The bill seeks to amend a 2007 law that was passed to protect students from bullying and discrimination, so that it would no longer be illegal to harass students on the basis of “sexual orientation” and “gender identity.”

This hateful piece of legislation is, not surprisingly, related to Iowa’s recent legalisation of gay marriage. Because the Iowa Supreme Court invoked the Safe School Law in its decision to legalize same-sex marriage, the bill’s authors, Senators Jason Schultz and Matt Windchitl, hoped their bill could help overturn that decision. By attempting to deny LGBT youth equal protections, Schultz and Windchitl hoped to force lawmakers to debate same-sex marriage.

Right. Telling students, “Go on, beat up the gays,” is really going to instill family values in our children….

Considering that 16 percent of Iowa’s LGBT youth already report having been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation, and that bullying plays a role in the suicides of many LGBT youth, the Schultz/Windchitl bill is an unconscionable political move that plays with students’ lives.

Fortunately, their ploy did not work, as the Iowa legislature just voted against considering a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage at this time. Hopefully, Schultz and Windchitl will consequently drop their cruel manoeuvre.

Photo: popmatters.com

Well, we now know that the U.S. Governer of South Carolina wasn’t hiking when he disappeared for a week. What we do know is that he has admitted going to Argentina to visit his mistress, a woman named Maria who is reportedly a member of the Argentinean government who lives in the apartment pictured above in a posh area of Buenos Aires known as Barrio Palermo. We also know that she’s separated and the mother of two children. Oh, and we also know that he loves the erotic curve of her hips, since the following emails between the two lovebirds have been leaked:

From Gov. Sanford,

Date: Thursday, July 10, 2008, 12:24 a.m.

One, tomorrow leave at 5 a.m. for New York and meetings. Will think about you on its streets and wish I was going to be there later in the month when you are there. Tomorrow night back to Philadelphia for the start of the National Governor’s Conference through the weekend. Back to Columbia for Tuesday and then on Wednesday, as I think I had told you, taking the family to China, Tibet, Nepal, India, Thailand and then back through Hong Kong on world wind tour. Few days home then to Bahamas for 5 days on a friend’s boat for the last break of the summer. The following weekend have been asked to spend it out in Aspen, Colorado with McCain – which has kicked up the whole VP talk all over again in the press back home …

Two, mutual feelings …. You have a particular grace and calm that I adore. You have a level of sophistication that so fitting with your beauty. I could digress and say that you have the ability to give magnificent gentle kisses, or that I love your tan lines or that I love the curve of your hips, the erotic beauty of you holding yourself (or two magnificent parts of yourself) in the faded glow of the night’s light – but hey, that would be going into sexual details …

Three and finally, while all the things above are all too true – at the same time we are in a hopelessly – or as you put it impossible – or how about combine and simply say hopelessly impossible situation of love. How in the world this lightening strike snuck up on us I am still not quite sure. As I have said to you before I certainly had a special feeling about you from the first time we met, but these feelings were contained and I genuinely enjoyed our special friendship and the comparing of all too many personal notes …

Lastly I also suspect I feel a little vulnerable because this is ground I have never certainly never covered before – so if you have pearls of wisdom on how we figure all this out please let me know… In the meantime please sleep soundly knowing that despite the best efforts of my head my heart cries out for you, your voice, your body, the touch of your lips, the touch of your finger tips and an even deeper connection to your soul.”

——————–

From Maria,

Wednesday, July 9, 2008 8:14 p.m.

As I told you I shouldn’t have done this trip but I would have felt worst if I wouldn’t have come because it was too over the date, he is a very nice guy, great heart … but unfortunately I am not in love with him … You are my love … something hard to believe even for myself as it’s also a kind of impossible love, not only because of distance but situation. Sometimes you don’t choose things, they just happen… I can’t redirect my feelings and I am very happy with mine towards you.

——————–

From Gov. Sanford,

Tuesday, July 8, 1:42 a.m.

