A Tale of Two Articles

Great News! No fuck that, Fantastic News!

A study from John Hopkins University published in JAMA Pediatrics shows that suicide attempts among queer teens has decreased since introducing marriage equality.

Written by the Associated Press via NBC News:

Teen suicide attempts in the U.S. declined after same-sex marriage became legal and the biggest impact was among gay, lesbian and bisexual kids, a study found.  

The research found declines in states that passed laws allowing gays to marry before the Supreme Court made it legal nationwide. The results don't prove there's a connection, but researchers said policymakers should be aware of the measures' potential benefits for youth mental health.  

Suicide is the second-leading cause of death for all U.S. teens. Suicidal behavior is much more common among gay, lesbian and bisexual kids and adults; about 29 percent of these teens in the study reported attempting suicide, compared with just 6 percent of straight teens.

So it would appear there is a correlation between societal expectance and a reduction in suicide. I feel like this falls into the category of "no duh."

The article goes on to point out:

About 230,000 students reported being gay, lesbian or bisexual. The surveys didn't ask about transgender status. They included questions about suicide attempts, smoking and alcohol or drug use.

In 32 states that enacted same-sex marriage laws during the study, suicide attempts dropped 7 percent among all students and 14 percent among gay kids after the laws were passed. There was no change in suicide attempts in states without those laws.

So it would appear there is a correlation between societal expectance and a reduction in suicide. I feel like this falls into the category of "no duh." Jinx you owe me a coke. Ok I should stop being shitty about this, because at the end of the day it is such great news.

And now for the shitty part.

On the same day as the mega-ultra-super-phenomenal news broke, the Washington Blade published an article detailing the Trump Administration's plan to roll back Transgender Rights. Chris Johnson writes:

Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told the Washington Blade on Monday she’s heard from “reliable sources” President Trump has green-lighted the plan for the Justice Department and Education Department to send a “Dear Colleague” letter to schools rescinding the guidance. 

At the time of this writing, this is a rumor. Based on how this White House operates, I normally won't write about a rumor. However, Tump promised on the campaign trail to rescind the Obama guidelines barring discrimination against transgender students.

The article further explains:

Jointly issued in May under the Obama administration by the Justice Department and Education Department, the guidance asserts that denying transgender students access to the restroom in accordance with their gender identity violates the prohibition on sex discrimination under Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. 

Rescinding the guidance is consistent with a legal brief the Justice Department filed earlier this month in litigation against the guidance filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on behalf of 12 states. As a result of the litigation, U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor issued a preliminary injunction barring the administration from enforcing the guidance nationwide. 

Although the Justice Department under former U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch filed an appeal along with a request with the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals seeking to limit the scope of the injunction to the 12 plaintiff states, the brief under Sessions withdraws that request and informs the federal appeals court the Trump administration is “currently considering how best to proceed in this appeal.”

Ugh. Fuck all of 'em. Those heartless shit bags. Going after any group of teens as political targets is disturbing, but going after LGBT youth is fucking deplorable. Transgender youth have it particularly rough.

According to the Trevor Project "In a national study, 40% of transgender adults reported having made a suicide attempt. 92% of these individuals reported having attempted suicide before the age of 25." The report they're citing is The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey by the National Center for Transgender Equality.

What next are they going to propose euthanizing homeless children and orphans.

Fucking shit bags.

Update:

So yes they are rolling back protections for trans* students 'cause states rights, despite this being tied to federal funding and Title IX, but you know states rights... fucking muppets the lot of them.


Liam '17

Sunday Morning Slander

This week was short and I haven't noticed much in the way of news. So I punching down, so to speak, by focusing on this story that appeared on Rawstory.com written by Eric W. Dolan:

Students in a freshman biology class in Atlanta’s Grady High School were shown a PowerPoint presentation that linked evolution to Satan, abortion, divorce, racism, and homosexuality.

The Grady High student newspaper, the Southerner, reported that Anquinette Jones used the PowerPoint presentation to teach the theory of evolution to her students during a freshman biology class last spring.

One slide in the 52-slide presentation included an illustration that shows creationism and evolution as two sides in a war between good and evil. Creationism is shown to be from Christ, while evolution is from Satan. The illustration suggests evolution is the driving force behind euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, divorce, and racism — social ills that are all defeated by creationism and Christianity.

My bullshit detector is wobbling a bit right now. I don't think anyone could be this fucking dumb and the primary source is a high school newspaper... so yeah... not to denigrate high school students...

