M.I.A. – Born Free

Brutal. Violent. Relentless.

M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.

No context, no story, no explanation – because to give one would indulge in the myth that there is a scenario where such actions are just. There is none.

12 Reasons Why Gay Marriage Should Be Illegal

Brilliant:

1. Homosexuality is not natural, much like eyeglasses, polyester, and birth control.
2. Heterosexual marriages are valid because they produce children. Infertile couples and old people can’t legally get married because the world needs more children.
3. Obviously, gay parents will raise gay children, since straight parents only raise straight children.
4. Straight marriage will be less meaningful if gay marriage is allowed, since Britney Spears’ 55-hour just-for-fun marriage was meaningful.
5. Heterosexual marriage has been around a long time and hasn’t changed at all; women are property, blacks can’t marry whites, and divorce is illegal.
6. Gay marriage should be decided by people, not the courts, because the majority-elected legislatures, not courts, have historically protected the rights of the minorities.
7. Gay marriage is not supported by religion. In a theocracy like ours, the values of one religion are imposed on the entire country. That’s why we have only one religion in America.
8. Gay marriage will encourage people to be gay, in the same way that hanging around tall people will make you tall.
9. Legalizing gay marriage will open the door to all kinds of crazy behavior. People may even wish to marry their pets because a dog has legal standing and can sign a marriage contract.
10. Children can never succeed without a male and a female role model at home. That’s why single parents are forbidden to raise children.
11. Gay marriage will change the foundation of society. Heterosexual marriage has been around for a long time, and we could never adapt to new social norms because we haven’t adapted to things like cars or longer life-spans.
12. Civil unions, providing most of the same benefits as marriage with a different name are better, because a “separate but equal” institution is always constitutional. Separate schools for African-Americans worked just as well as separate marriages for gays and lesbians will.

[TDW via Reddit]

Could Gonzo Vote?

My family has the tradition (as do a lot of other families, I think) of watching The Muppet Christmas Carol at some point the week of Christmas. I got to overthinking things per the usual and now am worried about whether or not The Great Gonzo could cast a vote.

I propose the following thought experiment:

The Blue Fairy, having had practice with Pinocchio, decides to bring more puppets to life. After a survey of the best candidates, she decides on bring the entire cast of The Muppet Show. Kermit, Gonzo, Ms. Piggy, Beeker and the whole gang are now “real” beings, biological, sentient and autonomous. They have all the qualities of any other living creature, including a sense of pain and need for resources, as well as the “minds” that their creators perceived them to have. Kermit would still be nervous, genuine, and smart, Ms. Piggy vain, obsessed with Kermit, and fabulous, etc. Would they be entitled to rights? Human rights?

——

One can assume that the most human of the Muppets, The Swedish Chef, would be the first to be granted rights by the Special Committee for Dealing With Magically Created Life Forms (SCDWMCF). Like Pinocchio, the Swedish Chef would be perceived as human for all intents and purposes and as a Henson creation would have been “made in the USA,” and therefore a citizen. Following close behind would be Stadler and Waldorf. Our current system of rights in the US would be unable to deny them rights, because their standing as “Muppets” would likely be categorized as either a race or ethnicity. As ostensible humans, their outer differences (being small, made of felt) would be inconsequential, as their rights stem from being members of the “human species.” Furthermore, Stadler and Waldorf would be defended by the AARP and the Swedish Chef would probably get some sort of Nordic Peoples of America backing. Swedish Chef, Stadler, and Waldorf, would, like Pinocchio, get standing as ‘real people’ and the rights associated.

So with a precedent for Muppet’s receiving rights established, the first real hurdle would be the “humans?” in the Muppet cast. Dr. Teeth and the members of the Electric Mayhem (save Animal) Scooter, Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker, and a slew of minor characters are all of questionable, hominid status. Sure, we all know people who kind of look like them, but Beaker’s head is a perfect cylinder and Dr. Teeth has green skin. In short, the “humans?” of the Muppets push the limits of what we accept as being human. When we watch the Muppets, we see Kermit as a frog and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew and Beaker as people. That we see a yellow ball of foam wearing glasses as a human face is something of a testament to how our brains are wired to see faces in everything. The “humans?” of the Muppets would also be quickly given rights, with the assertion being made that “it doesn’t matter what color or shape you are, no matter how strange, human rights belong to all humans.” The Special Committee would logically conclude that, though exceedingly weird ones, the Muppet “humans?” are, in fact, humans proper, and thus confer upon them full rights.

So now we come to the animals of the Muppets, including the aptly named Animal, as well as Kermit, Ms. Piggy, Rowlf, Rizzo, and Sam the Eagle. Early arguments, particularly using Animal and Rizzo as examples, would be that the animal Muppets are merely highly intelligent animals, ineligible for full rights. Animal has a collar and chain, clearly he isn’t deserving of the right to bear arms or free assembly and Rizzo is a nefarious element, pilfering food and talking with a low class accent. Yet, then one could present this argument:

Faced with this stirring and patriotic rendition of an American classic, one would assume that the easily shamed members of congress would leap into action to avoid appearing un-American and quickly confer rights to the animal Muppets,  including Animal himself.

