July 3, 2023

Letter to the Democratic Members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on the Web designer case

I sent this this evening to all Democratic members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and also to majority leader Chuck Schumer. I would urge others who feel as I do to do the same. Feel free to use my version if you wish, or write your own.

[div]Dear Senator (name):

I write to you in your capacity as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee ("JC&quot to ask – no, to demand – that the JC immediately commence an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the Supreme Court's ruling in the case, 303 Creative, LLC v. Elenis, et al., the case involving a putative web designer who didn't want to have to design websites for same-sex weddings.

As you are surely aware, within hours of the Supreme Court's issuing of a ruling, it was revealed in The New Republic ("TNR&quot see
https://newrepublic.com/article/173987/mysterious-case-fake-gay-marriage-website-real-straight-man-supreme-court) that among the papers filed with the court by the plaintiff's attorneys was something that was purportedly a request from a potential customer about designing a website for his upcoming wedding to a male partner. This alleged potential customer's name and contact information were included with the filings, and it was presented, presumably, to satisfy the Constitutional requirement, long upheldl by this very Court, of "case or controversy," as set forth in Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution of the United States. This is because the principal of 303 Creative does not now operate, nor has ever operated, a web design business, and she needed to show that she had standing to bring the case.

Article III, Section 2, Clause 1 of the Constitution states: "The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, the Laws of the United States, and Treaties made, or which shall be made, under their Authority;—to all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls;—to all Cases of admiralty and maritime Jurisdiction;—to Controversies to which the United States shall be a Party;—to Controversies between two or more States;—between a State and Citizens of another State,—between Citizens of different States,—between Citizens of the same State claiming Lands under Grants of different States, and between a State, or the Citizens thereof, and foreign States, Citizens or Subjects." Clearly, there was no underlying case or controversy here to be decided.

After the ruling was issued, the TNR reporter followed up by contacting the individual named as a potential customer. Although the person named did exist, and his contact information was correct, he disavowed any knowledge of having made such an inquiry of 303 Creative, adding that he would have no reason to do so, since he was already married (and to a woman). So, in fact, it appears that this case did not fulfill the case or controversy requirement of the Constitution.

Several things must happen if the Supreme Court is to retain any legitimacy whatsoever.

First, the ruling in the above-mentioned case must be set aside. If allowed to stand, it will open the door to all sorts of cases being made up out of whole cloth by parties who want the court to rule in advance on hypothetical controversies, a practice this Court, including under the current Chief Justice, as long disavowed. You and I both know, Senator, that had this case involved any topic other than one that was part of the right's culture wars, it would have been thrown out for lack of standing.

Secondly, the Judiciary Committee should look into several questions related to this whole affair, including:

(1) Did any of the justices know that the potential customer named in order to establish case or controversy had actually been made up? Or did they know, and decide to rule anyway because issuing a ruling was consistent with their political beliefs?

(2) If they did not know that it had been made up, why didn't they? Why did none of the Clerks take the time to verify that the information contained in the papers filed with the cased was accurate? (These questions should also be posed with regard to any lower courts involved in hearing the case.)

And finally, the Court must be pressured to sanction the plaintiff, as well as its principal, Lorie Smith, and the attorneys who helped to perpetrate this fraud upon the Court.

I urge you, both as a Senator and as member of the Judiciary Committee, to take immediate and decisive action in this matter.

Respectfully,
Mark P. Kessinger

July 3, 2023

Getting a 403 error when trying to post to General Discussion

But I can post to the Lounge, and here, just fine. What gives?

July 3, 2023

Testing

Just tried to post something in General Discussion, and got a 403 error. Not sure why. Posting here as a tests.

June 30, 2023

Had a frustrating conversation . . .

