Where I Stand

There's something incredibly comforting to me, as a lawyer, about seeing your opponent unable -- finally -- to hide hir objective. I welcome what's happened all day today in DC as Republicans have made clear that, no, preventing abortion is NOT their main goal. Their main goal is hurting women. Women who've been daring for decades now to not act as second-class citizens. In their world, that MUST be punished. In mine, it MUST go on. Come on out in the open, my enemy. Come on out into the light.

hat tip/ Thorn Coyle on Twitter.

My New Name For A Blog

What Twisty Said. I have to get up pretty early in the morning to wrap my head around the notion that sex is bad but children are pure. I wish that Diane Sawyer would eat a big fucking bowlfull of Shut-the-Fuck-Up.

Family Values My Sweet Ass

Family Values! Culture of Life!

It's generally a fair rule that whatever the Republicans claim to value, they really hate. And that's nowhere more true than when their policies impact women. Today's WaPo reports that, under the Republican's war (which John McCain says could easily last 100 years and that would be fine with him), mothers are being torn from their babies only a few weeks after giving birth so that the mothers can be sent back to war:

Connor was three months old when Shaw and her husband, Brad, a sergeant with the military police, began a 15-month deployment to Iraq, their second tour in the combat zone. Like thousands of other new military mothers, the 22-year-old Army medic faced a stark choice: Give birth and quickly leave the baby behind, or lose her job.

Many female soldiers hoping to start families face the prospect of missing most of their child's first year.


I will say this slowly and in short words: People who "value families" don't do things like this. They don't send moms away to war and force them to leave their twelve week-old infants behind. People who belong to the "culture of life" don't make it almost impossible to have and parent children.

When the Republicans say that they are the "party of family values" and that they espouse a "culture of life," they are lying. To them, new mothers are chess pieces to be rotated back onto the chess board as quickly as possible. To them, new babies are an inconvience, to be weaned and dumped on grandparents or foster care as quickly as possible.

I'm tired of having our country run by liars.

Take Your Abstinence "Education" Program And Shove It

This one's for my wonderful and determined friend, R., who spent last week working on this issue for Virginia.

Today's WaPo reports the good news that:

The number of states refusing federal money for "abstinence-only" sex education programs jumped sharply in the past year as evidence mounted that the approach is ineffective.

At least 14 states have either notified the federal government that they will no longer be requesting the funds or are not expected to apply, forgoing more than $15 million of the $50 million available, officials said. Virginia was the most recent state to opt out.

Thank the Goddess. The only surprising thing is that anyone rational ever imagined that this twaddle could be effective.

Despite intense (and, ask my friend, R., it's really, really intense and nasty) lobbying by fundie whackjobs and xianists, the trend is likely to continue.

"This wave of states rejecting the money is a bellwether," said William Smith of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, a Washington-based advocacy and education group that opposes abstinence-only programs. "It's a canary in the coal mine of what's to come."

"We hope that it sends a message to the politicians in Washington that this program needs to change, and states need to be able to craft a program that is the best fit for their young people and that is not a dictated by Washington ideologues," Smith said.

Smith and other critics said they hoped that if enough states drop out, Congress will redirect the funding to comprehensive sex education programs that include teaching about the use of condoms and other contraceptives.

"I think this could be the straw that breaks the camel's back in terms of continued funding of these programs," said John Wagoner of Advocates for Youth, another Washington advocacy group. "How can they ignore so many states slapping a return-to-sender label on this funding?"

I hate abstinence "education" programs for a number of reasons. First, of course, they're ineffective. Telling teenagers, with hormones coursing through their body designed specifically to make them want to have sex is about as effective as telling hungry dieters to just not eat or telling thirsty people not to drink. Sex is a natural biological function and our bodies are made to want it, just as they want air, and food, and water. Throw in a hyper-sexualized society, where 12-year-old girls dress like supermodels and sex is used to sell everything from beer to cars to, well, Viagara and you've got to be on dope to think that telling kids not to have sex = sex education. And the results show that abstinence "education" is lots less effective at preventing teen pregnancy than, oh, say, teaching kids how to use condoms and passing them out to kids every chance we get.

