Although the origin of rap is debatable, its emergence on the national music scene is due in large part to Russel Simmons and Rick Rubin, cofounders of Def Jam Records. Simmons first experienced rap in New York City where emcees gathered in parks to perfect their craft while crowds gathered to watch. Simmons soon left college to promote local rap artists and later joined
Rick Rubin to form the enormously successful Def Jam Records.
As rap grew in popularity, so did the controversy surrounding rap lyrics that many artists argue show what real life is like for inner-city youth. During President Barack Obama's campaign the then senator commented that rap musicians should reform their lyrics. Simmons responded in an interview for The New York Times published on April 29, 2007, "What we need to reform is the conditions that create these lyrics. Obama needs to reform the conditions of poverty." The connection between rap music and the conditions from which the music was born continues to be a contentious topic.
Exploring the topic of rap music and culture often gives rise to a question about terminology.
Even quick reviews of the viewpoints that follow reveal that some authors refer to "rap music" and "rap culture," whereas others use the term "hip-hop." And a few interchange the two. Is there a difference between rap and hip-hop, or do they mean the same thing? There are numerous answers to this question, and the topic is controversial. Some use the two terms as if they are identical. A significant number of artists and fans assert that comparing the two is like comparing apples and oranges; rap, to them, is one element in the larger cultural movement of hip-hop.
Others believe the difference between rap and hip-hop is a matter of quality.
Rap in the Media
The mainstream media most often use the two terms as if they are synonymous. Television and newspaper stories about fans, musicians, and the industry rarely distinguish between rap and hiphop. Furthermore, the mainstream media's depiction of the culture is strikingly negative. In the article "The Hip-Hop Hype: Black Males Battle Stereotypes," music manager Blue Williams attributes negative media stereotypes to racial bigotry. He writes, "The problem is that American culture has such an inbred sense of racism, we don't even realize that anything that shows black men speaking in high voices and being aggressive is going to be perceived badly." Art Jones and
Kim Deterline agree with Williams in the blog "Fear of a Rap Planet:"
Media stereotypes of black men as more violence-prone, and media's disproportionate focus on black crime (which is confused with the personas that rappers adopt), contribute to biased treatment of rap. The double standard applied to rap music makes it easier to sell the idea that
"gangsta rap" is "more" misogynist, racist, violent and just plain dangerous than other music.
Defining Rap and Hip Hop

Musicians and fans criticize the mainstream media's lack of knowledge about the complex world of rap music and hip-hop culture. They particularly dislike terms being used without an understanding of their meaning within the culture. As Jeff Chang writes in his article "Hip-Hop
Is Not the Problem," most journalists "confuse commercial rap … with how hip-hop is lived" and therefore "miss the good that hip-hop does." Many agree with Chang that the tendency to disparage the whole culture is related to the same ignorance that also uncritically equates rap with hip-hop.
A famous quote by musician KRS-One represents a common perception within the culture about the difference between rap and hip-hop. "Hip-hop is something you live," he said, and "rap is something you do." Nationally renowned hip-hop historian Davey D. agrees, explaining, "One is part of a whole. Rap is part of a larger entity we call hip-hop, which is culture." Like many others, KRS-One and Davey D. relate rap to the tradition of MC-ing (or emceeing). In the early
1970s, the term "MC" was shorthand for "master of ceremonies," "microphone controller," or
"music commentator." It defined a vocal style in which performers spoke rhythmically and in rhyme to a strong beat, introducing the DJs with which they worked and encouraging the crowd to dance and enjoy the music. As time went on, more people began using the term "rapper" interchangeably with "MC." Originally, the hip-hop movement was characterized by four elements: rapping, DJ-ing, breakdancing, and graffiti art. In this context rap is one part of the larger culture of hip-hop.
Most agree this was certainly true in the early stages of the hip-hop movement, but some would argue that the two terms have evolved to indicate two different types of music. For the artists and fans who want to preserve the aesthetic and values of the early hip-hop movement, rap has come to stand for music that lacks integrity and promotes selfish individualism, materialism, and gratuitous violence. In contrast to the commercially successful rap musicians, those who prefer to call themselves hip-hop artists praise music that refuses to be silent about social and economic problems such as racism, inner-city poverty and despair, and the need for collective action to improve the lives of poor minorities in America. Moreover, hip-hop musicians, in this sense, prioritize making artistically challenging, innovative music as opposed to music that makes money in the industry. Expressing this opinion of rap versus hip-hop, reporter Wendell T.
Harrison of the University of Louisiana newspaper The Daily Reveille writes, "It is hard to distinguish the two genres because the dividing line is as fine as the difference between fine art and stick figures. Hip-hop, like a classical art piece, does incite emotions. Stick figures and rap can only illustrate." He continues:
It does not take someone with talent to rap … In general, material gain is what most modern rappers seem to be about.
When Nelly links his success to making money as opposed to the consciousness of his listeners, he is basically saying that he is not interested in the artistic aspect of his music or its power to inspire, but its ability to make him richer.
Commercialism is the biggest enemy of the original hip-hop movement and ideally what separates rappers from hip-hop musicians.
This method of distinguishing rap from hip-hop is not accepted by all. Critics argue that it stereotypes commercially successful music and creates a caste system within the music culture.

Such a sharp dichotomy between good and bad music, they argue, fails to account for the infinite variety of rap and hip-hop music, some of it "underground" and some of it achieving mass popularity.
Although rap is frequently criticized for its violent lyrics, this reputation primarily emerged from a subgenre called "gangsta rap," which became popular with artists such as Ice-T and the group
N.W.A. in the 1980s. Gangsta rap frequently includes profanity and glorifies drugs and violence and is particularly criticized for portraying inner-city youth as leading violent lifestyles.
Genius, one of nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan explained in an August 30, 2004 article appearing in The Independent, "Our music is not ‘gangsta rap'. There's no such thing … The label was created by the media to limit what we can say. We just deliver the truth in a brutal fashion." Although whether this brutal portrayal of life is truthful is hotly debated, the success of the music is not. All nine members of the Wu-Tang Clan have launched solo careers, and many other rap artists have been successful with gangsta rap.
Does Rap Contribute to Violent Behavior?
Few studies have explored this question, but a some have found a link between the violence in rap music and violent behavior. According to a paper by David Gordon presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology on November 1, 2006, there is a correlation between ratings on rap-oriented radio stations and increases in homicide. The paper states this is particularly true "for what is thought to be gangsta rap's biggest audience: poor, male, urban blacks."
A study by the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University in 2003 explored the effect of rap music, particularly videos, on fourteen- to eighteen-year-old girls. This study also found a correlation between violent rap videos and violent or risky behaviors. The study, published in the
March 2003 edition of the American Journal of Public Health reported that during the year-long follow-up of the participants in the study "37.6% acquired a new sexually transmitted disease,
4.8% hit a teacher, 12.1% reported being arrested, 14.8% had sexual intercourse with someone other than their steady partner, 44.2% reported using drugs, and 44.4% consumed alcohol."
Ralph J. DiClemente, one of the researchers who worked on the study was quoted by WebMD as saying, "What is particularly alarming about our findings is that we didn't find an association with just violence or one or two risky behaviors, we found an association with a string of these behaviors."
Regardless of whether or not violence in rap influences behavior, rap music is protected under the first amendment. The group Parents' Music Resource Center (PMRC) was started in 1980s by a group of women, including Tipper Gore, then Senator Al Gore's wife, to make parents aware of the content of the music their children were listening to. Gore came up with the idea for the

group after she had purchased the album Purple Rain by Prince for her daughter and was disturbed by some of the lyrics. Although PMRC never pushed for censorship, as their critics claimed, they did ask Congress for oversight of the music industry, including printing lyrics and rating concerts.
Although the government did not place regulations on the music industry, the Recording Industry
Association of America (RIAA), which represents more than 600 recording companies, created the Parental Advisory Label (PAL) program, in part a response to an agreement with the PMRC and the National Parent Teacher Association. According to the RIAA Web site, PAL exists to alert parents to explicit content while protecting free speech. They state, "RIAA and its member companies take the PAL Program very seriously … Further, artists appreciate that this is a voluntary program which, instead of seeking to censor their words, permits them greater freedom of expression while still providing them the opportunity to help parents and families make informed consumption decisions." Critics counter, however, that the RIAA does not represent retailers, and children can still purchase music with PALs. Further, they are concerned that children may be drawn to PALs and be more likely to purchase music with this label. RIAA addresses this concern directly in the FAQ (frequently asked questions) section of their Web site.
"It's not a PAL Notice that kids look for, it's the music. Independent research shows kids put limited weight on lyrics in deciding which music they like, caring more about rhythm and melody. The PAL Notice alone isn't enough incentive."
From Elvis Presley to Eminem, people have continued to have contentious debates around the content of music, particularly the music enjoyed by youth, and the behaviors that music may encourage. Rap is only the latest genre to elicit these discussions, and it is not likely to be the last.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
"Rap (Music)." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
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Should Music Lyrics Be Censored for Violence and Exploitation? , 2008 listen -
John H. McWhorter is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a political and economic research organization. He is the author of several books, including Winning the Race: Beyond the Crisis in Black America, Doing Our Own Thing: The Degradation of Language, and Music in America and Why We Should, Like, Care.
Hip-hop record label owner Russell Simmons's call for a voluntary ban on the words "bitch,"
"ho," and the N-word is a milestone for the entertainment industry and African American culture.
Numerous intellectuals and chart-topping hip-hop and rap artists have long contended that their usage—particularly the N-word—is part of "keeping it real." However, rationalizing African
Americans' use of such words in music lyrics and everyday speech is an apathetic response to racism and sexism. As a prominent figure in hip-hop and rap, Simmons's denouncement of this abusive language sets a precedent for the African American community to follow and is a momentous shift toward equality.
Just as we could thank George III [of England] for creating the United States of America, black
America can now thank [television and radio host] Don Imus [who referred to members of the
Rutgers University basketball team as "nappy-headed hos"] for making Russell Simmons finally face himself. On Monday Mr. Simmons, co-founder of Def Jam Records, called for a voluntary ban on the N-word, "bitch" and "ho" in rap music, and suggested that the words be bleeped when music with them is broadcast. Meanwhile, the NAACPA [National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People] has spearheaded a STOP campaign aimed at combating the use of these words and the imagery associated with them, in popular culture.
This is a moment for the history books.
There is a consensus that there is something really wrong with black people using these words with such glee, meanwhile supporting the billion-dollar industry that wallows in it.
In fact, there has been an ongoing "conversation" in the black community and beyond, about black people's use of the N-word among themselves, and in rap music. It's been a staple topic in the media, in call-in radio shows and on panels for several years. But at times it has been hard to glean much purpose in this conversation.

On the one hand there is a consensus that there is something really wrong with black people using these words with such glee, meanwhile supporting the billion-dollar recording industry that wallows in it. Yet after the speeches, history lessons and chin-scratching are over, the N-word,
"bitch" and "ho'" continue to reign supreme, lexical staffs of life in top-selling rap.
What's the justification? Well, we are told that the very wondrousness of this music is that it is
"keeping it real." It has been especially depressing to watch "hip-hop intellectuals" pontificating on this theme. Hearing rap denounced as sexist, for example, they tartly remind us that there is sexism in American society as a whole—suddenly blind to the obvious issue of degree. And this from people who brandish a tripwire sensitivity to the minutest gradations of racism.
This worship of the "real" has done black America no favors, beyond making some entertainers and producers very rich. The civil rights heroes of the past were devoted to getting America past the racism and segregation that were once quite "real." It used to be considered a hallmark of human societies that their members strive beyond the "real"—creating legal codes, religions and even art.
The idea that black people ought now sit back and savor the "reality" of abusive language, including the same word that the Bull Connors [a Ku Klux Klan member and segregation advocate] of the world once hurled at us in all of its "reality," is in essence lazy. It is an incoherent rationalization by people who are merely intoxicated by the rhythms and politically inclined to thrill to black voices from the street.
Two weeks ago [in April 2007] there was little reason to expect a return to basic standards of decency and dignity among the folks so besotted with the fascinations of the "real." Mr.
Simmons and [civil rights activist] Benjamin Chavis issued a manifesto in the wake of the Imus controversy, insisting that this kind of language in hip-hop was "reality" not to be "censored."
One assumed that the language on these recordings would only change very gradually, as the result of a change in black America's self image, the increasing hybridization of the population, or perhaps just fashion. Every once in a great while, however, one witnesses a phase shift, when events conspire to force an abrupt and significant change in the cultural landscape.
It would appear that something about the Imus episode really struck a chord in a way that earlier events did not. [Former Republican senator] George Allen's macaca comment [directed at a volunteer of his opponent's campaign who is of Indian descent] was rather obscure; [former
"Seinfeld" star] Michael Richards's gaffe [in which he shouted racist remarks, including the Nword, at African American hecklers during a comedy routine] was a peculiar, nervous outburst from a washed-up comedian. But Mr. Imus had influence and a long record of verbal tackiness; the fact that he was referring to young, talented women rendered his comment stingingly mean.
The usual routine—screaming bloody murder, while nevertheless insisting that black men using

the same words on bestselling CDs is "real"—suddenly felt inconsistent, not to mention small and even uncomfortably close to self-loathing.
Most debates on race boil down to the question as to whether black America's main problem is racism or culture—that is, whether [comedian] Bill Cosby is right [in his comments attacking
African American slang and speech patterns]. Over the past several years, it has become increasingly mainstream among blacks to understand that questioning aspects of black culture is a matter not of ignorance or ill will, but of survival. There is a growing perception that even if all racism were somehow removed as of this Friday, black Americans would still have a lot of work to do.
How truly awesome it is that this week [in April 2007], one of the hip-hop industry's creators and a civil rights organization (so addicted to chasing "racism" that a new president committed to social services instead didn't even last two years) have committed themselves to the black community looking inward.
We cannot hope to control private conversation—as a quick listen to the way so many black,
Latino and even many Asian teens now talk to one another will so easily demonstrate. However, we can have more control over the public sphere—if only its powers that be get in line. Mr.
Simmons and the NAACP just did.
Further Readings
 Peter Blecha Taboo Tunes: A History of Banned Bands & Censored Songs. San

Francisco: Backbeat Books, 2004.
Steven Brown and Ulrik Volgsten, eds. Music and Manipulation: On the Social Uses and

Social Control of Music. New York: Berghahn Books, 2005.
Martin Cloonan and Reebee Garofalo, eds. Policing Pop. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 2003.
 Steve Jones, ed. Pop Music and the Press. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2002.
 Marie Korpe, ed. Shoot the Singer! Music Censorship Today. London: Zed Books, 2004.
 Allan F. Moore, ed. Analyzing Popular Music. New York: Cambridge University Press,
2003.
 Eric Nuzum Parental Advisory: Music Censorship in America. New York: Perennial,
2001.
 Roy Shuker Popular Music: The Key Concepts, 2nd Ed. New York: Routledge, 2002.
 Chris Washburne and Maiken Derno, eds. Bad Music: The Music We Love to Hate. New
York: Routledge, 2004.
 S. Craig Watkins Hip Hop Matters: Politics, Pop Culture, and the Struggle for the Soul of a Movement. Boston: Beacon, 2005.



 Terry Armour "Chicks Still Have a Lot to Say About Censorship," Chicago Tribune,

November 15, 2006.
 Associated Press "Rappers Cleaning Up Post-Imus," August 2, 2007.
 Associated Press "Study Links Degrading, Lewd Music to Teen Sex," August 7, 2006.
Tim Cavanaugh "Artists for Censorship," Reason, April 27, 2004.
 Derrick Z. Jackson "Epithet Stung, Even for Pryor," Boston Globe, December 14, 2005.
 Steve Knopper "Sticker Shock 'Parent Warning' Labels Can't Seem to Please Anyone,"
Denver Rocky Mountain News, July 26, 2003.
Colleen Kottke "C'mon Parents, Face the Music!" Reporter, August 29, 2007.
Annie Nakao "Throwing the Book at Music Censors," San Francisco Chronicle, May 30,

2004.
New Internationalist "Sound Facts: While Radical Musicians Often Risk Censorship or


Worse in Many Parts of the World, the Global Entertainment Industry Helps Keep Them
Poor and Disenfranchised While Reaping Huge Profits," August 2003.
 Amanda Paulson "Misogyny—Set to Music—May Alter Teen Behavior," Christian
Science Monitor, August 8, 2006.


Claude Robinson "Music, Morals, and Money," Jamaica Observer, October 10, 2004.
 Kelefa Sanneh "Don't Blame Hip-hop," New York Times, April 25, 2007.
T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting "Pimpin' Ain't Easy: Hip-hop's Relationship to Young
Women Is Complicated, Varied and Helping to Shape a New Black Gender Politics,"
Colorlines Magazine, May-June 2007.
Christopher Thompson "Curbing Homophobia in Reggae," Time, August 7, 2007.
Nigel Williamson "Banned! Music Censorship Spans Globe, and U.S. Is No Longer
Stranger to Trend," Billboard, May 22, 2004.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
McWhorter, John H. "Banning Words from Hip-Hop and Rap Music Would Be Beneficial."
Should Music Lyrics Be Censored for Violence and Exploitation?
Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2008. At Issue. Rpt. from "The N Word." Wall Street Journal 26 Apr. 2007.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Document URL http://krlrpa.krl.org:2121/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGro
upName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=true&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=norm al&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010517210&mode=view&userGroupName=kitsap_mai n&jsid=83362983d7cfd3c8f67969d63dfb127d
Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010517210

Alexander Billet is a music journalist and activist living in Washington, DC. He is working on his first book, The Kids Are Shouting Loud: The Music and Politics of the Clash.
Hip-hop record label owner Russell Simmons's call for a voluntary ban on the three controversial words from hip-hop and rap—"bitch," "ho," and the N-word—is an unsatisfactory and unfair solution to eliminating sexism and racism. Banning these words limits the voices of African
American artists who comment on racial oppression and poverty in the United States and does not address the misogyny prevalent in "white" music. Furthermore, Simmons's high stakes in the recording industry, as well as his current political and corporate ties, place into question his motivations. Ultimately, the focus on "sexist" and "racist" hip-hop and rap lyrics undermines the discussions about racial and gender equality that they are meant to provoke.
It's hard to know what to think about Russell Simmons's recent announcement about checking the content of hip-hop. There is no denying that most of us would like the words "bitch," "ho," and "nigger" to disappear from the English lexicon entirely. But alas, the situation is much more complicated than that. On the one hand, it is true that sexism and homophobia abound in not just rap but popular culture as a whole. On the other, there is a need to defend the music against those who denounce it for political gain.
And on yet a third hand (or maybe a foot), we have the context of the announcement in midst of a backlash against the glorious sacking of [television and radio host] Don Imus [who called the
Rutgers University women's basketball team "nappy-headed hos"].
To be clear, Imus' supposed defense that he was merely repeating the "language" in hip-hop is the biggest pile of crap since? well, his show. Hip-hop is a response to the long-term degradation of blacks and other oppressed peoples in the United States. Like all music it is flawed, but like no other genre it remains a mirror held up to the worst ills in American society. Imus, on the other hand, is a mouthpiece for maintaining those ills. A well-paid veteran broadcaster, he has spent the past twenty-plus years calling Arabs "rag-heads," gay men "faggots," and black women
"cleaning ladies." He brought his producer on board because he liked "nigger jokes." And all the while he has interviewed the most high-profile politicians, media moguls and millionaires on his show. Imus and hip-hop are in completely different leagues.
Furthermore, to say that sexism is somehow unique to rap is laughable. Listen to anything by
Merle Haggard or Ted Nugent, the Rolling Stones' "Cat Scratch Fever," [actually, a Nugent song] or the hit from Fountains of Wayne "Stacy's Mom" (whose video featured a stereotypical
"MILF" [a physically attractive mom] parading around in stripper gear) and one might get a good idea of how rife so-called "white" music is with misogyny.

But the twisted logic of this defense seems to have soaked well past Imus himself. [Illinois senator and presidential candidate] Barack Obama (whose own role in assuaging white liberal guilt becomes bigger and bigger every day) made it clear which side he stood on with his comments last week [in May 2007]: "We've got to admit to ourselves that it was not the first time that we heard the word 'ho.' Turn on the radio station. There are a whole lot of songs that use the same language and we've been permitting it in our homes, in our schools, and on iPods." So,
Barack, how long until you revive the PMRC [Parents Music Resource Center, a committee formed in 1985 that called for record companies to place parental advisory labels on recordings containing offensive language or content]?
It is the same kind of bootstrap rhetoric we've been hearing from Obama since day one. It's the kind of talk that bolsters the idea that racism doesn't exist, and blacks are only poor because they're lazy and self-loathing. When Obama spends more time talking about "getting Uncle
Jethro off the couch" [a comment Obama made in a speech believed to allude to encouraging reticent black Americans to become active in the voting process] than he does about Hurricane
Katrina, any criticism he may have of hip-hop should be put on mute.
Enter Russell Simmons. At times, his own defense of hip-hop has been eloquent and prescient.
His response to Obama [in his comments regarding Don Imus] provided a glimpse into the nature of this debate: "People who are angry and come from tremendous struggle; they have poetic license, and when they say things that offend you, you have to talk about the conditions that create those kinds of lyrics. When you are talking about a privileged man who has a mainstream vehicle and mainstream support and is on a radio station like that you have to deal with them differently."
Yet less than a week later, Simmons and his Hip-hop Summit Action Network announces it is launching a campaign to better the content of Simmons' own Def Jam recordings. In particular, he wants to crack down on the use of the words "ho," "bitch," and "nigger." Though a dialogue about such a thing is welcome, it should be initiated by the artists themselves, not by a label owner. When it is initiated by someone in Simmons's position, and at a time such as this, one wonders if this "discussion" is happening because of a genuine need, or rather because of pressure from the same people who are threatened by hip-hop's very existence.
First of all, neither Obama, Oprah [Winfrey], or any of the more right-wing figures diverting the issue seem to know anything about hip-hop. One wonders why there is no mention of the socially hard-hitting rhymes of the Roots, Common or Talib Kweli. Or even some of the more conscious (if still contradictory) mainstream joints coming from the likes of Nas or Kanye West.
Perhaps it's because there are those who have made billions off marketing rap's worst elements, while downplaying its long history of being a forum to speak out on inequality and poverty. Ever since Grandmaster Flash's "The Message" first hit the airwaves, the likes of MTV, BET and
Clear Channel have sought ever more effective methods of making rap marketable by dumbing it down. That's called exploitation.

Hip-hop historian Jeff Chang illustrated such marketing patterns with the example of Nas'
Stillmatic in a 2002 article. Though the album was full of protests against war and racism in the post-9/11 world, it also included songs with homophobic language chronicling his beef with Jay-
Z. Needless to say, the latter got the airplay, but the former was ignored.
Given this, it is questionable how much Simmons himself will actually be able to change. He may have direct control over the content that his own label puts out, but Def Jam is still subject to the same market principles as any other major record label. With Clear Channel having a strangle-hold on radio airplay, and likewise with MTV on television, will Simmons's efforts make a difference?
An MC friend of mine from Baltimore recently pointed out that Simmons lives in a very different world than most of the acts on his label. Despite his admirable record on civil rights issues, Simmons's more recent behavior may indicate somewhat of a shift. Many progressive hip-hop fans were dismayed when he endorsed Maryland's Republican Lieutenant Governor
Michael Steele for Senate last election. When he received criticism for organizing a tour through
Africa with DeBeers Jewelers, Simmons responded that there is too much focus on conflict diamonds [diamonds mined in African war zones that are sold in secret to fund the conflicts].
Simmons's action opens the door for those who want to do away with not just the "sexist" or
"misogynistic" elements, but hip-hop altogether.
Might his endorsement of Steele be just the beginning? Might this announcement be more than a publicity stunt, but a concession to Obama and the likes? Is it possible that beneath his progressive image, Simmons is attempting to buddy up to this country's heavy-hitting politicos?
Only time will tell, but there is a bigger problem. In making this announcement about hip-hop's content now, in the context of a backlash in response the Imus firing, Simmons' concession seems to say that the two are linked. They aren't. Worse still, Simmons's action opens the door for those who want to do away with not just the "sexist" or "misogynistic" elements, but hip-hop altogether. John McWhorter of the conservative Manhattan Institute has stated he makes no distinction between "conscious" rap and "gangsta" rap. He sees both as violent and depraved.
When it comes down to it he would also probably like to squash the art form altogether.
Simmons has now opened the door to McWhorter's arguments.
The Imus scandal should be an opportunity to talk about the very real racial and gender inequality in this country. It should be the chance to ask why women make 75 cents to men's dollar. To ask why more black men are in prison than college, and why the NYPD [New York
Police Department] thought it necessary to pump fifty rounds into [African American police violence victim] Sean Bell's car. Instead, the debate has shifted to all the flaws in black culture, and has merely reinforced the double standard that "white" culture simply isn't held up to. Where will Russell Simmons take the debate? Only time will tell, but it doesn't look promising.

