Gail Riecken for the Win

Some of you may have heard me going on and on about Senate Bill 89, which I discussed in more detail here. To pull out the bill specifics from that entry as background info:

SB 89 is a bill that the Republican-controlled Senate handed over to the House that originally stated that physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at their local hospital. This is ostensibly to ensure that physicians performing abortions have gone through the extensive background checking and whatnot that hospitals do, which is not a bad idea in itself.

The reason this is a problem is that hospitals are loathe to give admitting privileges to physicians who don't live in the area, and most abortion doctors don't perform abortions where they live, because it'll get your family harassed by anti-choicers. The other reason this is a problem is that it isn't necessary. The only thing admitting privileges really gains the woman is being able to have the same doctor at the hospital in case of a complication that she had performing the abortion. (...)

The real reason for handing this over is, of course, to shut down all but one clinic in Indiana that performs abortions by requiring doctors to jump through a meaningless hoop with no penalties for a hospital that refuses them admitting privileges simply because of why they want them. (...)

The House put language in it which accepted the premise that those performing [invasive] surgical procedures should have local admitting privileges as long as we apply it to all [invasive] surgical procedures. (...)

Senator Patricia Miller (R-Indianapolis) evidently doesn't like the fact that the bill would now cover all surgical procedures, and also disapproves of the amendment giving funding for preventative health care for women. That's right! These amendments strengthen the case of SB 89 being a bill about women's health, rather than an attempt to shut down most of Indiana's abortion clinics.

So the very things that make it viable as anything more than an imposition of an unconstitutional undue burden are the very things that might kill it in conference committee. If they want to say it's not germane to apply this to all surgical procedures, and if they want to say that it's not germane to amend other considerations of women's reproductive health, they're going to have to admit that the bill is attempting to do something else--something unconstitutional.

Well, guess what? I don't think they got a report out from committee last night, and those have to be out for 24 hours before they can be heard for the final vote today and... I don't think it was. So now that the bill has died, it was safe for me to talk to a Rep who really really earned my respect and gratitude through this.

I found the session video archive for April 15th (starts at 4:50), and here's what she said. To my knowledge this is the only transcript, but the damn thing is public record right on the State House website if people thought to look.

Let me say first that I am well aware that this bill is popular and will probably pass this evening. My intention in speaking is to put on record what I think is a major flaw in this bill. A disappointment, a great disappointment, to me in my first year in this House. It is the inclusion of the statement that a fetus might feel pain. The fetal pain requirement is simply medically unsound.

I had the occasion to talk with Representative Tim Brown this evening just before we convened, and he told me that he believes that life begins at conception, and I am not arguing that point. What I am arguing is that pain does not begin at conception. According to the Journal of the American Medical Association, it is not physiologically possible that a fetus feels pain before 29 or 30 weeks gestation. Medical experts acknowledge that awareness of pain requires the involvement of the cerebral cortex, which is not yet developed at 20 weeks' gestation. Now understand that I am not a physician. But I believe that we must pay attention to good, sound, scientific and medical advice. According to the Indiana State Department of Health roughly 90% of Indiana Abortion patients have their abortion in the first trimester. That same data reports no abortions past 20 weeks.

My fear in this bill is the thought of what lengths we will go as a House to get a bill passed. I am not advocating the use of abortion as a method to halt or avoid pregnancy. I do believe in a person's right to have an abortion, however, I do not believe in abortion. I have raised my two daughters to make responsible decisions and I do not believe that they believe in abortions. I cannot accept this bill that is, under the surface, a pathway to denying women control over their own bodies.

I have seen, I have lived, and served women in another country where authoritarian control over women and their reproductive health produced only two things: shame and guilt. Finally, I believe in this bill we have climbed the hill to a very slippery slope. A slippery slope that will only result to restrict women and our right to be responsible adults, determined with our husbands and our doctors our reproductive health.

I will not be voting for this hypocrisy.

