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posted by ampersand

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"Alas, a Blog"

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Fundamentalist obsession with the Crucifixion (Why are some people obsessed with the Crucifixion?, pt. 2)

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

Jeanne D'Arc at Body and Soul expressed surprise over my earlier post wondering why some people are so obsessed with the crucifixion of Jesus. As she said, "Blow me over. I always thought that was a Catholic thing."

She may have been surprised by my post because she thought it was only Catholics who were obsessed with the crucifixion; I've been surprised by the comments to my post that reveal how wrong I was in thinking that this was a predominately Protestant thing. In my mind I had it that the Catholics had the traditions surrounding the crucifixion--the Easter Day reenactments, the bloodied Jesus hanging on the wall--but the Protestant fundamentalists were the ones who really liked to dwell on the violence in their everyday speech and in their weekly sermons. Perhaps I'm wrong in that, but I don't know that there are is a growing number of Protestants who are focused on the violent aspects of the crucifixion. As many have pointed out, Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ is a movie steeped in Catholic imagery that has the Bible Belt Christians embracing it wholeheartedly.

There's a reason for this.

Before I can explain what this reason is and where it comes from, I'll need to describe two other groups I often encountered among the conservative Protestant set. These groups are the martyr-obsesed and the Revelation-obsessed. When it comes to Protestantism, the martyr-obsessed tend to be a subset of the crucifixion-obsessed, while the crucifixion-obsessed tend to be a subset of the Revelation-obsessed.

Like the crucifixion-obsessed, the martyr-obsessed tend to be male, outwardly devout, and leaders in their congregations and Bible study groups. Also like the crucifixion-obsessed, the martyr-obsessed have a tendency to make torture the subject of their Bible studies and bring up violence in their casual conversation, but unlike the crucifixion-obsessed the martyr-obsessed have broadened their area of interest to include every Biblical figure who was tortured and/or slain for his or her beliefs rather than focusing specifically on Jesus.

I knew one such martyr-obsessed man by the name of Bob. He was an ex-marine who had been converted to Christianity when he was in his thirties by a branch of the Crossroads Project. Because he had three teenagers, Bob was heavily involved in the youth group and was a member of the Bible study that eventually became the de facto youth group Bible study due to the number of families with teenagers who belonged to it. I was good friends with Bob's sons and an active member of the youth group, so I had plenty of opportunities to interact with Bob and to participate in classes and devotionals lead by him. His favorite discussion topic was "How to resist the temptations of the secular culture," almost always taught by way of a Biblical figure who stood up for God even in the face of potential or actual punishment. I can remember one particular lesson revolving around Stephen, the first Christian to by martyred in the New Testament after Jesus' resurrection.

Stephen was stoned to death for his beliefs. His story is told in the book of Acts. It begins with Stephen in Jerusalem performing miracles and teaching the Gospel. A group of Jews were unable to argue him down so they conspired to have Stephen brought before the Sanhedrin where false witnesses would testify against him. There Stephen gave a speech denouncing the Jews for never having listened to a prophet of God and for having betrayed and murdered Jesus. This so enraged the Sanhedrin and the people present that they took Stephen outside the city to stone him. After begging God not to hold this sin against the people Stephen was blessed by God such that he fell asleep while being stoned so that he wouldn't feel the pain of the rocks being tearing his body and crushing his bones. The important part of this story to Bob as he lead the Bible study, was not the bit about the evil Jews or the bit about the stupid Jews or the lesson underneath the anti-semitism that it's important to do as God commands or the lesson about standing up for what you believe or that God rewards those who forgive others; rather, the most important part of the story to Bob were the rocks, the torn body, and the crushed bones. What Stephen said, how he said it, why he said it, and the fact the he stood up for his beliefs were all secondary. What mattered was how much it hurt.

So the lesson consisted of descriptions of what happened to various organs when hit by rocks, how the skin would split more from pressure than from jagged edges, how the bones would break, when the skull would crack and what would happen to the brains once held inside. I don't know how accurate his information really was, but Bob knew how to speak in such a way that left people squirming uncomfortably. I can't recall know if it was he who brought a large rock in as a prop for the lesson, or if that was someone else at a different time, but I do recall being asked to imagine how it would feel to have that rock thrown into my chest or head. The implication was that if I wouldn't be willing to take that, my faith wasn't strong enough.

There were other lessons about other martyrs from Bob and people like him. After the Day of Pentecost, when the Holy Spirit came over the twelve disciples shortly after Jesus' ascension into Heaven, the Twelve divided to spread Christianity to other parts of the world. We got lessons about what happened to them: Peter was crucified, according to tradition he was crucified upside down; John died a prisoner on Patmos island shortly after writing the book of Revelation; others were burned or boiled alive. What happened to the disciples reads like an anthology of torture. We also got lessons on the prophets: Isaiah was cut in half with a timber saw, starting at the crotch so that he'd take longer to die; Ezekiel was ordered by God to tie himself to the ground and literally eat shit. Then there were the early Christians: Paul, who was beheaded; the nameless others who were fed to lions, killed in the Colosseum for sport, or impaled on spikes to be doused with oil and used to light the city.