Source Citation:
Billet, Alexander. "Banning Words from Hip-Hop and Rap Music Would Not Be Beneficial."
Should Music Lyrics Be Censored for Violence and Exploitation?
Ed. Roman Espejo. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2008. At Issue. Rpt. from "Is Russell Simmons Playing Politics with Hip-
Hop?" ZNet Commentary . 2007. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

Religion affects many areas of society in a profound way. It shapes the moral standards of individuals, which in turn influences the decisions of policy makers. It has played an important role in many movements for social change, including the movement to abolish slavery in the
United States. Many religious organizations work to promote social welfare by such actions as assisting the poor, caring for the sick, and sheltering the homeless. Also, in some societies, a shared religion is a powerful social bond that ties people together. However, when people of different faiths live together, religious differences can lead to conflict and even war. Throughout history, societies have attempted to find the appropriate role for religion in public life—one that takes advantage of religion’s many benefits while controlling its divisive tendencies.
Religion has been a basic part of American society since colonial times. In his classic 1835 work
Democracy in America, French writer Alexis de Tocqueville notes, "the religious aspect of the country was the first thing that struck my attention." In a 2009 Gallup poll, 56 percent of
Americans consider religion to be very important in their lives. Sixty-three percent are members of a church or synagogue, and 31 percent attend some form of religious services at least once a week. However, although religious belief has always been an aspect of American culture, religious orthodoxy has not. People of many faiths make up the nation, and freedom of religion is one of the cornerstones of American democracy.
Freedom of Religion
Many groups of settlers, such as the Pilgrims, came to America so that they could practice their faith freely. However, this did not always make them tolerant of other religious beliefs. Several colonies in the South and in New England established state churches that were supported by public taxes. However, residents of some other colonies strongly opposed attempts to create state churches. In general, the wide variety of faiths practiced by the colonies’ early settlers weakened the links between church and state.
After the United States won its independence from Great Britain, the founders of the new nation addressed the issue of religious freedom in the First Amendment to the Constitution. It declares,
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof." This phrase guarantees not only that the government will not interfere with religion, but that it also will not promote one religion over others.
Some devout people feared that the lack of an established, or state, church would destroy religious sentiment in the nation. However, exactly the opposite occurred. With all religions free to practice equally, the United States became a hotbed of religious expression and experimentation. Over the course of history, a variety of new religious groups emerged to attract people dissatisfied with their current faith. The list of religious groups that originated in America

includes, among others, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and the Nation of
Islam.
Fundamentalism
The First Amendment discourages any direct connection between religion and government.
However, religious groups have always played a role in American public and political life. One of the most influential religious movements in the country has been fundamentalism. Christian fundamentalists are Protestants of several different churches who believe in a literal interpretation of the Bible and a strict adherence to its requirements. Many fundamentalists have tried to shape the nation according to these beliefs, usually by promoting conservative political goals.
Fundamentalists in early America fought against aspects of American culture that clashed with their moral views, such as prostitution, alcoholism, and slavery. In the period following the Civil
War (1861–1865), some fundamentalists tried to amend the Constitution to make Christianity the nation’s established religion. In the early 1900s, fundamentalists battled against communism and promoted temperance (avoidance of alcohol). They also organized to oppose the teaching of evolution and other doctrines that contradicted their belief in the literal truth of the Bible.
For a while, fundamentalist goals met with some success. In 1919, the Constitution was amended to ban alcohol, and in the 1920s, some states passed laws prohibiting the teaching of evolution.
In 1925, a Tennessee schoolteacher named John Scopes was charged with breaking the state’s law against teaching evolution. Clarence Darrow, a famous lawyer and outspoken critic of organized religion, defended Scopes in what came to be known as the Scopes "monkey trial."
The case proved very damaging to fundamentalism. Darrow embarrassed the defense attorney
Williams Jennings Bryan—one of the nation’s leading fundamentalists—by showing in court that not even Bryan could successfully explain some of the contradictions between fundamentalist beliefs and scientific knowledge. Another blow to fundamentalism came in 1933, when Congress amended the Constitution to make alcohol legal again.
After these developments, the power and prominence of fundamentalism declined considerably.
However, the movement persisted outside of the public spotlight, particularly in the South and
Midwest. After World War II (1939–1945), as American culture grew increasingly secular, liberal, and permissive, fundamentalists once again became more active in public affairs. In
1979, preacher Jerry Falwell founded the Moral Majority, an organization that supports conservative social policies. Fundamentalism regained its vitality as a political force after Ronald
Reagan was elected president in 1980 with the public support of the Moral Majority. Since that time, fundamentalist Christianity has remained an important voice shaping political debate and policies in the United States. Fundamentalists today are particularly vocal in their opposition to abortion.
Although the Constitution bars any official connection between religion and government, religious belief has had an influence on many areas of public policy. As noted above, religious

groups are deeply involved in the abortion debate. Some groups seek to ban or limit the practice, which they view as the taking of a human life. Others support the right of a woman to choose abortion, which they believe to be a basic right. Other social issues related to religion include school prayer, civil rights, and the teaching of creationism in school.
Religion and the Courts
The First Amendment forbids the state to promote a particular religion and guarantees the right of all citizens to practice the religion of their choice. However, sometimes it is not clear whether a government action is merely protecting religious freedom or actively promoting religion. The classic formula for drawing that line is the Lemon test, based on the Supreme Court decision in
Lemon v. Kurtzman, which states that any government action that is designed primarily to aid religion is unconstitutional.
In 1968, for example, the Supreme Court struck down an Arkansas law forbidding the teaching of evolution because the law’s main purpose was to protect a particular religious viewpoint.
However, in other cases the Court found the Lemon test to be too restrictive of religion. In 1987, the Court ruled that religious groups are exempt from laws that bar other organizations from discriminating in employment on the basis of religion.
Many Supreme Court cases dealing with religion have centered on the treatment of religion in public schools. In early America, public schools tended to provide religious instruction with a
Protestant orientation. Members of other faiths, particularly Roman Catholics, protested that the schools were promoting Protestantism. In an attempt to please both Catholics and Protestants, the state of New York introduced a prayer in its public schools that made no mention of particular religious doctrines. They believed this prayer would be acceptable to all major faiths. However, in 1962 the prayer was challenged and found unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled in Engel v. Vitale that even though the prayer did not favor any group, any practice intended to aid all religions was just as unconstitutional as one intended to aid a particular religion.
In the following years, the Court heard several additional cases involving religion in schools. In each case, it struck down school practices, such as posting a copy of the Ten Commandments in classrooms, in which the main purpose was to promote religion. However, it also struck down school rules that restricted free speech and free assembly for religious groups. For example, it found that schools could not deny religious after-school groups access to school facilities that were open to other groups. They also could not suppress religious speech by students, as long as that speech did not harass others.
Religion and Civil Rights
Religious groups played a major role in the civil rights movement. Early efforts to end segregation in the South were led by activists who had ties to religious groups. Organizations such as the Quaker-inspired Fellowship of Reconciliation, the Federal Council of Churches, and the Fellowship of Southern Churchmen formed alliances between white and black antisegregationists during the 1920s and 1930s.

By the early 1950s, black churches had stepped to the forefront of the civil rights movement.
African American religious leaders such as T. J. Jemison and the Reverend Martin Luther King
Jr. led boycotts of segregated bus lines in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Montgomery, Alabama.
King emerged as the undisputed leader of the civil rights movement. His Southern Christian
Leadership Conference (SCLC), described by one author as the "decentralized arm of the black church," became the leading organization combating legalized segregation in the South. Since the 1960s, black churches have remained a strong voice in issues affecting African American communities.
Around the world, religion plays many different roles in society. Some countries are theocracies, where officials of one religion control most aspects of public life. In others, a variety of religions exist side by side. In some areas, competing religious groups struggle for dominance, often with violent results.
Religion and War
Throughout history, religious differences have been a major source of conflict between nations.
For example, the rise of Protestantism in the 1500s led to intense religious strife in Europe, marked by wars between Catholic and Protestant nations. Such tensions still exist in some
European countries, such as Northern Ireland, where outbreaks of violence between Catholics and Protestants have continued for many years.
The Balkan region of southeastern Europe contains a variety of ethnic groups that practice different religions, including Roman Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, and Islam. Under
Communist rule, the tensions between these groups were held in check by strict government control over religious practice. However, the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s destabilized the region and brought these tensions to the surface. The former country of
Yugoslavia broke apart into different states, each identified with a different religious group. A brutal war erupted between Orthodox Christian Serbians and Muslims in the area. The war ended only after military intervention by other European nations and the United States.
In other parts of the world, tensions between different religious groups make war a continual threat. The Muslim state of Pakistan and the predominantly Hindu nation of India continue to struggle over disputed territory. Many of the Muslim nations of the Middle East fail to recognize the Jewish state of Israel, claiming that the land belongs by right to Palestinian Arabs, who are mostly Muslim. Meanwhile, clashes between Israelis and Palestinians in Israeli-occupied territories killed nearly six thousand people from late 2000 through 2008.
Islamic Fundamentalism
One of the most significant international religious developments since the late 1970s is the rise of Islamic fundamentalism. In 1979, radical Muslim students toppled the civil government of
Iran and installed a theocratic government based on Islamic religious law. The success of the
Iranian revolution inspired a wave of Islamic fundamentalism.

Until recently, the most extreme example of fundamentalist Muslim rule was Afghanistan.
During the 1980s, Islamic guerrillas called mujahideen waged an extended war that eventually drove out Soviet troops occupying the country. A fundamentalist group known as the Taliban took control of the government, imposing strict Islamic law. The Taliban denied women most civil rights and clamped down on political opposition. It also allowed Afghanistan to be used as a base of operations for anti-American Islamic terrorists during the 1990s. After one of those groups, al Qaeda, launched a terrorist attack against the United States in September 2001, U.S. forces and their allies invaded Afghanistan and overthrew the Taliban.
Despite the fall of the Taliban, Islamic fundamentalism remains a potent force throughout the
Middle East. It also remains a source of uneasiness for rulers in Muslim nations such as Saudi
Arabia, who have close ties to the United States.
Source Citation:
"Religious Issues." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Document URL

"Given the centrality of freedom of speech and religion to the American concept of personal liberty, it is altogether reasonable to conclude that both should be treated with the highest degree of respect."
In the following viewpoint, Christopher J. Klicka argues that secularism threatens to overpower religious liberty. He cites the U.S. Supreme Court decision in City of Boerne v. Flores, in 1997, which declared the Religious Freedom Restoration Act to be unconstitutional. Klicka contends that each state should pass its own Religious Freedom Act to ensure that parents can freely practice their religion, particularly for those parents who homeschool their children. Klicka is senior counsel of the Home School Legal Defense Association, and is the author of The Right
Choice: Home Schooling and The Heart of Home Schooling.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
According to Christopher Klicka, what did the Supreme Court decide in City of Boerne v.
Flores?
2.
In the author's opinion, how does a state Religious Freedom Act protect the religious rights of homeschooled children?
3.
According to the majority of justices in City of Boerne v. Flores, what did the right to practice one's religious beliefs have to be combined with in order to be given more than a reasonableness test?
On June 25, 1997, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 majority, ruled the Religious Freedom
Restoration Act (RFRA) unconstitutional in City of Boerne v. Flores. This was a devastating blow to our religious freedom in this country.
The facts of the case are this: After the city of Boerne denied a building permit to a church because the church building was located in a historic district, Catholic Archbishop Flores of San
Antonio appealed this decision, arguing that this denial of the church's right to expand to accommodate its growing congregation violated the church's right to freely exercise its religious beliefs as protected by the RFRA. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against the church and in the process struck down the RFRA, which was the highest level of protection of our religious liberty available.
Since this extremely harmful U.S. Supreme Court Boerne decision, state and federal courts have diminished religious freedom in many ways. For example:
 The long-standing practice of pastor-laity confidentiality has been repeatedly violated
 A Catholic hospital was denied state accreditation for refusing to teach abortion techniques
 There have been conflicts with zoning ordinances, such as shutting down a church ministry to the homeless because it was located on the second floor of a building with no elevator

 A church was prohibited by a local city ordinance from feeding more than 50 poor people per day
The list goes on and on. This subtle erosion of our religious liberty by the courts who are applying the Boerne ruling is gradually removing one of the bedrock defenses of homeschooling.
But there is hope.
Several years ago, HSLDA [Home School Legal Defense Association] and a broad coalition of organizations worked very hard to get the federal RFRA enacted. Since it was struck down, other attempts at the federal level to resolve the religious freedom crisis have been misguided or have failed.
HSLDA, therefore, along with several other pro-religious freedom organizations and many state homeschool organizations, is urging all of the 50 states to pass their own Religious Freedom Act
[RFA] to counter the Boerne case's devastating impact on religious freedom.
As of August 2005, by God's grace, more than a quarter of the states have acted to protect the religious freedom of the citizens in their states. Rhode Island, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois,
Arizona, South Carolina, Texas, Idaho, New Mexico, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Oklahoma have passed their own state Religious Freedom Acts. Alabama made religious freedom even more secure by specifically amending their state constitution to recognize religious freedom as a fundamental right protected by the compelling interest test.
HSLDA's legal staff has worked with religious freedom coalitions in the states (and the national state religious freedom coalition), helped draft legislation, lobbied individual state legislators, attorney generals, and governor offices, sent out numerous alerts, and provided testimony at some legislative hearings in order to advance these Religious Freedom Acts. The phone calls of thousands of homeschoolers particularly contributed to the passage of the RFRAs in Illinois,
Arizona, Texas, South Carolina, Idaho, New Mexico, and Oklahoma. The Illinois act was successful after two HSLDA alerts and tremendous outpouring of calls by homeschoolers convinced legislators to override the governor's veto.
HSLDA and homeschoolers have brought significant pressure on the state legislatures of
Virginia and Oregon along with much work in Louisiana, California, and Hawaii, but the fruits of their labors have not yet been realized. In 1999, Religious Freedom Restoration Acts were passed by both houses in New Mexico and California, only to have them vetoed by the governors. However, in April 2000, HSLDA and homeschoolers were able to convince both the
New Mexico legislature and Governor Gary Johnson to re-pass and authorize a RFRA bill. Also encouraging is the fact that RFRA bills have continued to be introduced in numerous states during the 2004 and 2005 legislative sessions, although not all have passed.

We have used these state Religious Freedom Acts to help homeschoolers escape onerous homeschool requirements. For example, homeschoolers who have religious reasons for homeschooling have invoked the Florida Religious Freedom Act that HSLDA helped pass a few years ago. This act provides religious homeschoolers with a legal means to say "no" to the portfolio review of all their school records as allowed by Florida law. For some homeschool families the portfolio review by the local school district is offensive to their religious beliefs. By invoking the Religious Freedom Act these homeschoolers have forced the state to prove that the fulfillment of a portfolio review "furthers a compelling state interest" and is the "least restrictive means" of fulfilling its interest that children be educated. Instead of going to court, school districts have just exempted homeschoolers from invasive portfolio reviews!
In Pennsylvania, we are using that state's Religious Freedom Act to successfully fight against a very cumbersome and regulatory homeschool law that has substantially burdened families for years. We currently have about 50 families who are no longer following these onerous restrictions after invoking the RFA and are being left alone. We have a half dozen more families that we helped in court to win their religious exemption under the Act.
All freedom-loving homeschoolers should be prepared to call their legislators to support their state's Religious Freedom Act in order to save religious freedom.... Don't let one decision by the
U.S. Supreme Court denigrate this priceless inalienable right!
The RFRA was originally drafted in response to a 1990 U.S. Supreme Court decision (Smith II) in which the Court gave the lowest level of protection to religious liberty—one of the foundational freedoms of homeschooling. Using this ruling, a state could override an individual's right to freely exercise his religious beliefs merely by proving that its regulation was
"reasonable."
HSLDA helped form the coalition which drafted and promoted the RFRA. Three years later,
Congress passed the RFRA and President Bill Clinton signed it into law, reversing the disastrous effects of Smith II by restoring religious freedom as a fundamental right.
The RFRA affirmed a 1963 decision (Sherbert v. Verner) in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that in order for a state's regulation to prevail over an individual's right to freely exercise his religious belief, the state had to prove that its regulation was "essential" to achieve a compelling interest. In addition, the state had to provide evidence that it was using the "least restrictive means" to accomplish this compelling interest. Under this high standard of review, the free exercise of religion was usually upheld over restrictive state regulations.
However, in the City of Boerne case, the U.S. Supreme Court held that the power of Congress under Section 5 of the Fourteenth Amendment is limited to "enforcing the provisions of the
Fourteenth Amendment." In the Court's opinion, Congress does not have the authority to determine what constitutes a constitutional violation. The Court held that the RFRA went too far

in attempting to change the substantive law of constitutional protections. According to the
Boerne decision, Congress can make determinations as to the proper interpretation of the
Constitution, but courts ultimately have the authority to determine if Congress has exceeded its own constitutional bounds. In other words, the U.S. Supreme Court, not Congress, is the final arbiter in interpreting the Constitution.
Unfortunately, our conservative friends—the late Justice [William] Rehnquist and Justices
[Antonin] Scalia and [Clarence] Thomas—joined with the majority in knocking our First
Amendment right down from its lofty fundamental right status to a simple garden variety category. The Court ruled that only when a person's claim to freely exercise a religious belief is combined with another fundamental right still receiving the protection of the compelling interest test (in a "hybrid situation"), such as freedom of speech, freedom of the press, or the fundamental right of parents to direct the education and upbringing of their children, will it be given more than a simple reasonableness test.
Dissenting in the minority with Justices [Stephen] Breyer and [David] Souter, Justice [Sandra
Day] O'Connor stated that the Court should have used this case to revisit the Smith decision of
1990 since Smith had so drastically redefined the standard of review of the Free Exercise Clause, departing from decades of Supreme Court precedent.
[T]he Court's rejection of this principle in Smith is supported neither by precedent nor as discussed ... by history. The decision has harmed religious liberty. The historical evidence casts doubt on the Court's current interpretation of the Free Exercise Clause.
O'Connor gave a stirring review of the importance of religious freedom in our country, quoting a number of state religious freedom charters. She noted that:
[E]arly in our country's history, several colonies acknowledged that freedom to pursue one's chosen religious beliefs was an essential liberty. Moreover, these colonies appear to recognize that government should interfere in religious matters only when necessary to protect the civil peace or to prevent licentiousness.
She further explained that every state constitution included the right to freely exercise religious beliefs. She quoted James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in summary, explaining,
"To Madison, then, duties to God were superior to duties to civil authorities—the ultimate loyalty was owed to God above all ... the idea that civil obligations are subordinate to religious duty is consonant that government must accommodate, where possible, those religious practices that conflict with religious law."
O'Connor concluded,
"It has long been the Court's position that freedom of speech a right enumerated only a few words after the rights to Free Exercise has a special Constitutional status. Given the centrality of

freedom of speech and religion to the American concept of personal liberty, it is altogether reasonable to conclude that both should be treated with the highest degree of respect. The rule the Court declared in Smith does not faithfully serve the purpose of the Constitution.
Accordingly, I believe it essential for the Court to reconsider its holding in Smith."
Unfortunately, this dissent, although correct, was ignored.
Source Citation:
Klicka, Christopher J. "Religious Freedom Laws Are Necessary." Atheism . Ed. Beth Rosenthal.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Religious Freedom Is
Endangered: How We Can Fight Back." Practical Homeschooling 67 (Nov.-Dec. 2005): 16.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"Government shall not favor religion over 'no religion.' RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration
Act] legally endorses discrimination against those who do not endorse organized religion."
In the following viewpoint, the Institute for Humanist Studies (IHS) argues against a Religious
Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in New York State. The group maintains that the law is unnecessary because past court cases in the state were decided in favor of religious freedom. It also contends that such a law puts the government in the position of becoming involved in and promoting religion. The institute asserts that such laws give special rights to religious people that are not extended to all. The IHS is a group dedicated to publicizing humanism to increase public consciousness and knowledge.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
In the opinion of IHS, in what ways would some organized religions be given "special privileges" if the RFRA is passed in New York State?
2.
According to the IHS, how would the RFRA be a threat to secularism?
3.
How many nonreligious New Yorkers were there in 2001, and how many Americans declared "no religion" in the same year?
As U.S. Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia said, "Who can possibly be against the abstract proposition that government should not, even in its general, nondiscriminatory laws, place unreasonable burdens upon religious practices? Unfortunately, however, that abstract proposition must ultimately be reduced to concrete cases." In those concrete cases it is evident that not only is RFRA [Religious Freedom Restoration Act] unnecessary, but unjust.
What RFRA theoretically promises differs greatly from its practical application. In practice,
RFRA is redundant and discriminatory. The application of RFRA will call into question many secular laws that have nothing to do with religion and exist to protect all New Yorkers regardless of religion or creed.
RFRA is unnecessary because it is redundant on both the federal level and state level. Our right to religious freedom is already protected in the U.S. Bill of Rights:
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof ...
—First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
Additionally, the New York State Constitution also clearly guarantees free religious exercise:
The free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference, shall forever be allowed in this state to all humankind; and no person shall be

rendered incompetent to be a witness on account of his or her opinions on matters of religious belief; but the liberty of conscience hereby secured shall not be so construed as to excuse acts of licentiousness, or justify practices inconsistent with the peace or safety of this state. (Amended by vote of the people November 7, 2001.)
—Article I, section 3, Bill of Rights, the Constitution of the State of New York
RFRA advocates want you to believe that your right to religious freedom is insecure. But on what grounds do they make this claim? So far New York State has dealt fairly with cases of religious freedom. The system is working. Religious freedom is not in danger in New York State.
In case after case where New Yorkers claimed their religious freedom was infringed upon, the courts ruled in their favor.
For example, Gov. [Eliot] Spitzer endorses RFRA legislation. But even his June 11 [2007] press release in support of RFRA states (emphasis added):
As Attorney General, Spitzer brought numerous cases defending workers' rights to observe certain religious customs and practices. One such case involved a Jewish repairman who was required to work on the Sabbath. Another case involved a deliveryman who was ordered to cut the dreadlocks customary to his religion. Still another case involved a female medical student who was required to wear clothing considered immodest in her religion. In each of these cases, the courts ruled that the religious observances were not disruptive to employers and should be accommodated. The new legislation would ensure that such reasonable accommodation of religious customs becomes a standard principle of New York law.
The motivations behind passing RFRA in New York State appear murky and seem to have less to do with religious freedom than special privileges. One possible motivation behind RFRA is to give certain organized religions access to goods, resources, and services that are not available to the average citizen. For instance, RFRA could potentially make it easier for Catholic priests [to] deal with accusations of child molestation internally. It could allow particular sects to use drugs that are outlawed for the rest of the population. It could allow churches and temples to ignore zoning requirements that apply to everyone else—endangering the health and safety of New
Yorkers and our built and natural environment. RFRA's far reaching scope could affect child abuse issues, anti-discrimination laws, polygamy, animal rights, parking, housing, zoning, drug use, and so much more.
RFRA essentially establishes special rights for religious believers that are not available to other
Americans. In this way, it is discriminatory and unfair. Government is not supposed to interfere with religious practices or give preference to any specific religion over other religions.
Government shall not favor religion over "no religion." RFRA legally endorses discrimination against those who do not endorse organized religion. In 2001, there were 1.9 million

nonreligious New Yorkers, nearly double the figure from 10 years ago. (More than 29 million
Americans reported "no religion" in 2001.)
RFRA is problematic in that it not only pits religious against non-religious, but religion against religion. Those organized religions that have wide appeal or have already been embraced by the mainstream are likely to be seen as having a more justified claim to protecting their religious practices than those religions that are seen as taboo, controversial, and less popular. As U.S.
Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens pointed out, RFRA is a "law respecting an establishment of religion" that violates the First Amendment to the Constitution—not protects it.
The Institute for Humanist Studies opposes all proposed RFRA legislation. At best RFRA is redundant, and at worst it endangers centuries of secular legislation. Gov. Spitzer's proposed ... legislation is ill defined and therefore especially dangerous in its potential for unintended consequences.
While Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's ... bill attempts to be less vague than Spitzer, Silver's proposal is still at best redundant and at worst harmful. The more that legislators like Silver work to draft less harmful versions of RFRA, the more obvious it becomes that RFRA is not needed in the first place.
Instead of drafting new legislation, the Institute for Humanist Studies feels that the state government should do more to educate the public about existing protections for and limitations of the free exercise of religion.
RFRA is an attempt to circumvent the U.S. Supreme Court's 1990 Employment Division v.
Smith on religious freedom. By looking at cases where the courts used the "Smith ruling" we can see where decisions might be different if RFRA were enacted.
Do you think the following court rulings should be reversed? RFRA could reverse these decisions:
 A church in New Mexico claimed that a licensing requirement for a child care center (i.e., rule prohibiting spanking) violated their free exercise rights. The court denied the claim under Smith [Health Services Division v. Temple Baptist Church (1991)].
 A Catholic hospital in Pennsylvania sought to preclude application of the Federal Age
Discrimination in Employment Act. The court rejected the hospital's free exercise argument citing Smith [Lukaszewski v. Nazareth Hospital (1991)].
 A married male paramedic sued alleging that his employer's requiring him to stay overnight with a female paramedic at a station while on duty conflicted with his religious

 beliefs. The court rejected his free exercise claim, citing Smith [Miller v. Drennon
(1992)].
The state medical examiner in Michigan ordered an autopsy performed on the plaintiff's son after he was killed in an automobile accident. The plaintiff, who was Jewish, alleged that performance of the autopsy violated her free exercise rights. The court denied her claim, relying on Smith [Montgomery v. County of Clinton (1990)].
 A wrongful death case was filed on behalf of a Jehovah's Witness who was hit by a car and injured. The Jehovah's Witness later died after allegedly refusing a blood transfusion on religious grounds. The plaintiff argued that failure to mitigate damages for wrongful death is a violation of the plaintiff's free exercise rights. (In other words, if Person A inflicts a non life-threatening injury upon a Jehovah's Witness and that Jehovah's Witness refuses medical treatment on religious grounds and later dies from that refusal of medical care, Person A is responsible for the death of the Jehovah's Witness.) The court rejected this argument, relying in part on Smith [Munn v. Algee (1991)].