I felt really really good when she said that, because in Indiana those views often don't get heard. So when she said it... I felt heard. I wanted her to know that, and I think it made her happy to get that feedback. This is particularly true since this is her first term and a lot of people were probably urging her not to say anything because it would endanger her re-election prospects if Right to Life starts fanning the fires of misogyny in her district.

I hope she gets re-elected. There are a few Reps that I truly feel have both the insight and the conviction to actually stand up for my best interests as a voter in Indiana. Gail Riecken is one of them, and quite frankly I trust our legislature a lot more with her in it.

You, ma'am, have been counterfucked!

You remember SB 89 that I was so pissed about? I guess you wouldn't if you only read my blog. To recap for those of you who didn't hear me ranting loudly about this on the third reading deadline night...

SB 89 is a bill that the Republican-controlled Senate handed over to the House that originally stated that physicians performing abortions must have admitting privileges at their local hospital. This is ostensibly to ensure that physicians performing abortions have gone through the extensive background checking and whatnot that hospitals do, which is not a bad idea in itself.

The reason this is a problem is that hospitals are loathe to give admitting privileges to physicians who don't live in the area, and most abortion doctors don't perform abortions where they live, because it'll get your family harassed by anti-choicers. The other reason this is a problem is that it isn't necessary. The only thing admitting privileges really gains the woman is being able to have the same doctor at the hospital in case of a complication that she had performing the abortion. This really doesn't make a difference in standard of care as I've had it explained to me, since hospital doctors are just as qualified to take care of her!

The real reason for handing this over is, of course, to shut down all but one clinic in Indiana that performs abortions by requiring doctors to jump through a meaningless hoop with no penalties for a hospital that refuses them admitting privileges simply because of why they want them.

This should never have gone to the House floor for a vote, in my opinion. It should have been killed in committee so that the Democrats whose constituencies are ignorant and backward won't have to vote on it one way or the other. As it was, a lot of Dems had to vote against their own consciences and the best interests of their constituents just because Right to Life will force them out of office in 2010 if they don't. There's no right vote here. Either vote for an unconstitutional piece of legislation, or lose their seat to a Republican who's not even going to consider the Constitutionality of this kind of bullshit.

So of course it passed. The House put language in it which accepted the premise that those performing surgical procedures should have local admitting privileges as long as we apply it to all surgical procedures. Lots of amendments to it passed, including one requiring the woman seeking an abortion to be informed that a fetus can feel pain--despite the fact that one Rep stood up and gave AMA peer-reviewed evidence that this isn't even true for the developmental stage this legislation addresses.

But it did pass. It passed from the Senate to the House, and lots of Reps who understand the notion of "undue burden" as the Constitutional litmus test had to vote for it anyway. A very small number sacked up and voted Nay nonetheless, and they have my gratitude and respect for that. Then it remained to see if the Senate conferred or dissented with the changes that were made to their bill in the House.

I have an update!

Senator Patricia Miller (R-Indianapolis) evidently doesn't like the fact that the bill would now cover all surgical procedures, and also disapproves of the amendment giving funding for preventative health care for women. That's right! These amendments strengthen the case of SB 89 being a bill about women's health, rather than an attempt to shut down most of Indiana's abortion clinics.

So the very things that make it viable as anything more than an imposition of an unconstitutional undue burden are the very things that might kill it in conference committee. If they want to say it's not germane to apply this to all surgical procedures, and if they want to say that it's not germane to amend other considerations of women's reproductive health, they're going to have to admit that the bill is attempting to do something else--something unconstitutional.

Let's hope committee kills it. That way all the Dems will have pacified their constituents by voting to suppress women, but there won't actually be consequences for those constituents' uneducated single-issue voting.

U.S. will boycott U.N. conference on racism

U.S. will boycott U.N. conference on racism

GENEVA/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States will boycott a United Nations conference on racism next week, the U.S. State Department said on Saturday, citing objectionable language in the meeting's draft declaration.

