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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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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).
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Saturday, September 01, 2007
Senator Craig Resigns This is a tragedy. I blogged from the beginning that it was necessary, but it is still a tragedy. Senator Craig was an effective voice for gun rights in the Senate; he was a consistent vote for traditional values in the Senate. But his actions in that public restroom, and its aftermath, utterly destroyed his credibility. Why? 1. If he did what he pleaded guilty to, then there was a big gap between his public image and reality. I would like U.S. Senator to be a title that conveys integrity and trustworthiness. (You know, like Ted "Chappaquidick" Kennedy.) This also shows a remarkable self-control problem. 2. If Senator Craig is homosexual or bisexual, keeping it a secret made him prone to blackmail. Being open would be less of a security risk. 3. If he did not do what he pleaded guilty to, then his judgment leaves a lot to be desired. I've never pleaded guilty to even a traffic offense unless I was guilty. I've fought two tickets in my entire life: one for "unsafe speed" (30 in a 35 zone--yes, I don't have the numbers switched) when I was about 19. Another ticket was for "exhibition of speed" in 2000 or 2001, when my tires chirped on a sticky painted crosswalk while leaving an unlawful police checkpoint. In both cases, the judge agreed and dismissed the charges. (She looked very impressed when I cited all the existing case law that demonstrated that Petaluma Police Department was violating the Fourth Amendment with its traffic checkpoint for seatbelt use.) I am sorry to see Senator Craig have to leave office, but I also appreciate that he recognized the absurdity of pretending that there was no reason to do so. Labels: Idaho politics Iowa Marriage License Rush I mentioned two days ago that a state judge in Iowa had ruled that same-sex marriage was constitutionally protected. This led to a short run on the license bureau in that county. From August 31, 2007 Associated Press: DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) - Same-sex marriage was legal here for less than 24 hours before the county won a stay of a judge's order on Friday, a tiny window of opportunity that allowed two men to make history but left dozens of other couples disappointed after a frantic rush to the altar.I wonder if that "marriage" will be rendered null and void when the Iowa Supreme Court overrules Judge Hanson's legally bizarre ruling. One interesting statement from one lesbian couple that filed for a marriage license: Lytishya Borglum and partner, Danielle Borglum, drove 2 1/2 hours from Cedar Falls, along with their 13-month-old daughter, Berlyn. They planned to apply in Polk County and told their pastor in Cedar Falls to be ready to marry them when they returned.So if they are so convinced, why do they need the state to recognize it? As I pointed out last year, with one or two tax-status related exceptions, everything that a married couple has can be obtained with a little bit of paperwork by a same-sex couple: inheritance; joint ownership; rights of survivorship on property. Labels: homosexuality The Beauty of the Columbia Gorge I've driven through there before--but perhaps I was in too much of a hurry, or it was raining--what a beautiful piece of road that is on I-84 east of Portland! What Does This Mean? Odd thing I saw in the bar of a Mexican restaurant in Portland: "Degrading ethnic, racial, or sexist remarks are not allowed in this establishment." I'm not sure what this says. Does it mean that Portlanders have such bad manners that they don't know any better? Or does it mean that the owners are trying to show how progressive they are by saying that their clientele needs to be told this? Labels: political correctness I'm Exhausted My son was moving to Portland to go to college, so I drove a U-Haul up there, leaving Boise at 8:00 AM, unloading it in the afternoon, meeting with some friends who live in the air, jumping on a 7:20 PM flight back to Boise. Oh my, what a trip! This was the newest U-Haul I have ever rented. It was the 10 foot box, built on a GMC truck chassis with 4500 miles! I have never rented a U-Haul with less than 160,000 miles--and you could feel each and every one of them. I flew Southwest Airlines coming back. One thing about Southwest that I rather like is the sense of humor that their attendants have. They always managed to add just a little bit extra to the required safety announcements. The just this side of swishy flight attendant had me in stitches. A couple examples that I was able to remember and write down included: "In the event of a sudden loss of cabin pressure, emergency oxygen masks will fall from the ceiling. As soon as you stop screaming and grabbing the passenger next to you, put the oxygen mask over your nose and mouth.... If you are traveling with small children, what were you thinking? Remember to put your own mask on first before assisting your child with his mask." Labels: humor Friday, August 31, 2007
Imagine if the University of Michigan Were Building Christian Chapels... Here we have an example of a public school spending money on a facility that is only for members of one religion. While it is conceivable that a non-Muslim might use these footwashing areas, it is unlikely. From the August 29, 2007 Washington Times: DEARBORN, Mich. — Plans to construct two foot-washing stations continue at the University of Michigan at Dearborn amid concerns that such action would constitute an establishment of religion by the public university.I'm sure the ACLU has already filed suit for something that would be clearly an establishment of religion, if it was done on behalf of Christians: So far, the school has not lost money from donors and, as far as he knows, no one has challenged the foot baths legally.Oh. Where's the ACLU? Or does their commitment to "separation of church and state" not extend to "separation of mosque and state"? Labels: establishment of religion Meaningful, Deeply Committed Relationships That's the language that gets used in the same-sex marriage lawsuits. That's the image of homosexuality that you see in television shows like Will and Grace--or at least the pursuit of such relationships. A gay law professor recently took exception to my remarks about Senator Craig's behavior as indicative of a significant subculture (known as the "Tearoom Trade" after one of the early sociological works about this subject) within homosexual men--but if I'm wrong about that, what explains this booklet offered by Lambda Legal, a gay rights law firm?
