Turning bigotry into law

I'm going to make a categorical statement: if you approve of discrimination toward, or actual violence against, a person based on something completely outside of their control, you have lost all claim to the moral high ground.

This comes up because of a quote from Mat Staver, evangelical spokesperson and president of the Liberty Counsel, that the landmark anti-lynching bill currently being considered in Congress should be amended to eliminate the mention of LGBTQ people as targets.

"The old saying is once that camel gets the nose in the tent, you can’t stop them from coming the rest of the way in," Staver wrote in a statement.  "And this would be the first time that you would have in federal law mentioning gender identity and sexual orientation, as part of this anti-lynching bill... They’ve been unsuccessful over the many years in the past… but this is a way to slip it in under a so-called anti-lynching bill, and to then to sort of circle the wagon and then go for the juggler [sic] at some time in the future."

The Liberty Counsel is notorious for pushing specifically anti-LGBTQ legislation, and in fact is labeled as an "extremist group" by the Southern Poverty Law Center.  If you think that Staver's comment was a one-off, consider some of the other vitriol that's come out of the same organization:

Homosexual conduct can result in significant damage to those involved who engage in such conduct. There is no evidence that a person is born homosexual. And there is evidence that people can change. Our culture is being pressured with demands that our homes welcome, our daycares embrace, our schools indoctrinate, our businesses promote, and our laws reward this harmful sexual behavior. – Liberty Counsel website, “Resources on the Family,” 2015. 

Every individual engaged in the homosexual lifestyle, who has adopted a homosexual identity, they know intuitively that what they are doing is immoral, unnatural, and self-destructive. Yet they thirst for that affirmation because they've tied their whole identity up in this sexual perversion. —Matt Barber, “Faith and Freedom Radio,” September 2013. 

We are facing the survival of western values, western civilization. ... One of the most significant threats to our freedom is in the area of sexual anarchy with the agenda of the homosexual movement, the so-called LGBT movement. It does several things, first of all it undermines family and the very first building block of our society, but secondly, it’s a zero sum game as well and it’s a direct assault on our religious freedom and freedom of speech. —Mat Staver, October 2011, Values Voter Summit

And so on.

Beyond the simple cruel inhumanity of these people, what they are saying is at its basis entirely false.  A study published in The Proceedings of the Royal Academy of Sciences all the way back in 2006 has unequivocally shown that sexual orientation -- and gender in general -- is in no way a "choice."  The researchers write:

[T]here are two lines of evidence that homosexuality is influenced by polymorphic genes: (i) twin studies indicate that there are both genetic and environmental factors that contribute to the expression of the homosexual phenotype (Pillard & Bailey 1998; Bailey et al. 1999; Dawood et al. 2000), and (ii) male homosexuality appears to be inherited more frequently from the matriline (Pillard et al. 1981, 1982; Pattatucci 1998; Camperio-Ciani et al. 2004), suggesting the existence of polymorphic, heritable maternal effects and/or polymorphic X-linked genes influencing male homosexuality.

In another study released in November of last year, analysis of a huge sample size of men and women found stronger evidence still:

In a large study of more than 490,000 men and women in the United States, United Kingdom and Sweden, researchers discovered four genetic variants that occur more often in people who indicated on questionnaires that they had had same-sex sexual partners.  Andrea Ganna, a geneticist at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard reported the results October 19 at the annual meeting of the American Society of Human Genetics.  Two of the variants were specific to men’s sexual partner choice. The other two influence sex partner choice for both men and women.

Besides this evidence, the idea that being LGBTQ is a choice is ridiculous on two other grounds.  First, if someone chooses to be (for example) gay, wouldn't that imply that straight people are choosing that, too?  I defy you to find a single straight person who hit puberty and then sat there thinking, "Let's see, men?  Women?  Hmm, how shall I choose?"

