Snow
Well, I’ve lost it. This morning I read a weather blog. OK, it turned out to be sort of interesting, if weather has suddenly become your biggest preoccupation. For example, I learned that the last storm — which dumped a comical 28.5 inches of snow on Philadelphia — “weighed” a total of almost 40 billion pounds. And — this will excite you — last Friday was Weatherperson’s Day, in honor of the first forecaster, who issued the first incorrect prognostication (guess) in 1705.
With barely a chance to dig out from under the second-biggest storm in the city’s history (we’ve also had the third biggest snowfall ever during this season), we’re now expecting another, oh, one to two feet over the next 72 hours. This time, my magnolia tree is on its own; no more will I sweep heavy snow from its platformesque leaves, thereby dousing myself in wet snow.
At least there’s the drinking. When the first storm hit just before Christmas, we hosted a neighborhood party that was the kind of success that only the combination of climatological disaster and whimsy (think: Woodstock) can bring about. Now the bar has been set, but who knew it would need to be cleared again, and again, this season?This past Saturday, the owners of the house next to ours (the two are twin homes) hosted the party — actually, one of them did, while her husband, a pediatric resident, worked the overnight shift. (In fact, he didn’t even know about it, and I suggested to his wife — herself a resident — that we might clean up, Cat in the Hat style, without his ever learning of the revelry that had taken over his home.)
So who’s going to host the party on Wednesday? By now, the drinking may start to remind us all of Barfly.
It’s Always the Gays, continued
Turns out I wasn’t the only one who took issue with Heather MacDonald’s piece that used the decoupling of parenting and biology to argue against gay marriage. Michael Ginsborg, who hosts the information-packed Prop 8 and the Right to Marry blog, engaged in a rare but effective opinion piece of his own, in which he refuted MacDonald’s principal points. It’s well worth reading.
Back to the Burka
In an earlier post, I criticized the French government for its plan to ban the public wearing of the burka. It won’t liberate women, it will drive the issue underground, it sacrifices religious freedom to nothing more than public sensibility, and so on.
But what about the government’s recent decision to deny citizenship to a Muslim man whose wife is veiled? Is that equally indefensible? I don’t think so. The guy’s comments about his power over his wife amounted to an almost cartoonishly chauvinistic litany. According to the official with responsibility for the decision, the less-than-enlightened hubby said: “My wife will never be able to go out without the full veil; I don’t believe in gender equality; women have inferior status; I will not respect the principles of the secular society.”
If that’s really what he said, the government made the right choice. This is quite a different situation from the one presented by banning the burka in public. Here, the government has to decide whether to accept, as a French citizen, someone who openly rejects gender equality, one of the principal pillars of modern, secular society (at least rhetorically, anyway). The burka that his wife wears is but one tangible expression of his repressive behavior, and the government should no more approve his application than one filed by a domestic abuser. To gain membership in a secular democracy, there are certain principles by which one agrees to abide.
So what’s different about the “no burkas in public” rule? It’s all a matter of degree, of course, but I think the cases are quite different. Although the burka is certainly a marker of women’s inequality under religious law, it’s more than that; for some women, at least, it might be a deeply felt expression of their own religious belief, uncoerced at least in any obvious way by their husbands. A society should be open enough to accommodate the kind of conversation that the burka invites, even if it makes many (including me) uncomfortable. But a potential citizen who openly sneers at the very foundations of gender equality, in 2010, should be rejected — both on the merits and as a symbol of France’s willingness to take a stand in favor of women, and against those who would oppress them.
It’s Always the Gays
In a lengthy and some respects informative piece in the National Review, Heather MacDonald expresses concern that allowing same-sex marriages will further the erosion of the link between biology and parenting. Notwithstanding its merits as a review of the transformations wrought by the recent availability of assisted reproduction, though, the article reduces to a familiar trope: While the gays haven’t caused the mess we’re in, preventing them from marrying will at least slow the rot.
MacDonald acknowledges that the long-held connection between parenting and biology has been under assault of late, because of assisted reproduction, yes, but also as a result of the liberalization of divorce law and the higher incidence of cohabitation; now we have many kids living with people who didn’t supply the gametes. In the good old days, she pines, such disconnections were mostly limited to the relatively rare cases of adoption and the death of the biological parents. Now all hell has broken lose, and parenting is increasingly seen as a matter of intent rather than of biology.
Little of this has to do with gay parents and their children; we are late-comers to adoption and assisted reproduction. So what could possibly justify targeting gay parents and their children for discriminatory treatment? The argument reduces to a few points.
