Responses to the iSideWith Political Survey (Incomplete)

     What follows are my responses to the 157 questions which, as of July 2019, comprise the political questionnaire at www.isidewith.com.
     That survey can be accessed at http://www.isidewith.com/elections/2020-presidential-quiz.
     My responses to this questionnaire should be considered as my platform for my upcoming run in the 2020 race for election to the U.S. House of Representatives from Illinois's 10th district.

National Security Issues

     1. Should the president be able to authorize military force against al-Qaeda without congressional approval?

     No / No, Congress should approve all military conflicts.

     Congress should repeal the 2001 Authorization for the Use of Military Force (A.U.M.F.), as well as the 1973 War Powers Act, as soon as possible. This will help Congress to regain and retain its duly delegated right to approve or deny the authorization of all uses of force in which the United States military and/or its contractors participate, which the Congress unduly surrendered to the executive through these acts of legislation.

     2. Should the U.S. assassinate suspected terrorists in foreign countries?

     No / No, they should be captured and given a fair trial

     They should be captured, interrogated (without torture), and held until they can be given a speedy trial. All crimes committed on U.S. soil must be tried in the United States, in the jurisdiction where the crime occurred. The U.S. government must not deny due process rights to anyone accused of breaking a U.S. law, regardless of that person's citizenship status.
     If the U.S. government wishes to assassinate a suspected terrorist in a foreign country, then Congress should either urge that country to charge that person with some crime deserving of the death penalty, or formally declare war and authorize military action if the country refuses to prosecute the suspected terrorist.

Social Issues

     3. What is your stance on abortion?

     Pro-choice / Pro-choice, and providing birth control, sex education, and more social services will help reduce the number of abortions.

     I believe that abortion should be legal, but that it should not be funded by taxpayer money. People who wish to get abortions can pay for it themselves, or access charitable services and mutual aid in order to pay for an abortion, but inviting taxpayer funds into the mix only risks politicizing the issue.

Victims of rape and incest should have access to abortion services, but nobody who is unwilling to pay for it should be required to do so. That, however, does not mean that nothing resembling a public fund for abortion could exist; it could, as long as its members consisted solely of pro-choice people who donated funds willingly to help low-income people access abortion.

     Furthermore, I oppose taxpayer support of abortion in order to save the life of mothers in emergencies. If a mother is in danger of dying during childbirth, then it is likely that the baby, the mother, or both, will die, and it is also likely that an extremely difficult decision will have to be made. It is not the place of government, nor politicians, to intrude in an intimate matter such as this, nor is it any legislator's place to intrude upon the decision of a woman who gets an abortion mostly for the lack of funds and resources which would be necessary to raise a child.

     But a legislator should also not be able to say that a baby must not be allowed to die because public funds may not pay for it. Women should be free to get abortions, using any and all funds which are collected voluntarily, whether they are called public funds or not. But the government ought not collect such funds, unless there are assurances that nobody may ever be made into a donor unwillingly.

     Additionally, doctors take the Hippocratic Oath, which includes a promise to provide treatment to people regardless of their ability to pay. So the idea that a team of doctors and nurses would refuse to save the life of a mother who is in danger of dying while giving birth, because of questions surrounding who will pay for the procedure, is ridiculous.

     Treatment necessary to save lives will always be available because of hard-working doctors who care about saving lives, and there will always be people willing to donate so that others can afford to get abortions.

     Providing birth control and sex education, and keeping contraceptives legal without a prescription, will help reduce the number of unwanted pregnancies and abortions. Additionally, making adoption, surrogacy, and even (some day) fetal transplants, could help reduce the number of abortions even further.

     Abortion should neither be banned outright, nor should abortionists nor mothers be punished, nor should abortion nor sterilization be made mandatory under any circumstances. But infanticide should remain illegal, and doctors should make any and all reasonable attempts possible and necessary to keep alive babies who have been born as the result of failed abortions.

