Yvonne Burge’s Obiturary

Yvonne Burge died in Sept. 2022. Ages aren’t something I keep track of, but I’m pretty sure she was in her early 80’s. She fell and broke her femur which led to other complications.

Most obituaries, I think, focus on the good parts of the deceased’s life – and I’ll get to that – but I think it is important to recognize that Yvonne died a lonely and isolated person (although not bitter or angry). I met Yvonne though the Antelope Valley Freethinkers, but it was only about a month before I moved a thousand miles away that I became friends with Yvonne. What follows is some of what I know about her through 1-2 hour phone calls we had every month or so over the past eight years. As an indication of her loneliness, she would sometimes call me needing to talk because she was, as she said, “in a bad place.” Another example is that, for many years, it was not unusual for her to be drunk when we talked. Yvonne knew she had a drinking problem and worked on it. There was an AA meeting close to her but she couldn’t deal with the religiosity of it (as is true for many people – a major shortcoming of 12-step programs). She seemed to have gotten her drinking under control since I don’t recall her being drunk on the phone during the last year or so.

Yvonne was effectively estranged from her son (although there was some minimum contact). Another son committed suicide decades ago. Her daughter suffers from mental illness (and associated financial problems) and, in my opinion, engaged in elder abuse for years; sometimes screaming at Yvonne and playing the “If you love me, you’ll do [fill in the blank]” card. Yvonne was living on Social Security and HUD housing but went above and beyond her means both financially and emotionally to try to help her daughter. Several years ago Yvonne finally accepted the fact that she couldn’t help her daughter and broke off contact. This inability to help her daughter created a great source of sadness and guilt in Yvonne. This is an example of how the lack of mental health care in our society doesn’t just affect those with mental illness, but those around them as well. I also blame the societal myth and pressure that a mother is supposed to be able, if necessary, to take care of their children till death do they part. Another aspect of this is that her husband took custody of their children when they divorced. She didn’t contest the custody since, as was (and often still is) common, she had no power and no means of supporting her children. And then, the father of her children seemed to have no interest in their children as adults.

Yvonne kept in touch with her sister, but Yvonne was an atheist and her sister is very religious so it was difficult for Yvonne to talk to her sister. I learned of Yvonne’s death from her sister, but it was only because her sister and son didn’t know Yvonne well enough to know what Yvonne wanted done with her estate and corpse. Her sister remembered that I had helped Yvonne out and contacted me through Facebook. I suggest anyone wishing to donate in Yvonne’s name do so to a nonreligious children’s organization.

The only other relative I know of is a nibling I found out about through Facebook.

During her later years, especially post-Covid, Yvonne’s main social activity was through Facebook – which shows the positive side of social media. However, she struggled with technology in general and somehow she lost access to her account. She said she got a notice saying her access was removed with no possibility of recovery. I’m not convinced this was true, but I wasn’t in a situation to try to figure things out for her. She created a new account but that didn’t seem to have worked out either. So this shows the downside of social media; the loss of her Facebook account (on top of Covid) was disastrous in terms of her social engagement. No blame, but I offer this as a lessons learned. Do you have friends you are only in touch with through social media? Do you have backup strategies for contacting them if they stop interacting on that media; some way of finding out if they are okay or dead? How long would you wait? Would you even notice? I contacted all of her Facebook friends (her account was still up) to let them know of her death and there were quite a few people that responded with grief; there were people that cared about her. Not to put too fine a point on it but, although I’m fairly certain her sister notified Yvonne’s remaining family, there was only one person (me) who knew about her death, knew methods for contacting some people that knew her, and cared enough to do so. Perhaps I could have used this Facebook friends method to encourage people to reach out to her before she died – but there are a lot of other perhaps’s as well.

Locally, she occasionally attended the Freethinker’s group, but they stopped meeting during Covid. Even with my encouragement she didn’t start attending the Freethinkers when they starting meeting again. People from the Freethinker’s helped her move (6-7 years ago? which she greatly appreciated) and they would have welcomed her. But none of them were close enough to Yvonne to check in on her. And, to be honest, Yvonne started to withdraw from meeting people; to the point that she told me she avoided some of the Freethinker members during a rally in Los Angeles she attended. Yvonne had also been a Universal Unitarian much of her life but didn’t find the local chapter attractive. In general, I think she got caught in the slow spiral into isolation; the further you go down the spiral the harder it is to pull yourself out of it.  

