Iceland has passed a law that will make it illegal for any business to profit from the nudity of its employees. This includes stripping and lapdancing. The law will result in every strip club in the country being shut down. The new law is an attempt to close down the sex industry. The politician who first proposed the ban said, "It is not acceptable that women or people in general are a product to be sold." The country has instituted this ban for feminist, rather than religious, reasons.
According to Icelandic police, 100 foreign women travel to country annually to work in strip clubs, though it is unclear whether the women are trafficked. Supporters of the bill say many of the women work at strip clubs because of drug abuse and poverty, rather than free choice. Supporters also argue that some of the clubs are a front for prostitution. Strip club owners are obviously not too happy about the law. One owner said in an interview to a local paper that Iceland's actions in terms of this new law are reminiscent of countries such as Saudi Arabia, where it is not permitted to see any part of a woman's body in public. Huh, that's one way of looking at it...Those two situations seem completely similar...
The article goes on to discuss that Iceland is one of the world's most feminist countries. Iceland has a high number of female politicians; almost half of the parliamentarians are female. Iceland is ranked 4th out of 130 countries on the international gender gap index (behind Norway, Finland, and Sweden. Those Nordic countries know what's up). Iceland also has a female prime minister (who also happens to be the world's first openly lesbian head of state). There also is a strong women's movement in the country. One politician said that one influence for legislation (including this law) is the feminist groups that put pressure on parliamentarians. She said, "These women work 24 hours a day, seven days a week with their campaigns and it eventually filters down to all of society. " (Full Story)
Here's an update on the story from the other day about the insurance industry trying to take advantage of wording in the health care reform law: Kathleen Sebelius, the Health and Human Services Secretary, wrote a letter to the insurance industry's top lobbyist demanding they put an end to questions about the law's intent or wording. Sebelius said, "Health insurance reform is designed to prevent any child from being denied coverage because he or she has a pre-existing condition...Congress and the President have acted. Now is not the time to search for non-existent loopholes that preserve a broken system." She specified, "The term 'pre-existing condition exclusion' applies to both a child's access to a plan and his or her benefits once he or she is in the plan." [My emphasis]. She also informed the industry that regulations will be written to ensure that the industry covers children with pre-existing conditions. She urged the industry to follow the spirit of the law.
The insurance industry's top lobbyist Karen Ignagni, the president of America's Health Insurance Plans, wrote back and said the industry will not try to block Obama's efforts to fix the wording in the new law to dispel uncertainty, and that they will "fully comply" with the regulations. She even said in the letter, "Health plans recognize the significant hardship that a family faces when they are unable to obtain coverage for a child with a pre-existing condition." Do you?! Well, I guess they do recognize the significant hardship because they're the ones that created it! She's talking about this like it's a problem unrelated to the insurance industry, like 'Oh I know, all those sick children without coverage...that's just terrible. I wish something could be done about it...' Something can be done about it, and your industry is the one making the rules. So don't say you "recognize the significant hardship" when a family is unable to obtain coverage for a sick child, because you're the group responsible for it and you're the group that can change it. They say now that they will not exclude sick children from plans (or exclude benefits once children are on a plan), but that's only after they were forced to do it because of a law passed by Congress and the president -- a law in which they tried to look for ridiculous loopholes in order to get out of covering sick children. So if they understand the hardship, why didn't they themselves make a change (and decades ago)? And, yeah, it's good they will be accepting the regulations that clarify the intent of the law and they're dropping the stupid wording argument, but they accepted it because they were backed into a corner. They knew it was a weak argument. And if they tried to make a legal fight about the wording versus the intent of the law (a law that would provide coverage to sick children), and tried to have a word war with the president, they would have one serious PR nightmare on their hands. I think they knew it was not a fight worth fighting. I'm sure they'll figure out some other ways to not cover people and to shortchange their customers. (Full Story)
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