See here, where she refers to the foreigners who are coming to Iraq to join the insurgency as "freedom fighters," a term that I take it is a term of approbation for a person and his cause. (The statement is in an interview off the bus with a bearded interviewer — I'm told it's Mark Knoller of CBS — I'm about 1/4 of the way into the file; I wish I could give a minute/second mark, but I can't seem to get it to appear for me when the file is in this format.) I haven't been following the Cindy Sheehan story much, since I'm not sure that there's a lot of there there. But this particular item really struck me in a way that her attacks on President Bush did not.

Needless to say, I sympathize a great deal with Ms. Sheehan's loss, but when she's voluntarily made herself into a political figure, it seems to me that her views are legitimately open to criticism. Thanks to WorldNetDaily for the link, but I've checked it myself.

I'll be on KQED-FM (San Francisco) in a few minutes (starting at 9:05 or so Pacific time), talking about the Supreme Court confirmation process.

Pat Robertson's recent suggestion — now recanted — that the U.S. government assassinate Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez led me to think a bit more about this subject. Let me pass along some tentative thoughts (especially tentative as to point 2 below), and see what the rest of you think.

1. Morality: Government-sponsored assassination is essentially an act of war; it's an attempt to affect another nation's government policy by military force. Nonetheless, if an invasion is morally justified, it seems to me that an assassination is if anything more so. It would be an odd morality that allowed the killing of enemy soldiers, many of whom are personally morally innocent, but forbade the killing of their commander-in-chief — or even ostensibly civilian leaders of the enemy government — who may be morally culpable indeed.

Idi Amin was ultimately driven from power by a Tanzanian invasion (which was prompted by a Ugandan invasion of Tanzania, but would have been eminently justified even without that). If the Tanzanians or others could have stopped Amin's murders by assassinating Amin, and without killing any Ugandan soldiers, that would have been even better.

The same goes for many other tyrants, though naturally not for every leader you dislike: Just as invasions are unjustified in most certain circumstances, so are assassinations (especially of democratic leaders, where the people's self-government as well as the leader's right to live are implicated). My point is simply that assassinations are no morally worse than other acts of war, and likely morally better than many such acts.

(I don't know enough about Hugo Chavez to express a view on which category he falls into; I mentioned Chavez only because Robertson's remarks prompted me to post this, not because I have any views about him. I also set aside for purposes of this post questions about whether and when such assassinations violate either domestic law or international law; the "morality" inquiry is about whether they're inherently wrong, not just about whether they violate the legal rules, since presumably we can change any executive orders of statutes, or withdraw from any treaties, that we think are too constraining. For a couple of past posts about one corner of the legal question, see here and here.)

[UPDATE: For whatever it's worth, George Stephanopoulos seems to take this view, too, in a Dec. 1, 1997 Newsweek article urging the assassination of Saddam Hussein.]

2. Practicality: The chief problems with assassination, it seems to me, are practical ones. First, assassination will only do so much — it will remove one person, but it may see him replaced with someone who is equally bad, or it may lead to a bloody fight for succession, which may yield more deaths of innocents than the tyrant was responsible for. Especially if the assassination is done for humanitarian reasons (which may sound odd, but as the Amin hypothetical shows, would be eminently plausible), a humanitarian would want to make sure that the act will really do more good than harm. In many (though not all) situations, an invasion is a much surer way of accomplishing your goals than an assassination would be.

Second, democracies have much more to lose from an increase in the number of foreign policy assassinations than do tyrannies. As best I can tell, foreign policy assassinations are quite rare, even among countries that are quite hostile to each other, to the point of war or near war.

This condition — perhaps a tacit understanding — is very good for democracies. Civilian leaders in democratic governments, including ones who have a great deal of power, are generally soft targets except at the very highest levels (e.g., President or Vice President): They are often seen in public, and they generally live as the people do. That's good; we want our political leaders to meet with ordinary citizens, and to live like ordinary citizens. In autocratic governments, power is generally much more centralized, and the few who have power can much more easily live in bunkers, and always be under heavy guard.

If a spate of foreign policy assassinations leads more countries (and nongovernmental groups) to adopt this tactic, tyrants could protect themselves to a considerable extent, with little effect on their ability to govern. What's more, they probably won't be much deterred by the risk of assassination, unless we can make the risk very high: They knew the job was very dangerous when they took it, and they are likely the sorts of people who can live quite well with this sort of risk.

On the other hand, politicians in democratic countries could protect themselves only through steps that would substantially change, and change for the worse, the way our democracies function. Also, quite a few democratic politicians might conclude that the job isn't worth the risk. Naturally, there will always be some who are willing to take the risk; but I'm not sure that we want that sort of self-selection effect, in which political positions are increasingly taken only by people who want them so much that they're willing to ignore mortal danger to get them.

Of course, this all presupposes that our attempts at assassinating others will lead others to assasinate us; and this may be a mistaken presupposition, because I suspect that most of our enemies and potential enemies aren't exactly animated by a sense of fair play here. Yet the fact is that, despite the softness of many of our targets (again, not the President or Vice President but many other important leaders), our enemies — even in past shooting wars — have not generally gone after them. Likely this was often because they feared retaliation on our part. But I suspect that there was a bit of a tacit deal involved there, and if I'm right, then some violations of the deal could lead the whole deal to break down. (And, yes, I know that there have been violations of the deal already; but sometimes such deals survive a few breaches, but fall apart once a tipping point is reached.)

This having been said, there will of course be exceptions. Hitler was an unusual enough figure even within Germany, and the worth of killing him was so great, that assassinating him would have been very much worthwhile (though also very hard, as many would-be German assassins learned). When we're fighting a broader war, the killing of high military and quasi-military officers may be necessary, and might not materially increase the risk of retaliation beyond what it would be in any case. Still, it seems to me that if you look at the big picture, the seemingly cheap step of assassination ("just take him out") may generally be much more expensive than it appears.

