Thank Goodness They Went Home…

Can you stand one more diatribe about the pathetic Indiana legislature that has finally and mercifully departed? 

During the past session, I posted several times about the GOP super-majority’s deliberate rejection of evidence about the state’s woeful performance in education. (I could have focused on a large number of other deficits, but who has the time…?) 

The GOP’s persistent efforts to privatize education–while ignoring the state’s increasingly critical shortage of the public school teachers who teach 90% of Hoosier children–required legislators to ignore the years of highly credible academic research rebutting justifications for vouchers. 

I have previously posted about the many problems with privatized and other forms of “alternative” schools that researchers have identified. Among those numerous problems is the distressingly high percentage of such schools that close within 4 years of their founding. A May 4th article from the Indianapolis Star confirms that Indiana is not exempt from such closures. It appears that a third of charter schools close each year.

Proponents of charters and vouchers claim that these closures are a “feature, not a bug”–that the closures are evidence that “the market” is working. Tell that to the distraught parent for whom these closures are disruptive at best. As the article notes, those disruptions create yet another barrier for students who are already vulnerable to low student outcomes, and particularly for students of color.

The Indiana Capital Chronicle took a look at the legislature’s education policy failures during the just-completed session–and published an analysis with which I entirely agree.

As demonstrated by the 2023 session of the Indiana General Assembly, the Republican supermajority is more concerned with creating problems rather than solving them. 

If we are not able to attract and retain teachers and education support professionals because of low pay, lack of respect and inadequate funding, it’s the students who lose out.  

Too many students are in schools where decision-makers have driven away quality educators by failing to provide competitive salaries and support, disrespecting the profession and placing extraordinary pressure on individual educators to do more and more with less and less.

Additionally, too many potential educators never go into the classroom in part because of appallingly low starting salaries and record wage gaps between teaching and professions that require similar education – gaps that get worse over the course of educators’ careers.

So, what did our elected leaders do to solve these problems? 

    • They silenced teachers by eliminating a 50-year right to discuss students’ learning conditions with school administrators. 
    • They threatened educators with a level-six felony and two-and-a-half years in jail if they recommend certain books to kids. 
    • They trampled on the ability for local schools and educators to work collaboratively with parents addressing individual students’ mental health needs. 
    • They continued to drain public schools of scarce funding by siphoning a billion dollars to wealthy Hoosiers so their kids can attend private school for free.

As the commentary pointed out, it was Republican lawmakers who ignored testimony from educators and parents, and doubled down on what has become a GOP “anti-woke”  obsession. They focused on appeasing the Republican culture warriors who are determined to attack teachers and librarians in our public schools, employing misinformation and lies.

They listened to wealthy corporate donors who gave their campaigns hundreds of thousands of dollars to privatize our schools.

This agenda may benefit their political donors, but it hurts local communities which cherish and rely on their local schools – where 90% of Hoosier kids attend. 

It wasn’t just education, of course. The GOP super-majority ignored environmental concerns, thwarted efforts to improve building codes, spit on medical professionals and went to war against trans children–among many, many other things.

To call them “representatives” is to misuse the term.

Poll after poll confirms that Indiana’s legislature does not represent the policy preferences of Hoosier citizens. Thanks primarily to gerrymandering–which is the most effective of the GOP’s various efforts to suppress the votes of rational Hoosiers–Republican members of the General Assembly represent the most extreme elements of the Republican base. 

Since the Supreme Court has refused to notice that extreme gerrymandering is inconsistent with democracy and “one person, one vote,” the only way Hoosiers will ever get a truly representative legislative body is by massive turnout. Redistricting lines, after all, are based on turnout numbers from prior elections; if the people who have given up going to the polls because they’re convinced they live in a district that is “safe” for the other party were to vote in sufficient numbers, a lot of those “safe” districts wouldn’t be so safe.

I wish I knew how to get that message across.

I wish we didn’t have a legislative super-majority fixated on making Indiana the peer of a third-world country.

