ACLU comes to aid of Sen. Craig

The ACLU throws its support behind a sitting Republican senator!

But that's not the best part. This is the best part.

In an effort to help Idaho Sen. Larry Craig, the American Civil Liberties Union is arguing that people who have sex in public bathrooms have an expectation of privacy.

Funny thing is, they apparently have a court precedent:

The ACLU wrote that a Minnesota Supreme Court ruling 38 years ago found that people who have sex in closed stalls in public restrooms "have a reasonable expectation of privacy."

Bless them. They're out in left field on this one -- though I'll see if I can get a look at that precedent they cite. But I love to see them following a legal principle without fear or favor, even if they're following it out a window.

Craig, ACLU, politics, midtopia

D.C. madam update

Add to the list of prominent people linked to Deborah Palfrey's call-girl ring: Democratic activist and lobbyist Bill Broydrick. He called Palfrey's number three times in 2004.

Who the heck is Broydrick?

A former state lawmaker and longtime Democratic activist, Broydrick is considered one of the most influential lobbyists in Wisconsin and Washington.

Broydrick and Associates, the firm owned by Broydrick and his wife, Cynthia, consistently ranks among the highest-paid lobbying firms in the state and has offices in Madison, Washington and Tallahassee, Fla.

Broydrick declined to comment on the finding. One interesting twist: His lobbying firm is a joint venture with his wife, Cynthia. If there's any personal fallout, it could turn professional as well.

No evidence of hypocrisy just yet, though.

Wisconsin, Palfrey, Broydrick, politics, midtopia

D.C Madam update

Two new names have supposedly popped up in the D.C. Madam phone records, but both have problems.

One is Jack Burkman, a GOP lobbyist and conservative pundit who once worked for Focus on the Family. This wouldn't be particularly surprising, given a reported history of propositioning young women. Thus far, though, the claim is limited to a single somewhat obscure web site -- though one that appears to have a copy of the Madam's phone log in its possession. Burkman denies it.

The other is Daniel Patrick Moynihan, the legendary Senate Democrat. His number was found by online journalist David Corn. The problem is that the number match is tenuous -- appearing only on a single brochure put out by an environmental group in 1999. One would expect a number associated with the senator to leave more footprints. Even if the number did belong to Moynihan's office, the client could have been an aide or a visitor -- or it could have been Palfrey calling up to complain about her taxes or something.

Corn goes on to provide a good rundown of the difficulties in finding unambiguous links in the phone records.

Palfrey, Burkman, Moynihan, politics, midtopia

Vitter goes missing

A day after acknowledging he had patronized an escort service, Sen. David Vitter is keeping a low profile. Invisible, actually. Not at his D.C. apartment, not at his office, and not on the Senate floor.

I'd hide out, too, if I was him. But he's still being paid by the taxpayers, so he'll need to show up for work at some point.

Also, remote as the possibility may be, I hope nothing has happened to him. He doesn't sound crazy enough to harm himself over something like this, and the criticism and laughter are well deserved. But I'll feel better when he's back in public view.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post has the details on how Vitter was exposed, with Larry Flynt confirming his role. More interesting to me is that the process is so laborious that going through the entire list of phone numbers is going to take a good long time unless someone throws some serious computing power at it. Expect revelations to dribble out over many months, with long waits in between.

ABC News delves into the psychology of hypocrisy, that special mental talent that lets powerful public figures say one thing while doing another. My favorite quote? "Often the people who speak loudest about something are trying to protect themselves from their own urges. They act out one way on the public stage, but inside they have this urge. They feel it's wrong, and outwardly, they're telling themselves it's wrong. It's as if they're having a conversation with themselves."

Let's apply that to the gay marriage debate, shall we?

Update: Vitter's office says he's "with his family" and will return to work soon.


hypocrisy, Vitter, politics, midtopia

Former "gay conversion" officials apologize

Exodus International is the leading practitioner of something known as "conversion therapy" or "reparitive therapy," in which homosexuals are "healed" of their affliction through prayer, religion and counseling, becoming happy, healthy heterosexuals.

There are plenty of excellent reasons to be skeptical of this approach. For one particularly trenchant commentary, consider a Salon writer's account of his session with one such "therapist" -- who, among other things, made false claims about psychology's stance on homosexuality. He also said homosexuality was "highly correlated" with poor hand-eye coordination (you know, bad at sports), childhood loneliness (lonely kids are apparently more likely to masturbate, which somehow leads to being gay), wanting love from a distant father (thwarted filial affection turns into generalized sexual desire) and a whole lot more fluff.

Now, on the eve of Exodus' annual conference in Irvine, Calif., three former top executives at Exodus are apologizing for their actions on behalf of the group. They were sincere, they say, but they eventually came to realize the harm they were causing.

