Obergefell 2022

Same-sex marriage has not been legal across the USA for long, since 2015. The seven-year anniversary for the Obergefell v. Hodges decision is in two days.

Today, in the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Supreme Court Justices are hinting that other legal rights granted by previous decisions may soon be taken away. This includes privacy and same-sex rights to marriage.

https://time.com/6191044/clarence-thomas-same-sex-marriage-contraception-abortio...

Jim Obergefell is publicly expressing concern about this.

https://www.cleveland.com/news/2022/06/ohios-jim-obergefell-namesake-of-landmark...

I'm personally scared. Marriage certification affects other legal rights, including healthcare and parental protections, as well as adoptions, financial services, and housing. This current US Supreme Court seems set on destroying personal autonomy (mainly for half of the population) and families (that don't match what the extremist Justices support).

The fact that Thomas is "signalling" what he will and will not rule is pretty much the definition of an activist judge, isn't it? I mean, actively seeking out cases to rule on is pretty heavy-handed.

Dark forces in America saw Trump's glide down the escalator in June 2015 as an opportunity to unite and bring 21st Century America to its knees. The 2020's are proving them to be an evil force which is a very powerful minority.

>3 Molly3028: Trump's glide down the escalator

Gods, I had forgotten about that circus act. It happened ten days prior to the Supreme Court decision to legalize same-sex marriage.

The Escalator Ride That Changed America - POLITICO Magazine

https://www.mediaite.com/news/incredibly-stunning-biden-spox-jean-pierre-blasts-...
‘Incredibly Stunning!’ Biden Spox Jean-Pierre Blasts Clarence Thomas Over Promise to ‘Reconsider’ Sex and Marriage Rights

***
Americans have been warned ~ ANY rights can be boomeranged out of existence by the present-day SCOTUS court. Apparently, Thomas just has to add one or two more to the list of members he has ALREADY convinced to join his side ~ Red states have been advised that they should start to cue up cases that would give them that evil opportunity in coming years. America's 250th birthday celebration could be a lot bleaker than it already looks like today.

>5 Molly3028: Yep. We can all just add "rank hypocrite" to the essential attributes of anyone calling themselves a Republican in America today.

I didn't know so many states (35!) have kept statutes or constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriage. These laws were overridden by SCOTUS in 2015 but would likely become active again if the Obergefell v. Hodges decision were overturned.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/supreme-court-roevswade-...

C'mon, guys.

We've been legislating from the judicial bench for a while now. When a judicial decision goes the way the Left wants, it celebrates. It doesn't care what the opinion of the majority is on the issue. When things go the other way, the Right celebrates.

It's a war. When your side wins, you're happy. You don't care how it wins. This is true for either side.

Sadly, many Americans are A-OK with the laws-of-the-land as long as THEY can live free, unincumbered lives which allow them to control their bodies, living arrangements and their actions 24/7. Living across the pond probably makes it even more palatable for some Americans.

>9 Doug1943: When one side wins, civil rights are expanded. Actual human lives are saved. That's well documented. When the other side wins, civil rights are diminished. Lives are lost due to conditions that are considered deplorable by the majorities in similar countries.

This week, people are cheering for people-- actual autonomous human beings-- being hurt, scared, and having their freedoms taken away.

C'mon, do you seriously think the celebration for marriages is comparable to the celebration that Supreme Court judges are setting up for more marriage licenses to be denied or questioned?

Do you seriously believe families fearing that so much of what's tied to legal marriage-- our access to relatively affordable health insurance; visitation rights in hospitals and prisons; parental rights (within healthcare, education, banking/taxes, custody determination, or adoption); the option to be a beneficiary or inheritor-- is the same as people fearing... what? the existence of queer families?

>11 aspirit: I'm not arguing, here, the pro's and con's of abortion, same-sex marriage, or any other issue on which the Supreme Court has ruled or will rule.

I'm arguing that both Left and Right, in America and elsewhere to a lesser extent, increasingly see the differences between them as, to use a popular term, 'existential'.

When conflicts are about things like the minimum wage; what powers a trade union should have to compel membership or financial support from workers in an enterprise; how much welfare to give to people or what conditions, if any, should be attached to it; protectionist trade measures .... these conflicts can of course arouse great emotions on both sides.

However, they're not really seen as existential. You can and do have compromises. The losing side can hope that harsh experience will vindicate its position in the future.

Both sides look to the democratic process to advance their cause (even, as in the US, where Constitutional issues do arise and the courts, without acknowledging it, take non-legal issues such as changes in popular or elite opinion, or the needs of the government, into account).

Of course, almost any single issue can have some sort of compromise.

Gay couples could have civil partnerships to deal with the legal and financial issues that non-married couples face. Abortion can be legal up to a certain point, with pregnant women being counselled about it and encouraged to carry their baby to term. Only the most extreme people on the Left want to actually abolish the police, as opposed to de-funding them. Only the most extreme people on the Right talk about "hanging the traitors in Washington".

But the reality is that increasing numbers of people in the US see the conflict as one in which the complete victory of the other side will, eventually, result in their own side's effective extinction. Or at least that is how they behave.

The Supreme Court's decision returns the US to the position that it was in before Roe vs Wade -- it leaves the legality or otherwise of abortion up to the states.

Those who oppose this decision, and those who support it, generally couldn't care less about the legal/Constitutional issues. They simply want the Court to decide in their favor. This is true for both sides.

And the reason that it's true, is that both sides see the other side as the Enemy, to be defeated at all costs. The Enemy is de-humanized, demonized, and the usual moral constraints we follow in dealing with each other fade away.

This is actually quite a common condition in many countries around the world.

Usually, such deadly conflict happens in countries that are blessed with serious 'diversity', where two or more tribal/ethnic groups exist in substantial numbers.

Yugoslavia, Northern Ireland, India, Sri Lanka, Burma, almost any African country you can name, any Muslim country where Sunnis and Shias exist as large minorities, Israel/Palestine, China ...

If one group is too small to seriously pose a threat of taking over or breaking away, it's just subject to periodic pogroms -- usually punishment for being smarter and more successful than the majority: the Jews are the classic example, the Chinese in various Asian countries where they are a minority are another.

Central/Eastern Europe before WWII is another example.

It can happen over political differences, where ethnicity plays no, or a minor, role -- Spain in the 1930's was an example. Latin America in the 1970s was another. Russia after the 1917 revolution, Finland at the same time. Your enemies are literally exterminated.

