We weren’t discussing the personhood of a fetus or a woman’s right to choose or anything like that-I’d be truly impressed with myself if I ever manage to have that argument in a civil manner. We started with the agreement that, regardless of the legality or morality of it, society would be better with fewer abortions, and my question to her was whether this would mean that she would support wide availability of contraceptives and comprehensive sex education to avoid unintended pregnancies in the first place. We sparred over the reliability of a few empirical studies without really getting anywhere. Her real response to the question came today, in the form of a blog post which throws empiricism out the window in favour of a moral imperative. This is probably a sensible approach to the problem, as neither of us will trust any studies the other one cites. The post was written as a response to me, so I feel that courtesy dictates I reply. That being said, it’s a commonly made argument with some common responses, so I apologize if I’m preaching to the converted. Here’s an excerpt from the post:

“I think the real problem, the real disease that we need to be fighting is our culture’s messed up understanding of sex.  Somehow, we have become a people who believe that everyone has the fundamental right to have sex without getting pregnant.  We believe that our right to have sex whenever we want and with whoever we want is so fundamental, it’s even more important than religious liberty (HHS mandate) or protecting those who can’t protect themselves (abortion).  That’s just messed up.

…

To believe that we have the right to have sex without getting pregnant is like believing that I have the right to eat food without using the toilet. There are even medical interventions (colostomy bags, for example) that could ensure that I never have to sit on a toilet again.  But that would be ridiculous, wouldn’t it?”

You’ve probably heard this argument before. In its general form, it says that people who have sex generally know that it can lead to pregnancy and that sex is a voluntary act, therefore those who have sex should be prepared to accept an unwanted child as the consequences of their actions. There are a few practical problems with this approach. Firstly, it says nothing about unwanted pregnancies that result from sexual assault. Secondly, it places the burden of responsibility for sexual activity entirely on the shoulders of the woman, as the father is exempt from any of the physical and psychological trauma that comes with an unplanned pregnancy. Thirdly, research suggests that teenagers will continue to have sex regardless of their understanding of its consequences, so this approach risks an awful lot of children born into homes that are not ready for them.

Beyond those immediate criticisms, however, I’d like to address the foundation of the argument: the notion that nobody has the right to sex without pregnancy. This is based on a strong appeal to nature, as seen in the second quoted paragraph and elsewhere in the post. My first reaction to this is to ask why adults shouldn’t have the right to consensual sex without pregnancy? Two (or more) consenting adults having non-reproductive intercourse do not cause any harm to anybody else through the act. Remember that I’m talking about contraception, rather than abortion here, so questions about harm to the unborn do not enter the picture. By the harm principle, therefore, the act cannot be justifiably prohibited and must therefore be considered a right.

The naturalistic defense that tries to build up a positive case against the right reads a normative statement into natural facts. If something happens naturally without human intervention, goes the argument, it should be considered right and just and not interfered with. If we were to consistently follow this logic, we would see a lot more suffering in the world. The natural outcome, for example, of a situation in which a person’s cells begin to divide out of control is that the person dies, and yet I can’t imagine any Catholics coming out against chemotherapy. Similarly, the natural consequence of jumping off a cliff is a fast acceleration, a sudden stop and a swift death, but thanks to unnatural additions such as parachutes and bungee chords, we can do so with impunity.

If this picture makes you happy, you're engaging in unnatural behaviour. Stop it!

The extreme sports is particularly relevant because it entails the re-purposing of a natural instinct in order to bring us pleasure, rather than fulfill its biological ‘function’. When we jump off cliffs or watch scary movies, we re-purpose our self-preservation instinct for thrills; when we look at cute pictures of puppies, we re-purpose our nurturing instinct from a way of keeping our children alive to a source of simple happiness; and when we play or watch sports, we re-purpose our competitive instinct from a motivation to compete for scarce mates and resources to a way to bond with our friends and enjoy a good spectacle. There is nothing wrong with any of these examples, and by extension there is nothing wrong with using technology to reduce sex to something practised only for the good feelings it produces. I think most people would rejoice in the fact that we have advanced far enough that happiness, far from the by-product of a struggle for subsistence that it once was, has become a central purpose of our lives.

Where does this leave religion, then? Well, nothing about this says anything about personal morality, which can and should be separated from broadly accepted social ethics. If a Christian’s relationship with their God does not suffice to regulate their sexual conduct, then I should hardly think such a puny, mortal body as the state could fill in the gap. Sexual ethics beyond the simple requirement of consent should, in any case, be a personal decision. If a person decides to avoid non-procreative sex, then that is their prerogative and I admire their restraint. Such a lifestyle should not be forced on anybody, however. This means that workplaces, regardless of their nature, don’t get to dictate their workers’ sexuality through the denial of contraception. It means that parents, while they may do their best to impart their religious values in their children, may not do so by hiding information about safe sex. Perhaps most importantly, it means that nobody anywhere should ever be judged based on their sexual history.

I’ll finish off with a quote from Stephen Fry:

“sex is fun, it’s jolly and people enjoy it. It’s a lot like food in that respect. The only people who are obsessed with food are the anorexic and the morbidly obese. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is religion in a nutshell.”

