Uteri
I’ve read it, and I still don’t believe it:
During last week’s discussion about a bill that would prohibit governments from deducting union dues from a worker’s paycheck, state Rep. Scott Randolph, D-Orlando, used his time during floor debate to argue that Republicans are against regulations — except when it comes to the little guys, or serves their specific interests.
At one point Randolph suggested that his wife “incorporate her uterus” to stop Republicans from pushing measures that would restrict abortions. Republicans, after all, wouldn’t want to further regulate a Florida business.
Apparently the GOP leadership of the House didn’t like the one-liner.
They told Democrats that Randolph is not to discuss body parts on the House floor.
[H]ouse GOP spokeswoman Katie Betta: “The Speaker has been clear about his expectations for conduct on the House for during debate. At one point during the debate, he mentioned to the entire House that members of both parties needed to be mindful of decorum during debate.
“Additionally, the Speaker believes it is important for all Members to be mindful of and respectful to visitors and guests, particularly the young pages and messengers who are seated in the chamber during debates. In the past, if the debate is going to contain language that would be considered inappropriate for children and other guests, the Speaker will make an announcement in advance, asking children and others who may be uncomfortable with the subject matter to leave the floor and gallery.”
Here’s one body part the Florida Republican leadership would do well not to mention, lest people be reminded that the GOP has lost theirs: the brain.
This reminded me of the story, a few years ago, where a local theater company had been pressured to change the marquee of its feature to “The Hoohaa Monologues.” This really happened, and it pains me to report that the Sunshine State was once again the anti-sunshine culprit. Here’s an excerpt from back in 2007:
The Hoohah Monologues is a replacement title for The Vagina Monologues — a well-known play about that part of the female body.
“We decided we would just use child slang for it. That’s how we decided on Hoohah Monologues,” Pfanenstiel said.
They did this after a driver who saw it complained to the theater, saying she was upset that her niece saw it.
“I’m on the phone and asked ‘What did you tell her?’ She’s like, ‘I’m offended I had to answer the question,’” Pfanenstiel said.
Well, if legislators’ constituents really are “offended” that they have to tell kids that their body parts have names, perhaps politicians are just responding to that.
But it’s crazy. The idea that kids shouldn’t be taught the names of body parts — even the scary ones — has been discredited by every responsible expert in childhood development. Not only will this knowledge help with having natural conversations about their bodies and their emerging sexuality, but it has the added benefit of being a tool in the campaign against child abuse.
I guess putting their collective heads in the sand is easier, if only in the short run.
Institute of Medicine Report Calls for More Funding for Research into LGBT Health Issues (and Quotes Renowned Expert)
This ABC News story links to the IOM Report, which is like a blast of warm energy after the Bush Administration’s policy of declining to fund any studies related to LGBT health issues. The Report is a sophisticated effort, even if it does underestimate the challenges in collecting data relating to sexual orientation.
Oh, and the story quotes me.
That Other Marriage Debate
Marriage equality is often at the top of the LGBT rights check-list.
But what about the inequality inherent in the super-privileged status we accord marriage in the first place? This week’s 365gay column explores that very question.
Criminal Laws Matter (Even When They Can’t Matter)
I’m using the word “matter” in two different senses, obviously. The point is that even an unconstitutional statute can “matter” in terms of the signals it sends out to the group who is the law’s target, even though it can’t legally matter.
In this week’s column, I explore the issue as it applies to interracial marriage and sodomy laws. The motivating event for the piece was the decision by a couple of Kansas legislators to strike a proposed amendment that would have removed the now-unenforceable ban against sexual intimacy by two people of the same sex.
Justice Kennedy’s admonition in Lawrence v. Texas is particularly apt here:
“When homosexual conduct is made criminal by the law of the State, that declaration in and of itself is an invitation to subject homosexual persons to discrimination both in the public and in the private spheres.”
That’s no less true when the law can’t be enforced.
Primary Care, Stress, and Public Health
This week’s New Yorker (3/21) features a fascinating story (”The Poverty Clinic”) about the link being established between high stress in early childhood and subsequent poor health outcomes. It’s starting to look like these stresses cause poor health even if they don’t lead to unhealthy behaviors (like smoking, drinking, poor eating habits, and so on). The stress, it turns out, has a long-term effect on the body’s immune system and leads to greater susceptibility to a host of chronic, life-threatening diseases (including heart disease and possibly cancer). (You need a subscription to access the full on-line article, but here is the abstract.)
The results aren’t surprising, but they do highlight the need for a more integrated approach to primary care. The pediatrician featured in the piece, who has a Masters in Public Health as well as a medical degree, has in fact initiated a team approach to the problem. Her clinic draws on a number of specialists outside the medical field to develop a cohesive approach to combating the social factors that cause elevated stress levels. Given the depth of the social, behavioral, and economic problems that lead to stress, this won’t be easy. But this new approach could be revolutionary.
It’s at least promising, when so little else is.
Beyond the “Pail”
Everything’s on a bucket list these days, and everyone’s got one: the 25 places you must visit; the 37 varieties of fried donuts you must try (which, come to think of it, is itself a good way to kick the bucket); the 100 books you must claim to have read, and so on.
All this talk about buckets could make you want to retch into one. These lists give the impression that life’s but a frenzied dash from one experience to the next, until — zap! — the buzzer sounds, and the contestant experiences the ultimate “Final Jeopardy”. It’s exhausting just to contemplate.
