Lying to stop Same Sex Marriage

So it so happened that Ten News was on the T.V. at our place tonight (this is in Melbourne, Australia). Nothing remarkable until a story about 150 doctors issuing a warning that same-sex marriage poses “health risks”. The group behind this is called Doctors For The Family, which calls itself a “medical organisation to highlight the health aspects of marriage”. Ten just described them as “a conservative medical group”, a term that to me seems nonsensical. But I immediately thought “I bet it’s a Christian fundamentalist front”.

The Doctors For The Family web site is remarkably coy about who is behind it. But the group is run by the chap in the Ten story, who lists himself as the founder on his LinkedIn profile: Dr Lachlan Dunjey. From this and some other pages we learn some facts about Dr Dunjey that seem relevant:

• “He was the Senate candidate for the Christian Democratic Party at the 2004 federal election”
• Before scaring, sorry, educating us about the health risks of same-sex marriage he was campaigning for “freedom of conscience in health care”, a euphemism for permitting Christian medical professionals to refuse to perform abortions even when medically indicated.
• He says “we need to change people’s hearts and minds by bringing them into the Kingdom of God”
• He’s really upset about the depraved state of contemporary society, including such debauchery as alcohol being served at Christian wedding receptions.

Now, before I get accused of an ad hominem fallacy, it must be noted that none of this shows that Dr Dunjey’s claims are false. However, I do believe it gives us good reason to be very skeptical of his group’s claims, especially as to whether the term “medical” is merited.

The so-called medical evidence presented by Doctors For The Family seems very dodgy. Credible medical organisations generally don’t make claims about whether same-sex relationships are better or worse for children than hetero ones, simply because there’s no definitive evidence either way. Most studies seem to back the (to me, rather common sense) notion that when considering all the factors that effect child development, the sexual orientation of the parents doesn’t really register as significant.

Doctors For The Family is essentially another deceitful pseudo-scientific attempt to make fringe religious views appear scientific. Just like the Intelligent Design crowd, they start with a pre-determined conclusion and scour the globe looking for any scrap of data that supports that conclusion. In other words, they follow the scientific method, only exactly backwards. Just because this group is supported by some people with “Doctor” on their business cards doesn’t mean it deserves to be called “medical”.

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Thoughts on Kony 2012

Watching the Kony 2012 phenomenon unfold has been interesting. I’ve come to the conclusion that while the people behind they campaign are well-meaning, its not really useful or helpful. In other words, it’s pretty typical of campaigns to “raise awareness” these days.

It is a rather sad indictment on our mainstream media though. Kony 2012 did not reveal any facts that have not been public knowledge for some time. But get a slick and somewhat emotionally manipulative video to go viral and media outlets are suddenly falling over themselves to show their moral cred by promoting it. But the crimes of the L.R.A., while terrible, are not new. And horrifyingly, on the scale of violence and misery in Africa, the L.R.A. is actually small potatoes.

On the other hand, the reaction to Kony 2012 has definitely done some good. It has put the spotlight on a part of the world westerners usually pay no attention to, and started a genuinely useful conversation. People knowledgable about Uganda and surrounds have taken the chance to engage in the debate. To pick just one example, see the pieces by Michael Wilkerson in Foreign Policy and CiF.

The Arresting Officer

I can’t help but notice that many supporters of Kony 2012 seem to belong to another group: the “anti-war” crowd that has just spent roughly the last ten years decrying Western Imperialism and damning U.S. foreign policy as unmitigated evil. Am I the only one to find this ironic? If the world is to “stop” Kony, to which nation would the task fall? To which political leadership is the Kony 2012 campaign directed? Ban Ki-moon and his bureaucrats? Ha.

As the video shows, President Obama took action against Kony back in October last year. 100 troops were sent to advise the Ugandan forces who are hunting him down. Not huge, but it’s something, and doing more gets tricky very quickly. And while the video wants you to worry that the U.S. may pull out, there’s no indication of any plan to leave. At the time, there was no substantial public pressure to take action. There is no American interest at stake, no ulterior motive. Just a desire to bring one of the world’s worst war criminals to justice. How much time do you think Vladimir Putin has spent thinking about the plight of enslaved African children? What about Hu Jintao?

Why is the Kony 2012 campaign focused completely on U.S. policy? Or to switch to another example among many: when a Coptic Egyptian calls for aid for his beleaguered minority, why does he address his letter to the President of the United States? Why do the Syrians who are able to speak freely protest against Russia, not the great power some claim has “angered Muslims everywhere”?

Now, I’m not trying to defend every foreign intervention by the U.S. as noble or wise. My goal is just to give you something to think about next time you hear someone engage in cheap rhetoric about “U.S. Imperialism”.

Rush Limbaugh Bonus Feature

Just in case you missed this back in October, here’s Stephen Colbert covering Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to the President’s decision to go after Kony.

