I’m taking a break. So here’s a fantastic Bollywood dance number.

Ok, I’m way late to this discussion.

Kitteh — idk if he’d pull a “but ASD” here, but he’s done it for why he can’t tell that he’s made people uncomfortable, which feels like going “well you did” is just gonna cause the “not my fault (intention, it’s fucking magic)”. So idk, but it just isn’t worth trying.

Re: forced hospitalization — caveat, I’m not…I’m okay with people committing suicide, particularly for reasons that’d by considered for physician assisted suicide. But really, I have issues with the idea that anyone else gets to determine wtf you do with your body.

Of course, on terms of medical consent in general, no one else can decide if you’re both an adult and competent — even if your decision is likely to kill you, or certainly will. If your decision can’t be assessed (eg unconscious) then the decision gets made by, in order, living will, next of kin, medical standards. So if you’re seriously bleeding and in need of a blood transfusion, you can refuse, if you’re unconscious, haven’t already fused and next of kin says to do it, you’re getting the transfusion. And I swear I’m going somewhere with this! For children, they only unofficially have a say, the decision of the guardian will stand unless complex legal matters end in courts deciding your guardian isn’t acting in your best interests, but that’s things like insisting on prayer over insulin for a diabetic kid.

Back to the actual question — the issue of competency stands, but if we’re talking about an adult, who realizes the seriousness/consequences of refusing commitment, then no, I don’t think forced hospitalization should occur. Contra, if you’re legally incompetent, you shouldn’t have to be an imminent danger to yourself…not sure on that one, but I can sympathize with the families who want to get treatment for their psychotic family member, but the person’s an adult and thus gets to decide…

Dvärghundspossen, opinion on that one? I’m really wary of giving next of kin decision making power over adults simply because it’s a psych matter, but if the person’s been deemed legally incompetent?

As for minors…yeah, guardians get to decide. For everything from blood transfusions to commitment (mind, this shouldn’t include cosmetic/optional procedures such as circumcision). You’d have a hard time arguing that the guardian isn’t acting in the minor’s best interest — and you’d need to prove that the minor was competent to make such decisions. Unfortunately even trying would probably be seen as resisting treatment (*dies laughing* oh yeah, my psych is “frustrated” with me for that btw)

In any case, it really, really, fucking really, should be based on continual threat to self, not threat to self last week. There’s still the issue whether a minor is competent to make medical decisions for zirself, but adults saying they aren’t still suicidal? Yeah, no, that looming threat just prevents people from saying they tried because “fuck, if I say that you’ll commit me”

The other thing with minors is the psych does have to alert the guardian, same legal requirement as if a minor say they’re being abused (that gets complex, afaik the notification goes to CPS not the guardian)

Sorry that got so long — bipolar psych major with an inability to keep bioethics questions simple!

Some Gal, I’ll try to drop off a reply sometime this weekend, but it might not be till Monday; I’ve managed to cram several weekends into this one. And I got told today at work that we’ll probably be in crisis mode for the next five years! (the manager kept saying “exciting opportunities”… yeah, opportunities for CRISIS!!!)

Heh. So now I am going to go spend my weekend Ludditing it up. Keeps me sane.

*ever (I think my autocorrect has figured out where my thumb blocks. It has to just be fucking with me at this point.)

@howardbann1ster

What a weekend! Wow!

There’s a confounding effect in the whole sex abuse scandal—Catholicism. Most conservative protestant groups already treat them like the devil. They’re more likely to seize the scandal and say ‘see! We told you they’re pure evil! Go back to barring them from public office, and other wholesale discrimination!!’

I think the anti-Catholic bias is also why there is so little attention paid to Protestant sexual abuse scandals. (That and they are smaller, in “unconnected” churches so each individual one is mostly ignored and no one sees a pattern in the way churches do things that might contribute or facilitate). I would really like to see all churches tackling these problems because the way some atheists jump on them is … distasteful. It would be harder for atheists to do that if churches were out in front of the problem. It also might enable a conversation about how we as a culture respond to sexual abuse (perhaps unlikely, but I think possible if enough churches talked about it).

The advertising story is really horrible and I hadn’t heard about it. We have a church in our general area that advertises prominently that they conduct gay marriage ceremonies. I would like to see more of that. My exposure to churches has been mostly in liberal areas (and the conservative area where they terrified me). I think it is likely that churches in my area could do more to convey their moderate/liberal beliefs in ways that may not be possible in the country as a whole.

I know the messages in (at least some areas of) Florida, for example, are mostly conservative and rather hateful. I can understand more the challenges facing liberal and moderate churches in those areas than I can understand what is holding up so many churches in MA.

The conservatives have too much power over the conversation we’re having. So that liberal churches can’t even deliver their message. That’s a part of this problem.

I think it is a problem liberalism as a whole is having in the US right now. I’m not sure how to really address it, but more liberal voices speaking out however they can can’t hurt. Maybe as there are more of then joining it, it will be easier to hear.

Thanks again for having this conversation with me. I will certainly be paying more attention to the risks and impediments to speaking out. Perhaps that is something that atheist movements should try to help with. But, of course, to do that, churches have to be willing to work with and listen to (at least some) atheists. I know that it can be hard in some areas to find those churches. (I participated in some atheist-Christian discussions at college in the South and it was always dominated by atheists and agnostics, even though we were massively outnumbered overall.)

@howardbann1ster

…of course, it might be a problem to have me there, muttering ‘no, all religion is evil societal controls and brainworms eating your ability to handle reality… mutter mutter… brain programming zombies of doom! DOOOOM!!!!’

No, I probably wouldn’t. But some days I talk to my family, and start feeling like all religion is totally evil and should be destroyed.

I think having those feelings is normal. Of course, all you need to do is listen to a bunch of atheists engaging in misogyny, racism, homophobia, and all the rest of it. Then you can hate everybody! (I’m only half-joking with that one.)

I don’t think my mother is nearly at the level of your family (her concern for her own bills would prevent her from engaging in any Earth Day backlash), but from my experience with her, it is hard for me to cut conservatives much slack and hard for me to find patience for liberals and moderates who do. I can understand the value of giving people the benefit of the doubt, but then I think about my mother and the way she just knows that “the Puerto Ricans at work are only ever looking out for each other” (slightly paraphrased) or how “the black girl is such a bad worker” or any of the other casual, hateful bigotries that shape her thinking about seemingly everything and giving people like her the benefit of the doubt starts to seem like a very bad idea.

I am thankful, in a weird way, that my mom’s racism was mostly benevolent until we moved to the Southwest and I got to hear all about how awful “Hispanics” are. If I’d been younger, I might not have questioned it as much as I did. I still hear certain comments and “jokes” in my head sometimes, always in my mother’s voice. It’s toxic, that kind of hatred. I have a really hard time giving people who remind me of my mother and her views any slack. I have no reason to believe that they deserve it more than my mother does and she definitely deserves little to none, imo.

That was a very long way of saying that I totally get how you feel, and I’m not sure that it is entirely on you to change that way of thinking. Sometimes people should have to show that they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

I know you are busy and don’t expect you to have this conversation with me indefinitely. Anytime you want to end it is fine. 🙂

@howardbann1ster

Thank you and the same is true for me. Anytime!