Idiot of the Week: N.H. Senator Robert Letourneau

As can be read here, New Hampshire has passed a law allowing civil unions between gay partners. The reaction from the Religious Wrong was predictable, but sometimes they surprise even me with their sheer stupidity. Thus, our Idiot of the Week hits us with this Hall of Shamer:

"Let's just call it what it really is, no sugarcoating," said Republican Sen. Robert Letourneau. "This creates same-sex marriage. There is no right to marriage in either the New Hampshire Constitution or the federal Constitution."
"We don't let blind people drive or felons vote, all for good and obvious reasons," he said.

Uh huh. So allowing same sex people to have a civil union, to have the same rights to life insurance, to visit their injured mates in hospitals, and all the other benefits of committed unions that heterosexuals get when they get married, is the equivalent of allowing blind people to drive and felons to vote.

As is so common with the Religious Wrong, they are hard to distinguish from satire. Just what exactly is it about homosexual civil unions that threatens traditional marriage? Those wishing a traditional marriage still may have one. Those so opposed to this are never able to present the slightest coherance in response. There is simply nothing a heterosexual couple can do in marriage that does not apply to a homosexual union save one: unassisted procreation.

Now, this may come as a shock to people like Senator Letourneau, but we have an overabundance of people on this planet, and that is indirectly contributing to most of our major problems, such as global climate change. Having more people get married that can't have children together is actually a good thing. It also gives them a much more stable environment in which to raise whatever children they already have.

It is the height of hypocrisy for the Religious Wrong on the one hand to condemn homosexuals for living a frivolous lifestyle, and then on the other, to refuse them the right to have a civil union. It is also hypocritical for them to carp on and on about how important it is for parents to remain together and have a stable home in which to raise children, and then to fight efforts by homosexuals to do exactly that.

I'd like to ask Senator Robert Letourneau to explain what it is about homosexuals that makes them incapable of having a committed relationship, as his comparison to blind drivers implies. What is it about them that they have done to morally disqualify themselves from doing so, as his felon/voting comment implies.

I'm not holding my breath.

Why I Resist Affirmative Action: It ain't to Protect Whites

Zuska has a post discussing the findings of a study on the root source of our attitudes towards affirmative action. It's conclusion?

"The strongest source of white opposition to affirmative action today is neither racism nor a sincere conviction that any favoritism, even if compensatory, is wrong, but rather a "desire to protect fellow whites," three scholars argue in a paper released last week by the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center. That finding, the authors contend, offers a new window into white opposition to affirmative-action programs."

They dismissed the traditional interpretation, that this stemmed from a concern for quality and fairness rather than racism, because they found that people with a strong group identity were more likely to oppose programs that were presented as harming whites, rather than benefitting blacks, whereas those with a weak group identity did not.

Their conclusion doesn't seem to follow from their description of the data. All they've shown is that people obsessed with their whiteness are going to be against anything that hurts whitey. Gee, ya think? In our next report, fat people are heavier on average than skinny people, and illiterate people score worse in spelling bees.

I was more interested in how many people qualified as having the various ratings on the group identity test, because that is the root of the problem IMO, and they didn't even give that. Now sure, if there were far more people with strong group identity than weak, their conclusion would follow, but that's far from clear. Their implication, therefore, that those of us with strong opposition to affirmative action policies are probably hiding some racist agenda seems reckless to say the least.

Personally, I'd score very low on the group identity measure, and I have many principled reasons why I oppose some affirmative action programs. Citing this study and claiming it applies to me and people like me is surely not going to seem very persuasive to me. Yet that is surely what is going to happen.

Zuska asked: If I just say to you nicely that social inequalities exist between men and women that disadvantage women and advantage men, and affirmative action policies are intended to ameliorate the disadvantages and remove the advantages, not to harm men, will you all just come along now and be in support of affirmative action?

No. I am not interested in intent. I am interested in results, and I think I speak for a lot of people. I also am far more interested in making sure no one is harmed who has not personally earned it, than I am to reward someone because of a perceived social injustice. I'm not sure how many agree with me on that. :) I just don't think it is right to hire Nancy instead of George if George is the better qualified candidate, unless George himself is the source of the social injustice, say by being the incompetent son of the President. Doing otherwise not only harms George unjustly, but also harms everyone depending on whatever he would be doing. It might even harm Nancy if she ends up in over her head.