The Antelope Valley (Lancaster and Palmdale, CA) is a very conservative and religious area. The other people in her apartment complex and the people at the nearby senior center were simply too religious for her to connect with. Otherwise, as far as I know, the only local contact she had was with her car mechanic (who treated her kindly), someone that occasionally provided tech support, and some social worker type people that she did not encourage to stop by. She occasionally mentioned other friends she talked to on the phone, in particular an art dealer(?) in NYC; I’m not sure how much she maintained contact with these friends towards the end. I never asked how she ended up in Lancaster but Hwy 14 between L.A. and Lancaster is sometimes called the “welfare corridor.” Lancaster is in L.A. County so the benefits are similar to living in L.A. but with a 15-20% lower cost of living; people tend to migrate to Lancaster and Palmdale. I assume this was part of the reason she ended up where she did.

Yvonne had an interesting and diverse life. She was originally from Cheyenne, Wyoming. She worked on the Alaska Highway, worked for a Jewish organization in L.A., did door-to-door political canvassing (in particular, an anti-nuclear campaign), and worked with children in various ways. She was concerned about national affairs and was very distraught by the election and term of the president I don’t like to name. The Antelope Valley’s economy is largely based on the military-industrial complex (e.g., Edwards AFB and Plant 42) and this in-your-face presence didn’t help her mental well-being as she felt strongly that our country is to militaristic. She was proud of the fact that she hitchhiked from Idaho to New York with $50 in her pocket to attend the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Yvonne never understood how intelligent she was. Even towards the end she was very cognizant and, for example, still driving a car. (She did, however, fall victim to one of the scams perpetrated on the elderly. Someone convinced her to buy a $500 dollar gift card and send it to them for computer insurance. Interestingly, and fortunately, her bank returned the money to her.) She was curious, utilized the library, and read a lot. When Yvonne and I talked it was about intellectual things and generally not chit-chat. Although she did reminisce quite a bit and usually gave an update on her two (sequential) dogs and, in the end, the two cats she had. (A neighbor took the cats.) She was still flabbergasted by the fact that she was actively pursued by sororities during college. (As a side note, her father not only encouraged her to go to college but told her she needed to in order to expand her experiences – yay dad!) Similarly she didn’t fully understand why Fergus Bordewich admitted her to graduate school and mentored her the way he did. Yvonne and I had very different knowledge sets – for example, she knew about art history and Russian literature, I’m a mathematician and scientist – and she struggled with why I enjoyed talking to her.

I expect some people to find what I say next inappropriate, but it appears it has fallen to me to speak for Yvonne’s memory. When I contacted people through Facebook I received a few (not many, but a few) religious condolences – the “I pray she finds peace” type of thing. Yvonne was an atheist. She didn’t believe in fairy tales or imaginary friends. Praying for her or saying anything religious about her disrespects her memory; also, the religiosity of the people immediately around her added to her isolation. On a personal note – and although I don’t speak for all atheists I know I speak for some – receiving religious condolences is an unwanted expression of religious privilege. Sending religious condolences to an atheist is inconsiderate since the sender did not consider the possibility that someone might not want to hear them; it is unempathetic in that it projects beliefs on to other people; and it is uncompassionate to inject religiosity into my grief. If you don’t know someone’s religious beliefs, then ask before saying such things or, better yet, keep your religion to yourself.

Yvonne was an intelligent, knowledgeable, curious, interesting, passionate, and compassionate person who had, for the most part, a good and productive life.

(PS. I normally post a picture to go along with my blogs, but I don’t have a picture of her. We were, after all, mostly phone friends.)

Quick update: Yvonne’s daughter contacted me to say she is not mentally ill. I reiterate: other than a few post mortem details, this obituary was written based on years of phone conversations with Yvonne.

Zoom Trolling YouTube Video

As with most groups, I moved the Eugene Atheist Pub Social I organize to online during COVID. The online meetings slowly devolved until I wasn’t getting very many regular attendees. I am pretty sure that this YouTube video was of the last Pub Social Zoom I did (or very nearly the last at least). I didn’t have any regular attendees and when these trollers showed up I figured I’d mess with their Zoom bomb by not reacting. They recorded the session and included a clipped version in a YouTube video. At the very end, I am standing up to show them my skirt – bummed they didn’t show that part. In July 2022, someone tracked me down on Facebook to let me know about this. I think it’s hilarious as hell that I’m a YouTube video star and didn’t even know it. As of July 2022, over 54K views! The comments about me are quite complimentary. I had never heard of being called “da goat” before. (Greatest of All Times)

The part with me in it starts at about 3:09 minutes in.

Trolling Online ZOOM Classes *FUNNY*, Premiered on Youtube Oct 28, 2021.

