- Above: Animation of San Francisco’s Market Street by Kevin Parry. (You have to click on the photo to see the animation.) Click here to see more of his animations.
- No, Really, What About The Menz: The Book: chapter one. With an illustration by yours truly.
- Let It Bleed: Libertarianism and the Workplace — Crooked Timber It really says a lot that libertarianism seem so unable to explain what’s wrong with a boss demanding “have sex with me or you’re fired.”
- Bigots and the Bible
- Everyone Interprets The Bible, Some Just Admit It
- Ask a Gay Christian!)
- The ‘Busy’ Trap – NYTimes.com He has some good points — but not everyone is so privileged as the author, so his solution isn’t going to applicable for many, alas.
- The Dangers Of Group-Think, And Why We Must Never Forget Azaria Chamberlain
- The 22 rules of storytelling, according to Pixar
- I like this upcoming collage Spider-Man cover.
- Feminist singer/songwriter Tati Kalveks would like you to hear some of her songs, either here on her embarrassing youtube channel, or here with lyrics (but no videos and not quite as current).
Here is an article in N + 1 about crime in America and how crime rates are being artifically deflated. One of the pieces of evidence they put forward in support is that the crimes of prisoners against other prisoners are often not counted in the official statistics. One of the statistics they talk about has some interesting implications for feminists to consider. When we hear or see the word “rape victim”, the concept of a woman comes to mind, and we imagine that rape is something that overwhelming affects women. But consider this:
My emphasis. According to the Federal Department of Justice, a rape victim is more likely to be a man than a woman.
Re: 4. In a discussion on interpreting the Bible’s prohibitions against homosexual sex, the author states:
This seems a false premise to me. It presumes somehow that people who oppose the normalization of homosexual sex also oppose helping the poor. I don’t see any reason to presume this and, looking around at various churches, etc., see good reason to presume just the opposite.
RonF, I think it matters that Christians who are opposed to homosexuality aren’t nearly as opposed to not helping the poor.
It might if it were true. But that’s not a proven premise.
RonF, did you just notice that you assumed “prisoner” and “male” mean the same thing?
No, that’s not what the stats you quoted said — you’ve missed the crucial difference between number of “rape instances” and number of “rape victims.”
Furthermore, the numbers the Justice department typically use to measure rape prevalence outside of prison are thought to be severe underestimates by many social scientists. (ETA:) And just as some rape victims outside of prison are men, some rape victims inside of prison are women (as Mythago said). It would be pretty easy to argue that most rape victims are women.
But I won’t be making that argument. I frankly no longer feel I can say for sure if most rapes happen to male or female victims; there’s too little accuracy in the methods we have of measuring rape prevalence (both in prison and outside of prison), and the methods used are not really comparable.
Either way, there’s just way too much rape going on.
The problem is that virtually any policy can be said to be favoring the poor. Tax cuts for the rich are said to be good for poor people; opposing universal health care is said to be good for poor people; cutting food stamps is said to be good for poor people.
If Mitt Romney got on TV tomorrow and announced a policy of having the National Guard shoot poor people on sight, most hard core Republicans would defend that policy as good for poor people.
But we can look at other examples. The Bible is VERY clear that slavery is morally acceptable, for example; yet Christians constantly find ways to interpret the Bible to be anti-slavery. Ditto, in most Churches, for the very clear commands that women not speak in the Church.
There are arguments against taking the verses about slavery and women so literally, of course. But many of those arguments could also be used to suggest that the Bible doesn’t force Christians to oppose homosexuality. Conservative Christians want to have it both ways — using subtle interpretations to get around the Bible’s condoning slavery and misogyny, but shrugging and saying “what can we do? The Bible says what it says” when it comes to homosexuality.
A Bitch Magazine article on men watching “My Little Pony”, and how hard it is for networks to take girls cartoons seriously.
Can anyone point to any recent example of a Catholic Cardinal or Bishop saying that a government will face “unprecedented backlash” for cutting down benefits to the poor? Is there any example of the Catholic Church saying that it “will bear any burden and meet any cost” to defend policies which benefit the poor?
RonF, it is blatantly obvious, however, that the Catholic Church in particular cares much *more* about opposing homosexuality than about caring for the poor. Both as evidenced by Amp’s comments in #9 and as evidenced by the millions of dollars spent on opposing same-sex marriage. That money would feed a lot of people.
And when Catholic Charities decides to stop doing adoptions in Massachusetts at all, and closed a bunch of Illinois offices *completely* rather than adopt to same-sex couples that’s a pretty clear statement of where their priorities lie.
