The New Sex Discrimination

Sex discrimination law has not kept pace with the lived experience of discrimination. In the early years of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, courts settled on an idea of what sex discrimination looks like—formal practices that exclude employees based on their group membership. The problem is that sex discrimination has become highly individualized. Modern sex discrimination does not target all men or all women, nor does it target subgroups of men or women. The victims of modern sex discrimination are particular men and women who face discrimination because they do not or cannot conform to the norms of the workplace. These employees have been shut out of a sex discrimination regime that still expects employees to anchor their claims to a narrative of group subordination. I argue that the lived experience of discrimination should determine employment discrimination doctrine and not the other way around. Accordingly, I propose a new regime for sex discrimination law. The model for the new sex discrimination regime is religious discrimination law. Unlike other areas of employment discrimination law, religious discrimination law offers a dynamic conception of identity and a greater array of different theories of discrimination. I argue that sex discrimination law can and should work this way, too. On a broader level, the paper makes a strong normative claim about the substance of Title VII\u27s sex equality project. I argue that sex discrimination law needs to recalibrate its vision of equality. Difference is universal. No two women (or men) are the same, and this is a good thing. Thus the central task of sex discrimination law should be to better recognize—and, in turn, protect—the distinctive ways in which employees express their maleness and femaleness. It is these differences, after all, that shape the way employees experience modern sex discrimination

Heterosexuality and Military Service

The Kentucky National Guard’s 940th Military Police Company is based in Walton, Kentucky, just south of the Kentucky-Ohio border. In November 2004, in anticipation of its deployment to Iraq, the 940th was mobilized and stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Love was in the air at Fort Dix that fall. While the 940th was preparing for its year of service in Iraq, five couples in the unit got married. Amanda and Todd McCormick were one of those couples. The McCormicks spent their first year of marriage in an active war zone, where their duties included training the Iraqi police force, providing base security, and guarding detainees for the Army. And they did all this without being able to kiss, hold hands, or even be alone together in the same room. Shortly before the unit shipped out to Iraq, the commander of the 940th issued a new policy for the unit. Concerned that sexual relationships would interfere with the work to be done in Iraq, the commander decided to prohibit the members of the 940th from having sex. Under the unit’s new “no contact” policy, members of the 940th could not engage in “sexual contact, hand holding or kissing” while the unit was deployed to Iraq. For the McCormicks and the four other dual-serving couples in the 940th, their marriages did not excuse them from the new policy. According to the memo outlining the policy, although married couples in the unit could have sex on leave, they could not engage in sexual conduct of any kind during active deployment. In the summer of 2005, about halfway through her year of service in Iraq, Amanda McCormick emailed her congressman to complain about her unit’s no contact policy. In the email, she referred to an incident where Todd came to visit her in her living quarters while she was on a down day. Although they were fully dressed and the lights in the room were on, a superior discovered them together and told Todd to leave. The risks of violating the policy were substantial. Simply for being alone together, the McCormicks could have lost rank, had their pay docked, or been put on restricted duty. “We are not allowed to live together. We are not allowed to spend time alone together. Basically, in a nutshell, we are not allowed to be married,” McCormick wrote in the email. All the couple wanted was some private time together. “We are stationed on the same base, in the same unit. Instead of that fact being comforting, it has made us sick with worry.” The McCormicks’ experience in Iraq highlights an underappreciated, if not completely overlooked, fact about military life: the military regulates a considerable amount of heterosexual sex. For the McCormicks and the rest of the 940th, the military completely banned engaging in any kind of sexual conduct while they were deployed to Iraq. This is just one way in which the military regulates heterosexual sex. As this Essay shows, the military’s rules regulating sex come in various shapes and sizes, from blanket rules against sex altogether, like in the McCormicks’ case, to criminal laws targeting specific sexual acts and relationships, to a criminal penalty for becoming pregnant during active duty. The goal of this Essay is to examine the implications of the military’s regulation of heterosexual sex for its current policy toward homosexuality—the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (DADT). Heterosexuality is largely missing from the national debate over DADT, which has heated up in recent months due to President Obama’s open hostility toward the policy. Yet heterosexuality holds the key to understanding why DADT is based on a faulty premise. DADT is built around the idea that because gay sex disrupts unit cohesion—that is, because it prevents service members from forming the bonds of trust needed to succeed in combat—lesbians and gay men cannot be allowed to serve openly in the military. The policy rests on the idea that gay sex is more harmful to military effectiveness than other kinds of sexual conduct. Yet the military’s various rules regulating heterosexual sex are also aimed at protecting unit cohesion. If the military regulates a considerable amount of heterosexual conduct as a means to protect unit cohesion, why does DADT presume that gay sex poses a greater threat to unit cohesion than heterosexual sex? The military’s existing policies regulating heterosexual sex suggest that DADT’s focus on homosexuality is misplaced. What the military thinks of as a problem with homosexuality is really a problem with sexual conduct in general. This Essay makes two distinct contributions to the scholarly literature. First, it provides a new way of approaching the issue of gay military service. To date, the issue of gay service has been debated primarily in terms of whether the presence of openly gay service members would hinder military effectiveness. Indeed, the bulk of scholarly writing on DADT approaches the issue of gay service from this perspective. This Essay breaks from this trend by steering the conversation away from sexual orientation—and, in particular, homosexuality—and refocusing it on sexual conduct. After all, DADT is but one of the military’s many sex regulations, most of which impose considerable restrictions on the sexual lives of service members without regard to sexual orientation. By viewing DADT through this broader lens, this Essay paves the way for a more meaningful conversation about the military’s interest in regulating the sexual conduct of all the men and women serving in the armed forces, not just the ones who engage in same-sex sexual conduct

