The advertising above is just a source of revenue. If the ads get offensive enough, I may drop them.
Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
|
|
Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
PayPal members: to make a contribution
Email me at blogmail at claytoncramer dot com. Sorry to be so indirect, but all spambots must die! But they haven't died yet! Include the word spamIamnot in your subject line to make sure that my spam blocker lets you through. |
Saturday, June 28, 2003
I'll Be in Reno August 15-17 I'm meeting some friends there Friday afternoon. If your local group needs a speaker Friday evening through Sunday morning, let me know. I love to get a chance to talk about my current research in gun ownership in early America--or, for that matter, American slavery, another of my specialties. My Son Won Second Place in a Local Skateboarding Competition Okay, it's not a huge event, in the bigger scheme of themes, but one of the local skateboarding stores organized a competition, and lots of kids showed up. My son didn't even want us (his parents) there, because he was afraid he was going to do so badly. Along with a bunch of stuff that only appeals to skateboarders (a brand name hat, stickers) he also received a gift certificate for skateboarding shoes--and if you have paid for these recently, you realize that this has some real value. Eating Nemo My daughter is working at McDonald's this summer, and if you have kids, you are doubtless already aware that McDonald's has a bunch of toys associated with the new animated feature, Finding Nemo--which, of course, involves a fish as the hero--and sharks that have taken the pledge to go vegetarian. So this little girl comes in with her mother, and as they walk up to the counter, the little girl is saying, "Nemo! Nemo! Nemo!" As the mother orders a happy meal, my daughter leans over and quietly says, "We're out of the Nemo toys." The mother tells the daughter and then helpfully suggests, "Would you like a Filet-o-Fish?" Running Over Mormon Crickets Permagringirl's reaction an AP news story about population explosion--and driving through herds of an insect known as the "Mormon Cricket" was "Ewwwwwwww." Yup! Last year, I was on a road south of Boise, and there were herds crossing the road. You couldn't avoid them, and you could them crunching under the tires. Even worse--you could see the survivors grabbing their dead, and eating them. Cannibalism is never pleasant. The rate at which the LDS church (the formal name for the Mormons) grows makes me wonder if they are counting these creatures as well. Exponential Growth, STDs, and Homosexual Promiscuity A while back, Professor Volokh made the claim (which I can't seem to find right at the moment) that homosexuals aren't really so different from straights in their promiscuity. Based on several different surveys, he claimed that male homosexuals had only 1.5x to 4x as many sexual partners per year as straight males. That doesn't sound like much, does it? From the standpoint of STDs, it is a dramatic diference--because the results of promiscuity in spreading STDs are non-linear. Double the number of partners per year, and it does way more than double the infection rate. This is a concern regardless of whether the promiscuous ones are straight or gay, of course--but the high promiscuity of gay men is part of why AIDS burned a path of destruction through the gay community so quickly. Consider the following: A has acquired an incurable STD. He changes sexual partners annually. At the end of year 1, he has infected B. (I'm not specifying Mr. B or Ms. B--it really doesn't matter.) A now goes out, gets a new sexual partner, C. So does B; B now infects D. At the end of year 2, A, B, C, and D are all infected. They each go out and find new partners. At the end of year 3, there are now eight people with the incurable STD. This is a simple exponential growth: the number of people with this STD will be 2 raised to the number of years, because each of our one-lettered people is changing partners annually. (Yes, I'm simplifying, by assuming that no one is using prophylactic measures to prevent the spread--because it turns out that condoms break, partners sometimes share toothbrushes, and spread the disease anyway.) So, if you double the number of sexual partners per year, does it double the number of people infected with this incurable STD? No. It's an exponential growth. At the end of year 3, with everyone changing sexual partners every six months, there are now 2 to the sixth infected people: 64. Just a simple doubling of the number of sexual partners per year has octupled the number of infected persons. If male homosexuals are 1.5x as promiscuous as straight males, they will infect at 2.83x times the rate; if they are 4x as promiscuous (a number I find much more believable, having visited too many public toilets with holes drilled through the walls), they will infect at 16x the rate. Is there a compelling argument in this for the government telling people what to do in private? Only if the government is picking up the bills. (Of course, anal sex appears to be a more effective method for transmitting AIDS than sexual intercourse, except for those