I never thought I’d say I was grateful for Steven Crowder

He’s such an unfunny, horrible, selfish little man, but I am thankful that he has taught me about another plank of the conservative agenda: they want to abolish no-fault divorce. I had no idea! I assumed this was a safe and entirely reasonable right!

Steven Crowder, the right-wing podcaster, is getting a divorce. “No, this was not my choice,” Crowder told his online audience last week. “My then-wife decided that she didn’t want to be married anymore — and in the state of Texas, that is completely permitted.”

Crowder’s emphasis on “the state of Texas” makes it sound like the Lone Star State is an outlier, but all 50 states and the District of Columbia have no-fault divorce laws on the books — laws that allow either party to walk away from an unhappy marriage without having to prove abuse, infidelity, or other misconduct in court.

It was a hard-fought journey to get there. It took more than four decades to end fault-based divorce in America: California was the first state to eliminate it, in 1969; New York didn’t come around until 2010. (And there are caveats: Mississippi and South Dakota still only allow no-fault divorce if both parties agree to dissolve the marriage, for example.)

Researchers who tracked the emergence of no-fault divorce laws state by state over that period found that reform led to dramatic drops in the rates of female suicide and domestic violence, as well as decreases in spousal homicide of women. The decreases, one researcher explained, were “not just because abused women (and men) could more easily divorce their abusers, but also because potential abusers knew that they were more likely to be left.”

Today, more than two-thirds of all heterosexual divorces in the U.S. are initiated by women.

I had no idea. I was married in 1980, and I just assumed that this was an entirely voluntary association, taking for granted that she had the same rights I do. Was that a radical idea? I guess it was, once upon a time. What I take for granted is under threat from Republicans now.

Republicans across the country are now reconsidering no-fault divorce. There isn’t a huge mystery behind the campaign: Like the crusades against abortion and contraception, making it more difficult to leave an unhappy marriage is about control. Crowder’s home state could be the first to eliminate it, if the Texas GOP gets its way. Last year, the Republican Party of Texas added language to its platform calling for an end to no-fault divorce: “We urge the Legislature to rescind unilateral no-fault divorce laws, to support covenant marriage, and to pass legislation extending the period of time in which a divorce may occur to six months after the date of filing for divorce.”

If my wife were unhappy in our marriage and wanted to leave me, it would break my heart, but I recognize that I don’t own her and she has rights of her own and she is an autonomous agent. That Republicans want to deny women that right is eye-opening. I thought it was weird how Crowder kept harping on the idea that his wife was permitted to not want to be married to him, as if her agency was an affront to his right to compel her to live in an unhappy home, but that’s how the conservative mind works, I guess. Selfishly.

Now I’m wondering if right-wingers even have a theory of mind.

Also, further revelations about Crowder show why no one would want to associate with him for any length of time. He’s also a bullying, demeaning, awful boss, a spoiled tyrannical child.

In March 2018, Crowder and his crew were driving in a van when a former producer he liked to call “Not Gay Jared” fell asleep in the back row. “Steven was in front, and he was joking about what he was going to do,” a witness said. “He climbed over and dropped his junk on top of Jared’s shoulder.” The same ex-staffer recalled that Crowder had exposed himself to Jared in 2017 while they were filming a parody version of Ghost. And on a flight in 2018, a different employee claims they saw Crowder put his testicles on his childhood friend and assistant, John Goodman. Another employee remembered that Crowder had showed his genitals to Dave Landau, a comedian and former co-host who called Crowder a “bully” last week. (Landau claimed that Crowder installed a “‘Dave don’t talk’ button” on the show to get him to be quiet on air.) “At first, I took it as him trying to be friendly or one of the guys,” said an ex-staffer. “Now, I see it was a power play.”

Crowder allegedly sent production assistants to do his laundry and could be an “unreasonable micromanager” who would make wild requests after hours to “set people up for failure.” Ex-staffers claimed that he would “regularly” berate his team and threaten to fire people on the company’s Discord channel. He even went after his own father, Darrin Crowder, per one source, who claimed Crowder would yell at his dad in front of employees when Darrin was working as his son’s booker. (Darrin did not respond to the Post’s request for comment.)

All I can say is…I hope his ex-wife takes him to the cleaners, that his employees abandon him too, and and that not even a right-wing wealthy media site wants to syndicate him anymore. Not even the Daily Wire or Spotify will want to associate with this toxic person. More importantly I hope that every woman in the country becomes aware that a major goal of the Republican Party is to turn their marriages into prisons.

One class done (mostly)

I just finished grading all those exams and lab reports for genetics. It is finished!

OK, almost. There is an optional final exam next week — it replaces any low exam grade they might have received over the course of the term, and I expect that very few of the students will bother.

I still have the other course to wrap up, though, so it’s still going to be a busy couple of days.

Your law intrigues me

Japan is instituting some new guidelines for recognizing religious abuse. It would be nice to see something like this in the USA, but that’ll never happen.