Occasionally ethnicity/tribal differences co-incide with political ones, and then the conflict is even more deadly.

That's what is happening in the US today. And it will get worse. People on both the Left and Right should understand this, as it will help them to understand the world.

We're no longer doing politics as it has been done in the past.

This is not a good thing -- it's a tragedy, and one of world-historic proportions, potentially -- but it's just the way things are.

>9 Doug1943: Actually, Doug, I think you'll find that "legislating from the bench" is something that Republicans have long held out as a cardinal sin, except when they do it. The only time folks on the left bring it up is to call out the rank hypocrisy that is fundamental to anyone calling themselves a republican in America today.

Let's just get this on the record: do you feel that this decision, which overrules decades of settled practice and the will of well over half of the population of this country, based on no new facts or legal issues and therefore based entirely on the personal preferences of a handful of dubiously-appointed "justices" and justified with a collection of ad-hoc pseudo-legalistic mumbo-jumbo and false historical claims, constitutes "legislating from the bench"?

We can get into whether you think judicial activism is good, bad, or indifferent later, I'm just interested to know whether the repeal of women's rights in America was a case of that, in your mind.

Following that, I'd like to know whether you think of Thomas' active solicitation of cases in which he could rule against marriage equality. Is there any way in which Thomas can be considered anything but an "activist judge"? Again, not asking whether you think judicial activism is good, bad, or indifferent in itself, just asking whether you see Thomas as an "activist judge".

>12 Doug1943: I wrote a very long response with links for reference and personal anecdotes to cover the range of high- and low-level views. Then I realized you seem to neither know much about this topic nor care how much these laws affect lives. (These laws do affect people's and families' continued existence! Of course these are existential issues for some of us!)

Your comments moreover appear to be in the wrong thread.

So, in response, I'm going to point out for later use by readers who do care that yesterday was the nine-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s decision in US v. Windsor, in which the federal government recognized same-sex marriages performed in states already recognizing the right, and the 19th-year anniversary of the decision for Lawrence v. Texas, which made it illegal for municipal governments to prohibit private intimate conduct of adults.

In US v. Windsor, the US was found a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fifth Amendment of the US Constitution, while in Lawrence v. Texas, the State of Texas was in violation of the Due Process Clause under the 14th Amendment, the same ruling as for Roe v. Wade. For Obergefell v. Hodges, the Supreme Court cited both the Due Process Clause and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Actions in lower courts have historically been based on Supreme Court decisions in part because of the stability of those decisions. However, "(l)egal scholars said the decision to overrule Roe is one of the few times the Supreme Court has ever invalidated an earlier decision that declared a constitutional right — and the only time it took away a right that had considerable public support." (NBC News)

Now we're in this period of a kind of choatic period where biases in city and state governments are expected to determine which civil rights residents and visitors have, including such basic freedoms as right to life (as to get livesaving medical care), liberty (to maintain privacy), and the pursuit of happiness (such as to love).

>13 kiparsky: Yes, Clarence Thomas is an "Activist judge". There are many such. You like the Activist Judges of the Left. I am more partial to the Activist Judges of the Right. You legislate from the bench. So do we, or we should.

As for abortion, I'm sorry that the status quo was changed, for several reasons. One of those reasons is that it will help the Left electorally.

We could have an argument about abortion, but it won't clarify much. I'm uneasy about it, the way I am uneasy about capital punishment. But I wouldn't abolish either.

My attitude towards it is that it is made difficult because of the following: we oppose killing innocent human beings -- never mind why, both Left and Right would agree that a new-born baby should not be killed just because its mother decides it would damage her mental health to have it. (I'm assuming this, but I doubt any serious Leftist would disagree, except maybe that ultra-rationalist philosopher at Princeton who has the "life unworthy of life" position. It sounds better in the original German.)

On the other hand, there are many people who are generally against abortion, who would not think that a 'morning-after' pill is 'abortion'. I don't know the exact numbers.

I suspect it's a strong plurality, if not a majority, position among ordinary people, both those who generally support the right of abortion, and those who generally don't. (But it's just an impression.)

Yes, there are plenty of anti-abortion people, who , if pressed will claim the same status for a sperm-just-embedded-in-an-egg that they would for a full-term baby in the birth canal, about to be born. Ask me how I know.

I often argue with these people on the rightwing forums I hang out on ... they can't defend this position, which I think is insane, they just assert, "Life begins at conception", and by "life" they mean legal "human status". A sperm-embedded-in-an-egg is legally the same as a new-born baby.

Apparently there is an invisible man in the sky who tells them this, but if consult the supposed writings of this invisible man, we find that he was pretty casual about killing people who had something his chosen tribe wanted, including on occasion the women and children and presumably fetuses in the womb. Deuteronomy 7:1-2

The problem is, as in many situations, we have a continuous, smooth spectrum ... from sperm-in-an-egg, to full-term baby. The line between abortable, and not abortable, is, and must be, arbitrary, like the age of adulthood.

The more a fetus looks like us, the more uneasy we are about killing it. So where should the line be drawn? Wherever it's drawn, it will be arbitrary.

Now, I have argued with anti-abortion people that they should not make abortion punishable by law, but rather should continue their program of education -- trying to convince pregnant women voluntarily not to abort their babies. There are many things the state can do to further this, short of making abortion punishable in law.

They should make contraception very easy: make morning-after pills, condoms, etc. free, at least among the sort of people we don't want to have more of, such as drug-addicted prostitutes and chronic welfare recipients. (There! That'll get the outrage mob shrieking!)

Notice, I'm not talking about "rights" here, women's or anyone else. I think "rights talk" just confuses the situation.

"Rights" are just a social construct, a word, to use a favorite academic Leftist term. (That goes for the Second Amendment as well. Whether the Constitution guarantees something or not, or did when it was written, is an interesting datum, but is orthogonal to the question of whether that something is a good thing or not.)

There are other considerations. Take capital punishment.

A strong argument against it, in my opinion, is that it runs counter to something that we want to continue to establish, something that the slow and uneven progress of human civilization is moving towards establishing, namely, making it taboo -- at a deep, sub-rational level -- to take a human life.

I don't think this argument is 'dispositive', as the lawyers say (am I using the term properly here?) but it's a serious one. Abortion, same-same.

So that's what I think about abortion.

Incidentally, this issue should convince thoughtful people on the Left and the Right to start considering a proposition that is, at the moment, almost literally unthinkable: it would be so much better, if we did not inhabit the same country.

