If Republicans are fiscally conservative, why have they failed to make the one "valid" argument against gay marriage?

(Before proceeding, I should be very clear that by "valid" I don't mean that the argument is satisfactory or convincing. I merely mean that it doesn't rely on fallacious reasoning, abject falsehoods, or imagined costs or risks; i.e. I am defining "valid" as meaning an argument which identifies a real cost or risk, no matter how trivial that cost may be when compared to the benefits of doing the right thing.)

One thing I am fond of saying to explain my rabid support of gay marriage is that, unlike the vast majority of political issues, this one is a no-brainer. I have previously claimed that legalizing gay marriage is a rare legislative action that is all benefit and no cost. This differs from other issues on which I have a strong opinion, but where I acknowledge there are significant costs to the position I advocate, making it an issue where reasonable people might differ (e.g. my opinions on abortion rights and the death penalty fit this profile¹). We don't even have to figure out the logistics of enacting the legislation -- you just say, "Now all marriage laws are exactly the same as they were yesterday, except the gender of the involved parties doesn't matter." Done.²

So I was contemplating that this morning, and I suddenly thought of an actual, real cost of legalizing gay marriage. Mind you, it's a rather small cost, and even if it were a large cost I would still strongly support gay marriage because it's simply the right thing to do. Denying full civil rights to the LGBT community cannot be deemed acceptable under any circumstances.

Still, since the cost I have identified has a direct effect on the federal budget, it seems odd that a political party that nominally prides itself on fiscal responsibility has so far failed to raise this argument in their attack on gay marriage. (Or, it would seem odd if I actually believed the modern Republican party had any clearly articulated ideals at all, other than providing a haven for bigotry and promoting unapologetic demagoguery)

Without further ado, here it goes:

I'm not exactly sure how the numbers work out, but it seems likely that recognizing gay marriage at the federal level would create a sudden spike in the number of "Married filing jointly" tax returns, with a presumably negative effect on tax revenue. I don't imagine the impact will be large, and as I said, even if it were, it would be irrelevant in a discussion on civil rights. And furthermore, this can't become a reality until DOMA is either repealed or correctly ruled unconstitutional under the 14th Amendment, so the only way it can be applied to legalization of gay marriage at the state level is via the "slippery slope" argument (but we know gay marriage opponents have no qualms about using that usually-fallacious argument...)

But isn't it strange that this argument hasn't been made? Doesn't it seem like a perfect fit for Rush Limbaugh to be blathering on about how "these deficit-happy liberals want to deal a further blow to the federal budget right in the middle of the worst recession in recent memory?"

Could it be that it is beneath even the modern GOP to argue that civil rights should be arbitrarily denied to a certain group in order to increase tax revenue? It doesn't seem like it... The only answer -- and I guess we knew this already, but it is just further evidence -- is that when the GOP has a choice between promoting fiscal conservatism vs. promoting bigotry, they're going to go with the one that they know their audience can grasp.

¹My position on those two issues, and why it's not as cut and dry as gay marriage...

On abortion rights: I support full abortion rights with no restrictions on when they are performed or on medical necessity. I recognize that this position would conceivably allow a small number of abortions to occur which reasonable people -- myself included -- might view as hugely immoral, on par with infanticide. I think this cost/risk is justified because a) the vast majority of women seeking a late abortion are doing so for legitimate medical reasons, b) both the government and insurance companies have shown themselves to be completely untrustworthy at discerning what "legitimate medical reasons" are in regards to abortion, and c) good luck finding a doctor willing to perform a 3rd-trimester abortion on a healthy fetus inside a healthy mother, anyway.

We might imagine a distant future when reproductive rights are not so politicized, when regulations might be put in place on late abortions to define parameters when they are acceptable -- but in the near term any attempt to do so is simply going to be used as a foot in the door to deny appropriate medical care to women undergoing one of the most devastating events of their lives. Still, there are real costs here, and (unlike gay marriage) the issue is a bit tricky.

On the death penalty: It's a waste of money, a waste of time, and far too often a waste of an innocent life. But it is still less of a no-brainer than the gay marriage issue, because while the death penalty is a lousy deterrent for violent crimes, there is some suggestive evidence that a person who does not believe proper "justice" is being done in response to wrongdoing is less likely to behave ethically. We might extend that to a whole population, and argue that by failing to execute violent criminals, we contribute to a general nonchalance about unethical behavior.

Okay, that's a stretch. But the other reason I don't feel quite as passionate about the death penalty as I do about gay marriage is that for criminals whose actions are beyond reprehensible and whose guilt is not in doubt, my reaction to their execution is pretty much a big shrug. The recent execution of the DC sniper comes to mind. I don't generally support government-sponsored murder, and I feel like it's wasteful from a practical perspective -- but do I feel a sense of outrage that this guy was executed? Nope, not at all.

