Prop 8 Ruling A Rational Win for Gay Rights

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Yesterday Federal Judge Vaughn Walker ruled California’s Proposition 8 which bans gay marriage as unconstitutional and discriminatory, a major victory for gay and lesbian marriage advocates. The decision has already been appealed and will have to go through the 9th Circuit and, eventually, the US Supreme Court.

Over the last 12 hours I took the time to read through Judge Walker’s 138 page ruling, and what I was most pleased about was how he framed his decision, not in morals or emotional appeals, but in rational fact, which legal experts say will make it much harder for higher courts to overturn.

Walker’s focus on hard evidence and fact thrills me, and reading through his ruling as he methodically and without emotional appeal refutes the claimes of the Prop 8 proponents based on the fantastic legwork of the pro gay marriage legal team.

The anti gay-marriage proponents brought the “gay boogyman” to the trial, claiming that homosexual marriage would errode heterosexual marriage and damage children, and instead of moralizing, the plaintiffs’ lawyers said came back with piles of evidence, facts, precident and expert witness testimony from psychologists to social epidemiologists, methodically rebutting each of their claims. At one point when pressed by Judge Vaughn Walker to provide even one solid, fact-based harm that might come from permitting gay men and women to marry, Mr. Cooper had nothing but “Your honor, my answer is: I don’t know. I don’t know.” Aside from the boogyman that appeals to homophobic sentiment and discrimination, the anti-gay side has seemingly no evidence to back up their position.

A long list of factual evidence — most of which the Proposition 8 proponents conceeded to during the trial (my understanding based on reading through the ruling) — has been pulled out and is available for quick reading on the Yes Means Yes blog.

Over at Slate, Dahlia Lithwick has written an outstanding article highlighting the factual, well-reasoned Prop 8 ruling:

“But for all the lofty language about freedom and morality, nobody can fairly accuse Judge Walker of putting together an insubstantial or unsubstantiated opinion today. Indeed, the whole point of this legal exercise—the lengthy trial, the spectacularly detailed finding of facts (80 of them! with subheadings!)—was to pit expert against expert, science against science, and fact against prejudice.

It’s hard to read Judge Walker’s opinion without sensing that what really won out today was science, methodology, and hard work. Had the proponents of Prop 8 made even a minimal effort to put on a case, to track down real experts, to do more than try to assert their way to legal victory, this would have been a closer case. But faced with one team that mounted a serious effort and another team that did little more than fire up their big, gay boogeyman screensaver for two straight weeks, it wasn’t much of a fight. Judge Walker scolds them at the outset for promising in their trial brief to prove that same-sex marriage would “effect some twenty-three harmful consequences” and then putting on almost no case.”

Read the full article on Slate.

And my favourite quote from Lithwick’s article comes at the very end, one with which I heartily agree:

“The real triumph of Perry v. Schwarzenegger may be that it talks in the very loftiest terms about matters rooted in logic, science, money, social psychology, and fact.”

Anti-gay marriage supporters are already calling out Judge Walker and trying to refocus the story, calling his ruling a conflict of interest because he’s gay. This implies heterosexual people by default aren’t biased about this issue, which cleary is not the case: the fact that this is such a fought over, controversial topic tells us both heterosexuals and homosexuals have potential and very real biases and conflicts here. And after reading through the ruling, I have to say I think Judge Walker did an fantastic job of concentrating as much as possible on the evidence of the case — perhaps because he was concerned about being seen as biased, perhaps just because he’s generally awesome like that. In any event and for whatever reason, his ruling is founded on evidence rather than sentiment.

I encourage everyone to read the ruling themselves, but here are a few choice snippets (references to other court cases removed):

In response to the purported arguement that reserving marriage as a union between a man and woman excluding any other relationship on “it’s tradition” grounds:

“Tradition alone, however, cannot form a rational basis for a law. The “ancient lineage” of a classification does not make it rational. Rather, the state must have an interest apart from the fact of the traditon itself.”