We should start thinking about how to arrange an amicable separation.

>14 aspirit: I don't see anything to respond to here. Let us agree -- or 'stipulate' as I think the lawyers say -- that I am a wicked, unfeeling person, who is also deeply ignorant.

And that I don't think everyone and anyone's "right" to feel good is the only criterion by which we should judge things.

I think there is a general lack of nuance in the opinions of anti-abortionists. For instance there are loads if not hundreds of legitimate medical reasons for a woman to get an abortion. Just for one oncologists often are going to tell their pregnant patients to get an abortion because of upcoming treatments and/or because the medications they need can or likely will irreparably harm the fetus as well as make the necessary treatment more difficult for the patient herself.

>17 lriley: Yes, you're right. Most of the people you're talking about see politics as basically a moral struggle -- very like many people on the Left, by the way.

They don't see that modern society is necessarily a complex, messy compromise among various competing interests. In a sense, they're not really conservatives in one of the basic meanings of that term -- they're revolutionaries.

And on the other hand, in a way, they're right: in my opinion, the US is in the process of coming apart, because it has large numbers of people who no longer share the basic assumptions/emotions/attitudes that the majority in a healthy society share.

We'll have a test of this soon. Roe vs Wade simply returned the issue to the states. Some states will outlaw it, others will make it very easy. No one on either side will be completely happy about this. But it's a good approach to many controversial issues.

Then we'll see. I suspect many college graduates, being liberal, will not want to live in a state where abortion is illegal. This might have a negative effect on the long-term prospects of those states. That might mobilize the moderate anti-abortionists to modify the extreme laws of their state. That's how the democratic process works. And/or maybe conservatives living in a pro-abortion state will want to move to a state where their cultural attitudes are dominant.

(And, I have to admit, I would be happy to see a geographic separation of the 'two cultures'.)

But ... we will see some people on the Right try to make abortion illegal everywhere, as a Federal Law, turning the Roe vs Wade argument inside-out, denying liberal-majority states the right to make it legal.

So we're going to have a fight within the Right. Leftists should be happy about that..

By the way, I have the same attitude towards most 'cultural' issues. Leave it up to the states.

>15 Doug1943: Yes, Clarence Thomas is an "Activist judge". There are many such.

There are, in fact. Now, since you've decided to throw your lot in with the people who claim that "judicial activism" is not legitimate, and none of them are calling out this activist judge, how do you feel about siding with hypocrisy? Is that a comfortable place for you? Do you ever wonder what else your side is lying about? Or, maybe I should put it this way: do you ever feel the urge to admit to the things you know you're lying about?

You like the Activist Judges of the Left. I am more partial to the Activist Judges of the Right. You legislate from the bench. So do we, or we should.

That's pretty weak, dude. You've just admitted that this ruling has nothing to do with the law, and the only thing you can think of to say is "well, your side does it too"?

I don't think you even believe that, honestly. I mean, Roe was based in basic American norms: a person has the right to own their own body, and the State has no right to interfere in their private business. Recognizing that isn't "judicial activism", it's just being an American. If you don't want to be an American, that's your privilege, but don't try to paint me with your hypocritical values-free world view on your way out. That's your problem, it's not mine.

They should make contraception very easy: make morning-after pills, condoms, etc. free,

At least on this part of this sentence we agree. If you want to prevent abortions, ready access to contraception is a critical part of that, along with effective sex ed in all schools (none of this abstinence-only nonsense) and access to reproductive health services. So yes, all forms of contraception should be free and readily available.
There's a lot more that needs to be done, but that's what I'd call a bare minimum if someone is actually serious about reducing the number of abortions performed. Anyone not on board with that is not in any way serious about abortion, period, full stop.
(notice that this means that of the organizations calling themselves "pro-life" none are actually serious about preventing abortions... you might want to think a bit about what that means...)

at least among the sort of people we don't want to have more of, such as drug-addicted prostitutes and chronic welfare recipients. (There! That'll get the outrage mob shrieking!)

It's interesting that you come out for eugenics. There's something to be said for honesty, I guess most of your fellow-travelers prefer to do their usual confession-by-accusation dance. (accusing democrats of "stealing elections" while stealing elections, accusing leftists of "pedophilia" while supporting pedophiles in Congress and in their local church, etc, etc) Doesn't make it any less appalling, of course, but I guess I have to give you points for candor.
This does actually reveal something interesting, though. You seem to think that family planning is about having fewer people, and that this is a sort of game of "more of the 'right' sort of people". This seems, if I'm going to return the favor of the honesty you've shown, hopelessly ignorant. Preventing or terminating a pregnancy is generally not about wanting to never have children, it's about choosing when to have children, and under what circumstances.
It would be interesting to do the research, but I would suspect that access to birth control, reproductive health services, effective sex ed, etc - let's say, the full complement of family planning techniques and knowledge - does not make a lot of difference to the number of children born to a particular population, but it likely changes the average age at which women become mothers. Just a hunch, of course, but it'd be interesting to see if anyone's asked that question.

We should start thinking about how to arrange an amicable separation.

That'd be fine with me. Anyone who doesn't like America is welcome to amicably separate themselves. Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia - there are lots of places where you might be more comfortable. I honestly don't give a damn where you go. Just go, and don't let the door hit you on the way out.

>17 lriley: I think there is a general lack of nuance in the opinions of anti-abortionists.

Yeah, you could say that. Or putting it another way, a near-complete ignorance of modern medicine. I guess it's just a matter of where you want to put the emphasis, but these people's awareness of anatomy is typically as medieval as their ethics.

>20 kiparsky: FWIW I was busy this morning applying online to my local voter registration bureau for a mail in ballot in November. Being immune compromised I'd rather not have to actually have to show up at my polling place.....but Roe being overturned is a big part of why I'm so interested in this already along with other Supreme Court recent rulings on guns and clean water meanwhile I suspect they'll continue to add etc.'s to the list of why the Republican Party and its adherents are full of shit.

>19 kiparsky: I'm not really interested in exchanging personal insults, are listing all the hypocrisies of the Left, all the people with character defects on the Left, and so on.

In any large political movement, we'll have a spectrum of personality types. Of course, each side likes to pick examples of bad people from the other side, and claim that they're typical. I spent a couple of decades on the Left, longer on the Right, and I know that all human life is there, including some very unpleasant people -- on both sides.

