Packingham and censorship of sex offenders

Let's talk about Packingham v. North Carolina. May states constitutionally ban convicted sex offenders from using social media? Some points that came up:

• Social media is an important part of modern life. The President uses Twitter to convey breaking news--this law would ban sex offenders from reading the President's Twitter feed. Isn't that excluding sex offenders from fully participating in our polity as informed citizens? Who's going to tell Packingham about the latest dead celebrity?
• On the other hand, there's a lot of precedent for denying people rights after they have been duly convicted of crimes. Going to prison means losing many rights. Not only that, after release you may face indefinite or lifetime loss of certain rights, like the right to vote or right to bear arms. You can lose the latter after only a misdemeanor conviction or even a restraining order! So if we don't sympathize with the guy who slaps his girlfriend and permanently loses his Second Amendment rights, why should we sympathize with the sex offender who loses access to Facebook?
• It's legally irrelevant, but since I brought up sympathy, let's have a moment of sympathy for the "sex offender" in this case, who was put on the registry after having sex with a 13-year-old when he was 21, fifteen years ago. A bad decision, but not bad enough to justify being on a sex offender registry.
• A big reason why Packingham won (spoiler) was the overbreadth of the law. It banned "gaining access to" social-networking sites that allow minors, no matter what you do on those sites, even if you have zero contact with minors, and even if you never post any comment. (Packingham got in trouble after a Facebook post in which he attributed getting out of a couple of traffic tickets to being specially favored by Jesus. I'm no theologian, but I would think once you're a registered sex offender you'd give up on the idea of being favored by God.)
• The law also categorized any site as a "social-networking site" if it allows users to comment and does not ban under-18 users. So not just what you or I would think of as social-networking sites, but most news sites, blogs, job sites, and many commercial sites like Amazon that allow user reviews.
• So a law meant to prevent sex predators from seducing children online ends up banning people from buying shoes on Zappos, looking for apartments on Craigslist, or reading WashingtonPost.com. If the person who wrote the law had drafted more cautiously, this law would have survived as a narrowly tailored "don't contact strange kids online" rule. Why don't people hire me to write these laws? As it is, the law was struck down as an unconstitutional restriction on speech.  

Don't use the courts to force people to like you

Social approval! We all want it. And we're never going to get it--at least, not as much as we want. Whether the people around you approve of you is not within your control. Well, some of it is--you can take some voluntary actions to improve your chances of approval. Being nice and tipping and taking showers helps. But that will never guarantee you get the approval you want.

Why not? Part of it is pure luck--or “privilege,” grudgingly. Part of it is the “you can't please everyone” effect. Being upper-class is generally good, but not if you want to fit in in a lower-class environment. Some people resent immigrants; others think Americans are dumb. Some people will hate you for being black, and others for being white. You can be fat-shamed or skinny-shamed. So, fundamentally, we have to live in a world in which, no matter who you are, some people will hate you for no good reason. A woman has to navigate a world with misogynists and rapists in it. An atheist has to accept that many people think he's going to burn in hell. And gay people have to live with the knowledge that many of their neighbors disapprove of their sexual and romantic relationships. For the person who finds these facts upsetting, I recommend Agent Cooper's mantra.

FBI Agent Roger Hardy: They're liable to extradite you for murder and drug trafficking.

Special Agent Dale Cooper: These are things I cannot control.

This is my problem with the current gay rights movement. As a libertine and libertarian, I have of course been strongly in favor of gay rights as long as I can remember. When gay marriage was banned, and, earlier, when gay sex was illegal, there was a crying need to fight so that gay people can get what they deserve.

But now? Every time I read about a new gay rights case, it's, well, bullying. Suing the small business owner who refuses to sell flowers or cake or custom-printed T-shirts for gay weddings or gay causes. These are not cases about getting gay people what they deserve-- the same privileges and rights the rest of us enjoy. This is using the courts to force the illusion of social approval.

Not even the plaintiffs claim that any person has actually been damaged in these cases. One litigant in a right-to-wedding-flowers case claimed that his actual damages were some $17, or the cost of the gas he burned when he had to drive to a different florist. In another case involving a transgender high school student, the biologically male student wanted to use the girls' locker room; the school wanted him to use the boys' room, and offered the obvious compromise; a private changing room for this student. The offer was rejected--proving, beyond a doubt, that the transgender bathroom controversy is not about providing safe and decent bathroom facilities for transgender people. It's about forcing society to accept the transgender theory of gender. This is completely wrong. Partly, of course, I think it's wrong because my concept of gender is different. But it would be wrong to use the courts to force people to accept my gender theory too! I just have to live in a world in which most people are terribly, terribly, wrong, and, rather than being something the courts ought to correct, this seems like the human condition.

Litigating for social approval is not what the courts are there for. Social approval is not something gay or transgender people deserve, because desserts don't make sense in this context, because social approval is inherently arbitrary.

I wonder if the gay rights advocates agree with me on this point. Is it that they think of approval as something that you are entitled to, if you do x and y? In my life, I've gone from being one of the most stigmatized, powerless and low-status people in our society, to now being reasonably successful and respected. From having to ask dumb people for permission to go to the bathroom to having a job that largely consists of telling smart people what to do. And yet, I feel like the same person. It creates some cognitive dissonance that I've never really known how to communicate. But, other people have not had this experience. If you've always had people approve of you if you did the “right” thing, I imagine you might come to think of approval as something you “deserve.”

