My views on the morphology of family

On the event of our anniversary, I posted the following message to Facebook:

Today, we celebrate many many years of commitment, three-quarters of which include the legally binding contract called marriage. We honor our love for each other every single day. But today, we give thanks for the legal protections afforded to us by the government for making this legal contract with each other. We hope that one day soon, our friends who live in states whose government continues to discriminate against them will one day also be able to share in those legal benefits.

In response, a friend asked me whether I feel that people who engage in polyamorous relationships, but are prevented from getting married are being discriminated against.  He extended the question to GSA couples who are prevented from being legally married in some places.  It's a completely legitimate question.  I started to respond in Facebook, but decided that it needed a longer and more thoughtful response than Facebook provides.  Here is my response:

I have been blessed to have met a lot of people who live in all kinds of relationships.  I have met happily married people whose marriages were arranged and did not know each other until weeks before their marriage.  I have met one person who lives in, and have read a little bit about, polyamorous marriages.  I also know and love people of a variety of sexual and gender identities, many of whom are in committed relationships, some of whom are married, and many who are unable to be married or have their legal marriage recognized by the state they live in.

What I've learned is that I cannot say that the structure of their intimate and family relationship is fundamentally wrong.  Especially when I see so many examples of heterosexual couples who mistreat, abuse, and disrespect their partners and their families.   How can I say a same sex relationship, a polygamous relationship, or even an arranged marriage is inherently wrong when there are so many examples of loving, supportive, and devoted relationships in exactly those kinds of family structures.  These folks have taught me that there are many ways of being and many ways of loving that are based on mutual respect and devotion. 

For me, there are two issues here.  First, there is the issue of dignity and abuse.  There is a long history of subjugation within and through marriage.  You have to look no further than the bible for examples of this.  We find oppression and degradation (especially of women) in both monogamous and polygamous relationships.  As such, it strikes me that abuse is not confined to a particular family morphology.  Rather, history (and reading today's newspapers) shows us that patriarchy and the structure of power between social and gender groups is what creates oppression.  If dignity can be found in arranged marriages, same-sex and opposite-sex marriages, then it is entirely possible that people (again, most especially women) can live dignified lives even in polygamous relationships.

The second, and more important issue, is the legal one.  To me, this issue is about the law, and by extension the relationship between the state (i.e. the government) and its citizens.  I am not concerned about what any particular faith community believes or practices and would not support requiring faith communities to perform religious rituals that are contrary to their belief system.

My concern is the extension of legal protections and privileges to people who choose to engage in the legal contract that we call marriage.  There are hundreds of benefits and protections that are afforded to people who are legally married that people who are not allowed to be legally married are denied.  Again, my primary concern is the ability of people to be able to live lives of dignity and respect.  By not extending the access to legal recognition of a relationship between consenting adults, the government is discriminating against those people without any rational relationship to a legitimate government interest.

However, the question that is really at the heart of my friend's inquiry is would I support extending legal recognition of polygamy.  I would have to say at this point, I just might.  Since my primary concern is the ability of people to live in loving, devoted, dignified relationships of their choosing, I can't say that I have an a priori objection to any particular family structure.

However, I will also concede that I don't really know whether I would support the legalization of polygamy yet because I don't know that we have in place the social and legal structures to manage what is a more complex family structure.  We barely have the legal capacity to handle definitions of family that extend beyond one or two degrees.  Two cousins living together do not constitute a "family" in many jurisdictions, which is contrary to how many non-white or lower income cultures view family.  The obsession with maintaining the "nuclear family" as the only legally acceptable family structure makes dealing with potential conflicts within polygamous families a legal minefield.

What do you do if one wife asserts she has been abused and the others either have not or do not agree there has been abuse?  How do you handle divorce settlements, especially in community property states?  Do all spouses have to agree to an adoption?  Or to give permission for one spouse to travel with a minor child overseas?  Who has decision-making power in the event of medical emergency and death?  Does one mother have the same legal rights over the biological child of co-wife?