Measuring Morality – Metrology Part IV

I’ve had various discussions about science where people have made statements like, “That can’t be measured” and “Science can’t tell us anything about that.” Since I have yet to be presented with a well-defined concept that science is not capable of analyzing (vs. necessarily already having analyzed) I feel such statements need to be addressed. This is the fourth in a series about metrology – the science of measurement. In parts I-III I introduce metrology, the role of units, and discuss the differences between the “hard” and “soft” sciences. For a longer recap see the end of this post.

In this installment I overview some ways morality is measured. In previous posts I’ve presented measurements of such things as consciousness and beauty, but I think the idea of measuring morality strongly illustrates science’s ability to measure something that most people would argue can’t be measured.

Defining Morality – Bottom-Up vs. Top-Down

In the introduction of each of my metrology posts, I state that “I have yet to be presented with a well-defined concept that science is not capable of analyzing.” So if I’m going to measure morality the implication is that morality needs to be “well-defined.” And I think the difficulty of doing so leads to a great many discussions that also includes the question of where morality comes from. For the purposes of this post, I’m not going to provide a general definition of morality and I will only briefly discuss where morality comes from later in this post. My presentation will be based on the engineering concept of bottom-up design. The standard way of illustrating this approach is to contrast it with top-down design.

So consider designing a messaging app. The basics of such an app are a method of inputting the message, a list of recipients, and the process of sending it. The input method can be broken down to typing, voice, etc.. The recipient list can come from a contacts list or a simple reply. And there could be multiple ways of sending it. (See Figure) The process I just went through is top-down design. Start with a general concept break it into pieces, break the pieces into pieces, and repeat. Bottom-up design is where you develop the smallest pieces first and put them together to make larger pieces. For example, typing and voice recognition can be developed without knowing what the top level application is. Modern design is mostly a combination of both techniques. There are enough pieces of software or cars or computers, etc. that you don’t have to custom make all the parts, but you start top down with the main concept and integrate lower level existing pieces. Only creating enough specific pieces needed to develop a unique product.

If we think of morality as a set of moral actions then we can start looking at individual actions (bottom up) without having to fully define what morality is (top down).

This basic approach is applicable – and is applied – to a great many concepts. Gravity can be measured locally without a perfect model of it or an understanding of the relativistic effects on gravity. Individual ideas of beauty can be analyzed without a general definition of beauty. Etc.  These are always within certain levels of precision and accuracy as discussed in Metrology Part I.

Examples of Moral Metrics

Here are a few explicit examples of morality measurements. Of course, it is always possible to debate whether these particular metrics represent morality, but these seem like generally accepted moral concepts. People generally want (pharmaceutical) companies to be trustworthy; countries should strive to provide a good and healthy environment; and we should strive to prevent childhood deaths. My guess is that most people, even if they are aware of these metrics, don’t usually associate them with morality. In particular, good behavior of corporations is usually discussed in terms of ethics. But I argue that these are examples where people have applied concepts of morality to specific areas of the real world and asked how we can tell if we’re doing a good job.

More general examples of moral metrics are formal punishments for breaking the law. That is, laws are an attempt by society to codify moral actions. Of course, just because something is a law doesn’t mean it is just or moral. There are certainly good laws like “don’t murder” but there are also bad laws such as most victimless crimes (in particular drug laws) – but laws are at least an attempt to implement and enforce concepts of moral behavior. And, in terms of measurements, we can look at different sentences that are given for different criminal acts. There are even levels of morality defined: manslaughter vs. homicide or petty theft vs. grand theft.

Once you start thinking about these types of metrics as measuring morality, it is easy to find many examples. And, again, these are a bottom up approach to measuring morality. There doesn’t have to be a highest level definition of morality to understand that murder is bad.

Where does morality come from?

I’m not going to spend a lot of time discussing the (top-down) origin of morality in this blog. But I’ll give some quick notes.

First, the idea that morality comes from god (or religion) fails any serious analysis. If you want a detailed discussion of this see “What It Means to Be Moral: Why Religion Is Not Necessary for Living an Ethical Life” by Phil Zuckerman. The extremely quick summary is that there is no agreement on which god is the true god. (I’ve read estimates of more than 100,000 religions in human history.) Further, even within a single religion there is no agreement of what is moral. (For example, a recent schism in the Methodist Church has been over gay marriage.) In other words, religious based morality is pure opinion and thus any action can be argued to be moral by the person engaging in that action. (Also, as an atheist, I’ll point out that claiming morality comes from god is to claim that all atheists are inherently immoral – which is no less discriminatory than saying all Jews or Blacks are immoral.)