Another possibility is that gay rights advocates think of these cases not as means of redressing specific wrongs done to the plaintiffs, but rather as a means of shifting popular opinion. So it's not about fighting for what someone deserves, but rather conducting something of a morality play in which the state of the law is merely a public relations tool.

I would be interested in hearing your opinion, especially if you agree with these gay rights cases. Do you think social approval is something that people deserve? Or do you think these cases are a PR tool? Or do you think our disagreement resides somewhere else?

Gay conversion therapy

This is an interesting issue that I expect to neatly divide the liberals from the libertarians. Should "conversion therapy," a.k.a. therapy intended to make gay people straight, be banned?

Arguments against it:

• It's unpopular with the mob. "In two different national polls, more than 60 percent of Americans indicated that they believe conversion therapy doesn’t work." Who cares?
  
• The American Psychological Association says it's not backed by evidence. But this would support banning pretty much all psychotherapy, not to mention alternative medicine. Psychiatry is not a science, and it's common to see that any given treatment works for some and not others.
  
• Part of the reason there's no evidence base is that it's hard to verify whether someone who says he is straight is straight. I don't see a way around this, other than a longer follow-up period.
  
• Homosexuality isn't a "mental illness." But whether something counts as a mental illness or not is a political decision. People should be able to seek treatment for whatever is troubling them, regardless of whether it's in the DSM.
  
• Conversion therapy sometimes makes people feel worse. Again, no different from any other therapy.
  
• Children should not be given conversion therapy because they don't have the capacity to freely consent to it. I'm pretty sympathetic to the argument that children shouldn't be brainwashed. But why is brainwashing bad when applied to “correct” homosexuality, and not when applied to “correct” drug use, heterosexual sex, bad grades or any of the other sins for which children are sent to therapy?
  

Argument for:

• Boils down to the basic libertarian argument that people ought to be able to do what they want to with their own lives. Like it or not, some people don't want to be gay and are desperate for a way to avoid it. Cultural liberals may think it's laughable or sad for a gay man to marry a woman and call himself straight. But is it any more absurd than some of the weird sex liberals get up to?
  

How to make a phone call

The first step in making a phone call is putting the call on your schedule. Some people might do it immediately, but you can't risk calling at the wrong time. Maybe you haven't gotten enough sleep or you are in a bad mood or something. You also have to wait for a time when the person will be at work, decreasing the likelihood that he will answer. Maybe if you give it some thought, you can get what you want without a phone call. Really a phone call would never be necessary if not for the stupidity of others. Wait a few weeks or months.

At long last, when it's the right time, find the strength to look up the number. Then, go to the bathroom. Consider your shampoo collection. Which shampoo should you use next? The "rosemary mint" from the New Orleans hotel, the "aloe vera" from Wisconsin, or the "sugared citrus" from Minneapolis? The rosemary mint looks most expensive, but Minneapolis is clearly better than New Orleans.

If you decide you like the rosemary mint best, should you use it last, so that you have the pleasure of anticipating the best? Save the best for last, as they say. Or should you use it first, because you might die before you use them all? Seize the day, they also say. You wouldn't want to die without taking advantage of the best shampoo available to you. You will probably find this decision impossible, but spend some time on it anyway.

When you have lost interest in the shampoo, put the number into your phone. Stare at it, conscious you could still turn back. Then press the call button. Count the rings, forgetting to breathe. If it rings at least five times, it'll probably go to voicemail. It does. You will have planned out precisely what to say on the voicemail in advance, so this is the easy part.

Hang up, and get as much satisfaction as you can out of crossing out the to-do list item. Then it will occur to you that getting a return call is a real risk. Remember how the person's voicemail message said "I will call you back"— so decisive. You're screwed.

Try to distract yourself with an easier task. But how can you concentrate when the phone could ring at any moment? It sits beside you, like a viper ready to strike. You have made a phone call, but it made nothing better. Someday, you will have to talk to a stranger.

Gattaca

What a terrible movie. It's like the fantasy of a 10-year-old crying over the fact that his brother is taller than he is. So, here's this fascinating dystopian society, with deep-rooted class inequality, which raises many interesting political, moral and technological questions. The movie notices none of them. The only thing the audience is asked to care about is whether the hero gets to do his dream job. Is there a larger implication here? Will he try to fight injustice or help others? Nope. He just wants to be an astronaut because space is cool.

No one in the underclass besides the hero gets a name. They are all faceless, uniform men. There is only one woman in the movie--the blonde. No, I don't remember her name, why should I. Her job is to be a sex object and tell the hero that she likes him more even though his brother is taller. Their first sex scene occurs immediately after she has, in horror, watched him beat up a cop in order to avoid being questioned about a murder which she, and the audience, have strong reason to believe he committed to pursue his childish spaceman fantasy. This is below the moral level of a fairytale--and not just because the hero murdered an innocent man. At least in a fairytale, you have to give the beggar some of your bread before she'll do magic for you. Here, the hero gets special favors from a dozen other characters while narcissistically pursuing his dream with complete disregard for every other person besides himself. Disgusting.

An upside to sleep deprivation?

I've spent the past week complaining about the effect sleep deprivation has on my mood, concentration ability, IQ, energy, and memory--but now I think there may be an upside. I am more creative. I suppose some of the aforementioned factors--fatigue, lack of focus and IQ--weaken my usual obsessive grip on What Needs to be Done and my rigid ideas about What Ought Not to be Done. As a result, I've been less productive and done things like eat French fries and take the elevator rather than the stairs--but I also find my mind expanding. I think more, rather than constantly seeking something on the agenda to do. New ideas are occurring to me. Suddenly I have half a dozen blog posts to write.