Imagine nothing but toll roads.

I subscribe to The Simple Dollar (because it's a neat blog with pretty good advice) and in the author's most recent roundup post was a link to another post, at another blog, with the subject line "The Hypocrite Test: Should Rich People Pay More?" I cleverly deduced had a feeling that this post was about taxes somehow, so I clicked on it.

I was correct. The author of this post begins with the following scenario, in which the reader is supposed to imagine that they've been working hard for twenty years, and have gone from having nothing to having a very nice house in a very nice part of town (where they now live with their family and their possessions, some of which are also nice.) This nice new house needs a nice new boiler, because apparently the one it came with was not so nice. So they call a contractor, who:

...pokes around a bit, then hands over a proposal. $15,000. Youch!

Sounds out of line, so you thank him and send him on his way.

Later that day, you run into an old friend who lives “down the hill.” You mention your need for a new boiler and are surprised to discover he’s in the market for the exact same boiler. And, the one he’s replacing is the very same one you have. AND, he also just got an estimate from the same contractor…for the exact same amount of time, same equipment, same job.

But, your friend’s estimate was $7,500. Half of yours.

The author asks if this scenario is fair or not, and specifically tells the reader to think about why it is or isn't fair and keep that line of reasoning in mind. The author then goes into the next scenario. Guess what it is.

This time, you’re the guy living down the hill, earning a modest living. The contractor is now the government, the estimate you and your wealthy acquaintance received is your tax burden and the benefits are the services provided to both of you by the government.

The instinctive conclusion that many readers will come to is that neither situation is fair. This makes sense if you assume, as the author does, that these to situations are "the same issue, just set in a different context" - a transaction is fair if you get what you pay for, and since taxes don't work this way then they must not be fair. I was tempted to make this assumption as well, but when I took the time to consider the analogy, I realized that it was flawed.

State of the Union

Those of you who don't live in a cave will know that Obama gave his State of the Union address yesterday, which means that the Republicans and others of the right-leaning persuasion should be spending today going over all the things in the speech that could even remotely be construed to make Obama look bad. Given that Obama covered a lot of different topics in the address, they've got a lot of material to work with, but so far they seem to be focusing on a few select topics:

• he didn't talk about terrorism even though he actually did.
  
• we should not repeal "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". Doing that will lead to soldiers getting raped - never mind that this happens already, and the perpetrators are not gay men.
• it's not true that Citizens United v. FEC allows foreign corporations to make campaign contributions  (just the American ones, and they're completely trustworthy, right?)

There's also a little fact-check that they ganked from the AP. A couple of the items on that list are legitimate causes for concern - specifically, the hiring of lobbyists and the level of openness that doesn't live up to what he promised during his campaign. Everything else on the list borders on nitpicking - "The stimulus didn't help that much! We didn't catch that many terrorists!" - and apparently Obama is supposed to magically make insurance companies, Congress, and Russia do everything he asks. Uh-huh.

Equally telling is the stuff they haven't reacted to. Tax cuts, offshore drilling, reduced government spending - I guess all those things are only good if a Republican president proposes them. Nor are they paying much attention to his statement on healthcare and reducing student loan debt, or any of those other things he mentioned that would help out lots of people in a lot of ways. No, they're talking about stuff he mentioned only briefly - those things are important, yes, but they weren't the big points.

I think there's a reason for this. The Republicans in Congress are not going after the actual substance of Obama's speech, or openly and straightforwardly disagreeing with him, because frankly that would make them look like assholes. No Congressperson who actually wants to get reelected is going to say that there's no need for healthcare reform, or that it's okay that people are going into massive debt to pay for college, or that the bottom 95% doesn't need a tax break. They certainly don't want to have to explain why they'd be against punishing the banks with a fee or doing something about the Citizens United v. FEC ruling - if they did then people might figure out that their love for Jesus, fetuses, and Joe Six-Pack are collectively outweighed by their love of corporations and money. Giving into their instinctive disapproval would also expose them as hypocrites - do they really believe that offshore drilling, reduced government spending, and tax breaks are only good ideas when a Republican president is proposing them?