“Because it’s always been this way” isn’t a good enough argument to form the basis of a law.

“Proponents’ argument that tradition prefers opposite-sex couples to same-sex couples equates to the notion that opposite-sex relationships are simply better than same-sex relationships. Tradition alone cannot legitimate this purported interest. Plaintiffs presented evidence showing conclusively that the state has no interest in preferring opposite-sex couples to same-sex couples or in preferring heterosexuality to homosexuality. Moreover, the state cannot have an interest in disadvantaging an unpopular minority group simply because the group is unpopular.

The evidence shows that the state advances nothing when it adheres to the tradition of excluding same-sex couples from marriage. Proponents’ asserted state interests in tradition are nothing more than tautologies and do not amount to rational bases for Proposition 8.”

In response to the purported argument that social change should be implemented with caution:

“Proponents presented no reliable evidence that allowing same-sex couples to marry will have any negative effects on society or on the institution of marriage. The process of allowing same-sex couples to marry is straightforward, and no evidence suggests that the state needs any significant lead time to integrate same-sex couples into marriage. … The evidence shows that allowing same-sex couples to marry will be simple for California to implement because it has already done so; no change need be phased in.

Because the evidence shows same-sex marriage has and will have no adverse effects on society or the institution of marriage, California has no interest in waiting and no practical need to wait to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples. Proposition 8 is thus not rationally related to proponents’ purported interests in proceeding with caution when implementing social change.”

Basically, in order to justify “proceeding with caution”, there needs to be a better and more factual reason other than “because people won’t like it”. Nothing but policy has to change to make same-sex marriage a reality: there is no cost or time needed to make it happen, and no limited number of marriage licenses available to the population of California. A same-sex couple getting a marriage license does not prevent or delay an opposite-sex couple from getting one.

In response to the purported argument of opposite-sex parenting over same-sex parenting:

“The evidence does not support a finding that California has an interest in preferring opposite-sex parents over same-sex parents. Indeed, the evidence shows beyond any doubt that parents’ genders are irrelevant to children’s developmental outcomes. Moreover, Proposition 8 has nothing to do with children, as Proposition 8 simply prevents same-sex couples from marrying. Same-sex couples can have (or adopt) and raise children. When they do, they are treated identically to opposite-sex parents under California law. Even if California had an interest in preferring opposite-sex parents to same-sex parents — and the evidence plainly shows that California does not — Proposition 8 is not rationally related to that interest, because Proposition 8 does not affect who can or should become a parent under Californai law.”

So Propositon 8 doesn’t have anything to say about children or who is qualified to raise children, which makes the “think of the children” argument irrelevant to Prop 8 specifically. Also:

“Proponents argue Proposition 8 advances a state interest in encouraging the formation of stable households. Instead, the evidence shows that Proposition 8 undermines that state interest, because same-sex households have become less stable by the passage of Proposition 8. The inability to marry denies same-sex couples the benefits, including stability, attendant to marriage.

Proponents failed to put forth any credible evidence that married opposite-sex households are made more stable through Proposition 8. The only rational conclusion in light of the evidence is that Proposition 8 makes it less likely that California children will be raised in stable households. None of the interests put forth by proponents relating to parents and children is advanced by Proposition 8; instead, the evidence shows Proposition 8 disadvantages families and their children.”

I’m beyond pleased Judge Walker pointed out this inherent contradiction in this frequently used anti same-sex marriage argument. By not allowing gay and lesibian couples to wed, their families suffer social and psychologial strain that disadvantages them in our society and prevents them from creating a “stable household” which Prop 8 proponents claim to desire over everything else.

In response to the purported argument of protecting the freedom of those who oppose marriage for same-sex couples:

“Proposition 8 is not rationally related to an interest in protecting the rights of those opposed to same-sex couples because, as a matter of law, Proposition 8 does not affect the rights of those opposed to homosexuality or to marriage for couples of the same sex.

To the extent proponents argue that one of the rights of those morally opposed to same-sex unions is the right to prevent same-sex couples from marrying, as explained presently those individuals’ moral views are an insufficient basis upon which to enact a legislative classification.”

