Digging Into the Reality of Gun Violence

Like many, I've been struggling to get my mind around what to make of the Newtown shooting, what it says about our society, and what we ought to do about gun violence.  These shootings are increasingly common, although still relatively rare.  Digging into the actual statistics - what types of guns result in homicides, who is killing who is complex.

In the back and forth over the gun issue, tribal politics is in overdrive, even if the gravity of the Newtown shooting has caused many to rethink their positions.  What has stood out to me, however, is the question of threat assessment, and how much our perspectives on the issue are grounded in actual statistical reality.

The vast majority of gun deaths are not mass, but rather individual shootings.  There are over 300 million guns in the US, much more than any other country (about twice as many as the next highest gun-owning country).  There is a strong correlation between the number of guns in a country and their homicide rate.  People are more likely to die with the gun in their own home.  About 16,000 kids are killed in gun accidents a year.  About half of gun deaths are homicides, while the other half is suicides.

Richard Florida put together a very interesting graph showing correlations between socio-economic indicators and gun deaths.

As you can see, the top two indicators of risk for gun death is being in a Republican state and being poor.  As Florida writes,

"Though this association is likely to infuriate many people, the statistics are unmistakable. Partisan affiliations alone cannot explain them; most likely they stem from two broader, underlying factors - the economic and employment makeup of the states and their policies toward guns and gun ownership."

Overwhelmingly, gun violence seems most clearly to go back to poverty and lack of education. 

I've experienced this personally in my work with poor kids.  In my first year teaching Kindergarten in a lower-class, immigrant community, one of my kids entered school two months late due to having been accidentally shot in the torso by a family member. Two years a go, at a continuation high school, one of my students was shot in the head in a drive by, killed instantly, her 6 month old child was hit in the leg and survived.  A family member of one of my students, again a from lower socioeconomic demographic, was recently in critical condition from a gun injury.  I frequently hear about violence in the neighborhoods and lives of my students that is simply not present in the lives of better off families.

So basically, if you live in a poor neighborhood, you're going to be subject to the dysfunctional few who have been segregated into your community via social forces (family breakdown, economic exploitation, poverty perpetuation, incarceration, etc.).  Now, having to live in a poor neighborhood is going to be much riskier, and it may indeed make sense to own a gun for self-defense.  That seems a perfectly reasonable conclusion that individuals might make.  Of course, other issues arise, such as the necessity of knowing how to properly care for such a deadly weapon.  And in order for the gun to be an effective means of self-defense,  having it at the ready is going to be important, which in turn opens up greater risk of accidents, especially among children.  In poor communities, many of the gun owners are going to be relatively low human and social capital individuals, who may not have the proper where-with-all to keep their gun safe.  And with regard to guns getting into the hands of criminal elements of the community, easing regulations on gun sales is going to only make it easier for criminals to get guns.


In the back and forth over the gun issue, tribal politics is in overdrive, even if the gravity of the Newtown shooting has caused many to rethink their positions.  What has stood out to me, however, is the question of threat assessment, and how much our perspectives on the issue are grounded in actual statistical reality.  Most of us are not in any near danger.  Unless we live in poor neighborhoods.  Otherwise, the presence of a gun in the family puts us at greater risk, especially if the gun owner is poorly trained, doesn't keep their gun secure enough, or someone is at risk of suicide.  As I was just telling my students last week, after worries arose over the likelihood that someone would come and shoot up the school, that they were more likely to die or get a debilitating brain injury in a car accident.  So if they were truly concerned about their safety, they would begin wearing a helmet when driving in the car.

Everyone laughed.

Responding to Tragedy

Immediately following the tragedy in Connecticut, we began to hear the age-old rhetoric of retribution and bloodlust.  It came in two pieces, sometimes expressed together, sometimes not, but both logically dependent on one another.  The first, a reaction of disbelief and exasperation at a seeming lack of causality:  "Who could do such a thing?" The second, an impulse to revenge: "I hope he burns in Hell for this."

