THE HAMMER IS MOVING

Okay, after a couple days of dinking around with WordPress, I'm moving the blog over there. Please change all your bookmarks and RSS feeds accordingly.

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Todd

Trying out Word Press

Hey gang,

For numerous reasons, I've decided to maybe move my blog over to WordPress. Mainly it has to do with the addition of categories for indexing/archiving/searching and the ability to pingback and trackback more easily. If I learn how to do it, it'll also be more flexible and customizable, but there'll be a learning curve. Check it out and give feedback either there or here if you have a preference one way or the other. For most of you, it probably won't make a difference.

Todd's Hammer on WordPress

Todd

Women, Priesthood and Religious Struggle

Having been raised in a religion that demands obedience and deference to leaders, I find the internal strife of the Episcopal Church U.S.A. refreshing. The threat of schism has been looming since the Diocese of New Hampshire elected Gene Robinson to its bishopric. Yesterday, the American Episcopal church elected Katharine Jefferts Schori to be the Primate of the American church, to serve a term of 9 years. At least three diocese of the church who do not recognize the ordination of women have decried the retreat from tradition and have even said that Bishop Jeffrets Schori won't be welcome in their churches.

All of this, however, feels exciting to me because the structure of the church is so much different from the Mormonism I grew up with. Here you have a group of people who are actually struggling with each other over what compassion means, what the message of Jesus actually was, what it means to embrace our humanity and extend an arm of welcome and love to the outcast of society. And in having that discussion, what does that mean for a 2000 year old religion, especially a religion, along with the other monotheisms, whose historical claims have been severely undermined in the past 25 years.

As someone who doesn't believe in a separate, transcendant, personal God and one who values and insists on evidence and rational thought for the establishment of knowledge, I still find a depth of possibilities in the Christian tradition, possibilities missed and denied by most Christian churches in America today. Perhaps the Episcopal church, and other denominations whose focus is on ethics rather than orthodoxy, are working out a Christianity that can still be relevant in the 21st century.

Salon.com's analysis struck a chord with me:

The struggle isn't just about gayness, of course, but, rather, a more fundamental conflict between believers who crave certainty and those who embrace ambiguity; those who insist Scripture is inerrant and unchanging, delivered once and for all time, and those who believe the Bible is only part of God's ongoing revelation. The struggle is also about how to define a Christian: as one who seeks to keep religion “pure” or one who welcomes outcasts. It's hardly a conflict unique to Anglicanism or, for that matter, Christianity. As Chris Linzey, an English priest who edited a book on Anglicans and homosexuality, wrote, “The agenda of conservatives is a rolling one: today it is gays, but biblical inerrancy, interfaith worship, women bishops, remarriage after divorce will surely follow. The logic of all purity movements is to exclude.”

[...]

And yet God, according to the stories we know, tends to show up in the most unlikely places: in humiliated, unclean women, in helpless babies, speaking in ways that upset the established order and turn tradition on its head. As with Bishop Robinson, Jefferts Schori may provoke schism, and further dismembering of a denomination that has shakily held together despite differences in style, politics and theology. But she may also be a reminder that the institution of the church -- of any human religion -- is, finally, so much smaller than the promise it embodies.

My One and Only Post about the Da Vinci Code's Idiocy

The book was horrible. I couldn't make it past the first two pages. Among the worst prose I've read in my life.

The movie was boring. Except for the hot british guy (Paul Bettany) made up like a homicidal albino standing naked in front of the mirror to beat himself...with a flog! Dirty monkies...




But I digress...

While perusing Butterflies and Wheels this morning, I happened upon a scathing critique of western culture for even giving Dan Brown the time of day, by Joseph Hoffman, head of the Center for the Scientific Study of Religion. The concluding paragraph of “Death by Da Vincititis: Of Professorial Pimps and Humanist Harlots” says it all:

I once cringed to read Robert Heinlein’s judgement, that, “The difference between science and the fuzzy subjects is that science requires reasoning while those other subjects merely require scholarship.” Yet what hope is there even for the fuzzy subjects if specialists market their wares with an indifference to “certainty” - imperfect as it may be in history - and a contempt for judgement? And what hope for the fuzziest of thinkers outside the academy when scholars at some of our best universities convince themselves that their badly reasoned judgements are as good as true because they conform to a social matrix in which truth is a negotiation about facts. The Da Vinci Code says nothing so loudly as that the academy, which once rewarded caution as much as originality, has arrived at Hannah Arendt’s endpoint, where the choice is between the original and the irrelevant, and where what passes for learning “is the development of a pseudo-scholarship which actually destroys its object.”

The Meaning of a University Education (Musings after the BYU Thread)

A friend introduced me to a fantastic web site this morning called Butterlies and Wheels. Ophelia Benson and Jeremy Stangroom, the authors/editors of the web publication (philosopher of science and a social scientist, respectively) seek to counter pseudoscience, politically and ideologically motivated research, and what they call “epistemological relativism” (which is fancy philosopher-speak for some of the more problematic positions of postmodernism).

The stie's response to Nielsen's dismissal fascinated me, as it focuses more on the issues that I've been trying (unsuccessfully) to express about the learning environment at BYU, rather than on Nielsen's dismissal itself. Benson and Stangroom write a detailed analysis of BYU's policies on academic freedom and the university's practices in “Truth and Consequences at Brigham Young.”

All of us here would agree that Nielsen's dismissal is not a surprise and that BYU has the legal right to dismiss an adjunct professor (don't get me started on the part-time academic proletariat; see Trevor Dodge's arguments for a good intro). Many of us would disagree about whether or not the legal right to dismiss a professor means that BYU morally should have dismissed him.

The problem that I have, which has been surfacing over in the “Fired” thread is a larger issue with the quality and meaning of University education in general, and BYU, as a particularly rigid university, highlights the problems and conflicts within universities that damper or outright shut down the search for truth, which should be the hallmark of higher education.

Realistically, I know that in the society we live in, most (if not all) students are mostly concerned about their futures. They live in a world where college graduates make more the 25% more than non-college graduates. And a college degree is for the most part an entrée into the Professional Managerial Class (i.e., the dominant cultural class, but not the ruling class) of the United States. These practical concerns are understandable, especially given that the PMC is the only non-rich segment of the American population to have experienced an increase in their standard of living since 1973 The PMC make up about 15% of the population, with combined household incomes of between 80K and 140K per annum; households over 150K/year, the “wealthy” classes, are about 5% of the population. All this to say I understand my students' social and economic pragmatism.

However, I'm not ready yet to give up my idealism that a University Education can actually mean something more, a place where students come to explore their world, try on new ideas, examine human diversity, etc. And i believe that so far in human history, even with all its limitations and social problems, the University is the best place for the production of knowledge.

Benson and Stangroom point out that conducting solid research is completely possible while holding religious beliefs. The problem is how a religious university enacts the balance they have between their religious and academic missions. Interestingly, BYU divides academic freedom into two parts, the “individual” and the “institutional.” This is done, basically, in order to justify, within the rules of the university, the dismissal of professors for reasons beyond the value or their scholarship or the quality of their teaching. To wit, professors may not contradict or question LDS doctrine, they may not deride or attack the church, and they may not violate the “honor code.” B&S explain:

It’s obvious that such a policy is bound to result in problems. Scholars working in the humanities or the social sciences are very likely to be inquiring into subjects that could bring them into conflict with the specified limitations on academic freedom. This is especially the case since the limitations are vague enough so that what the BYU authorities consider to be a violation might vary over time, and from case to case, and that faculty might not be clear anyway that particular views or activities are unacceptable.

In other words, BYU is following its own policy quite clearly and has set it up to maintain the kind of tightly controlled intellectual environment they desire. B&S point out that there is no evidence that the faculty in general are unhappy, as most of them are believing Mormons with temple recommends, and so choose to be in that environment.

My concern, however, is more global. What happens to the quality of education when this kind of policy is enacted on its faculty? Furthermore, what is the quality of the education on a campus where 95% of the faculty are believing, temple-recommend holding members who agree with the policy and therefore do or say nothing that may be challenging to the world views of their students? Isn't that the very nature of a university education? To have our foundations laid bare and examined?

To be fair, that did happen to me as a student at BYU, but not necessarily because of the classroom (although I did have some excellent teachers at BYU, across disciplines). It happened to me because my personal experiences of god and my sexuality were in such sharp contrast to my experience of mormonism at BYU. But then again, I was there as the purges were just beginning, and many of my professors have left or been kicked out since I graduated. Further, I was in the humanities. What if a student majors in computer science or engineering? Will they ever be exposed to a teacher or ideas that are challenging or critical or revelatory of the world we actually live in?

Is this whole issue really just about the choice whether or not to attend a religious university? B&S explain:

Thus, for example, the AAUP described a visit to the BYU campus at Provo as follows:

Many faculty members shared in some detail the narratives of their problems with academic freedom, reappointment, promotion, and tenure, frequently producing documents but asking that their names and identifying circumstances not be included in this report. At least two cases are in litigation against the university. Some cases involve issues of personal conduct that are under investigation and others focus on academic research that raises concern with the administration. Several creative artists in different fields told of pressures to alter works to meet unclear administrative agendas...Numerous women, some in groups and some alone, spoke to the investigating committee about the hostile climate for women on campus.[8]

Reading this, though, one is led to wonder quite what they expected. Religious doctrine is always contested; therefore, disputes about academic freedom are inevitable given the existence of a policy which prohibits overt doctrinal heterodoxy. But it must be said that for a professor at a religious university to complain about this situation is a little bizarre. It comes with the territory. If you’re working within the confines of a revealed truth, then there’s a lot you can’t say. Indeed, with regard to BYU’s antipathy towards certain kinds of feminism, it is not unreasonable to ask, though it certainly isn't politic, what exactly feminist scholars think they are doing working there in the first place? After all, the LDS Church is hardly covered in glory when it comes to its record on the rights of women.