In addition, federal health officials reported last week that a 14-year drop in teenage pregnancy rates appeared to have reversed.

"This abstinence-only program is just not getting the job done," said Cecile Richards of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America. "This is a ideologically based program that doesn't have any support in science."

Second, I just reject the notion that we should be giving teenagers the message that there's something wrong with sex. There isn't. Sex is great. Teen pregnancy and sexually-transmitted diseases are the problems. So let's teach kids how to prevent those. Consider another natural function that we're wired to want to do: eating. We don't tell kids not to eat until they get married. Eating isn't the problem; eating is great. Obesity and poor nutrition are the problems. So we have health classes and phys ed classes and science classes and home ec classes to teach kids how to eat and cook healthy food.

Third, and this is related to the second reason, the notion that sex is a problem and should be avoided (at least for now) is a religiously-based idea. My religion doesn't agree. Teaching abstinence almost always slips over into indoctrinating kids into, if not outright xianity, into ideas introduced into this culture by xianity that are directly antithecal to, say, my religion. Xians can tell their own kids, in their own homes, how terrible sex is and why they should avoid it. Public schools should provide information: if you have sex, here's what could happen and here's how to avoid that.

My own Democratic governor, Tim Kaine, in spite of being a devout Catholic, recently added Virginia to the states telling the fundie whackjobs installed by the Bush junta to go pound sand.

"The governor has often stated that abstinence-only education does not show any results," said Gordon Hickey, a spokesman for Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine (D), who announced plans to give up the funding last month. "It doesn't work. He's a firm believer in more comprehensive sex education."

Anyone who thinks that state elections don't matter can simply consider whether this would have happened if Jerry Kilgore had won in 2005.

Even more conservative politicians are getting off the abstinence merry-go-round:

"Why would we spend tax dollars on something that doesn't work?" asked Ned Calonge of the Colorado Department of Health and Environment. "That doesn't make sense to me. Philosophically, I am opposed to spending government dollars on something that's ineffective. That's just irresponsible."

The reasons given for passing up the federal money vary from state to state. Some governors publicly repudiated the programs. Others quietly let their applications lapse or blamed tight budgets that made it impossible to meet the requirement to provide matching state funds. Still others are asking for more flexibility.

"The governor supports abstinence education," Keith Daily, a spokesman for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland (D). "What he does not support is abstinence- only education. We are asking to put the money toward abstinence in the context of a comprehensive age-appropriate curriculum."

Most of the battles on the state level are being fought by local affiliates supported by national groups. In Illinois, opponents are planning to launch a campaign next month involving more than 100 state groups to try to sway the governor and state legislature to forgo about $1.8 million in funding.

"These programs are dangerous," said Jonathan Stacks of the Illinois Caucus for Adolescent Health. "We're trying to get people across the state to raise their voice on this issue. I think once those voices are heard, the legislature and the governor won't have any choice but to back the will of the voters."

Not a minute too soon. Go, R.!

They Don't Even Try To Be Logically Consistent

It's old news by now that the Republicans and their orc pit of bloggers have taken to attacking the families of kids who benefitted from SCHIP, the children's health insurance program that Congress wants to expand and that Bush has vetoed.

What's interesting about the latest attack is that it's directed against a family that lacked insurance but chose to have a child, anyway. The child had a serious heart condition that required expensive health care. (The mother had insurance years ago at a prior job, but quit when that job became "unmanageable" and has worked for years as a waitress at a restaurant that doesn't provide insurance.) The right wing slime machine is in high dudgeon over the notion that this family shouldn't have had kids if they didn't want to work at jobs that provide insurance.

Of course, the right wing also doesn't believe in family planning or birth control. What was this married couple supposed to do -- abstain from sex forever? What if they'd saved enough to pay for a normal hospital birth for a healthy child, but discovered, while the mother was still pregnant, that the child, when born, would have an expensive heart condition? An abortion at that point would be affordable, out of their savings, but they couldn't afford the health care. In the wingnut world, what should they have done? Remember, wingnuts hate abortion worst of all.

