Posts categoriezed as abortion
A particularly audacious heckler’s veto
To refresh: A heckler’s veto is when a group objects to something and uses the threat of their own disruptiveness or potential violence to get that thing removed or banned. Or, when someone else who opposes that thing uses the specter of some other (real or imagined) group’s potential disruptiveness or potential violence. Basically, the message is “Force these people to stop this or else we’ll (they’ll) throw a raging fit about it.” You can see examples of heckler’s vetoes being attempted in different situations, with greater or lesser success, in these previous posts.
A heckler is, of course, a person who attends a performance of some kind, not to appreciate it, but to get in the way of it happening, thereby spoiling it for the actual audience. And a veto is the power to call a halt to something. The main problem with a heckler’s veto is that it transfers blame– it says nothing about the harmfulness or potential harmfulness of the thing being objected to, and everything about the willingness of the objector(s) to cause harm. Anybody could scream, make a fuss, or physically attack people or property for any reason, but in a heckler’s veto they try to attach this behavior to some object, practice, or speech which they don’t like in order to get that punished or banned, when really the person who is being disruptive should be. This would seem obvious, but unfortunately it often isn’t. Either out of sympathy for the heckler’s bruised feelings (“This is an expression of their outrage– you shouldn’t be allowed to provoke them; this makes the harm they caused your fault”) or a simple angry teacher response (“I don’t care who caused the disruption/damage; I just want it to stop!”), sometimes the heckler’s veto works.
That’s why I’m concerned about a ridiculous but possibly effective ploy being pulled by opponents of the opening of a new clinic which would provide abortion services in Wichita, in the same facility previously owned by Dr. George Tiller (murdered in 2009). It will be called South Wind Women’s Center and run by Trust Women founder Julie Burkhart, who used to work with Tiller. But pro-life group Kansans For Life has, completely unsurprisingly, been attempting to fight the new clinic in any way they can think of. Right now they are attempting to have the area re-zoned, because– get this– it’s bad for the neighborhood to have the disruption that constant protesters cause. Protesters like who? Why, Kansans For Life!
Kansans for Life is gathering petitions to ask the city to rezone the building. David Gittrich, development director of the group, said that when Tiller operated his clinic, a lot of traffic, police calls and other problems plagued the neighborhood.
“It was not a quiet, peaceful neighborhood when that place was open,” he said.
Alissa Kirby, an office specialist for Kansans for Life in Wichita, said Tuesday that the group had gathered 10,554 signatures on petitions so far and hoped to have 20,000 to deliver to the Wichita City Council by Feb. 5.
And they have a stated intention to heckle protest the clinic for…well, forever:
Gittrich said his group won’t stay away from South Wind.
“It’s never going to happen. Abortion is never going to be accepted in this country. We’re never going to be quiet and let it go on,” he said.
Well, you know what? Abortion is accepted in this country by two thirds of Americans. “We’re never going to be quiet and let it go on” is a statement made by opponents of gay rights, of miscegenation, of racial integration, and probably every other civil rights cause there has ever been. Eventually those people do shut up and let it go on, because they realize they’ve lost. The opponents of gay rights are on their way to realizing it, and the opponents of abortion will realize it eventually. Sometimes the people in charge do favor the heckler, but history does not.
Women who reject their own freedom
I’ll admit– I’m still surprised when I hear an anti-feminist argument coming from a woman. Women who don’t just reject the label of “feminist” but are actually opposed to specific freedoms for womankind, forcefully opposed, take me aback. I don’t understand how someone could want to be less free, and not just her but every other woman out there. My mind immediately jumps to “Look, lady. Just because it’s legal/socially acceptable for you do _____, doesn’t mean you have to! You can go right on living in your own private patriarchy if it pleases you. Don’t try to force the rest of us in there as well.”
But really, that’s not the case– we don’t get our own private patriarchies. Sure, in a free society there exists the freedom to live as if men are the leaders and women are followers or “helpmeets” if you so choose, but you will get judged for it. You don’t get the privilege of having your choices go unquestioned, assumed to be legitimate. And, let’s be clear, that’s how it should be. But when women push for men to be in charge, to dominate, they don’t want that questioning– they want it to be the standard. In order for it to be the standard in a free society, those who want less freedom are forced to create their own insular societies with their own rules which everyone follows and which children are raised not to question. But these little subcultures are under constant ideological attack by the outer freer world which has powerful weapons like information and the means to convey it cheaply and rapidly, aka the internet, and in comparison with these, less-freedom stands little chance against more-freedom.
And people who want to be less free know this. That’s why they want everybody to be less free.
But why would a woman want to be less free?
The common explanation is that they’ve been “brainwashed.” But that’s not really an answer. That just means “they’ve been manipulated to accept ideas I think are bad,” and it leaves out the answers to: Who is doing the manipulating? And how? And to what end? And what are these ideas, specifically? The problem with the word “patriarchy,” which is why I rarely use it, has to do with this. The word patriarchy suggests a deliberate, organized agenda on the part of mankind in general to dominate women, which is grossly inaccurate and grossly unfair. Just gross, really. The single biggest misunderstanding of feminism is that it’s a bunch of women who perceive everything men do as an organized plot to dominate and control them, and the word “brainwashing” sure buys into that. Brainwashing doesn’t fit into my preferred definition of patriarchy, which is more of an overarching, implicit concept of men’s interests being dominant. That definition involves a society in which men have privilege, but doesn’t require it to be deliberate (privilege generally isn’t) and doesn’t require or suggest that all men are complicit. That’s the kind of society that has existed in most of the world to greater and lesser extents for most of history, and that’s what feminists have a problem with– and which anti-feminists think is just peachy.
Okay. So, come on…get to the answer. Why would a woman be an anti-feminist?
