On gay rights and biological determinism

I guess I missed the memo but it seems that it's now verboten to suggest that humans have any sort of choice at all in terms of the gender of the person(s) with whom they like to have sex. I say this because apparently Cynthia Nixon got into hot water for saying that she had chosen to take up an intimate relationship with a woman. (link). I think I understand the reasoning for it -- some might worry that the notion that gender preference might not be strictly biological will invite suggestions that "pray the gay away" therapy might work and/or that instead of society making room for gay people we can instead just get homosexuals to choose a different orientation. Also, if it's strictly biological, the story seems to go, it's more obviously unfair to deny them the rights and means to live the same sort of life that straight people have.

I think the obvious problem here, that both sides seem happy to ignore, is that almost all preferences we have involve a complicated mixture of biological and environmental factors. I recall learning or reading that sexual preference may well be more of a spectrum than a simple on/off switch, i.e., while some people may be heavily inclined to be straight or gay, there are lots of people in between that might be more or less interested in having sex with person of the same or different genders. But this is obvious, isn't it? Don't lots of people who eventually settle into a gay or straight lifestyle experiment in their youth w/ differing preferences? Are we saying that all those people were simply violating their biological destiny? We believe, I assume, that there's a strong biological component that influences other features that we find attractive, but we wouldn't be surprised to learn that a person who had previously preferred buxom blondes or tall women was now choosing to spend more time with short slender brunettes.

That aside, I also think it's worth thinking about why the extent to which homosexuality is fully biologically determined matters so much with respect to the civil rights issues. Consider that there's probably a strong biological component in whatever the makeup is of a person who becomes a psychopathic killer. But if we were to firmly establish that that were the case, it wouldn't follow that society had some sort of duty to accommodate them in this compulsion. OTOH, many of our civil rights have no biological basis. We believe that people should be free to say what they want, believe what they want, and worship as they wish. The basis for this isn't the belief that beliefs and utterances and religious practice are all biologically determined. I think the civil rights story is a pretty simple one. We don't have the right to do whatever our biology compels or inclines us to do, we base civil rights on considerations of the fact that there's much inherent utility in maximizing liberty especially on matters that have little or no effect on the rest of society. Why does the fight for gay rights have to be depend on any more, or something other, than that? It's ironic that the civil rights movement which spent so many years arguing, implicitly or explicitly, that biology is not destiny, now finds itself vehemently insisting that is.

On the SOPA protests

There was something heartening and encouraging about the SOPA/PIPA protests yesterday. It's good to see that grass roots political action is possible, the extent to which the internet facilitates it and the fact that it might actually even have an effect. And I agree that both bills are troubling, an attempt to kill a gnat w/ a hammer and possibly missing the gnat. That said, it's also a bit troubling to compare the outpouring of response when people are threatened with the possibility of harsh action on copyright infringement to people reactions idly to the desecration or dismissal of so many other civil liberties. Illegal wiretapping? shrug.  Wars? yawn Give companies ability to sue to shut down websites that infringe on copyright?  HOLD IT RIGHT THERE, MISTER!!! Frustratingly, this action may say less about our eagerness to participate in democracy and a lot more about our desire for short term gratification.

On downplaying corpse desecration

Regarding, the four marines videotaped urinating on the bodies of Taliban fighters, I don't disagree with those who point out it that it seems to actually rank relatively low on the list of transgressions that US troops have committed in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns. Furthermore, I agree with those noting that it's odd to strain at corpse desecration while swallowing the camel of torture. What I don't agree with is the implied conclusion that we should be making less of a big deal about this. Why not conclude instead that  we should have been making a bigger deal of the heretofore downplayed atrocities?

But there's another argument making the rounds that bothers me even more. Bill Maher and others are making an attempt to downplay the seriousness of the offense on the grounds that it's being committed against bad people. According to the likes of Maher and Loesch, it's not really such a terrible thing to urinate on the corpses of Taliban fighters because the Taliban are such odious people and/or have committed such odious offenses. This argument is one of the popular arguments that have been used for all sorts of egregious violations of civil liberties and international law since the "war on terror" (and, of course, most wars throughout history) has commenced. It's the argument that some people are so despicable and so unlike us that we can drop the ordinary rules and laws that distinguish civilized societies from beasts in the forest or the characters in Lord of the Flies. In fact, the argument when applied to corpse desecration is even more brutish as there's no further utilitarian appeal to justify the actions, as is often the case with attempts to justify torture, just plain vengeance and blood lust. Just as free speech means little unless it protects the most objectionable speech, these laws and protections mean something only if they actually do protect respect for those we're ordinarily least inclined to protect.

