Anal Sex / Butt Sex

Dr. Li-ann Thio v. Random NYU Law IT Guy

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Thio Li Ann Visiting Professor NYU Law School.jpgWhen last we checked in on the saga of Dr. Li-ann Thio, the incoming NYU Law visiting professor who equated anal sex to drinking by shoving a straw up your nose, Dean Richard Revesz was defending the invitation extended to her.
But over the weekend, an information technology professional who works for NYU law (and who is also an NYU student) asked the dean to reconsider. Here’s part of the letter from Malik Graves-Pryor:

While I can understand your position and reasoning in displaying solidarity to the larger NYU School of Law community regarding Hauser Global’s decision to bring in Professor Li-Ann Thio … I must state my strong objection to her appointment and the official NYU Law defense of said appointment.
As an African-American man working in the LawITS department, and simultaneously a student at NYU, I could never imagine the day would come when NYU would allow the appointment of a legal scholar who held the opinion that African-Americans practice acts of “gross indecency”, that African-Americans who strive for diversity should be rebuffed because “diversity is not a license for perversity”, describing the private intimate acts between African-Americans as trying to “shove a straw up your nose to drink”, among other intellectually and morally shallow absurdities.

In response, Dr. Thio unleashed an 18-point defense that she sent to the entire NYU Law faculty. Apparently, she feels unfairly maligned:

1. I am a little tired of the torrent of abuse and defamation that I have been receiving, and blatant emotive misrepresentations of my position. I was going to stay above the fray but given this insidious attack on my academic reputation (aside from many ad hominem insults), I feel I must cast some clarity on certain issues.

More fighting after the jump.

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Dr. Li-ann Thio: The good professor speaks — and so does NYU Law School

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Thio Li Ann Visiting Professor NYU Law School.jpgNYU Law gays, consider yourselves warned: Dr. Li-ann Thio is not afraid of you. The outspoken professor, who vehemently opposed decriminalizing gay sex as a member of the Singapore parliament, is ready to rumble:

We can be united in commitment to this principle [of academic freedom], without slavishly bowing to a demanded uniformity or dogma of political correctness set by elite diktat. I cannot say I am impressed by this ugly brand of politicking which I hope is not endemic….

I am disappointed at the intolerant animosity directed at me by strangers who do not know me and have decided to act on their own prejudices, forged from whatever sources, I am nonetheless glad that there are still some at NYU, who uphold a commitment to academic freedom and who entertain dissent with respect. As a recent NYU graduate, a Muslim friend of mine said, one must have courage in the face of bullying.

Dr. Thio can’t be prejudiced. Some of her best friends are Muslim!
Although her defense of the Singaporean statute against gay sex has been dismissed by one prominent American law professor as “dumb” and “embarrassing[],” Dr. Thio is not unaware of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in this area:

[C]ertain Americans have to realize the fact that there are a diversity of views on the subject and it is not a settled matter; there is no universal norm and it is nothing short of moral imperialism to suggest there is. Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no consensus on this even within the U.S. Supreme Court and American society at large, even post Lawrence v. Texas.

Dr. Thio is fighting political correctness with political correctness, accusing LGBT activists of cultural imperialism. Yikes! Find something to bite down on, kids, ’cause she’s not planning to use lube pull her punches.
Meanwhile, the NYU Law School administration has (finally) issued a public statement on L’Affaire Thio.
Read the statement, after the jump.

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Dr. Li-ann Thio: An Update

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Thio Li Ann Visiting Professor NYU Law School.jpgTime for a quick follow-up on Monday’s post about NYU Law School’s controversial decision to invite Dr. Li-ann Thio, an outspoken proponent of criminalizing gay sex, to teach a course on human rights in the fall. The post generated almost 300 comments, many of them quite thoughtful — like this one:

I am a gay man living in Singapore. I have lived in Asia (including Singapore) for over 15 years. So, I have firsthand knowledge of the discriminatory environment for gay men and lesbians living in Singapore.

