Bill o' rights

UNHR Addemdum:

By Paul Facio

In spite of the U.N.s stated purpose to take our guns away so as to unite world governments under Jewish bankers and lizard people, I'm compelled to admit adulation for their declaration of human rights is deserved: broad without seeming generic; long but impacting; it is finely drafted-- if incomplete. And though I lack former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton's terrifically authoritative mustache, were the chance presented, here's what I'd add:

Personal rights:

The right to prostitution:

• Persons twenty one and over have the right to prostitution within a regulated, safe, and legal framework.

The right to drugs:

• Persons twenty one and over have the right to drugs as they would alcohol.

The right to marry and cohabitate:

• Persons of legal adulthood have the right to marry other consenting adults.

Societal rights:

The right to prisons as institutions of reform:

• Non-life sentence inmates have the right to a free education and a general chance at rehabilitation.

The right to contraception:

• Everyone has the right to cheap, legal, and effective contraception.

The right to abortion:

• Before and up to twenty four weeks of a pregnancy, every woman has the right to cheap, legal, confidential, and safe abortions. This extends past twenty four weeks in cases of rape, incest, and when the mother's life is jeopardized.

XXXDETH RITESXXX

The right to death:

• Persons deemed of sound mind have the right to euthanasia.

The right of conscientious objection:

• No persons shall be coerced into any form of organized violence or forcibly drafted. Those opting out of compulsory military service will still be required to serve in another (peaceful) fashion.

The right to life:

• As it is both cruel and unusual, no persons shall be subjected to capital punishment.

Financial rights

The right to progressive taxation:

• The burden of taxation shall be distributed fairly and according to ones means.

The right to fair pay:

• No employee shall earn less than a tenth of his superiors.

The right to protection from usury:

• Everyone has the right to protection from unreasonable interest on debt and loans.

Prescripts:

It'd be easy to mine endless non-fiction novels out of what's listed above. I have five (double spaced) pages; I must be terse. Also:

I'm a leftist-- favoring gay marrying stem cells to fund LSD abortions for terrorists-- but it's obvious to my patchouli-addled brain that certain issues-- gay marriage; drug legalization; synchronized incest-- won't be politically viable for sometime. Therefore, it's prudent to begin with rights most universal and centrist; I'll work toward Trotsky afterwards.

The right to conscientious objection.

“To the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights one more might, with relevance, be added: the right to refuse to kill."

– Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, and Nobel Peace Laureate, Sean MacBride, 1974³

It'd be reasonable to take this as self-serving moralizing aimed at keeping my already overlarge vocabulary Pashto and Arabic free; I'll allow for that. More compelling is the plight of peasants and children, largely in Africa and Asia, forced to fight in conflicts both murky and increasingly inhuman. It's estimated that 30,000+ children fought in the 1999 through 2003 second Congo war⁵ (more aptly titled “Africa's World War”) against a backdrop of approximately four million deaths with rampant gang rape and cannibalism⁶⁷. People are still dying from it's effects. There are similarly, if less wholly awful, documented cases of child solders fighting in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Chad, Cote d'Ivoire, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, and Zimbabwe-- with a sum estimated at around 100,000.

It's been argued the right to refuse to kill can be inferred from the right to “freedom of thought, conscience and religion” in article 18 of the UNHR, but it's not explicitly outlined, and there's been heavy lobbying from Amnesty International-- and others like-minded-- for the UN to do so. As this is so ideologically lopsided (unless I've overlooked the pro children-fighting-in-wars side) it will be the easiest to of my proposals to enact.

The right to life.

Retained in only 64 of the worlds 220+ nation states, capital punishment is overwhelmingly opposed globally, with the United States as a glaring anomaly in the western world. As evidenced by 2007's largest execution tallies⁸: China 470+, Iran 317+, Saudi Arabia 143+, Pakistan 135+, United States of America 42, Iraq 33+

There're myriad reasons for a moratorium: it's pronounced racial bias--( in America blacks amount to 41% of death row inmates while making up only 12% of the general population⁴⁾--; it's easy qualification as cruel and unusual¹⁰ (strapping someone to to a padded table and plugging them with paralyzing agents while leaving them cconscious as their lungs seize up); it's place on the wrong side of history-- (the death penalty has been dramatically curtailed UN-wide since world war II, with it's abolition a requisite for admission into the European Union)--; it's unproven effectiveness both as a deterrent and a utilitarian cost-saver; and the risk of executing an innocent.

The right to prisons as an institution of reform.

Allowing possible bias due to my multiple convictions as a sex defender, experts in the fields of education and correction have reached an overwhelming consensus¹: “postsecondary education is the most successful and cost-effective method of preventing crime.” For every tax dollar spent on spent on educating criminals, two are saved-- both from the massive decrease in recidivism among inmates receiving instruction, and their drastically raised likelihood of contributing to the economy.

The right to progressive taxation:

Taxing those who earn more by higher and higher percents. Favored by an overwhelming majority of economists (81% in America²), and one can assume, the majority of the worlds inhabitants (the lower classes). Already featured in other prominent human rights declarations like France's “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.”

The rest:

Personal rights:

The right to prostitution:

Crime by definition is non-consensual, but sex workers live in fear. The illegality of their profession discourages reporting crimes committed against them, and a lack of regulation and mandated health care leads to exploitative pimps and STDs. It's legal (and regulated) in most countries to pay two people to engage in sexual intercourse on camera (I have videos which prove this), but paying one person for sex private is outlawed-- baffling.

The right to drugs:

Labeled by numerous think tanks, research institutes, economists, politicians, and activists as an 'expensive failure' and largely regarded as a war on the underclass¹¹, the war on drugs is at best, a massive distraction from our societies larger ills, and at worst a concerted effort to move us closer to a police state.

