08.09.08
Posted in Politics at 10:59 am by ducky
Scott Rosenberg recently cited something on electoral-vote.com saying there is a double standard going on regarding McCain’s adultery and Edwards’ adultery. It implies that McCain ought to be getting hassled about his adultery.
I am a liberal and not a McCain supporter, but to be fair, there is more going on in the Edwards story than adultery. Edwards also:
- did it with an employee, who appeared to get preferential treatment as a result
- did so recently
- lied repeatedly and convincingly about it
Because of point 1, Edwards’ affair is a relevant issue. His interaction with employees has a direct bearing on his management abilities. It is especially troubling that he would use funds entrusted to him to reward people he liked: that makes me really nervous about cronyism.
As far as I know, McCain wasn’t fooling around with his subordinates. (And if he did, that would be big news, as his subordinates at the time were almost surely all men!)
As for point 2, we’ve all done things we were ashamed of when we were younger, and people are generally pretty willing to look beyond youthful indiscretions (and even to be pretty open about how old you can be to be “youthful”). G. W. Bush certainly got a pass on his past drug use, just as people don’t seem too upset about Obama admitting some cannabis use in college.
Furthermore, life had to be pretty rough on McCain when he got back from Vietnam. He had to readjust, he had to do physical therapy, his wife was not only different from the one he’d left but who had willfully hidden significant physical changes from him, etc. By contrast, John Edwards had a wife who he clearly loved, was kind of at the top of his game, and to the best of my knowledge was not in physical pain. So while I don’t think that McCain’s affairs reflect well upon the man, I don’t think they reflect nearly as poorly as Edwards’ affair does upon him.
Point 3 I think is most important. Because Edwards was so convincing when he lied, now nobody will ever trust anything he says again. Had he lied badly — where everyone could see that he was lying through his teeth — it actually would not have been so damaging. When he said, “oops, I lied”, if everyone had said, “yeah, duh!”, then he would in some ways be seen as more trustworthy. “Well, he’s not lying this time because we can tell when he’s lying.”
(I am reminded of seeing William Shatner — a legendarily unconvincing actor — on the news, absolutely heartbroken and grief-stricken that his wife had drowned. Someone in the room said, “Well, at least we know he didn’t kill her.”)
Now, electoral-vote.com and Scott seem to argue that McCain’s adultery should matter because he is trying to portray himself as the “morals president”. (I hadn’t noticed that McCain was trying to portray himself as the “morals president”, but I actually haven’t been paying him much attention.) However, “morals” is a code word for a particular set of value priorities. It doesn’t actually mean that he is the candidate of high moral standards, it means that he aligns himself with a particular set of value priorities: pro-guns, anti-choice, pro-small-government, anti-welfare, pro-miliary, pro-Christian, pro-traditional gender roles, anti-gay, anti-drugs, etc.
What is important is the alignment with those value priorities. As far as I can tell, Rush Limbaugh didn’t suffer much from getting caught with a drug habit: that didn’t change his alignment with the “morals” crowd’s politics. (He would have been in much worse shape if he had lied repeatedly and convincingly about giving a $100,000 donation to MoveOn.org!)
So while it might be nice wishful thinking on liberals’ part that bringing up McCain’s past indiscretions would make a difference, I really don’t think it would. 
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06.09.08
Posted in Politics at 5:34 pm by ducky
There are a number of stories out right now, like this one from US News, about how Clinton supporters are mad as hell at Obama and the Democratic Party for the sexism that Clinton had to endure during the campaign. The venom in the comments section of the above article is really breathtaking.
I am way, waaaaay unconvinced that Obama should apologize.
While there certainly were a whole lot of sexist comments in the mainstream media about Clinton, I don’t think that it is fair to blame Obama or the Democratic Party for that. Obama and the DNC do not control the mainstream news media. (And they *certainly* don’t control Fox!)
The only dismissive comment that I remember Obama making about Clinton was the “I like you okay, Hillary” comment, and he took heat for that. I think that Mr. and Mrs. Clinton both played much, much closer to the racism line (and they took heat for that).