In the first response, the question is empirical.  We actually have a pretty good idea of who do such things.  They are usually mentally deranged, due to some combination of mental illness and life trauma.  It is very rare that there weren't clear indications of mental distress in their lives leading up to the violence, whether known prior by some or hidden away to be uncovered in subsequent, post-event inquiries.  In these cases the question is simply not one of rational action.  Statements like "I had a bad childhood", or "I know lots of people  (with autism, schizophrenia, etc.) who would never do such things", have no real value.  These disorders are large spectrum, as is human experience.  There are different types of trauma, and everyone experiences trauma differently.  Some people may have the temperament to triumph, while others get pushed in other directions. 

What we do know is that mental disorders and trauma have real effects on one's ability to reason, and introduce elements of emotional, behavioral and cognitive impairment.  I'm aware of no sociopath ever having existed who had no history of mental disturbance or life trauma.  If one did, he or she would be exceedingly rare.  In any event, the question would then become how their personality and cognitive capacities were able to form in such a way that committing heinous acts made rational sense to them, in light of the fact that every waking moment, from one's first life breaths, of human socialization in every society in the world has designing effects on our person hood.  According to the theory of Societal Capital, such a "normal" person acting so abnormally would be an exceptional outlier.

The second response, calling for bloodthirsty retribution, is logically dependent on the question in the first response going unanswered, and an assumption of free, rational agency.  It is reliant both on on there being no good explanation for the individual's behavior, and the assertion that the individual could have done otherwise and yet chose not to do so.  As I have tried to show, we know enough in general about human behavior to be able to assume that a a logic reason for the individual's behavior. 

The second assertion, about free will, is more difficult.  We live in a universe of cause and effect, and it is near impossible to speak of anything existing outside that framework.  Yet because consciousness is so complex, and seemingly impenetrable in terms of its causal mechanisms - who can measure the thousands of connections firing from billions of neurons at every second of waking life? - it is often claimed that within this mysterious process there could exist uncaused phenomenon.  To put it more simply, the notion of free will is dependent on our being able to act in ways that are free from causality, and thus determine choices ourselves, instead of having them determined for us by the laws of the universe. In this way, we are supposed to be literally supernatural creatures, unhindered by the constraints of reality that everything else - rocks, trees, animals, etc. - are forced to obey. 

Incredibly, not only are we imagined to be capable of transcending the physical, spatial world, so too must we transcend the direction of time itself, effecting past events as we would (from some time in the future, if only seconds) like them to have been, freed as it were from the constraints of having had prior reasons for what we had done.   A question illustrates this paradox.  Can one act for no reason?  That is, can one develop reasons for making choices that themselves have no reason?  For instance, if I were to decide to make myself a cup of coffee, I would ostensibly have had a good reason for having done so, such as desiring caffeine.  And this reason would have been based on prior reasoning - knowledge of the effects of caffeine, knowledge of how to make coffee.  To the extent that my ultimate decision was informed, either by conscious cognitive processes, or unconscious emotional, behavioral, etc. processes, there was a reason for it.  In fact, it is impossible to imagine a human choice that is not based on a prior causal process.  While it is certainly true that we can never know exactly what all of the causes are in a given choice (conscious, unconscious motivation, etc.), there is no way to explain an action without resorting to causation.  This seems indeed a tautology, but only in the sense that time moves forward, based on prior interactions within the universe.  To assert that consciousness could somehow allow one to step beyond this reality, and to do things that were not caused, is a basic violation of physical law. 

The claim that someone "could have acted differently" could have two meanings.  The first is simply an acknowledgement that reality unfolds according to prior events; the tree would not have fallen had there not been a wind storm; the dog would not have bit the child had he not been abused as a puppy; things could have been different had prior events been different.  

Yet somehow, in humans, we allow often ourselves a different, supernatural meaning.  We say that one could have done differently had things been exactly the same.  This second meaning is practically quite useful. It serves to reinforce social norms as it reminds us to think of what is good and bad behavior.  He should have done this or that.  It was great that he did this or that.  These are important reminders both to ourselves and to others with whom we share an ever-evolving social sphere of norms and expectations.  Through this language of ought and ought not, we contribute to a narrative that solidifies social bonds and contributes to a social project in which our basic desires for a fulfilling, satisfying life are closer to being met.  By looking at circumstances as they are, and imagining the possible outcomes of different behavioral choices, we model projections for standards of behavior that we can then hold ourselves and each other accountable for. 

