Category News

The DC Dick Move Compromise

For those who hadn’t heard, last year DC passed a measure legalizing gay marriage. It’s scheduled to take effect tomorrow. This was a bit of a nail-biter, since Congress had threatened to repeal the law. But thankfully, the federal legislature is so dysfunctional that two and a half months weren’t enough to follow through on their threats.

Naturally, this ruffled a few feathers among homophobes (or, as I like to call them, bigots) like Catholic Charities, which I gather is a separately-incorporated of Caritas, which in turn is a branch of the Catholic church (CatholiCo, Inc.). From their rather vague “About us” page, I gather they do various charitable work like joining people who have money with people who need money, eliminating poverty, and promoting diversity, by which they mean they don’t discriminate on the basis of skin color, which is the only type of diversity among humans.

At any rate, Catholic Charities DC, or the bishop-in-command, figured that if teh gays were allowed to get married, they’d be considered equal to people, and that just wouldn’t do. So they threatened to be colossal dicks and pull out altogether.

The story today is that they decided to be merely huge dicks about this. They’ll continue their operations in DC. But they’re cancelling benefits for spouses. Not just gay spouses, but everyone (except current employees, who will be grandfathered in).

Once again, a religious institution digs in its heels and has to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

One final note: throughout this whole affair, Catholic Charities and people speaking on its behalf have justified their stance by using phrases like “faithful to the church’s teaching” and “values”. This reminds me of nothing so much as the 19th-century euphemism “our peculiar institution”, used in the south to refer to slavery, back when they got an inkling in the back of their minds that maybe what they were doing was wrong.

I take this as a positive sign. We’ve already progressed enough as a society that people can no longer admit in polite society that they’re racists. It may be that we’re now moving into a phase where people have to use linguistic doilies to cover up their homophobia as well.

A Step Forward for Marriage Equality in Maryland

According to the Baltimore Sun, the Maryland Attorney General has released a paper saying that “same-sex marriages performed in other states could be recognized by Maryland’s legal system.”

Now, there are some big caveats: the AG isn’t a judge, so this paper doesn’t have the force of law, the way a legal decision would. Rather, as I understand it, the AG is giving his opinion that if it were ever to come to trial, a Maryland court would find that the state should recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states. No court has ruled on this yet.

So so it’s premature for gay couples to break out the bubbly and file their taxes jointly. There’s still a ways to go, but it’s a step.

Update: The Post has this update:

UPDATE 2:50 P.M.: Maryland Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler (D) says effective immediately the state recognizes same-sex marriages performed elsewhere and state agencies should begin giving gay couples the rights they were awarded elsewhere.

Preserving the Sanctity of Marriage

See, this is what we can’t allow teh gays to get their hands on, lest they ruin it for everyone:

LEWISTON, Idaho (AP) — A marriage got off to a rocky start after the 21-year-old groom from northern Idaho was arrested twice on his wedding night and charged with assaulting his new wife in nearby eastern Washington. Court records show Nathan Lewis of Lewiston, Idaho, was charged Tuesday in Asotin County Superior Court with second-degree assault and interfering with a report of domestic violence.

The Nez Perce County Sheriff’s Office in Idaho says Lewis was married Sunday and later arrested for drunken and disorderly conduct in Lewiston.

Police say that after Lewis was released on bail, he assaulted his new wife at a home in nearby Clarkston, Wash. The bride told authorities she was slapped and choked during the altercation, the Lewiston Tribune reports.

The fact that these two were allowed to get married should also serve to silence anyone who mounts any kind of “but think of the children!” argument.

About that Abstinence-Only Study…

In case you missed it, a study was recently published in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine showing that abstinence-only sex ed programs were more effective than others at getting young people to hold off having sex. Or at least that’s the message you probably got from the news.

Ed Yong points us at a post by Petra Boynton explaining why the paper’s real conclusions aren’t quite the same.

Unfortunately, I don’t have access to the paper, and the library only has the January issue, so I can’t check Boynton’s assertions. But nothing in her article jumps out as strange. Basically, student volunteers were split up into four groups; each group got a series of 8-12 one-hour sessions on Saturdays. One group focused on abstinence, another on condoms, a third combined abstinence and condom use, and a fourth just covered health issues in general. This last group served as a control. The study found that students in the abstinence-only group were more likely than the other three groups to have put off having sex.