In fairness, I can’t claim that they’re spending *more* on opposing homosexuality than on caring for the poor. I don’t know how the actual numbers compare (and am curious if anyone has actual data on Church or specific diocese budgets—a quick google was totally unsuccessful).
Your “No, Really, What About The Menz: The Book” link does not work because it has a bunch of extra spaces in it.
mythago, you’re right. Good point. In my defense, that’s the presumption that the author is making. Given the disparity of the male-female sex ratio in the total American prisoner population, though, plus other factors I’m willing to wager that the overwhelming proportion of victims – and perpetrators – involved are male. Which way would you be willing to bet?
Amp, I would also guess that rape outside of prison as well as inside is underreported. I’ll offer an opinion (that I absolutely cannot back up with any kind of figures) that it’s far more proportionately underreported inside prison than outside. In any case it’s fair to say that the overall numbers are not precise, and that no precise figure of the male/female rape victim ratio exists. But if the DoJ has not been including prison rape in it’s total crime figures up to this point I think it’s also fair to say that the concept that rape victims are overwhelming female needs adjustment.
If you can’t come up with figures about how much the RCC spends on caring for the poor and how much it spends on opposing redefining marriage then I can’t see that these two statements can be reconciled.
Additionally – there are many different tasks involved in bring the word of Christ to man. Some involve caring for the poor and sick. Some involve opposing injustice. Some involve opposing immorality. To spend money on one task does not mean that you have no concern for another. And the Church spends massive amounts of money on caring for the poor and sick. It spends a lot of money on education, too. For example, consider that about 1/5 of all Chicago school students go to Catholic schools, not public schools.
People sometimes forget that when we speak of the desirability of the separation of Church and State one of the main objectives in doing so is to protect the Church and it’s mission from being corrupted by the State. This is an example of just that. The Church cannot allow the State to corrupt it – if it does, it loses it’s moral value. Time and time again the State has used the Church to justify immoral actions by the State, and the Church and it’s reputation has suffered thereby. What we see here is that the Church has started to learn it’s lesson, and act accordingly.
An article by Daisy Deadhead, who I suspect is the same one who posts here sometimes, on Andrea Dworkin and her opinions on transsexual people.
Grace
In the US, Catholic Charities spent $4.2 billion on social programs last year. 88% of that was for programs, 12% for admin and overhead. Programs are food security assistance, soup kitchens, immigration counseling, housing programs, services to at-risk youth, etc. Good stuff. They provide services to about 10 million people annually. About 60% of their budget comes from governments contracting for social work; the organization’s contribution of expertise and service capability there isn’t negligible, but it isn’t really Catholic giving so I’ll scale down their contribution accordingly.
Catholic Relief Services is the branch of US Catholicism that does overseas programs. They serve about 100 million people annually. Their budget is $823 million, with 94% going to programs. They give a lot of direct food aid but are more of a development agency; teaching people how to farm, clean water projects, that sort of thing. About $350 million of their budget comes from government, so again, discounting.
There were 625 Catholic hospitals in the US, as of 2008, operated on a non-profit basis with a total budget of $84.6 billion. Those aren’t free hospitals, just non-profit, but they did make donations amounting to $5.7 billion per year. About 1 in 6 American hospital patients ends up at a Catholic hospital.
Those are the three big “entities”; there are also about 18,000 individual parishes, all of which have some kind of charitable program. Some parishes (particularly small ones) don’t have independent charity operations and instead just raise money for Catholic Charities or CRS (or other programs); others have full-blown soup kitchens, shelters, clinics, etc. Hard to come up with a total on this one. There are 68 million Catholic in the US; let’s say five bucks apiece for church-directed or focused charitable giving, $340 million all told. (I know I gave more than that, and I suck.)
So: about $1.5 billion for Catholic Charities. $450 million for CRS. $5.7 billion for medical care. $340 million for miscellaneous. Comes up to ~$8 billion per annum.
I don’t have any figures on what the Catholic Church spends opposing same-sex marriage. But I kind of think it’s less than eight billion a year.
Re: #9 –
Amp, the bishops CONSTANTLY speak out on poverty issues. I haven’t seen the specific language (“backlash”) you mention, but they aren’t shy about it. Here’s a letter the bishops recently wrote to Congress on the budget issues:
http://jesuitjottings.blogspot.com/2012/04/bishops-do-speak-on-poverty-bill-presss.html
(The blog post where it’s found, interestingly, being a Jesuit response to a criticism that the bishops don’t speak about poverty.)
