March 31

1776: Abigail Adams wrote her husband when he was in Philadlphia helping plan the Declaration of Independence. Her “Remember the Ladies” letter was but one of the now famous letters sent by Adams to her husband:

1889: (Birthday) Muriel Hazel Wright, historian and writer, born. Wright helped organize the Choctaw Advisory Council in 1934 and fought for just recompense for Native Americans following Oklahoma’s statehood.

1895: (Birthday) Lizzie Miles, popular black singer in New Orleans and Los Angeles in the 1920’s and 30’s, born in New Orleans, Louisianna. Miles developed a style known as “gumbo French” jazz.

1966: (A First) The U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare approves distribution of contraceptives and birth control information under a number of federal programs.

March 30

1867: (Birthday) Jessie Donaldson Hodder, prison reformer, born. When her common-law husband rejected her and their two children, found work in the New York State prison system and developed reforms that became the model for the nation by giving women prisoners dignity, a chance to reform, education, etc.

1882: (Birthday) Melanie Klein, pioneer child psychologist, born in Vienna, Austria. Klein believed cruelty against the mother affected the child much more than Freud and his school of followers had thought.

March 29

1843: (Birthday) Frances Wisebart Jacobs born in Kentucky. Jacobs began the kindergarten movement in Colorado. She is the only woman among the 16 Colorado pioneers recognized in stained glass portraits at the state capitol.

1932: (A First) Theodora Chan Wan is elected president of the newly formed Chinese Women’s Association.

March 28

1515: (Birthday) Saint Teresa of Avila, first women doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, mystic, writer, and originator of the Carmelite Reform born in Avila, Spain.

1743: (Birthday) Princess Ekaterina Dashkova born. She is best known for helping the coup d’etat that seated Catherine II the Great and supervising the writing of the first Russian dictionary.

1841: Dorothea Dix tours a Boston prison and decides to devote her life to prison and poorhouse reform.

1979: (A First) Margaret Thatcher of the Conservative Party becomes England’s first woman prime minister.

March 27

1868: (Birthday) Patty Smith Hill, kindergarten pioneer, first woman named professor emeritus at Columbia University. Inventor of the Patty Hill construction blocks with which children can build structures large enough to play in. Introduced flexible, natural methods and by teaching teachers caused extensive permanent change in our educational system.

• Notes from the Front Lines (no permalinks; scroll to March 28) includes this quote in a good post about “separate but equal”:
  Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson answered the question 55 years ago: “The framers of the Constitution knew, and we should not forget today, that there is no more effective practical guaranty against arbitrary and unreasonable government than to require that the principles of law which officials would impose upon a minority be imposed generally. Conversely, nothing opens the door to arbitrary action so effectively as to allow those officials to pick and choose only a few to whom they will apply legislation and thus to escape the political retribution that might be visited upon them if larger numbers were affected.” (Railway Express Agency, Inc. v. New York).
• A really excellent response to Shelby Steele by Andrew Sullivan. The entire piece covers a lot of ground, but here’s a small sample:
  Is the lesbian relationship with genetically related children so different from a family with adopted kids that it demands a separate institution? Or is it so different than the remainder of these relationships that it cannot be included among them? I would argue not. In fact, I would argue that the differences between gays and straights are far more innocuous than Steele seems to believe. The love that once dared not speak its name is still love. The pain of separation between two men in love is the same as that between a parted heterosexual couple. I can understand the central relationships in Romeo and Juliet or Much Ado About Nothing because I am human–not gay or straight. I can relate to the ups and downs of my straight peers in their couplings because I know what love is. Yes, there are differences between relationships. The span between a lesbian couple and a gay male couple is as profound as the difference between men and women. But the marriage movement is dedicated to affirming what we have in common, not what keeps us apart. It is about the virtues and emotions that marriage includes, not the people it excludes.
• Eve at Marriage Debate asks: Should we leave it to the states?

  As a matter of short-term strategy, it might be for the best if marriage equality is left to states to decide for a while. After a few years of same-sex marriage in places like Oregon and Massachusetts fails to cause the sky to fall (or straight marriages to break up, or a surge in single-mother families, etc etc), the case for marriage equality will be that much stronger.

  I also have faith in the reflexive fairness of most Americans. Give the marriage equality movement several years of showing that marriage equality is about real human families loving each other, and many Americans now in the anti-equality majority will overcome their fears. The idea of equal treatment under the law has a basic appeal to fairness which I think will win out over the horror stories of the fearmongers.

