I remember reading a book awhile ago by a big wig in the FBI who was talking about training investigators. When trying to discourage investigators from doing illegal and immoral things like fix evidence, he approached them by pointing out that he doesn’t think that the urge to fix evidence always comes from a place of evil, where you want to set someone up for a crime that is innocent. Usually, cops who fix evidence actually mean well. (He said, and I’m going with it for now because in this case I think he was right.) But they are shooting themselves in the foot. The example he uses is the O.J. Simpson case. What’s most likely true in that case is both that Simpson is guilty as hell of killing his ex-wife and her friend and that the cops planted evidence against him. Why plant evidence if they knew he was guilty? Well, obviously to make sure that he was found guilty. But it backfired, because they got caught planting evidence, which gave the defense their opportunity to make the case that Simpson was being railroaded.
Moral of the story: Frustrating as it can be sometimes to see people get away with certain atrocities, if you break the rules to stop them, you’re only going to fuck it up.
I thought about this while reading about the student council at Carleton University crossing over a certain important line and barring an anti-choice group from having access to student funds or student spaces. Now, don’t get me wrong; I think anti-choice protestors are the scum of the earth. However, this is an area to tread lightly and err on the side of freedom of speech, even if you do think—and I do—that they are simply trussed up hate groups against women. Now, I do think that anti-choice organizing at actual clinics is something that one can seek reasonable legal remedies against, but not in terms of speech. In fact, the biggest feminist victories against these asswipes were achieved not by attempting to censor them but carefully documenting in court how the temptation to cross the line into harassment and intimidation was crossed over and over again until it was indisputable that Operation Rescue was a bona fide criminal organization engaging in racketeering.
The best remedy for hate speech is not to try to censor it. You only end up shooting yourself in the foot and allowing the hate group to play like they’re the victims of the PC Squad. This is especially likely to happen if the hate group isn’t recognized as such by the larger society, which is true of anti-choice groups at the moment. Now, this doesn’t go for hate speech directed at specific individuals. Universities are well within the bounds of reason if they punish someone for haranguing a certain person for her private medical choices. (Same with clinic protests—anti-choice groups simply cannot bring themselves to refrain from individual harassment of patients and so they have to stay X number of feet back so that they can’t single anyone out for such harassment.) But when it comes to political speech, err on the side of free speech. That means they are disabled from playing the victim role and, more importantly, gives you a chance to push back without fear of censorship.
Honestly, letting people play the fools often works really well. Living in a blue city in a red state, I get routine opportunities to see the wingnuts from everything from the KKK to the anti-choicers to the groups who think everyone’s going to hell show up and have their hateful little protests. Half the time, you don’t even need to bother to organize a counter-demonstration since the crowds around them provide unorganized mockery aplenty to make it very clear to the haters they don’t share the communities’ values. Pointing and laughing exposes them to the light. If they’re censored, the organize underground, thinking they’re speaking the “true” voice of the community that They are just afraid to hear. And that’s a lot more dangerous.
Now there are common sense rules for keeping expressing your opinion from turning into harassment, which is why I think in the real world having specific spaces are good—like having the cops hang out between the hate group and the counter protestors. And in the virtual world, things like comment moderation can be used to act as a virtual police barrier or agreed-upon standing 100 feet apart or whatever other methods are used to keep people in expression mode instead of brawling mode. But in this case, I think the student council at Carleton would have done much better to allow the group to have their share of funds and then have the pro-choicers set up counter protests nearby for all the anti-choice protests. I’ve seen similiar set-ups all the time and, believe me, the pro-choicers come off much better for it, since they tend to be the ones with fact-stuffed brochures while the anti-choicers are shoving bloody fetus pictures in your face even if you ask them a few questions about some of the issues with their viewpoints.
71 Responses to “The Klan’s having a rally—time to score some PR points by counter protesting”
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I am so with you on this one. I went to college in Ann Arbor, a famously blue town. Every April the local Nazi Party from the horrible hinterlands of Michigan would get a permit to hold a rally in Ann Arbor. The first year I was there, I was all fired up about how we ought to deny them the permit, blah^3, until my older GF said “No, don’t: come to the rally and watch.” The counterprotestors outnumbered the Nazis by at least a hundred to one and it was almost pitiable to watch these obese, illiterate, Cheeto-stained dipshits cringe in fear at a thousand college students and townies of all shades mock them.
Ever since, I’ve always wanted my Nazis right out in the open where I can see’em.
I do like me a good “everybody is going to hell” fundamentalist. I’ve seen a lot more of them since I moved to Tenn. One guy had to come through my office to get a permit to hang out on campus. Dude was almost too fat to fit through the door. Had his 8 yrold son with him.
He gave out a number of pamphlets with pictures of mothers n’ babies, young couples kissing, old grandparents sitting on the porch together, and each picture said in big black letters “THIS IS NOT LOVE”. The opposing page was covered with sorta-maybe-ifyou-like-crystal-meth relavent biblical phrases.
The last page was a stillshot from “passion of the christ” of the nearly flayed, deadish, bloodcovered Roadkill Jesus nailed to the cross, and it said in big red letters “THIS IS LOVE”.
i think i threw up in my mouth a little.
He then went outside, and with his two buddies, spent most of the afternoon calling atractive women whores, and any guy who wasn’t as fat as he was a fag.
I like the “on notice” lists they usually have, the ones with groups you never thought of included. Democrats and seventh-day-adventists are popular targets.
I have a question to ask, and it’s an honest one. That is, I’m not from troll-landia and am as pro-choice as they come. My question is, are there any anti-choice arguments that you don’t agree with but sort of respect where they’re coming from? And, if so, are there ways of presenting these arguments that you also respect? (I’m assuming that this way would not be an anti-choice rally.)
I ask because I’ve had the old pro/anti choice debate with my father, who is very anti-choice and very religious. But he frames his argument not in terms of religion or anti-feminism, but rather a lot of medical stuff that sound like facts to me (I don’t know anything about biology) about gestation, etc. Now, all of this might boil down to anti-feminism in practice, but I have to admit, I sort of respect where my father is coming from if he genuinely believes actual human babies are being killed. I don’t actually like babies, but if I thought actual human babies were being killed, I might be sort of up in arms.
I hope I don’t regret asking this question, I’m just wondering.