First, the visuals are bad: MacDonald opens her article with a photo of two gay men holding their soon-to-be-baptized child, and wonders “Where’s the mother?” Later, she says that gay parenting is a “visible affirmation of the social acceptability of severing genetic contribution from parenting.” MacDonald makes clear enough that she doesn’t like any kind of assisted reproduction, but nowhere suggests that we ought to revisit the legality of such arrangements. No, let’s just exclude gays and lesbians because they can’t even in principle procreate without outside assistance. At least we don’t have to see what’s going on with opposite-sex couples.
Second, men and women are complementary and bring this difference to their children. She’s smart enough to acknowledge, in passing, that she’s speaking only of “averages,” but seems committed to this sociological variant of natural law theory. The problem here, besides the essentialist impulse, is that gays and lesbians are already raising kids, and will continue to do so. MacDonald doesn’t even suggest that this should stop. As Andrew Sullivan points out, she contradicts her principal objection by stating that
The primary challenge to traditional notions of parenthood comes from gay conception, not gay marriage. Even if gays never gain the right to marry, the practice of gay conception will presumably continue apace. Given that continuation, gay marriage at least preserves one strand of traditional child-bearing arrangements: raising children within the context of marriage.
What, then, is the objection (aside from the uncomfortable visuals)? Gay marriage might be the “last straw” that we should be reluctant to add to the overburdened camel (marriage). This is her third and final point, but she can only make it by setting up a false opposition between the two people in a gay relationship and the overall society: Oh, if only we could be confident that same-sex marriages wouldn’t further erode this troubled institution, who wouldn’t be in favor of affirming the right of gay couples to put the “official, public stamp of legitimacy on their love.” (To her credit, MacDonald does acknowledge that the cost to gays of this denial of equality is “large.”) In a similar vein, she slams as “astoundingly blind” the libertarian view that “gay marriage is a trivial matter that affects only the parties involved.”
The only “straw” properly in this narrative is the straw man argument MacDonald has set up. No one who has seriously thought about marriage equality believes the matter is “trivial” or that it affects only the immediate parties. It’s not a question of “the gays” against everyone else. Many people at every point along the liberal-to-conservative spectrum believe that allowing gay couples to marry will strengthen the institution of marriage, by signaling and reaffirming the value of bilateral commitment. And what about the cost to marriage of defining it as a discriminatory, repressive institution? For some heterosexual couples, at least, the state’s continuing refusal to permit same-sex couples to wed is a black mark against marriage itself; this perception might itself reduce marriage rates.
Worse, MacDonald nowhere mentions the cost to the children of gay couples of denying their parents the right to marry. This omission is especially glaring in light of her statement that it might turn out that (as she clearly believes) children do best with “stability in their lives.” Against some theorized harm to the children of heterosexual parents by allowing gays to marry, she counts the welfare of the kids of gay unions — not at all.
This piece is much more thought-provoking than her earlier, risible attempt to cast doubt on marriage equality by suggesting that it might make African-American men reluctant to marry (really!), but it ultimately makes the same error as that article: Blaming the gays for any imaginable harm, whether we’ve caused it, or not.
Tax Court Offers Valuable Public Education on Gender Identity Disorder and Sexual Reassignment Surgery
Yesterday, the U.S. Tax Court overturned a determination by the IRS that sexual reassignment surgery doesn’t qualify as a deductible medical expense within the meaning of the Internal Revenue Code (and the regulations implementing it). (A copy is here.)
In a long decision that came with several concurring and dissenting opinions (and ran a total of almost 140 pages), the court offered a clear and sympathetic portrayal of the life of the woman, born as a man, whose life-long battle with gender identity disorder (”GID”) culminated in sexual reassignment surgery. Much of the decision is taken up, appropriately, with a discussion of whether the tax law views such surgery as as a qualified medical expense, but the court also was at pains to detail the life, and the course of medical and psychological treatment, that the petitioner had undergone.
The majority opinion is good public education. It walks the reader through the medical community’s evolving view of this disorder, the step-wise approach taken to dealing with this disorder (which can sometimes stop at hormone therapy), and the improved psychological outcomes for those successfully treated. The court makes the medical and psychological communities’ evolution comprehensible, and shows why federal public policy — tax policy, in this case — should follow these experts’ views on medical issues.
