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The Catholic Church continues to lose followers for awful decisions like the one it made last week to strip an Arizona hospital of its official religious status because it performed an emergency abortion to save the life of the mother.
The controversy has the ACLU appealing to the federal government to ensure that emergency contraceptives and abortions remain available at Catholic hospitals.
In a letter to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the ACLU said "the refusal by religiously affiliated hospitals to provide abortion and other services was becoming an increasing problem."
Their complaint stems from a Catholic Bishop Thomas J. Olmsted's decision to strip St. Joseph’s Hospital and Medical Center in Phoenix of its Catholic status after staff doctors performed an abortion to save a mother's life late last year.
The bishop who oversees the hospital excommunicated a nun who was involved in the decision-making process last Tuesday and announced that the hospital could no longer call itself Catholic because he discovered it had been providing women with "birth-control pills and other forms of contraception" and sterilizations and abortions in certain situations.
The medical center followed with a very brave announcement of its own last Tuesday, saying it will continue to provide life-saving abortion care to patients even though it means losing its affiliation with the local Roman Catholic Diocese.
This commendable decision by St. Joseph’s and the hospital network that oversees it, Catholic Healthcare West, upholds important legal and moral principles. It also underscores the need to ensure that religiously affiliated hospitals comply with their legal duty to provide emergency reproductive care.
Advocates for reproductive rights are concerned that as Catholic hospital chains take over more hospitals, it will become more difficult for women to access contraception and medically necessary abortions.
The controversy stems from an incident in November 2009, when a 27-year-old mother of four in her third month of pregnancy arrived at St. Joseph’s. She was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension, a serious complication that might well have killed her if she had continued the pregnancy.
The hospital performed an abortion, leading Bishop Olmsted to declare Sister Margaret McBride, a member of the hospital’s ethics committee, “automatically excommunicated” because she had consented to the therapeutic abortion necessary to save the woman’s life.
Last week, Bishop Olmsted said he no longer had confidence that the administration of St. Joseph's Hospital would run it according to Catholic teachings, "and therefore this hospital cannot be considered Catholic."
Leaders of the institution, founded in 1895 by a Catholic order, the Sisters of Mercy, said it would continue to operate "in the Catholic tradition" but without the official sanction of the church.
"I have hoped and prayed that this day would not come," the bishop was quoted as saying at a news conference. "However, the faithful of the diocese have a right to know whether institutions of this importance are indeed Catholic in identity and practice."
Just last month, Bishop Olmsted threatened to remove his endorsement of the hospital unless he received a written acknowledgment that the abortion violated Catholic policy and “will never occur again at St. Joseph’s Hospital.”
The hospital has steadfastly refused to bow to these demands, summing up its position with elegant simplicity: “Morally, ethically, and legally we simply cannot stand by and let someone die whose life we might be able to save.”
It is hardly reassuring that following the incident at St. Joseph’s, the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops said Sister Margaret was properly punished and seconded Bishop Olmsted’s stance against providing the abortion, even to save a woman’s life.
No one has suggested that Catholic hospitals should be required to perform nonemergency abortions. But as St. Joseph’s recognized, the need to accommodate religious doctrine does not give health providers serving the general public license to jeopardize women’s lives.
The hospital's president, Linda Hunt, said she was "deeply saddened" by Olmsted's decision, adding, "The fact that this situation stems from our decision to save a young woman's life is particularly sad."
This is no small matter. Catholic hospitals account for about 15 percent of the nation’s hospital beds and are the only hospital facilities in many communities. Months ago, the American Civil Liberties Union asked the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services to investigate reported instances where religious doctrine prevailed over the need for emergency reproductive care, and to issue a formal clarification that denying such treatment violates federal law.
As previously mentioned, St. Joseph's is run by San Francisco-based Catholic Healthcare West, which operates more than 40 hospitals and clinics in California, Arizona and Nevada.
— The Curator
Gay men and women will soon be able to serve openly in the military for the first time in our nation's history, rather than hiding their sexuality or being forced to lie about it.
There are thousands upon thousands of blog posts across the globe about the repeal of the military's bigoted "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy against gays, so I hesitated adding my small voice to that growing cacophony.
What can I say, that hasn't been said? Then it dawned on me: I'm bisexual, so I HAVE to add my small voice.