The United Nations organized the forum in Geneva to help heal the wounds from the last such meeting, in Durban, South Africa. The United States and Israel walked out of that 2001 conference when Arab states tried to define Zionism as racist. (...)

Juliette de Rivero of Human Rights Watch said the meeting in Geneva would lack needed diplomatic gravitas without Washington's presence.

"For us it's extremely disappointing and it's a missed opportunity, really, for the United States," she said.

A draft declaration prepared for the conference removed all references to Israel, the Middle East conflict and a call to bar "defamation of religion" -- an Arab-backed response to a 2006 controversy over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that Western states see as a way to quash free expression.

Wood conceded there had been improvements to the document, but he said it was not enough.

"The United States will work with all people and nations to build greater resolve and enduring political will to halt racism and discrimination wherever it occurs," he said.

Diplomats said the high-profile presence of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at the forum made it probable that touchy subjects would still dominate the proceedings.

*sigh*

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, we obviously can't allow one nation to define all interest in their rival as "racist," because allowing nations to redefine actual jargon from social critique in order to serve their own interests is a huge pain in the ass. (At one point some nations were invoking "cultural relativism" as a shield against criticism instead of the analytical tool that it is, which is why I'm annoyed that "racism" is now also getting co-opted.)

On the other hand, I'm getting kinda sick of allowing so much of our foreign policy decisions be determined by what Israel thinks we ought to do. There are other nations in the world, and maybe we should also be giving them some consideration. Like, oh say... all the nations that would benefit from having us there. Including our own.

So I'm ambivalent. I'll grant that the way Israel was discussed at the earlier meeting does sound out of line. But is this really wise?

I think what pisses me off most is the hesitation to talk to Iran's president lest uncomfortable topics come up. Hello, guys. You've put together a gorramn conference on racism. If somebody isn't uncomfortable by the time you're done, you're fucking doing it wrong. This isn't useful at all if it's just a way for everybody to get together and congratulate each other on how anti-racist they all are. Unless the nasty racialized barriers between members countries aren't brought up and hashed over... then what the hell are they doing all this for?

I realize there would and must be diplomatic consequences to a conversation of racism any deeper than superficial "we don't like racism, give us a cookie for how great we are" crap. However, I feel that until the uncomfortable stuff with diplomatic consequences is brought up, they're not really even talking. Maybe it's more diplomatically sound to waste so much time and money on an anti-racism circle jerk, but it's hard for me to imagine them actually accomplishing much if this is their approach.

But this is why I'm not a diplomat. I just want to drag shit out and get it over with, because as a rule people aren't actually going to examine themselves and their behavior any more deeply than they absolutely have to. This doesn't really work with people who aren't rational, and I suppose if any of those people I talked to had high-powered weapons of war just waiting to be used in a self-righteous temper tantrum, I might be inclined to be a little less honest, too.

It's just frustrating, that's all.

"Don't park your car here. I don't like this neighborhood, it's full of Canadians."

Has anybody ever heard people in food service using "Canadian" as a code-word?

I would appreciate if anybody who has heard this could read this article and tell me what they think of it.

What we have here is an example of a phenomenon that I've noted before, that of "whispering the word 'black.'" In certain situations, some white people use "Canadians" to refer covertly to black people when they think they shouldn't use another word. That other word probably isn't "black people" or "African Americans," but instead, a "worse" word. A more overtly racist word.

So white people apparently use "Canadians" this way because they might be overheard by the black people they're referring to. However, I suspect that in some cases, they use it because they don't want to be seen or heard saying the "worse" words by not just by black people, but by anyone--maybe even themselves.

If white people sometimes resort to this euphemism instead of a more clearly racist term when no black people could actually overhear them, then they're demonstrating something about the common workings of white psychology. Sometimes, when white people have racist thoughts or feelings, and we know we would look bad openly expressing them, we still manage to find other ways to express them. These are ways that we think don't make us look bad, but also ways that nevertheless also allow us to communicate the racist thought or feeling.

I've heard plenty of times of people doing this, but I've never heard it done myself.