Yet of critical importance to this narrative is a model in which we identify with the individual actor.  It is of no help to our narrative if we cannot imagine ourselves in their place.  When we say an individual ought or ought not do something, we are implicitly injecting ourselves into their position.  After all, it would be hypocritical to say an individual ought or ought not do things that we ourselves do not do.  Of course, none of us is perfect, and often times our moral convictions are mostly aspirational.  In this way though, we are still injecting ourselves into the role of actor, even with the caveat that our projected selves might not be perfectly suited to the role.

In our projections of our selves into the role of actor, reality often gets in the way.  That is, the individual is often quite a different person from us.  To the extent that this is true, our attempt to reinforce a social narrative is weakened; a story about what I would have done is a story about what everyone should do, and thus a valuable model.  However, a story about what someone very different than I am introduces complications.  Effective models are clear and easily understood.  Effective social models are those in which everyone can imagine themselves a part of.  Everybody likes a good story.  We want to identify with the protagonist.  Ought and ought not stories are no different.   It takes a great deal of mental energy to try and comprehend the mind of a psychological stranger.  We therefore tend to imagine others as similar to ourselves.  The cognitive efficiency of doing so, combined with the handy utility of reinforcing the larger social normative narrative places pressure on us to simplify what are usually very complicated stories behind tragic actions of individuals.

While a more nuanced approach to reflection upon tragic human behaviors such as mass shootings, one that acknowledges the minds of such individuals as very different from our own, and assumes that there is indeed a causal mechanism in place that led to their actions, requires more patience and more mental effort to quiet our more primitive neuro-physiological responses, I believe it ultimately allows us to not only attain a more accurate picture of reality, but indeed to further a stronger social narrative that is based less on the weak bonds of illusion and naivete about human nature and more on a sophisticated understanding of what it means for all of us to be human, fully-caused - and flawed - souls.  We are thus ever more prepared in very real ways for active compassion and calm wisdom about the tragedies of human behavior.  We no longer need to bother with the empty and nihilistic feelings that come from pointless questions such as "Why would any one do such a thing?", and instead allow ourselves to experience the tragedy as we would any other natural calamity, without unnecessary blame but instead a singular focus on natural grief and constructive reflection upon what we as a society might be able to do to limit such future tragedies.



For those interested in exploring more of what the Naturalistic wordview has to say about free will and human behavior, check out Tom Clarke's excellent Naturalism.org

Half-Measures

Map of Poverty (red) by location in San Francisco

The New York Times reports that a number of school districts across the country are moving ahead with plans to extend the school calendar, the reasoning being that poor kids need extra time in school to catch up with their middle class peers.

I'm not necessarily opposed to this in theory.  But I was struck by a line in the piece that is emblematic of current thinking in education, which tends to overlook the profound impact of family and peer interaction on cognitive and behavioral norms.  Advocates of extended school days claim, the author writes, that

"poor students tend to have less structured time outside school, without the privilege of classes and extracurricular activities that middle-class and affluent children frequently enjoy."

While this is generally true, these things have little to do with the cause of the achievement gap.  To the extent that we emphasize these particular inequalities in societal capital, we miss more salient inequalities, such as the effects of things like family stress (due to any number of problems associated with poverty, such as lack of access to health care, job issues, etc.), poor parenting, lack of parental education resulting in diminished cognitive and vocabulary development. 

We also miss what is maybe one of the most powerful drivers of the achievement gap, which is the effect of concentrated poverty, in which those with the least societal capital are segregated into geographic and social concentrations.  Neighborhood class segregation means schools become highly segregated by class, and a variety of social norms become prevalent. 

This is all, of course, a function of our capitalist system wherein property markets reflect class divisions.  It is a system that isn't going away any time soon.  Apart from experiments in bussing that might correct for class segregation, schools will likely be segregated for the foreseable future.  Extended school days have their benefits, as do the provision of extra-curricular activities for poor children.  But we must not fool ourselves into thinking that half-measures such as these are anywhere sufficient to remedy what are profoundly larger inequalities that result in an oppressive dynamic across classes that perpetuate social inequality of societal capital formation lasting not only for lifetimes of students but across generations. 