Before becoming disabled, I worked in law enforcement, within an agency that mimicked many military practices. In fact, a huge percentage of my co-workers were retired police, military or reservists. After 9-11, a large number of them were re-activated or volunteered and were sent immediately to Iran and into combat.
I knew that many of those men and women were also members of the Lesbian-Gay-Tri-Gender community. They responded to the country's call to arms without hesitation, putting their civilian lives on hold indefinitely. They kissed their families and significant others good-bye, and donned their helmets, fatigues and loaded their automatic rifles.
As most know, the military code of conduct requires that each member practice and respect honesty in service. How then, could these brave heroes be told by their country that they must lie about the core truth of their lives, or they would be barred from serving, or drummed out of the military in disgrace?
So, all of the ones I knew lied by omission. They did not declare their sexuality, and refused to disclose it if asked. Some of them were wounded, some never came home. The ones that did, were often re-deployed more than once because they had advanced military training and skills. When they finally came home and stayed, many were scarred emotionally and/or physically, and most were forever changed — just like their heterosexual counterparts. No difference. No difference at all.
I don't know one LGBT man or woman who wants to "seduce" a heterosexual, especially during combat! They simply want equality, to live normal lives, free from the constant stereotyping and bigotry that they have had to endure for eons.
Sexuality is NOT a choice, or a lifestyle. It is simply a biological fact. There are rotten LGBTs, just like their are rotten heterosexuals. The person you sleep with is not someone's defining char-ac-ter-is-tic — no, that would be char-ac-ter! You know, like strength, perseverance, compassion, courage, and honesty!
Equal rights means, uh, equal rights, i.e., freedom. It remains shocking to me that LGBTs have been seeking the right to die for those rights by defending our country. Shouldn't we all be focused on working toward peace? Maybe now, we will be.
"By ending 'don't ask, don't tell,' no longer will our nation be denied the service of thousands of patriotic Americans forced to leave the military, despite years of exemplary performance, because they happen to be gay. And no longer will many thousands more be asked to live a lie in order to serve the country they love," President Obama said in a statement.
It is high time that America joins the rest of the developed world. LGBT's right to serve openly and without penalty or disdain in the military is a huge step in doing just that. Now, let us turn our attention to bringing our military service members home safely — and soon — from all wars.
— The Curator
Primetime TV shows that appeal to teenagers are promoting the "sexualization" of girls at an alarming rate, including more portrayals of underage females being objectified than adults, especially for laughs, according to the Parents Television Council.
The questionable watchdog group is calling on producers, advertisers and government regulators to take an honest assessment of the sexually provocative way girls are portrayed on TV and take it down a notch. Or two.
But, is this study legitimate, or simply another way for this group to manipulate the statistics for its established agenda? The PTC is known to use scare tactics and thin statistics to jump to huge conclusions and generalizations about sex in America. It often does so without the appropriate, neutral scientific research to back up any of its claims.
PTC president Tim Winter, armed with only a 20-page study that the group released today, hosted a conference call with journalists and others to ask Hollywood to treat sex much as it has smoking: Strip it out where possible, for children's sake.
"They can step up. They can tone it down," he said, during the media blitz.
PTC analysts looked only at the top 14 scripted shows that Nielsen identified as being popular among children 12-17, including "The Office," "NCIS," "Two and a Half Men," "The Big Bang Theory" and "The Vampire Diaries."
"Underage female characters are shown participating in a higher percentage of sexual depictions compared to adults," according to the study, called 'Sexualized Teen Girls: Tinseltown's New Target' — hardly neutral language for a legitimate study.
The PTC argues that girls are increasingly shown as having their worth dependent upon their sexuality, a media phenomenon it asserts leads to passivity, depression, eating disorders and low self-esteem. In other words, TV is the root of most of the sexual evils of our time.
The report claims that 73 percent of televised sexual incidents that involved girls under 18 were designed to be funny, thus using "laughter to desensitize and trivialize topics that might normally be viewed as disturbing."
The study says 98 percent of the portrayals of underage girls acting in a sexual manner occurred with partners with whom they have no committed relationship, and 75 percent of such shows don't include the "S" descriptor beforehand to warn parents what's coming.
To bolster the PTC's case, the group put several "experts" on its conference call today, including former model Nicole Clark, who made the 2008 documentary film "Cover Girl Culture: Awakening the Media Generation."
