In the aftermath of California’s passing of the shameful Proposition 8, I bring good tidings (and hope) from Australia. I’ll post most of the article From the Canberra Times because it’s short and to the point:

Gay and lesbian couples are a step closer to equality before the law after two Bills passed through the Senate.

The laws would extend the definition of a de facto relationship to include same-sex couples and allow homosexuals to leave superannuation entitlements to partners.

The Bills also guarantee equality in tax, social security, health, aged care and employment.

Labor senator Penny Wong, who is openly gay, said the laws would deliver the sort of equality before the law that same-sex couples have never experienced.

”They [the Bills] deliver on a very important election commitment on an important day for us,” she told the Senate.

Uniting Care Australia’s national director Lin Hatfield Dodds applauded the Bills, saying it was ”about time” they were passed.

”These Bills are about citizens having equality before the law,” she said. ”They should cut across party lines, because it’s about respecting the inherent dignity of each person, and ensuring under the law there is opportunity for each person to express their sex and not be penalised for that.”

Liberal senator George Brandis said it was a historic day that signified an end to law reforms more than 40 years in the making.

Australian Greens leader Bob Brown, also openly gay and a long-time campaigner for same-sex rights, congratulated the Government for putting the legislation before Parliament within 12 months of its election.

(more…)

Did you think that the election was over? Nope. In the Minnesota Nov 4 Senate election, Al Franken (D) lost by 206 votes (out of almost 3 million). This close of a margin requires a hand recount. About 34,000 votes were rejected by machines (uncounted), primarily in Democrat-heavy districts.

With this and a few other close races, Al Gore (Y2K presidential loser, then Nobel winner) is pushing for recounts to create a Filibuster-proof Senate (60 on one side). Only 3 of the contested races need to tip Dem to create this potentially King Stork situation from our generally King Log Senate.

Anyone who has actually read some of the Arabian Nights learns that no fulfilled wish goes unpunished. (Amazon Book Search). So read up on your Aesop and your Burton, and prepare for the coming administration. It has the potential of changing the mythology of our nation.

I wrote this originally in 2004, upon the passage of an antigay measure in Missouri.  With the passage of Prop 8 in California, I thought it would be worth reposting here.

You may have heard. Missouri has become the first state in the union to establish a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. More will follow, of course, but it’s something to be the first.

I live here. This is my state.

Shame on us.

This was not, however, unexpected. Did anyone actually believe Americans, especially in the middle of the country, are ready, en masse, to embrace such a substantial change in attitude toward an institution that extends back to the murkiness of prehistory?

Prehistory. Genesis notwithstanding, I make that claim based on the fact that we have no documentary evidence that at a given moment Marriage was invented. It’s something homo sapiens brought with it into the historical period, which is really only that part of time in which we have had writing. Writing that survived, to be more specific. For all we know there may be a cache of stone tablets or whatever yet undiscovered extending that time backward reliably by a century or millennia or more. For the sake of argument, let’s say that the historical era has lasted (reliably) for ten thousand years. We can quibble over certain dates, but we’ve got evidence suggesting that humans have lived in organized social groups for at least that long, which suggests that we’ve been doing so for a lot longer. Marriage has been with us just as has been agriculture and the domesticated dog. It came with the package.

By marriage I mean a formalized union establishing what we call a Family Unit. For purposes of this discussion, I’m only interested in the Formal part of that. It’s quite self-evident that humans come together in unions of various types quite spontaneously and without the need of an overriding authority to give us permission. All the surface (and most of the deep core) attributes of marriage are manifest in self-selected associations all the time. We have never needed marriage for sex, the Fifties notwithstanding, and since the Seventies we have evolved a line on the Census to cover people with not-formalized arrangements—POSSLQ: Persons of Opposite Sex Sharing Living Quarters.

The fact that we have had the concept of “common-law marriage” for a long, long time proves that such arrangements have also been around for long, long time. Communities recognizing this fact decide at some point that, whether the participants like it or not, the condition constitutes a marriage. This was eminently practical in the days of expanding frontiers, when more often than not the formalizing apparatus was nowhere to be found (because just as often it was intentionally left behind, a lesson most people didn’t quite pick up on).

(I recall a hysterically funny argument in high school—my first ever encounter with a hardcore fundamentalist—over the status of Adam and Eve. Who married them? No priests and it was not stated in Genesis that they were husband and wife, but rather companions. Not only weren’t they married, but obviously they practiced some form of birth control since the kiddies didn’t show up until after they were banished from Eden. Maybe that was the definition of paradise then—lot’s of sex, free food, and no kids. The reply was that God had married them and while in a state of grace, they did not have sex. The older I get, the more I think this is fractured thinking, especially when one recognizes how often fundamentalist groups, regardless of what other purpose they may have, subjugate the women and turn them into sex toys.)

Okay, so we have this Institution called Marriage. Long history. After so much time it has become something other than a solution to a problem. We’ve hardwired it, seemingly, into our culture. Every culture has it. It’s so basic that for the most part no one questions it as a cultural phenomenon, only it’s imposition as a requirement on the individual. I may reject the idea for myself, but I don’t really question it across social landscapes. Marriage is emotionally and financially useful—so much so that all attempts to rid ourselves of it don’t even get off the ground in any meaningful way. I mean, even people like me—who do not live in a formalized union with our significant other—come in time to consider ourselves “married”. (And pleasantly so. It is not, when it works, a Bad Thing. If it were, it would not be so tenaciously part of our cultural identity.)