who already have STD-related open sores on their genitals.) In the case of AIDS, the government is picking up a big chunk of the bills--and this is where the usual homosexual analogy to smoking falls down. Smoking is a vile habit. It kills people. But it is not contagious, and it is not subject to this sort of exponential growth. Nice Post At Discriminations About Affirmative Action Decision Here: Thus it is not too soon to begin exploring ways to test and implement this new principle. Perhaps that would involve challenging current “diversity” admissions programs on the grounds that they are not really diverse. Surely the ranks of rejected applicants at many diversiphile academies contain armies of Arab, Sri Lankan, Hmong, Pentecostal, Hindu, and Muslim applicants whose race, ethnicity, or religion was not considered even though those groups are grievously underrepresented. And, as others have suggested, maybe it is time for political tests as well. How politically diverse are faculties and student bodies at elite schools these days?Yeah! Since the decision largely abandons the claim that affirmative action is reparations for past discrimination, and is now about creating "diversity," I think it's time to call the lying hypocrites that run many universities on their claim--and demand that "diversity" mean more than just race. Imagine how much different law school classes would be if fundamentalist Christians were admitted at the same percentage as their fraction of the population! I saw a few years ago a survey that showed that 7% of Stanford Law students identified themselves as gay or bisexual--or more than twice the percentage of the general population. Gay Supremacists I am getting email that claims that homosexual males are smarter than straights. (And yes, the email specifically said "homosexual males.") You know how weird the world is getting when someone makes this claim, and uses Herrnstein and Murray's The Bell Curve as part of the argument--after all, homosexuals are much richer than straights, and The Bell Curve demonstrates that intelligence and wealth are correlated. (It wasn't that long ago that only right-wingers would have the guts to make an argument based on The Bell Curve.) One of these days, conservatives are going to overcome their lethargy, and decide to make a serious attempt at taking control of America. This may be the issue that provokes it, not because of sodomy laws specifically, but because this decision demonstrates that allowing the moderate wing of the Republican Party to appoint Supreme Court justices is only a slower path to the same goal as letting Democrats control the process. Does anyone seriously doubt that Justice Kennedy's decision mentions marriage as an invitation to challenge--on Constitutional grounds--the laws recently enacted at both state and federal levels to define marriage as a heterosexual thing? Does anyone seriously think that current age of consent laws won't going to come under attack in order to make the NAMBLA/Hollywood wing of the homosexual movement happy? I am hard pressed to see any basis for limiting sexual activity by minors except the same sort of traditions swept away by Justice Kennedy's decision. Replace the phrase "consenting adults" with "consenting individuals" in Kennedy's decision. Is the result any less logical? I can also see the courts giving NAMBLA what it wants by a different process--redefining "minor" for sexual purposes as 12 or 14 (at least, on the first try). It's not like the age of consent is terribly consistent. You have to be 18 to make contracts; 18 to buy a long gun; 21 to buy a handgun or buy alcohol (in most states). Here in Idaho, you have to be 19 to buy pornography. In some states, the age of sexual consent is 17. In California, it's 18 for sexual intercourse, and within four years of your partner (if you are under 18) for just about anything else. It is also true that these ages are arbitrary, and for some teenagers, too high, and for others, too low. Does anyone doubt that using the same reasoning as Justice Kennedy used, that the Supreme Court could decide that there is a constitutional right for adults to have sex with 12 or 14 year olds--regardless of what the state legislature has decided? There is going to be a backlash on this. You won't see it in your newspaper for several years. Newspapers are too busily congratulating the Supreme Court about this decision. To hear my local newspaper tell the story, there were no newspapers that editorialized against it. (And there may not have been many--newspapers, because they are part of the entertainment business, are almost always the most depraved components of American society.) Yet most states have clearly expressed popular concern with these heterosexual definitions of marriage--in spite of the upset from America's loudest, most powerful, and most petulant minority group. There may not be a majority hopping made about this decision, but there will be a significant minority that is going to be very disturbed by this display of raw judicial activism. Friday, June 27, 2003
