@JerryBrownGov Vetoes Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

While Gov. Brown deserves some praise for signing a first-of-its-kind bill to ban pray-away-the-gay "therapy" for minors*, and signing a bill to allow young undocumented immigrants to obtain CA driver's licenses, he also deserves a massive whack upside the head for his decision to veto AB889, the Domestic Workers Bill of Rights.

Protip: You can't claim that the (overwhelmingly brown and female) workers of an industry deserve protections - and we're talking basic shit like guaranteed meal breaks, rest periods for live-in caretakers, and overtime pay - but turn around and veto it because it might cost more.  Yes, it will.  Duh.  That has always been how worker protections are.  But, see, the principle here is that people's safety and basic needs and ability to do their job without abuses are more important than the almighty dollar.  Just to clear that up for you, since you seemed to be confused.

It's couched in claims of concern for the poor and elderly who might have to pay more and thus not be able to afford caretaker support.  This is a legitimate concern.  You know how to address that, though?  Social support programs to make up the difference.  Fuck, go right to single-payer healthcare and you'll skip a lot of the trouble with that in the first place.  You know how not to address it?  By refusing to institute basic protections for the workers.  Don't take it out on them.  They deserve better.

He also pulls a line straight out of the anti-union-big-business playbook by saying that requiring such protections might mean there are fewer jobs overall because employers are having to pay more.  Gee, that sounds an awful lot like the arguments businesses have used against every union and every labor law ever - "We can't pay healthcare as well as wages, we'll go bankrupt and you'll all lose your jobs!"  "We can't afford to offer paid time off, it'll raise our costs and we'll have to lay people off to make ends meet!" etc. - and it's just as shitty coming from a supposed Democrat who just vetoed a worker protection bill as it is coming from private-sector PR.

It's especially shitty when it comes from a supposed Democrat who also vetoed two bills that would have instituted more stringent worker protections for agricultural workers by requiring that employers provide water and shade to prevent heat-related illnesses and deaths, basically by saying "yeah but this will actually lead to holding agribusinesses accountable in court (rather than just issuing them citations that are literally planned for in the company's accounting structure), and we don't like that."

But as was pointed out on tumblr, Brown knows what he's doing.  These bills overwhelmingly affect undocumented and migrant workers.  Who can't vote.  So he bolsters his cred with businesses (the California Chamber of Commerce opposed all three bills, gee I wonder why?) without losing much in actual votes come election time.

Smart politics.  Shitty decisions.

*Which I will have way more on tomorrow, because Liberty Counsel is already threatening to sue, and their histrionics are both predictable as fuck and hilarious.

Why Do We Celebrate This?

A few years ago, when I was still living out in Tennessee, I brought my first girlfriend home to visit family for the holidays.  She had never been to NorCal before.  The architecture here tends to be heavily Spanish-villa/mission influenced; I remember as we were driving somewhere, and we were talking about a particularly spectacular example of it (a country club out in Napa, IIRC), she got quiet for a moment, then asked, "Why?"

"Why what?" I replied.

"The mission-style architecture.  Why is that still such a thing?  Why model buildings after a period of colonization, where the purpose of the original buildings you're inspired by was to forcibly take over and convert the Native populations?"

I was at a loss.  "Because it's our history?" I offered, knowing what a weak excuse that was.

That conversation was brought to mind today by this post over on Calitics, a California-specific politics blog where I get most of my local- and state-level political news.  Fort Ross, an old Russian outpost and historic site on the northern coast of California that was one of the first European settlements on the west coast, turned 200 yesterday.  The post was a simple enough quick-recap of the history of it and a "happy birthday", but it got me wondering.

Why do we celebrate this?

Especially since the subhead was about it being one of the first European settlements in the area, like that was the salient point and major accomplishment we were celebrating?

What we're "celebrating" is a new phase in the invasion and colonization of the Americas.  An event which ended in the deaths of many, and the near or total obliteration of hundreds of unique cultures, simply because they were here first and white people wanted the land for them(our)selves, and which has left a legacy of racism, poverty, and appropriation that continues today.

Do we have these bicentennials (or really, far-more-centennials) for enduring Native settlements?  LOLno.  Both because most were destroyed by colonizers and the people forcibly moved away, and because even if they hadn't been this wouldn't be a priority for the general public.

And that disparity in and of itself should tell you that this is not the innocuous "yay history" it seems at first glance.

We should not be uncritically celebrating this.

Warning to Goddess-Worshiping Women in SoCal: The Goddess Temple of Orange County is Actively Transmisogynist

[TW: transmisogyny, misgendering/third-gendering, biological essentialism]*

Via The Wild Hunt's weekly Unleash The Hounds linkspam post, I found this blog entry by Tracie Welser, a pagan woman in Southern California, about her experience with transmisogyny at the Goddess Temple of Orange County.  The short version is, at a women-only service honoring Cybele - which gives this story an extra layer of fuckery, as several Hellenismos friends of mine have pointed out that Cybele had one of the most famous orders of trans priestesses in history** - the Temple's "Presiding Priestess" Ava (I don't see how that's different from High Priestess, but in comments to the linked post she disavowed that title, so I will respect her expressed identity, which is a damn sight more than she is willing to do for trans women) made a series of comments about "the truth of womanhood" that referred to trans women as "mutilated", "not truly women" and "denying the truth of who they are".  According to Tracie, who was at the service in question, it was spoken dogmatically by a person in a position of spiritual authority, and members were then asked to "meditate on this unreality [of trans-ness versus cis-ness]".  This was not a dialogue.  This was dogma.

So, with Tracie's permission, I am sharing this information for the benefit of any pagan female readers I have who are in that area, or who may be there at some point.  The Goddess Temple of Orange County is NOT a safe space for trans women or their allies.  It is headed by a 2nd-waver who defines womanhood by the possession of a uterus (apparently, even if you have had yours removed, if you were born with one, she considers you to have an "etheric womb", which begs the question of why she doesn't consider trans women to have the same sort of "etheric womb"...).

If you want to head over to Tracie's post and jump into the conversation, be warned that Ava has showed up in comments and is defending her bigotry with the usual litany of bullshit (which she asked me to post on here when I commented to ask Tracie if she would mind me blogging about this, lolno).

*I swear to fucking god I almost feel like I could TW for "2nd-wave bullshit" at this point, and it would be pretty easily understood.  Although it might be unclear as to whether I'm referring to their cis-supremacy or their racism, so...maybe not.


**Much like the fact that it was a rite to Lilith that was the site of transmisogynistic exclusion at PantheaCon 2011, which...just read this fantastic post about the absurdity of holding a trans-exclusionary ritual to Lilith in particular.  

9th Circuit Rules Prop H8 Unconstitutional!

An animated gif from Babylon 5, a 90's sci-fi TV show, of a maniacally grinning man with very tall hair giggling and tapping his fingertips together in excitement

It will of course be appealed, and I'm not at all certain of SCOTUS doing the right thing on this issue, but it's pretty damn exciting that we're batting 2-for-2 so far!

Also, is it even possible for political orgs to celebrate a victory WITHOUT immediately tacking on a request for more of their supporters' money?  I've so far gotten "YAY VICTORY now give us money plz" emails from AFER, Freedom to Marry, and Courage Campaign, and I'm sure I'll see at least one or two more by the end of the day.  Can't we just enjoy the moment without being milked for more cash?

