Two more quick comments.

First, while I’m not quite convinced I’m open to the argument that sleeping with someone is implicitly understood in our society to incur a commitment to mutual support for any resulting child. Thus I even think a case could be made that it is perfectly fair to require men to pay child support after one night stands. However, if this is the tack you are going to take then you have to allow (at a minimum) for explicit signed agreements repudiating the man’s responsibility. UPDATE:[ On further thought I've decided that the reaction of 'that's unfair' that many men still have to the idea of being required to pay child support for accidental pregnancies after one night stands shows that our society does not (widely enough) implicitly understand a one night stand to involve such an agreement. However, allowing signed contracts otherwise may be a good compromise between pragmatics (most won't sign) and fairness.]

Most of my objections to the current system would disappear if you allowed a man and woman to sign a (simple) contract before having sex absolving one or the other of having to care for an resulting child. I still think the social default should be to assume that casual sex should not produce children but that is just a minor matter once you allow agreements.

Secondly, even when I am deemed liable for another person’s injuries it only seems fair to make me pay what is reasonably necessary to treat these injuries. If I accidentally cut someone with my knife I should have to pay their costs to visit the doctor and purchase antibiotics plus a bit for pain and suffering. If they turn out to be a Christian Scientist it would not be fair for me to pay for their wrongful death because they refused to take antibiotics for their infection. In short fairness requires me to take responsibility for the consequences of my actions to a reasonable person not to bear the burden of their crazy religious beliefs. If we apply this same reasoning to the case of accidental pregnancy it is hard to see why the man should be expected to pay more than the cost of an abortion (especially as I believe early abortions are safer than pregnancy).

However, once again I’m willing to be flexible on this point as long as their is a relatively easy (can be signed in a couple minutes in the hotel room without attorneys or notaries) way for a man and women to sign documents changing the presumptions.

– UPDATE: I think it’s important that society view getting an abortion as the default choice for unplanned pregnancy. Not only because this would prevent many children from being raised by unprepared and perhaps ungrateful parents but because it would alleviate much of the stress of the decision from the woman. The morality of bringing new life into this world is a complex topic and having abortion be the clear societal default would save them the pain of having to mull over this during the tumultuous time after an unplanned pregnancy.

Hence my motive for treating someone not getting an abortion after accidental pregnancy the same as someone who refuses anti-biotics based on crazy religious. Namely ensure they have the right to do so if they wish (it’s their body) but not make others liable for their choice (they pay for the kid/greater sickness). However, on reflection it is unclear to me what the significance of this is when right now this isn’t the clear societal default.

In any case it doesn’t change my overall conclusion. Making men pay for child support after a one night stand is unfair. Yet it is quite possible that such a policy is necessary for overall welfare. If so we should balance fairness against the interests of having two people financially responsible for the child by allowing written contracts to alter the rules about who has to pay but leaving the default (unfairly) that the man must pay child support if it is his child even if it was just a one night stand.

So as I was afraid the lost post seems to have lead naturally back into the question of whether men should have to pay child support for children accidentally conceived in one night stands. However, before I dive into this topic and see if I can upset some more people let me clarify one point. Fairness, as I mean the term, is a defeasible good. All other things being equal the fair outcome is the mandated one but if the fair outcome is much worse than the unfair outcome it may be morally obligatory to insist on the unfair outcome. For instance if you are in a city under siege and running out of food fairness might require that you give everyone an equal share of the remaining food. Pragmatics might require that you give good only to the strong and kill the weak. It is a nasty thing when you must sacrifice fairness for total welfare but sometimes it must be done. Thus when I defend the thesis that fairness dictates that men not be required to pay child support for the accidental children of one night stands it doesn’t settle the question of whether we should make them pay child support in these circumstances.

Now on to the question of what fairness requires in a one night stand. Once again I defend the claim I offered in my last post: In informed consensual voluntary activities both parties assume responsibility for any harm to themselves and their bodies absent any agreement otherwise. Of course one can come up with situations where an information asymmetry or dirty dealing undermine this default but neither applies any longer in the canonical one night stand situation. I personally think that our current attitude on the man’s responsibility is a hold over from a time when we assumed any short term sexual encounter between a man and woman involved dirty dealing on the man’s part but that is neither here nor their.

Last time I may not have provided sufficient examples so let me do so now. Anytime two people agree to box both boxers are responsible for their own injuries. This holds true even if one boxer has a medical condition that makes the activity more risky for him. If two (equally) drunk college kids try to unsuccessful replicate a stunt they saw on jackass we expect each kid to pay for their own medical bills no matter who took the more dangerous part of the stunt. If you have the flu and knowing this your friend comes over to visit anyway you don’t become liable for his medical bills if he gets sick (though if you are a nice person you might feel bad and offer). This seems to be a (reasonable) generally applicable moral rule. If two equally informed people consensually enter into some risky activity that requires both of their participation they are both responsible for their own injuries.

Just to make sure that no one thinks there is something special about sex that undermines this presumption consider the situation with STDs. If a man and woman, both fully aware of the others sexual history (suppose they are famous porn stars) have unprotected intercourse and one accidentally infects the other with HIV the infector is not liable for the medical bills of the person they infected. Of course if there is a serious information asymmetry (say the guy knew he was HIV positive and didn’t say anything) this presumption can be rebuffed but it is the presumption. Since pregnancy and child rearing are such emotional issues it seems the best guide we can have to what is fair in that case is the generally applicable rule.

Now people who argue that it is fair for the man to be liable for child support often say things like, “If you don’t want a kid then use a condom,” or the very revealing, “If you weren’t prepared for the consequences you shouldn’t have had sex.” Immediately the form of this argument should jump out at you as invalid. After all the same form of argument would justify drawing and quartering men who got women pregnant (if they weren’t prepared for the consequences then they shouldn’t have…). These arguments are simply part of the wrong debate. They only explain why it is fair to subject an individual to a widely known general rule (men must pay child support) but don’t even speak to why that rule is fair in the first place. However, it is enough to observe that each one of these arguments applies equally well to the case where one party accidentally infects the other with HIV despite the fact that our intuitions point in exactly the opposite direction in that case. Moreover, the asymmetry of risk can’t explain the difference either as our intuition about STDs remains even though we know that for some diseases one sex or the other is at considerably more risk.

I don’t think it is a coincidence that we fail to apply our generally applicable rule about personal responsibility when it looks like someone might ‘get away’ with having consequence free sex. At the psychological level much of what is going on here is resentment that men might be able to have free casual sex without even risking consequences. Regardless of what people say intellectually casual sex is still regarded as something morally upstanding people don’t do and there is a certain inclination not to let people ‘get away’ with it. However, this is a subject for another post.

So what is the upshot of all this? Even if widely accepted this reasoning wouldn’t change much for people in relationships. Once people are in a dating relationship I think it is fair to understand them to have made an implicit commitment to deal with any accidental children together. However, have they made an explicit commitments (like I will get an abortion if I get pregnant) this would nullify that implicit commitment (the woman could certainly choose not to get an abortion but the guy wouldn’t be obligated to pay child support). Given the difficulty of establishing who said what to whom when it might be reasonable only to acknowledge written contracts as overcoming the implicit commitments we take to come with a relationships. However, it certainly should be possible for a couple to sign a legally binding contract that specifies that the guy will not be financially or legally responsible for the child. Even if you don’t like my reasoning this should be possible if for no other reason than to let women choose to be single parents.

As far as one night stands the effect accepting this argument would have depends on the facts on the ground. It could very well be that changing the law to make women solely responsible for children of one night stands would significantly increase the number of abortions and decrease the number of unplanned pregnancies. Given that women have more control over whether they have a child (both knowledge of their fertility and the choice to get an abortion) giving them all the responsibility might reduce the number of accidental births. If so then surely we should change the law so that men are not responsible for child support as the result of one night stands. On the other hand if the effect of changing the law would only be to leave more babies without fathers or even increase the rate of unplanned pregnancies we have a tough choice to make between fairness and welfare.

In short I think the current legal rules (except for a few unusual cases) are mostly defensible but ONLY as an unfair system necessary to increase total welfare. What irks me about the defenders of this system is their insistence as presenting it not only as the right solution but as fair despite it’s incongruity with our generally applicable notions of fairness.

Developing effective easy to use male contraception seems like a useful thing to do. Given the current laws that ridiculously require men to shoulder paternal responsibilities even if the woman assures them she can’t get pregnant before sex there are many men who could benefit from controlling their own fertility. Those of us dating forgetful, slightly irresponsible girls could benefit as well :-). However, there is this strange attitude that it is unfair for women to have to manage birth control. For instance this NY times article about male contraceptives ends with the following quote:

Whatever form male contraception eventually takes in this country, it is likely to find an eager audience.

“On some level,” Mr. Kleinman said, “it is just about fairness to women.”

Now certainly if they discovered a reliable method of male contraception that was less of a burden than the pill (or IUD if it is less reliable) is for women than every guy in a relationship who isn’t an ass should start using it. However, this isn’t a matter of fairness but simple consideration. If one party in a relationship incurs large medical bills both whichever party can pay them off the most easily should do so whether or not they are the one who was ill. Similarly no matter who dirtied the dishes the person who doesn’t mind doing them should clean them while their partner who hates doing the dishes should contribute in some other way. The question of fairness just doesn’t apply to individual acts in a relationship but only to the overall distribution of the shared benefits and rewards each party brings to it. Women may often get the short end of the stick in relationships but this is neither the result of nor particularly affected by who ends up handling the birth control.

So to examine the fairness question we need to look at more fleeting contacts like one night stands. Here many people would argue that because the man is a partner in the sex act he should be equally responsible for all of the consequences. Yet is this really a generally applicable rule we follow? If I don’t ask the women I’m sleeping with if she’s married am I equally at fault for breaking up her marriage because she couldn’t have cheated without someone to cheat with? Surely not! We sensibly assign people responsibility for consequences in their own lives even when they acted with another person to bring those about. All other things being equal it is the person with the most knowledge or control over the situation we hold accountable for the consequences not anyone whose actions were causally necessary for that results.

At it’s most basic level a women’s fertility is just susceptibility to a certain form of parasitic infection by a man’s sperm. What differentiates pregnancy from a mono infection is the fact that many people want to get pregnant and it exacts a much greater cost. So what do our intuitions about fairness say about people who are particularly susceptible to mono? Say that I have an immune deficiency which makes mono a grave health risk and if I want to kiss or share utensils with anyone I must either take a daily pill with mild side effects (in most people) or have them do the same. Now women I ask on dates might try to show they are nice by offering to take the pill inside of me but surely it would not be unfair for them to expect me to take the pill to protect against my vulnerability. If this example isn’t convincing try replacing mono with flu and kiss with touch. Surely it isn’t remotely reasonable to think that fairness requires everyone who wants to touch me or shake my hand to take prophylactic pills because of my vulnerability to infection when I could do the same. Yet in these cases the person doing the kissing or touching is just as necessary to produce the infection as the man is to getting the girl pregnant.

The fact that the ability to get pregnant is viewed as desirable only strengthens my argument. One might feel that your poor friend who is so vulnerable to flu has enough of a burden and you should take the prophylactic pill rather than him. However, if the same mutation that made your friend so vulnerable to flu gave him super powers and he deliberately choose to endure taking his prophylactic pill rather than give up his super powers there would be no question that fairness placed no burden on you to be the one who took the pill. In general we think the person who gains the benefit ought to be the one who endures the costs of that benefit. Yet as most women view the ability to get pregnant as a benefit the same argument applies equally well here.

At this point the best you can do is somehow argue that women are in total worse off than men as they must choose between dealing with birth control and giving up biological offspring all together. Of course this argument only works if women would really prefer it if it was the man who carried and nursed the baby gaining the special closeness to the child that relationship brings. Some women would prefer this but I suspect most would not. However, if you are going to try and expand the argument this way it becomes a question of which gender is more screwed over by biology and the evidence clearly indicates that it is men who are at the disadvantage. In the only two ways that truly matter, quantity and quality of life, women consistently do better than men. Not only do women live longer than men on average they self-report themselves as being happier than men as well. Of course self-reports aren’t perfect but it is the best evidence we have [UPDATE: removed incorrect fact about depression].

Moreover, it is hard to see why the man is morally obligated (more than just the nice thing to do) to ensure birth control is used because of the possible effect on the woman while a woman is not morally obligated to get an abortion after a one night stand just because knowing he has a child will have a significant effect on the man’s life. Ultimately the man’s feelings are his responsibility and impose no obligation that the woman get an abortion (w/o prior agreement) and similarly (absent agreement) the effect on the woman’s body of their consensual act is her responsibility. Since the woman has the most control and knowledge over her body the default should be that she is responsible for the effects on her body and the man the effects on his body. If the man has a heart condition that makes having vigorous sex a risk for him then by default it’s his responsibility to manage that risk just like it’s the woman’s default responsibility to manage her own body including the risk of pregnancy.

Of course none of this changes the fact that nice people try to help each other out. If a woman suspects that the guy she is with might have a heart condition the nice thing to do might be to offer to get on top so he doesn’t have to exert himself. Similarly if the guy knows that the woman might get pregnant he would be a dick not to offer to use a condom. However, there is nothing unfair about the default expectation we use everywhere else that each person in a consensual act is responsible for the consequences to themselves. Of course since men are often more eager to have one night stands than women it would be perfectly reasonable for women to demand that men take care of birth control as part of the deal of getting to sleep with them but that’s another matter entirely.

The attitudes we have about the man being responsible for the woman getting pregnant are relics of an anti-feminist past. If we started from the assumption that women freely choose to have one night stands just like men and there was nothing wrong with this I think the obvious model that everyone takes responsibility for the consequences to their own bodies/lives wouldn’t even be up for debate. It’s only the vague residue of puritan ethics whispering in our ear that sex outside of marriage is evil and that the perpetrators must therefore share the punishment or that women are not truly responsible for their own actions that cause us to come up with different standards for sex than other activities.

If you don’t agree with this last part then explain why sex seems to be viewed differently than other consensual acts? With disease, boxing or sports the default position is always that each person assumes responsibility over what might happen to their body. What makes pregnancy different?

So over on digg they link to s a story about a man who exposed himself to a ten year old being sentenced to wear a T-shirt saying “I am a registered sex offender.” A sentence like this not only seems disproportionate to the crime (primarily this is just going to scare and disturb children…just like seeing a guy wearing a sex offender shirt will) but also to increase the danger to children. Not only do such humiliating and harsh sentences discourage people form turning family members in by ostracizing the offender from any social support network they make it more likely that he will molest. While this man seems like nothing more than a harmless flasher if he was going to molest someone this makes sure he has the least to lose.

But what really blows my mind are the comments on the article. These are comments by a relatively tech savy, liberal, anti-Bush crowd and they literally include a fair number of people demanding that people like this get the death penalty and many more who are outrage that the judge didn’t lock this guy up and throw away the key because he had previously exposed himself to children. Yes apparently people are eager to sentence someone who pulls down his pants to far worse punishments than people who beat their wives, steal senior citizens retirement funds, or even some kinds of rape.

Moreover, some brief thought reveals that this has little to nothing to do with the crime itself and everything to do with the man’s desires. People are responding to a sexual desire towards children not any act. If you doubt this look at how people react to a pedophile who is so morally upright as to refuse to ever indulge his raging desire. Instead of regarding such a person as a moral paragon as they would someone who resisted other sorts of temptation they view them as a sicko who ought to be punished. Indeed the public has been fairly vocal about prosecuting people for any pornography involving the idea of sex with young children even if it is only written or computer generated irrelevant of any issue of encouraging molestation.

Obviously people just have a deep psychological need to push away their disgust at the notion of children as sexual objects and feel righteous condemnation. I’ve known this for some time but it really does make me sick to observe how pervasive and extreme the reaction is and disappointed to observe the lack of any influence of reason on the process. I mean I can think of little that is more selfish than counterproductively punishing people and thereby increasing the danger to children just so you can expiate your disgust.

As you can guess this also indicates my opinion on the sex offender proposition on our ballot. I just haven’t remarked on it because it is so obviously bad. The experience of other states, experts in criminal recidivism and good sense cry out that this measure will increase sex offenses by making families less likely to report offenders and, as John Stewart said, creating roving bands of homeless child molesters. Not to mention the severe drain on law enforcement resources by the totally useless monitoring system that will tell us where everyone who was arrested for streaking in college is at every moment.

So I’m sitting here listening to News and Notes, KQED’s black discussion/news program. I’m not a big fan of this sort of show as they have a strong predilection to interpret everything as being about race. Certainly there is a great deal of racial issues that aren’t talked about but in my experience this program reads racial issues into situations that likely have nothing to do with race. Worse, it often exhibits a troubling political correctness that prevents it from considering alternative explanations.

Case in point is the discussion of Phat Girlz they just had. They had the director on the program who was explaining that her movie is a romance that portrays blacks in a positive way and was complaining that blacks didn’t want to see positive portrayals in the media. Now this might be the case but it really irked me that the panel sat around for like 10 minutes talking about this (and to their credit they did seem inclined to just chalk up the poor performance to bad marketing) and during the entire time no one mentioned the fact that it was a fat girl involved in the romance and that the movie had been very explicitly marketed as being about fat girls.

Now first of all I suspect many people, like myself, are skeptical of movies that seem to have too sharp of a moral/social point. A movie where all the ads center around the fact that fat girls can find love with attractive men as well makes one suspect that cinematic/artistic considerations might have been secondary to making this moral point. But more importantly why didn’t anyone raise the possibility that people don’t want to see a romance about a fat girl. It might be nice (though might discourage people from being as health conscious) if people found fat girls as attractive as skinny girls but they don’t and part of the appeal of a romance movie is that you sorta fall in love with the characters yourself.

I mean I have every sympathy for significanty overweight girls looking for romance, and at the very least think it would be nice if more women wh didn’t fit the traditional stereotype of good looks had romantic success (though seemingly equating romantic success with dating a thin, rich doctor seems hypocritical), but it is ridiculous not to consider this as an explanation for why the movie didn’t do as well as expected.

As one might (or might not) have guessed but now confirmed by a study with better body image have more sexual partners then men with worse body image but women with better body image have less partners. In short we are doomed to frustrated desires even, perhaps especially, if we get everyone to feel good and confident about their looks. It also supports my cynical belief that much of the random casual sex that goes on (at least in college) isn’t so much sexually liberated fun loving women but women with low self-confidence who feel bad about saying no.

The interesting question is why this is true. Is it just because our society still pounds into women the idea that being ‘slutty’ or ‘easy’ is bad or is this a fundamental matter of biology? If the former then perhaps social changes will allow us to live in a society where both sexes can enjoy the pleasures of casual sex with people they find attractive. If the later then we are probably doomed to frustrated desires and continued nastiness toward promiscuous women#[prom] and we will have to wait for societal acceptance of modifications of brain chemistry/biology .

Ironically the report on the study I linked to is a perfect example of the kind of pernicious attitudes that tell pound into women the idea that having casual sex is a bad thing. Likely it will turn out that women are genetically predisposed to want less random sex than men but I know for a fact that many women are reluctant to have sexual encounters they genuinely desire because they have absorbed this idea that it is wrong. Sure it is important to use proper protection to avoid spreading STDs and even with protection multiple partners increase risk BUT the rhetoric about sexuality, and female sexuality in particular, is clearly not a rational response to the risk of disease. If you aren’t convinced let me share some quotes from the article and try to imagine someone saying these things about driving to visit grandma on the weekend (and thereby incurring risk of automobile accident).

