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Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW

Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW published on No Comments on Why, when talking about minorities in gaming, you talk about WoW

This post is based on a comment I made on an article called “Women in the World of Warcraft: The Bigger Picture” by Will at Skepchick (yep, it’s not just chicks!). There were a lot of reactions to the piece, some of them quite…vehement, but a commenter going by the name of Sawhoof who described herself as a twenty-something lesbian fundamentally rejected Will’s decision to use World of Warcraft specifically as the focus for a discussion on diversity in video games, and it got me thinking. And then writing. I don’t necessarily agree with the criticisms Will makes regarding WoW, but absolutely agree with the decision to make it a focal point when talking about representation of minorities– specifically in this case LGBT people and women– in video games. What I said was…well, here. What follows is a slightly modified version of the comment:

Sawhoof wants to know why Will is bothering to write about WoW when WoW is, as Sawhoof sees it, not a very good game and one that is on its way out. She also says WoW is as “generic as a knights in shining armor game gets.” Sawhoof, as a lesbian who plays video games and WoW specifically, presumably agrees with Will on most of what he’s said here, yet with inexplicable hostility she asks why what he’s saying is relevant. Here’s why it’s relevant:

1. WoW is a living game, a game with an expansion coming out later this year, and one which 10.2 million people all over the world continue to play and enjoy. And they pay $15 a month to do it, making it for them what Mike and Jerry of Penny Arcade have described as a “WoW utility” (you pay for the phone, the heat, the water..the WoW). It is the MMORPG that people who don’t even know what an MMORPG is, or what it means, still know about. It is also in my opinion an amazing game and one I continue to enjoy playing, but even if that wasn’t the case it would still be obviously important. If you’re going to talk about how minorities are portrayed in a video game that matters, and you’re just going to talk about one game, there is no better choice.

2. If WoW is really as generic as it gets, that makes it even more important to talk about it because that means that what it presents is at least in some way normative. “Generic” meaning, after all, “representative of a genus.” If a game sets the standard for games of its type, you want the standards it sets to be good!

3. A video game is a fictional place, yes—it can be anything the writers want it to be. That’s why what the writers want it to be matters. Everything they create is on purpose! Nothing has to be other than the way they want it to be, in terms of content. So while there may be elements of the story that make it necessary to present minorities badly or not at all, we can identify the gratuitous instances of such and ask “Why does it have to be this way? And if it doesn’t, why not change it?”

4. Sawhoof’s answer to that question is “Capitalism.” That is, that Blizzard has no incentive to portray minorities better because it’s not good for their bottom line. This argument always mystifies me because it assumes that people who play its games are a bunch of bigots and won’t be as happy with a game that doesn’t encourage prejudice! What’s the evidence for this? Sure, lots of video game players are sexist/racist/homophobic etc., but that doesn’t mean that the games they play should cater to these positions, and don’t depress the living hell out of me by suggesting that it’s financially necessary for them to do so.

5. An MMORPG isn’t just a story; it’s a world. It’s right there in the name—World of Warcraft. It’s hard to change the world we live in, but a whole lot easier to change one that was deliberately created, and whose creation is ongoing. So the choices made about what players are allowed and encouraged to do and how their characters are allowed/encouraged to look, as well as how NPCs behave and look, are very important. Some people want to play a radically different character in a game than they are in reality, but a lot of people want at least the option of playing something closer to who they really are. They also want to see characters who don’t exist in reality, but if those fictional characters are going to resemble reality in every way except that they’re homogeneous in a way that reality isn’t, that’s a turn-off. Sure, make people who are humanoid pandas! I’ll play one, because I’m one of those people who never chooses to play a human if other, fictional races are available (my first main was a troll). But if you’re going to have humans, please make them as diverse as actual humans actually are, or have a good reason why you can’t. Otherwise it looks like you don’t like the diverse forms that humans actually come in, and people whose forms aren’t represented tend to be offended by that thought.

I didn’t tell him not to murder, that it would assuredly land him on death row…that would be mean.

I didn’t tell him not to murder, that it would assuredly land him on death row…that would be mean. published on No Comments on I didn’t tell him not to murder, that it would assuredly land him on death row…that would be mean.

Do you recall those pastors who made it into the news lately for making outlandishly bigoted statements about homosexuals from the pulpit lately in the wake of Obama’s statement of support for gay marriage, and were recorded doing so?