A Michigan court ruled that the state's requirement that nonpublic schools use state certified teachers did not violate the defendant's free exercise rights, applying the Smith test [People v. DeJonge (1991)].
An FBI agent refused for religious reasons to be involved in a domestic security and terrorism investigation. The court denied the claim based upon Smith [Ryan v. United
States (1991)].
 A Church in New York opposed application of landmarking ordinances to buildings owned by the church. The court rejected the church's free exercise argument based upon
Smith [St. Bartholomew's Church v. City of New York and Landmarks Preservation

Commission (1990)].
An Illinois plaintiff argued that the Boy Scouts violated Title II in denying him admission because he refused to take the "Duty to God" oath. The Scouts argued that to require them to admit those who denied a belief in God violated their free exercise rights.
Relying on Smith, the court rejected the Scouts' argument [Welsh v. Boy Scouts of
America, 1990].
Although [Governor Spitzer's proposed legislation] could reverse all of the cases above, it is not clear if [Assembly Speaker Silver's] would reverse [Lukaszewski or Welsh]. While [Silver's] prohibits discrimination, it is not clear that this law would protect atheists from religious discrimination. Discrimination against atheists is still widely acceptable by mainstream America.
Source Citation:
Institute for Humanist Studies. "Religious Freedom Laws Are Discriminatory and Unnecessary."
Atheism . Ed. Beth Rosenthal. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from
"Why Does the IHS Oppose RFRA in New York State?" 2007. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In
Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

The right of privacy is a legal concept that, broadly defined, concerns the ability of an individual or group to retreat entirely from public view but is more commonly applied when discussing issues of a person’s right to maintain control of personal information about himself or herself. In the United States, most of the legal issues surrounding the right of privacy deal with the Fourth
Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which prohibits the government from engaging in unreasonable search and seizure. Courts have found that some aspects of the right of privacy are limited, such as the disclosure of financial information required by a government for the purposes of taxation. Following the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, a number of new laws went into effect that gave the U.S. government some drastically increased powers over the private lives of citizens, including the ability to eavesdrop without court approval.
In the history of the U.S. legal system, the right of privacy is first mentioned in an 1890 article by two Massachusetts lawyers, Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren. "The Right to Privacy" discusses violations of citizens’ private lives after personal details were revealed in newspaper stories, and Brandeis and Warren argue that there is a legal basis to permit the individuals to sue for damages. Brandeis later became the first Jewish U.S. Supreme Court justice, and in 1928 he filed a dissenting brief on Olmstead v. United States, a case that became a legal milestone in delineating the right of privacy in the courts. In Olmstead a group of Seattle-area bootleggers were indicted on charges that they conspired to possess, transport, and sell alcoholic beverages in violation of the National Prohibition Act. One of the bootleggers was Roy Olmstead, whose private telephone conversations had been monitored via wire taps.
In his lawsuit, Olmstead claimed that his Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure had been violated, as were his protections under the Fifth Amendment, which guarantees a defendant a fair and impartial court proceeding. The Supreme Court ruled against
Olmstead and the bootleggers. In his dissenting opinion Brandeis notes that search and seizure rules regarding U.S. mail prohibits such government-agency intrusions. Like the mail, the telephone is a means of communication that exists thanks in part to a government authority, and
Brandeis asserts that "the evil incident to invasion of the privacy of the telephone is far greater than that involved in tampering with the mails."
The most famous passage from Brandeis’s Olmstead opinion, however, is his declaration that
"the makers of our Constitution undertook to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness. They recognized the significance of man’s spiritual nature, of his feelings and of his intellect. They knew that only a part of the pain, pleasure and satisfactions of life are to be found in material things. They sought to protect Americans in their beliefs, their thoughts, their emotions and their sensations. They conferred, as against the government, the right to be let

alone—the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men." In later years, the phrase "the right to be left alone" became the cornerstone of the legal debate on privacy.
Several more decades would pass before the right of privacy was affirmed by the Supreme Court in 1965 with the decision on Griswold v. Connecticut. The case concerned an obscure
Connecticut state law that banned the use of contraceptives. It dated back to 1879 but had rarely been enforced. In the early 1960s, Estelle Griswold, executive director of the Planned
Parenthood League of Connecticut, opened a clinic in the town of New Haven that offered birth control to women. She and the Yale School of Medicine professor who ran the clinic with her were arrested, tried, found guilty of violating the law, and fined a hundred dollars each. Both appealed, but the sentence was upheld by two higher courts before reaching the U.S. Supreme
Court. The Court ruled in favor of Griswold and the clinic, stating that a certain right of privacy should be granted to married couples in making personal decisions about their family size.
"Would we allow the police to search the sacred precincts of marital bedrooms for telltale signs of the use of contraceptives?" asks Justice William O. Douglas in the majority opinion. A subsequent decision by the Court extended that right of privacy to unmarried couples as well in
1972.
The landmark 1973 case Roe v. Wade also represented a significant step in defining the legal concept of right of privacy. In ruling against state laws that criminalized abortion, the Court found such laws in violation of a woman’s constitutional right to privacy. This was a matter of access to reproductive health-care services, and the Court asserted that antiabortion laws defied the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Sometimes called "due process of law," this legal tenet holds a person’s basic rights to "life, liberty or property, without due process of law" cannot be taken away by the government.
Much of the post-Roe debate about the right of privacy has returned to the issues of search and seizure and due process. Several new laws went into effect in the weeks and months following the 9/11 attacks, some of them part of the USA PATRIOT Act. Others were the result of executive orders signed by President George W. Bush. Among the latter, the most controversial has been the Warrantless Surveillance Program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA).
This program is designed to strengthen the NSA’s data-collection abilities regarding foreign intelligence and allows for the monitoring of phone calls, e-mails, and text messages initiated or received by individuals whom the NSA suspects of involvement in terrorist activities.
The crucial point of the Warrantless Surveillance Program is that it does not require traditional judicial oversight . In most cases, law-enforcement officials must supply a judge or court with probable cause in order to be granted a warrant to monitor phone calls or other electronic methods of communication. The Bush administration argued that special measures are necessary to combat terrorism and that the Warrantless Surveillance Program was vital to protecting

America from future terrorist attacks. A number of lawsuits were filed by citizens against their mobile-phone service providers for complying with the NSA requests to provide data on tens of thousands of calls.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has voiced concern over the Warrantless
Surveillance Program and several sections of the USA PATRIOT Act. The ACLU asserts that a wide range of basic civil rights are being eroded, including the ban on illegal search and seizure and the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Civil libertarians warn that the United
States government is wielding too much control.
Mass surveillance is now being utilized in several nations of the European Union (EU). In the
United Kingdom (UK), for example, a system of closed-circuit television cameras (CCTV) has been installed in public places across the country since the 1980s. No one knows for sure how many CCTVs are installed, but estimates range from 3.2 to 4.2 million. Privacy International, a
UK human rights watchdog organization, lists the United Kingdom, the United States, Russia, and China as among the world’s most surveilled societies.
In the United Kingdom, technological advances have come so far that even the widely touted new Oyster card for the London public transportation system has surveillance-tracking abilities.
(The card contains an embedded microchip.) Users buy the card, then add value to it at vending machines or staffed train-station counters. Then they wave it at signal readers at the turnstiles when they enter and exit public transportation. The card can also be used to track an individual’s movements through the system, although it is possible for Oyster-card owners to opt out of this feature.
Source Citation:
"Right of Privacy." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

The authors of this viewpoint are organizations that aim to defend privacy rights and civil liberties in an era of advancing technologies.
The widespread deployment of radio-frequency identification (RFID), an item-tagging technology that emits radio waves, poses numerous threats to privacy and civil liberties. Because of their minute size, RFID tags can be placed on merchandise, documents, and other objects without a person's knowledge and transmit frequencies that can be picked up by RFID readers up to thirty feet away, which could enable secret human tracking and profiling. RFID proponents contend that these tags can be "killed" or "blocked" to protect privacy, but these measures have neither been proven nor are foolproof; killed tags, for instance, may actually be "asleep" and be reactivated in the future. Ultimately, RFID technology can lead to a climate of ubiquitous surveillance. To prevent this, its usage must be regulated and operated with transparency to all parties, and some RFID practices must be banned outright.
Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) is an item-tagging technology with profound societal implications. Used improperly, RFID has the potential to jeopardize consumer privacy, reduce or eliminate purchasing anonymity, and threaten civil liberties.
As organizations and individuals committed to the protection of privacy and civil liberties, we have come together to issue this statement on the deployment of RFID in the consumer environment. In the [following viewpoint], we describe the technology and its uses, define the risks, and discuss potential public policy approaches to mitigate the problems we raise.
RFID tags are tiny computer chips connected to miniature antennae that can be affixed to physical objects. In the most commonly touted applications of RFID, the microchip contains an
Electronic Product Code (EPC) with sufficient capacity to provide unique identifiers for all items produced worldwide. When an RFID reader emits a radio signal, tags in the vicinity respond by transmitting their stored data to the reader. With passive (battery-less) RFID tags, read-range can vary from less than an inch to 20-30 feet, while active (self-powered) tags can have a much longer read range. Typically, the data is sent to a distributed computing system involved in, perhaps, supply chain management or inventory control.
While there are beneficial uses of RFID, some attributes of the technology could be deployed in ways that threaten privacy and civil liberties:
Hidden placement of tags. RFID tags can be embedded into/onto objects and documents without the knowledge of the individual who obtains those items. As radio waves travel easily and

silently through fabric, plastic, and other materials, it is possible to read RFID tags sewn into clothing or affixed to objects contained in purses, shopping bags, suitcases, and more.
If personal identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their knowledge or consent.
Unique identifiers for all objects worldwide. The Electronic Product Code potentially enables every object on earth to have its own unique ID. The use of unique ID numbers could lead to the creation of a global item registration system in which every physical object is identified and linked to its purchaser or owner at the point of sale or transfer.
Massive data aggregation. RFID deployment requires the creation of massive databases containing unique tag data. These records could be linked with personal identifying data, especially as computer memory and processing capacities expand.
Hidden readers. Tags can be read from a distance, not restricted to line of sight, by readers that can be incorporated invisibly into nearly any environment where human beings or items congregate. RFID readers have already been experimentally embedded into floor tiles, woven into carpeting and floor mats, hidden in doorways, and seamlessly incorporated into retail shelving and counters, making it virtually impossible for a consumer to know when or if he or she was being "scanned."
Individual tracking and profiling. If personal identity were linked with unique RFID tag numbers, individuals could be profiled and tracked without their knowledge or consent. For example, a tag embedded in a shoe could serve as a de facto identifier for the person wearing it.
Even if item-level information remains generic, identifying items people wear or carry could associate them with, for example, particular events like political rallies.
This framework respects businesses' interest in tracking products in the supply chain, but emphasizes individuals' rights to not be tracked within stores and after products are purchased.
To mitigate the potential harmful consequences of RFID to individuals and to society, we recommend a three-part framework. First, RFID must undergo a formal technology assessment, and RFID tags should not be affixed to individual consumer products until such assessment takes place. Second, RFID implementation must be guided by Principles of Fair Information Practice.
Third, certain uses of RFID should be flatly prohibited.
Technology assessment. RFID must be subject to a formal technology assessment process, sponsored by a neutral entity, perhaps similar to the model established by the now defunct
Congressional Office of Technology Assessment. The process must be multi-disciplinary, involving all stakeholders, including consumers.
Principles of Fair Information Practice. RFID technology and its implementation must be guided by strong principles of fair information practices (FIPs). The eight-part Privacy Guidelines of the
Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) provides a useful model. We

agree that the following minimum guidelines, based in part on these principles, must be adhered to while the larger assessment of RFID's societal implications takes place:
Openness, or transparency. RFID users must make public their policies and practices involving the use and maintenance of RFID systems, and there should be no secret databases. Individuals have a right to know when products or items in the retail environment contain RFID tags or readers. They also have the right to know the technical specifications of those devices. Labeling must be clearly displayed and easily understood. Any tag reading that occurs in the retail environment must be transparent to all parties. There should be no tag-reading in secret.
Purpose specification. RFID users must give notice of the purposes for which tags and readers are used.
Collection limitation. The collection of information should be limited to that which is necessary for the purpose at hand.
Accountability. RFID users are responsible for implementation of this technology and the associated data. RFID users should be legally responsible for complying with the principles. An accountability mechanism must be established. There must be entities in both industry and government to whom individuals can complain when these provisions have been violated.
Security safeguards. There must be security and integrity in transmission, databases, and system access. These should be verified by outside, third-party, publicly disclosed assessment.
RFID should never be employed in a fashion to eliminate or reduce anonymity. For instance,
RFID should not be incorporated into currency.
Merchants must be prohibited from forcing or coercing customers into accepting live or dormant
RFID tags in the products they buy.
There should be no prohibition on individuals to detect RFID tags and readers and disable tags on items in their possession.
RFID must not be used to track individuals absent informed and written consent of the data subject. Human tracking is inappropriate, either directly or indirectly, through clothing, consumer goods, or other items.
RFID should never be employed in a fashion to eliminate or reduce anonymity. For instance,
RFID should not be incorporated into currency.

We have identified several examples of "acceptable" uses of RFID in which consumer-citizens are not subjected to "live" RFID tags and their attendant risks.
Tracking of pharmaceuticals from the point of manufacture to the point of dispensing. RFID tags could help ensure that these critical goods are not counterfeit, that they are handled properly, and that they are dispensed appropriately. RFID tags contained on or in the pharmaceutical containers should be physically removed or permanently disabled before being sold to consumers.
Tracking of manufactured goods from the point of manufacture to the location where they will be shelved for sale. RFID tags could help ensure that products are not lost or stolen as they move through the supply chain. The tags could also assure the goods are handled appropriately. Tags should be confined to the outside of product packaging (not embedded in the packaging) and be permanently destroyed before consumers interact with them in the store.
Detection of items containing toxic substances when they are delivered to the landfill. For example, when a personal computer is brought to the landfill, a short-range RFID tag could communicate toxic content to a reader at the landfill. It is important to underscore that uses such as the landfill example do not require—and should not entail—item-level unique identifiers. The
RFID tag would, rather, emit a generic recycling or waste disposal message.
We are requesting manufacturers and retailers to agree to a voluntary moratorium on the itemlevel RFID tagging of consumer items until a formal technology assessment process involving all stakeholders, including consumers, can take place. Further, the development of this technology must be guided by a strong set of Principles of Fair Information Practice, ensuring that meaningful consumer control is built into the implementation of RFID. Finally, some uses of
RFID technology are inappropriate in a free society, and should be flatly prohibited. Society should not wait for a crisis involving RFID before exerting oversight.
Although not examined in this [viewpoint], we must also grapple with the civil liberties implications of governmental adoption of RFID. The Department of Defense has issued an RFID mandate to its suppliers, schools and libraries ... have begun implementing RFID, the EU and the
Japanese government have considered the use of RFID in currency, and British law enforcement has expressed an interest in using RFID as an investigative tool. As an open democratic society, we must adopt a strong policy framework based on Principles of Fair Information Practice to guide governmental implementation of RFID.
The following technological limitations have been proposed as reasons why consumers should not be concerned about RFID deployment at this time. We address each perceived limitation in turn, and explain why in themselves, these limitations cannot be relied upon as adequate consumer protection from the risks outlined above.
1. Read-range distances are not sufficient to allow for consumer surveillance.

RFID tags have varying read ranges depending on their antenna size, transmission frequency, and whether they are passive or active. Some passive RFID tags have read ranges of less than one inch. Other RFID tags can be read at distances of 20 feet or more. Active RFID tags theoretically have very long ranges. Currently, most RFID tags envisioned for consumer products are passive with read ranges of under 5 feet.
Contrary to some assertions, tags with shorter read ranges are not necessarily less effective for tracking human beings or items associated with them. In fact, in some cases a shorter read range can be more powerful. For example, if there were an interest in tracking individuals through their shoes as they come within range of a floor reader, a two-inch read range would be preferable to a two-foot read range. Such a short range would help minimize interference with other tags in the vicinity, and help assure the capture of only the pertinent tag positioned directly on the reader.
2. Reader devices not prevalent enough to enable seamless human tracking.
The developers of RFID technology envision a world where RFID readers form a "pervasive global network." It does not take a ubiquitous reader network to track objects or the people associated with them. For example, automobiles traveling up and down Interstate 95 can be tracked without placing RFID readers every few feet. They need only be positioned at the entrance and exit ramps. Similarly, to track an individual's whereabouts in a given town, it is not necessary to position a reader device every ten feet in that town, as long as readers are present at strategic locations such as building entrances.
3. Limited information contained on tags.
Some RFID proponents defend the technology by pointing out that the tags associated with most consumer products will contain only a serial number. However, the number can actually be used as a reference number that corresponds to information contained on one or more Internetconnected databases. This means that the data associated with that number is theoretically unlimited, and can be augmented as new information is collected.
For example, when a consumer purchases a product with an EPC-compliant RFID tag, information about the consumer who purchased it could be added to the database automatically.
Additional information could be logged in the file as the consumer goes about her business:
"Entered the Atlanta courthouse at 12:32 PM," "At Mobil gas station at 2:14 PM," etc. Such data could be accessed by anyone with access to such a database, whether authorized or not.
4. Passive tags cannot be tracked by satellite.
The passive RFID tags envisioned for most consumer products do not have their own power, meaning they must be activated and queried by nearby reader devices. Thus, by themselves, passive tags do not have the ability to communicate via satellites.
However, the information contained on passive RFID tags could be picked up by ambient reader devices which in turn transmit their presence and location to satellites. Such technology has

already been used to track the real-time location of products being shipped on moving vehicles through the North American supply chain.
In addition, active RFID tags with their own power source can be enabled with direct satellite transmitting capability. At the present time such tags are far too expensive to be used on most consumer products, but this use is not inconceivable as technology advances and prices fall.
5. High cost of tags make them prohibitive for wide-scale deployment.
RFID developers point to the "high cost" of RFID tags as a way to assuage consumer fears about the power of such tags. However, as technology improves and prices fall, we predict that more and more consumer products will carry tags and that those tags will become smaller and more sophisticated. We predict that the trend will follow the trends of other technical products like computers and calculators.
The RFID industry has suggested a variety of solutions to address the dangers posed by RFID tagging of consumer products. Among them are killing the tags at point of sale, the use of
"blocker tags," and the "closed system." We examine each strategy in turn.
Some have proposed that the RFID tag problem could be solved by killing the tags at the point of sale, rendering them inoperable. There are several reasons why we do not believe this approach alone and without other protections will adequately protect consumer privacy:
Killing tags after purchase does not address in-store tracking of consumers.
To date, nearly all consumer privacy invasion associated with RFID tagging of consumer products has occurred within the retail environment, long before consumers reached the checkout counter where chips could be killed. Examples include:
Close-up photographs were taken of consumers as they picked up RFID-tagged packages of
Gillette razor products from store shelves equipped with Auto-ID Center "smart shelf" technology.
A video camera trained on a Wal-Mart cosmetics shelf in Oklahoma enabled distant Procter and
Gamble executives to observe unknowing customers as they interacted with RFID-tagged lipsticks.
Plans are underway to tag books and magazines with RFID devices to allow detailed in-store observation of people browsing reading materials. This potential was demonstrated recently at the Tokyo International Book Fair 2003. According to Japan's Nikkei Electronic News, "By placing tag readers on the shelves of bookstores, the new system allows booksellers to gain

information such as the range of books a shopper has browsed, how many times a particular title was picked up and even the length of time spent flipping through each book."
If RFID tags are allowed to become ubiquitous in consumer products, removing the kill option could enable the instant creation of a surveillance society.
We recognize the need for stores to control shoplifting and make general assessments to enhance operations. However, monitoring and recording the detailed behaviors of consumers without their consent, even if only within the store, violates Principles of Fair Information Practice.
Tags can appear to be "killed" when they are really "asleep" and can be reactivated.
Some RFID tags have a "dormant" or "sleep" state that could be set, making it appear to the average consumer that the tag had been killed. It would be possible for retailers and others to claim to have killed a tag when in reality they had simply rendered it dormant. It would be possible to later reactivate and read such a "dormant" tag.
The tag-killing option could be easily halted by government directive.
It would take very little for a security threat or a change in governmental policies to remove the kill-tag option. If RFID tags are allowed to become ubiquitous in consumer products, removing the kill option could enable the instant creation of a surveillance society.
Retailers might offer incentives or disincentives to consumers to encourage them to leave tags active.
Consumers wishing to kill tags could be required to perform additional steps or undergo burdensome procedures, such as waiting in line for a "killer kiosk" and then being required to kill the tags themselves. Consumers who choose to kill the tags might not enjoy the same discounts or benefits as other consumers, or might not be allowed the same return policies. In many areas of privacy law, this retailer incentive is recognized, and there are legislative prohibitions against inducing the consumer to waive their privacy rights.
The creation of two classes of consumers.
If killing tags requires conscious effort on the part of consumers, many will fail to do so out of fear, ignorance, or lack of time. Many will choose not to kill the tags if doing so is inconvenient.
(The current "killer kiosk" requires loading one item at a time, a lengthy and time-consuming process.) This would create two classes of consumers: those who "care enough" to kill the RFID tags in their products and those who don't. Being a member of either class could have negative ramifications.
The blocker tag might encourage the proliferation of RFID devices by giving consumers a false sense of security.

RFID blocker tags are electronic devices that should theoretically disrupt the transmission of all or select information contained on RFID tags. The proposed blocker tag might be embedded in a shopping bag, purse, or watch that is carried or worn near tags with information consumers want blocked.
Blocker tags are still theoretical.
According to our understanding, the blocker tag does not yet exist. Until a blocker tag is built and tested, there is no way to know how effective it will be and whether it can be technically defeated.
Encourages the widespread deployment of RFID tags.
The blocker tag might encourage the proliferation of RFID devices by giving consumers a false sense of security. While the proposed invention is an ingenious idea, it's one that could be banned or be underutilized if consumers become complacent. It's also possible that such an electronic device could be technically defeated either purposefully or because it stops functioning naturally.
The blocker tag could be banned by government directive or store policy.
Consumers could lose the right to use blocker tag devices if the government deems that knowing what people are wearing or carrying is necessary for national security. They might disallow the devices altogether or name selective spaces in which blocker tags would be disallowed. It is not inconceivable to imagine a ban on such devices in airports or public buildings, for example.
Retail stores might ban blocker tags if they believe the tags might be used to circumvent security measures or if they believe knowing details about consumers is valuable in their marketing efforts.
Once RFID tags and readers are ubiquitous in the environment, a full or partial ban on a privacy device like the blocker tag would leave consumers exposed and vulnerable to privacy invasion.
Adds a burden to consumers.
A blocker tag shifts the burden of protecting privacy away from the manufacturers and retailers and places it on the shoulders of consumers. In addition, busy consumers might forget to carry blocker devices or forget to implement them, especially if additional steps are required to make them effective.
Fails to protect consumers once products are separated from the blocker tag.
Blocker tags theoretically work only when they are close to the items they are designed to
"conceal" from RFID reader devices. Once items are out of the range of the blocking device, consumers would be exposed and vulnerable to privacy invasion. For example, a consumer might buy a sweater and feel that the information on the embedded RFID tag is unexposed

because she is carrying it home in a bag impregnated with a blocker device. However, once she removes that sweater from the bag and wears it in range of a reader device, information from that tag could be gleaned.
The creation of two classes of consumers.
Like the kill-tag feature, blocker tags will also likely create two classes of consumers, those who block tags and those who do not.
Industry proponents argue that when RFID applications are confined to closed systems, the data is only accessible to those within the system and those with a government mandate (perhaps via legislation such as the Communications Access to Law Enforcement Act [CALEA]). Therefore they argue, society-wide profiling and tracking are not likely.
An example of a current closed application is RFID in libraries. The Grapes of Wrath in Library
X has a different code than the same book in Library Y.
Whereas today RFID applications are confined to closed systems, there will be great incentives to standardize product level tagging. Publishers, for example, may someday ship books to libraries and bookstores with writable tags. Each copy of The Grapes of Wrath will contain a portion of its EPC code that is the same as every other copy. The library will be able to customize the remainder of the code to suit its own inventory control purposes.
Even if closed systems remain closed, their lack of transparency makes them troubling from a privacy perspective. Because details about closed systems might not be readily available, consumers could have difficulty obtaining the information necessary to assess privacy risks and protect themselves.
We appreciate that industry proponents are making an effort to address consumer privacy and civil liberties concerns associated with RFID technology. However, while we believe the proposed solutions are offered in the proper spirit, they provide inadequate protection. Until appropriate solutions are developed and agreed upon, we believe it is improper to subject consumers to the dangers of RFID technology through item-level consumer product tagging.
Source Citation:
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and
Numbering (CASPIAN), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), Electronic Privacy Information
Center (EPIC), Junkbusters, Meyda Online, Privacy Activism, Privacy Rights. "RFID
Technology May Threaten Privacy and Civil Liberties." RFID Technology . Ed. Roman Espejo.
Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. At Issue. Rpt. from "RFID Position Statement of Consumer

Privacy and Civil Liberties Organizations." 2003. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web.
10 Apr. 2012.