"NAMBLA Isn't Part of the Gay Community" I hear this a lot from homosexuals. But until 1994, NAMBLA was a member of the International Lesbian and Gay Association--which had observer status at the United Nations. ILGA expelled NAMBLA, but still lost their observer status. What's interesting is that NAMBLA, and another child molestation advocacy group, didn't sneak in the back door, and no one at ILGA knew about it. Even once it was clear that there were child molestation advocacy groups, there were members of the ILGA board prepared to keep these scum, even at the cost of losing UN observer status: In 1994 at the New York conference ILGA members voted 214-30 to expel NAMBLA and the two other "pedophile" organizations they knew about (Project Truth and Vereniging Martijn). They passed a resolution stating that "Groups or associations whose main objective is to promote or support pedophilia are not compatible with the future development of ILGA."There are other gay sites that admit that expelling child molesters, even as a condition of having a seat at the table of international diplomacy, was a controversial step: Not only the United States, but even loyal supporters like Canada and Australia began to question ILGA’s accreditation. In response, at its world conference in New York in June 1994, ILGA voted to expel NAMBLA and two other similar groups, but it was a highly controversial decision. Many accused the group of caving in to right-wing, anti-sex views, and NAMBLA supporters—including writers Pat Califia and Camille Paglia and pioneering gay-rights activist Harry Hay—staged a march against ILGA.I know that most homosexuals are not child molesters. Many homosexuals read my column, and engage in calm and intelligent discussions. But just because you consider NAMBLA scum doesn't mean much, when there is so much evidence that homosexual activists are split about whether NAMBLA and similar child molestation advocacy groups are a legitimate part of the gay movement. Ken Lay of Enron, Environmentalist? From the Washington Post, this amusing reminder that even corporate raiders can be green on the inside: Yesterday, self-styled muckraker Bernardo Issel of NonprofitWatch.org told us that the much-maligned Lay has been a longtime member of the board of trustees of the Heinz Center, an environmental group founded by the candidate's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry. She's the group's vice chairman, and Lay left the small board earlier this year after serving for nearly a decade.Unfortunately, this is not surprising. If you are fabulously rich (like Arriana "ban SUVs, while I fly in my private jet" Huffington), it's easy to afford environmental excesses. An Unfortunate Word This article from the Washington Post really shows how hard it must be to be a liberal: As sometimes happens with Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), he let his mouth race ahead of his brain Wednesday night at a gathering of Young Democrats at the Washington nightspot Acropolis. After presidential candidate Howard Dean spoke, Kennedy delivered an impassioned peroration against President Bush's tax cut. We hear that Kennedy told the crowd: "I don't need Bush's tax cut. I have never worked a [bleeping] day in my life." With that he got the audience's attention -- the dropping-jaws kind. "He droned on and on, frequently mentioning how much better the candidates would sound the more we drank," a witness told us. "Finally, he had to be stopped by a DNC volunteer." Kennedy's spokesman, Ernesto Anguilla, told us yesterday: "He was talking to the crowd; it was a rally-the-troops kind of speech about the tax cut. He was energizing the crowd and got caught up in it and used an unfortunate word, which he regrets using. . . . And no one pulled him off the stage."Which unfortunate word was that? The [expletive deleted]? Or that other nasty word that liberals seldom need to use because of growing up overprivileged: "work"? Supreme Court Manipulative Disintegrity Isn't New, Nor Confined to the Left I was finishing up my syllabus for Constitutional History (yes, I will be teaching it to undergrads this fall), and I noticed something very interesting that I have never noticed before. The Lochner v. New York (1905) decision struck down a New York law as a violation of the right of contract. It was a ban on bakers working more than 60 hours a week. The Lochner decision argued that such a law would prevent a self-employed baker from working as many hours as he would like to work. It seems that this law was intended to protect bakers from being forced to work long hours by their employers, and using the relatively unusual example of a self-employed baker being impaired from working was a clever method of achieving the result that they wanted: laissez faire. I was prepared to believe that the Court's goals were simply that: promotion of laissez faire. I'm generally supportive of laissez faire economics. Even if you find the results of laissez faire to be distasteful, you could, I thought, at least believe that they were consistent in their application of this policy. But then I noticed, as I was picking decisions to have the students read, that the Supreme Court wasn't even consistent on this right of contract. When they decided Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) just