The people with the strong group identities are a lost cause. That's the real lesson of this study. If you want support for affirmative action from the rest of us in the reasonable middle, do it in a way that does't harm innocents. Special private training programs are a good example. No one is harmed by you volunteering your time to read only to poor minority girls for example.

Also, stay away from situations where the affirmative program is likely to result in people getting whatever it is being far less qualified than whoever would have gotten it otherwise. And for God's sake, gag the people on your side of the aisle who act like that doesn't happen, or worse yet doesn't matter.

I once saw an old 60 minutes episode on women trying to be fireman failing the standards the men were held to. The feminists interviewed said things like "any standard that men pass more than women is unfair", and "the standards should be changed so the women can pass, such as allowing them to drag a body rather than carry it. There may be less smoke down there anyway." Those women did your cause no favors.

I believe most Americans have a strong sense of fairness, and that's why the historically recognized disadvantaged groups of racial minorities and women have made the strides they have (that and lots of old racists and sexists dying). The fairer your policies are perceived to be, among reasonable people anyway, the more support you are going to get.

O'Reilly vs Dawkins

I know, I know, this reads like "Bambi vs Godzilla". But hey, Bambi was on his own turf, ready to turn off that mike if Godzilla got too fiery on the set. So I tuned in with restrained enthusiasm to Bill O'Reilly's conversation with Richard Dawkins.

I wasn't encouraged when O'Reilly couldn't quite pronounce "agnosticism". It got worse when O'Reilly's entire argument for Christianity was "you can't prove Jesus wasn't God", to which Dawkins easily responded that O'Reilly couldn't disprove Zeus or Apollo. O'Reilly's brilliant retort? Something sarcastic along the lines of "I just saw Apollo, he doesn't look too good".

That gave me my favorite moment of the discussion. Dawkins just leaned back and gave O'Reilly a classic "OK, you're not even serious about trying to defend your position" smirk.

O'Reilly also fell back on the "why are we here?" question, and of course declared science ignorant. It amazes me that someone can live as long as O'Reilly has, see us go to the moon, discover nuclear power, create computers, clone a sheep, cure so many diseases, and all of the other advancements of science, and still think "Aw, those dumb scientists don't know anything".

Obviously O'Reilly hasn't been paying much attention to history. He trotted out the lame argument that Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao were atheists, as if somehow the existence of evil people who share your position makes your position wrong. They were all male too, does that make men evil or wrong? The position also doesn't follow logically when one looks at what these men actually believed and did. Hitler was a Catholic to the end, and often spoke of doing God's work. The others were atheists, but what gave them the means to do the evil they did was a pseudoreligious state, or virtual lack of one in Pol Pot's case. In short, they made themselves into gods, making it a very strange atheism.

It was a lame effort from O'Reilly for sure. I don't watch O'Reilly regularly, but I found this performance very similar to his interview with Colbert. There too, O'Reilly put up the very lamest of arguments, and resorted to poor jokes when they were demolished. It was as if he knew he could not hope to win a fair fight with either man, and so tried to hide that fact under levity. It seemed pained and ineffective, and similar to what I've seen Tucker Carlson do as well to a lesser extent. It would be nice to see these guys address atheism seriously for a change. It is telling that O'Reilly spent considerably more time talking about Alec Baldwin's parental rant than he did talking to Dawkins. Will someone please tell O'Reilly he is only funny when he isn't trying to be?

Gun Control works? Show me the data!

In gun control debates such as those here and here, I have seen way too much pompousity from the gun control advocates, who act as though the evidence is crystal clear that gun control works, and that anyone whose view differs is some sort of sociopathic macho redneck. Well I'm sorry,
this isn't global warming, much less evolution, where the evidence is solidly, if not entirely, on one side of the argument. This is an issue where data that can withstand the slightest statistical scrutiny is rare, at least what I've seen in the popular media.

I have no love whatever for guns. The only one I own was a gift and I haven't shot it in years. Here in Texas, that practically makes me a Commie. I got interested in the subject for two reasons: First was my anecdotal experience of being frequently in the presence of arsenals of friends and family that would make your stereotypical Frenchman pee his pants, and yet no one I've ever known has ever been involved in a shooting of any kind. Secondly, I consistently saw completely tortured logic and abuse of statistics from the gun control people. For sure the pro-gun guys have their share of goofy arguments, but they are usually philosophical (radical libertarianism, rigid contructionism). The idiotic statistical arguments always seemed to come from the left, such as a gun in the home being 43 times as likely to kill a family member as a criminal, or England having a lower gun homicide rate than the U.S., and other such twaddle.

