Hey, Cathy Ruse, you are a parent

Cathy Ruse is angry because the government is calling her a parent.

I mean, she is a parent. She has children. It is not an inaccurate term. But what she's bugging out about is the fact that on federal government forms they eliminated the terms "mother" and "father" for "parent 1" and "parent 2".

As a mother, I find that deeply offensive. I carried my children for 9 months in my womb, I endured the pain (and joy) of birth, I nursed them for many months after they were born, and every morning they jump into my bed screaming, “Mommy!”
But the federal government says I’m Mommy no more.
I am Parent 1.
Or maybe Parent 2.
Kind of like Thing One and Thing Two. But Dr. Seuss was being ironic.
Mr. President, I dare you to tell my daughters I’m not their mother.

For the love of Batman.

Look.This is clearly one of the dumbest rants ever. Just because you are called a parent on a form instead of mother it does not mean that your daughters are not allowed to call you Mommy. Is this a thing you actually believe? That a change on federal forms means that you no longer can have that title? I am serious,because if this is what you really think this will lead to then there is no point in arguing about it. It's like trying to convince the homeless guy in the park that he doesn't have a CIA implant in his head. You can't argue with crazy.

But I somehow doubt that Ruse believed this. She is expressing the righteous indignation of how terrible it is that the world is changing. You can file this in the same folder with people who bitch about how they shouldn't have to press one for English. It doesn't really make a difference for you and makes life easier for other people.

And that, really, is the problem. It isn't that Ruse cares about being parent instead of Mother. It's that this will make life better for same sex couples who have two Moms or two Dads. Or when a Grandparent is raising a child. Or those other many types of families that now exist where it is Dad and Step-Dad or Mom and Step-Dad or Jo and Mary instead of Mom and Dad.

When she sees Parent 1 instead of Mother it reminds Ruse that there are other types of families in the world. and those families are just as legitimate as her family. That's what pisses her off. Not that she is a parent (because, technically speaking, she was always a parent, Mother is just what we call the female parent) but that her status as parent is no greater than a same-sex parent or any other non-traditional parent.

I'm appalled at how many rants against GBLT issues come down to someone being upset that the fact they were born straight and cisgendered will no longer gain them some type of special place in society.

Gosnell is about Medicine not Morals

The National Review has a click bait article about how the truly harrowing of Kermit Gosnell is the expected results of a land where abortion is legal.

Gosnell’s human abattoir is the logical endpoint of our morally fraudulent national approach to abortion, the proponents of which maintain that they wish the procedure to remain “safe, legal, and rare,” in Bill Clinton’s cynically triangulating formulation, while at the same time resisting any and all restrictions upon the procedure. Gosnell’s murders are not an aberrant abuse of the abortion license but an inevitable result of it...

 His crimes differed from the usual practice of abortion in that his practices made them more visible. That we recoil in horror from the images of Gosnell’s crimes is evidence that the casual practice of abortion, and all of the political rhetoric deployed on its behalf, have not yet entirely extinguished the moral sense of those who are confronted with these bloody scenes.

This is a fundemental misunderstanding of what the abortion decisions really mean. It isn't about the right to kill an unborn child, but the right to gain medical care. Abortion is, at the core, a medical procedure.

If I take a saw and chop off your arm I have clearly committed a crime. If I am a doctor and I do it within an operating room then it isn't. Do you think that the National Review will start complaining about how the fact that we allow amputation in a hospital setting is the cause of people cutting off others limbs?  Of course not. But the National Review wants you the believe that is abortion was illegal then Gosnell could not exist.

In reality, Gosnell's exist not because abortion is legal but because it is hard to obtain. If abortion was easily available to women early in pregnancy (with no waiting periods and covered by federal funds) then they wouldn't go to a Gosnell. In the same way you wouldn't choose Dr. Nick Riviera from The Simpsons if you can get Dr. Hibbert.

Look, abortion was outlawed for many years. And Gosnell's existed in back allys. The illegality didn't stop the practice, it just made it unsafe. It created places like Gosnell's.


               

And Then There's This Asshole

Newt Gingrich said something either stupid or disingenuous on a Sunday news show!

You know, when he ran for President, my Dad asked me who would be running for his seat if he won.

"Dad, he hasn't been in office since I was in size 6 jeans."

My father was confused because why would all the news programs invite on a guy who failed at politics 15 years ago? He must be someone important because they kept putting him on TV.

