Joel Stein crapped my bed.

I see what you did there, NYT. Joel Stein offered you a chance to troll for page-hits from angry YA fans, and you were only too happy to have their wrath in the comment box. What does Mr. Stein have to say?

I have no idea what “The Hunger Games” is like. Maybe there are complicated shades of good and evil in each character. Maybe there are Pynchonesque turns of phrase. Maybe it delves into issues of identity, self-justification and anomie that would make David Foster Wallace proud. I don’t know because it’s a book for kids. I’ll read “The Hunger Games” when I finish the previous 3,000 years of fiction written for adults.

Oh, for fuck’s sake.

There is no coherent position here. There is no positive defense of the pleasures of reading fiction geared to adult sensibilities. There is not even an honest distinction between children’s books and YA fiction. There’s a reason why they call it “Young Adult,” Joel. It’s closer to books for adults than books for little kids. No, Joel Stein does not tell us WHY adults should read adult books, he just looks at Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games (as if they’re interchangeable) and says, “Ew.” He made this non-argument, and the New York Times gave him a platform. Great going, NYT. This is exactly the kind of example we need to have set by the elite mainstream media.

(I’ll pause here for a moment to vacuum the sarcasm out of my keyboard.)

Looking down one's nose is not an insight.

As a writer of grown-up fiction, the last thing I need is someone like Joel Stein on my side. This kind of looking-down-nose sneering isn’t going to make adult enthusiasts of YA fiction any less invested in their love of books geared to teens. It’s not going to make readers any more interested in books for adults. It’s certainly not going to make grown-up novels any more attractive to people who currently don’t read books for pleasure. If he wants to make YA enthusiasts even more uninterested in adult fiction, he’s doing a bang-up job. If the goal here is to make adult lit fic seem even more the bastion of unthinking snobs, then mission accomplished, but as someone who has written, continues to write and is trying to sell adult fiction, I would like to buy Joel Stein a ladder so he can get over himself.

If you’re not interested in reading The Hunger Games, then…don’t read The Hunger Games. When you compare it to Horton Hatches the Egg, however, you look like someone who could have taken a few more Literature credits in college.

DELICIOUS anti-gay nonsense!

While I had a very good time behaving like an asshole on Twitter yesterday while the Maryland Senate debated a marriage equality bill (and they passed it!), I heard some amusing new variations on the usual ridiculousness, but not really any new arguments against.

I find that much of the case against legal same-sex marriage rests on daring us proponents to criticize religion and the privileges it has long enjoyed in our society. I realize it may be a fairly recent development for progressives to come right out and tell you that they have no problem with religious groups losing public funding for public accommodations if they do not follow the public’s rules, but they really should have figured out by now that showing us Bible verses is a hilariously stupid idea.

It’s like this: if you tell us that same-sex marriage is wrong because of a couple of verses in Leviticus, we will point and laugh at you. It’s not even about punishment, it’s just a simple matter of cause and effect. If you expect us to believe that God hates Teh Gheyz because it says so in the Bible, you will have a gaggle of smartassed liberals throwing popcorn at you. Go out into the rain without an umbrella, you will get wet.

 

Really Bad Arguments: Anti-Equality Edition

Good news for civil marriage equality: the Maryland House of Delegates passed a bill yesterday to expand marriage rights to same-sex couples! It’s not finished yet, as we still have the state Senate, but our governor is pro-equality. While the House was debating the bill yesterday, I followed the #MDSSM tag on Twitter to keep up with the delegates’ arguments. While doing so, I failed to hear a new argument against marriage equality, which means I still have not yet heard a single reason to oppose equality that isn’t utter nonsense. That much is not news. What is news is that I realized something new about these Really Bad Arguments Against Marriage Equality.

They are mutually contradictory. Simply by virtue of their existence, some of these arguments cancel each other out.

For example: first, we hear the tired old battle cry of “Defend traditional marriage!”, which is in itself incoherent, as if heterosexual couples will suddenly be unable to get married, or stay married, if the institution of marriage is extended to include same-sex couples. However, later on in the same debate, we get that paranoid slippery slope of, “What next, legal polygamy?”

That’s when it hit me: legal polygamy (specifically polygyny, though there have been some cultures which practice polyandry) is a much older tradition than monogamy. There is nothing more traditional than a wealthy, powerful man with a clutch of dependent wives and an even larger group of concubines. If we really want to protect Tradition, then we should welcome the slippery slope to polygamy!

Your move, Enforcers of Tradition!