There is so much to speak of here. I could write a dissertation on Marijuana's benign (relative to tobacco) and even positive medical effects¹². Or the empowerment to criminal organizations analogous to alcohol prohibition and Al Capone. Or the money we could save from the “war”s cessation-- money we could spend on education, health care, research, infrastructure-- a giant communal bong-- anything that's not oppression.

The right to marry and cohabitate:

The last real civil rights struggle in developed nations. It's my stance that two (or more) consenting adults have the right to whatever ghastly obscenities they so choose in the privacy of their home/poorly lit public rest stop. Whether it involves sour cream, childos, power sanders, clown make up, the elderly, Dakota Fanning head shots, or livestock. The advancement of gay rights in over the past 50 years seems an obvious meat thermometer of where we're headed with all forms of sexual tolerance.

Societal rights:

The right to contraception:

Overpopulation; AIDS; crime; unwanted and neglected children; abortion; teen pregnancy; regional instability; Mormon hegemony-- it's difficult to spot the salient problem, but there's little argument outside the Holy See that contraception serves as a panacea, or at least a topical ointment, to all.

The right to abortion:

An understandably thorny and contentious topic and I won't feign possessing the rhetorical skills to neatly resolve it in two paragraphs. However, I still have points to make:

Safety: when abortions were outlawed in America, so called “back alley” or unlicensed and unsanitary abortions were prevalent; tremendously unsafe to both mother and child.

Crime: it has yet to be conclusively proven, but there's strong evidence that legalized abortion has a drastic bettering effect on crime rates⁹.

Death Rights

The right to death:

I've yet to hear a clear or reasonable argument as to why the elderly and the terminal of sound mind should not be allowed a painless release. I guess... Maybe if you've got something against cancer patients.

Financial rights

The right to fair pay:

Generally, unskilled labor is the least financially rewarding and most dangerous type of work. It's an obvious disparity, and I propose rectifying it with a law requiring a salary cap on management and above: no one should earn more than ten times the wage of the lowest paid employee. There will still be inequalities-- CEO's will still afford yachts-- but they would not be as galling; as enraging.

The right to protection from usury:

Jesus made decrying usury a cornerstone of his ministry, but it's a foreign sounding word to modern ears. Odd given it's blazing relevance during our economic collapse-- largely due to predatory lending. It's admittedly self-serving to start with Jesus: I'm militantly agnostic and if Jesus

comes back I'll be the first to gather up nails and 2 by 4's, but I still don't find it moral, or reasonable, to have the “money-changing” class we do. Banks and loans are fine; are necessary, but we need them not for profit if we want them trustworthy and in the interest of the public good.

It'll never fucking happen.

1.Education as Crime Prevention: The Case for Reinstating Pell Grant Eligibility for the Incarcerated. Daniel Karpowitz and Max Kenner. Bard Prison Initiative, Bard College. http://www.bard.edu/bpi/pdfs/crime_report.pdf

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_tax#History_of_intellectual_debate

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights#The_Right_to_Refuse_to_Kill

4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_punishment_debate#United_States_specificities

5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_use_of_children#Africa

6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Congo_War#Rape_as_a_weapon

7. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/30/AR2007073001849.html

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_penalty#Global_distribution

9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Impact_of_Legalized_Abortion_on_Crime

10. http://medicine.plosjournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-document&doi=10.1371/journal.pmed.0040156&ct=1

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_on_Drugs#Assorted_arguments_against_the_efficacy_of_the_War_on_Drugs

12. http://www.medboardwatch.com/wb/pages/therapeutic-effects.php

The Liquid We're Dissolved In

By Paul Facio

As a over-anxious preteen I'd walk through the Washington metro tunnels imagining the halls flooding with a loose, green mist of sarin gas; my fellow citizens staggering about blinded-- eyes bulging-- clawing violently at their throats or lying unconscious and twitching like dogs in group rem sleep. I spent evenings pondering over accidental nuclear weapons launches and mass extinctions-- or why my birthday parties were so consistently lacking in attendance.

Cheerfully enough, scientists agree we're square-in-the-middle of an ongoing mass extinction. To quote wikipedia:

“The current rate of extinction based on statistical modelling is estimated to be 10 to 100 times the usual background level. It is feared that 50% of species could be extinct by the end of the 21st century.”

As Kenan Malik seems giddy to point out near the beginning of Let Them Die, this isn't the only modern extinction, “Some pessimists suggest that by the year 3000 just 600 languages will be left,” he notes before quoting linguist David Crystal, “We should care about dying languages for the same reason that we care about when a species of animal or plant dies. It reduces the diversity of our planet.” Every other piece in the first chapter of Exploring Language is at-the-ready to compare our rapidly collapsing ecosystem and the mass die off of tongues, and here stews the meat and potatoes of Malik's argument: while the parallels are effortless, the metaphor is invalid in a 'Colorado and a postage stamp are both rectangles' sort of way: honey bees could die out-- they are-- and our farmers would be harvesting aspirated dirt and pet dander. No laymen will bat a lash when Middle Chulym is gone; we will be too busy eating.

This is the only valid point Malik stumbles into; all others are either factually shaky, or non-relevant--like painting romanticism as a few ideological bus stops over from burning Jews en masse (pg 86 para 9).

And, although hyperbolic to contrast our failing planet with obscure dialects, it does not make their salvation a negative. There're myriad avenues for measuring the scope and reach of human cognition, but few superior, or less documented, than linguistics.

Malik views linguists eager to save dying languages as inhibitive to the disenfranchised aspiring for greater things. Quote: “There is nothing noble or authentic about local ways of life; they are simply backbreaking (pg87 para12),” Cultures seeking to preserve a sense of societal integrity don't just occur in our poorest regions. Ireland, ranked fifth in the human development index, and first in standard of living-- or Wales, with it's high Tom Jones birthing ratio and beautiful, actual, place names like Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch-- have both experienced resurgences in native speak. In Ireland some radio stations broadcast solely in Irish; in Wales, the critically acclaimed rock group Super Furry Animals charted at #11 in the UK with an album entirely sung in entirely in Welsh; In America, tribes like the Mohawks and Seminoles are using software programs to educate their youth and stave off language extinction; and in China and India poverty is widespread (although lessening rapidly) in spite of Mandarin and Hindi's noted status; so this isn't progress and modernity versus googly eyed romantics and Malik does his thesis and his intellectual honesty a disservice by portraying it as such.

