Going All Judge Mental, Con't

I've been saying for months now that conservative judges weren't going to stop taking rights away from marginalized groups like women, Black folk, the LGBTQ+ community, and more in the wake of Dobbs and the death of Roe v Wade. They were never going to just give up and stop there, and wouldn't you know it, they're going after contraception after all.

Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee to a federal court in Texas, spent much of his career trying to interfere with other people’s sexuality.

A former lawyer at a religious conservative litigation shop, Kacsmaryk denounced, in a 2015 article, a so-called “Sexual Revolution” that began in the 1960s and 1970s, and which “sought public affirmation of the lie that the human person is an autonomous blob of Silly Putty unconstrained by nature or biology, and that marriage, sexuality, gender identity, and even the unborn child must yield to the erotic desires of liberated adults.”

So, in retrospect, it’s unsurprising that Kacsmaryk would be the first federal judge to embrace a challenge to the federal right to birth control after the Supreme Court’s June decision eliminating the right to an abortion.

Last week, Kacsmaryk issued an opinion in Deanda v. Becerra that attacks Title X, a federal program that offers grants to health providers that fund voluntary and confidential family planning services to patients. Federal law requires the Title X program to include “services for adolescents,”

The plaintiff in Deanda is a father who says he is “raising each of his daughters in accordance with Christian teaching on matters of sexuality, which requires unmarried children to practice abstinence and refrain from sexual intercourse until marriage.” He claims that the program must cease all grants to health providers who do not require patients under age 18 to “obtain parental consent” before receiving Title X-funded medical care.

This is not a new argument, and numerous courts have rejected similar challenges to publicly funded family planning programs, in part because the Deanda plaintiff’s legal argument “would undermine the minor’s right to privacy” which the Supreme Court has long held to include a right to contraception.

But Kacsmaryk isn’t like most other judges. In his brief time on the bench — Trump appointed Kacsmaryk in 2019 — he has shown an extraordinary willingness to interpret the law creatively to benefit right-wing causes.

This behavior is enabled, moreover, by the procedural rules that frequently enable federal plaintiffs in Texas to choose which judge will hear their case — 95 percent of civil cases filed in Amarillo, Texas’s federal courthouse are automatically assigned to Kacsmaryk. So litigants who want their case to be decided by a judge with a history as a Christian right activist, with a demonstrated penchant for interpreting the law flexibly to benefit his ideological allies, can all but ensure that outcome by bringing their lawsuit in Amarillo.

And so, last Thursday, the inevitable occurred. Kacsmaryk handed down a decision claiming that “the Title X program violates the constitutional right of parents to direct the upbringing of their children.”

Kacsmaryk’s decision is riddled with legal errors, some of them obvious enough to be spotted by a first-year law student. And it contradicts a 42-year-long consensus among federal courts that parents do not have a constitutional right to target government programs providing contraceptive care. So there’s a reasonable chance that Kacsmaryk will be reversed on appeal, even in a federal judiciary dominated by Republican appointees.

Nevertheless, Kacsmaryk’s opinion reveals that there are powerful elements within the judiciary who are eager to limit access to contraception. And even if Kacsmaryk’s opinion is eventually rejected by a higher court, he could potentially send the Title X program into turmoil for months.

 

Title X is the main vehicle through which government entities fund birth control at clinics and  practices across the country. Family planning services are vital, and here we have a lunatic judge saying no adolescent in America can even get birth control unless specifically approved by parents. Just like the entire flap about school boards, parents, not experts like doctors, now make choices for teen health.

 

And we know at the college age level, Title X contraception improves the graduation rate of women by 10-12%.  Requiring parental permission for that is awful.

Of course, if there's no right to contraception, then requiring consent for birth control before anyone in America has sex means once again, women have no right to their own bodies.

And that's the point.

Last Call For Screen Passes In Silly Valley

The people who gave us the ubiquitous tech of smartphones, tablets, and screens everywhere with the internet on them are now mortally afraid that data will be the drug of choice for Generation Z, and they're banning their own creations at dinner tables, schools, and living rooms to the point where an army of nannies are now employed to give these kids a 100% no-tech childhood.

Silicon Valley parents are increasingly obsessed with keeping their children away from screens. Even a little screen time can be so deeply addictive, some parents believe, that it’s best if a child neither touches nor sees any of these glittering rectangles. These particular parents, after all, deeply understand their allure.

But it’s very hard for a working adult in the 21st century to live at home without looking at a phone. And so, as with many aspirations and ideals, it’s easier to hire someone to do this.

Enter the Silicon Valley nanny, who each day returns to the time before screens.

“Usually a day consists of me being allowed to take them to the park, introduce them to card games,” said Jordin Altmann, 24, a nanny in San Jose, of her charges. “Board games are huge.”

“Almost every parent I work for is very strong about the child not having any technical experience at all,” Ms. Altmann said. “In the last two years, it’s become a very big deal.”

From Cupertino to San Francisco, a growing consensus has emerged that screen time is bad for kids. It follows that these parents are now asking nannies to keep phones, tablets, computers and TVs off and hidden at all times. Some are even producing no-phone contracts, which guarantee zero unauthorized screen exposure, for their nannies to sign.

The fear of screens has reached the level of panic in Silicon Valley. Vigilantes now post photos to parenting message boards of possible nannies using cellphones near children. Which is to say, the very people building these glowing hyper-stimulating portals have become increasingly terrified of them. And it has put their nannies in a strange position.