They talk about it. It doesn’t make the news.
Robert, I’ve read that letter before, and I agree with 90% of what they say about policy.
But you can’t possibly claim that very dry and polite letter communicates even one-tenth of the passion of the blistering quote I included, or was at all as newsworthy. It’s a strictly pro forma letter, written so that Catholics can lie to themselves and pretend that the Church is, politically, anything but a wing of the GOP dedicated to bashing homosexuals and opposing reproductive rights, with a small sideline in attacking nuns.
Not a single politician read that letter and thought “uh-oh. If I vote to screw the poor, I’m going to be facing a lot of opposition from the Catholic Church come election time.” They know perfectly well that as long as they’re anti-gay, the Church will NEVER oppose them in any way that actually matters. Unlike their pro-gay opponents, who face not just sedate, polite letters, but organized get-out-the-vote campaigns dedicated to their defeat orchestrated by angry Bishops.
That said, I’ll certainly grant you that the Church does spend a lot of money on worthwhile charities (although I’m a little suspicious of the $5.7 billion that makes up the bulk of the 8 billion you cite; I couldn’t find a breakdown of where that money goes, but I wonder if a lot of that is care for patients who show up to be treated, but can’t pay for their care, which for a hospital is more of a cost of doing business than a charity.).
I don’t think that really fixes the problem of Biblical interpretation, however. Luke 12:33 tells Christians to “Sell your possessions and give to charity”; that’s just not a passage that many Christians take literally, nor does the fact that Catholic Charities exists cover it. In Matthew 19:21, Jesus says “If you wish to be perfect, go and sell your possessions and give to the poor.” But most Christians — including some quite wealthy Christians who are leaders in the movement against SSM — find some way to interpret these passages so that they aren’t actually required to, you know, sell their possessions and give the proceeds to charity.
Yet even though those passages are interpreted to mean something other than their most obvious surface interpretation — and I think that’s a very reasonable thing to do — we’re told that there is one and only way way to interpret the “clobber passages” used to justify anti-gay attitudes and policies. I don’t think anything you’ve written here has resolved that contradiction.
(Of course, it’s possible that you weren’t intending to resolve that particular contradiction at all, and were just following thread drift. Which would be fine, if so.)
Well, for one thing, the Church in the United States takes a somewhat different tone with the electoral machinery than it does in Europe, where your quote is from. Scotland has an established church, and the Catholic Church is thus automatically an adversarial body. It seems pretty natural to me that the rhetorical tone is going to be different.
Your telepathic insight into the motivations of four hundred bishops is noted, but politely discounted as to verifiability. As for the church being a right-wing tool, well, I suppose that if gay rights is the only issue in the world, that would be a very reasonable position. On gay rights and reproductive issues the Church is hard-right. On many economic questions, the Church is hard-left. Those issues have varying importance to various members of the Church.
But the laity itself – which is by far the most important element of the church – is pretty similar to the US as a whole. Before the whole buy-me-an-abortion kerfuffle, Catholics were polled 53-44 in Obama’s favor. Afterwards, it was 50-45 in Romney’s favor. (So as you can probably figure out, about 10% of Catholics feel very strongly about the culture-of-life position of the church.) That hardly seems like an entity in the pockets of the GOP.
You are correct; I am not trying to resolve any contradictions about Bible interpretation. About the only thing I have to add to that is that the simple, surface interpretation seems adequate – Jesus said that if you wanted to be perfect, to give up material goods and devote our life to the poor. OK. Most of us aren’t going to make it to perfection. He didn’t say everyone had to go do this right this minute or they’d burn.
The anti-gay passages are, I think, exceptionally difficult to interpret especially in light of our changing understanding of biology and psychology. Jesus never said anything about it; maybe He was wise. (Gee, ya think?) In any event, sexual morality is fairly far down my list of things to worry about. I think Christians do a lot better to focus on the harms and the benefits caused by actions, than on more abstract questions of morality. God can handle those; you and I should focus (negatively) on not beating up people who get in our way and (positively) on treating people kindly.
The BSA concluded its secret two-year deliberation by refusing to change its policy on gays and lesbians. Sigh.
If I was going to go after a church for caring disproportionately about homosexuality versus caring for the poor, I’d go after the large non-denominational Protestant churches, not the Catholic Church. It does seem that the Catholic Church is rather selective about who is denied communion over which political stances.
I completely agree with this.
I will actually read and respond to the actual detailed discussion of church priorities later. Right now, sewing calls. But while we’re in an open thread, I have to brag that my foster dog passed her Canine Good Citizen test this past weekend and shamelessly link to her adoption profile in the hope that someone is reading whose life is incomplete without a goofy, cuddly dog.
A repost from another thread, on reflection that it belongs in an open thread:
Two weeks ago today I was in the ER for about my 6th straight hour. Chest pains. Chest pains that had been on the right side of my chest for about 6 weeks coming and going – mostly coming. Then, that morning, with several different things going on at once and the pressure building, sharp pains on the left side of my chest over my heart. After some consideration and discussion with my wife, it was off to the hospital. Blood tests, EKG, chest X-Ray, echocardiogram and cardiac stress test followed.
“Mr. F, there seems to be nothing wrong with your heart (aside from some normal abnormalities in your EKG). Is your job stressful?”
That either gets a one word answer – “Yes” – or a 1/2 hour’s worth. The doc got the one word answer. My wife got the 1/2 hour’s worth earlier in the day while the doc and nurse were out of the room and we were waiting for some test results.
It seems to be a combination of stress and acid reflux – and perhaps a injured chest cartilage or muscle. I’ve been on medication for the acid reflux for some time. For the stress – the next day, after getting up at 0600 and working until 1300 in 100 degree heat for my Troop’s annual Pancake Breakfast, we went home, finished packing, and drove off on an already planned vacation. Understand that prep for both of those had added quite a bit of stress. But for the next week and a half we celebrated my wife’s birthday by meeting with our kids for a few days in New England (she lives there, he flew out), my wife and daughter playing tennis while my son and I just relaxed. Then the kids went home and my wife and I toured Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine, camping out to save $ for some seafood lunches and dinners (although I did roast up a chicken in a dutch oven in the campsite once). One campsite was next to a lake about 8 miles south of the Vermont/Quebec border that had loons calling at night. It got down to 44 degrees at night and around 75 during the day. We spent hours canoeing around it. The last few nights we stayed in a campsite in Maine that was about 40 yards from the ocean at high tide.
The chest pains subsided around Monday or Tuesday and have stayed away since. My wife said “Now, remember this, and understand.”
Your wife is very wise, Ron. Though I’m sure you knew that. Glad you’re feeling better.
Robert:
Jesus said that he had come not to change the law but to fulfill it, and that he was not changing a word in it. How to reconcile that with the rest of his actions? He taught people that the authorities were applying the law without compassion or love. A seminal teaching to me was when he dealt with the crowd that was going to stone the woman for adultery. He drove the crowd away with “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, but then told the woman “Go and sin no more”. He didn’t let the crowd kill her for her sin, but he did not do so by telling either them or her that it was not a sin.
I figure that if Jesus was asked about homosexuality he would say the same thing. You don’t kill people for it, or lock them up or any such thing. But you don’t strike it from the list of sins or bless it, either.
Thanks. I have come to appreciate my wife more these days. Spending some time alone with her helped as well. Not too many women would willingly put up with camping out in a tent for a week with humor and grace.
Ron – that’s a fairly standard interpretation. So, with that interpretation in mind, would you like some bacon?
Mr. Ask a Gay Christian (Link No. 6) wants to chime in:
All I know is that no just or loving God would not want me to eat bacon.
I’m glad that you’re feeling better, Ron. Close call, and I hope you follow your wife’s advice to stay well away from that cliff.
A few years back, I also started to experience physical symptoms relating to the stresses from work and from being trans and closeted in this society. Some of these stresses were synergistic. The symptoms were more subtle that jabbing chest pains, and it took me awhile to figure out where they came from. Some I didn’t figure out at the time, but only in retrospect. But, I started to take steps to remove what stresses I could, and once I felt less trapped a lot of them simply disappeared. One of the most important steps was to let certain ambitions simply go, to give them up (among them the ambition of never having to transition). And oddly, when I did, and the stress of self-flagellation was gone, I started doing my job differently, and I achieved success in exactly those areas which I had given up on. (It helped that there were certain favorable personnel changes at work, too, but that was not the core of it.)
And here I am, still in the same career about a decade later, and slowly transitioning.
That’s my experience. Yours will obviously be different, but I hope it’s at least as positive. Good luck.
Grace
Meanwhile, here I am, bummed that the last *real* camping trip I went on has been over a decade ago (and it got cut short because a silly Boy Scout jumped out of a tree barefoot, impaling a stick into his foot, and based on the follow-up recommended at the ER after they took it out, had to go home). The hubby and I have been saying for about that long that we need to get back up to the Adirondacks, this time without the Boy Scouts.
