Down with dignity?

Steve Pinker has written a piece in the New Republic criticizing the concept of human dignity in bioethics. It does nothing, he argues, that is not accomplished by a principle of personal autonomy - "the idea that, because all humans have the same minimum capacity to suffer, prosper, reason, and choose, no human has the right to impinge on the life, body, or freedom of another."

This is a classical restatement of contemporary liberalism's "thin" conception of the good. Because we cannot say what has value and what does not, the best that we can do is respect the right of others to choose it for themselves - limited by some type of notion that what one chooses not harm others.

As a prudential rule of thumb, this has a lot going for it. In a fallen world, the "top-down" imposition of values - particularly if accomplished by coercion - is a dangerous thing. (One would hope that our more left-leaning friends might develop a greater appreciation of this prudence in the economic realm.)

But as an assertion of moral philosophy or organizing principle for society, its problems are legion. With respect to Pinker's endorsement of personal autonomy, what exactly gives individual choice its value? Why should I respect the right of others to self determination? Their ability to "suffer, prosper, reason and choose" is not my own. To say that I would have chosen to do so were I behind the veil of ignorance is not particularly persuasive once the curtain is down.

How am I supposed to resist the temptation to act upon my perception that some others do not have the same ability to "suffer, prosper, reason and choose?" The Nazis denied this with respect to the Jews. Peter Singer denies it for infants. Pinker, who has famously said that "the supposedly immaterial soul can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, turned on and off by electricity and extinguished by a sharp blow or lack of oxygen" exhibits a reductionist materialism to which I certainly would not look to protect anyone's life or well being.

As Leon Kass has put it, Pinker seems to know a great deal about science, but "dangerously little" about philosophy and "less than the village atheist" about religion.

H/T: Jay Bullock and Tom Foley

What she said ---

The late and brilliant Elizabeth Fox-Genovese has posthumously published a book entitled Marriage: The Dream That Refuses to Die . National Review Online has excerpted a chapter. Here are the concluding paragraphs:

Many Americans, who come to see same-sex marriage as just another step in marriage’s evolution, will accept the public pronouncements that they are doing no more than supporting “fairness” by extending some valuable benefits to people of the same sex who happen to love each other and wish to live together without shame or stigma. What could be more innocuous? But for the hardcore activists, the real goal is the destruction of marriage as the union of a man and a woman. They aim to discredit all forms of authority — especially God and nature — that dare to tell people how to lead their lives. In the view of queer activists, desire, like love in Carmen’s “Habenera,” knows no law — nor should any be imposed upon it.

In the current climate, the appeal of their position is not hard to understand, especially since most of those who accept it do not begin to understand its implications. If anything, the defense of same-sex marriage looks like yet another logical step in the gradual increase in freedom for all members of society. And since activists, the courts, and the media overwhelmingly encourage this deception, we may readily understand that many people may come to see same-sex marriage as another blow against outmoded and illegitimate forms of authority — a blow for freedom and equality. Buying into this view, however, they will remain blind to the ways in which they are playing into the hands of vast governmental and economic powers. The freedom for gays and lesbians to marry will decisively contribute to disaggregating all of the remaining social institutions that provide the foundations for any collective resistance against political and economic domination.

Contrary to many prevailing views, marriage is not the seat of oppression but rather the last best ground for resistance against it. In binding men and women into loving relations and shared purposes, marriage acknowledges the reality of sexual difference even as it works to bridge that difference and lay a foundation for a vital and, yes, grown-up social life.

Same sex marriage reprised

My post on Friday about same-sex marriage drew some critical comments. I wrote here extensively on same sex marriage in 2006 and am not particularly interested in rehearsing that now. But I do have a few quick responses.

1. My argument is not based, as one reader sarcastically put it, that people will "turn homo." I never said that. My concern is that expanding marriage to accommodate a type of relationship for which it was not designed seems likely to change our understanding of what marriage is for and, subsequently, the rules and mores surrounding it. We have already had a great deal of that over the last fifty years and, while there have been good things about the legal and social changes that have affected marriage, it's decline as an institution has had devastating social consequences.

2. These changes would not come about because someone else's same sex marriage would affect their neighbor's heterosexual marriage. Your neighbor's divorce doesn't affect your marriage either, but no-fault divorce laws did come to affect the way in which we think about marriage. In a legal system that works through precedent and analogy, changes in one rule often lead to changes in another. This is one of the reasons that the fear that same sex marriage will lead to multi-partner marriages is not idle. Indeed, there are legal theorists who explicitly see same-sex marriage as a step in "deprivileging" marriage generally.