But we are now left with perhaps the biggest problem: The Great Gonzo. Gonzo is, by nearly every measure, unacceptable. He is not merely not human, he is not even of a reality based taxonomic classification. Alien, monster, or whatever, Gonzo’s existence as a “weirdo” is not merely limited to his biological origin. Gonzo is also a deviant. His girlfriend, Camilla, is a chicken. In Muppet Treasure Island, he is shown to enjoy bondage (the rack, red hot pokers, etc.) and wear flamboyant outfits. He is often seen hanging out with Rizzo. He emulates Freddy Mercury. The list of morally and socially questionable acts in which Gonzo engages is embarrassingly long. Besides wearing argyle and knowing Dickens’ A Christmas Carol by heart, Gonzo has few palatable behaviors.

That’s why Gonzo is the perfect test case. We can’t justify grandfathering him into the system based on his civic performance or ostensible humanity or anything else. He is a political risk. I don’t think he has any naturalization papers or a birth certificate. If we can justify giving Gonzo rights, I think we’ve effectively disproved the canard that rights are “human.”

The first argument I would make is, oddly enough, based on Gonzo’s weird penchant for bodily harm. First, this proves Gonzo feels pain. Second, it proves that he operates above an instinctual level, because he can enjoy pain and find existential pleasure (“I feel alive!”) in the pain. Finally, Gonzo’s ability to discuss the meta-fictive humor of his status as an omniscient narrator would evidence his ability to use rational faculties to their maximum, ruling out both stimulus-response training and critiques of hindered intelligence. Thus we are faced with a very rational agent. Furthermore, Gonzo has clear, high level affection for Camilla (loving her among a flock of chickens, jealousy towards the Christmas turkey flirting with her) as well as his fellow Muppets. Complicating this  emotional ability are his skills in bantering with Stadler and Waldorf and consoling Rizzo after an injury.

In short, Gonzo demonstrates both high level reasoning and complex emotional responses. He grasps social situations, considers his fellow beings, and demonstrates an ability to make informed, consensual decisions. Despite having a foreign ancestry, he was made and born in the USA. Non-humans born in the USA are not eligible for citizen ship not because they are non-human but because they are not rational or capable of consent – the same reason you have be 18 to vote. State of mind, not state of biology, are what matters. If we are honest about where rights come from, there is no reason The Great Gonzo, if enlivened by the Blue Fairy, shouldn’t get to vote and run for office. Gonzo for president?

Reproduction Rights

On Saturday, the New York Times published an article about surrogate pregnancy including three cases in which problems arose due to the unregulated state of surrogacy. In one case, the surrogate mother discovered that the adoptive mother had a history of paranoid schizophrenia and sued to keep the children. In another situation, a single man arranged a pregnancy and his eccentricities have brought his ability to raise children into question. Finally, a woman is attempting to keep the child she surrogate mothered for her gay brother and his partner. In each case, we are shown the unprecedented legal and ethical quandaries interwoven into the very definition of words like mother, parent, family, and reproductive responsibility and rights.

The NYT article makes a clear case that raising a child is complex and emotional. Reducing pregnancy to a transaction only serves to amplify these complexities and emotions by trying to remove them from the equation. But wherein are the nuances of creating life lost?

George J. Annas, a bioethicist who is chairman of the health law program at Boston University, said, “This is the main problem with commercialization, seeing children as a consumer product.”

It is interesting that the article chose to use this quotation, as in two of the three example cases the pregnancy was not for profit. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that this quotation from Annas points out what happens to the child, but is largely unconcerned with how the process affects the mother. I suggest Carolyn McLeod’s “For Dignity or Money” which is the most evenhanded account of the multiple feminist perspectives on contract pregnancy, an issue far to complex to deal with in a single blog post.

The question that underpins contract pregnancy is always just beneath the surface of the NYT article and nearly every popular piece I read on the topic: has nature prevented these people from having children for a reason? Questions of ability, knowledge, and stability are logical to ask of any parent. Though I largely disagree with its method and position among social services, Child Protective Services makes sense in a major egalitarian society, because some people are not fit to be parents. What disturbs me is the double-standard for the reproductively impaired. I am not trying to create a new minority group or coin a new PC euphemism with the use of “reproductively impaired” but merely point out that these people in a state of nature cannot reproduce at all. They are, by choice or chance, effectively sterile. Therefore they seek the next best means by which to have children.

