Espresso

Upgrading the De’Longhi EC-155 steam wand

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 36 Comments

Note: This article describes how to upgrade the steam wand on the DeLonghi EC-155. This mod may work on other DeLonghi single-boiler espresso machines (EC-xxx model numbers plus the BAR32), but steps and requirements will vary. If you find an article for this mod with a specific model of DeLonghi, please leave a comment below with the link.

For the DeLonghi EC-702, Francisco over at his blog on WordPress provides the details.

For the DeLonghi EC-270/EC-271, see Ethan’s tutorial on Reddit.

If you follow this guide and make the upgrade to your machine, please consider sending a small tip as a show of appreciation. And also leave a comment below about your experience.

* * * * *

Recall from previous articles (here and here) that I changed out the portafilter basket on my De’Longhi EC-155 espresso maker from the stock pressurized basket to an unpressurized basket. Well I decided to see how much further I could upgrade it.

Along with the portafilter basket, the only thing that could really also be upgraded on the EC-155 is the steam wand. The EC-155 comes stock with a frothing aid on a short steam pipe (see below). The frothing aid works quite well once you become adept with it, but it does limit how well you could steam or froth milk with the espresso machine.

ec155_frothing.jpg

To get around this, some people have just modified the frothing aid by cutting the skirt off it, leaving just the plastic tip. I’ve heard mixed reviews on this option, too. Good thing replacing the frothing aid doesn’t cost much as it’s just a molded piece of plastic, so if you’re going to do this, I definitely recommend buying a spare. (Amazon, eReplacementParts)

Another option that I did try that didn’t work well is replacing the frothing aid with a different tip. Namely I used a single-hole tip sold by Orphan Espresso. As this tip is shorter than the frothing aid, it actually takes ½” off the length of the steam pipe. On a 20oz pitcher this just won’t do. And on a 12oz pitcher you still might have issues getting the tip deep enough into the milk to get a good swirl going. I do not recommend trying this as I don’t see being able to use it effectively, plus you need to use plumber’s tape to get an effective seal, which I don’t want plumber’s tape anywhere near the milk I’m going to steam.

So it seems that if you want to effectively steam milk with the EC-155, rather than settling for the frothing aid, you’re going to need to replace the entire steam pipe with something better, such as the steam wand for another espresso machine, namely the Rancilio Silvia. But there’s a caveat. (Isn’t there always?) The part to obtain is a steam wand assembly for what is known as the v1 or v2 model of the Rancilio Silvia (Amazon, EspressoParts.com – the o-rings the parts page mentions will not be used, so there is no need to buy them). This is the easy part.

You will also need hose clamps that can go down to 5/8″ (I found some at Home Depot for about 90¢ US each), or zip ties that can withstand temperatures approaching, to be safe, 250°F (122°C).

Warning: Performing this upgrade will void the warranty on your EC-155. Do not perform this upgrade unless you are comfortable with this. I cannot be held responsible for you voiding your warranty, nor for any incidental or consequential damages or injuries that may result from your attempt to perform this upgrade.

Disassembling the machine

First, you will need to, obviously, remove the tank and run out the last of the water in the machine before unplugging it. The frothing aid on the steam pipe also needs to come off. And this should also go without saying, but I’ll say it anyway: ensure the machine has cooled off and is unplugged before attempting to work on it.

Next you’ll want to pop off the knob on the steam valve. It’s a friction fit, so just open it all the way and get a butter knife under it, or something like that, to pry it off. The two screws under this knob are of no concern and you can leave them in place. I think they’re for holding the “cup warmer” in place.

Next there are four long screws you’ll need to remove: two long screws on the top of the machine and two more on the front near the brew head. There’s also a small catch on the back you need to push in and release before the top will come off. Once you have all of these out and you start popping the top off, the lid that covers the water tank should come off relatively easily with it.

On the underside you have four Torx® Security T20 screws. If the post in the screw is low enough to get a standard Torx bit into the head, then go for it, but it’s best to use the proper bit, which you can acquire online or at a local retailer (such as this DEWALT bit set). I also found that a 1/8″ flat-head screw driver works as well as it can wedge nicely into the screw head to allow you to turn it – I didn’t have any Torx® Security bits available at the time I did this upgrade. Once you have the bottom off, the two hoses that connect under where the water tank goes will need to be pulled off.

With all of this loose, it’ll make it easier to pull the body of the machine out of the shell. Some will say this isn’t necessary, but trust me, it makes things a lot easier, as you’ll have the innards of the machine out in the open instead of trying to mess around in the tight spaces around the boiler.

