Put on Your Editor’s Cap

Imagine you work for Reuters and this study crosses your desk.

Conclusion.The key factor associated with acquisition of HPV was lifetime number of sex partners, whereas circumcision was the most significant determinant for clearance of any HPV infection and oncogenic HPV infection.

You deem that worthy of a write-up. How do you write that up? If you highlighted the greatest risk factor the study identified, you’d be thinking like a responsible journalist. You’d also be unqualified to work at Reuters, apparently, as the story (run by Fox News) shows:

Men who are circumcised may be more protected against persistent infection with the virus that causes genital warts, a new study suggests.

The study, which followed 285 men ages 18 to 44, found that among those who became infected with the human papillomavirus (HPV), circumcised men were more likely to have their immune systems “clear” the virus by the end of the 18-month study.

When it came to the risk of acquiring the virus in the first place, the biggest risk factor was having a large number of lifetime sex partners, the researchers report in The Journal of Infectious Diseases.

The story waits until the third paragraph to present the largest finding, and then it’s only as an afterthought. The key lesson we’re supposed to take is that circumcision appeared to protect men. That’s bias, a conclusion seeking support.

Yet, notice how the article must clarify. The risk is identified “among those who became infected”. Isn’t that a useful key? We know how men (and women) can protect themselves. Don’t sleep with lots of people. Wear a condom. Actions have consequences.

If adult men want to use this study to justify circumcising themselves, I don’t care. I think it’s unnecessary because there are better ways to protect themselves. Someone else might think differently. But that’s not the point of headlines like this. It seeks to push infant circumcision. “See, it has medical benefits,” proponents claim. It’s propaganda wrapped in the appearance of good intentions.

Fiscal Irresponsibility (D-US) replaced Fiscal Irresponsibility (R-US)

And the government-as-parent continues:

President Obama warned the nation’s mayors yesterday that he will hold officials at all levels of government accountable for how they spend federal stimulus money, pledging to “call them out” if the funding is wasted on projects that do not generate jobs for the struggling economy.

Politicians are incapable of being shamed, so this is pointless. There’s also real money involved, so I’m not comforted knowing that waste will be dealt with through stern words. More to the point, this:

“If you’re seeking to simply fund a personal agenda at the expense of creating jobs and using taxpayer money to do it, the president will call that out and stop it,” press secretary Robert Gibbs said yesterday. “That’s true for agencies and members of this administration. That’s true for governors. That’s true for mayors. That’s true for anybody that might take part in any amount of this funding.”

How is this an option? The government will spend $800 billion. If we’re to believe that it’s money well spent, then there should already be a plan for every penny. I don’t believe that, of course, but we’re still supposed to trust what is clearly a plan based on the belief that money spent is money well spent. That’s the Keynesianism we’re stupidly embracing. And the Obama administration is saying that we have to spend the money without extended consideration, but if it’s not spent well, he’ll call out those responsible. The one person out of his line of ire is himself. An accident, I’m sure.

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This popped up today, tying uncomfortably to the previous story:

Less than a week after signing the largest economic stimulus package in U.S. history, President Obama is turning his attention to the nation’s long-term financial condition with an unprecedented effort to rein in government spending.

To kick off the effort, the new president has invited about 130 people to the White House State Dining Room on Monday for a “fiscal responsibility” summit, a marathon session on long-term budget-busters such as Social Security, Medicare, federal purchasing and tax policy.

Perhaps the time to do that was before shoving $800 billion out of the Treasury as quickly as possible. But it’s okay, a room full of partisans should be able to hammer out their differences in a marathon session. We’ll be saved!

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On a less comforting note, I’m starting to sense that press secretary Robert Gibbs, at least, views President Obama as an economic dictator. I am not reassured.

The Bully With the Guns Always Wins

CNBC reporter Rick Santelli gave an inspired rant in response to the Obama housing plan I criticized here. It was a masterpiece, as you can see in the video at the end of this entry. The Obama administration disagrees:

Apparently someone in the White House was. In response, Gibbs attacked Santelli by name repeatedly at a news briefing, accusing him of not reading the president’s housing plan and mocking the former derivatives trader as an ineffective spokesman for the little guy.

