National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra

National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, 585 U.S. ___ (2018), was a case before the Supreme Court of the United States addressing the constitutionality of California's FACT Act, which mandated that crisis pregnancy centers provide certain disclosures about state services. The law required that licensed centers post visible notices that other options for pregnancy, including abortion, are available from state-sponsored clinics. It also mandated that unlicensed centers post notice of their unlicensed status. The centers, typically run by Christian non-profit groups, challenged the act on the basis that it violated their free speech. After prior reviews in lower courts, the case was brought to the Supreme Court, asking "Whether the disclosures required by the California Reproductive FACT Act violate the protections set forth in the free speech clause of the First Amendment, applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment."
The Court ruled on June 26, 2018, in a 5–4 decision that the notices required by the FACT Act violate the First Amendment by targeting speakers rather than speech.
Background.
A crisis pregnancy center (CPC) is a type of nonprofit organization established to counsel pregnant women against having an abortion. CPCs provide peer counseling related to abortion, pregnancy, and childbirth, and they may offer non-medical services such as financial assistance, child-rearing resources, and adoption referrals. CPCs that qualify as medical clinics may provide pregnancy testing, sonograms, and other services. CPCs are typically run by pro-life Christians according to a conservative Christian philosophy, and thus do not recommend abortion as an option for pregnancy.
Medical professionals and abortion-rights advocates allege that CPCs omit information, provide false or misleading information regarding abortion, and may lead women to unsafe medical options. Cities like Baltimore, Austin, and New York passed legislation to require CPCs to disclose their status and that they did not offer abortion services, but organizations representing the CPCs have been successful in courts challenging these laws, principally on the argument that forcing the CPCs to post such language violated their First Amendment rights and constituted compelled speech.
Based on a report prepared by NARAL Pro-Choice America, which alleged that CPCs were providing misleading and inaccurate information, the California State Legislature passed the Reproductive FACT (Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency) Act (AB-775) in October 2015. It required any licensed healthcare facility that provided care services related to pregnancies to post a notice that stated "California has public programs that provide immediate free or low-cost access to comprehensive family planning services (including all FDA-approved methods of contraception), prenatal care, and abortion for eligible women." The law set provisions where this notice was to be posted and established civil fines if facilities did not comply. The Act required unlicensed facilities which offered certain pregnancy-related services to post a notice stating: "This facility is not licensed as a medical facility by the State of California and has no licensed medical provider who provides or directly supervises the provision of all of the services, whose primary purpose is providing pregnancy-related services." Whereas the previous attempts at regulating CPCs in Baltimore and other cities were based on having signage that informed the patient that the CPC did not offer abortion-related services, the FACT Act instead makes the patient aware of state-sponsored services that are available rather than what the CPCs did or did not offer. The law went into effect January 1, 2016.
Procedural history.
CPCs and the Pacific Justice Institute filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of the Reproductive FACT Act. The CPCs asserted that the law's requirements constituted compelled speech in violation of their rights to freedom of speech and free exercise of religion under the First Amendment. Among these was a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California by the National Institute of Family and Life Advocates (NIFLA) who represented over 100 CPCs in California. NIFLA sought a preliminary injunction to prevent the Reproductive FACT Act from coming into force on January 1, 2016, while the lawsuit continued. The Court denied the motion for a preliminary injunction in February 2016. NIFLA appealed from the denial of the preliminary injunction to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in June 2016, which affirmed the judgment of the District Court in a unanimous decision authored by Judge Dorothy W. Nelson, joined by Judges A. Wallace Tashima and John B. Owens.
The Ninth Circuit decision noted that the existence of a circuit split on the issue of the proper level of scrutiny to apply in cases relating to abortion-related disclosures, and agreed with the Fourth Circuit that the Supreme Court's decision in "Planned Parenthood v. Casey" did not resolve this question. The Court held that the notice that the state required to be posted in licensed facilities constituted professional speech, subject to intermediate scrutiny, and that the notice survived intermediate scrutiny because California has "a substantial interest in the health of its citizens, including ensuring that its citizens have access to and adequate information about constitutionally-protected medical services like abortion" and because the notice was "narrowly drawn to achieve California's substantial interests." The Court further held that the required notice for unlicensed facilities would survive any standard of review—even strict scrutiny—holding that "California has a compelling interest in informing pregnant women when they are using the medical services of a facility that has not satisfied licensing standards set by the state. And given the Legislature’s findings regarding the existence of CPCs, which often present misleading information to women about reproductive medical services, California’s interest in presenting accurate information about the licensing status of individual clinics is particularly compelling." The Court also ruled that the petitioners had no likelihood of success on their claim that the law violated their rights under the Free Exercise Clause. Citing "Employment Division v. Smith", the court held that the law was a "neutral law of general applicability, subject to only rational basis review."
The Ninth Circuit denied a motion for rehearing "en banc" in December 2016.
Supreme Court.
NIFLA filed a petition for writ of "certiorari" in March 2017, asking the Supreme Court to hear the case, pointing to the circuit split identified in the Ninth Circuit's decision. NIFLA specifically asked the Court to decide the question of "Whether the Free Speech Clause or the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment prohibits California from compelling licensed pro-life centers to post information on how to obtain a state-funded abortion and from compelling unlicensed pro-life centers to disseminate a disclaimer to clients on site and in any print and digital advertising." The Court agreed to hear the case in November 2017.
NIFLA was represented by Alliance Defending Freedom.
Oral arguments were held on March 20, 2018. Observers of the arguments believed the Court favored the CPCs and agreed with their arguments that the legal requirements of the Reproductive FACT Act not only burdened the free speech of the centers, but also put a burden on the centers to post the noticefor example, CPCs in Los Angeles County would be required to post the notice in 13 different languages. At oral argument, a number of justices said they believed that the FACT Act was written specifically to target CPCs; Justice Elena Kagan questioned whether that the law was "gerrymandered" to impact CPCs rather than all pregnancy service providers. The Court also considered the FACT Act in relationship to the Court's previous ruling of "Planned Parenthood v. Casey", which upheld the constitutionality of a Pennsylvanian law that required doctors performing abortions to provide their clients with health information related to them.
Opinion of the Court.
The Court announced judgment on June 26, 2018 in favor of the challengers. In the 5–4 decision, split between the conservative and liberal justices, the Court ruled that both notices required by the FACT Act violated the free speech principles of the First Amendment, reversing the Ninth Circuit's decision and remanding the case there for review. Justice Clarence Thomas wrote the majority opinion, joined by Justices Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, and Gorsuch. Thomas identified that the FACT Act targeted the speaker of the language demanded by the Act rather than the speech itself, which conflicted with the First Amendment. He wrote that the FACT Act "imposes a government-scripted, speaker-based disclosure requirement that is wholly disconnected from the State’s informational interest", and because it only applied to a specific classification of facilities, it could be seen as compelled speech for those in the CPCs that disagreed with the state's stance on abortion. Thomas' opinion rejected the Ninth Circuit's conclusion that the FACT Act was equivalent to "professional speech", defined through "Zauderer v. Office of Disciplinary Counsel of Supreme Court of Ohio", as "factual, noncontroversial information" that is less protected by the First Amendment, as the FACT Act notice dealt with the controversial topic of abortion. Instead, Thomas argued, the state could use public advertising or even post public notices near the CPCs to achieve the same message without violating the First Amendment. In regards to the notice for unlicensed centers, Thomas found that the state had not proved anything more than a "purely hypothetical" harm that the notices were to remedy, following "Ibanez v. Florida Dept. of Business and Professional Regulation, Bd. of Accountancy", , and even if they had demonstrated such harm, the notices would still run afoul of the First Amendment challenges.
Concurrence and dissent.
Justice Kennedy wrote a concurrence, which was also joined by Roberts, Alito, and Gorsuch, which further asserted that the FACT Act was specifically targeting pro-life centers, describing it as "This law is a paradigmatic example of the serious threat presented when government seeks to impose its own message in the place of individual speech, thought, and expression".
Justice Breyer wrote the dissenting opinion, joined by Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan. Breyer took issue with the majority's take on the First Amendment, using a heightened standard to test the First Amendment applicability as established from "Sorrell v. IMS Health Inc.", . Breyer also criticized the majority's opinion in light of the Court's decision from "Planned Parenthood v. Casey", , in which the Court affirmed the constitutionality of a law requiring physicians to provide women considering abortions with information related to adoption. Breyer wrote "a Constitution that allows States to insist that medical providers tell women about the possibility of adoption should also allow States similarly to insist that medical providers tell women about the possibility of abortion".


Sex-hormonal agent

A sex-hormonal agent, also known as a sex-hormone receptor modulator, is a type of hormonal agent which specifically modulates the effects of sex hormones and of their biological targets, the sex hormone receptors. The sex hormones include androgens such as testosterone, estrogens such as estradiol, and progestogens such as progesterone. Sex-hormonal agents may be either steroidal or nonsteroidal in chemical structure and may serve to either enhance, inhibit, or have mixed effects on the function of the sex hormone systems.
Sex-hormonal agents are used in medicine for a variety of purposes including hormone therapy (e.g., menopausal hormone therapy, androgen replacement therapy, transgender hormone therapy), antihormone therapy (e.g., androgen deprivation therapy, estrogen deprivation therapy), and hormonal contraception, among others.
Types and examples.
Indirect sex-hormonal agents.
Drugs that indirectly influence sex hormone systems, such as antigonadotropins like GnRH analogues and prolactin releasers (e.g., D2 receptor antagonists), progonadotropins like GnRH agonists, and steroidogenesis inhibitors like aromatase inhibitors and androgen synthesis inhibitors, are also sex-hormonal agents.