Around the boiler there are four silver Phillips head screws and four black hex key screws (Note: hex key screws, also called Allen screws or Allen key screws, are not the same as Torx screws). Do not remove the black screws as these screws are used to keep the boiler together. Only the Phillips screws need to come out. On the front of the machine, you need to pop the knob off the dial (it’s a lot easier to get off than the steam knob) and remove the two screws under it, then maneuver the dial assembly out of the way along with the two indicator lights. With this and the four Phillips screws mentioned also removed, the innards of the espresso machine should lift out of the plastic enclosing with ease. The steam pipe is going to give you a little bit of a hitch, but it should be easily overcome, and watch for the guide on the power cable as well as it might catch on the underside.

With the innards of the machine out of the way, it should become fairly obvious what you need to do next: pry the hose clamp off the hose at the steam arm and pull the steam arm out of the end of the tubing. Some force will be needed, but it shouldn’t be too much.

Installing the new pipe

Preparing the new pipe is straightforward. If you ordered the assembly I linked above from EspressoParts.com, you will need to unscrew the tip off the steam pipe and slide the burn protector off to get the giant nut off the pipe. There’s also a small washer between the nut and a small lip on the machine-end of the pipe. That nut and washer will not be used for this.

r_1054_2_full4_2086.jpg

Next, you will need to slide the steam pipe into the end of the steam/water hose. Make sure to slide it far enough that the end of the hose goes over the lip near the end of the pipe. This will ensure you’ve got a tight fit that should not leak. And to ensure it won’t leak, use the hose clamp or zip tie to keep it snug.

Piecing the machine back together basically requires reversing the steps that took it apart. Now getting the new steam pipe through that small hole in the machine will require some work. When you attempt to do this, you’ll see what I mean.

Don’t completely reassemble the machine back to the point where you’ve got everything covered up. Leave the top lid off the machine’s enclosure. The reason should be quite obvious: testing for leaks. Doing this requires pulling water through the new steam pipe, and you can’t easily see if there are leaks if you completely reassemble the machine. If you’ve ever built a computer by hand, assembling from separate parts instead of buying a pre-built machine, you should be familiar with the cardinal rule that you don’t close up the case until you confirm everything is working properly. Similar concept here.

Along with pulling water to check for leaks, I recommend pulling steam through it as well. Now you might say that if water comes through okay then steam will, too, but this isn’t necessarily going to be true, and it’s always good to be thorough. Note: the post for the steam knob will get very hot when you turn the machine up for steaming, so be sure to account for this.

So only after you’re reasonably certain that everything is working fine, both for pulling steam and water through the new pipe, let the machine cool off (might take at least an hour), then reassemble the last of the case.

In the end…

Now that you have everything reassembled, I guess it’s time to try steaming milk. Bear in mind that using a traditional steam wand, similar to what you’ve now installed in your EC-155, requires a quite different technique for steaming milk than the frothing aid. But after you’ve practiced enough, you should be able to steam milk and get better results than you could with the frothing aid. Interestingly, you can practice steaming milk with water and dishwashing liquid.

Will you be able to do latte art with this? I don’t know, but given some of the results I’ve gotten doing this, it appears to be possible if you get everything right for it. The results really are quite phenomenal. I’ve been quite pleased, and it can handle a 20oz pitcher without any problem (just make sure you’ve got enough milk in it), but a 16oz or smaller would likely be better.

Additional resources

Note: all images used in accordance with “fair use” as provided by 17 USC §107 in the United States and applicable international treaties.

Abortion/Sex

Rebuttal to PalMD’s "I have a problem with this"

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

I’m a regular reader of the blog "White Coat Underground" and I highly recommend you subscribe and read the blog as well. It’s written and run by a physician going by the moniker "PalMD", who has made it no secret his liberal-leaning politics as well, typically voicing where politics and medicine overlap – which in today’s society, there’s a tremendous overlap, as I’ve seen personally working in the medical industry.

Recently he wrote an article called "I have a problem with this" in which he responds to New York Times columnist Nick Kristoff. Much of the article is spot-on in the point that we have a culture that "assumes that rape, abortion, and any decision that involves women’s lives and autonomy is up to men to legislate, decide, judge."

But where he deviates from this point and enters the realm of being off the mark is when he says this:

This is about women in a culture where even abortion supporters think abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" instead of "safe, legal, and none-of-your-damned-business."

The fact that abortion numbers per year are still above the 1 million mark, despite being on an – albeit slow – downward trend for the last 20 years, is why abortion is far from "none of your damned business". The only part of the abortion decision that is "none of your damned business" is the reason behind the decision. The fact a woman (or a couple) chooses to abort a pregnancy is far from this, if for no other reason than the simple fact that it shows that people are making poor decisions. Allow me to clarify before anyone jumps down my throat about this.