A proper assessment of student need in emotional, cognitive, health, and relational domains is needed.  From there, we can build a system of interventions that is truly appropriate to the task of rectifying the deeper inequalities in societal capital that result from a capitalist system which is in large part driven by the exploitation of these inequalities.

Stuck in Society With You

Libertarian Mathew Kahn argues that climate change is real, however in our attempts to adapt to it, we ought not incentivize irrational choices, such as building levees so that people can continue to live in low-lying areas.

Humans are incredibly irrational decision makers.  Assuming they are not underlies our greatest tendencies to apologize for inequality and injustice.  We tell ourselves, "It is their own fault.  They could have done differently.  They made a rational choice."  Yet again and again, we see that people do not.  Any businessman who has ever depended on advertising knows this well.  Any politician who has calculated his message knows this.  Any one who has struggled with diet, a budget, or quitting smoking knows this.

The problem is that it is near impossible to understand the irrational drivers of our own behavior.  With great work, we can find ways to counteract this irrationality, but it is largely in the darkness that we work.  God knows what it is that is driving you to take that bite of the fattening donut?  Your bad childhood?  The time you spent reading Zorba the Greek?  An impulsive temperament?  All the brain research and psychology that exists can only give us the faintest hints.  The fact is that the causal mechanisms at work in any given second, when each of our billions of neurons involved in the choice is firing off with its 7000 connections, making up the entirety of consciousness and unconsciousness, is unfathomable.

We learn to counteract the irrationality, in order to supposedly act more rationally.  Yet are we really acting more rationally, or have we simply been able to design habits for ourselves that have out-maneuvered the negative impulses?  "Rationality" is merely shorthand for *choosing the correct option*. 

In a fundamental way, society can be thought of as a vast, evolving system of habit formation.  At the individual level, we feel very rational and "in control".  But at the macro level, patterns emerge that tell a very different story.  Instead of individual, rational actors we see the products of systems such as family, peer relations, education, government, and social norms that conspire to design not only an individual's ability to make correct choices, but - more foundational still - an individual's ability to design for himself the ability to make correct choices.  Thus, the choice as whether to eat the donut or not is dependent not only on an individual's choice, but the individual's prior ability to have designed for himself the ability to make that choice.  For instance, after week three of having successfully fought the 8am donut cravings, the choice to not eat the donut will be far easier than it was on day one.  (I'm not actually hip to diet design, but you get my point: successful routines for habit formation are successful because they are routines, not individual, isolated choices).

So, does this mean that no one ever ought be held accountable?  Should we all get to make base, easy, immediately gratifying decisions with no concern for external effects, with the excuse that we had no control?  This is generally the first response many have to the argument I have presented.  Yet this is a case in which patient, nuanced thinking is called for!  If you will recall, I spoke of the element of social design in individual decision-making.  Just as we would set for ourselves a course of habit formation that we hope will bring about correct decisions, so too we set for society a course of policy that we hope will bring about correct social behavior.  So too we design our formal and informal social institutions.  The idea is to look ahead and put in place systems that we hope will flourish.  This utilitarianism makes the question of blame somewhat irrelevant.  Policies ought be designed that foster, through the mechanics of incentives, social good. 

If the question was mere utility, it could be answered by either side of the aisle.  It could mean lowering taxes on the "job-creators", harsh sentencing for criminals, or letting residents in low-lying areas suffer rising tides without assistance - the right-wing model.  Or it could mean a more left wing emphasis on the benefits of redistribution, leniency, or shared burdens.  To the extent that these are subjective, evidence based controversies, the chips will fall where they will.

But what is removed from the equation is the moral posturing that has traditionally been wrapped up in left vs. right politics: no one is to blame.  So, even if we will all benefit from "job-creators" getting tax breaks, they are not inherently morally superior by their good works.  They have merely been the recipients of social circumstance that have allowed them - being in the right place at the right time - to do good things.  We can argue until the cows come home about the extent to which their work is actually good, and how much money is the right incentive for them to continue whatever it is they are doing.  But in the end, they are products of *us*, as the saying might go, "we built them".

And so too did we build those who, at the other end of the spectrum, we now see are playing out what society has designed for them in the form of irrational, self-indulgent or poorly-planned behavior.  We can also argue about the extent to which these people's behavior is all that bad, or whether by circumstance it appears so (the "negligent mother" may indeed be working two jobs and thus have no ability to look after her delinquent son).  But regardless, again, "we built them".  So when designing policies that, in the interest of deterrence, or disincentivization, will create hardship on individuals caught in such a tangled web of causality, we must admit that, as they are not the originators of their actions, rather society is to blame, their hardship is a form of Earthly purgatory. 

It may allow us to sleep easier at night believing that the many who suffer do so at their own choice.  But it is a convenient fiction. 

I confess much of this argument is aimed squarely at the right, who though at times concede some degree of social determinism, generally downplay it, if not deny it completely.  After all, who then, if not government is going to help enfranchise those whom society has failed to give an equal design?  The utilitarian case for less government action is rather weak.  And, more noticeably, a great portion of right-wing framing is not utilitarian at all, but rather a direct appeal to an assumed agency ("I built it"), or merely a sense of unfairness at the notion of social design - redistribution is unfair because well, "I built it".  The truth is that, were government indeed pared down to only its most basic elements, poverty and class-mobility would not suddenly cease, or even diminish.  The supposed moral hazard in provision of social services, or even such things as student loan forgiveness - as former candidate Romney complained about -  is a convenient excuse for a callousness that comes from not seeing individuals as determined by social design, whose ability to make rational choices is constrained by a prior ability to develop in themselves this ability, and so on, outwards into the fabric of socialization.

So I'm all for utilitarian incentives.  But when their effect is serious hardship in the lives of real people, we must ask ourselves if there was not another, better way to have both incentivized good choices, without having allowed such trauma to have occurred.

Have Faith in Atheism

It must be nice.

That is, having faith in God to pull you through.  Having faith that there is a plan for you, having faith that there is a meaning in the universe and a reason for everything.

Of course, no one is without doubt.  Even the most devout believers must at times struggle to hold on to their faith.  But they have a faith to hold on to.  They have a deep and enduring story that, at least in theory, accounts for everything in their lives.  It tells of a universe designed with them in mind, with special details and guarantees that promise not only an ultimate reward in the afterlife, but a better life now.  It spins tragedy into harmony, grief into glory, pain into love.  There may not be any specific answer to specific problems, but in faith it is promised that a deeper purpose exists, and faith will carry one through.

Unfortunately, I have no such reassurances.  As an Atheist, I have no reason to believe that there is any higher purpose to my life.  The universe was not designed with me in mind.  It simply exists, according to a relatively limited set of physical laws.  These laws have set in motion an unbelievably vast and complex series of interactions, my body and mind composed of elements forged in the ebb and flow of stellar supernovae, brought together by interactions of gravity and electromagnetics, propelled by energies as distant as the Milky Way galaxy within which our Sun orbits, and as close as  the very bonds that hold my sub-atomic particles together.  Within this vast cosmic dance, I do my thing.

So, what is "my thing", and more importantly, why do I do it?  A question for the ages, right?  What is the meaning of life?  What is the purpose of life?  Having already declared my Atheism, I have already submitted that there is no purpose.

Seven years ago, I tried to kill myself by overdosing on prescription pills.  For twenty five years I have gone about my daily life in varying degrees of chronic pain.  Sometimes it feels like the walls are closing in all around me. It is all I can do to focus my mental powers like invisible rods and struts, holding back the vice grip of gnawing muscle tension.  At other times the pain is barely noticeable, lurking in the background but easily ignored.  My life has been torn apart; who knows how it could have been had I not had that surfboard accident in 1989.

In my darkest moments - which thankfully, are much further far and in-between than they used to be before the suicide came as somewhat of a watershed - I do not have God to comfort me.  My footsteps are my own.  I cannot bend my knee and take solace in a faith that there is a purpose to my pain.  There is no "lesson" that I am to learn.  There were no sins that I am paying for now, redeemable for a ticket into heaven when I die.  There is only the cold machinery of the universe, of which I have been on the receiving end of misfortune. 

It is true that we all need purpose.  I know as well as anyone what it feels like to reach the end of the tether which attaches me to my will to live.  We need a reason to live.  We need a reason to push on despite horrible pain, anguish and tragedy.  We cannot live without purpose.  Purpose is what gives our lives beauty and reminds us in moments of challenge that there is much to be thankful for.  Purpose is what drives us to be better, more honest, more caring, more supportive people, to do better things, to set ambitious goals and struggle to accomplish them.  Without purpose, our lives become aimless and superficial, stumbling over minor obstacles and sidetracking us towards short-term satisfactions.