Jay Cline is a data-privacy specialist at Carlson Companies, which has businesses in travel, hospitality, and marketing and is based in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
The negative hype that surrounds radio-frequency identification (RFID) overshadows reality, and privacy advocates distort the vulnerabilities of RFID technology and its worst-case scenarios.
Instead of inviting governments or corporations to spy on unwitting citizens or steal their identities, RFID has the potential to revolutionize commerce and industry. For example, RFID tags can prevent medical mistakes in hospitals, markedly improve automotive maintenance, and streamline postal services. The federal government also stands to save billions of dollars by using RFID inventory-management systems. Regardless of these exceptional benefits, RFID makers must address the public's overblown fears, before the most valuable RFID applications are banned.
The privacy scare surrounding radio frequency identification (RFID) tags is greatly overblown.
No company or government agency will be secretly scanning your house, as is feared, to find out what products you've purchased. There is no feasible way to do so. But if RFID chip makers don't soon allay these fears, the escalating public emotion around this issue may effectively ban the most valuable implementations of this remarkable technology.
What are these mysterious devices? An RFID tag is a microchip the size of a grain of sand that transmits information to a nearby scanner. Typical chips store 96 bits of data and transmit a 125-
KHz RF signal. Experts say that capacity is enough to send a product serial number to a scanner a few feet away. Although this capacity is limited, many companies see a revolution in the making.
Hospitals imagine a day when RFID tags will prevent medical errors by transmitting the correct medicine dosages to nurses. Automakers hope similar tags will be able to transmit wear-and-tear information on vehicles before serious problems occur. Postal services see speedier parcel scanning and tracking. Appliance makers and food producers envision faster and more targeted recalls of defective products. Clothing and shoe stores expect faster customer service as RFID tags help identify items of the right size. Clothes manufacturers hope the tags will be able to tell washing machines how to best wash items. The music industry sees the technology reducing piracy, and the federal government hopes RFID tags will help combat counterfeiting and speed bag-checking at airports.
Sound too good to be true? Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and the Pentagon don't think so. They're counting on savings of several billion dollars that RFID tagging will bring them in the form of lower inventory-management costs. Items will no longer need to be individually hand-scanned, expediting product loading, invoicing and customer checkout. Scanners might be placed on shelves to speed restocking and at building exits to prevent theft. These lucrative benefits

prompted both organizations to announce ... that their suppliers must tag their cases and pallets with RFID chips by January 2005 in order to continue doing business with them.
The story gets better. Analysts see these dual mandates causing a domino effect throughout the world economy. Procter & Gamble Co.—which sells 17% of its goods through Wal-Mart— expects pallet-level tagging to improve the speed by which it replaces out-of-stock products.
P&G sees the technology boosting total revenue by $1.2 billion per year, nearly a 3% increase.
Accenture Ltd. estimates that RFID adoption will cause retailers to enjoy an average 3% climb in revenue. Japanese analysts project a worldwide benefit of $276 billion by 2010.
So what's the problem?
Privacy advocates are concerned about tags on products continuing to emit signals in the parking lot, on the road and at home. They're worried that by using charge cards or loyalty cards during checkout, customer identifies could be written to the tags. In the worst scenario, they imagine stalkers and thieves scanning cars and homes for expensive goods and personal information.
It's completely infeasible today for a vehicle to pass down your street and intercept signals from
RFID-tagged goods inside your home.
Some companies are already experiencing a customer backlash with their product-level tagging trials. Customers of a New York clothing store recently reacted against the prospect of their clothing sizes being beamed into the air. Wal-Mart reportedly had to cancel a pilot where it tagged packages of high-end razor blades because of strongly negative consumer feedback.
Stories of person-level tagging have only heightened fears of a Big Brother world coming to fruition. In Mexico, some children have reportedly been implanted with RFID chips under the skin so they can be tracked if they're kidnapped. A company in Brazil has supposedly implanted chips into the skin of its employees as their means to gain building access. Closer to home, a school in Buffalo is requiring students to wear RFID-tagged badges around their necks to track arrival times, and a prison is using RFID wristbands to monitor inmates. Some have speculated on the benefit of implanting in people RFID chips containing their medical and criminal histories. With friends like these, does Wal-Mart need any enemies?
The hype around RFID systems has certainly outpaced reality. Manufacturers and retailers have yet to agree on a universal electronic product code, the RFID equivalent of the Universal Product
Code used in bar codes. RFID scanning is also far from error-free. But more importantly, RFID signals are so weak that they're easily blocked by metals and dense liquids. It's completely infeasible today for a vehicle to pass down your street and intercept signals from RFID-tagged goods inside your home.

The economics of RFID chips are also limiting how they're used. The most basic read-only chips cost 5 to 50 cents apiece. More complex chips that are read-write and have a wider broadcast range can cost several dollars each. Until these prices approach a penny, RFID chips will be mostly used at the case and pallet level, clear of any personally identifiable activity. Because of these technology and cost limitations, the world will have several years to identify the privacy controls we want to see in RFID systems.
Several companies are already creating these privacy controls. In recent meetings, chip makers and users discussed how the universally accepted principles of data privacy could be built into the RFID process. A top priority was notifying customers that certain items were tagged with these transmitters. The companies discussed accomplishing this by adopting a common RFID logo to place on product packages. To give customers the ability to turn off the transmitters, the firms plan to make them peel-offs. RSA Security Inc. is also developing a chip that could be worn on watches or bags that would block nearby RFIDs from transmitting certain information.
All in all, the RFID privacy ball is rolling.
The gathering storm against RFID tags may soon outpace these positive efforts and make product-level RFID tagging taboo. RFID makers and users should take a time-out from their technical discussions and start talking more with the public about what's going on. Their dreams of big economic returns may well depend on it.
Source Citation:
Cline, Jay. "RFID Technology Does Not Threaten Privacy." RFID Technology . Ed. Roman
Espejo. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. At Issue. Rpt. from "RFID Privacy Scare Is
Overblown." Computerworld (23 Nov. 2003). Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10
Apr. 2012.

Same-sex marriage permits couples of the same gender to enter legally-recognized marriages and provides them with the same legal rights as couples in heterosexual marriages. Same-sex marriage is legal in Belgium, Canada, the Netherlands, Norway, South Africa, Spain, and
Sweden. In the United States as of 2010, same-sex marriage is legal in Connecticut,
Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Iowa, and Vermont as well as in the District of Columbia.
Opponents of same-sex marriage argue that the institution of marriage should apply only to unions between one man and one woman. Allowing gay and lesbian couples to marry, they say, undermines the institution of marriage itself. Some who object to same-sex marriage support the idea of civil unions, rather than full marriage, for same-sex couples. But advocates say that such unions are not fully equivalent to marriage and deprive same-sex couples of equal rights.
In the United States, marriage laws are enacted by the individual states, not by the federal government. Yet the federal government has intervened where it has determined that constitutional rights have been violated. The argument that same-sex couples should have the right to marry can be traced to the civil rights movement, which supported efforts to repeal state miscegenation laws that forbade interracial marriages. In 1942 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in
Skinner v. Oklahoma that marriage is "one of the basic civil rights." Loving v. Virginia, decided by the Supreme Court in 1967, ended race discrimination in marriage and also affirmed: "The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men." These decisions paved the way for same-sex couples to demand equal marriage rights. Beginning in the early 1970s, individual gay and lesbian couples applied for marriage licenses in various states, but these efforts did not succeed. Though some couples sued, the lawsuits were also rejected.
The tide began to turn in 1993, when three same-sex couples in Hawaii sued the state for marriage licenses. The Hawaii Supreme Court ruled that the state was required to demonstrate sufficient reason for denying the licenses, or stop discriminating. In a 1996 trial decision, Judge
Kevin Chang ruled that there is no good reason to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Despite this clear ruling to end discrimination in marriage, Hawaii amended its constitution to block same-sex marriages.
These developments fueled growing activism for same-sex marriage rights. In 1999 the Vermont
Supreme Court ruled that same-sex couples were entitled to the same rights as couples in heterosexual marriages, but the state legislature enacted civil unions, rather than full marriage, for same-sex couples. In 2001, the same year that the Netherlands became the first country to give same-sex couples full marriage rights, seven same-sex couples in Massachusetts who had been denied marriage licenses sued the state. Their case was bolstered by a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003, Lawrence v. Texas, which struck down sodomy laws and stated that the "moral disapproval" of voters or government is not a valid basis for discrimination in marriage. In 2003

the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the state constitution mandates equality in marriage for same-sex and heterosexual couples. Three months later the court specified that civil unions did not meet this requirement, and on May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state to grant marriage licenses to same-sex couples.
Events in California illustrate the deep divisions between supporters and opponents of gay marriage, and between government and voters. In 2004 San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordered the city to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples. More than 2,000 were granted, and these couples married. But the California Supreme Court later deemed these licenses invalid.
In 2005 the California legislature became the first in the United States to pass a bill legalizing same-sex marriage, but Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed the bill. The case went to the
California Supreme Court, which ruled in 2008 that "limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute," and that marriage must be made equally available to both same-sex and opposite-sex couples. At the same time, however, a ballot initiative, Proposition 8, was launched to deny same-sex marriage rights. On June 16, 2008, California began allowing same-sex couples to receive marriage licenses. But on November 4 of that year, Proposition 8 passed, again banning samesex marriage.
A similar pattern was seen in Maine, where Governor John Baldacci in 2009 signed a freedom to marry bill, which had strong support from both branches of the state legislature. Opponents, however, with strong support from national organizations, launched a referendum campaign to ban same-sex marriage. It was put on the ballot that November and passed by a narrow margin.
As in California, voters overturned legislative action.
In 1996 President Bill Clinton signed into law the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA). This law specifies that no state is required to recognize a same-sex marriage performed in another state. It also states that the federal government defines marriage as "only a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife, and the word ‘spouse’ refers only to a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife." However, DOMA does not require individual states to adopt this definition, nor does it ban states from allowing same-sex marriages.
Despite President Obama's strong support for gay rights, his administration filed a motion in
June 2009 to dismiss a case in California seeking to overturn DOMA. The motion acknowledged that DOMA permits each state to decide the legal status of same-sex marriage and said that married same-sex couples were not entitled to constitutional acknowledgement of their married status. Yet in August, the White House issued a statement on another DOMA defense brief, saying that the brief "makes clear … that my Administration believes that the Act is discriminatory and should be repealed by Congress."

Since 2002 opponents of same-sex marriage have worked to pass a Federal Marriage
Amendment (FMA) to the U.S. Constitution. This amendment would define marriage as a union between one man and one woman. It has been introduced to the U.S. Congress in 2003, 2004,
2005, and 2008 but has failed to gain enough support to pass. Those in favor of FMA argue that the federal government must intervene to stop same-sex marriage because, where it is allowed, it has been the result of advocate judges imposing their views against the will of voters. This, say proponents of FMA, amounts to an abuse of judicial power. Proponents also argue that same-sex marriage threatens the federally recognized special status of opposite-sex marriages and that a constitutional amendment must be enacted to protect this status and prevent other types of marriages.
FMA opponents, however, say that the amendment would violate state rights to regulate marriage laws. They also argue that it would restrict civil rights and violate the right to privacy.
Some religious groups also oppose FMA, arguing that it is not the government's role to define marriage and that the amendment would violate freedom of religion.
Many politicians, wishing to support same-sex rights without alienating advocates of traditional marriage, have supported civil unions for same-sex couples. These unions, the details of which vary by state, confer various rights and benefits, but not the full rights that marriage bestows.
Civil-union rights may include legal protections relating to wills and property, probate, adoption, spousal abuse, access to state employee group insurance, workers' compensation benefits, family leave benefits, and power of attorney.
But these rights, say advocates, offer only a fraction of the benefits that the U.S. government gives to couples who are legally married. These include the right to make medical decisions on behalf of the spouse or to take sick leave to care for a partner, and the right to visit a partner in the hospital or in prison. Legally married couples also enjoy a wider range of protections in matters of divorce, child custody, automatic inheritance, domestic violence, joint bankruptcy, and receipt of Social Security benefits, and also receive tax advantages not given to unmarried couples.
According to a Pew Research Center report in 2009, some 53 percent of Americans oppose same-sex marriage, but 57 percent support civil unions for same-sex couples. In 1996, when he was running for the Illinois Senate, Barack Obama stated: "I favor legalized same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages." But during his presidential campaign in 2008
Obama shifted his views, stating his support for civil unions. Some analysts accused the candidate of pandering to the large African American demographic that opposes same-sex marriage. According to the White House Web site, the president "supports full civil unions and federal rights for LGBT [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered] couples and opposes a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage."

Much of the debate on same-sex marriage stems from religious teachings on marriage and on homosexuality. Islam, for example, officially prohibits same-sex marriage, whereas Reform
Judaism has long permitted same-sex couples to celebrate their commitment. The Roman
Catholic church opposes same-sex marriage, and American bishops, stating that "marriage is a faithful, exclusive and lifelong union between one man and one woman," strongly support the
FMA.
The United Church of Christ, in 2005, became the first major Christian denomination to give official support to same-sex marriage. In 2009 the Episcopal Church voted not to block same-sex marriages in dioceses that chose to perform them. More-fundamentalist churches such as the
Southern Baptist Convention, however, have actively opposed same-sex marriage and homosexuality. Unitarian Universalist churches unequivocally support same-sex marriage.
Attitudes among churchgoers often differ considerably from those of church officials. Data published by the Christian Century in 2009, for example, show that some 45 percent of Catholics support same-sex marriage, whereas only 43 percent oppose it. And among white mainline
Protestant congregations, support is almost 40 percent and opposition is 50 percent. In black
Protestant congregations, however, 25 percent support same-sex marriage and 66 percent oppose it.
Source Citation:
"Same-Sex Marriage." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010.
Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"The Constitution was never intended to set social policy."
In the following viewpoint, Charles Krauthammer argues that congressional debate over a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage is a waste of energy. While he opposes the state of Massachusetts's decision to recognize same-sex marriages, he contends that laws already in place will slow the spread of such recognition. He concludes that when judicial activists overstep their bounds, as they have done in recognizing same-sex couples, the solution is to remove them, not to change the Constitution, and to elect presidents who will appoint rightthinking Supreme Court justices. Krauthammer is a Pulitzer Prize-winning syndicated columnist and commentator whose work regularly appears in national publications.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
How many more votes would the U.S. Senate have needed to pass a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage, as reported in the viewpoint?
2.
According to the viewpoint, which law protects a state that does not allow same-sex marriage from having to recognize same-sex marriages performed in other states?
3.
What are the two purposes of the Constitution, according to the author?
On Wednesday [June 7, 2006] the Senate fell eighteen votes short of the two-thirds majority that would have been required to pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. The mainstream media joined Sen. Edward Kennedy in calling the entire debate a distraction from the nation's business and a wedge with which to divide Americans.
Since the main business of Congress is to devise ever more ingenious ways (earmarked and nonearmarked) to waste taxpayers' money, any distraction from the main business is welcome. As for dividing Americans, who came up with the idea of radically altering the most ancient of all social institutions in the first place? Until the past few years, every civilization known to man has defined marriage as between people of opposite sex. To charge with "divisiveness" those who would do nothing more than resist a radical overturning of that norm is a sign of either gross partisanship or serious dimwittedness.
And that partisanship and dimwittedness obscured the rather interesting substance of the recent
Senate debate. It revolved around the two possible grounds for the so-called Marriage Protection
Amendment: federalism and popular sovereignty.
When one state, such as Massachusetts, adopts gay marriage, the full-faith-and-credit clause of the Constitution might reasonably be applied to require other states to recognize such marriages,

and thus, essentially force it upon the rest of the nation. Federalism, however, is meant to allow states the autonomy of social experimentation (as with Oregon's legalization of assisted suicide) from which other states can learn. It is not intended to force other states to follow.
But it turns out that the Massachusetts experiment has not been forced on other states. No courts have required other states to recognize gay marriages performed in Massachusetts. Gay activists have not pushed it, wisely calculating that it would lead to a huge backlash. Moreover,
Congress's Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) explicitly prevents the state-to-state export of gay marriage.
Should DOMA be overturned, that would justify a constitutional amendment to prevent one state from imposing its will on the other forty-nine. But it has not been overturned. And under the current Supreme Court, it is unlikely to be. The Marriage Protection Amendment is therefore superfluous.
That leaves justification No. 2:
Popular Sovereignty. Gay marriage is a legitimate social issue to be decided democratically. The problem is that imperial judges are legislating their personal preferences, striking down popular will and calling it constitutional law.
Most notoriously, in Massachusetts a total of four judges out of seven decided that the time had come for gay marriage. More recently, in Georgia and Nebraska, judges have overturned (state) constitutional amendments banning gay marriage that had passed with more than 70 percent of the vote.
This is a rerun of the abortion fiasco: judicial fiat that decades later leaves the issue roilingly unsettled and divisive. This is no way to set social policy in a democracy. So why not have a federal constitutional amendment and smite the arrogant solons of Massachusetts, Nebraska and
Georgia, and those yet to come, all at once?
Because it is an odd solution for a popular-sovereignty problem to take the gay-marriage issue completely out of the hands of the people. Once the constitutional amendment is passed, should the current ethos about gay marriage change, no people in any state could ever permit gay marriage.
The amendment actually ends up defeating the principle it sets out to uphold. The solution to judicial overreaching is to change the judiciary, not to undo every act of judicial arrogance with a policy-specific constitutional amendment. Where does it end? Yesterday it was school busing and abortion. Today it is flag burning and gay marriage.

It won't end until the Constitution becomes pockmarked with endless policy amendments. The
Constitution was never intended to set social policy. Its purpose is to (a) establish the rules of governance and (b) secure for the individual citizen rights against the power of the state. It defaces the Constitution to turn it into a super-legislative policy document.
In the short run, judicial arrogance is to be fought democratically with the means still available.
Rewording and repassing the constitutional amendment in Georgia, for example. Appealing the
Nebraska decision right up to the Supreme Court, which, given its current composition, is extremely likely to terminate with prejudice this outrageous example of judicial interposition.
In the longer run, it means having Supreme Courts that routinely strike down such judicial imperialism. And that means electing presidents who nominate [conservative Supreme Court
Justices] John Roberts and Sam Alito rather than [liberal Justices] Stephen Breyer and Ruth
Bader Ginsburg.
True, this does nothing about today's judicial usurpation in Massachusetts. But that is the problem of its good citizens. If they want to, they have the power to amend their own state constitution. In the meantime, Massachusetts remains quarantined by DOMA.
Therefore, there is no need (yet) to disfigure the U.S. Constitution with a policy amendment.
Source Citation:
Krauthammer, Charles. "The United States Does Not Need a Federal Marriage Amendment."
Homosexuality . Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints.
Rpt. from "A Ban We Don't (Yet) Need." Washington Post 9 June 2006: A23. Gale Opposing
Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"It would be the very height of foolishness to rely on the Supreme Court to protect marriage."
The following viewpoint was originally presented as a floor speech by Marilyn Musgrove, a
Republican congresswoman from Colorado, during a debate over a proposed Federal Marriage
Amendment in the United States House of Representatives. Musgrove argues that the best way to protect children is to protect the traditional notion of marriage through a constitutional amendment, and that such an amendment should be passed quickly before the tradition is further eroded. She points out that some states have already begun to recognize same-sex unions, and contends that the court system cannot be relied upon to safeguard marriage.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
How did the Supreme Court describe marriage many years ago, according to the viewpoint?
2.
As mentioned in the viewpoint, in which state did the Supreme Court decide the
Goodridge case, legalizing same-sex marriage?
3.
Why does our concern over a high divorce rate support the need for the Marriage
Protection Amendment, according to the viewpoint?
Letters and e-mails and phone calls continue to pour into my office urging me to continue in this effort. We know that polls show that the overwhelming majority of the American people support traditional marriage, marriage between a man and a woman.
The people have a right to know whether their elected representatives agree with them about protecting traditional marriage.
I cannot think of a better good that this body may pursue than to promote and defend the idea that every child deserves both a father and a mother. Studies demonstrate the utmost importance of the presence of a child's biological parents in a child's happiness, health and future achievements. If we chip away at the institution which binds these parents and the family together, the institution of marriage, you begin to chip away at the future success of that child.
I would not want to negate the heroic job that many single parents do every day in providing the necessary support to a child's happiness. But today we are discussing what social policy is best for our children, and I am convinced that the best is found in promoting and defending traditional marriage.
Are there other important issues? Of course there are, but preserving the institution of marriage, which, as the Supreme Court said many years ago [in 1888] is "the foundation of the family and of society, without which there would be neither civilization nor progress," certainly warrants a

few hours of our time. And even if there are other issues we need to address, as a former
Member, one of my favorites, J.C. Watts said, "Members of Congress are capable of walking and chewing gum at the same time."
And where are those who say we are wasting time when we were renaming post offices and federal buildings earlier this year? Mr. Speaker, if we have enough time to rename post offices and federal buildings, surely we can spend one afternoon debating whether or not the traditional definition of marriage is worth preserving.
Others have asked why we need this amendment given that courts in New York, Georgia, and
Nebraska have recently turned back challenges to traditional marriage. I just would like to say these decisions simply do not settle the issues. Cases in New Jersey and Washington, to name only two of many, remain pending.
Additionally, the Massachusetts Supreme Court's Goodridge decision legalizing same-sex marriage in that State continues to stand. Just last week, legislators in Massachusetts put off a measure to give the people the opportunity to decide this issue for themselves. While the
Goodridge case remains on the books, court dockets all over the country will continue to be ensnarled with same-sex marriage litigation as opponents of traditional marriage continue to fight to expand their agenda to the rest of the country.
While recent court victories are not unimportant, the ultimate court test, the test in the United
States Supreme Court, is still on the horizon. And legal experts agree at least four and probably five of the members of that court will act to overturn traditional marriage across America. That is why most legal experts expect DOMA [the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act] to fall once a challenge finally reaches the high court, which is why it would be the very height of foolishness to rely on the Supreme Court to protect marriage. Sadly, that August tribunal is part of the problem. Justice [Antonin] Scalia has already warned us that the Court's 2003 Lawrence decision was only the beginning of a road at the end of which is a radical redefinition of marriage at the hands of the Court.
Does anyone else see the irony in the opponents of this bill calling on us to wait until the
Supreme Court rules before deciding this issue? Many of those who protested the loudest that
DOMA was unconstitutional when it was enacted in 1996 are today the ones who say we ought to presume DOMA is constitutional until the high court tells us otherwise.
The American people want us to settle this issue now. They don't want us to wait to see how much havoc the courts will wreak on the definition of marriage before we act to protect it.
Our marriage laws represent centuries of cumulative wisdom regarding the best way to address public concerns about property, inheritance, legal liability and raising children. The last matter is especially important because we now know beyond any reasonable doubt that children thrive best when they are raised in a traditional family. And statistically speaking, the further we go