[Image licensed under the Creative Commons Benson Kua, Rainbow flag breeze, CC BY-SA 2.0]

But second, who in their right mind would choose being LGBTQ when there are assholes like Mat Staver and Matt Barber explicitly calling for discrimination against non-hetero individuals, and tacitly approving of violence against them?  LGBTQ individual have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and suicide, and are likely to be shunned by their families once they've come out.  In some societies -- like many places in the Middle East -- being discovered as LGBTQ means you're likely to be targeted for murder (if you're not arrested by the state for "immoral behavior" and executed in the public square, something that happens routinely in Iran and Saudi Arabia).

The one happy note in all this is that evangelical Christianity of the kind espoused by Staver and Barber is declining both in numbers and in influence.  Some have attributed this to their tying themselves irrevocably to Donald Trump -- witness Jerry Falwell Jr.'s recent statement that he "can't imagine President Trump doing anything that is not good for the country" -- a move that I think of as hitching their rowboat to the Titanic.  But it goes beyond that.  As Dr. Ken Fong, Baptist pastor and professor emeritus at Fuller Theological Seminary, put it in an interview in Forbes,  "White evangelical leaders were in bed with conservative politics long before Trump became President—notably the late Rev. Jerry Falwell and The Moral Majority.  However, the fact that so many of them and their followers not only helped elect Trump in 2016 but continue to be his most unflinching fans has exposed their moral hypocrisy for all to see."

Not only their hypocrisy, but their innate cruelty.  I can only hope that more and more people are seeing people like Staver for who they are -- vicious, narrow-minded bigots who want their own prejudices enshrined in law.  And that their followers one by one fall away, once they realize that their leaders' message is founded on nothing but hate.

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Carl Zimmer has been a science writer for a long time, and his contributions -- mostly on the topic of evolution -- have been featured in National Geographic, Discover, and The New York Times, not to mention appearances on Fresh Air, This American Life, and Radiolab.  He's the author of this week's Skeptophilia book recommendation, which is about the connections between genetics, behavior, and human evolution -- She Has Her Mother's Laugh: The Powers, Perversions, and Potentials of Heredity.

Zimmer's lucid, eloquent style makes this book accessible to the layperson, and he not only looks at the science of genetics but its impact on society -- such as our current infatuation with personal DNA tests such as the ones offered by 23 & Me and Ancestry.  It's a brilliant read, and one in which you'll learn not only about our deep connection to our ancestry, but where humanity might be headed.

[If you purchase the book from Amazon using the image/link below, part of the proceeds goes to supporting Skeptophilia!]

Unwinding the spell

If there's one thing I understand least about the whole sad spectacle of the Trump administration, it's the fact of his being embraced so warmly (and staunchly) by evangelical Christians.

Okay, I see how they'd have been put off by Hillary Clinton's pro-choice stance.  That, for many of them, is a real non-negotiable.  But most of these people are the same ones who call themselves "values voters" -- who, for example, pitched a fit when Bill Clinton got a blowjob while in office.  And somehow, these same people are able to look past Trump's serial adultery, admissions of sexual harassment if not outright rape, continual lying, and unwavering focus on money (the love of which, I seem to recall, the bible calls "the root of all evil").

In fact, they are able to look past all of this so much that just last week, Trump was the commencement speaker at Liberty University, which shares with Bob Jones University the moniker "The Buckle on the Bible Belt."  Liberty University was founded by Reverend Jerry Falwell, who also founded the Moral Majority back in the late 70s, and it's run today by Falwell's son, Jerry Jr. -- who called Trump "a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again."

So Trump gave a speech that talked up how wonderful and religious he was, and how he'd Make America Great Again, conveniently glossing over the current horrific chaos he's led our government into during the last few weeks.  Here is an excerpt:

Be totally unafraid to challenge entrenched interests and failed power structures.  Does that sound familiar, by the way?  Relish the opportunity to be an outsider.  Embrace that label.  Being an outsider is fine.  Embrace the label, because it’s the outsiders who change the world and who make a real and lasting difference.  The more that a broken system tells you that you’re wrong, the more certain you should be that you must keep pushing ahead...  As long as I am your president, no one is ever going to stop you from practicing your faith or from preaching what is in your heart...  In America, we don’t worship government.  We worship God.

At this point, I'd have leaped up and shouted, "Define we, buster!"  But apparently most of the Liberty University graduates simply smiled and nodded -- in fact, one of them commented afterwards that Trump had given a "kickass speech."

Not everyone was so positive, however.  Twitter erupted in a storm of tweets, many of them from Christians who are outraged by the fact that a man whose most outstanding characteristic is embodying all Seven Deadly Sins in one person has somehow become a spokesperson for the political arm of evangelical Christianity.

Here are a few of the most acerbic comments:

• Funny that Trump is speaking at Liberty University, a religious institute of higher education, since he is neither religious nor educated.
• "Trump’s ‘Christian faith" is the worst of his lies.  There isn’t a shred of Christ in him.  Liberty University should call him out, not welcome him.
• Trump speaking at Liberty University — two words his very existence shits on.
• In Trump's Liberty University commencement speech, he'll explain how to grab 'em by the cat parts and then become president.
• With Trump University and Liberty University degrees, you can be a preacher with a casino and three wives and date your daughter.
• Trump at Liberty University: Lie, lie, lie until you succeed.

Which is it exactly.  The only conclusion I can come to is that people like Falwell Jr., Franklin Graham, Jim Bakker, and Ralph Reed are supporting Trump for one reason and one reason only; they're rich, powerful men, and under a Trump presidency they're convinced they'll become richer and more powerful.  In other words, they don't give a rat's ass for values or morals, and never have.  All they care about is expanding their own empires, and they believe that hitching their wagon to Donald Trump will further that aim.

Which is kind of pathetic, because it means that they share another characteristic with Trump: the capacity for bald-faced lies.  They have their congregations, followers, and listeners hoodwinked into thinking that they are actually committed to moral behavior.  And somehow, they've succeeded in that deception, given the fortunes they've amassed (mostly due to contributions from their flock), and the power they wield in the religious world.

Lie, lie, lie until you succeed.  The same as Trump himself.

I keep hoping that the truly moral Christians -- which, I believe, are the vast majority -- will wake up and recognize the man they're following for the egomaniacal, sociopathic narcissist he actually is.  But there, we have the sunk-cost fallacy working against us; so many of them have put so much time and effort into supporting Trump and seeing that he got elected president, that to backpedal now would be agonizing.  

But I don't see any other way that our nation can get out of the slow-motion train wreck it's currently involved in.

The whole thing puts me in mind of a quote from C. S. Lewis, from his book The Great Divorce:

I do not think that all who choose wrong roads perish; but their rescue consists in being put back on the right road.  A sum can be put right: but only by going back til you find the error and working it afresh from that point, never by simply going on.  Evil can be undone, but it cannot 'develop' into good.  Time does not heal it.  The spell must be unwound, bit by bit, 'with backward mutters of dissevering power' -- or else not.

Outrage saturation

Because I apparently don't have enough to worry about, as a teacher, with the approval in Senate committee of the amazingly unqualified Betsy DeVos as Secretary of Education, yesterday I found out that Donald Trump has tapped Liberty University President Jerry Falwell, Jr. to lead a task force for reforming higher education.

Liberty University, which shares with Bob Jones University the moniker "The Buckle on the Bible Belt," has achieved notoriety among science-minded types for their staunch determination to teach young-Earth creationism as if it were actual, evidence-supported science.  They hire faculty on the basis of belief in YEC; an advertisement in the Chronicle of Higher Education said they were "seeking faculty who can demonstrate a personal faith commitment to its evangelical Christian purpose... compatibility with a young-earth creationist philosophy [is] required."  (Although it does make one wonder why anyone would want to teach there who wasn't a biblical literalist, a question I've also asked about the religious-belief requirement for working at Ken Ham's Ark Encounter.)