Because patriarchy– as I’ve defined it above— is familiar, comfortable, and structured. The roles of men and women, male and female, are pre-established and come with obligations as well as rewards. Being a follower is easier than being a leader, and it means that– if the leader is good– you’ll be taken care of. Feminists (according to this view) are people who don’t want men to be the leaders, which must mean they don’t want any leaders, which means chaos. Nobody gets taken care of. And that is deeply, deeply frightening.
The woman posting to me on the Cal Thomas column that abortion is an act of violence against women by men in order to shirk their (men’s) responsibility is frightened. To her, women want babies. A woman’s job is to want babies and to produce them, and a man’s job is to find a woman, produce babies with her, and take care of her and the babies. Abortion is therefore a feminist plot to help men abdicate their responsibility and escape having to be leaders. In this view, feminists are “brainwashed” because they are serving the interests of men without realizing it. And, importantly, not men who are leaders, but men who refuse to be leaders. Men who are not holding up their half of the patriarchal bargain.
Which is, as is so often pointed out, how patriarchy hurts men too. Men who don’t want to lead. Men who don’t even want a woman. Men who, for whatever reason, don’t conform to machismo. According to implicit patriarchal mindset, these men are not just different but bad– they are violating the laws of nature (no, don’t ask me how that’s even possible– I wonder it too) to pursue their own selfish interests. They are to be ridiculed, perhaps arrested or even killed.
I would say that, in arguing with a woman endorsing an anti-feminist position, this should be pointed out. But it isn’t likely to accomplish much– to such a person, the only men who are punished are the ones who are doing something wrong, just like the only women who are punished are those who want what women shouldn’t– independence, in general but particularly regarding their sexuality. Women should not want this, because that’s abdicating our responsibilities. To be taken care of. To be led.
How to be a moralizing blowhard
Have you always aspired to be a moralizing blowhard, but just can’t seem to get your message down pat? Are you unable to find that mix of condescension, ignorance, and absolute certainty that together make the perfect blend of sanctimonious grandstanding fit to publish on the editorial pages of newspapers across the country? Well, let me instruct you on how to make it work, using the Cal Thomas patented method:
1. Pick something either totally harmless or potentially harmful only to the individual practicing it, what is often called a “victimless crime”– that is, if people think of it as a crime at all– and condemn it vociferously.
2. Pick a few more.
3. Never shut up about them. Ever.
4. Seize upon every incidence of great catastrophe to blame it on the particular behavior(s) you have chosen, without demonstrating the slightest concern for establishing any kind of causal link between them. Exercise special diligence in doing this when behaviors that are far more closely connected to the catastrophe in question happen to be things you consider God-given rights.
5. Now, seize upon absolutely anything in order to blame the behaviors you’ve chosen, especially if you can manage to connect them causally with other behaviors you consider objectionable, again without troubling yourself at all to show that there is any actual link between them.
6. Excellent! You are now well on your way to becoming an established moralizing blowhard, in the longstanding and grand tradition of luminaries such as Robert Bork, Pat Robertson, and Tony Perkins. Hoorah! Result:
There are no new arguments about abortion, and most of us can probably recite the old ones by heart. It’s a woman’s right. It’s her body. No, it’s a separate life that is initially dependent on the woman for nourishment, but is independent of her in that it is a separate human being. Who will take care of the unwanted child if it is born? Meanwhile, adoptive parents wait desperately for a child to love. If one adopts the utilitarian view, the 55 million abortions in the U.S. robbed America of potential taxpayers. New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote last week about the availability of guns in America. “When I travel abroad and talk to foreigners about the American passion for guns,” he wrote, “people sometimes express a conclusion that horrifies me: In America, life is cheap.” He doesn’t say why he thinks foreigners believe life here is cheap, but let me try to explain it. I believe it begins with the killing of unborn babies. Once the value of life is diminished in the womb, it seems to be a short step to devaluing life at other stages, such as killing people for their sneakers or gunning them down in the street for no reason. If one wishes to stretch the point even further, add easy divorce, neglected children, out-of-wedlock babies (which is better than aborting them), spousal abuse, sex trafficking and pornography. All of these – and more – contribute to a cheapening of life and of what it means to be human.
Never mind that it’s right there in the Kristoff quote why the foreigners he spoke with believe that Americans consider life cheap; Thomas is certain it’s abortion. And things like pornography, divorce, and single parenting, to which foreigners are also notoriously opposed. </sarc>
Never mind that there is no established causal link between the legality of abortion and high incidences of abuse, murder, suicide, or general violence– aka what normal, sane people would use as a means of measuring perception of the cheapness of life. Have America’s lately-rather-frequent serial killers been pro-choice as a pattern, let alone as any sort of rule? I haven’t checked, and I somehow doubt Cal has either. I do know that there is no shortage of people willing to commit violence, even murder, who are “pro-life”…
Never mind that, generally speaking and notwithstanding these serial murders, America has become less violent since the 1960’s; not more. So in addition to there appearing to be no individual correlation between acceptance of abortion and propensity toward violence, there is no societal one either.
An important point in blowhardsmanship you would do well to learn before this lesson is over: Whatever you do, in the process of tying the behaviors which you’ve chosen as the focus of your moral scolding to the downfall of society, be sure that you don’t make claims which are anything near concrete, anywhere near falsifiable, anything that could easily be disproven! Because it tends to take a bit of hot wind out of the sails.
But only a little bit. Because if you’re like Cal Thomas, there’s no shortage of people willing to donate a few puffs to the cause.
