Same Person, Different Rights

I was just reading a post I'd missed on my new favorite blog, Are We Married?, about the fight for equal parenting rights and it led me down a familiar mental path.

See, I'm in a very long-term committed relationship with a man, but I have a few ex-girlfriends in my past and have been truly in love with a woman in my life. I'm also very sensitive about

rights when it comes to the most important decisions a person can make, to marry and to have children. I'm marriagefree and childfree and proud of it. I haven't 100% written marriage out for some time in the future, I'm realistically flexible and can see some practical advantages to the institution, but I am not having kids under any circumstances other than taking in the children of those I care about if there is no other option but them going to strangers. I knew I didn't want to be a mother for certain when I was 3 and have yet to waver as of 33. To be perfectly honest, the thought of having a kid terrifies me more than jumping out of a plane did! Only one thought is scarier -- pregnancy.

My only problem with my decisions is the conversation I have had oh, so frequently with strangers. acquaintances, some family members, and even a few friends:

Them: "So, are you two married?"

Me: "No."

Them: "How long have you been together?"

Me: "About 12 years [or whatever amount it was at that point]."

Them: "Oh! That's a long time! Well, when are you going to get married?"

Me: "I'm not sure, probably never."

Them: "But what about the kids?"

Me: "We're not planning on having any."

And then, depending on religion or age group, they launch into one of several tirades. The most common is just that if I don't have children I will end up regretting it, which is funny because I refuse to regret things, it's such a waste of time and energy. Another regular is that I will lose my boyfriend if I don't give him a family, which is ridiculous as he doesn't want those things either and we ARE a family as it is, we certainly act more like one than many married people. My personal favorite was the guy who told me I should kill myself because I am not fulfilling my function as God's daughter. I am not joking, he was a cabbie who picked me up at JFK and drove me to Manhattan, a very long and strange taxi trip.

I know I could just lie or try to change the subject but why should I have to do that? I much prefer being proud of myself and my choices, even if it can be painful to hear the reactions.

Then I look back at my life and realize that I could be having such a different conversation if I'd settled down with a woman. The very same people who lambaste me for choosing not to marry or have children would be telling me that those are not even an option for me as long as they have their way. That would hurt a lot more. The concept that a decision I made to go out to the bar where I got to know my boyfriend one spring evening years ago could completely change my rights is mind-blowing.

I think about Guadalupe "Lupita" Benitez and how a clinic refused her access to IVF. I think about the droves of right-wing voters who came out for Prop. 8. I think about how people used to complain about gay couples having more disposable income than them because they didn't have children yet they don't want them to spend that money to become parents or support children.

What worries me more than the serious Christian Coalition-types, though, is the amount of generally rational, tolerant, accepting, and loving people I know who are pro-gay rights in every other way but are also anti-marriage equality. Why? Why does it affect you in any way? It's not like anyone is talking about taking away a heterosexual's right to marry.

People who love each other should be able to marry each other or not as they wish. People who want kids and can care for them properly should have them, people who don't and can't shouldn't. It's that simple. We have an awful lot of control over these things today, the capability for a whole new level of personal freedom and choice.

We need to strip away all the laws that take away anyone's rights and worry about people hurting each other instead of who we can continue to oppress and how to best oppress them. Politically, spiritually, and in our attitudes as well. If that happens it will be the moment America truly becomes The Beautiful.

Welcome to the Only State More Corrupt than Louisiana! Now, Go Vote!

How do you choose who to vote for when there aren't any viable options?

I live in New Jersey these days and my first state-wide election here is coming up. For those of you who don't follow our politics here (outside of scandals that landed many in jail, including the mayor of my town), we are in the midst of perhaps the most heated election cycle of my lifetime. Our incumbent, Jon Corzine, is a favorite of Obama's (apparently, as he seems to spend almost as much time campaigning for him as he does on television appearances and screwing up New York City traffic) but pretty much no one else. His numbers are as bad as David Patterson's yet the Democratic Party seems to be fighting for him instead of asking him to step aside. I can't figure out if they really want to lose NJ or something. If they do I'm thinking it's because Corzine's opponent, Chris Christie, is so corrupt that they think he'll raise a lot of money for the party every time he does something that makes Democrats mad.