So we defend it. We protest over the specifics—its implementation, its uses in hiding inequities between men and women, its cultural drawbacks across social lines when questions of economic and educational status arise—but we don’t question the basic idea. We realize, at some times more than others, that we conduct it wrong, that we abuse it, that it doesn’t work the way it should, but we’ve never really questioned it as a desirable practice.

Given which, it should come as no surprise to anyone that groups who are barred from it would wish to eliminate those barriers.

This is not, historically, a Gay issue. But you can see the same arguments cycled over and over again in every instance that a social norm was challenged.

Everyone should know what Miscegenation is. If you don’t, open a dictionary. Then start checking social histories.

Basically, miscegenation is a term applied to the practice of sexual intercourse with an out group. In America, it was against the law for white people to have sex with (not to mention marry) black people. (Yes, I know, a lot of mixed blood Africans found their way to the auction block in the Old South, fetching higher prices for their lighter skins. Racial laws were in place to prevent their existence, but there you have it—and why let a little illegal screwing stop us from making some money?) Go see the movie Showboat for a dramatic example. Not only was the fictional couple unable to travel south because he was white and she a mulatto and because they were married, both could end up in jail—not only that, but the movie studio wouldn’t even allow a black woman to play the part, substituting Ava Gardner for Lena Horne. In fact, laws forbidding interracial marriage were not overturned in the United States until 1967—just in case you thought these things existed only in the Dark Ages of our history.

The LAW was brought to bear to prevent marriage between two groups society had decided shouldn’t come together that way. For a more violent, but no less savage example, look at the Nuremberg Laws of Nazi Germany. Same idea, carried to horrific extremes.

Examples of less formalized restrictions abound—look at Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet. Class is more often than not the basis of such restrictions. Often religion. Aristocrats have always been barred from various associations on both those bases. The whole awkward debacle of Prince Charles and Princess Di was born out of the religious problem—the woman Charles actually wanted was (gasp) Catholic! Can’t have that. (Diana was not only the right religion, but, ostensibly, a virgin—another holdover from a less enlightened time.)

In every instance over time we have grown out of it and rejected such proscriptions. After three or four generations in this country, what difference does it make if an Italian marries a Russian, or a Protestant marries a Jew? At least, where the law is concerned. What difference does it make if a white marries a black or an Asian? The law no longer concerns itself with enforcing such restrictions because we as a society have gotten to the point of recognizing the stupidity of such laws.

But here’s a new one. People of the same sex wish to marry.

What?

I imagine that for a lot of people who don’t initially react with the distorted horror of some religious objection, the first response is:

Why?

In one of the most superficial readings, this is a legitimate question. The basic assumption we grow up with (whether we maintain it into adulthood or not) is that marriage is for the formation of a Family. And “family” means mommy, daddy, and children. It’s a Standard Model image that is very difficult to disregard when questions of social propriety or morality or just plain tradition arise. Basic biology—you need a male and a female to make more of either.

So, the question follows, what would be the point of two men or two women getting married to each other?

I said superficial. For this question to have any real meaning, one has to accept the most basic concept of the purpose of marriage.

But once you put it that way—The Purpose of Marriage–you open the box and let out the genie, because up to that point most people don’t actually regard marriage as having A Purpose. It’s one of those things that simply Is. We marry because we’ve always married. Because in its way, it is Natural. What need to discuss Purpose when considering something Natural? What is the purpose of a flower?

And at that point, if one has a scintilla of intellectual honesty, one realizes that marriage is not natural. Sexual partnering is. Living in a community is. Friendship is. But the formal condition of Marriage is an invention. Like rituals. Like all communal institutions. It’s an artifice imposed upon us, which we impose or embrace ourselves, but it is not Natural. It has Purpose. We do it for certain reasons. We don’t do it to find love—love, it is presumed, is already there before the proposal is made. (We certainly don’t do it to maintain love—it doesn’t work, obviously.)

All the emotional components of a bonded relationship happen between two people whether there is a formal arrangement or not. So what do we do marriage for? Stripped of its romanticized components–which happen outside, in spite of, but certainly independent of marriage—we find a social form that fulfills certain requirements of community.

Rousseau had it pretty right—it’s a contract.

No, really. You might be surprised how many people don’t—or won’t—see it that way, but under all the pretty clothes, big cakes, photographs, champagne, and hoopla, society in fact does see it that way. Fill out these forms, meet these criteria, and you too can enter into a contractual obligation that makes you into a fiscal unit obligated for each others’ debts, with all the rights, responsibilities, and privileges thereto appertaining. The interface between family and society has always rested on one basic question: Who’s going to pay for what?

This may sound cold, but when it works, this has proven to be a very efficient boon to the human condition. Just consider the one aspect of this debate that has everyone so concerned—children. Until the last century, reliable contraception has been, well, not. Hit or miss. Often people with money got better product or could afford to “take care of” the problem by other means. Children are the inevitable by-product of humans indulging in sex without benefit of contraception. (This is a no-brainer, and may be too obvious to even state, but I don’t make assumptions like that anymore: people are dense when it comes to certain topics.) Children require.

Children require Everything. They are, to put it as bluntly as possible, expensive.

