Thought Snax

Posthumous conversion

Amy Robertson — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 13:33:08 +0000

I’ve been percolating a post about religion and religious tolerance. It started around the time of Tebowmania, and each time I’d think I had just the right angle, something new and blogworthy would happen, like a panel of celibate dudes lecturing the world on contraception. That post may still occur, but this snippet (sorry!) was too good to wait:

Stephen Colbert on Thursday tackled the practice of posthumously baptizing Holocaust victims into the Mormon church. . . . But “Jews don’t baptize, so instead I will now proxy-circumcise all the dead Mormons,” Colbert said.

The practice of posthumous baptism is fascinating to me from a number of angles. Given that Jews don’t believe that baptism has any significance, our collective response should logically be “knock yourselves out, guys. Enjoy the swim.” But for sheer creepiness, it is really hard to outdo. If I got word that my Jewish ancestors were being, well, not “baptized,” because that is not a meaningful concept to me, but invoked during a Mormon pool party the upshot of which is to say that their religion is better than mine, I’d be good and annoyed. And creeped out.

Stephen Colbert has the answer. Posthumous conversion of Mormons to Jews!

(I couldn’t get the Comedy Central video clip to embed, and I’ve wasted just about enough jury-instruction-drafting time trying. For the full, hilarious, clip, click here.)

I’m thinking of proxy converting everyone, living or dead, to my religion: Unaffiliated Skeptic With A Working Hypothesis of Monotheism. Our main sacrament is Trying to Figure Out What It All Means. All of my new converts would wander around in the same state of religious confusion in which I dwell, engaging in the Sacrament by asking each other, “What do you think it all means?” and listening respectfully to the answer. No special clothing or food required. And most importantly, no oppressing, killing, or even legislating against anyone else’s faith.

“Sh*t people say” jumps the shark.

Amy Robertson — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 12:48:29 +0000

Shit people say to spouses of people who use wheelchairs:

My favorite “I”m so sorry” experience was in my first trial as a young lawyer, when Tim — who was an associate at the same fancy-pants DC law firm that I was — came to watch. On a break, our loathsome opposing counsel came up to me and said, out of the blue, “I’m so sorry.” Given the quantity of serious litigation bullshit he had engaged in, I was glad he saw fit to apologize, but thought it was better directed to the senior partner. I was starting to say something about that when he added, “about your husband…” Honestly, I still didn’t understand: Tim wasn’t assigned to the case; what could this dude possibly mean? He had to stumble on to say something about “injury” and “wheelchair” before it finally dawned on me. Needless to say, I was speechless.

Years later, I actually wrote and submitted a “Modern Love” column to the New York Times after some lady walked up to us at a baseball game and said something about me being a good caretaker. How can you explain in a sentence how ordinary life is? How care is given and taken in equal measure? Unfortunately, my column couldn’t compete with other important dispatches from the front lines of human relationships, for example, looking for a date on Craigslist or overthinking your boyfriend’s slippers.

That’s the great thing about the blog: the only thing standing between my thoughts and publication is my own good judgment. Such as it is.

Lactation: I don’t think that word means what you think it means.

Amy Robertson — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 15:32:28 +0000

Though what this judge thought it meant is beyond me. The awesome Barry Roseman posts a quote of the day for a bunch of us civil rights lawyer types. Here was today’s:

The commission says that the company fired [Donnica Venters] because she wanted to pump breast-milk. Discrimination because of pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical discrimination is unlawful. Related conditions can include cramping, dizziness, and nausea while pregnant.

Even if the company’s claim that she was fired for abandonment is meant to hide the real reason — she was wanted to pump breast-milk — lactation is not pregnancy, childbirth, or a related medical condition. She gave birth on December 11, 2009. After that day, she was no longer pregnant and her pregnancy-related conditions ended.

Firing someone because of lactation or breast-pumping is not sex discrimination.*

Hold on. You may have missed the last line, so I’ll re-WordPress-special-quote-function it:

Firing someone because of lactation or breast-pumping is not sex discrimination.

Makes total sense: none of the men were permitted to lactate or pump breast milk at work either. QED!

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* EEOC v. Housing Funding II, Ltd., 11-cv-02442 (S.D. Tex. Feb. 2, 2012), slip op. at 2.

Yes, we have a voting problem, Part Deux

Amy Robertson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:56:01 +0000

Just last month I was being cynical about Republican efforts to prevent voting fraud by making sure that students and poor people don’t vote. But thank goodness the Republicans are on the ball, so we could catch poor student Charlie White and punish him for his voting transgressions.

Oh. Wait.