So they've got to take some time to make shit up - instead of saying we don't need healthcare reform because the system works for them, they gave us a bunch of crap about facism and death panels. And for the moment, we're only going to get their views on the issues that they've already got canned responses to - Obama's soft on terrorism, he's a liar because he didn't get everything done in his first year, and the gays will destroy the military. Once they've had time to make up some more shit we'll get to hear all about why the taxes breaks that they used to love so much are actually going to destroy America.

Oh noez! Form your militias!

President Obama's signed an executive order to create a council of governors. It's going to be ten state governors from both parties (who will serve on the council for two terms each) plus a bunch of cabinet members. The executive order says that reason behind this is to

"strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards. When appointed, the Council will be reviewing such matters as involving the National Guard of the various States; homeland defense; civil support; synchronization and integration of State and Federal military activities in the United States; and other matters of mutual interest pertaining to National Guard, homeland defense, and civil support activities."

Now, when George W. and Friends pushed their little wish list of civil liberties infringements through Congress after 9/11, not too many people paid attention to it until months later. And now that Obama's made this one little executive order establishing what looks to be a committee for reviewing all sorts of things (which the next president could easily get rid of with another executive order) some people are already interpreting it as the beginnings of a sinister plot to declare martial law.

I almost find this funny, until I remember that they're not joking. These are the same people who were talking about forming militias and buying up all that ammunition after the election was over - the same people who think that Obama hates America and is somehow a communist and a Nazi at the same time (a statement which bothers me not just because it's slanderous and false, but because it's pretty much impossible - Hitler's party may have been called the "National Socialists" but the fact is the communists were among the people that he was sending off to death camps.) Obviously the situation we're in now is far from perfect, but it seems like the people who are saying these things want to believe that we're mere moments away from some kind of apocolyptic dystopian totalitarian doom-empire. I honestly do not understand this. I mean, I didn't like George Bush while he was president, but I also never compared him to any dead dictators or suspected him of trying to set up some kind of 1984-esque police state (and this in spite of the whole PATRIOT Act thing.)

I'm not a political scientist, but immediately after I heard about the executive order and the theories as to what it is for, I came up with a theory of my own. Surely you all remember the gentleman from Nigeria who spectacularly failed to blow up an airplane in Detroit last month. You may also remember that not too long after this happened, President Obama said in pretty blunt terms that our intelligence and national security system had screwed up badly and needed to be reviewed and overhauled ASAP - because apparently a few agencies within the government had this guy's name and information about him, and somehow he still didn't make onto any no-fly lists and was able to get on a plane to Detroit. And so now the goal is to figure out where the miscommunication happened and fix it.

Given all of this, it seems a lot more likely that this is part of the comprehensive "overhaul" of our national defense system that Obama was referring to - the state governors will meet with the people from the cabinet and go over everyone's resources and policies and whatnot, so that everyone will be on the same page and know what they need to do (and what everyone else is doing) at the state level if there's ever another attempted bombing. I think this make a lot more sense than the "martial law" conspiracy theories... because frankly, if I were a president and wanted to work towards making myself a dictator, my first order of business would not be "form a committee".

I mean, maybe this is all just a front for some evil scheme... but I, for one, will not be rushing out to buy a gun anytime soon.

The Pro-Life Movement: selectively protecting embryos since 1973.

Unless you've been hiding under a rock for the past year, you are probably aware that the U.S. government is closer than it's ever been to major healthcare reform. If you're aware of this, you're probably also aware that the debate over this reform has partly turned into a fight over abortion, with the right introducing all kinds of measures to make sure that no one's tax money ever pays for an abortion.

In the interest of full disclosure, I am pro-choice in every sense of the word - I believe that everyone who is able to do so should have the final say in their own medical decisions, and that these decision should ideally be based on their  needs and sounds medical advice. Ergo, I think that if a woman wants to undergo any procedure related to her own fertility (IVF, abortion, tubal litigation, etc.) then the only moral paradigm that she should have to consider in the process should be her own. It's no one's business why she should choose to do any of these things - and unless you're her doctor, you have no right to ask or give your opinion on the matter. Obviously, those in the pro-life movement disagree - they would probably tell me that those embryos are unborn children who have a right to live.

