Grove St Cemetery

I stopped by the grove st cemetery for the first time (sad, I know) after going to the gym today. Walking around, on this beautiful sunny afternoon, I couldn't help but sense this poignant, almost tangible aura of history. We forget about these people, most of them, anyhow, and yet their lives were as meaningful and pressing and full as my own. Life is precious, of course, that's not really what I mean, though - more that I should enjoy life with some perspective, realizing that I should do everything to the fullest for my own sake, perhaps, so

I'm not sure exactly, but it made me know that I'm not afraid of dying, it's not such a sad thing, especially if your name is carved somewhere; and in the mean time, I was reminded of how lovely it is to be alive and still have this sense of urgency and worry and joy, to not yet have any sense of resignation to death, to continue to feel young and invincible! what a gift.

I kept on noticing how couples often die within months of each other. One guy had two wives, both named Sarah, both buried next to him. The first died at age 35, the second at 70-something.

Morality and Legality of Euthanasia

I just had a long conversation with two esteemed ruggers about euthanasia. Although it devolved (evolved, perhaps?) into the morality of suicide, it brought up some interesting points.

There seem to be three issues at stake:
1. the morality of taking one's own life when it's not already at stake,
2. the morality of helping someone commit suicide who wants to die or who would die anyway,
and 3. the morality of asking someone to be an accessory to, or actually perform, the acts that would cause one's immediate death.
On the legal side, we talked about how one could potentially define the times when doctor-assisted suicide is legally permissible, and also whether it makes sense for suicide to be illegal.

Other issues that came up were severe physical disability (but not enough to be on life support) or severe mental illness in the context of doctor- or family-assisted suicide. We all agreed, for the most part, that mentally ill or incompetent people should not be allowed to request a doctor-assisted suicide.

All in all a very depressing topic, but an interesting one nonetheless.

Compressed and simplified, my conclusion was that suicide should never be illegal (it only invites further stress on the family and on the potential "criminal"), but that doctors should never be asked to directly administer an injection intended to kill someone. In certain situations, allowing medical professionals to set up an IV which the person would have to administer themselves takes away a certain level of moral culpability on the part of the doctor, and adds a lot more weight to the patient's decision to end their life, since they are making all the decisions themselves. My biggest remaining uncertainty is what sort of situations merit the kind of moral and personal burden put on a doctor to perform a doctor-assisted suicide, and I can think of very, very few; they all include situations where the person is terminally ill and will die imminently anyway. Other than that, I can't think of a justification for burdening anyone with responsibility for another's untimely death - note, though, that it's not the suicide or the assistance that I have such a problem with, morally; it's asking someone to help you die that strikes me as immoral.

eek. this is such a depressing topic. Back to coffee and inspirational speeches, anyone?

My Favorite Friends

They're good for something after all, I guess...

How Liberal Arts Saved the World

From Harvard's Drew Faust's commencement speech:

A liberal education demands that you live self-consciously. It prepares you to seek and define the meaning inherent in all you do. It has made you an analyst and critic of yourself, a person in this way supremely equipped to take charge of your life and how it unfolds. It is in this sense that the liberal arts are liberal — as in liberare — to free. They empower you with the possibility of exercising agency, of discovering meaning, of making choices. The surest way to have a meaningful, happy life is to commit yourself to striving for it. Don’t settle. Be prepared to change routes. Remember the impossible expectations we have of you, and even as you recognize they are impossible, remember how important they are as a lodestar guiding you toward something that matters to you and to the world. The meaning of your life is for you to make.

Also, JK Rowling gave a great speech about imagination - not creativity, but the ability to empathize, to imagine the lives of others and take action using the great privelege and resources afforded Ivy Leaguers.

Transgender Marriage

Recently read this story on CNN.com about a couple who were recently married in Virginia, but may face charges for misleading officials, presumably because "Justin" pronounced her name with an accent on the second syllable, i.e. "Justine". Justine, who was born male, was dressed very convincingly as a woman, and may be transgendered or transsexual.

I was sort of surprised to note that all but three states change the sex on a patient's birth certificate after a sex-change operation, which allows two people born of the same sex to be granted a marriage license. Now, must we demand that Justine undergo expensive, painful surgery to be recognized as the opposite gender and get a legal marriage, if it's all under her clothes anyway? Public nudity is illegal. Seems cruel to demand someone to go that far, especially if that person could live as the opposite sex without surgery. After all, there are some seriously androgynous straight people out there that aren't required to get plastic surgery to look more traditionally (fe)male before being granted a marriage license.

This brings me to several issues.
1. The definition of "straight". Is it attraction to people who were born the opposite sex, or who look and act like society's expectation of the opposite sex? Your biological sex (or sex at birth) doesn't really determine who's going to be attracted to you - it has a lot more to do with self-presentation, health, and (gasp) personality. Biological women can look and act more like stereotypical men than most MTFs or cross-dressing men, yet the males attracted to those women are considered typically straight, and men who are into drag queens are supposedly "gay". If a woman (say a "femme", for argument's sake) is attracted to a person who looks and acts male but is biologically female, she's gay or at least "queer". Why does it matter what's under the clothes, in the eyes of the law? I somehow doubt Americans would appreciate it if they had to get naked to obtain a marriage license.