Granted, I spend a week in a tent most summers, but Pennsic to me doesn’t count as real camping.
I am very glad you’re feeling better, and I hope you can figure out a way to reduce the stresses in your life that are contributing to the chest pains. (If arguing on the internet is stressing you out, just admit that Amp and I are right about everything–except where we disagree. Then, of course, I’m right. Just trying to help, of course. ;) )
The vacation in New England sounds like it was fantastic, and I love the idea of camping out to save money on a long vacation, and I bet it ended up being a lot more fun than staying in a hotel.
Fair point. I’ve frequently said that if a religious entity is taking State money to perform a function for the State, it needs to either play by the state’s rules or get out of that particular activity. So, better that the Church withdraw than try to change the State’s rules. (Though IIRC, they withdrew only after *failing* to change the State’s rules, which is not quite the same thing.)
However, what I read about Illinois sounded like Catholic Charities not only stopped doing adoptions but closed up shop completely. To me, that sounds less like standing on principle and more like taking your ball and going home.
The article wasn’t specific on what else Catholic Charities was doing in the state, but I know that if Catholic Charities bails out of MD if we pass same-sex marriage in November, it will leave a giant sucking void as far as food banks are concerned. They run the main food bank in Southern Maryland, where I live, the one that supplies pretty much all of the smaller local food banks.
I think that ceasing to provide *unrelated* charitable services because a state has rules about marriage you don’t like is a crystal clear case of prioritizing opposition to SSM over caring for the poor. (I know, I haven’t even looked at the numbers Robert and Ron F helpfully provided. I will. I may even be forced to concede that you’re right on that score.)
Since this is an open thread, a bit of a vent about buying a sewing machine:
1) Who are these people who try and sell things on ebay (whether new or used) that cost MORE than the same item, brand new, from a reputable retailer?
2) Who buys them? What sort of fool says “I know, I’ll skip that evil Amazon-with-free-shipping-and-a-good-return-policy thing, and go direct to a random stranger with 40 feedback points and a price that’s $10 higher?”
3) Is there a way to prevent Google search from listing aggregator sites in all of the top results?
1) People pursuing the valuable “stupid people who are not yet broke” demographic.
2) Stupid people.
3) No.
My wife and I did a lot of camping when we were first married (and pretty much broke for many years). I’ve been doing a fair amount of camping the last 20 years as a Scouter, so we’ve got a garage full of equipment – although not a family camping tent, which was remedied when my wife qualified for a 10-year tenure gift from her employer the day before she was laid off. After perusing the catalog she bought a 6-person tent. Not that it’s that big – that means that 6 people smaller than me can lie side-by-side on the floor with no room for gear. But we had one of those air beds that has a built-in fan, and armed with that and the tent and other gear we were all set. When we were on the move driving out there and back we paid for cheap motel rooms, but while we were out there we camped.
And I got one motel room for free. The last night we were in some random small town in Pennsylvania. We stayed at built-in-the-50’s-and-not-a-chain motel. They advertised free Wi-Fi. It didn’t work. I went to the office to see if reception would be better there. It wasn’t. The desk was being bombed with calls. No one’s Wi-Fi worked. “Hey, I’m a network engineer. Let me have a look.” The short version is that about 30 minutes later I had it fixed, the phone calls stopped and the manager was so thrilled that she comped my room.
It took you 30 minutes to turn the router off and on again? ;)
Hey, sometimes you have to turn the router on and off multiple times.
No, it took me 30 minutes to get the front desk person to get the manager, explain to the manager who I was and what I thought the problem was, find the key to the closet, go walk to the closet, attach her laptop to it directly, figure out what the admin ID and password to the router was, plow through a bunch of config screens I had never seen before, find the right parameters to change, change them, disconnect her laptop and log in again via her wireless connection to test, and then button everything up and walk back to the office.
Nice. Sounds like you definitely deserved the comped room! Glad you were able to get it fixed.
KellyK, I’d definitely recommend that the hubby and you grab a tent and some gear (don’t foreget the TP) and head up to the woods. Helps to clear the mind. You’ll know you’re in the right spot when your cell phone says “No Service”.
YAHOOO!!!!
this has been a good week.
First, I finally settled a foreclosure defense case for a poor client that i have been working on for literally THREE YEARS pro bono, and got my client a truly outstanding settlement, the kind of thing where other people say “seriously?” when they hear it.
And I just tonight won an issue for another poor client who was at risk of losing almost everything he owned, and now he isn’t.
Now? Now i am having a stiff drink, or three.
Isn’t that cannibalism?
Seriously, congratulations — that’s wonderful news.
