People have been complaining, apparently, about a South Dakota bill to legalize killing in defense of unborn children.

It looks to me like the law is primarily aimed at killing in response to an imminent or ongoing unlawful assault that could cause a miscarriage, or perhaps an imminent/ongoing forced abortion. I'd actually support legalizing such killing, personally; unborn children mean a whole lot to people who actually want to continue a pregnancy, and I think perfectly reasonable people who totally don't deserve jail time might use lethal force to protect their or their partner's unborn child, just as they'd also use lethal force to protect their newborn. Plus, it's not axiomatic that all assaults that would endanger a fetus would also endanger the life of the mother; you do hear about abusers who have deliberately attempted to cause miscarriages without actually killing the mother.

On the other hand, even if a judge would never interpret this legislation to legalize killing an abortion provider (since such an interpretation would almost definitely fail even a rational-basis constitutionality test), it certainly could be read by crazy people as legalizing it, so it's disturbing that the lawmakers didn't see fit to put an explicit disclaimer in.

Of course, I'm not sure what you can even expect from legislators who write statutory language like this:

"Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt to murder such person, or to harm the unborn child of such person in a manner and to a degree likely to result in the death of the unborn child, or to commit any felony upon him or her, or upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is."

DANGLING CLAUSE ALERT. Because this is the third "or" clause in the sentence, you THINK it's supposed to be parallel to the others, but that makes no frigging sense: "Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt upon or in any dwelling house in which such person is." WTF.

After like 20 minutes, I figured out that the final "or" clause was actually supposed to be nested into the penultimate "or" clause: "Homicide is justifiable if committed by any person while resisting any attempt . . . to commit any felony upon any dwelling house in which such person is, or to commit any felony in any dwelling house in which such person is."

Which, by the way, is WAY SCARIER than a law saying that you can use lethal force in defense of your own fetus. I can totally shoot someone who's attempting to commit ANY FELONY in any house where I am. If this is to be taken literally, if I go to someone ELSE's house in South Dakota and they try to deal drugs or commit securities fraud or whatever in front of me, I CAN KILL THEM IN COLD BLOOD.

I'm pretty sure that's not what the South Dakota legislature meant to say. They probably missed it because the sentence overall is completely unreadable! Learn to write more clearly, South Dakota! You really need to work on your comma usage.

I am back in the habit of arguing with stupid people on the internet! If I ever was out of it.

This time it is an argument on change.org over, of all things, Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools.

If you've ever had anything to do with Maryland or the DC area, you know that Montgomery County is ridiculously liberal. It is also one of the best educated and and wealthiest counties in the country, with towns like Bethesda, Rockville, Potomac, and Silver Spring. Its public school system is extremely good and also well-funded. I attended MCPS schools until sixth grade, and a lot of my friends went all the way through. It was a far cry from the Bible Belt.

Apparently, MCPS has a flyer program that allows community members to distribute flyers to school students twice times a year. Because the school system is a state actor and because it's opened up the flyer program as a "public forum," the school can't exclude any particular viewpoint from distributing flyers except in when it would cause serious disruption, such as overt hate speech. So when an "ex-gay" organization, PFOX, submitted a flyer that just said "don't be mean to ex-gays, instead you should respect their personal decisions, and by the way we're an organization that supports people with unwanted homosexual feelings," the school said "okay, sure, whatever, put it in the box." And the flyers went out to the student body.

Of course, the queer community is completely outraged. I would be too, if this were actually the school system passing out the flyers. Instead, though, the school system is just also allowing people to flyer-spam the students. Their viewpoint-neutral outlook enables PFLAG and other queer organizations to also send out flyers to kids (on the link, scroll down to David Fishback's first comment).