Quoting him once more:

“Language campaigners also confuse political oppression and the loss of cultural identity. Some groups-- such as Turkish Kurds-- are banned from using their language as a part of a wider campaign by the Turkish state to deny Kurds their rights. But most languages themselves die out, not because they are suppressed, but because native speakers yearn for a better life (pg 87 para 12),” And, “The Reason that Eyak will soon be extinct is not because Marie Smith Jones has been denied her rights, but because no one else wants to, or is capable of speaking the language (pg 87 para 11).”

From Wikipedia's page on (the now late) Marie Smith Jones:

“Although she had nine children, they did not learn to speak Eyak due to the social stigma associated with it at the time.” Since Columbus first mistook Hispaniola for India, this has been a common story for indigenous peoples, and really, it's extremely lazy Journalism on Malik's part to just assume Marie Smith felt unconstrained to pass on Eyak. Would he make the same claim for the aboriginals of Australia? Or the rest of the Americas? He'd certainly be just as wrong. Peoples like the Kurds, Eyak, Chulyms, and countless other minorities who's language is suppressed, often to the point of death, are the rules-- not the exceptions.

Quoting Malik, “The Human capacity for language certainly shapes our thinking. But particular languages almost certainly do not. (pg 86 para 8)” Malik refers to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, the notion that our first language colors our comprehension and actions. He wants us to assume that academia has unlovingly discarded Sapir-Whorf to the same intellectual waste receptacle as geocentricism, a static universe, or phrenology, chalking such an “absurd” idea up to sheltered romantics far removed from the hard edged world of science when, in fact, it's hotly debated among linguists. Although most do agree that native language effects thought to some degree; the argument lies over the extent.

“The idea that French speakers view the world differently than from English speakers, because they speak French, is clearly absurd (pg 86 para 8).” Anecdotally, I can tell you of my friend who fluently speaks French reporting his thoughts, when in that language, coming out with bits of difference, but on the whole, close. And why shouldn't they be? England borders France; it was invaded by France near the start of the last Millennium; English is overwhelmingly Latinate, overwhelmingly similar to French; so of course speaking it natively wouldn't significantly alter your view of the world relative to our own. For an actual example, there's the Pirahã, a group of hunter-gatherers in the backwaters of northwestern Brazil. Before I discuss them further, I'd like to provide another Malik quote for soon-to-be-obvious reasons:

“It is of course enriching to learn other languages. But is is enriching not because cultures because different languages and cultures are unique, but because making contact across barriers of language and culture allows us to expand our own horizons and become more universal in outlook (pg 85 para 5).”

From wikipedia:

“Though it is controversial whether the Pirahã have words for 'one' and 'two' it is not controversial that they lack higher numbers. For these, they use only approximate measures, and in tests were unable to consistently distinguish between a group of four objects and a similarly-arranged group of five objects. When asked to duplicate groups of objects, they duplicate the number correctly on average, but almost never get the number exactly in a single trial.

Being (correctly) concerned that, because of this cultural gap, they were being cheated in trade, the Pirahã people asked Daniel Everett, a linguist who was working with them, to teach them basic numeracy skills. After eight months of enthusiastic but fruitless daily study, the Pirahã concluded that they were incapable of learning the material, and discontinued the lessons. Not a single Pirahã had learned to count up to ten or even add 1 + 1

As described in Daniel Everett's book Don't Sleep There are Snakes:

• As far as the Pirahã have related to researchers, their culture is concerned solely with matters that fall within direct personal experience, and thus there is no history beyond living memory.

• The culture has the simplest known kinship system, not tracking relations any more distant than biological siblings.

• There appears to be no social hierarchy, the Pirahã lack leaders.

• They have very little artwork. The artwork that is present, mostly necklaces and drawn stick-figures, is used primarily to ward off evil spirits.

• The Pirahã have no concept of God or religion.

• The Pirahã take short naps of 15 minutes to two hours through the day and night, and rarely sleep through the night.

• The Pirahã have not related to researchers any fiction or mythology.

• The Pirahã can whistle their language, which is how its men communicate when hunting in the jungle.”

This is all recent scientific work, yet Malik still claims, “Most linguists have long given up on the idea that people's perceptions of the world, and the kinds of concepts they hold, is constrained by the particular language they speak {pg 86 para 8).” Evidently he can't keep as up to date on current fieldwork as a community college student with a modem.

Less exotic is absolute pitch: the ability to identify notes heard in music, or everyday sounds, as if they were as plain and regular as colors. It's an obvious boon to musical aptitude and scientists have noted it in a conspicuously higher proportion of Eastern Asians. Again to blessed, blessed wikipedia:

“Individuals of East Asian heritage reared in the United States or Canada have 'no significant difference' in prevalence of absolute pitch than do Caucasians of the same geographical origin. The difference in prevalence is more likely explained by linguistic experience than genetic heritage. Many East Asians speak tone languages such as Mandarin and Cantonese; the prevalence of absolute pitch may be explained by exposure to pitches together with meaningful labels very early in life.“

Concisely, there's more for evidence language and culture intertwining into human thought than there is against. But of greater importance than that or linguistic rights is the wealth or “shitload” of knowledge we stand to loose-- a nearly unchecked blaze at a modern Library of Alexandria. As Jack Hitt relates in his essay, Say No More: “'I remember when I was doing fieldwork in Mexico,' said Lusia Maffi. She encountered a man whose native Mayan was already blurred with Mexican Spanish. He had traveled with his 2-year-old daughter to a health clinic because she was sick with serious diarrhea. 'He no longer knew the word for yakan k'ulub wamal,' she said using the Mayan term for a plant long known to cure the problem. 'It was probably growing in his backyard.(pg 78 para 19)'” We have a massive pile of knowledge, both scientific and anthropological, at the verge of nonexistence, and Malik wants us to shrug it off?