Did Obama mean to be sexist? Probably not. Did the Clintons mean to be racist? Probably not. It’s a long campaign, people get tired, they make little slips, move on. I think the Clintons owe Obama much more of an apology for racism than Obama owes H. Clinton for sexism. I’m willing to forgive the Clintons; let’s move on.
There is also a lot of anger about the DNC “stealing” the Florida and Michigan votes. I think that everybody was very gentle with Clinton about that because it was clear that she was beaten, and nobody wanted to look like they were piling on. Let me be a bit more blunt: Obama didn’t “steal” Florida and Michigan, Clinton did! She wasn’t entitled to any of those votes, because of rules that she agreed to. Obama wasn’t even on the ballot, and didn’t campaign. It would have been surprising if a newcomer who wasn’t on the ballot had managed to get as many votes as someone with total name recognition who was on the ballot. The Florida and Michigan elections were not fair elections, and for her to keep insisting that she had won strained my patience with her.
Furthermore, while Hillary had to deal with sexism in the mainstream media, Obama has had to deal with an enormous amount of crap from rumour and innuendo. From the comments section: “I despise the MSM for not telling the voters the truth about Obama associations. He has no normal friends. terrorists,people full of hate for this country and i believe his wife is one of them.” or ” The same can be said for the President and Obama…. he has had bad company. He hangs out with Wright, Ferrakahn, etc….”
Um, excuse me? Didn’t B. Clinton pardon a bunch of sleazy people? Members of the FALN terrorist group? Mark Rich? Didn’t the Clintons associate with some very shady characters? Wasn’t B. Clinton’s own brother a cocaine addict? Me, I don’t think that it’s fair to judge people too harshly by what their associates do and particularly what their associates (e.g. Wright) say. We are all human, none of us is perfect.
I understand that Hillary backers are hurting. I understand that Hillary represented for them, a hope that our society had gotten past its misogyny. I understand, truly I do, and how crushing it can be to discover that no, it isn’t. But to blame Obama and the Democratic Party for that seems highly misplaced.
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05.27.08
Posted in Politics, Random thoughts at 11:49 am by ducky
There have been reports that peacekeepers have been raping children. This is bad, but unfortunately not surprising. History seems to show that if you give men weapons, little accountability, and few dating options, they will rape.
There is a solution that seems blindingly obvious to me: send women soldiers.
I wonder if there is a place for an all-women, international peace-keeping army. I can imagine that would be a great way to serve.
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05.23.08
Posted in Gay rights at 11:26 am by ducky
The people opposing marriage equality have asked the courts to delay allowing same-sex marriages, on the grounds that there will be a proposition on the ballot in November to write marriage discrimination into the state constitution.
Um, is my loyal opposition stupid?
If there is no delay, then yes, thousands of same-sex couples will get married between June 16 and Nov 4. I can see how my loyal opposition might not like that. It is my interpretation that even if the amendment passes, they will still be married — that the amendment doesn’t have the right magic wording to retroactively dissolve the marriages.
But if marriages are suspended, my loyal opposition will piss off thousands of same-sex couples who were planning on getting married. Their only shot at getting married, then, would be to make sure that the amendment goes down to a screaming defeat. They would donate money and time and talk to all their friends.
You, dear reader, might reflect on Proposition 22, and how it (with very similar language to the proposed amendment) passed with 61% of the vote. However, I will tell you, dear reader, that I worked on the fight against Proposition 22, and the support from the gay and lesbian community was tepid at best. They didn’t see why they should donate money to a lost cause where the worst that would happen is that they would lose the possibility of getting a right that they don’t currently have. (There was also a significant undercurrent of “we don’t want your heterosexist institutions anyway!”)
The sentiment in the gay and lesbian community is completely different now. They totally understand the importance of civil marriage now. And, if the delay comes through, they will be pissed. They will fight the amendment tooth and nail. If there is no delay, they might get somewhat complacent: “well, too bad for everyone else if the amendment passes, but we managed to get married on 17 June, so we are okay.”
So while a delay would be a short-term defeat for my side, I think it would lead to a huge, enormous victory long-term.
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05.18.08
Posted in Gay rights, Married life at 3:35 pm by ducky
To my gay and lesbian friends, I am absolutely thrilled that you are going to be able to get married starting on June 16th!
