Archive for category Equality
Justice as Fairness
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, Conservative, Equality, GLBT issues, Liberal, This Blog on August 12, 2010
So this afternoon, Judge Walker announced that he was staying his decision only until 5 p.m. on August 18. From towleroad, this is, to my eyes, the best reason:
But, wait a minute. If the proponents of Prop 8 lost so comprehensively on August 4, why continue the stay? In the words of Judge Walker himself, marriage equality won the day. So, why would a judge delay the enforcement of his own decision. It is really a matter of procedural fairness. Judge Walker recognizes that this is, to paraphrase Vice President Biden, a big [blank] deal and it is only fair in our system to give the parties that lost at trial the opportunity to file their papers with the court of appeals. It also is a sign of respect for the appellate court, which now has time to consider any motion for a stay that they might here in the near future. Plus, this kind of ruling is common, even in civil cases. It may be frustrating, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were civil rights.
I don’t think it’s stretching it at all to say this is justice as fairness – Judge Walker recognizes this decision, this case, is important and he’s giving the defendants time to examine their options, file appeals and have those appeals heard and considered in a reasonable way. Process matters.
No Rational Basis: The Prop 8 Verdict
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, American History, American People, Bigotry, Bigotry, Conservative, Democracy, Equality, GLBT issues, Homophobia, Human Rights, Liberal, Queer, Religion, Religious Fundamentalism, Republicans, Sex, Society, The Constitution, This Blog on August 12, 2010
There’s been a flood of commentary about the Judge Walker’s 138 page decision striking down California’s Prop 8 as unconstitutional. Much of that commentary has been interesting and insightful much of it has been ludicrous. I’ve been reading almost all of it and trying to organize my thoughts.
Back in March, I quoted Ted Olson about the Lawrence decision:
TED OLSON: Well, and let me say that I have enormous respect for all of the members of the United States Supreme Court and I’ve had wonderful relationships in one way or another with all of them. So, it’s, my friends are not on one side or the other. Secondly, Justice Scalia, he writes beautifully. And he has passionate, powerful views. But he lost. And he went on to say in that very opinion, “If we decide this case that way, what’s to prevent same sex marriage from being held to be a constitutional right?” Well, he’s right.
And once you make that decision in that case, and you put it together with the marriage cases, that’s the end of it, as far as that’s concerned. We hope to persuade everyone on that court. And part of what you just read was some people don’t want a homosexual to be a teacher in a school. Well, I don’t think today hardly anyone would agree that you could make a law that said a person whose sexual orientation is homosexual can’t teach in a public school.
Olson and Boies “connected the dots” of a series of court rulings over the last 50+ years and said the cumulative weight of these rulings points directly to legalizing same sex marriage. They started with the Loving case which held marriage is a fundamental right and followed a series of rulings to the Lawrence case which held that the Constitution does not permit the state to tell adults they may not have sex with other adults. Olson and Boies also collected a mass of evidence to support their position. By contrast, the defendants – the far right legal group Alliance Defense Fund – had two actual witnesses who were annihilated on cross examination. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. Read the rest of this entry »
Critique of Timothy J. Daily Article: “Homosexual Parenting: Placing Children at Risk”
Posted by Diana Kennedy in Cliff's Picks, Equality, GLBT issues, Homophobia, Religious Fundamentalism, Sex, The Constitution, Utah Politics on August 8, 2010
Introducing guest Blogger Diana Black Kennedy (another exception to the ever loosening OneUtah editorial policy).
Follows is Ms. Kennedy’s response to an article written by Dr. Timothy J. Dailey is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Marriage and Family Studies of Family Research Council in which Dr. Dailey attempts to dismiss the “conclusion… echoed in the official statement on homosexual parenting by the American Psychological Association’s Public Interest Directorate, “that children raised in gay and lesbian households fare no worse than those reared in traditional families.”
