Safety regulations by AI

Yes, I’ve been watching team, dance, and men’s figure skating all this past week. Tonight starts pairs, followed by women’s this week. I’ve been enjoying it very much. I’m thinking about how to portray the stats from the men’s long program results in which the fifth place guy (Mikail Shaidrov of Kazakhstan) ended up in first place (yes, his long program was flawless and beautiful), the second place guy (Yuma Kagiyama of Japan) bobbled a bit to keep second place, the ninth place guy (Shun Sato of Japan) ended up in third, and the first place guy (Ilia Malinin of the US, known as the Quad God) took eighth, well off the medals. I watched Malinin’s performance and his many stumbles and quad jumps that weren’t four rotations. Perhaps calling him the Quad God (he even wore a t-shirt with that on it) was too much stress. When watching these performances I wonder would they be more or less beautiful if the skaters did it because they loved what they do and the joy they give viewers and didn’t get scored or ranked? Back towards the end of January Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Daily Kos included a five minute video of Rachel Maddow discussing the protests of the ICE operations in Minneapolis. This was shortly after Alex Pretti was murdered. Her main idea is this: The people who are against democracy and in favor of the nasty guy as dictator believe they will win with intimidation, with guns, and through war. The people who believe in saving democracy, who declare “No Kings,” will win through flexing democracy, through speech, protest, and political power. A week ago Alexander Shur and the staff of Votebeat in an article posted on Kos discussed the nasty guy’s call to Republicans to “nationalize the voting” and “take over the voting in at least 15 places.” Thankfully, there are some Republicans who are pushing back, including from Senate Majority Leader John Thune.

Election officials say the lesson of 2020 was not that the system is invulnerable, but that it can be strained in ways that cause lasting damage long before courts step in. While it’s unclear whether Trump’s latest demands — and possible future actions— would lead to the same level of disruption, legal experts say some of the backstops that ultimately stopped him last time are now weaker, leaving election officials to absorb even more pressure.

Some election officials are stressing transparency, showing in real time the rules are being followed exactly. But that doesn’t help with the skeptic that say, “I don’t believe you.” Also, they recognize the assault is coming to more than the local jurisdiction. Another danger this year is the “charlatans” who created a business model of spreading conspiracy theories for profit. Election officials are also dealing with death threats. They’ve had to enhance security, yet turnover has increased dramatically. Members of the administration that pushed back against the claims of fraud in 2020 are not there this time. Courts are a great line of defense and have already halted many of the nasty guy’s election policies. But court challenges take time and “untold damage” can happen to public trust and public officials before their ruling. That gap is the current risk.

“It’s up to us to choose to believe him or not,” [said Justin Levitt, an election law professor at Loyola Marymount University]. Obedience in advance isn’t required, and treating Trump’s claims as commands would grant him authority he does not have, Levitt said, adding, “We have agency in this.”

Also towards the end of January (yeah, this is a chance to get browser tabs that have sat for a while) Lisa Needham of Kos reported that the Department of Transportation updated safety regulations by letting an AI write them. That should be good enough.

While [DOT’s top lawyer Gregory] Zerzan might just want “good enough,” most people actually do want the perfect rule when it comes to transportation safety. Regrettably, as ProPublica described, Zerzan “appeared interested mainly in the quantity of regulations that AI could produce, not their quality.” ... This is, to be blunt, terrifying. It’s not just the blind faith that somehow Google’s glorified chatbot is more knowledgeable than an entire agency of specialized experts, but also that complex safety regulations can just be generated in seconds.

This isn’t just DOT and Zerzan. The nasty guy, after firing a lot of employees, has talked about AI replacing everything. Nothing will go wrong! Especially if it is Musk’s Grok AI. A month ago Oliver Willis of Kos wrote that the nasty guy has been talking about America First. But the country that benefits the most from his policies is not the US, but China. China may have started surging ahead before the nasty guy took office, but he has made America’s competitive advantage worse and has paid more attention to is ballroom than doing anything about China. Also from a month ago is a cartoon from Clay Jones. About that time the nasty guy had commented that the only this that would constrain him is his own morality. So Jones reviews his morality: He was pals with Epstein (details still TBD), stole from a fake charity, grifted students through his fake university, weaponized the DoJ against his enemies, and monetized the Oval Office. Yeah, we understand his morality and how little that would deter him from anything. In today’s pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted Carron J. Phillips of The Contrarian on Substack discussing the nasty guy’s racist posts about the Obamas.

Too often, the oppressed are asked to address their oppression, instead of the oppressed hearing from those who have the privilege of being unscathed. We see this a lot when it comes to activism in sports, which is why it was so refreshing to see a bevy of white American athletes being asked about the state of America during the Winter Olympics.

Those white American athletes declaring their opposition to the nasty guy’s policies are really annoying conservatives. Which is good. In the comments paulpro posted a meme:

Two things Republicans hate: 1. Being called racist. 2. Black people.

No copay for the leper

I listened to the New York Radio Hour on Michigan Radio yesterday evening on my way home from attending my niece’s high school graduation. Host David Remnick held a conversation with Rev. William Barber of Greenleaf Christian Church of Goldsboro, NC. William Barber had been the president of the NC chapter of the NAACP and the driving force behind the Moral Mondays demonstrations at the NC legislature. His people called attention to a wide variety of progressive causes.

The title of this episode is “Politics Needs Religion.” I think a more accurate title would be “Politics Needs Morality.” Barber wants to bring morality back to modern politics, though definitely not the Christian morality espoused by the right. He isn’t much impressed by modern Democrats, either. I transcribed some excerpts:

Differences between the white and black churches:

I’m an evangelical. The black church has been traditionally evangelical. The term was hijacked! Because in the Bible, theologically, there is no such thing as an evangelical that does not begin with a critique of systems of economic injustice. And when Jesus, the ultimate evangelical – that brown skinned Palestinian Jew that was born in Bethlehem and raised in Nazareth, the ghetto, the poor place – his first sermon said, “The spirit of the Lord is upon me to preach good news” – that’s “evangel,” that’s what that means – “to the poor.” If your attention is not on dealing with the issues that hurt the poor, the brokenhearted, the sick, the left out, the least of these, the stranger, and all of those made to feel unacceptable, you don’t have white, right-wing evangelical, you have heresy, theological malpractice. It doesn’t fit orthodox Christianity.
…
They came up with this weird theology. If you’re good, you go to heaven. If you’re bad, you go to hell. If you’re good, you’re wealthy. If you’re bad, you’re in poverty. [A prosperity gospel is] not consistent with orthodox theology, it’s not consistent with the theology of the Bible. … If your theology says whoever is good is wealthy then you would fawn over a wealthy businessman, because of his purse-strings, despite his moral behavior. Because maybe the religion you’re promoting isn’t about moral behavior. Maybe it’s about paid puppets of the empire. Because any time a religion seems to say the only moral issues are prayer in school, where you stand on abortion, being against a woman’s right to choose, private property, and making sure you can prove that Jesus was a founding member of the NRA, that is not Christianity.

