-{Somewhat unusually, this post involves a very hot-button political topic. Please, please be respectful of people of different mindsets in the comment section. References to the other side as baby-murderers or anti-woman fascists or whatnot will not be tolerated.}-

Clancy and I were invited to a dinner for a pregnancy assistance center that a colleague of hers, Dr. Lang, is associated with. Other than free food that wouldn’t be remotely Trumwill-friendly and rounds and rounds of self-congratulations on the part of the organization, I didn’t really know what to expect. If I’d thought about it longer, I might have given more thought to what “pregnancy assistance” likely means in this part of the country. It didn’t take me long before I realized that we were drawn into something we were not expecting. Oh, it’s one of those pregnancy assistance centers!

Arapaho is a relatively conservative state and Dent County is a conservative county within the state (having gone 2-to-1 for McCain), but it’s not remarkably conservative in the real religious sense. At least not compared with the south, which will always be my benchmark. We had a state house candidate that actually had a story to tell about his conversion to Christ and how it took him from being an ex-con to a pillar of the community, but it was actually something that he undersold (it only came up when he had to explain his felony record) in favor of lower taxes and antipathy towards socialism. But it nonetheless is a place of “small-town values” and that is usually going to include a public antipathy towards something like abortion. It’s also a place where abortion is apparently a real problem (if you view it as such) with some of the highest rates in the country*.

So I guess it shouldn’t have come as a complete surprise that this center was one of the ones where helping the mothers-to-be is more a means than an ends and the ends is talking them out of getting an abortion. I figured this out by the second prayer, which included a part about God looking out for the unborn and it seemed pretty apparent that he wasn’t solely talking about miscarriages. My views on the abortion subject shift around with time but are ultimately pretty conflicted, squishy, and middling. I can’t get on board with laws banning the practice and have difficulty mustering up support even in the later-term procedures which I find particularly abhorrent. But I also have pretty significant moral objections to it. While I support the notion of choice legally, I believe that there is a right choice and a wrong choice (the vast majority of the time). So in that sense (as there is nothing this organization can do with respect to the law), I really am on board with what this organization is trying to do.

At the time, though, I felt rather blindsided. This was partly an organization, but also partly a “ministry” (which they referred to themselves as repeatedly). I wasn’t sure to be irritated with the organization or irritated with Dr. Lang for not cluing us into this aspect of it all. But the feeling was all the same. I was also not sure to the same extent that their clients were not as blindsided as we were. Young ladies going in there thinking that they’re going to get help with all of their options only to find themselves pushed really strongly in a particular direction. The place has a pretty innocuous name that only lightly suggests what their aims are. Concealing their motivations, of course, is a strategically wise move. Both when it came to us (once they had us there, it was going to take some courage not to give at least a little bit of money to their cause) and when it came to mothers (you want the ones strongly considering abortion to come in, cause those are some of the ones you most want to reach). In any event, we found ourselves drawn into taking sides of a fierce debate that with forewarning I would have had to think long and hard about getting involved with. I would have felt similarly if I’d found out that this innocuous-sounding organization suggesting more general aims was actually an abortion clinic.

In addition to the religious angle, there were also a couple other points of concern. Their support for abstinence-only education, for example, leaves us somewhat cold. Truthfully, I am coming around to the point of view that the sex-ed debates ultimately don’t actually make all that much difference**, but to the extent that there is a line in the sand I am ultimately on the other side of it. We won’t be sending out kids to the abstinence camp that this organization helps fund.***

More seriously, though, they also made statements that simply aren’t true with regard to viability. So what are they telling the young women that come to them for help? The main thing, I have to assume, is “this is your baby.” The fundraiser was trying to raise money for a live ultrasound machine. They brought one in from Alexandria and gave us a demonstration of an 11-week old fetus that was sucking its thumb. It was the first live ultrasound I’ve ever seen****.

At the point where they were having people dump checks in the offertory buckets, Clancy mouthed the question of whether or not we wanted to donate. I subtly shook my head. At the time I was rather agitated with the blindside and wanted more time to unpack the very unexpected evening. She took the slip, folded it up, and put it in her pocket. She is a stickler for the facts (particularly as they pertain to medicine, and so the rather major fact they got wrong resonated more with her than with me. And, of course, she is not a fan of organized religion dating back to her unwilling Catholic days, reinforced more recently with her experience working in a Catholic hospital with… optimistic… views of viability leading to complicated issues. I figured if I was being blindsided and was resentful about it, it probably went doubly for her since she is further away from their perspective and she is particularly wary of being sold. We talked about it on our way back to the hospital. She decided that she would need to find out more about what they do and how they do it before she donates.

That night, while I was doing some late-night shopping, I started to unpack the thoughts. Once I cooled down, the main thing I kept coming back to is that whatever my objections to the way the whole evening went, theirs is a group with a mission statement I can mostly support. Theirs is an organization dedicated to doing what I believe ought to be done: encouraging people to choose life. Whatever my disagreements with regard to the nature of God, the legality of abortion, abstinence-only education and the like, their relative extremism on the matter compelled them to do the heavy lifting (and the courts preventing them from supporting legal changes I can’t get on board with. Not just pushing girls and women in the “right” direction, but helping those that make the right choice. Pointing the way to adoption agencies. Helping those that keep their baby with material goods like diapers and the such. Reaching out to women who made mistakes rather than smugly condemning them. I might prefer an organization with ideas I am more in line with doing these things, but this is the organization that Dent County has.

Further, their main goal at this point is an ultrasound machine, which I think is a great idea. Ultrasound images are perhaps the most powerful tool in the anti-abortion arsenal. Also, one of the least objectionable. If seeing what is being aborted changes someone’s mind, I believe that to be a good thing. Having an ultrasound of the baby that is actually in their womb also has the effect of preventing dishonest portrayals with mis-dated ultrasounds or ultrasounds of unusually developed or large fetuses (as was alleged at Southern Tech – see below). What they see is what they have. Honesty in live motion. I know some of you will disagree with me on that as well, but it’s my take on the subject.

