Marriage and Choice

Today the Supreme Court of the United States struck down the Defense of Marriage Act. While the Court struck down the law based upon the 5th Amendment, and not the 14th, the ruling still has some important implications. There is a definite feeling that the Court majority wanted to go further, but felt that doing so would create the same kind of cultural and political divisions that Roe v. Wade did in 1973.

The Court learned a valuable lesson from the ruling on abortion. It was a kind of ruling that was different from the rulings regarding race and civil rights, and it hinged upon a single, important concept: choice.

To Choose or Not To Choose

In the United States, protected classes are defined in both the Constitution and in Court precedent. Legally, outside of these classes, there are no "types" or "groups" of people which are afforded the protection of the 14th Amendment. Officially, anyway.

Unofficially, and in the consciousness of the population, what really divides "rights" and "privileges" is choice.

You cannot choose to be white or black, you cannot choose to be male or female, you cannot choose to be young or old. You have no element of choice or opinion on these things. The philosophical basis for protected classes in the United States is centered around the idea that you should not be discriminated against for things over which you have no choice or control.

Even things like poverty, which you may be born into, you still have some element of choice over, and while the Court understands that not everyone will escape that kind of restriction, some can and there are choices you can make which improve your chances of doing so. At its core, you can still work hard to improve your lot in life here in the United States. It might not be a sure thing, but it can and does happen.

Abortion is still a very controversial issue in the US.

This is part of what has made the Roe v. Wade decision so controversial for so long. It created a right to something which a large portion of the country did not view as something that happens to you, but instead around a circumstance that you put yourself in. Others viewed the choice not in the conception (and certainly in cases of rape, for instance, there is no choice in the matter) but in the termination.

These are fundamentally different conceptions of the human condition itself, and you don't win people over one way or the other by shouting about "life" or "choice". You don't win that argument by demonizing the other side.

When the Court first ruled on Roe v. Wade, it believed it was making another ruling in the vein of its many civil rights rulings, but what the country discovered afterward is that while racists did concede that blacks could not choose their skin color, the aspect of choice surrounding abortion was unsettled and quite volatile, leaving the question of abortion open instead of settled. After all, a different court might rule a different way, since in the view of the opposition, the ruling itself was arbitrary.

The Court wanted to avoid that same debacle with gay marriage and gay rights, and that is why they didn't rule in a way that made gay marriage legal across the entire country.

The Steady March of Progress

Many people in society today believe that gay rights and gay marriage, and even sexuality as a protected class, are only a matter of time. Several months ago, the National College Republicans released a report where they outlined results from focus groups, noting that among young people of all political leanings, gay marriage and gay rights are seen as obvious and fundamental.

Many Christians have begun to recognize how human
the hate for gays is.

Many religious groups are also transitioning away from direct combativeness with gays and gay rights, and beginning to once again approach sin as simply sin, something all of us share.

This long view of society is probably something that is shared by much of the Court, however despite the feeling of inevitable change within our society, a significant portion of people view homosexuality as a choice.

This comes back to what the Court learned from the 70's. If they pushed it too fast, while the issue of fundamental humanity was still unresolved, they would cause all meaningful debate to halt, and cause each side to become entrenched and blind forcing the country into meaningless conflict with itself.

Onward and Upward

The Court took such a measured approach to this topic because it understands the turmoil it can accidentally send the country into by being hasty. Real change never comes from the dictates of the government, it always comes from the people.

I used to believe that homosexuality was a choice. I no longer do. This is a transformation of thought that will continue throughout our society I believe. I did not change my views on a whim, it happened because I became friends with people of many different sexual orientations, and I began to be able to see things from their perspective.

Their love and dignity are worth more than my pride or belief

From their perspective, my view was ugly and hurtful, and it caused me to think, and ultimately to accept that I had been wrong. These people were people, and they deserved the same dignity that all other people did, and I began to see how my opinions hurt them. I also came to understand how their opinions did not hurt me.

While gay rights are not as much of an issue in other parts of the world, or in some even more of an issue, the fundamental forces at play are absolutely critical to our global society. The world itself is learning how to shed unjust discrimination, and that type of social learning takes time. Time that is unfair to those who are being wronged, but time which must be taken if we are to create lasting change in the hearts and minds of people everywhere.

Fear is a powerful emotion that still sends us into fits of tribalism and absurdity, and I personally am very pleased that the Supreme Court has learned the lesson of Roe v. Wade to such an extent. Any time injustice is being done, it is incumbent upon the people not the government to address it. The power of the government to right such wrongs only exists when the will of the people is there to enforce such a change throughout society, and we must all learn to be more empathetic with each other if we want to continue onward and upward.