I have to preface this by saying that I consider myself one of you. Unfortunately, I suspect that a number of you might not agree with my self-identification as a men’s rights activist, because of another important self-identification: I am also a feminist.  I know that this may seem incoherent and even offensive to some of you, and that is why I am writing this letter. The struggles for both men’s and women’s rights have a lot to gain if only the men’s rights movement realizes that feminism is not its enemy. Feminism and men’s rights can, in fact, be highly effective allies if they align themselves against their common foe: patriarchy.

Upon my mention of that last word, I can almost feel thousands of rolled men’s rights activist eyes on me. When I was a men’s rights activist of a more recognizable antifeminst variety, I immediately dismissed anybody who uttered the p-word. That was because I didn’t have the faintest idea of what feminists mean when they talk about patriarchy. Therefore, before I go any further, I will have to explain precisely what I mean by the word. Contrary to what I once believed, feminists talking about patriarchy are not referring to  some kind of conspiracy. While it has prominent supporters and apologists, patriarchy has no leaders. Its membership is not exclusive and its methods are not hidden. In fact, patriarchy is so universally visible and inclusive that it is difficult to detect if you do not put some effort into doing so, much as you would never know about the presence of the oxygen that sustains you if you had not had it explained to you.

Patriarchy is an emergent phenomenon that comes from the behaviour of virtually everybody on earth. It is the sum of all the beliefs, actions, words, choices, policies, practices, preferences, tastes, and documents that together constitute a broadly enforced but unwritten code that expects one clearly defined social role of women and another one of men. This is both descriptive and normative: gender roles are assumed to be natural, yet patriarchy demands the conformity of those who do not behave according to their supposed nature. I can say with near-complete certainty that you contribute to patriarchy. So do I. And so do even most feminists, as many of them admit themselves. It is fiendishly difficult to act against a lifetime of social conditioning, and yet it is precisely this task that feminism undertakes.

I think that if a sensible men’s rights activist looks at the consequences of patriarchy with an open mind, it will become obvious that they should be working with feminists rather than against them. A good example of this is the issue of family courts. Men’s rights activists have brought forward evidence that family courts are biased in favour of mothers during child custody cases. If this is indeed the case, then it would be difficult to see any plausible explanation for it that did not include the fact that women are generally considered to be more nurturing, and better suited to the care of children than men. That attitude, which is close to universal in our society, is a manifestation of patriarchy that hurts men. It has a flip-side, though. The common perception of women as sensitive and nurturing and more suited to child-raising leads to disadvantages in the work place, including the glass ceiling and lower average pay.

This kind of overlap exists for a number of feminist and men’s rights issues. The perception of women as fragile that leads to their being passed over for the draft or combat duty in the military is also a huge setback for women’s athletics, and the social expectation that men be the active party in the initiation of any relationship, while frustrating at times for men, is deadly serious for women as it contributes to stalking and date rape. A social order which has a set of expectations for men and a different set of expectations for women is beneficial for neither. Both men and women have entirely self-interested reasons to fight patriarchy. Adding a bit of solidarity for the other side of the struggle can only strengthen the cause.

It must be said, however, that there are many ways in which we men have it easy. One needn’t believe in patriarchy to concede that the vast majority of political, economic and cultural leaders for the history of the human species have been men. It therefore stands to reason that much of our society was and is set up by men and for men. This a priori argument is corroborated by a significant amount of hard evidence suggesting that women do, in fact, have it harder on average than men.  This is difficult for a men’s rights activist to accept, as it implies that certain privileges that men currently enjoy must be eliminated in order for equality to be attained. This is, I suspect, the reason why those interested in men’s rights are so reflexively sceptical of feminism. There is no way around this. If complaints about the status of men are to be taken seriously, then it must be accepted that men are privileged and that this privilege must be fought. I am confident that there are plenty of people within your movement that have the  maturity to accept this, and to live up to the term men’s rights activists, rather than the less attractive label of men’s privilege advocate.

The bottom line is that equal rights is not a zero-sum game. The elimination of patriarchy provides a blueprint for the realization of a world in which nobody’s gender will be used to oppress them in any particular way. This is an ambitious project whose realization demands nothing less than a complete rearrangement of the existing social order, and it will be made much easier if women and men can work together, both with their own goals in mind and out of genuine concern for the well-being of the other half of the human race. For that reason I ask you in the men’s rights movement to see feminism as an ally rather than an enemy, and to back that up with a commitment to fight for things that truly should be men’s rights, rather than for men’s privileges that should rightfully be abolished. I believe that there is enough honesty and maturity within the men’s rights movements that this can come to pass.