Think about it. This is how you can see it: They’re so loud on things like abortion and prayer in the school and so wrong and so quiet on things like health care and living wages and acceptance of all people and treating the poor.

There are 3500 scriptures in the bible about love and justice and mercy and how you treat the stranger and how you help the least of these. And it’s not talking about private charity either, its talking about how we shape society, its talking about the nations. Jesus said what I will say to the nations when I’m hungry, not to the individual, to the nations. That’s governments.

There may be three scriptures about homosexuality. None of them trump the scripture that says you got to love your neighbor as yourself. So how do you claim to be a conservative if you dismiss 3500 texts but then build a whole theology around three scriptures that most of them you misinterpret. That’s not conservative. Conservative means to hold onto the essence of.

I see the white evangelicals taking the basic messages of the Bible and subverting them to support ranking (yes, a familiar theme with me). I agree with Barber that what they preach isn’t what Jesus taught. I’m pleased he says it so well and so forcefully.

Abortion and other social issues:

Let’s get the folk out of the room for a minute, we love them, but who want to come in here and talk about a woman’s right to choose and they claim they want the baby to be here, but then they don’t want to give the woman health care to get the baby here, or health care after the baby gets here, they don’t want to pay the parents a living wage so they can take care, so you really don’t have any credibility to talk about abortion because all your policies abort people’ possibilities, dreams and hopes. So you don’t need to be in this conversation.

I’m not pro abortion. It’s not pro or con. I can say I believe in life, I want persons to have children, but there are so many situations where that may not be possible. There are situations where people have to choose. And even if they choose to have an abortion I choose to love, I choose to care for them.

What I want is to get the conversation to higher ground. And the higher ground is how do we stop aborting the hopes of the poor. How do we stop destroying health care. You think about, just a few weeks ago, the hypocrisy of having clergy in the Rose Garden with the president clapping for him signing the executive order about so-called religious leaders and not chastising him on his position to deny millions of people health care – and they claim to be Christian clergy.

This is a simple country-boy analogy. If I’m not mistaken, the one thing Jesus did was set up free health clinics. Everywhere you look in the Bible Jesus is healing people. He never charged a leper a copay.

You going to applaud someone? Something else is going on underneath that that’s ugly, that’s cynical, that doesn’t make sense, that’s not good for the health of our culture, and is a denial of the basics of our faith. The word salvation means healing.

About cutting taxes

The tax cut was always about disabling the government from being able to make the playing field more level and fixing the problems the government created in the first place.

He’s been touring the country training people in moral articulation and moral analysis.

People able to say, wait a minute, some of these issues are not about left versus right, they’re about right versus wrong. Health care is about right versus wrong. Living wages is right versus wrong. Dealing with systemic racism is about right versus wrong. We need to stand up, not as partisans, but as people of conscience.

We need a poor people campaign. During the last election cycle…

We had 26 presidential debates, I think, maybe 27. Think about it. Not one debate, not one full debate on voting rights. … Not one full debate on the world economy. Not one full debate on public education. None. We were talking about text-messages, emails, innuendos, and the strange conversation that you will not hear anywhere else in the world. … That says to us we don’t have just a partisan problem. We have a deep moral malady. Something is wrong in the spirit of the country. And we knew we needed to have this poor people’s campaign.

About the Democratic Party

We have to challenge the Democrats, especially right now. I’m very concerned when I hear Democrats talking only about the middle class. They think that’s all that went wrong in this past election. One of the things we have to do is recover our moral foundation.

When some of these extremists say they want to read the Constitution I get happy. I say, Please! Let’s read the Constitution. Or when they say we want to talk about what’s in the Bible. Please! Please! Let’s have that conversation! Because if we have it, then it will expose the holes and the hypocrisy and may even cause you to repent. And come join us. In love.
…
I think progressives make a mistake when we don’t know and remember the power of moral underpinning.

This does not have to be a Christian movement. Morals transcend religions. Progress is more than working on the white middle class. It has to deal with the issue of race.

It’s when we come together. When we’re willing to put our minds to work and our bodies on the line. What if we didn’t focus on Trump. Because Trump is a symptom. What if we went up to McConnell’s office and Ryan’s office, and every state capitol, and what if we said this is not the end of a movement, but the launch of a movement. … We want you to know we’re all in this together and we stand on our deepest moral principles, and not just curse the darkness but point people to the light. What if we used something like that to shock the very heart of this nation. I want to see what would happen if we finished that leg of the poor people’s campaign. I want to see what would happen if we would come together.

Study what your opponent is doing:

If, however, in order to win they had to lie almost every other ten minutes; they had to find a way to put pornographic sums of money into the electoral pot; they had to spend years pushing voter suppression; they had to use fear against Muslims, against immigrants; they had to be helped by the media that played too long with Trump and gave him too much free press; and then they had to go all the way over to Russia and get help … If somebody cheats you, they don’t cheat you because you’re weak. People only cheat you when they can’t beat you in a fair fight. Then that says we are stronger than we realize
…
It’s our time to stand up and be the moral dissenters, the moral defibrillators, the moral dreamers and to make it through this moment, and use it to change the course of history, to change America, and in some ways if we work together, we’ll change the world.

Up on care and fairness

Brian Dickerson, editorial columnist for the Detroit Free Press, is well aware of the size of the political chasm in America. He encounters it every time he writes an opinion piece and lots of readers call and write to tell him how wrong he is. Though he is good at defending his position he is pretty sure he hasn't changed any minds.

Since dealing with this chasm is important (see: state of roads, schools, and gov't institutions) Dickerson is now exploring why we're so antagonistic. He says he'll explore that idea over the summer perhaps with "moral psychologists" as guides.

This first article takes a look at The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haidt. Through his studies Haidt has found five foundations to moral systems that are pretty consistent in cultures around the world. These are:

The Care/Harm Foundation. For us to survive as a species we must protect the youngest and most helpless. That became the idea we have a duty to protect each other from death and injury. We admire those who are generous and condemn those who are cruel.