None of these are insurmountable. But they require that we as a society engage respectfully with communities who do live in polyamorous relationships.  It may require that we look to cultures that accept polygamy for guidance - something U.S. Americans are loathe to do.  But if we can find a way to distinguish between abusive relationships from loving, devoted ones, then perhaps we can accept this is a family structure.

I can't say I've met people who meet the criteria for GSA, at least not to my knowledge.  I haven't read much about it but I suspect that this may become an issue that will have to be addressed legally in places where known genetic relation prevents legal marriage.  With the increase in the use of anonymous sperm and egg donors, the probability of such relationships occurring may increase.  Again, I suspect that I would not object to allowing these couples to marry.  If there is no indication of abuse, if they live healthy, supportive, loving lives, that is their business and not mine.

Sustainability

Tonight I am going to have dinner with a dozen or so first years at Northeastern University to discuss the concept of sustainability. This dinner was organized jointly with the RA for the Sustainability Living and Learning Community (LLC). This is a new LLC with an enthusiastic, if somewhat overworked, RA who really wants to raise the awareness of LLC residents about their environmental impacts.

As many people may be aware, sustainability is a squishy concept. In my view, there are many different forms of sustainability, all which intersect. These include social sustainability, economic sustainability, and environmental sustainability. True social justice occurs at the center of these circles (if you think of it as a venn diagram). The question that I must pose to these young people tonight is, "What is your view of sustainability? What does it mean to you?"

In the general, the concept implies a number of things. There is a generational equity component. This idea focuses on the relative impacts of a decision on current versus future generations. Generational equity is achieved when there is a balance of benefits and burdens (or obligations) between current and future generations.

This isn't the only kind of equity involved here. The concept also pay some homage to the notion that people get what they need in order to live a healthy, safe, dignified life.

Sustainability also implies doing no harm, or at least no long term harm. In my view, this doesn't necessarily mean that there is no impact. It does mean that the impacts are either temporary or part of a cycle which transforms one impact into something that is either benign or beneficial. I think of animal waste when I think of this. The consumption of resources, in this case food, produces waste products. Manure (i.e. animal waste) is a waste product. If used properly, it also can become fertilizer for the production of food. If produced in quantities that does not allow it to be turned into fertilizer efficiently or otherwise be managed properly, it becomes not only a nuisance but a public and environmental health problem.

Operationalizing the concept of sustainability, however, is not as easy as pointing out the abstract elements of it. The term was popularized with the development of the idea of sustainable development, which has been criticized as nothing more than "controlled capitalism" (Lewis, 1992 as cited by Pulido, 1996). Given that capitalism depends on social inequality to sustain economic growth, critics argue, it is not likely to be an effective vehicle for addressing environmental and social inequities.

But even if we are willing to take economic growth down from the pedestal on which it currently stands, there are other issues to deal with. The first is the issue of tradeoffs. In the movie No Impact Man, the Beavan family experiment in living the truly sustainable life. This included washing their clothing by hand (or in their case, by foot). In response to someone reminding him that household chores have historically been, and for the majority of humanity still are, women's work, he simply states that this is not how it is in his household. Fair enough, but I don't think you can dismiss the fact that the reality of gendered housework in majority of humanity.

Beavan further criticizes what he views as the marketing gimmick that labeled household chores "drudgery." While there are elements of this last critique I might agree with (in terms of promoting consumerism), housework for the majority of the women of the world who do not have access to magical things like electricity or gas or supermarkets to buy cleaning supplies is, in fact, drudgery. Which, as Hans Rosling describes in his TED talk, is one of the many mechanisms that prevent women from breaking free from economic domination and gender oppression. It prevents them from going to school or reading to their children. Taken together, Beavan's response reminds me of a quote from John Galsworthy: "Idealism increases in direct proportion to one's distance from the problem."

I would also note that the Beavan family did end up going back to using the washing machine.

One of the lessons that the Beavan family took from their experiment is that, as individuals and as a society, we need to figure out how to get what we need in a sustainable way. But this is the other important tension in the concept of sustainability: who gets to determine what I need? If the concept is about balancing needs, how do we decide what the appropriate balance of benefits, burdens and obligations are between generations and within different groups in society? And, at the risk of sounding redundant, who gets to make that decision?

