girls gone feral

I am back in the habit of arguing with stupid people on the internet! If I ever was out of it.

This time it is an argument on change.org over, of all things, Maryland's Montgomery County Public Schools.

If you've ever had anything to do with Maryland or the DC area, you know that Montgomery County is ridiculously liberal. It is also one of the best educated and and wealthiest counties in the country, with towns like Bethesda, Rockville, Potomac, and Silver Spring. Its public school system is extremely good and also well-funded. I attended MCPS schools until sixth grade, and a lot of my friends went all the way through. It was a far cry from the Bible Belt.

Apparently, MCPS has a flyer program that allows community members to distribute flyers to school students twice times a year. Because the school system is a state actor and because it's opened up the flyer program as a "public forum," the school can't exclude any particular viewpoint from distributing flyers except in when it would cause serious disruption, such as overt hate speech. So when an "ex-gay" organization, PFOX, submitted a flyer that just said "don't be mean to ex-gays, instead you should respect their personal decisions, and by the way we're an organization that supports people with unwanted homosexual feelings," the school said "okay, sure, whatever, put it in the box." And the flyers went out to the student body.

Of course, the queer community is completely outraged. I would be too, if this were actually the school system passing out the flyers. Instead, though, the school system is just also allowing people to flyer-spam the students. Their viewpoint-neutral outlook enables PFLAG and other queer organizations to also send out flyers to kids (on the link, scroll down to David Fishback's first comment).

Most of the Change.org commenters seem to be under the impression that the school can keep the flyer program but require that flyers be "fact-checked," which would enable the school to ban PFOX's flyer because "ex-gay" programs don't work (interestingly, though, the flyer itself never actually asserts that ex-gay programs are effective, just that some people choose to enter into them, which is probably true. It also stops short of actually saying it's wrong to be gay, just that some gay people don't want to be, which is also true). But the lawsuit that decided that MCPS had opened a "public forum" in the first place involved a Christian evangelical organization sending out information about their religious-based club, and held that schools couldn't exclude that organization. If you could require that all the viewpoints in flyers be scientifically validated, I'm pretty sure you could exclude organizations whose primary beliefs are that evolution is a lie and God impregnated a virgin who gave birth to a human form of God who then died and rose from the dead. But the commenters JUST DON'T GET that the Constitution has a different idea than they do of when governments can engage in viewpoint discrimination.

In any case, the upshot is that tons of people are signing a petition yelling at MCPS for allowing something that they didn't really have much of a choice but to allow, unless they wanted to abolish the flyer program entirely. And I appear to be the only queer person in the world who thinks that the harm in preventing PFLAG from sending out flyers to schoolkids outweighs the harm of allowing PFOX to send them out. Because apparently when confronted with both sides, and in the context of one of the most gay-friendly public school environments in the entire country, kids STILL can't be trusted to figure out which position is the correct one. They also appear to think that the flyers are dangerous because parents could read and believe them, but from what I can tell the flyers were handed out at school and kids had no obligation to take them home.

I sort of want to start a counter-petition encouraging MCPS to keep the flyer program open.

Oh, and the worst part? Even Feminist Law Professors is getting this all wrong. "Do you think that the school system would distribute a flier with its report cards from a nonprofit that said that we could achieve world peace if only everyone embraced Jesus Christ as their personal savior? That certainly isn’t a slur or a threat either, but, like the flier from the ex-gay group, it would contribute to an atmosphere of intolerance–in this case, of religious minorities." UM, YES ACTUALLY. THAT WAS THE POINT OF THE ORIGINAL LAWSUIT AGAINST MCPS. YOU ARE A LAW PROFESSOR. RESEARCH YOUR GODDAMN LAW. And also, why does Feminist Law Professors not allow comments? I will have to make do with trackback.

ETA: In case anyone was skeptical of my claim that the schools, and the students, were fully aware of the problems with PFOX, here's an interesting open letter from PFOX to MCPS from back in 2007, complaining that teachers were encouraging kids to throw the flyers in the trash. PFOX threatened litigation over it. So: a) the fact that PFOX is sending out flyers to kids is not news, and b) no reasonable kid could think the flyers were endorsed by the school. I note that even though PFOX can threaten to sue when teachers tell kids to throw out the flyers, they certainly can't prevent the kids themselves from throwing them out, which, undoubtedly, most of them do.