In contrast, there is a growing body of work on how morality derives from evolution. A first aspect of this is to recognize that morality is a human (or sentient being) concept – amoebae, rocks, and the universe play no role in this discussion. Second, the progressive growth of societal structures plays a large part in the evolution of morality. This is a major theme of Michael Shermer in “The Science of Good and Evil: Why People Cheat, Gossip, Care, Share, and Follow the Golden Rule.”  In particular, Shermer provides a nice diagram showing the progression of larger societal structures: individual, family, extended family, community, society, species, and biosphere. Very simply stated, morality is largely a consequence of being social beings. A way of thinking about this is that moral action is in relation to how we treat others.

(A quick note is that I disagree with both Zuckerman and Shermer in terms of The Golden Rule being a moral precept. But that’s another discussion.)

The Progression of Morality and the State-of-the-Art Fallacy

Looking through history, it is very clear that the human idea of morality has progressed or evolved. For example, The Code of Hammurabi (c. 1750 BCE) is a little cringe worthy when compared to the modern Universal Declaration of Human Rights. (When I went to The Louvre in Paris, seeing the Hammurabi stele was one of the top three things I wanted to see because of its historical significance.) For another example, slavery has been legal through much of history and in much of the world but it is currently technically illegal around the globe – although slavery unfortunately still exists. If you look at the Wikipedia article on Timeline of abolition of slavery and serfdom, you can see the progression of slavery’s illegality. It is also somewhat shocking that the article lists changes to laws regarding slavery up to 2020.  And, unfortunately, the Thirteenth Amendment (Amendment XIII) to the United States Constitution has never been formally amended to abolish slavery as a punishment for crime.

The science of morality is very young (at best going back to the 1800s and more realistically the late 1900s). Morality is also, arguably, the hardest science there is in the sense that the so called “soft” sciences or harder than the so called “hard” sciences. (See Metrology Part III.) So, just as science in general progresses – including sometimes rejecting long standing results when new evidence is collected – so, too, the science of morality is progressing and is likely to have some major changes along the way. Even further, just like the fact that science in general will never answer all questions, neither will the science of morality. But as I have pointed out other places, there is a difference between saying science has not currently answered a question and that science cannot answer a question. And many people play what I call a form of Whac-a-Mole – coming up with some specific issue and claiming science can’t say anything about it because it hasn’t yet. This is what I call the State-of-the-art fallacy (which is a form of argument from ignorance.)

But as with other sciences, there are some moral truths that are as evidentially proven as seems possible; that slavery and murder are bad is, arguably, just as true as that gravity exists.

Brief Summary

My main point in this post is that there is no well-defined concept for which science cannot be applied. I’ve chosen morality as a main example because I think most people consider morality to be an extremely slippery concept. But science can approach even slippery concepts via a bottom-up approach to “well-defined.” And, realistically, this is the approach that has been taken for just about any area of science – not just morality. There are ample examples of moral metrics of which I’ve provided a few. And again, as with any science, claiming that science hasn’t already addressed some specific issue doesn’t mean it cannot address that issue.

Further Reading

Here are just a few additional writings I’ve come across that discuss morality from a scientific point of view.

  1. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values by Sam Harris. (book).
  2. Are We Cut Out for Universal Morality? By William J. FitzPatrick. (article)
  3. The Science of Morality by John Shook. (article)

Recap of Parts I – III

In Metrology is not about the weather. Part I – How to weigh a potato, I introduced the most important thing to know about a measurement: there is always an error in both accuracy and precision. I then outlined the traceability of measurement standards from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) to a produce scale used to weight a potato. The final section discussed how the formalization of measurement error is also a formalization of my three philosophical foundations discussed in Am I a figment of your imagination?  

In Metrology Part II – How do I measure thee? Let me count the ways, I introduced the International System of Units (SI) including how an infinite number of units can be derived from the seven base units. I then introduced the formal generalized definition of a measure, which allows expansion beyond SI based units such as those of the International System of Quantities. Of relevance here, is the distinction between physical units and conceptual units (my terminology). I also briefly mentioned statistics as a methodology that analyzes sets of measurements.

In Metrology Part III – The “soft” sciences are harder than the “hard” sciences, I argue that the so called “soft” sciences are still physical sciences. This includes discussing the difference between the types of measurements the different sciences use. This leads to a further generalization of units, culminating in a discussion of fictional units. And, because the “soft” sciences are usually about humans, it is much more difficult to study than, for example, particle theory.

(The cover image of Lady Justice is from Pinterest.)

Nuclear power to the rescue?

Nuclear power to the rescue?

I’ve subscribed to the magazine Analog Science Fiction & Fact for decades. It mostly publishes short science fiction stories. But it also always includes some fact articles – and they get some pretty heavy professional scientists to write the articles. One of the things I like about the fact articles is that they often present things at the fringe of science – things where there is some good work being done, but are in a real state of wait-and-see if they’re going to pan out. I won’t say it’s happened often, but occasionally I’ve seen things discussed in Analog that I later see in popular science magazines and then get to the point of showing up in newspapers.