I wrote some wedding advice for (straight) couples a few years back, and I’d like to give some specific advice to gay and lesbian couples who want to get married in the next few months.
- Read Lorem Ipsum and/or the EQCA FAQ about the topic. Those are good, but there are a few things they leave out and a few points that I think are incorrect.
- Consider carefully if you want to get married. I’m a big fan of marriage, but you need to be sure it is right for you. In addition to getting to throw a big party, you become (among other things) responsible for your spouse’s maintenance and their debts.
- Get married between June 16 and November 4, 2008. There is going to be an initiative in November that will shut down same-sex marriages if it passes, but I hear from reputable sources that even if it passes, your June 16-November 4 marriage will be valid. I am not a lawyer, but I believe it is hard to pass retroactive laws, and the way that the amendment is worded doesn’t do the right magic to make it retroactive. Of course, Our Opposition could always file suit saying that it was retroactive, and they would lose, but that would be a big pain so let’s just defeat the amendment, okay?
- Ask your wedding guests to give money to the anti-amendment campaign in lieu of gifts. (Or to NCLR, or to Lambda, or to the ACLU.) Remind people that there is a real risk that the next generation won’t be able to celebrate their love and comittment in the same way if the amendment passes.
- Give money yourself to the campaign, NCLR, Lambda, or the ACLU.
- Book your venue early. I expect that there will be an enormous demand for venues from June 16-Nov 4! (If you are straight, consider waiting until November 8 to avoid the crowds!)
- Make plans for your officiant early. Clergy and Commissioners of Marriage might be heavily booked.
- You can have a friend officiate via the Deputy-Commissioner-of-Marriage-for-a-Day program. Different counties have different rules, fees, and lead times for that program. (Some counties do not participate.) The EQCA FAQ says that there is a 60 day lead time, but I question whether that is true for all counties (or even for San Francisco — the San Francisco site says “You should come no sooner than 60 days from the date of the ceremony” which I interpret to mean as “Your deputization is only valid for sixty days”). When my uncle-in-law got deputized by the County of Santa Clara, he didn’t have to appear in person, he didn’t have to do a training class, but he did have to swear to uphold the U.S. Constitution. Check with the county that will issue the deputization.
NOTE: it is not clear if yYou can get your marriage license in one county and the deputization in another. The wedding does not have to be in the same county that issued the Deputization or marriage license.
- Note that you do not have to be married or straight to become a Deputy Commissioner of Marriage, so you can officiate at your friends’ weddings. Bonus!
- You and your friends can get ordinated as clergy very quickly over the Internet. It took me less than fifteen minutes through the Universal Life Church. I am not a lawyer, but it sure looked rock-solid legal to me. However, weddings also are about social validation, and using quickie-clergy does sound kind of shady to some people. (Note: I didn’t feel so bad once I looked at what roles were traditionally allowed to officiate, and figuring out what they all had in common. I decided that the common feature was that they had proved that they were able to fill in paperwork correctly, and responsible enough to mail it in.) I would thus encourage you to do Deputy-for-a-Day instead of Internet ordination.
- You might consider getting married at a County Building and/or doing a joint wedding with some good friends who also will (finally) be getting married. While you are free to do that, as a married person, I would recommend against that unless you’ve already done the big ceremony and party thing. There are (at least) two important functions of weddings above and beyond informing the state that they now have to recognize your relationship:
- You make it clear to the people who are important to you that this person is special and that they have to treat your spouse as special.
- The families and friends get to meet each other. While that might not be so important if you’ve been together for a zillion years already, it might be. I was really surprised at how much getting married connected our two families together. (Bad news: you now have to go visit your in-laws at Christmas. You can’t just send your spouse any more.)
- If you get married at a county building (e.g. with one of their marriage commissioners), then (I think) you can get a marriage certificate right away. Otherwise, you have to ask for it. While my husband and I didn’t get asked for one until we moved to Canada (with different last names), it might be more important for you than for a straight couple.
- There are lots of traditions associated with weddings. Some don’t really make sense in a same-sex wedding; some don’t even make sense in today’s hetero weddings. Remember, however, that it’s those strange traditions that make no logical sense that bind you most to your community. Why do you do X at a Foo wedding? Because you are Fooian. Doing X tells your guests (and your spouse) that you value being (or being married to) a Fooian, and that you honour the Fooian traditions.