Okay guys, I never actually got to read all the way through my friends list backlog from before I took the bar, but now I'm leaving again, for Prague. So... I'll be mostly out of touch again for another 2 weeks.

In the meantime, some choice snippets from the internet:

Hilarious "free-market"-ers on Change.org think that a truly free market, IN THE REAL WORLD, would lead to a world where every commercial good is completely perfect. They also think that we have evolved over "thousands" of years (young-earth Darwinism?), that Obama is a "Marxist," that anyone who doesn't see why they think that must just not have ever heard of Marxism before, that the temperature of coffee is a matter of "opinion," and yearn for the days where people learned true personal responsibility like men, instead of doing wimpy things like wearing helmets when riding bicycles. Yes guys: helmets and personal responsibility. They don't mix. YOU HAVE TO CHOOSE!

Okay, really this is no stupider than a lot of things on the internet, but this is somehow extra amusing because a) it's on Change.org, and b) these people are so sincere, and so dedicated to proving their point!

Also, a friend of mine in Tel Aviv (and a high-school classmate of mine) recently posted a facebook status message about how someone in Tel Aviv opened fire on a GLBT youth center, killing 3 and injuring 11. One of his friends responded:

fucked up news
this is not fkin jerusalem

This comment just says so much.

I saw Leonard Cohen tonight! It was completely crazyawesome. I've been into him since heronblue introduced me to him in seventh grade. He's in his mid-70s right now and hasn't toured for about 15 years, and his voice is still amazing. I am a fan. I brought this friend of mine who is also a fan, and we sort of squee-d the entire time. I kind of cried a number of times. If this dude ever starts his own religion (which is looking doubtful, but whatever), I wish to subscribe to it. In the meantime I am kind of looking out for a necklace that looks like this book's cover.

Right outside the theater, there were people protesting the fact that he was later playing in Tel Aviv, and trying to get him to cancel his concert. Why, you ask? Apparently, because Israel will use his appearance for propaganda effect and therefore we need a cultural and academic boycott of Israel. Seriously.

Reasons why this is stupid:

( There are at least five of them! )

Incidentally, at some point Leonard Cohen started talking during the concert about how he seemed to have gotten old enough that people cared about his opinion, and so he had something very important to say to us. He had noticed a disturbing trend towards hotels having magnifying mirrors with fluorescent lights all around them. His advice: none of us over the age of eleven should ever, ever look in those mirrors. Just his opinion, though.

I kind of wish that I'd yelled "next year he'll play in Jerusalem!" as I left. Just to be ornery.

I was hoping he'd make it until I got there in the morning. My mother was the only one with him at the time. He started breathing heavily and then just stopped. It was very peaceful. It's a good thing my mother was there, even if he didn't know she was there (it's not too clear) - he really did not want to die alone.

Per his request, he'll be cremated. The memorial service won't be for another month or so, they think. He has family around the world and they are going to schedule it so that people can make plans to fly here.

I am not particularly ready to be consoled by how good the death was, or how ready he was to go, or how he had a full life. I want my grandfather. I have been lucky in that, until now, I've never lost a close family member. But that also means that this is all new to me. I don't feel like I really know what it means for him to not be here.

While in Jerusalem I walked a couple of times past a crumbling, ancient Muslim cemetery. It was clearly very old, and also very much in disuse:

From Israel 2009 #2

( more pictures )

From Israel 2009 #2

Across the street was a building under construction, which the tour guide identified to us as the Palace Hotel - an old hotel that's recently been gutted from the inside, and will be rebuilt with the facade intact.

The guide spent a lot of time talking to us about how great the hotel would be when done, but I spent all my time ignoring him and taking pictures of the cemetery. There were what appeared to be Jewish graves in it as well (note the star of David):

From Israel 2009 #2

I thought perhaps they were two old cemeteries that were partially divided. You can't see in these photos, but there is a street that runs through the two halves of the cemetery, which would be a natural dividing point between Muslim/Jewish sections.

So imagine my surprise that upon reading further about how people are actually trying to build a museum of tolerance on the site of a historic Muslim cemetery in Jerusalem, I realized that it was the same cemetery I took photos of (note the reference, in comments, to the Palace Hotel).