No, I think that the question of when someone is individuated enough to deserve consideration is a valid one. But it’s overruled by the body rights argument, in my opinion, in the legal sense. In the moral sense, I think it’s problematic to kill a late term fetus unless you have to, but since most if not all very late term abortions are done for sound medical reasons (we’re talking 3rd trimester, the only time the fetus is likely to have enough nerve infrastructure to feel anything), it’s a moot question morally.
The very idea that a 2 month old fetus with no brain to speak of deserves consideration to the degree that it could even be a moral question that its mother has an obligation to house it against her will is repugnant and anti-woman to me. That most people who hold anti-choice views for the first two trimesters also eat meat, wear leather or otherwise participate in the killing of animals that have more brain functioning than a fetus is the nail in the coffin to me. If they care about brain development, a chicken has more right to their pity than a 2 month old fetus.
Whenever censorious measures come from the Left rather than the right, this seems to be the chain of logic:
1. The GOVERNMENT is intractably racist, sexist, homophobic, etc. and enforces laws out of those bad motivations.
2. As a result, women, minorities, gays etc. inevitably bear the burdens of free speech protections disproportionately — those laws are executed in a manner that disfavors those groups.
3. Therefore, let’s create exceptions to free speech protections.
4. And, I guess we’ll give the exceptions to the GOVERNMENT to administer and execute.
If you think this sounds reminiscent of the Underpants Gnomes logic from South Park, you aren’t alone.
1. Steal underpants
2. ????
3. Profit!
The fact is, though disfavored groups have always borne the brunt of freedom of speech, they have borne the brunt of EXCEPTIONS to freedom of speech even more. Hence, when Canada embarked on its McKinnonite/Dworkinite experiment in criminalizing pornography, observers should not have been surprised when gay porn shops were shut down disproportionately. Unfortunately, the canon-blinded were surprised.
The precedent of excluding viewpoints from student funding may, in the short term, harm conservative views. In the long term, history suggests that it is inevitable that they will be used against groups disfavored by society as a whole.
I have a big problem with this:
Having Cops present is NEVER a good thing. They’re not going to take our side, and they’re more likely to provoke real violence than anyone else in the equation.
Labyrus:
As someone who has been assaulted at a pro choice counter-protest to an anti-choice rally by a Knight of Columbus in full regalia (with their stupid scary little swords) while the cops watched on and did nothing… agreed. He shoved me into oncoming traffic, and the cops did nothing. I rant about this alot, so sorry if I’m being repetitive, but it was really terrifying :/
Back on topic… I work within walking distance of Carleton University, my brother goes there, etc… and I kind of agree with what they did. From the coverage that I’ve seen, they were explicit that they were going to deny student funds and student spaces (funded by student funds…) to groups whose PRIMARY purpose was the over turning of abortion-rights laws. I think its fair in that they would obviously not give funding to groups seeking to overturn racial equality laws or anti-gay hate groups, so it doesn’t make sense to give money to anti-woman hate groups either, or groups seeking to overturn women’s rights laws.
Also, afaik, the Student Fed is funded out of tuition, and the Fed is elected by the students, so the Fed is the democratically elected voice of the student body, so it seems fair that the voice of the Student Body should be able to decide where student funds go. If the students are really opposed to this measure, they can vote them out next year.
Not that I’m defending Carleton or anything. I have my pride as an Ottawa U student, after all.
Protecting the rights of people seeking to express unpopular ideas is a cornerstone of freedom. Once prevent the KKK or the Neo-Nazis frpm speaking, and you have become them.
As for whether police should be there - think Iraq. It’s easier to keep the riot from starting than to get it stopped after the violence gets started.
As for the “PC Police” - I tell people that there is no such thing as being “politically correct.” There are people who so strongly believe in their own viewpoint that they feel the need to silence folks with opposing views. However, these appear on BOTH sides of the debate. Right-wingers with this disease mutter about “PC police” and say things like “We have strong moral beliefs - you’re just being ‘politically correct.’” Substituting “ditto-headed” for “politically correct doesn’t make the phrase true - it’s still censorship.
it’s sort of like Jerry Falwell’s view of the Iranian government: He uses them as a terrible form of government in his speeches - but he’d think it a fine model for the US if he used a find/replace command to substitute “Christian” for “Muslim”, “Preacher” for “Ayatollah”, etc. We don’t want to start playing George W Bush and start preventing folks with opposing beliefs from speaking in the name of “preserving civil discourse.” After all, they’re the ones who thought the “Salvador Option” was a fine way to solve Iraq’s problems… and if we stop them from speaking on campus, it gives them an excuse to arrest us to stop demonstrations outside of their conventions.
On my site I get complaints on a fairly regular basis that I allow antis to post in the guestbook as long as they are reasonably respectful. My belief is that everyone’s entitled to their opinion and as long as they’re not being assholes about it they can express it. Same with the site’s blog (okay, there I mess with them a little, but hey, I have to take my fun where I can). Since I do this, delete the idiots and state publicly that I won’t argue abortion, the more nutty antis take their antics elsewhere.
David B., I actually respect anti-choice arguments that are based on abortion being murder and are consistent within that. So, if someone argues that abortion is always murder and is always wrong and therefore the only possible exception is if the mother’s life is in danger — I respect that. Because if you’re going to claim it’s murder, you can’t make exceptions if the kind of sex that led to the pregnancy gets the woman off the hook because she didn’t really want the sex — so, you know, no exceptions for rape or incest. And in addition, this person must also advocate that a woman seeking abortion be prosecuted for murder.
Harsh? Hell yes. But if you’re going to convince me that you are serious and sincere in your position that abortion is murder (and not just trying to punish women for enjoying sex), you better follow through with that. If it’s murder for a slut, it’s murder for an incest victim, and a woman seeking abortion should be treated no differently than someone hiring a contract killer.
Thing is, most people who claim that it’s murder get squeamish, particularly on the issue of criminal sanctions for the woman seeking abortion. Because women don’t have agency, in their eyes.
Usually, cops who fix evidence actually mean well.
You know, having done civil rights litigation, I can’t quite get behind that. They often believe the person they’re fixing the evidence for must be guilty, but it doesn’t follow that they “mean well.” I was actually surprised to find out just how banal police corruption is — I worked on a case involving a precinct-wide practice of planting evidence on suspects on a particular day, so that under speedy trial laws, the cop would be called in on his regular day off to testify for the arraignment, thus accruing overtime. I mean, this was a big scandal, and I couldn’t help thinking, “That’s it? An overtime scam?” I suppose I expected the stakes for something like planting evidence to be higher.
