Fairstein argues that media attention, and a rap sheet, is a fair punishment for Brown and "justice" for Rihanna.

Some will cry that his plea deal-five years of probation and 180 days of community service-is "celebrity justice," but I disagree. I think it's an instance in which the media attention to the plight of both celebrities, the assailant and his victim, helped keep the heat on both of them. In Rihanna's case, for the better: She has survived the attack and freed herself of an abusive partner who, as Oprah said, would indeed hit her again. In Brown's case, the media attention made him acknowledge his guilt and be punished for the crime.

So, Rihanna got out of the relationship, and Chris Brown said he did it, and that's the justice our system provides? Probation?

Fairstein even acknowledges that the prosecutors had a really good case — including a victim who was in court and willing to testify.

The prosecutor had the evidence he needed to go forward. Calls to 911 made by the terrified victim and photographs documenting the nature of her injuries: a bloodied face and choke marks that might have served to convict Brown had Rihanna chosen to stand by her man and not cooperate with the district attorney's office.

But she was there, which put the prosecutor in an even better position vis-à-vis even Chris Brown's defense lawyer.

It's at this point that Fairstein's biases start to shine through. She writes:

Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg will sentence Brown to five years of probation and 180 days of community service, in the form of labor. While some will complain that he got off with "only" probation, the disposition in this case is harsher than my 30 years of prosecuting batterers had me betting it would be.

Do you know how Fairstein knows what Schnegg will sentence Brown to? Because that was part of the plea agreement arranged with prosecutors. In Fairstein's 30 years of prosecuting batterers, if the ones she accepted pleas from got off lighter than Brown, it's because Fairstein allowed them to. Prosecutors have a lot of discretion in how to accept pleas, and what pleas to accept and judges generally go along with the sentencing agreements worked out amongst the lawyers.

To that end, Fairstein explains why so many abusers got off light on her watch — and why certain offenders won't ever catch a break.

In the average first arrest of a 20-year-old man with no criminal history and visible means of support-forget R&B star status-most cases are reduced to misdemeanors with a probation period of less than one year. Few communities have the resources to offer meaningful programs that try to re-educate offenders.

In other words, you'll get off easier for beating your partner if:

• You're young;
• You've never been caught and convicted for a crime before (two things which have a lot to do with class, race and financial means in our "justice" system);
• You have money;
• And, implicitly, you can convince prosecutors that you will get into therapy to keep from doing it again (which, Fairstein acknowledges, isn't an option for people without means).

Fairstein (again, a former New York prosecutor) takes Judge Schnegg (an L.A. judge) at her word that Brown is getting treated like any other abuser.

The judge specified that she expects Brown to "be treated the same as any other defendant who would come into this court," so that he will be picking up garbage or removing graffiti-that is, physical labor, which most perps on probation never have to do. He's got to pay a fine and take a year's worth of classes for batterers-and yes, he's young enough to learn something from that.

But, actually, multiple sources confirm that felony domestic violence sentences in L.A. quite often involve a minimum of three months in jail in addition to the fines, counseling and community service that offenders are expected to perform. In fact, given the strength of the prosecutor's case, one would think that at least a couple nights in the clink would not and should not have been off the table.

And if you still aren't convinced that Fairstein has a few biases, check this sentence out:

[Rihanna] ended her relationship with Brown, despite the efforts of some of his older thug role models to shepherd them back together [emphasis added]

Fairstein's talking about Sean "Diddy" Combs, who is only a "thug role model" if you're a wealthy white woman who thinks all African-American men who produce and perform hip-hop music are "thugs."

Rita Smith, the Executive Director of the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, and NOW's President, Kim Gandy, strongly disagree with Fairstein that Brown's sentence represents justice for Rihanna. Gandy tells Radar:

"I was very surprised that he will get no jail time. Paris Hilton got jail time for heaven's sake. This man beat Rihanna to a bloody pulp and he's not going to spend a day in jail," said Kim Gandy, President of the National Organization of Women.

Smith adds:

"It's not that Chris Brown didn't get more serious consequences. Most batterers on't get more serious consequences."