Ok, I found another source, which actually shows and links to the primary sources. Uggh.. The article written by the high school students is actually well written and appears to be factual... uggh.. my faith in humanity is both downgraded by the stupidity of a biology teacher and yet bolstered by great journalism that gives me hope for the future.

So let's march on.

One slide in the 52-slide presentation included an illustration that shows creationism and evolution as two sides in a war between good and evil. Creationism is shown to be from Christ, while evolution is from Satan. The illustration suggests evolution is the driving force behind euthanasia, homosexuality, pornography, abortion, divorce, and racism — social ills that are all defeated by creationism and Christianity.

So... uggh deep breath... find my happy place... slide... Ok, you are trying to get people to accept creationism in the middle of showing why and how evolution works. And to a bunch of 15 year old boys, you say pornography drives evolution. You don't understand 15 year old boys, do you? 15 year old boys are porn-freaks.

In fact in the middle of your presentation one of the students was either watching a porno on their iPhone or drawing naked ladies in their notebook.

But after looking through the slideshow it appears the rest of the material was fairly solid. So unless the teacher undercuts the rest of the slideshow with a stupid verbal rant everything's fine:

Jones told the Southerner that the PowerPoint presentation originated with the Atlanta Public Schools system. But students told the paper that Jones had brought up creationism and criticized evolution in her biology class before.

“She always had random comments about [creationism],” student {Name Redacted} told the Southerner. “If someone would ask if we were going to learn evolution, she was like, ‘No, I don’t teach that.’”

“[I] have gay parents, and [the cartoon] said that evolution caused homosexuality and it implied that to be negative, so I was pretty offended by it,” another student, {Name Redacted}, said.

Happy place... happy place... happy place... Ok think of the positives on the story. Students are demanding accountability from educators.

Students are taking the initiative and become active and engaged in democracy and their future. 

And it seems that the students understand why this circumstance is wrong, or at least some of the students seem to understand why this is wrong.  

Liam '14

Yeah, These are Still Things...

First on the list of This Shit's Still Happening

Did you think that measles were eliminated from the United States in 2000? Yeah, so did I. During my lunch break on Friday, I was greatly dismayed when I read a Washington Post article on the subject.

Lenny Bernstein in an article for the Washington Post summarizes the current measles outbreak:

The ongoing measles outbreak in the United States has reached a record for any year since the disease was  eliminated in this country 14 years ago, with 288 cases of the potentially deadly infection reported in 18 states, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Thursday.

The largest measles clusters are in Ohio (138 confirmed cases), California (60) and New York (26), according to the CDC. Almost all — 97 percent — have been brought into the country by travelers, mainly Americans, who contracted the infection abroad. About half of those were people who picked it up in the Philippines, where a large measles outbreak has affected more than 32,000 people, causing 41 deaths,  since January alone, said Anne Schuchat, director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.

Read the rest.

As I said before, measles had been eliminated from this country 14 years ago. So what gives:

In the United States, the number of people who choose not to be immunized for religious, philosophical or personal reasons has begun to become a public health problem, Schuchat said. Others are unaware of, or unable to get, vaccinations before they arrive in the United States. A small number of adults can lose their immunity over time and may need to be re-vaccinated.(Ibid.)

Blöd, blöd, blöd... Vaccinate your fucking kids. There is absolutely no reason that the measles epidemic should continue in the United States. I understand that a large number of those infected are from Amish Communities, and expecting a group that eschews technology to adopt a technology would be frivolous.But there are people in the US who do participate in the modern society who don't vaccinate. And it is completely unfounded. According to this Macalester College article, the MMR vaccine is safe and effective:

The net medical effects of the MMR vaccine cannot be understated.  "The health and resource benefits due to vaccination against measles during the first 20 years of vaccine licensure," according to a 1985 study in Pediatrics, "have been enormous.  In this period [in the United States] it is estimated that vaccination against measles has prevented 52 million cases, 5,200 deaths, and 17,400 cases of mental retardation, achieving a net savings of $5.1 billion."

And oh yes, if you are actively campaign against vaccines, you can go fuck yourself. Your bullshit is injuring people if not killing them, and it needs to stop.

Creationists on the School Board

Did you find the culture wedge issues of the Bush Era exhausting? Yeah, so did  I. Oh Johnny Walker, there is not enough of you to make this tolerable (he's also the reason why I am writing this so late in the week.)