Simeon Brown

Simeon Peter Brown (born 8 April 1991) is a New Zealand politician and Member of Parliament in the House of Representatives for the National Party.
Political career.
In his youth, Brown chaired the inaugural Manurewa Youth Council.
Brown first entered the political scene in 2013 when he was elected a member of the Auckland Council Manurewa Local Board, on which he also served as deputy-chair.
Brown stated, in an interview on his youth, that he was motivated to go into politics to stand up for the values of and fight for "hard work, personal responsibility and enterprise".
In 2014 he contested the seat of unsuccessfully for the National Party.
He entered national politics at the age of 25, three years later at the 2017 general election, when Brown stood in the electorate of . The Pakuranga electorate has been a safe seat for National since 1987 and since then it had been held by Maurice Williamson. Brown was selected as the National Party's candidate to replace Williamson after he decided not to seek re-election.
Brown entered a submission to parliament in which he opposed the Marriage (Definition of Marriage) Amendment Act 2013 which allows same-sex couples to legally marry.
Member of Parliament.
Brown was elected to Parliament in the Pakuranga electorate in the 2017 New Zealand general election with a majority of 14,886 votes.
In February 2018, a private member's bill introduced by Brown was drawn from the ballot. The Bill would ensure that anyone who supplies illegal synthetic drugs receives a penalty consistent with the penalty prescribed for supplying a Class C Drug. The Bill was strongly supported by family members of synthetics victim Calum Jones.
Brown voted against the Abortion Legislation Act 2020, which effectively seeks to remove abortion from the Crimes Act 1961. "Stuff" political reporter Henry Cooke described the MP as "one of the most socially conservative MPs in [the National Party]".
During the 2020 New Zealand general election, Brown was re-elected in Pakuranga by a strong margin of 10,050 votes, making Pakuranga the safest seat for National in terms of the candidate vote.
In the November 2020 caucus reshuffle, led by National's leader Judith Collins, Brown was admitted to the Shadow Cabinet, ranking 20 on the National Party's list, and is now holding four shadow portfolios in Police, Serious Fraud Office, Youth and Corrections.
Personal life.
Prior to entering Parliament, Brown worked as a commercial banker as a senior associate with the Bank of New Zealand. He studied at the University of Auckland, attaining a conjoint degree in law and commerce in 2015. Brown actively fought for the right of official affiliation at the University of Auckland for his group 'Prolife Auckland' while he was president.
Brown lives in his electorate in Auckland with his wife Rebecca. Together they have two children.


Antonio da Montefeltro

Antonio da Montefeltro (1445–1508) was an illegitimate son of Federico III da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino.
Biography.
He was born at Urbino, an inherited the title of count of Cantiano after the premature death of his brother Buonconte in 1458. In 1464 he abandoned the studies for the military career, following his father against the papal army led by Alessandro Sforza. In 1470 he took part in the battle of Mulazzano and, two years later, he took part in the siege of Volterra, always as lieutenant of Federico III. The two were both at the service of Alfonso V of Aragon in the Kingdom of Naples in 1474.
His wife was Emilia di Carpi, the daughter of count Marco II of Carpi and Sassuolo; she was perhaps portrayed by Raphael in 1504-1505. Antonio da Montefeltro died at Gubbio in 1508, likely of syphilis.


Vince Flynn

Vincent Joseph Flynn (April 6, 1966 – June 19, 2013) was an American author of political thriller novels surrounding the story of the fictional assassin Mitch Rapp. He was a story consultant for the fifth season of the television series "24". He died on June 19, 2013, after three years with prostate cancer.
Biography.
Early life and education.
Flynn was one of seven children born to Terry and Kathleen Flynn, and a graduate of Saint Thomas Academy (1984) and the University of St. Thomas with a B.A in Economics (1989).
Early career.
After graduating, Flynn went to work for Kraft Foods as an account and sales marketing specialist. In 1991, he left Kraft to pursue a career as an aviator with the United States Marine Corps. One week before leaving for Officer Candidate School, he was medically disqualified from the Marine Aviation Program.
In an effort to overcome the difficulties of dyslexia, Flynn forced himself into a daily writing and reading routine. His writing influences included Leon Uris, Tom Clancy, Ernest Hemingway, John Irving, Robert Ludlum, J.R.R. Tolkien, and Gore Vidal.
Writing and media career.
His newfound interest in such novels motivated him to begin work on a novel of his own. While employed as a bartender in the St. Paul area, he completed his first book, "Term Limits", which he then self-published.
"I had just finished reading "The Government Racket: Washington Waste from A to Z", by Martin L. Gross. It is without a doubt the most disheartening and enlightening book about politics that I've ever read. I was out jogging one day wondering what it would take to really change Washington, when my thoughts turned to a friend who had been shot and killed in Washington, D.C., several summers earlier. As I continued running, a story started to unfold."
Pocket Books published the hardcover edition of "Term Limits" in 1998, and the mass market paperback of "Term Limits" in 1999, which spent several weeks on The "New York Times" bestseller list. Subsequent works, including Flynn's 1999 novel, "Transfer of Power", his 2000 novel "The Third Option" and his 2001 novel "Separation of Power", also appeared on the "New York Times" bestseller list, with "Separation of Power" reaching as high as No. 7.
Flynn's fifth novel, "Executive Power", was published in hardcover by Atria Books in May 2003, followed by his sixth novel, "Memorial Day" in 2004, his seventh novel "Consent To Kill" in October 2005, his eighth novel "Act Of Treason" in October 2006, his ninth novel "Protect And Defend" in 2007 and his tenth novel "Extreme Measures" in 2008. With the exception of his first novel "Term Limits", his works centered around counter-terrorism agent "Mitch Rapp". His 2008 release, "Extreme Measures", became the ninth novel in the series.
Flynn wrote six "New York Times" bestsellers for Atria Books, and had a contract for four more. He remembered deciding between following the path that was the most uncomfortable—continuing with what looked to be a promising career as a commercial real estate leasing agent—or taking a big risk and start a new career as a writer: "I look back on it now and I couldn't be happier with my decision, but at the time I remember a lot of people thought I was nuts."
In February 2008, Flynn agreed on film and book projects with CBS Corporation units CBS Films and Simon & Schuster/Atria Books. Lorenzo di Bonaventura was negotiating to produce "Mitch Rapp" films. The first film, "American Assassin", was released on September 15, 2017. Atria Books got worldwide rights to four books by the author. In August 2010, Flynn signed a two-book deal for a new series that he would have co-written with Brian Haig, a retired Army lieutenant colonel. He was a frequent guest on "The Glenn Beck Radio Program" on the Fox News Channel, and on Dan Barreiro's radio program on Twin Cities station KFAN.
Personal life.
Flynn lived with his wife, Lysa, and their three children in the Twin Cities (Minneapolis-St. Paul) area.
Illness and death.
On February 1, 2011, in his fan newsletter, Flynn announced that he was being treated for advanced Stage III prostate cancer. He died of a rare form of aggressive prostate cancer in Saint Paul, aged 47, on June 19, 2013.
Bibliography.
Novels.
Mitch Rapp is a fictional undercover CIA counter-terrorism agent. Rapp's primary focus is thwarting terrorist attacks on the United States, and he is presented as an aggressive operative willing to take measures that are more extreme than might be considered commonly acceptable. His constant frustration with procedures and red tape is a major theme throughout the entire series.
Starting in 2015 with "The Survivor", the "Mitch Rapp" series has been continued by Kyle Mills. The latest book in the series, "Total Power", was released in 2020.
Related Book
In 1997, Flynn wrote "Term Limits" (not part of the "Mitch Rapp" series, but in the same universe). Scott Coleman from the Mitch Rapp series appears in the book, which takes place after the events of Kill Shot.
External links.


Sheik Umar Khan

Sheik Umar Khan (6 March 1975 – 29 July 2014) was the chief Sierra Leonean doctor attempting to curb the country's Ebola outbreak in 2014.
The virologist is credited with treating over a hundred patients before succumbing to the virus himself. He was recognized as a "national hero" by Sierra Leone's Health Ministry. Khan had long worked with Lassa fever, a disease that kills over 5,000 a year in Africa. He had expanded his clinic to accept Ebola patients. Sierra Leone's president, Ernest Bai Koroma, celebrated Khan as a "national hero". He had a habit of hugging the cured Ebola patients that were leaving his ward, to lift their spirits.
Khan made contact with the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital in 2010 when he came to Ghana to do his Residency. He was offered admission into the Ghana College of Physicians and Surgeons to undertake a 3-year residency training programme in internal medicine. As part of the training, he was posted to the Department of Medicine of the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.
Death.
Khan was very meticulous in donning personal protective equipment as he treated patients. Believing the virus unable to be transmitted in an airborne fashion, he worked fearlessly with Ebola virus patients. Despite observing recommended protocols, Khan was infected by the virus and died on 29 July 2014 in a facility run by Medecins Sans Frontieres. He was not offered a dose of the experimental drug ZMapp though one was available. Sierra Leonean president Ernest Bai Koroma had been due to visit his treatment center the following week.


Transgender Resource Center

The Transgender Resource Center (Traditional Chinese: 跨性別資源中心) was started in 2008 by Joanne Leung Wing-yan, a transgender woman from Hong Kong. The Hong Kong-based organization provides information on and to transgender people in Hong Kong and mainland China. It also advocates for legal reforms to protect the transgender community.
When it initially opened, TGR only provided social spaces and counseling services for transgender Hong Kongers. Currently, the organization also disseminates information to members of the transgender community. TGR's founder and chairperson, Leung, has called for legislation that allows transgender individuals to have their gender recognized and for greater social acceptance of transgender people in Hong Kong and mainland China. Finally, the organization advocates for an anti-discrimination ordinance that would protect LGBT people from discrimination.
TGR argues that the Hong Kong government needs a gender recognition ordinance because transgender individuals in Hong Kong may have their gender legally changed if they have undergone sex reassignment surgery. TGR has lobbied for legislation that would allow transgender individuals to change their gender without surgery. Such proposed legislation has faced opposition from Christian groups in Hong Kong.
TGR has written and published a series of transgender manuals called "Gossip Boys and Girls" (in Chinese named as 是非男女). One of the most recently version in English is ""The Book of Transgender in Hong Kong"."
After ten years of being without a permanent location, TGR opened a center in Hung Hom on 31 December 2017.
TGR has also worked with the Equal Opportunities Commission of Hong Kong to draft a report on transgender people's interactions with law enforcement.