But I've noticed something recently that I find very strange. For all the time and resources that the anti-abortion people have dedicated to putting as many restrictions on abortion into the healthcare bill as possible, they've kept strangely quiet about another medical procedure - in vitro fertilization, or IVF. I haven't seen it mentioned at all, even though it seems logical to me that someone who opposes abortion on the grounds that embryos are people would be equally if not more opposed to IVF. Anyone who consider embryos to be people and abortion to be murder should logically consider IVF to be something like a massacre.

Iowa residents, take note.

State representative Dawn Pettengill (R, Mount Auburn), is proposing a law that would require Iowa state reps to say "so help me God" when being sworn into office (link goes to Friendly Atheist.)

The justifications that are giving for this proposal are truly cringe-inducing ("not allowing state-sponsored prayer is against my religion!") The whole thing is obviously unconstitutional and even if it does go through somehow, it would probably be struck down very easily. Nevertheless, if you live in Iowa and have the slightest regard for freedom of (and from) religion, then you should still contact your state rep about this. Let them know that there are people in Iowa who will not take this kind of nonsense sitting down.

And the truth comes out.

The Bush Administration deliberately concealed an EP document which "concluded that six gases linked to global warming pose dangers to public welfare". Read the whole article. Apparently "the science isn't there" means "the science is in an e-mail which we are choosing not to read".

Good news and bad news.

You probably already know the good news - we've got a new president-elect.

The bad news comes from California - Proposition 8, which eliminates the right of same-sex couples to marry, passed by about a 5% margin. This is a step backward, and in California of all places on top of that. Measures in Florida and Arizona also passed, with the same effect, as did Arkansas Initiative 1, which bans "umaried sexual partners" from adopting children - this would apply to both gay and straight people, but because because only straight people can legally marry in Arkansas it's quite obvious who this is aimed at.

A friend and fellow blogger who lives in California has started a blog called No Surrender, in which she's been writing about events in California since Proposition 8's passing. There are already talks of lawsuits against the state for the right to marry, as well as protests by some more well-known gay Californians. My friend has written an open letter to the people of California, which I encourage all of you to read an pass along. This isn't over yet, and if we keep fighting we may still be able to beat this thing.

You keep using that word.

Some fun things to know about John McCain:

• We already know that he supports the troops - but only as long as they stay in Iraq. Once they come home John McCain doesn't seem to care so much anymore. He even opposed expanding the G.I. Bill, which gives college tuition and other benefits to war veterans. His logic is that if all those soldiers know that there was more money waiting for them when they finish their tours of duty, why they might actually want to come home, and we can't have that now can we?
  
  
• When it was time to vote on a bill to raise the federal minimum wage, John McCain took part in a filibuster to keep it from happening. Our federal minimum wage is currently $5.85 an hour - about $1,000 a month. I wonder if he seriously thinks one person can support themselves on $1,000 a month. I mean theoretically you could - if you don't ever do anything fun, don't drive a car, don't put too much away in a savings account, don't eat much, don't ever get sick, and don't have to pay rent because you own your own cardboard box. If you did all of those things, you might just be able to get by.
  
  
• John McCain opposed giving health insurance to low-income children. Now, this is not universal health insurance for all Americans, here. This is not even health insurance for all American children. This was for poor kids whose parents might not otherwise be able to send them to the doctor. But McCain doesn't think kids need to go the doctor! When he was their age, his parents just gave him a little bit of whiskey grandpa's cough medicine, and if that was good enough for him then by God it's good for everyone else!