Most of the Change.org commenters seem to be under the impression that the school can keep the flyer program but require that flyers be "fact-checked," which would enable the school to ban PFOX's flyer because "ex-gay" programs don't work (interestingly, though, the flyer itself never actually asserts that ex-gay programs are effective, just that some people choose to enter into them, which is probably true. It also stops short of actually saying it's wrong to be gay, just that some gay people don't want to be, which is also true). But the lawsuit that decided that MCPS had opened a "public forum" in the first place involved a Christian evangelical organization sending out information about their religious-based club, and held that schools couldn't exclude that organization. If you could require that all the viewpoints in flyers be scientifically validated, I'm pretty sure you could exclude organizations whose primary beliefs are that evolution is a lie and God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to a human form of God who then died and rose from the dead. But the commenters JUST DON'T GET that the Constitution has a different idea than they do of when governments can engage in viewpoint discrimination.

In any case, the upshot is that tons of people are signing a petition yelling at MCPS for allowing something that they didn't really have much of a choice but to allow, unless they wanted to abolish the flyer program entirely. And I appear to be the only queer person in the world who thinks that the harm in preventing PFLAG from sending out flyers to schoolkids outweighs the harm of allowing PFOX to send them out. Because apparently when confronted with both sides, and in the context of one of the most gay-friendly public school environments in the entire country, kids STILL can't be trusted to figure out which position is the correct one. They also appear to think that the flyers are dangerous because parents could read and believe them, but from what I can tell the flyers were handed out at school and kids had no obligation to take them home.

I sort of want to start a counter-petition encouraging MCPS to keep the flyer program open.

Oh, and the worst part? Even Feminist Law Professors is getting this all wrong. "Do you think that the school system would distribute a flier with its report cards from a nonprofit that said that we could achieve world peace if only everyone embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior? That certainly isn’t a slur or a threat either, but, like the flier from the ex-gay group, it would contribute to an atmosphere of intolerance–in this case, of religious minorities." UM, YES ACTUALLY. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE ORIGINAL LAWSUIT AGAINST MCPS. YOU ARE A LAW PROFESSOR. RESEARCH YOUR GODDAMN LAW. And also, why does Feminist Law Professors not allow comments? I will have to make do with trackback.

ETA: In case anyone was skeptical of my claim that the schools, and the students, were fully aware of the problems with PFOX, here's an interesting open letter from PFOX to MCPS from back in 2007, complaining that teachers were encouraging kids to throw the flyers in the trash. PFOX threatened litigation over it. So: a) the fact that PFOX is sending out flyers to kids is not news, and b) no reasonable kid could think the flyers were endorsed by the school. I note that even though PFOX can threaten to sue when teachers tell kids to throw out the flyers, they certainly can't prevent the kids themselves from throwing them out, which, undoubtedly, most of them do.

Reading my renter's insurance policy is hilarious! If you have homeowner's or renter's insurance of any kind, I encourage you to read it. It's truly amazing to read it and think "someone had to be hired just to think about all the horrible things that could happen to someone's house, JUST IN CASE!

For example, my insurance policy specifically states that, while it will cover damage due to a volcanic explosion, it will not cover:

WAR, including the following and any consequence of any of the following:
a. Undeclared war, civil war, insurrection, rebellion, or revolution;
b. Warlike ct by a military force or military personnel; or
c. Destruction, seizure, or use for a military purpose.

Discharge of a nuclear weapon will be deemed a warlike act even if accidental.

That's right: someone writing this totally was thinking "okay, but what if someone's house gets destroyed by a nuclear bomb... by accident???" Also note the implication there that if my building gets destroyed by a CONVENTIONAL bomb that was accidentally discharged, that's covered! I guess considering that's actually happened in my current city, it's an important consideration.

In addition, I'm not insured for the results of a "nuclear reaction, radiation, or radioactive contamination, or any of the consequences of any of these." This kind of DISCRIMINATION against people who live near nuclear plants is exactly why we don't have nuclear power right now! If a coal-burning plant exploded near my building and set fire to it, I'd be covered, not if I'm living near a nuclear plant? CALL YOUR CONGRESSPEOPLE, GUYS. Also, seriously, what's with the fact that I'm covered for volcanic explosions but not earthquakes or floods? WTF?

Okay guys, I never actually got to read all the way through my friends list backlog from before I took the bar, but now I'm leaving again, for Prague. So... I'll be mostly out of touch again for another 2 weeks.