Got back an hour ago to civilization and am now in Columbia after what was for me a glorious break from reality down at the farm. No phones ringing and tangible evidence of a day’s labors. Though I have started every day by 6 this morning woke at 4:30, I guess since my body knew it was the last day, and I went out and ran the excavator with lights until the sun came up. To me, and I suspect no one else on earth, there is something wonderful about listening to country music playing in the cab, air conditioner running, the hum of a huge diesel engine in the back ground, the tranquillity that comes with being in a virtual wilderness of trees and marsh, the day breaking and vibrant pink coming alive in the morning clouds – and getting to build something with each scoop of dirt.

——————–

Oh, something else we know: Mark Sanford left his wife and four sons over U.S Father’s Day weekend to go visit Maria, which might just give him a special place in the Bad Father’s Hall of Fame.

Source

Rigid Rules Rile Schools As Education Revolution Complaints Roll In
Twentyfour schools have complained to the Rudd government over its $14.7 billion schools infrastructure program, which the opposition savaged yesterday as a shambles and an exercise in political pork-barrelling. The Australian

Sarah Hanson-Young Denies Bringing Child To Senate Was A Stunt
A senator at the centre of a parliamentary storm over her daughter’s ejection from the Senate denies it was a stunt. Herald Sun

Babies Don’t Belong At Work
Rightly or wrongly the Senate is currently standing in the way of a chunk of the Rudd Government’s agenda. The Punch

Mercy For Mother Who Burnt One Baby And Froze Two Others After Killing Them
A mother was sentenced to eight years in jail last night for killing three newborn babies and hiding two of the bodies in a freezer in a case that outraged public opinion in France. Times Online

Welsh IVF Blunder Clinic Lost Another Couple’s Embryos
The fertility clinic that transferred a woman’s last embryo into another patient has apologised for losing the embryos of another couple. Times Online

FBI: Test Shows Michigan Man Not Long-Missing NY Boy
DNA testing confirmed that a 54-year-old Michigan man is not a toddler kidnapped in Long Island, N.Y., in 1955, the FBI said Thursday. The FBI said testing showed John Barnes of Kalkaska, Mich., is not Stephen Damman, who disappeared at age 2 from outside an East Meadow bakery while his mother shopped. Associated Press

A conglomeration of studies about to be printed in a social science journal posit that parents’ political leanings can be tied to the gender of their children. Notably, they say fathers of girls are more liberal (that’s a small ‘l’, by the way).

Is that the same as saying they’re more feminist?

Among the data social scientists looked at was the voting records of U.S. Congressmen. The first study (published in 2004) determined Congressman with daughters were more likely to vote liberally on reproductive rights issues. Four years later, the same researcher concluded the Congressmen with female offspring were voting liberally on a host of issues, including tax-free education and working families flexibility.

Integrating studies from Great Britain, the scientists have concluded parents with girls are more likely to sympathise with left wing ideals, while studies indicate that having a male child will lead to more right wing politics.

Interesting, because if you listened to appeals to George W. Bush on particularly feminist issues, you’d often hear references to his daughters. As in “What kind of father would take his own daughter’s rights away?” And I don’t remember him coming out as a champion of Roe v. Wade, do you?

I’ll allow that parents are more likely to weigh issues they wouldn’t have otherwise focused on when faced with parenting a child of the opposite sex. A father with a daughter is more likely to have his daughter in mind when debating the rights of a woman over the rights of a foetus (although I’d wager there are a fair amount of dads who would still come down on the side of the foetus because they now equate their child with that fetus).

Even more interesting, the study suggests parents who lean to the left are more likely to stop having kids after the birth of a son – pointing to an added valuation of boys in the liberal community. Right wingers, they say, are more likely to stop making babies after a girl is born. Maybe it’s all those liberal awakenings scaring them out of the bedroom?

Image: Flatrock

Via fivethirtyeight

Ironically, the schemes that cost the government the least (Child Care Tax Rebate and Medicare Safety Net) are the ones which could have the most affect on the ability of middle-class women to work and bear children via fertility treatments.