The Fairness/Cheating Foundation. Groups that collaborate have an advantage over those who don't. Problems arise when some either do extra work or reap extra rewards. That became the idea we encourage cooperation and discourage exploitation.

The Loyalty/Betrayal Foundation. Those same collaborative groups can be enhanced through loyalty and damaged through betrayal. This becomes loyalty to family, country, political party, and religion. Betrayal can be treated harshly.

The Authority/Subversion Foundation. Collaborative groups have leaders and develop a social hierarchy. The group works better when that hierarchy has clear lines of authority that are respected.

The Sanctity/Degredation Foundation. Defining one food as sanctified and another is degraded is an easy way to keep our early ancestors from eating toxic food. Defining a behavior as degraded can help avoid incest. The catalog of which food/behavior is good and which is not can lead to the sanctification of that catalog – such as the Bible or Bill of Rights.

Haidt explains out political divide by noting the different weights progressives and conservatives place on each of these five foundations. Progressives emphasize care and fairness. Conservatives emphasize loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

What happens when a person doesn't quite fit? That's a situation many LGBT people encounter. Here's a milder example: What to do with a child who colors the sky green? Praise the child for creativity? Punish the child for defying authority? Experiences like that teach a child which of the five foundations will guide his morals.

Dickerson suggests heading to the Your Morals site to see where you fit in. Warning: once you register there are two dozen different surveys you can take. The one that matches Haidt's book is the Moral Foundations Questionnaire. It rated me high (higher than progressives) in Care/Harm and Fairness. It rated me low (lower than progressives) in Loyalty, Authority, and Purity (Sanctity). My rating in Purity is quite low – all of that driven by what church people say about LGBT people. Yeah, in my opinion their purity codes – Would you avoid doing something "unnatural"? – are a lot of bunk.

This police car brought to you by...

A couple years ago I wrote about nine areas of public life that should not be privatized. These are things that are ruined, or at least made less efficient, more costly, or somehow distorted when the profit motive is involved. The areas are health care, water, internet, transportation, banking, prisons, education, consumer protection, and elections. An example of distortion is a health insurer that would prefer that the patient stay sick to be able to get more money.

So when I saw the book What Money Can't Buy, the Moral Limits of Markets by Michael J. Sandel I knew it was one I needed to read. I was sure it would confirm and my ideas of privatization. Well, not exactly. It didn't mention any of the nine areas listed above and didn't pursue the argument that there are things a government should do that should not be outsourced.

But it did tackle a related area and did so thoroughly and understandably (though repetitively). Since about 1980 there has been a strong sell for "market solutions." Let the market decide! Structure some process or event like a market with financial incentives and the market will come up with the best solution. The book examines all the areas of life in which this claim does not work or damages the process or event being marketed.

Here are a few of the areas that have come under market influence: Paying extra to jump the line, such as paying to use highway lanes reserved for cars carrying two or more people. Incentives, such as paying kids to read books. Naming rights, such as ads on police cars. And markets crowding out altruism, such as paying blood donors.

This push to marketize everything got a bit boost from the book The Economic Approach to Human Behavior by Gary Becker, and economist at the University of Chicago, published in 1976. By "everything" I do mean everything. Here is Becker's look at marriage and divorce:

According to the economic approach, a person decides to marry when the utility expected from marriage exceeds that expected from remaining singe or from additional search for a more suitable mate. Similarly, a married person terminates his (or her) marriage when the utility anticipated from becoming single or marrying someone else exceeds the loss in utility from separation, including losses due to physical separation from one's children, division of joint assets, legal fees, and so forth. Since many persons are looking for mates, a market in marriages can be said to exist.

One might reasonably say that looking at marriage as maximizing "utility" rather than love is a mighty cold method of calculation. But the marketization of many other things is just as cold. So we might debate whether such cold calculation is the proper way to look at things. And that debate is what this book is about.

When I read the above quote one idea jumped out at me. The utility of such things as marriage is not measured in dollars. The person entering into marriage may be aiming to maximize such things a love, security, friendship, and support as well as trying to minimize such things as fear and loneliness. These things can't be measured in dollars.

Sandal touches on my insight only briefly. He has other issues to present.

For most of the cases Sandel presents his objection to market influence comes down to just a few reasons.

There is the issue of fairness. In the case of scalped tickets, the product goes to who can pay the most, not who might value it most. The rich get the limited product because they are rich. The poor do not. In the case of using a forehead as a billboard the issue is injustice because inequality produces coercion. A poor person may agree to it as one of the few ways to get cash. The deal cannot be fair.

There is the issue of corruption. A Nobel Prize cannot be bought. And if the prize (not just the medal) is bought in the eyes of the rest of the world it becomes worthless. A bought politician has lost respect because he works for his purchaser, not for those who elected him. A person with an ad on his forehead is seen as an ad, not a human. Ads of a sponsor of a nature trail, even if discreet, intrudes on the serenity of the experience and spoils it.

Money crowds out morals. This was most clearly demonstrated through the practice of paying people to donate blood. Yes, blood for sale. The fairness argument certainly applies. When blood donations are paid, the people who donate are the ones who need the money most. The poor, due to their circumstances, are coerced into giving. However, there is a more important aspect. When blood is a commodity, people are less likely to feel a moral responsibility to give, to take care of their fellow humans. And that leads to an overall decline in moral and social life, a reduction in altruism.

Some economists think markets are good based on the idea that altruism is limited. Let's save this scant resources for the areas of life where it is most needed. And in all other areas let's use the markets so people are guided by plentiful self-interest instead of scarce altruism. But the fallacy is that altruism works the same way as love – the more it is exercised, the more there is.

Sandel's last major point is what he calls "skyboxification." One important feature of attending sport events 50 years ago was that everyone sat together. The price range was limited and the poor, middle class, and rich sat next to each other as one large community of fans. But skyboxes are a part of of nearly every stadium and ballpark (now named for a corporation). The average person sits down here and the rich sit up there. There is no longer a common life. And that isn't good for democracy.

Sandel finds market influence in a wide number of areas. All of them fall into the categories of fairness, corruption, or morals being crowded out.

In the category of jumping the queue – by paying extra I can go to the front of the line: Airports, amusement parks, and car pool lanes; hired line standers (used by lobbyists when Congressional hearing seats are limited); ticket scalpers for concerts, papal masses, and Yosemite campsites; and concierge doctors (ones who only care for patients who have paid a hefty subscription fee).

