Many enviros have criticized Obama for not using the "bully pulpit" adequately to highlight the dangers of climate change.  Other activists make similar claims for their causes.  By contrast, most political analysts seem to think the bully pulpit doesn't actually work.

I think there's a measurement problem - short term changes could be noise or ephemeral reaction to the bully pulpit with no lasting implications.  Long term changes can't distinguish between bully pulpit causes and everything else in life.  My personal guess is that it plays a modest but not insignificant role in cultural attitudes, and plays a somewhat more important role in elite attitudes.

Obama's shift on same sex marriage provides the best hope that the bully pulpit can actually do something.  Public opinion has shifted dramatically on marriage equality in the last 20 years with some evidence of acceleration, so if there were ever a chance to accelerate it further, now seems like a great time.

Most polls I've seen following Obama's announcement have shown large shifts in African American public opinion (but not all polls) and little shift in non-black opinion.  Some analysts have complained that this shift just reflects people lining up with their side, as if that matters.  Anyway, it's short term. Long term, we all know that in a decade support for SSM will be the dominant position outside of the South but there would be no way to test whether the extent of the dominance was affected by Obama.

Let's look in the medium term, one or two years from Obama's announcement.  My guess, made before Obama evolved, was that his opinion could shift 5-7% of black opinion and 1-3% of non-black opinion.  I think I'll stick with that and look at polls in 2013.  The complicating factor is that support for SSM typically goes down in presidential election years as the Republican Party plays the anti-gay marriage card.  Might not happen this time, but who knows.

My prediction is that we'll see the biggest bump in African American support in 10 years, big enough to overcome any Republican push against marriage.

Moving past the medium term, I think the biggest effect of Obama's announcement is to line up the Democratic Party in all the same direction.  Democratic leaders in blue constituencies will find it very hard to resist supporting gay marriage.  Here in my area, the otherwise popular mayor of San Jose is finding that out, something that could really hurt his political future.  Democratic leaders in red constituencies and among African Americans now have much more room to support SSM.  This probably falls into the long-term category, though.

I'm not sure how this all plays into the debate over whether Obama should talk more about climate.  Overall I think that yes he can and yes he should, but his political actions are more important than the small effect he can have on public opinion in the medium term.


UPDATE:  found a prediction I made in 2005.

The actual timeline is that they'll benefit politically for another five years, it won't help or harm them much overall for ten years past that, and then for fifteen years it'll hurt them as they fight the fundamentalist dinosaurs in their party before they can finally get rid of the anti-gay marriage plank of the Republican Party platform.

I was too pessimistic overall.  Beginning in 2014, being anti-SSM will start hurting Republicans on the national level (this year it's neutral).  It won't take Republicans 30 years to drop opposition, more like 15-20 years.

Mormons should put more effort into optional conversions for dead people, and less into stopping living people from getting married

That is all.

Obama good, Obama ungood

The good news is decision that gay rights and human rights "are one and the same" in a speech by Hillary Clinton, one that states the Obama administration will work for this concept internationally, and put some money behind it.   They also acknowledge imperfections here in American, while being studiously silent on gay marriage.

The foreign policy realists would say this will cost us internationally, just as any other human rights effort will cost us.  They'd be correct in some areas, although other places like Europe it should actually help our image and soft power.  Long run is a different story though, as history kind of arcs somewhat toward justice.

How this gets reflected in domestic politics will be interesting, because people who are somewhat conservative on gay rights domestically, say hypothetically a political science professor who supports civil unions, would fall on the far left of the spectrum of the countries with the worst discrimination.  The natural Republican reflex of opposing everything Obama does will then start looking pretty awful in the context of horrible abuses overseas. Rick Perry lost no time decrying "special rights" promotion, but the actual Republican nominee will probably lose votes while irresolutely dodging the issue.  Score one for the good guys.

The ungood side is the decision to overrule FDA's authorization of selling the Plan B contraceptive as a standard over the counter item.  Double plus ungood not because of the politics but the false claim that the science gives any reason to do this.  To the FDA's credit, they more or less stated their disagreement and weren't suppressed from doing that.  This is standard, almost, Republican-style War on Science.  Chris Mooney's book on the subject noted the Democrats were guilty too of this offense, but just not nearly to the same extent.  One strike against the Obama Administration in this regard.

I don't want to end on that note, so I'll add another piece of good news.  Younger Americans are significantly more accepting of climate science than older ones.  Now consider that even some Republicans acknowledge their antipathy to gay rights is a dying cause.  The very few scientists who don't accept climate science are also aging out (page 12) and not being replaced by anyone except lawyers, so the younger generation is being educated the right way.  I'm not sure how many demographically-challenged positions the Republicans really want to take, but maybe they should reconsider.