The fact article I want to talk about is, “Will Nuclear Power Save Us from Global Warming?” by Christina De La Rocha appearing in the November/December 2021 issue. This may not be bleeding edge science, but there is definitely a cadre of people arguing that we have to include nuclear power in our response to global warming so it’s a very topical issue.

I’ve never been a fan of nuclear power – to a great extent because there isn’t a good answer to how to deal with the waste. In particular, I don’t think having to bury something for 1000s of years is a good solution. De La Rocha does a good job of summarizing various aspects of the science and history of nuclear fission including the half-lives of the multiple radioactive nuclides involved but that’s not the point they make that I want to bring up here. They bring up a point I’ve never seen discussed before: how many nuclear power plants would be necessary to make a dent in global warming?

I won’t get into the detail they do, but here are some of the facts they present. A current strategy to meet the goal of keeping warming to 1.5o Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2050 is to reduce global energy consumption to 100,000 terawatt-hours per year (TWh/y). In 2018, the average output of the roughly 450 nuclear power plants in operation was 6 TWh/y. This means if we were to fully convert to nuclear power, it would take 16,700 of these power plants to meet the reduced need, or 1670 to meet just 10% of that need. And one of the ideas I’ve read about is producing smaller nuclear power plants that might supply a small city rather than the larger scale ones we currently have. As De La Rocha points out, the chances of thousands of new nuclear power plants being built and operational by 2050 are slim to none. So, to a certain extent, all the other debates surrounding nuclear power are pretty much moot.

I’m not going to discuss what the possible solutions to global warming are here other than a few general comments. We’re talking about long term infrastructure development. Why not put those investments into renewable sources. Another aspect of nuclear vs. renewable that I’ve never seen discussed is the ability to incrementally upgrade energy plants. Nuclear and coal can’t be; solar and wind can.

That’s the point I want to make, but I’ll take this opportunity to tell my story about the 1979 incident at Three Mile Island. I was attending Bucknell University in Lewisburg, PA at the time. Well, actually I had decided to take a semester off so I wasn’t there during the main incident. Lewisburg is about 50 miles north of Three Mile Island. I was home in Massachusetts, about 250 miles away, when the incident happened, but I visited the fraternity I belonged to (Theta Chi) while the aftermath of the incident was still playing out. This was an early lesson in the difference proximity can make in attitude towards something. In Massachusetts the attitude was pretty much “Did you hear about Three Mile Island?” At Bucknell the TV was on 24/7 with people seriously concerned about their safety. What a difference a couple hundred miles can make.

At the time Bucknell held annual “Colloquium Weekends.” (I think that’s what they called them, and maybe they still hold them.) These were weekends dedicated to a series of forums addressing some poignant topic. So it made a lot of sense for the topic the following semester to be about nuclear energy. I will admit upfront that I’m going off of 40 year old memories but I remember a semiformal debate I attended. I call it semiformal because it had the structure of a formal debate with pro and con debaters. Each of them had a certain amount of time to present their arguments. This was followed by timed rebuttals and timed counter rebuttals. But there wasn’t’ any score keeping the way some formal debates have. The pro side was led by the chair of the Nuclear Science Department from Penn State (not that far down the road from Bucknell). The con side was by the authors of an anti-nuclear book. (I thought it was titled “No Nukes” but I wasn’t able to find it on the net and I know the book by that name that comes up in a search isn’t the book I’m talking about. I told you I’m basing this on 40 year old memories!) What I remember is that every point the pro nuclear people made was rebutted by the anti-nuclear side with documentation in their hands. They literally claimed that the pro side was lying on virtually everything they said in support of nuclear power. Now, I didn’t research the issues very much at the time, so I don’t know how valid either side of the arguments were, but this left a sour taste in my mouth about nuclear power. And, perhaps as interesting, it amazed me that a prestigious academic was so ill prepared for such a public debate.

(The cover image is from Pexels, a free stock photo site. I added the question mark.)

Solstice Banner Update

For the past 3 years I’ve displayed a Solstice Banner in downtown Eugene (with the help of the Freedom From Religion Foundation). This year I am not. The banner was a direct response to an annual Jesus banner display. Last year that banner was not displayed. My opinion, and that of FFRF, is that the public square is not the appropriate place for religious displays but, if someone is going to display one, then it is apropos to display a secular one. This is in order to recognize the nonreligious and to remind the religious that not everyone is religious. If a Jesus banner shows up in the future I will respond the following year.

I would again like to thank everyone that donated to this cause.

I hope everyone had a sunny solstice.