. . . with a friend who was also frustrated, as we all are, about the Supreme Court decisions. The conversation went something like this:

June 23, 2023

Mama Bears Documentary on PBS/Independent Lens

https://www.pbs.org/video/mama-bears-ebooux/

This is an absolutely beautifully done documentary that I would encourage everyone to watch. It is about a group of mothers, mostly in the South, who are doing battle to defend their LGBTQ+ kids from the anti-gay/anti-trans efforts of Republicans in their home states. I was particularly moved the mother and daughter shown in the image. This is an evangelical Christian mother, whose child, born a biological male, began insisting at around the age of 3 that she was really a girl. It was only after trying everything she could think of, from prayer to counseling and even punishment (including corporal punishment) to dissuade her child from expressing her identity. But none of it worked. She came around when her child done day made that statement that she wished she could just go an “be with Jesus” that she finally woke up. As the mother now movingly put it, “I had to decide whether I wanted to have a trans daughter or a dead son.”

There is an oft-heard sentiment – one that typically comes from people who consider themselves to be very tolerant – that goes something like this: “Look, I am all for adults living how ever they want, but we’re talking about children here who are too young to be able to make such an irreversible, life-altering decision about themselves.” First, a little clarity is in order: no minor child is receiving full sex-change surgery. A few adolescents may, with their parents’ permission, get “top surgery,” (typically, this is when a trans-male (born biologically female) has breasts removed or reduced. One can agree or disagree with that, but that surgery takes place only after a LOT of counseling from doctors and mental health professionals. It isn’t as if some kid, on a whim one day, can announce he or she is a different gender, and go out and schedule sex change surgery or even top surgery that very day! Support of trans-gendered kids may involve, in some cases, prescribing puberty blockers, which merely delay the onset of puberty, buying a child a little time before he or she has to make a more permanent decision.

I’ve stated before that, in addition to knowing several fully transitioned adults, I also have several friends and acquaintances, all of the straight, who are raising trans kids. One of these persons I know from high school, and several others from my college days, and a couple of instances from other contexts. To a person, these are bright, stable and loving parents, who simply want the best for their kids. I, myself, am a cis-gendered gay man (meaning I am sexually attracted to other men, but fully identify as a male myself). One thing that infuriates me is when I hear right-wingers making statements to the effect that those who support trans people are “groomers.” That angers me on two levels. First, it partakes of an age-old anti-gay slander, i.e., that gay people represent some kind of threat to children, and are out to “convert” them. Sorry to break it to you, haters, but the overwhelming majority of people who sexually abuse children identify as straight, even the ones who molest children of the same sex as themselves. The other level on which this makes me angry is that it portrays the parents of trans kids as themselves as, essentially, child molesters, and I know personally how far from the truth that allegation is.

Then there is a sentiment I hear sometimes from other gay men. This one goes like this: “Trans people have nothing to do with gay people – one is about gender identity, the other is about sexual orientation.” Often, these folks entertain a fantasy that if only the LGBTQ+ community got rid of the ‘T’, that their problems would disappear as if by magic. But here’s what I say to them: the right-wing in this country accepts only ONE model of gender-identify and sexual preference, and that is the so-called “traditional” model in which the ONLY sexual orientation that is ever permitted to exist and express itself is heterosexuality, engaged in my cis-gendered males and females. They are opposed to EVERYONE who falls outside of that model. Those whose bigotries lead them to oppose trans people oppose us also, as indeed they oppose anyone who fails to conform to what THEY deem to be acceptable. So do not, for one minute, think that the anti-trans movement isn’t coming for you also, sooner or later!

But to get back to the film, again, I would urge everyone to watch it, and most ESPECIALLY those who are opposed to children learning about respect for and tolerance of those who are different from themselves. Yes, it is true that children are fickle. But both gender identity and sexual orientation, while neither if fully understood, are deeply rooted in a person’s sense of who they are. The child from the film has insisted, and never wavered, about being a girl since the age of 3. I know I knew I was gay LONG before I necessarily understood what all that entailed and before I even had any sexual stirrings. I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was gay; I went through a long process of coming to terms with what I experienced within myself. I suspect this is the same for trans people. Learning about trans people does not make any child trans any more than learning about gay people makes a child gay (or a gay child learning about heterosexuality makes a gay child straight). Kids know, on a very profound level, what they identify as in terms of gender and sexual orientation.

