RevSpork

America Askew, Revisited

A while back, I posted a fun little article about how ridiculous it was that some states ban gay marriage but allow bestiality.  North Carolina's passage of their anti-gay marriage amendment yesterday reminded me of this post, so I decided to do an overview of the old maps I made.

There were a few things I noticed: one, my original map regarding the legality of zoophilia was inaccurate.  I stated that some states, including North Carolina and Arkansas, did not actually bar bestiality when they actually did.  (My oops!)  Numero dos, the legal landscape regarding both gay marriage and zoophilia have changed since 2009.  Florida, for example, made bestiality illegal in 2011.  (I must also add that the bill failed in the state legislature twice before passing the third time.)  On the other hand, Kansas, in the process of redoing their criminal code, legalized human-animal nookie (presumably inadvertently, although you never know) in 2010. 

After a little rejiggering of the map, here is a more accurate map of states that permit bestiality, info brought to you by the fine folks at wikipedia:

...and here is a map of states that ban both gay marriage and civil unions:

...and here is a map that bans gay marriage and civil unions, AND allows bestiality:

Number: 5
Number of states that allow gay marriage:6 (laws in Washington state and Maryland are pending due to popular referenda)

Looks like gay marriage is running ahead.  But fear not, Rover rompers!  Guess which state, in cleaning up their criminal sodomy code, could end up legalizing zoophilia the way Kansas did?  No really, take a wild guess at who might join my "brown map..."

It accentuates my girlishness

A week ago, I was doing Manly Things, such as doing homework and playing Farmville, when I took a quick break and read the online Chicago Tribune.  J. Crew, a fine clothes seller whose wares I've never purchased (although I did end up with a fine J. Crew T-shirt just lying there in the dryer at the Williams Hall laundry room back in '94) but whose store I've consistently passed on the way to the dentist, was suffering from a bit o' scandal thanks to this ad.

My reaction?  "Huh."  Mom is painting her five-year old son's toenails pink.  Ok.  They're laughing.  It's a cute picture.  The ad print was similarly innocent: "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink.  Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."  Again, okay.  The kid likes pink.  Kids have their favorite colors.  We all do. 

So why are conservatives going all apeshit over this?  Because of the pink.  And the toenail polishing.  That's it.  That's all.  To the right wing, this pink toenail polishing smacks of "blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children" and "a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity." 

All this because of a J. Crew ad?

Never mind that pink=girls has only been an American gender fashion statement since World War II.  Never mind that pink has been considered a male color in both the United States and Europe in the past.  Never mind that painted nails has been going on with both genders since ancient Egypt.  No, for some reason pink toenails for a five-year old boy wrecks gender identity.  Okay.

In reaction to this excitement, I decided to put my manliness on the line last Wednesday.  I borrowed my wife's nail polish and painted my toes a bright neon pink.

I kept the nail polish on for over a week, looking for signs of gender breakdown on my part.  I found none.  I ate not one, not two, but three roast beef sandwiches for lunch over the past week.  I grilled hot dogs.  I openly disdained the Oxygen channel.  About the only remotely feminine act I was involved in was being extremely impressed with George Clooney's performance in "Up in the Air," which Tori and I watched last Saturday.  Upon studying various movie reviews, however, I noted that men even more masculine than I (I'm thinking specifically of Roger Ebert) approved both of Clooney's performance and the movie itself. 

After ten days of failing to feel more feminine, I got out the nail polish remover and wiped away the pink from my toes.  I don't miss it; I reacted to my newly naked piggies with as much emotion as cleaning out my ears with a Q-Tip.  However, I'm considering a new experient: will black nail polish turn me goth?

My prediction: probably not. 

Won't you come out to play?

I don't remember exactly the moment I found out that John Lennon had been murdered.  I vaguely remember hearing the news from the car radio; it was in the evening; I was one week short of ten years old.  I also remember the seemingly endless tributes to the man: the cuts from his then-current album, Double Fantasy, played practically every hour on rock and pop stations in Kansas City well into the next year. 