In the category of incentives (on which Obama – of all people – has based a great deal of public policy): Cash to sterilize women with drug problems, paying kids for grades, bribes for weight loss, selling immigration rights, trading pollution permits, carbon offsets, and paying to hunt endangered species (which provides more money to combat poaching).

In the category of insurance: Janitor insurance (in which a corporation takes out life insurance on even the janitor and makes good money, though the janitor's family gets nothing), terrorism futures market, and death bonds.

In the category of naming rights: Selling autographs; corporate-sponsored home runs; skyboxes; bathroom advertising; body billboards; branding of the public square, nature trails, and police cars; commercials in the classroom; and ads in jails.

Sandel concludes:

Once we see that markets and commerce change the character of the goods they touch, we have to ask where markets belong – and where they don't. And we can't answer that question without deliberating about the meaning and purpose of goods, and the values that should govern them.

Such deliberations touch, unavoidably, on competing conceptions of the good life. … For fear of disagreement, we hesitate to bring our moral and spiritual convictions into the public square. But shrinking from these questions does not leave them undecided. It simply means that markets will decide them for us. … The era of market triumphalism has coincided with a time when public discourse has been largely empty of moral and spiritual substance. Our only hope of keeping markets in their place is to deliberate openly and publicly about the meaning of the goods and social practices we prize.

…

Democracy does not require perfect equality, but it does require that citizens share in a common life. What matters is that people of different backgrounds and social positions encounter one another, and bump up against one another, in the course of everyday life. For this is how we learn to negotiate and abide our differences, and how we come to care for the common good.

And so, in the end, the question of markets is really a question about how we ant to live together. Do we want a society where everything is up for sale? Or are there certain moral and civic goods that markets do not honor and money cannot buy?

Terrorism terrifies

This post is number 3000 for this blog! And I wrote that many in less than 8 years (I started the blog in mid November of 2007). Since 2010, when Blogger started keeping statistics for me, there have been over 78,000 page views. I've written about gay marriage/marriage equality in 642 posts, the GOP in 420 posts, personal adventures in 296 posts, and fundamentalism in 271 posts. The top two countries of readership are America and Russia with United Kingdom a distant third.



Alas, this milestone post doesn't come with a celebratory topic. It's … more of the same. Sigh.

Audra Williams in a post for The Soapbox on website The Frisky notes that fat hatred has become so strong that "the most morally pure thing a person can do is lose weight." She shows how that has been true starting with Jared Fogle, the guy in the Subway ads who was arrested on charges of raping children. His foundation to fight childhood obesity put him in a position to have access to lots of kids. But since he had lost so much weight he was seen as a fantastic guy and indiscretions (and crimes) were overlooked. Williams also discusses politicians and celebrities who rose from scandal by losing weight. She reminds us "There is no link between body size and morality, full stop."



The anti-choice movement can't be called pro-life, because the only life they are interested in is that of the fetus. Pro-life? How about working to end war? Perhaps make sure women have great health care so if they don't want kids they won't get pregnant? Maybe even pay attention to the quality of life, including safe neighborhoods and great schools, for all kids beyond the moment of birth? No, they aren't pro-life. Their only purpose is to keep women subservient to men, barefoot and pregnant.

Melissa McEwen of Shakesville takes it one more step. The anti-choice movement is domestic terrorism. It has a decades-long campaign of intimidation, threats, multiple assassinations and attempts, kidnappings, and long lists of harassment, assault and battery, vandalism, arson, and bombings. Their latest strategy is to dig up confidential medical records to be able to file complaints against abortion providers. Never mind the women whose information is used without their consent or knowledge.

Why does this still happen? Because the people being targeted are not straight white males. Because the GOP is a state sponsor of this terrorism. Because the supposedly pro-choice party can barely say the word "abortion" and still uses language that stigmatizes. Because too few people are willing to put themselves in the crosshairs. Because terrorism terrifies.



On to the Donald Trump phenomenon. Here is a guy loudly proclaiming his hatred for women and minorities and voters are falling at his feet because he "speaks the truth!" McEwen again has a few things to say. Her army of commenters add a few more.

The first half of the issue is the hateful language from Trump is giving a lot of fellow haters lots of permission for their hate. We don't need more of that.

The second half is many progressive men think Trump's antics are good for a laugh, followed by a dismissive wave. McEwen reminds us these men are not the ones who will be harmed if Trump or anyone else acts on his vile language. Women and people of color don't think Trump as funny at all.

Is The Donald telling the truth? Yes, he is proclaiming his bigotry quite loudly. Why are we cheering that truth? And why are some progressives cheering that poisonous stream even if it might expose GOP faultlines?



A company is coming out with a Caitlin Jenner costume for Halloween. McEwen says such costumes are only about mockery and that one person's identity is not another person's costume. She asked her readers to describe costumes that don't appropriate someone else's identity. The list is long and varied: candy corn, pencil, mime, academic regalia (hmm, a use for my master's robe?), fictional characters, historical figures (Suffragette), tooth fairy, office fairy (crown of paper clips), a princess with a guy dressed in green as the pea, IRS agent ("audit or treat!"), vampires, zombies, ghosts, and my favorite: all white clothes printed with "404 – Costume not found."

Underpants Rule

Ragen Chastain of Dances with Fat has what she calls the Underpants Rule:

The Underpants Rule is simple: everyone is the boss of their own underpants so you get to choose for you and other people get to choose from them and it’s not your job to tell other people what to do and it’s not their job to tell you what to do.

So if someone starts a sentence with, "People should," it probably means they're about to violate the Underpants Rule.

Yes, telling you to follow the Underpants Rule violates the Underpants Rule. So this is only a suggestion.

She goes on to say:

The war on obesity is an underpants rule breakdown on a massive scale. A group of government, public and private interests (with various profit and political motivations) has chosen a group of people who are identifiable by sight and is now trying to tell us everything from how we have to prioritize health, to the path we have to take to become healthy, to how our bodies have to look. Who died and made them Underpants Overlord? Nobody.

Then watch out for this mental image:

My metaphorical underpants and my actual underpants have something in common: if I want somebody else in them, that person will be among the very first to know. I have definitely not invited the executives at HBO, Kaiser Permanente, the government, or the diet industry into my underpants.