In any case, these are just some tentative thoughts — I'm most surely no expert on the question — and I'd love to hear what others think.

UPDATE: I use the term "assassinate" because I don't want to sugarcoat what would be happening — the deliberate killing of a particular person. But if you think that "assassinate" inherently carries a connotation of improper deliberate killing, just mentally replace the use of "assassinate" in my post with "targeted killing."

Dictionary definitions of the term in fact reflect this ambiguity in the term. Some define it using the term "murder," which generally means kill immorally or illegally; others define it using the term "kill," which doesn't carry that meaning. I generally lean towards the latter category: A deliberate attempt to kill Hitler would in my view be commonly called "assassination," though it would of course be morally praiseworthy. And I think that this is a common enough use of the term that saying "targeted killing" instead would make it sound like I was pussyfooting around the subject. But, again, if you think that assassination definitionally can't be permissible, just use the term targeted killing instead.

FURTHER UPDATE: Professor Bainbridge has a Catholic perspective on the issue.

I've long wondered about this question. Say that you normally tip 15% for normal good service in a full-service restaurant. How much should you tip in a restaurant where pretty much everyone eats from a buffet? The waiter takes your drink order, gets you the drink, and gets you the check; the waiter or the busboys clean up after you; the waiter or a busboy takes care of small condiments requests (e.g., to get a bottle of low-sodium soy sauce or stuff like that). Should it still be 15%? 10%, because the waiters do much less than full-service waiters do, and end up serving many more tables? 5%?

More to the point, what's the social norm? There's nothing magical about a 15% tip, or an 18% or 20% tip if some people prefer it — the important thing is that it's a social norm, and becomes part of the deal: You go to a normal restaurant, and you're essentially (morally, if not legally, though there's been one odd legal incident that I know of related to this) promising to pay the cost of the meal plus 15%, unless the waiter's poor service gives you good reason to undertip. What are you promising when you go to a buffet?

I'd love to hear people's views, especially on the descriptive what's-the-social-norm question.

UPDATE: If you're concerned about the waiter's income, keep in mind that because the waiter has to spend less time per table, he will probably be serving more tables. A waiter who is tipped 15% per order at a buffet service restaurant will thus end up making more for the same amount of total work (work per table x number of tables) than a waiter who is tipped 15% per order at a full service restaurant. (The busboys still work pretty much as hard per table, though, and I assume that the tip is split with the busboys, so you can't just proportionately reduce the tip by the reduction in the waiter's amount of work.)

On the other hand, I don't know to what extent this is taken into account in the base salary that the waiter is paid by the restaurant; that, I take it, turns on what the restaurant and the waiters expect the tips to be. And I also have no personal experience confirming my supposition that waiters at buffet restaurants serve more tables than at full-service restaurants, though I think my speculation on this is well-founded. So none of this proves that the rate should be below 15%, but it does suggest that the "buffet restaurant waiters need to live just like full-service restaurant waiters, so they should get the same percentage tip" argument is likely mistaken or at least incomplete.

The AP reports (thanks to The New Editor for the pointer):

Dr. Terry Bennett says he tells obese patients their weight is bad for their health and their love lives, but the lecture drove one patient to complain to the state.

"I told a fat woman she was obese," Bennett says. "I tried to get her attention. I told her, 'You need to get on a program, join a group of like-minded people and peel off the weight that is going to kill you.'" . . .

[The woman's] complaint, filed about a year ago, was initially investigated by a panel of the New Hampshire Board of Medicine, which recommended that Bennett be sent a confidential letter of concern. The board rejected the suggestion in December and asked the attorney general's office to investigate. . . .

"Physicians have to be professional with patients and remember everyone is an individual. You should not be inflammatory or degrading to anyone," said board member Kevin Costin. . . .

It's hard from the article to figure out exactly what the woman is complaining about; it may well be that Dr. Bennett said something harsher than what he's quoted as saying. (The complaints and other materials are apparently confidential, though if anyone has any more data on this, I'd love to hear it.) Still, if the account is correct, it's pretty troubling. And, more broadly, do we really need government regulation to keep doctors from being mean to their patients? (For a sense of the First Amendment issues raised by such regulations, by the way, see this post.)

UPDATE: Another article reports that Bennett "has 'an obesity lecture for women' that is a stark litany designed to get the attention of obese female patients. He said he tells obese women they most likely will outlive an obese spouse and will have a difficult time establishing a new relationship because studies show most males are completely negative to obese women." I can see how that would get some people upset, though I also see why the doctor might figure that this is the one way to get to people who haven't listened to his other advice. And it still seems to me that this isn't something the state medical board needs to be regulating.

might want to read my earlier posts trying to debunk the myth of the hyper-promiscuous median gay male (also here, here, here, and here), criticizing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell", arguing against the "nongenital sex is unnatural" argument, and arguing that even religious people who take Biblical injunctions seriously, but who believe in religious tolerance, should treat tolerance of gays and lesbians as equivalent to tolerance of other religions. I will be the first to say that I don't endorse all the things that many gay rights activists endorse; for instance, while I support same-sex marriage, I think it should be recognized by statute, not by judicial fiat. But if you treat everyone who doesn't completely agree with you, and sometimes even agrees with your adversaries, as an anti-gay bigot, you might want to ask how sound, fair, and effective an attitude like that is.

the relative risk of male homosexual sexual conduct: So some commenters to this post seem to think. To recap: My earlier post noted in passing that male homosexual sex is much more dangerous for the men than is heterosexual sex. To my surprise, three people e-mailed me with fairly detailed messages that either denied or minimized these risks. I decided to respond, because this is actually an important point, on which people need to know the facts.