“I’m not entirely sure where Mr. Santelli lives or in what house he lives,” Gibbs told reporters in a derisive tone. “Mr. Santelli has argued — I think quite wrongly — that this plan won’t help everyone. This plan will help . . . drive down mortgage rates for millions of Americans.”

Later, Gibbs added: “I would encourage him to read the president’s plan and understand that it will help millions of people, many of whom he knows. I’d be more than happy to have him come here and read it. I’d be happy to buy him a cup of coffee, decaf.”

I have two responses. First, Gibbs should not be engaging in this type of rhetoric. Obama is President of the United States, not just President of the United States’ Economically Illiterate. He – and his representatives – should refrain from behaving in this manner. It’s possible to disagree without mockery.

Second, if the President’s plan insists on the 1.05 mortgage-to-market-value ratio requirement, he’s right that it will not help most speculators. However, as I wrote earlier this week, it won’t help anyone other than those not in distress. I don’t concede that we should help those in distress, but if we should, the people who qualify for the President’s plan offer the least bang for the national buck. Forget politics, that’s bad policy.

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Video link via Kip’s tweet.

Clarifying Circumcision Facts, Part 1

I’ve been in an on-and-off circumcision debate on Twitter recently with an individual named NotStyro. (My Twitter link.) I find the debate useful because I find his responses inadequate. However, 140 characters isn’t enough to debunk the flaws in the link he typically provides. I have a different qualm, but first, a representative tweet from NotStyro on the subject.

just to inform, not debate… [link redacted] …let me know if you would like more information

I find this understandable within the limitations of Twitter, but unsatisfactory overall because the site he links makes this offer:

Why should you consider circumcision ?

With the anti-circumcision propaganda on the net, consider the following facts:

If parents will make a choice (that isn’t ethically theirs), I want more than a list of seven facts of questionable legitimacy. To the extent these facts are facts, they still do not support what NotStyro recently promised a father questioning his son’s pending circumcision to go forward with the surgery:

… he’ll appreciate your decision later in life.

As he’s been in our debate, NotStyro is indifferent to the reality that men, including me, do not appreciate that decision by our parents. This is our fundamental disagreement. I demand only that each individual retain the choice to decide about his body. NotStyro argues differently. But we can’t get to it until we agree on facts.

There’s too much information in his link for one post, so I’m going to break this up into its logical parts. The list NotStyro links to has seven items. Each item will get an entry. Once I’ve posted an entry, feel free to debate (i.e. defend) a position. No e-mail or web address is necessary to comment. I’m establishing only one rule beyond normal etiquette: inappropriate links will be deleted. Most links will stay if they’re defended. (No canned answers, please; address the items from the list.) But I will not allow a direct link to the list of seven items under any circumstance. The site is a pro-circumcision fetish site, complete with circumcision fiction. I will not promote it. If you must visit it (NSFW), follow the link through NotStyro’s tweet above. Anyone may participate, of course. To NotStyro directly, I’m asking for more information.

On to item #1:

1. The foreskin increases the risk of male and female infections.

  • ‘Current new-born circumcision may be considered a preventative health measure analogous to immunisation in that side effects and complications are immediate and usually minor, but benefits accrue for a lifetime’

“May be considered” is a claim, not a fact. Nor is infant male circumcision analogous to immunization. The threats are distinct. Unvaccinated, I could catch measles by simply going out in public. I am not going to become HIV-positive without specific sexual behavior I can control, regardless of whether or not I have my foreskin.

There is a further complication to the comparison. The recent, actively-touted studies looked only at female-to-male HIV transmission. This is the least common transmission among those involving men. For example:

Female-to-male HIV infection was not observed in long term stable monogamous relationships. These results emphasize the relative uni-directionality of heterosexual transmission in non-promiscuous couples.

That suggests what we already know. HIV is transmitted through promiscuous, unprotected sex. Pretending that circumcision is a significant benefit when neither of those conditions exists is wishful thinking. Circumcised or not, if an individual behaves recklessly, there are consequences. That is the lesson. Parents will be more successful at keeping their sons (and daughters) safe from HIV if they teach them about responsible sexual behavior. No medical expert proposes that circumcised men may now ignore condoms. Circumcision is superfluous and unnecessary. This is particularly true in the United States, where HIV infections result primarily from IV drug use and male-to-male transmission. Circumcision is irrelevant to the former and ineffective to the latter.

