Glad someone else noticed this. The ACLU has worked against several causes (such as freedom of the press and free speech) that it would have supported once upon a time. The question is why. Possibilities I can think of are: (A) it's become controlled opposition, the leaders are secretly libertarians (unlikely) (B) it's become bloated with bureaucrats who just want to collect a paycheck and are guided by trails of money (meh) (C) It's become bloated with trend-chasers who are passionate about the latest cause de jure, and don't think about or care about other causes (D) the organization is holding on for dear life, donations are down, and they can't afford to be picky with what causes they support, whatever keeps the justice ship afloat
I suppose if you critically examine the definition of Liberty / Libertarian you could say they are such an organization. You could also get creative with definitions and claim that because they want to maintain and preserve constitutional rights they are actually a 'conservative' institution.
However in general perception they are firmly "on the left" politically and socially whereas Libertarians are perceived as "on the right" in America. Therefore I don't think the label Libertarian is fitting in this case.
Interesting, thanks. I know that people who identify as 'libertarians' in the USA tend to be right-wing, but I thought that the definition was much closer to that of 'liberal', as in 'favoring the rights of the individual'.
There has been a significant shift in what "liberal" means in the vernacular. I suspect this is because there is a habit of reducing everything down to either "liberal vs conservative" - in the US at least. I know many libertarians have started qualifying themselves as "classical liberals" in order to try and distinguish their ideology.
Not when it comes to the second amendment. They cherry-pick the Bill of Rights to suit their donors’ politics. They also seem to ignore the 10th as well.
Not particularly. For example their policy document "A Pro-Liberty Case for Gun Restrictions" is very much the opposite of the libertarian take on the issue. Their support of net neutrality laws & regulations is also un-Libertarian, although maybe you could make the argument that net neutrality is only necessary because ISPs don't operate in a true free market.
No, the phrase "controlled opposition" implies that they're for these ideals, and take up losing cases against them as a means of advancing them.
It's not very plausible, but it's a theory :)
For example, if I—a dyed-in-the-wool free speech advocate—bring a weak case against someone who wrote something unpopular, I can control the opposition within the case and ensure that I lose (and therefore my ideals are upheld).
Again, not very plausible with respect to the ACLU's drift, but that's what parent seems to be suggesting as one of the possibilities.
That's some extreme 4D chess. An organization originally founded to support free speech is infiltrated by people who support free speech who start promoting anti-free speech ideals or cases in order to weak man the anti-free speech argument.
The principles on which the organization was founded are not (at least not to the same degree) the principles of the people who now comprise it. Leaving aside why this is the case, I think it is clear that the ACLU trades on a reputation that they no longer entirely deserve.
I do genuinely wonder what it is in humans that makes them seem to inherently want a 'strong' (read: a flavor of fascist but with views that agree with mine personally) leader.
Of course - when everything is made into this "battle for America", everything matters, censorship becomes "justified" and the further the division grows.
Well, and they also disagree on where the censorship should occur.
One side is trying to prevent kindergarteners from having teachers discuss gender and sexual identity issues with them. The other is openly claiming free speech is problematic on widely available public discussion platforms, with thought leaders claiming that strict moderation of these platforms is necessary to preserve democracy.
But yes, arguably both sides are supporting some degree of censorship.
Also if we allow teachers to teach about any topics due to freedom of speech. Is that necessarily a good thing or even something we want? This could lead very varying things being taught and probably some that one side agrees and some that other side agrees with...
I think age appropriate centrally planned general plan what should be taught is entirely reasonable. Anything else just leaves to mess and unevenness.
Wow. There's literally legislation intended to have a chilling effect on certain kinds of speech - outlawing it - and you "don't think it's censorship" because you happen to disagree with said speech. It would be difficult to conjure a more prototypical example of censorship.
It's definitely censorship, just in the same way that a police department might also have rules about officers not swearing at children. Yes it restricts speech, but no, it's not inappropriate or stifling of discussion.
A more prototypical example of censorship would be government-sanctioned banning of the selling or distribution of books critical of its policies... and not just in libraries at schools for children.
You probably saw the video of Russian protesters being taken away by henchmen immediately after speaking out [1], or the video of the Chinese police interrogation for the guy who criticized them on WeChat [2]. It'd be a little obtuse to compare these to controlling what sexual education topics kindergarteners are exposed to.
I concede that your examples are more prototypical examples of censorship. That said, a law banning what teachers can or can't teach is also censorship. While it's not appropriate for teachers to teach to kindergarteners about sexual identity topics, it really shouldn't be lawmakers making those decisions (what schools should or shouldn't teach).
my impression is that some chapters/local offices are more focused on traditional civil liberties than others. but fashion is oh-so-hard to resist, especially in places like CA or TX that see themselves as being at the forefront of culture.
side note: "de jure" (by law) should be "du jour" (of the day). i just used this phrase in another post, a funny little coinky-dink (coincidence).
I live in the southeast and talk to a lot of right wing people. Nothing has really changed in my lifetime as far as right wing view points go. At least to the degree that I can't find anyone around me who supports the crazier stuff I see online.
What does “further right” mean? Positions the left would have never taken 10 years ago are now commonplace. The idea that a Supreme Court nominee is too afraid to even define what a woman is (due to her lack of biology credentials apparently) — that would have been laughable 10 years ago. The Democrat position on abortion, during the Clinton admin was “safe, legal, rare.” Now it’s “abortion for any reason at any stage of pregnancy, even up to the moment of birth.” That’s an extreme position. And on illegal immigration — Barbara Jordan’s position is identical to the position republicans have maintained for decades. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=3qjdZUx7fUw
So a world without Roe v Wade (for example) with the threat of Dred Scott style extradition for those who cross state borders, isn't a further-right position than when Roe was still in place? Immigration policies/attitudes aren't further right than in the days when "bring me your tired" meant something? You don't remember the days when finance and media and airlines were more tightly regulated? When unions were stronger? Do you really need me to cite the many studies from actual political scientists and sociologists showing the rightward trend, vs. your cherry picked anecdata? I thought this was all well known, but perhaps it's not so obvious behind HN's own rightward shift.
IMO the answer as to why is that Ira Glasser was replaced by Anthony Romero as executive director in 2001, and Romero substantially reoriented the organization.
…since Trump’s election, according to The New York Times, the organization’s annual budget has grown threefold and its lawyer staff has doubled—but only four of its attorneys specialize in free-speech issues, a number that has not changed in a decade.
Instead, the ACLU has expanded its services—and filled its coffers—as it takes partisan stances or embraces dubious causes. Meanwhile, when it comes to the red-hot culture-war issues squarely within its wheelhouse, such as the right to free, albeit hateful, speech on campus, the ACLU has stayed largely on the sidelines.
It seems our corrupt political class has rotted one of our most venerable institutions.
Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee from these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
I'm not an overly religious person, but this seems to ring true as much today as it ever has.
I think it's more than just the political class. It seems like the entirety of american culture revolves around the idea that everyone should want to get rich by any means necessary.
It's like those pictures of bulldogs from the early 20th century. They look like real dogs, they don't have the health problems, and they just seem to be better. But then it becomes a competition. There is a public standard for success. And now we have flat faced monsters that can't breed on their own and need surgery just to breathe.
We're just seeing the natural progression of American individualism. What used to mean - be strong in the face of adversity, work toward a positive goal, and bring others along once you make it, has become a monstrosity. Winning means amassing resources, regardless of the steps you take to get those resources. Oh, and don't forget to pull the ladder up after you, because if someone else wins, you lose.
What we're seeing is the evolution, the simple, natural evolution of stoic individualism taken to the nth degree.
I think the timeline of mass media, public relations weaponizing psychology, and consumerism being the focus of media messaging are relevant to that change — rather than it being the inevitable outcome of stoic individualism.
I think those are just further extensions. When all that matters is winning, and my own winning, the psychological outcomes of weaponized marketing literally don't matter. When my corporation selling things is what matters, and my success is what matters this quarter, rampant consumerism and the inevitable impacts on society/the planet don't matter.
Honestly, I do believe it all comes down to the cultural individualism as the prime component of success. Other countries have the same PR, mass media, and consumer goods, but don't seem to have the same cut-throat attitude to absolutely everything in their lives.
I completely disagree. I think this is the result of the war on the middle class and how expensive it has become just to stay alive in america. Social media platforms also promote the hell out of "grindset" accounts, or accounts that are just rich people doing expensive activities, and I refuse to believe that these trends that appear overnight are actually organic at all.
It feels like we're being conditioned to hate poor people.
I was a long-time ACLU supporter until a couple of years when they pivoted away from their free-speech mission. Is there any organization that carries that mantle now?
The Trump era really broke something in people's brains. Politics started invading everywhere at a level much greater than had ever existed before. I don't go to work, watch sports, or share pictures with the intent to engage in politics.
How do you know they're fake? If you were to be convinced they were real, would you then share the EFF's opinion, or do you believe Stallman shouldn't be judged on this?
> The Trump era really broke something in people's brains.
The mainstream media did a great job of outraging liberals because whenever trump said anything even remotely controversial, it was covered nonstop until he said the next thing. I think a lot of people ended up being outraged for 5 straight years, and came to the conclusion that the idea of free speech is "a danger to our democracy".
> The mainstream media did a great job of outraging liberals because whenever trump said anything even remotely controversial, it was covered nonstop until he said the next thing.
To be fair, I bet you could measure the average interval of those events in hours.
Yeah sure, but so what? Was him getting two scoops of ice cream really worth covering? Something I like to ask people is, how did any of it actually effect your life? The only noticeable change in my life from his presidency was that I paid less in taxes.
I'm just tired of pretending any of it means anything anymore. Both parties won't fix the roads, both parties won't give us healthcare, both parties are pro-war. Why should anyone care who the president is?
Personally, it's a huge red flag when anyone in any sort of leadership position in the american military is against any kind of conflict, because they are usually all for it. I also can't help but wonder how this would be reported if these leaders did this to obama. I really wish they did!
This is nonsensical. What the article is describing is political trash talk, with absolutely nothing to back it up. Typical article published during that time period, and emblematic of the media circus that surrounded Trump.
Yes. Even this week, we have the news that his supreme court nominees are voting to strike down abortion protections, and I have female friends and family in states with trigger laws.
This is a pretty strange week to say that: The president nominates supreme court judges, and the rulings of those judges can make a big difference in your life: For instance, whether there's a right to abortion in the US or not.
Whether you are in favor or against, it's easy to argue that a whole lot of people care about that issue, and not only in purely theoretical grounds.
And that's just the topic of the week: A justice is, on average, going to be making rulings for about 30 years, and is probably going to be able to retire strategically, to be replaced by a like-minded judge. So even if it's just due to the power of electing supreme court justices, presidents matter.
So I don't think it's hard to argue that, because of Trump's presidency, we'll have a very conservative supreme court for, very likely, our entire lifetimes, while if Clinton had won, we'd instead have a liberal majority in the court for at least another 20 years.
Even without the abortion decision, the court will make a big practical difference to a lot of people. I think it's fair to expect wide sweeping decisions that would never have happened without Trump being able to build a 6-3 court.
> This is a pretty strange week to say that: The president nominates supreme court judges, and the rulings of those judges can make a big difference in your life: For instance, whether there's a right to abortion in the US or not.
i'm sorry, but what the supreme court DRAFT said was: "there's no constitutional right to abortion. also this should've been decided by representatives of the people".
i'm not sure why that's a bad thing -- supreme court justices should not legislate and, if abortion is such an important thing for one side of the isle, they should fight, tooth and nail, to get laws (actual laws, not flimsy decisions by non-elected officials) passed.
What is this ice cream strawman? Dude popped off with lies and idiotic remarks routinely, was proud of an inhumane immigration policy, wanted to yank people's healthcare, cozied up to dictators, etc. It's disgusting how much some people defend him.
I appreciate the sentiment, but I humbly ask that you don't comment about votes. It's against the guidelines, and imo it's just a waste of an indentation level. But the worst part is that you cannot know what the number of votes will be in the future, so your comment is only relevant the exact moment you post it.
Fine. I'll just say. "Some may not like your opinion" - also it's a bit rude to suggest someone's thoughts are not 'worth an indentation level' mr. HN elite.
While 2016-2020 did seem particularly crazy in how every little thing got outrage coverage, I remember similar things from Obama's presidency. Things like the week long outrage over him asking for dijon mustard on his burger. I also felt a lot of parallels between Trump and his tax returns / ties with Russia and Obama with his citizenship conspiracies/outrage.
I don't know if recency bias plays into the Trump stuff feeling way more covered, or if it actually was, but I'm not sure media did particularly more this time around compared to last. Maybe it was just who the target audience for outrage was this time, instead of the amount of coverage.
Not really sure of my point, but food for thought to the lurkers I guess.
I don't disagree that our media sucks and chooses to cover things that I don't think are important.
I have a very clear memory of a fox news headline disparaging obama for taking his jacket off in the white house, because apparently that was against the custom or whatever. And I thought, who cares, and it was then I knew that I shouldn't take fox seriously. But then, when trump was elected, I saw cnn spend a whole day talking about how trump got two scoops of ice cream and everyone else only got one, and had the same realization.
But I have to disagree with the idea that these stories were spread to the same degree. Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. And you can argue that "that's just the algorithm" or whatever, but it is what it is, which is biased.
> Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat.
I had always rationalized this with the thought that these platforms had larger Democrat populations than Republican, which explains the broadcast bias. Maybe that is an incorrect assumption.
This is just because you didn't watch Fox. Fox and Limbaugh had been milking the idea that news should be about invoking outrage and gaslighting for a very long time. MSNBC copied the model starting about 2010, and then every single news outlet realized it was the best business model by the time Trump came into office.
I don't think there's a particular left/right/whatever bent to running this business model. It's just that there isn't a lot of news that engages people in this world, so you cannot sustain a 24/7 media empire unless you wrap them up in a conspiracy or create a false narrative that there's some evil group that their news is fighting against with the truth. Then, all of a sudden, some random person's Tweet about mixed sex bathrooms becomes an hour's worth of news to engage people with.
While Fox does have large market share it was the only major media company that was constantly critical of Obama. When it comes to Trump NBC, ABC, CBS, MSNBC, CNN, and whoever else were all critical of Trump. It felt far more widespread when it came to Trump.
I don't think anything during the Obama years comes remotely close to the 2+ years of wall-to-wall coverage of Russian collusion that failed to materialize... and that's just the most obvious case.
Except it did materialize. There were indictments that arose from that investigation, and we know they were interested in acquiring Russian "dirt" on Clinton. If you expected something more dramatic or obvious, that's uninformed and naive.
It was two years of incessant media coverage, fully including open discussion of whether or not Trump or his family members would be indicted. If you expected anything less, you were not consuming mainstream media [1].
There was a lot of debate over whether Trump even could be indicted, whether Mueller would even if he had the evidence, etc., and such discussions did make it into coverage by the "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh).
It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare.
It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
> "mainstream media" (I am generally wary of people who use that term tbh).
It's just a shorter phrase than "ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, all late night comedy shows, SNL, and nearly all newspapers." It becomes a bit of a mouthful. It's the most neutral form of phrasing all of this media that seems to lean toward the same political party, though I'll accept recommendations if you have a better term.
> It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare.
It wasn't just my expectations, and I absolutely do expect news media saturation of a story to correlate with its actual relevance. Instead, they over-hyped and sold outrage day after day until the rubber hit the road. And then they just moved on. The idea that one should have simply ignored all the supposed journalists and reporting to read one guy's legal blog (???) seems bizarre to me. This is a very revisionist view of those 2+ years.
> It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
I'm not excusing anything. I'm saying the media hyped this up as "Watergate times a thousand" over a two year stretch, and it ended up being nothing near that.
Lawfare is not an obscure legal blog, it's a highly regarded legal publication featuring a lot of expert analysis. The fact you dismissed it as "one guy's legal blog" is a good indication you're not very adept at assessing and processing information about any of this, including the full import and seriousness of the actions at issue.
I think you're completely right. There are, in fact, numerous topics for which I don't have the resources or expertise to fully comprehend and make judgments about. That's why I, like most people, ultimately depend on news media to keep me informed.
...and that's why it's a big problem when they spend 2+ years building up hype around a story whose ramifications are far less than we were led to believe.
There were times when that was going on that I honestly wondered whether Trump was a genius. I can't thing of anything he did from a legislative perspective that was really problematic but he exerted almost total control of the media cycle 140 characters at a time.
Huge tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy without cutting services would be the first thing I'd ding his administration on.
Not stopping the family separation at the southern border.
Sending bad medical advice and politicizing response to a national healthcare crisis with COVID-19.
Abandoning Puerto Rico after a devastating Hurricane.
Not offering a replacement for Obamacare as promised, instead only gutting the process to make it more expensive for people who still try to get insurance. Especially for not implementing a single payer healthcare system like the entire rest of the civilized world uses to offer much more efficient healthcare to the populace.
Not fixing the Social Security deficit.
Engaging in a trade war with China without an apparent exit strategy.
> Huge tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy without cutting services would be the first thing I'd ding his administration on.
Agreed. The lack of accompanying service cuts really kept this from being as effective as it could have been.
> Abandoning Puerto Rico after a devastating Hurricane.
Yea, that was really bad.
> Engaging in a trade war with China without an apparent exit strategy.
I was actually pretty happy with how that went. A lot of progress was made, including stopping China from being able to abuse our own postal service to undercut local vendors on shipping. Before Covid hit, I was most looking forward to seeing continued progress there.
> Sending bad medical advice and politicizing response to a national healthcare crisis with COVID-19.
I'm not going to go deep into this, but suffice it to say it was an election year and everything was politicized by everyone.
Everything below here is just maintaining the status quo. I wouldn't call any of these Trump specific.
> Not stopping the family separation at the southern border.
This is admittedly horrifying, however, the amount of people coming over the border without any identification combined with the potential for trafficking makes it a complicated problem to solve. Not solving it was also just maintaining the status quo.
> Not offering a replacement for Obamacare as promised, instead only gutting the process to make it more expensive for people who still try to get insurance. Especially for not implementing a single payer healthcare system like the entire rest of the civilized world uses to offer much more efficient healthcare to the populace.
Agreed and disappointing. It's also an incredibly hard problem to solve without turning the entire country upside down. Dangling the carrot is easier (for both parties).
> Not fixing the Social Security deficit.
Been a problem for years that neither party is willing to make the hard decisions to correct.
> whenever trump said anything even remotely controversial, it was covered nonstop until he said the next thing.
Which was typically the next day. Trying to follow the Trump White House was exhausting.
Trump knew how to play the media like a fiddle. Say something outrageous, get loads of coverage, before anybody has time to really think about it or offer rebuttals he says something else outrageous and the first statement is instantly old news and forgotten.
News organizations made huge profits while Trump was in office, and their ratings have slipped considerably since electing President Biden and especially since Trump was kicked off of Twitter.
Makes me really miss the days when the biggest outrage in media was which flavor of ice cream Obama liked. It felt like people were a lot more open to just laughing at things back then. Now so much political discourse is about calling the opposition evil in some way.
Could also just be the fact that I was a young teen then with little care for the world beyond school and friends.
It was an intentional distraction from the real story, which was the vast theft of trillions of dollars through bullshit tax cuts and pointed neglect for the key things that keep society functioning, like boring stuff--infrastructure, education, generational investments, rule of law, international politics, energy policy, environmental issues, etc. Nope, the rage grabbed eyeballs. Eyeballs meant ads. Ads meant dollars. Dollars meant kaching for the media powers. And the stock market! So much shareholder value!
I'd really love an answer to this question myself as I was similiarly a moderate supporter of the ACLU. Also I completely agree on your thoughts on the Trump era.
> Is there any organization that carries that mantle now?
It depends on whether you're willing to support an organization which also cares about other rights too. If you can stomach the defense of property rights, ij.org and pacificlegal.org both defend free speech rights alongside other rights.
I recall when Trump was elected a huge amount of money went to the ACLU and that is when they really took a turn towards who was paying them. Recall this was the organization that would represent white supremacists as an absolutist for free speech.
Conservatives have historically had problems with free speech when it came to things they view as contrary to "family values", and later on with Trump branding the press as "The enemy of the people". But in the last 5-10 years liberals have as well had a problem with free speech with things they determine is "hate speech".
So now there aren't many people left that support the cause of absolute free speech regardless of whether you agree or disagree, and we have the ACLU catering more towards liberal causes and less on free speech cases.
> The Trump era really broke something in people's brains.
It was mass experiment in what specific types of rage they love subjecting themselves to, fueled by an ungodly amount of computational power, in order to prop up and expand a vast ad-delivery network that masquerades as news.
The daily rage was hugely profitable for all media participants and don't let them tell you anything different. The internet found its crack cocaine and us poor subjects are just tweaking for another hit.
>The heart of Depp’s claim is that Heard ruined his acting career when she published a 2018 op-ed in The Washington Post describing herself as “a public figure representing domestic abuse”—a thinly veiled reference to much-publicized accusations of assault she made against Depp in court filings toward the end of their short-lived marriage. But Heard hadn’t pitched the idea to the Post—the ACLU had. Terence Dougherty, the organization’s general counsel, testified via video deposition that the ACLU had spearheaded the effort and served as Heard’s ghostwriter in exchange for her promise to donate $3.5 million to the organization. The promised donation also bought Heard the title of ACLU “ambassador on women’s rights with a focus on gender-based violence.” When Heard failed to pay up, Doughtery said, the ACLU collected $100,000 from Depp himself, and another $500,000 from a fund connected to Elon Musk, whom Heard dated after the divorce.
I have not been paying much attention to this case (I actually thought it was just a messy divorce case), but man, fuck the ACLU. How is anyone supposed to take any of this seriously anymore? She didn't even write the piece herself? How was the ACLU able to "collect" money from both Johnny Depp and Elon Musk??
What a disgrace the ACLU has become, and unfortunately I think most people still see them as the freedom-fighters they used to be.
> When Heard failed to pay up, Doughtery said, the ACLU collected $100,000 from Depp himself, and another $500,000 from a fund connected to Elon Musk, whom Heard dated after the divorce.
It doesn't really specify what the ACLU said or did to get that money. I'm curious what those methods were and if Depp (or Musk) were aware of the ACLU's involvement or the pay to play relationship between Heard and the ACLU.
In Depp’s case, he paid the first $100,000 of the $7M divorce settlement directly to the ACLU — and she flipped out and demanded the money go to her, rather than directly to the charities she pledged it to: the ACLU and a children’s hospital.