Pinche, mang.

Pinche.

Marriage Is For Faggots II: Fagletric Boogaloo

I wrote 'Marriage' in my native Utah, for my writing 121 class. Originally a mean-spirited peer review of a classmate's paper-- it morphed into a sort of essay-rant. Zachary, the author whom I was reviewing, had turned in a d-grade paper of clumsily reiterated rightward talking points, and I tore into it with relish.

Zach's essay was a mess, but there were several paragraphs which stood out-- either for their awfulness or familiarity-- I cut out whatever amused me, or seemed particularly misguided, and portioned the quotes throughout my response, using them as mini writing prompts. In spite of Zach's inability with letters, he manged through most arguments made by the sanctity of marriage crowd. So composing this was like writing a counter-editorial to something penned by Bill O'Reilly immediately after he'd received a thorough colonoscopy.

Though it was styled as a peer-review, our instructor informed us she would not be handing our work back to the original authors (but still requested we go light on cruelty), so she was my audience. As this woman was the only relatable human being on campus (Salt Lake Community College is a bottomless shithole) she was easy to gauge.

I'm proud of this paper because I largely ignored my teacher's request to refrain from cruelty, and still received a healthy A. I'm proud of this paper because, even though I choose an easy target, it works as a broader response to those on the right of this issue. And it's probably the best essay I've written.

***

Author's Note: All quotes from Zachary are in bold, all others are in italics.

There are instances when cruelty and accuracy amount to synonyms, when their colorful circles overlap into a malice-filled venn diagram. Summarizing Zachary Vallentine's paper on gay marriage-- Ornately tittled, "The Gay Marriage Debate"-- is such an instance. As an opinion piece, it's vague, illogical and poorly sourced: full of ignorant blanket statements and melodramatic slippery slope arguments. As writing, it's a throbbing mass of redundant non-sequiturs.

The first two pages made me question if it's author had encountered homosexuals. And the last two, wondering if he was raised in an Iranian cave where putting pen to paper enjoys the same legal status as sodomy. Regardless of upbringing and circumstance, Zachary is clearly anti-rainbow. Quote:

"While having an open mind and the ability to look past personal views is a necessity, the changing of laws to allow gay marriage is one situation that Americans need to stand together and protect the holiness of this sacred union."

The 'It's good to have an open mind' platitude careens into a 'gays shouldn't be allowed to marry' wall of non-logic, and the ensuing rhetorical thud seems to be the only connection. So marriage is sacred; marriage is a holy; the institution is vulnerable-- an infant teetering over the business edge of a shark tank-- and must be protected?

Marriage is a concept, societal and governmental, used to join property and people, not some fair-skinned damsel perched atop a conflagrated tower-- screeching for help. Yes, there's often religious elements to the modern practice: when not being preformed in drab settings of a judge's office, the union is conferred by a minister of some sort. But whatever the method, marriage is as secular as it is sacred; as much mundane as metaphysical. Would anyone ramble on about the safeguarding the "holiness of tax brackets" or the "sanctity of census taking?"

But I'm being unfair: having experienced the trauma of my parents divorce at age nine, I know marriage isn't only some fancy notion reducible to notarized paper and ritualized cake-eating. It's just an idea, but are so compassion and tolerance-- and it has concrete ramifications for families and their children. Which is why I found it so queer to see Zach's paper skirt over divorce so nonchalantly; it's not mentioned once.

My parents didn't end their 20 year plus relationship so my father could run of to Cancun with our pool boy. After Dad moved out, Mom didn't start spelling her gender with a Y and wearing flannel to Lilith fair-- they broke up over less tabloid-friendly concerns: money, arguments about money, trust, and dependability; relationships end for simple reasons. Here's a 2004 survey of UK divorcees by consulting firm Grant Thornton International:

Reasons Given for separation:

* Extramarital affairs - 27%
* Family strains - 18%
* Emotional/physical abuse - 17%
* Mid-life crisis - 13%
* Addictions, e.g. alcoholism and gambling - 6%
* Workaholism - 6%
* Homosexual cabals 0% (reason not given)

In my mind, the government recognized sundering of families poses a far more conspicuous threat to the marriage than some dudes with wedding bands brutally sodomizing one another in the comfort of their impeccably decorated home. So where's the conservative movement to outlaw divorce (and for that matter, adultery)? Where are the propositions crowding ballots in our rural heartland and south?

Quote (from a 1999 study by the National Center for Policy Analysis):
"Aside from the quickie-divorce Mecca of Nevada, no region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. Nearly half of all marriages break up, but the divorce rates in these southern states are roughly 50 percent above the national average."

From a November 2004 edition of the Jew York Times: (by Pam Belluck):
"Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics. The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedy's and same-sex marriage."

It'd be heavy-handed to focus only on divorce in a paper that glosses over it so completely, so I'll cherry pick some of the funniest arguments Zach came up with to battle the advancing specter of legalized gay marriage:

"If homosexuals were allowed to be married nothing would stop pedophiles from using the same excuses to attempt to marry young boys and girls. NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love association) is a perfect example of an organization that would try to legalize men marrying young boys. Americans would also have to allow polygamy simply because of love. In short, the simple fact that you might be in love with someone is not the only valid reason to allow marriage that is not socially acceptable. There is too much legal risk."

Comedy gold.

