Primer on e-book basics from Clarisse Thorn:
http://clarissethorn.com/blog/2012/08/08/epublishing-amazon-smashwords-where-and-how-to-sell-ebooks/
I am partially posting this here because I want to read it, but am currently too exhausted, and hopefully this will act as a reminder. ;-)
I’m a graduate of Chicago public schools. So is my husband. We’re old enough to remember the last time there was a strike. Here’s the thing about all the “Kids won’t learn as much” rhetoric. It’s only the second week of school. They aren’t missing a year at this point. It’s one day. And even if this strike lasts a few weeks, guess what? Kids miss school for holidays, illness, & natural disasters. They catch up. Hell, if parents have the time & access a strike can be a learning opportunity. Hell any break is a good time for some one on one propping up of skills in areas where your child struggles. Kid #1 and I are discussing politics & current events a lot. There’ll be some in depth discussion of history while we’re at it so he can understand how things got to this point. Kid #2 is working on his handwriting & we’ll talk about being flexible when it comes to new experiences & there’ll be reading practice with picket signs. Because that’s how we roll. And I get that there are real concerns about safety & meals for a lot of kids. That my husband & I are fortunate to have family support that makes it easier for us to get through this strike.
Do I wish that things could have been resolved without a strike? Sure. But I am well aware that teachers are looking down the barrel of long days with huge class sizes & requirements to teach to a goal of higher scores on standardized test instead of to student needs and abilities. I am aware that promised raises didn’t happen, and that teachers are spending significant amounts of money out of their own pockets every year. So are parents. And still our kids aren’t getting art, music, library, or computer classes in a lot of these neighborhoods. I am aware that my kids aren’t getting the same amount of time or attention that I got as a Chicago student. In the 80’s & 90’s we thought classrooms with 30 kids was a lot. Some schools are now looking at classes approaching 40 kids to one teacher. I can’t fault the teachers for being less successful when they’re trying to wrangle 35+ 5th graders (all at different levels of ability) into listening to a 50 minute lesson from a workbook that might or might not be recent. That might or might not be effective at teaching the skills the kids will need after testing.
Mind you, I don’t deny that there are problem teachers. My aunt was a turn around principal with CPS for years & the stories she told us about some of the teachers under her would curl your hair. But, tying pay and employment to test scores doesn’t address that problem at all. It’s telling that the board isn’t concerned with ways to get rid of abusive teachers, only with ways to punish teachers for not producing standardized outputs from individuals. The rhetoric around all of this has been about what’s best for the kids. I don’t believe that longer school days and higher test scores are all it takes for my child to have a quality education. I want my sons to have recess, art, music, & a curriculum that gives them room to develop their individual talents. Only one side of this discussion has ever said anything about kids being people with needs & that side is not the board or the mayor. I hear teachers talking about kids as people with needs & so I side with them. For the sake of kids like me, kids like my sons, and for the future.
On being a CPS parent & siding with the striking teachers — Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Brendon Ayanbadejo, a football player for the Baltimore Ravens, has been outspoken in support of marriage equality. Maryland state Delegate Emmett Burns, a Reverend and a Democrat, wrote to Ayanbadejo’s boss (Ravens owner Steven Disciotti) on government letterhead (emphasis mine):
I find it inconceivable that one of your players, Mr. Brendon Ayanbadejo would publicly endorse Same-Sex marriage, specifically as a Raven Football player. Many of my constituents and your football supporters are appalled and aghast that a member of the Ravens Football Team would step into this controversial divide and try to sway public opinion one way or the other.
Many of your fans are opposed to such a view and feel it has no place in a sport that is strictly for pride, entertainment and excitement. I believe Mr. Ayanbadejo should concentrate on football and steer clear of dividing the fan base.
I am requesting that you take the necessary action, as a National Football League Owner, to inhibit such expressions from your employees and that he be ordered to cease and desist such injurious actions. I know of no other NFL player who has done what Mr. Ayanbadejo is doing.
Please give me your immediate response.
I hope I don’t need to explain why this is appalling behavior. (I should note that after massive criticism from liberals and democrats, Burns backed down. Reminds me of that other Reverend who boldly announced his opposition to Obama because of Obama’s pro-SSM stance, and then backed down a week later. Oh, wait, that was the same dude.)
