This short post by Michael of Res Ipsa is worth quoting in full:

Also check out Michael’s post critiquing Maggie Galligher’s latest. (You may need to scroll to the bottom of the page). Via Family Scholars Blog.

A good article by Lynn Paltrow describes many recent cases in which the law has been used to force c-sections on unwilling women. Here’s a sample:

Paltrow is the head of the National Advocates for Pregnant Women, whose website I should probably explore.

I’ll never understand what mainstream liberals have against feminism.

Which brings us to “Raising Hell,” by Philip Longman, the cover story of this week’s Washington Monthly. Here’s a sample:

I very much agree with Mr. Longman here. Of course, it’s all pretty familiar; there’s next-to-nothing here that isn’t cribbed from feminist books like Nancy Folbre’s The Invisible Heart and Who Pays for the Kids, and Ann Crittenden’s The Price of Motherhood. (Longman even quotes Folbre directly at one point, without mentioning that she’s a prominent feminist). If you look in the academic literature, the feminist writings similar to what Longman writes here go back many years. Still, it’s good that this idea - that raising children should be understood as a public good - is spreading.

Of course, after spending most of an essay discussing feminist ideas as if he made them up out of thin air, Longman names the villains who have prevented pro-caregiver reforms from taking place: conservatives and feminists.

Friedan’s homophobia was appalling - but it was also thirty years ago, and has long been repudiated by feminists. To suggest that Betty Friedan’s decades-ago homophobia shows that current-day feminists don’t support caregivers is bizarre and incoherent.

Longman’s basic policy prescription is a cut in payroll taxes for working parents; is there a single policy-oriented feminist or feminist economist who opposes such a program? Are feminist legislators like Nina Lowrey (who proposes Social Security credits for caregivers) the hold-up? How about organizations like MOTHERS (founded by feminists Naomi Wolf and Ann Crittenden) - are they opposing such policies?

Get real. As far as I can tell, virtually all the people who have been working for economic support and security for caregivers (not just parents, but other caregivers, such as people caring for elderly relatives) are feminists.

Do feminists say “motherhood should not be a woman’s highest calling or priority?” Perhaps some do, somewhere (although Longman doesn’t provide any evidence to support this stereotype). That’s certainly not what some feminists Longman has read - such as Nancy Folbre - say about motherhood. What the feminists I know say is that motherhood shouldn’t be women’s only socially acceptable calling - being a mother is fine, but so is not being a mother - and that fathers should take a fair share of the caregiving load, too.

It’s true that over the last generation, feminists have worked for reproductive rights, equal access to decent-paying jobs, and (horrors!) personal liberation; surely The Washington Monthly isn’t saying that feminists should have ignored these issues?

What Longman doesn’t acknowledge is that feminists have also been working on helping working parents, through lobbying for child care, for family leave, and through advocating the sorts of policies Longman is talking about - as well as policies he isn’t talking about, such as Social Security credit for caregivers.

To claim that feminists are blocking such legislation is a bizarre, anti-feminist lie - made even more bizarre by the fact that most of the ideas this article recycles were developed by feminists. While I support much of the analysis in this article, I find it disappointing that the Washington Monthly thinks feminists are as much to blame as Republicans for opposing pro-caregiver policies - when feminists have actually been far more supportive of such policies than anyone else in the Democratic coaltion.

* * *

UPDATE: There is part of Longman’s policy that I don’t think I support. He suggests that parents whose children don’t graduate from high school should be penalized by getting less social security than other parents.

There’s an economic logic there, in that parents of children who graduate high school have, in a sense, “created more value” and should be rewarded for it. But the possible injustices of this policy are bothersome. My cousin died accidentally at age sixteen; the idea of penalizing her parents financially for that tragedy is repulsive. How about parents of mentally disabled children who cannot be fairly expected to graduate? For that matter, given how strongly dropping out is related to poverty and race, there’s something disturbing about economically punishing families of drop-outs - don’t they have enough economic problems?

There’s also a bizarre sort of discrimination against parenting in Longman’s proposal. Parents should get Social Security credit for parenting because what they do is work - and socially important work. But other workers don’t get Social Security depending on whether or not society likes the outcome of their labor. We don’t, for instance, deny folks who have been working at Enron their Social Security for that time - even though, on the whole, Enron has been a net drain on society and on the economy.