Heard never donated the balance of her divorce settlement she publicly pledged.
Ah, okay, thanks for the clarification! That actually makes it kind of funny. I guess there's the possibility of some kind of blackmail, but I don't think musk would let himself be blackmailed quietly.
But still, it doesn't seem like the ACLU should be involved in this.
The ACLU was trying to cash in on #metoo (which was timely, when this was published) — and published Heard’s defamation of Depp, apparently ignoring the numerous flags everyone else could see that Heard was the one abusing Depp.
But during the height of #metoo, we weren’t “allowed” to ask those questions because we needed to “believe all women”.
This seems to imply that Depp did not abuse Heard, which was not the view of the judge in the UK defamation trial (he ruled that 12 out of 14 incidents of abuse perpetrated by Depp had been proven to a civil standard).
It looks like Heard also abused Depp on at least a few occasions. But there seems to be this online sentiment at the moment that Heard is a compulsive liar and that she did not suffer abuse at all. There seems to be clear public evidence to the contrary.
> There seems to be clear public evidence to the contrary.
I would encourage you to examine the evidence.
Heard’s claims weren’t critically examined in the UK — who took her statements at face value while discounting both physical evidence and testimony of others.
By contrast in Virginia, where Heard is the subject of forensic analysis, both forensic psychologists have stated that Heard abused Depp — while there has been zero evidence (except Heard’s wild claims) to support that Depp ever acted similarly.
There is only evidence that Heard abused Depp.
A lawyer on YouTube has been streaming the Virginia trial and posting daily recaps, LegalBytes.
> there has been zero evidence (except Heard’s wild claims) to support that Depp ever acted similarly.
I'm a bit confused about this point - didn't Depp & his witnesses go first? I'd expect the majority of Heard's evidence in this trial to come out (and be examined) over the next couple of weeks.
If she calls witnesses that corroborate what you call her 'wild claims', would that change your opinion?
Yes — that’s why I’m watching the trial: to see the evidence.
Though, Heard’s case has already started: the second forensic psychologist was hired by Heard and called as her witness and Heard herself is currently giving her testimony (which, watching it in full I find unconvincing and in conflict with evidence already presented).
We already have the witness list and know roughly what to expect. The main thing going against Amber is that we've heard from the officers that responded to a couple incidences and each officer has testified as to not observing any injuries nor any damage to the penthouse. There are also zero medical records reporting the injuries she claims to have sustained.
Her witness list does not include anyone that will refute those points and is mainly filled with people whose only account of what happened between Johnny/Amber is what they've heard from Amber.
Just a sample of her claims thus far:
> Walked across a tile floor covered in glass shards from broken bottles and wine
> Sexual assault with a (potentially broken) wine bottle
> Thrown across a room by the neck
> Beaten on top of a bed so forcefully as to have broken the timber bed frame
It's a mess. Looks like that Miss Heard promised $3.5m to ACLU and $3.5 to a children hospital but didn't pay anything to the hospital and only donated like $350k herself to the ACLU. It's pretty wild when Miss Heard told on public television that she donated the full $7m to both parties (in 2018). You wonder what else she is lying about.
Sorry, I meant $3.5m for the hospital. The amount that Amber received was $7m tax free that would be split between the two, $500k for attorney fees, and ~$14m communal labilities to be paid by Depp. $7m + ~$14m + $500k + taxes is quite a lot for a 15 month long marriage
As a counterpoint, accusations of "violence" get thrown around with little restraint. "Silence is Violence" but I've also found that disagreements can equate to "denying my right to exist".
That was the point of Ira Glasser's stance. Him and other ACLU members defended the right of Neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois. Glasser himself and many of the other attorneys on the case were Jewish. They were protecting the rights of people demonstrating to advocate for doing violence against people like them.
Viewpoints like this are mostly gone these days in the US. Liberalism has become unpopular on the Left (and it's always been just a suggestion on the Right in my experience).
Most liberal countries have restrictions on outright hate speech. It's definitely possible to be a liberal and also oppose the right of Nazis to advocate for mass genocide.
Who defines hate speech? Do you need agreement from 100% of citizens or can a few politicians decide what a country can and cannot say legally before running afoul of hate speech laws?
Who defines what constitutes murder, what food safety regulations are, or any of a million other laws? It really doesn't seem like an unsolvable problem
Free Speech isn't a "liberal" or a "conservative" value, it's an American value.
The reason "hate speech" exists in European countries is because they have unresolved baggage from WWII, and rather than confront the problem, they decided to put a boot down and curtail civil liberties instead. None of that is relevant to the USA or has any bearing on our politics.
The word "liberal" has been mangled to the point where it is essentially meaningless. As far as I'm concerned, anyone who believes the government should have the power to regulate the content of your speech, at the point of a gun, is in no way "liberal".
There we have a case of prominent Jewish lawyers defending the right of Neo-Nazis, a group of people who advocate for violence against Jews, to protest. Here we have people suggesting we need legal restrictions around hate speech. Do you see the difference of values?
Liberalism is about guaranteeing individuals' rights in the face of the State. My point is that the Left in the US has lost interest in it and are more interested in pursuing their policies regardless of how it affects freedoms. The Right has never really cared for Liberalism and so it's falling out of favor.
Holding a desire to do violence is even more protected than saying it out loud or writing it down, which are also generally protected if they aren’t imminent incitement.
Also, by now I've seen so many breathless statements by leftists who are literally shaking rn that so-and-so "denies my right to exist" and "wants me dead" that it doesn't even look like anything to me anymore. It's just a slogan. Letters of the alphabet strung together.
If you're so completely devoid of empathy that you have no reaction to hearing that someone is afraid for their for their life, that says a lot more about you than it does about them.
I don't think you have enough info to really judge OP. There's a reason everybody learns the boy who cried wolf story as a kid - it's human nature to become desensitized to something after frequent false alarms.
It's worth considering how recent advances in things like gay rights are, and how much more is left for things like trans rights. Why should I care more about debate club than about being able to make medical decisions for my significant other? It's one thing to consider a situation from afar, but having it bear down on you directly gives you a very different perspective.
I mean sure, but you're making the discussion about a different (albeit related) issue than I was trying to address.
For one thing, your comment states concrete concerns that could directly affect you, as opposed to the vague "fear for my life" sort of comments OP was referring to.
But more importantly, my question is not whether OP was correct, it is whether stating this opinion on an internet forum with little other context is somehow enough info to make a judgement about his empathy/morals.
> Why should I care more about debate club than about being able to make medical decisions for my significant other?
Because for every loud/news visible minority like some LGBT folks there are others like Southeast Asians who nobody is caring about. By focusing on laws we can uplift _all_ minorities, not just the ones we identify as. The victories of a Neo Nazi's ability to publicly demonstrate can help Southeast Asians or African Americans demonstrate against police brutality or fight for equity in hiring, pay, and crime.
Not all minorities have hugely visible movements advocating for their rights. The modern LGBT movement is very visible and very online. My dark-skinned PoC parents are poor, speak bad English, and need a lot of help to navigate the US. Nobody is focusing on them.
If you’ve been paying any attention to US politics over the last few years, it is pretty clear they’re talking about police killings of black people and/or hate crimes directed at Asians and LGBT folks
Yes these are certainly problems that should be addressed. School shootings are also a problem that should be addressed, but it would be hyperbolic to say you feared for your life going into school every day. Some of the language that is used surrounding those other issues creates unnecessary anxiety IMO.
But that's not really my main point, I'm certainly open to debate on the topic. I just don't agree with the character judgement of OP - we have no idea how his circle talks.
I've personally encountered two people that were clearly attention seeking or perhaps had an anxiety disorder with the way they talked about such issues. One example was a black female born into the upper middle class, working from home as a SWE in a gated community during the pandemic, saying quite literally that she actively feared for her life due to police violence.
To be clear, I do not think the existence of that extreme invalidates the legitimate underlying concerns at all. They've also been a minority of the voices in my experience. I'm just saying that language starts to lose its meaning if you encounter too many of these types, and I have seen with my own eyes that they exist.
The right response is probably not to outright dismiss a statement about fearing for one's life, but some amount of skepticism is normal if it's been a false alarm in the past. Especially on an internet forum with random strangers.
I have tons of empathy, but I won’t coddle strangers on the internet over their dramatic rhetoric. It’s not sincere, it’s polemical, and I’m not buying it. If it is sincere, they need therapy not empathy. Get some perspective on your situation and don’t cry wolf.
Nice try with the “you must be a monster!” tactic.
That tweet is almost as bad as people who bring up the paradox of tolerance.
Morals have always and will always be relative to who’s alive at the time. Dril is just speaking power to truth, since their morals are winning for now.
> In 1978, the ACLU succcessfully [sic] defended the right of neo-Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, a community populated by Holocaust survivors. But in 2018, following the ACLU’s successful litigation to obtain a permit for white supremacists to march in Charlottesville, Virginia, which ended in death and disaster, the ACLU issued new guidelines. Citing concerns about “limited resources” and “the potential effect on marginalized groups,” the organization cautioned its lawyers to take special care when considering whether to represent groups whose “values are contrary to our values.”
First off. A professor writes a mere 1,000 word article for a major publication and it has typos. Yikes.
Second, the author points to action the ACLU took to defend the right of white supremacists to march in Charlottesville in 2018 and then tries to say they've changed position but doesn't demonstrate that with any proof of similar action or inaction -- just words. IMO actions are more important than words and if the ACLU's actions are still in line with the mission you say you agree with, this is much ado about nada.
>I view the ACLU’s hard-left turn with alarm. It smacks of intolerance and choosing sides, precisely what a civil-liberties organization designed to defend the Bill of Rights is meant to oppose.
The ACLU has clearly been infiltrated and coopted by the same authoritarian ideologues running amok in almost all of our other institutions. Manufactured by degree mills where children take on tens of thousands in debt for the privilege of progressive indoctrination.
>Progressive causes are near and dear to my heart. I am a feminist and staunch Democrat. As a federal public defender turned law professor, I have spent my career trying to make change in a criminal legal system that is riven with racism and fundamentally unfair to those without status and financial resources
The author is complicit but in typical progressive fashion totally oblivious to her role in the rise of this activist class. She made her bed and now we all get to lay in it, surrounded by irrational diversity propaganda while forced to keep quiet in the face of genuine systemic racism under implicit threat of retaliation.
Overt discrimination against straight white males? Mandated by investors through ESG contingent funding and pushed down the chain by C-suite executives who have attended mandatory "diversity" reeducation seminars (literal racial/gendered propaganda), implemented by (overwhelmingly female) degree mill graduates in HR who viciously suppress any dissent against this particular systemically sanctioned discrimination.
That would fit the bill for systemic racism/sexism and it isn't merely alleged like that of D&I proponents.
Discrimination against straight white males? Presumably everyone would agree straight white males were given huge privileges in the long tail history of America. (That's a pretty easy reading of history.)
So, if your claim is that they are now discriminated against- what was the inflection point where they were treated with no net bias?
Perhaps the reason it feels like discrimination is because those privileges are eroding?
>Presumably everyone would agree straight white males were given huge privileges in the long tail history of America. (That's a pretty easy reading of history.)
No, that's a biased, agendad reading of history which ignores that the vast majority of these unfairly privileged white males were competing with other males who shared the same privilege. It does not justify discrimination against individuals today. It also does not demonstrate how a 90% majority benefited from workplace discrimination against the minority. Those inconvenient details are handwaved away with accusations of bigotry.
>So, if your claim is that they are now discriminated against- what was the inflection point where they were treated with no net bias?
Given the rate with which this cultural shift has progressed, there may not have been an obvious inflection point. But that's irrelevant to my argument.
In typical fashion you are simultaneously rationalizing discriminatory hiring practices (as though historic privilege requires modern correction) and denying that they are being mandated (as though D&I initiatives do not put implicit and explicit pressure against hiring white males). And the dishonesty is infuriating.
Perhaps the reason it feels like discrimination is because those privileges are eroding?
It feels like discrimination because it is discrimination.
Stop being so USA centric anyway. This crap gets exported around the world. Even if you accept the evil "corruption of blood" type propositions, people who live in countries that never had any of the racial history of the USA end up suffering from your racist and sexist nonsense.
But this particular sub-thread is about the ideology the ACLU is pushing, which unfortunately gets propagated by American companies, American employees, and dumb locals who imitate what they see on TV.
Vague memory is that the ACLU ran off into the organization disfunction weeds quite a few years ago, with the CEO and Board suing each other, and other fun.
But at least from a quick skim of their Wikipedia page, there's no sign of that being true.
Anyone else have a similar memory? Or "true story, but it actually was {name of some other organization here}"?
You might be thinking of the Southern Poverty Law Center -
"In 2019, founder Morris Dees was fired, which was followed by President Richard Cohen's resignation. An outside consultant, Tina Tchen, was brought in to review workplace practices, particularly relating to accusations of racial and sexual harassment. Margaret Huang, who was formerly the Chief Executive at Amnesty International USA, was named as president and CEO of the SPLC in early February 2020."
I mean the fact that they can run a false flag in order to incite hatred towards a major political party, get caught, and get away with it with zero consequences is just mind-blowing.
They're exercising their right to free speech (specifically free political expression, which is more or less the same thing under US law).
If you think that's a bad thing, you're arguing that there should be limits to it, which is counter to what seems to be the majority opinion of... well, the members the Lincoln Project oppose, judging by this thread.
I'm not just pointing this out to be smug, but because I genuinely believe a majority of the people on the right who claim to be free speech absolutists in this thread would agree with you upon reading your comment, because it's a reasonable concern to have. Almost no one is actually a free speech absolutist, when push comes to shove it usually comes down to an objection to which speech is being censored, and how often.
You could also interprete the downvotes as a community indication that your comment is lacking in content or insight, or is some other way insufficiently interesting.
When you start labeling non-violent political interest groups as "domestic terrorists" for the simple reason of "we disagree with them morally", you should lose all legitimacy.
yeah the guy who made them a big deal "ira glasser" basically chose some guy he had known for not that long as his successor. mostly because he was gay and latino. and that guy ended up not believing anything that the ACLU stood for and taking it to just be an arm of the democratic party. (Anthony d romero)
Not sure if directly relevant but they are focusing on DEI so this is across staff. That has led to some tension between the old guard (white supremacist / civil rights supporters depending on view) and new guard (equality / human rights focus).
They had bylaws historically which emphasized "wholly without political partisanship" as well, though I think that's probably long gone by now.
I don't think there were ever white supremacists at the ACLU. Who would that have been? I think DEI is a heavy mistake to pursue. I get the incentive but the method is lacking and everyone will lose.
Sorry, the view is more that traditional civil liberties reinforces white supremacist power structures (I think the ACLU actually has a page on this?). So that those in the ACLU perusing what were some of those "traditional" civil liberties things (free speech etc) were supporting white supremacy. The ACLU has moved away from that towards some of the speech = violence approach which then basically allows a violent response.
The ACLU lost its way a long time ago and that's not really news because it's in the "good" company of most non-profits.
We all "know" they are rotten but we are still "shocked" when we learn exactly what they do - aka "How the sausage is made".
It reminds me that time ( possibly now ) when Politico's "journalists" went around the World asking money from Governments and other public institutions in order for them to write good things about them ( visibility!! ) but also "asking" money to not write bad things about them..
Sometimes the drunk bums around the corner are 100% right: this shit stinks!!!
Can you remember where you read the allegation about Politico? It isn’t in the “controversies” section of the Politico Wiki page [0] and a couple of Google searches for things like “politico corruption” and “politico pay for articles” weren’t helpful.
Sure, but people have to fight for their rights. The world doesn't swing towards freedom automatically. The rise of authoritarianism around the world (China, Russia, etc.) makes that clear.
It shifted because the powers that be saw an actual unified, targeted movement aimed against the ultra rich (occupy), and got scared. So now, instead of fighting against the people who own the government, we are fighting each other based on skin color. So progressive!
Nothing really shifted to the left, certainly not the DNC. We just gave Bezos a $10B bailout. The rich are getting richer and richer. Roe is being overturned. There is not "far-left" presence in the US with any actual power. The right-wing (and Elon) freakout about the "far-left" is about people expressing their gripes with the state of things online, much of it being actual, salient criticism that gets handwaved away as "communism."
There isn't a single far-left politician in the federal government. There are a few that are maybe left of center, but "far-left?" Absolutely not.
Show me a rep or senator calling for public ownership of the means of production and then we have a conversation, but there simply isn't one. Nobody with a say is advocating for abolishing money, the state, class, etc. Even the list of politicians that support worker unions is really short. The furthest left US politicians go is social democracy, which is just democracy with strong safety nets to help keep as many people as possible from rock bottom.
I'm outside the US, but I see similar issues everywhere. I think it's time modern democracies stoped having "representative of the people" voting on laws. Laws should be considered each on their own value, and everybody should be able to vote for/against them.
Unfortunately, United States has a population of ~330 million and that would mean a House of Representatives with 33,000 members. There's no way it would be able to effectively deliberate topics with that many people. Just imagine how little time each representative could be allocated to speak, given there are only 8,760 hours in a year. Additionally the individual power of each representative would be so watered down as to be practically meaningless.
It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense.
Why do people need to debate on the house floor? Do such debates actually change anyone's mind or how they vote? Let them debate in an electronic forum with written arguments, let them debate in public and on social media (a good portion of political debate already happens on social media). Debate on the floor isn't so sacred we can't do without it.
And yes, the power of individual representatives would be watered down, that's ok. It would be much closer to the direct democracy the parent comment suggested (and the reason I brought it up).
It allows representatives to deal with boring bills the public doesn't care about, but there are enough representatives that I can reasonably expect to be on a first name basis with my representative if I care enough to get involved.
Debate on the floor of the House and Senate is largely faked for TV cameras already in the current era.
CSPAN camera angles are limited on purpose to hide this, but most speeches are given to an empty or nearly empty chamber. Actual floor debate that might change viewpoints is rare to non-existent now - the real debate and discussion happens off of the floor in private intra-party meetings and lunches, or in 1:1 meetings between leadership.
The "citizens", the people who could vote, did pretty well. Not surprisingly, laws were not so good for slaves and other non-citizens, laws were not good for the people who could not vote.
Look how favourable our current laws are to politicians!!
In my country a law saying "you don't have to work, but you still get 10k eur from the government" would win by a huge margin... how this would actually work, noone cares...
Sadly, an average person is stupid, and half are even stupider.
There are countries that do something close to that, and it does in fact work. In many, many ways. Basic Income is a very real and powerful thing.
Reduced crime, increased economic strength, increased education and skills, better overall wellbeing, a stronger economy, better health.
Whichever European country you're in, I'd wager that the .1% are using tax loopholes and straight up fraud to fleece more taxpayer money than 10k per citizen would cost.
Sounds a bit like you're a victim of class war propaganda. Try looking into BI and how it actually works.
Then specialists will explain that to be able to spend this, other budgets will have to be cut, like healthcare.
If people are stupid and we need to be ruled by elites, then why do we have democracies? Why popular vote? Shouldn't we have PhD's decide who are rulers are?
Lookup "sortition", experiences show that common people tend to make better decison for the good of society, while any "club" (politicians, elites) end up working towards expanding their power.
It's really a shame that my options right now are either the anti-freedom "no abortions, no weed, and absolutely no criticizing us" party, or the anti-freedom "no critical thinking, no guns, and absolutely no criticising us" party. Unfortunately under first past the post tribalism is rewarded, and moving to the center only gives room for a more radical same-party challenger to appear making you both lose. In my opinion, the greatest boost to freedom in current American politics would be the introduction of a better voting system[0] to allow third parties to exist and encourage them to work together to legislate.
[0] I prefer score voting, but I'll vote for anyone who will get any alternate form of voting out there. For an easy explanation of the different voting systems, look at https://ncase.me/ballot/
Come to slovenia... we just had an election which was (a bit simplified), "a bad guy we have now, and most people hate, but right leaning grandmas like" vs "a guy we didn't know existed two months ago, but media propped him up, and he's the only chance to take on the current guy".
Because of the voting systems, parties need 4% of the votes to make it into the parliament, and all the votes for <4% parties are basically "lost".
The end effect was people not voting for the "new guy" because they liked the new guy, but because they didn't want the new guy to stay, causing a huge discrepancy between the the parties they actually wanted to win vs the voting results.
Because freedom of speech has never been quite what it says. It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech".
Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away.
All that is happening is that people want everyone to live by the same rules. Either nobody has consequences or everybody can have the soapbox taken away if the general public doesn't agree with them.
Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. So it is reasonable that questions ensue questioning how great this "free speech" really is. Is lying by corporations really speech?
This is a great post illustrative of the currently widespread misunderstanding of freedom of speech in the US. It's not about the powerless wanting to control the speech of the rich and powerful. It's about the powerful of one side wanting to control the speech of the powerful of the other side by weaponizing ignorant masses of the populace to do their fight for them in defeating the ability of their opponents to have speech.
It's a scary precedent and even more scary that so many don't see what's happening.
> Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
The powerful have controlled the media in the past WAY more than they do now or even in recent decades. Even the people gaining control of the media recently are outside of the normal historical rich as they're all of the nouveau riche class.
This is all one more example of the recent trend of not wanting to bring UP the less privileged but to tear DOWN the privileged to the level of the less privileged. The former is beneficial for society the latter is self-destructive.
The result of lack of speech is violence. If people (parts of the rich) can't voice their opinion with words they do so with actions by galvanizing people into violent actions.
> It is basically only immunity from consequences for the rich and powerful. Only they're allowed to have substantive influential speech without consequences, and only they are allowed to reclassify bribery as "speech".
This is simply not true and I'm curious if you have any examples to support this.
> Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away.
Again that is simply not true. In fact compared with the UK for instance it is _far_ harder to sue for libel or defamation in the US.
> Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
Rich people have access to resources the poor don't. That's not new.
> BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech.
In general we are free speech absolutists. Honestly along with fast food, very entertaining movies and our love affair with guns it's quintessentially American.
Could you please provide specific examples of how this current trend of wanting to outlaw hate speech, "disinformation", etc., applies to billionaires, rather than the common people?
"Free speech absolutism" is a nonsensical slur. There are sensible restrictions on the freedom of speech that have been engrained into American jurisprudence. There actually used to be more exceptions (for instance, anti-war speech was illegal during World War 1) but, to their credit, the political left pushed for expanding those rights.
But yes, we do take our free speech with religious seriousness. That is because many of our ancestors came here to escape religious persecution from Europe (and other places). We do not wish to return to the bad old days where our beliefs could again be criminalized.
Notable examples include kicking people who post white supremacist articles off of Twitter and Facebook. Or DirectTV dropping OAN from their lineup because their ratings have tanked after Trump left office. Or when Marjorie Taylor Green lost her committee assignments for merely stating her belief that white genocide is a major problem that Congress must take action against the Jewish space lasers immediately before they cause more wildfires that kill white people.
Banning people from Twitter, App Store, AWS, VISA being cancelled, kicked out of distribution etc...
Private institutions are narrowing their versions of what was considered normative 'crude' behaviour into 'hate speech' which has implications. Netflix, Hulu etc. spend a lot of time defining what's appropriate and not in their programming, and someone uttering something 'counter narrative' is problematic for them (unless it makes them a lot of money).
That said, with Trump lying about the election, and others lying about vaccines, and foreign actors 100% trying to influence electoral outcomes (these are real things), it's an actual problem.
I mean, I don't care if RT.com is punted from anywhere, it's not relevant, but it's a slippery slope.
Those are examples of private companies not platforming certain speech. But how is that a modern change? Are you saying that decades ago, the big media companies at the time (say, NBC, CBS, ABC) platformed a greater variety of speech than now? I don't think you can earnestly claim that.
Did VISA, in the 1970s, kick people off of their network 'because speech'?
Did ABC Shipping refuse customers, 'because speech'?
That's not 'platforming' - those are just businesses that do business.
Second - what happened in the past is irrelevant.
Businesses should not really vetting customers unless there's a material reason.
Certainly banks, telcos, retail - should be barred from this. VISA is not 'platforming' anyone, that's ridiculous.
Twitter, Appstore - because they are directly related to the content, this is more arguably 'platforming' and there's more likely to be some kind of content management, but we have to be very careful about it.
This makes sense to me. They've basically bought into the idea of the Paradox of Tolerance.
That still doesn't explain why they are involved with the Heard/Depp case. Or why they were supporting Stacey Abrams' campaign or campaigning against Brett Kavanaugh.
I don't much care about the Heard/Depp case, it's a tabloid sideshow. The story the Atlantic author presents seems bad to me, maybe the ACLU made a mistake there.
Supporting Stacey Abrams makes absolute sense; she's done more work on the ground for voting rights than any politician at her level. As for Kavanaugh, the ACLU's explanation for their opposition satisfies me. https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/executive-branch/w...
I think the argument in the Atlantic piece is roughly that these “one-off” exceptional blog posts justifying their decision is largely just-so stories with little principled reasoning. For example, this is their defense for why they opposed the justice nomination:
“Board members were clear that if the same concerns were raised about a Democratic Supreme Court nominee — inadequately investigated credible allegations of sexual assault supported by credible testimony and met by nominee testimony showing angry partisanship — we would similarly oppose that nominee.”
That’s a lot of qualifiers! Would they do the same for any potential crime? What about other crimes whose severity, from a social perspective, has changed in the other direction in the years since they were committed? For example, smoking weed was probably considered, contemporaneously, as less forgivable than making unwanted sexual advances. Should we try to dig into whether a nominee passed a blunt in college, since surely that’s a sign of poor past judgment?
By wading into these waters, the ACLU should have airtight argumentation, ideally proactive not reactive. It hasn’t offered much of that, which is why its integrity is being credibly questioned.
If you're talking about the op-ed I don't even think that was Heard's idea. It really sounds like she wasn't involved in it at all. They sold her the ambassadorship title I guess, but after that they were just trying to cash in on me too. Heard was a useful figure because they already had a relationship with her and she had a public messy divorce.
Ignoring actual disagreement about what the 2nd amendment means and what policy should be, why would the ACLU invest in 2nd amendment rights in a world where there is already a a strong lobby dedicated to them.
That "strong" lobby is dangerously corrupt and currently bleeding membership because of it. They've also turned themselves into a form of religion and not capable of being a rational actor.
Please let’s not rehash that 2008 Heller and 2010 McDonald have settled that 2A has absolutely always been an individual right - even if you don’t like that outcome.
But apparently trying to hide a fact might make it change!
Ummmm fact check time! Actually they were never convicted of terrorism so even though they murdered people and bombed government offices they're technically not terrorists. Stop spreading misinformation!
A fairly short piece that makes the same points that have been made a million times about the ACLU’s apparent changes, using the typical examples of the group defending the freedom of assembly rights of neo-nazis during the 1970s (other articles often mention they were well known for simultaneously defending the same rights for communists). The 2021 NYT article linked within is a more interesting read.
What I’d be curious to see on this topic is a review of what the ACLU was up to during the 90s and 00s, when anti war and environmental activism were the biggest targets for suppression, and privacy and LGBT rights became major issues. Would people today see the ACLU’s activity in those periods as still too focused on “partisan” causes, or is this really a post-Trump phenomenon?
Just look up ACLU's response to the federal government's effort to describe environmental groups like the Sierra Club as "mainstream organizations with known or possible links to eco-terrorism" in the Bush-Cheney Era, c.2008. They definitely seem to have lost their minds and their historical agenda post-Trump. For example, it's worth reading their response to the 2001 attacks:
My own view is that the leadership of both parties really would like to install Chinese-style mass surveillance practices, and the motivation primarily seems to be the desire to contain popular anger over declining standards of living across the USA. The creation of the Rust Belt via the implementation of neoliberal trade policies played a key role in the rise of Trump, and leaders of both parties pushed that through on the behalf of their corporate masters. Of course, Trump did nothing about it, so the populist anger is still smoldering.
If implementing draconian mass surveillance is the plan, then buying off the ACLU is a step in that direction.
Here is the testimony of the ACLU for this trial, if you're curious about it. I watched it live and was beside myself. There are a lot more shenanigans than listed in the article. It's important to listen to the actual words spoken and changes in voice, see the facial expressions, watch the dancing around the questions, hear the contradictions.
You can impeach someone and/or offer up other witnesses to chip away at a liar's credibility. "Good enough" doesn't come close to describing the level of deception necessary to render our entire legal system completely ineffective.
Just look at the 'good faith' allowances granted when government officials violate the legal system's own laws and requirements. Not only is it ineffective if someone is good at lying, it just voids it's own laws and requirements if the liar is a government official because 'good faith'.
Trump's election handed them an extra ~$100m a year, but advocating for free speech in Charlottesville put that all at risk.
Their Director, Anthony Romero, implemented a new ideological and political backlash test for those they represent. It was his decision. His interviews show he'd much rather be in charge of sprawling, well funded partisan organization than a smaller crotchety one.
I see the appeal. He's becoming a Democratic power player, funding campaigns and helping define the Democratic agenda. Why would he ever go back? He has more personal impact than he ever could under the old ACLU, can become much wealthier, fraternize with celebrities and politicians, and all while being consistent with his personal politic views.
I used to support the ACLU and I support progressive causes. Now that they are one and the same, I'd rather donate to candidates and causes directly instead of letting Romero pick for me.
It reminds me a bit of what happened to the National Rifle Association honestly. The money is in being hyper-partisan, not being objective and standing for some principle. The NRA is now basically a far-right Republican lobby group that is only incidentally about second amendment rights.
Seems true in media too. Look at what happened to Joe Rogan when he got his big deal. His move down-market and toward a more partisan position is just going where the money is, I'm sure at the behest of his new owners.
Objectivity doesn't pay. Standing for principles doesn't pay. Selling out to partisan or corporate agendas pays.
There are gun advocacy groups which are issues-focused and compromise far less than the NRA, which is kind of a joke among younger gun advocates. Gun Owners of America is one who frequently supports legal funds for gun advocacy issues. Occasionally, a state gun rights group escalates a case up through circuit courts to the supreme court and deserves financial support. This past year, the California Rifle & Pistol association fought a case around standard-capacity magazine bans, and the New York State Rifle & Pistol Association fought a case regarding restrictions on carrying and transporting firearms. I believe CRPA is a 501(c)3 organization so donations are tax-deductible. I am sure there are others but I would be fine if the ACLU focused on the 1st amendment and left gun advocacy to other more focused groups (although I would appreciate if those groups also got 501(c)3 certification)
>The NRA is now basically a far-right Republican lobby group that is only incidentally about second amendment rights.
As someone who has extensively followed the missteps of the NRA under Wayne LaPierre… I don’t believe you understand what Far-Right is, nor the actual details of the NRA.
Allow me to give you a primer that isn’t built off of media fear mongering…
NRA is very much Establishment Right. That’s part of the problem. They wanted to snuggle with McConnell and Graham and hated Trump just as much as the afore mentioned do. The NRA wants status quo. Don’t actually do anything because we can’t campaign on that. Go to galas, make important calls and meetings in DC, have the company buy a house for you.
As both sides have abandoned compromise solutions, the NRA is still playing the 2A game as if it was bowling pin matches and skeet clubs.
Guess what though? The young people that make up modern gun owners have different concerns. The Hearing Protection Act and National Reciprocity should have gone through on Trump Day 1. But the NRA didn’t really care about either. Almost every gun owner in the county was pissed off when NRA didn’t storm the fucking gates when Philando Castile was killed by a twitchy cop. That was a fucking home run to prove gun ownership isn’t about skin color and they did absolutely nothing. GOA and SAF took an immediate stand despite many members and groups being police affiliated.
GOA and SAF have been building their ranks with young, motivated, and politically active members. The NRA Old Guard is dying of age, not by bullets real or political, by bloat.
Anyone that is anti-gun should not be celebrating the slow dissolve of the NRA. And likewise, if you (seriously!?) think the NRA is “Far Right” you really aren’t going to like the ambitious and motivated direction of the new guard. They’ll compromise when it makes sense, but real compromise, where you give something up for something they want.
Side note: For anyone who doesn't know, they are available on Amazon Smile as a charity so you can support them with a few cents from every purchase you make at no additional cost to you.
When the ACLU rewrote a Ruth Bader Ginsburg quote ("The decision whether or not to bear a child is central to a [person's] life, to [their] well-being and dignity..."[1]), all I could think of was The Onion ("I've always believed that one [homosexual] really can make a difference."[2]).
RBG is being misquoted and misremembered a lot again in the past week or so. She publicly stated on many occasions that she thought Roe vs Wade was bad law. Now her name is being invoked to defend it.
Not for you, and not for anyone else engaged in such obvious sea lioning. Just Google it, or at least pretend to write a substantive comment before going, "Sauce? Sauce? Sauce?"
(And for anyone else doubtful of parent commenter's intentions: seriously, try googling it.)
I totally agree that the ACLU is getting into things that seem silly, but it seems equally silly to claim they are 'losing their way' based on that.
This article complains the ACLU is not taking right-wing speech cases but admits they still do take cases and lists no examples where they refused. It cites the ACLU reacting to the protest where a protester was killed by nazis as anti-speech, but the ACLU was not saying they are against legal speech! They reflected, correctly, that backing groups that seek to silence (and kill) others is not straightforward. Considering the number of people in here who are decrying a "movement against freedom of speech" I would think people would support that policy!
If the article is to be believed and the ACLU has gotten a lot more money in recent years - wouldn't it make sense that they get into new areas?
Should the ACLU have more speech lawyers? Maybe! Are there cases they couldn't take? I would love to see some examples.
Should the ACLU stay out of politics? It's worth debating and I'm glad the article brings it up - but given the anti-democratic (and anti-individual rights) policy goals of the republican party I understand the approach. The article doesn't even ask what we do when one party is against proportional representation!
In general I just don't feel like this is actually responding to the ACLU's positions. She accuses the organization of hypocrisy around Title IX because they criticized changes but then later said they supported some updates - but of course it is perfectly coherent to criticize overall changes AND support parts of them. Here is their statement:
> We filed comments on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ Title IX rule that supported fair process requirements for live hearings, cross-examination, access to all the evidence, and delays in proceedings if the student accused of wrongdoing also faced a student criminal investigation, even as we criticized the rule for reducing the obligations of schools to respond to reports of sexual harassment.
Like seriously, I encourage everyone to check the case selection guidelines linked in the article[1]. Here are the things that might lead them to not take an otherwise suitable case: the group seeks to engage in violence, the group seeks to carry weapons, if the speech would lead to direct harm, if the ACLU support would appear to damage the orgs' overall mission. These aren't even vetos. They're areas of concern, and they seem pretty reasonable - especially considering this article criticized the ACLU for getting involved with Amber Heard because she sees their support for Heard as damaging to the ACLUs' mission! Which is exactly their concern.
They were attorneys on the Timbs case (not ACLU) which they won at the Supreme Court. They've had lots of success in this in lower courts with some crazy cases.
ACLU used to do a lot to improve policing (ie, look at how line-ups are conducted etc). Some other groups taking that on - this is less about defunding / abolishing police and more about improving accuracy of policing (ie, still catch a murderer but do it in ways with less collateral damage / fewer false allegations).
I'm actually trying to explore the question of other groups as I've been an ACLU member since the 90's so just know so much more about them! I was drawn to some of their earlier policing work (I volunteered in some prisons) in particular because certain approaches just result in real problems in policing (project innocence helped prove I think many of the ACLU's earlier points here).
That said, I think no question a change with Romero. I might describe it as a change from a "civil liberty" type org to a more traditional "human rights" type org more along the lines of NAACP, Sierra Club etc? And a LOT more politically focused than in the past from a feeling standpoint? They do things like anti-trump ads etc. Historically they might have cheered some of the due process protections in Title IX, now they denounce them.
Internally worth noting that some efforts around free speech issues are seen as "white supremacist" - that may make it harder for folks there to take on classic campus type free speech issues just internally. Speech = violence type stuff.
DEI is a big push. They are doing interesting work around trying to push employers to take identity characteristics into account when making employment decisions, including numerical goals / targets which historically folks were cautious about. They have some good examples here, like reserving 50% of new hire slots for black workers only as still being in compliance with non-descrimination law as long as black workers are not equally represented etc.
> They are a nonpolicial (required by charitable status) group running ads like this
They're a 501(c)(4), not a 501(c)(3). They aren't nonpolitical and have no obligation not to engage in politics. In fact, engaging in politics is the entire point of the ACLU
A 501c4 is a social welfare org. Political activities are generally prohibited
"Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office."
I think this is a fair confusion currently however given their strong dem tie-in recently and their current approach of taking on individual politicians (for and against) by name.
Note: If you are active in the ACLU they have a related ACLU Foundation they use to collect 501c3 money, is run by the same people out of the same offices, and actually brings in more money I think than the c4 if that matters.
You are correct about the letter of the law. The Supreme Court disagreed in Citizens United v. FEC and ruled that the government cannot restrain corporations from making independent expenditures for political campaigns. It definitely applies to 501c4 orgs, as Citizens United itself is one!
Don't disagree - the "dark money" c4's have (ironically) been a complaint on the left for a while.
That said, this is still a real shift for the ACLU - this type of campaigning is not something they historically really did. So the push to actively campaign more is newish for them.
It's def where the money is though - the MAGA orgs, the NRA, the ACLU - in some ways they are just following the money.
I stopped giving to ACLU years ago when it became clear their mission to champion a grab-bag of lefty causes had superseded their free-speech defending goal. This pivot has lead them, at times, to actually defend the government against citizen requests for public records! I never thought I'd see the ACLU fighting on the government's behalf against FOIA/open records type requests but here it is: https://www.womensliberationfront.org/aclu-lawsuit-public-re...
In the above case, some female prisoners in Washington state wanted to know how many male prisoners had been transferred to women's prisons. The state didn't want to share that information (even in aggregate) and the ACLU defended the state's assertion that this information should be kept secret from the public, including from the imprisoned women whom this policy impacted directly.
Why the government would want to keep this secret is a good question, but the main point here is: did people donating to the ACLU realize their money is being used to fight private citizen information requests & defend government secrecy? How the mighty have fallen.
These are citizens private healthcare information. You shouldn't be able to foia this anymore than my medicare records. Citizens don't lose their right to privacy because they're in prison. Goodness.
If you read his link, it states the request is for counts, not individual names.
1. A complete and accurate count of inmates who identify as transgender (gender identity differs from sex identified at birth) in the custody of the Washington Department of Corrections [please break this information down by location]
2. Number of inmates that have been transferred from a men’s facility to a women’s facility since January 01, 2021
3. Total number of male persons who identify as female, non-binary, or any other gender identity that are currently housed in a women’s facility
4. Number of inmates who have transferred from a women’s facility to a men’s facility from January 01, 2021 to March 18, 2021
5. Number of female persons who identify as male, non-binary or any other gender identity that are currently housed in a men’s facility
It breaks down the N by location, which... what defines a location here? Is it a state? Is it a single prison? For a small N, narrow location is definitely a de-anonymization factor.
How would knowing "1 Transwoman is currently housed in a female prison on the territory of Washington state" in any way risk causing harm to that transwoman, or help you identify her in any way?
It doesn’t. I think GP is confusing small cell counts in micro data (a real problem) with small numbers in aggregate data (sometimes a problem).
In this case, just a count and prison is not a privacy issue as someone would have to already know the individual is trans to identify them. And that’s the only information contained in the data release.
For some the issue so sensitive that even a broad and impersonal question is hugely offensive. And negative intent is immediately assumed of the questioner.
this FOIA request arbitrarily mixes sex and gender, which actually does show a lack of understanding towards trans and non-binary people (as well as willingness to understand, materialized as fear. fear is the phobia part of transphobia)
so even though GP tried to be accurate and progressive-enough in their admonishment of the ACLU to find a way to have a rational way of expressing and discussing their fear, the people involved have made a malformed FOIA request and are expressing their calcified opinion conflating sex and gender identity.
What does that have to do with denying a FOIA request? Sorry, you used the wrong pronouns, you are denied FOIA? Intent of the FOIA request is irrelevant, otherwise the government could deny FOIA for people who want to make the government look bad, which honestly is probably the case here.
its not about a pronoun, so looks like you're also conflating concepts
no pronouns need to be added or used to correct the malformed FOIA request
it conflates sex and gender, I said what I said, its accurate that it is doing that.
> Total number of male persons who identify as female, non-binary, or any other gender identity
The request would be "Total number of male persons that identify as women". The sex doesn't change, the gender does. The FOIA request would say invalid, or zero, and be accurate, regarding the ones identifying as "female". The "other gender identify" may cover it, but not necessarily. Males identifying as men wouldn't have been transferred. So "other than what"? "Female" is not a gender, unless we are accepting that any arbitrary identification is valid, but would that be grounds for transfer?
But yes that can just say "males transferred", because they remain male.
Its a conditional argument because legal circumstances follow conditional logic. So if it seems obtuse, oh well, thats how it works.
> The request would be "Total number of male persons that identify as women". The sex doesn't change, the gender does. The FOIA request would say invalid, or zero, and be accurate, regarding the ones identifying as "female".
Actually a lot of them now do identity as female, and claim to have literally changed their sex from male to female.
The old idea of "man/woman refers to gender, male/female refers to sex" no longer applies these days.
Not content with colonizing the word "woman", they've now done the same to "female".
This is contemporary trans discourse for you, erasing women and trampling all over women's rights.
from what I can tell, consensus hasn't been made and there is a lot of regional consensus. For example, I see US English honing in on "man/woman refers to gender, male/female refers to sex" while some Commonwealth English not having that exact distinction. On the internet, this makes things very confusing because its not clear where consensus is, and its not clear if someone is saying something exclusionary when they're critiquing the nomenclature. obviously, if you are fearing something that doesn't make sense, this ambiguous regional discourse masquerading as consensus only will validate your suspicions.
Aggregate counts are not private healthcare information when released in a way that limits reidentification. The Privacy Act (and HIPAA) allows for deidentified data to be shared broadly.
Anyway, prisoner gender is not healthcare data, it’s administrative data that describes prisoner population demographics.
I would agree with you if the request was for individual medical information on treatment or procedures or something.
> Aggregate counts are not private healthcare information when released in a way that limits reidentification. The Privacy Act (and HIPAA) allows for deidentified data to be shared broadly.
Possibly, but you're almost assuredly looking at a sample of N=10 or fewer, so the answer would be "*" anyway.
Not if it’s just a count. Because, even with a low count it wouldn’t be used to identify someone.
Let’s say there were 3 transgender people in the state, or even a facility. If they reveal that number it doesn’t identify an individual or divulge any confidential information.
The low counts have to be suppressed when coupled with other data or linked to other data.
If you included count by age group, then you would need to change from a low count to a suppressed marker.
For example 3 transgenders in the 80+ age group might reveal their identity because there aren’t many 80+ inmates.
But just having a small count with no other info is not really a cause to remove the value.
It sounded like aggregate numbers were being requested, not names. (Though, the link is only one side of the story.) Assuming that is correct (that it is merely an aggregate count), does that not maintain medical privacy, while allowing public access to the information on how the state is running prisons?
I don't think your sex is "private healthcare information." How would sharing the total number of males in various facilities violate an individuals privacy rights? (sidebar: if you think you retain your right to privacy in prison... all I can say is you've clearly never been to prison :)
Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
> Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
Any argument here about privacy is entirely independent of sex and gender. Prison is dehumanizing, address that. Don't be a transphobe.
Edit: There's a bunch of mistaken comments here assuming that this will protect women prisoners in some capacity. That's totally wrong! Women in prison are sexually assaulted, raped, and even impregnated by men all the time and have been for years. Those men are guards[0]. And this happens at a vastly higher rate per capita and overall than any assault by trans inmates. Anyone here with a legitimate interest in protecting women in prison would be attempting to address that harm, because it is far more dire for numerous reasons.
Is a woman a transphobe for not wanting to share a jail cell with a person who has a penis? I think most people would consider safeguarding female prisoners from males common sense.
I think you should take a moment to consider the (female) women in this situation. Imagine you're a woman 100% at the mercy of the state, and the state locks you in a cell with a male person. Put yourself in their shoes, and try to extend some empathy to them.
I never made any comment about women in prison. I have empathy to anyone in prison. Like I said, its deeply inhumane.
I think people in prison should be protected from other people in prison if they are dangerous, and I think prisons fail to do that today. I don't accept your presumption that having a penis makes someone inherently more dangerous.
Again: if your goal is to protect women in prison, the best way to do that is to advocate for reform that makes prisons safer for everyone. Not by being transphobic, which you're doing instead.
>"Again: if your goal is to protect women in prison, the best way to do that is to advocate for reform that makes prisons safer for everyone. Not by being transphobic, which you're doing instead. "
Perfect is the enemy of good and while it's hard to disagree with the sentiment of "reform that makes prisons safer for everyone ", we have no idea what that actually entails and that's so much of a monumental task that it's basically a non-starter. I feel like the sentiment here is "this wouldn't be a problem if we changed everything, so why don't we?"
