For a state that prides itself on being a beacon of progress in American politics, California seems intent on proving it can be just as backwards as everyone else, at least when it comes to gay rights. A California appeals court ruled this week that California Lutheran High School didn’t violate the law when it expelled two students it suspected of being lesbians, determining that the state’s civil rights laws don’t apply to private religious schools. According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

The ruling is the first to consider a religious school’s status under California's Unruh Civil Rights Act, which forbids discrimination by businesses and was amended in 2005 to include discrimination based on sexual orientation. State education law also forbids anti-gay bias, but that law applies only to public schools.

The court determined that California Lutheran didn’t qualify as a business and therefore wasn’t bound by the act. The school’s lawyer applauded the ruling, telling the Chronicle that the court rightly recognized their right to exercise freedom of religion. But Kirk Hanson, an attorney for the expelled girls, told the L.A. Times that the “very troubling” decision essentially gave private schools carte blanche to discriminate against students for any reason, as long as they could defend their actions on religious grounds. The Times reports that the girls plan to take their case to the California Supreme Court.

According to a recent poll, the number of Americans who believe that Jews run Hollywood has significantly dropped (22 percent, down from nearly 50 percent in the 1960s). The finding has Los Angeles Times columnist Joel Stein all worked up. “The Anti-Defamation League, which released the poll results last month, sees in these numbers a victory against stereotyping,” he writes. “Actually, it just shows how dumb America has gotten. Jews totally run Hollywood.”

Stein hillariously rants about the deep Jewish presence in Hollywood. “The Jews are so dominant, I had to scour the trades to come up with six Gentiles in high positions at entertainment companies,” he asserts. “When I called them to talk about their incredible advancement, five of them refused to talk to me, apparently out of fear of insulting Jews. The sixth, AMC President Charlie Collier, turned out to be Jewish.”

All jokes aside, Stein does have a good point: “As a proud Jew, I want America to know about our accomplishment,” he writes. “Yes, we control Hollywood. Without us, you'd be flipping between “The 700 Club” and “Davey and Goliath” on TV all day.”

Theater critics Isaac Butler and Rob Weinert-Kendt unveiled their Critic-O-Meter blog last ­­­week, giving New York theater enthusiasts a one-stop site for play reviews and, in the words of the Los Angeles Times’ Steve Leigh Morris, laying bare a “philosophical divide between criticism that investigates and that which judges.”

Critic-O-Meter gathers any and all reviews it finds on a given play, translates each review into a letter grade, and averages the grades into an overall score. Butler and Weinert-Kendt then write a short blurb summing up the critical reaction. Further links offer visitors the option of browsing excerpts from the original reviews.

Morris’ piece explores feedback to Critic-O-Meter thus far, particularly in the critical community. Their responses have been divided: While some less-established reviewers express gratitude for the exposure (one gushes at the possibilities for “a lil' ol’ aspiring theater critic”), other writers view the blog disdainfully. A particularly apocalyptic critic sniffs that it is “evidence that the final stage in the devolution of the theater review has arrived.”

Morris has some beef with Critic-O-Meter—he rejects, for instance, a logic that assumes subjective reviews can be easily converted into objective grades. But even as he indulges in some editorializing on the blog’s value, he acknowledges that such compilations are already entrenched in our critical culture. After all, movie and music reviews have long drawn on thumbs, stars, and letter grades to assess a piece’s worth.

Morris ends, somewhat breezily, there: We like our criticism to tell us what’s good, and fast. Those who voice dissent, no matter how nobly, are “spitting into the wind.” While there’s doubtlessly a degree of truth to his conclusions, he leaves some strands of analysis underdeveloped. For instance, he might have examined the differences between the critics who support tools like Critic-O-Meter and those who greet it with handwringing. The detractors seem intent on maintaining a certain purity in theater criticism. It’s hard to tell whether this stems from an elitism about the theater world or more practical concerns about the future of their jobs. As reviewers in the fine arts increasingly take their cues from critics of more popular forms, these kinds of issues ought to be explored.

Image courtesy of Joel Telling, licensed under Creative Commons.

(Thanks, AltWeeklies.)

The American Medical Association is under fire for its recent decision (word document) to advise against home births. Doctors, midwives, feminists, natural family planning proponents, and even Ricki Lake are all upset with the intrusion. 

