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Category: Law

Where The Truth Lies

The following is an actual transcript of my coming-out conversation with Dina.

Me: “Blah blah blah I’m a lesbian.”
Her: “Oh, I love Melissa Etheridge!”

So begins an often hilarious but poignant look into homophobia, self-doubt, and sexuality in the work environment. Emily DePrang writes about her experience being a lesbian fired from a corporate loans office for sexual harassment.

I used to think I’d escaped the self-loathing that plagues most gays. I’d grown up well-loved and free of religious condemnation. I had moved to New York City from Austin, Texas, where you can’t throw a rock without hitting a lesbian. But sitting in Ms. HR’s office, I felt like I did when I got busted playing doctor with Eileen Gospel in fifth grade: that I was bad in a way so base that doors had to be closed before I could be reprimanded.

She continued. “I’ll be meeting with the management to decide how to proceed. And we’ll need to make your placement agency aware of the situation.”

The stain grew. I wasn’t just losing my job — I was losing my means to get another one. I’d have to start over. I saw her reading my file to the lazy boss who loved me, and to Andy, the jokey guy at OfficeTeam who once considered me his finest temp. I saw their faces change as they listened to her. I saw myself change in their minds. I saw Andy explaining to his bosses why my file was being terminated. And everyone, in my mind, regarded me like the plague. Sexual harassment is too dire for the benefit of the doubt. No one would associate with me now. Shit, shit, was this really happening?

via Paul

Brown People, Please Leave Michelle Malkin Alone

Excuse me, but she is not living in East Los Angeles! She got a cozy home outside of DC primarily to escape all the black people in the city and all the illegals everywhere else. But now there are gangs in her neighborhood. They’re even at Target! And it’s the fault of illegal immigration! Because everyone knows that natural-born citizens don’t join gangs. Besides, those immigrants should stay where they are so that they can continue working for pennies a day, making discount clothes for Ms. Malkin to buy from Target.

God, Save Us From Looting

The looting in New Orleans wouldn’t have happened if students were taught the 10 Commandments in schools. Cuz that’s the only way to learn that stealing is wrong. Plus, liberals steal, just like the commies. Although, as far as I can tell from the news coverage, looting would be avoided if only there weren’t any black people around. As Lauren pointed out earlier, black people loot. White people find stuff.

Peggy Noonan has a solution to stop looting: “Shoot ’em!” How very Republican and life-affirming of her. The (completely non-) Independent Women’s Forum agrees. (Disenfranchised? Rubbish!) And they pull the tsunami card.

Leslie Crocker Snyder for DA!

If you live in New York, get your ass out and vote for Leslie Crocker Snyder! I’ve been a big fan of this woman, ever since she came and spoke to College Democrats at NYU. She’s dynamic. She was the first woman ever to try homicide cases at the Manhattan DA’s office, and fought her way into that unit . When she first asked her boss if she could transfer to homicide, he turned her down. When she asked again, he said he’d consider it, under one condition — that she got her husband’s permission.

She didn’t, but made it into the unit anyway. She founded and let the Sex Crimes Prosecution Bureau, and co-authored New York’s rape shield laws. She has spent decades trying to reform the racist and misguided Rockefeller Drug Laws. She’s a huge supporter of rehabiliation programs for non-violent offenders, and an advocate of community courts and instituting local legal resources in a variety of languages, to give as many disempowered people as possible access to the legal system.

Her one flaw is that she is technically in support of the death penalty. But when she spoke at NYU, a friend of mine asked her about her position, which she clarified, saying that she only supports the death penalty in the most extreme cases — for example, a terrorist who manages to blow up a building and kill hundreds of people, or a mass murderer. I still don’t agree, but the fact is that the death penalty isn’t really an issue in New York. Oh, and my anti-death-penalty friend who asked the question was so impressed with her that he now works for her campaign.

Even The New York Times has endorsed her. So get out and support Leslie!

What To Do About Statutory Rape

I sure as hell don’t know how such issues should be dealt with, but this story is indeed disturbing. Girl, 12, starts dating man, 20. At 14, she gets pregnant and they get married. She was in eighth grade. He was 24.

Now, will it do any good at this point to lock the guy up? No, it probably won’t. In fact, it’ll probably just make it harder on the 14-year-old child who is now at home with a newborn baby. But this relationship is obviously, um, problematic. I’m not trying to be judgmental here, but I’m pretty sure that when a 12-year-old and a 20-year-old are in a sexual relationship (or a business relationship, or any relationship), there’s going to be an inherent power differentiation, and a serious issue of judgment and maturity (on the 12-year-old’s part by simply being 12, and on the 20-year-old’s part for having sex with a child).

I’ve said before that I think it’s important to let women make their own decisions, and to let them be their own moral agents. I’ve also said that being of minor age should not strip someone of their right to their own body. I certainly stand by those statements. But where does statutory rape come in — particularly the more extreme kind, like this? Thoughts?

Taking culture into account

A Flordia drug sting has resulted in the arrest of almost 50 Indian immigrant drugstore clerks, under charges of selling materials used to make methanphetamine — legal materials, available over-the-counter. Police claim that the clerks knew what they were selling would be used for drugs, since informants said that they were using the materials (like aluminum foil) for a “cook,” which is apparently common drug-making slang. Many of the Indian clerks say that they didn’t understand what their customer was saying — and to be honest, I’m not sure even I would have understood what was going on.

Either way, it seems a little ridiculous to me that store clerks could be arrested for doing their jobs.

Clarification

Amanda does a good job summing up the “Fetal Protection” case that so many of us feminist bloggers commented on this week:

It looks like there’s a very good chance that this homemade abortion was the last incident in a string of abusive encounters. The boy admitted to hitting the girl in the past to keep her from berating him, and the hospital report indicates that she was hit on the face and had a huge bruise on her arm from someone grabbing her. This casts doubt on her story that she wanted to abort the pregnancy so much as it was lost after her boyfriend beat her. The girl had, after all, been keeping up her doctor’s appointments.

From the affidavits, it looks like parental notification wasn’t an issue.

…This entire case is disturbing on a number of levels. First of all, it’s disturbing that it was so widely reported as a simple issue of two teenagers getting caught doing a homemade abortion, when it’s very likely that instead it was closer to the all-too-typical scenario of domestic violence escalating due to a pregnancy. But the prosecution carries a lot of the blame in that–instead of treating this incident for what it most likely was, which is a case of domestic violence leading to a miscarriage and prosecuting the young man for hurting his girlfriend, they grandstanded on the whole abortion bullshit instead of standing up for the young woman who was victimized in all this.

…This hyper-focus on the fetus turns the entire national discussion on how to handle the fact that domestic violence often escalates during pregnancy into a joke. Anti-choicers who exhibit more interest in fetuses than women may not intend it, but their attitude tacitly condones treating women like objects that can be mishandled by their partners–grab her, hit her on the arm, hit her on the face, but if you dare injure her fetus, off to jail with you!

We got some details wrong on this case, but I think the newest information makes this case far more troubling. First because many of us jumped so quickly to defend the boy and his actions, and second for the emotional appeals the boy’s defense made against the girl. Unfortunately, early reports did not mention the boy’s earlier abuse.