If there is no God, or supernatural story within which our lives are fixed, which gives ultimate purpose to our lives, carrying us through the pain and propelling us towards the fulfillment of our best natures, how is it that the Atheist is not destined for all that accompanies a life devoid of purpose?

Some might take solace in the notion that it is Atheism itself which destroys purpose.  After all, how can one ever prove that there is no God, or supernatural force that guides our destiny?  Partly a semantic issue, Atheism is not incompatible with such agnosticism.  It can as easily be said that one can never really prove a negative.  Two plus two may equal four this time, but no one can know the future.  Just because there is no evidence for God at all, and an inexhaustible supply of evidence for causal mechanisms in the natural world that need no creator to be explained.  Aside from the creation of natural laws themselves, we have every reason to believe they are enough in and of themselves to explain everything that exists in the universe.  Agnosticism should be the basis not only for supernatural questions, but our stance towards reality itself.  However, it is merely a baseline.  Acting with purpose requires so much more.  While nothing may be able to be completely disproven, we live in a practical world and Occam's Razor requires us to make practical decisions.  I may not know that two plus two will always equal four, but I can't sit around waiting to find out.  There is just as little purpose in agnosticism as there is in Atheism.

While Atheism can give us no purpose, it makes a stronger statement about purpose in general: that we make our own purpose.  In fact, in Atheism we see that all religious faiths (all but one of them being untrue, by default) are in fact man-made.  Therefore, the purpose that they purport to offer the faithful is man-made as well. 

Unfortunately, as a non-believing Atheist, I cannot simply adopt the purpose of the faithful as my own.  And thus I cannot collect the rewards - the comfort, the inspiration.  And so I must find my own.  Limited to the natural world, I cannot simply invent convenient stories, hiding away in the mysticism that "everything happens for a reason", knowing full well that it doesn't.  We offer no such hubris to the billions of animals that die of starvation or predation each year in the wild.  The reason?  That's life.

But maybe the stoicism of the natural world offers us a clue in how to make sense of a harsh reality.  It has been theorized that at root, humanity's existential despair comes from our larger cognitive capacity.  Our brains have evolved as sense-making machines.  And yet, when faced with senseless tragedy, we are at a loss.  Our brain is a hammer looking for a nail, and unfortunately one does not exist.

Or does it?  In our quest to make sense of the world, we have invented powerful mythologies with the ultimate goal of finding purpose where there seems to be none.  It is a highly useful story to tell, yet everyone knows all but one are wrong - Atheists simply claim that one is wrong too. 

But what if we had a story to tell about purpose that didn't require the supernatural.  Is there not enough to live for here on earth?  Is there not enough to get us through the tragedies, the hardships, to inspire us with ambition, to want to make the world a better place? 

When I look into the eyes of the woman I love, I feel a purpose.  When I laugh along with my two daughters, I feel purpose.  When my family and friends remind me of our shared memories, I feel a purpose.  When I see my smiling neighbor walking past my house everyday after returning from the bustop after work, I feel purpose.  When I pull weeds in my garden I feel purpose.  When I finish writing a new song with my guitar I feel a purpose.  When I listen to a new record that inspires me to go back and write again, I feel purpose.  The roadrunner that struts across my garden wall gives me a sense of purpose.  The way the tendrils of the grapevine reach out in slow motion for a new handhold, I feel purpose.

Of course, I will forget all of these things.  I will become overwhelmed.  I will allow negative thoughts to creep over my consciousness and push away all of the good things in my life.  But time will pass, and I will overcome.  I will be reminded of all of these things that give me purpose, and I will embrace them.  I will have faith in their ability to change my life.  I will have faith that they do indeed exist, that I will come to feel their effects again.  These things are real.  They exist in the natural word.  I can touch them.  I can make real connections with them.  I have faith in these things, and through them, I have faith in Atheism.

