On Being Trans

Miss Netherlands, a trans woman

How long did it take Dick Cheney, vice president under George W Bush and a real “conservative” Republican, to change his thinking about gay rights when his own daughter came out?  What do you think?  A minute?  20 seconds?  Somewhere between 5% and 10% of us are not straight.  That is, 20 million of us are not straight.  Which means that most extended families have a gay member or two.  And when that person came out, the family got behind him or her.  Without blinking an eye.  The person who didn’t was probably ostracized by the rest of the family.  The huge number of families with gay members explains why gay rights is no longer an issue among presidents, senators, House members, and even most SCOTUS justices.

Powers, Rights, Privileges

In a constitutionally limited representative democratic republic,

• A power belongs to a government, to compel a non-governmental entity to perform some action or to prevent a non-governmental entity from performing some action.  The sole powers that any such government has are always defined and limited by a constitution, either federal or state.
• A right belongs to an individual or a natural person, to do or not to do as he sees fit.  A right is absolute protection against governmental power. 

The U.S. Bill of Rights

Dear Reader:

It's been 10 years, maybe 30 years or more, since you read, and thought about, our Bill of Rights.  It's time for a refresher.  At less than 1000 words, it should take you five minutes to read this post.  Take ten minutes, at least, to understand what you are reading.

The Right to Bigotry

You have a right to be a bigot.  PERIOD!  A legal, Constitutional right to be a bigot!

But what exactly does that mean?  All it means is that you may not be imprisoned or fined or in any tangible way penalized – by the federal government, by your state government, or your local government – for being a bigot.  You may lose friends and you may lose your job or your livelihood, but you have a legal, Constitutional right to be a bigot.  Indeed, the biggest loser is bound to be the bigot himself – is that you? – but he is legally free to do so.

What is Constitutional, anyway?

Constitutional is a podcast, check it out!

I am pretty certain that I have addressed this maddening question elsewhere, but maybe not in my blog, perhaps in my book, To My Countrymen.  But without going back to see what I have already written that you cannot find by reading my blog, I feel compelled to address this important issue here and now.

Many Americans are pretty sure what is and what is not Constitutional, what is or is not a Constitutional RIGHT.  I believe that they are wrong most of the time, especially those who like to throw around the words “That IS (or is NOT) Constitutional” on a daily basis.  If pressed, they would declare that they have the right to their opinion about what is or is not Constitutional.  But they are wrong!  They have no more right to an opinion about this question than they have a right to an opinion on the question of: how much is two plus two?  But, of course, Constitutional rights are not so rigidly defined as the rules of counting.  But we peasants have no right to an opinion here.

A Constitutional Right to Privacy

In my recent blog post, The Leak, I wrote about Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, No. 19-1392, 597 U.S. ___, the SCOTUS case that overturned Roe v. Wade.  While this unhappy decision did not rest solely on the controversial notion that there is no Constitutional right to privacy, Justice Clarence Thomas did go out of his way to suggest that other SCOTUS decisions that relied on privacy could be rolled back based on that interpretation of the law.  That is what I want to talk about in this essay: the Constitutional right to privacy, does it exist in the law?

The Day the Music Died

A NYC friend of mine (I have given him space in this blog before) wrote the following and I thought it worth being aired.  The title of the piece was just to rope you in to reading his piece.

The link takes you to a story written in 2021 and it is a bundle of lies

It was Memorial Day in New York City, just a few years ago, 55 years ago to be exact, 1967.  What do New Yorkers do on Memorial Day?  Same as big city folks across the nation.  They find a park to picnic in.  I lived on the Lower East Side and Tompkins Square Park was my city park. 

The long and short of it was that by day’s end, some 42 of us had been arrested, taken to the local police station, jailed, fingerprinted, and released.  Finally, we had our day in court.

Masks and Rights

Sure doesn't

This post was inspired by the aggressive ignorance of this woman (video) who insisted that she had the RIGHT to transact business in her bank without complying with its demand that she wear a mask.