2. Transsexual marriage rights vs. gay marriage rights. If transsexual people can get married as long as they've had surgery, what's the big deal about gay people? The whole religious argument about procreation loses its footing. I'm just puzzled as to why America is so entrenched in the idea that gender is defined in the way you dress and how your bits are shaped. What if an MTF and an FTM wanted to get married but didn't have surgery? Would the MTF have to be the legal "groom"? Why should it matter to the state whether a married couple have the same genitalia, if they're condoning marriage between people who artificially (and painfully) create different genitalia? If marriage were only allowed between people born opposite sexes, at least they'd be being consistent - but then what do you do about the xxy's of the world?

The point is, gender is very difficult to define, which makes restricting marriage along gender lines a losing battle - particularly in a country where (in the eyes of the law, anyhow) female-male equality is mandated.

It all stinks of ignorance to me. It's a touchy issue, since I obviously support the right of trans people to get married - but using it in comparison to the gay marriage battle just makes me feel like things are so completely unfair.

McCain on Reproductive Rights

I'm confidently pro-choice, but even if I were pro-life, I would vote for pro-choice candidates. Why?

As do many pro-lifers, I believe that abortion should be not be used in place of regular birth control and safer sex, and that people are responsible for being proactive about safe sex (which usually means using a condom and/or taking the Pill). However, a lot of people out there haven't been educated about safe sex, due to abstinence-only education or a complete lack of sex ed; others don't have access to good quality, inexpensive condoms or birth control. Because "pro-life" politicians (McCain is a case in point) consistently attempt to block efforts to reduce the need for abortions through comprehensive sex education and condom distribution, I think it's irresponsible to be one of the lucky sexually-active people with access to condoms and education and still vote pro-life. This is especially true if one's goal in voting pro-life is to reduce or eliminate abortions (not to mention unwanted births).

Even if the basis for pro-life beliefs is religious, and one thinks no one should have sex before marriage, comprehensive sex education is still an appropriate thing to support - and therefore, voting pro-choice makes sense. I think it's fair to say that reducing the number of abortions (saving lives, some say) through sex ed is more morally pressing than keeping unmarried people from having sex in the first place (i.e. abstinence-only education). The latter doesn't work - people still have sex while they're unmarried, and often have unwanted pregnancies even while married. Reducing the need for abortions by encouraging safe sex works - so we should support candidates who recognize that reducing abortions through legal restrictions just won't do the trick - it'll happen with parallel measures that educate on and encourage responsible behavior, which, of course, includes abstinence as the best option.

The quoted text below is from an article by Arianna Huffington in response to the rumors that some Clinton supporters are planning on voting for McCain because they sense sexism in the Obama campaign. I think that'd be taking it too far...Not only is Sen. McCain vehemently pro-life and strongly in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade,

"...McCain has also consistently voted against expanding access to programs that reduce pregnancy and the need for abortion, consistently voted in favor of abstinence-only programs, and against legislation requiring insurance companies to cover birth control."

Also,

• "He voted to shut down the Title X family-planning program, which provides millions of women with health care services ranging from birth control to breast cancer screenings.
• He voted against legislation that established criminal and civil penalties for those who use threats and violence to keep women from gaining access to reproductive health clinics.
• He voted to uphold the policy that bans overseas health clinics from receiving aid from America if they use their own funds to provide legal abortion services or even adopt a pro-choice position."

A final scary thought, and another good reason why any woman and pro-choicer should vote Obama:

"What's more, McCain has made it very clear that if he becomes president he will appoint judges in the Scalia, Roberts, Alito mold. His big judicial speech earlier this month was filled with coded buzz words that make it clear that, if given the chance, he'd replace 88-year-old Justice John Paul Stevens with an anti-choice Justice who would tip the scales against Roe v Wade. Throw in an additional anti-choice replacement for the 75-year-old Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and you can kiss the right to choose good-bye for a long, long time."

Huh. Democrats aren't as divided as I thought

Recent NYT Op-Ed, on whether Clinton supporters are defecting to McCain:

"Now, there’s no question that men played a big role in Mrs. Clinton’s narrow loss, starting with Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Mark Penn. And the evidence of misogyny in the press and elsewhere is irrefutable, even if it was not the determinative factor in the race. But the notion that all female Clinton supporters became “angry white women” once their candidate lost — to the hysterical extreme where even lifelong Democrats would desert their own party en masse — is itself a sexist stereotype. That’s why some of the same talking heads and Republican operatives who gleefully insulted Mrs. Clinton are now peddling this fable on such flimsy anecdotal evidence."

"...the myth of Democratic disarray is so pervasive that when “NBC Nightly News” and The Wall Street Journal presented their new poll results last week (Obama, 47 percent; McCain, 41 percent) they ignored their own survey’s findings to stick to the clichéd script. Both news organizations (and NBC’s sibling, MSNBC) dwelled darkly on Mr. Obama’s “problems with two key groups” (as NBC put it): white men, where he is behind 20 percentage points to Mr. McCain, and white suburban women, where he is behind 6 points.

"Since that poll gives Mr. Obama not just a 19-point lead among all women but also a 7-point lead among white women, a 6-point deficit in one sliver of the female pie is hardly a heart-stopper. Nor is Mr. Obama’s showing among white men shocking news. No Democratic presidential candidate, including Bill Clinton, has won a majority of that declining demographic since 1964. Mr. Kerry lost white men by 25 points, and Mr. Gore did by 24 points (even as he won the popular vote)."