Either way, I have ended up with a huge dilemma. I'm very (theoretically) excited to vote at last in the state I grew up in and left before I was old enough to register but I have no one to vote for.

As you know if you've read my post on The World's Smallest Political Quiz, I am a Libertarian. The problem is, if I vote for my own party's candidate, it's pretty much a wasted vote. That is why the two-party system does not work. Call me crazy, but I'd much rather vote for the least of several-to-many evils than the lesser of two. I'm wise enough to know I will be unlikely to have the chance to vote for someone I might actually believe in but why do I only have two choices? In this case, it's not even the lesser-of situation, it's more, "I'm voting for pure evil and shortsightedness either way."

Two of my most politically-aware friends also live in New Jersey and are staunch Democrats. I respect their views immensely even when we completely disagree but they are considering not voting at all. That's how bad it is. They are not the sort to skip voting and they have very strong opinions on this election but they can't in good conscience vote for either of these men. They know better but just can't figure out what to do.

For me, not casting a vote is not an option at all, but I understand their sentiment. As far as I can tell, these are my options:

1. Vote for the status quo and accept that my state will continue on it's extreme downslide. This is also a vote for corruption and irresponsibility.
2. Vote for the "other guy" who is even more corrupt and wants to focus on issues that hardly even matter in this economy and time period rather than fixing anything for anyone.
3. Vote for my party's candidate just to up their vote count, perhaps aiding the cause of being able to vote for a third, fourth, or fifth party someday in the future but more likely having the same effect as not voting.

New Jersey is, I believe, unique in that we depend so much on two other states (New York and Pennsylvania) for employment and therefore it's pretty hard to change our fate when we can't do anything to change their policies. Still, things used to be better here for individuals, families, and corporations alike. When I was a kid this was an exciting place to be, always growing and changing. As much as I've railed against the development around me and particularly hate how much farmland has become condos, at least most people could find a job, usually a very good one to support living somewhere so costly. Now we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the country and it's still more expensive to live here than anywhere but Manhattan and San Francisco. Everything has gotten worse. Everything.

I think about these things almost all the time with at least a few brain cells yet I am no closer to a decision than I was when the primaries ended.

Death Penalty Truly Does = Homicide

Capital punishment. Just the words make my blood run cold. I am not a great believer in the Bible but I have often thought that was one of the best lessons of the New Testament, that capital or even corporal punishment are not the way to handle justice on any level.

On a logical level, it is nearly impossible to know a person's actions with 100% accuracy. Even video can lie, heck, you could be standing there watching something happen and not know the truth. It happens all the time, even to highly observant types.

The only good argument I've ever heard for the death penalty can be summed up in Ted Bundy's escape from prison via a law library and the subsequent murders he committed before Florida put him to death. However, that level of cunning is rare and Ted Bundy is an exception to many "rules" of criminal behavior. We like to pin the label sociopath onto all kinds of criminals but the truth is they are incredibly rare yet share the trait of most criminals that the death penalty is not even slightly a deterrent to them. If anything, it just ups the stakes of the game and makes it more interesting.

Well, I'm off on a tangent again. The point is, I've always been against capital punishment, but today I read an article that made my veins particularly icy and included a sentence that, to me, is the truly unrefutable argument to be made against it: "On his death certificate, the cause was listed as 'Homicide.'"

I don't know if that's standard, but it certainly makes sense, as it is quite intentional and thus homicide. Still, to see that we completely admit that we, as a society, are committing homicide on a regular basis just makes a horrifying concept seem that much more contentious. I'd honestly never thought about what they put on the death certificate in such cases before.