They mentioned that to do their work they need a better computer and a laptop. If they’re having computer troubles, that is certainly something I can help with. Depending on what they have, I may be able to just give them one of my computers that’s sitting around doing nothing. Or if their computer is underfunctioning I can bring it up to speed for them. Even on the laptop front, I am a really good go-to person for anyone that needs an expensive laptop that won’t set the world on fire with its speed but that is good enough for day-to-day use (I have a possible business plan involving solid laptops – not netbooks, laptops – for under $300). If nothing else, it’s a good way to introduce myself to people as a guy that can do these things.

I was and am kind of curious if we basically freeloaded ourselves a dinner. I was under the impression that our seats were tickets purchased by Lang. I don’t like to think that we were given free food with the understanding of a lavish check at the end of the evening. I don’t really know how these things work.

*- Among the highest in the state or the country. They made a point of mentioning the high abortion rates repeatedly but couldn’t settle on the parameters, giving the same figure (xth in the y going back and fourth with y being the state or the country (I suspect y=state). They also mentioned what towns the nearby abortion clinics were in. This had the unintended effect of Clancy making mental notes because she is legally obligated to refer care to anyone that wants abortion. She does not and would not perform them herself (except in an emergency situation out of necessity). Beyond our moral/ethical reservations about abortion, the notion that some on the pro-choice side don’t believe it should be her prerogative on whether to perform the procedure herself of not is one of the things that keeps us from being very firmly in the pro-choice camp.

** – Both abstinence-only and safe sex movements severely overestimate the decision-making capacity of the young as well as the influence that educators, spiritual leaders, and ultimately parents have on that decision-making process.

***- The thought also occurred to me that for all of the money they were trying to raise for advertising, one hell of an advertising mechanism would be to give out condoms (which I don’t think I have seen for sale since moving here and the purchase of which in a small town is not likely to go unnoticed). Then, after the user errors that would inevitably result do result, they’ll probably go back to the center where they can then be talked out of having an abortion. Of course, this runs headlong into the religious foundation of (most of) the anti-abortion movement and it’s an awfully big concession to make. Also, given the strong Catholic presence here and the social conservatism of the people most likely to donate money, going this route would probably be inordinately expensive with regard to dried up fundraising. So even if they weren’t true-believers, which they almost assuredly are, from a pragmatic institutional standpoint this idea probably doesn’t make a lot of sense.

****- I think I may have seen a video or something on YouTube, but even if I have I might still be uncertain that the fetus is the age that they say it is. A pro-life group at Southern Tech was notorious in liberalish circles for showing pictures of fetuses with ages that were either incorrect or extremely developed for their age.

Apparently, tribes that run casinos are far more likely than tribes that don’t to embrace stereotypes. The question is whether they do this because they recognize that a number of the stereotypes are not meant all that negatively, or because they’re willing to endure being made light of when it is in their financial interest?

One of the big surprises when I first moved out west was how much the local tribe in Deseret embraced the stereotypes. I had been raised to believe that calling them Indians is wrong (which, technically, it is) and that the proper term is Native Americans (which is not wrong so much as inspecific). But the local reservation doesn’t say “Get your Native American Ornamentals here!” but rather “Indian Gear! Next Exit!” (often selling things that have no ties to the local tribes but are associated with tribes in general). After that, it became hard to ever use the “Native American” term. So I’ve transitioned to using “tribes” generically. I wish we could go back to the drawing board and use “Amerindians” as the CIA World Factbook and other sources do.

The question of embracing or resisting the stereotypes is one of those things that comes up when it comes to sports mascots. It’s difficult to understand why Redskins might be considered an offensive mascot. I am generally indifferent on the subject of tribal mascots, believing that appropriateness depends a great deal on context, but that one does make me squirm a little bit. On the other side of the equation is Braves, which seems pretty obviously meant to be complimentary. Everything else is somewhere in between.

The NCAA passed down a ruling several years back that forced many colleges to reconsider their mascots. The ruling essentially required any use of tribal mascots to be approved of by the applicable tribe. Some rather generic names, such as Indians, had no applicable tribe to appeal to and so Arkansas State and Louisiana-Monroe changed their mascot from the Indians to the Red Wolves and Warhawks. Had the Miami Redskins not already changed their name to the RedHawks, they likely would have had to change their name, too. William & Mary called themselves the Tribe and responded by removing the feather from their logo and becoming a generic tribe rather than an Indian Tribe.

Others, though, got away with it by securing the approval of their local tribe. At least that’s the official reason. The Utah Utes were cool despite a most heinously uncool name. The Illinois Illini had to get rid of the guy in the costume, but got to keep the name. The Florida State Seminoles were initially on the Bad List, but they got on the Good List by securing the approval of the local Seminole tribe. Other Seminole tribes objected.

In a similar situation, though still on the Bad List, is the North Dakota Fighting Sioux. They got the approval of one Sioux tribe, but not of others. Unlike Florida State, however, this was deemed insufficient. This ruling lead some to believe that the Big Boys were being allowed to get away with what the lesser schools were not. The NCAA can afford to irritate North Dakota, but not so much Florida State. Being a big school also would presumably make it easier to donate money to their sponsoring tribe to garner their goodwill. More on this in a minute.

North Dakota in particular has been hit hard because their boosters are vociferously opposed to changing the mascot and have threatened to withhold donations if they comply. They tried to gradually transition to the North Dakota Force, but then a minor league hockey team swooped in and took that name. UND was further hurt because their limbo prevented them from being invited into an athletic conference (The Summit League) with a number of nearby schools (North Dakota State, South Dakota State, and South Dakota). North Dakota also sports a first-class hockey team and they have to cover up their logos anytime they make the hockey playoffs. When the Board of Regents tried to change the name, they were sued (though they won in court). They’ve decided to change the name, but have not decided what to.

