Prior to emigrating, I found myself vigorously defending Raph Koster on Twitter. It started as a result of this article, in particular this quote from Anna Anthropy:

"Videogames have been one of the most exclusive communities i've ever encountered," she said to me via email, "some dudes, like Raph Koster, insist that when he says dys4ia 'isn't a game,' that's not a value judgement. That's bullshit. the attempt to label games like dys4ia as 'non-games,' as 'interactive experiences,' is just an attempt by the status quo to keep the discussion of games centered around the kind of games it's comfortable with—cus if there's one thing existing videogame culture is good at, it's making a certain kind of dude very, very comfortable."

I've noticed a recent uptick in this "certain kind of dude" argument. On the one hand it's about the acceptance and treatment of women, minorities and other groups within the game industry - and rightly so. On the other it's about the perception of patriarchy. It's saying that a "certain kind of dude" oppresses creative people with his view of an industry organised around keeping him happy, and he uses the definition of "game" as an exercise of power. 

This assertion is far more contentious because it conflates three different discussions. The first is political and asserts that passivity or apathy are actually forms of complicity. The second is to do with market preference, asking why is it that the white-dude market buys certain kinds of game endlessly while ignoring greater diversity. This point lays the blame at the feet of the industry, whereas the industry maintains that market dynamics are evolutionary and so the industry chases the market rather than dictating to it. 

The third discussion is about critique. To many formalists (myself included) many new kinds of interactive art are either not games, or not very good when thought of as games. Many are gamelikes, gamified systems, limited, persuasive, personal interactive stories. Some are virtual worlds. Some are more conceptually interesting than playable. Many are reliant on knowing the author's intent.

In creating a "game" not meant to be played or won, its creator is saying something. To then call that work something other than "game" can seem like an attack directed at its creator. Particularly for the group that could loosely be termed "zinesters", "game" has become a highly charged art-politik battleground that has to be won. Increasingly zinesters have taken to folding formalism into the patriarchy, complicity and "certain kind of dude" debates to paint all with the same broad brush.

Not only is that yet another attempt to win the debate over games through equivocation, it has the effect of dissuading some otherwise-interesting voices from engaging. Some, like Raph, continue to try such as with this open letter in which he discusses the debate and its personal side (an indie developer he respects crossed the street to avoid him at GDC) only to find himself yelled-at once more on Twitter. The question for zinesters is this: Is yellers and name-callers essentially all you are?

Because if so, zines will inevitably flame out.

Poor Enemies

Zinesters consider themselves to be an emerging class of interactive artist. Their work covers everything from their life stories to observations about the universe and purely aesthetic experiments, and that work takes thousands of forms. In her book, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, Anna Anthropy paints the movement as akin to Youtube uploaders or other aggregate-media makers, free of the shackles of commercialism or elitism, and able to make whatever they want. Quite right too.

And yet unlike Youtube uploaders, zinesterism also has a combative side. Provocateurs like Anna appear at GDC and read poems about their struggles, fights, victories and defeats in the battle for true equality. Sometimes zinesterism goes beyond even that. For some the struggle is less about validation of self and more about the invalidation of others. It's about the opportunity to yell "I'm as mad as hell at you, token white dude". It's to say you just want an enemy.

We may be formalists, but writers like Raph or I are the wrong kind of enemy if your intent is to defend the right of game makers to make statements with games because we agree with you. Among our ranks you'll find some of your strongest supporters, passionate advocates and earnest evangelists. You'll find fierce debate and considered responses as we try to come to a point where our critical framework is both as inclusive and as clear as possible. But you'll find few people who fault your works on quality for those reasons (As an aside, in the rush-to-judgement in recent weeks over this whole issue, where many are content to maintain that value judgements and the like are at the heart of what-is-a-game, none of its proponents have yet cited a credible example of this.)

What you will also find, however, is people who have been around the gaming block a few times. People who have seen this struggle over "what is a game" happen before. People for whom the idea of a game that uses permadeath to make a point is not startlingly original. People for whom the cleverness of character reversal and the notion of play as self-loathing, or games that demand to not be played, are ideas that they've seen before. People for whom the debate has little or nothing to do with their own sense of power and everything to do with trying to get to a better understanding. People to whom zinesters seem intent on repeating a very old mistake.

Toward the end of the 80s a desire grew among young tabletop roleplaying gamers (myself included) to push beyond the limits of numbers. We started talking about roleplaying games as storytelling games. We regarded many old guard gamers who talked of campaigns, classes and hit points as quaint. We were convinced that one day "game" would have room for stories, epics and themes. We talked endlessly about non-plot narrative, non-rule games and moving beyond fun. 

The early energy surrounding this movement led to lots of creative output. The sorts of game we created were concept pieces. We worked on games that were intended to explore themes of mythology, identity and sexuality. At first we used traditional backgrounds, plots or mechanics, but over time moved into stylistic territory, the roleplaying equivalents of Pirandello's Six Characters In Search of an Author. We were essentially the proto-form of today's zinesters. 

For us this was fascinating stuff, but it gained no traction beyond our ranks. So over time we descended into an increasingly introverted conversation. While the rest of gamerdom didn't care so much, we became factional and obsessed over minutiae, slights and perceived insults. We went from being a passionate tribe to a collection of niches who bitched about one another, and over time we shrank. "Game" remained much as it was, despite all of our bluster, and by the late-90s it had pivoted back to its roots through Dungeons and Dragons 3rd edition.

This, largely, is the pattern that zinesterism seems to be following.

 

On Whose Terms

For storytelling roleplaying games the premise that, by changing the meaning of "game", the rest of the world would follow along and validate the revolution was self-deception. "Game" did not change for those outside the scene, and instead it was swallowed up by its larger, older parent. In a digital form, I fear that zinesters are making exactly the same mistake.

As an oft-uncertain white dude who happens to write a fair bit about games, I have recently encountered a lot of defensiveness surrounding the idea of what games are. Those arguments tend to boil down to "you don't like it", "it's not meant for you", "it sold X copies" or even "you secretly hate games". I suppose I should expect that kind of reaction given that I am pretty forthright. I often say that the most effective ways of conveying the artistry of games (thauma) needs to come from a place that is game-native, and that that enables and restricts the game's maker in some ways. I tend to advocate for the player, for the need for games to be dynamic in order to build up to a convincing world. 

I have also been known to say that some interactive artworks are not games. I don't, for example, consider Dear Esther a game, nor Proteus. I don't think The Passage is a game, nor The Stanley Parable nor most Tale of Tales' work. I consider them to essentially be gamelike performance art. 