Justice for Rihanna [Daily Beast]
Women's Groups Outraged Over Chris Brown Sentence [Radar]

Related: California Domestic Violence Charge [Stephen G. Rodriguez & Associates]
California Domestic Violence Laws [California Criminal Defense Lawyers]
Diddy Opened His Home To Chris Brown And Rihanna 'As A Friend' [MTV]

Earlier: Ted Bunch Tries To Stamp Out Sexism, One Abuser At A Time

The documentary, Justice Delayed (it airs on PBS stations tomorrow night - check local listings) focuses on the situation in Los Angeles and examines why so many kits have been languishing in cold storage; what the department has done about it in the last year; and how far they still have to go. When New York City faced a similar problem years ago — 16,000 untested rape kits — it took four years and a boatload of money and new hiring (did anyone say "economic stimulus"?) to reduce the backlog. That time and effort resulted in 2,000 cold hit arrests. Part of the problem, according to LAPD Deputy Chief Charlie Beck, is that there aren't enough (expensive-to-hire) skilled technicians to perform the tests, which involve replicating DNA in less-than-ideal circumstances and developing a genetic profile.

Kristof's column weighs in on the problem, too.

Stunningly often, the rape kit isn't tested at all because it's not deemed a priority. If it is tested, this happens at such a lackadaisical pace that it may be a year or more before there are results (if expedited, results are technically possible in a week).

So while we have breakthrough DNA technologies to find culprits and exculpate innocent suspects, we aren't using them properly - and those who work in this field believe the reason is an underlying doubt about the seriousness of some rape cases. In short, this isn't justice; it's indifference.

Well, that's all well and good — but not every case can be expedited without having the staff — and expediting one case for analysis pre-arrest might mean putting off another analysis required for trial (and pre-trial disclosure). When the supply of analysts is short and the demand is high, things are going to slip — and that's a resource, not an attitude, problem.

DNA testing is still a labor-intensive process that requires skilled labor and time, both of which are at a premium in assault investigations and, often, prosecutions. While efforts need to be made to reduce testing backlogs and the systemic problems that contribute to backlogs — including, goodness knows, attitudes about sexual assault and their prosecution — it's also important to talk about and work on the need to encourage more people (and, particularly women) to enter into these technical fields and for local, state and federal agencies to spend money on recruiting, training and keeping employed the very people whose work is so vital to getting these tests performed in a timely fashion.

Justice Delayed [NOW]
Is Rape Serious? [NY Times]

Earlier: LA Rape Kits Backlog
LAPD Allows Prosecution Deadline To Lapse For Hundreds Of Unexamined Rape Kits

It is not like there hasn't been enough stories about female soldiers and military contractors subjected to sexual harassment and sexually assaulted while serving their country. And yet, it keeps happening and the military keeps coming up short. It's like if they spend a little money to try to prevent assault, they have to take it away from treating the women who are assaulted.

Martin explains:

For more than a year after she got out of the military, she was unable to hold a job, lying lethargic and depressed in front of the television for days on end (something she say she never would have been capable of prior to her service). Her marriage dissolved. Suicide seemed like the only option. She had almost every sign of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

And yet when Guzman applied for benefits, the military denied her claim for mental health care. In part, she suspects, this is because she never actually saw "combat" — defined as "active fighting in a war."

During her time "not" serving in a war, she was sexually assaulted, and did not report it. Martin admits that separating out combat- and non-combat veterans for different services makes sense, except for one key point.

When the sexual assault rates among female veterans are so astronomically high — at least 30, and as high as 70 percent, according to Helen Benedict, author of the new book The Lonely Soldier — the "combat" classification becomes a moot point. Keep in mind that sexual assault is a hugely underreported crime; even the Pentagon admits that only 10 to 20 percent of cases are probably being reported.

And if that's not shocking enough, think about it this way:

Everyone who signs his or her name on the dotted line of a military contract is destined for psychological trauma of one kind or another, especially if they're female.

That doesn't exactly sound good for recruitment — which means you'd think the military would be keen to stop this problem, uh, yesterday.

And when it comes to care as well as to prevention, women continue to get the short end of the stick.

A study conducted by the VA in 2004 found that women veterans who had experienced military sexual assault (MSA) were nine times more likely to have PTSD — whether they had been in combat or not. The conclusion reads: "Although women with MSA are more likely to have PTSD, results suggest that they are receiving fewer health care services."