It wouldn't be America without an idiot running for School Board, thinking that they will change the curriculum to get rid of those icky things like the Theory of Evolution, Reproductive Education, and Keynesian Economics (Mercantilism forever baby.)  According to an article by Sherese Gore in the News and Advance, this time it's in Amherst County, Virginia, which boarders Lynchburg:

Two candidates seeking appointment to the Amherst County School Board are laying out an early agenda for their time on the board, including a candidate who said he is concerned with the inclusion of evolution and human-caused global warming in the schools’ science textbooks.

Oo goodie. And how, pray-tell, did this Candidate come to his agenda? 

Olivares [...] is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

His interest in serving on the school board was sparked while serving as a substitute teacher with Amherst County Public Schools. During that time, Olivares said he became concerned with science textbooks that state that global warming is caused by human activity and those that teach Darwinian evolution. As part of the school board, he said would like to review the division’s textbooks.

When I was a substitute teacher I used my time wisely to look up gay porn on my iPhone... just kidding, I didn't have an iPhone back then.

Ok, let's give him the benefit of the doubt. Why doesn't he believe in Global Warming:

“As far as the current global warming, my physicist contacts tell me that there has been no global warming in the past 15 years despite Mr. Gore’s film,” he said, referencing the 2006 documentary “An Inconvenient Truth,” which was written by Al Gore.

Fantastic! Unsourced contacts, academia what out, we have a new scholar rising.  And now how are you totally not going to undercut your previous statement with something completely asinine:

In regards to humanity’s involvement with climate change: “As a physicist, I know better than that,” Olivares said. “I know the cause. It’s that big shiny thing that we see up there every day if the clouds are not covering it.”

Oh for fuck sake, which is it: is global warming real but cyclical, or is it a hoax? Hint, it can't be both, and it ends with neither. (Note: there are natural occurrence which are contributing to global warming; however releasing the amount of carbon dioxide at the current rate is having an adverse affect on our environment.)

I am also wondering if his physicist "contacts" aren't just a bunch of sock puppets he created that he talks to.

Backing up, I couldn't help but notice that he doesn't care to much for that there "Darwinian Evolution" thing in them learny books.  I for one am glad someone finally is taking a stand against Darwinian Evolution. Why should American Children be learning an outdated theory from 1859, which does not include genetics, DNA sequencing, and in utero epigenetics? Oh wait, I'm guessing he actually means Modern Evolutionary Theory:

Olivares said he also is concerned with Darwinian evolution “being taught as fact and settled science which it is not.” Single-celled organisms have not changed significantly through the millions of years “that they say evolution has taken place,” he said.

Err.. for one thing, no scientific theory is ever settled. Claiming complete knowledge is antithetical to science. And secondly, single celled organisms have varied greatly you dunderhead. I am just going to spitball it here, because I am not too concerned about this statement being overly accurate, but according to Wikipedia:

Following present classification, there are a little less than 9,300 known species of prokaryotes, which includes bacteria and archaea;^[147] but attempts to estimate the true number of bacterial diversity have ranged from 10⁷ to 10⁹ total species – and even these diverse estimates may be off by many orders of magnitude.^[148][149]

That's just diversity among Prokaryotes, which is minuscule when compared to the complexity and diversity of Eukaryotes.

While the article no where suggests that the Candidate's motives are driven by religious fervor, I will treat it as if it does. As I have written before, Creationism is an Insult to any god that would exist. If there is a god, that god apparently created the universe in a natural method, that includes evolution. To deny rational thought and the scientific method in favor of ancient mythology is insulting to this would be creator god.

Around Half of Americans Don't Understand Gayness

Did you think that most Americans finally understood what it means to be gay? Yeah, so did I.

This Gallup poll is slightly depressing.

Credits belong to Gallup. So go read the article and inform yourself.... I'll wait for you.... Done reading now? Good.

In concordance with this poll done by the Pew Research Center last year:

Credits belong to Pew. 

So these two polls show that around 37% of the public believes that gayness is a learned behavior that can be changed. My attraction to men is fixed. No one can change that about me. And thank fuck nobody has. I am proud to be gay. I am proud of my yellow eyes. I am proud of my brown hair. I am proud of the things I did not choose about myself, as I am sure a straight man with blue eyes and blond hair is proud of himself. 

It makes me sick to think of the millions of people wishing they could change, expecting that they can change, and completely incapable of changing.

And to anyone who thinks it is a choice to be gay, I know it's trite, but so you think you are choosing to be straight? You choose to think the waitress is attractive or the woman who sits next to you on the bus?