The rest of the claim is questionable, as well. Minor complication is subjective, as determined by the victim. You may think a skin tag is “minor”; I would not. I prefer to think of complications as treatable and not treatable. In this case, yes, most complications are treatable. That raises the obvious ethical question of imposing surgical risk on a non-consenting, healthy individual, which I will save for another post in this series.

But what about those complications that are not treatable? These can be lesser problems such as tight, painful erections. If we move up the spectrum, we can discuss males who lose portions or all of their glans. Are we still in the territory of “minor”? What if we go to the extreme, death. It happens. I won’t pretend it happens often, but how many times may it happen before we suggest that maybe healthy boys dying from by-definition unnecessary surgery is unacceptable? The lack of medical need demands the answer be 0. It isn’t, which demonstrates that we do not rely on facts when circumcising healthy infant males.

Continuing from the list:

  • Circumcision reduces the risk of vaginal infections.

Probably, based on some of the studies I reviewed. If, of course, the results were properly controlled and the results are transferrable to industrialized nations. Maybe, maybe not, but I’ll concede the point for argument’s sake. This is a factual claim. So what?

The underlying issue here is the ethical flaw. It is unethical to alter a non-consenting individual’s body to reduce the risk that his future partners – if he is heterosexual – will suffer vaginal infections. That is a decision for him to make. He may include his female partners in the decision-making process. But that is within only his discretion. All else is a speculative guess. A speculative guess involving another’s healthy body is indefensible, even if his parents make the speculative guess.

To put it in perspective, a male can’t cause vaginal infections if we prohibit him from having sex with women. He can’t cause vaginal infections if we remove his entire penis. These are extreme, ridiculous hypotheticals. But they demonstrate that just because we can do something does not mean we should. There is more involved in permitting parental proxy decisions than just the fact that Action X generates Result Y.

Whether or not this generates a debate, and how long that debate transpires, will determine when part 2 appears. I will continue the series, regardless.

Laissez-Faire Capitalism can’t fail before we try it.

I’ve never felt inferior because I earned my MBA from a school ranked lower than 13th. This Forbes essay by Nouriel Roubini, a professor of economics at NYU’s Stern Business School, reminds me to continue that confidence. After a rundown of recent economic facts, Professor Roubini states:

This severe economic and financial crisis is now also leading to a severe backlash against financial globalization, free trade and the free-market economic model.

I’ll interrupt here to say that I agree with this statement, although those lashing out are ignorant of what they rebuke. That includes Professor Roubini, who next states:

To paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime–apart from the alternatives. However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market-economy capitalism, it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism. Namely, the laissez-faire, unregulated (or aggressively deregulated), Wild West model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation, supervision of financial markets and proper provision of public goods by governments.

I have two words for Professor Roubini: Sarbanes-Oxley.

Having Enron and WorldCom go bankrupt, with the accompanying loss of shareholder investment, is the free market. Having executives go to jail is regulation. As a libertarian I am not reflexively against regulations that make the market more transparent. Regulations have unintended, often negative consequences, as Professor Roubini quickly glosses over, yet I don’t consider the idea of the SEC an abomination. But to pretend that we are in some Wild West model of capitalism suggests two conclusions: Either Professor Roubini is incompetent, or he’s engaging in hyperbolic nonsense bordering on propaganda.

I’m betting on the latter:

It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed. It relied on several factors: self-regulation that, in effect, meant no regulation; market discipline that does not exist when there is euphoria and irrational exuberance; and internal risk-management models that fail because, as a former chief executive of Citigroup put it, when the music is playing, you’ve got to stand up and dance.

The “Anglo-Saxon” model of supervision and regulation is hardly self-regulation. If the free market has failed, how can we explain the massive unwinding of the complex, poorly designed mortgage securitization market? People who invested unwisely and often ignorantly are being punished through the loss of their wealth. Does Professor Roubini believe the mortgage securitization will reappear anytime soon without new regulations to control it? Pain is a powerful motivator. The market is working exactly as it should be, except Congress and the President are determined to reduce the pain of those who made mistakes, intentional and unintentional. Incentives matter. Regulation skews incentives. We ignore that at our own peril.

