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Two methods of shaming women out of getting abortions

Two methods of shaming women out of getting abortions published on 1 Comment on 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.

“Freedom for me, but not for thee” of the day

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From the American Family Association’s spokesman, Bryan Fischer:

Islam has no fundamental First Amendment claims, for the simple reason that it was not written to protect the religion of Islam. Islam is entitled only to the religious liberty we extend to it out of courtesy. While there certainly ought to be a presumption of religious liberty for non-Christian religious traditions in America, the Founders were not writing a suicide pact when they wrote the First Amendment.

Isn’t it interesting how people claim that the Constitution is not a “suicide pact” when they want to refuse to acknowledge something clearly guaranteed in it, but dollars to donuts are the same ones who will be thrusting said document into the air and yelling at the top of their lungs should someone come along who says the same thing about something they actually value?  

The First Amendment, last I checked, singles out no particular religion when it acknowledges both our freedom to religious expression and restrains the government from foisting its own expressions upon us.  Nor is it accurate to say that the founders had no intention of protecting freedom of religious expression for Muslims:

In his seminal Letter on Toleration (1689), John Locke insisted that Muslims and all others who believed in God be tolerated in England. Campaigning for religious freedom in Virginia, Jefferson followed Locke, his idol, in demanding recognition of the religious rights of the “Mahamdan,” the Jew and the “pagan.” Supporting Jefferson was his old ally, Richard Henry Lee, who had made a motion in Congress on June 7, 1776, that the American colonies declare independence. “True freedom,” Lee asserted, “embraces the Mahomitan and the Gentoo (Hindu) as well as the Christian religion.” In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted with satisfaction that in the struggle to pass his landmark Bill for Establishing Religious Freedom (1786), the Virginia legislature “rejected by a great majority” an effort to limit the bill’s scope “in proof that they meant to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahometan.”

And the atheist? Well, that’s another story. But it’s absurd on its face to claim that the right to religious expression exists for Christians alone. If it did, then the word “freedom” would hardly describe it.

Follow-up: New York Times responds to complaints about their reporting

Follow-up: New York Times responds to complaints about their reporting published on No Comments on Follow-up: New York Times responds to complaints about their reporting

…poorly:

The Times responded Wednesday evening to The Cutline: “Neighbors’ comments about the girl, which we reported in the story, seemed to reflect concern about what they saw as a lack of supervision that may have left her at risk,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the paper. “As for residents’ references to the accused having to ‘live with this for the rest of their lives,’ those are views we found in our reporting. They are not our reporter’s reactions, but the reactions of disbelief by townspeople over the news of a mass assault on a defenseless 11-year-old.” 

With all due respect, Ms. Ha, I think you kind of missed the point.

How not to represent rape: a report on a Texas travesty

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A horrible crime happened in Cleveland, Texas.  A small town just northeast of Houston, it has a population of only 9,000 people, but that apparently includes up to 18 boys and men who were willing to take part in the gang rape of an eleven year old girl.  I imagine that the fallout from this event will be extensive and the investigation will take quite some time (it began just after Thanksgiving of last year), but the coverage in the New York Times has already come under fire because of how it chose to portray the story.  The offending passages:

The case has rocked this East Texas community to its core and left many residents in the working-class neighborhood where the attack took place with unanswered questions. Among them is, if the allegations are proved, how could their young men have been drawn into such an act?“It’s just destroyed our community,” said Sheila Harrison, 48, a hospital worker who says she knows several of the defendants. “These boys have to live with this the rest of their lives.” . . .Residents in the neighborhood where the abandoned trailer stands — known as the Quarters — said the victim had been visiting various friends there for months. They said she dressed older than her age, wearing makeup and fashions more appropriate to a woman in her 20s. She would hang out with teenage boys at a playground, some said. “Where was her mother? What was her mother thinking?” said Ms. Harrison, one of a handful of neighbors who would speak on the record. “How can you have an 11-year-old child missing down in the Quarters?”