Yours sincerely,

Cameron Roberts

The ongoing physical battles on the streets of Greece have been mirrored in the rest of the financially struggling world with a rhetorical battle to establish the narrative of exactly what went wrong there. The deficit hawk

s are winning this battle. Their message is generally along the same line as this Forbes article:

A bailout, however, does nothing to fix the misguided policies that have generated Greece’s existing debt and ongoing deficits. Bailout therefore merely postpones the day of reckoning. Worse, bailout both rewards Greece’s bad past behavior and encourages such behavior in future. Greece will never change its misguided policies if the E.U. and IMF infuse it with new cash, just as no teenager who has overspent an allowance will reform if the parents merely expand that allowance.

I can’t comment on the causes of Greece’s fiscal woes, as I lack the requisite economics training to

say anything useful. But the line of thinking quoted has ramifications that go beyond Greece and beyond economics. The irresponsible teenager mentioned in the quote is a clear reference to the kitchen table metaphor, in which government budgets are compared to household budgets and extensive government services are compared to unnecessary luxuries that must be abandoned in times of fiscal scarcity.

There have been many criticisms of the kitchen table metaphor on strictly economic grounds, so they’re worth reading if you’re interested in the politics of the recession. I’m going to remain agnostic on the validity of the household/government comparison and focus instead on the second postulate of the analogy: that social services are luxuries. Before I begin, you should know that I have chosen to lay this out as a careful ethical argument, but I strongly considered abandoning stru

cture and instead stating this as a rant. You should therefore feel free to read the following in a really angry voice if it suits you.

If we’re talking about luxuries, we must first define what exactly we mean by t

he term. I propose the following: In ethics, a luxury refers to anything whose presence is an ethical good, but not a moral necessity. In other words, the presence of luxuries makes the world a better place, but the absence of luxuries does not necessarily make the world any worse. I recognize that other disciplines, such as economics or politics probably already have definitions for the term, so this definition is for ethical deliberations only. While it will undoubtedly be subject to Wittgensteinian counterexamples, I think the definition I have outlined accords with what most people mean when they talk about luxuries.

This definition jives well with what people do around the real kitchen table. If a person or family is struggling financially and cannot raise further income, the first thing they will look to cut is their luxuries. They will be more likely to buy fewer clothes or to cancel a vacation than to cut off their heating or buy less food. While your mileage may vary on what actually constitutes a personal luxury, the matter is not a subject of frequent and vigorous public debate. Unfortunately, such agreement does not exist on what constitutes a public luxury, and that is a big problem for determining ethical fiscal policy.

One way to resolve this is to take the focus off of government and place it instead on society as a whole. By drawing on labour and natural resources, society produces wealth which is then distributed amongst its members. The production and distribution of wealth can be done in a number of different ways, which are known as economic systems. In every

economic system, however, the reality is the same: labour and resources are required to produce wealth, which is then allocated tow

ards various purposes.

With that in mind, let’s look at a few items that would appear on the a few national kitchen tables as the world tries to sort out its budget in these tough times. The United States Environmental Protection Agency’s 2011 budget of US8.6 billion  might seem a bit steep, until you consider the fact that in the same year, Americans spent $48.3 billion on pet care alone. In Canada, meanwhile, the CA $1 billion (approximate) that the CBC receives from the Federal government is dwarfed by the $22 billion that Canadians spent on Christmas gifts alone last year. Here in Britain, the

23 billion pounds spent by the department for Education, Innovation and Skills in 2008 (before the cuts) looks pretty small when compared with the 30 billion pounds spent on alcoholic drinks. And in all three countries, there is a small upper class that spends huge amounts of the national productivity on luxuries for itself. In the United States, $2 trillion-or 20% of the nation’s money-is owned by the top one percent. That figure is less severe in Canada and Britain, but still there is a lot of money being spent on personal luxuries by wealthy people.

Given all this, it is unlikely that we at the kitchen table would designate things like public health care, universal education, or environmental protection as luxuries. These government services are among the most important things that any society in any country spends its money on. The choice between cutting education or health care is an excruciating one, but if cutting back on the amount of money spent by the ultra-rich on private yachts is an option then the choice becomes obvious. As it currently stands, we’ve got it all back-asswards: cutting social services while maintaining (and even increasing) tax cuts for the wealthy is akin to our cash-strapped kitchen table family halving their f
This is a question of priorities. I have no problem with people spending money on Christmas or their pets or (god forbid) beer. I don’t even have any real objection to the extravagant spending of the super rich. But when fiscal circumstances force us to tighten our belt, then it is the real luxuries-particularly those purchased by the super rich-that should be cut back.   The fact that this extends the cutting decisions beyond the government budget is immaterial. Taxes give us an instrument to decrease private spending on certain things and reallocate society’s resources towards more important goals, and when the decision is between a new sports car for a rich person or a life-saving surgery for a poor person, then we should not hesitate to cut the former. Luckily, even in times like this there is more than enough money to take care of the necessities and have a few luxuries on the side, but we should never forget which is which. As long as there are still talented people who can’t afford an education or people dying of treatable conditions for want of affordable health care, society should not be allocating its resources towards expensive personal luxuries. ood budget while buying a Porsche.

For more on this, see xkcd’s awesome money chart.

The recent Penn State Riots are an excellent example of argumentum ad populum.