I am not sure what the administrators of NYU Law School were thinking when they hired Dr. Thio to teach “human rights” in Asia. Asking a Singaporean tenured at a Singapore government-funded university to teach about human rights in Asia is like asking a Ku Klux Klan grandmaster to teach about racial equality. She will simply be a mouthpiece for the Singapore government’s positions on human rights issues. If Dr. Thio espoused views opposed to the Singapore government’s – trust me – she would not be teaching at the National University of Singapore. As everyone in the international human rights community knows, the Singapore government is not a “model” example for upholding human rights.

So Dr. Thio may not have been the best person in the galaxy to pick as a visiting professor of human rights. On the other hand, her views — definitely unorthodox in the American legal academy — could generate healthy and informative debate (like what we saw in our comments).
In our reader poll, which attracted over 3,000 votes, over 55 percent of you supported NYU’s decision to host Dr. Li-ann Thio. Not surprisingly, given the freewheeling, irreverent comments on this site, ATL readers are pro-free speech.
And so is the NYU OUTLaw Board, to its credit. In the wake of our coverage, the board issued a statement criticizing Li-ann Thio’s views, but simultaneously observing that it is “best to fight Dr. Thio’s offensive views not by silencing her but by engaging in a respectful and productive dialogue about the boundaries of human rights.”
The full OUTLaw statement — plus an adult-themed reader poll, by popular request — after the jump.

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NYU Professor of Human Rights: Not a Fan of Gay Rights?
Also: Is anal sex like ‘shoving a straw up your nose to drink’?

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Thio Li Ann Visiting Professor NYU Law School.jpgAcademic freedom is a beautiful thing, essential to our nation’s celebrated system of higher education. And, to borrow the words of Dick Cheney on gay marriage, “freedom means freedom for everyone” — including people whose ideas we might not like, or even find repugnant.
How far should academic freedom extend? That’s an issue being faced right now at NYU Law School. The following message went out to the law student community last week:

Dear Student,

We are writing on behalf of OUTLaw, NYU Law’s LGBT student group, to raise awareness of anti-gay statements made by a NYU visiting professor. Dr. Li-ann Thio, a professor at the National University of Singapore, will be teaching Human Rights Law in Asia during the Fall 2009 semester as a Global Visiting Professor of Law at NYU.

In 2007, the Singaporean Parliament was considering repealing 377A – the statute criminalizing consensual sex between men in Singapore. Dr. Thio, a Nominated Member of Parliament, gave a speech before Parliament arguing against the repeal. In her speech supporting the continued criminalization of “acts of gross indecency” between two males, she made such statements as, “You cannot make a human wrong a human right,” “Diversity is not a license for perversity,” and that anal sex is like “shoving a straw up your nose to drink” (http://theonlinecitizen.com/2007/10/377a-serves-public-morality-nmp-thio-li-ann). The efforts to repeal 377A failed, and consensual sex between men is still illegal in Singapore.

While respecting Dr. Thio’s right to her opinion and without questioning her teaching abilities, OUTLaw believes it is important for LGBT students and allies to be aware of her views in order to make fully informed decisions regarding class registration. If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact the OUTLaw Board at nyu.outlaw@gmail.com.

The NYU OUTLaw Board

Links to videos of her speech to the Parliament: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWqp3mLz4ko (part 1), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUDYo29gNNg (part 2), http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPIdp0qXZy4 (part 3)”

The videos are worth checking out (especially if you’re a high school debater wanting to relive your glory days). Dr. Thio speaks persuasively and with conviction, supporting her argument against gay sex with an impressively broad range of sources, from the Bible to Immanuel Kant to contemporary bloggers. One would expect nothing less from someone with her dazzling educational pedigree: a BA from Oxford, an LLM from Harvard Law School, and a PhD from Cambridge. Don’t call her Dr. TTThio!
Additional discussion, plus a reader poll, after the jump.