After reading the article my first reaction was “Wow, blame the victim much?”  And I apparently wasn’t alone–  Jezebel, Feministing, and Slate all have commentaries about how the article appears to focus on how the men and boys in this community are going to suffer from this incident and what could have prompted them to behave in this way, up to and including the suggestion that the victim is actually to blame for what happened to her. It is of course worth being concerned about whether people who actually weren’t involved in the crime might have been accused unjustly, but that specific worry isn’t actually mentioned in the body of the article.  Nor are the obvious attempts by members of the community to find some way to pin responsibility for the rape on this young girl labeled for what they are– victim-blaming.  Libby Copeland wonders

How can the New York Times fail to frame these quotes properly, to point out the stunning cultural misogyny that allows a brutal gang rape to be reinterpreted as vigilante moral policing? To report these details bare, without context, puts the misogyny squarely in the voice of the Times.  The kindest reading of what makes people blame the victims of rape is fear. We don’t want to imagine that what happened to this 11-year-old could happen to us or to our daughters, so we rationalize that it couldn’t, that we are not like her. But there’s much more going on. There’s deep-seated fear of and disgust for women and female sexuality. We don’t have the same reaction to a boy getting beat up as we do to a girl getting raped; we don’t tend to wonder what the boy did to provoke the bully.Here’s the thing: Any attempt to gain emotional distance on rape by transferring just a tiny portion, just one percent, of the blame onto the victim is an absolute moral wrong. It subtracts from the agency of the individual doing the raping. He is completely culpable. It is his crime — or, in the case of 18 young men and boys, it is theirs.

Amanda Marcotte blames this strange story-telling on journalistic objectivity gone too far:

I was under the impression that gang raping children is generally assumed to be such a horrific crime that reporters don’t have to strike a studied neutral pose, as you would with more overtly controversial issues, but apparently not. I feel strongly there’s a missed opportunity here.  I grew up in a rural Texas town on the other end of the state, and have more than a passing familiarity with how common it is for these kinds of communities to be shockingly tolerant of gang rape.  I don’t think it’s radical to point out that victim-blaming and assailant-sympathizing in a community sends permission signals to would-be rapists and makes crimes like this likelier to occur.  This could have been an opportunity to write a story examining the relationship between victim-blaming attitudes and the rapes themselves, much in the way that the murder of James Byrd in nearby Jasper in 1998 became an occasion to look at how racism still thrives in the South and created the context for hate crimes.

I agree, but such a story wouldn’t have been less objective– it would have been more objective, because objectivity isn’t simply dutifully recording people’s opinions and representing them in print.  It requires actually telling the facts of the story, including the fact that blaming the victim is what your sources are doing.  The story pays almost no attention at all to what the girl who was attacked in this way might have experienced or how difficult it must be to survive it physically and emotionally, but instead discusses how men might have been “drawn into” attacking her and how this ordeal must be affecting them.  I’m not sure it’s possible to be excessively neutral or objective, but it’s certainly possible to write an article that gives a definite impression of sympathy for the perpetrators, and that’s what happened here.  Marcotte is willing to give the article’s author, James McKinley, the benefit of the doubt and assume that he had no intention of lending credence to Cleveland residents who saw fit to speculate on how the girl provoked her own victimization.  I would like to do so as well, but if that’s the case I’m still mystified as to why the piece was written in this way and these specific quotes used without comment.  That isn’t a “studied neutral pose;” it’s just bad and biased reporting.

ETA: I missed this sardonic comment by Mac Mclelland at Mother Jones.  Money quote:

This is the point at which, as the writer’s editor, I would send him an email. “Dear James,” it would say. “Thanks for getting this in! I have some concerns that we’ve only got quotes from people who are worried about the suspects (‘The arrests have left many wondering who will be taken into custody next’) and think the girl was asking for it, especially since, even if she actually begged for it, the fact that she is 11 makes the incident stupendously reprehensible (not to mention still illegal). We don’t want anyone wrongly thinking you are being lazy or thoughtless or misogynist! Please advise if literally no other kinds of quotes are available because every single person who lives in Cleveland, Texas, is a monster.” 

SCOTUS rules in favor of Westboro on funeral protests

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The Supreme Court ruling on Snyder v. Phelps was issued this morning– 8-1 in favor of Phelps, saying that the First Amendment protected the WBC’s right to protest the military funeral.  I couldn’t have imagined it going any other way, but there was still a niggling worry that it might.  The opinion, authored by Roberts with Breyer concurring, notes that the protest was taking place on public land, roughly a thousand feet from the church (as instructed by police), and none of the protesters entered the cemetery.  None of them interfered in the funeral in any way, and the plaintiff was not even able to read what their signs read until that evening when he saw them on a news broadcast.  The lone dissenter to the opinion, Justice Alito, disagreed mainly on the grounds that the protest took place at a time and location geared to garner maximal attention.  Which…isn’t that what protesters always do?

