Protecting pedophiles

Posted on May 30, 2008 by David

The Texas Supreme Court has ruled that most of the children rescued two months ago from the fundamentalist Mormon Yearning for Zion ranch must be returned, saying that Child Protective Services failed to show that there is an “immediate danger” to the children.

Parental rights are important, of course, but can’t be treated as absolute. Children are not chattel property that parents can do with as they please, they are human beings with their own inalienable rights.

One would think that a very clear dividing line here would be the belief that the sexual use of children by adults is an acceptable lifestyle. For instance, in the recent case of James Bevel that was heard in Loudoun County, his deeply held belief that it is a father’s duty to “sexually train” his daughters led to the ongoing abuse of several of his children, the travesty ending only when an adult daughter was willing to come forward years later. See last week’s Washington Post Magazine for a well done article on the story. Bevel readily admitted to his behavior, evidently believing that he had done nothing wrong.

In the case of the fundamentalist Mormon sect, the parents are refusing to admit to the institutionalized pedophilia in the community (after all, they have lawyers). Apart from documentation of the beliefs of the sect and testimony by women who have escaped and boys who have been driven out, there is abundant physical evidence in the form of, say, 16 year old girls who have already given birth to four children.

Attorneys for the sect argued, successfully, that Child Protective Services had no authority to remove all the children from the ranch, only the ones for whom there were specific allegations of abuse. In agreeing with this argument, the court seems to be saying that no action can be taken to protect these children until after each one has already been subjected to pedophilic rape. One has to wonder how this constitutes protection for the children, rather than protection for the adults who are preying on them.

When this story initially broke, the silence from the anti-gay industry, those who so touchingly cite their concern for “the children” in their baseless attacks on the GLBT community, was deeply disappointing. Here was a documented situation in which adult men were sexually preying on young adolescents, and yet we could find not a single expression of outrage from the likes of James Dobson, Chuck Colson, Mike Farris, or any of the other anti-gay mouthpieces who typically fill our inboxes with their blather about protecting children.

And the disappointment continues. The Texas court decision, which will effectively place hundreds of children back in a setting in which they will be the sexual prey of adult men, has been met with a great collective sigh of relief that “parental rights” have been affirmed. A typical statement is this one from local blogger Barbara Curtis:

This is good news!

Don’t get me wrong, I am not supportive of polygamy or cults. But I am even less supportive of the state stripping parents of their rights…consider joining an organization that we may be relying on more and more as the state feels increasingly inclined to decide what’s best for our kids.

As if the problem were simply “polygamy,” and not child sexual abuse. It may be shocking, but it’s not surprising given the underlying belief system that is shared by all of these writers. NoVA Townhall blogger Jack has even explicitly defended the sect’s practice of institutionalized pedophilia, arguing that the marrying off of such young girls is natural and healthy because of “the God-given sex drive which comes in one’s early teens.” (Jack doesn’t address the fact that the young teenage boys are not being offered marriage to relieve their “God-given sex drive,” but I may be trying to introduce too much logic here.)

If you believe, as do all these anti-gay activists, that marriage is not a partnership between two equally powerful and autonomous adults, but rather a fundamentally unequal relationship based on prescribed gender roles, then this kind of makes sense. If one’s belief is that the role of a woman in such a marriage is to submit to the will of her husband, to occupy the domestic sphere, and to be a vessel for bearing her husband’s children, then it doesn’t really matter whether she is a legal, competent adult – and in fact, it might be preferable if she’s not – only that she is reproductively ready. If one believes that this is “God’s design,” then it makes sense to slip down the slope of justifying sex with children.

For the rest of us, though, it looks positively barbaric.

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Marriage equality arrives in California

Posted on May 16, 2008 by David

Everyone’s no doubt heard about yesterday’s California Supreme Court ruling that invalidates Proposition 22 and makes civil marriage available to all couples. You can read the ruling here.

The Anti-Gay Industry seems a little testy about it:

It is tyranny, plain and simple.

Judges do not have the authority to invent ‘rights’, overturn all of recorded history, biology, and a super-majority of the people, and the law they passed.

The judges’ ruling should be ignored as of no legal effect, and the judges arrested and tried for tyranny.

This comment is from Loudoun’s Prison Fellowship Ministries blog, which gives us the usual song and dance about “judicial activism” and the coming deluge of people marrying their dogs and dahlias. Yawn.

I can’t help noticing something. There have been a number of state Supreme Court rulings in the last few years that found the opposite, that discriminatory marriage laws did not violate those respective states’ constitutions. I have searched my memory, and I can’t seem to recall any marriage equality advocates calling for the arrest and trial of the judges in those cases for treason (which you may recall carries the death penalty). Seems a little extreme, but maybe that’s just me.