The situation at Brigham Young University, then, is fundamentally about religion, and the pressure which the requirement for doctrinal orthodoxy, both in words and practice, exerts upon the faculty. Religion and the pursuit of knowledge, even a religiously circumscribed ‘knowledge’, are uneasy bedfellows, so it is entirely to be expected that the university faculty and administration get along with each other only uneasily.

And so, yes, perhaps it is simply about choosing to attend or work at a religious institution. You simply do so knowing fully before you enter what you are choosing--an environment that forecloses the search for truth where truth is already known and where you risk punishment for the slightest wiff of heterodoxy. Perhaps the best thing to come out of this latest in a long string of firings at BYU is, again, the public debate about what a University education should be like and what it is actually like at BYU.

Academic Freedom

In the now stunningly long thread about Prof. Nielsen's dismissal from BYU, much of the argument has been revolving around the issue of Academic Freedom. I've been trying to take large, complex issues and squeeze them into little blog comments, to little effect. And so I thought it would be worthwhile to put some great articles up here for those readers interested in thinking through issues of Academic Freedom with more care and detail.

First, an important print debate between David Horowitz (a right-wing culture crusader, and author of the so-called “Academic Bill of Rights” which would seek to exert state control over university education) and Stanley Fish (a long-time professor and university administrator and erstwhile commentator at the Chronicle of Higher Education).

The Chronicle's news article about the issue.

David Horowitz's, “In Defense of Intellectual Diversity”

and

Stanley Fish's “'Intellectual Diversity': The Trojan Horse of a Dark Design”

And finally, a couple weeks ago, Michael Bérubé delivered a speech to the AAUP in which he addressed the Horowitz campaign and the meaning of Academic Freedom in our current political climate, and the importance of defending academia from state control. [I would also highly recommend reading the comments section to Berube's piece.]

Michael Bérubé, “Academic Freedom Again”

These will give you a feel for the debates going on both within the academy and in state legislatures around the country right now. Hopefully, it will also illustrate what is at stake in this struggle and illuminate what academic freedom should actually be.

My New Boyfriend

I just got back from seeing Keeping Up With the Steins, with Matt Black, frequent commenter here at the Hammer. It's a sweet little film about a Jewish boy who is about to be bar mitzvoh'ed. The trailers make it seem like a rip-roaring comedy, but it's actually more about families, love and forgiveness. I willfully abandoned all good taste and bought the sappy story, hook line and sinker. The film also made me, yet again, long for that sense of tradition and cultural continuity across generations that are some of the things that I most admire about Judaism.

I forgave the film its maudlin moments, of which there were several, and took pleasure in the idea that people can love each other, that there is forgiveness, and that there really are men that HOT. Through the entire movie, I just kept wishing that I could meet Jeremy Piven, that he would be a raging homo and that he would fall madly in love with me so we could live together happily ever after, and, you know, do what people in love do.

Homosexuality Is Not Pedophilia (In Case You Didn't Know That Already)

Earlier today, a guest raised a morality argument about homosexuality by conflating it with pedophilia, a favorite and hateful red herring of the conservative anti-gay agenda. Here is a modified version of something I wrote for another forum when someone posed the question whether it is ethical or worthwhile to compare homosexuality to pedophilia, even if the two are apples and oranges. I'm sure most of you can skip this post, as you already understand how ridiculous this conflation is, but recently I've been having a lot of believing and practicing Mormons stopping by, so I figure it is worth rehashing some of this publicly.

When is it a useful and meaningful project to compare homosexuality with pedophilia? Or is it always inappropriate, given their incommensurability as categories?

1. The problem is that since the mid-19th century, homosexuality has been conflated in the Western mind with pedophilia, because many of the early sexologists mis-categorized homosexuality as a psychopathology. To be fair, some sexologists (e.g., Havlock Ellis and Mangus Hirschfeld) understood quite early that homosexuality was not pathological, and made arguments for its naturalness and the rights of gay and lesbian individuals and even transgendered people as early as the 1910s. These researches figured out a long time ago that pedophilia was quite different. Unfortunately, in the public mind, especially where religion is involved, the conflation of the two has been long-lasting and intractable. “Save Our Children” is a favorite rallying cry of Christian anti-gay forces, from Anita Bryant to Pat Robertson to Russel M. Nelson (Mormon apostle). So when in the course of public discussions about gay rights people casually compare homosexuality and pedophilia, people accept the association as a given, without thinking about what they are saying.

Because of the refusal of such false and calomnous ideas to die, we live in a culture where we will inevitably have the conversations comparing pedophilia to homosexuality. [We should also be comparing to heterosexuality, but that doesn't happen.] And so I say, in the words of our fuhrer, W., Bring It On. Let's have the argument, and once and for all dislodge this bit of deeply harmful bullshit from our collective consciousness.

2. If you frame the comparison as the etiology of homosexuality vs. that of pedophilia, it seems like an incomplete question. If pedophiles are claiming that their sex acts are the result of a 'sexual orientation' and not a socio-pathology, then pedophilia must be compared to heterosexuality as well. Whether or not it is a sexual orientation comparable to homosexuality/heterosexuality is a valid scientific question that can be researched. I won't rehearse all the data in detail, but I will point out the basics. Whereas homosexuals and heterosexuals have no demonstrable socialization commonalities as groups, pedophiles do; and whereas both homosexuality and heterosexuality are demonstrably heritable, no studies have found any evidence of heritability among pedophiles.

What emerges among pedophiles is a picture of idividuals who are sociopathic. Some kinds of sociopathology are biological (faulty frontal lobes, usually); but other kinds are acquired and/or learned. In the case of pedophiles, they share almost universally histories of childhood violence (not necessarily sexual) and as an adult, the need to control or hurt using sex as the weapon. Pedophilia almost always manifests as a pathology that seeks to control its object. Key here, these are similar pathologies as those found in other sexual criminals, such as serial rapists or spousal abusers.

To return to the question at hand, to make comparisons among heterosexuals, homosexuals, and pedophiles is a perfectly legitimate thing to do scientifically. In fact, we learn alot from doing so. We learn that pedophiles actually are a different category altogether from the basic sexual orientations of heterosexuality and homosexuality, and in fact belong in the cateogries of criminal pathologies. You discover that pedophilia has the characteristics of rapists and spousal abusers, for example: 1) need to control, 2) inability to empathize, 3) the sincere belief that their victims “want it” or “deserve it”, 4) sexual pleasure from violence, etc.

This then helps us more clearly see that heterosexuality and homosexuality describe an individual's orientation separate from a sexual pathology. A heterosexual man, for example, can be a pedophile who preys on little boys; homosexual woman can be a spousal abuser.

In the end, the key thing to remember is that the conflation and comparison of homosexuality with pedophilia is a red herring at best, and a homophobic lie at worst the perpetuates hatred, fear, and violence against gay men and women.

Human Evolution (Book of the Week)

I didn't make it all the way through Theory and Reality yet, but will be picking it back up in a few days. I find the philosophies and arguments in scientific method to be stimulating, to say the least, but the reading is challenging me to rethink a lot of my treasured assumptions about research and science. So I needed to take a break. Here's the next book on my list:

“Human Evolution : An Illustrated Introduction” (Roger Lewin)

Roger Lewin has written a lot about the development of evolutionary theory and especially about the rapidly progressing field of human evolution. I just finished the first “unit” in this textbook this morning, and I'm really excited. I feel I finally get the relationship between macro-evolution and micro-evolution, and also finally understand the relationship between natural selection (gradualism) and punctuated equilibrium.

One of the things that really stood out to me in my emerging thoughts about the relationship between evolutionary theory and social theory, is the development of the theory of broad adaptation and distribution to avoid extinction. Although it sounds obvious, it took a while for scientists to build up the mathematical models and the evidence to support it. Basically, over the past 25 years or so, biologists and paleontologists have demonstrated that species that are broadly adapted (versatile) and can move from one ecosystem to another are less likely to go extinct; further, species with a broad geographical distribution are most likely to survive extinction events. Combine this with the notion that sometimes adaptations aren't the cause of speciation, but rather the effect of geographical separation and external pressures on a species. Scientists have also found that the related homonin species (radiated adaptation) were all increasing their brain size (encephalyzation) at the same time.

Which brings me to the no-shit conclusion that hominins' and eventually the genus Homo's brain size increased (timing appears to be after bipedalism) in a punctuated equilibrium mechanism that gave rise (quickly) to homo sapiens, with their big brains, producing an incredibly diverse species, capable of surviving in nearly any environment.

For me this is significant because it links human culture (knowledge, language, symbol systems, meaning) to humanity's nature: it is an adaptation. Culture, as powerful and amazing as it is, must not be seen as an ultimate cause (as it is often assumed to be in the humanities and social sciences); rather it must be seen as a kind of adaptive tool. This would explain, in evolutionary terms, how the findings of cognitive science (and the evolution of mind) overlap with social and cultural theory. Now what this all means, I'll have to figure out later.

Gay Pride

Last week, the City of San Francisco lined Market Street with Pride flags. Although ubiquitous, and somewhat garish, the flag evokes in me feelings hard to describe. Every year when the flags come out, I just have a feeling in San Francisco that I belong here and that I'm part of the social fabric. Gay men and women are ingrained in San Francisco's history and culture, dating back to the 1800s, but it's only been since AIDS that the city has recognized our presence.

I'm torn between the marketing of gay identity in the form of this flag, and the meaning of the flag itself and the association I have with it. In any case, Gay Pride month is here! Everybody par-tay!

BYU Professor Fired

[This is a continuation of the discussion about the BYU professor who protested the church's political and partisan backing of the Federal Marriage Amendment earlier this month. See my two previous posts, BYU Professor Speaks Out and BYU Professor, Part 2.]

The Salt Lake Tribune reported today that, as expected, Jeff Nielsen, adjunct professor of philosophy at BYU, was terminated based on his letter to the editor challenging the church's political stance on same-sex marriage. The termination letter from the department chair, Daniel Graham, read in part,

In accordance with the order of the church, we do not consider it our responsibility to correct, contradict or dismiss official pronouncements of the church. ... Since you have chosen to contradict and oppose the church in an area of great concern to church leaders, and to do so in a public forum, we will not rehire you after the current term is over.

I have an unverified letter from Nielsen responding to his termination. I'll get a citation as soon as I can and post it here. I thought Nielsen's thinking about the role of the church in the academic freedom of BYU to be worth putting up here for those of you concerned with issues of free speech, academic freedom, and the role of religion in American politics. I think it specifically illustrates the deep intellectual problems inherent in an institution of higher learning that tries to “serve two masters.” [Emphasis in letter mine]

June 13, 2006

Daniel W. Graham, chair
Department of Philosophy
Brigham Young University

Dear Dan,

I regretfully read your letter of June 8 informing me that because of my opinion piece in the Salt Lake Tribune of June 4, you have decided not to rehire me to teach the philosophy courses I had already been scheduled to teach through next year. I have only the utmost respect and admiration for you and for the students, faculty, and staff in the Philosophy Department at Brigham Young University. In my experience, the students and faculty have always been engaged and lively participants in the academic pursuit of truth. Now let me address some of the issues you expressed in your letter.

Church leaders have consistently opposed same-sex attraction and gay marriage. I have never agreed with this position believing that it was based in misunderstanding and in a purely human bias of cultural place and time and not reflective of divine will. Yet I have never publicly, or in the classroom, opposed their policy. Yet when church leaders take a political stand on a moral issue, then I am not only engaged as a member of the church, but also as an American citizen. As an American citizen, I publicly expressed an honest opinion contradicting a political statement by our church leaders. I fear for the church and the university if the time comes when the members of the church, including faculty at BYU, are not allowed to disagree, either in public or private, with political positions taken by the church. If such conformity is required, then we deserve to be called neither a church nor a university.

I also strongly disagree with the implications of your statement that faithfulness and loyalty to the church and church leaders never permits expressions of disagreement, or questioning of our church leaders - especially in an academic setting. Unquestioning acquiescence and blind loyalty to leaders in positions of power over human beings have no place in any institution of higher learning that values the pursuit of truth and search for justice. And in my mind, what is philosophy but the quest for truth and justice. I believe that there is great potential at BYU that will never be realized if the faculty, in certain areas of study, are limited in their research and work by the necessity of arriving at pre-approved answers given by church leaders.

Finally, when it comes to the sustaining of church leaders, I will always argue for the privilege of church members to examine, question, and dialogue with each other and with their leaders in order to genuinely sustain and support church doctrines and teachings. I do not believe that sustaining leaders requires either silent acquiescence or unquestioning conformity, but it does require active engagement with one another and with our church leaders, regardless of our place or position within church leadership hierarchies. If sustaining our leaders is to be real and genuine - not a sham as are elections in totalitarian governments - then members must be free to examine, question and benevolently criticize. Ultimately, I strongly believe that every person possesses the privilege to speak and the obligation to listen.

Again, I have only respect and admiration for you. I have enjoyed our association, and I also wish you the best.

Sincerely,

Jeff Nielsen

Democratic Culture

[In a comment to my last post, Mark asked some great questions and posed some interesting problems, and again, my response was long and I think merits its own post.]

First, “democracy”. You're right in its Greek meaning of “rule of the people.” However, in the implementation of democratic society in the modern era and in democratic theory since the Enlightenment, “democracy” has meant a lot more than that. We have about 300 years of thinking and working out how democracy can work, why it should exist, and what it should look like. But the old Greek notions are just that: old greek notions. To be more clear here, it is of utmost importance that we not confuse modern democracy with “rule of the majority.” Every modern democracy was actually founded as an effort to prevent the tyranny of the majority over the rights of the minority.

“Democracy as form of government”: As democratic theory developed, it was never seen as merely a form of government. Jefferson's writings on democracy reveal it to be a social structure and a value system; J.S. Mill saw it as a social system the maximized the search for truth and the freedom of the individual; and John Dewey saw it as a culture, with foundational values that precede the government. In other words, democracy is far more complex and much deeper than a form of government. The structural forms of democracy can be practiced in the most undemocratic of societies (e.g., voting in the old soviet union, or capitalism in present-day singapore).

There are actually a set of values that a civil society must have in place LONG BEFORE an effective democratic government (the actual institutions) can function. The evidence for this is in Iraq. They put the democratic structures in place without having a democratic civil society first. Without going into details, those basic values are Tolerance (for people who are different from you), Freedom (that you and all members of the society should be as free as possible) and Equality (that all members of the society are of equal value in the civil society).

The Harm Principle, as J.S. Mills called it, is the way that we should judge the rules of the civil society (or, the laws of the government). In other words, the harm principle is the means of evaluation of current or future laws. When a current law no longer meets the standards of the harm principle, it should be jetissoned; or if a future law will respect the harm principle and maximize freedom, equality, and tolerance, it should be adopted.

I did not mean to imply that the harm principle was the ONLY basis for a democratic society.

I do not think that a monarch could actually fully enact the harm principle (no matter how ethical he/she was), because he would ultimately have veto power on everything. democratic society and democratic harm principle does require that all members of the society are of equal value; I think a monarchy precludes that possibility.

Finally, the collective interest, or as democratic theorists usually put it, “the Common Good.” Yes, the common good must be weighed in the harm principle. I only focused on individual rights because that seemed more appropriate for the argument about homosexuality. An effective democracy balances the common good against individual rights. I've said elsewhere that I think America has too often erred in the direction of individual rights, to the detriment of our democracy. The purpose of a democracy is to maximize the possibility for all its members to self-actualize and to spend their lives exploring and expressing (jefferson called this “the pursuit of happiness”). If the common good is not balanced with individual rights, you end up with a society where some individual's rights are valued above whole swatches of society, who are left, for example, in poverty or working 80 hour weeks to feed their kids. That's not freedom and it sure as hell isn't the pursuit of happiness.

Finally, the harm principle does not preclude learning from experience or by trying things. Your point, by the way, is very Deweyan, which warms my heart. In fact, democracy opens up the possibility that we can constantly evaluate our society and system and institutions and change them as we need to. The harm principle is one of the values we (should) use to evaluate our democracy on an ongoing basis. Because things change, something that was perfectly fine in 1950 may be an egregious breach of harm in 2006; or vice versa. And you are right that our best calculation of harm will always be incomplete and inadequate. Democracy, again, is the best way to deal with this because, in an effective democracy, the social relationships are set up for constant evaluation and tweaking as we learn and change. Of the democracies of the world today, the United States is by far the least supple and least capable of such ongoing change. Our strong executive (the main anti-federalist argument in the 1780s) coupled with the lock-grip of a two-party system and a constitution nearly impossible to change means that we have easily the most unresponsive and static democracies on the planet. That it works at all is due mainly to tradition and culture, rather than effective structures.

In short, the harm principle does not require ominscience. In fact, the opposite: it requires that we face our uncertainty as a democratic civil society and that we be open to constant change, new knowledge and experience to move the civil society forward, by tweaking or changing the government as we need to to maintain our freedoms and maximize our “pursuit of happiness” at any given moment in the course of our history.

Gay Rights and Some Logical Fallacies

[A further refinement of my argument about the biological origins of homosexuality and their relationship to our current arguments about equality and freedom for gay men and women in the United States:]

Natural = Moral

This is called, loosely, the “naturalistic fallacy” (philosophers have tighter definitions of this fallacy, but this will do for my purposes). The naturalistic fallacy argues that something that is natural is necessarily moral. The fallacy does not mean that things which are natural aren't moral, just that they aren't necessarily so. There is also an inverse fallacy, the "moralistic fallacy," which is that the current moral construction of something in society is natural. Anti-gay forces make this moralistic fallacy in their assumption that their construction of morality (i.e., monogamous, sexually excluse, heterosexual, nuclear family unit) is necessarily natural. The naturalistic fallacy is made by the pro-gay advocates in defending themselves in the public sphere.

It is important to point out that in fact as the dominant cultural force and defenders of status quo, the anti-gay forces are the ones in the position to define the terms of the argument, and they have defined it around naturalness. Because they don't have scientific backing on their argument, for the past 10 years they've been trying to move away from it, but it is still at the core of their rationale for disallowing homosexuality and institutionalizing second-class citizenship.

The key problem with this whole line of reasoning and the whole question of morality in the public sphere is that democracies were set up on the principle that moral debates were private. The public sphere functions on determining harm and foreclosing or denying rights only when harm is the result. Harm in democracies has the narrowest of definitions, and means only the infringement of another individual's rights. This switch away from morality and religion, toward rational weighing of individual rights was a brilliant move which aimed to stop incredible amounts of violence which had been wracking Europe for a few hundred years at the time. One of the biggest problems with American democracy is that we've never fully enacted disestablishmentarianism (i.e., get the church the fuck out of my democracy).

In any case, although I think homosexuality is completely natural (that is, it's a biological part of the human phenotypic diversity), I think people should start screaming loud and long about the democratic harm principle. I challenge anyone to think of a rational reason why homosexuality should be in any way restricted (other than the ways that we would likewise restrict heterosexuality) and why homosexual persons should not receive equal treatment under the law, including all the same rights and privileges as hets. I have never heard a single compelling argument based in the democratic harm principle.

Anti-gay forces have three arguments: 1) it has ever been thus (revealing their utter ignorance of history and anthropology), an argument that is neither here nor there, as tradition is never an acceptable end-in-itself in a democracy; or 2) it's unnatural (revealing their utter ignorance of biology, genetics, evolution, anthropology) and therefore immoral, the naturalistic fallacy that is neither here nor there in democracy; or 3) god says so, but god has no place or power in a democratic public sphere. None of these goes to the harm principle, therefore none of them is acceptable reasons for the abridging of rights in a democracy.

[posted with ecto]

Biology and Homosexuality

[Allen Lambert responded in the comments section of the BYU Professor post, and I thought it would be useful to bring that to a main post because it is so lengthy and important. I'm not sure what piece of his Mr. Lambert is referring to, but I wouldn't have read it if it's not in a peer reviewed journal or published by a reputable press. I simply don't read religious anti-gay writings. Here's my response to his post:]

Mr. Lambert,

You are partially correct. There is no gay gene (at least none has been found so far) and hormones are not to blame (gay and straight people have indistinguishable hormone loads; although gay men recover much more slowly from a female hormone overload than do hetero men). However, biology is vastly more complex than this would imply. Genes act in cascades, more like a recipe than a blueprint; and they act in response to environmental influences, most notably here, the environment of the womb. Genes, cell growth and mutation, hormones, enzymes, proteins, aging, development, etc., all act in concert to create the phenotypical diversity of the human population.

Any one study on the origins of homosexuality or one line of thinking alone is not sufficient to indicate a biological etiology. However, taken together, the evidence is overwhelming that the homosexual phenotype is biological in origin (if expressed in vastly diverse ways among human populations).

Here's a brief rundown of the high-points:

1-Social scientific data: all societies ever studied have a minority population that is same-sex oriented (although they have different roles for such individuals and different meanings for such a sexuality). See the work of Stephen O. Murray for a run-down.

2-Zoological data: indicates that nearly all bird and mammal species have individuals in their population with preferences for sex with members of their own sex. See the work of Bruce Bagemihl for a summary of this data.

3-The Gay Gene: Dean Hamer and his colleagues found an area on gay men's x-chromosome that appeared to be passed on through the mother's line. However this line of research has not been able to be verified and appears to be a dead end for the moment.

4-Maternal pattern: However, the statistical relationship between the maternal line and gay sons conducted by Hamer has been verified numerous times. That is, homosexuality is not evenly distributed in the population, but is actually found to be more dominant in some families, and seems to follow the mother's line, indicating heritability.

5-Twin Studies: Early studies were faulty methodologically, but more recent studies, most notably those conducted by Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard, found that when one identical twin is gay, there is a 52% chance they other is also gay; one one fraternal twin is gay, there is a 22% chance; and one separate-birth sibiling is gay, only a 6-10% chance (i.e., the general population). This has been validated in over 14 different studies, and has been shown to hold true for both gay men and gay women. This indicates both heritability and that something environmental is at play (most likely developmental, that is, part of the process of fetal development). There has been more recent studies that have indicated that whether or not the twins share an amniotic sack basically clenches the deal. That is, when identical twins share an amniotic sack, they nearly always have the same orientation, gay or straight (I'll have to look up the authors of that study.)

6-Fraternal Birth Order: Dr. Ray Blanchard and colleagues discovered accidentally that with each subsequent male birth to a given women, the chance that the boy will be gay increases by about 30%. Older sisters do not affect the probability, only older brothers. Later studies found that whereas normally subsequent male births have higher birth weights, gay male births have lower birthweights. These studies have been reproduced and verified in numerous populations. They indicate again a heritability and a connection between the mother and the gay son. (This particular pattern does not hold true for lesbians.) Dr. Blanchard argues that this seems to indicate an immuno response in the mother (a genetic process) to a male birth. The most likely hypothesis from this data as it now stands and as we understand fetal development now is that when a child with a genetically possible phenotype of homosexual is in the womb of a woman whose genetic phenotype has an auto-immune response to a male fetus, the fetus will be homosexual.

7. Brain morphology: In the late 1980s, the first clues that gay men's brains me be morphologically similar to straight women's in certain key areas of the hypothalmus and pituitary first emerged (Simon LeVay). These human studies are problematic because they used cadavers for the experiments and its unethical to cut open live humans and measure their brains. However, recent work at Oregon State University has found that a small percentage of rams shows an exclusive preference for mounting other rams. Numerous experiments led these researchers to conclude that among sheep, there are indeed homosexuals. Part of their studies included researching their brain morphologies. The homosexual rams' brains were identical to the 'normal' rams' except in those key structures of the brain regulating sexual desire and response. Although these aren't human experiments, they support the older data gathered from human cadavers. Among biologists, similarities among mammals, although not conclusive, is highly suggestive; the OSU research adds weight to the highly controversial studies of Le Vay.

8. Fingers: In the late 1990s, a group of scientists (Terrance Williams, et al) found that the ratio of the finger length of the ring finger to the index finger was the same between straight men and gay women; and between gay men and straight women. The significance of this study is that we know very much about how finger lengths develop (the gene cascades that stop and start finger development in utero), and so given the corresponding ratios across sexual orientations, this indicates again a developmental component to homosexuality. These results have been verified and reproduced.