> people in prison should be protected from other people in prison
I strongly agree; if you deprive someone of their liberty, then you take on the responsibility of protecting them - because you've deprived them of the ability to protect themselves.
I'm not aware of any prison regime that takes the safety of prisoners as a key objective. [Edit] Nor do I know of a state that handles the deliberate negligence of prisoner welfare as a criminal offence.
Men share more than the possession of a penis, of course. But saying the possession of a penis doesn't make men more dangerous in the face of male rape is like saying that a pistol doesn't make a man more dangerous.
The data showing 99% of perpetrators are male doesn’t count forcible envelopment as rape. In order to rape a man a woman has to penetrate him in some way for example sticking a finger in his ass.
> Women in prison are sexually assaulted, raped, and even impregnated by men all the time and have been for years. Those men are guards.
Indeed and this is why feminist organizations, and others with an interest in women's rights and safety, push for policies of only employing female prison guards in women's prisons.
It's no stretch to see why they don't want male prisoners to be incarcerated there too, no matter how such males identity.
If the male guards can't be trusted not to sexually abuse women, how can you expect the same from cohabiting males?
>I don't think your sex is "private healthcare information."
Your sex is private information under GDPR. Why would the GDPR be stricter than than HIPAA in this case?
>Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
You're assuming male prisoners have a "right" to be housed with female prisoners, and that female prisoners have no right to sex-segregated facilities. Whether the former "right" exists is far from a settled question.
Assuming the former right does exist, then there is a conflict of rights (between the wishes of males who want to be housed with females, and females who want to be housed without males). Rights conflicts like this are not solved by simply telling one group (in this case, women) to shut up and stop complaining.
Using "males" and "females" here is irrelevant and actively seeking to confuse.
People typically consider that women (cis or trans) have a right to be housed together, and separately from cismen.
If anything, the biggest problem of policy are trans-men, who would likely feel much more concerned by being housed with cis-man prisoners, but who would also make women uncomfortable.
> A woman is, quite simply, an adult human female.
So an adult human female (XX phenotype) who is taking masculinizing hormones and thus has a beard, body hair, a heavy voice, and perhaps has had his breasts surgically removed, or even had penile reconstruction surgery, is, in your opinion, a woman?
If he is not naked and you do not have a genotypic test result, how would would you know? Do you think a woman seeing him in a women's locker or in a women's bathroom would feel comfortable? Or would she feel more comfortable with a male that has a female body and clothing presentation (say, Caitlyn Jenner)?
Also, your definitions of course leave no room for people with various biological conditions that leave them with an uncertain biological sex - hermaphrodytism, XXY genotype, chymerism (multiple genotypes in different tissues), testosterone resistance (natural female phenotype despite a male genotype) etc.
> So an adult human female (XX phenotype) who is taking masculinizing hormones and thus has a beard, body hair, a heavy voice, and perhaps has had his breasts surgically removed, or even had penile reconstruction surgery, is, in your opinion, a woman?
Yes. She's a woman who has taken masculinizing hormones, and had cosmetic surgery. She is not changing her sex. She remains female, and is therefore a woman.
Consider this: the women athletes who have doped with testosterone, did they become men? No, of course not. What if they got breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy? Also no - they're still women.
This is nonsense that serves only to obfuscate. Normally this sort of stuff is put forward by people trying to confuse and befuddle the reader.
We segregate prisons by sex. Primary and secondary sex characteristics are observable characteristics that indicate one's sex.
Your argument is like saying "You don't buy a Mazda. You go to the Mazda dealership and buy a car that says Mazda on the back, interior, and on the manual. You don't actually know the car is a Mazda."
No, my argument is people mistake a used car lot for a licensed dealership. Just because the salesman says its a Mazda and it has a little logo in the front doesn't tell you much about its history, modifications, etc. Intersex people are in fact pretty common, so much so that there are more intersex olympic athletes than there are trans ones.
It's so odd to me that liberals, who seem to care a lot about women's rights, just flat out dismiss women who are genuinely concerned about being raped in prison by males who were secretly transferred to female prisons.
>"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
Why is that surprising? There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
On the other hand, it is well known that transwomen are much more often the victims of rape by cismen, if living in men's prisons.
If anything, I would think the biggest problem here is the fate of transmen. I doubt a ciswoman would feel very comfortable sharing a cell with a transman, but a transman also has much higher chances of being abused if sharing a cell with a cisman.
> There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
There is no proof males who identify as trans (transwomen) are any less likely to commit rape than males who do not identify as trans. The rape risk of being housed with a male is real regardless of how the male identifies with regards to gender. If you have data to the contrary (data indicating that trans identifying males are less likely to commit rape than other males) please share.
Do you think a cis woman would fear being raped more by Natalie Wynn[0] or by Buck Angel[1]? I would bet that its the latter.
To be clear: not accusing either of those above of being an actual rapist! Just asking which would be more likely to inspire this fear in someone who doesn't know them.
The article notes that the relationships were consensual. Like, do you think no one in prison would want to have sex? (The article could be misleading, but also there's presumably lots of consensual sex in prison, much as there is quite a bit of non-consensual sex).
> Why is that surprising? There is no proof that transwomen are any more likely to rape ciswomen than other ciswomen are.
Here's an analysis of data from the Ministry of Justice in the UK, demonstrating that trans-identifying males have similar patterns of criminality to other males, including sexual assault: https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-se...
>It's so odd to me that liberals, who seem to care a lot about women's rights, just flat out dismiss women who are genuinely concerned about being raped in prison by males who were secretly transferred to female prisons.
Really? Are there actual women who are genuinely concerned about this or is this a strawman invented by other people? You see this same issue with transwomen in sports. There is massive concern-trolling for women "who want a level playing field", but when you actually _ask_ women who compete with them (like in the case of Lia Thomas), they don't have a problem with it.
You are masking your transphobia in coddling for women who aren't even complaining about these issues. Women in prison are far more likely to be raped by law enforcement; but somehow the 3 or so transwomen who might sleep in the same cell as a woman is a bigger mark for the ACLU.
>I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
That's actually pretty simple for me, I don't think gun rights are inalienable rights, no more than I think I have a right to own a playstation.
> what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
Keeping penises out of the same room with vaginas will not magically eliminate sexual assault because sexual assault is based on power and willingness to harm another, not whether not tab A physically fits into slot B.
If you think keeping penises away from vaginas will eliminate prison rape then clearly you don't know much about rape in mens' prisons.
One would assume surgery or hormones are required to change your gender designation in Washington State, but in fact this is not the case (neither is required). Here's the form to change gender designation on your driver's license in WA, anyone living in washington state can do it today: https://www.dol.wa.gov/forms/520043.pdf
It's all about 'gender identity' these days, not hormones and surgery.
Indeed, in trans circles, expecting the latter as a required factor is often considered highly offensive. This, and the notion that a person needs to experience gender dysphoria to be trans, is now derisively known as the 'truscum' point of view.
I think the vast majority of binary trans people consider gender expression to be an integral part of gender identity, and at least a majority also consider HRT or surgery to be a significant component. I think there are close to 0 people walking around with a beard and wearing masculine suits that identify as transwomen.
Non-binary people are another discussion, and how they should fit into male/female spaces is of course unclear.
Overall, I would agree that prison assignment should depend on more than reported identity. Especially since it is conceivable that people in prison are likelier to lie about their internal identity if they believe they can get something out of this lie. This is much less relevant for lower risk environments, such as bathrooms (in my country at least, unisex bathrooms are anyway quite common) or gym lockers.
Ironically, a lot of the arguments I've seen could be construed as misandrist because they're operating under the presumption that men are rapists and thus transgender people in women's prisons must be rapists. That's why the argument always focuses around transgender women while failing to address that their same argument would send transgender men to the far less safe male prison.
The actual problem is that prisons are unsafe for everyone and there's little done to make them safer. But they'd rather use transgender people in their culture war because they don't care about the actual violence problems.
You mean they'd rather fix the problem that is entirely an own goal than tackle the problem of reorganizing the entire penal system in a deeply unpopular and expensive way?
Once prison is organized like a summer camp with a 2:1 guard to prisoner ratio, we can do them co-ed.
I am having trouble following your line of thinking. You're saying that because rape is common in mens' prisons* we should not be concerned about putting males in women's prisons? Wouldn't it make more sense to say "men rape in mens prisons, so women's concerns about being housed with males is reasonable"?
In any event, I still don't see how any of this justifies keeping this whole topic in the shadows and making public discourse impossible by keeping the scope of the question secret from the public.
* I'm taking your word for this, haven't looked it up.
The goal (I assume! You haven't spelled this out.) is to reduce the rate of sexual assault between cellmates in prison.
The system has to determine who can end up in the same cell. Prison wardens have access to some data about prisoners. The question is which data is used to partition prisoners.
Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence since the widespread accounts of prison rape in same-sex prisons implies that simply avoiding penises and vaginas in the same cell does not appear to be sufficient to lower the chances of rape.
Implicit in your comment is only looking at this from the perspective of the woman in the cell who doesn't have a penis. But the other cellmate has to end up somewhere and the overall goal should be to reduce the rate of sexual assault for all prisoners, not just cis ones.
So, if you don't allow trans women into women's cells, where do you put them? And do you really think putting a trans woman in a cell with a male prisoner is going to lead to a lower incidence of assault?
> Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
If you don't think this is an issue, can you explain why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
It sounds like you're arguing for mixed sex prisons, even within individual cells.
> why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
Or age segregation. Just because a 50 year old man has a penis and is 3x the weight of a 13 year old girl doesn't mean that they shouldn't be locked in a cell together. That's just your bigoted assumption that he's a violent person, you don't even know him.
Let me take a step back and look at this another way. The initial comment I replied to looked at the issue only from the perspective of the woman in the cell. It treated it as "should a trans woman be with her: yes/no?".
But that's not the actual choice prisons have to make. The choice they have to make is "which cell does the trans woman go into"? Given that there likely aren't enough trans women prisoners to put them only with other trans women, the choice is "with a cis man or with a cis woman." And I believe pretty strongly that putting a trans woman in a cell with a cis male is more likely to result in assault than putting a trans woman with a cis woman.
I could be wrong. But given what I've read about trans women being the target of sexual assault outside of prison and sexual assault among males in male prisons, I think it's a fairly safe bet.
I guess the question hinges on whether you imagine a trans woman to be more "like a man" (stereotypically stronger, aggressive, and more prone to perpetrate assault) or "like a woman" (stereotypically weaker, passive, and more prone to being the victim of assault). What I know about trans women suggests the latter more than the former.
Obviously, individual behavior trumps all. Any particular woman (trans or not) who has a history of violence or sexual assault towards women should not be housed with another woman. The same should be true for men (again, trans or not).
The name of the game should be keeping perpetrators away from victims, and my belief is that "has a penis while other has a vagina" is a relatively poor proxy for that. Yes, there is a strong correlation, but that's a Simpson's paradox from combining the much smaller trans population with the very large cis population. If you were to separate out the datasets and consider cis men and women separately from trans men and women, I suspect you would see no or the opposite correlation.
> And I believe pretty strongly that putting a trans woman in a cell with a cis male is more likely to result in assault than putting a trans woman with a cis woman.
Why do you believe this?
And, more importantly, why is it somehow the responsibility of women to be used as a mitigation for male on male violence?
If a male attacks a trans-identifying male, or there is a risk of this happening, that is entirely a male issue. So why should incarcerating the trans-identifying male amongst women be the solution?
> If a male attacks a trans-identifying male, or there is a risk of this happening, that is entirely a male issue.
No, if a prisoner attacks a prisoner with whom they were placed, due to reasons which are reasonably foreseeable and preventable, it's a prison system issue, not an issue for the gender class of the attacker or victim, whether they are the same or different, irrespective of the basis in which gender is ascribed.
Even moreso than with restrooms, it's very clear that gender segregation, whether based on ascribed gender at birth or gender identity, is not even approximately an effective protection against predatory behavior [*], so the safety issue:
(1) Isn't a good defense for any model of gender segregation, and
(2) Needs addressed by mechanisms other than gender segregation (one of the more effective of which is probably imprisoning fewer people, at lower levels of crowding), which, surprisingly, pretty much no one that is using the danger to argue for their preferred model of gender segregation even pretends to be concerned about.
[*] Edit: and this is particularly true for women in our segregated system who face twice the incidence of inmate-on-inmate assault, as well as higher rates of staff-on-inmate assault, and far less social attention to the problem of such assaults. If anything, it's more defensible based on outcomes to say our system of segregation exists to protect sexual assault against women prisoners than to say it exists to protect against sexual assault for anyone.
So are you advocating for entirely mixed-sex prisons or what? That's an extremely radical view.
An important part of addressing these issues of violence in the prison system has been, up until recently, the segregation of inmates by their sex. This is in addition to other policies regarding the prison environment.
If you want to undo that policy of sex segregation, you should have a very good reason, and proof that it won't cause harm to the sex who, in general, have lesser physical strength and can be impregnated by the other.
> An important part of addressing these issues of violence in the prison system has been, up until recently, the segregation of inmates by their sex.
No, it hasn't.
That's an after the fact rationalization for preserving the policy invented long after segregation on fairly explicitly misogynistic grounds was established, when the original motivation was no longer something people felt comfortable saying overtly in government.
Preventing assaults (and sexual assaults specifically) in prisons is not a major motivator for the structure of our prison system; if it was, there'd be a lot fewer sexual assaults in it.
It doesn't matter that the segregation was originally pushed for with the benefit of male prisoners in mind. If you look at the conditions for women in prison before and after sex segregation, it was an improvement.
We shouldn't be regressing back and allowing men to be incarcerated alongside women again, unless there is a provably good reason for this - which, so far, no-one has demonstrated.
> And I believe pretty strongly that putting a trans woman in a cell with a cis male is more likely to result in assault than putting a trans woman with a cis woman.
Why do you believe this?
Anyway, I believe women have a right to dignity and privacy and to set some boundaries against males in refuges & places they are especially vulnerable. Female prisoners should absolutely be allowed to refuse to share sleeping quarters with males. Frankly think it's nuts that this should be considered a controversial stance.
The simplest answer is to segregate by sex, it's not clear why gender identity should require moving to another facility.
Regarding the supposed issue of safety of trans identifying male prisoners in male prisons (I haven't seen data around this but let's assume it's an issue), it's still not clear the answer is housing with women. If a gay man is more likely to be abused in a male prison, or a small or young man, does that mean men with any of these characteristics should be put in women's prison to improve their safety conditions? This doesn't scan.
Its notable to me that as concerned as you are about prisoner safety, I don't see you or other advocates of males in womens prisons mention the safety of the female prisoners should men be added to their cells. Does their safety not rate?
> Its notable to me that as concerned as you are about prisoner safety, I don't see you or other advocates of males in womens prisons mention the safety of the female prisoners
Strange that despite the much higher rates of sexual assault (inmate on inmate and staff on inmate) for women in the sex segregated prison system we have, the only time safety of women prisoners gets brought up is as an argument for preserving sex segregation against the fairly minor tweak of gender-identity segregation and not about trying to figure out why a system adopted specifically to isolate and impose harsher punishment on women because they were viewed as incapable of rehabilitation once they had fallen into crime continues, despite recent retcons of it's supposed justification, to disproportionately sexual victimize women.
> Anyway, I believe women have a right to dignity and privacy and to set some boundaries against males in refuges & places they are especially vulnerable.
I believe everyone has a right to dignity and privacy and the right to set some boundaries against others in refuges and places where they are especially vulnerable.
What I don't understand is people that thinks that this right disappears just because the “other“ is of the same gender (whether that's gender socially ascribed at birth, or gender identity really is a side issue.)
In summary: women in prison are being raped and sexually assaulted by trans-identifying males, who should never have been locked up in women's prisons in the first place.
It really is well beyond time for authorities to reverse these ridiculous policies that elevate claims of gender identity above all other concerns, and return to segregating prisons by sex like we had previously.
Three news articles about three isolated incidents, regardless of how horrific they are, are not sufficient to design good policy. In the US in 2012, "an estimated of 4.0% of state and federal prison inmates and 3.2% of jail inmates reported experiencing one or more incidents of sexual victimization by another inmate or facility staff since their admission to the facility or in the past twelve months".
Those three articles are a drop in the bucket.
Consider that there are N trans women convicts and you're trying to decide where to house them. The relevent number is not "how many women do they rape if you house them with other women"? It's "What is the relative difference in rape stasticics between housing them with men versus women?"
Obviously, any number of sexual assaults is unacceptable. But if housing trans women with men leads to thousands of rapes while housing them with women leads to only dozens, it's still a better policy. The only reason you could argue against that is if you consider a trans woman being a victim somehow more acceptable than a cis woman being victimized.
It's not just those three articles though. When you consider these in the context of other data, such as this from the UK - https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-se... - which shows that trans-identifying males have similar patterns of criminality to other males, including sexual assault, the reality of the situation becomes clear: these inmates are not some special type of women who happen to have been born male, but men like any other.
So then the argument is just around the question, should women and men be housed in the same prisons, without any sex segregation? And we already know the answer to that.
> If you don't think this is an issue, can you explain why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
Historically, mostly patriarchal misogyny; specifically, the belief that while women were inherently more virtuous, those who had “fallen” a state subject to imprisonment had fallen further, and less correctibly than men, and that they were a corrupting influence that would impair the rehabilitation of imprisoned men (that's also why imprisoned women, originally segregated within prisons rather than in separate prisons, were often given fewer meals, not encouraged to socialize, and otherwise treated worse than male prisoners.)
More recently, in order to avoid reexamining the actual policy of segregation, societies have tried to retcon a more modern rationalization, but that rationalization is not actually the reason for the policy, just an excuse for it.
That is not universally true, even if it may have applied to some parts of the US prison system in the past.
In particular, influential British prison reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Elizabeth Fry and John Howard, promoted sex segregation as a means to prevent the sexual exploitation of women prisoners. They also pushed for many other reforms to make prisons safer and more rehabilitative environments in general. Nothing to do with patriarchal misogyny.
More recently, the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, first adopted in 1955, states as one of the standards that "men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely
separate". Their rationale was not patriarchal misogyny either, but rather how to maintain a safe and dignified environment for inmates.
The "penis and vagina" characterization is too reductive. What's at issue is that males are generally bigger, stronger, and more sexually aggressive than females. These factors in aggregate create increased risk when forcing proximity between men and women while in vulnerable contexts. But none of this needs extra demonstration, this is all common knowledge.
hrt is effectively chemical castration by another name. one of the primary effects of estrogen and anti androgens is erectile dysfunction combined with the shrinking & atrophy of the genitals along with a typically highly diminished sex drive.
on balance, this issue, just like sports, is incredibly optically poor for trans people regardless of the facts at hand. the suggestion that mtf trans create an elevated risk for rapes and assaults is a deeply unfair cultural bias that is probably not going away for at least a generation. similarly putting mtf trans into the male prison system seems likely to subject them to incredibly high risk. there are other nations & cultures that have had a legally recognized 3rd gender for much longer than trans rights have been an area of focus in the west, i imagine we could learn a great deal from them on these issues in particular.
Not all trans-identifying people use HRT. Indeed some deliberately make no bodily interventions whatsoever - see e.g. Alex Drummond, a 'trans woman' with beard, moustache, and his intact male body.
Third gender in the cultures you allude to is typically just a way of othering gay man, of the "you can't be a real man" variety. It's nothing positive to emulate.
> Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
> My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence.
The DOJ says 99% of rape and sexual assaults are by males, and that 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male [1].
This is generic data, not trans specific or prison specific. But in the absence of specific data, it seems pretty relevant.
I’d argue if prisons have significant rates of sexual assault that prisons are doing little to prevent then prisoner’s should have a right to a private cell. You don’t get to engage in huge rights violations against people who can’t defend themselves for budgetary reasons.
>Why the government would want to keep this secret is a good question
It's because if the public found out, it would be either be considered illegal or unethical or ultimately make them look bad. That's the general rule of why anyone in government keeps an action secret. Now consider how much stuff the government wants to keep secret.
I guess the follow up question would be why the government transferred biological men to a women's prison, especially if it could be illegal, unethical and make them look bad?
Not a follow-up for the ACLU, who should be concentrating solely on records release (on the opposite side than they took.)
The modern disease is that everyone seems to be running a keynesian beauty contest, trying to figure out what side the truth is better for, and pretending it's a lie if it's against their side. Principles aren't a means, they're an end.
It's a world of propagandists (public relations professionals.)
In general "male" refers to sex, "men" to gender. While I agree the comment could be written more kindly, this comment was referring to biological sex, not gender identity.
No matter how nasty the reason was for the FOIA request - why should an organization who historically has defended free speech in most if not all circumstances going to such lengths to defeat it? What happened to defending the Westboro Baptist Church and skinheads re: freedom of speech?
Let's say there was a hypothetical corporation looking to identify employee participation in a protest. Would you defend that corporation making an FOIA request to identify who might've participated?
Who's freedom of speech do you think deserves to be defended, the corporation or the individuals in question?
Now apply that logic to this scenario, where the group in question is looking to identify individuals in order to make a scapegoat out of them for their own private decisions. Who's freedom deserves defending?
>IIRC, FOIA does not grant you a right to personal information collected on citizens. The agencies have the right to redact that in whole or in part from the records sought.
Please reread my comment, I don't use the terms "man" or "men" once. It seems you object to the idea that imprisoned female people should be allowed to have an opinion on being forced to share a jail cell with a male person.
Personally, I think female people are well within their rights to voice concerns about this. If you see it differently, I'd be grateful to hear your rationale on why the government should be able to move males into women's prisons in secret, as the ACLU asserts.
IIRC, FOIA does not grant you a right to personal information collected on citizens. The agencies have the right to redact that in whole or in part from the records sought. I don't deny your main concern about left wing issues potentially derailing the ACLU's chief mission, but that isn't the example I'd cite.
"Why the government would want to keep this secret is a good question"
That's an easy one - they always hide anything that could be controversial. This is definitely a hot topic in recent years.
"did people donating to the ACLU realize their money is being used to fight private citizen information requests & defend government secrecy?"
Due to the scope of the ACLU's actions and the variability of its members personal beliefs, it's almost guaranteed that they engage in things that some member disagree with.
> some female prisoners in Washington state wanted to know how many male prisoners had been transferred to women's prisons
This is such an incredibly bad-faith and transphobic representation of the case that I can only conclude you are intentionally trolling. Even if you believe that trans women should not be housed in prisons with cis women, it is beyond bad faith choose the words you chose to use.