Justice issues aside, there are practical problems. What do we do with families that have two children, only one of whom graduates? How will the Social Security Administration keep track of whose children have graduated? The federal goverment doesn’t currently keep a list of who has and hasn’t graduated - and Longman claims his plan won’t require a vast new bureaucracy - so I don’t know where the SSA is going to get that information.

Finally, I wonder if increasing Social Security payments for parents of high school graduates actually would increase graduation rates. Is the reason some kids don’t graduate really that their parents lack financial motive? That doesn’t make much sense - parents would be awfully short-sighted not to see possible benefits in their children prospering. And if they really are that short-sighted, will reducing their future Social Secuirty payments actually change their behavior?

• Julian on the difference between slippery slopes and reductio ad absurdum.

• Also, Julian defends Noam Chomsky. Okay, not really. Or, he defends Chomsky from one particular attack while maintaining a face-saving disdain for Chomsky in general. Whew!
• Speaking of Chomsky, this letter by Donald Johnson pretty much expresses my own views of Chomsky (so I don’t have to do it myself).
• And via Julian, check out Judge Richard Posner’s opinion in the McFarlane/Gaiman lawsuit (pdf link). Gaiman won (pending further appeals?), which is the outcome I would have hoped for. The decision is entertaining not only for Posner’s discussion of the copyright issues involved with superhero characters, but also for his surprising detailed explanation of Spawn’s origins.

  One thing I found intriguing was a reference to a 1954 lawsuit involving Sam Spade: “Hammett was not claiming copyright in Sam Spade—on the contrary, he wanted to reuse his own character but to be able to do so he had to overcome Warner Brothers’ claim to own the copyright.”

• THE PERFECT PLANET: Comics, Games, and World-Building, by Dylan Horrocks, is the best thing I’ve read in ages. Everyone interested in - well, in comics, role-playing games or world-building - should read it. It deserves a blog entry of its own, but who knows when (if) I’ll get around to it, so I’m linking it now. Via Kip.
• Boils and Blinding Torment is the meanest, most cynical, nastiest Buffy site I’ve read. It is of course my new favorite.
• Body and Soul on high class and low class Republicans.
• I always hated Snuffelupagus.
• The Fool’s Blog documents an interesting case of hypocripsy going from one Boy Scout lawsuit to another.
• This debate in Sharleen Mondal’s livejournal - over a silent (or was it?) protest at a Daniel Pipes speech, and what counts as censorship - is quite entertaining. Read this followup post, as well.
• Flea of One Good Thing is the best storyteller in the Blogoverse, bar none. Sure wish she’d get off Blogspot, though - damn thing takes forever to load. Sometimes I think the biggest advantage of Movable Type is being able to link to single blog entries (rather than to somewhere on a loooong, slow-loading page of blog entries).
• A Day in the Life, Feministe, NegroPlease and Diesel Nation discuss sexism and hip-hop.
• A good briefing paper on “Marriage, Poverty, and Public Policy,” by Stephanie Coontz and Nancy Folbre, lays out the arguments against using marriage as a government anti-poverty tool.
• Meanwhile, last Friday in Sudan, over 100 women were raped in an attack by militias. I don’t even know how to respond to events like this; sitting and screaming seems so inadequate, but I don’t have anything constructive or intelligent to say about it, frankly.
• Here’s a bit of good news: The formation of a Democracy Caucus in the UN. Congrats to The Fifty Minute Hour, who had a hand in it.
• Angela’s Math on why you can fit more flat round shapes (like plain M&Ms) than spheres (like peanut M&Ms) into a jar.
• Good Nicholas Kristof essay, “Terrors of Childbirth,” describes several victims of lack of decent maternal care worldwide. Thank goodness we have the pro-life movement around to cause things like this.
• A good Jane Bryant Quinn essay explains why Social Security Isn’t Doomed - in fact, it’s in pretty good shape, assuming none of its “rescuers” manage to kill it off. Via Nathan Newman.
• I wish I could see this all-male production of Midsummer Night’s Dream, which sounds quite neat. (Via MsMusings).

Long Story, Short Pier has an excellent take on the 300th issue of Cerebus - not on the issue itself, which Kip has not read, but on the occasion.