Diana Kennedy writes:
Dr. Timothy J. Dailey: Specializing in issues threatening the institutions of marriage and the family (from the perspective of a Bible Thumper)
I have a friend on Facebook with whom I often debate politics. I am the self-described flaming liberal and he is the Mormon libertarian. We have some great debates—always respectful, and always challenging. Recently, during a discussion of the recent Prop 8 ruling, he posted an article by Timothy J. Dailey Ph.D., called Homosexual Parenting: Placing children at risk. This is my critique.
1) Daily spends a lot of time pointing out methodological problems in the pro-equality literature and then totally abandons those strictures in his citing of anti-gay literature.
“Thus, all generalizations must be viewed with caution. . . . Because all uncorroborated self-report data are subject to biases, and because parents may deliberately or unconsciously minimize the extent of conflicts with their children, these findings cannot be accepted at face value.24″
However, when discussing anti-gay literature, he writes: “A survey conducted by the homosexual magazine Genre found that 24 percent of the respondents said they had had more than 100 sexual partners in their lifetime. The magazine noted that several respondents suggested including a category of those who had more than 1,000 sexual partners.31″
Could not the same presentation bias have something to do with over-estimating the number of partners gays have had in their lifetime? Talk to any 22 year old frat boy, gay or straight, (outside BYU, of course) and I think you’d see a similar presentation bias.
Also, in the “comparison with heterosexual couples” section, he offers no direct comparison. He goes from studies of homosexual couples who have been together 1-37 years to look at monogamy, and then compares that stat with heterosexual couples in marriage. I bet if you included hetero couples living together before marriage, the comparison number would be almost identical.
Again, in the comparisons section, he says, ” In Sex in America, called by the New York Times “the most important study of American sexual behavior since the Kinsey reports,” Robert T. Michael et al. report that 90 percent of wives and 75 percent of husbands claim never to have had extramarital sex.36″ Oy. Talk about presentation bias! Someone calls you on the phone and asks if you have been faithful to you spouse–well, you don’t think people may want to present themselves as better than they are? Read the rest of this entry »
“The gibberish of diversity, equality, tolerance, pluralism or multiculturalism has rendered you irrelevant”
Posted by Cliff Lyon in Bigotry, Civil liberties Infringement, Equality, GLBT issues, Homophobia, Hypocrisy, Religious Fundamentalism, Sex, Tea Bag Party, Tribalism & Blind Obedience to Authority, Utah Politics, utah on August 6, 2010
I saw this comment on Bagley’s latest and I just had to post it. If you live in Utah, this is par for the course. But for our wider audience (the rest of the modern world), this is REAL!
Yep, its true, there are very serious, not legally insane people who really DO say AND BELIEVE this:
etb says:
In a society that has abolished all boundaries, the only boundary left is to abolish that society.That’s the endgame in this “race to the bottom” scenario. Your allegiance to “moral relativism” under the guise of “honoring” the gibberish of diversity, equality, tolerance, pluralism or multiculturalism has rendered you irrelevant in any discussion about the state of the culture.
You are the fruit of a mass media educated population. All the self-esteem in the world, but you can’t think, or argue, your way out of a wet paper-bag. You are the type of people who have been groomed to welcome the economic and cultural calamities all around us. Your life mantra hasn’t changed since the 60s, if it feels good…do it!
These latest rounds of various court rulings are more of the circus of the absurd, only important in chronicling the speed of the decline and debauchery of reason. That being said, I’ve done what I can do. I’m going out dancing, not sitting in a cave. You enjoy the affects of the blue pill as long as the ride lasts.
Copyright 2010 The Salt Lake Tribune. All rights reserved.
Prop 8 Ruling Reax
Posted by Glenden Brown in Equality, GLBT issues, Human Rights, This Blog on August 5, 2010
Okay so unless you’re headless you heard that a federal judge ruled that California’s Prop 8 was unconstitutional on both due process and equal protection grounds. Props for Richard for getting this posted yesterday.
Some of the best commentary is from Towleroad (I know!).