But about the scientific validity of what they're teaching, I can't put it any better than Richard Dawkins did:

If it's really true that the museum at Liberty University has dinosaur fossils which are labeled as being 3,000 years old, then that is an educational disgrace.  It is debauching the whole idea of a university, and I would strongly encourage any members of Liberty University who may be here, to leave and go to a proper university.

So the leader of this institution is the man who is being entrusted with the task of "reforming higher education."

Look, this goes beyond political affiliation.  There are plenty of conservative Republicans who are qualified to run the Department of Education and/or lead a reform of the American college system.  My contention is simply that Betsy DeVos is a doctrinaire know-nothing whose primary qualification seems to be that she gave big donations to the Trump campaign, and Jerry Falwell is a Christian extremist whose choice was almost certainly motivated by Trump's continual pandering to the religious right, who (for reasons that still escape me) continue in their support of him despite his lies, ego, narcissism, and long history of sexual assault and serial adultery.  (I am honestly looking forward to the next time a Trump supporter uses the term "values voter" or "family values," so I can laugh directly into their face.)

And it also brings up the question of what, exactly, Trump thinks needs to be reformed about colleges and universities.  About all I could find on that note are that Falwell believes there are "too many regulations" (this is becoming something of a mantra of this administration) and that colleges are "too liberal."

Well, Jerry Falwell is certainly the man to combat the latter.

But that's the pattern being established here; appoint people to government agencies whose aims apparently include destroying the agency they're leading.  Just two days ago, we had the announcement that Trump had appointed Kenneth Haapala, of the climate-denying, petroleum-funded "think tank" Heartland Institute, to be on the committee that oversees appointments to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

You read that right.  A guy who thinks that climate change is a hoax is going to be helping to lead the agency that monitors climate change.

If that wasn't enough, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida has just drafted a bill to close the Environmental Protection Agency entirely.  Apparently appointing Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt, a staunch fossil fuel advocate who is also a climate change denier, to the post of head of the EPA wasn't sufficient.  Gaetz writes:

Our small businesses cannot afford to cover the costs associated with compliance, too often leading to closed doors and unemployed Americans.  It is time to take back our legislative power from the EPA and abolish it permanently...  Today, the American people are drowning in rules and regulations promulgated by unelected bureaucrats, and the Environmental Protection Agency has become an extraordinary offender.

You have to wonder whether Trump's insistence on smashing the EPA might have something to do with his own businesses -- i.e., yet another conflict of interest.  Lest you think I'm engaging in idle speculation, here, take a look at this story that ran in The New York Times just yesterday. It describes a situation in South Carolina where Donald Trump, Jr. started a business venture called Titan Atlas Manufacturing, which tanked -- until Donald Sr. bailed him out by buying the failed business through a new company called "D. B. Pace" created solely for that purpose.  The problem is that Titan Atlas had allegedly been responsible for pollution and groundwater contamination at the site, and Donald Sr. and D. B. Pace are attempting to evade responsibility for the cleanup by claiming that the new company had nothing to do with the damage.

Guess which government agency oversees liability for corporate pollution?

Got it in one.

It's gotten to the point that I'm reaching outrage saturation.  I can barely even stand to look at the news lately, for fear of what new lunacy has been perpetrated by our leaders.

I have never before had so little faith that the people running our government have our best interest in mind, have any kind of foresight about what effects their actions will have, have the least idea what they are doing, or are actually even sane.

What I'm wondering about is damage control.  How can we minimize the havoc that will result from having dramatically unqualified people running things -- or appointing people unshakably hostile to the departments they're overseeing?  I wish I had a good answer to that.

Of course, at the moment, I'm having a hard time even answering the question, "Why am I not curled up in the corner of my office, weeping softly?"