As you may know, I am primarily concerned about social justice in all its forms, most recently environmental justice. At the heart of social justice struggles is the idea that some people are shouldering most of the social (particularly economic and environmental) burdens that the rest of society benefits from, as well as being barred from access to social amenities. Those of us who struggle for social justice in its varied forms are seeking to change power relations and the distribution of those burdens and benefits. Given the historical record, will the socially, economically, and politically marginalized be tasked with carrying the weight of other people's sustainable lifestyles? If the past predicts the future, the Beavan's conspicuous unconsumption will become one more way to marginalize the already marginalized.

Yes, if you reduce your consumption, you will definitely relieve the burden placed on communities who host the landfills that hold your waste. Yes, if you reduce your electricity use, you will relieve the burden on those communities who suffer the air and water pollution associated with oil and coal burning power plants. But will any of this make the health, safety, well-being, quality of life, and livelihoods for those who do not have your privilege any better?

I'm not saying that you shouldn't do any of this. In fact, I want you do. I'm saying that sustainability should mean more than just reducing your carbon footprint or the amount of waste that you create. Sustainability may also mean recognizing your own privilege and being willing to give up not just the $1000 Chloe boots, but the assumption that you get to choose whether I wash my laundry by hand.


Pulido, Laura. (1994). Environmentalism and economic justice: two Chicano struggles in the Southwest. Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press.

Losing my liberal credentials

It should come as no surprise to most people who know me that my ideological inclinations lean progressive liberal. I believe there is a role for society in ensuring the health and well-being of everyone, most especially the most vulnerable. I also believe that government is often the most efficient mechanism to ensure that public goods (e.g. education, social welfare, research, defense, etc) are provided to the general public, particularly the most vulnerable.

However, I apparently lost some of my liberal street cred because I refuse to be steadfastly opposed to the debt deal that was passed by the House last night and will likely be approved by the Senate today. I don't believe in hurting people (or myself) to serve ideological purity. Therefore, I am not liberal enough. The fact that I believe that this is not the best deal that could have emerged and that I would have preferred something else apparently does not matter.

Not only that, but because I completely refuse to put the blame for this on President Obama, I am also a sell out. Or a fool. A damn fool, according to one acquaintance.

There are two important reasons why this attitude is both wrong and dangerous. First, putting the onus on the president to solve the budget problem betrays a serious misunderstanding of the legal structure of our government. Second, this attitude is the exact mirror of the right wing perspective that my liberal purist friends and acquaintances profess to detest.

A little lesson on the law: the Congress is responsible for the budget, including the debt.

There's a document that guides pretty much everything that we do here in the USA. It's called the Constitution. It sets the framework for our government and enumerates the rights citizens can expect our government will uphold. For liberals, we rely on the Constitution to ensure everything from fair trials to free speech. Well, there's a little thing found in Article I, Section 8 that should guide our understanding of what is wrong with the whole debt ceiling mess:

The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States ... (emphasis added)

The powers of the Congress are further enumerated, including:

To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;

and

To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

The president's responsibilities are also enumerated in the Constitution. Of particular interest here is that the president has a pretty small role in the crafting and passage of legislation (including the budget). The president's main job is to review legislation passed by both houses of Congress and either sign the legislation or veto it. Beyond this, Article II, Section 3 in the Constitution does provide for the following:

...from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; .... he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, ....

If you notice, Congress has most of the power here. The passage of laws, including the budget, is entirely the responsibility of Congress. The president's leverage is the veto. That is it.

So, forgive me, my liberal colleagues, friends, and others, if I just don't buy the argument that this is all Obama's fault. Did the president make recommendations regarding the budget and the debt ceiling to the Congress? Did he convene both houses of Congresses in this extraordinary occasion to resolve this disagreement? Why, yes he did. Could he impose his will, whatever that may have been, on recalcitrant members of Congress, some of whom were hell bent on going into default? No. The Constitution does not allow it. If we are going to rely on the Constitution to protect us from the government and each other, we need to also accept the structure of responsibilities between the Executive and the Congress that is laid out in it.