New health ministry guidelines in Japan will classify as abuse any acts by members of religious groups who threaten or force their children to participate in religious activities, or that hinder a child’s career path based on religious doctrine.

A few details:

The law stipulates four types of abuse: physical, sexual, neglect and psychological.

Inciting fear by telling children they will go to hell if they do not participate in religious activities, or preventing them from making decisions about their career path, is regarded as psychological abuse and neglect in the guidelines.

Other acts that will constitute neglect include not having the financial resources to provide adequate food or housing for children as a result of making large donations, or blocking their interaction with friends due to a difference in religious beliefs and thereby undermining their social skills.

There go most of the churches in town, as well as the state of Utah.

I can imagine the arguments if this were even proposed here, although they’d be easily defeated by all atheists. “This is a law to protect the children, you love children, don’t you?” “Anyone who opposes this law is probably a groomer, trying to indoctrinate innocent kids.” “Are you in favor of child abuse?” It could be fun.

They’re killing libraries

I have never read a book by Nora Roberts, and what I’ve heard about them does not appeal at all. If you enjoy them, great — she’s an immensely popular author, so a lot of people do enjoy her books. Unfortunately, a censorious few do not, and have decided that no one should read them. She’s being banned. For this?

What’s more, the objection to Roberts’s books appears extremely flimsy. Four of those books, which make up “The Bride Quartet,” are about friends seeking love as they build their wedding-planning business.

The books have some sex scenes, but the language is often vague enough that a child would have little idea what was happening. (“He touched, he tasted, he lingered until her quivers became trembles.”) And — spoiler alert — each book ends with a marriage proposal.

Roberts allowed that the books contain “sex” but noted that it is “monogamous” and “consensual.” Speaking of the censors, Roberts told us: “I’m surprised that they wouldn’t want teenagers to read about healthy relationships that are monogamous, consensual, healthy and end up in marriage.”

It’s conventionally heteronormative! But one person, literally one person, squeaked an objection, and chickenshit school administrators in Martin county immediately pulled every Roberts book off the shelves. That’s all it takes, one prude from the fascist group “Moms for Liberty” complains, and administrators instantly surrender.

There’s a reason for that. “Moms for Liberty” is a right-wing terrorist organization.

The group’s methods, however, belie the wholesome vision it tries to project. VICE News has spoken to students, administrators, parents, superintendents, school board members, and teachers who have faced vicious attacks by Moms for Liberty. Their stories paint a picture of a group that conducts orchestrated harassment campaigns against individuals, that’s resulted in many fearing for their safety and, in some cases, their lives.

“The greatest impact that Moms for Liberty is having is imparting fear, within the teachers and the educators and in the parents,” Laura Leigh-Abby, co-founder of Defense of Democracy, a nonprofit group advocating for inclusive education, told VICE News. “The true impact they’re having is really not calculable, because I’m seeing teachers who are afraid to speak out because they don’t want to be targeted.”

It’s their tactics. They harass and threaten to get their way, and all too often people let them have it.

In Pennsylvania, the leader of a local Moms for Liberty chapter allegedly hijacked a dead woman’s Facebook page to harass her enemies, including using the N-word and saying they should hang from a noose. In Arkansas, the head of communications of the Lonoke County chapter said that librarians should be “plowed down with a freaking gun.” In Chattanooga, Tennessee, a member of a local Moms for Liberty chapter harassed an opposing group, threatened to report them for child abuse, and called them “pedophile sympathizers.” In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, police had to be called to a school board meeting after members of Moms for Liberty accused attendees of being “groomers” and wanting to show explicit pictures to children. In Charleston, South Carolina, a Moms for Liberty-affiliated member of the local school board publicly stated he would show up at his son’s teacher’s doorstep with a gun if the teacher came out as transgender.

They’re actually a tiny minority, a widely scattered few, whose only strength lies in their unscrupulous fanaticism. They are our brownshirts. You dare to put a book they don’t like in a library, and they show up at your door with a gun and have a parade of shrieking right-wing assholes marching by your house. The most harmless, mild exhibition of tolerance and open-mindedness will trigger a shit-flinging hateful response.

They don’t even like Judy Blume.

She’s right. Fight back. Except it’s hard — the executors of the repressive policies are usually bland, faceless, cowardly bureaucrats, middle-aged white men sitting on school boards and city councils, masters of being tepid and boring and making excuses to avoid riling up the seething masses of idiots. They will always defend action and inaction by calling upon pitiful pleas to avoid trouble, claiming to be trying to obey the will of the people…where “the people” refers to just those who have bullhorns and guns.

We have to fight back anyway.

I went to a concert on campus last Saturday

It was quite nice and I enjoyed myself. Unfortunately, it was no LA Philharmonic.

Multiple people who attended the L.A. Phil concert on Friday reported hearing a woman making a moaning noise during the symphony’s second movement.

One attendee, composer and music producer Magnus Fiennes, described the sound on Twitter as that of a person having a “loud and full body orgasm.”