I don't remember my mother's initial reaction, but I'm sure she was stunned.  Then again, who wasn't?  This wasn't one of those "it was going to happen sometime" moments we had come to expect from rock and pop stars.  We had been shocked when Elvis Presley died, but we knew - even at the time - he was having problems.  He certainly looked like a sick man in the months before his death.  Keith Moon, Sid Vicious, John Bonham - their deaths were almost predictable; all three suffered from alcoholism or drug addiction.  If some sick souls had a death pool for rock stars in the wake of Elvis's demise, at least two of those three would have popped up on most lists. But John Lennon's murder was a bolt from a blue sky.  That he was gunned down by a Beatles fan made it all the more bewildering. 

And it's those latter tragedies that get to us, isn't it?  It's as if those particular calamities remind us more than anything that we have no control over the universe.  When one occurs, at least one generation declares "the end of innocence," as if 6 December 1941, 21 November 1963, and 10 September 2001 were the tail ends of some Golden Age.  It never was, and as long as evil hearts exist, there never will be.

I never met John Lennon, but I was a friend of his and still am.  Every time I hear my favorites of his songs, whether his Beatles or solo works, I feel a strong connection to him. I appreciate his dark humor ("Happiness is a Warm Gun"), his moments of great lyrical beauty ("Dear Prudence," "Nowhere Man"), his brutal honesty ("Sexy Sadie," "Jealous Guy"), and his impassioned vocals ("Mother," "Stand By Me").  And whether one liked or hated Yoko, one could appreciate her inspiring him to write great love songs ("Woman," "Oh Yoko!"). 

Perhaps I'm being presumptive in calling John Lennon a friend.  When I hear his voice, it's the voice of someone I've known nearly all of my life.  And as always, I wish he'd come out to play. 

Burning Questions: Pro-choice utopia edition

The year is 2035.  Roe v. Wade is the unquestioned law of the land.  Pregnant women can abort their fetus in any state, for any (or no) reason, paid for by their health care provider.  Abortion opponents have been reduced to a quiet, rapidly-shrinking group of ranters as the practice is socially accepted all over the nation.  However, within this pro-choice utopia, five news items pop up on Americans' personal information modules:

I'm sorry we didn't reach you in time

Dear Billy Lucas,

By the time I post this, you will have died just over two weeks ago.  I never met you; I'm sure you had never heard of me.  We couldn't be more different; in terms of age, sexuality, and backgrounds, we might as well have lived galaxies apart.  We had nothing in common but one: we suffered in school.  Man, did we suffer.  We probably had the word "faggot" and its relations tossed at us so often, we could hear them in our heads with no one around.  I do not know how much hell you endured, but it was apparently enough for you to pull off the ultimate escape. 

On behalf of the grownups, I apologize for not paying attention, for looking away when you were bullied, for thinking "it's just boys being boys," for thinking it's no big deal.  A depressingly large number of adults have this tendency to assume that just because they managed to make it through adolescence, the generation currently entering it have no excuses.  Just listen to what the grownups did, and you'll get through, no problem.  And if you can't handle it, you're somehow to blame.

Trust me: when I was your age, the grownups had all the answers, and I was the fuck-up if I didn't think the answers applied to me.  And in some cases, they may have been right.  But I was too young to understand how to filter the valuable advice from the bullshit. 

When I was your age (and haven't we all heard those five words by now?), life sucked.  I had very few friends, none at school.  My grades were terrible; I was failing three or four different classes at one point.  School was like this bizarre factory where the students stood at the assembly line and picked me apart, day after day.  Sure, there are 15-year olds all over the world starving, working in fields all day, forced into sex slavery... but none of that means anything when you yourself are miserable.  The "look at the bright side: it could be worse" leads one to the inevitable "This isn't the worst it can get?  My life could get worse?  Gee, thanks!"

I wish I could go back in time and tell you all these things before you decided to commit suicide.  I wish I could give you a hug and tell you the one thing grownups say that's actually true: It gets better. No, really, it does.  I should know: it got better for me.

At 15, when everything was shit, I made a decision: I would graduate high school, move far away, and flip the bird to the past.  I did all that.  I'm now almost forty years old; life's not always been easy, and it's definitely had its share of misery.  But that decision twenty-five years ago, that decision to move forward... it was worth it.  Overall, things did get better.  I'm happily married, attending graduate school, and I have many friends, all of whom think I'm a freak but a freak they can rally behind. 