nine years earlier, they could easily have used this same laissez faire right of contract doctrine--and didn't. In Plessy, Louisiana had intervened in the private business of railroad companies, by requiring them to segregate passengers by race. Louisiana didn't trust the free market enough to get the wonderfulness of segregation; they were going to pass a law, and not take a chance that the railroads would put profit above the noble pursuit of racism. The Supreme Court, had they really believed in this right of contract, would have struck down Plessy on the same grounds that they struck down Lochner. The cases are surprisingly parallel: both involve a state law; both involve the state telling a corporation what to do. In Plessy, the Court even admitted that there were questions of right of contract involved, giving the example of interracial marriage--but then insisting that this was purely a technical question of contract. If there any real difference, it is that Lochner involved a claim of public health and safety, while Plessy doesn't even make that claim. Americans Really Don't Like Telemarketing This article reports that the new national "don't call" registry has received 635,000 phone calls in its first 14 hours--and the web site is getting 1000 hits per second. I wish something like this existed for spam (and actually worked). Oh yeah: www.donotcall.gov is the web site to sign up. UPDATE: No surprise--I just tried to register for the "don't call" list--and the servers are having...problems. Those Of You Kicking Money Into the Tip Jar... I really, really appreciate those who kick in big chunks, like $25 I received recently. But I would be even more appreciative (and productive) if lots of you kicked in $1 each. I suppose as an encouragement I should start offering some of my books for sale--that way those of you who are kicking in the big chunks will kick a bigger chunk--and get something for it besides a warm fuzzy feeling. Delaware Reciprocity Bill for Concealed Carry on Governor's Desk I mentioned a week or so ago that Delaware (which isn't even a shall-issue state) was considering a bill to recognize concealed weapon permits from other states on a reciprocal basis--you recognize mine, I'll recognize yours. (Only for permits issued by your state of residence, however.) I recommended that some of you contact the State Senators, and encourage them to pass it. It has now passed both houses. By some reports, it passed the State Senate (controlled by Democrats) unanimously. It's now on the governor's desk. It is time to let her know that she can increase tourism spending in the state by signing this bill. Gov. Ruth Ann MinnerBy the way, you will notice that we are getting laws changed all over the country, in spite of concealed weapon permit holders being a tiny fraction of the population (2-3%) not by having judges overrule democracy, but by operating through democratic processes. Thursday, June 26, 2003
The Need For Library Filters Sent to me by a friend: A few years ago I took my family to the new Beaverton branch of Washington County library system shortly after it opened for business. This modern facility replaced the shabby old library that was built back in the days when Beaverton was just a little farm town. It has, of course, the now requisite network of open-usage, Internet-enabled PCs. These are installed in a large open area in the center of the building through which you have to pass while navigating the stacks, etc. The PC displays are arranged on four or five rows of tall tables, and are situated in such a way that they are clearly visible to patrons passing through the area. (Maybe they have changed this arrangement since I was last there, but I am describing it as it was at that time.) Epitaph For a Slave The historian J.L. Bell posted this to one of the professional historian email lists of which I am a member. I found it very touching. Loyalist lawyer Daniel Bliss's gravestone for John Jack of that town, reprinted in Boston newspapers in 1774 and rediscovered by Abolitionists decades later: The Affirmative Action Case Again Another blogger quoted me, with a title guaranteed to infuriate liberals everywhere. Responding to a Question From a Reader ----- Original Message ----- From: "" To: Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 12:59 PM Subject: Sodomy > Clayton-- > > Connecticut's code of 1650 is problematic as an example here, as I am sure > you must realize. Don't you get the reference? Isn't it a problem that a > code pre-dating the United States, quoted almost verbatim from Leviticus, > is being used as a justification by you for continuation of the outlawing > of homosexual sex, in a country which only came into existence in 1836? Not at all. Justice Kennedy's opinion claimed that the laws against sodomy in the colonial period applied to both homosexual and heterosexual sex, and didn't discriminate in the same way as the Texas statute. I demonstrated that his statement was incorrect. The second claim, that the entire notion of homosexuality vs. heterosexuality didn't exist until the 19th century, and that laws against homosexuality are a modern innovation, is similarly defective. Connecticut 1650 Code clearly demonstrates that: 1. Laws that criminalized specifically homosexual sodomy were present, and are NOT a 19th century innovation. 