Child care tax rebates of up to 50% on the cost of fees are currently not means-tested and are available to all parents engaged in a least 15 hours of work, study or training per week, to a maximum of $7500 per child per year.

This enables a mother for example (as male partners are still primarily the higher wage earners) to return to work with her children in care and actually make a small amount of money once taxes and child care fees have been paid.

If this was means tested around the $150,000 mark, which is simply two average professional wages, there would be little incentive for a woman to actually work. Say she earned $60,000 and had two children in full-time daycare of about $80 per day. Without any form of rebate, full time child care for two children would cost $38, 400.  Add to that a tax bill of $12,600 and essentially a woman would be working for the grand sum of $9,000 a year or $173 a week.

A far more attractive option would be for her to stay at home and receive the Family Tax Benefit Part B payment available to families with one main income  under $150,000. (Interestingly, FTB payments do not seem to be on the chopping block – a nice nod to Howard’s belief that women should be encouraged to be at home).

So, instead of contributing $12,600 tax per year, the family would instead be eligible for Family Tax benefit A and B payments, thus costing the government more money and keeping that woman out of the workforce and at risk of losing her skills.

Five to seven years is too long to be out of the workforce for most skilled or professional jobs. Would bringing in means testing below, say $200,000 for a combine family income see an exodus of women from vital positions as doctors, nurses and teachers?

A cynic might suggest that a flood of women out of professional positions would do wonders for unemployment numbers and child care places just before the next election. But the crux of the matter is that it is unjust and unequitable to financially punish professional women for working when they are also mothers. Child care is an expense of working and should be treated accordingly, no matter what a woman’s income.

Do we really want to send a message to young girls that there is no point studying on to post-graduate level, because should you achieve success within your industry and want a family you’ll be penalised heavily for doing so – and may never get to pay back that huge tax debt? Better just to coast along at average wage and drop out to have a family, the government will support you well.

Those who wish to express their displeasure over any plans to means-test the Child Care rebate should e-mail Parliamentary Secretary Maxine McKew or Minister for the Status of Women Tanya Plibersek:

Maxine.McKew.MP@aph.gov.au
Tanya.Plibersek.MP@aph.gov.au

Complaining that 24 hours was not enough notice by the Government to review and vote on the bill, Turnball said the Coalition would block the proposed legislation in both houses.

“We know that this is not going to be a popular decision but it’s the right decision,” he said.

“Someone has to stand up for fiscal discipline.”

In retaliation, Rudd has blasted Turnbull’s actions as “cheap politics”, telling the media that “Mr Turnbull’s Liberals in the Senate now stand in the way of the biggest school modernisation in history, financial support for Australian householders and support for up to 90,000 jobs.”

The package could still pass with the support of the Greens, Independants and Family First, but maybe hold off on eyeing up new appliances just yet. If anything’s going to be dropped from the bill, it may just be the cash payments.

“Those dollars can go into the bank account, or you may patriotically transform your beet, onion and cabbage savings directly into Defense Bonds.”

These days, with increasing popular concern about food safety, increasing interest in organic eating and a growing desire among more and more people to reduce their “carbon footprints” food gardening is popping into vogue again. The L.A. Times recently reported on the phenomenon, anecdotally suggesting that gardening for political, ecological or budgetary reasons (or all three) was standing in these days for the single-minded war effort of the 40s.

I found the article intriguing in part because, after having children, my insistence on organic produce increased a hundredfold and my grocery bill almost increased as much. I have shopped farmers’ markets and joined local harvest organisations but when desperate, I’ve forked over the hard, cold cash at Wholefoods as necessary.

This year, with an increased amount of outdoor space — albeit, on a third-floor apartment balcony — I’ve decided to try container gardening for food. My older child will be four next month and I am planning to involve her in the whole project from sprouting seedlings and transplanting to harvesting and preparing the food. This way, I get even more for my time, money and effort. I get educational enrichment and fun family time with my kids.