Blaming the president for the many undesirable provisions in the debt ceiling plan displaces responsibility for this problem from its true agent: Congress. It is Congress that holds the power here, as was clearly demonstrated over the past few weeks. It is members of Congress who should be held accountable for both the crisis and the consequences of dragging this on for this long. By putting all of their energies and expectations onto the president, liberals and progressives remove themselves from the responsibility from doing the harder work of electing responsible members of Congress.

Obsessing over the president's "failure" to ensure tax revenue was part of the deal to me is like blaming the CEOs of publicly traded companies for laying off workers, rather than the shareholders and investors whose expectations for never-ending increases in dividends make laying off workers a rational choice. And if you really want to know who to blame, talk with the voters who elected the dozens of Tea Party Republicans who made this the crisis it came to be.


Liberal ideological puritanism is just as bad as conservative ideological puritanism

Ignorance of the Constitution is regrettable, but also understandable. For almost a century, the power of the Executive has grown over time. The existence of strong presidents who appeared to impose their desires on an unwilling Congress is a fiction supported by a misreading of history and by the willful spread of misinformation. What I find more disturbing is that the behavior and attitude displayed by some of my fellow progressives and liberals is eerily similar to the objectionable behaviors and attitudes of the rabid right wing ideologues who are the primary source of this crisis.

Much has been made about the demonizing of moderates and liberals by right wing, Tea Party types. This is a legitimate criticism. But when Democrats in Congress refer to the debt deal as a "Satan sandwich" and describe their colleagues as terrorists, they are participating in the exact same kind of demonization. I'm just not inclined to believe that those who hold different views of the world or different ideas about what is right and wrong are inherently bad people. They may be greedy, power hungry, or hypocrites. Or they may be misled or ignorant of the true consequences of their beliefs. Or they may have a truly different value system. But many of those who share my left leaning inclinations have come to the view that everyone who is to the right of them are inherently greedy, power hungry, bigoted hypocrites.

There is a serious problem with this perspective. By demonizing and dehumanizing those whose view of the good is different than yours, you are absolved from the hard work of actually making the argument in favor of your position. You can rest on your characterizations of evilness and bad faith, as if that alone justifies your view. If such behaviors and attitudes are unacceptable when perpetrated by the right wing, they are equally unacceptable by progressives, liberals, and moderates.

Further, there is no meaningful difference between refusing to budge on restructuring Social Security and refusing to budge on tax reform. The outcome is the same: no action. There are definitely times when no action is the best course of action. This was not one of them. The consequences of going into default was immediate harm to the most vulnerable members of society with little to no chance of long term gain. We would have gotten nothing in the long term, except the cold comfort that we were right. We would have imposed a serious economic burden on many individuals and families, even furthered hampered a very fragile economic recovery, and the rest of the world would have been justified in beginning the process of containing its economic relationship with the US. On the latter point, if you haven't been paying attention, China and India are steadily catching up to the US in terms of consumption and economic power.

In my view, there are few values that are absolute. Even the one of the most fundamental of human values, thou shalt not kill, can be loosened under the right circumstance. So, while I am heartbroken that the agreement includes removing subsidized graduate student loans, and knowing that this will probably also impact me as a college professor, if the choice was subsidized student loans or default, I'm going to vote to get rid of student loans. Knowing, too, that it is something that could always be changed later if me and my liberal/progressive/moderate colleagues do the hard work in ensuring that reasonable people are elected into Congress in the future.

So I refuse to be blinded by the righteousness of my view. I also do not believe that this is about my side versus their side but about doing a better job convincing people that my view better meets their goals and better supports their fundamental values. And I believe in holding accountable those who were truly in the positions of power to do the right thing. If this means that I am not the liberal you want me to be, so be it. I was never good at conforming to other people's expectations anyway. And it does not change my inclination to do what I can to prevent harm to those who are vulnerable to the consequences of demagoguery of all forms.

