StoptheACLU's Response

One of the frequent readers here posted a link to my post about their silly guilt-by-association attempt regarding the sex change for prisoners case in Massachusetts, and the author of their article, glib fortuna, has replied. His reply is rather amusing. He writes:

Frances Cohen IS AN ACLU VOLUNTEER ATTORNEY. I state clearly that the ACLU was involved "somehow" and never said that the case was being litigated directly by the ACLU.

But in fact, the ACLU is not "involved" - an attorney who also did work in 2005 for the ACLU is "involved". This is a bit like arguing that since ACLU staffers and mafia hit men both go to the same pizza place, the ACLU is now "involved" with the mafia.

1) Linking to the opinion of an obscure blogger that confirms your opinion is hardly digging up the "facts."

Well now, that's just insulting. While he's technically correct that linking to linking to someone's opinion is not digging up the facts, the facts in this case are not under dispute, only the illogical conclusions that this guy tried to draw from those facts. He would need to actually engage the logical argument in order to prove me wrong, and when he does that, he falls on his face quickly. And by the way, I'm hardly an obscure blogger. In fact, my blog gets considerably more hits per day than StopTheACLU does (sitemeter shows them getting 1132 hits per day, while i get over 3500 per day according to sitemeter and over 5000 per day according to Google Analytics).

2) His "argument" is SO weak: What he implies is that though an ACLU volunteer attorney is taking the case, that the ACLU would NEVER support litigation of this type and my actual research (being the first I know of to discover that this attorney is an ACLU volunteer attorney) is merely an illegitimate exercise in dot connecting.

Ah, those good ol' straw men arguments. I did not say that the ACLU would never support litigation of this type. If glib had merely said that it sounds like the sort of thing the ACLU would support, there'd be no argument. But he claimed that they are involved in the case and his argument for that was ridiculous and illogical.

Glib links to this article on the ACLU website about a case in Wisconsin, but had he bothered to read the article he would have recognized (then again, maybe he wouldn't) that the two situations are quite different. The ACLU's suit in Wisconsin did not involve the question of whether taxpayers should have to pay for such surgery, but whether the state could forbid transgendered inmates from getting any treatment at all, including even basic hormone pills. The state of Wisconsin had passed a law forbidding any and all treatment of transgendered people in prison, including those who had already begun receiving those treatments, paid for themselves, prior to getting to prison. But their medical experts said that withdrawing hormone therapy after a certain period of time was dangerous to the health of the patients, so that was a case of the state passing a policy that actually endangered the life of an inmate. That's quite a different issue from whether an inmate should have taxpayers pay for entirely optional surgery. Since I personally agree with the ACLU on the Wisconsin case, but disagree with the case in Massachusetts, there's no reason why the ACLU can't take a similar position.

I was not talking about "every position," I was talking about a particular position...and my link proves that I have once again prevailed. The ACLU DOES in fact, in spirit and in practice support this PRECISE theft-by-witholding from working men and women.

Except that the link showed nothing of the sort, as I just explained. There is a big difference between "the state can't do something that specifically endangers the lives of an inmate" and "the state has to pay for an inmate to have elective surgery".

Not only that, I'll bet the farm that before this case is over that the ACLU of MA does get involved directly if it hasn't already been funding this case for their volunteer attorney. I will find out soon enough. More to come.

But that will not make his argument now any more credible. I concede that the ACLU might be on the side of the plaintiff in this case and may later on file something on his (her?) behalf. But the only evidence that glib has at this point is a purely illogical argument based on guilt by association. If new evidence makes for a better argument later, it doesn't make his prior argument any less illogical.