From Margaret Wente’s latest column:

“If you are a faithful follower of the mainstream media, you will … know that Mr. Harper is guilty of valorizing the military, being indifferent to the plight of downtrodden aboriginals and clamping down (at vast expense) on imaginary crime. He has also created a quasi-totalitarian world called Harperland in which no dissent is tolerated.

But here’s the worst part. Canadians don’t care! In fact, they claim to be pretty happy with the way things are going. According to a new poll published in Maclean’s, 86 per cent of us believe Canada is the greatest country in the world … On top of that, the Harper government’s dangerous and misguided policies are overwhelmingly popular. According to a poll by Ipsos Reid, two-thirds of Canadians approve of its efforts to boost the military and fight crime. Sixty per cent of the public feel the government is enhancing Canada’s reputation in the world. And a whopping 80 per cent agree with its decision to ban the niqab at citizenship ceremonies – a move derided by much of the progressive left.

It doesn’t get worse than that.

To tell the truth, I don’t agree with all of Mr. Harper’s policies myself. (e.g., the niqab.) But it seems obvious to me that his government is far more in touch with mainstream Canadians than all those critics who accuse him of abandoning the mainstream. He’s worse than an extremist – he’s a populist. Or else he has duped and terrorized the masses so effectively that they are powerless to resist. Kind of like you-know-who.”

In the above quote, ‘you know who’ refers to the recently and thankfully deceased Kim Jong-Il. This implies a big fat false dilemma: either Stephen Harper’s policies are responsible, acceptable and praiseworthy, or the Conservative Party is some kind of duplicate of the North Korean regime. Any intelligent person in any part of the political spectrum should know that such a comparison is a waste of time. Stephen Harper has little in common with the world’s tin-pot dictators, but a government can be autocratic, irresponsible and morally bankrupt long before its country descends to the point where it can be compared with North Korea. It would not be entirely off-base to say that Canada under Stephen Harper has made a few tiny but significant steps towards a point where such a comparison might begin to seem valid.

What worries me more than the false dilemma, however, is Wente’s implication that popularity makes right. This is also known as argumentum ad populum, and it is a classic logical fallacy. While Wente has a history of massaging the facts to fit her message and so I don’t entirely trust the polls she cites, it is still entirely possible to imagine a fascist government that enjoys broad public support. This support could have helped the government win an election, or could have been created by careful public relations once the government is already in power. In either case, however, the public cannot necessarily be counted on to understand the consequences of their support.

It’s difficult to talk about this phenomenon without violating Godwin’s law, so it’s fortunate that Paul Krugman just published a column by Kim Lane Schepple, which describes exactly this phenomenon in Hungary:

“In a free and fair election last spring in Hungary, the center-right political party, Fidesz, got 53% of the vote. This translated into 68% of the seats in the parliament under Hungary’s current disproportionate election law. With this supermajority, Fidesz won the power to change the constitution. They have used this power in the most extreme way at every turn, amending the constitution ten times in their first year in office and then enacting a wholly new constitution that will take effect on January 1, 2012.

This constitutional activity has transformed the legal landscape to remove checks on the power of the government and put virtually all power into the hands of the current governing party for the foreseeable future.”

If you read the original article, you will see that the authoritarian provisions in the new constitution are complex and numerous, such that an average member of the Hungarian public would be unlikely to fully understand the government’s intentions even if they had any viable means to oppose them. Canada’s situation may be less dire, but the same phenomenon applies. How many Canadians, using the media outlets this country has to offer, can fully comprehend the ramifications of Stephen Harper’s frequent proroguing of parliament, or the removal of the per vote subsidy? I can say that I certainly don’t understand the likely constitutional outcomes of everything that happens in Ottawa. That’s why we, as a society, pay ombudsmen, newspaper columnists and academics to explain those things which whose understanding is demanded of us by democracy.

The appeal to popularity may be among the laziest of the logical fallacies, because it allows its user to shy away from all but the least objectionable positions. If unpopular positions are automatically untrue, then all research in science, ethics, history, law, public policy, epistemology, religion, sociology, criminology, engineering, literature, and many other fields can be reduced to simple opinion polling. The argumentum ad populum is also useful for governments because it automatically justifies everything they do by virtue of the fact that they have won an election at some point.

Seen in that light, it’s decidedly inconvenient that argumentum ad populum is a fallacy in the first place. Maybe we can find enough public support to officially codify it as a valid argument.

While I applaud recent efforts to create a positive Canadian nationalism, I think that we will always have a tendency to define ourselves in opposition to others. It will always be easier to point out things you are not than to consider what you actually are. This is mostly harmless in the context of nationality, but it can be a great deal more problematic when it comes to gender identity. Men pursuing the masculine ideal tend to identify themselves in opposition to some kind of feminine ideal. The negative effects of this can cut both ways. When applied in this context, traditionally masculine traits such as strength, intelligence, or self-reliance can imply that women are weak, stupid or dependent. Alternately, if women are percieved according to traditional femininity to be nurturing, empathetic, and polite then the quest for masculinity will drive some to become cruel, callous, and obnoxious. The latter effect explains a lot about the masculine nihilist brigade.

