Comment Of The Day: “A Visit To “The Ethicist””

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments

A disturbing Child Protective Services tale from slickwilly, and a Comment of the Day, on the post, A Visit To “The Ethicist”…

When my kids were little, we learned of the stories from friend and relatives where a CPS worker with a vendetta (or being paid off) would take someone’s kids and subject the parents to 7 kinds of hell just using the process against them.

A friend crossed (innocently enough) a CPS worker, who threatened to ‘get even.’ Several days later she was visited by stormtroopers who forcibly removed her toddler aged child and shipped him to Arizona, to a father who did not want him. This meant that the Arizona foster care system was where the child landed. Think dealing with ONE CPS agency is hard? Try two at once! It too all of the mother’s savings, and over a year, to get her child back. She did not get to even SEE her child for 3 months: a huge part of that child’s life. Terrible.

My relatives had a similar experience, after their daughter’s ugly divorce (where the father, who did not want the 3 year old boy, nevertheless made a mess by threatening to take away custody.) When the father sicc’d a friend from CPS on her, alleging abuse, the family sprang into action. A day after the initial call from the corrupt CPS worker, her apartment was raided to remove the child and document the alleged signs of abuse. Continue reading →

Comment Of The Day: Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 2/25/ 2019: “Martina Navratilova A Gender Bigot? …WHAT’S HAPPENING????” (Item #3)?

/ Jack Marshall / 7 Comments
I learn something every time the transgender ethics issues raise their contentious heads, and usually it’s because of the comments by Zoe Brain, who has forgotten more about these matters than I will ever know.Here she was responding to another commenter, and, typically, pointing out that this area is much, much more complicated than the superficials public debates about it reveal.

Here is Zoe Brain’s Comment of the Day on the post, Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 2/25/ 2019: Martina Navratilova A Gender Bigot? The Founding Fathers Nazis? Art Galleries Discriminating Against The Blind? WHAT’S HAPPENING?????

“There are over 6,000 genetic differences, affecting everything from the skin to the brain…There is no possible drug cocktail, therapy, or surgery that can change one’s gender.”

The evidence strongly suggests that’s correct. Once set in the womb by neural development in the third trimester, the resultant development paths are tightly constrained, regardless of post natal hormonal environment. Of course, as physiological characteristics such as genitalia are formed earlier, gender and sex may be discordant.

“There are over 6,000 genetic differences, affecting everything from the skin to the brain.”

But a bone marrow transplant changes that. Or can do.
See Bone marrow-derived cells from male donors can compose endometrial glands in female transplant recipients by Ikoma et al in Am J Obstet Gynecol. 2009 Dec;201(6):608.e1-8 & Transplanted human bone marrow cells generate new brain cells by Crain BJ, Tran SD, Mezey E. in J Neurol Sci. 2005 Jun 15;233(1-2):121-3 :

It’s really only important when measuring statistical sensitivity to various chemicals. 46,XY mothers exist. 46,XX fathers exist (though far fewer than 46,XY mothers, apparently). And of course 47,XXY people exist.

“The very “best” options are still merely cosmetic.”

A matter of opinion. Womb transplants have proven to be very successful for some Intersex women. It’s only a matter of time before they’re made available to Trans women with similar physiology. And in order to justify that “cosmetic” opinion, you’d have to justify why you’re picking one set of physiological characteristics – say height – over another, say bust size. Or vice versa.

I think you’re right in your opinion, but I have no idea how I’d go about justifying that, and could easily be persuaded to change my mind.

It’s anything but simple. Sorry.

Ethics Quiz: Is This Fair?

/ Jack Marshall / 30 Comments

Just kidding!

Of course it’s not fair.

In fact, it’s ridiculous. So the real question is, why does anyone, activist or otherwise, argue with a straight face that it is fair?

That photo is from Oct. 13, 2018, when  transgender cyclist Rachel McKinnon of Canada won the  UCI Masters Track Cycling World Championships in Carson, California. The other cyclist is Carolien Van Herrikhuyzen of the Netherlands. The other competitors were similar in stature and build to Carolien. She was born female, and unlike McKinnon, grew up female.

It makes a difference.

In fact, as Martina Navratilova wrote in a February 17 op-ed for The Sunday Times of London, “It’s insane and it’s cheating.” Well, it’s not cheating if a sport says it isn’t. It is, however, insanely unfair, and unarguably unfair. Advocates, like McKinnon herself, an educated trans woman, actually try to deny these conclusions that are as plain as that photograph. In her debate with the legendary tennis star, she argued,

 “She imagines a nonexistent cisgender man who will pretend to be a trans woman, convince a psychologist and a physician to prescribe hormone therapy, undertake the process for legal changer recognition, then wait the minimum 12 months of testosterone suppression required by the current IOC rules, compete, and then change his mind and ‘go back to making babies’? No such thing will ever happen. This is an irrational fear of trans women.”

But, significantly, she does not argue against Navratilova’s central assertion (which she garbled badly by making the lame slippery slope argument), which is that it’s unfair to allow women who have matured as men to compete against women who haven’t. Obviously. Look at the picture.

I’ve discussed the ethics of allowing trans athletes to compete against non-trans competitors, and frankly, the only interesting part of the topic is that fear of trans activists and being accused of bigotry has succeeded in so many locales in bullying officials into allowing it. It is unfair. It is obviously unfair. It destroys the integrity of the competition; it makes women’s sports a joke. Why do they allow it? Well, this is a small but revealing example of how ideology can strangle common sense and reality when those committed to the ideology find facts and ethics hostile to the world as they would like it to be. The result is that people, with nothing but good intentions, convince themselves that wrong is right and that what doesn’t work, does. Continue reading →

CALLOO! CALLAY!

/ Jack Marshall / 21 Comments

I’m chortling in my joy because I FINALLY figured out how to navigate the Massachusetts efiling system sufficiently to get my reply appellee’s brief in just before the March 1 deadline. What is known at ProEthics as “The Stupid Lawsuit” has eaten up enough billable hours for me to buy a Lexus if anyone was paying me for it. Having this thing off my back is like having a 75 pound wart removed, not that I don’t expect a new assault eventually

This is, as loyal followers here know, the continuation of the frivolous defamation suit filed against me by a mad commenter who had his little boo-boo bruised by the rough and tumble here. I referred to him in metaphorical terms that weren’t very nice, but they weren’t defamatory either, and now that I have experienced the full vindictiveness of this guy, I realize that my terms were unnecessarily restrained. My return brief, however, was a model of respect and decorum, and also only 12 pages, five of which are mandatory boilerplate. His was seventy incoherent pages or something: I confess to not reading more than a few of them, using the rest to make little origami frogs. The gist was the judge who dismissed the suit in August was an unqualified fool whom I had hypnotized or otherwise turned into my lackey, and I…well, heck, let me get the thing out of my files and not recite it from memory…am a “craven, venal LIAR” who had displayed “toxic mendacity”, though “Orwellian psychosis may possibly overstate the case.” Continue reading →

Morning Ethics Warm-Up: 2/26/2019: Horribles

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

GRRRRRRR!

I have to get my reply brief to that %$#@!#&%! Ethics Alarms defamation suit in today, and I just KNOW the online filing system isn’t going to work..

1. College basketball ethics. See? Baseball isn’t the only sport I follow! Zion Williamson, one of college basketball’s biggest stars and a potential NBA star as well, injured his knee after one of his Nike shoes split less than a minute into Duke’s game against North Carolina last week. Not only does Nike have a likely product liability lawsuit on its hands, while Williamson’s bright career is suddenly in limbo, the freak accident raised—AGAIN–issues of the propriety of the way universities like Duke handle big money sports. The New York Times asked:

“Here were all the issues of big-time college sports laid bare: Should amateurism be curbed in college sports, allowing athletes a cut of the money they help produce? Should a prodigious talent like Williamson, who is good enough to play professionally right now, have to risk his future competing for free because of an N.B.A. rule prohibiting him from leaping to the league from high school? Do the sneaker companies, which were at the heart of a federal fraud trial near the start of the season, do more harm than good in college sports?”

Answers: No, No, and Yes. Big time sports are a source of corruption in all colleges that feature them. Nobody should be admitted to college to play basketball or football. If they don’t want to learn, then there should be no place for athletes in college. Allowing universities to be participants in the business of sports to the extent that universities like Duke are is a travesty of education, and guarantees misconduct.

2. The shadow of Harvey Weinstein and Hollywood’s hypocrisy hung over the 2019 Oscars, but few noted it.

Donna Gigliotti produced the Oscars telecast. There has been no accountability for the many, many stars and Hollywood figures of both genders who enabled Weinstein’s crimes for years, then became #MeToo activists as soon as he no longer had the power to enrich them. [Pointer: Victory Girls]

3. Hasn’t this been obvious all along? Bloggress Ann Althouse does a terrific job deconstructing a New York Times article, a “Trump is Epic,” a conversation between columnists  Gail Collins and alleged conservative (who wants to repeal the second Amendment) Bret Stephens,  that could have been a parody of mainstream media bias and “resistance” false reasoning, but wasn’t. I didn’t have the heart or the stomach to fisk it, the thing is such self-evident crap: Thanks, Ann! She writes in part… Continue reading →

A Visit To “The Ethicist”

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

I haven’t opined on posts by the current holder of The New York Times Magazine “The Ethicist” title as often as I used to, in part because Kwame Anthony Appiah, unlike his predecessors, is a real ethicist, and usually answers the questions to his ethics advice column competently. The February 18 column was especially interesting, however, because Appiah seemed to be ducking some issues. I don’t blame him; two of the three questions he received have no clearly right ethical answer.

The one out of the three that was relatively easy was the anonymous inquirer who discovered that his company was willfully violating labor wage laws and under-reporting wages for workers’ compensation purposes. “Should I report this company to the authorities?” The Ethicist was asked. My answer? YES. 1) Get a lawyer. 2) Document what you know and how you found out about it. 3) Quit. 4) Blow the whistle. “I hope you proceed. Obligations of confidentiality to your employer don’t include the duty to conceal fraud,” was Appiah’s conclusion.

The other two questions are more problematical, especially the first: A correspondent asks what she should do with relatives in desperate financial straits who are begging for her money to bail them out. “I love my family, and it is extremely painful to see them suffer, but at the same time it is difficult for me to fund their lifestyles when they seem like a bottomless pit. I feel guilty and uncomfortable, but also angry and annoyed. Yet how can I watch my sister be thrown out of her house and potentially end up homeless if I have the resources to help her?”

The Ethicist ducks. First he says that the woman should try to train her relatives in financial management, even to the extent of actively managing their budgets. Right: THAT’s going to work. His conclusion: “So the most important thing you and your brother can do is to be clear with her about what you are and are not willing to do if her grasshopper behavior brings her into financial difficulties. And that means first being clear about this matter yourself. Bear in mind that you owe more to family members than you do to strangers, but you don’t owe it to them to abandon all your hard-earned plans in order to pay for their mistakes.”

But that wasn’t the question. Of course family members can’t demand that you fix their financial mistakes. It isn’t a matter of “owing” them, either. The Ethicist also cheats by resorting to a straw man: she didn’t ask if she should “abandon all her hard-earned plans.” She asked how she could sit back and watch them suffer when she had the resources to alleviate some of that suffering. Continue reading →

The 2019 Oscar “In Memoriam” Snubs [UPDATED!]

/ Jack Marshall / 22 Comments

Ethics Alarms has been cataloguing the infuriating omissions from the Oscar “In Memoriam” segment for several years. Why does it matter? Well, curtain calls are important to me, as are the lives of major film artists generally. I believe that the final bows of those screen artists who perished during the year have been earned with blood, sweat, tears, crippling anxieties and addictions, and their families and fans want to see that last acknowledgment from the industry they toiled for. Once the fleeting clip of a dead actress, actor or other movie figure is over, each recedes slowly in the culture’s memory to eventual oblivion, which is the real death for the once-famous.

There is no good reason they shouldn’t get that final moment. The inexplicable omissions, and there are several every year, are not oversights. They are deliberate. The Academy knows who died, and a complete list is on its website. The whole segment takes only a few minutes. Last night’s version, like the rest of the streamlined broadcast, was less leisurely than usual, but adding in the fallen few left out would have made no difference to the whole comparable to the insults and cruelty it would have avoided.

Here were 2019’s most upsetting “In Memoriam” snubs:

Stanley Donen

How hard would it have been to include a quick clip from “Singin’ in the Rain,” the all-time classic he directed with Gene Kelly, perhaps the most entertaining movie of all? Donen, who received a Lifetime Achievement Oscar, also directed “Charade,” “Damn Yankees,” and many other important films, including “Two For The Road,” a clip of which was shown to mark the passing of Albert Finney, who was, quite properly, accorded the honor of the last bow in this “In Memoriam.”

The excuse given for Donen’s snub was that he died last Tuesday. There was time to add him; of course there was. The producers just didn’t care enough to make the effort.

Sandra Locke

This one was especially cruel. If you know anything about the way Clint Eastwood treated Locke, his long-time live-in girlfriend and his frequent co-star, you are probably not quite as big a fan of Clint as you might be otherwise. Locke was very good when she had decent material to work with. Her film debut in 1968’s The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter  got her nominated for an Academy Award  for Best Supporting Actress, and she starred in many films, the most successful with Eastwood. From October 1975 until April 1989, Locke she lived with actor.   Locke had two abortions in that period, then had a tubal ligation, stating in her autobiography that her decision to have the procedures was due to Eastwood’s insistence that their art and lifestyle wouldn’t allow parenthood. Eastwood, meanwhile, secretly fathered another woman’s two children during the last three years of their relationship.

Nice guy.

Eastwood ended the virtual marriage with Locke when he changed the locks on their Bel-Air home. Locke filed a palimony suit, and after a year-long legal battle, the parties reached a settlement in which Eastwood set up a film development/directing deal for Locke at Warner Bros. in exchange for her dropping the action. (Clint also got married, after refusing to marry Locke during all of those years together.) Locke sued Eastwood for fraud in 1995, alleging that the deal with Warner was a sham. The studio had rejected all of the 30 or more projects she proposed and never used her as a director. She also claimed that Eastwood had, in essence, blacklisted her.  Eastwood settled out of court for an undisclosed amount.  Locke brought a separate action against Warner Bros. for conspiring with Eastwood, and this also was settled.

I got the horrible feeling that Locke’s snub was somehow a continuation of the industry’s mistreatment of Locke, who barely worked again after Clint dumped her. Continue reading →

Yes, It’s Come To This…Bernie Sanders Is Attacked By Progressives For Rejecting Discrimination

/ Jack Marshall / 35 Comments

Senator Bernie Sanders told  Vermont Public Radio,

“We have got to look at candidates, you know, not by the color of their skin, not by their sexual orientation or their gender and not by their age. I mean, I think we have got to try to move us toward a nondiscriminatory society, which looks at people based on their abilities, based on what they stand for.”

Wouldn’t you agree that this position is unassailable based on basic American values and principles? True, it is a self-serving position for Bernie, who is almost certainly too old, male and white to be a viable candidate in the  female, minority, youth dominated Democratic Party, but surely even progressives concede that favoring candidates based on their color, age and gender is bigotry. Right? They have some shred of integrity left, don’t they? Right?

Well, not these progressives apparently:

Neera Tanden of the Center for American Progress on Twitter:

“At a time where folks feel under attack because of who they are, saying race or gender or sexual orientation or identity doesn’t matter is not off, it’s simply wrong.”

(Her statement doesn’t even make internal sense.)

Former Hillary Clinton aide Jess McIntosh: “This is usually an argument made by people who don’t enjoy outsized respect and credibility because of their race, gender, age and sexual orientation.”

(You mean like by blacks discriminated against during Jim Crow, and by women for most of our history, and by gays even now in many communities, Jess?)

 Stephen Colbert: “Yes, like Dr. King, I have a dream—a dream where this diverse nation can come together and be led by an old white guy.”

(I used to think Colbert was witty. It is now clear that he is simply a vicious, hyper-partisan, cheap-shot jackass.)

Writes Prof. Turley, who gets the pointer for this story:

“The Democrats are clearly all-in on identity politics despite the fact that it is viewed by many as inherently discriminatory and divisive. It is a reminder that the best thing going for Trump in the 2020 election remains the Democratic establishment.”

I don’t think anyone paying attention needs any reminders of THAT, professor. That was true in 2016, and has been ever since.

Afternoon Ethics Warm-Up, 2/25/ 2019: Martina Navratilova A Gender Bigot? The Founding Fathers Nazis? Art Galleries Discriminating Against The Blind? WHAT’S HAPPENING?????

/ Jack Marshall / 79 Comments

It would be a good afternoon if EVERYTHING WASN’T SPINNING OUT OF CONTROL!!!!

1. For the record, it appears that Facebook blocking Ethics Alarms posts has cost the site about 30% of its traffic. Mission accomplished, Thought Control Activists!

For now…

2. Did I call this, or what? In  October of 2017 I wrote about another example of tyranny by the disabled, when the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave Paul McGann, who can neither see not hear, a chance to show that movie theaters must provide him with a “tactile interpreter” under the ADA.

No word yet on how Paul is faring, but last October I wrote about yet another example, as described in the New York Times:

…Eight suits have been filed in federal court in Manhattan over the past two weeks, most recently against Hofstra University on Long Island on Oct. 4. In each case, lawyers for Emanuel Delacruz, who is blind, charged that the college’s website is inaccessible to their plaintiff and therefore in violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act.

The filings are part of a growing number of actions involving accessibility and the internet.….Since January 2015, at least 751 lawsuits have been filed over the issue. The vast majority have focused on retailers and restaurants, according to a legal blog that tracks such suits… another website, which includes not only lawsuits but also government investigations into web or technological accessibility, lists 37 schools that have been accused of noncompliance with disability law.

I wrote, in part,

Next? Law suits against art museums for not having audio descriptions of every work exhibited. Law suits against sports stadiums, alleging that the ADA mandates play-by-play being blasted from the ballpark speakers. Then, I suppose, lawsuits against the world for not making being blind a pleasure.

From the Times last week:

“On Dec. 13, a blind Manhattan resident named Henry Tucker filed federal lawsuits against 10 art galleries, saying their websites were not accessible to people who could not see. The galleries’ names included Adam Baumgold Fine Art, Adelson, Agora, Albertz Benda and Acquavella. The next day, Mr. Tucker and his attorneys moved on to the B’s.”

Continue reading →

Oscar Ethics: Let Us Pause To Marvel At The Unapologetic Jerkism Of Director Spike Lee

/ Jack Marshall / 43 Comments

Director Spike Lee is a talented artist and an epic jerk, as he has proved too many times to mention. Lee reached his pinnacle of unethical grandstanding when he tweeted out what he thought was George Zimmerman’s address while the New Black Panthers were offering a bounty on Trayvon Martin’s shooter’s head. The man is an incurable race-baiter, as well as a constant catalyst for racial division. Last night’s Oscars put all of this on display, as well as a feature we don’t see that often so blatantly displayed: Lee has the sportsmanship and grace of a 9-year old.

When Green Book won the Oscar for Best Picture (as many had predicted),  Lee became visibly furious, then stood up and attempted to leave the Dolby Theater, the Associated Press reported. Lee stormed to the exit with his Oscar in hand, but was stopped by staffers who argued with him and eventually persuade him to  return to his seat. Lee’s film BlacKkKlansman was also nominated for Best Picture, and had won earlier in the night for its screenplay, which was co-written by Lee.

So far, nobody has been able to recall another nominee behaving so childishly and disrespectfully after losing in an Oscar race. Lee was defiantly unapologetic after the show, joking that he thought he was at a Knicks game and reacting to a ref’s “bad call.” That comment is also unethical, as the Oscars are supposed to be a collegial celebration of the art of movie-making, with all involved at least publicly supportive of the final awards, whoever they go to. Continue reading →