You can argue about a lot of things. We can debate abortion, capital punishment, religion in schools, snowmobiles in National Parks, all sorts of things. Other things are simply inarguable. If a person walks up to you and says, “I think being gay is a choice,” that’s not grounds for an argument—that’s the moment for you to say, “You need to check yourself into a mental hospital.”
The point of this chapter is to point out that we’ve got to stop arguing that which has already been decided. There’s a Latin term you learn in law school, res judicata. It’s been adjudicated. It’s been decided.
The earth is warming. Evolution occurred. The planet is not 5,000 years old. Who begat whom who begat whom is not history, and it isn’t geology. Teaching sex education in schools is necessary—and abstinence-only education doesn’t work. And, by the way, the Republicans stole Florida in 2000.
Here’s a list of topics on which there is no argument:
What are we arguing about?
Global Warming Is Happening, and It’s Caused by Humans. Period.
THE RIGHT
“Today, even saying there is scientific disagreement over global warming is itself controversial. But anyone who pays even cursory attention to the issue understands that scientists vigorously disagree over whether human activities are responsible for global warming, or whether those activities will precipitate natural disasters.”1
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
Global warming is established fact, and it is caused by human activity, according to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, and the American Geophysical Union.2
The dangerous effects of global warming are staring us right in the face and are clear to anyone who isn’t intentionally putting blinders on. In the summer of 2009—for the first time in recorded history—the North Pole could have no sea ice.3 Sea levels are rising across the globe.4 Glaciers are retreating across the globe.5 We are seeing more and more extreme and altered weather patterns.6
These changes to our climate are not just an academic discussion; they have direct and dangerous impacts on our economy. According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, dangers include disruption to agriculture, problems in insurance and investment markets, infrastructure degradation, water scarcity, and increasing health problems.7
I just can’t let this go, and no one should, so let me add here—global warming is a huge security threat. For all that President Bush and the Republicans want to claim that they take the strong stand on national security, global warming may be the greatest threat Americans will face in the coming years.8 (For more on this, turn to Chapter 14 on The Real Deal.)
What do the Republicans do in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence? Imagine a two-year-old’s tempter tantrum. I’m talking about the really bad kind, when a child summons up every bit of righteous indignation he can, sticks his fingers in his ears, and screams at the top of his lungs so he can’t hear you. That pretty much sums up the Republicans’ attitude.
The Senate Republicans’ point person on the environment is Senator James Inhofe, who claims that climate change is the “greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.” He’s the one who warns that “Much of the debate over global warming is predicated on fear, rather than science.”9
The Bush administration has gone to great lengths to shut out all discussion of global warming. For one, they’ve censored the Environmental Protection Agency. In 2003, the EPA tried to publish a draft report on the environment, exactly the sort of activity one would imagine an agency on the environment was created to undertake. The Bush administration essentially gutted the section on global warming, whittling it down to a few feeble paragraphs.
A damning Washington Monthly article investigated the Bush response to global warming and reported that “curious reporters asking the White House about climate change are sent to a small, and quickly diminishing, group of scientists who still doubt the causes of global warming.”10 The Bush administration is set on trying to create its own reality when it comes to global warming. After the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change published a report on climate change—and please bear in mind this was the work of 2,500 leading scientists—the Bush administration ordered its own scientists to create a follow-up. In the words of Nicholas Thompson, it was “like asking a district court to review a Supreme Court decision.”
To return to my earlier, appropriate analogy of the Bush administration reacting to science like a two-year-old told no, it would appear that the adult equivalent of plugging your ears with your fingers is to ignore emails. The Bush administration’s latest trick to ignore the EPA was simply to stop opening emails from them.11
While the Republicans were refusing to accept basic scientific facts, the Democrats were trying to pass legislation that will combat global warming and promote energy independence, but had to pull the bill because Republicans would not support it.12 Until the Republicans accept that global warming is not a topic for debate, we’ll have to rely on outside groups—and leaders like Al Gore—to take action on climate change.