     Finally, the prospect of Roe v. Wade being overturned should not concern us, since the decision never guaranteed abortion as a right in any manner, but allowed states to pass any restriction on abortion they pleased, so long as the states deem that legislation “reasonable”. Planned Parenthood v. Casey re-affirmed Roe v. Wade, and thus affirmed the legality of these state restrictions. While supporters of abortion fear that Roe being struck down will "take away the right to abortion", Roe being struck down could potentially result in state laws restricting abortion being declared unconstitutional.

     The only way forward is to affirm that abortion is a natural human right, which the 9^th Amendment implicitly recognizes and honors. Bodily autonomy, sexual autonomy, the right to marry, the right to reproduce, and the right to make family planning decisions, may not be explicitly named in the Constitution, but the meaning of the Ninth Amendment is that basic rights (like the right to be free and to have a family) don't need to be specifically mentioned in order to exist.
     Abortion is a natural human right, but it is not a positive right (the kind which entails obligations being put on others to provide it or pay for it). Neither should abortion be considered a legal right, nor considered something we can get only if we pay the government and/or ask for its permission. Abortion is a right which cannot naturally - and should not - be infringed, nor taken away, by government.

     4. Do you support the legalization of same sex marriage?

     Yes / Yes, but allow churches the right to refuse same-sex ceremonies.

     Marriage should never be legally defined as solely between a man and a woman, just as it should not be defined as between two people of the same sex.
     I support same-sex marriage being “legalized”, but only in the sense that being “legalized” is the opposite of same-sex marriage being illegal. Same-sex marriage shouldn't be illegal, but it shouldn't be “permitted” either.
     I support same-sex domestic partnerships, civil unions, and marriages being unrestricted. However, preventing the restriction of marriages between consenting adults, requires that we resist the temptation to seek unnecessary actions to make same-sex marriage more widely accepted. These unnecessary actions include legal and political methods, organized violence, and marriage license systems.

     Gay couples' rights to marry – which are very personal rights, much too personal for the government to intrude upon - are implicitly enshrined in the 9^th Amendment, and they are part of gays' rights to pursue happiness. If the government is to stay out of our bedrooms and out of our pocketbooks, then we must not allow government to charge us money for a marriage license.

     For some people, the idea that government should be allowed to confirm or deny the right to marry – and, moreover, that the government ought to require a permit to apply for a license to get married – is ridiculous. Contracts, private arbitration, and recording the event in the family Bible, can accomplish everything a couple needs to say they're married (and, additionally, for all or most of their friends and family to accept their decision and agree that the marriage is valid).

     Additionally, for many people, marriage being a religious decision is important, and it is enough, and no government can affect such a deeply personal decision that two people make. As such, churches should remain free to refuse same-sex ceremonies.

     Except, of course, when it comes to whether that marriage is considered legitimate by the rest of society, and by the government. So, then, why should there exist state marriage licensing systems, which only risk that some set of marriages (say, same-sex ones) could be invalidated at any moment?

     “Take the government out of marriage and instead make it a religious decision” nearly describes my position, but while many people view marriage as a religious decision, many view it as a matter of contract, and thus think it totally appropriate that civil government have something to do with it. So while government must not be made into a solely political institution, neither should it be made into a solely religious institution.

     The best way forward is to insist that the right to marry, whether it's a person of the same sex or not, derives from our inherent natural human rights to pursue happiness, make decisions concerning sex and sexuality and family planning, and to marry and have children if we please. Those rights do not come from the government, and enjoying those rights should not be conditional upon paying the government to do so, nor upon asking for its permission.

     5. Should the government continue to fund Planned Parenthood?

     No / No, and the government should not give funds to any organizations

     The government should not give funds to any organizations, let alone organizations that perform abortions. The government should not fund Planned Parenthood; not for its abortion services, nor for its cancer screening, prenatal services, nor adoption referrals. All funding for Planned Parenthood should be collected voluntarily, rather than extorted from taxpayers.

     6. Should gay couples have the same adoption rights as straight couples?

     Yes / Yes, as long as they pass the same background checks as straight couples

     Same-sex couples, and couples including trans individuals, should not be prohibited, nor unduly restricted nor enjoined, from enjoy the same rights to access family planning services, abortions, and adoptions, as do heterosexual couples seeking adoption.
     As long as same-sex couples pass the same background checks which heterosexual couples are expected to pass, then adoption agencies should not prioritize offering children to straight couples before offering them to gay couples. However, no religious orphanage or adoption agency should be legally required to consider same-sex couples as candidates for placing children.


