Really, Maine?
Well, it looks like Maine’s Question 1 passed with 53% of the vote. I have to say, Maine, I’m disappointed in you. I had so much hope when you were the first state to lift the ban on same-sex marriage through the legislature rather than the courts. But no.
This would be so much easier to stomach if I had ever heard a single coherent reason why there’s any downside to legal same-sex marriage. At all. (And no, “it’s just icky to me” does not count.)
Questionable Ethics #3
Welcome back to another edition of Questionable Ethics, where we demonstrate to Randy Cohen and the rest of the New York Times Magazine staff that ethics aren’t something you can simply decree. Let’s get right to it; here’s this week’s column and here’s the first letter.
My daughter, in her late 20s, has a same-sex partner. Most of our very large, very Catholic family knows this except my husband’s parents.They have a summer home, and their rule is that nonmarried children and their opposite-sex partners may not share a bedroom. My daughter and her partner often claim a small room for two, and her grandparents regard the girls, who live together, as good friends. My younger daughter thinks it unfair that she and her boyfriend must sleep in separate rooms. We have a family reunion coming up. Should I say something to my in-laws about my older daughter? NAME WITHHELD
Cohen says that it’s unethical for the writer to out her daughter without her knowledge or consent (unless some crazy monster threatens the globe, but can only be stopped by a lesbian). That seems straightforward enough. Then he goes on to assert that the daughter should “adhere to that rule or find another place to stay.” Sounds like a reasonable call, but what does it mean to adhere to the rule?
Perhaps the daughter and the girlfriend ought to admit that they are “nonmarried” and claim separate rooms. This will be confusing to everyone, since they have been sharing a room in the past. It effectively forces them to come out to the grandparents, which we’ve agreed is an unethical thing to do. (Ditto if they opt out and find their own room. What for? everyone will ask.) Additionally, the odds are pretty small that this family lives in a state where it is possible that this couple can currently become married. So they can’t stay in separate rooms as a nonmarried couple, and they can’t share a room as a married couple. It’s hardly ethical to compel a person to comply with a paradoxical rule like this.
Maybe this daughter simply can’t win with her grandparents. They disapprove of her sexual orientation, they disapprove of sex before marriage, they disapprove of same sex marriage. Yet she is (I assume) in a caring, committed, long-term relationship with someone she wants her extended family to get to know. At some point, one may certainly argue, the daughter is justified in defying rules which are oppressive and unfair. The spirit of the law her grandparents have laid down is that committed relationships are important, and promiscuity is to be discouraged. She is obeying the spirit of the law, and harming no one by ignoring the letter.
On a different course, one might point out that it’s unlikely the grandparents have no idea that these two young women are a couple. They’ve lived together for years. The friend always comes along on family trips, and is coming to a family reunion. I’ve never had that kind of relationship with a roommate, and I don’t know any people who have. One could suggest that the most ethical thing to do is to encourage the daughter to explain the situation to her grandparents, and allow the grandparents to decide which of their “family values” is most important: no homosexuality, no sex before marriage, or actually valuing your family.
Letter number two:
I locked my bicycle to a fence outside my building a few times over two weeks. One morning, it was gone. My landlady had the police remove it, claiming she tried to alert the owner by letting the air out of the tires. She left no note. At the precinct, an officer said she told them the bike had been there for three months. Fortunately, I reclaimed it undamaged. Unfortunately, the police cut the locks: replacement costs are $150. Should my landlady cover that? NAME WITHHELD, NEW YORK
Cohen claims that while the landlady had the legal right to have the bike removed, the ethical thing is for her to replace the broken locks and apologize. However, several points of fact are left ambiguous here. Perhaps they were trimmed out of the letter before publication. I am left wondering: does the fence count as part of the rental property? If so, then surely the writer is entitled to use it, just as one would have use of a lawn or a driveway that came along with a rental. Unless there was a clearly signed and established rule that bikes were not to be chained to the fence, it’s no more ethical (or legal) for the landlady to take the bike than it would be for her to go into the writer’s apartment and walk away with the television set. Of course, the entire building is technically the landlady’s property, but these rights of (reasonable) use are what is signed over in the lease.
