The value of privacy

I've been reading a book by Daniel J Solove called "The Future of Reputation: gossip, rumor and privacy on the Internet". With the privacy concerns around Facebook now making mainstream news, it's interesting to take stock of just what it is that makes privacy important. Solove has helped clarify that for me.

I would put it like this: privacy is an acknowledgement that humanity - both individuals and society - is imperfect in many ways, and it is a means by which people can cope with that imperfection.

Privacy enables people to hide character defects from others. This sounds like something that shouldn't be done, but it's actually necessary to some degree if we're ever going to make friends with anyone. As Solove says (p66-67): "When intimate personal information circulates among a small group of people who know us well, its significance can be weighed against other aspects of our personality and character. By contrast, when intimate information is removed from its original context and revealed to strangers, we are vulnerable to being misjudged on the basis of our most, embarrassing, and therefore most memorable, tastes and preferences". Privacy prevents us from being judged by people unfamiliar with us solely on the basis of our sensationalistic flaws.

Even if people have perfect information about us, this is no guarantee that their judgements will be fair or accurate. People are irrational beings, by and large, and privacy enables people to hide information about themselves that might lead to stereotyping and prejudice - sexuality and mental illness are some historical examples. Even in cases where a judgement might be accurate - employers discovering if a potential employee has a greater predilection to a fatal illness like cancer is the example Solove gives (p71) - then it's still possible to view this judgement as unfair. Is it fair to deny employment to an individual because they're statistically more likely to get cancer? Should disclosure of such medical information be protected by law? I suspect that in many if not most cases it already is.

Privacy permits violation of social norms. Again, this sounds bad but isn't necessarily so. It is an acknowledgement that there can be conflict between what society demands of an individual and what an individual desires for themself, and a recognition that sometimes the desires of the individual should take precedence. Solove puts it thus (p72): "Most of us desire a limited realm where we might have reprieve from the judgment of others, which otherwise might become suffocating".

Finally privacy helps us to overcome our individual imperfections and grow as human beings. It does this firstly by providing the opportunity to hide our pasts, giving us the opportunity to break free of them, in essence letting us have a second chance at life. Solove again (p73): "Protection against disclosure permits room to change, to define oneself and one's future without becoming 'a prisoner of one's recorded past'".

It does this secondly through group privacy, or the opportunity to have different identities among different people. This is not dishonest, but simply an acknowledgement of the complexity of human beings, that "when you play various roles you're not being artificial or phony. These roles let you accentuate different aspects of yourself" (Arnold Lugwig quoted in Solove, p69). This roleplay enables personal growth, because "people even play roles in which they seem improperly cast, hoping to grow into the part. One plays a role until it fits, becoming transformed in the process." (Solove, p68) This is not possible without privacy.

It would be very easy to go through this list and point out instances where privacy should not apply, and Solove recognises as much, explicitly calling for a balance between the benefits of privacy and the benefits that disclosure of information about others can bring. But in a time when it's not uncommon to hear the claim that privacy is dead, I want to point out just what is being lost if privacy is lost altogether, and question whether our society, and the people within it, can cope.

Is there any society in which nobody has any imperfections that they legitimately do not want disclosed to others? In which nobody ever judges anybody else in a way that is unfair or inaccurate? In which people never have any need to violate the existing norms of society in even the mildest, slightest way? In which nobody ever needs to develop themselves personally beyond the labels already placed upon them by the society around them? I don't think there is. And I don't think there ever will be.

As long as humanity is imperfect, we will need something that performs the functions that privacy currently performs. If we are indeed losing our privacy, then we need to do one of two things. We need to come up with something that currently does for us what privacy had done for us in previous years, and fast. Or else we need to get our privacy back. And fast.

Nick Minchin on tobacco addiction, 1995

It came up on the ABC show Qanda tonight that Senator Nick Minchin (he of the "climate change is a left-wing anti-industry beat-up" view) allegedly claimed in a government report that cigarette smoking was not addictive and that passive smoking was not real. Minchin claimed on Qanda that his statements were taken out of context, and that this was part of a larger argument that people should be free to smoke or not smoke as they see fit, without government interference.

The report in question wasn't hard to find: The Tobacco Industry and the Costs of Tobacco-Related Illness. A final section starting on page 119 entitled "Dissenting report by Senators Nick Minchin and Sue Knowles" does express a lot of disagreement with regulatory proposals out of a desire to see less government interference in general life. However, a comment on page 120 by Nick Minchin (and it is explicitly made clear that this opinion is only the opinion of Nick Minchin alone) reads as follows:

Senator Minchin wishes to record his dissent from the Committee's statements that it believes cigarettes are addictive (1.25) and that passive smoking causes a number of adverse health effects for non-smokers (1.34).

So....not a denial, but it seems to me a response of "not all the evidence is in yet" on the issue. I wonder if he still feels that way?

The dissent goes on:

The Committee's terms of reference did not ask it to reach conclusions on these controversial issues, and nor was sufficient evidence from both sides of the argument brought to bear. These are medical conclusions which it is inappropriate for this Senate Committee of inquiry to reach.

Senator Minchin briefly referred to this part in his Qanda reply when he claimed that his comments on smoking should be disregarded because the Senate Committee wasn't convened to address medical issues. This seems like a half-truth: to my eye, it's only the dissenters Minchin and Knowles who took issue with the scope of the Senate report's medically-informed decisions, specifically because they didn't believe that there was sufficient medical evidence of the reality of nicotine addiction and passive smoking. In 1995.

This might be worth keeping in mind when Senator Minchin makes claims about the supposed unreliability of current climate science on the question of anthropogenic global warming.

Conroy not going to budge

Say what you like about Senator Conroy (and believe me I do), I've got to admire sheer testicular fortitude when I see it. He's refusing to back down from even the toughest opponents of his censorship scheme, including opponents as powerful US government and Google. From those articles, it looks like Conroy's gone on the attack for Google but isn't saying anything about the US government just yet. I wonder if he will?

Earth Hour: how about some REAL commitment?