You have every right not to like it, but not liking something or someone doesn’t give anyone the right to supress the rights of others when no actual, evidential, factual harm is being done.

I absolutely encourage everyone to read through the 80 facts called out in Judge Walker’s ruling on Prop 8 and to read through at least pages 109 – 138 of the ruling itself.

YEGfeminists’ First Meetup

Thursday, July 8th, 2010

About a month and a half ago, discouraged by an apparent lack of feminist groups in the Edmonton area, I decided to take the proverbial bull by the horns and start up one myself. I created the Facebook group YEGfeminists and sent it around to some ladies I knew might be interested. The response so far has been encouraging: 22 members and counting so far, and while that may seem small, so far it exceeds any other Edmonton-based feminist group I can find.

We had our first meetup this past Tuesday at Original Joe’s Varsity, and though only seven of us could make it the conversation and company was excellent. It was awesome to talk about feminist challenges in the workplace, feminism in pop culture, street harassment, The Ethical Slut, and the dozen other feminism-related topics that came up in person with real live people rather than just throwing out thoughts to the Internet void. Blogging about feminism has been a great outlet for me, but conversation with other feminist-identifying women is something that has been missing from my life. Big thanks to Stephanie, Kasia, Nicoel, Kathleen, and Holly for coming out!

I’ve set up a YEGfeminists Twitter account to help facilitate conversation, communication and future events. I’m also hoping to set up a blog we can use to aggregate and point to content from multiple Edmonton feminist bloggers.

The next YEGfeminists event will likely be in early August, and I’d like to have a topic or theme of the night to help encourage and initiate conversation. If anyone has ideas for topics or meetup locations, please leave a comment on this post and let me know! (A note about locations: I was messaged by a couple of under-18 feminists who couldn’t attend because of the no-minors location, so I’d definitely like the next location to be age-inclusive.)

Preventing Homosexuality & Non-Comforming Women: When Science & Medicine Go Astray

Thursday, July 1st, 2010

Over at the Bioethics Forum, a trio of “uppity” women have written an exposé on the research of pediatric endocrinologist Maria New to engineer females in utero to be heterosexual and adhere more closely to female behavioral stereotypes. The article is lengthy and a little science heavy for those of us with a liberal arts education, but it’s absolutely worth reading.

It boils down like this:

New is giving pregnant women the steroid dexamethasone to prevent the development of ambiguous genitalia in girls with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH). CAH is caused when a fetus receives an excess of androgens, and can lead to a number of things besides ambiguous private bits, including rapid childhood growth, delayed puberty and infertility. For all the outcry going on in feminist circles about this, it is I think important to note that CAH is a legitimate disease that can have lasting effects, and it’s important not to brush that under the rug.

However. This all goes astray due largely to motive. New and her partner Heino Meyer-Bahlburg are pointing to these surges of prenatal androgens as having a significant impact on sexual orientation, noting “research has repeatedly shown that about one-third of homosexual women have (modestly) increased levels of androgens” and “findings support a sexual-differentiation perspective involving prenatal androgens on the development of sexual orientation”.

The fun doesn’t stop there, though, and here’s where we start wading into seriously murky waters. Because it turns out these nefarious little androgens don’t just influence sexuality. Follows are two quotes from articles written by New and Meyer-Bahlburg:

“CAH women as a group have a lower interest than controls in getting married and performing the traditional child-care/housewife role. As children, they show an unusually low interest in engaging in maternal play with baby dolls, and their interest in caring for infants, the frequency of daydreams or fantasies of pregnancy and motherhood, or the expressed wish of experiencing pregnancy and having children of their own appear to be relatively low in all age groups.”

…

“Gender-related behaviors, namely childhood play, peer association, career and leisure time preferences in adolescence and adulthood, maternalism, aggression, and sexual orientation become masculinized in [girls and women with CAH]. These abnormalities have been attributed to the effects of excessive prenatal androgen levels on the sexual prenatal androgen levels on the sexual differentiation of the brain and later on behavior. We anticipate that prenatal dexamethasone therapy will reduce the well-documented behavioral masculinization.”

