The Packbats' Weblog

The U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling today on three cases related to LGBT+ rights - Gerald Lynn Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia; Altitude Express, Inc., et al. v. Zarda et al., as Co-Independent Executors of the Estate of Zarda; and R. G. & G. R. Harris Funeral Homes, Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission et al. - answering the question of whether Title VII the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits employment discrimination against gay and trans people when it prohibits discrimination by sex. In, unexpectedly, Justice Neil Gorsuch's words, the answer is "yes, it is illegal to discriminate against them" (us):

An employer who fires an individual for being homosexual or transgender fires that person for traits or actions it would not have questioned in members of a different sex. Sex plays a necessary and undisguisable role in the decision, exactly what Title VII forbids.

cosmolinguist has a nice roundup post bringing up a lot of good points about how much this means (tl;dr: a lot).

Joshua Kors tells the story.

Luther insisted to doctors at Camp Taji that he did not have personality disorder, that the idea of developing a childhood mental illness at the age of 36, after passing eight psychological screenings, was ridiculous. The sergeant used a vivid expression to convey how much pain he was in. "I told them that some days, the pain was so bad, I felt like dying." Doctors declared him a suicide risk. They collected his shoelaces, his belt and his rifle and ordered him confined to an isolation chamber.

Extensive medical records written by Luther's doctors document his confinement in the aid station for more than a month. The sergeant was kept under twenty-four-hour guard. Most nights, he says, guards enforced sleep deprivation, keeping the lights on and blasting heavy metal music. When Luther rebelled, he was pinned down and injected with sleeping medication.

Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.

I can't even joke about this. It's horrible, pure horror.

Edit: Link via ceruleanst, here.

From baldanders, here and there:

Alan Grayson (D-FL) is my hero. Seriously, he tells it like it is, without fear of the insurance companies, and certainly not without fear of the Republican lie machine:

"We as a party have spent the last six months, the greatest minds in our party, dwelling on the question, the unbelievably consuming question of how to get Olympia Snowe to vote on health care reform. I want to remind us all that Olympia Snowe was not elected President last year. Olympia Snowe has no veto power in the Senate. Olympia Snowe represents a state with one half of one percent of America's population.

"What America wants is health care reform. America doesn't care if it gets 51 votes in the Senate or 60 votes in the Senate or 83 votes in the Senate, in fact America doesn't even care about that, it doesn't care about that at all. What America cares about is this; there are over 1 million Americans who go broke every single year trying to pay their health care bills. America cares a lot about that. America cares about the fact that there are 44,780 Americans who die every single year on account of not having health care, that's 122 every day. America sure cares a lot about that. America cares about the fact that if you have a pre-existing condition, even if you have health insurance, it's not covered. America cares about that a lot. America cares about the fact that you can get all the health care you need as long as you don't need any. America cares about that a lot. But America does not care about procedures, processes, personalities, America doesn't care about that at all." [. . .]

"Last week I held up this report here and I pointed out that in America there are 44,789 Americans that die every year according to this Harvard report published in this peer reviewed journal because they have no health insurance. That's an extra 44,789 Americans who die whose lives could be saved, and their response was to ask me for an apology." [. . .]

"Well, I'm telling you this; I will not apologize. I will not apologize. I will not apologize for a simple reason; America doesn't care about your feelings. [. . .] America does care about health care in America. And if you're against it, then get out of the way. You can lead, you can follow or you can get out of the way. [. . .] America understands that there is one party in this country that is favor of health care reform and one party that is against it, and they know why.

"They understand that if Barack Obama were somehow able to cure hunger in the world the Republicans would blame him for overpopulation. They understand that if Barack Obama could somehow bring about world peace they would blame him for destroying the defense industry. In fact, they understand that if Barack Obama has a BLT sandwich tomorrow for lunch, they will try to ban bacon.

"But that's not what America wants; America wants solutions to its problems, and that begins with health care."

From Roger Cohen, hat-tip to Andrew Sullivan:

Of the 770 detainees grabbed here and there and flown to Guantánamo, only 23 have ever been charged with a crime. Of the more than 500 so far released, many traumatized by those “enhanced” techniques, not one has received an apology or compensation for their season in hell.