There were object lessons in this. Hold your hand above the candle and see how long you can take it. Can you feel how it burns? Now imagine that that's going over your entire body and there's nothing you can do to stop it. Hold your arms out to either side. I'm going to read the account of Jesus being crucified, or I'm going to talk about Peter being crucified, and I want you to hold your arms out for as long as possible. That was only twenty minutes; imagine doing that for six hours. Kneel down here and put your neck on this block. See that basket in front of you? Imagine that it's filled with heads and that the block is slick with blood. This would be the last thing you'd see in life.

The implication behind these lessons was the same was the implication behind Bob's lesson about Stephen: if you couldn't take that--the heat, the blood, the heads, the cross--then your faith wasn't strong enough. Your faith needed to be strong, not just because you could walk out that door and get hit by a bus, but because Jesus could come back at any moment.

That line, that bit about Jesus coming back, is the fixation of the second group of people I've set to describe to you: the Revelation-obsessed. If you've been following the culture war for long, they really don't need much of an introduction. I'm not sure how many of these people there really are since the sales for something like the Left Behind book series aren't a very reliable counter, but I do know that their numbers are growing and their voice is getting louder.

The central belief of the Revelation-obsessed is that the world is soon going to end as it's described in the Bible. I've decided to refer to this group as the Revelation-obsessed as the book of Revelation is the Biblical part most often associated with the end of the world. However, the Evangelical view of the world's end is descended from the original Catholic view of the apocalypse which was cobbled together from different parts of the Bible including Isaiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, Second Peter, the Gospels, and Revelation. So things like the Rapture (when all of the true Christians are taken bodily from the Earth in a single instant), which is taken from a vaguely-worded section of Second Peter, and the assault on Jerusalem by Gog and Magog (a coalition of countries) prior to the Rapture, which is taken from Ezekiel, aren't necessarily agreed on by all. Some say that the Rapture will not occur at all, others say that the Rapture will occur at some point late in the apocalypse, while others take the view that the Rapture will be the first sign of the end times. Therein lies the problem.

The Revelation-obsessed are a people convinced that the end of the world is coming soon, but there is no consensus as to when the world will end and what signs will precede it, meaning that the faithful are left debating whether the end times are set to begin at any moment or if they have already begun. Either the clock is ticking toward midnight or is ticking past midnight, but in any case: the end has come. Because of the conflicting ideas about what elements, exactly, would make up the apocalypse it's hard to give an impression of what the Revelation-obsessed are fearing, but there's a generic story-arc that fits all of the interpretations of Revelation et al. that I've heard so far. At some point in time, a single figure who is Satan incarnated in human form will rise to power and will establish by way of war and trickery an empire that covers the whole of the planet. This figure is the Antichrist. At the same time that the empire of the Antichrist is being established, a new religion that is a corrupted version of Christianity will become the single dominant religion. Eventually this religion will hold up the Antichrist as the holiest of holy figures. During the reign of the Antichrist, Christians will be rounded up and tortured to death or executed for sport as they were in ancient Rome. After a period of time, Jesus will come down out of Heaven, wage a holy war on the Antichrist, and then cast the Antichrist into Hell. At this point some believe that Jesus will establish an earthly kingdom for a period of time, or will simply end the world right then, but in any case that's the end of time.

So what does all of this have to do with Evangelical support for The Passion of the Christ, and what does it have to do with the growing number of Protestants who are crucifixion-obsessed?

Many of the martyr-obsessed and crucifixion-obsessed fundamentalists I've met have been of the opinion that the end of the world was either about to kickoff or had already been running for awhile and that Christians would soon suffer through a Holocaust of their own. These people also tended to be of the opinion that Christians were already and oppressed minority in the United States, making it that much more likely, in their view, that we may soon begin to see modern-day Stephens stoned to death in the wake of show trials.

These visions of immanent persecution have, I believe, led many fundamentalist Protestant Christians to become interested in the persecution of Christians and/or prophets of the past. The question or whether or not your faith is strong enough for you to hold your hand over the candle or be burned alive is a pressing question to these people because it's something they may have to literally face in their lifetime. This idea that the world will soon be ending, and with the end times there being mass slaughter of Christians, has led to the rise of the martyr-obsessed and crucifixion-obsessed among the Protestant fundamentalists.

This fixation on the end of the world is also a contributing factor to the widespread Evangelical support for The Passion of the Christ. With the end times approaching, many fundamentalist Protestants feel that a battle line has been drawn in the sand and that something must be done about the heathen culture of the United States before the end times. Some feel that if the culture is repaired that the apocalypse will not come, others feel that it is their duty to convert as many people to a righteous lifestyle, by force if necessary, before the world ends, while still others feel that they need to build up the United States as a base of Christian support for the coming war with the rising Antichrist. The Passion of the Christ is one of the things on that line in the war for America's soul. Regardless of how pre-Reformation the depiction of the crucifixion is in that movie, it's a movie about Jesus and a criticism of the movie is a criticism of Christianity at large. For some, not seeing The Passion of the Christ or questioning its motives and religious merits is a fundamentally anti-Christian act.