UPDATE: To be clear, because upon rereading this post I realized it wasn't, I do not support gay marriage in spite of my belief that it is wrong, however I believe that is an acceptable position to hold. Rather, I support gay marriage because I believe that it is morally correct to do so, and that there is nothing immoral about a society allowing it, and that there is nothing immoral about gay people in general.

Believing, even personally, that being gay is wrong even when I believe it is not a choice would make me a bigot by definition, and it is a position I would never take. There is nothing wrong with being gay, there is nothing immoral about being gay, and there is nothing about being gay which is harmful to the rest of society. That is what I believe.

The NSA, and How We Have Fallen

It's rather... strange. We have learned that our government has been secretly, and illegally, spying on us for years, and I felt nothing. Some in this country shrugged and said they "have nothing to hide", and I felt nothing. The man who leaked it was charged with espionage, and I felt nothing. In fact, this revelation, which should have elicited so much emotion from a person such as me elicited so much "nothing" that I began to worry.

Was I falling victim to my apathy? I had written an assessment on the topic only six months before, maybe I was falling in to that same trap. But no... no. I was still just as engaged. Apathy is a lot like depression, you just... don't care. Not that you are upset, or even that you are passive, you just have no feeling. Why would you even read about such topics if you were apathetic? It'd be a waste of time.

No, I wasn't experiencing apathy, I was experiencing existential dread. You see, I was in fact hit much harder by this story than I thought at first, but it hit me at such a core level that I didn't even feel it right away.

The Story of Us

The main issue of this story, to me, was that it was not a story exclusively about the evil of big liberal government, or the danger of strong conservative government. In fact among the political elite it seemed to be one of the only things that was enjoying near universal support, and incredibly could keep that support even when the voters cried foul.

This was not the cause, it was merely the catalyst.

This story was, instead, about us. All of us. The butchers, the bakers, the candlestick makers, and the network engineers with Top Secret clearance who were setting up ways of peering in to the daily lives of our small existences.

But it was also about us. This was not thrust upon us, it was begged for. When America experienced "terror", a word which has nearly become impotent at this point, we begged for safety. The best of us and the worst of us. True, some saw this coming. It is quite humbling to me that among the people who advocated for a logical and reasoned approach to national security following the September 11th attacks, not one was young. Not one was at that age where you find the confluence of idealism and energy.

No, they were seasoned, experienced, and all-too-prepared for what was coming.

You see, when they spoke up, it was not Congress or President Bush that needed to quash those ideas. They didn't have to lift a finger. They could stand back and appear like neutral arbiters while the people, us, lashed out in fear.

People like Noam Chomsky spoke up, but received
mostly vitriol in response.

There were those who warned about the USA PATRIOT Act, who warned about preemptive wars, drone strikes, torture and indefinite detention. But we were scared, and the world they warned us of sounded even scarier, and so we told them to be quiet and step in line. To shut up or leave, this country wasn't big enough for their opinion.

The First Amendment is supposed to protect speech from government retribution, but nothing can protect speech from the opinion of the public, or from the morality of the mob.

The Story of Them

Like many aspects of our government, the NSA is a closed group that looks out for its own interests. The first priority of any bureaucracy is to perpetuate and expand the bureaucracy. In this sense, there is little that is sinister about many government projects, even the most onerous. The problems arise not out of the encroaching bureaucracy, but the idea of "them".

In any situation, in any circumstance, people divide other people into the in-group and the out-group. For many of us the in-groups we identify with change throughout the day. At home it may be our family or our cohabitants. At work it may be our co-workers of approximately the same responsibility and compensation. As our circumstances change, even moment to moment, we internally modify our concept of the in-group but never to include the entire group.

The in-group/out-group structures of our mind are
powerful, confusing and unconscious.

The out-group is not defined positively, it is usually defined as the not in-group. This negatively based definition means that the out-group nearly always contains more people than the in-group, and frustratingly it is almost impossible to seize upon a single personality or figure to personify the out-group. This is, in many ways, why we crave scapegoats, blame and reducing fault to the responsibility of a few people. This is also why many of our social systems explicitly designate concentrations of responsibility and fault up a chain... it's just how humans are wired socially.

But... in a place like the NSA, or the CIA, where your job necessitates separation from the public, this separation will always lead to the formation of an out-group, and in many ways the inverse as well where the public views these institutions as out-groups. When things go wrong, we want to blame the CIA, the FBI, the NSA. Wasn't it your job? Isn't this why we keep you around?

