Here are three items, all found via Radley Balko's blog and all dealing with government overreach. The first is from Chicago, where a group of chefs is suing the city council to reverse a city-wide ban on serving foie gras at restaurants. I don't know that they'll win the lawsuit. The grounds on which they're arguing it don't seem terribly compelling, at least if this report is accurate (it says they're claiming that since the foie gras is produced in France or Canada, it's not up to Chicago to regulate it - that's a pretty weak argument). But I'm glad to see someone standing up to the city council for telling people what they can and can't eat or serve in a restaurant.
The second is from Minnesota, where the government is trying to destroy the career and business of a woman who - get this - fell in love with and married one of her clients.
LaRae Lundeen Fjellman likes to think her massage and alternative health business in Lindstrom has a small-town touch. She knows most of her clients personally and often gives them presents, such as flowers or banana bread, on special occasions.But when she got too close to one of them and fell for former client Kirk Fjellman, who was divorcing his wife, she was surprised to learn that Minnesota bans massage therapists from having sexual relations with former clients for two years.
Kirk says his ex-wife reported LaRae to state officials in 2004. Now, the state is seeking to fine and possibly prohibit LaRae Fjellman from practicing in Minnesota for having sex with someone who has become her husband.
I feel safer now, how about you?
And the third highlights the next probable target of the anti-smoking zealots: churches.
Even brief exposure to contaminated air during a religious service could be harmful to some people, says atmospheric scientist Stephan Weber of the University of Duisburg-Essen in Essen, Germany. A previous study in the Netherlands indicated that the pollutants in smoke from incense and candles may be more toxic than fine-particle pollution from sources such as vehicle engines.
Okay, how about we just fast forward right to the utopian society envisioned by both extremes, where we're all living in plastic bubbles with helmets on, safely strapped into our child safety seats, free from the threat of external pollutants and the possibility of infection, taking sterilized, low-fat, preservative-free soy protein through a tube and thinking only clean thoughts? Will that make the zealots on both sides happy? Can we all just recognize that living itself is bad for your health? Every day you're alive is one day closer to dying. And no matter how healthy you are, no matter how much you exercise, no matter how much tofu you eat, you could drop dead tomorrow. If you want to eat food that's bad for you, then do it. And tell the people trying to stop people from selling it to you to go get bent.
- Log in to post comments
I don't see how the foie gras ban is nanny-statism. It's an animal welfare issue. It may be hypocritical, since they don't ban battery chickens, but that doesn't make it nanny statism. The others are stupid, though.
Actually, the second one is not quite as stupid as it might seem. There is good sense in placing a ban on therapists having sexual relationships with their patients. That such an otherwise sensible ban will result in cases like this is unfortunate, but unavoidable.
- JS
I can see that for a pyschological therapist, but she's a massage therapist. Not the same thing, by a long stretch. And he's an ex-client.
Unlike Ginger, I would argue that it is the 'massage therapist' law that is out of place. (That doesn't mean I agree with it, just that it is not an example of 'nanny-state' thinking.)
I would simply ask if the law read -- as it may -- that doctors were similarly prohibited from having relations with their patients, how would you feel about it, given the number of examples of doctors using their position for purposes of 'sexual harassment'? (And, of course, 'alties' tend to be far more manipulative than medical practitioners since, with no evidence to support their quackery, they have to be.)
Oh, and also -- even if it were unethical for a relationship like that to develop, it is something that should be dealt with by a private licensing agency, not the state. Being unethical is a long stretch from being illegal.
Presumably the massage therapist thing isn't about professional ethics, but about running brothels in disguise. A two year waiting period is ridiculous, though, and to actually enforce the law for somebody who married their client is.
...even more ridiculous.
The church incense case is so ridiculous I can only chalk it up to a pressure group grasping at any "issue" it can find, or make up, to justify its continued existence. Yes, I'm sure some individuals are quite allergic to certain smokes or fumes, but how far do the majority have to go to accomodate a vulnerable minority of...how many people, exactly?
According to the article you cite, the health concerns are not voiced by actual doctors who deal with such matters -- just an atmospheric scientist. The article talks a lot about how alarmingly particulate levels spike during services, but gives little if any perspective on how important the numbers are; and, in fact, only discusses concentrations of pollutants in RELATIVE terms ("seven times the normal contration!!! what ever "normal" is). Nor is there any mention of how much pollutant concentration it takes to cause harm.
"Even after relatively short exposure, you can expect acute health effects" in susceptible groups, such as shortness of breath in people with asthma, de Kok says. He adds that he knows of no study examining whether groups such as priests and frequent churchgoers have elevated rates of cancer or other pollution-associated health problems.