At any rate, here is another exposition of the “judicial activism” argument:

The court stepped in, summarily overturning laws…Tossing aside evidence that the constitutional provision was never intended to apply to the situation at hand, the court instead looked to what it grandly described as the “broader, organic purpose of a constitutional amendment.”

How dare they, those “unelected judges.” They ignored the will of a clear majority of the people, turning to “’emanations’…and other airy constructs the court has employed over the years as poor substitutes for clear and rigorous constitutional reasoning.” They arrogantly dismissed the state’s “legitimate legislative objective of preventing the sociological and psychological evils” that will surely result from allowing people to marry the partner with whom they are in love, and with whom they are building a life and family.

This happens to be Ruth Marcus, discussing John McCain’s attempt to mimic the Pat Robertson crowd. The “legitimate legislative objective” quote referenced above is taken from the oral arguments in a marriage rights case – not California in 2008, not New York in 2006, or Massachusetts in 2004 – but Virginia in 1967. This was Virginia’s attorney, arguing that the Commonwealth had a legitimate interest in preventing interracial marriage. Marcus, listening to the case on the occasion of Mildred Loving’s passing, found the juxtaposition rather compelling. (You can listen to the oral arguments in Loving v. Virginia here.)

Basic human dignity prevailed then, as it did yesterday:

The constitutionally based right to marry properly must be understood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes traditionally associated with marriage that are so integral to an individual’s liberty and personal autonomy that they may not be eliminated or abrogated by the Legislature or by the electorate through the statutory initiative process. These core substantive rights include, most fundamentally, the opportunity of an individual to establish – with the person with whom the individual has chosen to share his or her life – an officially recognized and protected family possessing mutual rights and responsibilities and entitled to the same respect and dignity accorded a union traditionally designated as marriage.”

– Chief Justice George, writing for the majority

Here is the statement from Equality Virginia Executive Director Dyana Mason:

Equality Virginia Celebrates with California

(May 15) In response to the 4-3 California Supreme Court ruling overturning that state’s marriage ban, Equality Virginia released the following statement from Dyana Mason, Executive Director:

“All Americans should celebrate the California Supreme Court Decision today. Interpreting that state’s constitution, the Court ruled that their same-sex marriage ban was unconstitutional and that all couples, gay and straight, have a right to marry the person they love.”

The California marriage decision will affect over 36 million people – well over 10% of the total population of America.

Unfortunately in Virginia, we took a different path with the 2006 passage of the so-called ‘marriage amendment’ banning any type of relationship recognition for same-sex couples, even though a majority of Virginians did and continue to support civil unions. We will continue to work to change hearts and minds and to seek full equality under the law.

We applaud the National Center for Lesbian Rights, Equality California, Our Family Coalition and all the plaintiffs for their courage and leadership.

Meanwhile, the good folks at the Virginia “Some Families Foundation” are beside themselves, and not even making sense. In what I can only describe as a unintentional nod to EV, Victoria Cobb declares that the California ruling “reads more like an Equality Virginia press release than a legal document.” She goes on to express her confusion about what a family relationship is, suggesting that the court has left the definition “open to any of an assortment of behaviors.” She doesn’t enlighten us as to what that “assortment” might be, but perhaps she needs to read the ruling more carefully. It seems to me that the court has clearly described the “behaviors” that make life partners a family, things like providing for each other, being able to make decisions for each other, having parental rights and responsibilities – those things that are addressed by Domestic Partnerships – as well as the more intangible aspects of marriage, the public declaration that each partner will now be understood by all to be no longer just an individual, but part of a new unit, a couple committed to each other for life.

That understanding of marriage is an integral part of the value of marriage to individuals and society. The Center for Marriage and Family (Maggie Gallagher‘s outfit) is chock full of research demonstrating that marriage is good for you. Just this morning they sent out an email with some new material on the fiscal benefits of encouraging marriage. It seems almost painfully obvious that these basic principles apply to all couples, not just heterosexual ones. Yet, Maggie Gallagher and her ilk continue to defy reason in arguing that these benefits to social stability, taxpayer savings, emotional health, lifespan and security for children are irrelevant when it comes to same sex couples. They not only want Special Rights, they want a Special Reality that applies only to them.

Reality, however, is what it is, and not what they wish it would be. The reality of our current patchwork approach to family recognition, in which some states recognize marriage for all couples, while others have some form of domestic partnership registration or civil union, and still others recognize no relationship rights at all for our community, cannot last. It is a ridiculous administrative situation that will quickly demand resolution.