Evolution Occurred
On evolution, what is there to say? There is possibly no better illustration of just how ridiculous the Republican Party has become than their insistence on government endorsement of creationism. If there’s ever been a time to use the word “incontrovertible,” it’s when we’re talking about evolution. Arguing evolution is like denying gravity. Creationist propaganda has no place in our schools. Of course, that’s a truth based on science and law—two subjects Republicans have little regard for.
THE RIGHT
“Intelligent design postulates that humans originated due to the intentional arrangement of bio-matter—including the human genetic code—by the action of intelligence.”13
THE RIGHT, TAKE 2
Intelligent design “begins with the observation that intelligent agents produce complex and specified information (CSI)…. One easily testable form of CSI is irreducible complexity, which can be discovered by experimentally reverse-engineering biological structures to see if they require all of their parts to function. When [intelligent design] researchers find irreducible complexity in biology, they conclude that such structures were designed.”14
Basically, because they don’t understand evolution, and they can’t replicate it, these intelligent design “scientists” have decided it can’t have taken place.
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“In science, a theory is a rigorously tested statement of general principles that explains observable and recorded aspects of the world. A scientific theory therefore describes a higher level of understanding that ties ‘facts’ together. A scientific theory stands until proven wrong—it is never proven correct. The Darwinian theory of evolution has withstood the test of time and thousands of scientific experiments; nothing has disproved it since Darwin first proposed it more than 150 years ago. Indeed, many scientific advances, in a range of scientific disciplines including physics, geology, chemistry, and molecular biology, have supported, refined, and expanded evolutionary theory far beyond anything Darwin could have imagined.”15
The issue of evolution in school curricula truly is res judicata. Not to bore you, dear reader, but let’s review the body of legal precedent that supports the science.
We all know about the “monkey” trial—the Scopes trial in Tennessee in 1925. That was the first major legal test of evolution in schools, but it wasn’t until forty years later that the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on evolution.
In 1968, the Supreme Court took on the issue of evolution in Epperson v. Arkansas. The Court ruled that evolution is science and creationism is religion. Ergo, evolution can be taught in schools and creationism cannot. It’s a simple First Amendment issue. Twenty years after that, the Supreme Court found itself faced with another evolution issue, this time coming from Louisiana—Edwards v. Aguilar. In 1987, the Court ruled against the Louisiana law requiring schools to teach both evolution and creationism together.16
Despite 150 years of science and 80 years of law, there’s a whole active movement among conservatives to push intelligent design again. A Gallup Poll found that 60 percent of Republicans believe that man was created by God 10,000 years ago, as is.17 That means six of ten Republicans don’t believe in evolution. The Republicans have bought into intelligent design and they are fighting to make it a policy issue.
Take, for example, the 2008 pseudo-documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, which was of enough note and profile that the New York Times took aim at it—and gave it a deservingly scathing review.
The so-called documentary on the “debate” over evolution and creationism was unapologetic propaganda masquerading as science. The filmmakers were “linking evolution theory to fascism (as well as abortion, euthanasia and eugenics), shamelessly invoking the Holocaust with black-and-white film of Nazi gas chambers and mass graves.” The review read: “Positing the theory of intelligent design as a valid scientific hypothesis, the film frames the refusal of ‘big science’ to agree as nothing less than an assault on free speech.”18 Meanwhile, I consider the proposal to teach intelligent design in schools nothing short of an attack on the U.S. Constitution, the integrity of our public schools, and Americans’ intelligence.
Just look at what Republican elected officials have to say.
George W. Bush is of the mind that students should learn about both evolution and intelligent design. That’s like saying it should be up to individual school boards to decide when the country was founded. According to Bush, “Both sides ought to be properly taught…so people can understand what the debate is about…. Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought…. You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.”19
The fact that Bush was for teaching intelligent design should be enough for other Republicans to know to be against it, but they’re all still for it, too.