Homophobia is Irrelevant

After the recent election, it is increasingly clear that America has reached a tipping point in its acceptance of homosexuality as something natural, normal, healthy and acceptable.  Voters in Maine and Maryland approved same-sex marriage, and in Wisconsin the first openly gay US senator was elected.  Of course, the country remains divided, with gay acceptance being very limited among certain groups, especially in the Southern states.  But looking back over the last two decades, the progress of the gay rights movement has been rather stunning.

Gay rights is commonly compared with the anti-racist civil rights movement, which has now reached the point where it is entirely socially unacceptable to advocate against the equal treatment of ethnic and racial groups.  On its face, the similarities are obvious: an historically discriminated against minority group, subjected to irrational, unscientific hostility by a majority group whose main argument rests simply in an appeal to tradition.  Like blacks, gays have routinely been terrorized, ostracized, oppressed, discriminated against both informally and in law.  Pseudo-scientific theories have been invented to justify bigotry.

Yet proponents of discrimination against gays still cling to one key difference between gay rights and civil rights based on gender or race.  While interpretations of religious text have for centuries been used to justify the oppression of women and minorities, viewing them as deserving status second-class citizens, they have largely been abandoned as backward and misguided.  This owes in large part to the paucity of clear references in religious texts to the subordination of these groups.  While with some work, cases can be made for interpretations that support bigoted views, modern progressive opinion, at least in the West, has largely abandoned such explicit justification.  Discrimination surely still exists, as minority and female representation in positions of power is still limited.  However, defense of this status quo rarely appeals to religious text, instead preferring the subtleties of other cultural traditions or social norms.

With homosexuality, things are quite different.  Religious texts still stand as the primary justification for viewing homosexuals as second-class citizens.  The reason for this is clear.  Religious texts, especially the Old Testament, very clearly condemns homosexuality as specifically immoral and unnatural.  Combined with centuries of unquestioned cultural norms of anti-gay discrimination, the verses seem clear as day.  While many other practices are explicitly prescribed in religious texts that would be seen as beyond the pale (at least in most societies), their practice ended so long ago that it is easy to think of them as antiquated and retrograde. 

So it may go with interpretations of religious texts that explicitly view homosexuality as sinful.  However, especially in light of the passion with which so many conservative religious groups seem to have invested themselves in the condemnation of homosexuality not only as an individual sin, but the acceptance of which is emblematic of a larger social and cultural decline word-wide, religious-based opposition to homosexuality seems especially intransigent.

It is undeniable that there has always been a component of hatred to the tradition of anti-gay cultural norms.  Anti-black, or anti-female sentiment has always been expressed not only in codified discrimination, but in literal violence against those groups, whether through rape or lynchings.  History is replete with justifications of bigotry generally rooted in nothing more profound than simple feelings of disgust at some innate quality of women or blacks.  This disgust is a feeling that becomes so powerful that it gives rise to outward expressions of discrimination or even physical violence.

However, the interesting question is where this feeling has come from.  It certainly isn't something innate.  Rather, it is a social construction.  While there is good reason to believe that as a species, we have a tendency towards a fear of the "other" in cultural relations, there is also plenty of evidence that through social construction, we can overcome this fear by mitigating it with patterns of cultural conduct that both pre-emptively inhibit what may be perfectly natural, yet irrational dispositions towards xenophobia and the fear of the unknown.  Further, we can establish norms of social and self-reflection that seek to provide a continual "check" on current social norms, ensuring that they are rational, moral and just.  Looking over the centuries, it isn't hard to see an arc of moral progress in which old social norms have died away, and been replaced by enlightened perspectives.  As such, old "disgusts" that we may have felt in prior centuries past - say, at seeing a woman bathing in a two piece swimsuit or driving a car, a child arguing with a parent, a black man kissing a white woman - would be hard to imagine today.  Their social context has changed, and the construction of assumptions and expectations has been altered in such a way that disgust has been de-activated.

Yet in churches and radio stations across the country, the social construction of homosexuality as immoral and sinful is being activated on a regular basis.  While at the same time it is being deconstructed by a continuous march of reality - one in which homosexuals engage in public activity no differently, and with no different effects than heterosexuals - there exist wide swaths of society that refuse to acknowledge its benevolence.