I'm not following you at all. From the text of the request, the petitioners want to know: "Number of inmates that have been transferred from a men’s facility to a women’s facility since January 01, 2021" This is almost identical to what I wrote.
I would appreciate it if you would explain to me and others what part of my argument you disagree with rather than simply saying "incredibly bad-faith" "transphobic" "you are trolling" "beyond bad faith" without any explanation of what you think I did wrong or would prefer I do differently.
For what it's worth, I think you are acting in bad faith by calling me names and speculating unkindly about my motives without actually explaining what assertion or argument you object to and why. What you're doing is just bullying.
It's wrong to say "male." You're supposed to come up with some euphemism, like "bedicked." Literally nothing to do with the content of the argument; you're supposed to concede the ground before you step onto it.
While I really prefer the term “bedicked,” what is the term for people with penises regardless of gender? Is there a term that won’t result in someone being called a transphobe?
I’ve heard the term “sex assigned at birth” but that’s not accurate in this situation because I’m interested in people with penises and if someone was born male and had their penis removed surgically I wouldn’t want them included in my population of interest.
> what is the term for people with penises regardless of gender? Is there a term that won’t result in someone being called a transphobe?
No, there is no universally accepted term that won't get you called a transphobe by anyone (correct me if I'm wrong). If terms of the discussion are set by the most extreme genderist views, it's becomes literally impossible to discuss things like male violence against women or sexism in the workplace, because there's no permissible language to describe the groups involved.
I just go with "male" and "female" which are objective, observable facts. If people object to these terms, they are really objecting to having a discussion at all.
> “sex assigned at birth”
Sex is not "assigned" at birth it is observed, frequently well before birth via ultrasound or some other technology. Midwives and doctors don't go round flipping coins that say "boy" on one side and "girl" on the other, this whole concept of "assigned" sex is silly.
While that’s true, it’s such a rare occasion that it wouldn’t really factor into any general terminology. In that there’s not much benefit in altering any words to take into account the 1:100,000 situations where that’s true.
I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
> In that there’s not much benefit in altering any words to take into account the 1:100,000 situations where that’s true.
Please explain where you got that number. You are off by three orders of magnitude. About 1:100 of births have ambiguity of gender at birth.
> I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
Please explain why you feel that the description "assigned gender at birth" is not apt to describe people who have unambiguous genitals. Yes I understand that the description "observed gender at birth" is a subset of the description "assigned gender at birth", I understand the difference between these expressions. But it seems to me like one expression nicely covers the other expression, e.g. you can say for any birth where gender was "observed" at birth that it was also "assigned" at birth. It seems to me like you are the one stretching language to weird places to achieve political goals.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to observe the sex in most of these cases though, it just takes more than a quick visual check to determine.
The really tricky cases are where the individual has reproductive organs of mixed types, particularly where it involves some sort of genetic mosaicism or chimerism. These ones are where we could reasonably say that sex is only assigned and not observed, but it's very rare. Rarest of all is where someone could be plausibly regarded as both female and male.
Generally, I think it's best to avoid the terminology of "assigned at birth", because it comes with the implication that sex can be arbitrarily reassigned. Something like "incorrectly observed" would be better, in cases where a mistake has genuinely been made.
Exactly this. Even using the phrase 'trans woman' is a concession, implying that these men are a subcategory of women, rather than of men. And that it's possible to 'trans' into this category.
(This is why in radical feminist circles, they are typically referred to as 'trans-identifying males' instead.)
How is releasing raw statistics about inmates based on demographics creating "a target list"? I don't see where they are asking for a list of individual identities.
The public records act doesn't include personal information:
> personal student or patient information, employee files, and some investigative records are exempt.
You could silence tons of scientific studies with this sort of broad rejection of data collection simply because you deem a subset of the group 'vulnerable' (including just as many studies that benefit these groups). It could be applied in many other ways beyond state prisons.
Some of the requests are directly for the names and ages of individuals, but the government doesn't have the statistics requested and want to "provide records from which requestors may derive answers to their own questions" for the statistics requests as well. The ACLU is objecting to this to the extent that it would "include highly sensitive information" that identifies individuals. The ACLU is not asking the court to block the government from releasing raw statistics. They want to prevent them from releasing a literal list of transgender and gender non-conforming individuals.
There are also requests for infractions, complaints, reports, etc. If you think this is agienst the law, then you agree with the ACLU.
WoLF are representing Andrea Kelly. The ACLU's own filing, that you linked to, confirms that she requested only statistical data, not personally-identifying information:
> 4.8 On March 19, 2021, Requestor Andrea Kelly made a public records
request to Defendant Washington State Department of Corrections that sought the
following records:
> - "The number of transgender individuals currently incarcerated broken out by facility location."
> - "Number of incarcerated individuals who have been transferred from a
men's facility to a women's facility since January 1, 2021."
> - "The number of male incarcerated individuals who identify as female, non-
binary or any other gender identity who are currently housed at a Women's
prison facility."
> - "The number of incarcerated individuals who have transferred from a
Women's facility to a Men's facility since January 1, 2021."
> - "The number of female incarcerated individuals who identify as male, non-
binary or any other gender identity who are currently housed in a Men's
prison facility."
I do wonder if you read past that first paragraph you quoted, because the above section supports the facts of WoLF's article that you erroneously called out as "outright lying".
> “The names and ages of the transgender or gender non-conformists inmates moved to Purdy and the convictions they are serving time for.”
> “The names of all transgendered incarcerated individuals who have requested, received or are scheduled for gender reassignment surgery.”
However, even with only the requests made by Andrea Kelly, the DOC indented to provide private information about individuals in order to allow the requester to derive answers to their questions, as it doesn't have the statistics requested. This is what ACLU sued to prevent. See:
> 4.20 The Attorney General, on behalf of DOC, has indicated in discussions with DRW that DOC does not create records in response to requests for aggregate numerical information. Instead, the Attorney General explained that DOC will identify as responsive and provide records from which requestors may derive answers to their own questions. DOC has not provided DRW a list of what records have been identified by DOC as responsive to the requests. Based on DRW’s knowledge of DOC records, such records will likely include highly sensitive information about transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and/or intersex inmates and former inmates.
The ACLU never asked the court to stop the government from responding with statistics, but the government doesn't have the statistics requested.
No, I think they are lying when they say the ACLU is suing to "prevent the public from receiving public records from the Washington State Department of Corrections on the number of inmates in state custody who identify as transgender and the number of male inmates who are housed in women’s facilities" because there are no such records and they are actually suing to prevent the release of people's identities. They are also lying by omission and competently misrepresenting the case by not mentioning what other kind of information was requested and how the government intends to respond to the request for the statistics it doesn't possess.
How about a more charitable interpretation, rather than accusing people of lying: ACLU's position is that these shouldn't be public records, WoLF's is that the government should release whatever public records are required to fulfil the request.
I'm a lifelong member of the ACLU. During all the years, I've disagreed with numerous things they have done and that they do presently, including this involvement in politics. However, there are few organizations doing the legal representation that they do on behalf of the poor and the marginalized, and for that I continue to support them. Insisting that an organization perfectly fit my personal preferences is a fool's errand. As with everything in life, I don't want to fall into the trap that perfect becomes the enemy of good. The ACLU ain't perfect, but it's certainly doing good work that IMHO merits my continued support.
The problem with this problem is that there isn't a better alternative.
There's a lot of people in this thread complaining about how the ACLU is ruined because they are no longer free speech absolutists.
That's not why I give, or ever gave them money. I give them money because they solve all sorts of other problems. If the biggest problem in your life is 'the far american right can't speak as loudly as it likes', that's certainly terrible, but it pales in comparison to the harm of all the other civil liberty violations that the ACLU tackles.
There are plenty of orgs that tackle portions of what the ACLU used to - enough that I’m sure with 3 or 4 donations one could replace the former ACLU donations one made.
For example, FIRE has done way more for campus free speech issues this last decade or two than the ACLU despite a considerably smaller budget. Between them, Institute for Justice, and EFF, I don’t miss my ACLU donations much.
Why the SPLC over the ACLU, if their missions largely overlap?
I give to both, FYI.
If you don't give a crap about all the social causes, and just care about alt-right speech, I agree, the ACLU is not the organization you should donate to! In that case, I also can't say I care very much for your vision of the problems in this country, but it's your opinion, everyone's free to have one.
I think the point of the article and general consensus here is that their missions should not overlap as much as they do.
Or as the ACLU puts it, on why they defend abhorrent groups:
"The ACLU is frequently asked to explain its defense of certain people or groups — particularly controversial and unpopular entities such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam, and the National Socialist Party of America. We do not defend them because we agree with them. Rather we defend their right to free expression and free assembly.
Historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened. Once the government has the power to violate one person’s rights, it can use that power against everyone. We work to stop the erosion of civil liberties before it’s too late." https://www.aclu.org/about-aclu
Which is somewhat different than the SPLC:
"The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people."https://www.splcenter.org/about
I do care about alt-right speech. I care about leftist speech. I care about anarchist speech. I care about conspiracy weirdos speech. I care about religious nut job speech.
I'm not sure why you're implying that FIRE "despises" speech; perhaps you see them as conservative. That said, here's are some recent situations in which FIRE has taken the side of what would be under the general progressive/liberal umbrella:
I'm not sure what you're suggesting. This is the comment:
> FIRE has done way more for campus free speech issues this last decade or two ...
> You mean conservative speech? Or has FIRE actually defended speech they despised, like the ACLU used to?
It seems to imply that FIRE has done way more for conservative campus free speech issues. I supplied examples of times when FIRE supported non-conservative campus free speech. I'm not quite clear how else to read that comment, but would love your take.
I’m not a conservative or right wing in any way. FIRE doesn’t turn away people based on their political views or the political content of their speech as far as I know; I would stop donating if that were the case.
> If the biggest problem in your life is 'the far american right can't speak as loudly as it likes', that's certainly terrible, but it pales in comparison to the harm of all the other civil liberty violations that the ACLU tackles.
Speech is the most important non-violent right that we have, regardless of who is speaking or about what issue. Without Freedom of Speech, corporations or the government could simply censor the other liberties out of existence. You can't be a civil rights absolutist without being a free speech absolutist.
I disagree. Never in my life has the best solution to anything been the extreme, instead it's always been balanced and nuanced solution that have ended being more optimal. I've observed this in science, physics, engineering, medicine, culinary, inter-social relations, business, in everything.
Based just on that, I already get a red flag when someone says that an extreme free speech position, such as free speech absolutists, is the best solution to have a liberal society with civil liberties.
In my experience, balanced and nuanced is always better, and you must always have provisions to handle special cases, there will always be special cases.
Free speech is very important, like you said, beyond violence, how else you going to influence and assert any improvement or changes to defend, retain or ask for more liberties?
But speech can remain civil and respectful, it doesn't have to include slander, or threats to a person, insults, ridicule, raised voices, talking over people, etc.
And then you have the conflict with other liberties. Yes governement shouldn't be able to restrict anyone's speech, no matter what. But between themselves, citizens should be allowed recourse to slander for example. They should have ways to protect their reputation when it is being harmed by someone intending to harm it through misinformation, lies, and false accusations, and that would require the government to intervene and uphold someone's right to their reputation.
Also, we should be allowed to create communities with code of conducts that include speech behavior. If you come to my house and start bad-mouthing my daughter, insulting her, and I kick you out, you shouldn't be able to sue me for violating your free speech rights. I should be allowed to control the code of conduct of others in my own home. Similarly on my website, in my comment section, or if I am a company running a social community space I too should be allowed to do so in order to protect my business. Robo-calls, spammers, calling me or leaving spam in my email, website, I should be allowed to block them, or have some service that auto-censors them, it shouldn't be that their creator can prevent me from blocking them because it infringes on their creator's right to free speech. Same for bot accounts and all that. So clearly I feel there needs to be special provisions for exceptions to the right to free speech, and when exactly it applies, to whom, about what, and how the speech itself is conducted and what the speech is actually saying, is it false accusations, slander, threats, spam, etc.
> Speech is the most important non-violent right that we have
Really? More important than the right to vote? Than the right not to be arbitrarily detained? Than the right to a fair trial?
I strongly believe in the importance of free speech when it comes to true statements or criticism of the government. But the idea that the right to spread deliberately false information or directly incite violence is not just a fundamental right, but the most important fundamental right? Honestly, I just don’t find the argument very compelling
Yes, the right to free speech is more important than those rights because it is what lets you say that the other rights have been violated. If you have the right to vote, but not the right to say that you were prevented from voting, you don't actually have the right to vote.
That doesn't explain why absolute free speech is necessary. If you are allowed expose violations of your voting rights, but not allowed to engage in hate speech... you still have the right to vote?
But part of it is also the broader context: There's a contingent on the far-right who complain about their speed being limited as they actively campaign for stripping minorities of civil rights. I interpret the post as indirectly suggesting that siding with those minority groups means you are less committed to civil rights (because the right-wing folks are the primary ones concerned about speech restrictions, while minorities are concerned about everything). Which quite frankly is an absurd conclusion
"hate speech" is whatever the current political climate deems to be unacceptable speech. Today it's hateful to be against homosexuality, tomorrow it's hateful to be against any other approved policy from your favorite political party.
No, the frog doesn’t know it’s being boiled at all.
Being fully aware of an organization’s good and bad behaviors is the opposite of being unknowingly boiled. Even if one chooses to continue supporting the organization in spite of some disagreement.
If the article is correct that they’re selling their services to parties in private civil suits, along with positions in the organization (for use by the individual for publicity), I think you should reconsider your support. The ACLU was once an effective advocate for free speech, but the fact that they're selling themselves to either side of a private dispute should be a sign that the ACLU has changed.
edit: this is all premised on the idea that you were supporting them for their old 'free speech' mission, rather than the new 'values', which I now realize may have been in error.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment. As you sensed, I supported their old mission and parts of their new mission.
However, I agree that if they view their new mission to be "selling themselves" to one side or the other, that would indeed detract from my willingness to continue supporting them long-term.
I just can't imagine what conversations happened inside the organization, where they were willing to ghost write for Heard and sell off a position to her, then switch to taking money from the other side; all of this in a completely private dispute with no public interest on either side, other than visibility. This whole situation seems absurd to me.
Were they desperate for money? Or fans of Amber Heard? Or were they swept up in enthusiasm about a high-profile case of spousal abuse? I am not aware of the ACLU taking a general position on defamation suits between private parties in the past.
The default position on most articles, especially critical ones, should be that they have utterly failed to accurately grasp and convey the key issues. This seems to be a universal law not just of journalism, but of knowledge sharing in general, especially where controversy exists.
Eh. If they exchange one lawyer's time for $3.5 million in donations that will be used for all their other causes, that's actually a pretty good deal. (Or at least would be if Heard paid up, which she apparently didn't.)
I don't see a fundamental conflict between the ACLU's core beliefs and offering legal aid to a woman accusing her ex-husband of domestic violence. (Although I'll readily admit I don't see much reason for ACLU to get involved either.)
I had a friend working with one of their lawyers and she was amazing. I can't agree with an article that says to quit helping a group that is still fighting for civil liberties, even if I don't agree with their following cancel culture hook, line, and sinker. Maybe someday they'll go too far though I suppose.
Whether you think they are still fighting for civil liberties depends on what you think civil liberties are.
Recently they have been supporting the “civil liberty” of men such as Lia Thomas to compete on women’s sports teams. I don’t see that as a defense of anyone’s liberties, but rather as an attack against the liberties of female athletes, and of women in general. They are on the attack against women’s sex-based rights.
I’ve stopped supporting them.
I used to support them even though I was disappointed in their 2nd amendment stances, because their work on 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment issues was so valuable. But now they’ve turned into a misogynist organization, actively campaigning against civil liberties.
> They are on the attack against women’s sex-based rights.
One thing you'll find is a lot of people find this sentence very strange. Replace "sex-based rights" with "race-based rights" or any other trait passed on at birth and you'll find the ACLU's actions to be very consistent.
People claimed the ACLU was anti-white decades ago. I guess now that that argument isn't working, misogyny is the new claim.
Your claim that they’re misogynist is just outright bizarre. The idea of “sex based liberties” being something the American Civil Liberties Union is misogynist for not upholding is wild. It’s obvious why they wouldn’t based off their history and name.
Sure. But I don't have the time (nor realistically the ability) to review each one and determine which one is as effective at the ACLU in that representation.
In Heard's case, the ACLU is creating an ambassador position and crafting the credentials for the ambassador they wish to hire (the op-ed). Knowing the level of deception they're engaging in - and not from a low-level employee but from their general counsel - how do you trust/verify any claims the ACLU makes?
Agreed. The ability to support a cause for the greater good, even if some of it makes you uncomfortable, is just a sign that you’re not totally brainwashed by one “camp” or another, imo. It’s a symptom of retaining individual thought while working toward collective progress. It would be far more troubling to be part of a movement that operates fully in lock—step.
This being the internet, I feel the need to attach a disclaimer that there are limits to this general rule, but I don’t think the ACLU is currently crossing them.
I believe the complaint here is actually more "The ACLU is no longer defending my political enemies".
The issue is not that the ACLU is taking on causes the author disagrees with. The issue is that the ACLU has switched away from "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" thinking. And instead they are taking a few cases of "I disapprove of what you say and will therefore not defend you". Let alone the weird Heard case that seems to be "You give me money so I give you backing and legitimacy".
What about the "poor and marginalized" students that were falsely accused and expelled from university over Title IX kangaroo courts?
> When the Trump administration proposed in 2018 a new regulatory scheme for schools to follow in Title IX campus-sexual-assault cases that offered more protections to students defending themselves against these allegations, the ACLU responded in an angry tweet thread: “It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.”. (The following year, the ACLU declared its support for new Title IX regulations’ “fair process requirements for live hearings, cross-examination, [and] access to all the evidence,” but it has never taken down the tweets or walked them back.)
It's interesting that the author refers to unspecified "partisan stances". Many of the political positions of the last year that have been described as partisan are actually globally regarded as human rights.
Human rights are nonpartisan. The ACLU has stuck to it's guns on that, despite the the overwhelmingly biased political climate.
I think it's silly that this thinly sourced hit-piece is on the front page of hacker news.
If it truly were nonpartisan, I would have absolutely no ability to guess which way you lean politically. Right? And yet I can tell with a near 100% certainty that you lean left. Can you explain to me why is that, and how that's consistent with your claim?
I suppose that's why the ACLU didn't want to get involved with the rights violations I reported a couple years ago. I suppose if i had $3.5M it could have been different.
It's funny in prison. So many guys come in thinking the ACLU is going to help them. The ACLU will not take on prison cases. You can try local chapters, but they don't even refer you to them. Check out this joke:
If you have been assaulted by an officer in prison, they want you to file a grievance through the prison process. Thanks for having people's backs ACLU. No reason people who has been assaulted by those in power in the system should fear reporting that assault to those people in power. So the ACLU doesn't see themselves as protecting Eighth amendment rights. But if you keep reading...
If you have religious discrimination, you should contact the ACLU.
Sexual abuse and torture in a prison? Trust the prison administrators, they will take care of resolving it. But if they violate your religion, oh man, that's when the high power ACLU lawyers are needed.
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[ 0.19 ms ] story [ 605 ms ] threadHold up. Are you suggesting that libertarians are against free speech and freedom of the press?
However in general perception they are firmly "on the left" politically and socially whereas Libertarians are perceived as "on the right" in America. Therefore I don't think the label Libertarian is fitting in this case.
(with the additional caveat that the ACLU has somewhat controversial opinions about which constitutional rights don't apply to individuals)
It's not very plausible, but it's a theory :)
For example, if I—a dyed-in-the-wool free speech advocate—bring a weak case against someone who wrote something unpopular, I can control the opposition within the case and ensure that I lose (and therefore my ideals are upheld).
Again, not very plausible with respect to the ACLU's drift, but that's what parent seems to be suggesting as one of the possibilities.
Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.
One side is trying to prevent kindergarteners from having teachers discuss gender and sexual identity issues with them. The other is openly claiming free speech is problematic on widely available public discussion platforms, with thought leaders claiming that strict moderation of these platforms is necessary to preserve democracy.
But yes, arguably both sides are supporting some degree of censorship.
I know the idea that this is censorship might float with some, but I just can’t be fussed to stand for something I wouldn’t want for my children.
I don’t think this is censorship, I think this is defining what is appropriate for interactions with children.
I think age appropriate centrally planned general plan what should be taught is entirely reasonable. Anything else just leaves to mess and unevenness.
A more prototypical example of censorship would be government-sanctioned banning of the selling or distribution of books critical of its policies... and not just in libraries at schools for children.
You probably saw the video of Russian protesters being taken away by henchmen immediately after speaking out [1], or the video of the Chinese police interrogation for the guy who criticized them on WeChat [2]. It'd be a little obtuse to compare these to controlling what sexual education topics kindergarteners are exposed to.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO9u0XT6O40 [2] https://reclaimthenet.org/china-man-chair-interrogation-soci...
side note: "de jure" (by law) should be "du jour" (of the day). i just used this phrase in another post, a funny little coinky-dink (coincidence).
'Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.'
…since Trump’s election, according to The New York Times, the organization’s annual budget has grown threefold and its lawyer staff has doubled—but only four of its attorneys specialize in free-speech issues, a number that has not changed in a decade.
Instead, the ACLU has expanded its services—and filled its coffers—as it takes partisan stances or embraces dubious causes. Meanwhile, when it comes to the red-hot culture-war issues squarely within its wheelhouse, such as the right to free, albeit hateful, speech on campus, the ACLU has stayed largely on the sidelines.
Those who want to be rich, however, fall into temptation and become ensnared by many foolish and harmful desires that plunge them into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil. By craving it, some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many sorrows. But you, O man of God, flee from these things and pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, perseverance, and gentleness.
I'm not an overly religious person, but this seems to ring true as much today as it ever has.
We're just seeing the natural progression of American individualism. What used to mean - be strong in the face of adversity, work toward a positive goal, and bring others along once you make it, has become a monstrosity. Winning means amassing resources, regardless of the steps you take to get those resources. Oh, and don't forget to pull the ladder up after you, because if someone else wins, you lose.
What we're seeing is the evolution, the simple, natural evolution of stoic individualism taken to the nth degree.
Honestly, I do believe it all comes down to the cultural individualism as the prime component of success. Other countries have the same PR, mass media, and consumer goods, but don't seem to have the same cut-throat attitude to absolutely everything in their lives.