What’s Cerebus, you ask, and why is issue 300 an occasion? It’s a monthly comic book, written by Dave Sim and drawn by Sim and his collaborator Gerhard, which has been coming out more or less once a month since the late 1970s. But Sim has said for decades that the storyline would end with issue 300. So, just as a matter of dogged persistance, Cerebus is an impressive achievement. It was also one of the best-written, best drawn comics ever - until Sim seemed to go quite mad with misogyny. Oh, well, at least the cartooning is still good.

The impact that Cerebus has had on me as a cartoonist is immeasurable. I’m probably not going to comment on Cerebus critically, though, until I have time to purchase and read the whole thing - I’m currently several reprint volumes behind. (The entire thing is something like 17 or 18 volumes).

From The Economist (March 6-12), via Crescat Sententia:

• The Republicans have modified their proposed anti-marriage amendment so it’s language is less extreme; although it still forbids any state from recognizing same-sex marriages, state legislatures would be free to pass civil union laws under the new version of the amendment. (See Professor Volokh’s comments, and also Trey’s comments).

  They’re hoping that the modification will let them pick up enough votes to pass the bill out of the Senate. I’m hoping they’re wrong.

• The Iron On-Line comments on gay marriage and sexism:
  But the pink box remains. To accept that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, you have to first accept that men and women are fundamentally different. You have to ignore the diversity of real human beings, the nuances of real human relationships, and concentrate instead on a conception of Man, Woman and Relationship that may only exist inside your head. And you have to defend this conception against people who disprove it with every decision they make in their everyday lives.
• Oregon - as far as I know, currently the only place in the US where same-sex couples can still get a marriage license - has reached an agreement between several parties to boil the gay-marriage fight down to a single lawsuit, asking the courts to decide if the Oregon Constitution requires equal marriage rights for same-sex couples. Even expedited like this, however, the case could take quite a while to reach the Oregon Supreme Court.

  Worldwide Pablo points out that this is a defeat for the conservative Christians who oppose equal rights; they will submit a brief to the court, but they don’t get to be a party in the lawsuit.

• Although same-sex marriage licenses are still being issued in Multnomah County (where I live), Oregon’s Benton County - after saying they’d issue same-sex licenses starting this week - has decided instead to issue no marriage licenses to anyone until there’s a court ruling on the constitutional questions.
• Check out Where is My Gay Apocalypse?
  Where Is My Gay Apocalypse? Over 3,500 gay marriages and, what, no hellfire? I was promised hellfire. And riots. What gives?
• A New York Times article on the satisfaction some kids of gay parents have gotten from their parents’ new marriages.
  “I don’t think they can take it away,” said Alex Morris, mulling over a possible constitutional amendment. “Maybe they can go into the Hall of Marriages and rip up the papers. But emotionally, they can never take away the feeling that my parents are married.”
• SSM-advocate Tom Sylvester says that this Tom Tomorrow Cartoon accuses SSM opponents of “acting in bad faith.” I don’t see it. It does accuse Karl Rove of acting in bad faith, but it’s unfair of Tom to assume that any criticism of a particular SSM opponent (such as Rove) is criticism of every SSM opponent. Besides, the cartoon depicts George W. Bush as a good-faith (albeit stupid and bigoted) opponent of SSM.

  The only people criticized here are Bush and Rove - and the critiques of them (Bush is dumb, Rove calculating) are ongoing stock critiques, not a critique of them that’s particular to the SSM debate. The cartoon’s point - which is that the definition of marriage has changed with the times, and so appeals to tradition should be viewed skeptically - is a reasonable one (although Tom may not agree with it), and focuses on attacking an argument, not on attacking SSM opponents personally. If SSM opponents actually do find this beyond the pale, then they need to grow thicker skins.

• Be sure to read Gabriel Rosenberg’s review of Jonathan Rauch’s book Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America. In particular, Gabriel uses his review to discuss how opposing SSM actually devalues marriage.

  And while you’re at his blog, you should also read Gabriel’s response to David Blankenhorn’s dismissal of Rauch’s Atlantic article.