Think back to the dishearteningly dissembling discussion of evolution that transpired at the June 2007 Republican presidential debate in New Hampshire. We can look to the statement of Governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who actually had a shot at the Republican nomination, frighteningly enough. “To me it’s pretty simple. A person either believes God created this process or it was an accident, and that it all happened just all on its own…but you know if anybody wants to believe that they are the descendants of a primate, they are certainly welcome to do it, I don’t know how far they will march that back.”20
At that same debate John McCain, who was then touting himself as a moderate, got more than a touch closer to the crazy far right himself. McCain said that he thought that whether schools teach intelligent design should be “up to the school districts” and that “every American should be exposed to all theories.” McCain even went so far as to say he admired Huckabee’s views on the topic. His final statement on the matter was that he believes “all of our children in school can be taught different views on different issues.”21 The modern Republican Party doesn’t seem to understand the difference between fact and opinion.
There’s always Ron Paul. I admit the possibility that I am throwing this in for my own amusement, but here goes: “I think it’s a theory, theory of evolution, and I don’t accept it…I just don’t think we’re at the point where anybody has absolute proof on either side.”22
And on down the ranks. Senator Sam Brownback said it would be “helpful” to talk about intelligent design “in a bit more detail and with the seriousness it demands.”23 The seriousness it demands? The amount of seriousness intelligent design deserves is somewhat less than the amount of seriousness I devote to the idea of becoming a monk.
Republicans even try to blame the teaching of evolution for problems in the world. After the shootings at Columbine High School in California, Representative Tom DeLay, former Republican majority leader, blamed youth violence on “the teaching of evolution” along with, of course, “working parents who put their kids into daycare…and working mothers who take birth control.”24
That’s an offensive new low, even for DeLay.
The Democratic answer is simple. Obama nailed it. When asked about teaching evolution in schools, he said: “I believe there’s a difference between science and faith. That doesn’t make faith any less important than science. It just means they’re two different things. And I think it’s a mistake to try to cloud the teaching of science with theories that frankly don’t hold up to scientific inquiry.”25
Senator Clinton has also been consistently effective in her responses, saying reasonably and respectfully, “I believe that our founders had faith in reason and they also had faith in God, and one of our gifts from God is the ability to reason.”26
Although former Governor Howard Dean and I have some points of disagreement, I find myself wholly behind him when it comes to his take on evolution. Dean got it right on Face the Nation: “Science is science. There’s no factual evidence for intelligent design. There’s an enormous amount of factual evidence for evolution. Those are the facts. If you don’t like the facts, then you can fight against them. The Catholic Church fought against Galileo for a great many, many centuries.”27
Representative Rush Holt of New Jersey is actually a physicist. (How a physicist got to the House is beyond me, so don’t ask.) He got predictably worked up over the idea of teaching intelligent design in school, and he offered a rather clear scientific indictment of intelligent design:
Sure, evolution is a theory, just as gravitation is a theory. The mechanisms of evolution are indeed up for debate, just as the details of gravitation and its mathematical relationship with other forces of nature are up for debate. Some people once believed that we are held on the ground by invisible angels above us beating their wings and pushing us against the earth. If angels always adjusted their beating wings to exert force that diminished as the square of the distance between attracting bodies, it would be just like our idea of gravitation. The existence of those angels, undetected by any measurements, would not be the subject of science. Such an idea of gravity is “not even wrong.” It is beyond the realm of science. So, too, is intelligent design.28
So there you have it, the so-called debate over evolution boils down to the Republicans’ invisible-angel theory of gravity against the Democrats’ 150 years of science and the U.S. Constitution position.