"Our girls are being sexually objectified as young as six," said Clark, who is pregnant and broke down into tears several times during her presentation. "How did things get so crazy?"
Television executives are robbing children of their innocence — "preying on them" — she asserted, and their victims aren't strong enough to reject the destructive messages.
"Why can't the media be on our side?" she asked.
The provocative question regarding the veracity of this study was addressed in detail in an excellent column written by Chris Kelly, which appeared in today's Huffington Post. Read the opinion editorial in its entirety below, or directly at the website:
TV is Smutty, but the Parents Television Council is a Disgrace
By Chris Kelly
"L. Brent Bozell is a cheap has-been who died years ago, but that doesn't mean his work-from-home pressure group, The Parents Television Council, can't still come up with the occasional hot title for a press release. Take, for example, this week's shocking study — more than 35 hours in the making —
Sexualized Teen Girls: Tinseltown's New Target (deep breath) A Study of Teen Female Sexualization in Primetime TV
Just looking at him, you'd guess that L. Brent Bozell's savvy with technology was limited to opening cans, but you've got to hand it to him — the man can manipulate a search engine.
If there's one thing L. Brent Bozell hates about our sleazy, lowest-common-denominator media, it's teen girl sex teen female teen teen sex girls.
Especially in that dern "Tinseltown," where a smooth-talking sharpie can turn a dizzy doll's head, pitch her some woo, love her up, and leave her table dancing in some gin joint.
L. Brent Bozell is a busted valise, and the PTC is a card table, but the report has already been covered, and taken seriously, by ABC News, the Los Angeles Times, and the New York Daily News. None of which mentioned that, just to give you a feel for where the PTC is coming from, this week they made a grid of every show on network television, and said only two were appropriate for family viewing — Extreme Makeover: Home Edition and Minute to Win It.
Here's the PTC's release about the teen sex sex teen sex thing:
LOS ANGELES (December 15, 2010) In a new report, the Parents Television Council details the nature and extent of Hollywood's obsession with sexualizing teen girls. PTC's report, Tinseltown's New Target: A study of Teen Female Sexualization on Primetime TV, is based on a content analysis of the most popular primetime broadcast shows among 12 to 17-year-olds during the 2009-2010 TV season.
This content analysis was limited to just 35 hours of TV — that's including commercial time — over two weeks. They only watched scripted shows on the four major networks, so the study doesn't include reality shows, which actually make up half of top 25, or whole channels, like MTV, TLC, Adult Swim or Comedy Central — the ones that air the shows teenagers actually watch. So remember, this study of modern TV trends has been prepared by people who've never seen American Idol and don't have cable. It's like getting a tsunami warning from a man listening to a seashell.
Pretty shocking, right, Grandma? Get out your checkbook. But let's take a closer look, claim by claim.
"When underage female characters appear on screen: more sexual content is depicted."
Than when? Than when underage female characters don't appear? Than during reruns of My Little Margie? Than when the Wright Brothers pioneered powered flight? Than when the TV is off?
Not only don't we know what any of these terms mean, we don't know to what, if anything, they're being compared. We just know it's MORE.
So we turn to the study itself, and find the PTC means more sexualized images of underage female characters than adult female characters.
This could be shocking, but remember, the PTC got to pick the shows it gets to talk about. And they picked the (network, scripted) shows that teenagers watch. So, it's not really that weird that they're about teenagers, and not about adults. Would it be less creepy if teenagers were watching shows where adult women had more sex than teenagers?
And what exactly is "sexual content?" According to the PTC, it includes dancing, nudity (partial, obscured or implied) and "scenes in which sexualization was intentionally ambiguous and communicated using subtle overtones and social cues" including scenes that "required knowledge of a previous storyline or history and/or knowledge of the characters' general disposition."
Your move, Taliban.
In other words, everything and anything. They don't know smut, but they know it when they see it, kind of see it, or don't see it at all. This, of course, is lunacy.
"The teen girls show next to no negative response to being sexualized."
According to the PTC report:
"Only 5% of the underage female characters communicated any form of dislike for being sexualized (excluding scenes depicting healthy sexuality)."