I have some rather mixed feelings about these rules. On the one hand, I do wish that the tribes would take it as the compliment it often is. The mascots are in the same warrior tradition as the Spartans and Trojans. Of course, you also have the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, though there is a decent argument to be made that a group using itself as a mascot is different than a group using some other group as a mascot. Ultimately, though as a WASP, it’s hard for me to tell other people how they should respond in circumstances like that. It’s always easy to tell the other guy when they should and should not be offended.

My main objection to the Indians name is that it is such a generic and boring name. The fact that there were two teams in the Sun Belt Conference (not to mention a professional Major League Baseball team) with that name is a testament to that (Utah State and New Mexico State should reconsider Aggies, too). On the other hand, the names that they chose are equally uninspiring. When an actual tribe’s name is being used, it actually makes a good deal of sense to have to obtain their approval in a backaround trademark sort of way. But that only really requires the approval of one tribe and therefore North Dakota should have gotten the same pass as Florida State. Requiring these universities to pay for the rights also does not seem unfair.

There’s also the question as to what right the NCAA should have to dictate these terms to begin with, but I think that they are within their rights there. North Dakota is always free to leave the NCAA for the NAIA. In fact, it’s the overall lack of leverage that forced them to accommodate Illinois and Florida State. The NCAA can afford to lose North Dakota, but not FSU. In some ways, the NCAA’s grasp on its member institutions is actually somewhat weak, which is why they cannot impose any sort of football playoff.

Robin Hanson on Pink Politics:

Yes there’s the implicit sex angle in talking about breasts, but you could have a “have sex to get exercise” campaign, or make sexual innuendo about beds in a sleep campaign. And a campaign about testicular cancer wouldn’t be nearly as popular. So this isn’t mainly about sexual innuendo.

One obvious difference is that being anti-breast-cancer is framed as being pro-women. Thus one can insinuate that folks who resist social pressures to support the campaign are anti-women. Since folks fear seeming anti-women much more than seeming anti-health, a breast-cancer campaign can tap into far more social pressure than can an exercise or sleep campaign.

I remember when I was younger, a lot of women would say that Breast Cancer was being ignored because it (primarily) effects women. And that if it affected men, the government would automatically pay for everything involved in it and the only reason they don’t is cause the victims are women. This idea was first posited by a feminist sociology teacher in high school, which I think made me notice whenever I heard it later on. I was skeptical as I was of a lot of things the teacher said, but it was one of those frustrating things that couldn’t really be tested either way.

Then I found out about prostate cancer. Prostate cancer primarily affects men, kills men at a similar rate as breast cancer does women, and does not get remotely the same amount of attention as breast cancer does in the public eye. Oh, and does not involve the government paying for everything because it only affects men. As far as I know, both are treated pretty similarly by the insurance establishment. Maybe this wasn’t the case before “awareness campaigns”. I don’t know, but I would want to see proof of it considering prostate cancer doesn’t get a fraction of the attention.

Why not? I think it’s partially as Hanson says that women were able to make it a women’s issue in addition to being a health issue. I also think that it’s harder to mobilize men both as a collective and around health issues. On the former, we don’t have a history of mobilizing around specific issues because we’ve been the ones in positions of power and influence. On the latter, men are less inclined to believe that the government should pay for health care initiatives. And generally speaking, I think we’re more private about our health problems. I mean, given that prostate and breast cancer occur in equivalent numbers, you would think that I would know or know of men with prostate cancer in about equal numbers of women with breast cancer, but I don’t. I think that some of this is that men are less likely to communicate their malady so precisely. Some of it, though, is probably attributable to breast cancer having such a high profile. Finding out that people you know have a particular illness probably does increase the likelihood of it being something you will concern yourself about. So in that sense, maybe it is doing good? Maybe we do need a campaign for prostate cancer. Especially considering that men are less likely to take care of themselves in this regard.

Or maybe, as Hanson points out, a lot of the screening is unnecessary and it’s a good thing that prostate cancer doesn’t have the same profile and we would be better served if breast cancer didn’t, either. Maybe our resources are best devoted elsewhere. Of course, not all things are equally provocative and if people didn’t donate money to breast cancer research or awareness or whatever, they’d spend it on something stupid rather than on research and awareness of something that might do more good.

With regard to the peer pressure of pink ribbons, it reminds me a bit of the bumper stickers on cars and whatnot about supporting the troops. They have ribbons of their own. Back when our wars were more in our consciousness, there did seem to be a bit of sanctimony about it. Especially as those in favor of the war accused those against the war of not supporting the troops. Until the left responded with “Support The Troops – Bring Them Home”, the whole thing was a seemingly innocuous proxy for a larger public opinion battle over the righteousness of the wars themselves.

I’ve heard some people say the same general thing about the American flags*. Some Canadians I know consider it unseemly when they visit the States how we put our flag everywhere and have them in lawns and all that. I can’t say that it bothers me any. I don’t feel the need to say “I support my country” as I did to say “I support our troops!” back before support for the war soured. Arapaho probably has more flags flying than anywhere I’ve ever lived before. I suppose that could be considered patriotic peer pressure, but I consider it a positive sign of solidarity around our country as a whole.

I do wish breast cancer would go away. I do support our troops and hope they succeed even in wars I am not sure we should have entered. I have a gooey white-boy’s appreciation for my country. But I guess I am not hugely worried about people thinking that I am pro-cancer, anti-woman, anti-American, or anti-troops by virtue of the lack of a flag or ribbon on my lapel. One of the positive developments in my life is to be (increasingly, though quite imperfectly) able to take accusations hurled my way in stride when I know them to be false.

* – There was a recent to-do on this subject in California. My omission of that incident is not accidental. This portion was inspired by my trip to Canada many years back and various conversations with my (generally liberalish white) friends.

