Category Archives: Political Correctness

Institute for Justice’s Bone Marrow Donor Compensation Legal Challenge Prevails

Here’s a follow up to a story I linked back in 2009 concerning the Institute for Justice’s legal challenge to the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984 and the act’s applicability to bone marrow transplants. This is very good news for the roughly 3,000 Americans who die every year while waiting to find a bone marrow match:

Arlington, Va.—The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals today issued a unanimous opinion granting victory to cancer patients and their supporters from across the nation in a landmark constitutional challenge brought against the U.S. Attorney General. The lawsuit, filed by the Institute for Justice on behalf of cancer patients, their families, an internationally renowned marrow-transplant surgeon, and a California nonprofit group, seeks to allow individuals to create a pilot program that would encourage more bone-marrow donations by offering modest compensation—such as a scholarship or housing allowance—to donors. The program had been blocked by a federal law, the National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA), which makes compensating donors of these renewable cells a major felony punishable by up to five years in prison.

Under today’s decision, this pilot program will be perfectly legal, provided the donated cells are taken from a donor’s bloodstream rather than the hip. (Approximately 70 percent of all bone marrow donations are offered through the arm in a manner similar to donating whole blood.) Now, as a result of this legal victory, not only will the pilot programs the plaintiffs looked to create be considered legal, but any form of compensation for marrow donors would be legal within the boundaries of the Ninth Circuit, which includes California, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, Oregon, Washington and various other U.S. territories.

[…]

Rowes concluded, “This case isn’t about medicine; everyone agrees that bone marrow transplants save lives. This case is about whether individuals can make choices about compensating someone or receiving compensation for making a bone marrow donation without the government stopping them.”

Tweet of the Day: #heblowsalot Edition

“Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.”

I designated the above tweet by 18 year-old high school senior Emma Sullivan tweet of the day, not due to the content itself (it’s actually quite juvenile), but for her refusal to write an insincere apology letter to Gov. Brownback under pressure from her principal.

Go here for the rest of the story.

Reducing OWS Economic Equality Demands to Their Absurd Conclusions

While I’m sympathetic and agree with some of Occupy Wall Street’s grievances, too many of their solutions are fatally flawed. Louis DeBroux over at United Liberty has written some grade A quality snark concerning OWS’s demands for economic equality. DeBroux says he had an epiphany while watching some of the ESPN coverage concerning the NBA lockout: what if the NBA adopted the OWS model?

The most obvious reform he mentioned would be to pay all the players equally regardless of talent and contribution to his team. But why stop with pay? Why not change the rules of the game itself in the name of fairness:

This new equality should not be limited to just to salaries though; it should extend to the basketball court. While winning is fun, losing just stinks. It makes the losers feel like, well, losers. Sometimes players even cry when they lose. It hurts their self esteem and makes them feel inferior to the winners. To solve this horrible injustice, I propose that at halftime of each game, the total points scored by that time be redistributed equally among the players of both teams. Then, with one second left on the clock, just before the game ends, the head referee will call time out and the official scorekeeper will once again redistribute the points evenly among the players of both teams.

Think how great this would be! Everyone that plays will be the high scorer. Never again will an NBA player experience the sadness of losing! Every team will be the L.A. Lakers or Boston Celtics, and no team will have to feel like the Washington Wizards or Toronto Raptors. Every team will go 82-0, and every player will be an MVP! It’s perfect! Just like PC-kiddie-soccer leagues, everyone is a winner and everyone gets a trophy. Isn’t this awesome?

Obviously, this would be the death of sports if such changes were implemented. As awful as that would be, DeBroux points out life and death consequences if the notion of competition was taken out of our culture completely:

There might be the occasional sacrifice that hits closer to home when little Sally, who always wanted to be a surgeon but could never quite remember the names and anatomical characteristics of the various human organs, accidentally mistakes the aorta for the appendix and snips that sucker right out of there. Oops! That’s gonna make a mess! Alas, poor mom, we loved you and will miss you, but the loss of your life was the acceptable price for keeping Sally’s self-esteem intact by letting her become the surgeon she always wanted to be, even if she never quite mastered the minutiae of performing surgery.

We would be all worse off to be sure, but hey, at least we would all be equal!

Does Gay Marriage Imperil Free Speech?

One would think that one has very little to do with the other. That is, unless one is Gary Bauer, who seems to be taking a tactic I’ve seen too often out of leftists suggesting that if someone in the private sector wants to fire you for saying something bigoted, that it’s an assault on your freedom of speech.

Recently, Frank Turek, an employee for computer networking firm Cisco Systems, was fired for authoring a book titled “Correct, not Politically Correct: How Same-Sex Marriage Hurts Everyone.” Turek had a stellar work record and never talked about his religious or political views on the job.

But after a homosexual manager at Cisco Googled Turek’s name, learned about his views and complained to a human resources professional at Cisco, Turek was immediately fired.

Also recently, Canadian sportscaster Damian Goddard was fired for declaring his opposition to gay marriage. Rogers Communications fired Goddard after he tweeted his support for Todd Reynolds, a hockey agent, who had earlier voiced his opposition to the activism of Sean Avery , a New York Rangers player who was part of the New Yorkers for Marriage Equality campaign in the lead-up to the same-sex marriage vote in the New York State Legislature.