Of course the statement on evolution I may agree with most closely is that of former Senator Mike Gravel of Alaska (for the first and only time). When someone asked Gravel if he thought creationism and intelligent design should be taught in schools, he responded: “Oh God, no. Oh, Jesus. We thought we had made a big advance with the Scopes monkey trial…. My God, evolution is a fact, and if these people are disturbed by being the descendants of monkeys and fishes, they’ve got a mental problem. We can’t afford the psychiatric bill for them. That ends the story as far as I’m concerned.”29
The Earth Is Not Thousands of Years Old; It’s Billions of Years Old
THE RIGHT
“If you have ever wondered how old the earth and our universe is, just read the Bible. Begin at Genesis 1:1 and see how God created the heaven and the earth. Read all of Genesis chapter 1 and chapter 2 and understand that God created this entire present world in just six literal 24-hour days…. It is very clear…that the Bible proves the age of our universe to be approximately 6,000 years old.”30
THE RIGHT, TAKE 2
“The Bible provides a complete genealogy from Adam to Jesus. You can go through the genealogies and add up the years. You’ll get a total that is just over 4,000 years. Add the 2,000 years since the time of Jesus and you get just over 6,000 years since God created everything. Is there anything wrong with figuring out the age of the earth this way? No. There is nothing to indicate the genealogies are incomplete. There is nothing to indicate God left anything out. There is nothing in the Bible that indicates in any way that the world is older than 6,000 years old.”31
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“Science unequivocally dates the earth’s age at 4.5 billion years…. Even the intelligent design movement, which argues that evolution alone cannot explain life’s complexity, does not challenge the long history of the earth.”32
Here’s another fact for you: only 5 percent of scientists, and only 1 percent of earth and life scientists, believe in the “Young Earth” theory.34 I’m a big proponent of the Bible, but I don’t use it as a textbook for biology or geology any more than I’d try to explain the gospels with physics.
Maher: But, why shouldn’t it be part of a political discussion? If someone believes that the earth is 6,000 years old when every scientist in the world tells us it’s billions of years old, why shouldn’t I take that into account when I’m assessing the rationality of someone I’m going to put into the highest office in the land? [applause, cheers]
Huckabee: Well, I think the point, though, Bill, is that we really don’t know. And that’s my whole point.33
There are few things crazier than arguing about the age of the earth. The only time I ever want to hear about “Young Earth” theories is when we’re pointing out that anyone who says the earth is “young” is unfit to be elected to office by reason of insanity.
God Didn’t Create the Grand Canyon 4,500 Years Ago
I don’t care if you want to believe the Grand Canyon is a few thousand years old, but keep your beliefs out of government. This isn’t arguable. Bush was guilty of trying to enforce ideology at the expense of science through government. As Chris Mooney, author of a particularly solid book, The Republican War on Science, put it in 2005, “Dear President Bush: Americans don’t want you to be a geologist. We only want you to talk to geologists when it becomes necessary for your job.”35
THE RIGHT
“Bible-believing Christians interpret the canyon as a spillway from Noah’s Flood…. The Bible says that a flood covered the whole earth (see Genesis 7:18–20). This means we should find places where the water drained. The Grand Canyon is one of those places. It is a washed-out spillway and provides great evidence for Noah’s Flood.”36
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“The Grand Canyon was formed 17 million years ago over a very, very long stretch of time. Several small streams eroded land away and joined together as the Colorado river, which carved out the Grand Canyon. Science proves it with uranium-lead dating and calcite deposits and every other test you can think of.”37
The Republicans have given themselves over entirely to these Christian right crazies. These nut jobs hang out together. They create literature and pamphlets and even theme parks. My new favorite tourist destination has to be Dinosaur Adventure Land in Pensacola, Florida, where visitors come to hear about how man and dinosaurs co-existed.38
The Dinosaur Adventure Land Web site promises “a theme park and science museum that gives God the glory for His creation. It has rides and fun-filled events and activities, each involving a physical challenge, a science lesson, and a biblical truth.” To be clear, the site offers that it is less an amusement park than “an amazement park. Come and stand amazed at the truths of the Creator and Savior of the world, Jesus Christ.”39 The truth they’re teaching the young children who come to their Dinosaur Adventure Land being that humans and dinosaurs lived side by side in some kind of biblical Jurassic Park.
Unfortunately, they aren’t limiting their craziness to their delusional dinosaur-themed parks. They’re taking over National Parks.