Makeup is one of those things that girls do that guys often fail to appreciate. In fact, we’re often inclined to say “I prefer girls without makeup” when what we mean is “I prefer girls who apply their makeup with more restraint.” Cause few guys really like pimples. Most guys like smooth-looking skin. These are things that makeup provide. Granted, I myself fall into the category of guys that “prefer girls without makeup.” Indeed, my wife rarely wears it and I easily consider the low-maintenance aspect of it to outweigh the visual benefits when she does wear it. A step further, a surprising number of romantic interests in my past and present (Clancy, Evangeline, Tracey, Dharla, Carla, Libby) never pierced their ears (though Tracey pierced her nose some years later).

So a part of me is quite sympathetic to Redefining Beautiful, a club at a Texas high school that go bare-faced on Tuesdays. Well, not just a club of girls, but a club of pretty conventionally attractive girls. Comments Phi:

On the one hand, I’m encouraged that that someone wants to call a truce in the clothes and cosmetics arms race among high school girls. But on the other, it’s not clear that these girls are redefining much of anything. On the contrary, most of the girls in this picture are in the very flower of their natural beauty by its existing definition. What’s changed is that they are not dressing in ways that signal sexual availability, but that isn’t the same thing, and every high school boy knows it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if this sort of thing caught on. I’ve commented in the past about how female fashion seems to be geared towards exclusion. You have tops that look good only on the slimmest of slim girls. You have uncomfortable shoes that only the most dedicated will suffer to wear. If a medium-size girl with an unimpressive chest (and/or a modest pocketbook) looks okay in it, female fashion has no use for it. This is sort of a reversal of that in that any girl can go without makeup, but it’s also an extension of it in that not any girl can look good while doing it. Sort of like how the popular and/or good-looking guys in high school could get away dressing down in a way that the rest of us can’t. Except that in girlworld, this is of greater import.

It gets me thinking about all of the steps that girls must take to define their attractiveness that guys don’t. I mean, like girls, guys have to watch their weight and it’s helpful to put some thought in how you dress. But outside of certain circles it’s really pretty easy for guys to get to that middle of the personal-appearance bell-curve as far as dress and hygiene are concerned. Shower regularly, comb your hair, moderately groom yourself, and you’re right there in the middle. And there aren’t a whole lot of guys out there trying to one-up you by dressing a little bit better. Indeed, we’ve made lemon out of lemonaid. Losing your hair? Just shave it off. Don’t want to shave? Well, we’ve made that okay. And guys that try to separate themselves from the pack by trying to look too impressive? Well, we have words for those people. If we could get the ladies to go along, we’d all just sport large beards and brag about how smelly our armpits are. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but not much of one.

Of course, there is another side to this as the RD girls inadvertently demonstrate. These girls can go without makeup and still look good. What about the girls who can’t? In that sense, makeup has a certain egalitarianism about it. With enough effort, it allows so-so looking girls to look a heck of a lot better. The wide array of fashion may make things remarkably more complicated than it is for men, but it provides the underdog girl with options that men don’t have. If a guy is so-so looking, he can’t wear a stunning outfit (because again, we have words for guys that do that). If he has pimples, he can’t use makeup without significant risk. There are industries around helping heavier women find outfits suitable to their figure. Guys are stuck in the same outfit as their peers. And one of the biggest basis of discrimination against men – height – simply can’t be accounted for. The biggest tool in our chest that women don’t have is facial hair to make the chin more distinct, but we’ve already got men calling men out for that, too.

The makeup thing in particular is problematic for the young and pimpled. Makeup will only take things so far, but they do at least make these things less noticeable. Acne was never a huge problem with me, but I did envy girls their makeup when the pimples came. And on a couple of instances I tried to do something about it. But the stigma is enough that even if you use makeup, you have to apply so little that nobody could possibly notice. The closest I came to something working was peach-colored anti-acne cream. At least then I had an excuse because anti-acne stuff wasn’t verboten… but if someone with more social influence than you said it was makeup you were doomed.

It’s sort of the inverse of the yin-yang involving who-asks-out-whom. On the one hand, ladies are more likely to have guys coming to them. On the other hand, if the guys aren’t coming, they are much more limited in what they can do in response. A guy, on the other hand, has the ability to muster up the courage to ask out a thousand girls, learn from his mistakes, get better at it (both the approach and the marks), and overcome it. It’s our responsibility, but also our power.

Back on the makeup thing, on the whole I think that guys have the better end of the deal. Of course, I think we do on the who-asks-out-whom deal, too. So maybe I am just the guy from the Chinese proverb picking my problems right back out of the pile. But I do like the fact that there is much less expectation that I am going to spend a whole lot of time and effort on my looks. I additionally benefit from being a nerd wherein by dressing up to the top of the curve gave me a significant advantage in a group that is notoriously cool for hanging out on the left end of it. And it takes a lot of decisions out of my hands, which given my indecisiveness and the fashion errors I make (consciously and unconsciously) is likely to my benefit.

Half Sigma was able to pick up on the fact that Anna Torv (the star of “Fringe”) is faking an American accent. I had actually picked up on the fact that her inflections were… odd… but I think I discovered that she was Australian the way that I uncover a lot of foreign actors. Namely I wonder what part of the country they are from because I can’t regionalize the accent and sounds something other than generic.

Some in the comment section have suggested that American accents are easy to fake because they grow up watching a fair number of American TV shows that are sold abroad. I think this is true, but I also think it’s true that there’s more flexibility in the American English idiom than in others. Britain has 60 million on an island. Australia has twenty million or so on an island continent. That’s not to say that there aren’t some regional and class distinctions, but I don’t think they compare to the multitude that come from the 300 million people in the United States accompanied by 30 million in neighboring Canada covering huge swaths of land with large spaces in between.

