Prince of Hate

"God hates soft men. God hates effeminate men. If I was in a drugstore and some guy opened the door for me, I'd rip his arm off and beat him with the wet end."
Ken Hutcherson, pastor - Antioch Bible Church, Kirkland Washington

Wow. At this rate, Christopher Hitchen's next anti-religious screed will pretty much write itself. As well it should. American Christianity has a problem in the fact that within its community lurk some really evil, nasty people, who understand that they have divine sanction for spreading hate. They are tolerated because their message - that there is a different set of rules for Christians who, as the "chosen people," are special - makes it easy to see them as only a problem to "bad people."

And to a degree, they're right. After all, even Rwanda during the height of the Genocide was a safe place to be - if you were an extremist Hutu.

"[Art] Caplan draws a wise lesson from the Nazi doctors: Beware the human weakness for moral rationalization. But part of that weakness is the illusion in each of us that we have escaped it."
William Saletan ("Natural-Born Killers" Slate Magazine, 4 April, 2005)

Fear and Outrage

"Hard cases make bad law." Criminal Justice truism.

Ben turned me on to a story about the fight over compliance with a federal sex offender law in California.

The federal "Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006," would require states to submit information on adolescents as young as 14 deemed delinquent in juvenile court of aggravated sexual abuse to a national public registry, and it provides penalties for non-compliance - the Attorney General can reduce the federal Byrne funds allocated to the state for law enforcement resources. (The article mentions a 10% reduction, but I don't know what the actual cut might be. For that matter, I don't know what "Byrne funds" are.) One thing that I'm curious about is the definition of "aggravated sexual abuse." According to the article: "If a 14-year-old touches an 11-year-old’s penis, the 14-year-old would be eligible for the public registry." THAT'S "aggravated sexual abuse?" Really?

The fear of sexual abuse of children by strangers, fueled by the (very) occasional high-profile child abduction, rape and murder has got people falling over each other to seek tougher and tougher sanctions, to show everyone that they're doing something about this intolerable scourge. And it's made me realize something. The very next time someone brings up the War on Terror, or the fact that people throughout the world are starving, and asks: "Where is the outrage?" I'm going to answer: "At sex offenders." Politicians may be conniving bastards, but they aren't stupid. You can't get any momentum up for impeachment proceedings against President Bush*, but you can get new sex offender laws passed on shakier evidence than you have against the Executive Branch. Misguided wars against heathen foreigners don't drive outrage in the Heartland. (Especially if we think they have something we want.) Fear of unapproved sexuality does. That's why President Clinton had to face the music for the Lewinsky affair - which, let's face it, was an absurdly trivial thing.

"Supporters of the law argue the high cost of putting the act into effect is worth the safety of the community."
Is Ricky Really a Sex Offender? - Los Angeles CityBeat

This reminds me of another truism - "Nothing is too expensive to the man who doesn't have to foot the bill himself."

* For my part, I don't think that a charge of intentional deceit would hold up against the Bush Administration, and I don't know that willful ignorance of reality is an impeachable offense. But if banging the interns IS, I don't see why it shouldn't be.

Moral Futility

China is enticing expatriate Chinese stem-cell researchers to go back by setting them up with cash, homes, cars and lab space. Sweet deal. It turns out that the government there isn't conflicted (at least publicly) over stem-cell research. Although it's interesting, but not at all surprising, that they don't allow them to be used for reproductive purposes. One wonders if the Chinese won't eventually start recruiting non-Chinese researchers to go over and work.

This is going to be hard on the pro-life movement here. They can keep such research from being labeled as ethical enough to go ahead, but only here in the United States, and possibly only at the Federal level. If the Chinese make any therapeutic breakthroughs, you can be sure that Americans will want access to the new treatments - and given the fact that people are already showing a willingness to travel to India for cheaper medicine there, they're unlikely to stay on this side of the ocean if new life-saving measures can be had at the end of a flight to Hong Kong. American bio-tech firms that don't partner up with China risk being shut out - those that do seem likely to run the risk of being censured by China's critics in Congress. In the end, I suspect the money will win out.

But all of this brings up an interesting point. Of how much worth is a unilateral moral stand, when in the presence of people who are perfectly willing to go ahead regardless? Is personal blamelessness, in and of itself, worth aspiring to?

No Parking Zone

Given how often we're clubbed over the head with stories of christian charity in the United States, there is a certain sad irony to the fact one of the groups that called for the city to do something about Seattle's "rolling slum" (a colony of homeless people that live out their vehicles in Seattle's Ballard neighborhood) is Mars Hill Church. Blessed are the poor, until they take up choice parking spaces, neh?

(As an aside, I find it interesting that Mars Hill Church is the only organization mentioned by name as having complained about the mobile homeless in the area. It should be interesting to watch the column for the next few days or weeks, and see if Mr. Westneat reports the church or its supporters as being critical of him for that, or if they ask for a more nuanced story to be presented.)

Scarlet Numbers

Washington State Republican Senator Mike Carrell is sponsoring legislation to mandate that people convicted of Driving Under the Influence have to purchase bright yellow license plates for their vehicle, and display them for the first year after their driving privileges are restored. Needless to say, there has been some controversy surrounding the idea, and not everyone is a fan.

"We view alcohol problems as an illness, so why don't we shame someone for kidney stones? Why don't we say, 'Suck it up, pull up your bootstraps and get rid of those kidney stones?' "
Patrick Hart, Seattle psychotherapist and substance-abuse counselor.

The comparison here is misplaced. There is no drive to shame the entire population of alcoholics - no one is proposing that simply having a drinking problem should mean special plates on one's car. And alcoholism, like kidney stones, can be considered an illness, while DUI is a behavior, and is pretty much separate from the disease of alcoholism. A person can be driving a car with more than the legal limit of alcohol in their bloodstream without being an alcoholic, and a person can be an alcoholic for decades without ever having been intoxicated behind the wheel.

Hart is correct in that its unrealistic, and perhaps even patently unfair, to expect alcoholics to just up and quit cold turkey. But in some quarters, this has metastasized into an overall understanding that alcoholics are so helpless in the face of their disorder that they can't even be expected to take the simplest steps to avoid hurting others. Hart notes, correctly, that "[... T]here's no evidence that anyone ever said, 'I am going to go out and get a DUI.' " But I bet that you could find plenty of instances where someone said, "I'm going to go over to this cool bar I know and have a drink or two," with the understanding that they were going to drive over there, and without having made a plan to get home without having to drive back.

There are any number of objections to special plates for DUI drivers. Like the fact that they're unlikely to be of any real use to other drivers, outside of making them feel a little more prepared, and therefore, aren't worth the expense of putting the program in place. You're unlikely to see special plates on an oncoming car before he crosses into your lane. And defensive driving means keeping an eye on everyone on the road, not just the one guy with the special plates. Or, the obvious one, that Senator Carrell's bill seems more about punishing people who have already served their time than it is about public safety. But I don't think the idea that it's not helpful to the DUI drivers themselves holds much water. After all, prison is hardly an environment that helps car thieves learn new job skills.