When a similar situation happened earlier this year, many pro-SSM bloggers (including some big names, like Andrew Sullivan) spoke up to defend Chick-Fil-A’s free speech rights, as did major pro-SSM organizations like the ACLU. Have any major anti-SSM bloggers or organizations spoken up to defend Brendon Ayanbadejo’s free speech?
I don’t know. But I can say for sure that NOMBlog — which posted countless times on the Chick-Fil-A mess, often several times a day — has yet to post about Burns’ attack on Ayanbadejo’s free speech rights.
(Postscript: While looking – unsuccessfully – for examples of NOM standing up for free speech of people they don’t agree with, I came across this video of Brian Brown passionately arguing that it’s wrong to describe this FRC statement as “spewing hate”: “One of the primary goals of the homosexual rights movement is to abolish all age of consent laws and to eventually recognize pedophiles as the ‘prophets’ of a new sexual order.”
Brown shouldn’t have trouble unambiguously condemning a statement like that; and that he does have trouble suggests that his moral balance is seriously skewed. Things like that are why so many people consider NOM an anti-gay group, rather than an anti-SSM group.)
![[Trigger Warning] Laurie Mann shows her ass by excoriating fandom over the horrible treatment of Rene Walling](http://theangryblackwoman.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/icons/abw.jpg){kind=icon}
Due to a discussion on Facebook started by Scott Edelman, I’ve spent the last couple of days arguing with people about Rene Walling and what constitutes “real” sexual harassment. I have a lot to say on this subject, but it’s going to require a longer blog post and a lot of crafting.
In the mean time, I’d like to point you to the blog of Laurie Mann, who posted a stunningly ridiculous and stupid post in which she wags a finger at all the bad fandom people who are just blowing this whole ReaderCon thing out of proportion.
I left a comment on that blog, but I doubt it will escape the moderation queue, thus I am posting it here. You really, really need to go over to Laurie’s blog and read her post1 before reading this because of context.
I always felt very safe in fandom.
This right here is the crux of everything that is wrong with your post, Laurie. Just because you have always felt safe does not mean that fandom is safe or that other women do. This entire post is you positing that your experiences trump everyone else’s and all these evil friends of Genevieve are just being soooo unfair. It’s bull.
I can think of a couple of times having long discussions with men, sometimes in their hotel rooms during SF conventions. A few of them came onto me – a kiss, a grope, whatever. I said no, and we just resumed our conversation.
UM. Laurie. This is not in any way okay. Yes, it’s good that when you said no they stopped, but what the hell is it with you thinking it’s just fine for them to have groped and kissed you without permission? That’s the way you wrote it. That you were with them, they touched you, you said no.
Perhaps you’ve been socialized to think that this is just harmless flirting and, as long as they back off when you tell them to, all is copacetic. I’m here to tell you it is not. There is never a scenario in which someone touches you un-accidentally without your permission and that’s okay.
Here again we come to the real problem with your entire post and attitude: you have decided that certain boundaries are okay and attempting to say that anyone who feels differently is just blowing things out of proportion. You don’t get to decide that for others.
No meant no, but an unwanted kiss did not mean I’d just been raped.
It did mean you’d just been sexually assaulted. And I know you’re going to say “That does not rise to the level of ‘real’ sexual assault and by saying it does you belittle people who have actually been assaulted!” so I’m going to head you off by saying: Nope, wrong. Just because a grope is not rape doesn’t mean it’s not a violation and wrong. There is no getting around this.
Sexual assault is not a matter of degrees. It’s a violation of boundaries without consent. Period.
Fannish women knew how to stand up for themselves, right?
And yet you are angry at a fannish woman and her female and male friends standing up for herself because we’re a mob. It’s okay okay to stand up for yourself alone.
At the same time, I never heard about a woman being raped at a con.
Because you’ve never heard of it, it never happens. I’m so glad that your reality is the only reality, Laurie. It makes the world so much easier to live in!
Do you know how ridiculous you sound? Just because you knew women in college that got raped but didn’t hear from fannish women who were raped does not mean that the latter did not happen.
Perhaps the fannish women you know or don’t know didn’t tell you about their rapes or didn’t announce it. And perhaps they didn’t do so because women LIKE YOU would trot out of the filk room to say you’d never heard of anyone being raped at a con, plus that guy is totally nice and all, so obviously they must be wrong about their own experiences.
