Category Archives: WTF?!

Suing to protest your child’s existence should be prima facie evidence of child abuse

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Perhaps you’ve seen the articles about a white lesbian couple who are suing because the sperm bank they used to conceive their child gave them the sperm of Donor #330 instead of Donor #380.  Likely would not have been a problem, but Donor #330 turned out to be African-American, and the women are freaking out because they have to raise a mixed-race child.

This reminded me instantly of parents who bring “wrongful life” or “wrongful birth” lawsuits, [.pptx]* alleging that doctors failed to warn them of potential risks of disability that would have caused them to abort their unborn child.  The mixed-race case and the undetected-disability case share this in common:  they require parents to say they would not have had a child who is now born, is now here, is now A PERSON.

It always makes me think:  Don’t these parents realize their unwanted infants will grow up to be teenagers who can use Google?  Don’t they realize that even the youngest of children will understand an environment of unwantedness?

The request for damages is usually for the extreme distress of raising a disabled child (wrongful birth) or BEING a disabled person (wrongful life).  What it should be for is PREPAYMENT OF THE SHRINKS’ BILLS THE KID WILL INCUR BECAUSE HER PARENTS DECIDED TO TELL THE WORLD THEY DIDN’T WANT HER.

Image: mixed race toddler girl in pick polka-dot t-shirt and jeans sitting in what appears to be a shopping mall.

Original caption:  “This undated family photo provided by Jennifer Cramblett shows her daughter, Payton.”   So not only is she telling the world that her daughter is a mistake, she’s publishing her name and photograph.  Do they think that their child alone in the world will never Google her own name?  W.T.F.?

This situation is so fucked up that my conservative brother and I — who agree about almost nothing except that his kids are awesome and the rest of our family is a clown car — are in complete agreement.  Take it away, Bruce!

Two white people decide to have a baby and, surprise, it comes out black (or half black). They’re lesbians so you’d think maybe they’d have some sensitivity to being a minority (and pay some lip service to that), but fundamentally they’re pissed that they bargained for a white baby and got a half-black one.

But, don’t people get surprises not of their choosing with babies all the time. I think this has been your mantra for a long time – that all life is equally valuable, etc. Interesting that therapists actually recommended they move out of a white neighborhood into a more “diverse” neighborhood.

Not sure, but this story seems to have about a million things wrong with it, none of which have to do with the mistake made by the sperm bank.

Sadly I learned early in my career in civil rights law that being in one minority does not guarantee you give a rat’s ass about any other minority or civil rights in general.  In an investigation not long after we started Fox & Robertson, we were interviewing people with disabilities whose personal care assistants were managed by a company who we thought might be committing Medicaid fraud.  The primary complaint of one of the first people I spoke with was that, despite her request, the agency would not stop sending Black people to her house.   Sigh.  This recent post by our friend Corbett describes a similarly depressing lack of rat’s-ass-giving by a group of non-disabled feminists.

Working hypothesis:  Humans are selfish, insular, and thoughtless, except the ones who are generous, compassionate, and funny.  It’s hard to say.

But back to parents who sue because their child exists.  As Bruce says:  having a kid is always full of surprises.  My parents — dyed-in-the-wool liberals — could not possibly have predicted they’d have a gen-u-ine Republican son.  But then, my dyed-in-the-wool Republican/WASP grandparents could not possibly have predicted they’d have a Democratic son who married a Jewish liberal, either.  Generations of parents — to the beginning of time — cope with children who aren’t what they expect them to be, yet the law does not recognize a right to compensation for parental disappointment unless the child is disabled or — I guess we’ll soon learn — of a different race.

Meanwhile, I’d like to set up shop as the lawyer representing the grown kids of these hateful lawsuits, bringing suit against their parents for the child abuse of publicly rejecting their very existence.

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* Link is to an excellent PowerPoint presentation on the subject by Samantha Crane, Public Policy Director at the Autistic Self Advocacy Network.

Municipal Planning Morass = Disability Discrimination Travesty

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A weird, complicated, simple, dramatic, Aspen-based soap opera of a legal case started trial yesterday.  The City of Aspen is suing two wealthy condo-owners and the developer/landlord of the rest of the building for privatizing the only accessible entrance.  It’s a smaller but more disturbing version of the “poor door” controversies in New York and other cities, where affordable housing tenants are forced to use a side entrance to mixed use buildings.

Image: the front of a brick building with a restaurant patio and covered entryway.