If the fence is somehow distinctly part of the landlady’s property—for example, the writer rents a room or two in the landlady’s house, and all the other rooms in the house are considered solely hers—then it would appear that she acted completely within her rights and behaved appropriately. If you leave a bunch of your personal stuff on your neighbor’s porch without informing them, you effectively gave them your stuff. They have no obligation, legally or ethically, to tape a sign on it and wait ten days to see if anyone claimed it. That would actually seem kind of crazy. They are free to throw it away if they want to. The landlady’s actions could be seen as analogous to that sort of situation.
In the absence of answers to these questions, I don’t see how it’s possible to determine who is at fault, and who owes what to whom, and I don’t see how Randy Cohen can purport to have such authoritative knowledge on what is ethical here.
Cis and trans
I’ve read a couple posts by recursiveparadox lately (here: the first and the second) about the prefix/word “cis,” as in “cisgender,” meaning the opposite of “transgender.” Apparently there has been some sort of huge uproar—follow the many links in RP’s posts if you are interested—because some people think the word “cis” is a slur. It’s intended to refer only to the fact of not being trans, to help in a situation that would be awkward at best and unfairly normative at worst (since “normal” or “regular” are the words that come to mind if you are trying to name that side in a comparison).
I agree with RP when she says that, “It is not a weapon, it is a classifier, used for discourse only.” I cannot imagine why anyone would be offended by it… but my intention is not to rehash that argument or to take anyone to task. (RP does a more than adequate job.) My reason for posting is that, as a scientist, I am very excited about this term. It is awesome! It is brilliant!
I think I did hear “cisgender” once a few years ago but didn’t run into it again until I read this stuff, and I guess I didn’t see the connection before. In all the posts I read in my wild goose chase to understand this recent controversy, I only saw one passing reference to the origins of the term. I feel like explaining it might take some of the edge off the anger that folks are apparently feeling out there, so here goes.
This is trans-2-butene. The CH3 functional groups are on opposite sides of the double bond.
This is cis-2-butene. The CH3 functional groups are on the same side of the double bond.
(Images thanks to Wikipedia.) So… if your gender identity is opposite that of your birth sex, we say you are transgender. And then, if your gender identity is the same as your birth sex, what to call you? Cisgender, of course! Not an insult. Not even a value judgment. Just a clever borrowing of a simple fact from chemistry! (Science to the rescue!)
Of course, even this terminology still presents gender identity as a binary rather than a continuum; it’s not perfectly inclusive. I think we ought to be able to agree, however, that it’s a significant improvement over comparisons between “trans” people and “normal” people. Apparently, the word “cisgender” has been in use since the mid-1990s. I’m surprised it hasn’t caught on more since then.
Not in their control
I’ve been doing some thinking since I read this post over on Friendly Atheist. Hemant Mehta reported on a vote in Goshen, IN to add sexual orientation and gender identity to its list of qualities protected in its anti-discrimination laws. They didn’t—the proposal failed 4-3.
In response to a man who asked in a local news interview, “Where do we draw the line?” Hemant said:
You draw the line in favor of helping people who are being discriminated against for things that are not in their control. That’s what the moral thing to do would be.
It really got me thinking about how some people make the crazy argument that by allowing same-sex marriage, the government is endorsing pedophilia and all sorts of other actually objectionable things. That argument is still crazy, but Hemant’s statement gave me a little bit of insight into where that argument might be coming from. (I say “might” because I doubt that many people are actually thinking it through to this degree. There is some chance that what I’m about to explain is happening on a subconscious level, and in any case, I think having logically sound reasons for our beliefs is important, even if no one has noticed a hole in your logic yet. But I’m getting ahead of myself.)
