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Look out, fat folks. As we learn more about the intractability of your condition, the good news is that people may stop expecting you to diet or exercise your way to a thinner body. The bad news is, they may start expecting you to go under the knife.
More here.
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Is the global market in womb rentals out of control? Does it need regulation?
I wondered about that three weeks ago when I saw this Reuters story: "Poverty Makes Surrogates of Indian Women in Gujarat." The $4,000 to $8,000 paid to successful surrogates in India is "a huge sum of money in a country where many live on less than $2 a day," Rina Chandran reported. But compared with U.S. rates, it's cheap. That's why foreigners have begun
to flock to [Nayna] Patel's clinic, drawn by the lower costs, relaxed attitude toward surrogates and lack of legislation. A draft bill on surrogacy is pending before parliament, and meanwhile, hundreds of clinics have mushroomed across the country, with critics saying touts promoting this "reproductive tourism" care little for the health or rights of the surrogates. ... Patel has a list of nearly 200 [would-be surrogates] and is seeing more women walk in everyday because they are feeling the pinch of the slowdown.
And yet, Chandran noted, Patel "draws the line at gay couples."
Cheap reproductive labor for wealthy foreigners, but no gay parents allowed? For the usual incoherent combination of lefty reasons—not enough private discrimination in working conditions, too much private discrimination in family values—I felt the urge to support regulation of the industry.
Then, yesterday, Reuters published another investigation of overseas surrogacy conditions, this time in China. "With China's rising affluence, increasing numbers of infertile couples have been seeking surrogate mothers," James Pomfret reported. "Surrogacy agencies have been recruiting girls, often from poor villages, to have babies on behalf of prospective parents."
Should the government do something about this? Actually, authorities are already on the case:
In the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou, three young surrogate first-time mothers were discovered by authorities hiding in a communal flat. Soon afterwards, district family planning and security officers broke into the flat, bundled them into a van and drove them to a district hospital where they were manhandled into a maternity ward, the mothers recounted to Reuters. "I was crying 'I don't want to do this'," said a young woman called Xiao Hong, who was pregnant with four-month-old twins. "But they still dragged me in and injected my belly with a needle," the 20-year-old told Reuters. ... Another of the surrogates, who said she'd come from a village in Sichuan province, recounted how officers made her take pills then surgically removed her three-month-old fetus while she was unconscious.
This isn't the kind of policing liberals have in mind when they call for tighter regulation of the fertility industry. But the tricky thing about official intervention is that once the state gets its foot in the door, you don't necessarily get to dictate what it can and can't do.
Every time the global market in human body parts and rentals looks ugly enough to regulate, I'm reminded how much uglier things can get when the government steps in.
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Homosexuality isn't a sin or mental illness. It needs no cure. In most cases, it's deeply ingrained and probably inborn. If you try to change your sexual orientation, you're more likely to end up at war with yourself than at peace. For these reasons, any systematic program to turn gay people straight, such as "reparative therapy," is futile and dangerous.
But therapy isn't about the big picture. It's about lots of little pictures: the worlds unique to each of us. You and I may have the same sexual orientation, but our lives are very different. You know nothing of my family, my religion, or my community. You don't even know how straight or gay I am. If I tell my therapist that I'd rather try to modify my feelings than give up my faith or my marriage, who are you to second-guess her or me?
More here.
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Four months ago, this column looked at the overwhelming black vote for California's Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage. Why would one group, having endured discrimination, vote against the rights of another?
Answer:
Whites, on balance, have come to believe that sexual orientation, like color, is immutable. Blacks, on balance, haven't. They see homosexuality as a matter of character. "I was born black. I can't change that," one California man explained after voting for Proposition 8. "They weren't born gay; they chose it."