Anti-Obama sentiment

Recently, we took my mother-in-law to DC. We usually don't go to tourist shops unless we need to make change but on this trip we found ourselves hitting the tourist shops in Alexandria, VA in search of souvenirs my mother-in-law could take back home. Now, in general, Northern Virginia is not as rabidly conservative or anti-government as other parts of the South are. However, even on this trip, even in the tourist shops, the anti-Obama sentiment could be seen.

The first place we went into, Old Town Trading Post, is your typical souvenir shop. Everything made in China, including the 'rah-rah America' stuff. There was quite a bit of anti-liberal and anti-Obama kitsch available for purchase. Lots of "Don't Blame Me, I voted for McCain" bumper stickers and "Friends don't let friends vote Democrat" t-shirts could be found here. I didn't see any anti-conservative/Republican or pro-liberal/Democrat products. But it's a kitsch shop and the owner had some clear political views. Being a part of the South, I was not surprised. What they didn't have, and what my mother-in-law was looking for, was a coffee mug that said "Alexandria, VA," so we moved on.

We found the Virginia Shop just off of King Street and were sure that we would find something to meet her needs there. They also sold wine, and we were hoping to find a bottle from the Fox Meadow Winery. My mother-in-law doesn't follow American politics closely (she lives in Mexico) and I found her looking at three shelves of "Don't Tread on Me" merchandise. I explained to her that this was the logo of the Tea Party. Since there was a guy wearing a confederate flag t-shirt within earshot, I made a point to state that, "They don't like people like us. You know, immigrants. Especially Mexicans." He and his wife did turn to look at us. I smiled at them and continued to browse the wines. Again, we left empty handed.

Finally, we went into the America! store. This is where you will find all things to "Express the Pride and Spirit of America!" There were Obama bobble heads and "Hail to Chef" aprons. You can buy your "official" White House ornament here. You can also buy Spy Museum merchandise, as well as hats and t-shirts that say FBI or CIA on it (interestingly, I didn't see any ICE or Homeland Security products). And even here there was anti-Obama merchandise for sale. In addition to the "Don't Blame Me, I Didn't Vote for Change" bumper stickers, there were t-shirts with GW Bush on it that said, "Miss me yet?" and coffee mugs that said, "NOPE" in which the "O" was Obama's campaign logo.

It struck me that even in this place, which was all about celebrating the US (through Chinese made merchandise), you could not get away from the anti-liberal/ anti-Obama sentiment. On their website the owners claim that they are not affiliated with any political group and that they present a variety of "satirical" merchandise for sale. And through the website you can purchase a "Stop the insanity" t-shirt which shows Sarah Palin turning into Edvard Munch's The Scream. That was not available in the Alexandria, VA store. What was available in the store was the Sarah Palin bobble-head.

All of this made me wonder whether there were similar anti-Bush merchandise available during the Bush years. I wonder what kind of satirical merchandise America! sold, if any, during that time. I don't remember walking into a souvenir shop during the Bush era and seeing that kind of thing. But we don't frequent these kinds of places. So I looked at the America! store website through the internet archives.

Between 2006 and early 2008, I did find some of what could be considered anti-Bush merchandise. There was a book of photo ops gone awry focusing on Bush, one on Bushisms, and Bushwhacked by Molly Ivans and Lou Dubose. Munch's The Scream appears on a t-shirt that says "Bush, 3 more years". They also sold the Bush countdown calendar (counting down to his leaving office). Most of these were found in 2007, right as election season was beginning to gear up. In 2006 (the just after the mid-term election), there were four items that could be considered anti-Bush. There are currently eight anti-Obama items available on the website, including one that implies that Obama is the one responsible for the bank bailouts.

It seems like there is a larger market for anti-liberal/anti-Obama merchandise, even in slightly left of center Northern Virginia. I do wonder why. Perhaps liberals just don't go in for that kind of thing. I know I would not waste $13 on a countdown calendar not matter how much I wanted Bush out of office (although I will admit to having bought a Bush-Pants-On-Fire doll for a present and kept one for myself). Certainly racism (conscious and unconscious) is a factor in some part of the opposition to Obama as president, but how much of this latent racial bias is fueled by a corporate media that feeds on sensationalism?