So for instance, I went my entire life until I moved to Arapaho without hearing (or noticing that I am hearing) the words bag and flag rhyme with “vague” despite knowing vaguely (no pun intended) that some people pronounce it that way. There are a lot of ways you can sound a little off-normal and people still kind of shrug it off as not-odd because we’re used to significant degrees of variation. Compare this variation to the relative lack of variation in the south, and it’s much, much easier to point out a bad southern accent (to those that are familiar with it) compared to a bad American one. That’s not because southern accents are monolithic (says the guy who gets frustrated with accents and says to the TV “people from Georgia do not sound like they are from Texas!”), but because the range is more limited and therefore it’s easier to spot (or hear) an actor who hasn’t nailed it.

-{HypoThursday is a latent series dedicated to your take on hypothetical scenarios. This one is for a subplot of a novel that has been bouncing around in my mind. After I get some answers, I’ll explain why it matters.}-

Bob Gaines is a two-term congressman. He got his position on a bit of a fluke, the default opponent in a year where his party had a really good showing. He also unseated his incumbent with a torrent of negative attacks on ethics violations going back to when his opponent was a criminal court judge. Prior to becoming a congressman, Gaines was a prosecutor working his way up from petty misdemeanors to sex crimes (forcible rape, mostly).

Congressman Gaines has a secret. One of those secrets out in the open for anyone that does the math. Finally, his third opponent, Jim Stevens, did. Gaines met his wife when he was 18 and she was 15. They are three years and two months apart, meaning that if they had sex at any point prior to her turning 17 (they were not married up to that point) then he was guilty of statutory rape. He doesn’t need to take the 5th because the Statue of Limitations has passed (beyond which, obviously his wife is not going to press for charges nor are her parents, who always liked him), but he’s not saying one way or the other whether he had premarital sex with his wife.

The Stevens campaign is saying that this is highly relevant because, as a prosecutor, Gaines handled sex crimes and if he was a sex criminal than that goes towards his character. The Gaines campaign responds that even that weak reasoning doesn’t work because Gaines never actually prosecuted any statutory rape cases and beyond which regardless of what happened Gaines was obviously not in violation of the spirit of the law. Stevens says the law is the law. The Gaines campaign say that whatever may or may not have happened is in the past is irrelevant because there is no legal standing for charges to be filed. Stevens says this is about character, not criminal charges.

Now, assume that you find both Gaines and Stevens to be equally good or bad on the issues. Would this (probable) revelation about Gaines’s past make you less likely to vote for him? If so, how much less likely? Does the fact that Gaines married her make his alleged crime irrelevant or is the law the law? Does the fact that it was over a decade ago make it irrelevant or is the law the law? Does the fact that Gaines prosecuted rapists make his own statutory rape relevant? Despite the fact that Gaines is not denying it, do you simply give him the benefit of the doubt and say it’s irrelevant because nothing has been proved or do you assume guilt? Does the fact that Gaines got his job on the basis of negative campaigning mean that all’s fair? Do you resent the fact that Stevens is focusing on this rather than more substantive things?

A couple weeks back was National Coming Out Day, where various people are encouraged to come out of the closet with their homosexuality, bisexuality, or transgenderism and to foster dialogue on these issues. I’ve been aware of it the last few years, though this is the first year that people I know took the opportunity. One I had been informed of through backchannels, the other I had no idea. It involves someone I knew in Deseret. The child of a Good Mormon Family who had himself had a falling out with the faith some time ago and left Deseret some time after I did. He has apparently determined that he is, at the core, a she.

I am, broadly speaking, pretty liberal when it comes to sexual identity issues. My views on sexual promiscuity, the sexual revolution, and the family tend more to the center (or maybe slightly to the right), but on the subject of homosexuality and related issues I am (depending on the issue) center-left or hard-left. Not only do I support gay marriage and the like, but I believe they should be held to the same standard (more or less) as heterosexual couples in terms of public displays of affection and public affirmation of their relationships. I part ways with the left in that I believe there is a certain amount of flexibility involved (ie it’s not entirely innate), but there are enough for whom there is no flexibility that I believe it wrong to discriminate against the latter so that we can “win back” those somewhere near the fence. I know that some of you disagree with that, but I needed to go into it a bit for the sake of context for this next part.

My views have historically been belied by my actual experiences with homosexuals. In short, they have generally not been all that good. The ones I knew until the last few years had the tendency to have unrelated (I think) personality traits that gave me an unfavorable impression. My earliest exposure was when I was in high school. It was on the BBSes and involved a guy named Vertigo:

Vertigo was a kid of 14 or 15 when I met him that believed that deep down, everybody is bisexual. For a kid his age, he was remarkably charismatic and manipulative. I’m not sure I’ve seen anybody as adept at manipulation before or since I knew him. His crusade to prove the bisexuality of the world was basically to turn earstwhile straight people bisexual one at a time.

He was remarkably good. He had a really good eye for emotional vulnerability. He got the help of the more attractive people in his arsenal to seduce guys and girls not used to getting much (positive) attention. He took the confusion of puberty and adolescence and worked it for his own benefit. And perhaps the most interesting thing about it is that he didn’t really do all this for his own sexual pleasure. He was perhaps most convincing because he was not trying to seduce them personally. He had romantic partners (male and female – mostly male), but it wasn’t all about him getting laid.

From the perspective of a BBS moderator, he was a real pain the ass. Regardless of sexuality, manipulating 14 year olds is pretty uncool as far as I am concerned. And from a practical perspective, we didn’t want to be the BBS to be a sexspot of any sort, much less for behavior that many parents considered deviant (with many underage users, parental opinion was important to us). Vertigo’s targets were also often insufferable for the same reasons they were amongst Vertigo’s easiest marks: they lacked self-esteem, couldn’t talk about anything but how difficult their life was, and were just drags even for somebody that was as downcast as I often was. There was one that went to my high school that Vertigo asked me to look out for because some kids were giving him a tough time (the poor guy was in ROTC). He was a nice guy, but miserable and misery is contagious.

