This Guardian article provides a very helpful overview of the escalating controversy over the American Psychological Association's decade-long policy supporting the involvement of licensed psychologists in U.S. military interrogations at Gitmo and other facilities. An independent report has brought more attention to this policy and, specifically, the involvement of psychologists -- Gitmo currently has five on duty, according to the Guardian -- in forced feeding of people imprisoned at these facilities. Several APA leaders have resigned because of their role in the policy.
Its efforts were spurred by the scandal that occurred two and a half years at the Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio during a training program. As Mother Jones reports, at least 70 individuals came forward with charges of “unwanted touching, inappropriate relationships, and rape” by at least 30 training instructors.
If you're a public servant, you don't get to choose which parts of your job you will do, and which you won't do. If an action falls within your job responsibilities and scope of duties, you have to do it, unless you've been granted an accommodation due to a disability. That's how I've always understood things.
But, apparently, some North Carolina magistrates and clerks in county register of deeds offices find it unconscionable that they be asked to perform marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples now that Amendment One, the 2012 voter-approved law prohibiting same-sex couples from marrying, has been struck down. (A federal judge ruled it unconstitutional in the fall, after which same-sex couples began marrying throughout the state, and some magistrates and clerks resigned in protest.)
“[The criminal justice system] is not set up for the victim, it's set up for due process for the accused.”
Amily McCool, NC Coalition Against Domestic Violence (as quoted in the DTH, 11/25/14)
For several days, I've been thinking intently about the above quote, which I read in a Daily Tar Heel article about the issues survivors of sexual assault face in trying to pursue criminal charges against their attackers. Below the fold of Tuesday's edition ran the headline, “Rape Still Ignored by Law Enforcement,” and, underneath that, were two stories: “Forgotten Rape Leaves a Broken Mother” and “Data Shows Prosecutors Ignore Campus Assault.”
I'm a new member of BlueNC. For my first post, I'd like to share the following letter of mine that ran in yesterday's edition of the UNC student newspaper The Daily Tar Heel. The academic scandal involving UNC athletes continues to fascinate and perplex so many of us.
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