With feminism and minority rights, there was less for the religiously conservative to lose.  Little in religious texts explicitly calls them inherently sinful.  Religious interpretations that called for the subjugation of women and minorities could be slowly forgotten, or at least, as in the case of women, re-imagined in more benign terms - in rhetoric women could indeed be powerful, however the more enlightened among them would make an honest attempt to stick closer to home and define themselves within the context of traditional marriage.  Having a female or black president wasn't necessarily a threat to civilization as we know it, as long as the general order of patriarchal and Christian supremacy was assumed.  The union of man and woman, under God producing the next generation of Christian youth was intact.

But homosexuality undermines this vision.  Not only do religious texts repeatedly describe homosexuality as outright unholy, but as a social norm, it calls into question the larger holy alliance of male and female procreation under God.  This institutional construction is seen as at the very core of the faith itself.  Breaking it would call into question the fundamental purpose of life on Earth, under God's plan.  The implications extend far beyond homosexuality: sex-before-marriage, a woman's place in the home, a parent's relationship with his child, traditional gender roles - all of these are possibly under threat.  Nothing less than a total realignment could possibly be in store if one were to go down the road towards accepting homosexuality as something neither sinful nor immoral.  As Maggie Gallagher, prominent conservative critic of gay marriage, wrote apocalyptically after the recent election, "The Obama electorate defeated marriage."  Gays didn't win marriage.  Heterosexuals lost it - the entire institution
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This is not to say that a massive shift cannot occur.  History is filled with examples of religious interpretation shifting alongside social changes.  Plenty of religious people today have found ways to reconcile an understanding of homosexuality as something perfectly natural with their faith.  But unlike gender and racial equality, homosexuality is going to cause much more soul-searching.

In the meantime, there will be a debate as to whether religious intransigence represents mere principled devotion to faith, or a post-hoc religious justification for homophobic bigotry.  This is a question that is impossible to answer clearly.  We just don't have the opportunity to peer into the mind of our fellow man with the resolution required to determine from where his convictions arise.  Without a textual case to be made, when anti-gay feelings are expressed, there is little to explain them other than simple homophobic disgust.  Yet religious texts, by definition, are powerful sources of ideological guidance. 

The original purpose of gender and racial equality arose not from rational, doctrinal interpretation, but from the supremely personal, human experience of inequality and injustice.  This was the only truth that mattered - that which was real and felt in the minds and hearts of millions.  Despite religious prevarication, so the truth of gay rights lies not in the words on any printed page, but rather in the lived experience of millions.  The only question, in the end, is whether or not to trust in the loving bonds we cannot help but feel for our fellow man.  When asked, in an honest, deliberate comparison of our feelings of hateful disgust versus our capacity for empathy, empathy will win out, especially in the context of widespread social pressure.   However, the attempt must be made, either forced by social pressure or otherwise.  Will the tide of gay acceptance reach the church walls, overwhelming calculation and fear with love and truth?  Or will polarization drive the walls ever higher?  My guess is, eventually, the former.  But given the implications - real or perceived - for religious conservatism's driving against the liberalism it sees homosexuality as representing, the road will be a long one.

Pinning Down Will

A big problem in discussions of free will is language.  One of the sticking points is often the way we talk about the meaning of will, or volition.  The common intuition that we all have free will is based on the observation that most choices we make are in the context of there being many possible options.  I could have eggs for breakfast, but I could also choose to do an endless number of other things.  I have the freedom to decide which.

In explaining how a computer works, it would make sense to say the computer "chooses" from a set of variables, according to a predetermined set of parameters. When IBM's Watson computer famously competed and won against Jeopardy's best contestants, his responses were accompanied by the relative probabilities his system gave alternate responses.  Did Watson have the "freedom" to make other responses?  No, he did not.  He chose the response that made the most "sense" to him, based on predetermined parameters.

I think it is important to describe will as the act of merely choosing between competing options. In doing so, we make the notion of freedom irrelevant, instead describing the fact that choices are dependent upon predetermined parameters, ultimately arising from impulses outside of, and prior to, our conscious awareness. Just as no one would describe Watson's decisions as anything like "free", no one should describe our choices as such either. The only difference is that our impulses are infinitely more complex and (presently) unknowable.  

Yet to the degree that those impulses are knowable, they are deterministic.  That is, when analyzing why we make any particular choice, wherever we look we see a will that is dependent on predetermined parameters.