Why do you insist on invalidating other people’s experiences, Laurie? Oh right, because it makes your reality that much less real and more like a fantasy you made up.
Can I also point out that you’ve been told by multiple people at this point that your little summary of what happened at ReaderCon is both incomplete and inaccurate, yet I have not seen you correct it here on this blog post. That’s class, Laurie.
You ask for people to be respectful of each other, but you have not been respectful of the person who had to deal with the harassment at the con or of anyone who has ever had to deal with harassment, sexual assault, rape, and more.
Instead you’re sitting up here defending Rene Walling.
Keep being classy, Laurie Mann. You’re going on my list of people to avoid at cons.
[Trigger Warning] Laurie Mann shows her ass by excoriating fandom over the horrible treatment of Rene Walling — Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
I found this post at Face In The Blue, going through each of the 44 presidents and asking which would win in a 44-President knifefight melee — oddly entertaining.
The rules, as set by redditor Xineph:
* Every president is in the best physical and mental condition they were ever in throughout the course of their presidency. Fatal maladies have been cured, but any lifelong conditions or chronic illnesses (e.g. FDR’s polio) remain.
* The presidents are fighting in an ovular arena 287 feet long and 180 feet wide (the dimensions of the Roman Colosseum). The floor is concrete. Assume that weather is not a factor.
* Each president has been given one standard-issue Gerber LHR Combat Knife , the knife presented to each graduate of the United States Army Special Forces Qualification Course. Assume the presidents have no training outside any combat experiences they may have had in their own lives.
* There is no penalty for avoiding combat for an extended period of time. Hiding and/or playing dead could be valid strategies, but there can be only one winner. The melee will go on as long as it needs to.
* FDR has been outfitted with a Bound Plus H-Frame Power Wheelchair, and can travel at a maximum speed of around 11.5 MPH. The wheelchair has been customized so that he is holding his knife with his dominant hand. This is to compensate for his almost certain and immediate defeat in the face of an overwhelming disadvantage.
* Each president will be deposited in the arena regardless of their own will to fight, however, personal ethics, leadership ability, tactical expertise etc., should all be taken into account. Alliances are allowed.
(See also the discussion in the comments here.)
Although the blogger briefly mentions a couple of possible alliances, he mainly focuses on individual ability — who has combat experience, who is a good athlete, and who has the killer instinct. Based on this, he decides that Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, and Andrew Jackson would be the top three.
But I think alliances are actually the most important aspect of this knife fight (at least until the end game). In a 44-person melee with no place to hide, even a skilled killer like Jackson will end up with a knife between his shoulderblades, unless he’s got absolutely trusted allies guarding his back.
Furthermore, because the melee starts immediately, there’s not going to be time to build new alliances from scratch. The three strongest alliances at the start will be the three family pairs — the two John Adamss, the two George Bushes, and the two Roosevelts.
What about the two Harrisons? The elder was the grandfather of the younger – but since they never met as adults, the two Harrisons don’t have a built-in relationship of trust the way the Adamss, Bushes and Rossevelts do. ((But if Benjamin can manage to explain who is to his grandfather without getting stabbed, then William might be a valuable ally. Most people are dismissing William because he died 31 days into his presidency, but that was from a fatal case of pnumonia, and according to the rules “fatal maladies have been cured.” William Harrison was a terrible human being, but also a soldier with combat experience, so probably shouldn’t be counted out entirely, he says, counting him out entirely. ))
So, what of our alliances? I think George Washington would naturally join in with John Adams, as they were allies in life. Jefferson and Madison were enemies of the elder Adams, so they’re probably not in the alliance. Andrew Jackson loathed the younger Adams ever since the 1828 election, when pro-Adams folks spread the word in the press that Mrs. Jackson had committed bigamy (which was true). Van Buren would join with Jackson.
So this alliance is just three Presidents – Washington, Adams, and Adams. And of those three, I think only Washington – a big guy with major military experience – is a very intimidating fighter.
So how about the two Roosevelts? They’re an interesting combo. FDR is physically one of the least imposing people in this knife fight – not being able to stand limits reach — but also the fastest. TR is the physically most intimidating fighter on the field — he is, after all, only 42, still physically in his prime, and unbelievably tough. (What sort of person declines medical care after being gutshot because he has a speech scheduled?) But as far as alliances go, FDR could bring both Truman and Eisenhower on board. TR, on the other hand, tended to alienate people, and neither Taft nor Wilson would join him.