I'm an actuary. I like data and I know what to do with it. So give me some that takes into account the sociological and other critical variables necessary to draw a solid conclusion. Don't tell me gun control works because England has a lower gun homicide rate than the U.S. That sort of analysis would earn one an F in introductory statistics. Give me some data where the people actually know WTF they are doing. Do it, and you will get a very loud statistically informed ally in your cause. I've never seen any that warranted the smug dismissal of the alternate view that I see so often in these discussions, but I can be persuaded. Show me.

You don't know what Cho's problem was?!?!

As the Cho Seung-Hui shooting incident at Virginia Tech continues to develop, some of the commentary amazes me. I just saw a commentator on MSNBC on the Tucker Carlson show comment that he just didn't understand what Cho's problem was. You don't? Let me help you.

This was the kid that got picked on, that was uncomfortable in his own skin, that felt like an outcast, and was abused and bullied. In one of his video comments he makes mention of having garbage shoved in his mouth. That is not the sort of experience that fades from memory. He railed against the wealthy "brats", who no doubt were the kinds of people that psychologically bullied him the most. Being uninvited from all the big social events, or being laughed at by a group at a vulnerable moment, can be as painful for an outcast kid as a kick in the head.

We all remember those kids. Some of us, sometimes, were those kids. And many of us remember doing things to kids like that we'd rather we hadn't, as we look back with adult insights. Does any of this sound familiar? It should. It was true of the Colombine shooters.

Cho also apparently had a psychological disorder that had gone untreated. So we had an unhealthy mind subjected to abuse, and it exploded in a day of rage and 33 dead bodies. Those who focus on the guns are missing the big picture. What distinguished Cho from everyone around him wasn't access to guns. They all had access to guns. But they all did not have a sick mind subjected to sick treatment.

If Columbine didn't teach us this lesson, maybe Virginia Tech will. It is time for the abusive bullying, and unhealthy orchestrated ostracism that goes on in schools all over this country to be viewed as something unhealthy that should be actively discouraged, and not just "kids being kids". Playing tag and X-box are kids being kids. Having an occasional fight is kids being kids. Playing sports and actually keeping score and having winners and losers is kids being kids.

Having a group of children actively, in concert or not, torment kids that are weird, geeky, shy, psychologically unhealthy, etc., is not. It is a form of cruelty, plain and simple. If the injustice to the direct victims of that doesn't motivate you, perhaps the injustice to all those murdered kids at Virginia Tech will.

Gun Control: Get the Right Numbers

Over at Mike the Mad Biologist's blog, the discussion has begun about gun control. Unfortunately, too often these discussions involve horrible use of logic and statistics, and this one is no exception.

Let's start with something Mike gets right that most people don't:

"... had the Virginia Tech students been armed, fewer students would have died...Of course, at that moment, you would probably be safer...What is missing ... is any serious thought about all of the ramifications."

Many gun control supporters make the mistake of denying the obvious here, probably because they subconsciously think that admitting the obvious (a group of armed people are going to die at a lesser rate than a group of unarmed ones if attacked by a lone gunman) concedes some important point. It doesn't, because it is the wrong question. What we care about is the overall death rate under this or that law, not what happens in one particular instance.

from other posters:

"I like to look at the numbers: the stats I've seen say a handgun in the home is 20-40 times more likely to shoot someone in a suicide, crime of passion, accident, etc. than it is to be used to defend a home."

The referenced study was conducted by doctors Arthur L. Kellermann and Donald T. Reay ("Protection or Peril?: An Analysis of Firearm-Related Deaths in the Home," New England Journal of Medicine, 1986). The figure was 43, and it referred to people killed by the gun in their home, or an intruder being killed in self-defense. Scaring off or injuring an intrudor didn't count, and no mention is usually made of the fact that most of the deaths were suicides. There is a more detailed examination here. Suffice it to say, the study does not address the relevant issues.