About 4 million people visit the Grand Canyon National Park yearly. However many thousands of them who go into the park stores can buy right-wing propaganda along with bumper stickers and keychains, thanks to the National Parks Service. The Grand Canyon bookstores now sell a particularly ludicrous book—and I use the term “book” loosely—by the title Grand Canyon, a Different View. The author, one Mr. Tom Vail, is a Christian right crazy who gives guided creationist tours of the Grand Canyon.40
So from 2003 to 2008 the Grand Canyon bookstore has sold a book by a creationist that spells out how the Grand Canyon was created 4,500 years ago in Noah’s Flood. (I say “to 2008” because I have yet to have the opportunity to attempt to call and verify whether the bookstore has continued to stock this work.) By the way, in 2003, twenty-two titles were rejected by Grand Canyon officials. Only the creationist manifesto made it through the no-doubt rigorous selection process.41 Nothing subtle about that.
Wilfred Elders, professor of geology emeritus at the University of California Riverside, wrote that the book was “‘Exhibit A’ of a new, slick strategy by biblical literalists to proselytize using a beautifully illustrated, multi-authored book about a spectacular and world-famous geological feature…. Allowing the sale of this book within the National Park was unfortunate. In the minds of some buyers, this could imply NPS approval of young-earth creationists and their religious proselytizing.”42
A disgruntled park geologist was, shall we say, less kind. He said it would be like Yellowstone National Park offering Geysers of Old Faithful: Nostrils of Satan in the park bookstore.43 I’m with him.
Every attempt to remove this constitutionally offensive material from the bookstore during Bush’s terms met with typical Bushian stubbornness. The presidents of the American Geological Institute and six of its member societies as well as the Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility organization fought this creationist title for years. All that happened was that the creationist book was moved to the “inspirational” section of the bookstore.44
Yet in 2005 the National Parks Service approved a new policy on educational materials that said they must “be based on the best scientific evidence available, as found in scholarly sources that have stood the test of scientific peer review and criticism [and] interpretive and educational programs must refrain from appearing to endorse religious beliefs explaining natural processes.”45
It’s not just that the Republicans continue to take and argue ridiculous positions. It’s that they’re wildly, obviously, and unapologetically abusing the federal government to do it. The consequence has been a long-drawn-out, multiyear battle over something that is simply not arguable.
Abstinence-Only Education Does Not Work
In the time Bush was in office, from 2001 to 2008, the federal government directed about $1.5 billion to telling our children not to have sex, only to find that, in an unsurprising development, 88 percent of kids who have abstinence-only education still have premarital sex.46
THE RIGHT
“It is the will of God that you abstain from sexual impurity until you are married.”47
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“A long-awaited national study has concluded that abstinence-only sex education, a cornerstone of the Bush administration’s social agenda, does not keep teenagers from having sex. Neither does it increase or decrease the likelihood that if they do have sex, they will use a condom.”48
For decades the Republicans have been pushing abstinence-only programs. In 1981, they passed the Adolescent Family Life Act (AFLA), which funded educational programs to “promote self-discipline and other prudent approaches” to adolescent sex, or “chastity education.” In 1996, they took it a step further and used a welfare bill to establish a federal program to exclusively fund abstinence-only programs.49
President Bush has continued to follow the abstinence-only doctrine blindly. In his FY2008 budget, he requested $242 million in abstinence-only funding. Congress was right there with him. As the Obama administration came into office, it was faced with considering the fate of $176 million in annual funding for abstinence-only education.50
Representative Henry Waxman of California released a report in spring 2007 that exposed just how loony the curricula of abstinence-only programs in this country are. Of thirteen abstinence-only courses they analyzed, only two were not scientifically inaccurate. Of the eleven that were inaccurate, the fallacies weren’t small—they were on the scale of two extra chromosomes, for example. That’s the difference between species.51
Here are some of my other favorite errors in abstinence-only education from the Waxman Report or, as some might refer to it, sex according to the Bush administration:
Myth: HIV/AIDS is spread through sweat and tears.
Fact: According to the CDC, HIV is transmissible only through blood, semen, and vaginal secretions.
Myth: [R]esearch confirms that 14 percent of the women who use condoms scrupulously for birth control become pregnant within a year.
Fact: In fact, when used correctly and consistently, only 2 percent of couples who rely on the latex condom as their primary form of contraception will experience an unintended pregnancy.
Myth: Twenty-four chromosomes from the mother and twenty-four from the father join to create [a fetus].
