The Real Argument

So, a little while ago I posted in response to what I felt was a pretty rude comment in the newspaper. I recently realized that my "viewpoint" was nothing more than a smart-alec response to a argument that was a more rational framing of the issue than any other I've paid attention to.

The brief of the comment was that gay people shouldn't be able to get married because marriage is a human right and gay people aren't human.

A harsh comment, but a bit more rational then the "what's next?" argument. I think that while many of the things I write about on this blog I have a genuine interest in, nothing really hits me at a personal level like this does. Lets face it, Eli Judge could run for governor and it wouldn't have as much impact on me personally as gay marriage does. Tuition at Madison could double, but it's a hit to the wallet, not the heart.

First, lets tackle this whole "not human" thing. In general, species are separated by their inability to breed and produce fertile offspring. Whereas a donkey and a horse make an infertile mule, a gay parent and a straight parent can still have either gay or straight children. So, forget the idea of a new species, it is a complete misconception.

However, this is a good way of framing human rights. If you deny them from someone, you are essentially saying that they are not human!

Now, what makes something a human right? Really, it's a social construct. People like to believe that they will not be killed without reason. I'm sure animals think the same way, yet for some reason, I still love stepping on ants on the sidewalk. Hourly jobs are a social construct. Try telling a farmer that he can make half of their yearly income in half the time if they want too. You can't just turn a half-grown field into half of the income of a full grown field. Marriage is a social construct. Yep. People like to believe that their spouse won't leave them for no reason. Men are jealous, so here's this great social construct that ties women to men (traditionally for our society). Now, what makes this social construct a human right? Lets look deeper into what marriage is today.

While marriage used to be simply a way of holding a relationship together, it is now the determining factor in inheritance, medical rights, occupational benefits such as insurance, adoption, tax benefits, liability control, and joint ownership. How does this really effect gay people? Oh let me count the ways:

1) If a married person dies without a will, their spouse gets everything no questions asked because they jointly own everything.
2) If a married person is hospitalized and cannot make medical decisions, their spouse can step right in and make them.
3) If a married person gets insurance or other perks such as health club membership from a job, they are offered to the spouse if the spouse doesn't have the same opportunity at their job.
4) Arkansas is the only state that explicitly prohibits unmarried couples from adopting; Florida explicitly bars single and coupled GLBT people from adopting. Some states allow one GLBT person to adopt, but does not allow their partner to also adopt the child; This results in the adopted child to be torn from the family should the parent that adopted the child die or otherwise be declared unable to care for the child. Sounds pleasant, doesn't it?
5) Want to file a joint tax return? You have to be married. Want to qualify for the tax benefits? Yep, have to be officially married too. The IRS even tried to bar at least one same sex couple from filing a joint return because they didn't recognize same sex marriages. I think that whole debacle passed over quickly though.
6) If you have a car and its insurance in your name, your insurance does not normally cover damage when someone else is driving. Of course, spouses in marriage are almost always covered. Just don't forget to file the paperwork within 60 days of marriage ;)
7) I went over this one in the inheritance thing, but joint ownership itself is kind of goofy. Legally, it's almost exclusively from marriage or from legal entities that cause people to go to jail for tax evasion. Personally, its a big respect and trust thing to give your partner half of everything you own.

Well isn't that a hodgepodge of social constructs? How bout this new one: civil unions and domestic partnerships (lets call them hodgepodge just for fun). Separate but equal? Brown vs Board of Education? Wisconsin's gay marriage ban that took out hodgepodge with it? Honestly, hodgepodge would be a good consolation prize. The problem is that so many laws and policies use the word "marriage" and don't necessarily apply to hodgepodge or whatever you want to call them. Who volunteers to rewrite everything that applies to marriage so that it applies to hodgepodge too?

So, is it a human right to care for a loved one when they are unable to make medical decisions? Is it a human right for an adopted child to be adopted by both parents and cared for by either one in the absence of the other rather than getting torn away? Is it a human right to be legally recognized as a couple?