Glad your week went well. It’s been pretty hellish on my end.
My little title and mortgage company is going to go bankrupt; this deadbeat who’s been squatting for years duped a local lawyer into giving him so much pro bono time that he was able to run out the clock on us; we ran out of cash for our company lawyer last month. We tried to pro se it but we obviously didn’t know the law very well; guy ended up winning and we have have to pay HIM! Unfortunately it was right on the edge for us and this was the last straw; I gotta lay everybody off tomorrow. Some Friday that will be.
And to make it even worse, the guy who robbed my mother last year and totally cleaned her out? The judge in the case decided that he didn’t have to pay her any restitution, because it would impose a ‘hardship’ on him. Un fucking believable. What’s the world coming to?
I’m going to go drown my sorrows in rum.
Man, that sucks. My sympathies, Robert.
That’s real tough Robert.
Plus some jackass engineer from Chicago came by the motel I own right in the middle of us reconfiguring all the wi-fi setups, and did God only knows what to the system. Now we can’t even log on, and we’re providing free unrestricted wi-fi to everyone who parks in the lot!
Ron @39, I like that idea. Except my cell phone doesn’t always get service in my living room, so I may have to travel a little further afield.
It’s a gift.
Dude, that sucks. Truly.
Unless you’ve already explored this angle, you may not want to lay off everyone until you’ve talked to a bankruptcy attorney. By which I mean an experienced specialist who ONLY DOES bankruptcy work; do not go to a generalist who does it on the side. You may be able to reorganize and keep some, if not all, employees.
I regret even giving you this unsolicited advice since it rarely applies (you’re smart; you probably did that already, and I don’t mean to imply that you don’t know it already) but it’s helped a few folks so I’m giving it anyway.
What gin-and-whiskey said @48.
RonF @12: It’s not much of a defense to say that not only was the article you proudly cited flawed, but you repeated those flaws unthinkingly. Let’s cut the crap, okay? You thought you had a fabulous “CHECKMATE FEMINISTS!!!!” argument, and when that fell apart at a rather basic level, you suddenly eschew facts and numbers to invite me to “bet” on whether you’re right after all, and argue with Amp based on something you claim you “absolutely” can’t support – but which, apparently, we are nonetheless supposed to credit for some reason.
Also, protip: there are places on the web where you can shift from arguing about raw numbers of victims to ‘proportions’ of victims and nobody will notice. This isn’t one of them.
If you’d bothered to try and determine whether you were right, instead of playing “oh, let’s just assume I’m mostly right anyway, k?”, you would have found the Department of Justice recently (and quite reluctantly) surveyed incidence of sexual assault of prisoners, and it has, like, numbers. The study isn’t great in that it surveyed a limited number of prisons – two, in the case of women – but it really doesn’t support the argument that we can ignore those darn inconvenient female prisoners who aren’t ever raped anyway.
Mythago’s right; let’s talk numbers.
Women make up about 7% of total prisoners in the US; see the excellent report available at
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/p09.pdf
That report contains a lot of detail, including average length of stay, offense type, etc.
Applying those numbers to the us population suggests that roughly 1 in 200 us folks are imprisoned at any point in time. I’m brain-dead and can’t do the “therefore 1 in ____ men are in prison and 1 in _____ women are in prison” math. Help, please…?
Note that those above numbers reflect people who are actually IN prison at one time. They don’t reflect the # of folks who have or will be in prison, during any particular length of time. In other words, if there are a million prisoners with an average stay of three months, then every year, four million people will pass through the prison system. I suspect but do not know that this may very by gender.
If you know an average prison stay, and the average # of prisoners, and an average rape %age, then you can probably get a rough estimate for total #s of rape victims in a given time frame. But it is very important (and surprisingly difficult) to make sure that you keep your denominators straight, and that you never mix up rates, absolutes, and time.
It is also critical to make sure that you’re comparing the same standards. To use an extreme example, one can’t use a study that counts “unwanted sexual interaction” , and compare it to a study that counts “independently verifiable instances that satisfy the state or federal criteria or rape charges.” A lot of people have thrown out a lot of different definitions of “rape” over the years.
Anyway: interesting topic. Does anyone have a link to the rape prevalence info that Mythago mentions?
gin-and-whiskey, I have it at work (not here), but frankly I don’t have much interested in Googling something RonF ignored because it might say something he didn’t want to hear. Roughly, from the report, the rate was higher for female inmates in the case of sexual assaults by other inmates, and lower in the case of sexual assault by guards and security personnel.