So it's not just the military that needs to get its head out of its ass with how it deals with soldiers coping with sexual assault — and the fellow soldiers committing said assaults, it's also the Veterans Administration. Looks like there's a few more articles that need to be written.

The Combat Within: Female Veterans And PTSD Benefits [The American Prospect]

Related: The War Against Female Soldiers [Daily Beast]

Earlier: "What, Don't You Always End Up In Need Of Reconstructive Surgery After A Night Of Good Consensual Sex?"
Jamie Leigh Jones
Defense Contractors: If It Wasn't For Diplomatic Immunity-Protected Rape, They'd Never Get Laid
Be All You Can Be
Is The Military Finally Going To Do Something About The Sexual Harassment Of Soldiers?
U.S. Army Finally Vows To Prevent Sexual Assault In Its Ranks
VA Report: 1 In 7 Deployed Female Soldiers Suffer From Sexual Trauma
Sexual Assault Victims Get New Action From U.S. Military
What's The Military Hiding About LaVena Johnson & Kamisha Block's Deaths?
Sexual Assault Reports In The Armed Forces Are Up
Fighting Our Wars Without Reproductive Choice

An LA Times piece by David Zucchino looks at what's happened in the investigation into LaVena Johnson's death since we wrote about it last summer. Sadly, nothing much has changed.

Johnson maintains that his daughter was raped and killed, and that her death scene was staged to make it appear as if she shot herself. He accuses the Army of covering up for a killer or killers to conceal a soldier-on-soldier slaying, explaining that military personnel would have had unrestricted access to the area where his daughter died and therefore would not have attracted undue attention.

If LaVena's death were investigated as a homicide, Johnson added, it would raise questions about base security and discourage women from enlisting.

In fact, in the information released to Johnson, the investigators speculated that Johnson was depressed after a break-up and finding out that she had condyloma — a sexually transmitted infection better known as "genital warts." In fact, investigators have an answer for every piece of evidence that contradicts the story that Johnson killed herself.

Grey, the Army spokesman, said the only blood found outside the tent was on a bench that had been removed after LaVena's body was discovered. Investigators are not aware of any boot prints in blood or on a cement bag, and they found no cuts, bruises or abrasions on her body "that would have led us to believe that they had been created by suspicious means," Grey said.

Investigators believe the bullet went through an open tent flap window, Grey said. They concluded that LaVena had started a small fire inside the tent and burned pages from her journal before she shot herself.

Grey said investigators demonstrated that it was "easily possible" for a person of LaVena's stature to shoot herself through the mouth with an M-16. And because investigators found no evidence of sexual assault, Grey said, there was no reason to collect vaginal or fingernail swabs.

Paul Stone, a spokesman for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, said the damage to LaVena's face was consistent with the rapidly expanding gases discharged by an M-16, which he said could break bones and leave bruises and abrasions.The institute also concluded that LaVena committed suicide.

Part of the reason that none of these answers sound completely convincing is because the military does have quite the recent history of covering up the murder of female soldiers.

A case in point is Kamisha Block, whose death Peter Wilkinson sensitively explores in Maxim (no, for real! Maxim!). Kamisha, as it turns out, got involved with an abusive man to whom she reported, Staff Sergeant Paul Brandon Norris, which is a no-no in the military and has gotten people discharged. Instead, his superiors looked the other way as he transferred units to be closer to his girlfriend, threw fits and acted increasingly jealous in the weeks before shooting her 5 times in a rage.

Back at Fort Hood, Kamisha began to get a sense of Norris' consuming jealousy. One day, while packing up a truck, Kamisha had trouble lifting a box. A male corporal walked up to help and accidentally brushed her breast. According to a witness, an outraged Norris grabbed him by the collar and chewed out both the corporal and Kamisha. She complained to friends how "aggressive" Norris was with her, "in and out of bed."

Besides verbal abuse, Jane Block says, Staff Sergeant Norris also allegedly began physically abusing Kamisha: "He first assaulted her at Fort Hood. A friend of Kamisha's called me and said, ‘He grabbed her by the throat and shoved her against a wall.'" No charges were ever filed.

"Norris was high-strung," recalls a fellow MP. "He was always shouting at soldiers."

And that's just when they were stateside.