Does Zachary truly believe it's a fine line between legalizing gay marriage and state-sanctioned pedophilia? That polygamy is at our doorstep the moment we pronounce a couple 'Man and Husband?' Those are wholly unrelated laws-- and when employing slippery-slope arguments, it behooves one to remember that the 'slope'-- like a healthy portion of the people for whom I'm advocating-- goes both ways. Until doing research for this paper, I was unaware the last law banning interracial marriage in America had been overturned a mere 20 years before I was born to my Mexican father and Caucasian mother of poor judgment. Never mind that amendments are designed to ensure personal freedoms-- The only exception being the ill-fated 18th or 'prohibition' amendment--, passing a constitutional ban on gay marriage sets a wide precedent for governmental regulation of personal lives.

After sounding the alarm on NAMbLA's lobbying juggernaut, Zachary descends into several paragraphs of bigoted lies:

"Marriage should not be a gateway for homosexuals to receive the same tax breaks, rights, and privileges that heterosexual couples receive. The main reasons why homosexuals want to be married are financially motivated. Another reason they want to be married is to further their acceptance in American society. Marriage is a legally binding contract and should be entered into for the correct reasons."

At the start of his essay, we needed to defend the "Holiness of this sacred union"-- and now it's simply a legally binding contract. Here is Zachary's prejudice at its most naked; he ignores the long, pronounced, and still continuing history of heterosexuals entering into marriage for morally dubious reasons-- BUT HEY, AT LEAST THEY AREN'T FAGGING IT UP.

"Even if raising children is a priority for some homosexual couples, have two moms or two dads is not the ideal situation to be raised in and learn how to properly become a member of society. There are specific things that humans learn from a father and certain things that one would learn from a mother. No matter how you try to duplicate the proper family structure it cannot be done. There are a lot of negative effects of children being raised by only a mother or only the father. How could homosexual couples be any different?"

From wikipedia's page on Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender parenting:

"The American Psychological Association states in its Resolution on Sexual Orientation, Parents, and Children (adopted July 2004):

“There is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children"; and "research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish."

Similarly, Children's Development of Social Competence Across Family Types, a major report prepared by the Department of Justice (Canada) in July 2006 but not released by the government until forced to do so by a request under the Access to Information Act in May 2007, reaches this conclusion: The strongest conclusion that can be drawn from the empirical literature is that the vast majority of studies show that children living with two mothers and children living with a mother and father have the same levels of social competence. A few studies suggest that children with two lesbian mothers may have marginally better social competence than children in traditional nuclear families, even fewer studies show the opposite, and most studies fail to find any differences. The very limited body of research on children with two gay fathers supports this same conclusion "

I'll close with a 2004-era conversation between the always brilliant Jon Stewart, and the consistently alive Larry King:

KING: Will same-sex marriage be an issue in the campaign?

STEWART: I was freaked out by it, because I love my wife and I'd hate to have to leave her for a dude. They said, "the gay marriage," and people got upset, so I figured, well, clearly this means that there's a law being passed that we all now have to be gay-- once it was explained to me it doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore.

Post Script:

Countries that impose the death penalty on gays:

Mauritania
Sudan
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Yemen

Countries that allow gay marriage:

Spain
Belgium
The Netherlands
South Africa
Canada

Let's be more like Belgium and less like Yemen.

Marriage Is For Faggots

Author's Note: All quotes from Zachary are in bold, all others are in italics.

There are instances when cruelty and accuracy amount to synonyms, when their colorful circles overlap into a spiteful Venn diagram. Summarizing Zachary Vallentine's paper on gay marriage-- Ornately tittled, "The Gay Marriage Debate"-- is such an instance. As an opinion piece, it's vague, illogical and poorly sourced: full of ignorant blanket statements and melodramatic slippery slope arguments. As writing, it's a throbbing mass of redundant non sequiturs.

The first two pages made me question if it's author had even encountered homosexuals. The last two had me wondering if he was raised in an Iranian cave where putting pen to paper shares the same legal status as sodomy. Regardless of upbringing and circumstance, Zachary is clearly anti-rainbow. Quote:

"While having an open mind and the ability to look past personal views is a necessity, the changing of laws to allow gay marriage is one situation that Americans need to stand together and protect the holiness of this sacred union."

And later on:

"Nobody should be able to tell anyone who to fall in love, or have a relationship with, but allowing gay marriage opens up so many other issues. Just because love cannot be explained does not justify allowing people of the same sex to consummate their love by being married."

What does that even mean? His 'It's good to have an open mind' platitude leads right into 'gays shouldn't be allowed to marry;' there is no connection. So marriage is sacred; marriage is a holy; and the institution is vulnerable-- an infant teetering over the edge of a shark tank, and must be protected?

Marriage is an abstract concept, governmental and societal, used to join property and people, not some fair-skinned damsel perched atop a conflagrated tower-- screeching for help. Yes, there are religious elements to the modern practice: when not being preformed in drab settings of a judge's office, the union is conferred by a minister of some sort. But whatever the method of attaining it, marriage is a much secular as it is sacred-- as much mundane as metaphysical. Would anyone go off on the safeguarding the "Holiness of tax brackets" or the "Sanctity of census taking?"

Of course I'm being unfair. Having experianced the trauma of my parents divorce at age nine, I'm aware that marriage isn't just some fancy notion reducible to a notarized piece of paper and ritualized cake-eating. It may only be an idea, but are so compassion and tolerance-- and idea or not, marriage has concrete ramifications for family stability and the quality of childhood. Which is why I found it queer to see Zach's paper skirt over divorce so nonchalantly; it's not mentioned once.