UPDATE:  Chris Mooney on Plan B here.  Similar grasp of the obvious.

Keep the homophobic climate weirdo on the oil spill team

A bozo physicist, Jonathan Katz, who apparently thinks creatively but has zero quality control, has been kicked off one of the oil spill teams because he is/was homophobic and believes some of the nonsense he reads on climate denialist websites like Greenland "formerly" being green in medieval times.

I don't care, as long as he's not involved in anything dealing with homosexuality (or being in charge of anybody, including students) or with climate change. Just let him come up with some ideas to control the oil spill and let other people be in charge of figuring out whether they're any good.

His nonsense on climate hardly needs to be dealt with, except for psychological analyses. I'm guessing he's one of those political conservatives who can't deny physics, so he just accepts what he maximally can accept without having to change his policy positions, and skates over the rest.

On homophobia, he says "The human body was not designed to share hypodermic needles, it was not designed to be promiscuous, and it was not designed to engage in homosexual acts." The guy must be outraged by bonobos, but I don't see much difference between their design and ours that makes promiscuity and homosexuality okay for them and problematic for us. Generally he seems like a cranky old man who's used to saying whatever he wants to say.

I think he very well may not be qualified to grade and mentor students, many of whom are gay, but he should be able to serve on the spill team.

Reintroducing the Atlantic Gray Whale

One of the disadvantages of the Internet is it destroys any pretensions I have to originality. I've thought for a while that it would be an amazing feat to reintroduce the Atlantic gray whale to the wild. Of course, one complication arises from the Atlantic whale's extinction. The easy solution is to take some of the closely related and now-abundant Pacific gray whales and bring them over.

Turns out that my original idea has been developed much more extensively by other people. Still it would be interesting. I've followed the reintroductions of condors and wolves closely here in the US, and beavers were just reintroduced to Scotland after a longer absence than gray whales from the Atlantic. Sometimes reintroductions don't work well (Mexican wolf, lynx in Colorado), but if you don't try....

There's also the issue that these would still be Pacific grays, and so not exactly the natural species for the habitat. On the other hand, that niche in the Atlantic Ocean isn't being occupied right now, which also isn't natural. Bringing in the Pacific grays seems closer to natural than the present situation. And it would be cool.

Bonus unrelated blogging: Obama reiterates his promise to repeal Don't Ask Don't Tell. My prediction from months ago that I thought I blogged about but can't find anywhere, is that he'd put off the repeal until 2010 and then use it to run against Congressional Republicans as bigoted and soft on defense. I'll bet he'll put off repealing the more popular Defense of Marriage Act until 2011.

Prediction for 2010: Obama will use Don't Ask Don't Tell in the campaign

My prediction is that Obama will finally move on Don't Ask Don't Tell in 2010 as an election-year issue, both to energize gay-rights supporters and to paint conservative opponents as placing their prejudices ahead of national security.

And no, just because I'm usually wrong in my political predictions doesn't mean I'm always wrong in what I predict.

Geese, guts, and gays

Kristof in the NY Times about his childhood on the farm:

Then there were the geese, the most admirable creatures I’ve ever met. We raised Chinese white geese, a common breed, and they have distinctive personalities. They mate for life and adhere to family values that would shame most of those who dine on them.

While one of our geese was sitting on her eggs, her gander would go out foraging for food — and if he found some delicacy, he would rush back to give it to his mate. Sometimes I would offer males a dish of corn to fatten them up — but it was impossible, for they would take it all home to their true loves.

Once a month or so, we would slaughter the geese. When I was 10 years old, my job was to lock the geese in the barn and then rush and grab one. Then I would take it out and hold it by its wings on the chopping block while my Dad or someone else swung the ax.

The 150 geese knew that something dreadful was happening and would cower in a far corner of the barn, and run away in terror as I approached. Then I would grab one and carry it away as it screeched and struggled in my arms.

Very often, one goose would bravely step away from the panicked flock and walk tremulously toward me. It would be the mate of the one I had caught, male or female, and it would step right up to me, protesting pitifully. It would be frightened out of its wits, but still determined to stand with and comfort its lover.

So, no more eating geese for me. The thing about it is, my feeling that it would be wrong to eat an animal that can behave like this, isn't an intellectual determination. By contrast, I can intellectually justify my general rejection of animal rights. I can also justify my acceptance of some level of rights for highly intelligent animals that the Great Ape Project supports, and even my squishy concerns regarding eating smart-but-not-sapient animals like pigs and some other mammals. But my reaction against killing geese is just a gut reaction.

Gut reactions aren't necessarily wrong though - I think any coherent ethical system could be used to justify horrible things, so a gut check is a good thing. On the other hand, I think it's exactly this kind of unthinking gut response that tells other people that gay behavior and gay marriage is bad.