I'm all in favor of effective family planning, and in particular of that which will encourage women to have more children. Although most attempts in other countries to provide financial and similar incentives have had only a little effect on increasing the birth rate, they're still worth a try.

And of course you are indifferent to whether the next generation of children are born to illiterate drug addicts, or college graduates. Of course you are. Ha ha.

The issue of whether abortion rights, or gun rights, are in the Constitution, or are part of the 'American tradtion' is irrelevant. If the Constitution did not have the Second Amendment, my side would still want the right to own effective firearms. If it explicitly outlawed abortion, your side would still want the right to abort.

As for an 'amicable separation', I think you've picked up an echo of what conservatives used to yell at Lefties, "Go Back to Russia!" (And watch out for your unconscious Islamophobia -- the three horrible countries you'd like to exile us to are all Muslim!!! Hopefully your fellow Lefties here will re-educate on what's wrong with that.)

What we need to do is to divide the country -- possibly in some sort of extreme federalism, but I doubt that would work. You could turn your part into a socialist paradise, like they've been doing in San Francisco. We could turn ours into ... well, name your best rightwing horror-state. Anyone who didn't like where they were could move. Everybody happy.

First, of course, we've got to cure our addiction to being the world's policeman, but that's another argument.

>22 Doug1943: I'm sorry if you don't like the company you've thrown yourself in with, but I'm not going to lie to you about it. You can call it "exchanging personal insults", or you can call it facing the facts. Either way, there it is: you've taken the trouble to expose the hypocrisy of the position you hold, now you have to decide what comes next. If you don't like being a hypocrite, do something about it, or don't, but for fuck's sake don't try to blame it on anyone else.

I'm all in favor of effective family planning, and in particular of that which will encourage women to have more children
Let's dig into that a little. Notice that rather than empowering women to make their own choices, you're looking for a policy which will impose your preferred goals on other people. This is the difference between freedom and whatever it is y'all on the right are after. And you know what? Freedom works better. Most people are better off when they make their own decisions for themselves - and if you don't like the number of babies they have, what has it got to do with you in any case?

And of course you are indifferent to whether the next generation of children are born to illiterate drug addicts, or college graduates. Of course you are. Ha ha.

Actually, I'm not about to tell people whether they may or may not have children, regardless of the circumstances they're living in, or to try to arrange things so that some preferred class of people have more children than some dispreferred classes of people. Like I say, eugenics is not my thing. I guess you're in favor of it, the only good thing I can say about that is that you're more honest than the majority of your fellow-travelers who try to keep that part quiet. Feel free to keep banging on about it if you want, but I'd ask you please to stop trying to tie me to your sick fantasies of the master race. Keep your own beliefs in your own damned mouth, particularly when they're as filthy as the ones you're spouting here.

The issue of whether abortion rights, or gun rights, are in the Constitution, or are part of the 'American tradtion' is irrelevant. If the Constitution did not have the Second Amendment, my side would still want the right to own effective firearms. If it explicitly outlawed abortion, your side would still want the right to abort.

So you don't think the Constitution is relevant to American law? That's fascinating. We're learning a lot about you here.

As for an 'amicable separation', I think you've picked up an echo of what conservatives used to yell at Lefties, "Go Back to Russia!"

You're the one who said you wanted to separate from America. If you want to stay, that's fine too, but it doesn't sound like you like it here all that much. (BTW, I did consider Russia as a possible destination for you, but apparently women have some rights there, at least to some extent, so I didn't think you'd be keen on that)

(And watch out for your unconscious Islamophobia -- the three horrible countries you'd like to exile us to are all Muslim!!! .)

Well, that's funny. I went looking for totalitarian theocracies where there's lots of guns and no tradition of respecting women's rights like you say you're looking for, and those were the ones that came up. I mean, the only other option I could find was Paraguay, but that's not a proper theocracy, there aren't nearly as many guns, and the way things have been going in Latin America they're likely to start respecting human rights any decade now. No, I honestly think that based on what you say you want, the Taliban is really your best shot for happiness. Go forth, young man, and live out your dream! And send us a postcard to let us know how you're getting on!

What we need to do is to divide the country

I think that's been tried before, and as I recall, it didn't work out so well. If you're suggesting you want to try that experiment again, all I can say is it's probably easier for you to just go. Really. If you're honestly unwilling to live with Americans, you should go somewhere else where there aren't so many of us.

>22 Doug1943: I'm all in favor of effective family planning, and in particular of that which will encourage women to have more children. Although most attempts in other countries to provide financial and similar incentives have had only a little effect on increasing the birth rate, they're still worth a try.

Sure; when social engineering, why bother to worry about if your expensive plans will actually work?

And of course you are indifferent to whether the next generation of children are born to illiterate drug addicts, or college graduates. Of course you are. Ha ha.

You can't treat illiterate drug addicts as lessers any more, now that they're white and live in West Virginia. Haven't you heard? Now they have a sickness and Obama was clearly deliberately abusing them.

If you go to Eton, it's because you're better than the plebes and should have more children. Basic eugenics with a backbone of racism. Instead of pouring money into getting the poor the food and education they need to fully live up to their potential, we'll just deny their potential.

The issue of whether abortion rights, or gun rights, are in the Constitution, or are part of the 'American tradtion' is irrelevant. If the Constitution did not have the Second Amendment, my side would still want the right to own effective firearms.

Doubt it. Guns has been fetishized by the Right. Without a Second Amendment, the Left would let Montana set up its own gun laws, for the most part, and the RIght would let Chicago and New York set up their own gun laws. There'd be a lot less of this "I have a God given right to carry an assault rifle in public" and "I have to own an AR-15 to stick it to the libs" type stuff.

>24 prosfilaes: Fair point. No serious gun owner cares about owning a weapon of mass murder, that's purely about politics.

Usually about someone else's politics, frankly. Right-wingers are so very easily used, it's pathetic.

I think I may have mischaracterized some people's views here, re abortion and eugenics, etc.

I thought one of the arguments for abortion was that when a woman discovered that her baby was going to be born with Down's syndrome, or some other genetic disfunction, she could kill it and try again.

This is eugenics. Undesirable genes are kept from replicating themselves.

Please note: I am NOT talking about 'force sterilization'. Just the voluntary actions of women who want a normal child, not a disabled or otherwise genetically-malformed one.

As we learn more and more about our own genome, we'll be able to do this for a greater range of things, including IQ.