Earth Hour is the annual event in which people are encouraged to switch off their lights for one hour of one day of the year. It is described by the organisers as "a global call to action to every individual, every business and every community throughout the world. It is a call to stand up, to take responsibility, to get involved and lead the way towards a sustainable future."

The event receives criticism. One is that it doesn't actually save any energy at all for that hour. The response from organisers in the linked news article to this criticism was that "Earth Hour is not about saving energy, it’s a positive inspiring event that will show the level of public concern about climate change". Earth Hour is, apparently,"an opportunity for people to show that they care about climate change and want global leaders to take action". It's an awareness-raising exercise, in other words.

I don't think it's effective. For one, we're well past the stage of needing awareness-raising for the general public. The issue of climate change is almost impossible to avoid in any form of media. Perhaps the "awareness-raising" is aimed at leaders, making them aware of a constituency that wants the issue addressed, and not a general message to the public. But if so, I think it fails.

Turning lights off for one hour of one year tells leaders that people want something done? Yes. It tells them that people are willing to accept what those leaders actually need to do? No, I don't think it does. It just tells them that people are willing to engage in a very temporary and very tiny inconvenience that's then conveniently discarded for the other 364 days of the year.

Facing climate change requires long-term commitment, and it requires sacrifice. None of those values are truly on display in Earth Hour. The symbolic message being sent to leaders, from where I'm sitting, is "we care, but we expect you to fix the problem, without inconveniencing us more than we want to be". A politician can easily exploit such a sentiment to ensure nothing gets done. Thus we have situations such as that in Australia, where the Opposition opposes a cap-and-trade scheme by basically saying "sure climate change is an issue, but this particular approach costs too much". It doesn't take much to figure out that any approach can be said by opponents to "cost too much", because any approach is going to cost.

I don't object to symbolism, nor do I object to trying to send a message to leaders. I do object to what I think is the message being sent by the fairly lacklustre effort required to implement Earth Hour for one day a year. If proponents of this approach truly want to demonstrate a commitment, they need to get people on board for more than one hour a day. Maybe they could convince people to engage in this hour a day for a month at a time? Six months? A year?

Would it be possible to get all the people, governments and countries, all so allegedly determined to see leaders do what needs to be done to combat climate change, to do engage in an ongoing "Earth Hour" every day for more than a week?

Whatever the answer, the extent to which such an event could be sustained beyond just one day would to me demonstrate just how committed people really are to making the commitment and sacrifice needed to address and adjust to climate change. And I fear the real answer to the question exposed by such a demand would "not very committed at all".

India and Australia, racist attacks or moral panic?

The paper ran a cartoon depicting an Australian policeman wearing a pointed white hood associated with the US racist group the Ku Klux Klan. The officer was shown saying "We are yet to ascertain the nature of the crime."

That was, apparently, the actions of a newspaper in India called the Mail Today, in response to the murder of 21-year-old Indian student Nitin Garg. When I found the site of the Mail Today to check, the first thing I'm greeted with is a pop-up asking for my feedback in response to the question "SHOULD INDIA PURSUE THE MATTER OF AUSTRALIAN RACISM IN AN INTERNATIONAL COURT?"

It worries me that the single biggest source of the claim of a dramatic increase in racist attacks against Indian people in Australia appears to be the sensationalist media, and that the same media is making calls for special action to address the claimed problem. I'm currently trawling for actual statistics of crimes, but in the absence of reliable, verifiable statistics demonstrating an upsurge in demonstrably racist violence against Indian people, and with the role that the media is playing right now, I have to wonder: is this a moral panic? Is "racist Australia" here playing the role of a folk devil perceived as threatening the virtuous and vulnerable youth of India?

I have found one claim of of a clear and dramatic increase of attacks against Indian students as reported in the Indian media: both the Mail Today and the Siasat Times claim that a "government report tabled in parliament" said that "The number of Indians attacked in Australia in 2008 was 17. In 2009, 94 Indians were attacked till November 20. A total of 100 attacks on Indians, including students, have been reported in Australia during last year". If true, that would be an extraordinary upswing.

Unfortunately I don't know what this report actually is, or how these claimed statistics were compiled. I would need that information, I think, before I could accept the figure as accurate. So....moral panic or genuine upsurge in racist violence that specifically targets Indian people? I'm not really sure at this point, although I do find it odd that Indian people, and only Indian people, would be experiencing such an upsurge. I think that believing such a situation to be possible gives Australian racism far too much credit - it's far too broad to expect it to be targeted solely at one non-white group.

The parenthood of Janet Miller-Jenkins

A case between two lesbians (one of whom now claims to be ex-gay) in America has been at the periphery of my attention the past couple of months.

I don't have time to get all the links together right now, but here's the situation as I understand it: Lisa Miller and Janet Jenkins got a civil union in Vermont. While living in Virginia, they had a child together, with Lisa conceiving through artificial insemination from an anonymous donor. Sometime later they separated. Under the terms of the dissolution of the civil union filed in Vermont by Lisa, Lisa would have custody of the child and Janet would have visitation rights. This did not happen, with Janet being refused visitation by Lisa after just one visit. Lisa then filed a new petition in Virginia requesting that the Virginia (not Vermont) court system grant Lisa exclusive access to the child, and deny any visitation rights to Janet, on the basis that same-sex marriage was illegal in Virginia, and that Janet was not really the child's parent (this in spite of the fact that the Vermont family court had ruled that she was).

The upshot: a 2006 Vermont Supreme Court ruling claiming that Vermont had exclusive jurisdiction over the issue, based on a law called (I think) the Parent Kidnapping Protection Act which explicitly prevented attempts at "jurisdiction shopping" in child custody disputes. In 2008, the Virginia Supreme Court also ruled that it was Vermont, not Virginia, that had jurisdiction. Finally, on November 20, the original Vermont judge that awarded custody to Lisa found Lisa in contempt of court and switched custody to Janet on the basis that this was the only way to ensure equal access to the child. Upon expiration of the time allotted for Lisa to give up the child, both Lisa and child vanished without trace.

Anti-gay arguments in support of Lisa's decision to go on the lam place much focus on the claim that, as biological parent, Lisa's needs should take precedence no matter what the law says. In the more extreme version of the argument, giving the child over to Janet is described by anti-gays as equivalent to forcing a mother to give her child over to the milkman.