So who will pay for them? (more…)

[rant warning!]
 
Wait, who’s dead? Three of the bastards who carried out the Sari club bombing in Bali in 2002. They’ve been sitting on death row since then and within the last 24 hours were shot dead by an Indonesian state death squad. Their coffins, predictably, were paraded through the streets like trophies, held aloft by screaming family members and bellowing supporters who have made it very clear that their jihad against “the West” will continue. Naturally, a governmental advisory against travelling to Indonesia has been issued and some of our airlines are allowing people to change their plans without penalty. Fair enough: who knows who’ll take up the jihadi cause now and decide that killing white tourists, enjoying the exchange rate and out for a surf, a beer, some cheap weed on the sly perhaps or just those infernal hair beads, will make Allah happy.

OK, so some people might be rejoicing. These animals killed over 200 people in cold blood, 88 of them Aussies on holiday. They were mindless apes, jumping on the ol’ jihad bandwagon at the urging of some bloviating, hatemongering imam somewhere (these mental children do need to be told what to do after all; independent thought is not a hallmark of your average jihadi) and striking at soft targets with homemade bombs - with obviously no regard at all for the lives of fellow Indonesians, let alone fellow humans. But hey, that’s what fundamentalism does to you: makes anyone who’s not on your team fair game, even if they’re a neighbour. It splits the world into enemies and friends, and all enemies deserve a gruesome death, followed by hell. The most infuriating thing was that footage of these - people - from their jail cells and from the courtroom showed them grinning like idiots and raising their fists in triumph, like they’d won gold medals. That grinning halfwit Amrozi, nicknamed “The Smiling Assassin” was the one everyone down here wanted to damn well smash in the face with a pint glass, me included. I wouldn’t even have finished my beer first. He’s killed 200 people and he’s grinning like the cat who got the cream. Smug bastard. Smash!

But do I want him dead? Hell no! Why? Because he believes when the Indonesian government murder him, he’s going to Heaven to screw his brains out for eternity. He’s getting exactly what he wants. He’s fulfilled the orders of his bizarre & barbaric corruption of a god (head of the alleged “religion of peace”) and is about to score bigtime. Which, to me, is the complete opposite of what punishment should entail. It’s no punishment to kill a man when all he wants is to die and be martyred, a hero to his polluted herd, and achieve paradise. You commit a crime against society, you should be deprived of the privileges of being a member of that society. Take lives and your quality of life should be forfeit - but not your life itself. I’d much prefer if they kept the little shit alive, in the squalid filth of a Indonesian jail, until his lifeless flesh can be fed to sharks. Don’t let him wear his jihadi hat. Don’t let him read his precious goddamned scripture. Don’t give him a prayer mat. Let him have a skylight, not a window - don’t let him know which direction Mecca is. It’s his religion (his twisted version of it anyway) that turned him into a murderous, easily-led automaton - deprive him of all the comfort it gives him. It’s his comrades that conspired with him to kill all those people - deprive him of their company & any comfort that they may give him. Let him befriend the guards (who should be under strict orders of complete silence) if he wants company. Even better, let him have a TV behind a grille that plays nothing but evangelical Christian shows with the volume way up and don’t give him the remote. Don’t let him have any control over his life, starting with the damn TV. Don’t let him have anything he’d have on the outside, save food & water & light. But give him a nice cold hosing every month. Hey, it’s a hot country. He’ll be fine.

But, no. Indonesia, having a backward & reactionary justice system (which I define as “any system which includes death as punishment”), follows the law … and lets these bastards have exactly what they want. Then their bloated corpses get treated like rock stars, crowd-surfing to the grave, held aloft by adoring groupies.

Now, apart from wanting that haunted meat-bag Amrozi to suffer properly and apart from the fact that he & his chums wanted martyrdom and therefore should have been deprived of it, I don’t believe the death penalty makes any sense as either a punishment or a deterrent. It didn’t deter these primates. It didn’t deter fellow mindless shaven ape Tim McVeigh, the dim-as-a-two-watt-bulb Australian smack-smugglers known as the Bali Nine (for whom I have little sympathy and who still rot, awaiting their own Indonesian murder squad) or anyone else who’s been executed lately. Anyone currently on Death Row, anywhere in the world, had to know the possible penalty for what they were doing yet they went ahead anyway (provided they were convicted fairly - another giant problem with death penalties is that you can’t be sure 100% of the time that you even convicted the right person). If the death sentence is meant to be a deterrent, news flash: it isn’t damn well working.

The state, whether it straps someone to a table and injects lethal poison, ties them to a chair or electrocutes them, suffocates them in a gas chamber, breaks their neck on the gallows, kills them with robot lions or just lines them up and has soldiers shoot them, is no better than the criminal they’re ostensibly punishing. It’s the 21st century for crying out loud. We’re better than this. We have to be if we want to progress.

Anyway, Amrozi (and your fellow murderous intellectual cripples), now that you’re dead … I hope you go straight to hell. Which I suppose, to a randy, stunted animal looking forward to deflowering children for the rest of eternity - and considering I don’t believe in hell - would be not existing at all (which would be unpleasant as long as you knew you didn’t exist anymore, which implies that you’d have to exist to know you didn’t exist - quite a paradox I know, but I’m annoyed, so give me some latitude). To me, non-existence is no substitute for being treated like the sack of manure you are for the rest of your sad little life, but I guess it has to be good enough for me. You might not be suffering, as the victims of your righteousness and their families still suffer, but it’s at least nice to know that you’re not getting your perverted little slice(s) of heaven.

OK, rant over. Nothing to see here. Return to your homes!

—

PS: I noticed a certain senator from Illinois was elected last week.

America, thank you.

Barack Obama’s not Jesus, Batman or even Buzz Lightyear, I know, but with a level-headed, educated, well-spoken, caring individual like Barry O at the helm I have high, even audacious hopes that, come January 2009, America can start to drag itself out of the hole that Team Bush have been digging for the last 8 years.

Good luck!

This title is an incisive quote from our regular responder, Karl K. My personal and immediate response to this statement is, “Duh”. Naturalism, or the acceptance of the results and conclusions from the application of the Scientific Method, has created huge advances in the survival and comfort of all humanity. In the couple of centuries since the Enlightenment, more progress has been made toward that goal than in the previous 50 centuries under theistic ruling philosophies. There is great utility for society as a whole in following naturalistic views.

However, then Karl proceeds with the following non-sequitur:

Can I therefore assume that you would concede the point that if somebody has to die to solve some of the world’s problems it should be people like ERIK who preach religious dogma in a manner that offends you. In fact this would apply to anyone who says interpretive science needs to be knocked out of its prominent position in our secular society be they Christian, Muslim, Hindu, [...]

Actually, evolutionary theories (one subset of naturalistic conclusions) prove that variety (a wide bell curve in every characteristic) is necessary to the long term survival of societies, as well as species. Only people with narrow world views advocate eliminating non-aggressive adversaries. Genocide is practiced by theists, not naturalists. Usually by theists of the newly-formed personality-cult sort as with Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. These cult leaders claim to be scientific to the world, yet the first thing they do is purge actual scientists and intellectuals, leaving a core of pseudo-scientific yes men to lead their institutions. They all refuted Darwin. Look how well that worked out for them.

It is a scientific necessity to keep around those who disagree, if only because they might be right despite all evidence currently available. Even if there is no God, maybe the belief itself has social utility. The basis of the scientific method still is adversarial in nature. Advances come when someone disproves currently accepted theories. But solidly disproved ideas that keep appearing as new insights by those who refuse to peruse the news of the views they refuse are not helpful.

The problem with the term “Utilitarian” is that it means different things to different people. To the Saved-by-Jesus crowd, it appears to mean selfish and without regard to society. It seems that many of the Faithful were raised with the odd idea that morality comes from carefully following ancient rules, rather than understanding the effects of ones own actions as a part of living society and its future. To rational atheists like myself, the morality of Utility is implicit. If an action provides for the greater good, then it is useful, has utility. If it also gains something for myself, then great! See Utilitarianism.

(more…)

I was having lunch with Joe the Juggler at the City Diner earlier this week. He was showing me some papers he found in the wall of his house. The original owner in 1892 apparently was in the personal rubber products business.

Back then, this was a euphemism for (shocked whisper) a birth control device. The Comstock Act of 1873 made it illegal to send even information about birth control through the mail, much less the rubber products themselves. Several states had laws completely prohibiting such things, as well. So this gent sold coupon books to would-be salesmen, who sell individual coupons door to door along with an instruction manual.

The coupon was to be mailed with another fee to the manufacturer, to have a non-descript disk (I’m guessing) of rubber shipped direct to the home. Arguably, such a disk can be used to stop a drain, or something. Very scandalous. That’s why the instructions are delivered by hand. The total cost was about 2 days white collar wages for a single “rubber”. Quite a savings over retail.

Contraception information was decriminalized in the U.S. in 1936. Can we keep it that way? Heard of the “Global Gag Rule”?

So, on October 14, 2008, Christmas Carols assaulted us in the City Diner. Twice. On a 70 degree afternoon. Only 71 more shopping days till the virgin birth.

I am not one to encourage a lawsuit, and am no expert in the law. But if you read the details about this suit, you might want to give to the cause. In brief, a Creationist posted a long monologue rehashing many long-disproved arguments claiming to be original and irrefutable proofs of God (the particular Christian Fundamentalist one). Our “hero” Martin Wagner, host of Atheist Experience soundly debunked many sections thereof on his blog back in June.

At first, strong responses were exchanged. But then YP (our villain) libeled Wagner in Wagner’s own wiki listing and on other blogs, some created just for this purpose. But he did it all from his regular ip address. Completely traceable.

When Wagner publicly called him on it, YP sent a Cease and Desist injunction for exposing his illegal tactics plus the threat of a suit if he didn’t immediately recant.

So, reluctantly Wagner is suing in response. But suits cost money, so at the bottom of the page linked above, there are some Donation buttons. Should you wish to help an Atheist in distress. The linked post also has links to all the supporting materials should you wish to check them out.

The Alliance Defense Fund, a legal action group whose purpose appears to be to promote an American Theocracy, has instituted The Pulpit Initiative. In brief, it calls for ministers, priests and pastors to openly stump for particular candidates on September 28, 2008 (”Pulpit Freedom Sunday”) and beyond. No more pussyfooting around those silly IRS rules or the First Amendment. Push for “right thinking” candidates from every pulpit.

Naturally, the Americans United for the Separation of Church and State have responded with Project Fair Play to try to bring awareness of this action to the people, and the clergy, of what the repercussions of this movement might be.

But then we have this apparently left-field selection for GOP-VP, pert and perky fundamentalist Sarah Palin. Does it seem to you as if she were tailor made for the Pulpit Initiative? What other qualification does she have?

As part of this initiative, fundamentalist groups are challenging the IRS’ right to restrict the direct political action of not-for-profits. They claim that tax-free organizations should not be restricted from direct political action. Basically, they want representation without taxation, claiming it as an inalienable right. My guess is that they are hoping to take it to the Supreme Court, before Obama gets to pick a judge.

Keep up with the latest news on it here.

I was reading Friendly Atheist this morning, and found out that the DNC is preparing to start their convention (coronation ceremony?) with an interfaith religious service. (Link to the post) They invited representatives of several religions to speak, but explicitly denied access to any atheists, agnostics, pagans, spiritualists, or humanists.

In the comments it is discussed that atheists often fight to not have Atheism tagged as a religion, and so being actively excluded from a religious service should be applauded, not derided. But the counterpoint is that this is the opening ceremony of a government event, not a church service or private function. Therefore, shouldn’t the 10% of the public that do not believe in a particular god be represented?

Here is a petition to request that non-believers be represented to their representatives at the convention.

The chamber, flickering by massed candle light, is stuffy and just a bit noisy from all the shfting fabric and heavy breathing, muttered comments and borborigmi. The couple in the opulent bed seem annoyed, but they’re forcing themselves to play along and be jolly. He manages—he’s been through this before, of course—but she is having difficulty with the idea of being unclothed before an audience.

“We must do this quickly and have done,” says he, “then they will leave us to our bliss.”

She eyes him suspiciously, then nods curtly, hikes up what little she has around her hips, scoots down, and spreads her legs.

Ponderously, he rolls atop her.

A minister, a member of Parliament, two servants, and a Duke move closer to observe.

“A little to your left, Highness,” says the Duke.

Everything slides home. The woman winces visibly (it doesn’t really hurt, but there is the expectation of virgin ritual to fulfill).

“It is done,” the minister says, whereupon the Master of the Chamber begins shooing everyone out of the room to leave the newlyweds alone.

Macabre? Loosely, we’ve just witnessed the wedding night of Henry the VIII and…well, one of the six. It was a State Affair, the First Time, and required witnesses. The realm must be assured that the king’s thing shot home into the queen’s vagina. All is well, the security of the state is assured.

This obsession with where penises go—or whether they go somewhere at all—has, you may rightly agree, no place in a democracy where the provenance of royal spoor has no bearing on state matters (unless one is unfortunate enough to stain a dress with it). In Henry’s day, however, the royals had far less privacy in the matter than the commoners. You would think we’d have learned by now that, really, where what part fits when and with whom is totally irrelevant to anything, well, National…

Not so. California has legalized Gay Marriage and some of its citizens are Up In Arms about it. So much so that they are trying to enact an amendment to ban it. Of course, they’re a bit embarrassed about it as they are now suing to remove the current wording from their Proposition 8, which is one of the more truthful and straightforward such ballots I’ve seen. It states currently that by voting for Proposition 8, the right to marry and be married will be removed from homosexuals—who currently enjoy that right in California. The proponents of Prop 8 call the wording “inflammatory” and want it changed. The problem is, that is exactly what Prop 8 will do.

So why the fuss? Well, they’re afraid such wording will cause people to reject it. It’s too rough, you see.

Personally, though, I think they are also just a bit embarrassed, because underlying this desire to strip gays of the right to marry is this same old pesky problem of where all those penises are going. We can’t crowd into the bedrooms of all these folks—especially since it looks like domestic surveillance might be curtailed again under the next president and Alberto Gonzales is no longer in the Justice Department to make sure our search for terrorists can also be used eventually to root out, you know, perverts—so the next best thing is to try to make sure what Those People are doing is in no way protected by law.

A stretch? Well, take a look at this from Osron Scott Card. I pick on this because Card is an excellent fiction writer who seems to have the ability to empathize (in his fiction) with those he does not agree with. In fact, a read of his novel Songmaster would lead one to expect a profound level of tolerance for alternative perspectives. And yet, compartmentally, he seems incapable of extending such tolerance to, well, reality.

But it is his claim that such legalization of gay marriage is a threat to democracy that I think is interesting. This is another in the long conservative argument over Legislation from the Bench—which they hate when liberals do it, but then they do it themselves all the time in the guise of Strict Constructionism. So this would be great for them—enact a constitutional amendment which would bypass legislative bodies and allow a conservative court to strike down majority mandates based on constitutional law that can be construed as Founding Intent.

It is such a tortuous road, though, for such a silly prejudice. Do people really concern themselves with what other people do with their parts? Does it matter where someone else’s penis goes as long as such use conforms to laws that apply to everyone (statutory rape, forcible rape, etc)?

Maybe it is does. I know it concerns me where mine goes. But I always thought that was a strictly private matter. Maybe I’m wrong.

Have things changed since 1966? Those of us alive back then (I was ten in 1966) might need to think back before answering yes. Things must have changed since then, but in what ways? Let’s see . . . there were no personal computers. Color TV was a luxury. No astronaut had yet walked on the moon. People lived in much smaller houses closer to city centers.