from this ideal, the more we can expect to see increases in measures of a whole host of social problems.
Again, this is not to say that children raised in non-traditional families will necessarily fall prey to these problems, but public policy is based on cumulative, not individual experience. Facts, as it has been said, are stubborn things. And one sad but stubborn fact is that the statistical dice are loaded against children who are raised without a father and a mother.
Some oppose the Marriage Protection Amendment on the grounds that the institution of marriage is already in trouble. Why be concerned, they say, about same-sex marriage when the divorce rate among couples in traditional marriages is so high? But can't you see this is a non sequitur? It is like saying to a doctor: The patient already has pneumonia, so why are you taking precautions to prevent him from getting a staph infection? Yes, traditional marriage has its problems, we all know that, and the high divorce rate is a national scandal. But far from undermining my point, this reinforces it. We are dismayed by the breakup of families because we know broken families lead to more and more children being deprived of the tremendous benefit of having both their mom and dad around to raise them.
Other opponents of this amendment argue that the existence of same-sex marriage in
Massachusetts has not caused the earth to stop spinning on its axis, so they ask what is all this fuss about. After only two years of experience, it is absurd to suggest that we can even begin to guess how the redefinition of marriage in that State will ramify in the future. And the fact that same-sex marriages in Massachusetts do not directly affect my marriage or your marriage means nothing in regard to the public policy debate. The breakup of the family next door does not directly affect your marriage or my marriage either, but we all recognize that every family that comes apart is a tragedy, and that is why our laws have always sought to encourage, not undermine, traditional families.
Source Citation:
Musgrave, Marilyn. "The United States Needs a Federal Marriage Amendment." Homosexuality .
Ed. Auriana Ojeda. San Diego: Greenhaven Press, 2004. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from
"Congressional Record—House." 2006. H5298-H5299. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context .
Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Clinton said, "If it means that the school rooms will be more orderly and more disciplined, and that our young people will learn to evaluate themselves by what they are on the inside, instead of what they're wearing on the outside, then our public schools should be able to require their students to wear uniforms." Although originally only popular in private schools, school uniforms have been the topic of much debate in homes, schools, and courts since the first public schools began requiring that students wear uniforms in the 1980s. Since that time more and more schools, public and private, are opting for uniforms. In fact, 15.5 percent of public schools required uniforms in the 2007–2008 school year, according to the Department of Education, reflecting an increase of about 6 percent from a decade earlier.
Dress codes generally differ from school uniforms in that they set rules about what cannot be worn but do not specify what must be worn. For example, a dress code may require that skirts and shorts be a certain length or may ban printed or potentially offensive T-shirts, certain types of jewelry, large or baggy clothes, clothes with holes, visible undergarments, strapless tops, or other types of clothing that the school administrators deem inappropriate or distracting. Uniform policies are generally more restrictive and require students wear a particular color and style of clothing—sometimes even dictating where the clothing must be purchased. In some schools, however, dress codes entail so many rules that they are nearly as restrictive as uniform policies and may require only solid colors or polo-style shirts. Both dress codes and uniform requirements have been contested in court. Some have even landed in the U.S. Supreme Court.
Generally, though not always, the courts rule in favor of a student's right to free speech in cases where students have violated dress codes. However, the courts have supported uniform requirements. This makes it easier for administrators to enforce uniform policies than more complicated dress code policies. For example, in a March 2007 case, a school argued that an anti-gay shirt was hateful and inflammatory, but the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the child citing the right to free speech. That following June the Supreme Court upheld a lower court's decision allowing a student to wear an anti-President Bush shirt with images of drugs and alcohol that violated the school's dress code prohibiting images of drugs or alcohol on clothing.
In another June 2007 case, however, the Supreme Court clarified its position when it ruled against a student who wore a shirt with the words "Bong Hits 4 Jesus," which the court said advocated drug use.
The courts have not overturned school uniform policies despite numerous student protests. For example, the Clark County School District in Nevada gave individual schools in their district the option to require students to wear khaki pants and solid-color polo shirts. The American Civil
Liberties Union challenged the requirement, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

in San Francisco ruled in favor of the schools, stating that uniforms do not violate the First
Amendment rights of students.
Proponents of uniforms contend that school uniforms make having and enforcing a dress code easier for school administrators. They keep wealthy students from showing off, prevent gang colors from entering the school, contribute to school spirit, and help teachers more quickly identify students on field trips as well as spot outsiders who enter the building. In addition, research also shows that uniforms can improve test scores and reduce behavior problems.
A frequently cited case of academic improvement following a school uniform policy is that of the Long Beach California Unified School District, one of the first districts to require student uniforms in grades K–8 in 1994. Following the new requirement, crime in the K–8 schools dropped by 22 percent, while attendance increased. Further, the district reported higher student test scores in reading and math. Other schools implementing similar policies have had similar results, but critics wonder if the uniforms should really be taking all the credit.
A study done by David Brunsma from the University of Missouri and Kerry A. Rockquemore from Notre Dame measured the effects of uniforms on attendance, behavior, substance abuse, and academic achievement and concluded that uniforms did not improve any of these. In their report published in the The Journal of Education Research in September/October 1998, the authors contend that uniforms may even have the opposite effect on academic achievement. They state, "Here, contrary to the expected, student uniform use actually decreases, on average, the standardized test score of these tenth graders who wear them due to mandatory school policy."
Although these assertions were contested by Ann Bodine in the November/December 2003 issue of The Journal of Educational Research, where she argued that the research methods were flawed, their results are often cited by school uniform opponents, and no other formal studies support claims for either side of the debate. Perhaps more importantly, Brunsma and
Rockquemore consider other reasons schools may see a correlation between uniforms and improved test results and other benefits. They state, "What is omitted from the discourse on school uniforms is the possibility that, instead of directly impacting specific outcomes, uniforms work as a catalyst for change and provide a highly visible window of opportunity. It is this window which allows additional programs to be implemented … Requiring students to wear uniforms is a change which not only effects students, but school faculty and parents. Instituting a mandatory uniform policy is a change which is immediate, highly visible, and shifts the environmental landscape of any particular school." Whether or not school uniforms directly improve attendance, behavior, and grades is still a matter of debate.
Although proponents say that uniforms should make clothing less expensive for parents, that is not always the case. Uniforms prevent parents from shopping at resale shops and sending their

children to school in clothing handed down from friends and relatives. Some parents also argue that uniforms should not be mandated in public schools, which are supposed to be free. To address this issue, President Bush instituted tax breaks for school supply purchases. Meanwhile, some states offer additional deductions to cover the costs of school supplies, and a few districts give vouchers for uniforms to low-income families. However, these benefits rarely apply to private schools and are sometimes not sufficient to cover the costs of public school uniforms.
Further, some schools, particularly private schools, require children to wear pricy uniforms that can only be purchased through the school or at specialty shops. A writer at The Economist relayed a story on September 26, 2009, from one of his coworkers whose child's school required that students wear a wool suit only available through the school outfitters. The child's father argued with the school throughout the summer saying, "I don't object to his being nicer and more intelligent than I am … But I draw the line at his being more expensively dressed." The article continues to point out that expensive uniforms not only cost a lot upfront, but some schools change the uniform from year to year, preventing parents from handing clothing down to younger siblings or other students. Also, requiring that the uniforms come from specific suppliers means parents cannot use secondhand or discount stores. Many assume that parents who are paying the high price of tuition can also afford to pay for the expensive uniforms, but that is not always the case. Parents frequently make many financial sacrifices to pay the tuition at a school they feel will better serve their children than their local public schools. These parents cannot afford expensive uniforms in addition to the already high price of tuition.
Many students simply do not like wearing uniforms. They complain that uniforms take away their individuality, promote conformity, or are unflattering or uncomfortable. Some students have gone as far as staging protests against wearing uniforms. At the Watson Chapel School
District in Arkansas, students wore black armbands to protest a uniform policy that began in
2006 for middle and high school students. When the students were disciplined for the armbands, the case went to court. The court ruled in favor of allowing the students to protest with armbands but did not require the school to change its stance on uniforms.
Requiring students to wear uniforms also does not allow parents to make clothing decisions that they view as more conscientious, such as resale, organic cotton, or locally produced clothing.
Some school uniforms have been tied to sweatshop conditions at the factories where the uniforms are made. SweatFree Communities, an anti-sweatshop group in Maine, accused Wal-
Mart of buying school uniforms made under sweatshop conditions from the JMS Garments
Factory in Bangladesh, which were sold under the Faded Glory brand name.
Annalisa Barbieri complains in a New Statesman article, "Today, trying to find a school uniform that contains cotton and wool has got even harder. Whereas in the outside world we covet natural fibers, we can't be trusted with them where children's school dress is concerned. Synthetic school trousers, for example, outsell cottons by 20:1." She continues by saying that the fabrics are

particularly bad for children with some skin conditions, such as eczema, and are so thin that they do not keep children warm in the winter.
While debates continue as to whether or not uniforms make schools safer and students smarter or if they are fair to require of parents and students, one thing remains clear—school uniforms will not likely be going away any time soon. The courts have supported their use, presidents have spoken out in support of school uniforms, and uniform policies are increasing in popularity in schools around the country.
Source Citation:
"School Uniforms." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"Our biggest problem with a school uniform policy is the anti-individuality message it sends."
The authors of this two-part viewpoint contend that school uniform policies erode students' rights of expression. In part I, an editorial in the Northwest Florida Daily News counters claims that uniforms ensure better behavior. Instead, it proposes, they suppress the individuality that administrators find distracting. In part II, Kent J. Fetzer of Salt Lake City, Utah, argues in the
Salt Lake Tribune that abrogating students' rights of expression by mandating uniforms runs counter to the spirit and laws of our nation. Young people, he posits, should be allowed to choose clothing that is different from the norm as long as it meets standards of decency and poses no safety threat.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
How does the Northwest Florida Daily News editorial refute the argument that school uniforms ensure better behavior?
2.
What advice does the editorial in the Northwest Florida Daily News offer to students who must wear uniforms?
3.
According to Fetzer, what has long been a hallmark of our democracy?
The Borg, "Star Trek's" biomechanized bad guys, might as well have been talking about
[Florida's] Okaloosa County's march toward school uniforms when they intoned: "Resistance is futile."
Indeed, as the Daily News reported last Monday [April 2002], more and more public schools are requiring or encouraging students to wear clothing of standardized colors and styles—uniforms, basically—and there's been nary a peep of protest. The goal: to mute some of the individuality that school administrators find so distracting.
Trekkers, however, will remind us that the Borg believed the individual was nothing and the collective was everything. That's one reason they were bad guys.
We don't think Okaloosa's uniform boosters are bad guys. But we do think they're emphasizing values that may not be, well, rewarding in the long run.
We know that many parents favor a uniform policy because it could make school clothes easier and cheaper to buy. And many administrators think uniforms will ensure kids behave better.
Don't be too sure about that last one. If matching duds guaranteed better-behaved people, no soldier would ever go AWOL [absent without leave] and no prisoner would ever get into a fight.

But our biggest problem with a school uniform policy is the anti-individuality message it sends.
If young people are to understand that a cornerstone of our freedom is the primacy of the individual—over government, over the collective, over any non-voluntary association—then sticking them all into look-alike clothes is a poor way to teach it.
In our view, a splendid way to teach the values of freedom and responsibility is to let youngsters experience freedom and, in the process, learn to act responsibly.
Instead, more uniforms are being ordered.
Here's our advice to area students:
Make your own friends, form your own opinions and shape your own beliefs, even if you're forced to look like everybody else.
Think your own thoughts.
And hope that they don't find a way to stop that, too.
While we were still basking in the warm glow of a successful Olympics, proud of our American heritage, a little bit of our freedom slipped away from us. A somewhat harried Utah Legislature has recently engaged in some well-intentioned railroading of our rights, and now our governor has signed their encroachment into law.
I refer to House Bill 5, sponsored by Rep. Karen W. Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights, which disallows parents' ability to opt out of mandatory wearing of school uniforms by their children.
Many parents are in favor of the uniforms, but not all. The stage has thus been set for the rights of the minority to be abrogated by the tyranny of the majority, and this with the sanction of our state government.
It may seem a trivial matter to some, but then again, should any loss of our basic personal freedoms be considered trivial? I think not. Freedom of expression has long been a hallmark of our democracy, and any loss of its privilege is deserving of our careful attention and scrutiny. It is insufficient that some may be disturbed by others' choices to be different. If a choice meets with common standards of decency and poses no threat to the safety and weal of the community, then the bar has not been met. Whereas, to infringe upon the rights and independence of the individual by coercing uniformity is an affront to both the spirit and the letter of the law of this great nation.
I know lawmakers' concern was protecting our children against the deleterious influence of gangs; but as I would not want my children imposed upon by these pernicious elements, or even

unduly influenced by the peer pressure of fashion and fad, so also I would guard them from the tyranny of bureaucracy.
Studies have been adduced demonstrating improved scholastic performance in conjunction with the wearing of school uniforms. I will not attempt to gainsay these results other than to state that even if true, it is still insufficient justification to warrant encroachment upon the rights of an individual. Should teachers also be forced to wear uniforms in an effort to improve their teaching? And why not the general citizenry of the state, to improve our overall efficiency? If possible, would some wish even to control hair, eye, and skin color? The thought may seem ludicrous, but then, Hitler's Third Reich was to boast the blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan race.
A nation that does not guard against small encroachments on its liberties is not likely to retain them. To suffer small erosions of our personal freedoms is to demonstrate our not being deserving of them. Vigilance has ever been the price of liberty, and ever will be.
Source Citation:
Fetzer, Kent J. "School Uniforms Stifle Freedom of Expression." School Policies . Ed. Jamuna
Carroll. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Erosion of
Freedom." Salt Lake Tribune 18 Apr. 2002: F2. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10
Apr. 2012.

"Uniforms instill discipline, help students focus on their studies and eliminate pressure on parents to outfit their kids."
According to Mike Kelly in this viewpoint, objections to school uniform policies are unfounded and frivolous. He especially takes issue with lawsuits filed against school districts on the grounds that the students' rights to choose clothing is a First Amendment freedom. One such case, he explains, is that of Mike DePinto, a fifth grader who wore a button depicting the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary group of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party, to protest his school's uniform policy. In Kelly's view, requiring schoolchildren to don uniforms is a reasonable way to improve learning skills, discipline, and focus. Kelly has been a columnist for The Record of Bergen County, New Jersey, for eighteen years.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
According to the author, how does DePinto's story get "weirder"?
2.
What are Kelly's two main objections to Laura DePinto's statement, released by her son's lawyers?
3.
In the author's view, what will DePinto's lawyers argue at trial?
Mike De Pinto, an 11-year-old fifth-grader from Bayonne [New Jersey], has a problem.
Just what kind of problem? This week [December 2006], a federal judge in Newark will try to find an answer.
We cherish our judicial system. For many, especially people on the downside of life, courts are often a refuge of last resort after stodgy bureaucracies and cowardly, narrow legislators refuse to act.
But sometimes, we waste judges' time with frivolous lawsuits.
Mike DePinto is wasting time.
At issue in this boy's life is a policy, invoked last September [2006] by the Bayonne public school system, that required students to wear uniforms to school.
DePinto is not necessarily claiming the school uniforms are ugly, distasteful or even too costly.
If anything, the uniforms of khaki pants and blue shirts with a school emblem are probably too bland.

DePinto's dilemma is that he simply wants to pick his own clothes. Or as he put it to a Bayonne newspaper last week: "I'm opposed to somebody telling me what to wear and forcing me to wear an emblem against my will."
Against his will? An emblem?
We're not talking about DePinto being forced to put on a political or religious symbol. The school district merely wants him to wear a pair of khakis and a shirt with a school emblem on it.
What will DePinto say if he earns a spot on a high school athletic team in a few years? Would he tell his coach he wants to design his own uniform?
Incredibly, this story gets weirder.
What got DePinto in trouble with school authorities—and prompted his federal lawsuit—was not his objection to wearing a Bayonne uniform as much as how he accessorized it. He added a button with a photograph of Hitler Youth members in their trademark Nazi uniforms. DePinto claims his button, which has a red circle and a slash across the Hitler Youth photo and the slogan
"No School Uniforms," is his personal form of protest.
The school district told DePinto and another student who later joined the button protest to get rid of the button or get suspended. Images of the Hitler Youth "are considered objectionable and are offensive to many Bayonne citizens and do not constitute free speech," the school district said.
DePinto, with the help of his mother and two Hackensack attorneys, filed a federal lawsuit along with the other protesting student, claiming that his freedom of expression was "stifled" because he had to remove his button. DePinto's attorneys tried to bolster their argument by claiming the
Hitler Youth photo is "historically accurate" and "not very different from pictures found in history books used by American schools to teach social studies."
What's the legal logic here—that if Bayonne students can gaze at pictures of creepy Nazi kids in a history book they ought to be able to design a creepy button to wear on their school uniforms?
DePinto's mother, Laura, added to the ridiculousness with her own statement, released by her son's lawyers: "That image showed no swastikas, no weapons, and [Adolf] Hitler himself wasn't depicted. The picture makes a profound statement about what can happen when we turn children into 'uniform' followers."
Memo to mom: Bayonne's students are not going to turn into the Hitler Youth because they are wearing khakis and blue shirts. Your statement is silly. So is the idea of using the name of Hitler as a vehicle to promote free expression.
There is a lively argument among some educators today about whether uniforms can be a useful tool in improving children's learning skills. Parochial and private schools have long followed a

formula that uniforms instill discipline, help students focus on their studies and eliminate pressure on parents to outfit their kids to look like such paragons of scholarship as [pop stars]
Justin Timberlake and Paris Hilton.
Now, public schools, from Secaucus to Hackensack, Fort Lee and Paterson, are considering various policies that would require students to wear some form of a uniform. But critics counter that uniforms don't really improve academics or student behavior and instead infringe on students' First Amendment rights of free expression.
Mike DePinto thinks he has a First Amendment case. On Monday, his attorneys are scheduled to present their arguments to U.S. District Court Judge Joseph A. Greenaway in Newark.
If only the judge would tell DePinto to button up and get back to school. But the judge probably won't do that.
He will likely allow lawyers to say that DePinto suffers deep sartorial pain each school day as he opens his closet and faces the cruel reality that he can't choose his own clothes and instead is forced to wear khaki pants and a blue shirt emblazoned with his school emblem. And then, we will hear the legal coup de gras: how he has a constitutional right to invoke the name of Adolf
Hitler—and Hitler's memory of racism, anti-Semitism and mass murder—as a way of demonstrating all the pain he feels about the clothes on his back.
In uniform, can we all shout: Give us all a break? Go back to school.
If only the judge would do that.
Source Citation:
Kelly, Mike. "School Uniforms Do Not Stifle Freedom of Expression." School Policies . Ed.
Jamuna Carroll. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Squabbling
Over School Uniforms." Record 10 Dec. 2006: O01. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context .
Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

A seat belt is a restraining device that is installed in a vehicle to prevent or minimize injury to passengers during a crash. It is also known as a safety belt, and the word safety is the key issue surrounding this device. Although research indicates that when seat belts are used properly they save lives, opponents argue that mandating their use, as almost all American states do, can actually cause more harm than good in some cases and is an infringement on personal rights.
Manufacturers use seat belts in many vehicles, including racecars, trucks, and airplanes, but the controversy surrounding seat belts applies mainly to their use in passenger cars.
Seat belts were first introduced in cars informally in the 1930s by physicians who determined they were necessary to avoid injury. These first seat belts were two-point lap belts only, consisting of a single piece of fabric stretched over the lap. Throughout the 1950s various car companies offered either lap belts or shoulder belts—each consisting of two points—as optional accessories. In 1959 the Swedish car company Volvo combined lap and shoulder belts into the first three-point belt, which is characterized by one continuous piece of fabric with a metal tab that stretches across both body regions and inserts into a single buckle. Although many types of seat belts have come and gone, the three-point belt is generally regarded as the safest version and is the kind found in most vehicles today.
Governmental Oversight
In the 1960s as driving-related fatalities increased and the dangers of driving permeated the public consciousness, several countries instituted seat belt laws. This included the United States.
Congress in 1966 passed several pieces of legislation, including the Highway Safety Act that created the Department of Transportation. This government department, in turn, established several agencies, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which was charged with setting and regulating all standards for motor vehicles and highways, including the use of seat belts. The subsequent rulings over the next several decades included many guidelines for automotive manufacturers, including the requirement to provide seat belts for rear passengers and visual and audible belt reminders, which chime when a belt is not fastened.
When a vehicle is involved in a crash, researchers refer to two types of collisions—primary and secondary. A primary collision is the impact between the vehicle and another vehicle or object.
The secondary collision refers to the impact of an occupant with some part of the vehicle's interior, such as the steering wheel, the roof, or the windshield. Or, in a case where the occupant is ejected from the vehicle, it refers to a collision with the ground or other surroundings. All seat belts are designed to tighten at the appropriate moment, so that they either prevent the second

collision or at least minimize the injury potential of this event. Unfortunately, sometimes the crash force is too great and even a seat belt cannot prevent injury or death.
Research by NHTSA suggests that seat belts are effective in saving lives. The most recent study estimated that 13,250 lives of passengers over the age of four were saved in 2008 by the use of seat belts, and an additional 4,152 lives may have been saved if seat belt use were at 100 percent.
In addition, research has shown that when three-point belts are used properly, it reduces the risk of fatal injury to front-seat passengers by 45 percent and the risk of moderate-to-critical injury by
50 percent. The agency also noted that when a person is ejected from a vehicle, this event is often fatal (77 percent of occupants who were totally ejected from the vehicle were killed in
2008). Because seat belts are particularly effective in preventing ejections, this is one of the strongest arguments for wearing them.
Although no federal law requires adult occupants to wear seat belts, forty-nine states and the
District of Columbia have instituted mandatory safety belt laws. (New Hampshire is the only state that does not require adults to wear seat belts.) In addition, thirty states have what is known as standard, or primary, laws, meaning that officers in these states have the right to pull over and ticket anybody who fails to follow the state's seat belt laws. In secondary law states, drivers must commit another offense first before an officer can pull them over and ticket for seat belt violations.
The high-profile national initiative known as "Click It or Ticket"—coordinated through NHTSA, the nonprofit Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), and all states that have seat belt laws—is the main tool that states use to promote awareness of seat belt laws and to coordinate enforcement efforts. The campaign started in selected states in the 1990s and early 2000s, and then became nationwide in 2003. The primary audience for this program is males ages eighteen to thirty-four, a group that research shows is less likely to wear seat belts and more likely to engage in risky driving behavior that could lead to crashes. Through a mix of media messages and increased enforcement during specific time periods, the Click It or Ticket program has consistently helped to increase seat belt usage. In July 2009 NHTSA reported that a record 83 percent of front seat occupants had buckled up in 2008, up from 59 percent in 1991.
A January 2010 agency report that reviewed the last several years of the Click It or Ticket initiative also found that public awareness and attitudes have changed. In fact, the analysis highlighted the growing support for primary belt laws and for seat belt enforcement.
Not everybody is a fan of mandatory seat belts, however, for several reasons.
Safer Without Them

Opponents of seat belt laws note that, especially in high-speed collisions where crash forces are extreme, seat belts have been linked to life-threatening conditions, including cardiac arrest or injuries to the chest, abdomen, or neck. These people believe they are safer without seat belts, although others argue that if the crash were severe enough to produce those types of injuries, then the alternative approach, no belt at all, would have ejected the occupants from the vehicle and likely killed them.
Seat Belt Malfunctions
Both NHTSA and IIHS agree that if a seat belt malfunctions—due to a manufacturing defect or design flaw, improper use by a passenger, or as a result of other vehicle defects that prevent the belt from working properly—it can reduce its effectiveness or even cause serious injuries, disabilities, or death. For example, if a seat belt appears locked but is not or fails to remain locked during a crash, then the occupant can be ejected from the vehicle. Some people argue that because they have no control over manufacturing defects, they would rather take their chances with no seat belt. Because these types of defects are a major liability for automotive manufacturers, recalls related to seat belts are common.
Moral Hazard
Another major argument against mandatory seat belt laws is that when people use seat belts, they may feel safe enough to engage in riskier driving behavior that could lead to an accident. This concept is known as moral hazard. One of the most persistent and vocal proponents of this idea is
John Adams, a risk expert and emeritus professor of geography at University College London.
For nearly three decades, Adams has analyzed the issue and associated data and says that people who believe themselves insulated from risk, such as those who trust in their seat belts, may ultimately engage in risky behaviors. A November 2006 Time magazine article cited some of
Adams' more jarring examples of how perception of risk can alter driving behavior—drivers would be much more cautious if a sharp stake were mounted in the middle of the steering wheel or if all cars were made with explosive-packed bumpers.
Infringement on Personal Rights
Some people also argue that it should be their choice to wear a seat belt because not wearing one can only harm them. In this sense, not wearing a seat belt is what is known as a victimless crime.
Also, given that seat belts have been linked to serious injuries or death, especially as a result of design flaws or other malfunctions, this group believes that it is a crime to force them to wear a potentially dangerous device and that mandatory seat belt laws are an infringement on their personal rights.
Of particular concern to everybody are seat belts and how they restrain children. According to the IIHS, more than 1,000 children twelve and younger in passenger vehicles die in crashes every year, and more than 100,000 are injured. For this reason, all fifty states and the District of

