Greta Christina's Blog

Multiple Marriage and the Texas Polygamy Case: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, about the Texas polygamy case. At first I didn't think I was going to write about it, since I didn't think I had anything original to say about it. (Pretty much what I had to say about it was, "Oh, my god, that is so awful.") But then someone asked me what I thought of the question of legalizing multiple marriage -- in general, as well as in light of the polygamy cults -- and I decided to write this piece. It's called, somewhat unimaginatively, Multiple Marriage and the Texas Polygamy Case, and here's the teaser:

One of the main objections to legalizing multiple marriage is that, in the world as it is today, multiple marriages tend to be abusive. Groovy polyamorous triads aren't the norm, the argument goes. The norm for multiple marriage, in this country and around the world, is coercive and abusive religious cults that effectively imprison women and children. And if we don't have laws against multiple marriage, these abusive cults will be legitimized, and there will no protection for their victims.

I’m not sure whether that's true or not. I don't know if anyone has ever done a good, careful study on the frequency of multiple relationships, either in this country or around the world, to see if the coerced cult variety really does outnumber the consensual free-adult variety. If there has been such a study, I haven't seen it.

But here's the point I want to make.

When the Texas polygamy compound got raided and arrests were made, nobody was charged with bigamy.

The charges so far have all been related to child abuse. And the case seems to be largely in the hands of Child Protective Services.

So how does the illegality of multiple marriage help the victims of these situations?

To read more, read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

The Texas Dildo Massacre, Or, Reason Number 2,767 Why Gay Rights Matter To Everyone

The Federal court decision that inspired this post happened a couple of months ago, when I first wrote it. But the issues it addresses are very much current and pertinent... not to mention a rare bit of good sex news in this crappy decade. So I'm reprinting it anyway. This piece was originally published on the Blowfish Blog.

As you've probably heard, the Texas law banning the sale of sex toys has been overturned.

This is excellent news, for all the obvious reasons. Most obviously, Texans can now buy and sell sex toys. People can now open sex toy stores in Texas, run fuckerware parties in Texas, sell sex toys to Texans through the mail without fear of entering murky legal waters. Woo-hoo! Go, Texans! (Good articles about it in the Austin-American Statesman, and in Dispatches from the Culture Wars.)

But I want to talk about one of the less obvious reasons why this is astoundingly, excitingly, kick-ass good news.

(Please note: I'm not a legal expert, and I'm definitely not an expert on constitutional law. These are simply the opinions of a smart lay person who’s been paying attention to this issue for a long time, informed by the opinions of people who are legal experts.)

The primary reason for the Texas sex toy ruling -- the main precedent cited -- was the 2003 Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence and Garner v. Texas, which overturned sodomy laws and legalized gay sex across the country. Now, Lawrence was important for sexual civil rights for a whole lot of reasons. Most obviously, it meant that nobody in the United States could be considered a criminal simply for having gay sex. And that has huge implications for things like custody rights, housing rights, employment rights, etc. Before Lawrence, gay people could be -- and were -- denied all sorts of basic rights... because, technically, they were criminals. Lawrence upended all that, and it was hugely important for that reason alone.

But this latest case -- the Texas sex toy case, Reliable Consultants and PHE v. Texas -- makes it clear that Lawrence has even broader implications... for everyone. Gay, straight, everyone.

The Texas sex toy case makes it clear that the Lawrence v. Texas ruling established a constitutional right to sexual privacy in the United States.

And that, people, is HUGE.

Before the Texas sex toy case, we didn't have that. You might have had it in the particular state you lived in -- we’ve had it in California since 1975, when the consenting adults law got passed -- but United States citizens did not have any constitutionally guaranteed right to sexual privacy until February 12, 2008.

And we have it now. Yes, the Federal courts have now said that you have a constitutional right to use a vibrator or a dildo. But so much more than that: the Federal courts have now said... well, let me quote briefly from the decision.

Just as in Lawrence, the State here wants to use its laws to enforce a public moral code by restricting private intimate conduct. The case is not about public sex. It is not about controlling commerce in sex. It is about controlling what people do in the privacy of their own homes because the State is morally opposed to a certain type of consensual private intimate conduct. This is an insufficient justification for the statute after Lawrence. (Emphasis mine.)

The Lawrence case didn't just say that gay sex couldn't be criminalized. It said that people -- all people -- have the right to engage in any consensual intimate conduct in their home, free from government intrusion. It said that people's sex lives are not their neighbors' business, not society's business, and most emphatically not the government's business. It said that the fact that the State doesn't happen to like a particular kind of sex doesn't mean they have a right to ban it, or indeed to have any say in it at all.

This case says, "Yup. That's what Lawrence meant, all right."

And that has enormous implications. (Assuming it gets upheld, of course; the decision could be appealed to the Supreme Court, and I haven't read anything yet saying whether or not it will be.)