The three are Michael Bussee, a co-founder of Exodus; Jeremy Marks, former president of Exodus' European operations; and Darlene Bogle, founder and former director of an Exodus referral agency in California.

"Some who heard our message were compelled to try to change an integral part of themselves, bringing harm to themselves and their families," the three, including former Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee, said in a joint written statement presented at the news conference. "Although we acted in good faith, we have since witnessed the isolation, shame, fear and loss of faith that this message creates."...

All three said they had known people who had tried to change their sexual orientation with the help of the group but had failed, often becoming depressed or even suicidal as a result.

To his credit, Exodus president Alan Chambers acknowledges problems while defending his organization.

"Exodus is here for people who want an alternative to homosexuality," Chambers said. "There are thousands of people like me who have overcome this. I think there's room for more than one opinion on this subject, and giving people options isn't dangerous."

He added that sexual orientiation "isn't a light switch that you can switch on and off."

Well no kidding.

Things like reparative therapy will always be able to claim some "success" because of two things: the power of the human mind and the fact that sexual orientation is more of a spectrum than a pair of opposites. Let's deal with each in turn.

The adaptability of the human mind is legendary. Given time, people are able to accustom themselves to situations that, looked at from a distance, would seem completely degrading, impossible or entirely undesirable. On the negative side, it's why we have things like genital mutilation, the "untouchable" castes in India and people living in garbage dumps. On the positive side, it's the determination behind incredible feats, like the marathon monks of Japan.

Sexual orientation is a strong force, but given the range of things humans can adapt themselves to, it's not an insurmountable one. If the societal norm were homosexuality and someone really, really, really wanted to fit in, they could probably find a way to accomodate the need to take a same-sex mate.

This becomes even more true if you view sexuality as a spectrum. In that view, most humans have a mix of same- and opposite-sex attractions, with the only difference being the ratio between them. The spectrum probably looks like a lopsided, inverted bell curve, with most of the population clustered at either end of the scale. A practicing heterosexual, for example, might be 99% hetero and 1% homo.

Such people have little inclination and absolutely no need to address the 1% -- indeed, they may be entirely unaware of it. But a certain percentage of the population is more mixed, becoming increasingly bisexual: 80/20, 70/30, 60/40, 50/50 and all the way through to the other end of the scale, where the most strongly identifying homosexuals reside.

If you accept that view, then it's possible to understand how a 60/40 homosexual, for example, might be able to suppress the 60 and express the 40 in order to fit in and gain societal acceptance. Or, with far greater mental effort, a 90/10 homosexual could do the same thing.

But at that point you have to stop and ask: Why? What's the point? Is there any rational basis to the societal bias against homosexuality? And is it either fair, reasonable or humane to push gays to get "fixed"?

Then, too, consider the situation where a group points to a 60/40 who was cured, by way of increasing the pressure on a 90/10 to view himself as both "there's something wrong with me" and "I'm too weak-willed to fix it." When the situations aren't remotely parallel, and all in service of... what?

I'll grant Exodus' Chambers the philosophical point that "choice is good," and if gays think they can become nongay they have every right to make the attempt. But that facile justification ignores the source of the problem -- societal bias. Wanting to "go straight" isn't generally something that comes from within. It's most often a reaction to discrimination imposed from without.

Chambers' argument also ignores the complexity of sexual orientation, and in that area groups like Exodus are complicit. They acknowledge that change is hard, but they don't acknowledge that sexuality isn't binary, and so change is harder for some than for others.

I respect monks that can run marathons every day. I just don't see why that sort of effort is a reasonable thing to ask gays to attempt simply because society is uncomfortable with them. It's a "blame the victim" approach that fails any society-level cost-benefit analysis. On an individual level it may pass such an analysis, but only because of pervasive social bias against gays. And the analysis is warped when people are misled by bad science and false claims perpetrated by groups like Exodus.

sexual+orientation, gay rights, politics, midtopia

Sex and religion

Slate's Hanna Rosin this week reviewed a provocative new book: "Forbidden Fruit: Sex & Religion in the lives of American teenagers."

What's so provocative about it? The author, Mark Regnerus, a sociology professor at the University of Texas in Austin, did a detailed survey as well as in-depth interviews to correlate religious belief with sexual behavior. And the results are surprising -- or not, depending on your point of view.

Teenagers who identify as "evangelical" or "born again" are highly likely to sound like the girl at the bar; 80 percent think sex should be saved for marriage. But thinking is not the same as doing. Evangelical teens are actually more likely to have lost their virginity than either mainline Protestants or Catholics. They tend to lose their virginity at a slightly younger age—16.3, compared with 16.7 for the other two faiths. And they are much more likely to have had three or more sexual partners by age 17: Regnerus reports that 13.7 percent of evangelicals have, compared with 8.9 percent for mainline Protestants.

And of course, there's the "not enough information" problem.