So, I've found the 2006 Vermont Supreme Court ruling online, available here. The relevant section on the question of parenthoood, and why Janet Jenkins has it, is in paragraphs 56 to 58:

56.  Many factors are present here that support a conclusion that
  Janet is a parent, including, first and foremost, that  Janet and Lisa were
  in a valid legal union at the time of the child's birth.  The other factors
  include the following.  It was the expectation and intent of both Lisa and
  Janet that Janet would be IMJ's parent.  Janet participated in the decision
  that Lisa would be artificially inseminated to bear a child and
  participated actively in the prenatal care and birth.  Both Lisa and Janet
  treated Janet as IMJ's parent during the time they resided together, and
  Lisa identified Janet as a parent of IMJ in the dissolution petition. 
  Finally, there is no other claimant to the status of parent, and, as a
  result, a negative decision would leave IMJ with only one parent.  The
  sperm donor was anonymous and is making no claim to be IMJ's parent.  If
  Janet had been Lisa's husband, these factors would make Janet the parent of
  the child born from the artificial insemination.  See generally People v.
  Sorensen, 437 P.2d 495 (Cal. 1968).  Because of the equality of treatment
  of partners in civil unions, the same result applies to Lisa.  15 V.S.A. §
  1204.
   
       ¶  57.  Virtually all modern decisions from other jurisdictions
  support this result, although the theories vary.  See e.g., Brown v. Brown,
  125 S.W.3d 840, 844 (Ark. Ct. App. 2003) (husband estopped from denying
  child support where husband knew wife was using artificial insemination to
  have child); Sorensen, 437 P.2d at 498-500 (Cal. 1968) (husband is lawful
  father of child conceived through artificial insemination born during
  marriage to child's mother); In re Buzzanca, 72 Cal. Rptr. 2d 280, 286-87
  (Ct. App. 1998) (finding virtually all decisions hold husband to be parent
  based on his consent to artificial insemination); In re M.J., 787 N.E.2d at
  152 (mother of children conceived through artificial insemination may seek
  to establish paternity of man with whom she had ten-year intimate
  relationship based on theories of "oral contract or promissory estoppel"); 
  Levin v. Levin, 645 N.E.2d 601, 604-05 (Ind. 1994) (husband who orally
  consented to artificial insemination of wife estopped from denying
  fatherhood of child); R.S. v. R.S., 670 P.2d 923, 929 (Kan. Ct. App. 1983)
  (husband who orally consented to artificial insemination of wife estopped
  from denying fatherhood); State ex. rel. H. v. P., 457 N.Y.S.2d 488, 492
  (App. Div. 1982) (wife estopped from denying husband's paternity where she
  fostered parent-child relationship); Brooks v. Fair, 532 N.E.2d 208, 212-13
  (Ohio Ct. App. 1988) (public policy disallows wife from denying paternity
  of husband where parties agreed during marriage to conceive via means of
  artificial insemination); In re Baby Doe, 353 S.E.2d 877, 878 (S.C. 1987)
  (husband is legal father of child where he consented to artificial
  insemination of wife during marriage); see generally A. Stephens,
  Annotation, Parental Rights of Man Who Is Not Biological or Adoptive Father
  of Child But Was Husband or Cohabitant of Mother When Child Was Conceived
  or Born, 84 A.L.R.4th 655 (1991).  Some courts find the party a parent as a
  result of contract theory or estoppel.  E.g., R.S., 670 P.2d at 928. 
  Estoppel is often invoked because of the strong reliance interests that
  arise from consensual artificial insemination.  Other courts reach the
  result more as a matter of policy, particularly stressing the adverse
  consequences of leaving the child without a parent despite the clear
  intention of the parties.  E.g., Brooks, 532 N.E.2d at 212-13.  We adopt
  the result in this case as a matter of policy, and to implement the intent
  of the parties.
   
       ¶  58.  This is not a close case under the precedents from other
  states.  Because so many factors are present in this case that allow us to
  hold that the non-biologically-related partner is the child's parent, we
  need not address which factors may be dispositive on the issue in a closer
  case.  We do note that, in accordance with the common law, the couple's
  legal union at the time of the child's birth is extremely persuasive
  evidence of joint parentage.  See People ex. rel. R.T.L., 780 P.2d 508, 515
  n.11 (Colo. 1989) ("We acknowledge that the presumption that a child born
  during wedlock is the legitimate child of the marriage was one of the
  strongest presumptions known to the common law."); Cicero v. Cicero, 395
  N.Y.S.2d 117, 117 (App. Div. 1977) (presumption of legitimacy attached to
  "issue of the marriage"); LC v. TL, 870 P.2d 374, 380 (Wyo. 1994) ("The
  presumption of legitimacy is one of the strongest in the law."); see also
  Godin, 168 Vt. at 522, 725 A.2d at 910 ("Thus, the State retains a strong
  and direct interest in ensuring that children born of a marriage do not
  suffer financially or psychologically merely because of a parent's belated
  and self serving concern over a child's biological origins."). 

Needs to be summarised for the attention-addled, obviously, but that's the argument. Unsurprisingly, most people that take Lisa's side in this dispute haven't even glanced at it.

Homosexual visibility and beyond the concept of "coming out of the closet"

The rising tolerance of the existence of homosexuality has perhaps invalidated, or at least significantly modified, the expected experience of LGBT people's lives. Homosexuality need no longer be hidden in as many social mileux as it once was, prompting academic author Steven Seidman to describe contemporary western society as gradually becoming a "post-closet society".

In his book, Seidman uses "closet" in a way that I don't often see these days: a "closeted homosexual", per Seidman, is someone who has accepted their homosexuality and engages in same-sex relations, but conceals it totally from people in their everyday, "normal" life. In my experience, most times "closet case" these days instead refers specifically to someone who still hasn't admitted their own sexuality to anyone at all, perhaps not even to themself. I find the evolution of language telling: there is less of a need for a term to describe someone who accepts their homosexuality but conceals it from everyone. Is this because such a thing is gradually ceasing to exist?