Astronaut 2: Always has been...
It feels like we're being conditioned to hate poor people.
The Trump era really broke something in people's brains. Politics started invading everywhere at a level much greater than had ever existed before. I don't go to work, watch sports, or share pictures with the intent to engage in politics.
The mainstream media did a great job of outraging liberals because whenever trump said anything even remotely controversial, it was covered nonstop until he said the next thing. I think a lot of people ended up being outraged for 5 straight years, and came to the conclusion that the idea of free speech is "a danger to our democracy".
To be fair, I bet you could measure the average interval of those events in hours.
I'm just tired of pretending any of it means anything anymore. Both parties won't fix the roads, both parties won't give us healthcare, both parties are pro-war. Why should anyone care who the president is?
edit: I'm getting downvoted, so here's a source: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
We're in a much better place today because of heroes in our military
Lucky you?
Whether you are in favor or against, it's easy to argue that a whole lot of people care about that issue, and not only in purely theoretical grounds.
And that's just the topic of the week: A justice is, on average, going to be making rulings for about 30 years, and is probably going to be able to retire strategically, to be replaced by a like-minded judge. So even if it's just due to the power of electing supreme court justices, presidents matter.
So I don't think it's hard to argue that, because of Trump's presidency, we'll have a very conservative supreme court for, very likely, our entire lifetimes, while if Clinton had won, we'd instead have a liberal majority in the court for at least another 20 years.
Even without the abortion decision, the court will make a big practical difference to a lot of people. I think it's fair to expect wide sweeping decisions that would never have happened without Trump being able to build a 6-3 court.
i'm sorry, but what the supreme court DRAFT said was: "there's no constitutional right to abortion. also this should've been decided by representatives of the people".
i'm not sure why that's a bad thing -- supreme court justices should not legislate and, if abortion is such an important thing for one side of the isle, they should fight, tooth and nail, to get laws (actual laws, not flimsy decisions by non-elected officials) passed.
hell, even RBG criticized roe v wade -- https://www.law.uchicago.edu/news/justice-ruth-bader-ginsbur...
I don't know if recency bias plays into the Trump stuff feeling way more covered, or if it actually was, but I'm not sure media did particularly more this time around compared to last. Maybe it was just who the target audience for outrage was this time, instead of the amount of coverage.
Not really sure of my point, but food for thought to the lurkers I guess.
I have a very clear memory of a fox news headline disparaging obama for taking his jacket off in the white house, because apparently that was against the custom or whatever. And I thought, who cares, and it was then I knew that I shouldn't take fox seriously. But then, when trump was elected, I saw cnn spend a whole day talking about how trump got two scoops of ice cream and everyone else only got one, and had the same realization.
But I have to disagree with the idea that these stories were spread to the same degree. Go on twitter, go on facebook, go on snapchat - name a platform, and that platform will promote ideas against a republican significantly more than stories against a democrat. And you can argue that "that's just the algorithm" or whatever, but it is what it is, which is biased.
I had always rationalized this with the thought that these platforms had larger Democrat populations than Republican, which explains the broadcast bias. Maybe that is an incorrect assumption.
I don't think there's a particular left/right/whatever bent to running this business model. It's just that there isn't a lot of news that engages people in this world, so you cannot sustain a 24/7 media empire unless you wrap them up in a conspiracy or create a false narrative that there's some evil group that their news is fighting against with the truth. Then, all of a sudden, some random person's Tweet about mixed sex bathrooms becomes an hour's worth of news to engage people with.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1ab6uxg908
It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare.
It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
It's just a shorter phrase than "ABC, CBS, CNN, MSNBC, all late night comedy shows, SNL, and nearly all newspapers." It becomes a bit of a mouthful. It's the most neutral form of phrasing all of this media that seems to lean toward the same political party, though I'll accept recommendations if you have a better term.
> It's bizarre to simultaneously criticize them while also blaming them for setting your incorrect expectations. Should have listened to and read Lawfare.
It wasn't just my expectations, and I absolutely do expect news media saturation of a story to correlate with its actual relevance. Instead, they over-hyped and sold outrage day after day until the rubber hit the road. And then they just moved on. The idea that one should have simply ignored all the supposed journalists and reporting to read one guy's legal blog (???) seems bizarre to me. This is a very revisionist view of those 2+ years.
> It's also simply morally blameworthy to excuse the relevant behavior on the part of Trump and his associates, whether they were indicted or not.
I'm not excusing anything. I'm saying the media hyped this up as "Watergate times a thousand" over a two year stretch, and it ended up being nothing near that.
...and that's why it's a big problem when they spend 2+ years building up hype around a story whose ramifications are far less than we were led to believe.
Not stopping the family separation at the southern border.
Sending bad medical advice and politicizing response to a national healthcare crisis with COVID-19.
Abandoning Puerto Rico after a devastating Hurricane.
Not offering a replacement for Obamacare as promised, instead only gutting the process to make it more expensive for people who still try to get insurance. Especially for not implementing a single payer healthcare system like the entire rest of the civilized world uses to offer much more efficient healthcare to the populace.
Not fixing the Social Security deficit.
Engaging in a trade war with China without an apparent exit strategy.
Agreed. The lack of accompanying service cuts really kept this from being as effective as it could have been.
> Abandoning Puerto Rico after a devastating Hurricane.
Yea, that was really bad.
> Engaging in a trade war with China without an apparent exit strategy.
I was actually pretty happy with how that went. A lot of progress was made, including stopping China from being able to abuse our own postal service to undercut local vendors on shipping. Before Covid hit, I was most looking forward to seeing continued progress there.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18246130
> Sending bad medical advice and politicizing response to a national healthcare crisis with COVID-19.
I'm not going to go deep into this, but suffice it to say it was an election year and everything was politicized by everyone.
Everything below here is just maintaining the status quo. I wouldn't call any of these Trump specific.
> Not stopping the family separation at the southern border.
This is admittedly horrifying, however, the amount of people coming over the border without any identification combined with the potential for trafficking makes it a complicated problem to solve. Not solving it was also just maintaining the status quo.
> Not offering a replacement for Obamacare as promised, instead only gutting the process to make it more expensive for people who still try to get insurance. Especially for not implementing a single payer healthcare system like the entire rest of the civilized world uses to offer much more efficient healthcare to the populace.
Agreed and disappointing. It's also an incredibly hard problem to solve without turning the entire country upside down. Dangling the carrot is easier (for both parties).
> Not fixing the Social Security deficit.
Been a problem for years that neither party is willing to make the hard decisions to correct.
Which was typically the next day. Trying to follow the Trump White House was exhausting.
Trump knew how to play the media like a fiddle. Say something outrageous, get loads of coverage, before anybody has time to really think about it or offer rebuttals he says something else outrageous and the first statement is instantly old news and forgotten.
News organizations made huge profits while Trump was in office, and their ratings have slipped considerably since electing President Biden and especially since Trump was kicked off of Twitter.
Could also just be the fact that I was a young teen then with little care for the world beyond school and friends.
It depends on whether you're willing to support an organization which also cares about other rights too. If you can stomach the defense of property rights, ij.org and pacificlegal.org both defend free speech rights alongside other rights.
Conservatives have historically had problems with free speech when it came to things they view as contrary to "family values", and later on with Trump branding the press as "The enemy of the people". But in the last 5-10 years liberals have as well had a problem with free speech with things they determine is "hate speech".
So now there aren't many people left that support the cause of absolute free speech regardless of whether you agree or disagree, and we have the ACLU catering more towards liberal causes and less on free speech cases.
It was mass experiment in what specific types of rage they love subjecting themselves to, fueled by an ungodly amount of computational power, in order to prop up and expand a vast ad-delivery network that masquerades as news.
The daily rage was hugely profitable for all media participants and don't let them tell you anything different. The internet found its crack cocaine and us poor subjects are just tweaking for another hit.
They'll never let us chill out again, ever.
I have not been paying much attention to this case (I actually thought it was just a messy divorce case), but man, fuck the ACLU. How is anyone supposed to take any of this seriously anymore? She didn't even write the piece herself? How was the ACLU able to "collect" money from both Johnny Depp and Elon Musk??
What a disgrace the ACLU has become, and unfortunately I think most people still see them as the freedom-fighters they used to be.
It doesn't really specify what the ACLU said or did to get that money. I'm curious what those methods were and if Depp (or Musk) were aware of the ACLU's involvement or the pay to play relationship between Heard and the ACLU.
Heard never donated the balance of her divorce settlement she publicly pledged.
But still, it doesn't seem like the ACLU should be involved in this.
But during the height of #metoo, we weren’t “allowed” to ask those questions because we needed to “believe all women”.
Institutional misandry strikes again.
This seems to imply that Depp did not abuse Heard, which was not the view of the judge in the UK defamation trial (he ruled that 12 out of 14 incidents of abuse perpetrated by Depp had been proven to a civil standard).
It looks like Heard also abused Depp on at least a few occasions. But there seems to be this online sentiment at the moment that Heard is a compulsive liar and that she did not suffer abuse at all. There seems to be clear public evidence to the contrary.
I would encourage you to examine the evidence.
Heard’s claims weren’t critically examined in the UK — who took her statements at face value while discounting both physical evidence and testimony of others.
By contrast in Virginia, where Heard is the subject of forensic analysis, both forensic psychologists have stated that Heard abused Depp — while there has been zero evidence (except Heard’s wild claims) to support that Depp ever acted similarly.
There is only evidence that Heard abused Depp.
A lawyer on YouTube has been streaming the Virginia trial and posting daily recaps, LegalBytes.
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbQVtXJ42xmgG9Q7cJI-F...
I'm a bit confused about this point - didn't Depp & his witnesses go first? I'd expect the majority of Heard's evidence in this trial to come out (and be examined) over the next couple of weeks.
If she calls witnesses that corroborate what you call her 'wild claims', would that change your opinion?
Though, Heard’s case has already started: the second forensic psychologist was hired by Heard and called as her witness and Heard herself is currently giving her testimony (which, watching it in full I find unconvincing and in conflict with evidence already presented).
Her witness list does not include anyone that will refute those points and is mainly filled with people whose only account of what happened between Johnny/Amber is what they've heard from Amber.
Just a sample of her claims thus far:
> Walked across a tile floor covered in glass shards from broken bottles and wine
> Sexual assault with a (potentially broken) wine bottle
> Thrown across a room by the neck
> Beaten on top of a bed so forcefully as to have broken the timber bed frame
Viewpoints like this are mostly gone these days in the US. Liberalism has become unpopular on the Left (and it's always been just a suggestion on the Right in my experience).
The reason "hate speech" exists in European countries is because they have unresolved baggage from WWII, and rather than confront the problem, they decided to put a boot down and curtail civil liberties instead. None of that is relevant to the USA or has any bearing on our politics.
Liberalism is about guaranteeing individuals' rights in the face of the State. My point is that the Left in the US has lost interest in it and are more interested in pursuing their policies regardless of how it affects freedoms. The Right has never really cared for Liberalism and so it's falling out of favor.
Also, by now I've seen so many breathless statements by leftists who are literally shaking rn that so-and-so "denies my right to exist" and "wants me dead" that it doesn't even look like anything to me anymore. It's just a slogan. Letters of the alphabet strung together.
For one thing, your comment states concrete concerns that could directly affect you, as opposed to the vague "fear for my life" sort of comments OP was referring to.
But more importantly, my question is not whether OP was correct, it is whether stating this opinion on an internet forum with little other context is somehow enough info to make a judgement about his empathy/morals.
Because for every loud/news visible minority like some LGBT folks there are others like Southeast Asians who nobody is caring about. By focusing on laws we can uplift _all_ minorities, not just the ones we identify as. The victories of a Neo Nazi's ability to publicly demonstrate can help Southeast Asians or African Americans demonstrate against police brutality or fight for equity in hiring, pay, and crime.
Not all minorities have hugely visible movements advocating for their rights. The modern LGBT movement is very visible and very online. My dark-skinned PoC parents are poor, speak bad English, and need a lot of help to navigate the US. Nobody is focusing on them.
But that's not really my main point, I'm certainly open to debate on the topic. I just don't agree with the character judgement of OP - we have no idea how his circle talks.
I've personally encountered two people that were clearly attention seeking or perhaps had an anxiety disorder with the way they talked about such issues. One example was a black female born into the upper middle class, working from home as a SWE in a gated community during the pandemic, saying quite literally that she actively feared for her life due to police violence.
To be clear, I do not think the existence of that extreme invalidates the legitimate underlying concerns at all. They've also been a minority of the voices in my experience. I'm just saying that language starts to lose its meaning if you encounter too many of these types, and I have seen with my own eyes that they exist.
The right response is probably not to outright dismiss a statement about fearing for one's life, but some amount of skepticism is normal if it's been a false alarm in the past. Especially on an internet forum with random strangers.
Nice try with the “you must be a monster!” tactic.
Morals have always and will always be relative to who’s alive at the time. Dril is just speaking power to truth, since their morals are winning for now.
First off. A professor writes a mere 1,000 word article for a major publication and it has typos. Yikes.
Second, the author points to action the ACLU took to defend the right of white supremacists to march in Charlottesville in 2018 and then tries to say they've changed position but doesn't demonstrate that with any proof of similar action or inaction -- just words. IMO actions are more important than words and if the ACLU's actions are still in line with the mission you say you agree with, this is much ado about nada.
The ACLU has clearly been infiltrated and coopted by the same authoritarian ideologues running amok in almost all of our other institutions. Manufactured by degree mills where children take on tens of thousands in debt for the privilege of progressive indoctrination.
>Progressive causes are near and dear to my heart. I am a feminist and staunch Democrat. As a federal public defender turned law professor, I have spent my career trying to make change in a criminal legal system that is riven with racism and fundamentally unfair to those without status and financial resources
The author is complicit but in typical progressive fashion totally oblivious to her role in the rise of this activist class. She made her bed and now we all get to lay in it, surrounded by irrational diversity propaganda while forced to keep quiet in the face of genuine systemic racism under implicit threat of retaliation.
That would fit the bill for systemic racism/sexism and it isn't merely alleged like that of D&I proponents.
So, if your claim is that they are now discriminated against- what was the inflection point where they were treated with no net bias?
Perhaps the reason it feels like discrimination is because those privileges are eroding?
No, that's a biased, agendad reading of history which ignores that the vast majority of these unfairly privileged white males were competing with other males who shared the same privilege. It does not justify discrimination against individuals today. It also does not demonstrate how a 90% majority benefited from workplace discrimination against the minority. Those inconvenient details are handwaved away with accusations of bigotry.
>So, if your claim is that they are now discriminated against- what was the inflection point where they were treated with no net bias?
Given the rate with which this cultural shift has progressed, there may not have been an obvious inflection point. But that's irrelevant to my argument.
In typical fashion you are simultaneously rationalizing discriminatory hiring practices (as though historic privilege requires modern correction) and denying that they are being mandated (as though D&I initiatives do not put implicit and explicit pressure against hiring white males). And the dishonesty is infuriating.
It feels like discrimination because it is discrimination.
Stop being so USA centric anyway. This crap gets exported around the world. Even if you accept the evil "corruption of blood" type propositions, people who live in countries that never had any of the racial history of the USA end up suffering from your racist and sexist nonsense.
But at least from a quick skim of their Wikipedia page, there's no sign of that being true.
Anyone else have a similar memory? Or "true story, but it actually was {name of some other organization here}"?
"In 2019, founder Morris Dees was fired, which was followed by President Richard Cohen's resignation. An outside consultant, Tina Tchen, was brought in to review workplace practices, particularly relating to accusations of racial and sexual harassment. Margaret Huang, who was formerly the Chief Executive at Amnesty International USA, was named as president and CEO of the SPLC in early February 2020."
That organization is one of the most harmful organizations in the US. In my opinion.
I mean the fact that they can run a false flag in order to incite hatred towards a major political party, get caught, and get away with it with zero consequences is just mind-blowing.
See: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/oct/30/lincoln-proj...
If you think that's a bad thing, you're arguing that there should be limits to it, which is counter to what seems to be the majority opinion of... well, the members the Lincoln Project oppose, judging by this thread.
I'm not just pointing this out to be smug, but because I genuinely believe a majority of the people on the right who claim to be free speech absolutists in this thread would agree with you upon reading your comment, because it's a reasonable concern to have. Almost no one is actually a free speech absolutist, when push comes to shove it usually comes down to an objection to which speech is being censored, and how often.
For this, my original comment now is at -3
Here's a good article addressing what's gone wrong with the SPLC: https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/splc-klan-h...
Thank you for clarifying, it sounds like the organisation has changed recently
https://nypost.com/2022/01/31/ex-aclu-head-ira-glasser-slams...
They had bylaws historically which emphasized "wholly without political partisanship" as well, though I think that's probably long gone by now.
We all "know" they are rotten but we are still "shocked" when we learn exactly what they do - aka "How the sausage is made".
It reminds me that time ( possibly now ) when Politico's "journalists" went around the World asking money from Governments and other public institutions in order for them to write good things about them ( visibility!! ) but also "asking" money to not write bad things about them..
Sometimes the drunk bums around the corner are 100% right: this shit stinks!!!
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politico#Controversies
"Vote blue no matter who" isn't gonna get us out of this one, and neither is donating to the ACLU and NPR.
There isn't a single far-left politician in the federal government. There are a few that are maybe left of center, but "far-left?" Absolutely not.
Show me a rep or senator calling for public ownership of the means of production and then we have a conversation, but there simply isn't one. Nobody with a say is advocating for abolishing money, the state, class, etc. Even the list of politicians that support worker unions is really short. The furthest left US politicians go is social democracy, which is just democracy with strong safety nets to help keep as many people as possible from rock bottom.
It's an unacceptable solution but it seems to me that the US is just too big and splitting it up would make more sense.
We already have this. The divisions are called states. And it's solid argument for a weaker federal government.
And yes, the power of individual representatives would be watered down, that's ok. It would be much closer to the direct democracy the parent comment suggested (and the reason I brought it up).
It allows representatives to deal with boring bills the public doesn't care about, but there are enough representatives that I can reasonably expect to be on a first name basis with my representative if I care enough to get involved.
CSPAN camera angles are limited on purpose to hide this, but most speeches are given to an empty or nearly empty chamber. Actual floor debate that might change viewpoints is rare to non-existent now - the real debate and discussion happens off of the floor in private intra-party meetings and lunches, or in 1:1 meetings between leadership.
The issue is coming up with the text of a bill to actually vote on and finding a way to avoid laws that contradict each other unintentionally.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_in_Switzerland
Look how favourable our current laws are to politicians!!
Sadly, an average person is stupid, and half are even stupider.
Reduced crime, increased economic strength, increased education and skills, better overall wellbeing, a stronger economy, better health.
Whichever European country you're in, I'd wager that the .1% are using tax loopholes and straight up fraud to fleece more taxpayer money than 10k per citizen would cost.
Sounds a bit like you're a victim of class war propaganda. Try looking into BI and how it actually works.
If people are stupid and we need to be ruled by elites, then why do we have democracies? Why popular vote? Shouldn't we have PhD's decide who are rulers are?
Lookup "sortition", experiences show that common people tend to make better decison for the good of society, while any "club" (politicians, elites) end up working towards expanding their power.
[0] I prefer score voting, but I'll vote for anyone who will get any alternate form of voting out there. For an easy explanation of the different voting systems, look at https://ncase.me/ballot/
Because of the voting systems, parties need 4% of the votes to make it into the parliament, and all the votes for <4% parties are basically "lost".
The end effect was people not voting for the "new guy" because they liked the new guy, but because they didn't want the new guy to stay, causing a huge discrepancy between the the parties they actually wanted to win vs the voting results.
Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away.
All that is happening is that people want everyone to live by the same rules. Either nobody has consequences or everybody can have the soapbox taken away if the general public doesn't agree with them.
Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech. So it is reasonable that questions ensue questioning how great this "free speech" really is. Is lying by corporations really speech?
It's a scary precedent and even more scary that so many don't see what's happening.
> Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
The powerful have controlled the media in the past WAY more than they do now or even in recent decades. Even the people gaining control of the media recently are outside of the normal historical rich as they're all of the nouveau riche class.
This is all one more example of the recent trend of not wanting to bring UP the less privileged but to tear DOWN the privileged to the level of the less privileged. The former is beneficial for society the latter is self-destructive.
The result of lack of speech is violence. If people (parts of the rich) can't voice their opinion with words they do so with actions by galvanizing people into violent actions.
This is simply not true and I'm curious if you have any examples to support this.
> Anybody not in that set saying something the rich and powerful don't agree with gets sued into oblivion and/or gets their soap box taken away.
Again that is simply not true. In fact compared with the UK for instance it is _far_ harder to sue for libel or defamation in the US.
> Billionaires have been too blatant with media manipulation for everyone else to be OK with the rules as they are.
Rich people have access to resources the poor don't. That's not new.
> BTW I'd also note that "free speech" American style is almost like a religion, you can't argue against it. I'd just note that no other country Europe (or the world) subscribes to this absolutist version of free speech.
In general we are free speech absolutists. Honestly along with fast food, very entertaining movies and our love affair with guns it's quintessentially American.
The fast food and guns are still doing well though!
"Free speech absolutism" is a nonsensical slur. There are sensible restrictions on the freedom of speech that have been engrained into American jurisprudence. There actually used to be more exceptions (for instance, anti-war speech was illegal during World War 1) but, to their credit, the political left pushed for expanding those rights.
But yes, we do take our free speech with religious seriousness. That is because many of our ancestors came here to escape religious persecution from Europe (and other places). We do not wish to return to the bad old days where our beliefs could again be criminalized.
Private institutions are narrowing their versions of what was considered normative 'crude' behaviour into 'hate speech' which has implications. Netflix, Hulu etc. spend a lot of time defining what's appropriate and not in their programming, and someone uttering something 'counter narrative' is problematic for them (unless it makes them a lot of money).
That said, with Trump lying about the election, and others lying about vaccines, and foreign actors 100% trying to influence electoral outcomes (these are real things), it's an actual problem.
I mean, I don't care if RT.com is punted from anywhere, it's not relevant, but it's a slippery slope.
Did VISA, in the 1970s, kick people off of their network 'because speech'?
Did ABC Shipping refuse customers, 'because speech'?
That's not 'platforming' - those are just businesses that do business.
Second - what happened in the past is irrelevant.
Businesses should not really vetting customers unless there's a material reason.
Certainly banks, telcos, retail - should be barred from this. VISA is not 'platforming' anyone, that's ridiculous.