It does not help, of course, that many fundamentalist Christians really do feel that the Jews killed Jesus. It also doesn't help that for some people, this movie is an object lesson not entirely unlike holding your hand above a candle flame. When watching the movie, they might say, think about what Jesus did for you and ask yourself if you could do that for Jesus. You may have to when the end comes.

There's one more point I'd like to add, and it's very important: I've been careful to try to use the term "fundamentalist" as often as possible because I'm trying to make a vital distinction between the people who believe this and the majority of Christians in the world. Not every person who is a Christian believes that the world is going to end in the next couple of years and so everything must be done to pull the United States back from the brink of Hell. There are Christians who support same-sex marriages and Christians who would like to kick in Jerry Falwell's teeth but won't because it violates their beliefs or because they just haven't had the chance yet.

The people I've discussed in this post are not the majority of Christians, and so you should not hold these beliefs against all Christians. On the other hand, the people I've discussed have done a good job of cowing less fundamentalist Christians into following their lead, which is really what the ascendancy of the Religious Right has been all about: a small group of fanatics who have done everything they can to force their definition of Christianity on other Christians and non-Christians in the country, while convincing those Christians who disagree with them that disagreement will hurt Christianity as a whole.

They're not the majority of Christians, just the most vocal.

The IWF on Rape

posted by ampersand

Regular "Alas" readers have seen me criticize the IWF (the Independent Woman's Forum, the Republican Party's answer to feminism) before. Maybe I should quit.

But whenever I think the IWF has reached rock bottom, they bring in the big Caterpillar earthmoving machines and dig themselves an even deeper hole to sleaze in. Regarding the University of Colorado sex party scandal, Charlotte Allen of the IWF writes:

(If a man was mugged at a charity dinner, presumably Charlotte would say "why go to a charity event if you don't want to give away money?")

I guess the difference between feminists and the enlightened women of the IWF is, feminists don't make excuses for rape. But I guess retrograde opinions like that are why I don't get free money from Richard Scaife.

Adbusters makes a list of Jews

posted by ampersand

Is there any point to this article, aside from anti-Semitism?

But, as their own list (with the Jewish names carefully marked) shows, about half of the neocons aren't even Jewish. Sop apparently you can come to neocon opinoins about Israel without any suspicious Jewish blood influencing you in that direction.

I certainly approve of criticism of neocons - on ideological grounds, on policy grounds, or heck, on grooming grounds. But to criticize them because half of them are Jewish is anti-Semitic. What assholes.

FMA endorsement fallout

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

In case you haven't heard the news yet here's the skinny: President Bush has announced his support for an amendment to the Constitution that would prohibit same-sex marriages and--according to some--civil unions. The Associated Press report on the subject can be found here.

The fallout has already started to drift to the ground. The opening paragraph from the aforementioned AP report is a good way to begin, I think.

I'm sure you can parse the language on your own, but I think I'll go ahead and call attention to the words "quick," "election-year" and "Republicans [...] not rushing." A few remarks from those not-exactly-rushing Republicans:

Unfortunately, our Democratic front-runners haven't exactly been something to be proud of in response.

The Daily Kos has a brief reaction and round-up of notable quotables.

Josh Marshall has a good analysis of why Republican members of Congress might not be too happy with Bush announcing this when he did. Andrew Sullivan responded to the announcement with outrage and a feeling of betrayal. He's also posted letters from some of his readers here, here, here, and here. The Poor Man thinks this is Bush's Waterloo. I think the best summary of the situation comes by way of Discount Blogger:

One of Alas' own comment threads got a brief testimonial and reaction from "Gavin":

So... Now that you're all caught up, discuss.

On this day in women's history...

posted by bean

February 25

1972: The Rochester (NY) Junior Chamber of Commerce chapter, second largest in the nation, is suspended by the national organization for admitting women to its membership. The chapter had 750 members, of which 4 were women.

On this day in women's history...

posted by bean

February 23

1787: (Birthday) Emma Hart Willard, founder of the Troy Female Seminary, born in Berlin, Connecticut.

On this day in women's history...

posted by bean

February 22

1822: (Birthday) Isabella Beecher Hooker, a lifelong suffrage leader, born in Litchfield, Connecticut.

1860: Women shoemakers join strike for higher wges in Lynn, Massachusetts.

1912: Thirty-five starving women and children were beaten and arrested at the train station of Lawrence, Massachusetts, when they tried to go to temporary homes in Philadelphia. Workers were striking the lowering of wages and poor working conditions in the textile plants and were part of the now famous Bread and Roses strike.

1994: (A First) the Church of England announced officially that it would ordain women as priests. The first ordination of the 1,200 women in line for priesthood occurred March 12, 1994, with the first woman celebrating communion March 13, 1994, British Mother's day. The U.S. Episcopal Church had ordained 1,031 women by the time of the Church of England announcement. Thirty-five Anglican priests announced they would leave the church, some saying they would join the Roman Catholic Church and predicting as many as one-third of the men would leave over the ordination of women. It did not occur.