Columbia have child-restraint laws that require children to travel in approved devices. The specific laws for which type of restraint is appropriate for each age group differs by state, but, in general, there are four recommended ways to restrain a child passenger: a rear-facing child seat
(for infants and newborns up to at least one year of age), forward-facing child seat (for toddlers), booster seat (for children who have outgrown a forward-facing child seat), or adult seat belts.
Debate continues over the relative safety of each of these options, with one of the common issues being whether or not these devices are being used properly. In some cases, either by manufacturing design or misuse of the device, the belt is stretched across the soft parts of a child's body, such as the abdomen, which cannot sustain the same forces that bony structures, such as the pelvis, can. When a child passenger is in an accident and is improperly belted, it can cause internal injuries, including spinal cord damage.
Child Safety Restraints in School Buses
Another heated debate involves whether or not seat belts should be used in school buses. Any time there is a high-profile bus crash involving the death of an unbuckled child, as happened most recently in Connecticut in January 2010, a renewed debate begins over whether or not to require seat belts in school buses. NHTSA, which sets the national safety standards for school buses, addressed this issue most recently in October 2008, when it issued a ruling on the requirements for seat belts in school buses.
In its ruling NHTSA cited the overall safety statistics of school buses, noting that over a period of eleven years, ending in 2005, an annual average of twenty-six school transportation-related fatalities occurred, and the majority of these deaths were bus drivers, other adult passengers, or pedestrians—not the children riding the school buses. Furthermore, NHTSA indicated that making the addition of seat belts mandatory to all of the nation's school buses would require significant cost, which the agency estimated would be between 183 million and 252 million dollars to install three-point belts on all large school buses. For these reasons the agency ruled that on large school buses (those weighing more than 10,000 pounds, which comprise more than
80 percent of the nation's fleet), seat belts are not mandatory, and the choice is left up to individual states and school districts to require large buses to have seat belts. If they do, they must adhere to the agency's performance standards.
For small buses (those weighing less than 10,000 pounds), NHTSA ruled that they must have three-point, lap-and-shoulder belts to replace the lap belts that had been required up to that point.
The new rules for seat belts apply to small school buses manufactured on or after October 21,
2011.
Proponents of putting seat belts in all school buses argue that one should never have to put a price on human life, especially the life of a child, and that even if seat belts save the life of one child, the cost would be worth it. They also cite potential auxiliary benefits for buckling bus passengers, such as improving student behavior and helping to prevent bullying.
These impassioned pleas often meet the impasse of budget shortfalls, however, and most states and school districts, faced with either the financial issue or the space issue—installing seat belts

can cut down on the available passenger space in buses that are already filled to capacity—have not chosen to install seat belts.
Given the increasing use of additional safety technology such as airbags, anti-lock brakes, and traction control, seat belts are only one of the issues in a greater discussion on safety. Some of these innovations, most notably airbags, have also been cited as causing more injury than harm in certain cases. The debate over the relative safety of such devices, as well as the rights of passengers to choose whether or not they want to use these devices, is sure to continue.
Source Citation:
"Seat Belts." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"The single greatest defense against highway fatalities is a vehicle's seat belts."
The single most effective way to prevent injury and death on the highway is to wear a seat belt, argues Danielle E. Roeber in the following viewpoint. Since stronger seat belt laws increase seat belt use, she reasons, stronger seat belt laws will in turn save lives. The strongest seat belt laws are primary enforcement laws, in which police officers are authorized to stop and cite unbelted motorists without needing another reason to stop them. Roeber asserts that such laws will increase seat belt use and therefore reduce the economic and human cost of highway accidents.
Roeber is the alcohol safety and occupant protection coordinator at the National Transportation
Safety Board.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
According to Roeber, what percentage of ejected passenger-vehicle occupants were killed in 2005?
2.
What is the estimated cost of each critically injured survivor of a motor vehicle crash, according to NHTSA, as cited by Roeber?
3.
In the author's opinion, how does seat belt use in primary and secondary enforcement states differ?
The National Transportation Safety Board is an independent Federal agency charged by
Congress to investigate transportation accidents, determine their probable cause, and make recommendations to prevent their recurrence. The recommendations that arise from our investigations and safety studies are our most important product. The Safety Board cannot mandate implementation of these recommendations. However, in our 39-year history, organizations and government bodies have adopted more than 80 percent of our recommendations.
The Safety Board has recognized for many years that motor vehicle crashes are responsible for more deaths than crashes in all other transportation modes combined. Every year, more than 90 percent of all transportation-related deaths are caused by highway crashes. The single greatest defense against highway fatalities is a vehicle's seat belts. When used properly, seat belts reduce the risk of fatal injury to front seat vehicle occupants by 45 percent.
Seat belt laws are instrumental to increasing seat belt use, and the stronger the law, the greater the use. Seat belt use in the United States remains considerably lower than use in other industrialized nations precisely because other countries have stronger seat belt laws, and New
Hampshire, with no adult seat belt law, has the lowest belt use in the country.

For more than 15 years, the Safety Board has recommended that States enact seat belt laws and authorize primary enforcement of those laws. The Board maintains a Most Wanted list of safety recommendations because of their potential to save lives. Primary enforcement is one of the issues on that list, the one with the potential to save more lives than any other on the list. It has the potential to save more lives than probably any other piece of legislation you will consider this year.
Today I want to discuss four elements that support the Safety Board's recommendation on primary enforcement seat belt laws. First, seat belts are effective in reducing motor vehicle injuries and fatalities. Second, motor vehicle occupants who do not use seat belts engage more frequently in high-risk behavior. Third, the economic cost from the failure to use seat belts is substantial. Finally, primary enforcement seat belt laws do increase seat belt use.
Seat belts are the number one defense against motor vehicle injuries and fatalities. Seat belts restrain vehicle occupants from the extreme forces experienced during motor vehicle crashes.
Unbelted vehicle occupants frequently injure other occupants, and unbelted drivers are less likely than belted drivers to be able to control their vehicles. Also, seat belts prevent occupant ejections. Only 1 percent of vehicle occupants using seat belts are ejected, while 30 percent of unrestrained vehicle occupants are ejected. In 2005, 75 percent of passenger vehicle occupants who were totally ejected from a vehicle were killed.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimates that from 1975 through 2005, seat belts saved more than 211,000 lives nationwide. According to NHTSA, had all passenger vehicle occupants over age 4 used seat belts in 2005, an additional 5,300 lives would have been saved. Unfortunately, some motor vehicle occupants mistakenly believe that they are safer without a seat belt, that their vehicle and/or their air bag provides sufficient occupant protection, or that they will not be in a motor vehicle crash where seat belts would make a difference.
Approximately 19 percent of motor vehicle occupants nationwide do not use seat belts. These drivers, who choose not to buckle up, tend to exhibit multiple high-risk behaviors and are more frequently involved in crashes. According to the National Automotive Sampling System (crash data composed of representative, randomly selected cases from police reports), belt use among motorists is lowest in the most severe crashes.
Fatal crashes are the most violent motor vehicle crashes and can result from high-risk behaviors such as speeding and impaired driving. Unfortunately, people who engage in these high-risk behaviors also tend not to use their seat belts. While observational surveys have identified an 81 percent seat belt use rate, use in fatal crashes is significantly lower. From 1996 through 2005, almost 840,000 vehicle occupants were involved in fatal crashes. Of those 840,000 occupants, more than 320,000 died. More than 55 percent of the vehicle occupants who died were

unrestrained. In New Hampshire, for the same time period, more than 1,000 vehicle occupants died, and almost 65 percent were unrestrained.
Impaired drivers and teen drivers are also considered high-risk drivers. Seat belt use for these populations is substantially lower than the national observed belt use rate. In 2005, only 28 percent of fatally injured drivers who were violating their State's per se impaired driving statute
(had a blood alcohol concentration at or above 0.08 percent) were using seat belts. As for teen drivers, researchers found that while belt use was low in States that authorize primary enforcement (47 percent), it was even lower in States with only secondary enforcement seat belt laws (30 percent).
Although opponents to primary enforcement seat belt laws claim that nonuse is a personal choice and affects only the individual, the fact is that motor vehicle injuries and fatalities have a significant societal cost. For example, NHTSA calculated that the lifetime cost to society for each fatality is over $977,000, over 80 percent of which is attributed to lost workplace and household productivity. In 2005, more than 5,300 lives and billions of dollars might have been saved if everyone had used a seat belt.
NHTSA estimates that each critically injured survivor of a motor vehicle crash costs an average of $1.1 million. Medical expenses and lost productivity account for 84 percent of the cost of the most serious level of non-fatal injury. In a 1996 study, NHTSA found that the average inpatient cost for unbelted crash victims was 55 percent higher than for belted crash victims. In 2000 alone, seat belts might have prevented more than 142,000 injuries.
While the affected individual covers some of these costs, those not directly involved in crashes pay for nearly three-quarters of all crash costs, primarily through insurance premiums, taxes, and travel delay. In 2000, those not directly involved in crashes paid an estimated $170 billion for crashes that occurred that year; $21 billion, or 9 percent of total economic costs, were borne by public sources (federal and State government). Motor vehicle injuries and deaths experienced by unbelted vehicle occupants cost the Nation's taxpayers an estimated $26 billion just for medical care, lost productivity, and other injury related costs.
Primary enforcement seat belt laws remain the best way to raise and maintain high seat belt use rates. With primary enforcement, police officers are authorized to execute a traffic stop and cite unbelted vehicle occupants without needing another reason for making the stop. According to the
National Occupant Protection Usage Survey (June 2006), seat belt use in primary enforcement law States was 85 percent, while the belt use rate in secondary enforcement law States was only
74 percent. States that recently enacted primary enforcement seat belt laws have experienced increased seat belt use rates ranging from almost 5 to almost 18 percentage points. The increased use is based on the perceived risk of being stopped.

Key provisions of a comprehensive seat belt law should also include coverage of all vehicle occupants in all seating positions, coverage of all vehicles, and sufficient penalties to promote compliance with the law.
American citizens support primary enforcement. NHTSA conducted a survey in 2003 to determine the public's opinion on primary enforcement seat belt laws. Overall, 64 percent of the population surveyed supported primary enforcement. Among people from States with secondary enforcement seat belt laws, more than half (56 percent) approved of primary enforcement.
Minority populations are strong proponents of primary enforcement. For example, 74 percent of
Hispanics surveyed and 67 percent of African Americans surveyed endorsed primary enforcement, as opposed to 62 percent of whites. Traffic crashes affect people of all ethnic backgrounds.
Source Citation:
Roeber, Danielle E., and Statement before National Transportation Safety Board Transportation
Committee. "Seat Belts Reduce Highway Fatalities." Transportation . Ed. Louise Gerdes. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "House Bill 802, Seat Belt
Legislation." 2007. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"Regulators should take a deep breath, allow beltless motorists to put themselves at risk, and go hassle the dangerous drivers."
Driving laws should protect careful drivers from dangerous drivers, argues Ted Balaker in the following viewpoint. Driving laws should not protect the careless from themselves, he maintains.
Those who do not wear seat belts do not put the lives of others at risk, only their own, Balaker asserts. In fact, he reasons, seat belt laws distract the police from their proper role—protecting law-abiding people from those who pose a threat. Balaker is a fellow at the Reason Foundation, a libertarian think tank.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
How does the Click It or Ticket campaign differ from other campaigns, in Balaker's opinion?
2.
In the author's view, what is even more tragic than the death of someone who refuses to wear a seatbelt?
3.
According to the author, what are some of the unintended consequences of seat belt laws?
Who's the bigger threat to your safety, a murderer or someone who attempts suicide? The answer is obvious, and we'd certainly jeer any mayor who suggested lowering a city's death toll by cracking down on suicides. Yet something strange happens when death comes to the highway.
Politicians lock arms with law enforcement, and come up with campaigns like "Click It or Ticket
[CIOT]," which ... aims to reduce highway fatalities through stricter seatbelt law enforcement.
Suddenly, the murder-suicide distinction vanishes, and it's perfectly acceptable to reduce deaths by punishing those who put only themselves at risk.
Like other do-gooder efforts that plead with us to turn off our TVs or put down our cigarettes,
Click It or Ticket rolls around once every year. But unlike many other campaigns, CIOT doesn't stop with pleading. Cops from over 12,000 law enforcement agencies scope out violators, set up checkpoints and mete out fines as high as $200. In order to emphasize the seriousness of their intentions, they've even adopted the hallmark of all ham-fisted safety crusades—zero tolerance.
As one police chief put it: "America should be on notice—Click It or Ticket. No exceptions. No excuses. No warnings."
But why waste cops' time with seatbelt laws? After all, laws shouldn't protect careless people from themselves, they should protect the peaceful from the dangerous. CIOT supporters figure that since so many people die because they refuse to wear seatbelts, the government could save many lives by strapping them in with laws. The implicit rationale is that all of [2003]'s 43,220 highway deaths were equally tragic.

But if an adult does something risky—like tightrope walking, smoking or driving without a seatbelt—that person alone is responsible for the consequences. And since drivers who don't buckle up aren't making anyone else less safe, laws that bear down on these people don't make other motorists any safer either. We should be allowed to ruin our own lives, but we shouldn't be allowed to ruin the lives of others. So, yes, it's tragic when someone dies because he refused to wear a seatbelt, but it's much more tragic when a reckless driver kills innocent people. Public policy should not concern itself with decreasing all highway deaths, but with decreasing the deaths of innocents.
Even though fans of individual liberty often (and rightly) decry the paternalism embedded in seatbelt laws, most Americans take little offense at such state-sponsored nannying. However, nannying does not just make us less free; when it distracts law enforcement from its proper role, it can also make us less safe. When government assumes many duties, it's tougher to do the important ones right.
Government officials are more on the mark when they call for enforcement of drunk driving laws. But here again law should focus on recklessness, whether it's encouraged by alcohol, fatigue, general stupidity or high-speed lipstick application.
Forty-nine states have seatbelt laws, and in many cases, the laws allow officers to pull over motorists whose only crime is not wearing a seatbelt. While the officer takes time to give the seatbelt scofflaw a scolding and a ticket, plenty of other drivers embark on the kind of harebrained maneuvering that often ends with a reckless driver colliding into a good driver. It's these red-light-running, left-turn-at-any-cost daredevils who enrage and endanger good drivers.
And seatbelt laws come with their own set of unintended consequences, which further complicates the principle that policy should protect the peaceful people from the dangerous.
Seatbelt laws may make drivers and children safer, but economists such as Christopher Garbacz suggest that greater safety can make drivers more comfortable with dangerous driving, which puts the lives of more innocents—like pedestrians, cyclists and other passengers—in jeopardy.
Risk assessment researchers have long pondered this paradox, and some have even suggested
(only half jokingly) that the best way to promote cautious driving would be to attach a twelveinch buck knife to all steering wheels.
Of course, the government's crusade to convert the unbuckled does not stop with seatbelt laws.
For decades, mandates have forced automakers to take up the cause. At one point, interlocks actually prevented drivers from starting their cars if their seatbelts weren't snapped on. Public outrage spurred Congress to outlaw such mandates, but the crusade continued.
Today government-mandated lights, chimes and text messages hector drivers when they turn the ignition, and often all the ringing and flashing doesn't stop when the car starts. In many models,

chime and light seatbelt reminders can persist for up to five minutes, and safety pushers have even decided to take another stab at interlocks. A proposal before Congress would up the agitation ante by mandating "entertainment interlocks," where drivers could listen to the stereo only if they buckled up.
The good news is that most of us do buckle up. About 80 percent of Americans use seatbelts, a decision probably based less on government nagging than on a simple understanding of the safety benefits. After all, the word is out—seatbelts make you safer. We get it. Why wage an ever-intensifying campaign against the remaining holdouts?
Perhaps one day regulators will understand that—even when armed with all the facts—some people will still choose risky behavior. Instead of saving us from ourselves, regulators should take a deep breath, allow beltless motorists to put themselves at risk, and go hassle the dangerous drivers.
Source Citation:
Balaker, Ted. "Seat Belt Laws Are Unnecessary." Transportation . Ed. Louise Gerdes. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2008. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Unbuckling Seat Belt Laws." Reason
(27 May 2004). Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Document URL http://krlrpa.krl.org:2121/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?displayGro
upName=Viewpoints&disableHighlighting=true&prodId=OVIC&action=e&windowstate=norm al&catId=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010523219&mode=view&userGroupName=kitsap_mai n&jsid=632377c226303fb8f30b119a7bbb6780
Gale Document Number: GALE|EJ3010523219

Current Issues , 2010 listen -
Almost everyone agrees that certain actions constitute torture. These actions would include physical assault, beatings, use of electric shock, employment of mind-altering drugs, rape, and various other behaviors that cause great pain and harm to the bodies and minds of human beings.
Trying to agree on a single legal definition of torture, however, has sometimes proved problematic for the world’s governments.
International agreements on the subject have used various definitions. The 1948 Universal
Declaration of Human Rights states that "no one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." Article 17 of the Third Geneva Convention (1949), which addresses the treatment of prisoners of war, asserts that "no physical or mental torture, nor any other form of coercion, may be inflicted on prisoners of war," and requires that "persons taking no active part in the hostilities … shall in all circumstances be treated humanely." Most recently, the 1985 United Nations (UN) Convention Against Torture defines torture broadly as:
Any act by which severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, is intentionally inflicted on a person for such purposes as obtaining from him or a third person information or a confession, punishing him for an act he or a third person has committed or is suspected of having committed, or intimidating or coercing him or a third person, or for any reason based on discrimination of any kind, when such pain or suffering is inflicted by or at the instigation of or with the consent or acquiescence of a public official or other person acting in an official capacity.
Today, most legal definitions of torture follow this 1985 definition, emphasizing that torture is any act that intentionally inflicts severe pain or suffering, whether physical or mental, when executed to serve a stated purpose other than punishment, such as gathering intelligence information or intimidating government dissenters.
The United States has historically incorporated these international definitions into its military manuals. The 1992 U.S. Army Field Manual, for example, instructs soldiers that both the Geneva
Conventions and U.S. policy prohibit acts of violence or intimidation, including physical or mental torture, threats, or insults as a means of interrogation. Since the terrorist attacks of

September 11, 2001, however, a debate over how to define torture has emerged as a result of former president George W. Bush’s efforts to combat the new terrorist threat by pushing the boundaries of what actions constitute torture.
In 2002, for example, the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel issued a memo that asserted that coercive interrogations constitute torture only if they intentionally caused suffering
"equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death." That memo was rescinded in 2004, but the administration apparently continued to authorize or otherwise permit highly coercive interrogation techniques, claiming that they did not rise to the level of torture. Administration officials have referred to these as "enhanced" interrogation techniques, but critics refer to them as
"torture lite."
In February 2005, for example, the Justice Department issued a secret memorandum on the subject of torture, providing explicit authorization for government interrogators to use a variety of painful physical and psychological tactics against terrorist suspects, including head-slapping, frigid temperatures, and waterboarding (a technique designed to make a victim feel as if he or she is drowning). Other interrogation techniques discovered to have been used in U.S. detention facilities as part of the war on terror were not publicly acknowledged or explicitly approved, even though high-level administration figures reportedly were made aware of them.
Enhanced Interrogation Techniques
These measures included prolonged standing, removal of detainees’ clothing, sensory deprivation, hooding (covering prisoners’ heads), protracted interrogations, use of dogs to instill fear, forced shaving of beards, grabbing, poking, pushing, and sleep manipulation and deprivation. Interrogators also used religious and sexual humiliation, prolonged shackling, exposure to heat, food or toilet deprivation, and mock or threatened executions. According to reports, these techniques were used frequently in Central Intelligence Agency interrogations; at detention facilities in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba; and in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq, such as the prison at Abu Ghraib, which became famous for photos showing naked prisoners in various humiliating positions. The administration also was heavily criticized for sending terrorist suspects to foreign countries that are known to use torture.
Despite these criticisms, however, former President George W. Bush maintained throughout the post-9/11 period that the United States complied with the international prohibition against torture because its "enhanced" interrogation techniques did not constitute torture. The former president firmly believes that enhanced interrogation techniques were necessary to obtain much-needed intelligence information in the war on terror. The administration’s position and its flexibility in defining torture have raised difficult questions about U.S. policies on torture, how narrowly torture can be defined by the executive branch, and whether it is ever appropriate for the government to employ any type of torture techniques against terrorist suspects.

Former President Bush stated during an address on October 5, 2007, in the Oval Office, "This government does not torture people." It was a statement that would be echoed numerous times on the campaign trail by Barack Obama and again on January 9, 2009, when as president-elect, he stated, "I was clear throughout this campaign and was clear throughout this transition that under my administration the United States does not torture … We will abide by the Geneva
Conventions. We will uphold our highest ideals." On January 22, 2009, President Obama signed three executive orders, including one to close the Guantánamo Bay Detention Facility within a year. During the signing ceremony, President Obama stated that the order was issued to "restore the standards of due process and the core constitutional values that have made this country great even in the midst of war, even in dealing with terrorism." A second order, signed the same day, required the use of the Army Field Manual for terrorism interrogations, which therefore ended the use of enhanced-interrogation techniques. Finally, a third order was signed to assign a task force to review all the cases of individual detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.
Although the move received much support, some quickly pointed out that President Obama may have been hasty and would surely receive opposition when relocating the detainees. Over the months that followed, this proved to be true, and as of January 2010, approximately 200 prisoners still remained at Guantánamo. One problem is that no state wants to take the remaining prisoners. USA Today on December 22, 2009, reported that in response to an announcement that several prisoners would be moved to a prison in rural Illinois, "Seven House Republicans from
Illinois warned that the Chicago area would ‘become ground zero for jihadist terrorist plots.’"
Further complicating the issue, many prisoners from Yemen, the largest group of prisoners still being held, cannot be returned to their homeland because of the risk of retaliation there.
According to a report published by Human Rights Watch on March 28, 2009, "All 14 of the former Guantánamo detainees who have been returned to Yemen were detained by Yemeni security services, most for two to three months. Some of them claim to have been held in squalid conditions, in at least two cases underground, with no access to legal counsel and only sporadic family visits." Amidst these and other issues, it is yet to be seen how and when the president will accomplish the closing of Guantánamo.
In August 2009 President Obama approved the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, a team overseen by the National Security Council specifically created to interrogate high-value terrorist suspects. Meanwhile, additional terrorist plots against the United States continue to be revealed, including a foiled attempt by a bomber on a flight to Detroit on Christmas Day in 2009.
Although a year has passed since President Obama signed the order that essentially outlawed torture, the debate about what interrogation techniques are humane continues. In a January 22,
2010, article in the International Herald Tribune Matthew Alexander contends that President
Obama did not bring about an end to torture. He states, "Americans can now boast that they no longer ‘torture’ detainees, but they cannot say that detainees are not abused." As an example,
Alexander points out that although the Army Manual requires that detainees be treated

humanely, at the same time it still allows indefinite solitary confinement, successive twenty-hour interrogations with only four hours of sleep in between, and putting detainees in stress positions.
Although to date President Obama has maintained his stance against torture, many unresolved issues are likely to be debated long into the future.
Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2012 Gale, Cengage Learning.
Source Citation:
"Torture." Current Issues : Macmillan Social Science Library . Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.
Document URL http://krlrpa.krl.org:2121/ic/ovic/ReferenceDetailsPage/ReferenceDetailsWindow?displayGroup
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Gale Document Number: GALE|PC3021900173

Patrick J. Buchanan was twice a candidate for the Republican presidential nomination and the
Reform Party's candidate in 2000. He is also an author, a founder and editor of The American
Conservative magazine, a political analyst for MSNBC, and a syndicated columnist.
Can torture—the infliction of intolerable, even excruciating, pain to extract information from war criminals—ever be justified?
Civilized society has answered in the negative. No, never. And torture is everywhere outlawed.
Regimes that resort to it deny it, lest they be judged barbarous. Routine torture marks the regime that uses it as unworthy of rule or even respect. And rightly so.
But that does not address the moral question, a question that has arisen with the capture of [Al
Qaeda terrorist] Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. Among the crimes to which this monster has been linked are the plot to blow up a dozen airliners over the Pacific, the truck-bomb massacre at the
U.S. embassies in Africa, 9/11 [terrorist attacks on the United States] and slashing the throat of
[American journalist] Daniel Pearl.
When Mohammed was seized in Pakistan, found with him was a treasure trove for CIA [Central
Intelligence Agency] and FBI [Federal Bureau of Investigation] investigators: a computer, disks, tapes and cell phones with data pointing to planned new atrocities.
The higher law, the moral law, the Natural Law permits ... [torture] in extraordinary circumstances.
Mohammed is not talking. Yet, if he can be forced to talk, the information could save thousands.
It was said to be two weeks of torture that broke the al-Qaida conspirator who betrayed the plot to blow up those airliners. And if ever there was a case for torture, this excuse for a human being,
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, is it.
Thus, the question: Would it be moral to inflict pain on this beast to force him to reveal what he knows? Positive law prohibits it. However, the higher law, the moral law, the Natural Law permits it in extraordinary circumstances such as these.
Here is the reasoning. The morality of any act depends not only on its character, but on the circumstances and motive. Stealing is wrong and illegal, but stealing food for one's starving family is a moral act. Even killing is not always wrong. If a U.S. soldier had shot Mohammed to save 50 hostages, he would be an American hero.

