Current Affairs

Death Statistics

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

One of the more bizarre characteristics of the mass media is the different level of emphasis that they place on reporting deaths. Teenager killed in gang brawl, an accident on the railways – they’ll be headline news. Someone killed in a motoring accident – lucky to be reported at all. But the actual numbers are out there, and every so often we get to see one that (hopefully) makes us stop and think. Today’s number came in an article about a group of MPs that wants more done to discourage domestic violence by means of education. Here’s the number:

Two women are killed every week in the UK by husbands, boyfriends or former partners, the report said.

I’ll repeat that:

TWO . WOMEN . MURDERED . EVERY . WEEK
in Britain, by their family

Remember that next time someone tells you that feminism has outlived its usefulness.

Wedge Issues

~ Cheryl ~ 6 Comments

I’ve been trying to avoid saying anything about the US Presidential election, partly because it is not my country, and partly because the ongoing self-destruction of the Democrat party is is just too darn depressing for those of us from outside the US who hope the country will vote itself a sane leadership this time around. Looking from the outside, it seems very likely that, in much the same way as Ralph Nader did for Al Gore, angry Clinton will supporters do for Obama. Unless… unless…

The Economist has come up with an interesting idea. The Libertarians might yet ride to the rescue. Not, of course, the loony “freedom to own slaves and kill people I don’t like” Libertarians, but rather those “soft Libertarians” who, like The Economist itself, are conservative on economic issues and liberal on social issues. As the paper points out, Dubya has hardly endeared himself to Libertarians:

Mr Bush has presided over the fastest growth in federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s. He put the Republican seal of approval on the biggest intrusion of federal power into the classroom in history (No Child Left Behind), the most expensive public-works programme ever (the 2005 highway bill) and the largest new entitlement programme since the creation of Medicare and Medicaid (the prescription-drug benefit). He launched an open-ended “war on terror”. He rode roughshod over states’ rights on issues such as assisted suicide. And he has expanded the government’s power to eavesdrop on its citizens.

And that’s a whole big pile of potential wedge issues. The Economist apparently thinks that these issues are potentially serious enough for a small but not insignificant number of voters to desert John McCain and vote for Bob Barr instead. I have no idea whether they are right, though I’ve always suspected that conservatives have an innate advantage in elections because they tend to value power above all else whereas liberals are likely to value principle above all else. Still, it is perhaps a comforting thought for those of us across the pond who are watching the current outpouring of fury from Clinton supporters with a considerable degree of nervousness.

International Rainbow Roundup

~ Cheryl

My congratulations to the New York State Assembly for passing an employment protection bill for LGBT people by a whopping majority of 102-33. This is, of course, the same sort of bill that the Democrat leadership felt had no chance of passing congress because it included protection for transgender people, and which President Bush said he would veto even if it only protected homosexuals.

Congratulations also to the British Embassy in Riga for lending their support to the beleaguered LGBT people of Latvia.

The less said about Turkey the better. They clearly have real problems (and not just over LGBT issues).

LGBT Family Blogging Follow-Up

~ Cheryl

Checking back with Mombian today I discover that there are already 159 posts for LGBT Family Day. I’m not going to have time to read them all by any means, but do feel free to dip in. Some of them are really heartwarming.

What did surprise me, however, was to find the Daily Telegraph getting in on the act. Well, they are a day late, and I don’t think they did it deliberately, but it is lovely anyway.

Introducing COLAGE

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

My apologies for doing yet another queer politics post, but I’m assuming that there will be a fair few LGBT folks and their allies popping in as a result of the “Phone Arnie” post and the various follow-ups and this seemed like a good opportunity to plug some people who I think are rather important.
Continue reading →

Over to Jed

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

All of the latest on same-sex marriage in California from an actual Californian. Jed Hartman comments here and here, including on the story that Attorneys General in ten other states are worried that they might get Gay Cooties from California. Sad really.

Where They Get Their Ideas

~ Cheryl

The question, “where do you get your ideas from?” has long since passed into legend in writing communities, such that it is hard to avoid giggling when some poor fan asks it at a reading. But writers do sometimes get their inspiration in interesting places. And sometimes real life has a habit of imitating art. Over at Tropic Temper, Glenda Larke talks about a news story from Argentina that is scarily like one of her recent books.

NY To Recognize CA Same-Sex Marriages

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Several sources have pointed me to today’s news that the Governor of New York, David Paterson, has instructed state officials that they must recognize same-sex marriages conducted outside of New York as legal. New York, of course, does not allow same-sex marriages. But Massachusetts does and California looks like it will. For that matter, Canada does as well. Now in order to get married in Massachusetts the people involved have to be residents of the state. But what happens if they change jobs and have to move to New York? Would they be no longer married? And thus far California is planning to let anyone marry there. Indeed, “gay marriage tourism” has been suggested as a potential benefit to the state. So this is a real issue for other parts of the USA. How can someone be legally married in one state, but not in another?

Doubtless there will be a challenge to Governor Patterson’s ruling. Indeed, the whole basis of the Governor’s ruling is that he has had legal advice that he has to recognize the marriages until such time as the State Legislature says otherwise. It also seems likely that conservative governors in other states will now be under pressure to state that same-sex marriages will not be recognized in their domains. It could all get quite complicated quite quickly. Indeed, the Republicans are very much hoping that it will because they see it as a possible wedge issue in the coming Presidential election. They feel that if Obama (or Clinton) can be tagged as the pro-gay-marriage candidate then this will give McCain a significant advantage.

Meanwhile there are reports that San Diego County is considering allowing staff to opt out of performing same-sex marriages if they object to doing so. There are also government officials in the UK trying to get out of having to perform their duties because they are homophobic. The LA Times is rightly scathing. We wouldn’t tolerate a government official refusing to perform a marriage for a mixed race couple because they happened to be racists. If the local law, be it in California or the UK, says that same-sex marriages (or civil unions or whatever) are legal, then government employees are bound to follow that law.

Yeah, I know, I’m not a Californian citizen – I just spend a lot of time there. But people are apparently interested in my writing about this stuff, so I do.

Work for Girls

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

Alex Massie is taking a break from pillorying Gordon Brown to take a look at prostitution instead. Normally I’m rather suspicious of men who call for prostitution to be legalized, but Alex has show distinct Libertarian leanings in the past and the article he links to from the New Zealand Herald is quite interesting. Apparently New Zealand legalized prostitution in 2003. The newspaper article is in response to a government report commissioned to investigate the effects of the new law. And the results seem positive. None of the dire predictions usually made by religious extremists appear to have come to pass, and while there are not a lot of positives to report, the fact that over 60% of those prostitutes surveyed “felt they were more able to refuse to provide commercial sexual services to a particular client since the enactment of the law” is excellent news.

Given the weight of evidence that abounds, I am astonished that there are still people who think that making an activity that is popular illegal will stop it happening rather that simply move it into the control of criminals.

Phone Arnie

~ Cheryl ~ 5 Comments

Via Nicola and Kelley – the office of the Gubernator has set up a telephone poll to allow people to express their opinions about the recent California Supreme Court decision in favor of same-sex marriages. Apparently you don’t have to be a Californian to vote. You don’t even have to be in America, because I have just made the call. So you can bet that fundies all over America, and probably all over the world, are going to be calling in. They are well organized. You can register your vote too. Here are the instructions:

1. call 916-445-2841
2. press options 1 (English); 5 (to vote on a hot topic); 1 (same-sex marriage); 1 (vote yes).

Why yes, I did just ask you to vote in favor. Are you surprised? My many gay and lesbian friends thank you in advance for your support. The call only takes a few seconds, so it won’t cost much even at ruinous BT international rates.

Post Cultural Imperial Melancholy

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been hearing even more whingeing than usual on this trip back to the UK. Most of it has come from cricket commentators. It is apparently not fair that India should have a high profile Twenty20 tournament when England doesn’t. And it is not fair that Manchester should be denied the right to hold test matches simply because their ground exposes the poor spectators to all of the vagaries of the local weather while newer grounds like Cardiff and Southampton have invested heavily in good facilities. Because cricket is a game played mainly by the upper classes (state schools generally don’t give kids the chance to play the game) it isn’t surprising to find that cricket people are a conservative bunch who think than if something has happened in the past it should always happen in the future, just because it is traditional.

This morning, however, UK newspapers are full of the same sort of nonsense over the Eurovision Song Contest. It is, apparently, not fair that the Russians should win. Those nasty Eastern European types all vote for each other and not for us. And it is not fair that the UK should finish last, even though most people seem to have agreed well in advance that the UK entry was hopeless. It is time, they suggest, for Western Europe to secede from Eurovision and set up its own song contest: one that Western countries will always win, just like they used to before they let a bunch of foreigners into the competition. (Here, as examples, are The Times and the BBC.)

Aw, c’mon. Firstly, Eurovision has always been a jingoistic nonsense. Before Eastern Europe joined in it tended to be a bit of a North v South affair (which the French, Italians, Spanish and Portuguese generally lost because they could never get past their love of overly-emotional ballads). If the UK always used to do well, that just meant that it happened to be in with the majority. Now it isn’t. Get over it.

Furthermore, of all the stupid things to get nationalistic about, why Eurovision? As the great John McEnroe used to say, “you cannot be serious, man.”

Look, if the Russians and their pals want to win Eurovision, that’s fine with me. Though I hope very much that the rest of Eastern Europe insists on getting a fair share of the spoils over the year. In the meantime, I want the West to engage in a little cultural imperialism of a different sort. I think we should stay in the contest, and vote resolutely for the Eastern European entry that gets the highest score on our gaydar. Let them compete amongst themselves, but make it it clear that we’ll support the countries that make the best show of looking open and inclusive and liberal. That will give them something to think about.