The disturbing trend here is that those who are able to have children “naturally” are innocent until proven guilty, while those who must use alternative means are subjected to the judgments of doctors, bureaucrats, and their peers. One must qualify to have IVF, adopt, and, as shown, use a surrogate mother. Unless one can prove one is able to have the financial, moral, legal and mental stability necessary to raise a child, one cannot have a child by any artificial means; however, there is no such condition for simply getting pregnant or impregnating someone. In short, if nature has already hindered your ability to reproduce, then the state and society have the right to control how and when you acquire children.

This double-standard is the passive equivalent of a far more insidious active, possibility. The specter of eugenics is often raised around issues of reproductive rights. The eugenicists of the earlier part of the 20th century are oft maligned for their support of sterilizing those deemed as problematic for society. If one was below the poverty line or shown to be “morally” or “mentally” unfit (more often euphemisms for bigotry than matters of ethics), the eugenicists argued for sterilization. While sterilizing for any one of those reasons is now considered patently offensive and wrong, it is seen as completely rational for those who meet those conditions and are born or become sterile to be forced to remain that way.

Let me provide an example. Let us assume that the only criterion one must meet to adopt a child are that one must make $50,000 a year, have no criminal record, be mentally and physically healthy, between the ages of 25 and 45, and be straight. Let us extend these criterion to receiving in-vitro fertilization, egg or sperm donation, and surrogate pregnancy. While grossly simplified, it is an analogous model to our current legal system’s requirements, designed to protect the welfare of the children. This set-up makes sense both on face and when analyzed in detail – the combination of standards provides a normative baseline for what a decent home for a child would be. While each standard might be debated (economic and sexual status in particular) the general idea of standards for adoption and assisted reproduction make sense because they are designed to protect the new child.

Now let us add a twist: in addition to being unable to adopt or receive reproductive assistance, if one does not meet one or more of the above criteria then one is legally and compulsively required to undergo temporary chemical sterilization. For the sake of the children, one might argue, it is the responsibility of a just society to only allow reproduction among those who are up to the task. Simply possessing the ability to reproduce unassisted is no justification for having the right to do so. In fact, getting pregnant is itself often used to exemplify a person’s irresponsibility. By this logic it would seem that we as a society have an obligation to prevent those who do not meet society’s standards from acquiring children, be it by natural birth, adoption, or assisted means.

Rightly we find such a suggestion abhorrent. Unlike Leon Kass’ repugnance theory, which relies on our instinctual fear of something new or misunderstood as a form of moral judgment, this abhorrence comes from our living in a liberal and free society. To suggest that the government is responsible for determining who may and who may not have children based on their class, sexual orientation, legal and medical history, and age is perhaps one of the most prima facia dystopic and offensive ideas one could articulate. Yet it is the real status quo for those who seek to adopt or use assisted reproduction. In every one of the cases described in the NYT piece, no one would have so much as thought to scrutinize their right to have children had they been able to do so naturally. Sterility due to nature or by situation is viewed as an exception, thus granting the state legal jurisdiction over one’s reproductive rights. Biopower exerts itself most grotesquely among those already outside the norm.

If forced to surmise as to why, I would guess that our society still maintains the deeply embedded, though irrational belief, that those who are sterile from birth or by accident or do not wish to reproduce in a normative fashion, such as asexual or homosexual people, are as such because some greater moral force – be it Nature, Fate, or God – has preordained them as deviant and unfit to parent. The NYT piece expresses this view perfectly, wherein there is no example of a successful surrogate pregnancy, only deviants – a mentally unstable mother, a strange, lonely man, and a homosexual couple. That a happy, normal, heterosexual couple with no other problems but biological inability would want a child via surrogacy goes unexplored. The underlying logic is that their normalcy is only ostensible and problems are likely lurking beneath the surface. If you can’t do it like everyone else, the argument goes, then perhaps you shouldn’t be doing it at all.

I do not have an immediate or even rough solution for the problem of our reproductive double-standard. What I do know is our society’s relationship with and perspective on reproduction is still grossly undermined by our continued attachment to decayed religious morays and their secular bioconservative descendants. There are people having children who do not want them and people who want children who cannot have them in substantial, depressing numbers. Compounding it is our legal system’s deranged obsession with genetic relationships creating de facto legal relationships. Adoption and foster care is stigmatized, contraceptives are restricted, the abortion debate has devolved into factious insanity, “natural” fertilization and birth is given mythic status and mystic veneration, and artificial methods are still portrayed as dehumanized scientific experiments; and the entirety of reproduction and sexuality is surrounded by a reactionary veil of ignorance, misinformation, and puritanical dogma crippling the very measures that would protect and help those that are most needful.

The state of law and ethics surrounding reproduction and sexuality in the West is in desperate need of a sea change, but the brave new world it would create is, for now, still to terrifying to even contemplate. It is a problem, however, that we must confront. We cannot, appropriately enough, leave it for future generations to handle.