It has implications for sadomasochists. Fetishists. Swingers. Any other sexual minority you can think of. If you're any of those things... you now have a legal right to it, anywhere in the country. And that's pretty darned important for all those custody rights and housing rights and employment rights and whatnot that we were talking about. It may wind up having implications for porn laws; if we our right to sexual privacy means we can have vibrators, it should mean we have a right to dirty movies as well. (It should have implications for the legalization of sex work, too; but alas, the rulings in both Lawrence and this case made a point of saying that the rulings don't apply to prostitution. Mistakenly, in my opinion.)

So here's the lesson for today. Apart from just, "Hooray for sex toys!" and "Hooray for the right to sexual privacy!"

The lesson for today: Gay rights are human rights.

Gay rights are everyone's rights.

And straight people have a personal vested interest in fighting for gay rights.

This is a point that sex advice writer Dan Savage has made on several occasions. He's pointed out that the right-wing homophobes who want to stop things like same-sex marriage are the exact same right-wing sex-phobes who want to stop things like birth control and sex education and abortion. Gay sexual rights are often on the cutting edge of sexual liberation... and they're often the first on the chopping block when right-wingers try to turn back the clock.

So I want all the straight people reading this to say a big, heartfelt "Thank You" to the people in the gay rights movement who fought so hard for so many years to get the Lawrence verdict. They are the people who, last week, gave you the right to own a dildo or a vibrator in every state in the country.

And I want you to promise to treat the fight for gay rights as if it were the fight for your own.

Because it is.

BTW, does anyone know the current status of this case? Is it being appealed, or is it standing? I Googled it, but couldn't find anything except on the original decision.

*****

Addendum: Important correction to the legal effects of this ruling in Jon Berger's comment below.

Onward Christian Soldiers: Theocracy and the U.S. Military

This one scares the bejeezus out of me.

A lot of atheist blogs have had this story. For some time now, actually, But the New York Times has finally covered the story, which seems like a good excuse for me to talk about it.

The Times headline sums it up pretty darned well:

Soldier Sues Army, Saying His Atheism Led to Threats

And here's a few pertinent quotes before I get into my analysis:

When Specialist Jeremy Hall held a meeting last July for atheists and freethinkers at Camp Speicher in Iraq, he was excited, he said, to see an officer attending.

But minutes into the talk, the officer, Maj. Freddy J. Welborn, began to berate Specialist Hall and another soldier about atheism, Specialist Hall wrote in a sworn statement. "People like you are not holding up the Constitution and are going against what the founding fathers, who were Christians, wanted for America!" Major Welborn said, according to the statement.

Major Welborn told the soldiers he might bar them from re-enlistment and bring charges against them, according to the statement.

And:

Perhaps the most high-profile incident involved seven officers, including four generals, who appeared, in uniform and in violation of military regulations, in a 2006 fund-raising video for the Christian Embassy, an evangelical Bible study group.

And:

Specialist Hall began a chapter of the Military Association of Atheists and Freethinkers at Camp Speicher, near Tikrit, to support others like him.

At the July meeting, Major Welborn told the soldiers they had disgraced those who had died for the Constitution, Specialist Hall said. When he finished, Major Welborn said, according to the statement: "I love you guys; I just want the best for you. One day you will see the truth and know what I mean."

And:

Complaints include prayers "in Jesus' name" at mandatory functions, which violates military regulations, and officers proselytizing subordinates to be "born again." After getting the complainants’ unit and command information, Mr. Weinstein said, he calls his contacts in the military to try to correct the situation.

"Religion is inextricably intertwined with their jobs," Mr. Weinstein said. "You're promoted by who you pray with."

Okay. Do we have the picture now, everybody? Read the whole story if you don't. And this isn't the first time I've seen this story: plenty of atheist blogs have been carrying it for a while, along with many others like it. (More info -- not just on this case, but on an appalling number of similar ones -- at the Military Religious Freedom Foundation.)

And here's why this scares the daylights out of me. More than just about any instance of creeping theocracy in our country. More, even, than creationism and other forms of religious fundamentalism being taught in our public, taxpayer-funded schools.

This is the Army.

This is the branch of our government with the big rifles.

And increasingly, they seem to be placing their allegiance to their religion over their allegiance to the country and the Constitution.

There's a story that Ed Brayton (who's been covering this story a lot) had over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars. The whole story is excellent, but here's the truly terrifying part:

One individual, posting under the name "Hidog," suggested Hall put on an orange vest and carry a sign "Bong hits 4 Allah" through the streets of Iraq, "because apparently, your Bill of Rights trump your CO's (commanding officer's) orders."

As Ed pointed out, "Well yes, the bill of rights does trump the orders of a commanding officer when those orders violate the bill of rights."

And it scares the merciful crap out of me to think that the Army is increasingly full of people -- not just mooks with no power, but officers -- who don't understand that. It terrifies me to think of an Army populated by both officers and enlisted men whose hearts -- and guns -- belong, not to the citizens of this country who employ them, but to Jesus.

And it terrifies me to realize these are not isolated incidents. There's so much more to this story that I haven't gotten into, that I don't have time to get into without this turning into an unreadably long screed. It is becoming increasingly clear that this is the dominant culture of the current United States Army.

With support from the Pentagon.

Because that, people, means that we really are living in a theocracy. Right now. The armed enforcers of our Federal government are the defenders, not of our country, not of our Constitution, but of their God and their faith.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck.

Okay. Perhaps I'm being a little panicky, a little overdramatic. The good news is that we're not overtly a theocracy. Yet. When caught in these shenanigans, the perpetrators still have to shimmy and sidestep, deny that it happened or hastily issue regulations to halt the more grotesquely blatant examples of it. And if the Supreme Court hasn't become completely craven, hopefully they'll be spanking the Pentagon long and hard over this. (Military fetishists, take note.)

And the good news is that the story finally got out of the atheist blogosphere and into the New York Times. (CNN has the story, too.)

But this is not a few isolated incidents. This is not a few bad apples. This is, as Mikey Weinsein of the MRFF called it, "the intentional dismantling of the Constitutionally mandated wall separating church and state by some of the highest ranking officials in the Bush Administration and the U.S. military."

The intentional dismantling of the wall separating church and state. By the armed enforcers of the Federal government. By the branch of the Federal government that has the big rifles.

What is that but theocracy?

(P.S. I'm not even going to get into the fact that these are the people who are enforcing our foreign policy overseas, in parts of the world that are primarily and quite passionately not Christian. Except to say: Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. What a colossally, appallingly, mind-twistingly bad idea that is.)

This has been all over the atheosphere; but Susie Bright is the one who sent it to me. So thanks, Susie.

Born or Learned? Sexuality, Science, and Party Lines

When I first came out into the gay community, one of the most common party lines going around was, "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids than straight parents." Some of the big political battles being fought at the time had to do with gay parenting, and the community was trying to reassure/ convince the straight world that it was "safe" for gay people to have and raise kids, that our kids wouldn't be any more likely to be gay than anyone else's. (Of course, many of us personally thought, "So what if our kids turn out gay? There's nothing wrong with being gay, so why does it matter?" But we knew the straight world didn't feel that way. Hence, the line.)

Not too long after that, I started hearing the party line, "Being gay isn't a choice -- we're born that way." Again, this was used in political discussions and debates, as a way of putting anti-gay discrimination in the same civil rights camp as racist or sexist discrimination... and as a way of gaining sympathy. Now, this would seem to be in direct contradiction with the "Gay parents aren't any more likely to have gay kids" line. If people are born gay, doesn't that mean it's genetic, and doesn't that mean gay parents are more likely to have gay kids? But in fact, these two party lines overlapped. I heard them both at the same time for quite a while... and I never heard a good explanation for why they weren't contradictory.

Then I started hearing the strict constructionist line. "Sexual orientation is a social construct," it said. "Our sexuality is formed by our culture. All that 'we're born that way' stuff -- that's biological determinism, rigid, limiting, a denial of the fluid nature of sexuality and sexual identity." (I am embarrassed to admit that I bought and sold this line myself for quite some time, in a pretty hard-line way... solely because I liked the idea.)

And now... well, now it's kind of a mess. Some in the queer community say, "it's genetic," and argue that this is a core foundation of our fight for acceptance. Others fear that the "genetic" argument will lead to eugenics, parents aborting their gay fetuses, the genocide of our community. The constructionist line about rigidity and determinism still gets a fair amount of play. And more and more I'm starting to hear the combination theory: sexual orientation is shaped partly by genetics, partly by environment, and may be shaped differently for different people.

And in all of these debates and party lines, here's what I never heard very much of:

Evidence to support the theory.

Or, to be more precise: Solid evidence to support the theory. Carefully gathered evidence. Evidence that wasn't just anecdotal, that wasn't just personal experience.

The line of the day -- and the debates in our community surrounding it -- always seemed to be based primarily on personal feeling and political expedience. I'd occasionally hear mention of twin studies or gay sheep or something... but that was the exception, not the rule. And the line has shifted around over the years, based not on new evidence, but on shifting political needs, and shifting ways that our community has defined itself.

I am profoundly disturbed by the ease with which many in the queer community are willing to dismiss the emerging science behind this question. Yes, of course, scientists are biased, and the research they do often reflects their biases. But flawed as it is, science is still the best method we have for getting at the truth of this question (and any other question about physical reality). Double-blinding, control groups, randomization of samples, replication of experiments, peer review: all of this has one purpose. The scientific method is deliberately designed to filter out bias and preconception, as much as is humanly possible.

It's far from perfect. No reputable scientist would tell you otherwise. Among other things, it often takes time for this filtering process to happen. And it completely sucks when the filtering process is happening on your back: when you're the one being put in a mental institution, for instance, because scientists haven't yet figured out that homosexuality isn't a mental illness. But when you look at the history of science over time, you see a consistent pattern of culturally biased science eventually being dropped in the face of a preponderance of evidence.

And if you're concerned about bias affecting science, I think it's important to remember that many of the scientists researching this question are themselves gay or gay-positive. We can no longer assume that scientists are "them," malevolent or ignorant straight people examining us like freakish specimens. Many of them are us... and if they're not, they're our allies. Yes, science often reflects current cultural biases... but right now, the current cultural biases are a lot more gay-positive than they used to be. And that's even more true among highly educated groups such as the scientific community.

But more to the point: What other options are being offered? How else do we propose to answer this question? Or any other question about the possible causes of human behavior? If answering it based on science is subject to bias, then isn't answering it based on our own feelings and instincts even more subject to bias? How can we accuse scientists of bias in their attempts to answer this question -- and use that accusation as a reason to dismiss the science -- when our own responses to the question have been so thinly based on evidence, and so heavily based on personal preference and political expedience?

Unless you're going to go with the hard-core deconstructionist argument that there is no reality and all of our perceptions and experiences are 100% socially constructed, then you have to accept that the question, "Is sexual orientation genetically determined, learned, or a combination of both -- and if a combination, how much of each, and how do they work together?"... well, it's a question with an answer. It's not a matter of opinion. And it's exactly the kind of question that science is designed to answer: a question of cause and effect in the physical world.

I'm not a scientist myself. But I've been following this question in the science blogs for a little while now. And as best I can tell, here's the current scientific thinking on this question:

1) Sexual orientation is probably determined by some combination of genetics and environment (with in utero environment being another possible factor). (Here, btw, is a good summary of the current scientific research on this topic, and how it evolved.)

2) We really don't know yet. The research is in the early stages. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment... but we really don't know that for sure, and we don't know which factor is more influential, or how they work together, or whether different people are shaped more by one factor and others by the other. We just don't know.

But I've said it before, and I will say it again: We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we would like to be true. We should not be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer we find most politically useful. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is true. We should be thinking about this question on the basis of which answer is best supported by the evidence.

If we don't, then we are no better than the creationists, refusing to accept evolution because it screws up their view of the world. We are no better than the 17th century Catholic Church, refusing to accept that the Earth revolves around the Sun because it contradicted their theology. We are no better than the Bush administration, refusing to recognize clear warnings about Iraq and Katrina and global warming because it got in the way of their ideological happy thoughts. We are no better than the "Biology for Christian Schools" textbook, which states on Page 1 that, ""If [scientific] conclusions contradict the Word of God, the conclusions are wrong, no matter how many scientific facts may appear to back them."

If we expect the straight world to accept the reality of our community, the reality that our lives and relationships and families are as healthy and stable as any other, then we ourselves need to be a committed part of the reality-based community. And we therefore need to accept the reality of the causes of our orientation... whatever that reality turns out to be.

So why don't we try a different angle for a while. Maybe something like this:

"We don't really know what causes sexual orientation. And we don't think it matters. It's probably a combination of genetics and environment, but until more research is done, we don't really know for sure. And we don't think it matters. It's an interesting question, one many people are curious about -- but it doesn't really matter. Homosexuality doesn't harm anybody, and it doesn't harm society, and our relationships are as healthy and stable and valid as anybody else's... and it isn't anybody's business but our own.

"We deserve rights and recognition because we are human beings and citizens: as much as racial minorities, whose skin color is inborn, and as much as religious minorities, whose religion or lack thereof is learned. The 'born versus learned' question is a fascinating one, with many possible implications about human consciousness generally. But it has absolutely no bearing on questions like job discrimination, or adoption of children by same-sex couples, or whether we should be able to marry. We don't yet know the answer to this question... but for any practical, political, social, or moral purposes, it absolutely does not matter."

Carnivals: Godless and Liberal

Carnival of the Godless #89 is up at Rational Response Squad.

Carnival of Liberals is up at A Revolution of One.

Wee-ha!

Memories of a Good Science Education... and Worries About Bad Ones

I didn't see the point at the time.

When I was a kid, I always got annoyed by the lab portion of my science classes. I guess I've always been more of a theory person than a research person (hence my career as an essayist instead of a journalist). Rolling balls down inclines and measuring the speed; putting nails in different liquids and seeing how fast they rusted; cutting up fetal pigs... it always seemed like a waste of time.

I mean, I never had any problem understanding the theories being taught by the books and the teachers. And I was perfectly happy to believe the books and the teachers. After all, it's not like my measurements of gravity or magnetism or whatever were going to be written up in the science journals. Even at the time, I knew perfectly well that if my numbers didn't come out the way the theory said they should, the discrepancy would, without a doubt, turn out to be caused by my experimental methodology... not the theory.

And it's not like the theories we were learning in second -grade or sixth-grade or tenth-grade science class were on the cutting edge of new scientific thinking. Again, even at the time, I knew that the stuff we were learning was well-established, and had been experimentally verified thousands upon thousands of times... by researchers who were a whole lot more careful than my sixth-grade science class. I knew we weren't really verifying the theories. The theories had been verified, many times over. We were just seeing how they worked for ourselves.

Which I didn't think I needed. I got it. The books and teachers and theories made sense. I didn't need to roll the damn ball down the damn incline to see it for myself.

So it seemed like a waste of time.

But now that I'm an adult, I see the value in it much more clearly. And especially now that I'm so engaged in the skeptical/ rational thinking/ science groupie blogosphere (what I've seen referred to as "the reality-based community"), I value it even more.

I see the value because I think there's an enormous difference between learning something purely by authority -- "it's true because I say it's true, and you can trust me" -- and learning something by seeing it for yourself. And the latter is the core of the skeptical, rational, reality-based approach to life that I think is so very valuable.

Let me give you an example. We'd learned very early on, of course, that the earth was round. But in a high school science class (freshman year, if I remember correctly), we learned how, exactly, the ancient Greeks determined that the earth was round. It had to do with comparing shadows: you measure the shadows of two poles of equal height set, say, a mile apart. You do it at noon, and again an hour later. And you do the math. The difference in the length of the two shadows will be different on a curved surface -- i.e., the earth -- than they would be on a flat surface. You can even figure out, within a crude approximation, how large the curved surface is.

So we learned how exactly this information was acquired. And then we went outside and acquired it ourselves. We did it with sticks set a few feet apart, so of course our measurements weren't super-accurate -- but we got measurable results that weren't that far off the mark.

And so now I know. I know that the earth is round, not because I read it in a book or was taught it by a teacher, but because I measured it myself. And now when I'm in a debate with some theist who says that science is just another religion and my belief that the earth is round is no different from their belief in God, I can say, "Yes, it is different. I know that the earth is round -- because I measured it myself."

Of course, in practical terms, most of what I know about science -- or what any other layperson knows about science -- is learned from authority. I haven't personally done experiments to see the effectiveness of antibiotics in treating pneumonia; I haven't personally dug up any of the millions upon millions of fossils supporting the theory of evolution. Had I but world enough and time... but I don't, so I'm not going to.

But the difference is that I could. Any smart, dedicated person with access to education can get into epidemiology or paleontology, and find out for themselves whether or not the stuff that the books say about antibiotics or fossils is true.

We can do this because scientific knowledge is transparent, and it's replicable. When researchers publish their findings, they publish not only what their results were, but how exactly they obtained them. They don't keep it an arcane secret, accessible only to those who have achieved the 34th Level of Poobahhood; they don't tell overly- inquisitive students to stop asking so many questions and just accept their teachings on faith. They say, "Here's what we think, and here's why, and here's what we did to find it out, and here's the kind of evidence that would prove us wrong, and here's exactly what you need to do to see it for yourself."

There were other good things about my grade- school and high- school science education. We learned a lot about the scientific method -- even as early as third grade, we were learning about the difference between observation and inference (illustrated with cartoons about wet tricycles on lawns -- the observation is that the tricycle is wet, the inference is that it rained... or that someone turned on the sprinkler). And we started learning very early on about the importance of careful measurements -- we were measuring liquids by reading the meniscus as early as third or fourth grade, and I remember a stern lecture from a science teacher about how screaming and cheering at the hamster running the maze would probably have a negative impact on his learning curve.

But of all the good things in my science education, I think the "see it for yourself" labs were probably the best. As annoying as I found them at the time, I now think that they were some of the most important and influential experiences in all of my early education. Because it taught me not to believe what the teacher told me, just because they were telling me. It taught me that I had the power to find things out for myself.

And it's one of the main reasons I get so upset when I read about the "No Child Left Behind," teaching- to- the- test style education that American public school kids are getting. Science education -- and indeed, all education -- needs to be about more than learning enough facts to let you pass standardized tests. Science education -- and indeed, all education -- needs to teach kids how to learn. It needs to teach kids how to think critically; how to ask questions; how to look things up. And it needs to teach kids that they don't have to believe everything they're told, just because they're told it. It needs to teach kids that they have the power to find things out for themselves.

A Tale of Two Scandals: The Obligatory Eliot Spitzer and "American Idol" Stripper Column: The Blowfish Blog

I have a new piece up on the Blowfish Blog, a piece that manages to tie together the two big sex scandals of the week -- the Eliot Spitzer scandal and the "American Idol" stripper scandal -- into one, hopefully not overly belabored analogy. The piece is called A Tale of Two Scandals: The Obligatory Eliot Spitzer and "American Idol" Stripper Column, and here's the teaser:

When the governor of New York resigns due to the revelation that he had sex with a prostitute -- and a contestant on a top-rated TV reality show is found to have been a stripper -- sex columnists around the world are driven to the stories like salmon returning home to spawn. So this is kind of an obligatory column. I am powerless to control myself. Can't... stop! Must... blog... about... Spitzer... and... the "American Idol"... stripper! Send... help!

But until help arrives, I’m going to have fun with it.

To find out why a weird part of me is glad that the latest major politician to get embroiled in a sex scandal is a Democrat -- and to why find out why I think so many Americans are wigging out over the fact that an "American Idol" contestant was once a male stripper -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

"I Also Apologize..." Best Week Ever on Eliot Spitzer

"Best Week Ever" is this ridiculous, trashy, pop- culture- gossip show on VH1 that cloaks its triviality under a veneer of snark. Ingrid and I love it. A wonderful guilty pleasure.

But this isn't a guilty pleasure. This is one of the absolute best commentaries on the Eliot Spitzer prostitute scandal that I've seen so far. Hilarious, bitchy... and completely on target.

Video below the fold, since putting it above the fold gums up my archives.

Carnivals: Godless, Skeptics, Feminists, and Liberals

Blog carnival time!

Carnival of the Godless #86 at Life Before Death
Skeptic's Circle at Conspiracy Factory
Carnival of Feminists #54 at In a strange land
Carnival of the Liberals #59 at The Largest Minority

The Texas Dildo Massacre, or, Reason Number 2,767 Why Gay Rights Matter To Everyone: The Blowfish Blog

As you’ve probably heard, the Texas law banning the sale of sex toys has been overturned. I have a new piece about it on the Blowfish Blog: in it, I talk about what this ruling means -- not just for consumers of sex toys, but for everyone who cares about the right to sexual privacy. And I talk about the Lawrence v. Texas case -- the Supreme Court decision legalizing sodomy and same-sex relations, the case that was the foundation for the Texas dildo decision.

It's called The Texas Dildo Massacre, or, Reason Number 2,767 Why Gay Rights Matter To Everyone, and here's the teaser:

The Lawrence case didn't just say that gay sex couldn't be criminalized. It said that people -- all people -- have the right to engage in any consensual intimate conduct in their home, free from government intrusion. It said that people's sex lives are not their neighbors' business, not society's business, and most emphatically not the government's business. It said that the fact that the State doesn't happen to like a particular kind of sex doesn't mean they have a right to ban it, or indeed to have any say in it at all.

This case says, "Yup. That's what Lawrence meant, all right."

And that has enormous implications.

To find out what I think the implications are of the Texas dildo case -- and the Texas sodomy case that preceded it -- read the rest of the piece. Enjoy!

The Scarlet Letter: Visibility and the Atheist Logo

Insanely observant readers of this blog may have noted that I recently added the Scarlet Letter, the big red "A is for Atheist" A of the RichardDawkins.net Out Campaign, to my blog.

I wanted to talk briefly about why.

I've been resisting the Scarlet Letter for some time. Well, "resisting" is too strong a word. "Not doing it" would be more accurate. It wasn't for any grand and lofty reason; I didn't have a problem with it being too in-your-face or not in-your-face enough, I didn't have a problem with it promoting a robotic conformity or being insufficiently explicit. I didn't have a problem with it at all.

It was pretty much an aesthetic decision. I felt that the look of my blog was already very busy, since I like to illustrate my posts so heavily, and especially since I now have ads. I didn't want another design element glonking things up even more. And it just seemed superfluous. I figured that anyone who reads my blog for thirty seconds will figure out that I'm an atheist. The banner/ slogan at the top even says it: "Sex, atheism, politics, dreams, and whatever."

So why did I change my mind?

I was in a discussion thread -- I can't even remember now where or which one -- and the subject of female atheist bloggers came up. I wanted to offer a short list of female atheist bloggers that I liked; but it occurred to me that there were some female bloggers who I'd been assuming were atheist without actually knowing for sure. So I did a little blog-hopping, visiting some of the women bloggers I like to see if they were atheist or not...

...and I quickly realized that what I was looking for was the big red A.

The big red A meant that I could see immediately, at a glance, that a blogger was an atheist.

This was useful. It was helpful to have a conspicuous visual cue on a blog that screamed "Atheist!" in big red letters. Well, a big red letter. And it occurred to me that someone else doing the same thing I was doing wouldn't be getting that helpful visual cue from my blog.

And then it struck me:

Oh, right.

Visibility.

Like pink triangles and rainbow flags and "Dyke March" T-shirts with the word "Dyke" in four-inch tall red letters.

Duh.

Yes, I have the word "atheist" all over my blog like a cheap suit. But I think visibility sometimes has to be about more than just words. I think sometimes visibility has to be about... well, the visible. The visual.

The writer in me hates to admit it, but sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words. A picture of a crowd of a million people marching in Washington, D.C. conveys the sense of a vast social movement better than the words "a million people marching in Washington, D.C." A picture of a colorful, well-attended Gay Pride Parade conveys the sense of joyful defiance better than the words "colorful, well-attended Gay Pride Parade."

And the image of hundreds of bright-red "A is for Atheist" A's popping up all over the blogosphere like hands being raised in a crowd... that's a powerful image, one that gets across a sense of what's happening in this movement, in a way that just saying, "Hey, there are exciting things happening in the atheist movement!" doesn't.

I want to be part of that. I want to be one of the people with my hand raised.

And if it makes my already crowded-looking blog look a little more crowded, I'll just have to find a way to live with that.

Carnivals of Bloggy Goodness!

I'm a little behind on my blog carnival goodness, and there have been some excellent ones lately, so I want to get caught up.

Humanist Symposium #15 is up at Cafe Philos. This is probably my favorite blog carnival of them all; it's the one dedicated to positive aspects of life without religious belief: in other words, atheist blogging on Why Atheism Is Good instead of Why Religion Is Bad. My piece in this Symposium: Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2. My favorite other piece in the Symposium: Stopping to Think at Elliptica, on art and the meaning of life.

I somehow missed listing the last Carnival of the Godless at Mind on Fire when it came out. My total bad, which I'm attempting to rectify now. My pieces in this Carnival: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- A Review, and Defensiveness, Rationalization, Mulishness... What Does That Have To Do With Religion? Mistakes Were Made, Part 2. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: The absolutely stunning, must-read What’s So Bad About Religion? at An Apostate's Chapel.

Carnival of Feminists #53 is up at Uncool (one of the coolest blog names ever). My piece in this Carnival: True Love Waits... And The Rest Of Us Get On With Our Sex Lives. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: I Wanted to Fuck Like a Man at Letters from Working Girls (an extremely nifty new blog, paired with another nifty new blog Letters from Johns -- both run by Susannah Breslin, and both of which I'll be visiting again).

Skeptic's Circle #80 is up at Bug Girl's Blog. My piece in this Circle: Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts -- A Review. My favorite other piece in the Circle: the hilarious and informative Scientific Lovers at Gateway Skepticism, on a supposedly scientific dating service that matches couples based on their histocompatibility. (My favorite quote: "Sure, having a slightly higher chance of healthy babies is great, but I'd really like to know more about the 'more orgasm' thing.")

And Carnival of the Liberals #58 is up at Liberal England. My piece in this Carnival: The Content of Their Character: Judging On the Basis Of Beliefs. My favorite other piece in the Carnival: A letter to Senator Barack Obama at Prepare Yourselves for a Settlement.

And I think that catches me up with my Carnivals. I'll try to be better about staying on top of them in the future. Happy reading!

The Content of Their Character: Judging On the Basis Of Beliefs

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

"Hey mister don't look down on me
For what I believe in..."
-The Minutemen

There's this trope. Lots of people say it, on many sides of many cultural divides: liberal and conservative, secular and believer. And it's come up a lot in the Presidential campaign: especially regarding the now-retired candidate Mitt Romney, with pundits and opinion-makers and the candidate himself decrying how prejudiced it was for people to refuse to vote for Romney because of his Mormon beliefs.

There's this trope. And it goes like this: It's not right to judge people for what they believe.

So here's what I want to know:

What the hell else am I supposed to judge people on?

What basis are we supposed to use to judge people, if not their beliefs?

Yes, their actions, of course. But our actions are shaped and decided by our beliefs. Why shouldn't people's beliefs be a relevant factor in guessing what their actions are likely to be? Beliefs shouldn't be the only thing we judge people on, for sure -- but why should we ignore them entirely?

I mean -- "the content of their character." Aren't our beliefs a huge part of that? How are we supposed to judge people by the content of their character and not judge them on the basis of their beliefs?

If someone believes that gay couples shouldn't be allowed to adopt because homosexuality is a crime against God and humanity, should I really not judge them on their morality? If someone believes that their tax money shouldn't pay for poor children's health care because "those people are always looking for a handout," should I not judge them on their compassion? If someone believes that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago despite human historical records dating well before that, should I not judge them on their good sense? If someone believes that all human beings have been infested by space aliens, should I not judge them on their sanity? If someone believes that they don't have to reduce their fuel consumption because one person can't make any difference -- or because the Rapture is coming and none of this pollution and global warming stuff will matter -- should I not judge them on their social responsibility? And if someone believes that the moon landing didn't happen because they read it in the Some Guy On The Internet Journal, should I not judge them on their... well, on their judgment, their ability to discern, among other things, what is and is not a good source of information?

I look at these questions, and I get very puzzled. Why, again, is it not appropriate to judge people for what they believe?

Now, if you're talking about something like employment or housing rights, then the "don't judge people on their beliefs" concept suddenly makes a lot more sense. A person's belief in the infinite wisdom and mercy of Ganesh is irrelevant to how good they are at software design; a person's belief in the Celestial Kingdom is irrelevant to whether they'll pay their rent or their bank loan on time.

I can think of a few exceptions to this rule -- if someone believes that God wants homosexual sex eradicated from the Earth, that would probably disqualify them from an executive position at the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. But on the whole, personal beliefs, including religious ones, aren't relevant to questions like housing and employment. And they shouldn't be.

But for a lot of other questions -- ranging from who you vote for to who you marry -- personal beliefs are very relevant indeed.

So maybe a better principle would be, "Don't judge people irrelevantly on the basis of their beliefs."

And of course I understand that religious prejudice -- which is a lot of what people mean when they say, "Don't judge people for what they believe" -- has a long and ugly history, in the U.S. and in the world. I understand the desire to not be bigoted, the will to fight bigotry in yourself and others. I share that desire and that will. Passionately.

But I would argue that much of that ugly prejudice is, and always has been, based on false perceptions of people's beliefs... not an actual perception of their actual beliefs. Ignorance and vicious lies about people with different beliefs are the foundation of religious prejudice. (Well, one of the foundations...) People hate Jews because they supposedly have plans to take over the world; Catholics because they supposedly grind up babies into communion wafers; Mormons because they supposedly all have six wives on the sly; atheists because we're supposedly selfish, nihilistic hedonists with no basis for morality. People hate those with different beliefs because of lies they've been told about them. They rarely hate those with different beliefs because of what those people actually believe. They often don't even know what those beliefs are.

