There was a flap recently about a flight attendant who removed a child from the arms of the mother after the mother allegedly slapped the child across the face and hit the child on the legs. Now, apparently, the flight attendant could be facing legal charges for attempting to protect the child.

All 50 states allow parents to use some form of physical discipline and even the courts have difficulty determining the acceptable level of physical discipline. Each situation is taken on a case by case basis. However, even if you see a parent striking a child, you are not allowed to do anything to stop it. Except call the police. But when you’re 30,000 feet above the ground, the police are going to be a while getting to you.

If you see a person striking another adult, you are certainly allowed to step in and protect the other adult and your actions would probably be covered by some form of a good samaritan law. But if the victim of a beating is a child, and the one doing the beating is the parent, you are legally not allowed to do anything. Of course, you have no way of knowing for certain that the person is the parent unless the child is screaming “Mommy, don’t!” or “Daddy, stop!”

Me, well, let’s just say I’d probably end up in jail because I’d have done exactly what the flight attendant did.

I know there are some really stupid laws out there, especially in the state of PA, but this one really takes the cake. A woman’s specialty bike was stolen. She notified police within minutes of the theft and then began looking online at  Craigslist and eBay until she found her own bike at a pawnshop. She notified police, provided proof of ownership of the bike and was then told that she’d have to pay $253 to get her own bike back because that was what the pawn shop was selling it for! Now she has to try to get the money back from the thief, if they ever catch him/her.

How stupid is that? Pawn shops have to know that there’s a good chance that they’re going to be buying stolen merchandise because they don’t ask for proof of ownership before they give you money for whatever you’re pawning. That’s why so many people are willing to take so little for what they pawn: it’s not theirs in the first place so it’s all profit for them!

The law, as it stands, protects the pawn shop instead of the person whose stuff was stolen and bought by a pawn shop owner who knows there’s a good chance it’s stolen merchandise. How is that in any way fair or just?

There is proposed legislation that will change the law so that the owner gets his stuff back and the pawn shop has to get the money from the thief, but chances are it won’t go anywhere. The people don’t have a lobbying organization to donate large chunks of money to campaign funds, but businesses do…which is why PACs should be outlawed and businesses should not have legal personhood. But that’s a whole different post…

Thirty years ago, long before Andrea Yates, Dianne Evers drowned her three young daughters in the bathtub of the family home. She said that the Virgin Mary told her to do it and medical professionals determined that Ms. Evers had schizophrenia. She pled and was found not guilty by reason of insanity and was committed to the Florida State Hospital where she has been ever since.

Now doctors at that facility say that Ms. Evers is as good as she’s going to get and is ready to be released back into society. That, with the help of medication, learned coping strategies and continuing counseling, she has the hallucinations under control. Her doctor and social worker want her to go to an adult living facility where she can still be monitored and treated but she will have increasingly more freedom as she demonstrates her ability to cope with stressful situations without endangering anyone else or herself.

The prosecutor who has been working this case for 20 years wants her to prove herself to be stable in stressful situations before allowing her to be released to the adult facility. And how, pray tell, is she to do that if she’s not permitted to leave the facility? While I’m sure that living in a state hospital for 30 years has its own stresses, the environment is also very controlled. There’s no worry about where your next meal is coming from, if you’re going to have clothes on your back or if you’re going to have a roof over your head.

The ex-husband doesn’t want her out of prison only because he sounds as if he’s still very bitter. And if you read the comments posted after the story, you’ll see a whole lot of ignorance, hatred, prejudice and bigotry aimed at this woman. She is not a murderer: she was found not guilty of murder by reason of insanity. Just like other people are found not guilty of murder by reason of self-defense. Yes, they took a life. No, it was not murder.

This woman, if she is indeed no longer insane, must now come to grips with the fact that she took the lives of her three daughters. She has to live with that knowledge and that, I believe, is a prison worse than any man could construct.

Remember Abu Ghraib where American soldiers posed with “suspected terrorist” detainees at a secret prison most of  didn’t even know existed until the photos appeared? Well, now it seems that at least one person in the Israeli military is following in the footsteps of the US military (and well they should! After all, the US provides Israel with $3 billion annually, almost all of that in military assistance, allowing Israel to maintain one of the most technologically advanced militaries in the world.. And that doesn’t count the cost of private donations to Israel from various groups in the US.)

A former member of the IDF (Israeli Defense Force— the Israeli military in which all non-Arab Israelis must serve for three years (for men) or 2-3 years for women (depending on where they are assigned)) has posted pictures on Facebook of her posing with blindfolded Palestinian prisoners whose wrists are bound.