I would really like to think that this depraved behavior--having sex in public restrooms, or at least soliciting complete strangers for a one-time sexual act somewhere else--is a really, really tiny minority of homosexuals. But I am skeptical of that for two reasons: 1. If it is a tiny minority, why do supposedly respectable gay rights groups like Lambda Legal and the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force feel the need to defend it or provide legal advice about how to deal with the legal consequences? This would be equivalent to Focus on the Family providing instructions for Christians about how to get away with assaulting homosexuals--confirming a false and nasty stereotype. 2. There are about 150,000,000 males in the United States, of which perhaps 120,000,000 are adults. If we use the figure that 4.5% of the adult male population is homosexual and bisexual, that would mean that there are about 5,400,000 gay men in America. If 1% of that population are part of the "Tearoom Trade," that would be about 54,000 men scattered across a huge country. Yet over the years, I have been impressed how much evidence I see of this activity. When I went to USC and UCLA, there were certain restrooms you learned pretty quickly not to go into or you would see or hear things that you didn't want to see or hear. In most public restrooms in rest areas in California that I have used over the last 30 years, in spite of efforts by the state to paint over graffiti and repair "glory holes" (which are holes drilled through stall walls and used for what you think), I have seen advertisements indicating at what time and how to signal one's interest. Arrests such as Senator Craig's are actually pretty common in most big cities--and vice squads devote resources to this because there is a big problem with this. Tucker Carlson of CNN apparently admitted being so angry at some guy soliciting him for sex in a public restroom that he grabbed the guy and banged his head against the wall. There are website devoted to nothing but telling homosexuals where to go for this, like this one. There are homosexual celebrities like George Michael who keep doing this again and again. The Advocate (not a worksafe website because of the ads) did a poll of their readers: Caught having sex in a London park, George Michael told a reporter, "This is my culture! I'm not doing anything illegal. The police don't even come up here any more. I'm a free man, I can do whatever I want. I'm not harming anyone." Do you agree with George?And 53.5% of the 2792 votes agreed with George Michael. For all the attempts to pretend that this is a minor subculture of male homosexuality--the evidence suggests that it is not minor at all. UPDATE: Here's an article from the August 31, 2007 St. Louis Post-Dispatch about Laud Humphreys' pioneering sociological research, done in restrooms in the St. Louis area: Laud Humphreys' research was pioneering. It shattered stereotypes. It also cost him his job.The article goes on to characterize the sort of men who were doing this: Humphreys conducted in-depth interviews with 100 men. Half of those he interviewed in the bathrooms. The other half he interviewed using clever and controversial methods. He would write down the men's license plate numbers and track them down a year later. He donned a disguise and talked to the men under the pretense of a social health survey. The men presumably never learned they were part of Humphreys' study.Well, what a surprise, it was the 1960s when Humphreys did this study. I am not surprised that only 14% were out of the closet. It makes you wonder about the rationality of of the 38% who considered themselves "neither bisexual nor homosexual" but were doing this. "Most of the people who do these things are actually heterosexual," said Joel Jackson, youth advocacy coordinator for Project Ark, a St. Louis-based AIDS outreach group.Oh yeah. Men who look for sex with other men are "actually heterosexual." I hear this a lot from homosexual activists--the insistence that these embarrassing sorts aren't really homosexuals, but are straight men. I'm reminded of Lincoln's famous observation that you can call a tail a leg, but a dog still has four legs, no matter what you call it. To their credit, the article goes on to emphasize how widespread this practice is: The senator's case also brought attention to the little-known tearoom trade. Today, websites share ratings and comments on different public places for homosexual sex. There are hundreds listed in the St. Louis area, from restrooms along the highway to big-box stores in Kirkwood to shopping malls in Chesterfield and Frontenac. Labels: homosexuality Thursday, August 30, 2007
Iowa Marriage Laws Discriminate Varnum v. Brien is a recent Iowa District Court decision that rules that Iowa's law that limits marriage to a man and a woman violates the equal protection clause of the Iowa Constitution. The argument is one that you have heard before--that because the law prohibits two men from marrying, or two women from marrying, it discriminates based on sex. Much of the beginning of the decision is an attempt by plaintiffs and defendants to exclude expert testimony about the consequences (positive or negative) of same-sex marriage. What should concern Americans, even if they aren't hostile to same-sex marriage, is that the judge was deciding which experts weren't expert enough to testify because he was going to use their opinions and statements as part of the process of deciding whether same-sex marriage was constitutionally allowed or not. Ordinarily, weighing the merits of a particular law is a job for the legislature--not a judge. A judge is supposed to be deciding points of law, not, "Is this a good idea or not?" Something of the judge's pretense at