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Also: Is anal sex like ‘shoving a straw up your nose to drink’?“

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Some Legal Fun With Rectal Exams
(And he doesn’t like being ‘poked’ on Facebook, either.)

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rectum redacted anal sex anus prostate gland Above the Law blog.JPGA case going to trial next month raises some, er, probing questions. From the NYT’s City Room:

Under what circumstances can a patient in an emergency room be forced to submit to a procedure that doctors deem to be medically necessary? That question — and the notion of informed consent — is at the heart of a civil case that is about to go to trial next month in State Supreme Court in Manhattan.

Brian Persaud, a 38-year-old construction worker who lives in Brooklyn, asserts that he was forced to undergo a rectal examination after sustaining a head injury in an on-the-job accident at a Midtown construction site on May 20, 2003. Mr. Persaud was taken to the emergency room at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, where he received eight stitches to his head.

According to a lawsuit he later filed, Mr. Persaud was then told that he needed an immediate rectal examination to determine whether he had a spinal-cord injury. He adamantly objected to the procedure, he said, but was held down as he begged, “Please don’t do that.”

C’mon, Brian. Why not have a more open mind (among other things)? Don’t knock it ’til you’ve tried it.

As Mr. Persaud resisted, he freed one of his hands and struck a doctor, according to the suit. Then he was sedated, the suit says, with a breathing tube inserted through his mouth.

After Mr. Persaud regained consciousness, he was arrested, then taken — still in his hospital gown — to be booked on a misdemeanor assault charge. Gerrard M. Marrone, who was Mr. Persaud’s lawyer, got the criminal charges dropped, then helped Mr. Persaud file a civil lawsuit against the hospital.

For more discussion — including additional facts about the case, legal discussion, and comment from the hospital — check out the full post, by the indefatigable Sewell Chan.
Update: More about involuntary rectal exams from Slate (via WSJ Law Blog).
Forced Rectal Exam Stirs Ethics Questions [City Room / New York Times]
But I Don’t Want a Rectal Exam! [Slate]

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Ever Heard of the Term ‘Blue(book) Balls’?

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We understand there are various websites — websites that we won’t mention by name or link to here — in which people seeking hook-ups or other sexual encounters can meet similarly minded individuals. Site visitors typically post pictures or images of certain body parts, in order to entice other visitors into arranging an encounter.

Anyway, by clicking on the box below, you can see a funny photograph that was posted on one such site. We’re inferring that the individual depicted is (1) horny and (2) a law student (maybe even a law review editor).

Please note that this image is NOT completely safe for work. Although it probably won’t set off automated porn filters, since it’s not a link to a pornography site, you do NOT want your co-workers to be around when you access it. Be sure to do so in the privacy of your own office. If you’re in a cubicle, wait until nobody else is around.

Also, please note that this image was sent to us by a reader. We did NOT find it on our own, and we do NOT visit the website from which it was taken. Thank you. [FN1]

[FN1] Yes, we fully expect this to be received with skepticism by the peanut gallery of commenters. That’s okay; serving as a piñata for anonymous commenters is part of our job description.

UPDATE: In response to this comment, yes, the usual rules apply: please don’t identify this individual in the comments (if, for some disturbing reason, you actually recognize him).

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Adriana Dominguez: From A Playboy Source

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Adriana Dominguez 2 Brooklyn Law School Playboy Above the Law blog.JPGRegular readers are very familiar, perhaps more than they’d like to be, with Adriana Dominguez. She’s the third-year student at Brooklyn Law School who appeared nude in a video for Playboy TV. You’ve seen a lot of her [quasi-NSFW] in the pages of ATL.
We recently had an interesting telephone conversation with a source inside Playboy concerning Ms. Domginuez. Our source had this to say:

“This is really a non-story. So she posed naked while still in school — big deal. It’s not like she was getting triple anal!!!”

