Gay marriage in Maine

Posted on January 15, 2009 by Michael

People seeking an end to bigotry are pushing for the passage of a bill that would allow homosexuals to marry in Maine, making it one of the few states which does not illegally discriminate on the basis of gender.

“Some have asked if this is the right time,” said Sen. Dennis Damon, D-Trenton, the bill sponsor. “To them, I say, this legislation is long overdue.”

The bill would define marriage as the union of two people, rather than one man and one woman. It would allow any two eligible people, regardless of sex, to be issued an application for a marriage license.

This should put an end to the ‘if you allow gay marriage, you should allow beastiality’ argument. It won’t. But it should.

Essentially, “two eligible people”, as far as the secular Maine government is concerned, are two people of age who are capable of consent. That means 18 and with an understanding of the terms of their secular marriage contract – in other words, non-human animals are not eligible since they cannot consent to or understand the contract. Of course, that’s the legal argument. The more interesting argument is that there is no good reason to deny homosexuals a certain set of rights. There is, however, the good reason of allowing two harmless individuals the right to a complete and happy life.

Gov. Baldacci isn’t so sure.

And while several Democratic legislators stood with gay advocates for the announcement, Gov. John Baldacci released a statement saying he hasn’t yet made up his mind on the issue.

“This debate is extremely personal for many people, and it’s an issue that I struggle with trying to find the best path forward,” Baldacci said. “I’m not prepared to say I support gay marriage today, but I will consider what I hear as the Legislature works to find the best way to address discrimination.”

The man has made up his mind. He’s a politician, though, so he needs to be careful with what he does. Maine is in the better part of the country politically, so he does have the advantage of having a fairly liberal constituency, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of bigots, especially in the north. (To give you an idea of the northern Maine bigotry potential, Sarah Palin campaigned there due to Maine splitting its electoral votes. The McCain campaign thought they had a shot up there. They didn’t, but the fact they even tried is disconcerting.)

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Carla Hopkins and Victoria Eleftheriou, of Mount Vernon, who brought their toddler, Eli, to the Statehouse to participate in the event, said they want a secure future for their son.

“The state discriminates against his family and it affects our ability to care for him in very real ways,” Hopkins said.

For example, she said after Eli was born, they had to fight with an employer to get him covered under a health care plan, something that would have been automatic if his parents were married.

This is just one of the differences between marriage and civil unions. Aside from being insulting, they prevent parents from being able to care for their children robustly.

Bob Emrich, a Baptist pastor who leads the Maine Marriage Alliance, said he hopes for a respectful debate on the issue. The alliance wants a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage.

He said the gay marriage bill is “really bad for society.”

Whoa, back up the irony train. You want to be respectful? Don’t say bigoted things that aren’t true because a piece of literature claims the currently most popular god endorses that bigotry. Then you might have a shot at being respectful. Until then, you’ve done nothing to earn any respect accept insofar as a literary critic deserves respect.

“It’s changing the very foundation of our society,” he said. “It’s going to have a major impact on children. It says something about the importance, or lack of importance, of fathers and mothers.”

Yes, your god forbid children have health insurance and their parents have more complete relationships to reinforce their love. How dreadful.

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This would change everything

Posted on January 11, 2009 by Michael

Edge asked its readers what would change everything. Richard Dawkins has responded.

But such ‘essentialism’ is deeply un-evolutionary. If there were a heaven in which all the animals who ever lived could frolic, we would find an interbreeding continuum between every species and every other. For example I could interbreed with a female who could interbreed with a male who could … fill in a few gaps, probably not very many in this case … who could interbreed with a chimpanzee.

We could construct longer, but still unbroken chains of interbreeding individuals to connect a human with a warthog, a kangaroo, a catfish. This is not a matter of speculative conjecture; it necessarily follows from the fact of evolution.

People often fail to realize this. Of course, humans were magically given souls at some point, so there’s no need to worry about this continuum. A god simply decided, at some arbitrary point, that a mother and father were not human but their offspring were. While the mother and father were clearly underserving of such a gift, the children, being full-fledged humans, were given a pass into an afterlife.