1. But wait! A couple of the commenters decided that this must show some "ulterior motives" and some presumably sinister "agenda," because of course my statement was "so obvious" that there was no legitimate reason for mentioning it. I get three e-mails (which I noted in my original post) denying the accuracy of my claim. None seem to be from cranks — one is from a Ph.D. who's also a founding father of the gay rights movement, and the two others are from people who seem to be quite articulate, thoughtful, and generally well-informed. You'd think there'd be two pretty obvious motives for my responding: (A) I want to rebut what seem to be important and dangerous misconceptions. (B) I want to respond to people's criticism of my assertion. Apparently not.

OK, though, I confess: I am developing an ulterior motive in writing about this stuff. The more people tell me not to write about things that strike me as important and perfectly legitimate to write about, the more I'm tempted to write about them. If people are trying to cow others into not discussing this information, then it's all the more important that we remain uncowed.

2. Several commenters also argued that posting this information was somehow improper because it might be misused (for instance, because it would "play right into the hands of the anti-gay right").

Well, I'm an academic, and my sense of the academic ethos — or at least the best of that ethos — is that we try to publish the facts, even when the facts may be used by bad people in bad arguments as well as by good people in good arguments. (Yes, there are obvious exceptions, perhaps such as publishing information about how anyone can brew up smallpox in his kitchen; but the very extremeness of this example should remind us how narrow these exceptions are.)

Lots of information related to race, sex, sexual orientation, and more can be and has been misused by bad people. Yet reasoned inquiry and debate can't proceed without it. You can't think seriously about criminal justice and crime control without recognizing the racial disparities in crime. You can't think seriously about the causes of disproportionate representation of men and women in certain fields without at least considering whether men and women might on average have important biological differences that might explain some of this disproportion. You can't think seriously about what public health strategies are needed to fight AIDS, about whether various existing strategies are being conducted usefully and honestly, about whether it's proper for sperm banks or blood banks to screen out gay donors, about why AIDS infection patterns are so different in Africa and in the U.S. — or for that matter, about how careful one should be in one's own sex life, or whether (if one is a bisexual) one should experiment with homosexual sexual behavior — without knowing the data about the demographics of HIV.

If people misuse the data I posted, I'm sorry, in the sense that I wish they didn't do that. But I'm not the least bit sorry I posted it. These are tremendously important facts; literally life-or-death facts for some. I'm going to keep posting information like this, because I believe that keeping quiet about it does far more harm than good. And the more I see people trying to stop others from distributing this information, the more important it seems to me that it be distributed.

Some readers challenged my claim that there is "disproportionate and grave health danger from male homosexual activity" to men, compared to the danger from male heterosexual activity. I think this danger is tragic, and I very much hope that medical advances will lead to the danger's decreasing. All decent people should agree that it's tragic. (The bunk that we hear from some quarters about AIDS being God's punishment for homosexuality would suggest, as some wit put it, that lesbians must be God's chosen people, since their rates are apparently very low.) But it seems to me quite clear that this danger is very much there.

Reader Brian King, for instance, writes:

The fact is that male homosexuals having a one-night stand are more then twice as likely to practice safe sex then heterosexuals having a one-night stand. Given this, from a health point of view, you should think that it's preferable for a bisexual man to experiment with homosexuality, then to remain heterosexual. If the bisexual man in 2005 has sex with a male, that male has a 66% chance to demand a condom, while a female only has around a 33% chance to demand a condom. Ergo, pairing the bisexual with the male homosexual results in statistically safer sex then pairing the bisexual with the female.

Your reasoning is flawed because current STD rates are a comment on the safe sex practices of men 20 years ago. Gay men, in response to this crisis, have changed their behavior over the years. Now, gay men are the most informed people in the world about safe sex. . . .

[Quoting a study:] "From 1993 alone, nine different studies reported that two thirds of gay men were being primarily safe in locales as disparate as North Carolina, Britan, Australia, Pittsburgh, and San Fransisco. Yet, the national aids behavioral surveys surveyed heterosexual men and found: 'Among respondents with multiple partners, only 28% of men and 32% of women always use them (condoms) with secondary partners...in general, almost half the men and women with multiple partners never use condoms.' Another study compared gay and straight men and found gay condom use "twice as high.'" . . .

If gays are engaging in safe sex, that's wonderful. Nonetheless, even if one focuses on new (post-1993, and even more recent) HIV/AIDS cases among U.S. males, the majority are among gay men (if one uses means of acquisition as an admittedly rough proxy for sexual orientation). Gay men are only roughly 4% of the male population. This means that gay men are still disproportionately much more likely than straight men to get infected, by a factor of 20 or more. Even if gay men are using condoms more often, they may be engaging in riskier sexual behavior (receptive anal sex as opposed to insertive genital sex), and (probably more importantly) they're having sex with people who are much more likely to be infected. The CDC, for instance, reports that of new AIDS diagnoses among males in 2003 (which I suspect are mostly people infected after 1993), nearly 18,000 of the about 32,000 involved "male-to-male sexual contact" as the primary risk factor, and nearly 2,000 more involved "male-to-male sexual contact and injection drug use." Only a little over 5000 involved heterosexual contact as the primary risk factor. The Texas data for new HIV diagnoses (see PDF p. 12) among males in 2003 is similar: 1700 of the 3500 involved male/male sex, plus 150 more involved male/male sexual contact plus drugs as risk factors. 270 were from heterosexual contact, though another 1100 were other/risk not reported, so maybe there were more heterosexual acquisitions there.