 

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Sunday Sermon

Today, I will be delivering a talk–shared below– to Danville’s UU Congregation, addressing our legislature’s assault on trans children.

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Let me begin this talk by quoting from the introduction of a recent article in the New York Times:

When the Supreme Court declared a constitutional right to same-sex marriage nearly eight years ago, social conservatives were set adrift.\

The ruling stripped them of an issue they had used to galvanize rank-and-file supporters and big donors. And it left them searching for a cause that — like opposing gay marriage — would rally the base and raise the movement’s profile on the national stage.

“We knew we needed to find an issue that the candidates were comfortable talking about,” said Terry Schilling, the president of American Principles Project, a social conservative advocacy group. “And we threw everything at the wall.”

What stuck to that wall was the issue of transgender identity, particularly that of young people. As the article went on to detail, the effort to restrict transgender rights has supplanted same-sex marriage as an animating issue for social conservatives. It has reinvigorated a network of conservative groups, increased rightwing fund-raising and set the Right’s agenda in school boards and state legislatures, including Indiana’s.

Nothing like fear of a demonized “Other” to gin up the troops….

I was asked to address the legal issues triggered by the Indiana General Assembly’s efforts to keep trans children from receiving appropriate medical care. I will do that—but before I do, I think it is critically important to point out that what we are experiencing in the U.S. right now, not just in Indiana, isn’t just an attack on the autonomy of women and the existence of trans people; it’s a political calculation that is also part of a wholesale attack by MAGA partisans on the Bill of Rights and long-settled principles of American jurisprudence.

The purpose of the Bill of Rights was—in Justice Jackson’s immortal words—”to withdraw certain subjects from the vicissitudes of political controversy, to place them beyond the reach of majorities and officials and establish them as legal principles to be applied by the courts.” Or, less eloquently, as I used to tell my students, the Bill of Rights answers a deceptively simple question: who decides? Who decides what book you read, what God you worship (or if you do), what politics you endorse, who you choose to marry, whether you choose to procreate…who gets to dictate what philosophers call your telos—the ultimate aims and objectives that you have chosen and that shape your life?

From 1967 to last year, America’s Courts answered that question by upholding a doctrine called substantive due process—often called the individual’s right to privacy or personal autonomy. That doctrine recognizes the existence of an intimate “zone” that governments have no right to enter— a set of personal decisions that must be left up to the individuals involved.  That doctrine, first enunciated in Griswold v. Connecticut, recognized the libertarian principle embraced by the nation’s founders.

Those who crafted America’s constituent documents were significantly influenced by the philosophy of the Enlightenment, and its then-new approach to the proper role of the state. That approach rejected notions of monarchy and the “divine right” of kings (in other words, the overwhelming authority of the state) in favor of the principle that Individuals should be free to pursue their own ends–their own life goals–so long as they did not thereby harm the person or property of someone else, and so long as they were willing to accord an equal liberty to their fellow citizens.

When I was much younger, that principle, and the importance of limiting government to areas where collective action was appropriate—keeping the state out of the decisions that individuals and families have the right to make for themselves– was a Republican article of faith. It was basic conservative doctrine. Ironically, the MAGA folks who inaccurately call themselves conservative today insist that government has the right—indeed, the duty– to invade that zone of privacy in order to impose rules reflecting their own particular beliefs and prejudices.

That process requires the use of other inaccurate labels. We’re hearing a lot about “parental rights,” for example—but we sure aren’t hearing about the rights of parents who want to treat their children’s gender dysmorphia or who want their children to have access to a wide range of books, or to be taught accurate history. In MAGA world, parental rights extend only to parents who agree with them. (A more accurate label would be “parental privileges.”)

Indiana’s legislature has now gone home, but before they left, the culture warriors who dominate that legislature passed measures doing irreparable harm to trans children. That same gerrymandered legislature was first in the nation to pass an almost complete ban on abortion after Dobbs was handed down. It was the same legislature that ignored law enforcement warnings and passed “permit-less carry,” and the same legislature that has conducted a years-long effort to destroy public education in Indiana.

