Over on marriagedebate.com, Maggie is disagreeing with Andrew Sullivan over whether or not David Blankenhorn - and, by implication, the entire anti-same-sex-marriage wing of the marriage movement - has shifted their views on marriage since the same-sex marriage debate became prominent. Maggie writes:

A studio pic of Maddox in her Dad’s arms. So tiny!

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Hack! Hack! Sorry, I’ve just got this persistent cough…

Belle, who favors same-sex marriage, nonetheless says that this is one of the most compelling anti-SSM arguments:

The change SSM advocates propose is a radical one, and we can’t be sure exactly what will happen. The last time a radical change to marriage was enacted on the grounds of maximizing individual liberty and happiness it turned out to be a disaster from a broader point of view, and especially for children.

Even if Belle is just playing devil’s advocate here, I think it’s worth responding.

Almost two years ago, I pointed out that same-sex marriage opponents appear to be fitting their views of marriage around their opposition to SSM. SSM opponents often suggest that the only purpose for marriage that matters is marriage’s “generative” function. But as recently as 2000, SSM opponent David Blankenhorn’s think tank published a “statement of principles” - signed by many current SSM opponents, including Maggie Gallagher - which clearly took a much broader view of marriage’s purposes and benefits.

Yesterday Andrew Sullivan, who recently debated David Blankenhorn (audio file here), mentioned this seemingly shifting view of marriage among SSM opponents. David responded:

From a fundraising letter sent me last month by the “College Republican National Committee”:

These [anti-war] protests are being led by liberal professors leftover from the 1960’s… the same professors who fail students for simply expressing their support of President Bush and our troops!

Not that I think that Republicans leaders are liars, but does anyone know if there is any credible evidence to support the claim that there is a pattern of many leftist professors acting in this manner?

Josh Jasper (thanks, Josh!) sent me a link to this interview with George Takei (most famous for playing Lt. Sulu on the original “Star Trek”). Takei has recently came out of the closet - to the press, at least (I take it he’s been open about his sexuality among his friends and family for many years). The interviewer asked Takei, who is Japanese-American, why he decided to come out of the closet. This, part of Takei’s answer, was for me the most interesting bit of the interview:

You know, I grew up in two American internment camps, and at that time I was very young. My memories of camp…I was four years old to eight years old…they’re fond memories. We were first sent to a camp in Arkansas. I remember catching pollywogs and seeing them sprout legs, and then it snowed one winter in Arkansas, and for a Southern California kid, to discover snow was magical. Yes, I remember the barbed wire and the guard towers and the machine guns, but they became part of my normal landscape. What would be abnormal in normal times became my normality in camp. We had to line up three times a day, and take our meal in a noisy mess hall…normal for me to go to school in a black tarpaper barracks, and I used to begin school every morning pledging allegiance to the flag, and I could see the barbed-wire fence out there, and the guard towers, saying, “With liberty and justice for all,” without being aware of the irony of those words. But when we came out of camp, that’s when I first realized that being in camp, that being Japanese-American, was something shameful.

Even His Groceries Are Racist
Frequent “Alas” token right-winger Robert goes shopping.

Old Glory Insurance
Boy, is Sam Watterson a sell-out. (Quicktime required).

Stop Looking At Me!
Ann Althouse provides a scary photo of a cell phone.

Infamous Page 7
Kevin gets in trouble lending his six-year-old Katie a comic that reveals the unrevealable.

Objectivity and Subjectivity Switched Meanings
Really, they did. But that was hundreds of years ago, so none of us noticed.

Quite Impressive Optical Illusion.
I probably came across this via Boing Boing.

Control Humans Via Remote Control

I felt a mysterious, irresistible urge to start walking to the right whenever the researcher turned the switch to the right. I was convinced — mistakenly — that this was the only way to maintain my balance.

The phenomenon is painless but dramatic. Your feet start to move before you know it. I could even remote-control myself by taking the switch into my own hands.

