Echidne has an excellent post on Afghan Women and the upcoming elections. Here’s a sample, but you should read her entire post.

Related article: The BBC has an article today surveying the dismal state of women’s rights in Afghanistan, with several anecdotes from women in Afghanistan.

I blogged earlier about my disappointment that Edwards was unwilling or unable to address a question about the crisis of AIDS among black women.

Frankly, I’m also disappointed that virtually no one I’ve seen in the left blogosphere - not even those who blogged about the VP debate - seemed put off by this (or if they were, they haven’t mentioned it). Sometimes I worry that the lefty blogosphere has gone too far over the line from blogging about substance to boosterism of Kerry/Edwards. A happy exception is Ms Musings - go check out her post.

Sheelzebub of Pinko Femnist Hellcat has written a terrific post about telling women to smile (recent “Alas” posts on that topic can be found here and here). Here’s a sample, that I think cuts directly to the heart of the matter:

Sheelzebub also quotes Mary’s comment posted on Alas (Mary is the blogger behind Naked Furniture).

I recommend reading Sheelzebub’s whole post.

While searching for something else, I ran across a good article discussing fetal pain. Here’s a sample:

The article comes from a Canadian online pro-choice magazine, Pro-Choice Press, which seems to have a lot of good material. In particular, I thought the Summer 2003 edition, a special issue focused on “Where is the Anti-Choice Movement Headed?“, was quite interesting.

Here’s an alert from Irene of Stop Family Violence.org.

As some of you know, Bean works at a DV shelter, and I know that they take secrecy issues extremely seriously. Bean isn’t even allowed to tell anyone where her workplace is located! By their nature, DV shelters are sometimes in the business of protecting people from extremely determined stalkers who are doing everything they can to locate their victims. Putting the victims’ names and addresses on a federal database would be deadly.

Please phone the White House today - their comment line is 202-456-1111. Here’s what you should tell them:

That’s the most important step to take. For other steps, visit Stop Family Violence’s.org page on the HUD regulations. And if you’re a blogger, please consider either linking to this post or (even better) reproducing it or something like it on your own blog.

I mentioned in passing in an earlier post that I’m not in favor of legalizaing (or decriminalizing) prostitution. (Instead, I favor “the Swedish solution,” which is to decriminalize being a prostitute while retaining - and enforcing - laws against being a John or a pimp).

I don’t really have time to blog today, so I thought I’d post some quotes from “Legalization: The Australian Experience,” by Mary Lucille Sullivan and Sheila Jeffreys, from the academic journal Violence Against Women Vol 8 no 9 September 2002. It’s articles like this one that have cooled my interest in the legalization approach.

Factcheck.org has a good article fact-checking both sides of last night’s debate.

For me, the low point of the debate was the question about the relatively high rate of new HIV infections among American black women.

Both candidates were clueless, and neither one even attempted to answer the question. Of course, it’s no surprise that Cheney cannot talk credibly about AIDS among black women. But is it too much to expect that the Kerry/Edwards ticket - which will wind up with at least 90% of the black, female vote - be able to at least address the issue, especially since Edwards answered second (and thus had the whole two minutes Cheney was speaking to think about it)?

I debated quite a bit while I was in college, and like all debaters I occasionally got asked a question I knew nothing about. It’s clear from his non-answer that Edwards doesn’t have any grounding in the issue of AIDS among black women - but he should have had the grounding in the basic liberal approach to issues to be able to say something. Here’s what I was expecting Edwards to say:

That’s not an especially great answer, and it doesn’t require any specialized knowledge about black women and AIDS. But it’s what I thought of when I was listening to Cheney’s non-answer. That Edwards couldn’t be bothered to say anything on the subject really stunned me.

This Guardian article may shed some light on why new infections are so high among black women:

So homophobia, bizarrely, may be an important cause of HIV infection in straight women.

UK Gay reports: a Louisiana District Judge William Morvant ruled Louisiana’s anti-marriage equality amendment invalid because it violated the “single issue” criterion required by Louisiana’s constitution.

Those familiar with the amendments in 11 other states will be aware that many contain language that appears to restrict civil unions or laws permitting the government to recognize civil or domestic unions that permit unmarried couples to obtain legal recognition for “incidents of marriage”. The precise benefits, right and responsibilities associated with the “incidents of marriage” is not clearly defined. I previously mentioned that AARP has expressed opposition to Ohio’s anti-ssm amendment because they believe these secondary restrictions harm unmarried seniors, depriving them of property and other rights vital to seniors.

Despite the clear existence of multiple issues in the amendment, opponents of same sex marriage have accused Judge Morvant of usurping the role of the legislature. Judge Morvant, a Republican, has a reputation for a no-nonsense approach to application of the law. When presented with an emotional appeal by a gay plaintiff, he responded:

See The Enquirer

Presumably, the Judge did not rule in favor of the plaintiffs out of sympathy for their plight; this is a simple application of the law. The term “District” sounds like a lower court ruling to me, so I assume this will be appealed.