Do you garden? Do you garden with children? Do you garden for fun, profit, food security, politics or other reasons? Have you taken up gardening recently, or have you done it for years? What’s your advice for me and any other gardening newbies out there?

image: local harvest.org

Small children might not be the most helpful assistants on visits to your local political representative to lobby for your cause, but then again…maybe they can be, if they’re cute and friendly enough.

What do you think? Has becoming a parent dampened or raised your political interests? Has being a parent led you into more activism? Less? How do you suppose working full-time, part-time, from home or strictly in the home affects your sense of political power?

Image: My daughter’s protest sign

Biggest Creep

After James Madison’s death, his stepson John, a gambler, thief and alcoholic, betrayed his mother by trying to sell off his father’s personal effects.

Biggest Redneck
No, not Chelsea Clinton, who’s never been much of a country girl, despite being the daughter of the Bubba-in-Chief. The winner here is blueblood John Adams II, son of John Quincy Adams, who married his first cousin Mary Catherine Hellen in the White House in 1828.

Biggest Catfighter

Letty Tyler Semple, the stunningly beautiful daughter of James Tyler, was still grieving her mother when the president married Julia Gardiner, a young New York socialite and department store model. All Julia’s efforts to befriend Letty were rebuffed. Two decades later, Letty would accuse Julia of seducing her own husband, James A. Semple.

Most Unjustly Criticised

Robert Lincoln was a university student in the early years of the Civil War, drawing fire from some contemporaries. One editorialist fumed: “Is an education more necessary in his case than with the sons of other people? Verily, he who has done so much to call the youth of the nation to arms should let his own son set the example.” Such polemics weren’t fair to the young Lincoln, who was eager to fight. His parents, who’d already lost one child to typhoid, were understandably eager to spare their eldest. Robert did eventually prevail, serving in the Union Army right after he graduated from Harvard.

Best Use of the White House

Irwin McDowell Garfield, according to Doug Wead’s 2004 book All the Presidents’ Children (a great source for gossip and insight on this subject), used to ride down the White House staircases on his bicycle.

Wildest

Alice Roosevelt, daughter of Teddy, had a pillow with her personal motto emblazoned in needlepoint: “If you can’t say something good about someone, come sit by me.” The president, exhausted by his daughter’s many Oval Office interruptions, once said, “I can run the country or attend to Alice. I cannot possibly do both.” She chewed gum, appeared in public with a pet snake, smoked, gambled at the racetrack, shot at telegraph poles from a train and played poker. When the Roosevelts moved out of the White House in 1909, Alice buried a voodoo doll of Nelly Taft, the incoming first lady, in the White House lawn. A congressman’s wife described Alice at a White House party a couple years later, holding “the very scant skirt quite high, and when the band played, kicked about and moved her body sinuously like a shining leopard cat.”

Toughest

Teddy Roosevelt Jr.’s dad remains to this day a cultural icon of bygone real-manhood — hunter, military hero, symbol of the can-do Progressive era — that present-day presidents and candidates still pathetically attempt to emulate. A more neurotic boy might have had a breakdown living in such a shadow, but Teddy, Jr. opted instead to surpass Dad with his own military career — winning every possible award and honor that a soldier serving in the ground forces could attain. Dad’s image did have some downsides for Junior. Once, while the boy was in boarding school, he took a drubbing in a football game from some young men who said they “wanted to see if he is made of as good stuff as his father.” A newspaper headline describing the incident read: “Teddy Jr. Pummelled for Being President’s Son.”

Biggest Hippies

Though easy to mock, two women in particular seem to have been the most principled political activists of the White House children. Amy Carter, a child during her father’s presidency, grew up to attend Brown University, where she lived in a student co-op full of acidheads, and hung out with aging countercultural icon Abby Hoffman. Yet she was also serious about opposing injustice. She was arrested for protesting apartheid and CIA recruitment on campus.

