Courtney Casgraux, 41 (above), describes herself as an international businesswoman as she runs for a seat in the United States House of Representatives for Oregon ‘s first district. Casgraux’s campaign, launched last spring, was rocked over Labor Day weekend when her past occupation as a BDSM dominatrix was revealed via video on Reddit. Casgraux was outraged. “To shame me for something that helped create the life that I have today where I have opportunity … made me really mad. Because it felt like an attack on women, not just an attack on me,” she said.
Really? Letting the public know about the past activities of a Congressional candidate is wrong? Interesting take, Madam.
In response, Casgraux says she is “reclaiming her sexuality” though a campaign collaboration with Playboy. Sure, why not? Remember, she’s running in Oregon. Did I mention what party she belongs to? Do I need to?
On Instagram the former-dominatrix wrote,
First and foremost, I would like to thank Playboy for giving me the opportunity to express what freedom means to me and welcoming me into the Playboy family. Over the last month Playboy has not only championed me but my Congressional Campaign. I’m looking forward to utilizing my platform to educate, uplift voices and fundraise for those less fortunate. My journey with Playboy is just beginning so be on the lookout for more things to come.
Boy, I can’t wait. She continued, “Secondly, I’m reclaiming this American Flag and what it represents, and that’s FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL.” (Actually, that’s “liberty and justice for all,” but never mind…)
Her campaign website further elaborates: “As a fiercely independent single mother who has had to navigate the adversities of life, I understand firsthand the struggles that American families face on a daily basis.” OK, she’s an Oregon Democrat: can you guess her platform without peaking? Yes, she wants to secure LGBTQ “rights and equality,” guarantee “abortion rights” nationwide, pass “comprehensive gun reform” and take “immediate action on climate change.”
Your Ethics Alarms Thanksgiving Ethics Quiz is,
Should her dominatrix past be held against her by voters?
The museum in Hitchin, England owns a coin minted during the reign of Elagabalus and includes it in LGBT-themed displays. (Don’t ask me why a museum has LGBT-themed displays). Because the Roman historian Cassius Di wrote that Elagabalus was “termed wife, mistress and queen, ” told one lover, “Call me not Lord, for I am a Lady,” and allegedly inquired about how he could be outfitted with female charms, the museum is persuaded that he would consider himself “transgender” in 2023. (As well as really, really dead.) Prior to this Great Stupid brainstorm by the museum, historians have assumed that Dio was just smearing the predecessor of his patron, Emperor Severus Alexander, who gained power after the mad Elagabalus, was assassinated.
On a recent episode of the “Pardon My Take” podcast, the Fox Sports and NFL on Prime Video host Charissa Thompson blurted out that when she was a sideline reporter in the late 2000s, some of her football halftime reports were just made up on the spot. “I’ve said this before, so I haven’t been fired for saying it, but I’ll say it again,” she began. “I would make up the report sometimes, because … the coach wouldn’t come out at halftime, or it was too late and I didn’t want to screw up the report. So I was like, ‘I’m just gonna make this up.’ Because first of all, no coach is gonna get mad if I say, ‘Hey, we need to stop hurting ourselves, we need to be better on third down, we need to stop turning the ball over … and do a better job of getting off the field.’ They’re not gonna correct me on that. So I’m like, ‘It’s fine, I’ll just make up the report.’”
[Sidebar: This alleged professional sports reporter said “I was like” and “I’m like” in one short statement. She should be fired for that.]
It comes down to two alternative words: redemption or chutzpah.
Former New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey resigned from his position in 2004 after announcing to the world that he had been living a lie and was gay, as his crushed wife stood loyally by his side. (She then divorced him as soon as she could.) He’s been wandering in the wilderness ever since, but yesterday he formally reentered politics by announcing his intention to become mayor of the state’s second largest city, Jersey City, last week.
A lawyer with the Georgetown Law Center degree and a Masters from Harvard, he was considered a rising Democratic Party star with a picture-perfect family and obvious ability. But a man he had appointed to a position in his administration under odd circumstances threatened to sue McGreevey for sexual harassment, and shortly thereafter, the governor was making a sensational statement at a press conference in which he revealed that he was a “gay American” and that he had engaged in an adulterous affair with a man. He then announced that he would resign, which McGreevey did, though he delayed long enough to avoid a special election.
And now…he’s baaaaack!
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Is it ethical to give McGreevey another chance at elected office?