1. The discovery of relict populations of extinct hominins such Homo erectus and Australopithecus. Yeti enthusiasts notwithstanding, I don’t think this is going to happen. The world is now too well explored for us to have overlooked a large, savannah-dwelling primate. Even Homo floresiensis has been extinct 17,000 years. But if it did happen, it would change everything.

But I thought dinosaurs still existed? Oh, wait. He means the real world, not Ken Ham’s world. Indeed, this discovery would be wonderful. How would humans treat this new species? We’ve grown out of the old world notion of slavery, so would grant the species some rights, at least insofar as freedom is concerned. But would we allow them a part of our society? Would they not meet our arbitrary cut for being granted human rights?

4. The human genome and the chimpanzee genome are now known in full. Intermediate genomes of varying proportions can be interpolated on paper. Moving from paper to flesh and blood would require embryological technologies that will probably come on stream during the lifetime of some of my readers. I think it will be done, and an approximate reconstruction of the common ancestor of ourselves and chimpanzees will be brought to life. The intermediate genome between this reconstituted ‘ancestor’ and modern humans would, if implanted in an embryo, grow into something like a reborn Australopithecus: Lucy the Second. And that would (dare I say will?) change everything.

Between this, the discovery of how molecules can replicate and evolve new information on their own, and the discovery of exolife, the future is very exciting, indeed. It’ll hopefully also be very damning to religious zealots who base their lives on prose and poetry rather than reality. No longer will they be able to hide behind the veil of special privilege

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Sigh. McCain.

Posted on January 9, 2009 by Michael

So John McCain is at it again. Not satisfied with the sending of his inept running mate out into the big evil world of science and reality a few months back, McCain has decided to wade in to the pool himself – and he’s just as over his head as Palin was.

On Wednesday, McCain himself grabbed for the fruit-fly swatter at a press conference to unveil his new anti-earmark legislation.

After a long takedown of research into lobsters by the University of Maine that involves a “Lobster Cam,” McCain, a Senator from Arizona, turned on the fruit flies, saying, “also, there’s one in Paris that — yes — $212,000 for Olive Fruit Fly research in Paris, France.”

It’s pretty well established how important fruit fly research is in science. Given his lack of familiarity with the field, his election would have been as devastating to science as the past 8 years. But now he has decided to pick on lobster research, in my home state, no less. Personally, I’m not a fan of these sea cockroaches. However, I do enjoy the boost they give to the Maine economy. McCain apparently does not. He apparently believes citing a lobster cam shows how much of a MAVERICK!!! he is about pork-barrel spending. The truth is much more interesting.

This research by the University of Maine is done through its Lobster Institute, an organization devoted to the health of the Maine lobster industry. It is through this organization, not the $188,000 grant, that the lobster cam is funded. The grant money, on the other hand, goes toward “research of microbial diseases that devastate lobster stocks”.

I don’t know about any other readers, but I personally prefer politicians from Arizona to stay out of vital sectors of my state’s economy. More importantly, I prefer them to stay out of science if it is only utter ignorance they are able to profess.

Lobster Institute

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Have the Republicans done anything right?

Posted on January 8, 2009 by Michael

House to vote on pay fairness bills

Ledbetter, after 19 years on the job, sued her employer when she discovered she was the lowest-paid supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co plant where she worked, despite having more experience than several male co-workers.

A jury found she was the victim of unlawful discrimination.

Seems reasonable. A person is discriminated against unlawfully, a jury finds that to be the case. Okay, so the business needs to pay up, right? Nope.

But an appeals court said she waited too long to sue.

In May 2007, the Supreme Court agreed with the lower court and gave businesses a win by ruling discrimination lawsuits must be filed within six months of the act of discrimination.

That’s right. Ledbetter should have known, nearly two decades ago, that her work was paying her less than they should have. It makes perfect sense – ya know, in the deluded minds of the Republicans.

The Lilly Ledbetter bill — blocked in the Senate last year by Republicans — has been a key project of U.S. labor unions, which played a big role in November in helping Democrats make gains in Congress and capture the White House.

Of course the Republicans blocked this bill. It went against the soulless corporations they love so much. We can’t possibly have a notion of humanity in a party devoted to sucking CEO dick, can we? Well, that isn’t entirely fair. When it comes to differentiated cells with no consciousness, the Republicans do well to arbitrarily impose a notion of humanity. Businesses that discriminate though? They’re a-okay.