But if it is permissible to take Mohammed's life to save lives, why is it impermissible to inflict pain on him to save lives?
Is the deliberate infliction of pain always immoral? Of course not. Twisting another kid's arm to make him tell where he hid your stolen bicycle is not wrong. Parents spank children to punish them and drive home the lessons of living good lives. Even the caning of that American kid in
Singapore that caused a firestorm was not immoral.
Civil War doctors who amputated limbs without anesthesia on battlefields inflicted horrible pain.
Why? For a higher good: to save the soldier's life, lest he die of gangrene.
But if doctors can cut off limbs and open up hearts to save lives, and cops may shoot criminals to save lives, and the state may execute criminals, why cannot we commit a lesser evil—squeezing the truth out of Mohammed—for a far greater good: preventing the murder of innocents?
Before America had its vast prison system, petty criminals were locked in stocks in the town square as humiliation. Others were flogged. Barbaric, we now say. But was flogging immoral?
While the instant recoiling that decent people exhibit to the idea of torturing [terrorists] ... may mark them as progressive, it may also be a sign of fuzzy liberal thinking.
Today, many believe that public caning of young criminals, and their return to society for a second chance, would be far better for them and us. It might be a superior deterrent to crime than dumping them into the animal cages that are too many of American prisons, where young offenders face sexual abuse and are exposed to the daily example of how incorrigible criminals succeed and fail.
Who would not prefer a thrashing that might even put one in a hospital for a week to spending years in such a prison?
In short, while the instant recoiling that decent people exhibit to the idea of torturing Mohammed may mark them as progressive, it may also be a sign of fuzzy liberal thinking.
Many of these same folks are all for war on Iraq. Why? To rid the Middle East of a tyrant and his weapons of mass destruction. When [Pope] John Paul II argues that, with inspections underway, such war does not seem necessary, or thus moral, [White House Press Secretary] Ari Fleischer instructed the Holy Father that this war has to be fought to keep Saddam from giving horrible weapons to terrorists.
But if it is moral to go to war and kill thousands to prevent potential acts of terror on U.S. soil, why cannot we inflict pain on one man, if that would stop imminent acts of terror on U.S. soil?
There is no evidence Saddam has murdered Americans, but there is a computer full that
Mohammed has and has hatched plots to slaughter more.

What will history say about people who hold [President] Harry Truman to be a moral hero for dropping atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but recoil in horror from painfully extracting the truth out of one mass murderer to stop the almost certain slaughter of their own people?
Source Citation:
Buchanan, Patrick J. "Torture Is Moral When Inflicted for a Greater Good." Torture . Ed. Debra
A. Miller. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Rpt. from "The Case for
Torture." World Net Daily . 2003. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

Kim Petersen is co-editor of Dissident Voice, a Web site that provides news and commentary on politics and culture.
Treat others as you wish to be treated yourself. It is basic common sense for most people. We should not expect to be treated any differently or better than how we ourselves treat others. This
... is elementary morality.
The results from an AP-Ipsos [a research and polling group] poll conducted between 15
November and 28 November [2005] gives pause to people's grasp of elementary morality. The poll reveals that in some countries there is substantial support for the notion that torture of suspected terrorists can be justifiable. Important to note is that the poll is not talking about convicted terrorists but rather "suspected terrorists." This is disturbing because the presumption of innocence has been dismissed. German citizen Khaled al-Masri's desperate plight speaks to this. Masri was abducted by the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency], transferred to another country, tortured and subsequently released after the "mistake" became apparent.
The poll raises many questions. For example, who is defining terrorism? Can the right to torture suspected terrorists be justified when the alleged terrorists are resisting an illegal invasion and occupation ...?
Approximately 1,000 adults were interviewed in each of the nine countries traditionally considered strong allies of the United States. The margin of error for each poll was plus or minus
3.1 percentage points. Much of the support for justifiable torture ... is limited to "rare instances."
Has anyone ever heard of the slippery slope argument?
The poll results indicate that support for justifiable torture is highest in southern Korea and the
United States. There is also strong support in the United Kingdom and France with borderline results in Germany, Canada, and Mexico. Italians and Spaniards are opposed.
Whether torture is illegal or not is a side argument. Torture is morally reprehensible.
When respondents were asked about how they felt about the US interrogating suspected terrorists in their country, the results were strongly in opposition in every country except the US, where 63 percent indicated support.
Disregarding mendacious denials from high-ranking US officials, it is no secret that the United
States is running a worldwide system of detention centers where torture is used on prisoners. In carrying out its so-called War on Terrorism ... the US government has contorted international

laws and conventions to its own twisted aims. The US government has cowardly eluded the international protections afforded prisoners of war through the introduction of its own designation of "enemy combatants"—a designation not provided for in international law. The US is sending a dangerous signal: it is very easy to slip from the constraints of international law; all that is required is to coin new terminology.
Whether torture is illegal or not is a side argument. Torture is morally reprehensible. It debases humanity to its most atavistic level. If the US government cared for the safety of its captured forces ... then it would oppose torture and enforce an international prohibition against it. The US attempts to shield its troops from their war crimes in Iraq through questionable occupation legislation and failure to accede to the authority of the International Criminal Court ... but ... US troops are left vulnerable on the ground. The US fighters themselves should be refusing torture with all their force. Their very use of torture exposes themselves and fellow fighters ... that fall into "enemy" hands to a similar treatment. Obviously for many US troops, the appeal to morality is in vain but this does not involve morality. It is just an appeal to the self-preservation instinct.
Republican US Senator John McCain ... was himself a victim of torture in Vietnam. He is a leading proponent to ban the use of torture as well as "cruel and inhumane treatment." The antitorture legislation was heavily approved in the Senate [in 2005] but the war president George
[W.] Bush has indicated that he will veto the measure. [Bush signed the bill in December 2005 but reserved the right to bypass the torture ban under his powers as commander-in-chief.]
The questions used in the AP-Ipsos poll are leading. The poll might have asked: "How do you feel about the use of torture against people who might be innocent to obtain information about terrorist activities of which they might know nothing about?" This might have led to completely different results. Nonetheless, the use of torture is but one further instance of the regressive slope trod by the Bush government in its never-ending crusades. The sadness is that so many people in the western world would slide down this slope. It bodes ill for humanity.
Source Citation:
Petersen, Kim. "Torture Is Morally Reprehensible." Torture . Ed. Debra A. Miller. Detroit:
Greenhaven Press, 2009. Current Controversies. Rpt. from "Elementary Morality and Torture."
Dissident Voice . 2005. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

The United States Armed Forces are the military forces that serve the United States of America.
The U.S. Armed Forces include five service branches: the Air Force, the Army, the Navy, the
Marine Corps, and the Coast Guard. On 14 June 1775, the Continental Congress created the
Continental Army, and also authorized riflemen from Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Maryland. By
13 October of that year, Congress had established a Naval Committee and authorized two armed ships to capture British vessels traveling to North America. On 10 November 1775, the
Continental Congress authorized the creation of the Continental Marines. For these reasons, today's U.S. Armed Forces consider 1775 to be the year the U.S. military was formed.
While the United States has had a military since the 1700s, the National Security Act of 1947 established the modern U.S. Armed Forces. The National Security Act of 1947 created the
United States Air Force and the current structure of the U.S. Armed Forces. The act also created the Department of Defense out of what had previously been the War Department. Since the
1940s, the U.S. Armed Forces have grown rapidly. As of 31 July 2010, there were 1,478,160 personnel on active duty in the U.S. Armed Forces.
The function of the U.S. Armed Forces is to help protect and defend the United States, its people, and its interests. In order to complete these functions, the U.S. Armed Forces operate on a strict chain of command, which allows for discipline, order, and the effective discharge of duties. The president of the United States is the official commander in chief of the U.S. Armed Forces.
However, carrying out the policies of the Air Force, the Marine Corps, and the Navy is overseen by the Department of Defense, a federal department. The Department of Homeland Security oversees the Coast Guard during peacetime, while the Coast Guard reports to the Department of
Defense through the Navy in times of war.
The highest ranking members of the service branches include: the Army Chief of Staff, a fourstar general; the Air Force Chief of Staff, a four-star general; the Chief of Naval Operations, an admiral; and the Commandant of the Marine Corps, a four-star general. These officers are members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a group of military leaders whose job it is to advise the president. The Coast Guard Commandant commands the Coast Guard, and is not a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
In addition to active-duty members of the five service branches, the U.S. military has reserve military service members who serve in the National Guard or the Army, Navy, Air Force, or
Marine reserves. These reserves undergo military training and must agree to a certain time commitment to the reserves. They may be called into active duty during times of war. The
National Guard is a joint component of the Air Force and the Army. National Guard units are attached to each of the fifty states. The total number of U.S. military reservists is about 1.5 million.

While the overall aim of the U.S. Armed Forces is to protect the United States and its people, each of the service branches has a specific role. The role of the U.S. Army, for example, is to defend and protect the United States as well as its interests through use of ground troops, tactical nuclear weapons, tanks, artillery, and helicopters. As of 31 July 2010, there were 567,167 personnel in the U.S. Army.
The Air Force defends and protects the United States and any U.S. interests in space and air, often using tanker aircraft, bomber aircraft, transport aircraft, and helicopters. The U.S. Air
Force is in charge of the nuclear ballistic missiles and military satellites, as well. As of 31 July
2010, there were 336,031 personnel in the U.S. Air Force.
The U.S. Navy protects U.S. interests at sea. In times of war, the U.S. Navy supports the U.S. Air
Force by supplying aircraft carriers and by attacking land targets from remote areas. The U.S.
Navy is also in charge of navy submarines and is responsible for transporting navy personnel to areas where they are needed. As of 31 July 2010, there were 330,223 personnel in the U.S. Navy.
The Marines are trained for air, land, and sea operations, and often work closely with the Navy.
As of 31 July 2010, there were 201,646 personnel in the Marine Corps. The Coast Guard also has a very important role in peacetime, promoting boating safety, rescuing persons at sea, and preventing illegal immigration and criminal activity at sea. During wartime, however, the Coast
Guard can be used in military operations. As of 31 July 2010, there were 43,093 personnel in the
Coast Guard.
The United States actively encourages diversity in the military. One way it encourages diversity is by giving immigrants who join the Armed Forces a streamlined path to U.S. citizenship. This gives immigrants from many parts of the world an incentive to join the U.S. Armed Forces. The
Armed Forces also rely on people from all over the world, including foreign nationals, joining the U.S. Armed Forces in order to provide language support and other types of support needed in tactical operations in foreign countries.
In the first decade of the 2000s, the military became increasingly diverse. While a large percentage of Caucasian and African American personnel have always served the U.S. Armed
Forces, the Armed Forces were also seeing increasing numbers of other ethnic groups by 2005.
For example, the percent of active-duty Asian Americans in the U.S. military increased to four percent in 2005 from 1.3 percent in 1983. Hispanic Americans comprised 3.8 percent of the U.S.
Armed Forces in 1983, but reached 10.5 percent in 2005.
Conscription, also known as the draft or compulsory military service, is the practice of compelling able-bodied and eligible citizens into active military service. Many countries

throughout history, including the United States, have used conscription to build their militaries, but the United States became a voluntary military force after the draft was discontinued in 1973.
However, after 1980, the United States did start to employ Selective Service Registration. This is a process which allowed the U.S. government to collect information about persons who might be eligible to expand the Armed Forces in a national emergency. All men who are between eighteen and twenty-five are required to register with the Selective Service. Failure to register can result in felony charges, fines of a maximum of $250,000, and up to five years imprisonment. Some critics of Selective Service see the registration process as a form of conscription. However, the
U.S. government maintains that the Selective Service Registration is not a form of conscription because people whose names have been collected are not automatically called up for duty in the
U.S. Armed Forces or considered as volunteers for duty.
Women have served in every war throughout U.S. history. During World War II, women served in the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP), the Women's Army Auxiliary Corps (which would become the Women's Army Corps or WAC), the United States Coast Guard Women's
Reserve (SPARS), and the Women Accepted for Volunteer Military Services (WAVES). These were service branches created specifically for women. Women did not take part in active combat, but rather provided medical aid and acted as clerks, mail sorters, and typists. This work allowed more men to go to the front lines and was considered an essential part of the war effort. During
World War II, more than 350,000 American women took an active role in the war through the
US Armed Forces.
After World War II, women were allowed to enlist in the regular service branches, but a two percent cap was placed on the total number of women allowed in the military. The cap, created with the signing of the Women's Armed Services Integration Act in 1948, was not officially repealed until Public Law 90-130 was signed on 8 November 1967. By 2003, one out of seven
U.S. military personnel deployed in Iraq were women. Women comprised about fifteen percent of the total active duty personnel of the U.S. Armed Forces that year.
The integration of women into the U.S. Armed Forces has been challenging. Women service members have reported sexual harassment in the military as well as discrimination that has prevented them from attaining high ranks. According to the Pentagon, one in three women serving in the military will be the victim of sexual assault, often by fellow service members, and the instances of sexual abuse in the military appear to be increasing. A Pentagon report showed
2,900 sexual assaults on women service members were reported in the military in 2008, a nine percent increase over 2007. Of those sexual assaults that are reported, only a small percentage result in a trial or disciplining of the offender. In 2008, forty-nine percent of reported rapes were dismissed and only about ten percent resulted in a court martial. The challenges women face in the military may contribute to post-traumatic stress and other problems. According to a 2007 study, female members of the military suffered twice the rates of post-traumatic stress disorder and depression compared to their male counterparts.

The role of gays and lesbians in the U.S. Armed Forces has been controversial. Although gay and lesbian men and women have served with the U.S. Armed Forces throughout the history of the U.S. military, the military does not allow openly gay men and women to serve. Instead, the
U.S. Armed Forces has a "don't ask, don't tell" policy regarding these members of the military as of 2010. Under the policy, gays and lesbians are allowed to serve as long as they do not report their sexual orientation. The military also does not ask about sexual orientation, allowing it to become a type of open secret. In 2009 and 2010, military leaders began taking steps toward changing the policy so that homosexuals could serve openly in the military. On 21 September
2010, U.S. senators tried to hurry the process along by including a repeal of the policy as part of a military appropriations bill; however, the bill did not win the necessary votes to bring it to the
Senate floor for debate. Supporters of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy call it a reasonable compromise that allows gay and lesbian men and women to serve without changing the official makeup of the military. Opponents to the "don't ask, don't tell" policy believe that it violates the civil rights of gay and lesbian service personnel.
When members of the U.S. Armed Forces enlist, they sign a contract that states, among other things: "In the event of war, my enlistment in the Armed Forces continues until six (6) months after the war ends, unless my enlistment is ended sooner by the President of the United States."
This clause permits the military to extend the period of time someone is required to serve on active duty beyond a normal separation date. This extension of service time is known as stop loss. There have been legal challenges to stop loss, but the practice was still used as of
September 2010. One issue critics use in attacking stop loss is that the clause in the enlistment contract authorizing it uses the term "war." Only Congress has the power formally to declare war. In many cases where stop loss has been used, however—such as the War on Terror following the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001—Congress had not declared war. Some military service personnel and critics have noted that stop loss leads to very long deployments, which can increase the risk of injury and diminish military effectiveness.
In the first decade of the twenty-first century, the United States was involved in wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan that required the commitment of hundreds of thousands of troops. Between thirty and forty percent of these troops were reservists called to active duty. Many were given multiple deployments. Critics of stop loss and the heavy use of reservists say that the practices taken together amount to a "back-door draft." The standing military, they argue, is not large enough to fulfill its missions. Rather than reinstituting the draft to increase the size of the military—a move likely to be unpopular with the American public—critics believe that military and civilian commanders are placing an unfair and unsafe burden on active-duty and reserve personnel.
The future of the U.S. Armed Forces is a subject of some debate as of September 2010. After prolonged campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. Armed Forces are in need of replacement equipment and have public relations as well as personnel problems due to the length and cost of

the conflicts. The cost of the wars reached more than one trillion dollars by 2010. By 2017,
Congressional Budget Office estimates, health care costs alone for returning soldiers will total more than nine billion dollars.
At the same time, the U.S. Armed Forces are facing new challenges. For example, some military experts believe that the nature of war itself is changing. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and other military experts have stressed that the U.S. Armed Forces must modernize, both their equipment and their philosophy of war in general. In the future, Gates asserts, the United States is more likely to be involved in counterinsurgency operations rather than direct conflict with the militaries of foreign nations. This will require more flexibility in structure and more sophisticated weaponry.
Source Citation:
"The U.S. Armed Forces." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection . Gale, Cengage Learning,
2010. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"The solution is obvious: We must reinstate the draft."
The United States should bring back the draft to improve the quality of recruits, claims Bill
Maxwell in the following viewpoint. To meet recruitment goals, the Department of Defense has reduced both the percentage of recruits required to have high school diplomas and the minimum score required on aptitude tests, he asserts. The costs of enlistment bonuses have also risen significantly, Maxwell maintains. The solution to lower standards and rising costs is to return to the draft and make military service mandatory, he concludes. Maxwell is a journalist with
Florida's St. Petersburg Times.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
What inspired Maxwell to return to the subject of bringing back the draft?
2.
What does the author claim is distracting Americans from the demoralization of our allvolunteer fighting force?
3.
In the opinion of Nicholas Confessore, what should be a condition of admission to college?
A column of mine on this same topic, the military draft, was published in the St. Petersburg
Times on September 29, 1999. The headline was "Military service should be mandatory."
Again, we should bring back the draft.
I was inspired to return to this subject because of the furor [2004 presidential candidate] John
Kerry created the other day when, while addressing students in Los Angeles, he lamely joked about George W. Bush's incuriosity and intellectual deficits, saying, "Education, if you make the most of it, you study hard, you do your homework and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."
Instead of using Kerry's gaffe as a springboard to an honest national discussion about Bush's wrecking of our military, too many of us are letting the GOP's [Grand Old Party's, i.e. the
Republican Party's] putrefaction machine distract us from the reality on the ground in Iraq and the demoralization of our all-volunteer fighting force.
The U.S. armed services, even the Army, the biggest supplier of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, met their 2006 wartime recruiting goals. But the price has been high, and it may do permanent, irreparable harm to the enlisted ranks.
Following are some of the major concessions the services were forced to make. (My source is the
Military Officers Association of America.)

Recruit quality has been affected. Until now, the Defense Department wanted 90 percent of boots
[recruits] to have a high school diploma, and 60 percent to score above the median on armed forces aptitude tests. [In 2006], only 82 percent of Army recruits had diplomas, and 61 percent met the aptitude test standards—down from 92 percent and 72 percent, respectively, since 2004.
Enlistment standards have been changed. The Army, for example, increased its maximum enlistment age first from 35 to 40 last January, then to 42 in June. Most recently, the Army loosened restrictions on tattoos, criminal infractions, and a host of other old red flags.
Bonus budgets have skyrocketed. Enlistment bonus costs jumped from $166 million in 2005 to
$238 million in 2006. Reenlistment bonus costs for fiscal year 2006 went past $650 million, versus an average of $120 million for fiscal years 2000-2004. If reenlistments drop, as they are expected to, recruiting goals will rise exponentially.
"The recruiting problem is not just an Army problem," General Richard Cody, the Army's vice chief of staff, told NBC News. "This is America's problem. And what we have to really do is talk about service to the nation—and a sense of duty to this nation."
Recruiting in the regular ranks is being hurt by many problems, such as longer and more frequent tours in Iraq, erratic schedules and the rising lethality of the fighting. Reservists also face these problems, with the added pressures of discontent at their daytime jobs, financial ruin and longerthan-expected deployments.
Pentagon officials are desperately seeking solutions to this manpower crisis. While they are tinkering with shorter enlistment terms and talking of using current troops more efficiently, the big, bad gorilla remains in the middle of the floor: We need many more troops.
According to most analyses, recruitment is being hurt mostly by the appeal of college. That is right. More and more high school graduates are attending college without giving the military a second thought. Officials are trying to find attractive ways to lure college graduates into volunteering during this time of war. Based on everything I read, no gimmick or battery of gimmicks will work.
The solution is obvious: We must reinstate the draft. As Gen. Cody said, we are talking about
"service to the nation" and "a sense of duty to the nation." I believe that every able-bodied, mentally fit U.S. citizen has a duty to serve. I leave the logistics to the experts.
I agree with Nicholas Confessore, editor of Washington Monthly, in his March 2003 article for the magazine:
Every year, a million young adults begin attending four-year colleges. As a condition of admission, those students could be required to serve their country for up to two years, in civilian national service programs like AmeriCorps, or homeland security efforts such as guarding nuclear plants, or ... in the military. Some percentage would choose the latter, especially if they

were to receive more GI [a member of the armed forces] Bill-type college aid as a reward for higher-risk duty.
Let us face a nasty truth about ourselves as U.S. citizens: When it comes to serving our great nation, we are AWOL [absent without leave]. This crisis, not a flubbed Kerry joke, should be our national discussion. We should be ashamed.
Source Citation:
Maxwell, Bill. "The United States Should Reinstate the Draft." Armed Forces . Ed. Louise
Gerdes. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Time to Bring Back the Military Draft." St. Petersburg Times 5 Nov. 2006: 3P. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In
Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

"Maintaining freedom of occupational choice and relying on incentives to attract qualified individuals for our national defense is surely the most equitable method of procuring military manpower."
Military service should be a matter of choice, asserts Walter Y. Oi in the following viewpoint.
Claims that an all-volunteer force (AVF) is motivated only by money and benefits are flawed, he maintains. Serving the country, acquiring skills, and receiving specialized training are major motivators, Oi contends. Moreover, he argues, concerns that the AVF is not representative of the population are also unwarranted, as the AVF has a greater percentage of high school graduates than the general population. The most equitable way to staff military is by volunteers, he reasons.
Oi, an economics professor at the University of Rochester, served on President Richard M.
Nixon's Commission on an All-Volunteer Force.
As you read, consider the following questions:
1.
In Oi's view, what well-known claim made by Uwe E. Reinhardt is untrue?
2.
According to the author, why did Gen. Maxwell Thurman introduce a high-qualitypersonnel policy in the early 1980s?
3.
In the author's opinion, what prediction concerning African Americans made by critics of ending the draft was not borne out?
For a quarter of a century, 1948-1973, young American men faced a military service obligation.
They could be drafted to serve in the enlisted ranks for 24 months if the obligation was not discharged by deferment, exemption, or serving in the Reserves or active-duty forces as an enlisted man or officer. Conscription was abolished on July 1, 1973. Since that date, the basic training camps have been populated by young men and women who have voluntarily chosen the military over alternative civilian jobs and activities.
Stanford historian David M. Kennedy wrote in a 2006 American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Bulletin article that this development is alarming: "The U.S. Armed Forces today have many of the attributes of a mercenary army." This essay asks if Kennedy's assessment is correct—is today's All-Volunteer Force (AVF) a mercenary army? Moreover, is the AVF representative of the population that it defends? Finally, how does the AVF depart from the composition of some hypothetical force that might emerge under some other method of manpower procurement? ...
Professor Kennedy is one of a number of writers on the AVF who assert a stylized fact: The young men and women who join today's armed services do so mainly for the money and benefits. From this stylized fact, critics of the AVF often jump to the assertion made by
Princeton professor Uwe E. Reinhardt in a 2006 Washington Post op-ed: "It is well known that to fill the ranks, the Pentagon relies heavily on the bottom half of the nation's income distribution,

sending recruiters to the slums and low-income neighborhoods." This may be "well known" but it is untrue; Reinhardt apparently has not looked at the data and instead is peddling a stylized fancy.
Let us consider the young people who serve in the AVF, and who served under the old conscription system. Obviously, under either system, not everyone is physically fit to serve. The
Universal Military Training and Service Act, the draft law, judged mental fitness by an individual's score on the Armed Forces Qualification Test (AFQT). Those with a score of 10 or lower were placed in draft classification IV-F and exempted. When draft calls were low in relation to the pool of eligibles, the lower bound was raised. During the last decade under the draft, men with AFQT scores below 20 were deferred. A 1964 Army study reported that more than one-third of the nation was unfit—specifically, 35.6 percent of draft-eligible men who passed through armed forces examining stations failed to satisfy the physical and/or mental qualification standards.
Attritions are costly and were a problem even under the draft. In the first five years of the AVF,
Congress allowed military pay to slip. To meet recruiting goals, the Army accepted lower-quality recruits, some with police records, even though military brass realized that there was a relation between quality and retention. In order to have 100 soldiers on board at the end of two years, the
Army had to recruit, enlist, and train 131 high school graduates or 188 high school dropouts.
In the early 1980s, under the AVF, General Maxwell Thurman introduced a high-qualitypersonnel policy. Army recruiters were instructed to find young men who had a high school diploma and an AFQT score of 50 or higher, which means that recruits had to be from the top half of the mental test distribution. With higher-quality recruits, the Army was able to reduce the size of basic training camps by 27 percent. Additionally, brighter soldiers could handle the technical materials in the advanced individual training courses, which enabled the Army to upgrade its entry-level training. Thurman, in a chapter he contributed to the book Professionals on the Front Line, wrote:
The existing Army training system was predicated on a World War II conscription supported mobilization scheme where training was just a phase in which all units participated before deployment. The Army had not adjusted to the point where training for combat was an integral part of daily peacetime activity for the AVF.
The structure of the AVF differs from that for a mixed conscript/volunteer force. The fraction of the force assigned to the combat arms (e.g., the infantry, armor, Airborne, Special Forces) is smaller under the AVF, with more service members in the supporting logistical tail. The Army has substituted capital and trained soldiers for raw, untrained labor....
When enlisted Navy men were asked the reasons why they volunteered, "service to country" was a major response. Other responses included acquiring skills that will be useful in the civilian labor market, qualifying for post-service educational benefits, getting into the submarine corps or other special assignments, etc. Michael Hansen and Sam Kleinman reported in a 2005 Center for