  However, as a matter of principle, the 14th amendment should protect all Americans, not just heterosexual Americans. Same-sex couples therefore should have equal marriage rights in every one of the fifty states. In the long run, if the states won’t recognize equality on their own, I hope the Supreme Court forces them to.

• Also on MarriageDebate, this post by “stay-at-home knitter” Lucia Liljegren needs to be quoted in full:
  Let us say we buy the idea that that all parents ought to be married. That does not imply that all married people ought to have children, nor does it imply that marriage is defined by children or even “about” children.

  It seems to me that the law has LONG recognized that marriage is not “about” child bearing. We can, one would think, get some idea what it is “about” by examining grounds for dissolution of marriage. After all, that gives us an idea of the elements legislators consider essential to a real marriage.

  Despite the many, many possible grounds for divorce dreamt up by the various 50 states, infertility, or unwillingness or a partner to have children is NOT grounds for divorce in even one state.

  Legislators always recognized that, fundamentally, marriage is about something… else!

• Gabriel Rosenberg responds to Ben Bateman with great thoroughness.

One area of miscommunication in the marriage equality debate is about words like “bigot” and “homophobe.” Marriage equality opponents, quite understandably, don’t like being called bigots and homophobes. They might genuinely have nothing against lesbians and gays; some of them have good friends who are lesbian or gay, and some of them are lesbian or gay themselves.

The problem here, I think, stems from two different definitions of “bigotry.” Marriage equality opponents think “bigot,” in this context, means “someone who hates lesbians and gays.”

Speaking for myself, that’s only one possible meaning of “bigot” or “homophobe.” Another meaning, which is how I tend to use those words in the context of the marriage equality debate, is “someone who favors an unequal legal status for lesbians and gays.” And by that latter definition, it makes perfect sense to describe those who oppose marriage equality as homophobes and bigots.

This is no different from how I view any other issue involving bigotry. To reuse an example, consider someone in the 1960s who favored laws and rules excluding Jews from fancy country clubs. That person may have had many close Jewish friends; perhaps they only favored the exclusions because they valued the club’s longstanding traditions. But regardless of this person’s personal love for Jews, they nonetheless favored one law for gentiles and a different law for Jews, and that made them an anti-Semite.

Put another way, our opponents think that being a homophobe is only about what’s in their heart. I think that being a homophobe can be about what’s in one’s heart, but it can also be about what’s in one’s policies.

Of course, it may make marriage equality opponents - some of whom I quite like and respect - uncomfortable or unhappy to be described thus. I’m sorry about that; but truth doesn’t cease being true just because it makes some people uncomfortable. If the stigma bothers them that much, they can avoid it by changing their minds and favoring equality between gays and straights.

Women’s Enews has an interesting article about a mass wedding in Pakistan in which 201 couples got married without dowries (presents traditionally given from the bride’s family to the groom’s family).

The article also has some interesting information about the history and impact of dowry payments.

Read the whole thing.

From The Globe and Mail:

This is, of course, precisely the kind of intrusion and intimidation that rape shield laws are supposed to head off. Regardless of if Kobe Bryant is guilty or not, imagine what the next woman raped by a sports celebrity will think; she’ll look at the Kobe Bryant case and know that if she presses charges, she’ll be tried, convicted and punished in the court of public opinion. What a great day for sleazy defense lawyers everywhere.

Jewish Week is having it both ways on same-sex marriage. First, a pro-same-sex marriage article by Rabbi David Ellison; here’s a sample:

Then, more recently, a response by Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb, speaking for an organization of Orthodox Jews.

I love the way he makes no distinction between “educating” the public and using the law to force the public - and religions that don’t share Orthodox Judaism’s homophobia - to obey his religious injunctions.

Check out this excellent Echidne of the Snakes post, contrasting what’s going on in Kenya today with what was happening in the West a couple of centuries ago. Here’s a bit of the news from Kenya:

Read the whole thing.

An interesting LA Times article describes the cases for and against the gay marriage ban in California. The big quesition: does the California Constitution forbid unequal treatment of LBGT couples?

Unfortunately, the Court may end up deciding more in deference to politics and power than in deference to the equal protection of the law.

Via Marriage Debate.