Well, you might be gratified to know that, as CNN’s Belief blog tells it, harsh anti-gay preaching alarms gay rights supporters and Christian conservatives alike. Yep, that’s right:

The incidents drew outrage and condemnation from gay rights supporters. But they also left many Christians uncomfortable – even those who call themselves conservative. One leading expert on American Protestantism has a simple explanation for why some pastors preach against homosexuality while others go further, encouraging violence against gay people.”There is a significant percentage who think it’s a sin,” Ed Stetzer said of homosexuality. “And there are a small minority who are stupid.”

Stupid, you say? Is that the problem?

Many conservative Christians would agree with pastors such as Worley and Knapp that homosexual behavior is fundamentally wrong, Stetzer said. But that doesn’t mean they support them or their sermons, he added. “If you asked, they would say that’s really unhelpful and stupid,” he said. 

Yes, stupid. Got it. Okay, but isn’t there more to it than that?

But the Rev. Robin Lunn said these preachers are much worse than that. She calls such pastors “genocidal.” “If someone is talking about rounding up me and all my kind in a pen, what is the difference between that and what is happening in Syria and Sudan and what happened in Germany and Poland during World War II?” asked Lunn, executive director of the Association of Welcoming and Affirming Baptists. “We are talking about people who believe somehow that the Second Coming is connected to a Final Solution,” said Lunn, a lesbian, using the Nazi term for the mass murder of Jews in the Holocaust. “I think these men expressed something that many Baptist preachers think,” Lunn said. “We need to stand up and denounce this powerfully.” Her group campaigns for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender inclusion across all Baptist churches. 

Oh, so not just stupid, but wrong. The problem isn’t in the fact that they said it, or how they said it, but that they think it in the first place. Is that it?

One of the most respected voices in conservative Christianity agrees with Lunn, up to a point. “The Gospel does not condemn homosexuals, it condemns homosexuality,” said R. Albert Mohler, president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. “The Bible makes clear that homosexuality is a sin, in the context of making clear that every person is a sinner.” What preachers such as Worley and Knapp are doing wrong, he said, is that they are “not merely rendering a moral judgment on homosexuality but extending it to the condemnation of people. They are speaking with a certain venom and hatred.” He called their sermons “reprehensible.” And, he said, “they are doing grave harm to the cause of conservative Christianity by speaking messages of hate that obscure the message of the church.” “What you’re seeing here is a very dangerous fringe that does not represent conservative Christianity in America,” he said.

Hmm. Nope, it looks like the problem really is just that those pastors are stupid. Yes, homosexuality is a sin, but hey– we’re all sinners! So having sex with another man or another woman is just like one of the other bad things that humans do everyday, like lying or stealing! And yes, Christians who do these things know they’re sinful, so they repent for them, whereas homosexuals don’t believe that what they’re doing is sinful so they don’t repent, and hence presumably won’t be granted salvation and will be cast into hell when they die…but that’s all!  No need to get all hatey about it by actually concluding what any normal person would about someone who deserves eternal torture, and deeming it appropriate to condemn that person from the pulpit– that’s just reprehensible. What you’re supposed to do is keep your dedicated conviction that that these unknowing and unrepentant sinners will burn in eternal agony after they die as punishment for their behavior to yourself, rather than taking the logical action of speaking loudly about the horribleness of their lives and the grave peril their souls are in, because that would be hateful. Believing precisely that but keeping quiet about it, not proclaiming it for all who need to hear this very-important-if-true message, is the way to go.

After all, we wouldn’t want to be stupid.

Pastors come up with creative ways to express how unequal gays are

Pastors come up with creative ways to express how unequal gays are published on 1 Comment on Pastors come up with creative ways to express how unequal gays are

Now, I’m sure that pastors denouncing homosexuality from the pulpit isn’t a new thing. It’s impossible to know how often this happens. But it’s hard to escape the notion that the recent three occasions of pastors doing so, so vehemently, are related to Obama’s recent profession of personal support for gay marriage. And for that reason, I have to admit that his endorsement means more than I’d previously thought it would. It’s easy as a long-time supporter of gay rights to observe the president saying something in an interview for a magazine that expresses the most tepid of support, while clarifying that gay marriage is something that is and should be decided by the states, to be…well, underwhelmed by that revelation. But clearly this milquetoast-in-my-eyes statement has put a fire in the belly of some preachers lately. And the result isn’t pretty.