In a previous post, an important takeaway is the # of Americans who could pass a basic Citizenship test, only 38% of us!  A corollary of that fact is that a clear majority of us do not understand what our so-called RIGHTS really are.

By definition, our legal (and Constitutional) rights are established in our Declaration of Independence, our Constitution, our Bill of Rights, and the rest of the amendments to the Constitution.

#2A

This essay concerns the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, not mass shootings and not gun violence (for which, please see 2016  and 2015).

Here is the Second Amendment, in all her 27 words of naked splendor:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

That is the whole thing.

Lying is Legal

Lying (you KNOW you are telling an untruth) is a Constitutional RIGHT guaranteed by the “freedom of speech” clause in the Constitution’s 1st Amendment.  If freedom of speech doesn’t protect a lie, what does it protect?  2+2=4?  The Earth is round?  The truth rarely needs protection.

But there are “exceptions” to our right to lie.  Freedom of speech does NOT protect perjury, which is telling a lie under oath, before Congress, or in a legal contract.  Freedom of speech does NOT protect slander or libel or defamation which are lies about another person that are deliberately malicious and are spoken or written with a clear intent to damage another person, his reputation or his finances (but public figures are not protected by libel and slander laws, an interesting exception that president Trump wants to undo – for himself).  Freedom of speech does NOT protect shouting fire in a crowded theater.  Or threats or incitements to violence.  Or conspiracy to commit a crime.  Or obscenity.  Or plagiarism.  All President Trump’s lies are legal as he is not under oath.  What a list, and there are a few more.

What is a Right, anyway?

I recently found this gem on my Facebook Timeline, posted there by a “friend” of mine.  It is called A Bill of Non Rights.  The author (Lewis Napper, a computer software engineer from Mississippi who ran for a U.S. Senate seat in 2000) was tired of hearing that every damn thing is a RIGHT (he was a Libertarian, of course), and he made the point (back in 1993) that all sorts of things (food, housing, health care, a job, happiness, etc.) are not “rights,” a point with which I substantially agree.  You may have already seen it on your Facebook Timeline.  But you should read it before continuing to read this post.

School Prayer

School prayer is a very hot issue among Americans, right up there with abortion and gay rights. But Americans who know the Constitution understand that the ban on school prayer is not an attack on Christianity or on religion or on God. In the first place, the ban concerns only public schools as they are agencies of the state, of the government (our taxes pay for public schools and they are open to everyone, not just members of one religion or one economic class). There is no ban on prayer in private schools as they do not represent government authority. And, finally, there is no ban on student prayer (individually or in a group), the ban is on prayers initiated (compelled) by the public school, as any such prayer would represent an “establishment” of a (particular) religion. Imagine, if you will, a prayer that would satisfy not only every Protestant Christian sect (Southern Baptist, Presbyterian, Methodist, Lutheran, Mormon, Christian Science, etc., etc.), but also the Roman Catholic faith, the Jewish faith (orthodox to Reform), the Muslim faith (Sunni and Shia) and even the “faith” of non-believers. Is such a prayer possible? So, any prayer is necessarily the work of one or more religious sects but never the work of all. Thus, any such public-school prayer would be a case of “establishing” a religion, forbidden to government by the words of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Skokie

Few people, few Americans, really get what being American really means.   Here is one American’s take on really getting what it means to be American.

In 1977-78, a bunch of neo-Nazi thugs claimed the right to peacefully assemble and speak in Skokie, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago.  Not only is Skokie predominantly Jewish, but a significant portion of its population is Holocaust survivors.   The Nazis were looking to pee in the faces of their victims.

Wedding Cakes

The Supreme Court case, Masterpiece Cakeshop, Ltd. v. Colorado Civil Rights Commission, 584 U.S. ___ (2018), was decided on June 4th in favor of the cakeshop, by a 7-2 vote, 2 of the 4 liberal judges dissenting.