Perhaps such total concealment is getting phased out, but this is not to say that concealment is no longer necessary. In fact I think the situation now is more complicated that a binary closeted/out dichotomy can properly describe. Jon Lasser and Deborah Tharinger performed a study of LGB youth, published in the Journal of Adolescence (volume 26, issue 2, April 2003, pp 233-244), called Visibility Management in School and Beyond: A qualitative study of gay, lesbian, bisexual youth The concept of "visibility management" that they came up with seems to offer a richer understanding than that of the traditional concepts of the closet and of coming out.

Visibility management differs from coming out of the closet in several ways. First, where coming out is an event, visibility management is a proces: "While 'coming out' functions as a common expression for simple disclosure of one's sexual orientation, visibility management captures the complexity of the strategic and continuous process that GLB youth employ over time" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p237).

This is as much about non-verbal cues as it is about verbal announcements of one's sexuality. Dress and speech were all described by the study participants as influenced by how visible they wanted their orientation to be: "participants modify dress, speech, and body language to manage their visibility. They use subcultural symbols, euphemisms, humour and references to pop culture to manage their visibility" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238)

Second, visibility management occurs on a continuum: "the extreme points of the continuum are most restrictive visibility management and least restrictive visibility management ... most participants (N=16) placed themselves between the endpoints" (Lasser & Tharinger 2003, p238). Rather than being "closeted" or "out", the youth studied had disclosed their sexual orientation to some people, but not to others. Further, and logically, they had to monitor and manage their disclosure in order to ensure that only people that they wanted to know about their sexual orientation would know about it. This of course further entailed decisions about who they wanted to know, and why.

Lasser & Tharinger didn't go into specific detail about what influenced these decisions, beyond describing it as an outcome of their interactions with their environment. This is a pity, as I think it's important, and should be a part of any more general theory of how LGBT people engage in visibility management.

Examples tI've come across in my day to day life of the kinds of pressures influencing the decisions of LGBT people about how to manage their visibility include: issues of safety, the issue of "why is it other people's business anyway?", the desire to dispel myths and fears about homosexuality by being open about it with friends and acquaintances, or simply the desire to let a potential significant other know that you swing the same way they do. There are almost certainly others, and I'd be interested in finding out what they are.

Conroy and the Australian Christian Lobby make sweet, sweet love together

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has started the political process of spinning his upcoming report by meeting with Jim Wallace, managing director of the ACL, to discuss..something or other about the proposal which ABSOLUTELY WAS NOT any details about the upcoming report on the ISP filtering trial, shortly after which Jim Wallace said that he believed he'd "found out" enough to know that ISP-filtering would work.

Nobody else has been in any such discussions about...something or other which ABSOLUTELY IS NOT details about the upcoming report on the ISP filtering trial, particularly ISPs and free speech supporters who might be motivated to scrutinise the data a little more closely than uncritical cheerleaders like the ACL. The Greens have noticed this funny business, and would like further details. I suspect they won't get any, but it's nice that somebody is asking.

Chaid Feldblum quote in context

An openly lesbian woman is being nominated to America's Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Predictably, the Christianist right in America is having an absolute fit. The website Good as You has already demonstrated that a video of Chai circulated by anti-gay activists has been significantly edited in a misleading way. I'm still exploring all the many claims being circulated, but I would like to put one quote back into context.
From this anti-gay website we have the claim

Feldblum has written: "Once a religious person or institution enters the stream of commerce by operating an enterprise such as a doctor's office, hospital, bookstore, hotel, treatment center, and so on, I believe the enterprise must adhere to a norm of nondiscrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity." Feldblum believes that every organization must ascribe to her vision of society or else face penalties from the EEOC.

Unusually for anti-gay activists, they include a reference to the original article. It is entitled "Moral Conflict and Liberty: Gay Rights and Religion", and I find it notable just how much she stands up for the rights of religious believers in it. Of course, you wouldn't know that from reading the one small passage that anti-gay activists cherry-pick from it.

And as is quite usual for anti-gay activists, the cherry-picked quote is taken out of context and a supposed "summary" is provided which misrepresents the true meaning. Nowhere does Feldblum say that she requires "every organization" to "ascribe to her vision of society". Feldblum, in the very next paragraph of this article explicitly cites situations in which she does believe religious organisations should be allowed to discriminate against gay people.

The text of the quote, and the continuation of it that demonstrates that anti-gay activists are lying, is on pages 52 through 54 of Feldblum's article. I'm including the two paragraphs here so people can see for themselves what's going on. I'd actually recommend reading the whole thing, though, so you can get a complete picture of Feldblum's views instead of relying on anti-gay distortions.

As a general matter, once a religious person or institution enters the stream of commerce by operating an enterprise such as a doctor's office, hospital, bookstore, hotel, treatment center and so on, I believe the enterprise must adhere to a norm of non-discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. This is essential so an individual who happens upon the enterprise is not surprised by a denial of service and/or a directive to go down the street to a different provider. While I was initially drawn to the idea of providing an exemption to those enterprises that advertise solely in very limited milieus (such as the bed & breakfast that advertises only on Christian Web sites) I became wary of such an approach as a practical matter. The touchstone needs to be, I believe, whether LGBT people would be made vulnerable in too many locations across society. An "advertising exception" seemed potentially subject to significant abuse.

Nevertheless, I believe there might be a more limited exception that would be justified. There are enterprises that are engaged in by belief communities (almost always religious belief communities) that are specifically designed to inculcate values in the next generation. These may include schools, day care centers, summer camps and tours. These enterprises are sometimes for-profit and sometimes not-for-profit. They are within the general stream of commerce, together with many other schools, day care centers, summer camps and tours.

I believe a subset of these enterprises present a compelling case for the legislature to provide and exemption in a law mandating non-discrimination based on sexual orientation. The criteria for an exemption should be as follows: the enterprise must present itself clearly and explicitly as designed to inculcate a set of beliefs; the beliefs of the enterprise must be clearly set forth as being inconsistent with a belief that homosexuality is morally neutral and the enterprise must seek to enroll only individuals who wish to be inculcated with such beliefs.