The point it sounds like Hemant is making is that if a quality is innate to you, you shouldn’t be treated poorly because of it. This is almost true, but it raises some big questions about free will. What about people who were “just born with” violent tendencies or compulsive urges to steal? Is it discrimination to charge them with assault or robbery? In the limited context of this story, it’s being used to say that LGBT orientations are something that people are born with, and nobody chooses what they are attracted to or what gender they identify with. But what about people who are attracted to young children? It’s easy to imagine that they didn’t choose that attraction, any more than people choose what body type or hair color appeals to them most. I have no idea what goes on in the mind of a pedophile, but it seems reasonable to contend that they “didn’t choose it.”
Of course, even if you are sexually attracted to children, we believe you have an obligation not to act on those desires, and it’s okay for society to punish you if you do. And if you were born a violent person (whatever that means), it’s okay for society to punish you if you allow yourself to act on your violent inclinations. But! But! protests the Religious Right. Can’t we make the same argument about homosexuals?
And there we have our problem. Because you can make the same argument. But that was never the real argument in the first place. The difference between homosexuality and pedophilia isn’t that one is innate and the other isn’t, it’s that one is fine and one is bad. There’s nothing actually wrong with homosexuality; it doesn’t hurt anyone in any way. Two individuals of the same gender freely consenting to be in a romantic relationship with each other? That’s great for both of them, and as good for the rest of society as every other stable relationship. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that even if someone has certain brain chemicals that make them want to molest children, acting on those desires still constitutes coercion and assault, and it’s completely acceptable to punish them.
When we make laws about how people should be treated, we have to think about what is good for society (or at least, what society is indifferent to) and what is bad for society. The innateness of a particular quality only comes into play insofar as it means we have to be more careful to be right when we come to a conclusion about its goodness or badness. (See: strict scrutiny.) I don’t know if it’s possible to have a public discussion about discrimination against homosexuals on these terms, but it feels more intellectually honest than simply repeating, “That’s just who they are!”
Think before you speak
An interesting story was brought to my attention by this Penny Arcade comic. Typically, Penny Arcade is about video games and the gaming community (of which I consider myself to be on the periphery), though they do occasionally cover topics of more general interest. This is one of these occasions, and the topic is the Think B4 You Speak campaign which aims to stop people from using the word “gay” as a derogatory term. There’s a news post that goes with the comic that explains what the cartoonists were thinking when they drew this.
I gather from that news post that Tycho is in favor of GLSEN (the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network, which is running the campaign along with the Ad Council) and groups like it, and in favor of their general goal of tolerance of and respect for people regardless of their sexual orientation or gender identity. I am, as well. I say this up front because I’m wary of being misunderstood (or encouraging readers to misunderstand someone else) on a sensitive topic like this.
The Think B4 You Speak campaign includes some print ads and some radio and TV ads. Three of the print ads they have on their site are structured in the same basic way: a teenager’s face fills most of the background, and text covers their face, saying:
- That’s so “jock who can complete a pass but not a sentence.”
- That’s so “cheerleader who like, can’t like, say smart stuff.”
- That’s so “gamer guy who has more videogames than friends.”
An inset at the bottom of the ad says, “Think that’s mean? How do you think ‘that’s so gay’ sounds? Hurtful. So, knock it off.”
Tycho’s reaction?
…Bigots and stupid kids speak this way expressly to promulgate the root concepts or to provoke a reaction. Telling them to “knock it off,” as this campaign hilariously does, is like exposing your belly to these wolves.
Lexically speaking, the word Gay is a battleground of warring meanings, uses, and baggage. The fact that the slur has retained its power – for all parties involved – is evidence that the conflict is ongoing, and that its destiny is not yet established. I have tremendous support for them in their aim: the wresting of language, which is identity, from the unworthy foe. If you want to hunt this kind of game, though, you need bigger ordnance.
This criticism is an important one. The ads come off as almost wimpy, merely pointing out that people’s feelings are hurt. That’s often the goal, “to provoke a reaction,” to make people feel insulted. The target audience may just think: “So what?”