The Ledbetter legislation would reverse the Supreme Court decision by saying that workers must file a discrimination lawsuit within six months of each new discriminatory paycheck.

“On Friday we intend to do two bills that deal with pay equity and also with the ability to address pay discrimination,” House Democratic Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland told reporters in a briefing.

He said the Supreme Court ruled imposed “an unduly restrictive requirement on employees.”

He said the bill is based on the “very fair” idea that “every week that someone is paid in a discriminatory fashion, that is a new discriminatory event.”

It’s great and all that this injustice is being corrected. It’s just too bad it’s for some BS technical reason. People seem to forget that rules never matter; it is only the reasoning for the rules that is important. This bill shouldn’t become law based upon the idea that each paycheck is discrimination (though it is). It should be enough that it becomes law on the notion that it makes no sense to impose a six month limit: the discrimination often cannot be found in that period of time.

At least the Democrats are getting things right as we phase out the evil of conservatives – for the time being.

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Taking morality back

Posted on January 6, 2009 by Michael

There are far too many claims coming from atheists and humanists that the religious do not have the sole claim to morality. It’s true, of course, they don’t. But that argument is getting old. What’s more interesting is that the morality of the religious, if anything, is lesser than that of the secular.

As time marches forward, secular thought prevails more and more in public policy. The religious often claim credit for these things, but they’ve long been known as liars (see intelligent design). It’s merely a matter of time until a large roadblock to equal rights is quashed; homosexuals will have the right to marry in most parts of the country within the next two decades. It’s simply an inevitability. The religious zealots never win these arguments. Their basis is weak (i.e., belief in superstition). They have no good grounding for their bigotry. Interestingly, it will be discrimination on the basis of gender that actually falls. That is, the government does not make distinctions on the basis of gender in deciding who can enter into a contract. It’s clearly illegal. That is precisely what is happening with this “one man, one woman” bigotry that pervades the country, most notably the backward-thinking south.

It is with the secular that we see an increase in our morality as a nation. The secular progressiveness of Europe has shown itself with a strong repudiation of torturing. It has shown itself with its higher regard for animal rights. Perhaps most importantly of all, it has shown itself in the fact that the vast majority of the continent’s nations have outlawed the death penalty, a punishment based upon the desire for revenge, a petty and callous reasoning.

The argument atheists and humanists should be putting forth is not that the religious do not have the only say in morality. It’s that they have very little. They have a distorted view of reality. They are not interested in freedom, equality, and being good people. They wish to pursue their largely evil gods at the expense of everyone else. It is the religious who must present a case for why anyone should listen to their version of ‘morality’, not the atheists and humanists.

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John Lott is wrong again

Posted on January 3, 2009 by Michael

It has been well-documented that John Lott is a big, fat liar. He writes slanted pieces to pursue his own agenda, not truth. So it comes as no surprise that he would post an article on his blog which claims that an Obama advisor is “wacky” for being concerned about global warming. Okay, so no big deal. Just another ignorant mook that cites non-scientific sources in order to pursue lies. Sure, it’d be nice if he would just go and post at Conservapedia, FOX News, or WorldNetDaily, but the whole concept of free speech does allow for anyone to speak his mind, even if the thoughts within said mind are utterly ignorant. Ignorant how? As is so common (especially among conservatives – extra-especially among FOX News conservatives), John Lott is ignorant in science. In this case, it’s sun spots.

First let’s note how Lott cites an article from Investor’s Business Daily (that highly regarded scientific organizati…business newspaper). He excludes eight grafs on his blog. Three of the grafs are either introductory or conclusion grafs. The other five are as follows.

The Little Ice Age has been a problem for global warmers because it serves as a reminder of how the earth warms and cools naturally over time. It had to be ignored in the calculations that produced the infamous and since-discredited hockey stick graph that showed a sharp rise in warming alleged to be caused by man.

The answer to this dilemma has supposedly been found by two Stanford researchers, Richard Nevle and Dennis Bird, who announced their “findings” at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco. According to them, man not only is causing contemporary warming. He also caused the cooling that preceded it.

According to Bird and Nevle, before Columbus ruined paradise, native Americans had deforested a significant portion of the continent and converted the land to agricultural purposes. Less CO2 was then absorbed from the atmosphere, and the earth was toasty.

