Critical Exponent

You can look up studies on the genetics of homosexuality using the OMIM website. What jumps out of this collection of studies is that, for males, the genetic link appears to come through the mother (X chromosome) and that boys with older siblings are more likely to be gay. Interesting.

I learned about this through the NY Times Tierney lab. As seems to be the case every time I bother to look (is it sampling bias?), reader comments on newspaper blogs degenerate into the tangential, irrelevant, and specious. Sigh.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali asks in The New York Times where Islam’s moderates are. A better question, I think, is “what are progressives and moderates doing to prevent extremists of all stripes from hijacking social discourse?”

Right-wing Christians in the US bemoan a supposed assault on Christianity, since anything less than a state religion will not do. A presidential candidate needs to placate the religious right, reciting revised history in the process. Another candidate attributes his success to god alone. In American society at large, it matters much more that one invoke the name of the proper deity in the proper way than that one have sensible, concrete ideas to put ethical principles into action.

Do these folks not realize that conspicuous piety in fact speaks very poorly of their character, ethics, and value system?

U.S. Ambassador resigns over discrimination.

Some NYU students would.

Sigh.

Tip of the hat to Jeff

In an emotional statement, the mayor of San Diego reversed his stance against same-sex unions because his daughter is gay.

I have mixed feelings about this.

First of all, I applaud a politician for having the guts to say “I was wrong” and reverse himself. I admire him for putting family above dogma and for refusing to be a hypocrite.

Second, I applaud his daughter for being open, establishing dialog, and not giving up on the bond with her father.

But, third, I feel that this shows how self-serving we are even we pretend otherwise. Supposedly one holds convictions on fundamental or controversial issues such as this because one is convinced those convictions are correct. Whether that belief comes from rational thought, from humanist principles, from religious belief, from historical tradition, the presumption in politics is that those beliefs are held and professed not because of personal gain but because they’re good for society at large. That’s certainly the way the gay marriage debate has been framed.

But if a change in your personal circumstances makes you reverse your position, what does that say about your convictions? Your arguments, your talking points, your invective now change, not because you know more about the issue, but because being suddenly associated with the victims of discrimination now puts you at a disadvantage.

Will your new position survive new changes in your circumstances?

To me, you see, a good litmus test as to whether positions are worth holding is whether, indeed, I’d continue to hold them if my circumstances changed. If I wouldn’t advocate tax cuts for the rich when I’m poor, then advocating them when I’m rich is simply selfishness. If I wouldn’t advocate more social services if I were rich, then advocating them when I’m poor is purely self-serving. And similarly, suddenly supporting gay rights only because my daughter is gay means I care about me and my own but couldn’t be bothered with those whose plight did not affect me.

This Orion article captures the anxious guilt I feel that I am not doing enough, that I never can do enough.

Interesting

This weekend’s NYT Week in Review seems largely devoted to the Wide Stance Scandal:

Abby Goodnough writes about open secrets and hypocrisy.

Sarah Kershaw writes about stings and entrapment.

Laura Maconald writes about how tea-room rituals are such as to not pose a menace to the public order.

My commentary: Normally, this ought to be a private scandal, just like Bill Clinton’s ought to have been. What makes Craig’s actions fair game for the media is his hypocrisy in soliciting gay sex (when he voted against gay rights) outside of marriage (when he proclaims support for “family values”). Interestingly, it seems like “family values” stands for nothing more than “anti-gay”, given that senators who commit adultery with women are not being pushed out.

On a lighter note, I think someone ought to open a gay bar in Idaho called The Wide Stance….

Mark Lilla, writing the cover story for this week’s New York Times Magazine, uses the word theotropism. While a Google search reveals that this is not a neologism, I am delighted to run across such a succint term that captures the all-too-common drive to construe the world in divine, supernatural ways. My own speculation is that this is a mechanism for making sense of the environment that was useful in our infancy, as individuals and as a species—but which now all too easily leads us astray as sects feel called upon to enforce divine will on the unbelievers and apostates.

While walking around Wallingford yesterday, we came across The Budget Graph.