Incidentally, his views on all three of those issues are right in line with those of our current Moron-In-Chief, the self-declared "compassionate conservative". Now, do these sound like the decisions of a compassionate person? I think not. Personally, I think they sound more like the decisions of the sort of individual who might do things in like kick puppies for fun in his spare time - but that's just my opinion. In any case, the only thing McCain's got going for him here is that at least he hasn't tried to label himself "compassionate" yet. Granted, he has shown us that the term "straight talk" can also be used to mean "hey guys, there's a whole bunch of stuff I'm not telling you",  so he may yet sink to Bush's level.

Here come the gender police.

First, the article which inspired this post: Times Online - Thomas Beatie, a married man who used to be a woman, is pregnant with a baby girl. I know this is old news, but I just found this article the other day, and over the couple days since then it's spawned this post.

The content itself is not terrible. The writer consistently refers to Mr. Beatie using male pronouns and doesn't sensationalize any aspect of the story, nor does he gloss over the difficulties and discrimination that the Beaties faced while trying to get pregnant, both from doctors and from their own families. The terrible parts are in the comments left by other readers - they highlight just how prejudiced and ignorant most people are when it comes to transgendered people. I've picked some of the more shockingly backward ones and... analyzed them.

To start off, we have generic religious wingnuttery from "Mason Wheeler, Honolulu":

"Readers, how coulcd this be the will of God? God designed Women to have children. Not women who turn into men having babies. It just isnt right. We need to pray in the name of Jesus that the remaining months of Mr. Thomas and Nancy Beatie will be having a healthy baby girl."

Ah yes, the "sandwich prayer". I really hate these; he's essentially saying "You're horrible sinners and you're going to hell. But um, all the best. I'll pray for you." (And then there's the really strange wording of that last sentence; are we supposed to pray for the remaining months to have a healthy baby girl?)

Next we have Exhibit B, a horrible analogy from "Christi, St. Louis".

"You can't change DNA. Thomas Beatie didn't become a man. Thomas has the appearance of a man. If I had surgery to add a tail, whiskers, and pointy ears, and received therapy to purr and mew, would I BE a cat? No, just an altered human. Thomas is an altered woman, & pregnant. God bless baby."

This is just a really awful statement for two reasons. First, they're failing to distinguish between a person's biological sex and their gender. Biological sex is determined by many things, including your DNA, and your DNA is indeed something that you can't change. Your gender, however, refers to your internal identity - that it, whether you are most comfortable thinking of yourself as male, female, or perhaps both or neither. It's not the same thing as your sexual orientation, but like sexual orientation it's determined by a whole bunch of factors that aren't fully understood, and the experience of "being trans" varies a lot from person to person. Some people know from a very early age that their biological gender is "wrong", while others go through long periods of soul-searching and confusion before coming to the same conclusion - some people have supportive families and are able to "come out" and transition, while others have very little in the way of an IRL support system and are unable to. But if someone says they identify as a man or a women, then the polite, decent, and respectful thing to do is to take their word for it and use the appropriate name and pronouns. You should not question their judgment or point out that they're still really their birth gender because of their DNA/genitals/whatever. This is precisely what this commenter has done here, and it is beyond rude.

Second, they're comparing cats and humans (two different species) to men and women, which is just... no. Men and women are both human, albeit different categories of human, and when it comes to gender identity those neat little categories are not so useful. Indeed, they're even a hindrance for some people - for example, gay trans men and lesbian trans women. They often have to deal with accusations of "not being trans" or "not knowing what they really want" even more than heterosexual trans people, because people assume that all trans people are heterosexual. But as I said above, gender identity and sexual orientation are two separate things - it's totally possible for someone born female to to transition to a male identity, and still be attracted to men, and in this case you would refer to them with respect to their gender identity (not as a straight woman, but as a gay man.)

Next up, some "ewww gross" and "think of the children" from "Jennifer, Reynoldsburg".