I knew a couple from my real high school who essentially lived up to every gay stereotype as though they were getting it from a book. I’m not convinced that they were actually gay. My exposure in college and several years beyond had limited exposure to gays and lesbians but a fair amount of exposure to bisexuals. Now, I can’t say that I didn’t like them because I disproportionately dated them and attracted them as platonic friends, but they are among some of my more serious regrets. They were either people desperately in search of an identity or people that used bisexuality (and gothism and paganism) in an effort to pump up their mystique. Not bad people, but often people that were in a place where I wasn’t and thus our time together was wasted (when we dated) or would have been. Complicated further by the fact that I usually saw this first and in one case the other never saw it at all.

I went round and round as to what my experiences actually meant. Are gays abnormally obnoxious? Or is it just the ones that are quickest to let you know that they are gay (or bisexual)? Or for all of my liberal gobblygook talk about tolerance, was I just finding reasons not to like them. Things actually turned around a bit when I was invited to my first gay “wedding” (I use the quotes because gay marriage was not legal in the state in question). It involved a college friend of Clancy’s. The ceremony was… nice. With the exception of the obvious (two mentions of husband, no mention of wife, no mention of “By the power invested in me by the State of…”) it was like any other wedding, except with lots of men holding hands in addition to the heterosexual couples doing the same. It was a nice slice of normalcy that was enough to make me feel comfortable that my previous experiences were actually the product of an incompatibility of one sort or another and not just (entirely) a manifestation of the “ick factor”.

The “ick factor” however, is in full force with me when it comes to transgenderism, transsexuality, and simply transvestitude. I really have no idea why that viscerally and conceptually bugs me in a way that homosexuality does not (especially since one of my favorite movies of all times involves a transsexual). Maybe it’s just the “J” part of my personality that likes things in nice, clean, and distinct categories and this trifecta is a challenge to that. Maybe it’s because the men who cross over so often tend to wear nail polish and other gawdy female things that I don’t like on actual females. Back when I was working at Mindstorm, there was a (him-to-her) cross-dresser of some level that I shared the smoking area with. Took me a while (months, though I only saw her periodically) before I became comfortable with her (and… sigh… I never took a real liking to her, again for unrelated reasons and despite my best efforts and eventual comfort). And then, when I was, another one showed up, and none of the comfort I had built up was transferrable at all. I had to start from scratch, though I left not too long after.

This left me a bit not sure what to do about the friend, who basically announced his conversion in a Facebook message and created a new account to migrate to if you were comfortable with the conversion (he was very respectful of those he knew that wouldn’t keep in touch). To be honest, I wasn’t hugely, hugely surprised. I mean, nobody expects that but if I had been told that one of my acquaintances in Deseret would make such a discovery, he probably would have been near, at, or the only person on the list. This was a guy that I was on good terms with but never overly fond of. To be honest, I often felt uncomfortable around him before. Maybe the discomfort he felt with his male identity was actually the source of that or maybe it’s my gay problem all over again. In any event, this is someone that I would otherwise probably see when she makes his way back to Deseret since I live not far now from where he lived back then. I also realized that given his Mormon background and the like, support could be something that she is in need of, and that she was not the type of person to make grand pronouncements like this merely for attention or to stand out.

Ultimately, I determined that the discomfort is my own problem and immediately added him as a friend. Interestingly enough, the female thing actually works for him. If it weren’t for the adams apple, I’m not sure I would even be able to tell from the picture. And the more I think about it, the more I think “You know, this could explain a lot.” I had the same feeling when I discovered a good friend in high school had come out as gay several years ago (yeah, I held a couple back from the above rundown). After suffering through precal together our junior year, he moved away from his senior year. He came back for prom, though, the date of a smoking hot girl. The whole prom he essentially ignored her in order to hang out with us. I attributed it at the time to seeing people that he hadn’t seen in a while, but even when she got flustered he didn’t really care. I don’t think he knew he was gay at that point, but for him to ignore her he must have been.

There’s one more case I held back. An ex-fling of sorts that I have mentioned here a few times that determined she was a lesbian at some point between then and now. I hold it back because I think it gets its own post and also because I think I am actually somewhat in denial about it.

CNN has an article about church-going (black) women having difficulty finding a man:

In raising the issue, {San Fransisco Examiner writer Deborrah} Cooper ignited a public conversation about a topic that is increasingly getting attention in the black community and beyond. Oprah Winfrey, among others, recently hosted a show about single black women and relationships after a Yale University study found that 42 percent of African-American women in the United States were unmarried.

Big Miller Grove Missionary Baptist Church, a predominately African-American Baptist church in Atlanta, is holding a seminar on the question of faith’s role in marital status on August 20.

“Black women are interpreting the scriptures too literally. They want a man to which they are ‘equally yoked’ — a man that goes to church five times a week and every Sunday just like they do,” Cooper said in a recent interview.

“If they meet a black man that is not in church, they are automatically eliminated as a potential suitor. This is just limiting their dating pool.”

This, of course, runs headlong into a lot of what we hear around these parts, which is that women usually have the option of a good man if they want one and if they end up with something else that’s because it’s their preference. The theory goes that women purposefully bypass nice and stable men in favor of bad boy alpha males.

Some women, of course, do this. Sometimes because the women are rather dysfunctional themselves (like bring attracted to like) and some women just have bad taste. The implication, however, is that women are the ones pulling the levers and men (with the exception of precious few) are just along for the ride. In some environments this may be true, but in others it most definitely is not.

This is important to recognize because it is in these environments that single motherhood typically thrive. A lot of times we look at women that go it alone or get impregnated by some ne’er-do-well and wonder why they didn’t make better decisions when it came to men. Sometimes, of course, this is valid as some women have awful choice in men (just as the reverse is true). But it’s often the case that they are simply considering the options they have. A lot of women are sleeping with guys outside of the context of a relationship not because they would “prefer 5 minutes with an alpha over a lifetime with a beta” but rather because they lack other options. Their options are not to sleep with some guy that won’t treat them right or find some good fella who will, but rather accept the fleeting companionship of someone that demands sex as a prerequisite – often someone that otherwise treats them poorly – or being alone.