So let’s call this alliance TR-FDR-Truman-Eisenhower. I think they’d be pretty scarey.
So, what about the Bushes? I think people underestimate GHWB; looking at his bio, it’s clear that he was smart and courageous. He’d bring in Reagan and Ford as allies (and Ford was a good athlete). Would Nixon join them? I’m not sure; Nixon might feel bitter over GHWB pressuring him to resign. On the other hand, Nixon doesn’t really have anyone else to ally with, and he sure wouldn’t like his odds as a loner. I can’t see Bush, Jr bringing any allies on board.
So this group is George Bush, George Bush, Nixon, Reagan, and Ford.
So what happens?
I don’t think Washington-Adams-Adams will last. Both John Adamss are about 60 years old and neither one had any fighting experience; and Washington himself is just too juicy a target.
Then we have the Roosevelts. I think they’re going to take themselves down with in-fighting; TR, the strongest and (amazingly) most arrogant of this group, will expect the others to obey his orders, but I don’t think Eisenhower would put up with that. But if this group can somehow get along, they’ll wind up the last group standing, in which case TR will kill the others and be the champion.
The Bush group has the advantage of being five people, so they can suffer a couple of casualties ((I.e., Nixon)) and still have three Presidents left in their alliance. That, I think, would be a telling advantage. And in the endgame, when it comes time to turn on your allies and become the last man standing, GHWB has the right combination of physical ability and ruthlessness.
Thoughts?
I realize it’s just wooden acting, but if we pretend the acting is top-notch, it’s hard not to notice how very, very conflicted the husband seems.
Via Tod Kelly.
It’s funny in a horrifying I might start crying kind of way to think about how many times I’ve experienced extreme sexism/misogyny from perfect strangers. I’m always boggled at how willing people are to excuse their behavior & claim I should have been nicer, or that they’re sick and don’t know any better. I remember a guy tried to grab me on an empty train car in high school, I kicked the shit out of him & ran like hell. For a host of reasons I was afraid to tell my parents about what happened, but when I told some friends about it the next day I remember a girl I only kind of knew shutting down the victim blaming comments by saying “Girls get raped on the train.” and that the way she said it was so *knowing* you know? I never asked for her story. She didn’t offer it either. But then I was already a survivor so I guess I didn’t need it to understand.
Fast forward a few years from that age & I can tell you a dozen more “extreme” stories that happened in between, but the ones that stick out most all have a theme of me being engaged in my life when misogyny dropped in for a visit. There was the guy in Germany who tried to trap me in a dark tunnel with his car (I jumped on the hood & ran like my life depended on it, maybe it did) and there was no conversation between us. He yelled at me in German from a moving car then drove around to bar my way. There was the guy that followed me home from the store one night telling me that he could be a rapist. He didn’t speak to me in the store & our conversation outside consisted of me walking past him & him yelling at me that I was a stuck up bitch. The guy that called me everything but a child of God, because I wouldn’t buy his CD came at me on a bus & no one (including his friend) said shit to stop him. Or the group of men who surrounded me while I was walking with my child that had to be backed off by a neighbor with a gun.
How many times exactly does someone have to be insulted, harassed, or terrorized before the conversation can be about the person who accosted them & not about what else they could have done? Should have done? How many incidents (all with different people, different settings, different responses) does it take before the discussion is about ways to stop the harassers & not ways to respond to them so that they maybe, possibly, if you’re lucky won’t escalate? When do we talk about the culture that not only permits these behaviors, but encourages them & punishes victims for being wary of new people after years of bad experiences? When do we talk about why women are cautioned to be nice, to be patient, to be careful, but never told it is okay to say no & mean it without fear of repercussions? Oh right, those are all hard topics for hard days & folks would rather blame victims than address problems.
On Street Harassment, Victim Blaming & Life in My Skin — Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
Image originally published in Emma Magazine.
I saw this story by Piper Weiss on Yahoo and it is heartwarming and inspiring:
[Nils] Pickert never minded that his son liked dressing in little girl’s clothes, but when his family moved from West Berlin to a small southern town in Germany, he learned that other people did. In fact, it became a “town wide issue,” according to Pickert, whose essay was translated by Tumblr user steegeschnoeber.