“In the last year everything has changed,” said Shannon Zimmerman, a nanny in San Jose who works for families that ban screen time. “Parents are now much more aware of the tech they’re giving their kids. Now it’s like, ‘Oh no, reel it back, reel it back.’ Now the parents will say ‘No screen time at all.’”

Ms. Zimmerman likes these new rules, which she said harken back to a time when kids behaved better and knew how to play outside.

Parents, though, find the rules harder to follow themselves, Ms. Zimmerman said.

“Most parents come home, and they’re still glued to their phones, and they’re not listening to a word these kids are saying,” Ms. Zimmerman said. “Now I’m the nanny ripping out the cords from the PlayStations.”

I actually understand.  Tech has made the parents miserable, the 24-hour, 7-day leash from work is something I've been though and I wouldn't wish that level of anxiety on a kid, well, ever.  But the problem is these are the people that create the tech and get paid to make it as ubiquitous and widely available as possible.

They're telling their kids that no, you can't use this.  It'll ruin your life.  We're actually hiring somebody to enforce this rule.

What does that say about the rest of us?

A Swing And A Miss, Fox News Style

[Note from Bon: Hey kids, have you missed me? Zandar took a day off and left me with the keys to the office.  You got me now and all day tomorrow, so let's have some fun!  Now on to your normally scheduled blog post.]

The step up to the plate, full of promise and hope.  

But when it comes to the hazards of sex, our approach falls somewhere between passivity and paralysis.

True.  Fox News and its audience are not famous for using science or education to steer their attitudes towards sex.  Is this someone trying to say something different for a chance?  Is this person actually going to confront a longstanding problem in the conservative community: acknowledging that people have S-E-X?

No. I mean, c'mon.  It's Fox News.

 They wiggle the bat and settle their hips.  They go into position and become a solid mass, and dig in.

We make sure our kids know about condoms and the Pill, and tell them we’re always there if they want to talk.  Which is the equivalent of shutting our eyes, crossing our fingers, and hoping.  Hoping that our kids won’t get pregnant, or get someone else pregnant.  Hoping that they won’t catch that STD that causes infertility or cancer.

Ah, there you are, the oldest chestnut of them all.  Telling your kids about birth control is akin to just instructing them hump like bunnies. Despite evidence that supports talking to kids is helpful and should happen more, this can't possibly be the answer.  Quit your crazy talk, scientists!  Your numbers and peer reviewed material is from the devil!

The other team throws a solid pitch!  Straight across the plate, a thing of beauty!

Instead, the conversations should focus on what the child is capable of absorbing, and what the child asks about. Parents should also take advantage of every excuse to broach the difficult subject — a mention of sex or sexuality on a TV show, a pregnancy in the family, sex-education classes in school or a visit to the doctor around the time of puberty. "If you just get over the hurdle of starting, then once the conversation gets going, you often find it's easier than expected," says Schuster. "So use any excuse you want, but just get over the initial hurdle and start talking to your kids, because it's really important." - TIME 

Yes, this is what a straight pitch of common sense looks like. Thoughtful, ongoing, and factual dialogue that informs and educates the child.

The swing and the miss.

As parents we spend our lives trying to protect our kids.  So here’s a radical thought.  How about urging them to wait till they’re married before having sex?  If we really want what’s best and safest and healthiest for our kids, let’s start a sexual revolution.  Hey, it’s been done before. 

"Tell them not to do it, that'll fix it."  Because that's their revolutionary answer.  The same thing that's been done since the first surprise pregnancy.  This gasbag just got published on one of the biggest fake news websites on the Internet for acting as though "don't have sex and you won't have to worry about it" is a newfangled approach to sex education.  The limbo champions at Fox just keep dropping the bar and playing the same old tired songs for anyone who will listen.

Damn, I've missed you kids.  I feel some epic length rants coming on here.

StupidiParents

A new tag for an emerging problem.  It seems some people are confused about what it means to be responsible for their children, and who is responsible for the kids when they are out of sight (hint: it's still you, dummy).

Police have received multiple complaints from parents saying their children owe money after placing bets.

There have also been reports of money, DVDs and PlayStation games going missing from homes to pay off debts.

Police are taking action over growing fears that children could be pushed into shoplifting or fights.

Letters warning about the dangers of gambling have been sent to parents through Mayflower Primary School.

He said on dry evenings groups of up to 40 people aged from five to teenagers have been gathering around drains to play Pits.

The game involves lifting the covers on water meters outside properties and flicking marbles into the hole.

"Over recent weeks we have been approached by parents telling us that their kids are asking for money to pay back debts owed to other children," PCSO Amador continued. "I have also heard that money has been taken out of purses and things round the house have gone missing like DVDs and Playstation games."

He said officers have been told of several children, as young as seven, owing £20 or £30 to other children.

Blink. Think. Read it again. That's right, kids as young as five years old are racking up gambling debts.  Parents are worried?  How about not letting your kindergarten aged child wander the streets and be taken in by this type of scam?  I cannot imagine my little nephew being out of sight for more than five minutes at that age, let alone enough time to fall prey to other kids trying to scam his money.  The blame doesn't belong to the kids, it belongs to the idiotic parents of all kids involved.

He also asked parents to visit the following websites: www.gamblersanonymous.org and www.youthgambling.com

Great idea.  While they do that, I'm going to recommend they go to http://www.watchyourgoddamnkidsandstopblamingothers.com/ and see if the results are helpful.

Idiots.