The logic I've heard from servers who've mentioned this to me is that waiting tables "makes" a person racist, in the most purely privileged sense of the word. Racism here--like with so many people in so many situations--fails to mean "unfairly shitting on people for being the wrong ethnicity," but gets mutated into something racist people are more comfortable with. "Racism" is their word for all those things that everybody knows really are true, but try not to say because if they're caught speaking these truths (truths like the common laziness of black people, or how poorly POC treat their wait staff) they'll get in trouble with the "PC police." In short, it'll upset other white people, which is somehow more of a problem than participating in a system that actually harms POC.

Here's my personal feeling on certain occupations "making" someone be racist. Waiters become racist because black people make them be racist. Cops become racist because black people make them be racist. It's not their fault, you see, and there's nothing they can do. If black people don't want to be treated like shit by white people, clearly the solution is for them to quit being so... *whisper* ...you know. Black.

Then white people will finally be able to stop going through the pain of believing racist and hurtful things, finally be able to stop inventing codewords to express those racist things without getting caught using nasty words (that can't possibly be off-limits for a reason), and finally... finally... we'll all be able to get along. Once people stop "making" each other be racist. I mean, come on, POC. Personal responsibility, people! If I'm saying racist things, just accept that you are to blame, and we'll finally be able to move toward a solution after you change your behavior.

But y'know. Those fucking "Canadians" never were very good at personal responsibility, am I right? Am I right?

Goddamn it.

Seriously, guys. Victim-blaming. Please stop getting so enthused about it like it solves all social problems, because saying, "If black people weren't so cheap and rude, I wouldn't be racist," is like saying, "If women weren't so vapid and petty, I wouldn't be sexist."

"Take Back Our Country"

So there's this enormous rally outside the statehouse. Angry conservatives who don't know what they want (as evidenced by the "keep the change" sign right next to a "change is coming in 2010" sign), and who seem to have made the terrible mistake of taking Ayn Rand seriously.

The best sign was "Take Back Our Country." From whom? THE VOTERS? Because YOU LOST?

The symbol for the whole protest--in my mind--was a man in a chicken costume. Nobody knows why he's there, what he's up to, or what he wants. Just that he's angry at Democrats.

Seriously. There was no unified message. No organization. Most of the things they were protesting weren't even in the state's jurisdiction. lern2government, dumbasses.

We all laughed (and I don't mean just Democrats). They brought their Galt signs! And people in chicken suits. Come the fuck on, people. What can we do but laugh?

I guess it's better that they get this out of their system here, where they're a rabble of ineffectual kooks who don't know where to direct their anger. Let them mill about yelling at their state legislature to get rid of Obama. Let them rage about taxes that most of them are paying less of now than they were before.

You guys get this out of your system now. The Reps are all in recess anyway. There's no one to hear you scream (except for those inside who are laughing at you, and those outside who will get fired for lobbying).

Why did they pick Pope Sidious again?

This man should have been the pope.

"Can you imagine that there are those who think God is a Christian?" he said to laughter from a mostly appreciative audience. "Can you tell us what God was before he was a Christian?" (...)

"Injustice and oppression isn't just evil, which it is. It's not just painful, which it certainly is for the victim. It's like spitting in the face of God."

He invoked his friendship with the Dalai Lama, the Tibetan Buddhist leader who has been exiled from his homeland for nearly 50 years. Although others would be embittered, the Dalai Lama is filled with "bubbly joyousness," he said.

"You have to be totally, totally insensitive not to know you are in the presence of someone who is holy and good."

He then asked, "Can anyone say to the Dalai Lama, 'You are a good guy. What a shame you are not a Christian'?"

Another great quote from Desmond Tutu, and one that hits close to home as far as my approach to a higher power: "What a tremendous relief it should be ... to discover that we don’t need to prove ourselves to God."

Erosion of privilege is not the same as oppression, kthxbai.

Hilzoy has an excellent essay up here.