Taken on its own terms, art can be very powerful. However, taken on the terms of something else, art can invite unfortunate comparison. Depending on how you regard it, Marcel Duchamp's Fountain is either a classic work of modern art or an example of conman craft. Similarly, taking some interactive art on the terms of games devalues it enormously. Proteus might be interesting, one might say, but it's not much fun. Interactive art like Proteus struggles for traction outside of academia, certain sections of Steam, highbrow publications or conferences like GDC, because to label it as "game" invites comparison with the usual understanding of game that involves doing to overcome.

Zinesters are asking for their work to be taken in the same breath as casual and hardcore videogames, puzzles, crosswords, sports, the Olympics, the World Cup, the casinos of Las Vegas and so on. Furthermore their work's lack of fun leads to some negative reactions (such as this satirised review of Super PSTW), which in turn leads to creators equating incomprehension or apathy to a "certain kind of dude" who deliberately shuts them out. And so it seems that "game" won't change to include them because the patriarchy is afraid/unsure/resistant.

And this is true of many gamelike art works. Many of them are challenging, observant or interesting but they ultimately sideline themselves by wanting to be spoken of in the same breath as games. Their gameplay tends to be thin. They tend to be either unidirectional ("this is my message") or directionless ("just walk around"). They tend to sound interesting as high concepts for GDC talks. Yet they're not games. 

 

The Forms and Labels of Interaction

The fact that The Color Purple exists means as much for the novel as the content within it. To some designers it's basically the same with games. Rise of the Videogame Zinesters lays out the argument that because games are mostly made by geeky white dudes for geeky white dudes, they tend to be mono-cultural. Muscular men shooting other muscular men in the face is the order of the day, and women tend to either be swapped out for men in that scenario, or relegated. There are very few gay women avatars in games. 

I mostly agree. Big blockbuster games do tend to be mono-cultural and involve a lot of shooting dudes in the face. Yet at the same time bridging those issues with "what is a game" - and demanding that anything interactive and artistically expressive be considered a game - is unsound. 

"Novel" is a format of story, not a token of legitimacy. Alice Walker's novel is as much a novel as Jane Austen's because they are two instances of the same general format (a long-form arced tale with internal and external writing etc). The argument over the acceptance of one kind of novel over another what that means for society is usually separate from the argument of whether or not it is a novel (although, granted, some modernist and postmodernist works have deliberately tried to play with the format). 

Howl is a poem. A poem has a different format, kind of structure and voice than a novel. We can comfortably understand and accept that poetry and novels are two kinds of writing, and in order to maintain attention and interest from the reader they each operate according to their own rules. Similarly we can see that the short story, screenplay, comic, theatrical play or song also have their own special requirements. None of those formats are any more or less valid than any other. Novelists don't spend all of their time wishing poets would include them.

What the angrier zinesters seem to want is the equivalent of Ginsberg demanding that Howl be recognised as a novel. For some reason they believe that "game" means "valid, legitimate, in-the-club", something to be won back from the hands of the white dudes.

What fascinates me is how much that in itself is a tacit acknowledgement that (despite all arguments to the contrary) apparently labels do matter to the zinesters. If zinesterism really was just about self-expression, it wouldn't matter what formalists thought. Despite it being something of an ideal to exist in an aggregate everyone-can-publish universe of making whatever you want, a world beyond labels and types, zinesterism is obsessed with owning a particular label. It seems to revolve around wanting to have legitimacy granted to it by hook or by crook, which I find undoes it somewhat. 

The label issue is also one that only exists in the zinester space. Outside of it, nobody gives a good god damn. In the everyday world, "game" is a noun that describes a mode of play. "Game" means sport, puzzle, task, problem and test. Games can be won or lost. Games can be practiced. Games may open a door to understanding and emotional enlightenment, generate heroes and cultural lodestones, but they do so through creative constants. They must operate under the joy of winning while mastering fair game dynamics.

Otherwise, as games, they don't really work. And the judgement criteria for why this is so comes not from patriarchy or shadowy cliques, but from players. If a game is not fun it is simply not played for long, regardless of its intent. Games are meant to be played. However none of that is true of interactive performance art if the player knows that it is not meant to be a game.

But how to convey that intent?

 

Zines

I think there's a solution to this conundrum, a formalist solution no less. I also think that many zinesters are not going to like it. Maybe in time.

In her book, Anna describes a class of maker analogous to the newsletter-zine-makers of years past. Such people are generally considered outside the mainstream, working away on personal projects and finding fans the hard way. Zinesters are typically not programmers (whom she categorises as white middle class dudes, etc.) and they have tools like GameMaker or Twine to make their art.

Rather than call that art "game", "gamelike", "notgame" or get into arguments over just how much game is game or not, or getting stuck in the quagmire that is "interactive entertainment", Anna (perhaps inadvertently) supplies us with a great term. "Zine" strikes me as a very neat term to describe a political and critical intent, a description of how a thing is meant to be approached rather than a classification of what it is. 

Some zines may be games, for example. Some zines may be gamelike, but not games. Some zines may be toys. Some zines may be worlds to be wandered for no particular purpose. Some may be digital promenades. Some may tell stories. Some may deliberately not. Some zines may be none of the above, or incorporate aspects of all. Some zines may be digital. Some zines may be analogue.

"Zine" is a label that demands a work be regarded on its own terms, much as "modern art" does, rather than describing a format, as "statue" does. Zine allows the discussion to get past issues of who gets to be in what club. dys4ia and Warioware, for example, could be considered as contrasting examples of zine vs not-zine, irrespective of whether they are games. The main differences between them are:

1. How they treat challenge
2. Whether they are meant to be replayed
3. How they treat learning
4. Whether failure is possible
5. Whether emergence is desired

Warioware tests player skills and ramps up those tests. It is meant to be replayed, often for long periods of time. It is meant to be mastered. Failure is possible, as are emergent effects. Every time a group gathers to play the party version on a Wii, funny and unexpected things happen. This all makes Warioware a game, but not a zine. Warioware is ultimately a commercial product intended to delight or entertain, and any sense of personal expression within the game is likely to only be found around its edges, if at all. 

dys4ia tests player preconceptions. Its tests do not become more difficult (in terms of skill) but they do become more emotionally illustrative. It is meant to be replayed a couple of times, but not many. It is not meant to be mastered, but participated-with, so the player comes to understand the depth of its author's situation. Failure is not really possible, only delays of success. Emergent effects likewise - dys4ia is deliberately experient. It is personal, authored, intended to paint a picture and conjure a feeling that its creator experiences (which is the definition of art according to Tolstoy) every day.

Viewed in the context of "game", on games' terms, dys4ia does not have much in common with Warioware, Chess, the 100m hurdles, Darts, Tetris, Backgammon, Halo, Poker, Ridiculous Fishing, Snake, Go, Arkham Horror, Tag, Diablo, kiss chasing or slot machines. It's not much fun, nor mechanically fascinating. You don't really win or get better at it. Those are the sorts of qualities that generally describe games.