Most telling and troubling is this quote, which New reportedly said during a slideshow presentation/dexamethasone pitch to parents:

“The challenge here is … to see what could be done to restore this baby to the normal female appearance which would be compatible with her parents presenting her as a girl, with her eventually becoming somebody’s wife, and having normal sexual development, and becoming a mother. And she has all the machinery for motherhood, and therefore nothing should stop that, if we can repair her surgically and help her psychologically to continue to grow and develop as a girl.”

Read the full article these quotes are pulled from at the Bioethics Forum.

There are several points of fail here, but I want to point out three in particular.

Firstly:

The idea of “preventing gayness” is both horrible and, sadly, unsurprising. It is not medicine or science’s place to alter people to conform to society’s norms, and the extrapolated future world this kind of people-engineering leads to is not a world I want any part of. I am reminded strongly of Scott Westerfeld’s excellent trilogy Uglies, Pretties and Specials where bodies, brains and behavior is fiddled with to smooth out those unsightly “abnormal” wrinkles to make people more socially compliant, “normal” and “happy”. This is not acceptance or tolerance. This is an outright attack on homosexual, bisexual and transexual people’s right to exist.

From Alice Dreger:

“It sends the message that you must conform to the most conservative social norms to count as acceptable and to be allowed to live, with full rights, free of discrimination and abuse in American society. … A democratic medical establishment does not alter people’s bodies to fit regressive social norms; it advocates for patients by demanding the social body get its act together. As a white woman who grew up with a black brother, I can tell you that the solution to my brother’s suffering was not to have his skin bleached and his hair straightened, prenatally or postnatally.”

Read more from Alice Dreger at Psychology Today.

Secondly:

As a woman who is a poster child for “uppity”, I take massive offense at the idea that I am “abnormal” or need “repair”, and as a feminist the idea that females could be engineered to adhere to conservative, sexist, stereotypical housewife and mother roles is beyond enraging. If women want to be wives and mothers, to be quiet and unassuming, to stay at home, cook and take care of babies, then that’s their business. I have no problem with that life. But when people — and most especially female scientists working in traditionally male dominated fields — tell me I am behaviorally broken or wrong, then I am going to throw down and you will see what this arrogant, aggressive, “masculinized”, career-oriented, childless, unmarried female is made of.

This kind of sexist and homophobic thinking is why Supreme Court nominee Elana Kagan has been criticised for ridiculous things like not crossing her legs when she sits and playing softball. And why athlete Caster Semanya’s gender identity was publicly and medically questioned. Kagan and Semanya don’t fit neatly into society’s definition of what it means to be and look female, so we parade them around and label them as “abnormal freaks”.

These women are not broken and neither am I. We do not need to be fixed, most especially before we have developed our own gender identities and personalities. When parents start trying to customize their unborn baby’s behavior and cosmetic physical appearance to sooth their own heteronormative and gender binary biases, science and society has strayed into unethical waters.

Thirdly:

The thing not enough people are talking about when it comes to New’s research and the clitoral surgeries going on at Cornell University is the dubious medicine and science going on here.

In the Cornell case, Maggie Koerth-Baker notes on BoingBoing these are purely aesthetic surgeries that can and often do have well-documented life-long side-effects, performed when patients are infants and cannot consent, and are mostly to placate parental discomfort and “fix” female babies so they conform with societal physical norms.

“There’s been no research on outcomes for intersex adults, but there have been lots of intersex adults who’ve spoken up about being miserable with the results of childhood surgeries. Realistically, there are probably people who are happy with their surgeries, too. But, with the evidence we have, all we can say for sure is that there’s no guarantee surgery is the right way to go, psychologically, for each individual. Meanwhile, the standard practice is to not offer individual choice.

I’m going to go out on a limb and call that wrong. But this isn’t just oppressive to people who don’t fit a neat gender binary. It’s also not scientific medicine.