These findings suggest that programs that focus on improving young women’s attitudes toward their body could also help to promote healthy sexuality. However, programs designed to promote positive body image among young men should also include content to help them develop healthy sexual attitudes and respect for women.

and

In their paper, the authors note that a positive view of one’s body may provide an extra dose of confidence for males and, as a result, these men may be confident enough to seek multiple sexual partners and engage in unprotected sex – behaviors that exemplify the stereotypical male role of sexual freedom.

Among sexually active young women, the confidence that comes from a positive body image may work in the opposite way to empower them to resist multiple partners and insist that a condom be used when they do engage in sex.

First of all I am just generally upset at the creep of moral language like this into scientific findings. It both risks misleading the public into believe that science has vindicated these moral positions as well as bringing a moral tone into research results. For instance in this situation an unsophisticated reader, especially one reading a summary, might very well think that the implication of unhealthiness for multiple partners is a genuine scientific result about STD transmission, i.e., even with protection having sex with multiple partners is a very high risk relative to other risks in daily life.

More specifically I am annoyed at the clear implication that wanting to have casual sex with a woman is somehow not a ‘healthy sexual attitude’ and doesn’t show ‘respect.’ In fact I would argue that it is the paternalistic attitude expressed in these quotes and in our society which disrespects women. When you respect someone you respect their ability to make their own choices and don’t decide for them that they shouldn’t be given the option to have casual sex because that would be bad for them.

Even worse is this idea that somehow resisting multiple partners empowers women. Sure, many promiscuous girls are doing so because they have low self-esteem and fixing this problem is empowerment. However, empowerment is ultimately about having the same choices and opportunities as anyone else and so long as society tells women they are bad and somehow deficient if they choose to have multiple partners they aren’t empowered. Sure this person seems to view male promiscuity as somehow disrespectful but telling men they shouldn’t have multiple partners because it disrespects women while telling women they are somehow victims if they have multiple partners just perpetuates the slut/player dichotomy that puts women in an inferior social position.

This is yet another example of the disturbing practice of selective appeal to risk. When the speaker or society approves of a certain type of activity (driving to visit grandma) the fact that there is a risk of death or injury to the actor and others is overlooked. On the other hand when the activity is morally disapprove of (smoking, sex) the risks/harms are prominently invoked. Why can’t people understand that everything has some risk/harm and people make trade offs between risk and pleasure. It isn’t a hard concept.

[prom]: So long as most women don’t like indulging in casual sex they will be jealous of the attention that easy women get. The same way I hate guys who get female attention by pretending to be someone else because I’m unwilling to do it myself.

I’ve always thought those claims about how we ought not to depict skinny models because they cause girls to have low self-esteem were pretty ridiculous. Unless I’m missing something, I see no more reason to believe depicting skinny girls has a negative effect on self-esteem than depicting smart girls does. If girls are supposed to despair because these models are skinnier than they are ever likely to be why wouldn’t they similarly despair when some (not enough) commercials or TV shows show female scientists or other supposedly smart women? Sure aspiring to a level of intellectual achievement beyond one’s ability is surely a more rewarding pursuit than trying to be skinnier than your body type will allow but this is irrelevant to the self-esteem question. While I probably suffer from selection bias I have met very few (probably none but maybe 1 or 2 if you really loosen the notion) women who aspire to look like models. I have known a great many people (including a fair number of women) who had self-esteem issues because they perceived themselves as not being smart enough. It would seem that if the self-esteem argument was valid in the first place it would be even more applicable to the depictions of incredibly smart women. For instance this argument would suggest that the really smart female grade student on Numbers (crime show about a unrealistically attractive math prof) is doing women harm and that they would be better off with the more ‘realistic’ role model of a woman who wasn’t in the smartest 1% of people, i.e., was struggling through grad school. Of course I think the conclusion that we should try and show average women (or men) instead of exceptional ones in the media is absurd but I always found the original argument pretty absurd as well.

Below I argue in some detail that the entire idea of criticizing the choice of skinny women for (high) fashion models shouldn’t have ever seemed like a reasonable position. However, you don’t need to read all the theoretical arguments if you don’t want to because we now have empirical evidence that women actually feel worse about their bodies when they see models who are a tad plump than when they see skinny models (or significantly overweight women). There are many possible explanations of this effect but it doesn’t really matter why. The critique of fashion models as giving women poor body-image didn’t really make sense in the first place and now it is dead in the water.

While we are on the subject of obesity I thought i would also post this interesting link suggesting that it might be a virus that disposes people to get fat. Very interesting if true, hopefully that would mean we could come up with something like an antibiotic for obesity inclinations. Though even with current medical tools I think we could do a great deal to make life better for people who find it hard to stay near their ideal weight. For instance if doctors are willing to prescribe stimulants for ADD just because someone has some difficulty paying attention in school or at their job they should be willing to do the same for people who want to drop down to a more attractive (medically healthy) weight.

Of course a lot of people would object to taking this sort of risk (all medications carry some risk) for something that’s ‘just’ an aesthetic matter. Why the immediate cause of the affliction should make a difference is beyond me, it is the patient who needs to be treated not their foot or their brain and I know in our culture I would much rather suffer with attention deficit disorder than endure the stigma that overweight people live with. Besides ADD isn’t (in most cases) that it is an objective disfunction, if we still lived in caves and hunted game I bet this wouldn’t be much of a problem. The real issue is that ADD makes it hard to achieve in today’s civilized environment where we need not worry about being eaten but do need to worry about paying attention. Yet studies have repeatedly shown that being unattractive significantly reduces career success. Besides career is not the most important thing in the world anyway and we all know that looks make a difference about who you date.

Sure it comes off all noble to say that good looks aren’t all that important and that the medical risks aren’t worth it for ‘just’ aesthetic benefits but unless you are really just as likely to date a person with an extra 30 or more pounds it is just hypocrisy. Insisting that looks aren’t important the way real medical conditions are when it comes to medical treatment but then turning around and making decisions about who to date, befriend or even hire based on looks is just the height of hypocrisy. Of course everyone says they aren’t one of those people who does this sort of thing but the studies don’t lie someone is doing it. Probably we all do it unconsciously and, the same way everyone says they would never have hurt anyone in the Milgram experiment, we all like to delude ourselves into thinking otherwise. However, perpetrating that illusion just isn’t worth the pain it causes. All the medical options we have available should be on the table so the people who are actually doing the suffering can make their own decisions. There is something quite sinister in letting the mostly slender attractive people who rose to the top of their profession decide that giving other people the same advantages that they had isn’t worth the risk.

Ohh and before someone tries to blame this on men let me point out that the last study I linked showed that men and women are equally affected by looks when deciding who to date. The men are just more likely to say looks mattered while the women cite other factors. (more…)

So a few weeks ago I published a really long post about the murky legal aspects of gay marriage. Unfortunately, despite the apparent inconsistency between past precedent and laws denying gays the right to marry it seems unlikely the court is going to grant gays the right to marry anytime soon. In fact from a political perspective it is likely that a decision in favor of gay marriage would cost the court a great deal of political capital that would be better used elsewhere. The real issue behind gay marriage is not some abstract legal right but the social acceptance of homosexuality and it is unclear if an unpopular court decision supporting gay marriage would advance this cause or provoke resentment and retard it. Ultimately, just as with civil rights, any real solution to this problem will need to come from the legislature and ultimately from society. While this solution is a long way off the form it will take is already crystalizing. As has happened in a number of other countries and a state or two the traditional franchise of marriage is going to be extended to homosexuals. However, this approach just repeats the mistakes of the past. It injects the government into the bedroom and the household and asks it to make moral judgments about what sort of relationships are good and which are not. The only difference is that gays would be in the approved category.

In a moment I will detail the problems with legal marriage but first let me outline the alternative so they can be compared. Rather than having the government pick out a certain sort of relationship, set the terms of that relationship and reserve certain privileges and benefits to the people in that relationship adults could confer whatever subset of those benefits they saw fit via contract (more or less see below). For instance anyone could sign papers granting another consenting adult joint parental rights to any children they have. This way for instance not only lesbians who wanted to raise a child together but a pair of spinster sisters could do the same. Of course there would still need to be a special underlying legal status for people who have chosen to legally treated as a single entity but it would be available to any type of relationships be it parent-child, brother-sister, or husband-wife. Most people of course would simply take a standard set of these legal relationships requiring no more paperwork than a marriage license does now but the same privileges would be available to anyone no matter what kind of relationship they were in. There are a few details that need to be dealt with (like preventing people from using these arrangements to arbitrarily transfer wealth tax free). I will offer some suggestions on the details in the extended entry below but first let me detail the benefits of this approach.

As I’ve already hinted at the basic problem with marriage is that it forces the government to select what sort of relationships are ‘worthy’ of the economic and legal benefits of marriage. If you think it is wrong to deny the benefits of marriage to gays just because a majority of people disapprove of that sort of relationship it would be hypocritical not to also support the same benefits to people in group marriages or other non-traditional relationships. In fact there seems to be no justifiable reason to grant these benefits only to people in sexual relationships. If one is unfortunate enough to remain single for your entire life why should the government add insult to injury and deny you these benefits if you choose to cohabitate with a friend or relative? If one suggests that these benefits aren’t really a big deal and single folks (say single sisters who live together) aren’t being screwed over then there is no harm in dissolving the legal institution of marriage, people can just live together without these minor advantages, and if these advantages do matter it seems wrong to deny them to the people who are unlucky enough to be single (not only do studies show marriage makes one more happy it lets one reduce many expenses).