But what is so frightening is that it appears that the same attitude is infecting some Israelis as it did many Americans: these prisoners deserve to be treated like animals instead of as humans. The woman who posted the pictures still doesn’t see what she did wrong!

This, to me, is part of a growing trend of “dehumanizing” the “enemy”. The rrr does it all the time in dealing with gays, calling them animals and “sodomites” and saying they’re “unnatural”. We in the US have done it to “terrorists”, even when it’s been shown that the people are not terrorists. Hitler did it to the Jews and the Israeli government is doing it to the Palestinians. And radical Palestinians are doing it to the Israeli people. Fred Phelps does it to whomever doesn’t agree with him.

The lack of empathy that’s running rampant in this world bring back the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller.

First they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up,  because I wasn’t a Communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up,  because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me,  and by that time there was no one  left to speak up for me.

Many of us don’t speak up out of fear. But if we believe that our “enemy”— the one being “taken”— is not human or is less than human, it makes it that much easier to quell our conscience and to say nothing and still be able to sleep at night.

The US is in trouble. We give air time to bigots and racists and homophobes like Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck, Bill O’Reilly, and a whole host of others. They’re making fortunes while their hatemongering and fearmongering are tearing this country apart. And the fear-filled and hate-filled Americans are eating up their words, growing stronger with every word they hear and spew forth from their frothing mouths. THIS is the real danger to American and the “world as we know it.”

And yet I defend their right to freedom of speech. I defend their right to believe as they will. We just have to educate the rest of the public what a bunch of nonsense they spew forth every day….

In Los Angeles this week, two skeletons of infants/fetuses were discovered in an old steamer trunk by two women cleaning out the basement of a building that is being turned into condominiums. Both skeletons were wrapped in papers from the 1930s. Now the LA coroner is going to try to figure out how they died (remember, this was in 1930, when deaths of newborns was relatively common, when being a single mom was shameful as well as scandalous, and abortion was done in back alleys) and see if they can find any kin so they can get “closure”. The police have also promised their own investigation.

This, to me, seems a bit over the top in terms of police response. Whomever they might “investigate” is probably dead now. If the woman who gave birth to these children was 16 when she did so, she’d be 94 now (assuming the first child was born in 1932, the year of the oldest paper.) What exactly are the police going to do to her if they find her and if she is still alive and if she is still alert and oriented and knows what they’re talking about when they question her. The police have said they’re doing to put detectives on the case “long-term”. Do they not have present day cases that need to be solved? Is this really a wise use of the limited resources of the LAPD?

I think not.

I’ve always said there’s a difference between being a father (providing the sperm to fertilize the egg) and being a dad. (Of course, the same is true for mothers and moms, but this is about father’s and dads.)

Dads are there for you in the middle of the night when you wake up with a nightmare. They’re there to coach your Little League team or your soccer team or drive you to cheerleading practice or ballet class. They’re there to teach you how to ride a bike, how to drive a car and to walk you down the aisle when you get married.

Fathers don’t do any of that. They provide the sperm and they’re gone. They are merely sperm donors. Some sperm donors get paid for their donations and can make up to $1200 a month! One donor speculates that he’s probably fathered more than 400 kids. That’s 400 kids who probably have questions as to why their father didn’t want to be part of their lives. Why they didn’t know they were harboring the genes of a life-altering illness. Four hundred kids who wander who they look like. Four hundred kids who will be hard pressed to find an organ donor if they need one.

How many of these sperm donors (or the banks that collect the sperm) consider the kids that will be born as the result of their donation? Mind you, I’m not saying that artificial insemination is wrong. Far from it! I know countless infertile, gay and lesbian couples who would probably choose to remain childless without it. But someone has to think of the children who will follow. Someone has to be able to provide them with the answers they’re going to be seeking— perhaps in a desperate race against time.

I can envision a time when a couple meets, falls in love, tries to get pregnant and, after genetic counseling, discovers they are biologically related, perhaps even half-siblings due to the use of sperm banks. Imagine the emotional toll that revelation would take on the couple and their families. Regulations will only allay the problem so much. Limiting the number of times a person can donate sperm over his lifetime would lessen the chances of this happening as would limiting the number of times that donor’s sperm could be used in any geographical location.

By media I mean radio, TV, newspapers, magazines, video games, music, etc. And the amplifier is the internet. Stories from around the world get picked up and posted online and may go viral. Songs and rants get posted on YouTube and suddenly people are overnight stars and interviewed on morning talk shows and get publicists and agents to help try to make their fifteen minutes of fame last a lot longer. People like me blog about how we see the world and people may or may not read it and you might or might not become famous. Even national news networks now have special reporters who are bloggers.