I’m very glad that this case went to the Supreme Court, and that this was the decision they delivered.  That doesn’t mean I have a shred of sympathy for Westboro or their supposed cause, but I do think that delivering a $5 million dollar judgment against a group protesting on public grounds without any violence or even cursing would set a very, very bad precedent in terms of freedom of speech.  From the opinion:

Given that Westboro’s speech was at a public place on a matter of public concern, that speech is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment.  Such speech cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting or arouses contempt.  “If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.” Texas v. Johnson, 491 U. S. 397, 414 (1989).  Indeed, “the point of all speech protection . . .is to shield just those choices of content that in someone’s eyes are misguided, or even hurtful.”  Hurley v. Irish-American Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Group of Boston, Inc., 515 U. S. 557, 574 (1995).   The jury here was instructed that it could hold Westboro liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress based on a finding that Westboro’s picketing was “outrageous.” “Outrageousness,” however, is a highly malleable standard with “an inherent subjectiveness about it  which  would allow a jury to impose liability on the basis of the jurors’ tastes or views, or perhaps on the basis of their dislike of a particular expression.” Hustler, 485 U. S., at 55 (internal quotation marks omitted).  In a case such as this, a jury is “unlikely to be neutral with respect to the content of [the] speech,” posing “a real danger of becoming an instrument for the suppression of . . . ‘vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasan[t]’ ” expression.  Bose Corp., 466 U. S., at 510 (quoting New York Times, 376 U. S., at 270).  Such a risk is unacceptable; “in public debate [we] must tolerate insulting, and even outrageous, speech in order to provide adequate ‘breathing space’ to the freedoms protected by the First Amendment.” Boos v. Barry, 485 U. S. 312, 322 (1988) (some internal quotation marks omitted).   What Westboro said, in the whole context of how and where it chose to say it, is entitled to “special protection” under the First Amendment, and that protection cannot be overcome by a jury finding that the picketing was outrageous. 

Their conclusion:

Westboro believes that America is morally flawed; many Americans might feel the same about Westboro. Westboro’s funeral picketing is certainly hurtful and its contribution to public discourse may be negligible. But Westboro addressed matters of public import on public property, in a peaceful manner, in full compliance with the guidance of local officials. The speech was indeed planned to coincide with Matthew Snyder’s funeral, but did not itself disrupt that funeral, and Westboro’s choice to conduct its picketing at that time and place did not alter the nature of its speech. Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and—as it did here—inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course—to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.

ETA: Fred Phelps’ estranged son Nate, an LGBT activist who lives in Canada, does not support the decision.  I find that disappointing but not surprising.  

Interesting links of the day

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No children were harmed in the writing of this post

No children were harmed in the writing of this post published on No Comments on No children were harmed in the writing of this post

I have a special place in my heart for a lot of people accused of making or possessing kiddie porn.

What? Did she really say that?
  

A photo of actual children here
might bias you against me.

Yep, I did.  But hear me out.  I say this because child molestation is one of the worst crimes possible in the minds of probably most Americans, and because of this a lot of people who weren’t actually molesting children– for the sake of making and distributing pornography or otherwise– tend to get caught up in the legal crossfire and punished in ways that are far out of proportion to their deeds. Call me a bleeding heart, but I don’t think it takes away in the slightest from the severity of real child victimization to feel for those who didn’t actually victimize any children, but are treated as if they did.

For instance, teenagers who are guilty of “sexting”– sending racy photos of themselves to each other.  No child molestation there, and yet in some parts of the country these kids are receiving felony charges and convictions for it.  In my own state of Texas they’re considering downgrading this “crime” from a felony to a misdemeanor.  That’s an improvement, but it would still mean using laws that were originally intended to prevent adults from preying on children to also punish teenagers for ill-advised behavior that damages little but their own reputations.  I understand the impulse to protect them from this considering that once photos get onto the internet they effectively become immortal, but surely arresting, convicting, and putting teenagers on a sex offender registry alongside rapists and actual pedophiles is precisely the opposite of “protecting” them.

