Pharyngula

Posted by: clare | October 24, 2009 1:36 PM

Done, and fervently agreed!

Posted by: nejishiki | October 24, 2009 1:41 PM

Comment from that page:

"I was told in 1965 that if you subsidize poverty, that it will breed. I assume the same thing will be true for immoral or degenerate behavior. The use of tax dollars should be for the good of all society and not the aberrant few who are demanding the blessing of "normal" from society."

Vote yes, if only to troll.

Posted by: ryk | October 24, 2009 1:43 PM

wow.

I made the mistake of looking at some of the comments :(

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, Quel Dommage | October 24, 2009 1:56 PM

I's voted:

Yes 76%
No 21%
I'm not sure 3%

Posted by: neon-elf.myopenid.com | October 24, 2009 2:02 PM

'Yes' is now up to 80%, but it's a fairly small sample.

Posted by: Nebula99 | October 24, 2009 2:10 PM

Ugh. Some of the comments on there are repulsive. I voted for "yes, I do believe in fair treatment of employees." It's at 83% now. Such a small poll compared to some of the others we have jacked in the past (

Posted by: Whateverman | October 24, 2009 2:27 PM

Well, if answering the question ideally, I'd agree with you, PZ. "Partnership benefits" should be apply to the widest possible definition of partnership.

On the other hand, the question is specific to a non-deal situation. Should lawyers for both schools answer Yes? Not unless the liability issues are minimal. Should people responsible for keeping the schools afloat financially answer yes? Not unless the monetary ramifications are either positive or neutral for said institutions.

Although I agree with your ideal answer, I think a practical answer is much more difficult to assess/conclude.

Posted by: Cheryl | October 24, 2009 2:32 PM

I live in the Birmingham, AL area and know being LGBT is pretty much life-threatening here. There are a lot of people here very upset by the adding of sexual orientation to the hate crimes bill recently. Ramping up the "Yes" vote on this poll is going to seriously piss off a lot of people. So keep voting "Yes"! I love pissing off the Religious Reich around here.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 2:36 PM

When I arrived at the poll, the only choices were "yes" and "not sure." There was no "no"

The poll choices were aligned weird. "No" was over to the right.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 2:44 PM

There are a lot of people here very upset by the adding of sexual orientation to the hate crimes bill recently.

OK, so I know a lot of people have fallen for the lies about throwing clergy in jail for preaching bigotry...but why are they so pissed? Are they really that disappointed that they can't wantonly beat the shit out of queer people for being queer?

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 2:52 PM

Here we go again. Stewart shrieking "notice me! notice me!" Big yawn.....

Posted by: Rrr | October 24, 2009 3:05 PM

Like, the new Gertrude Stein:
"When I got there, there was no no, there"

Posted by: Big Mike | October 24, 2009 3:06 PM

Yes
93%

No
6%

I'm not sure
1%

Votes Cast: 1519

Posted by: Vidar | October 24, 2009 3:31 PM

I'm sorry for my European ignorance, but what does 'follow UAB's lead and offer domestic partner benefits' even mean? What the hell are 'comestic partner benefits', and what business is it of any university?

Posted by: Vidar | October 24, 2009 3:49 PM

@MAJeff;
Sounds like sam-sex partnerships are even more fucked than I thought.

Vote made: Yes.

Current ooll results:
Yes: 94%
No: 5%
Other: 1%

Posted by: Meredith | October 24, 2009 4:17 PM

I live in Alabama, too. I didn't know UAB offered domestic partner benefits; that's excellent. I certainly hope AU and UA follow suit. It's sad, but I'm not surprised people are still debating this kind of thing down here.

Off topic, but I work in public schools and I had a student tell me how much she hates atheists the other day. Apparently, more and more of her friends are becoming atheist (although it could easily be a phase) and it bothers her. I simply acknowledged that the segment is growing (ARIS numbers, etc), but I thought it was cool that somebody her age knew an atheist now! I certainly didn't when I was her age. Maybe we have improved the label a bit?

Posted by: Knockgoats | October 24, 2009 4:48 PM

Voted - now up to 95% yes.

Posted by: Carlie | October 24, 2009 4:56 PM

these men were classified as criminals by the Allied authorities and sent back to prison to serve out the "remainder" of their criminal sentences. Time spent in a place like Auschwitz or Birkenau wasn't considered "time served" for the violation of German law by the new American/British/French/Russian authorities.....

Fucking what? This is the kind of thing that makes me say WHY DID I NEVER KNOW THIS? God dammit.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 5:05 PM

Fucking what? This is the kind of thing that makes me say WHY DID I NEVER KNOW THIS? God dammit.

Why would you know it? I don't mean that as an attack on you, Carlie. I had sociology PhDs who weren't exactly ignorant about state regulation and criminalization of sexuality giving the same response. Why would the US/UK/France/Russia teach this historical fact? The purpose of historical education, broadly, isn't to give people a sense of what happened, but to produce citizens with pride in nation....This moment may make the US look bad (I'm sure there are any number of people today who would agree with those actions), but it's also a statement about the way that the United States (and these others) produces good citizenship as heterosexual. Those/We sexual others aren't worthy of citizenship. Our history isn't part of the national history.