To top it off, by the very nature of their work they can never receive credit for their successes, they will always be blamed for their faults, and will in fact be blamed for many faults that aren't theirs. This, of course, only further divides the public and the intelligence communities into in-groups and out-groups.

The danger is not the bureaucracy itself, it is that the people that make up that bureaucracy see the public as an out-group. This tendency actually has a name: tribalism.

Many within the NSA likely honestly don't believe that there is anything wrong with what they do, or that the fears of many people are so unfounded. They also likely believe that the public is stupid, and can't possibly understand the intricacies of their job and task, or how difficult it can be, or how little it is appreciated.

I do not feel that the behavior revealed by Edward Snowden should be defended. It needs to be abolished and defamed. But we must understand why it happens.

Yes, a few people at the top probably have malicious and terrifying aspirations, but their charisma and magnanimity is not why all the routine workers below them follow through. Dictators do not charm their way to the top, they fight their way there, or more accurately they give you someone to fight against and position themselves as the only ones that can lead that charge.

Our Fall

When I say that we have fallen, I do not mean the United States, I mean our species. Tribalism is alive and well. People manufacture villains and groups to fight against, even when their interests are highly aligned, because they need conflict. Contrary to the Marxist theory of social ordering, I do not believe that this is embodied in a class struggle. Certainly there are classes and there is struggle, but I don't think that's why people feel the way they do; why Republicans and Democrats fight with each other to enact very similar policies.

We still have tribes, and we still war.

In fact, if you ever tell a staunch Democrat or Republican about how similar these things are, they fight harder against that concept than they do against their political foes. Because they need that difference, that division.

And that is how we have fallen. We fight with each other on who to kick out of the life raft, completely oblivious to the yacht that carries our leaders past comfortably. Class struggle exists, and the problem that our society has, and indeed nearly all human societies, is not that we refuse to work together and take over the boat our leaders have built for themselves, it's that we still have tribes, we still are sensitive to shifting allegiances and warring groups.

Except in extreme cases, we no longer war with weapons, but we war all the same. In a sense, I suppose we haven't fallen, we have merely been exposed. The information age, which has connected our ideas at speeds which our social structures were never expected to deal with, that our brains were never expected to handle, has exposed our species for the primitive, tribal, aggressive animals we are. We dress it up now, but we are being confronted with our own ugliness, and as always we need that scapegoat, we need that person to blame, that position of responsibility to hold accountable. We need that because anything, anything, is better to our own mind, to our own selves, than facing the ugliness inside.

I am ugly, and scarred, and damaged. I am hateful, and malicious, and tribal. And I don't want to be.

And I don't have to be.

What will you leave behind?

A while ago I decided that my life did, indeed, have a purpose. Egalitarianism, freedom, liberty, progress, advancement... these are the things that give our collective life meaning, that allow us to build legacies for the next generation of self-aware beings that will follow, and they are the only things of lasting value which can perpetuate through the social memory into the future, giving our legacy a higher mountain to stand on and reach for the stars.

When I heard about the NSA PRISM scandal, it did not make me angry or scared or hurt at the level that it hit most people. It hit me at a place of existential survival. My purpose, my reason that I continue existing, is to foster collective benefit for the species as a whole, however I can. I will not be content without changing the world. I may never do that, but that's not the point.

This scandal hit me at a place of existential fear, fear about the very fundamental meaning of our collective will. It prompted the question, "Do we deserve, as a society, to keep improving?" I began to doubt if this was the case, because not only did we beg for this to happen, when it came to light we started fighting in our life raft once again.

But, in the end, I felt that this doesn't change anything. We still deserve that legacy, we still deserve to reach for the stars, even with our faults as they are. My question is no longer if we deserve it, it's if we want it, and that is a much harder question to answer.

Freedom of Speech... Motherfucker

Oh, I'm not supposed to do that, am I? Put such coarse language in an article title? But... I'm not going to be arrested for it. No one is going to enforce this particular social rule upon me under threat of force. This is partly due to a concept very deeply rooted in the United States called "freedom of speech".

As long as freedom of speech has been a concept, there have been debates about its boundaries. What if you say something is a lie for the purpose of harming another person's reputation? What if you say something for the purpose of inciting violence? If you say something you know is vastly unpopular, is that incitement? What if you say something in support of an action which is itself illegal, such as child pornography? Does that count?

