If you haven’t been following the news or getting updates from various gay rights groups, you may have not noticed that these past few months have been something of a renaissance of same-sex civil unions and domestic partnerships – they’re cropping up everywhere, and state legislatures and governors are actually taking them seriously. They’re not ideal (see: practical issues of civil unions in New Jersey)* but goddamn they’re helpful. Speaking as someone whose aunt’s partner** is having serious health issues -- the context in which the lack of marriage rights affects gays and lesbians most seriously – this is something that makes me very happy, for all that I am critical of the institution of marriage.
A recent summary, for your information:
Past years:
Connecticut – CUs (2005)
California – DPs (2005)
Maryland – governor vetoed DP bill passed by legislature(2005)
Maine – DPs (2004)
Massachusetts – Marriage (2004)
Vermont – CUs (2000) ***
Hawaii – ‘reciprocal beneficiary registration’ (1997)
New York City – DPs (1997)
Washington D.C. – DPs (1992) ****
San Francisco – DPs (1989)
2006-2007:
New Jersey CUs
Washington – DPs to go into effect in June.
New Hampshire – CUs (today!) (gov. still has to sign, but he says he will)
Keep your eye on:
Oregon - DP (bill has to pass only one more chamber)*****
New York - SSM (Spitzer says he’ll introduce legislation in weeks to come)******
Maryland - SSM (courts)
Rhode Island - CUs (bill submitted)
Illinois - CUs (bill recommended to be voted on by house – soon?)
-----------------------------------------------------
* Times Select - fyi students, did you know you can get it free? Go here.
**I’d call her my aunt as well, since they’ve been together as long as any of my other aunts and uncles by marriage, but I wasn’t raised to call her 'Aunt ----' and starting now just sounds weird. That’s probably not a good reason, but it’s hard to call someone who you’ve only gotten to know in an adult context, ‘aunt’. So for the sake of struggling with heterosexism, let’s call her my aunt, but know that due to heterosexist forces in my childhood that I can’t gloss over, I don’t add an ‘Aunt’ before her name when I refer or talk to her.
***Same-sex marriage legislation introduced in 2007.
**** barely – they’re not allowed to spend any money on the program, and at least the UK doesn’t recognize them as equivalent to civil partnerships.
*****It’s a civil union bill but people threatened to throw hissy fits if they were called civil unions, so they changed it to domestic partnerships in name only and all of a sudden everyone is peachy-keen with it. And they say what you call it doesn’t matter… I suspect when it passes (it’s looking pretty likely) this will have very serious consequences of inequality for queer Oregonians, but at least they’ll have a platform upon which to fight for more, unlike now where all we have is a constitutional same-sex marriage ban and an anti-discrimination bill (which, however, is an excellent bill).
******this probably won’t amount to anything any time soon, but it sounds like Spitzer is actually pushing for marriage as opposed to CUs and DPs, since New York is not one of the many states with the constitutional bans. It could probably get by the house, but almost certainly not the senate.
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Sunday, April 22, 2007
Things That Drive Me Bonkers: Gonzales v. Carhart edition
1. Intelligent, eloquent, and progressive women who insist that they cannot take a pro-choice stand because the issue is ‘too emotional’ for them and they can’t ‘think about it rationally.’
Women, this is an emotional issue, but that doesn’t disqualify you from having a valid opinion. Emotion is not the antithesis of rationality, no matter what law school tells you.
2. When people say, “But the partial birth abortion ban has an exception for women’s lives!”
Yes. And it doesn’t have one for health. Do you really so little value women’s health that you would allow it to be damaged, so long as it actually stopped short of killing them?
3. People who say, ‘well, I’m pro-choice, but I’m really uncomfortable with partial-birth abortions. I mean, at that point, why doesn’t she just have the baby? But it should have an exception for a woman’s health.’
Okay, I’ll provide a list of reading for you, but I’ve really reached my limit on how many times I can explain that ‘partial birth abortion’ doesn’t exist. It’s a made up name for a medical procedure that is performed when it is the safest way to have an abortion, but it is by no means the only way. Yeah, I will grant you it’s really, really gross. But gruesomeness is no basis to outlaw a medical procedure that, though rare, is done because it is medically necessary.
Why do people think that women undergo such a procedure for fun? Who could imagine thinking that a pregnant woman is sitting there going, well, I could give birth at this moment were labor induced, to a totally healthy baby with no harm to myself but instead I want this really scary procedure. That’s not how it works people. (but you know what? I’m so pro-choice that even if it did, I’d still support it, because in my personal balancing test, the woman’s interest in her own body always outweighs the state’s interest in what the courts have declared to be a potential life.) But this is the real world, with real women, and the truth of the matter is that this is a procedure rarely used, but when it is, it is used because the fetus is dead, or is not going to live, and/or will severely hurt the woman if carried any further.
Putting a health exception on this ban would have essentially made it ineffective, something anti-choicers clearly understood, and that is why they intentionally left it off.