This leaves us at a somewhat hopeless position. Masculinity is a social construct, and the recognition of that fact means that we can define manhood as whatever we want it to be. If, however, people can’t be kept from defining themselves in opposition to others, then gender identity comes perilously close to being a zero sum game, in which every positive trait in one gender must be offset by its undesirable opposite in the other. I think most rational people will recognize that this is neither the way the world works, nor a way that anybody would want it to work. How, then, are we to account for this tendency in the construction of a more positive masculinity? What is the opposite of a man if it is not a woman?

Here’s my proposal: The opposite of manhood is not womanhood, but rather boyhood. Masculinity thus denotes maturity rather than mere opposition to femininity. This must come with a few disclaimers. First, as I mentioned above and have said before, nothing about this says anything whatsoever about women and femininity. Questions about femininity are for women to answer. Second, boyhood is not to be understood as a set of negative characteristics to be shunned, but rather as a perfectly healthy state of being that people should be expected to grow out of at a certain point in their lives. Lastly, this is all quite subjective. Manhood, boyhood, and other such identities vary between cultures, families and individuals. That being said, here are a few of my observations on the matter, drawn from five summers of working at a day camp. As I see it, men differ from boys in a number of important respects:

• Response to Adversity Howls of rage at not getting one’s way are generally characterized as immature, and indeed they are far more common among boys than among men. Masculinity can therefore be understood as including a certain stoicism in the face of difficult circumstances.
• Response to Constructive Criticism When criticized, boys frequently respond with insults and denial. It is, accordingly, thought of a mark of maturity when somebody uses constructive criticism as a catalyst for self-improvement.
• Responsibility Speaking purely from personal experience, I can say that adulthood has come along with a vastly improved ability to acknowledge the consequences of my actions, both as they pertain to me and as they affect other people.
• Temper Boys are quick to hit one another as a way of resolving conflict. Men can be expected to use their words, and little tolerance is extended to them if they are unable to do so.

The nice thing about this definition of masculinity is that it already lines up with a lot of what is prized in traditional masculinity. Traditionally masculine pop-culture heroes, for all their problematic sexism, tend to exhibit a high degree of maturity. That this transition is not terribly radical will make it easier to attain. It does, however, have an interesting and encouraging side-effect, which I have intentionally chosen the characteristics listed above in order to illustrate. Feminism, if taken as seriously as it deserves, should change the social landscape such that gendered privilege is stripped away from men while those same men are asked to reform their behaviour as they relate to women and each other. This will not be easy for many men, and it will require a great deal of maturity to deal with. Many men have, predictably, responded to feminism with a series of juvenile whines, but masculinity, according to my definition, requires the stoicism to accept the loss of certain privileges, and the willingness to listen and change when one’s sexist behaviour is criticized. This can only be good for the feminist project.

This is just one way to understand masculinity, of course, and no man is required to abide by it or any other masculine ideal. The reason I have shared this is because men need alternatives to Sean Connery masculinity, and these alternatives must not define themselves simply as ‘not femininity’. Anti-feminists have chosen to aggressively question the masculinity of men who support the feminist cause, so it behooves us to fight back by cutting the very idea of normative masculinity out from under them. An important job for male feminists is to make the transition away from patriarchy as comfortable as possible for men, while not compromising the advancement of women’s rights. We need new, feminist-compatible views of masculinity to make that possible.

Clever image stolen from Slap Upside the Head.

I’ve flown from Scotland to Ontario for a two-week Christmas with my family. This means that I don’t get to be taken seriously in any environmental discussion for at least the time that the Earth’s forests take to absorb my massive transatlantic carbon emissions, so now that I’m no longer in Scotland writing thousands of words about the multi-level perspective, I might as well write about Ontario things. Specifically, the ongoing saga of the Catholic Board of Education and their insistence on homophobic policy.

Some progress appears to have been made in this matter since I left. From my perspective, it seems to have become something of an election issue, and Tim Hudak’s homophobic ad campaign, which tried to capitalize on that, may have even lost him the election. This bodes well for the tolerance and general decency of the Ontarian electorate, and probably helped Dalton McGuinty table an anti-bullying bill that will require Catholic schools to have support groups for gay students, though it weasels out on their names. So far, (mostly) so good.

Unfortunately, the push-back from the religious right has begun. This recent National Post Article shows that some conservative Catholics are getting all upset about their religious rights to discriminate based on sexual orientation:

“Ms. Pierre said [...] ‘We would not tolerate negative speech toward anyone based on his or her sexual orientation in our schools,’ she said. ‘Nevertheless, we don’t want society telling the Church what is proper behaviour and what it should teach.’

The Catechism of the Catholic Church says homosexual behaviour is ‘intrinsically disordered’ and ‘under no circumstance can it be approved.’ However, the Catechism also teaches that homosexuals ‘must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided.’”

The most common reply in the comment thread of the above-linked article is the a very common fiscally-grounded argument:

“Here’s a suggestion, Catholics: do what the public tells you, or stop receiving public funds.”

