"Gender ideology, today, is one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations. Why is it dangerous?"

"Because it blurs differences and the value of men and women. All humanity is the tension of differences. It is to grow through the tension of differences. The question of gender is diluting the differences and making the world the same, all dull, all alike, and that is contrary to the human vocation."

Said Pope Francis, quoted — translated — in "Pope Francis: Gender ideology is ‘one of the most dangerous ideological colonizations’ today" (Catholic News Agency).

"4B is shorthand for four Korean words that all start with bi-, or 'no'..."

"The first no, bihon, is the refusal of heterosexual marriage. Bichulsan is the refusal of childbirth, biyeonae is saying no to dating, and bisekseu is the rejection of heterosexual sexual relationships. It is both an ideological stance and a lifestyle, and many women I spoke to extend their boycott to nearly all the men in their lives, including distancing themselves from male friends.... For Youngmi and many others who subscribe to its basic premises, 4B, or 'practicing bihon,' is the only path by which a Korean woman today can live autonomously. In their view, Korean men are essentially beyond redemption, and Korean culture, on the whole, is hopelessly patriarchal.... While 4B’s adherents may hope to change society — through demonstrations and online activism, and by modeling an alternative lifestyle to other women — they are not trying to change the men whom they view as their oppressors.... Even young women who are not members of the movement echo that they could not imagine dating or marrying a Korean man...." 

From "A World Without Men/The women of South Korea’s 4B movement aren’t fighting the patriarchy — they’re leaving it behind entirely" (NY Magazine).

"Yeshiva University abruptly announced on Friday that it had placed all undergraduate club activities on hold... to keep from recognizing an L.G.B.T.Q. student group."

"The move came two days after the U.S. Supreme Court... [i]n a 5 to 4 vote... said the university would first have to make its arguments in New York State courts before returning to the Supreme Court.... A lawyer for the students, Katherine Rosenfeld, said in an email Friday that the move by the university... 'is a throwback to 50 years ago when the city of Jackson, Mississippi, closed all public swimming pools rather than comply with court orders to desegregate'.... [S]tudents seeking formal recognition for a club called Y.U. Pride Alliance.... [sued] under laws barring discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation."

The NYT reports.

Is it like closing the swimming pools? Students can have clubs whether the school has some club-recognition process or not, but you can't go swimming if there is no pool. 

Perhaps the loftiest position for a school to take is to disaggregate itself from student expression. But the question whether it must do this remains, and I'll be interested to see what happens when (if?) this case gets back to the Supreme Court. The argument is that the law against discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation contains various exceptions, so it's not the kind of "neutral, generally applicable" law that, under current doctrine, the federal Free Exercise Clause permits. I'm also seeing an argument that the current doctrine should be overruled, so that even "neutral, generally applicable" laws would be subjected to heightened scrutiny if they substantially burden religion. 

"The administration has been working to pursue a narrow definition of sex as biologically determined at birth, and to tailor its civil rights laws to meet it."

"Access to school bathrooms would be determined by biology, not gender identity. The military would no longer be open to transgender service members. Civil rights protections would not extend to transgender people in hospitals and ambulances. But the administration’s definition is now firmly at odds with how the court views 'sex' discrimination."

From "Supreme Court Expansion of Transgender Rights Undercuts Trump Restrictions/The ruling focused on employment discrimination, but legal scholars say its language could force expanded civil rights protections in education, health care, housing and other areas of daily life" (NYT).

Why is "sex" in quotes? I'd say the Court's case is also at odds with the effort to banish talk of sex and replace it with the concept of gender. I wonder, now will there be a new focus on sex?

Monday’s case was focused on employment law, a provision of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 known as Title VII. But Justice Neil M. Gorsuch’s opinion used language that is likely to apply to numerous areas of law where there is language preventing discrimination “because of sex” or “on the basis of sex.” Under the ruling, discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity ran afoul of the standard....

“They’ve ruled,” [President Trump] said. “I’ve read the decision, and some people were surprised, but they’ve ruled and we live with their decision.”

He's read the decision. Ha ha. Did anyone tell him it was 172 pages long before he concocted that lie? I assume it's a lie. And go ahead and bullshit that if you've read any of the opinion — a paragraph, say — you've "read the decision."

Anyway, I'm sure he doesn't mind the Supreme Court taking this pesky issue out of his hair.* "They’ve ruled and we live with their decision." If he really objected, he'd talk about how important it is to reelect him so he can appoint more Justices like Kavanaugh. Oh, but there is the complication that his #1 choice for the Supreme Court, Neil Gorsuch, wrote the opinion. He can't purport to have the power to control where the Court goes with all the legal issues.