• An interesting article in the New York Times argues - fairly persuasively - that the “full faith and credit” clause of the Constitution would not mean that states have to recognize gay marriages performed in other states.
• It’s amazing how fast the gay marriage debate has been transformed, isn’t it? Support for civil unions - a fairly far-out idea less than a year ago - is becoming a centrist position. Even one Republican has, either out of a sincere changed heart or out of political necessity, recanted his DOMA-tainted past:
  [Representative] Shays [of Connecticut], meanwhile, said Monday that his views on the issue have evolved since he voted for the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which says states don’t have to honor same-sex unions performed elsewhere. At the time, he said, he thought he would not support gay marriages. But after watching the coverage of gay marriages being performed in states like California and New York, he said he feels differently.

  “I look at these gay marriages and I say ‘how is that impacting in any way against the marriage I have with my wife?’ I don’t think it does,” Shays said. “I don’t think people need to fear this type of union.”

  Shays is, by the way, being challenged in the upcoming election by Diane Farrell (D) of Westport (my high school hometown). Farrell, who as a judge can legally solemnize marriages, has asked Connecticut?s attorney general for permission to solemnize gay marriages.

  Along similar lines, check out Barney Frank’s comment on the modifications to the anti-marriage amendment:

  “Politically, they are making it easier for states to set up civil unions,” said Frank, who is scheduled to testify against the amendment today. “This is very interesting, since a year ago civil unions were the most divisive issue in history. Now they are very boring to anyone who isn’t in one.”
• “With This Ring” describes the less-than-attractive traits that used to be part of “traditional” marriage. Remember this when anti-SSM folks describe marriage as an eternal tradition that must never, ever be altered. Here’s a sample:
  Husbands could physically discipline their wives, as long as they used what was called “moderate correction.” If that, or anything else, prompted women to leave home, their husbands would advertise the fact in newspapers, right alongside the ads Southern plantation owners placed for the return of runaway slaves.

  The U.S. Supreme Court was loath to tamper with that tradition of the man as lord and master of the household as late as 1911, when it rejected the idea that a wife could sue an abusive husband. The justices called the very thought “revolutionary,” “radical and far reaching.”

  Unfortunately, I can’t remember which “Alas” reader emailed me that link - but thank you, whomever you are!

• Check out “Notes from the Front Lines of the Struggle for Same-Sex Marriage,” a new pro-SSM blog. I particularly liked the guest post by Dale Carpenter (scroll down to March 19th). (UPDATE: Here’s a direct link to Carpenter’s essay you can use instead). Here’s a sample:
  The procreationists have two responses to the non-procreative-couples argument. First, they say laws are made for the general rule, not the exceptions. Most opposite-sex couples can reproduce, but no gay couple can. Second, the failure to require married couples to procreate is only a concession to the impracticality and intrusiveness of imposing a procreation requirement. It is not an abandonment of the procreation principle. It would be unthinkable, on privacy grounds alone, to subject couples to fertility tests as a requirement for marriage. We need no such intrusive test to know gay couples can?t reproduce, the procreationists observe.

  The first response is an evasion. Laws often state general rules but provide exceptions where appropriate and just. Gay marriage, like non-procreative straight marriage, is an appropriate and just exception to the procreationists? rule that marriage exists for procreation.

  The second response is equally unavailing. If we were serious about the procreationist project, we could require prospective married couples to sign an affidavit stating they are able to procreate and intend to procreate. If in, say, ten years they had not procreated we could presume they are either unable or unwilling to do so and could dissolve the marriage as unworthy of the unique institution.

  That would be neither impractical nor require an invasive fertility test. That no one has proposed it, or anything like it, suggests we do not take the narrow procreationist vision of marriage very seriously. Marriage is not essentially about procreation because procreation is not essential to any marriage.

  Further, this second response suggests that the general rule of procreation must bend to the overriding needs and interests of couples unable or unwilling to live by it. If that exception exists for non-procreative straight couples, why not for non-procreative gay couples? If there is an answer to this question, it cannot be found in the procreationist argument.

  So the procreationist rule, refined in light of actual lived experience, is this: Nobody is required to procreate in order to marry, except gay couples. It?s a rule made to reach a predetermined conclusion, not for good reasons.

• UPDATE: Make sure to this response to the above link from Trey of Daddy, Poppa & Me. Trey’s right to criticize, imo. (I’ve just added both Daddy, Poppa & Me and Notes from the Front Lines to the blogroll, by the way).

This Jonathan Rauch article in The Atlantic seems, to me, to put its finger on what’s wrong with the non-religious objections to same-sex marriage.