Viewed in the context of "zine", however, the question of whether dys4ia is a game, or how much, or what parts might be, is irrelevant. So is the question of whether it is fun. As a zine, as a piece of performance art that illuminates the player about what it is to be transgender, dys4ia is amazing. By thinking of it as a zine, I find I can get past its gameyness or lack thereof. 

 

Toward Détente

It makes sense in my mind, but my instinct tells me that my "zine" label notion won't fly. Perhaps we'll end up in a place where, like the gameplay vs story debate, everyone eventually concludes that the whole thing was predicated on straw man arguments. Perhaps we'll end up with a "Game" and "game" distinction (like "Art" and "art") or a convention like "performance game" or "gamezine" that fudges definitions of game specifically to accomodate zinesters. 

However at this point I am inclined to say it is up to zinesters to decide who they want to be. As a formalist I'm personally growing bored of hearing a lazy argument that clumps all white dudes together and proclaims that any opinion a white dude may have is suspect and equates to non-specific-complicit-apathetic oppression. In part I was motivated to write this article to explain why, for all its virtues, I tire of listening to certain ranters rant the same rant over and over, how the novelty of that rant will fade away, and how it seems to me that zines are currently just a bit of history repeating.

Right now zinesters are not giving much of a reason for people who don't already agree with their general viewpoint to care. They seem more content to yell and be acknowledged by their own tribe, but that energy will eventually peter out if it does not engage with others. The passions of zinesterism are not to be trifled with or denied, but the risk of it marginalising itself is strong. Rants are important, but after a while there needs to be more.

I can't help but feel that the zine movement's fight with straw men will ultimately relegate it to a kind of angry-to-be-angry nub. I can't help but think that the movement will eventually fracture, as the storytelling-game movement did. In the hunt to find enemies, I can't help thinking that zinesterism will ultimately start to find enemies in its own ranks and become cannibalistic. All it takes for zinesterism to fail is for people to ignore it, to conclude that all it is just fringe folk being fringe folk. Personally I think if zines end up in that box, it will be tragic.

In a bold move to protect the well-being of dolphins, India has moved to ban dolphin shows -- a push that helps elevate their status from creatures of mere curiosity to one that borders more closely to the personhood we seem to share.

When it comes to online privacy, many consumers assume that their service provider, or the websites they are browsing, have the users’ best interest in mind and that these companies won’t simply hand over your information to authorities. These people are mistaken, as are those who believe that no online companies make user privacy a priority. The truth, as usual, is a bit from column A and a bit from column B.

The privacy-loving folks at the Electronic Frontier Foundation recently released their third annual Who’s Got Your Back? report covering online service providers’ transparency and privacy practices regarding government access to data.

As you can see from the image above, each of the companies was rated on the following six categories:

1. Require a warrant for content of communications
A star is awarded in this category for companies with policies that specifically state that authorities must provide a warrant in order to look at the content of a users’ communications. The EFF lauds Facebook’s policy in particular for not just requiring a warrant but also saying that the warrant is needed for things that some might consider to be semi-public, like Wall posts and location data.

Just because a company does not receive a star in this category doesn’t mean that it will necessarily hand over user content without a warrant; it just means that an un-starred company does not have a policy explicitly stating it requires a warrant.

Some companies maintain that a 2010 U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in U.S. v Warshak sets the precedent that government authorities must have a warrant to obtain access to user e-mails. However, as the EFF points out — and as we mentioned in this story about the IRS’s policy on reading consumers’ e-mails — this is not a Supreme Court precedent, and is really only binding in the region covered by the Sixth Circuit.

2. Tell users about government data requests
Even when a warrant is obtained for users’ information, the company may not have a policy of actually telling the user about it. The seven companies receiving a star from the EFF in this category each have a public policy to tell users when the government seeks their data, except in cases where that disclosure is prohibited by law.

“Promising to give notice should be an easy commitment to make,” writes the EFF, “the company doesn’t have to take a side, it merely has to pass on important information to the user.”

The EFF took away a previously earned half-star for Google because its language on this topic no only states [italics for emphasis] “We notify users about legal demands when appropriate.”

Meanwhile, LinkedIn’s policy is commended for its policy, which is clear for the user and also contains the following information for law enforcement:

Law enforcement officials who believe that notification would jeopardize an investigation should obtain an appropriate court order or other process that specifically precludes member notification, such as an order issued pursuant to 18 U.S.C. §2705(b).

3. Publish transparency reports
The category in which the fewest stars were given by the EFF, with only 6 of the 18 companies publishing reports on how frequently they provide user data to government authorities. On the up side, this is up from only 4 companies the previous year, so here’s hoping the trend continues.

Microsoft, one of the two companies to get its first star in this category, published its first transparency report in March, detailing not just the number of requests it received from authorities around the world, but how many were honored.

4. Publish law enforcement guidelines
To earn this star, a company must have a public statement on how it responds to data demands from the government.

The EFF believes that a proper set of law enforcement guidelines would include details on the following:
• Whether a company requires a warrant for content
• What types of data a company retains, and what kind of legal process the company requires for law enforcement to obtain various kinds of information
• How long data is generally held by the company, and how long will it be held in response to a retention request
• Whether the company has an exception for emergency or other kinds of disclosures
• Whether the company asks for reimbursement for the costs incurred in complying with a request for data

5. Fight for users’ privacy rights in courts
This one is a little trickier, as not all companies on the list have been compelled to fight for their users’ privacy rights in courts.

“The lack of a star in this category should not be interpreted as a statement that the company failed to stand up for users when it had the chance,” writes the EFF. “Instead, this category serves as special recognition for companies that were faced with a decision to defend user privacy in court, took action to defend that privacy, and could to publicly disclose their efforts.”

Oddly enough, this is the only of the six categories in which Yahoo earned a star — for successfully getting the Justice Dept. to back down on a request to view a user’s e-mail without probable cause.

It will be interesting to see if Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr, which has stars in 3 categories this year, will result in that company’s policies being weakened or the bolstering of both businesses’ guidelines.

6. Fight for users’ privacy in Congress
Given that many privacy laws predate the creation of the wheel, most companies in the EFF survey have advocated — either directly to lawmakers or by joining the Digital Due Process Coalition — for the modernization of these laws.

Only Yahoo, Comcast, Verizon (and MySpace, but honestly… it’s not 2005 anymore so no one really cares) failed to earn stars in this category.

You can read the entire EFF report here.

It is Endangered Species Day and we are acknowledging it by bringing attention to these canid species that are on the brink of disappearing.

It is Endangered Species Day and we are acknowledging it by bringing attention to these feline species that are on the verge of disappearing.

Nintendo is now claiming ad revenue on user-generated "Let's Play" videos that feature the game company's content, according to YouTube user Zack Scott who received a "content ID match claim" issued by Nintendo.

As a result, Let's Play videos using Nintendo content will be bookended by ads while content-creators will not receive any revenue for the videos.

Nintendo has since issued a statement to GameFront, asserting its right to protect and monetize its own IP.

"As part of our on-going push to ensure Nintendo content is shared across social media channels in an appropriate and safe way, we became a YouTube partner and as such in February 2013 we registered our copyright content in the YouTube database," the company writes.

"For most...

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I'm floating in a most peculiar way.

In 2010, photographer Rä di Martino found the remains of a galaxy far, far away. After finding an errant tourist photograph through Google Earth, she had traveled to Tunisia's Chott el Djerid, a salt desert that held the remains of Luke Skywalker's home on Tatooine and other abandoned sets from Star Wars. There, she documented them in No More Stars and other photo series, capturing strange modern ruins that she refers to as "almost like archaeological sites." Several of the photographs are available at FastCo.Design and di Martino's own site, and she's done an interview at The Guardian. Since di Martino left, Star Wars enthusiasts have sought to recover some of the sets, rebuilding and repainting the Lars Homestead.

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Twitter, even more than many other social media tools, can feel disconnected from the real world. But a group of students and professors at research site Floating Sheep have built a comprehensive map of some of Twitter's most distasteful content: the racist, homophobic, or ableist slurs that can proliferate online. Called Geography of Hate, the interactive map charts ten relatively common slurs across the continental US, either by general category or individually. Looking at the whole country, you'll often see a mass of red or what the map's creators call a "blue smog of hate." Zooming in, however, patches appear over individual regions or cities; some may be predictable, while others are not.

The map builds on an earlier Floating Sheep...

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It is a sign of our rapidly changing world that we can get daily updates on the growing levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere via Twitter.

If you happen to know of any female fish of the Mangarahara cichlid variety, the London Zoo would very much like to introduce her to a couple of extremely

While commercial and personal borrowers are currently enjoying historically low interest-rates on loans, and big banks are able to obtain loans at less than one percent interest, student borrowers have had to fight against lawmakers looking to raise interest rates on federally subsidized student loans. With the rates on Stafford loans set to bounce back to 6.8% from 3.4% on July 1, Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has introduced legislation that would actually lower that rate for one year to only .75%.

This is the same rate at which big banks are able to borrow money from the Federal Reserve, so Sen. Warren wants to know why banks get preferential treatment to America’s students.

“[T]he federal government is going to charge students interest rates that are nine times higher than the rates for the biggest banks,” said Sen. Warren, “the same banks that destroyed millions of jobs and nearly broke this economy. That isn’t right.”

That’s why Warren introduced the Bank On Students Loan Fairness Act [PDF], which would prevent Stafford loan rates from reverting to 6.8% on July 1 and would set the interest rates for loans disbursed until July 1, 2014, at “the primary credit rate charged by the Federal Reserve banks on July 1, 2013.”

The Senator maintains that by allowing banks to borrow at insanely low rates, taxpayers are effectively investing in those institutions.

“We should make the same kind of investment in our young people who are trying to get an education,” she explained. “Lend them the money and make them pay it back, but give our kids a break on the interest they pay. Let’s bank on students… Unlike the big banks, students don’t have armies of lobbyists and lawyers. They have only their voices. And they call on us to do what is right.”

“Senator Warren’s bill underscores the great disparity between the extremely low interest rate that big banks pay to borrow money and the higher rates that students often pay,” said Pamela Banks, Policy Counsel for Consumers Union. “Congress needs to act to find a way to help struggling students manage skyrocketing loan debt.”

Speaking of which, Consumers Union recently drafted the following list of principles it believes are the backbones of any fair student loan system:
PRIOR TO BORROWING
Transparency: Lending options should be easily comparable
Schools should be required to provide students with plain English, standardized disclosures that clearly explain their options for financing education, including grants and scholarships as well as loans. The disclosures should enable students to compare and understand the differences between private and federal loans, as well as their estimated monthly loan payments after graduation.

Borrowing Options: Schools should help students find the most affordable loan options

To prevent unnecessary borrowing, private lenders should be required to check with the borrower’s school before making a loan. Schools should provide students with pre-loan counseling to review loan costs and eligibility requirements for less costly options.

PAYING BACK THE LOAN
Flexible Repayment: Borrowers must be given reasonable options

Lenders should offer flexible, affordable and sustainable repayment options, including income-based payment plans, deferments and forbearances, regardless of the type of loan. Lenders should also permit refinancing of loans, and accept partial payments.

Reasonable Costs: Fees should be reasonable and proportional to services provided

Borrowers should not be penalized with excessive, new or hidden fees. Lenders should not be allowed to manipulate payments in a manner that harms borrowers

Accountability: Students should have access to effective and timely loan inquiries and dispute resolution

Those who administer and collect student loan payments should be required to establish clear procedures and a single point of contact for questions and complaints. Complaints handling, resolution and appeals should be centralized and monitored by regulators.

Fairness: Abusive, unfair or fraudulent practices must not be permitted

All borrowers should be protected from deceptive marketing, abusive collection and repayment practices, identity theft, school kickbacks and other fraudulent student loan practices and services.

INABILITY TO PAY
Reasonable Relief: Loans shouldn’t be a lifelong burden

All borrowers should receive opportunities to rehabilitate loans back to good standing with an affordable and sustainable repayment plan. Borrowers should also have the opportunity to obtain loan cancellations in certain circumstances, including long-term economic hardship.

Nearly one in three commercial honeybee colonies in the United States died or disappeared last winter, an unsustainable decline that threatens the nation's food supply and suggests that something is deeply foul in our environment.

The Catholic Church threatened to excommunicate Irish Prime Minister Enda Kenny if he held a scheduled vote on Ireland's new abortion law. He responded:

Everybody’s entitled to their opinion here but as explained to the Cardinal and members of the church my book is the constitution and the constitution is determined by the people. That’s the people’s book. We live in a Republic and I have a duty and responsibility as head of Government to legislate in respect of what the people’s wishes are.

Redditor bleacliath created a great graphic for this quote and posted it to /r/atheism.

Politicians ‘have responsibility’ to legislate on abortion issue

The Telegraph gives William Shakespeare, Henry VIII and others a digital makeover.

Ten years from today, in 2023, a baby will be born. She will grow up, head off to school, graduate from high school in the class of 2041 and then graduate from college in the class of 2045.

She will get a job with the U.S. Post Office, starting work there in 2046 and staying on until retirement at age 65 in 2088.

Just think of that date: 2088. That’s the future. It’s decades after the future we’ve imagined.

It’s 87 years after a Space Odyssey; 69 years after Blade Runner; 61 years after Children of Men; 59 years after the robots take over in Terminator; 34 years after Minority Report; four years after Total Recall.

I’ll be long dead by then. So will every current member of Congress. 2088 is a long, long way away.

And yet, today, now, at the moment, the U.S. Postal Service is required by law to already be pre-funding employee benefits for that baby who won’t be born until 2023 and won’t start working for the USPS until 2046.

Why? Well, because Americans like the Postal Service. They may not like standing in long lines at the post office — the high cost of low taxes for everyone — but they like the idea of the Postal Service. They rely on it and rely on being able to rely on it.

And the Postal Service is run by the government, even though it funds itself without any tax dollars.

So if your whole political shtick is based on being anti-government, then the Postal Service is a threat you’ve got to get rid of. That’s why, back in 2006, Republicans in Congress passed something called the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act,” requiring the agency to “pre-fund its future health care benefit payments to retirees for the next 75 years in an astonishing ten-year time span.”

(The USPS is also home to lots of unionized public employees, and the GOP lately has decided that unionized public employees are Public Enemy No. 1. That’s an odd claim — villainizing police officers, firefighters, first responders, teachers and mail carriers doesn’t seem like an easy or an obvious task, but that’s the current Republican plan, and the “Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act” is a part of that strategy.)

The PAEA was designed to bankrupt the Postal Service — to turn a government service that Americans like into something that could be railed against as wasteful, inefficient and costly. That’s what the law was meant to do. That’s exactly what the law is doing, just as planned.

It was a deliberate act of sabotage. And it’s working. The whole point of requiring the agency today to fund benefits for workers it won’t hire until 2046 was to ensure that the agency wouldn’t still be around in 2046 to hire anybody.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, D-Oregon, has introduced a bill to repeal the sabotage of the Postal Service — getting rid of the malicious and absurd requirement for pre-funding 75 years worth of benefits, and rescuing the agency from this Bush-era attempt to euthanize it.

But the Republicans who passed the sabotage bill in 2006 are still in charge of the House of Representatives today, so DeFazio’s bill faces a brick wall of opposition. The last thing that John Boehner, Eric Cantor and Paul Ryan want to see is a money-saving plan to improve the efficiency of a government service beloved and relied on by the American people.

Recipe: Churros

Yield: about 8-10 (depending on size)

Ingredients:

Directions:

Source

Click here to view the embedded video.

“Love the bigot, hate the bigotry.”

“Conservative evangelicals, your hurt feelings for being called a bigot and for being viewed as reprehensible, your frustration with seeing the ‘equal’ signs on Facebook, and your losses in the so-called culture war are nowhere near the pain inflicted upon many in the LGBT community.”

“One pastor whom you would know, I won’t name him, he said to me this week, ‘we’re losing ground morally all the time,’ and he said, ‘I’ve told my people get ready for persecution because it’s coming, it’s coming to everyone who is a vocal believer in Jesus Christ,’ and he said that he really expects to end his life in prison.”

“I know there’s [a game] called Dungeons & Dragons that literally destroyed people’s lives. I mean, they got this and it was like, almost demonic.”

“Poole’s intention was to teach the power of cultural symbolism. Given the overreaction we’ve seen by the conservative media … it looks like the lesson worked.”

“I’ve got no problem if a school board, a local school board, says we want to teach our kids about creationism.”

“There is no clear place to draw the line once you eliminate the traditional marriage and it’s the same once you start putting limits on what guns can be used.”

“Wheaton is hardly the only evangelical college that’s seeing a growing spectrum of responses toward homosexuality among students, alumni and staff.”

“All they want is to be treated fairly. But unlike most of you, they have to come again here year after year and explain over and over why their love is equal to yours.”

“He and his cohort are losing control, and the people wresting it from them aren’t just indifferent about who’s gay and who isn’t, but are also strange creatures from the future who seem to speak an entirely different language.”

“Justice Scalia and the rest of you haters — game over. You lose. Love wins. Enjoy your future home in the dustbin of history.”

“We get this skewed picture where straight people have relationships and gay people have sex, where straight people have lives and gay people have lifestyles.”

“‘This place has a tan,’ said Ulrich, a 51-year-old postal worker, who wore a wireless phone device in his ear and shorts that revealed a large cross ‘in the colors of the American flag’ tattooed on his calf.”

“Plan B and Ella are not abortifacients. Plan B (the morning-after pill) and Ella prevent ovulation and prevent a woman from getting pregnant after sex. Nonetheless, those claiming that the birth control benefit infringes their religious liberty remain happily unconvinced.”

“A not-inconsiderable segment of the GOP base believes ‘the pill’ is infanticide.”

“Not to put too fine a point on it, but the non-religious reasons are simply rationalizations for the religious results they want. They’re the situation ethics of social conservatives.”

“Is it good that people who can believe facts are wrong also believe it is good to walk amongst their peers with hidden firearms on their person?”

“Today’s day and age, has gotten so crazy. Shoot, man, Obama wants to take our guns from us and everything.”

“The effective separation of rat sex from rat procreation may be one of the most important defining marks of our age – and one of the most ominous.”

“30 of the Most Offensive, Idiotic, and Bizarre Conservative Arguments Against Marriage Equality”

 

Even in the dark pit of poverty, where rays of hope shine their dimmest, there's often still light enough for a new life to take hold.

The complete run of Omni, one of my all-time favorite magazines, is now available for free on the Internet Archive! In its late-1970s and 1980s heyday, Omni was a wonderful blend of technology, science, art, fiction, futurism, and high weirdness. It really inspired my own writing and interests. OMNI Magazine Collection (via Warren Ellis)

In fact, as I've posted before, if I could launch a new Boing Boing print magazine I'd want it to have this logo, courtesy of Mr. Beschizza:

UPDATE: Rob now says that this is what Boing Omni would look like...

SimCity now includes a free Crest-sponsored Attractions Set with five attractions that can only be obtained by buying dental hygiene products.

Purchasers of specially marked packages of Crest toothpaste and Oral-B Glide floss will find codes redeemable for offers including the Attractions Set, which features five attractions that will increase your population's happiness: Dolly the Dinosaur, Giant Garden Gnome, Llarry the Llama, Maxis Man Statue and the World's Largest Ball of Twine. It is impossible to buy the DLC in SimCity.

The codes can also be used for cash in The Sims Social, which is being closed June 14, or a coupon for $5 off a purchase on Origin. The Attractions Set isn't the first piece of sponsored SimCity DLC; earlier this...

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Tim Wu sez, "I wrote something quick in the New Yorker about America's big blind spot when it comes to big business -- if its not a monopoly, its no problem, so highly concentrated industries can get away with whatever they want."