Now, I believe that if high-IQ women have fewer children than low-IQ women, which appears to be the case, this will result in an increasing proportion of the population having a lower IQ, since IQ is largely inherited.

Therefore I am in favor of encouraging high-IQ women to have more children, and of not encouraging low IQ women to have more children.

Is it your position that the progressive lowering of the average IQ of the American (or any other) population should be a matter of indifference to us?

It seems to me that this is what you are saying. But maybe I have misunderstood. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

WTF. Ignoring the topic and now also doing it in a way that ignores the research into how restricting access to abortion increases poverty, forces people who may become pregnant (not only those who are!) to seek illegal medications and services, and limits education?

People who care about ensuring women (regardless of sexual orientation, sexuality, or gender assigned at birth), trans men, and non-binary adults have access to higher education and stable jobs support abortion rights.

Do you know why?

It's because abortion rights are associated with broad areas of healthcare, including cancer treatments and hormone therapy, and access to healthcare affects education and job opportunities.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/roe-v-wade-decision-expected-to-financially-hurt... (published before the Dobbs decision)

Among those denied an abortion, there was an increase in household poverty for at least four years relative to those who had an abortion. Years later, the women denied an abortion were more likely to lack the money to cover basic living expenses such as food, housing and transportation.

What's more, being denied an abortion lowered these women's credit scores, boosted their debt and increased negative financial records, such as bankruptcies and evictions, the study found.

While the right to abortion may remain legal in more than half the states, "the {financial} impact would be absolutely enormous" if it's banned nationwide, Myers said.

See The Turnaway Study for details.

CNBC also reported, "More than 150 other economists and researchers, including Myers, filed an amicus brief with the courts showing the connection between women's access to abortion and economic opportunity."

September 2021: "Brief of Amici Curiae Economists in Support of Respondents (pdf)

edited to correct an important word that was mistyped

So ... you're in favor of eugenics via abortion, as well as poverty relief? Being poor correlates with low IQ -- allow poor women easy access to abortion, and we'll have fewer low-IQ people, and presumably these women will all go back to school or go out and get jobs. I'm all for it!

Wonderful! That's what I have assumed. Please tell me if I am wrong.

An edit of my advice statement to add (and I'll put it here to elaborate): Abortion rights are associated with broad areas of healthcare, and access to healthcare affects education, job opportunities, and child care.

I left out that last part at first, thinking it was obvious, but I forget how anti-abortionists refuse to acknowledge that the many abortions are for parents--mostly, women who already have children and want an abortion to continue to focus on them.

On that note, let's also highlight what's been shown over and over again in the research: low-income women are more affected by abortion restrictions than high-income women are. In other words, a wealthy woman is more likely to get a (forced) abortion for an unwanted pregnancy. A poor woman who wants an abortion is more likely to have to continue the pregnancy to birth.

I'm cringing that I feel I need to write this, but also-- intelligence is not correlated to economic status! Wealthier adults may have better access to educational services; however, that brings us back to how abortions allow adults to continue their own education as well as focus on their (birthed or future) children's educations.

The pro-eugenics arguments are (in addition to sounding obscene) counter to reality. If the goal is for healthier, better educated parents, then abortion needs to be accessible.

>28 Doug1943: We crossposted.

tl;dr? Yes, you're wrong.

ETA: And before you or a newcomer rushes toward more accusations that pro-choice supporters are pro-eugenics, I'm going to point above to what's already been written in this discussion about how giving individuals choices for their personal healthcare is not eugenics. That's family planning.

As a reminder, the actual topic I created is same-sex marriage in the USA.

https://www.lambdalegal.org/know-your-rights/article/trans-marriage

When the Supreme Court legalized marriage for same-sex couples on June 26, 2015, it was a great day for transgender people of all sexual orientations: the highest court in the land had proclaimed the right to marry to be gender-blind. Transgender people have a long history of being denied the right to marry and having their partnerships and marriages disrespected.

It's not important what words you use. What's important are the facts.

Fact: Poor people tend to have low IQs.
Fact: IQ is to a large degree heriditary. On average, your IQ won't differ widely from your parents' averaged IQ.
Fact: making abortion illegal, difficult, for poor women will result in their having more children. (Who will inherit their low IQ.) Middle class, more intelligent women, will be able to evade these anti-abortion laws ... they'll move to, or temporarily go to, states which permit abortion.

Therefore making abortion illegal or difficult will result in a higher number of low-IQ children.

These are just facts. If I'm wrong in any of them, please correct me. Just how this will play out in the numbers is another question. It might only be a small rise. I don't know. Maybe the more intelligent women who abort their babies will go on later to have even more children.

I don't think this is the case at all, based on past behavior, but I could be wrong. Or the behavior of intelligent women may change for some reason we cannot now see.

Or there may be some other factor that runs counter to the abortion effect -- maybe the very conservative states that outlaw abortion, will suddenly provide very high quality day care and schooling for poor children -- which, while it won't directly effect IQ very much, could definitely affect the behavior associated with low IQ, like criminality.

Maybe they'll do things to encourage all women, including middle class intelligent ones, now forced to bear children if they become pregnant, to see having children as a positive thing, and to have more -- through providing much better schooling, free high quality summer camps, a financial incentive for people with children. (Somehow I doubt this, but who knows?)

Now ... your attitude to the conclusion can vary. You may think IQ is just a bunch of malarky and if there are more people with lower IQs, so what, it doesn't mean anything. You may think lower IQ is a good thing ...there should be more such people. Or you may be a Christian fundamentalist and think we're all children of God, so it doesn't matter.

But, whatever you or I think, it seems very likely that restricting abortion will have the effect of there being more children with lower IQs, proportionately.

And by the way, this is definitely NOT a message most conservatives want to hear. So liberals and progressives should make some effort to spread it among them.

>26 Doug1943: What you describe as your position, specifically

Therefore I am in favor of encouraging high-IQ women to have more children, and of not encouraging low IQ women to have more children.

is precisely the definition of eugenics: the selective breeding of human beings to "improve the race".

I need not point out that it's generally considered one of the single worst and most destructive ideas of the 20th century, and was one of the cornerstones of the Nazi pseudo-science of "race". The fact that you are seriously defending this idea suggests that you are not aware of this, but it is the case.

Is it your position that the progressive lowering of the average IQ of the American (or any other) population should be a matter of indifference to us?