Blogrolling: P…
P is a popular letter so the list is longish. As always, check it out: bad links? Let me know. A super-find you are very happy to discover? I’d like to know. A grave omission? Tell me in the comments………
My brother was telling me about this time that a bunch of anti-abortion protesters were holding some protest near his apartment in Denver and he noticed that a bunch of them parked in a tow-away zone, so he sat in his apartment and called the towing company and let them know there was a bunch of money to be made towing cars. So they showed up and started towing cars…protest over.
It is important to respect free speech, and I’m afriad it isn’t said (heh) enough. Without it, the only remaining question is who chooses what is acceptable, and witness the last six years in the US as an example of how public opinion can sway. And that was, in the scheme of things, mild.
I don’t know how Canada’s uni system works, and CA differs from the US on free speech issues in important legal ways. So I don’t know how this works. I do support the US system here, though - private unis can do whatever sillyness they want, but a public institution should be forbidden from mandating speech.It leads to uncomfortable outcomes, but the alternative is worse.
I usually tend to see things like Ms. Marcotte on issues like this. I readily admit that I don’t know the specific situation in Carleton and I don’t know the real strategic equation. If, like Labyrus and Arianna say, the cops around there are going to side with the anti-choicers and look the other way when they do violence, then that is a real bad problem and maybe the students at Carleton have a point.
I just think, “Keep your freinds close, but keep your enemies closer”. Sometimes its better to have the anti-choicers/Nazis/whatever out there looking like the idiots they are, spewing their hate in full view of everyone, then to have them underground.
God damn, Amanda, but you impress the hell out of me.
(And I hope like hell that I’ve said something, sometime, somewhere that impressed you, just a bit, so that me saying you impress me *means* something to you. Does that make sense? I hope so.)
The OJ bit, the abortion bit in the comments, the defense of free speech, your earlier talk about your dreams for society… god *damn* but you impress the hell out of me.
I don’t think I totally agree with what you said about framing people being counterproductive. In OJ’s case, I agree it definitely backfired. Probably in the vast majority of cases the person is convicted because they don’t have high-priced lawyers looking out for them. Therefore, they get to look good and convince everyone that the bad guy has been caught. There aren’t major consequences if someone if proven innocent years later, either.
I listened to almost all of the O.J. Simpson case on the radio, and I disagree that it’s obvious the police planted evidence. In fact, the police were starry-eyed fans of Simpson, and I think planting evidence would never have occurred to them.
The fact that the myth of planting evidence prevails to this day shows only that our judicial system is filled with “successes” in blowing smoke in the faces of intelligent people.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Yeah, in order to plant evidence they would have had to believe Simpson was the killer. The first people at the site observed the so-called planted evidence in situ, and called in the homicide detectives. It took a while for it to dawn that Simpson was a suspect and not another victim. The idea that evidence was planted started with the Simpson dream team, who somehow made a rich wife-beater with a young trophy wife into a symbol of oppression. The motto is, in America, the true sign of wealth is the ability to kill one’s wife and get away with it. After all, if white guys get away with beating their wives to death, then everyone else is entitled to kill a white woman, too.
I’ve been thinking about this more and I still can’t see it as a free speech issue. The University’s governing structure isn’t banning these groups, nor is it involved in this in any way, it’s just the CUSA (Carleton University Students’ Assoc) that has decided not to give any of the CUSA (or whatever they call it at Carleton) funds or space to these groups. No one is censoring them or banning them from doing whatever, they just won’t be getting any money from the CUSA. They already had a non-discrimination policy in place where they wouldn’t fund racist groups, etc, and all they did was added reproductive rights to the list. Even then, it states that they are only denying funding and space to groups whose primary purpose is the overturning of legal abortion, so all the crap Lifeline has been spewing about it “Cracking down on religious groups who happen to be pro life” is just that.
Atheist:
Well, where I was assaulted was within (albeit long) walking distance from Carleton. I was also at the huge SSM protest last year where they anti side was actually busing in huge groups of Americans… they had something like 10,000 people filling Parliament Hill, and we only had a teeny corner to ourselves. The cops were theoretically supposed to be there keeping the groups separate and protecting our reserved corner as we only had a few hundred people to their 10,000, but well, this is a largely Catholic country so no one stops the damn KoC from doing what they want. So, we had groups of KoC walking over and intimidating our group, and then their side slowly starting to push people into the midst of our group, screaming and generally being creepy as all hell. The cops, of course, stepped in to stop us whenever we tried to go over there as a counter-measure.
Wow, this is the first time I’ve even gotten caught in moderation here :/
Amanda:
Thank you for addressing my question.
I think the body rights argument is your friend here, but you seem to be (to me) on less firm logical ground when it comes to describing the fetus in its early stage of development as being beneath moral notice because its brain development is not conducive to feeling pain.
If I were to bring that up, my anti-choice father would likely respond that the lack of brain development is a temporary condition, and if you’re going to make moral comparisons to killing chickens, an equivalent argument could be made that it’s beneath moral notice to kill a living human person as long as you’ve induced a temporary mental impairment that would allow him or her not to feel it. I’m not sure I could argue my way out of that one.
I guess . . . well, help me out here. As a gay man, I haven’t spent much time thinking of the gestational aspects of this question. To me, personal and private body rights trounce all. But that’s not the framework that my debates get stuck in because, and this is the anti-feminist part, I dont’ think anti-choicers are thinking about the women at all, its wholly about the potential of the fetus. To the people I have argued with, it comes down to the question of temporary inconvenience and/or discomfort vs. killing a baby, and I don’t think an argument about wearing leather or chicken brains can make much of a dent in that paradigm.
You have made some very excellent points about the coopting of a woman’s body against her will, with illustrative examples, that are just stunningly powerful to me. It seems if we can generally keep the argument on the level of the woman’s body and make them argue why a woman doesn’t have the right to make choices about her own body vs. get caught up in the logistics of when a fetus feels pain and when morality kicks in there, we are on firmer ground.
I dont’ think anti-choicers are thinking about the women at all, its wholly about the potential of the fetus.
Exactly. The actual humanity of the woman in questioned (in terms of her right to self) in favor of the potential humanity of the fetus.