3. The analogy between anti-miscegenation laws and laws restricting marriage to a union of one man and one woman is flawed. It is a traditional move on the part of a group that believes itself to be dispossessed to argue that they are just like blacks. Such arguments are almost always wrong. Here, there is a world of difference in interpreting the equal protection clause of state and federal constitutions to prohibit racial discrimination and extending their reach to sexual orientation. They were quite clearly intended to apply to racial discrimination. That courts failed to apply them properly for many years doesn't change that.

They were clearly not intended to apply to sexual orientation. If judges take them to prohibit what they were intended to permit whenever they believe that a democratically enacted distinction is "unjust," we have an imperial judiciary. The only stopping point is are the personal predilections of the court and whatever sense of prudence a majority of justices have at any one time.

Even if you adopt - either for purposes of judicial interpretation or legislative interpretation - a methodology for recognizing accepted distinctions, sexual orientation doesn't fit well within traditional methodologies employed for that purpose. While we can argue whether sexual orientation is immutable. It seems to be less immutable than race or gender but more so than, say, political preference. My sense is that can be changed although not often and only with great - some would argue damaging - effort.

But lots of (even more) immutable characteristics form the basis for distinction in the law. Age, intelligence, disability and even gender are all permissible bases for distinction if they are pertinent to the distinction being drawn. Sexual orientation and gender are relevant to an institution that is designed to channel sexual relationships that are potentially procreative and which occur between genders that experience sexuality in different ways into a form that maximizes the prospect that any resulting children will be raised well and that the different sexualities of men and women will be accommodated.

4. It doesn't matter that not all married couples will or can have children. Marriage is not simply a tool to be taken up when children arise but a social model for the way in which sexual relationships between men and women are best conducted. That the model is overinclusive doesn't undermine it's rationale. In fact, I would be far more opposed to domestic partner laws for heterosexual couples that do not intend to have children than I am to same-sex marriage.

5. Nor does it matter that not all men and women have successful marriages or raise children well. The research is quite clear that children do best when they are raised by their own mother and father in low-conflict marriage. Not all marriages will work out this way and there are single parent and even same-sex couple households that may raise children well, but society has an interest in encouraging the family form that maximizes their chances even while acknowledging that all children will not be raised in this way.

6. The best argument against my view is that there simply won't be enough same sex marriages to matter. I did some research during the campaign to ratify the marriage amendment and it turns out that the number of same-sex couple households is very small and the number with children is not even a drop in a bucket. Of course, this cuts both ways. The absence of marriage for such a small number - to the extent it causes real problems - cannot be a social tragedy and can count for only so much when weighed against concerns about further deterioration in an essential social institution.

But law has expressive as well as instrumental functions. It is not clear that the impact of same sex marriage can be measured by the relatively small number of persons who enter into it.

7. This does not mean that I "always favor" "social engineering" over "individual liberty." First, I certainly don't advocate the criminalization of homosexual relationships. But redefining an institution that is created by the community based upon recent changes in social mores and a desire to appear "tolerant" strikes me as ill advised. This is particularly so given that many of the practical concerns of same sex couples can be addressed in other way.

8. While I am not interested in making arguments about whether homosexuality is a sin (I don't feel that I can make such a judgment), I don't believe that those who do are "haters" or "homophobes." Nor am I willing to say that society has no interest in holding up heterosexual relationships as normative, What I don't think that the law or culture should do is condemn or ostracize those who are gay or lesbian. Refusing to redefine an institution that has arisen for other purposes to include same sex relationships simply doesn't do that.

9. I think it's boring and intellectually lazy to respond to arguments like this by suggesting that those who make it are "really" just motivated by what one commenter calls the "ick" factor. First, the motivation of those who make them doesn't much matter. They either persuade or they do not. Second, while sleeping with men has never struck me as a fun thing to do (women, thankfully, seem to think otherwise) and, on a cerebral level, I am drawn to Roman Catholic theory about the value of complementary in sexual relationships, the "ick factor" is not particularly strong with me. I understand that others can experience the world differently than I do.

10. I'll get to the California case eventually.

They cite cases so it can't be activism

Yesterday's decision by the California Supreme Court mandating same-sex marriage is probably unlikely to survive past November.