Proximate pratfall
Regarding Richard Mourdock’s “rape babies are a gift from God” comment…
It’s fun to see people all over the internet making fun of Mourdock saying that a pregnancy which results from rape should be considered a gift from God, because that life is something God intended to happen. They can see the obvious dishonesty of it, and are going to town drawing the logical conclusions of such a statement. Those logical conclusions are how we can know it was dishonest– if it wasn’t, then the most charitable thing that can be said is that Mourdock didn’t exactly think it through.
You see, the position that God intended for a pregnancy to have resulted from a rape can be interpreted in one of two ways:
1. Ultimate: Of course God intended for it to happen, because God intends everything! God is the author of the universe, the primary force behind everything and everything. He is the ground of being, or at least the first cause who set everything in motion. Therefore if something happens, it is by his intention.
Why Mourdock’s statement is ridiculous, if that’s what he meant: Rape pregnancies, then, are intended by God in the same sense as cancer, earthquakes, and car accidents. The implication of Mourdock’s statement is of course that a pregnancy resulting from rape is intended by God, therefore the woman should not have an abortion. But our response to disease, natural disasters, and human-caused mishaps is not to proceed about our day as if nothing happened, whether we regard those things as ultimately intended by God or not. When those things happen, we attempt to fix them– to put things right. Oftentimes, to a woman whose pregnancy resulted from rape, getting an abortion is putting things right (well, as much as she can). God intending the pregnancy is not an argument against her doing so any more than it is an argument against chemotherapy for cancer patients.
2. Proximate: A rape victim’s pregnancy is a result of special intervention on God’s part. For reasons known only to God– and apparently to Mourdock– God looked down on that woman who had recently experienced the suffering of sexual violation and said “Hey, that raped lady needs a baby.” And presto! He put one inside her.
Why Mourdock’s statement is ridiculous, if that’s what he meant: Because it makes God– and Mourdock– a sadist. Unfortunately Mourdock’s use of the word “gift” makes it much more likely that this is the sense in which his statement was made, and that’s why people are reacting so badly to it even though he still appears to have no clue of the enormity of what he said. That’s what is making people mentally dry heave.
And by the way, you can give a gift back. It might be rude, but you can do it. Just saying.
This lead me, though, to think of an earlier rumination I had about conservatives conflating God’s behavior in the proximate vs. ultimate sense, so I’m re-posting that here:
1. “Everything is caused by a higher power. I call that higher power God.”
2. “Natural disasters are acts of God– they are part of the structure of the world and we just have to deal with them as they come.”
3. “Now that (insert natural disaster) has happened, are the people of (insert region of the world) going to wake up and see that God has a message for them? Are they going to see that God is not happy, and change their ways?”
Three very different statements. The third person is claiming that a natural disaster is a specific act of God, performed in reaction to the behavior of people in the area affected by it. This person is either too uneducated to know the reality of why natural disasters happen in certain times and in certain places, or does not mind appearing to be. To put it less delicately, if you claim that natural disasters are actually divine punishment you are not only stunningly lacking in empathy but can also safely be thought less than bright. I don’t expect people to stop doing that any time soon, but our collective willingness to call their statements ridiculous has increased. Previously there would have been no need for Michele Bachmann’s PR person to declare that she was simply joking [when she said that Hurricane Irene was God “getting Washington’s attention”].
We still don’t– or at least, shouldn’t– want people who are willing to make statements like that running the country. We shouldn’t want governors who think that you solve problems like property rights violations and drought by appealing to God to solve them. We shouldn’t want a president who decided to run in the first place because he/she thinks God told him/her to run, or that God will tell him/her things like whether to go to war or not while in office.
Why? Because these put God in front of natural and human causes for things. They make him a proximate cause, rather than the ultimate one. God might indeed favor Herman Cain for president, but the rest of us should be primarily concerned with whether he’s what the country needs, and whether he’ll do a good job. God might be concerned about property rights, but since it’s the job of politicians to make things right in that regard, they should be doing it. God might have an opinion about whether the country should go to war, but hopefully it’s based on the same things a president should be concerned about– whether the war is just, how much suffering it will cause, and so on. God might have very firm opinions about how Obama’s handling the deficit, but if you consider Irene to be a sign of that you’re a cretin and shouldn’t be in an elected position of power.
No True Feminist
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| Disbelieving Tankard Reist is disbelieving |
…is not my favorite game. I really dislike playing it, and not just because it’s a variation on an informal fallacy. I’m fully aware that groups need labels, and for the purposes of distinction we need some labels to fit some groups, and other labels to fit other groups. I just don’t like arguing about who fits in the Feminist group, because it’s not like it’s going to stop anyone from calling themselves feminists if they want to.
What am I talking about? The question of whether someone who is pro-life can legitimately be called a feminist. That’s what Anne Summers asks in The Age— or rather what she answers, since she comes down firmly on the side of “No”:
Maybe this is a strange question to be asking when we are supposedly living in a post-feminist era, when feminism is still mocked and trivialised by the media and (no coincidence) when young women famously assert, ”I’m not a feminist, but …”, meaning: I want the equality but not the label. But the question has come up recently in two very different examples. Meryl Streep said on 7.30 recently that former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, who she plays so brilliantly in The Iron Lady, ”was a feminist whether she likes it or not”.
You could almost hear the shrieks of disavowal around the Western world: No! No! she’s not one of us. Then last week we had the brouhaha around Melinda Tankard Reist, the Canberra-based campaigner against porn and the sexualisation of girls, who has threatened to sue for defamation a blogger who commented on Tankard Reist’s failure to disclose her Christian beliefs in a recent magazine profile. The same article described Tankard Reist as one of several high-profile women who are ”redefining feminism – and making enemies in the process”. Sarah Palin was named as another. What these women have in common is their self-identification as ”pro-life feminists”. They are against abortion.