Posted by: Carlie | October 24, 2009 5:49 PM

MAJeff - I'm thinking about it, because my initial response is "BECAUSE I SHOULD KNOW EVERYTHING, THAT'S WHY" and that's not exactly rational or helpful. :) There's a bigger point in there about education and caring about history and how knowing how people were treated in the past helps make people more understanding in the present, but it will take awhile for me to suss that out and organize it.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 24, 2009 6:49 PM

I get all that, Carlie ;-)

I guest taught a summer class for high school students a few years ago, and they were shocked to learn that there were more gay and lesbian people purged and targeted during the McCarthy era than communists. They were shocked to learn that it has only been legal for gay and lesbian people to enter the United States for less than 20 years....

Going back to the WWII thing, even beyond the aspect of the allies re-targeting the men with the pink triangles, it's not even widespread knowledge that those men existed. There was a state Rep in Minnesota (Arlon Lindner) about 7 or so years ago who denied that gay folk were targeted at all in the Holocaust, and attempted to have them removed from legislative definitions of survivors. There was a rec'd diary on dKos after the debacle in California last fall that was criticized for talking about the targeting of gay men in the Holocaust as attempting to "politicize" the Holocaust, as though even acknowledging the fact that gay men were targeted was an illegitimate rewriting of history.

There's a lot to unpack, I guess.

Posted by: Matthew | October 24, 2009 7:05 PM

Thank you for putting this up. I know dozens of people this will affect.

Posted by: Steve LaBonne | October 24, 2009 8:52 PM

Folks, we're winning. Slowly. Very Slowly. Too Slowly. But, we're winning.

I believe that as the bigots in the older generations die off, at some point we will see that progress accelerate markedly. I live in a pretty conservative suburban area in Ohio and I see an almost complete collapse of homophobia in kids my daughter's (high school senior) age. Even the ones who have absorbed some of their parents' prejudices don't seem to really care enough to put any energy into it.

Posted by: Sanction, Inherent Antonym | October 24, 2009 9:24 PM

Time spent in a place like Auschwitz or Birkenau wasn't considered "time served" for the violation of German law by the new American/British/French/Russian authorities.....

Unbelievable. What justification, if any, did the Allies assert for this decision?

Posted by: Heidi | October 24, 2009 11:42 PM

@MAJeff: Did you hear that Mass AG Martha Coakley announced she will be suing the federal government for equal rights for married gay couples? Cross your fingers. And thanks for all the other information. I didn't know most of it. Please keep telling everyone.

I have to wonder, don't any of these hateful people have gay family members? I mean I can see that they wouldn't have gay friends like a normal person would, but they have to be related to someone gay. I guess they must all be in the closet or shunned or something. :-(

In the past, I never thought it was important to mention I'm not gay when I stand up for gay rights. But now I'm realizing that the haters are all just assuming "only" gay people care about gay rights. So now I make sure to say "I'm not gay, and I care." And I do have gay friends and family members, who are worth a hell of a lot more as human beings than any of the closed minded haters.

Posted by: Quinno | October 24, 2009 11:51 PM

I don't think such benefits should be given regardless of sexual orientation or domestic arrangement.

Why should anyone expect benefits from someone else's employer?

Posted by: SpriteSuzi | October 25, 2009 12:45 AM

So, Quinno, you don't think we should be able to cover our spouse/partner/children with the health insurance available from our jobs? Are you serious? Then how do they get insurance?

Posted by: Liveliest Crib | October 25, 2009 1:11 AM

Heidi:

I have to wonder, don't any of these hateful people have gay family members? I mean I can see that they wouldn't have gay friends like a normal person would, but they have to be related to someone gay. I guess they must all be in the closet or shunned or something. :-(

There are certainly some with the courage of their dubious convictions who disown and mistreat their LGBT relatives. I know one trans-woman shunned so thoroughly that when she attempted to reunite with her father on his tragically early deathbed, not only did he refuse to see her, but the relatives who delivered the rejection on his behalf added, "And it's your fault he has this cancer, you know!"

But many just maintain the same cognitive dissonance required to rationalize every other aspect of their religious "moral" systems. Somehow "teh gay" remains an evil to be resisted in public policy, but their child/sibling/cousin is okay with them. Waiting for the deity to enter their hearts or something. Another friend of mine has a gay brother. Her very anti-gay parents know, but manage to pretend it's not true. No one's allowed to talk about it at their house.

And, of course, let's not forget the Vaders Cheneys. No problem with either targeting the gay community to win election or their openly gay daughter.

Posted by: Quinno | October 25, 2009 2:29 AM

@53

I'm perfectly serious, SpriteSuzi.