Again, remember: This announcement is being made based on the close study of less TV than the average teenager sees in a weekend, and deliberately excludes the shows the average teenager chooses to watch. And by "being sexualized" the PTC sometimes means sending subtle social cues about a willingness to dance.
Let's look at where they get their 5 percent. It's in Table 3 "Frequencies and Percentages of Female Characters' Attitudes Toward Being Sexualized Based on Age":
Participant's Attitude Positive 16 Negative 2 Unclear/Neutral 23 Total Incidents 41
Look at this another way: Even given their insane definition of sex, and their tiny sample of episodes of shows — that aren't really representative of anything — they still find that 25 out of 41 underage characters' responses to being sexualized are negative, unclear or neutral.
That's 60 percent. Which could be better, but it's not bad.
"More sexual incidents occur outside of any form of a committed relationship."
Here the Parents Television Council jumps the tracks entirely. What do they imagine they want? We're talking about children. What sort of committed sexual relationships would L. Brent Bozell like eight year olds to enter? This isn't an argument; it's just dog noises.
"There is less accuracy in the TV content rating."
Goddamn it, here we go again. Than what? Less accuracy than what?
One last shocking figure from the report:
"The data show that 73% of the underage sexualized incidents were presented in a humorous manner or as a punch line to a joke."
Outrageous! Except the PTC only looked at 14 shows, and nine of them were comedies. I'm thinking the comedies were the ones making light.
By the way, of the 14 shows in the study, only six even have underage characters: Two and Half Men, Glee, The Cleveland Show, Family Guy, American Dad and The Simpsons. So by "Tinseltown," the Parents Television Council means one sitcom, one dramedy, and four cartoons, one of them over 20 years old.
Obviously sexualizing children is wrong. But so is talking nonsense about nothing in language designed to deceive. It's contemptible and obvious, and L. Brent Bozell should knock it off."
The sexualization of children is deplorable, and appears to be ans increasing phenomenon throughout our society. It is an important topic that should be looked at with neutrality, not by a group that has an established agenda and manipulates minimal statistics primarily to generate fear and its own sensational headlines and point of view.
— The Curator
Want to be a nicer person? If you're a man, then shacking up may help. A new study is lending credence to the idea that marriage helps combat antisocial behavior.
Earlier research has found evidence that tying the knot can make men less aggressive and even less likely to engage in criminal activity. But it wasn't clear whether antisocial men were simply more likely to remain single, or whether marriage actually makes them into nicer people.
Both reasons may apply, according to a study published this week in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
S. Alexandra Burt, a behavioral geneticist at Michigan State University and the study's lead researcher, examined 289 pairs of male twins to find out how they would differ if one of the twins got married, and the other remained single.
"The married men engaged in lower levels of antisocial behavior at all ages," which suggests that they were less antisocial people to begin with, Burt concluded.
"But once they got married it seemed like the behaviors go down even more," meaning that something about their marriage likely made them become "nicer," she said in an interview.
Researchers examined the twins at age 17, 20, 24 and 29. They found that those who were less aggressive or more likely to consider the well-being of others at age 17 and age 20 had a better chance of getting married by age 29.
Once married, they became even less likely to do something antisocial, like get into a brawl, compared to their single twin brothers.
The study didn't examine why it is that antisocial men are more likely to stay single, or why married men may become more responsible and laid-back.
But the findings raise some interesting questions, Burt says. "I can imagine if you're a guy who really likes to get in fights and steal things, marriage may not look all that attractive to you," she said. "On the other hand, it could be that if you're a woman looking to get married, the kind of guy that gets in fights and steals things doesn't look as attractive as a marital partner either. So it's hard to know who's doing the selecting."
It may also be that "when men are with their wives, they're just less likely to go out and do some of the stuff that they might do with their rowdy friends," she said.
Or perhaps marriage teaches men to better relate to others.
"Through getting married they're just learning better how to bond with people. Since antisocial behavior is really about disregarding the rights of others, they're less likely to do that," Burt said.
And once men get married, she added, "they also have more to lose."
This study clearly involved only marriages between heterosexual men and women. I would like to see the study replicated to see whether the results hold true in same-sex unions between men. I would expect the results to be exactly the same!
— The Curator
I hate this, hate this!
Breakups are agonizing. For both the heartbreaker and the heartbroken, the let's-not-do-this-anymore conversation is always awkward and very often painful, particularly for the person getting dumped.