We can EXPECT acute health effects. But do we OBSERVE them? People have been inhaling this stuff in not-so-well-ventilated churches for CENTURIES -- surely by now we should have heard doctors from all over Christendom describing the dire respiratory ailments of devout churchgoers, and reliably tracing them back to church incense as a primary cause.
This article may not be stating falsehoods; but it is clearly biased in its presentation of the facts, to the point of being useless.
Oh please, this is a simple prohibition against steam-and-cream parlors and creative lawyering.
I see a lot of dissonance in the view that the sex trade should be deregulated but lets all be thoroughly disgusted by the anti-feminism stance in some countries.
The deregulation of sex-trade is not going to end well for anyone pushing feminism and female rights (or gay-rights for that matter). Free markets WILL produce abusive consequences in the case of labor supply. Will the labor force (male or female) be college educated, stable people or will it attract those with lesser opportunities? This would result in gross exploitation and a class segmentation similar to The Handmaid's Tale.
How do I know that? Because I've seen it in countries that allow it. Seen it - not partaken of it before that comes up.
Free markets WILL produce abusive consequences in the case of labor supply. Will the labor force (male or female) be college educated, stable people or will it attract those with lesser opportunities?
Okay, I'll step up to the plate here.
Notices and disclaimers: I'm gay. I've never used an escort service. I've never traded sex for money or vice versa. But I have known people who did.
I think an open, honest, straightforward market in sex would be a huge step forward for women. And for gays. And for everyone else.
Why? Well, look around you. We already have a sex trade.
It's there. It's impossible to deny, because people are going to find ways to pay for sex, no matter what you do about it.
Look in the ads for any "alternative" newspaper, whether gay or straight. What do you see? Escort services. Massage services. Ads for naked housekeepers, for crying out loud.
And don't even tell me that the clients are just paying for a fun night on the town, or for someone to scrub the kitchen floor. They're paying for sex. And it would be better for all involved if there were no lies, no games, and no euphemisms.
It would be far better for all involved if the transaction could be policed, exactly as all legal transactions are policed: If someone lies to you, or robs you, or harms you, you can take them to court and extract compensation from them. You can prosecute them even if they're male and you're female. You can prosecute them even if they're physically or economically stronger than you. That's why courts are so important in society. Any market would start to go sour if there weren't an established enforcement system.
This is just the case of the present-day sex trade. And the lack of policing, the inability to adjudicate disputes in the way that everyone else does, is the entire reason why our sex trade is the sordid, exploitative mess that it is.
Who would work in a liberated sex trade? Probably many of the same people who work in the sex trade right now. I don't know if it would, err, suck more people in than it currently does -- but if so, fine. They would be going into that business because it now offered them better opportunities than before. Which I'm okay with. That's just how the world works.
Further, it is preposterous to fault the sex trade because sex workers tend not to have college educations. Of course sex work is going to attract people who don't have better opportunities. That's what all forms of employment do. A legalized sex trade will just remove the threat of unredressed violence and fraud from a market that already exists. Which would be a good thing, and not a bad one, for the less educated and less privileged.
From the AMTA (American Massage Therapy Assoc.) code of professional ethics:
"Refrain from engaging in any sexual conduct or sexual activities involving their clients."
...
From the TFA:
Hiendlmayr said the statute is "part of an umbrella law to protect consumers" from unlicensed alternative care practitioners, ranging from herbalists to folk remedy practitioners. The statute does not target massage therapists and there does not have to be a victim, he said.
In an argument filed to the Office of Administrative Hearings in the Health Department (provided to the Star Tribune by Fjellman), the state's lawyers said sex prohibitions are appropriate because "a therapeutic relationship exists between the massage therapist and the client, and inherent in that relationship is a power differential."
...
I don't know about violating a criminal law -- but handling via professional licensure boards (which can also suspend / expel practitioner's, and fine them) seems appropriate. In the absence of a professional board, the BOH seems to be the logical person to regulate it.
Well, currently sex workers are abused-- physically-- by both their clients and the police. I hardly think the "abuse" you're talking about can hold a candle to that.
Feminism (at least my kind of feminism) is supporting a woman's right to make her own choices in life. If she chooses to become a sex worker, that is absolutely her right. It's her business whether she finds the work exploitative or not-- if she does, she is free to choose not to work in that field.
Well, it seems everyone has their favorite activity that they think the state should ban. You have conservatives wanting to ban this and liberals wanting to ban that. I see, "well the so and so is not state nanny-statism but the rest are". Maybe instead of outright banning things we should address the problems that they cause. For each of the things people want to ban there are people willing and able to go around that ban, and that causes more harm than just allowing it. You may want to ban prostitution, you may want to ban drugs and alcohol, you may want to ban gay sex, but even if you ban it, people are still going to do it. I don't know about everyone else, but I think the way we handle these things as a society does not work and new approaches need to be found.