I haven't yet read the decision so I'll reserve commentary on it. As long time readers of this blog know, I oppose same-sex marriage on grounds that have nothing to do with moral judgments about homosexuality. Marriage is an institution with mores and legal characteristics that are rooted in the potentially procreative nature of heterosexual relationships and the resulting need to channel the rather different ways that men and women experience sexuality in a way that facilitates the raising of children. Love and intimacy are part of that, but not the whole of it.

It seems inconceivable to me, then, that you can take an institution that has evolved in a certain setting for a specific purpose and extend it to another setting involving a different set of relationships that, while similar in some ways, are not and cannot be the same without causing changes to that institution.

Part of my opposition is rooted in my Burkean nature. Part is informed by the fact that marriage can be adversely affected by things that are, in many ways, admirable (see. e.g., greater appreciation for individual autonomy and sexual liberation) and that these changes can have devastating social consequences (see, e.g., the stunning absence of fathers among the urban poor in the United States).

For that reason, I distrust rapid changes in marriage brought about by the application of abstractions about equality and individual autonomy. These principles may frame (parts of ) the discussion but they don't resolve it.

So the California Supreme Court has found that the state's constitution mandates a change in an essential and longstanding institution that virtually no one in any place or at any time would have dreamed of until, figuratively speaking, somewhere around last Tuesday.

This is why, contra Dahlia Lithwick in this hash of a column, I can call the court's decision activist. By this I mean that it cannot possibly be rooted in a source of authority other than the majority's policy preferences. You cannot reasonably conclude that the people of California intended their equal protection and due process clauses to require a result that, until a few years ago, virtually everyone, rightly or wrongly, would have thought preposterous. An interpretive method that allows you to reach such a result seems unlikely to have much in the way of restraint on judicial discretion.

I am sure, as Lithwick (who seems unable to grasp the concept of separation of powers) says, that there is plenty of "law stuff" in the decision. I'm sure there is. But, as Ed Whelan notes, "[i]t’s rather charming, I suppose, that after all the lawless rulings on same-sex marriage, one might be so naïve as to think that maybe, just maybe, there’s a right to same-sex marriage hidden somewhere in the penumbras and emanations of the California constitution ...."

I suppose that someone might - some day - prove that alchemy can turn coal into gold, but the presumption runs the other way.

Profiles in courage?

Over at Prawfsblawg, Rick Hills wonders if any of the presidential candidates can win the LaFollette Award, his prize for a candidate who is willing to "distinguishes himself or herself by conscientious indifference to public opinion in the service of truth as he or she sees it."

But will either clinch the deal by saying something risky that they obviously believe? (Denouncing the gas tax holiday garners, at most, a tepid honorable mention). Will Obama actually admit that NAFTA neither cost nor created a lot of jobs? Or that eliminating outsourcing would probably also eliminate the Indian middle class and risk economic collapse of unstable economies? Will McCain admit that tax breaks in an era of runaway deficits are silly and demagogic? Will either admit that slogans on Iraq regarding withdrawal time are essentially meaningless, because the situation there is too volatile to predict more than a week in advance? In short, will either address the voters as mature adults rather than as drunken fans at a tailgate who cannot understand sentences too long for a tee shirt?

It seems rather odd that Professor Hills fails to acknowledge that McCain has said some rather unpopular things on withdrawal from Iraq. I also am not entirely sold on the notion that tee shirt slogans don't convey valuable information that many voters use intelligently, but that's a whole other subject.

Do any of the candidates deserve Professor Hills' LaFollette Award?

Obama still stuck on changing the subject

Obama certainly will get the nomination and I still think it is likely to be a Democrat year. But can you really win the Presidency by insisting that issues that, for whatever reason, people seem to care about are "distractions" and "divisive."

The notion that Obama offers some kind of "new politics" or post-ideological reconciliation of the our past divisions has always struck me as fancy silliness. You can believe it only if you regard all attacks on the consensus of left-liberals as divisive. If you can dismiss being "overly" concerned with the war on terror or the cost in lives of a precipitous withdrawal from Iraq, then Obama (who has, essentially, nothing to say about either)appears to be talking about the right things. If your economics tells you that the answer to America's economic slowdown is to reduce the return to work and investment, close the border to trade while effectively leaving it open to an influx of low-wage workers and making an uncompetitive health care market even less competitive, then the other side will look like plutocrats. If you are relatively unconcerned about the integrity of marriage as something privileged over other lifestyle choices or about the threats to the sanctity of life posed by abortion and biotechnology, then those that feel otherwise are mired in resentment and fear of the other. Knock yourself out.