Bradley Laborman knows this because he has probably been through more breakups than anyone else. That's because he runs the website iDUMP4U, which lets users hire a relationship hit man — i.e., Laborman — to do their dirty work for them. For $10, Laborman will make the breakup call, which he records for posterity — and for YouTube. That's right, customers can choose to broadcast these calls for their entertainment (or revenge) value.
Sound terrible? It really, really is. But, I think it also symbolizes just how far our society had devolved. People and relationships are beyond expendable, they have become simply 'objects' to be used then discarded along with the trash without a backward, emotional or responsible glance. So, why not use the new technology to keep your own hands clean? Dis-gusting.
But people do use the service. At $10 for a standard breakup, $25 for ending an engagement and $50 for demanding a divorce, iDUMP4U isn't turning a profit yet, but Laborman says he was surprised at how quickly business picked up after he launched the site in September 2009.
Originally starting it as a joke, Laborman so far has conducted more than 200 breakups, for almost every reason imaginable, from cheating partners to lazy lovers. And if last year's requests are any indication, Laborman's numbers are about to get a boost. The phenomenon known as the Turkey Dump — in which college freshmen break up with their hometown loves over the Thanksgiving holiday — provided Laborman with a lot of extra business last year. "Last year I had a lot of Turkey Dumps," he says. "I also had people who didn't want to buy a Christmas present [for their partner]. This time of year is the busiest."
Although Laborman may be the most extreme, he is not the only provider of third-party dumping services. There's BreakUpEmail.com, which asks users to fill out various details — their name, partner's name, reason for breaking up — and then produces a breakup e-mail to send to their soon-to-be-single sweetheart.
The site gets up to 5,000 visits a day, and its creator, Chris (who asks that we do not include his last name out of concern that moonlighting as a breakup facilitator might negatively impact his day job as a humanitarian-aid worker), says he has gotten thank-you e-mails from two types of people: those who find the site funny and those who actually use it.
And, of course, there's an app for breaking up. Erase Ur X can be used to create a form e-mail sent from your iPhone that breaks the news to your soon-to-be-ex. After that, the app does what creator Cory Wiles calls the hardest part of the breakup — deleting the now-ex's number from your phone. (If you aren't actually conducting the breakup yourself, that probably is the hardest part.)
For those of us who can still remember the time when breaking up over the phone, rather than in person, was thought to be in poor taste, services like these may seem an unimaginably impersonal way to end what should be your most intimate relationship. But for those who began their dating career in the age of texting, Twitter and Facebook, relationships have a whole new communication system. And so do breakups.
"We are so used to having standardized etiquette, and in some ways we are still waiting for that to emerge [online]," says Ilana Gershon, an assistant professor at Indiana University and the author of The Breakup 2.0: Disconnecting over New Media. "But no one has set out the rules of what's acceptable and what's not." So for a society that once lived by Emily Post's code of conduct, we now find ourselves navigating the social scene sans guidelines, and what may seem like horrific behavior to some is (borderline) acceptable to others.
Ironically, Erase Ur X's Wiles and the other guys who run third-party dumping services admit that they'd never want to be broken up with by their own companies. BreakUpEmail.com's Chris says he's never broken up with anyone over e-mail, which may explain why he's still friends with most of his ex-girlfriends (one of them even gave him advice on developing the site). And iDUMP4U's Laborman says he'd prefer a face-to-face breakup to any other method.
Yet each defends their services as having a practical role for today's relationships. Wiles says that social networking has changed our ideas about privacy. "It used to be that breakups were private," he says. "This is just the new trend, a natural progression."
Laborman contends that with all the ambiguity that new media can bring to a relationship — it's not officially over until your Facebook relationship status says it's over, right? — using a third-party dumping service can let your partner know how serious you are about the breakup, and therefore improve your communication.
"Or," he counters, "it's the perfect way to burn a bridge."
No kidding! Anyone who would use one of these services is not someone I would ever be interested in having a relationship with in the first place. Relationships mean taking risks, and they require mutual responsibility and have consequences. Sometimes they cause pain, but they can also produce a profound joy like nothing else in the entire universe. They are not iPod applications for God's sake, they are real life. You remember real life, right? Jesus, I am developing a real, honest hatred for this era!
— The Curator