And, of course, there's no end to the "objections" the wingnuts can come up with when they presume to decide how other people should live their lives. What about people who have jobs that provide insurance, have a child, lose that job to "oursourcing" (it happens in George Bush's America) and then their child develops an expensive medical condition? Sure, we could go back and criticize some "choice" they made -- there was that year that they took the family to Disney Land instead of foreseeing that their child would develop cancer and need to be hospitalized for a month. If they'd invested that money in the stock market -- oh, wait.

In the end, it's all just nuts. We're the richest country on Earth. We can afford trillions of dollars for an war of aggression against a country that didn't attack us. Our wealthiest citizens pay ridiculously little in taxes. If we have money for that, we have money to provide health care for working families, people like waitresses and cabinetmakers. The notion that people should have to "choose" between working at the vanishingly few jobs that provide real health insurance and having a child or between owning a home and having a child or between being self-employed or having a child is just goofy. Well, no, it's more than just goofy. It's evil and pernicious and disgusting. I'm looking at you, Republican Party.

My New Name For A Blog

What BooMan said.


Americans need to learn: if someone tells you how to act sexually, hide your children and vote for the other party.

Eli Whitney Debevoise II. I Swear That I Am Not Making That Up

Today's WaPo has an article about a leaked World Bank report showing that Wolfowitz broke bank rules -- clearly the World Bank still thinks that it can shame Wolfowitz into resigning. They can't; he's George Bush's man and Bush's men apparently are incapable of shame. See, e.g., Alberto Gonzales. You can have their jobs from them when you pry them from their cold, dead hands. An option which becomes more attractive by the minute.

But what really struck me was this:

Monday was also shaping up as a test of the board's will on a controversial new bank strategy on health, nutrition and population.

In recent months, World Bank employees have shaped the strategy, which directs the institution's lending, to include the ready availability of "sexual and reproductive health services" for women in poor countries. That bit of jargon is widely known in some countries to refer, among other things, to access to safe and legal abortions.

But in recent weeks, Juan Jose Daboub, a conservative Christian whom Wolfowitz appointed managing director at the bank, directed the staff to delete that reference, effectively eliminating the endorsement for access to safe abortions, according to two bank officials. Daboub did not return calls.

In a letter sent last week to the bank vice president overseeing the strategy, several members of the governing board, including those representing Germany, France and Britain, demanded that the original language be restored, asserting that the bank would otherwise be breaking with a 1994 consensus embracing family planning.

This week, the American representative on the board, Eli Whitney Debevoise II, pressed again to remove the reference to "services" and replace it with "care," to eliminate any potential endorsement for abortion, the officials said. Debevoise did not return phone calls.


That's who that cowboy, that good ole' boy with whom you'd just love to sit down and have a beer, that man of the people who saved us from that elitist John Kerry, George Bush appointed to be the American representative to the governing board of the World Bank: Eli Whitney Debevoise II. And that's who gets to decide that some poor woman living in a shack in Africa or India or South America will have to bear one more child than she can care for, or feed, or even carry to term. Eli Whitney Debevoise II.

Young Mr. Debevoise comes from, well, shall we say, circumstances that were significantly removed from those of a poor, pregnant woman living in the Third World. The first Mr. Eli Whitney Debevoise (1899-1990) co-founded the New York law firm of Debevoise & Stevenson (later Debevoise & Plimpton) in 1931. During World War II he served as chairman of an Alien Enemy Hearing Board in New York City, where he ruled on the eligibility of aliens to remain in the country during the war. From 1950 to 1953 he was appointed deputy general counsel with the High Commission for Germany - Office of General Counsel (HICOG-OGC). His namesake, after spending time at Yale and Harvard, became a partner at Arnold & Porter. He testified just last month that he was eager for the great privilege and the responsibility to represent the United States at the World Bank Group institutions.

Hey, who could possibly be in a better position to decide what's good for Third World women? Please. Shoot me now.

Beltane and SCOTUS. Not As Unrelated As You Might imagine.

Wicca is often accused of being a-male. I certainly practice a Dianic form of Wicca that, well, that generally ignores the male. It works for me.