When I looked at this last, about twenty years ago, the consensus among social scientists seemed to be that IQ mostly measured a subject's acculturation into what we'd now call "WEIRD" ("Western, educated, industrialized, rich and democratic") culture, along with a little bit of simple puzzle-solving skills. I haven't seen anything in recent years to suggest that this has changed. So to answer your question, yes, trends in IQ would be a matter of indifference to me. More to the point, any proposal to breed human beings to improve any such metrics is so appalling that I'm about 60% sure that I'm being trolled right now. I find it pretty hard to believe that anyone who's capable of putting together a string of coherent sentences would propose something of that sort unless they were just dragging for outrage.

Regardless of whether your trolling is intentional or not, I don't see any point in following this line of thought any further, particularly not in this thread, since even if it were a serious discussion and worth having, it's completely off-topic here (as has been pointed out several times). If you really want to troll this group, I suggest you start a thread about your eugenics plan and see how that goes.

>30 aspirit: I'm sorry to have put this last response in on this side-track, but I wanted to eliminate any possibility of confusion about who is proposing a return to eugenics here, and who is opposing it - precisely because, as you say, the claim that the freedom to terminate a pregnancy has some relation to eugenics is the sort of confession-by-accusation that misogynists love to return to over and over again. But as we can see, it's not the pro-choice community that favors this idea, it's the misogynist community.

And that really is my last word on this in this thread.

Boy, are you out of date and ignorant about IQ. I know it's a matter of religious faith among Leftists that we're all a 'blank slate', but no one who looks into this topic can deny that genes play a major role in determining your IQ. It's astonishing to me to see people who are otherwise rational, act like religious fundamentalists on this question.

Of course no one who values his career in the academy will lightly undertake research in this area -- you very quickly end up committing thoughtcrime. But there are some courageous people left.

Now I know why you have this ridiculous position. You want life to be fair, and you would like to believe that with the right social environment --- which would take a lot of action by the state -- we could all have Jewish IQs, all have good self-control, etc.

That's actually a noble sentiment. It's also my sentiment, and it's my belief that if we don't destroy ourselves in a big war, that within a few decades, via gene editing, we'll arrive at that goal.

I assume that the progressives and liberals here do not want their religious faith challenged on this issue. But if there is anyone who doesn't fear looking at evidence that might disconfirm their faith, i can post some links to papers and books on the IQ issue.

And please note: IQ is not destiny. Social environment plays a big role. Take a baby whose parents have high IQs, let him be brought up by a low-IQ single mother drug addict in an area where no one has a job and crime and violence are rife ... and you'll probably get a clever criminal at best.

Take a child from low-IQ parents and bring them up in a loving home with a mother and a father who are well-educated, who read books, who listen to NPR, who get them into a good school, and then to university -- and whose neighbors are similar ... and you'll get someone who will probably be a decent citizen. (The British Royal Family, especially Prince Charles, seem to fit this description.)

And there is a lot we do not know yet about IQ and its determinants. The Mayas built pyramids, did astronomy, invented a positional-exponential numbering system ... and their descendants are the present-day Guatemalans. What happened?

However, I never try hard to disillusion Christian fundamentalists, nor Leftist ones either. If someone is comfortable with their superstition, then good for them. It's a cruel enough world without taking away someone's comfort blanket.

https://www.npr.org/2022/05/05/1096365879/roe-wade-abortion-transgender-scotus-m...

"How the reversal of Roe v. Wade could impact the transgender community" (NPR, May 5)

Activists and supporters of the LGBTQ community say any decision to overturn Roe v. Wade could have significant consequences on vulnerable groups if privacy-related rights like access to contraception or gender-affirming care are threatened.

>26 Doug1943: I thought one of the arguments for abortion was that when a woman discovered that her baby was going to be born with Down's syndrome, or some other genetic disfunction, she could kill it and try again.

This is eugenics. Undesirable genes are kept from replicating themselves.

No, it's not done to improve the species. The diseases that lead to abortion are usually so traumatic that there is no chances of the children resulting from the pregnancy ever reproducing. Only 15-30% of women with Down syndrome are fertile, and 0% of men with Down syndrome are.

>33 Doug1943: Fact: Poor people tend to have low IQs.
Fact:IQ is to a large degree heriditary. On average, your IQ won't differ widely from your parents' averaged IQ.

https://www.iflscience.com/separated-identical-twins-raised-us-korea-massive-iq-...

17 IQ points difference between the twins. That's enough to take someone from average to smarter than 85% of the population. How about the Flynn effect? "A study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008." In fact, the Flynn effect literally says that most people IQs, tested on the same test, will be higher than that of their parents.

We could talk about the effects diet and environment and lead and education have on IQs. But you'd rather repeat the old stories about the Jukes and the Kallikaks and explain how certain people are naturally superior.

>35 Doug1943: no one who looks into this topic can deny that genes play a major role in determining your IQ.

Nobody who looks into this topic denies that lead and other environmental factors play a major role in determining your IQ. Once again, if it's all genes, where is the Flynn effect coming from?

And there is a lot we do not know yet about IQ and its determinants. The Mayas built pyramids, did astronomy, invented a positional-exponential numbering system ... and their descendants are the present-day Guatemalans. What happened?

As any Roman knew, you don't buy English slaves, because they're dumb as rocks. The English and Germans write using a Roman writing system using Arabic numerals, borrowed the cultured part of their language from the Romans and Greek, but they're all that. Perhaps what happened has nothing to do with IQ, and everything to with culture and what happens when people with guns come in and destroy your culture, repeatedly returning to overturn your government in the name of the United Fruit Company and anti-Marxism. This is a mystery only to you.

This is a foolish (and off-topic) bun fight. I won't use the word 'discussion'. Nonetheless:

>35 Doug1943: The Mayas built pyramids, did astronomy, invented a positional-exponential numbering system ... and their descendants are the present-day Guatemalans. What happened?

Well, for one, the Spanish happened. Duh! (And, yes, I know the difference between Mayans and Aztecs.)

Any discussion among laypeople of IQ is pointless because the whole subject is too murky and unsettled. On the one hand, there's the Flynn effect, while on the other there's perhaps a more recent reverse trend, as in this CNN story.

If it is in fact the case that poor people have lower IQs, might not another, and preferable, policy be to make them not poor?

And I will just end with this:

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it.

— John Stuart Mill, Letter to the Conservative MP, Sir John Pakington
(March 1866)

I was recommend this perspective of political minorities within political minority activism. "For anti-abortion LGBTQ groups, Roe's reversal is a 'human rights victory': While the country’s largest LGBTQ rights groups have come out forcefully against the Supreme Court’s abortion decision, some queer Americans are rejoicing."