But that won’t stop me from mentioning that I’m on such a list. National Jurist, a freebie mag that’s mostly read by law students, just released a list of “23 Law Profs to Take Before You Die” — and I’m on it. The list is a diverting mix of academic and policy heavyweights (Elizabeth Warren, Brian Leiter, and the reprehensible John Yoo); celebrities (Bud Selig, Arlen Specter, and that vilified Tiger Mother, Amy Chua)…and, well, the rest of us. (The page with my entry is here.)
Rankings that try to compare complex things, like universities, aren’t to be taken seriously. (After all, who decides what measures count, and how to weight them?) And this isn’t even a ranking; it’s just a story that was apparently based on nominations that were submitted. (That’s really all I know about it.) But it’s flattering and fun to be named.
I mean, if this is the trend, why buck it?
The Hidden Costs of Inequality
In today’s column over at 365gay.com, I look at what inequality does to those who are in power.
If nothing else, take a look at the short but powerful video from a couple that really can’t afford to wait until the state gets around to letting them marry. One has Altzheimer’s disease.
Meteorite Rights (Postscript)
You might recall some months back a story I covered on a bizarre topic: Who had the rights to a meteorite, the physician practice leasing the building into which the tennis ball-sized object plummeted, or the owners of the building? The owners wanted the profits, while the lessees simply wanted to donate the thing to the Smithsonian (or to use the proceeds for charitable purposes, as detailed below).
The building’s owners wised up. Realizing their legal position was tenuous, and their public one worse, they gave in. Here’s the end of the story, from the same friend who happens to be married to one of the physicians whose offices were invaded by this alien rock:
Tomorrow Doctors Without Borders will pick up the check for $10,000 which we received from the Smithsonian for the meteorite. We won the legal battle so tomorrow we will donate the money and put this all to rest!
The Mutlus have returned to their native planet.
I love a happy ending!
Well, What’s to Stop Them?
The Phelps pinheads are at it again, this time threatening to picket the funerals of seven children who died in a house fire in rural Pennsylvania. Since the Supreme Court has effectively given them carte blanche to cause whatever emotional suffering they can — provided only that they take a few minutes to construct a sign or two that speaks to some political issue, however remote or irrelevant — expect much more of this lunacy. And, inevitably, self-help by those on the receiving end of this stupid sludge.
Devastated: The house in Madison Township, Pennsylvania, where the children died on Tuesday, March 8
I know, I know: Counter this “speech” with more speech.
Tell that to the family.
There’s No Such Thing as a Natural Disaster
That’s not completely true, of course, and in the aftermath of the triple-barreled horrors in Japan — earthquake, tsunami, nuclear meltdown — it might even seem callous to suggest otherwise, as the title of this post does. Surely the first two of these are natural disasters in the purest sense.
But calling something a “natural disaster,” while a humbling reminder of the fact that, as one seismologist said, “nature always bats last,” sometimes gets in the way of looking into the deep questions that make such disasters more or less catastrophic. Indeed, Andrew Sullivan wrote:
Readers have asked why we haven’t covered this event exhaustively. My answer is that this is a natural disaster, unlike, say, a revolution or a war, which requires little added comment.
I couldn’t disagree more. Consider:
Hurricane Katrina was barely one when it reached New Orleans — the big story there was the ineptitude of the Army Corps of Engineers, local, state, and federal politicians and bureaucrats, and the ham-handed efforts by the Department of Homeland Security (forced into a public health role for which it had little appetite and less competence, as dramatized so chillingly in Zeitoun).
The earthquake that decimated Haiti was, in its effect, far worse than the one that hit Japan, even though the magnitude of the first — 7.0 — was far less than the 8.9 (or is it 9.0?) of the more recent one.What’s the difference between 7.0 and 9.0? Here’s a quick Richter scale refresher:
[E]ach step on the Richter scale is 10 times greater than the one before it. An earthquake that measures 8.0 is ten times stronger than one that measures 7.0, and an earthquake that measures 9.0 is one hundred times stronger than one that measures 7.0. So Friday’s earthquake in Japan was almost 100 times stronger than the one in Haiti in 2010.
So why was the less powerful natural disaster more consequential than the much stronger one? Largely because of the vast differences in infrastructure and public health preparedness between the two island nations. It’s by now a commonplace of public health doctrine that any naturally occurring, negative incident — say, infectious disease or (let’s use the term here) natural disaster — will have far worse consequences for the poor than for the rich. And while Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, Japan remains one of the wealthiest nations on the planet. So the Haitian government estimated 230,000 dead (others guessed fewer, but all agree that the number exceeded 100,000), while the Japanese devastation, though too early to quantify yet, will almost surely be much lower. (As I write this, 20,000 is the new “best guess.”) So the earthquake about 100 times stronger (in Japan) will likely end up causing the deaths of about one-tenth as many people as the weaker one (in Haiti). Please don’t think I mean to minimize any of this. I’m trying to make a point, and I can barely stand to watch these images.
There’s plenty more to do, and to say, than to simply gawk at the horror and tally the dead. There are questions of constructing buildings to withstand earthquakes (and boy, did Japan do a good job there — not even one of the strongest quakes in recorded history caused a single skyscraper to topple; again, compare Haiti), personal preparedness for disaster (and the interesting psychological questions relating to why we don’t prepare for low-frequency, but high-impact events), and, inevitably, the safety of the nuclear power industry.
In its way, a natural disaster causes us to think about, report on, and try to fix just as many things as does a revolution; just in a different way. And it’s a mistake to think that one raises more complex questions that the other. There are simply two very different kinds of entropy to be dealt with.