That is the central immorality of the anti-same-sex-marriage position: they’d rather smash gay families with a log than risk straight families getting a splinter. I’m not sure if it’s homophobia or just incredible selfishness, but in either case it’s pretty distasteful.

This Salon article by Ann Hulbert, about flaws in studies of children raised in same-sex households (studies which univerally failed to find any harm to those children), has gotten a fair number of links from anti-same-sex-marriage blogs, and no wonder.

But although Judith Stacey has indeed criticized many studies (in her much-talked about journal article), to describe her as “shooting down findings” is going a bit far. In fact, Stacey has strongly defended the studies Slate says she “shot down”:

I also agree with the article’s conclusion, which suggests that this isn’t a question that’ll be decided by the social science, ultimately.

(See also this post, linking to con- and pro- articles about the social science studies).

I was going to write a couple long posts today, but am too depressed. So how’s the weather? It was a way-too-hot seventy-degrees here in the Springs today; I’m not sure if I’ve ever been happier to see the sun go down. It may rain some these next few weeks, but I think it’s safe to say that we’ve seen the last of the snow around here. That’s disappointing.

Lauren at Feministe has posted her one sentence review of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind so, having seen the movie last night, I thought I’d post my own review, this one in two sentences:

“Poorly developed but interesting. Wait for the DVD.”

Today’s my birthday. Go me! I survived! (Really, that’s important; more on that later.)

I had written a long post responding to this Curmudgeonly Clerk essay. Unfortunately, that post is now lost, lost, lost. It’s too bad - I’m sure it would have been the Best Post Ever. It would have changed your life, and mine.

Oh, well. Here’s a new post responding to CC; any errors in it, any lack of transcendent splendor, any failure to enthrall or enlighten, is entirely caused by the loss of the previous version, and should therefore be blamed on my software and not me.

* * *

Background: Galvanized by the case of Rodi Alvarado, a Guatemalan woman who fled to the US to avoid her murderously abusive husband, Janet Reno proposed new rules which would make it clearer that a woman in Alvarado’s situation would qualify for refugee status and asylum in the USA.

The rules were not finalized before Reno left office. However, John Ashcroft is now considering finalizing Reno’s rule change (or something similar).

Under US law, a refugee must convince a court that, if returned to their home country, they would be “persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.” (”Persecuted” sounds mild but it’s not; in practice, refugees usually need to show that they’re in danger of something very dire, such as death or imprisonment, to qualify as persecuted - see INS v Stevic.)

Courts have varied in how they’ve interpreted “membership in a particular social group”; who does that include? That’s what the current controversy is about, technically. The crucial aspect of the proposed rule change (pdf file) is how it defines “particular social group”:

The Curmudgeonly Clerk thinks this would be a bad idea. I’ll be addressing CC’s objections one at a time, summarizing CC’s arguments in brief header form - but a paraphrase ain’t the real thing, so please visit CC’s blog and read his arguments in his own words.

That said, what are CC’s objections?

1. If “abused women” can be considered a “particular social group,” then so could any group of people.

CC doesn’t understand the proposed rule changes. “Abused women’ cannot be considered a particular social group under Reno’s proposed rules, because the rules forbid using “the fact of persecution” (in this case, the abuse) as part of the definition of a particular social group. (The point is to prevent circular logic.)

More broadly, CC’s point is that the new rules will make it possible for any group at all to claim asylum (for instance, poor people, or homeless people). That’s nonsense. The rule doesn’t change the definition of “persecution”; even if CC is right that a court would accept being poor as an “immutable characteristic,” merely being homeless or poor doesn’t qualify one as “persecuted.”

On the other hand, imagine a country in which the government decided to start shooting homeless people. In that case, possibly a homeless person from that country would qualify for refugee status; but what on Earth is wrong with that?

2. The proposed regulations represent a radical reformulation of the standards articulated in cases like Gomez.

CC’s argument harps on the Gomez case a lot. However, as the Department of Homeland Security brief (pdf link) points out, “the dominant line of reasoning in United States decisional law interpreting the social group ground is best represented by Matter of Acosta.” Why is this relevant? Because the new rules are largely (but not entirely) drawn from the Acosta ruling (sometimes word-for-word).

