back to issues

issues of pressing concern:  (about which you might want to CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVES)

• the right is fighting hard to push the federal marriage amendment.  Evan Wolfson of Freedom to Marry came to stanford to participate in a debate with the Reverand Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition on the proposed amendment.  It was sadly not too informative a debate.  Wolfson spoke with eloquence and logic, while Sheldon relied on rhetoric and prejudice.  i felt like if i talked one-on-one with Sheldon, i should be able to expose the absense of logic in his initiative and get him to change his mind, but that's a fundamental problem dealing with people who base their decisions on faith rather than reason...  they cannot be made to see reason.
  
  the highlight for me was after Sheldon had brought up the statistics cited by Stanley Kurtz showing a decline in marriage rates in scandinavia (referring to them as studies demonstrating that gay marriage is causing social collapse there).  an audience member asked him whether the studies in question were correlational or causational.  he said, "what?"
  
  this brings me to a larger point about what i think perhaps should be step one in turning this country around.  anyone well-versed in science can easily tell you the difference between correlation and causation and the pitfalls of relying on correlation alone to make any point about causality (here's a basic explanation for those not well-versed in science!).  however, those who employ "scientific" data to make cases for public policy typically have little to no training in science, while they have extensive training in sounding self-assured and well-informed when speaking to the public.  the rev. Lou Sheldon can make himself sound very convincing to the average layman claiming that "studies show" gay marriage is causing social collapse in norway.  and the layman doesn't have the grounding in science to evaluate that statement critically.
  
  but there was no shortage of excruciating scientific errors propounded by the good rev. Sheldon tonight.  another glaring example was in his opening statement:  in essence, he asserted that because there was no study pointing out the "gay gene", he could take it for granted that homosexuality is not an immutable characteristic, and thus homosexuals are not party to the protections (or, i guess, basic civil rights) afforded minority groups.  two fallacies here that occur all the time in public policy debate:  taking a lack of evidence (or the inconclusiveness of evidence) as evidence in itself, and only looking for (and acknowledging) evidence that supports your hypothesis, rather than attempting to disprove it.  he also showed the error of relying almost entirely on one source, Unwin's 1934 book Sex and Culture.  Though even if we are to rely on 1930s british cultural anthropology and the host of prejudices and methodological inexactness it represents, it still doesn't explain how you get from Unwin's hypothesis—that "strict marital monogamy" is necessary for the survival of civilization—to the need to ban gay marriage.  if marital monogamy is what you're after, why prevent people from having it?
  
  the funniest moment of the evening was while Wolfson was talking about a recommendation from the american academy of pediatrics (citing studies of children of same-sex parents) supporting adoption by same-sex couples:  Sheldon interrupted, "those who wrote it i believe were gay."  hardly missing a beat, Wolfson replied, "it was well written."
  
  anyway, i think if we had better science education in this country, we could give the coming generation the intellectual resources to make well-informed, critically evaluated, logical decisions about policy.  and everything else.

april 2005