Here are the numbers:
In a 2003 Pew survey, 32 percent of whites said homosexuality was inborn, 15 percent said it was caused by upbringing, and 40 percent said it was a lifestyle preference. Latinos answered roughly the same way. But only 15 percent of blacks agreed that homosexuality was inborn; 58 percent said it was a lifestyle preference. A plurality of whites (45 to 39 percent) said a person's homosexuality couldn't change, but a two-to-one majority of blacks (58 to 30 percent) said it could. The pattern persists in Pew's 2006 survey. A plurality of whites said homosexuality was inborn, and a majority said it couldn't be changed. A majority of blacks said that homosexuality was just how some people preferred to live and that it could be changed.
Now comes Michael Steele, the new chairman of the GOP. Steele is black. In an interview with GQ's Lisa DePaulo, Steele concedes:
Q. Do you think homosexuality is a choice?
A. Oh, no. I don't think I've ever really subscribed to that view, that you can turn it on and off like a water tap. Um, you know, I think that there's a whole lot that goes into the makeup of an individual that, uh, you just can't simply say, oh, like, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being gay." It's like saying, "Tomorrow morning I'm gonna stop being black."
This matches what the nation's leading black Democrat, Barack Obama, has said. In a November 2007 appearance on Meet the Press, Obama declared, "I do not believe being gay or lesbian is a choice."
This is very bad news for opponents of gay marriage. As Proposition 8 demonstrated, blacks have become politically pivotal on this issue. If they follow Steele and Obama in coming around to the idea that being gay is like being black, look out.
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Are mental disorders as important as physical injuries? Many advocates say that they are and that we should treat them accordingly. Most of the fight is over insurance coverage of mental health. But part of the action is in the U.S. military. There, the question has been whether to award the Purple Heart for post-traumatic stress disorder. This week, the Defense Department announced its decision: No.
Eight months ago, when we first checked in on this debate, I was skeptical for two reasons. One was that PTSD would turn out to be widely overdiagnosed. In general, mental wounds are harder to define and identify than physical wounds are. There are obvious cases, but there are also fuzzy ones. Where do we draw the line? How do we keep the Purple Heart from being cheapened?
The second reason was that the Purple Heart, unlike basic health insurance, isn't a policy instrument. It's an honor. Officially, it denotes "meritorious action." And honor isn't the first step in a cultural transformation, no matter how worthy that transformation may be. It's the last.
I've been reading DoD's explanation of its decision and looking back at what I wrote eight months ago. And I'm beginning to think the decision may be wrong.
The reason has to do with gay marriage. The "honor" argument against the Purple Heart for PTSD is a lot like the argument against same-sex marriage. Marriage isn't a right or benefit, conservatives argue. It's a special commitment, a moral institution. Gays may deserve equal employment opportunity, just as mental-health patients deserve basic health insurance coverage. But marriage, like the Purple Heart, is a higher standard. It's an honor that should be awarded last, or maybe never.
Andrew Sullivan nailed this argument 20 years ago: Conservatives are largely right about what marriage is. They're just wrong that this understanding precludes extending it to homosexuals. In fact, they have it backward: Marriage would anchor gays, like straights, against "the chaos of sex and relationships to which we are all prone. It provides a mechanism for emotional stability, economic security, and the healthy rearing of the next generation." The key is to preserve the definition of marriage as commitment: to let go of the heterosexual requirement while fortifying the distinction between marriage and shacking up. My favorite proposal, to prove the point, is same-sex covenant marriage.
Something like that should be the solution to the Purple Heart debate. Opponents of the Purple Heart for PTSD say mental disorders can't qualify because the warrior doesn't "shed blood." That's foolish fundamentalism: Lots of people are wounded without literally shedding blood. DoD also says the wound must be "intentionally caused by the enemy." But the Purple Heart is already awarded for wounds that weren't precisely intended by the enemy. The enemy just throws his grenade at your platoon. Exactly which of you gets incapacitated and how—shrapnel, shock, whatever—isn't his concern.
