How Will We Remember Ohio?

I'm not sure what I want to accomplish in this post, but I think it's pretty modest.   I think I just want to make people aware of something, read a couple of articles about it, and think about it.  That's not so much to ask, I think.

In August 2012, in Steubenville, OH, a night of teen partying went horribly wrong.   If party after party of under-aged drinking wasn't bad enough, more than one of those parties apparently were the sites of repeated gang-rapes of a 16 year old girl.   Since that night, as the local law enforcement and civic leadership essentially decided to protect the student athletes rather than the female victim, the Internet has stepped in.   Publicity of the incidents, exposure of the students' web posts and tweets boasting of the repeated assaults, videos and photos of the attacks (including one showing the unconscious teen being carried from one party to another for more raping), and assorted other efforts to expose what Steubenville was apparently trying to ignore, have all occurred online.  

Two students have been arrested and are scheduled to stand trial in juvenile court in February, 2013.   None of the party-goers who witnessed the assaults, posted photos and videos of the assaults, and who failed to stop the attacks or report them to law enforcement have been charged.  The online hacktivist group "Anonymous" has gotten involved and leaked some of the evidence and Roseanne Barr has also gotten involved in applying pressure to political leaders in Ohio to ramp up the investigation.   Even porn actress Traci Lords has spoken about how she was raped as a ten year old when she lived in Steubenville, and speculated that the attack and "culture" in Steubenville must have had something to do with her embarking on a porn career.

The undercurrent to the entire sordid episode is that Steubenville has long revered their vaunted football team and is not likely to actively prosecute those students who participated in the rapes, observed the rapes, or failed to stop the rapes.  

Read about it:
New York Times article, one of the first mainstream news stories about the rapes
Boston Globe opinion column on "stigma shift" from victim to accused
The Nation blog on media explosion
New York Magazine story on threats against NYTimes reporter
New York Magazine story about Roseanne Barr involvement
Buzzfeed interview of Roseanne Barr


So, the question is, will Ohio be known as a place that celebrates gang rape, or a place where it is aggressively prosecuted?  I can't image what it must be like to be a female of any age in this town.
 


 
 

Where's The Do Not Fly List When We Need It?

OK, it's Crazy News Day apparently.

So, a local software consultant has been convicted of "sexually groping" the thigh of a fellow passenger on a flight from Las Vegas to Chicago.   He was convicted by a Federal jury after a 3 day trial in Chicago.   But wait, there's more.

The guy was seated between a woman (in the window seat) and the woman's husband (aisle seat) for this flight.   The woman planned to sleep during the flight and woke up several times when feeling something on her leg.  The third time, she woke to discover the guy's hand up the leg of her shorts, at which point the woman "struck" the consultant and yelled at him.  Fellow passengers and flight attendants on the 2011 Southwest Airlines flight also testified.     But wait there's more.

It appears that the offender has been convicted twice before for virtually identical crimes.   In 2000, he pleaded guilty in Cook County Court to groping the breast of a passenger in the seat in front of him on a flight from Detroit to Chicago.  In 2002, he was convicted in Federal Court in Detroit for groping the breast of a fellow passenger on a flight from San Jose to Detroit.

So, we have a secret "No Fly List" in this country.  If your name gets on this list, you're banned from boarding flights, allegedly because you might be a terrorist and harm people.  So if we already have this list, why isn't this jerk, a serial sexual groper with three convictions on his record, banned from flying anywhere?   He's a clear and present danger to female passengers.  How many felony convictions are required before you get jail time?
 

The More Things Change

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The older I get, the more often I feel that I'm in some sort of time warp, in which events of today seem to be reflections of events that occurred in my younger days.   In today's topic, the current events mirror some even older events, namely the anti-labor rhetoric and demonizing that led up to the "Haymarket Riot" in Chicago, back in 1886.  Just as it is today, the labor union movement in the 1880s was under attack and made the scapegoat for the nation's economic problems.   The effect of Haymarket and the resultant trials and hangings, was a setback to labor organization and development in this country for decades.   Then, workers were struggling to form unions; now workers are struggling to keep them.  Haymarket became the focus of May Day memorials around the world, but hardly at all in this country.  

All of this is described in detail in a timely article in the Chicago Tribune which can be found here.  We need to ensure that today's workers know what happened in Chicago in 1886 and how it relates to their lives today.   Because it surely does relate to today.

Gay Rights As Civil Rights

There's been a lot of coverage this past week over the recent vote in Maine repealing gay marriage in that State. I know that much, if not most, of the funding on both sides of the issue came from outside Maine, and that fact bothers me. I don't like the idea of "outside" money being used to sway "local" opinions on a referendum. I get lots of emails soliciting financial support for lobbying efforts around the country, and I generally don't participate, unless it's for something that is on my ballot. I don't want people in other States telling me what I should do, and I don't want to tell them what they should do. That said, I do support the right of gay couples to marry.

Those that oppose it seem to focus on the "sanctity" of marriage, but that argument seems to be fallacious when one considers that the majority of heterosexual marriages in this country end in divorce. If marriage is sacred, why have we made it so easy to dissolve one?

At any rate, it's hard to rationally counter the shouting of the religious right on this topic, unless you're comfortable with debating the finer points of biblical texts. Burt Constable's column "Don't remember the Maine vote, just keep eyes on gay prize," does a good job of it with a discussion of Rev. Gilbert H. Caldwell, a retired, black, heterosexual, Methodist minister who is a new member of the Board of Parents, Family and Friends of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

This week's vote in Maine against gay rights was disappointing, but Caldwell calls it another example of "letting the majority determine the rights of the minority." If not for court decisions upholding the rights of the minority, some states still might vote to ban interracial marriage or integrated schools, Caldwell notes.

You might expect a retired minister to be fluent with biblical texts, and Rev. Caldwell, who was an active participant in the fight for civil rights in the early 1960s with Martin Luther King, does not disappoint.

People who use the Bible to deny rights to gays, "use the Bible to sustain their bias," Caldwell says. "And that, to me, does great damage to the sacred book for those of us who are Christian. I say we've done damage to the depth and breath of scripture when we have used the Bible as a book to bash people."

There is a certain calming influence to Rev. Caldwell's words. He urges us to be steadfast and not be discouraged and to continue to seek equality for everyone. He paraphrases a Martin Luther King quote "Today we know with certainty that segregation is dead. The only question remaining is how costly will be the funeral":

Caldwell says the days when civil rights belong only to the heterosexual population are dying. "We're in the funeral-making with heterosexualism," Caldwell says, employing a word he lumps in with racism and sexism. "We just have to figure out how long that will be."