I'm sort of speechless. I actually think everyone here is acting pretty badly, not just the people trying to build the museum - for one thing, the highest members of the Muslim clergy were perfectly happy 60 years ago to sell part of the cemetery to build a hotel on it, and never complained when, almost 50 years ago, a parking lot was built on the same exact location they're trying to build the Museum of Tolerance on; this article seems to suggest that the museum will not actually encroach on any part that is still cemetery, it will only be on the part that's currently a parking lot. That said, the people complaining now aren't exactly the same people who didn't complain 50 years ago: It's a new generation that can legitimately have different priorities.

That said, for fuck's sake, this is not how you build a Museum of Tolerance. You do not propose to build it on the former cemetery site of a prominent minority with whom you have a rather contentious relationship, then, when they object, resolve it through litigation. While in Israel a number of Israelis I talked to said, with varying degrees of pride or matter-of-factness, that Israelis were not "politically correct" people and this is possibly why Israel has such a "PR" problem. When they weren't native speakers of English, I tried to give them the benefit of the doubt, figuring that they didn't realize how dismissive their word choice was - Israeli culture is pretty unpolished in a bunch of other ways, and they could have been referring generally to that (a friend of mine who now lives there says that American table manners are much stricter, and that sort of frightens me). But some of them were born in the United States, and I really kinda wanted to punch them in the face. I hate the use of "political correctness" as a dismissive term for what should be called regular human decency.

Oh, and this is clearly not a matter of one culture just valuing cemeteries more than another: if anything, Judaism is far more concerned with maintaining the sacredness of cemeteries than any other Abrahamic religion, which is why you'll read in the above-linked articles references to the ultra-Orthodox community complaining bitterly about this, and significant wads of cash being expended for "teumah pipes" to channel ritual uncleanliness away from the site (wtf?), presumably so that Kohenim can visit. There was a relatively similar incident in Prague, when Czech authorities built a building that encroached a bit onto the Old Jewish cemetery. The community was enraged. There is a plaque there, apologizing for it (but the building is still there).

Also, even if nobody else cared, I would. I love old cemeteries. Just looking at how it is now, full of grass and weeds and semi-toppled headstones, is very sad. Clearly something needs to be done about the cemetery even if nothing is built there (or near there). It is badly damaged already, and has vast swaths of completely empty, overgrown space. But I really loved this cemetery, partially because it was the first time I'd seen Muslim headstones (the two-towers motif is really awesome), partially because I'm just really into such things. Clearly I should have joined this protest, in full goth regalia, with a sign saying "I JUST REALLY LIKE GRAVES!"

Here's a disturbing juxtaposition.

(In other words, I'm too busy to read lj lately, but should catch up soon!)

Hamas steals aid supplies from UN building.

And in the process, most likely discourages hundreds of thousands of people worldwide from contributing money toward aid to Gaza. This is exactly the reason that the BBC was recently giving in not broadcasting information about where to send relief money: the aid will go to Hamas.

Of course, Hamas can't do that much military damage with food and blankets, but it can claim credit for them when distributing them and cut off aid to people who oppose them (the fact that the UN was giving aid to people linked to Hamas opponents was one of the reasons Hamas gave for stealing the supplies). So to the extent that Hamas can wield control over aid as a weapon over the Gazan people, this is a serious problem.

So yeah, fuck you, Hamas. Good people paid good money for that stuff, and it wasn't for you.

Dude. So not cool.

I've been reading up on the ideological settler movement for this paper I'm writing. The behavior described in this article is not surprising at all. And when we tried to remove them by force, they fought back Waco-style. That's how crazy this shit is. They consider the current Israeli government totally illegitimate for even trying to interfere with settlement construction, so I'm not surprised that they also don't particularly respect other people's private property rights.

These people are completely insane. Imagine if we had civilian FLDS groups trying to set up compounds in Iraq and Afghanistan, on other people's property, in order to prevent us from ever pulling our army out of there, and saying that this is what God commands them to do. Also imagine that every once in a while a one of their members in good standing up and shoots a bunch of Iraqi civilians in a mosque or assassinates an American politician, and end up hailed as heroes by their community. That's how crazy this is.