9. Pheromones: The pheromonal studies are quite recent, within the last 18 months, and were simultaneously conducted at a the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and another in the United States at the Monell center. They have repeated the experiments this past year, and are so far withstanding verification processes. Basically, gay mens brains respond to men's pheromones like straight womens; and gay women's brains respond to female hormones like straight men's. The U.S. study also found (accidentally) that gay men respond more strongly to other gay men; and that straight men respond the least to pheromones from gay men (i.e., the respond more to the pheromones of other straight men). [The weakness in these studies is that human pheromonal studies is tricky and its hotly debated whether or not humans have pheromonal receptors at all. The receptor in our nose was thought to be dormant for many years; but it looks like those were conclusions drawn without study and probably emerging from the old view that humans are “special” or “separate” from other mammals.]

These are just the high points and I haven't expounded all the arguments and data interpretation (this is, after all, a blog). Again, the point is that taken separately, none of these is sufficient to warrant the claim that homosexuality has a biological etiology; but taken together, they indicate both a heritability and a developmental component to sexual orientation development (in much the same way that height is determined by genetic predisposition in interaction with developmental factors): i.e., homosexual orientation is biological

POLITICAL IMPLICATIONS of the BIOLOGY OF HOMOSEXUALITY

And so I return to my original point, which is that for those of us in favor of full equality for gay and lesbian citizens, the argument over biology is merely academic and is useless in the public sphere. If we take the stance that it's biological, opponents of gay rights say “No it isn't, it's cultural.” If we say, sexuality is is cultural, the opponents respond, “It's immoral.”

And so it really comes down to a question of democracy. In a good democracy, the curtailment of rights must be backed by reasons, that is, arguments about the harm caused by allowing a particular behavior, belief or practice. These arguments about harm must withstand rigorous scrutiny, before anyone's civil rights may be abridged. For 55 years, the best argument that anti-gay forces have been able to mount is that it's offensive to them, that is, that it's different from the way they think things ought to be. That is simply not an acceptable democratic argument, inasmuch as one of the main purposes of democracy is to maximize individual freedom.

[posted with ecto]

Corporations Are Not Citizens in Humboldt County, Calif.

Measure T in Humboldt County, Calif., passed 55-45 last Tuesday. In a nutshell, a series of corporations have interfered in local politics since the late 1990s, and the citizens of the county took matters in their own hands a passed a law that contradicts a series of Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 1870s. [See Los Angeles Times article from June 8 and John Nichol's blog at The Nation.com.]

Given the current state of the courts in the U.S., it is highly unlikely that the law will withstand judicial review. If it does miraculously stand up in court, the problem will be that Humboldt County will be the only jurisdiction limiting corporate power in elections, and they will likely feel the impact. This kind of sweeping shift in the relationship between democracy and economy will only be effective in the United States if it is enacted globally, from sea to shining sea, so that various jurisdictions will have equal footing. This is already a problem with things like tax breaks and corporate benefits from local governments, where jurisdictions who can give the most money to the corporation are able to lure the company in; but this often has devastating effects in the long term on the tax payers in the jurisdiction.

What I love about Humboldt County's action is that it's so Jeffersonian. I have confessed here before that I'm a Jeffersonian at heart, ever since reading Richard K. Matthews' book The Radical Politics of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson argued that an effective democracy would only work in the long run at the level of local politics, where “ward republics” had radical democracy on the bottom, keeping the representational democracy on the top honest. He believed that the fundamental purpose of a democracy was to provide the best possible circumstances for human happiness, where happiness would have two facets. On one hand, public happiness would arise from the real participation in the society, really having a say and getting your hands dirty in working to create and maintain a society worth living in; public happiness comes from being recognized as a peer and equal among your fellow citizens. On the other hand, private happiness arises from the personal pursuits, such as intellectual or artistic development, conversation with friends, observing nature, playing with your children, becoming a better, more moral human being.

In order for an individual to both participate in the democracy and to seek personal freedom to develop the self, citizens must have leisure time. This is what undergird Jefferson's notion of an agrarian nation. He wasn't a romantic or taken with pastoral nostalgia; rather, he saw agrarian lifestyles as creating a population of people who were economically independent, and therefore free to participate in the public and seek person growth in private.

Having observed wage labor and combined wealth (i.e., corporations) at work in England, Jefferson feared (correctly) that the coming of corporations and wage labor system to American would create, instead of a free people, a society of de facto slaves to the pecuniary interests of the Owner Class. Wage labor would undercut real, material independence and, because wage laborers are dependent on owners and subject to the owners' whims, there would ultimately be no leisure time to, in any real sense, pursue meaningful happiness.

Obviously Madison's view of governmental organization won out in the framing of the constitution, and Hamilton's view of the economy won out during the first few administrations of the young nation, and so Jeffersonian Democracy died before Jefferson did. But United States (and other industrialized democracies) continues to question what the appropriate relationship between a capitalist economy and a real, responsive democracy should be. The U.S. has fallen far to the right of most industrialized nations, in a sort of “free-market fundamentalism.” The population of Humboldt County drew a small and relatively weak line in the sand, invigorated their democracy, and redefined citizenship within their jurisdiction. It is sad that American democracy is such that, for the time being, their efforts will most likely end in a glorious defeat.