Photo from aspenpublicradio.org. Original caption: The building at the center of the dispute, at 308 East Hopkins in downtown Aspen. The entrance in question is on the right side of the building. Credit Loopnet.com

Elise Thatcher of Aspen Public Radio interviewed me about it on Monday and posted the Court’s decision granting in part and denying in part the City’s motion for summary judgment.

In short, JW Ventures, a developer in Aspen, Colorado, constructed a building in downtown Aspen to include two “market value” apartments, three “affordable housing units,” and two restaurants.  It also had, as required, an accessible entrance from the sidewalk with an elevator serving all apartments and the two restaurants, as well as an alley entrance and service elevator.   Fast forward to today:  the owners of the two market value units — a couple who combined them into a single apartment (the “Fancy Apartment”) — have asserted that the street-side accessible entrance and elevator are theirs alone, and that tenants of the affordable units and patrons of the restaurants must use the alley entrance and service elevator.  The legal case, brought by the City of Aspen to enforce its own ordinance, centers around the city’s conflicting actions with respect to building and condo plans.  I’ll get to the untested ADA and Fair Housing angles in a second.

I want to start in the middle and slightly to the side of the poor-door, privatized-accessibility story, with an email reporting an appalling quote by one Charles Cunniffe, an architect and principal with JW Ventures.  At the point when the status of the accessible entrance was being debated, the Fancy Apartment owners’ broker called Cunniffe and reported this conversation in an email back to the owners:

So, I called Cunniffe who said, Denis Murray of the bldg. dept has a personal agenda with handicap usage because its his personal MO (he’s handicapped).

Let’s put this quote in the More Traditional Minority Insult Conversion Machine:

We may not be able to exclude Jews from our apartment building.  That code inspector has a personal agenda with anti-Semitism because it’s his personal MO (he’s Jewish).

See how that works? Not OK, right?  In fact, prima facie evidence of discriminatory animus IMHO. In case Cunniffe’s appalling disability discrimination weren’t enough, he goes on, per the email, to recommend illegal retaliation.

If [affordable housing] tenants don’t like that and want to make an issue, the building owners have the right to terminate their lease based on being noisey, pet issues, smoking, etc.

In other words, if they stick up for their rights under the Fair Housing Act, just find a pretext to kick them out. ZZzzzzzt! You lose! That violates 42 U.S.C. § 3617, which prohibits retaliation for asserting rights under the FHA.

Stepping even farther aside, this is an object lesson in privilege. The wheelchair-using code inspector is likely a well-educated, competent guy. Maybe he has a degree in architecture or engineering. Maybe a professional license or two. But when he takes the radical position that JW Ventures should comply with federal law and municipal ordinance, he is reduced to his wheelchair and his views dismissed because of it.  If the email is accurate, this guy Cunniffe was determined to discriminate and retaliate, so even if Murray were not disabled, Cunliffe might have disparaged him as a bureaucrat or a jerk, but his views would not have been brushed off as a mere product of his minority status.

Back to the legal case. Turns out the city required, in the ordinance permitting the redevelopment, that the building be accessible and approved plans showing access from the street to all units and both restaurants.  The city later signed off on a condo map showing the street-side entrance and elevator as within the exclusive control of the Fancy Apartment. It is the conflict created by these apparently contradictory actions that is being tried — under the City ordinance — in court this week.

Because this case was brought by the city to enforce its ordinance it does not address the ADA or FHA, but I will.

JW Ventures designed and constructed the building in around 2010.  The apartments are thus covered multifamily housing under the FHA and the restaurants are places of public accommodation under Title III of the ADA.  All were required to be accessible when built — and apparently were.*   Having done this, JW Ventures, as the landlord, has to maintain the features that were originally required to be accessible.  This would require it to keep the elevator in good repair; naturally, taking affirmative steps to prevent use of the elevator would be covered by this provision as well.  Both the FHA and ADA also require reasonable accommodations/modifications in policies and procedures, so the landlord would also have to modify a policy that barred people from the accessible entrance.  Bottom line:  should a resident or guest of one of the affordable units or a patron of one of the restaurants require wheelchair access, that person would have the right to use the entrance and elevator currently privatized based on the landlord’s policies.

This may be a one-off situation, based on the complex set of conflicting communications during the building and condominiumization** process.  But if more and more mixed-use buildings are going to have “poor doors,” they may find themselves in violation of the ADA and the accessibility provisions of the FHA, in addition possibly to FHA disparate impact provisions, and of course common decency.