2. The presence of that law demonstrates that the idea of homosexuality is older than the 19th century. > That is to say, I think you're a bit off by using Connecticut's 1650 > criminal code. Got anything more relevant to the era? Also, how do you When determining what rights are protected under the Ninth Amendment, an originalist interpretation requires examining what laws were in effect when it was ratified. This is a legitimate method for overturning laws prohibiting birth control devices for married couples (as was sort of the argument in Griswold), and for overturning Alabama's law against vibrators (recently struck down by a federal judge because there were no such laws in 1789). If you want to argue that a colonial law has no relevance, aren't you afraid that someone might make the same claim about other ancient laws, such as the 1789 Constitution, the 1791 Bill of Rights, and the 1868 Fourteenth Amendment? Without those other antiquities, this decsion goes away, doesn't it? > feel about slavery? Since, of course, that also was legal at the time. And specifically prohibited by not only the state constitutions of a number of states in the early Republic, but throughout the United States in 1866, by the Thirteenth Amendment. There's a legitimate way to change the Constitution, through the amendment process. That's not what the Supreme Court has done here. They have claimed that there is a right, using the Griswold argument, and yet such a right is directly contrary to the statutes in effect when the Ninth Amendment was ratified, and when the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified--and the Griswold decision itself. To argue that anyone ratifying either of those amendments understood that there was a right to homosexual sodomy, even in private, is silly. > Keep in mind that your position is only logically consistent if you > mention that the War of Northern Aggression was incorrect, and wrong. Not at all. I don't think you understood what I was saying. I believe that I have clarified it above. > I'd be interested to hear more of your views, and also if they're based on > anything except for "My religion says gay people are bad." Keep in mind that there are two separate issues here. One is whether sodomy laws are a good thing or not. Most states have concluded that they are not, and have repealed them, some because the voters, speaking through their legislators decided to do so, some because the state supreme court has decided that it was contrary to the state constitution. When California repealed its sodomy and oral sex laws in the mid-1970s, I thought that this was a very good idea--what sort of narrow-minded idiot would support such laws? Having lived in the San Francisco Bay Area in the period 1982-84, 1986-2001, where homosexuals dominated local and state politics, I no longer consider such laws self-evidently bad. The strongest argument for them is that they tend to encourage homosexuals to congregate in states that want them, and all the baggage that goes with homosexuality (AIDS, progressive politics, "I'm a victim!" screeching, passage of laws that require you hire people who think "being outrageous!" is a sign of liberation, and tolerance of groups like NAMBLA). The strongest argument against such laws is that they tend to be selectively enforced, and I don't strongly care what homosexuals do in private. I do want them to stop using public restrooms as places of assignation, and I see no reason for homosexuals to engage in sexual acts while naked in the middle of the street--even when the occasion is a Gay Pride Parade. It seems to be difficult to have a state without sodomy laws that doesn't eventually end up with the rest of this baggage. The other question is whether sodomy laws are unconstitutional. What the Supreme Court did today was to decide that the majority are not competent to make laws regulating sex between consenting adults in private. Whether the state governments should make such laws or not, it is abundantly clear that they have the right to do so, along with all sorts of other laws of questionable sense. If we are going to go to a situation where the state governments must have a very, very good reason for every law that they pass, fine. But then liberals will start screeching, because so many of the laws that are currently on the books, such as most of the gun control laws, will then have to go down as well. Liberals aren't going to allow that. Tennessee Recognizes All Other State Concealed Weapon Permits Starting July 1. Read the law here. It appears that they formerly required reciprocity agreements with other states, and only ten states had done so. Note: you can only carry a concealed handgun--not any other weapon. Eugene Volokh Again Promoting His View That Incest is Constitutional Protected Professor Volokh has previously argued that the reasoning used in the Supreme Court's decision striking down the Texas sodomy law could be used to strike down laws against incest--and he thinks that's a good thing. He makes that argument again, and suggests that