd breed of capitalism. For a career woman, emancipated by feminist thought, the only way to true happiness is to stay single—if she can learn to disregard insults from men and rebukes from other women for her status.

• TalkLeft collects a number of links reporting on brutal police attacks on anti-FTAA protestors in Miami last week.

• Blueheron quotes (indirectly) these stats, from the Economist, showing the ratio of take-home pay between top executives and factory workers in different countries:
  Nation----------Wage Gap

  Japan--------------11

  Germany-----------12

  France------------15

  Canada------------20

  Britain-------------22

  Mexico------------47

  Venezuela---------50

  United States-----475

• Some links on the same-sex marriage debate:
  • Jack Balkin examines the proposed Federal Marriage Amendment, and finds that it's a "bait and switch" - claiming to oppose only gay marriage, while actually outlawing not only gay marriage but "civil unions" and state-level attempts to give gay couples any rights at all.

  • Michael Alvear argues - I think correctly - that "gay marriage is as inevitable as Monday morning."
    Every landmark civil rights case has an eerie similarity. Reformers argued equality, those who resisted predicted doom. Advocates appealed to our conscience, opposers appealed to our fears. There are no substantive differences between the black, women and gay civil rights movements. Proponents are propelled by the injustices they want to correct, opponents are motivated by the social order they want to preserve.

    The players changed, but the roles didn't. The issues changed, but the dialogue didn't. The fights changed, but the rulings didn't. Reformers didn't win every battle, but they won every war.

  • A simple, shorthand list of the legal benefits of marriage.

  • Does the "Full Faith and Credit Clause" of the Constitution mean that DOMA is unconstitutional? This short article by Sue Davis considers the issues in more depth than most I've seen.

  • Crescat Sententia's Amanda Butler argues persuasively that protecting the word "marriage" by creating civil unions is unlikely to work.

• An article containing a number of good Berkeley Breathed quotes on the occasion of his new Opus comic strip.

• The definitive statement on what's wrong with mainstream comic strips today, however, remains Bill Watterson's decade-old "The Cheapening of the Comics." (Watterson, for those who don't know, is famous for creating Calvin and Hobbes).

• This article on Israel's Separation Wall (or Apartheid Wall) contains several interviews with Palestinians whose lives are affected by the Wall.

• What do Afghan and American women have in common? More than some authors apparently realize, according to Jeanne at Body and Soul.

• Did you know that the New York Times has "weblog-safe links" that won't go bad? I didn't - thank you, Jeanne, for wising me up.

• Excellent Intel Dump post on why what happened to Jessica Lynch is not an argument against women in combat.

• Did you know that they're shooting a Hellblazer movie? Well, don't bother having any hope for it: as blueheron reports, they've cast uber-flat actor Keanu Reeves as John Constantine. This news led my house to a spirited discussion of what (male) roles Reeves would be even less suited for: the two suggestions I remember were Othello ("he'd also make a terrible Iago") and Hercule Poirot.

• Soren Abrose (writing in Z Magazine) has an excellent, nuanced article on the WTO stalement in Cancún.

IWF heads down the toilet

posted by ampersand

From a month-old press release from the Independent Women's Forum website:

Brushing aside the happy spin of the IWF's press release, it's obvious this merger is bad news for nation's leading anti-feminist think tank.

First of all, obviously the result of this will be to dilute the IWF's message, and to leave the IWF's management with less time for IWF-specific goals. There are only two reasons I can see for this. One, maybe the IWF management wants to "expand their portfolio" and put their fingers into more pies, which might be good for them but won't be good for the IWF. (Kind of like the way that Joss Whedon's decision to put more of his time into Angel and Firefly led to a noticeable decline in the quality of Buffy the Vampire Slayer).

Since IWF chief Nancy Pfotenhauer has a background in economics, an anti-tax group like CSEF will be a natural fit for her. The IWF, meanwhile, is going to be saddled with less-than-fully-engaged leadership.

Alternatively, maybe the IWF has failed to raise enough funds to keep itself going, and IWF management felt they had no choice but to economize by merging with another organization. (Similar to the way Ms Magazine had no choice but to merge with FMF). If so, that's obviously bad news for the IWF and for anti-feminism in general.