In a case I read about today, the culprit is a little less innocent than a sexting teen– okay, he seems downright creepy– but what happened to him is nonetheless a travesty of justice.  A 34-year-old Indiana man named Eric Rinehart had sexual relationships with two young women, aged 16 and 17 respectively.  Yes, I know– ew.  But it was entirely legal for him to do so, as the age of consent in Indiana is 16, as it is in roughly half the country.  One of the girls offered to take naked photos of herself for him, and he agreed and then later took more photos of her as well as the other girl.  He didn’t distribute them at all, just kept them on his computer.  Here’s what happened next:

In 2007 Rinehart was convicted on two federal charges of producing child pornography. U.S. District Court Judge David Hamilton, who now serves on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 7th Circuit, reluctantly sentenced Rinehart to 15 years in prison. Thanks to mandatory minimum sentences, Hamilton wrote, his hands were tied. There is no parole in the federal prison system. So barring an unlikely grant of clemency from the president, Rinehart, who is serving his time at a medium-security prison in Pennsylvania, will have to complete at least 85 percent of his term (assuming time off for good behavior), or nearly 13 years. Hamilton was not permitted to consider any mitigating factors in sentencing Rinehart. It did not matter that Rinehart’s sexual relationships with the two girls were legal. Nor did it matter that the photos for which he was convicted never went beyond his computer. Rinehart had no prior criminal history, and there was no evidence he had ever possessed or searched for child pornography on his computer. There was also no evidence that he abused his position as a police officer to lure the two women into sex. His crime was producing for his own use explicit images of two physically mature women with whom he was legally having sex. (Both women also could have legally married Rinehart without their parents’ consent, although it’s unclear whether federal law would have permitted a prosecution of Rinehart for photographing his own wife.) “You can certainly conceive of acts of producing actual child pornography, the kind that does real harm to children, for which a 15-year sentence would be appropriate,” says Mary Price, general counsel for the criminal justice reform group Families Against Mandatory Minimums. “But this is a single-factor trigger, so it gets applied in cases like this one, where the sentence really doesn’t fit the culpability.”

Families Against Mandatory Minimums, or FAMM, is a non-profit organization dedicated to changing legislation to prevent grossly out-of-proportion sentencing.  They deserve all of the support we can give them, but making changes in this area is decidedly an uphill battle.  

In his sentencing statement, Hamilton urges executive clemency for Rinehart. He points out that under federal law Rinehart received the same sentence someone convicted of hijacking an airplane or second-degree murder would receive. For a bank robber to get Rinehart’s sentence, Hamilton writes, “he would need to fire a gun, inflict serious bodily injury on a victim, physically restrain another victim, and get away with the stunning total of $2.5 million.” . . .Hamilton is not the first federal judge to express frustration over federal child porn sentencing laws. In May 2010, The New York Times profiled U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein, who after 43 years on the bench has essentially gone rogue, twice throwing out convictions of a man convicted of receiving child pornography because of the five-year mandatory minimum sentence attached to the offense. Weinstein has also indicated that in future child porn cases he will disregard the federal rules of criminal procedure and inform his juries of the sentences defendants will get if convicted. 

I would imagine that opponents of draconian laws against drunk driving have an easier time of it than people who take aim at those having to do with child porn.  Nobody wants appear as though they are coddling sexual predators, and so they are reluctant to speak out against the worst travesties of justice that come from laws intended to protect kids.  The road to hell is paved with such intentions, as a Florida lobbyist named Ron Book can attest.  Fear plus grief plus a desire for revenge can be the equation for some horrific legislation.  In order to prevent the victimization of people as an unintended consequence of this kind of legislation, we need to be able to speak up about it.  And in order to do that, we need to realize that there is a clear distinction between disapproving of a behavior (actual child molestation) and approving of measures purporting to stop it which actually don’t– just as with any other crime.

In the meantime, things do not look good for this case:

It could actually have been worse for Rinehart. Under federal law, he could have faced up to 25 years in prison. In exchange for a guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to seek only the minimum sentence. Unfortunately for Rinehart, that plea agreement also prevents him from challenging his conviction or sentence. His only hope for early release is executive clemency. Given the clemency records of the last two administrations, that does not seem likely.

Top 10 Logical Fallacies in Politics

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Wonder how he managed to narrow it down to ten…. 

This is a very good list explanations and examples of fallacies commonly made by politicians.  In the world according to Gretchen, all children would learn about logical fallacies in school at a young age and then go home and apply that knowledge when watching politicians speak on TV.  They and their parents would have animated discussions about which fallacies were made and how they know, and as they approached voting age the kids would have developed a sturdy sense of skepticism about everything coming out of the mouth of anyone who had either received votes or was asking for them.

I’d settle, however, for them learning about fallacies in school.