The dignity of LGBT individuals would still be harmed by excluding such enterprises from the purview of an anti-discrimination law. But in weighing the interests between the groups, I believe the harm to the enterprise in having its inculcation of values to its members significantly hampered (as I believe it would be if it was forced to comply with such a law) outweighs the harm to the excluded LGBT members.

I am more hesitant regarding the second limited circumstance, but I offer it for analysis and criticism. I believe there may be a legitimate exemption that should be provided with regard to leadership positions in enterprises that are more broadly represented in commerce. Many religious institutions operate the gamut of social services in the community, such as hospitls, gyms, adoption agencies and drug treatment centers. These enterprises are open and marketed to the general public and often receive governmental funds. It seems quite appropriate to require that the enterprises' services be delivered without regard to sexual orientation and the most employment positions and that most employment positions in these enterprises be available without regard to sexual orientation

But the balance of interests, it seems to me, shifts with regard to the leadership positions in such enterprises. Particularly for religiously-affiliated institutions, I believe it is important that people in leadership positions be able to articulate the beliefs and values of the enterprise. If the identity and practice of an openly gay person will stand in direct contradiction to those beliefs and values, it seems to me that the enterprise suffers a significant harm. Thus, in this limited circumstance, a legislature may perhaps be legitimately conclude that the harm to the enterprise will be greater than the harm to the particular individuals excluded from such positions and provided a narrow exemption from a non-discrimination mandate in employment for such positions.

Quote for the day

"Most liberal opinion is horrified by persecution of homosexuals and supports abolishing anti-homosexual laws without really accepting homosexuality as a full and satisfying form of sexual and emotional behaviour. Such tolerance of homosexuality can co-exist with considerable suspicion of and hostility towards it, and this hostility is reinforced in all sorts of ways within our society." - Dennis Altman, Homosexual Oppression and Liberation, 1972

Weird statistical reporting from Rasmussen Reports

For reasons unfathomable to me, the US public opinion poller Rasmussen Reports has decided to measure President Obama's popularity by a Presidential Approval Index rating arrived at by strange means. They get it by subtracting the percentage of those who strongly disapprove of his Presidency from those who strongly approve of it.

Why exclude moderate approval and disapproval? The current figure of -8% arrived at by Rasmussen Reports through their methodology seems to the casual viewer to suggest a negative overall view of President Obama. Yet the total numbers provided by Rasmussen in the article (50% overall approval and 49% overall disapproval) suggest a much more even split. I don't see much room here for interpreting this as Obama having negative overall popularity the way this Index misleadingly suggests. I think that there is room for interpreting this as Obama being more unpopular among rabid partisans than he is among the general population, though.

Curious also is the decision by Rasmussen to only survey likely voters to determine approval rating. As the survey summary notes, "President Obama's numbers are always several points higher in a poll of adults rather than likely voters". I can understand why this might be relevant in a poll of how people are likely to actually vote, but in general overall approval? Does being unlikely to vote automatically make your opinion completely worthless when it comes to politics? I can see how some people might argue that it should, but personally I think the principle of democratic accountability extends well beyond the single moment of an election. If people, even people unlikely to vote, have an opinion about government, then that opinion should be known and taken into account. It's a shame that Rasmussen doesn't do that.

It does seem awfully convenient that both these statistical oddities have the effect of making President Obama's approval rating seem much lower than the results reported in other surveys with more meritorious methodologies. If I was a conspiracy-oriented person I might start wondering if this was deliberate. Good thing I'm not a conspiracy-oriented person, then.

Ex-gays to ex-ex-gays: it's your fault you didn't change

I recently found myself at the first official recognition that I've seen of the existence of ex-ex-gays from a supporter of an ex-gay ministry. The piece is written by one Sue Bohlin of Probe Ministries and is available here. It's also notable in distinguishing between the "reparative therapy" used by psychoanalysts trying to "cure" homosexuality and what Bohlin calls the "redemptive approach", in which homosexuality is "healed" through cultivating a relationship with Jesus Christ. She describes the latter as the superior method of the two.

The specific reference to ex-ex-gays is an attempt to explain their existence. Ater all, if a relationship with Christ is all that is needed to heal homosexuality, then why do ex-ex-gays even exist? Unsurprisingly, the answer is to blame the victim: Bohlin outright states that it is because ex-ex-gays failed to really do what is necessary to change that they didn't change. Notably, she didn't talk to a single ex-ex-gay before leaping to this conclusion, merely assuming it to be true based on her own assumptions about religious belief. This is understandable given the ex-gay ideology: after all, in the Fundamentalist worldview God cannot fail, therefore He can only be failed, therefore it must be the ex-ex-gays and not the "Godly" ex-gay ministration that failed.

But it's also quite destructive. Unlike Miss Bohlin, I have spoken one-on-one with ex-ex-gays (the undergraduate assignment for which I did this has been publicly posted about halfway down this forum page), and I understand just what the accusation that "they're not trying hard enough to change" did to them when they were in ex-gay ministries. It laid a whole new heaping of undeserved shame onto them, over and above the shame they experienced in the first place for "experiencing unwanted same-sex attractions", as the ex-gay movement puts it. Having given their all in the effort to change, these people were then told by the ex-gay ministries that their all wasn't good enough. Is it any wonder that Shidlo and Schroeder's 2002 ex-gay study found that the many individuals in ex-gay institutions who experienced no change at all reported that they found the ex-gay experience harmful? The ex-gay ministries make it abundantly clear to them that they will never be able to change, and that this is their own fault.

This is why the demands by the ex-gay movement for "tolerance" fall flat. They do not merely want tolerance for how they live their own lives, they want people to be "tolerant" of the way they dictate how much or how little faith other people must allegedly have, without any regard for the actual feelings of those other people about the matter. They can also be dangerous to a same-sex-attracted person's mental well-being: their harmful imposition of shame onto those who they fail, demanding that their failure be treated as the failure of their victims, is not something that deserves any tolerance at all.