My parents didn't end their 20 year plus relationship so my father could run of to Cancun with our pool boy. After Dad moved out, Mom didn't start spelling her gender with a Y and wearing flannel-- they broke up over less tabloid-friendly reasons: money, arguments about money, trust, and my father's dependability. People quit relationships for simplistic reasons. Here's a 2004 survey of UK divorcees by consulting firm Grant Thornton International:

Reasons Given for separation:

* Extramarital affairs - 27%
* Family strains - 18%
* Emotional/physical abuse - 17%
* Mid-life crisis - 13%
* Addictions, e.g. alcoholism and gambling - 6%
* Workaholism - 6%
* Homosexual cabals N/A (question not posed)

The government recognized sundering of family units seems a a far more conspicuous threat to the marriage than some dudes with wedding bands brutally sodomizing one another in the comfort of their impeccably decorated home. So where's is the conservative backed movement to outlaw divorce in this country? Where are the propositions on ballots in the deep south-- the powerbase of the far right-- to outlaw this most immoral of practices?

Quote (from a 1999 study by the National Center for Policy Analysis):

"Aside from the quickie-divorce Mecca of Nevada, no region of the United States has a higher divorce rate than the Bible Belt. Nearly half of all marriages break up, but the divorce rates in these southern states are roughly 50 percent above the national average."

OH WOW I WASN'T EXPECTING THAT.

AND NOW A NOVEMBER 2004 ARTICLE FROM THE JEW YORK TIMES (by Pam Belluck):

"Kentucky, Mississippi and Arkansas, for example, voted overwhelmingly for constitutional amendments to ban gay marriage. But they had three of the highest divorce rates in 2003, based on figures from the Census Bureau and the National Center for Health Statistics.

The lowest divorce rates are largely in the blue states: the Northeast and the upper Midwest. And the state with the lowest divorce rate was Massachusetts, home to John Kerry, the Kennedy's and same-sex marriage."

It'd be heavy-handed to focus only on divorce in a paper that glosses over it so completely, so I'll cherry pick some of the funniest arguments Zach came up with to battle the advancing specter of legalized gay marriage.

"If homosexuals were allowed to be married nothing would stop pedophiles from using the same excuses to attempt to marry young boys and girls. NAMBLA (North American Man/Boy Love association) is a perfect example of an organization that would try to legalize men marrying young boys. Americans would also have to allow polygamy simply because of love. In short, the simple fact that you might be in love with someone is not the only valid reason to allow marriage that is not socially acceptable. There is too much legal risk."

Comedy gold.

Does Zachary honestly believe it's a fine line between legalizing gay marriage and state-sanctioned pedophilia? That polygamy is at our doorstep the moment we pronounce some (un)lucky couple 'Man and Groom?' Those are entirely unrelated laws-- but if you want to employ a slippery-slope argument, it can just as easily slide the other way. Until doing research for this paper, I hadn't realized that the last law banning interracial marriage in this country had only been overturned a mere 20 years before I was born. Nevermind that amendments are designed to ensure personal freedoms rather than remove them-- The only exception being the ill-fated 18th or 'prohibition' amendment--, passing a ban on gay marriage sets a precedent for the government to regulate our personal lives on a national level.

After presenting us with the grim threat posed by NAMbLA's lobbying juggernaut, Zachary descends into several paragraphs of full blown inaccuracies.

"One reason why marriage brings stability is that couples go into marriage with the intent to have children. Since that is not an easy possibility, or a reason homosexuals' want to be married, it is easy to wonder what other motivations they have."

That's patently untrue. It's a natural human impulse to want kids; to want a family-- gays are not robots or aliens, they have these feelings too.

"Marriage should not be a gateway for homosexuals to receive the same tax breaks, rights, and privileges that heterosexual couples receive. The main reasons why homosexuals want to be married are financially motivated. Another reason they want to be married is to further their acceptance in American society. Marriage is a legally binding contract and should be entered into for the correct reasons."

Here Zachary's bigotry is at it's most naked. Where does he get that figure from? And what correct reasons? At the start of his essay, we needed to defend the "Holiness of this sacred union" and now it's simply a legally binding contract? We also find him ignoring the long, pronounced, and still continuing history of heterosexuals entering into marriage for morally dubious reasons-- but I guess it's okay when they do it.

"Even if raising children is a priority for some homosexual couples, have two moms or two dads is not the ideal situation to be raised in and learn how to properly become a member of society. There are specific things that humans learn from a father and certain things that one would learn from a mother. No matter how you try to duplicate the proper family structure it cannot be done. There are a lot of negative effects of children being raised by only a mother or only the father. How could homosexual couples be any different?"

From wikipedia's page on Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender parenting:

"The American Psychological Association states in its Resolution on Sexual Orientation, Parents, and Children (adopted July 2004):

there is no scientific evidence that parenting effectiveness is related to parental sexual orientation: lesbian and gay parents are as likely as heterosexual parents to provide supportive and healthy environments for their children"; and "research has shown that the adjustment, development, and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation and that the children of lesbian and gay parents are as likely as those of heterosexual parents to flourish."

Similarly, Children's Development of Social Competence Across Family Types, a major report prepared by the Department of Justice (Canada) in July 2006 but not released by the government until forced to do so by a request under the Access to Information Act in May 2007, reaches this conclusion: The strongest conclusion that can be drawn from the empirical literature is that the vast majority of studies show that children living with two mothers and children living with a mother and father have the same levels of social competence. A few studies suggest that children with two lesbian mothers may have marginally better social competence than children in traditional nuclear families, even fewer studies show the opposite, and most studies fail to find any differences. The very limited body of research on children with two gay fathers supports this same conclusion "

I'd like to close with a 2004-era interview with Jon Stewart on Larry King Live:

KING: Will same-sex marriage be an issue in the campaign?

STEWART: Same-sex marriage is a very difficult situation-- and I was freaked out by it too... until I found out that it wasn't mandatory, because I love my wife and I'd hate to have to leave her for a dude... they said, “the gay marriage,” and people got upset, so I figured, well, clearly this means that there's a law being passed that we all now have to be gay... Once it was explained to me that [it was] only [for] gay people, I seem much more comfortable with it; It doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore.