And it touches I've been waiting to addressed in mentions of queer Americans since the Dobbs decision.

While there’s disagreement about what the Dobbs decision may mean down the line for recently gained rights like same-sex marriage, advocates note that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has a direct and immediate impact on LGBTQ Americans.

A 2019 study in the journal Women’s Health Issues found that all sexual minority groups, except lesbians, were generally more likely than their heterosexual peers to have a pregnancy, a teen pregnancy and an abortion. And a report published in 2021 in the journal BMJ Sexual & Reproductive Health showed that a “high proportion” of transgender, nonbinary and gender-expansive respondents had attempted abortion without clinical supervision.

That's still not addressing the link between abortion rights and the accessibility of healthcare of cisgender (lesbian, some bi- and pansexual, and asexual) women who don't have sex with cisgender men as well as the healthcare of transgender men and non-binary people. The priority of healthcare in areas controlled by anti-abortion legislators is to keep some chosen parts of population fertile even at the cost of the individuals' lives. This factors into the denial of medical services that queer patients face.

>38 librorumamans: That's basically my position. Like almost everything related to biology and behavior, we don't know enough yet. Let's keep doing the research. Research into genes and IQ is, of course, made difficult, if not dangerous in the US by the Leftist stormtrooper thoughtpolice, but it will be done, even if not in the US.

You say the current not-very-high-IQ descendants of the Mayans are that way because of the Spanish. That is, you believe the Spanish, or the consequences of the Conquest, eliminated the high-IQ Mayan-descendants selectively. Well, that's possible. And that would lend credence to the genes-IQ argument. I use the example AGAINST the genes-IQ argument, ie. that it's more complicated than that. But I may be wrong and you may be right ... maybe the Spanish did selectively kill off more of the intelligent Mayan descendants. Or maybe whatever catastrophe ended Mayan civilization 500 years before the Spanish arrived did it.

Yes, the problem with this as a public discussion is that most people don't understand statistics.

Example: "If it is in fact the case that poor people have lower IQs, might not another, and preferable, policy be to make them not poor?" I know you're compressing ideas here, as we all must do in online discussions, so I'm not accusing you of not understanding statistics ... just that this statement, by itself, conceals a couple of falacies.

In the first place, making poor people "not poor" is tricky. We've made a lot of poor people not poor over the past few decades, all over the world, through the introduction of nasty old capitalism to their countries. Wonderful.
For some data, see here: https://www.humanprogress.org/extreme-povertys-end-in-sight/
And in particular, here: https://www.humanprogress.org/prosperity-comes-from-economic-growth-not-well-int...

(By the way, this site is a good one to look at whenever the news is too depressing. Better than Valium, or an analyst. https://humanprogress.org )

But not all poor people are alike. In particular, in advanced countries, especially ones with chronic labor shortages to fill like the US -- which is why people are risking their lives to cross the southern border, not to get on welfare as some rightwingers think -- in such societies, most people who remain poor -- and only a small fraction of people in the bottom 20% remain poor all their lives -- are poor because of their own behavior. Get all the education you can, don't have a baby out of wedlock -- and you greatly reduce your chances of being poor. Just handing the chronically-poor money won't change that behavior. In other words, poverty correlates with low IQ (in the case of poor people n advanced countries), but is not necessarily the cause of low IQ. it may be the other way around. Or there maybe other variables which cause both. (I know you know this.)

I'm going to post this now so you can reply if you wish, and return to the rest later.

>40 Doug1943: Research into genes and IQ is, of course, made difficult, if not dangerous in the US by the Leftist stormtrooper thoughtpolice, but it will be done, even if not in the US.

Or the fact that if a researcher "discovers" that one race is smarter than the others, you know immediately what his race is. It's because people have yanked some at best mediocre research out of context and start making huge pronouncements about how we should restructure government around it; we can't afford medical care for the poor, but we can afford to try to get the college educated to have more babies. You even admit that it's complex and largely unknown, but still interpret it the way you like and think we should take action on it.

There's a long history of researchers claiming stuff like evolution made boys like blue and girls like pink (a relatively new fad; some blame it on First Lady Marnie Eisenhower), or press and talking heads claiming that men and women have different eyes and need to be treated differently (the results were barely statistically relevant, and amounted to 0.35 standard deviations, meaning even if the difference in cornea thickness was relevant, gender tells you almost nothing about it.) There's a reason why this stuff annoys the hell out of so many people.

You say the current not-very-high-IQ descendants of the Mayans are that way because of the Spanish. That is, you believe the Spanish, or the consequences of the Conquest, eliminated the high-IQ Mayan-descendants selectively.

That's not at all what he said. Again, I pointed out that different life experiences made two twins have 14 IQ points separation, and that different life experiences between kids in 1942 England and in 2008 also have a 14 IQ point separation. Any real difference between Guatamalans and Americans probably has to do with prenatal and postnatal environment, including food and stress.

Get all the education you can

When Romney was running for President, he talked about Jimmy John Liautaud, who dropped out of college, and his father gave him a $20K loan to start his own business. College dropout Bill Gates got trained in an up and coming technology by going to an expensive private school, so he could drop out of Harvard and write programs for computers that were just becoming sold for home use.

The rich didn't get where they are by living by these rules; they get where they are because their parents gave them a chance to do anything they wanted and failure was not an existential threat.

Just handing the chronically-poor money won't change that behavior.

The chronically poor. That's the word for someone who had to drop out to support their family and has worked many poorly paid jobs over many years. In any case, nobody said just hand them money. Give them health care, give them decent schools, give them lead-free water.

only a small fraction of people in the bottom 20% remain poor all their lives

Uh-huh. I can't find any numbers on that, but color me skeptical, especially as it's pretty clear you didn't check the numbers on it.

>40 Doug1943: the current not-very-high-IQ descendants of the Mayans

So, just out of curiosity, where are you getting this claim from? What's your basis for claiming that "descendants of the Mayans" (we would usually just say "Mayans", but whatever) have lower IQs than some reference population? And who are you comparing them to?

>40 Doug1943: Leftist stormtrooper thoughtpolice

Doug, I do try to take you seriously, but really when you use slogans like this it is increasingly difficult to do so.

We've made a lot of poor people not poor over the past few decades, all over the world, through the introduction of nasty old capitalism to their countries.