Norris had arrived at Camp Liberty in late June, several weeks after Kamisha. Within days she found herself transferred to Norris' 10-person squad. The word around Camp Liberty was that someone up the chain of command had done Norris a favor.

It's quite the favor, to get the woman you're not legally allowed to sleep with transferred into your unit.

To those soldiers stationed under him, Norris seemed to have a knack for taking things too far. If Kamisha showed up somewhere on base, Norris more often than not appeared as well. "Every night, Norris would find some time to spend with Specialist Block, using the excuse that he ‘couldn't sleep' or that he had ‘a lot of problems and needed somebody to talk to,'" recalls one soldier in a sworn statement. "I made comments to Specialist Block's old squad leader that he should do something or say something, to tell Staff Sergeant Norris the relationship was getting out of hand. The squad leader would laugh it off and say, ‘There's nothing I can do.'"

It wasn't until people in the unit started dying that Norris' superiors stopped laughing.

Several days later, on July 23, a senior officer confronted Brandon Norris, who flatly denied dating Kamisha. That same day a platoon sergeant sat down with Norris to discuss the "inappropriate relationship" and the allegation, from senior leaders, that he was showing Kamisha preferential treatment. In that meeting the counselor, who observed that "staff sergeants don't hang out with specialists," issued a stern warning: "This rela­tionship must stop immediately. Specialist Block will be reassigned to 1st Squad, and if you have any business that needs to deal with Spc. Block, you will use the chain of command or the NCO [noncommissioned officer] support channel."

Norris wasn't exactly willing to let it go, nor take responsibility for his own actions. He was, however, willing to ratchet up his abuse of Block.

Norris seemed to shift his anger from potential rivals toward Kamisha herself, who, friends say, wanted to break things off with her increasingly hostile boyfriend. In the first week of August, Norris upbraided Kamisha publicly, as she stood by her Humvee talking with a male soldier. Norris rushed up to her. "What are you doing hanging around him?" he screamed, grabbing Kamisha by her right arm. When she tried to move away, Norris shouted, "Don't walk away when I'm talking to you!"

"You're not supposed to grab other soldiers like that," the male soldier protested.

"You need to stay out of this," a seething Norris replied. "This is between an NCO and a soldier."

Three weeks later, he walked into Block shared barracks, ordered her roommate out and began yelling, finally firing his weapon into the wall to scare her. That's when her roommate ran back in.

Norris wheeled and pointed the Beretta at Jennings, who jumped behind a nearby barrier, then ran for help. It was too late. Inside trailer #15-255-C, Norris unloaded, shooting Kamisha Block five times, including rounds to her shoulder, chest, and head. Then, as his girlfriend lay on the floor of her trailer mortally wounded, Brandon Norris turned the gun on himself, putting a single bullet into the right side of his head. Medics who arrived minutes later found Norris dead at the scene and Kamisha, her pulse weak, wheezing, with a sucking chest wound.

Then, Army officials told her family that she was killed by friendly fire. It took Block's mother's personal investigation and quite a crusade to get the Army to admit that she's been deliberately killed by a superior officer with whom she was involved in an illegal and abusive relationship that their superiors had chosen to overlook for months. The revised report that the Army did release, however, was so heavily redacted and missing information that Block's former Congressman, Kevin Brady (R-Texas), had to pressure the Defense Department's inspector general to investigate the investigation.

So, basically, both women are still dead and the military's apparently still hiding things. Johnson's father thinks that they're doing it so as not to hurt recruitment, because finding out the military won't help you get out of abusive relationships or hold people accountable for your death is definitely worse than finding out they'll actively lie to your family about it.

Father Disputes Army's Suicide Finding In Daughter's Death [LA Times]
Love And Death In Iraq [Maxim]

Earlier: LaVena Johnson: Murdered By Her Colleagues, Ignored By The Army
There Really Aren't Ways In Which They Won't Lie

What is striking about what Andersen writes is not that it's a grand tour of all the many, many fucked up things about our system of supposed justice for female victims of violence in this country, but that she opens up that hers, too, came by way of a partner.

I have been a victim of dating violence. And I did what only about 5 percent of victims but 100% of feminists say to do: I pressed charges and took my boyfriend to court, eventually sending him to prison for felony sexual abuse.