Oh, if only the TV was filled with important people.

Anyway, Newt was on Meet the Press where he said this stupid thing (memorialized by Crooks and Liars).

"But what I'm struck with is the one-sidedness of the desire for rights," Gingrich continued. "There are no rights for Catholics to have adoption services in Massachusetts, they're outlawed. There are no rights in D.C. for Catholics to have adoption services, they're outlawed. This passing reference to religion -- 'We sort of respect religion.' Well, sure. As long as you don't practice it."
"I think it will be good to have a debate over -- beyond this question of are you able to be gay in America, what does it mean? Does it mean that you actually have to affirmatively eliminate any institution which does not automatically accept that?"

Catholics can't adopt in Massachusetts? That is terrible. That is a total violation of equal protection. I'm offended by that. Or I would be if it was true.

It isn't.

Catholic Charities ceased adoption services in Massachusetts because of anti-discrimination laws. Given the option of allowing gays to adopt (something they had done before but which the Vatican had told them to stop doing) or shutting down shop, they picked the latter.

Catholics can continue to adopt. In fact the same anti-discrimination law that protects gay couples also means that a Catholic couple can't be denied the opportunity to adopt by an Evangelical or Atheist adoption agency.

So, do you all think that Newt didn't know that fact? Or that he intentionally misrepresented the truth because he is just a hamster on the wingnut welfare wheel?

Niall Ferguson's Thoughts on Keynes are Telling

Harvard economic historian and conservative quote machine Niall Ferguson told a conference that the reason that Keynes' economic theories don't work is because he was gay.

He's since apologized for the remark, but what is interesting is what it means that he said it in the first place. Ferguson isn't a dumb man. This wasn't Jeremy Irons suddenly discussing incest and gay marriage because some guy with a camera asked an actor his views on the topic. This is a guy who was scheduled to talk and did so. He was asked a question and came out with a statement that one witness said seemed thought out and not off the cuff.

But what is interesting is what this means for the larger austerity movement (Keynes believed that in times of economic downturn large spending by the government could kickstart recovery). After the Excel Error heard round the world showed that the one large study supporting austerity was wrong, it seems like there is no science left to support the idea.


So,what do you turn to when you don't have numbers on your side? Name calling and false dichotomies. Keynes didn't understand about why debt is bad because he didn't have kids since he was gay. And gay people can't care about the future of the world.

Even better is the banker in the audience who agreed with the sentiment because his outlook on the world changed when he had a kid.

Seriously. You didn't care about the future until you had some genetic skin in the game? I'm pretty sure that makes you a sociopath. The fact you work for an investment bank is supporting evidence.

I don't have kids. I do have a nephew I love. And the friends of my children who I adore. I care about their futures. I cut out the boxtops for their schools. I vote to have more funding for school because my life is better when I live in a place with well educated people.

In fact, maybe I'm better because I don't have kids. I can support a future where everyone can benefit instead of just my kid.

Ferguson's statements go to show how little he has on his side. It also shows that people aren't going to accept that type of gay bashing anymore. 10 years ago his comments might have gotten attention on some social justice blogs, but this was everywhere. And Ferguson did a real apology. Not a "I'm sorry that you want me to be sorry" thing. So, that's good.

But seriously, when your strongest argument is "but he's gay" then you don't have any argument at all.

Princeton Mom is my Superego Made Flesh

In the movie Forbidden Planet, Leslie Nielsen (disarmingly sexy, especially if you only know his comedy work) and some non-Leslie Nielsen astronauts land on a planet where your thoughts come to life. But they are terrorized by the monsters created by the Id.

Well, here in real world, I am haunted by the monster created by my Superego. Princeton Mom. You know, the lady who wrote the article to the school paper telling the ladies that they needed to lock down a husband before they graduated. And then gave that sad follow up interview to The Cut saying that her marriage failed because her husband wasn't from Princeton.

Well, she's back. And this time giving a speech at Princeton. And continuing to say terrible things that I'm used to my subconscious saying to me in the shower.

“If we do want to marry men who are our intellectual equal, we’ve almost priced ourselves out of the market,” she said. “Finding a husband as smart as you is going to be hard if you don’t find him at school.”

 Sometimes I worry about this. I'm technically a genius. I could join mensa. But I know how useless IQ is as a predictor of social ability or interestingness (because I am neither of those things). Still, I am technically in the 98th percentile of intelligence. Maybe I should marry someone dumber than me. But guys don't want to marry someone smarter than them. So, maybe I should pretend to be dumb to find a husband.