A new school didn’t make life any easier for his young son. Shortly after his first day, he stopped reveling in his own tastes and Pickert worried about the damage it could wreak on his self-confidence. “I didn’t want to talk my son into not wearing dresses and skirts,” Pickert explained. “He didn’t make friends doing that in Berlin… so after a lot of contemplation I had only one option left: To broaden my shoulders for my little buddy and dress in a skirt myself.”
I really think that speaks for itself. You should go read the article.
I wasn’t interested in the GOP convention this year, and I don’t expect to be interested in the Democratic convention. It’s not like I’m sweating who to vote for; of the two viable candidates, Obama, despite horrible flaws, is the overwhelmingly better choice for someone with my policy preferences. ((It’s very likely that my vote will be entirely irrelevant – I live in Oregon, after all — in which case I might vote for a third party.))
I assume Republicans feel the same way about Romney.
I’m growing anxious about the upcoming election. I sometimes read poll reports and analysis, but I stopped myself today when I realized that I was looking for reassurance, not information.
So I’m trying to minimize how much attention I pay to the conventions. But despite myself, I heard Romney’s big line making fun of global warming, and was appalled:
President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise is to help you and your family.
This seems horribly irresponsible for someone who has a good shot of being the next President. Addressing global warming and helping ordinary families are not mutually exclusive goals; furthermore, if nothing is done to slow down global warming, it will be ordinary families, not super-elites like the Romneys, who will suffer for it. (Who already are suffering for it).
Some right-wingers are defending Romney’s comment by saying that Romney wasn’t mocking global warming, but Obama’s hubris.
That’s not a significantly better position. In the speech Romney was mocking, Obama said that if Americans work and fight for it, we could begin to slow the rise of the oceans. How is that hubristic? It seems like an accurate statement of what most people in the non-science-denying party believe – that good policy can slow down global warming.
I don’t want a President who believes that the idea of trying to address global warming is hubristic and ridiculous.
For Republicans, I honestly don’t think thought enters the matter at all. There is no intelligent case to be made that global warming is a myth; nor is there any intelligent case for inaction.
What there is, instead, is partisan fear. Republicans believe that if they admit the obvious – that global warming is a real problem that urgently needs to be addressed — “liberal fascists” will immediately wipe out technology (even the internet) and eventually wipe out humanity altogether.
If that were all true, I suppose it would make sense to deny global warming, or at least oppose doing anything about it.
It’s not true, of course. Liberals like urban living, not caves; liberals like the internet and heated homes and all the other comforts of modern living. A serious fight against global warming doesn’t require a return to the stone age. And, obviously, liberals are humans, and thus see no profit in wiping out humanity.
The problem is, among Republicans, an ridiculous and irresponsible position on global warming has become a mark of tribal identity. An intelligent position, in contrast, would be a sign of disloyalty to the party. They are committed to doing nothing as a matter of partisan fealty, and there is no position harder to change than a partisan position.
Does advocating for marriage equality for same-sex couples require us to also advocate for polygamy — that is, for legally recognized marriages of three or more people? I don’t think so; there are crucial differences between same-sex marriage and polygamy that require us to consider the issues separately.
In David’s slippery-slope thread, AnnaJCook wrote:
I am actually uncomfortable with the way pro-gay-marriage folks distance themselves from legal recognition of poly marriages. I’ve known a couple of folks whose poly relationships could have benefitted from equal legal recognition. There’s nothing in our current conception of marriage (love, commitment, mutual finances, etc.) that require only two consenting adults.
Three of my best friends are polyamorousy married to each other, but their marriage has no legal recognition. Their marriage is egalitarian, stable, and full of love. Isn’t it unfair that they can’t have a legally recognized, three-person marriage?
Well, yes. It is unfair.
But not everything in life that’s unfair should be addressed by changing the law. It’s unfair that an expert driver who can safely drive at 100mph on city streets cannot do so legally, but it’s still in society’s best interests to have speed limits.
I think that even though it’s unfair that my friends can’t legally marry, there are very strong arguments against legal recognition of polygamy.
1) Contrary to what Anna suggests, there’s actually quite a lot in our current legal conception of marriage that requires two and only two consenting adults; polygamy can’t fit into our current legal regime seamlessly, as SSM can. To accommodate polygamy, the laws around marriage would have to be rewritten at every level. David Link outlines some of those reasons here.
