Quotulatiousness

March 13, 2014

Feminist writer picks fight with the Trans* community

Filed under: Britain, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:06

Julie Burchill is a British feminist who writes for the Guardian and the Spectator, and has had spats with the Trans* community before. Her most recent provocation was in the comments section of an article at Vice, where she got particularly cranky:

Burchill made the comments on a Vice Magazine column by prominent trans activist and journalist Paris Lees, in which she talked about catcalling, and questioned whether enjoying the attention of men in the street effectively made her a “bad feminist.”

The Sugar Rush writer said: “Paris, you like it because you ARE still a YOUNG GAY BOY. And that’s what YOUNG GAY BOYS LIKE! Bless!

“Paris, if you were a BORN WOMAN, bothered since the age of 12 by GROWN MEN, you wouldn’t find it fun. You’d find it boring, wearisome, wearing. When you’re a plain old trans, ten years from now, you’ll get a big old identity crisis on, if you rely on random lechery for self-esteem.

“I bet B*tch [Paris Lees] will come up with a ‘sexy reason’ for foot-binding next. [Female Genital Mutilation], even. Didn’t I hear that a ‘transwoman’ thought we Radical Feminists were fussing about too much about FGM? What price the genital mutilation of a 7 year old brown-skinned girl child when THE MOST IMPORANT THING IN THE WORLD is big white blokes having their cocks cut off on the NHS?

[…]

She went on: “No human who did not grow up as a girl can call themselves a woman. Any more than a white human can become a black human. Delude yourselves all you like, but in the way you lot harass born women, your bully boy side always shines through. And no amount of lipstick and plastic tits can cover that up.”

She deleted the comments and posted an apology, but clearly the damage had been done.

H/T to Kathy Shaidle for the link.

February 28, 2014

Baked-in prejudice and freedom of religion

Filed under: Business, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:48

Jonah Goldberg assures us that he’s not against gay marriage, but that the Arizona baker’s case isn’t quite what it seems:

Speaking of unreasonableness, according to ESPN’s Tony Kornheiser, if Arizona allows bakers to refuse to bake cakes for gay couples, gays may have to wear “yellow stars” like the Jews of Nazi Germany. It would be Jim Crow for gays according to, well, too many people to list.

Now lest you get the wrong impression, I am no opponent of gay marriage. I would have preferred a compromise on civil unions, but that ship sailed. The country, never mind the institution of marriage, has far bigger problems than gays settling down, filing joint tax returns, and arguing about whose turn it is to do the dishes. By my lights it’s progress that gay activists and left-wingers are celebrating the institution of marriage as essential. Though I do wish they’d say that more often about heterosexual marriage, too.

But I find the idea that government can force people to violate their conscience without a compelling reason repugnant. I agree with my friend, columnist Deroy Murdock. He thinks private businesses should be allowed to serve whomever they want. Must a gay baker make a cake for the hateful idiots of the Westboro Baptist Church? Must he write “God hates fags!” in the icing?

The ridiculous invocations of Jim Crow are utterly ahistorical, by the way. Jim Crow was state-enforced, and businesses that wanted to serve blacks could be prosecuted. Let the market work and the same social forces that have made homosexuality mainstream will make refusing service to gays a horrible business decision — particularly in the wedding industry!

February 26, 2014

Facebook‘s 58th gender and the (in)flexibility of language

Filed under: Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 14:04

Chrissie Daz discusses the rise of the “third gender” (should that be 58th?) and earlier attempts to make language conform to an idealized view of how life should be, as opposed to how it is:

The legal recognition [in passports and other legal documents] of intersex people and others who cannot properly be said to be either male or female is probably a good idea, but this should not impact upon the vast majority of people who have no problem living in a binary-gendered world or using binary-gendered language.

History is replete with failed attempts to re-invent or modify language, from Esperanto to the feminist PC language of the Eighties. But this campaign to institute a third sex in language and law may well prove to be the most unstable project yet. The ever-changing and ever-expanding taxonomy of words and identities aimed at respecting difference among transsexuals, always seems to cause undue offence among transsexuals themselves. To use the word transsexual, for instance, as a noun (rather than as an adjective) is said, by some, to diminish a person’s identity down to a single trait. The very term transsexual has been replaced, first by transgendered (to assert that fact that it is about gender not sexuality) and now by Trans*. The capital ‘T’ is obligatory and the asterisk is meant to represent inclusivity. Apparently, to simply call someone ‘Trans’ implicitly denigrates the experiences of cross-dressers and gender-queer folk who are not intent upon making a full transition from one gender to the other.