The response of Bryce Faulkner's family

As I expected, the parents of Bryce Faulkner have hit out against efforts to locate their son, speaking to a media outlet that is sympathetic to their side of the story, specifically, Fox News. Notably, there is still no direct contact with Bryce Faulkner, despite a written statement from an unidentified "family representative" allegedly from Bryce saying "Every decision that I've made has been based solely upon my beliefs and I have not been manipulated or coerced by anyone to do anything".

The Facebook groups that were set up concerning Bryce's situation still appear to be down, and the original "help save Bryce website has been updated with correspondence between the site maintainer and what he believes to be members of the Faulkner family (The e-mail address is unverified but the wounded effrontery, bad spelling and unironic signing off of a really angry letter with "in Christ," suggests to me that the letters are indeed from a small-town Christianist family that has found their actions unexpectedly scrutinised).

I have an obvious bias in the matter, but the Faulkners deserve a fair hearing, so I'm glad the letters are up. The website maintainer for his part is to my mind responding well to all allegations made about such things as the alleged length of the relationship between Bryce and Travis Swanson and the reason the relationship ended. One troubling thing does stand out for me however.

In one letter, signed by "The Faulkner's [sic]", it is stated "Bryce has ended this relationship and is moving on with his life. It is no different than any other relationship...its over...". This is a highly unusual thing to see in Christianist writing, specifically placing a homosexual relationship on the exact same emotional footing as "any other relationship". The standard anti-gay rhetoric as I understand it is that there's simply no equivalency between a heterosexual relationship and a homosexual one: the latter is a product of "sexual broken-ness" and can never be emotionally satisfying. So why is a rather different point of view about homosexuality being put forward by the Faulkners?

The Fox News article has a quote from Mrs Faulkner in which says that Bryce "got caught up with friends who were pulling him that way", which Fox News interprets (probably correctly) as Mrs Faulkner believing that friends were influencing Bryce towards homosexuality. So she apparently believes homosexuality is a choice, and one that can be influenced by outside factors. Yet the usual rhetoric doesn't quite match.

I'm not sure what to make of that. It could be that the Faulkners have never really had to think the issue through, and so have amassed a collection of contradictory beliefs that they've never taken the time to examine. I'm afraid that'll probably change now as anti-gay activists turn them into "victims of the homosexual movement" and instruct them more formally in the assumptions of anti-gay ideology. Pity.

Xavier High School, villification, and freedom of speech

Somewhat unusually for a GLBT person it seems, I'm opposed to the criminalisation of "hate speech". That includes opposition to the villification laws that exist in New South Wales and other Australian states. That means that on principle I must oppose the decision by Gary Burns to use villification law against Xavier High School in Albury after they printed a letter to the editor in their Alumni magazine from "former homosexual" Matt Price entitled "Imagine a world free from homosexuals".

Gary Burns is suggesting that this can only be interpreted as a call to murder gay people. I disagree: as an ex-gay, the author of the letter most likely thinks that "a world free of homosexuals" is more akin to the idea of "a world free of unbelievers" that the Catholic church presumably aspires to through its prosetylising. It can be interpreted as a call to conversion of homosexuals to heterosexuality rather than a call for elimination. Admittedly, other people might not think so.

It's especially difficult to judge as the full text of the letter is no longer available online. As Channel Nine reports, the online version of the newsletter in question has changed the text in question to remove all references to homosexuality. Price's letter now reads as the following inoffensive pablum:

Sorry it has taken so long to get back to you. My family
moved from Sydney and then to Howlong, but my
parents divorced when I was in Year 7.
I started at Xavier North Campus in 1985. I stayed until
Year 11 when I transferred to Albury High, doing Year
11 again and completing my Year 12 certificate. Later
I was accepted into Sydney University to become a
Registered Nurse.
I have been a Registered Nurse since 1994 and have
pretty much worked full time since then. I am currently
living in Noosa and my mother is here also. I am really
pleased to say I am going regularly to church where I am
a reader. It is enjoyable and I can lead/heal my spiritual
life in the way I was guided as a child. “The Truth Will
Set You Free” is what Xavier taught me.
I have a surfboard which I’m still trying to learn, but I can
get up! I had a friend that I used to catch the school bus
with from Howlong – his name was Paul Lavis. I have
not heard from him since I left school. If you hear his
name in passing could you say Hello to him for me.
God bless! Yours,
Matt Price

According to SX News, a local paper called the Border Mail may have posted the original letter under the heading "world of sex and drugs", alongside an article entitled "gay activist demands cash from schools" which trys to paint Xavier High School as the victim. But again, neither of those two articles are available from the Border Mail website. There is an online copy of a letter to the editor of the Border Mail complaining that the Border Mail's coverage of the situation was inaccurate and misleading, but nothing more.

My approach to issues like this is that it is better to publicly expose bigotry as bigotry rather than try to censor it. I mean, it's kind of hard to publicly demonstrate just what's wrong with the letter when nobody's able to read it. Presumably it's out there somewhere, even if it's not online. If I find something, I'll post it. Otherwise....

Australian Christian Lobby's misleading press release on GetUp's "misleading" ad

GetUp was planning to run some satirical ads opposing the Australian government's proposed mandatory Internet filtering scheme on Qantas fights in Canberra. Qantas has now refused to run them, citing a long-term ban on running "political advertising". While Qantas and GetUp tussle over the exact definition of the term "political advertising", the Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) has put out a press release entitled "ACL Welcomes Qantas move to ditch misleading GetUp ad".

The supposedly "misleading" ad is not misleading at all. It is ACL who is being misleading in their press release. The ad itself briefly makes mention of Iran and the alleged cover-up of a rigged election there, prompting the response from the ACL:

We have been concerned that people might be responding to GetUp's plea for money to screen its ad because of the misleading claim that the Rudd Government's clean feed for kids election promise might lead to Iranian-style political repression,

Yet again, proponents of Internet censorship misleadingly try to dodge the real problem with Conroy's filter: that under his scheme, Internet censorship will be mandatory for adults. It is the ACL, not GetUp, who is misleading the public by trying to suggest otherwise.

I thought "Christians" weren't supposed to bear false witness?