I’m not calling the abortion decision itself a "poor decision". It is certainly not one. A poor decision, in my opinion, is one that is made without consideration for all consequences and alternatives that could be reasonably considered. Often poor decisions are made haphazardly, spur of the moment, spontaneously or on impulse. In the case of sexual choices and decisions, often our hormones make it difficult to actually make sound decisions, including the decision on whether to employ a condom. If inebriants come into play, there might not be an opportunity to make a sound decision. And it is also possible to be so inebriated that one does not recall consenting to sex.

The fact that over 1 million abortions occur just in the United States alone per year is a symptom of a greater problem, a problem that starts before the women obtaining these abortions are even old enough to conceive a child, let alone physically carry it to term. It is a symptom of a problem that is exacerbated in our public schools that tell our students to just abstain from sex without explaining in the necessary detail why they should abstain – it’s as if adults have taken on the fallacy of "if they don’t learn about it, they won’t do it". Which given some of the most religious States in the US are ones with the highest teen pregnancy rates, it really makes you wonder if the biggest problem of stupidity is not realizing you have it.

This is why those of us who are pro-choice, or at least not so pro-life that we want the legislatures to intervene, call for abortion to be "safe, legal, and rare". We see abortion as a symptom of a greater problem, a problem that society not only can address, but must address. However addressing the problem is not going to be easy and, in my opinion, should not involve government.

Most people who identify as pro-choice, or, again, at least not so pro-life that they want legislatures to intervene, want to see the numbers of abortions continue to decline. To do this, it is well known that education is involved. This means teaching teenagers about sex rather than avoiding the topic by just vapidly saying "wait till you’re married". This means teaching teenagers the actual facts about proper methods of contraception and how well they work, while also stating that abstinence is the only 100% guaranteed way to prevent not only pregnancy but the spread of STDs. This means also teaching teenagers about masturbation as an alternative to sex.

This basically means not lying to our children and teenagers. But unfortunately we do a lot of lying to our children and teenagers. Parents, clergy and religious leaders lie repeatedly to our children. Governments do so as well. And given that governments are operated and instituted by parents, clergy and religious leaders, this is no surprise.

The question is when we’ll stop lying to not only ourselves about the problems we face, but stop lying to the next generation about the natures of those problems and how to solve them.

Religion

Playing games

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 5 Comments

One game I’ve seen played by numerous theists against atheists is an attempt to corner atheists into admitting in some way that a deity is possible. Except if the theist were to actually listen to the assertions that atheists make, they’ll already see that most of us already do. The late Christopher Hitchens summed it up fantastically: "It may not be said that there is no god. It may be said that there is no reason to think that there is one."

As such one peculiarity about these games is how they merely get a person to concede the possibility that a deity might exist, something that again most atheists already concede, without actually showing evidence that a particular deity exists.

Typically it is Christians administering this game, and thankfully only a minority attempting to do so as it is quite a fallacious game to play, and it can be summarized as this: as each person only possesses a tiny fraction of the overall sum of knowledge available, it is possible that the God of the Bible exists within the part of the knowledge that, presumably, the atheist does not possess.

Except there is one major problem with the conclusion or concession the game tries to get the atheist to make: the God of Abraham, the God of the Bible, does not exist, as I have stated previously:

First, Christians, would you agree that without the Bible, both the Old and New Testaments, Christianity would not have any definition? In other words, much if not all of the theology behind the religion called Christianity relies on the Holy Bible. It is where the teachings and story of Jesus are recorded, and it is the basis if not sole source for the theology most often cited by Christians. Now Mormons, I am aware, also have the Book of Mormon, but that is merely an addendum to the Holy Bible, as far as I am aware, so everything for Christianity still rests on the Bible.

And in the Bible lies many problems.

Numerous scholars have written about the authoring of the Bible, including the identification of the various authors of not only the Pentateuch, but the other books of the Old and New Testament. To put it simply the Bible is riddled with numerous problems, errors, contradictions and the like. The Bible is not the work of a god, or if it is, it is certainly not an infallible God as has been declared so readily by Christians. As the Bible provides a definition of God accepted by Christians (and further defined, molded, polished and primed by apologists), and as the Bible has been shown by numerous scholars to be wrong about so many things between its covers, it is not only my opinion but the opinions of many others that the Christian God, the "God of the Bible", Yahweh, Jehovah, or whatever name you wish to ascribe to the God first mentioned in Genesis, does not exist.

