Thank You, Judge Walker.

As most everyone will have heard by now, Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (first nominated by Ronald Reagan, blocked over Democratic concerns he would be insensitive to gay and lesbian issues, and later confirmed after renomination by George H. W. Bush) issued his ruling (available as a PDF here, among other places)in Perry v. Schwarzenegger today, striking down the infamous Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban on the grounds that California had no legitimate interest in preventing same-sex marriage, that to do so was a violation of the due process and equal protection guarantees of the U.S. Constitution, and that sexual orientation was a “suspect classification,” meaning approximately that almost any state or federal law or government act which discriminates on that basis is more or less presumptively invalid.

This is an enormously important decision, no less so for the fact that it should always have been self-evident.  The celebrations going on tonight in California, and around the country, are well-deserved; I’m raising a glass to toast the victory, myself.

The question now, however, is how this ruling will fare on appeal.  Its next stop is the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, which in recent history has been known for leaning left; there’s no completely reliable way to predict what they’ll do, but it seems most likely they’ll affirm Judge Walker’s decision.  Then — a year or two from now — it goes to the Supreme Court.

SCotUS is, of course, the real question.  I haven’t read the entirety of the Perry decision, and I’m not a lawyer, so take this with a grain of salt, but to me it seemed airtight; and at least some of the lawyers I know have agreed with me on that.  But there is a solid bloc of four Justices who are staunchly opposed to GLBT rights in any form, and airtight reasoning by a lower court may not be sufficient to keep them from finding a pretext on which to oppose the ruling, so as many important things seem to, it will likely come down to Anthony Kennedy’s swing vote (assuming, of course, that by the time the case reaches the Supreme Court, Elena Kagan is on the bench but the composition of the court has not otherwise changed).

A Sad Anniversary

One year ago today, I wrote:

Hilzoy, one of the greatest in the game, is stepping out.

Go well, Ms. H.: we’ll all be poorer for lacking your voice, which was always among the sharpest, clearest and brightest on every topic you chose to tackle.  I can think of few bloggers who can approach the quality of writing which seems to simply be your natural element.

I wonder, sometimes, whether Hilzoy still feels, as she did then, “…that the madness is over. There are lots of people I disagree with, and lots of things I really care about, and even some people who seem to me to have misplaced their sanity, but the country as a whole does not seem to me to be crazy any more.”  Her farewell had a tone of finality to it, so I don’t expect she’ll return to blogging, and it would be foolish to begrudge that; but I do miss her voice.

What The Hell Is Wrong With You People?

Shorter Switzerland:

Raping a child and spending thirty years as a fugitive from justice is punishment enough, especially for a Great Artist.  Plus, America’s not the boss of us.

Shorter New York Times:

Ho-hum, Switzerland decides that the rule of law doesn’t apply to Famous People…who cares about that?  But Polanski’s a director, so I guess we’ll stick it in the “Movies” section along with the reviews and fluff pieces.

Quick Hit: New Location

This is the new location of Fineness & Accuracy, as I’ve decided to use the other URL for my professional site.  Please update your bookmark(s) and/or feed reader(s)!

Quick Hit: Oh, That Explains It.

On my way in to work this morning, I was listening to WBUR as usual, and caught part of an interview with David Kirkpatrick, author of a new book called The Facebook Effect.

I assume that everyone reading this is familiar with the recurring controversies over Facebook’s privacy controls; for a quick view, I recommend Matt McKeon’s interactive graph; Mark Zuckerberg, the founder and CEO of Facebook, has also made some fairly notorious comments about privacy on the internet (in particular, seeming to imply that his view is that no one should have or expect to have any, let alone expect Facebook to protect it).  So when I heard Kirkpatrick say of Zuckerberg, “He believes that he will live a better life personally, and all of us will be more honest, and ultimately it will be better for the world if we dispense with that belief [that we can, and it’s good or reasonable to, maintain separate personal, professional, and even anonymous ‘identities’ on the internet],” I had something of an epiphany.

Zuckerberg is this guy:

He's either too naïve or too obsessed with his vision of a completely open future to have come to the 4th-panel conclusion.

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Original image © Randall Munroe, used under the terms of XKCD’s Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license.

The Start of a Short Week

Overnight, thunder came — but with rain,
And so far no sounds of giants;
Blue sky shows through the smoke haze.
Perhaps, after all, it’s not
The end of the world.

The End of a Long Weekend

I have come home today,
Home from New York — leaving
Half my life there — to Boston.

The smoky evening air
(From forest fires up north),
As I left South Station,
Made Beach Street just less than real.

I had spent the bus ride
Reading, mostly Lovecraft
And his modern successors.

Now, at my apartment
In the suburbs, my cats
Keeping me company,
And half a bottle of wine,

I think of fires and smoke,
Clouds of volcanic ash,
And plumes of undersea oil,

And a small and foolish
Corner of my mind — the
Wind picking up outside —
Wonders whether I will hear

No rain but thunder, and
The sound of giants.

Quick Hit: New Look

After a bit over two and a half years with the “Ocean Mist” theme, I’ve decided it was time for a change.  The new theme is “INove.”