What an infuriating, despicable headline, though the story is equally bad. If abortion supporters—yes, it’s the Democratic Party exploiting the issue—weren’t “squeamish” about what they so indignantly and self-righteously support they wouldn’t have spent the past 70 years trying to figure out ways to avoid directly admitting what they are advocating. “Baby? What baby?”
The argument for abortion, that is, terminating a developing unique human life distinct from that of its mother before it can grow to be born and go on to experience life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, has been, and still is, deliberately clouded by misleadng rhetoric about “choice” and “reproductive care,” the current dodge. Wait, how is that other human life in the equation assisted with his or her “reproduction”? Is it “care” to have that life’s own chances of reproducing taken away from it?
And what choice does the victim of an abortion have?
If Democrats weren’t “squeamish” about having to deal with those questions, they wouldn’t be trying (and, tragically, thanks to the abysmal level of attention, critical thought and ethical competence of the average American, largely succeeding) to avoid them.
In HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” a character in the midst of trying to persuade his fiance to abort their unplanned pregnancy is visited in a nightmare by his three previous aborted offspring at the age they would have been if they had been permitted to live…
I have another abortion-related post gnawing on the inside of my skull, but just as I was about to get the thing down in print, I remembered Ryan Harkin’s deft comment from two days ago, responding to Here’s Johnny’s argument that “given that we concede to government the right, in limited circumstances, to end innocent human life when a greater good is perceived (by some), why cannot we cede that right to women, in limited circumstances when a greater good is perceived?“I had been prepared to point out that Kant (as usual, dismissing special circumstances) holds that it is never ethically acceptable to sacrifice a life “for the greater good,” and that the aborted human life would certainly have a different perspective on that conclusion. Ryan Harkins, however, had more and better to say, and did, in this Comment of the Day on “Regarding the Ohio Right to Abortion Amendment”:
[Notice of Correction: For some reason, I attributed this COTD to Null Pointer, who promptly alerted me to the mistake. My apologies to Ryan.]
***
In general, the answer to this is that government and individuals have different roles. Government exists to set the boundaries, enforce the boundaries, and exact penalties for the failure to comply with those boundaries regarding interpersonal interaction. Individuals cede that responsibility to the government so that there is an agreed upon entity to handle those interpersonal disputes, for otherwise everything becomes vigilante justice. Whoever is stronger wins.
The view of government we have is that because the strong and the powerful can impinge on the rights of weaker individuals, government intervenes to protect the rights of the weak. I know there are other forms of government out there, ones that favor the strong and crush the weak, or favor the clan at the expense of outsiders, and so on. But here we formed a government of the people, by the people, for the people, with the thought that all men are created equal and are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights, which include life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We profess that the government exists to ensure that the enumerated rights of the weak are protected against the strong. To turn and delegate the decision making to the individual returns the power to the strong to crush the weak as they see fit. It is anathema to what our nation stands for.
Let’s see: the last time I mentioned Semenya was at the end of last year, musing about what to do about another mutant in sports, Jeremiah Johnson, then a 12-year-old junior high school running back from Fort Worth, Texas who weighed 5-foot-11 and weighed 198 pounds, counting his facial hair. (I’m afraid to check on what size he is now.) The question is how schools and sports organizations should treat outliers who break all the rules naturally, and clobber the competition. Semenya, you will recall (we have discussed her a lot) is intersex, meaning that she has some of the primary and secondary characteristics of both sexes. It also gives her testosterone levels about 15 times higher than her female competitors. Though she has won many international competitions and set many women’s records (in the 400m, 800m, 1,000m and 1,500m races). A Swiss ruling in 2019 banned Semenya from international races between 400 meters, and Switzerland’s highest court backed the decision. To compete, she would be required to suppress her natural male hormones, which she refuses to do.
“We can’t have special leagues and categories for however many gender categories science identifies and activists fight to have recognized, and there is no justification for creating artificial standards to eliminate outlier performers. The “solution” imposed on Caster Semenya—force her to take drugs that eliminate her natural advantage—is horrifying. How is this different from banging brilliant kids on the head until they have brain damage and no longer dominate their less gifted fellow students in school? What right do the sports czars have to declare an unprecedented, unique competitor unfit to compete because her, or his, unique qualities are advantageous? Why are so many woman condemning Caster as a cheat, when they should be defending her as a human being with as much right to compete as she is as anyone? Because she’ll win? Because it’s unfair that God, or random chance, or her own dedication rendered her better at her sport than anyone else?”