Another reader suggests that it's a mistake to focus solely on HIV, and it's better to look at estimated lifespans — if gay male lifespans are on average the same as straight male lifespans (presumably controlling for various demographic factors), then that means that homosexual activity as actually practiced is on average less dangerous than heterosexual activity. Dr. Franklin Kameny (a leading gay rights activist of long standing) writes that "Homosexual sexual conduct is not dangerous, and its alleged danger is being MUCH over-stated and exaggerated here. As an 80-year-old gay man, sexually active for some 50 years and less so for well over a decade before that, and in good health for my age, I can certify to such lack of danger. Most of the founding fathers of the gay movement died in their 70s, 80s, and 90s."

A lifespan comparison study would be a great study to see, but I don't think it's ever been done right, and it would be very hard to do right. In the meantime, let's look again at the Texas data for (see PDF p. 12). The data suggests that there were about 50,000 HIV and AIDS cases among male homosexuals in Texas since 1980 (again, if you use method of infection as an admittedly rough proxy for the infected person's sexual orientation). The population of Texas is roughly 20 million; that leaves 10 million males; and if roughly 4% of Texans are homosexual or bisexual (working off the national percentage, that's about 400,000.

Naturally, we'd need to add to that 400,000 in some measure because of transience — there were people moving in and out of the state, and dying and being born since 1980, and since such people are counted in the AIDS and HIV cases, they should be counted in the population data as well (and unfortunately I don't know of any data that can tell us precisely how many people have lived in Texas in 1980, as opposed to those who live there now). But even if we double that, we still have a huge mortality / HIV infection rate — not at African levels, thankfully, but over 5% of all Texan homosexuals and bisexuals — and one that's likely underestimated, because presumably many people who have HIV haven't yet been tested and therefore aren't included in the HIV statistics.

So male homosexual activity does seem much more dangerous, on average, than male heterosexual activity. As I've said before, this danger is tragic. But it seems to me a grave mistake to deny this danger.

The UPI reports:

Turkmenistan President Saparmurat [for life] Niyazov has deemed recorded music a negative influence on society and banned it from public events, TV and weddings.

Niyazov has already banned opera and ballet from the former Soviet state, saying they were unnecessary, the BBC reported. . . .

He has also banned car radios, closed all hospitals except those in the capital and renamed calendar months after his relatives, the BBC said.

This account suggests that the calendar renaming plan is a bit more complex than that, but it still prompts a puzzle -- though the answer should be so obvious that it's really more a reminder than a puzzle: What other (and likely much more influential) month renaming plan does this echo?

Also, another question: Does the music ban cover Living Colour's Cult of Personality?

Thanks to Daniel Schmutter for the pointer.

BarcePundit points to an amusing video.

News.com reports:

Oklahoma prosecutors will soon weigh whether to take up criminal charges against a former mayoral candidate accused of libeling a longtime state politician on his Web forum.

In a police report filed Aug. 16, former state senator and convicted felon Gene Stipe charged that Harold King had published false information about Stipe and his family on his Web forum, the McAlester Watercooler, said Capt. Darrell Miller of the McAlester, Okla., police force. The nature of the information was not disclosed. . . .

Many people have argued that criminal libel laws are unconstitutional, but the Supreme Court has never so held. The government would have to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the statement was false, and that the defendant knew it was false, or at least knew there was a substantial chance it was false and didn't adequately investigate that possibility. (This at least would be the rule for statements on matters of public concern.) The Court's most recent decision about this, Garrison v. Louisiana (1964), basically required this sort of proof, but did not go further and suggest that all criminal libel laws are per se impermissible. The article goes on to say that "[A]ccording to a 2003 study by the Media Law Resource Center[, a] total of eight suits -- or about 10 percent of all criminal libel cases [presumably over the last few decades] -- have involved Web postings by nonprofessional media. In half of those Web cases, including the three most recent ones, the charges were dropped. One of those recent cases led to a Utah criminal libel law being declared unconstitutional."

For reasons I can't explain, a couple of days ago I remembered the last stanza of this poem, so I decided I'd pass it along:

Orpheus

I was a fine musician
When I was back in Greece;
I soothed the very rocks, when we
Retrieved the Golden Fleece.
Folks liked my cool persona,
I played my lute with flair --
My voice rang out with quirky drawl;
I pleased the people, one and all,
With what the critics liked to call
My sad and wistful air.

I met the fair Eurydice
When she was seventeen;
And when I led her out of Hell,
Charmed even Proserpine.
I played, that Ixion's fiery wheel
Stood still, for once, that night.
I strained to hear the muted sound
Of footfalls on the quiet ground --
And she was gone when I turned round,
As I returned to light.

One night, I heard that sound again
For which I often yearn --
The tread of silent footsteps,
And I didn't dare to turn.
I learned that bitter lesson once
Upon the road from Hell.
I felt a blow upon my head;
I tumbled, hurt but not quite dead --
An altogether different tread
Than that I'd known so well.

The man who stole my wallet then
Was scared and ran away;
If only he had used his knife,
I'd be with her today.
We'd stroll around forever
In the sweet infernal spring....
In Hades, where the palms are rife,
We'd afterlive as man and wife --
But I have been condemned to life.
The Fates won't cut my string.

I've known that Hell was beautiful
Since we were first apart;
I can't imagine brimstone
In the dwelling of my heart.
With Sisyphus and Tantalus
I'd drink a glass of beer;
With fingers that would never tire,
Accompanied by Pluto's choir,
I'd play sweet music on my lyre
When she and I are near.

The gods today are strange to me;
My gods are out of reach.
I built a shrine to Jupiter
Last week on Venice Beach.
The flame grew dim and flickered out.
Could Hades be no more?
Apollo sings no more to me.
If they are gone, then so is she.
The Styx flows to a vacant sea
By a deserted shore.

I was glad to read Orin's post below, and had a few thoughts about it.