Why are some people obsessed with the Crucifixion?

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

I was raised in a relatively conservative Christian household and was a devout member of a conservative church in my hometown for many years (in fact, the church was more conservative than even Focus on the Family, headquartered on the other end of the city; the church believed that using instruments while praising God was a terrible sin). In all my years of church camps, Sunday services, bible schools, and mission trips there was a particular quirk of some devout Christians that I've not yet been able to understand: why are some people so fixated on Jesus' crucifixion?

I've known some Christians, typically male, typically very outwardly devout, who obsessed over the crucifixion in a way that seemed, at times, to border on the unhealthy. These were the people who would devout weeks of their sermons and/or small group lessons to the gory details of how many times Jesus was lashed, how much it would have hurt to be nailed and tied to a cross, how it would have felt to have died in that particular way, and so forth. They often reminded me of horror film aficionados discussing their favorite dismemberments, beheadings, tortures, and eviscerations from the various horror movies they'd seen; the thrill seemed to be in the amount of blood spilled and the number and volume of screams emitted rather than in the context of the situation.

These teachers and friends from my past have been in my mind a lot lately in light of tomorrow's release of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The movies has already become notorious without having been released. The flogging of Jesus occupies forty minutes of the film. The Romans flip Jesus face-down before hoisting his cross. The beatings are brutal. The violence is unflinching, some say excessive, and is the bulk of the movie. The film magazines and some film reviewers have spoken as though this is the first "uncensored" movie made about the crucifixion of Jesus, but they seem to have forgotten the glut of passion movies made since the beginning of the history of film. The last days of Jesus' life, particularly the crucifixion, is one of the single most popular film subjects because when the first films were being made they were often based on stage plays, including the ever-popular passion plays. The number of passion films has declined since more original films began to be made, but there's hardly been a lacking for them, so it seems that Mel Gibson's film doesn't seem to be adding much.

What's interesting to me, though, is that of all the films made about Jesus the overwhelming majority of them have been made specifically about the crucifixion, often with the stated goal of showing the crucifixion in a more realistic, more brutal way than has ever been shown before. The level of violence has, yes, increased as movie standards for violence have shifted over the years, but why does the one-upmanship occur in the first place? Why do people feel the need to constantly run over the details of what is, regardless of your faith, a deplorable and cruel act?

The crucifixion-obsessed Christians, when I asked, explained that they spoke extensively about the particulars of the death of Jesus because they felt that not enough people really understood what Jesus had gone through in order to save them. I can understand this, except that there were often so many of them, so many stomach-churning descriptions from so many different sources, that it didn't seem reasonable to me that a study of the Book of Mark should take six weeks, four of which were spent on the crucifixion alone. The number of repetitions, sometimes at the drop of a hat in casual conversation, seemed excessive to me.

Another explanation I've received many, many times is that this obsession is necessary because the crucifixion of Jesus was the single most important act committed in the Gospels. It seems to me that the Christians who say this have forgotten the rest of the story and why the rest of the story is important. The bulk of the New Testament is made up of letters dedicated to discussing why Jesus being raised from the dead was so important, why his being resurrected was such an everything-changing event. Even with this, though, the cross and the crucifix are the symbols of Christianity. I've never been to a church (with the sole exception of a Latter-Day Saint temple) where a cross was not on prominent display, bringing to mind the act of the crucifixion rather than the act of resurrection.

Why is the symbol of Jesus and Christianity so often the cross, a reminder of the bloody and disgusting and less important event, instead of the empty tomb, a reminder of the real reason why Jesus' coming mattered at all?

I'm not asking this question to be antagonistic or critical of Christians or of Christianity. I'd genuinely like to know the answer.

How to get people to link to your blog

posted by ampersand

There's nothing wrong with wanting more readers for your blog. (For the record, "Alas" gets 900-1000 visits a day - which makes us fairly respectable as smallish blogs go, but chump change compared to folks like Atrios and Calpundit). Blogging can take a lot of effort, and it's natural to want more people to read and appreciate what you're doing.

So how do you get people to link to you?

1. The best way to get people to link to you is to write interesting posts and update frequently. I know, "duh," but it's still the best advice. I hate to say it, but unless you write as well as D-Squared (and almost no one apart from Billmon or Jeanne D'arc does), frequent updates are probably the best thing you can do to increase your traffic.

2. DON'T send people "hey, want to exchange links" emails. I receive several "reciprocal link request" emails a week, and I almost always ignore them (especially when they're obviously form letters sent to a gazillion bloggers). It sounds harsh, but I don't have time to add a new blog to my blogroll every time someone emails me. Neither will you, once your blog has grown a bit.

3. Link to other people! Nearly all bloggers check to see where their hits are coming from; you're far more likely to get a blogger to check you out by linking to them than by emailing them. Link to bloggers you find interesting, whether or not they've ever linked you.