But, if there are (and there do seem to be)many people who believe otherwise - so many, in fact, that they have managed to win seven of the past ten presidential elections - then how does it work to dismiss their concerns as irrelevant? Won't that come off as arrogant and condescending?

If that's what Hillary's continued vitality demonstrates, then the large numbers of Clinton supporters who are telling exit pollers that they will not vote for Obama in November are more significant than they seem to be. Sure, the Democrats will come together, but the independents may not follow. It may be Obama's election to lose, but if he's to avoid that, he may be tasked with changing the narrative of his life and recasting much of what he has done in public life. He may need to learn that he doesn't get to say what others ought to care about.

While I was away ...

... there was a controversy over American TV's sponsorship of an appearance by Bill Maher at the Riverside. Should pressure be placed on American to withdraw their sponsorship? Of course, everyone involved - Maher and those who oppose him - are exercising their free speech rights. Folks have a right to pressure American to withdraw support for Maher, but should they? If we lived in a world in which media outlets and private sponsors had to avoid anyone who might strongly upset a significant number of folks, we'd have pretty thin public gruel. So there ought to be a presumption against this type of thing.

But what about Maher? He's not funny, being the type of guy who thinks that adolescent rebellion is profound. His insights seemed witty and meaningful when I was 17. He obviously wasn't the guy making them. Maher takes the kind of dumbed down apologetics for atheism engaged in by the likes of Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett and tries to render them in a way that would have went over at the cool kids table in 4th hour study hall.

But there are those who like it, so what is American to do? We tend to understand efforts to ostracize those who make fun of - or express contempt for - others based on immutable and generally irrelevant characteristics such as race (gender is more complicated). The idea is that we ought not to make fun of people for what they cannot change and what does not normally matter in assessing their character and value as human beings.

But we routinely poke fun at people for what they believe or do. It is fair game, we think, because they can choose these things.

Religion fits uncomfortably between these poles. Most of us do not actively choose our faith and, even if we do, it is a part of who we are and not easily discarded. Yet what we believe about God can have profound consequences for others.

As a consequence, some people argue that religion deserves a certain presumption of respect - something that Maher, who out of malevolence or ignorance, routinely mischaracterizes the nature of Roman Catholicism and other faiths does not observe.

I think a presumption of respect makes sense, but a rule of respect does not. Because drawing that line is difficult, I am generally not in favor of secondary boycotts (i.e., those aimed at those who host or sponsor them) of speakers and writers and entertainers. I wouldn't pressure American to drop its sponsorship of Maher.

But I wouldn't pay a nickel to see him either.

Old songs for Mother's Day

My Mom was a big fan of the Kingston Trio. Played constantly when I was barely knee high.




And, of course, Harry Belafonte:

Louise Bussiere 1935-2008

After a long struggle, my Mom, Louise Bussiere, passed away late Friday afternoon. Arrangements are pending. Mom was, in her later years, a difficult person but I remember her as bon vivant and a bit quirky. I used to joke that she seemed to have acid flashbacks without, as far as I know, ever taking LSD. She was an accomplished artist (but I can't draw a straight line)and, above all, fiercely loyal to me and my sister.

I can't say that I entirely understand it yet, but there is a special difficulty in losing a parent. Of course, you mourn for a loved one but also, at least when the chronology is the customary, for your lost youth, the loss of protection and the passing, in part, of the world you were born into. A new book suggests that this presents opportunities for growth, but, right about now, I'd rather not hear about them.

Mom died as my son arrived at the hospital. He didn't need to see her again.
He had said what he needed to say and she had been unconscious for six days, He told me that he just wanted to be with his dad and aunt and cousin at the end. She let him do that.

Many thanks to those who posted here or sent e-mails of support and sympathy. Blogging will resume shortly.

Blogging in perspective

Activity here has been and may continue to be slow. My mother, Louise Bussiere, took critically ill on Saturday morning. I could reflect on the uncertainty of medical intervention or praise the ICU staff at St. Mary's-Ozaukee (tremendous without exception). But that'll have to wait.

If you do prayers, we'd appreciate them.