Another case of coerced involvement in an ex-gay group

The story of Bryce Faulkner, a gay pre-med student in Arkansas, has started making the rounds on the net. Short version: a young man was unexpectedly outed to his parents through their discovery of electronic communications between Bryce and his boyfriend Travis. Bryce was given the option of ex-gay treatment or losing all financial parental support (for a college student in America, a very grave threat indeed). Bryce has not been heard from at all in 25 days since the time I write this.

Waymon Hudson of the Bilerico Project has been in contact with Travis' parents to verify the story (Per Waymon, Bryce's parents refuse to communicate anything at all). For that reason I believe that this comment, originally posted at Bilerico, is genuinely from Travis' mother. I'm reposting part of it here because I find it so disturbing:

Hello everyone. First and foremost, I want to thank Waymon for putting this out here for everyone. I am "the BF's mom". That being said, this is not a hoax, scam or anything blown out of porportion. Bryce is a fine young man and had a bright future ahead of him, until he decided to come out to his mom and dad. He actually didn't even have the option of coming out. He was "found out" by despicable means. Everything he had was in their name, the cell phone, the car, internet, he worked at a clinic his mom owned. She would call the cell company and tell them she forgot the voicemail password, which they would then reset for her in order to get access to his voicemails. His dad is a technician for the local cable company (inet) and installed a "tap" on the internet in order to get access to passwords for email accounts. They even got the password to an account that they didn't know that he had. Any mail that came to the house addressed to him was opened and scanned. He did rely on his parents for everything.

I suppose nothing about what Christianist parents will do to their children to try and keep them in line should surprise me, but this claim that Bryce's parents covertly monitored every communication that he had was still disconcerting to me. I hope that little factoid gets publicised in the wake of the parents' inevitable attempt to paint themselves as the victims of the so-called "homosexual agenda" in response to the negative publicity that, with any luck, is now coming their way.

Gay people's anger getting misinterpreted as usual

The US Department of Justice recently filed a brief in response to a challenge to America' Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), the US law that ensures US state don't have to recognise same-sex marriages in other states, and prohibits the federal government from recognising same-sex marriages in any way, including same-sex marriages in states where same-sex marriage is now legally recognised at the state level.

Gay rights advocates have been upset by the brief, although you'd be very hard pressed to find out the main reason why from the news reporting and DOJ PR about the issue. The problem is not so much the fact that a brief was filed in support of DOMA but the language and arguments used in the brief. As David Link put it:

It is gratuitously insulting to lesbians and gay men, referring (unnecessarily) to same-sex marriage as a “form” of marriage, approving of congressional comparisons between same-sex marriages and loving relationships between siblings, or grandparents and grandchildren, and arguing (with a straight face, I can only assume) that discrimination against same-sex couples is rational because it saves the federal government money. There are some respectable arguments in this motion, and this kind of disrespect is offensive.

Yet the DOJ statement in response to the public outrage pretends otherwise, defending their actions as if it was the decision to file a brief alone that was making gay people upset:

As it generally does with existing statutes, the Justice Department is defending the law on the books in court. The president has said he wants to see a legislative repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act because it prevents LGBT couples from being granted equal rights and benefits. However, until Congress passes legislation repealing the law, the administration will continue to defend the statute when it is challenged in the justice system.

Nor is the anger over how the DOJ supported DOMA in their brief appearing in mainstream media reports: CBS simply states "Gay rights groups are upset that Obama appears to be going back on his word [to repeal DOMA]. But the Justice Department says it's following the standard practice of defending existing law", with no indication of the main problem identified by prominent gay rights advocates such as Andrew Sullivan that "the question is not why the DOJ should defend existing law; it is why they chose to lard it up with such egregious anti-gay rhetoric and religious right arguments"

It is very hard to put forward your case about why something is hurtful to you when the very reason that it is so hurtful is not being made known. No wonder you get people claiming that gay people get "hysterical" over things. If I was seeing someone getting really mad and upset just because a brief was filed in a court case, I'd probably think they were hysterical too. But that's not the root cause of the anger here: it's the actual callous language in the brief that's at the heart of the matter. And yet, I fear, most people will be completely unaware of that, thanks in no small part to the PR actions of the DOJ itself.

Justifying torture as a way to demonstrate that torture is evil

Right-wing Fox News pundit Sean Hannity half-jokingly offers to undergo water-boarding as a test to see just how bad it really is, Huffington Post writer Jason Linkins says go for it.

My first reaction to this would be: shame on Linkins and those of his commentors who support Hannity getting the torture he asked for. Torture is evil. It is always wrong. Period. It is not something which should be done to anyone for any reason, ever, and it is interesting to see just how easy it is, even for the people on the side of the angels in the argument over whether or not to prosecute Bush era officials for their design and use of "enhanced interrogation techniques", to decide that a little bit of torture is okay if it's done for a just cause on a person naive enough to ask for it to be done on them. This is why torture must be ferociously opposed, no matter whether it works, no matter why it is done, no matter who does it, no matter who it is done to. Its evil is too seductive even for good people.

On the other hand: there is an argument made by the anti-torture side that waterboarding that can be stopped at any time by the person undergoing it isn't actually torture, and that the complete and total helplessness of the person undergoing a torture "treatment" to make it stop when they've had enough is an essential component of defining something as torture rather than a lesser moral evil like "unwarranted infliction of violence". That conceivably opens up space for Hannity to undergo water-boarding under carefully controlled conditions: if he's able to stop it at any time while undergoing it, then it doesn't cross the moral evil threshold of being torture. But it also defeats the purpose of the entire exercise: if the idea is to show that the techniques used by the Bush Administration are too horrible to use on anyone, then what's the point of putting on a demonstration that's missing a key component of what made those techniques qualify as "torture"? It would at best just show how painful and frightening water-boarding really is, but it wouldn't demonstrate just what it is about torture that makes it truly evil.

To do that without actually torturing someone seems impossible. Keeping in mind the possibility that I myself am getting seduced by the evil of torture by even suggesting that taking Hannity up on this offer to subject him to some type of water-boarding is anything other than irredeemably evil, I'm inclined to explore the idea that it might be possible.