But the education isn’t complete without one of the concurring opinions. Judge Holmes’s opinion (the second of the concurring opinions, beginning on page 82) would have decided the issue without answering the contested question of whether the procedure was “medically necessary.” But since the majority had discussed the medical and psychological issues in such detail, Holmes felt compelled to offer a competing view of sexual reassignment surgery, noting that the medical community is in conflict on the issue, and that experts disagree about gender confusion. Some find those so affected “delusional,” others believe that the condition is a social construction, some think it’s a form of erotic attachment, and, as Holmes conceded, the predominant view is as expressed by the majority: that GID is a medical disorder that requires varying levels of intervention, depending on severity. Unlike the disrespect toward the petitioner that the dissenters could barely conceal, Judge Holmes tried instead to flesh out the full debate about gender identity disorder.
A tax court decision might seem like an unlikely place for such a discussion, but it’s not. Tax law is policy and judgment as much as it is statutory and regulatory interpretation, and tax law affects everyone — including those who are gender non-conforming. Of course, this case would never have surfaced had the sex reassignment surgery been covered by insurance, because then there would have been no (or not enough) expenses to deduct. But insurance policies don’t typically cover such surgery. Perhaps this opinion will start a conversation about whether they should.
Maggie Gallagher is “Just Saying…” (But You Can’t)
Maggie Gallagher says:
We have no scientific evidence at all, that I know of, that children raised by same-sex couples benefit if their unions are legally considered marriages. Why is that now self-evident?
Then she says:
I do not think same-sex marriage will serve child well-being in any appreciable way, and I don’t think there is much sign that that is the goal.
So…we shouldn’t be able to just claim that the marriage of their parents will help kids in gay and lesbian-headed families. We need proof. But Gallagher can claim — also without the evidence she’s just said is needed to make any assertion — that “same-sex marriage [won't] serve child well-being in any appreciable way.” She just “thinks” it, and, apparently, that should be good enough for policy-makers.
This lack of consistency should be astonishing, but it’s the norm for Maggie Gallagher.
If nothing but science will do, then we’re left with speculation on both sides. If that’s so, I prefer the speculation of gay and lesbian parents who are actually raising kids to that of (in this sense) uninformed oppositionists like Gallagher. Here, for example, is my own self-interested view as a gay dad.
Even in liberal West Philly, my kids feel (and will increasingly feel) their difference from the majority of families. We tell our kids we’re married (Gallagher would call us liars, and has1) but soon they’ll know that the state treats their parents as second-class citizens. This can’t be good for them (although of course we’ll deal with it).
Am I wrong? Is that really not self-evident?
- Where marriage is legally prohibited, she says: we can point with confidence to those who claim civil unions are marriages and say with confidence, “Not in the United States.” Thanks for that. ↩
Shadows and Light — The Compromises of an Aging Athlete
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Yesterday, Roger Federer captured his record-extending sixteenth title in a Grand Slam tournament, winning the Australian Open in a one-sided match against the latest pasty-faced Brit pretender, Andy Murray. (Here’s a good summary of the match.) Murray, a Scot, is an inventive and amazingly mobile player, and he’ll soon win one of these big ones: probably either the U.S. or the Australian Open (the suffocating pressure at Wimbledon might be too much to overcome, at least for awhile). But watching Federer cruise to yet another title, one had to ask: “Will this never end?”
It probably will, and sometime soon. But these days, with rival Rafael Nadal’s career clearly in peril because of the persistent injuries his relentless style and body type make inevitable, it’s easy to see Federer as unstoppable. And part of the reason is that the past year has seen a new Federer: a man who realizes that his time at the top is limited, and that he can’t simply assume he’s going to win every match on his unsurpassed talent alone. Compromises have been made; some wise and inevitable, others disturbing (if slightly amusing).
Over the past year, Federer has added the strategic drop shot to his already formidable arsenal. For years, he’d eschewed it as a desperate, almost avulsive, way to end a point. Now he uses it against the Legion of Baseline Heroes, who stand back and blast away. Throw in a drop shot and watch their comfort level drop. He’s also added a violent second-serve return, no longer able to rely on his sliced or chipped backhand to get the point back on neutral terms. He didn’t do much of this sort of returning against Murray (and when he tried, it rarely worked), but the threat of it can have the desired effect of unsettling the opponent.
These innovations are smart, and, if anything, one might ask why Federer didn’t try them sooner in his career. The answer, of course, is that he didn’t need to.With the glaring exception of Nadal (mostly on clay), Federer was unbeatable. From 2005-2007, he barely lost any matches at all.