Amid all the offence being taken over these linguistic acrobatics, the one thing trans campaigners, and now Facebook, fail to realise is that language does not respond well to being artificially manipulated. As Wittgenstein once remarked, language is like a toolbox, you use the best tool available for the job in hand. With general use, over time, words and their meanings change to reflect changing forms of social consciousness. It is not the other way around. Any attempt to force language to respond to the presumed delicate sensitivities of marginal groups not only underlines and reifies these presumed vulnerabilities, it also undermines the responsiveness of language to real experience.

February 25, 2014

Freedom of belief and “administrative law” in Colorado

Filed under: Business, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:05

L. Neil Smith on a controversial case in Colorado:

In a story that recently made national news, a Colorado baker who, for reasons of Christian conscience, refused to make a wedding cake for a homosexual couple, has been ordered by a Denver administrative law judge (and exactly what the hell is an “administrative law judge”, anyway?) to do so nonetheless — and make similar cakes for any other customers who request them — or face fines and possibly a stretch in prison.

He will file reports and be watched closely from now on.

I am not kidding.

The baker, who has said that he will disobey the order, is Jack C. Phillips, his bakery, Masterpiece Cakeshop. The judge’s name is Robert Spencer. The gay couple are Charlie Craig and David Mullins. The lawsuit was brought on their behalf by the American Civil Liberties Union.

Craig and Mullins originally filed a complaint with the Colorado Civil Rights Commission. Apparently Phillips had refused another such request, by a lesbian couple, some time ago, and, according to local talk show host Peter Boyles of 710KNUS, was deliberately targeted, or “shopped”, possibly by the judge, himself. Meanwhile, a Colorado Democratic legislator (whose name I can’t find) has just introduced legislation that would crank up the fine for this “offense” by 7000 percent.

In a specimen of logic so twisted it would make Pablo Picasso or Salvador Dali vomit, Spencer has issued Phillips a “cease and desist” order — an official order to stop not doing something. It’s exactly like a moment out of a nightmare collaboration between Stalin and Kafka.

Clearly, Baker Phillips has a right, under the First Amendment — a right currently being denied him — to believe whatever he wishes, and to follow the precepts of his religion, as long as he doesn’t deny anybody else their rights. He also has a First Amendment right to freedom of speech, which necessarily includes the right not to speak, when that appears more eloquent, or to employ his artistic insights, intuitions, and skills in support of a cause that he personally finds obnoxious.

Certainly Craig and Mullins have their rights, as well, but they don’t include compelling Phillips or anybody else to work for them, or to pretend as if they agreed with their ideas and help trumpet them to the world. The fact is, there are dozens of other bakeries in Denver more than willing to do that. But, as we now know from Obamacare, everybody has to comply. They want to get this guy and get him good.

Lobbyist wants to ban gays from playing in the NFL

Filed under: Football, Law, Liberty, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 08:28

This is the sort of story that wouldn’t be out of place in the 1970s, but seems to have come adrift in the timestream and for some reason shows up today:

Just when it appeared that a supposedly modern, progressive society is willing to accept people for who they are and not force them to pretend to be something they’re not, someone is trying to kick the pendulum sharply in the other direction.

According to The Hill, lobbyist Jack Burkman said Monday that he’s preparing legislation that would ban gay players from the NFL.

“We are losing our decency as a nation,” Burkman said in a statement. “Imagine your son being forced to shower with a gay man. That’s a horrifying prospect for every mom in the country. What in the world has this nation come to?”

One must assume that Burkman’s belief is, contra Chris Kluwe, sharing a shower room with a gay man will magically turn you into a “lustful cockmonster”.