But I don't think Trump is keen to hold back gay and transgender people. At most, he hopes to maintain the enthusiasm of the religious conservatives he needs to get reelected. But I don't think he is the slightest bit interested in reining in sexual — or gender — expression. Has he ever reined in his own?
______________________

* His orangified, poofed up, spray-spritzed hair.

I don't know if it has anything to do with being Catholic, but Nancy Pelosi must know that it's the other party that is supposed to own the brand "hate."

Nevertheless, I will read the Karen Tumulty column in WaPo, "Nancy Pelosi and that four-letter word." Tumulty accepts the religious explanation for Pelosi's fury at the notion that she hates Trump — "those who know her well insist religious belief is at the core of everything Pelosi does." There's also this strange distinction:

Disgust, to a Catholic, is not the same as hatred....

Strange to me. I'm not a Catholic. Is "hate" a freakout word but "disgust" just fine? To me, disgust is worse than hate. Maybe. I'm not sure. Actions based on hate may be worse. The hater might act out in violence. Those whose insides roil with disgust — they shrink away, as from disease. If you disgust someone, you might count on them to stay away, but if they hate you, you're in danger. There's something so lowly about disgust.

Oh! Am I disgusted? Ha ha. But you see my point: What kind of person are you, if you feel disgust for other people? Isn't that the stuff of racism? Isn't that what makes you want to put half of your fellow citizens in a "basket of deplorables" where you won't have to see them?

Back to Tumulty:

Pelosi’s announcement that the House would proceed with impeachment was suffused with religion. “In signing the Declaration of Independence, our founders invoked a firm reliance on divine providence,” Pelosi said. 

She is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.

ADDED: The subject of disgust is profound, and I wanted to call special attention to the writings of Martha Nussbaum on the subject. Let me quote from "Back Talk: Martha C. Nussbaum/A conversation with the author of From Disgust to Humanity about various forms of opposition to gay equality" (The Nation, 2010). The subject at the time was gay people, and I presume the philosopher's ideas were not limited or unduly tied to that particular worldly concern, that the critique of "the politics of disgust" was not simply a means to the end of improving life for gay people.

"Mr. Gorey himself never really acknowledged his own sexuality. To Mr. Schiff, he described himself as 'reasonably undersexed.'"

"To another interview’s probing question about his sexual orientation, he said, 'I’m neither one thing nor the other particularly.' Later in the interview he added: 'What I am trying to say is that I am a person before I am anything else.' While today’s L.G.B.T.Q. community may read that as a closeted gay man from an earlier generation refusing to come out, 'it’s far more complicated than that,' Mr. Dery said. The few romantic feelings Mr. Gorey confessed to in letters to friends, most of them for other men and best described as infatuations, show him as someone for whom the messiness of human relationships was much too much. Perhaps for that or other reasons he kept himself buttoned up. Mr. Dery honored that. 'I wanted to allow Gorey his self-definition, and his self-definition is essentially not to define himself,' he said. 'I wanted to allow Gorey his mystery.'"

From "Edward Gorey Was Eerily Prescient/A new biography celebrates his mysterious life and art."

The book, by Mark Dery, has a fantastic title, "Born to Be Posthumous: The Eccentric Life and Mysterious Genius of Edward Gorey."

On the subject of vague sexuality, I love this Gorey drawing:



The caption is: "When they tried to make love, their strenuous and prolonged efforts came to nothing" (from Gorey's book "The Loathsome Couple").

"Asked to plot themselves on a 'sexuality scale,' 23% of British people choose something other than 100% heterosexual..."

"... and the figure rises to 49% among 18-24 year olds."

"I said to her – and she completely agreed – 'Can we love each other without that?'"

"If you can love somebody without that, then you can really love somebody."

Said Russell Wilson, the Seattle Seahawks quarterback, in an interview with the pastor of Rock Church, referring to his relationship with Ciara.

The link goes to People, which reads that quote as  "news that the couple is abstaining from sex for religious reasons." But the quote does not say that. Let's talk about what the words mean, and let's assume that Wilson: 1. doesn't lie, and 2. chooses his words accurately.

First, Wilson is telling us about a conversation in which he posed the question whether it's possible to love without having sex. The woman agreed with the proposition embedded in his question: Yes, it is. There's a second level to the proposition: Refraining from having sex is a test of love. If you have the capacity to love without having sex, then your capacity for love is truly great. At the time of the conversation, the couple expressed a shared belief in this proposition.