And so I talk to myself in circles until I remember that 1) there are many different types of intelligence and 2) smart people don't always end up in the best schools. Or any schools. Why limit myself to the guys who are at Princeton at the same time I am when I could choose men of greater intellect who didn't go to college?

Patton also said women should not wait until their 30s to get married because of potential difficulties in finding a spouse and bearing children at that age.
“A woman looking for a husband in her 30s gives off total desperation,” Patton said, likening the effect to a “man repellent.”

I will have you know I was giving off that desperation starting at age 16! I have gotten less desperate over time. But I'm still repelling to men. That is my constant.

“The fallacy of gender equality is that men can take a lifetime to marry and have children, and women cannot,” she said. “That is a hard and cold bulletproof fact.” 

Well, okay. That's true. What can I do with that fact? I wanted to get married and have children. I wanted that as long as I could remember. I was in relationships. They didn't work out. Now I'm 33. Have I ruined my entire life?

There is a narrative in the world about the woman who ignores romance for her career and then it is too late. It's a story that has been around for a LONG time. The Hepburn/Tracy movie "Woman of the Year" talks about it. It isn't the creation of feminism or hippies. And, sure, if you want to have a family then you should probably avoid following that narrative path.

But there is another story that doesn't get told. It is my story. It's the story of 9% of women who never marry and have children even though they wanted to.  I'm not 33, single, and childless because I didn't accept biological reality. I'm here because nobody wanted to marry me, and I've yet to figure out how to pull off a wedding by estoppel. I want to have a child with someone I am in love with. And so do lots of other women. But it didn't happen.

And Princeton Mom's assertions that I'm now repelling to men, or that I was ignoring biological truth, or that I could have done something to prevent it hurts. It hurts because those are the things I tell myself when I see a family at brunch looking adorable.

I did not choose this. I haven't really ever chosen anything in my life. All I can do is make the best with what I end up with.

That's what Princeton Mom doesn't get. Maybe her life was a series of choices that she got wrong at some point. But that isn't typical. I think far more people are like me. We end up in places because the things we planned didn't work out or because other people let us down. I'd much rather tell young women to learn how to make the best with what life hands them than to tell them that they have to force things to happen. If Princeton Mom had learned that lesson then maybe she'd be doing something with her post-divorce life other than telling 20 year old women how to avoid her mistakes.

Pride

I spent the afternoon at Tallahassee Pridefest today with the school's GSA. It was great music, good food, and just a wonderful sense of community.

I was thinking about how it is interesting that the celebrations use the term "pride". Traditionally, pride is not just one of the seven deadly sins, but the original and most serious of the sins. It is the sin that caused Satan to be cast into hell. But it's funny because the pride that the religious accounts talk about don't sound much like what I saw today.

From wikipedia:

pride (Latin, superbia), or hubris (Greek), is considered the original and most serious of the seven deadly sins, and the source of the others. It is identified as a desire to be more important or attractive than others, failing to acknowledge the good work of others, and excessive love of self (especially holding self out of proper position toward God). Dante's definition was "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour"

 The people I met today don't want to be more important than other people. They just want to exist safely outside of the closet. They want to walk down the street with their partner holding hands and not afraid of being attacked. They want to have a picture of their significant other on their desk without being afraid that it will get them fired. That isn't being more important.

Failing to acknowledge good work of others? Gay pride festivals still feature drag queens prominently because they were the ones who fought back at Stonewall. The community is welcoming to allies. Many in the community are concerned about other social issues and work to bring attention to these issues. They aren't perfect, of course. And there has been a lot of conversations about the treatment of transgender issues within the larger gay community (mostly, a feeling that the issues of transgender rights are on the backburner), but those conversations are happening. I don't think that the gay community is guilty of this type of pride.

Excessive love of self? Not as a group. Oh, there may be people guilty of this (in any group) but the gay community is not selfish. They love their partners. Their families. Their community. Every volunteer group I've been a part of has had a larger percentage of GLBT folk than statistics would suggest. They are a community that is very involved with giving back.

Now, I know that Pride was a term adopted to help convey that people should not be ashamed of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Have pride in yourself for who you are. But that pride was just trying to replace the shame and condemnation that society heaped on the community for so long. Much like "Black Power" was a way to give back the power taken away by society "Gay Pride" was about saying that it was okay to be yourself. You know, all those thing Lady Ga Ga sings about.