I left one of my favorite Southern cities feeling a little bit uneasy. I know that merchants will sell whatever people will buy. I guess it bothers me that people will buy that stuff. But I don't think having liberals buy anti-conservative products to wear, stick on their car, or use as a pencil holder in their office is the right response. The question is, what is the right response?

Things I've been thinking about lately

I have a small flip notebook with four kitties (not cats, kitties - there is a difference) on the cover that I keep in my purse. I use it to make lists of things not to forget to buy when I go shopping but also to note things that I might want to write about. Sometimes I do write about those things. Often I don't.

Here's the most recent list:

• There seems to be a relationship between anti-urban sentiment and anti-youth sentiment.
• The geography of legal inequity. See Supreme Court decision in the Osborne case. Why is geographic inequality o.k.?
  
• What is political correctness anymore? Why is it that it only seems to be used when someone asks to be treated with respect and dignity?
• At a community meeting, someone gets up and apologizes for hijacking the meeting: "I've never been consulted. I've never been heard. The only way to get heard is to be a disruptor. I don't want to be a disruptor but I am forced to." Similar to EJ communities.
  

Since I have a book review that is already late, I won't have a chance to write about these things today. But I figure I'd put it out there and see what happens.

Politicizing

I was in the car yesterday, listening to the news. NPR to be exact, because I am a raging liberal. I don't know that I have the energy to rage; I barely have the energy to make myself breakfast. But I've been told that anyone who uses newspapers, NPR, or PBS as their primary source of news is a raging liberal.

But I digress.

NPR was reporting on the election of a Democrat in a heavily Republican district in New York state. The general consensus was that this unlikely turn of events was a response to Paul Ryan's Medicare reform proposals. Some Republican argued that Democrats were "politicizing" the issue of Medicare reform, which I guess is their explanation for why they lost so badly.

And then it occurred to me. Anyone who uses the term "politicizing" or "politicized" in reference to a political issue is stupid and apparently think I'm stupid too. And no one is calling them out on it.

I did a Lexis-Nexis search of US newspapers and was told that there are over 3000 references between 1978 and today in news articles that include the terms "politicized" or "politicizing." It gave me 1000 of what Lexis considers the "most relevant." In a random, and totally unsystematic, check of three articles (I didn't say I was doing research on this), the term is used as a pejorative. Which is stupid.

If you haven't figured it out yet:

• If you are an elected official, any official action you take is political.
  
• If you are appointed by any elected official or body (including you, judges), any official action you take is political.
  
• If you propose a law, you are creating a political issue.
  
• If you discuss a proposed or existing law, you are creating a political issue.
  
• If you support a proposed or existing law, you are taking a political position.
  
• If you oppose a proposed or existing law, you are taking a political position.
  
• If you are campaigning or lobbying for any elected or appointed position, you are engaged in a political act.
• If you do any of the above in relation to a court decision, regulation, policy, or government program (including government agencies like public schools), you are making a political issue, taking a political position, or otherwise engaged in political action.

By doing any of the above, you are in fact, "making something political." You are engaged in efforts that shift power, influence, and social benefits and burdens. In fact, by proclaiming that someone else has politicized something, you are engaged in that process of politics-making.

I think the next time I hear my political representatives, or the media pundits for that matter, assert that someone has "politicized" something, if I have the opportunity I am going to ask, "As opposed to what? Is this somehow a personal issue? Is this proposed or existing law, regulation, or policy somehow separate from the political sphere? And if so, exactly how?" And if their answers are not satisfactory, I will let them know that they are insulting my intelligence and will not likely support them in the future.

Feel free to do the same.

Science and religion are not incompatible and O'Reilly is a scientifically proven idiot

Apparently, Bill O'Reilly, one of these TV pundits who gets paid lots of money to show off his stupidity, tried to engage in a religious debate with an atheist. In doing so, he put his own ignorance about both the physical world and his own religion on display for all to see. In short, he argued that belief in religion is "real" because of the mysteries of the tide. As we all learned in elementary school, tides are not all that mysterious and haven't been for centuries.