Now to say that the God of the Bible does not exist is not to say that no deity exists. But the Christian says that if a deity does exist that deity must be the god of Abraham. I’ve yet to personally encounter a Christian that is willing to admit that anything different. As such by trying to get the atheist to admit the general possibility a deity might exist, the theist is, in their mind at least, attempting to get the atheist to admit that their deity exists.

Except that isn’t how it works, for two reasons.

Admitting the possibility that unicorns might exist does not automatically mean that pink unicorns with purple eyes are a genuine species that we just haven’t discovered yet. Admitting that a deity might exist is not the same as admitting that the Christian god does exist.

Further, the onus is always on the Christian to prove their religion and all its claims are true.

Religion

Atheists lacking balls

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 1 Comment

As an atheist, one thing that I tend to hear from the religious side of the equation is that atheists don’t believe in anything. And that is frustrating because atheists believe in plenty of things, just nothing supernatural. But one statement I’ve been hearing that pisses me off even more actually comes from atheists: "Atheists lack a belief in gods."

This in reality should never be uttered by an atheist. And I do mean never. Every time I hear it, I just want to cringe. Hearing this proffered countless ways by atheists in many different venues, repeated practically verbatim, I’ve got to wonder if the person who originally came up with that description lacked a lot of creativity with regard to the English language.

I mean there are so many ways to say that atheists don’t buy any of the supernatural ideas being proffered by all the various religions in the world, and that’s the phrase that keeps getting passed around like a case of VD at a Roman orgy? Come on!

Now the fingernails-on-chalkboard effect that phrase has had on me has only been growing more potent as I’ve been reinvigorating an old hobby of mine from high school: writing fiction. To anyone who sees the phrase "atheists lack a belief in god" who also has experience writing fiction, do you see the problem?

Those who take on the moniker "agnostic" (like yours truly) are often referred to by atheists as "weak atheists". To me, any atheist who says "atheists lack a belief in gods" is a weak atheist because you’re using weak language. And I hear those who refer to themselves as "strong atheists" using this weak language.

As such I propose this phrase be banned from discussions on atheism, post haste. It needs to go. Atheists need to stop using it. It is a weak statement that makes the person uttering it have the appearance of backing into a corner and cowering like a frightened mouse. Is that really the impression you want to give? More powerful and active language must be adopted:

As an Atheist I have no reason to believe the claims the religious offer, and I will not believe any of them until sufficient evidence has been provided and adequately supported against all claims to the contrary.

Powerful language that is straightforward and in the active tense and not passive like saying in a rather pissy tone, "Atheists lack a belief". Sure a lot of atheists do say something similar to what I’ve just offered, but they say the "lack" statement even more.

When discussing atheism it should not be discussed as lacking anything because it doesn’t lack anything. Instead atheists just do not believe in anything supernatural and live their lives without the spiritual slavery of the here and now and the tyranny of the here after. A more powerful connation of "lack" is "does not", a form of the transitive word to be.

To say you are lacking something means that you want or desire whatever you are lacking. The dictionary defines lack as a "deficiency or absence of something needed, desirable, or customary". For example I currently lack children. The hungry lack food. The horny lack a sexual partner or some alternative. I think you get the idea. So by saying you lack a belief in a deity or god, it seems to imply you want to believe in a deity or god. If that be the case, then go on saying you lack a belief and I’ll know how to classify you.

As to the rest of us, if you don’t want to believe in a god, deity, or theology, then stop using the word "lack" in describing your beliefs. Start using the more active tone instead of the passive, pissy tone.

Atheism is purely not believing in any supernatural or higher power. The atheist is someone who does not believe in any supernatural or higher power. Plain and simple. And that is how atheists should describe atheism, other atheists, and themselves.

Politics

Defining "equal work"

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 2 Comments

Oftentimes many will cite an alleged "pay gap" between men and women. Despite this notion having been refuted time and again, it is still proffered in time for elections as a way of spurning the female side of the electorate into voting for Democrats.

And typically Democrats will say they are for "equal pay for equal work". And as great as such a notion sounds, there is one big problem: what is "equal work"?

Let me proffer two scenarios, and I’ll borrow on my own profession – software engineering – as the example.

First scenario

Jim and Alice are software engineers on the same team at the same company.

Jim is 32, has been writing software in his spare time and professionally for about half his life and has made available several of his projects online on the Internet. He is recognized for his expertise and readily shares it as well with his team where possible. He’s been working for the company for about 5 years, and continues to work on his own projects in his spare time.

Alice is 32 and has been working for the company since graduating from college. Like Jim she also has a computer science degree, but when hired, she had little experience beyond her classes and she makes no effort toward additional learning or study in her spare time.