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* Lawyerly disclaimer:  I have not seen the place, so I can’t vouch for its accessibility.  Everyone seems to agree that the street-side entrance and elevator would provide compliant access if not restricted.

**  Yes, this is a word.

[Cross-posted at CREECblog.]

The introvert vs. the anti-vaxxer: I wimped out

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I was recently at an event — the type where you’re supposed to mingle holding a drink and make small but significant conversation with total strangers.  In other words, hell.  I ended up caught in a conversation with a woman whose adult son is Autistic, and who wanted to lecture me on how it was caused by vaccines, mercury in fillings, and fluoridation in the water.  (The conversation happened last week, not in 1965.)  She “warned” that soon 1 in 2 boys would have autism.  She said her son was “her part-time job.”  I asked (assumed, actually; that’s how far inside my own head I generally dwell) about involvement in groups of parents of adults with disabilities; her husband chimed in that these groups were “just” interested in “access” — the latter term enunciated as if “interest in access” was as absurd as “interest in pro wrestling” or “interest in wearing white after Labor Day.”

As an introvert and a klutz, I could not figure out the cocktail-party-level response to this.  So I put down my beer (half-finished!  desperate times!) and left. I have this question for you extroverts and people with social skills but also a righteous civil rights message:  what do you do in shallow social situations when someone says something deeply misguided or offensive?  I’ve blogged about avoiding entirely situations in which people — especially people you don’t know well but thought you respected — might say something buttheaded about disability or civil rights.  But what do you do when you’re stuck?  You’ve taken the highly questionable step of actually putting yourself in the position of making small talk with strangers, and the conversation takes a distinctly buttheaded turn.

Saw this on Facebook today; wish I could have responded as cleverly.

anti vax refutation

Image: the graphic consists of five text boxes, arranged with one at the top, and then two rows of two below. The top text box contains the meme being ridiculed. It shows a syringe and states “If you mixed Mercury, Aluminum phosphate, Ammonium sulfate, and Formaldehyde with VIRUSES, then got a syringe and INJECTED it into your child . . . you would be ARRESTED and sent to JAIL for child endangerment and abuse. Then WHY is it legal for a doctor to do it? and WHY would you let them? Educate yourself. Re-Think Vaccines.”  The box in the second row on the left has an icon of two cars colliding head on, and reads “If you welded some scrap Aluminum and Steel together, added some Tires, Cylinders, Spark plugs and GASOLINE, then took it out and DROVE it on a public road, you would be ARRESTED and sent to JAIL for public endangerment and unsafe vehicle. Then WHY is it legal for Ford & Chevy to do it? and WHY would you let them? Educate yourself. Re-Think Vehicles.”The next box has a wall socket and reads “If you look Copper wiring, connected It to the city power grid, then ran it through the walls of your house and into the bedroom of your child, you would be arrested for child endangerment and fire code violations. Then WHY is it legal for electrician to do it? and WHY would you let them? Educate yourself. Re-Think Electricity.” The box on the bottom left has a fireman’s ax and reads, “If you burst Into the bedroom of a child you didn’t know wielding and Axe and then forcibly took the child out of bed and carried them outside the house, you would be arrested and sent to jail for the assault and kidnapping of a child. Then WHY is it legal for firefighter to do it? and WHY would you let them? Educate yourself. Re-Think Firefighters.” The final box on the lower right has an airplane seating chart and reads, “if you took over a hundred people, packed Them into a pressurized metal tube, then used refined KEROSENE to LAUNCH Them to over 35,000 feet at speeds of over 450 knotsyou would be ARRESTED and sent to JAIL for . . . . I’m not sure, probably a lot of things. Then WHY is it legal for pilots to do it? and WHY would you let them? Educate yourself. Re-Think Aviation.”

Hobby Lobby meet Jah Frederick Nathaniel Mason, III

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I’ve been trying, through hypotheticals, to explain some of my frustration with the Hobby Lobby decision.  Luckily today’s WestClip brought a real-life example from D. Colo.

Hobby Lobby meet Jah Frederick Nathaniel Mason, III.

 The Hobby Lobby decision is frustrating primarily for magically turning legally-fictitious corporations into people of faith.  But it was truly specious for another reason, as well:  it was based on religious beliefs that were based, in turn, entirely on scientific fallacy.

Hobby Lobby’s objection to contraception is that some contraception is really abortion which contravened the religious beliefs of their executives.