What makes Summers’ argument not actually fallacious in the discussion which follows is that she articulates exactly what constitutes feminism, in her mind: supporting women’s ability to be independent. There are two fundamental preconditions of this, she continues, and those are financial security and control over one’s fertility. Therefore, women should have the ability to regulate both for themselves:
Some women might choose periods of dependence on a husband or someone else while they raise children or write a book or whatever, but the key is that this is a voluntary state. Some women may abhor abortion and never choose that option themselves but they cannot deny the choice to other women. On these criteria, Thatcher is a feminist while Tankard Reist is not. Thatcher supported abortion rights (including, according to Streep, attacking president Ronald Reagan for using abortion as a political tool) and while she never identified with the women’s movement, nor it with her, she championed women’s economic independence, scorning the idea of women as mere washers of teacups. Tankard Reist, on the other hand, rails against the abuse of women and girls’ bodies through pornography but then sanctions the ultimate assault on a woman’s body: requiring her to carry a child she has decided she cannot have.
This is an individualist position based entirely on autonomy, and therefore one I support wholeheartedly. You will not get an argument from me that anything can be more feminist than supporting women’s individual freedoms.
The thing is, feminism is also about how women are viewed in society, including how women view themselves. Someone who is passionate about eliminating racism is not just concerned about things like overtly racist laws and disproportionate numbers of minority races being imprisoned, but also whether minorities appear in media and how they are presented when they do. How advertising catering to them depicts and treats them. What people are saying about them, and their role in society. The same is true of people who are passionate about eliminating sexism– they want to convince the world, either by argument or by ordinance or both, not to be sexist. Tankard Reist no doubt believes that pornography makes the world more sexist, and therefore she is opposed to it. I don’t, and even if I did I wouldn’t want to fight such a thing using law because that would limit the autonomy of women as well as men. Like Summers, I believe that individual freedom is foundational to feminism. I think that the freedom to both be in and consume porn are part of a woman’s autonomy, her ability to be financially secure and retain control over her fertility. Summers may not agree, so I don’t want to put words in her mouth. But the point is that individual freedom trumps social perception, a position that Tankard Reist, anti-porn advocate, does not share.
Tankard Reist also does not share the position that abortion is an individual freedom. Or does she? According to another recent article in The Age,
Tankard believes that abortion is a form of “violence against women”, one that many find traumatic and laden with regret. “Abortion is often an excuse not to deal with the structural conditions that compel women to have abortions,” she told One Plus One. She draws the line at government regulation, she says, preferring to focus “on those women who would rather not choose abortion. What can we do to make it easier for women who would prefer to make another choice?” (In the ’90s, she co-founded Karinya House, an organisation providing support for pregnant women “in crisis”.)
But Melbourne-based ethicist and regular sparring partner Leslie Cannold is sceptical. “To get the wide reach she does, she is absolutely dependent on us not knowing the full extent of what she’s done in the past,” says Cannold. Tankard Reist worked as a media and bioethics adviser for former Tasmanian senator Brian Harradine for 12 years, during which time he successfully blocked and continued to campaign against the abortion drug RU486. She also personally opposed changes to legislation that would have required pro-life pregnancy-counselling services to disclose their affiliations in their advertising. For others, the discomfort is more philosophical. As high-profile second-waver Eva Cox puts it, it’s about the difference between “a view of feminism in which choices and opportunities are not determined by gender” (a group in which Cox includes herself) and “one that wants to protect women, whether it be from men, from sexuality or something else” – the world view Cox suspects Tankard Reist subscribes to.
Tankard Reist’s political activity is the practical manifestation of this difference in philosophy. It takes a paternal, protective disposition to work to ban a product or practice because you don’t trust people to choose it for themselves and use it responsibly. I would say the notion that abortion is always foisted on women against their will rather than having been chosen of their own volition is delusional, but then people say the same thing about being in porn. No doubt Tankard Reist is one of them.
But it doesn’t seem that she opposes abortion on the grounds that a fetus is a person, which is what pro-life women generally bring up first when they want to claim both the label “pro-life” and “feminist,” or what anyone who is pro-life tends to bring up first when charged with sexism. This might be a cultural difference– Americans are powerfully swayed by the idea of people having rights, dammit, and if a fetus is a person then it stands to reason that it has rights. On the other hand, the idea that abortion (or pornography) is somehow an offense against women which subordinates them seems more likely to carry in Australia, forcing women who want abortions (or porn) to assert that they are capable of handling it.