- There is a huge enormous wedding industry that is designed to extract dollars from your wallets. Remember that it is your wedding and you don’t “have” to do anything. If you don’t want flowers, party favors for the guests, a videographer, or a professional photographer, you don’t have to.
- Everybody has a camera nowadays, and the cameras take good pictures. We asked our guests to take pictures and send them to us, and it worked extraordinarily well. Hubby and I also sat for a professional photographer in our wedding clothes the day before, and we were really happy with that as well.
- We didn’t have a gorgeous six-tier wedding cake, and you know what? We were still married at the end of the day. Also, the (flat) carrot cake and the cupcakes tasted wonderful.
- Unsolicited recommendation: at our wedding ten years ago, Continental Catering in Menlo Park did a fantastic job. A bit on the spendy side, but well worth it. (It was so good that most people didn’t notice that it was all vegetarian.) That was ten years ago, but hopefully their quality would still be good.
Note that there are lots of references to county buildings, county this, county that, but you remember people getting married at San Francisco City Hall. Marriage stuff is administered through counties in California. San Francisco is the only jurisdiction that is both a city and a county. (I think that means it is the only jurisdiction where a mayor could have decided to issue marriage licenses. Thank you, Gavin Newsom!)
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05.17.08
Posted in Politics at 12:20 pm by ducky
I hear murmuring that American blue-collar white voters think Barack Obama is elitist.
On the one hand, since I favor Obama, I’m slightly distressed for practical reasons. But as a liberal American, I am secretly overjoyed at how far we’ve come that white folks to find a black man too smart, too successful, too restrained, and/or too cultured for them to relate to. I wasn’t alive fifty years ago, but I have the sense that many white folks thought African-Americans were too stupid, too lazy, and/or too emotional to be fit for many jobs.
It’s possible that what they are uncomfortable with is Obama not conforming to their image of a black man, and so seeming too slick, too phony. They might also just be uncomfortable about how cool (meaning restrained and unemotional) he is period: it might be that Obama he doesn’t seem like people they know personally, white or black. H. Clinton had more breakdowns and meltdowns, and perhaps that made her seem more genuine. (Also, everyone is well aware that she’s had way more than her fair share of marital troubles and has done the difficult thing and stuck by her man — the tough gritty thing to do.)
If I’m right, then I don’t think Obama can do anything about it. If he starts acting more emotional, that will give people an excuse to use the “bad” black stereotypes that I enumerated above.
“He’s Muslim” — religion or race?
I have also heard that there are people who don’t support Obama because he’s Muslim. While this might be discrimination against (his mistaken) religion, I think it’s more likely that this is actually racism. I suspect that when they say, “He’s Muslim”, they mean, “He is Other, he is from genetic stock that is not like ours”.
I remember at a racism discussion group I went to about ten years ago with a woman who considered herself Christian and whose parents considered themselves Christian. However, the Nazis felt differently, and put her (at a very young age) and her parents in a concentration camp, as her relatives were Jewish. This woman was frustrated by (among other things) her son insisting that they were Jewish. Clearly “Jewish” means both “the faith that you practice” and “who your ancestors were”.
So when people say, “Barack Obama is Muslim”, I suspect that what they are saying is not, “he worships at a mosque” but “his genetic stock is different from mine”. They might be concerned that blood is thicker than water, and that if he gets elected, then he will favour “his people” (i.e. people in Muslim countries) over “our people” (i.e. white Americans)
I can imagine that going to grade school in Indonesia also hurts him with people who think he is Other. I can imagine people for whom going to school in another country is so completely, totally, utterly outside their experience that it would seem suspicious.
If he’s going to be swift-boated, I think this is the topic they will use.
So if I were Obama, what would I do? I’d start releasing photos of Obama as a child surrounded by white Americana. Going to Disneyland. Little League. Blowing out birthday candles. At the zoo with his grandparents looking dotingly at him. The next thing I would do is allow videographers to shoot him playing basketball; how him getting (rightfully) pissed off at something and yelling “Shit!”