[T]he company’s mission, as they see it, is to “operate in a professional environment founded upon the highest ethical, moral, and Christian principles.” The company’s “Vision and Values Statements” affirms that [the company] endeavors to “ensur[e] a reasonable profit in [a] manner that reflects [the executives’] Christian heritage.” It is therefore “against [their] moral conviction to be involved in the termination of human life” after conception, which they believe is a “sin against God to which they are held accountable.” The [executives] have accordingly excluded from the group-health-insurance plan they offer to their employees certain contraceptive methods that they consider to be abortifacients.
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[They object to the ACA because] it requires them to provide health-insurance coverage for four FDA-approved contraceptives that may operate after the fertilization of an egg.These include two forms of emergency contraception commonly called “morning after” pills and two types of intrauterine devices.

Burwell v. Hobby Lobby Stores, Inc., 134 S. Ct. 2751, 2764-65 (2014) (internal citations omitted).  The problem with this is — whatever their faith* — they got the science wrong.  The measures that the ACA covers — and that the executives fear — are not, in fact, abortifacients.  As an L.A. Times article summarizes — quoting the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists — neither IUDs nor “morning after pills” cause abortions.

So the “beliefs” of a legal fiction (the corporate entity) based on a scientific fallacy entitled the company to opt out of a law of general application.

OK, then.  Let’s see how this works in practice for a real live human being with religious beliefs he is seeking to enforce in court.  Take it away, Jah Frederick Nathaniel Mason, III:

Mr. Mason asserts nine claims based on his belief that the use of satanic imagery on the seals of government justifies his driving without a license because the seal on Colorado drivers’ licenses displays satanic images. He also apparently believes that, by following his religious beliefs in not carrying a driver’s license, he should not be charged with traffic offenses as a result.
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[In addition], [h]e is suing the meter agent for issuing a ticket for a missing front license plate and calling the police, who had his car towed, despite his explanation that he considered himself to be a “religious sovereign and had conscientious objections to the image of mountains on the Colorado plates as they violate God’s commands.”

Mason v. Clear Creek Cnty. Sheriff, 2014 WL 4099326, at *2, *5 (D. Colo. Aug. 20, 2014).  Sounds reasonable.  Just about as scientific as the Hobby Lobby execs’ beliefs, and what’s the big deal of one guy driving without a license or license plate.  Not even close to the burden on society of permitting a corporation to exclude coverage of an entire set of benefits for its entire female workforce.

Predictably, Mr. Mason did not fare as well as Hobby Lobby:
Plaintiff cannot argue there is no legitimate governmental interest in requiring license plates on cars. Mr. Mason’s religious beliefs—whatever they may be—do not excuse him from complying with the State’s requirement that he display license plates attached to his car. See Colo.Rev.Stat. § 42–3–202(1)(a) (license plates to be attached to the front and rear of a vehicle); see also Colo.Rev.Stat. § 42–1–101 (licenses for drivers required). The requirement for attached license plates is valid and neutral—all Colorado drivers are required to have license plates on their cars. . . .  Mr. Mason’s claims asserted against the unnamed Denver parking management meter agent will be dismissed as legally frivolous.

Mason, 2014 WL 4099326, at *5.  He not only loses a case at least as well-grounded in religion and reality as Hobby Lobby, his case is deemed frivolous.

Given that the Supreme Court had already decided that individuals did not have the right to smoke peyote** or opt out of the social security system*** based on sincerely held religious beliefs, the sad take-away from Hobby Lobby is that legally-fictitious corporations in fact have greater rights of religious freedom that individual believers.

Welcome to the Roberts Court!
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 * Many have pointed out that, at the same time that Hobby Lobby was touting its Christian business principles in refusing to participate in a broad health insurance program that, based on the private decisions of insureds and their doctors, may result in use of contraception that Hobby Lobby believes to be — but in point of scientific fact is not — abortion, it is engaging in a wide variety of un-Christian business activities, including investing in companies that produce the type of contraceptive devices that it refuses to cover and purchasing massive quantities of cheap crap from China, which not only supports fairly un-Christian labor practices, but actively encourages actual — rather than imagined — abortion.  This would be like an inmate insisting on a kosher diet while ordering sliced ham from the commissary.

** Employment Div., Dept. of Human Resources of Ore. v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872 (1990).

*** United States v. Lee, 455 U.S. 252  (1982).

This guy is tasked with public safety?