Good gravy. You people do realize that I don’t have a title company, a motel, or a robbed mother, right? Tell me SOMEONE got it.
I got it. :P
I got it.
Thank God.
What about the rum part? That’s real, right?
Sadly, no.
I got it.
[cries]
I got it.
I got it when you talked about the motel.
Prior to that: I am SUCH an idiot. I blame this Hereville deadline.
I assumed everyone got it and they were just fucking with you back.
I didn’t get it but possibly I wasn’t paying enough attention.
So we need to bring you rum, is what you’re saying?
@62: I was wondering that myself.
@64: Yes.
Eagle Scouts protest the BSA policy on the GLBT community by returning their awards. Good for them.
Wow. Nice letter, and especially nice analogies.
The other letters are good, too.
Grace
I think it’s fine that those Eagle Scouts act on their opinions and convictions. But their actions stem from opinions regarding what is bigotry and what is not and what the nature of homosexuality and homosexual behavior is that the sponsors of the majority of Scouting units (and, I suspect, the majority of Scouting parents) do not share.
I note one of the writers notes a decline in Scouting’s numbers and wonders if any part of it is related to their current membership policy. I wonder what he – or you – think would happen to Scouting’s numbers if the BSA changed its membership policy to what they’d like to see it to be?
About the only way that the BSA could change this policy and have it work would be to adopt what has been called “local option”. It used to be that women were not permitted to become Boy Scout leaders (although they could be Cub Scout Den Mothers, as the term was used in those days, they could not be Cubmasters either). Then the policy was changed, in steps. When that happened, units were (and are still) permitted to exclude women from leadership positions if they so desire – which is generally what Mormon-sponsored Troops do. It’s hard to look at a non-Mormon unit to see if they have this policy, since in many cases there just aren’t any women who want to be leaders in the unit.
So it has been proposed that a unit could simply exclude or include homosexual leaders as a matter of unit policy, and National would keep it’s nose out. I would have no problem with such a policy. But it’s been shot down as well.
I can accept that the Boy Scouts have to have at least something of an anti-gay stance to exist, because troops have sponsors, most sponsors are churches, and it’s not as though there are enough UCC churches and Unitarians and Quaker meetings to sponsor troops if the conservative and a fair number of the mainline churches wanted nothing to do with BSA.
What galls me, a lot, is the statement “The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting.” It’s wishy-washy, and it’s bull. And it carries this veneer of neutrality–oh, we’re not saying we hate you or that you’re second-class citizens, we just want parents to be able to address issues as they feel it’s appropriate.
Parents have to address issues that they’d rather not *all the time* because they are things that exist in the world. Sex, other religions (maybe religion at all for atheist parents), death, all kinds of things. Things happen at school, stuff comes on the news, kids ask awkward questions, and it’s a parent’s job to deal with it, not stick their fingers in their ears and say, “Lalala, the things I don’t like don’t exist, and I’m not acknowledging them.”
From my–admittedly limited and indirect–experience with Scouting, it seems to be about helping kids develop skills and a certain amount of independence, critical thinking, and decision-making. It’s kind of amazing to me that the same parents who happily send their kid off to camp, hike, rock-climb, rappel, or white-water raft would also pitch a screaming hissy fit that their child might be in the same room with someone whose personal life the parent doesn’t completely approve of. On that one particular issue, kids apparently need to be bubble-wrapped. Never mind that a gay kid who isn’t allowed to join their Scout troop is the same gay kid who goes to their school, and they’ve probably figured out that he exists.
If you’re going to, as an organization, disdain and despise gay people and want nothing to do with them, or you’re so beholden to organizations that do hate gay people that you feel you have no choice but to throw them under the bus, at least be straightforward about it. Drop the wishy-washy “parents’ rights” and “good people can disagree on this issue” stuff that means you’re trying to play both sides and keep everybody happy. Have the guts to say, “We feel that Scouting is only for straight boys. We want nothing to do with LGBT kids, nor do we much care that they could benefit from Scouting as much as straight kids. And, frankly, we’d really rather see a troop that’s hurting for volunteers fold than allow someone who’s openly gay to have anything to do with running it, because we sincerely believe that gayness is the worst thing kids could ever possibly be exposed to.”
It’s an issue of tolerance vs. approval and freedom of association.
Let’s say there’s a gay teacher in the school, and he is very public about his sexual orientation. The parents may have little choice (from a financial viewpoint) but to send their kid to that school. But they have a lot of choice as to whether they send their kid to a Boy Scout Troop or to some other youth organization. To do something where you have little choice does not send their kid a message that they do or do not approve of what happens there. To send their kid voluntarily to a group does.