   For instance, I just checked out "Alas, a Blog's" stats. (Hey, I got 1500 visitors on the 17th! I wonder what that was about?) Looking at referrals, I see several blogs that I haven't looked at lately (or ever): Keywords, which seems like a very smart lefty blog that I'll definitely be checking in the future, the beautifully-written Across, Beyond, Through, where I read that "joy is a force of nature," and My So-Called Lesbian Life, a blog that I've linked to frequently in the past but have forgotten to check lately, which was my mistake because she's got a lot of great stuff on same-sex marriage (including a photo of her best friend's wedding).

4. If there's a blog you'd particularly like a link from, try linking to and discussing their posts. If you can bounce off one of their posts and add new thoughts, that's more likely to generate a reciprocal link than a post saying "go read this post, it's great" is.

5. If you're a political blogger, and there are opposition blogs you respect, go ahead and start up inter-blog debates with them (but be polite!). A nice, long blog war can do wonders for your stats.

6. If you do a post responding to someone else, it's okay to email them to make sure they see it. Just say "FYI, I've responded to you on my blog, and here's the URL." It's also perfectly acceptable to post a link to your response in their comments (if they have comments).

7. Proofread. Spell-check. Use an easy-to-read blog design (no white print on black backgrounds!). It may seem unfair, but being "professional" in your approach will attract more readers.

8. If you must send out a "please check out my blog" email, wait until you've written a particularly great post, and send out a "check out this great post" email.

9. Stick with it. Unless you luck out, it can take a long time to build an audience.

10. Have fun and don't obsess on your stats. A blog with twelve readers is just as valid as a blog with twelve thousand readers. Do material that pleases you, and trust that your audience will find you.

I'm sure there's more, but that's what occurs to me offhand. Anyone else have any suggestions?

78,000 women killed each year by unsafe abortion

posted by ampersand

In the midst of a pro-life post, Sara of Diotima surprised me by pointing out that 70,000 women die each year from unsafe abortions. Sarah linked to an article in Science to support this figure; Science, in turn, cited the World Health Organization. The WHO has since revised its estimate upwards, to 78,000.

The surprising thing is that Sara seems to consider those deaths an argument against legal abortion. But just the opposite is true: the vast majority of unsafe abortion deaths take place in countries where pro-life forces have successfully restricted or outlawed abortion. Africa - which has by far the highest rate of unsafe abortion deaths - also has overwhelmingly pro-life laws. This is unsurprising; where abortion is illegal, women will seek abortions from people without medical training, and fear (or local laws) may keep them from seeking medical help if the unsafe abortion goes wrong.

The best cure for unsafe abortion is safe abortion - and that means legal abortion. What kind of a difference can legal abortion make? Here's what happened in Romania when abortion was outlawed, in 1966 - and when it was legalized again, in 1989.

There's a very clear relationship between legalized abortion and deaths from unsafe abortion.

There's also no evidence that outlawing abortion reduces the number of abortions. From a WHO article on unsafe abortion:

This is just one of the many ways that pro-life views make no sense. There is no serious doubt that pro-life laws lead to increased death and injuries due to unsafe abortions. Furthermore, as the Netherlands show, it's possible to have the world's lowest rate of abortion by concentrating on reducing demand, rather than by threatening doctors and mothers with jail time.

There's no reason the US couldn't have an abortion rate as low as the Netherlands; it would just require the pro-lifers to quit trying to use the law to legislate against women's freedom, and instead put just as much energy and funds into reducing how likely women are to want abortion. In economic terms, the difference between a pro-lifer and a feminist who opposes abortion is that pro-lifers focus on reducing the supply of abortion by taking away women's and doctor's freedom; feminists who oppose abortion would rather reduce the demand for abortion, without attacking women's freedom. The feminist method is at least as effective for reducing abortion - and is far less deadly to women's lives.

UPDATE: Paul at A Fortiori responds:

When making laws, I think it makes sense to both know what your sought-after benefit is, and to keep a cost/benefit analysis in mind.

The benefit of outlawing bank robberies is to reduce bank robbery, since our banking system wouldn't work very well if people felt free to rob banks at will. The cost of outlawing bank robbery - the increased danger to robbers - is probably acceptable, because of the benefits we gain.

Now, what is the benefit of outlawing abortion? Paul's post implies that the benefit is to punish evildoers (women, doctors, folks like that). If that is the benefit, then we should indeed outlaw abortion; from a cost/benefit point of view, more women will be punished if we outlaw abortion than if we don't.

On the other hand, many pro-lifers have argued that the purpose of outlawing abortion is not punishing women, but reducing the amount of "babies" (actually, zygotes and fetuses) killed by abortion. Furthermore, "pro-life feminists" often argue that outlawing abortion benefits women.

If that's the case, then I think my argument - applying a cost/benefit analysis to see if outlawing abortion actually reduces abortion and benefits women - is one that logically should carry weight, even if you believe abortion is murder. If the goal is to reduce abortion and help women, then logically it should be a matter of some concern to pro-lifers that 1) there are fewer abortions per capita in pro-choice Netherlands than in any pro-life country, and 2) pro-life laws appear to increase the number of illegal, unsafe abortions, leading to tens of thousands of women needlessly dying each year.

The question for pro-lifers, I think, is which is more important to you - saving lives, or punishing women?