As with any study, there are problems and potential problems. For one thing, these students were volunteers (and presumably they participated with their parents’ approval). So presumably they take sex ed seriously enough to take time out on Saturday to do something about it, and their parents support them in this. Thus, they may not be representative of the general population.

Secondly, the results were all self-reported. So there are various potential biases like people lying, or misremembering, or just wanting to please the researcher by giving the “right” answer.

But the biggest “however” lies in the description of the “abstinence-only program”:

Abstinence information only
Focused on abstinence (not having sex) to “eliminate the risk of pregnancy and STIs including HIV. It was designed to (1) increase HIV/STI knowledge, (2) strengthen behavioural beliefs supporting abstinence including the belief that abstinence can prevent pregnancy, STIs and HIV, and that abstinence can foster attainment of future goals and (3) increase skills to negotiate abstinence and reduce pressure to have sex. It was not designed to meet federal criteria for abstinence-only programs. For instance, the target behaviour was abstaining from vaginal, anal or oral intercourse until a time later in life when the adolescent is more prepared to handle the consequences of sex. The intervention did not contain inaccurate information, portray sex in a negative light, or use a moralistic tone. The training and curriculum manual explicitly instructed the facilitators not to disparage the efficacy of condoms or allow the view that condoms are ineffective to go uncorrected”

In short, this program was something like “Of course you want to have sex, and that’s great. But it’s easier to go through college and get the job you want if you don’t have a baby to take care of. Here are some ways to resist people who are pressuring you into sex.”

Whereas the that the wingnuts have been pushing have been closer to “If you have sex before you’re married, you’ll make Baby Jesus cry and he’ll send you to hell. Using a condom won’t help you, because they don’t work.” Not quite the same thing.

Having said this, I’m still surprised that “abstinence-only” beat out “comprehensive”.

Another question I have is addressed neither by the study nor Dr. Boynton, and concerns the ultimate effects of the programs.

The reason we want to teach sex ed to young people is not that sex is evil or that abstinence is a good thing in and of itself. Rather, it’s because we don’t want them to catch a disease, or wind up supporting a child before they’re ready.

Other studies have found that with Jesus- and fear-based abstinence-only programs, students will put off sex for a teensy bit, but that when they do have sex, they’re far less likely to be safe about it. I’d be interested in seeing what works best as far as avoiding undesirable consequences.

Prop-8-Apalooza

If anyone hasn’t gotten their fill of Prop 8 trial coverage, here’s a bundle of links:

First of all, mercurynews.com’s day-by-day coverage of the trial. Mercury being, like, an actual news outlet with presuambly journalistic standards, I figured it’d be best to lead off with them. (Free registration required. Or bugmenot. Or, as it turns out, just leaving JavaScript disabled bypasses their compulsory registration system. Huh.)

The Alliance Defense Fund, who support marriage by refusing it to people who want to get married, have their own roundup.

It’s pretty dry, and generally makes a game attempt at hiding the WTF, mostly by being short on details. But the façade isn’t perfect, e.g.:

Professor Chauncey also had a frustrating habit of falsely linking the motivations of those who supported Proposition 8 to those who supported racial segregation a half century ago. He reluctantly agreed that there is nothing wrong with voters considering their individual moral values to decide how to vote on an issue, but then added that people supported racial segregation because of their moral beliefs. People also use their personal moral values to support environmental legislation or health care legislation. Does that mean those voters are just like those who supported racial segregation?

If you’re one of those weirdos who like facts (ugh! Ptooey!) in their arguments, you might be interested in the American Foundation for Equal Rights’s official trial transcripts.

But my favorite is Autostraddle’s Judgment Daze series. Yes, Rachel and Riese are as biased as the ADF (though in the other direction), but Rachel writes like a gay Wonkette, which counts for a lot, and includes links and videos and tasteful pictures of hot women kissing.

Naturally, both sides think they’ve won, and we won’t know which side really really won until the judge rules in, I think, late February. But I’m feeling cautiously optimistic. As in Kitzmiller v. Dover, the defense witnesses don’t seem to be all that familiar with the value of consistency or critical thinking, things that, I gather, count for a lot in a courtroom, especially when there’s no jury to be swayed by emotional appeals.