To me, the foolishness is in the assumption that somehow science and religion are competing ways of knowing. I do not agree with that perspective. Each has their own domain in which they provide meaning to separate questions. Science tells us what happens to our bodies when we die. Religion tells us what happens to our essence (aka soul) when we die. To me, science and religion answer different questions and support different social functions.

This sparked a vigorous debate on a blog that I participate in about the validity of religion as a way of knowing or as a basis for behavior. Some point to the what they view as senseless rules (prohibitions on eating pork) that have outlived their purpose. I see this has simply not understanding how things like rules (or rituals) have meaning beyond the rule. There are others who truly believe that religion is "the opiate" of the willfully ignorant. I personally see this view as offensive.

To me, casual rejection of others' truths shows that you do not live in the world where those truths have meaning. And, what is important here is the meaning that people bring to their truths. The basis of O’Reilly’s comment wasn’t really about what causes tides but that there are mysteries that seem to have no explanation, and God provides that explanation and therefore gives meaning to the mystery. The fact that tides can in fact be explained doesn’t actually remove God from the equation, it just shows how simple, or at least inarticulate, O’Reilly is.

A key concept in the kind of research I do is the idea that reality is socially constructed. And that includes scientifically based facts. I happen to have a lot of faith in most empirically determined facts, but I also know that African Americans were scientifically shown to be intellectually inferior. Men had been told for years that the reliability of the PSA test in detecting prostate cancer was scientifically validated when in turned out that it was not as reliable as people were led to believe. Consequently, many men suffered needless interventions, and some still suffering the effects of those interventions, as a result of what amounts to unexamined faith in science.

The truth behind how science works is that sometimes quite a bit of what we do is based on assumptions that are supported by little more than faith. That isn’t to say that there are no scientifically validated facts. The relationship between the moon and tides, or the process of gradual genetic change in phenotypes (aka evolution) has been repeatedly shown to be the best answer to very specific scientific questions. And there are empirically shaky conclusions to scientific questions that were put out as “truth”, like the relationship between vaccines and autism. This "truth" was acted upon with disastrous consequences for children around the world.

What’s important about social constructions is that, regardless of their “truth”, they are real to people who believe them. The Thomas Theorem states that if you define something as real, it is real in its consequences. So, if you define pigs as unclean, the real consequence is that you do not eat them. This may have been the result of seeing the relationship between eating pork and dying from trichinosis and deciding that a rule was needed to ensure health of your people (an explanation for the Jewish pork prohibition that is not entirely supported by evidence, by the way). It does not change the fact that the rule had meaning and that people acted on the basis of that rule. What is important here is not the rule, but the meaning behind the rule.

The other thing about social constructions is that the justification for rules (and rituals) can evolve over time to serve different purposes. So the prohibition against eating pork no longer serves a potential health purpose but serves to define a community. Having a sense of identity is just as important as understanding what it takes to cook food safely. And given that human beings are scientifically proven social animals, it may even be more important in the perpetuation of the species.

O’Reilly is a Roman Catholic. If you do not live in that world and don’t share its assumptions, it is easy to dismiss his social construction of the world. However, a stronger argument against his stupid remarks can be made if you understand that his references about what is mysterious have not been considered mysteries by his own Church for centuries. (And you can go on all you want about how the Church went bat-poop crazy with Galileo and Copernicus, but the scientifically trained urologists also were pissed when the scientific evidence against the PSA test came out last year.)

Calling any belief in religion stupid is not an effective method of undermining what may be undeniably real to others. Since science has no special claim to truth either, such arguments are only patronizing. Indeed, the one thing that religion and science share is the certainty that its assumptions have meaning and therefore are real to its believers.


**Full disclosure: I am not adherent to any religious belief system. I was baptized and confirmed a Catholic but stopped practicing almost two decades ago. With that said, I have been called a secular humanist, which is a label that I will recognize, if you need me to be labeled.