Rod Dreher Continues To Puzzle Me

Anonymous Liberal notes this from Rod Dreher, writing about the Iowa decision to legalize gay marriage:

"This morning, I had breakfast with some guys, including a lawyer. We weren't aware of this decision, but we talked about this issue. The lawyer said that as soon as homosexuality receives constitutionally protected status equivalent to race, then "it will be very hard to be a public Christian." By which he meant to voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage. To do so would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views."

Anonymous Liberal makes two important points in response. First, if Dreher thinks it's tough being a "public Christian", he should try being openly gay for a change. Second:

"I find it more than a little pathetic that Dreher and his friends feel that they can't be "public Christians" without going out of their way to advertise their disapproval of homosexuality. First, there are millions of Christians in this country who have no problem at all with gay marriage or homosexuality generally (indeed, there are many gay Christians). But more importantly, since when is expressing disapproval of homosexuality a key part of being a "public Christian"? What about going to church or singing Christmas carols or celebrating Easter or (gasp!) volunteering your time to help those less fortunate? Aren't those pretty effective ways of being publicly Christian? Is gay marriage really going to make it any harder to do any of those things? We still do live in a majority Christian country after all, and I have a feeling that will continue to be the case even after we start treating gay people like full citizens."

But there's another problem with what Dreher and his lawyer friend think. Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that being Dreher's kind of Christian does in fact require public disapproval of homosexuality. I don't know why one would want to be that kind of Christian, as opposed to the kind who follows Christ in ministering compassionately to Pharisees and (those whom one takes to be) sinners alike, but hey: it's Dreher's life, not mine. And suppose further that allowing gay men and lesbians to enjoy full legal rights, including the right to marry, would in fact produce the (specific) results Dreher's friend fears. Here, again, is how Dreher describes the problems that loom on his horizon:

"To voice support, no matter how muted, for traditional Christian teaching on homosexuality and marriage (...) would be to set yourself up for hostile work environment challenges, including dismissal from your job, and generally all the legal sanctions that now apply to people who openly express racist views."

Notice anything about those legal sanctions? They all apply to people who openly express racist views at work. There are no legal sanctions for expressing openly racist views on the street or on a public beach. Why not? We have this odd thing called "freedom of speech", which precludes them. In a country that let Nazis march through a town full of Holocaust survivors, I find it hard to believe that Rod Dreher and his friends will not find some way to express their views in public.

Apparently, to be the kind of "public Christian" that Dreher thinks he has a right to be, it's not enough to bear Christian witness in public. It's not even enough to express disapproval of homosexuality in public. You have to express disapproval of homosexuality to your co-workers, in your workplace. And you have to do so even if they find your expressions of disapproval so unpleasant that they actually file suit.

The existence of laws against sexual harassment in the workplace does not mean that no one can be a public lecher. The fact that I think it inappropriate to introduce my political views into my classroom does not mean that I do not get to be publicly political. It just means that not all remarks are appropriate in all settings. This should not be news to anyone. It's certainly not a threat to freedom of religion, any more than it's a threat to public political expression.

Only someone whose life had been very, very privileged would assume that he had the right to tell his co-workers how sinful he thought they were, or that if this supposed right were threatened, that meant not that he should bear witness to the gospel in a more appropriate setting, but that his freedom of religion itself was in jeopardy.

Zoe Kentucky posted a great comment to this:

This is exactly what Dreher is talking about, and coming to a workplace, pulpit, public forum, or jurisdiction very near you very soon.

I suppose that is why Fred Phelps is rotting behind bars. Because in America we don't let people say ugly, anti-gay things in public without silencing, fining and punishing them.

Oh, wait, he isn't? In fact, Phelps and his family recently took huge their "God Hates Fags" signs and protested outside of the White House recently. For pete's sake, the Phelps family protests military funerals. They don't get arrested or fined even when they ARE harassing people.

So, as far as free speech rights are concerned, if Fred Phelps can walk around freely and say beyond-the-pale reprehensible anti-gay comments then I think you can still tell people that you don't like gay people or approve of gay marriage.