Jim and Alice work on the same team and contribute to the same projects working toward the same goals and ends. For the sake of argument, we’ll say they work with the same programming language and frameworks and the same tools.

Should Jim and Alice be getting paid the same? Why or why not? If no, who should be getting paid more and why?

Second scenario

Jim and Alice are software engineers on the same team at the same company.

Alice is 32, has been writing software in her spare time and professionally for about half her life and has made available several of her projects online on the Internet. He is recognized for her expertise and readily shares it as well with her team where possible. She’s been working for the company for about 5 years, and continues to work on her own projects in her spare time.

Jim is 32 and has been working for the company since graduating from college. Like Alice he also has a computer science degree, but when hired, he had little experience beyond his classes and he makes no effort toward additional learning or study in his spare time.

Jim and Alice work on the same team and contribute to the same projects working toward the same goals and ends. For the sake of argument, we’ll say they work with the same programming language and frameworks and the same tools.

Should Jim and Alice be getting paid the same? Why or why not? If no, who should be getting paid more and why?

My take

Okay this is almost a trick scenario. If you haven’t noticed, the scenarios are near mirror images of each other. In the first Jim is the far more experienced and more passionate engineer, while in the second it is Alice who is more experienced and more passionate.

The question comes down to this: should Jim and Alice be paid the same? And if you say that in the first scenario Alice should be paid the same as Jim while in the second there should be the disparity, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.

But then it’s immaterial whether you think they should be paid the same or not. Few companies would dream of doing so for two reasons. First, it would be categorically unfair to pay a far less experienced, less passionate engineer the same as the greater experienced, more passionate colleague. Second, if it were discovered this was occurring, it wouldn’t last long as the company would risk losing the far more valuable engineer as he or she sought out a company willing to pay more.

Yet in the "equal pay for equal work" crowds, experience and expertise are often overlooked.

Further, the idea of "equal work" is a myth. Two people will not do the same job the same way. That is just reality. Even two people with similar levels of expertise and experience will differ on attitude, energy, and/or perception.

This is why individuals are paid based on the kind of value they can bring. Those who demonstrate themselves to be more valuable – such as by reducing costs and increasing efficiencies – will or should be paid more. And if the more valuable person happens to be a man, then so be it. If it’s a woman, so be that as well.

But if you’re going to advocate "equal pay for equal work", then you must first define "equal work". Until you can do that, anything you attempt to say advocating your position can be easily and readily ignored.

Politics

Endangering Big Bird?

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Mitt Romney has recently taken a bit of heat for saying that funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting should be cut. I happen to agree with that stance. The Federal government should not be in the business of subsidizing speech, as when government subsidies come into play, the speech is not truly free – as in freedom, not price.

But a lot of people seem to think that cutting funding to the CPB means that Sesame Street is in trouble. And nothing could be further from the truth.

For one, look at Planned Parenthood. When their Federal funding was threatened, private donations skyrocketed for a short period of time. If people really want to see something stick around, they’ll fund it. If Federal funding to the CPB is threatened, we could expect private donations to make up a good portion of the difference, possibly even overtake the difference. After all, it is one of the reasons the various PBS stations hold their massive telethons every year, as government subsidies do not pay all the bills.

But let’s say the "worst case" happens and PBS ends up going away as a result. Does this mean there is no home for Sesame Street? Again, hardly.

Sesame Street has been around since 1969 and is a name readily recognizable by… well… anyone. This means that if PBS were to go away, the company behind Sesame Street could probably shop the show around and have the other major broadcasters practically beating each other up competing for it because the show would be an advertising boondoggle to the channel(s) that picked it up. Nickelodeon, Discover, even ABC, CBS, NBC or Fox could pick up the show to keep it on the air channels. Again it would be a ratings and advertising "cash cow" to those networks.

Seriously, folks, if there is enough demand to keep Sesame Street around, even if PBS goes away, the money will flow to keep it around somehow. That is how private sector markets work. Sesame Street doesn’t need the government to keep it going, and the sheer amount of money likely being churned up each year in merchandising alone shows this.

Now the other shows on PBS may not fare so well, but then that is the market’s "natural selection" at work: something you cannot convince private investors to fund likely isn’t worth funding.

Espresso

Follow-up on De’Longhi EC155

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 1 Comment

Recall from an earlier post that I said a good alternative for the De’Longhi EC155 (and similar machines) for getting a non-pressurized basket is to use the basket for the La Pavoni Millennium espresso machine and flatten out the rim. Since that post was made, I’ve made a few purchases.