Going back to Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), I deal with it as a financial software consultant. It drives me insane with the ridiculousness it requires. It is a burden with very little obvious benefit. Every decision we make must run through the SOX team. Every mistake must be documented in detail to verify that it was an honest mistake rather than an attempt at deception. Something as trivial as having extra, unintended access to the financial system must be documented in detail beyond the logs clearly showing the user ID never accessed the system. It’s a Chicken Little response that makes politicians feel proud for Doing Something, but the regulation actively diminishes productivity. And it assumes every accountant is a criminal.

Our modern day Wild West exists only in the halls of Congress.

The Promise and Spectre of Liberaltarianism

In a comment to yesterday’s post on liberaltarianism, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen’s Mark suggests that I may not grasp the full purpose of the proposed alliance. This is possible, since there’s much dialogue right now about it that I haven’t read. But I don’t think so, as I’ll try to explain.

He’s right to challenge me, though, because I should delve deeper into the topic. This is the only possible alliance in the near-term political future for libertarians. I’d accept it as a practical step to something better than we have now, if I thought it would be successful. I try not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good, which is part of the reason I’m not an anarcho-capitalist. But I don’t think it would be successful. Maybe I’ve let my natural skepticism slide too far into cynicism?

I think Mark and I agree that libertarianism is distinct from both liberalism and conservatism as we know it today, and that modern liberalism is closer to libertarianism than modern conservatism. This point seems obvious, although I wonder whether liberals would agree if they thought about it. And I don’t think liberals will treat a potential alliance the way libertarians would. I don’t mean to imply that libertarians are more noble, but in an alliance, liberals have political power and libertarians mostly don’t. Liberals would have to cede some power to libertarians. I don’t see that happening.

Sure, it makes sense for liberals in the long-term if we’re correct that libertarians are a powerful voting bloc with good ideas. I want to leave aside the question of whether or not we are a powerful voting bloc for this; I’ll assume we are and that liberals agree. I don’t think they’ll conclude we’re right in ideas because there are legitimate philosophical differences. Do libertarians give up the individual or do liberals give up the collective? Who concedes? That’s a dead-end to me.

In the short term, I think the prospects are worse. Liberals have the White House and Congress. They don’t need us. Just as Republicans demonstrated during the middle (and latter) part of the Bush years, partisanship almost guarantees arrogance when one’s party has control of both. Liberals are already showing signs of this. It takes a principled statesman to overcome that. I don’t need to question principles to suggest that our politicians aren’t statesmen in that way. Partisanship corrupts principle, so until we have a more diverse party system, liberals have a party identity and we don’t. (We mostly don’t want one, of course, which exacerbates the problem.)

I don’t think liberals want to go back to their classical liberal roots. And, although we have more in common with today’s liberals, libertarians should’ve learned from the ongoing death spiral of the Republican Party that being a pawn will not advance our position to any worthwhile degree.

That is not to say that Mark’s purpose is flawed. In this recent post he states:

Simply put, the promise of liberaltarianism is that it can help to build a libertarianism that is more true to its classically liberal roots. …

If the call is for ways to shed some of the modern Right’s infection into libertarian thinking, yes, I’m behind that. Primarily I’m thinking of the paleolibertarian and the false promise of Ron Paul. That needs to go, and quickly. Liberty is more than just being able to buy an unregistered gun.

But, again, I don’t think looking to liberals will be successful. Mark offers an example:

So where are some of the areas where libertarianism has been corrupted by its affiliation with the political Right? One area is in what tends to be our reflexive opposition to labor unions; there is a false assumption that labor unions exist virtually entirely because of government intervention and that they are therefore inherently coercive. …

To an extent I am guilty of this. But when I think about my opposition, it’s not to unionization. That process is structurally unsound in the 21st century, but the ability of people to freely organize is within my concept of liberty. Voluntary associations I don’t like shouldn’t be a problem if they don’t harm me. The idea of a union fits that.

The reality, however, is different. My problem with looking to liberals as we reevaluate our reflexive opposition starts and ends with card check. It’s want thing to encourage free association and another to legislate the form. Modern liberals do not seem to want unions to be voluntary associations. Am I going to find common economic ground with someone who supports the Employee Free Choice Act?