Obviously, there are also Muslims who are this crazy and violent or worse. But when the country that you're supporting as the shining light of secular democracy in the middle east has this kind of problem with its own citizens, it's just depressing.

So I recently got The Czechoslovak Cookbook, which is just an English translation/adaptation of a rather popular basic cookbook in Czech Republic and Slovakia (it was probably originally published there when they were both the same country).

It's great. My mom's side of the family is Czech, and I'm happy that I can cook all sorts of things that I used to eat when I was little, either at the annual Czech Bazaars that I went to, or when visiting Prague (I used to go there with my family at least once every two years starting in 1990). Even though I didn't eat Czech food most of the time when I was little, whenever we got Czech food it was always treated like a big treat. But ever since I became vegetarian (fifteen or so years ago!), it's been hard to get traditional Czech food that I can eat even when I'm in Prague, other than pastries and some random things like fried cauliflower and fried cheese and Czech crepes. But now, I can make stuff myself, so I don't have to worry about what's got beef broth in it! It feels so good to eat this stuff, I can really get why Southerners refer to traditional Southern cooking as "soul food." It's good to eat what you grew up on.

Another interesting result: yesterday, I decided to make Czech knedliky (dumplings), but the kind that I know as real, authentic knedliky apparently included yeast. I didn't want to wait for my knedliky to rise so I picked an easier-seeming recipe that just called for some cooked farina (cream of wheat), mixed with an egg and some butter, and dunked in soup.

I ENDED UP WITH MATZO BALLS. Freakin' matzo balls! They weren't quite the same since the farina was cooked in milk and I imagine that actual matzo balls don't have dairy in them (since they usually go in chicken soup), not to mention the fact that, well, they weren't made out of matzo. But you could easily use this same recipe, I think, to make matzo balls by just using matzo and water instead of farina and milk.

Lessons learned:
1. Jewish food is really just Eastern European food, tweaked to be kosher, and
2. Cream of wheat is a pretty good replacement for matzo flour, apparently (however, not vice versa; I would NOT recommend microwaving matzo flour and water for a nice hot breakfast)

There are other recipes that I've tried from this book that people pointed out were analogous to Jewish food. I made some palačinky (Czech crepes) for Mike at some point and used cream cheese and/or jam to fill them instead of some of the more traditional Czech fillings because I had to make do with what was already in his parents' kitchen, and his parents pointed out that they were blintzes. I made some poppyseed koláč pastries (basically tarts with filling in them) and people pointed out that they were sort of like big, round hamentaschen (with a somewhat different type of crust).

This is further evidence for my theory that much of what we call "Jewish" culture in the US is really Eastern European culture. Which is how I explain why people who know I'm "half Jewish," and who hear me talk about my mother and grandmother, are constantly surprised that they're not the Jewish side (my grandmother talks about nothing but her poor health, WWII, and how nobody helps her, and complained throughout my childhood that my mother was starving me to death; my mother is a guilt expert, has exclusively Jewish friends as far as I can tell, and gets really excited when she meets a nice, single med student who's even vaguely my age- she tried to set me up with a friend of mine from pre-school once she ran into his mom and found out that he was in med school).

Now I want to drop out of law school and open a vegetarian, kosher-dairy Eastern European fusion restaurant. I would have NO COMPETITION! I would adapt the dishes to be moderately healthy! You could eat gluten goulash! Dumplings filled with textured vegetable protein, or maybe even VEGETABLES! I could sell pre-made Shabbat dinners every Friday afternoon! HIPSTERS would go there, because they would think that the concept was ironic, but it would be COMPLETELY SINCERE.

Any furries on my friends list want to do an interview for this online mag? My lj friend jinxremoving knows someone at this mag who wants to write a fur-related article.

Pros: judging from the articles, these people have seen pretty much everything and appear interested in being interesting but respectful and non-sensationalistic. Which appears rare among journalists who want to talk about furries.

Potential cons: the article is in the "deviance" section (but note that they're really quite pro-deviance), and this section seems to focus largely on sexuality/sexual identity issues, which may not be your bag. However, they do have random essays about other subcultural interests, like punk. So again, not too much of a concern.

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