Gay rights advocates are getting some unexpected support. AARP has examined Ohio’s proposed anti-same sex marriage amendment; they concluded the restrictions will harm unmarried elderly people.

Rainbow Network quotes AARP :

Similar amendments appear on ballots in 11 states in November. Hopefully, AARP will evaluate, and publicly articulate their opposition to every one of them.

Folks may recall that there was some discussion of my appearance on Air America’s “Majority Report” show; so I should point out that Jessica of Feministing appeared on “Majority Report” last week. To listen to Jessica’s segment, go here, download the second half of the show, and start listening 35 minutes into the recording. (Alternatively, you could just listen to the whole show, of course.)

Janeane’s guest-sidekick was blogger Bill Scher of the excellent Liberal Oasis. I would have preferred to hear less Janeane and Bill and more Jessica, but on the whole it’s a good segment, and Jessica does a wonderful job discussing some of the current battles in the abortion war.

Later in the segment, there were interesting bits of disagreement between the three speakers. Bill derailed a good Janeane rant about “which feminists hate men?” by suggesting that Catherine MacKinnon is a man-hater (a charge I doubt Bill could support). Janeane and Jessica disagree - very gingerly - about pro-sex feminism, which Janeane calls “thong feminism.” (Janeane thinks that underwear like this trivializes the issues involved, whereas my - possibly mistaken - impression was that Jessica thinks it’s cool activist fun.). And some tensions between second-wave feminism and third-wave feminism were apparent, as well.

Anyhow, it’s fun to hear feminists on the air.

I ran across this story in Proud Parenting describing a Brazilian court case which imposed a legal restriction on a lesbian because her relationship with her partner was “tantamount to marriage”.

We generally don’t think of court rulings imposing restrictions as a major advance in rights, but this one may be! Here is the story: Astrid Cunha e Silva and Eulina Rabelo are lesbian partners. Ms. Cunha e Silva is currently the mayor of the small town of Viseu; Ms. Rebelo wants to run for office and replace the mayor at the end of her term. However, Brazilian law blocks the spouse and relatives of an elected official from succeeding them in office.

Sp. when Mr. Rabelo decided to run, the courts needed to decide if their relationship is marriage as far as the election law is concerned. Judges ruled unanimously that Ms. Rabelo cannot run because of the two are, for all intents and purposes, married.

Now, obviously, one does not hope to read of judges imposing legal restrictions associated with marriage, while refusing benefits, but I can only wonder:
Is Brazil about to fully recognize Same Sex Marriage? The answer may be yes.

Proud Parenting’s article states:

11D is holding a “work/family blog conference” all this week, beginning today. Go visit her blog and scroll down to read the posts and leave comments, or visit this post to view the week’s schedule of topics. Parents especially (but not exclusively) will find a lot of topics to post on, I think.

Something that isn’t talked about enough is that abortion bans overreach. That is, most abortion bans say “abortion is banned except in cases X, Y and Z.” But in practice, the very act of banning abortion ensures that for many women safe, legal abortion will be unavailable - even if they fall into one of the exceptions written into the abortion ban.

Reproductive Health Matters volume 10, issue 19 (not online, sorry), has a report on the results of Poland’s abortion ban (Poland banned abortion in 1993, except in cases of rape, a threat to the health or life of the mother, or a severely damaged fetus). The Polish abortion ban is fairly similar to what pro-lifers in the USA have proposed, except that American pro-lifers are opposed to health exemptions.

The law didn’t measurably reduce the number of Polish abortions; it did, however, force hundreds of thousands of women to obtain illegal abortions (and it drove the price of abortions way up). However, some women who need abortions for health reasons don’t have the money or connections to obtain an illegal abortion, or cannot safely have an abortion outside of a legal hospital setting. The result, of course, is that women are hurt.

The article contains other examples. One HIV positive woman, Maria, “obtained written confirmation from a specialist that pregnancy presented a danger to her health.” But hospital after hospital refused to treat her, some explaining that they simply would not perform an abortion under any circumstance.

This is by no means a problem unique to Poland. In the United States, the so-called “Abortion Non-Discrimination Act”, if it becomes law, allows health professionals (not just doctors, but also nurses, insurance agents, pharmacists, etc) to refuse to perform abortions, regardless of the consequences to the woman’s life or health. XX, Feministing and The Well-Timed Period (here and here) have more about this law. From The Well-Timed Period:

Rivka at Respectful of Otters tells the horrifying story of an American whose preborn baby died in utero at 19 weeks. The safest procedure for removing the baby’s corpse - dilation and extraction - has been widely under attack by pro-lifers who call this and other procedures “partial birth abortion.”