Though Chastain doesn't stray from a discussion of weight I see other places where the Underpants Rule is routinely violated. At the top of the list are abortion and gay rights. I've been hearing another scary area that violates the Underpants Rule: GOP lawmakers telling people on public assistance what they can and cannot spend that assistance money on.

Got it wrong

In my summary of Dan Savage's book American Savage in yesterday's post I left out an important point. In the last chapter, in which Savage debates Brian Brown, the argument turns to the authority of the Bible. This is important when so many of our opponents believe the Bible is the Word of God and therefore without error. Savage stated if the Bible got slavery wrong – and it did – what else did it get wrong? If it is so wrong about an easy issue such as slavery what are the chances of it getting a complicated issue such as human sexuality 100% right?

Brown tries to claim that the brutal form slavery as was practiced in America is only an Old Testament thing, and the slavery practiced in New Testament times, or at least with Hebrew masters, wasn't all that bad. It was mostly voluntary (indentured servitude) and of a short duration. In addition, the New Testament doesn't really support slavery.

During the debate Savage let Brown's comments go. There were so many other illogical threads to chase after. Once the video of the debate was made public others refuted Brown's claims. Yes, even New Testament era slavery was brutal and yes the New Testament does endorse it and doesn't condemn it. So, back to Savage's question. If the Bible got slavery wrong what else did it get wrong?

That's another way of saying our morality is and should be independent of the Bible.

To be fair, the Bible also got a great deal of morality right. Do unto others... Love one another... There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, neither male nor female...

The dark side

Religions promote many fine ideas and virtues. The Wisdom Commons lists perhaps a hundred of them. Click on an item in the list and you get a description of the virtue and many quotes about it. Some virtues shared by many religions are: Acceptance, balance, compassion, contentment, enthusiasm, forgiveness, generosity, honesty, humility, integrity, justice, love, loyalty, mercy, patience, peacemaking, repentance, responsibility, sacrifice, stewardship, trust, and wonder.

But there is a dark side to religion, one that I've experienced and documented in this blog. Valerie Tarico lists a dozen of the worst ideas from religion.

Chosen people: only a claim of superiority.

Heretics: a way to dehumanize as heretics are seen as "a threat that needs to be neutralized by conversion, conquest, isolation, domination, or—in worst cases—mass murder."

Holy War: Declare a holy war and you gain permission to do any vile thing you want.

Blasphemy: Declare an idea is off-limits to criticism or question and when that is violated … see holy war.

Glorified suffering: This is the idea that if one endures suffering (perhaps even inflicting it on oneself) long enough an evil can be undone. Instead, people willing to inflict pain on themselves also inflict it on their enemies and the helpless.

Genital mutilation: In men it is a sign of membership and test of commitment. In women it establishes submission.

Blood sacrifice: Fortunately abandoned by nearly all religions. Even so, Christianity still focuses on Jesus as being the ultimate blood sacrifice.

Hell: a way to satisfy a desire for justice has become a tool to coerce behavior and belief.

Karma: promotes passivity in the face of suffering and also promotes blaming the victim.

Eternal life: I'm reminded of the phrase, "He's so heavenly minded he is no earthly good." A focus on heaven means less effort given to cherishing and taking care of the world we have.

Male ownership of female fertility: women are reduced to their ability to bear children and in this time of overpopulation the quality of a man is still defined by the number of his children.

Book worship: understanding of the world becomes static, and believers of a perfect faith are developmentally arrested in the Iron Age, a time of violence, slavery, and early death.

We must acknowledge religion's worst ideas to be able to fully embrace the best.

Poverty of values

I wrote yesterday about how the rich attribute poverty to bad morals, yet the poor are more ethical than the rich. Charles Blow, in an opinion piece for The New York Times expands on the idea.

It seems the latest idea trumpeted by the GOP is that all one needs to do to get out of poverty is embrace "the attributes of friendship, accountability and love," as Paul Ryan put it last week. And where does one find friendship, accountability and love? Why, in marriage, of course -- and it had better be the traditional male-female variety. Jeb Bush said something similar.

Yo, dudes, a lot of traditionally married loving couples accountable to each other are still stuck in poverty. So simply saying get married to get out of poverty is condescending. And stupid. Besides, as Blow puts it, "you can't simply hug the cashier and walk away with groceries."

From a USA Today poll that Blow included:

Which means the rich are blind to their advantages. I've heard it described this way: They're born on third base and can't figure out why so few people are able to hit a home run. To justify their wealth they equate it to morality. Yes, let's discuss poverty, but a poverty of resources is not the same as a poverty of values.

The poor are more ethical

I've written several times about how the rich equate wealth with morality. Paul Buchheit of AlterNet disputes that claim and backs it up with numbers. Five ways the poor are more ethical:

* The rich complain the poor are lazy cheats. However, they cheat much less than the rich.

* The poor care about other people. Part of that is they need other people simply to survive.

* The rich focus on themselves.

* The rich are less generous and the money they donate doesn't go to help those in need. Instead, it goes to universities and cultural institutions.

* The middle class is much better than the rich at creating jobs. Alas, the middle class is getting smaller.

Unable to challenge power

At the end of May I wrote a big post on Power. I find there is one more section to add to it. I had written that Power is maintained through laws, by oppressing those who don't recognize that the powerful are supposed to be in charge, and by enlisting others to support their oppression. I see that I missed one key part.

A Power will make sure others are unable to challenge their power.

An example of this is the tax laws in Alabama that are designed to make sure the schools for black students are underfunded. Black children who aren't educated grow up to adults who are able to take only the menial jobs and are no challenge to the corporate tycoons.

Newsweek has an article about another aspect of this Power preservation. The article by Anna Bernasek, discusses the ways we are underfunding our public schools nationwide and the consequences that has for us as a society.

The article mentions the support the elderly get from government ($27K per person from all levels of gov't and 41% of the federal budget (including Social Security and Medicare). In contrast each child gets $12K and most of that comes from state and local budgets in the form of education. The federal budget has only 10% for children. Fortunately, the article spends very little time on the argument that if the elderly weren't so greedy the kids would be just fine. The proper solution, not mentioned much, is that the rich aren't being taxed enough.

Some of the support kids need and don't get: Nutrition assistance, health care, a place to live, education. And education is the biggest one.

Some claim that if we don't deal with the federal deficit our children will inherit a mess. But if we skimp on our children's education they won't be able to deal with the mess.