"Everyone should have a small nuclear device strapped to their back. This will be rigged to go off at the first sign of violence (Being shot, stabbed, punched, etc). Everything within a 500 meter radius will be vapourised. Just imagine how polite society would become. And how little crime there would be!"

Amusing, but off point. Nuke's kill indiscriminately, whereas the gun can be controlled as to who is fired at, albeit imperfectly. Also, the rigging of the nuke removes the valuable judgement a gun wielder can exercise. After all, no one is suggesting gun owners should shoot automatically at the first sign of violence!

"The evidence seems to suggest that limiting gun ownership, espcially handguns, does stop people being killed by them."

Of course it does, but that borders on tautology, and misses the point of the exercise. Consider suicide as an illustration, which is about half of gun deaths. If we successfully banned guns tomorrow, and yet found that our suicide rate was not reduced, would that not be a hollow victory? Hey, we reduced gun suicide 100%, woohoo! Not. Our purpose is to reduce death, not just death by gun.

Some people who intend to kill themselves are going to find other ways to do it. Many already do. Ditto for murder victims. The number that died by gun recently that would have died even in the absence of guns is not zero, and their deaths are no less tragic.

Also, talk of people being killed by guns ignores important context. The death of a 12 year old girl who was shot by her friend after finding Dad's gun concerns me far more than the death of a thrice-convicted felon shot by a police officer in self-defense. Homicides worry me far more than suicides. Yet these broad brush statistics take none of this into account, and as a result, exagerrate the perceived risk. So do not speak of "gun deaths". That's meaningless.

"What this person is suggesting is that every confrontation on a college campus, or in an office building, or a public school, or a crowded shopping mall, or in a packed bar, or on a busy city street, should have a vastly increased probability of ending in a shootout."

This is the flip side of the first point I made here. Gun ownership advocates too often dismiss the increased probability of conflict inherent in having everyone armed. What happens to the total conflict is a different question, and ignoring the fact that many scenarios exist where the presence of guns increases the risk, adds no credibility to one's opinion of the bigger questions.

Notice also the fallacy of talking about "gun" violence cropping up again in the above note. Of course the probability of a "shootout" is higher with guns than without. The more relevant question is what the probability of violence, death and injury is, regardless of the source.

Also inherent in the quote above is the false assumption that the pro-gun guys advocate everyone having a gun. Far more prevalent is the notion that it would be beneficial for more people to have guns, but only a nonrandom subset of the populace doing so, steering away from those prone to crime, violence, etc.

"if someone has a gun pointed at you, and you reach for a gun, you will very likely get shot."

This is one of many red herring scenarios that people pose as representative. Obviously if the person is right in front of you with a gun pointed at you, you are in grave danger, carrying a gun or not. However, gun defense also includes scenarios where the attacker is not armed, or less armed, or further away, and focusing on this extreme rare scenario misses the bulk of the picture.

The bottom line is this: to make good decisions on issues like gun control, we need to have good complete data and ask the appropriate questions. We are trying to reduce deaths, not "gun deaths", crime, not "gun crime". Let's be more open about what gun deaths are: roughly 50% suicides, and including shootings all but the most granola-carrier doesn't mind so much, like police shooting career criminals in self-defense. It's the innocent we are trying to protect, so let's concentrate on that.

Taxes for the Iraq War?

Mike Dunford, scienceblogger and husband of an active army officer, wrote this powerful letter to his representatives and senators.

He raises a very interesting point. With the absence of the draft, the war truly splits the population into those that are personally involved and those who are not. There are no signs as one walks down main street America that we are at war except for a few yellow ribbons on SUVs. There is even discussion of bringing back the draft.

I wouldn't go so far as that, even though I am now thankfully beyond the danger age, and have no dog in that hunt. The draft takes away the populace's most powerful force against a war: the refusal to fight it. The second most powerful force is the refusal to pay for it. And obviously the Democrats lack the political will to do the job.

So let's put it out there for honest discussion. No more pushing off the debt to the next generation. We are in the best position to decide if this, or any, war is worth fighting, which means some of us will die and most of us will pay the bill. If those who support continued action in Iraq win the debate and raise the necessary taxes, well, that's the way our system of representative democracy works. It's not perfect, but it's better than all the others. And if America, most of America, isn't willing to make the necessary sacrifices to fund and fight the war here and now, well then, it's time to end it, now.