So they tolerate sending their kid to that public school, and they teach him that it’s his duty to tolerate people who think, act and behave in certain fashions whether they approve of it or not. Those behaviors can include sexual behavior (of various kinds), drug use, cursing, blowing off homework and getting lousy grades, fighting, etc., etc. But they can also teach him that in cases where they have a choice you don’t choose to associate with people exhibiting certain kinds of behavior. So, yes – the kid is going to go to school with certain people that he might not be associating with in his Scout Troop or church group or soccer traveling team, etc. (yes, gay kids play soccer and gay adults coach it – but you can choose the traveling team your kid is on). The fact that your kid is going to be exposed to something in school doesn’t mean that choosing not to associate with that something outside of school doesn’t make a difference.
That, I believe, is what they mean by “The vast majority of the parents of youth we serve value their right to address issues of same-sex orientation within their family, with spiritual advisers, and at the appropriate time and in the right setting.” People can’t do a whole lot about homosexual teachers and what public schools are teaching their kids about homosexuality, but they can address what they think about it at home.
Yes, they do. But the BSA is saying that it’s not their role to force parents to do so within the context of the BSA. The Scout Oath and Law do teach that you must tolerate people who believe differently than you. But it does not teach that you have to approve of those beliefs as well. That choice belongs to the family. The distinction between “toleration” and “approval” is sometimes lost.
Speaking of all which, I’m outta here for a while. Off to Boy Scout summer camp for a week in the woods.
Just to give you an idea of how deep my roots in the Boy Scouts go, my wife is going to accompany me for a few days. Once we get the Troop squared away in the campsite, we’re going to drive by ourselves to one of the other areas of the camp that has a bunch of cabins that Scouters’ families stay in when they are in camp with their Troop. We’re going to try to find the one we spent our honeymoon in. See you all in a week.
RonF:
By which you mean he wears a sparkly pink shirt with the words “I am Gay” picked out on it in rhinestones, or by which you mean he is permitted to refer in conversation to his husband and public aspects of his family life, like his heterosexual peers?
You’re making an argument that we should be allowing to hang out with whom we like, and if we create organizations to facilitate that, the organizations should be permitted to set criteria. Well and good. But, if those criteria are based in bigotry, as those of the BSA are, then the price of that association is censure from those who are inclined to point that bigotry out.
The Scout Oath and Law may teach that you must tolerate people who believe differently, but the BSA teaches that while you’re learning to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent, you will not be permitted to associate with LGBT people, and they will not be learning to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent alongside you. Maybe they will be learning to be Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent while associating with other people like themselves, in some situation which is separate but equal.
Grace
“Gay” is not a behavior. Even if you think that being gay is a choice, there are certainly kids who identify as gay who are not having sex and have not had sex.
Except that they *do* force parents to deal with people of different races and religions. Nor do they kick out every kid who does something that another kid’s parent disapproves of. I assume kids aren’t automatically thrown out for one instance of smoking, drinking, lying, bullying, or cheating on homework.
Additionally, BSA *does* force parents of gay kids to explain to their sons why the Boy Scouts don’t want them. And parents in the Cub Scout troop that kicked out Jessica Tyrell *are* forced to explain to their kids why the troop leader that they liked had to leave.
What they are saying is that it’s not their role to force parents to deal with things they don’t want to deal with. What is actually true is that there’s a very specific group of people they don’t want to force to do anything they might not want to do, and whose rights as a parent matter, and another group of people who can be thrown under the bus to accommodate that.
If I had a seven-year-old son in Jessica Tyrell’s troop, I might *want* to hold off on teaching him that homophobia exists, but I would be forced to do so.
I also think that if your idea of tolerance is “put up with someone who’s different, but not for one moment longer than you have to, then shun them completely,” that’s kind of sad.
I also don’t think “voluntarily associate with someone” implies “endorse and approve of everything they do and think,” and I don’t think teaching your children that it is is a particularly grown-up view of the world. I mean, I sing with a choir whose director has a framed picture of George W. Bush displayed prominently in her house. The fact that we voluntarily associate with each other doesn’t mean we approve of each other’s politics.
Awww! That’s really cool, and I hope you have a good time.
And here’s an African-American couple who had to relocate their wedding when their church turned them away.
Longtime followers of the Amp & Bob Show will get this reference. Everyone else will just have a laugh.
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2012/08/01/orctivism
How can you have missed this?
What if every Olympic sport was photographed like beach volleyball?