There's still a major barrier, the social construct of religion (Yes, you don't need to read that again, I did just say it). I don't mean to say that the origins of religions are untrue. Its a moot point because most religions only recognize their own religion as valid. I do know that they place an awful lot of belief in the religion itself being unfailingly holy and pure while accepting changes along the way. A very generalized example, but Jesus didn't preach violence or hate over religious dissidents, yet Popes were responsible for starting wars! So when GLBT relationships started popping up, religions suddenly have an opinion on it? Who honestly came up with the opinion? A book? Unfortunately, religions are going to do whatever they want, honestly cannot blame them. Religious people truly believe their religions, it is very respectable and I will never hold religion against someone. I will, however ask for the human right that is requested in the US bill of rights. It explicitly prohibits the government from enforcing a religion on the people. Look at Iran, it's a country of liberal people governed by religious leaders. All we see over here is the religious conservative government. So, while it is respectable to not approve of same-sex marriage due to religious beliefs, it is not alright to force those beliefs upon others.

Don't turn this into the "holiday tree" mess. Acknowledging a religion is different from pretending religion doesn't exist. To make it worse, some religions teach that in order to do your duty to God, you must convert others. A respectable duty, but not so much for the sects that believe in killing those who don't convert. Luckily we don't ever really see those in the US.

So, the next time you vote on an amendment to define marriage, think about the rights that you would not want to be denied to you, then think about whether you want to deny them to others.

Blog Type - Typealyzer

I was kind of amused when I saw the site Typealyzer in a different blog. It analyzes the posts in blogs and offers a simple profile for the kind of writing the blog has. I was even more amused when its analysis of my blog stated what most personality tests say about me:

ISTP - The Mechanics

The independent and problem-solving type. They are especially attuned to the demands of the moment are masters of responding to challenges that arise spontaneously. They generally prefer to think things out for themselves and often avoid inter-personal conflicts.

The Mechanics enjoy working together with other independent and highly skilled people and often like seek fun and action both in their work and personal life. They enjoy adventure and risk such as in driving race cars or working as policemen and firefighters.

So, what does your blog say about you?

New Blog in Town: University and State

Usually the kind of start-ups I see are small, one person projects that wind up being decent enterprises, such as CB or Fearless Sifting. Not too often do I see one pop up that seems to jump right into the big time. University and State is one such blog. Take a look at it, see if you recognize any names. You might find the author of the Critical Badger in there, not to mention some campus big names both graduated and approaching their senior year. Mostly Poly Sci and Journalism majors, plus Suchita Shah who managed to seem like one last year while graduating with a degree in neurobiology. Their combined resume is extremely impressive.

Good luck everyone at University and State, I look forward to your success!

Open Source Companies Weathering the Bad Economy?

I read an interesting article by Matt Asay titled
Open-source companies crashing en masse? Puh-lease! I don't know the author, but you can't deny the fact that Red Hat, one of the biggest if not the single biggest commercial supplier of open source software, has seen growth in the double digits compared to the previous year for a little while now. This correlates with a huge push in the Free Software community to capitalize on the poor economy (lol, i know, it sounds funny) and get Free Software into as many hands as possible.

A lot of innovations have come from the Free Software Movement. The Open Document Format (ODF) was created by the community, and now it's a standard almost everywhere. Russia is already making the switch because they realize that it means that no citizen would need to buy special software (ie, M$ Office for hundreds of dollars) just to read it. To top it off, all Russian schools will be using Free and Open Source Software!

So, what happens when that company you've been relying on for years to provide you with great updates falters (Vista, Office 07, IE7)? What happens when the economy goes into a slump and the company you rely on can't be as innovative? What happens when large amounts of people are laid off and pick up programming as a hobby? Free and Open Source Software is going to take off in the next few years. I wonder if Microsoft and... dangit, i don't pay for software, I don't know enough of the companies - ok, lets say Oracle and Adobe (even though none of you will know what Oracle is and Adobe will likely never die with their customer base) will be able to keep up?

In short, don't bother getting used to the new M$ Office, get OpenOffice.org. It can even open up those pesky new .docx files. Don't like Vista? Get Ubuntu. Don't like Mac OSX? (I'm sure you do like it, but whatev) Try Ubuntu!

Here's a list of the FOSS (Free and Open Source Software) I use on a daily basis:
OpenOffice.org - Office Suite
Firefox - Web Browser
Thunderbird - Mail Client
Pidgin - Instant Messenger
VLC - Media Player (PS. )
Synergy - Utility to use one mouse and keyboard over multiple computers. I use it over 3 or 4 depending on the day.
VirtualBox - Open source virtual computer. ie, VMWare replacement.
And on occasion, ArmagetronAD - Fun, fairly lightweight tron game that runs on whatever computer you've got.