What they got on release was a single piece of paper from the American government. A U.S. official met one of the dozens of Afghans now released from Guantánamo and was so appalled by this document that he forwarded me a copy.

Dated Oct. 7, 2006, it reads as follows:

“An Administrative Review Board has reviewed the information about you that was talked about at the meeting on 02 December 2005 and the deciding official in the United States has made a decision about what will happen to you. You will be sent to the country of Afghanistan. Your departure will occur as soon as possible.”

That’s it, the one and only record on paper of protracted U.S. incarceration: three sentences for four years of a young Afghan’s life, written in language Orwell would have recognized.

Via Mount Holyoke College, Orwell's "Politics and the English Language", 1946. Past time to be reading this one again.

D-mn, sixty years, and we didn't learn anything.

California bumper sticker by *peganthyrus on deviantART

I'm going to go ahead and stick my neck out for a moment here, and talk about marriage.

I want to warn you in advance: I'm not really eloquent, and I'm not terribly meticulous. I have no illusions about the strength of my voice or the originality of my phrasing. If it is a rigorous case you want, Jesurgislac has a better analysis - I'm here to speak my mind.

Let me start with questions: What is "marriage"? What is "civil marriage"? And why do we recognize it?

I will try to answer these questions, but I will do so through this last, through the word "recognize" - recognition is the key to the whole business. Civil marriage is no more than the recognition of an earlier marriage, an alliance above and beyond the reach of law. There's a reason marriage sometimes happens in churches - the bond whose existence is affirmed and celebrated in these ceremonies is ... special, for lack of a better word. (I said I wasn't eloquent.)

What, then, is this earlier marriage?

In a word, it is love. It is dedication. The willingness to swear an oath, equal to equal, which in the common phrasing of these things often resembles this: "To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part." (Till death do us part? It is of no consequence, the meaning is clear.) It is a brash and daring refutation of the mundane cussedness of existence, the seemly invincible force of the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and the cynicism of the worldly - it declares, to amend a phrase attributed to Martin Luther: "Here we stand. We can do no other. God help us. Amen."

We choose as a people to recognize these bonds, as I have said. Today, then, we must recognize one more thing: what we recognize in these bonds is not the perpetuation of traditional gender roles, is not the perpetuation of the species, is not a perpetuation of anything preceding themselves. It is the bond itself.

No on California Prop 8.

---

For those of you not following the issues closely: present polling has this going either way. If you agree with me - and I know better than to hold it against you if you don't - noonprop8.com seems to be the headquarters for the opposition. Please: throw a couple bucks in the jar, if you can spare them, and pass the word.

Reposted from my deviantArt journal.

Like Bitch, Ph.D. said: "This speech might make you tear up; it did me. It's certainly timely as hell."

Commentary at Washington Monthly and The G Spot.

Just finished watching the debate. Initial impressions: McCain performed above my expectations, but that pretty much adds up to "it was close". What it comes down to, though, is the facts.

Just to look up the first thing that comes to mind: according to transcripts, and ABC's blog agrees, McCain is simply wrong about Kissinger - he does support high-level talks without preconditions. Now, I don't care about errors like "Kennedy was out of the hospital before the debate started" or the Eisenhower letters thing, but if there are other significant points like Kissinger's stance on which McCain was simply and directly wrong, it matters.

As a member of your constituency, I am writing to offer my encouragement as you work on the bailout plan recently proposed by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. I am aware that you are under intense pressure to get something done, but as I know you know, there are few worse things that can be done than blindly throwing money at a problem. Therefore, I want to tell you: do not give in, do not give up, do not give even in the smallest degree unless you can secure this plan with all the controls that it requires.

Thank you for your time and trouble,
Robin H. D. Zimmermann

Hat tip to baxil for the link: Paul Krugman just got a link sent to him (how many layers of indirection am I up to?) of a little piece John McCain submitted to go in Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries.

As the man says, you might want to sit down for this.

I would also allow individuals to choose to purchase health insurance across state lines, when they can find more affordable and attractive products elsewhere that they prefer. Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

Ouch.