This is particularly true in certain segments of the population where there is a man shortage. Or a shortage of men with any discernible quality. The black community in particular is hit hard by the number of men going in and out of prison, exceptionally high unemployment rates, and high crime rates in general. When it comes to the black community, the number of decent women (defined as being self-supporting and having a relatively clean criminal record) vastly outnumber that of decent men. Now, maybe it’s true that these women should look outside the black community, but as others have pointed out, black women (like Asian men) are the losers in the musical chairs of interracial dating. It’s not clear that white, Asian, and Hispanic men are lining up at the opportunity. And most people want to date people with similar backgrounds.

But this isn’t just an issue in the black community (and this post is not really about the black community). If you look at the poor white communities you will often see the same sort of thing. While white men are substantially less likely than black men to end up in prison, they’re still far more likely than white women to end up there. Or homeless. Or, these days, perpetually jobless and unemployable. Society’s most successful and least successful participants are typically men. Women seem, generally, most likely to populate the center (after school is over with, anyway).

So imagine a graph to this effect. Women with a tall curve towards the center and men with a flatter curve and higher numbers on each end. Women on the left (dysfunctional) side of the curve, in the third quartile, are going to pretty substantially outnumber the men. Look at the third and fourth quartile as a whole and women are going to populate the most functional half and men the least. Women in the third quartile that are close to the halfway point are sometimes going to be able to get men in the second quartile, but you don’t have to move too far to the left before the general dearth of men in the middle is going to be a problem.

The long and short of it is that a lot of women on the left side of the curve are going to be stuck in their own half. That half is one in which women are going to generally be more functional than men. In other words, they are going to either end up with someone less functional than they are or they’re going to end up alone. Even the women on the fourth quartile are not in as advantageous a position as we might think because though they are outnumbered by men, a substantial portion of the men are either completely unavailable or undateable by any standard because they’re dead, in prison, completely dysfunctional alcoholics, pedophiles, homeless, or have a serious anti-social personality disorder. So at best these women have their pick of a very bad lot. The kind of lot that if they did date these men they would be further proof of how women are attracted to awful and dysfunctional men.

In reference to mail-order brides, Phi objects that women can be critical of the dating choices of men that they wouldn’t date. This is a fair observation. But I think it behooves us men to ask ourselves if we do the same thing. Case and point: Anne McClaren. It is unlikely that Phi or I would ever seriously contemplate dating such a woman (for any substantial period of time) even if she were quite attractive (and, actually, she is). Even if you set aside the fact that she’s got three kids (and a fourth on the way) to men of varying degrees of worthlessness and that she may be attracted to this sort, she has a host of other drawbacks that would be dealbreakers even if she had sober taste in men. She can’t hold down a job, can’t support herself, can’t take care of children, and has a history with drugs. If she’s half as smart as her sister is, you can’t tell it by virtue of the fact that she’s a walking, talking wreck. And, to be honest, given that I wouldn’t have dated her if I were her age and living in Appalachia and unmarried unless I was absolutely desperate, I am disinclined to be all that condemning towards her taste in men.

Not just, I should add, because of the kids in tow. In fact, since all three have been taken up by her parents, they don’t even factor in. But the kids and the drugs and all that are the result of an impulsive and reckless nature that I would find unattractive even if it all the bad stuff hadn’t happened yet.

And so it goes with a lot of the women that become single mothers to some guy that wouldn’t commit to a weekend much less to nuptials. I remember a while back when I was at Dharla’s birthday party and met an attractive and seemingly smart girl that got knocked up by some guy who promptly disappeared. A part of me wondered why she seemed to have such bad taste in men. I got to know her and discovered that she was really quite bitchy and entitled – and beautiful or not most decent men wouldn’t want to be with her anyway. And this girl did not seem remotely as incompetent as Anne. Neither Anne nor this girl is unworthy of criticism, but their removal (or the removal of people like them) from my dating sphere was really no great loss.

And not because she wasn’t attracted to men like me. Lots of women were unattracted to men like me. Some real quality women were very, very unattracted to me. But those women didn’t get knocked up by some semi-functional jerk or throw away a promising future for parties and pot and directionless hanging out. They weren’t the type of woman to do so.

Those that I’ve kept in touch with (thanks, Facebook) mostly married guys who were… a lot like them. A couple married guys that seem kinda like me, actually, except better looking or with better job prospects. Others married guys that were more… well, normal, like they were and I wasn’t.

I think along similar lines when it came to the ones I never asked out. Will Tyson‘s sister was cute and, though she never made any romantic overtures, oddly nice to me. I briefly considered making a move but was enthusiastically warned against it. And I thank them for it because even if she had said yes, nothing good would have come of it on my end. On her end… she might not be in prison right now if I’d tried. She and a later boyfriend tried were convicted of armed robbery (he robbed, she was in the car). Women attracted to jerks? Women finding a suitable mate? Women just doing the best they can? Chances are she was never interested in me because I wasn’t her type. But neither was she mine in any meaningful sense, my temporary infatuation notwithstanding.

This post isn’t a full-frontal assault on notions of hypergamy or the Alpha-Beta Theory. Merely, it’s to point out that a good portion of the women removed from the dating scene because they got knocked up or because they date losers aren’t really women that we would consider dating anyway. They’re women with two strikes against them often trying to get the most out of their situation or women making the same poor choices in romance that they make in other aspects of their life that make them not our type anyway. And oftentimes they’re actually quite decent people, but somewhat unintelligent or socialized in a way that we would be hard-pressed to want to introduce them to our families or simply from a subculture with which we are not likely to be able to relate all that well to.