Other articles and posts on the subject:
Terminating Women's Rights by Jill @ Feministe.
Do Women Have lives by Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon.
Health v. Life, Trying to Clear Things Up by Cecily @ And I Wasted All That Birth Control.
Intentionally Choosing by Terrance @ The Republic of T.
Father Knows Best: Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women. by Dahlia Lithwick @ Slate.
Gambling with Abortion: Why Both Sides Think they Have Everything to Lose by Cynthia Gorney @ Harper's Magazine.
Women, this is an emotional issue, but that doesn’t disqualify you from having a valid opinion. Emotion is not the antithesis of rationality, no matter what law school tells you.
2. When people say, “But the partial birth abortion ban has an exception for women’s lives!”
Yes. And it doesn’t have one for health. Do you really so little value women’s health that you would allow it to be damaged, so long as it actually stopped short of killing them?
3. People who say, ‘well, I’m pro-choice, but I’m really uncomfortable with partial-birth abortions. I mean, at that point, why doesn’t she just have the baby? But it should have an exception for a woman’s health.’
Okay, I’ll provide a list of reading for you, but I’ve really reached my limit on how many times I can explain that ‘partial birth abortion’ doesn’t exist. It’s a made up name for a medical procedure that is performed when it is the safest way to have an abortion, but it is by no means the only way. Yeah, I will grant you it’s really, really gross. But gruesomeness is no basis to outlaw a medical procedure that, though rare, is done because it is medically necessary.
Why do people think that women undergo such a procedure for fun? Who could imagine thinking that a pregnant woman is sitting there going, well, I could give birth at this moment were labor induced, to a totally healthy baby with no harm to myself but instead I want this really scary procedure. That’s not how it works people. (but you know what? I’m so pro-choice that even if it did, I’d still support it, because in my personal balancing test, the woman’s interest in her own body always outweighs the state’s interest in what the courts have declared to be a potential life.) But this is the real world, with real women, and the truth of the matter is that this is a procedure rarely used, but when it is, it is used because the fetus is dead, or is not going to live, and/or will severely hurt the woman if carried any further.
Putting a health exception on this ban would have essentially made it ineffective, something anti-choicers clearly understood, and that is why they intentionally left it off.
Other articles and posts on the subject:
Terminating Women's Rights by Jill @ Feministe.
Do Women Have lives by Amanda Marcotte @ Pandagon.
Health v. Life, Trying to Clear Things Up by Cecily @ And I Wasted All That Birth Control.
Intentionally Choosing by Terrance @ The Republic of T.
Father Knows Best: Dr. Kennedy's magic prescription for indecisive women. by Dahlia Lithwick @ Slate.
Gambling with Abortion: Why Both Sides Think they Have Everything to Lose by Cynthia Gorney @ Harper's Magazine.
Monday, November 13, 2006
Becoming Gentlemen and an Introduction
For anyone curious, the title of this blog comes from the article, "Becoming Gentlemen: Women's Experiences at one Ivy League Law School" by Lani Guinier, Michelle Fine, and Jane Balin, with Ann Bartow, and Deborah Lee Stachel, printed in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review , November 1994.
I would repost it here but, um, I'm afraid of copyright law. Anyhow, all you law students can find it pretty painlessly on LexisNexis.
I read this article my freshman year of college, for my 'American Politics' class, and again my senior year of college (after having applied to law school but before I was accepted anywhere) for my 'Politics of Difference' class.
I don't remember deciding that I wanted to attend law school, but I do remember that the first time I read this article law school was already a goal of mine, and this scared the living hell out of me. I hoped it was dated, or that the experience was unique to the particular school. I was, at the same time, taking my first Women's Studies course and was beginning to recognize that there might be a chance that my feminist goals might not totally line up with the experience of a legal education. I didn't really know any lawyers, and the feminists I knew were either casually feminist in their politics and spare time or they were feminism-focused academics. I wasn't sure that either role-model was what I was looking for.
I really began thinking twice about law school, until part way through my junior year when I decided, at the least, that maybe I didn't want to go to law school immediately after college, or even at all. I decided not to take the LSATs. At the end of that summer, however, I abruptly changed my mind after starting to research for my thesis on same-sex marriage in Canada and reading some of the important cases from that movement and contemporary ones in the States (Halpern, Barbeau, re: Same Sex Marriage in Canada, for example, and Lawrence and Goodridge in the US). I realized that a) I actually liked reading cases and b) this was a profession in which, if I were successful (and idealistic and naive, I know, I know), I could actually concretely change people's lives on an individual or larger scale. At the very least, I could better understand the system in which we live so as to best know how to change it.