And if you think this is entirely a joke, I point you at this article that talks about how the Israelis have decided to require their contestants to have served in the military, a rule that would have excluded one of their three winners, Dana International.

Aliens in Denver?

~ Cheryl

Thank goodness we are not in Denver now. Science fiction conventions tend to attract all sorts of odd people, and there are some fairly crazy folks in town at the moment. Yes, the Libertarian Party convention has just started. And one of the guest speakers is “Richard Hoagland—an author who argues that NASA is covering up evidence of dead civilizations found with their probes”. It is good to know that the guardians of Freedom are out there protecting our right to know about alien civilizations, and at least one Libertarian candidate is raising Hoagland’s concerns in his campaigns, though sadly such issues don’t appear to be going down well at the polls:

Latham read my expression: I was wincing. “You’ll meet him,” Latham said. “He’s not a kook. He talks about this as a secrecy issue, in a relatable way.”

“No matter how he talks about it,” I said, “can’t the two parties use it to marginalize him? I mean, how is it playing.”

“It’s playing pretty well!” Latham thought about it. “The polls aren’t great, though. We just got the first one in from the district and we’ve got… zero percent. I was hoping to start off better than that.”

More here, for those of you who find such things amusing. (Thanks Alex!)

Down Your Way

~ Cheryl

This week’s Economist tackles the California Supreme Court’s decision on same-sex marriages. The most interesting part of the article is where they talk about how gay couples can increasingly be found in all parts of the US, even Utah:

Indeed, of the 34 states with above-average increases in the number of gay couples, 21 voted for Mr Bush in 2004. This does not mean there has been a sudden outbreak of homosexuality in conservative states; rather, it means gay couples in such areas are swiftly becoming more open about their relationships.

Becoming part of the scenery is important, and it looks like gay people are achieving just that. Progress.

Cory on Statistics

~ Cheryl

Our Mr. Doctorow has an article in today’s Guardian. It is all about the difficulty that we humans have in understanding statistics. I think he’s rather brave to try to make any point by talking about pedophiles, but he is right, and he does show very clearly why anti-terrorist efforts end up fingering so many innocent people.

Of course I’m not by any means the target of his article. My reaction on entering Las Vegas airport (you don’t need to leave it, Cory, there are plenty of slots inside the terminal) was to think, “oh my, look at all these poor sods pouring away their life’s savings.” The best way to learn that gambling is a poor investment is to work in the business (in my case working in a bookmaker’s during college vacations). I’m also one of those odd people who generally feel safer on public transit than in a car.

And that actually brings me to a useful point, because actually it isn’t so much lack of education that makes us bad at understanding risk, it is the way things are presented, and the way we react to them. People think that traveling on trains is horribly dangerous because every time there is a train crash it is headline news. If every car crash was headline news as well, then people might start getting the point that they miss from the raw statistics. But even then I suspect they’d dismiss the danger of road travel on the grounds that they are good drivers and it is only bad drivers who have accidents, whereas on a train you don’t get to drive. We are hard-wired to be much more fearful of things we think we cannot control than of things we think we can. Which is why gambling addicts spend so much time convincing themselves that they have “a system.”

Congratulations, Mr. Sulu

~ Cheryl

With same-sex marriage now firmly on the agenda in California again, many couples are announcing their plans to get married. One such couple is George Takei and Brad Altman. Having grown up on classic Star Trek (amongst other things), I am thoroughly delighted for the happy couple and wish them all the best of the future. Official announcement here.

CA Judges Show Sense

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Looks like there is some good news from California on the subject of same-sex marriages. Jed has more details, but this is the important bit:

we determine that the language of section 300 limiting the designation of marriage to a union “between a man and a woman” is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute, and that the remaining statutory language must be understood as making the designation of marriage available both to opposite-sex and same-sex couples.

I think “Woo Hoo!” is an appropriate reaction. 🙂

Message to Jaipur

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

You get so much bad news on a daily basis that sometimes you get inured to it. Thousands of people die in typhoons and earthquakes and somehow it doesn’t mean much, if only because there is nothing much you can do, especially in the case of Burma because their idiot government isn’t letting aid in.

And then something like this happens. It isn’t even a natural disaster, it is a series of terrorist bombs. And this time it doesn’t even appear to have religious motivation, because both Hindu and Muslim sites were targeted. But it is in Jaipur, the home of the Rajasthan Royals, a city that I have been taking a great deal of interest in over the past month.

Once again there isn’t a lot I can do. But hopefully all of my recent enthusiasm for the Royals will have some people thinking that these are not just faceless foreigners that have been killed, they are fellow cricket fans. People much like you and me. And hopefully, because there are now Royals fans all around the world, the people of Jaipur will know that they have friends who wish them well.

It sucks. Why do people do things like this?