Cartoonists With Attitude

[Another outtake from my correspondence with "Linus." I've edited it somewhat, so it is not identical to the email I originally sent Linus.]

Can someone believe that God is against people having homosexual sex, and still treat lesbian and gay people with substantive dignity?

There are three issues here, I think.

First of all, can you hold the view that lesbian and gay people within your particular faith should be celibate, while treating them with substantive dignity?

On the surface, it seems like you can — after all, people make the choice to join your faith, and if they freely choose to be celibate, who am I to question it?

But I’d argue you cannot, because it’s inherently cruel for lesbian and gay children (by which I mean, all children who will grow up to be lgb, regardless of if they’re aware of their sexual orientation during their childhood) to be brought up in a faith that teaches them that their own sexuality is so “disordered” that it’s against natural law/God’s plan and they must never, ever practice it. Many of their deepest desires are — they are taught — immoral and against God.

For many people, sexuality — including expressing sexuality — is an important part of their self. There is nothing more cruel than a child being raised to believe that part of their core self is inherently unworthy of love. Many children raised this way take years or decades to grow beyond the self-hatred that they are taught; some will turn to drugs or alcohol to dull the pain; some will commit suicide.

You may believe that it’s possible to bring up children to both believe that they are fine, lovable, and worthy, and that for them to ever have sex is disordered, immoral and wrong. I think it wouldn’t take much time listening to lgbt people raised in traditional Christian families to learn that for many, that’s not so. Most will spend huge portions of their live plagued by internalized self-hatred, arguably the worst pain of all.

Raising people in that way is unjust and cruel. I don’t think it’s compatible with substantive dignity.

The second question is, can you hold your beliefs and avoid devaluing those lgbt people who aren’t members of your church?

Again, I’d argue the answer is no.

When a traditionalist Christian says in effect “God considers your family and love life wrong, and the only acceptable way for you to live, in God’s opinion, is as a celibate,” of course that Christian is devaluing lgbt people. It’s saying that a core element of their being is inherently immoral.

No matter how sincerely the words are meant, no matter how kindly they’re put, telling someone that their love is immoral devalues them.

Now comes the third question: Can you treat lgbt people with real dignity while calling for them to be legally second-class citizens, by banning them from equal treatment under civil law?

I think here, the answer is self-evident: No. Without legal equality, we cannot have real dignity of treatment.

I know my answer may seem hurtful to those who oppose marriage equality, yet think of themselves as a friend to lgb people. To those readers, I say: I don’t doubt your intentions or your good will. But there is no substitute for equality. Someone treated unequally — no matter how kind the heart or sincere the intent of the person treating them unequally – is still, at the end of the day, being treated unequally.

(This is part of an email I recently wrote to a thoughtful Christian acquaintance, who I shall call “Linus.” Obviously, our discussion was set off by Dan Savages recent remarks. My thanks to Linus for his kind permission to include some quotes from his letter. The occasional links were added by me just now, not part of the original correspondence. –Amp]

I guess I am really taking exception to Savage’s characterization of the Bible as “pro-slavery” when a proper reading makes it clear that over the course of the narrative, the pro-slavery statements are turned on their ear and negated. By my understanding, Christians haven’t altered their views on slavery from what the Bible says; they are anti-slavery because the Bible is anti-slavery.

By labeling out-of-context statements about slavery as “bullshit”, putting forth an argument that the Bible is pro-slavery, and then equating them to different moral teachings that he disagrees with, Savage is not treating the Bible or its present-day adherents with any fairness. [...]

I think it is important to reflect that while Christians hold the entirety of scripture to be inspired by God – it is still written in a historical context by a human author. Paul, in situ, is writing as a pastor to a member of his flock, instructing him on how he is to receive a returned runaway slave. I suggest you read Philemon to get a sense of the exchange, it is only a few paragraphs long, but the tone is appropriate for a pastor’s instruction in the form of a letter. A full-on command to free the slave or an emancipation declaration might not have achieved Paul’s purpose, but his wording and tone make it clear where he stands on the issue. I cannot tell you why God would use subtle language and tone in this case, or the many other cases where he is mysterious – it is a question that has the potential to be an entire theological discussion by itself.