The problem with “Jesus chicken”

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Those familiar with the Chik-Fil-A restaurant chain have known for quite a long time that the ownership is explicitly conservative Christian, which hasn’t meant much for people who like to eat there except that they must remember it’s closed on Sundays.  But recently it has come out (pardon the expression) that the company also contributes significantly to anti-gay causes.  The New York Times says:

Nicknamed “Jesus chicken” by jaded secular fans and embraced by Evangelical Christians, Chick-fil-A is among only a handful of large American companies with conservative religion built into its corporate ethos. But recently its ethos has run smack into the gay rights movement. A Pennsylvania outlet’s sponsorship of a February marriage seminar by one of that state’s most outspoken groups against homosexuality lit up gay blogs around the country. Students at some universities have also begun trying to get the chain removed from campuses. . . Over the years, the company’s operators, its WinShape Foundation and the Cathy family have given millions of dollars to a variety of causes and programs, including scholarships that require a pledge to follow Christian values, a string of Christian-based foster homes and groups working to defeat same-sex marriage initiatives.

Hence a certain amount of outcry from gay rights groups.  Change.org has created a petition asking Chik-Fil-A to stop funding anti-gay groups such as Focus on the Family which has so far received over 25,000 signatures, and many individual gay rights supporters have decided not to patronize the restaurant chain any longer.  Alvin McEwen writes at Pam’s House Blend that “lgbts also have a right to decide where NOT to spend our money. Furthermore we and our allies have a right to make a stink in regards to a company who wants us to buy its product, but not afford us respect.”

In other words, a boycott. It’s a time-honored concept– a way for people to express their disagreement with the ethics of a company by refusing to do business with it.  Otherwise known as “voting with your wallet.”  The idea is that financial support for an institution enables it and therefore can be construed as an endorsement of its policies, therefore revoking such support while saying “Hey everybody!  I’m revoking my support!” means that you’ve both ceased enabling that institution and attempted to make others aware of your reasons and encourage them to do the same.  It’s a legal and peaceful way of making your views known.  Right?

Not to Michelle Malkin, apparently.  In these efforts the conservative columnist sees an “ugly war” waged by a “left wing mob”:

Progressive groups are gloating over Chick-fil-A’s public relations troubles exacerbated by the nation’s politicized paper of record. This is not because they care about winning hearts and minds over gay rights or marriage policy, but because their core objective is to marginalize political opponents and chill Christian philanthropy and activism. The fearsome “muscle flexing” isn’t being done by innocent job-creators selling chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. It’s being done by the hysterical bullies trying to drive them off of college grounds and out of their neighborhoods in the name of “human rights.”

Gosh, you’d think that people were crowding the streets screaming and trying to use the law to prevent Chik-Fil-A from erecting a new establishment purely out of objections to its ideology!  Oh wait, that’s what people did in reaction to the proposed so-called “Ground Zero Mosque.”  What’s happening in this case is an objection to ideology, yes, but not just that.  It’s an objection to political efforts on behalf of that ideology to oppose equal rights for a segment of the American population.  And that objection is not taking place through violent means or legal enforcement– it’s taking the form of voluntary boycotts, and student efforts to encourage their universities to stop using Chik-Fil-A as a vendor.  Essentially, they are asking universities to participate in the boycott as well.

During the protests in New York at Cordoba House, many of us were asking conservatives who opposed the Islamic community center why they oppose the property rights of the building’s owners.  Now as gay rights advocates are boycotting Chik-Fil-A, I would ask Michelle Malkin why she doesn’t support the right of individuals to do business with whom they please.  It’s one thing to say that while boycotts in general are fine, this one in particular is misguided and inappropriate because of x, y, and z.  Then we could have a discussion on the merits of x, y, and z and would probably still disagree, but the basic understanding that everyone has a right to speak their mind both verbally and with their wallets would be there.

But that’s not what she wants to do.  The objections Malkin is making could be applied just as easily to any boycott by conservatives of liberal businesses.  The next time an organization like the American Family Association declares that it will boycott a automobile manufacturer or food producer for so much as advertising in a gay-friendly way, I wonder if she will call them “hysterical bullies,” or instead support them in speaking out against the fearsome left wing mob of…people who are okay with the idea that there are gays who want to do things like drive cars and eat soup.

Trying to decide who do business with can be tricky for people who care about the political involvement of companies and corporations (and trust, they will go on being involved in politics whether we care or not).  The most important part of minimizing that difficulty is freedom of expression.  We have to be able to find out, to research, to exchange ideas, to act, to let others know of our actions, and to hear about theirs.   The way to influence an entity whose primary concern is its profit margin is indisputably through our business choices– it’s the only power we as individuals have, which makes it sacred in a way.  It shouldn’t be treated lightly, and it should never be denied.