Naval Analyses study that "training to learn technical skills" was a major component of compensation in attracting youths to become sailors. Navy enlisted recruits do not behave like mercenaries. American sailors will postpone gratification to get training today, not at all like the carefree men in [20th-century Irish leader of battles in Africa and the Indian Ocean] Mike
Hoare's mercenary army.
The armed services have never been, and are not now, representative of the U.S. population. The characteristics of the active-duty forces depend on the method of manpower procurement, accession and retention policies, and the strength of the civilian labor market.
Conscription forced some men into involuntary service as enlisted men while others reluctantly volunteered so as to discharge their military service obligation. With the end of the draft, the armed services had to compete for individuals who were willing and able to satisfy the accession requirements.
The picture painted by Professor Kennedy is one in which the AVF had to enlist the leastproductive individuals—the dregs of society. The facts reported by Russel Beland and Curtis
Gilroy in a 2006 Washington Post op-ed contradict the Kennedy story of a mercenary army. I point out a few attributes of the force that have emerged when those who serve do so by choice, not coercion:
Gender. In 1973, the last year under conscription, women made up only 4 percent of the activeduty force. There was apparently little pressure to find, recruit, and train qualified women when men could be drafted. In the transition to the AVF, the share of women in uniform rose to 12 percent in 1990 and 15 percent in 2000. The role of women was also changing, as Aline Quester and Curtis Gilroy noted in a 2002 Contemporary Economic Policy paper.
Accession. Not everyone is fit to serve. In the last decade under the draft, 1964-73, a man was excused from military service (via exemption or deferment) if his score on the AFQT was under
20. The accession policy introduced by General Thurman in the early 1980s raised the minimum acceptable AFQT score to 30 as well as a high school diploma—a GED [General Educational
Development] would not do.
Of course, the AFQT is not an accurate instrument. From January 1976 to October 1980, the
Department of Defense slipped and mis-normed the test. Roughly 25 percent of Army accessions would not have met the mental qualification standard with a correctly normed test. The mistake has been corrected. Judged by mental test scores, the AVF in 2000 is considerably superior to its conscription-era counterpart.
Education. According to Kennedy, "While 46 percent of all Americans have some college education, only 6.5 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old enlisted men in the Army have ever seen the inside of a college classroom." But are AVF soldiers educationally inferior to the people they are defending? Beland and Gilroy, in their Washington Post op-ed, note that 90 percent of Army

enlisted men have a high school diploma compared to 80 percent for the entire economy.
Moreover, Kennedy ignores the AVF officers, nearly all of whom have graduated from college.
Income. Professor Reinhardt claimed that the vast majority of enlisted accessions are drawn from the bottom half of the income distribution. Yet, high-quality recruits with high school diplomas and strong mental test scores are unlikely to be found in slums and low-income census tracts.
Beland and Gilroy found that the neighborhoods in which most Army enlistees resided had incomes above the average for all census tracts. They do not come from the bottom half of the income distribution.
Race. The armed services are equal employment opportunity employers. In 1995, only 7.6 percent of all college graduates were African American. However, 12.0 percent of all officers were African American. Blacks are overrepresented not only in the officer corps, but also in the enlisted ranks.
The presidential commissions on the draft chaired, respectively, by Burke Marshall in 1967-68 and Thomas S. Gates in 1969-70, heard witnesses who testified that African Americans were carrying more than their fair share of the defense burden in the Vietnam War. Some 30-40 percent of the soldiers in the infantry and combat arms were African Americans.
Critics of ending the draft predicted that a change to an AVF would result in those percentages rising and the nation would be protected with the blood of an all-black army. But that prediction was not borne out. In 1995, African American soldiers made up only 9 percent of the infantry in the AVF. Black volunteers chose military occupational specialties in supply, clerical, transport, and food services to enhance the chances of being promoted and retained. Contrary to the dire predictions, African American soldiers do not make up the majority of the soldiers on the front line. Instead, as noted in a 1999 Wall Street Journal headline, "Infantry Surprise: It's Now Mostly
White; Blacks Hold Office Jobs." ...
In his 2006 article, Professor Kennedy concluded that "a preponderant majority of Americans with no risk whatsoever of exposure to military service has in effect hired some of the least advantaged of their fellow countrymen to do some of their most dangerous business while they go on with their affairs unbloodied and undistracted." This is simply not so. The men and women who serve in today's AVF are not hired guns. Military pay was raised to be competitive with wages in the civilian labor market. It was the right thing to do, to eliminate the hidden tax that had been placed on draftees. Members of the AVF enlist to serve their country, to get training and post-service education benefits, and engage in something that is worth their while.
Professor Kennedy and draft proponent Representative Charles [B.] Rangel argue that in a democratic society, the burden of defense ought to be equitably shared. The composition of the
AVF is not representative of the population it defends. But it must be remembered that the size of the Army in relation to the size of the U.S. population is smaller today than the armies that fought in Vietnam, Korea, or World War II. Kennedy and Rangel have proposed bringing back the draft, possibly embedded in a larger national service program in order to spread the defense

burden. The very well-to-do and the highly educated have always been able to evade conscription. Maintaining freedom of occupational choice and relying on incentives to attract qualified individuals for our national defense is surely the most equitable method of procuring military manpower.
Source Citation:
Oi, Walter Y. "The United States Should Not Reinstate the Draft." Armed Forces . Ed. Louise
Gerdes. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2010. Opposing Viewpoints. Rpt. from "Should We Bring
Back the Draft? Is the All-Volunteer Force a 'Mercenary Army?&#x0027." Regulation 30 (Fall
2007): 8-12. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

On 26 December 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the Luftwaffe air force of Nazi Germany attacked the Basque village of Guernica, Spain, destroying most of the town and killing hundreds of civilians. Commenting on the attack two days later, a London Times reporter wrote, “Who can think without horror of what another widespread war would mean, waged as it would be with all the new weapons of mass destruction?” Ironically, this first known use of the phrase “weapons of mass destruction” came in response to an attack carried out with conventional munitions. In later years, the term came to refer specifically to biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons— armaments that could wreak incalculable, indiscriminate damage with a single device.
Since the beginning of recorded history, human beings have resorted to every known means of violence to smite their enemies in war, including numerous poisons and toxic fumes. In 1346, according to an Italian memoir from the period, the Mongol army subdued the Crimean city of
Caffa by catapulting the dead bodies of bubonic plague victims over the city walls. The victims fleeing this act of biological warfare could have been partly responsible for the spread of the
Black Death into Europe. In World War I, poison gases such as chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas were dispersed in huge quantities by the German, British, French, and United States armies, inflicting more than one million casualties and nearly 100,000 deaths. The worldwide condemnation of these atrocities led, in 1925, to the negotiation of the Geneva Protocol, a treaty prohibiting the use of asphyxiating or poisonous gases and bacteriological agents in warfare.
While the Japanese used biological and chemical weapons in China during World War II, the battlefields of Europe were spared their use. However, the Nazis employed chemical agents to put millions of people to death in the concentration camps. The Allies developed a technique of coordinated aerial firebombing in their attacks on Dresden, Hamburg, and Tokyo; hundreds of airplanes dropped thousands of tons of conventional high explosives, killing tens of thousands in each city. In the final days of the war in the Pacific, the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For the first time, an urban center could be incinerated by a single weapon.
In the decades since World War II, political and military leaders gradually came to conceive of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons as part of a single class of armaments, distinct from conventional arms by reason of the magnitude of potential destruction within their capabilities.
Many also categorize radiological weapons or “dirty bombs”—those intended to kill by dispersing radioactivity without an atomic explosion—as weapons of mass destruction. Of these types of weaponry, nuclear weapons represent by far the greatest threat. A large-scale biological or germ warfare attack has never taken place, perhaps due to the difficulties of dispersal and the variety of factors that could potentially mitigate the effects of such an attack, such as wind and weather patterns, antidotes, and other public health remedies. Studies of the impact of chemical weapons find, similarly, a wide range of estimated lethalities based on the means of delivery; the purity and density of the chemical agent; climate factors that would affect the agent’s diffusion,

dilution, or evaporation; and precautionary measures taken by the target population. Indeed, gas masks and other protective gear greatly limited the battlefield effectiveness of poison gas as
World War I progressed.
However, there is no effective defense against nuclear weapons. Furthermore, it has been conclusively shown that a large-scale nuclear war would likely set off catastrophic atmospheric effects (known as “nuclear winter”) that could destroy human civilization and even potentially extinguish life on Earth.
International efforts to prevent the use of weapons of mass destruction have historically taken the form of negotiated treaties such as the Geneva Protocol mentioned above. The very first resolution of the United Nations General Assembly, approved 24 January 1946, called for the establishment of a commission to make recommendations for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons and of all other major weapons adaptable to mass destruction.”
These diplomatic endeavors have been fruitful, resulting in agreements to outlaw biological and chemical weapons and to restrict lawful possession of nuclear arsenals to a select group of countries. Thanks in part to the legal norms created by arms control and disarmament instruments, nuclear weapons have not been detonated in warfare since 1945, and usage of chemical and biological weapons has been limited to a few instances, such as Iraq’s poison gas attacks against both Iran and its own Kurdish population in the 1980s.
The Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC) was concluded in 1972, entered into force in 1975, and as of 2011 had been ratified by 163 states. This treaty bans the production, acquisition, and stockpiling of biological weapons, but contains no provision for inspections to verify adherence. In 1994, the states parties to the BWC agreed to negotiate a binding protocol creating a verification regime, but these negotiations came to an end after US president George
W. Bush declared in July 2001 that the United States would no longer participate.
The Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), in force since 1997, does contain an inspection regime, administered by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), based in The Hague. This body also oversees the required destruction of chemical weapon stocks by states parties; in 2010 it announced that 60 percent of these declared stocks had been safely destroyed. The United States and Russia admitted they would not complete dismantling their stockpiles by the treaty’s final deadline of April 2012.
Nuclear arms control has proven far more complicated. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union engaged in a nuclear arms race while maintaining an uneasy “balance of terror.” Twenty years after the Soviet Union’s disintegration, the two sides continued to target each other with thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on high alert. The NATO alliance also predicated European security, for the foreseeable future, on the deterrent effect of nuclear arsenals.

The main international treaty governing nuclear arms is the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
(NPT), which was agreed upon in 1968 and came into force in 1970. The core of the NPT constitutes a bargain between the five nuclear-armed, permanent members of the UN Security
Council (the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and China) and the rest of the world. The non-nuclear weapon states agreed to forswear development or acquisition of nuclear weapons, while being permitted to develop nuclear technology for energy generation; the nuclear weapon states agreed, in Article VI of the treaty, to engage in disarmament negotiations. The
International Court of Justice, in a 1996 advisory opinion, unanimously confirmed that the NPT imposes “an obligation to pursue in good faith and bring to a conclusion negotiations leading to nuclear disarmament in all its aspects under strict and effective international control.” The treaty does not, however, state or imply any specific timeline toward that objective. Moreover, three states not parties to the NPT (India, Pakistan, and Israel) are known to possess nuclear arsenals.
Another state, North Korea, withdrew from the treaty in 2003 and subsequently performed two nuclear test explosions.
Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, and the anthraxlaced mail attacks discovered one week later, the frightening combination of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism has become a paramount concern of national security and international relations. The existing body of multilateral arms control instruments did comparatively little to address the threat of non-state actors such as terrorist groups gaining access to WMD materials and technology. This threat drove the rhetoric and rationale of President Bush and his administration as the United States launched a global war on terrorism and revamped its national security strategy. A key strategy document from 2002 outlines the administration’s shift from the doctrine of deterrence to a policy embracing pre-emptive military action to neutralize grave threats before they manifest. Critics assailed the “Bush doctrine” as a break from the legal precedents against aggressive war enshrined in the UN Charter. The US military also reserved the right to retaliate with nuclear weapons to any biological or chemical attack on US territory, deployed forces, or allies.
The new policy was enacted in Iraq, which was suspected of clandestine WMD stockpiles and development programs. The Bush administration accused the Iraqi government of harboring al-
Qaeda terrorist operatives. UN weapons inspectors entered Iraq in November 2002 after a fouryear absence, but despite some progress toward disarmament as reported by the chair of the inspection team, Hans Blix, Bush advised the inspectors to leave Iraq on 16 March 2003 and the
US-led invasion began three days later. No hidden weapons or evidence of active WMD programs was found.
Iran presented the world community with another tough case of potential proliferation. Since
2006, Iranian scientists have been enriching uranium and the Islamic Republic’s leaders have rebuffed demands from the United States, Israel, and other nations to halt the program. Uranium enrichment is not a violation of the NPT, but the Iranians are widely suspected of seeking a nuclear weapons capability despite their denials. Barack Obama, who succeeded Bush as president in 2009, echoed his predecessor’s commitment to “use all elements of American power

to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon.” The diplomatic standoff raised the prospect of another major war in the Middle East.
Source Citation:
"Weapons of Mass Destruction." Opposing Viewpoints Online Collection . Gale, Cengage
Learning, 2010. Gale Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

Malcolm Fraser was the prime minister of Australia from 1975 to 1983.
The large number of nuclear weapons possessed by various nations poses a serious threat to
Australia and the rest of the world. Although nuclear weapons should be eliminated, nuclear power is a necessary part of the modern world; thus, the trade in nuclear fuel needs to be tightly regulated. The majority of world governments agree that nuclear weapons should be abolished and outlawed. This can be done only through a global treaty that abolishes nuclear weaponry.
Sixty-five years on from Hiroshima,
1
abolition of nukes is long overdue.
I am dismayed that the most critical security threat to Australians—the 22,600 nuclear weapons around the world—has barely rated a mention during the election campaign. Sixty-five years ago today [August 6, 2010] the city of Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki were devastated by nuclear weapons. By the end of 1945, the two bombs, small by today's standards, had killed
230,000 people and injured more than 150,000.
Their radioactive poison continues to this day to afflict the survivors and their offspring with increased rates of cancer, chronic disease and genetic damage.
The plea to do away with nuclear weapons should not be confused with the need to rely to a much greater extent on nuclear power for peaceful purposes. The scientific reality is that this represents an essential part of a worldwide program to combat global warming.
Australia began its trade in uranium for peaceful purposes under the most stringent safeguards, knowing that if we were in the trade, we would be able to toughen the safeguards and prevent diversion of uranium for military purposes.
The weapons currently held by nine nations are the equivalent of 150,000 times the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.
Making the rules more rigorous, more ironclad, is an essential part of the work that lies ahead.
Selling uranium to India, not a member of the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and not subject to the strictest safeguards, enabling more of its own uranium to be diverted for military purposes, runs totally counter to that objective.
The abolition of nuclear weapons and the necessary use of nuclear fuel for peaceful purposes are separate questions that should not be confused.

The grim reality of nuclear weapons is stark. In an afternoon they could lay waste much of the earth and end human civilisation. The weapons currently held by nine nations are the equivalent of 150,000 times the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. Even a tiny fraction of the world's nuclear arsenal exploded on cities in a regional nuclear war on the other side of the world—such as between India and Pakistan, or in the Middle East—would alter the climate for years, devastating agriculture and causing starvation on a scale never seen before.
The danger of nuclear weapons being used by accident or design is growing. They and the means to acquire them—uranium enrichment technology and nuclear reactors—are spreading. If we do not get rid of them, it will only be a matter of time before the weapons are used. We must not allow that to happen.
Dismantling and outlawing nuclear weapons will need a binding, verified global treaty—as is needed to ban dumdum bullets, biological and chemical weapons, landmines and cluster bombs.
The Rudd Labor government [Australian government led by Kevin Rudd, 2007-2010] took some commendable initiatives on nuclear disarmament, establishing the International Commission on
Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament and an inquiry by the all-party parliamentary joint standing committee on treaties on how Australia could best make a greater contribution to nuclear disarmament. Both made some excellent recommendations, including for negotiation of a nuclear weapons convention—a comprehensive treaty to abolish nuclear weapons. The parliamentary committee's recommendations were unanimously supported by members from the
ALP [Australian Labor Party], Coalition and Greens. They provide a basis from which to move beyond counterproductive adversarial party politics to build cross-party support for humanitarian action to get rid of nuclear weapons.
Unfortunately, the government's response to both sets of recommendations has been disappointing.
The greatest immediate threat to human survival posed by nuclear weapons affects everyone and is too important to be left to politicians.
The recently concluded five-yearly review conference on the nuclear non-proliferation treaty made it clear that the treaty by itself is inadequate to achieve the abolition of nuclear weapons. It provides no binding process and no specific phased plan. After 40 years, it has not delivered disarmament and has not prevented the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Nor has it been able to make real progress on universality, making withdrawal from the treaty more difficult, or strengthening safeguards, nuclear export controls, nuclear safety or security.
The most significant aspect of the review conference was the unprecedented level of support from a clear majority of close to 130 of the world's governments, as well as civil society, for

getting on with the negotiation of a non-discriminatory comprehensive legal framework to eliminate and outlaw nuclear weapons. Regrettably, Australia was not among them.
The greatest immediate threat to human survival posed by nuclear weapons affects everyone and is too important to be left to politicians. Citizens the world over have a critical role to play, and to ensure their leaders are in no doubt about what they must do. Leaders need to hear a multitude of voices, impossible to ignore, telling them to negotiate a global abolition treaty now. That is why I am pleased to support the MillionPleas campaign launched this week. It invites everyone to support a clear message: 65 years is too long. It's time to retire nuclear weapons. A global abolition treaty is the best way to accomplish this.
The leaders of all political parties should substantively address in their campaign policy speeches how, if elected, they will work now for negotiations to begin on a global treaty to abolish nuclear weapons.
1.
1. The first detonation of a nuclear weapon occurred in Hiroshima, Japan, when
American forces dropped an atomic bomb on August 6, 1945, effectively bringing World
War II to a close.
Source Citation:
Fraser, Malcolm. "Nuclear Weapons Pose a Grave Threat." Weapons of War . Ed. Diane Andrews
Henningfeld. Detroit: Greenhaven Press, 2012. At Issue. Rpt. from "Without a Global Ban,
Nuclear Conflict Is Only a Matter of Time." Sydney Morning Herald 6 Aug. 2010. Gale
Opposing Viewpoints In Context . Web. 10 Apr. 2012.

John Hutton is a British Labour Party politician and a former secretary of defense for the British government.
Because of the large number of armed conflicts around the world in recent years, it is imperative for the United Kingdom to maintain a tight national security. The two main dangers to the nation include weapons of mass destruction and Islamic terrorism. Appearing weak invites such attacks.
Having nuclear weapons signals strength and provides the ultimate deterrent. If other nations and terrorists have access to nuclear weapons, the United Kingdom also must have these weapons to protect its national security.
There is a growing debate in the country about how Britain can best defend itself militarily in the
21st Century.
A report last week by the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank, questioning whether
Trident nuclear submarines are a cost-effective way of maintaining the UK's nuclear deterrent, is an example of this.
But amid all the discussions, one fact stands out like a sore thumb. In the 20 years that have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Britain's Armed Forces have been engaged on active service more frequently than at any time since the end of the Second World War.
There is one obvious conclusion to draw from this—that the collapse of communism did not mark the end of any threat to our national security. Far from it. And whether it is in Sierra Leone,
Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan, our soldiers, sailors and airmen have demonstrated time and time again that they are the best in the world.
We should all be so proud of the work they do, day in day out. In my view, none of these conflicts was discretionary or optional. Our involvement and that of our allies was necessary to secure our vital long-term national security interests.
We should never forget that the first business of Government is national security.
We should never forget that the first business of Government is national security. Everything else is secondary. Today, the threats to our country's security are real and obvious.
Britain faces two principal dangers. Firstly from the spread of weapons of mass destruction— nuclear, chemical and biological. China, for example, is investing considerable sums in enhancing its nuclear weapons systems.

Iran is seeking a nuclear weapons capability. North Korea already has one. There are twice as many nations today that possess nuclear weapons than did so when the Nuclear Non-
Proliferation Treaty was signed 41 years ago.
The second main challenge to our national security comes from Islamic terrorism—a new breed of fanaticism that despises everything we and our friends and allies stand for—liberty, human rights, equality.
Terrorists who will stop at nothing, stoop to the very depths of depravity, and use indiscriminate violence in the name of their vile cause.
We have to defend ourselves against both of these threats. We should do so because our values and freedoms are worth defending. They have been bequeathed to us by previous generations and we hold them in sacred trust for those who will come after us.
We do not have the luxury of picking and choosing which of these threats we are prepared to defend ourselves against.
If we do this, and follow the advice of some politicians, we would expose our country and our friends around the world to mortal danger. And to defend ourselves successfully, we will need, above all else, to recognise that the response to both of these threats will require different means.
Britain should always invest its principal effort in conflict prevention. It is better to prevent a war than have to fight one. It is better to prevent a state from becoming a haven for international terrorism than have to go in and flush out the terrorists.
So we should remain active in all those international security organisations that can do this vital work—the United Nations, NATO [North Atlantic Treaty Organization], the international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, and, yes, the
European Union [EU] too.
We should invest more in this area. Only six percent of EU funds are devoted to conflict prevention. It is even less in the UK.
We need ... to understand that our independent nuclear deterrent remains an absolutely essential pillar on which everything else depends.
But if all these efforts fail, then Britain must retain the ability if necessary to defend itself by all of the military means at its disposal. Weakness only attracts greater dangers. It does not make threats go away. They are there whether we like it or not, whether we choose to acknowledge it or thrust our heads in the sand.

To defend ourselves against these very different threats we need firstly to understand that our independent nuclear deterrent remains an absolutely essential pillar on which everything else depends.
It is a minimum deterrent designed to make it clear to any nuclear aggressor that we cannot and will not be blackmailed and that we will extract a terrible price if we are attacked.
Britain has done more than any other nation to show its peaceful intentions. We have reduced the number of our warheads. We have given up free-fall nuclear bombs.
But we must never give up the ultimate deterrent as long as others possess nuclear weapons that could be aimed at us. So it is right that we should now be taking the necessary steps to replace our current Vanguard submarines.
The Trident missiles can be given an extended life span, providing a massively capable and costeffective platform for decades to come.
No other delivery system—such as bombers or land-based missiles—could ever provide an equivalent level of deterrence.
Our nuclear submarines are undetectable and cannot be taken out by a pre-emptive strike. That is why they provide the best form of nuclear deterrence available to us.
It is why we should not listen to those who suggest that there is a better, cheaper form of deterrence available to us. There isn't.
Is it safe to take the risk that we can do without our own nuclear weapons while potential aggressors keep theirs?
It is nonsense to say that we cannot afford Trident any longer. If belts have to be tightened—and they do—this should not be done at the expense of national security. Replacing Trident will cost the equivalent of 0.1 per cent of our GDP [gross domestic product] over the lifetime of the programme. It is a price well worth paying.
To those who say we cannot afford the ultimate insurance policy ... I would say think again.
Think about the next 50 years rather than the next 12 months and the run up to the next Election.
Who can predict what the world will look like in 50 years' time, because that is what you have to be able to do if you advocate unilateral nuclear disarmament. Politicians have many skills, but this level of foresight is well beyond our reach.

Is it safe to take the risk that we can do without our own nuclear weapons while potential aggressors keep theirs? On the basis of what we know from the past 50 years, I say no.
Some will make the argument about the opportunity cost of proceeding with a new generation of ballistic nuclear submarines—that we have to choose between conventional capability or nuclear deterrance. This is a false argument and a false choice.
The Government has rightly made it clear that the money for replacing Trident will not come at the cost of our spending on conventional forces. So we can continue to equip our Army, the
Royal Navy and the RAF [Royal Air Force] with the right equipment they need to deal with the other threats we face.
It means that in Afghanistan, for example, our troops can expect continuous improvements in their kit, and rightly so. Our Forces deserve the best that money ca