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Creationism and climate change denial

I’ve noticed this more and more: people lumping “climate change denial” and “evolution denial” (creationism) into the same category. The argument is that both of these are the result of the same religious conservative “anti-science” movement. In a very narrow sense, this is true; creationists generally do not seem to believe in anthropogenic global warming (AGW), for the same bogus reasons they don’t believe in evolution. But the reverse is not true: many (most I would say) AGW skeptics are not creationists. Lumping these two things together allows the environmentalists to dismiss any criticism of the established climate change narrative as the ravings of anti-scientific religious nuts. But there are some very significant scientific and economic arguments around climate change that are most definitely not in the same class as creationist arguments. Time for some de-lumping.

One major difference between climate change and evolution is how the evidence is understood and presented. It is now a familiar experience to see someone on TV telling us we need to immediately reduce emissions to avoid climatic catastrophe. In the rare event that such a person is asked to provide evidence of a human cause, the most common answer I’ve observed is along the lines of “ice caps and glaciers are melting, and the scientific consensus is that human CO₂ emissions are to blame.” Now, when was the last time you heard someone asked for evidence supporting evolution to respond with “life forms adapt to their environment and the scientific consensus is that Darwinian evolution is the cause.” This is not a small point. The fact that “consensus” is so regularly rolled out to support AGW, but is never used to support evolution shows that the levels of scientific understanding and debate are completely different.

No one talks about the “scientific consensus” for evolution because there’s no need to: evolution has a mountain of cold hard facts on its side, all confirmed by independent observation countless times. Climate research is very tough by comparison: our observational capabilities generally aren’t good enough to falsify competing theories. Instead, we have the IPCC saying that since we can’t establish the facts by direct observation, we’ll establish them by consensus. You can’t take the IPCC publications, repeat the experiments and confirm their results, because at the end of the day it’s just opinion.

My point here is not to show that the IPCC is wrong, but simply to show that the scientific process that it follows is fundamentally and necessarily different to that of evolutionary biology, or any other hard science for that matter. Questioning the consensus-derived “facts” of climate research is not the same thing as questioning the empirically verified facts of evolution.

Another difference I think is worth pointing out is how politics is so commonly mixed with climate science, in contrast to evolution science. Tell me if this scenario sounds familiar: well credentialed scientist goes on TV and says “my research shows that climate change is likely to significantly damage coral reefs…” and barely pausing for breath continues “so it’s clear we must act to cut CO₂ emissions.” This casual connection of minor scientific research to sweeping reorganization of the world’s energy production is now so common place that people don’t find it remarkable. And if you accept the climate change problem but doubt the solution you’ll likely still receive the “denier” pejorative. Evolutionary biology simply isn’t political in this way.

Skepticism regarding climate change is not comparable to the denial of the established facts of evolution. Climate research has a long, long way to go before it achieves the level of confidence we have in evolution. It is very wrong to think that all opposition to the climate change narrative is driven by Biblical literalism.

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WikiLeaks

Attack and Counter-Attack

I must confess, no story in recent months has captured my attention like the still-developing WikiLeaks saga. The ongoing dump of diplomatic cables combined with Julian Assange being charged with some sort of sex crime in Sweden means this is going to be in our face for a while yet.

The response to WikiLeaks has been loud, angry, hyperbolic attacks from “tough on terror” types in the U.S., and a corresponding thoughtless, reflexive defence from many “progressive” types. Amongst the noise are a few precious thoughtful critiques.

Clearly, WikiLeaks is not engaged in terrorism, and Julian Assange is not remotely comparable to the most junior jihadist. Sarah Palin’s pronouncements on the subject are pure demagoguery (by now I think we can fairly declare that an axiom with regard to any statement she makes). And Senator Lieberman needs to seriously deflate his sense of his own importance, and recognise that maintaining the government’s operational security isn’t actually in his job description.

I believe all these clumsy attacks against WikiLeaks will fail in the end, and they deserve to fail. In fact, I think they are completely counter-productive: sympathy for WikiLeaks is growing as people become concerned about the government trying to restrict speech.

The defenders of WikiLeaks are themselves hugely overreacting, however. The “attacks” against WikiLeaks and Mr Assange so far consist of: a few random nuts-with-a-mike threatening violence, some companies cutting off service, and a number of people expressing the opinion that U.S. law has been broken. Taken together, all this doesn’t come close to being a serious attempt to censor WikiLeaks. In the event that Mr Assange is charged by the DOJ, which is unlikely in my opinion, he’ll have his day in court. In the even more unlikely event that he’s actually convicted of espionage, then it should be the law you’re complaining about rather than the enforcement of it. And as Christopher Hitchens points out, those who choose to engage in civil disobedience must be prepared to face the consequences.

(The reason I say charges are unlikely is that I can’t see how the DOJ could credibly prosecute Mr Assange without also prosecuting the editor of the New York Times, which would be sure to end in disaster. But, who knows?)