objectivity can be deduced from how one of the expert witnesses for the defendants (those arguing that the Iowa law should be allowed to stand): The Defendant also submits the statements of purported economist Dr. Steven Rhoads. Dr. Rhoads possesses a Ph.D. in government and an M.P.A. in Economic Analysis and Public Policy.Hmmm. A Masters' Public Administration with that specialty certainly doesn't sound like a purported economist. One of the claims for why Iowa should allow same-sex marriage is: 36. Because their parents cannot marry, Minor Plaintiffs are subjected to the historical stigma of "illegitimacy" or "bastardy" which, though of diminished social and legal force, is still a status widely considered undesirable.Unlike, of course, the stigma of having two lesbians raising them. That wouldn't be stigmatizing at all! Some of the other claims are real head-scratchers in terms of, "What constitutional right is that?" 37. Without access to the institution, familar language and legal label of marriage, Plaintiffs are unable instantly or adequately to communicate the depth and permanence of their commitment to others, or to obtain respect for that commitment, as others do simply by invoking their married status.What part of the U.S. or Iowa Constitution guarantees this right to "adequately" "communicate the depth and permanence of their commitment"? And I also scratch my head when I wonder what they are talking about. My wife and I have been married 27 years, but when we lived in California--and even here in Idaho--that makes us pretty darn weird. Marriage, unfortunately, is only slightly more permanent than a car loan to many Americans now. A state recognized marriage is actually less of a commitment than a car loan; just try to get your bank to walk away from your car loan without payment in full. 38. Plaintiffs' inability to marry their chosen partners is a painful frustration of their life goals and dreams, their personal happiness and their self-determination.Having to work five days a week at a job that I don't enjoy "is a painful frustration of [my] life goals and dreams, [my] personal happiness and [my] self-determination." But I know better than to claim that I have some right to force the government to solve that problem for me. Some of this language reminds me of something that an idealistic, not very bright teenager might write, with no awareness that the courts are supposed to be tied at least lightly to reality: 41. Plaintiffs are harmed in an infinite number of daily transactions as a result of being denied the right to marry, including transactions with employers, hospital, courts, preschools, insurance companies, businesses such as health clubs, and public agencies including taxing bodies.An infinite number of daily transactions? Well, maybe countless (in the sense of, "too many for us to immediately figure out"). But infinite--someone needs to go look up the meaning of that word. Some of these claims are completely laughable, not because they are wrong on all counts, but because they are wrong on the single count that matters in this case: same-sex: 96. Marriage has evolved over time, in legislatures and courts, to meet the changing needs of American society and to embody fuller notions of consent and personal choice.It certainly has evolved and changed. But there is one aspect of marriage that has been constant for at least three thousand years, and across (as near as I can tell) every culture, everywhere: it involves opposite sex. There have been polygamous marriage forms (one man, multiple women). Far less frequently, polyandrous marriages (one woman, multiple men). But two or more people of the same sex? Never before in history that I know of--and that is one of the most constant aspects of marriage in all human societies. The history of this decision is hopelessly wrong. Claim 99 starts out okay: When Iowa's first marriage law was passed, the centuries-old doctrine of coverture, in which the woman's separate legal identity disappeared into the man's upon marriage, reigned in Iowa as elsewhere.This is true, as far as it goes. In fact, a number of states had (and may still have) statements that a married couple are legally one person. I believe that this is why a married person may not be legally compelled to testify against his or her spouse. The next sentence however, is what happens when "women's studies" replaces real academic disciplines: Married women were essentially chattel; they were not considered "persons" who could exercise rights, hold property, earn money, or deny their husbands access to their bodies.Chattel means personal property, other than real estate. You know--something that you can buy and sell, like a slave. This is flat out false. And while the rest of the sentence is essentially correct about the limited economic independence of a married woman, the idea that a married woman could not "exercise rights" (such as the right to free speech) is quite bizarre, and as far as I can determine, completely false. Many chose not to do so because they "knew their place" in society, or because they preferred not to have conflicts with social norms, but this is a bit different from having no rights. This historical claim also appears to be incorrect: The vast majority of States had laws prohibiting certain marriages based on racial and ethnic classifications; most of these laws survived long after Emancipation.As I pointed out last year in my statement to the Idaho legislative committee considering a marriage amendment: Such laws were never universal in the United States. In 1910, at the heights of Social Darwinism (which put enormous emphasis on racial difference), only 28 out of the 46 states had such laws.