How to argue against marriage equality by arguing in favor of also repealing spousal rape laws ...

I used to enjoy reading First Things (about two decades ago). Despite being conservative in both politics and theology, it was rigorous, logical, and even humane. I could read entire articles wherein I disagreed with both the starting hypothesis and the conclusion ... and still feel like I benefited personally from the experience of reading it.

Sadly, no more.

If "Obergefell Must Go" is an example of that First Things is publishing these days, another once-venerable conservative voice (like National Review) has flattened itself to fit into the neo-MAGA "Intellectual" system that is reflexively anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-diversity, anti-poor people, etc etc etc ad nauseam ad infinitum (for a good dose of Latin).

This article is written by one Robert P. George, who "is McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University."

And he's very obviously a homophobic bigot.

Part of that understanding comes from Professor George's overly strident defense of his position in just those terms:

///Americans are waking up to the illiberal tactics—everything from invading churches to stigmatizing believers in marriage as a conjugal partnership as “bigots”—of the organizations that forced same-sex marriage on us by judicial fiat.////

Beware anybody who actually builds into his or her article the boldface sentence that other people (no matter of illegitimate they are presented to be) consider anyone holding the author's position is a bigot ... then you can start with the reasonable presumption that the author is ... a bigot trying to weasel his or her way out of it.

Which is in fact that case here.

Consider his opening paragraph, which characterizes Obergefell v. Hodges as "the case that invalidated state laws defining marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife and required states to issue marriage licenses to same-sex partners."

Our dear Professor George thereby asserts that, LEGALLY, marriage was a "conjugal union" (between one man and one woman) prior to the Supreme Court decision on Obergefell, and that it is this "conjugal" understanding of marriage that the case destroyed and which must be set right again:

////if one believes that marriage is inherently a conjugal bond—that is, the union of one man and one woman, and not a mere form of sexual-romantic companionship or domestic partnership—then the “law” imposed on the nation by the Supreme Court in Obergefell is a defiance of moral reality.////

Note the illegitimate shifting of positions here. In the first paragraph Professor George asserts that the "conjugal union" was an inherent element in the LEGAL definition, but then later on reduces that to the "belief" (as in "if one believes") rather than a legal component in the union.

This is critical because almost all legal definitions of marriage prior to Obergefell DID NOT include "conjugal union" (I haven't actually found one yet that did, but I only searched 28 states), and when the word "conjugal" appears it is in the context of the act of marriage conferring "conjugal RIGHTS" on each of the partners.

And that's where this particular bigot palmed his homophobic card.

Take the quickest note from Oxford Reference (I cite it because it is brief; I have not found any legal commentaries that disagree with it):

////Conjugal Rights

////The rights of either spouse of a marriage, which include the right to the other's consortium (company), cohabitation (sexual intercourse), and maintenance during the marriage. There is, however, no longer any legal procedure for enforcing these rights. The old action for restitution of conjugal rights was abolished in 1971 and a husband insisting on sexual intercourse against the wishes of his wife may be guilty of rape. See also consummation of a marriage.////

Note two critical points:

ONE: "conjugal rights" are one set of rights stemming from having become married, and are not viewed as part of the definition of marriage. AND ...

TWO: Since 1971 and the introduction of the legal concept of "spousal rape," that term actually has zero legal bearing on the institution of marriage.

Hmmm .... 1971?

That would ,mean that the legal element of "conjugal rights" (for which Professor George inappropriately substitutes "conjugal union") had already been eliminated from the legal definition of marriage ... 47 years BEFORE Obergefell v Hodges was decided.

Moreover, in order the reinstate it -- on conservative theological grounds -- would not only eliminate marriage equality, but also necessary return to the doctrine that within a "conjugal union" the husband has a right to sexual intercourse any damn time he pleases, no matter what the opinions or lack of consent by his wife.

Professor Brown knows this, which is precisely why his pontifications morph "conjugal rights" into "conjugal union," as even he must actually know that telling people you intend to remove the necessity for CONSENT for wives is a nonstarter.

