Family

Ethics Quiz For Rep. Weiner Defenders: Would You Still Think He Shouldn’t Resign If He Did THIS?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

Just add his daughter's head, and you have Rep. Gerber's fantasy date.

The Sixth District Court of Appeal in San Jose just ruled that Joseph Gerber, a California man who used his computer to create sexually explicit photos by pasting images of his 13-year-old daughter’s head onto the fully mature, naked bodies of porn performers in lewd poses, was wrongly convicted of possessing child pornography. After all, the pictures didn’t show minors engaging in sex acts, just fully legal adults with his daughter’s head, which apparently really turned Dad on.

The decision is unquestionably correct from a legal standpoint: no children were harmed to create the photos, and they did not depict child porn of any kind, except in Mr. Gerber’s fatherly mind.

Thus the Ethics Alarms question for Alec Baldwin and the reported 56% of New Yorkers who say that sexting, lying Representative Anthony Weiner should not resign his position because of his personal habit of sending smiling photos of his penis and other body parts to porn actresses, scheduling skype phone sex while his pregnant wife is away, and other similar activities, lying it all the while until lies became impossible: Continue reading →

Hateful, Vicious and Wrong…Constitutional or Not

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

In New Mexico, Greg Fultz has responded to the loss of the baby he almost fathered with  his ex-girlfriend by putting up a billboard along the Alamogordo, NM. thoroughfare that shows him holding the outline of an infant, accompanied by text that reads, “This Would Have Been A Picture Of My 2-Month Old Baby If The Mother Had Decided To Not KILL Our Child!”

His ex-  has taken him to court for harassment and violation of privacy, demanding that the billboard be removed.  Fultz and his attorney are not giving in, and argue the order violates Fultz’s free speech rights.

Fultz may have a good case. I could see him prevailing in a First Amendment analysis that places free speech above the breach of privacy and the embarrassment such a billboard would cause. If his girlfriend really did have an abortion (she claims it was a miscarriage), I can also understand how many would sympathize with his claim of father’s rights.

It doesn’t matter. The billboard is ethically indefensible. It is motivated by hate and anger, and designed only to humiliate and hurt. Putting it up is a mean-spirited act of vengeance, with no redeeming virtues at all. I sure wouldn’t want to be the kid that had a man who would do something like this as a father, and I can certainly understand why the ex-mother is also an ex-girlfriend.

The only good thing about the billboard is that it doesn’t have a picture of any portion of Congressman Weiner.

“Grow Your Own Marrow Donor” Ethics and Consequentialism: The Ayala Family Saga

/ Jack Marshall / 24 Comments

Anissa Ayala and her custom-made bone marrow donor

Once again, the fans of that ethically corrosive twin of  “the ends justifies the means,” consequentialism, were holding court in the mass media, as the “Today Show” revisited a two-decade old ethical outrage to declare that it was all perfectly fine after all…because it worked.

Thus does television, itself dominated by ethically-dim writers, producers and stars, corrupt the public. So here we go again:

Does the fact (if it indeed is a fact) that Osama bin Laden capture and execution was facilitated by torture make torture less ethically wrong?

No.

Do the fortuitous results of any action that was unethical from its inception change the nature of that conduct from unethical to ethical.

Again, no.

Is conceiving a child solely to provide donor bone marrow to her cancer-stricken older sister ethically acceptable as long as the sister’s cancer is cured?

Absolutely not!  But to listen to the “Today Show,” and revoltingly, the “Today Show’s” resident medical correspondent Dr. Nancy Snyderman, it is not only ethically acceptable but laudable. Because it worked.