I think it’s really important to understand that denying medical care to defenseless trans children isn’t a “stand-alone” position. It’s part of an entire worldview that is anti-choice, pro-gun, anti-immigration, racist, anti-Semitic and homophobic, a worldview that is autocratic and profoundly anti-American. The good news is that it’s a worldview held by a distinct minority of Americans—and that minority has gotten substantially smaller since the recent judicial and legislative assaults on women and LGBTQ+ people. The bad news, of course, is that—thanks to gerrymandering– that minority controls far too many legislative bodies, very much including Indiana’s.)

What is my evidence for the assertion that these are minority positions?

According to a Pew Research Center poll conducted in 2021, before Dobbs, 59% of Americans believed that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 39% believed it should be illegal in all or most cases. In a Gallup poll earlier this year—after Dobbs— 35% of Americans said abortion should be legal under anycircumstances, and another 50% said the procedure should be mostly legal, but with some restrictions. Only 13% responded that it should always be illegal. (What’s that old saying? You don’t know what you have until you lose it…)

It isn’t just abortion.

In a 2021 Gallup poll, 56% of Americans said they believe gun laws should be stricter, while 43% said they should remain as they are or be less strict.

In a Pew poll from 2021, 60% of Americans said that immigrants strengthen the country, while 37% said that they burden the country.

In another poll that year, 70% of Americans supported same-sex marriage while only 28% said it should be illegal. That level of support explains why the GOP has shifted its main focus from same-sex marriage to transgender people; the public is less familiar with transgender people, so they can more easily be demonized.

With that background, let me turn to the legal issues. On April 5th, Indiana’s ACLU– joined by the national organization– filed a 47-page complaint challenging the discriminatory and cruel anti-trans measure signed by Governor Holcomb. Let me just read the opening paragraph of that Complaint:

Over the sustained objection and concern of medical professionals, Indiana passed Indiana Senate Enrolled Act 480, effective July 1, 2023, which prohibits transgender minors from receiving what the law labels as “gender transition procedures.” These prohibited interventions are evidence-based and medically necessary medical care essential to the health and well-being of transgender minors who are suffering from gender dysphoria, a serious condition that can lead to depression, anxiety and other serious health consequences when untreated. By denying this medically necessary treatment to minors, the State of Indiana has displaced the judgment of parents, doctors, and adolescents with that of the government. In so doing, the State has intruded on the fundamental rights of parents to care for their minor children by consenting to their receipt of doctor-recommended and necessary care and treatment. This violates due process. Additionally, by singling out for prohibition the care related to “gender transition,” the law creates a facial classification based on sex and transgender status, violating the equal protection rights of transgender adolescents. It also violates their bodily integrity and is fundamentally irrational, which violates due process. And, to the extent that it prohibits the provision of essential services that would otherwise be authorized and reimbursed by Medicaid, the law violates the federal requirements of the Medicaid Act and the Affordable Care Act. It also intrudes on the First Amendment rights of doctors and other practitioners.
Speaking of intrusions on Constitutional rights, the ACLU has also filed two cases challenging Indiana’s abortion ban. The first case argues that the ban violates Indiana’s constitution. In my view, the second case is the really important challenge—it’s based upon religious liberty. Your Unitarian Church—along with several other Christian denominations, the Jewish community, and an assortment of other minority religions– has an extremely important interest in both its argument and outcome.

I’m one of many people who are convinced that abortion bans are prompted by a desire to return women to a subservient status– but those bans are publicly justified by equating a fertilized egg with a human person. As doctors will confirm, that is a religious precept, not a medical one. It’s a belief held by some Christian sects, but it is at odds with doctrinal beliefs held by other Christian denominations and by adherents of other religions. In Judaism, the health of the pregnant woman takes priority over that of the fetus throughout pregnancy, and the fetus does not have equal moral status with the mother until the head emerges from the womb.

If the Indiana Supreme Court upholds the ban, it would be favoring one part of one religion over others—a violation of the First Amendment, and ironically, a violation of Indiana’s version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act., or RFRA. As you will all recall, that act was passed in order to justify discrimination against LGBTQ+ citizens. (What’s that saying about karma??) I’m relatively optimistic about Indiana’s Supreme Court, since none of its justices appear to be clones of Clarence Thomas or Samuel Alito.

So here we are.

MAGA Republicans are waging culture war against a fundamental premise of American governance—what Justice Brandeis once called “the right to be left alone”—a premise that animates the Bill of Rights and for the past 56 years has been protected by the explicit doctrine of substantive due process—the premise that there are decisions government doesn’t get to make.

I may disagree with your choice of religion or politics or life partner, but my disapproval is irrelevant. Even if a majority of Americans disagree with your choices, in our system, they are yours to make. Absent harm to others, government must “butt out.”

The Indiana legislature’s assaults aren’t just against women or trans people—these assaults should be seen for what they are: an effort to overturn a fundamental principle of American government.  And if that effort is successful, it won’t just be trans children who suffer. None of us will have rights that government will be obliged to respect.

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Politics And Perception

Every so often, there will be a vigorous debate on social media that hinges on perception–is this dress blue or gold? What color are these shoes?  The arguments can get pretty heated, with viewers insisting that those who see a different color must be defective in some way.

There are scientific efforts to explain these opposing views.(Apparently, when context/background varies, so will people’s visual perception.)

Context and background probably explain other differences in perception–for example, the prevalence of criminal activity.

The linked article from the Washington Post was prompted by the recent spate of irrational shootings–a teenager sent to collect his younger brothers, who rang the doorbell at the wrong house; a woman driver who pulled into the “wrong” driveway; cheerleaders who approached the “wrong” car in a parking lot.

Across the country this month, at least four men have opened fire on someone who’d stumbled upon their space, resulting in one death, two injuries and a car pocked with bullet holes. The apparent acts of snap-aggression have reinvigorated the debate around the prevalence of “stand your ground” laws in the United States and a pressing question: Why are people so quick to pull the trigger on strangers?…

Experts blame a cocktail of factors: the easy availability of guns, misconceptions around stand-your-ground laws, the marketing of firearms for self-defense — and a growing sense among Americans, particularly Republicans, that safety in their backyard is deteriorating. (emphasis mine)

Survey research confirms that fear of the “other”–and a growing belief that pretty much anyone could be a dangerous “other”–is more widespread among Republicans, who are also more likely to own guns. The gap is significant.

Since 2020, the share of Republicans who said that crime is rising in their community has jumped from 38 percent to 73 percent, according to the latest Gallup numbers from last fall. Among Democrats, that same concern climbed only 5 percentage points to 42 percent, marking the widest partisan perception gap since the polling firm first asked the question a half-century ago.

There is a reason Republicans are convinced that crime is growing: GOP strategists have encouraged Republican candidates to dwell on fear of crime and to level accusations that “woke” Democrats are insufficiently supportive of police and too protective of “those people.” (Here in Indianapolis, that strategy was employed by a Republican candidate in the recent primary, who won that primary largely by running repeated, offensive ads describing a violent hell-hole of a city most of its residents didn’t recognize.)

Not surprisingly, Rightwing media is culpable for spreading misinformation about crime.

The perception that life is getting more dangerous has spread on the right as GOP leaders and pundits repeatedly argued, without evidence, that immigrants and protesters are jeopardizing American peace. Conservative news channels have devoted more airtime to violence than their center- and left-leaning competitors: Over the past three years, for instance, Fox News anchors and guests spotlighted crime 79 percent more often than those on MSNBC and twice as much as voices on CNN, according to a Washington Post analysis of closed captioning…

So–what does accurate data tell us? (What color is that dress, really…)

A Washington Post crime analysis of 80 major police departments’ records found that reported violence across the country in 2022 was lower than the five-year average.

And over the longer term, the National Criminal Victimization Survey showed the number of people reporting sexual assault, robbery and other physical attacks is overall much lower now than in the 1990s and has not increased in recent years.