[Gabriel J. Chin and Hrishi Karthikeyan, "Preserving Racial Identity: Population Patterns and the Application of Anti-Miscegenation Statutes to Asian Americans, 1910-1950," Berkeley Asian Law Journal, 9:1 [2002], 14.]There were certainly laws based on race--in some states, prohibiting whites from marrying non-whites; in others, prohibiting whites from marrying Asians. But ethnic classifications? I would like to see some examples. I really don't know enough about the Iowa Constitution's equal protection clause to know if this decision is wrong about this--but I do know that the appropriate way to understand its intent is to look at when it was added, and how it was understood at the time. Art. I, sec. 6: All laws of a general nature shall have a uniform operation; the general assembly shall not grant to any citizen, or class of citizens, privileges or immunities, which, upon the same terms shall not equally belong to all citizens.Here is the 1857 Constitution, where this clause first appears. If Iowa's voters intended this as a ban on discrimination against homosexuals in 1857, my, what a progressive state they were! Labels: homosexuality Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The Billionaires Are Corrupting the Political Process This isn't exactly news; I was surprised when I was took History of Los Angeles class in grad school that millionaires (equivalent to a lot more money today) were among the big funders of some of Southern California's socialist communes in the 1900-20 period. There are a couple of disturbing examples that have popped up in the news in the last few days. The first is that one of the leftist groups funded by billionaires like George Soros and Peter Lewis was fined very heavily for unlawful contributions: The Federal Election Commission has fined one of the last cycle’s biggest liberal political action committees $775,000 for using unregulated soft money to boost John Kerry and other Democratic candidates during the 2004 elections.It makes you wonder how much larger Bush's victory margin would have been if the billionaires hadn't been breaking the law. This other news item is about some rather curiously large campaign contributions to Hilary Clinton's campaign. From the August 28, 2007 Wall Street Journal: Does this remind anyone of what happened when a bunch of Buddhist nuns gave big contributions to the Clinton/Gore campaign--and then admitted that it wasn't their money? From September 4, 1997 CNN: Oh yes, I'm sure none of that money came from overseas! Without question! My friend Stacy McCain's book Donkey Cons has a very detailed account of the corruption involved with overseas money coming into the Clinton/Gore campaign in 1996--and how Republicans made no serious effort to look into this. Labels: overprivileged liberals I Have Something Nice To Say About Larry Miller Pontiac in Boise My son's 2005 Pontiac Sunfire, while still under factory warranty, developed a problem with the driver's side power window motor--it just stopped working. Larry Miller Pontiac fixed it under warranty. Well, a year and a half later, it developed the same symptoms. GM charges $180 for the motor, and the labor was quoted at about $140. Hmmm. Can we replace this ourselves? Trying to find a repair manual that covers this recent of a Pontiac was impossible. I mentioned the problem a while back, and one of my readers scanned and emailed me the 2005 Pontiac Sunfire door wiring diagram, and the 2000 Pontiac Sunfire remove and replace instructions. She wasn't having any luck, either, on finding the 2005 instructions. So I opened up the door. Just in case you get really bored: 1. Unscrew the sheet metal screw that holds the driver's side mirror control in place. 2. Unscrew about five sheet metal screws that hold the driver's door panel at bottom and rear to the door. 3. Unscrew two 6mm bolts that hold the door handle part of the door panel to the door. Once inside, my wife immediately noticed that the plastic sheeting that is supposed to provide water protection for the motor and other mechanisms had a big orange rust stain where the motor is. It also appears that GM's notion of proper sealing would only work in the Atacama Desert. The clear plastic sheet is attached to the door by some black goo--and not enough of that. A little experimentation with a multimeter, fiddling with the power window switch, and listening to everything, confirmed that the motor was intermittently bad. The window regulator itself (the gear and scissor-lever arrangement that moves the window up and down) seemed to work just fine. But the more I looked at what was involved in removing that motor--since I couldn't see the far side of the mechanism without fiber optics or shrinking myself down to one inch tall--I decided to go to Larry Miller Pontiac. They couldn't do anything about the bad motor--out of parts warranty--but they were willing to install the $55 motor that I bought online. It was clearly an exact replacement, and they did the labor for $122. I suspect because I made an issue of it, they probably did a better job of sealing up the plastic sheet. Labels: cars I Just Noticed That Larry Craig's Three Kids Are All Adopted At least, according to Wikipedia (which isn't one of the most reliable sources): Craig is married and has adopted the three children that his wife, Suzanne, had from her previous marriage.[5] Through his adopted children, Craig has nine grandchildren.[6]I see quite a bit of stuff indicating that Craig has a strong interest in adoption issues. I mentioned a few days back the Idaho Statesman's coverage of the nasty rumors about Craig, and that report included this: Craig and the then-Suzanne Scott had their first date on Valentine's Day 1980, when Craig was making his first run for Congress. Craig proposed six months after the scandal, on Suzanne's birthday, Dec. 28, 1982. They married in July 1983.What's interesting is that Craig specifically responded to a question of whether theirs was a "marriage of convenience." (I recently read an interview with former New Jersey Governor McGreevey's ex-wife. It was a marriage of convenience for McGreevey, to make himself electable as governor--she just wasn't brought in on this detail.) I think very highly of people that adopt. There are a lot of children out there that need a home. But the more I connect the dots on this, the more it really does look like a marriage of convenience. Maybe Craig has some sterility problem. Maybe his wife decided that she had three kids and didn't want anymore. But in the same way that all the individual actions in that men's room don't mean much by themselves, when you put them all together--it does make you wonder, doesn't it? A politician has to wear a mask that hides who he is really is--to be different people to different interest groups--in order to get elected. For a lot of homosexuals, unless they choose to be open about it, they also have to wear a mask that hides who they really are. Perhaps all these gay politicians are the consequence of people who get used to wearing a mask about their sexuality--and find it very easy to then leapfrog into politics, a career that does not require, but certainly encourages equivocation, shading the truth, and flat-out lies. None of this would matter if Craig had either been discreet, or intelligent. But he managed to fail on both counts with this stunt in Minneapolis, and made all of this relevant. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Sacrificing the SUVs I mentioned earlier that the Goracle's fans showed up at one of his events driving expensive, gas-guzzling SUVs. The Hedgehog Report invites you to count the number of SUVs parked about John Edwards house--who has just called on Americans to give up driving SUVs, as part of sacrifice: There are days I wonder who is more stupid: the journalists who fall all over themselves praising "courageous" people like John Edwards, or John Edwards, for assuming that no one else will see what a transparently dishonest person he is. Senator Craig's not the only politician with some hypocrisy problems. Labels: enviromental lunacy, hypocrisy A Way To Avoid Tongue & Throat Cancer: Reduce Your Lifetime Sex Partner Count This August 28, 2007 CNN report warns that oral cancers are associated with HPV-16, and that as the number of oral sex partners a man has increases, the risk increases: There are several strains of HPV, which cause ordinary warts but also genital warts. These in turn can cause cancer in some cases. The researchers looked at various studies and concluded that HPV 16 was especially likely to be linked with certain cancers of the tonsil and base of tongue.This report from Journal Watch gives details on a similar study: The investigators collected demographic information and determined HPV infection status in 100 patients with OPC and 200 age- and sex-matched healthy controls. Most patients (86%) were male. Family history of cancer (especially squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck), a personal history of oral papillomas, poor long-term oral hygiene, consumption of 15 or more alcoholic drinks per week for more than 14 years, and a smoking history of more than 20 pack-years were all associated with OPC. In a multivariate analysis, the following factors were also significantly associated with OPC: having had more than 26 lifetime vaginal-sex partners or more than 6 lifetime oral-sex partners and presence of serum antibodies to HPV-16b L1 capsid protein. Of 60 patients with available frozen tissue samples, 72% had HPV-16 DNA in tumor cell nuclei. Neither high tobacco use nor high alcohol use was an additive factor in HPV-induced OPC. The authors speculate that alcohol- and tobacco-induced OPC may follow a different pathway than HPV-16–induced disease.My guess is that this increase in cancers since 1973 is because of: 1. Increased number of sexual partners increasing the chance of running into someone infected with HPV-16. Yes, I know that before 1973, every adult didn't stay celibate until marriage, and remain faithful for life. But I don't think anyone seriously believes that fear of pregnancy (which had risks for both woman and man back then) and the prevailing notions of sexual morality didn't act as something of a constraint. Remember that the percentage of a population that will be infected with an STD increases exponentially with the number of different sexual partners. Double the number of different sexual partners over a particular period, and you octuple the number of STD cases. 2. My impression from reading literature of the period is also that oral sex became a more mainstream activity in the 1970s, perhaps because of the increased exposure to it in pornography and sex manuals. Labels: STDs Rep. Filner's Aggressive History I mentioned here about the other Congressional misbehavior which should be at least as much of a concern as Senator Craig's actions. As much as I don't approve of soliciting for sex in public restrooms, assault and battery is clearly the more serious problem--and yet Rep. Filner (D-CA) is getting a pass on this from the national media--probably because he's a Democrat, and violence by a Democrat doesn't make him a hypocrite. It turns out that Filner's problem with pushing people isn't new. From the August 22, 2007 San Diego Union-Tribune: WASHINGTON – Rep. Bob Filner's alleged altercation with an airline employee in Virginia on Sunday, which led to an assault-and-battery charge against the San Diego Democrat, wasn't his first such run-in, according to a 2003 Justice Department incident report. Labels: politicians behaving badly It's Beginning To Feel Like A