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I personally believe in Jesus Christ as my lord savior, but I’m also a killer. I’ve killed a lot. And if I need to, I’ll kill a whole bunch more. … If you don’t want to get killed, don’t show up in front of me, it’s that simple. I have no problem with it. God did not raise me to be a coward.

via Ferguson-Area Police Officer Suspended After ‘Killer’ Rant Surfaces Online.  He apparently rants on along these lines, on the video, for an hour or so, largely missing the point of the whole “Christianity” thing.  And the whole “protect and serve” thing.

This guy is a cop, and a member of the “Oath Keepers, the right-wing law enforcement group that is aligned with the Patriot movement.”   A quick (and slightly toxic) visit to their website reveals that “Oath Keepers” are a collection of police and military types who believe their “oath” to their interpretation of the constitution gives them the right to do things like not do their jobs and shoot random people who do not share their interpretation of the constitution.*

They have a list of orders they will not obey, including executing warrantless  searches (good), disarming Americans (potentially bad, if the armed American is threatening to kill someone), and wildly paranoid:

We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

…

We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

Whew!  Glad we cleared that up.  And good to know that when Texas finally secedes, no one will try to stop them.  Buh byeeeeee!

I do appreciate that this group is a big fan of Edward Snowden.  So they exist in that special place where the extreme right and extreme left of the political spectrum meet up in shared paranoia and megalomania.

I guess we’ve always known that certain subsets of law enforcement view themselves as creating, interpreting, and executing the law; it’s more than a bit frightening to think those cops have a self-aggrandizing club where they can encourage and reward each other for doing so.

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* Based on their logo, this may or may not be caused by the emotional trauma of having very long but very thin penises:

Image: silhouette of man holding long gun, which also looks like he has a very long, thin penis protruding from his midsection.

Why is it OK to be a trans man or trans woman but not . . .

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So just the other day, I was lecturing radical feminists never to question anyone’s identity as a woman, even if she was born with guy parts.  In that post, I posed what I thought was a rhetorical question.

Could a white person declare himself black in the same way a person born with female parts can declare himself to be male? Can I decide to be disabled without actually having a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities?

If I should have learned anything in 53 years, it’s that there are no questions rhetorical enough that someone somewhere won’t answer, “yeah — that’s me.”

Meet Chris. He is not a person with disabilities, but nonetheless identifies as one and sits in a wheelchair whenever he can without giving his secret away to the people that know him. On last night’s episode of Showtime’s documentary series 7 Deadly Sins (this week’s sin: envy), Chris shared his story.

“I identify as a guy in a wheelchair,” he said. “I feel like I have the wrong body. I feel like I’m supposed to be disabled. What I want my life to be like is what is the detriment of a lot of people’s lives, the worst thing that’s ever happened to them, and I think it would be the best thing that ever happened to me.”

image

I feel fairly strongly that this is wrong, just as a white person declaring himself to be black or have a black identity is wrong. I’m just having a hard time articulating a principled reason why.

I support the rights of trans men and trans women to be the ones to tell us what gender they are, rather than having that be dictated by the body parts they were born with or what society thinks they should be.  And I have no problem if a person of one religion converts to another, and adopts a new identity wholesale.

Then there are those (Obama; me) born into two identities (black/white; Jewish/Protestant) who essentially get to choose — one; the other; or both — which choice is generally respected.

Yet we clearly have a set of negative judgments for people of a privileged status (white; nondisabled) adopting and asserting an identity as a less-privileged status (black; disabled) and a different set of negative judgments for the reverse (a black person deciding to identify as white; a disabled person identifying as nondisabled).  In the first situation, we use words like “wannabes” or “appropriation” or — in an article in New Mobility — “pretenders;” in the latter, “oreos,” “bananas,” or “passing.”

So, uncharacteristically, I don’t have an answer, or even a working hypothesis.  Why is it OK for a person born with male parts to identify as a woman, for a Christian to convert to Judaism, or for a person born in a mixed marriage to choose either identity or both, but not for Chris to identify as a person with a disability?

 

Because “back the f**k off” would be impolite.

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Our yard has a long expanse of fence that faces a fairly busy road.  The fence was in need of upkeep before our recent wind and hail storms, and is now looking pretty dilapidated.

Image: a street runs along the right side of the photo; on the left side, a green area bordered by a wooden fence which is sagging out into the green area next to the street.

We’ve scheduled a handyman, but we were busy and he was busy and one thing after another . . . he’s set to fix it on July 29.  But the fence was getting a lot of, um, neighborly commentary, so I decided on a bit of fence art:

Image: a street runs along the left side of the photo; on the right side, a green area bordered by a wooden fence which is sagging out into the green area next to the street. A white sign is visible tacked to the fence near the broken area.