Of Meat and Manhood

The idea that “real” men eat meat is firmly embedded in our culture. For those men who are benefited by the stereotype, eating meat serves as a confirmation of their manhood, a kind of marker of their privileged status as masculine men. This is not the case for men who do not eat meat. In our culture, a man who does not eat meat is often seen as insufficiently masculine. In this Article, I use the relationship between meat and manhood as a springboard to challenge the way in which employment discrimination law—more specifically, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act —conceives of sex discrimination. The Article focuses in particular on what is perhaps the most transformative theory of sex discrimination—the gender-stereotyping theory of sex discrimination. The thrust of the gender-stereotyping theory is that an employer cannot discriminate against an employee for failing to conform to stereotypical gender expectations. The Supreme Court announced the theory in 1989, in the seminal case Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins. In doing so, the Court ushered in a new wave of sex discrimination claims, shifting the focus of Title VII’s sex discrimination project from formal sex segregation to more subtle forms of discrimination concerning how employees look and behave in the workplace

Heterosexuality and Military Service

The Kentucky National Guard’s 940th Military Police Company is based in Walton, Kentucky, just south of the Kentucky-Ohio border. In November 2004, in anticipation of its deployment to Iraq, the 940th was mobilized and stationed at Fort Dix, New Jersey. Love was in the air at Fort Dix that fall. While the 940th was preparing for its year of service in Iraq, five couples in the unit got married. Amanda and Todd McCormick were one of those couples. The McCormicks spent their first year of marriage in an active war zone, where their duties included training the Iraqi police force, providing base security, and guarding detainees for the Army. And they did all this without being able to kiss, hold hands, or even be alone together in the same room. Shortly before the unit shipped out to Iraq, the commander of the 940th issued a new policy for the unit. Concerned that sexual relationships would interfere with the work to be done in Iraq, the commander decided to prohibit the members of the 940th from having sex. Under the unit’s new “no contact” policy, members of the 940th could not engage in “sexual contact, hand holding or kissing” while the unit was deployed to Iraq. For the McCormicks and the four other dual-serving couples in the 940th, their marriages did not excuse them from the new policy. According to the memo outlining the policy, although married couples in the unit could have sex on leave, they could not engage in sexual conduct of any kind during active deployment. In the summer of 2005, about halfway through her year of service in Iraq, Amanda McCormick emailed her congressman to complain about her unit’s no contact policy. In the email, she referred to an incident where Todd came to visit her in her living quarters while she was on a down day. Although they were fully dressed and the lights in the room were on, a superior discovered them together and told Todd to leave. The risks of violating the policy were substantial. Simply for being alone together, the McCormicks could have lost rank, had their pay docked, or been put on restricted duty. “We are not allowed to live together. We are not allowed to spend time alone together. Basically, in a nutshell, we are not allowed to be married,” McCormick wrote in the email. All the couple wanted was some private time together. “We are stationed on the same base, in the same unit. Instead of that fact being comforting, it has made us sick with worry.” The McCormicks’ experience in Iraq highlights an underappreciated, if not completely overlooked, fact about military life: the military regulates a considerable amount of heterosexual sex. For the McCormicks and the rest of the 940th, the military completely banned engaging in any kind of sexual conduct while they were deployed to Iraq. This is just one way in which the military regulates heterosexual sex. As this Essay shows, the military’s rules regulating sex come in various shapes and sizes, from blanket rules against sex altogether, like in the McCormicks’ case, to criminal laws targeting specific sexual acts and relationships, to a criminal penalty for becoming pregnant during active duty. The goal of this Essay is to examine the implications of the military’s regulation of heterosexual sex for its current policy toward homosexuality—the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy (DADT). Heterosexuality is largely missing from the national debate over DADT, which has heated up in recent months due to President Obama’s open hostility toward the policy. Yet heterosexuality holds the key to understanding why DADT is based on a faulty premise. DADT is built around the idea that because gay sex disrupts unit cohesion—that is, because it prevents service members from forming the bonds of trust needed to succeed in combat—lesbians and gay men cannot be allowed to serve openly in the military. The policy rests on the idea that gay sex is more harmful to military effectiveness than other kinds of sexual conduct. Yet the military’s various rules regulating heterosexual sex are also aimed at protecting unit cohesion. If the military regulates a considerable amount of heterosexual conduct as a means to protect unit cohesion, why does DADT presume that gay sex poses a greater threat to unit cohesion than heterosexual sex? The military’s existing policies regulating heterosexual sex suggest that DADT’s focus on homosexuality is misplaced. What the military thinks of as a problem with homosexuality is really a problem with sexual conduct in general. This Essay makes two distinct contributions to the scholarly literature. First, it provides a new way of approaching the issue of gay military service. To date, the issue of gay service has been debated primarily in terms of whether the presence of openly gay service members would hinder military effectiveness. Indeed, the bulk of scholarly writing on DADT approaches the issue of gay service from this perspective. This Essay breaks from this trend by steering the conversation away from sexual orientation—and, in particular, homosexuality—and refocusing it on sexual conduct. After all, DADT is but one of the military’s many sex regulations, most of which impose considerable restrictions on the sexual lives of service members without regard to sexual orientation. By viewing DADT through this broader lens, this Essay paves the way for a more meaningful conversation about the military’s interest in regulating the sexual conduct of all the men and women serving in the armed forces, not just the ones who engage in same-sex sexual conduct