Another reality that those bloviating about “the will of the people” being ignored need to be aware of (or cease and desist lying about) is this one:

Equally misinformed will be anyone arguing that this is some sort of an example of judges “overriding” the democratic will of the people. The people of California, through their representatives in the State legislature, twice approved a bill to provide for the inclusion of same-sex couples in their “marriage” laws, but both times, the bill was vetoed by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said when he vetoed it that he believed “it is up to the state Supreme Court” to decide the issue.

Polls have found substantial support for gay marriage in California, with dramatic trends toward favoring gay marriage. While there was a referendum passed in 2000 limiting marriage only to opposite-sex couples, five years later (in 2005), California’s state legislature became the first in the country to enact a same-sex marriage law without a court order compelling them to do so. Thus, even leaving aside constitutional guarantees (which, in a constitutional republic, trump public opinion), today’s ruling is consistent with that state’s democratic processes and public opinion, not a subversion of it.

Kudos to the plaintiffs in California and all those who saw this process through.

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Mildred Loving, RIP

Posted on May 12, 2008 by David

Mildred Loving, of Loving v. Virginia, passed away a week ago last Friday.

Mr. and Mrs. Loving were not activists. Although there is now an annual day of celebration of the right to marry won by the aptly-named couple, Mildred Loving never considered herself a hero, “just a girl who once fell in love with a boy.”

“It wasn’t my doing,” Loving told The Associated Press, in a rare interview. “It was God’s work.”

They did not go looking for the fight that put an end to anti-miscegenation laws in this country. It came looking for them. From the New York Times:

By their own widely reported accounts, Mrs. Loving and her husband, Richard, were in bed in their modest house in Central Point in the early morning of July 11, 1958, five weeks after their wedding, when the county sheriff and two deputies, acting on an anonymous tip, burst into their bedroom and shined flashlights in their eyes. A threatening voice demanded, “Who is this woman you’re sleeping with?”

Mrs. Loving answered, “I’m his wife.”

Mr. Loving pointed to the couple’s marriage certificate hung on the bedroom wall. The sheriff responded, “That’s no good here.”

The certificate was from Washington, D.C., and under Virginia law, a marriage between people of different races performed outside Virginia was as invalid as one done in Virginia.

We’re all too familiar with that Virginia strategy, aren’t we? Also, with this sort of absurdist, circular thinking:

Now 84, Garnett Brooks vividly recalls bursting into the Lovings’ home at 2 a.m., rousing the couple out of their sleep and hauling them off to face the law. Word of their marriage — nobody’s sure who complained — had reached the commonwealth’s attorney.

“He told me to go and check on them and if they are (married) arrest them,” said Brooks, who insists the case wasn’t about race, but about illegal cohabitation.

“I told him I’d be glad to do it.” [emphasis added]

See? It wasn’t about race at all, because if they had each married the “right kind” of people instead of each other it would have been legal, and there would have been no illegal cohabitation. Thanks for explaining that to those of us who are just too dim to understand the obvious, Mr. Brooks.

The judge who convicted the Lovings, we are reminded, is the source of this infamous quote that just won’t go away:

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.

This is surely a source of embarrassment for anyone continuing to deploy the “God’s design for human sexuality” meme to control who may marry. One almost pities them, as they try to cover their shame with a kind of smug, bombastic certainty.

That’s different, the usual suspects will say. Those Virginia legislators and judges and religious leaders were misguided, they didn’t understand the nature of marriage. I can only point out that they thought they did, and with the very same brand of certainty.

Imagine, if they had blogs in 1964. Some contemporary apologist would no doubt have appeared to explain why the Commonwealth had the “right” to regulate who can travel together within its borders (the arrest that lead to the Supreme Court case was not for residing in Virginia, but for visiting Mildred’s mother). I can see it now. This commenter would also have offered helpful suggestions for how the Lovings could have “worked around” the law, thereby avoiding all this unpleasantness (“Why didn’t Mildred go by herself to visit her mother? Couldn’t her mother have visited them?”) We’re also all too familiar with that sort of argumentation.

It doesn’t pass the smell test.

Here is Mildred Loving’s statement in support of the freedom to marry, on the 40th anniversary of the Loving decision:

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and right. The majority believed what the judge said, that it was God’s plan to keep people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation’s fears and prejudices have given way, and today’s young people realize that if someone loves someone they have a right to marry.

We do seem to have an unusually large learning curve here in Virginia, but even that cannot halt the inevitable. In the end, social engineering doesn’t work.

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Eye of the Storm

Posted on May 9, 2008 by David

When you try to love the world the way that God loves the world, you’re going to get into trouble.