Twilight Zone Episode, Or A Kafka Novel Senator Craig gets caught in a sting operation at an airport public restroom--started because of widespread lewdness there. As I mentioned yesterday, the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force issues a press release that says that the police shouldn't be trying to stop this kind of thing. An attempt to stop gay men from having anonymous sex on a public beach is termed "homophobia" and compared to the Holocaust. The ACLU challenges a Virginia law that prohibits anonymous sex in an adult bookstore (which is as much a public place as any other business subject to government regulation and laws) because it interferes with gays having sex. Ditto, for the ACLU's challenge to a conviction for sex in a public restroom because it interfered with homosexuals finding anonymous sex partners. All of these actions show that this is a pretty widespread behavior--and that clearly, homosexuals and their advocates believe that it is sufficiently fundamental to homosexuality that they need to challenge laws against sex in public places because it interferes with homosexuals getting sex. (There's a constitutional right to have sex in public places. It's right after to the constitutional right to feel good about yourself. Look it up.) But the mayor of Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is now in deep trouble for having expressed his concerns about public restroom sex. From the August 28, 2007 South Florida Sun-Sentinel: Fort Lauderdale - Mayor Jim Naugle's series of controversial comments about homosexuality cost him his seat Tuesday on the board that promotes Broward County to tourists.Which is it? Is Mayor Naugle being a bigot for saying that there is "rampant gay sex in public restrooms"? If so, why does the NGLTF and the ACLU seem to be in agreement? Or is the problem that Mayor Naugle is saying something that most men over 25 already know? That there is a problem with this, and homosexual activists want to pretend otherwise? Or is this just a blatant attempt to use power to remind people that truth is not to be spoken? To paraphrase an old Quaker expression, Mayor Naugle needs to "speak truth to depravity." I'm an adult. I would be disgusted if I walked into a public restroom and saw people having sex (even if it was a heterosexual couple). It isn't the right place for it. I certainly don't think that a kid should be seeing this--for whom this might be traumatic or at least emotionally troubling. But I guess that's just a sign of my homophobia. Labels: homosexuality Fans of the Goracle And What They Drive Instapundit likes to say that he'll start to take global warming seriously when the advocates start to act like they take global warming seriously. Zombietime has a great collection of photos that she took in the parking lot at the Marin Civic Center when the Goracle came to speak about global warming. Go here, and scroll down to "Gallery of Gore Fan SUVs." And let me emphasize: Marin County is among the most wretched excess of wealth counties in America. These are people who can easily afford to show their environmental responsibility by having their Mercedes SUVs dismantled, and then buying a hybrid or whatever hair shirt best shows off their concern for Mother Earth. It reminds of something that happened to a friend of mine back in 1992. He was driving north from San Francisco to Sonoma County. This friend was one of the tiny number of Republicans in Sonoma County, and he had a Bush bumper sticker on his car. Somewhere in Marin County, a Volvo pulled up alongside him on the 101, and started swearing and screaming at him. Not being a lip reader, about all he could make out was something about Bush--and then the deranged liberal pulled out a handgun and started waving it around. (Doubtless a member of at least two gun control groups, I'm sure.) Fortunately, one of those rare, historic events, there really was a cop around when you need one--a California Highway Patrol car was two cars back, saw this confrontation, and pulled the brandishing liberal over. My Corvette gets about 20-21 mpg around town; often in the high 20s on the highway. I telecommute four days a week. For this house, I spent a bit of extra money to make sure that I had R-50 insulation in my attic. I used 2x6 construction in the walls instead of 2x4 to add air space insulation, and every window in the house opens, so that most of the year I can use natural breezes for cooling instead of air conditioning. I am almost certainly doing less damage to Mother Earth than these environmentally self-righteous sorts. Labels: enviromental lunacy, hypocrisy Tuesday, August 28, 2007
CNN Is Overdoing The Craig Scandal It seemed to occupy most of the 5:30 to 6:00 half hour of Wolf Blitzer. I'm sorry, but it isn't important. Not like the Iraq War, or the prospect of nuclear war with Iran, the global warming scam, or any of a number of real issues. As Classical Values points out, there's a member of the House who has been charged with assault and battery against an airline employee--and that's not getting anywhere near the press. Is it because he's a Democrat? The usual suspects are saying that it is because the Craig scandal exposes the hypocrisy of conservatives for being against gay marriage while in the closet. There are some problems with that explanation: 1. I suspect there aren't that many closeted gay Republicans who are social conservatives. The two gay Republican House members--Kolbe and Mark Foley--weren't social conservatives at all. 2. If Craig's scandal is newsworthy because he did one thing in private and voted the opposite direction, then why is Filner's assault and battery charge not news? Is it because he's acting privately in accordance with Democratic Party soft on crime policies? Similarly, is