I don't really see a third possible reason to merge - despite what the press release claims, CSEF's "grassroots mobilizing," which has specialized in capturing anti-tax resentment and anger, won't be transferable to the IWF's mission. Even among Republicans, few Americans resent feminism nearly as much as they resent paying taxes.

So what's in the IWF's future? I think this is the key sentence in the press release: "While IWF's focus has been on a woman's perspective on important issues, the partnership allows us to leverage each other's strengths and build on each other's successes." This merger locks the IWF into being about providing "a woman's perspective on important issues." In other words, the IWF's job is to provide op-eds and talking heads who will explain why the policy choices Bush and the Republicans make are good for women - rather than deciding for themselves which policies they'll support. That's a very different animal from being an organization about women's issues.

This "focus" effectively locks the IWF out of ever disagreeing with the libertarian/republican consensus; if the IWF's mission (what's left of it) ever conflicts with mainstream conservative thought, it's the mission that will have to give way. That of intellectual independence is, I think, a real problem for a think tank. (Not that the IWF ever displayed much intellectual independence in the first place, imo).

Bad news for anti-feminism; good news for feminists. Now let's hope the IWF lingers for a long, long time, sucking away resources and preventing a new focal point for anti-feminism from emerging.

Amp's favorite new blog: Echidne of the Snakes

posted by ampersand

Make sure to check out Echidne of the Snakes, which has quickly leaped onto my list of must-read blogs. Funny, feminist commentary from one of the more obscure dieties - what more could you want?

Here's a sample, from Echidne's post on the glass ceiling:

Same-sex marriage: the stalemated sumos

posted by ampersand

Here's the best passage from an otherwise forgettable Jonah Goldberg column on same-sex marriage:

How not to engage an opponant's arguments

posted by ampersand

Over on the Family Scholars Blog, David Blankenhorn "can't let go of Katha Pollitt's argument" for same-sex marriage.

Like many same-sex marriage adovcates, Pollitt argues that we don't require straights to be able to reproduce in order to have legal marriage, so we shouldn't require it for gays either.

David responds:

But David's analogy misses Pollitt's point, because Pollitt was making an argument about how we decide marriages are legal or not. Even if we grant David's point - marriage is, in some fundamental sense, for procreation - it remains true that we don't legally forbid infertile straights from marriage.

To extend David's analogy, it's certainly not the case that Buddhist Temples make it "a central goal... to help people know and love God." Nor could Humanistic Jewish congregations like Kahal B'raira be described that way. But no one claims that the law should therefore legally discriminate against Buddhists and Humanistic Jews by refusing to grant their temples the same legal status given other, more traditional churches. "To help people know and love god" may be a central purpose of most churches, but it's not a means for determining their access to equal legal rights as a church.

The anti-same-sex-marriage argument doesn't merely state that marriage is "centrally about bearing and raising children." It states that marriage is "centrally about bearing and raising children," and therefore lesbians and gay men should be denied equality. It is that latter proposition that Pollitt was attacking; and that latter proposition is as indefensible as denying Buddhists equal rights because they don't believe in god.

Why they really oppose same-sex marriage

posted by ampersand

It's not a huge surprise, but a Pew Research Center poll on gay marriage shows that opponants of same-sex marriage are motivated far more by religion than by a desire to protect children. (In contrast, the conservative intelligentsia tend to argue that it's all about the children).

Of the people who oppose gay marriage, 28% said the main reason they object to same-sex marriage is "morally wrong / a sin / the Bible says." Another 17% said it's "against my religion." On the other hand, only 6% mentioned children as the main reason to oppose gay marriage.

Thanksgiving?

posted by bean

Today, most of us (well, the Americans, anyway) will be spending time with family and friends, eating good food, and generally being thankful for any number of things.

And many of us (myself included) will also be telling ourselves that we aren't celebrating the "real" Thanksgiving and all its racist and genocidal history, but rather enjoying the long weekend that allows out-of-town friends and family to visit, the excuse to eat lots of good food, and treating it as any other holiday, with or without awareness of what this day has historically meant. Why should it be any different from the way we celebrate any other holiday -- Memorial Day, Labor Day, and (for some of us, at least) Christmas or Passover?