I'm sorry I didn't reach you in time.  But there are a lot of kids out there who suffer as you suffered, and maybe they thought the same as you did: there's no way out but one.  That's not true.  Life does get better.  Gay?  Lesbian?  Bi?  Trans?  Freak?  Geek?  Just not one of the guys/girls?  It gets better. It gets better.  Honestly, it gets better.

Burning Questions - the children's edition

These are questions meant for those Christian fundamentalists who object to the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child based on religious objections:

1. You are the parent of a 16-year old gay son.  He sleeps with another young man his age.  Under Leviticus 20:13, such a coupling must be punished by death.  Who should execute the two: the families or the state?

2. Your four-year old son disobeys you at every turn.  According to Proverbs, "Withhold not correction from the child: for [if] thou beatest him with the rod, he shall not die."  How close to death should he be beaten with a rod before you must stop?  Is causing permanent brain damage acceptable?

These are my two humble questions.

Spot the pattern

Percent of Americans who believe President Barack Obama is a Muslim: 18 
Percent of Americans who do not wash their hands after going into a public restroom: 17
Percent of Americans who are "unsure" the United States declared independence from Great Britain in 1776: 20
Percent of Americans who believe the sun revolves around the Earth: 17
Percent of Americans who believe the First Amendment allows them the right to drive a car: 17

I know, I know... banning idiots from voting is elitism at its worst.  And sterilizing them is fascist.  I get that.  I'm a freedom kind of guy.  So we have to live with the idiots.  I guess there's a bright side to this: at least two percent of those who can't figure out our nation's birth don't think the president is a Muslim. Or they're just not sure.

What is "None of yer damned business?"

That's the Jeopardy-style answer to the years-old question, "What is Barack Obama's religion?"

America, we have a problem

Last week in East Point, GA (a suburb of Atlanta), over 30,000 people showed up at a strip mall, hoping to acquire low-income housing vouchers.  Over twenty people passed out in the August heat; dozens more were hospitalized.  (Number of vouchers? 655.)

In June, Chicago opened up its low-income housing waiting list for the first time in over a decade.  Although the Chicago Housing Authority only had spots on the waiting list for 40,000 people, over 125,000 applied on the first day alone.

Number of repossessed homes in Atlanta: 13,607 (1st quarter of 2010)
Number of foreclosed homes in Chicago: 78,022 (1st half of 2010)

(I could toss off some similar stories in Detroit, Roanoke VA, Birmingham AL, and other cities, but it would get depressing.  Oh, and those waiting lists?  In most large cities, an applicant can be on the list for upwards of ten years.)

Estimates vary, but there may be anywhere from 12-16 million vacant homes in the United States.  So here we are: suffering simultaneously from a housing glut and a housing shortage.

I guess I'm naive, but maybe, just maybe, we could fix both problems at once.

Sex offender registries (When good ideas go bad - Part 2)

Note: This is the second part of a [now] three-part series on the flaws of the sex offender registry.  To read Part 1, click here. 

I have a confession to make: if not for the grace of God (and God's wonderful sense of humor), I could have been a convicted sex offender.  You see, one winter's day in 1996, in the presence of a couple of somewhat appalled friends, I mooned Phoenix.  Yes, I mooned a huge chunk of the capital of Arizona from the top of a mountain at the Phoenix Mountains Preserve.  I got away with this fiendish crime against humanity, but what if I had gotten cocky and decided to repeat my caper on the 14th anniversary of the first time?

My friends would not have reported me to the police (I doubt they'd even come along this time around), but let's say a birdwatcher did, and the poor soul, tracking a turkey vulture, saw...everything.  Alarmed, she calls the police.  I'm arrested and charged with public indecency, a misdemeanor.  That's no big deal; even in Arizona, that's not enough to get me on the sex offender registry if I'm convicted.  However, let's say that her 12-year old daughter with matching binoculars also got a gander at my intimate areas.  That bumps my mooning incident to a Class 6 felony which, if I'm convicted, could put me on the sex offender registry once I'm released from my year-long term in prison. 