Please, if you struggle to understand what trans people and the people who support them are all about, do watch this film. Set aside your politics, set aside the culture wars. Watch with an open heart. Ask yourself what you would do if you were these parents, what would you do if your three-year-old suddenly announced to you, and remain committed to the announcement, that he or she was really something other than the biological sex that defined them at birth? You can’t beat or punish it out of the child. You might succeed in raising a child that has thoroughly repressed his or her own sense of self, but in that case, you will at the least be raising an unhappy adult, and you may wind up creating pathologies within the child that you can scarcely imagine.

Compassion and empathy really aren’t difficult. They merely require a little humility about one’s own understanding of the world around oneself – recognizing that the ways in which you always have understood the world may be incomplete or not fully informed, and a willingness to HONESTLY place oneself in another’s shoes.

June 21, 2023

Justice Alito seems to be making the opposite argument from Clarence Thomas . . .

. . . Remember, Thomas's argument about the gifts/favors he received from Harlan Crow was, basically, "Hey, the guy's a dear friend, who gave me those things did so because of our friendship and for no other reason."

Now comes Alito, talking about the gifts/favors he has received from Paul Singer. Alito's argument, in effect, is "Paul Who? Look, I barely know the guy -- we've only spoken on a handful of occasions."

Interesting tack. But if anything, if Singer and Alito really are such casual acquaintances, then the gifts/favors become even more suspect. I mean, he's asking us to believe that some billionaire he barely knows is giving him private jet travel worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, and expects nothing in return!

Thomas's argument was at least slightly (but only slightly) more plausible than Alito's!

June 20, 2023

Remembering my Dad . . .

Given that yesterday was Father’s Day, i have been thinking a lot about my own father, and my relationship with him. We disagreed about some things,politics being chief among them. He was a staunch, conservative Republican (albeit of an older variety of conservative Republican that is largely extinct today), and I am an unabashed liberal/progressive. But he was ALWAYS willing to hear what I had to say, and to do so respectfully, and, on occasion, to acknowledge that I had a legitimate point to make. And it is that quality that I find utterly lacking in today’s Republicans, including, sad to say, some in my own family!

He died 23 years ago, and I still miss him!1


[William B. Kessinger, circa 1964, taken in Rome.]

April 26, 2023

Came across a wonderful New York story about Harry Belafonte . . .

. . . In 1958, when he was already an international start, Belafonte and his wife were looking for an apartment in Manhattan. He saw one that he really wanted -- a 21-room, 6-bedroom sprawler at 300 West End Avenue. At the time, though, many Manhattan landlords would refuse to rent to black tenants, even very prominent, wealthy ones like Belafonte. So Belafonte sent his white manager to fill out the application and paperwork as if for himself, and then, when it was approved, signed the lease in his own name.

When the landlord found out he had a black tenant, he promptly asked Belafonte to leave. Belafonte was so furious at the insult that he bought the entire building. And one of the first tenants he brought in was singer Lena Horne, who rented the penthouse. She and her white husband had been living for years out of hotels because of the same prejudice!

Belafonte eventually converted the building to a co-op, and he continued to reside there for nearly 50 years!

April 13, 2023

Cultural norms and the danger of parochial moral absolutism

If the kerfuffle over the Dalai Lama's interaction with a young boy demonstrates anything, it should be to drive home the danger and folly of viewing the customs of a foreign culture through a lens of moral absolutism grounded in the values of our own culture only, even, and especially, when we are a little too arrogantly sure that our society's values are oh-so-enlightened. Reading some of the comments on this board made me think that perhaps all of us are in need of a refresher in Anthropology 101!

The reality is that customs that look very weird and inappropriate in the context of our culture might be thoroughly appropriate in the context of another. (If you haven't yet watched the video posted by Richard D in which a young Tibetan man explains the context for kissing on the lips and sticking out tongues, I urge you to do so (see https://www.democraticunderground.com/1017820070 ).

The important thing to remember is that a gesture that seems, and indeed may be, wildly inappropriate in one cultural context can be utterly benign in another. And when we lose sight of that, even the most progressive among us can wind up looking like cultural boors!

March 24, 2023

Trump warns of 'death and destruction' if he's indicted in NY case

At what point does this become a terroristic threat?

From the NY Daily News Evening Edition: