fairness

Ethical Quote Of The Month: Justice Richard Bossun of The New Mexico Supreme Court

/ Jack Marshall / 80 Comments

First-Amendment-on-scroll1

[The quote that follows is from the concurring opinion in the just-decided case of  Elaine Photography v. Willock, which challenged the proposition, discussed and endorsed on Ethics Alarms in several posts, that a business could not and ethically should not refuse service to same-sex couples.]

“On a larger scale, this case provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice. At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation’s strengths, demands no less. The Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the Huguenins in that respect and much more. But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.

“In the smaller, more focused world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world.”

——- New Mexico Supreme Court Justice Bossun, concurring with opinion in Elaine Photography v. Willock, which rejected the claim that legally requiring a photography shop to take photographs of a same-sex marriage was a violation of the First Amendment.

You can read the Volokh Conspiracy take on the case here, and here; Ken White has his usual trenchant observations at Popehat.

From an ethics perspective, however, Justice Bossuns’s words need no enhancement. I could not agree more, nor say it better.

______________________________

Graphic: Illinois Family

 

Ethics Verdict On Dr. Phil’s Media Mugging

/ Jack Marshall / 16 Comments
You're in the clear, Phil...this time.

You’re in the clear, Phil…this time.

If a brilliant scholar like Richard Dawkins can get himself in hot water trying to be provocative in 140 characters, you can imagine the scalding a phony expert like Dr. Phil can attract with his tweets. Sure enough, the Oprah Winfrey-spawned arbiter of troubled relationships is now being ground up in the maw of the blogosphere and news media for tweeting this question to his inexplicably large mass of Twitter followers:

 “If a girl is drunk, is it okay to have sex with her? Reply yes or no to @drphil #teensaccused.”

He did not ask “If a girl is passed out drunk, is it okay to have sex with her?” Nor did he ask “If a girl is drunk, is it okay for me to have sex with her?” (The answers to both of these questions, obviously to me, you, and Dr. Phil, is emphatically  no. But then, he didn’t ask either of them.) He also didn’t suggest that he doesn’t know the answer to the question he did ask. He posed a question for his followers, which it is reasonable to assume was done to get a sense of the majority response.

There was nothing wrong, unethical, “tone deaf,” insensitive, sinister, off-putting, icky, misogynistic or otherwise inappropriate about the tweet or its wording, whether it was sent by Dr. Phil or anyone else.

And yet (from the Washington Post)... Continue reading →

Of Puppy Ethics, Presidents, And Ruddigore

/ Jack Marshall / 14 Comments

Sunny

One aspect of being President that cannot be much fun is knowing that anything you do in your very public private life has the potential of permanently altering the culture, like the book about Chicago gangster days left on the developing planet in a famous episode of “Star Trek.” President Kennedy didn’t wear hats because of his bodacious hair (all the better to shag those young girls), and ruined the U.S. fedora trade. Bill Clinton announced that oral sex wasn’t sex after all, and millions of U.S. junior high school students took the hint. Now President Obama and family are being called poor role models because they adopted a new pure-bred puppy from a breeder rather than finding an appropriate rescue dog, as animal welfare activists constantly urge us to do. Continue reading →

How Dangerous Lies Become Accepted Truth: D.C. Theater Embraces The False Emmett Till-Trayvon Martin Comparison

/ Jack Marshall / 91 Comments
If we want it to be true, then it will be true...

If we want it to be true, then it will be true…

I awoke to find this in my Washington Post Style Section this morning, in the column devoted to notable events in D.C. theater. My personal Facebook page is fairly well linked to the Washington , D.C. theater community, so I decided to register my disgust there. I’m continuing it here, and in the interest of economy, will simply repeat what I just posted on Facebook.

I will just add this: I foolishly assumed that the irresponsible, and either ignorant or malign attempts to equate the killings of Emmett Till and Trayvon Martin were isolated examples of race-baiting excesses, and would be widely rejected and debunked by more responsible figures and authorities. Not only did this not happen, but that indefensible comparison, and the damaging falsehoods it is intended to plant, like a deadly virus,  in our national fabric, is beginning to take hold as truth.

Anyone, regardless of race and political or ideological belief should be able see how intolerable this is. Everyone has an obligation to do what they can to stop it.

Here is my Facebook post. Continue reading →

Reading Club Ethics: Punishing The Motivated And Successful In Hudson Falls

/ Jack Marshall / 28 Comments
There goes Tyler, doing more than he has to and spoiling things for everyone else...

There goes that show-off Tyler, doing more than he has to and spoiling things for everyone else…

Some day in the less-distant-than-we-might-think future, when the United States is a gray, socialist country populated by millions of Winston Smiths and Julias, historians and sociologists, if there are any left, may well look back on the species of American represented by Hudson Falls (New York) Public Library Director Marie Gandron, and reflect upon how it proliferated, eventually taking control of the culture and permanently stigmatizing initiative and talent to achieve the current ideological Holy Grail of guaranteed equal outcomes.

Ms. Grandon thinks its unfair that the student who reads the most books in the library’s student reading club summer competition keeps winning the annual distinction of being honored as the student who read the most books in the library’s student reading club summer competition.

Following the immortal logic of those who regard rewards for superior performance one more injustice spawned by the oppressive values of the United States of America, she reacted to the annual triumph by 9-year-old Tyler Weaver, who just loves to read and who again lapped his fellow club members in the Summer Reading Challenge for the fourth straight year, by suggesting that the rules should be changed. In an interview, the library director said Tyler “hogs” the contest and should “step aside,” because the other kids “quit because they can’t keep up.”  She told the reporter she planned on changing the rules of the contest so that instead of giving prizes to the children who read the most books, she would draw names out of a hat and declare winners that way. Continue reading →

Ethics Hero: Millikin University

/ Jack Marshall / 86 Comments

This story sounds like it was dreamed up for joint production of the Lifetime Movie Network and Chiller.

Above: The scene of Wolcott's mothers shooting; below, his father.

Above: The scene of Wolcott’s mothers shooting; below, his father.

Millikin University is a private institution in Decatur, Illinois with approximately 2400 students. It has been thrust into local headlines with the discovery that one of its psychology professors, James St. James, who heads the schools Department of Behavioral Sciences, murdered his parents and his older sister when he was 15. Then he was called James Gordon Wolcott.

He changed his name after being treated in a mental institution, where he was sent after being found not guilty of the crime because he was legally insane at the time of the killings. High from sniffing glue, the brilliant but emotionally disturbed teen grabbed a .22-caliber rifle, walked into the living room and shot his father, then shot his sister and his mother.

Six years after being sent to Rusk State Hospital,  Wolcott emerged apparent cured, and ready to lead a productive life. Ironically, his patricide and his insanity  had greased the way for his rehabilitation: he inherited his parents’ estate and was able to draw a monthly stipend from his father’s pension fund. Changing his name to St. James, he earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s degree and a PhD, and became an award-winning professor at Millikin. Professor St. James’ secret was undiscovered until this year. He is now 61. Continue reading →

Ethics Quiz (And a Poll!) : The Fan, The Girl, and The Grope

/ Jack Marshall / 17 Comments

I wrestled with whether it was ethical to show this video or  just link to it on another website instead. I have, as you might have surmised by now, an ethical objection to the practice of taking videos, photographs or recordings of people without their knowledge or permission and publicizing them, and that objection is intensified when it is done for the purpose of embarrassing them or shaming them, unless the conduct is illegal or so unquestionably vile that society is obligated to issue an objection in the strongest terms possible. I think that the borderline episodes of this are  important to discuss and yet it is difficult to do that without aiding and abetting what may be unethical conduct, as I help publicize what perhaps should have been left private.

I haven’t resolved this dilemma. When a video has gone viral, as this one has (as well as another I show here), I think that the impact of my embedding the clip in order to discuss it is minimal, and that the value of presenting the actual video for readers to see outbalances the harm to the victim/victims, if that’s what they are, of posting it on one more site on the web among many. I invite opinions to the contrary. (In the instant case, I should note, the episode was inadvertently captured by a TV cameraman—he shot what he thought was a sleeping fan, and then the copping and feeling began—and broadcast live. Someone else then put the touching moment online.)

With that introduction, here is the video, YouTubed and picked up by Gawker (naturally) as well as many other sites. It shows a male fan at a Yankee game with a sleeping or otherwise unconscious young woman resting her head on his chest. While she sleeps, he appears to fondle her breast, thus spawning endless leering references, since it was at a ballgame, of “stealing second.” We do not know whether the young woman was a stranger who collapsed his way (this actually happened to me once, and at a ballgame, so it’s not that far-fetched), a friend, his wife, his girlfriend, or, as some disturbed individual on one site suggested, his sister.

For the sake of this quiz, we will assume they are a couple. YouTube pulled the video I had embedded, so to see the action, go here.

All set?

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz today is…

Assuming this was the fan’s wife or girlfriend, was it unethical for him to cop a feel, in public, while she was unconscious? Continue reading →

“Studies Prove BMW Drivers Are Jerks”….And So It Begins

/ Jack Marshall / 26 Comments
"Look at THAT jerk. What's he up to, I wonder?"

“Look at THAT jerk. What’s he up to, I wonder?”

If you would like to ponder on how prejudices, stereotypes and bias worm their way into our brains, look no further than here, a Yahoo! report, via the Wall Street Journal, about how research backs up the widespread belief that drivers of BMWs are jerks. (Full disclosure: my son drives an old BMW, and loves it dearly. I love it less, because repairing the damn thing has required me to moonlight by entertaining at kids’ birthday parties and rodeos…)

Various studies, we are told, show drivers of the car are less likely to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks and to take the upper hand at four-way stops. In addition,

“…in the U.K., motorists were asked to identify the make and color of the car from which they have most frequently suffered road-rage incidents…The study of 2,837 motorists found men between the ages of 35 and 50 driving blue BMWs were most likely to be reported as having engaged in road-rage behaviors such as aggressive driving and swearing.” Continue reading →

Comment of the Day: “Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg”

/ Jack Marshall / 18 Comments
Tornado ruin

A home in Tanner, Alabama, after the events of April 3, 1974…

Here are the always thoughtful and often profound Fattymoon’s reflections, in the Comment of the Day, inspired by the post, Ethics Dunce: Photographer Jill Greenberg:

“This reminds me of the time I made a critical decision, on the spot, while covering the aftermath of a killing F5 tornado at Tanner, Alabama the night of April 3, 1974.

 

“Walter McGlocklin was walking away from me, carrying one of his two surviving daughters. He was cradling this little girl, her upper body and tear streaked face peeking just above her father’s right shoulder. The look of utter horror on her face! The lighting was perfect, an eerie cross hatch of flashlights and spotlights – I KNEW I had the picture of the year. I raised my Minolta 35 mm and focused in. And that’s when it happened. Something inside me said, Do NOT violate this little girl’s privacy. Do NOT allow this little girl’s unbearable pain to act as fodder to sell newspapers across the country. I slowly lowered my camera. It’s a decision, one of only a very few, of which I will forever be proud of.”

_______________

 

 

Ethics Quiz: Reddit Ethics And The Non-Privileged Confession

/ Jack Marshall / 37 Comments

confessions

Reddit’s OffMyChest forum is promoted as a safe social media site to post confessions and to seek support or advice for very difficult, personal, potentially embarrassing problems. Of course, there is no such thing on the web, and such posts are only as confidential as the forum’s participants are trustworthy.