Apart from the basic issues of fairness having the government pick out what relationships count as marriage inevitably entangles gets public policy entangled in an emotional mess. Though many people argue that marriage is about incentivizing two parent homes or other desirable child-rearing behavior neither the benefits or who they are granted too have little rational relation to these ends. Why for instance do we allow women over 50 to marry if it is about children? If it turned out that it was bad for children if their parents stayed in a failed relationship for financial reasons could you imagine a tax benefit for divorce? While many of the benefits offered by marriage are also good for child-rearing, and it would be foolish not to let parents receive them, it is clear that the notion of marriage is such a deeply emotional subject for most people that it can never be treated as just a tool for incentivizing behavior. Intrinsically people view the status of marriage as a type of approval and so long as the government decides what sort of relationships are to be approved of our social policy will be distorted by strong emotions and many people will be hurt by governmental disapproval.

Just like other tough moral, spiritual and personal issues it would be best if the government just stayed out of the debate. We all know that having the government decide which churches are acceptable would cause unnecessary acrimony and suffering. The situation is pretty much the same with marriage. It would be best if we could get the government completely out of the bedroom and leave the matter of deciding what is an acceptable marriage to the churches and the couples. Below I will outline some specifics about how we might accomplish such a thing.

Of course despite the eminent sensibility of such an approach it is about as politically viable as free abortions. I can see the political accusations already, “The secular liberals even want to take away your right to MARRY.” (more…)

So gay marriage has come up several times in Alito’s confirmation hearings so I figured it was time to finally get around to finishing up this post. In those hearings senator Brownback even threatened to revoke judicial jurisdiction if an activist court ‘created’ a right to gay marriage. More on the confirmation hearings later now for gay marriage.

That title is a bit misleading. As a policy issue there is no problem except how to overcome bigotry and puritanical values and allow for gay marriage. Even better we could eliminate the legal institution of marriage entirely and allow people to enter into contracts assigning the benefits and responsibilities traditionally associated with marriage to whomever they see fit (later post). However, as the legal problem of justifiably protecting gay rightsis much thornier. Justice calls out for fair treatment of gays and unsurprisingly many conclude that the courts ought to rule gay marriage is a constitutional right. Like other emotionally charged legal issues where belief in the ‘right’ result precedes acceptance of any particular argument or even knowledge of the relevant laws and constitutional clauses I am generally skeptical. Of course in some states their constitution probably does demand this outcome but in this post I am going to consider the situation in New York and the recent appellate decision reversing the Hernandez v. Robles decision declaring a right to gay marriage in the state. Since the equal protection clause (sec. 11) of the New York constitution is pretty much the same as the one in the US constitution the arguments are the same both for the federal situation and the New York situation. In fact while I will use the Robles decision as a jumping off point most of this discussion is about the federal situation.

My original conclusion, just having read the constitutional clauses and the arguments at issue, was that the appeals court was correct. Unfair and unjust as it may be there seemed to be no valid constitutional ground, even on an extremely broad reading, to support the contention that homosexuals have a constitutional right to marry. The constitution doesn’t prevent legislatures from treating distinct classes of people differently, otherwise child tax credits, sin taxes, regulations protecting journalists from revealing their sources and virtually every act of congress would all be unconstitutional. So long as there is some legitimate government interest served by the law and the differing treatment is not based on a suspect class (race, religion, and kinda gender but not sexual orientation). While outlawing gay sodomy serves no legitimate state interest as the supreme court opinedopined there is a valid interest (though not a very strong one) in denying gays the legal advantages of marriage. Marriage benefits cost money and there is a greater need to discourage straight couples from having unplanned children without parental commitment because homosexuals don’t accidently get pregnant (before you get angry and accuse me of missing something read the rest of the post).

However, I do not think this position (despite its justification on first principles) can be maintained in the face of the many court decisions declaring legal marriage to be a “fundamental right”. Moreover the court has maintained the status of marriage as a constitutional right even inside prisons where issues of procreation or sexual relations are not relevant. While I think this decision, while perhaps justified in a past time, is in error (now legal marriage is just an eclectic collection of financial and minor legal benefits) it is blatantly incompatible with denying gays the right to marry.

While recognizing the right to marry as fundamental has great outcomes in the situation with gays applying this principle in the same unbiased manner which guarantees gays the rights to marry would protect bigamy and incestuous marriages . Additionally it would imperil laws banning underage marriage or stringently regulating marriages we intuitively regard as exploitative, e.g., marriages where one partner is severely retarded. This is for the simple reason that in order to restrict a fundamental right the government must show a compelling governmental interest and if that requirement is to have any substance it must require more than mere intuition or assertion. If conservatives bald assertions that gay marriage causes social deterioration are to be disregarded unless they can provide evidence so too must widespread assumptions about incest or bigamy.

Ultimately, though I don’t think this is such a bad standard (in terms of results). I expect age minimums for marriage will be able to be supported with evidence and married cousins or group marriage probably ought to be legally allowed. Some harmful but rare practices will probably slip through but by definition they don’t happen often. So even though I think it is a bad standard , maintaining marriage as a fundamental right has fairly good results. Whatever you feel about this point it is abominable for the court to treat marriage as a fundamental right for straight people but not for gays.