Bah.  Still going to enjoy the moment.  Prop 8 Trial Tracker has the text of the decision available here, if anyone wants to read it.

Tell Gov. Brown: No Repeal of Hayden Law!

Over the past few years, austerity measures have been the go-to "fix" (I put that in scare quotes because austerity fixes fucking nothing and we all know it) for budget deficit crises at all levels of government in this country.  Services for vulnerable populations have been slashed left, right, and center.  Disability services.  Subsidized health insurance services.  Reproductive health care services.  Food banks.  When the going gets tough, fuck over the poor and those in need, seems to be the theory.

This week, I heard about another cut about to go into place here in California, that would harm a population that hadn't occurred to me to worry about yet.

Shelter animals.

Governor Brown has said he wants to repeal a 1998 shelter-reform law, called the Hayden Law, that among other things mandated that county-run shelters hold onto animals for six days after being brought in before they could be euthanized, instead of the previous 72 hours.  The reform also required that shelters structure their open hours to include after-work and weekend times - or, if they were a small staff, make "by appointment" times available outside of normal work hours - so that (when combined with the six day minimum holding time) people who had lost a pet but who also worked a day job would actually be able to come and claim their animals before they were put to sleep.  To quote from the Facebook page of Sutter's Friends, a group dedicated to stopping the repeal:

What is at risk in the proposed repeal? Permanent loss of the requirement to provide prompt and necessary veterinary care. Permanent loss of the requirement to hold animals for an extended period to increase opportunites for redemption and adoption. Permanent loss of the requirement to post lost and found lists. And, among other things, permanent loss of the requirement to provide care for animals other than cats and dogs, such as rabbits, hamsters, and other animals commonly kept as pets.

This is a topic near and dear to me.  Every animal but one that I've bonded to - either belonging to me, my family, or close friends - has been a shelter animal.  Ozz and I just adopted our first in December, and we specifically chose to look for our new family member at the county shelter instead of the no-kill alternatives so that we could help in some small way to increase the survival rate there.  Kalika, our family's first dog, a golden retriever from the county shelter.  Kelly Anne, another golden, from a private rescue organization.  Diablo and Cielle, my mom's two cats, from a different private rescue org.  Amee, my ex's Siamese cat, from the county shelter.  Isis, my ex's and his brother's cat (and sort of mine, too, for awhile), from a shelter in Tennessee.  And now, Mara, Ozz's and my cat, from the county shelter.  And we plan to continue adopting from the shelter when we're ready to expand our family.

Local animal shelters can be an invaluable resource for saving animals' lives, from strays to runaway or lost pets - but they are all too often where animals' lives end, too.  The Hayden Law helped tilt that balance a bit more toward saving.  Jerry Brown's repeal would tilt it back toward death, and while I realize CA's budget situation is fairly desperate, I somehow don't get the feeling that euthanizing more shelter animals is going to be the linchpin on which a balanced budget would turn.

So I'm asking my readers to lift a small teaspoon in support of the Hayden Law.  Petitions against Gov. Brown's proposed repeal may be found and signed here and here; if you're on Facebook, "like" Sutter's Friends to stay on top of updates.

It's the humans' fault that there are so many homeless domestic-breed animals in the world to begin with; the least we can do is try to kill as few of them for the sake of our irresponsibility as possible.

Would somebody put a stake through this thing's heart, already?

We have killed it three times already, and it simply will not stay dead!  Via RHRealityCheck, I hear that the zombie parental notification bill is back in California again, after defeats in 2005, 2006, and 2008, for another round.  Two different versions of the bill (one of which would require a 48-hour waiting period between notification and procedure, the other of which would not) are now circulating petitions to gather signatures in the hopes of making it to the ballot for 2012.

This particular fight is, in a strange way, dear to my heart, as it was the scene of my first involvement in a political campaign as an adult, back in 2005 - the first demonstration I ever went to was coordinated through the Santa Cruz Planned Parenthood against Prop 73, the first phone banking effort I took part in was also through them for the same issue.  It brings up good memories, but at the same time, it's annoying to see an issue I first fought for as a rosy-cheeked behbeh activist still in my teens, coming up again.

Admittedly, pro-choicers in CA sort of knew this would happen; the initiative has been funded each time by a wealthy conservative newspaper owner in SoCal who has publicly vowed to keep trying until it passes, and he's renewed that commitment after every defeat.  (Gee, must be nice to have money enough to throw at a failing proposition year after year - voter initiatives don't come cheap, especially if they get sufficient publicity to turn truly contentious.)  It does, however, mean the rights of young Californians will be continually at risk, until Mr. Holman either dies, or gets bored of it, or gets the message and goes away.

I would be surprised to see this bill fail to get enough signatures, since it's managed to multiple times before and this time, it's riding a surge wave of anti-choice momentum from the past year.  Most likely, it will end up on the ballot, meaning another campaign, more money and time and effort spent on simply trying to hold the crumbling battlements against the unending anti-choice onslaught.

Well, I'll be there.  Again.  And to my readers in California - or anywhere else, if you have the means to remotely assist - I hope to see you there, on the front lines.

The Blame Game and #OccupyOakland

I had heard last night that there was a(nother) planned eviction of Occupy Oakland set for this morning.  Nothing much to do but hope and pray that the cops wouldn't turn violent again.  Reading this morning's news, it seems that things were indeed relatively peaceful - legal observers and press observers were permitted to be in the camp unharassed by police, and while the encampment is gone again and there were 32 people arrested - mostly clergy and religious personnel from what I've heard, good job, I'm sure handcuffing priests is absolutely vital to the security of the nation - it did happen without the police brutality that has been the hallmark of these repeated attempts to quash the Occupy movement.

But this morning, in perusing my Twitter feed to catch up on the news, I came across this tweet from my local news channel, @abc7newsBayArea:

Screenshot of a tweet from @abc7newsBayArea reading "Mayor @JeanQuan said over 175 911 calls were not answered this past week because of police attention to #OccupyOakland"

This unfortunately follows the usual pattern of Mayor Quan's faux-populism attacks on #OO: point to various bad things in the city that are harming the people of Oakland, then blame the effects on #OO whether they're related or not.  When there was a shooting near the camp that ended with one man dead, even though neither the victim nor the shooter(s) were affiliated or involved with #OO, Quan used it to call for the encampent to disband because "violence is unacceptable".  It's Oakland, for fuck's sake!  One of the most violent cities in the Bay Area!  Shootings like the one that took place near #OO happen tragically often in Oakland, and statistically speaking it was just a matter of time before one happened in proximity to #OO.  Even OPD declared it unrelated, but Quan tried to make out like it was Occupy's fault and used it to justify evicting the encampment today


And now, this tweet this morning, which holds the not-so-subtle implication that it's #OO's fault that the police are spending time harassing #OO and were thus unable to respond to other calls.  Mayor Quan, you know there's a simple solution to that, right?  Leave Occupy the fuck alone.  All the cops have done around Occupy is stir up more trouble and escalate tensions.  YOU are the one choosing to devote so many police resources - and spending $2.4 million the city could ill afford to cover the costs of evicting #OO this morning, too - to Occupy and thus depriving your other constituents of what little protection or help they might have gained from the cops this past week when those calls were going unanswered.  Don't blame this on Occupy.  Take responsibility for your own actions and your own choices and what they are costing the people of your city, all because you're feeling threatened by some peaceful but very visible protests.