I love modern medicine. The skeptic movement has turned me into an advocate of evidence-based medicine — the simple idea that tradition, anecdote and common sense aren’t good enough reasons to ask a patient to spend money and risk side-effects on a treatment. If there’s no solid, scientific evidence, what you’re doing isn’t medicine.”

Read the full article by Maggie Koerth-Baker on BoingBoing.

I couldn’t agree with this more. When legitimate science and medicinal techniques are wielded against people unable to consent for wibbly justifications of comfort, abstract potential unproven future psychological gain, and society’s physical aesthetics, it ceases to be legitimate science or medicine at all. The literature suggests there is no evidence or medical justification for this kind of surgery on infants, so why is it being done?

When it comes to New’s research with dexamethasone, Dreger reminds us the research being done is not conforming to standard clinical trial procedures. Women are not being fully informed of the risks, and Dr. New has come under fire repeatedly from multiple medical societies for her methods and poorly controlled trials.

From a letter from Alice Dreger to the CARES Foundation which promotes prenatal dexamethasone:

“There are also important scientific questions raised by what appears to have been such a poorly controlled trial. If these studies were not run as real scientific trials from the start, as they should have been, then it is very hard to know what really happened during the pregnancies in which women were administered dexamethasone.

We are also very concerned by the disjuncture between what Dr. New advertises on her Foundation’s website (“Dr. New maintains contact with all children treated prenatally”) and the substantial number of patients missing from the follow-up studies on which she is a coauthor. Dr. New has made the same claim about continuity of contact with all patients to the CARES Foundation, even though her studies suggest otherwise.

Studies of prenatal dexamethasone give us substantial reason for concern for these mothers’ and children’s physical and mental well-being, particularly given that this usage is aimed at preventing a cosmetic issue (one not even shown to increase a girl’s psychosocial risk) and that 87.5% of the mothers started on prenatal dexamethasone will not even be carrying a fetus that is 46,XX 21-hydroxylase deficient. As mentioned earlier, studies have already shown some concerning adverse effects on exposed children.”

Read the full letter to CARES.

This whole thing is surrounded by fuzzy medical science and motivated by reasons other than the health and wellbeing of mothers and children. Evidence-based medicine this ain’t, and that part needs to be talked about more.

Girl Geek Dinners Officially Arrive in Edmonton

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Last night I attended the inaugural Edmonton Girl Geek Dinner, organized by the well-known Brittney Le Blanc from iNews880 and local Out Inc marketing mistress Shauna McConechy.

Girl Geek Dinners started in 2005 in England when its founder Sarah Blow had enough of attending technical events where she was among one of the only female attendees and frustrated by stereotypes that assumed she was only knowledgable about marketing and branding. She knew there were other women out there working and geeking out over technology, so she brought them together and started Girl Geek Dinners as a way of creating a female-centric community to connect tech women over good food and incredibly nerdy conversations of all kinds and colours.

Girl Geek Dinners have spread around the world in the last few years, and now — thanks to Brittney and Shauna — they’ve officially come to Edmonton.

There were a limited run of tickets to the first dinner; I was fortunate enough to snap one up the day they were announced, and have been looking forward to the event since then. The fist series of 20 tickets sold out so fast (four hours!) that an additional 10 were added, and those sold out within only a couple of days. It was fantastic to see so much immediate interest in the event right off the get-go! A couple of geek men were also in attendance, but the majority of us were women in technology and science. (Men must be invited by an attending woman, and women may invite only one man in order to keep the ratio to at least 50/50: this is, after all, a female meetup above and beyond anything else.)

First order of the night was a round of introductions that included each person providing their background, occupation and “geek credentials”, and it was a great ice breaker to come out of the geek closet and discover so many women with shared and similar interests from gadgets and gaming to role playing and crafting.