Fact: Human cells are actually comprised of forty-six chromosomes; twenty-three from each parent.
When people in my family get sick, I like to get medical advice from a doctor, not a right-wing nut job. So that’s who I’ll turn to now for advice and pronouncements on this medically relevant topic. The doctors say, via the American Medical Association, that there is “no evidence that abstinence sex education works.”52
Not only does abstinence-only education not work, it often results in unsafe sex practices: one study found that “There is little evidence that teens who participate in abstinence-only programs abstain from intercourse longer than others. It is known, however, that when they do become sexually active, teens who received abstinence-only education often fail to use condoms or other contraceptives. In fact, 88 percent of students who pledged virginity in middle school and high school still engage in premarital sex. The students who break this pledge are less likely to use contraception at first intercourse, and they have similar rates of sexually transmitted infections as non-pledgers.”53
Defenders of this policy of abstinence-only education like to claim responsibility for a decline in teen pregnancy from 1995 to 2002. That decline, however, was only 14 percent due to abstinence and 86 percent due to the use of contraception.54 In other words, the decline in teen pregnancy was thanks to Clinton, not conservatives.
The only thing abstinence-only education does is load young people down with rather dangerous notions about sex and protection. For example, thinking that condoms are effective only two thirds of the time. (I’m not saying condoms are perfect, but they are 98 percent effective in preventing pregnancy when used correctly.)55
Abstinence-only education and related programs teach our kids that condoms and birth control pills don’t work, which has the effect of leading them not to try to use anything at all when they have sex. They think there’s no point. Hopefully, we can all recognize that this is not an acceptable trend.
Women’s Health: The HPV Vaccine
THE RIGHT
“The seriousness of HPV and other STIs underscores the significance of God’s design for sexuality to human well being. Thus, Focus on the Family affirms—above any available health intervention—abstinence until marriage and faithfulness after marriage as the best and primary practice in preventing HPV and other STIs.”56
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“Studies have found the vaccine to be almost 100% effective in preventing diseases caused by the four HPV types covered by the vaccine—including pre-cancers of the cervix, vulva and vagina, and genital warts.”57
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has studied the HPV vaccine and concluded that it’s almost 100 percent effective in preventing HPV. To be most effective the CDC reports that it needs to be administered before girls become sexually active and therefore should be administered for girls of eleven to twelve and as young as nine. The vaccine has been extensively studied by the FDA and is rated as “safe and effective,” with no serious side effects.58
Republicans don’t want young women to get the HPV vaccine because if they take it, they’ll be less likely to get sick if they have sex, which, of course, means they’ll keep having sex. The best response I’ve seen to the Republicans on this issue came from Katha Pollitt in The Nation:
Wonderful, you are probably thinking, all we need to do is vaccinate girls (and boys too for good measure) before they become sexually active, around puberty, and HPV—and, in thirty or forty years, seven in ten cases of cervical cancer—goes poof.
Not so fast: We’re living in God’s country now. The Christian right doesn’t like the sound of this vaccine at all. “Giving the HPV vaccine to young women could be potentially harmful,” Bridget Maher of the Family Research Council told the British magazine New Scientist, “because they may see it as a license to engage in premarital sex.” Raise your hand if you think that what is keeping girls virgins now is the threat of getting cervical cancer when they are 60 from a disease they’ve probably never heard of.59
To paraphrase Ms. Pollitt’s point, it seems rather unlikely that some seventeen-year-old girl in the backseat of a car who was considering having sex with her boyfriend that night would suddenly say, “Wait, hold on, I could get cervical cancer.” It’s been a somewhat long time since I was a teenager, but if memory serves me right, the threat of cervical cancer is not really looming large for many teenagers.
The lengths the Bush administration has gone to in order to sabotage women’s health would be remarkable under any other president. For Bush, they are simply typical. When the Bush administration had a say in the makeup of an agency or panel, you could bet it was going to pack the panel with people as crazy as it was. Bush named a guy who said women should pray to relieve PMS to the FDA’s Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Commission.60 I don’t think I’ve asked my wife or any other female consultants about their success with combating cramps with prayer, but I can bet I know what their answer will be—and you can bet it won’t be printable.