Now, it’s different. The general public, to the extent it follows tennis at all, looks to the four Grand Slam tournaments (mentioned above, plus the French Open) as the measure of success; there, Federer continues at his insane level — 23 consecutive semifinals, and 8 consecutive finals, reached; an average of more than two of these majors won every year for the past eight years; and so on. But Federer has been mortal for the past few years at all of the other tournaments. He now saves and marshals his best efforts.
Less savory are some of the other things Federer has been willing to do in order to keep winning. In his quarter-final match against the human ball-striking machine named Nikolay Davydenko, Federer was in deep trouble: Down a set and a break of serve, and almost down another. He rallied and won (of course), but he used a kind of perceptive gamesmanship to do so. After the first set, he took a bathroom break. This is permissible, and a regular practice of many players. (Even Venus Williams took such a break at this year’s Aussie Open, and I can’t recall seeing her do that before.) But Federer has long decried gamesmanship of any kind, calling out the whiny Novak Djokovic for his “injury” timeouts. Of course, when I heard why Federer took the time out, I was too impressed by his perceptive abilities to criticize him. Speaking to ESPN’s Darren Cahill shortly after the match, Federer said he was trying to survive until the sun went down; the match had been conducted under a late-afternoon sun, and Federer had said (almost poetically) that the ball was “half in shadow, half in light” so that he could only see half of it. Someone could construct a musical suite on this theme.
But what about Federer’s sophisticated mind-game (not really “trash talking”, to be precise) against Murray in the days before the match? Some of it was just funny: In the interview after his semifinal with Jo-Wilfried Tsonga, Federer said that the British hadn’t won a Grand Slam “in like 150,000″ years (74 is the slightly more accurate number). But in press conferences before the final, Federer turned up the heat: Murray would feel the pressure; It would be important for Murray — but not for him — to win the first set; Murray’s head-to-head winning record against Federer (which now stands at 6-5) was constructed when Federer “wasn’t at [his] very best”; Murray had cratered during the previous major final encounter (at the 2008 U.S. Open, also won by Federer in straight sets).
The tactics seem to have worked, but maybe they weren’t necessary. Federer enjoys amazing crowd support everywhere he goes, even against home-town heroes. This, too, helps him win. Is his new approach a risk to this capital of good will? Perhaps. And to what lengths will he go to remain on top? We’ll see. But these latest actions by the great Federer remind us that elite athletes will do what they need, even if the rest of us don’t like or understand it. Just watch and enjoy his sublime tennis, while it lasts.
What’s Wrong with CBS, the Super Bowl, and Football
This will be the official Grouch Post for January. One of them, anyway.
Maybe you’ve heard by now about CBS’s decisions on ads for the Super Bowl. They’ve decided to “relax” their policy against advocacy ads to allow one from Focus on the Family that uses NFL star Tim Tebow and his mother to condemn abortion. (The message: “He wasn’t aborted! Therefore no one should be, ever!” What were you expecting in thirty seconds, sophistication?) It turns out that their policy had been evolving, but we just didn’t know it until now. Very convenient.
Meanwhile, an ad from an entity known as ManCrunch has been rejected, with the following explanation: “the creative is not within the Network’s Broadcast Standards for Super Bowl Sunday.” It might help to know what those standards are, but CBS isn’t saying. Here’s the rejected video:
No, the Super Bowl isn’t being aired on April 1 this year. There’s a great deal that can be said about CBS’s decision. I begin with the obvious question: Would they have rejected a similar dating service ad for an opposite-sex couple? But that’s the easy observation. I’ll bet that the real reason had something to do with the way the ad brings to the surface the simmering homoeroticism in male contact sports (and here extended to the jersey-wearing couch potatoes who watch them).
I can’t say I’m sorry to see the ad go, though. I have no idea why a gay dating site would want to run this ad. The two guys don’t seem to know they’re even gay until they find their hands together in the chip bowl (yuck, btw). Worse, it closes with a pan over to the flummoxed friend who, one thinks, might be checking out other Super Bowl parties within the next few minutes. And do not get me started about the production values. I’m not the first to suggest that ManCrunch is offended like a fox, as they (never) say. They couldn’t have expected CBS to actually run this thing; but now they’re getting tons of free publicity. My tastless ad submission for this blogsite will soon follow.
As the Janet Jackson warbdrobe malfunction moment that will live forever reminds us, the Super Bowl has long been an uneasy mix of family entertainment, statement on the current culture, and — lest we forget — controlled violence.