Guess that’s the “gold standard” of the porn industry. If you’re reading this over lunch, our apologies.

“This has no relevance to her bar admission. What bar would bother looking into this? All she has to do [to be admitted] is pass a test and not perjure herself.”

Our tipster thinks this is all much ado about nothing — a trumped-up story. And a story, our tipster speculates, that was manufactured by Adriana herself:

“Adriana wanted to get a little notoriety, sell a story. She was reaching out for fame…. [The New York Daily News] didn’t call her; she hired someone to call them.”

Very interesting. More from our source at Playboy, after the jump.

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Sullivan & Cromwell: Because Charney v. S&C Is Just the Tip of the Iceberg

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Sullivan & Cromwell S&C Sully Above the Law.jpgWell before Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell was ever filed, the venerable law firm was dealing with some serious issues. As aptly summarized by New York Magazine’s Intelligencer, “Sullivan & Cromwell lost about 30 percent of its associates in 2004 and 2005. It might take more than a raise to fix that.”
From a fascinating rather interesting Wall Street Journal article by Peter Lattman (which we meant to write about yesterday, before we got swamped by all the pay raise news):

Faced with a surge in turnover of its associates, the prestigious law firm Sullivan & Cromwell LLP has been putting on a charm offensive to hold onto junior lawyers.

The crash course in etiquette went into high gear at a partners meeting last February. To deal with low associate morale and high attrition, a confidential slide presentation reviewed by The Wall Street Journal urged partners to say things like “thank you” and “good work” to associates they supervise.

What else should partners do? “Return associates’ phone calls as quickly as you would a partner’s or client’s,” said one bullet. “Be sensitive to not canceling associates’ vacations,” said another.

Additional bullet-points made these helpful suggestions:

“Don’t tell gay associates that they like taking it up the ass (because they might be tops rather than bottoms).”

“Refrain from subjecting associates to profanity-laced tirades in which you tell them they should be fired.”

Guess Eric Krautheimer and Alexandra Korry missed that meeting.
Discussion continues after the jump.

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Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell: Aaron Charney Has Left the Building

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H Rodgin Cohen Chairman Aaron B Charney Aaron Brett Charney Sullivan Cromwell Above the Law Above the Law Above the Law ATL legal tabloid legal blog.JPGThe lawsuit filed by an openly gay associate against his prestigious law firm, Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell, has been picked up by the mainstream media — big-time.
We expect that, after this rash of articles, the MSM will move on from this story. Rest assured, dear reader, that ATL will not.
We intend to cover the crap out of this case. If you have any information whatsoever about Aaron Charney, Sullivan & Cromwell’s treatment of gay lawyers, or related subjects, please email us. No detail is too small to escape our interest. If you shared your apple juice with Aaron Charney in kindergarten, we want to hear about it.
Okay. We have carefully read this morning’s coverage of the lawsuit by the New York Times, the New York Law Journal, and the Times of London — so you don’t have to. We’ve located the highlights, the juiciest details, and the money quotes.
The most notable news, as reported in the NYT and the NYLJ, is that Charney has been barred from the Sullivan & Cromwell offices while an internal investigation is underway. Considering the weirdness and tension that would have resulted otherwise, both Charney and the S&C partners are probably happy about his absence.
Excerpts and links to the full articles, after the jump (i.e., click on the “Continue reading” link below).

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Charney v. Sullivan & Cromwell: Does S&C Hate Gays (and Canadians)?

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Are you a gay law student or lawyer? Are you thinking about possibly working at the New York powerhouse law firm of Sullivan & Cromwell?
Before you apply to S&C, you might want to first check out this complaint, filed today in the New York Supreme Court (a trial court, despite the misleading name).
Aaron Brett Charney v Sullivan Cromwell 1.jpg
Allegations of discrimination against gays AND Canadians (there’s a difference); a headshot of the handsome plaintiff; and a link to the full complaint. All this and more awaits you, after the jump.

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