List of transgender-rights organizations

Transgender organizations seek to promote understanding and acceptance, both legally and socially, of transgender persons.


Penile sheath

Almost all mammal penises have foreskins or prepuce, although in non-human cases the foreskin is usually a sheath (sometimes called the "preputial sheath", "praeputium" or "penile sheath") into which the whole penis is retracted. In koalas, the foreskin contains naturally occurring bacteria that play an important role in fertilization. In some bat species, the prepuce contains an erectile tissue structure called the "accessory corpus cavernosus".
During musth, a male elephant may urinate with the penis still in the sheath, which causes the urine to spray on the hind legs.
Male dogs have a conspicuous penis sheath.
In stallions, the retractor penis muscle contracts to retract the stallion's penis into the sheath and relaxes to allow the penis to extend from the sheath.
The penis sheath of a male axis deer is elongated and urine-stained. When rubbing trees with their horns, these stags sometimes move the penis back and forth rapidly inside its sheath. Male bison and fallow deer have tufts of fur at the end of their penis sheaths.
In rodents, the length of the prepuce is related to urine marking behavior.


Emory University Hospital

Emory University Hospital is a 733-bed facility in Atlanta, Georgia, specializing in the care of acutely ill adults. Emory University Hospital is staffed exclusively by Emory University School of Medicine faculty who also are members of The Emory Clinic. The hospital is renowned as one of the nation's leaders in cardiology and cardiac surgery, oncology, transplantation, ophthalmology, and the neurosciences.
History.
Emory University Hospital's history dates back over a century. In March 1904, its predecessor, Wesley Memorial Hospital, was chartered with 50 beds. The hospital was housed in a downtown Atlanta mansion that had been spared from destruction by General Sherman's army during the Civil War.
By November 1922, the hospital had grown too large for its quarters and moved to its current DeKalb County site on the Emory University campus. The new 275-bed facility was a gift of Asa G. Candler, philanthropist and founder of The Coca-Cola Company.
In the mid-1930s, its name was changed to Emory University Hospital. The university and the hospital bear the name of Bishop John Emory, who presided at a meeting of the Georgia Methodist Conference in 1834 when delegates decided to establish a Methodist college in Georgia.
The City of Atlanta annexed Emory University effective January 1, 2018. Prior to the annexation, the hospital was in an unincorporated area, statistically in the Druid Hills census-designated place.
General description.
Emory University Hospital is a 587-bed facility specializing in the care of the acutely ill adult. The hospital is located on the Emory University campus in northeast Atlanta.More than 24,000 inpatients and 80,000 outpatients come to Emory University Hospital each year. They receive care from physicians of The Emory Clinic, who also are faculty of the Emory University School of Medicine, and from a highly trained staff of nurses and other clinical professionals.
 The hospital provides a full range of specialized care. News and World Report's "America's Best Hospitals" for several years as one of the nation's top 10 cardiology centers.The latest data show it has 23,710 admissions and performs 9,446 inpatient and 2,843 outpatient surgeries. Its emergency room has 30,476 visits. Located in Atlanta, GA, it is accredited by the Joint Commission, Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF). It is also a teaching hospital.
Rankings.
On the U.S. News's "America's Best Hospitals", 2010–11, Emory University Hospital was ranked in 11 adult specialties. Out of 4,852 facilities analyzed for the 2010-11 Best Hospitals rankings, only 152 were ranked in any of the 16 specialties and this hospital was one of them.
2014 West Africa Ebola Outbreak.
On July 31, 2014, the United States government and the Centers for Disease Control announced that Emory Hospital would treat at least one of the patients of the 2014 West Africa Ebola outbreak in a specialized isolation facility. Brantly was released August 21, 2014 with Dr. Bruce Ribner, director of Emory's Infectious Disease Unit, declaring that Brantly "… has recovered from the Ebola virus disease and he can return to his family, to his community, and to his life without any public health concerns". In his statement, Brantly reported that Writebol had been released two days earlier (on August 19). Brantly and Writebol were the first patients ever to be treated with the experimental drug ZMapp, splitting a dose between both patients; Samaritan's Purse later reported Brantly's condition began to improve within hours of receiving the treatment, although they point out that it is unclear if either the treatment or a blood transfusion, received in Africa from a young Ebola survivor, was responsible for the improvement.
On October 15, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced that Amber Vinson, the second case of Ebola transmission in the U.S., would be transferred to Emory. Vinson has since recovered from the disease and been declared Ebola-free.