And maybe more to the point:

You can't always judge an individual person's beliefs simply because of the religious group they belong to.

For most people, religious beliefs are only part of a whole constellation of beliefs, and for many people it's not a very important part. So even if what you know about the Jewish or Catholic or Mormon faith is more or less accurate, you still won't necessarily be able to judge any individual Jew or Catholic or Mormon simply because of the religious group they belong to.

Jimmy Carter, for instance. Jimmy Carter is a born-again Baptist, and was when he was President. But he also opposed the death penalty; and supported the Equal Rights Amendment; and opposed the Briggs Initiative which would have banned gays and lesbians from teaching in California public schools. I disagree with many of his positions and actions -- but if he were the Democratic nominee for President this year, I'd vote for him, and I'd do it reasonably happily. His born-again Baptism isn't completely irrelevant to me, but it's obviously only one part of his belief system, and when it comes to the Presidency, the other parts are a lot more relevant.

So maybe we need to modify the principle again. How about this:

"Don't judge people irrelevantly on the basis of their beliefs -- and don't judge them inaccurately on the basis of what you think their beliefs are."

But what if my perception of someone's beliefs is accurate? What if it's based on things they've said -- and done -- and not just on the group they belong to? And what if their beliefs are relevant to the topic at hand, to whatever question it is that I'm deciding on… whether it's who I want to vote for or who I want to marry?

Why on Earth shouldn't I judge them on the basis of their beliefs?

Maybe the problem is with the word "judge." It's something of a harsh word, with strongly negative connotations these days. We're not supposed to be judgmental. It implies, not just the forming of an opinion, but the passing of a sentence.

So okay. Feel free to substitute another word if you like. Instead of "judge," read "assess." "Discern." "Conclude." "Form an opinion." "Evaluate." "Appraise." "Critique." If you don't like the word "judge," any of these will do.

But when Mitt Romney said that "Freedom requires religion just as religion requires freedom... Freedom and religion endure together, or perish alone"; when he cited religious scripture to support his opposition to same-sex marriage... then you're effing well right I'm going to judge him on it. Or critique him, or appraise him, or form an opinion of him.

I never cared very much that he's a Mormon. Voting against someone just because they're a Mormon would be just as wrong as voting against someone just because they're an atheist. If Romney were a Mormon in the way that Jimmy Carter is a born-again Baptist, I wouldn't have given two figs about his religion. I don't care about the specific religious group that Romney or Carter, Mike Huckabee or Barack Obama, or any other current or former Presidential candidate, belongs to. But I damn well reserve the right to judge them for the content of their character.

And that includes their beliefs.

Carnivals of Liberals #57 and Skeptic's Circle #79

Carnivals of Liberals #57 is up at World Wide Webers. My piece in this Carnival: All I Really Need To Know I Learned From Porn -- Or Not. My favorite other piece in this Carnival: The Zombie of Trust Betrayed, at Trusted Advisor.

And Skeptic's Circle #79 is up at Podblack Blog. Podblack has very thoughtfully made LOLCats for all the contributors to this Circle; hence the cat with the microscope. Hey, anything for a weird life. My pieces in this Circle: What's the Harm in a Little Woo?... and Oscarology: The Readings. My favorite other piece in this Circle: the totally fucking brilliant WHY Extraordinary Claims Require Extraordinary Evidence, at Skeptico.

If you blog about liberalism or skepticism and want to participate in the blog carnivals, here are the submission forms and guidelines for the Carnival of the Liberals and the Skeptic's Circle. Happy reading, and happy blogging!

Democrats, Horse Races, and John Edwards

I've stayed away from "Democratic primary" stuff in this blog until now. Mostly because the election in California is just over a week away and I still have no freaking idea who I'm voting for. But I've been seeing a pattern in progressive writing about the Dem primary; it's a pattern that's bugging me, and I want to talk about it.

The pattern is this: The progressive writing about the Democratic primary is completely buying into the narrative that this election is between Clinton and Obama. Not all of it, but a lot of it. And when Edwards is mentioned, the theme that keeps coming up is, "I like him, but he's behind in the polls, and I don't think he's electable."

And I want to shake these people and scream, "If you would fucking well endorse him, maybe he'd BE electable."

The San Francisco Bay Guardian was the most recent one of these -- and it's the one that pissed me off the most. They're the big progressive alterna-weekly here; their politics are sometimes wacky but are generally good. I really wanted to see what they had to say about Edwards, who I'm seriously considering voting for. And I wanted more information about him than, "We might endorse him if we thought he was electable."

I understand the need to be pragmatic in an election. I've held my nose and voted for the least repulsive candidate more than once. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of candidates for major elective office who I actually felt unqualified excitement about. I get it. Really I do.

And in the general election, I completely get it. Come November, I will vote for whoever the Dems come up with. The Dems could nominate Lyndon Johnson again, and I'd vote for him.

But in a primary, it's different.

In a primary, it seems to me, you're supposed to forget about the horserace.