Personhood Amendments Come To California

Personhood amendments: that example of radical anti-choice ideology that goes SO far, even regular anti-choicers are like "Err, no, dude, not that way, okay?"

I mean, we're talking about a movement that gives only the barest of lip service to disavowing actual murderers in their midst, and they will actually come out and oppose these personhood amendments.  Not because they disagree with the premise, more because they think it's too far too fast and the backlash will set them back in terms of PR.

Personhood amendments, for those without their fingers on the pulse of reproductive justice battles *preen preen, smug smug ;-) *, are amendments with Orwellian names like "Human Rights Amendment" and "Respect for All Life Amendment", which declare the legal term "person" to include "all humans at all stages of development from conception to natural death" or some variation on that basic wording.  They're a blatant attempt to end-run around Roe by ensuring that laws against assault, murder, abuse, etc - designed to apply to born people - also apply to fetuses.  They could have a whole host of fucked-up effects, from banning abortion (the core intent) to banning certain forms of contraception, like the IUD and the pill, and banning in vitro fertilization procedures.  They're also intended to provide the vehicle for a case to go to the Supreme Court in the hopes that this court will overturn Roe entirely - which would then allow a number of states with "trigger measures" on the books to immediately go into effect and ban abortion entirely.

They are, in other words, the most extreme anti-choice legislation ever, and Really Fucking Bad News.  (Also ridiculous, medically and scientifically speaking, as we have no way of identifying the moment of conception, only implantation; but then, we all know anti-choicers are not on speaking terms with science.)

Colorado overwhelmingly rejected their personhood amendment - twice.  Ohio has a measure on the ballot for this coming year, although the Attorney General and Personhood Ohio are wrangling over the summary language to be included on the ballot - the AG refused to certify their summary because it was misleading, and Personhood Ohio is appealing.  Mississippi is the "state to watch" for 2012 personhood amendments, with an amendment on the ballot and frighteningly high approval rate in polls.  Personhood USA's stated goal is to get these awful amendments on the ballot in every state across the nation.

And now, it seems, California's time has come.  The absurdly-titled "California Human Rights Amendment" has been submitted to the Attorney General's office for certification.  The AG is to certify the proposed title, language, and summary, after which proponents can start gathering signatures to put it on the ballot.

Frankly, this is fucking California.  We won't even pass a parental notification law (although they keep trying; 3 out of the last 4 elections.  You'd think they'd eventually learn it's not going to happen).  So normally I'd just scoff and write it off as anti-choice fever dreams.  Except for the language they're using.  Take a look:

"The term "person" applies to all living human organisms from the beginning of their biological development, regardless of the means by which they were procreated, method of reproduction, age, race, sex, gender, physical well-being, function, or condition of physical or mental dependency and/or disability. "

Compare that with the Mississippi version...

Section 33. Person defined. As used in this Article III of the state constitution, "The term 'person' or 'persons' shall include every human being from the moment of fertilization, cloning or the functional equivalent thereof."

Or the Colorado version...

 Section 32. Person defined. As used in sections 3, 6, and 25 of Article II of the state constitution, the term "person" shall apply to every human being from the beginning of the biological development of that human being.

Not that I have no faith in my fellow Californians - okay, maybe I don't; sorry, y'all, but you *did* pass Prop H8 - but I notice they've padded out the California version of this crap with all the sort of anti-discrimination-law-language that will appeal to the "token liberal" type - you know, the person who believes in human rights but isn't inclined to do much research on things before voting?  And I don't think it's accidental that they've sort of tucked this "*cough*beginningofbiologicaldevelopment*cough*" bit in among a whole lot of "age race sex gender disability protections yay" fluff, all of which is *already* covered in California's nondiscrimination laws.

No, this is pretty definitely an attempt to appeal to our collective liberal identity as The Right Sort of Person, you know, the kind of person who supports human rights and will vote in favor of them, by tacking on the name of "Human Rights Amendment" and adding lots of irrelevant reiterations of current nondiscrimination laws in the hopes that we won't look too hard past that. 

I can't decide if I find it infuriating or amusing. 

Actually, I take that back; I know exactly what I find it: frightening.  It's a targeted message that shows an unfortunate level of understanding of the bulk of moderate voters here in California, and I am not at all sure of pro-choice organizations' ability to mount an extensive, expensive, well-publicized education campaign to combat the lazy feel-good vote in favor of something called a "Human Rights Amendment", no matter what that amendment would actually do.

Not With A Bang, But A Whimper: How California's local governments' "moderate" response to #OWS might be more dangerous to the movement than outright crackdowns

In Oakland, after the police used tear gas and rubber bullets on Occupy protesters, the mayor released a statement (PDF) apologizing for the excessive force and listing a "compromise" position which would ostensibly allow Occupy to continue without police opposition - so long as nobody stayed overnight.

The San Francisco mayor's office says he supports the protests but is citing "health concerns" and saying they can't stay much longer.

Fresno justifies their intent to remove Occupy protesters because they "failed to meet permit requirements" such as "limiting the gathering to about 20 people" along with, predictably, not staying overnight.

I read these stories and I wonder if, in a way, California's generally-liberal nature is actually working *against* the Occupy movements here.  This is California, we love us a good protest, but do it quietly and only during park hours with a small number of people, if you please.

Oakland's "no camping" stance is ridiculous because...err, you do realize that the point of Occupy is to, well...occupy?  To take over and hold a space in the name of the people, as a visible community together against oligarchic oppression?  "Only during daylight hours" completely fails to address this.  Without the community, without the living-together-encampments, Occupy is just another Tea Party.

San Francisco's "okay but not too much longer" stance misses the point again: an Occupy that lasts a couple weeks then goes home is just a blip on the radar; to do the work that Occupy is trying to do, it needs to make it clear that it's not just a passing fad, that it's a serious movement that will not just go away and cannot just be ignored.  It's taken nearly two months for #OWS to gain even the piddly amount of mainstream media coverage it's gotten.  It would have been no coverage at all if they'd gone home after a week or two.

Fresno's complaint about the protest being too big for a permit is basically a gentle request to defang your own movement; the point of the Occupy protests is to show a massive display of solidarity.  To demonstrate the 99% principle, to show that we really do outnumber the 1%.  Making sure only 20 people show up sort of defeats that purpose.

And that's the problem with these demands.  They are so reasonable on the surface and designed to appeal to the moderate person's sense of compromise, but to comply with them would strip the essential meaning from the Occupy protests.  They would see them reduced to a useless, token gesture, easily ignored and dismissed.  But because they're framed as moderate, common-sense compromises, to reject them and continue to preserve the core principles of the Occupy movement leaves it open to being painted as "radicals" who refused to negotiate with the authorities.  Bad PR, and fodder for mainstream media attempts to discredit the movement - "We tried to negotiate, but those hippies wouldn't budge!"  And I am very much afraid that disregarding the pseudo-reasonable demands of local governments who are trying to compromise the movement into irrelevancy will set the stage for ever more violent clashes as they use that refusal as justification for "extreme" tactics out of "necessity".

I hope - and I think most likely it will happen - that the Occupy movements negotiating with the local governments stay true to their principles and refuse to conform to "acceptable" levels of protest.  But I'm concerned what that refusal might do to the general representation and public opinion of Occupy and that it might provoke further police violence.  And I'm not at all sure which path is best, in the end.