"I think it is disgusting. When she chose to be a "man" then she gave up her right to have a baby. You can't go back and forth. If she wants to be a man, and if your 'wife' can't get pregant then adopt. It is immoral and unethical.It's very confusing for children to see a 'man' pregnant. Not natural"

You know what? When people see guys with large stomachs, their first thought is not usually "pregnant" but rather "beer belly." Ergo, seeing a guy who looks like this is probably not going to confuse or traumatize anyone, including little kids. Then there's this whole "chose to be a 'man'" (and look, she even used scare quotes!) The fact is that trans people don't "choose" to be uncomfortable with their birth-assigned sex, any more than people "choose" their sexual orientation - that is, they don't. The only choice involved is whether to come out and transition; for many this is a very difficult decision to make, and to belittle that fact by saying that they chose their situation is quite insulting. As for giving up the right to have a baby, it is an unfortunate fact that in most countries, trans people must undergo sterilization in order to change their legal gender. In the US it varies from state to state, and the state of Oregon (where Beatie lives) sterilization is not required. In my opinion, sterilization requirements are awful and unnecessary: not all trans people want this done, and it's not as if anyone other than their doctor will even be able to tell if it's been done or not. I can only conclude that this requirement is the government's way of saying "you can live like this if you want, but get out of the gene pool."

Moving on, we have some no doubt well-meant "concern" followed by sheer stupidity from "Danarene, Lake View Terracce, CA".

"Well, if that don't beat all! One of my concerns would be how the parents go about explaining sexuality and reproduction to the child down the road. This is really the ultimate case of having your cake and eating it too. 'Mr.' Beatie decides she's not really a woman and does the ultimate renouncement and alters her biology in order to mimic a man but in a pinch determines that it's acceptable to fall back on her innate reality - how convenient is that? Obviously 'Mr.' Beatie is a woman at her core, regardless of her attempt to become a man, it appears that she's likely a lesbian and putting on the facade allows her and her lover to live without harrassment from homophobes. Good luck!"

You know what really "beats all"? This comment. There are so many things that are so incredibly wrong here that I think I'll just list them:

1. This "concern" about how the Beaties are going to explain where babies come from to their daughter. This was not the only comment guilty of this one, I saw some other people speculating that they'd tell her that babies come "from daddy". But I'm guessing they'll probably go with the standard "egg + sperm = baby" explanation, and tell her about her dad being trans when they feel she's old enough to understand it. And when they do, it'll put her way ahead of most of her peers (not to mention most of the commenters here) because she'll know that there's more to gender than what most people would like you to think.
   
2. Again, questioning Mr. Beatie's gender identity. In this case it's made worse by the fact that he's pregnant (something that we associate with women) but a lot of trans men who decide not to get a phalloplasty are targeted with similar criticism. A phalloplasty is a very expensive and complicated procedure, is rarely covered by insurance for gender transition purposes, and many trans men don't feel that the high cost is worth the risks of undergoing surgery. This is no one's business but their own, but that doesn't stop people - both in the GLB community and in society at large - from questioning whether they really want to be male since they still have a vagina.
   
3. This sort of goes along with the previous point, but I am utterly baffled by this idea that Mr. Beatie is "a lesbian and putting on the facade allows her and her lover to live without harassment from homophobes." It clearly hasn't occurred to this person that trans people deal with harassment just like gay people do, and in some ways to a greater extent - "gender identity disorder" is still listed as a mental illness in the DSM, and some therapists still recommend "reparative therapy" aimed at getting trans people to live as their birth-assigned sex, particularly in the case of younger kids. These therapies are no more effective than the reparative therapy that were used to "treat" homosexuality, but they persist nonetheless. There are many other things that cis gay people generally don't have to worry about that trans people frequently do (which bathroom or changing room to use, whether they're being perceived as male or female, how to explain their bodies to potential sexual partners, and so on.) This is not to say that gay people have it easy, but non-trans gay people are still very far ahead of trans people in terms of being accepted by mainstream society. I doubt that a cis lesbian couple would've had as much difficulty as the Beaties did in finding a doctor to perform artificial insemination and a OB/GYN later on.

And this one from "Lamecia, Nashville" absolutely takes the cake:

"I feel bad and embarrassed. Just think of how upset God is...this is not how he created things. What do we tell our kids? They will be so confused. As for the baby girl she will have such a hard time in life because she was carried by a man during pregnancy. Kids will pick on her. Kids are hard on each other they pick on people that is almost perfect so just think of what she has to look forward to. This is not normal. I will not accept it and I will continue to teach my son that this is not right."