February 21, 2014

Michael Sam and the NFL combine in Indianapolis

Filed under: Football, Media — Tags: , — Nicholas @ 09:37

In USA Today, Tom Pelissero says that former Missouri defensive end Michael Sam will have to convince team representatives that he has the skills to play in the NFL, rather than how he might fit in as the only openly gay player in the locker room:

One of the largest crowds ever for a media session at the NFL scouting combine peppered Manti Te’o with 36 questions last year, almost all about a hoax involving the death of a girlfriend who didn’t exist.

The crowd for Missouri defensive end Michael Sam’s session Saturday may be even bigger. But behind closed doors, it’s unlikely NFL teams will show near the same interest in Sam’s announcement that he’s gay.

As Minnesota Vikings general manager Rick Spielman put it Thursday: “What are you going to ask him? He just came out and stated his position.”

[…]

With Sam, who earned All-America honors after coming out to teammates before last season, his answer already became public record Feb. 9 — he’s gay.

“If my area scout’s any good, he already knew that anyway,” an NFL personnel director said, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the situation.

All the other questions — Will Sam be accepted in an NFL locker room? Will the media horde chronicling the NFL’s first openly gay player create resentment? — will be answered once he lands with a team.

The dynamic is different when entering a transient NFL locker room than in college, where players grow up together over four or five years. But Missouri’s excellent 2013 season suggests such questions are overblown anyway.

“One of the key differences between this and the Manti Te’o story is Manti Te’o wasn’t really in control of that situation,” said former NFL punter Chris Kluwe, a gay rights advocate who was at Sam’s coming out party the night before his announcement. “Mike is very much: ‘Yeah, this is who I am. Deal with it.'”

February 18, 2014

Michael Sam, latent homophobia, and the NFL draft

Filed under: Football, Media — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 09:04

Jim Geraghty looks at two sides of the Michael Sam story: the media side and the football side. They’re very different stories.

Good luck, Michael Sam.

Those of us who are sports fans are going to have a fascinating couple weeks ahead, as the national political and cultural media insists upon interpreting the events of the National Football League draft through the lens of identity politics. They will attempt to shoehorn events into a made-for-TV movie storyline about Michael Sam, defensive end for the University of Missouri, and aspiring NFL player.

Our media used to writing one kind of identity politics story: a person comes out of the closet and becomes the first openly-gay person to achieve a particular goal, gets saluted for bravery, is elevated to hero status, and then spends the next few years going to black-tie awards dinners and being the subject of overwrought documentaries.

[…]

The NFL Draft comes with its own movie-ready drama. Unlike the Super Bowl or any other sports championship, the draft is a major annual event that involves every team, as every almost every team has a first-round draft choice. (Sorry, Washington Redskins fans.) There’s a near-complete reversal of fortune, as the league’s worst team has the first and most consequential choice, making a selection that could ignite a quick turnaround back to respectability or be remembered as one of the all-time flops. Every fan of every team has a reason to tune in, to see who their team picks, hoping to have gotten a future star. The NFL draft is one of those rare high-drama sporting events with no real losers.

But there are indeed big winners. For the players, draft day is their real graduation day, where they stop practicing their craft to ensure the prosperity of a university and finally cash in on their years of effort with, in most circumstances, a multi-million dollar, multi-year contract. Guys who grew up with next to nothing bring their mothers and their whole families to New York City, where they learn where they’ll be living for the next few years, pursuing their dream of stardom. Genuine tears of joy flow. At age 20 or 21 or so, these young men have achieved their childhood dreams.

I suspect most fans’ biggest question about Michael Sam is, ‘if my team drafts him, how much better will our pass rush get?’ NFL fans care about the off-the-field behavior of their favorite team’s players to a certain degree; nobody likes rooting for a thug and a player prone to off-the-field trouble represents a higher risk of getting himself suspended or in legal trouble someday. But it’s hard to believe that NFL fans who can come to terms with a one-man population explosion at cornerback or shrug off drug busts, assault charges, DWIs, public intoxication, and all kinds of other misbehavior will stop rooting for a team with a gay defensive end.

