to the last sentence.
throw a bit of trans in there and wooohooo.
would hurt the small minds of cops everywhere.

I thought of you while watching this on the news. Pressure from the women?s groups and the look on his face as if discussed to even have to say the word women, The arrogance of these people astonish me.

God -- and we haven't even touched on the issue that what you do in your private life DOES matter, an increasingly so. There are no special dispensations for law enforcement officers. If a blogger gets fired for blogging on her "private" time -- or someone can be questioned by an employer about attending a political function in their OFF TIME etc. etc. and so on ... what CENTURY does O'Hara live in?

We've been chatting about the fact that Tiger Woods extramarital affairs raise more outrage than incidents of spousal/partner abuse. Granted, there is plenty wrong with infidelity and very real dangers of exposure to STDs if spouse is unaware of the other relationships, but what's a source of greater "betrayal" of a commitment/marital vows -- infidelity or assault?

I am going to disagree with this article in a way which I hope will be constructive.

The problem we face is that the moral and ethical underpinning of saying that FOP has a special obligation to women is on shaky ground.

It is the same shaky ground that allows Obama to refuse to do anything about Don't Ask, Don't Tell, to continue Bush administration discrimination against various groups using taxpayer funds through the so-called "faith-based initiatives", and allows congress to pass a health care bill designed primarily to increase profits of health insurance companies.

I support full and equal human and civil rights for all people. Obviously, FOP doesn't, nor does Obama.

If they did, then there'd be no argument.

If you support full and equal human and civil rights for all people, then you are required to treat everyone equally and you can't make arguments against same-sex marriage, or ignore the specific needs of specific groups required to achieve full and equal human and civil rights for all people.

ENDA, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Violence Against Women Act are examples of legislation needed to make full and equal human and civil rights for all people a reality.

According to the UN Charter on Human Rights, health care is a human right. The U. S. is a signatory and the only industrialized nation that is in violation of this charter with reference to health care.

If full and equal human and civil rights for all were the yardstick by which we measure health care reform, it would be blatantly obvious that anything less than 100% coverage is unacceptable.

My view is this: We should ally with those who accept the principal of full and equal human and civil rights for all to make full and equal human and civil rights a reality for everyone and to specifically work on the issues relating to those groups that ally with us.

Full and equal human and civil rights is the foundation for everything we are working towards and our job should be to frame issues in that light so that FOP is stuck with protecting everyone, including women, or having to argue that women don't deserve full and equal human rights.

It's a lot easier to divide us and argue against us when we are not explicitly standing on a unified foundation of full and equal human and civil rights for all -- and it gives us a basis for requiring our allies to toe the line and for determining which groups will receive our support, money, and labor, and which won't:

If you are willing to work for full and equal human and civil rights for all, we will support your group, work for your election, etc. If not, we're not interested.

I think we are saying the same thing. My comment wasn't intended to say that women deserve special protection, simply the same protections as the "public" and that half of the public happen to be women. Thus, dismissing acts of violence against women by police officers in their personal lives sends a message about those same acts perpetuated by other men to which police officers respond.

Women deserve police protections because they are full and equal citizens in this City. Domestic violence is a crime overwhelmingly perpetuated against women and thus the societal value for women is embedded in the societal (and police) response to the epidemic of this crime.

Great post, Geoff.

That's what I meant about disagreeing, soft of.

I think the focus needs to be on asking the question, "Do you support full and equal human and civil rights for all people."

If the person does, they're stuck having to uphold that principle. If they don't, they demonstrate their bigotry.

Either way, we win.