CC may disagree with the Acosta ruling; it is nonetheless a standard and oft-used citation in interpreting “particular social group” in the USA (and often cited outside of the USA, as well). Nothing strongly based on Acosta can be accurately termed “a radical reformulation” of asylum law, or of the common understanding of asylum status in the US or abroad.

3. The persecution at issue is the result of a single individual: the victim’s spouse. Asylum law is for people victimized by governments, not people victimized by spouses.

As CC himself admits, asylum law has traditionally protected not only victims of “direct governmental persecution,” but also ” those who are victimized by governments that effectively sanction persecution by private actors.” A battered woman like Ms. Alvarado would logically qualify under this standard; she made multiple attempts to get the government to intercede, but the government refused to do so because she was her persecutor’s wife. It’s hard to imagine a clearer case of a government “effectively sanctioning persecution” by a private individual.

AS I wrote in a post last year, when basic government services - like police protection from violence - are withheld from a particular group, that’s state persecution against that group. This is just as true when police decide it’s not their business to interfere with the “private” problems of battered women, as it is when Rwandan police decide not to interfere with “private individual” Hutus massacring private individual Tutsis. In both cases, what’s going on is governmental bigotry against a group translated into non-action.

CC’s claim that the government of Guatemala has not victimized Ms. Alvarado, shows that CC does not comprehend domestic violence issues. If not for government discrimination, Ms. Alvarado’s husband would have been given a long prison sentence years ago, and there would have been no need for Ms. Alvarado to flee to the USA.

4. The proposed regulations would effectively abrogate a longstanding principle of asylum law, namely that the persecution in question be geographically pervasive. The persecution faced by battered women can in no meaningful sense be portrayed as country-wide.

What the hell is CC talking about?

Keep in mind, we’re talking about a country that’s smaller than Tennessee. I’m bewildered by CC’s argument here - does he think abusers can’t drive cars?

Ms. Alvarado was persecuted no matter where she hid in Guatemala; there is no place in Guatemala in which she’d be safe, or in which her government would be willing to offer her basic police protections. In what meaningful sense is that not country-wide persecution?

5. Homosexuals are to some extent discriminated against in the US; therefore it’s senseless for the US to provide refugee status to persecuted gays. The US government has been criticized by feminists for not doing more to oppose domestic violence; therefore it’s senseless for the US to provide refugee status to persecuted wives.

To see why CC’s argument cannot stand, consider that groups like the NAACP still criticize the US (both the society and the government) for racism, and have done so for decades. Conservatives often accuse the government of discriminating against political viewpoints (for instance, in government-sponsored universities). If we accepted CC’s logic, then we would have to conclude that refugee law has therefore been mistaken all along in providing asylum to victims of racial and political persecution.

Taking CC’s argument to its logical conclusion, we must admit that there is no field of discrimination in which the US is absolutely perfect, in every county of every state, without exception or question. Therefore, since the US can’t claim to be absolutely pure, it is a mistake for the US to accept any refugees, ever. Right?

Of course not. Although feminists rightly criticize sexism in the US, it doesn’t follow that feminists would fail to recognize that there is a difference between the US and Guatemala (where wives don’t even have the legal right to their own property, or to make legal decisions), especially in Ms. Alvarado’s particular case.

CC’s argument shows a disturbing lack of connection to reality. For instance, his argument implies that the situation for gays in the United States ten years ago (in which some, but not most, states outlawed sodomy) is equivalent or comparable to the kind of government persecution suffered by Mr. Hernandez-Montiel, a young gay man who was raped at gunpoint by government representatives. The fact that Hernandez-Montiel did in fact escape significant threats to his life and freedom by moving to the USA (and, for all we know, he moved to a state where sodomy was not outlawed) isn’t even acknowledged in CC’s argument.

CC is right to say that the US isn’t perfect when it comes to domestic violence issues. But he’s using that fact as an excuse for papering over the reality of this case. Imperfect as the US is, it is nonetheless true that by moving here Ms. Alvarado has escaped the persecution that threatened her life and freedom. That is, or should be, the bottom line.

6. This rule change would open the floodgates; the US would be overrun with refugees fleeing bad marriages, poverty, homelessness, etc.

Before I could take this argument seriously, CC would have to explain why this problem has not happened in Britain, Canada, Australia, Germany, Austria, and New Zealand, all of which have asylum laws which recognize domestic violence as a form of persecution.