The fact is that things are changing-- openly anti-gay views are falling out of social favor. The truth is that you can say whatever you want, just don't expect that it will make you popular or be accepted with a agreeable smile. That is the part that these people are upset about, that their prejudicial views are no longer shared by most people.

That's what they're really talking about. "When we try to block equal protection under the law for people who believe differently from us, people talk like we're unreasonable, hateful, and un-Christ-like. OH MAN IT'S SO HARD TO BE CHRISTIAN POOR US THIS IS JUST LIKE BEING FED TO ROMAN LIONS."

Don't get me wrong. I think Christianity is a beautiful religion, and I know people for whom it's done a great deal of good. And it is notable that most Christians nowadays are actually not strongly opposed to treating same-sex couples with the same human dignity that heterosexual couples receive. Yes, yes, really. They're not like Dreher and other similar people, whose lives are so centered around public hatred and derision of other people that being asked to treat others with respect is a life-destroying catastrophe.

Most Christians aren't like this. This is an exceptional case of extraordinary fear-mongering irrational hatred. This is homophobia in its purest sense: the fear that if gays are around and treated like they're people something terrible will happen. Just what that is, and how it'll happen? Well, I guess that needs to be taken on faith.

Families: Legitimate and Illegitimate

Vermont passes gay-marriage bill

BOSTON (Reuters) - Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode a veto from the governor in passing a bill that would allow same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the state to become the fourth in the nation where gay marriage is legal.

The Vermont House of Representatives passed the bill by a 100-49 vote after it cleared the state Senate 23-5 earlier in the day. In Vermont, a bill needs two-thirds support in each chamber to override a veto.

Those of you who know me know that I don't cry often. I really don't. I find the act a distasteful lapse in self-control comparable to urinating on oneself. But I've been on the edge of it for over an hour now, since I heard about this.

Part of it is sadness at how far we've yet to go, but most of it is relief. State by state we're overriding people who think that same-sex marriage threatens their own, even if they can't explain why or how. State by state, victory and setback after victory and setback, we're making progress.

But why cry over it? Why get so emotional about something that doesn't really affect me?

That's what you think.

You see, I know a beautiful family. I've mentioned them before. Two brilliant, insightful, creative, stable, and loving women who are raising a son together. He's an amazing kid, creative and free to a degree that I was never allowed to be. They may not be perfect--no family is--but they're still the kind of family that I always wished I was secretly part of, that would realize someday that I didn't belong in that fearful and angry place, that I didn't belong where intelligence was something to be resentful of, that I didn't belong in a family where people intimidated each other and did violence to each other. I thought--like many kids in my position--that someday my real family would find me.

I didn't care whether that family had one mom or two, one dad or two. I just wanted somebody around who could look at me and know me for who I was, and still somehow love me. I just wanted somebody I could trust to be proud of me when I succeeded, and be there for me when I didn't. I wanted somebody I didn't have to be afraid of, or threatened by. I wanted what every lonely, angry little girl in my position wants. I wanted safety and love, and I didn't care who from, as long as it was real.

Four more states. Massachusetts, Vermont, Connecticut, and Iowa. Four states are finally done telling my friends and their son that kids should grow up like I did and not like their son will, because their son won't have a "real" family (not a good, wholesome American one like mine, at least). Four states are done defining a real, government-sanctioned family as one with the right composition of sexes and not one with the right kind of love and unity.

Shows what the rest know. I may have had a "real" family, but I spent my whole childhood wishing I had anything else, anywhere else, with a group of people like my friends and their son. If they're not a family, what is? If their son isn't part of a family, then what the hell am I?

What's a family to you? Has anyone ever told you that you don't have one? That you shouldn't have one? Can you even imagine what that feels like? I don't know if I can, but the closer I get the more deeply it hurts. I don't want anyone to feel that.

So here's a hat tip to these four states. We're far from done, but a little hope goes a long way.