* * *

Further update: I know many pro-lifers will respond by reflexively trying to disprove or find a reason to disregard the statistics. Before you do, ask yourself - why are you so against this being the case? Look at this from a point of view apart from partisan politics: If it was true that we could reduce abortion and save more women's lives without forcing anyone to give birth against their will, wouldn't that actually be a wonderful thing?

I understand, a world with no abortions at all would be even better. But that will never happen on this Earth; no pro-life state has ever succeeded in eliminating abortion, not even those states that are far more brutal and aggressive in fighting abortion than the USA can ever be.

Why are pro-lifers so reflexively against even the possibility that restricting women's freedom might not be the most effective way of reducing abortion? So much that virtually no pro-lifers are willing to even consider the possibility, apart from searching for an excuse to dismiss it?

I'm not being snarky - I sincerely don't understand it.

* * *

By the way, if pro-lifers believe abortion is murder, why do they propose such wimpy penalties for it? Often their proposed laws would only jail the doctor for a couple of years, and wouldn’t punish the woman at all - which begs the question of who gets punished if the woman self-aborts. If abortion is murder, why not seek the murder-level sentences for women and doctors?

(Okay, now I'm being a little snarky. But my previous question was entirely sincere.)

Hey, some new stuff on the sidebar

posted by ampersand

There's a couple of new catagories on the sidebar. First, I've added a "Blogs & websites by Alas comment-writers" catagory. Just a place to list all the blogs and sites maintained by folks who post here in comments at least a couple of times each week. I've probably missed some folks, so please email me or post a comment if you can suggest a blog or website that belongs on this list.

Second, I've created a "Blogs discussing feminism" catagory. This isn't the same as "feminist bloggers" - there are many excellent feminist bloggers who I haven't put on this list, because they don't discuss feminism that often. This list is for blogs where feminism or feminist issues are very frequently discussed, so that I can always click on the link and find some feminist-related posts.

Finally, there's a "blogs discussing same sex marriage" catagory, which is convenient for me to have since I've been paying so much attention to this issue lately.

"Unborn children" and the Clash of Analogies

posted by ampersand

Julian, responding to a post of mine, wrote:

In context, I used the phrase "(unborn) children" while summing up my understanding of Eve's point of view; because Eve is pro-life, it seemed an appropriate phrase to use in that context. In general, however, I agree with Julian that pro-choicers are wise to avoid the phrase.

After Will Baude linked to Julian's post, several bloggers chimed in to object to Julian's analogy. Here's what Matthew Stinson wrote:

Two comments on this.

First, Matthew's post falls into the "Woman? What woman?" genre of argument that's so common among pro-lifers. He argues that human action is involved in transforming bricks to houses, in contrast to the process by which a fetus becomes an infant, which he presumably believes involves no human effort

Having recently lived nine months with a pregnant housemate - not to mention the childbirth itself, a process that was not without human effort - let me assure Matthew that an infant does not magically produce itself. There is a great deal of effort involved, much of it conscious and deliberate.

Second, it would be easy to make Julian's point with analogies that are "a process" just as much as pregnancy is. For instance, Julian could have written that it's as mistaken to call a zygote as an "unborn child" as it is to call an acorn an "ungrown oak tree"; or to call interstellar gas clouds "uncollapsed stars."

An acorn is not an oak tree; a law that treated stepping on an acorn as identical to cutting down an ancient oak would be ridiculous. Just because "A" might someday develop into "B," it does not follow that "A" is identical to "B," and is entitled to identical moral or legal treatment. That, as I understand it, was Julian's point - and it remains valid whether we use "static" or "in process" analogies.

Conservatives who falsely associate themselves with MLK, are in turn falsely associated with the KKK

posted by ampersand

Eugene Volokh points out this article in The University of Michigan student paper, reporting the KKK's endorsement of the anti-affirmative-action Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI).

It is, of course, unfair to blame MCRI for the KKK's endorsement - they don't control who endorses them.

But I can't help but see it as a form of ironic justice, since the MCRI has - either through dishonesty or ignorance - severely distorted Martln Luthor King Jr's views. Although we can't know what King would say if he were alive today, there's no doubt that he favored racial (and other) preferences during his lifetime. Here's what King said interviewed in Playboy (January 1965):

Here's what King wrote about the "Operation Breadbasket" program, which he helped create and administrate, from King's book Where Do We Go From Here?

As racial preferences go, this is much more radical than any currently operating Affirmative Action program.

King's proposals didn't begin and end with race, of course - he also wanted programs to help poor people of every race. But quotes like the above leave no doubt that MLK favored racial preference programs.

So what's going on in Michigan? A group that continually falsely associates their views with MLK Jr., so they can unfairly benefit from MLK's moral credibility, is objecting to being falsely associated with the KKK, because they don't want to be unfairly tarred by the KKK's lack of moral credibility.

Sounds like ironic justice to me.

A small number of links Amp has read

posted by ampersand

As usual, I had built up a huge list of links over the weekend. Then I accidentally closed the window that had all the links. Whooops.