Do you sense that little bitterness? That comes from doing what you're told is the "right" thing that ends up feeling so wrong for so long. Having done the "wrong" thing once and the "right" thing once when it came to my sexual assaults, I'll sack up here and admit that Andersen's story sounds uncomfortably familiar and equally fucked up.

Here's what happens if you take Chris to court: basically, you're eviscerated. What, your victims right's advocate didn't tell you about that? I'm not surprised. Despite her title, she doesn't work for you. She works for the prosecution. And they don't work for you either. Nor do the police. All those folks are just there to enforce the laws of the nation. Dealing with the myriad of feelings most victims experience just makes the whole affair messy. Which isn't to say that they don't want you to cry. Your tears only help their case. But make no mistake: it is their case they are worried about, not you.

My victim's advocate refused to speak to me after our second phone call and first meeting because my reactions stressed her out. Literally: refused to call me or speak to me. The prosecutor's office strong-armed the detective in my case into doing it because they didn't want to. The only thing that person is there to advocate for is the prosecutors' interests with you, not your interests with them. They often don't give a fuck about your interests. If you want that, tough shit, honey. Find your own lawyer.

Next up is your testimony. You probably thought you were done with your affidavit - the one you signed with hands shaking so badly your kindergarten teacher wouldn't recognize your signature. But unless he plea bargains out early, you'll be stuck repeating your version of the events. And it will always be called that: "your version." It's not the truth. It's merely the truth as you see it. Or thought you saw it. Obviously you were upset so, you know, you might have missed a few things. Which of course you did. You're only human. The self-doubt, incidentally, will be the only emotion that the prosecution will not allow you to show.

The police, in my case, spent much of the 5 hours I spent at the hospital waiting for the forensic rape nurse to get her good night's sleep pressuring me to sign mine between bouts of compulsive vomiting and passing out. I can only assume they have an Egyptologist on staff to decipher my handwriting. If you're lucky, you'll only have one "version" of your events. If you remember things better later, if your story changes one iota, if you say later that the underwear you wore that night was red instead of black, well, prepare to have every single thing you said questioned by your supposed advocates as though you've been lying the entire time. Pictures be damned.

Andersen rightly notes that for all the questioning and badgering and general attitude that you get from the criminal justice system, neither she nor I can imagine what it is like to have what must feel like the whole world questioning the case.

Everyone will ask you questions. Some will sympathize with Brown. I'm telling you this as a girlfriend. It doesn't matter how clear-cut your case is - and domestic violence is often anything but - there will be people that think you brought it on yourself. That somehow, somewhere there is something terrible enough you could have said or done (and you know those rumors have already started and are flying fast and furious courtesy of the Internet) that would justify a sound beating.

The first person who suggested I might have been culpable — before the prosecutors got around to doing it — came less than 24 hours after it happened. She said that perhaps if I hadn't have had so much to drink... I can't imagine hearing from a relentless cavalcade of voices that I did something to engender the violence perpetrated on my person. Hearing law enforcement suggest it was bad enough.

And then, of course, she gets to us. Or, rather, some of us. You know who you are. The ones who have been banned for telling me that I should've reported my first sexual assault, and that the blood of his many victims after me is on my hands. Those people who made the tough choice, and many more who never had to and thankfully never will. Those who find it easy to pontificate that the entire fuckedupness that is our criminal justice system could be solved if we all just prosecuted because, obviously, the problem is only that there aren't enough scarred victims.

But you have the option of pursuing legal action. Should you do it?

Many people - who are not in your stilettos - will tell you absolutely. That you must. That you owe it to the other women out there who could be harmed by him in the future or the girls who've taken it in silence from him in the past. I'm telling you that it's hell. It was the worst and hardest thing I've ever done. The court case in its long protracted goriness scarred me worse than the actual assaults did. I regret it even now, five years later.

This kind of encapsulates how I feel about having reported mine. It was a grinding, grueling experience of constantly being asked to relive what was done to me, and then being constantly told that no, that wasn't what really happened.

Andersen, though, has a couple fewer regrets than I, probably in part because her case dealt with a partner and mine a stranger.

And yet I wouldn't take it back. I'd do it again if I had to.

