Author: arbriggle

City Council will vote tonight for a new gas well drilling and production ordinance. Of course it is a complex document with many inter-related, moving parts. But there is one number that stands out.

250 feet

That’s the distance they are considering for reverse setbacks in residential areas — when people move into homes or apartments next to existing gas well sites.

The red-line version of the ordinance shows that they have cut this in half from the 500 feet recommended by staff.

I don’t think this is actually a matter of being commercially reasonable for the gas industry via HB 40. I think this is driven by a desire to be commercially reasonable for land developers.

Given the propensity of frack sites to catch on fire, blowout, and explode – not to mention emit long-term emissions – I wouldn’t vote for a 250 foot setback. I think it would be irresponsible to put people that close to danger.

Now, I know, the response is: disclosure and freedom of choice. If people want to move in next to a gas well and they know the risks, then it would be paternalistic to prevent them from doing that.

But would they really know the risks? That’s the big question. I look at the disclosure requirements proposed here and I seriously doubt it. Just think about renters…or folks moving into an assisted living facility. I don’t see any provision requiring that they be informed. And the disclosure rules that are in the proposed ordinance only indicate where gas wells are, not what that means in terms of risks.

I don’t think I’ll be able to speak tonight, but if I could I would ask for an increase in the reverse setback distance.

Clusterfrack [n.]: A tragic clash of incommensurable values triggered by short-sighted decisions early on and sustained by fracking. In other words: what has happened to Denton.

This should be apparent to anyone who watched last night’s City Council hearing about the proposed gas well ordinance. It laid bare the torturous pas de trois between the industry/mineral owners, land developers, and residents – or, respectively, those whose primary interest in this case is money from gas, money from development, and living safely in their homes.

Well, maybe ‘tragedy’ is too theatrical…perhaps it is just politics: the give and take of different competing private property rights and various ill-defined obligations to steward the common good. But whether tragedy or politics, it’s pretty messy.

The clusterfracking of Denton has been slowing unfurling for about fifteen years. That’s how long it took to spray the city’s territory with the buckshot of nearly 290 gas wells on more than 150 frack sites.

All three interests have always been involved, but the industry held the lion’s share of power right from the get go. That’s not only because of state laws that systematically favor them (especially the split estate and the predominance of minerals). It’s also because most of the early fracking was in relatively sparse areas (thus few residents) with only a handful of landowners many of whom also owned the minerals.

Obviously, as fracking encroached on more residents and as more residents became aware of this uniquely toxic, invasive, and secretive industry, the balance of power began to shift. Residents claimed their greatest victory on November 4^th last year with the ban. Of course, that was short lived and thanks to money in Austin, HB 40 has swung power back to the industry.

But where were the developers throughout the saga of the 2012-2013 ordinance rewrite, the 2014 ban, and the 2015 preemption orgy down in Austin?

One developer said last night that they are basically in the business of maximizing developable land and revenue from it. Now, many of them do far more than that, of course, and generate all sorts of positive values for our community. But given that that is their primary orientation, what do they make of fracking?

As I try to enter into that perspective, I think I’d see fracking as a negative. The actual pad sites chew up developable land (2 to 5 acres). And we are talking about industrial sites that are irrationally either going to be permitted in any neighborhood you build or are already located in an area you’d like to turn into a neighborhood. That’s not going to be good for property values and revenues.

But developers last night didn’t focus on fracking. Rather, they focused on the reverse set back distances that would be mandated when new development encroaches on existing frack sites. In so doing, they started sounding just like the industry — promoting its basic value of dense urban fracking. Members of the industry must be doing lots of self-satisfied finger-tenting to watch all the support coming from what should be their natural adversary.

Did you note the disparity in presentations? Residents and land developers face profound challenges — can we be safe in our homes? Can we use our land at all? By contrast the gas industry was left to contemplate the marginalia — whether we need stone walls or if, really, chain link fences might do the trick after all. There’s little doubt who comes out on top when it comes to a clusterfrack.

Several individual cases were presented depicting how different reverse setback distances from existing wells (either on their land or adjacent land) would impact development plans. Developers showed how reverse setbacks greater than 225 feet would hamper their plans and in some cases even render their land basically worthless.