No, capitalism has made a lot of rich people richer, a few poor people richer as well, and a lot of poor people poorer. That's what capitalism does.

Capitalism has always been a zero sum winners losers game and there are always a lot more losers than winners. What helps keep the game going is the buffer in the middle of people doing just well enough, people doing okay, people doing pretty well and people doing very well but not really getting rich. The people in the buffer area tend in large part to conservative politics and are obsessed with protecting what they have from the poor or losers while looking up to the rich or winners. The losers basically are meant to be demeaned and there are racist and/or misogynistic elements at play here too.

>43 John5918: I suspect that the situation is a little more complicated than either you or Doug is making it out to be.

It's of course clear as day that when it is allowed to proceed unchecked, and to the degree it is allowed to proceed unchecked, the outcome of capitalism is tremendous inequality, and when goods and services critical to a minimally satisfactory life (education, health care, food, shelter, etc) are mistakenly allowed to be treated as though they were ordinary market goods, capitalism produces tremendous want and misery alongside appalling luxury and waste.
Nobody living in the WEIRD world today could sensibly deny this, and presumably those living outside the WEIRD world can see it even more clearly.

However, and this is the frustrating part, early-stage capitalism does in fact reduce effective poverty, by making it cheaper to produce needed goods. This has the effect of turning luxuries into necessities - a double-edged sword, but we can't afford to ignore either edge. Or, to invert the metaphor, a pair of scissors with two blades that work together to cut the paper.

The automobile is a reasonable example. It started out as a luxury item, and pretty quickly became a necessary tool of rural life, and in pretty short order became (by a combination of intentional skullduggery and somewhat uncontrolled social forces) a requirement for daily living. Another example might be air conditioning: humanity survived for tens of thousands of years without it, and today in much of the world, people consider it impossible to do without it.

In both cases a product went from unimaginable to essential within a few decades. The point is not to justify the use of these products (I use neither myself, and I live a perfectly decent life in an American city) but to point out that people all over the world feel strongly that they both have access to and absolutely require both of these luxuries, and this is because of capitalism.

I want to be very careful to observe both blades of the scissors: there are people all over the world who have access to luxuries that a few generations back would have been considered fantasies, and they have access to these fantastic goods because capitalism.

On the other hand, people all over the world require these fantastic goods which are threatening their children's lives, and in many cases their lives, because their world has changed so as to make these former luxuries essential to their daily life, and this change is again largely because capitalism.

I honestly don't know how to square these two aspects of capitalism, but neither do I know how to ignore them.

>45 kiparsky:

That's such a complete muddle of completely wrong, and irrelevant observations. What capitalism does above all is create artificial needs. Even in your country, the current insane situation with cars didn't occur "naturally", but through a conspiracy of money and government which saw literal destruction of the public transport systems. Add to it the perennial condition of American society, racism, and the creation of the suburbs with their horrid way of life, plus the artificially low gasoline price (the Europeans, for example, were always paying considerably more)--that's how you get the supposedly "essential" thirst for the automobile.

Capitalism created absolutely nothing "essential", and nothing that is essential for life depends on capitalism. Electricity, access to water, transportation, healthcare, education, food, all of these have been available in non-capitalist countries as a matter of course, whereas to this day not all capitalist countries--the US included--provides all this to all its citizens.

I think it needs to be said as well that whatever checks are placed on capitalism by governing bodies they are always subject to being unchecked by the same. That's entirely because politicians are prone through ambition and greed to create or look past inequalities as if they don't matter; so as to sell their souls and to feather their own nests. You'd almost need that governing body to be in greater part those refusing to do such and aspiring to create a heaven on earth for everyone which is clearly never going to happen with the types of politicians that we have or have ever had or ever will have.

>33 Doug1943: >40 Doug1943:

As I recall, we've been over this before:

Is intelligence determined by genetics?
NIH National Library of Medicine | https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/traits/intelligence/

Like most aspects of human behavior and cognition, intelligence is a complex trait that is influenced by both genetic and environmental factors.

...studies have focused on similarities and differences in IQ within families, particularly looking at adopted children and twins. These studies suggest that genetic factors underlie about 50 percent of the difference in intelligence among individuals...

https://medlineplus.gov/genetics/understanding/traits/intelligence/

As a college-educated, queer American parent who has struggled with governmental poverty lines (and thereby healthcare) my entire life yet is, by the way this is typically measured as IQ, considered one of the smartest people in my country...

I'm mentally kicking myself for not making a more strictly defined opening post.

Y'all, one person who is clearly uncomfortable with the actual topic in the title as well as its related subjects is successfully redirecting attention to their own preferred subjects (ie, eugenics and Calvinist propaganda). You can see that, can't you?

Please take any further responses that make no attempt to tie into the 2015 Supreme Court case for same-sex marriage to a different page.

>49 aspirit: I agree, and I apologize again for participating in the hijack.

Trying to get this back on track, I'm seeing a lot of fear in the communities I work in around the repeal of queer rights. People in these communities see the recognition of queer marriage as a tacit recognition of queer humanity, and they're afraid not only of the explicit loss of the benefits associated with marriage, but also of the return to more overt forms of discrimination and attack.

Sadly, I can't offer them much reassurance on this.

In today's Guardian, the kicker to Owen Jones' column reads: "It’s no surprise that people opposing the rights of [the LGBTQ] minority are also anti-abortion. Unless we unite, patriarchy will come for us all."
He concludes with:

For LGBTQ people on both sides of the Atlantic, the reversal of progress is bewildering and frightening. But it isn’t happening in isolation. After suffering historic defeats, patriarchy is roaring back, and it’s angry. Our rights and freedoms are bound together: we rise together, and unless we’re united, patriarchy will come for us all.

The US House of Representatives is prepared to vote on same-sex (and interracial!) marriages, in responding to the US Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade, according to The Associated Press.

Related bits of news:

• Out of 435 Representatives, only nine are openly gay. (None of the current members are openly bisexual or transgender, apparently.)

• A Gallup poll in June showed 70% of adults in the USA believe same-sex marriages recognized by law are valid. The poll showed majority support among both Democrats and Republicans, with 83% and 55% respectively in support.

• Jim Obergefell, the named plaintiff in the landmark ruling that legalized same-sex marriage, is now running as for the Ohio House (District 89).

A small victory that (47?) Rs voted for the bill even as midterms loom... On to Senate. Midterm elections...