The internet can also make rumors spread like wildfire, particularly when they combine with the very powerful twins of hate-mongering and fear-mongering. Some would say they’re one and the same: that hate is the product of fear. But I have learned that there are some people who just hate because they can. Because they get a kick out of it. Maybe if you dig deep enough you might find that there’s some fear at the very deepest root of their hatred, but it’s deep enough that, like aspen trees (who are usually identical genetic copies of each other), they look different enough to be considered two different things.

There have been several rumors floating around about Barack Obama. The first was that he was not really American by birth and that he wasn’t born in Hawaii as he has stated and therefore he was not eligible to become president. This rumor is STILL running around almost two years later. There was someone on one of those social networking sights who said her only problem with Barack Obama was that he never allowed anyone to see his birth certificate! Give me a break! The man would not have been allowed to run for president if he had not proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that he was born on American soil and is a natural citizen, not a naturalized citizen! People filed lawsuits to try to prevent Obama from running for president, claiming he was a naturalized citizen. Every single one of those suits was dismissed. (I know, see how deep the conspiracy goes!)

Today, the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life released the results of their latest survey that showed that a full 18% of Americans believe that President Obama is a Muslim. (Among Conservative Republicans, that percentage is 34%!!!! Insane!) That number (18%) has more than doubled (+11%) since March 2009!  A full 43% of Americans are unsure of Mr. Obama’s faith. And the number of Americans who correctly knew he is Christian dropped 14% from 48% to 34%! And these numbers were acquired before Mr. Obama voiced his support for the First Amendment and the right of the Muslim community to build a community center in downtown Manhattan. God’dess only knows how many people will now think he’s Muslim because of his support for the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.

First,  what faith he follows is immaterial. This is a free country with freedom of religion and if he wants to practice voodoo, he can. He can convert to any faith he wants to at any point in his life. And if people vote him OUT of office because of his faith, they’re a bunch of hypocrites for wanting their freedom to be whatever faith speaks to their hearts but denying him that same right.

Second, in this day an age of internet access, it absolutely blows my mind how ignorant some people are. How gullible they are to whatever they read. They don’t check to see if the story is true or not: they simply repeat it and pass it one. I was (maybe still am at times, although I try to verify a story as best I can) when I first got online too. I have pages of “true stories” on my website that I am finding out aren’t as true as I thought they were. I still have them up there because one can still find inspiration and spiritual truth from a work of fiction. But there are so many conspiracy sites online and gloom and doom sites and Apocalypse sites that false stories get passed around faster than they can be nipped in the bud. (Although if anyone can do that, it’s Keith Olbermann. He addresses the misconceptions of the “Ground Zero Mosque” as only Keith can. It’s well worth the quarter hour of your time.)

But the most frightening aspect of this survey was that even when presented with reliable sources that contradicted the false belief, respondents were unwilling to give up that belief! They continued to cling to it despite knowing it was wrong. That is very scary and raises the question of how far will people be willing to go to hold onto their beliefs? Because that, dear reader, is where fundamentalism gets started. When one will go to any means to not only hold onto a belief but to propagate that belief and help it grow.

There is no doubt that fundamentalism is on the rise in the US, and not just among the radical religious right. It occurs in women’s rights groups, gay rights groups, abortion rights/protest groups, environmentalists, animal rights groups, atheists, etc. This nation, I don’t believe, has ever been as polarized as it is now.

Access to the internet should show us that people everywhere face similar type struggles to survive and enjoy their life. That people everywhere want pretty much the same thing: to be able to live their life from from outside interference according to the beliefs they hold dear in a manner that allows them to actually live instead of merely survive.

And yet because of hate-mongering, fear-mongering, hypocrisy and plain old greed by the radical religious right and their mouthpieces and political allies, this nation is being destroyed. It’s not going to be the once in a lifetime planetary alignment that tears this world apart: it’s going to be hate and fear and greed and hypocrisy.

I found this an interesting commentary on how social norms keep changing. Not much to say about the list except that some of the things on it are meaningless to me as well and I was born long before 1992…

Well, actually, this is just on the national/international make the big news front. I don’t really have the time to scour all kinds of local papers about local news concerning gays…But I digress.

Of course, the biggest news was that that Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals extended the stay on Judge Walker’s ruling that Prop 8 was unconstitutional. However, as disappointing as that was, there are some encouraging signs.

The court has expedited the matter and it is set to go before the court on December 6 of this year, something that’s almost unheard of in federal courts of appeals.