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05.15.08
Posted in Gay rights, Married life at 2:04 pm by ducky
Today, something that I worked on for five years came to a successful completion today. No, not my thesis: the California Supreme Court ruled that marriage discrimination against same-sex couples was unconstitutional.
In 30 days (when the law takes effect), California will join the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, South Africa, Spain, and Massachusetts in allowing same-sex couples to get married civilly.
I skimmed the court decision, and it all came down to words. They were very clear that California’s domestic partnership granted essentially all the same rights and responsibilities as California civil marriage. They were deciding
whether our state Constitution prohibits the state from establishing a statutory scheme in which both opposite-sex and same-sex couples are granted the right to enter into an officially recognized family relationship that affords all of the significant legal rights and obligations traditionally associated under state law with the institution of marriage, but under which the union of an opposite-sex couple is officially designated a “marriage” whereas the union of a same-sex couple is officially designated a “domestic partnership.
In other words, does the word matter? And if it does, is it okay to grant the word “marriage” to one group and not to another?
They determined that this was a question of the equal-protection-under-the-law clause, and as such, subjected it to a legal examination called “strict scrutiny”:
in order to demonstrate the constitutional validity of a challenged statutory classification the state must establish (1) that the state interest intended to be served by the differential treatment not only is a constitutionally legitimate interest, but is a compelling state interest, and (2) that the differential treatment not only is reasonably related to but is necessary to serve that compelling state interest.
They decided that the state didn’t have a compelling interest in perpetuating the differing language.
They also pretty comprehensively showed that the different language matters. One example they mentioned is that it is common to be asked “Are you single or married?” To respond truthfully, “I’m in a domestic partnership”, requires disclosing one’s sexual orientation in a situation where they might not want to.
Accordingly, we conclude that to the extent the current California statutory provisions limit marriage to opposite-sex couples, these statutes are unconstitutional.
WoohoooOOOO!!
I was sure that this would happen in my lifetime, but thought it would take longer.
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02.07.08
Posted in Politics, Random thoughts at 11:38 pm by ducky
Mitt Romney dropped out of the US presidential race today. That pretty much guarantees that the next president will be one of John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama.
This pretty much guarantees that my country’s leadership will cease accepting torture on 20 January, 2009!
That realization made me very, very happy.
Now we just have to get my fellow citizens to cease accpting torture…
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01.13.08
Posted in Politics, Random thoughts at 11:36 pm by ducky
I recommend this interesting New York Times article on morality by Steven Pinker.
The first highlight is that there are about five main components to morality: don’t harm others, be fair, support your in-group, respect authority, and be clean/pure.
The second highlight, for me, is that liberals and conservatives place different weights on the values:
The ranking and placement of moral spheres also divides the cultures of liberals and conservatives in the United States. Many bones of contention, like homosexuality, atheism and one-parent families from the right, or racial imbalances, sweatshops and executive pay from the left, reflect different weightings of the spheres. In a large Web survey, Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. Conservatives instead place a moderately high weight on all five. It’s not surprising that each side thinks it is driven by lofty ethical values and that the other side is base and unprincipled.
This passage reminds me of both George Lakoff’s Don’t Think of an Elephant, which discusses different value weightings by liberals and conservatives, and The Seven Cultures of Capitalism, which posits that people have generally the same values but different value priorities. Those are also good books and worth a read.
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11.05.07
Posted in Gay rights at 4:30 pm by ducky
Recently, there was a large judgment against the Westboro Baptist Church for protesting at the funeral of a Marine. Their protest was typical for them: linking homosexuality to everything that could possibly be wrong in the world.
WBC is completely, totally, completely repugnant to me, but I cannot support the judgment. If we start putting limits on who can say what where, that is a very scary slippery slope. Even if free speech by The Bad Guys is only limited a little, it means that The Good Guys will also have to face limits.
Suppose, for a second, that Robert Mugabe died and the US government put on a state funeral for him. Mugabe is just about as close as you can get to pure evil in my book, and it would be completely, totally inappropriate for the US government to celebrate his life. I would absolutely travel thousands of miles to protest at such a funeral. I would be incensed if I were not allowed to protest at his funeral.
Rights are so annoying. For them to work for you, you have to also let them work for the people who revolt you.
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