Here are the essential details:

In July 2012, Charlie Craig and Dave Mullins, a gay couple who were planning to wed, entered Masterpiece Cakeshop in Lakewood, Colorado to order a wedding cake. At the time, Colorado law did not honor gay marriages; so, the couple had planned to travel to Massachusetts – where gay marriages were legal – get married there, fly home and celebrate their union with their family and friends; it was for this after-party that the couple wanted a special cake. Jack Phillips, the owner of the bakery, was a man of “sincerely held (Christian) religious beliefs,” and he refused to make the couple a cake, based on his religious belief that marriage was between a man and a woman. There was no discussion of a message or customization or even any decoration of the cake; the discussion never went beyond a gay couple wanting the cakeshop to make a wedding cake for them and the owner refusing.

Las Vegas Shooting

I’ll be brief.

One more massacre on American soil, committed by a crazy man with an automatic weapon.  But he may not have been crazy until he went crazy (we don’t know his story yet).

The Second Amendment reads: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

Many Constitutional “experts” like to disregard the first thirteen words, a dependent clause.  I am NOT arguing that the people should NOT have the right of armed self-defense (against a neighbor, not a foreign military power), but I am

Messing with the Right to Vote

OK, I can hear some of you already: “That Ben Paine, he is totally off his rocker; his idea is bad enough, but publishing it is a sure sign of really losing it!”

OK, what’s it all about?

Democracy!  And who has the right to vote.

You have heard me say that a democracy is the ONLY way to go; any other form of government – oligarchy (rule by a few) or monarchy (rule by one) – is a form of tyranny, because no matter how benevolent they may be, they are NOT self-rule, they are NOT We the People ruling ourselves.  And you have heard me say that everyone should exercise his right to vote, it is his civic duty, it is the least he can do!  But I’d like to impose some conditions on a citizen’s right to vote.  Just to make things interesting.

A Study of Gun Violence in the USA

I am going to talk about guns in a way you have never seen before, so hold on.

Snowden and the NSA

Benjamin Franklin by Joseph Duplessis

After the homilies he immortalized in Poor Richard’s Almanac (“A penny saved is a penny earned,” “Early to bed and early to rise …,” “Old too soon and wise too late”), Benjamin Franklin is best known for two more mature aphorisms: “A Republic, madam, if you can keep it” and “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

In other words, alongside of the wise Mr. Franklin, I am squarely on Edward Snowden’s side in this contest between the forces of civil liberties vs national security.  If we can’t protect ourselves without resorting to undermining the very freedoms that make us proud to be Americans in the first place, well then, God help us.

Having said that, this is a tough one.

Gay Marriage, Updated

U.S. District Judge David Bunning’s decision to jail Rowan County, Kentucky’s Court Clerk Kim Davis was an overreaction.  Thank God it is done with, and in only six days’ time.  Too long by six days; better he had put her on leave without pay until a resolution could be reached.  And a perfect resolution was indeed reached, in less than a week.  As long as one clerk or assistant clerk is able to fulfill the letter of the law, there is no need for Ms. Davis to be forced to betray her conscience.

Washington Post 2015/09/04, etc.

You should be clear that I am on the side of the LGBTQ community in the gay marriage argument.  For several reasons.  One, it is no skin off my back if a gay couple gets married, it costs me nothing.  Two, the argument against gay marriage is a religious one, and the first amendment prohibits the establishment of a religion (or group of religions) in the nation and in the states, and a legal ruling in favor of a religion is an “establishment” of that religion.  Third, no religious organization will be compelled to marry – or even recognize as married – any gay couples, as the Supreme Court decision only relates to civil law.  Fourth, before the Court decision, civil law sometimes distinguished between married people and single people, oftentimes advantaging married people; now gay people will be able to take advantage of those same advantages of being married.  And last, does your happiness really depend on the unhappiness of human beings who are not like you?

Gun Violence

I propose a response to “gun violence” that is better than anything I have seen out there, but there are hurdles to going along with my “solution.”

First, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.”  Take away the guns, the firearms, and the perp cannot kill from a distance and cannot kill in large quantities per minute.  Nothing else kills quite so efficiently as firearms.