David B,
I don’t know what you can do with your father, or whether you have to “do” anything. At issue isn’t what one or more persons think about the morality of an action they are not, in fact, called upon to take. AT issue is whether the state should be brought in to legislate someone else’s rights on the basis of a third party’s morality. I think if I were in your shoes I’d say:
“That’s great, Dad, I’m really glad you care so much about someone else’s unborn fetus. Can you tell me what you did today to outlaw state execution, private ownership of guns, and the Iraq war? Because if you can’t, don’t bother telling me about the morality of denying medical abortions to some woman who can’t afford another mouth to fee, or can’t afford to die in childbirth so you can feel morally superior. Literally thousands of men, women, children and unborn fetuses die every day of AIDS, malnutrition, war, and pestilence. You have a greater chance of stopping those deaths than you do the tiny number of abortions, and those people actually exist in the world to thank you and appreciate your help.”
And I’d leave it at that.
aimai
Notice how the anti-choicers always mention the fetus, but never the woman. Kinda makes you wonder if they wouldn’t just like to make us all disappear, if they didn’t need some of us for baby breeding.
Reposting due to stuck in moderation and being bored on a Sunday morning:
I’ve been thinking about this more and I still can’t see it as a free speech issue. The University’s governing structure isn’t banning these groups, nor is it involved in this in any way, it’s just the CUSA (Carleton University Students’ Assoc) that has decided not to give any of the CUSA (or whatever they call it at Carleton) funds or space to these groups. No one is censoring them or banning them from doing whatever, they just won’t be getting any money from the CUSA. They already had a non-discrimination policy in place where they wouldn’t fund racist groups, etc, and all they did was added reproductive rights to the list. Even then, it states that they are only denying funding and space to groups whose primary purpose is the overturning of legal abortion, so all the crap Lifeline has been spewing about it “Cracking down on religious groups who happen to be pro life� is just that.
Atheist:
Well, where I was assaulted was within (albeit long) walking distance from Carleton. I was also at the huge SSM protest last year where they anti side was actually busing in huge groups of Americans… they had something like 10,000 people filling Parliament Hill, and we only had a teeny corner to ourselves. The cops were theoretically supposed to be there keeping the groups separate and protecting our reserved corner as we only had a few hundred people to their 10,000, but well, this is a largely Catholic country so no one stops the damn KoC from doing what they want. So, we had groups of KoC walking over and intimidating our group, and then their side slowly starting to push people into the midst of our group, screaming and generally being creepy as all hell. The cops, of course, stepped in to stop us whenever we tried to go over there as a counter-measure.
“Now there are common sense rules for keeping expressing your opinion from turning into harassment, which is why I think in the real world having specific spaces are good—like having the cops hang out between the hate group and the counter protestors.”
Unless, of course, the authorities decide that the best place to hold your protest is a couple of miles away from where you want to hold it, as they did during the Presidential campaign. You wanna protest the president? Okay- three miles away, behind those chain-link fences!
And agree with the people who say the police are most likely to instigate violence. And they have guns and tasers and pepper spray, etc.
Just to address the marginally-on-thread “OJ & Police evidence planting” discussion above - the practice of police planting evidence to ensure a conviction has been called “gilding the lily” for many years. The police have a “gut instinct” that someone is guilty, so they are often tempted to kind of help the investigation along by planting some additional evidence to back up their predetermined beliefs. Keeps them darn librul judges from letting the crook off on some technicality, you see. Sometimes they get caught at it - and sometimes their efforts make it impossible to catch the right criminal.
“Unstable Isotope Dec 10th, 2006 at 7:06 am
[cops who frame people] get to look good and convince everyone that the bad guy has been caught. There aren’t major consequences if someone if proven innocent years later, either.”
I really hope I’m just misunderstanding what you said here, Iso, cause the “consequences” are pretty “major” for the wrongly-convicted.
With the work of The Innocence Project, and similar groups and individuals, we’re seeing more and more proven-innocent people getting released after decades of incarceration. Not to mention that at this point, it’s virtually a mathematical certainty that at least some actually-innocent people have been executed.
Are you, personally, willing to accept a chance of wrongful incarceration or execution as a price of the system working as you describe? What about for your children, spouse, parents? If not, then I’m not seeing how you can deem it acceptable that other people (especially if they’re less white and/or of less wealth and privilege than you) take on that risk for you.
You want to get really horrified? Look at how many people—usually black men, how strange—have been imprisoned or executed on the basis of eyewitness testimony alone. There is nothing more unreliable, though I suppose you could argue for the polygraph if you wanted.
Aimai: That is a very powerful argument, but it also sounds like a game of moral “gotcha.” Further, I would like to avoid having it turned back around on me. Just because I’m anti-war, I don’t want it to necessarily follow that I have to be a vegetarian or something.
I care about this argument because I know people who are very anti-abortion that could possibly convinced to vote anti-legal intrusion into choice given the right logical framework. (My father is not one of these, but he has a lifetime of anti-choice arguments stored up, so he’s the one I test my theories out on.)
David B., I actually respect anti-choice arguments that are based on abortion being murder and are consistent within that.
I’ll admit, I don’t. I think they need to be able to make a secular argument that a blastocyst=a baby and there isn’t any.
Carleton student here. Just so people are clear (and Arianna’s been pretty good at getting to the real point of the matter - I’m an Ottawa U alum too, doing my MA at CU) the funding they are being denied amounts to $250 and the student-manages spaces are only a small part of the campus. There is plenty of room and plenty of private money floating around to keep these guys in gory fetal pictures from here until the second coming. Furthermore, I don’t see why my student fees should be subsidizing groups that want to take away what amounts to a fundamental right under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. I would no more want fund a group that wanted to recriminalize abortion than I would one that wanted to bring back slavery or recrimininalize homosexuality. If they want to stand around the quad (giant open public space by the library) in the -40c Ottawa winter and spout their stupidity, fine. But they can buy their own coffee and donuts - I don’t see why the students should have to support groups that aim to take away their human rights.
Like others, I see this not as censuring free speech, but rather withholding endorsement. Somewhat equatable with gov. funding of crisis pregnancy centers, though with alternate outcome.
smartalek: I believe Isotope was referring to the police not having consequences.