A large chunk of the media will insist upon interpreting every triumph and setback for Michael Sam through the lens of his homosexuality and their belief that he’s a flashpoint in a battle between ‘tolerance’ and ‘intolerance.’ But the career of an NFL player can rise or fall on a thousand different factors and twists of fate. Do the coaches use him correctly? How complicated is the defensive system, and how quickly can he pick up the signals, terminology, and strategy? Is he in a system designed to showcase his natural skills, or are the coaches trying to use him in a new or different role that takes time to learn? How good are the other players on the team at his position? Does he twist an ankle or tear an ACL? Sam seems to have a good head on his shoulders, but how does he handle the pressures of being a professional athlete?

In addition to the questions about whether Sam’s collegiate talents will be enough to allow him to flourish in the NFL, and whether a given team would welcome an openly gay team-mate in the locker room, there’s also the “Tim Tebow” problem … the team that drafts Sam will be in the unrelenting focus of the media’s publicity floodlights. Just drafting Sam would only be the start of the media’s attention. Everything to do with Sam will draw TV cameras, paparazzi, and the team’s beat writers for local media outlets.

Where is he going to live? What kind of car does he drive? Where does he shop? How do his new neighbours feel about him? What kind of clothes does he wear away from the team’s facilities? Where does he go for entertainment? Who is he hanging around with?

And that’s just the start of it. Once the pre-season routine gets underway with organized team activities, mini-camps, and then training camp, the team (probably the head coach, but also the GM and the defensive co-ordinator or the linebackers coach) will have their every word analyzed for Sam-newsworthyness. If Sam does poorly in a drill or a scrimmage, it’ll be all over the media. If he isn’t in the starting rotation, it’ll be interpreted (by some) as proof that the team isn’t serious about giving him a fair chance to play.

This might be acceptable to a team if Sam’s skills were top-10 quality, but most of the reports don’t indicate that. A team will put up with a lot if the player drawing the attention is an athletic superstar, but for what seems to be (at best) a player with fair-to-adequate skills, it may deter them from drafting him at all.

Each team starts the regular season with 53 players, but they take nearly twice that number to training camp. Players who are drafted will have a better-than-average chance of being on the opening day roster, but the chances go down significantly the later a player is drafted. All first and second round picks are going to be on the roster, but not all sixth or seventh round picks will be. Sam’s skill set indicate he might have been a mid-round pick before the news broke about him coming out. Now, he might not be picked until the sixth round or he may not be picked at all. If that happens, many will decry the NFL’s homophobia, but as you can see, there’s a lot more in play than just Sam and his NFL playing potential.

February 14, 2014

Facebook‘s multiplicity of gender choices

Filed under: Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 14:30

I have known enough people for whom the arbitrary division of people into “male” or “female” was insufficient that it didn’t surprise me at all that Facebook has extended their available self-designators. What does surprise is the vast selection of choices they currently support. Slate‘s Will Oremus attempted to identify all the options:

Facebook told me it has no plans to publish a comprehensive list of the choices it offers. So we took it upon ourselves to reconstruct it by typing each letter of the alphabet into the text field, one at a time, and transcribing the options that appeared. We found 56 custom options, bringing the total number of options to 58 including male and female. Please note that it’s possible that the list below is not complete. If you find one that we missed, please feel free to point it out in the comments and we’ll update accordingly.

The list goes from “Agender” to “Two-Spirit”. Who knew there could be so many discrete gender states?

February 10, 2014

The NFL’s first openly gay draft candidate and the Vikings’ image problem

Filed under: Football, Media — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 09:11

It’s likely to be a very tense day in the public relations office of the Minnesota Vikings, after Missouri defensive lineman Michael Sam came out … and the jokes started about the only team in the league that wouldn’t draft him. At The Viking Age, Dan Zinski rounds up the first crop of jokes and rumours:

News broke late Sunday afternoon of former Missouri defensive lineman and current NFL draft prospect Michael Sam’s decision to come out as a gay man. Immediately the jabs started appearing on Twitter, the great social media instant pop culture temperature gauge.

“Well, I know the Vikings won’t be drafting Michael Sam,” tweeted @dbaby_23.

“I’m going to go out on a limb and say Michael Sam will not be drafted by the Vikings,” tweeted @ChrisJamesMMA.

“100000 dollars says the vikings dont draft michael sam,” tweeted @sports_scene.

“I bet Michael Sam would make a great special teams player for the vikings!” tweeted @MattesonTrevor.