This blind spot is of particular significance during an age when oligopolies, not monopolies, rule. Consider Barry Lynn’s 2011 book, “Cornered,” which carefully detailed the rising concentration and consolidation of nearly every American industry since the nineteen-eighties. He found that dominance by two or three firms “is not the exception in the United States, but increasingly the rule.” Consumers, easily misled by product labelling, often don’t even notice that products like sunglasses, pet food, or numerous others come from just a few giants. For example, while drugstores seem to offer unlimited choices in toothpaste, just two firms, Procter & Gamble and Colgate-Palmolive, control more than eighty per cent of the market (including seemingly independent brands like Tom’s of Maine).

The press confuses oligopoly and monopoly with some regularity. The Atlantic ran a recent infographic titled “The Return of the Monopoly,” describing rising concentration in airlines, grocery sales, music, and other industries. With the exception of Intel in computer chips, none of the industries described, however, was actually a monopoly—all were oligopolies. So while The Atlantic is right about what’s happening, it sounds the wrong alarm. We know how to fight monopolies, but few seem riled at “The Return of the Oligopoly.”

Things were not always thus. Back in the mid-century, the Justice Department went after oligopolistic cartels in the tobacco industry and Hollywood with the same vigor it chased Standard Oil, the quintessential monopoly trust. In the late nineteen-seventies, another high point of enforcement, oligopolies were investigated by the Federal Trade Commission, and during that era Richard Posner, then a professor at Stanford Law School, went as far as to argue that when firms maintain the same prices, even without a smoke-filled-room agreement, they ought to be considered members of a price-fixing conspiracy. (By this logic, the Delta and US Airways shuttles between New York and Washington, D.C., would probably be price-fixers, since their prices do vary by how far in advance you buy, but are always identical.)

The Oligopoly Problem

It works for cigarettes, why not for fossil fuels?

In e-mail, Brian asks:

Women in Geekdom. Why is this all exploding now? Where is it going?

I am assuming Brian means women in geek-related fields taking a stand against the both latent and overt sexism in those fields and having to deal with outsized, histrionic freakouts some geek dudes are having about it in response.

What’s happening? To explain, let me go to one of my favorite little bits in the film The American President, which I think these days is best known as writer Aaron Sorkin’s rough draft of The West Wing. The scene has President Andrew Shepherd navigating his way through a Christmas party at the White House and coming across a florid, very concerned man in a green jacket:

INT. RESIDENCE - NIGHT

	An informal Christmas party is underway with maybe 20 GUESTS,
	some of them familiar faces.

	SHEPHERD and a GREEN-BLAZERED MAN

				GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL)
		Mr. President, militant women are out
		to destroy college football in this
		country.

				SHEPHERD
		Is that a fact?

				GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL)
		Have you been following this
		situation down in Atlanta? These
		women want parity for girls'
		softball, field hockey, volleyball...

				SHEPHERD
		If I'm not mistaken, Gill, I think
		the courts ruled on Title 9 about 20
		years ago.

				GREEN BLAZERED MAN (GILL)
		Yes sir, but now I'm saying these
		women want that law enforced.

				SHEPHERD
		Well, it's a world gone mad, Gill.

Right now geekdom is positively stacked with Green Blazered Men, who are shocked and concerned that women in geekdom are suddenly not just satisfied with the idea that they have equal standing, opportunity and engagement in the geek world — they are actually pushing for it to happen, and pushing back against the men who are resisting that, whether that resistance is passive, aggressive or passive-aggressive. Or to put it another way, more and more women in the geek world seem to be done with the idea they need to just put up with this shit anymore, and it’s making the men who have been dishing out the shit — whether they knew they were dishing it out or not — a little defensive. And when Green Blazered Men feel defensive, they sometimes also get sort of angry.

Which doesn’t precisely answer the question of why now? Well, the best answer for this I can come up with is that it’s the second decade of the twenty-first century, isn’t it? If I were a woman geek being asked to put up with a whole bunch of sexist bullshit in my community, and pretend it wasn’t happening and that this is what actual equality in my community looked like, I would hope that my response would be to say, loudly and publicly, “you’ve got to be fucking kidding me.” So that there are women who are actually saying this, loudly and publicly, doesn’t surprise me and is also something I support.

And of course those women are catching hell for it. Many male geeks (it seems to me) are unaware of their casual sexism and/or have uncritically bought in to how things have always been in the culture, because why wouldn’t they? It’s a nice set-up for them (and by them I should note I mean us, because, hi, I’m a male geek). I think people are inherently conservative about social structures that favor them, because a) duh, and b) most people assume their own life experience is similar to other people’s even when they’re told otherwise and are given specific examples. When they’re confronted with this ignorance, they feel defensive and feel like the real problem is the person who is complaining, because they themselves are not bad people, therefore the person making them feel bad must be.

Add this to the fact that a lot of male geeks are also emotionally immature and/or seeking status with other male geeks — male geekdom is extraordinarily status sensitive, which is a subject worthy of its own separate discussion — and it’s not surprising that an immediate reaction by so many male geeks to women pushing back is HULK SMASH. The Internet obviously facilitates this sort of thing by allowing for anonymity and gatherings of like-minded folks who offer a comforting bubble of “my thinking is how everyone thinks.” So it’s easy for hordes of anonymous male geeks to strike out at women — who often do not have the same sort of anonymity when they complain publicly about the sexism of the geek world, and who indeed have a target painted on them as soon as they open their mouths.

This is not to paint every male geek with the same brush. There are plenty of male geeks who are also fed up with the sexism of geekdom; there are others who show their ass with a bout of public sexism — intentional or otherwise — who then actually pay attention to what women and others are telling them about that sexism and try to do better (there’s often a difficult “but I’m not a sexist!” protest phase to this, followed by a 101-level discussion of sexism, which is its own issue. Lots of smart, clever people don’t like to think they need entry-level enlightenment.).

Also, sexism in the male geek world does exist on a sliding scale, from jackassed geek bros who loathe and fear women and everything about them that they cannot penetrate at the top, to the dude who for no particularly good reason suspects women aren’t good at FPS games but is otherwise fine with women geeks at the bottom. Some of these dudes will find it easier to let go of their sexism than others.

And with that said, the final reason I think this is all exploding now is because I think the acceptance of overt and covert sexism in geekdom is on its way out — not as a feature (it will always be there, because some people are just fucking sexist assholes, and also, geeks) but as a dominant aspect of the field. A useful example of this I can offer is what happened in the first decade of the twenty-first century, when a ton of US states suddenly passed laws and state constitutional amendments banning recognition of same-sex marriage. It happened because a bunch of people who were abjectly terrified that gays and lesbians would have equal access to the rights and privileges of marriage were able to leverage the latent and often unexamined homophobia of a bunch of other people into terrible, bigoted, hateful laws.

Why then? Because Massachusetts allowed same sex marriage, and because gays and lesbians as a class had begun saying “enough of this shit,” when it came to being denied the right to marry, and it just plain freaked out a bunch of people who didn’t understand why gays and lesbians couldn’t be happy knowing they could get married, just as long as it was to someone of the opposite sex (no, really. This was an argument for a while). And then the more organized members of the freaked-out brigade looked at the demographics of gay acceptance and realized the clock was ticking.