A. I don't think that the golf analogy quite captures things. To make it closer, you'd have to posit the following:

1. Some fraction of people doesn't just "get a great deal of pleasure from golf," but feels that playing golf is very important to their happiness and personal fulfillment (in the way that people feel that love, romance, or even an erotic relationship to the right person is very important to their happiness and personal fulfillment), and that not playing golf would cause them deep misery.

2. Those people encounter lots of social pressure not to play golf, though many of them overcome that pressure, start playing golf, and feel their lives are far better as a result.

3. Those people suspect that there are others like them who are still being victimized by this social pressure, and who are likely to be miserable (if they're mostly homosexual in orientation) -- or at least not as likely to find the right person for them (if they're roughly evenly bisexual in orientation -- as a result.

The closest sports analogy, I suspect, is to women who found sports to be a very important part of their lives, who found sports despite having been pushed away from it because they were girls, and who suspect that other girls who could be very happy playing sports are likewise being pushed away from it. Even this doesn't capture the importance of love and sex to people's lives, and the degree to which society discourages homosexuality; and the one other difference is that many people think all girls should be interested in sports, at least in some measure, while I suspect that most gays and lesbians recognize that only a small fraction of the population is likely to be at all interested in same-sex relationships. Still, it seems like a closer analogy. And in this situation, many feminist groups do try to influence society so that girls who might be interested in sports are encouraged to experiment with it.

2. But more broadly, I do agree with one aspect of Orin's post: The phenomenon that I was describing was not supposed to be shocking or unusual. It's just human nature, which is why I think it's such a plausible hypothesis. What strikes me as being implausible is the claim -- against which I was arguing -- that it's somehow a "myth" that gay and lesbians (not every such person, but many) are interested in converting some people to gay or lesbian behavior. As I pointed out, it's highly unlikely that they're trying to convert heterosexuals generally. But, as I argued, it does seem likely that they're trying to convert the orientationally bisexual but behaviorally heterosexual into at least exploring their homosexual sides: "[T]he [gay rights] movement . . . necessarily, and I suspect intentionally, also helps people who are attracted to both sexes be more willing to explore the homosexual facets of that attraction."

That is exactly the claim I was making in my original post. It is not a claim of unusual human behavior; rather, it is a claim of quite normal human behavior. And whether or not it's "a somewhat odd question to consider" if one is coming to it from a blank slate, I'm considering this question simply because it's a question that others have raised.

I appreciate Orin's response to my post, and I agree that my post is based in some measure on speculation, as claims about people's motives often are. Yet it strikes me as sound speculation.

Recall that one premise of my post (for which I have considerable data) is that there are many people who have bisexual orientation, in the sense that they are attracted at least in some measure to both sexes. Of these, some may engage in purely heterosexual sexual behavior, others in bisexual sexual behavior, and others in purely homosexual sexual behavior. Social pressure, as well as internalized feelings of shame or guilt about homosexuality, may push many of the bisexually oriented into the purely heterosexual sexual behavior category.

Why wouldn't gays and lesbians who think that homosexual behavior is just fine want these people to experiment with homosexual behavior? After all, once some of these people overcome social and personal inhibitions, they may find that they're much happier in same-sex relationships than in opposite-sex relationships. Others may find that they're happier engaging in a mix of such relationships.

If the bisexually oriented person hasn't tried his homosexual side, I would think that many gays and lesbians would think that this is a shame: There must be something that keeps the person from looking into something that might give him or her great happiness. Working to convert a bisexually oriented person from a purely heterosexual behavior pattern that completely ignores the person's heterosexual side to one that is more open to the person's homosexual side -- even if only as an experiment to see how strong that side is -- would, it seems to me, be thought of as a good deed. (It would be seen as an especially unselfish good deed if the work involved destigmatizing homosexuality and making the bisexually oriented feel better about their homosexual side, rather than just having sex with the person directly.)

This is what I was trying to get at by posing the five questions in my original post. My sense of human psychology, based on which I'm speculating about people's intentions, would be that many gays and lesbians do think such conversions (or persuasion or influencing or whatever one may want to call it) are good; and I think the five questions help explain why that might be so.

Orin suggests otherwise: "Most people who encounter social disapproval for their conduct are probably more concerned about ending that stigma than about getting other people to be more like them." But I'm not sure that it quite works that way. Many people who encounter social disapproval for their conduct become especially aware of such disapproval, and especially empathetic of those who are in the same boat. I think to myself (to borrow an example I gave in my earlier post): What if I were a heterosexual in a hypothetical future overwhelming homosexual society, and I had overcome my original shame and fear at experimenting with heterosexuality? I'd think that I'd then want to make sure that other people like me -- including those who are bisexually oriented, but may end up happier in a heterosexual relationship than in a homosexual relationship -- felt comfortable experimenting, too. I'd even urge people who fit that profile to experiment (again, not necessarily with me), just so they can avoid the possible unhappiness of being stuck in relationships that aren't satisfying for them as they could be.

So it seems to me contrary to what I know of human psychology for gays and lesbians not to want the orientationally bisexual / behaviorally purely heterosexual people to convert to a more bisexual or homosexual behavior pattern. It's speculation, but it seems to me likely correct.

I've just posted this article, which is forthcoming in the Hofstra Law Review. Here's the Introduction; for more details, and footnotes, see the article itself:

Recognizing same-sex marriage, some say, will make it more likely that the law will one day recognize polygamy. This is a classic slippery slope argument: Even if legal action A today (recognizing same-sex marriage) wouldn’t be that bad, or would even be moderately good, it should be opposed because it will increase the likelihood of a much worse legal action B in the future (recognizing polygamy). And the argument isn’t a logical one, but a psychological one: Though A and B are distinguishable, the argument goes, in practice it’s likely that various actors in our legal system — legislators, voters, judges — will eventually end up not distinguishing them.