This topic has come up in P-A’s UNFPA thread: rather than derail that discussion further, I’ve put up a new post, and transfered comments about the Lancet study from that post to this one.

It’s been almost a year since the British medical journal The Lancet published a study (pdf version here) showing that deaths among ordinary Iraqis have increased as a result of the American invasion and occupation.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.

There’s a famous study, which many liberals are fond of, which involves putting a special cuff around the penises of homophobic young men. This cuff measures even tiny changes in the penile circumference. The homophobes are then shown homoerotic films; the cuff shows that their penises get bigger as they watch hot gay men doing what hot gay men do in such films. In contrast, a control group of non-homophobic men with cuffs around their dicks didn’t show any reaction to the hot gay men. The authors conclude that “Homophobia is apparently associated with homosexual arousal that the homophobic individual is either unaware of or denies.”

I most often see this study brought up by liberals and lefties when they’re arguing with a right-winger about some queer rights issue; the point is that homophobes are homophobic because they’re repressing secret gay desires. I don’t like the way it’s brought up in argument, because it’s usually used as a sort of neener-neener “you only say that because you’re a closet case” ad hom attack.

But I’m also bothered by the study’s methodology and interpretation. First of all, measuring sexuality by strapping a cuff around Mr. Happy - while ignoring what the subjects say about their subjective state of arousal - is a reductive and simplistic way of defining male sexuality.

Second of all, sexual excitement isn’t the only thing that can alter a penis’ circumference. The study authors themselves, towards the end of their study, acknowledge that their data could be explained by homophobes feeling anxious and threatened, rather than by secret gay desires:

Another explanation of these data is found in Barlow, Sakheim, and Beck’s (1983) theory of the role of anxiety and attention in sexual responding. It is possible that viewing homosexual stimuli causes negative emotions such as anxiety in homophobic men but not in nonhomophobic men. Because anxiety has been shown to enhance arousal and erection, this theory would predict increases in erection in homophobic men. Furthermore, it would indicate that a response to homosexual stimuli is a function of the threat condition rather than sexual arousal per se.

To me, that seems more likely than the theory that homophobes are mostly closet cases - even though the closet case theory is, I admit, more fun.

Anyone know what’s going on with Half Changed World and Democracy Arsenal? Two of my favorite blogs which haven’t had new posts in nearly two weeks…. (UPDATE: I have no idea why my browser wasn’t refreshing - there are plenty of new posts at both DA and HCW. Oy.).

Anyhow, if you haven’t been reading these blogs, go over and check out their archives - it’ll be worth your while. Half Changed World deals with social policy and social science, from a feminist mom perspective, and Democracy Arsenal covers foreign policy from a progressive perspective (Susanne Nossel’s posts are especially good).

And A Couple of New Blogs

Another good blog - one that’s new to me - is Capitalism Bad; Tree Pretty by occasional “Alas” contributor Reddecca. She has a recent post about abortion and Down syndrome, galvanized by the recent discussion, which “Alas” readers may want to check out. There’s also a lot of interesting posts about the lives of the woman profiled each day in the “feminist of the day” segment, and a refreshing lack of partisan loyalty - Reddecca doesn’t hesitate to criticize sexism on the left.

And, finally, Salon’s new blog focused on women and women’s issues, Broadsheet, seems pretty good to me - the stories they’re covering are worth reading about, and it’s better-written than most blogs, although I’d prefer it to be a tad less slick/professional and a tad more of an individual voice. Still, so far it looks like a good moderate-liberal blog with a real concern for women; why so many of Salon’s readers consider that a horrible thing is a mystery.

I don’t really talk about international issues much, but if you have a few bucks you can spare, then right now is an essential time to donate to help vicitms of the Pakistan earthquake. Media Girl is on the case.

In her comments, Media Girl asks why the US media is so completely off the case:

BBC World covers the tragedy every single night. US media does not. Why?

Disaster burnout? Too many US disasters?

My feeling is that it’s a combination of two things, primarily: Islamophobia, thanks to our president’s pandering to the worst impulses of xenophobia, and a feeling of powerlessness that has grown since the utter failure of our government in the aftermath of Katrina.