First, Pastor Sean Harris of Barean Baptist Church in Fayetteville, North Carolina:

 “So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed. Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.” You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?” Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

Second, Pastor Charles Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church, also in NC:

I’ve never been as sick in my life of our President getting’ up and saying it was alright for two women to marry, or two men to marry. I can tell you right now, I was disappointed bad, I’ll tell you right there, it’s as sorry as you can get. The Bible is against, God’s against, I’m against and if you’ve got any sense you’re against!I had a way, I’ve figured a way out. A way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers, but I couldn’t get it past the Congress. Build a great big large fence, 150 or 100 miles long, put all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified till they can’t get out. Feed them. And you know what? In a few years they’ll die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce.If a man ever has a young’en, praise god it will be the first em. All of these… You can say amen, I’m going to preach the hell out of all of them.Hey I’ll tell you right now, somebody say who you going to vote for? I ain’t gonna vote for a baby killer and a homosexual lover.You said did you mean to say that? You better believe I did.God have mercy it makes me puking sick to think about… I don’t even know whether you ought to say this in the pulpit or not. Can you imagine kissing some man?

Third, Pastor Curtis Knapp, of New Hope Baptist Church in Seneca, Kansas:

If there is a man who lies with a male as those who lie with a woman, both of them have committed a detestable act; they shall surely be put to death. They should be put to death. ‘Oh, so you’re saying we should go out and start killing them.’ No. I’m saying the government should. They won’t, but they should. You say, ‘Oh, I can’t believe you, you’re horrible. You’re a backwards neanderthal of a person.’ Is that what you’re calling scripture? Is God a neanderthal, backwards in his morality? Is it His word or not? If it’s His word, he commanded it. It’s His idea, not mine. And I’m not ashamed of it. He said put them to death. Shall the church drag them in? No, I’m not saying that. The church has not been given the power of the sort; the government has. But the government ought to [kill them]. You got a better idea? A better idea than God?

MS legislator has supernatural fears of gay marriage

MS legislator has supernatural fears of gay marriage published on 2 Comments on MS legislator has supernatural fears of gay marriage

A state representative from Mississippi, Andy Gipson, posted on Facebook recently responding to Obama’s endorsement of gay marriage. Gipson first invoked Leviticus and Romans, the first of which calls for men who sleep with men as they do with women to be put to death. Asked to elaborate further, he had this to say:

Why am I calling these concerns “supernatural”? Well, aside from Gipson having outright appealed to biblical mandate…

1. “Unnatural behavior which results in disease” certainly sounds like he thinks gay sex causes disease. Like somehow, the act of two men having anal sex– which is presumably what Gipson is describing, never mind that anal sex occurs between straight couples as well, and there are a lot of ways for gays to have sex besides anal intercourse, and oh yeah there are such things as lesbians– brings HIV/AIDS into existence. I guess this occurs via spontaneous generation, like people used to believe about rats and garbage. Accumulate enough garbage, and rats will appear. They must have been produced by the garbage! It’s a miracle. Only, not the kind of miracle you’d want, since (almost) nobody sits around wishing for rats or HIV. And the latter, incidentally, may be more easily transmissible via anal intercourse, but a) it would be absurd to suggest that it’s difficult to protect oneself from infection, and b) two uninfected people can have all of the anal sex they want over the entire course of their lives without either one ever getting the disease. You know, such as might be the case between two married people. Including two gay married people, Mr. Gipson.

2. You see, we need to think of the children. Not because gay married couples can be expected to become parents, and unmarried gay couples are parents already, and there is reason to believe that they are somehow inferior at it in comparison to straight couples. Gipson doesn’t even bother alleging that. Instead, he claims that children might be confused because gay marriage might mislead them about the “proper role of men and women in society” and the “important differences” between then, which gay people being married would somehow render obscure. He doesn’t bother to explain, though, what the proper roles of men and women in society are and how gay marriage would misportray that, nor does he explain what important differences between men and women exist which gay marriage would make less obvious. Gipson simply speaks about children becoming “confused,” as if they are being deceived about the reality of what men and women are and do, when in fact he is the one advocating for such deception by trying to force men and women to do and be other than what they want and are. Dobedobedo.