Nouning, Again: The Crux

About a year and a half ago, I wrote this:

Recent discussion … has reminded me, too, that this doesn’t apply solely to negative descriptions like racist, sexist, homophobic, etc.  If it were more normal to use “feminist” (for example) as an adjective, a mostly fruitless debate over whether Barack Obama is “a feminist,” which tends toward devolving into people claiming their set of views is what defines “a feminist” and anyone who doesn’t quite match up is “not a feminist,” we could be discussing how feminist he is[.]  These things are matters of degree.

In the time since then I’ve continued to think about the issue, and I suspect that I missed an important point in my original post — even though, with the Neal Stephenson and Jay Smooth citations, it was staring me in the face.  It’s still important to think about “isms” in terms of degree rather than as simplistic, binary oppositions.  But another, probably equally important way to see it is that nouns tends to be about identity, while adjectives are more easily applicable to action.

The original “Nouning Considered Harmful” post was, in part, inspired by debate over whether Barack Obama was or was not “a feminist.”  Now, some sixteen months later, a similar debate is occurring over Sarah Palin’s description of herself as “a feminist,” and the larger attempt by conservative women to “claim” (or “reclaim”) the term “feminist” to describe their generally anti-choice, anti-marriage-equality, pro-capitalist, pro-traditional-patriarchal-family policy positions.

(My responses to this are mainly 1) to note that attempting to co-opt progressive language for anti-progressive policies, or to smear progressive policies with anti-progressive labels, is standard right-wing newspeak procedure; and 2) to quote this excellent Bitch, PhD post: “My point is that it irritates the hell out of me when I see an argument about feminism in which neither side seems to actually remember that feminism isn’t about what women or men ‘choose’ to do: it’s about the way society is structured.” (emphasis mine)  That is, to claim your policy positions are feminist, when you’re actually advocating against structural changes in society that would improve the socioeconomic status of women as a class, is an absurdity.)

But the question of whether a specific person “is a feminist” or not is the wrong question, I think; it’s either a meaningless question, or it’s a meaningful question asked in a counterproductive way.  As I understand it, it’s a basic tenet of anti-oppression thought that people get to define their own identities.  And this can be kind of tricky, it turns out, and lead to some pretty fraught discussions of appropriation and self-definition, when someone like Sarah Palin calls herself “a feminist.”  Because to claim to be, or not to be, or that someone else is, or is not, “a [noun]” is a claim about identity.  People really, really don’t like to be told their identity is something different from what they themselves say it is, and people who subscribe to progressive views tend to be really uncomfortable with the idea of telling someone else “no, your identity is X, no matter how much you say it’s Y.”  Identity is personal and internal, it resides in the mind — and no one but me knows my mind, so how can anyone else contradict my claims about my own identity?

So this is the crux of the nouning issue, then: if I say “you are a racist” or “you are a feminist” I’m making a claim about your identity, and in some sense that’s just not a claim I’ve got the right to make.  If I say “I’m not a racist” or “I’m a feminist” I’m making a claim about my identity, which I’ve got every right to do, but the validity of which no one but me has any way to evaluate.

If, on the other hand, I say “the policies you support would tend to keep the political, social and/or economic status of women as a class lower than that of men as a class,” or (equivalently) “the policies you support are un- or anti-feminist,” I’m making a claim that can actually be evaluated, because it’s a claim about actions and effects in the world, not thoughts within someone’s brain.

Some further reading, from which you’ll be able to click through to all sorts of blog posts about whether Sarah Palin is a feminist, should you be so inclined: Pilgrim Soul, Kate Harding.

Quick Hit: Hospital Visitation Rights

President Obama has finally taken a significant, positive step on LGBTQI rights.  And he’s done it in a way that benefits everyone who goes to a hospital.  The news coverage I’ve seen so far (Washington Post, New York Times) emphasizes that the new rules Mr. Obama has directed HHS Secretary Sebelius to implement will ensure that people in same-sex relationships will be able to visit and, if necessary, make decisions for their partners in hospitals.  But the actual memorandum specifies this not in terms of recognizing same-sex relationships, but in terms of respecting patients’ rights to designate who should be able to visit and/or make decisions for them.

This applies to people who would prefer that their closest platonic friend make decisions if they’re incapacitated, rather than their family; to people trying to escape abusive familial or spousal relationships; to people like me in different-sex relationships who choose not to marry; and, of course, to people in same-sex relationships who aren’t able to marry yet.  The memorandum also includes language explicitly stating that hospitals “may not deny visitation privileges on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability,” which is, sadly, probably necessary.  But the conceptual framework it applies is not one of slightly expanding the allowed relationships to include not only blood relation and marriage, but “marriage-equivalent” relationships; it’s a more drastic change, which rejects the assumption that blood relation and marriage are always the best proxies for patient wishes, and instead respects patient autonomy.

This is in line with the approach favored by Nancy Polikoff, who hasn’t written about it yet but, I would guess, probably will soon: it makes marriage as a cultural formalism matter less, and instead tries to do a better job of accommodating what patients’ lives are actually like.

So I’m very glad to see this — although I’m still not extending much credit, this is an excellent move, and I’d like to hope that it’s the start of better things to come.

Update: Sure enough, Dr. Polikoff has a post up now about the memo.