Twenty years ago, Abe and Mary Ayala were desperate because Anissa, their 16-year-old daughter, had been diagnosed with leukemia. Chemotheraphy proved ineffective, and neither the Ayalas nor their son was a compatible bone marrow donor. The Ayalas had long before decided that two children were enough; Abe had a vasectomy. But then Mary came up with the idea of having another child in the hopes that it would be a bone marrow donor who could save Anissa’s life. Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Two Mothers, Young Love and Deception”

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

Lianne Best, who writes a weekly newspaper column about the challenges of a working wife and mother, weighs in with the alternative point of view regarding my post about a friend’s handling of her daughter’s boyfriend’s deception. I was afraid someone was going to write this, because I find the argument persuasive and it makes me doubt the wisdom of my advice. Still, I think I support my friend’s decision not to blow the whistle on the boyfriend, primarily because he’s 17, not 15. By 17, a child is engaged in an ongoing controversy about autonomy, trust and boundaries; the boyfriend is accountable for defying his mother, but it is his life and I would grant him the right to make his own mistakes, if mistakes they are, without my active interference. Lianne is persuasive, however…and she has a teenage daughter and son of her own:

“I like the advice … but because the horse has already left the barn far behind.

“I am actually pretty horrified that Julia is actively participating in and abetting the subterfuge. Even if she doesn’t agree with Ishmael’s mother’s rules (and let’s note they could be his father’s rules too; and maybe his church’s rules, and his culture’s rules), that doesn’t mean she should be actively plotting to subvert them.

“In this instance were it my own daughter, I would NOT take the decisive action of contacting Ishmael’s mother, but NEITHER would I allow him to spend the night there, and help my daughter make up stories and situations to enable the relationship. She’s happy? Please. Teenage female happiness is tenuous and temporary at best. (Has anyone on here LIVED with a 16-year-old girl??) It’s one year, probably less, until Ishmael is 18. So much can (and will) change in that year! Until then, group get-togethers (movie dates and parties) should be fine. Continue reading →

Ethics Challenge: Two Mothers, Young Love and Deception

/ Jack Marshall / 11 Comments

A good friend—call her Julia— with a teenage daughter (she’s 16) recently  asked me for help with an ethical dilemma.

Julia’s daughter is quiet, seemingly conservative, and socially restrained. She has never had a boyfriend, and has been on few dates, until now. She has been seeing a young man—call him Ishmael— her own age (well, he’s 17) who seems to match her to perfection in every respect. He’s sensitive, polite, and witty,  and on top of everything, he’s really cute, the object of every one of her friends’ and rivals’ awe.

Of course, there is a problem. Ishmael’s mother is fanatically protective: he is not supposed to date until he is 18, and has to check in with her every hour when he is out of the house. The relationship with my friend’s daughter only exists through an elaborate subterfuge, involving complicit friends and relayed phone messages. Once, in order to facilitate a special date to go to a concert, Julia allowed the boy to sleep overnight (in the guest room), when he was supposedly staying a male friend’s house.

My friend wanted to know if she should tell the boy’s mother about his web of lies. A parent has a right to have his or her own rules respected, and not undermined by other parents. The Golden Rule, applied to Ishmael’s mother, yields a demand that she be told; Julia would want to be told if her child was systematically defying her.

On the other hand, she firmly believes that the mother’s restriction on her son are excessive, and she has never known her daughter to be so happy.  She is worried that informing the mother will cause a serious rift with her daughter, and perhaps worse. “What is the ethical course?” she asked me. “What should I do?” Continue reading →

Gov. Mitch Daniels’ Self-Validating Decision

/ Jack Marshall / 9 Comments

"My wife, may she always be right, but my wife right or wrong!"

“Simply put, I find myself caught between two duties. I love my country; I love my family more.”

Thus did Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels remove himself from consideration for the 2012 GOP presidential nomination, breaking the hearts of Mitt Romney haters everywhere. Seldom have eighteen words launched so much ethical analysis, or what passes for it in the media.

Washington Post columnist Ruth Marcus, for example, applauded the Governor’s priorities while accusing Daniels of “throwing his wife under the bus.” Her point was that Daniels did not have to make it so crystal clear that his wife vetoed his own desire to run, that he should have simply said that he declined, and leave it at that. Indeed, that would have been chivalrous and kind. For a public servant and politician, however, it would also have been dishonest and wrong. Just as the public needs to know why a public figure is running for president (Gingrich: Because he’s deluded….Trump: Because its good for his TV ratings…), it needs to know why a public figure is not. Continue reading →

“ARRGHHHHHHHHH!!!!” Is This Wrong?