3. “Undermining the long-standing definition of marriage as between one man and one woman.” Or one man and a bunch of women. Or one man, one woman, and a bunch of concubines. Or one man and one woman, but only if they’re of the same race. We’re all familiar with these very real historical and current forms of marriage that exist despite the outright denial of people like Gipson. But what baffles and amazes me about the redefinition argument, especially this version of it, is that it sounds like he honestly thinks people won’t know what marriage is anymore if gays are allowed to marry. Like everybody who is currently in a non-gay marriage, or aspires to someday be in one, will suddenly forget why and lose all motivation. They’ll experience a collective marital amnesia, like Goldie Hawn’s character in Overboard, and cease to want and feel what they formerly did about being in love and establishing long-standing relationships based on that love. Straight people will cumulatively throw their hands in the air, forget the whole marriage enterprise, and become eunuchs I guess. Or gay, in which case I suppose they will all get gay married, which is probably one of the thoughts that makes Gipson wake up at night in a cold sweat.

All of these impulses I’m calling “supernatural” because they are literally not about reality. They are about Gipson’s false impression of reality, which he portrays as real but which will be further– let’s not kid ourselves, it’s already very apparent– revealed as unreal as the cause of gay rights progresses. Sex doesn’t work how he thinks it does. Men and women are not what he wants them to be. Marriage is not what he wants it to be. And that’s frightening. It’s really scary to be profoundly mistaken about such basic and fundamental aspects of life. But though I have sympathy for a person who is so mistaken, the solution is not to force the rest of us to conform to his delusions. Mississippi, please pay attention and vote this person out of office…he has no business being there.

From the wayback machine

From the wayback machine published on 2 Comments on From the wayback machine

Other bloggers occasionally like to dig up something they wrote years ago and share it again, either for nostalgia’s sake or because it has become relevant again, or both. I’m going to do that today, only I’m going super old school on you. High school, that is.

Apologies for the fuzziness– I need a real scanner.

I’m not sharing this because it’s an especially good bit of writing– it isn’t. I’m sharing it because of the date and the location. Wichita, Kansas, November of 1994. Publishing this in the school paper got me a certain amount of retaliation– a rapid-fire rumor spread that I wrote it as a way of coming out myself, and the word “DYKE” was scrawled in big red letters on the wall of my storage cubbyhole in the journalism office. But I didn’t encounter any open resistance from the staff about the legitimacy of writing on this topic, and certainly not from our journalism teacher Pam Koeller or anyone in administration. We started a gay-straight alliance club in that same year, again with no resistance from anyone in authority that I recall, and with the gracious sponsorship of biology teacher Sherri Schaake (both Koeller and Schaake, it should come as no surprise, were excellent teachers in addition to being so open-minded).

Considering the current environment in the U.S. midwest when it comes to LGBT issues in 2012, I am forced to come to one of two conclusions. Either it is the case that

  1. A large scale back-sliding has been taking place, and a progressive attitude that was once prevalent has now diminished, or
  2. There are significant pockets of progressiveness in what are commonly considered to be thoroughly red states which make it unfair, or at least very hasty, to dismiss them as generally hostile to LGBT interests.
I suppose it’s also possible that the high school I attended was just a remarkable exception, but it wasn’t some kind of haven of gay-friendliness. The GSA club was started in the first place in part because openly gay or “gay-seeming” students could expect to be bullied at any free period such as lunch or breaks between class, and we wanted to create a safe place in order to just hang out and talk. 
And yet. And yet, there has been a rash of bullying of gays that has led to several suicides in the past few years. Elsewhere in the midwest, in 2012, we have stories like this. It really does baffle me sometimes.

Bullshit

Bullshit published on 2 Comments on Bullshit

In today’s news, a group of high school students were offended and walked out of a talk because they were told that they are too moral to do things like stoning women for being non-virgins on their wedding night or owning slaves. The person giving this talk called them cowards for doing so. When word of this event reached certain sources afterward, they loudly condemned the speaker for being a bully. The speaker then apologized.

Yes, I’m serious.

What, you want more details? Fine…

The speaker was sex advice columnist and gay rights advocate Dan Savage. The talk he was giving was about bullying of LGBT students and causes of such. And what happened was….well, just watch the video:

It’s important to actually hear what was said and done, yes, but mostly so that you can recognize the correct interpretation of what happened rather than what is being reported, which is that Savage went on an “anti-Christian tirade.” No, he did not. Nor did he go on an anti-Christianity tirade, or even really an anti-bible tirade. He did not bully Christian students, he didn’t abuse anyone, and– let’s note– he didn’t offend most of the Christian students in the room, at least not enough to make them walk out. I don’t find it likely that the loud cheers and applause when Savage dryly remarked “It’s funny, as someone who’s on the receiving end of beatings that are justified by the bible, how pansy-assed some people react when you push back” came from a group made up of all atheists, Muslims, and Jews. I think it included at least a few Christians who recognized how absurd it is to be offended at the suggestion that the Bible includes descriptions of and outright commands to do some silly or even horrible things, and modern Christians are content to leave such things to history rather than interpret them as rules for living today. And that if Christians can do that with stoning and slavery, they can do it with attacking homosexuals.