Yesterday’s morning yakfests brought us an an interview with Bishop V. Gene Robinson by the Today Show’s Matt Lauer. The occasion was Robinson’s new book, In the Eye of the Storm – Swept to the Center by God.

I found the way that Lauer handled this interview to be rather disappointing, even at times offensive. It may be that he thought his job was to channel the “opposing view,” and one certainly expects such an interview to contain provocative, challenging questions. But this just seemed geared to be as salacious as possible. Take a look at the video and tell me if you disagree.

Relying heavily on the “some people say” method, Lauer again and again returned to a shaming, accusatory line of questioning, implying that Robinson should somehow be held accountable for the vile, criminal, and decidedly un-Christian behavior of others, i.e., the “firestorm of controversy” over his consecration, including threats on his life. The entire interview is framed this way: In the face of the murderous rage you have engendered, don’t you feel guilty and remorseful? Why are you continuing to fan the flames? Doesn’t it make you regret choosing this path? Consider this exchange about the upcoming Lambeth conference (a gathering of Anglican Bishops held once a decade; Robinson has received more death threats from people who identify themselves as Christians in the event of his attendance):

Lauer: Let me go back to the Lambeth conference…You have basically been disinvited [to placate conservative activists who threatened a boycott]. They don’t want you to be [t]here. But it goes a step further. There are several Anglican Bishops who have decided not to attend – get this – because they don’t even want to be under the same roof as the American Bishops who elected you as a Bishop. So how do you respond to people who say, is the elevation of one man worth all this? [emphasis added]

As if this petulant behavior is his fault, and as if the theological struggle within the Episcopal Church is about “the elevation of one man.” What an absurd question. Does any thinking person believe that this historic struggle would evaporate if only this “one man” would let the bullies win? Why are these conservative Bishops so unable to engage those with whom they differ in principled discussion of these matters? Isn’t that the point of having such a conference?

Robinson: You know, the table that God invites us to includes everyone, and the Church is going to get it wrong sometimes, and I think the Archbishop of Canterbury has gotten this wrong by not inviting everyone, and then having the conference with all those who can come. I’m going to go, and offer myself…

Lauer: You’re going to go kind of and stand outside, right?

Robinson: I am, and I’m going to talk with anyone who wants to talk to someone who is unashamedly gay, and unashamedly Christian.

The simple power of that witness is revealed by the fact that he will need to wear a bulletproof vest. That’s what is interesting about this experience, the outlandishly fearful response to a life lived with integrity, and what Robinson goes on to discuss as what he has come to understand as the particular historic role he discerns to be what God has called him to play at this moment. That would be an interesting and challenging question – why, do you think, is it so incredibly scary to even allow this conversation to take place? Why has sexuality, of all things, become the eye of the storm? Lauer doesn’t get it – or he’s figuring the audience doesn’t get it and is trying to be a cypher.

Lauer: The fact remains that about a hundred parishes or a hundred churches in this country have split with the Episcopal Church, and they are now more closely aligned with the much more conservative Bishops of the Anglican Church in Africa and South America. Do you feel guilt about that? [emphasis added]

Again, the implication is that Robinson should hold himself accountable for the choices of others – a very few others, as he points out in response, around one hundred parishes out of nearly eight thousand. We’ve discussed the coordinated campaign to take over these parishes in Virginia before, here and here.

I love this one. Responding to a question about the book, in which Robinson states that “the traditional understanding of what the Bible says about homosexuality is flawed, and needs to be reinterpreted,” he explains:

Robinson: We’ve often misinterpreted Scripture; we’ve used Scripture to justify slavery, the subjugation of women, and now we’re realizing that what the Bible initially seems to say about same sex relationships is not actually what we’re talking about today…

Lauer: So, so, is that one man’s interpretation, because that interpretation suits that one man? [emphasis added]

Sure, Matt. This man has devoted his life to study and ministry in the Church he loves, and taken on this difficult historic role in the face of threats on his life, just so he can justify having a sex life. A truly tacky question.

Robinson: Well, it’s the interpretation of many Biblical scholars today, that what the Scriptures are talking about [i.e., those obscure, yet infamous, six passages that decry things like temple prostitution] are not what we’re talking about today – faithful, monogamous, lifelong intentioned relationships between people of the same sex.

Clearly, the Today Show folks very much wanted this to be a news item about same sex marriage, and the headlines on the MSNBC website reveal that desire. One incongruously reads “Gay bishop plans to marry” (although that is not yet a possibility in New Hampshire) and the description under that headline reads “Gay Episcopal Bishop Gene Robinson speaks with TODAY’s Matt Lauer about his support for same-sex marriage and his upcoming plans” (although nowhere in the interview do they discuss same-sex marriage). Another telling headline on the site reads “Despite death threats, gay bishop plans civil union” [emphasis added].