They were right. Here in 2013 a more than bare majority of Americans approve of same sex marriage, marriage equality is the law in several states, and the percentages are going up in both cases. There will be places and people who will need to be dragged into the world of marriage equality kicking and screaming, but it’s a question of when, not if, at this point. Too many people, gay and straight, have decided this is a thing that will be.

And so with the geek world. Women geeks are largely done with letting this sexist shit go uncommented upon, a growing number of men geeks are siding with them, and that number is going to continue to grow. Women geeks certainly aren’t going to shut up now — too many of them are all in on this. Good for them.

But, yeah, sexism in geekdom is a thing, is still a thing, and will continue to be a thing for a while. Not every male geek is going to just willingly unload his sexism. Whether they want to admit it or not — whether they consciously know it or not — they see it as having value; something that offers status and an exclusive identity. They like their green blazer.

Grand Theft Auto V may not be arriving until September, but Rockstar Games is already getting gamers primed for mayhem by replicating the iconic radio stations from past GTA titles on iTunes and Spotify. The GTA series is known for its use of licensed music; whenever a driver gets in a vehicle, they can peruse a number of different radio stations, complete with mock advertisements. Of course the playlists — which cover the radio stations from Grand Theft Auto III and onwards — contain only the songs available on a given service; if you're hoping to find a song from Liberty Rock Radio that Spotify doesn't already carry you're going to be out of luck. That said, it's a quick and convenient way to find songs you may remember fondly from...

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User interfaces remain one of the most fascinating elements of visual science fiction. They need to tell us something about what characters are doing (whether it's aiming a weapon or tracking a criminal, apparently the two most common activities in the future) and something about what the world finds aesthetically appealing, all in a way that's immediately understandable to people in the present. While most stay firmly in the future past, others have had a massive — some would say pernicious — impact on how we use technology in the real world. Even so, the designs often appear for only a few seconds onscreen, but the VisualPunke tumblr has collected them in an ongoing series of beautiful, often frenetic images from anime, video...

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The story of Noah in the book of Genesis does not invite a “literal” reading. It cannot even be made to tolerate such a reading.

This is not a historical story. It is not told to say, “Here is a thing that really happened and I am telling it to you, first of all, so that you will know that this was a thing that really happened.”

It is not that kind of story. The story itself tells us it is not that kind of story. And thus to read it that way is to fail to listen to what the story itself is telling us. To read the story of Noah as a historical account is to contradict the book of Genesis.

When we treat a story of one kind as if it were a story of another kind, we ruin the telling of it. We become exactly like That Guy who won’t let you finish a joke. (“Wait — you can’t bring a duck into a bar. The health code …”)

That Guy only comes in two varieties. He’s either so dim that he doesn’t understand how stories work and thus has completely failed to notice all the clear signals as to what kind of story is being told. Or else he’s just a jerk who’s trying to ruin the story on purpose so that we never get to the punchline.

“So this Southern Baptist minister, a Catholic priest, and an imam walk into a bar. Bartender looks up and says …”

“No way. A Catholic priest maybe, but a Southern Baptist minister and an imam would never go to a bar.”

“…”

“They’re teetotalers. They think drinking alcohol is a sin.”

“OK. Fine. Make it a Presbyterian minister, a Catholic priest, and a rabbi.* They walk into a bar. Bartender looks up and …”

“So which is it? A rabbi or an imam? I doubt this ever really happened at all! Just where is this bar supposed to be, anyway?”

That Guy is technically correct. But he’s also an idiot who doesn’t grasp the kind of story being told.

Entrance to the Museum of the Good Samaritan (photo by Josh Envin).

But there’s one thing more annoying than trying to tell a story over the clueless interruptions of a That Guy who misunderstands the kind of story being told — trying to hear a story told by a That Guy who misunderstands the kind of story he’s telling.

In both cases, the story will be ruined. Try to turn the one about the guy with the duck under his arm into a journalistic report and you’ll wreck the punchline. You’ll never convey the moral of the story about hard work and discipline if you wind up focusing, instead, on defending the notion that ants and grasshoppers are capable of speech.

So whether you’re reading, hearing or telling the story of Noah, you’re bound to make a mess of it if you don’t respect the story enough to treat it as the kind of story it presents itself to be. Treat it otherwise — treat it as a historical account — and you will inevitably miss what the story itself is saying.

Rep. Joe Barton of Texas provided a neat illustration of this yesterday when he attempted to invoke the story of Noah as a historical account:

Republican Texas Rep. Joe Barton on Wednesday dismissed concerns that the Keystone XL pipeline could contribute to climate change, citing the biblical flood myth described in the book of Genesis as evidence that climate change was not man made.

… In contrast to Barton’s past insistence that global warming science is “pretty weak stuff,” the Texas Republican took a different tack in Wednesday’s hearing.

“I don’t deny that the climate is changing,” he said. “I think you can have an honest difference of opinion on what’s causing that change without automatically being either all-in that it’s all because of mankind or it’s all just natural. I think there’s a divergence of evidence.”

“I would point out if you’re a believer in the Bible, one would have to say the Great Flood is an example of climate change. And that certainly wasn’t because mankind overdeveloped hydrocarbon energy.”

(What is it with Texans and the complete inability to understand the story of Noah’s Ark?)

Poor Barton reminds me of the American church group I met at the “Good Samaritan’s Inn” — a museum/gift shop for tourists and pilgrims along the Wadi Qelt in the West Bank. They were very excited to be at the “actual location” where the Good Samaritan in Jesus’ story took the man who had fallen among thieves. For them, it was a confirmation that the story “really happened.”

Except that the story did not “really happen.” The story never claims to have really happened. It was a parable. Parables are not fables, and we shouldn’t try to reduce them down to some “moral of the story” slogan, or to say “this and only this is the point of the story.” The story of the Good Samaritan is told to teach us several things, I think, but none of those things is that “this really happened.” It’s not that kind of story. And if the main thing you take away from the parable of the Good Samaritan is “this really happened,” then not only have you learned a false lesson, you’ve failed to learn any true ones.

You wind up, in other words, in the same illiterate, ignorant bind as Rep. Joe Barton.

Barton appeals to the story of Noah to argue that: 1) climate-change has nothing to do with human behavior; and 2) since humans are not responsible for causing climate change, we are not responsible for responding to it or mitigating its effects.

If “you’re a believer in the Bible,” or if you’ve ever read or heard the story of Noah, then you know that Barton is getting the story backwards and upside-down. The great flood in the story of Noah is a direct consequence of human behavior. Noah’s flood is, in that story, anthropogenic climate change. Genesis 6 does not say:

The Lord saw that the wickedness of ostriches was great in the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of their hearts was only evil continually. And the Lord was sorry that he had made ostriches, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out from the earth the ostriches I have created …”

Not ostriches. Humankind. (“Adam” is the actual word there.) The story is very clear that humans are to blame.