That's the thing about it. Some of us would take it back, and some of us wouldn't. And, regardless, it's going to pretty much suck whatever she decides. I hope that, for her own sake, she doesn't let back into her life someone that would physically assault her. I hope that if she opts for that trip through the meat-grinder we ironically call our justice system she finds it less painful and horrific than the rest of us do. But, at the end of the day, she's one more victim, and the system isn't going to be changed by the victims inside of it or by one more victim reporting. It's only going to be changed when the people who haven't been there and aren't there stop lecturing about what us victims should do or should have done for the good of society, and start pressuring the system to make changes for the good of society and for victims. Otherwise, we're just a bunch of whiners that didn't get what we wanted.

Yeah, I heard that one from the prosecutors, too.

An Open Letter to Rihanna: What It's Like Taking Your Boyfriend To Court [Huffington Post]

Earlier: My Sexual Assault Is Not Your Political Issue

In that trip, a civilian co-worker at the U.S. Property and Fiscal Office saw Brian kiss her girlfriend. So despite not asking nor telling, she was kicked out of the military.

Brian said the effort to remove her from the Guard started with a barrage of anonymous e-mails referencing her sexual orientation and a networking Web site where her photo was posted. The e-mails were sent to her chain of command, including the Kansas Adjutant General's Office.

That however, wasn't enough to separate her from the career she'd chosen, where she'd received awards and promotions and was working on a Master's degree. It took a public display of affection seen off-site by a civilian co-worker whose job was, ironically, protected from discrimination because of sexual orientation to do that.

[Sharon Watson, public affairs director for the Kansas Adjutant General's Office] said a separation from the Guard because of homosexual conduct is "not based on performance but based completely on federal law." The federal law states the military must have proof of the homosexual conduct, an admission from the soldier or an attempt or successful application for marriage to another gay person by the soldier.

Apparently, "proof" is one person noticing that you're living your personal life on your own terms, and requires no corroboration. On the other hand, there's this:

[Brian] said she served with heterosexual soldiers who were found guilty of adultery, sexual harassment, and credit card fraud and received disciplinary actions instead of discharges.

You know, men.

More than 12,500 soldiers have been ousted from the military since the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy went into effect in 1994. A recent study showed that last year, despite women making up a disproportionately small percentage of military personnel, more than half of those dismissed were women. While President Barack Obama has openly committed to ending this discriminatory policy that unhelpfully diminishes the number of qualified people willing to serve in our armed forces, his spokeman Robert Gibbs said on January 14th (the day after Brian was shown the door) that it wasn't going to happen right away. It just sort of seems like some people, like Amy Brian, would rather not have to be kept waiting.

Kansas Army Discharges Gay Soldier [Topeka Capital-Journal]

Related: Obama Will End ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' Policy - But Not Right Away [Think Progress]

Earlier: Don't Ask, Don't Tell, And Try Not To Be A Woman

Jindal's commission is intended "to propose programs, policies, incentives and curriculum regarding marriage and family by collecting and analyzing data on the social and personal effects of marriage and child-bearing within the state of Louisiana." Which sounds like it could be okay, I guess, until you look, as Bilerico's Steve Ralls did, at who is sitting on the Commission.

Among those who have been appointed by Jindal to serve on the Commission are Tony Perkins (who hails from Baton Rouge), the president of the anti-gay advocacy group known as The Family Research Council . . . Gene Mills, executive director of the far-right Louisiana Family Forum . . . Mike Johnson, senior legal counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund . . . and numerous members of the clergy. All, Jindal has said, "have significant academic and/or professional expertise" on issues of marriage and family.

And each has a long history of spouting anti-gay rhetoric, too.

Jindal, as Ralls notes, already rolled back a previous executive order banning discrimination against state employees and contractors based on sexual orientation, so he's not exactly gay-friendly. With the new focus by the conservative movement on the supposed damage that will be done to children by merely seeing two people of the same sex in love, you can expect Jindal's commission to push for legislation or policy to limit gay adoption and push an anti-same-sex marriage agenda, which he's probably make a cornerstone of his 2012 campaign. But, you know, maybe he's just trying to stave off another Hurricane Katrina by driving out teh gheyz as John McCain's buddy John Hagee suggested?

Ah, discrimination! The true Real American value.