7. People who favor the rule change are driven by emotionalism, and their arguments belongs more on the Lifetime network than in a serious policy discussion.

CC doesn’t say this explicitly, of course, but his argument is full of Ad Hominem attacks implying that people who favor this rule change are driven by emotions and not logic (his crack about Lifetime appears in his conclusion).

First of all, much as I dislike bringing this up, the sexism of CC’s Ad Hominem is impossible to overlook. Describing concern for women’s rights as mere emotionalism is a centuries-old tactic for dismissing concern for women. I’m not saying CC is personally a sexist (I don’t know CC personally, and don’t know if he’s sexist or not); the issue here is that educated people should know better than to attack concern for women’s rights as “emotionalism,” just as educated people now know better than to refer to African-American men as “boy.” The traditional language of sexism should be avoided in civilized discussions.

Second, what’s so terrible about emotion? In classical rhetoric, an argument without any pathos would be considered incomplete. I’m not saying that emotion alone makes a good argument; logic is necessary, and I think should be primary, in any debate.

But logic that isn’t levied by emotion can easily lead to losing track of what matters. Consider CC’s strange argument about gay refugees, in which he treats rape and threats of murder by Mexican police as if they were somehow equivalent to anti-sodomy laws in the USA; I think it’s CC’s exclusion of emotion from his argument that enabled him to make such a mistake.

UPDATE: The Uncivil Litigator is also criticizing CC’s post.

I just lost a long, complex post dealing with legal issues that required quite a lot of research.

Why? Well, a menu popped up that I wanted to get rid of, so I pressed “escape.” In Movable Type, pressing “escape” erases everything. There’s no way to undo it, that I can find.

That seems to me to be criminally stupid design. Why the hell would they include a “erase everything with one keystroke, no way to undo it” function?

I know, I know - I should be saving halfway through complex posts. That’s damn little comfort.

Grrrr.

Several days ago, I blogged about Melissa Ann Rowland, a woman charged with murder for refusing to have a c-section. Here’s a few more links about Melissa Rowland and her arrest.

First, for those who are interested, The Salt Lake Tribune article has a lot more background on Melissa Rowland’s life and mental state. (Via Annatopia and Body and Soul).

Body and Soul’s take seems exactly right to me:

Read the whole thing.

* * *

Then, a post from Annatopia, where letters are not capitalized:

Read (as, AATS, they say) the whole thing.

* * *

In comments, “Alas” reader Z*lda pointed me to this FindLaw commentary by Sherry Colb:

Again, the whole thing, read the.

UPDATE: And a fourth comment - how did I miss this one, from Echidne?

The whole thing.

I quite enjoyed this funny film short (I wonder how long before the link expires?). Via Maurin Quina Likes To Drink. Don’t watch it if swear words offend you.

UPDATE: I’ve updated the link to one that may last longer (and was also bigger on my screen). Thanks to Ananna for leaving the new URL in the comments.

Almost a year ago, I drew this cartoon. The subject was abused women who apply for asylum in the United States; Janet Reno changed the US’s asylum rules to include battered women, but left office before finalizing her changes, and Ashcroft was considering changing them back. The particular case at issue was the case of Rodi Alvarado, a woman fleeing an abusive husband in Guatimala.

At the time, I wrote “Of course, the administration hasn’t officially made its decision yet; it could be that they’ll decide to be humane, in which case this cartoon will be wrongheaded and a bit embarrassing. But that’s some egg I’d be pleased to have to wipe off my face.”

It’s too soon to know for sure, but it looks possible that I’ll be wiping my face soon. From The New York Times (via Diotima):

That’s great news. And - wonder of wonders - I agree with the Concerned Women for America, who wrote Ashcroft that giving “refuge to such a woman as this is exactly what our asylum policy exists for, and to turn her away would be an act of pointless cruelty.” Exactly right.

It’s nice as well that some Conservative groups are on the right side of this issue; with this administration, the pressure from Conservative groups is the pressure that counts.

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I wrote what I thought was a pretty good post on this issue last year, so I’ll be all self-promoty and stick in a link to it here.