Recognizing same-sex marriage, others say, will make it more likely that other “gay rights” laws will be passed and upheld, including laws that substantially burden religious objectors, institutions that are trying to further value systems that oppose homosexuality, or antigay speakers:

• Employers (including churches, religious schools, and groups like the Boy Scouts) will have to hire homosexuals, even if they believe that the homosexuality is inconsistent with the employee’s position as a role model.

• Private landlords will be required to rent to same-sex couples, even if the landlords have religious objections to providing space that would likely be used for sinful activity.

• Roommates might be unable to advertise their preference for a same-sex heterosexual roommate.

• Fear of “hostile work environment” liability under antidiscrimination law may pressure employers or educators into suppressing antigay views by employees or students.

• Groups like the Boy Scouts may be required to have openly gay scoutmasters, or at least face exclusion from government benefits if they insist on limiting their leadership posts to heterosexuals.

This too is a slippery slope argument: Legal action A might not be that bad, for instance because giving same-sex couples marriage licenses doesn’t hurt anyone else. But taking action A will increase the chance of legal action B, which would be worse — from the perspective of some observers — because it would interfere with the free choice of people or groups who oppose homosexuality. (Naturally, some people might welcome the slippery slope, since they may favor B; but the argument’s target audience is those who oppose B.)

How can we evaluate the plausibility of these arguments? In this Essay, I’ll try to briefly discuss this question — and in the process, illustrate more broadly how slippery slope arguments can be made and analyzed.

Throughout, I’ll focus on examining the mechanisms behind the “slippery slope” metaphor. Metaphors are falsehoods. If they were literally true, they wouldn’t be metaphors.

Of course, metaphors are falsehoods that aim at exposing a deeper truth. They can be legitimate, and rhetorically powerful. Some of the most effective legal arguments use metaphor. Yet, as Justice Holmes cautions us, we must “think things not words” — “or at least we must constantly translate our words into the facts for which they stand, if we are to keep to the real and the true.” So what are the facts for which the metaphor “slippery slope” stands? To determine how likely it is that we will “slip” from one legal decision to another, we need to understand how the “slippery slope” operates, in fact and not just metaphorically.

What follows will not discuss (except briefly in the Conclusion) whether recognizing same-sex marriage is good or bad on its own terms; whether recognizing same-sex marriage is so morally or practically imperative that slippery slope arguments are irrelevant; or whether recognizing polygamous marriages or accepting broader antidiscrimination laws is itself good. These are all important parts of analyzing whether to support recognition of same-sex marriage, but I leave them to the many other commentators who are happy to deal with them.

Rather, I will focus solely on the empirical claims behind the slippery slope argument: that recognizing same-sex marriage will indeed help bring about those consequences. This is just a subset of the broader policy question, but I think an important subset, at least for those who like (or don’t deeply dislike) the first step A but oppose the possible future step B. And I think that exploring this subset can help illuminate slippery slope phenomena more broadly.

I just noticed this item, though it happened last month; according to an S.F. Chronicle article (see here and here for Web-accessible AP stories),

The San Francisco Board of Supervisors on Tuesday rejected efforts to bring the battleship Iowa to the waterfront as a museum, saying the peace-loving city is no place for a warship.

The supervisors voted 8-3 to rebuff a plan by supporters . . . to berth the World War II-era ship at San Francisco's port and turn it into a tourist attraction. . . .

[Some supervisors] cited several reasons why the ship doesn't belong in San Francisco: the widespread opposition to the war in Iraq, the unequal treatment of gay and lesbian enlisted men and women, and the city's reputation as the home of the peace movement.

"It's important that we have for our children, for those who come here, a vision that is uniquely San Francisco in terms of what, for decades, has been a city represented again and again in the foremost positions of peace movements," said Supervisor Jake McGoldrick, who opposed the plan. . . .

[The ship] first set sail in 1943, and its long career included tours during World War II and the Korean War. . . .

The debate turned Tuesday's meeting into a political free-for-all, with supervisors standing up to express their dislike of the Bush administration's policies and the war in Iraq.

Supervisors Tom Ammiano and Bevan Dufty, both openly gay, said they would not support bringing the ship to San Francisco because of how the military treats gay people.

Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi said permanently berthing the Iowa on San Francisco's historic waterfront is not something city residents would want.

"If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now," he said. . . .

Just appalling. This ship helped protect America and the Free World from the Japanese and the Nazis. It helped protect the South Koreans from being overrun by the North. Yet somehow that's all outweighed in the Supervisors' minds by the Iraq war and of the military's policy on homosexuality. What a shocking lack of perspective and lack of respect for the institution that has helped (and continues to help) to protect San Franciscans -- and, I should mention, gay and lesbian San Franciscans, who would have suffered far worse than exclusion from the military in the hands of our WWII-era enemies, or of our modern enemies -- alongside all other Americans. (For more on a similar lack of perspective on the part of law schools that refuse to let the military interview on campus, see here.)

Naturally, I should stress that the city had no moral duty to allow the berthing of the ship here; there may be all sorts of good practical reasons not to do this, even if, as the museum's supporters say, "they would cover the cost of moving the ship and remodeling the piers where it would be located . . . as well as any other annual fees the city would charge to berth the ship." But at least some supervisors' reason seemed to be essentially their lack of respect for the symbols of the U.S. military -- and what an awful reason that is.

Here's a question from a Pew Research Center, Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life survey, Oct. 15-19, 2003:

Society should not put any restrictions on sex between consenting adults in the privacy of their own home. Do you completely agree, somewhat agree, somewhat disagree, or completely disagree with this statement?

RESULTS:
Completely agree - 61%
Somewhat agree - 19
Somewhat disagree - 5
Completely disagree - 8
Mixed opinion (vol.) - 1 Don't know/Refused - 5

So can we confidently say that 61% really do completely agree with the statement -- to the point of supporting the legalization of prostitution? I'm pretty sure the answer is no: I doubt that most respondents would have realized that prostitution is covered (though it clearly is).