Childbirth is a natural part of life, writes Dr. Vijay Goel for The Health Care Blog. It’s been around longer than hospitals have. So why is the AMA advocating against home birth, a practice that, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics, only one percent of women choose? The AMA’s resolution “appears to be based more on turf management than evidence,” writes Goel, “...especially when evidence exists that the process is safe for low-risk mothers.” Condemning home birth is another medical attack in the battle between women and doctors over childbirth in the United States.

Restricting all women to hospital or birthing center delivery, like encouraging unnecessary cesarean sections, is prompted by “junk science and further reduces the credibility of our once proud profession,” writes Goel. Doctors elsewhere would disagree with the AMA’s decision, points out Jennifer Block, author of Pushed: The Painful Truth About Childbirth and Modern Maternity Care, writing for the Los Angeles Times. Block quotes a British National Health Service handout, which states: “There is no evidence to support the common assertion that home birth is a less safe option for women experiencing uncomplicated pregnancies.” 

For more on the ideas and issues surrounding home births, read “Drugs, Knives, and Midwives” and “A Tale of Two Births” from the March/April 2007 issue of Utne Reader.

Image by Big Ben(Gaijin Bikers), licensed under Creative Commons.

The Los Angeles Times published its last standalone Book Review (LATBR) on Sunday, July 27. It must have been difficult reading for subscribers who’ve been lamenting the loss of the LATBR since news of its demise broke on July 21. L.A. Times book coverage, what remains, supposedly will be grafted into the larger paper. Cue my unimpressed cheer.

It’s not that you couldn’t have seen this coming. Over the past year, death knells have been sounding ad nauseam for every subsidiary of the printed word. Newspapers are dying; publishers are struggling; essayists are flopping; book reviews are becoming extinct. No one is reading, at least not as much as they used to, and with less patience.

It’s still remarkable to witness one of the Goliaths fall—if only for how it exposes the flawed sense that something so established couldn’t be flushed away so fast. A July 7^th memo from the Tribune Company’s chief innovation officer seems to rail against just this outcome. “Heard a conversation about how Book reporting doesn’t generate revenue and may have to go away,” writes Lee Abrams. “WAIT! Maybe Book reviews and coverage are one of those things that don’t generate revenue right now, BUT—are trademarks for newspapers and elicit high passion from readers.”

Abrams is on to something, until he offers a less-than-innovative plan for revamping book sections—which are “maybe too scholarly”—by including more popular, retail-oriented picks. If the Tribune Company messed up in axing the LATBR, at least it got one thing right: Abrams’ fix wouldn’t have made anyone any less upset.

We want our culture, and we want it uncompromising. In a public letter, four former editors of the Review condemn the decision as a “philistine blunder that insults the cultural ambition of [Los Angeles] and the region.” All around the literary blogosphere, folks are dismayed at the loss of cultural cachet, angered that the Tribune Company could fail to see the edifying nature of the section. A less-literary book review only would have prompted a different strain of disgruntled hand wringing.

Maybe it’s not reasonable to petition a for-profit organization to recognize and uphold the cultural value in a non-revenue-generating section. Maybe it’s not even fair. Even the letter-writing editors concede that problematic reality, closing their reproof with the one threat that matters: “Angelenos in growing number are already choosing to cancel their subscriptions to the Sunday Times. The elimination of the Book Review…will only accelerate this process and further wound the long-term fiscal health of the newspaper.”

If the demise of the Los Angeles Times Book Review has one thing to offer, perhaps it could be a kick in the derriere, a reminder that we’re on our own out here (and that big, stalwart publications can and will drop the ball). Scott Esposito, editor of the Quarterly Conversation, puts it nicely. Esposito is reflecting that as the LATBR folds he’s begun paying his contributing writers:

I think there's a corollary to this, and it's that just as periodicals have certain responsibilities to their contributors, so do readers have responsibilities to their periodicals. That is to say: I'd like to strongly encourage everyone who reads online book reviews, literary journals (and here I'm grouping in print publications like Rain Taxi that continue to support good criticism), literary blogs, and whatever else out there is fighting to keep intelligent literary discourse alive, to support the publications they read. I'm not just talking money here, although I've never met someone who didn't appreciate a little cash; I'm also talking buying a subscription when you could read it for free on the Web, offering in-kind support and/or volunteering, offering submissions and contributions to places you like. Even something as simple as buying through a site's Amazon links adds up in the long run.

Image by  Kris Bautista , licensed under Creative Commons.