Benefits of Measure 110 are generational

This is a Guest View column I had published Nov 20, 2021 as Legalize Drugs for Everyone’s Sake in the Eugene Register Guard. Oregon’s Measure 110 decriminalized almost all drugs. That is, possession of small amounts of even drugs like heroin only results in a citation and fine. There are a bunch of other related provisions including some benefit to calling a drug hotline for referral to rehabilitation.

This is a response to a Register Guard front page feature article (Oct 29) on “How Measure 110 has measured up.” Although the article mentions inequity in passing, the article is almost entirely about the effect of Measure 110 on drug addiction and rehabilitation. Of note is that Measure 110 only came into effect in early 2021.

Guest View column as submitted:

It would be easy to read the article on Measure 110 (Oct 29) and think that drug criminalization was related to drug addiction. Let’s look at history to see if this is the case. In particular, let’s consider the science, or lack thereof, behind the implementation of drug laws.

A common argument for drug laws is that someone knows somebody that is grateful they were arrested and forced into rehabilitation. Well, I know a former addict that is grateful they were not arrested because a record would have significantly reduced the chances of them having the professional career they had. But such tit-for-tat anecdotal stories don’t represent scientific data. Going deeper, the absurdity of (the church financed) Reefer Madness – which, among other things, implied marijuana would make you a murderer – illustrates the lack of science in the 1930s when drug laws were being put in place. Further, the government continues to ignore its own study by the Shafer Commission which recommended decriminalizing marijuana in 1972.

So what was the motivation? In the 1930s Randolph Hearst and other publishers associated marijuana with supposedly crazy and dangerous Mexicans, while Reefer Madness’ use of parties featuring jazz helped associate marijuana with Blacks. And there is the interview with John Ehrlichman (Nixon’s domestic policy chief) published in Harper’s Magazine. Ehrlichman stated, [The war on drugs] “was authored by President Nixon not for reasons of health or science, but rather simple prejudice … We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities …Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

The consequences of this racist motivation have been huge. Studies consistently show that minorities have been disproportionately targeted and incarcerated for drug possession. A specific example was the longer sentences for crack (vs. powdered) cocaine possession in the ‘80s. Incarceration contributes to multigenerational poverty. Not only does a person lose personal income by being incarcerated and paying related judicial costs, the entire family loses income and parental involvement.

We need better ways of helping people with addiction, but within the context of drug laws, addiction is a red herring misdirecting attention from much greater harm. Addiction is also used as a red herring for the unhoused (addiction is a symptom, not a cause). It’s harder to afford housing when you can’t get a job because of a drug arrest. Another red herring is violence. From Prohibition to drug cartels, the vast majority of drug related violence is due to the illegality of drugs, not their use.

Mental health is another victim of drug demonization. In addition to the trauma of homelessness and incarceration (both individually and to families) the understanding of the therapeutic benefits of psilocybin and similar drugs was delayed by decades because of the Reefer Madness type hysteria around LSD in the ‘60s.

Here are some questions relevant to Measure 110 and decriminalizing drugs. How many people will get jobs that they would not otherwise have gotten because of a drug arrest? How many more people will be able to afford higher education because their parents got those jobs? How many more people will be able to afford housing because of a decrease in stigma associated with drug use and arrest? Since many people can’t afford time off of work, what role does this cost in time and money play in people not showing up to court? Even though over prescription of opioids has increased addiction, not every user of opioids (or other drugs) is an addict. What role does this play in people not calling drug hotlines when cited for possession?

The harm from drug criminalization has accumulated over nearly a century. Undoing this harm by decriminalizing – or legalizing – drugs will take generations, not months. But the mere fact that fewer people are developing rap sheets or being harassed on the streets for harmless drug possession is already a positive step towards changing social and economic inequity.

It is unfortunate that even many proponents of decriminalizing or legalizing drugs are unaware of, or unwilling to acknowledge, the racist origins of the war on drugs or the far ranging harm these laws have caused.  The evidence supports legalizing drugs for everyone’s sake.

(End Guest View column)

There is so much more that could be said about this and it’s not hard to find information supporting the legalization of drugs. For example, I came across this 2015 article, “The Beginning of the End of the War On Drugs? UN Agency Advocates Drug Decriminalization, Says War on Drugs Violates Human Rights” in the Atlanta Black Star.

And the cover image is from a 2016 article by release.org.uk.