There is a certain amount of “poor women aren’t able to make the decision to have an abortion; they’re pressured into it” mentality in American pro-lifers, but their paternalism is firmly right-wing. I doubt Sarah Palin cares a great deal about being considered a feminist, because here it seems like right-wingers of any kind are extremely reluctant to claim that label– that it belongs to the left. I don’t know for certain, but am guessing that in Australia the term “feminist” is rarely used as an epithet. In America, feminists of Tankard Reist’s brand and conservatives have banded together in fighting pornography, as noted in Pornography Makes For Strange Bedfellows:
But in the late 70’s, some radical feminists, lead by writer Andrea Dworkin and law professor Catherine MacKinnon, began to see pornography not as obscene or immoral but as a means of subordinating women and keeping gender inequality intact. This shall be referred to as the second wave of feminist critiques or the “radical feminist” critique. Moreover, they view pornography as a form of sexual violence, not just the cause of it. They do not make a distinction between erotica and pornography or even art for that matter. They accordingly support the suppression of these works as a way of dissolving gender inequality in society. The third wave of feminist critiques are a defense of pornography on free speech grounds in response to the preceding two waves of criticism. This diverse group of women contains every one from pioneering feminist Betty Friedan to ACLU president Nadine Strossen to syndicated columnist Molly Ivins to former porn star Annie Sprinkle. What they have in common is their support of pornography as protected speech. These “free expression” feminists don’t all agree on the value or harm of pornography to society but they do agree on the harm to free expression that the suppression of pornography would cause. . .Do the feminist anti-pornography critiques offer something new to the discussion of pornography as protected speech? Or are their arguments a reworking of previous arguments but with feminist terminology? The answer to both of these questions is “yes.” First, let us examine the first question: do the feminist anti-pornography critiques offer something new to the discussion of pornography as protected speech? The advent of the feminist voice to all discussion has been very healthy to the exchange of ideas in this country. The first and second wave anti-pornography feminists have brought a fresh critical eye to the examination of pornography as a social phenomenon. They ask who does the First Amendment protect? Pornographers? But what about the climate pornography fosters for women in our country? Isn’t pornography a form of group defamation towards women? Does it not teach men that women are sexual objects who enjoy being the object through which men get their sexual satisfaction. Second, let us examine the other question: are their arguments a reworking of previous arguments but with feminist terminology? Their criticism of pornography is interesting and healthy for the exchange of ideas but their remedies for it in the case of the second wave, suppression of it, presents more harms than the ones they are seeking to just. It seems contradictory that the same structures the radical feminists are trying to tear down are the same ones they are seeking to use to attack pornography. The Indianapolis Ordinance for example, a collaboration between conservatives and anti- pornography feminists, would have allowed people who are harmed by pornography to seek civil damages from the distributors and makers of it. But the American Booksellers Association filed a suit against it because its members feared that since they could not review every book they ordered they would have to not sell any books that relate to sexual matters for fee of violating the ordinance. The ordinance was found to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in a summary statement that agreed with lower court decisions.
I’m conflicted in applying this same sort of thinking to Tankard Reist’s stance on abortion. On the one hand, it seems that in saying she doesn’t deserve to call herself a feminist, Summers is saying that only (what in America would be called) leftists can be feminists, and Tankard Reist’s reasoning for being pro-life conforms very much to Dworkin/MacKinnon-style feminism which was leftist. On the other hand, Tankard Reist’s reasoning in opposing both pornography and abortion is clearly protection-focused over autonomy-focused, and that undermines what Summers and many other third-wave “sex positive” feminists see as foundational to feminism itself.
So I guess my conclusion is…Tankard Reist is a feminist, as much as Dworkin and MacKinnon were. Protective, paternal (maternal, I suppose), and ultimately so concerned with the representation of women in society that protecting women from themselves seems/seemed like the responsible, pro-woman thing to do. That doesn’t mean that autonomy-focused third-wave feminists like Summers (and myself) need to approve of her thinking or what she stands for. We’re free to continue pointing out that treating women like children doesn’t amount to supporting them, and that the most important thing is to allow them to make their own choices even if they are wrong-headed, self-damaging, or even influenced by nefarious outside sources. In other words, that feminism might just be more about intentions than outcomes. And that’s okay.
Coulda been, shoulda been, never woulda been
Apparently October 9th is National Pro Life Cupcake Day. Did you know? It’s a day when pastries become political…poor pastries. Pressed into service on behalf of highly controversial issue which doesn’t have, so far as I can tell, any direct connection to wax paper wrappers and frosting. But, one might ask, how is this joyous holiday celebrated? Well…
Here’s how we celebrate: once a year, on October 9th, we would bake as many birthday cupcakes as humanly possible and hand them out for free wherever we can. When people asked whose birthday it is, we tell them these cupcakes are for celebrating the birthdays of every person who never gets to have a birthday. People respond in all ways – from refusing the cupcake, to sharing about abortions they’ve had in the past and the regret they carry, to just wanting to know more.
Amanda Marcotte offers up some lovely snark in response:
But really, they’re selling the whole “never will get a birthday” thing short! After all, there are many, many, many more potential people that never come into existence than just those who may have been but for an abortion. After all, there are children you never had because you use contraception (to be fair, anti-choice activists are also against that). But there are also children you didn’t have because you didn’t have sex in the first place. Not fucking is clearly murder in these cases. Every time you’re ovulating and you elect to go to bed alone, you have deprived someone of a birthday! So women like Lila Rose and Jill Stanek, who claim that contraception is a sin and therefore expect us to believe they simply use abstinence to keep from having babies, are also horrible deprivers-of-birthdays with all that abstaining. Stanek is in her 50s and has only one son, I do believe, meaning she’s deprived approximately 400 children of their chance to have a birthday. That’s a lot of cupcakes!
All I can think of this quote from Richard Dawkins’ book Unweaving the Rainbow:
We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Arabia. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively exceeds the set of actual people. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.
Have a cupcake.
What’s wrong with The Marriage Vow
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| This is not a marriage. No matter what it might look like. No siree-bob. If they have kids, they will not be a family. Nope. This message brought to you by a lot of organizations with the word “family” in their names, so they know what they’re talking about. |
So far, Rick Santorum and Michelle Bachmann are the two presidential candidates (wow; it’s still strange to say that) who have signed something called The Marriage Vow. What is this vow, you ask? Well, it’s a pledge conceived by a Christian organization called The Family Leader, based in Iowa and associated with Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council. Because by golly, you don’t care about families if you don’t have “Family” right there in your name.
And the word “family,” of course, means something very specific: a church and state-authorized union of two people who were born biologically male and female respectively, who were virgins until marriage and maintain a strict monogamous relationship, would never divorce unless perhaps one of them beat the other to a pulp, and whose sexual relations (which involve no consumption of pornography) have produced at least one child containing their shared genetic lineage. Or to use the Vow’s terms, “innocent fruit of their conjugal intimacy.”