Patti Davis dropped Reagan’s last name because she so disagreed with his politics: she was pro-choice, pro-gay rights and opposed to nuclear weapons. (Davis’s rebellion did go beyond the political: she also posed as a Playboy model, experimented with drugs, and wrote a book about her dysfunctional family.)

Worst Alcoholic

Sadly, there is too much competition here to name a winner. Other than death from childhood diseases — which, of course, used to be common throughout the population — the biggest danger to presidential children seems to have been alcoholism, to which Doug Wead — a former aide to George W. Bush — found that they succumb at much higher rates than the general population. According to America’s Royalty (another good source on presidential families), Martin Van Buren once wrote to his son John — a notorious partyer who eventually died of kidney failure in 1810 — “What you may regard as an innocent and harmless indulgence may take you years to overcome in the public estimation . . . I was told you were twice carried drunk from the race course.” Looking at the long list of casualties, one can’t help feel a pang of empathy for presidential-son W.’s own struggle with booze.

What a crew, right? But don’t expect so much dysfunction and mayhem from America’s next First Children. In recent years, presidential kids seem psychologically healthier, partly because their parents have been more careful to shield them from media scrutiny. Contemporary White House parents may also — mirroring trends among other well-educated parents — be more sensitive about letting the kids find their own way, compared to past presidents who obsessed about kids’ impact on their own legacy. Poor George Washington Adams, son of John Quincy Adams, was driven to alcohol (and eventually, most historians think, suicide) by his father’s relentless bullying; among other conflicts, the poor fellow wanted to study literature and poetry at Harvard, and Dad dismissed this pursuit as too trivial and girly for a presidential son. It’s hard to imagine Boomer parents like the Clintons or the Bushes pressuring their kids in this manner — not surprisingly, their kids are turning out better. Chelsea Clinton positively glowed on the campaign trail for mom this year, while both Jenna and Barbara — apparently past their DUI years — seem to be leading happy lives filled with worthy public service. All this bodes well for 2009’s incoming presidential children.

From the moment Republican presidential nominee John McCain plucked Alaska Governor and self-described hockey mum Sarah Palin from small-state obscurity to place her in the number two slot on the Republican Party ticket this November, the questions have multiplied like rabbits, leaving pundits and voters alike to wonder just how much, in this election cycle anyway, the personal is political.

Let’s start with the rumours. Within twenty-four hours of the Palin announcement last Friday, the Internet was buzzing with speculation that four-month-old Trig Palin, who has Down syndrome, was actually the governor’s grandson. The blog equivalents of Woodward and Bernstein linked to photos from both official sites (including some that were later moved, taken down, or re-captioned) and MySpace (including those of a girl calling Bristol her “SIS in law!”) to argue that Palin had undertaken a sham pregnancy to cover up for her teenage daughter, Bristol. Given published reports that Palin “simply [didn't] look pregnant” when she announced the pregnancy in March (Trig was born in April), along with a dearth of photos online showing a discernible bump and widespread rumours that Bristol had spent months out of school due to mono, the story sounded both deliciously scandalous and vaguely plausible.

Even those who didn’t believe the Trig-as-Bristol’s-baby meme found some details of the baby’s birth unsettling, what with Palin reportedly boarding an eleven-hour commercial flight home after her water broke in Texas, where she’d delivered a speech, then driving to the tiny regional hospital in Wasilla rather than give birth in Anchorage (despite the baby’s high risk status and prematurity). It takes some serious conspiracy-minded thinking to imagine dozens of hospital personnel going along with a baby switcheroo, but any reasonable woman who has had a child might find Palin’s choices around Trig’s birth questionable at best.

