The Real Gay Rights Frontier is the Church, not Politics
The victory for marriage equality in the republican led New York state senate brought as much euphoria to me as anyone else concerned with LGBT equality. The story of Governor Cuomo’s leadership and political acumen that lead to this stunning political victory is absolutely enthralling, but sometimes I think we lose sight of the most important objective of the LGBT rights movement: gaining full political and moral equality for LGBT people throughout the country. That means there’s more work to do even in New York.
Political equality is important, but remember that politics is largely driven by simple majorities in legislatures which ideally reflect majority opinion in the populace. This means the 45 to 50% or so of LGBT people who are born into the anti-gay portion of the New York state population must still contend with some form of rejection from their family, church, and God. That’s a big deal, and political victories like that in New York do little to ameliorate this problem. Morever, even though public opinion is currently accelerating towards greater equality, I doubt that full LGBT acceptance will pass the 70% mark any time soon, since there remains the hard core Tea Party and Michele Bachmann-types that constitute 30% or so of the country that will not be budging on this issue.
So, even a decade or so from now, there will be many LGBT children born into households and communities that have such negative views of homosexuality and transgender issues that these children will be susceptible to bullying at school, in the church, and in the family. And we all know the tragic fates that disproportionately affect these children: gay-bashing, suicide, and mental health issues. Further, unlike other oppressed minorities, LGBT people cannot simply leave oppressive communities because they will always be affected in some way or another by their anti-gay family.
I remember sitting next to a gay friend in a Baptist church where the pastor railed against homosexuality recently, and listening to him whisper to me half jokingly, “they’re going to burn me.” Unlike this friend, many LGBT young people in these places do not have the luxury of social and spiritual support from allies and/or others like them.
The obvious motivator for anti-gay beliefs in the remaining 30% of the country is religion, so naturally a religious strategy should be sought to combat this. As I see it, there are two historical precedents that should inform religious LGBT activism, (i) the Catholic Church and birth control and (ii) the Mormon Church and black people.
In 1968 the papal encyclical Humanae Vitae reaffirmed the Church’s absolute ban on contraceptives, provoking a huge uproar in the West, including some Catholic theologians and clergy. Still, today it enjoys almost universal acceptance by the clergy, especially among the elite. At the same time, to this day it is ignored by Catholics in majorities exceeding 80%, making it the “most widely flouted injunction of the church at the level of practice” (source). In my more cynical moments I think this seems like the most likely outcome the LGBT movement will achieve in churches in the next few decades. Anti-gay animus is just too strong. In the Catholic Church, the same theoretical apparatus that legitimates its stance on birth control and abortion, natural law theory, also serves as the primary argument against accepting homosexuality, prompting the current pope to describe homosexual acts as “intrinsically disordered.” In the case of conservative protestants who, unlike Catholics, ostensibly hold biblical authority in much higher regard than church authority, the biblical injunctions against homosexuality are clear, particularly the one in the New Testament made by St. Paul, the biblical author that forms the basis of protestant theology and thus the one Christians are least likely to interpret contextually.
In my more hopeful moments, I look toward the evolution of the Mormon Church’s stance on black people. In this case, as with the Bible and homosexuality, the Mormon scriptures explicitly mentions black people in a negative light:
And [God] had caused the cursing to come upon them, yea, even a sore cursing, because of their iniquity. For behold, they had hardened their hearts against him, that they had become like unto a flint; wherefore, as they were white, and exceedingly fair and delightsome, that they might not be enticing unto my people, the Lord God did cause a skin of blackness to come upon them. And thus saith the Lord God; I will cause that they shall be loathsome unto thy people, save they shall repent of their iniquities.” (2 Nephi 5:21) [boldface added]
For this reason, black people, although allowed in the Mormon church, were not allowed to participate in the priesthood until 1978, more than a decade after the civil rights act was passed in 1964. This is clearly an encouraging precedent for LGBT rights in that the Mormon’s overcame an explicit scriptural obstacle by giving blacks full equality in the church. Still, it should be noted that blacks were never completely banned from the church, or considered “intrinsically disordered” or sinful by simply being black like the LGBT community is.
Thus, two basic outcomes of LGBT activism in church are possible: (1) official church disapproval but tacit acceptance by the laity as is the case with the Catholic ban on birth control in the USA and Europe, or (2) official and majority lay acceptance exemplified by the Mormon church’s full acceptance of blacks within a decade of civil rights. In the coming decades the struggle for full LGBT acceptance will be messy and will probably more resemble the outcome of feminism in the church, whose legacy seems to me to be a superposition of the two precedents discussed above.
So what should be the endgame for the LGBT equality movement? Should it focus primarily on either politics or religion? Should it’s next goal be based on the Mormon model of full acceptance for blacks or the Catholic model of tacit acceptance of birth control? I have no idea, but I think the gay rights movement can walk and chew gum at the same time, it should focus on democratic politics and religious persuasion. Obviously this won’t be easy, the New York victory for marriage equality did not just fall into place, it took serious work and coordination between the governor, LGBT rights groups, and republican donors to get the job done. I suspect that more work and coordination will be necessary to achieve success in the religiously conservative 30% of the country.
For Lent I’m…
…giving up the online New York Times and Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish. Any news I get will be via radio or print. I hope I make it…
Yesterday, without any of Sullivan, Krugman, and Dowd et al.’s rage against the GOP to contend with, I made great progress on a research problem that had stumped me for two weeks. So maybe, just maybe, if I make this abstention permanent, I’ll be, as Amod Lele puts it, saved from politics.
Quote Of The Day
Although the special manifestations of religion may have been absurd (I mean its creeds and theories), yet the life of it as a whole is mankind’s most important function.
—William James
(Via)
Obama Now Supports Gay Marriage?
Apparently the Attorney General said that Obama will not defend the part of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) that bars gay marriage and that Obama
has concluded that given a number of factors, including a documented history of discrimination, classifications based on sexual orientation should be subject to a more heightened standard of scrutiny.
Hopefully this means Obama now supports marriage equality. If this is true, then I can’t help but think that Obama has been playing realpolitik by pretending to be against gay marriage until now.
Update: The White House press secretary recently said that “there’s no change to how Obama views gay marriage itself.” Alas.
(via)
Is God Malicious?
“Subtle is the Lord, but malicious He is not.” -Einstein
Skholiast has a fascinating post in which he makes an interesting connection between the recent psychology journal article published on psi and a New Yorker essay by Lehrer about the decline effect, described thusly:
But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts were losing their truth: claims that have been enshrined in textbooks are suddenly unprovable. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology. In the field of medicine, the phenomenon seems extremely widespread, affecting not only antipsychotics but also therapies ranging from cardiac stents to Vitamin E and antidepressants: Davis has a forthcoming analysis demonstrating that the efficacy of antidepressants has gone down as much as threefold in recent decades.
Interestingly, Skholiast intimates that the so-called decline effect–that many statistically significant scientific findings primarily in medicine and psychology become harder to replicate with time–may be a feature of the universe itself, rather than a sociological phenomenon of scientists. So, here’s the comment I left at his post (which is currently not showing up for some reason):
Skholiast,
I appreciate your insightful comparison between Lehrer’s article on the decline effect (which somehow I had missed) and Bem’s recent work on psi, even if you don’t draw the same conclusions I would from said comparison (namely, that Bem’s psi effect will decline because it probably isn’t there). Specifically, I’d like to push back against the hyperchaos-like thesis that the decline effect is real. I should also state at the outset that I’m a physicist, thus my gut instinct is, put bluntly, to cheer on team Science and boo the Other Side. Nevertheless, I try as much as possible to keep an open mind about these things.
A problem with the thesis that the decline effect is real (a la Meillassoux’s hyperchaos), is that the strength of the decline effect differs depending on the complexity of the object of study. That is, studies on complex things like mice and humans which purport to show the X effect are often later overturned, whereas experiments on simple stuff like protons and electrons which prove the Y effect are usually not. It is true that, as Lehrer briefly mentions, physics experiments occur where the strength of gravity is anomalously different in Nevada or the value of the weak coupling ratio changes unexpectedly in time. However, this is the mere change in the numerical value of a constant over time (or space), not the overturning the “gravity effect” or the “neutron decaying effect.”
Simply put, one can envision two competing explanations for the decline effect’s existence: (1) it is an inherent aspect of nature, or (2) it is an inherently sociological phenomenon among scientists. The advantage of (2) is that it naturally explains why the findings of social and medical science display more of a decline effect than the findings of physics. Mice are clearly more complex than particles, since the phenomena associated with the former are often “by-products of variables we don’t understand” (Lehrer) and therefore it’s that much more difficult to, as you put it, “construct an artificial circumstance in which the only variable is the mechanism of your hypothesis.” Thus, on the one hand the inherent variability of mice and humans make such fields of study ripe for the operation of the sociological forces that give rise to the decline effect. On the other hand, the limited range of “behaviors” that electrons can exhibit constrains said sociological forces such that the decline effect is limited to, for example, the change in the value of the electron’s charge, instead of the existence of the Coulomb force.
Finally, buttressing (2) are the many different sociological effects Lehrer names in his New Yorker piece: The desire to avoid reporting null results (this literally happened to me yesterday), confirmation bias, an illogical reliance of Fisher’s significance test (see, e.g., this Science article), the worsening of scholarship in fashionable subjects, and the different results researchers in the East and the West get from studies on acupuncture.
Dawkins on the King James Bible
Richard Dawkins nails it in his New Statesmen essay on the King James Bible in honor of its 400th anniversay:
The King James Bible occupies nearly 42 pages of the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, only narrowly beaten by Shakespeare, with 45. Not just literature in the high sense but everyday speech is laced, suffused – riddled, even – with biblical phrases the status of which ranges from telling quotation (“They have sown the wind and they shall reap the whirlwind”) to cliché (“No peace for the wicked”) and all points between. A word in season and perhaps we can see eye to eye. Although I wouldn’t call the Bible my ewe lamb, and I would have to go the extra mile before I killed the fatted calf for it, you don’t need the wisdom of Solomon to see how biblical imagery dominates our English. If my words fall on stony ground – if you pass me by as a voice crying in the wilderness – be sure your sin will find you out. Between us there is a great gulf fixed and you are a thorn in my flesh. We have come to the parting of the ways. I fear it is a sign of the times.
…
Let’s celebrate the 400th anniversary of this astonishing piece of English literature. Warts and all – for I have not mentioned the carnage, the smiting, the vindictive, genocidally racist, jealous monster god of the Old Testament. Warts and all – for I have drawn a veil over the New Testament misogyny of Paul, the founder of Christianity, or the Pauline obscenity of every baby being born in sin, saved only by the divine scapegoat suffering on the cross because the Creator of the universe couldn’t think of a better way to forgive everybody. Warts and all, let’s encourage our schools to bring this precious English heritage to all our children, whatever their background, not as history, not as science and not (oh, please not) as morality. But as literature.
(via KtB)
In Which I Say “Fuck Science”
[F]ucking magnets, how do they work? I don’t want to talk to a scientist, ya’ll mother fuckers lying and getting me pissed
There are plenty of competing explanations on why folks turn a blind eye to the findings of science: human-caused global warming (political ideology), evolution (religion), vaccines (?). Even in academia, there is the skepticism that some in the humanities feel towards the reductionist project of the sciences.
Hypothesis
One of Abstruse Goose’s most brilliant comics to date describes a process in which the comic creator’s notion of how elevators, cars, radios, and microwaves work — they’re all powered by unicorns — was mercilessly dispelled as he grew up and learned how things worked scientifically. In a fit of rebellion he admits that sometimes you just have to say it: “fuck science.”
So there it is, my hypothesis: anti-science sentiment is, at root, a visceral response — “Fuck science!” — to the murdering of our imagination that is perpetrated by science education.
Smug Alert!
Unsurprisingly scientists and Richard Dawkins acolytes take offense when people — be they humanists, Christians, or rappers dressed like clowns — un-ironically state some version of “fuck science!” Take Sean Carroll, who gives a shot at explaining why the Insane Clown Posse (the rapping clowns and “fucking magnets” folks) believe the way they do:
I don’t think religion is causing these lovable mop-tops to rebel against the power of scientific explanation; that’s too cheap an explanation. Rather, there is an underlying attitude that both pushes them away from science, and toward religion: a strong preference in favor of believing a certain set of things about the world, well before any evidence is in. First we decide that rainbows and magnets and Stonehenge are miraculous and mysterious things that cannot be accounted for by ordinary, understandable processes; then we reject science and turn to religious beliefs because that’s what flatters our preconceptions. It’s hard to know how to reach people like that. I’m thinking Phil Plait and Brian Cox should put on clown makeup and start rapping about Maxwell’s equations.
I think he’s missing a point though. The view that these folks are rejecting is not simply the scientific method, it’s this:
The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless. -Steven Weinberg
So we scientists can smugly rest assured that we posses the most reliable path to the truth (insert here the usual caveats about what type of truth claims may be adjudicated by science), but totally miss the true motivation behind a “fuck science” attitude: the desire to hold on to the visceral feelings of awe that we had as children when exploring the world. For the Insane Clown Posse really is right, science dispels the feelings of mystical awe that surrounds literal religious truths, magnets, and stars.
Of course, many scientists have realized this, most notably Richard Feynman. Take a look at Walt Whitman’s “fuck science” poem:
WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
To which Feynman reacts:
Poets say science takes away from the beauty of the stars – mere globs of gas atoms. I, too, can see the stars on a desert night, and feel them. But do I see less or more?
In other words, understanding the physical mechanisms responsible for stars simply provides an additional layer of awe that does not detract from our ability to “[look] up in perfect silence at the stars.”
Conclusion
Honestly, I’m not sure if I completely agree with Feynman. Having learned the science behind, for example, magnetism, I’m left with something more abstract and austere and difficult to appreciate:
And in some situations the extreme analytic beauty of Maxwell’s equations just isn’t enough. Fuck science.
The Tea Party and Greek Mythology
A refreshingly sane and interesting essay by Stanley Fish (!) on the Tea Party:
And the Democrats will be helping [the Republicans] by saying scathing and dismissive things about the Tea Party and its candidates. The Greek mythological figure Antaeus won victory after victory because his opponents repeatedly threw him to the ground, not realizing that it was the earth (in the figure of his mother, Gaia) that nourished him and gave him renewed strength. The Tea Party’s strength comes from the down-to-earth rhetoric it responds to and proclaims, and whenever high-brow critics heap the dirt of scorn and derision upon the party, its powers increase.
Fish goes on to conclude,
What to do? It is easier, of course, to say what not to do, and what not to do is what Democrats and their allies are prone to do — poke gleeful fun at the lesser mortals who say and believe strange things and betray an ignorance of history.
That won’t work. Better, perhaps, to take a cue from Hercules, who figured out the source of Antaeus’s strength and defeated him by embracing him in a bear hug, lifting him up high, and preventing him from touching the ground. Don’t sling mud down in the dust where your opponents thrive. Instead, engage them as if you thought that the concerns they express (if not their forms of expression) are worthy of serious consideration, as indeed they are. Lift them up to the level of reasons and evidence and see how they fare in the rarified air of rational debate where they just might suffer the fate of Antaeus.
It’s at least worth a try, because the way things are going we may soon be looking at Senator O’Donnell, Governor Paladino and, down the road a bit, President Palin.
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