But today is not Thanksgiving for many of our fellow Americans. And, while I will be spending my time with friends and eating good food today, I would like to take a moment to reflect on another "holiday" taking place today.

This was written by a dear friend of mine, Nikkiru, and my thoughts will be with her today.

19% of poll respondants understand the concept of irony

posted by bean

Internet polls are never really very accurate -- I mean, they are so simplified that you always end up with leading questions, and it's impossible to get a random sample. Nevertheless, some of them can be fun. And I have to say, this is the best poll I've ever seen.

Musing on September in November

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

I'm writing this without reading it through a few times, without taking the time to do multiple drafts, without really planning out ahead of time what I'm going to say.

This is a post about September 11th, which I doubt you were expecting to read on Thanksgiving. No, there's no connection between the two; tonight I just felt like I needed to write about something and this is what came to mind. September 11th (I hate calling it 9/11--that seems so television, so like a movie that someone's trying to sell) is something that's on my mind a lot but not always when I expect it to be. It's never really on my mind when I think about the war in Iraq or the botched manhunt in Afghanistan or even when I'm thinking about George Bush and how much I don't like him. To me, September 11th has very little connection with the current geo-political situation, little to do with terrorists, little to do with "this post-9/11 world" (that phrase which I have come to abhor more than any other; it's like someone took something tragic and turned it into coin-phrase wankery by attempting to intellectualize it). September 11th, though, has everything to do with people.

This past September 11th, on the second anniversary of the attacks, I spent most of the day browsing around on blogs of all blushes looking for people's accounts of where they were, what they were doing, what they thought about what had happened. I didn't find nearly enough and yet I found too much. Too much of what I read was tying September 11th to today and why we should or shouldn't be in Iraq or why George Bush is or is not Satan's pawn. I suppose it's inevitable that an event of that magnitude that has such an impact on the world situation would eventually become another political chip for the left/right battle, another talking point, another proof of the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of this or that strategy... But that depresses me. I feel like sometimes when professional pundits and amateur pundits banter and scrap about terrorists and national security and such they view September 11th as a symbol--as though what happened was really and truely equivalent to the statuettes, the bumper stickers, the commemorative coins, and the Osama bin Laden voodoo dolls. The Twin Towers, like the Maine, like Pearl Harbor, like the Gulf of Tonkin, like the Lusitania, have become in their rubble a physical shorthand, a morse code dotted out in scattered wreckage and scarred bodies... Again, a symbol like a work of art, a famous speech, a long-dead relative, or an urban legend.

I guess this bothers me because, for me, September 11th was a deeply personal thing. Judging from the things that people wrote at the time and that people have written in the years since, it was a personal thing for a lot of people, and I guess it just annoys me when people take something personal and use it to reinforce their political views (and I say reinforce for a reason; I've yet to meet anyone who says "9/11 changed everything" who actually changed their political views much as a result of that thing that changed everything). When I read people's posts and articles from the day the attacks happened I see a lot of the same stuff that was going through my head at the time: are the people I know okay? I heard a noise; what the fuck was that? Is this real?

When I think about September 11th I tend to think of myself as an office peon in the World Trade Centers or as one of the passengers on the flights. I don't think of myself as a terrorist, or as a politician who had to make some big decisions, or as a firefighter or police officer who died trying to save other people... Okay, so sometimes a hero, but usually just myself in a situation similar to the situation I'm in now. A paper shuffler, an ex-college student, a regular guy. I think that's why September 11th bothered me so much: because it's so easy to picture myself as a victim in that situation. It's harder, although not entirely beyond me, to picture myself as a victim of genocide in Africa or oppression under the Chinese government; it's pretty easy to picture myself, exactly as I am in slacks and worn tennis shoes, on-board a plane or fetching a latté for my boss.