At a time when publishing a cartoon depicting the Prophet Mohammed means you run the very real risk of being murdered, I can read people earnestly telling me that Amazon and Paypal cutting off WikiLeaks represents the greatest free-speech fight of our generation. Perspective is sorely lacking here.

Transparency

Overall, I’m far more concerned about the way WikiLeaks is being lauded and defended than the way it’s being attacked. I’ve seen a call for Julian Assange to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and another for him to be named Australian of the Year. This is madness.

The word most often used by WikiLeaks fans is transparency. More transparency is good, and WikiLeaks provides more transparency, therefore WikiLeaks is good. Mr Assange certainly understands his fan base very well, as this is the line he takes in his deceitful, self-serving piece in The Australian. Well, I need to make a few points about transparency.

First, transparency is a means, not an end in itself. The ends are, essentially, ensuring that government office holders are acting within the law and in accordance with the will of the people. Of course, this is both a good and necessary thing. In principle, I’m all in favour of leaking government secrets when there’s a clear public interest in doing so. This has served us well in the past, and will do so again in the future.

But it must be recognised that transparency may also lead to negative ends. This is why responsible journalists weigh, as best they can, the public interest against the potential downsides before publishing leaked information. This article provides a good description of the negative ends that may result from the “transparency” that WikiLeaks has forced on us.

Now we must delve into the theories and ideology of Julian Assange. He has explained these in detail, but I shall do my best to summarise them fairly here. What the defenders of WikiLeaks don’t seem to have realised is that Mr Assange actually has no interest in improving transparency, or holding governments to account. His goal is essentially to conduct information warfare against what he views as “conspiratorial authoritarian regimes”. This is why, in sharp contrast to all the talk of transparency, WikiLeaks does everything it can to conceal its own activities. It’s an organisation built for conducting information warfare.

So, the objective of indiscriminately releasing all the diplomatic cables was not to inform the public, the objective was to impede the ability of the “regimes” to conduct diplomacy in the future. This is a goal that may very well have been achieved. Julian Assange is not trying to improve the system, he’s trying to smash it. In a nutshell, he’s an anarchist using information as his weapon. And after he has smashed every institution of liberal democracy, what then? Like any good anarchist, he has nothing more to say.

The fact that so many of the leaks have been “against” the U.S. government leads to the unavoidable conclusion that Mr Assange considers that government to be a “conspiratorial authoritarian regime”. Judging by his rhetoric, I strongly suspect he views all governments that way. Now we come to the really critical point: if Julian Assange is right about this, then his actions make perfect sense and should be supported. It should be no surprise by now that I think he is completely wrong.

It is necessary to follow the implications of accepting Mr Assange’s thesis. He is claiming that our governments that are ostensibly democratic systems working for the people, are in fact authoritarian regimes that are actively conspiring against the people. Your nation’s constitution is a lie. Our traditions of liberal democracy are actually myths. Debate is pointless. Your vote, irrelevant. Breaking the machine with information warfare is the only way to truly affect change.

Now if I try to muster every last reserve of cynicism and despair at my disposal, I cannot bring myself close to believing such a thing. Am I a naive, dewy-eyed, babe in the woods?

Returning the subject of transparency, I would argue that in historical terms we’re actually doing reasonably well on the transparency front these days. Let us consider some of the government activities that the WikiLeaks cheerleaders are generally most concerned about: detention without trial, “enhanced interrogation”, handing prisoners over to foreign authorities known to practice torture, extraordinary rendition, support for the Karzai regime/racket, I could go on. Many of these issues concern me too. But we knew about these policies before the valiant Mr Assange rode onto the scene. The leaks have, at most, underscored a few things. These policies are no more likely to be changed after the leaks than they were before.

Opponents of these harsh policies need to face up to a conclusion that appears most unwelcome to them: conspiracy and lack of transparency are not what keeps the policies alive. The real reason they persist is much more prosaic: the electorate, broadly speaking, is ok with them. What’s called for is less vandalism and more old-fashioned criticism. Make your arguments and try to convince your fellow citizens. Don’t be afraid to be boring about it (I certainly have no such fear – ha!). Or forget all that and go with cynical ranting about a public stupefied by mass media and consumerism. Either way.

In conclusion, I do not want to see WikiLeaks silenced or Julian Assange in jail for espionage (I’m not going to comment on the Swedish charges, thus far they seem completely tangential). However, those of us who believe that liberal democracy has some life in it yet need to criticise the undemocratic and destructive ideology that drives WikiLeaks. This is a secretive, unelected, unaccountable group that releases whatever information it can get its hands on. It indiscriminately and purposefully harms the ability of our government office holders to do the work we elected them to do. Our oft-derided citizenry at least have the pragmatic sense to recognise that those to whom we have delegated power can better achieve our common good when some secrecy is maintained. Julian Assange should respect that democratically determined outcome, and give up this reckless test of his pet conspiracy theories.

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