The difference comes down to arithmetic. Same-sex marriages have the same dyadic structure that all heterosexual marriages now have. Each partner is married to the other, and only to the other. Their rights and obligations to one another, to any children they may have, and to any third parties who might have some interest in the relationship, such as banks, creditors, parties to contracts, etc., are usually quite clear.
That’s not true with polygamy.
In the dominant form of polygamy, where one man is married to several wives, he is, in some way, “married” to each one of the wives individually. […] But what about the relationships of the wives to one another? Are they similarly “married” to all the other wives in the marriage? […]
If the answer is “yes,” then if the husband died, would the wives continue to be married to each other? Why or why not?[…]
Could some or all of the wives divorce the husband, but continue to be married to one another? Could they divorce one another? Again, why or why not? And if the answer is “yes,” how would that work? Who files what papers, naming whom? Would the various partners choose up sides in the ensuing divorce proceedings, and how would a court deal with that?
Another question related to divorce: Could an individual wife file for divorce of only herself, or would a divorce petition dissolve the entire marriage? […]
And – central to the present debate — what about the children? If the husband – or one of the wives – wanted out of a polygamous marriage, what would the rules be for who gets custody of the children – and who is responsible for child support? […]
The fact that we do not know the answers to these questions – and thousands of others – is at the core of why polygamy is dramatically different, as a matter of public policy, from same-sex marriage.
Maybe those problems could be addressed. But it would not be fair to put SSM on hold while we wait for that to happen.
2) As I’ve written before, in actual practice changing marriage requires a large-scale social movement; a critical mass of people must be persuaded to advocate for the change, then an even larger mass of people must agree to support or at least not object to the change. This is an enormous amount of work, and that’s work that SSM supporters have done and are doing, but poly supporters have not yet begun (and I’m not sure they’re even interested in doing it). Again, I don’t think it’s fair to put SSM on hold to wait for polygamy.
3) Legal recognition of SSM doesn’t change existing heterosexual marriages. But legal recognition of polygamy would change and potentially destabilize existing two-person marriages, by introducing the possibility of them becoming poly marriages. Many married people enjoy the security provided by an institution which is permanent and exclusive; is it fair to them to change the institution so that it’s no longer exclusive? What happens when Bob is pressuring his wife Marie (who got married when polygamy wasn’t legal) to marry Julie with him? What if Bob simply marries Julie – where does that leave Marie?
4) In the current USA, if we have polygamy, many poly marriages would not be egalitarian trios like my polyamorous friends, but patriarchal arrangements in which wealthy men marry many wives, leading to a class of unmarriageable young men who may be shunned from their communities. This is already going on today, on a small scale, with tragic consequences both for hundreds of ostracized boys, and for girls who are effectively forced into what may be terrible, misogynistic and abusive marriages.
Right now, in the USA, this is a problem only in a few isolated, non-mainstream communities. If polygamy is legalized, what assurance is there that this practice won’t radically expand? If it does expand, how would we mitigate the significant harms to society?
* * *
Opponents of same-sex marriage have not been able to make any credible arguments showing that same-sex marriage would be harmful. Opponents of polygamy will not face any such problem.
These are all points that make polygamy substantially different from same-sex marriage.
It may be that all these problems can be addressed; and that polygamy can be made practical, just, and harmless to larger society. It may also be that there will someday be a large-scale movement fighting for legally recognized polygamy, addressing all the problems associated with polygamy, and persuading a large mass of Americans to support polygamy.
But that has not yet happened. Until it does happen, there will not be legally recognized polygamy in the USA.
In the meantime, merging polygamy and same-sex marriage into a single issue is unfair to same-sex couples.
It’s unfair for supporters of polygamy to attempt to merge the two issues, because it’s not fair to expect lgbt couples to have to have their issues put on hold while the polygamy issue is sorted out.
And it’s unfair for opponents of same-sex marriage to merge the two issues, because there is no compelling reason to believe that SSM will lead to polygamy. Furthermore, punishing lgbt people for the sin of polygamy, even though most polygamists are heterosexuals, is unreasonable and unjust. That sort of policy makes sense only if we consider lgbt people to be lesser humans, deserving of less respect and justice.
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