Mark seems to agree, because he writes:

The trouble with all of these blind spots is that they largely leave libertarians on the sidelines when it comes to debate on relevant issues, reduced to more or less relaying the plays called by the political Right. So, instead of arguing for at least a partial repeal of Taft-Hartley, which would actually advance libertarian ends, as an alternative to EFCA (which really is a terrible law from a libertarian standpoint), we are reduced to union-bashing, resisting EFCA (and thereby neither advancing nor hurting the cause of individual liberty) without offering any kind of alternative.

This is where I think the issue rests. How do we as libertarians stop hindering our chances for eventual success? Project management isn’t Step 1, start, Step 2, finish. Right now, we’re behaving more like Underpants Gnomes than political tacticians. So, yeah, we have work to do. Whatever we propose as Step 2, will liberals agree to negotiate? Again, why should they?

In short, we need to scrub the anti-liberty nonsense from libertarianism by challenging those who spew it. While we accomplish that, if it can be accomplished, we need better marketing ideas. We need to offer constructive solutions, as Mark did with Taft-Hartley and EFCA. We need to sell our vision. That’s Step 2, not an alliance with people who don’t share that vision. This makes our task harder, but it has a chance of success.

Why I Am Not A Liberaltarian

From James Poulos:

How many hipsters are too poor to party? The liberaltarian bargain, with the state as cool parent, does have a first principle: we should help create a popular ‘private sphere’ that can, should, and does expand as costs are socialized and power is centralized.

It is the allure of this promise, already planted within the popular culture, which is making lots of young people more liberal and more libertarian — this principle, and nothing else.

Spontaneous order, centrally planned? If that oxymoron is the offer, count me out.

Okay, count me out anyway, because “liberaltarianism” is little more than progressives attempting to sell economic errors to libertarians because we allegedly agree on social issues. We don’t agree because liberty is about more than opposition to the current American Right. Libertarianism concerns itself with liberty for each individual. Much like today’s conservatism, liberalism seeks its preferred collective outcomes, to be imposed on the unwilling minority. All partisanship is the mistaken belief that everyone should play for your team. It assumes the defeated would like this, if only they weren’t so <insert negative personal attribute>. That’s not liberty.

But I reject the idea more vehemently and vocally if a government-created private sphere is what I should expect. I think it is.

Link via Andrew Sullivan.

Homes are undervalued by $6,000?

Rather than try an idea that might work and has the added benefit of extending liberty, President Obama unveiled his $75,000,000,000 plan to rescue us from the foreclosure crisis. Presumably Obama’s plan is precise and complicated, but Doug Mataconis has a succinct explanation at The Liberty Papers for why this plan will fail. His entire post is worth reviewing because he gives a concise summary of the various incentive problems involved, but his basic, widely-applicable conclusion is this:

Most of all, this part of the plan seems to be aimed at the idea that the government must reinflate the housing bubble so that housing prices return to the “correct” level.

Here’s a clue, though. The only “correct” price for your house is the price that someone is willing to pay for it. Today.

Exactly. As much as I’d love to be able to sell my house for what I paid for it in 2005, that’s not where the market is at in 2009. That is unfortunate, but the only way the government can help me is to get out of the way and allow the market to stabilize itself. They’re self-correcting that way. It’s a little lot painful, yes, and, although I bought what I could afford rather than what the bank was willing to lend me, I still made my choice despite the warnings. Lesson learned. And I wish it wasn’t so, but pain is how most people will have to learn. Buffeting them from that only prolongs the faulty thinking.

Unfortunately, even in the misguided belief that propping up the market is an effective method for stabilizing it, President Obama’s plan ignores the reality of the market. It appears to be nothing more than Do Something at its worst.

“The plan I’m announcing focuses on rescuing families who have played by the rules and acted responsibly: by refinancing loans for millions of families in traditional mortgages who are underwater or close to it,” Obama said at a speech in Mesa, Ariz. The White House released an early transcript.

Those of us who played by the rules are those of us who bought what we could afford and continue to pay for what is not worth what we owe. We don’t need or want to be “rescued”. Giving me money that you will extract from me later through taxes is hardly a bargain worth applauding.