Maura Kelly, mentioning Hit Coffee favorite Mike & Molly, raised some eyebrows with this:

My initial response was: Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country’s obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it’s at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

So anyway, yes, I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

Just as am discomforted being in an elevator with someone that has massive burn scarring that has consumed their face. It’s not an unnatural reaction to respond negatively to someone aesthetically displeasing. Of course, the difference when it comes to obesity is that we get to tuck it into something self-righteous. It seems wrong to be disgusted with someone that had the misfortune to be in their house as it burns down. But the obesity thing, you see, is about health. Maura herself says that of course they could lose the weight if they only tried. Trying. If only they’d thought of that. To be fair, this is something I used to agree with until (a) I saw how abysmal the numbers actually were on sustained weight-loss of large amounts of weight and (b) that weight-loss through force-of-will was a losing proposition (or a not-losing proposition, depending on how you look at it).

I would actually be more understanding of Maura’s point if the show were about fat-and-happy people that were reveling in it by calling each other Big Mama and the like. While Mike and Molly make jokes about it, they’re pretty self-conscious jokes in nature. They don’t accept their weight so much as it is a personal struggle that they’re losing.

Maura has taken (in my view) an excessive amount of heat for this article, though. Her bio page now has some hateful comments and she has since issued an apology. I think this, as with many things, is something that people should approach more carefully. Not just Maura, but her critics. The fact is that a whole lot of people think like she does. Invective against her is invective against all of those that feel that way, which is most people who are not nor have ever been fat themselves. It’s better to simply point out the problems with being so glib about problems that they have never really faced and point out the statistics about how truly difficult sustained weight-loss (of large amounts of weight) actually is.

I almost called this “TV Review:” to fit in with the other reviews of new shows, but this is less about the quality of the show and more about a couple of themes it brought up. The basic premise of the Better With You (as with other shows such as “Til Death” and “Rules of Engagement” as well as the British show “Cold Feet”) is following the adventures of three couples at different stages in their relationship. In this case, you have long-married Joel and Vicky, long-term yuppie cohabitants Ben and Maddie, and newly-coupled Mia and Casey. The only two other things you need to know are that Joel and Vickey are Maddie and Mia’s parents and that Casey knocked Mia up and so she’s pregnant and they are immediately engaged.

In the first episode, everyone meets Casey and the situation that she and Mia are in. Maddie and Ben are stunned when the parents are extremely supportive and excited about the engagement and the grandchild. Though he’s a dimwit and not responsible like Ben, Casey is immediately accepted as a member of the family. The entire situation accentuates the fact that Ben and Maddie have been together for nine years and are neither married nor parents. Leaving aside the marriage issue (I’ll get to that in a minute), the parenthood issue struck home a bit with me because in that sense they are doing the “responsible” thing and waiting until they are settled down and entirely ready before taking that next step. And for all of these shows of responsibility, the parents start half-favoring the irresponsible ones that are unintentionally giving them a grandkid.

It hit home with me because my parents are getting antsy about grandkids. My brother Ollie has kids, but it’s not quite the same since Ollie has always been so independent, a little different, and not a Truman by blood. He did buy us some time, but they still want both Mitch and I to have kids. And since Mitch has already said that he won’t… well… we become the designated grandchildren-bearers. Naturally, they want us to do it the right way. But we’re already married and now that we’re not moving around every year or two (we hope) the timing is getting good. But for reasons I’m not getting into, it’s not going to happen for another year or so, assuming that everything goes account to plan. According to plan. Though they want us to do things the right way and though having a baby back when she was a resident would have been a logistical nightmare, they would have been ecstatic nonetheless. They probably would have been happy even if Clancy and I hadn’t been married yet, cultural disapproval aside. Sometimes, I wonder in retrospect if they would have been happier if one of those pre-Clancy pregnancy scares with others would have at least given them that grandkid.

In that sense, I could relate Maddie and Ben. “Wait… all we had to do to get you this excited for us is f*ck up?!” That’s pretty unfair, though, as they were very happy for us at our wedding and they do like Clancy a great deal (a lot more than they expected to like any woman that I would marry – they expected me to find someone that they disliked). But… it’s hard to overlook that had a pregnancy test with Julianne actually come up positive, they would have an 11-year old grandkid. A divorced son, most likely, but a grandkid nonetheless. Maybe more than one before the likely divorce.

While I could relate to Maddie and Ben on the issue or monogamy and children, they lose a lot of my sympathy on the marriage issue. On the third episode, they are upset that Ben is not allowed to be in the family Christmas card while Casey is. Joel, the father, had pretty simple reasoning. “They’re having a kid and you’re not and they’re getting married and you’re not. If you get married, he gets to be in the Christmas Card.” They object on the basis that he’s really family and that Joel is being unfair.

I don’t think he is. I mean, to me it’s something that could go either way, but something I see on TV pretty frequently is this notion that non-married, long-term cohabitants deserve the same respect as married couples. The nature and love of the relationship is more important than the piece of paper. I don’t think that’s inherently true at all. If you want the respect that marriage brings, then you should get married. If you want the rights and privileges of being married, you should get married*. This has been an issue on some legal shows I watch where unmarried people claim that they are being discriminated against because they’re functionally married but didn’t want to be bound by that piece of paper. Sorry. That piece of paper carries meaning. Legally, but also culturally. If you choose not to respect the institution of marriage, the rest of us do not have to go along.

Both Clancy’s and my parents held the same attitudes, so that’s probably where I get it from. No matter how obvious it was that we were serious about one another, when visiting we slept in different rooms right up until the logistics of it made it too impractical (our wedding, at that point, was imminent). It never occurred to us to complain. I suppose with our own future kids Clancy and I will be ridiculously old-fashioned by maintaining the same standard. It’s something I expect we will do even if they are cohabitating like Ben and Maddie.

* – Assuming you legally can. Gay couples get a pass outside states that allow them to marry.