I think your interpretation is, while not unreasonable, EXTREMELY strained. It’s the interpretation of a good person who is strongly motivated to believe the Bible doesn’t condone slavery, and who has found a way to interpret the text to support that reading.

But it’s not a straightforward, obvious reading of the text. Philemon, which you’re putting great weight on, is ambiguous at best. Especially in light of other passages of the New Testament (e.g., in Titus when Paul says “tell slaves to be submissive to their masters and to give satisfaction in every respect; they are not to talk back, not to pilfer, but to show complete and perfect fidelity, so that in everything they may be an ornament to the doctrine of God our Savior”), a much more straightforward interpretation is that Paul expected Philemon to return as BOTH a slave and a brother in Christ, and would have seen nothing greatly wrong with that outcome.

This is Savage’s point (if I’ve understood it). When you genuinely want to, you subscribe to a “subtle” — I’d say generous — interpretation of the text to reconcile the NT’s condoning slavery with your own belief that condoning slavery is wrong.

If you genuinely wanted to, you could make a similar generous reconciliation for homosexuality. For instance, you argue that we should bear in mind that the scriptures were “written in a historical context by a human author.” But the human authors who wrote scripture simply didn’t have a concept of “gay and lesbian people” as we do. In Paul’s time, it’s very plausible that the homosexual acts he was condemning were between adult men and young boys, and he wasn’t familiar with the idea of two adult men or women living together in a consensual relationship.

Etc, etc. I’m sure you know the arguments; they do require you to interpret the text a bit, but not in a more extreme way than what you do to argue that the NT isn’t condoning slavery.

Please know that I don’t say that with any sense of satisfaction – it has very real implications for how I practice my personal faith – but I feel like it is the only consistent position I can take based on how I understand Christianity and the teachings of the Bible.

This is bothersome because you’re speaking as if you have no choice. You could decide that the Bible does not condemn consensual, loving same-sex relationships between adults; you have chosen not to. You could even more easily decide that the Bible doesn’t say anything about what civil law regarding same-sex marriage should be. Your understanding of the Bible, and your view of when it is and is not okay to interpret the text (as you do when considering slavery), and what that means for civil law, is not an objective fact. It is your own subjective judgment.

The Bible isn’t forcing you to treat lgbt people unequally. Nothing in the text of the Bible forces you to believe that Paul was intending to condemn two adult women living together and forming a loving family. At some level, perhaps unconsciously, you’re choosing to believe that. (And I say this without any sense of satisfaction, by the way! I would much prefer to welcome you as an ally than to disagree with you on this issue.)

[More from the letter in a later post.]

[Note: I've renamed this post from the original title, "Is Dan Savage a Bully."]

Ever read one of those comments and you’re agreeing with it, agreeing with it, and then the writer yanks the rug out from under you?

So I was reading this comment from Jessica, on a NOMblog entry about Dan Savage’s speech that some Christian teenagers walked out of (more on that in a moment). A teacher implied that Savage’s comments were bullying, and Jessica wrote:

Bullying, bullying, bullying,

He bullies she and she bullies he and everyone bullies and get bullied.

Bullying has become politicized. That is, everyone is accusing everyone else of bullying. It is the latest tin word, thoughtlessly shot across to the other side’s ranks.

And I am so in agreement. (Perhaps because I had just read this post, by a Catholic blogger who is furious at Savage for “bullying” but sees no problem with his charming habit of calling gay and lesbian folks “brownshirts.”)

Jessica continues:

Well, I’ll tell you something, I was really bullied, at school, many years ago…

Again, I’m totally with you, Jessica. I lived your pain. I know where you’re coming from.

…and there only way yo cure it is not to have lectures and diversity meetings and talk, the only way to cure bullying is to hang the bullies from lampposts with a sign around their neck, I am a rotten bully and deserve worse.

Any survivor of bullying can tell you this, if you are willing to listen.

Eeeeek!

Jessica, please get off my side thanks so much.

Anyhow, about that Dan Savage speech.

1) Credit to the videographer: That is a gorgeously framed shot.

2) The thing I found most objectionable, on first listen, was Savage’s use of the term “pansy-assed” — an attack Savage has since apologized for, while standing by the rest of his speech (although admitting that his use of the word “bullshit” may not have been wise).

3) Is there really a case for calling what Savage did “bullying?” I guess it was rude to use the word “bullshit” when referring to someone’s religion. But the actual content of Savage’s statement is an argument. And I have trouble accepting that disagreeing with (some) Christians is tantamount to bullying Christians.

Although there are many Christians with other, sometimes more sophisticated, anti-gay arguments, you don’t have to talk to opponents of lgbt rights much to see that the “I believe it because it’s what’s in the Bible” comes up a lot. It’s legitimate of Savage to respond to that argument.

4) I can see an argument that Savage was wrong — rude, uncivil, and insensitive — to use the word “bullshit” three times. Savage isn’t an average man on the street; he’s a professional and seasoned speaker, who was invited to speak to an audience of minors. Under those circumstances, it’s reasonable to hold Savage to higher standards than we’d hold folks to in an average political disagreement in a bar.

5) On the other hand, this wasn’t a school assembly with a captive audience. It was a journalism conference that student journalists chose to attend; and as far as I know, all of the students had the option of simply not attending Savage’s speech. That Savage uses swear words while speaking and writing is hardly a surprise to anyone; and future journalists shouldn’t spontaneously blanch and flee because someone uses the word “bullshit” three times while making an argument they disagree with.

6) I have some doubt that this was a spontaneous walkout; the walkout starts before Savage ever swears, the students in the video are often smirking, and the video is so very nicely framed. If this was, in fact, a planned protest, that wouldn’t delegitimize the protest, so it’s not an important point.

7) When I was a teenager, I swore constantly, except when I was around grownups. Hearing the word “bullshit” was not a shocker. Are teenagers now different? Are right-wing Christian teenagers different?

8 ) Although I don’t think Savage’s words were bullying, I can see an argument that they were insensitive. The truth is, Christians in the US are used to having their beliefs treated with a great deal of deference and respect; saying that some of the Bible is “bullshit” probably isn’t the smartest way to get the point across. Savage’s argument — which I think was legitimate — has been lost, because either out of sincerity or out of opportunism, right-wingers are now shocked (or, perhaps, “shocked! shocked!”) that Savage used cuss words while discussing the Bible. Or that he criticized the Bible at all – it’s hard to tell if people are objecting to his tone or to the argument itself.

9) Although I realize the title of this post could be seen as an invitation for a discussion of Dan Savage generally, I’d rather not go there. Let’s restrict discussion to this one particular incident, please.

Conservative blogger Jennifer Rubin:

Richard Grenell, the openly gay spokesman recently hired to sharpen the foreign policy message of Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, has resigned in the wake of a full-court press by anti-gay conservatives. [...]

According to sources familiar with the situation, Grenell decided to resign after being kept under wraps during a time when national security issues, including the president’s ad concerning Osama bin Laden, had emerged front and center in the campaign. [...]

Right Turn has learned from multiple sources that the senior officials from the Romney campaign and respected Republicans not on the campaign contacted Ric Grenell over the weekend in an attempt to persuade him not to leave the campaign. Those were unsuccessful. During the two weeks after Grenell’s hiring was announced the Romney campaign did not put Grenell out to comment on national security matters and did not use him on a press foreign policy conference call. Despite the controversy in new media and in conservative circles, there was no public statement of support for Grenell by the campaign and no supportive social conservatives were enlisted to calm the waters. Beyond his statement, Grenell has declined further comment today.

The title of this post is a little vague. If Grenell was driven off Romney’s team, then who did the driving?

The title of Rubin’s post is “Richard Grenell hounded from Romney campaign by anti-gay conservatives,” and that’s a fair enough take on it. But I think that Grenell, a longtime Republican activist, knew from the start that some prominent conservatives, from the religious right to the National Review, would oppose his appointment. Grenell was fully prepared to take some flack.