the near absence of national coverage of Rep. William Jefferson (D-LA) scandal involving $90,000 in cash in the freezer because corruption is in accordance with Democratic Party policies? Labels: low standards of journalism "The Devil Made Me Do It" I watched Senator Craig's speech in Boise today. What little possibility that I entertained that he might, indeed, have been "misunderstood" is gone. The tone that I heard--a bit of self-righteous indignation that sounded terribly insincere--as he insisted that he isn't a homosexual reminded me way too much of, "I never had relations with that woman!" Craig used an awful lot of passive voice constructions about the shame that he has brought onto his family, his office, and Idaho. That's not a sign that he has come to grips with who was at fault--either in his actions in the restroom, his attempt to use his office to avoid charges, or his decision to plead guilty. Worse was his attempt to redirect blame for his decision to plead guilty to the lesser charge. Those of you above a certain age may recall the comedian Flip Wilson's famous excuse, "The devil made me do it!" Senator Craig is blaming his incredibly bad decision to plead guilty, in the hopes of making the more serious charge go away, on what he characterizes as eight months of the Idaho Statesman harassing him about the rumors that have been floating around. Now, the parallel of the Idaho Statesman to the Prince of Darkness has some merit to it; so does the attempt to blame sinful decisions on others, rather than accepting personal responsibility for a decision so astonishingly bad that it makes me think of the Charge of the Light Brigade. The Idaho Statesman, to their credit, was the only major paper in Idaho that did not discuss the rumors last year about Craig's homosexuality. The Statesman asked questions of Senator Craig over the last few months that included the very serious but not particularly credible claim that someone had sex with Senator Craig in a public restroom in Union Station in Washington, DC. So his response when he gets arrested under very similar circumstances is to try to bluff his way out with his business card, then hopes that pleading guilty to a lesser charge will make it "go away"? Many very sensible, intelligent, disciplined people out there manage to confine all the madness, obsession, and self-control problems to one little corner of their lives. (In my case, it's my home office.) For Senator Craig--like a fair number of others--it appears to be their sexuality, and things that relate to it. I wrote a letter to his office earlier today strongly encouraging Senator Craig to resign his position. At a minimum, his guilty plea shows an enormous inability to make good decisions--probably because it is tied to his sexuality, and fear of its exposure. I also pointed out that he is going to need the time to work through some of his issues. And there is hope for him. Robert L. Spitzer is the professor of psychiatry who played a vital role in getting homosexuality removed from DSM-III, the American Psychiatric Association's standard for defining mental illness. A few years back, Professor Spitzer became curious to know if reparative therapy (which purports to help homosexuals turn straight) worked. His paper, "Can some gay men and lesbians change their sexual orientation? 200 participants reporting a change from homosexual to heterosexual orientation," Archives of Sexual Behavior 32.5 (Oct 2003): p403-18, asked that question. Spitzer surveyed 143 males and 57 females who had been primarily homosexual in orientation, had gone through various forms of reparative therapy, and were at least five years post-therapy. These were mostly not people that had fought with homosexual urges, but were actively engaged: Although all of the participants had been sexually attracted to members of the same sex, a small proportion had never engaged in consensual homosexual sex (males, 13%; females, 4%; [chi square](1) = 3.2, p < .10). Significantly more males than females had engaged in consensual homosexual sex with more than 50 different sexual partners during their lifetime (males, 34%; females, 2%; [chi square](1) = 20.6, p < .001). Significantly more males than females had not experienced consensual heterosexual sex before the therapy effort (males, 53%; females, 33%; [chi square](1) = 5.6, p < .025).The survey group were homosexuals who were highly motivated, and were uncomfortable with their homosexuality--and they were far more successful than Professor Spitzer had expected in changing not just their behavior but their preference: The mean of the Sexual Attraction Scale for both males and females at PRE was in the very high homosexual range: males, 91 (SD = 19.8); females, 88 (SD = 13.8), t(198) : 1.3, ns. The mean of the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale for both males and females at PRE was also in the very high homosexual range: males, 77 (SD = 24.5); females, 76.5 (SD = 26.7), t(183) < sd =" 21.4);" sd =" 14.5);" n =" 57)" n =" 139)" sd =" 14.5);" sd =" 8.1);">To compare the amount of change from PRE to POST, the PRE values were subtracted from the POST values. On the Sexual Attraction Scale, the mean change in females was 80 (n = 57; SD = 20), significantly more than that in males, 67.8 (n = 143; SD = 20; t(198) = -3.6, p < .001). On the Sexual Orientation Self-Identity Scale, the mean change in males was 68.1 (n = 131 ; SD = 28.3), not significantly different from the change in females, 73.4, (n = 52; SD = 29.3; t(181) = -1.1. This wasn't a sudden change, either, nor was it done after a few dalliances with homosexuality: The mean age at onset of sexual arousal to the same sex was 12 years (SD = 2.9). About 18 years (SD = 7.8) later, at age 30, was the beginning of