I used to like this argument, but now I find it deeply unsatisfactory. It’s not that it’s a bad argument. It has all the hallmarks of a highly effective talking point. It’s specific, policy-oriented, and strategic. It’s also largely unanswerable. The best response the Catholic School Board’s supporters have been able to muster is some gibberish about how their tax dollars somehow grant their school board the right to openly flout human rights law. I doubt that even the people making this argument really believe it. Public institutions must obey the law regardless of how their users or backers feel about specific laws in question. So the argument from public financing has been largely effective. And yet I dislike it.

The reason I dislike it is because it concedes too much. Even if entirely successful, this argument makes LGBT rights a matter of mere fiscal prudence. It implies that the open teaching of homophobia and intentional marginalization of gay students will be entirely acceptable if only their parents use private funds to do so. If this is the only argument we use, then we risk precisely this outcome. It’s important to keep in mind that Dalton McGuinty is primarily a well-meaning coward, and will be looking for a way out of the situation that does not alienate conservative Catholics. We might, therefore, see some kind of tax rebate for parents who pay tuition to private Catholic schools as a way out of the argument that would not require the Liberals to take a stand against religious bigotry. According to the fiscal argument, such financial sleight of hand would make institutionalized discrimination and the resultant bullying entirely acceptable.

Such practices can never be acceptable, regardless of how they are funded. Try substituting different kinds of human rights for gay rights into the situation, and the fiscal argument appears extremely conciliatory. Would we allow racist parents to pass their hatred onto their children through home-schooling? Would we permit a private school to teach xenophobia? Would we accept it if a high school demanded its students live according to 1950s gender roles, so long as it accepted no public funding to do so? No, no, and no. So why is it even remotely fathomable that financial independence could license an entire school board to teach that some ten percent of its students are ‘intrinsically disordered’? The fact that this is even a question is evidence that the gay rights movement still has a long way to go. Homophobia, regardless of what ancient tome is used to justify it, should be seen as a fringe perspective that is absolutely unacceptable to teach to children.

I’m normally an advocate of balancing the ideal with the attainable, but when basic human rights are concerned it is no time to be merely strategic. While this debate is still open, the pro-gay majority of Ontarians need to push harder on this issue: Nobody, regardless of faith, culture, or any other factor, has a right to teach homophobia to their children. Even private schools have a responsibility to teach curricula that promote public goods. Homophobia is the opposite of a public good. The fiscal argument’s effectiveness means that it should not be abandoned, but it should be used only as tactical support for a stronger position: No school, regardless of where it receives its funding, should have hate and discrimination in its curriculum or policies.

"Nothing would have kept me from joining you except the loss of my voice (at least my speaking voice) which in turn is due to a long argument I am currently having with the specter of death. Nobody ever wins this argument, though there are some solid points to be made while the discussion goes on." -Christopher Hitchens

Christopher Hitchens was in the business of disagreement, so I can think of no better way to commemorate his life than to disagree with him. Here it is, then: Christopher Hitchens, depsite his own and others’ assertions to the contrary, was not a militant atheist. Or at the very least, he was a militant atheist of a different sort than Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and the others who surrounded him. Consider this pertinent quote from a debate he had with Al Sharpton:

“Firstly, I’ve said repeatedly that this stuff cannot be taken away from people. It is their favourite toy and it will remain so, as Freud said, as long as we are afraid of death, which is, I think, likely to be quite a long time. Second, I hope I’ve made it clear that I’m perfectly happy for people to have these toys, and to play with them at home, and hug them to themselves and to share them with other people who come around and play with the toys.

They are not to make me play with these toys. I will not play with the toys. Do not bring the toys to my house. Don’t say my children must play with these toys. Don’t say my toys-which might be a condom-are not allowed by their toys. I’m not going to have any of that. Enough with clerical and religious bullying and intimidation. Is that finally clear? Have I got that across? Thank you.”

While spoken with Hichens’ characteristic abrasiveness, this quote reveals something that is not widely recognized: while Dawkins complains that religious belief is an epistemic offense, Harris makes moderate believers responsible for the actions of fanatics and Dennet speaks of a religious spell that needs to be broken, Hitchens always focused his attention squarely on those cases where religious excesses cause real human suffering. Hitchens’ first priority was always human welfare, and by never straying from this goal into the epistemic snobbery of his atheist colleagues, he was, I think, more a friend to moderate religion than he himself would have admitted.

Of course, those who wish to remember Hitchens negatively will not do so for his ends but for his means: Hitchens was famous for his contrarianism, and the brash and frequently offensive manner in which he expressed it. My attention was first drawn to Hitchens by the dramatic flourish-commonly referred to as the hitchslap-with which he would dispatch his opponents in a debate. Unfortunately for me, the hitchslap was not reserved only for those who I happened to dislike. Hitchens applied his rhetorical ferocity to a number of quite unpopular causes: support for the war in Iraq being the most egregious example.  It would be easy to simply say that nobody is perfect and dismiss Hitchens’ support for some nasty right-wing causes as blemishes in an otherwise admirable career, but that would not do the man sufficient justice. While many of his political positions were mistakes, the important thing to take away from his stalwart defense of them is that Hitchens never pandered to an audience. Having arrived at his positions through careful moral deliberation, Hitchens would aggressively advocate for them until either his goals were achieved, or further deliberation caused him to change his mind. Hitchens would not hesitate to alienate his existing fans if he thought it would be necessary to do so in order to confront injustice. Today, when most newspaper columnists appear to simply express positions calculated to best corner the market potential of a particular slice of the political spectrum, Hitchens’ approach is more needed than ever, even if it makes us angry from time to time.