     7. Should marital rape be classified and punished as severely as non-marital rape?

     Yes

     Marital rape should be classified as sexual battery, not domestic violence.
     Additionally, sex with a spouse under the age of 18 (or 16 or 17; whichever age of marriage the state prescribes) should also be classified as sexual battery, not domestic violence. I would support a constitutional amendment prohibiting all states from licensing marriages involving people below the age of 16.


     8. Should “gender identity” be added to anti-discrimination laws?

     Yes / Yes, and the government should do more to protect minorities from discrimination.

     Gender identity and biological sex, and national origin – in addition to race, ethnicity, and religion – should never be used as bases upon which to discriminate.

     The purpose of the government is to be an inclusive, universal, non-discriminatory institution, and so nobody may be prohibited from accessing public services (unless they have agreed to become an outlaw, receiving no protection from the government whatsoever).

     While private residences and private enterprises should retain the right to discriminate and refuse service for any reason, many enterprises now considered private are not actually private, since they receive some form(s) of taxpayer subsidies, supports, and/or protections. Thus, any “private enterprise” receiving taxpayer support, should not be discriminating, since it is, in effect, a publicly-funded institution.

     No enterprise should be free to discriminate on the basis of gender identity, unless it agrees to give up every single form of subsidy, support, and protection which it derives through the funding and assent of the taxpayers. This should apply to discrimination in hiring, housing and loan applications, and all other functions for which public funds are expended.

     9. Should health insurance providers be required to offer free birth control?

     Yes, except for religious organizations and charities that oppose the use of contraception

     I would answer “No, the government should not decide what services a private business can provide”, but that answer wouldn't describe my position. To say “government shouldn't require insurers to offer free birth control because government shouldn't make decisions about private businesses” implies that we're talking about truly private businesses in the first place.

     While it's true that government should not make decisions about private businesses, most health insurance providers are not private businesses because of all the public taxpayer funds they receive.

     Health insurance providers should be required to offer free birth control, as long as they receive taxpayer funds, and the public wants them to. Health insurance providers which receive taxpayer funds, should not be considered “private”, and because they are not truly private, they should not be allowed to deny people goods and services which the public (which supports them) wishes them to provide.

     Private health insurance providers should continue to exist, however. Insurance providers should be free to deny contraception, as long as they are truly private and receive no taxpayer subsidies whatsoever. Religious organizations and charities that oppose the use of contraception must never receive taxpayer funding.
     Health insurance providers which receive taxpayer funding, should never be free to discriminate against us by denying us contraception, while we are not free to discriminate against them by taking away their privileges and bailouts.


     10. Should a business be able to deny service to a customer if the request conflicts with the owner's religious beliefs?

     Yes.

     A business should be free to deny service for any reason, but only if the business receives no taxpayer funding whatsoever.

     Whether a business receives taxpayer funding or not, it should not be allowed to discriminate, nor to deny service to anyone, if it is a venue offering public accommodations. No enterprise should be free to discriminate while receiving taxpayer funds, regardless of its size or the number of its employees, regardless of how many states in which it has franchises or sources of labor and capital, and regardless of whether they post a sign stating their beliefs and what they refuse. That information can be communicated verbally.

     Customers of private establishments are not “members of the public”, they are private individuals who agree to enter into temporary contracts, whether written or verbal, with the operators of the establishment. What individuals do on other people's private property should be a matter of private contract, but anyone occupying property secured, securitized, or bailed-out with the help of public funds, should be subject to the same anti-discrimination laws which protect people from discrimination by public institutions and protect people while they are on public property.
     Allegations of discrimination by enterprises which directly affect interstate commerce, such that they source any of their labor and/or capital from outside the state, should be handled by the federal government. Allegations of discrimination by enterprises sourcing all their labor and capital from within a single state, and enterprises with franchises in only one state, should be handled by that state's government.