Oh, one last thing:

Countries that impose the death penalty on gays:

Mauritania
Sudan
Iran
Saudi Arabia
Yemen

Countries that allow gay marriage:

Spain
Belgium
The Netherlands
South Africa
Canada

We all know which way our social slide whistle is headed if we choose to ban gay marriage.

Can we be more like Belgium and less like Yemen?

Please?

POUMZ

Fun-eral:

No priests.
Or monks.
Or imams or whatever.
A Unitarian would be okay.
No one in black.
Scatter the ashes on the faces of my enemies.

Invite everyone I've known to a potluck,

And

Make them talk about how awesome I was. Or like,

Have you seen Batman two?
Near the end when the penguin dies (spoiler warning),
Near the end when the penguin dies,
His mournful namesakes gather,
Honking sorrowfully.
And, downcast yellow beaks clenched upon black fabric,
Waddle his bloated, pin-striped corpse,
To the icy depths.

You know what?
Just do that.

***

Here's Dani with the weather:

I'm not reaching towards the sexual when I say, "you could charm the pants off me."
Like a micro burst deals with ill-parked convertibles shaded by top-heavy trees,
You send the rigid frame of my better judgment onto uninsured violence.

***

Glug glug:

I can find your name in conversation-- an excuse or inhibition.
I can find lust in kneading hands on the jeans of your peers.
I can find sincerity underneath your whiskey-dusted breath.

***

4am in the parking lot at work:

The blizzard is back lit thermonuclear orange by still active street lights.
Flakes mass and stagger towards contact.

A winter-soft bomb aftermath.
A radioactive snow globe.

***

That's actually the name of my metal side project:

You had the gall to drink at the wedding reception.
And It was offensive.

Like,
If you'd arrived hours late,
With "faggot-nigger abortion"
Tattooed on your forehead,
And proceeded to cup the groom,

It was like that.

***

Those lithium ones:

I found him motionless;
Disproportionately room temperature within the broiling minivan interior.

RadioShack was having a sale on batteries.

When you lose a child, a part of you,
Does it rule you out for 'parent of the year?'

***

The Unauthorized Biography of Allison Smith:

You will be the same at 30.
Your waxy Adrian-Brody-features,
Like six pack rings half-buried in sand,
Shaming the concept of decay.

You will be the same at 40.
Because shifting your opinions induces pain--
Harsh-physical-actual-pain.

Excepting the divorce,
You will be the same at 50.
All darkened missionary sex,
Seething judgment,
And giggles tailing speech.

You are the five; you are the mean of our species.

***

She has big juggs too:

She is pandemic
Draping in friendly pinks and speaking in absolutes.

She is plastic flowers and clove cigarettes.
Indifference on a pedestal.

***

This was in what? Jr. High?:

Walking home
I encountered a Doberman,
Alert behind stained wooden planks;
Barking like I was a rapist.

I set my books against the sidewalk

And,

Through high-pitched imitation,
Matched its guttural aggression,

Then spent the next week pondering his owners expression.

***

And the "bapjism":

I loathed the hours.
Waking near the edge of twilight
To the pull of my mother's leather-clad hands,
Then huddling naked in that snowy forest clearing. But,

The worst part of satanic mass
Was the placental cakes frosted in menstrual blood.

THE VERY FATE OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE ITSELF.

The Internet:

Famed antagonist of the elderly and those who didn't "realacize that there dun was a camera in the barn," it's been warping the very fabric of our existence since it's inception. I can order shoes without leaving my house; I can order pizza without out picking up my telephone. I can spend hours vanquishing electronic dragons or view massive stockpiles of explicit pornography during the time I've allotted for writing this very paper! We live in the goddamn future; a land of iPod touch screen phones with innumerable Usher (Ft. Lil' Jon) ring tones. Flying cars and cancer-curing sex-robots are not far behind.

Some will claim that it's advent has stifled a once flowering English language; that the written word is nearing it's death rattle. While their, no doubt, ineptly composed papers would appear to back, at least superficially, their equally moronic claim, I am not in possession of this fear. For you see, I have read pitchforkmedia.com. Ornately constructed and entirely heavy-handed with their reviews, Pitchfork is one of the more popular websites-- both to read and to bash-- at the moment. Take comedian David Cross. You might know him from his television appearances (Mr. Show, Arrested Development), his voice acting (Those tremendously popular Halo video games), or his stand up. The latter falls into the field of pitchforks reviews, and both his CDs have seen appraisals by the site. When he was invited by their editors to submit his top ten album, Cross responded with:

Hi, I was a somewhat surprised that Pitchforkmedia.com would ask me to participate in this. Here's why:

"The devastating paradox of David Cross' pre-recorded comedy: Is it funny that everything Cross says is nauseatingly smug, yelped out in smarmy, supercilious prose? Or is David Cross just a giant fucking asshole? That Cross is such an immensely unlikable live performer-- condescending, defensive, arrogant, patronizing-- is both his greatest asset and his most crippling flaw."

And while the above review of my second cd It's Not Funny is certainly more thoughtful than, "David Cross? Yeah, he's funny" or "He sucks", it's still a bit shitty. "...immensely unlikable"? The paradox is "devastating"? How is it devastating?

And that's just one reviewer, Amanda Petrusich.* There's another one, William Bowers, who claims to: "...having developed a strange, extra-textual concern for David Cross. Likeminded futon-psychoanalysts fret over his fluctuating weight, his fitfulness, and despondence..."

Fretting over my weight? Oh well. But regardless of their opinion of me and/or my act, they've asked me for my Top Ten List®, So here is my contribution to the Top Ten List® For Pitchforkmedia.com.

Cross then went on to review ten fictional albums at the expense of Pitchfork.

You can see, from the text quoted in Mr. Cross's list, that the written word is alive and well; perhaps a little too alive. This is not some obscure little backwater URL that features blog posts about what the webmasters cat did, this site is a giant; a behemoth of taste-making. Bands like The Arcade Fire, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Tapes N Tapes have all exploded into the limelight with a mere positive word from it's staff. It receives (according to the semi-reliable Wikipedia) 200,000 hits per day and 1.5 million unique visitors per month. People would jump off a bridge if it received anything higher than an 8.5.