/ Jack Marshall / 15 Comments

"I'd be so very appreciative if you resolved not to contact me again!"

Some years ago, a person in my household who shall not be named made the mistake of buying some drugs off the internet. Now, with ever-increasing frequency, we receive calls from illicit on-line pharmacies. all hours of the day, sometimes one after the other. Telling them not to call doesn’t work; telling them we are going to report them doesn’t work. I have warned the callers of dire consequences to future callers, and now have to find some actual consequences to inflict.

My new practice, when they reveal who they are and their purpose, is to  give a blood-curdling, high-pitched scream directly into the phone, as loud as I can make it. I am certain this is startling (I have a great scream), and I hope it is painful. I would not be sorry to learn that it bursts an eardrum or seven.  Plan B…an airhorn.

Is this unethical?

The Atheist, the Graduation, and the Prayer

/ Jack Marshall / 65 Comments

Is an atheist high school student who single-handedly blocks his school from having a prayer at graduation a hero or a jerk?

Well, neither. He’s a high school student. But he’s growing up to be a jerk. Perhaps even… a fick!

Pray for him….no, wait. Scratch that.

Here’s the story in Damon Fowler’s own words:

 “My graduation from high school is this Friday. I live in the Bible Belt of the United States. The school was going to perform a prayer at graduation, but due to me sending the superintendent an email stating it was against Louisiana state law and that I would be forced to contact the ACLU if they ignored me, they ceased it. The school backed down, but that’s when the shitstorm rolled in. Everyone is trying to get it back in the ceremony now. I’m not worried about it, but everyone hates me… kind of worried about attending graduation now. It’s attracted more hostility than I thought.

  “My reasoning behind it is that it’s emotionally stressing on anyone who isn’t Christian. No one else wanted to stand up for their constitutional right of having freedom of and FROM religion. I was also hoping to encourage other atheists to come out and be heard. I’m one of maybe three atheists in this town that I currently know of. One of the others is afraid to come out of the (atheist) closet. Continue reading →

The Giordano Decision, Sympathy and Malfunctioning Ethics Alarms

/ Jack Marshall / 6 Comments

Sympathy and empathy are wonderful and admirable qualities, but they can mess up ethics alarms but good, causing them to ring out with gusto when perhaps they shouldn’t be set off at all.

This, I’m sorry to say, is what seems to be going on with the public and the media in the wake of a North Carolina judge denying Alaina Giordano primary custody of her two children,  in part because Giordano has Stage IV breast cancer, and in part because she is unemployed. Giordano is upset and nobody can blame her for that. She has also started a website exhorting readers to “Say NO! to CANCER discrimination!” There is a Facebook page (of course) rallying support for her, and it already has over 14,000 fans. An online petition to the governor called “Do Not Allow NC Judge To Take Alaina Giordano’s Children Just Because She Has Cancer ” has more than 75,000 signers.

Yet there is nothing inherently unethical, illogical or unfair about family law Judge Nancy E. Gordon awarding custody of 11-year-old Sofia and 5-year-old Bud to their father, who lives and works in Chicago, rather than to their mother, who lives in Durham, and has breast cancer that is most likely terminal. Continue reading →

Ethics Quote of the Week: Washington Post Columnist Michael Gerson

/ Jack Marshall / 8 Comments

“In determining who is a “major” candidate for president, let’s begin here. Those who support the legalization of heroin while mocking addicts are marginal. It is difficult to be a first-tier candidate while holding second-rate values.”

—-Washington Post columnist and former Bush advisor Michael Gerson, pronouncing presidential candidate Rep. Ron Paul’s Libertarian endorsement of drug legalization ethically unacceptable.

Gerson’s deconstruction of the all-too-common and increasingly ominous calls for legalizing addictive drugs nicely captures the trio of ethical flaws of the advocacy: it denies the crucial and legitimate government role defining responsible conduct for society, it embraces the myth that recreational drug use “does no harm,” and it is arrogant and selfish, condemning the poor and reckless to problems that their fragile resources cope with, in order to bestow a dubious “freedom” that the drug advocates do not need. Continue reading →