Querying Edith Windsor, Querying Equality

This essay is the second in a series exploring the implications of the recent landmark Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor. Specifically, the essay intends to “sound some skepticism…about the majority opinion…and especially the vision of equality articulated by it.” This discussion was inspired by Meg Penrose’s article, UNBREAKABLE VOWS: SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO DIVORCE, published in Volume 58:1. The series is meant to serve as an open forum for scholars and practitioners to weigh in on one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the 21st century

Queer/Religious Friendship in the Obama Era

In Queer/Religious Friendship in the Obama Era, Jeff Redding delves into the politics of Proposition 8 and gay marriage more broadly. He urges self-identified queers to use their electoral defeat to reconsider both substantive political goals and coalitions. The Article rejects the conventional norms and metrics of identity politics in the U.S., which typically urge power and dignity through inclusion and accommodation of differences within mainstream institutions. Of course, in the Prop 8 debate, this means rejecting civil unions as inferior and insisting on access to marriage. Redding rejects this norm, instead contending that civil unions should be viewed as a potentially queer space, not unlike the personal law regimes utilized by some religious minorities in other countries. The development of recognition pluralism in the U.S. can both provide queers with some agency and dignity, while also building a kind of legal regime that is more encouraging of legislative spaces protective of queer interests. Queer/Religious Friendship also urges innovative and previously unthinkable alliances, urging for instance that queers build coalitions with religious minorities who also seek to carve spaces outside of state regulation

Querying Edith Windsor, Querying Equality

This essay is the second in a series exploring the implications of the recent landmark Supreme Court case, United States v. Windsor. Specifically, the essay intends to “sound some skepticism…about the majority opinion…and especially the vision of equality articulated by it.” This discussion was inspired by Meg Penrose’s article, UNBREAKABLE VOWS: SAME-SEX MARRIAGE AND THE FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO DIVORCE, published in Volume 58:1. The series is meant to serve as an open forum for scholars and practitioners to weigh in on one of the most significant Supreme Court decisions of the 21st century

What American Legal Theory Might Learn from Islamic Law: Some Lessons About \u27The Rule of Law\u27 from \u27Shari\u27a Court\u27 Practice in India

In 2010, voters in the state of Oklahoma passed a constitutional amendment that prohibits the Oklahoma courts from considering Sharia Law. A great deal of the support for this amendment and similar (ongoing) legal initiatives appears to be generated by a deep-seated paranoia about Muslims and Islamic law that has taken root in many parts of the post-9/11 United States. This Article contends that the passage of this Oklahoma constitutional amendment should not have been surprising given that it is not only right-wing partisans who have felt the need to strictly demarcate and police the boundaries of the American legal system, but also liberal partisans too. Indeed, this Article argues that certain modes of American liberal legal thought actually facilitate the anti-shari\u27a mania currently sweeping the United States. As a result, an adequate response to this mania cannot simply rely on traditional, American-style, liberal legal theorizing. Indeed, as this Article argues and explains, some extant American liberal understandings of \u27law,\u27 \u27legal systems,\u27 and \u27the rule of law\u27 are eminently inappropriate resources in the struggle against American forms of reactionary parochialism because these liberal understandings are themselves deeply compromised by their own forms of parochialis

Optimization of coronagraph design for segmented aperture telescopes

The goal of directly imaging Earth-like planets in the habitable zone of other stars has motivated the design of coronagraphs for use with large segmented aperture space telescopes. In order to achieve an optimal trade-off between planet light throughput and diffracted starlight suppression, we consider coronagraphs comprised of a stage of phase control implemented with deformable mirrors (or other optical elements), pupil plane apodization masks (gray scale or complex valued), and focal plane masks (either amplitude only or complex-valued, including phase only such as the vector vortex coronagraph). The optimization of these optical elements, with the goal of achieving 10 or more orders of magnitude in the suppression of on-axis (starlight) diffracted light, represents a challenging non-convex optimization problem with a nonlinear dependence on control degrees of freedom. We develop a new algorithmic approach to the design optimization problem, which we call the ”Auxiliary Field Optimization” (AFO) algorithm. The central idea of the algorithm is to embed the original optimization problem, for either phase or amplitude (apodization) in various planes of the coronagraph, into a problem containing additional degrees of freedom, specifically fictitious ”auxiliary” electric fields which serve as targets to inform the variation of our phase or amplitude parameters leading to good feasible designs. We present the algorithm, discuss details of its numerical implementation, and prove convergence to local minima of the objective function (here taken to be the intensity of the on-axis source in a ”dark hole” region in the science focal plane). Finally, we present results showing application of the algorithm to both unobscured off-axis and obscured on-axis segmented telescope aperture designs. The application of the AFO algorithm to the coronagraph design problem has produced solutions which are capable of directly imaging planets in the habitable zone, provided end-to-end telescope system stability requirements can be met. Ongoing work includes advances of the AFO algorithm reported here to design in additional robustness to a resolved star, and other phase or amplitude aberrations to be encountered in a real segmented aperture space telescope

Women at risk for sexually transmitted diseases: correlates of intercourse without barrier contraception

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the correlates of vaginal intercourse without barrier contraception (unprotected intercourse). Study Design: Baseline data from a randomized trial were analyzed to evaluate factors that are associated with intercourse without barrier method use among women \u3c35 years old. Logistic regression models provided estimates of the association of demographic, reproductive, and sexual history variables with unprotected intercourse. Results: Intercourse without barrier contraception was common; 65% of participants had ≥2 episodes of intercourse without barrier contraception use in the past month. Factors that were associated with increased odds of unprotected intercourse included the number of coital episodes, a male partner’s unwillingness to use condoms (adjusted odds ratio, 4.1; 95% CI, 2.3-6.9), and, among women \u3c20 years old, low condom use self-efficacy score (adjusted odds ratio, 1.6; 95% CI, 1.0-2.9). Conclusion: Risk factors for unprotected intercourse included coital frequency and the male partner’s unwillingness to use condoms. Self-efficacy for condom use was especially important for women \u3c20 years old

Adherence to dual-method contraceptive use

Background: Patient characteristics associated with adherence to dual-method contraceptive use are not known. Study Design: Project PROTECT was a 24-month-long randomized trial designed to promote the use of dual methods of contraception using an individualized computer-based intervention or enhanced standard care counseling intervention. We analyzed 463 women with follow-up data and examined sustained dual-method use (reported at 2+ interviews). Results: While 32% initiated dual-method contraceptive use, only 9% reported sustained use. Education increased (RRadj=4.42; 95% confidence interval [CI] 1.19–16.42), substance abuse decreased (adjusted relative risk [RRadj]=0.49; 95% CI 0.24–0.97), no contraceptive use at baseline decreased (RRadj=0.32; 95% CI 0.11–0.92) and contraceptive stage of change increased (RRadj=5.04; 95% CI 1.09–23.4) adherence to dual-method use. Conclusion: To effectively prevent sexually transmitted diseases and unplanned pregnancies, dual-method use must be consistent and sustained. Future interventions to promote dual-method use should focus on high-risk groups and additional dual-method combinations (e.g., barrier plus intrauterine devices or implants)