I also understand that the prosecution wants to show that Prop 8 was motivated primarily by anti-gay animus, and that a bigoted majority can’t just take away the rights of a minority. Sounds like they did a fine job with the examination of Hak-Shing Tam, who basically regurgitated every homophobic stereotype and urban legend you’ve ever heard, and whom the defense side nudged under the bus a bit.

Other arguments, like “marriage is all about raising children” were countered by, say, the observation that the Netherlands have had gay marriage since 2001 or so, and still does not resemble a Mad Maxian apocalyptic hellscape.

But just in case the judge decides that keeping definitions constant is more important than allowing people to pursue happiness, I think I have the perfect solution:

In the last day of testimony, David Blankenhorn said:

Even in instances of a man engaging in polygamous marriage, each marriage is separate. He — one man marries one woman. That’s the way it works.

The scholars then have pointed out that in certain societies, many societies, men of wealth and power then go on to marry additional women. They do not marry as a group. It is not a group marriage. It permits certain men that have access to power to marry more than one woman. Each marriage is a separate marriage of one man and one woman.

So let’s say a guy marries a woman. He then marries another woman, thus forming a family of three. They then divorce the guy, leaving two women married to each other, all fairly within the confines of the traditional definition of marriage.

It could even lead to a cottage industry of professional brides and grooms, who’ll marry any two people for a reasonable fee.

Way to Undermine Your Case

Today’s WSJ has an article about the Proposition 8 suit in California:

Defenders of California’s ban on same-sex marriage began making their case Monday, countering the plaintiffs’ argument that gays and lesbians are subject to discrimination.

Which is all well and good until you see the photo that ran next to the article:

Prop 8 Discrimination

So this guy is holding up a sign saying “No gay rights”. Right in front of the courthouse in which the lawyers for his side are trying to argue that gays aren’t discriminated against.

I believe that counts as an own goal.

I Fail to See BillDo’s Problem

In a characteristically spittle-flecked post, BillDo rails against the people suing to repeal Proposition 8. For those who’ve forgotten, that’s when a group of Californians turned to another group of Californians and said, “The right to get married is so precious and fundamental that we’re going to take it away from you.”

BillDo writes:

Their goal is not to contest the First Amendment rights of Catholics and others—their goal is to put religion on trial. What they are saying is that religious-based reasons for rejecting gay marriage are irrational, and thus do not meet the test of promoting a legitimate state interest.

So what are the rational reasons for taking away gays’ right to get married?

Society cannot exist without families;

This isn’t obvious to me, but I won’t argue the point.

families cannot exist without reproduction;

Agreed.

reproduction cannot exist without a sexual union between a man and a woman;

Well, duh.

and every society in the history of the world has created an institution called marriage to provide for this end.

Again, this might not be 100% true, but it’s close enough for jazz.

In short, it is nothing but irrational to challenge such a timeless verity.

Who’s challenging any of this? How will allowing gays to marry affect straight couples who want to get married and/or have children?

Unless he’s arguing that the institution of marriage will become so polluted by Teh Gay that people like him won’t want anything to do with it. Kind of like saying “I won’t go into that store; they allow homos to shop there.”

In short, BillDo’s problem seems to be with his head. Fortunately, it’s nothing a good laxative can’t fix.

PS: I just realized that I managed to write an entire post about BillDo without using the words “fucknugget” or “twatwaffle”. I take this as a sign that I’ve grown as a writer.

Hovind’s Appeal Denied

Kent Hovind’s site gives word that

The Supreme Court has recently denied our petition for a rehearing of Dr. Hovind’s case. They gave no reason.

Personally, I like to think that a clerk got the brief about someone who didn’t bother defending himself at the original trial, yet wants to appeal to the Supreme Court, and assumed it was a joke by one of the interns.

The Onion Can’t Keep Up

Onion headline, Dec. 22:

Weed Delivery Guy Saves Christmas

Associated Press headline, today:

Search of car turns up gift-wrapped marijuana

Drugs in the Czech Republic

Because USian media outlets don’t seem to have reported this story:

Prague – The Czech government today set the drug possession limits under which the possession of up to 1.5 grammes of heroin, up to one gramme of cocaine and up to two grammes of methamphetamine (pervitine) will not be punishable as of New Year.

Czechs will also be able to legally possess up to 15 grammes of marijuana, according to the Justice Ministry’s proposal approved by the government today.

Follow the link to see a table showing how much of what is allowed.