The unique physical characteristics of many, many other elite athletes can be said to have bestowed the exact same kinds of “unfair” advantages that allow Semenya to excel. The only question should be: Are these her real, natural abilities? If so, it is unethical to punish her for being born superior. Meanwhile, biological men transitioning into womanhood are allowed to dominate women’s sports competitions in the U.S. This makes no sense at all.
Last night, Ohio voters approved a constitutional amendment that guarantees the right to abortion. The tally wasn’t close: 2,186, 962 favored the measure, or 56.6%, while only 1,675, 72, or 43%, opposed putting a right to abortions in the state constitution.
The first point to understand is that this is not a rejection of the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs over-ruling Roe v. Wade, but the exact result the Supreme Court ruled the Constitution intended. It is and always whould have been the states’ call: abortion is not a federal issue, and the national Constitution is silent on it, despite the political and ideological dishonesty of Roe. What Ohio did is exactly what the Supreme Court ruled it should do: let voters, not courts, decide the issue.
Logically, this decision should take abortion out of the 2024 election in Ohio, and if Republicans are smart <cough> that’s what they should say. “It’s in the constitution now, and we’ll follow the law. I still believe abortion is wrong in most cases, and I will work toward making that clear enough that Ohioans change the law, but right now, the decision has been made.”
In Sherman, Texas, the local high school declared that senior Max Hightower, who has been a member of the school’s theater group all four years, is ineligible to play the part of Curley, the male lead in Rodgers and Hammerstein’s musical “Oklahoma!” despite the fact that he won the part in auditions fairly and squarely. The part is being taken away from him, or her, or “them,” because, as he was told by the principal (evidently an idiot miscast as an educator) that a new school policy dictates that student “actors and actresses could only play a role that was the same gender they were assigned at birth.” Max is a young trans male, a girl who “identifies” as male, and presumably has taken no steps to acquire male genitalia.
All aspects of this debacle are so stupid it makes my teeth hurt.
1. There is nothing about casting a female in a male role, a male in a female role, a heterosexual in a gay role (or vice-versa), a black actor as a white character…and so on, ad infinitum, that is inherently wrong or right, for that matter. If a school is going to have a drama program, it should be competent enough regarding theater to know, practice and teach that. A production does what its artistic directors believe is necessary to make the show work as drama, comedy, or entertainment.
2. A penis is not necessary equipment for playing the male lead in “Oklahoma!” Curley thinks with his penis, but he never shows it. A policy requiring any actor to actually possess features the character he or she portrays demonstrates abject ignorance of what drama is. Needless to say, except perhaps to the morons who run this school, Curley is also a lot older than a high school senior, lives in the Oklahoma territory, and ideally can sing like Gordon MacRae above. No high school performer is strictly well-cast as Curley by those criteria, or as a character in any classic musical with the exception of shows like “Grease,’ “West Side Story” and “Bye-Bye Birdie.” Without some version of so-called “non-traditional casting,” high school musicals, which have been a rich and beneficial part of the school experience for more than a century, would be impossible.
When the high school theater group in Arlington (Mass.) High School put on “Oliver!” in the early 1970s (my sister played Nancy, the tragic female lead), the part of the Artful Dodger, a male, pre-teen role, was taken by female senior. She was terrific. In Sherman, her casting would have violated policy.
3. There are potential copyright issues when a director actually tries to change the gender of a character as written by the author. That’s not what was being done here. By sheer coincidence, I saw a school production of “Romeo and Juliet” last week in which Romeo was played by a female. The show was not turned into a lesbian romance (though this has been done many times, and that works too): the part was played as male, and it worked just fine. The Rodgers and Hammerstein organization is appropriately flexible with casting variations: in recent Broadway revivals, the villain Judd, written as a white character, was played by a black man, and the comic female part of Ado Annie, the local flirt, was played by a woman in a wheelchair.
4. I could make an argument for a school policy requiring shows to be cast based on artistic considerations only, and not to make political points, but it would not be a good argument. It is impossible to separate art from politics and social commentary. High school actors need to learn that, too. Such a policy would also be impossible to enforce coherently—especially by fools like the Sherman high school principle, who can’t grok this theater thingy.
5. Also needless to say, except to people who run that high school and victims of closed head injuries, theater is not like athletic competitions. Being a female who identifies as a male or the other way around confers no unfair advantage on an actor. Presumably confusion on this rather basic point is what led to the ridiculous policy and the abuse of Max.