Perhaps it's the coming of Beltane, when my circle-sister K. always demands that we invoke the Green Man, that has me considering what it means to be a male: the union of the king and the land. Perhaps it's seeing Son being such a wonderful father to G/Son, changing diapers, cuddling, gentling to sleep, providing for, ensuring the future of.

Miniver Cheevey explains what it can mean to be a man in 21st Century America:

Nothing is stopping the bleeding. There seems to be nothing they can do. They talk about trying some drugs, but then they decide things are going too fast to give time to let them work. So that leaves only surgery as a possibility. Surgery means hosing her out. It means killing the baby. So obviously, we look into other options. Only now, my wife is so out of it, from blood loss, from the painkillers, that the doctor said she is no longer able to legally consent. Now I'm handed a clipboard. On it is consent to basically give my wife an abortion and kill our future child. And it is all on me, my decision, mine alone. Something I never thought I'd ever face, ever have to deal with. Made worse by being a decision of either kill the baby or potentially watch both my wife and the baby die. The doctors did not say at this point that it was absolutely necessary. Maybe more blood could be transfused in. Maybe she wasn't dilated—they hadn't figured it out yet. Still too much blood. So then there I was, facing the sort of choice that you usually see only in hypotheticals in ethics and philosophy classes. Only it was real. It was my wife. And I didn't have exactly a lot of time to think about it. It was just me and the clipboard. An empty line there, marked for my signature. My wife bleeding right next to me. The ultrasound of my baby, and its heartbeat, fresh in my mind from minutes before. I cannot begin to describe how I felt at that moment.

At an early point in D-i-L's labor, when the doctor was trying to impose his will on D-i-L, Son said calmly to the doctor, "Let's step outside and discuss this." He was calm, "Let's step outside." The doctor was freaked out; he thought that Son might be about to punch him in the nose. The doula was amazed; she came out later and told me, "Your son is stronger than almost any father that I've ever seen." Son just wanted to discuss the issue someplace where it wouldn't interfere w/ D-i-L's work of breathing, concentrating, bringing G/Son into the world. To me, that's the epitome of male power, the ability to protect wife and child, to deal with the outside world so that the inner world of childbirth and magic isn't imposed upon.

I'm sad that SCOTUS did what it did. Something in me doesn't believe that this will be allowed to stand. Sometimes, men are, they just are, called upon to stand in that doorway between life and death, that place where their wife's blood and their child's heartbeat run into each other. Sometimes, they are handed a clipboard and asked to step up, to be the Green Man, Pan, Dionysis, and Apollo all at once. Sometimes, they are called upon to stand in the breach, to tell the doctor to step into the hall, to do what they'd hoped not to have to do. I'm sorry that SCOTUS has made that moment so much more fraught, so much more difficult. I think that living male in this patriarchy is already way, way, way too difficult.

I had only one child, Son. Son and D-i-L have likely had their only child, a son. And in this insane patriarchy, in this culture of war and domination and acquisition, I have tried, Son and D-i-L are trying, to raise a man who can thrive and do the right thing in this world, a man who can face this scenario:

And it is all on me, my decision, mine alone. Something I never thought I'd ever face, ever have to deal with.

May the Goddess guard our sons. May she guard them as they must navigate this Roberts/Alito world.

May the Goddess and the Green Man guard Justice Stevens. It's already as difficult as it needs to be.

Yeah, What The NYT Said

If Attorney General Alberto Gonzales had gone to the Senate yesterday to convince the world that he ought to be fired, it’s hard to imagine how he could have done a better job, short of simply admitting the obvious: that the firing of eight United States attorneys was a partisan purge.

Mr. Gonzales came across as a dull-witted apparatchik incapable of running one of the most important departments in the executive branch.

He had no trouble remembering complaints from his bosses and Republican lawmakers about federal prosecutors who were not playing ball with the Republican Party’s efforts to drum up election fraud charges against Democratic politicians and Democratic voters. But he had no idea whether any of the 93 United States attorneys working for him — let alone the ones he fired — were doing a good job prosecuting real crimes.

He delegated responsibility for purging their ranks to an inexperienced and incompetent assistant who, if that’s possible, was even more of a plodding apparatchik. Mr. Gonzales failed to create the most rudimentary standards for judging the prosecutors’ work, except for political fealty. And when it came time to explain his inept decision making to the public, he gave a false account that was instantly and repeatedly contradicted by sworn testimony.