Wow. Let's go through this one, shall we? There's some "eww, gross", a statement that tran speople are upsetting God with their "choice", followed by a "think of the children", which neatly segues into "why would they do this to their daughter?! She'll be bullied!!" And then she goes on to say that "I'm going to raise my son the right way - by teaching him that trans people are freaks." The fact that this statement follows her "concern" is almost funny. It clearly hasn't occurred to her that if the Beaties' daughter is bullied, it won't be because of her parents. It'll be because of people exactly like this, people who tell their children that "different" is weird and unnatural, basically giving them carte blache to bully anyone who's not like them.But if you go to the article and read the comments yourself, you'll see that it isn't all bad. For every negative and hateful comment that I saw, there was another one congratulating the Beaties, and calling out the hateful and prejudiced commenters on how wrong and self-righteous they were being. This was really heartening, especially considering that this is a mainstream paper rather than one aimed at the GLBT community. Indeed, much of the opposition I've seen to Mr. Beatie and his pregnancy - on other articles that were in GLBT newsletters - came from other GLBT folks. I won't quote any of them here (I think this post is getting quite long enough) but some of them were very much like the ones above: statements that if Thomas Beatie wanted to be a "real" man he wouldn't have done this, and even saying that he was not and could never be a real man, and that his choice to go public with his pregnancy would "hurt the movement." This is what I mean when I say that trans people have a much more difficult time than gay people when it comes to discrimination - they get it not only from straight cisigendered people, but from GLB folks who ought to know better. I disagree completely that this is going to "hurt the movement" - yes, it has brought some people like the above-quoted commenters out of the woodwork, but its also brought out people like those other commenters, people who might never have said a single word in support of trans people until now. There will probably be backlash - when Massachusetts began allowing gay marriage, many other states initially began passing laws and even amending their constitutions to prevent it from ever being allowed there. This might seem like a step backward, but four years after Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, we now have civil unions and gay marriage being allowed in New Jersey and California, people suing for the right to marry in numerous other states, and a presidential candidate (Barack Obama) who favors repealing the DOMA and allowing federally-recognized civil unions that would provide all the rights and privileges of marriage. In the short term it caused a few setbacks, but in the long term we've made progress that we might not have made otherwise. This will probably have a similar effect - the short-term backlash will draw attention to how unfair and intrusive society and the law are in the lives of trans people. The folks who oppose the GLBT movement will keep doing so, but we may gain some outspoken new allies who might have remained silent, and make long-term progress that might otherwise not have happened. That is a definitely a good thing.

Ideas, anyone?

I found this article via some sporadic link-clicking: LifeNews.Com - Barack Obama Would Back Daughters' Abortion, "Don't Punish Them With a Baby"

I read the entire article and there was one particular quote at the end that caught my attention:

"[Obama's remarks] align him squarely with abortion advocates who view laws protecting unborn children as 'punishing' pregnant women by forcing them to give birth to the baby instead of taking the child's life through abortion."

Now, given that this is a pro-life newsletter, nothing about this quote is surprising; they refer to pro-choice people as "abortion advocates" (although I don't think any pro-choice people would actually advocate or encourage abortion) and describe an embryo/fetus as a child (although it is clearly not a child yet.)

What I find ironic, though, is that they seem to take offense at the use of the word "punishment" to describe a baby. In my experience, the most oft-repeated lines against allowing abortions for women who simply don't want kids usually sound something like "Well, she shouldn't have had sex." When people say things like this to pregnant women who never wanted kids - that this pregnancy and the resulting child are a consequence of having sex and they should have to deal with it - how is that not punishing them? The way I see it, this attitude is exactly the opposite what having a kid should be: something that's welcomed and looked forward to, and even planned for, not a consequence to be dealt with.

I can't help but wonder how the writer of that article is rationalizing this, or if it's even occurred to them.