Because that’s what Savage said. Only he chose to describe those silly and/or horrible things as “bullshit,” which apparently was a bridge too far. Or at least I hope that’s what got so many outraged posteriors out of uncomfortable-looking conference hall seating. I hope it wasn’t a belief that it’s actually really unfortunate that we can’t stone fornicating women to death anymore, because such is God’s true and enduring will.

I realize that language was the primary concern that caused the movie Bully to ironically be rated as appropriate only for ears older than those of the victims depicted in the documentary. But really, no high school student hasn’t heard the word “bullshit” countless times. As the title of a popular long-running show on Showtime, it barely rates as profanity. But was it an inaccurate word for what Savage was describing? In his apology, he says

On other occasions I’ve made the same point without using the word bullshit…

We can learn to ignore what the bible says about gay people the same way we have learned to ignore what the Bible says about clams and figs and farming and personal grooming and menstruation and masturbation and divorce and virginity and adultery and slavery. Let’s take slavery. We ignore what the Bible says about slavery in both the Old and New Testaments. And the authors of the Bible didn’t just fail to condemn slavery. They endorsed slavery: “Slaves obey your masters.” In his book Letter to a Christian Nation, Sam Harris writes that the Bible got the easiest moral question humanity has ever faced wrong. The Bible got slavery wrong. What are the odds that the Bible got something as complicated as human sexuality wrong? I’d put those odds at about 100%. 

It shouldn’t be hard for modern Christians to ignore what the bible says about gay people because modern Christians—be they conservative fundamentalists or liberal progressives—already ignore most of what the Bible says about sex and relationships. Divorce is condemned in the Old and New Testaments. Jesus Christ condemned divorce. Yet divorce is legal and there is no movement to amend state constitutions to ban divorce. Deuteronomy says that if a woman is not a virgin on her wedding night she shall be dragged to her father’s doorstep and stoned to death. Callista Gingrich lives. And there is no effort to amend state constitutions to make it legal to stone the third Mrs. Gingrich to death.

…and maybe I shouldn’t have used the word bullshit in this instance. But while it may have been a regrettable word choice, my larger point stands: If believers can ignore what the Bible says about slavery, they can ignore what the Bible says about homosexuality. (The Bible also says some beautiful things that are widely ignored: “Sell what you possess and give to the poor… and come, follow me.” You better get right on that, Joel.) Finally, here’s Mark Twain on the Bible:

It is full of interest. It has noble poetry in it; and some clever fables; and some blood-drenched history; and some good morals; and a wealth of obscenity; and upwards of a thousand lies. 

 I’m not guilty of saying anything that hasn’t been said before and—yes—said much better. What is “bullshit” in this context but “upwards of a thousand lies” in modern American English? 

That part, at least, doesn’t sound very apologetic. What Savage was actually apologizing for is calling the students who walked out “pansy-assed,” which sounds like a pretty good description to me for rising up from one’s chair and walking out almost the moment a speaker even mentions your holy text in a discussion on atrocities that once were seen as acceptable but are now easily recognizable as abhorrent. That is what happened, and I’ve seen claims in a few places that the walkout was planned in advance, before Savage even hit the stage.

Hemant Meta’s discussion of this says that Savage should not have used the words “bullshit” and “pansy-assed” because they are alienating. Perhaps they are, but that isn’t necessarily an argument against using them. For one thing, the students Savage called “pansy-assed” were already feeling good and alienated. And I thought it pretty clever to use one of the predominate epithets hurled against gay men for the past few decades to describe a walkout in response to the suggestion that the bible is a source of bigotry and bullying. It’s not the source, however, as Meta surprisingly claims:

So did he go too far in talking about the Bible? Nope. If you’re a journalist covering this subject, you should know about the root cause of anti-gay bigotry: The Bible. I don’t know how anyone could give a speech like this without talking about religion.