No, no, no, no, and no. Robinson and his partner are planning to enter into a civil union explicitly because of the death threats, not in spite of them. Here is what he says in response to, yet again, a ridiculously framed question:

Lauer: I want to mention something else about you and your partner Mark Andrews, you are going to enter into a civil union in the not too distant future, and you know there are people who say ‘that is just going to fan the flames, and why does he need to do that?’ How do you respond to that? [emphasis added]

Robinson: In the face of death threats, this summer, I am simply not going to go to that conference and put my life in jeopardy without putting into place the protections for my beloved partner and my children and my grandchildren that are offered to me in a civil union; I think any husband or wife would want to do that.

Can we get a show of hands of those who would prefer that their beloved partners and children be without whatever legal protections are available to them, especially if they will be going into harm’s way? That’s what I thought. The attempt to present this no-brainer decision as a “political” act is really a bit shameful. Robinson and Andrews are not responsible for the uncontrollable rage of other people. The fact is that there are some folks who can’t tolerate dissent and change and simple honesty. While I’m genuinely sorry that they are on fire, it does not follow that the targets of their rage must therefore be motivated by a desire to “fan the flames” – rather than by a desire to protect our families, be treated fairly, or any of the other things that would motivate anyone else. This blaming-the-victim slant has become tiresome.

Here’s another video, of interviews with Daniel Karslake (director of the documentary For the Bible Tells Me So, for which he received a 2008 Equality Virginia Commonwealth award) and Bishop Robinson, who has a prominent role in the film.

Excellent film. We’ll keep you posted on plans for local screenings.

My favorite doc at Sundance this year. Karslake has made a powerful film, one that I hope will be widely seen, because it addresses the fulcrum of the religious right’s objection to homosexuality without attacking those who hold those beliefs. Rather than smacking down with a righteous hammer, Karslake instead simply takes those who would believe that there is no common ground between faith and homosexuality and gently, relentlessly chisels away at every argument that bolsters those beliefs.

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What’s really at stake in the Elane case?

Posted on April 15, 2008 by David

There seems to be pretty widespread disagreement within the GLBT community over the meaning of the New Mexico Human Rights Commission ruling in the Elane Photography case, and whether the decision was correct. (The short version: Lesbian couple approaches photographer to take wedding pictures; photographer refuses, citing religious objection to homosexuality; couple files discrimination complaint with Human Rights Commission; photographer is fined.) For those who find the ruling troubling, the gist is that equality for GLBT people can’t be attained through the use of force, and there is a danger of that approach backfiring. Timothy Kincaid at Box Turtle Bulletin:

On one hand, I recognize the value of the limitations that society has placed on the application of religious beliefs and can see the societal benefits that have resulted from anti-discrimination laws. I would not want a plumber, for example, using religious freedom as an excuse to deny services to a Muslim. And I don’t want to return to the day when a store can refuse service to someone solely because they are black or Jewish or gay.

But, on the other hand, I don’t think we are best served by forcing photographers to participate at same-sex commitment ceremonies and I am not convinced of the wisdom of laws that don’t allow for religious objections. I fear that legislatures that might be considering laws that protect gays and lesbians from discrimination will balk if they believe that individuals will be forced to participate in events that they find immoral or objectionable.

Of course he’s right that people who find someone else’s beliefs or conduct objectionable can’t just be forced to change their views. There is not much value in forcing someone who hates you to associate with you, I get that; but I question whether that objective is really the one underlying this complaint. And as much as I share the concern about sending the wrong message to legislators, I think the alternative may be even worse.

Since what we are really talking about is a case of religious discrimination, I’ll stick with comparable examples. Suppose that the proprietor of a photography business is an Orthodox Jew, and would find mixed marriages objectionable on religious grounds. If the business is advertised as doing “wedding photography,” it’s certainly likely that its services will be sought by couples with a different religious view on this question. Is it acceptable to advertise to the public that a business does wedding photography, and then refuse to work with certain prospective clients on the basis of their religious beliefs? (Some would probably say yes, but New Mexico law says no.) The same would be true of a devout Catholic who believes that it’s a sin for divorced people to remarry, or, for that matter, someone who objects to women having children out of wedlock. Can such a person advertise to the public that they specialize in baby photography, and then refuse to photograph the baby of a single mom? Should they be able to demand information about marital status, where the baby’s father is, how the pregnancy was accomplished, etc?