An 18-year-old poster calling himself Pilot94 unburdened himself about a statutory rape (or two) that he escaped punishment for thanks to some good luck. But the episode obviously still troubled him. He began…

“I’ve never been good at this sort of thing. Never in my life have I fully told the truth to anyone, except my best friend…But there are things I need to say that I’ve never been able to say before. I am purposefully not using a throw away account, I highly doubt anyone I know will find this but if they do, I’m glad you now know… “

He went on to describe his life to date, and how it had begun to spin out of control:

“I basically turned into a drug dealer with my best friend. He took the pills and I sold them. We started to get into trouble with the police. Patrick and I vandalized numerous parks and places around our town. We got caught for that had probation and fines, etc. That didn’t stop the Dynamic Dumbasses though. We picked up charges for shoplifting, under age consumption, speeding, drunk driving, etc. But nobody knew. We were such good liars that we were able to keep it all to ourselves. …We ran from cops all the time and partied, got drunk, got high, and raised hell. I kept dealing drugs and we kept taking them. Somehow we avoided getting charged for that, though we were close multiple times.”

Then came the incident that prompted the post:

“I knew some girls from school (I thought they were 15-16, they ended being 13-14) that I met at a party. One night they called us up and said they were drunk and wanted to have fun. We couldn’t say no. We drove out and picked all 3 of them up. We parked by the neighborhood pool, got in the back of the truck, and started going at it. Everyone had their clothes off, the girls were making out with each other and having sex…After about an hour, we headed back to their house. We were out front when a cop pulled up. Then shit hit the fan. The girls accused us of raping them, getting them drunk and supplying drugs. They revealed their true age to the police…One of the girls was so drunk she had to have her stomach pumped and spend the night in the hospital. [My friend} and I went home with our parents as the police impounded my truck and started a full criminal investigation into what had happened. Apparently all 3 were virgins prior to the night, and only did this because they were drunk. The one with alcohol poisoning also had vaginal tearing, and they performed a rape kit on her. The evidence against us was incredible. I don’t know why we weren’t arrested on the spot…But for some reason, both the lead detective on the case and the chief of police were fired shortly after. We were told we would hear from the new officer in charge of our case, but we never did. I don’t know how or why, but it just disappeared.”

The near disaster prompted a life turnaround, he wrote, that at least so far was a success:

“Needless to say this scared us beyond straight. Going from expecting 10+ years in prison to miraculously being free was incredible. Somehow I straightened my life up and actually graduated with honors from a Top 500 school….I received a full ride Army ROTC scholarship to a prestigious military school to study Russian and International Affairs and eventually receive a commission as an officer. [My friend and I]  both have no idea how or why we were given another chance, but we definitely aren’t going to fuck it up. I know there are stories on here about suicide and other heavy subjects, but this is the most honest I’ve ever been in my life, and it feels amazing. Sorry for making it so long!”

So trusting was the author that he later posted a photo of a scholarship he received from Army Reserve Officer Training Corps to Reddit’s military forum. It included his name, and some Reddit users connected the scholarship, the school, the name and the earlier confession.

And alerted the school.

Now he may be kicked out, and perhaps prosecuted. When he asked on the forum why anyone would do this to him, one Reddit member, perhaps the same one who revealed his secret, wrote…

“You ruined a couple of girls’ childhoods. You make it sound like your a good person now and that you have turned over a new leaf but you never once indicated that you felt any remorse for these people you destroyed. I think you far exaggerate to us and yourself how good of a person you are, and how deserving you are of forgiveness.”

Another wrote:

“He considers drugging and raping 3 14 year olds in the back of his pick up “minor”, he has no remorse for the lives he’s hurt, only that he was caught. He is deserving of no forgiveness until he can show that he actually feels remorse.”

Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz Question is this...

Was reporting him to his school based on his post ethical, or unethical? Continue reading →