Being Gay Is Not a Choice
THE RIGHT
“I feel homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural and sinful lifestyle.”—Governor Mike Huckabee.61
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE SCIENCE
“The idea that sexual preference is a hard-wired part of who we are is consistent with a growing body of scientific research that indicates a biological basis for sexual orientation, including studies of identical twins, studies of other species that don’t have cultural influences, and the discovery of genes that can change the sexual behavior in flies.”62
There’s no serious person who believes that being gay is a choice. The Republicans, and even some Democrats, are just plain wrong on this one. And it matters what people say, because public figures have sway. They affect what people think. People who think being gay is a choice are only about a quarter as likely to support gay rights as those who think being gay is a matter of birth—22 percent of people who think being gay is a choice support gay rights, but 78 percent of those who know that gay and straight are matters of birth support equal rights. It matters what people say, and it matters what we teach our children.63
During the 2004 election, CBS News anchor Bob Schieffer asked President Bush if he thought being gay is a choice. Bush replied, “You know, Bob, I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Although it would be a somewhat tiring exercise to keep up with everything Bush doesn’t know, and I try not to worry about most of it, this is something everyone should know: being gay isn’t a choice. Here’s the exchange.
SCHIEFFER: Both of you are opposed to gay marriage. But to understand how you have come to that conclusion, I want to ask you a more basic question. Do you believe homosexuality is a choice?
BUSH: You know, Bob, I don’t know. I just don’t know.64
It’s no surprise that Bush had support from the rest of the right wing, and all the men who have hoped to succeed him (and didn’t). When my friend the late Tim Russert cornered Governor Mike Huckabee on NBC’s Meet the Press in 2007, he confronted Huckabee with his statement that “homosexuality is an aberrant, unnatural, and sinful lifestyle”:
MR. RUSSERT: But when you say aberrant or unnatural, do you believe you’re born gay or you choose to be gay?
GOV. HUCKABEE: I don’t know whether people are born that way. People who are gay say that they’re born that way. But one thing I know, that the behavior one practices is a choice.65
I wonder how Governor Huckabee would take it if suddenly he faced elected officials saying on national television that they thought practicing heterosexuality was a sin.
Senator McCain, for his part, danced around the issue of gay rights throughout the primary and general election. He’s said he’s for and against civil marriage—during the same taping of This Week—and again during a single taping of Hardball.
MATTHEWS: Should there be—should gay marriage be allowed?
MCCAIN: I think—I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don’t have any problem with that. But I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.
Later during the show, McCain tacked a pivot on gay rights onto a response about the farm bill, correcting back to the right-wing position:
MCCAIN:…Could I just mention one other thing? On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that if people want to have private ceremonies, that’s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.66
This right-wing craziness is not confined to Congress; Republicans are also busy inserting state governments in people’s bedrooms. A majority of states have passed some form of legislation limiting or preventing people’s right to get married.67 It is disheartening to watch such legislation passing in states that vote Democratic.
Despite the right-wing hysteria, so far gay marriage has not destroyed the country. On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts officially recognized same sex-marriage.68 Five years have passed and Massachusetts seems to be intact. If it has had trouble with apocalyptic events following the legalization of same-sex marriage, news hasn’t reached New Orleans yet.
When it comes to the shrill protests and vile bigotry of the right wing, the only suggestion I can offer is to embrace your natural commonsense horror at the words of these right-wing bigots. It’s hard to listen to Katherine Harris, who claims same-sex marriage would cause anarchy.69 It’s worse to hear the homophobic proclamations of former Senator Rick Santorum, who compares same-sex unions to “man on dog” relationships.70
RICK SANTORUM
AP: I mean, should we outlaw homosexuality?
SANTORUM: I have no problem with homosexuality. I have a problem with homosexual acts. As I would with acts of other, what I would consider to be, acts outside of traditional heterosexual relationships. And that includes a variety of different acts, not just homosexual. I have nothing, absolutely nothing against anyone who’s homosexual. If that’s their orientation, then I accept that. And I have no problem with someone who has other orientations. The question is, do you act upon those orientations? So it’s not the person, it’s the person’s actions. And you have to separate the person from their actions.