I was at a courthouse in St. Clair County, Illinois, today when it hit home in another way. Take a look at this photo of the membership of the St. Clair Bar Association in 1966 (I took a photo of a big photo). Notice the total lack of women. Notice the almost total lack of any lawyers other than those who were Caucasian males.

It is so incredibly different now. Now, approximately half of all law school students are women and more than ¼ of all practicing lawyers are women. Currently, about one law student in five is non-white.

I’m not trying to pick on St. Clair County. I’m certain that the demographics of lawyers were similar in many other places back in 1966. Back then, no matter where you lived, being a lawyer almost guaranteed that you were a white male.

I’m 52 now, yet 1966 doesn’t seem like a long time ago. By the time I entered law school in 1978, it was no longer unusual to see women and minorities in law school classes. Things have changed dramatically, but it wasn’t an obvious change while it happened. In the case of the demographics of lawyers, it is all for the better.

Incremental change can be statistically dramatic, yet invisible.

This testimony by John Yoo is disgraceful on many levels.   Yoo was commenting (or, rather, refusing to comment) on his previous “work” in Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.  Of course, in this Think Progress video, Yoo is doing his best to uphold the disgraceful actions of his former boss, George W. Bush.  He’s doing this by refusing to answer a simple question.

Andrew Sullivan adds this footnote.

The “bipartisan” telecom immunity bill is about to be made law.  It contains a specific provision granting amnesty to the telecoms which has been titled “”Protection of Persons Assisting the Government.”  How bad is this new law?  That depends on how badly you prefer that Courts be open and accessible to citizens.  You see, the proposed law provides for secret dismissals of lawsuits.

Glenn Greenwald has written a scathing review of the bill at Salon:

Perhaps the most repellent part of this bill (though that’s obviously a close competition) is 802(c) of the telecom amnesty section. That says that the Attorney General can declare that the documents he submits to the court in order to get these lawsuits dismissed are secret, and once he declares that, then: (a) the plaintiffs and their lawyers won’t ever see the documents and (b) the court is barred from referencing them in any way when it dismisses the lawsuit. All the court can do is issue an order saying that the lawsuits are dismissed, but it is barred from saying why they’re being dismissed or what the basis is for the dismissal.

So basically, one day in the near future, we’re all going to learn that one of our federal courts dismissed all of the lawsuits against the telecoms. But we’re never going to be able to know why the lawsuits were dismissed or what documents were given by the Government to force the court to dismiss the lawsuits. Not only won’t we, the public, know that, neither will the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Nobody will know except the Judge and the Government because it will all be shrouded in compelled secrecy, and the Judge will be barred by this law from describing or even referencing the grounds for dismissal in any way. Freedom is on the march.

Unbelievable . . .  Not Greenwald who is an astute and highly credible media critic.  I’m reacting to the proposed law.

I highly recommend visiting Salon for a review of Greenwald’s entire article.

In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against the government in the case of Boumediene v. Bush, finding that the detainees at Guantanamo Bay have the right to file habeas corpus petitions in federal court. This decision strikes down a key section of the Military Commissions Act, the horrible piece of legislation passed by Congress in October 2006 that sought to condemn detainees to indefinite imprisonment with no real right to challenge their detention.

The MCA provided only for “Combatant Status Review Tribunals”, a farce trial that makes a mockery of the protections given by the Constitution to an accused person. Detainees are tried before military officers, rather than neutral judges. In these tribunals, they have no right to a lawyer, they can be barred from seeing the evidence against them, and they cannot call witnesses in their defense. In a number of cases, when the first CSRT concluded an inmate was not an enemy combatant, the government simply ignored the ruling and convened a second one to reach the decision it preferred.

These inquisitorial, rigged “trials” give further evidence of why the writ of habeas corpus is so vitally important. For over 700 years, it’s protected people against arbitrary and capricious imprisonment by their government. By forcing the government to publicly show the reasons why it has detained someone before a neutral magistrate, habeas corpus turns imprisonment into a tool of justice, rather than a tool of tyranny.

The U.S. Constitution provides that Congress may suspend habeas corpus, but only in cases of “rebellion or invasion”, when it is vital to protect public safety. Clearly, neither of these conditions is in effect at the moment. Thus, the MCA’s suspension of habeas corpus for detainees was unconstitutional, and the Court was absolutely in the right to strike it down.

The prisoners at Guantanamo Bay have been in detention, in some cases, for over six years without ever being given the chance to prove their innocence. The Bush administration’s attempt to put them into a legal black hole, beyond the reach of all law, is anathema to everything the American justice system stands for. It’s long overdue that this injustice was corrected. If any of these detainees are terrorists or have committed war crimes against the United States, then let the government prove that in a court of law. Our justice system has served us well against those who would harm us for over two hundred years, and it will continue to do so. On the other hand, if any of these detainees are innocent - a very likely circumstance, given the dragnet-like way in which they were swept up - then their detention is an outrageous evil, and they should immediately be released.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the majority opinion, concluded that neither the President nor Congress may “switch the Constitution on or off at will“. The Court rejected the legal fiction that, because Guantanamo Bay is technically part of Cuba, the detainees have no recourse under the U.S. Constitution.

This is a great victory for due process and for the American legal system, and a bright day for friends of liberty everywhere. The only dark spot on this decision is that it was by a narrow, 5-to-4 majority. (Scalia’s dissent begins “America is at war with radical Islamists” and goes on to cry about how the terrorists will kill us if we don’t lock people up indefinitely with no trial. I am not joking.) If John McCain is elected president and has the chance to make the next few appointments to the Supreme Court, the fragile constitutional bulwarks which still stand against arbitrary government power will be in extremely serious jeopardy.

What can you do if the police dig through your garbage without your permission?   You  get even by digging through their garbage.   Willamette Weekly published this article back in 2002. Their idea was both simple and effective.  Whose garbage did they investigate?:

We chose District Attorney Mike Schrunk because his office is the most vocal defender of the proposition that your garbage is up for grabs. We chose Police Chief Mark Kroeker because he runs the bureau. And we chose Mayor Vera Katz because, as police commissioner, she gives the chief his marching orders.

The first two of these three had publicly proclaimed that it was OK for the police to invade a woman’s privacy by digging through her garbage.  This is a well-written piece demonstrating that revenge is, indeed, a dish best served cold.

Apparently the Pacific Justice Institute is suing a couple of Berkeley professors for putting up a website that explains evolution. The PJI apparently sues anyone who might constrain Christian evangelism in America, including in public schools. I read about this current suit here, on CitizenLink.org.

CitizenLink is a newsletter for Focus on the Family, a non-profit political action group for Pro-Life, evangelical Christian, and/or Young Earth education policies, but with redeeming social action programs. As long as they don’t mention candidates by name, they don’t have to pay taxes.

The legal claim is that evolution is a faith-based idea, and that the professors used Federal Grant money (National Science Foundation grant no. 0096613) as part of the funds needed to develop the site. Apparently the site disregards Creationist sources and ideology, and as such is religiously biased and violates the separation clause.

www.UnderstandingEvolution.com is full of references and citations, explanations, illustrations, and teaching guides to try to lead one to an understanding of many facets of what evolution is, and how it affects, well, everything. Topics include easy to follow answers for skeptics, like “How does evolution impact my life?”, “What is the evidence for evolution? ” and “What is the history of evolutionary theory?”. There are guides for teachers at all levels.

As such, this site has been a thorn in the side of Intelligent Design since 2004. Let’s see how much mainstream press this current nuisance suit attracts.

We have a nice brewery run by the Schlafly family in our town. A town already renowned for beer. But a relative by marriage is more famous than the beer because of her stance against women’s rights and against progress through knowledge. Yes, Phyllis Schlafly is in the local news with a new controversy. In brief, this Washington University Alumna has been offered an honorary degree, and the faculty is in an uproar.

Why? After all, my own commencement speaker (honoree of the year) at that institution was Bob Hope. He claimed to be the most degreed high school dropout in the world at that time. The link above goes to the article containing the full text of a scathing letter by the faculty about the choice of Schlafly, specifically from the Law School. The flap is because the faculty thinks that honoring an outspoken anti-intellectual with another degree would demean an institution of learning. At least Bob Hope says silly things on purpose.

Our own Erich had put a response up there, but I found the post it by browsing news involving Creationism, another educational priority of Ms. Schlafly. Quoth he:

The problem is that if Ms. Schlafly completely had her way, core values of true academics, including skepticism and tolerance, would be extinguished. Under those conditions, Washington University would cease to exist.

According to this article, essentially copied from the AP, Adnan Oktar, who writes as Harun Yahya, has been convicted of fraud. His extensive organization has the goal to persuade the world (or at least the schools therein) of the Truth of Young Earth Creationism, as revealed in the Bible. In his case, he began by defending Islam against that Christian Evolution Conspiracy. But he also publishes books for the YEC Christian market in which he substitutes the return of Jesus for the coming of Mahdi.

I’ve read that he does produce beautiful books in support of his ideas. I expect him to get out on appeal of his apparently politically motivated incarceration. Then he and his followers around the world will continue to produce high class anti-science textbooks the like of which the Discovery Institute only wishes they could produce.

In the April 24, 2008 edition of Nature (available online only with a subscription), it is reported that the Swiss Federal Government has issued guidelines to help granting agencies “decide which research applications deeply offend the dignity of plants.” Those studies that fail to treat plants with “dignity” won’t be funded.

This is not a spoof report.  It is real, and this new requirement has many scientists wondering what it could possibly mean to consider the “dignity of plants.”

The Swiss Ethics Committee has offered little guidance to this point, but suggests that genetic modifications causing plans to “lose their independence” by “interfering with their capacity to reproduce” could be suspect.  This leaves many plant geneticists wondering whether there is now a problem with traditional plant hybridization.  For instance, roses require male sterility.  The article raises the question of whether the development of seedless fruits is now unethical in Switzerland.

This article leaves me wondering what new ethics guidelines we’ll see next.  Perhaps there will be a new law requiring the ethical treatment of non-living things, such as rocks, clouds or spoons.  Perhaps there will be new labor restrictions imposed to keep us from abusing our computers by constantly giving them keyboard commands or by making them work more than forty hours per week.

Yall might could be tiring of my babbling on about Bible study in science classes. But I shall continue. According to this article, Louisiana has, and Florida still may pass amendments to their education codes to give free reign to teachers who choose to use texts other than (and conflicting with) science books to teach biology in science classes. Although these remarkably similar bills don’t actually mention the Bible, Creationism, nor their apparent origin from the Discovery Institute, their intent is clear.