David: The argument you’re sharing is taking a value associated with a state and conveying it to something that has potential to attain that state. It is an absurd reasoning, even though I’ve heard it many many times from anti-choicers. The greatest problem with it in this case is where to draw the line. Obviously your father would draw it at fertilization (or maybe coitus), but why? There is no inherit biological reason for it, though some people will exploit the ignorance of the populous to claim their is one. At best it is arbitrary, which makes everyones druthers equally valid.
David, I think that killing a person—who has a family, a memory, and can feel fear—is so completely incomparable to killing a fetus that has a tail and no real brain to speak of shows the lack of solemn awareness of the reality of these things, that it scares me. I think a lot of men are impressed with the idea that what they put in the woman’s uterus is more human than she is, and they run with that idea, but frankly, it’s out of touch.
As a football fan, I can remember how many people were absolutely stunned when it came out about Nicole Simpson calling the cops on OJ for hitting her. I mean, this was OJ Simpson!!! Hall of Fame running back! In the “Naked Gun” movies! Hertz commercials! No way could he have done that! But what cemented his guilt in many people’s minds was the infamous Bronco Chase. If he was in his words “100 percent not guilty” why did he feel the need to take off with a passport and money? Hardly the actions of an innocent man in my opinion. Yeah, he may be living in Florida and playing golf and living off his NFL pension, but the NFL won’t touch him with a ten-foot pole–nor will any other decent human being. And, as usual, the true victims are his children.
Ginmar, I think it’s counterproductive to insinuate that the cops were involved in a sadistic conspiracy against Nicole Brown. That is not the reality of how people brush off domestic violence. The reality is people are so scared to admit that wife-beaters are narcissists and sadists, so they strain to see it as a personal weakness. The cops blew off OJ’s wife-beating because they convinced themselves they weren’t seeing what they were seeing—controlling sadism. Instead they chose to see it as a spat that got out of hand. After they found her dead, they knew damn well that he had “crossed the line” and I think were determined to send him away for playing them as the fool.
The VAWA works because the training programs attack this myth that domestic violence is “just” marital spats that get out of hand. They explain to the cops that abusers LIKE beating their wives, they feel powerful when they do it, and they will escalate the violence. And the result has been that cops are quicker to arrest in the early stages of a DV case. If they were in a sadistic conspiracy, training them to see past the myths about DV would not work.
David B:
The issue there is that the brain development is not a temporary condition induced by a person in an assault. It is what the fetus is at that point.
Additionally, while the fetus will eventually develop more of a brain, it does so only by putting the woman carrying the fetus at risk (though the risk is usually small). While we can urge people to be willing to take this risk for the sake of another, it can’t be legally required.
Which, I can almost guarantee will bring up the argument “but she *chose* to have sex, and *knew* she could get pregnant, so she has a responsibility to take those risks, if they’re the normal risks of pregnancy!”
And I’d agree with that argument if the pregnancy has advanced sufficiently, not because she chose to have sex, but because she chose to continue the pregnancy to that point. (I’m not saying when that is, because I’m not sure myself. Viability is a relatively clear legal standard, so that’s more-or-less where I’m willing to stand for pragmatic reasons.) However, note that Roe vs. Wade quite wisely (IMHO, of course) said that abortion can’t be forbidden if it’s necessary for the health of the woman. Once those risks have gotten beyond those that normally associated with pregnancy, we’re into some icky moral territory. If she was forced to continue the pregnancy, people would be demanding that she put her health at risk for another person. Well, you can’t compel people to accept such risks as a matter of law under ordinary circumstances, so carving out an exception for pregnancy seems more geared towards a dislike of abortion, rather than sound medical ethics.
Again, we can urge people to accept that risk, or feel disappointed if they won’t, but we can’t legally obligate them to take those risks.
Good job.
Or why the ACLU is right to represent the Phelps monsters.
Keep ‘em in the open so you can see the flesh drop from his rotted bones.
Thing.
Floyd, exactly. I was going to mention that I work for a group that promotes diversity and is ‘funded’ by CUSA… i.e. we get $500 a year to help print tickets to our events. This is really a non-issue, but the media went completely apeshit over it, especially the utterly useless but universally-read Metro.
Amanda,
Your observation that “most people who hold anti-choice views for the first two trimesters also eat meat, wear leather or otherwise participate in the killing of animals that have more brain functioning than a fetus is the nail in the coffin to me” implies, incorrectly, that anti-choice views are generally based on “animal rights” considerations. In my experience with the anti-choice movement, I’ve found the opposite to be true; the majority of those who hold anti-choice views believe that humans are superior to nonhuman animals in “The Great Chain of Being.” As such, I don’t believe there is any hypocrisy.
J, you’re absolutely right. They think it’s because sperm inject souls into eggs and that humans have souls and that’s the basis of our claims to rights. And that’s fine. If they stuck with that, I would have no problem with it.
But they know that arguing about when god puts a soul in a fetus isn’t going to fly, so they try to use science to argue their position by saying that a fetus has a brain, etc. If they want to use THAT model of ethics, which is perfectly reasonable and secular, they have to deal with the facts. And the facts are pretty straightforward—if having a brain means you have a right not to be killed, a chicken is up the chain from a 2 month old fetus. Ergo, if you invoke neurological development as your basis of your anti-choice argument, then you HAVE to be a vegetarian in order to be consistent.
David–also, the “temporarily not enough brain development” doesn’t avoid the fact that at that point in time the fetus doesn’t have enough brain to be conscious, and it can only continue its development to that point by acting as a parasite. Just because it’s a parasite that ends up getting ejected from the host’s body without too much damage most of the time doesn’t change the fact that it’s a parasite.
Also, if we could choose any point of time of a projected timeline and pick THAT point as being representative of the status of the entity, then I don’t see why I can’t stab someone (living) in the heart and say “but if I had waited, he would have become a dead body anyway!” You can only act in accordance with the status of the entity AT THAT TIME WHEN THE ACTION OCCURS.
Oh, and if your dad wants to bring up DNA uniqueness, ask him does that mean you can kill one of a pair of identical twins, and if not, why not?
Plus there’s absorption of one fetus by another, zygotes absorbing each other, splitting and then one absorbing a different zygote, the high percentage of zygotes who never make it through to birth (God being the greatest abortionist of all,) etc., etc., and so forth.
Sheesh, maybe if we started a movement for mandatory liver-and-kidney donations from all men, they’d understand why we’re so picky about having jurisdiction over our own bodies.