Having clarified that, let’s get to the Vow itself. The purpose of this pledge is to outline a set of stances a presidential candidate will promise to support and uphold in defense of the Institution of Marriage, which is critical to maintaining that of Family (TM) outlined above. If a candidate refuses to sign, then of course we need no more evidence whatsoever to conclude that he or she is anti-Marriage and anti-Family (TM) and therefore presumably in support of every brand of debauchery, perversity, and hedonism that you can imagine. He/she probably holds nightly screenings of Caligula for the neighborhood children during which they are encouraged to suck on vodka-flavored phallus-shaped lollipops. Or worse, he/she supports gay marriage. Which is not Marriage, regardless of what the government might say. Unless the government agrees with The Family Leader and passes a federal prohibition on gay marriage (support for which is included in the Vow) in which case the law is presumably binding and just.
So. Let’s fisk The Family Leader’s Marriage Vow for candidates, shall we?
Therefore, in any elected or appointed capacity by which I may have the honor of serving our fellow citizens in these United States, I the undersigned do hereby solemnly vow to honor and to cherish, to defend and to uphold, the Institution of Marriage as only between one man and one woman. I vow to do so through my:
- Personal fidelity to my spouse
This goes to hypocrisy. It’s typical for conservatives to accuse everyone else of hypocrisy for not properly upset about the dalliances of people like John Edwards, Bill Clinton, or Anthony Weiner, but the reason why we aren’t is because those aren’t the politicians who were going on about the sanctity of marriage as an inviolate institution which no one deserves but people like them. That is, they’re not hypocrites. The number of Republicans, on the other hand, who have made precisely such speeches and advocated legislation in “protection” of this institution? Caught red-handed all of the time. So often it has become a joke– identify the ones speaking most loudly about the sanctity of marriage, and they will be the next one caught cheating. Sexting, hiking the Appalachian Trail, affecting a wide stance in an airport restroom….I can understand why advocates of The Marriage Vow would want to ensure that such embarrassments are not recruited to their cause. I am also skeptical that they can attract anyone else.
- Respect for the marital bonds of others
…unless they’re gay, or their marriage is otherwise not officially condoned as supportive of Family (TM).
- Official fidelity to the U.S. Constitution, supporting the elevation of none but faithful constitutionalists as judges or justices
This one struck me as out of place, considering that the Constitution says exactly nothing about marriage. Then I read the footnote to this provision:
It is no secret that a handful of state and federal judges, some of whom have personally rejected heterosexuality and faithful monogamy, have also abandoned bona fide
constitutional interpretation in accord with the discernible intent of the framers. In November, 2010, Iowa voters overwhelmingly rejected three such justices from the
state Supreme Court in retention elections. Yet, certain federal jurists with lifetime appointments stand poised, even now, to “discover” a right of so-called same-sex
marriage or polygamous marriage in the U.S. Constitution.
Aha! Yes, that pesky 14th Amendment. The reasons for eliminating that bothersome guarantee of the equality of all American citizens to be protected at both state and federal levels just keep adding up, don’t they? After all, it has been used as justification for ending segregation and legalizing miscegenation. First the blacks got to marry whites, and now the gays are getting to marry each other. Clearly this amendment must be eliminated. In order to protect the Constitution from those who would change it, we must…change it first, before they can get to it.
- Vigorous opposition to any redefinition of the Institution of Marriage– faithful monogamy between one man and one woman– through statutory-, bureaucratic-, or court-imposed recognition of intimate unions which are bigamous, polygamous, polyandrous, same-sex, etc.
Or, conservatives from 1967 would like to note, mixed-race.
The definition of the Institution of Marriage used here strikes me as odd….it uses a non-legal concept of marriage (faithful monogamy not being a requirement) to enforce a legal prohibition. If the authors of the Vow want non-monogamy to be outlawed, they’ve chosen a very roundabout way of expressing that. As it is, the mention of monogamy here is superfluous at best. Certainly it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that they would like to lock up adulterers, but perhaps refrained from including that because it would be impossible to find anyone willing to sign off on it. After all, it’s one thing to pledge to be true to your spouse– it’s quite another to agree to your own arrest and prosecution if you fail.
Also, including both polygamy and polyandry is redundant, polygamy being the word for multiple spouses in general and polyandry for multiple husbands specific. Bigamy is okay to include as to my knowledge it refers to duplicitously marrying multiple spouses. But that goes to the issue of consent, and people making this argument generally don’t seem to factor in consent at all. That’s how they can compare gay marriage not just to polygamy but also pedophilia and bestiality, as signatory Rick Santorum has done.
- Recognition of the overwhelming statistical evidence that married people enjoy better health, better sex, longer lives, greater financial stability, and that children raised by a mother and a father together experience better learning, less addiction, less legal trouble, and less extramarital pregnancy.
The footnote to this rather startling claim cites Why Marriage Matters: Twenty-Six Conclusions From the Social Sciences, a 2005 report from the Institute for American Values. As its sole evidence. This report is also entirely about comparing the welfare of children raised by two parents as opposed to a single parent, rather than those raised by married straight parents as opposed to married gay parents. An omission about as subtle as a freight train.
- Support for prompt reform of uneconomic, anti-marriage aspects of welfare policy, tax policy, and marital/divorce law, and extended “second chance” or “cooling-off” periods for those seeking a “quickie divorce.”
Well, I suppose making it harder for people to get divorced certainly supports the goal of marriage as an end unto itself. In the same way that opposing assisted suicide for terminally ill patients who are in great pain supports the goal of preserving life as an end unto itself.
- Earnest, bona fide legal advocacy for the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) at the federal and state levels.
Of course. Even rabid states’ rights advocate Ron Paul (whom The Family Leader supports) has abandoned that position to advocate for a federal ban on same-sex marriage. I am not a states’ rights supporter myself and in fact consider the notion to be abhorrent, but it’s particularly sad to see a libertarian abandoning principles in favor of personal prejudice. When your entire claim to legitimacy is based on the fact that you stick to your principles come hell or high water, and can at least be consistent if nothing else, and then you take a stance like this, well…you’re no longer even a stopped clock, are you?
