Thanks a lot, American
Political Science Associations Executive Council, for making the professional
lives of specifically political scientists and generally anybody in higher education
harder by making us look stupid.
First, I would like to
apologize to the reading public, and Gov. Bobby
Jindal, legislators, and state Supreme Court justices, on behalf of political
scientists everywhere who can think logically and for themselves for the
ignorance shown by the APSA
Council’s letter to these policy-makers, criticizing the state for its
prohibition of same sex “marriages” and saying it will not hold its annual
meeting again in the state until that changes. Believe me, many of us are not
as intellectually lacking or divorced from the real world as the letter implies
political scientists generally are.
That meeting, occurring
this week in New Orleans, was planned with the city as its site almost a decade
ago, before the state by an overwhelming popular vote amended its constitution
to make sure marriage was defined as a union of one man and one woman. By 2008,
some APSA members got around to protesting the arrangement, but the
organization, which has backed out of other host cities because of its liberal
orthodoxy, decided to stay to prevent disruption.
So the letter was its mea culpa with exculpatory explanation
to the left and a feeble attempt to get back at being trumped by reality. But
to the wider world, it comes off as complete whining, half-baked idiocy.
It claims that there now
exist “discriminatory burdens on same-sex couples,” apparently because “partners
who hold legal rights, through marriage, civil unions, or other forms of
committed care for each other, now face unanticipated challenges and undue
burdens when visiting Louisiana.” One would hope better from those whose life
work is engaged in research and learning easily could discover that a
decision-making rights that one person may have granted to another can be done
through a simple durable power of attorney (look on the Internet for the
version applicable to your state’s laws, which are recognized in all other
states). There is nothing undue about that, nor should this be unanticipated
since the majority of states have standards very similar to Louisiana’s on this
issue.
Thus, the complaint that “Some
of our members who are in same-sex relationships believe that attending the
conference could potentially place them in peril if a partner were not allowed
to make a medical decision in an emergency situation,” is entirely without merit,
and if the APSA, in contrast to the content of the note, wanted to perform a
useful service, it would assist its members that have this false fear in
learning about the legal instruments that moot this concern.
Further in the letter, “APSA
stands in support of the human rights of scholars and in opposition to
discrimination in all of its forms.” Presumably, this means it considers opposition
to same-sex marriage as “discrimination” against a “human right.” The latter
appears to come from jurisprudence such as the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of
Human Rights, although that document does not define marriage.
Yet even if we apply
liberally a definition of marriage to include any kind of coupling where at
least one being involved is human and thereby make same sex couples eligible to
enjoy this right, it is the state, and in the United States its first order
divisions known as states, which defines what a state of marriage means for
legal purposes (for religious purposes, any definition will do, but has no
legal status). And in the states, it means that a man and a woman in a married condition
derive certain advantages bestowed by the state for legal purposes.
But there is a reason the
state grants these privileges: because the marriage of one man and woman
creates the optimal conditions by which to perpetuate the state. This assists
society as a whole through creation of successors through reproduction and in a
manner that brings into being the most productive citizenry with the least
amount of costs to support them. That’s why these advantages are not made
available to unmarried couples, whose relative lack of stability, if there is
any at all, makes less likely the production of children and children whose
upbringing in that condition disproportionately reduces their life prospects
and increases the chance they will be less productive for society and increasingly
dependent upon the state.
That’s especially why these
benefits philosophically should be denied to any combination that is not one
man and one woman, because reality trumps ideology: these alternative combinations
cannot produce children, so why should the state subsidize this behavior when
it does nothing to aid society? And even in the cases of where one man and one
woman, because of age, health, etc; cannot have children, conferring legal
benefits from marriage still makes sense because the state has an interest in their
service as examples of loving partnerships to encourage other married couples who
have the biological capability and will to reproduce. No matter how much the
fact is ignored, simply enough people of the same sex cannot couple to produce
children, so the state is under no obligation to encourage such unions.
So the APSA Council is
being disingenuous here in the wording it chose, as I don’t think its members
would be in favor of laws that allowed the state to solemnize same sex marriage
but with no additional legal benefits. What it really means is it considers as “discrimination”
the state not allowing same sex marriages that also don’t have the same
benefits as do those of couples who have the biology to produce children. But
to argue this shows a profound ignorance of what constitutes “discrimination.”
In reality, policy
universally discriminates, because it makes decisions about how political
resources are distributed. More narrowly, to use a specific example, there is a
tremendous discrimination in how societies treat murderers, sending them to
prison for a long time if not taking their lives. But it’s justified because of
their actions. So in a pejorative sense, “discrimination” only occurs when it
is unjust, when equals are being treated unequally.
Yet in denying the same benefits
to same sex couples as to couples of one man and one woman, the unequal
treatment is justified, because of the different and unequal roles that each
play in maintenance of the state. Thus, the Council tries to redefine illegitimately
“discrimination” to mean it occurs when policy does not meet its ideological
purity test, rather than be determined by a reasoned search for the truth about
the nature of just distributions.
Learned individuals should
be disappointed by the inadequacy of the argumentation in the note, and the
political scientists among them embarrassed to be seen as associated with such
sloppy thinking. Yet all of higher education in Louisiana suffers as a result,
for the thinking members of the public read something like that and conclude
that cuts to higher education in the state brought about by budgetary problems and
encouraged by a state fiscal structure that channels cuts in worse times to
universities and colleges aren’t so harmful after all. They must think that if the
letter’s kind of reasoning is what goes on in and gets taught from the academy
that not much is being accomplished there nor is the taxpayer getting his money’s
worth from it.
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