NYC judge rules polyamorous unions entitled to same legal protections as 2-person relationships

One wonders about the ramifications of this. A major privilege for married couples is concessional income tax rates. Will all parties in such a union get such a concession? And if they do, might it not encourage lots of people to claim being part of such a union? Given such considerations, a higher court could well overrule this verdict

An opinion from New York City’s eviction court has come down on the side of polyamorous unions.

In the case of West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill, New York Civil Court Judge Karen May Bacdayan reportedly concluded that polyamorous relationships are entitled to the same sort of legal protection given to two-person relationships.

West 49th St., LLC v. O’Neill involved three individuals: Scott Anderson and Markyus O’Neill, who lived together in a New York City apartment, and Anderson’s husband Robert Romano, who resided elsewhere.

Anderson held the lease, and following his death, the building’s owner argued that O’Neill had no right to renew the lease because he was a “non-traditional family member.”

The attorney for the property owner said that O’Neill’s affidavit, in which he claims himself as a non-traditional family member, is a “fairytale.”

According to LGBTQ Nation, the case returns to court after further investigation of the three individuals’ relationship.

In her decision, Judge Bacdayan highlighted the importance of a previous case and asserted that the existence of a triad – no matter how they got along – should not automatically dismiss O’Neill’s claim to non-eviction protections.

In the case at hand, Bacdayan notes how changes since 1989 play a role, including changes to the definition of “family.”

She notes the law has rapidly proceeded in recognizing that it is possible for a child to have more than two legal parents.

“Why then, except for the very real possibility of implicit majoritarian animus, is the limitation of two persons inserted into the definition of a family-like relationship for the purposes of receiving the same protections from eviction accorded to legally formalized or blood relationships?” asked Bacdayan.

“Why does a person have to be committed to one other person in only certain prescribed ways in order to enjoy stability in housing after the departure of a loved one?” she continued. “Do all nontraditional relationships have to comprise or include only two primary persons?”

Bacdayan pondered whether a person who would not meet the requirements for succession to a rent-stabilized apartment after Braschi was decided could now be evicted when they may qualify – as was concluded in Braschi – under a more inclusive interpretation of a family.

The judge notes that the “problem” with cases like Braschi and the landmark Obergefell v. Hogdes – which held that the Fourteenth Amendment guarantees the right for same-sex couples to marry and requires all states to recognize and issue marriage licenses for those couples – is that they “recognize only two-person relations.”

“Those decisions, however, open the door for consideration of other relational constructs; and, perhaps, the time has arrived,” Bacdayan said, citing a passage from Justice John Roberts’ Obergefell dissent.

“If not having the opportunity to marry serves to disrespect and subordinate gay and lesbian couples, why wouldn’t the same imposition of this disability … serve to disrespect and subordinate people who find fulfillment in polyamorous relationships?” Roberts wrote.

https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/nyc-judge-rules-in-favor-of-polyamorous-relationships/

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Vanderbilt University Medical Center suspends gender affirmation surgery for minors

Vanderbilt University Medical Center is suspending all permanent “gender affirmation surgery” for minors until further notice.

The international medical center will forgo performing any transgender surgeries for children that cannot be undone or reverted later in life, pending an internal review.

“On September 6, 2022, WPATH published a new version of its recommendations to health care professionals for treatment of transgender persons, known as SOC-8,” the university wrote in a letter to lawmakers.

The letter continued, “In light of these new recommendations, and as part of completing our internal clinical review of SOC-8 guidance in patients under 18, we will be seeking advice from local and national clinical experts. We are pausing gender affirmation surgeries on patients under age 18 while we complete this review, which may take several months.”

The statement comes in relation to calls from Tennessee lawmakers to investigate the clinic following a report from conservative activist Matt Walsh.

Republican Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee, Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and others called for an investigation after the September report, which claimed that VUMC “drugs, chemically castrates and performs double mastectomies on minors.”

The VUMC denied any wrongdoing in a statement to Fox News Digital at the time, saying that it conducts all of its care “in compliance with state law and in line with professional practice standards.”

Vanderbilt University denied involvement in the VUMC in a statement to Fox News.

A series of videos from Vanderbilt staff came to light in September, showing the medical center’s discussions surrounding the practices, which have been offered for both children and adults.

Assistant professor Dr. Shayne Taylor can be heard in a 2018 video apparently discussing “top surgery.”

“Some of our VUMC financial folks in October of 2016 put down some costs of how much money we think each patient would bring in. And this is only including top surgery, this isn’t including any bottom surgery, and it’s a lot of money,” Taylor said in the video

https://nypost.com/2022/10/08/vanderbilt-university-suspends-gender-affirmation-surgery-for-minors/

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More fraudulent history

As a general rule, it’s worth remembering that Hollywood is in the business of mythologising, rather than retelling history. The Woman King, which was released in cinemas this week, represents the latest effort at constructing a past more in tune with 21st century progressive political narratives. In the film, King Gezo of Dahomey and his loyal Amazons – an elite band of women warriors – struggle to free his kingdom and his people from the evils of the slave trade, the dominance of the Oyo empire, and the creeping tendrils of European colonisation. It’s a stirring tale of African resistance and female empowerment. It’s also deeply flawed.

