Today, the Boston Globe reported that NASA is "canceling or delaying a number of satellites designed to give scientists critical information on the earth's changing climate and environment." The paper further reports that The space agency has shelved a $200 million satellite mission headed by a Massachusetts Institute of Technology…
The Onion does it again. All of you old-fashioned scientists should take a look and learn a thing or two.
A few years ago I had an extended conversation about gay people with an evangelical man in his mid-50s. I thought that this conversation might be illuminating, in that this fellow is a decent fellow in many ways. He would make a nice neighbor, for instance. He works hard, pays his taxes, makes contributions to poor people, loves his children and abhors bigotry, at least when it involves blatant discrimination of African-Americans. On the other hand, he is deeply troubled with the “problem” of gays. For purposes of this post, I will refer to him as “Donald.”
Here’s how the conversation went:
Do gays choose to be gay? Donald is really perturbed that some people choose to engage in homosexual sex as a matter of sexual variety or perverted fun. On the other hand, he does acknowledge that there are numerous gay people who have not chosen to be gay. They were born or raised in such a way that they turned out “differently.” Donald admits that they had no choice. They have innocently found themselves attracted to members of the same sex. I asked Donald whether his God created them this way, and he shrugged.
Donald admits that many heterosexuals engage in sex that he considers degenerate or immoral. This would include oral sex, anal sex or S&M for example. Donald reluctantly admits that these people should nonetheless be allowed to marry. People who do not want to have children or who physically can’t have children should also be …
We’ve recently raised a few issues regarding justifications for bigotry. What especially rankles some of us is the often-heard argument that people should do something a particular way (recently, the issue is preventing gay marriage) because that is the way that it has been done in the past.
What a ridiculous-sounding principle on which to base an argument! Ridiculous sounding, unless you are a lawyer arguing an important case. In courtrooms across this country, multitudes of lawyers lawyers stand up every day with straight faces and proceed to argue to judges that a case should be decided a particular way solely because a previous and similar case was handled that same way.
In law, this principle that judges should rely on precendent is given the obscure and mysterious-sounding label “stare decisis,” from the Latin, “stand by the thing decided.” [Stare decisis et non quieta movere, meaning “to stand by the decisions and not to disturb settled points”].
There is the great power in this heuristic. At least it’s an equal opportunity principle: Analogizing to old cases is a technique that can be used by crafty opportunists, as well as good-hearted seekers of justice.
Though we are tempted to scoff at this principle (of relying on precedent) when it is employed by bigots, we need to keep things in context. That very same principle is the heartbeat of justice. How strange, you might think, that such an amoral principle determines outcomes of important cases! That’s the way it is, however. I’ll …
Gays' enjoyment of drinking fountains undermines MY enjoyment of drinking fountains. Therefore, we need a "Defense of Drinking Fountains" Amendment to the United States Constitution. I'm simply extending this Administration's logic, you see. As Mr. Bush said “Our policies should aim to strengthen families, not undermine them. And changing the…