Frederick Delius

Frederick Theodore Albert Delius ( 29 January 1862 – 10 June 1934), originally Fritz Delius, was an English composer. Born in Bradford in the north of England to a prosperous mercantile family, he resisted attempts to recruit him to commerce. He was sent to Florida in the United States in 1884 to manage an orange plantation. He soon neglected his managerial duties and in 1886 returned to Europe.
Having been influenced by African-American music during his short stay in Florida, he began composing. After a brief period of formal musical study in Germany beginning in 1886, he embarked on a full-time career as a composer in Paris and then in nearby Grez-sur-Loing, where he and his wife Jelka lived for the rest of their lives, except during the First World War.
Delius's first successes came in Germany, where Hans Haym and other conductors promoted his music from the late 1890s. In Delius's native Britain, his music did not make regular appearances in concert programmes until 1907, after Thomas Beecham took it up. Beecham conducted the full premiere of "A Mass of Life" in London in 1909 (he had premiered Part II in Germany in 1908); he staged the opera "A Village Romeo and Juliet" at Covent Garden in 1910; and he mounted a six-day Delius festival in London in 1929, as well as making gramophone recordings of many of the composer's works. After 1918, Delius began to suffer the effects of syphilis, contracted during his earlier years in Paris. He became paralysed and blind, but completed some late compositions between 1928 and 1932 with the aid of an amanuensis, Eric Fenby.
The lyricism in Delius's early compositions reflected the music he had heard in America and the influences of European composers such as Grieg and Wagner. As his skills matured, he developed a style uniquely his own, characterised by his individual orchestration and his uses of chromatic harmony. Delius's music has been only intermittently popular, and often subject to critical attacks. The Delius Society, formed in 1962 by his more dedicated followers, continues to promote knowledge of the composer's life and works, and sponsors the annual Delius Prize competition for young musicians.
Life.
Early years.
Delius was born in Bradford in Yorkshire. He was baptised as "Fritz Theodor Albert Delius", and used the forename Fritz until he was about 40. He was the second of four sons (there were also ten daughters) born to Julius Delius (1822–1901) and his wife Elise Pauline, "née" Krönig (1838–1929). Delius's parents were born in Bielefeld, Westphalia, and Julius's family had already lived for several generations in German lands near the Rhine but was originally Dutch. Julius's father, Ernst Friedrich Delius, had served under Blücher in the Napoleonic Wars. Julius moved to England to further his career as a wool merchant, and became a naturalised British subject in 1850. He married Elise in 1856.
The Delius household was musical; famous musicians such as Joseph Joachim and Carlo Alfredo Piatti were guests, and played for the family. Despite his German parentage, the young Fritz was drawn to the music of Chopin and Grieg rather than the Austro-German music of Mozart and Beethoven, a preference that endured all his life. The young Delius was first taught the violin by Rudolph Bauerkeller of the Hallé Orchestra, and had more advanced studies under George Haddock of Leeds.
Although Delius achieved enough skill as a violinist to set up as a violin teacher in later years, his chief musical joy was to improvise at the piano, and it was a piano piece, a waltz by Chopin, that gave him his first ecstatic encounter with music. From 1874 to 1878, Delius was educated at Bradford Grammar School, where the singer John Coates was his slightly older contemporary. He then attended the International College at Isleworth (just west of London) between 1878 and 1880. As a pupil he was neither especially quick nor diligent, but the college was conveniently close to the city for Delius to be able to attend concerts and opera.
Julius Delius assumed that his son would play a part in the family wool business, and for the next three years he tried hard to persuade him to do so. Delius's first job was as the firm's representative in Stroud in Gloucestershire, where he did moderately well. After being sent in a similar capacity to Chemnitz, he neglected his duties in favour of trips to the major musical centres of Germany, and musical studies with Hans Sitt. His father sent him to Sweden, where he again put his artistic interests ahead of commerce, coming under the influence of the Norwegian dramatists Henrik Ibsen and Gunnar Heiberg. Ibsen's denunciations of social conventions further alienated Delius from his commercial background. Delius was then sent to represent the firm in France, but he frequently absented himself from business for excursions to the French Riviera. After this, Julius Delius recognised that there was no prospect that his son would succeed in the family business, but he remained opposed to music as a profession, and instead sent him to America to manage an orange plantation.
Florida.
Whether the move to America was Julius's idea or his son's is unknown. A leading Florida property firm had branches in several English cities including Bradford; in an article on Delius's time in Florida, William Randel conjectures that either Julius Delius visited the Bradford office and conceived the notion of sending his wayward son to grow oranges in Florida, or that Fritz himself saw it as a way to escape the hated family wool business and suggested the idea to his father. Delius was in Florida from the spring of 1884 to the autumn of 1885, living on a plantation at Solano Grove on the Saint Johns River, about 35 miles (55 kilometres) south of Jacksonville. He continued to be engrossed in music, and in Jacksonville he met Thomas Ward, who became his teacher in counterpoint and composition. Delius later said that Ward's teaching was the only useful music instruction he ever had.
Delius later liked to represent his house at Solano Grove as "a shanty", but it was a substantial cottage of four rooms, with plenty of space for Delius to entertain guests. Ward sometimes stayed there, as did an old Bradford friend, Charles Douglas, and Delius's brother Ernest. Protected from excessive summer heat by river breezes and a canopy of oak trees, the house was an agreeable place to live in. Delius paid little attention to the business of growing oranges, and continued to pursue his musical interests. Jacksonville had a rich, though to a European, unorthodox musical life. Randel notes that in local hotels, the African-American waiters doubled as singers, with daily vocal concerts for patrons and passers-by, giving Delius his introduction to spirituals. Additionally, ship owners encouraged their deckhands to sing as they worked. "Delius never forgot the singing as he heard it, day or night, carried sweet and clear across the water to his verandah at Solano Grove, whenever a steam-ship passed; it is hard to imagine conditions less conducive to cultivating oranges—or more conducive to composing."
While in Florida, Delius had his first composition published, a polka for piano called "Zum Carnival". In late 1885 he left a caretaker in charge of Solano Grove and moved to Danville, Virginia. Thereafter he pursued a wholly musical career. An advertisement in the local paper announced, "Fritz Delius will begin at once giving instruction in Piano, Violin, Theory and Composition. He will give lessons at the residences of his pupils. Terms reasonable." Delius also offered lessons in French and German. Danville had a thriving musical life, and early works of his were publicly performed there.
Illegitimate son.
During his time in Florida, Delius is said to have fathered a son with a local African-American woman named Chloe, although details of this legend are scarce. Violinist Tasmin Little embarked on a search for descendants of Delius's alleged love-child in the 1990s. Upon Delius's return to Florida some years later to sell the plantation, it was suggested that Chloe, fearing that he had come to take her son away from her, fled with the child and disappeared. Little believes that this tragic occurrence was a significant influence in the tone of his works thereafter.
Leipzig and Paris.
In 1886, Julius Delius finally agreed to allow his son to pursue a musical career, and paid for him to study music formally. Delius left Danville and returned to Europe via New York, where he paused briefly to give a few lessons. Back in Europe he enrolled at the conservatoire in Leipzig, Germany. Leipzig was a major musical centre, where Arthur Nikisch and Gustav Mahler were conductors at the Opera House, and Brahms and Tchaikovsky conducted their works at the Gewandhaus. At the conservatoire, Delius made little progress in his piano studies under Carl Reinecke, but Salomon Jadassohn praised his hard work and grasp of counterpoint; Delius also resumed studies under Hans Sitt. Delius's early biographer, the composer Patrick Hadley, observed that no trace of his academic tuition can be found in Delius's mature music "except in certain of the weaker passages". Much more important to Delius's development was meeting the composer Edvard Grieg in Leipzig. Grieg, like Ward before him, recognised Delius's potential. In the spring of 1888, Sitt conducted Delius's "Florida Suite" for an audience of three: Grieg, Christian Sinding and the composer. Grieg and Sinding were enthusiastic and became warm supporters of Delius. At a dinner party in London in April 1888, Grieg finally convinced Julius Delius that his son's future lay in music.
After leaving Leipzig in 1888, Delius moved to Paris where his uncle, Theodore, took him under his wing and looked after him socially and financially. Over the next eight years, Delius befriended many writers and artists, including August Strindberg, Edvard Munch and Paul Gauguin. He mixed very little with French musicians, although Florent Schmitt arranged the piano scores of Delius's first two operas, "Irmelin" and "The Magic Fountain" (Ravel later did the same for his "verismo" opera "Margot la rouge"). As a result, his music never became widely known in France. Delius's biographer Diana McVeagh says of these years that Delius "was found to be attractive, warm-hearted, spontaneous, and amorous". It is generally believed that during this period he contracted the syphilis that caused the collapse of his health in later years.
Delius's Paris years were musically productive. His symphonic poem "Paa Vidderne" was performed in Christiania in 1891 and in Monte Carlo in 1894; Gunnar Heiberg commissioned Delius to provide incidental music for his play "Folkeraadet" in 1897; and Delius's second opera, "The Magic Fountain", was accepted for staging at Prague, but the project fell through for unknown reasons. Other works of the period were the fantasy overture "Over the Hills and Far Away" (1895–97) and orchestral variations, "Appalachia: Variations on an Old Slave Song" (1896, rewritten in 1904 for voices and orchestra).
First successes.
In 1897, Delius met the German artist Jelka Rosen, who later became his wife. She was a professional painter, a friend of Auguste Rodin, and a regular exhibitor at the Salon des Indépendants. Jelka quickly declared her admiration for the young composer's music, and the couple were drawn closer together by a shared passion for the works of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche and the music of Grieg. Jelka bought a house in Grez-sur-Loing, a village outside Paris on the edge of Fontainebleau. Delius visited her there, and after a brief return visit to Florida, he moved in with her.
In 1903 they married, and, apart from a short period when the area was threatened by the advancing German army during the First World War, Delius lived in Grez for the rest of his life. The marriage was not conventional: Jelka was, at first, the principal earner; there were no children; and Delius was not a faithful husband. Jelka was often distressed by his affairs, but her devotion did not waver.
In the same year, Delius began a fruitful association with German supporters of his music, the conductors Hans Haym, Fritz Cassirer and Alfred Hertz at Elberfeld, and Julius Buths at Düsseldorf. Haym conducted "Over the Hills and Far Away", which he gave under its German title "Über die Berge in die Ferne" on 13 November 1897, believed to be the first time Delius's music was heard in Germany. In 1899 Hertz gave a Delius concert in St. James's Hall in London, which included "Over the Hills and Far Away", a choral piece, "Mitternachtslied", and excerpts from the opera "Koanga". This occasion was an unusual opportunity for an unknown composer at a time when any sort of orchestral concert was a rare event in London. In spite of encouraging reviews, Delius's orchestral music was not heard again in an English concert hall until 1907.
The orchestral work "" was composed in 1899 and dedicated to Haym. He gave the premiere at Elberfeld on 14 December 1901. It provoked some critical comment from the local newspaper, which complained that the composer put his listeners on a bus and shuttled them from one Parisian night-spot to another, "but he does not let us hear the tuneful gypsy melodies in the boulevard cafés, always just cymbals and tambourine and mostly from two cabarets at the same time at that". The work was given under Busoni in Berlin less than a year later.
Most of Delius's premieres of this period were given by Haym and his fellow German conductors. In 1904 Cassirer premiered "Koanga", and in the same year the Piano Concerto was given in Elberfeld, and "Lebenstanz" in Düsseldorf. "Appalachia" (choral orchestral variations on an old slave song, also inspired by Florida) followed there in 1905. "Sea Drift" (a cantata with words taken from a poem by Walt Whitman) was premiered at Essen in 1906, and the opera "A Village Romeo and Juliet" in Berlin in 1907. Delius's reputation in Germany remained high until the First World War; in 1910 his rhapsody "Brigg Fair" was performed by 36 different German orchestras.
Growing reputation.
By 1907, thanks to performances of his works in many German cities, Delius was, as Thomas Beecham said, "floating safely on a wave of prosperity which increased as the year went on". Henry Wood premiered the revised version of Delius's Piano Concerto that year. Also in 1907, Cassirer conducted some concerts in London, at one of which, with Beecham's New Symphony Orchestra, he presented "Appalachia". Beecham, who had until then heard not a note of Delius's music, expressed his "wonderment" and became a lifelong devotee of the composer's works. In January 1908, he conducted the British premiere of "Paris: The Song of a Great City". Later that year, Beecham introduced "Brigg Fair" to London audiences, and Enrique Fernández Arbós presented "Lebenstanz".
In 1909, Beecham conducted the first complete performance of "A Mass of Life", the largest and most ambitious of Delius's concert works, written for four soloists, a double choir, and a large orchestra. Although the work was based on the same Nietzsche work as Richard Strauss's "Also sprach Zarathustra", Delius distanced himself from the Strauss work, which he considered a complete failure. Nor was Strauss an admirer of Delius, as he was of Elgar; he told Delius that he did not wish to conduct "Paris"—"the symphonic development seems to me to be too scant, and it seems moreover to be an imitation of Charpentier".
In the early years of the 20th century, Delius composed some of his most popular works, including "Brigg Fair" (1907), "In a Summer Garden" (1908, revised 1911), "Summer Night on the River" (1911), and "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" (1912), of which McVeagh comments, "These exquisite idylls, for all their composer's German descent and French domicile, spell 'England' for most listeners." In 1910, Beecham put on an opera season at the Royal Opera House in London. Having access to the Beecham family's considerable fortune, he ignored commercial considerations and programmed several works of limited box-office appeal, including "A Village Romeo and Juliet". The reviews were polite, but "The Times", having praised the orchestral aspects of the score, commented, "Mr. Delius seems to have remarkably little sense of dramatic writing for the voice". Other reviewers agreed that the score contained passages of great beauty, but was ineffective as drama.
War and post-war.
During the First World War, Delius and Jelka moved from Grez to avoid the hostilities. They took up temporary residence in the south of England, where Delius continued to compose. In 1915, "The Musical Times" published a profile of him by his admirer, the composer Philip Heseltine (known as "Peter Warlock"), who commented:
[H]e holds no official position in the musical life of the country [i.e. Britain]; he does not teach in any of the academies, he is not even an honorary professor or doctor of music. He never gives concerts or makes propaganda for his music; he never conducts an orchestra, or plays an instrument in public (even Berlioz played the tambourine!)
Heseltine depicted Delius as a composer uncompromisingly focused on his own music. "There can be no superficial view of Delius's music: either one feels it in the very depths of one's being, or not at all. This may be a part of the reason why one so seldom hears a really first-rate performance of Delius's work, save under Mr. Beecham".
One of Delius's major wartime works was his "Requiem", dedicated "to the memory of all young Artists fallen in the war". The work owes nothing to the traditional Christian liturgy, eschewing notions of an afterlife and celebrating instead a pantheistic renewal of Nature. When Albert Coates presented the work in London in 1922, its atheism offended some believers. This attitude persisted long after Delius's death, as the "Requiem" did not receive another performance in the UK until 1965, and by 1980 had still had only seven performances world-wide. In Germany, the regular presentation of Delius's works ceased at the outbreak of the war, and never resumed. Nevertheless, his standing with some continental musicians was unaffected; Beecham records that Bartók and Kodály were admirers of Delius, and the former grew into the habit of sending his compositions to Delius for comment and tried to interest him in both Hungarian and Romanian popular music.
By the end of the war, Delius and Jelka had returned to Grez. He had begun to show symptoms of syphilis that he had probably contracted in the 1880s. He took treatment at clinics across Europe, but by 1922 he was walking with two sticks, and by 1928 he was paralysed and blind. There was no return to the prosperity of pre-war years: Delius's medical treatment was an additional expense, his blindness prevented him from composing, and his royalties were curtailed by the lack of continental performances of his music. Beecham gave discreet financial help, and the composer and musical benefactor H. Balfour Gardiner bought the house at Grez and allowed Delius and Jelka to live there rent-free.
Beecham was temporarily absent from the concert hall and opera house between 1920 and 1923, but Coates gave the first performance of "A Song of the High Hills" in 1920, and Henry Wood and Hamilton Harty programmed Delius's music with the Queen's Hall and Hallé Orchestras. Wood gave the British première of the Double Concerto for violin and cello in 1920, and of "A Song Before Sunrise" and the "Dance Rhapsody No. 2" in 1923. Delius had a financial and artistic success with his incidental music for James Elroy Flecker's play "Hassan" (1923), with 281 performances at His Majesty's Theatre. With Beecham's return the composer became, in Hadley's words, "what his most fervent admirers had never envisaged—a genuine popular success". Hadley cites, in particular, the six-day Delius festival at the Queen's Hall in 1929 under Beecham's general direction, in the presence of the composer in his bath-chair. "[T]he cream of his orchestral output with and without soli and chorus was included", and the hall was filled. Beecham was assisted in the organisation of the festival by Philip Heseltine, who wrote the detailed programme notes for three of the six concerts. The festival included chamber music and songs, an excerpt from "A Village Romeo and Juliet", the Piano and Violin Concertos, and premières of "Cynara" and "A Late Lark", concluding with "A Mass of Life".
The "Manchester Guardian" music critic, Neville Cardus, met Delius during the festival. He describes the wreck of the composer's physique, yet "there was nothing pitiable about him ... his face was strong and disdainful, every line graven on it by intrepid living". Delius, Cardus says, spoke with a noticeable Yorkshire accent as he dismissed most English music as paper music that should never be heard, written by people "afraid of their feelin's".
Last years.
A young English admirer, Eric Fenby, learning that Delius was trying to compose by dictating to Jelka, volunteered his services as an unpaid amanuensis. For five years, from 1928, he worked with Delius, taking down his new compositions from dictation, and helping him revise earlier works. Together they produced "Cynara" (a setting of words by Ernest Dowson), "A Late Lark" (a setting of W. E. Henley), "A Song of Summer", a third violin sonata, the "Irmelin" prelude, and "Idyll" (1932), which reused music from Delius's short opera "Margot la rouge", composed thirty years earlier. McVeagh rates their greatest joint production as "The Songs of Farewell", settings of Whitman poems for chorus and orchestra, which were dedicated to Jelka. Other works produced in this period include a "Caprice and Elegy" for cello and orchestra written for the distinguished British cellist Beatrice Harrison, and a short orchestral piece, "Fantastic Dance", which Delius dedicated to Fenby. The violin sonata incorporates the first, incomprehensible, melody that Delius had attempted to dictate to Fenby before their "modus operandi" had been worked out. Fenby's initial failure to pick up the tune led Delius to the view that "[the] boy is no good ... he cannot even take down a simple melody". Fenby later wrote a book about his experiences of working with Delius. Among other details, Fenby reveals Delius's love of cricket. The pair followed the 1930 Test series between England and Australia with great interest, and regaled a bemused Jelka with accounts of their boyhood exploits in the game.
In 1933, the year before both composers died, Elgar, who had flown to Paris to conduct a performance of his Violin Concerto, visited Delius at Grez. Delius was not on the whole an admirer of Elgar's music, but the two men took to each other, and there followed a warm correspondence until Elgar's death in February 1934. Elgar described Delius as "a poet and a visionary".
Delius died at Grez on 10 June 1934, aged 72. He had wished to be buried in his own garden, but the French authorities forbade it. His alternative wish, despite his atheism, was to be buried "in some country churchyard in the south of England, where people could place wild flowers". At this time Jelka was too ill to make the journey across the Channel, and Delius was temporarily buried in the local cemetery at Grez.
By May 1935, Jelka felt she had enough strength to undertake the crossing to attend a reburial in England. She chose St Peter's Church, Limpsfield, Surrey as the site for the grave. She sailed to England for the service, but became ill "en route", and on arrival was taken to hospital in Dover and then Kensington in London, missing the reburial on 26 May. The ceremony took place at midnight; the headline in the "Sunday Dispatch" was "Sixty People Under Flickering Lamps In A Surrey Churchyard". The vicar offered a prayer: "May the souls of the departed through the mercy of God rest in peace." Jelka died two days later, on 28 May. She was buried in the same grave as Delius.
Music.
Influences.
After the 1929 London festival "The Times" music critic wrote that Delius "belongs to no school, follows no tradition and is like no other composer in the form, content or style of his music". This "extremely individual and personal idiom" was, however, the product of a long musical apprenticeship, during which the composer absorbed many influences. The earliest significant experiences in his artistic development came, Delius later asserted, from the sounds of the plantation songs carried down the river to him at Solano Grove. It was this singing, he told Fenby, that first gave him the urge to express himself in music; thus, writes Fenby, many of Delius's early works are "redolent of Negro hymnology and folk-song", a sound "not heard before in the orchestra, and seldom since". Delius's familiarity with "black" music possibly predates his American adventures; during the 1870s a popular singing group, the Fisk Jubilee Singers from Nashville, Tennessee, toured Britain and Europe, giving several well-received concerts in Bradford. When Delius wrote to Elgar in 1933 of the "beautiful four-part harmonies" of the black plantation workers, he may have been unconsciously alluding to the spirituals sung by the Fisk group.
At Leipzig, Delius became a fervent disciple of Wagner, whose technique of continuous music he sought to master. An ability to construct long musical paragraphs is, according to the Delius scholar Christopher Palmer, Delius's lasting debt to Wagner, from whom he also acquired a knowledge of chromatic harmonic technique, "an endlessly proliferating sensuousness of sound". Grieg, however, was perhaps the composer who influenced him more than any other. The Norwegian composer, like Delius, found his primary inspiration in nature and in folk-melodies, and was the stimulus for the Norwegian flavour that characterises much of Delius's early music. The music writer Anthony Payne observes that Grieg's "airy texture and non-developing use of chromaticism showed [Delius] how to lighten the Wagnerian load". Early in his career Delius drew inspiration from Chopin, later from his own contemporaries Ravel and Richard Strauss, and from the much younger Percy Grainger, who first brought the tune of "Brigg Fair" to Delius's notice.
According to Palmer, it is arguable that Delius gained his sense of direction as a composer from his French contemporary Claude Debussy. Palmer identifies aesthetic similarities between the two, and points to several parallel characteristics and enthusiasms. Both were inspired early in their careers by Grieg, both admired Chopin; they are also linked in their musical depictions of the sea, and in their uses of the wordless voice. The opening of "Brigg Fair" is described by Palmer as "perhaps the most Debussian moment in Delius". Debussy, in a review of Delius's "Two Danish Songs" for soprano and orchestra given in a concert on 16 March 1901, wrote: "They are very sweet, very pale—music to soothe convalescents in well-to-do neighbourhoods". Delius admired the French composer's orchestration, but thought his works lacking in melody—the latter a comment frequently directed against Delius's own music. Fenby, however, draws attention to Delius's "flights of melodic poetic-prose", while conceding that the composer was contemptuous of public taste, of "giving the public what they wanted" in the form of pretty tunes.
Stylistic development.
From the conventional forms of his early music, over the course of his creative career Delius developed a style easily recognisable and "unlike the work of any other", according to Payne. As he gradually found his voice, Delius replaced the methods developed during his creative infancy with a more mature style in which Payne discerns "an increasing richness of chord structure, bearing with it its own subtle means of contrast and development". Hubert Foss, the Oxford University Press's musical editor during the 1920s and 1930s, writes that rather than creating his music from the known possibilities of instruments, Delius "thought the sounds first" and then sought the means for producing these particular sounds. Delius's full stylistic maturity dates from around 1907, when he began to write the series of works on which his main reputation rests. In the more mature works Foss observes Delius's increasing rejection of conventional forms such as sonata or concerto; Delius's music, he comments, is "certainly not architectural; nearer to painting, especially to the "pointilliste" style of design". The painting analogy is echoed by Cardus.
Towards recognition.
Delius's first orchestral compositions were, in Christopher Palmer's words, the work of "an insipid if charming water-colourist". The "Florida Suite" (1887, revised 1889) is "an expertly crafted synthesis of Grieg and Negroid Americana", while Delius's first opera "Irmelin" (1890–92) lacks any identifiably Delian passages. Its harmony and modulation are conventional, and the work bears the clear fingerprints of Wagner and Grieg. Payne asserts that none of the works prior to 1895 are of lasting interest. The first noticeable stylistic advance is evident in "Koanga" (1895–97), with richer chords and faster harmonic rhythms; here we find Delius "feeling his way towards the vein that he was soon to tap so surely". In "Paris" (1899), the orchestration owes a debt to Richard Strauss; its passages of quiet beauty, says Payne, nevertheless lack the deep personal involvement of the later works. "Paris", the final work of Delius's apprentice years, is described by Foss as "one of the most complete, if not the greatest, of Delius's musical paintings".
In each of the major works written in the years after "Paris", Delius combined orchestral and vocal forces. The first of these works was "A Village Romeo and Juliet", a music drama which departs from the normal operatic structure of acts and scenes and tells its story of tragic love in a series of tableaux. Musically it shows a considerable advance in style from the early operas of the apprentice years. The entr'acte known as "The Walk to the Paradise Garden" is described by Heseltine as showing "all the tragic beauty of mortality ... concentrated and poured forth in music of overwhelming, almost intolerable poignancy". In this work Delius begins to achieve the texture of sound that characterised all his later compositions. Delius's music is often assumed to lack melody and form. Cardus argues that melody, while not a primary factor, is there abundantly, "floating and weaving itself into the texture of shifting harmony" – a characteristic which Cardus believes is shared only by Debussy.
Delius's next work, "Appalachia", introduces a further feature that recurred in later pieces—the use of the voice instrumentally in wordless singing, in this case depicting the distant plantation songs that had inspired Delius at Solano Grove. Although Payne argues that "Appalachia" shows only a limited advance in technique, Fenby identifies one orchestral passage as the first expression of Delius's idea of "the transitoriness of all mortal things mirrored in nature". Hereafter, whole works rather than brief passages would be informed by this idea. The transitional phase of the composer's career concludes with three further vocal pieces: "Sea Drift" (1903), "A Mass of Life" (1904–05), and "Songs of Sunset" (1906–07). Payne salutes each of these as masterpieces, in which the Delian style struggles to emerge in its full ripeness. Fenby describes "A Mass of Life" as standing outside the general progression of Delius's work, "a vast parenthesis", unlike anything else he wrote, but nevertheless an essential ingredient in his development.
Full flowering.
"Brigg Fair" (1907) announced the composer's full stylistic maturity, the first of the pieces for small orchestra that confirm Delius's status as a musical poet, with the influences of Wagner and Grieg almost entirely absent. The work was followed in the next few years by "In a Summer Garden" (1908), "Life's Dance" (1911), "Summer Night on the River" (1911) and "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring" (1912). The critic R.W.S. Mendl described this sequence as "exquisite nature studies", with a unity and shape lacking in the earlier formal tone poems. These works became part of the standard English concert repertory, and helped to establish the character of Delius's music in the English concert-goer's mind, although according to Ernest Newman, the concentration on these works to the neglect of his wider output may have done Delius as much harm as good. The typical mature Delian orchestral sound is apparent in these works, through the division of the strings into ten or more sections, punctuated by woodwind comments and decorations. In the "North Country Sketches" of 1913–14, Delius divides the strings into 12 parts, and harps, horns, clarinets and bassoons evoke a lifeless winter scene. In Payne's view, the "Sketches" are the high water mark of Delius's compositional skill, although Fenby awards the accolade to the later "Eventyr (Once Upon a Time)" (1917).
During this period Delius did not confine himself to purely orchestral works; he produced his final opera, "Fennimore and Gerda" (1908–10), like "A Village Romeo and Juliet" written in tableau form, but in his mature style. His choral works of the period, notably "An Arabesque" (1911) and "A Song of the High Hills" (1911) are among the most radical of Delius's writings in their juxtapositions of unrelated chords. The latter work, entirely wordless, contains some of the most difficult choral music in existence, according to Heseltine. After 1915, Delius turned his attention to traditional sonata, chamber and concerto forms, which he had largely left alone since his apprentice days. Of these pieces Payne highlights two: the Violin Concerto (1916), as an example of how, writing in unfamiliar genres, Delius remained stylistically true to himself; and the Cello Sonata of 1917, which, lacking the familiarity of an orchestral palate, becomes a melodic triumph. Cardus's verdict, however, is that Delius's chamber and concerto works are largely failures. After 1917, according to Payne, there was a general deterioration in the quantity and quality of Delius's output as illness took hold, although Payne exempts the incidental music to "Hassan" (1920–23) from condemnation, believing it to contain some of Delius's best work.
Final phase.
The four-year association with Fenby from 1929 produced two major works, and several smaller pieces often drawn from unpublished music from Delius's early career. The first of the major works was the orchestral "A Song of Summer", based on sketches that Delius had previously collected under the title of "A Poem of Life and Love". In dictating the new beginning of this work, Delius asked Fenby to "imagine that we are sitting on the cliffs in the heather, looking out over the sea". This does not, says Fenby, indicate that the dictation process was calm and leisurely; the mood was usually frenzied and nerve-wracking. The other major work, a setting of Walt Whitman poems with the title "Songs of Farewell", was an even more alarming prospect to Fenby: "the complexity of thinking in so many strands, often all at once; the problems of orchestral and vocal balance; the wider area of possible misunderstandings ..." combined to leave Delius and his helper exhausted after each session of work—yet both these works were ready for performance in 1932. Of the music in this final choral work, Beecham wrote of its "hard, masculine vigour, reminiscent in mood and fibre of some of the great choral passages in "A Mass of Life"". Payne describes the work as "bracing and exultant, with in places an almost Holstian clarity".
Reception.
Recognition came late to Delius; before 1899, when he was already 37, his works were largely unpublished and unknown to the public. When the symphonic poem "Paa Vidderne" was performed at Monte Carlo on 25 February 1894 in a programme of works from British composers, "The Musical Times" listed the composers as "... Balfe, Mackenzie, Oakeley, Sullivan ... and one Delius, whoever he may be". The work was well received in Monte Carlo, and brought the composer a congratulatory letter from Princess Alice of Monaco, but this did not lead to demands for further performances of this or other Delius works. Some of his individual songs (he wrote more than 60) were occasionally included in vocal recitals; referring to "the strange songs of Fritz Delius", "The Times" critic expressed regret "that the powers the composer undoubtedly possesses should not be turned to better account or undergo proper development at the hands of some musician competent to train them".
Of the May 1899 concert at St. James's Hall, London, "The Musical Times" reviewer remarked on the rawness of some of the music, but praised the "boldness of conception and virile strength that command and hold attention". Beecham, however, records that despite this "fair show of acclaim", for all the impetus it gave to future performances of Delius's work the event might never have happened; none of the music was heard again in England for many years. Delius was much better received in Germany, where a series of successful performances of his works led to what Beecham describes as a Delius vogue there, "second only to that of Richard Strauss".
In England, a performance of the Piano Concerto on 22 October 1907 at the Queen's Hall was praised for the brilliance of the soloist, Theodor Szántó, and for the power of the music itself. From that point onwards the music of Delius became increasingly familiar to both British and European audiences, as performances of his works proliferated. Beecham's presentation of "A Mass of Life" at the Queen's Hall in June 1909 did not inspire Hans Haym, who had come from Elberfeld for the concert, though Beecham says that many professional and amateur musicians thought it "the most impressive and original achievement of its genre written in the last fifty years" Some reviewers continued to doubt the popular appeal of Delius's music, while others were more specifically hostile.
From 1910, Delius's works began to be heard in America: "Brigg Fair" and "In a Summer Garden" were performed in 1910–11 by the New York Philharmonic Orchestra under Walter Damrosch. In November 1915 Grainger gave the first American performance of the Piano Concerto, again with the New York Philharmonic. The "New York Times" critic described the work as uneven; richly harmonious, but combining colour and beauty with effects "of an almost crass unskillfulness and ugliness".
For the rest of his lifetime Delius's more popular pieces were performed in England and abroad, often under the sponsorship of Beecham, who was primarily responsible for the Delius festival in October–November 1929. In a retrospective comment on the festival "The Times" critic wrote of full houses and an apparent enthusiasm for "music which hitherto has enjoyed no exceptional vogue", but wondered whether this new acceptance was based on a solid foundation. After Delius's death Beecham continued to promote his works; a second festival was held in 1946, and a third (after Beecham's death) at Bradford in 1962, to celebrate the centenary of Delius's birth. These occasions were in the face of a general indifference to the music; writing in the centenary year, the musicologist Deryck Cooke opined that at that time, "to declare oneself a confirmed Delian is hardly less self-defamatory than to admit to being an addict of cocaine and marihuana".
Beecham had died in 1961, and Fenby writes that it "seemed to many then that nothing could save Delius's music from extinction", such was the conductor's unique mastery over the music. However, other conductors have continued to advocate Delius, and since the centenary year, the Delius Society has pursued the aim of "develop[ing] a greater knowledge of the life and works of Delius". The music has never become fashionable, a fact often acknowledged by promoters and critics. To suggestions that Delius's music is an "acquired taste", Fenby answers: "The music of Delius is not an acquired taste. One either likes it the moment one first hears it, or the sound of it is once and for ever distasteful to one. It is an art which will never enjoy an appeal to the many, but one which will always be loved, and dearly loved, by the few." Writing in 2004 on the 70th anniversary of Delius's death, the "Guardian" journalist Martin Kettle recalls Cardus arguing in 1934 that Delius as a composer was unique, both in his technique and in his emotionalism. Although he eschewed classical formalism, it was wrong, Cardus believed, to regard Delius merely as "a tone-painter, an impressionist or a maker of programme music". His music's abiding feature is, Cardus wrote, that it "recollects emotion in tranquillity ... Delius is always reminding us that beauty is born by contemplation after the event".
Memorials and legacy.
Just before his death, Delius prepared a codicil to his will whereby the royalties on future performances of his music would be used to support an annual concert of works by young composers. Delius died before this provision could be legally effected; Fenby says that Beecham then persuaded Jelka in her own will to abandon the concerts idea and apply the royalties towards the editing and recording of Delius's main works. After Jelka's death in 1935 the Delius Trust was established, to supervise this task. As stipulated in Jelka's will, the Trust operated largely under Beecham's direction. After Beecham's death in 1961 advisers were appointed to assist the trustees, and in 1979 the administration of the Trust was taken over by the Musicians' Benevolent Fund. Over the years the Trust's objectives have been extended so that it can promote the music of other composers who were Delius's contemporaries. The Trust is a co-sponsor of the Royal Philharmonic Society's Composition Prize for young composers.
Herbert Stothart made arrangements of Delius's music, particularly "Appalachia", for the 1946 film "The Yearling".
In 1962, enthusiasts for Delius's music who had gone to Bradford for the centenary festival formed the Delius Society; Fenby became its first president. With around 400 members, the Society is independent from the Trust, but works closely with it. Its general objectives are the furtherance of knowledge of Delius's life and works, and the encouragement of performances and recordings. In 2004, as a stimulus for young musicians to study and perform Delius's music, the Society established an annual Delius Prize competition, with a prize of £1,000 to the winner. In June 1984, at the Grand Theatre, Leeds, the Delius Trust sponsored a commemorative production of "A Village Romeo and Juliet" by Opera North, to mark the 50th anniversary of Delius's death.
Public interest in Delius's life was stimulated in the UK in 1968, with the showing of the Ken Russell film "Song of Summer" on BBC Television. The film depicted the years of the Delius–Fenby collaboration; Fenby co-scripted with Russell. Max Adrian played Delius, with Christopher Gable as Fenby and Maureen Pryor as Jelka.
In America, a small memorial to Delius stands in Solano Grove. The Delius Association of Florida has for many years organised an annual festival at Jacksonville, to mark the composer's birthday. At Jacksonville University, the Music Faculty awards an annual Delius Composition Prize. In February 2012 Delius was one of ten prominent Britons honoured by the Royal Mail in the "Britons of Distinction" stamps set.
Beecham stresses Delius's role as an innovator: "The best of Delius is undoubtedly to be found in those works where he disregarded classical traditions and created his own forms". Fenby echoes this: "the people who really count are those who discover new ways of making our lives more beautiful. Frederick Delius was such a man". Palmer writes that Delius's true legacy is the ability of his music to inspire the creative urge in its listeners and to enhance their awareness of the wonders of life. Palmer concludes by invoking George Eliot's poem "The Choir Invisible": "Frederick Delius ... belongs to the company of those true artists for whose life and work the world is a better place to live in, and of whom surely is composed, in a literal sense, 'the choir invisible/Whose music is the gladness of the world'".
Recordings.
The first recordings of Delius's works, in 1927, were conducted by Beecham for the Columbia label: the "Walk to the Paradise Garden" interlude from "A Village Romeo and Juliet", and "On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring", performed by the orchestra of the Royal Philharmonic Society. These began a long series of Delius recordings under Beecham that continued for the rest of the conductor's life. He was not alone, however; Geoffrey Toye in 1929–30 recorded "Brigg Fair", "In a Summer Garden", "Summer Night on the River" and the "Walk to the Paradise Garden". Fenby recounts that on his first day in Grez, Jelka played Beecham's "First Cuckoo" recording. In May 1934, when Delius was close to death, Fenby played him Toye's "In a Summer Garden", the last music, Fenby says, that Delius ever heard. By the end of the 1930s Beecham had issued versions for Columbia of most of the main orchestral and choral works, together with several songs in which he accompanied the soprano Dora Labbette on the piano. By 1936 Columbia and HMV had issued recordings of Violin Sonatas 1 and 2, the "Elegy and Caprice", and of some of the shorter works.
Full recordings of the operas were not available until after the Second World War. Once again Beecham, now with the HMV label, led the way, with "A Village Romeo and Juliet" in 1948, performed by the new Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and Chorus. Later versions of this work include those of Meredith Davies for EMI in 1971, Charles Mackerras for Argo in 1989, and a German-language version conducted by Klauspeter Seibel in 1995. Beecham's former protégé Norman Del Mar recorded a complete "Irmelin" for BBC Digital in 1985. In 1997 EMI reissued Meredith Davies's 1976 recording of "Fennimore and Gerda", which Richard Hickox conducted in German the same year for Chandos. Recordings of all the major works, and of many of the individual songs, have been issued at regular intervals since the Second World War. Many of these recordings have been issued in conjunction with the Delius Society, which has prepared various discographies of Delius's recorded music.