Default Prior Choice for Bayesian Model Selection in Generalized Linear Models with Applications in Mortgage Default

<p>The adoption of Zellner's g prior is a popular prior choice in Bayesian Model Averaging, although literature has shown that using a fixed g has undesirable properties. Mixtures of g priors have recently been proposed for Generalized linear models, extending results from the Gaussian linear model context. This paper will specifically look at the model selection problem as it applies to logistic regression. The effect of prior choice on both model selection and prediction using Bayesian Model Averaging is analyzed. This is done by testing a variety of model space and mixtures of g priors in a simulated data study as well illustrating their use in mortgage default data. This paper shows that the different mixtures of g priors tends to fall into one of two groups that have similar behavior. Additionally, priors in one of these groups, specifically the n/2, Beta Prime, and Robust mixtures of g priors, tend to outperform the other choices.</p>Thesi

Peripheral Innate Immune Activation Correlates With Disease Severity in GRN Haploinsufficiency.

Objective: To investigate associations between peripheral innate immune activation and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) in progranulin gene (GRN) haploinsufficiency. Methods: In this cross-sectional study, ELISA was used to measure six markers of innate immunity (sCD163, CCL18, LBP, sCD14, IL-18, and CRP) in plasma from 30 GRN mutation carriers (17 asymptomatic, 13 symptomatic) and 29 controls. Voxel based morphometry was used to model associations between marker levels and brain atrophy in mutation carriers relative to controls. Linear regression was used to model relationships between plasma marker levels with mean frontal white matter integrity [fractional anisotropy (FA)] and the FTLD modified Clinical Dementia Rating Scale sum of boxes score (FTLD-CDR SB). Results: Plasma sCD163 was higher in symptomatic GRN carriers [mean 321 ng/ml (SD 125)] compared to controls [mean 248 ng/ml (SD 58); p &lt; 0.05]. Plasma CCL18 was higher in symptomatic GRN carriers [mean 56.9 pg/ml (SD 19)] compared to controls [mean 40.5 pg/ml (SD 14); p &lt; 0.05]. Elevation of plasma LBP was associated with white matter atrophy in the right frontal pole and left inferior frontal gyrus (p FWE corrected &lt;0.05) in all mutation carriers relative to controls. Plasma LBP levels inversely correlated with bilateral frontal white matter FA (R2 = 0.59, p = 0.009) in mutation carriers. Elevation in plasma was positively correlated with CDR-FTLD SB (b = 2.27 CDR units/μg LBP/ml plasma, R2 = 0.76, p = 0.003) in symptomatic carriers. Conclusion: FTLD-GRN is associated with elevations in peripheral biomarkers of macrophage-mediated innate immunity, including sCD163 and CCL18. Clinical disease severity and white matter integrity are correlated with blood LBP, suggesting a role for peripheral immune activation in FTLD-GRN