OK, can we at least that 61% is the rough fraction of people who completely agree with the statement as to those matters about which the statement is most often made -- homosexual activity, nongenital sex, and the like? Not really: The number may well be higher, but some people who believe that might have said "somewhat agree" or even "somewhat disagree" precisely because they realized that prostitution is covered. What that number is, we have no idea.

I do think we can guess that probably at least about 60% of the public oppose bans on homosexual activity and nongenital sex; I'd think that when most respondents heard the "consenting adult" language, they'd probably have thought of those things. But we can't even be confident of that, it seems to me.

Surveytaking is necessarily imprecise, partly because people don't accurately report what they really believe (or how they'll really vote). But questions like this, it seems to me, just exacerbate the likely inaccuracy.

Some people argue that recognizing same-sex marriages will keep some heterosexuals from marrying. The theory, as best I can tell, is that the recognition will "diminish regard for marriage" (George Dent, The Defense of Traditional Marriage, 15 J. L. & Pol. 581, 623 (1999)), partly because treating traditional marriages "no better than a gay partnership" would "to most people . . . constitute not only the denial of a deserved accolade but a calculated insult" (id. at 617).

Now I'm pretty skeptical about this: I doubt that many people are put off from straight marriage by the fact that some percentage of people marries for bad reasons (e.g., marry someone rich and old whom you don't love and wait for them to die so you can inherit), and I don't see how the fact that some 2% or so of marriages would end up being same-sex would affect the remaining 98%.

Here, though, is a way we might try to test this (I realize that the analogy here is imperfect, but I think it can still be helpful): As I understand it, Catholics believe remarriage after divorce is wrong, and is in fact a form of bigamy. My sense is that while Catholics believe that religious marriage is a sacrament, they don't believe that the married parties are also religiously obligated to enter into a civil marriage. If they oppose civil marriage as an institution, they wouldn't be sinning by entering into the religious marriage but not the civil marriage.

Are there American Catholics who are so "insulted" by the fact that the civil law treats their marriage no better than a bigamous marriage of a divorcee, and who have so lost regard for the institution of civil marriage, that they refuse to engage in civil marriages? Or do they take the view that while some other people engage in bad or even immoral marriages, this wouldn't make their own marriage (both the religious marriage and the civil marriage) any worse? If the latter, then wouldn't we likewise assume that the behavior of opposite-sex couples won't be affected by the existence of same-sex marriages of which they disapprove?

Please do correct me if I'm misunderstanding Catholic doctrine here (which I well might be).

I've seen lots of assertions that it's a "myth" that gays and lesbians try to recruit others into homosexuality. (See, among many other examples, here and here.) Yet it seems to me that this assertion of "myth" is likely itself something of a myth, or at least quite incomplete.

I rather doubt that many gays and lesbians harbor hopes that many heterosexuals will "become homosexual." That just isn't likely to happen, and I doubt that gays or lesbians make plans around it. Moreover, it may well be that you can't really change a person's sexual orientation, in the sense of whom the person is attracted to. (I'm not sure whether that's right, but I'm willing to assume it for purposes of this post.)

But sexual orientation is not the same as sexual behavior. In particular, people who are at least in some measure attracted to both sexes may be seen as having a bisexual sexual orientation, but they may choose to behave heterosexually, homosexually, or bisexually. And in fact, it appears that the majority of men — and nearly all women — who are at least in some measure attracted to the same sex are also at least in some measure attracted to the opposite sex:

The gay rights movement has aimed — in my view, on balance quite laudably — to make homosexuals feel more comfortable with their homosexuality, and to help people who are attracted to the same sex be more willing to act on that attraction. But it follows that the movement also necessarily, and I suspect intentionally, also helps people who are attracted to both sexes be more willing to explore the homosexual facet of that attraction. It thus increases the likelihood that the bisexually-attracted people who would otherwise engage in purely heterosexual relationships (because of fear of social stigma, or because of their own disapproval of their homosexual attraction) will instead be also willing to engage in some homosexual relationships.

If I'm right, the movement thus is trying to convert those who have a bisexual orientation but act purely heterosexually — or would act purely heterosexually, if we're talking about people who haven't started having sex yet — into also experimenting with homosexuality. This doesn't mean that most gays and lesbians are trying to do this to particular people up close and personal; there are obvious costs to that, such as the risk of rebuff if you get the other person's interest wrong, or the risk of quick abandonment if the other person is interested in experimenting but then concludes the experiment has been a failure from his or her point of view, so many gays and lesbians might well prefer partners who have a more definite homosexual preference. But there are many actions that might go into this sort of "conversion" (if only a conversion into a mix of homosexual/heterosexual behavior, and a conversion that in many cases will end up proving to be only temporary): Providing oneself for the actual sexual behavior is one, but so is public action to destigmatize homosexual behavior, or to provide positive homosexual or bisexual role models, something that for perfectly understandable reasons many gays and lesbians are indeed trying to do.

To further illustrate this, ask yourself: How would most gays or lesbians who believe that homosexuality is perfectly proper respond to these questions?

(1) A person who has had only heterosexual experiences is feeling some homosexual attraction. Should he or she experiment with homosexual relations to see if he or she finds them more rewarding, or at least a valuable facet of his or her future sex life (assuming this wouldn't constitute infidelity, that it's done with the proper protection against disease, that it's done with the right person, and so on)?

(2) Should gay rights groups try to change society so that such experimentation is less stigmatized?

(3) Should gay and lesbian friends of this person urge the person (of course, sensitively and without browbeating) to experiment, and to see if — given that he or she feels at least some same-sex attraction — he or she might indeed find same-sex relationships more rewarding?