I’ve been following this issue for a while (here’s one of my earlier posts), and continue to find it disturbing.

The main argument they make is that nothing is “proven” in science. Dedicated and well educated scholars have been trying diligently for over 200 years to disprove evolution. Yes, the battle predates the birth of Chas. Darwin! So far, no luck. Every piece of evidence and each new tool reinforces this theory. But with shrewd political action, the anti-science crowd could win enough popular support to hide the actual science from American kids. Theocracy, here we come!

If Pope Urban VIII (nee Cardinal Mafeo Barberini) had the political clout of American Fundamentalists, the Copernican/Galilean theory of heliocentrism might still be challenged in schools.

It seems to me that Darwinism is to this election cycle as Family Values and Abortion have been to previous ones. There has been a recent rash of books and now a movie all pointing out how a conspiracy of elites are following the Darwin manifesto to create a facist atheist state.

Am I overstating it? Read this criticism (including their own release blurb) of Ben Stein’s new movie, “Expelled”. This movie about how bully tactics are what keeps the theory of evolution uncontested is scheduled for a mid-April release. But is already playing to mega-churches and closed-door sessions of school boards and state legislatures. Mainstream press has not yet officially had access to it.

Legislatures? According to NowPress.com in this short article:

The invitation to “Expelled” is just for legislators and their spouses, along with legislative aides. The press and public is excluded.

House Minority Leader Dan Gelber, D-Miami Beach, asked House general counsel Jeremiah Hawkes if that’s legal — since Florida law requires open meetings whenever two or more lawmakers meet to discuss pending business. Hawkes replied that, as long as they just watch the film and don’t discuss the issue or arrange any future votes, it’s technically legal.

Why? Because Florida just modified its education policy to require the Evolution to be mentioned in biology classes as a Scientific Theory. Two representatives have now introduced bills that would allow teachers to present discussion of “Intelligent Design” in science classes. The Florida Family Policy Council (one of the many branches of Focus on the Family) is the group sponsoring the showing.

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We do many inefficient things.  Why don’t we simply do those things differently, in a more efficient way?  Often, we don’t change things because we’ve done them a certain way for so long that it would take too much time and psychological effort to do them in new ways, even though the new ways would be easier and more inefficient in the long run.

The QWERTY keyboard is a great example. We could rearrange our keyboards, which would cause us to struggle with our new configurations for a few months or years, but then we’d all be better for the change.  We don’t do this, however.  It would take too much initial effort.

Scientific theories are quite often strained by the discovery of new evidence that doesn’t fit the theory, yet we cling to the old inadequate theories.   This is another tendency toward path dependence.   For example, until the 17th century, “epicycles” were used to explain the perceived retrograde motion of planets and stars.  Epicycles were finally discarded in response to Kepler’s work.   Philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn pointed out that scientific progress does not occur smoothly, but rather in the form of periodic revolutions that that he termed paradigm shifts. The fact that scientists tend to hold onto old unworkable theories longer than they should can be seen as another manifestation of path dependence.

It would make a lot of sense to simplify the spellings of many words used in the English language.  We don’t do this, however.  It would take too much time and effort in the short run, even though it would be well worth our while in the long run.  And shouldn’t we all switch over to a universal language, so everyone could understand everyone else?  Esperanto, anyone?

We don’t have the determination to make many long-term improvements due to the time and energy it would take to make the short-term change.

I thought of path dependence yesterday when I drove past the campus of St. Louis University, a large Jesuit college in St. Louis, Missouri.  I attended the St. Louis University school of Law.  I know many people who have received fine educations from St. Louis University.  I know that many of the people associated with University are good-hearted people who do wonderful things for the community.  On the other hand, St. Louis University is a school based upon an unsubstantiated belief that a bloody crucifixion occurring 2000 years ago “saved” humankind.  What does my well-reputed school of law have to do with claims that a man/God visited Earth to save his wretchedly undeserving children?  Many people would say nothing at all. The Law School is attend by many students who don’t believe in the divinity of Jesus. It could be argued that the education provided by the St. Louis University School of Law could equally be provided by a university that didn’t make any claim that a man named Jesus rose from the dead.  After all, I attended law school for three years and never once heard Jesus discussed in any law school class.  So, why is it that a law school that teaches nothing about Jesus is considered to be a Jesuit law school?  Good question.  I consider it to be another manifestation of path dependence.  The buildings and administration of an existing Jesuit college simply made for a good foundation for the Law School.  The Jesuits would argue that the SLU School of Law is as good as it is because it is Catholic.  They would hear some good arguments that this is not the reason from some of the many fine law schools that are not Catholic, however.

Speaking of law, the legal principle of stare decisis holds that an ongoing legal dispute should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that way.   (more…)

I received this email from a regular reader in response to one of my responses to my Creationism in Florida Schools post:

“The real question that comes to my mind after reading this St. Petersburg Times poll is, should we allow popular demand to decide what is taught in science classes?”

How about for deciding what is taught in science, deciding tax policy, setting social programs, setting foreign policy, etc., etc., etc.? Should we allow popular demand to decide for these as well? I think we currently do, and I think it is with the same disastrous results. The next logical question is how should we pick the deciders? The problem is, we will never mo