the language used by the Court today means that this isn't a stretch of their intent at all: The Court had an opportunity to distinguish them today, as it distinguished prostitution, statutory rape, and so on; it didn't. And the reasoning that it gave was quite broad, broadly focused on people's liberty to engage in sexual activity with whomever and however they thought was right. Like many rights (free speech, criminal procedure rights, right to have children, and so on), this is a right that may well apply -- and I think likely will apply -- even when it may potentially cause some nontrivial externalities. Certainly the right to have children, which the Court has long recognized under the same rubric that it uses here, has huge effects on society, but it's protected nonetheless. I doubt that the Court will buy arguments for criminalizing fully consensual incest, bigamy, polygamy, and adultery based just on these sorts of general and indirect (even if plausible) harms.Welcome to post-Christian America. I used to think that whatever differences there were between libertarians and conservatives (and I spend a lot of time crossing the line back and forth between the two positions, on particular issues), that there were certain minimum standards of civilized behavior that would tend to keep the most outrageous results of a purely libertarian worldview in check, just as I assumed that the traditional conservative skepticism of zealotry would keep the "Christian reconstructionism" ideas of the lunatic wing of fundamentalism in check. "Christian reconstructionism" as a movement seems to have evaporated. The "there are no limits" wing of libertarianism seems to be growing rapidly--as evidenced by the fact that a law professor is making the argument that incest laws are not just counterproductive, but unconstitutional. Ten Years Ago, This Would Have Been Unthinkable Michigan's Attorney General has a web page telling you which states's concealed weapon permits they recognize. In 1995, I testified before the Michigan House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, trying to get a non-discretionary concealed weapon permit law passed. It didn't pass then, and it seemed like we were just going through the motions. Wow! Supreme Court Demonstrates Its Inability to Read History Again The Supreme Court has struck down the Texas law prohibiting homosexual sodomy. The opinion hasn't been made available anywhere yet that I can find, but the quotes in the article demonstrate that the Supreme Court decided this based on a right to privacy that the Framers did not support. Laws prohibiting sodomy were present in every state when the Constitution was ratified, and when the Fourteenth Amendment incorporated the Bill of Rights against the states. If state governments repeal sodomy laws, I don't have any strong objection, because that's within the powers of the state governments to decide. I do object strongly to the Supreme Court deciding that something that was criminal everywhere in America until 1961 is somehow protected by a right to privacy that is only implicit in the Constitution--and that none of the Framers would have recognized as outside the legitimate police powers of the states. Justice Scalia said something a couple of years ago about how homosexuals exercise excessive influence on the legal system. It shows. Remember: a right that is only implicit in the Ninth Amendment is a valid basis for striking down state laws that have been present since the beginning of American government (sodomy prohibition); a right that is explicitly stated in the Second Amendment is not a basis for striking down state gun control laws that are actually a pretty modern innovation. This is why I don't respect liberals--they use their control of the courts to achieve their objectives, and care not in the least about the Constitution. UPDATE: Here's the Supreme Court decision. It is embarrassing in its dishonesty and ignorance. It claims that its decision is based on Griswold, but neglects to mention that the Griswold decision explicitly held that this right to marital privacy did not extend to homosexual sex. The Court's ignorance--probably willful--of history appears when it claims that laws specifically criminalizing homosexual sodomy are of recent vintage: The absence of legal prohibitions focusing on homosexual conduct may be explained in part by noting that according to some scholars the concept of the homosexual as a distinct category of person did not emerge until the late 19th century.... Thus early American sodomy laws were not directed at homosexuals as such but instead sought to prohibit non-procreative sexual activity more generally. This does not suggest approval of homosexual conduct. It does tend to show that this particular form of conduct was not thought of as a separate category from like conduct between heterosexual persons.This is nonsense. Connecticut's Code of 1650 criminalizes homosexual conduct, making it a capital offense: "If any man lye with mankynd as he lyeth with a woman both of them have comitted abomination, they both shall surely be put to death." You can read it here. The Court also argues that regardless of what the state of things