the therapy that they found helpful. The mean duration from the onset of the therapy to the participant beginning to feel a change in their sexual orientation was 1.9 (SD = 1.9) years. At the time of the interview, 21% (n = 42) reported that they were still involved in some form of reparative therapy, usually referring to continuing to attend an ex-gay support group or, on their own, having a life-long struggle with the underlying issues that they believed were related to their becoming homosexual. For these participants, the mean duration of therapy up until the interview was 15.0 (SD = 7.7) years. For the 79% (n = 158) of the participants who were no longer involved in any type of reparative therapy, the mean duration of the therapy was 4.7 (SD = 3.5) years.Now, Spitzer is careful not to overplay this. He reports that some of them still would have occasional lusts for the opposite sex. But it does appear that homosexuality doesn't have to be a life sentence--at least for those who are sincerely interested in change. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics The Throat Slasher Yesterday I guessed yesterday from initial reports that he was mentally ill. And yes, this isn't the first time that he has done this, and deinstitutionalization played a role. From the August 28, 2007 Chicago Tribune: The suspect, identified as 39-year-old Kenton Drew Astin, worked at CU last year as a cashier at the Alferd Packer Grill at the student center, school officials said. He was arrested and hospitalized Monday with serious stab wounds, the school said.And so he was released? Labels: deinstitutionalization Hypocrites Who Say One In Public, Do Another in Private No, I'm not talking about Senator Craig. I'm talking about Sylvester Stallone, who argues in interviews that handguns should be confiscated from all Americans: "until America, door to door, takes every handgun, this is what you're gonna have... It really is pathetic... We're livin' in the Dark Ages over there." --but applied for, and apparently received, a concealed carry license from the Los Angeles County Sheriff. Let me emphasize that getting a concealed carry license in Los Angeles County is extremely difficult. If you aren't a judge or a celebrity, your chances of getting a permit are very, very low. Labels: gun rights The Idaho Statesman Story About Senator Craig It's here, and it's pretty damaging to his claim that the incident he pled guilty to was a "misunderstanding": Over five months, the Statesman examined rumors about Craig dating to his college days and his 1982 pre-emptive denial that he had sex with underage congressional pages.Former New Jersey Governor McGreevey also married after enough rumors floated around to become an obstacle to running for higher office. What a tragedy. Labels: homosexuality, Idaho politics Sex in Public Restrooms Just so that you don't think this is a weird behavior frowned on by homosexual advocacy groups--from the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force:
Labels: homosexuality That Incident in Sheboygan I mentioned some days ago a woman who had been arrested when she came home and found a relative molesting her children, and proceeded to stab him. This news report from WTMJ 620 says: Prosecutors in Sheboygan County have filed a misdemeanor charge against a mother who stabbed a teenager after he was caught sexually assaulting the woman's 8-year-old daughter.This makes it sound like the stabbing took place some time after they caught the nephew--purely an act of revenge. If so, I can see why she is being charged. But the somewhat graphic criminal complaint (which has been edited to remove the mother's name), is actually quite a bit more ambiguous: Simon stated he began to punch and kick Martin, forcing Martin out of the bedroom into the apartment living room where he continued to punch and kick Martin. Simon stated that _______ and Jason then returned to the apartment and attempted to stop Simon. While it is not completely clear from the various statements as to from where and who obtained a knife, at one point Simon stated he was struggling with Martin for a knife, using a toy snow shovel and a portable fan to beat Martin to gain control of the knife, which he did. Simon stated _______ and Jason convinced him to wait outside the apartment for police to arrive, which he did. At some point during Simon’s beating of Martin, ______ was told of what had happened in the bedroom and she apparently called police.At least from what appears in the criminal complaint, it would take a very liberal jury to convict the mother. I'm not sure that a jury that liberal exists, except if the jury pool consists of ACLU members. Labels: child sexual abuse Monday, August 27, 2007
Humor Michael Vick, the football player, is in trouble for illegal dog fighting involvement. So what better than this new dog chew toy? Labels: humor What's Wrong With This Picture? Others have pointed it out, but it says something about either the honesty or intelligence of the at AFP reporter, photographer, and editor involved that they don't realize that this news story: An elderly Iraqi woman shows two bullets which she says hit her house following an early coalition forces raid in the predominantly Shiite Baghdad suburb of Sadr City.doesn't go with the picture:  For those of you who don't shoot rifles--she isn't holding bullets, but entire unfired cartridges. It also appears that these aren't even U.S. military issue ammo. UPDATE: The QandO Blog has pictures of current U.S. military ammo. It is possible that other NATO forces in the theater are using these older 5.56mm rounds--but unless they are throwing unfired ammunition at her house, this story and picture are, at best, wrong. Labels: low standards of journalism, media manipulation |