He plays a few other silly, stupid games throughout the article, but this is the heart of it. His detestation of homosexuals engaging in a long-term relationship if so profound that he is quite willing to remove women's protections against spousal rape to prevent queers from being able to claim equal citizenship.

The problem, of course, is that Professor George's sleazy slight of hand will pretty much disappear when the article becomes a footnote in some Heritage Foundation position paper on why only "tradition families" should be considered legitimate.

Now you know.

Contrary to the current MAGA formulation of how liberal all the professors in higher education are, there are plenty of folks out there publishing queer-bashing op-eds in formerly respectable journals.

https://firstthings.com/obergefell-must-go/

The world pushes back on US international human trafficking -- and you need to get involved

 

Here is the complete text of Angie Cano's post:

Hundreds of Venezuelan men including my husband were kidnapped by the U.S. government and thrown into El Salvador’s mega-prison, CECOT. They had no trial, no lawyer, no notice. Some had asylum claims. Others had wives and children here. They were not criminals they were treated like hostages.

Now, the world is finally paying attention.

1. The United Nations has called this a disappearance.

2. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (CIDH) is being asked to issue emergency protections.

3. And for the first time, President Nayib

Bukele is being reported to the International Criminal Court (ICC) for crimes against humanity for using these men as political leverage in a proposed prisoner swap.

This is not immigration enforcement.

This is state-sponsored human trafficking, arbitrary detention, and a coordinated attack on human rights.

The U.S. and El Salvador must be held accountable because the longer we stay silent, the more this abuse becomes normalized. My husband and hundreds like him are still in CECOT.

They are still incommunicado. They are still waiting.

We demand:

Immediate access to the detainees

Legal review of each case

Full cooperation with UN and CIDH investigators

And the return of those unlawfully deported

To every human rights group, journalist, and policymaker watching this we need your voice. We’re done waiting for justice to trickle down. We are fighting for it, and we won’t stop.

#humanrights #ICC #CIDH #DeepStateSecrets #EnforcedDisappearances #CECOT #ImmigrationJustice

Several notes here:

FIRST: You really should be following her page.

SECOND: DON'T STOP TELLING THIS STORY IN ANY VENUE YOU CAN FIND. Use real names and make these cases into identifiable human beings.

THIRD: PUSH BACK AGAINST REGIME NARRATIVES ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL COURT. The United States should not be above international law, no matter how exceptional we like to think we are.

FOURTH: FIND AN ORGANIZATION OUT THERE WORKING ON THE PROBLEM AND JOIN IT. DONATE IF YOU CAN.

This President and his regime will be remembered by their crimes.

We will be remembered for our resistance (if we never quit).

Herr Shickelgruber visits Auschwitz -- updated so that AP is now being more assertive in its reporting

I can't even figure out what to caption this.

AP has just recently updated title and story

It is important to note that the individual who held supreme power over Germany (or, at the end, what was left of it) from 1933 - 1945 neither visited the death camps nor the fighting front, despite all the cultivated rumors to the contrary.

That he did not do so was cited by Holocaust deniers like "historian? David Irving to argue that he not only did not order the genocide of six million Jews and another six million Poles, Romani, LGBTQ+ people, Russian prisoners, and etc.

Our current President will have no such alibi, even of such tissue-thin stuff. He has celebrated his crimes on national media. Had he been inside the shrinking borders of Deutschland in 1944-1945 my guess is that he would have had himself filmed turning the lever to release the gas into the showers.

There is unlikely to be any physical retribution toward this individual before dementia or clogged arteries send him to hell, so the best we can do is (A) continue to resist the atrocities he claims to be committing in our name; (B) ensure that he leaves his position in disgrace; (C) have him remembered as the 21st Century example of "Never again."

I welcome any of his supporters to join with comments and publicly stake out their identities with the regime for their employers, their children, and their potential grandchildren to see. I'm pretty sure their spouses already know they made a marriage bond with Satan.

ICEBlock and other crowd-sourced initiatives are now driving civil resistance to mass deportation

 Time covers ICEBlock with a really deceptive title:

The only person in the story how hates it is Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. You know Todd, he's the guy who defends having all of his agents wear masks, and who is fearmongering -- without presenting the slightest amount of evidence that ICE agents' children are now being targeted. (One reason for doubting this story is that WJBC, which first ran with it, has abruptly taken the post down. 