Don’t lift my kilt

For most of my life I’ve thought I’d like to wear a skirt but it’s only been the last few years that I’ve started to. The main reason I told myself I didn’t do so was because it is (mostly) socially unacceptable for a man to wear a skirt. Now, it’s an interesting question of whether or not I am “cross-dressing” in doing so. If you strictly define cross-dressing as wearing clothing traditionally associated with a gender that someone doesn’t identify as then I guess I am. (There is a whole other discussion about gender and clothing that I won’t get into here.) But I don’t wear a skirt because I want to dress like a woman. I wear it because I find it cooler and more comfortable when it’s hot out. I don’t think of myself as a cross-dresser.

There are a couple of cultural biases that come up here that took me a while to shed. First, why should the fact that it is socially unacceptable for a man to where a skirt be an issue to me? Perhaps my biggest internalized reason was because of the conservative nature of my work environment. Maybe that’s enough reason and maybe it’s not. But that was always in my mind. The second cultural norm was to start by wearing kilts. It is socially acceptable for a man to where a kilt. (Since I came across someone that didn’t know this, I’ll point out that a kilt is a specific style of skirt – most notably from the nature of its pleats, although the plaid tartan fabric is also a traditional indicator.) It seems like a really weird distinction to make that a particular style of skirt makes a difference in which gender can wear it. I’ve since decided I don’t really like the kilt style of skirt and have started wearing other styles. (This includes silk tie skirts my girlfriend has made for me. I’ll also put in an unpaid plug for my favorite skirt by Macabi Skirts – they have pockets and belt loops!) The power of societal bias has shown itself in that it seems virtually impossible for people to call what I wear skirts rather than kilts – simply because a man is wearing them.

More importantly, it has been a surprising, especially when wearing a kilt, as to how often someone asks what I’m wearing underneath. I finally came up with my standard response: Would you ever ask a woman that question? Now, I’ve never had the situation go beyond this simple – yet totally inappropriate – question. But I’ve read and heard that it is common for people to actually lift men’s kilts to check – or even follow a man into the restroom to check. A letter to Dear Abbey talked about a man literally having his kilt ripped off of him! And when the police were called they started to arrest him rather than the perpetrator. Then, when the police finally understood what happened, they just laughed it off!

Let’s be clear. Lifting a man’s skirt is just as much an illegal sexual assault as it is when doing so to a woman. I think it should also be clear that it isn’t the potential exposure of someone’s genitals that is the issue here. Even if nudity was totally socially acceptable (which I think it should be) the action itself would still be a problem.

Now, having someone lift a man’s skirt doesn’t come close to the level of ubiquitous sexual harassment and assault that many women endure, but I think it illustrates how much sexually inappropriate behavior is still considered socially acceptable.

(The cover image is from Wikipedia with this caption: “One of the earliest depictions of the kilt is this German print showing Highlanders around 1630.”)

The Buy Nothing Project

For as many problems as the internet and Facebook have produced, they have also created some awesomeness – like the Buy Nothing Project. If you’ve never heard of it, it is a group of sites (quite often on Facebook) where things are offered up for free. It is not a bartering site – there is no exchange of goods, services, or money. It’s a great way to get things reused, to help other people out, to get rid of stuff cluttering your house, or to get things you want or need for free. (My girlfriend actively uses it so we can attest to how well it works.)

As a recent N. Y. Times article points out, in addition to obvious stuff like kids clothes and furniture, the offers can be pretty weird – like pickle juice and dryer lint. And it’s quite surprising what people will take.

The groups are all local to encourage community and to facilitate pickup and delivery. It has grown to 6,700 independent Buy Nothing Facebook groups in 44 countries. How awesome is that!

(The cover image is from the Buy Nothing Project website.)

Eliminate religious exemptions for vaccines

This is a letter to the Eugene Register Guard that was published with the title “Trust in science, be gone with religious exemptions for vaccines” on 19 Sept, 21. It’s pretty self explanatory. I took some of the legal information from an article in Freethought Today, a publication of the Freedom From Religion Foundation. There is also an article on this in the L.A. Times by  Michael Hiltzik.

As submitted:

Let’s be clear that there is no legal obligation in the U.S. to provide religious exemptions for being vaccinated. Thirty years ago in Employment Division vs. Smith, Justice Antonin Scalia’s opinion said that as long as a law is neutral, not motivated by a desire to interfere with religion and of general applicability to all individuals, it cannot be challenged based on free exercise of religion. This was reaffirmed in June in Fulton vs. City of Philadelphia. Apropos, courts have upheld public schools’ rights to require vaccinations without religious exemptions. A colloquial way of understanding this situation is the old adage: your right to swing your fist – or your religion, or your virus – ends at the tip of my nose.

The fact that religious exemptions are almost universal in vaccine mandates epitomizes religious privilege. That people use religious exemptions to refuse to be vaccinated is a modern example of the harm done by religion. Why do people hide behind religion to avoid their moral obligation to protect society in general and the vulnerable in particular?