Anyhow, here's the links I've been reading - well - this morning.

• This letter from reader Matt Taylor, to the generally anti-gay-marriage FamilyScholars.org (one of the three bloggers, Tom Sylvester, has said he favors same-sex marriage, but he hasn't written any major posts presenting his pro-SSM views), showed an interesting touch of doubt.
  I agree that the SF mayor is on the wrong side of the law; the recently passed CA ballot proposition on marriage is unambiguous. The mayor may lose his job over this, and that's probably what should happen to preserve the rule of law. On the surface, it looks like yet another elitist government official ignoring the people's will, much as the MA justices did in Goodridge. Mayor Newsom has even been compared to former AL Chief Justice Ray Moore (ugh!), the guy who wouldn't move the Ten Commandments monument.

  But beneath the legal wrangling, in the realm of human relations that underlies the formalities of government, something seems very different. Seeing people line up for hours, even days to get married, hearing that drivers honk their horns in support as they pass SF City Hall, and musicians spontaneously serenade the couples as they wait in line, it has such a different feel than the activist-led events we've seen so far in the SSM controversy. The mood reminds me a little bit of the late-80's revolutions in Eastern Europe; OK, on a much, much smaller scale ...gay marriage isn't the Berlin Wall for crying out loud.

  That's I guess what bothers me so much. What's transpiring now looks, smells and feels like liberation from an oppressor; here are ordinary people, long denied the freedom to go about the business of their lives, and celebrating now that they are finally free to do so. It's kind of a scary thought; if the people of San Francisco are oppressed, at least on this one question, then their oppressors are the people of the rest of California, and the rest of the US. People aren't supposed to be oppressed in a democracy, are they?

  The more people see SSM as a human issue, the more our side will win.

• Anderw Sullivan quotes an evangelical Christian reader, on why evangelicals tend to be so much more anti-gay than they are anti-other (alleged) sins.
  ... few pastors have the guts to stand up and say "I struggle with the temptation to view pornography" or similar things. But we all do. When is the last time you heard a preacher expound on "but if any of you thinks lustfully about another woman, he has committed adultery in his heart"? (Me, in 34 years of going to church every week: never. Occasionally at a Christian conference or retreat for men, a gutsy speaker will address this.)

  But on homosexuality, of course, the church is righteously indignant. I have come to believe that this is so because for the vast majority of heterosexual Christians, homosexuality is the one sin that they are certain they will never commit. Murderous thoughts, adulterous hearts, sure. But never homosexuality. And that is why they point fingers.

• Good article in Slate about the history of Arab feminism, with a particular emphasis of the trouble with importing ideas - or appearing to import ideas - from the West. Link via Diotima.

• An interesting online debate about feminism and hiring nannies. Barbara Ehrenreich totally rocks. (Via Crooked Timber)
  When an immigrant, usually Third World, nanny moves in with the family (as a resident or just a day worker), her very presence teaches the kids an ugly lesson: that there are tasks that are somehow "below" mommy and daddy, but appropriate to darker-skinned people with broken English. Caitlin, for example—who took the odd and astoundingly privileged course of staying home with the nanny—reports that this personage washes the sheets and generally cleans up after the kids go through a bout of stomach flu. You think the kids don't notice that mommy is available for reading stories but only nanny deals with actual diapers and shit-stained sheets? You think this division of labor doesn't make a lasting imprint on them?

  Suppose I could have afforded a nanny and a maid when my kids were little; I still wouldn't have hired them because I didn't want my kids growing up with the world's class and racial hierarchies stamped on their emerging little world views. The African-American poet Audre Lorde, for example, wrote of encountering a little white girl in the supermarket, who pointed at Lorde's child and exclaimed, "Look, mommy, a baby maid!" I didn't want this for my kids.

• Flowers for Al and Don is your chance to donate a few dollars (or a lot of dollars) to having flowers delivered to couples waiting on line to get married in San Francisco. Very cool.

• Two hilarious newspaper articles from The Volokh Conspiracy. First, "The brown-skinned kid who showed up at the Nazi rally wearing a WHITE POWER tee shirt." The kid, it seems, was being entirely sincere - he just wanted to support White Power.
  The skinheads looked at him incredulously, and not without a degree of sympathy. It was obvious that he actually thought he belonged there, amongst white power kinfolk. "Well, you haven't broken any of the festival's rules," began another skinhead, employing the sort of "I hate to break it to you" tone of voice of a father explaining to his 5-year-old son why a bed sheet tied around his neck doesn't mean he can fly. "The thing is, you're not white."

  Second, the Oxford engineering student who pretended to be an economist, delivering a series of lectures on global economics at an economics conference in BeJing. (He shares a name with a genuine expert, a professor in New York).

• A very interesting article by Larry Kramer in The Boston Review, arguing that the people - not the courts - should be the final interpreter of what the Constitution means. I don't agree - I'm one of those horrible elitists that Kramer criticizes for not trusting in the people's good will - but it's an interesting article.

• Potvaliant - meaning "having the courage given by drink" - is indeed, as Will Baude says, a neat word.