When the decision of a trial judge like Judge Walker goes up on appeal, his legal conclusions are reviewed by the appellate court de novo, or “from the beginning.” That means that Judge Walker can conclude that Prop 8 violated the Equal Protection clause and the Due Process clause for this or that reason, but appellate judges are not bound by his conclusions. However, Judge Walker’s factual findings — such as the effect of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts or statistics on thriving children of same-sex couples — must be accepted by the appellate court unless they are “clearly erroneous.” A clearly erroneous finding of fact is looking up at the sky, seeing it is blue and having a weatherman tell you it’s blue, but concluding that the sky is, indeed, red. We do this because it was Judge Walker who heard the evidence and evaluated the trustworthiness of the witnesses with his own two eyes.
Judge Walker’s factual findings are breathtaking, if only for their sheer depth. From page 54 to 109, Judge Walker lays out his findings, eviscerates the testimony of anti-marriage equality experts and emphasizes the long list of statements where Prop 8 opponents conceded their factual case. In my years as an appellate litigator, I have never seen a factual record as detailed and well-documented as this. My compliments to Judge Walker and his clerks.
And this: Read the rest of this entry »
Prop 8 Gay Marriage Ban Unconstitutional
Posted by Richard Warnick in American People, Bigotry, Democracy, Equality, GLBT issues, Hypocrisy, Mormon LDS, National Politics, Religious Fundamentalism, The Constitution on August 4, 2010
I expect other One Utah authors will have much more to say about this. I just thought, this is great news so why wait?
Federal district court judge Vaughn Walker has overturned Prop 8, ruling that the California’s gay marriage ban is unconstitutional.
CONCLUSION
Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite-sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis,the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.REMEDIES
Plaintiffs have demonstrated by overwhelming evidence that Proposition 8 violates their due process and equal protection rights and that they will continue to suffer these constitutional violations until state officials cease enforcement of Proposition 8. California is able to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, as it has already issued 18,000 marriage licenses to same-sex couples and has not suffered any demonstrated harm as a result, see FF 64-66; moreover, California officials have chosen not to defend Proposition 8 in these proceedings.Because Proposition 8 is unconstitutional under both the Due Process and Equal Protection Clauses, the court orders entry of judgment permanently enjoining its enforcement; prohibiting the official defendants from applying or enforcing Proposition 8 and directing the official defendants that all persons under their control or supervision shall not apply or enforce Proposition 8. The clerk is DIRECTED to enter judgment without bond in favor of plaintiffs and plaintiff-intervenors and against defendants and defendant-intervenors pursuant to FRCP 58.
IT IS SO ORDERED.
Judge Walker issued a stay of the ruling, pending appeal to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, and if necessary, the U.S. Supreme Court.
Related One Utah post:
The Prop 8 Trial and the Constitutional Case for Same-Sex Marriage (March 2, 2010)
Deformations of the Economy
Posted by Glenden Brown in American History, American People, Conservative, Equality, This Blog on August 2, 2010
In one of his essays in The Demon Haunted World, Carl Sagan observes that every policy is an experiment – you try spending more on education and less on the military or raising taxes on the wealthy to pay for programs that benefit the middle class and it’s all an experiment. You try reducing tax rates on the wealthy and cutting domestic spending and that’s an experiment. You can look at the outcomes and ask “How did this turnout? Are we better or worse off? Did the economic growth benefit the many or the few? Were those outcomes good for our society?”
David Stockman’s recent NYT Op-Ed was entitled “Four Deformations of the Apocalypse” and was a pretty strongly worded jeremiad against Republican economic policies of the last forty years. I’ve already posted some of his argument (concerning what he called Milton Friedman $8 trillion mistake). Stockman’s other three points are: Read the rest of this entry »
Show Us Your Papers!
Posted by Richard Warnick in Barack Obama, Civil liberties Infringement, Equality, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, Immigration, National Politics, Racism, The Constitution, This Blog on May 19, 2010
Thanks ACLU. Tell it like it is.
Arizona’s new racial profiling law is as outrageous as it is unconstitutional. In this ACLU video, the people of Arizona show us the only papers they need in the United States: the Constitution.