Jindal's Latest Attack on Louisiana's Families [The Bilerico Project]

Related: Adoption Ban Targets Gay Couples, Critics Say [LA Times]
Some Hateful, Radical Ministers — White Evangelicals — Are Acceptable [Salon]

Jahnke was, in 2006, in a relationship with a woman who agreed — multiple times, even — to have sex with him. As a way of showing his appreciation, he secretly videotaped them together once, audiotaped it 33 times and took two more videos of her naked without him around. She found the camera, called the cops and helped force his resignation from his job as a high school chemistry teacher. He pled guilty but his lawyers then tried to get his guilty plea thrown out arguing that by consenting to sex with Jahnke, the woman had forfeited her right to any privacy. The appeals court sided with the state, saying that having sex with, or appearing naked in front of, a person doesn't give that person the right to secretly tape you without your consent. Hot.

Court: Naked People Have Privacy Rights [CBS]

When Congress passed legislation in 1996 strengthening the laws against domestic violence, Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-New Jersey) introduced an amendment to protect women whose abusers pled out to misdemeanor assaults, which happens far too often. In order to cover the different ways states prosecute such men, the federal law currently states that men convicted of a "misdemeanor crime of domestic violence" cannot own guns. Last year, in the case of a wife-beater who wanted to get a gun, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Virginia (of course) ruled that the law doesn't cover men — like the wife beater — convicted of assault and battery instead of "domestic violence."

The government argued that Congress didn't intend for the law not to cover wife-beaters only convicted of regular beatings, and, like Lautenberg, argued that many wife-beaters plead out to misdemeanor counts. Scalia, though, wasn't buying:

JUSTICE SCALIA: And this was misdemeanor assault and battery, wasn't it?

ASSISTANT SOLICITER GENERAL NICOLE SAHARSKY: Yes, that's right. I mean, I really -

SCALIA: So it's not that serious an offense. That's why we call it a misdemeanor.

SAHARSKY: Well, I mean, certainly the offense is this particular case was serious. The charging document reflects that Respondent hit his wife all around the face until it swelled out, kicked her all around her body, kicked here in the ribs-

SCALIA: Then he should have been charged with a felony, but he wasn't. He was charged with a misdemeanor.

JUSTICE GINSBURG: Wasn't the — wasn't the statute responding to just that problem, that domestic abuse tended to be charged as misdemeanors rather than felonies? And it was that fact that the Senator was responding to when he included misdemeanor. The whole purpose of this was to make a misdemeanor battery count for the statute's purpose.

Following this and other exchanges, advocates for the law assume the Supreme Court will uphold the 4th Circuit's ruling that will leave many abusers able to purchase guns — and only another act of Congress will be able to fix the loophole.

Domestic Violence Abusers Could Get Gun Rights [LA Times]

McCoy's legislation will remove a prohibition from Utah's constitution against civil unions, expand protections for same sex couples in health care, insurance, and estate decisions and eliminate discrimination in housing and employment — all of which are laws on the books in California that the LDS Church said it didn't support eliminating and touted as the reason that same-sex couples should have the right to marry yanked denied to them. The Church, naturally, has no comment on the pending legislation, but Utah is one of now 4 states that prohibits same sex couples from adopting following the passage of a ban in Arkansas on Election Day.

In fact, there are some in the LGBT community who are now saying that the state institution of marriage — which provides couples with certain contractual rights and responsibilities — should be far from the only right that the LGBT community focuses on pursuing. From the need to continue to fight for laws that prohibit discrimination in employment, to seeking legal requirements for domestic partnership benefits to fighting laws that prohibit same sex couples from adopting or participating in foster care, there are plenty of rights beyond marriage that the state and federal governments have seen fit to deny Americans based on who they choose to share their lives — and their beds — with. And it all sucks equally bad — and if every dollar of funding seeking to expand or maintain rights for the LGBT community floods into the effort to get the courts there to overturn the ballot initiative on technical grounds, the fundies will keep advancing their agenda to deny as many rights as possible to the LGBT community — which is what they're seeking to do, LDS hypocrisy in California notwithstanding.

Gay Leaders in Utah Plan 5-Bill Attack in Legislature [NY Times]
Activists Rethink Their Gay-Marriage Tactics [Time]
Legality of Same-Sex Marriage Ban Challenged [Washington Post]

No On 8 Lead Is Eroding In Polls [LA Times]