was when the Constitution was written, In all events we think that our laws and traditions in the past half century are of most relevance here.Whoops! The Constitution isn't part of our "laws and traditions in the past half century" so I guess it's down the drain as well. UPDATE: Read Justice Scalia's dissent. As usual, it's grounded in reality in a way that the majority is not. Let me be clear that I have nothing against homosexuals, or any other group, promoting their agenda through normal democratic means. Social perceptions of sexual and other morality change over time, and every group has the right to persuade its fellow citizens that its view of such matters is the best. That homosexuals have achieved some success in that enterprise is attested to by the fact that Texas is one of the few remaining States that criminalize private, consensual homosexual acts. But persuading one's fellow citizens is one thing, and imposing one's views in absence of democratic majority will is something else. I would no more require a State to criminalize homosexual acts--or, for that matter, display any moral disapprobation of them--than I would forbid it to do so. What Texas has chosen to do is well within the range of traditional democratic action, and its hand should not be stayed through the invention of a brand-new "constitutional right" by a Court that is impatient of democratic change. It is indeed true that "later generations can see that laws once thought necessary and proper in fact serve only to oppress," ante, at 18; and when that happens, later generations can repeal those laws. But it is the premise of our system that those judgments are to be made by the people, and not imposed by a governing caste that knows best.Scalia goes on to point out that the Court has essentially left a hole designed for imposing a constitutional right to homosexual marriage on the states. Justice Thomas's dissent emphasizes that he thinks the law in question is silly--but silly doesn't mean unconstitutional. Monday, June 23, 2003
Factors About the Children's Internet Pornography Act Upheld by the Supreme Court That Some People Seem To Have Missed The news story is here. It isn't just to protect children from exposure that this law exists--it also protects librarians. Now, you are ready to denounce as some narrow-minded Puritan, but I don't think you realize the trash that gets printed out in public libraries. It isn't just Playboy. It's not even graphic pictures of sex. It's pictures of what some of what the spam I get calls "Barnyard Fun." We aren't talking about a domesticated animals version of nature films. That's the sort of stuff that a friend of mine who works in a California library has to leaf through when it comes off the printer. She has to leaf through it, to figure out whose print jobs are whose. Now, there are a lot of very open-minded sorts who just don't understand why this is shocking to look at. Imagine if they were printing out pictures of women being tortured. Now do you understand the upset? Good. Now, explain to me why a library's essential function of providing access to a wide range of intellectually stimulating points of view requires garbage like this to be viewed and printed on a library's computers. I have a friend who works at a local university library. The library monitors everything that they download. They have called the police in to arrest people (not students) for downloading child pornography on the university's terminals. (Being a university library, of course, they are having to call in the police to arrest exhibitionists as well. And that's not just in Boise--my friend in California says similar problems are rampant in their public library.) There is, I presume, a bit of material that gets downloaded that doesn't meet the legal requirement for arrest, but is essentially tab A into slot B. Tell me, why is spending resources on network bandwidth to download such materials a good use of the public's money? The liberals, of course, are full of high-minded excuses for why all this stuff should be available to every child, and no adult should be even slightly inconvenienced by having to go ask the librarian to turn off filtering so that he can sit at a publicly owned computer and download pictures of groupsex and bestiality. "This is electronic book burning. The Supreme Court has ruled the secret censors may prevent you from reading what you want," said Seth Finkelstein, a Cambridge, Mass., computer programmer who is a leading expert on Internet filters.More accurately, the government has ruled that you may have to ask a librarian to see the pornography, or you might have to go to a commercial Internet access facility to download porn. This is not book burning--unless you have a strange notion of matches. Judith Krug, with the American Library Association, predicted that many libraries would consider rejecting federal money rather than installing filters. "A substantial number of libraries will say it's not worth it," she said. "The fact that the librarian can flick a switch isn't going to change the stigma that's attached to it."Yes, maybe there needs to be some stigma to asking them to turn off the pornography filter. I never