Same-sex marriage, the courts, and the mayor: A response to David Blankenhorn

posted by ampersand

David Blankenhorn objects to the Massachusetts Supreme Court's "hardly disguised contempt for the views of most citizens of the commonwealth." He feels that the Court has displayed a " wanton disregard for democratic procedures." This is a pretty common statement among opponents of same-sex marriage (SSM), which leads me to wonder: what do they think the proper role of the courts should be, in regards to individual constitutional rights?

David seems to think that it's wrong for a court to go against majority opinion, or the legislature, on matters of individual rights. But this is bewildering. Surely David wouldn't actually require the Court to take polls of the populace and then base their opinions of what the Constitution means solely on what the majority would prefer. But assuming that David doesn't favor poll-driven court decisions, why exactly does he want the court to do when their good-faith interpretation of the constitution disagrees with popular sentiment?

I tend to agree more with Trivial Pursuits, who writes:

It the judiciary is required to go along with whatever the legislature and the polls say, then I don't see the point in having a judiciary at all. Or in having a bill of rights, for that matter. Who needs a first amendment? Next time a free-speech controversy comes up, we’ll just take a poll.

* * *

David also sees democracy at peril in San Francisco:

But the case isn't as simple as David describes. The Mayor has argued that two California laws - the constitutional call for equal protection, and the statute defining marriage - are contradictory. Since he perceives a contradiction, the Mayor must "pick and choose which law to enforce"; it's not possible to enforce both laws at once. Under such circumstances, it's perfectly reasonable for the Mayor to decide that his duty is to obey the Constitution, first and foremost. (See Eugene Volokh for a more developed version of this argument).

(Suppose that, on Election Day morning, the legislature voted to deny blacks the right to vote. During the several hours it might take to get the judicial bureaucracy into motion to stay or repeal the new law, thousands of blacks would be turned away from the polls, potentially changing the election's outcome. In that situation, does David believe that the Mayor is bound to obey the legislature, or should he instead obey the constitution?)

If the mayor felt that state anti-gun laws violated the state constitution, then he would have been perfectly within his rights to create a test case by refusing to obey the (in his view) unconstitutional law. He could also arrest doctors, although in that case the judiciary - seeing a clear and immediate harm - would step in and stop him much, much sooner.

Or perhaps they are interpreting the law in good faith as they see it.

On this day in women's history

posted by bean

February 21

1846: (A First) Sarah Bagley reports to work at New York and Boston Magnetic Telegraph Company office in Lowell, Massachusetts, as the first female telegrapher. This is accomplishment is the last [known] among many, many others achieved by Bagley. Previous to this, Bagely worked in a cotton mill in Lowell, Massachusetts.

1866: (A First) Lucy Hobbs graduates from Ohio Dental College, becoming the first American woman to become a dentist. This came after being denied admission to both the Eclectic College of Medicine and Ohio College of Dental Surgery. Through private tutelage by a professor from the former and the dean of the latter school, she opened a private practice in Cincinnati in the spring of 1861, and later in Bellevue, Iowa and McGregor, Iowa. In July 1865 she was elected to membership in the Iowa State Dental Society and sent as a delegate to the American Dental Association convention in Chicago. In November 1865 she finally was admitted to the senior class of the Ohio College of Dental Surgery, and on her graduation in February 1866 she became the first American woman to receive a dental degree.

1936: (Birthday) Barbara Jordan, Representative to U.S. Congress 1973-79, born in Houston, Texas. Jordan was the only black and only woman in the Texas State Senate 1966-1972. Because of health, she was forced to retire to teaching at the University of Texas, but served as a political advisor to Texas Governor Ann Richards.

1960: Jerrie Cobb started secret tests for astronaut training. Years later in a U.S. Congressional probe, NASA officials admited they had "no intentions" of allowing women into space. Cobb testified that of the 25 women who applied to the space program in 1960, 13 had been found qualified.

LaTeX Question

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

Continuing this week's trend of computer-related posts, I have a question for any LaTeX users out there:

How do I break a line such that the line that follows it begins at the point where the break occurs rather than beginning at the side of the text margin? I'm thinking here very specifically of character changes in dialogue written in verse. Something along the lines of:

                  Francisco
Give you good night.
                  Marcellus
                    Holla! Bernardo!
                  Bernardo
                                    Say,--

I suppose that that doesn't exactly fit what I was wanting because of the character names. So let me pose the question a different way: Consider the piece from Hamlet I quoted; how would I format do that with LaTeX?

The Great Purge, Pt. 2

posted by PinkDreamPoppies

Earlier today I decided that I would be better off living a Microsoft-free lifestyle and set about purging my computer of Microsoft products.

While not yet entirely finished, the project goes on...

Same-sex marriage in New Mexico

posted by nikkiru

Sandoval County, New Mexico, is another place where the local government has sanctionined same-sex marriages. The reasoning there seems to be a bit different from that in San Francisco and Chicago, though.

From the Albuquerque Journal:

Edited to add this, from the Denver Post:

Things sure changed in a hurry there. But I have a feeling this isn't quite where that story ends.