First is the grinder. I purchased the Breville Smart Grinder, in part because it was available through Crate & Barrel, which has a location in the Kansas City metro. It cost me almost about $15 more than ordering online due to sales taxes alone, but convenience has a price, payday had just hit when I bought it, I was about out of the pre-ground stuff I was using, and I didn’t feel like waiting for the grinder to arrive via UPS or FedEx.

The tamper came from Coffee Complements, and the basket came from Orphan Espresso. Along with this I’ve been weighing out beans as I use them rather than keeping a quantity in the hopper, and for storage I bought an AirScape from Crate & Barrel. So far results have been a lot better than before and I know I’m never going back to the pressurized portafilter. And with the AirScape and measuring out beans as I go, each shot that I’ve pulled has been about like I’ve just opened the bag of beans.

Speaking of, I’ve been using the Super Tuscan Espresso blend from The Roasterie, though I want to give their Gotham blend a try.

One thing I will say is that the coffee through the non-pressurized basket has a much, much more pronounced flavor than in the stock pressurized basket that comes with the EC155. As such my lattes have had a much stronger coffee flavor in them, something I like, but not something my wife enjoys a lot, so I just add more of the vanilla syrup in hers. And it’s also great not having the soupy pucks after each shot, making cleanup easier.

Update (2012-11-10): I’ve also since upgraded the steam wand on my machine to get better results while steaming and frothing milk.

Due process/Marriage/Republican platform/Sex/Supreme Court

Scalia get’s it right… mostly

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Antonin Scalia is a Reagan appointee to the Supreme Court. He’s typically seen as a strict constitutionalist, which is true for the most part. And in recent statements I agree when Scalia says that many questions of Constitution conflicts are easy to answer – that is if you know and understand the Constitution. Here is the statement in question:

The death penalty? Give me a break. It’s easy. Abortion? Absolutely easy. Nobody ever thought the Constitution prevented restrictions on abortion. Homosexual sodomy? Come on. For 200 years, it was criminal in every state.

Scalia elaborates on the death penalty mildly to say that the Drafters of the Constitution and those who wrote the Bill of Rights would not have imagined the death penalty being forbidden by the Eighth Amendment, the one that prohibits cruel and unusual punishments. I’ve elaborated on this elsewhere.

The only part of Scalia’s statement with which I take issue is the last. And the reason I take issue with that statement is its appeal to a former status quo. Thankfully the Court didn’t appeal to "conventional wisdom" when it overturned sodomy laws in the case Lawrence v. Texas, 539 US 558 (2003). In fact it even nullified the ability to claim such by noting, "It was not until the 1970’s that any State singled out same-sex relations for criminal prosecution, and only nine States have done so." The majority decision in the case also does a very good job of destroying any claim that homosexuality (as opposed to "sodomy") has been illegal for a significant time or that such illegality, as the Court in Bowers v. Hardwick initially claimed, has "ancient roots". The Court noted of the current laws:

The laws involved in Bowers and here are, to be sure, statutes that purport to do no more than prohibit a particular sexual act. Their penalties and purposes, though, have more far-reaching consequences, touching upon the most private human conduct, sexual behavior, and in the most private of places, the home.

But then one must ask why he brought up "homosexual sodomy" to begin with. The Supreme Court has settled the question in very well-defined terms. Private consensual sexual acts, whether homosexual or heterosexual, cannot be prosecuted, plain and simple.

Further, sex and marriage are two completely different issues, addressed completely differently in law. Don’t believe me? The sodomy laws of many States extended to heterosexual encounters that include what was typically called "deviant sexual behavior" – i.e. anything other than vaginal sexual intercourse. Who would think that a guy going down on a woman, or vice versa, free of charge (so as to rule out prostitution) could land both of them in jail? And in some States that was also a felony! Imagine a married couple being prosecuted on felony charges for having sex beyond "conventional" boundaries! Just try to wrap your mind around that idea for a moment.

Thankfully after the Court decision in Lawrence many of these laws are inapplicable except in cases where there is not any consent.

Beyond this, while Scalia is observing the Tenth Amendment in noting the former State-level criminal statutes, he is ignoring the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments. The Ninth Amendment gives the People the power to say to the government, "You have gone too far", while the Fourteenth Amendment states *explicitly* that no State may deny liberties to those within its jurisdiction without "due process of law". This means that, unless it can be demonstrated that an individual’s actions have somehow violated the rights of another person, the government should not act. This includes private, consensual sexual acts even of a homosexual nature.

The Equal Protection Clause also applies here. Where the laws provide some kind of protection to a person, that protection cannot be discriminatory. All persons must have equal ability to seek the protection of the law. For example if rape against women is felonious under the law, so must rape against men. If mugging a white guy is a crime, so must also be mugging a black guy. Sounds easy, right?