Hitch was not always an asshole. His discussion of a reading list with an eight-year old girl, to take one example, is absolutely heartwarming. On the frequent occasions when he was abrasive and unpleasant, it was never for frivolous reasons. Hitchens was, in fact, exactly the kind of asshole that the world needs. Aggressive challenging of preconceived notions is sometimes necessary to make real ethical progress, and that was exactly what Hitchens was in the business of doing. In an inspiring interview about his impending death, he quoted somebody (I forget who) who said that one should be embarrassed to die if they have not done anything to make the world a better place. By that measure, Christopher Hitchens can go into the grave with pride.

First person to get a horizontal, vertical or diagonal row gets a free handout.

The story in question has already been termed gelatogate, and there is a reasonably neutral summary of it here. Basically, a bunch of skeptics attending the Skepticon IV conference in Springfield, Missouri, found this sign in the window of a local Gelato shop:

On first glance, it’s easy to dismiss this as the work of some Christian supremacist bigot with more temper than business sense, until you read the shop owner’s apology, which he posted on Reddit last night:

“Once the store slowed down, I decided to walk down the street to learn more about the convention, fully thinking it was something involving UFOs (“skeptics”). What I saw instead was a man conducting a mock sermon, reading the bible and cursing it. Instead of saying “Amen”, the phrase was “god damn”. Being a Christian, and expecting flying saucers, I was not only totally surprised but totally offended. I took it very personally and quickly decided in the heat of the moment that I had to take matters into my own hands and let people know how I felt at that moment in time.

So, I went quickly back to my business, grabbed the first piece of paper I could find, wrote the note and taped it in my front window. This was an impulsive response, which I fully acknowledge was completely wrong and unacceptable.”

This seems pretty sincere, and so despite not having been there, I am inclined to forgive the shop owner on that basis for ten minutes’ indiscretion. Jen McCreight agrees, as does Hemant Mehta, and many people quoted in the aforementioned news story. But not everybody is being so charitable. Adam Lee over at Big Think had this to say about the apology:

“That response – the instinctive desire to punish people for expressing a viewpoint you dislike, even when they’re doing it on their own time and in their own place – is what I can’t abide…Christians in America speak as if their beliefs deserve a special protection from criticism, that they should be exempt from the kind of criticism and, yes, mockery that they don’t bat an eye at when it’s directed at other ideas”

Typically for a political atheist, Lee is brazenly asserting his right to offend. Lee’s objection is a contribution to a debate much older than gelatogate over whether it is acceptable to engage in intentionally offensive conduct. There are reasonable arguments for Lee’s position. Significant social progress has been thanks to aggressive campaigning: it is unlikely that the civil rights or gay rights movements would have succeeded without offending the sensibilities of some. More recent feminist or economic justice campaigns have also likely caused some offense along with their positive effects. Offensive beliefs can be quite deeply rooted, and therefore quite offensive to remove. It therefore seems unlikely that any marginalized group would ever make any headway if they had to avoid ever causing offense. On the surface, therefore, offense seems justified.

There is, however, a convincing counterargument. Offense is frequently cast as a significant moral harm that can cause considerable distress to its victims. This is true. The Gelatogate example shows that human emotions can be powerful things: The gelato store owner’s actions show that what he saw at skepticon was considerably emotionally damaging. While certainly not as bad as, say, pepper-spraying peaceful protesters, offending somebody is still a pretty reliable way to make somebody unhappy and is therefore ethically objectionable.

Both of these arguments are convincing, but I think that to see the issue in such polarized terms is to fall victim to a false dilemma. Nobody talks this way about other harmful but potentially useful actions. It’s possible to condemn physical violence, for example, while still admitting its use for self-defense, defense of others, or (maybe) defense of property. Hurt feelings should be approached the same way: the question is not whether offense is justified, but when offense is justified.

Luckily, we already have a seasoned ethical theory for a similar situation: just war theory. Admittedly, there is far, far more at stake when considering whether to go to war than there is when considering whether to tell somebody they’re beliefs are wrong, but the fundamentals of the decision are the same: one is weighing a the moral harm that will inevitably be caused by confrontation against the good that could possibly come from it. It can therefore serve as a reasonable guide. Based on that, here is my proposed theory. I’ve used the example of a hypothetical confrontation with a religiously inspired homophobe to guide the discussion.