AP: OK, without being too gory or graphic, so if somebody is homosexual, you would argue that they should not have sex?
SANTORUM: We have laws in states, like the one at the Supreme Court right now, that has sodomy laws and they were there for a purpose. Because, again, I would argue, they undermine the basic tenets of our society and the family. And if the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything. Does that undermine the fabric of our society? I would argue yes, it does…. Every society in the history of man has upheld the institution of marriage as a bond between a man and a woman. Why? Because society is based on one thing: that society is based on the future of the society. And that’s what? Children. Monogamous relationships. In every society, the definition of marriage has not ever to my knowledge included homosexuality. That’s not to pick on homosexuality. It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be.71
Republican claims that gay marriage and gay rights undermine the fabric of society are absurd. As the physicist Wolfgang Pauli used to say about ill-reasoned papers, these claims are “not even wrong.” They’re too far outside the realm of rationality to even dignify with a response.
Fortunately there are commonsense Democrats fighting back against this hatred and bigotry by introducing legislation to repeal the military’s ineffective “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy and to prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation.72
The Republicans Stole Florida
Gore won Florida in 2000. The Republicans stole Florida. Period, end of the story. I’m never going to get over that. And I’m never going to stop saying that (see Chapter 3).
THE RIGHT
They took Florida.
WHY WE’RE RIGHT/THE MATH
The Florida vote was tainted by a series of errors and political interpretations. Under a full accounting, Gore most likely would be president.
Oh, the Books They’ll Write: Scott McClellan and Other Administration Defectors
The fuss last year over Scott McClellan’s book would make you think it was the first time a Bush loyalist defected. Wrong. McClellan’s wasn’t the first book about this administration, and it won’t be the last. There are a lot of unanswered questions. Members of the Bush administration may be out of office, but they’re going to be dealing with tell-all books and congressional investigations for the rest of their lives. There will be more books. Under the Obama administration, I hope and pray and expect there will be investigations. Congress will chase down answers to a number of open questions about the war in Iraq and the unprecedented financial meltdown, among other things. Historians will launch their own full investigations. President Bush and this administration will spend a long, long time defending what was done and answering for their actions.
The National Opinion Research Center (NORC) at the University of Chicago was hired by a consortium on media outlets to conduct the definitive study on who won the disputed Florida election. NORC concluded that, “under a full accounting, Gore most likely would be president.”73 Republicans can kick and scream, but this study—again, from the University of Chicago, not exactly a reliable liberal stronghold—uses hard math and facts.
There were many factors and improper actions pushed by Bush’s Republican cronies in Florida that combined to steal the election from Al Gore.
Republican election officials improperly allowed questionable absentee ballots, mainly from Bush-leaning counties, giving him 292 votes. Suspicious and confusing ballot designs were used in Palm Beach and Duval County, which are heavily populated by seniors citizens who vote predominantly Democratic. These ballots were not counted and cost Gore approximately 113,000 votes. Older voting machines were also used in areas that were heavily populated by seniors, African-Americans, and lower-income voters who favor Democrats, and these errors cost Gore an additional 120,000 votes.74
Not to mention that the U.S. Civil Rights Commission concluded that Katherine Harris and the Republican election officials had improperly scrubbed voting rolls of “felons,” 180,000 of whom were legally able to vote. Of those excluded, 54 percent were African-Americans who vote overwhelmingly Democratic.75
The facts are clear: Al Gore won. For my Republican friends who will whine, “Oh, it’s in the past,” or, “Get over it,” I say, look at what the past eight years have brought. Go talk to the families of thousands of soldiers who are dead or maimed. Go talk to the people of New Orleans whose lives are still devastated after Katrina. Go talk to the millions of Americans living in poverty.
Ask them if they are over it. I know I’m not. The only thing that’s over is the argument of the inarguable, of issues that are res judicata.