When evangelical parents say they talk to their kids about sex, they mean the morals, not the mechanics. In a quiz on pregnancy and health risks associated with sex, evangelicals scored very low. Evangelical teens don't accept themselves as people who will have sex until they've already had it. As a result, abstinence pledgers are considerably less likely than nonpledgers to use birth control the first time they have sex. "It just sort of happened," one girl told the researchers, in what could be a motto for this generation of evangelical teens.

Again, not surprising to any advocate of comprehensive sex education. Keeping kids ignorant about sex simply increases the risk to them when they eventually do have sex.

Which they will. Because while "save it for marriage" pledges and abstinence programs may slightly delay a teen's first premarital sexual experience, they do not generally prevent them. So the risk remains, unabated:

he fate of the True Love Waits movement, which began with the Southern Baptist Convention in the '90s, is a perfect example. Teenagers who signed the abstinence pledge belong to a subgroup of highly motivated virgins. But even they succumb. Follow-up surveys show that at best, pledges delayed premarital sex by 18 months -- a success by statistical standards but a disaster for Southern Baptist pastors.

Yowch.

Before getting all smug about short-sighted moralizing, however, consider a few of the book's caveats and other findings. First, a big caveat:

Partly, the problem lies in the definition of evangelical. Because of the explosion of megachurches, vast numbers of people who don't identify with mainstream denominations now call themselves evangelical. The demographic includes more teenagers of a lower socioeconomic class, who are more likely to have had sex at a younger age. It also includes African-American Protestant teenagers, who are vastly more likely to be sexually active.

There also are demographic splits: Southern teens are more likely to have sex than teens in the North, as are those who are less well-off and less well-educated.

Next, there is a group of teens for which abstinence pledges actually work.

Among the mass of typically promiscuous teenagers in the book, one group stands out: the 16 percent of American teens who describe religion as "extremely important" in their lives. When these guys pledge, they mean it. One study found that the pledge works better if not everyone in school takes it. The ideal conditions are a group of pledgers who form a self-conscious minority that perceives itself as special, even embattled.

So truly committed religious teens wait until marriage. This is hardly surprising; they are living out values they strongly believe in, so outside coercion is unnecessary. I would think such teens would abstain until marriage even without abstinence pledges and even if they attend comprehensive sex-ed classes.

For the same reasons -- strong social networks that reinforce the value system -- Mormons and church-going Asians also have high levels of abstinence.

I have not read the book, so I cannot comment on its methodology. But it seems safe to draw some general (and somewhat obvious) conclusions.

1. Teens are remarkably impervious to coercion that goes against their own values or desires.

2. Pressure to remain abstinent at best delays the onset of sex; there is still a need for comprehensive sex education.

3. If you want kids to avoid sex, you must get buy-in from them -- either as a moral value (wait until marriage or adulthood) or a practical matter (the reward isn't worth the risk). This takes more than threats, lectures and good intentions. It takes responsible, loving and frank parenting over a period of years so that your values become their values, too.

4. Comprehensive sex education, contrary to the claims of its moralistic critics, apparently hasn't been interpreted by teens as license to bang like rabbits.

Discussing healthy sexual behavior with your kids can be a tough road to walk, because there's a certain contradiction involved. You're trying to persuade them to wait until they're older while also trying to avoid going overboard and demonizing sex as "dirty" or bad.

But if you've got a good relationship with your teens, it should work out most of the time. Even with my young children, I've found that kids can handle complex issues and moral ambiguity if it's presented forthrightly. Just avoid rules that are oversimplified, overly draconian or simply not mentioned at all. All three approaches may be more comfortable for the parent, but in each case you're either not giving them information they need or the world you describe is so unlike the one they encounter that they'll conclude you're either lying or clueless.

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the Weekly Standard praises it. Interestingly, the conservative magazine notes that blue-state teens, while sexually progressive in attitude, actually have sex later than their red-state counterparts and are also more likely to use contraception when they finally do have sex. Yet having accepted that, the reviewer goes on to claim that the abstinence movement has played an important role -- citing the same True Love Waits data I quoted above. But at best that shows that encouraging abstinence only works as part of a comprehensive sex-education curriculum -- most of which have always included abstinence anyway.

On a blog run by his publisher, the author, Mark Regnerus, sounds off about the state of sexual learning in the United States. And in a review-plus-interview by the Austin American-Statesman, Regnerus makes some of the same points I do, specifically that "the idea of 'the talk' has to go away. It must be an ongoing dialogue."

And here's a Q&A he did with the Dallas Morning News, where again he sounds a bit like me: "We have to talk about facts, to be open about the beauty and pleasure of sex, and its mixed emotions and consequences. Tell them the complicated truth about the beauty and frustration of marital sex. Admit there is a gray area.... We all know it. No more hiding."

A Presbyterian minister and professor gives the book high marks, saying there's an interesting insight on every page.

sexuality, religion, politics, midtopia