“well you know the Vikings aren’t gonna draft Michael Sam,” tweeted @Miyag_e.

And on and on in that vein.

Endless jokes about how the Vikings will never draft Michael Sam because they have an openly homophobic coach on their staff.

Completely unfair jokes, because Mike Priefer, even if he thinks the things Chris Kluwe says he thinks, doesn’t speak for the team. He only speaks for himself.

But still, it’s out there. It’s in people’s minds. The Vikings are guilty of homophobia, if only by association.

A willing association with a man whose public image is, justly or unjustly, that of a bigot.

The timing couldn’t be much worse for the Vikings: they had an ongoing investigation into Chris Kluwe’s accusations against Mike Priefer, but they also had a new coaching staff being hired. They couldn’t just part company with Priefer while the investigation was underway for fear of being sued for wrongful dismissal. If the investigation sustains Kluwe’s side of the story, the team can discipline or dismiss Priefer with a clear conscience (assuming that the investigation isn’t a whitewash from the start), but if they clear Priefer of any wrongdoing, they’ll probably take an even worse beating in the court of public opinion … at least until the next NFL scandal comes up.

The media attention on the story of the first openly gay NFL player (assuming he’ll be drafted, that is) won’t be over quickly. The Vikings can only hope that their share of the attention will quickly diminish.

Putin’s homophobia is making the case to allow same-sex marriage

Filed under: Europe, Liberty, Russia — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 08:46

The Russian leader’s anti-homosexual agenda is making converts of people like Telegraph columnist Cristina Odone who had been strongly against allowing same-sex marriage:

Vladimir Putin has succeeded where Peter Tatchell failed. I loathe the Russian president and admire the gay rights campaigner, but it is Putin that has made me rethink my view of gay marriage.

I have written before about my fear that legalising gay marriage would affect the special status of marriage as a sacred institution. I have argued that once gay people could demand to be married, believers who refused to open their churches or even church halls to the ceremony would be punished. But Putin’s homophobic measures have changed my mind. If I oppose gay marriage I may be seen as condoning his anti-gay campaign. I couldn’t live with that.

Russia’s anti-gay laws and practices are odious. Last summer, the Duma passed a law to “protect children from information that can bring harm to their health and wellbeing”. The legislation can stamp out any organisation seen as pro-gay and fine it up to 1 million roubles; foreigners can be arrested for 15 days and deported from the country. (Note: circulating Nazi propaganda carries a fine of up to 2,000 roubles: Russian parliamentarians regard non-traditional relations as far more pernicious.)

The new law is easy to manipulate, allowing for example the authorities to shut down a helpline for LGBT teenagers, the Children-404 project: by providing sympathetic advice to isolated, bullied, ostracised, depressed and sometimes suicidal LGBT teenagers, the group is guilty of propaganda

January 5, 2014

Polarized America, not

Filed under: Government, Media, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:50

In Time, Nick Gillespie goes through the polling numbers and finds that despite frequent claims that the United States is more polarized than ever before, it’s certainly not over the issues you’d expect:

The apparently massive and unbridgeable gulfs between Republicans and Democrats, men and women, gays and straights, secularists and believers, rich and poor, and coastal elites and heartland Americans are belied by data that substantial and growing majorities of folks actually agree on a wide variety of important social and policy issues and attitudes.

Here’s a sampling:

  • Pot legalization. As Colorado and Washington state begin selling legal weed, fully 58 percent of Americans believe the drug should be legal. That’s up from just 12 percent in 1969, says Gallup.
  • Abortion. Few issues are as hotly contested and few issues have generated such consistent support, with 78 percent of us thinking abortion should be legal under either all or some circumstances, and just 20 percent thinking it should be illegal in all circumstances. Those numbers basically haven’t changed since 1975.
  • Homosexuality. In 2001, just 40 percent of Americans thought that that “gay or lesbian relations” were morally acceptable. Last year, 59 percent had no problem with them. And 53 percent now think same-sex marriage should be given equal status to conventional couplings. That’s up almost 20 points from the start of the century.
  • Health Insurance. As Obamacare cranks up, 56 percent believe that it is not “the responsibility of the federal goverment to make sure all Americans have healthcare coverage.” That’s up from 28 percent in 2006. Only 42 percent — down from 69 percent in 2006 — think providing health insurance is the government’s responsibility.
  • Trust in Government. Just 19 percent of Americans “trust the government in Washington to do what’s right” all or most of the time. That’s down from 60 percent in 2002. Meanwhile, 81 percent of us don’t expect the government to do what’s right all or most of the time, up more than 40 points in the last decade. And a record-high 72 percent believe government “will be the biggest threat to the country in the future.” During the Obama presidency, 55 percent say that the government “is doing too much.”