The strange thing is that you still occasionally hear homophobes who will, in their own way, accuse the GLBT community of being prideful. They say that being able to marry your partner is a shoving your lifestyle in their face. Or that not being fired because your sex and gender are different is a special right. They say that the gay community should just go back in the closet so that some small minded straight people don't have to deal with it.

And yet, it is those very people who seem to best meet Dante's definition of pride: "love of self perverted to hatred and contempt for one's neighbour". The bigots and hypocrites of the right aren't the perfect example of that definition. They are so in love with their faith, in their interpretation of the bible, and with their heterosexuality that it has made them hate their neighbors who don't conform to those things.

The gays may have the pride, but it is their detractors who are being prideful.

Judges Don't Know How the Internet Works

Let's just call this an ongoing series, because it is going to be.

I wrote about a year ago about the Judge who didn't understand how video games worked. Well now we have one who doesn't understand how facebook works.

From the ABAJournal:

A federal appeals court is citing a trial judge’s apparent dislike of Facebook in a decision to vacate an eight-year sentence for a defendant accused of producing child pornography.
During the sentencing, Senior U.S. District Judge Warren Eginton of Connecticut stated he would have sentenced the defendant to six years in prison if not for his concerns about Facebook and the need for general deterrence, according to the March 19 summary order by the New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

Federal sentencing laws are a mess. Years ago there weren't any guidelines and so there was no consistency. One judge would give 10 years for drug possession. One would give 2 years for distribution of drugs. The Congress started setting strict sentencing terms, but these were ruled unconstitutional in US v Booker. So, now there is a weird middle ground. There is a recommended range for sentencing based on the type of crime and factors like the use of a weapon. You run the formula for sentencing adding up the factors and it spits out a sentence. The judge doesn't have to accept the sentence but they need to have a compelling reason to go outside of them. The health of the defendant, or the specific circumstances of the case, might all be reasons.

Another reason is if the judge thinks that the sentence should be harsher to serve as a deterrent to other people. If the crime has been around forever then general deterrence probably isn't a reasonable argument, but if this case brings a twist on it (like internet stalking or selling drugs on silk road) judges may want to punish it more harshly to prevent people from catching on the the new crime trends.

This case involved a woman and man who produced child pornography involving an 8 year old child. She got a slight sentence reduction for testifying against him. We don't know the details of the case (because children are involved) but we know that the internet was not involved in this case, because the Appeals court specifically says so.

(Total speculation, but from the cases I've seen involving couples molesting a child together, the child is usually related to the woman. A daughter or niece or someone else. It is easier for women to have access to children since people are wary of men, but female sexual abuse is wildly under reported. In part, this under reporting is because people believe the narrative of the woman not being the active abuser. The man is the abuser, and the woman is just going along with it because she is abused or is desperate to make him happy. People think the man is sick and the woman must just be desperate. Another weird bit of patriarchy being pro-women, we're too pure and good to ever do something like abuse a child for sexual pleasure)

Anyway, this case didn't involve the internet yet the judge goes on about facebook and society and...oh, just read it yourself in a Grandpa Simpson voice

In justifying its decision to impose a sentence of eight years instead of six, the district court referenced “Facebook, and things like it, and society has changed.” ... The court speculated that the proliferation of Facebook would facilitate an increase in child pornography cases. The court said it hoped Mark Zuckerberg (who founded Facebook) was “enjoying all his money because . . . he’s going to hurt a lot of people . . . .”

Well, somebody saw the Social Network!

Don't worry though. The case is going back for re-sentencing and the judge at that point could still impose the 8 years, as long as they give an actual reason based on the facts of the case instead of one about facebook.

In this particular case there isn't much harm in the fact that this 90 year old judge doesn't understand how the internet works. So, child molester lady gets 2 more years in jail. Big deal.

What is scary is that this same judge could be sitting on a case next week involving deciding if a piece of evidence found on a hard drive is admissible.  Or if a case belongs in federal court when the parties did business online. More and more cases involve elements of technology and judges are not known for being early adopters of technology. The Supreme Court still does not allow cameras in oral arguments or live broadcasts of hearings. So, how can they be expected to properly understand cases about doxxing and iPhone apps.

The lesson to lawyers is to explain, explain, explain. Better to write an over detailed explanation than assume the have knowledge and then lose out.