Homicides and thefts did rise during the pandemic, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data —but even then, that rise did not reach the levels of the 1990s. (It is worth noting that when it came to homicides, states with stand-your-ground laws had a 55 percent higher homicide-by-firearm rate in the past two years than the states that didn’t have such laws.)

The 28-year-old grandson of the 84-year-old White man who shot Black teenager Ralph Yarl, told officers that his grandfather was perpetually “scared to death. It’s the paranoia and fear…. It was the 24-hour news cycle — Fox News, OAN, all that stuff — pushing the civil division. Everybody is just so scared all the time.”

Context and background.

It’s one thing when you see a gold dress and I see a blue one. It’s something else entirely when I see a neighbor looking for directions and you see one of “those people” looking to rob or otherwise harm you–someone posing a threat that requires you to get your (always handy) gun and “stand your ground.”

The politicians and media outlets inculcating paranoia in their drive for power and profit are every bit as guilty as the armed and terrified citizens they’ve encouraged to pull the triggers.

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No Equal Rights For You!

In case you consider the concerns addressed in the book I promoted yesterday to be exaggerated, allow me to offer the following evidence that that the GOP is indeed waging war on women–that the Republican Party is working overtime to ensure that we females remain decidedly second-class.

The “Grand Old Party” is focused on denying us bodily autonomy, and in case we missed getting the message, has recently reinforced the message by refusing to extend the deadline for passing the Equal Rights Amendment.

The ERA passed Congress in 1972, having been first proposed in 1923. Constitutional amendments, under U.S. law, must be ratified by three-quarters of all state legislatures, meaning 38 states.

In 2020, Virginia became the 38th state to ratify the ERA, but it did so after the 1982 deadline to ratify the amendment had passed.

The Senate resolution would have removed the deadline so that the ERA could become the 28th Amendment. Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Murkowski were the resolution’s lead co-sponsors.

Murkowski and Collins were the only Republicans to support the extension. The vote was 51 to 47 to invoke cloture on a motion to proceed, falling short of the 60 votes it it needed.

This would be a good time to reiterate my opposition to the filibuster as it is currently employed. In its current iteration, it bears little or no resemblance to the original rule.

A filibuster used to require a Senator to actually make a lengthy speech on the Senate floor–unlike today. In its current form, it operates to require government by super-majority, and it has become a weapon routinely employed by extremists to hold the country hostage.

The original idea of a filibuster was that so long as a senator kept talking, the bill in question couldn’t move forward. Once those opposed to the measure felt they had made their case, or at least exhausted their argument, they would leave the Senate floor and allow a vote. In 1917, when filibustering Senators threatened President Wilson’s ability to respond to a perceived military threat, the Senate adopted a mechanism called cloture, allowing a super-majority vote to end a filibuster, and in 1975, the Senate again changed the rules, making it much, much easier to hold the Senate hostage.

The new rules allowed other business to be conducted during the time a filibuster is (theoretically) taking place. Senators no longer are required to take to the Senate floor and publicly argue their case. This “virtual” use has increased dramatically as partisan polarization has worsened, and it has effectively abolished the principle of majority rule. It now takes sixty votes to pass any legislation, and has brought normal government operation to a standstill.

Operating together, gerrymandering, the Electoral College and the current iteration of the filibuster have allowed a minority party to exercise unwarranted power and throw sand in the levers of government.

In this case, a majority of Senators voted to assure the equal rights of America’s female citizens–but that majority vote was blocked by the members of what I have come to call the “anti” party–anti-woman, anti-Black/Brown, anti-Gay, anti-“woke.”

Anti-modernity.

I still remember long-ago arguments with what were then fellow Republicans about the necessity or advisability of the Equal Rights Amendment. Those who opposed its passage tended to rely on the language of the 14th Amendment, arguing that women could achieve legal equality under that language, and that a separate amendment was unnecessary.

In the wake of the Dobbs decision, which upended fifty years of 14th Amendment jurisprudence, that argument no longer passes the smell test.