Ignacio Carrasco de Paula

Ignacio Carrasco de Paula (born 25 October 1937) is a Spanish prelate of the Catholic Church. He has been a bishop since 2010. He was the president of the Pontifical Academy for Life from 2010 to 2016.
Carrasco de Paula was born in Barcelona, Spain. He was ordained a priest for the Personal Prelature of Opus Dei on 8 August 1966 at the age of 28. From 1984 he was professor of moral theology at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross and from 1984 to 1994 he was the rector of the university. He was also director of the Bioethics Institute of the Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Rome and is a member of the ethics committee of the experimentation clinic at the Gemelli Policlinic in Rome.
He began working a consultor for the Academy for Life when it was established by Pope John Paul II in 1994. He served as its chancellor from 3 January 2005 until his appointment as president on 30 June 2010. He said his immediate focus would be on two subjects–post abortion syndrome and umbilical cord banks–and he criticised Spain's recently enacted legislation legalizing abortion.
On 15 September 2010, Pope Benedict XVI named him Titular Bishop of Thapsus. He received his episcopal ordination from Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone on 9 October.
In October 2010 Bishop Carrasco de Paula criticised a decision to award the Nobel Prize for Medicine to Robert Edwards for his work on in vitro fertilization. Carrasco de Paula said: "I find the choice of Robert Edwards completely out of order. Without Edwards, there would not be a market on which millions of ovocytes are sold ... and there would not be a large number of freezers filled with embryos in the world. In the best of cases they are transferred into a uterus, but most probably they will end up abandoned or dead, which is a problem for which the new Nobel Prize winner is responsible."
In August 2011, Carrasco de Paula said, "The reaction to the news of becoming a mother should return to being what it has always been, a reaction of joy" that leads us to say "congratulations". He added that the response to a mother should not be "'I'm so sorry,' like we say to people who get sick." He added that the focus in 2011 has been on three areas: post-abortion trauma, umbilical cord banks and treatments for infertility. Regarding post-abortion trauma, he said it is necessary that the condition be "defined as well as whether or not there is a cure".
In 2012, Professor Josef Seifert, a member of the Academy sharply criticised the leadership of the Academy for its sponsoring a February 2012 conference on infertility and stem cell research, which the Academy had not organized itself, which included speakers who appeared to endorse techniques and methods condemned by the Church. Carrasco de Paula first responded in kind in April and then on 8 May apologized to the members of the academy. He wrote that when he criticised "some pro-life activists" he had employed "unfortunate phrasing which, if misunderstood, could have offended the sensibilities of some persons". He added that he had not meant "to show any disrespect, and certainly not to those with whom we have been collaborating closely and gratefully for years in favour of human life and of its defense."
Pope Francis named Archbishop Vincenzo Paglia to succeed Carrasco de Paula as president of the Academy on 17 August 2016.


Jennifer Childs-Roshak

Jennifer Childs-Roshak is an American physician, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, president of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts and a board member of the Boston Public Health Commission She is the first person with a medical degree to become the chief executive of any Planned Parenthood.
Life and education.
Childs-Roshak grew up in New Hampshire. She attended Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and after graduating with a degree in English, moved to New York City to work as an editor for the United Nations Population Fund. While in New York, she began volunteering at a Planned Parenthood facility. She attended medical school at Temple University in Philadelphia. She also has an MBA from the Boston University School of Management.
Childs-Roshak is married to Phillip Roshak. They have two children. She gave birth to her first child while in medical school, and her second while completing her residency at Maine Medical Center Family Practice Center.
Career.
In 1993, Childs-Roshak became a primary care physician with a specialty in family medicine. She worked as a faculty physician at Maine Medical Center Family Practice Center, the same center where she completed her medical school residency. She then became the vice president of family services at the Family Health Center of Worcester. She then moved to become the medical director of quality at the Milford Regional Medical Center. In 2012 she joined Harvard Vanguard's internal medicine department as a physician. She later became the medical director of their facilities in Kenmore, Copley, and Post Office Square, under Atrius Health.
On November 23, 2015, Childs-Roshak became the president and chief executive officer of Planned Parenthood League of Massachusetts, and the president of the Planned Parenthood Advocacy Fund of Massachusetts. She is the first person with a medical degree to lead any Planned Parenthood in the United States, having filled the vacancy left by Marty Walz, who resigned from the position in January 2015.


Marty Klein

Marty Ralph Klein (born 1950) is an American sex therapist, author, educator and public policy analyst. Klein has spent his career supporting the healthy sexual expression of men, women and couples in a wide range of ways. He is critical of censorship, the concepts of sex addiction and porn addiction, as well as the anti-pornography movement. He believes that public policy relating to sexuality should be driven by scientific data rather than emotion, "tradition" or popular but untrue myths. He has been a participant in various state, federal and international court cases dealing with the First Amendment, obscenity, censorship and "harmful to minors" laws.
Early life.
Klein grew up in Brooklyn, New York. While still in elementary school he began to play the recorder and to collect stamps, interests he has continued throughout his life. Collecting stamps led to a lifelong interest in geography and history. He later wrote on these topics frequently when he began to lecture and travel internationally.
After graduating from Stuyvesant High School in 1967 he attended Stony Brook University. There he developed a passion for sociology and went on to attend PhD programs in sociology at Indiana University and the University of California.
Career.
Klein was trained in the doctoral programs of two different branches of sociology: the first was survey research, the use of statistical analysis to gather data about human behavior in order to understand, correlate and predict it; the second was ethnomethodology, which is the study of how people create meaning as a prelude to creating orderly social interactions and predictable social institutions.
While at the University of California, Klein worked at the local weekly newspaper the "Santa Barbara News & Review", his first job was a writer. In 1976 the "Los Angeles Times" published his op-ed piece on contraceptive advertising; together these two outlets began his career as a professional writer.
First as a volunteer and then as a staff member, Klein worked for the Santa Barbara branch of Planned Parenthood (1976-1980). While there he became intrigued with the recurring experience of women returning for pregnancy tests multiple times despite being prescribed or given various types of contraception. These women's explanations surprised him: they didn't want to use birth control because they were afraid their partner would think they were a slut, or that they had actually planned to have sex with a stranger they'd just met at a bar.
Planned Parenthood then asked him to run a group for the male partners of women coming to the birth control clinic. He also received a grant from the state Office of Family Planning relating to male sexuality. His interest already piqued by his experiences at the clinic, he began his career in human sexuality.
Sexuality.
Views on sexuality in the media.
Klein has been outspoken about the way sexuality is discussed in media outlets. For example, a 2005 "New York Times" article on the phenomenon of self-help books about sexual positions, sex fantasies and increasingly edgy materials stated that the genre is big business, aimed at women and promoting the idea that "It is a woman's role to ensure that the couple's sex life remains satisfying." Klein disagrees that the promises that these books make about improving sex with oral, anal and fetishistic techniques and information are not what most couples really need to make them happy. "A book called 'How to Get Your Wife to Hug You a Little Bit More' or 'How to Get Your Husband to Slow Down and Caress Your Hair and Love Doing It,' now those are books that would change people's lives," says Klein. Communication is the key to satisfying relationships; things like new positions or removing pornography from a home without your partner's consent is generally not helpful. Klein told the "Commonwealth Club" that what most adults want out of sex is a combination of "pleasure and closeness," and he encourages people to pay more attention to these, rather than to performance anxiety or how they look.
Klein has criticized the mass media for talking about sexuality in what he claims is an exploitative manner. He calls this the "Oprah-ization" factor, where talk shows like "Oprah" and "Dr. Phil" will, for example, put teen prostitutes on stage and talk about how awful it is. What they are really doing, according to Klein, is showing teen girls in skimpy clothing talking about sex, which results in voyeuristic viewers. "If the American media really thought these stories were so terrible it wouldn't give them so much air time ... The key message in American culture is that sex is dangerous. But sex isn't dangerous, bad sexual decision making is dangerous." In an interview with Chip August for "Personal Life Media" Klein stated, "I think Oprah has single-handedly launched the victim industry in this country," adding that society is now infantilizing women by saying that they are unable to make decisions for themselves, that they are tricked into drinking at parties, that they can't control whether they get drunk or create circumstances of vulnerability. "It's demeaning to people to say that even though you're an adult, we're not going to hold you accountable for your own decision-making," he says.
Views on pornography.
Klein has criticized as unproven the theory of "secondary effects", which posits that people involved with various forms of commercial sexual expression (such as escorts, strip clubs or pornography) will inevitably get involved with other, non-sexual illegal activity such as burglary, vandalism, or assault. He states that there is no evidence for this, but the idea appeals intuitively to many people. Thus instead of looking at the actual causal factors of crime, they seek to ban pornography, strip clubs and other outlets to reduce it. On "20/20" Klein told host John Stossel that 150 years ago most people got married as soon as they reached puberty, which was about 14 or 15 years old. Now most Americans reach puberty around ages 10–12 but they delay marriage into their late 20s. "Telling people to not have sex is like telling a depressed person to have a nice day and expecting that to lift their depression."<ref name="20/20"></ref>
In December 2016, Klein was a return guest on "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" talking about his book "His Porn, Her Pain: Confronting America's Porn Panic with Honest Talk about Sex". He explained that he wrote this book in response to Broadband internet making porn more available - and the accompanying increase in women complaining about their men viewing porn, as well as to help improve sexual literacy of both adults and minors. Host Steven Novella asked Klein if anti-pornography groups are trying to justify their opposition by citing health concerns or were just confused about the science. Klein responded that both are true. "The junk science is there for anyone who wants to use it," he said, noting that the common claims that pornography leads to various social problems lack evidence to support them, as rates of sexual violence, divorce, teen pregnancy and child molestation have all gone down since Broadband pornography became common. He observed that couples that don't have sex anymore are quicker to fight about pornography rather than have a meaningful conversation about problems in their sexual relationships. Cara Santa Maria asked if porn leads to unrealistic expectations by men. "Absolutely yes!" Klein answered. "Some people think porn is a documentary, showing real people in real situations... porn is usually unusual bodies, doing unusual things in unusual circumstances." "Pornography leaves out so much that we value in sex. Kissing, hugging ... whispering... because if you watch people hug, after about 2 seconds it gets real boring." In addition, he explained that consumer products based on fantasy are mostly about what people want to see, not necessarily what they want to do or experience, as both men and woman fantasize about things they would not do even if given the chance.
Views on children and sexuality.
In a 2012 interview with "Your Tango", Klein stated that in America, children are raised to have negative feelings about sex and their sexuality. In Europe most beaches are clothing optional, yet in America nudity on beaches is a crime. "When children in the United States grow up learning that their sexuality is bad, when every institution that children have contact with reminds them that their sexuality is bad or dirty or shameful or dangerous — when those kids grow up to be adults, they carry those lessons with them. And one of the things those kids decide when they are adults is that 'if there's something wrong with my sexuality, there must be something wrong with everyone else's sexuality. And, therefore, it's not only my sexuality that I need to repress, it's other people's sexuality that I need to be concerned about, too." This is, Klein says, one of the roots of censorship in America. Further, he has been critical of laws which make it risky for parents to take photos of their children in the bathtub, or for teenagers to take sexual photos of themselves for their own private use. In addition, he has spoken out against the way he sees teens being treated as a sexually repressed minority, such as the criminalization and punishment of teen "sexting," and the deliberate withholding of sexual information and sexual health products from them.
In a 2015 "New York Times" interview, Klein was asked how best to talk to children about sex. He responded that it depends on the child, since a younger child will probably not notice the conversation, and older children will need additional information and it is best for parents to respond honestly in a way that reflects their values. A teenager will need to understand what is real and what is fictional entertainment. In all cases, Klein said, it is important to listen, remain calm and make sure the child knows they are not a bad person for having sex questions and that they can ask the parent anything. '"There’s a technical word for the conversations that adults have with their kids when the parents are uncomfortable'" said Klein '"parenting.'"
Klein has also noted that children are learning about sex despite "anti-sex crusaders" and other societal forces trying to keep it from them: "The truth is children think about sex whether we want them to or not. Children don't need our help to think about sex ...There are groups of people out there who are devoted to scaring the heck out of Americans about sexuality ...It makes some people feel good because they say, 'Aha, there's the enemy and if only we could do something about that, everything would be better.' " It's a parenting issue, Klein told NPR, when children are viewing something that is made for adults. Parents need to educate their children and increase their sexual literacy, so that they understand that what they are seeing on the Internet is fantasy.
"Sex addiction".
When the expression "sex addiction" was coined in the mid-1980s by Patrick Carnes, Klein began to lecture and write against this idea. Klein believed then - and continues to believe - that the concept of "sex addiction" is primarily a set of moralistic judgements dressed up as clinical theory. He has written that the concept is a simplistic explanation of poor sexual decision-making that demonizes sexuality. He says it ignores the roles of culture, religion and the psychological means of sex for individuals while portraying sexual desires as dangerous, often unhealthy and in need of strict control channeled into the one proper form of sexual expression. Klein has reservations that sex-addiction exists and believes that an addiction movement whose agenda is based on false assumptions is harmful to patients and to society, namely: that sexual desires are dangerous, controlling, and not healthy, and that there is only one way to express sexuality.
It is unknown, according to Klein, if the sex addiction movement realized that its ideas would become politically exploited. Regardless of their intentions, this is what activists, government and the media have done in order to discredit the profession of sexology. Issues such as culture, religion, age and disorders must be taken into account. He states that society needs to come up with "sex-positive" models of "sexual health". These models should reflect good education for children as well as for adults, while being sensitive across different cultures. Klein's concerns with the concept of sexual addiction are that it appears to lend scientific credibility to it and implies that "sex is dangerous." Twelve-step programs for sex addiction are of limited value because they are typically self-referred for a problem that any lay person can diagnose. There is no serious evaluation, just "Hello Joe, welcome to the group". Joe may suffer from other problems that will not be helped by a twelve-step program, and may in fact be made worse. Klein told NPR that the idea that going to strip clubs or "watching porn movies can actually be addictive in the same way that heroin is addictive is just silly."
Court cases.
Michigan passed a law in 1999 criminalizing the distribution of "sexually explicit" material on the Internet fearing it could fall into the hands of minors. Plaintiffs, which included Marty Klein, challenged the law arguing that it violated the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and it was ruled unconstitutional in June 2001.
In April 2000 Arizona Governor Jane Hull signed law H.B. 2428 which added the Internet to the "harmful to minors" statute. Plaintiffs including Klein sought to have the Internet removed, claiming the law was far too broad contrary to the First Amendment. After reaching the 9th Circuit in June 2002, the Court struck down the law as unconstitutional in "American Civil Liberties Union v. Goddard".
In early 2010 an addition was proposed to Massachusetts Senate Bill 997 adding "electronic media" to traditional media in its "harmful to minors" law. This would have criminalized any material posted on the Internet that might be considered harmful if viewed by a minor. The plaintiffs argued that this could "potentially ban constitutionally protected speech about art, literature, sexual health and other topics." The case was heard in October 2010, and in April 2011 the Bill was signed into law, but with the stipulation that it could only be enforced if the "harmful material" was knowingly distributed to a minor. Marty Klein was the only individual among the various institutional plaintiffs.
According to lead attorney Michael Bamberger in 2010, the "harmful to minors" law is too broad and will harm adults that have a constitutional right to content on the Internet, '"(T)he injunction was necessary to ensure that all Internet communications were not reduced to the level of what is appropriate for children."' Plaintiffs were concerned that fines of up to $10,000 and five years in prison would have a chilling effect on booksellers as websites have no way to determine the age of an Internet user, and it is not possible to block only users located in Massachusetts. Thus the law would threaten Internet users nationwide and even worldwide.
Klein has been an expert witness, consultant, or invited plaintiff in many state, federal, and international censorship, internet, and obscenity cases.
Personal life.
Klein is an extensive traveler and maintains a travel blog for his various trips, including India (2007), Azerbaijan (2009), Viet Nam (2010), Ukraine (2010), China (2011), Brazil (2011), Poland (2012), Myanmar (2013), Italy (2014), Hong Kong (2015), Japan (2015) and Greece (2016). All the photos on his blog are his own.
Awards.
Klein has been honored by the following professional associations:
Select bibliography.
Books.
Klein has authored seven books on sexuality. His book "America's War on Sex" with a foreword by ACLU President Nadine Strosse was honored as 2006's Best Sexuality Book by AASECT. It documents how the issue of sexual regulation is being used by the Religious Right to undermine secular democracy. Klein details what he describes as a well-coordinated, deeply funded war on sexuality which is being fought on many fronts. Klein explores what he sees as the U.S.'s deep-seated anxiety about sexuality and the lengths to which the U.S. government is willing to go to keep its citizens sexually repressed. Klein challenges American society's (and psychotherapy's) assumptions about sexuality; he is particularly critical of what he calls the "Sexual Disaster Industry" and the "Oprah-ization" of psychotherapy and medicine.