Here is the BBC’s take on the recent announcement that the Boy Scouts will be permitting openly gay scouts.
The Boy Scouts of America organisation has voted to welcome openly gay scouts from January 2014, but a ban on openly gay adult scout leaders will remain in place.
At a meeting in Texas, more than 60% of the national council of 1,400 voting members supported the change.
The campaign to overturn the ban pitted conservatives against liberals opposed to what they deem outdated discrimination.
Teen Faces Felony For Lesbian Relationship
Eighteen year old Florida resident Kaitlyn Hunt currently faces fifteen years in prison for her relationship with her sixteen year old girlfriend. Here is a description of the story:
Florida teen Kaitlyn Hunt, 18, started dating her 15-year-old girlfriend last year. The older of the two teens, Kaitlyn, was arrested and subsequently charged with “sexual battery on a person 12-16 years old.” If found guilty of this crime, Kaitlyn could serve up to 15 years in prison and be required to register as a sex offender. But the assistant state attorney offered a deal: if she agrees to 2 years of house arrest and one year of probation, she can forgo trial.
The case has stirred up controversy about the application of this law: is the crime Hunt is being charged with an abuse Florida’s sexual battery law or is the Florida law itself being applied abusively?
It’s impossible to estimate how many Florida teens have violated the sexual battery statute:809,984 teens attend the state’s high schools and it’s certain that thousands of them are sexually active. Kaitlyn’s family believes the law was misapplied to their daughter for discriminatory reasons.
Demand for Bullets: Shooting Up
NPR’s Planet Money recently discussed how there has been an increased demand for ammunition, yet prices have not correspondingly increased. Here is the introduction to the story:
Sales of guns and ammunition rose after President Obama took office in 2008, and they went through the roof starting late last year, when a school shooting led to a push for new gun control measures. That’s led to a prolonged ammunition shortage, even with manufacturers running at full capacity.
A gun owner in Florida told me he has had a hard time finding .380 ammo for a small handgun for the past six months. Customers at Bob’s Little Sport Shop in southern New Jersey told me it’s hard to find ammo for some rifles and for the popular 9 mm. Even .22 rounds, the small ones, have been hard to come by.
An economics textbook would say this shouldn’t happen. It would say that Bob Viden, who has run the shop for almost 50 years, should respond to the increase in demand by raising prices. And some stores and online sellers have done just that. But, Viden told me, “We don’t want to do that. We want to be fair.”
Radio Lab recently ran a story about a child that was born at 23 weeks and 6 days about halfway through a typical pregnancy. Although this program isn’t explicitly about the abortion debate in the United States, I have included it because I believes it has implications in the debate. Here is a description of the story:
When Kelley Benham and her husband Tom French finally got pregnant, after many attempts and a good deal of technological help, everything was perfect. Until it wasn’t. Their story raises questions that, until recently, no parent had to face… and that are still nearly impossible to answer.
This hour, we spend the entire episode on the story of Kelley and Tom, whose daughter was born at 23 weeks and 6 days, roughly halfway to full term. Their story contains an entire universe of questions about the lines between life and death, reflex and will, and the confusing tug of war between two basic moral touchstones: doing no harm…and doing everything in our power to help. Kelley has written about her experience in a brilliant series of articles in the Tampa Bay Times.
Oxford Scholar on Same-Sex Marriage
Oxford legal philosopher Leslie Green discusses the moral,legal, and philosophical implications of the same-sex marriage debate on the Philosophy Bites podcast. It is one of the smartest takes on gay marriage that I have heard in awhile.