Of course, all of these issues — and many others — contain nuances and contexts that need to be taken into account. And most issues show partisan differences too, with Republicans pulling in one direction, Democrats in another, and Independents (who are, at 44 percent, the single-largest bloc of voters by far) somewhere in between. But it’s striking that Americans seem to be becoming more socially liberal and fiscally conservative with every passing year. That just isn’t reflected in the platforms of the major parties, with the GOP only getting more conservative and the Democrats only more liberal.

January 2, 2014

John and Sherlock

Filed under: Britain, Media — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:26

The first episode of Sherlock season three was aired in the UK yesterday. On this side of the pond, we won’t get to see it until later in the year, so we have to rely on media reaction to the show, and Tim Stanley wasn’t over-pleased with the producers’ efforts, calling it a “roller-coaster ride” that “leaves you confused and nauseous”:

Holmes has always been a wonder, but here he is wondrous to the point of smug and irritating. How can Watson love him? Presumably because they are such good friends and one of Sherlock‘s strong points is the genuine chemistry between Martin Freeman and Benedict Cumberbatch. But even this comes with an irritating postmodern twist. Everyone presumes they’re gay. Because of course if two men spend more than five minutes in each other’s company they’re obviously candidates for some Brokeback-style hot cowboy action in a tent.

One of the saddest things about our culture is the death of brotherhood. Watch any of the pre-Millennium Sherlocks and you’ll be in no doubt that these men would take a bullet for one another. In the excellent Murder By Decree, Christopher Plummer and James Mason’s heroes are so tender that they share a blanket on a carriage ride — Sherlock gently tucking Watson in. When Vasily Livanov’s Holmes “dies” in the Russian version of The Final Problem, Vitaly Solomin’s Watson collapses against a tree and weeps uncontrollably. But no one ever questions their sexual preference. There’s no need to. They’re just friends.

By contrast, contemporary British culture has become so pornified and sex-obsessed that the running gag in Sherlock is that everyone thinks Cumberbatch and Freeman are in a civil partnership. Don’t get me wrong — I’m sure there’s an enjoyable version of Holmes yet to be written in which they’re at it like knives. But the constant snickering that goes on in Sherlock just adds to a sense of the show’s lack of maturity. It’s knowing, clever-clever, hip, ironic, tech-obsessed, geeky, hipster and just about everything else that gets in the way of a sophisticated yarn well told. For that, you have to go back to the Jeremy Brett Sherlock, which was distinctly lacking in action but high on good prose. Most episodes were an hour of Jeremy sitting in the gloom in Baker Street complaining that he’s got nothing to do. Compulsive viewing.

December 28, 2013

Un-noticed marker of social change

Filed under: Books, History, Media, WW2 — Tags: — Nicholas @ 10:36

Ann Althouse talks about the dust-up at National Review Online, where an editor objected to something that Mark Steyn wrote and posted what I’m sure he thought was a gentle rebuff. Steyn reacted exactly the way you’d expect him to, and in the end the editor got a chance to polish up his resumé for his next position. As an addendum to the original post, she quotes from William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich as a rather jarring example of how much society’s attitudes to homosexuality have changed (for the better) since the early 1960s:

The point of the Rat Pack joke — “How do you make a fruit cordial?”/ “Be nice to him.” — wasn’t that it’s funny. It’s that not too long ago junk like that was the norm. It was probably considered sweet, gentle and even gay-friendly. Steyn is paying attention to how cultural norms change. This is something I’ve been talking about too, and I am confounded by what a hard time people have understanding this subject.