In one of my protests over the last month one of the leaders remarked that Wayne State University in Detroit used to get 75% of its budget from the state of Michigan. Now it gets 25%. It has become a private school. Many student in Detroit can't afford it. This article and others are full of cuts to all levels of education and the soaring debts students now carry.

This is why I am putting underfunded education under a discussion as a way to prevent challenges to Power:

Back in the 1960s and 1970s [California's] residents mightily benefited from low-cost college education. Without huge student debts, students were free to experiment with new ideas and start their own businesses. The rise of Silicon Valley as a place of innovation, creativity, and risk taking, coincided with two generations of students going to college in California for next to nothing. That might have been tougher to pull off had they been saddled with a $100,000 or so in student debt.

Another aspect of this is companies no longer train their workers. They assume the worker is already trained -- on the workers dime. Without that training employees can't get into the higher-paying jobs.

So a student either can't afford to go to college or has so much debt the emphasis must be on fitting into the current power structure to pay off the debt rather than doing something radical and innovative that might challenge the power structure.

Social Security and other services are designed so that current workers support retirees. The young support the old. Yet, the young are provided fewer resources to enable them to do that.

I've gone back to the original post on Power and updated it.

On to another aspect of Power: The Demos Policyshop highlights a study that showed as inequality increases, trust in strangers declines.

This decline in social trust begins a downward spiral. Bo Rothstein and Eric Uslaner note in a fabulous paper for World Politics, "The best policy response to growing inequality is to enact universalistic social welfare programs. However, the social strains stemming from increased inequality make it almost impossible to enact such policies."

A lack of trust means the rich see the poor as takers and the poor see the rich as selfish. A study found that "upper class individuals were, more likely to break driving laws, take goods from others, lie in a negotiation, cheat and endorse unethical behavior." Which belies their claim that money equals morality.

My dad sent me a link to a video of Cenk Uygur posted on Upworthy. Does money influence politics? Sheesh, what a question! Of course, it does. That's why rich give money to campaigns. But do you know to what degree? The video reported on at a study that compared how closely the last five Congresses listened to their various constituents, how thoroughly they did what the rich, middle class, and poor asked them to do. The rich always had their requests filled. The poor -- never. The middle class? Only when Democrats controlled both chambers of Congress. And only enough to get the middle class to shut up.

I have mentioned several times, though maybe not on this blog, that while it is obvious the GOP is my enemy, trying to institute policies I profoundly disagree with, I am not convinced the Democrats are my friends. Another part of this video provided more evidence they are not. One finding was that the Democrats -- not Republicans -- most closely did what the rich wanted. The rich are able to play the two parties as Good Cop -- Bad Cop. Those GOP people are really out there. They won't do anything for you. So vote for the Dems because they will (even though it is just a few crumbs while they give us everything we want).

I don't do Halloween, especially the part about handing out candy to kids. I did, however, wore by Charlie Brown shirt to the college on Tuesday (Halloween party) and to the Ruth Ellis Center on Wednesday. "So you're Charlie Brown!" "No, I stole his shirt." A couple women offered to hold footballs for me.

So I look for something else to do during the time the kids go door-to-door. This year I ended up at the Purple Rose Theatre in Chelsea to see the play Vast Difference. That's a pun on the vas deferens and (as a reviewer said) if you want to know more Wikipedia can help. It was a comedy about manhood. The small crowd did quite a bit of laughing.

I mention all that here because my first choice for the evening was to see the documentary Inequality for All by Robert Reich. Alas, the last showing at the one movie theater showing it was at 1:30 yesterday afternoon. I did hear about the movie when it was released, especially the interview in which Reich said that the rich would be richer if they invested in the middle class, which would in turn buy more of whatever product made them rich. So why scrimp on that investment? Reich couldn't explain that one.

But I can. The 1% isn't after money, though huge piles of it is mighty nice. No, the rich want power and all that money enables them to get power.

No election necessary

Carol Bond was convicted of attempting to poison her husband's mistress. Domestic squabble. So why would the Supreme Court be interested in the case?

Because Bond was charged under the Chemical Weapons Convention Implementation Act. That was passed in 1998 to implement an international treaty. That Act falls under the "necessary and proper" clause of the Constitution. Congress is given the power to pass any law it feels is necessary and proper to carry out the duties assigned to it by the Constitution. One of those duties is to ratify international treaties.

Advocates on Bond's side say that the federal gov't should not be involved in a case of poisoning. That's a state's job. That means this case is a serious assault on the "necessary and proper" clause. And that is a serious assault on the powers of Congress brought by those who want smaller gov't. Which means any federal regulation, especially those that implement treaties, could be disputed on the grounds Congress doesn't have the power to write such a law.

Keep in mind why they want smaller gov't -- so there is nobody with enough power to stop their ability to raise money even if it impoverishes or causes harm to thousands of people, destroys the environment, and in general makes the country and world a harsh place to live.

Of course, nobody in this dispute cares at all what happens to Carol Bond.

Essayist Terrence Heath reviews why conservatives want a smaller government. This is a quote from George Lakoff. I think the emphasis was added by Heath.

Competition is necessary for a moral world; without it, people would not have to develop discipline and so would not become moral beings. Worldly success is an indicator of sufficient moral strength; lack of success suggests lack of sufficient discipline. Dependency is immoral. The undisciplined will be weak and poor, and deservedly so.

Heath uses that to explain the gov't shutdown:

Any government which “impedes” economic activity by the “best people,” through regulations designed to protect the consumers, workers, communities, etc., penalizes morality and discipline. Any government activity which protects the “immoral undisciplined people” from the economic consequences of their poor character rewards immorality and discipline.

To conservatives, sequestration was a good start, but shutting down the government is even better. Sending government workers home without pay, and cutting off services to low-income Americans is the right thing to do. Plus, it means conservatives can force the country to conform to their worldview, without even having to win an election.

Yeah, in case you haven't figured it out by now, I profoundly disagree with this definition of morality.

As an example: A composer (perhaps me) could be the most disciplined (well, maybe not me) and productive creator of high quality music around. But because he writes in a style that doesn't draw massive popular support (like much of classical music) he doesn't earn millions from his efforts. If he doesn't also teach at a college or university (which sucks up time better spent composing) he might be just getting by.

Monetary success might also be due to Dad's money and Dad's network of friends, so even a slacker could appear moral. And some truly evil people (some despots come to mind) can be quite disciplined in their tyranny.

Therefore discipline (and even a huge dose of talent) does not equal monetary success and neither discipline or piles of cash have anything to do with morality. That has to do with how we treat each other. And the 1% is doing an abysmally rotten job at that.