But perhaps most telling is that the court has told Prop 8 supporters, all of whom are private religious organizations, to demonstrate why they have the right to file an appeal of a ruling that the state is not contesting. The state did not even defend Prop 8 during the original hearing. The request for this information appears to suggest that the appeals court is considering the argument that the plaintiffs have no legal standing to file the appeal.

If the court rules the supporters of Prop 8 have no legal standing, there are two possible courses of action. They give up the battle in California (where the governor and the state’s attorney general support allowing gay marriages to resume immediately) and take the fight elsewhere or they file an appeal of the ruling that they have no standing.  That appeal will be with either the entire 11-member Ninth Circuit Appeals Court or directly to the US Supreme Court, which will probably schedule the case to be heard in October, 2011.

I would prefer the latter to happen because then, with one fell swoop, just as it did with the Loving v Virginia ruling and the Lawrence v Texas rulings, the Supreme Court will invalidate all the constitutional amendments of all the states that added them to their state constitutions. If the supporters of Prop 8 (not sure if they’re now the defendants or the plaintiffs since they are the ones seeking to change the ruling…) choose to NOT fight, I believe (although I’m not an attorney) that Judge Walker’s ruling will apply only to California. Then there will have to be court battles in all the other states over the constitutional amendments until one of them makes it to the US Supreme Court. While there is no legal precedent stating that such an amendment is federally unconstitutional, it will still require lots of time and money in order to file all those cases and fight them in court.

Moving on…

Mississippi seems to have a real problem with gays and public schools. Almost like a “if we don’t see them they don’t exist” type mentality. Ostrich with its head in the sand. (Although I hope everyone is aware that ostriches really don’t stick their head in the sand. That probably started with a statement from Pliny the Elder in his Natural History collection when he said that an ostrich that has its head and neck in a bush believes its entire body to be concealed as well.) But I again digress…

A student in Mississippi had her picture and even her name removed from the school yearbook because she chose to wear a tuxedo to get her senior picture taken. Well, actually, it was not really removed since it was never included in the book to begin with. Except may in the drafts/proofs before it goes to the printer. It’s not like she was a trouble-maker. She was an honor student and played several different sports. She attended the same school from kindergarten through her senior year, so it’s not like she just moved in and had no friends or no social network among her peers— all of who accepted her as she was. Mississippi simply must get itself into the modern age if it doesn’t want to waste its already struggling budgets on defending unwinnable discrimination cases.

The good news for gays comes from international news.

Mexico has taken another step towards full gay equality when the highest court in Mexico upheld a law that allows gay adoption, making the US stand on gay marriage and gay equality look that much more Dark Age-ish.

Germany too has begun to move towards equal treatment of gays. Today, the highest court in Germany ruled that the government cannot impose a higher inheritance tax or a lower tax exemption threshold on gay couples. They also ordered the government to reimburse the difference to gay couples who have had to pay a higher percentage in taxes after the death of their partner.

Campaign financing has gotten totally out of hand. You read about all these candidates starting PACs so they can affect change for America, but in truth, most of the money goes towards “consulting” fees for the candidates’ own campaigns and for their travel expenses. In other words, voters are financing their escapades all around the country trying to make it seem as if they’re going to change the world if you only listen to them.

So here’s how I propose we change campaign financing.

First, campaigning couldn’t start until six months before the election. You couldn’t even file to be a candidate until six months before the election.

Second, depending on what office you are running for, the government gives you a set budget of government funds. These funds are not to be used for television commercials or for newspaper advertisements, because TV stations would be required to grant each candidate a set amount of time to air television commercials and newspapers would be required to give each candidate a set amount of print. (All the details could be worked out later, but I’m talking maybe an hours worth of TV time over the course of the six month campaign and maybe half a dozen half-page ads in the newspaper. And these ads could NOT be mud-slinging and could only talk about what the candidate will do if elected, not what the candidate’s opponent(s) didn’t do in the course of their careers.  If a TV station or newspaper wants to interview a certain candidate, they have to print the other candidate(s) responses to the same questions.

Additionally, the government would maintain a website where all candidates must submit answers to questions about certain policy issues, like immigration, abortion, civil rights, etc. that are relevant to the office they’re running for.

No candidate could use their own money. No candidate could use money from any party’s national committee. No party could accept gifts of hotel stays, meals, etc. And PACs would be banned completely. Any money that PACs wanted to give would go to the general election fund and be split up among ALL candidates.

Not only will this eliminate all the influence that PACs have in writing legislation, but it will allow more people to run for office and maybe, just maybe, we could get people elected who actually represent the people instead of representing corporations and ideologies and religious fanatics.