If the plan rescues people like me:

Finance companies cannot currently refinance a loan if the homeowner owes more than 80 percent of the home’s value. But under the plan, Fannie and Freddie — which were taken over by the government last year — would be able to refinance a mortgage if it does not exceed 105 percent of the current value of the property. For example, if the value of the borrower’s property is $200,000, but the homeowner owes $210,000, he or she could still qualify for the program. The program will not launch until March 4.

The housing market in America is far worse than a 1.05 loan-to-current-value ratio. I’d flip cartwheels up-and-down my street if I had a 1.05 ratio. I think most people with negative equity are in the same situation. (If the administration knows something to the contrary, now might be a good time to provide that information.) This plan hardly seems a response to that, under the not-conceded belief that the government should get further involved. President Obama wants to add further government involvement and debt to rescue people who would lose no more than 5% if they sell today? A homeowner who can’t cover a 5% loss shouldn’t own a home. A homeowner with a ratio larger than 1.05 will apparently see no benefit.

Maybe the theory is that propping up home values by the claimed $6,000 will grease the market into action. That’s unlikely, at best, but it’s not the claim the administration is making. This plan gets us nowhere other than $75 billion further in debt, with a more-entrenched, market-distorting incentive system.

When a politician offers to save the economy, he will seek to destroy it first.

GM and Chrysler are back at the federal trough, this time hoping to extract billions more in “loans” from American taxpayers. This is not a surprise. David Z asks the right questions at no third solution:

What happens when April comes around, and General Motors still doesn’t have a viable future? Do they get more money? At what point does the nonsense end? At what point do the politicians recognize and accept the fact that continually taking money from the taxpayers and giving it to companies like General Motors in massive corporate welfare schemes can’t ever work? …

Giving money to Detroit auto makers is nothing more than a lesson in how to destroy wealth. First, we destroyed $17.4 billion. Next we’ll destroy at least $14 and probably $21.6 billion, as the article states. At some point we (i.e. Congress) need to realize that these companies are dead. Walking dead, but they’re dead. Treat the original “loans” as a sunk cost, hope to recover something in bankruptcy, and move on with a commitment to never make that mistake again with someone else’s money.

That won’t happen, as suggested by the Obama administration yesterday.

“The president of the United States wants to see a strong and vibrant auto industry that’s employing tens of thousands of hardworking Americans and building the cars of tomorrow for Americans right now. That’s what this president wants to see,” Obama spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters aboard Air Force One.

President Obama apparently believes that wishing makes it so. It doesn’t. The rational economic perspective would remove obstacles to a strong and vibrant free market that deploys – and redeploys – its finite resources in the most productive manner possible. Employment of hardworking Americans (and Chinese and Germans and Brazilians and …) would follow.

But the president isn’t interested in a rational economic perspective because the president, like all the politicians in Congress, is interested only in political games. Watching as winners and losers emerge based on merit is too risky. Picking the winners and losers himself better enhances his power. That’s what this president wants to see. A free market without centrally-planned allocation of resources won’t provide that, so it mustn’t be allowed.

Is this a defensible thought-process?

I want to pass along an e-mail sent to David Wilson of Stop Infant Circumcision Society. There is rough language throughout, but it demonstrates a valuable point. [sic everywhere]:

I’ve seen the nasty ass excuse of a dick you rocket pop weilding bastards have I love my circumsized penis it is the prettiest dick I’ve ever laid my eyes on it doesn’t smell if I miss a shower either you sick fuck why would you want to inflict a circumcision on a full grown man any way have you seen the process fuck you my dick is gorgeous I love my wang and I sure as fuck wouldn’t of made the decision myself as an adult what kind of a fucked up world are you trying to create where an eighteen year old has to decide weather a mental scar like that is worth hygene

I am told that the choice to circumcise only male children for non-medical reasons is a parental right. This is objectively wrong, and this e-mailer is the too-typical anecdotal proof. I will posit that he is not qualified to make medically necessary decisions for a child, so medically unnecessary, permanent decisions should be prohibited. Despite this easy-to-understand truth, he is allowed to circumcise a male child with this thinking because no politician or judge has the courage to reject the status quo and defend the individual rights of all children. Our society is not yet sane on this topic.