It’s that time of year…

Spring on a large university campus means but one thing: crazy evangelicals. Since I attend (arguably) the largest university in the country, I get my fair share of kookery. Most evangelical preachers simply stand on a grassy area and preach, for hours, about the damnation that sinful, depraved college students face. Some gather crowds and screaming voices of dissent, but many are as easily ignored. But every spring, the evangelical season is rung in by a group so passionate they cannot be ignored: the abortion protesters. They cover the campus in the blight of propaganda- their commitment is clear. This year, I decided to take a few photos of the madness, and string them into a quick youtube slideshow. Check it out, and note the response of the pro-choice counter protesters:

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Amazon.com Now Censors As Policy

Amazon.com has just initiated a new marketing policy. They are stripping away the sales ranking of any book with so-called Adult Content. Here's their little explanation: "In consideration of our entire customer base, we exclude "adult" material from appearing in some searches and best seller lists. Since these lists are generated using sales ranks, adult materials must also be excluded from that feature. Hence, if you have further questions, kindly write back to us. Best regards, Ashlyn D Member Services Amazon.com Advantage What this mean in effect, however, is that books primarily with gay and lesbian content are being singled out for exclusion from database searches. It is being applied in a bigoted and surprisingly hamfisted manner to conform to someone's standard of what constitutes Offensive Material. Adult Content generally means anything with more than coyly suggested sex in it. However, as a sample of the books not having their sales ranking stripped away, consider these: --Playboy: The Complete Centerfolds by Chronicle Books (pictures of over 600 naked women) --Rosemary Rogers' Sweet Savage Love" (explicit heterosexual romance); --Kathleen Woodiwiss' The Wolf and the Dove (explicit heterosexual romance); --Bertrice Smal's Skye o'Malley which are all explicit heterosexual romances --and Alan Moore's Lost Girls (which is a very explicit sexual graphic novel) These book sell very well, generally, so it's obvious that there's a dollar connection to this new policy. Midlist---the vast majority of books---will be targeted.

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New regressive laws in Afghanistan

As reported by Marie Cocco at Alternet:

Afghan President Hamid Karzai has just signed a law that forces women to obey their husbands' sexual demands, keeps women from leaving the house -- even for work or school -- without a husband's permission, automatically grants child custody rights to fathers and grandfathers before mothers, and favors men in inheritance disputes and other legal matters. In short, the law again consigns Afghan women to lives of brutal repression. . .

The ugly truth is that Afghanistan has long been sliding back into the violent chaos that is friendly political ground for the Taliban and other extremist groups. Women have, as usual, been among the chief victims.

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Varnum vs Brien: the abridged version of the Iowa Supreme Court Opinion upholding gay marriage

What follows is an abridged version of the Iowa Supreme Court Opinion upholding gay marriage: KATHERINE VARNUM vs. TIMOTHY J. BRIEN, Polk County Recorder. Decision date: April 3, 2009. Who would have thought that the next state to recognize gay rights was going to be Iowa? Right out here in the heartland, neighbor of Missouri, where I live? Many these states in the Midwest have taken pains to amend their laws to forbid gay marriage. I am highly impressed by the Court’s ruling and opinion in the case of Varnum vs. Brien, the Iowa Supreme Court Opinion upholding gay marriage (here’s the full text of the opinion). Here’s Des Moines Register’s brief description of the holding. It is an extraordinary opinion, extremely well-written and well-reasoned. It is extraordinary for both the legal analysis and for the emotional and social insights expressed by the court. This Court really gets what is at stake in this case, and did hide from any of the arguments asserted by the County. It’s amazing what happens when you carefully lay out all of the arguments for the world to see, and I do believe that the Court covered all of the arguments expressed by those who are opposed to gay marriage, even a big argument that the anti-gay-marriage forces didn’t have the courage to raise in the courts (religious objections). Because the Court took the time to carefully lay out all of those anti-gay-marriage arguments, we can all see how empty and paranoid they sound in the abstract. When we see the anti-gay-marriage arguments calmly on paper, without the angry faces and the megaphones, we see them as the specious arguments they truly are. Today, I took the time to read the entire 70-page opinion by the Iowa Supreme Court. It occurred to me, though, that many people (especially non-lawyers) might not want to work their way through the entire opinion. Therefore, I have created this “abridged” version, preserving the significant points, but redacting the citations and technical points. This actual words of the Court’s opinion are truly worth your while. Don’t settle for the simplified news media stories on this decision. This court’s opinion is professional and inspirational. In it’s thoroughness and directness regarding a tumultuous subject, it reminds me of the Pennsylvania decision of Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al., (full decision of the Dover decision here). In this legal decision, the Iowa Supreme Court takes the long view of history, as you can see at page 16, where the Court points out that it prohibited slavery more than 15 years before the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the rights of slave-owners in the Dred Scott case. This discussion is on the mark, given that any legislation curtailing the rights of gays is based on bigotry. The Court has a long analysis ready for those who would argue that homosexuality is a choice, starting around page 41 in the “immutability” section. The also Court slams the concept of "civil union" as a second rate version of marriage (for example, see page 9). What was at stake in this case was Iowa Code section 595.2(1), which ostensibly provides:

“[o]nly a marriage between a male and a female is valid.”

The Court considered a mountain of evidence and reviewed dozens of amicus briefs (briefs from interested individuals and organizations who are not direct parties) before rendering its opinion.

Continue ReadingVarnum vs Brien: the abridged version of the Iowa Supreme Court Opinion upholding gay marriage

Chinks II: Food Stamps

Which reminds me: I was getting a pedicure. I know, so decadent (for a poverty lawyer, teehee), but I was, in this Vietnamese joint, tiny like a hallway lined with big massage chairs. A dangerously overweight, black woman walked in. No, she lumbered in with her handbag at her side, looking tired of lumbering. Titters from the nail-doers. Manicurists, I guess. They’d noticed her too: first the weight, then the skin color. Or perhaps I’m projecting. In any case, they beckoned her to a chair, malignant smiles aglow like jack-o-lanterns, and she quietly succumbed to the growing twitters, over-generous, nonsensical verbal massaging, and I cringed. I cringed visibly. I said nothing. They asked her if she exercised often. They asked if she had a job. For many years, she said. Yes. “Food stamps? Are you on food stamps?” they asked. No, she said quietly. She was not receiving food stamps, and had never, in her life, benefited from food stamps. By now, she'd noticed me staring. I was. I was staring at her - and with her- at us in these ridiculous chairs, prisoners of racists. I could tell the woman picking at my toenails to give it a rest, put my shoes on, pay the bill, tell them all off and leave. Or I could sit there quietly and smile sympathetically at this dangerously overweight black woman who knew, I hoped, that I knew that I was a coward. She smiled at me.

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