Don’t Make Us Uncomfortable: Dutch face-covering edition

Oh, yawn.

Via Jezebel,

One government official said that the law was designed to make everything more Dutch. “People should be able to look at each other’s faces and recognize each other when they meet,” he said.

Kind of makes you wonder how blind people ever manage to get through life.

I still think this “I must see your face” reasoning is pulled out of the ass to rationalize an act borne of mental discomfort. If the Dutch government is worried about men dressing in women’s coverings and carrying guns under their veils, then they should come out and say the law is about security. If they’re having issues with veiled women refusing to remove their coverings in places like courthouses, where facial identification is necessary, then they should freaking well write the law accordingly. If there’s an argument to be made about security, that makes a lot more sense than blithering about how we all have the right to see each other’s faces. No, we don’t. No one’s rights would be violated if I were to walk around Arlington with a burlap sack on my head. I’d look ridiculous, but it would be no skin off anyone else’s nose.

 

I would like to see some Christians defending Jessica Ahlquist.

We have an overall summary of the case brought to our attention by 16-year-old Jessica Ahlquist via Friendly Atheist. With me so far? Church/state separation issue, prayer banner displayed in public school, clearly unconstitutional, no surprise that the judge ruled against the school? Right? Right, so, THAT happened, and now that the case has been decided, a lot of people in Cranston, RI are not happy with Jessica. In fact, they are extremely upset with her, and they’re making sure she knows it.

Greta Christina gives her analysis of the backlash at Alternet. She draws from these two basic observations: 1) this was a clear, simple question of church/state separation from the beginning, and no one should be surprised that the judge ruled against the school, and 2) and yet people are totally enraged at Jessica for her role in this case.

Some edited highlights are below the jump. This shit ain’t pretty, folks.

Emancipating zygotes from the women who carry them

Sikivu Hutchinson has a new post up about the dubiously named Personhood Movement, and she raises a tricky question:

One of the most reprehensible arguments that the personhood campaign makes to bolster its cause is a comparison between egg rights and the movement to abolish slavery. The California campaign’s website cites Joshua Giddings, a 19th century American anti-slavery legislator who held that “God” as “author” of all life grants the inalienable right to life to every being. Following this argument it is unclear who is exactly “enslaving” pre-implanted fertilized eggs. Is it potential mothers who arrogantly lay claim to their own bodies? Is it the state for failing to protect the right of pre-implanted fertilized eggs to implantation? By cloaking its propaganda in the rhetoric of civil and human rights the movement avoids delineation of the real life consequences for women, once again reducing them to vessels with no agency, right to privacy or control over their own bodies.

This is indeed a head-scratcher: who is responsible for the supposed enslavement of zygotes?

How Not to Act Like a Pro-Choicer: Innocent Babies

When you’re involved in a debate—or better yet, just a conversation about a particular woman who’s had an abortion—we on the pro-choice side of the spectrum will much more easily accept your good faith if you do not comment, “But the baby is innocent.”

Yeah, about that? It’s not that we dispute that the fetus hasn’t done anything wrong. The fetus didn’t have a say in where, when, by whom and in what manner it was conceived. We know that. By arguing towards the “innocence” of the “baby,” (note: fetus and baby are not interchangeable) you imply that the abortion is about punishing the fetus for being conceived in the wrong person at the wrong time.

Of course the fetus is a helpless bystander in the circumstances of the unwanted pregnancy, and of course the fetus could grow into a darling, lovable infant if its mother decided to maintain the pregnancy to birth, but for now, in the first trimester, we’re talking about a non-sentient, obliviously developing little critter without the slightest inkling of its own existence. The idea of “punishment” is perfectly unrelated to anything a fetus could experience. It makes about as much sense as punishing someone’s gall bladder. No, there is no dispute over the innocence of the fetus. It’s not about punishing the baby that could have been born. It’s about letting the woman get on with her life.

Furthermore, nobody cares what you, personally, would have done in that woman’s place. It’s all nice and fine if you cannot imagine ever terminating your own pregnancy if you were to find yourself in that situation, but when we’re looking at a woman who has faced a (multiple!) pregnancy conceived by rape when she already had two children who needed her, your declaration that you would never respond to the situation (which you have so far never experienced) the way she did, provides no useful information. One might get the impression that you merely want to show her that you’re a better person. Particularly when we’ve seen what such what-if statements actually yield.

America does not owe AAPLOG members a living.