(4) If this were a friend of yours to whom you were attracted, you knew that he or she felt at least some same-sex attraction, and you weren't worried about the emotional risk to yourself, would you consider having you be the person with whom the friend experiments? (Again, assume that neither of you is otherwise committed, the approach would be suitably sensitive, and so on; naturally, even sexual behavior that's perfectly proper in the abstract can be made wrong if done under the wrong circumstances.)

(5) Do you think that older teenagers (say, 16 and above) should have out-of-the-closet gay, lesbian, and bisexual role models so that those of the teenagers who feel some same-sex attraction would feel more open to experimenting to see if same-sex relationships will be more rewarding to them than opposite-sex relationships? (I'm not asking about sexual experimentation with the role models, but rather about the role models' presence making the teenagers more comfortable with their same-sex attractions.)

I suspect that most gays and lesbians who think homosexuality is proper would say "yes" to most or all of these questions. I know that if I were a heterosexual in some hypothetical future overwhelmingly homosexual society, and I were asked similar questions about "converting" people who were open to heterosexuality but had so far had only engaged in homosexual behavior into practicing bisexuals or heterosexuals, I'd say "yes." If you think some behavior can be proper and, for some group, very rewarding, you would naturally want people who aren't sure whether they fall into that group to try it out.

And if that's true, then gays and lesbians (though not necessarily each gay and lesbian) are trying to get others who have been behaviorally heterosexual, but who might be open to homosexual behavior, to try homosexual behavior. They almost certainly don't see all heterosexuals as likely converts. But they probably do think (with good reason) that some fraction — a substantial fraction compared to the number of pure homosexuals — might well be willing to change behaviors, especially if they are made to feel right and welcome in doing so. And, yes, that would include teenagers as well as fully grown adults. If most people think the age of sexual consent should be around 16 (the legal norm in the country), then I doubt that most gays and lesbians would think that it's wrong to encourage 16-year-old boys and girls who have some same-sex attraction to experiment with that attraction.

Now, as I've suggested, I don't think there's anything inherently immoral about such attempt to convert people away from purely heterosexual behavior, if they are interested in homosexual behavior, and of course if the "conversion" is done without force, imposition on those who are genuinely too young to decide, and so on. If it weren't for the disproportionate and grave health danger from male homosexual activity, I'd think such encouragement to explore which relationships give people the most happiness would be positively quite good. (Yes, I realize that the danger can be reduced by not engaging in anal sex, always using a condom, not having sex with a partner unless he's been tested and had not had sex for some months before the test, and so on. But most people are not nearly this cautious, and the reality thus remains that, given the vastly disproportionate prevalence of HIV among gays in America today, the greater risk from anal sex, a practice that for understandable reasons many male homosexuals do not want to forego, and the notorious difficulty with getting people to actually practice safe practices — whether aimed at preventing disease or conception — the fact remains that experimenting with male homosexuality is dangerous activity.) Given this danger, I'd prefer that men with bisexual orientations who can be happy with women not experiment with men; but that's a judgment about medical risk, not about the inherent morality of "conversion" attempts, and in any event it doesn't apply to lesbianism.

Nonetheless, if I'm right, then I don't think we should deny that the gay and lesbian movement does aim in part at "converting" people who have a wholly or partly bisexual orientation from a purely heterosexual behavior pattern to one that involves at least some (initially experimental) homosexual behavior.

UPDATE: A bunch of commenters think I shouldn't use the word "convert," for various reasons. The reason I'm using it is that I'm responding to an alleged "myth": People claim that it's a "myth" that gays and lesbians try to convert or recruit others, and I am arguing that this "myth" claim is "likely itself something of a myth, or at least quite incomplete." If you prefer to describe this not as "converting," but as something else (e.g., "influencing the person to change his practices"), that's fine. But if my analysis above is right, then one still shouldn't deride claims of conversion as "myth," even if one thinks that the word is slightly imprecise or has a bad connotation.

But in any event, it seems to me that the term is fine. It is hardly inherently pejorative: Changes in religious beliefs and practices are called conversions, and if people view them negatively, they do so because they disapprove of the new belief or practice, not because they disapprove of "conversion."

And it's also quite sensibly applied to changes in behavior (especially behavior that many people find important to their felt identity) and not just changes in some supposed inherent nature. If you persuade someone to become a vegetarian, you can be said to have converted him to vegetarianism. He's still biologically an omnivore, but his practices are now different. Likewise, changing someone from (a) being an orientational bisexual who engages solely in heterosexual relationships to (b) someone who is an orientational bisexual who engages solely in homosexual relationships, or to (c) someone who is bisexual both by orientation and practice strikes me as quite rightly called a "conversion."

In a gesture intended to be reminiscent of the Patent and Trademark Office's special rule about patent applications for perpetual motion machines — no patent granted without a working model — I propose a new rule about comments that reference the Patriot Act: If you allege that some government misconduct was done pursuant to the Patriot Act, you must cite and quote the relevant section (for instance, from this online version) to prove that the Patriot Act can indeed be involved.

Yes, I know that perpetual motion machines are impossible, and abuse of the Patriot Act is vastly overstated (see, e.g., this post, among many others, for examples) but in fact possible. Nonetheless, annoying times call for annoying measures. (For those curious about the straw that broke the camel's back, see some of the comments to this post.)

Remember, "Patriot Act," like "fascism" and "unconstitutional," is not Latin for "government action I don't like."

I have nothing to add substantively to Jim's post, but the alternative title was just begging to be blogged (the referent is here). "Castor Beans, Treason, and Plot" would have been better, but that would be ricin. And yes, I hope that this event and the July 7 attacks won't be as bad for British Muslims as the Gunpowder Plot and related unpleasantness were for British Catholics.