It’s more likely that what Grenell couldn’t stand was being kept in the closet (pun intended) by the Romney campaign. Romney could have put Grenell out there on the Sunday morning shows and other gabfests and let Grenell do his job: Talking right-wing foreign policy. (A job that Grenell could have done well, and certainly better than Romney himself.) Instead, Romney chose to let right-wing anti-gays intimidate his campaign. Romney, typically, was trying to have it both ways; keeping Grenell on staff as his foreign policy spokesman (demonstrating to independent voters that Romney is not anti-gay), but not actually allowing Grenell to act as a spokesman (to placate the right wing).

I think Grenell understandably found that to be an impossible situation.

I think Grenell was driven off Romney’s team not by the entirely predictable whines of the anti-gay activists, but by Romney’s cowardly refusal to let Grenell do his job.

Although this episode usefully demonstrates how intolerant the GOP is, and how much Romney will bow to the far right, I’m not happy about it. There is a significant chance that Romney will be the next president; whoever replaces Grenell will no doubt be generally as right-wing as Grenell himself, but unlike Grenell will not be openly pro-gay rights. It’s imaginable that there could be a time, in the next four to eight years, when having someone who is pro-gay in the White House could make a difference. It would be better if Grenell had remained.

This New Yorker article based on Dale Carpenter’s book on Lawrence v Texas is really interesting reading.

(Quick backstory for those who need their memories refreshed: In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s law criminalizing gay sex in Bowers v. Hardwick.

The majority opinion in Bowers, written by Justice Byron White, framed the legal question as whether the constitution confers “a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.” Justice White’s opinion for the majority answered this question in the negative, stating that “to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious.” [...]

A sharply worded dissenting opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun attacked the majority opinion as having an “almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity.” Justice Blackmun suggested that “[o]nly the most willful blindness could obscure the fact that sexual intimacy is ‘a sensitive, key relationship of human existence, central to family life, community welfare, and the development of human personality’”

17 years later, in Lawrence v Texas, the Court overturned Bowers. Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority: “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. [...] the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.”)

The famous story behind Laurence v Texas is that cops looking for a gun instead found two men — John Lawrence and Tyron Garner — having sex in Lawrence’s bedroom, and arrested them. That story just isn’t true — Lawrence and Garner weren’t lovers and weren’t having sex.

That night in 1998, Lawrence, Garner, Eubanks, and probably a fourth man were all in Lawrence’s apartment. Lawrence and Eubanks were very drunk. Eubanks seems to have thought that Garner was being flirtatious with Lawrence, and fell into a jealous rage. He left the apartment, supposedly to get some soda, and called the police with a false story about his lover, Garner, brandishing a gun. There was never any dispute that the four policemen who responded to that call were entitled to enter the apartment to investigate, or that Lawrence began screaming furiously at the intruding officers, demanding to see a warrant and threatening to call his lawyer. There was sexually explicit art on the walls, notably a pencil drawing of a naked James Dean with oversized genitals. Eventually, Lawrence and Garner were charged with the crime of “deviate sexual intercourse, namely anal sex, with a member of the same sex (man).” [...]

The legal opportunity depended, however, upon persuading the defendants to go along with an unusual strategy. [...] Lawrence and Garner understood that they were being asked to keep the dirty secret that there was no dirty secret.

For me, the fact that Lawrence and Garner hadn’t actually been having sex when they were arrested perfectly illustrates the real meaning of anti-sodomy laws. The cops didn’t really witness any sex going on, but they did recognize that the men were gay, and that was reason enough for the cops to arrest the men. This is sodomy laws at their most pure: It’s not about stopping sex, it’s about criminalizing existing while homosexual.