We're talking about benefits for spouses and domestic partners, who generally are not dependents. Spousal benefits made sense in the past, since the norm was a two parent family with one income. Today however, in the US, most families with two parents are dual income, and most gay and lesbian households are dual income, no kids.

Spouses and domestic partners should get their health insurance from their own employers. Single-income couples with children are now too small a minority for partner benefits across the board to make sense.

Posted by: Richard Eis | October 25, 2009 7:16 AM

but partnerships already have EXACTLY the same rights as a "normal" marriage. I know because I was told this repeatedly by religious people.

Posted by: Carlie | October 25, 2009 10:00 AM

Spouses and domestic partners should get their health insurance from their own employers.

And just fuck'em if they're too disabled to work, or if they really are needed at home because they can't get a job that covers the amount of money they'd then have to pay out in child care, or if the job market where they are is so bad that they honestly can't find work?

I still can't believe that we live under a system where health care is dependent on the whims of a person's employer, of all things. This country is so screwed up.

Posted by: Rob W | October 25, 2009 11:18 AM

Yes 97%
No 2%
I'm not sure 1%

Votes Cast: 5936

@Quinno:

Spouses and domestic partners should get their health insurance from their own employers. Single-income couples with children are now too small a minority for partner benefits across the board to make sense.

Wait, what? Spouses and domestic partners DO get their health insurance from their own employers. Haven't you ever filled out an insurance claim form? Notice that section generally right at the top asking you about any other insurance you have that could possibly cover this claim? I was on my wife's insurance for a while when she had medical insurance from UMich and I was self-employed, and there were definitely hoops to jump through to prove I had no other source of insurance.

So, uh, it's only the situations where only one partner has insurance where this benefit is even usable. These are not "benefits across the board".

Posted by: Andrea | October 25, 2009 12:52 PM

Those in the UA community and surrounding area can help by signing a letter being provided by the Capstone Alliance, a group for LGBTQ faculty, staff, and allies at UA, to present in an upcoming meeting. You can find it here on their website: http://bama.ua.edu/~calliance/benefits.html . Every major voting faculty and student body on campus has voted in support of this measure, but so far the administration has declined. The letters will be provided in a packet to the administration in November. Help Alabamians support equal rights for our LGBTQ friends and family members.

Posted by: Richard Eis | October 25, 2009 1:20 PM

LOL Quiino got bunny whipped.

Posted by: Liveliest Crib | October 25, 2009 1:59 PM

David Marjanović, OM:

"And it's your fault he has this cancer, you know!"

ROTFLMAO!

(Yes, I am capable of laughing at tragedies. I'm capable of laughing about the entire ridiculous country of North Korea, too. This quote is just so stupid and absurd... :-D )

Oh, I firmly believe that anything worth taking seriously is worth making fun of. And hey, even the woman who had to hear that line has laughed at it later in life. It's so transparently ridiculous it helps remind her -- when she feels the inevitable pangs of guilt and shame for just being herself -- that it's the relatives who disowned her who are the crazy ones.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 25, 2009 2:06 PM

One thing to remember is this: Domestic partnership benefits are not limited to health insurance access. They can also include such things as the ability to take a paid time off (family leave) to care for a partner or attend the funeral of "in-laws". They can include family rates for such things as university health centers, or even access to the library. They are pretty much always more limited than the benefits distributed through marriage--and, as I noted, even when "equivalent" end up being financially inferior to marriage--but they do go beyond health insurance.

Posted by: John Phillips, FCD | October 25, 2009 3:53 PM

Quinno if you want to argue that no types of partnerships shold accrue such benefits for an employee's partner, fine. However, what we are voting for here is equality for both 'traditional' hetero marriage and legally recognised domestic partenships in organisations that already cover 'traditional' marriage,. After all, many of the so called defense of marriage bigots keep telling us that domestic partnerships are as good as marriage but it stops them getting their knickers in quite such a twist because it isn't called marriage. So they can't have it both ways, though they try and prove very trying.

Posted by: MAJeff, OM | October 25, 2009 6:35 PM

Quinno,

Have you read Nancy Polikoff's Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage? Her basic argument is that "family" as we define it in policy is far too limited and we should focus on relations of interdependency (function) as opposed to only looking at certain families (form) as worthy of protection.

Part of the problem with this question is the fucked-up system of health care delivery we have in this country. But it goes beyond that to things such as inheritance, visitation, medical and funerary decision-making, and the like....I particularly like Maryland's registry with regard to hospital visitation, which allows individuals to list who they would like to have access to them should they end up in the hospital instead of focusing on what kind of "kin" relationship they have. (It gets to my personal practice of making a distinction between "relatives" and "family")

worth a read (for everybody).

Posted by: Doug Alder | October 27, 2009 6:43 PM

Yes
95%

No
4%

I'm not sure
1%

Votes Cast: 8115

I have access to a number of IP addresses - I've voted twice I think I'll vote a third time :)