And keep in mind - that’s just the result of political and social pressure on doctors not to perform “partial birth” procedures. If the ban actually became law, obtaining even a legal D&X abortion will become all but impossible.

To be clear - nothing about the “partial-birth” abortion ban makes it illegal to remove an already-dead fetus using the D&X procedure. But it doesn’t matter, because the effect of the ban (if it ever becomes good law) will be to make the procedure unavailable even in cases where a D&X is undeniably legal and desperately needed.

One last thought about the case of the Polish woman blinded because she could not obtain an abortion. At least in Poland, it’s in theory (if not in practice) legal for a woman to have an abortion to save herself from going blind. In the USA, pro-lifers are opposed to health exemptions, so if they had their way not even preventing blindness would be a good enough reason to get an abortion.

(I’ve asked this once before, but it’s for real this time.)

So we are remodeling our garage - or, more accurately, we have borrowed money to give to a contractor who will remodel our garage.

If any “Alas” reader knows of a Portland-area contractor who does a good job for a not-too-insane price, please drop me an email or leave a comment with the person’s name and contact info. Thanks!

PinkDreamPoppies emailed looking for some comics advice:

My first idea was Nausicca of the Valley of the Wind; my second idea was Bone, by Jeff Smith. My third idea was to ask the “Alas” readership, since you folks generally have great ideas. So - remember - no sex. And of interest for age 10-14. Any suggestions?

William Baude at Crescat Sententia quotes Reverend Abernathy of “Guys and Dolls”, asking:

For Roman Catholics, the answer is clear. It’s not a sin because in 1763 Pope Clement VII drank some and decreed:

I would submit it’s a sin to drink bad coffee. Do give that up.

For more coffee history read An Overview of Coffee Evolution which suggests that discussions in coffee houses contributed to calls for political change, and indirectly helped foment both the French and American revolutions. Likely the effect is indirect. However, if coffee can, indeed, lead to revolution, we may need to cut Jacob Levy off or risk overturning our current form of government.

In an earlier post, I criticized Hugo Schwyzer’s use of the phrase “real manhood.” Amanda at Mousewords commented on my post, mostly agreeing with me; Hugo himself then replied to me, drawing on his inner Bly; and Stentor at Debitage responded to Hugo’s reply, suggesting a different approach Hugo could take to defending the concept of real manhood.

Anyway, I’m planning to respond as well; but I haven’t yet found time to write a substantive post, and rather than putting off linking to the above (especially Hugo’s reply) any longer, I thought I’d better post this update.

Update: Soulful Blogger Joe Perez, who (like Hugo) comes from a mythopoetic perspective, disagrees with me.

“Alas” readers may be wondering why I have’t blogged about Thursday night’s debate yet. But it’s hard work.

You know, blogging about these things, keeping up with the news, no doubt about it, it’s tough. It’s hard work. It’s incredibly hard. I understand how hard it is. I get the traffic reports every day. I see on the computer screens how hard it is. But it’s necessary work. And it’s hard work.

Of course we’re doing everything we can to blog the debate. I wake up every day thinking about how best to blog the debate. That’s my job. I work with Bean of the upstairs bedroom; comes in my office when I’m online every morning, talking about how to blog the debate. There’s a lot of really good people working hard to do so. It’s hard work.

We’re making progress. It is hard work. It is hard work to go from a televised debate to a blogged debate. It’s hard work to go from a place where people get their campaigns energized, or not, to a place where people are can read about it online. But it’s necessary work. And it’s hard work.

(Link via The Moderate Voice).

I attended a couple of father’s rights meetings once, just to see. The ones I attended consisted mainly of men complaining - with, I should add, amazing bitterness - that they ought to be able to, you know, get a to-the-penny accounting of how child support money was spent. And maybe a line-item veto option. Not that they were interested in trying to control their ex’s lives or anything.

I was reminded of that reading Trish Wilson’s blog; Trish has been doing a lot of top-notch blogging on father’s rights misogyny lately (just go to her September 2004 archives and scroll). My favorite was this Guardian article on “Father4Justice,” a sort of support group for British divorced dads who like dressing up as Batman and hanging out on ledges. Here’s a sample:

Just as impressive is an American group, Equal Rights for Divorced Fathers. Are they misogynistic? Well, their t-shirt (sold to raise funds) bears the motto “Trust No Bitch.” Their founder likes to tell jokes like “What do you tell a wife who has two black eyes? Nothing, you told her twice already.” And that’s just for starters. What’s frightening is, at least until recently courts routinely referred fathers to this group. Trish has more.

If Fafblog! didn’t exist, we’d wish we were clever enough to invent it:

Read the whole thing. Link (and the choice of quote) swiped from Julia.