Robin Marty shows us the latest round of surely-you-jest absurdity in the battle over abortion rights in Kansas. It appears of AAPLOG, the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, are filing to appeal the federal injunction against the enforcement of TRAP laws, which would effectively shut down most abortion clinics. In short, their lawsuit says, “Oh yes they CAN shut down the abortion clinics in Kansas!” What is their legal standing in the case, you ask? I’ll give you the full quote from NECN:

The American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists filed a motion to intervene in the case Monday, along with a notice of its appeal of the injunction. The group claims it has legal standing in the case because its members in Kansas are losing childbirth-related business to abortion clinics. It also says its members are placed at a competitive disadvantage because abortion providers pass along the costs of any complications or medical care after abortions to other doctors.

Is this an argument against abortion rights now? “We need to force women to have babies because baby-catching docs need to make a living”?

Fine, this is just their foot-in-the-door argument to get their case into court. They want to see the TRAP laws enforced because they’re against abortion, full stop. There are plenty of OB/GYNs who do mostly maternity care, don’t provide abortions, and are pro-choice. They seem to be more concerned with how they’re already working a ridiculous number of hours per week with the patients they already have, rather than whining about how they’d have so much more business if only women didn’t have the right to choose.

In order to get their case into court, however, they will need to convince a judge of this “taking away our business” malarkey. This “competitive disadvantage” idea is also quite bizarre. Abortion providers do follow-up appointments with their patients to see how they’re recovering. Now, if a woman has a hemorrhage or a sudden life-threatening infection after an abortion, she will need to go to the emergency room. A woman who suffers major complications after giving birth will also go to the emergency room and will be cared for by doctors other than the OB/GYN who provided her L&D care. We could just as easily say that abortion providers are at a competitive disadvantage to L&D care providers because the latter group don’t have to deal with hordes of protesters terrorizing their clinics.

Does AAPLOG also try to shut down midwifery practices on the grounds that—no, scratch that thought, I don’t want to give them ideas.

Seriously, though, the idea that abortion providers are in competition with maternity care providers assumes that society is obligated to provide the maternity docs with as much business as possible. It assumes that women not only are not allowed to decide how to plan their families, they’re also not allowed to decide how to spend their money. An abortion costs a few hundred dollars. Having a baby at a hospital can run you into the $10k-20k-and-up range, but that’s not why women have abortions. The reason that women have abortions is because they have unwanted pregnancies. We’re not just talking about a product that’s cheaper than the alternative. This is about women making decisions for their lives. The ability of certain doctors to maintain their customer base does not come into that decision.

Ireland will be having none of this bullshit, either.

Ophelia Benson shows us that Vatican officials have seen the Cloyne report and are self-aware as ever:

In its response, the Vatican will point out the  weakness of Irish state monitoring of child abuse. And it will insist that the Taoiseach’s comments failed to recognise the efforts of Pope Benedict XVI to ensure bishops comply with national laws.

The Government will also be told that the seal of the confession is
sacrosanct.

Are we quite sure we’re not reading an article at The Onion?

The claims are, roughly translated:

1. “You didn’t work hard enough to stop us!”

2. “How dare you criticize the Pope!”

3. “We don’t have to tell you NOTHIN’.”

I suppose the Catholic hierarchy’s logic is that as long as they insist they did nothing wrong, the secular world will have no case against them.

I expect the Taoiseach’s response to this will be a classier version of: “Don’t piss on my leg, fuckers.”

Scandinavian Christian Terrorist

As more information comes out on Anders Behring Breivik, the reactions are all over the map.

Sam Harris, for example, complains that Breivik is making his side look bad:

What cannot be doubted, however, is that Breivik’s explicit goal was to punish European liberals for their timidity in the face of Islam.

I have written a fair amount about the threat that Islam poses to open societies, but I am happy to say that Breivik appears never to have heard of me. He has, however, digested the opinions of many writers who share my general concerns—Theodore Dalrymple, Robert D. Kaplan, Lee Harris, Ibn Warraq, Bernard Lewis, Andrew Bostom, Robert Spencer, Walid Shoebat, Daniel Pipes, Bat Ye’or, Mark Steyn, Samuel Huntington, et al. He even singles out my friend and colleague Ayaan Hirsi Ali for special praise, repeatedly quoting a blogger who thinks she deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. With a friend like Breivik, one will never want for enemies.

He then goes on to pout over crossed arms that now no one will want to talk about the awfulness of Islam anymore. While I am unimpressed with his attitude, at least he acknowledges that Breivik’s actions cannot be laid at Islam’s door.