The New Yorker article points out that a great deal of the change in the 17 years between the Bowers and Lawrence decisions — both on the Court and in America generally — is that Americans, both on the Court and in general, are far more likely to know openly gay or lesbian Americans (or at least to have watched Will and Grace). It’s not a coincidence that Justice Blackmun’s passionate dissent to Bowers was, to a great extent, written by his law clerk Pam Karlan, who is openly lesbian (she’s now a law professor at Stanford).

National gay-rights advocates certainly got a boost of confidence when, on the day of oral argument [regarding Lawrence] at the Supreme Court, someone in the audience whispered to Smith that Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—one of two potentially “gettable” swing voters on the Court—had recently sent a baby gift to a former clerk and her same-sex partner. That’s how much sentiment at the Court had shifted. Justice Lewis Powell, Jr., the swing vote in the 1986 Bowers decision, was seventy-eight when the case reached the high court. Baffled, he told his clerk, “I don’t believe I’ve ever met a homosexual.” That clerk, as it turns out, was gay. But by the time that Lawrence arrived to challenge Bowers the Justices had openly gay clerks, and prominent lawyers who were gay were arguing major business cases at the Court. Insofar as this case could be packaged as a fight for the dignity and respect of a class of successful clerks, advocates, and lawyers now well known to the Justices, it was much easier for Kennedy to conclude, as he did, that “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today.”

Anyway, the whole article is interesting and worth reading. Carpenter’s book sounds like it’ll be fascinating.

The Oxnard teen who shot a gay classmate he believed was flirting with him has agreed to spend the next 21 years in prison, a plea deal that ends a case that drew national attention and ignited debate on how schools should deal with openly gay students.

Brandon McInerney, who was 14 when he pulled a gun out of his backpack and shot Larry King twice in the head in 2008, has already served nearly four years in jail and would be released by the time he is 38, under terms of the deal.

Brandon McInerney’s crime was unforgivable. But I just don’t believe that two decades in prison for a crime committed when he was fourteen makes sense. It doesn’t bring Larry King back; it doesn’t act as a deterrent for the next 14 year old who might commit murder; it doesn’t bring justice. It doesn’t do anything but compound the tragedy.

If we want a just society, we can’t hold children as accountable as adults.

The Oxnard teen who shot a gay classmate he believed was flirting with him has agreed to spend the next 21 years in prison, a plea deal that ends a case that drew national attention and ignited debate on how schools should deal with openly gay students.

Brandon McInerney, who was 14 when he pulled a gun out of his backpack and shot Larry King twice in the head in 2008, has already served nearly four years in jail and would be released by the time he is 38, under terms of the deal.

Brandon McInerney’s crime was unforgivable. But I just don’t believe that two decades in prison for a crime committed when he was fourteen makes sense. It doesn’t bring Larry King back; it doesn’t act as a deterrent for the next 14 year old who might commit murder; it doesn’t bring justice. It doesn’t do anything but compound the tragedy.

If we want a just society, we can’t hold children as accountable as adults.

[Crossposted at Family Scholars Blog.]

In an anti-abortion/anti-marriage equality essay, Stephen Heaney writes:

With a different understanding of marriage, one might argue that same-sex couples are harmed by the lack of marital status because they believe it is owed to them.

The simple fact that no one in the entire history of humanity has ever thought it even possible for two people of the same sex to marry should give us pause.

Stephen is, of course, exaggerating; obviously, some people in “the entire history of humanity” have thought same-sex marriage possible, or we would not be discussing it now.

The same day I read Stephen’s essay, I also read this, by “Tardiff Mark”, in the comments at Unequally Yoked.

Rather, what needs explanation is why a sizable minority in Europe and North America have, in the late twentieth century, come to think that marriage could be anything else than what it has always and everywhere been. Those pushing for a change tend to explain the situation by saying that their opponents are ignorant bigots. Those pushing for a change, however, differ with the entire human race of earlier ages and just about the entire human race today. The only logical deduction is that those pushing for a change consider themselves to possess a wisdom and insight into marriage greater than just about the entire human race. Is that reasonable?

Mark also exaggerates when he says “what it has always and everywhere been.” Obviously, places like present-day Canada and New York are part of the set “always and everywhere.” (There are other historic examples.)