This junta is full of lying, incompetent, assclowns. And these are the people who get to tell me what I can and can't do with my own body? I.Don't.Think.So.

Tragedy Of The Commons

I adore Twisty and this made me slap my thigh and laugh out loud.

Tragedy of the Commons. That's all I'm saying. Motherfucking Tragedy of the Motherfucking Commons. Externalities. Your right to swing your fist and my nose. Etc.

Gee, Mary, Is That How You Think It Works? Welcome To Your Father's America.

NEW YORK - The decision to become pregnant and raise a child with her female partner was not political, Mary Cheney, a daughter of Vice President Dick Cheney, told a Barnard College audience.

"This is a baby," Cheney said Wednesday at a forum sponsored by Glamour magazine. "This is a blessing from God. It is not a political statement. It is not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. It is my child."

You know, you ignorant bint, there's more than a few women who think that their reproductive choices shouldn't be anybody else's business. And, beyond that, I kind of think that Terry Schiavo's husband thought that, "This is my wife. She's not a political statement. She's not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. She's my wife." There are sick Americans who could be cured by research using stem cellls from tissue that's going to be discarded anyway. I kind of think that they'd say, "This is my health. I'm not a political statement. I'm not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. I'm a human being who'll die without this research." And, of course, as you well know, there are gay people out there who love each other and want to get married. They'd gladly tell Glamour Magazine that, "This is our love life. We're not a political statement. We're not a prop to be used in a debate by people on either side of an issue. We're just two people who love each other and want to get married."

And, hey, Mary! Guess what you privileged, protected, punk? Your fucking father and his fucking marionette in the WH disagree! They think that THEY, not you, have the right to make your reproductive choices, and to make medical end-of-life decisions for Terry Schiavo, and to prevent stem cell research, and to define marriage as "between a man and a woman" -- all in the name of placating some whackjob, woman-hating, gay-fearing fundies in order to harvest their votes and their donations. In fact, that's your daddy's base, although, as you well know, he holds them in as much contempt as he seems to hold 99% of the electorate.

And, gee, Mary, you filthy-souled sell-out to your gender, guess what else? You support that! You worked on your daddy's campaign. You didn't give a speech and say that Focus on the Family is a bunch of dirty-minded busybodies who have no business sticking their noses into America's vagina. You didn't issue a statement saying that Terry Schiavo's family ought to be left the fuck alone. No, Mary, you, you ugly-spirited sow, you are what we call a collaborator.

And, hey, guess what else, Mary, you moron! You may have thought, as all collaborators do, that your collaboration and your position of privilege would protect you. Yeah, poor women, black women, -- other people -- maybe the patriarchs that you've supported would interfere in their lives, but not yours. Your daddy's rich and powerful and so you thought that you'd get to flout the rules that Focus on the Family lays down for those of us with wombs; your reproductive decisions, unlike those of all the rest of us, would be "personal matters," your "choice," and not a political prop.

Well, all I've got to say to you was said a long time ago by Bob Dylan:

Once upon a time you dressed so fine
You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you?
People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall"
You thought they were all kiddin' you
You used to laugh about
Everybody that was hangin' out
Now you don't talk so loud
Now you don't seem so proud
About having to be scrounging for your next meal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely
But you know you only used to get juiced in it
And nobody has ever taught you how to live on the street
And now you find out you're gonna have to get used to it
You said you'd never compromise
With the mystery tramp, but now you realize
He's not selling any alibis
As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes
And ask him do you want to make a deal?

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns
When they all come down and did tricks for you
You never understood that it ain't no good
You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you
You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat
Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat
Ain't it hard when you discover that
He really wasn't where it's at
After he took from you everything he could steal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people
They're drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made
Exchanging all kinds of precious gifts and things
But you'd better lift your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe
You used to be so amused
At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used
Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse
When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose
You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal.

How does it feel
How does it feel
To be on your own
With no direction home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?

Now shut the fuck up and quit complaining. You made your goddamn bed. Now sleep in it, bitch.