Now does civil marriage unto itself provide certain protections under the law? Unto itself, no. But the law makes available certain legal protections to those who are married that go into effect the moment the marriage is legally officiated. As there are legal protections applied to civil marriage, it is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause to deny access to those protections to all but only those whom you deem "appropriate". Everyone must have access to those protections.

If you don’t like that, then the only consolation is to remove the protections afforded to married couples from the law. Amending the Constitution of the United States to set a definition of marriage is absurd. If anything needs to be abolished, it isn’t gay marriage, but marriage licensing. Why should a couple need to implicitly get the permission of the government to get married?

Religion

Becoming those you despise

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 0 Comment

Over the last several years I’ve been keeping a loose eye on things regarding atheism online. Unfortunately things on that mark have kind of turned stale, though there are plenty of people trying their best to keep things fresh. Perhaps it is in that mark that the new Atheism+ idea got started. Perhaps not. I’m not entirely sure what was running through the heads of those starting this whole thing, but I don’t really care either.

My worry with regard to the Atheism+ "movement" (using that word loosely here) is already well voiced by YouTube users C0nc0rdance and xxxThePeachxxx, but still incompletely.

Christian conservatism is Christianity combined with politics. It is Christian doctrine overwhelmingly influencing public policy. And I’m all in favor of undoing as much of that as is logical and possible – let’s be clear that we still need laws stipulating punishments for actions that clearly violate someone else’s autonomous rights.

But virtually all of those that started and first promoted Atheism+ can be described as hard-core liberal former Christians – i.e. they’ve traded one deity (religion) for another (the State). And many hard-core liberals want to use the yoke and force of the various governments to not only undo the excessive entanglements that already exist between church and state, but install their own entanglements between atheism and state.

Socialist statism is one of the key attributes of hard-core liberals: using the force and power of the State to effect social change, often by seeking equality of outcomes rather than opportunities. This is entirely the wrong focus. If the goal is greater equality, as prominent atheists like Matt Dillahunty have stated, using the State to accomplish this will only result in failure. And before anyone tries to quote the civil rights movement at me in an attempt to refute that, bear in mind that the civil rights movements were largely effected through Courts, not legislatures, to undo the social shackles legislatures had previously installed. Only after the Courts had largely undone much of the shackling did legislatures act to clean out the rest while installing through amendments to State constitutions and the Constitution of the United States guarantees of additional liberties.

I fear that Atheism+ will become atheist liberalism or, arguably worst, atheist statism. This would be entirely the wrong direction to go. It would only confirm what Christian conservatives have been accusing atheists of doing for years. After all atheists are already called so much by Christians and Christian conservatives merely because we don’t subscribe to any religious ideology, and they make many assumptions about our political views or aspirations, including assuming that atheism means believing everything that is the exact opposite of what Christian conservatives believe. I’ve seen this first hand. And Atheism+ appears to only feed into that, intentionally or not.

Further mixing atheism with politics will only seek to alienate rather than unite, and given that we are still a minority, division and alienation should be avoided. Unfortunately I am too late in my words on this. Many atheists like myself, Shane Killian, and others do not subscribe to hard-core liberalism. And others like Stefan Molyneux are anarchists (or voluntarists, to borrow Molyneux’s assertion). And it seems those on the Atheism+ forum have already declared that libertarianism (and by extension anarchism) is not compatible with their focus, while also trumpeting Marxism and saying the focus needs to be on equality of outcomes rather than opportunities, so they’ve already excluded a lot of people right off the bat.

Some libertarian-minded individuals have attempted to defend libertarianism as seeking similar ends as Atheism+, just through different means, but I feel the fruits of such attempts will be rotted through with the stench of frustration and near insanity and suggest to other atheist libertarians and anarchists to just not even bother trying.

The last thing we need is for atheism to become defined as a political ideology. Yet it seems that is what Atheism+ wants to become: an atheist political ideology. And the table has already been set, to borrow C0nc0rdance’s words from his video.

If Atheism+ is intended to be the "new wave of atheism" called for by Jen McCreight, I think it’s doomed for failure right off the bat. For one there are more atheists than those who actually use the label "atheist", and more using the label "atheist" than those active in the atheist movements, meaning Atheism+ is, by definition, another minority within the totality of all who fit the definition of "atheist" even if they don’t use the label.

And now they’re going to tack specific political ideologies onto the label "atheist" and call it Atheism+? And apparently there seems to be a "you’re with us or against us" mentality among those in Atheism+. Yeah I don’t see this getting too far. Instead what it likely may do is undo some of the societal progress that has been accomplished for secularism over the last couple years.