Mark and Stephen share not only a tendency towards exaggeration, but also the idea that it’s suspicious and probably wrong to have a belief that differs from what most of humanity has believed. The implication — a flat-out claim in Mark’s case — is that those who favor same-sex marriage are arrogant and conceited to think that we might be right when so many have disagreed with us.¹

But there are all sorts of things that virtually everyone in our society — including most opponents of same-sex marriage — believe that much or most of humanity, historically, would disagree with. Slavery, for example, was an accepted part of most human societies for thousands of years. The very idea of democracy with universal suffrage — allowing even poor people and women to vote — would have been not just foreign but immoral in the view of most humans in history.

Even if we limit ourselves to marriage, most human cultures have allowed children to marry adults, a practice we find disgusting. War brides — essentially a form of rape — have also been common. Marital rape, repulsive to us, would have been acceptable in most of human society for most of history.

Now let’s talk about homosexuality. Most opponents of same-sex marriage that I’ve spoken to tell me they have absolutely nothing against lesbians, gay men and bisexuals. On the contrary; like Rick Santorum, they allude to respected and loved LGB friends, and are at pains to say they do not think of homosexuals as disgusting immoral perverts. If we take same-sex marriage opponents at their words, then, they too are disagreeing with what much (perhaps most) of humanity has believed throughout history.

It’s fairly obvious that much, perhaps most, of humanity has believed some monstrous things throughout history. I don’t believe that modern people are individually any smarter than people born 100 or 1000 years ago. But collectively we may be wiser, because knowledge of morality, like knowledge of science and technology, may accumulate over time.

Think of some of the great discoveries — germs, for instance. That the Earth orbits the sun. Evolution. We also have great inventions, such as architecture, antibiotics, the printing press, the rudder, and democracy. These are bits of technology and knowledge that don’t need to be reinvented every generation; technological wisdom, when things work well, accumulate over time.

Do I have access to printed books and antibiotics because I am personally smarter than humans who lived 1000 years ago? Of course not. I have access to these things because I was lucky to be born in a time, a society, and an economic class that inherited access to these and other accumulated wonders from previous generations.

Similarly, moral wisdom, when things work well, accumulates over time. The realization that homosexuality is not morally disgusting — is in fact, not in any way morally inferior to heterosexuality — is one of the great discoveries of humanity, and one that reduces suffering and increases contentment just as surely as the discovery of a useful new medicine.

Just as the realization that rape is morally intolerable changed our understanding of marriage, the realization that homosexuality is moral is changing our understanding of marriage. That’s the way it should be. Change is not always bad, and clinging thoughtlessly to the often cruel bulk of human history is not a tenable moral position.

1. Mark and Stephen are far from alone in this assessment; I’ve seen many opponents of same-sex marriage make similar claims.

[Crossposted at Family Scholars, Alas, and TADA.]

From The Washington Post:

After receiving thousands of complaints, Apple has quietly axed an iPhone app that linked to a conservative Christian manifesto called the Manhattan Declaration, issued a year ago and signed by nearly a half-million people.

Apple approved the app in October, rating it a 4+ – free from objectionable material. But this week, Apple changed its iTune. The app “violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people,” Natalie Kerris told CNN.

The anti-app campaign, led by Change.org, mustered 7,700 petitions to Apple founder Steve Jobs. Supporters criticized the app as promoting hate and homophobia.

(Full Disclosure: The Manhattan Declaration was co-written by Robert George, who is on the board of directors of the Institute for American Values, which of course owns Family Scholars Blog, where I’m currently a guest blogger.)

NOM has released a video calling this “censorship,” and saying that “Steve Jobs… has become Big Brother.” At the Manhattan Declaration’s official blog, Billy Atwell writes:

NOM’s video makes a good point. Big Brother is traditionally seen as the government. But when corporations are able to grow to such an extent that they control the means of communication, can they be just as destructive and limiting for the American people? I think the situation with Apple removing the Manhattan Declaration’s app is an example of non-governmental power impacting civil discourse,which keeps us from suffering under tyranny.