On the other hand, DoD rightly points out that there have to be "objective" medical ways to distinguish clear-cut PTSD from fuzzy or fake versions. Otherwise, Purple Heart awards will become cheap or arbitrary. Along these lines, the department articulates three clear, reasonable, and tight criteria. First, the wound must be "the result of enemy action where the intended effect of a specific enemy action is to kill or injure the servicemember." Second, it must be "an injury to any part of the body." Third, it must be "caused by the enemy from an outside force or agent."
Can PTSD satisfy these criteria? In principle, I think so. The first criterion is relatively easy to address: You must face the same physical risks as any other Purple Heart recipient. The second is more difficult: Objective physical measures of PTSD must be established. This could be done, for example, with brain scans. We aren't there yet, so consider this a research project for the PTSD movement. The third criterion is a nexus of the first two: You would have to assemble some kind of case file showing that the signs of PTSD in the brain scans or other physical measures postdate the combat incident.
Will service members and veterans with PTSD actually meet these standards? Some won't, and even the most qualified cases will be hard to prove. But they should be, because the Purple Heart is sacred. It's just that there's nothing inherently more sacred about being wounded in your backside than in your brain.
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Tomorrow night, Joe Biden and Sarah Palin will meet in their only vice-presidential debate. Most of the discussion will be about economics and foreign policy. On the social issues, here are two questions moderator Gwen Ifill should ask.
1. Gov. Palin, you were asked this week whether it should be illegal for a girl to get an abortion in the case of rape or incest. Your answer was that the girl herself should not go to jail. What about the doctor? Should the doctor who performs that abortion face criminal penalties?
2. Sen. Biden, you said four weeks ago that you believe life begins at conception but that you can't impose your personal beliefs on other people. Yet you also voted for a law against gay marriage called the Defense of Marriage Act, and two years ago, you said this law expresses your view that "marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that." Why is it OK to impose your beliefs on gay marriage but not on abortion?
Here's all the background information Ifill will need when the candidates start fudging.
Palin's interview with Katie Couric, aired yesterday:
Couric: If a 15-year-old is raped by her father, you believe it should be illegal for her to get an abortion. Why?
Palin: I am pro-life. And I'm unapologetic about my position there on pro-life. And I understand good people on both sides of the abortion debate. In fact, good people in my own family have differing views on abortion and when it should be allowed. So ... I respect people's opinion on this. ...
Couric: But, ideally, you think it should be illegal for a girl who was raped or the victim of incest to get an abortion?
Palin: I'm saying that, personally, I would counsel the person to choose life, despite horrific, horrific circumstances that this person would find themselves in. And, um, if you're asking, though, kind of foundationally here, should anyone end up in jail for having an ... abortion, absolutely not.
Biden on Meet the Press, Sept. 7, 2008:
Biden: I'm prepared as a matter of faith to accept that life begins at the moment of conception. But that is my judgment. For me to impose that judgment on everyone else who is equally and maybe even more devout than I am seems to me is inappropriate in a pluralistic society. ...
Tom Brokaw: But if you, you believe that life begins at conception, and you've also voted for abortion rights.
Biden: No, what [I] voted against curtailing the right, criminalizing abortion. I voted against telling everyone else in the country that they have to accept my religiously based view that it's a moment of conception.
Biden's recorded vote for DOMA, Sept. 10, 1996.
Biden on Meet the Press, June 4, 2006:
We already have a law, the Defense of Marriage Act. We've all voted—not, where I've voted, and others have said, look, marriage is between a man and a woman and states must respect that. Nobody's violated that law, there's been no challenge to that law.
Biden on CNN, June 5, 2006:
We have already passed a law saying that—and the Defense of Marriage Act, defining marriage between a man and a woman.
The Biden campaign's evasive response to a same-sex marriage question on the Human Rights Campaign's 2007 survey of presidential candidates:
Senator Biden supports letting states determine how to recognize civil unions and how to define marriage. He believes that legal recognition should not be denied to same-sex couples.
Bonus peg: Biden will speak at HRC's annual dinner Saturday night.
All yours, Gwen. Go for it.