Update: I tweeted this post and Bill Maher responded and clarified that he didn't claim it was acceptable, just that the US has done far worse things that bothered him more. Fair enough, and in this post I didn't say he claimed it was perfectly acceptable, that was only in my tweet. Nonetheless, while Maher didn't exactly say it was perfectly okay, he was very dismissive of the incident w/ a "shit happens" (when agreeing with Rob Reimer), noted that it's "like a TD dance" and pointed out that they may have been honor rapists so he didn't care much, which is all pretty much indistinguishable from saying it was acceptable from where I'm sitting.

oh, eh, can you see ....

Their crappy musicians dominate the pop charts with their bland mindless music (link), its citizens cockily believe they live in the "greatest country in the world" (link), nationalistic logos (link, link, link, link) and a quest for world dominance pervade its sports culture, and, most telling of all, one has to cross the border in order to experience real winter weather. Clearly, Canada is the new USA.

On Hitchens

I'm sorry to hear of the passing of Christopher Hitchens. There are a number of good obits, including one from David Frum, that do a good job of celebrating the man and describing what he accomplished. I'm happy to acknowledge that in terms of writing skill he was in a league with the likes of George Orwell, as his glowing New Statesman obit contends. But Hitchens's legacy will always be stained, in my eyes, by his outspoken support of the Iraq war and the responsibility he bears for contributing to the "clash of civilizations" rhetoric and perspective in which responding militarily to the attacks began to trump all else.

Hitchens's writings, including his set of "discussions" with Noam Chomsky, from those weird post 9-11 months are worth another read today. I think Hitchens correctly called out Chomsky and some others on their inclination to rationalize the Sept. 11 attacks. (link to the set of exchanges between him and Chomsky: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)  But it's also interesting and useful to read his farewell article from The Nation today. In it he declares, as if it's a sort of reductio ad absurdum, that, "I have come to realize that the magazine itself takes a side in this argument, and is becoming the voice and the echo chamber of those who truly believe that John Ashcroft is a greater menace than Osama bin Laden." I'm not sure that that is an accurate portrayal of The Nation at the time, but if so aren't we at least somewhat inclined to say, "well, bully for them"? In the hindsight that a decade's perspective, trillions of additional dollars in debt, an efficiently executed assassination in Pakistan and legislation like the troubling National Defence Authorization Act affords us, isn't it hard to deny that The Nation was right to worry that the actions being put in place by Ashcroft et al might well present a deeper threat to the American way of life than anything OBL could ever hope to summon up?


Update: interesting anecdote with a similar conclusion: link

Louis CK

Louis CK decided to self produce, release and distribute his latest video for $5/copy. He released the video last Sunday, December 10, and has thus far sold 110 000 copies. So far he has earned less than he would have if he just had some big company produce the video, and, obviously he has put far more effort into it than he would have had he just had a big company produce it, but, the advantage is that he was able to sell the video for a lot less money, users would have had to purchase an "encrypted and regionally restricted video of limited value, and they would have owned your private information for their own use". He made decent money, and he still owns the rights to the material. 

This should be the value add of the internet, i.e., elimination of the middleman in terms of distribution. And CK's experience should be encouraging for all artists. When you don't treat your customer as an adversary and offer quality things to them at a reasonable price, people will pay real money for digital content on the internet even if those things would be cheaper/free via bittorrent or by grabbing a copy from a friend. 


Update: Write up in the Globe and Mail

Oh, Fox

I stumbled across this little Fox News gem this morning: "Team Obama's Immigration Hypocrisy". The article contends that there's a contradiction between the Justice Department opposing state laws requiring police to demand proof of legal presence and the State Department encouraging police to ensure that foreign nationals be granted consular access upon being arrested. The author contends that Justice Department objections to things like the Arizona immigration law imply that the State Department must abandon efforts at Vienna convention compliance when it comes to the arrest and detainment of foreign nationals. "If it [the Obama administration] ... truly believes... that authorities should not be checking the citizenship status of local lawbreakers, than the State Department should withdraw its 'Consular Notification and Access' manual, and stop telling local police officers to comply with the Vienna Convention by checking the citizenship status of criminals".

But this objection completely paves over the differences between legal and illegal presence and citizenship. The majority of non-US citizens in the US are here legally; as such there's all the difference in the world between inquiring into citizenship status and requesting proof of legal residence. I'm regularly asked about my citizenship status and I never interpret this as a question about whether or not I'm in the country legally. The objection also incorrectly conflates what is being asked of the police in these two instances. In the first case it's a requirement to insist on proof of legal presence, whereas in the second it's an attempt to ensure that persons be given the means to avail themselves of their rights under international law. The State Department isn't requiring police to demand proof of citizenship. Conflating the state immigration laws with the State Department efforts is like arguing that offering a guest a snack or a meal is no different from tying him down and force feeding him. The State Department is trying to ensure that non-citizens have an opportunity to contact their embassy, i.e., upholding fundamental legal rights. State immigration laws in practice and intent are something quite quite different.