Indeed, in the United State the Supreme Court has wrestled with these issues as long as our Constitution has been a document. Although the Court never ruled on freedom of speech until the 20th century, it has repeatedly upheld a higher standard of freedom than society at the time is generally comfortable with.

In invalidating the Child Pornography Protection Act of 1996, the Court wrote:

First Amendment freedoms are most in danger when the government seeks to control thought or to justify its laws for that impermissible end. The right to think is the beginning of freedom, and speech must be protected from the government because speech is the beginning of thought.

Yes, this is a point that I think many will agree with. Yet, there are limits to what you are allowed to say or do in the name of free speech.

Not All Utterances Are Created Equal

There are several limits the Court has established to freedom of speech, but they can broadly be described as thus:

• Obscenity, which is speech with no redeeming cultural, social, artistic or scientific value and is offensive to the sensibilities of a community is not protected free speech.
• Speech which causes a clear and present danger of substantial evil that Congress or the States have a substantial interest in preventing.
•  Slanderous words which must be false, uttered with malice (or the intent to defame), articulated to the third person, and attacks an actionable aspect of that person which primarily have to do with the character of that person and their personal history.

But even with these restrictions, and these are very brief descriptions of the largest ones, the Court has held that it is best to err on the side of speech.

[Our] decisions have fashioned the principle that the constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not allow a State to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force or law violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is likely to incite or cause such action.

The general public is protected in speaking even when the content of the speech is advocating the use of force or violation of the law unless such speech is producing imminently lawless action. This means that as long as I am not, say, at the head of a giant mob, I can advocate burning down Federal buildings or spraying graffiti on police cars.

The Court of Public Opinion

There is one group, however, that is not really given the full protection of the First Amendment, and that is politicians. Politicians cannot enjoy free speech to the extent most others can because they are reliant on the approval of a large number of people. The speech for which the First Amendment is most necessary is that which is unpopular, but such speech can end the careers of politicians.

In reality this is a failing of our society. We are not interested in electing politicians to do a job, we are interested in picking the person we like the best. Such a process is... farcical.

So why write about this topic? Because we have a prime example on our hands over the last 24 hours.

Mitt Romney (R) giving an address about his attack

Mitt Romney, the Republican Nominee for President, attacked President Obama for "apologizing for our values" to the protesters which ended up killing four people in Libya, including a U.S. Ambassador. He said that such an apology, (in this case condemning the video which became the pretext), undermines Freedom of Speech and Freedom of Religion, two very closely held values of our country.

Now there are problems with this view, not the least of which is that the "apology" came before the protests started, and was issued by the Egyptian Embassy, not the President, but I think the most interesting thing about this is that Romney has stumbled upon a truth in the time since, albeit accidentally.

He does not have the luxury of making such statements whenever he pleases, because his speech must be protected not only by the Supreme Court of the United States, but also by the court of public opinion, and the public is much harsher.

One of the qualities we look for in a President is moderation. Not just in their positions and views, but also in how they conduct themselves. The reason for this is obvious: a President can say anything they want, but if they do not moderate what they say the consequences can stretch out across the entire country and lead to death, destruction, or financial loss for countless others.

In defending Freedom of Speech, Romney has accidentally highlighted why we as a society protect such speech: because radical speech and ideas can never come from those in power, even in democratic societies, and in order to move forward as a culture, we must depend on our citizens to push the edge of conversation while our politicians follow.

Romney saw this as an opportunity to lead our society in way that could help him appear Presidential. Instead, we saw someone who doesn't really understand the job he's applying for, or the people who he's trying to convince.

U.S. Ambassador Killed in Libya... Extremists, of All Sorts, Win

As I write, the news that Christopher Stevens, Ambassador to Libya, has been killed in an RPG attack on the American Consulate in Bengazi is only hours old. Yet the script is a familiar one, and much like a formulaic summer flick that doesn't live up to the hype, I'm looking at my ticket stub wondering if the price of admission was really worth it.

I live, like most people, more or less in the middle of warring extremists. I don't live in a place where it touches me personally routinely, but I've long since given up the illusion that simply because it is another part of the world feeling the munitions, it's not my concern. I'm human first, and American second. I'm a citizen of our species, and our planet, and right now that species is being railroaded by extremism.

A Tale of Two Ideologies (or more)

A newspaper front page after the Atlanta bombing

People, especially in the West, are familiar with Muslim extremists. And certainly, they seem to be the flavor most likely to wield destruction upon others lately, but it is true, if perfunctory to many people, to note that there are many kinds of extremists. The thing is, these other kinds aren't as toothless or gentle as we make them out to be.