So, I scrambled and got my LSATs done and my applications, was fortunately accepted to two schools, and picked this one because it had more courses about women in law or domestic violence or LGBT folk, for example. Three of my five professors are women and the administration of my school is majority female. Women in my classes are outspoken and impressive. The cold-calling system, as nerve-wracking as it can be, isn't nearly as traumatic as I feared. The Women's Law Forum and the OUTlaws groups have been good outlets for some of my political and personal focuses, interests, and desire for feminist community, though often it feels like no one has enough time for community, only isolated 'events'. To my delight, I haven't had a class or a professor who hasn't made a point of bringing up gender and feminist issues, and some even have a reputation for it (unfortunately, that reputation, in one case, is that she is 'crazy' and 'too biased'). I think I've lucked out in my choice of schools and that I'm in the best possible place for my personality and politics.
and yet.
Yet, sometimes I'll be talking to another woman in my class, or to a friend at another law school and I'll find myself close to shouting in frustration at some inane comment some guy made while we were discussing J.E.B. v. Alabama and Baston challenges. Or, I'll somehow find myself standing around, fifteen minutes after Crim Law with three other women as we practically grab each other in relief that it wasn't just us who had really obvious answers to the "tough questions" about rape that were posed in class. Speaking out doesn't seem to be as big a problem as I thought it would be when I first read "Becoming Gentlemen", but being heard is.
So, here's a space for women law students. I know for a fact we have a lot to say about this really bizarre experience we're going through these three years. There's scholarship out there about us and how to teach us, but what I really would have liked to have seen, four-and-a-half years ago when I evaluated my goal of attending law school, is something written by a female law student - recently - about her experiences.
This is also an invitation to point out where else I can look for these narratives, discussions, individuals and communities. I don't believe that they're not out there. I know they're out there. And I want them to be heard.
I would repost it here but, um, I'm afraid of copyright law. Anyhow, all you law students can find it pretty painlessly on LexisNexis.
I read this article my freshman year of college, for my 'American Politics' class, and again my senior year of college (after having applied to law school but before I was accepted anywhere) for my 'Politics of Difference' class.
I don't remember deciding that I wanted to attend law school, but I do remember that the first time I read this article law school was already a goal of mine, and this scared the living hell out of me. I hoped it was dated, or that the experience was unique to the particular school. I was, at the same time, taking my first Women's Studies course and was beginning to recognize that there might be a chance that my feminist goals might not totally line up with the experience of a legal education. I didn't really know any lawyers, and the feminists I knew were either casually feminist in their politics and spare time or they were feminism-focused academics. I wasn't sure that either role-model was what I was looking for.
I really began thinking twice about law school, until part way through my junior year when I decided, at the least, that maybe I didn't want to go to law school immediately after college, or even at all. I decided not to take the LSATs. At the end of that summer, however, I abruptly changed my mind after starting to research for my thesis on same-sex marriage in Canada and reading some of the important cases from that movement and contemporary ones in the States (Halpern, Barbeau, re: Same Sex Marriage in Canada, for example, and Lawrence and Goodridge in the US). I realized that a) I actually liked reading cases and b) this was a profession in which, if I were successful (and idealistic and naive, I know, I know), I could actually concretely change people's lives on an individual or larger scale. At the very least, I could better understand the system in which we live so as to best know how to change it.
So, I scrambled and got my LSATs done and my applications, was fortunately accepted to two schools, and picked this one because it had more courses about women in law or domestic violence or LGBT folk, for example. Three of my five professors are women and the administration of my school is majority female. Women in my classes are outspoken and impressive. The cold-calling system, as nerve-wracking as it can be, isn't nearly as traumatic as I feared. The Women's Law Forum and the OUTlaws groups have been good outlets for some of my political and personal focuses, interests, and desire for feminist community, though often it feels like no one has enough time for community, only isolated 'events'. To my delight, I haven't had a class or a professor who hasn't made a point of bringing up gender and feminist issues, and some even have a reputation for it (unfortunately, that reputation, in one case, is that she is 'crazy' and 'too biased'). I think I've lucked out in my choice of schools and that I'm in the best possible place for my personality and politics.
and yet.
Yet, sometimes I'll be talking to another woman in my class, or to a friend at another law school and I'll find myself close to shouting in frustration at some inane comment some guy made while we were discussing J.E.B. v. Alabama and Baston challenges. Or, I'll somehow find myself standing around, fifteen minutes after Crim Law with three other women as we practically grab each other in relief that it wasn't just us who had really obvious answers to the "tough questions" about rape that were posed in class. Speaking out doesn't seem to be as big a problem as I thought it would be when I first read "Becoming Gentlemen", but being heard is.
So, here's a space for women law students. I know for a fact we have a lot to say about this really bizarre experience we're going through these three years. There's scholarship out there about us and how to teach us, but what I really would have liked to have seen, four-and-a-half years ago when I evaluated my goal of attending law school, is something written by a female law student - recently - about her experiences.
This is also an invitation to point out where else I can look for these narratives, discussions, individuals and communities. I don't believe that they're not out there. I know they're out there. And I want them to be heard.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
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