I ask governments, businesses, and educational institutions to have enough trust in science and enough understanding of the law to eliminate these religious exemptions.

(end letter)

A final comment is that religion shouldn’t exempt anyone from anything.

(The cover image was taken from an online search. The design is available in various formats on various websites.)

With Children but Not by Choice

This is a follow on to my previous post about being childless by choice.

Here are some of the reasons why people may have children when they didn’t want to (again, I’m sure there are more and these are not mutually exclusive):

  1. Ignorance
    1. No sex education
    1. Lack of general education
    1. Not knowing you can say no to sex
  2. Lack of access to birth control or abortion
  3. Relationship escalator
    1. Societal pressure
    1. Family pressure
    1. Cultural pressure
    1. Pressure from religious peers
  4. Pressure not to give child up for adoption
  5. Religion
  6. Actual lack of choice
  7. Rape

The fact that people end up with children when they don’t want them is a horrible commentary on society. The fact that some people are effectively forced to have children is absolutely tragic. And let’s be clear that people that are against abortion are doing exactly that – forcing people that don’t want children to have them. Being against birth control or other family planning is even worse than being anti-abortion. In fact, I call people that are against abortion or family planning “pro-poverty” since giving women control over reproduction is one of the few ways demonstrated to reduce poverty. There is a growing body of evidence on this but here’s a very specific study that found that women who were denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later.

It is somewhat obvious why some of these reasons can lead to having a child when you don’t want one but I’ll focus on a few.

One of the surprising reasons to me is: “not knowing you can say no to sex”. A friend told me that when she was young, she thought that if she went on a date and the man wanted to have sex, she had to have sex with him. This illustrates how a combination of societal pressure, patriarchal attitudes, lack of education and probably several other factors can lead to a total misunderstanding of a person’s right to self-determination.

I’ve talked about the relationship escalator before but, for completeness here, this is the societal pressure that says love is followed by monogamous marriage, is followed by living together, is followed by having children. It’s a very strong societal compulsion.

The pressure to not give up a child for adoption is one that I didn’t think of myself. But this is illustrated by the constant refrain (by the entertainment industry, media, and even Dear Abby) that someone’s biological parent is that person’s “real” parent. This attitude needs to change. A real parent is someone that rears a child regardless of biology. And if we look into the future a little, the ability to have a child with more than two genetic donors isn’t that far off. (This is even a common trope in some science fiction.) Would we really consider someone that donated a gene or two but never had any interaction with the child someone’s parent?

And, talking about adoption, there are anti-abortionists that push for adoption as an alternative. Evidently they are unaware of the number of children that have not been adopted and are in the foster care system. From what I can tell, the horrors of the foster care system are portrayed fairly accurately in the entertainment industry. I’ve had more than one person tell me of sexual abuse when in that system. (This doesn’t mean there aren’t loving foster parents. Probably most of them are.) The suggestion to bring an unwanted child into the world to be put up for adoption also doesn’t consider the financial, physical, and emotional impacts of bringing a child to term. This is a societal catch-22: put your child up for adoption to avoid abortion but, in doing so, be a horrible parent.

I’ve purposefully cited both pressure from religious peers and religion itself. People can pressure other people because of their religious beliefs but people can fall victim to religious beliefs as well. This isn’t just the pressure to have children, but also the pressure to not use birth control.

The idea that someone may not actually have a choice at all is counter to the myth of freedom for everyone in the U.S. One form of this is actual (sexual) slavery. Even though slavery is technically illegal in all countries, slavery still exists (including in the U.S.). Arguably one form of this is child marriage. People in the U.S. probably don’t think this happens in the U.S. – that it only happens in other “culturally backward” countries – but it can happen in the U.S. as well. In particular, (as of this writing) there are still two states that have no minimum marriage age if the parents grant permission. And some states have minimums as low as 12. Let’s be serious, can a twelve year old in today’s society actually make such a choice? I think any child being married at such a young age would only do so because the pressures around them give them no choice. There are also modern day (usually religious) cultures where women have no choice about who they marry or even any choice about if they marry – which is another form of slavery. Another form of this is the (mostly religious) idea that a husband can’t rape his wife; that a married woman is obligated to perform “wifely duties” (what a horrible euphemism.) Even in the U.S. it wasn’t until 1993 that marital rape was illegal in all 50 states.

A quick comment is that, although it is more common for women to have children when they don’t want them, men can fall victim to most of the above reasons. The existence of the phrase “shotgun wedding” evidences men being in this situation.

To be fair it is important to realize that just because someone has children when they didn’t or don’t want them doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t love their children. But this can add to the tragedy – especially in cases of poverty or adoption.

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