Oy. (Thanks to “alas” reader and housemate Kim).

Alas, The Invisible Adjunct - definitely one of the best bloggers out there - has decided to hang up the blog (and also the adjuncting). Good luck to her.

This post by economist Brad DeLong is worth reading for a couple of reasons.

First, because he quotes a skeptical American Prospect article about outsourcing at length. So go over and read that bit.

Second, because of the extraordinary weakness of DeLong’s response:

I suppose it’s theoretically possible, but that’s pretty plainly not what’s happening to actual workers in the actual marketplace. What’s also possible - and closer, I suspect, to the real world - is that low-wage workers have not benefited in the slightest from higher-wage workers being outsourced. Instead, the extra money is going to wealthy stockholders and to overpaid CEOs (on and off the books). Wheeeeeee.

I have nothing against upper wages in the US being pushed down to benefit folks who need the money in India. But half the people I know don’t even have jobs. There needs to be a sufficient supply of jobs for American workers; not great jobs, but jobs that enable people to get by. Or, failing that, there needs to be a much, much more generous safety net.

That a respected economist apparently thinks that things are getting better for the folks near the bottom of the scale doesn’t give me much faith in the dismal science.

Also check out the comments - I don’t think I’ve ever seen a thread on his site in which fewer readers were willing to agree with Mr. DeLong.

From Salon (and worth the trouble of sitting through the ad for the day pass).

Yes, because everyone knows that when a straight teacher mentions his husband, that always leads to an investigation. The Light of Reason has the full story.

Once again, it’s striking how much Wall Street hates the American worker and wants us to be as low-paid and miserable as possible. Nor do they have much of a soft spot for American consumers, for that matter. From a November 2003 Fortune article:

Via Electrolite.

[This is another “Sunday Rerun.” This post was first posted in November 2002, and has been somewhat modified from the first version]

The more privileged you are, the easier it is to envision human beings as pure individuals, unconnected to other individuals in any way that matters.

It sometimes puzzles conservatives that progressives are so concerned with what people think. What is racism, sexism, homophobia, etc, after all, other than a way some people think about some other people? And as long as I’m free to pursue my own self-interest, what does it matter what others think of me?

For someone with a lot of privilege, the rational answer is, “it doesn’t matter at all.” The more privileged you are, the less other people’s thoughts count. You go into a store, and you buy what you want, or you don’t buy. You don’t have to worry about what the store clerks think of you - what could matter less?

It matters if you’re a black woman like Debbie Allen, the very successful producer and choreographer. When she walks into a store, it matters what the clerks think of her - because those clerks might decide to refuse to sell her anything (she obviously can’t afford it). This isn’t a hypothetical situation - it really happened. Just as it really happened to Patricia Williams (a very successful lawyer who is a black woman), who once visited a high-end retail store - and the clerk refused to even buzz her in.

Those are small examples, but they illustrate what I mean. To someone with a lot of privilege, what strangers think is irrelevant. To someone in a less privileged position, what strangers think of you determines what kind of access you get to the complex network of relationships that make up our society and our economy. When strangers often think less of you because of your sex or race, you have less access to the material benefits of our society and economy.

People with more privilege, in contrast, can easily imagine that they are independent. A big mark of privilege is that social and economic networks tend to facilitate our goals, rather than block them. This makes it easier to ignore the social and economic networks around us; and it makes it easier for the privileged to imagine their accomplishments are the result of their own pure merit. Imagine two roads: one smooth, well-paved, well-maintained, the other lumpy and full of cracks and pits. Most people will drive over the smooth road without even noticing it - but that doesn’t mean that the smooth road hasn’t facilitated their driving. Nor does it mean that the person driving on the smooth road has more merit, as a driver, than someone stuck on pothole avenue.

The feminist view of the world - in which people are not independent but interlinked, and therefore what others think matters in very real and concrete ways - is much more realistic. No one is independent; we all rely on a network of social and economic ties to tens of thousands of strangers, just to get through a single day. (Who grew the food you eat? Who paved the road you take to work? Who decided to offer you your job? Who decided to offer - or not offer - you a residence where you now live? You didn’t do all these things yourself.)

I’m not saying that straight white men should be blamed for any of this. It’s not our fault if the road we drive on is smoother than the roads most folks have access to. But when the folks on the smooth road go faster and further, can we at least stop pretending it’s because they’re better drivers?