What basis for equality?

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Cross-posted from State of Formation.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

The true meaning, mind you– not merely what is reflected in the law, but in how we see each other.  How we evaluate each other’s worth, respectability, humanity.  Not by the color of each other’s skin, but the content of our characters.  That, in turn, will reveal our collective character.

Dr. King’s foundation was unquestionably in his faith.  Being a Baptist minister, that is naturally where he found his strength: “I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.”  For him, the glory of the Lord could only be revealed when people of different colors could love and value each other as equals.  Jennifer Sanborn writes

You see, for me, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is first and foremost a Baptist minister, and a child of the same. I imagine it is because I am also the child of a Baptist pastor (and grandchild of two others) that I take particular pride in placing “the Reverend” at the start of his name. “Reverend” is a title that he earned with his education and his occupation, but also a title to which he was called, bringing unparalleled dignity and relevance to what it means to serve society as a religious leader.

I’m sure many people feel similarly, now as well as when MLK originally gave that iconic speech, which was essentially a sermon to America on the meaning of loving one’s fellow man.  As a non-believer I find no conflict in welcoming that sermon, and only a slight bit of discomfort in wondering how he would have responded if asked whether atheists would be included in the pluralistic group exhorted to “sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!’”  I won’t remotely pretend, however, that there is any comparing the lot of atheists to that of black Americans in 1963.  That isn’t the point.  The point is, from whence is a committment to equality derived for those who don’t believe it was God-given?

It would be a fair bet to say that prejudice almost always precedes rationalization, whatever that rationalization is.  I’m pretty sure that human nature, perhaps ironically, includes both the justification for equality as well as the explanation for why humans are so prone to denying it.  And that is because of two salient facts:

1. Both science and religion have, at many points and many places in history, been used to rationalize bigotry.
2. And yet, neither one has ever or will ever come up with a good reason to treat people unequally.

If either of the above points seems at all contentious, remember that the numerous mentions of slavery in the Bible were used as a  primary reason to believe that black slavery was part of God’s divine order in the South, as well as the legacy of Spencerian “social Darwinism” which maintained that certain races were inherently inferior.  After all, if it weren’t so, why were they doing so poorly?  Why were they so easily conquered and used for the purposes of the more powerful white Europeans and Americans, if not because they are inherently inferior by evolution or design, whichever your preference?

I’m still in the midst of my very long quest to discover what exactly human nature is, anyway, but the revelation of the above facts in my life can be attributed primarily to the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker around 2004.  You see, after (and before) publishing a book called The Blank Slate which used powerful data from experimental psychology to demolish both the idea that there is no such thing as human nature as well as various myths about exactly what that nature is, Pinker and every other psychologist who uses evolution as a means to explain why humans behave as we do has been hounded by accusations that their work will be used to justify prejudice.

And you know what? That’s exactly what has happened.  And it still happens.  People think that if they can show differences between the psychology of men and women, homosexuals and heterosexuals, blacks and whites, they will be able to show that treating any one or more of those groups as inherently less human is justified.  I really don’t want to get into all of the specific attempts to show that, because it would take away from the fundamental point that there’s nothing we can discover about a specific group of humans that would justify, for example, slavery.  Nothing that would justify physical or cultural genocide, rape, internment, disenfranchisement.  And that is because the humanity of humanity doesn’t need to be determined by conducting some elaborate experiment– it is literally standing right before us.

I believe that tribalism is instinctive– that people find an element of safety in clinging tightly to those who are like themselves.  They will certainly base that in-group/out-group association on ideology, but it’s even easier to base it on traits that are evident at a glance.  Familiarity and similarity are the primary triggers for empathy, which means that strangers and people not like us are the “best” enemies.  And that is why, again and again throughout our history, we have been able to deny the humanity of certain groups of people in order to persecute them.  Not by knowing them, looking them in the face, having a conversation…because that would demonstrate that they’re more like us than we thought.

I suppose that’s where I find my fundamental belief in equality– the abject failure, despite our best and most heart-felt efforts, to show that any class of humans really doesn’t deserve the label of “human.”  Martin Luther King Jr. managed to punch through that barrier of prejudice for so many people because he emphasized how much we have in common, how similar we are fundamentally, and how different life could be if we were just willing to encounter each other as fellow human beings, fairly and honestly.  That’s why his speech had and continues to have such a tremendous impact, and why we continue working to make his dreams come true.