On September 11th, 2001 I was at college in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma about a twenty minute drive from the site of the Oklahoma City bombing. I'd been to the memorial there but wasn't really affected by it; I was having problems with a girl at the time and spent most of the afternoon trying to get lost so that I could think. Months later, in September, I had actually gotten up on time and had a good chance of making it to my morning class for the first time in a week or two. I was in the cafeteria eating bacon and biscuits when someone mentioned that plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The World Trade Center? Isn't that in New York or something? Oh well, back to breakfast. A second plane hit so I decided to see what I could find out about it on the internet... Not surprisingly, the web was tangled.

There was only one television in the entire student center that was tuned to the news (CNN, I think) and I was the only person watching it when the second tower fell. I don't recall clearly what I was thinking at the time... I was late for class, knew I couldn't concentrate, didn't want to go anyway, and was only vaguely aware that I'd just watched a couple thousand people die live on television. I knew it, but it hadn't sunk in yet.

I spent the next few days in something of a daze, much like everyone else on campus, trying to be normal but getting freaked out at the oddest things, none of which I remember now. I am by nature prone to paranoia, though, so who knows. Maybe I was the only one who got nervous when cars backfired, jets flew overhead, and people I knew started to develop an us-or-them mentality. I was also freaked out by the fact that I knew who Osama bin Laden was while everyone else was learning how to spell his name and make up insults about him. In high school I knew a guy in forensics/speech-and-debate (where I had foolishly signed up for a political-themed event despite knowing nothing about politics and not really having a passion for it) who was obsessed with Osama bin Laden. He was a conservative-type who thought that Jesse Ventura was the future of politics (little did he know it was the whole cast of Predator) and that Osama bin Laden was the greatest threat to the United States since... I don't know who since because everyone who wasn't American seemed to be bad, but this guy, Matthew, knew a lot about Osama bin Laden. I thought that Matthew was a bit nutty in both his political views and his obsession with a terrorist leader, but I thought he must have been proud of himself when the shock of three thousand dead people wore off.

I get pissed off when I see the flags on people's cars or when I see those damn "United We Stand" or "These Colours Don't Run" bumper stickers. Why? Because it's part of that whole symbolfication-of-dead-people thing that generally makes me mad. I can't explain why it is that this bothers me. I'm sure that if I were a better writer, a more experienced person, had a more politically or socially oriented mind I could explain it... but I can't. I just get mad when I see people from any place on the political spectrum use September 11th as a justification for anything, using the three thousand dead Americans as a number to drop into a speech.

I have a lot of faith in people, but whenever I hear a politician, be he/she George Bush, Atrios, Glenn Reynolds, or Carol Moseley-Braun... I think they're fucking cheap opportunists. (Not in the sense that they're having sexual relations with cheap opportunists, but you get my point...) This is probably because I've noticed that pundits and politicians only bring up Septemeber 11th as a point of proof in an argument.

So if I had to summarize myself, which I probably should if I'm going to end this post, I'd say that I'm still sore, and others I know are still sore, from being shocked by a tragedy that it's so easy to relate to that I'm not quite ready to have phrases like "post-9/11 world" tossed around like "post-modernism" or "post-rock." I'm not ready to have people play with my emotions because they think it'll get them some votes. I'm not ready to tell people to take those flags down, because September 11th may have meant as much (and as little) to them as it did to me.

In other words: it's a different world, but not that different, so let me mourn the tragic loss of human life before trying to prove your point with it.

And that's the end of the rant, folks. Happy Thanksgiving.

The Disability Gulag

posted by ampersand

Make sure to read The Disability Gulag, an article by disability rights activist Harriet McBryde Johnson in this week's New York Times Magazine.

The "gulag" referred to is the American disability care system; a system that assumes that people who are unable to care for themselves physically unassisted must also be stripped of the right to make decisions. Can you choose your own meals, your own schedule, your own assistants, your own hair style - your own life?

For many severely disabled people, the path of least resistance leads to institutional care, where they can live with little freedom of choice and at enourmous expense to taxpayers. Why is this what our system encourages?

One thing the activists are pushing for is the right to hire non-nursing care, and to have non-nurse care seen as valid (and thus qualified for Medicare coverage). Johnson argues is that nurses are often ruled by standard proceedures, rather than allowing patients to control their own care.

Back in March, incidentally, I blogged another article by Harriet Johnson, describing a debate between Johnson and philosophy professor Peter Singer, which is also terrific.