None of them sloth

Terrence Heath, in his own blog, sees signs that the GOP will simply fade to white. A few things he notes:

* In 2008 black voter turnout (the percentage of black voters who actually voted) was higher than white voter turnout.

* In 2012 Romney lost 83% of the non-white vote.

* There are more non-whites under the age of 5 than whites of that age. There are now more white deaths per year than white births.

* The GOP is assuming the coalition that Obama put together will fracture. Groups such as North Carolina's Fusion Politics are working to make sure that it doesn't happen.

* At the recent 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington the GOP had a great opportunity to make the conservative case to a black audience. Or at least counteract the huge Dem presence. But they declined all invitations.

Shrinking white base. No interest in reaching out to minorities. I like what that leads to.



The Farm Bill / Food Stamp Bill was in the news today, including NPR. The House GOP is cutting another 5% from food stamps. The representatives are saying all kinds of things about able-bodied poor need to go out and get a job. Of course, the response was a job in this economy? Besides many of the people on food stamps have a job. It doesn't pay a living wage.

Terrence Heath has a discussion of this bill. He notes how much various members of Congress (including a Rockefeller) receive (or will receive) in payments from the Farm Bill. These are gentlemen farmers that may own the land but don't do any of the work (if any farming is actually done) and live quite handsomely without any farm income. Which means they are voting to take food out of the mouths of the poor but voted to keep putting money in their own pockets. Heath concludes this way:

Republicans believe that closing billions of dollars in tax loopholes is wrong, and killing jobs by slashing government spending is right. Republicans believe that raising taxes on the wealthy is immoral, but slashing food assistance is moral.

Food stamps should not be the Hunger Games.


Chris Arnade has a related article that is posted on AlterNet. He had been working on Wall Street, but left that job to document the lives of addicts in one of the poorest sections of the Bronx. While on Wall Street he knew a man he calls Mr. One-glove, for his stinginess. This guy made bets that bankrupted his company (bailed out by the feds), an action that set the whole economy into a tailspin. At the end of 2008 he wonders how big his bonus will be.

Arnade contrasts Wall Street with Takeesha. She was molested by a family member at 11, pimped by another at 13, ran away at 15 and has spent 25 years as a prostitute and addict. It would be great if she shook off the rape and prostitution, took advantage of social services, graduated from high school and college and is free of her past. Didn't happen. Her question: Will I get out of jail by the end of the year?

Arnade's point: Mr. One-glove can afford lawyers. They can find the wiggle room in the law. He makes mistakes and goes home at the end of the day. Takeesha can't afford lawyers. For her the law is rigid. She makes mistakes and goes to jail.

One-glove felt that raising his own taxes to help the poor like Takeesha was "encouraging a lifetime of sloth" (as the GOP likes to echo). Arnade's answer:

Poverty and addiction have a thousand mothers, none of them sloth. Surviving the streets and hustling for the next fix is some of the hardest work around.

Talking in moral terms

Obama is back on the road defending his Affordable Care Act. That's while the GOP House voted to overturn the law. It is something like the 37th vote to do that. Not like they have anything else to do.

George Lakoff is a professor of Linguistics at University of California-Berkeley. He's noticed Obama and the GOP talk about the law in quite different ways. Obama talks about pragmatic things the law does. The GOP talks about morals. Lakoff said on NPR today:

Basically ... they say that democracy is about liberty, the liberty to pursue your own self-interest without you having to take care of anybody else's interests or anybody else having to take care of yours.

Which is the opposite of community. That's a pretty scary view of liberty. It throws "my brother's keeper" right out the window. What about those who simply can't manage their interests at the moment? Or what about those whose interests are the opposite of your own?

At the moment the GOP appears to be winning the argument. Obama could talk about the law in moral terms. But he isn't. Lakoff says Obama could say:

Health care is about life itself, about living a decent life, about living free from fear, and also free from economic fear. Fear of losing your home because you have to pay out of pocket for operations that really ought to be paid for by having healthcare insurance.

Unwanted advances

Back in 2007, about the time got my master's degree from Wayne State University, John Corvino, philosophy professor there, created a DVD of his talk What's Morally Wrong With Homosexuality?. I was in the audience for the taping. I bought a copy, but it didn't survive sharing with others. No matter. The hour-long talk is now on YouTube. Highly recommended. For those who just can't wait, Corvino's answer is "nothing." He is gay and has a partner.



Ari Ezra Waldman takes a look at Antonin Scalia's dissent in the case that struck down part of DOMA. Waldman notes it is internally contradictory and looks like Scalia is guided by a personal agenda, not clear thinking or the constitution.



Why are people homophobic? That's a question being studied. Possible answers include fear of gender-role violation, threats to a person's sexual identity, and threats to religious beliefs. All could play a role. One more idea did get studied -- the fear of unwanted sexual advances. Research showed a strong correlation between that fear and homophobia, though they remind us (in spite of this article's title) that correlation is not the same as causation.

Moral in the court

Issues with a strong moral component should be decided by the people, not a judge moralist. It isn't the court's job to decide what is morally acceptable.

True? False? Intriguing? An idea worth exploring? Let's see, if the courts aren't to rule on morality, they can look at gay issues through discrimination and not whether being gay is an abomination to some denomination's god. This could be good.

But when I tell you the person expressing the idea at the top of this post is Antonin Scalia, Justice of the Supreme Court, the debate gets more interesting. Scalia gave a speech at the North Carolina Bar Association yesterday. In his talk were references to homosexuality as an issue to be decided by the public, not the courts.

That prompts more questions:

Is Scalia just throwing bombs, being provocative? He's known for doing such things.

Is he signaling how he will vote in the marriage equality cases to be issued next week? Just what is he signaling?

Is he saying that the court shouldn't rule on "moral" issues at all? Does that imply he believes gays have no recourse to the courts?

Is he being realistic that justices are indeed not qualified to rule on the moral aspects of cases, that there is no demonstrably morally right answer?

What should a court do when a religion claims the moral right to bully gay people? From a statement Scalia said in 2003, as part of his dissent on the Texas anti-sodomy law, that Americans have a clear right "to protect themselves from a lifestyle that they believe to be immoral and destructive."

Scalia was asked to apply those principles to the case of "Brown v. Board of Education," that desegregated schools.

Scalia said he would have voted with the majority on the case to create more educational opportunities for blacks. He added, however, that “a good result” doesn’t make for good law. Had the courts not interceded, he said, state leaders would have eventually removed the racial barriers.