It’s this violence that makes me so not a fan of professional football. As I’ve written before, distressing numbers of pro football players sustain long-term neurological and physical problems, often leading to early death and disability. (One might say, uncharitably, that it’s too bad that Tim Tebow’s mom’s concerns about her son don’t seem to extend to his life after football.) And watching the level of aggression that leads to such serious issues is itself a producer of violence: Domestic violence, fueled by alcohol and the negative emotions sustained by the fans of the losing team, spikes on Super Bowl Sunday. Enjoy the game, everyone!
Public Health and Welfare in State of the Union Speech
Despite my current frustration with Obama — or maybe because of it — I watched the entire State of the Union speech. I’m sure it’s being endlessly picked apart by all kinds of talking heads, bloggers, and the like. Me, I’m watching the Australian Open. (The indomitable Serena Williams just beat back a tough challenge from the letter-limited Li Na to advance to the final. No news there.) But I do want to pause to grant some limited props to Obama for mentioning two of my pet issues: Public health and the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”
The promise on DADT had generated an anticipatory, bloggy buzz, and it was heartening to hear the President speak to it. I’m confident it will happen. (Missing, though, was any mention of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which I had thought was also likely to pass into law this year. I was reminded that this issue had been raised in a State of the Union as long ago as the end of the Clinton Administration. Can we please get there? The goal seems to shimmer and recede….)
The DADT comment came towards the very end of a pretty good speech, and very close in time to another issue near and dear to me: public health. Of course, everything the President mentions is public health to me (health care reform is just the most obvious example, but I can’t bear to talk about it right now). But to hear him pledge energy, money and effort to public health efforts to fight terrorism and infectious disease — now that was something. My night was made in five minutes.
Now, to bed. Oh, wait…the recently unretired Justine Henin is taking the court….
Two Stories of Civic-Minded Nazis
I. Things to Adopt: A Highway and a “Whites-Only” Policy
According to this story, a National Nazi party (called the National Socialist Movement) has just adopted one mile of U.S. 85 in Colorado. Here, in their own words, is what they stand for: “The rights of white people everywhere…and promotion of white separation.” Want to join? Here’s who’s eligible: “non-Semitic heterosexuals’ [sic] of European Descent.” I guess it’s too much to expect good grammar from angry pinheads.
You know the drill: The state is helpless to prevent this message, it’s free speech, if the government allows one message it has to allow them all, blah blah blah. But is this true? First, states, however revenue-strapped, should get out of the business of having organizations “sponsor” miles of state roads. This is a quintessentially government function, and now we can see what happens when the government allows third parties to participate. Under the program, the sponsoring group agrees to pick up litter, thereby saving the state some money in would otherwise spend in doing so. A worthwhile project, but maybe not worth it. What’s next, the Wal-Mart Old Faithful Geyser? And the argument about the need for government to stay out of this dispute, by letting every message wash over it, is much too simple. States also have non-discrimination laws, and the state should be able to stand its ground here, saying that it can’t be in bed with neo-Nazis. Let them march. But they shouldn’t get the imprimatur of state sponsorship. States with those terminally annoying vanity plates set ground rules for those displays (i.e, no profanity, no offensive language, no sense of irony, etc.), so why not here? If we can dictate or limit what people place on their own cars, why not on state highways?
The policies related to the program are here. As you can see, the state leaves itself plenty of discretion. Why not use it in this case?
II. (Ne) Vive (Pas) La France!
I hate the burka. My reaction to it, and to what I think it says about the women who wear them — and worse, the uncovered husbands who enforce this anti-social discipline — is visceral.
I’m not alone. The French government, apparently taking its cue from the more defensible ban of religious symbolism in schools, is now seriously considering banning full face coverings from many public places, including government offices and public transportation. For a good debate on the issue, listen to the BBC Newshour story from today.
This would be a terrible mistake, precisely because people feel so strongly about the issue. It’s in those cases that individuals most need protection. And banning the burka will only mean that many Muslim women wouldn’t be able to leave their homes. How is that going to help the assimilationist goal of this legislation? I don’t oppose all government policies in support of secularism; in fact, we are too sometimes too far to the contrary, as with the bans on same-sex marriages, which are justifiable only by appeal to (dominant) religion, But this measure is likely to be counter-productive, and will feed the rhetoric of extremists.
As for the title of this post: It’s not fair, even in blog-hyperbole speak, to call this move Nazism. And the parallel I’m trying to draw is obviously too simple. But there’s surely something to it, and this latest move by the French should concern us all.