Where to go from here?  I'd probably want to start my life over again, starting with returning to Illinois a far more humbled gentleman.  Within three days of my return, I would have to register with my local police department as a sex offender.  As a nonviolent offender, I would be required to remain on the registry for ten years.  My name, address, and photograph would be posted on the state's online sex offender registry.    If I live within 500 feet of a school (which I do), I would have to move.  I would not be allowed to use social networking sites such as Facebook.  My volunteer work, thoughts of becoming a librarian or teacher, all that comes to an end, all because of what began as a silly stunt.

Compared to other states, however, Illinois is paradise for a convicted sex offender.  In Louisiana, those on the  registry must use special hurricane shelters (which do not offer separate spaces for women) for sex offenders.  In Georgia and Alabama, a sex offender not only cannot live near schools, they cannot work near them.  In many states, a sex offender cannot live near churches or school bus stops.  Everything from career restrictions to being required to put up a "sex offender" sign on one's front door during Halloween is mandatory in many states.

In the case of convicted pedophiles, this all makes sense.  But do horny teenagers (or a middle-aged mooner) deserve such punishment?  Should, say, a fifty-year old man who pays for the services of an adult prostitute deserve similar treatment as a fifty-year old man who fondles his five-year old niece?  When we blindly pass laws to protect children from sex offenders, we must ensure that we're protecting our children from those who mean to do them harm, not those whose carnal desires are unconnected to children.

There's another problem with throwing those convicted of minor offenses onto the same registry as pedophiles: it makes it much harder to track the latter criminals.  State sex offender registries have grown so fast in the last several years that many states can no longer keep track of those on the lists.  The Chicago Tribune reported recently, for example, that Chicago law enforcement's efforts to track sex offenders who fail to register their addresses have utterly failed, resulting in sexual predators striking again.  California, Missouri, and Georgia also report problems attempting to cope with their burgeoning sex offender registries.  And as long as we continue to include non-pedophile sex offenders in the registry, these numbers will only continue to rise.  In ten states, sex offenders - no matter what their transgression - must register for life. (Six of these states allow an offender to petition to be removed from the registry after a minimum period of time.)

In addition, laws passed in several states limit where sex offenders can live, some of which are so restrictive that many cannot find a place to live, particularly if they reside in a populous region.  As a result, the number of homeless sex offenders has skyrocketed.  Jessica's Law, passed in California, bans sex offenders from living within 2,000 feet of a school or park where children "regularly gather."  The result: the number of homeless sex offenders in the state has risen from 88 in 2007 to over 2200 today.  In Miami, where the restriction is 2,500 feet - nearly half a mile - the only place where released sex offenders can reside is a tent city under a bridge. As any law enforcement official can tell you, homeless people are far more difficult to track than those with a permanent address.  Creating transients out of sex offenders protects no one; Florida reports no change in the number of sex offender convictions since their Jessica's Law went into effect. 

The effects of such a broad definition of who a sex offender is can be catastrophic.  Lives can and have been destroyed.  Sex offenders, including those who were not pedophiles, are targeted by their neighbors in the guise of "vigilante justice" and occasionally murdered by people under the assumption that their victim had molested children. 

As parents, as teachers, as all those who support children, we are right to worry about pedophiles.  As the most recent scandal in the Roman Catholic Church illustrates, pedophiles appear among the most trustworthy of groups.  Aggressive pedophiles will do anything to insert themselves into occupations or organizations that give them the most opportunity to interact with children unsupervised.  However, if we want to minimize that possibility, we must properly categorize the various sexual offenses and determine if those offenders should be subject to personal restrictions once they have served the length of their punishments.  Pedophiles?  Sure, one would want to keep them away from children as possible, and yes, they should be placed on the sex offender registry.  Rapists who assaulted an adult?  I believe they should be placed on a sex offender registry, but should also not be allowed near children?  Probably not.  How about voyeurs or exhibitionists?  Prostitutes or pimps?  That's for the states to determine. 

Yes, the resulting laws may be more complex, but at least the resulting sex offender registries would be far more manageable, focusing law enforcement on the more dangerous sex offenders and saving states countless millions of dollars in the process because they don't have to monitor some poor 18 year old kid caught sleeping with his 17 year old girlfriend.  Or, for that matter, a Phoenix-mooner.