That's lovely and quite appropriate for an interview in a church, but if privacy-invading probing questions were in order, I'd ask: After agreeing about the possibility of love without sex, did there come a time when you, in fact, had sex? I'm only pointing out the gap between the quote and the People paraphrase. Wilson didn't state that the couple is — People's word — "abstaining."

Second, Wilson didn't state that the couple is abstaining — as People put it — for religious reasons. One might seek a sex-free relationship with a person of the opposite sex for reasons other than religion. Maybe that's the only reason People can think of or maybe People is influenced by the church setting or maybe People is pandering to the tastes of its readers, but religion is not a necessary foundation for Wilson's statement. It could be philosophy (as in Plato's "Symposium"). And it could be sexual preference. I would not infer from a woman's beauty that a particular man feels sexual desire for her.

They're a beautiful couple, and I wish them happiness. My motivation here is to reveal the soppiness and the sloppiness of People Magazine.

"[T]he first 800-page instalment of a two-part history of America that tells of the secret gay life of figures from Alexander Hamilton, George Washington and Abraham Lincoln to Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Richard Nixon."

From activist/writer Larry Kramer.

ADDED: The link goes to an article in The Guardian which has the title "Were Lincoln and Nixon gay? The ‘history’ book that is dividing America" and, right under that, this set of pictures:



The caption under that is: "Abraham Lincoln, left and Richard Nixon. 'It may look like fiction, but to me, it’s not,' says author Larry Kramer of his book." One gets the sense that Kramer is playing an imaginative game of hypothesizing that this or that historical figure was gay. He says:

"Most histories have been written by straight people. There has never been any history book written where the gay people have been in the history from the beginning.It’s ridiculous to think we haven’t been here for ever."

Of course, he's right about that. There were gay people who hid it, so why not speculate about which ones were gay? What evidence is there? Lincoln and Nixon look so grim in those photographs. Maybe it was the stress and pain of denying and hiding their true sexuality.

"Almost all furries have a fursona, but only a small proportion wear a fur suit. Many furries feel that, in everyday life, we are all forced to adopt personas..."

"... their fursona allows them to be their true selves. The one message that was consistent across my conversations was that each member of the community felt they had something that made them different and ill fitting in mainstream society, such as Asperger syndrome or a facial tic. The fandom gave them a safe venue in which to express themselves.... Furries are well aware that the public perceives their community and lifestyle as primarily motivated by sex. From my conversations that day, I got the sense that there are layers behind the decision to become a furry, and that sex and furry pornography are only one aspect of their lifestyle... [E]veryone was too busy making new friends and having fun."

Fron "A Peek Inside a Furry Convention," from a letter sent by Debra W. Soh to the Archives of Sexual Behavior, published in the February issue of Harper's Magazine under the title "Below the Pelt." You need a subscription to Harper's for the link to work).

A question I have about this (and about some similar things) is whether we are grouping together people who belong in 3 different categories: 1. Those who want to have fun and are just playing, 2. Those who are mentally disordered and hurling themselves toward greater chaos and feelings of turbulence, and 3. Those who only want to feel normal.

"A group of swingers, kinksters, polyamorists and nudists is taking over a Madison hotel... celebrating Valentine's Day weekend..."

"... with two days of what's billed as 'complete sexual freedom.' The event will draw as many as 275 'alternative sex' aficionados from all over Wisconsin, the United States as well as abroad says Melanie, a volunteer event organizer with Camp NCN, a 'sexual freedom' campground in Black River Falls, Wis."

Black River Falls, eh? When I hear "Black River Falls," I hear "Wisconsin Death Trip."

Wisconsin Death Trip is a 1973 non-fiction book by Michael Lesy, based on a collection of late 19th century photographs by Jackson County, Wisconsin photographer Charles Van Schaick – mostly taken in the city of Black River Falls – and local news reports from the same period. It emphasizes the harsh aspects of Midwestern rural life under the pressures of crime, disease, mental illness, and urbanization.

The book was adapted into a film in 1999.

But let's hear about this "complete sexual freedom" from Melanie:

Melanie agreed to be interviewed about the event on the condition that Isthmus not use her real name. 

There's complete freedom for you.

"There's a huge misconception about the swinging world," says the 48-year-old from western Wisconsin. "A lot of people look at swingers as people who are immoral, who are whorish, who jump from one person to another, but that's not necessarily the case. It's just another type of connection."

Well, complete sexual freedom includes prostitution, which is another type of connection.

The group rents out the entire hotel when they come to Madison, so there's no risk of children or other unsuspecting guests getting an unexpected eyeful (or earful). That also gives the group the freedom to set up a fetish dungeon, group "play rooms" with various sex apparatuses, an area with vendors selling sex toys and a dance floor with a DJ. The entire hotel is clothing-optional, with the exception of the front desk reception area.