When Calling Someone a Mutant isn't Hate

4th response published in the the Badger Herald Article of online comments: "Reason, reason, reason, insanity"

In response to “Proposition 8 exposes a new prejudice” by Laura Brennan:

First of all, there is nothing wrong with being anti-homosexual. It doesn’t make you a bigot, or any other flavor of the week leftist hate speech word. The argument of trying to compare alleged homosexual discrimination with that of the blacks is so flawed that I don’t even know where to begin. The fact of the matter is that homosexuality is wrong, plain and simple. Relationships are based on the hope that those involved will reproduce to keep the human species going. That obviously can’t happen with gays. I could write for hours and continue to provide facts that would allow me win this argument, but I’ve done it so many times with this paper that it is just old. The bottom line: homosexuality is wrong, unnatural, and is essentially human species mutation. Those who are don’t deserve equal rights or benefits because they aren’t humans like the rest of us, they are essentially mutants.

Thank you Badger Herald for aptly titling this comment, and thank you "bigot[s], or any other flavor of the week leftist hate speech word[s]" for creating the wonderfully inadequate arguments Laura Brennan has bought into. In fact, I aught to draft up a new amendment and start getting signatures. It'll redefine marriage as a union between two people who can procreate (having a gay child doesn't count because they are of a different species). Do you think we should start a mutant registry, or is Facebook and Myspace an adequate registry. Also, how do we deal with Gays? Should they be forced to procreate? Should we add a new species to the list? I suggest the name Homosapians. Darn, it's already taken. Perhaps we should just consider heterosexuality a mutation and call people inflicted with it Heterosapians. Also, how do we deal with animals that exhibit homosexuality? Are they invasive species?

The best part is that I've heard this "Mutant" theory before. Earth is starting to get overcrowded, so the human race has evolved to produce less offspring! Gays are saving the world! Even better, lets flip the situation. In a bleak future, nearly everyone is gay, and the world is turning into the movie "Children of Men." Instead of letting schools decay, however, they are turned into massive dance clubs, the world is fabulous. Wait a second, doesn't this scenario mean that gays don't want to raise children? Oh darn, that doesn't make any sense at all, as proven by the fact that there are legal battles in nearly every state trying to allow gay couples to adopt children.

I could write for hours and continue to provide facts that would allow me to win this argument, but I'm going to take a tip from Laura Brennan and assume that my pompus "I'm right, you're wrong... and you're unhuman" less than solid and complete argument will win over some of you readers.

Thank you Laura Brennan for showing your true colors. Now I'm off to watch X-Men and try and figure out what superpower gay people get. I hope its superhuman dancing abilities. That would be FABULOUS!

DRLI - Passed and Ready to Move

I'm pretty excited about Alder Eli Judge's Downtown Residential Lighting Initiative. Another step in the right direction after Judge's last great success, the Photo Ordinance. Last year I lived on Langdon Street, and this year I'm a little further away from campus, and the dark areas of the city are always the least fun (read: pretty scary) to walk through at night. Talk about a good plan too, not many people can give reasons against it thanks to its low cost to the city, low cost to landlords, improved safety for all people, and better visibility for police.

Shoot, who forgot to ask the opinion of the thiefs and muggers?

Lets fight disease!

There was a pretty cool article in the New York Times about Google using search data to track Influenza breakouts up to 2 weeks before the CDC can. Pretty slick. There was an article in Wired magazine about a similar sort of thing a few months ago. The Wired article is about a Department of Defense project to point out potential localized epidemics quickly. Here's my favorite snippet of the article:

"We detected a gastrointestinal outbreak in Korea," Mansfield says. "I called my boss, and he asked me, 'When did it happen?'"

Korea is 13 hours ahead of Washington. So Mansfield simply answered: "Tomorrow."

We live in a pretty awesome age.

I wonder how well this kind of aggregated data (read: grouped so that no private info is kept) could be used for other topics more interesting to mainstream America, like politics or sports popularity. Or even music popularity. At least one site uses this kind of data for Operating System popularity.