Plenty of non-digital publications are striving for a dumbing down of the populace-- pick up a USA Today-- and It's well known that newspaper circulation in America has been graph-plummeting with study determination since the Carter administration. Printed media is at a, to borrow a the title of a Britney Spears vehicle, crossroads. Newspapers increasingly consolidate and congeal into more compact larger firms under bigger and more faceless corporations. Conversely, the quantity of magazines has increased dramatically, driving competition among frantic publishing magnates to be the next Maxim or FHM and grab a slice of the ever thinning market share. Both those magazines are vapid nudie-mags for men too chicken shit to view actual pornography, but their success in a dying industry has spurred numerous imitators. Rolling Stone even hired a former editor from the latter magazine to spruce up their sales-- I'm guessing that cover with Jessica Simpson vacuuming in her underwear was his idea. While that might appeal to John Q Stupid, a snob like me would avoid that image like AIDS. The most sex appeal you'll see on popular Internet music sites is from the American Apparel ads and Jenny Lewis interviews. For a prude such as myself, that's almost too much.

Rolling Stone Magazine is the analogue counterpoint to Pitchfork. Founded in 1967 (Pitchfork's birthday was in 1995) it has somehow managed to stay culturally irrelevant for the entirety of it's shameful 40 year run. This is a magazine that despised Led Zeppelin during their prime creative years and gave Nirvana's landmark album Nevermind a nondescript three stars. This is a magazine that would rate Kid Rock or Creed as favorably as Radiohead. This is a magazine for your self-aware uncool father; It's VH1 in print. With a circulation of around 1.3 million, they also lay claim to the burliest market share.

While they have published some commendable journalism (I am a card carrying progressive), RS is a music based publication, so I will judge them by that. Their business model seems grounded around selling CDs. Look at a list of recent album reviews in any issue you'll see a mean around three and a half stars. It's a brilliantly ambiguous rating really. You could apply it to a Lenny Kravitz album or an Elliott Smith CD and no one will be the wiser. To be fair, unlike Pee-Fork, their reviews are mercifully short and entirely readable. Here's paragraph one of a criminally enthusiastic Creed review:

On Weathered, Creed's lucid powerhouse of a third album, the Orlando, Florida, trio emerge as masters of hard-rock atmosphere. As Soundgarden proved with Superunknown, there are a million little intricacies to pulling off what sounds like big enormous rock. And Creed are all over them: Weathered is rock of unusual focus and arrest, a beautifully distressed dance of sustained style and unapologetic emotion.

If there's a video of what Scott Stapp (Creed's grotesquely untalented frontman) did to the editors of RS to get that printed, I hope it was thrown into a volcano. For it surely involved the most base of carnality and the most unwilling of livestock.

But you can see, comparatively, the text is dumbed down-- refreshingly so. And yet this is a printed medium; a relic from the days of Gutenberg and the enlightenment. Shouldn't it at least be stuffier? Harder to read? No, our linguistic mass grave does not lie in the shadowy crevasses of the Internet, but our humility, our unpretentiousness, just might.

Crash

Crash? More... Like... Tuh-- Trash! (that's clever; that's good Paul; keep going).

Bad introductory sentences aside, I didn't find this to be a great movie.

Good? Sure. You could you argue for good. There's a few moments so intense and spellbinding (the fiery car wreck, or the police stand off) that comfortably make this uncomfortable film worth watching. It's good for you; an emotional multivitamin: we shouldn't judge people by their skin! Racism is bad! Etcetera! But Crash as great? Oscar worthy? Really?

I don't have a thing for gay cowboys. I'm not a gay cowboy aficionado; I don't widdle away my conscious moments painstakingly collecting and filling my favorite issues of Country Beefcake magazine (Alphabetical by cover article, then chronological) into moisture-proof Mylar bags to the gypsy kings pumping from my stereo system; It's just something I don't do-- I'm not gay--, but it seems hard to fathom how this won best picture over Brokeback Mountain, over Jake Gyllenhaal's watery blue eyes... Rock hard abs... Mmmm.

The Review! Right:

I didn't hate it, like I do with-- you know, Mexicans, but it didn't strike me as a movie worthy of the praise so liberally slathered upon it by the press. Yeah, I get racism is wrong-- and I get that we're all guilty or prejudice-- and that even the most enlightened and liberal minded of us is predisposed by our nature as human beings (due to an inherent biologically-driven preference towards the familiar) to bigotry-- I know all of this! Having this told to me in movie form doesn't make for good story telling. The format irked me too. While I loved the way they shot the film and the music that went with the stark imagery of the Los Angeles winter, I loathed the "have a buncha awful shit happen to all these people" concept. It renders the movie's message as unsubtle as a tomahawk to the sternum.

Admittedly, I live in a world almost entirely free of overt racial hostility. Everyone around me, my friends, my family, is white. But when I do come across Blacks/Arabs/Persians/Mexicans/whatevers, it's just never that fraught with tension. It could very well be that I'm living in the wrong place for me to relate fully to this film. I don't think that's what it is, though.

Crash could captivate me entirely, but was capable of reinstating my disbelief in equal portions. So officer Hanson will, full of disgust at his racist sexual predator partner, report him and seek a new one? He will risk his career and possibly life to deescalate a near shoot out with the an obviously irate and ready-to-blow black man? But he'll shoot another black man, the one whom he offered a ride, to death for reaching into his pocket after laughing? Police are trained not to be trigger-happy or short-fused. I know it's fiction; that shooting still took me entirely out of the film and back into my community college seat. The exact opposite of how you want to feel at a theater.


Also, I hate Sandra Bullock. God, Remember Speed Two? With the boat? And like, Jason Patrick? Oh man. I hate her so much.