- Steadfast embrace of a federal Marriage Amendment to the U.S. Constitution which protects the definition of marriage as between one man and one woman in all of the United States.
Yes, yes….and a big banner across the White House that reads “Adam and Eve; not Adam and Steve,” and a formal repudiation of rainbows, triangles, and the color pink to be included in the presidential oath of office, and the establishment of internment camps for anyone found to be in possession of a Barbara Streisand album, and a national ban on mullets for women. We get it already.
- Humane protection of women and the innocent fruit of conjugal intimacy– our next generation of American children– from human trafficking, sexual slavery, seduction into promiscuity, and all forms of pornography and prostitution, infanticide, abortion, and other types of coercion or stolen innocence.
The mind boggles on how a provision such as the above could be enforced. I wonder if The Family Leader even know(s)? The footnote to this plank doesn’t specify– it just contains a very thorough and detailed rejection of abortion and infanticide. Okay, so the latter is already illegal and we’ll outlaw the former. Then what? Human trafficking is already illegal. Slavery, sexual or otherwise, also illegal. Prostitution is illegal. How do you ban pornography and “seduction into promiscuity”? At least, without turning into Saudi Arabia?
And what counts as “stealing innocence”? Can I bring charges against George Lucas for bringing the first three chapters of Star Wars into the world? How about the creation of Garfield, the movie?
- Support for the enactment of safeguards for all married and unmarried U.S. Military and National Guard personnel, especially our combat troops, from inappropriate same-gender or opposite-gender sexual harassment, adultery or intrusively intimate commingling among attracteds (restrooms, showers, barracks, tents, etc.); plus prompt termination of military policymakers who would expose American wives and daughters to rape or sexual harassment, torture, enslavement or sexual leveraging by the enemy in forward combat roles.
But not, presumably, when such acts are committed by our guys.
- Rejection of Sharia Islam and all other anti-woman, anti-human rights forms of totalitarian control.
…such as laws banning abortion, pornography, adultery, prostitution, and gay marriage. All of which Sharia Islam also forbids, does it not? What a coincidence.
- Recognition that robust childbearing and reproduction is beneficial to U.S. demographic, economic, strategic and actuarial health and security.
Clearly the most controversial and divisive plank by far. With their record on emphasizing the importance of raising children properly and healthily, Democrats would never sign off on something like this.
- Commitment to downsizing government and the enormous burden upon American families of the USA’s $14.3 trillion public debt, its $77 trillion in unfunded liabilities, its $1.5 trillion federal deficit, and its $3.5 trillion federal budget.
Smaller government = happier families. Umm, okay? I suppose that means happier advocates for smaller government, and therefore they will be kinder to their spouses and children, and so….wait a minute; this argument could work for committing to anything at all that will make anyone with a family happy! By that rationale all presidential candidates should commit to legalizing marijuana, because Willie Nelson has seven kids who could sure use some bonding time with Dad. Get on it!
- Fierce defense of the First Amendment’s rights of Religious Liberty and Freedom of Speech, especially against the intolerance of any who would undermine law-abiding American citizens and institutions of faith and conscience for their adherence to, and defense of, faithful heterosexual monogamy.
Great! Fantastic. I’m glad to hear that The Family Leader and all signatories of The Marriage Vow are fully behind protecting freedom of of expression for everyone who agrees with them on everything. Now let’s hear how they feel about those who don’t.
Two methods of shaming women out of getting abortions
Let’s say you’re pregnant, and really don’t want to be. Maybe you were raped and conceived as a result, or maybe your birth control just failed. After thinking the matter over, you’ve decided that an abortion is what you want. It isn’t something you take lightly, but you feel that it’s the right decision. Once you make it, which would be worse to experience?
1. According to state law, before you can get an abortion you must go to a “pregnancy help center.” There you will be given a lecture by a volunteer counselor who may be overtly religious or may not. This person will not need to have any particular certification or license. Their sole job will be to convince you to keep the pregnancy. By law, they will have to inform you that your abortion would “terminate the life of a whole, separate, unique living human being.”
2. According to state law, if you want an abortion you must submit to a sonogram 24 hours before the procedure. It’s not terribly unusual to be given a sonogram at some point before an abortion, but in this case it will be mandated by the state for every woman who wants an abortion, because the governor and Congress want you to re-think your decision. This will be required even if your pregnancy is the result or rape or incest, or if you want the abortion because your fetus has fatal abnormalities. If you are not given the sonogram, your doctor will lose his/her medical license. The procedure is intended to confront you with the fact that your embryo has a heartbeat– whether it actually does at the time or not– and resembles a human, although if you wish you can completely disregard both of those by not looking and wearing headphones.
The former is now the case in South Dakota. The latter is legislation that was recently passed by the Texas State House. The Senate passed a slightly milder version, one which allows exceptions for victims of sexual assault, a 2-hour distance from the abortion rather than 24, and would not punish doctors who will not perform the sonogram.Currently they’re duking it out about which version will prevail, though Governor Rick Perry has denoted the legislation in general an “emergency” and is eager to sign off on it.
A friend described such requirements as a “modern poll tax,” and I can definitely see it. These restrictions do not discriminate amongst women who want abortions– unless (as is entirely possible) they will need be paid for by her, in which case getting an abortion will become even more costly and poorer women will have an even more difficult time affording one. However, they are created for the express purpose of creating additional obstacles in the way of exercising a freedom that is Constitutionally protected. They perpetuate the myth that women who want abortions are themselves like children, and don’t know what they’re doing. If they could only be confronted with the truth, they might change their minds– it would be silly to presume that they have given extensive thought to the decision beforehand, or that they have been advised sufficiently by their own doctors. Not only does the state need to intervene in the physician-client relationship, but it needs to do so using sheer emotional appeal. Because in addition to being ignorant, women are emotional, not rational human beings.