Even scarier, what the article was largely about was the appalling state of arson investigation in this country. If you watch much prime time television you must have seen some amazing arson investigations using all sorts of gizmos and scientific methodology. Well, it turns out that is more fictional than I thought. "In 1997, the International Association of Arson Investigators filed a legal brief arguing that arson sleuths should not be bound by a 1993 Supreme Court decision requiring experts who testified at trials to adhere to the scientific method." Seriously? I don't even have words (and that is extremely rare, as you may know if you've been reading this blog). Arson investigators often claim their profession is more of an art than a science. I'm sorry, but if you are going to kill me over something, I'd like some solid factual science to be behind it. Luckily, in this case the Supreme Court agrees, but arson investigators are still grappling with the concept.

Why is this country so much more accepting of art than science? Alas, that will have to be a discussion for another day.

The excellent article from the New Yorker that inspired these thoughts is a long one but well worth the time:

Cameron Todd Willingham, Texas, and the death penalty: newyorker.com

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World's Smallest Political Quiz

One fact about my family has defined more about the way I look at everything than any other: My father has been a passionate Republican for my whole life while my mother was just as passionate of a Democrat. It was like growing up with James Carville and Mary Matalin in reverse, only not political operatives but just intelligent and educated voters who care. Objectively, their points of view were unsurprising, as he was an executive at large companies while she was a Ph.D. who opted to teach in and, eventually, run public high schools instead of working in the relative luxury of colleges. They generally lived by what they preached and that obviously led to some heated debates at the dinner table. While this drove me absolutely nuts as a child it also made me learn the importance of being politically aware very early on.

The second most important lesson I learned is to respect people who disagree with you. Sometimes it feels like I'm the only person in Generations X or Y who feels that way. The vitriol between parties makes me physically ill when it's my friends spouting it. Disagreements are necessary and even helpful but the sheer petty meanness from both major parties is purely depressing and helps not one single person in this world.

Even worse, I've never fit on the right/left line, so the debates have always made me feel like even more of an outcast than I felt from being a geeky girl with odd interests all my life. I've also found that a lot of people I've met who THINK they know what party they belong in actually disagree quite a lot with that party. That's one of the many problems of a two-party system, many (if not most) people join a party that fits one or two of their pet issues and ignore that party's position on everything else.

So, you can imagine how thrilled I was to receive an email from Dad with a link to The World's Smallest Political Quiz and a note about how he was surprised by his results. I immediately took it and, while not surprised when it told me I was a libertarian (I joined the Libertarian party a while back after doing a lot of research before transferring my voter registration to a new state), it was a revelation to see just how intensely libertarian I am. What validation! People have been trying to convince me I'm a Democrat for years despite my enormous issues with many of that party's stances and their underlying system of beliefs. I knew that wasn't right.

Being a natural skeptic in general, though, I felt the need to test the quiz a bit further and had my boyfriend take it. He scored precisely where I expected, as pretty much a super-liberal. Yup, I ended up with a significant other almost as different in his beliefs as my mother was to my father. We really do grow up to be our parents!

So now I want to encourage everyone in the country to take this quiz, it only takes a couple of minutes but it is by far the best way I've found to distill what you think into something quantifiable. The other wonderful thing about the quiz is that it will lead you into ways to explore the parties you might fit well into, regardless of which they may be. No matter how politically aware you may be there is always more to learn. Always.

Perhaps the most important thing about this quiz and the group that publishes it is that they are trying to redefine the political landscape, get away from the left/right line that leaves so many people like me out in the cold. Libertarians AREN'T conservatives, as many people think, and statists aren't liberals. They use a diamond-shaped chart that makes so much more sense than any straight line ever could, the world isn't flat and neither should our political options be. There is no category where you can divide the nation's population into exactly two positions, let alone one as sophisticated and complicated as politics.

John Adams famously said, "There is nothing I dread so much as a division of the Republic into two great parties, each arranged under its leader and converting measures into opposition to each other." The man should be considered a prophet.

Please take this quiz!

The link again: The World's Smallest Political Quiz