This is the same Billy Atwell who only two months ago wrote:

The New Hampshire Union Leader, the state’s largest newspaper, refused the “wedding” announcement of Greg Gould and Aurelio Tine. New Hampshire legalized so-called same-sex marriage under state law in January 2010. [...]

If Gould truly respected individual thinking he would respect the Union Leader’s decision not to print an announcement regarding his “wedding.” Gould obviously would feel frustration or even resentment over the decision, but his incessant criticism leaves me wondering if he truly values individual thinking and independence.

So apparently corporate “censorship” (as NOM calls it) encourages tyranny if it’s repressing speech Atwell agrees with, but an example of “individual thinking and independence” when repressing speech Atwell disagrees with.

Atwell’s hypocrisy aside, he has a point about how large corporations impede civil discourse. Most Americans get their news and opinions not directly, but through corporate intermediaries. When CBS accepted a pro-life Super Bowl ad (but refused an ad for a gay dating site), they provided a irreplaceable forum for right-wing advocacy that left-wing advocates did not have access to.

In the last decade, the best defense against corporate dominance of public discourse has been the internet, where anyone (well, anyone able to write well, with internet access) can pull up a soap box and have some hope of finding readers. But as major corporations prepare to do away with “net neutrality,” and as devices like the iphone and the ipad increasingly privatize access to their users, I’m not sure we can depend on that continuing.

For the moment, I’m not really crying for any side. With outlets like talk radio, Fox News, and a zillion conservative newspapers and websites, anti-SSM folks are in no actual danger of not having access to the public square. Similarly, pro-equality folks have access to a lot of major media. No side can legitimately claim that their views have been effectively censored.

But a healthy public debate is a matter of degree. We don’t live in a totalitarian society, but our discourse isn’t as free and open as it should be. Obviously, it’s not possible for every viewpoint in the world to get “equal time” in finite media, so gatekeeping is sometimes necessary. I wouldn’t object to a major newspaper deciding not to give space to the flat earth society, for example, since that debate is largely settled and the flat-earthers have no significant constituency among the American public. But for corporations to decide to allow only one side of a major current controversy access to major media is a frightening imposition on public discourse.

So I agree with The Manhattan Declaration folks about one thing — Apple should allow their app, just as CBS should allow pro-lgbt ads in the Superbowl, and the biggest newspaper in a state should accept same-sex marriage announcements. Unfortunately, if their blog is anything to judge by, the folks behind The Manhattan Declaration don’t genuinely object to corporate gatekeepers of speech — they just object to corporate gatekeepers of their speech.

From the Washington Post:

Gay and lesbian teens in the United States are about 40 percent more likely than their straight peers to be punished by schools, police and the courts, according to a study published Monday, which finds that girls are especially at risk for unequal treatment. [...]

The study, from Yale University [found] substantial disparities between gay and straight teens in school expulsions, arrests, convictions and police stops. The harsher approach is not explained by differences in misconduct, the study says.

“The most striking difference was for lesbian and bisexual girls, and they were two to three times as likely as girls with similar behavior to be punished,” said Kathryn Himmelstein, lead author of the study, published in the journal Pediatrics.

Why the punishment gap exists is less clear.

It could be that lesbian, gay and bisexual teens who got in trouble didn’t get the same breaks as other teens – say, for youthful age or self-defense, Himmelstein said. Or it could be that girls in particular were punished more often because of discomfort with or bias toward some who don’t fit stereotypes of femininity.

In the comments of Box Turtle Bulletin, Kat wrote:

I see this result as being in line with other research, such as the finding that gender non-conforming women are more likely to be sexually harassed than those who present more femininely (link).

I’d guess, like the lead author, that when police or other agents of authority “eyeball” people to see who’s a troublemaker/suspicious or whether or not they’re worth being lenient towards that gender non-conforming appearance/behavior can contribute to being seen as a less savory character.

The research doesn’t appear to have measured punishments of trans versus cis people, but I strongly suspect that a similar “extra punishment” effect applies to trans teenagers.