King Gezo, Dahomey, and the Amazons really existed, and did fight a war with the Oyo. At that point, the parallels with reality end. The real Dahomey was a country of almost unrivalled brutality, its economy built on slavery and its religion on human sacrifice. The wars it fought had the intention of preserving the slave trade, and its conflicts with Europeans were driven by British attempts to suppress it.

In 2018, a book called Barracoon was published, containing old interviews with Cudjoe Lewis – the last survivor of the final slave ship to land in America. Lewis was kidnapped by soldiers from Dahomey in 1860, and the raid on his home town featured the kingdom’s ‘women soldiers’. The slave ship set sail in the first place following King Gezo’s resumption of slave trading – the same Amazons and the same Gezo lauded by The Woman King as proto-abolitionists.

In Hollywood’s history, Gezo is a reluctant slaver forced into the selling of prisoners to fund his purchases of weapons. In the real world, the King was an enthusiastic participant in the trade. In 1850, the British dispatched an officer to Dahomey with a simple mission: to persuade the kingdom to abandon the slave trade. He met with stout resistance. Gezo is quoted as saying:

‘I and my army are ready at all times to fight the queen’s enemies and to do anything the English government may ask me, except to give up the slave trade. No other trade is known to my people… it is the source of their glory and their wealth: their songs celebrate their victories, and the mother lulls the child to sleep with notes of triumph over an enemy reduced to slavery. Can I, by signing a treaty, change the sentiments of a whole people?’

This quote reflects the complex reality of slavery in West Africa; far from being solely an imposition by Europeans on African states, the system lasted for so long because it was mutually profitable for indigenous kingdoms to engage in it too. The eventual British colonisation of West Africa was driven in part by the difficulty of eradicating the trade once public sentiment in Britain moved against it.

This complexity is reflected in Gezo’s real-world relationships with European slave traders. In the film, a Portuguese-trading slaver known as Santo Ferreira – seeking slaves to send to Brazil – plays the role of antagonist. In reality, far from waging war on slavers, Gezo enlisted their help in seizing the throne. Gezo – then Prince Madagungung – was second in line after his brother, Adandozan. Francisco Felix de Sousa, a Brazilian based in the port of Whydah, financed Gezo’s revolution and was rewarded with the position of ‘Chacha’ (principal trading agent) in the region. De Sousa’s descendants remain prominent in modern-day Benin, counting among their number former presidents and first ladies; the title of ‘Chacha’ is still handed down along the clan’s patriarchs.

This reliance and debt to de Sousa, in combination with the sheer wealth the trade brought him, partly explains why Gezo was so reluctant to end the trade. And, in turn, why the city of Abeokuta had to go. Because the curious thing about The Woman King and its glorification of Dahomey is that there really was a kingdom which resisted African slavers. It’s just that the city in question was Abeokuta, and the slavers it resisted were Gezo and his Amazons.

Abeokuta was home to a large population of liberated slaves, and did not generally participate in the wider trade. It was not a paradise; like other West African states, the people of the city kept slaves. However, this was not comparable to the cruelty shown in Western plantations; they worked in agricultural labour, and the notes of one European observer suggest a greater resemblance to the slaves of Rome than those doomed souls forced to cross the Atlantic.

When Dahomey eventually assaulted the city, it was repelled. The war on Abeokuta was partly motivated by the willingness of Europeans to engage in arms sales to the city, which was allied to abolitionist Britain. This defeat did not result in a lasting change of heart; eventually Gezo returned to slave raiding. This time, there would be no coming back: a sniper friendly to Abeokuta killed the slaver King, sparking another round of conflict between the city and Dahomey.

The story told by The Woman King is both less complicated and less interesting than the reality. Wouldn’t the story of Dahomey in full – its complicated relationships with Britain, France, and neighbouring kingdoms, the rule of Gezo, the role of de Sousa – be fascinating to see play out? And wouldn’t it be better to set aside political mythology and examine the world as it was?

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-woman-kings-flawed-history-lesson/

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The Australian War Memorial represents ALL of Australia's ethnicities, singling out none

I couldn’t agree more with the need to provide a place to acknowledge the conflicts between the original inhabitants of this continent and those who settled here from elsewhere in the late 18th Century. But the Australian War Memorial is not that place, and it is wrong to make it a political football.

When I was a child, I wanted to wear my great-great uncle’s slouch hat to a fancy dress ball at school. My grandfather was livid – how dare I disrespect the uniform! I have that same slouch hat today. It, and my own slouch hat, are succumbing to the inevitable forces of time.