Shauna and Brittney gave a brief talk about their vision for Girl Geek Dinners in Edmonton that will include speakers, community blogging and event nights. One of the things they’re keen to do that struck me as particularly awesome is organize a dinner to connect women in tech with high school girls in Edmonton to help spread the word and encourage more females to pursue technology, math and science programs and careers. The more of us there are, the better off all of us are: there are still a lot of stereotypes and artificial, cultural barriers that discourage girls and young women from entering the industry, and I can’t think of a better way to encourage them than to get them hanging out with a group of successful tech women in their community. I definitely hope to be able to attend that dinner!

After there were door prizes (I won a free ticket to the next Girl Geek Dinner in July at Lux Steakhouse! Awesome!) and much mingling. It was a fantastic night, and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised by the range of people who were there, particularly when it came to spanning age demographics. As a twenty-something geek, it was very cool to meet and chat with other geek generations!

Big thanks to Ceili’s Irish Pub and Restaurant who hosted and sponsored the event, providing one free drink per head and free appetizer plates. Ceili’s has a reputation in Edmonton for being good to the Twitter community, and the service was excellent!

Keep up with the latest from YEGGirlGeek Dinners by following their Twitter feed or subscribing to their official blog. Hope to see you out at the next dinner in July!

Busty Barbie Controversy

Monday, May 31st, 2010

Some parents are in a twist because Mattel’s new “Back to Basics” Barbie collection — featuring a line of dolls in modern cocktail attire — has a doll sporting a knee-length black dress with a plunging neckline and “bowling-ball cleavage”.

Let’s consider for a moment that all these Barbies, as a set, are themed around cocktail and evening wear. None of the dresses on any of the Barbies in this set strike me as particularly over-sexed: most of them are pretty standard fair, black dresses based on current trends or classic styles. There are only two showing off any extreme amount of cleavage, including the one in question and — arguably, depending on your perception — number 11 with the halter dress..

A concerned Minnesota mother says:

“I don’t want [my daughter] to think she has to be this, you know, busty Barbie who’s constantly wearing heels and these low-cut shirts. And that’s really the image I think a doll that you’re going to buy for a child is portraying.”

Read the full article.

Not for nothing, but some of us HAVE naturally large breasts and for me the problem at the core here is a culture and society that over-sexualizes large breasts and judges them as automatically inappropriate. I have large breasts and I’m sick of being policed for them, especially by other women: they’re no more or less appropriate than small ones.

What if the daughter of this woman grows up to have naturally larger breasts? What kind of messages are we sending to her then, that her large breasts are abnormal and ‘slutty’ just by virtue of their size? That she’s forever doomed to the “fake-breasted stripper look” if she wears a top that so much hints at cleavage? How is that any better than telling small- or average-breasted teens they need large breasts to be sexy?

Also — and I know I’ve said this before but I’m gonna say it again — slut shaming and madonna/virgin worship are two different sides of the same coin: women are either pure, modest and sexually restrained or slutty, sex-crazed whores. The clothing choices on this set of Barbies seems very measured to me given the theme: the hemlines mix from long to short, the tops range from turtleneck to plunge, and the sleeves range from full to strapless. As a representation of basic cocktail dresses women in the current day and age wear, I think Mattel did pretty well representing a broad set of styles and degrees of sexual expression.

Of course, they’re all identical body-types — skinny, hourglass-shaped and tall. That’s the bigger issue to me than what they’re wearing. Wouldn’t it be great if we could see a range of body-type as broad as the range of fashion? Short, stout girls, pear-shaped girls, flat-chested girls, tall and lanky girls, etc. Mattel is starting to think a little more carefully about race when they’re building these dolls (though still not enough: hair and face shapes still tend toward a largely caucasian standard even when the skin tone is modified), so why not represent a broader range of body sizes and shapes as well?

Sure it would cost more to manufacture, but also think of the sales potential! With a variety of body types comes the need for consumers to buy a broader variety of clothing and accessories, especially for girls with multiple dolls that wouldn’t always be able to draw from the same wardrobe. If I was Mattel’s CEO that’s where I’d steer the ship: good publicity and a whole host of new products to sell.