Leslee Unruh, owner of one of South Dakota’s pregnancy help centers, taunts asks “What are they so afraid of? That women might change their minds?” No, Leslee. We trust in a woman’s ability to make this most private decision regarding her body herself, in consultation with her doctor. That’s why we’re not trying to get legislation passed which allows us to browbeat women into getting abortions. Believe it or not, abortion providers and those of us who support them aren’t out to get every fetus aborted. It isn’t about ignorance versus informed decision-making; it’s about paternalism versus autonomy. The difference, whether you’re pro-choice or pro-life, should be clear as day.
Disabled vet stalks WBC members, invites heckler’s veto
A disabled Afghanistan veteran was arrested today in my hometown of Wichita Kansas on charges of stalking members of the Westboro Baptist Church:
Prosecutors charged [Ryan] Newell, 26, with five misdemeanors Thursday, including stalking and three counts of criminal use of a firearm in an incident involving the Phelps family of Topeka’s Westboro Baptist Church. He also was charged with false impersonation of a law enforcement officer. . .
Sedgwick County sheriff’s detectives arrested Newell mid-morning Tuesday in the Wichita City Hall parking lot after a detective saw him following a van that carried Westboro church members.
The church members were meeting in City Hall with police officials. Detectives found Newell in a vehicle backed into a parking space. In the vehicle, investigators found two handguns, a rifle and more than 90 rounds of ammunition, sources have said.
The stalking charge accuses Newell of actions targeted at Westboro members and putting them in fear for their safety.
The weapons charges accuse him of unlawfully carrying and concealing or possessing with “intent to use” an M4 rifle, .45-caliber Glock handgun and .38-caliber Smith and Wesson handgun.
“I just can’t imagine him wanting to hurt anybody,” his grandmother, Bonnie Crosby, said.
Agents with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives went to Newell’s home, and his wife turned over items — including firearms — to law enforcement, said a source close to the investigation.
Newell, who appeared in the courtroom through a video connection with the Sedgwick County Jail, was seated in a wheelchair and was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit. He was ordered to have no contact with members of the Westboro Baptist Church or the Phelps family.
Two lawyers appeared in court offering to represent Newell, who grew up in Goddard. He told Judge Ben Burgess that he had also received offers from a number of other lawyers.
Burgess quipped, “The more the merrier, I suppose.”
Newell remains in jail on $500,000 bond.
I’ve already seen sentiments along the lines that the police should’ve looked the other way and allowed him to shoot some people, that the WBC’s protests should be banned on the grounds that they will provoke this kind of reaction, even that the members of Westboro should have their children taken away because their protests are subjecting them to violence. Probably no body of people comes as close to being universally reviled in the United States as the WBC, but even so the idea that this justifies murdering them is too insane for me to contemplate. I can’t even giggle sarcastically about the idea, though I fully understand people’s reasons for loathing the group.
I’ve been aware of the WBC before most people outside of Kansas, probably, given that they showed up at my brother’s 1995 law school graduation at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Guess they thought someone gay was graduating? I was in high school at the time and wanted to confront them, but my mom said it would be a really bad idea. They’ve gained steadily in notoriety over the years, first rocketing into it in 1998 with their protest of Matthew Shepherd’s funeral and subsequent funerals of gays waving signs declaring that God hates fags, and then in 2005 when they started protesting funerals of soldiers who had died in Afghanistan and Iraq on the grounds that their deaths are punishments from the Lord for the country’s moral decline. I think pretty much everyone knows who their patriarch Fred Phelps is by now. He’s a former civil rights attorney who attended the same law school as my father (though not at the same time) but was disbarred and apparently went a bit insane. He has thirteen children, four of whom are estranged from the family, and I believe the rest have been trained up as diligent sign-waving homophobes. People make parties out of counter-protesting them now– they show up in crazy costumes waving signs of their own, usually vastly out-number the WBC crowd (not a big church population), and have a grand time. But the WBC’s practice of protesting the funerals of soldiers has infuriated people to the point that the Supreme Court is currently trying to decide whether they have the right to do so.
That being the case…with these claims that their right to protest in general should be taken away, and even that their children should be taken from them, I’m hearing “Ground Zero mosque! OMG!” all over again. It’s the heckler’s veto— the argument that we can restrict people’s freedom of speech on the grounds that it may provoke violence. Effectively, it allows people who are willing to be violent to restrict the rights of those whose speech they would use as justification for violence, by punishing the speech rather than the violent response. We cannot do that, whether the speech in question is admirable or despicable. Hecklers are people who prevent the speech of others by drowning them out. Violence attempts to silence others by frightening them, physically incapacitating them, or in the case of a heckler’s veto by getting the government to outlaw certain kinds of speech in the name of their own protection. It really disturbs me that, hated as the WBC is, people would leap to this conclusion upon hearing that a potential candidate has stepped up to the plate. Contributing to this man’s defense or expressing “wry” disappointment that he didn’t actually kill anyone, to my eyes, looks like an expression of sympathy for his actions and gratitude that someone (not us, of course) was willing to show up and do the dirty work. Rather like the remarks at various points between half-hearted condemnation and whole-hearted support that came from various pro-life activists when Scott Roeder murdered Dr. George Tiller last year, also in Wichita.
Everything about that is wrong to me. I can’t be that kind of cheerleader, no matter who the gun is aimed at. And I can’t use the fact that someone else is willing to aim the gun as justification for legally preventing his target from doing whatever is angering him (and maybe me) so badly.