Another week.  Another racial costume party.  Students at Santa Clara University decided to have a “South of the Border Party.”  Here is a quote:

Photographs taken at the private, off-campus party and splashed on Internet sites reveal a crude and narrow portrayal of Latino life. One student hammed it up before the camera with a stuffed balloon on her belly, under her blouse. Another posed for a close-up shot of her puckered mouth, thickly lipsticked and lined in black. One student wore a janitorial costume complete with the long, rubber gloves commonly used to clean bathrooms.

Once again the photos were posted on facebook.

This is not the first Latino themed party to draw scrutiny.  Last year a Tri-Delta sorority and Zeta Beta Tau fraternity at University of Illinois hosted a “Tacos & Tequila” party, which lead to protests on campus and subsequent sanctions from the campus fraternity and sorority boards.  The University of Illinois is also home to the facebook group “Students Against Racially Themed Parties.”

Both of these cases also reveal the patterns of racially themed parties.  In the Santa Clara case there was another party labeled “Fresh Off The Boat,” and at Illinois there was party called “Big Booty Hoes & Ghetto Bros.”

The student newspaper at Santa Clara has been covering the story, and they have a few of the pictures from the party.  The editors blurred the faces out of the pictures, with an “interesting” justification at the bottom of the article.  In their defense the student paper gave an excellent editorial on racially themed parties.  Here is a quote:

These theme parties are nothing new, and many Santa Clara students have attended them, dressed up or not. The people depicted in the pictures of this specific party were just the ones that got caught. Whether it be a “South of the Border,” “Ghetto” or “Fresh off the Boat” party, feeding into ethnic stereotypes at parties has become a pastime of predominately white, upper-class students at colleges nationwide.

What is it about our backgrounds and education that has made us think that racism is a form of entertainment?

It may be the way our generation has been raised on satire. From “The Simpsons” to “Family Guy” and “Chapelle’s Show,” manipulating ethnic stereotypes for humor is nothing new to us.

But the true issue at hand is that many white students are ignorant of race issues that minorities face on a daily basis, in some cases because of a lack of contact with people from minority ethnic groups or disadvantaged economic backgrounds.
And in that respect, Santa Clara is failing in its mission.

Would the women at the party have chosen to dress the way that they did if they had done an Arrupe placement in a community where immigrants work long hours at custodial jobs just to pay the bills? Maybe not.

The paper makes a good point.  Racism and poverty make great fun for those who are not the victims of it, and it is important that universities take a lead role in educating students about this.  Unfortunately, many students are not getting an appropriate education on racism and its destructive effects from their primary school, their secondary schools, or their families.

Thanks to Bean for the heads up on this!!

Young Woman (YW): Excuse me? I’m making a baby area, but I forget to make a sign before I left my house.

Amp: You want me to make you a sign? Sure.¹

YW: Thanks! It should say “Mothers Room” in big letters. We’re going to make the parlor room a quiet area for feeding babies.

Amp: Okay.

YW: And below that, in smaller letters, can you put “for mothers and their young children?”

Amp: No problem. But what happens if a father wants to bottle-feed his baby?²

YW: Well, we don’t want to get too PC here.

Amp: You’re already setting up a nursing room, which is pretty PC of you.

YW: Nonono, it’s a “mother’s room.” A lot of people weren’t sure it’s all right to have nursing in church, so we’re calling it a mother’s room.

Amp: Oh.

To be fair, there are plenty of people in the church group who are very hip and liberal and play acoustic guitar and (if male) wear stylish stubble. But sometimes the culture shock still takes me by surprise…

1. This is a common request at my job, so I have a bunch of sign formats saved on the office computer. (back)
2. In retrospect, this was a stupid question; given how conservative these folks are, of course they don’t want any men in an area where mothers are breastfeeding. This didn’t occur to me at the time, probably because none of the nursing moms I’ve hung out with hesitated to nurse their babies in a mixed crowd. (back)

These shots were taken back in October, but somehow I never got around to posting them… In this picture, Maddox displays her all-important tongue-airing technique, without which who knows what disaster would ensue?

More Maddox below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry »

Imagine you’re a sixteen year-old girl. You’ve grown up in a small town where jobs aren’t getting any easier to find. Your boyfriend is a cop, which has its advantages. One night you’re at a friend’s house and have some drinks - you’d probably be able to get into bars, but alcohol is much cheaper from an off-licence. Some of your boyfriend’s cop friends show up, but they don’t object to underage drinking any more than he does.

Readers from New Zealand probably know where this is going.

25 years ago Bob Schollum, Brad Shipton and Clint Rickards dragged a 16 year old girl to a bedroom while she was struggling and screaming. They handcuffed her and indecently assaulted her.

What would you do? Where would you go? Who could help you?

Clint Rickards, Bob Schollum and Brad Shipton are standing trial for the crimes they committed agains this woman. They are rapists, who used the power their uniform gave them to abuse an unknown number of women.

After years of criticism from activists, the University of Illinois had decided to retire its American Indian mascot.  Here is the story:

The University of Illinois will retire its 81-year-old American Indian mascot, Chief Illiniwek, following the last men’s home basketball game of the season on Wednesday.

The NCAA in 2005 deemed the buckskin-clad Illiniwek an offensive use of American Indian imagery and barred the university from hosting postseason events.

American Indian groups and others complained for years that the mascot, used since 1926, is demeaning. Supporters of the mascot say it honors the contributions of American Indians to Illinois.

Illinois still will be able to use the name Illini because it’s short for Illinois and the school can use the term Fighting Illini, because it’s considered a reference to the team’s competitive spirit, school officials said. It is unclear if the school will get a new mascot.

It doesn’t seem that they are doing this based on some ethical awakening.  The full story reveals reservations of some administrators, but the pressure from the NCAA was just too much. 

Next stop– probably University of North Dakota’s Fighting Sioux or the Florida State Seminoles.

Via F-Words and Eye on Boise, I learned that Idaho State Representative Bob Nonini has proposed a law “to outlaw the use of threats or physical force to dissuade a pregnant woman from giving birth.”

I emailed Representative Nonini, and we had this exchange:

ME: My question is, do you also feel that those who coerce women into not having abortions should be penalized?

NONINI: No, I do not believe that coercing a woman into not having an abortion should be penalized.

Kudos to Nonini for honesty; most politicians would have dodged the question.

Nonini isn’t alone in feeling that pro-life coercion is acceptable. In August, I blogged about Michigan’s “Coercive Abortion Prevention Act.”¹ As I wrote then, the law itself seems benign, at least on the surface. What makes it twisted, is that the Michigan pro-lifers who pushed CAPA through the legislature, actively worked to defeat an amendment to this law, which would have left CAPA intact but also have applied the same rules and penalties to people who coerce women not to have an abortion. In other words, in both Idaho and Michigan, pro-lifers explicitly opposed making it illegal to use threats or physical force coerce a woman into giving birth.²

It’s not really being against coercion if you only oppose it when you don’t like its results.

Of course, pro-lifers are pro-coercion; being pro-life by definition means wanting the state to coerce unwilling pregnant women to give birth. But I think there’s another reason pro-life politicians won’t support real anti-coercion legislation: They want to protect anti-abortion activists. In particular, I think they didn’t want to make it possible for women to sue so-called Crisis Pregnancy Centers for using fright and intimidation to compel women not to have abortions.