Then a bunch of nasty old white guys arrived and depopulated the native populations through war and the diseases they brought with them. This led to the large-scale abandonment of agricultural lands. The subsequent reforestation of the continent caused temperatures to drop enough to bring on the Little Ice Age.

Implicit in this research is that the world would be fine if man wasn’t in the way. We either make the world too cold or too hot, a view held by many in high places.

Given the derisive nature of these grafs, it may actually may have made sense for Lott to publish them, but two of them contain some contradictory science to his silly dogma. That just doesn’t fly for these global warming denialists. I’m beginning to think Lott maybe does visit Conservapedia.

So now that we have Lott’s continued dishonesty out of the way, let’s tackle the main issue: sun spots. The unscientific, babbling article the unscientific, babbling Lott cites tries to stake a claim that all this hoo-hah about global warming is really just scientists misinterpreting data because they never considered sun spots.

When the sun is active, it’s not uncommon to see sunspot numbers of 100 or more in a single month. Every 11 years, activity slows, and numbers briefly drop near zero. Normally sunspots return very quickly, as a new cycle begins. But this year, the start of a new cycle, the sun has been eerily quiet.

The first seven months averaged a sunspot count of only three and in August there were no sunspots at all — zero — something that has not occurred since 1913.

According to the publication Daily Tech, in the past 1,000 years, three previous such events — what are called the Dalton, Maunder and Sporer Minimums — have all led to rapid cooling. One was large enough to be called the Little Ice Age (1500-1750).

(Don’t worry, Lott posted that part).

Okay, so because there are few sun spots to be seen toward the end of this current solar cycle and global temperatures have dropped in 2008, global warming is due to that. There are so many things wrong with this it makes me mad.

First of all, this horrific article cites the first seven months of this year. Guess what? Those months correspond to the end of the last solar cycle. It wasn’t until the past three months that the new 11-year cycle was detected (Hey, John, that’s a scientific citation; use it sometime).

Of course, it’s possible to go so far as to use the misleading information provided by this business newspaper and still show it to be wrong. Let’s assume this solar cycle does correspond with the change in global temperature. It would necessarily follow because there was a rise in temperature in the first seven years of this century that there was also a rise in solar activity. In truth, this past 11-year solar cycle peaked in 2000 and has been decaying ever since. Wow! The wonder of slight research and knowledge! Oh, how it destroys ignorance so quickly. It’s too bad John Lott isn’t interested in doing that.

What’s more, this article cites the Little Ice Age, as if it was entirely and decidely caused by solar activity. The issue is far more nuanced than that – and certainly too nuanced for such an unqualified business newspaper.

Global thermometers stopped rising after 1998, and have plummeted in the last two years by more than 0.5 degrees Celsius. The 2007-2008 temperature drop was not predicted by global climate models. But it was predictable by a decline in sunspot activity since 2000.

Wow. This is just so fucking wrong that it just made me go and fucking swear at its wrongness. Global temperatures have been rising since 1998. From 1995-2006, 11 of the 12 warmest years on record were recorded. As far as this past year goes, it was a decline over the first years of this century – of course, that doesn’t really matter when it was still the 10th warmest year on record. In fact, part of the reason it was cooler than other years was the moderation experienced from La Niña. As is well known (except by John Lott, in all likelihood), water is tremendously useful for retaining temperature. Since La Niña shrinks the warm pool of water in parts of the Pacific, it can make a noticable difference in global temperatures. Still, because of man-made pollution and deforestation, La Niña was not strong enough to prevent 2008 from being the 10th warmest year on record.

It’s unsurprising that John Lott would make a post like this. He has a history of making posts concerning things on which he has no knowledge. Take a look at his posts on evolution. They’re disparate, sometimes contradictory, often with no commentary to give some context. Granted, he shouldn’t be giving commentary on anything, but he also shouldn’t be making posts first concerned with human evolution accelerating and then subsequent posts concerned with human evolution slowing down. Bah. I don’t know why I continue to expect more out of these far-right, a-science mooks.

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What will change everything?

Posted on January 2, 2009 by Michael

Edge asks us What will change everything? Specifically, “what game-changing scientific ideas and developments do you expect to live to see?”