In the meantime, some choice snippets from the internet:

Hilarious "free-market"-ers on Change.org think that a truly free market, IN THE REAL WORLD, would lead to a world where every commercial good is completely perfect. They also think that we have evolved over "thousands" of years (young-earth Darwinism?), that Obama is a "Marxist," that anyone who doesn't see why they think that must just not have ever heard of Marxism before, that the temperature of coffee is a matter of "opinion," and yearn for the days where people learned true personal responsibility like men, instead of doing wimpy things like wearing helmets when riding bicycles. Yes guys: helmets and personal responsibility. They don't mix. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE!

Okay, really this is no stupider than a lot of things on the internet, but this is somehow extra amusing because a) it's on Change.org, and b) these people are so sincere, and so dedicated to proving their point!

Also, a friend of mine in Tel Aviv (and a high-school classmate of mine) recently posted a facebook status message about how someone in Tel Aviv opened fire on a GLBT youth center, killing 3 and injuring 11. One of his friends responded:

fucked up news
this is not fkin jerusalem

This comment just says so much.

Yes, that is the title of a post in a shitty Minneapolis food blog.

It's like a misogynist, ableist, fatphobic TRIFECTA!

I could also mention that ADA rights are statutory, not constitutional. But that'd be a bit nitpicky.

In other news, I saw orawnzva today, which was very fun, except for when I noticed that the Harvard Coop (the official bookstore) had twice misspelled the word "espresso" as "expresso" on handwritten signs posted outside, and also (on the same sign) written the word "cappuchino." Anywhere else such a misspelling would have been acceptable, I think, but I figure if you're an elitist institution, you should be held to elitist standards.

Also, I'm still studying for the bar, and will continue to be for MORE THAN A MONTH. Ewwwwwww.

I saw Leonard Cohen tonight! It was completely crazyawesome. I've been into him since heronblue introduced me to him in seventh grade. He's in his mid-70s right now and hasn't toured for about 15 years, and his voice is still amazing. I am a fan. I brought this friend of mine who is also a fan, and we sort of squee-d the entire time. I kind of cried a number of times. If this dude ever starts his own religion (which is looking doubtful, but whatever), I wish to subscribe to it. In the meantime I am kind of looking out for a necklace that looks like this book's cover.

Right outside the theater, there were people protesting the fact that he was later playing in Tel Aviv, and trying to get him to cancel his concert. Why, you ask? Apparently, because Israel will use his appearance for propaganda effect and therefore we need a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Seriously.

Reasons why this is stupid:

( There are at least five of them! )

Incidentally, at some point Leonard Cohen started talking during the concert about how he seemed to have gotten old enough that people cared about his opinion, and so he had something very important to say to us. He had noticed a disturbing trend towards hotels having magnifying mirrors with fluorescent lights all around them. His advice: none of us over the age of eleven should ever, ever look in those mirrors. Just his opinion, though.

I kind of wish that I'd yelled "next year he'll play in Jerusalem!" as I left. Just to be ornery.

Dear lazywebs,

Can anyone read this?

From Drop Box

It's inscribed on a signet ring that I bought in Jerusalem (this drawing is, of course, a mirror image of what's on the ring, since the writing in signet rings is always backwards - this is how it should the actual stamp should look). The vendor claimed it didn't actually say anything, but someone else who saw it said it did but that they didn't read Arabic well enough to read it. I am guessing it's just someone's name, or initials, but it would be cool to know.

(apologies if the letters are messed up somewhat - I couldn't get a good, clear photo of the actual stamp, so I had to copy it freehand)

edit: here's the actual ring, mirror-flipped in photoshop thanks to greyling!

From Israel 2009 #2

I was hoping he'd make it until I got there in the morning. My mother was the only one with him at the time. He started breathing heavily and then just stopped. It was very peaceful. It's a good thing my mother was there, even if he didn't know she was there (it's not too clear) - he really did not want to die alone.

Per his request, he'll be cremated. The memorial service won't be for another month or so, they think. He has family around the world and they are going to schedule it so that people can make plans to fly here.