Which hotel is this?

Though Camp NCN is LGBT-friendly, the hotel takeover events are open only to heterosexual couples and single females (who are referred to as "unicorns") as a way to ensure guests are comfortable, Melanie says. Single men are not allowed.

There's complete sexual freedom for you! Which hotel is involved in hosting a business that discriminates on the basis of sex and sexual orientation?

The location of the Madison hotel takeover site is kept secret... The Camp NCN website doesn't even provide the information on its registration page....

Smell the freedom!

"Some friends have told me that kink should not be considered an orientation..."

"... since that could open the door for any deeply felt sexual identity to claim that status. Is sexual orientation a slippery slope? Are we two clicks away from a strong preference for nerdy-Jewish-tech-guys-with-dark-hair-and-an-athletic-streak being called an 'orientation'? Personally, I don’t think it really matters—I doubt that preference could become a legally protected category, so if someone wants to say that’s her orientation, what do I care? — but, for the sake of conversation, let’s say there needs to be some mechanism to limit what can qualify."

Writes Jillian Keenan over at Slate in a piece called "Is kink a sexual orientation?"

I admit to only skimming the article, but what I think is missing is an analysis of what hangs on the answer to the question whether something is in or out of a category called "sexual orientation"? This is one of those questions about whether to interpret a term narrowly or broadly. That's something that we discussed a few days ago with respect to the word "rape."

There are different consequences to defining an important term narrowly or broadly, and it should be recognized that this doesn't need to be about what the words somehow really mean. It's often about what you are trying to do by labeling. You might want to narrow a category so something important is taken very seriously and given special attention, or you might want to be more inclusive because you see something good that could be done (or you just want some priority for an interest of yours).

"Sexual orientation" clearly refers to the sexual preference for a partner of another sex or your own sex. But you could make it a big category, inclusive of things like sado-masochism. But why? What are you trying to achieve by grouping these things together?

If you don't address these questions, the discussion runs in circles.

The difference between requiring a business to cover contraceptives for employees and barring it from committing acts of racial discrimination.

The dissenting opinion in Hobby Lobby and many sincere commentators worry that the Supreme Court's opinion could mean that the government won't be able to require businesses — if they cite a religious objection — to refrain from race discrimination and other acts that we, as a society, consider morally wrong and terribly harmful.

But the majority opinion makes a sharp, clear distinction that it's very important for people to understand before they accept the invitation to become inflamed over the horrible prospect of religious exemptions from laws that restrict businesses that are causing harm to others.

Under the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, when the federal government imposes a substantial burden on the exercise of religion, it must justify that burden by showing that it is the least restrictive means of achieving a compelling governmental interest. In Hobby Lobby, the compelling governmental interest is comprehensive preventive health care for women, and the majority said that requiring the employer to include coverage of all FDA-approved contraceptives in its health care plan was not the least restrictive way to to serve that interest. There are other ways the government could get the cost of contraceptives covered, ways that wouldn't rope in the employer.

So the government's interest could be served without imposing the burden on religion.

But when the government bans race discrimination, it is serving a compelling interest in banning race discrimination and there is no alternative way to achieve that end. From the majority opinion:

The Government has a compelling interest in providing an equal opportunity to participate in the workforce without regard to race, and prohibitions on racial discrimination are precisely tailored to achieve that critical goal.

With race discrimination, the corporation that gets the burden is the source of the harm to others that the government seeks to eliminate. That can only be done by regulating the business. It's automatically the least restrictive way to meet the compelling interest.

As Chief Justice Roberts famously said (in another context): "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Making employers cover particular health needs of employees is tapping them to provide a benefit. The corporation is not the source of the harm. It's the source of jobs. Historically, businesses have included health insurance as part of the pay package, and then the employees are getting their personal health-care needs met with this benefit, but there are other ways that health care could be funded. And that's why the government in Hobby Lobby couldn't show that it had used the least restrictive alternative.

So don't think that Hobby Lobby would apply to situations where the business is itself inflicting the harm to others that the government wants to alleviate. So let's say that in the future the federal government would like to ban employment discrimination against gay people, and a business wants to use RFRA to claim an entitlement to continue to discriminate. Quite aside from the difficulty of expounding a sincere religious belief that is substantially burdened by needing to refrain from discriminating, the government's argument that banning discrimination would easily satisfy the least-restrictive-alternative requirement.

The way to stop discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is to stop discriminating on the basis of sexual orientation.

Those who don't like what did happen in Hobby Lobby have an incentive to portray it as portending horrible consequences that, in fact, the Court took pains to foreclose.