Pro-choice groups in more liberal states should propose “Coercion Prevention Acts” of their own — acts which would make it illegal for women to be “terrorized, frightened, intimidated, threatened, or harassed” to compel her to make any reproductive decision (not just about abortion or not-abortion, but also sterilization and not-sterilization). Unlike the pro-lifers, we genuinely don’t favor coercion — so we can make the laws fair and even-handed, prohibiting coercion in either direction. If the laws are passed, then good.

And when “pro-life” leaders oppose such laws - as I’m sure they would - then at least they’d be a bit further exposed as hypocrites. Plus, their vote against outlawing coercion would be a lodestone around their necks when it came time for reelection.

1. I’ve recycled some of the prose from that post in this post. (back)
2. You might object, “aren’t these things already illegal?” But it’s hard for lawmakers who are themselves proposing an anti-coercion law to credibly make use of the “aren’t these things already illegal” defense. (back)

Amy Phillips at iLiberty¹ and Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet are both blogging against a proposed Texas law which would fund anti-sexual assault programs by adding a $5 tax on top of the admission fees for strip clubs.

Like Tracy and Amy, I’m unhappy with the idea of sin taxes. But I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this sort of thing in years to come. It’s an inevitable result of the growth of anti-tax ideology; when it becomes unfeasible to pay for government services through ordinary taxes, it’s natural to try targeted taxes aimed at groups that are either too unpopular, too disorganized or too poor to put up an effective lobbying resistance. So: Cigarette taxes. Liquor taxes. Lotteries. And now “tassel taxes.”

From the Houston Chronicle:

State Rep. Ellen Cohen, a freshman Democrat and executive director of the Houston Area Women’s Center, and Sen. Royce West, D-Dallas, are sponsoring the legislation. [...] Although she is not suggesting that people who frequent strip clubs commit sexual assault, Cohen said money generated by sexually oriented businesses should pay for sexually oriented crimes.

“We are talking about a service that does objectify women and it seems like an appropriate place to raise those kinds of dollars,” she said. “It’s apples to apples.”

It’s estimated that the $5 fee would produce $80 million over the biennium. Cohen wants to see $12 million of that dedicated to sexual assault programs. She, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault and the Texas Council on Family Violence, which are supporting the measure, are flexible about where the rest of the money would go.

But if the idea is a tax on objectification, why not tax the sale of men’s magazines like GQ — and women’s magazines like Cosmopolitan, for that matter? And why not a special tax on all cable TV boxes and Texas TV network affiliates? It’s not as if strip clubs are the wealthiest or the most numerous purveyors of objectification that exist. And isn’t it dishonest to try and sell this as a tax to pay for anti-sexual assault programs, when 85% of the money raised will go to the general fund?

This is general taxation by other means. If you can’t tax the people without being creamed in the next election, then you just tax the unpopular people. So you dress up a tax that supports the general fund as a tax against sexual assault; and you don’t go after the networks or GQ or Cosmo because those things are so much more popular than strip clubs.

So what’s my take on this? If I was king of Texas, I’d use a sensible income- or wealth-based income tax to pay for government, rather than sin taxes, which are inevitably arbitrary and unfair. But it’s not up to me; in the end, it’s up to voters, and most voters want a full-service government without paying for it with higher general taxes. So the choice is either to accept the so-called “sin taxes,” or to do with fewer government services - including $12 million a year less for anti-sexual-assault programs.

If that’s the choice² then I say, bring on the sin taxes. They suck less than the alternative.³

And with all due respect to Amy — who I like a lot — if libertarians object to this, maybe they should rethink the over-the-top anti-government, anti-tax ideology they’ve been pushing for decades, which is part of what has brought us to this state.

* * *

Amy writes:

As Salon magazine’s Broadsheet blog, Tracy Clark-Flory points out the danger of giving legislators the power to financially punish legal activities that they find morally objectionable. In this case, they’re punishing women who choose to take their clothes off for money—because that admission fee is most likely going to come out of the pockets of employees, not the club’s profits—because they don’t like the choice these women have made or the choice their customers make to patronize such clubs.

1) If government can’t “financially punish legal activities that they find morally objectionable,” then some possibly reasonable environmental policies — such as charging higher taxes on factories that pollute due to not updating their equipment — would have to be taken off the table. There are times when a middle ground between making something absolutely illegal, and not addressing it with policy at all, makes sense; usually that middle ground involves fees or taxes.

2) Who is going to pay for the increased admission fee depends on how flexible the demand for attending strip clubs is. My guess is that it’s not very flexible — that is, I think strip club patrons are not going to stop going to strip clubs just because admission is raised $5. If I’m right about that, then most of the extra $5 will be paid by strip club consumers, rather than by dancers or management.

1. Amy used to blog at “The Fifty Minute Hour,” one of my favorite libertarian blogs. I’m very happy to find out where she’s blogging nowadays! (back)
2. Maybe it’s not, it’s not like I know anything about Texas politics (back)
3. Of course, I don’t go to strip clubs, drink alcohol, gamble, or smoke, so I could be accused of favoring sin taxes because they’re paid by other people. But for what it’s worth, iirc I voted for the ridiculously high cigarette tax here in Oregon, and since one of my partners smokes like a chimney, it’s quite a bite out of our shared income. (back)

It’s on Salon. It’s good stuff, as you’d expect from Amanda; well worth sitting through Salon’s ad-barrier.

While I’m posting on this subject, I thought this post by Ezra made an excellent point:

So the question at hand isn’t whether group hatred can be condoned (it cannot, of course), but whether, for some reason, Catholicism should be protected against irreverent, and even over-the-top, rhetoric. That is a protection our society affords to certain groups — no white man can put on blackface and make jokes about rappers, though black men can put on white face and makes jokes about crackers. Dominant majorities are often strong enough to withstand parody, irreverence, and even attack on their traditions without requiring additional protection, while the same treatment, if deployed against weakened minorities, could enhance ongoing discrimination or cement negative stereotypes believed by the majority. So disrespecting the eucharist isn’t my style, but it doesn’t concern me in quite the fashion mocking the Black work ethic would.

It’s hard to find a stand-out quote from this post at Noli Irritare Leones, because the whole thing is quite thoughtful and nuanced, so just go read it.

Republic of T has an excellent blog round-up, and also adds this comment:

And where faith is concerned — where it’s either , as Matt said, “religion as cover for a political attack” or to justify inequality and injustice for some of your constituencies — if in addressing it you must not “stridently and profanely attack” those who stridently and profanely attack members of your coalition, how do you answer them effectively, and in a way that can be heard above the din of their unrestrained invective?

How do you effectively address bigotry couched in religion, or bigotry disguised as religion, without being an “anti-religious bigot”? If it even is bigotry? Is it bigotry? It it belief, badly expressed?

How do you denounce it? Do you denounce it?

What do you say?

What can you say?

Finally, Brownfemipower asks, “Well, what I’m wondering is how will this affect those big bloggers who *hope* to possibly one day be the chosen lucky one to work for the lovely politicians–or to be chosen to go to lunch with them?” I think that’s a fair question. As is often the case at Brownfemipower’s, the discussion in the comments is must-read.

Right-wingers are attacking Democrats for scuttling “the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program,” or as they often call it, the “baby AIDS” bill. Why are liberals against helping babies with AIDS, they cry? Isn’t helping AIDS babies something we can all agree on? (See these links, for example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8). This outpouring of “baby AIDS” related anger is being led by the Family Research Council’s Joe Carter, who sent a mass email-mail that virtually all the above-linked bloggers are cribbing from.

Of course, none of this is as simple as conservatives claim.

In fact, the bill Carter is so angry about is almost entirely irrelevant to HIV prevention; the mandatory newborn testing Carter favors is useless for telling us if newborns are HIV positive, is overly controlling of mothers, and will do almost nothing for preventing HIV transmission; and virtually all the effective policies for reducing mother-to-child HIV transmission involve improving the effectiveness and availability of prenatal care.

1) The omnibus bill Carter is angry about has almost nothing to do with HIV prevention.

The specific legislation that set Joe Carter and the FRC off is an omnibus legislation intended to eliminate dozens of so-called “earmark” programs. In order to prevent the anti-earmark bill from having dozens of anti-anti-earmarks hanging off of it, the Democrats decided to accept no amendments at all, on any subject, to the anti-earmark bill. The no-amendments provision doesn’t seem like an unreasonable approach to an anti-earmark bill, and it certainly has nothing to do with the Democrats being against AIDS prevention funding.

(For further discussion of this aspect, read Kevin Keith’s arguments in the comments of Evangelical Outpost.¹ )

2) Mandatory newborn testing can’t tell us if newborns have HIV. It can only tell us if mothers have HIV.

It’s important to understand that HIV-testing a newborn doesn’t tell us if the newborn is HIV positive. For the first 18 months of life, infants who aren’t infected with HIV will nonetheless test as HIV-positive if their mother was HIV positive while she was pregnant. (This happens because anti-HIV antibodies, which is what the standard test looks for, are transmitted from mother to child in the womb. Source.). 75% to 85% of infants who “test positive” for HIV do not have HIV.

There is a newer test which tests for HIV virus in the baby, rather than just testing for antibodies. However, this test is only 33% accurate on a newborn; it’s not until a baby is two months old that this test becomes 90% accurate, and not until six months that it’s 95% accurate. (Source).

So there’s no effective way of finding out if a newborn baby has HIV. What testing the babies actually provides is a way of finding out if the mother has HIV. “Newborn” testing avoids the sometimes uncomfortable and slow work of getting a mother’s informed consent for HIV testing — by testing for the mother’s HIV status indirectly. It’s about avoiding the need for the mother’s consent. As Senator Tom Coburn, the leading proponent of mandatory newborn testing, say: “If they didn’t want to be tested, their baby was tested.”

Labor, childbirth and the hours immediately after birth is the time when a mother has the least choice about being in the hospital, and about submitting herself and her baby to medical tests; it is therefore the time that conservatives have been most eager to test women for drugs and for HIV. With a mandatory newborn testing law, there’s no need to muck about with counseling and informed consent and all that; you just do the test, wam bam no need for thanking you ma’am.

3) Mandatory newborn testing is mostly worthless for preventing HIV transmission.

The FRC’s Joe Carter asks “what could possibly be more important than preventing babies form contracting HIV/AIDS?” But the only controversial part of the Ryan White Early Diagnosis Grant Program is mandatory newborn testing — and mandatory newborn testing is mostly worthless for preventing mother to child transmission.

Consider this real-life story from The Body, an advocacy group for people with HIV and AIDS. Rosa, a 27-year-old mother, lives in New York. (New York’s mandatory newborn testing program is often cited by advocates as a success story). When Rosa found out she was pregnant with her second child, she went for prenatal care and counseling, and was counseled about the importance of breastfeeding. But at no point was she counseled about HIV or advised to get tested. Six weeks after giving birth to her daughter, the hospital called Rosa.

A phone call summoned her to the mental health division of the hospital. There, during a meeting that lasted less than fifteen minutes, she learned that her daughter had been tested under New York State’s mandatory newborn HIV testing program and that her results were positive.

No one had informed Rosa ahead of time that her daughter would be tested. No one informed Rosa now what the results of the test meant. It was only later, through her own research efforts, that Rosa learned that the temporary presence of the mother’s viral antibodies in a newborn’s blood means that all infants of HIV-positive women will test HIV-positive at birth. It was only later that she learned that only 15 to 25 percent of these newborns will themselves be infected by the virus. It was only later that she learned that screening newborns for HIV antibodies reveals the HIV status of the mother, not that of the infant.

Rosa immediately told her boyfriend about the test results. A few weeks later, however, a visiting nurse who came to the apartment when Rosa was not at home implied to the boyfriend that Rosa had known her status before her daughter’s birth but hadn’t told him. When Rosa got home, her boyfriend beat her up, forcing her and her children to leave her apartment and stay in a shelter for several days.

“I definitely would have tested prenatally if anyone had asked,” says Rosa. “If I had known earlier, I would have planned. I probably would have taken AZT because I would have wanted to increase the chances that my child would not have the virus. I would never have breastfed.”

Does anyone believe that New York’s mandatory testing program did a good job of reducing Rosa’s odds of transmitting HIV to her daughter?

By definition, testing newborns happens too late to prevent most mother to child transmissions. Serious efforts to prevent mother to child HIV transmission have to be prenatal, before the virus is transmitted. And that requires working with mothers, not bulldozing over them. The good news is, prenatal testing and treatment have already been successful at vastly reducing mother to child HIV transmission nationwide. So why do we want to take $30 million dollars away from existing programs (which are already critically underfunded) and give it instead to programs that include mandatory newborn testing — a “prevention” effort that’s guaranteed not to be very effective?

Supporters of mandatory newborn testing often claim that such programs have worked miracles preventing HIV transmission, usually citing New York as an example. But there have been enormous improvements nationwide, not just in New York and other states with mandatory newborn testing. According to a CDC factsheet on mother-to-child HIV transmission, “Over the course of the epidemic, the number of perinatally transmitted AIDS cases has decreased dramatically. The number of infants infected with HIV through mother-to-child transmission decreased from an estimated peak of 1,750 HIV-infected infants born each year during the early to mid-1990s to 280–370 infants in 2000 (CDC, unpublished data, 2000). This decrease is largely due to the use of antiretroviral therapy during pregnancy and labor.” (Emphasis added).

4) What we should be fighting for.

• Prenatal care for all pregnant women.
• Information and counseling on prenatal HIV testing for all pregnant women, and on pregnancy, childrearing and HIV for HIV positive pregnant women. These should be available in a variety of languages and designed for a variety of cultural backgrounds.
• Free anti-HIV drugs for all HIV positive pregnant women (and all HIV positive people, but that’s a topic for a different post, I suppose). Being treated for HIV drastically reduces the chances of a mother transmitting HIV to a child in the womb or during childbirth - from around 20% to less than 2%. (For those who are interested, here (pdf link) is a detailed discussion of the medical issues.)
• Attention to the economic and other issues that often prevents women, especially non-white, immigrant, or low-income women, from getting adequate prenatal care. This is too large a topic for this post, but issues to be considered include low-cost transportation, language and cultural barriers, how difficult it is to get prenatal care outside of regular working hours, childcare for mothers expecting new children, and the impact of abuse. This may sound like a grab-bag of irrelevant issues, but in fact it’s a central issue: Readily available prenatal care is the number one way we can prevent mother-to-child HIV transmission.
• A model of medical care that assumes that all women — including women with HIV — need to give informed consent for all medical treatment and tests.

Sources/ Further reading:

HIV Infection in Infants and Children
Whose Virus Is It Anyway?, from The Body
Routine Testing Must Include Informed Consent
Mother-To-Child (Perinatal) HIV Transmission And Prevention (CDC factsheet)
Striking A Balance: HIV Testing For Pregnant Women And Newborns

1. From one of Kevin’s comments:

   HJRes20 is the omnibus “anti-earmark” bill. As many people have noted, getting rid of “earmarks” is harder than it looks, because there is no legal distinction between an “earmark” for “pork-barrel spending” and an ordinary appropriation for an ordinary program. But both parties have declared they are going to do something about “earmarks”.

   The approach they have taken is to submit a huge bill that comprehensively strikes out hundreds - possibly thousands, there were too many for me to count - of targeted allocations for named programs. The same bill stipulates specific levels of funding for different departments, and in some cases specifies that that funding should be used in certain ways.

   …The bill is an attempt to clear the decks of the thousands of small allocations for individual projects, in order to start a systematic attempt to decide what should or should not be funded. Along the way, a huge number of specific funding initiatives - most of them probably reasonable - have been undone. (Note that this does not mean that these programs will not get funded, or that the money will “just sit there”. It means that all those funding decisions will have to be revisited, hopefully with greater oversight. Every single one of the rescinded “earmarks” could be funded if Congress chooses to do so, even after passing this bill.)

   So what’s up with the Baby AIDS program? It is one of the hundreds of line items that is being taken out of the budget.

   Why are the Democrats holding it up? They’re not. A Republican member attempted to re-insert a specific earmark for that program in the bill designed to eliminate earmarks. Reid has said he will not allow specific programs to be exempted. I don’t think Reid has said anything about the Baby AIDS program - just that he wants the entire earmark bill dealt with at once, and not a bunch of earmarks on the earmark bill.

   (back)

“The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it’s indifference.”
–Anonymous prisoner quoted by Human Rights Watch

In response to Ezra Klein’s two posts on prison rape yesterday (which themselves relied on a 2001 Human Rights Watch report), a lot of bloggers are discussing prison rape today, and past posts are being linked again. Here are quotes from some of the blog posts I’ve been reading:

Ezra:

I understand why this is a politically tough issue: There’s no political upside to helping criminals, and the prison guard’s unions are terrifically powerful on the state level. But politically tough as it may be to address, it’s morally abhorrent to ignore. And we have to remember: Every single time we sentence a suspect to jail time, we are tacitly consenting not merely to his imprisonment, but to his savage sexual assault, with all the physical and psychological damage it will bring.

If you want to get involved, or donate money, or learn more, Stop Prisoner Rape is the leading organization on the issue. Their website is here.

New Donkey:

Simple indifference aside, there are two obvious barriers to eliminating prison rape. The first is that most of the remedies are controversial (incarcerating far fewer non-violent offenders) or very expensive (building less crowded prisons, providing much higher pay and better training and supervision of prison staff, or radically improving monitoring of inmates).

And the second barrier to change is the really dirty little non-secret underlying tolerance of prison rape: the idea that it’s an effective deterrent to criminal behavior.

This “walk the line or get raped” attitude has undeniably been prevalent on the political Right, where for years politicians have railed against so-called “country-club prisons” and suggested that inmates deserve the most barbarous conditions imaginable. (There has to be a special place in hell for conservatives who want to criminalize loving, consensual gay and lesbian relationships, while smiling upon prison rape.) But it’s also found implicit currency elsewhere, among virtually every advocacy group that wants to deter some anti-social behavior, from drunk driving to white collar crime…

Robert at Lawyers, Guns and Money:

To add briefly to the point that Ezra has made, one of the most irritating aspects of CSI (which, sadly, I have been unable to break from) is the common, almost offhand manner in which the heroes threaten suspects with the prospect of rape in prison. It suggests to me that the public at large has simply concluded that a) rape is an integral part of prison life, such that a five year prison sentence automatically includes five years of rape, and b) that anyone who goes to prison is irredeemably besmirched, and thus deserving of constant rape.

To take this a bit farther, it’s interesting to compare modern conceptions of prison (sadly or no, I’ve never seen Prison Break) with the work of Johnny Cash or Merle Haggard. For Haggard or Cash, that a poor white family would have to deal with the prison system in some fashion was simply a fact of life, even if Cash himself only spent one night behind bars. Moreover, neither Cash nor Haggard dodged the question of guilt; even if the protagonists of their songs weren’t going away for life, they were usually guilty of something. At some point (probably as the War on Drugs saw a steady increase in the incarceration percentages of young black men) the idea that white people would have to deal with prison became alien. Is there music or other art today that deals with the possibility that guilty white folks might spend time in prison, and thus that prison should be made at least survivable?

Booman Tribune:

…Giving someone HIV and subjecting them to rape, assault, and torture is inhumane, it’s illegal, it’s immoral, and, in this case, it is completely incommensurate with the offense. It’s appalling what goes on in our prisons. I saw another piece on American prisons on 60 Minutes last night. A prisoner with mental problems was allowed to die of thirst in a Michigan prison. They were strapping him to his bed for 18 hours a day. They caught his death on tape.

Shakespeare’s Sister:

It’s interesting, by the way, to see how different the comments threads are from typical rape threads. No one is suggesting that rape victims in prison are “crying rape” for ulterior motives, for example.

Also, although no one is saying, “Hey—if people don’t want to get raped, they shouldn’t commit crimes for which they’ll be sent to prison if convicted,” unfortunately its absence isn’t because that sort of victim-blaming isn’t operative, but, instead, boasts such wide tacit agreement that it isn’t even worth saying. There are plenty of people (including progressives) who simply don’t blanch at the thought that rape is a likely part of any prison sentence.

I’ve heard that attitude ascribed to many things, from ignorance of the prevalence of prison rape to contempt for the rule of law, but I suspect the predominant quality which most closely tracks with holding the position is never having been raped oneself.

ACS Blog:

A recent ACS Issue Brief by attorney Deborah Golden warns that a federal law intended to prevent frivolous suits by prisoners involving such issues as “insufficient locker space, a defective haircut by a prison barber, the failure of prison officials to invite a prisoner to a pizza party for a departing prison employee, and yes, being served chunky peanut butter instead of the creamy variety” may also shield prison guards who rape prisoners from being sued by their victims. Under the Prison Litgation Reform Act of 1996, prisoners may only bring suits if they can demonstrate a “physical injury,” but the law does not define whether or not rape is such an injury.

Julian Sanchez at Hit and Run in 2003:

In the case of prisons, the state is at least a partial agent of the harm: It establishes the prisons in which convicts are confined and removes the ability of inmates to defend themselves against the felons with whom they’re compelled to coexist. You don’t get to throw someone naked into a pit of bengal tigers and then proclaim, with a look of wide eyed innocence, that it’s nothing to do with you if the guy gets mauled to death.

Brendan Nyhan:

If you asked me what issue Americans will see in retrospect as the greatest unacknowledged barbarity of our time, I would nominate prison rape, which is not only tolerated but frequently encouraged within our prisons and is still the subject of jokes in popular culture and politics.

The Hindsight Factor:

We spend a fair amount of time talking about detainee treatment and Guantanamo. But there is no greater, or more common, human rights abuses in America than those occurring in our overcrowded, constantly expanding, jails.

The Debate Link:

Ezra Klein wrote a series of posts on Prison Rape that are really worth reading. As it happens, my roommates were busy cracking jokes about prison rape while I was reading them, and I kind of flew off at them. Accuse me of having no sense of humor, if you will (and they did), but when the conceptualization of a problem as a popular joke is one of the key barriers to fixing it, I don’t think it’s a neutral action to play right into that structure…

Agorophilia, from 2004:

I’m still appalled that prison rape is not taken at least as seriously as the death penalty, given that (a) it’s imposed without regard to the severity of your offense, (b) no judge or jury officially approves of the sentence, (c) it’s systematically inflicted on the weakest and most vulnerable of prisoners, (d) the transmission of HIV can make it a de facto death penalty, and (e) it occurs at least an order of magnitude more often than the death penalty. Why isn’t allowing prisoners to be raped considered cruel and unusual punishment?

When I presented my position to a group of college students this summer, most of them libertarians or libertarian-leaning, I was surprised by their willingness to defend prison rape. They relied primarily on a loosely intent-based argument: that while prisoners may unfortunately get raped, that is not the state’s intent when it jails them…

Faith at The Point:

Prison rape is very much a taboo topic. Although rape is a horrific crime, the media has no qualms about reporting on the topic, but when it involves inmates, considered the scum of society, suddenly no one is interested. “They deserve what they get. Let’s leave it at that.” This speaks volumes of the de-humanized way we view those individuals within our justice system. But let’s not forget that those individuals are people, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers. It is true that many have committed heinous crimes, but allowing rape to occur within the walls of an institution promotes chaos.

Eteraz.org:

Note in the [Human Rights Watch] report how the officer simply tells the raped prisoner to find someone who will protect him. When you hang out with the Muslims in prison, they will not rape you. I’m not sure how easy it is for a non-Muslim to gain entry to the Muslims, but someone who has some Muslim leanings, or knew a Muslim on the outside, its not that hard. And again, Muslims in prison might be all hardcore, but THEY DO NOT RAPE (and they don’t let theirs be raped either). So, let’s see, you got a prison system that is turning ablind eye to rape and violence, and you then you got a religion inside the prisons that protects you from those two evils. And people wonder about the spread of Islam in US prisons.

From a 2004 article in Legal Affairs (curtsy: Instapundit):

Many other films and books have also invoked the specter of prison rape; to say that it is an unacknowledged problem in American culture is clearly inaccurate. Yet while our culture may not be bashful about discussing prison rape, it has, for the most part, portrayed it as a problem with no solution. Evocations like the one in 25th Hour aren’t meant to inspire outrage in the moviegoer; they’re meant to stir up fear. In films like Lee’s, or Curtis Hanson’s L.A. Confidential, rape is a fixture of prison life as unavoidable as lights out. In Hanson’s film, it’s a convenient shorthand for all the potential horrors of prison that can be used by detectives to extract confessions—from innocent suspects, no less. [...]

Compiling statistics on prison rape involves the same pitfalls as compiling conventional rape statistics. [...] The most authoritative studies of the problem, conducted by the University of South Dakota professor Cindy Struckman-Johnson, found that over 20 percent of prisoners are the victims of some form of coerced sexual contact, and at least 7 percent are raped. Extrapolating from Struckman-Johnson’s findings suggests that some 140,000 current inmates have been raped. [...]

Despite its prevalence, prison rape has generally been treated by courts and corrections officials as it has by novelists and filmmakers—as a problem without a solution. Prison rape is rarely prosecuted; like most crimes committed in prison, rapes aren’t taken on by local district attorneys but left to corrections officials to handle. When inmates seek civil damages against the prison system, as Johnson has done, they must prove not merely that prison officials should have done more to prevent abuse but that they showed “deliberate indifference”—that is, that they had actual knowledge that an inmate was at risk and disregarded it. Showing that a prison guard should have known is not enough, no matter how obvious the signs of abuse.

This standard was established by the Supreme Court in the 1994 case Farmer v. Brennan, in which a transsexual inmate imprisoned for credit card fraud sued federal prison officials for ignoring his rape behind bars. While the court affirmed that prison rape is a violation of an inmate’s constitutional rights and stated plainly that sexual assault is “not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses,” it set up formidable barriers to establishing the culpability of corrections staff. At the cellblock level, the “deliberate indifference” standard discourages prison guards from shining a light into dark corners. What they don’t know can’t hurt them.

The quotes above, and the links below, are from both right and left bloggers; this is a curious case where it appears that everyone agrees, yet nothing ever gets done.

Other bloggers discussing prison rape (not a complete list by any means):
Formal Dressage Required (good post about the schizophrenic media approach to prison rape).
Echidne
Outside The Beltway.
Unfogged (”I’m so ashamed to have joked about this.”)
Rserven at Daily Kos (the writer was at one time a “correctional specialist” in the armed forces).
Dr. Mellisa Clouthier
Asymmetrical Information
Christopher Hayes
Some Guys Are Normal (the blogger implies he’d commit suicide before going to prison).
Patrick at Making Light.
Julian Sanchez (again)
Agoraphilia(again)
Live From Silver City (discussing a prison gang-rape case currently in the news)
David Archer
Rev. Chad (this post collects quotes from prisoners)

Further reading: If you have time, you may also want to read through this 300+ page ethnographic report (pdf link), by Mark Fleisher, on attitudes and beliefs about prison rape by prisoners. (Curtsy: Corrections Community.) And also this considerably shorter (15 pages) report from Notra Dame Law School (pdf link). And, needless to say, HRW’s 2001 report.

(Photo found on the webpage of the Reproductive Rights Action League of Yale College.)

This is just the definition I use; I’m not claiming that I can dictate my definition to anyone else. What I try to do with a definition is to exclude as many clear non-feminists and feminist-bashers as possible, while still maintaining a “big umbrella” definition that can include feminists with wildly disparate views.

A feminist:

1. Advocates for the social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.
2. Believes that there is current, significant, society-wide inequality and sexism.
3. Doesn’t believe that men are the primary victims of inequality and sexism.

Point one is pretty much derived from the standard dictionary definition of feminism.

Point two is intended to exclude folks who don’t see any present need for feminism, because they believe equality has already been achieved. Feminism is an activist, political movement; you can’t be a feminist if you’re not advocating for change, in my opinion.

Point three is intended to exclude men’s rights activists and their fellow travelers. My previous definition excluded the MRAs in a slightly different way, by saying that feminists believe that sexism and inequality “on balance disadvantages women.”

But I now think that excluded too much; although many (perhaps most) feminists think that sexism and inequality primarily oppress women, I know sincere feminists who think that both sexes are significantly oppressed by the gender binary system, and that making a “whose worse off” comparison is not a useful approach. My modified definition no longer excludes those folks, but still excludes MRAs.

In another great example of college students being totally insensitive, a student at Central Connecticut State University decided that it would be funny to satirize rape. He titled his editorial “Rape Only Hurts If You Fight It.” He claims to be making the point that only sensational stories get headlines, so he decided to make his own sensation.

Well the students and staff didn’t find the editorial to be funny, and the writer John Petroski was called to the carpet in a town hall forum at the school:

Petroski took the podium before a hushed, tense audience — his first public appearance since the publication of a controversial article he wrote last week in the student newspaper describing rape as a “magical experience.”

The article, meant to be a satire of media sensationalism, had missed its mark, incurring the wrath of hundreds of students over its depiction of rape as a boon to civilization and to “ugly women” who otherwise would not be able to get men to have sex with them.

Many in the audience felt Petroski had a lot to answer for, especially those who were familiar with some of the articles and comic strips he had previously written for the paper poking fun at sensitive topics such as abortion and affirmative action.

He had been up since 3 a.m. writing the speech. He hoped it would heal the wounds he had reopened and convince the audience that he was truly sorry — although later he would assert that the overwhelming response to his story proved his initial point.

Apparently, the condemnation of students did have some impact because the student was forced to resign, and it sounds like the paper’s editor was even getting a little reflective by the end of the forum. Here’s an excerpt that starts with Petroski and ends with the editor of the paper.

“I apologize sincerely,” he said to the group of women who, in the days since the article was published, had publicly identified themselves as rape victims in a show of protest against the article and the paper.

One student, Nicki LaPorte, had won a rousing ovation from the audience after tearfully condemning the article earlier during the forum.

“I am not a victim of rape, I am a survivor of rape,” LaPorte said.

Several other students were also critical of the article, saying it crossed the boundaries of journalistic responsibility. Besides demanding Petroski’s resignation, several students also called for the resignation of the paper’s editor, Mark Rowan, as well as the paper’s faculty advisors.

Students said that over the last year, the paper had become increasingly hostile to women and gays and other minority groups.

“Where are the advisors in all of this?” asked one student.

The controversy over the article prompted The Recorder’s editorial board to vote to remove Petroski as the opinion editor over the weekend. Yet Petroski will be allowed to continue writing on a limited basis, according to Rowan, who also said he has no plans to step down.

Petroski and Rowan said they were both deeply moved by the dozens of letters they had received concerning the article over the last few days, especially those written by rape victims who described their attacks in harrowing detail.

“It’s definitely going to make me more sensitive to this issue,” said Rowan, a 21-year-old senior who hopes to pursue a career in journalism after he graduates. “Up until now, I had always seen the world from the narrow vantage point of a 21-year-old white male, but now I see that it needs to be broadened.”

Rowan said the paper intends to appoint a woman to replace Petroski as opinion editor soon. The paper would then have an editorial board consisting of seven men and five women, he said.

Nevertheless, this case seems to be alarmingly similar to the blackface cases we have been seeing. Students claim that they didn’t know their behavior was offensive or inappropriate.

This also case strikes me as a real male privilege moment because rape is no joke to women especially for college women who have a very high rate of rape victimization. I think many men don’t realize how the threat of rape affects all women. We do things like get our keys ready well before we get into our cars. We check the backseat before we get into our car. We rarely go to parties alone. We stay in our homes late at night, and this applies to almost all women whether we have been sexually assaulted or not. The fear of rape is pervasive and unfortunately so normalized that many women (myself included) take it for granted. I suggest that men who want to learn about how rape affects women’s lives read this essay by Tim Beneke. It is an excerpt from his book Men on Rape: What They Have to Say About Sexual Violence. The article demonstrates how pervasive and powerful the fear of rape is.

I wish John Petroski and Mark Rowan would have read the Beneke article. Maybe then they would realize why this essay wasn’t the least bit funny. Satire implies that you “get it.” (Didn’t I say this a couple days ago!) Mr. Petroski and Mr. Rowan simply don’t get it. By his own admission, Mr. Rowan says he’s being viewing the world only through his young white male vantage point, and I suppose that’s what college is for getting students to see not only their vantage points but the vantage points of others. If Petroski and Rowan could see the world through my eyes (and the eyes of billions of other women), would know that rape is no laughing matter; they would understand the paralysis and fear that rape causes for women, and they would have never written such an editorial.

Thanks to Carmen for the heads up on this!

(Second time typing this post; digital goblins must have eaten it the first one.)

Last month I posted a list of what I thought were the hot and not so hot racial trends for 2006. At that time, I promised to post a list of what trends I think will be popular in 2007. Here is my list.

1. Asia/Asians are Hip and Cool–Africa was hip in 2006, and I think Asians will be hip in 2007. I expect to see more attention given to Asian Americans and Asians on TV and in the movies. 2007 will be like the so called Latin invasion of the late 1990s. Get ready to hear about the “Asian Invasion.” Whether or not there really will be any substantive gains (or a lessening of stereotypes) for Asian Americans in politics, media, or other prominent positions is a different question, but I think media is going to frame it that way.

2. End of Voluntary Desegregation Plans–I’m not really going out on a limb here. The Supreme Court is reviewing voluntary desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, and I expect to see them to rule these plans unconstitutional, which really shouldn’t surprise anybody given the conservative bent of the current Supreme Court. This will continue the trend of resegregation, moving schools back to the segregation levels of the 1960s.

3. Biological Notions of Race– Not that this isn’t already popular, but I think the “health disparities” research and the current obsession with DNA testing are going to combine to make biological notions of race very popular. Even though mainstream biologists and most health disparities researchers don’t necessarily believe in biological notions of race, their research will be spun this way by media outlets and advocacy groups.

4. Latinos Becoming White– I guess I am going out on a limb here especially since I said in my last post that the anti-immigrant backlash will continue until the presidential election in 2008. What I think is going to happen is that we will see two competing frames one that discusses how “illegal immigrants are ruining the US” and another that discusses how “todays immigrants are just like the immigrants of the past.” I know some people will be critical of me on this one, so I should make it clear that I don’t really expect Latinos to become white in a year, but I think this will be the beginning of a trend where those Latinos who are lighter will be seen as whiter. There may be a backlash against this from radical and progressive Latinos who see themselves being aligned more with Black, Asians, and American Indians, but this is a big issue to watch out for.

5. Non-African American Blacks are Popular– Maybe it can be called the Barack Obama phenomenon. This will be the year that Americans discover that black people are diverse. I know it should be more obvious, but it’s not. I expect Black immigrants in the US to get tons of attention, and I expect to see them set up as “model minorities” compared to their American born black counterparts. Nowhere in this discussion will people discuss how immigration policy helps select the most educated and wealthy people (regardless of race). This will be part of a divide and conquer strategy that challenges traditional Civil Rights models of African American organizing, and I have a feeling that civil rights leaders really won’t know how to respond.

6. Anti-Racism/Pro-Racial Equality Blogs Blow Up– Call me optimistic, but I have been noticing an increasing number of blogs that focus mostly on race related issues. I think 2007 is the year of the anti-racist/pro-equality blog. These blogs are reaching a critical mass, but whether or not this will translate into on-line activism is unclear.

What do you think? What trends did I leave out? Where do you think I”m right/wrong?

Thanks to Bean for making me watch this: The Tyra Banks Show in which she responded to the tabloids complaining that she’s gotten fat. I’m not sure I even knew who Tyra Banks was two weeks ago, but now I’m a fan.

Bank’s opening speech — which she delivered in front of a monitor displaying the “unflattering” swimsuit photo the tabloids all published, wearing the same swimsuit she wore in the photo — is stunning, smart, and justifiably angry. (And also displays a degree of body confidence I simply cannot imagine possessing).

Here’s a link to the youtube video of her speech, and here’s a transcript of an interview Banks gave to Larry King.

From FIRE:

San Francisco State University (SFSU) is investigating its College Republicans for hosting an anti-terrorism rally on campus in which participants stepped on makeshift Hezbollah and Hamas flags. After students filed a complaint claiming they were offended because the flags bore the word “Allah,” SFSU initiated an investigation into accusations of incitement, creation of a hostile environment, and incivility. [...]

“At a public university, stepping on a flag—even burning an American flag—is without question a constitutionally protected act of political protest,” FIRE Vice President Robert Shibley said. “The right to protest is at the very heart of the First Amendment, and means nothing if only inoffensive expression is permitted.”

The College Republicans’ “offense” took place on October 17, 2006, when they held an anti-terrorism protest in SFSU’s Malcolm X Plaza. During the protest, several members of the group stepped on butcher paper they had painted to resemble the flags of Hamas and Hezbollah. Unbeknownst to the protestors, the flags they had copied contain the word “Allah” written in Arabic script.

…Students report that OSPLD has the power to dismiss baseless charges after concluding an investigation. SFSU’s student group misconduct procedures also give OSPLD Director Greenwell the option of settling the complaint with an “informal resolution of charges.” Instead, Greenwell passed the case along for trial before SOHP. If SOHP finds the College Republicans guilty, punishment could range from a letter of warning to the revocation of recognition.

All of this seems deplorable to me. Do I like the College Republicans’ behavior? No. It’s a pattern I’ve seen before: Public behavior, calculated to offend and cause a stir, followed by pretend-shock when people are offended.¹ But they have a first amendment right to do that without official harassment by the University or the student government.

This is one of those times I’m embarrassed by lefty and liberal authorities on US campuses. Whether it’s a pro-choice professor leading students in knocking down a pro-life exhibit, a pro-Israel professor being fired for his views, or this case in San Francisco, I can’t help but expect better of campus lefties.

Of course, campus left-wingers have been censored too: a professor being investigated by the university for criticizing Israel, a student feminist group having their pro-reproductive rights signs torn down by the university, and an accomplished lefty professor having his appointment to Yale scuttled by right-wing partisan activism are three examples that leap to mind. Not to mention the ongoing use of ironically-named free speech zones to censor mostly left-wing campus activists. Right and left, the pattern suggests that too many academic authorities have too little respect for free speech.

Of course, many SFSU students found the Republican’s flag-stomping offensive while still respecting its right to exist. This isn’t at all surprising — most students are pretty sensible about this stuff, in my experience — but it is something that folks objecting to censorship on campus rarely acknowlege, so I wanted to highlight it. From The Golden Gate [X]Press:

“I guess they have right to protest,” said Blanco, a sophomore and music major. “But that shit means something to people, and stomping on it is disrespectful.” [...]

Annette Heully, 21, said a group’s right to protest is covered by the First Amendment, no matter the controversy of the group or its methods.

“It’s a First Amendment issue,” Heully, a junior art major, said. “I mean, chick flicks are offensive, but people are still allowed to make those.”

(Okay, I also had to quote that because the quote about chick flicks is super-cool.)

* * *

By the way, the president of the SFSU Republicans has a very one-sided notion of “free speech.” From an article published shortly after the rally, in October:

“This campus preaches free speech, but unless you are Republican,” Clark said. “We don’t show up and protest their events.”²

Clark seems to believe that free speech is somehow impinged upon if his events are protested, which makes me wonder: Does Clark understand what free speech is? Of course Clark has a right to stomp on a flag and yell in the public square; but other students likewise have a right “to show up and protest [Republican] events.” Until the college administration and student governments stepped in and screwed things up, there was no free speech issue here.

(This misunderstanding of free speech is, in my observation, pretty common among right-wingers.)

Hat tip: Dispatches From the Culture Wars

1. Some folks are going to be tempted to accuse me of hypocrisy because I defended Amanda Marcotte earlier this week. But no one, least of all me, is saying that people have no right to be offended by what Amanda writes: I just don’t think Amanda should be fired for it. Just as I don’t think the College Republicans should be punished for their behavior. (back)
2. Clark was also quoted, in the October article, claiming that he and other Republicans were physically threatened while on stage. If physical threats were made, the threateners should be punished. But I haven’t seen any substantiation of “physical threats” against the Republicans; this claim has seemingly been dropped in the more recent articles, making me suspect Clark’s October claim was just hyperbole. (back)

From the Lactivist blog:

I want to make it clear to my readers that based off of our contact with the staff at the National Pork Board it is quite clear to me that they were extremely upset that anyone would feel they were not supportive of nursing mothers. The fact that the staff has dug into their own pockets in order to make a contribution strikes me as extremely generous and I think that they should be applauded for their response to this issue.

Now, this is where YOU come in once again.

It’s quite clear that bad news travels fast. The question is, will good news travel as well?

We all know how rare it is these days for a big corporation to admit that they’re wrong. Rarer yet, is the group of executives that are willing to dig into their own pockets to make a donation to right a wrong. (So much easier to dip into the corporate coffers and to write it off as a business expense.) If we’re going to lambaste the companies that behave poorly, we must celebrate the companies that do the right thing.

So my request is this… Help me spread the word about a company that not only admitted their mistake, but that quickly worked to come together in an act of good will that will benefit the countless babies and families that benefit from the work of the Mother’s Milk Bank of Ohio. Take a moment and write a letter of thanks to the same email addresses that you fired off your letter of fury to. Take a simple moment to say “thanks.”

While reading Family Scholar’s blog, I noticed Elizabeth’s quoting of a New York Times article. Here’s the complete text of Elizabeth’s post:

RACE AND SSM

In a new University of Chicago study:

Fifty-eight percent of blacks opposed legalizing same-sex marriage compared to 36 percent of Hispanics, and 35 percent of whites.

Elizabeth’s partial quoting of the paragraph from the news story obscures the striking correspondence between homophobia and opposing marriage equality. Here’s what the complete paragraph in the Times story says:

In addition 55 percent of blacks felt homosexual activity was always wrong compared to 36 percent of Hispanics and 35 percent for whites. Fifty-eight percent of blacks opposed legalizing same-sex marriage compared to 36 percent of Hispanics, and 35 percent of whites.

So in all three populations, according to this survey, the rates of homophobia and the rates of opposing equal marriage rights are virtually identical. Although I doubt Elizabeth left that out of her post on purpose, the strong popular connection between anti-gay bigotry and opposition to marriage equality is certainly a subject that she avoids discussing.