Don't get me wrong, on both of these issues, I still feel strongly. But there are major costs and benefits on both sides, so it requires careful thought to come to a conclusion, and opinions could conceivably change over time. With gay marriage, there are simply no (non-trivial) costs to speak of, and I cannot imagine my opinion changing under any circumstances. Nearly unique among political issues, it is a complete and total no-brainer.

²Seriously, legalizing gay marriage is that simple. As we have seen by precedent in areas where it has been legalized, it's not even a big deal if the existing marriage license forms say "Husband" and "Wife". People just cross out the erroneous appellation and replace it with an appropriate one for the time-being, until the local government can get around to printing out "Spouse/Spouse" forms to correct that embarrassment. It's not ideal, but it shouldn't be a barrier to legalizing gay marriage, particularly in cash-strapped locales where expediency might dictate that the old-style forms remain in use until they would have needed to print new ones anyway.

Fixing those little remaining artifacts of prejudice like "Husband/Wife" forms is something that needs to be done, but it is not at all a requirement for legalizing gay marriage. Gay marriage could be legalized across the entire country, today, with nary a hiccup in the bureaucratic administration of marriage laws.

You can't escape it, part II

I have written previously about how stupid and hypocritical it is to suggest that atheists should keep their (lack of) beliefs to themselves, given the ubiquity of religion in everyday life. Everywhere you turn, people are blathering on or otherwise promoting their religious beliefs, and nobody bats an eyelash. I'm not even talking about fundies and other sanctimonious types, I'm just talking about casual promotion of religious beliefs.

Today, my wife took our 9-month-old son to a "Kindermusik" class, which might be described as "music lessons for infants", but is probably better described as "fun activity that let's mom get out of the house while increasing baby's socialization and exposure to music." In any case, she said it was a real blast and she intends on going back. On the other hand, she also reports:

It is unfortunately held at a Christian school, in a room decorated with Christian affirmations, by a woman who appears to be xtian

Not that this is a huge deal... In theory, none of that should matter (though I find even nominal reverence for a book as horribly violent and hate-filled as the Bible to be deeply disturbing, so I guess even in a perfect world it would matter a little) except that this sort of thing is everywhere; nobody thinks very much of it; and if you imagine the atheist equivalent, people would be all up in arms. I mean, what if it was held in a freethinker school, talk by a woman who appeared to be an atheist, and the room was decorated with humanist affirmations like "You can be good without God" and such? People would storm out. It would be controversial.

Either everybody else shuts the fuck up about their stupid beliefs, or else I get to be as vocal as I want about my stupid beliefs. You can't have it both ways... unless you want to maintain that atheism -- even the quiet, deferential sort -- is inherently evil. People who spew tripe like, "People who talk about their atheism are just as bad as religious fundamentalists," need a serious reality check. At worst, people who talk about their atheism are just as bad as people who talk about their religion -- and the latter is not restricted to fundamentalists, it's situation normal all over the world, all the time.

Bishop Tobin is a slimy little toady

On a recent Hardball, Chris Matthews reams Bishop Thomas Tobin like an altar boy over his hypocritical request that Sen. Partick Kennedy not accept communion because of his voting record on abortion legislation. And yes, I said hypocritical -- I initially thought the Bishop's position was just wrong and stupid and mean, but I now realize it's hypocritical too, after hearing Matthews' clever argument. It goes something like this: "Okay, Bishop, you say Kennedy should have voted a different way. So what should abortion law be? Should abortion be a criminal offense?"

Tobin won't answer. He condemns Kennedy for not legislating like a Catholic, but he can't (or won't) say what that would mean. It takes a minute and a half of badgering by Matthews just to get this pathetic slimeball to say he thinks abortion should be illegal at all. Seriously! He wants to tell other people want to think and feel, but he refuses to actually take a position that might draw fire towards him.

Oh, and his contention that Kennedy attacked him first is just absurd. Yes, Kennedy chose to make Tobin's assholeness public. But Tobin was the one who chose to be an asshole in the first place. I suppose that Bishop Tobin also thinks that it is the abuse victims who attacked the priests and not the other way around, because the priests had the good graces to keep the child molestation a private pastoral matter, while those grandstanding victims went and publicized the whole thing. Right...

Not that it ought to matter whether Kennedy gets to eat a holy Jesus cracker or not, but this just highlights how despicable the Catholic church is. Yeah, sure, religion provides people with solace -- by attempting to manipulate them through spiritual blackmail. Real nice.