I’m not so sure it makes much sense to ask what ideas will change the world dramatically, but I think there are two clear-cut scientific developments which will occur within the next 50 years. The first is the creation of life in the laboratory. It’s going to happen. It should, of course, crush creationism and its lying, deceitful bastard cousin intelligent design, but it will just be used as a prop for the claim that life only comes from a creator (which will, of course, be a laughable misunderstanding). I suspect far less than 50 years for this to happen. The next two decades may prove to be the time needed for the greatest discovery since Darwin discovered natural selection.

The second will be the discovery of life on one or more exoplanets. No longer will natural selection be the greatest discovery in the history of man. In fact, it won’t even be remotely close. The discovery of exolife will radically alter the philosophies of the world, deepen our understanding of the Universe, and place humanity in the best perspective it has ever had.

Post your own thoughts here, if you please.

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Good call, Jerry

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Michael

California Attorney General Jerry Brown has joined the good fight.

Brown, a former California Democratic governor, said the California court’s summer ruling allowing gay marriage led the way to his argument.

“The right of same-sex couples to marry is protected by the liberty interests of the constitution,” Brown said by telephone, referring to the ruling. “If a fundamental right can be take away without any particular justification, then what kind of a right is it?”

The fact that California has a simple majority of bigots is not reason enough to take away the right of a minority. The reason it takes 38 states to ratify an amendment to the U.S. constitution is that it’s quite possible that 26 states could impose highly disagreeable rule over the other 24 – imagine if 25 southern states could have banded together and banned interracial marriage. (Unsurprisingly, it would likely be mostly southern states, again, voting in favor of bigotry if an amendment banning gay marriage ever came to a vote at the state level.)

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Coy Creationists

Posted on December 22, 2008 by Michael

Have you ever noticed that creationists are getting more and more coy and more and more dishonest? From repeating claims about evolution that are blatantly false even after the real answer has been explained to them to coming up with the hooey that is intelligent design (as if it isn’t a repackaging of creationism), so many have turned to flat out lying. They’re liars. They’re immoral charlatans and mountebanks, peddling lies to society, especially children. Why they are given even a modicum of respect is beyond me.

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More Michael Heath mumbo

Posted on December 19, 2008 by Michael

He’s full of mumbo. Jumbo, too.

A lot of teenagers are unable to speak with their parents about sex. Either it’s awkward or they’re made to feel bad about their desires because of the irrationality of religion or some other shallow thought. But, of course, Michael Heath of the Maine Family Policy Council embraces shallow thought. He favors changing the current law in Maine concerning parental consent for birth control and other sexual reproductive health issues.

Maine law has allowed minors contraception without parental consent for more than 30 years, but the issue was brought back to the forefront last fall when the Portland School Committee voted to allow contraceptives to be given to girls at the school as part of the services offered at a city-run health center in the school.

…

Mike Heath, executive director of the Maine Family Policy Council which supported Smith’s attempts to limit the confidentiality law last session, believes Family Planning is working to hard to protect the current law because it fails to align with public sentiment.

“The public knows the Maine Family Planning Association is wrong,” Heath said this week. “The MFPA is holding the public forums because they are selling something the public has no interest in buying. The public knows that good laws honor the nobility of sex inside of marriage and the danger of fornication.”

(The MFPA is sponsoring public forums on the issue.)

Oh, Mikey. The state has no business “honoring” sexual practices within the purely legal, purely secular contract of marriage. As such, it does not do this. What’s more interesting here, however, is how childish Heath’s views on sex really are. By denying minors the right to their reproductive health, “the danger of fornification” is actually increased. What’s more, Maine law allows for a person as young as 14 to consent to sex as long as the other person is within 5 years of age. At the age of 16, a person may consent to sex with a person of any age, from 14 to 140, it’s legal. So if Heath is right (his track record says he isn’t) and minors need to get parental consent for their reproductive health issues, then that undermines Maine law. That is, Maine law states a person is responsible enough, in the eyes of the state, to engage in sexual activity at that aforementioned age levels. Forcing consent would imply that, no, these people are not responsible enough. Essentially, the freedom to engage in sex within the prescribed laws would disappear because the sexual activity of a 17 year old would become the responsibility of his or her parents.

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