Now, I don’t know the workplace policies of either corporation, but I would assume that in the first case, Turek violated some section of his employment contract with Cisco. I might call that an overreaction, but I wouldn’t call it a violation of his freedom of speech. It was, rather, an exercise in freedom of association (or, in this case, disassociation). The second case, the sportscaster is a public figure, and I think it’s quite likely that Rogers Communications might believe that his thoughts on gay marriage would impact ratings or the bottom line.

Should either corporation be forced to retain an employee that publicly espouses values — values that I’d call bigoted — inconsistent with those of the corporation? Cisco is a multinational company with highly diverse employees, and it’s quite possible that someone hired to put together leadership seminars [as Kurek was] may not be seen as a leader himself if he publicly advocates legal oppression against people who he is to lead.

But let’s take it a step farther. Let’s assume instead that either Kurek or Goddard were advocating against interracial marriage. Let’s say that Kurek was writing books claiming interracial marriage hurts families, and that the races shouldn’t mix. After all, many of the arguments at the time of Loving v. Virginia were based on religious beliefs. Would Gary Bauer be defending either? I fail to see any difference in principle here — in both cases, one would be arguing against legal equality based upon one owns religious convictions of what defines a proper marriage. And in both cases, the issue at hand LEGALLY [not morally] is whether the state can withhold access to a LEGAL CONTRACT between two adults.

Bauer continues with a slightly more thorny issue:

Same-sex marriage is already having a chilling effect on religious freedom. In states that have legalized civil unions or gay marriage, Catholic adoption agencies have been shuttered or lost their tax-exempt status for refusing to let gay couples adopt children.

Last week in Illinois, Gov. Pat Quinn affirmed a decision by the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services not to renew adoption contracts with Catholic Charities for the same reason because of the state’s law recognizing same-sex civil unions.

This seems like outright state hostility to religion, when viewed through Gary Bauer’s eyes. However, from a legal perspective, the 14th amendment demands equality before the law. If gay marriage is legal, then gays should be allowed the same rights as straights when it comes to adoption. And if an agency looking to work with the state on adoptions refuses to comply with equal protection clauses, those agencies should not get state funding.

Again, this can be greatly simplified if we refer back to other cases of equality before the law. Should adoption agencies be free to take state funds and refuse to allow interracial straight couples to adopt? Should state charter school funds be given to schools which admit white and asian students, but bar blacks and hispanics? The state itself is barred from discrimination in most cases, and while some wholly private organizations can discriminate, state adoption contracts and state school funding are most certainly not wholly private. If a religion wants to work WITH the government, they have to do so on the government’s terms.

I would think that if the arguments were advanced today, Gary Bauer would call the person advocating against interracial marriage a bigot. I think if someone were arguing for re-segregating the schools, Gary Bauer would call that person a bigot. A Gary Bauer of 50 years ago, I’m not so sure.

Of course, a Gary Bauer of only 3 years ago might give us a different tone:

Last week, a few days before Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to America, TV talk show host Bill Maher went on a profanity-laden tirade against the Pope and the Catholic Church. On his HBO Real Time program, Maher claimed that the Pope “used to be a Nazi,” and called the Catholic Church a “child-abusing religious cult” and “the Bear Stearns of organized pedophilia.”

The result: (Cue sound of crickets chirping.)

Maher believes he can get away with such overt bigotry under the pretext of “creative license.” As Maher said in his non-apology apology: “Now first of all, it was a joke, during a comedic context…”

And when the Catholic League confronted HBO about why it continues to give Maher airtime, the station insisted that his anti-Catholicism was a matter of “creative freedom.” Needless to say, such “creative freedom” would not be extended to those who make racist, anti-gay or anti-Muslim remarks. Ask Don Imus.

Based on a *very* charitable reading of that op-ed, one can potentially infer that Bauer things nobody should be fired for bigoted remarks, and that he’s merely upset at the double standard of the left. It seems, based on my reading of his article, that his concern with the double standard is that Bill Maher isn’t punished, not that right-wingers who make bigoted statements are.

Gary Bauer is not fighting for religious freedom, he’s fighting for the right to espouse bigoted politics with no social cost. Sorry, Gary, that’s just not how it works. You might not think that treating gays like they’re not worthy of the same legal rights is bigotry, but I’m afraid that an ever-growing portion of the country disagrees with you on that. If we call you on it, that doesn’t mean you’ve lost your right to free speech. It means we think you’re a bigot.

UPDATE: Crystal Mangum’s Boyfriend Reginald Daye Has Died

Just last week I wrote about the false Duke lacrosse accuser, Crystal Mangum being charged with “assault with a deadly weapon with intent to kill.” Durham police are now “more than likely” going to charge Mangum with murder since her alleged victim and boyfriend Reginald Daye has died.

Maria White writing for CNN reports:

(CNN) — A man who police say was recently stabbed by the accuser in the 2006 Duke University lacrosse scandal has died, the Durham County, North Carolina, medical examiner’s office confirmed Thursday.

Reginald Daye, 46, died Wednesday at Duke University Hospital as a result of the stabbing earlier this month, Durham police said.

[…]

Mangum, 32, was placed in the Durham County Jail without bond. As of Thursday morning, no additional warrant had been served against Mangum. Her next court date is April 25, officials said.

“The case remains under investigation and we do anticipate upgrading the charges,” police spokeswoman Kammie Michael said. “No new charges have been filed at this time and there is no court hearing scheduled for today.”

Not surprisingly, Nancy Grace hasn’t written a word about this latest chapter of this ongoing saga, neither on blog nor on her Twitter account (though the above story was linked from her blog so I guess I can grudgingly give her some credit for that).

Hat Tip: Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway

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