First Lady Michelle Obama learned about this issue first-hand today from a second-grader in Silver Spring, Maryland. Via Think Progress:
ABC News’ Karen Travers reports:
The student shyly raised her hand and said, “My mom … she says that Barack Obama is taking everybody away that doesn’t have papers.”
Mrs. Obama replied: “Yeah, well that’s something that we have to work on, right? To make sure that people can be here with the right kind of papers, right? That’s exactly right.”
The girl then said quietly, “But my mom doesn’t have any …” and trailed off.
Mrs. Obama replied: “Well, we have to work on that. We have to fix that, and everybody’s got to work together in Congress to make sure that happens. That’s right.”
We need a court injunction to stop Arizona’s racist immigration law NOW. Where is the Obama Department of Justice on this?
UPDATE: Dan Froomkin: The second-grader’s mother has a good reason to be worried because the Obama administration has stepped up deportations, particularly of “non-criminal aliens.”
AZ ‘Papers, Please’ Law Unconstitutional and Un-American
Posted by Richard Warnick in Civil liberties Infringement, Equality, Foreign Policy, Hypocrisy, Immigration, National Politics, Racism, Republicans, Sarah Palin, Tea Bag Party, The Constitution, This Blog, Utah Politics on May 17, 2010
On a lonely Phoenix street in April, a police officer pulled behind Jim Shee’s parked BMW and asked to see his “papers.” Shee, 70, who had pulled over to the side of the road to check text messages on his cell phone, responded, “I hope you mean my registration and license.”
The police officer said Shee was being questioned because he was “suspicious.” It’s typical… in April, he was pulled over twice in less than two weeks.
“DWB,” said Shee, who is of Chinese and Spanish descent. “It’s ‘driving while brown’ … when he saw me all he saw was brown.”
The new Arizona immigration law is probably never going to be enforced. States have no power over immigration because it’s an attribute of foreign affairs. Just as states can’t have their own foreign policies or enter into treaties, they can’t have their own immigration laws either. Over the past few weeks, we’ve been treated to the spectacle of all the putative Constitution-defenders on the right rallying to support this patently unconstitutional law.
Predictably, former half-term Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has joined in.
This pretty much cancels out all the “we’re not racists” claims of the Tea Party movement too.
Announcing a lawsuit filed in federal court in Phoenix on Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union and other rights group described the law as “un-American” and an invitation to racially profile individuals.
“Arizona’s law is quintessentially un-American: we are not a ’show me your papers’ country, nor one that believes in subjecting people to harassment, investigation and arrest simply because others may perceive them as foreign,” said Omar Jadwat, a staff attorney with the ACLU Immigrants’ Rights Project. “This law violates the Constitution and interferes with federal law, and we are confident that we will prevent it from ever taking effect.”
Here, for the benefit of some people who have asked me to explain why the Arizona law is unconstitutional, is the cite (emphasis added):
U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 8:
The Congress shall have Power….To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
Article VI, Clause 2 (the Supremacy Clause):
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.
The Arizona law would criminalize not only undocumented immigrants, but anybody who helps them or who fails to carry paperwork proving legal status at all times. It would be impossible for the police to carry out a mandate to check anybody who they have a reasonable suspicion of being in the country illegally, without engaging in profiling or violating our basic civil rights.
If this law is allowed to take effect, people with brown skin – regardless of whether they are U.S. citizens or legal residents – will be forced to prove their legal status to law enforcement officers over and over. One-third of Arizona’s population – those who are Latino – will be designated as second-class citizens.
Perhaps encouraged by recent polls, Utah Rep. Stephen Sandstrom (R-Orem) is already drafting a bill just as unconstitutional and oppressive as the Arizona law. Governor Herbert had to cancel a special session of the Utah legislature to avoid a repeat of the Arizona fiasco.
It’s up to the courts to put a stop to this immediately. Our fundamental rights as Americans are at stake. Again. Thanks to the pseudo-patriots who don’t understand our Constitution.
Related One Utah posts:
Your Papers, Please… (April 27, 2010)
Jim Crow in Arizona (April 27, 2010)
People Still Want to Be Americans!