I am not particularly ready to be consoled by how good the death was, or how ready he was to go, or how he had a full life. I want my grandfather. I have been lucky in that, until now, I've never lost a close family member. But that also means that this is all new to me. I don't feel like I really know what it means for him to not be here.

Going to DC tomorrow.

He is very old and has been progressively deteriorating for several years. Still, I am really devoted to my grandfather, he is the only one I ever had. My father's parents died before I was born. He was always a really sweet guy, and he and my grandmother lived very close to me when I was growing up, so I spent a lot of time at his house. I really idolized him as a kid, and still do. He's a pretty intimidatingly impressive person.

Today is also my dad's 70th birthday.

While in Jerusalem I walked a couple of times past a crumbling, ancient Muslim cemetery. It was clearly very old, and also very much in disuse:

From Israel 2009 #2

( more pictures )

From Israel 2009 #2

Across the street was a building under construction, which the tour guide identified to us as the Palace Hotel - an old hotel that's recently been gutted from the inside, and will be rebuilt with the facade intact.

The guide spent a lot of time talking to us about how great the hotel would be when done, but I spent all my time ignoring him and taking pictures of the cemetery. There were what appeared to be Jewish graves in it as well (note the star of David):

From Israel 2009 #2

I thought perhaps they were two old cemeteries that were partially divided. You can't see in these photos, but there is a street that runs through the two halves of the cemetery, which would be a natural dividing point between Muslim/Jewish sections.

So imagine my surprise that upon reading further about how people are actually trying to build a museum of tolerance on the site of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, I realized that it was the same cemetery I took photos of (note the reference, in comments, to the Palace Hotel).

I'm sort of speechless. I actually think everyone here is acting pretty badly, not just the people trying to build the museum - for one thing, the highest members of the Muslim clergy were perfectly happy 60 years ago to sell part of the cemetery to build a hotel on it, and never complained when, almost 50 years ago, a parking lot was built on the same exact location they're trying to build the Museum of Tolerance on; this article seems to suggest that the museum will not actually encroach on any part that is still cemetery, it will only be on the part that's currently a parking lot. That said, the people complaining now aren't exactly the same people who didn't complain 50 years ago: It's a new generation that can legitimately have different priorities.

That said, for fuck's sake, this is not how you build a Museum of Tolerance. You do not propose to build it on the former cemetery site of a prominent minority with whom you have a rather contentious relationship, then, when they object, resolve it through litigation. While in Israel a number of Israelis I talked to said, with varying degrees of pride or matter-of-factness, that Israelis were not "politically correct" people and this is possibly why Israel has such a "PR" problem. When they weren't native speakers of English, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, figuring that they didn't realize how dismissive their word choice was - Israeli culture is pretty unpolished in a bunch of other ways, and they could have been referring generally to that (a friend of mine who now lives there says that American table manners are much stricter, and that sort of frightens me). But some of them were born in the United States, and I really kinda wanted to punch them in the face. I hate the use of "political correctness" as a dismissive term for what should be called regular human decency.

Oh, and this is clearly not a matter of one culture just valuing cemeteries more than another: if anything, Judaism is far more concerned with maintaining the sacredness of cemeteries than any other Abrahamic religion, which is why you'll read in the above-linked articles references to the ultra-Orthodox community complaining bitterly about this, and significant wads of cash being expended for "teumah pipes" to channel ritual uncleanliness away from the site (wtf?), presumably so that Kohenim can visit. There was a relatively similar incident in Prague, when Czech authorities built a building that encroached a bit onto the Old Jewish cemetery. The community was enraged. There is a plaque there, apologizing for it (but the building is still there).

Also, even if nobody else cared, I would. I love old cemeteries. Just looking at how it is now, full of grass and weeds and semi-toppled headstones, is very sad. Clearly something needs to be done about the cemetery even if nothing is built there (or near there). It is badly damaged already, and has vast swaths of completely empty, overgrown space. But I really loved this cemetery, partially because it was the first time I'd seen Muslim headstones (the two-towers motif is really awesome), partially because I'm just really into such things. Clearly I should have joined this protest, in full goth regalia, with a sign saying "I JUST REALLY LIKE GRAVES!"