It isn’t an outright ban on their free speech rights, but they are subject to a restriction based on the content of that speech. You might say that the CUSA has the right to allocate its funds however it chooses, but I don’t think you would actually endorse the idea that the CUSA can defund or restrict access to a club simply because the CUSA disagrees with that club’s views.
Case in point: my university had a big dust up last year over the Vagina Monologues. The end result was that the Monologues were denied student funds and denied access to the theatres. The reasoning was identical to the defenses offered here–it isn’t a restriction of their free speech, just a withdrawing of endorsement by a group free to fund or not fund student activities as it sees fit.
The only difference between that case and Carelton’s is that, well, the anti-choice people are wrong and the Vagina Monologue players are right. But that’s precisely the sort of distinction that we don’t want to leave to simple majoritarianism, as is evidenced by the repeated enactment of anti-same sex marriage amendments.
Amanda, I agree with what your saying in theory, but I think you’ve got it wrong in terms of what is actually happening at Carelton (as two Carleton students have been kind enough to point out). i think this is more of a problem of trying to generalize about Canada based on similar examples in the United States. It just doesn’t work. Our political landscape is different, our institutions are different, our free speech laws are different, and the whole abortion debate is different.
Amanda, cops and the mililtary are macho professions, and the LAPD has a history of being the most macho of police departments around. Cops have a noteable tendency as do service members to be more likely to beat their own wives. The more macho a guy is the more likely he is to beat his wife. Add to that a football hero who was a big fave of those guys and you have a recipe for a bunch of guys to buck one another up over irritation at uppity women. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy, which I don’t think I implied. All it has to be is a pervasive attitude that no one’s trying to examine or change.
CUSA is making a terrible mistake. They’re just making martyrs out of a bunch of anti-choice losers and making David Horowitz come in his pants. Who wants that, really?
Practically speaking, the few bucks of student government money the anti-choice folks might get are trivial compared to the international publicity that CUSA has given them. They’ll keep meeting on campus, they just won’t get a reserved room through the student organization director.
I know, ginmar. That’s exactly why the LAPD blew it off when OJ beat his wife. However, they did not blow it off when he sawed her head off with a knife. I agreed whole-heartedly that they acted the part of the macho dicks who won’t see reality when he was beating her. But when he killed her, he disproved the macho excuse for covering up DV, which is they say that it’s not that bad. Clearly, it was. So, OJ exposed their bullshit, and they were mad and tried to set evidence to make sure he got convicted.
And *no one’s* trying to examine or change it? Wow, that’s defeatist. Why are we spending money on training for the police about DV if not in an attempt to change it? And how come it’s working, if no one is trying?
Thom:
Carleton already had an anti-discrimination policy in place, which women’s rights were just added to. That’s all. It’s just bringing it into line with saying that generally they won’t fund groups that try to revoke people’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms rights. Should they fund racist hate groups out of respect for their “free speech” too?
Debbie:
Completely agreed, I think this is a case of Americans trying to generalize their experiences onto a different culture with a different legal system that no one seems to differentiate from their own :/ The whole tenor of the debate is different here, and much, much less warlike despite the occasional protest going bad. As was pointed out over how Harper has decided to let the SSM issue lay now that they got the vote out of the way, our nuts are different from their nuts
See, from what I’ve noticed, while we’re here arguing about it on an American blog, no one in Ottawa besides those involved in the Lifeline group really gives a shit, and it’s going to have basically zero impact on a national scale. We’re all too concerned with watching how the Liberal leadership race just played out and wondering what’s going to be the outcome of the new leader, Stephane Dion, who is basically a political unknown, to be getting all hepped up over a minor event at a minor university
Arianna, the question that comes to my mind is what percentage of Canadians understand that anti-choice groups are in fact hate groups? I think this decision wouldn’t backfire if it was the KKK, but that’s because people get that the KKK is a hate group. Do people really get that anti-choicers are a hate group?
Amanda:
No, I don’t think they do, but I think what is being missed is that in most circles here, the abortion question is considered settled long, long ago. The political culture here doesn’t revolve around re-fighting old battles (Unless we want to talk about the whole Quebec question, but that’s its own quandary).
I do think, though, at the very least that the Carleton Students, or at least the CUSA, get it, or they wouldn’t be so specific in making sure everyone knows that they are only targeting groups who are primarily seeking to overturn abortion rights.
Likewise, are we supposed to wait around until the ‘general public’ decides to accept out of the blue that anti-choice groups are hate groups, or are we going to push to have them recognized as such? Ideas have to come from somewhere.
No, but that’s not the issue. The issue is whether they should defund and restrict the speech of an existing student group because the CUSA disagrees with the content of that group’s speech.* Of course the CUSA has no obligation to create a white supremacist group and provide it with adequate funding, simply because those white supremacists have a right to free speech. That’s not what’s happening here. Here, there is an existing student group whose speech is being restricted on the grounds that a majority of students do not agree with their position. The defense that this is acceptable because it only (nominally) restricts speech contrary to the Charter begs the question, because the issue being raised by the group is that the Charter is wrong insofar as it allows abortion.
If the CUSA were to defund the group because it harasses passers by, great. If they want to defund the group because it disrupts classes, fantastic. If they want to defund the group because it violates some campus bylaws, even better. But that’s not what they’re doing. They’re defunding the group specifically because they disagree with their political aims.
To be clear, I think these anti-choice groups are nuts–misogynists and religious whack-jobs, the lot of them. But if they can legitimately be defunded because the CUSA doesn’t like their political aim, then to what principle should we appeal when other student governments defund groups that we do like, such as the Vagina Monologues? Better yet, at my old university, the Campus Greens were denied funding because we were pro-choice. Sure sure, we’re right and they’re wrong, but that argument doesn’t take you far when you’re in the minority view. Think of it this way: if you didn’t know the political tenor of the school or leanings of the CUSA, would you want the CUSA to have the power to defund groups only because they didn’t like their political goals?
*but suppose that Lifeline were actually white supremacists: I’d still oppose defunding them, not only on free speech principles, but because defunding papers over and does not solve the larger problem, i.e. why are there enough white supremacists at Carleton to form such a student group?
Likewise, are we supposed to wait around until the ‘general public’ decides to accept out of the blue that anti-choice groups are hate groups, or are we going to push to have them recognized as such?