So how do you reconcile gut instinct against intellect? I don't think you can, and I don't think you should really choose one over the other. But knowing that gut instinct can be directed by personal feelings that have nothing to do with morality makes me believe that my reaction to not eating geese is better than others' homophobia, because the consequences of being wrong are very different. If I'm wrong and eating geese is fine, then the world has not been badly damaged. Wrongly choosing to discriminate against a whole class of people, though, is a different ball of wax.

A repost from September 4, 2007

(Original here. Reposting seemed relevant to California's election on Tuesday.)

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

On a personal note...

I got married on Sunday. Everything seemed to go very well, and it was fantastic to see everyone.

In addition to registering for the usual selfish presents, we also registered for Kiva loans, a system that supports microfinance institutions by allowing donors to give no-interest loans to micro-entrepeneurs in developing countries. A number of people made loans, and I'll be very interested to see how it turns out.

And we registered for TerraPass for carbon offsets, something I need to do more of.

Final note: I often think the whole "personal is political" concept involves an overblown sense of self-importance, but the idea that my wife and I can participate in something so wonderful while a gay or lesbian couple cannot is simply beyond ridiculous. I know good-hearted people who disagree, and I just don't think they're reflecting on it hard enough.

And now - off travelling for a few days!

A McCain Court could allow recriminalization of homosexuality

Conservatives think that the potential for making appointments to the Supreme Court will work to McCain's advantage. While I agree that on some issues the public is to the right to the Court's present position, the public is also to the left of where McCain's appointments could take it.

Overturning Roe v. Wade so that abortion is banned outright in some states is one real possibility. Recriminalizing homosexuality is another that's received no attention, and whatever the general public thinks about gay marriage, I don't think they want homosexuals arrested in their homes.

Lawrence v. Texas ended that practice five years ago on a 6-3 vote. Current Justices Alito and Roberts each replaced one vote from the majority and minority of that decision. Had they been on the Court in 2003, it would have been a 5-4 vote for gay rights, leaving Kennedy (whose age will be 75 in the year 2012), Stevens (will be 92), Souter (72), Ginsburg (79), and Breyer (73) in the majority. A single McCain appointment theoretically could flip a future decision and overrule Lawrence.

Two loose ends - first, would they return to and overrule this precedent? Justices don't like to do this, although they might also consider it okay to do so here, considering that Lawrence itself overruled Supreme Court precedent that was 'only' 17 years old. I've no doubt that on the present Court, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia would overrrule. As for Roberts I'm less sure about his willingness to overturn, but it's very possible. My guess is that one appointment by McCain replacing the majority justices makes overruling possible, three appointments makes it virtually certain, and two appointments is a coin-toss.

Second loose end - would they get the opportunity? In law school I learned that it's not clear what happens to laws that are overruled by courts - do they become nullified and no longer exist, or are they existing but are unenforceable? Apparently that hasn't been decided. The Texas law prohibiting homosexual conduct is still on the books, so Texas hasn't done a cleanup and removed the law. I could see a conservative Texas sheriff and conservative Texas DA trying to revive the law during a McCain Administration. A good factual situation for them would be a homosexual rape case where the evidence makes it hard to prove there was no consent - the DA could just bring a homosexual conduct case against the defendant but not the victim. After losing all the way through the Texas Supreme Court, the DA then appeals to the US Supreme Court and we see what happens.

It could be a strange country - gay marriage legal in some states, while gay sex is illegal in others. I don't think criminalizing homosexuality is a winner for the Republicans.

The ignored asexual?

An interesting, if older, sexual preference survey is summarized at the Volokhs. Nearly 3% of people report no sexual partners since puberty, almost half of the number reporting same-sex partners since puberty. Another question asks about sexual attraction, but doesn't give an option of no attraction or limited attraction.

Once in a great while I read about people claiming no sexual interest and being quite happy about it. Seems like this could use more public discussion, although some discussion's already happening and of course there's a dedicated website.

General Pace shouldn't apologize, but should be fired

Thought I'd use my typical, lighting-quick blogger reflexes to comment on the two-week-old story about General Peter Pace refusing to apologize for saying the homosexual soldiers under his command commit "immoral acts." I disagree with calls for an apology, and give him the benefit of assuming it's his considered belief and not a thoughtless mental twitch. No one should apologize for what they think is right - the concept of an apology doesn't even make sense.

But he should be fired - his beliefs are contradictory to the morale and well-being of thousands of soldiers underneath him. Hiding behind the idea that he condemns their acts, not their orientation, is just ridiculous. He did acknowledge that he should not have focused on his own personal views, but it's too late. He can't be an effective leader of homosexuals who are allowed to serve in the military, and should be forced out.

(Of course, that won't happen.)