Twitter, Appstore - because they are directly related to the content, this is more arguably 'platforming' and there's more likely to be some kind of content management, but we have to be very careful about it.
That still doesn't explain why they are involved with the Heard/Depp case. Or why they were supporting Stacey Abrams' campaign or campaigning against Brett Kavanaugh.
Supporting Stacey Abrams makes absolute sense; she's done more work on the ground for voting rights than any politician at her level. As for Kavanaugh, the ACLU's explanation for their opposition satisfies me. https://www.aclu.org/blog/civil-liberties/executive-branch/w...
“Board members were clear that if the same concerns were raised about a Democratic Supreme Court nominee — inadequately investigated credible allegations of sexual assault supported by credible testimony and met by nominee testimony showing angry partisanship — we would similarly oppose that nominee.”
That’s a lot of qualifiers! Would they do the same for any potential crime? What about other crimes whose severity, from a social perspective, has changed in the other direction in the years since they were committed? For example, smoking weed was probably considered, contemporaneously, as less forgivable than making unwanted sexual advances. Should we try to dig into whether a nominee passed a blunt in college, since surely that’s a sign of poor past judgment?
By wading into these waters, the ACLU should have airtight argumentation, ideally proactive not reactive. It hasn’t offered much of that, which is why its integrity is being credibly questioned.
“Does this decision change ACLU policy?
No. ACLU policy is not to support or oppose any candidate for elected or appointed office, including Supreme Court justices.”
And supporting Stacey Abrams is in keeping with that…how?
Edit: typos
https://www.aclunc.org/norecall
I mean… guys… it’s #2. I wouldn’t be surprise to hear that ACLU defended more people against 3A violations than 2A.
SAF and GOA have done more than NRA in the past 10 years anyhow. The only people sad about NRA dissolving are the people internally doing it.
But apparently trying to hide a fact might make it change!
The FBI refers to the Weather Underground organization as domestic terrorists. [1]
If you rob an armoured car and kill people for a terrorist organizations that sounds like being a terrorist to me.
But you have the right, along with the ACLU, to defend terrorists.
What I’d be curious to see on this topic is a review of what the ACLU was up to during the 90s and 00s, when anti war and environmental activism were the biggest targets for suppression, and privacy and LGBT rights became major issues. Would people today see the ACLU’s activity in those periods as still too focused on “partisan” causes, or is this really a post-Trump phenomenon?
https://www.aclu.org/other/defense-freedom-time-crisis
My own view is that the leadership of both parties really would like to install Chinese-style mass surveillance practices, and the motivation primarily seems to be the desire to contain popular anger over declining standards of living across the USA. The creation of the Rust Belt via the implementation of neoliberal trade policies played a key role in the rise of Trump, and leaders of both parties pushed that through on the behalf of their corporate masters. Of course, Trump did nothing about it, so the populist anger is still smoldering.
If implementing draconian mass surveillance is the plan, then buying off the ACLU is a step in that direction.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRkLmKJCKbw
Their Director, Anthony Romero, implemented a new ideological and political backlash test for those they represent. It was his decision. His interviews show he'd much rather be in charge of sprawling, well funded partisan organization than a smaller crotchety one.
I see the appeal. He's becoming a Democratic power player, funding campaigns and helping define the Democratic agenda. Why would he ever go back? He has more personal impact than he ever could under the old ACLU, can become much wealthier, fraternize with celebrities and politicians, and all while being consistent with his personal politic views.
I used to support the ACLU and I support progressive causes. Now that they are one and the same, I'd rather donate to candidates and causes directly instead of letting Romero pick for me.
Seems true in media too. Look at what happened to Joe Rogan when he got his big deal. His move down-market and toward a more partisan position is just going where the money is, I'm sure at the behest of his new owners.
Objectivity doesn't pay. Standing for principles doesn't pay. Selling out to partisan or corporate agendas pays.
As someone who has extensively followed the missteps of the NRA under Wayne LaPierre… I don’t believe you understand what Far-Right is, nor the actual details of the NRA.
Allow me to give you a primer that isn’t built off of media fear mongering…
NRA is very much Establishment Right. That’s part of the problem. They wanted to snuggle with McConnell and Graham and hated Trump just as much as the afore mentioned do. The NRA wants status quo. Don’t actually do anything because we can’t campaign on that. Go to galas, make important calls and meetings in DC, have the company buy a house for you.
As both sides have abandoned compromise solutions, the NRA is still playing the 2A game as if it was bowling pin matches and skeet clubs.
Guess what though? The young people that make up modern gun owners have different concerns. The Hearing Protection Act and National Reciprocity should have gone through on Trump Day 1. But the NRA didn’t really care about either. Almost every gun owner in the county was pissed off when NRA didn’t storm the fucking gates when Philando Castile was killed by a twitchy cop. That was a fucking home run to prove gun ownership isn’t about skin color and they did absolutely nothing. GOA and SAF took an immediate stand despite many members and groups being police affiliated.
GOA and SAF have been building their ranks with young, motivated, and politically active members. The NRA Old Guard is dying of age, not by bullets real or political, by bloat.
Anyone that is anti-gun should not be celebrating the slow dissolve of the NRA. And likewise, if you (seriously!?) think the NRA is “Far Right” you really aren’t going to like the ambitious and motivated direction of the new guard. They’ll compromise when it makes sense, but real compromise, where you give something up for something they want.
Side note: For anyone who doesn't know, they are available on Amazon Smile as a charity so you can support them with a few cents from every purchase you make at no additional cost to you.
[1] https://twitter.com/ACLU/status/1439259891064004610 [2] https://www.theonion.com/area-homosexual-saves-four-from-fir...
Interesting. Do you have link(s) to read more about this?
(And for anyone else doubtful of parent commenter's intentions: seriously, try googling it.)
This article complains the ACLU is not taking right-wing speech cases but admits they still do take cases and lists no examples where they refused. It cites the ACLU reacting to the protest where a protester was killed by nazis as anti-speech, but the ACLU was not saying they are against legal speech! They reflected, correctly, that backing groups that seek to silence (and kill) others is not straightforward. Considering the number of people in here who are decrying a "movement against freedom of speech" I would think people would support that policy!
If the article is to be believed and the ACLU has gotten a lot more money in recent years - wouldn't it make sense that they get into new areas?
Should the ACLU have more speech lawyers? Maybe! Are there cases they couldn't take? I would love to see some examples.
Should the ACLU stay out of politics? It's worth debating and I'm glad the article brings it up - but given the anti-democratic (and anti-individual rights) policy goals of the republican party I understand the approach. The article doesn't even ask what we do when one party is against proportional representation!
In general I just don't feel like this is actually responding to the ACLU's positions. She accuses the organization of hypocrisy around Title IX because they criticized changes but then later said they supported some updates - but of course it is perfectly coherent to criticize overall changes AND support parts of them. Here is their statement:
> We filed comments on Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ Title IX rule that supported fair process requirements for live hearings, cross-examination, access to all the evidence, and delays in proceedings if the student accused of wrongdoing also faced a student criminal investigation, even as we criticized the rule for reducing the obligations of schools to respond to reports of sexual harassment.
Like seriously, I encourage everyone to check the case selection guidelines linked in the article[1]. Here are the things that might lead them to not take an otherwise suitable case: the group seeks to engage in violence, the group seeks to carry weapons, if the speech would lead to direct harm, if the ACLU support would appear to damage the orgs' overall mission. These aren't even vetos. They're areas of concern, and they seem pretty reasonable - especially considering this article criticized the ACLU for getting involved with Amber Heard because she sees their support for Heard as damaging to the ACLUs' mission! Which is exactly their concern.
[1] https://www.aclu.org/sites/default/files/field_document/aclu...
Police are white supremacist and defunding police big focus
"We need to defund the budgets - It’s the only way we’re going to take power back." - Mr Romero (head of the org).
400+ lawsuits against trump.
Started trying to stop circulation of books they don't agree with:
"Stopping the circulation of this book and these ideas is 100% a hill I will die on.” - https://twitter.com/donovancleckley/status/13274901590765854...
They are a nonpolitical (edited: should be nonpartisan) (required by charitable status) group running ads like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aqKS3ihVM
"Stacey Abrams will end dependence on private prisons which will save millions" Stacey Abrams did some deal with someone that will do X. etc.
On title IX issues, where you had some crazy stories around due process, the ACLU pushed back on more due process rights:
"It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused and letting schools ignore their responsibility ..."
https://twitter.com/aclu/status/1063456843706585089?lang=en
Also doing a lot more twitter lecturing I think then in the past.
"There’s no one way to be a man.
Men who get their periods are men.
Men who get pregnant and give birth are men.
... "
It's been lucrative to the ACLU. $750K in salaries and benefits to ED, he used to be at $340K range.
Institute for Justice - good project on adding some limits to civil asset forfeiture:
https://ij.org/issues/private-property/civil-forfeiture/
They were attorneys on the Timbs case (not ACLU) which they won at the Supreme Court. They've had lots of success in this in lower courts with some crazy cases.
ACLU used to do a lot to improve policing (ie, look at how line-ups are conducted etc). Some other groups taking that on - this is less about defunding / abolishing police and more about improving accuracy of policing (ie, still catch a murderer but do it in ways with less collateral damage / fewer false allegations).
I'm actually trying to explore the question of other groups as I've been an ACLU member since the 90's so just know so much more about them! I was drawn to some of their earlier policing work (I volunteered in some prisons) in particular because certain approaches just result in real problems in policing (project innocence helped prove I think many of the ACLU's earlier points here).
That said, I think no question a change with Romero. I might describe it as a change from a "civil liberty" type org to a more traditional "human rights" type org more along the lines of NAACP, Sierra Club etc? And a LOT more politically focused than in the past from a feeling standpoint? They do things like anti-trump ads etc. Historically they might have cheered some of the due process protections in Title IX, now they denounce them.
Internally worth noting that some efforts around free speech issues are seen as "white supremacist" - that may make it harder for folks there to take on classic campus type free speech issues just internally. Speech = violence type stuff.
DEI is a big push. They are doing interesting work around trying to push employers to take identity characteristics into account when making employment decisions, including numerical goals / targets which historically folks were cautious about. They have some good examples here, like reserving 50% of new hire slots for black workers only as still being in compliance with non-descrimination law as long as black workers are not equally represented etc.
They're a 501(c)(4), not a 501(c)(3). They aren't nonpolitical and have no obligation not to engage in politics. In fact, engaging in politics is the entire point of the ACLU
"Political or social activities. The promotion of social welfare does not include direct or indirect participation or intervention in political campaigns on behalf of or in opposition to any candidate for public office."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/26/1.501(c)(4)-1
I think this is a fair confusion currently however given their strong dem tie-in recently and their current approach of taking on individual politicians (for and against) by name.
Note: If you are active in the ACLU they have a related ACLU Foundation they use to collect 501c3 money, is run by the same people out of the same offices, and actually brings in more money I think than the c4 if that matters.
That said, this is still a real shift for the ACLU - this type of campaigning is not something they historically really did. So the push to actively campaign more is newish for them.
It's def where the money is though - the MAGA orgs, the NRA, the ACLU - in some ways they are just following the money.
In the above case, some female prisoners in Washington state wanted to know how many male prisoners had been transferred to women's prisons. The state didn't want to share that information (even in aggregate) and the ACLU defended the state's assertion that this information should be kept secret from the public, including from the imprisoned women whom this policy impacted directly.
Why the government would want to keep this secret is a good question, but the main point here is: did people donating to the ACLU realize their money is being used to fight private citizen information requests & defend government secrecy? How the mighty have fallen.
In this case, just a count and prison is not a privacy issue as someone would have to already know the individual is trans to identify them. And that’s the only information contained in the data release.
Here's a link to a public inmate search for Washington state.
https://www.doc.wa.gov/information/search.htm
so even though GP tried to be accurate and progressive-enough in their admonishment of the ACLU to find a way to have a rational way of expressing and discussing their fear, the people involved have made a malformed FOIA request and are expressing their calcified opinion conflating sex and gender identity.
no pronouns need to be added or used to correct the malformed FOIA request
it conflates sex and gender, I said what I said, its accurate that it is doing that.
> Total number of male persons who identify as female, non-binary, or any other gender identity
The request would be "Total number of male persons that identify as women". The sex doesn't change, the gender does. The FOIA request would say invalid, or zero, and be accurate, regarding the ones identifying as "female". The "other gender identify" may cover it, but not necessarily. Males identifying as men wouldn't have been transferred. So "other than what"? "Female" is not a gender, unless we are accepting that any arbitrary identification is valid, but would that be grounds for transfer?
But yes that can just say "males transferred", because they remain male.
Its a conditional argument because legal circumstances follow conditional logic. So if it seems obtuse, oh well, thats how it works.
If this had been maliciously complied with, the whole discussion would have been different.
Actually a lot of them now do identity as female, and claim to have literally changed their sex from male to female.
The old idea of "man/woman refers to gender, male/female refers to sex" no longer applies these days.
Not content with colonizing the word "woman", they've now done the same to "female".
This is contemporary trans discourse for you, erasing women and trampling all over women's rights.
Anyway, prisoner gender is not healthcare data, it’s administrative data that describes prisoner population demographics.
I would agree with you if the request was for individual medical information on treatment or procedures or something.
Possibly, but you're almost assuredly looking at a sample of N=10 or fewer, so the answer would be "*" anyway.
Let’s say there were 3 transgender people in the state, or even a facility. If they reveal that number it doesn’t identify an individual or divulge any confidential information.
The low counts have to be suppressed when coupled with other data or linked to other data.
If you included count by age group, then you would need to change from a low count to a suppressed marker.
For example 3 transgenders in the 80+ age group might reveal their identity because there aren’t many 80+ inmates.
But just having a small count with no other info is not really a cause to remove the value.
Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
Any argument here about privacy is entirely independent of sex and gender. Prison is dehumanizing, address that. Don't be a transphobe.
Edit: There's a bunch of mistaken comments here assuming that this will protect women prisoners in some capacity. That's totally wrong! Women in prison are sexually assaulted, raped, and even impregnated by men all the time and have been for years. Those men are guards[0]. And this happens at a vastly higher rate per capita and overall than any assault by trans inmates. Anyone here with a legitimate interest in protecting women in prison would be attempting to address that harm, because it is far more dire for numerous reasons.
[0]: https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/the-rape-club-womens-priso...
I think you should take a moment to consider the (female) women in this situation. Imagine you're a woman 100% at the mercy of the state, and the state locks you in a cell with a male person. Put yourself in their shoes, and try to extend some empathy to them.
I think people in prison should be protected from other people in prison if they are dangerous, and I think prisons fail to do that today. I don't accept your presumption that having a penis makes someone inherently more dangerous.
Again: if your goal is to protect women in prison, the best way to do that is to advocate for reform that makes prisons safer for everyone. Not by being transphobic, which you're doing instead.
Perfect is the enemy of good and while it's hard to disagree with the sentiment of "reform that makes prisons safer for everyone ", we have no idea what that actually entails and that's so much of a monumental task that it's basically a non-starter. I feel like the sentiment here is "this wouldn't be a problem if we changed everything, so why don't we?"
I strongly agree; if you deprive someone of their liberty, then you take on the responsibility of protecting them - because you've deprived them of the ability to protect themselves.
I'm not aware of any prison regime that takes the safety of prisoners as a key objective. [Edit] Nor do I know of a state that handles the deliberate negligence of prisoner welfare as a criminal offence.
The data really really doesn't support your view. Men are objectively more dangerous.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/251886/murder-offenders-...
https://stoprape.humboldt.edu/statistics
An estimated 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male. Nearly 99% of perpetrators are male
Indeed and this is why feminist organizations, and others with an interest in women's rights and safety, push for policies of only employing female prison guards in women's prisons.
It's no stretch to see why they don't want male prisoners to be incarcerated there too, no matter how such males identity.
If the male guards can't be trusted not to sexually abuse women, how can you expect the same from cohabiting males?
Your sex is private information under GDPR. Why would the GDPR be stricter than than HIPAA in this case?
>Regarding the right to privacy, what's your take on the privacy rights of the (female) women who are being physically forced to house & sleep in a cell with males?
"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
Assuming the former right does exist, then there is a conflict of rights (between the wishes of males who want to be housed with females, and females who want to be housed without males). Rights conflicts like this are not solved by simply telling one group (in this case, women) to shut up and stop complaining.
Where the ACLU comes in here I have no idea.
People typically consider that women (cis or trans) have a right to be housed together, and separately from cismen.
If anything, the biggest problem of policy are trans-men, who would likely feel much more concerned by being housed with cis-man prisoners, but who would also make women uncomfortable.
So an adult human female (XX phenotype) who is taking masculinizing hormones and thus has a beard, body hair, a heavy voice, and perhaps has had his breasts surgically removed, or even had penile reconstruction surgery, is, in your opinion, a woman?
If he is not naked and you do not have a genotypic test result, how would would you know? Do you think a woman seeing him in a women's locker or in a women's bathroom would feel comfortable? Or would she feel more comfortable with a male that has a female body and clothing presentation (say, Caitlyn Jenner)?
Also, your definitions of course leave no room for people with various biological conditions that leave them with an uncertain biological sex - hermaphrodytism, XXY genotype, chymerism (multiple genotypes in different tissues), testosterone resistance (natural female phenotype despite a male genotype) etc.
Yes. She's a woman who has taken masculinizing hormones, and had cosmetic surgery. She is not changing her sex. She remains female, and is therefore a woman.
Consider this: the women athletes who have doped with testosterone, did they become men? No, of course not. What if they got breast cancer and had to have a double mastectomy? Also no - they're still women.
I'm pretty sure that's how conflicts with women have been historically resolved.
We segregate prisons by sex. Primary and secondary sex characteristics are observable characteristics that indicate one's sex.
Your argument is like saying "You don't buy a Mazda. You go to the Mazda dealership and buy a car that says Mazda on the back, interior, and on the manual. You don't actually know the car is a Mazda."
>"But what about the children?" is never a good argument for taking the away the rights of others.
I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
On the other hand, it is well known that transwomen are much more often the victims of rape by cismen, if living in men's prisons.
If anything, I would think the biggest problem here is the fate of transmen. I doubt a ciswoman would feel very comfortable sharing a cell with a transman, but a transman also has much higher chances of being abused if sharing a cell with a cisman.
There is no proof males who identify as trans (transwomen) are any less likely to commit rape than males who do not identify as trans. The rape risk of being housed with a male is real regardless of how the male identifies with regards to gender. If you have data to the contrary (data indicating that trans identifying males are less likely to commit rape than other males) please share.
To be clear: not accusing either of those above of being an actual rapist! Just asking which would be more likely to inspire this fear in someone who doesn't know them.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ContraPoints#/media/File%3AN...
[1] https://mobile.twitter.com/BuckAngel/photo
Are you just making this up, or do you have some statistics on female on female rape?
Here's an analysis of data from the Ministry of Justice in the UK, demonstrating that trans-identifying males have similar patterns of criminality to other males, including sexual assault: https://fairplayforwomen.com/transgender-male-criminality-se...
Really? Are there actual women who are genuinely concerned about this or is this a strawman invented by other people? You see this same issue with transwomen in sports. There is massive concern-trolling for women "who want a level playing field", but when you actually _ask_ women who compete with them (like in the case of Lia Thomas), they don't have a problem with it.
You are masking your transphobia in coddling for women who aren't even complaining about these issues. Women in prison are far more likely to be raped by law enforcement; but somehow the 3 or so transwomen who might sleep in the same cell as a woman is a bigger mark for the ACLU.
>I also hope that you don't point to school shootings to argue against the second amendment then.
That's actually pretty simple for me, I don't think gun rights are inalienable rights, no more than I think I have a right to own a playstation.
Keeping penises out of the same room with vaginas will not magically eliminate sexual assault because sexual assault is based on power and willingness to harm another, not whether not tab A physically fits into slot B.
If you think keeping penises away from vaginas will eliminate prison rape then clearly you don't know much about rape in mens' prisons.
Indeed, in trans circles, expecting the latter as a required factor is often considered highly offensive. This, and the notion that a person needs to experience gender dysphoria to be trans, is now derisively known as the 'truscum' point of view.
Non-binary people are another discussion, and how they should fit into male/female spaces is of course unclear.
Overall, I would agree that prison assignment should depend on more than reported identity. Especially since it is conceivable that people in prison are likelier to lie about their internal identity if they believe they can get something out of this lie. This is much less relevant for lower risk environments, such as bathrooms (in my country at least, unisex bathrooms are anyway quite common) or gym lockers.
The actual problem is that prisons are unsafe for everyone and there's little done to make them safer. But they'd rather use transgender people in their culture war because they don't care about the actual violence problems.
Once prison is organized like a summer camp with a 2:1 guard to prisoner ratio, we can do them co-ed.
In any event, I still don't see how any of this justifies keeping this whole topic in the shadows and making public discourse impossible by keeping the scope of the question secret from the public.
* I'm taking your word for this, haven't looked it up.
The goal (I assume! You haven't spelled this out.) is to reduce the rate of sexual assault between cellmates in prison.
The system has to determine who can end up in the same cell. Prison wardens have access to some data about prisoners. The question is which data is used to partition prisoners.
Your claim appears to be that one prisoner having a penis and the other having a vagina is a strong predictor of an increased odds of sexual assault.
My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence since the widespread accounts of prison rape in same-sex prisons implies that simply avoiding penises and vaginas in the same cell does not appear to be sufficient to lower the chances of rape.
Implicit in your comment is only looking at this from the perspective of the woman in the cell who doesn't have a penis. But the other cellmate has to end up somewhere and the overall goal should be to reduce the rate of sexual assault for all prisoners, not just cis ones.
So, if you don't allow trans women into women's cells, where do you put them? And do you really think putting a trans woman in a cell with a male prisoner is going to lead to a lower incidence of assault?
If you don't think this is an issue, can you explain why we should have any sex segregation in prisons at all?
It sounds like you're arguing for mixed sex prisons, even within individual cells.
Or age segregation. Just because a 50 year old man has a penis and is 3x the weight of a 13 year old girl doesn't mean that they shouldn't be locked in a cell together. That's just your bigoted assumption that he's a violent person, you don't even know him.
But that's not the actual choice prisons have to make. The choice they have to make is "which cell does the trans woman go into"? Given that there likely aren't enough trans women prisoners to put them only with other trans women, the choice is "with a cis man or with a cis woman." And I believe pretty strongly that putting a trans woman in a cell with a cis male is more likely to result in assault than putting a trans woman with a cis woman.