ceased to be amazed at how the same crowd that insists that fundamentalist kids need to be "challenged" by having evolution taught as fact in the schools, object to the "challenge" of an adult having to ask the librarian to turn off filtering on a computer terminal for a while. The idiot wing of the Supreme Court chimed in, of course: "A statutory blunderbuss that mandates this vast amount of overblocking abridges the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment," Stevens wrote.Except that the filters can be turned off for any adult that wants them turned off. Souter seems to be comparing "Barnyard Fun" with an article in an encyclopedia. Oh yeah, that strikes me as a very logical comparison. Why Isn't This Getting More Press? The difficulties with alcohol of the Bush twins--and of Gov. Jeb Bush's daughter with prescription drugs--got lots of media attention--and this is a more serious matter, all the way around. So why are the news media not banging the drum about this endlessly, making it the first or second story on the evening news? The 17-year-old son of Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean would "pay the price" for his alleged involvement in what police said was a break-in at a country club that included the theft of alcoholic beverages, Dean said Sunday.Yes, Dean is right--teenagers do some really stupid things, and we shouldn't necessarily hold the parents responsible. But at the same time, it sounds like Dean needs to be spending a bit more time at home. Supreme Court Rules on Affirmative Action Suits I've just read Justice O'Connor's majority opinion for Grutter v. Bollinger (the University of Michigan Law School affirmative action suit). I am especially offended by the pretense that "diversity of student body" is a legitimate rationale for this program. The claim is that "inclusion of students from groups which have been historically discriminated against, like African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans," will improve the quality of education for the rest of the student body. The Law School's claim of a compelling interest is further bolstered by its amici, who point to the educational benefits that flow from student body diversity. In addition to the expert studies and reports entered into evidence at trial, numerous studies show that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and "better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals."Gee, if "diversity" was the real reason for this, the Law School would have an affirmative action program for stupid people. After all, stupid people "have been historically discriminated against" and are discriminated against today. You don't find a lot of subnormals sitting on the Supreme Court (though there are decisions that make you wonder), or running major corporations (Enron: the results of corporate affirmative action for stupid people?). And it is certainly true that having 30% of the law school entering class filled with those of normal or subnormal intelligence would give the law students "differing perspectives" that they aren't going to hear from their fellow smarties. (Before you start sneering, I'm sure that none of the students admitted through the Law School's affirmative action program would qualify as "normal or subnormal" in intelligence.) The Law School isn't going to set up a stupid people's affirmative action program. The real reason for this program is a little deeper in O'Connor's decision: Effective participation by members of all racial and ethnic groups in the civic life of our Nation is essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.This is a racial spoils program--guaranteeing that the percentage of incoming law school students roughly matches the percentage of applicants. The alternative would require asking why so many black and Hispanic kids are coming out of high school much more poorly educated than their white peers. This would raise disturbing questions that we dare not ask about the quality of minority public schools and the influence of cultural factors. I don't have any real hope for O'Connor's claim, "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today." That's nonsense. This is a racial spoils program. The Court has upheld policies established 25 years ago, in the Bakke decision (if you can call something that badly split a decision). In 1978, you could point to generations that had grown up in a highly discriminatory society, one where race was a fundamental part of all sorts of decisions. Students applying to law school right now are almost entirely those who were born after Bakke, when American society had spent more than a generation aggressively extirpating all forms of racial discrimination in not only the public sector, but in nearly all parts of the private sector as well. The problems confronting some racial minorities today simply can't be ascribed to the sort of institutionalized racism that Bakke was trying to uproot. Fifty years of government-imposed and sanctioned racial discrimination. Is this what the Supreme Court meant when it talked about ending racial discrimination in public schools "with all deliberate speed" in Brown v. Board of Education (1954)? |