At any rate, the ICEBlock app is available through the Apple App Store. There is no Android version because the app is intentionally designed NOT to collect or save identifying user data, and you apparently can't do that on android:

Here's what the app does:

An American Police State is not in our future: It's already here ...

A lot of Trump/MAGA vs Hitler/NAZI comparisons are out there, increasingly focusing on very real parallels between mass deportation based on racial ideology and Jewish persecution/genocide, along with the creation of a massive prison/concentration camp complex across not only America, but extending into other nations.

While these comparisons are both accurate and useful to serve as recruiting tools for civil resistance, it's critical not to neglect the most important parallel between the United States under the second Trump administration and Germany once Hitler became first chancellor and then fuhrer, which is to say the process by which the liberal democracy of the Weimar Republic was rapidly converted into the textbook example of the modern police state.

In order to examine this process, I wanted to go back to a description of the creation of the German police state that could not possibly be tied to the politics of today. What I used is Professor Brian Chapman's book "Police State," published as part of MacMillan's series "Key Concepts in Political Science" in 1970. That's right: Chapman's book even predates Watergate and the subsequent emergence of President Nixon's abuses. Chapman cannot be accused of presentism in his accounting of the key factors of the establishment of the Nazi police state because he was writing 55 years ago (and in the UK, as a matter of fact).

The Strange Case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia's alleged human trafficking and corporate media's compliance in advance

PART ONE: Media compliance in advance

Let's begin with an essentially random image of headlines from my Google news aggregator regarding the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia from El Salvador's CECOT death camp to the United States:

Here's what you notice immediately: the use of the transitive "to." Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the overwhelming majority of headlines tell us, is being returned TO the United States FOR THE PURPOSE OF facing criminal charges of human trafficking. (Do your own search if you don't believe me that this is the standard formulation.)

Pay attention to what is not said, either in the headlines or the body of an overwhelming majority of the stories, including that ... (1) the Trump administration denied vociferously that it would ever return Abrego Garcia to America; (2) that his return was a way to get around charges that the administration had been refusing to comply with a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling; and (3) that the narrative presented by Attorney General Pam Bondi regarding the investigation and charges does not hold water in even the slightest.

President Trump flees from his own promises on Ukraine -- and his MAGA followers cheer

ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT SURPRISING, IT IS INDICATIVE OF HOW REPUBLICAN STATECRAFT AND MAGA DELUSIONS INTERACT

Possibly no promise except lowering the price of eggs became more of a Donald Trump signature line than his posturing on the Ukraine war:

////Former President Donald Trump said if reelected he would end the war in Ukraine before his inauguration because he is respected by Ukraine and Russia’s leaders.

////“That is a war that’s dying to be settled. I will get it settled before I even become president,” the Republican said during his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday. If I win, when I’m president-elect and what I’ll do is I’ll speak to one, I’ll speak to the other, I’ll get them together.”

////“I know Zelenskyy very well and I know Putin very well. I have a good relationship and they respect your president, O.K., they respect me, they don’t respect Biden.”////

It's completely unsurprising that he's been backing away from that since day one as well, with my personal favorite idiotic lie coming about a month ago:

////“Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that,” Trump said in a clip released ahead of the episode airing Sunday. “What I really mean is I’d like to get it settled and, I’ll, I think, I think I’ll be successful.”////

At the end of March, CNN published a timeline of the Trump administration reeling backward from his words, which could have been subtitled, "President Trump learns that neither Putin nor Zekenskyy actually respects him."

Now, predictably, comes Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who took time off from his daily masturbabory quest for foreigners who said something he doesn't like to announce that the United States is about to dump the entire enterprise:

////“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters upon departure. “Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”

////“It’s not our war,” Rubio said. “We have other priorities to focus on.” He said the U.S. administration wants to decide “in a matter of days.”////

This was, of course, inevitable, but there's an aspect of the situation that deserves closer attention: how successfully the Trump administration has been in terms of undermining pro-Ukraine legislators in his own party.