There are Christian extremists, of course. The 1996 Olympic Bombing in Atlanta was perpetrated by Eric Robert Rudolph who also bombed several abortion clinics and a lesbian nightclub, saying "the purpose of the attack on July 27 was to confound, anger and embarrass the Washington government in the eyes of the world for its abominable sanctioning of abortion on demand".

There are Jewish extremists as well. Some have sprayed graffiti on Christian sites in Jerusalem saying in Hebrew "Death to Christians". Others have attacked women, Arabs, Christians, and even the Israeli military in the region for not conforming with their views on religion and morality.

And there are extremists from other walks as well. It was a Hindu extremist that killed Gandhi. Buddhist extremists (which is a bit of a mind-fuck in itself) have damaged churches in Sri Lanka and killed thousands of Muslims and Christians in Myanmar and India. Even Atheism has its extremists, though they tend to restrict themselves to going online and being obnoxious to people they don't know.

But anywhere there is something which is a concept, there are people that want to take it to an extreme.

In this case, a perfectly respectable man has been killed because two opposing extremist groups have decided to play games with one another.

Where Did This Come From?

A natural question when something like this happens is why. Why did these people do this? Some are satisfied with this question, but I'm not. That question can be answered with such platitudes as "they hate America" or "they're extremists", as I outlined above. No, the question I'm interested in is "Why did these people believe this was a good idea?"

Now you may think at first glance that these are the same question. But they are not. People do not think something is a good idea simply because they hate America or because they are extremist. People believe that an action is a good idea because they think it furthers a goal of theirs. Generally, but broadly, people only do things that they honestly, truly believe are a good idea. They may change their mind later, but at the time most people believe that their current course of action is always a good thing. There are exceptions, but that is always the case.

So why would someone believe this to be a good idea?

Tahrir Square in Cairo, Egypt during the Arab Spring

Nearly two years ago what has become known as the "Arab Spring" began, sweeping several longtime dictators out of 'public service', and into the private sector. The positive and negative aspects of these various revolts and revolutions are many, but the important thing to remember here is that they occurred in both Libya and Egypt, and that we directly and materially supported the revolution in Libya.

These countries are both finding their footing, attempting to institute democratic forms of government in regions that have been largely unstable in the recent past. In this process, many of the most extreme groups have come out, trying to convince the people that they should be trusted to lead. This has been more successful in Egypt than in Libya so far, but both have sizable populations that are wary of extremism.

Many of the people there are however Muslim, and because of this the extremists try very hard to control people through religion. All they need is an excuse.

Cue Christian and Jewish extremists. So, remember the fellow that was going to hold a Quran burning party in Florida? Him and a man name Sam Bacile, an Israeli currently living in California, played off of one another beautifully to provide a perfect storm. Bacile, a real estate developer, wrote and produced what the Boston Globe (correctly) calls a "Saturday Night Live spoof" of Islam and its prophet Muhammad.

I've seen the video... it's hard to watch. You can tell that the people who thought it up believe it to be very clever, but to the average person it can only be described as stupid, tactless, and vulgar. It depicts the prophet as a confused pedophile who promotes homosexuality, is not capable of coherent thought, and even engages in soft-core pornography.

It's everything you would expect from an extremist.

Terry Jones, pastor

Terry Jones, of Quran burning fame, decided to hold a viewing of the video at his church on September 11th (of all days), and attention was drawn. The Arab world, now with a dubbed version of the film to review, found the video insulting and outrageous. I can't really blame them for that... I'm not Muslim and I found it insulting and outrageous.

But... the extremists never miss an opportunity. A religious television station in Egypt, owned by a Saudi national, began spreading the idea that this video was somehow an official U.S. Government product, and that it represented an official view of American policy. Then it called for protests.

And protest they did.

It All Went So Wrong...

Christopher Stevens

This video, as vile and tasteless as it was, probably was nothing more than a pretext for riling up local sentiments to swing popular opinion or make people more malleable. Unfortunately, this time it had some rather dire consequences. A dead ambassador is a very big deal, and while I doubt the American Government will respond with sanctions or missiles, the killing of an ambassador is considered one of the most barbaric and uncivilized acts imaginable in international politics.

But extremists can rarely see past their own followers.

Our world is a cruel and strange place, with different extremists on both sides, and dead diplomats in the middle. Many will tell you yet again after today that Islam is the problem. Maybe, I don't know. But I suspect not.

I think extremism is the problem. We have so much hate for other people that we forget they are people, and that in my opinion is far worse and far more shameful than anything Islam or any other religion teaches.