Oh, it gets worse. The Stupid is strong with this community. In a statement, the school district said the production is being postponed, writing,
….”It was brought to the District’s attention that the current production contained mature adult themes, profane language, and sexual content. Unfortunately, all aspects of the production need to be reviewed, including content, stage production/props, and casting to ensure that the production is appropriate for the high school stage.”because of “sexual content and profanity.”
Perfect. Some busy-body escapee from a Mennonite compound complained about the script to a bunch of illiterates who never have seen “Oklahoma!” Cultural illiterates should not be involved in educating children. “Oklahoma!” was judged G-rated fair when it premiered in 1943, and has been performed without controversy by high schools, colleges and community theaters ever since. The “sexual content” is called romance, like in “Romeo and Juliet”,” ” (which is a lot more sexually provocative than “Oklahoma!”) and if there’s profanity in the show, it consists of some cowboy saying “dang.” (All right, all right, Ado Annie’s song “I’m just a girl who can’t say no” is suggestive, but of nothing that a normal high school student isn’t very familiar with already.) Today, high schools have to worry about musicals containing words like “shit” and “fuck,” and these Neanderthals are investigating “Oklahoma!”?
Then the district makes things as clear as mud by adding, “There is no policy on how students are assigned to roles. As it relates to this particular production, the sex of the role as identified in the script will be used when casting. Because the nature and subject matter of productions vary, the District is not inclined to apply this criteria to all future productions.”
Oh.
WHAT???
Meanwhile, Max’s parents say they are going to fight to get Max back into the role. Good. But if this fiasco is sufficient to turn off Max and a lot of his fellow students to theater generally, I wouldn’t be surprised.
November 4 is lively ethics date in addition to the aforementioned robbery of King Tut’s tomb. There have been two notable assassinations on this date that have current news resonance: Then-Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, in 1995, and in 1928, gambler Arnold Rothstein, who was instrumental in fixing the 1919 World Series. (If the Arizona Diamondbacks has won the World Series just completed, I would have suspected a fix, especially with baseball sullying itself with a full embrace of online gambling last season.) Just to show how fast cultural and ethical winds can shift, it was on this date in 2008 that Proposition 8 was passed in California, banning same-sex marriage. Today I wouldn’t be surprised to see Gavin Newsome sign a bill making it a felony to say anything negative about same-sex marriages. The Iran hostage crisis began in 1979: yes, it’s true, Democrats: once the Iranians were the bad guys. In 1956, the USSR under Khrushchev sent in the tanks and crushed the flickering of democracy in Hungary. The late Diane Feinstein was elected California Senator for the first time, highlighting the Democrats’ incredibly cynical “Year of the Woman,” during which misogynist and serial sexual harasser Bill Clinton was held up by the party as a paragon of virtue. And in 2008, of course, Barack Obama was elected, proving that the United States was not the racist nation his administration and its supporters helped convince black citizens that it was over the next eight years.
Boy, this really has been a terrible date for ethics.
Let’s hope today doesn’t add to the list…
1. Could this be it? Is this the tipping point? In Dighton, Mass, (This Massachusetts boy never heard of it!), a female high school field hockey player was badly injured and sent to the hospital after a fierce shot by “a male player” hit her in the face. Whether the player on the other team “identified” as female or was just a male playing a female sport because Massachusetts’ way to avoid controversies is to just eliminate gender separations in all sports is unclear so far. It shouldn’t make any difference.
In the ridiculously woke Bay State, the incident is being treated like a live hand-grenade, but it is still setting off ethics alarms. Dighton-Rehoboth Superintendent Bill Runey said in a letter to families that “[w]hile I understand that the MIAA has guidelines in place for co-ed participation under section 43 of their handbook, this incident dramatically magnifies the concerns of many about player safety,” Runey wrote. Gee, ya think?
2. See? Baseball makes you smart! (As opposed to football, which gives you dementia…) The latest issue of the Baseball Research Journal (the fruit of a generous gift from my friend Bob Kenney) had a feature article on the burning topic of why Ty Cobb was named “Tyrus.” My first reaction was, “Wow, they are really digging deep for topics at SABR,” but, as is often the case, research on a seemingly trivial topic yielded wide-ranging and valuable information. Cobb believed that his first name was original and the invention of his father, a history professor, whom the baseball great thought bestowed on his son the name to honor the city of Tyre’s courageous resistance to Alexander the Great, who eventually destroyed it. This, in turn, would indicate that all subsequent Tyruses were named after Ty Cobb. In the course of debunking that story, historian William H. Cobb discovered and reveals,
Ethics Alarms 