     11. Should the military allow women to serve in combat roles?

     Yes / Yes, as long as they can pass the same physical tests as men / Yes, preventing women from serving in combat roles is discriminatory

     Women should not be prohibited from serving in combat roles in the military. Nor should women be required to register for the Selective Service (draft).

     The military should never discriminate on the basis of biological sex, sexual orientation, nor gender identity; let alone forcibly compel people to join the Armed Forces. The Selective Service, along with registration therefor, should be abolished, such that there is no chance of anyone – men, women, the poor, etc. - being coerced or compelled into rendering public military service in person.

     12. Do you support the death penalty?

     No / No, too many people are innocently convicted

     The government should never have the power of life and death over us. Even if a person is accused of horrific crimes, and the evidence seems undeniable, people on death row have nevertheless been freed after decades of imprisonment.

     Spending life in prison is not necessarily a harsher sentence than death, but as long as a convicted murderer is not only unrepentant, but also a nearly constant danger to others, then the public has a duty to try to rehabilitate the person.

     The moral risk of wrongly condemning one innocent person to death, is not worth any price we could pay for it. Victims' families may call for harsh punishments, but extraordinary punishments call for extraordinary levels of proof and assurance. A traumatized family might find some closure in seeing their son's murderer executed, but that closure will not exist so long as there is any lingering doubt as to whether the convict is really the person who did it. And many murderers have families too; families who love them unconditionally and do not want them to be executed, even if they are guilty. The victim has a right to receive justice, but as long as the family of a murderer did not incite or equip the murderer to kill, then the murderer's family should be considered (at least potentially) every bit as innocent as the murder victim.

     A person who has been condemned to death, should not be executed, unless and until it actually becomes necessary or beneficial to others, to kill him. For example, if he escaped from confinement, and tried to commit some act of violence, or credibly threatened physical harm against others. That scenario is very different from - and arguably more necessary and “legitimate” than - executing someone with the consent of law, after a “proper trial and conviction”. Is it really so “civil” to essentially sit around calmly and decide that you're all going to have someone killed, just because you call it a “proper trial and conviction”?

     Not everyone who has killed before will kill again; they may have even killed in order to save lives, or committed an accidental or negligent act of homicide. We cannot assume that all murderers will kill again; we shouldn't even assume that all murderers are bad people. Killing a murderer when and only if they become violent again, in self-defense or the defense of others, is a much more necessary and “legitimate” way to go about killing a convicted murderer who really needs to be killed.

     13. Should states be allowed to display the Confederate flag on government property?

     No / No, and ban any public display of the flag

     While it's fair to say that some of the collective and private display of Confederate flags is intended to symbolize states' rights and political independence, Confederate political and military flags symbolize rebellion when flown by agencies of the U.S. government.

     While I acknowledge that there are even African-Americans who display the battle flag proudly and believe it to represent Southern pride, Confederate flags nonetheless represent racism and treason to many people.

     Confederate flags should not be displayed on public property, nor on any property which is ostensibly private but which is in fact receiving public taxpayer funds. No public institution should display Confederate flags; and this includes museums, as I believe that no institution should ever receive public funds, even if it cannot thrive on voluntary donations.

     Truly private museums which receive no public funds, and private residences, however, should be free to display Confederate flags.


     14. Should terminally ill patients be allowed to end their lives via assisted suicide?

     Yes

     Terminally ill patients should be free to end their lives via assisted suicide, and also free to refuse artificial life support, as well as free to try medications that could save their lives even if they are untested and could kill them. The government should not intrude into intimate, personal, life-and-death decisions like these. Such decisions are not worth the risk of politicizing, and should stay as close to the patient and the patient's family as possible.
     While it is important to make sure that a patient is in full possession of his faculties when making the decision to end his life, we should not necessarily trust whatever manner of psychological examinations are currently being offered as proof that the patient fully understands his choice. That's because such a choice can only be made with full knowledge of the range of alternatives and opportunities available to the patient. If the patient is only free to choose euthanasia or experimental medication when it is inevitable that their illness will kill them, then it is already too late for alternative treatments, and euthanasia is the “only option”.