An alleged audio recording of the moment — where someone can be heard crying out during a quiet beat in the music — was making the rounds on social media. Attendees who spoke to The Times said that the clip was similar to what they’d heard.

Future audience expectations in LA are going to be hard to match.

Welcome to the last week of the semester

Everything crashes together at the end of the term. It’s inevitable that everything comes due before everyone goes away, and it’s urgent that I get it all graded as fast as possible. So I set a deadline of 6pm tonight for the final lab report in genetics; then tomorrow at 6pm is the deadline for the last take-home midterm; and then the day after tomorrow is the last class session, which I’ve set aside for final grade assessment. Everything has to be done by Wednesday so everyone knows their semi-final status! The next couple of days are going to involve me sitting late at night staring at reports and exams on the screen.

I have two more lectures to give in introductory biology, one on examples of modern evo-devo research, and a final discussion of bioethics.

I won’t be done after that, though. I have to compose take-home final exams for genetics and the intro biology course, and get those formatted and submitted by Friday. Grading those will slap me in the face at the end of next week.

One bright spot in the endless misery of evaluation is that I’ve decided that Friday will be game day: I have a few decks of Clades and Ecologies and we’ll celebrate the last day of the semester with some fun.

I don’t qualify at all

Answers in Genesis is looking for a full-time high school science teacher. I’m not looking for a new job, but even if I were, I’m stunned by how supremely unqualified I am for this position.

The qualified individual must be an evangelical Christian committed to living a biblical lifestyle in all areas and in full agreement with the schools statement of faith. The teacher is expected to be in alignment with the science and biblical positions held at Answers in Genesis and able to teach science from a biblical worldview in the classroom. The teacher must also be able to distinguish operational vs historical science as well as be able to articulate the evolutionary beliefs correctly while being able to refute them biblically and scientifically. The teacher must also have a good understanding of AiGs presuppositional apologetic approach and know how to incorporate it in the classroom.

The teacher shall be one who feels called of God to the teaching profession. The teacher must maintain a teachable spirit while demonstrating patience, humility, integrity, and kindness while performing his/her day-to-day duties. He/she must be devoted to prayerfully work with administration, faculty, students, and parents to develop and maintain a school which is thoroughly Christian and academically exceptional. The teacher shall prayerfully help students learn attitudes, skills, and subject matter that will contribute to their development as mature, able, and responsible Christians to the glory of God.

I don’t meet the requirements in a single sentence of that summary. Of course, nowhere in there does it say anything about degrees or training or experience, all that matters is conformity to the peculiar notion of science held by AiG.

Oh, at the end of the long list of detailed stuff, almost every bit of it about theological purity, there is a passing mention of what I might expect for qualifications of a real teaching position.

It is expected for the teacher to:

  • Hold a minimum of a bachelors degree or equivalent in related field
  • Have completed student teaching and/or other educational field experience.

It is preferred (but not necessary) for the teacher to:

  • Have two or more years of classroom teaching experience.
  • Have a current teaching certificate from a Christian school association and/or State Teaching Certificate in Education.
  • Have a masters degree in education or a science field.

Did you finish Bible school? Did you teach Sunday school? You’re qualified. (I’ve done neither.)

Yes, I did see John Wick: Chapter 4

I don’t have a lot to say about it. It’s 2½ hours of solid, non-stop chop-sockie and gun-fu, strung together on an increasing thin, baroque plot built around an imaginary and deeply improbable society of assassins. Time flew by! You don’t get to think, because if there is a brief pause that might give you a moment to consider the weirdness of the story, there’s a kinetic distraction that will fly in from stage right with a knife or a pistol or a seriously vicious dog. Which is OK, I guess, it’s a popcorn movie with no time to eat popcorn.

I was quickly desensitized to all the murder, but there was something that bothered me greatly. John Wick gets beat up badly — he’s hit by cars multiple times, and everyone — I mean everyone — is punching and kicking him. There’s one scene where he has to run up 222 stairs to get to a deadly appointment, and it is of course lined with bad guys who are continuously shooting and punching him, and he gets to the top and one of the heavies knocks him down and he rolls down the stairs. I don’t mean he falls hard — he rolls down all of the stairs in a long scene that is comical in its overdoneness.

That hit home. I don’t often get shot at or stabbed, but I have sometimes twisted an ankle or overdone the walking or stretched wrong in bed and ended up hobbling and aching for days or weeks. I just wanted to say, “John, don’t get up. You’re gonna need lots of ibuprofen, and you might want to ice your whole body for a while. Get some rest, John.” Oh, sure, I could watch him persevere in a gun battle with thousands of enemies and not blink an eye, but it was the falls that were just too relatable.

I sincerely hope that there isn’t a John Wick: Chapter 5. The franchise has been thoroughly milked at this time, and it would be a good idea to move on creatively. But most of all, I feel for Keanu Reeves, who had to have exhausted himself making this movie.

Keanu, you’ve got to be popping painkillers and icing every joint in your body. Get some rest, Keanu.