“The Bible” ! = “religion.” It wouldn’t even be accurate to say that religion is the root cause of anti-gay bigotry, but it would be a lot closer. Many religions contain moral codes in which some notion of sexual purity and prescribed gender roles are important and therefore men who “act like women” and women who “act like men” by sleeping with members of the same sex are regarded as unnatural and profane. Ultimately, however, mistrust of any and all people who step outside of rigid gender roles is so widespread that I believe it precedes and is imported into religion by people who want to believe God not only shares but is the source of their bigotry. Indeed, you can’t– or at least, shouldn’t– give a talk addressing bullying and general mistreatment of gays without addressing how religion contributes to it. But that doesn’t mean holding all religious people solely accountable for homophobia, which Savage took great pains not to do. That was the point of noting that there are all sorts of things good religious people no longer believe or practice even if old doctrines say they should, because they (the people) are good. People who have been taught that God considers homosexuality sinful change their position on this all of the time, usually because they are actually exposed to the existence of homosexuals who are decent, kind, normal people who aren’t harming anyone.  “Therefore,” the non-homophobic religious person concludes, “I must have been given bad information about what God thinks is sinful in this regard. Surely in order to be considered sinful something must be harmful to someone, and homosexuality isn’t.”

The existence of this sort of person must be acknowledged and respected, and my hunch is that Dan Savage’s audience was largely composed of them. Those are the people who laughed when he said “The bible guys in the hall can come back now because I’m done beating up the bible,” because they knew he wasn’t really beating up the bible. And he sure as hell wasn’t beating up Christianity or Christians. He was beating up the notion that it’s acceptable to hypocritically discard other relics of religious hatred from 2,000 years ago because they don’t apply to how we should live today, but not when it comes to beating on the gays. And that’s a message for which nobody should apologize.

Love. This.

Love. This. published on 1 Comment on Love. This.

Two very bad ideas

Two very bad ideas published on No Comments on Two very bad ideas

1. Inflicting an enormous judicial penalty on someone because what would otherwise be counted as harassment a) resulted in a suicide, and b) might have been based in bigotry:

Dharun Ravi is on trial in New Jersey for spying on his college roommate. Although the Newark Star-Ledger says “Ravi is not charged in connection with [Tyler] Clementi’s death,” it is doubtful that he would have been charged at all if Clementi had not jumped off the George Washington Bridge on September 22, 2010. That was three days after Ravi, monitoring their Rutgers University dorm room via a webcam, watched Clementi kiss a male visitor and two days after Ravi tweeted that he “saw my roommate making out with a dude.” If Clementi had not killed himself (for reasons that remain unclear), Ravi surely would not be facing the prospect of 10 years in prison for “bias intimidation.” 

2. Allowing schools in your state to skip sex education, and prohibiting instruction on contraception in classes that continue to be taught, because you are fundamentally opposed to sex outside of marriage and consider safe sex to be “getting away” with something.

A bill to allow Utah schools to drop sex education classes — and prohibit instruction in the use of contraception in those that keep the courses — moved significantly closer to becoming law Wednesday. The House passed HB363 by a 45-28 vote after a late-afternoon debate that centered largely on lawmakers’ differing definitions of morality. “We’ve been culturally watered down to think we have to teach about sex, about having sex and how to get away with it, which is intellectually dishonest,” said bill sponsor Rep. Bill Wright, R-Holden. “Why don’t we just be honest with them upfront that sex outside marriage is devastating?”

Hmm. That doesn’t sound like honesty to me. Honesty would be refusing to withhold the knowledge that contraception exists, and that it can be very effective when used properly, and here’s how to use it properly. Honesty would be acknowledging that not everyone wants to have a baby at all times, and everyone wants to avoid disease, always, and contraception is very good at preventing both of these. A marriage license, not so much.

Shopping at Penney’s has not made me a lesbian

Shopping at Penney’s has not made me a lesbian published on 2 Comments on Shopping at Penney’s has not made me a lesbian

Sure, this is anecdotal evidence, but take it for what it’s worth.

I like to buy jeans at J.C. Penney. They have a decent variety of Levis, usually at a good price. Now, granted, I was never persuaded to shop for jeans there by a spokesperson of any kind. But I also have not seen any sign that my Levis give a damn what kind of family I’m in. Nor has my sexuality changed, so far as I can tell, as a result of my wearing them. There has not been the slightest uptick in my attraction to girls, and no increase in incidences of my having been mistaken for a lesbian. I have neither been ejected from my “traditional family” as daughter for wearing them, nor been refused admission to a “traditional family” as wife. In fact, if my ass looks sufficiently good in those jeans, they might actually aid in the latter endeavor.