My take on this campaign, however, would come from a slightly different angle. You might recall what I wrote about the Spread the Word campaign (against the word “retarded” as an insult), basically explaining that there is a negative quality to mental retardation that leads to its use in a derogatory context. For most people who use “gay” to mean “bad” or “stupid,” homosexuality itself is a negative quality. (Sure, there are some people who say it unthinkingly, but my sense is that they are a minority. I don’t know of any statistics on this; maybe I’m wrong. The lines given to the character of Gabe in the comic strip do illustrate basically what I imagine to be typical. He knows what he’s talking about when he says “gay.”) If you go back and read over those poster slogans, you’ll see that they all do refer to negative qualities: being unintelligent or illiterate or unliked by others. They didn’t choose to stop at, “That’s so cheerleader” or “That’s so jock” or “That’s so gamer”—they had to add extra phrases to make the statements actually sound insulting.
The point of this whole thing, as I understand it, isn’t just to stop people from insulting people. It’s to teach people that “gay” shouldn’t be an insult. To achieve that, you need to show that it’s just a descriptor, a part of some people’s identities. Maybe the posters would be better if they said things like, “Ugh, that’s so 27-year-old guy from Michigan.” Really basic, using innocuous qualities, but obviously intending to convey disgust. Then the point you’re making is a bit more clear: how would you like it if someone used your identity as an insult?
Of course, none of this erases the deeply held beliefs that many people have about homosexuals being condemned to hell. And there will probably always be some straight people who feel squeamish about homosexuality, simply because the orientation is unappealing to them. I think the best that society can hope for from this campaign and others like it is to establish that some things are off limits. You might personally be happy that you’re not a different religion or of a different ethnic background, because some of their traditions and customs don’t appeal to you, but that doesn’t make it okay to mock people who do belong to those groups. We need this rule to apply to sexuality as well.
It’s not clear that this campaign, as it is, is counterproductive, though… maybe at worst, just unproductive. Tycho wrote that “the conflict is ongoing, and that its destiny is not yet established.” This is the next phase of the conflict, the next statement in the social dialogue. It doesn’t have to end the conflict, but there’s nothing wrong with strategizing in the meantime about the most effective next step.
Civil unions for everyone
With all the recent gay marriage controversy in California and New York, I’ve been thinking about an idea I’ve actually had for quite a while. I think that every state should offer civil unions — but not just for same-sex couples. In fact, I think civil unions should completely replace marriages, at least legally.
Now, of course, this will probably seem extreme. End marriage? But the really important thing here is that such a move would in no way end marriage. Churches would still perform marriages. There would still be weddings, and rings, and vows, and everything else. None of that is remotely related to the legal institution of marriage. Legally, marriage is a contract of sorts between two people where they agree to a standardized set of promises towards each other. As a society we formally recognize this for two reasons. First, we think it’s beneficial socially as a structure for families. Second, it’s easier to keep track of things that way, since so many decisions/transactions are made at the family level. (For example, if we want to see if a child is poor enough to qualify for free school lunches, we need the combined income of both parents, not just one.)
I’m all for giving those legal protections to married couples. I do think it’s a good social structure to encourage, and it provides for a lot of expediency throughout society. Civil unions would also do this. (The civil unions I have in mind, very similar to those that actually exist, would be complete replications of the legal status of marriage, but with a different name.) In a way, it’s a meaningless change. However, I think it would have an important effect. There’s a reason that civil unions, despite being essentially equivalent, are meaningfully more acceptable to many people than gay marriage. To say gay couples deserve marriage is to make a strong statement about the cultural and religious institution of marriage, not just the legal one. Now, I fully support social as well as legal equality, and I believe churches should be willing to perform marriages for gay couples. Some already do. However, it seems better to me if the government stays out of that decision. The government already does, technically — even if gay marriage were legalized, a church could easily refuse to perform marriages for gay couples — but it doesn’t feel like that to most people. I think changing the name to “civil union” would clearly distinguish the legal institution from the cultural/religious one. Very few people actually oppose hospital visitation rights for gay couples. Making it clear that that kind of stuff is what we’re talking about would allow for a much more intelligent debate, and probably a better outcome for everyone.