Posted by Richard Warnick in American People, Barack Obama, Democracy, Equality, Foreign Policy, Free Speech, Immigration, National Politics, The Constitution, This Blog on May 14, 2010
Waving the flag at naturalization ceremony
Those of us who spend too much time on the blogs and watching cable news channels encounter boundless cynicism day after day. We are overwhelmed by hyper-partisanship, hypocrisy, propaganda and outright lies. This week I briefly escaped into a land of optimism, coincidentally also named “America.”
A friend of mine decided to fill out forms, wait in line, get fingerprinted and photographed, take English and civics tests, pay over $700 and submit to an FBI background check– just to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. You also must renounce any “hereditary titles or positions of nobility,” interestingly enough.
(Note: Based on what we know about Glenn Beck, he’d probably flunk the civics test and the FBI check.)
The final step: you have to take the Oath of Allegiance before a federal judge. This is part of a ceremony held monthly at the Rose Wagner Performing Arts Center in Salt Lake City, and numerous other venues all over the country.
Last Wednesday, white-haired U.S. District Judge David Sam was on hand to administer the oath, along with Daughters of the American Revolution “patriotic speaker” Frances Merrill (who last year graduated from BYU with a bachelor’s degree in American Studies, at age 70). Senator Orrin Hatch is her older brother.
The Ensign Elementary First and Second Grad classes did a wonderful job on stage, both singing and testifying, one by one, about why they love America. One of the girls sincerely cited the “freedom to go shopping,” and you can’t argue with that. Cute kids, and at least for now pretty much innocent of cable news and blogs.
This was all as corny as you might expect. But then, after the oath-taking, there was an open mike for the newly naturalized citizens, about 200 of them. They came from Albania, from South Africa, Mexico, the Congo, Afghanistan, Somalia, China, India, Canada, Venezuela, Belgium, Brazil, Italy and lots of other places.
These folks aren’t exactly newcomers– you have to live here at least five years before you’re eligible to become naturalized. Presumably they watch cable news like the rest of us, and they know a lot of things have gone wrong in the last decade. Yet, in a series of brief, poignant statements, those who desired to speak all basically said “thank you, however hard it is, it’s worth it to become a citizen of the United States.”
There’s very little personal advantage to becoming a citizen. Basically all you get is the right to vote, a right most Utahns fail to exercise. It’s an affirmation that just being able to call oneself an American is something worth striving for.
I thought back to the hundreds of people I saw waiting outside the U.S. embassies in Sana’a, Yemen and in Manila in the Philippines. I’d really like America to be everything those immigrants want it to be. I envy their optimism. By coming here and joining up as citizens, maybe they can help fix what’s broken in our foreign and domestic policies. We sure need all the help we can get.
At the end the ceremony reverted to form, finishing with a video message from President Obama and Lee Greenwood’s godawful “God Bless the USA” (for a second time, because the elementary school students sang it too!)
Today I’m back on the blogs, arguing about stopping Arizona’s brazenly unconstitutional immigration law from ever taking effect. The polls say most Americans are for it.
In Defense of Political Correctness
Posted by Glenden Brown in Activist groups, American History, American People, Civil liberties Infringement, Democracy, Equality, Free Speech, GLBT issues, Health Care, Human Rights, Liberal, Society, This Blog on April 20, 2010
Ta-Nehisi Coates offered this through provoking statement in response to a statement of Andrew Sullivan’s:
There’s a lot here that I agree with. (I’m against hate-crime laws for instance.) But I think any sort of conservative intellectual critique of liberalism and minority rights, really has to reckon with American conservatism’s appalling record on that front.
Put differently, I think there’s something to be said about political correctness on the Left, about hate crimes legislation, about affirmative action etc. But these are problems that American conservatives don’t have to answer for, in large measure, because they’ve been utter cowards in the face of some of the greatest moral issues of our time.
Moreover they have used a skepticism of change, to mask a defense of institutional evil. Read the rest of this entry »
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