So I’m sorry, Penney’s. If having Ellen DeGeneres as your spokesperson has all been some kind of nefarious plot to create gays, repel non-gays, convert non-gays into gays, and/or destroy traditional families, it doesn’t seem to be working. At least on me. Please don’t listen to the “One Million” Moms. They literally don’t know what they’re afraid of.

Tempest in a cookie box

Tempest in a cookie box published on 1 Comment on Tempest in a cookie box

Because a seven year old transgender child tried to be involved in a Girl Scout troop in Colorado, a national campaign has been created to urge us to not to buy any cookies this year, and Girl Scouts themselves to not sell them.

Yes, really:

Three Girl Scout troops in Louisiana won’t be hawking Thin Mints this year. They’ve disbanded in protest after the Girl Scouts of Colorado accepted seven-year-old transgender child Bobby Montoya as a member. Montoya was born a boy but has considered herself a girl since she was two years old, says her mom Felisha Archuleta. In October, Archuleta took her daughter to speak with a Denver troop leader about signing up, and took her daughter away crying after the Scout leader referred to the child as “it” and said “Everyone will know he’s a boy.” Three weeks later, the statewide Girl Scouts body issued a statement saying, “If a child identifies as a girl and the child’s family presents her as a girl, Girl Scouts of Colorado welcomes her as a Girl Scout.” When they heard about this reversal, three moms and troop leaders in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana decided to dissolve their troops and leave Girl Scouts. Now, 95 years after the organization first starting selling cookies, its signature product has once again become a political pawn. Right-wing groups and some conservative parents and scouts have posted to a site called Honest Girl Scouts, YouTube, and Facebook pages—including one called “Make Girl Scouts Clean Again“—urging Girl Scouts everywhere to go on strike from selling cookies, and their parents to stop buying them. They want Girl Scouts USA to officially bans [sic] transgender children from membership, and kick out any known transgender scouts “hiding” in the troops.

Because a transgender kid is dirty. Dishonest. A scourge, hiding in the ranks to prey on legitimately female members of the troop. A parasite on their virtue, apparently. A seven year old. What’s the national Girl Scout policy on such matters?

So far, the national Girl Scouts USA has made no official statement about Bobby Montoya’s case or what happened in Louisiana. . . Andrea Bastiani Archibald, a development psychologist with Girl Scouts USA, says it’s a case-by-case decision. “It depends on the age of the child and other questions: Are they being recognized everywhere (as girls)? Are there policies in place at that child’s school? Are they attending a girl’s bathroom?” She reiterated that acceptance of transgender girls is not formal Girl Scouts policy, and that the organization takes a position of nondiscrimination rather than radical inclusion. So for all intents and purposes, decisions on who gets included or excluded play out at a local level.

And yet protest against transgender children being involved apparently is not– it’s a national thing. Three troops several states away from Bobby Montoya, who almost certainly have never met her and would never have been aware of her existence if not for the statement from Girl Scouts of Colorado, felt so strongly against her inclusion that they actually disbanded. No more selling cookies, no more earning badges, no more fun camping trips because some kid a thousand miles away who was born male but determined at age two that she was a girl was accepted into a Girl Scout troop. What are they afraid of, exactly? Could there possibly be anyone in this scenario with more at stake than Bobby herself? I first learned of this story from Radley Balko’s blog, where he bemoans making a small child the object of ridicule in the name of a culture war, and sighs

It’s a story about why in the world you’d decide to wage a national campaign attacking the Girl Scouts over their decision to accept a kid who think she’s the opposite sex . . . who is seven-years-old. I mean, even if she’s just going through a phase. Even if the mother should have recognized that. Even if you think it was wrong of the Girl Scouts in that particular part of the country to accept her as such. So what? What is the point of making a big deal out of this? If, 10 years from now, the kid decides he really was boy all along, does it matter? Has it done any harm to you? Hell, even if your kid was in the same troop — which is untrue of 99.999999 % of the people making a huge deal out of this — do you really think this kid is going to disguise his/her sex so he/she can take advantage of your daughter? Again, she’s seven years old.

Exactly. I have nothing to add to that. Except this–