And the reason for this is simply this: they are becoming those they despise. Instead of Christian conservatives, they will be called atheist liberals. Not just liberals, but atheist liberals. A politico-religious ideology.

I guess the label "atheist" doesn’t have enough negative connotations already. Perhaps I need to stop using that label for myself and go back to using the label "agnostic" (yes, I’m a "weak atheist") to avoid being mixed in with this mess. I don’t see it going anywhere good.

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Note in advance: don’t bother trying to argue with me about Atheism+ as your energy and keystrokes will only be wasted with the first click of the Delete button on your attempts. This is my blog under my domain name hosted on web space that I pay for, so that is not censorship but me exercising editorial discretion over my own digital property and landscape.

Abortion

I am not pro-abortion

Posted on by Kenneth Ballard / 8 Comments

The hardcore pro-lifers give themselves away with just one word: “pro-abortionist”. The word is loaded and poisons from the start the well of any discussion regarding abortion and how to deal with it. In some ways this might be intended, because to the hardcore pro-lifer, there is no discussion. Instead abortion must be immediately and permanently outlawed at the Federal level, by amending the Constitution of the United States if deemed necessary (and some deem it necessary), with no exceptions, period.

And if the woman dies from a complication for which pre-viable delivery is necessary to save her life, then oh well.

And to the hardcore pro-lifers, if you’re not for what I just said, you’re “pro-abortion” and you’ll be labeled either a “pro-abortionist”, “pro-abort” or, to borrow words of my cousin’s husband, a “flat-earther”. Don’t ask me why on the last one as I never asked him to explain it. But talk about a major false dichotomy, eh?

But if we look at the label plainly, who would call themselves “pro-abortion”? Who would say they are in favor of abortion? I think you’ll be hard pressed to find many who do.

The problem with the term is misdirection. People who are, by default, labeled “pro-choice” or “pro-abortion” are, merely, not against the availability of abortion services. Talk to people who are “pro-choice” and you’ll see that they, like the hardcore pro-lifer, do not like abortion either, don’t like that it is exercised as an option. But what they don’t like even more is the idea of the legislative pen striking it away.

To do so would return us to the 1960s and the “back-alley” clinics or, in the case of Chicago, the mobile, clandestine abortion clinics that do everything they can to operate under the radar. Or they’ll turn to the Internet and the multitude of abortion cocktails ready for download, with safety being a crap shoot. This means dead women and dead babies – there is no escape from that reality.

It doesn’t matter the language pro-lifers use to defend their “pro-life” (i.e. using government force to back their agenda) stance. People will do what they can to escape or deter government scrutiny when they feel the government is stomping all over them. And legislation has this pesky problem of being somewhat vague, allowing overzealous and politically-motivated prosecutors and law enforcement officers to twist the wording of the legislation in such a way that allows them to achieve greater political power.

In response we have hardcore pro-lifers who jump down the throats of anyone who doesn’t believe 100% what they believe with regard to abortion. Even if you get someone to believe what you do about abortion itself, where you will always run into problems is getting people on board with the idea of government action or legislation against it. This is especially true in recent years where more people are expressing sentiment with not turning to government to solve problems. Yet that is exactly what hardcore pro-lifers, most of whom are conservative Christian Republicans, want.

So hardcore pro-lifers need to drop the word “pro-abortionist”, because the only thing that will do is turn people off and cause offense. It has the same effect as bringing God into the argument or turning to scripture to support your points. Both will turn off the person you are attempting to persuade, in which case you’ve lost the argument before you’ve made any traction.

You will persuade someone that abortions should not be performed, because it’s already a common point of view. Most people think that way, even most people who are “pro-choice”. Where you will have difficulty is persuading someone that abortion should be outlawed by legislative action. Bringing the government into the picture through legislative action is just one stop shy of bringing God into the picture by quoting scripture. If the latter isn’t effective at turning people away from abortion – I’ve yet to see any credible evidence that it is effective – why would you expect the former to be any more effective? History shows us it won’t be.

Instead, again, drop the word “pro-abortionist” because it’s inaccurate at best, offensive at worst. Even I identify as “pro-choice”, but that is only because I know legislation won’t work. Instead we need to educate people on effective methods of preventing pregnancy, and this includes teaching abstinence as part of a comprehensive program, not an abstinence-only program as history also shows those to not work.

I am pro-life. It is the hardcore pro-lifers who think otherwise simply because I refuse to turn to the legislative pen where I know education to be more effective. Are you also pro-life?