I don’t see how the Commission could have ruled other than the way they did, given that they define a photography business as a “public accommodation” (a valid question in and of itself, taken up by some of the commenters at Box Turtle Bulletin). They would have to come to the same conclusion if the hypothetical Catholic photographer refused the business of a couple by saying to them “It offends my conscience that you divorced people are getting married, and I will not participate in your sinful behavior.”

The point that some are making, that photography requires good rapport between the photographer and the client, and is therefore different from, say, service in a restaurant, is well taken. Certainly, the couple wouldn’t have wanted this hostile woman to actually be their wedding photographer, so the question becomes why didn’t they just walk away? I do have reservations about the decision to bring the complaint in the first place. In a business such as wedding photography, it seems to me that the market should be able to work this out without non-discrimination law being invoked. In practice, the market will demand photographers who are open to couples of all faiths and combinations, and those who are not will experience the consequences in their business.

In some areas it might be viable to only serve a niche market like non-interfaith Jewish weddings, and in fact there are plenty of places where different niche markets co-exist, even though discrimination is illegal. This is accomplished through something called “discretion.” Instead of our hypothetical Orthodox photographer saying to an interfaith couple, “I’m not doing your wedding because self-hating Jews like you are contributing to the demise of our people, and by the way, you’re breaking your mother’s heart,” he might say, “I’m so sorry, but we’re already booked that day.”

See how this works? Elaine Huguenin chose to handle this situation without discretion, in a way that seems to have been calculated to cause offense, and that very deliberately communicated her belief that she could violate New Mexico law with impunity. That was her choice, and it was very stupid and belligerent, not to mention unnecessary. The fact is that not every business is right for every client, and people should be able to sort these things out without taking up positions behind the barricades. Here is a real-life example of how that reality can be handled 1) without violating the law and 2) without being insulting. This is how people with very different beliefs and viewpoints co-exist:

Let me give a comparative example. In CA, there is an anti-discrimination law that includes LGBTs. Yet in Palm Springs there are several bed-and-breakfasts that cater to gay men and are typically clothing optional. I asked the owner of one such establishment how he handled reservation requests from non-gay men (since the law works both ways, he cannot refuse reservations from straights). He told me (and the story he related was actually of an Orthodox Jewish family who had contacted him about booking some rooms) that he was very frank. He would certainly welcome them to the b-and-b, but explained that there would undoubtedly be gay men also there at the time, that the rules that people could be nude around the pool would not be restricted, and basically left it up to the family to decide. They opted for another establishment, which he recommended to them after they asked. No laws were violated, and all information was upfront.

The photographer could have taken that same route, instead of refusing the work. Simply explain to the couple that, of course she would take the job, but that she would be uncomfortable around the ceremony. If the couple still wanted her, they would have to deal with the discomfort during the day. Presumably they would have shopped elsewhere.

Exactly. Notice what happened here – or, more accurately, what didn’t happen; this Orthodox family didn’t respond by becoming outraged that this guy runs a B&B at which they might not be comfortable, and declare that they were going to stay there anyway and be miserable. They thanked the proprietor for the reference to a more suitable establishment, and life went on. When you treat someone with respect, they tend to respond in kind. There could easily have been a similar outcome in the Elane Photography case. Just as it didn’t serve the Orthodox family’s interests to stay at that particular B&B, it wouldn’t have served the lesbian couple’s interests to have an uncomfortable, homophobic photographer at their wedding. If Elaine Huguenin’s objective was one of mutual interest – she didn’t want to do the job, and they didn’t want someone uncomfortable with same sex marriage to do the job – she could have explained that she probably wasn’t the right photographer for them, and recommended someone else. The free market would have worked, and all parties would have had their needs met. Mutual interest doesn’t appear to have been her goal, though. Instead, she seemed to need to make a point of refusing them and asserting her “right” to refuse them, to make a political statement. As absurd as this sounds, the equivalent would be for our B&B proprietor to have huffed at the Orthodox family that he most certainly would not accommodate them because he found their religious beliefs and way of life offensive, and furthermore, that his own beliefs give him the right to violate the law with impunity. Would anyone be defending him if he had done that?

This is the reason that, although I might not have chosen to take legal action, neither do I have much sympathy for Elaine Huguenin. She went beyond the reasonable pursuit of her interest as a business owner in finding compatible clients, and chose to make an unnecessary, inflammatory STATEMENT that she was violating the law.

I don’t claim to know the rationale for the decision to file the complaint, and I really don’t know anything about this couple, but it could be that they were looking beyond their own interests (after all, this unpleasantness certainly couldn’t have enhanced their wedding celebration much) and were instead considering the larger implications of this incident. Wedding photography is not a life-and-death issue. That is not the case with some other services and accommodations.