I could be wrong. But given what I've read about trans women being the target of sexual assault outside of prison and sexual assault among males in male prisons, I think it's a fairly safe bet.
I guess the question hinges on whether you imagine a trans woman to be more "like a man" (stereotypically stronger, aggressive, and more prone to perpetrate assault) or "like a woman" (stereotypically weaker, passive, and more prone to being the victim of assault). What I know about trans women suggests the latter more than the former.
Obviously, individual behavior trumps all. Any particular woman (trans or not) who has a history of violence or sexual assault towards women should not be housed with another woman. The same should be true for men (again, trans or not).
The name of the game should be keeping perpetrators away from victims, and my belief is that "has a penis while other has a vagina" is a relatively poor proxy for that. Yes, there is a strong correlation, but that's a Simpson's paradox from combining the much smaller trans population with the very large cis population. If you were to separate out the datasets and consider cis men and women separately from trans men and women, I suspect you would see no or the opposite correlation.
Why do you believe this?
And, more importantly, why is it somehow the responsibility of women to be used as a mitigation for male on male violence?
If a male attacks a trans-identifying male, or there is a risk of this happening, that is entirely a male issue. So why should incarcerating the trans-identifying male amongst women be the solution?
No, if a prisoner attacks a prisoner with whom they were placed, due to reasons which are reasonably foreseeable and preventable, it's a prison system issue, not an issue for the gender class of the attacker or victim, whether they are the same or different, irrespective of the basis in which gender is ascribed.
Even moreso than with restrooms, it's very clear that gender segregation, whether based on ascribed gender at birth or gender identity, is not even approximately an effective protection against predatory behavior [*], so the safety issue:
(1) Isn't a good defense for any model of gender segregation, and
(2) Needs addressed by mechanisms other than gender segregation (one of the more effective of which is probably imprisoning fewer people, at lower levels of crowding), which, surprisingly, pretty much no one that is using the danger to argue for their preferred model of gender segregation even pretends to be concerned about.
[*] Edit: and this is particularly true for women in our segregated system who face twice the incidence of inmate-on-inmate assault, as well as higher rates of staff-on-inmate assault, and far less social attention to the problem of such assaults. If anything, it's more defensible based on outcomes to say our system of segregation exists to protect sexual assault against women prisoners than to say it exists to protect against sexual assault for anyone.
An important part of addressing these issues of violence in the prison system has been, up until recently, the segregation of inmates by their sex. This is in addition to other policies regarding the prison environment.
If you want to undo that policy of sex segregation, you should have a very good reason, and proof that it won't cause harm to the sex who, in general, have lesser physical strength and can be impregnated by the other.
No, it hasn't.
That's an after the fact rationalization for preserving the policy invented long after segregation on fairly explicitly misogynistic grounds was established, when the original motivation was no longer something people felt comfortable saying overtly in government.
Preventing assaults (and sexual assaults specifically) in prisons is not a major motivator for the structure of our prison system; if it was, there'd be a lot fewer sexual assaults in it.
It doesn't matter that the segregation was originally pushed for with the benefit of male prisoners in mind. If you look at the conditions for women in prison before and after sex segregation, it was an improvement.
We shouldn't be regressing back and allowing men to be incarcerated alongside women again, unless there is a provably good reason for this - which, so far, no-one has demonstrated.
Why do you believe this?
Anyway, I believe women have a right to dignity and privacy and to set some boundaries against males in refuges & places they are especially vulnerable. Female prisoners should absolutely be allowed to refuse to share sleeping quarters with males. Frankly think it's nuts that this should be considered a controversial stance.
Regarding the supposed issue of safety of trans identifying male prisoners in male prisons (I haven't seen data around this but let's assume it's an issue), it's still not clear the answer is housing with women. If a gay man is more likely to be abused in a male prison, or a small or young man, does that mean men with any of these characteristics should be put in women's prison to improve their safety conditions? This doesn't scan.
Its notable to me that as concerned as you are about prisoner safety, I don't see you or other advocates of males in womens prisons mention the safety of the female prisoners should men be added to their cells. Does their safety not rate?
Strange that despite the much higher rates of sexual assault (inmate on inmate and staff on inmate) for women in the sex segregated prison system we have, the only time safety of women prisoners gets brought up is as an argument for preserving sex segregation against the fairly minor tweak of gender-identity segregation and not about trying to figure out why a system adopted specifically to isolate and impose harsher punishment on women because they were viewed as incapable of rehabilitation once they had fallen into crime continues, despite recent retcons of it's supposed justification, to disproportionately sexual victimize women.
I believe everyone has a right to dignity and privacy and the right to set some boundaries against others in refuges and places where they are especially vulnerable.
What I don't understand is people that thinks that this right disappears just because the “other“ is of the same gender (whether that's gender socially ascribed at birth, or gender identity really is a side issue.)
https://reduxx.info/transgender-inmate-convicted-of-raping-f...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/oct/11/transgender-...
https://www.womenarehuman.com/transgender-felon-who-killed-m...
In summary: women in prison are being raped and sexually assaulted by trans-identifying males, who should never have been locked up in women's prisons in the first place.
It really is well beyond time for authorities to reverse these ridiculous policies that elevate claims of gender identity above all other concerns, and return to segregating prisons by sex like we had previously.
Those three articles are a drop in the bucket.
Consider that there are N trans women convicts and you're trying to decide where to house them. The relevent number is not "how many women do they rape if you house them with other women"? It's "What is the relative difference in rape stasticics between housing them with men versus women?"
Obviously, any number of sexual assaults is unacceptable. But if housing trans women with men leads to thousands of rapes while housing them with women leads to only dozens, it's still a better policy. The only reason you could argue against that is if you consider a trans woman being a victim somehow more acceptable than a cis woman being victimized.
So then the argument is just around the question, should women and men be housed in the same prisons, without any sex segregation? And we already know the answer to that.
Historically, mostly patriarchal misogyny; specifically, the belief that while women were inherently more virtuous, those who had “fallen” a state subject to imprisonment had fallen further, and less correctibly than men, and that they were a corrupting influence that would impair the rehabilitation of imprisoned men (that's also why imprisoned women, originally segregated within prisons rather than in separate prisons, were often given fewer meals, not encouraged to socialize, and otherwise treated worse than male prisoners.)
More recently, in order to avoid reexamining the actual policy of segregation, societies have tried to retcon a more modern rationalization, but that rationalization is not actually the reason for the policy, just an excuse for it.
In particular, influential British prison reformers of the 18th and 19th centuries, such as Elizabeth Fry and John Howard, promoted sex segregation as a means to prevent the sexual exploitation of women prisoners. They also pushed for many other reforms to make prisons safer and more rehabilitative environments in general. Nothing to do with patriarchal misogyny.
More recently, the UN's Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners, first adopted in 1955, states as one of the standards that "men and women shall so far as possible be detained in separate institutions; in an institution which receives both men and women the whole of the premises allocated to women shall be entirely separate". Their rationale was not patriarchal misogyny either, but rather how to maintain a safe and dignified environment for inmates.
Third gender in the cultures you allude to is typically just a way of othering gay man, of the "you can't be a real man" variety. It's nothing positive to emulate.
> My point is that that claim requires some level of supporting evidence.
The DOJ says 99% of rape and sexual assaults are by males, and that 91% of victims of rape & sexual assault are female and 9% male [1].
This is generic data, not trans specific or prison specific. But in the absence of specific data, it seems pretty relevant.
[1] U.S. Dept. of Justice, Violence Against Women Report, 2002. via https://stoprape.humboldt.edu/statistics
Okay, so ... statistically, would your average transwoman be taller than your average biowoman? Stronger? There's your power.
The FOIA requestor did not ask for any private information, merely for the number of the people.
It's because if the public found out, it would be either be considered illegal or unethical or ultimately make them look bad. That's the general rule of why anyone in government keeps an action secret. Now consider how much stuff the government wants to keep secret.
The modern disease is that everyone seems to be running a keynesian beauty contest, trying to figure out what side the truth is better for, and pretending it's a lie if it's against their side. Principles aren't a means, they're an end.
It's a world of propagandists (public relations professionals.)
For the 99% of the world’s population that hasn’t been browbeat into submissivenesses, they are the same.
Who's freedom of speech do you think deserves to be defended, the corporation or the individuals in question?
Now apply that logic to this scenario, where the group in question is looking to identify individuals in order to make a scapegoat out of them for their own private decisions. Who's freedom deserves defending?
>IIRC, FOIA does not grant you a right to personal information collected on citizens. The agencies have the right to redact that in whole or in part from the records sought.
Personally, I think female people are well within their rights to voice concerns about this. If you see it differently, I'd be grateful to hear your rationale on why the government should be able to move males into women's prisons in secret, as the ACLU asserts.
That's an easy one - they always hide anything that could be controversial. This is definitely a hot topic in recent years.
"did people donating to the ACLU realize their money is being used to fight private citizen information requests & defend government secrecy?"
Due to the scope of the ACLU's actions and the variability of its members personal beliefs, it's almost guaranteed that they engage in things that some member disagree with.
Edit: why disagree?
This is such an incredibly bad-faith and transphobic representation of the case that I can only conclude you are intentionally trolling. Even if you believe that trans women should not be housed in prisons with cis women, it is beyond bad faith choose the words you chose to use.
I would appreciate it if you would explain to me and others what part of my argument you disagree with rather than simply saying "incredibly bad-faith" "transphobic" "you are trolling" "beyond bad faith" without any explanation of what you think I did wrong or would prefer I do differently.
For what it's worth, I think you are acting in bad faith by calling me names and speculating unkindly about my motives without actually explaining what assertion or argument you object to and why. What you're doing is just bullying.
I’ve heard the term “sex assigned at birth” but that’s not accurate in this situation because I’m interested in people with penises and if someone was born male and had their penis removed surgically I wouldn’t want them included in my population of interest.
No, there is no universally accepted term that won't get you called a transphobe by anyone (correct me if I'm wrong). If terms of the discussion are set by the most extreme genderist views, it's becomes literally impossible to discuss things like male violence against women or sexism in the workplace, because there's no permissible language to describe the groups involved.
I just go with "male" and "female" which are objective, observable facts. If people object to these terms, they are really objecting to having a discussion at all.
> “sex assigned at birth”
Sex is not "assigned" at birth it is observed, frequently well before birth via ultrasound or some other technology. Midwives and doctors don't go round flipping coins that say "boy" on one side and "girl" on the other, this whole concept of "assigned" sex is silly.
I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
Please explain where you got that number. You are off by three orders of magnitude. About 1:100 of births have ambiguity of gender at birth.
> I think it would be like avoiding saying “people have two legs” because some people are born without legs or with only one leg. Yes, it occurs, but not so much as to matter in regards to population generalizations.
Please explain why you feel that the description "assigned gender at birth" is not apt to describe people who have unambiguous genitals. Yes I understand that the description "observed gender at birth" is a subset of the description "assigned gender at birth", I understand the difference between these expressions. But it seems to me like one expression nicely covers the other expression, e.g. you can say for any birth where gender was "observed" at birth that it was also "assigned" at birth. It seems to me like you are the one stretching language to weird places to achieve political goals.
That doesn't mean it's impossible to observe the sex in most of these cases though, it just takes more than a quick visual check to determine.
The really tricky cases are where the individual has reproductive organs of mixed types, particularly where it involves some sort of genetic mosaicism or chimerism. These ones are where we could reasonably say that sex is only assigned and not observed, but it's very rare. Rarest of all is where someone could be plausibly regarded as both female and male.
Generally, I think it's best to avoid the terminology of "assigned at birth", because it comes with the implication that sex can be arbitrarily reassigned. Something like "incorrectly observed" would be better, in cases where a mistake has genuinely been made.
(This is why in radical feminist circles, they are typically referred to as 'trans-identifying males' instead.)
The public records act doesn't include personal information:
> personal student or patient information, employee files, and some investigative records are exempt.
You could silence tons of scientific studies with this sort of broad rejection of data collection simply because you deem a subset of the group 'vulnerable' (including just as many studies that benefit these groups). It could be applied in many other ways beyond state prisons.
There are also requests for infractions, complaints, reports, etc. If you think this is agienst the law, then you agree with the ACLU.
> 4.8 On March 19, 2021, Requestor Andrea Kelly made a public records request to Defendant Washington State Department of Corrections that sought the following records:
> - "The number of transgender individuals currently incarcerated broken out by facility location."
> - "Number of incarcerated individuals who have been transferred from a men's facility to a women's facility since January 1, 2021."
> - "The number of male incarcerated individuals who identify as female, non- binary or any other gender identity who are currently housed at a Women's prison facility."
> - "The number of incarcerated individuals who have transferred from a Women's facility to a Men's facility since January 1, 2021."
> - "The number of female incarcerated individuals who identify as male, non- binary or any other gender identity who are currently housed in a Men's prison facility."
I do wonder if you read past that first paragraph you quoted, because the above section supports the facts of WoLF's article that you erroneously called out as "outright lying".
> “The names and ages of the transgender or gender non-conformists inmates moved to Purdy and the convictions they are serving time for.”
> “The names of all transgendered incarcerated individuals who have requested, received or are scheduled for gender reassignment surgery.”
However, even with only the requests made by Andrea Kelly, the DOC indented to provide private information about individuals in order to allow the requester to derive answers to their questions, as it doesn't have the statistics requested. This is what ACLU sued to prevent. See:
> 4.20 The Attorney General, on behalf of DOC, has indicated in discussions with DRW that DOC does not create records in response to requests for aggregate numerical information. Instead, the Attorney General explained that DOC will identify as responsive and provide records from which requestors may derive answers to their own questions. DOC has not provided DRW a list of what records have been identified by DOC as responsive to the requests. Based on DRW’s knowledge of DOC records, such records will likely include highly sensitive information about transgender, non-binary, gender non-conforming, and/or intersex inmates and former inmates.
The ACLU never asked the court to stop the government from responding with statistics, but the government doesn't have the statistics requested.
There's a lot of people in this thread complaining about how the ACLU is ruined because they are no longer free speech absolutists.
That's not why I give, or ever gave them money. I give them money because they solve all sorts of other problems. If the biggest problem in your life is 'the far american right can't speak as loudly as it likes', that's certainly terrible, but it pales in comparison to the harm of all the other civil liberty violations that the ACLU tackles.
For example, FIRE has done way more for campus free speech issues this last decade or two than the ACLU despite a considerably smaller budget. Between them, Institute for Justice, and EFF, I don’t miss my ACLU donations much.
I give to both, FYI.
If you don't give a crap about all the social causes, and just care about alt-right speech, I agree, the ACLU is not the organization you should donate to! In that case, I also can't say I care very much for your vision of the problems in this country, but it's your opinion, everyone's free to have one.
Or as the ACLU puts it, on why they defend abhorrent groups:
"The ACLU is frequently asked to explain its defense of certain people or groups — particularly controversial and unpopular entities such as the Ku Klux Klan, the Nation of Islam, and the National Socialist Party of America. We do not defend them because we agree with them. Rather we defend their right to free expression and free assembly.
Historically, the people whose opinions are the most controversial or extreme are the people whose rights are most often threatened. Once the government has the power to violate one person’s rights, it can use that power against everyone. We work to stop the erosion of civil liberties before it’s too late." https://www.aclu.org/about-aclu
Which is somewhat different than the SPLC:
"The SPLC is a catalyst for racial justice in the South and beyond, working in partnership with communities to dismantle white supremacy, strengthen intersectional movements, and advance the human rights of all people." https://www.splcenter.org/about
Clearly not any more, especially if the ACLU were to have their way.
I care about free speech.
You mean conservative speech? Or has FIRE actually defended speech they despised, like the ACLU used to?
https://www.thefire.org/category/cases/
* https://www.thefire.org/cases/new-york-university-administra...
* https://www.thefire.org/cases/catholic-university-of-america...
* https://www.thefire.org/cases/suny-brockport-event-featuring...
There are more, for sure, but hopefully this points you in the right direction.
> FIRE has done way more for campus free speech issues this last decade or two ...
> You mean conservative speech? Or has FIRE actually defended speech they despised, like the ACLU used to?
It seems to imply that FIRE has done way more for conservative campus free speech issues. I supplied examples of times when FIRE supported non-conservative campus free speech. I'm not quite clear how else to read that comment, but would love your take.
It's not obvious to what you're referring. Can you explain?
[1] - https://prospect.org/education/conservatives-behind-campus-f...
[2] - https://www.alternet.org/2016/09/what-campus-free-speech-cru...
Speech is the most important non-violent right that we have, regardless of who is speaking or about what issue. Without Freedom of Speech, corporations or the government could simply censor the other liberties out of existence. You can't be a civil rights absolutist without being a free speech absolutist.
Based just on that, I already get a red flag when someone says that an extreme free speech position, such as free speech absolutists, is the best solution to have a liberal society with civil liberties.
In my experience, balanced and nuanced is always better, and you must always have provisions to handle special cases, there will always be special cases.
Free speech is very important, like you said, beyond violence, how else you going to influence and assert any improvement or changes to defend, retain or ask for more liberties?
But speech can remain civil and respectful, it doesn't have to include slander, or threats to a person, insults, ridicule, raised voices, talking over people, etc.
And then you have the conflict with other liberties. Yes governement shouldn't be able to restrict anyone's speech, no matter what. But between themselves, citizens should be allowed recourse to slander for example. They should have ways to protect their reputation when it is being harmed by someone intending to harm it through misinformation, lies, and false accusations, and that would require the government to intervene and uphold someone's right to their reputation.
Also, we should be allowed to create communities with code of conducts that include speech behavior. If you come to my house and start bad-mouthing my daughter, insulting her, and I kick you out, you shouldn't be able to sue me for violating your free speech rights. I should be allowed to control the code of conduct of others in my own home. Similarly on my website, in my comment section, or if I am a company running a social community space I too should be allowed to do so in order to protect my business. Robo-calls, spammers, calling me or leaving spam in my email, website, I should be allowed to block them, or have some service that auto-censors them, it shouldn't be that their creator can prevent me from blocking them because it infringes on their creator's right to free speech. Same for bot accounts and all that. So clearly I feel there needs to be special provisions for exceptions to the right to free speech, and when exactly it applies, to whom, about what, and how the speech itself is conducted and what the speech is actually saying, is it false accusations, slander, threats, spam, etc.
Really? More important than the right to vote? Than the right not to be arbitrarily detained? Than the right to a fair trial?
I strongly believe in the importance of free speech when it comes to true statements or criticism of the government. But the idea that the right to spread deliberately false information or directly incite violence is not just a fundamental right, but the most important fundamental right? Honestly, I just don’t find the argument very compelling
But part of it is also the broader context: There's a contingent on the far-right who complain about their speed being limited as they actively campaign for stripping minorities of civil rights. I interpret the post as indirectly suggesting that siding with those minority groups means you are less committed to civil rights (because the right-wing folks are the primary ones concerned about speech restrictions, while minorities are concerned about everything). Which quite frankly is an absurd conclusion
Being fully aware of an organization’s good and bad behaviors is the opposite of being unknowingly boiled. Even if one chooses to continue supporting the organization in spite of some disagreement.
edit: this is all premised on the idea that you were supporting them for their old 'free speech' mission, rather than the new 'values', which I now realize may have been in error.
However, I agree that if they view their new mission to be "selling themselves" to one side or the other, that would indeed detract from my willingness to continue supporting them long-term.
I just can't imagine what conversations happened inside the organization, where they were willing to ghost write for Heard and sell off a position to her, then switch to taking money from the other side; all of this in a completely private dispute with no public interest on either side, other than visibility. This whole situation seems absurd to me.
Were they desperate for money? Or fans of Amber Heard? Or were they swept up in enthusiasm about a high-profile case of spousal abuse? I am not aware of the ACLU taking a general position on defamation suits between private parties in the past.
The default position on most articles, especially critical ones, should be that they have utterly failed to accurately grasp and convey the key issues. This seems to be a universal law not just of journalism, but of knowledge sharing in general, especially where controversy exists.
When you sell your soul to the devil? Don't be surprised when promises aren't kept or turn sour.
That phrase makes it sound like their actions represented an expenditure rather than a revenue generating operation.
Recently they have been supporting the “civil liberty” of men such as Lia Thomas to compete on women’s sports teams. I don’t see that as a defense of anyone’s liberties, but rather as an attack against the liberties of female athletes, and of women in general. They are on the attack against women’s sex-based rights.
I’ve stopped supporting them.
I used to support them even though I was disappointed in their 2nd amendment stances, because their work on 1st, 4th, and 5th amendment issues was so valuable. But now they’ve turned into a misogynist organization, actively campaigning against civil liberties.
One thing you'll find is a lot of people find this sentence very strange. Replace "sex-based rights" with "race-based rights" or any other trait passed on at birth and you'll find the ACLU's actions to be very consistent.
People claimed the ACLU was anti-white decades ago. I guess now that that argument isn't working, misogyny is the new claim.
This being the internet, I feel the need to attach a disclaimer that there are limits to this general rule, but I don’t think the ACLU is currently crossing them.
The issue is not that the ACLU is taking on causes the author disagrees with. The issue is that the ACLU has switched away from "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it" thinking. And instead they are taking a few cases of "I disapprove of what you say and will therefore not defend you". Let alone the weird Heard case that seems to be "You give me money so I give you backing and legitimacy".
> When the Trump administration proposed in 2018 a new regulatory scheme for schools to follow in Title IX campus-sexual-assault cases that offered more protections to students defending themselves against these allegations, the ACLU responded in an angry tweet thread: “It promotes an unfair process, inappropriately favoring the accused.”. (The following year, the ACLU declared its support for new Title IX regulations’ “fair process requirements for live hearings, cross-examination, [and] access to all the evidence,” but it has never taken down the tweets or walked them back.)
Human rights are nonpartisan. The ACLU has stuck to it's guns on that, despite the the overwhelmingly biased political climate.
I think it's silly that this thinly sourced hit-piece is on the front page of hacker news.
https://www.aclu.org/know-your-rights/prisoners-rights
If you have been assaulted by an officer in prison, they want you to file a grievance through the prison process. Thanks for having people's backs ACLU. No reason people who has been assaulted by those in power in the system should fear reporting that assault to those people in power. So the ACLU doesn't see themselves as protecting Eighth amendment rights. But if you keep reading...
If you have religious discrimination, you should contact the ACLU.
Sexual abuse and torture in a prison? Trust the prison administrators, they will take care of resolving it. But if they violate your religion, oh man, that's when the high power ACLU lawyers are needed.