Well, it’s super important to do that, sure. But I think this just generates sympathy for them and might be counterproductive. To get them recognized for what they are, we have to do the hard work of exposing how their excuse of “pro-life” is as much a shallow cover story as white supremacist groups saying they’re about white “pride” not hate.
I’ve been away from Canada for about five years, but I have to wonder whether today’s campus anti-choice groups are true hate groups. Maybe they’ve gotten a lot worse than they were five years ago, when I graduated. On the other hand, if they’re anything like the Canadian campus anti-choice groups that I remember, they wouldn’t be worth banning even if banning would get rid of them.
I remember the initial abortion legalization fight in Canada when I was a kid, and later the fight over free speech zones around Vancouver abortion clinics.
The doctor who delivered my boyfriend was nearly died when he was shot in the femoral artery with a high-powered rifle by an anti-abortion zealot. So, I know how dangerous these crazies can be
But honestly, I don’t see Canadian campus anti-choice groups as actively hateful or dangerous. They tend to sit politely at their booths during student activity day and not assail anyone.
Thanks everybody.
Sigh. Amanda, I’m going to point out my last line, which in turn points out that it doesn’t have to be a conspiracy—you know, meetings, roll call, dues, newsletter, etc., etc.,—-to do widespread damage. All it has to be is an attitude that is shared by a lot of people–in this case macho men in a macho job field, who dominate the profession out of proportion to their relation to the general population. The police in some areas have been notorious footdraggers in regards to domestic violence. I don’t buy it for a second that the guys who had been covering for OJ suddenly had a change of heart when they saw the bodies. There’s something funny about macho guys in this profession; they’ll cover it up, they’ll run, they’ll be absolutely passive—-because it gives them plausible deniability. In some ways and in some situations they’re incredibly craven. The Run of His Life pretty much proved how utterly unlikely and physically impossible it would be to plant the evidence that was supposedly planted. It wasn’t just one division or precinct of cops or detectives that handled the case from the get go; there were several. With no prior coordination and without knowing Simpson himself hadn’t been victim Number 3, they decided to plant evidence to convict him?
Ginmar, I’m sorry, but I can’t believe that every enabler of domestic violence is him or herself a firm believer in the beauty of beating women. The disbelief that these things escalate is what allows the cops to let it go.
And there’s evidence. DV training for police does in fact have a net effect of reducing murders and escalated violence. Why? Because if the police are educated in the reality of DV, they sometimes, believe it or not, absorb the message. Post-VAWA, cops that before would have blown off a situation like OJ beating his wife are more likely to recognize the beginnings of a situation that will end with her dead if they don’t take action now. To ignore the statistics and insist that cops always coddle abusers out of macho sympathy with the desire to hurt and even to kill women is to cherish hopelessness over the facts. The fact of the matter is some people are ignorant of how bad DV is. Education works.
Now, you may think that those guys were happy as pigs in shit that he finally killed Nicole, but I disagree strongly. I think they got a lesson in how harmless beating your wife is NOT. Amazingly, there are degrees of sexism—a lot of guys who turn a blind eye to date rape and wife-beating don’t go along with murder. And that kind of sharp humiliation is exactly the sort of thing that leads to planting evidence. They planted the glove. Everything else was real. They just wanted that small push to send him away, because they knew that he did it. And why did they? Well, who else would?
The fact of the matter is I don’t think it’s hopeless. I think education works. I think that people, when they learn to open their eyes and see the truth, often make adjustments. The rape rate is down. The DV rate is down. The spousal murder rate is down. Feminists went out and educated people and instead of saying no one cares, it’s time to realize they do care, things are getting done, and because we can be successful, we have to try.
Read this to get the real truth about this situation.
Fact is, this group doing all the complaining about being excluded from campus, isn’t. Citing the most relevant paragraph from the post above:
CUSA is not a government because it cannot govern what goes on on campus. As has been pointed out, CUSA cannot and has not stopped LifeLine from holding a debate on campus. However, CUSA has the right to deny its own resources to LifeLine for political reasons. This is because CUSA represents the student body and does not want to deny rights to half its membership by supporting an anti-choice organization. Contrary to the Debate Society’s open letter, this is a legitimate exercise of the freedom of assembly - the freedom not to associate with a person or group because of their views.
So no, Lifeline is not censored and can do whatever it wants on campus, but it cannot do so with support from the CUSA (the student union).
If they want space on campus, they can hire their own; if they want monetary support, let them get that from people who actually support them.
Some more relevant extracts from the post I linked to above:
The whole debate has created a disgusting climate on campus. Let’s look at what the rest of the story that the media, Debate Society and LifeLine would love to ignore.
Katy McIntyre and CUSA’s president Shawn Menard have now received death threats because of this motion. Women are coming to the Womyn’s Centre in tears, in fear and in terror because of the fear and hatemongering of the LifeLiners and their liberal buddies worshipping at the alter of abstract rights. People are being verbally abused on campus, and some of the toughest, fiestiest people I know are being worn down, sometimes reduced to tears. Petitioners are being confronted and initimidated. Muslims are being told that their rights are about to be trampled by the student union.
This is the climate of debate and “free speech” that we want on campus?
This is not a sterile academic debate over rights. This is about real lives, real decisions and real people. The motion needs to be passed. CUSA should not support anti-choice bigots and LifeLine should be confronted at all their events.
Amanda,
I don’t know why you continue to assert that the LAPD planted evidence against O.J. Simpson. It did not happen. Please tell me which specifics you have in mind.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
You do realize I think that OJ is 110% guilty, right? That the fact that the cops planted evidence (bloody glove and bloody socks) was done because the cops wanted to make sure he got convicted, and it backfired. Saying that the cops tried to “assist” the evidence isn’t saying, “OJ is innocent.” There was sufficient evidence, and the cops blew it by not trusting that there was enough.
Ideological insistence that the cops couldn’t have wanted to find Simpson guilty because that somehow undermines the ever-so-important idea that they enjoy watching women be dead doesn’t do us any favors.
But hell, if you’re convinced that the cops were happy OJ killed his wife, then remember he also killed a man. If you think that one sexist is exactly as happy to see women dead as the next, then how do you explain why the cops would want Ron Goldman dead?
I don’t know why you keep asserting that I think it’s hopeless, but it kind of reminds me of Germaine Greer’s famous phrase that “Most women don’t have any idea how much men hate them.” Nor do I get the feeling you’ve read Schillling’s The Run of His Life. It’s great to talk about DV training in general, however, the LAPD is a particular institution nad others of the type in this country have proven to be utterly intractable to the simple notion that women are people.