Jury finds Indiana Secretary of State Charlie White guilty on 6 of 7 felony charges

Do you love that his name is Charlie White as much as I do? And it’s really a Republican hypocrisy two-fer, because it turned out that his vote fraud, er, “confusion” was, well, I’ll let IndyStar.com break it to you gently:

The charges stemmed from confusion over where White lived when he campaigned for secretary of state in late 2009 and 2010. White claimed that he lived at his ex-wife’s home on the east side of Fishers. But the jury convicted him based on allegations that he actually lived in a townhouse on the opposite side of town that he bought for him and his then-fiancé. The townhouse was outside his Fishers Town Council district.

Note that it’s “confusion” when a conservative politician bails on his wife, shacks up with his fiancé, and fails to notify the secretary of state so he can stay on the city council of the city in which he no longer lives, but potential “fraud” when an 84-year-old woman who has voted in every election since 1948 doesn’t have a birth certificate because she was born at home in 1927.

Dogs in snow

Amy Robertson — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 01:30:32 +0000

By popular demand:

Wishful thinking/reality

Amy Robertson — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 20:38:12 +0000

What I bought online this week:

What it looks like out my back door:

Why are some atheists such a**holes?

Amy Robertson — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 14:33:48 +0000

From a billboard in Boulder:

Right, because making fun of other people’s beliefs has done so much — throughout history — to promote peace and understanding.

How about “Choose Mutual Respect: It Will Be Better for All of Us.”

Shit Walkies Say

Amy Robertson — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 15:36:29 +0000

Having thoroughly enjoyed Shit Sighted People Say to Blind People, Shit White Girls Say to Black Girls, and Shit White Girls Say to Arab Girls, I decided it would be hilarious to make a video out of some of the stupid shit people have said to Tim* over the years. Only problem, of course: I have no video production skills, not to mention equipment. So — as with a couple of previous posts — I relied on the cartoon people over at xtranormal and created this. I’m sure it doesn’t measure up to the videos that inspired it, but on the upside, I only wasted three hours on it.

* Yes, it’s weird that it’s me (a walkie) and not Tim who made this little video, but he’s busy actually practicing law, or possibly (we can only hope!) drafting his first guest blog post. Stay tuned!!

In which my friend Susie does good things for my brain.

Amy Robertson — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 14:45:21 +0000

Expand & protect.

Lunch yesterday with my awesome friend Susie Greene, who has just produced/published this multimedia investigation into solitary confinement. Extra bonus awesomeness, it features ass-kicking DU clinical professor Laura Rovner. The video will expand your brain into the toxic arena of solitary confinement. You thought it was just a few days “in the hole” for bad behavior. Think again.

And, um, protect. After lunch — at the (perfectly appropriate) prodding of Susie and Tim — Susie took me ski-helmet shopping. I have been trying to convince myself that having skied for 40ish years without a helmet, I was somehow grandfathered (grandmothered?) in. But even I had to admit, finally, that this made no damn sense. So now I’ll look like this when I ski:

Or more realistically:

It shouldn’t be about choice; it should be about respect.

Amy Robertson — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 14:32:46 +0000

Cynthia Nixon has spurred an interesting dialog by embracing the concept that being gay or lesbian can be a choice. In the civil rights world,the it’s-not-a-choice-it’s-an-inborn-trait position is an attempt to connect being gay with other protected classes defined by immutable characteristics, such as race, gender, and disability. It’s also embraced as a counter to the common homophobic position* that if you can choose to love people of your own gender, you can equally easily — like choosing a different flavor of ice cream — choose to love people of the other gender. Or perhaps choose to live a celibate life.

But Nixon makes I think the precise right point:

I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not. . . . It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate.

It has always seemed bizarre to me that religious folks stress that this protected class — gays and lesbians — is based on choice, when the most mutable, chosen-not-born protected class is religion. You don’t choose your race, disability, or national origin, and most people don’t choose their gender. But if you can choose to be Christian, you can just as easily choose to be Jewish or Muslim, right? Why on earth should we protect Christians against all that discrimination** they face when they could simply elect to be Jewish or Muslim and get away scot-free?***

Seriously, we shouldn’t be discussing choice vs. innate; we should be discussing respect. And in the discrimination context, relevance. What on earth relevance does it have to someone’s ability to do their job who they sleep with? What faith they practice? Their gender? Their race?

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* Did you know there is something called Conservapedia? Me neither. It’s precisely as informative as the name suggests. For example, this is the only substantive information it provides on the ADA:

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is a broad federal law that requires places of public accommodation to comply with numerous regulations relating to access by persons having disabilities. The Act encourages lawsuits against restaurants, schools, retail stores, hospitals and other small businesses by providing for the recovery of attorneys fees by successful plaintiffs.

Go forth and be informed, young conservatives with homework projects!

** Clearly Conservapedia is going to be my go-to source for links to straw-man conservative arguments. They make it so easy!

*** Can I say that? Does that discriminate against Scottish people? Or is it OK because I’m a Jewish-Scottish-American?