So why are blacks more likely to oppose SSM — and gay sex — than whites? I don’t know for sure, but I’d bet the fact that blacks attend church more than whites (I don’t know what the stats are for Latinas) has a lot to do with it.

From the AP:

A Michigan appeals court ruling that bans public universities and state and local governments from providing health insurance to partners of gay employees has alarmed gay rights advocates nationwide.

They fear the decision could encourage similar rulings in 17 other states whose bans on gay marriage could be interpreted to prohibit domestic partner benefits for same-sex couples.

Michigan last week became the first state to rule that public employers cannot offer health benefits if the benefits are based on treating same-sex relationships similar to marriage.

This is disgusting, scary, and doubtless what some of the supporters of those bans had in mind all along. And, of course, the conservative Christian leadership is eager to demonstrate that they have absolutely no compassion for lesbian and gay families:

“This is pretty unprecedented,” said Jeffery Montgomery, executive director of the Triangle Foundation, a gay rights group in Michigan. “It just seems like such a needless slam on gay and lesbian families. The health and livelihood of their families is at stake in this ruling.”

Conservatives, however, are lauding the decision and say the amendment’s wording was clear.

“Since two-thirds of all the marriage amendments are more similar to Michigan’s language, who’s to say that the Michigan decision won’t be the prevailing precedent in the future?” said Gary Glenn, the president of the American Family Association of Michigan who helped write that state’s measure.

Warren at Daddy, Poppa and Me has a must-read post on the subject. Here’s a sample, but go read the whole thing:

Marriage equality opponents claim they are only putting these anti-gay amendments on the ballot to limit marriage, not to take away rights or change what rights gay and lesbian people already have. And then as soon as the amendment passes, the very same groups start law suits to take away already existing rights based on the amendment.

Classic bait and switch. That’s why these amendments must be stopped. They not only limit my family’s rights, they take away any we might already have.

(For a larger copy of the cartoon, click here.)

A group called The Washington Defense of Marriage Alliance is proposing to modify Washington state’s marriage laws to better comport with a recent anti-gay-rights marriage ruling by the Washington state supreme court:

If passed by Washington voters, the Defense of Marriage Initiative would… require that couples married in Washington file proof of procreation within three years of the date of marriage or have their marriage automatically annulled.

Initiative 957 is actually the first of three planned initiatives; “The second would prohibit divorce or legal separation when there are children. The third would make the act of having a child together the legal equivalent of a marriage ceremony.”

The Defense of Marriage Alliance (”DOMA” - hee hee) website explains:

Absurd? Very. But there is a rational basis for this absurdity. By floating the initiatives, we hope to prompt discussion about the many misguided assumptions which make up the Andersen ruling. By getting the initiatives passed, we hope the Supreme Court will strike them down as unconstitutional and thus weaken Andersen itself. And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.

I don’t know if this is politically wise or foolish, but I do think it’s hilarious. Elizabeth at Family Scholars doesn’t agree:

Absurd. No one says marriage exists for the “sole” purpose of procreation. But some of us do say that gutting marriage of any legal or cultural relevance to encouraging men and women who make babies together to stick together for the sake of the baby and each other — that gutting marriage of that could be a very bad thing for children overall.

But there’s no logical reason to believe that state recognition of same-sex marriages would have that effect, any more than state recognition of infertile couples’ marriages currently has that effect. Recognizing same-sex marriage logically requires rejecting the view that heterosexual reproduction is the sole purpose of marriage; but it doesn’t require rejecting the view that encouraging women and men to become committed parents who stick together is one purpose of marriage.

Elizabeth goes on:

Also a weird touch of envy that heterosexual sex MAKES BABIES.

Thank goodness queers have heterosexuals like Elizabeth around to use their magical gay-mind-reading powers to let us all know what queers are really thinking! Why, without heterosexuals like Elizabeth around to tell us what the gays are thinking but not saying, we might actually have to listen to what non-heterosexual people say! The horror, the horror!

But I really want to address Elizabeth’s contention that “No one says marriage exists for the ’sole’ purpose of procreation.” If that’s not precisely what anti-gay activists have been saying, they’re certainly coming awfully close. Here’s Elizabeth’s friend Maggie Gallagher wrote, in a Weekly Standard piece entitled “What Marriage is For”:

Marriage is the fundamental, cross-cultural institution for bridging the male-female divide so that children have loving, committed mothers and fathers. [...] The marriage idea is that children need mothers and fathers, that societies need babies, and that adults have an obligation to shape their sexual behavior so as to give their children stable families in which to grow up.

Next, here’s what Margaret Somerville — one of the best-known and best-respected academic opponents of equal marriage rights — says marriage is for (pdf link):

Through marriage our society marks out the relationship of two people who will together transmit human life to the next generation and nurture and protect that life. By institutionalizing the relationship that has the inherent capacity to transmit life — that between a man and a woman — marriage symbolizes and engenders respect for the transmission of human life.

Here’s what On Lawn — who frequently commented in support of Elizabeth’s anti-marriage-equality views, back when Elizabeth’s blog accepted comments — wrote on his blog yesterday:

It is the 800lb gorilla in the room that marriage is about responsible procreation. Every benefit and provision of it intersects in that single purpose.

Next, here’s what the Family Research Council blog says:

“Is marriage solely for the purpose of creation?” My tentative answer: Yes and no. I agree with natural law thinker Robert George, who says, “Here is the core of the traditional understanding: Marriage is a two-in-one-flesh communion of person that is consummated and actualized by acts that are reproductive in type, whether or not they are reproductive in effect…” He adds: “Although not all reproductive-type acts are marital, there can be no marital act that is not reproductive in type.”

A number of factors could prevent a married couple from having a child within three years (e.g., what if the child is stillborn?) so it would be unfair to penalize them for something that is beyond their control. Instead, a more reasonable criteria should be established that is based on actions that are solely within their power. For example, all couples who wish to marry–both gay and straight–must be willing and able to engage in “marital acts”, acts that are reproductive in type. To paraphrase the WA-DOMA, those couples who cannot or will not engage in marital acts that are reproductive in type should equally be barred from marriage.

Blogger Thomas Shawn:

Human nature defines the properties of marriage as between a man and a woman with the primary purpose of procreation and the education of children.

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops:

Marriage exists so that the spouses might grow in mutual love and, by the generosity of their love, bring children into the world and serve life fully.

These are hardly unique or even unusual examples, and many of them represent the intellectual leadership of the anti-equality movement. The best thing that can be said in defense of Elizabeth’s statement is that not all these people are saying that procreation is the “sole” purpose of marriage; there’s some wiggle about whether these folks consider reproduction the “sole” purpose or merely the “primary” purpose.

But if Elizabeth’s argument is based on the word “sole,” then Elizabeth’s case is awfully weak. After all, DOMA’s argument doesn’t change much if we strike the word “sole” and stick in “primary” instead. (”And at the very least, it should be good fun to see the social conservatives who have long screamed that marriage exists for the sole primary purpose of procreation be forced to choke on their own rhetoric.”)

Other blogs yakking about this ballot proposal: Shakespeare’s Sister, Bring It On!, Pam’s House Blend, Goosing the Antithesis, Lunkhead’s Diary, Eclectism, Feministing, and the Republic of T.