In order for it to be morally acceptable to verbally offend somebody, the following conditions must be satisfied:

1. Just Cause: Any offense must be caused only for the right reason. While just war theory focuses on self-defense or the defense of others on this point, just offense theory must be aware of the hazards of escalation. It is, therefore, usually not a good idea to return an offense for an offense. Instead, social betterment should be understood as the primary (but perhaps not the only) just cause for offense. Offensive words may be justifiably spoken if their aim is to correct some belief that is somehow materially detrimental. It is, therefore, acceptable to call out homophobia even if a homophobe’s religious beliefs entail a very strong emotional attachment to Leviticus. It is not, however, acceptable to tell somebody that their God does not exist simply because you believe that you have a more coherent metaphysical worldview than them.

2. Right Intention: In addition to having a justified cause, it is necessary to pursue the argument with the goal of addressing that cause. In the example above, it would not be acceptable to offend the homophobe if you’re secretly doing it in order to feel morally and intellectually superior.

3. Last Resort: Verbal offense should be the last possible means available to change a person’s mind. In the case of the homophobe, one should first try changing their mind with minimum modification to their deeply held beliefs. In the case of the aforementioned homophobe, one should avoid offense until an attempt has been made to invalidate homophobia from within a biblical worldview. Most skeptics should actually be pretty well equipped to do this.

4. Probability of Success: If you’re arguing with a member of the Westboro Baptist Church, it’s probably best to just walk away rather than challenge their core religious beliefs. You’re not going to win that battle. There’s no point in causing the moral harm of offense if there is no chance of thereby changing their mind.

5. Proportionality: The offense caused must not be so great as to negate any benefit brought about by changing minds. This will depend on the situation. It may, for example, be worth it to attempt to change the outlook of a young and politically active homophobe, as their ideas could have a large impact and their brain is probably still malleable enough to permit change without too much distress. If the same beliefs are held by an elderly relative, however, the personal offence necessary to change them may be more harmful than whatever small actions may be influenced by their belief.

6. No Arguments Mala in Se: No arguments that are evil in themselves. You don’t get to insult somebody’s dead relatives, even if it would somehow be helpful to the point you’re trying to make. Even justified offense must have limits.

That’s my best attempt for now. It’s a little bit half-baked, but I think that gelatogate should be seen as a catalyst for further thought on this. Of course, the performance that the shopkeeper saw was not in his shop, but within the space of the skeptics where he had taken the initiative to go and investigate. This argument may therefore be irrelevant to the discussion of the shopkeeper’s apology. The apology should, nevertheless, cause self-reflective skeptics to examine the moral value of offending people.

This can have a large benefit that extends beyond the skeptical movement. Despite the aforementioned difference in opinion over offense, skepticism and social justice activism actually have a lot to offer one another. More skepticism incorporated into social justice activism can provide new and effective lines of argument and policy formation while also helping to repair credibility damaged by the 9/11 truthers and similar hangers-on. Social justice activism, meanwhile, besides being a natural conclusion of skeptical and humanist principles, can also provide a body of activist experience that would be very useful in a number of atheist, skeptic, and humanist efforts. There is, therefore, a lot of potential benefit to the resolution of this one sticking point about offense.

I don’t intend to be the last word on this matter, but I think this is a discussion that needs to be started. Wouldn’t it be nice if an event ending in ‘gate’ actually resulted in something positive for the skeptical community?

Stay calm and document.

In all the excitement about Occupy Wall Street evictions, I almost forgot to share this. On the Monday after the Toronto G20 police riot, my friend and I were stopped on our way to the anti-police brutality demonstration in front of the police headquarters by a group of uniformed police officers, who stopped us and searched our backpacks despite our lack of consent. I filed a complaint with the Ontario Independent Police Review Department, and they took the time to interview me about the incident. Two weeks ago, I received the official report resulting from the complaint. Here’s the summary:

“After careful investigation, the OIPRD has found that there is an insufficient body of evidence to establish on reasonable grounds that misconduct, as defined by the Police Services Act, occurred in this complaint.”

That’s the bad news. There is, however, a small vindication on page 3 of the report (posted below), which substantitates my claim that the search as I described it was illegal. The issue was a lack of evidence. I suppose I can’t be too surprised or disappointed by the result. Proper jurisprudence says that even thuggish police officers can’t be punished without proper evidence, and I neglected to collect any such evidence. I’m a bit upset with myself on this count. Part of me expected such treatment (or worse) on the way to the rally, and I should have known enough to document it. This report seems to suggest that, had I done so, I may have seen some vindication from OIPRD. Thinking back to the incident, I think the main reason that I failed to record the search or collect the officers’ names and badge numbers was that I was intimidated: There were five of them and two of us, and they were all much, much bigger than us, and I had seen videos of some pretty nasty violent incidents coming from such situations over the past weekend. I think the officers effectively used that fear to their advantage.

So the moral of the story is this: If you are subjected to illegal searches or worse from police officers, keep your head. Film the incident and collect names and badge numbers. Be polite but insistent-it is your right to record the details of any interaction with the police. Afterwards, file a complaint. My experience suggests that if you’re proactive, you can actually win after the fact.

Here’s the report in full.