     While lack of medical information makes a fully-informed decision to end one's life basically impossible, euthanasia should nevertheless be an option for patients. However, we can and should seek to reduce rates of euthanasia, “medical killings”, and “mercy killings”, by educating patients about the full range of medications and treatments which could be employed to help them stave-off death. That way, a person's illness will be less likely to progress to the point at which euthanasia would be considered the “only option”, or the merciful option.


     15. Should businesses be required to have women on their boards of directors?

     No

     The government should not tell people how to run their businesses, nor does it have an appropriate role in requiring private businesses' boards, nor workplaces, to be diverse enough. For truly private enterprises receiving no public supports, the set of people serving as board members should be the most qualified, regardless of biological sex or gender or any other factor.

     However, any and all public institutions, and ostensibly “private” enterprises which actually receive public taxpayer funding, should be required to have women on their boards, if the public so desires.

     The prospect of requiring companies to have women on their boards of directors only if they are “large international corporations” is interesting, if only for the fact that corporations are financially and legally insulated from competition and legal consequences by the public (and with the use of public funds). While corporate status should preclude a company from discriminating, the size of the business should not be used as a determining factor as to whether a business should be free to discriminate.

     However, whether the business is involved in interstate commerce, should be an important factor. If the business is active in only one state, then it may not be required to be inclusive of women unless that state's laws require it to do so. But if the business is active in more than one state, then the issue of whether it may discriminate is the federal government's decision. In either case, the federal or state government may prohibit businesses from discriminating in any and all manners as the public wishes.

     No business should continue to receive public taxpayer funds, while having discriminatory hiring practices against members of the very same community from which it draws those funds.

     16. Should transgender athletes be allowed to compete in athletic events?

     Yes

     Sports stadiums, teams, and facilities receiving public funds, should not be free to exclude transgender athletes from competing; nor should any ostensibly “private” sports facility exclude transgender athletes if it in fact receives public funds.

     Transgender athletes should be required to prove that their hormone levels are equivalent to those in the gender category in which they compete, if and only if the organizations and facilities on and for which they're competing, are truly private and receive no taxpayer funds, and as long as the transgender athlete is an adult and has duly consented to be subject to hormone testing as a condition of competing.

     Since the purpose of government is to be inclusive, and not to discriminate, any school wishing to discriminate against transgender athletes, should not receive public funds.

     Since some level of separation on the basis of sex is practically inevitable when it comes to regulating the behavior of teenage students at sporting events, a situation in which no school receives public funds (and thus, in which public schools do not exist) would be most useful when it comes to making progress on this issue. That's because – to put it simply – having a boys' locker room and a girls' locker room should not be considered segregation that merits intervention or redress through legal or governmental action.
     The issue of whether and how to integrate or segregate physical education and sporting events on the basis of biological sex or gender identity, should be decided by the individual school. Some schools will choose to require transgender and nonbinary individuals to compete based on the biological sex that is listed on their birth certificate, while other schools will choose to allow trans individuals to compete based on their gender identity. Still other schools will abolish sexually segregated sports competition altogether.

     Regardless of any school's individual choice, the right of the student to move to a more inclusive school, or to speak to the school board to request a change of policy, should never be infringed. And whatever the choices of a school and a transgender athlete, other students should be consulted before they are expected to be present in locker rooms or restrooms with anyone around whom they feel uncomfortable, regardless of the person's sex or gender.

     In addressing this issue, we must also be mindful that if the federal or state government has the power to control the policy of school districts or individual schools, then those governments can just as easily require discrimination against transgender student athletes, as it can prohibit discrimination. The power to do one, is the power to do the other; and thus, the decision-making power should stay as close to the school and surrounding community as possible.

     However, I would oppose any and all attempts by schools to require students' hormone levels to be equivalent to the gender category in which they compete, because this requirement could invite intrusive monitoring which interfere with students' privacy, doctor-patient confidentiality, and bodily autonomy.

[Responses to Questions #17 through #157 will be available on this page at a later date.]

Written on July 9th and 10th, 2019

Originally Published (in part) on July 10th, 2019

Edited and Expanded on July 12th, 2019