We have, in recent years, seen an unprecedented attempt on the part of certain “religious conservatives,” as they call themselves, to establish a “right” to discriminate against people who hold other beliefs in the critical area of health care delivery. These health care providers have asserted that their “religious freedom” includes the freedom to determine, according to their personal moral judgment, who is and is not entitled to receive their services – to have prescriptions filled, to obtain surgical procedures, or even to be accepted as a patient in a general practice. Attempts are being made both through state legislatures and through the private sector to permit so-called “conscience clause” provisions that would exempt individual pharmacists from having to provide certain legally prescribed medications, or to fill prescriptions for certain people – for instance, contraceptives to unmarried women – simply on the basis of their personal “disapproval.”

This trend, part of a larger political strategy of framing every obstacle to the public policy desired by these “religious conservatives” as an attack on their religious freedom, is obviously extremely dangerous to the rest of us. There is no logical endpoint if individuals are allowed to make these “exceptions” to the delivery of health care based entirely upon subjective belief and bias. Taken to its logical conclusion, people could be denied life-saving medical treatment and allowed to die – which, in fact, is exactly what happened to Robert Eads, a transexual man who was turned away by doctors until his cancer was too advanced to successfully treat. He died at 53. See the film Southern Comfort for his story.

I have a solution for pharmacists who object to filling the prescriptions that people obtain from their doctors and bring to you: Change careers. The job description of a pharmacist is to fill prescriptions written by doctors, being on the alert for medical contraindications and drug interactions that may have been overlooked. Your own moral judgments and opinions about how other people live their lives is not a medical issue. If your conscience prevents you from filling certain prescriptions – which it may, and that is certainly your right – then you are not qualified for the job of pharmacist. It’s that simple. Ditto for any doctor or other health care practitioner who would refuse care to a person because that person offends your beliefs. If that is the effect of your “conscience,” then your “conscience” needs to be treated like any other disability that would prevent a person from doing a particular job. Firing or not hiring someone because they can’t do the job is not discrimination. Find something you can do.

It’s easy to see why, in the context of this kind of assault on the basic rights of anyone who doesn’t share the beliefs of these “religious conservatives” – to equal treatment in health care, housing and employment, things that are necessary for life – allowing someone to get away with openly declaring that their religious beliefs make them exempt from following a law sets a dangerous precedent, one that will have real, life threatening consequences.

It’s a shame that things turned out this way, and that a Human Rights law would be invoked in an encounter about something as voluntary as wedding photography – but there’s your slippery slope. People who consider their own beliefs so special that they trump everyone else’s will not put limits on themselves, limits have to be put on them externally. To see a real life, and local, example of this, you need look no further than the angry-man sputterings of Brian Withnell over at Nova Townhall. He claims, among other fascinating things, that GLBT people have “no right” to work in the interest of our own equality. That’s right, Mr. Withnell goes far beyond stating that he would refuse to do business with GLBT people, or even that the lesbian couple in this case went too far – he openly states that we have no constitutional rights that he recognizes, because to his mind such rights are only granted in accordance with his religious beliefs. The fact that completely escapes him is that our Constitution was written to protect the rest of us from people who think this way. Can you believe that this poor guy actually attempted to run for public office in Loudoun County? If he had any plans to try again, that idea just ended with a whimper. As for Elaine Huguenin, maybe she was ignorant of the law in her state; maybe she inadvertently got caught up in this without knowing what she was stepping into, and maybe not. I don’t know.

In the end – and maybe everyone can agree on this – I think everybody loses in this case. This is exactly the kind of situation that abstractions like “law” can’t really resolve. Only human beings acting in good faith can do that.

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More silence and hypocrisy from the AGI

Posted on April 11, 2008 by David

Adult members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, stand around as children play with bottles of bubble water at their temporary housing, Fort Concho National Historic Landmark, in San Angelo, Texas, Monday, April 7, 2008.(AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez)

There’s still been nary a peep from the usual Anti-Gay Industry outlets about the recent public executions of gender variant youth. A local exception is a brief condemnation of violence from the Community Levee Association, which says “We condemn all violence and specifically in this case, that which is perpetrated against those who hold different opinions.” The “different opinion” held by Lawrence King, I suppose, is that he had the right to openly be who he was.

Now we are seeing the reports trickle in about the rescue of hundreds of young girls from the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) “Yearning For Zion” Ranch in Eldorado, Texas. In an article titled Sect Teens Made to Have Sex, the Washington Post reports the discovery of a bed inside the compound’s temple where girls, some as young as 12 or 13, were ritually raped to consummate their “marriages” to much older men. Many of the rescued girls are pregnant. One 16 year old girl already has given birth to four children.