Religious leaders in Belfast object to "Don't label me" billboard

I guess this is no surprise. There is no atheist/humanist billboard innocuous enough that it won't draw protests. If an atheist organization put up a billboard that merely said, "Have a nice day!", I'm sure there would be all sorts of objections. "We don't need that in our community -- God decides what kind of day it is!"

Anyway, the final phase of the BHA's bus campaign, in which a billboard with a picture of a child simply reads, "Please Don't Label Me. Let Me Grow Up And Choose For Myself," surrounded by a bunch of possible "labels" that people might wrongly apply to a child ("Christian child", "Muslim child", "Mormon child", "Atheist child", etc.), is drawing fiery objections from religious leaders in Belfast. You'd think that asking people not to label their children would be uncontroversial, but I guess not.

Most of the objections miss the point -- "How dare you tell us how to raise our children!" -- but one which does take the point head-on also happens to be the most disturbing. From Sheikh Anwar Mady of the Belfast Islamic Centre:

We believe that every child is born as a Muslim. Religion is not given by the family, but it is a natural religion given by our God at birth. The role of the family is to teach the traditions of the faith. But that faith is implanted at birth.

So yeah, his contention is that every child ought to be labelled a "Muslim child". Egads.

NCSE's "Don't Diss Darwin" flyer strikes the appropriate "accomodationist" tone

The National Center for Science Education has generated a flyer to be passed out at college campuses tomorrow in order to counter the distribution of bananaman Ray Comfort's mangled version of Origin of Species. I noticed in the flyer that the NCSE strike the perfect tone for "accommodating" the religious in the fight for evolution, while not alienating atheists or making explicit theological statements:

Comfort implies that it is necessary to reject evolution in
order to be a good Christian.

Ironically, although Comfort quotes Francis Collins, the geneticist who led the Human Genome Project and is now in charge of the National Institutes of Health, he fails to mention that Collins is a committed evangelical Christian who accepts evolution!

People of all faiths and of none have accepted evolution on its scientific merits. The fact that Comfort fails to acknowledge this suggests that he is arguing in bad faith.

Right on. Notice how they never actually say that there is no contradiction between evolution and Christianity (which would be an explicit theological position, and not appropriate to the NCSE's mission statement). They also put in a positive acknowledgment of atheists ("people of all faiths and of none"), a la Obama's inaugural nod to "non-believers".

This is accomodationism done right. They make only factual statements, not theological or philosophical ones¹. They are inclusive. And they don't belabor the point. If this is as far as accomodationism ever went, I would have zero complaints.

¹As is often overlooked, prominent "anti-accomodationists" like Jerry Coyne have clearly stated that the NCSE should also not be saying there is a contradiction between faith and science, because that would also constitute of a theological/philosophical position. Based on the NCSE's mission, they need to stick to the facts -- and the bare facts merely say that there are Christians and other theists who believe in evolution. End of sentence.

Links

I had a bad cold the end of last week, and before that work was heating up a bit, so that's why there have been no posts. I am finally reading Bruce Hood's SuperSense, though, and I will probably have a lot to say about it shortly. In the meantime, since I have nothing original to say, how about some cool links?

Socialist Fire Departments
I just made a similar joke on the Dispatches blog a week or so ago, but this website carries it much farther. Bravo.

3-D Mandelbrot attempt
So a true 3-D equivalent of the Mandelbrot -- with its simple formula, and its unending and consistent complexity -- is apparently somewhat of the holy grail of 3-D fractals. Here is a remarkable attempt, though they admit it's not quite a true 3-D Mandelbrot. It also introduced me to the idea of hypercomplex numbers. Woah. If I turn out to be totally off base on this whole atheism thing, and end up reincarnated, I'm totally going to be a math major. Well, maybe on the third life -- next time around, I'm going with a lit major, because I am also terribly interested in that, but I'd probably get laid a lot more in college...

No surprises there

Yep, Prop 1 in Maine succeeded. No surprise there.

The outcome is "further evidence that although voters have shown tolerance toward same sex couples, they draw the line at marriage," said Jeff Flint, a partner with Schubert Flint Public Affairs in Sacramento, who worked on California's "Yes on 8" campaign in 2008.

No, it's further evidence that making it so that voters can overturn acts of the legislature and pass (state) constitutional amendments with a bare majority is a fucking retarded idea. I'm totally down with a voter veto if a supermajority is required -- that could be a useful check against the possibility of a corrupt legislature. But a bare majority? Insanity.

Referendum 71 does look like it's going to pass in Washington State, but that only extends equal benefits, i.e. it's the old separate-but-equal refrain.

Oh well. Have fun being on the wrong side of history, assholes.