And because humans are to blame for bringing this destructive wrath down on the whole world, humans are also given the responsibility to rescue the rest of the creation.

This is not a minor point in the story. It is impossible to read this story or to hear this story or to tell this story without very clearly understanding that this story is saying that: 1) humans are uniquely capable of destroying all of creation; and 2) humans are uniquely responsible to care for all of creation.

Or, rather, it is almost impossible to read, hear or tell this story without understanding that. It’s possible to miss that point if you’re completely confused as to what kind of story you’re reading, hearing or telling. If you ignore or reject everything the story signals about what kind of story it is, then you can also ignore or reject everything the story has to say, focusing instead on what the story doesn’t say — that it is a historical account, the testimony of actual events from witnesses the story itself says cannot exist.

Focus on that and the story becomes something else — a tale of cubits, blueprints and cryptogeology. Read or told that way, the story no longer has anything to say about responsibility. That’s convenient for folks like Joe Barton, for whom avoiding responsibility is the whole point in quoting the Bible.

So which kind of That Guy is Rep. Barton? Is he the clueless idiot who doesn’t understand how stories work? Or is he the jerk who deliberately tries to ruin the punchline? I think probably it’s a little of both.

The good news for Joe Barton is that he’s from Texas. That means even after embarrassing himself with clueless statements like the one above, he still doesn’t ever have to worry about being the most embarrassing member of his congressional delegation. Heck, he doesn’t even have to worry about being the most embarrassing Barton from Texas.

- – - – - – - – - – - -

* The punchline is “Bacon,” so really it works either way.

A mixture of plant oils, bacterial spores and ozone is responsible for the powerful scent of fresh rain

American social and political culture has shifted rather abruptly towards support for same-sex marriage. Many opponents of same-sex marriage have shifted their rhetoric with it. They have changed focus from increasingly unpersuasive primary arguments (such as appeals to religious norms) to arguments that same sex marriage will have unintended consequences threatening the rights of others. They argue that legalizing same-sex marriage will have the effect of oppressing people who wish to exercise First Amendment rights to dissent from it, whether by speech or association.

Here's the problem: in doing so, some opponents of same sex marriage ("SSM" from here on out, because I am lazy) are promoting ignorance and confusion about basic rights by conflating government action, private action, suppression, and response speech. Ignorance — and I know I am going out on a limb here — is bad.

Consider this Bob Unruh column at WorldNetDaily. Now, I realize that some will say I am setting up a strawman by treating WND as an example of anything other than WND. But the Unruh column has a rather comprehensive list of links to stories that SSM opponents actually cite, and a representative sample of what I see as the willful jumbling of speech and action.

Unruh advocates the use of the term "homofascism" to counter the term "homophobia":

Hunt for the word “homophobia” – purportedly a fear of homosexuality – and Merriam-Webster, the ADL, Wikipedia, Oxford Dictionary, The Free Dictionary, the Reference Dictionary and others are ready to provide help.

But look for “homofascism” – the use of homosexuality to bludgeon and batter the religious rights of Christians and others – and the logical resources are silent, leaving it to blogs and others to define.

(As an aside, I've always understood the suffix "-phobia" to encompass both fear — which foes of SSM disavow — and strong dislike or aversion. Most dictionaries seem to support that meaning. I've always thought the argument "I'm not homophobic because I'm not afraid of homosexuals" to be rather dim and dishonest.)

Unruh goes on to offer a long list of links "that show abuse of Christians’ rights" culled from a site called "Defend the Family." The problem with the list is that it collects, homogenizes, and labels as "fascism" a wide variety of legal and social phenomena. Some items on the list are genuine examples of conflicts between the government and the individual — like application of anti-discrimination laws to SSM issues. Others are individual incidents of alleged viewpoint-based violence or threats. But Unruh and his sources mix those incidents with examples of clear protected speech by supporters of SSM and gay rights.

Unruh cites an instance "when a homosexual activist demands a lawyer not be hired because of past support for traditional marriage." But the underlying news story reveals a rather mundane political battle over a candidate's past affiliations. Is Unruh suggesting that SSM opponents would not oppose politicians who have backed organizations that they dislike? Unruh calls out examples of boycotts by gay rights groups. But boycotts are classic examples of protected speech, not fascism. Is Unruh really decrying all boycotts? If so, does he decry them when groups like the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America employ them in an attempt to enforce anti-gay dogma? Unruh includes instances of gays complaining to the government about treatment by the government's agents in his list of fascism, even though such complaints are classic petitioning activity. Unruh complains about expressions of skepticism about a story of unfair censorship of a Christian, calling it "an LGBT publication desperately and through the use of unrelated arguments trying to convince people that they’re not getting the whole story and that the student harassed the teacher for the teacher being homosexual." But fascism is not characterized by a blogger asking skeptical questions about a news story. The list complains about pressure and rhetoric brought to bear against companies opposing SSM — but does Unruh really think that citizens bringing pressure and rhetoric to bear is fascist? Is it fascist when anti-gay and anti-SSM citizens do it?

Like many abrupt social changes, SSM and associated recognition of the rights of gay Americans will trigger some conflicts between statutory and constitutional rights. Those conflicts involve freedom of association (as when religious student groups wish to maintain religious qualifications for leadership) and freedom of expression (as when an artist's personal views conflict with the anti-discrimination laws of her state.) These conflicts are best discussed openly and honestly with an eye on the actual legal principles presented.

SSM and gay rights also triggers much mere disagreement, rhetoric, and social consequences for proponents of both sides. That is not a conflict of constitutional dimensions. Nor is it anything like fascism. That's the marketplace of ideas, functioning as intended. By mixing up government action and private speech, Unruh and WND are indulging in the trope that speech is tyranny — as WND has done before. But speech is not tyranny. Speech is what we have instead of tyranny. When you speak, and your fellow citizens disagree with you, that disagreement may take the form of condemnation and ridicule. But that's their free speech and does not impede yours. Suggesting otherwise — suggesting that condemning homophobia is comparable to threats or violence or government action — willfully promotes ignorance about basic civic principles.

We should condemn, investigate, and prosecute true threats and political violence. We should think carefully about the ongoing conflict between anti-discrimination laws and freedom of speech and association — a conflict that won't go away if we pretend it doesn't exist. But we shouldn't take anyone seriously if they suggest that being called a bigot is like being a victim of fascism.

Fascism Is Not "That Which Hurts My Feelings" © 2007-2013 by the authors of Popehat. This feed is for personal, non-commercial use only. Using this feed on any other site is a copyright violation. No scraping.