Authorities have had to explain why they waited four years to take this action, when the systematic abuse of young girls in FLDS communities was common knowledge. Jon Krakauer exposed this subculture back in 2003 in his investigative book Under the Banner of Heaven. A few other stories, like that of Carolyn Jessop, have also surfaced in the last decade. Jessop was interviewed on the Today Show on Tuesday:

I think it’s a form of pedophilia hiding behind a religion as a protection. There’s just a desire to control and manipulate and torture people, and religion is just used as the cover.

In this video, she discusses the indoctrination of children to believe that the abuse is God’s will. Children are never exposed to “any other kinds of information to challenge the information you’re given…you have no skills to see it as what it really is.” If a woman is unhappy with her lot in life, she has been carefully trained to believe it’s because “you don’t have the spirit of God, and it’s your fault.” The isolation was such that Jessop describes her experience of integrating into the world after her harrowing escape as being like “ending up on a new planet.” As she told the Washington Post earlier this week, the women who have left the Texas compound “have no concept of mainstream society, and their mothers were born into it and have no concept of mainstream culture. Their grandmothers were born into it.” Jessop herself was a sixth-generation member of the group. It’s astounding that anyone would ever have the insight and strength to even consider escaping under these circumstances. Where the girl who blew the whistle on these criminals found the courage to do so, I can’t even imagine.

Given even this limited information, what is being discovered in Eldorado should surprise no one. Equally unsurprising is the fact that the group’s attorneys are citing religious liberty as a shield to interfere with the continuing search for documentation of the abuse. The temple where the child rape bed was discovered – and I’m not going to call it anything but that – is described by authorities as “massive,” and as containing “multiple locked safes, vaults and desk drawers” thought to contain evidence. Lawyers for the sect argue that much of this material should be off-limits as evidence “for legal or religious reasons” and have attempted to have the search ended entirely.

Gerry Goldstein, a San Antonio lawyer flanked by nine other attorneys the church hired, said the search of the temple is analogous to a law enforcement search of the Vatican or other holy places.

Now, why are we not hearing thundering condemnation of this perverted, criminal behavior – in the name of God, no less – from Family “Research” Council, Prison Fellowship Ministries, Concerned Women for America, Eagle Forum, American Family Association, or any of the other self-proclaimed defenders of “traditional marriage?” Where are they? Every other week of the year these groups can be counted on to beat their breasts and scream about how our children are at risk from pedophiles, and how the institution of marriage will be destroyed by a “slippery slope” that leads to polygamy and incest (and that somehow, this is all connected to “the homosexual agenda,” so send a generous donation right away!).

In this case, rather than some propagandistic nonsense made up about a group of people who have no connection at all with these things, we are talking about an actual community, comprising perhaps 10,000 real people, that practices pedophilic rape, polygamy and incest, with very real consequences. Little girls are taught that unless they submit to sexual servitude at the whim of the old men running the joint, they will be condemned to hell. The inbreeding within these communities has resulted in widespread genetic disease. Young men (because there is always a surplus of them) are systematically driven out of the community, and many end up suicides or living on the street. Don’t these ordinarily loudmouthed trumpeters of “moral values” care? It doesn’t appear that they do.

I suspect that in some cases it may be that the notion of keeping children isolated from the rest of society, teaching them that “God has a plan” for their lives – especially their sexual lives, that the execution of this “plan” is the responsibility of male religious leaders and heads of household, and preventing them from accessing any contradictory information, is a bit too familiar for comfort. It sure sounds familiar to me.

What do you think?

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Ignorance kills

Posted on March 29, 2008 by David

So. It wasn’t newsworthy that a 15 year old boy who had been the target of relentless bullying and threats because he was “feminine” was publicly executed by a classmate – nor did the slaying of another “too feminine” teenager, barely a week later, even register a blip in the national media.

Only now, when thousands of community members in Oxnard and thousands more across the country have held vigils, launched websites, written letters, and otherwise recognized the significance of what happened at that school is the execution of a child for having the temerity to honestly express himself worthy of notice by the Washington Post.

The article is really about what we already know: That many schools – in particular middle schools, where gender-based bullying tends to be the most intense – do not “have programs that promote tolerance among students, provide training for educators, or include policies that specifically prohibit harassment and bullying based on sexual orientation.”

Naturally, the usual suspects weigh in with their mewling that sexual orientation is an “inappropriate topic” for students:

Continue reading →

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