Image: wooden fence with a sign consisting of three pieces of white paper stapled to it.

 

 

Fence Art 2 p 2

Text of signs:  “art installation: ‘waves of wood’ — symbolizing the transient nature of the material world, the multiplicity of human consciousness, and our hope for the future.”  A text box at the bottom reads, “In other words, the fence broke, we were focused on other things and procrastinated calling the handyman, who is busy for the next few weeks, but will be around to fix it soon.”

Not too transgressive, but at least I crack myself up!

Title III doesn’t [just] need damages; it needs a public shaming remedy. Update: I appear to have been punk’d.

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Update:  While it’s true that Title III most definitely needs a public shaming remedy, this case may not be the vehicle for it.  Gawker reports that the whole thing was a hoax.  Not wishing to be equally credulous of the debunking as I was of the original bunking, I’ll leave the various links and let you decide.

Original post:

Family says girl scarred by pit bull attack asked to leave KFC restaurant.

Image: Kentucky Fried Chicken logo. Old white man with white goatee and red apron.

 

A 3-year-old girl who was attacked by pit bulls in April was asked to leave a restaurant in Mississippi because her scars scared customers, the girl’s grandmother told a television station there.

…

“They said, ‘We have to ask you to leave because her face is disrupting our customers.’ [The girl] understood exactly what they said.”

As you can imagine, this is pretty much an automatic violation of Title III of the ADA, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of disability in public accommodations, including restaurants.  But Title III has no damages remedy; the only thing the girl and her family would be entitled to would be an order permitting them to eat at the restaurant in question.

Second prize:  two meals!

Since there’s no damages remedy and the injunctive remedy is somewhere between less-than-useless and adding-insult-to-injury, I propose — in addition to the very-expensive-scotch remedy for hotel reservation violations — that Title III have a public shaming remedy.

Here, the remedy would include a requirement that (1) the waitstaffperson who made the request wear a sign saying “I acted like an asshole.  I’ve learned my lesson.  I will not act like an asshole — at least to people with disabilities in restaurants — in the future;” (2) the owner of the restaurant wear a sign saying, “I promise not to hire assholes and I promise to train my staff not to act like assholes,” and (3) the waitstaffperson and restaurant owner buy the entire family a meal at the best restaurant in town as well as a year’s supply of Popeye’s fried chicken, which everyone knows is the far superior take-out fried chicken.

This is just so wrong.

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In a Denver Post article entitled “Book lovers rejoice! How to coexist peacefully with your collection,” — by a woman who claims to be a “book lover” in search of “suggestions of how best to display [her] book collection” — we find the following appalling advice, passed along uncritically:

Amy Trager, a certified professional organizer based in Chicago, suggested flipping the books around so the pages are facing out, instead of the spine, to cut down on the visual clutter of the books’ different colors and sizes.

This caused in me a reaction of disgust and aversion not unlike my reaction to [the prospect of ever being exposed to] the brain-eating scene in a zombie movie.  The article goes on to explain, helpfully:

That only works, of course, if you don’t need to quickly access specific books, but it’s a great way to add texture and a neutral, toned-down feeling to your space, Trager said.

Like using your oven to store your shoes only works if you don’t need to bake.*  WTF?

Trager had another client who needed to keep her books in the living room but hated the way they looked. She created covers for each of her recessed shelves out of thin paperboard. When she wanted a particular book, she could pull the covers down, but when they were up, it looked like a solid colored wall, fading into the background.

The only answer here is to arrest this woman and force her to donate her books to the local public library.

I realize that, as a dog lover who bought a light-colored, linen-upholstered sofa and as the proud owner of a gray formica kitchen counter, I should not be giving design advice, but I feel very strongly that there is only one good way to display books: out and proud.

Image: white bookshelves, filled with largely paperback books, in front of which are photos and mementos such as a pair of baseballs, a large piece of driftwood, an inlaid metal box, and an American flag.)

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*This, on the other hand, is not totally out of the question as a design solution in our house.

Anti-Gay Group Refuses To Accept Mail With Harvey Milk Stamp

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From the Huffington Post.

Fundamentalist Christian group American Family Association is urging members not to accept any mail postmarked with the U.S. Postal Service’s newly released Harvey Milk stamp, the first U.S. stamp to feature an openly gay elected official.

Image: US postage stamp bearing the image of a smiling white man, with the legend "Harvy Milk."

In related news, the American Family Association announced plans to put its fingers in its ears and say “LALALALALALALALALA” until the 21st Century goes away.