Or maybe it’s simply that the conglomerates that own the mainstream media don’t see any profit opportunity in Pakistan, and don’t want people sending more money overseas.

Maybe I’m too cynical. But look at the scale of this disaster, and look at the virtual non-existence of the coverage, and tell me it’s just that it slipped the news editors’ minds.

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QUOTE

From a speech by Al Gore.

Radio, the internet, movies, telephones, and other media all now vie for our attention - but it is television that still completely dominates the flow of information in modern America….

Soon after television established its dominance over print, young people who realized they were being shut out of the dialogue of democracy came up with a new form of expression in an effort to join the national conversation: the “demonstration.” This new form of expression, which began in the 1960s, was essentially a poor quality theatrical production designed to capture the attention of the television cameras long enough to hold up a sign with a few printed words to convey, however plaintively, a message to the American people. Even this outlet is now rarely an avenue for expression on national television.

So, unlike the marketplace of ideas that emerged in the wake of the printing press, there is virtually no exchange of ideas at all in television’s domain.[...]

It is important to note that the absence of a two-way conversation in American television also means that there is no “meritocracy of ideas” on television. To the extent that there is a “marketplace” of any kind for ideas on television, it is a rigged market, an oligopoly, with imposing barriers to entry that exclude the average citizen.

(Full disclosure: I have good friends who are in legally unrecognized three-person marriages; and my own living situation is arguably a three-way marriage.)

In my view, what marriage does is enable unrelated adults to become, legally, each other’s closest kin. I don’t see a single moral reason why three or more people who wish to shouldn’t be able to have their marriage legally recognized, and so become each other’s closest kin.

However, I see three practical reasons to not legally recognize polyamorous marriages.

First, legal questions. Two is a convenient number for closest kin; if Ken and Barbie are each other’s closest kin, that provides legal clarity, which is very useful from the state’s perspective. If Ken dies without a will, Barbie inherits; if Ken is in a coma, Barbie is his legal guardian and decision-maker; and so forth.

But what happens when Ken, Barbie and Steve Austin are all each other’s closest kin? If Ken is in a coma and Barbie and Steve Austin can’t agree on medical treatment, what happens?

Of course, “usually” avoided is not the same as “always avoided,” as the Terri Schiavo case proved. But more often than not, two-person marriage does succeed in establishing that A is B’s closest relative for such purposes; and the Schiavo case also illustrates exactly why it’s a nightmare when courts do not have that clarity.

There are other legal ambiguities created if we allow more than two to marry. If Barbie divorces Steve and Ken, is the whole marriage dissolved, or are Steve and Ken still spouses? Can Barbie divorce Steve but remained married to Ken? Can Ken marry G.I. Joe without Barbie’s and Steve’s permission? There may be a legitimate state interest in avoiding such legal muddles.

Second, polyamorous marriages, unlike same-sex marriages, actually would change the nature of already-existing legal marriages. Most married couples currently understand that when they got married, they were choosing a single sex partner for life - and for most, that’s an absolutely essential part of marriage. The legal possibility of adding new partner(s) would change that - suddenly the exclusivity they thought they were signing up for, isn’t necessarily exclusive. (What does a wife do if her husband wants to start dating - but he’s not cheating on her, he says, he’s just courting potential new partners?)

Legal same sex marriage doesn’t change anything about the nature of already-existing marriages - making claims that SSM is unfair to other married couples moot. The same can’t necessarily be said for legalizing polyamorous marriages.

Third, and perhaps most important, all too often polygamous marriages are a tool for oppression and abuse of women and children. It’s likely that legally recognized polygamous marriage could make such abuses more acceptable and more difficult to fight - a price that’s too high to pay. And, once again, a compelling state interest.

I don’t assume these problems are insolvable; but they’d have to be convincingly addressed before I could support legally recognizing polygamous marriage.

This post was removed by request of the author.

This post was removed by request of the author.