My “Alas” co-blogger PinkDreamPoppies argues that Nader did not cost Gore the election in 2000. With respect, I disagree. I think that Nader’s run (among many other factors, such as Gore’s mediocre campaign, the press’ weird hatred of Gore, Republicans playing racist games with the voter rolls in Florida, five members of the Supreme Court, and the fact that the Dems just didn’t fight as hard as the Republicans in Florida) caused Gore to lose (or, rather, caused the race to be close enough so that Bush was able to steal the election).

Aside from the vote-counting issue PDP focuses on, there’s the fact that in the final weeks of the campaign Gore was forced to shore up his left wing by campaigning in states that otherwise would have been “safe,” such as Oregon. If Nader hadn’t been running, Gore would presumably have spent that time and money in increased appearances and ads in swing states like Florida. Although we can’t know for sure, it’s likely this would have made a 600 vote difference.

I voted for Nader in 2000, although I’m not planning to vote for him in 2004. I don’t understand why so many other Nader voters are invested in arguing that Nader didn’t make a difference to the election’s outcome. Of course he made a difference - in an election this close, everything made a difference!

I think the 2000 election showed that the Democrats can’t win a close election without wholehearted support from progressives; the outcome refutes right-wing Democrats who say that the best way to win elections is to ignore progressives. Nader’s run in 200 shows that the progressive voters (and, perhaps more importantly, progressive activists) do matter. Why is that an interpretation that so many Greens resist?

That said, I do agree with PDP that “the Democratic party has only itself to blame for Gore losing the 2000 election.” Yes, they would have done better if the Greens hadn’t run a candidate; but no one has a right (legal or moral) to run unopposed, or to run only against their chosen opposition.

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Postscript: If you’re anti-Nader or anti-Green and want to criticize me in the comments for how I voted in 2000, then welcome! All I ask is that you keep it polite, and that you read this post and this post first, so that you can understand my views a bit before critiquing them.

Seth Stevenson, Slate’s new ad critic, recently wrote a column criticizing Apple’s new iPod ads (and the old DeBeers diamond ads) because they seemed to suggest that the product was better than the consumer.

Mr. Stevenson describes the ads as being:

He then goes on to describe his reaction to the ads:

At the risk of criticizing the professional critic, I think he misses part of the brilliance of using silhouettes instead of people and so misses how the ads aren’t insulting at all. To understand what Mr. Stevenson missed, we turn to that great tome of art theory: Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics.

In the second chapter, Mr. McCloud discusses the way that humans have a tendency to see themselves and their features in objects that bear no resemblance to humans (cars, light sockets, etc.) and that humans also tend to project themselves onto simplified human forms (in the books case, cartoons). The more realistically a cartoon character is rendered, the harder it is to empathize with that character because as more features are added to that character it automatically has fewer features in common with the reader. A face that is composed of a circle, two dots, and a line for the mouth is more easily identified with than one that has all of those features plus long hair. (I would scan in the pages in question, but am not sure of the legality of such a move. If someone can tell me whether or not that falls under fair use, I’ll gladly post scans of the pages.)

This is what the silhouette ads play on. By taking the consumer, the wearer of the diamond and the user of the iPod, and rendering that person as a shadow they, the advertisers, are inviting the viewer to project his or her self onto the shadows. When the woman grooving to the iPod, or the man giving a diamond to his love, is featureless it’s easier for a person to picture herself or himself as the one grooving or giving.

So really, the spots are no more insulting than the usual advertising fare. Imagine yourself with our product; wouldn’t you be happier, then?

Update (03/17): Just to be clear on this: I think that only Apple’s ads are entirely without offense in this case. As some others have pointed out in the comments, the DeBeers diamond ads are misogynistic in their view that women’s affection can be earned by buying them expensive baubles.

I’m sorry if that wasn’t clear.

As others have pointed out, the fact that al-Qaida may have bombed the trains in Madrid in retaliation for Spain’s involvement in Iraq doesn’t prove that there was any sort of connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. All it proves is that al-Qaida continues to try to frame their actions as part of an on-going “clash of civilizations” between the West and the Middle East and Islam and that they’re willing to exploit whatever material they’re given in order to wage their war.

Although argument by analogy is a pretty weak way of going about things, an analogy might help make things clear…

Does this attack on Alberto prove a connection between the Wolves and the Rocks? No, not really, but that doesn’t mean that even though the Rocks were ideologically opposed to the Wolves, the Wolves were still eager to interpret the crackdown on the Rocks through their world-view as an attack on all African-Americans.