One of them gave a fascinating rough calculation. It is something like this: 150 existing frack sites each with a 1,000 foot setback radius around it means nearly 17,000 acres of land rendered undevelopable. That is about 28% of the entire area of Denton!

So, you want a prediction? – Council will not impose a 1,000 foot reverse setback distance. It will be 225-250 feet. That would render only about 2,000 acres of land undevelopable, about 3% of the city’s area.

I am suspecting that Council will think something like this: one interest (land development) faces such severe negative repercussions, that the reverse setback distances just have to give in and shrink down. (Wait, we could ban fracking, thus opening up all that land for development and protecting residents…oh, yeah…that’s right.)

It was interesting to watch some on Council commiserate with the developers and point out, in effect, “See! Look how much land we are gobbling up with these setbacks!” But who has done the gobbling? The implication at times seemed to be that it is the residents and their (what, hysterical, irrational?) demands for greater setbacks.

But those setbacks are only being considered because of fracking. It is fracking that has gobbled up the land. When I see those big swaths taken out of development by maps with proposed setback distances, I think: Well, there’s the true cost of fracking for you. If you want it in your city and you also care about protecting health and safety, then you are talking about massive opportunity costs. And even just speaking economically that’s bad news, because developing that land will produce far more revenue for the city than fracking ever will (remember this?).

So, the big question is: Where have the developers been all these years? Of course we hear from them now, because their bottom line faces a clear and present danger. But couldn’t they see this coming? Why weren’t they leading the charge years ago to minimize the surface impact of fracking? Why weren’t they speaking up for healthy and safe neighborhoods?

Now that fracking has been forced back on us, how are we going to slice up its off-the-book costs? How much do we make developers and landowners swallow in terms of lost revenues and how much do we make residents swallow in terms of increased risks to their health and safety? That’s the political decision before us.

The great hope is disclosure (or notice): We can have our cake and eat it too by having small setback distances (thus not much lost revenue) and robust disclosure for residents (thus only willingly accepted risks). IF people genuinely consent to the presence of the risk nearby, then who are we to stop them? We can allow for profit maximization and respect the autonomy of residents.

I wish this could be so, but I fear that it is a mirage. Let’s not forget that this was the very issue that tipped us into the ban. Yes, the proposed disclosure rules are better than they were, but that’s not saying much. All residents will not be notified of the presence of fracking and its associated risks…only lot owners. And even if we could get this generation of residents to consent to a reduced setback, they’d effectively be foisting their will on the next generation (i.e., whoever moves in a week, a month, or a year later).

Genuine consent starts to sound pretty unworkable…even utopian in the face of the hard-headed claims of practical necessity. I think we may be trying to make this bitter pill of pragmatism go down more smoothly by swallowing a spoonful of that mythical creature, the “rational man” – this fully aware decision maker who will know just precisely what he is getting himself and his loved ones into.

There is a strong case for keeping the reverse setback distance the same as the forward setback distance. Our local government has an obligation to provide a safe and healthy city for our residents. Sadly, it looks like in Denton’s case that means taking huge swaths of land out of development because the frackers have set up shop will nilly all over the place – concerned, as they are, only with the wealth below and not one jot with the havoc they wreak on the surface.

But, again, we will wind up with very small reverse setbacks. We’ll have homes just as close to wells as if this was all happening back in 2003 when we knew nothing about fracking and might really have thought that was a safe scenario. But this time we’ll have homes that close to frack sites for a different reason…we just can’t afford to give up that much land! That’s the clusterfracking of Denton.

I do predict that Council will impose a 1,000 foot setback distance for new sites, which is the one thing that has the industry spooked (in case we can build out before they can ‘fully exploit’ minerals). That will be a good thing (sadly, about as good as it gets under HB 40). But I’m not sure it will be as important as it sounds.

Why? Well, much of the action will be around existing sites (thus the centrality of reverse setbacks). But the real game is going to be in Master Planned Communities. I’d like to see a map that overlays zoning categories with frack sites. My hunch is that a solid majority of them are out in MPCs like Cole Ranch. In these cases, the pas de trois becomes a pas de deux, because the land owner/developer is also the mineral owner.

Despite the outsized importance of MPCs, the ordinance under consideration largely does not apply to them. They are governed by their own, that’s right, ‘master plans,’ which slot in gas wells wherever the developer would like to put them.

Now, I’ve heard tell that the thinking here is: MPCs are different, because of the coincidence of mineral and surface interests. Surely, they won’t intentionally develop in the way things have happened in Denton unintentionally when these two interests operate separately. No one would clusterfrack on purpose!

I, for one, am not so sure. The best way to maximize mineral and surface property values is to drill lots of wells and build lots of homes. That means, of course, homes close to wells. Another good assurance is to make sure the folks who buy those homes don’t know too much about the gas wells. I don’t see why we would expect them to plan for safe setback distances and robust disclosure policies…and so I don’t see why they are exempt from the ordinance. Don’t get me wrong: I am quite sure there are perfectly valid legal reasons. I’m just saying as a matter of morality and commonsense…

So, we will end up with small reverse setback distances because developers were partly hamstrung by frackers and poor planning decisions and partly sleep-walked into this scenario. And we’ll end up with an ordinance that otherwise does the best we can but that won’t apply to huge swaths of Denton’s frack zones.

I really think our staff and elected officials are doing a great job, considering the circumstances, especially those in place during the reign of HB 40. It is certainly despite their best efforts, not because of them, that the clusterfrack continues. After all, one characteristic of a tragedy is that the protagonists have no way out. We may be able to see just how we will fail…but nonetheless be unable to stop it.

If Denton was a soup, frack sites would be the turds. I mean, you know, the turds in the soup.

For many years, the conversation in Denton was about how to put turds in the soup. But then we learned more and we pulled together and we changed the conversation to be about whether to put turds in our soup at all. We talked it over and decided, “Actually, that’s not safe and healthy.” So we banned fracking.

Then HB 40 happened. Now we are forced back to the question of just how, precisely, to put turds in our soup. Should they be all in a bunch? Spread out? How far should they be from other things in the soup? How closely do we watch them? How do we let the other things in the soup know about the turds and their penchant for catching on fire, emitting toxic fumes, and causing a general nuisance?

This obviously isn’t a sane way to frame a policy conversation. And it’s all come about because smug corporate corruption has overruled democracy.

But it is the situation we are in now until HB 40 is killed.

That will take a while. So, what do we do in the meantime? It seems to me that we need the smartest and toughest ordinance possible under the terms of the existing legal regime. Of course, what that looks like exactly is hard to say. It will probably look different for different cities.

I think the ordinance that Planning and Zoning recommended to City Council is on the right path, and I hope Council will further strengthen it.

With the moratorium soon to expire, it is imperative that we put a new ordinance in place. The alternative is to revert to a previous ordinance, which is non-compliant with HB 40 and was, as we all know, largely unenforceable to begin with.

The ordinance now under consideration is the product of long hours of hard work by very intelligent Dentonites. They have spent many a meeting vigorously polishing turds, which will doubtlessly get even shinier over the coming weeks through the use of yet more elbow grease. (This, by the way, is why it costs far more to write rules to accommodate fracking than it does to prohibit it, which is not to mention the wider economic gains of a ban.)

Though the result will not and cannot be our democratically-won ban, it will likely be an improvement over our previous ordinances. And of course it will remain a living document open to whatever revisions we might be able to muster from within the plutocratic headlock currently applied by Austin.

There seems to be some consternation lobbed at Planning and Zoning Commission members. I suppose that’s just politics. But it does strike me as misplaced anger. Our city staff, appointed, and elected officials are now working within the (ambiguous, sure, but nonetheless) severe constraints of HB 40. ‘Perfect’ isn’t an option for them. They are trying to arrange turds in soup, after all. Better, I think, to direct frustration at those who have forced us once again to cook up this foul recipe.

Here is my facebook post from the morning of June 1st:

Tomorrow – Saturday May 9 – is Election Day. If you live in District 3, please go to the polls and cast your vote for Amber Briggle. The polling location is North Lakes Recreation Center (on Windsor just east of Bonnie Brae). Voting is from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

I suppose it is easy to discount my endorsement of Amber. I am her husband after all. But because of that very fact, I can give you an insider’s perspective on why she’s the right woman for the job.

I could tell you about where she stands on the issues…but you can go to her website to find that. I could tell you about how hard she has worked to not just learn about every facet of city governance but also develop ideas for how to improve things…but you can read her blog about all that.

No, I just want to tell you about how much she loves Denton. From the moment we moved here, little d stole her heart. For six years, my wife has been having an open affair with Denton. All she wants for Christmas are gifts from the community market. And Denton-themed t-shirts. And a beer glass from East Side.

All she wants to do on date nights is sit on the square and admire the courthouse. I have to sit kind of to the side so I won’t block her view. All she wants to talk about at dinner (on the rare times we see each other) is how she helped make sure a sidewalk would get built at her Planning and Zoning Commission meeting or how cool it would be if we could put a micro-park in that unused swath of parking lot out by the Kroger. I mean, I might want to talk about my day at work, but no, we have to hear all about new road standards.

All we eat are vegetables from Earthwise. I mean, I like local carrots as much as the next guy, but…well, I won’t say anything. Just pass the carrots.

Amber recently bought a necklace that is just a little map of Denton inside a glass frame. She loves it. She shows it off to everyone we see. “Look at my necklace!” she giggles. It’s embarrassing how much she loves Denton.

Now, you tell me, do you think someone this infatuated is going to sit by and watch Big Austin trample all over little d? Amber helped write the new drilling ordinance that City Council was about to pass before the oiligarchy down in Austin gutted our local control. That ordinance would help reduce the frequency of accidents like we saw last night with the gas well explosion. Local control isn’t some idea for her. This is personal.

Amber is an independent thinker and a consummate professional who has weathered attacks against her with grace. She is poised and open-minded and a team player.

But most of all, she wears her heart on her sleeve and that heart has a little d tattooed on it.

During the campaign for the fracking ban, we made one point very clear: this is a Denton thing. It’s not just that the ban applies only in the city limits of Denton. It’s also that the citizens of Denton were uniquely vulnerable to the harms and nuisances of fracking. Past municipal policies combined with state laws to create conditions where frack sites could be located in extreme proximity to homes despite our best efforts to adopt reasonable protections.

Indeed, we tried for years to find workable solutions. In the end, we were left with the regrettable choice of either the ban or sacrificing our health and safety.

The ban, however, is not just a Denton thing for our state legislators. Rep. Phil King, for example, is still spouting crazed lies about the involvement of “out-of-state liberal political groups.” Rather than a local, non-partisan movement for commonsense land use reform (bakeries are not allowed in neighborhoods, but frack sites are!?), he spins the Denton ban as part of a vast anti-fossil fuel, anti-American conspiracy.

This is the same rhetoric that was used (oh so successfully!) during the campaign. And now it is painfully clear why state leaders want things framed in such an apocryphal light. It gives them cover for adopting draconian, scorched-earth policies (like HB 40 by Darby R, San-Angelo) to annihilate local regulation of oil and gas. They are even going so far as to propose the elimination of home rule (SB 343 by Huffines R, Dallas), which would effectively centralize all political power in Austin.

The fracking ban couldn’t be just a Denton thing for the plutocrats in Austin, because then they’d have to actually do their homework about the conditions that led to the problem. And they’d have to actually propose meaningful fixes in an attempt to prevent a similar situation from arising again. This would entail revising state laws about vested rights and the mineral estate that they are too cowardly to touch, because it would offend their corporate patrons.

Rather than propose policy fixes grounded in the gritty realities of urban fracking, they’ve invented a bogeyman of collectivist “California nightmares” to justify their legislative extremism. In a surreal political circus, they’ve transformed a local land use and safety issue into a state war on cities. In so doing, they’ve completely put the lie to their supposed commitments to small government and local control. They’ve packed all of their perverse ideological clowns into the little car that is Denton.

Their arrogance and ignorance is shocking. I can understand not liking the fracking ban. But why did our so-called representatives never take the time to learn exactly what happened in Denton to force us to this point? Why did they not visit or set up conferences with the people? There has been not one sincere effort to listen and dialogue or one gesture that the ban was a result of state policies that fail to protect people. They only put us in one of their ready-made boxes reserved for lunatics and used their misinformed anger to write bills to please the special interests they really work for.

Representative Darby’s HB 40 is the latest act in the circus. It seeks to expressly preempt municipal control of oil and gas development.

HB 40 claims that Texas has successfully balanced the goals of maximizing mineral production while protecting the environment and public health and safety. Insofar as this balance has been accomplished, it’s only because of the crucial role that has long been played by cities in regulating oil and gas development. Without cities, for example, there are no setback requirements greater than100 feet. There are no nuisance mitigation measures. So, by the bill’s own logic, cities have been essential to oil and gas development in Texas.

But Darby (who is only the piper playing the tune called by the Texas Oil and Gas Association) then turns around and undermines a key piece of the very success story that he extols by gutting city authority. Yet, one provision in the bill actually seems to allow cities to do what they’ve done all along. So, what’s going on here?

Again, if this was about crafting rational policies, there would be no way to explain it. We have to see it as a political stunt, a kind of chest-thumping Morse code to the powers that be. I’ve come to think of Austin as a kind of jungle where lawmakers engage in a great deal of symbolic, turf-defining posturing, peeing, and preening without any indication they actually care about writing sensible laws that could do some good in the world.

Now, I don’t mean to impugn all of our state lawmakers. I’m sure many are quite civic-spirited. I can’t say the same, however, about those who have turned a Denton thing into an excuse to further entrench industry power and further eviscerate protections for health, safety, property rights, and quality of life. Or perhaps just an excuse to grab the spotlight to showcase their own zaniness.

Fresh off our empowering experience at the local level, we are now getting a different flavor of ‘democracy’ at the state level. There it is reduced to frantically calling and visiting offices located hours away in an effort to kill devastating bills…bills that are so obnoxious we can never be sure that anyone seriously intended them to go anywhere in the first place.

Say what you will about City Hall. At least there you don’t have to deal with these bizarre ritualistic dances of industry and ideologues.

Here is a letter I sent to city council, speaking solely as an individual and not on behalf of any organization. Happy to hear any thoughts folks may have on this.

Dear City Councilors,

Thank you for the open exchange of ideas this Tuesday about the gas well drilling and production ordinance. Despite Mayor Watts’ understandable concern about waxing philosophical, it seems to me that policy decisions are always grounded in philosophical positions even if these are often left implicit. What I most valued about Tuesday night was how those positions were made more explicit.

To me, the discussion about reverse setbacks and disclosure was most important. In situations where a new gas well comes into an existing neighborhood, we are dealing not simply with risk but with a risk that is not willingly chosen. But in the reverse case, it could be that those moving into new homes around existing gas wells willingly choose the risks. In such cases, who are we to stop them? That would seem to be an act of government paternalism, which requires a great deal of justification in a democracy premised on individual liberty.

This raises a question: why have any reverse setback at all? Admittedly, we must adhere to the 100 foot distance imposed by the international fire code. But why anything greater than that? Why not leave it up to the land owners? This may be a case where government is trying to figure out some optimal decision that is best handled by the invisible hand of the market.

I found it curious that even those of you arguing from surface property owner rights didn’t make this suggestion. There was a general consensus around 350 feet. (As an aside, I would argue this should be from the nearest piece of equipment, not just the wellhead, because the wellhead is not necessarily the riskiest thing on a site.) Why 350 feet and why make that decision rather than leave it up to the property owner?

Now, it could be that this is for some of you a political compromise. “Ideally,” you might say, “it would be 100 feet, but I’m willing to go up to 350 to meet in the middle with others who want 500 or more.”

But I didn’t get that sense. Rather, it seemed like there was a consensus around a kind of mild paternalism, that is, a need to put some modest limits on the amount of risk we can allow individuals to assume. To me, this seems reasonable, for a couple of reasons that hinge on who is actually choosing the risk and on the basis of what knowledge.

First, there is much talk of developers and homeowners as the primary people involved here. Assuming they are fully informed of risks, then there is no problem. But there is also always the potential for renters and others who will live in the area who are not given the chance to assent to the risks but who will nonetheless be exposed to them. I think also of children here, though recognize this is problematic, because parents routinely make risk calculations on behalf of their kids. A robust reverse setback distance may be justified to protect people like this.

Second, how can we ensure that even the typical agents (i.e., adult homebuyers) are made aware of the risks? Here, I would submit, we cannot simply rely on the market to guarantee disclosure of risks. Indeed, profit motives will work against disclosure, because it would almost certainly reduce property values. Everything hinges on establishing an adequate disclosure mechanism, because the assumption all along has been that people know what they are getting themselves into. We clearly do not have adequate disclosure now. The real question is whether any such thing is even possible.

Currently, as the Meadows at Hickory Creek testifies, people are not informed. They don’t fit the archetype that seems to be so often assumed in these discussions of the rational decision maker with perfect access to all salient information. And I don’t think it is appropriate to blame homebuyers in such situations for “not doing their homework.” They did their homework as well as anyone could reasonably be expected to do. The standard here should be one of reasonable persons, not perfectly rational calculators. Knowledge about gas well plats, gas well equipment, and the associated risks is not something that can be expected of the reasonable person. That knowledge must be explicitly provided.

I spoke to one gentleman who had just moved into a home in that brand new development around the south site at the Meadows. His house was a stone’s throw from the site. I asked him what he was told about that site when he moved in. He said that he was promised there would be “no new activity” there. I asked him if he got that in writing and he said no. I would submit that he was not honestly or adequately informed. And this was a man who had lived around gas wells at his previous home. If anyone should be expected to ask more questions, it would be him. But again it is unreasonable to put the burden of information gathering on the shoulders of those considering a move near a gas well site. These sites are not ordinary sorts of things people can be expected to know about.

Underneath all the talk of property rights is a notion that we all own ourselves. To be in possession of yourself is to be an autonomous being. This is arguably what makes us persons with dignity. Respecting persons means providing them with a chance to give their informed consent. This is what disclosure does. So, I see disclosure as the very essence of honoring private property rights. Yet it is something that the government must ensure.

The form that disclosure takes is more straightforward than the content. Formally, it should happen early in the decision process (not when someone is signing closing papers, for example) and it must be intelligible to non-experts.

The content is the issue, because there is no consensus on the risks to be communicated. Indeed, we are not talking about risks here at all but rather uncertainty. Risk connotes a known probability (like a 50% chance of getting tails). Uncertainty is a murkier situation.

One way around this is to provide people with a set of information accepted by representatives on different sides of the controversies involving shale gas development. Or you can supply them with information culled exclusively from credible authorities like government reports and peer-reviewed studies. Another strategy is to provide people with competing narratives from different sides.

But at the end of the day, I think the justification for a more robust reverse setback distance (far more than 100 feet) is this uncertainty itself. Imagine the most robust disclosure process practicable: at the end of it, won’t any reasonable person still be left with lots of uncertainty afterward? We cannot really give our informed consent to something about which so little is known (especially about long-term health consequences). In some sense, no one can really know what they are getting themselves into (this is one way to phrase the conclusion of the New York State Health Department study that recommended a ban on hydraulic fracturing there).

I would argue that you have an obligation to err on the side of caution in the face of this uncertainty and require a sizeable reverse setback distance even when our disclosure process is improved. I might even argue that there is no morally significant difference between regular and reverse setback distances, because in neither case can one willingly choose the risks, because too much is unknown.

Anyway, these are some of my thoughts and I’d be happy to discuss more specific ideas for disclosure (e.g., why not a brochure like the one used when selling homes with lead paint?). It seems to me that we have a responsibility to respect people by supplying them with information. But we also have a responsibility to own up to the consequences of lingering uncertainties by enforcing robust reverse setback distances.

I know there is a concern about acting paternalistically with these reverse setback distances. But I actually think some form of paternalism is inevitable here. Consider the present situation that led to the ban: decisions that impact people in important ways are being made without their consent. They are, in short, being treated like children. Even if we leave it up to the market plus a robust disclosure policy, we may only salvage the appearance of autonomy, because in reality people will continue to make decisions basically in the dark given the level of uncertainties involved here. We might only be tricking them, albeit unintentionally.

I still favor stronger disclosure policies to try to enable people to act autonomously. I’m just not sure those conditions are really possible.

Dear Representative Riddle,

Your proposed legislation HB 1748 and HB 1747 will make it illegal for a person “at least seven years of age” to use a bathroom “that is designated for use by persons of a gender that is not the same gender as the individual’s gender.” You define the gender of an individual as whatever is on a government document or established by chromosomes.

It just so happens that my seven year old son has been having bathroom issues at school lately. I don’t know what chromosomes he has, but his birth certificate identifies him as female. Thus the issues. He last wore a dress when he was two. He’s always been into ‘boy’ things – star wars shoes, ninjas, and matching haircuts with dad. For a while, we just said things like “all colors are for everyone” and “there are different ways of being a girl.” That worked fine through kindergarten. But in first grade, he’s taken to more explicitly self-identifying as a male with the use of pronouns like he and him.

The bathroom has been a sticking point because that’s the one place where gender fluidity meets a rigid dualism. “If I use the girl’s room, kids that don’t know me will yell at me for being in the wrong room. But if I use the boy’s room, kids who do know me will yell at me.” Well, it’s not so much yelling as it is questioning, which is uncomfortable. And although everyone at his school has been supportive, the stage is set for bullying. To get tripped up on the most basic axiom of our culture can make one vulnerable as an outsider. Boy or girl. One or the other. How strange can you be if you don’t even belong in the category marked out for you at your birth!

We are hoping we live in more enlightened times than all that, but this is my fear. What if he is known not as the goofball, the basketball player, the thoughtful older brother, the whiz at Minecraft, the aspiring magician, and the candy connoisseur? What if he is reduced to that freak? Worse, what if he internalizes that self-description? All that potential, a thriving human personality, would be crushed on the shoals of intolerance, tattered and ruined by the knives of bigotry and ignorance.

This is where you come in. You propose to march into this already fraught situation, this fragile space, and make criminals out of the people at my son’s school who are doing their best to love him. How will it be when our school principal is marched away in handcuffs for allowing a child to use the bathroom that best fits his burgeoning sense of self? How will it be when the kids see bullying modeled at the highest level, enforced with badges? How are we to overcome prejudice when you are inscribing it into our laws?

Your Facebook post is the only justification I could find for these bills. You say they “will protect women & children from going into a ladies restroom & finding a man who feels like he is a woman that day.” What an offensive remark that simultaneously misunderstands and trivializes the issue. What a cavalier attitude to bring to the business of ostracizing and criminalizing thousands of Texans simply for being who they are.

If your bills become law and the police come to our school, I will stand in the way. How could I in good conscience do otherwise? At least one of us should take this seriously.

You define a person’s gender as whatever is listed on state documents. Since when do tea party types such as yourself want the state to define us? If anything, I would think you’d want to abolish the DMV, not grant it the authority to dictate our identity. I don’t see where personal liberty fits into your plans.

Of course, this is where you are conflicted, because at your core you are not a tea partier. You are a religious conservative and, more to the point, a bioconservative. It’s telling that you use the term ‘rear’ on your website: you were reared in Houston and have reared three (presumably cis-gender) children. It’s the same language I imagine you use in your horse breeding.

With these bills you are saying: “There are two kinds of humans just like there are two kinds of horses. Male and female did he make them. That’s God’s plan.” This is where personal liberty hits a brick wall. “You are free to smoke and shoot guns, but when it comes to your gender identity, there is only one way to express yourself.”

I am sympathetic to talk about respecting the natural order. My first book was a defense of President George W. Bush’s bioethics council. But the problem with your stance here is twofold.

First, gender identity is a complex psychological phenomenon that cannot be reduced to one’s biological sex. You’d have to lobotomize people to eradicate the gender/sex distinction, because gender identity is a product of our higher human capacities to form a sense of self. Maybe that’s the world you would prefer, what with all this talk of rearing. We’d all fit more neatly into boxes if we were less evolved and not so individualized.

Second, even the binaries of biological sex are not as entrenched in the natural order as we once believed. Biologists are now learning that sex is a spectrum rather than a dualism. There are intersex conditions. Many people are a patchwork of cells, some with a sex that doesn’t match the rest of their body. Variations in hormones and genetics blur distinctions. One father of four went into surgery for a hernia and the doctors discovered that he had a uterus.

You are conflating out-dated conventions with the natural order of things. What is most insidious about your bills is the attempt to gussy up rank prejudice in the regal garb of natural law. You’re using your power to shame and pillory people you don’t understand. As a dad working through some pretty complex issues, you’d do me a favor if you got out of our bathroom and went back to Austin.

The Denton fracking ban has energized an important discussion about the political authority of municipalities and the role of citizens’ initiatives in a democracy. This is often couched under the label of local control, a core conservative value that state legislators are now hypocritically attacking (I’ll have more to say on that soon).

One of their strategies is an appeal to rule of law. In a nutshell, the argument is something like: “Local control is all well and good as far as it goes. But it is not an absolute value. Taken too far it becomes mob rule. The Bill of Rights prevents majorities from stripping minorities of their civil liberties. Just because an ordinance is passed by a city or citizens’ initiative, doesn’t mean it can trump certain basic rights that are afforded all U.S. citizens.” Here’s one example of this argument.

No one will dispute the possibility that local control can be misused to violate Constitutional protections. But this argument doesn’t apply to Denton’s hydraulic fracturing ban. As we’ve maintained all along, the ban is legally sound and indeed it is less restrictive than other valid Texas ordinances.

The rule of law argument can quickly become a distraction used against a straw man. For example, an editorial in a Colorado paper compared the situation of mineral owners and the industry under local hydraulic fracturing bans with the plight of black Americans under Jim Crow laws. If this isn’t offensive, it is at least way off base.

Denton’s law is not depriving anyone of their property rights (or any civil liberty). It is simply a recognition that the rights of all citizens to peacefully and safely enjoy their property trumps the imperative to maximize profit from mineral resources via a hazardous and noxious well stimulation technique. Securing equal rights for all citizens requires limiting activities that harm others. Indeed, the rule of law argument actually favors the Denton ban, because it was the only remaining path to secure the basic rights of citizens put in harm’s way.

Let us not forget for how long and hard the people of Denton worked to draft a set of reasonable rules. Leaning on systematically biased state laws, the industry refused to cooperate. On November 4, bad neighbors got their comeuppance.

In reality, the rule of law argument is being used as the sheepskin around the wolf of state corporatism. The oil and gas industry owns the state legislature. They fund the campaigns of law makers and regulators. As a result, they have been able to put in place a legal system that prioritizes their profits over health, safety, community integrity, and welfare.

This is why local control is so vital in this context: municipalities are the only level of government concerned with protecting the people exposed to the harms of fracking.Rule of law is only as good as the laws that are ruling. With vested rights, non-disclosure of chemicals, non-reporting of emissions, the dominance of the mineral estate, lax enforcement, and much more, the state allows the industry to run roughshod over the people. Those appealing to the rule of law at the state level need to get busy making some better laws. In the meantime, local communities will need to continue to stand up for the rights of those neglected by the state.

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on an amazing boom in socially-engaged philosophy in Germany. Here are a couple of quotes:

“Philosophy can be an extremely effective means to help us interpret and order ourselves in our environment,” says Mr. Eilenberger, a former academic who taught at the University of Toronto. The public square, not the elitist confines of university campuses, is the appropriate domain for philosophic discourse, he argues.

“Sometimes the popular version is harder to write than the academic product,” Mr. Hampe says. “The true public intellectual can do both. But it takes hard work and lots of time.”