Yet the sanctity of military service was not lost on four generations of my family who wore the uniform. While in recent times, that very sanctity appears to be an anachronism; a remnant of a time gone by, a lesson well-learnt through death and destruction, supported by the faith that such an atrocity, like the Great War, will never happen again.

Challenges to the idea of what it is to be Australian have somewhat turned against the work of Dr Bean, that eminent historian who is largely responsible for creating the ANZAC legend and manifesting it as that sacred place we call the Australian War Memorial.

Why sacred? Stand under the dome next to the tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Look at the stained glass and mosaics. Read the values inscribed therein. This space touches all those who enter in the way an old soldier explained to me:

‘All soldiers believe in God. When caught in an ambush, they all pray.’

While the ideal society eludes humanity, Australia has it pretty good. This is in no small part due to the sacrifices of our soldiers.

Last week, I was in Seoul at a seminar about the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea. A Korean general said to me that he was most grateful for the sacrifice of 340 Australians who lost their lives while contributing to Korea’s freedom. He gestured to the skyline of Seoul’s magnificent development, humbly hoping that Korea’s peaceful democratic society was a worthy tribute to our digger’s sacrifice. It made me think deeply about those same sacrifices.

If you knew my paternal great-grandmother who worked in the munitions factory at St Marys (she was so happy when the Rising Sun badge was returned to the brim of the slouch hat) or sat a moment with Mrs Stewart (a second world war widow who lived nearby and once gave me a ‘shilling’ after she told me the story of her long-lost husband through her tears), you would know that war is blind.

It strikes all – regardless of social constructions – the devastation wreaks havoc on participants, victims, witnesses, and conscientious objectors alike. But you cannot always appease an aggressor. We can hope for a better world, but appeasement has never proven adequate. Sometimes you have to fight.

And fighting has its costs. The photographs of Mrs Stewart’s uniformed dead husband and brothers that adorned her mantel still haunt me to this day. I felt like Pip stumbling upon the wedding feast that never was. Mrs Stewart lost her life, back then, too.

But they were post-federation Australian soldiers. Not settlers. Not troopers. Not colonists. Australians. They were united in purpose.

When I met my maternal great-grandmother, we asked her where we’d come from. She said we were Cherokee Indian. Twenty years later, we learned that our maternal heritage is Kamilaroi. She had lived that lie to avoid being sent to the mission and carried it to her deathbed.

George, one of my grandfather’s mates who lived next door at the RSL veterans’ village in Cairns, was an Aboriginal digger and a veteran of New Guinea. He liked to paint. But he was an Australian digger through and through. (I daresay the antics he and my grandfather got up to provide sufficient empirical evidence to support that fact.)

And if you ever heard the glorious harmonies rise up when Charlie Company of 51FNQR let off steam, you’ll feel the generations of pride of the many Torres Strait Islanders like Sarpeye Josie who served to protect their home and continue to do so.

These are not stories about colonisers or the victims of colonisation. These are stories of Australians who served and continue to serve to protect their homeland. This spirit is what the Australian War Memorial commemorates.

Australians have experienced war and peace, prosperity and depression, recessions we had to have and circumstances we did not want. We have lived lies; we have faced up to truths. Or not – and there is plenty of scope for more truth-telling. But we should never forget that the Brisbane Line was a last-ditch attempt to protect these very privileges. That time is still in living memory for many among us.

We can criticise the government, we can criticise politicians, we can criticise our institutions. But such freedoms imply responsibilities to support that very liberty.

The problem stems from the habitual use of our individual freedoms to say whatever we like about politics as a safety valve, to let off steam. While doing so got us through the pandemic, in light of the changing nature of geopolitics, it has become a bad habit that we now take for granted and potentially to our own detriment.

The Australian War Memorial is a symbol of the social cohesion we so desperately need, rather than a battleground for the polarised community we appear to have become.

Our island home can only be breached if we open the gates from within.

The Australian War Memorial does not sanctify war. The lives of all Australians who served Australia make it holy. Not necessarily in a religious sense, but holy in that it honours the sacrifice given by those who believed in something more. Australians who believed in something more.

It is a mistake to allow one of the central symbols of Australia’s national identity to become embroiled in politics. I urge caution on all sides of politics should we neglect our duty by opening the gates and cutting off our nose to spite our face.

Let us learn from the past, let us embrace the good and the bad. Let us acknowledge colonial times and conflict appropriately, but somewhere else.

Let the sacrifice of the many First Nations diggers have their place in the history of this great federation where it rightfully belongs. Let the Australian War Memorial tell its stories. Let it tell the stories of my great-grandmothers, of Mrs Stewart, of George, of my old comrade-in-arms Sarpeye Josie, and all those who give up their freedoms so we may have ours.

And let all Australians hear them.

https://spectator.com.au/2022/10/the-australian-war-memorial-is-not-a-political-football/

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My other blogs. Main ones below:

http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)

http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)

http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)

http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)

http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)

http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs

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