The cops planted the glove? Really? Because it was observed on the site by the first uniforms, before the detectives got called in, before anyone went to Simpson’s own house. Frankly, the idea that the LAPD suddenly saw the light is bewildering, because I lived in LA till 1991. They acted more like soldiers than cops, and soldiers in a hostile country at that.
“liberal buddies worshipping at the alter of abstract rights.”
Yikes.
Thanks for the link, Amanda. However, I think you’re confused on what the Carleton student union did. The student union is not censoring anyone or banning free speech. The union is within its rights to deny resources to a group that would violate its own pro-chioce and anti-discrimination policies. Anti-choicers can and have taken place on the campus, but it will do so without student union funding. CUSA is an association of students - a union - not a student government or a similar institution that runs the university. It cannot control what goes on beyond its own resources. To boot, the motion still allows funding to pro-life groups so long as they do not discriminate against women and promote the recriminalization of abortion.
Simply put, individuals and groups who are against racism, sexism, homophobia, and support certain views have the right to associate with whomever they please. And if they choose to disassociate themselves from groups which go against their own policies, then they have the right to do so.
This is a good reason to defund the group, presuming that LifeLine is sending the death threats.
This is a good reason to defund the group, presuming that lifeline is doing the abusing.
This is not a good reason to defund the group. Setting aside that abstract* altar of rights at which I worship (well, I am a member of the ACLU), it is a bad idea for purely selfish reasons. Specifically, the shoe will eventually be on the other foot. What then? We support the right to deny resources to the LGBT-Straight Alliance because the CUSA doesn’t like their politicals? We support the right to deny rehearsal space to the Vagina Monologues? Or do we just drop principles when they’re inconvenient?
I’m aware the same legal protections don’t apply, but I recommend reading the ACLU’s position paper on campus hate speech provisions, available here. The principles are the same.
*As if abstract were somehow a slur.
What principles would these be? If a small group is charged with representing a larger group, it doesn’t make sense for them to pander to or endorse a view that doesn’t mesh or is even counter to what they are representing.
Talking about giving them special voice in hopes that if/when they have the say, they’d give it to us is rather optimistic and being very generous to a group that is actively seeking to promote inequality. In fact, it doesn’t take much looking around to see that when they run things they aren’t interested in giving fair play, regardless of precedent.
That funding should not be contingent upon holding a certain political position. I thought that was pretty clear. If you’re arguing that it is right for the CUSA to do this specifically because they represent the majority of students who disagree with the political position of Lifeline, then what do you say when, say, Alabama decides the state health plan doesn’t cover birth control or abortion because the majority of the people represented don’t agree with it? Or how do you argue against the gag rule for health funding overseas? Or any of the other examples I’ve offered before?
It isn’t about giving anyone a “special” voice,* nor is it blind optimism that they will suddenly become converted to the virtues of Rawlsian public reason - it’s about being fair in a pluralistic society. At bare minimum, it’s about not being hypocritical. If the response boils down to, “Well, they’d do it to us” then there’s no reason to even fight because you’ve already conceded to being just like them. The idea is to create a fair and equitable society, not a tyranny of the majority, remember?
*just like GLBT rights aren’t “special” rights.
I can’t really agree with a principle that gives anyone that asks a special spot to preach and a slice of limited funds to do so. There have to be criteria, and political ones are valid. For your examples, if the politics were different on the campus and this led them to refuse a queer group funds and space, then that’s in line with their responsibilities. It isn’t equatable with state instituted discrimination.
It is very much about giving people special voice. Groups funded and given space are elevated via the endorsement. At the end of the day, groups that have been given that have an edge over those not. It isn’t possible to give equally to everyone. So why is it fair to give that endorsement to a group that doesn’t have a pluralist backing?
I’d agree that the “they started it” argument is childish, but you seemed to be previously arguing that we should pander to them because they would return the favor. I do not see how creating a fair and equitable society can be done when actively promoting a unfair and unequal society by funding such groups.
Sorry, Thom, but it’s simply absurd for CUSA to fund any organization that would violate CUSA’s principles as outlined in CUSA’s constitution. We don’t expect trade unions to fund a small group of their members who want to scab on a strike. Nor should we expect a pro-choice, anti-sexist organization like CUSA to fund a group which violates the CUSA constitution.
Amanda,
Of course I realize that Simpson is 110% guilty, and my fear is that you give aid and comfort to those who believe in his innocence when you assert that evidence was planted. The link you gave shows what the prosecution and defense asserted about each piece of evidence, but you seem to always take the side of the defense. In fact, what the defense asserted on these pieces of evidence was utter nonsense. It was all smoke and mirrors, and would never have been allowed under a less star-struck judge or with a competent prosecutor like Vincent Bugliosi.
Yes, the police were terribly negligent in handling Nicole’s previous calls for help, but that helps prove MY point that they still looked on Simpson as a hero when they began their investigation of the murders, and had no thought whatever of framing him.
What you seem to be saying is that the police allowed, if not approved of, O.J.’s beating his wife, but then got so furious with him when he killed her that they planted evidence to try to make sure he’d be convicted. I just think that’s an extremely unlikely scenario.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com
Carolyn Kay:
Let me suggest an alternate theory for you.
Mark Fuhrman handled one of the domestic violence calls, one where Nicole ended up pretty badly battered. But he mostly blew that off. Then she turns up dead. He knows that OJ is the most likely perpetrator. While he can stomach OJ walking away from a domestic violence charge, murder is something else,and he decides to make sure OJ doesn’t get away with it.
Add to this that they found one glove at the scene, and the other on the ground at Simpson’s house. How likely does that seem? Both at one scene is easy to believe, but one at one scene and one at the other suggests a level of carelessness inconsistent with his managing to dispose of other crucial evidence.
Add in one other factor: the instant the issue of planting evidence came up, the defense immediately assumed that the evidence was planted by the police, and not by the “real” killer, hoping to implicate OJ.
How would they know this? Why wouldn’t they claim that it was planted, probably by the police, but maybe by the killer?
My guess is it’s because OJ told his lawyer “No, I left both gloves at the scene; stripped them off, dropped them on the ground.”
John Palmer,
I almost lost just one glove this very morning, with both gloves in my hand, because I was distracted and in a hurry.
Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com