The problem: for the experience of waterboarding to truly demonstrate to Hannity some measure of the personal experience of being tortured, it would have to be done in a way that he can't stop. But if he has no say in when it stops, then we're torturing him. A partial reproduction of the treatment may be ethically justifiable, but the mere physical experience of water-boarding, able to be stopped by Hannity at any time, is an insufficent example of what it actually is that makes torture irredeemably evil.

But, what if Sean Hannity was allowed to decide how long he would be water-boarded for, but he had to make that decision before the waterboarding started? Then, once the process starts, he cannot change that decision for any reason and must undergo waterboarding for the time he himself earlier chose. That would give an idea of what its like to be helpless to stop waterboarding while still granting him a limited control over the whole process.

In suggesting that Sean Hannity be offered a chance to undergo waterboarding under the conditions I just described, have or have I not myself just justified torturing someone as a legitimate way to demonstrate to them why torture is evil? I suspect that the only reason Hannity would accept the terms I presented would be because he's too naive about torture to understand what it is he would be signing up for. That says "yes, it's torture" to me. So yes, it is impossible to give a person a personal understanding of why torture is so evil without torturing them, and it would be better for all to stop contemplating the highly seductive, evil idea of even trying.

Seen on the Internet: a parable about torture

Top members of Mossad, MI-5, and the CIA compete in the International Intelligence Service Olympics. They are told to enter a nearby forest and return with a fox.

The Mossad agents return an hour later with a fox. Two hours later, MI-5 also returns with a fox. The two groups congratulate each other on their respective gold and silver prizes.

Hours pass. The judges begin to get restless.

Finally, the CIA agents emerge from the forest with a deer, who is battered and bleeding, with shackles on its legs, opaque goggles over its eyes, and muffled earphones on its ears. As it passes the judges’ stand they hear it saying over and over:

“I am a fox. I am a fox. I am a fox . . .”

21 Reasons Why Gender Matters: Plagiarism?

This is odd. Section 15 of the pamphlet 21 Reasons Why Gender Matters is the section of the leaflet primarily concerned with homosexuality (or "gender identity disorder", as they pseudoscientifically call it). It starts out like this:

Consider first the issue of pathology. The whole notion of gender
disorientation has been highly politicised in the past few decades.
Objective scientific debate has been overwhelmed by advocacy
groups driving specific agendas. For example, in 1952, the first edition
of the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental
disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality
as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II
reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the
sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA’s
annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified
as a pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual
activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its DSM III edition to
the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists - particularly those who
specialized in treating homosexuals.

Now look at the section "Understanding: Gender-Disorientation Pathology" in this paper from the far-right website the Patriot Post:

n order to understand how to respond to the homosexual agenda in the Church and society, it is helpful to understand the underlying pathology.

In 1952, the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the official catalogue of mental disorders used by mental health professionals, listed homosexuality as a sociopath personality disturbance. In 1968, the revised DSM II reclassified homosexuality as a sexual deviancy. But in the midst of the sexual revolution, homosexual protestors began picketing the APA's annual conventions, demanding that homosexuality not be identified as pathology. In 1973, under enormous pressure from homosexual activists, the APA removed homosexuality from its the DSM III edition to the dismay of about 40 percent of psychiatrists -- particularly those who specialized in treating homosexuals.

The second paragraphs of each section are likewise almost identical. Gender Matters pamphlet:

Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American
Psychiatry, writes: “The entire process, from the first confrontation
organized by homosexual demonstrators, to the referendum demanded
by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations
about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being
engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in
a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an
approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was
instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times.”106
It is hoped that the APA will reverse its position.

From the Patriot Post article:

Dr. Ronald Bayer, author of the book, Homosexuality and American Psychiatry writes: "The entire process, from the first confrontation organized by gay demonstrators to the referendum demanded by orthodox psychiatrists, seemed to violate the most basic expectations about how questions of science should be resolved. Instead of being engaged in sober discussion of data, psychiatrists were swept up in a political controversy. The result was not a conclusion based on an approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times."

But the APA is not likely to reverse their position.

It continues. Gender Matters pamphlet:

Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite
sex parent and peers - thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized
while a girl becomes more masculine.107 In both cases - lack of identity
and over identity - there is a common denominator, which is emotional
deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and
physical closeness with their parents - particularly with their samesex
parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender
identity as male or female.

Skip a little in the Patriot Post article until:

Many homosexuals report that as children, they had a dysfunctional relationship with their same-sex parent, such relationships being their primary means of gender identification and affirmation. For some children, particularly those whose parents are separated or divorced, the dissociation from their same-sex parent can cause an unconscious but directive drive for gender identification and affirmation among same-sex peers, which, after puberty, can manifest as sexual behavior. The search for closure to a dysfunctional relationship with a parent can lead to a lifetime of misery.

Some homosexuals report that they over-identified with their opposite sex parent and peers -- thus a boy becomes increasingly feminized while a girl becomes more masculine.

In both cases -- lack of identity and over identity -- there is a common denominator, which is emotional deprivation. In their formative years, all children need emotional and physical closeness with their parents -- particularly with their same sex parent, and they need to develop a healthy sense of their gender identity as masculine or feminine.

The number "107" you can see up there sandwiched in the quotes from the Gender Matters pamphlet refers to this footnote:
107 Mark Alexander, “The Homosexual Agenda”, http://www.patriotpost.us/papers/03-32.asp 6/6/2006, although the URL didn't work for me when I tried it. The link to the Patriot Post piece above references the URL by IP address, not domain name.

In any case, it is remotely conceivable that reference 107 is an attempt to reference all this apparently plagiarised text. If so, it was done so badly that it makes it look like the text presented here was actually original work by the Gender Matters people. I don't suppose Mark Alexander (author of the Patriot Post piece) would mind being plagiarised overmuch so long as his writing is being used to further an anti-gay agenda somehow, but I wonder how such plagiarism would reflect on the people doing the plagiarising?

The only other possibilityI can see here is that Mark Alexander himself was involved in the production of this pamphlet somehow. I've found no evidence of that as yet.