Thoughts?

More Race-Based Antichoice Propaganda

Remember these?  And these, and these?  Playing on the statistical discrepancy between rates of abortion for white and black women, they set out to demonize black women for making reproductive choices other than giving birth to EVERY PREGNANCY NO MATTER WHAT.  Conveniently, they ignored the part about structural inequality and poverty and other issues which might explain why abortion is much more prevalent among black women than white women.

Welp, they're at it again.  Only now it's Latinas under fire.  Using the same phrase, "The most dangerous place for a Latino is in the womb," in both Spanish and English, with a silhouette of a child and smaller polaroid-style pictures of babies' faces and a pregnant woman's belly (curiously, the woman is headless/faceless; it's almost like they don't want people thinking about the woman, only her body and specifically her uterus), the campaign is unveiling this weekend in Los Angeles, CA. 

The group behind it, as usual, cites statistics, showing that Latinas are 2.7 times more likely to get an abortion than non-Hispanic whites.  And as usual, that's thrown out there without any discussion of racism, systemic inequality, poverty, employment problems, access to contraception, etc which might, just a tiny bit, maybe in some way contribute to a woman's decision to abort rather than carry a pregnancy to term. 

As I said before, if you really want to address this discrepancy, work on the CAUSES of the disproportionate rate of unwanted pregnancy/inability to carry wanted pregnancies to term.  Demonizing Latinas who choose to abort like this is just fucked-up, and it's not going to help*.


*You know who is helping?  Planned Parenthood and all their low-cost/free/sliding-scale contraception and other sexual health services.  Suck on that, anti-choice assholes.

San Francisco's Circumcision Ban

The City of San Francisco will have on its next ballot a measure that would ban circumcisions performed on minors in that jurisdiction.  There is nothing in the proposed language that would allow for religious exemptions for Jewish or Muslim families wishing to circumcise their sons for religious reasons. 

The legal blogs are all over this, discussing it in terms of both parental rights and religious rights.  (It's honestly pretty dense reading, I didn't get through all of it, and they reference quite a number of other cases.  But here's a good roundup for the curious.)  I had declared myself cautiously in favor of the ban in conversations with friends/family, but in the ensuing discussions, I discovered I actually felt far stronger about it than I'd thought.

It still bothers me a little that there's no religious exemption.  Being of a minority faith which is still struggling in many ways to be treated fairly under the law, I find the idea of laws that ban a practice originating in a particular religion to be troubling. 

On the other hand, the vast majority of circumcisions in the U.S. are not done for religious reasons, but for reasons like "not looking different," or "so he looks like his father," or "just because that's what's done."  Given that circumcision offers only minimal, mostly potential health benefits (the US Academy of Pediatrics does not recommend routine circumcision) and is generally a cosmetic procedure, why is it acceptable for parents to choose such an intimate bodily modification for an infant incapable of consent?  When a mother was featured on TV last week for having had her 8-year-old daughter given Botox injections, there was a righteously outraged wave of condemnation.  How can we logically condemn one parent for having a minimally-invasive, semi-permanent (Botox injections fade after about six months, IIRC) cosmetic procedure done on a child, while accepting a much more intimate and absolutely permanent *surgical* cosmetic procedure performed on days-old infants without comment?

And I even find it harder and harder to advocate for a religious exemption, the more I consider it.  Those who would have female "circumcision" - more accurately described as female genital mutilation - performed on their children are not permitted to do so (it's legally banned in California, at least), deep-held cultural values notwithstanding.  Which makes it logically inconsistent to advocate upholding the ban on FGM without exception, while wanting a religious exemption for a circumcision ban.

So I suppose in the end, it comes to this:  I don't believe parents should be making permanently-body-altering decisions for their children, period.  I don't care what religion the parents hew to, or what their cultural beliefs dictate they do to their kids.  It's unethical, to perform such procedures on those too young to independently decide for themselves.  If people choose to have body modifications made as adults, that's their prerogative.  If you want to get circumcised, go for it.  Have fun.  But something like that should require active, informed consent, and an infant is absolutely incapable of giving such.

What do you think?  I'd like to hear other perspectives on this.

Your Rights End Where Mine Begin

How is this a difficult concept to grasp?  I would think it would be pretty simple.  Your right to do something ends where my right not to have my life interfered with in some way begins.

But apparently this guy doesn't get the idea.  This preacher went to a local DMV in a town in Southern California one morning before it opened, and began reading the Bible and preaching to the people standing in line waiting for the office to open.  After being asked to stop by a security guard and refusing, he, and the two elders of his church who had come with him, were arrested for trespassing and interfering with a public business.  (Personally, I think he should have been cited for public nuisance, but that's just me.)

Cue, of course, the whining of the Poor! Persecuted! Christians! about how the ebil gub'mint is coming for their Bibles and soon it will be illegal to be Christian in this country.  One of the linked articles is headlined, not kidding, "Christians Arrested for Reading the Bible in Public".  Which, while technically factually correct, conveys rather a different message than what actually happened, which was that they were arrested for proselytizing, at a captive audience, on government property.

It gets better, of course.  In the end, the three jackasses weren't actually charged, and now they're suing the state for infringement on their religious freedom and free speech rights!

What is this I don't even.  Look, dudes, your right to free speech and freedom of religion does not include the right to harass people waiting in line at the goddamn DMV.  That's just not how it fucking works.  And no, as one of the linked bloggers claimed, the people in line couldn't "just" go away and come back when it opened.  Have you been to a California DMV lately?  If you don't have an appointment and you arrive after it opens, expect to wait at least an hour before you even TALK to anyone, and gods help you if there are more forms to fill out, because yes, they will make you wait through the line AGAIN to bring the forms back up (unless you get a really nice DMV person; they're out there, they really are.  Sometimes.).  So the only way to get in and out quickly, if you wanted to do anything else with your day or if you have an appointment or have to work later, is to get there at least half an hour before they open and wait in the pre-opening line.  It's completely unfair to force people to choose between coming back later and thus spending twice as long at the DMV, and listening to you force your religion on them. 

Your right to share your religion ends where their right to do business with the DMV without suffering religious harassment begins.  Because that's what public preaching to a captive audience is: religious harassment.  You give them no choice in whether to listen to you or not - that being the definition of a captive audience - and force them to listen to your religious dogma, which they may or may not share.  That is not what is meant by either "freedom of religion" or "freedom of speech".  You are absolutely, completely and totally making up out of whole cloth this imagined "right" to proselytize in this manner.  It does not exist.  Period the end.

(I can't decide if my lolsob is more lol or more sob at this; referring to captive audiences as "organic congregations" is just...just...words fail me.  Fuck, I hope that was supposed to be a joke...)

Brown v Plata: The Humanity Of Prisoners

To put it bluntly, California's justice/prison system is utterly, completely broken.  Thanks to what is widely acknowledged as the most draconian three-strikes law (on your third conviction of a felony, the sentence is life imprisonment, period, no exceptions) in the nation, our prisons are overloaded with mostly-nonviolent offenders, most of them convicted of various drug possession or sale offenses.  The state prison system was built to house around 80,000 prisoners; it currently houses nearly 150,000.  Overcrowding of such epic proportions, combined with constant budget cuts, has led to a situation in which "on average, an inmate in one of California's prisons needlessly dies every six to seven days due to constitutional deficiencies in the medical delivery system."

SCOTUS has now stepped in with a ruling yesterday, Brown v Plata, which holds that the level of overcrowding and resulting deficiencies in care violate the 8th Amendment's ban on cruel and unusual punishment.  That's how bad it is.   The document describes unthinkable, mass-storage conditions, like cramming 200 prisoners into a gymnasium supervised by only two or three officers.  It's just horrifying.

It made me remember a project I did, years ago in college, about health-care delivery systems in the prison system.  (I took a course on "structures in clinical health care" or something like that as an "Oh, shit, I need credits." sort of elective thing.)  The rates of Hep C were unthinkable, treatment was scarce, prisoners who were entering more or less healthy were leaving with lifelong diseases that the system had neither bothered to prevent nor treat.  I was horrified to read about the complete disregard with which prisoners in my state were being treated - or rather, not treated.

And yet I remember a conversation with a coworker and a customer and I on a slow day last year, still fresh in my mind, where the customer was griping about how "those damn prisoners get organ transplants paid for by my tax dollars," and "they get better medical care than I do."  And I said, first of all, that's not true, at least in this state; the medical care in our prison system is awful-to-nonexistent.  But that aside, why shouldn't prisoners receive necessary medical care?  We're not talking about cosmetic boob jobs here, we're talking about necessary-to-survive medications and operations and other forms of care.  At which point my coworker jumped in and sided with the customer, saying that it's just not fair and they fucked up so they don't deserve anything (heavily paraphrasing, but that was the gist of it). 

And I think of the criminal-in-chief of Maricopa County, Arizona, Joe Arpaio, too.  His tent cities in the desert and his chain gangs, and how strangely, and horrifyingly, he has remained in power for nearly twenty years now.  That people defend him, and reelect him, over and over, because his awful human rights abuses are "only" against prisoners (and immigrants, and anybody non-white, really) and they "deserve" it. 

Why is this okay?  Why is it commonly accepted that being convicted of a crime - without knowing what the crime was, mind you.  People end up in prison for rape and murder, yes, but also for drug possession or other nonviolent offenses, and I hope people aren't trying to make those out to be equally bad - means you deserve whatever kind of treatment those in power dish out?  Do we really want a culture where one bad decision is enough to completely strip a person of hir humanity, hir rights to decency and a certain minimum standard of treatment?  I'm sure it's only a coincidence that these views coincide with a "justice" system that is heavily racist, so most of the time when one talks about "prisoners" it's also a sort of code for "lower-class PoC", right? /sarcasm 

I can understand being angry at the fact that, for many people, prison healthcare *is* actually better than what we can access on the outside.  It's galling to know that while I, having never committed a crime, struggle along without access to any healthcare at all, people who have committed crimes are having their health care paid for on the state's dime.  So I get that envy and anger, I really do.  But I don't think the solution is to heap further abuse on the prison population.  It's not their fault our government has shitty priorities.  When there is an inequality between haves and have-nots, the solution is not to tear down those who have, it's to raise up those who have not.  And you know, maybe if we provided universal healthcare and a living wage and decent educational opportunities, not only would the people on the outside not have to be jealous of medical care afforded to prisoners, a lot of people in prison, who turned to the least-worst path available to them despite the illegality of that path, might not *be* in prison in the first place. 

California Republicans: "We Will Do The Will Of The People, Even If It's Not The Will Of The People!"

You know how Republicans like their public image to be all about Real Americans™ and grassroots America versus the evil liberal elites?  They like to say they're doing the will of the people by fighting against things that help the people, like social safety nets and assistance programs.  But those who are paying attention know they're full of shit.

Like here in California, for instance.  California's legislature operates under a terrible little procedural rule that requires a 2/3 vote for the state's budget to pass*.  This leads every time to "the ransom letter", the list of demands the Republican minority requires in order to pass a budget and keep the state running.  If you've heard about CA repeatedly having late budgets and running on IOUs on a strangely regular basis, this is why, btw.  I don't think there's a single time in my adult life that the budget has come from the legislature on time.  Apparently 2009 set a record for 100 days after the deadline. 

Anyway, the full list can be read here (via).  But buried in there is a bit about gutting AB 32, California's landmark greenhouse emissions standards law that passed a couple years ago.  Big Oil, which has quite a number of refineries in California (There are 4 refineries within a 15 mile radius of where I live, for example), is not a fan of this law, for obvious reasons.  There was a pitched battle over Prop 23 this past election, which would have suspended AB 32 "until the state's economy is back on track" - which is to say never, because they'd keep manufacturing crises to justify keeping it suspended - bankrolled by Valero, which we won.  AB 32 is safe and still on the books. 

So the Legislature passed AB 32...Big Oil and the Republicans tried to use the financial crisis to get it suspended...that didn't work, and the people voted to keep AB 32 intact.  So what's their response?  To use the yearly budget fight to try to destroy AB 32 anyway.

Let me repeat that: the people voted to keep it.  So why is the party of Real Americans™ attempting to use backroom deals to override the stated will of the people? 

I guess the "will of the people" is just a soundbite to trot out when its convenient, rather than an actual principle they'll abide by.  Thanks for letting us know where you stand, CA Republicans.  Now kindly fuck off.

*Prop 25 in this past election changed it to require a simple majority, but that doesn't seem to have taken effect yet as far as I can tell, and I can't find an "effective as of" date anywhere.

I Think Jesus Would Have A Few Words To Say About This...

First let me say, if you're not following Sociological Images, you should be.  Awesome analysis of visual culture, updated quite frequently.  Love it. 

Secondly, trigger warning on the video for xenophobia, threats, accusations of domestic violence, and virulent Islamophobia. 

This video was posted on SocImages a few days ago.  A SoCal chapter of ICNA Relief, a Muslim organization which raises and distributes money for various charitable efforts including food pantries, disaster relief, and women's shelters, hosted their annual fundraising dinner in Yorba Linda.  The funds raised were to support women's shelters, as well as homelessness and hunger relief work. However, a bunch of racist fuckwits got wind of it, and came to protest.  Because, of all the things in this country to be protesting right now, a fundraising dinner for a charitable relief agency is totally Important, right?

So a couple hundred (according to news accounts) asshats showed up with American flags, signs, and vicious xenophobia to protest the dinner and harass the people entering and leaving.  Again, trigger warnings on the video - this shit is *ugly*.  Partial transcript below.

Footage shows groups of angry white people behind police tape, carrying signs and a veritable forest of American flags, screaming hateful things, interspersed with shots of Muslim families, some women in headscarves and some without, being harassed as they enter the community hall where the dinner was being held, and shots of elected officials standing on a flag-draped and -bedecked podium letting their ignorance and hate hang out for their constituents to see.

"Make no bones about it - what is going on over there is pure. unadulterated. evil...My son is a Marine - in fact, I know quite a few Marines who will be happy to help these terrorists to their holy meeting in Paradise!" - Deborah Pauly, Villa Park Councilwoman (R)

Random protester, after threatening to rip the video-taker's fucking camera out of his fucking hands and break it if he kept taking video: "Go back home!  Go back home!  You beat your women and children!  Why don't you go beat up your wife?  She probably needs a good beating!"

"The problem with America is that our children have been taught that every idea is right, that no one should criticize another's positions, no matter how odious...They call that "multiculturalism".  And it has paralyzed too many of our fellow citizens from making the critical judgment we need to make to prosper as a society!" - Congressman Ed Royce (R)

Random protester, as a woman in a headscarf walks by with a girl beside her: "One nation under God, not Allah!  Get out of here!  Never forget 9/11!"

Various other protesters: "Take your Shariah and go home!"  "You don't belong here!"  "You're not welcome here!"  "Get out of here, terrorist!"

I watch this video and want to cry with shame at what my "fellow Americans"* think is acceptable behavior.  The ignorance on display here, the hate and seething rage that feels, even from the distance of three weeks, half a state away, and viewing it on video, a hair's breadth away from exploding into outright violence, is stunning. This is the kind of mob mentality that ends up with people getting killed.  And further, that elected officials feel safe in getting up behind a microphone and adding fuel to the fire...I have no words for that.

Like Councilwoman Pauly's assertion that a charity dinner, purely by virtue of being sponsored by a Muslim organization, is "pure unadulterated evil".  And her veiled threat about Marines she knows who would "be happy to help them to a meeting in Paradise!"  I cannot believe that an elected official feels safe and supported in getting up and saying, on-camera, that she knows some people who would like to kill those people over there whose only crime is belonging to a religion she disapproves of.  What the fucking fuck?

Or Congressman Royce's schtick about "multiculturalism" being a bad thing that "paralyzes" our "fellow citizens" - hey, asshat, you know what?  Most of the Muslims at that dinner you're so loudly criticizing are, in fact, also citizens of this country.  I thought the whole point of America was that, even if you believe something different from the mainstream or dress differently than the mainstream, you are still American?  No? - from "making the critical judgments."  So, let's pull the veil off this one, Royce.  What exactly are those "critical judgments" you think we need to make?  I have a fair guess: you want us to outright declare that any beliefs but your WASPy traditions are Wrong and Bad, and only White Cis Straight Christian Men (WCSCM) should be allowed to run this country because they're the only ones with the right Principles and Morals, yes?  And of course it has nothing to do with the fact that you yourself are a WCSCM and would benefit greatly from official codification of the status quo and official condemnation of anything that does not fit your standards.  Right?

And of course, the protesters, who have no obligation to be coherent or even pseudo-rational in their screamed hate, because they won't have names attached to what they say.  The themes of "Go home" - as if there are no Muslim Americans?  As one attendee to the dinner was quoted in the local paper as saying, "I'm actually from Fullerton, CA.  So I don't know where "back home" is." - and of course, conflating "Muslim" and "terrorist" as if they are one and the same, are incredibly disturbing.  The anti-Sharia sentiment is telling, as well.  As I pointed out to a family member the other day, when talking about the wave of anti-Sharia bills being passed by various states, it's not as if anyone has ever proposed implementation of such in any American legal system.  And it's not like the Christian stranglehold on government is easing, nor is there some sudden Muslim majority in governments which could pass such a law.  It's a solution in search of a problem - and they are demonizing and scapegoating American Muslims to create the "problem" they need.  This protest just shows the fruit of those efforts. 

This also highlights the further hypocrisy of mainstream political Christianity in this country.  They're so keen to have the government funding "faith-based" charity efforts and disaster relief - even our super-secular-socialist President has maintained funding for faith-based initiatives - and there have been outright claims that the government's social safety net programs can and should be replaced by community faith-based charity organizations and individual charity giving.  I've often heard it claimed, too, in debates over the merits of various religions in this country, that Christianity is superior because "all the charities that are religious are Christian.  Nobody else takes care of the poor and needy like Christians do."  And yet here it is, a non-Christian faith-based charitable organization, raising money from individual donors to spend on what I'm fairly sure would be nearly-unanimously regarded as Good Causes, and what do they get for it?  Protests, mocking, angry threats, told to "go home" even though they ARE home, being called terrorists.  Well, angry Christian assholes?  You say you want other religions to step up and be all charitable in order to earn your respect.  But then you do everything you can to make that not happen.  Which is it, hypocrites?

But there's a tiny little silver lining here.  Some nice, solid, undeniable evidence for the next time some privileged meatsack claims there's no anti-Islam sentiment in the US and that those hysterics are just exaggerating everything.  >.<

*I have absolutely less than zero interest in sharing any kind of cultural identity with these fucking shitstains, yet by virtue of being white and read mostly as middle-class (despite my current financial situation, I have the clothing, dialect, and mannerisms of a middle-class upbringing), most of them would classify me as one of them.

Committing To Vote, But Not For You!

I can't decide if I'm glad I'm still on Organizing for America's email list (OFA being the post-campaign continuation of Obama's campaign organization, now absorbed into and run by the DNC) because it gives me immediate access to all the condescension and emotionally-abusive patterns this administration so loves, or if I'd really rather this shit didn't show up in my inbox to annoy me anymore.  


But I think, since it's giving me more to blog about, I'll be grateful for now.  The latest missive is a get-out-the-base "Go vote in November!" type.  Here you go:

[personal anecdote here]

That's why one key part of our Vote 2010 plan this year is to get folks like you from across the country to commit to vote, to make sure we get as many people as we can to cast their ballots this fall.

But getting the commitments we need starts with your own promise to make it to the polls and cast your ballot.

Will you please commit to vote in the 2010 elections?

Over the next 82 days, volunteers across the country will spend countless hours calling voters and knocking on their doors, asking them the same question.

And you can bet that I am counting on you to join them in talking to voters in your community.

This election offers a stark choice. We Democrats are hard at work trying to move America forward, repairing a decade of damage and growing an economy based on the Main Street values of hard work and responsibility.

We've fought for and won historic reforms to our health care system, a victory 100 years in the making, and to Wall Street, the most sweeping overhaul of the financial system since the Great Depression.

But after years of policies that landed us in the worst recession since the 1930's, the Republicans who got us there have not come up with anything different from the policies of George W. Bush.

We simply cannot afford to go backwards or let them repeal our reforms. And making sure we can continue moving forward starts with your own promise to cast your ballot in these elections.

Please commit to vote this fall:

http://my.barackobama.com/Commitment

*Yawn*  More of the same.  "Look at our historic [and toothless] reforms!  Ooga booga REPUBLICANS IN POWER AGAIN!"  


Okay, so you managed to make some adjustments to our health insurance system.  But we never got the public option we were promised, and honestly?  I'm still waiting for this to be of any use to me.  Still uninsured, still waiting, still without my depression meds.  Thanks a bunch, Obama administration.  Yay historic reforms.  Plus I'm super-pleased at how you threw me under the bus to get the DINOs in line on abortion.  Love it.  Can we please stop calling this health CARE reform, and start calling it what it is, health INSURANCE reform?  


And with Press Secretary Gibbs' little rant the other day, about us drug-addled ingrates who are really pissing off the administration by not licking their ass in worship for the few crumbs they've seen fit to toss us, the Obama administration can go fuck itself.  Hard.


But I do hereby promise to go vote this November.  After all, I've got Carly Failorina trying to unseat Barbara Boxer, and I'm not going to stand idle and let that happen uncontested, and Meg Whitman the corporate shill up for governator.  So rest assured, OFA, I will go vote.  