Eventually? There are many in the South who are even now working to make schools segregated.

Reaction by an audience member: Yup, Scalia is being consistent with earlier views. He's no friend to gays or progress.

Moral protection

Romney has been running ads attacking welfare. Most of the content in the ads are false. Yet those ads appear to be working. Why?

It turns out the more racist, or more racially resentful, the more likely a person is affected by the ads. That's even though the ads themselves are racially neutral.

This is now a strange situation. Obama can't talk about race. When he does he is accused of playing the race card. But Romney is talking about race a lot, in ways aimed at racists.

Terrence Heath asks an important question. Why is the Romney campaign (and the GOP) getting away with playing the race card? Two parts to the answer:

The media either excuses those comments or pretends the comments aren't really as racist as they appear. Media talking heads can't believe the GOP really is that racist in our supposed "post racial" society.

The base is willing to endorse policies that hurt their own lives as long as *those people* are not helped. Robert Self, in a New York Times article (sorry, no direct link) said, "For liberals, government promises to support individuals and families economically. For conservatives, government promises to protect individuals and families morally." So if a GOP candidate explains the need to end welfare in moral terms he can get support in spite of the harm other policies will have on the voter. And the moral reason is the candidate wants to eliminate a culture of dependency -- a phrase loaded with racial overtones.

Vague gestures toward unspecified reforms

A few days ago (meaning before today's Supreme ruling on the Affordable Care Act), Jonathan Chait in the New York Times Magazine wonders about the difference between a right and a privilege. If you are poor, are you entitled to a big house? A large flat-screen TV? If didn't work as hard as Romney, had the misfortune of having poor parents, went to bad schools, aren't very smart, or trained for an industry that collapsed are you entitled to nice clothes or air conditioning?

Or health care?

We as a society essentially agree that no, a poor person is stuck with the little house (or apartment or mobile home) that doesn't have air, the puny TV, clothes from Goodwill, and perhaps food from the local food bank. Some forms of material deprivation are morally acceptable.

I can't (and Chait doesn't) say whether we as a society think health care is a right or a privilege. What Chait says is that the GOP definitely believes it is not a right. So in all their talk about repealing Obamacare you won't hear any of them talk about what they would replace it with. Because they don't intend to replace it. The GOP budgets call for throwing more people off Medicare.

Their reason for failing to defend their actual principles is obvious enough: That tens of millions of Americans deservedly lack a right to basic medical treatment is a politically difficult proposition. Thus, they oppose Obamacare without defending the indefensible conditions they actually favor. Their tactic of adding vague gestures toward unspecified future reforms has been so successful that news reports almost uniformly describe the Republican health-care stance as yet-to-be-determined, rather than an outright defense of maintaining health care as an earned privilege rather than a right.

Now that the Supremes have ruled on the Affordable Care Act (and I'll let you peruse your favorite news source for details) there is a strange question to ponder. Why did Chief Justice John Roberts spend so much effort in saying the Affordable Care Act is permitted because it is a tax and not because it is interstate commerce? Why split hairs like that?

I heard a variety of NPR hosts interviewing GOP members of Congress (oh, I wish they would follow those interviews with rebuttals by Democrats!). Some of them jumped all over that tax designation -- The largest tax increase in history! And on the poor! Jonathan Chait (again) proposes another idea. Roberts is slowly and carefully chipping away at the idea that the federal government has anything to do with interstate commerce. Just imagine the mischief that could cause.

Building authentic lives

My friend and debate partner disapproved when I last shared the idea that gays are winning the battle for acceptance. My friend reminded me of the dangers of declaring victory too soon and I haven't written about it since then.

Of course, I mention it now because I'm about to write about our victory again. This time I am prompted by the article Victory, unprecedented by Linda Hirshman in a posting on Salon. The article is an excerpt from her latest book. She reminds us of the huge gains we've made in the last few years -- repeal of the military ban, enactment of a hate crimes law that includes gays, judges that have struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and the Calif. ban on gay marriage, legal gay marriage in six states, and national polls that the majority support gay marriage. All this and the Stonewall riot was only 43 years ago. So how did we do it?

The first component of our success is because we live in America. Our country is a liberal state (and Hirshman emphasizes the small "L") which makes three promises:

First, security: the state will protect its citizens from one another and not hurt them worse than the people it is protecting them from. Second, liberty: citizens have certain rights as human beings that even the state cannot interfere with. And finally, self-governance: for those aspects of life the state can control, citizens must decide for themselves on equal terms what they want the state to do. It’s a good deal. No wonder so many people want in.

The next component is that America was in the midst of two other social movements for inclusion, the racial civil rights movement and the feminist movement. These two showed the solution must be at least partly political. They demanded security against violence, be allowed their human liberty, and have equal access to political and economic life. Alas, both of these movements haven't completely reached their goal. However, the success so far has been through mimicking the straight white male power structures and defending their differences.

The gay movement started from farther back. In the 1960s we were characterized as sinful (by the church), criminal (by law), crazy (by doctors), and traitors (by politicians, see the lavender scare that happened alongside the red scare). The final component is that at key times gay leaders undermined those characterizations with a moral claim. Activist Arthur Evans put it this way:

It was more than just being gay and having gay sex. We discovered who we were and we built authentic lives around who we were and we supported each other doing that and in the process came to very important questions about the meaning of life, ethics, the vision of the common good and we debated these issues and we lived them.

The moral aspect of our claim has allowed us to take on institutions of straight morality -- marriage and the military -- and has allowed us to go toe-to-toe with that bastion of morality, the religious right. Our moral argument, along with our leadership, resourcefulness, and creativity, is teaching other movements how to proceed.

Redefining morality

Linda Hirshman of Salon says gays have made such huge gains in 2011 because we have fundamentally changed the debate.

They did it – and this is the lesson that the gay revolution holds for any progressive movement – not by asking for “tolerance.” They didn’t ask people to accept gay marriage by holding their moral noses. Rather, they set out to change people’s minds about what is moral.

For too long, morality in America has been reduced to sexual morality. That allowed economic justice -- and the vast income inequalities we now see -- to be ignored as topics of discussion. Gays changed the discussion. Instead of discussing the morality of sex gay leaders (and gay court cases) talked about the morality of relationships. And in 2011 we passed 50% of Americans approving marriage equality.

It is time to change the discussion around lots of other progressive causes, to fight morality with improved morality.