Passage of the Equal Rights Amendment would establish gender equality as a fundamental constitutional right–something that, thanks to Justice Alito, we now know the Constitution doesn’t explicitly guarantee.

It would also bring the United States into compliance with international standards for human rights. (Granted, those standards are widely disregarded, but the United Nations has recognized gender equality as a fundamental human right.)

It took a hundred years for women to win the right to vote–and we have now fought (thus far, unsuccessfully) for an Equal Rights Amendment for exactly that long– it has been proposed and supported by feminists for nearly a century. (A representative of the National Women’s Party, Alice Paul, was the person who first introduced the Equal Rights Amendment to Congress in 1923.)

Currently, an overwhelming majority of Americans (81%) support passage of the amendment. The White Christian Nationalist cult that now controls the Republican Party disagrees.( Actually, it disagrees with pretty much anything promising equality for non-whites, non-Christians or non-males…)

Congress will not reflect the desires of the majority of Americans–and women will not have equal rights– until and unless we reform the systems that have turned our country into a failed democracy: gerrymandering, the Electoral College, and the current iteration of the filibuster.

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Shameless Promotion

Okay–I previously warned readers of this blog that yet another book was in process. This time, it’s a co-authored effort with Morton Marcus, who occasionally comments here. The book is titled: From Property to Partner: Women’s Progress and Political Resistance, and it’s available as either an e-book (6.50) or a paperback (15.00).

Bargains, I tell you……

Morton and I have been friends for 30+ years, and–while we don’t always agree–our disagreements tend to be both minor and civil, and both of us think women are people and equal rights are a good thing.

This is the 11th book I’ve written–and only the second with a co-author. Most have been published by academic and trade presses that did absolutely nothing to market them. (Granted, three or four of them were barely interesting to other academics, but there was no effort at marketing even those that I fondly believed merited a broader distribution.) Morton’s experience with publishing houses has been similar, so we’ve published this book on Amazon–keeping the price reasonable and access broadly available. Hint, hint.

This time, we’re marketing!

Our book–with individual chapters by each of us– considers the progress women have made over the last 100 or so years—from a status that essentially made females the “property” of their fathers or husbands, to today’s almost-equal legal parity with men. It outlines the bases upon which that progress rests, and the very real threat posed by the Rightwing culture warriors who see women’s progress as an existential threat to their continued patriarchal dominance.

Here are a couple of paragraphs from the “Afterword,” to give you a taste of the contents:

We began this book as an exercise in social history. The decision in Dobbs was handed down a couple of months after we began researching the path women had taken—the path we’ve dubbed “from property to partner”—and it changed our focus for this effort. Dobbs was a frontal assault on human liberty. Yes, it was a “shot over the bow” of women’s right to self-determination, but it was much, much more. It represents a profoundly anti-liberty worldview that poses a danger to fundamental American constitutional values….

In order to look forward and to act with vigor, we need to understand the technologies and cultural changes that have empowered women over the past years. Now, women (and men of good will) must enlist the technological and cultural opportunities of our times to issue a call to arms. This effort, this manifesto if you will, is intended to assist in a marshaling of building blocks for the critically-necessary program to stem the tide of reaction, to regain what we have already lost, and to prevent the further erosion of women’s personal autonomy. It is the time for all of us to ask, “What else we are at risk of losing?”

So–here’s my shameless plea, and my “elevator speech.”

If you are a regular reader of this blog and feel that its contribution to the current national discourse is worthwhile–buy this book!

If–like Morton–you believe that data “tells the tale” and that an analysis of credible and accurate facts and figures confirms and documents both persistent problems and progress to date–buy this book!

If–like yours truly–you are deeply worried about the culture warriors’ efforts to return women to a subservient status, and interested in the religious and historical roots of their paternalistic backlash–buy this book!

If you want to feel better about the prospects for women’s continued emancipation –buy this book!

And if you do buy it, and after reading it decide that you like it–tell your friends!

We’ll really appreciate it!

I will now return this blog to its usual whining and ranting…..

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