As the Web heated up, the professionals took over. On Monday, the day the Republican convention was set to open — and the day Hurricane Gustav took aim at New Orleans and the Gulf Coast — the Palin campaign made a statement. Seventeen-year-old Bristol, they said, was five months pregnant, expecting in December, and she was planning to marry her boyfriend and make it all official. Presented as part precious miracle, part parental cross-to-bear, the Bristol pregnancy announcement was intended and timed, according to spokesperson Tucker Eskew (the Republican operative who, while working for George W. Bush in 2000, torpedoed McCain’s primary bid in South Carolina), to “flush the toilet,” a charming political term for releasing all a candidate’s negative baggage at once. The family later promised that Bristol’s fiancé, Levi Johnston, will be attending the Republican National Convention and presumably appearing with the Palin family when she accepts the nomination Wednesday in St. Paul. That is, if she does accept; as I write, odds-makers calculate a twelve percent likelihood that Palin will drop out as the VP candidate.

In the seventy-two hours since the country’s second female Vice Presidential nominee was named, the country has ridden a roller coaster of revelations and assumptions, leaving the complex work of separating rumour from fact, distraction from revelation. In the wake of what seemed like lax vetting from McCain, as Jack Shafter of Slate pointed out, any story about Palin felt like a scoop. And given that McCain’s choice seemed calculated to both energize his party’s far-right social conservative base and appeal to any remaining disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporters, any questions raised about Palin’s children, pregnancies, pregnant children, etc., were sure to invite scrutiny for sexism and double standards.

Some, including Democratic nominee Barack Obama, argued that the family of a candidate should be off-limits period (Obama also pointed out that his mother was only eighteen when she gave birth to him). Democratic strategist James Carville, on Larry King Tuesday night, attacked Palin’s credentials while constantly deflecting questions about her family situation, focusing instead on her lack of experience and international knowledge (including the fact that she only got her passport in 2007).

But it’s Palin’s positions on social issues like abortion that make it so hard not to comment on, or at least ask questions about, her family life and choices. Palin, a member of Feminists for Life, an anti-abortion group that favours overturning Roe v. Wade, says she chose to continue a pregnancy after she was told at four months that the baby had Down syndrome. Supporters see her as someone who “walks the walk” of her conservative positions, even at a time when some 80-90% of women (including, presumably, thousands who consider themselves “pro-life”) choose to abort in the same situation. If the campaign chooses to share the Palins’ very personal story to gain favour among these voters, can it on the other hand ask for privacy as they deal with Bristol’s pregnancy? Similarly, many social conservatives see the Palins’ support of Bristol as a sign of strong family values during difficult circumstances; is it off-limits to ask whether Palin (or McCain) would consider abstinence-only education a success? How about their position on birth control, itself under attack by the lame-duck Bush administration? Or funding to health and other services for pregnant teenagers, a budget item Palin as Alaska governor?

It’s certainly true that most of those who have worried about Palin’s ability to handle her family crises while running for VP did not express similar qualms about her counterpart Joe Biden’s decision to serve his first Senate term even while his two sons recovered from the car accident that claimed the lives of their sister and mother. Yet is it fair for the campaign to suggest that any query about Palin’s qualifications for office is itself offensive and sexist? When a candidate is chosen in large part for her biography (as a friend put it, her foreign policy credential is “son in Iraq,” while her family values credential is “son with Down’s”), how can her life choices be off limits?

Certainly there are other, non-maternal scandals in Palin’s portfolio, and I’d like to see the media get to work on them. Her one-time membership in the Alaskan Independence Party, which advocates secession from the Union, is intriguing, as are the statements of her pastor, who believes that God speaks to him and allows him to read people’s minds. I would like to know more about her attempts to ban books from the Wasilla Public Library, especially since her vast executive experience is often cited to her credit.

But when even Lindsay Lohan, a lifelong expert on lousy parenting, goes online to criticise your parenting choices, this is clearly a mummy issue.

For most women, most mothers anyway, Sarah Palin’s situation will seem both alien and familiar. Most of us have never run for high office but we’ve all had to justify our work lives to our families and vice versa. The question in her case is, just what does her family life tell us about how she’d do the job she’s asking for?

What do you think about all this? How do you think Sarah Palin’s mothering relates to her potential as Vice President? Tell us in comments!

Photo courtesy JohnMcCain.com. (Seriously, this is an official press photo.)