But what's really troubling to me is that some 37% of gay children will be raised in a household that believes they can change. Perhaps worse is the number of straight children who will be raised "straight" and that any sign of effeminacy must be beaten out corrected.  

Liam ‘14

Achievement is to Blank as Liberal is to Blank

I woke up this morning, and I was curious to see if I could put together a map of how states performed on the SATs and the ACTs.  It is fairly complicated, because some universities use the SATs, while others use the ACTs, and it depends on which state they are locate. A large number of students leave their home-states further complicating the system. The way I came up with to solve the problem was to take the SAT average and convert it into an ACT equivalent system and then weighted the average by the percent of students to take each test.

Top Percentile for 2013: 

State	Percent of Graduates Tested	Average Composite Score	SAT Participation Rate	ACT Equivalent	Weighted Average
New Hampshire	19	23.8	70	23.67	23.69775
Massachusetts	22	24.1	83	23.49	23.61781
Minnesota	74	23	6	27.0675	23.30506
Washington	21	22.8	60	23.355	23.21111
Connecticut	27	24	85	22.95	23.20313
Vermont	26	23	61	23.2875	23.20158

Followed by:

State	Percent of Graduates Tested	Average Composite Score	SAT Participation Rate	ACT Equivalent	Weighted Average
Virginia	26	22.6	71	23.175	23.02088
New Jersey	23	23	78	22.9725	22.97876
Oregon	34	21.5	49	23.4	22.62169
California	26	22.2	57	22.725	22.56054
Pennsylvania	18	22.7	71	22.455	22.50455
New York	26	23.4	76	22.185	22.49471
Maryland	21	22.3	73	22.4325	22.4029
Ohio	72	21.8	17	24.84	22.38067
Wisconsin	71	22.1	4	26.8875	22.35533
Iowa	66	22.1	3	26.8425	22.3062
Rhode Island	14	22.7	72	22.0725	22.17465
Kansas	75	21.8	6	26.64	22.15852
Indiana	38	21.7	70	22.3425	22.11644
Alaska	37	21.1	52	22.7925	22.08888
South Dakota	78	21.9	3	26.8425	22.08306
Montana	72	21.3	25	24.2775	22.0674
Missouri	74	21.6	4	26.7975	21.86654
Nevada	32	21.3	48	22.185	21.831
Nebraska	84	21.5	4	26.2575	21.71625

The Lowest Half:

State	Percent of Graduates Tested	Average Composite Score	SAT Participation Rate	ACT Equivalent	Weighted Average
Texas	37	20.9	59	21.96	21.55146
Georgia	51	20.7	75	21.9825	21.46339
Hawaii	40	20.1	64	22.1625	21.36923
Arizona	50	19.6	35	23.6025	21.24809
South Carolina	51	20.4	64	21.8475	21.20557
Maine	8	23.5	95	20.9025	21.10425
Oklahoma	75	20.8	5	25.65	21.10313
Colorado	100	20.4	14	26.0775	21.09724
Idaho	49	22.1	99	20.5425	21.05816
West Virginia	63	20.6	15	22.8375	21.03029
Utah	100	20.7	6	25.5375	20.97382
Illinois	100	20.6	5	27.3825	20.92298
District of Columbia	38	20.4	91	21.1275	20.9132
Florida	74	19.6	67	22.095	20.78557
Delaware	15	22.9	100	20.43	20.75217
Alabama	78	20.4	7	24.255	20.71747
North Dakota	98	20.5	2	27.405	20.6381
New Mexico	70	19.9	12	24.6375	20.59329
Arkansas	90	20.2	4	25.695	20.43383
Michigan	100	19.9	4	27	20.17308
North Carolina	100	18.7	62	22.5225	20.16293
Wyoming	100	19.8	4	26.3025	20.0501
Tennessee	100	19.5	8	25.7175	19.96056
Kentucky	100	19.6	5	26.3025	19.91917
Louisiana	100	19.5	5	24.9525	19.75964
Mississippi	95	18.9	3	25.0875	19.08941

Here is how it looks when mapped out:

2013 SAT/ACT Score by State

I then broke it down by Quartile: 

2013 SAT/ACT Score by State

I then broke it down by Half:

2013 SAT/ACT Score by State

I then pulled a map over laying the Half map and a map of state legislature by controlling party:

SAT/ACT Political Overlay Map 

There are obvious flaws in my methodology. There are also larger questions of socio-economic factors playing a more responsible factor in the systematic educational success of a population, and so forth. At the same time, I do believe this simple map is at the heart of the fundamental american dynamic.


Liam '14