If any of my arguments didn’t convince you they are laid out in full detail below. (more…)

So last night I actually watched the Maltese Falcon. It’s a bit different from my normal fair and it only reinforced my view that old movies aren’t that good. Sure the stunts suck and the blue-screening is obvious but the real problem is the wooden and overdone acting. Acting in a movie is a lot different than acting on a stage and it has just taken a long time for people to learn how to do it well.

NOTE: What follows is just amateur speculation I haven’t done any research but just thought I would share some ideas.

Anyway, movie criticism aside, seeing the movie made me think a lot about the 50s. I was actually kinda surprised to see how openly they portrayed Spade (protagonist) using sexual coercion. Though they would barely show kissing they were perfectly happy to imply he was demanding sex to protect this woman. While we think of our movies now as more racy than ‘staid’ 50s era (40′s actually) films this sort of portrayal would likely offend modern sensibilities if it was done in a movie today (without more editorial condemnation).

Also I was struck by the change in the male model. I guess I always knew so intellectually but in the 50s men really were supposed to be tough and to shield women from the realities of the world, i.e., they really were supposed to play the protector role. Conversely women were supposed to be obedient to their protectors taking whatever shit or even violence they might dish out. Not that these aren’t obvious facts about the 50s but I was struck by how openly they were spelled out. Anyway the interesting thought that occurred to me was that it was societal wealth and safety nets which may be responsible for the revolution in our moral values and understanding of relationships not birth control and feminism was just a necessary consequence.

Before the 20th century, and probably until the new deal, women really did need protection and someone to provide for them. Regardless of their intrinsic ability without a man it was very tough to make money for food and shelter and a single woman was quite vulnerable. So it really was the better decision in most cases to stay with a bad, or even abusive, husband than to leave him. However, with the evolution of a social safety net, welfare, social security etc.. for the first time it really was a better choice to leave a mildly abusive or bad husband than to stay with him. This would boost the population of independent women creating momentum for female involvement in the workplace as well as political participation. Conversely once it was how nice and pleasant you were to live with which became the deciding factor in a woman’s choice of mate instead of your ability to care for her the change in male ideals natural follows. Of course I may be wrong and the actual events were probably too complex to be explained by just one cause but it does raise some interesting questions about how best to reform primitive societies (the ones often nicely termed ‘traditional’).

I am even given to wonder if the strange change in attitudes toward war and nationalism are a result of the change in male ideals. I’ve never quite been able to comprehend what made democracies in the early 1900s and 1800s so enthusiastic to go to war just for pride or to gain control over some land. What changed that makes it so absurd to think of Germany going to war to grab part of France now when it seemed sensible enough in WWI to make millions of Germans favor the war? Even the neo-cons in the US would be crazy peaceniks compared to the nationalists from the first half of the 20th century. Is the difference the fact that men no longer aspire to be strong protectors (as much) who can back up their family with force and instead reasonable people who call on the police to protect them? If true this has some troubling implications for our relationship with Islamic world and other primitive (‘traditional’) societies.

While many people keep suggesting that it is something about Islam or a variety of Islam which stokes the conflict between the western world and Muslims I tend to think this is a misleading analysis (though perhaps not false). Just like the bible the Koran can be interpreted to support almost any position on war, struggle, or non-Muslim countries. Shiites and Sunni’s have significantly different views of Islam yet the anti-western component seems to be present in both traditions. I think it is pretty obvious that otherwise open-minded pro-western people aren’t sitting down reading the Koran and deciding the west is evil. Rather anti-western sentiments are part of the social milieu and are then read into the religious documents the same way the bible always seems to support the American foreign policy of the day.

Since religion is as much about culture as it is about a book it might be fair to say these beliefs are a part of mainstream Islam it falsely suggests these beliefs would be different if only they were Christians or some other faith. While the religious difference between the west and Islam certainly makes things worse I don’t expect things would have turned out any differently if it was the west who was Islamic and the middle east/Indonesia which was christian. Watching the Maltese Falcon convinced me that the Muslim world is reacting to the west no differently than we would have reacted had we met the modern world in the 1800s.

Look at how staid the country was even in the 50s and how women showing ankles in the 20s was regarded as moral decay by many. Can you doubt that if China had been exporting scantily clad girls on MTV and demanding we give women equal rights that preachers and ministers all across the country would have been denouncing them as a great secular evil. Modern society directly challenges the traditional ideals of masculinity and social order virtually guaranteeing violent opposition. Even worse traditional societies still seem to have the same attitude toward war as the west did before WWI making military force an appealing way to express their concerns. This makes the prospect of these countries gaining the bomb truly scary.

Unfortunately if even part of my speculation on the economic safety net needed to effect this transform the problem is quite intractable. In order to become well off in the modern world one needs to adopt western secular practices but this adoption may be almost impossible while a country is still too poor to provide effective social services and strong police protections, e.g., enforcement of laws by professional courts/police rather than social pressure and local leaders. Still the success of china in westernizing does suggest that wealth may not be absolutely essential to make this tradition, however, china had hundreds of years of strong governmental control and imperial law enforcement.

(below is just a few more musing about the 50s inspired by the movie) (more…)