I will not, however, pledge some kind of unthinking allegiance to the DNC's chosens.  I will not commit to vote Democrat.  I will commit to vote for those who support me, who do not start from the middle, compromise to the right, and call it historic reform, who do not sign proclamations further emphasizing the BadWrongImmoral nature of a medical procedure I have myself needed in the past, despite purporting to support the right and ability to access said procedure, who do not stubbornly insist on bipartisanly declaring their anti-marriage equality bigotry in the face of real progress.  I will vote for actual progressives, no matter what the letter is before their name.  And I flatly refuse to donate to or work with the DNC and their chosen corporate-friendly DINOs.  


I'm committed to voting.  But not the way the DNC wants.  They want my vote back, it's time for them to damn well earn it.

The Religious Reich: Without Lies, What Would They Be?

...Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what.* Via Right Wing Watch (what would I do without you?), comes a clip of some right-wing assholes talking about their strategy for getting SCOTUS to reinstate Prop H8.  In essence, their belief is that if they just bring enough public opinion to bear on their side, the justices will capitulate to the tyranny will of the people.  But really, the best bit is right at the beginning:

The Supreme Court has not, ever, handed down a decision which flew into the face and teeth of a strong moral consensus against it.

Wow, really?  So Brown v Board of Education was totally uncontroversial, with massive public moral consensus on its side, and the National Guard was called in to escort the black students into newly-desegregated schools as an honor guard!  Also, Roe v Wade was and has always been supported by a strong moral consensus, which is why certain segments keep on attacking it and trying to have it overturned.  Oh, and Loving v Virginia was a total no-brainer, despite more than 40 states having anti-miscegenation laws on the books at the time.  No moral consensus against interracial marriage there!  


I mean, really.  This is one of the stupider boldfaced lies I've seen come from the Religious Wrong.  Someone please do correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand it, the function of SCOTUS is to scrutinize contested laws through a Constitutional lens and decide if the law in question is permissible under the Constitution, yes?  Not to have a popularity contest and say "Well, most people feel strongly against this, so we'll have to rule against it."  The popularity-contest part is the voting which enacts the law; SCOTUS is supposed to stand independent of public opinion and decide pure questions of the Constitutionality of the laws.  Sure, there's a "moral consensus" against same-gender marriage, although it's not such a strong one as they'd like to claim, and its hold has been diminishing considerably with the passage of time.  And with that moral consensus, they won the popularity contest that is voting, and enacted their law.  That part has already been decided.  The question now is not whether it's popular or in step with a "moral consensus", but whether it abides by the strictures of the Constitution.  Which Judge Walker held it did not, and which is the question the 9th Circuit Court and, eventually, SCOTUS will be deciding on, not whether or not there's a "moral consensus" about the issue.


No wonder they're getting all the wrong answers here.  They're asking the wrong questions.



*Gamer joke; from a Zero Punctuation review for Dragon Age in which Yahtzee asked, "What would a Bioware RPG be without text?  Just a whole bunch of silence and trousers, that's what."

To Correct Some Misapprehensions The Right-Wing Seems To Be Laboring Under

PROP H8 HAS BEEN OVERTURNED IN FEDERAL DISTRICT COURT!  

Judge Walker issued a 136-page ruling (available here) declaring that Prop H8 was a violation, separately, of BOTH the due process AND equal protection clauses of the federal Constitution, AND that the claims of the anti-equality side couldn't even stand up to the "rational basis" standard of review, which is the least stringent standard!  Additionally, he set forth a wonderful list of "findings of fact" tearing apart the secular arguments against marriage equality ("findings of fact" in a case are given very heavy weight in appeals to a higher court, while "findings of law" are basically tossed and redone from scratch on appeal, so these findings are a lasting gift to our side).  This is an absolute, unqualified win for the forces of equality in this state and the country.  No word yet (that I've heard) as to whether or not Walker will issue a stay pending appeal, as requested by the anti-equality side.  [EDIT: Walker has issued a temporary stay pending hearings on a longer-term stay]  So far, it seems that Prop H8 has been overturned entirely.  Next step is the 9th Circuit, then after that, SCOTUS.*

It's been highly entertaining, if a bit predictable, watching wingnut heads explode over the decision.  I've been following the coverage on Right Wing Watch (available here; refresh for updates as they come available) and it is every bit as over-the-top and panicky and filled with hateful bile as you might expect.  Some select quotes:

Focus on [Your Own Damn] Family:

Judge Walker’s ruling raises a shocking notion that a single federal judge can nullify the votes of more than 7 million California voters, binding Supreme Court precedent, and several millennia-worth of evidence that children need both a mom and a dad.

Concerned [Self-Hating] Women for America:

Judge Walker’s decision goes far beyond homosexual ‘marriage’ to strike at the heart of our representative democracy. Judge Walker has declared, in effect, that his opinion is supreme and ‘We the People’ are no longer free to govern ourselves.

CWA CA Chapter:

Today Judge Vaughn Walker has chosen to side with political activism over the will of the people. His ruling is slap in the face to the more than seven million Californians who voted to uphold the definition of marriage as it has been understood for millennia.

Family [Discredited] Research Council:

It's time for the far Left to stop insisting that judges redefine our most fundamental social institution and using liberal courts to obtain a political goal they cannot obtain at the ballot box.

Alliance [of Hateful Heteros] Defense Fund:

It’s not radical for more than 7 million Californians to protect marriage as they’ve always known it. What would be radical would be to allow a handful of activists to gut the core of the American democratic system and, in addition, force the entire country to accept a system that intentionally denies children the mom and the dad they deserve.

American [Hetero, Monogamous, Childbearing] Family Association:

This is a tyrannical, abusive and utterly unconstitutional display of judicial arrogance. Judge Walker has turned ‘We the People’ into ‘I the Judge.’ “It’s inexcusable for him to deprive the citizens of California of their right to govern themselves, and cavalierly trash the will of over seven million voters.

Notice a pattern here?  It's all variations on one theme: the Activist! Judge! overturning the Will! Of! The! People!  And after reading these, it becomes quite clear that this wingers need a remedial course in American gov't and various types of governing systems.


As a Twiend of mine pointed out after seeing Walker's ruling, now is a good time to ruminate on the difference between a raw democracy and a constitutional republic.  The USofA is a constitutional republic.  Features of a constitutional republic include: a founding document which lays out a meta-framework of guidelines and principles for establishing the rules and laws of the land, and a limited type of democracy that allows the citizenry at large to elect representatives, who then go on to do the actual lawmaking independent of direct interference by the citizens who elected them.  A raw or pure democracy, on the other hand, is characterized by every decision being made by general election, or "the will of the people is the law".  


Since the US is a constitutional republic, the directly-expressed "will of the people" (mind you, that's the will of 52% of the people, not exactly a resounding majority; I wonder why they're not screaming about the will of the 6.5 million people who voted against Prop H8 in between shrieks about the 7 million who voted for it?) cannot overrule the meta-guidelines laid out in the foundational document.  And I don't know what Constitution they're reading while they're having their little headsplosions, cause my copy has these nifty bits about the government not impeding citizens' rights without due process, and having an obligation to protect the rights of all citizens, and it seems like Walker's copy corresponds with mine.  


I mean, really, when the judge's decision extensively cites not only the Constitution (with which conservatives seem determined to wipe their asses *coughBushAdministrationcough* right up until a progressive does something they don't like, at which point it's all THE!CONSTITUTION! YOU!CAN'T!DO!THAT! whether or not the document in question supports their freakout) but a not-insignificant body of established case law as precedent, the whiny bile of right-wingers is pretty clearly exposed for what it is: petty bigotry trying to cover itself with the flimsy shield of deliberate misinterpretation of and selective inattention to the Constitution under which all our other laws fall.


So here it is, right-wingers: Go and reread the fucking Constitution.  Nowhere in there is there a right, either explicit or implied (and no, you cannot pull the 10th amendment on this one, because due process and equal protection are in the federal Constitution, and the 10th says all powers/responsibilities not enumerated herein go to the states), of the people to vote to deprive other citizens of their rights in violation of the Constitution.  Period, the end, that is all, THE GENTLEMAN WILL SIT!

*According to a legal-issues reporter who's been following the Prop H8 trial and who I've been following on Twitter, @FedcourtJunkie, the State of CA is not going to appeal this decision, and the 9th Circuit may decide that the pro-H8 campaign doesn't have standing to appeal, saying: "Btw, Yes on #prop8 has serious standing problems for an appeal. This will become a huge issue very shortly- they might not be able to appeal".  So we may or may not see this go any further.  

Bite-Sized

Alright, dearloves. I know I've been neglecting you lately. But I keep opening links, promising myself I'll write about them just as soon as I'm done with homework or the laundry, and then I've got two dozen tabs open, each containing a story I really want to write about, and it starts getting overwhelming to the point where I start hiding in WoW.  So I'm going to just toss down some links and snippets to get the backlog out of my brain so I can get back to regular posting.

In abortion news, Oklahoma's legislature overrode their Governor's veto to pass two incredibly intrusive and frankly immoral anti-abortion laws - one requiring vaginal probe ultrasounds for first-trimester abortions, along with a detailed description of the fetus, with no exception for rape, abuse, or incest victims (yeah, THAT'S not triggering at all), and the other allowing doctors to legally lie to pregnant women about the health of their fetus and not get sued for it.  This has been covered really well elsewhere, so all I'll say is, it is really fucking stupid to pass these at the same time, because it's very easy to compare the two bills and see in the second bill the proof that the first bill's ostensible purpose of "providing more information" to pregnant women is an utter crock of shit, because in the same breath that they say "We just want to give her information!" (if that information would discourage an abortion) they're willing to legally provide for the withholding of information (if that information would encourage an abortion).  Also, Florida is trying a similar tactic, only they also want to make women pay for the ultrasound, to the tune of $350 or so, thus putting abortion services further out of reach for low-income women - and thus enlarging the demographic of children in poverty, because THAT'S pro-life, right?  However, Florida Dems have more spine than the national set, it seems, because when it came to the House of Representatives for a vote, they used a procedural move to close everything down to avoid a vote on this bill.  Cookies for the Democrats in the Florida HoR!

In news of the Big Gay Agenda, a Mississippi school decided to punish a lesbian student for wanting to wear a tux instead of a drape for her senior photo...by completely cutting all mention of her from the yearbook.  Not even her name sans photo.  The family has the ACLU on their side and they're considering pursuing legal action.  I wish them luck.  Also, the Religious Reich is screeching [trigger warning on that link for vicious lies of the gay=pedophile sort] about the audacity of Congress, to consider protecting LGBT students from bullying.  Of course, this really makes them look like they're shielding bullies, especially when juxtaposed against this story of a bunch of highschoolers who tried to push their lesbian classmate off a cliff during the National Day of Silence protest.  No, gay students totally aren't targeted by bullies.  Just ask that girl.  And on the Don't Ask, Don't Tell front, a group of retired chaplains sent a letter to the President and Secretary of Defense asking them to keep discriminating against gay servicemembers (not that they need encouraging, frankly) because apparently discrimination is a zero-sum game; to not discriminate against gays is to discriminate against chaplains somehow.  They fail to mention non-Christian or even not-anti-gay-Christian chaplains in their handwringing about how Oh noes chaplains will be forced to treat gays like everyone else and that's against our beliefs!   Listen, if your beliefs interfere with your ability to treat all people with respect and compassion, maybe you need to take another look at the ethics and morality of those beliefs.

In news of oh my fucking RACISM, the Arizona police-state profiling law (short version: the police now have the right, and even the duty, to demand freedom papers citizenship documentation from anyone who looks like an escaped slave illegal immigrant.  They don't say outright that they want to check all brown people for green cards, but how else do you think they're going to decide who "looks illegal" or not?) seems to have brought out the worst in every politico's inner white supremacist.  From a CA state rep from San Diego saying he'd like to see the American-born children of immigrants rounded up and deported for not being American enough, in blatant violation of the 14th Amendment, which reads "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside." to Texas reportedly considering a bill like Arizona's, to the worst of all, a stunningly racist Republican running in an Iowa primary, who said "I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can't I microchip an illegal?"  Well, how about because immigrants, illegally here or not, are PEOPLE, not DOGS, entitled to just as much bodily sovereignty as you yourself are, and also YOU DON'T OWN THEM, and while we're talking, HOW THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN IN A POSITION TO RUN FOR OFFICE?  Listen, you pathetic, miserable excuse for a human being.  Talk like this?  Is how the fucking Holocaust started. Shut the fucking fuck up and get some fucking therapy before you find yourself touting a Final Solution to the "immigration problem".

And lastly, in sheer stupid what-the-fuck-ery, the Teabaggers are staging a boycott of San Francisco (in response to their decision to end official city business travel to Arizona because of the above-mentioned racist law)...by congregating in San Francisco to protest.  Teabaggers?  Just so's you know.  A boycott generally includes things like AVOIDING the boycotted place. 

There's plenty more stories where these came from, of course, but they're mostly religion-related, and I feel they deserve a more in-depth treatment than this format.  Look for normal posting to resume this afternoon!

Just Call Her Uppity And Be Done With It

Remember last year, when during a Congressional hearing, Sen. Barbara Boxer got a bit annoyed at an Army brigadier general calling her "ma'am" and directed him to refer to her as "Senator" the same way he was referring to her (male) colleagues?  Much like Hillary Clinton's "outburst" at being asked about her husband's opinion during an appearance as the US Secretary of State, most people flipped out about those angry women and their habit of demanding respect rather than meekly requesting it, while feminists defended the women in question and their stances as totally reasonable.  Listen, if I had gotten as high and powerful as those two women, I, too, would be pissed at some guy referring to me differently than my male equals or asking me for my husband's opinion.


Now, Boxer's seat is facing challenge from Tom Campbell, a Republican.  And he has just released an attack ad against Boxer, featuring the clip from the hearing.  (Sadly, I couldn't find it on YouTube; if someone knows where it's posted online, please let me know in comments and I'll add it.)  The fun part, though...is how he frames her request.

"There's an arrogance that I see right now in the federal government," Campbell says, before the ad cuts to the Boxer footage.

So...it's "arrogant" for a woman in political office to request that she be referred to by the title of that office, just like her male colleagues are?   That's quite the misogyny dogwhistle.  Damn uppity woman, thinking she has the right to be called by her title.  You don't want to be represented by a woman who thinks she's entitled to respect, now do you? 

If you've got some cash burning a hole in your pocket, or some funds earmarked for political donations yet unassigned to a political candidate, might I suggest donating to help Boxer keep her seat against this douchenozzle?