I would have thought that for something to qualify as nanny-statism, as opposed to mere illiberalism in the classical sense, it would have to fall into the category of protecting people from themselves. Animal welfare clearly doesn't.
Well, Ginger, if it's really about animal welfare, then why stop at foie gras? Go after hog confinements, chicken confinements, and veal while you're at it.
Stogoe - see the first comment in the thread.
And stogoe, it is the forcefeeding that is objectionable to many people who support these bans (some of whom are not PETA members...), not the confinement of animals per se. I think you can argue confinement itself is cruel (and I would agree), but confinement plus forcefeeding is undeniably worse than confinement alone.
It also doesn't jibe with the notion (sometimes written into law, but I don't know if that's the case here) that unnecessary suffering not be caused to animals. I think there's room for debate about that, but it has nothing to with regulating what we eat, since fois gras would likely not be banned if the effects on the liver could be attained without harming the animal. (For example, food additives that did not sicken the geese or cause them undue pain etc).
I suppose some people might think that the state doesn't have an interest in animal welfare. I am not one of them.
If animal torture is necessary to produce foie gras, then that is the only reason needed to ban it. The Chicago city council is not trying to deprive people of enjoyment, it is trying to prevent an inhumane procedure.
I'm not sure whether I'm one of those people who thinks the state should have an interest in animal welfare...but if it does, I sure wish it would be consistent about it. And it is abmoninably not. Factory farm animals are tortured, no two ways about it. Chickens raised for cock-fighting are treated better. Pigs are smarter than cats, yet you'd get in vastly more trouble for torturing the latter than the former. It just doesn't make sense. I sometimes wish we could revert to a purely hunting society-- if you want to eat meat, then you have to catch and kill it yourself. At least that way the animal gets an (ostensibly) happy life in the wilderness before it gets popped with a bullet.
WHOA WHOA WHOA!!!! Stay away from the pork. They'll be trouble. I'm serious. Don't test me.
I understand people's aversion to their idea of how foie gras is made, but many of the high end producers are not the auger forced feeding style. If you don't like it, don't eat it. It is still legal to produce. And while we're at it can we stop worrying abobut unpasturized cheese imports?
The deregulation of sex-trade is not going to end well for anyone pushing feminism and female rights (or gay-rights for that matter). Free markets WILL produce abusive consequences in the case of labor supply. Will the labor force (male or female) be college educated, stable people or will it attract those with lesser opportunities? This would result in gross exploitation and a class segmentation similar to The Handmaid's Tale.
I call BS - the current legal parameters have produced vast exploitation. Legalizing and regulating it would make it safer and more secure for everyone involved. And much of the labor force would be putting themselves through college and help stabalize the lives of others. Some people simply enjoy sex and would love to make a living doing it. Others just don't care that much and would do it for a buck - whatever the reason, it's their, damned choice.
I also have a great appreciation for the laws this nation has to protect workers and help ensure a safe working environment. I firmly believe these protections should also be in place for sex-trade workers. How, pray tell, will it hurt feminism and gay rights, to allow such protections to be put into place? And how will it hurt feminism and gay rights to empower women and men to take charge of their lives and make a living the best way they see fit - even if they use their genitals to do so?
I think I agree with Treban here.
I agree with Treban and Jason: legalizing the sex trade will, at the very least, give sex-workers themselves a bit more leverage, especially against violent pimps, and enable them to improve their own conditions. Every evil attributed to a legalized sex trade is already prevalent in the current legal climate.
But we should be realistic in imagining how much better things will be if the sex trade is legalized. If pot is legalized, people will gladly buy and trade the stuff in the light of day. But the sex trade is a bit different in that, legal or not, customers will seek the maximum of privacy because, well, sex is a private thing and most people won't want to be seen pursuing it. I also don't think that legalization will, in itself, eliminate international human trafficking.
Gretchen: we have inconsistent standards for treatment of animals because some animals are cuter than others. And don't think that putting me in charge will help: you'll just get a different pattern of unfairness, where hedgehogs, big smart dogs, cats (non-Siamese), and dolphins are at the top of the list; and howling, stupid, neurotic inbred Siamese cats and yappy, stupid, neurotic inbred topiary poodles are at the bottom.
So, RB, if I force-fed siamese cats to poodles, do you think I should be able to serve the liver in Chicago?
Only if there are no steroids in the poodles' system.