[…]

ADDED: Here’s something a little different that corresponds to that Rat Pack joke, not in the realm of comedy, but in a best selling history book that was published in 1961 and got high praise in places like The New York Times Book Review and won the National Book Award. It’s William Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. Listening to the audiobook, I was struck by the references to homosexuality, made in an offhandedly negative way that you’d never encounter in a book published today by a respectable publisher and an author who meant to be taken seriously. Examples:

A tough, ruthless, driving man — albeit, like so many of the early Nazis, a homosexual — [Ernst Roehm] helped to organize the first Nazi strong-arm squads which grew into the S.A., the army of storm troopers which he commanded until his execution by Hitler in 1934….

Such was the weird assortment of misfits who founded National Socialism…. The confused locksmith Drexler provided the kernel, the drunken poet Eckart some of the “spiritual” foundation, the economic crank Feder what passed as an ideology, the homosexual Roehm the support of the Army and the war veterans, but it was now the former tramp, Adolf Hitler… who took the lead….

“I know Esser is a scoundrel,” Hitler retorted in public, “but I shall hold on to him as long as he can be of use to me.” This was to be his attitude toward almost all of his close collaborators, no matter how murky their past — or indeed their present. Murderers, pimps, homosexual perverts, drug addicts or just plain rowdies were all the same to him if they served his purposes….

But the brown-shirted S.A. never became much more than a motley mob of brawlers. Many of its top leaders, beginning with its chief, Roehm, were notorious homosexual perverts. Lieutenant Edmund Heines, who led the Munich S.A., was not only a homosexual but a convicted murderer. These two and dozens of others quarreled and feuded as only men of unnatural sexual inclinations, with their peculiar jealousies, can….

No other party in Germany came near to attracting so many shady characters. As we have seen, a conglomeration of pimps, murderers, homosexuals, alcoholics and blackmailers flocked to the party as if to a natural haven. Hitler did not care, as long as they were useful to him…..

December 13, 2013

Australian territory’s gay marriage law struck down by High Court

Filed under: Australia, Law, Liberty — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 08:01

The Australian Capital Territory attempted to make gay marriage legal within its borders despite federal law prohibiting same-sex marriages being recognized. The Australian High Court decided yesterday that the territory cannot override federal law on this issue:

The ACT legislation had allowed gay couples to marry inside the ACT, which includes the Australian capital, Canberra — regardless of which state they live in.

Federal law, however, specified in 2004 that marriage was between a man and a woman.

Civil unions are allowed in some states in Australia.

The High Court in Canberra ruled unanimously against the ACT legislation on Thursday, saying that it could not stand alongside national-level laws.

“Whether same sex marriage should be provided for by law is a matter for the federal parliament,” it said in a statement.

“The Marriage Act does not now provide for the formation or recognition of marriage between same-sex couples. The Marriage Act provides that a marriage can be solemnised in Australia only between a man and a woman,” it added.

Attorney-General George Brandis had previously warned that the local law would face a legal challenge, because it was inconsistent with the country’s Marriage Act.

November 5, 2013

Just add lawyers and stir

Filed under: Business, Law, USA — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 10:46

Coyote Blog on the problem with the latest anti-discrimination law:

In reality, this is how it works: Suddenly, as owner of the company, one finds a lawsuit or EEOC complain in his lap, generally with absolutely no warning. In the few cases we have seen in our company, the employee never told anyone in the company about the alleged harassment, never gave me or management a chance to fix it, despite very clear policies in our employee’s manuals that we don’t tolerate such behavior and outlining methods for getting help. There is nothing in EEO law that requires an employee to try to get the problem fixed via internal processes.

As a result, our company can be financially liable for allowing a discriminatory situation to exist that we could not have known about, because it happened in a one-on-one conversations and the alleged victim never reported it.

What I want is a reasonable chance to fix problems, get rid of bad supervisors, etc. A reasonable anti-discrimination law would say that companies have to have a grievance process with such and such specifications, and that no one may sue until they have exhausted the grievance process or when there is no conforming grievance process. If I don’t fix the problem and give the employee a safe work environment, then a suit is appropriate. The difference between this reasonable goal and the system we actually have is lawyers. Lawyers do not want the problem to be fixed. Lawyers want the problem to be as bad as possible and completely hidden from management so there is no chance it can be fixed before they can file a lucrative lawsuit.

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