"If I’m going to kiss a stranger, I’d rather kiss a girl," said the female singer....

... who appears in the kissing video that got so viral before people discovered it was an ad. So... viral advertising is a thing we could talk about again, but I was interested in the preference of the singer. But it's only interesting if the singer (Soko) is not a lesbian. The quote is featured at the end of the linked NYT article, which says nothing about Soko's sexual orientation.

By the way, I have not watched the viral video that got 43 million views in one week. Why should I?

Exclusion of gay individuals from the jury requires an explanation, a 9th Circuit panel rules.

The issue here is peremptory challenges, which ordinarily do not require explanation, but there is Supreme Court case law requiring explanation when these challenges seem to be based on race or sex. That is, the opposing lawyer can require the lawyer who challenged the would-be juror to give some reason other than race or sex for wanting to exclude this person. Should sexual orientation be treated the same way?

Unlike race and sex, a person's sexual orientation isn't openly visible unless you use stereotypes and inference, but in this case, the challenged individual had answered some questions that elicited answers about his "partner" that included the pronoun "he."

“The record persuasively demonstrates that” the juror “was struck because of his sexual orientation,” [Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt wrote for a unanimous three-judge panel]. “Permitting a strike based on sexual orientation would send the false message that gays and lesbians could not be trusted to reason fairly on issues of great import to the community or the nation,” he added....

How will this work in future cases? Will lawyers accuse lawyers of excluding someone because he is or seems gay? Someone called in for jury duty will be subjected to lawyers arguing over whether he is perceived as gay?

Anyway, the 9th Circuit panel determined that the Supreme Court's DOMA case, United States v. Windsor, required heightened scrutiny for discrimination based on sexual orientation:

"We have analyzed the Supreme Court precedent... by considering what the court actually did, rather than by dissecting isolated pieces of text."

That's a useful prod. The Supreme Court — if it's going to have a system of levels of scrutiny — ought to tell us outright what level it's on. 

"It seems the woman who falsely claimed she received an anti-gay 'tip' from two patrons..."

"... never donated the money she received from supporters to help wounded vets like she promised."

Liars lie.

In other news, Bill Clinton doodled a penis.

"Kids React to Gay Marriage."

This video has gone viral.

Much as I support same-sex marriage and think these children are adorable, I have a few problems:

1. Using children to get out a political message. They're too young to consent, so it's an invasion of their privacy, and they're too young really to understand the issues, even if their out-of-the-mouths-of-babes opinions charm us (especially when we agree).

2. The video is edited, so we don't hear any "wrong" answers the videographers didn't want us to hear, and we don't hear the extent of the leading questions and promptings by the adults... which takes us back to point 1: using children. When you do things with children, that particular child's interests must be placed first.

3. These children — at least most of them — have probably already been indoctrinated. We're told they are "from California." What schools have they attended? What have they been told? Do they even know what sexual feeling is? Do they understand the issue basically in terms of being nice to other people and liking what you like?

"New Study Says That Lesbians Hold Hands Better."

A headline at Slate marks the emergence of a new rule in reporting on scientific studies: Where a difference is shown between gay and straight people, portray what is true of gay people to be better.

What's bad about the way heterosexual people hold hands? There's a "dominant" position, and the man takes it. That's funny. I always thought there's a more comfortable position and the man lets me take it. Am I supposed to feel all subordinated retrospectively?

Living in compressed time with Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy.

"We live in an era of time compression," said Justice Kennedy. And "It’s simply stunning to me to see the changes in attitudes." He was talking about attitudes about sexual orientation.

At the same time — compressed time, presumably — he said that, in a "functioning democracy," courts should not be "resolv[ing] the most serious issues of the day."

"I just don’t think that a democracy is responsible if it doesn’t have a political, rational, respectful, decent discourse so it can solve these problems before they come to the court."

Attitudes are changing rapidly, and in a democracy, serious issues should be resolved outside of the courts. And yet he wrote the decision that struck down part of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Why not wait for the democratic process to play out?

Maybe — in the mind of Anthony Kennedy — they did wait. DOMA was passed in 1996. They waited 17 years.

In compressed time, that's what? Half a century?

"Obviously not designed by a heterosexual man. It looks damaged and hideously asymmetrical."

Says Clyde, in the comments to the post about that very bizarre (and asymmetrical dress Cate Blanchett wore to the Paris premiere of "Blue Jasmine").

I say:

Heteros are bugs for symmetry and on guard for hideousness and damage? What evidence is there of that?

I see hetero men around all the time who don't seem to mind hideousness and damage.

Clyde says: