Careful What You Wish For

Right.  So.  I get these ads from the Wish app whenever I'm browsing Faceborg, and lately, they've been getting... weirder.

Like... what even is this?  A homemade grenade press?

What I Learned About Leadership by Playing World of Warcraft (part 2)

Last time, I talked about how I got a guild started in World of Warcraft, and a little bit of what made us different from other guilds.  This time, I'll be finishing that conversation, and talking about how it all fell apart.

What I Learned About Leadership by Playing World of Warcraft (part 1)

This has been on my mind lately, so I'm just going to talk about it.  The short version, so you can know if you want to stick around, is that I joined World of Warcraft in year one and founded a guild which went on to become the largest and oldest on our server (it was a roleplaying server, this isn't much of a big deal).  I had a chance to put into practice some of my ideas about leadership, and got results, and it eventually all fell apart due to shenanigans and chicanery.  In the process, I learned a great deal about real-world leadership, but I don't talk about it with people because, in the first place, if they care about my leadership experience then they won't care about a video game I used to play; and second, if they care about a video game I used to play then they won't care about my leadership experience on a roleplaying server.

IMAGE (fork?  dilemma?  horns?)
Caught between the two horns of a dilemma.  Grooooaaaan.

Not a whole lot of sources today, hence the "rant" tag.  Any real-world connections to administrations past or present are left as an exercise for the reader.  Something something upcoming mid-term something.
CUT
World of Warcraft came out right about the same time I put my undergrad degree on hold, due to a crisis of What The Fuck Am I Doing With My Life.  During this time, my life was basically Work-WoW-WeekendsWithFriends, as all my friends were at college.  I had been hyped about the game since playing Warcraft III and really biting into the lore - the "good guy" Human Alliance was pretty racist and prone to infighting, driven as they were by fear and vengeance, while the "bad guy" Orcish Horde was a coalition of misfits, driven by the desire to overcome their literal demons and a history of subjugation.  There's a lot of purple prose, cliche, and overused tropes I'll forgive for a story as social-justicey (SoJuicy?) as that.

Humble Beginnings

I started a guild basically as soon as I could, but I was a naive MMO virgin (virgin to MMOs, not sex - I got into D&D and MMOs well after popping my metaphorical cherry which is not how that works at all actually but this isn't the point right now).  Consequently, I didn't go around begging for the ten signatures needed and then immediately boot them.  Instead, I focused first on recruiting the right people:  I'd party up with strangers, play with them for an hour or two, and then talk with them for a bit if I liked the cut of their jib.  As an intermittent insomniac prone to bouts of mild mania during periods of excitement, I found a fairly diverse group of English and Spanish speakers from around the world.

Thing is, most guilds are about power, prestige, and profit:  winning PvP matches, doing world firsts, making money to buy gear to do the first two, bragging rights on the forums, that sort of thing.  I wasn't about any of that - I wanted to start a family.  I would watch how others played, how they interacted with other strangers, how they responded to loot, and build an idea of their moral compass from that.  If I thought they were reasonable to a first approximation, I'd talk to them about guilds in the abstract, and then we'd decide whether or not to team up.  I wanted people who were in it for the long haul, and I got:  bilingual people from around the world; a couple who wanted a chill guild that wouldn't make huge time demands; people with children searching for a guild where real life comes first; and my second-in-command, a disabled veteran in search of the belonging he no longer got from the military.  A motley crew, no doubt, but I'm the kind of person who recognizes that diversity is strength just because it avails you of insights from multiple perspectives.

I ran my guild with one driving question:  "Is this a guild that I would want to be in, at any level?"  I hadn't the words then, but I was after a Rawlsian veil of ignorance.  I couldn't demand too much of the noobs in return for the prospect of advancement, because I wanted leadership to be fairly stable and not top-heavy; I couldn't demand too much of leadership, because burn & turn is a terrible way to run any organization; I also couldn't give too much power, because then I'd attract the kind of people who want power, whom I deeply loathe.  So every aspect of the guild was tuned to fostering community, camaraderie, and cooperation, especially the mandatory weekly guild meetings:  we met in an un-used arena in the corner of the orcish capitol, gave brief announcements and shout-outs, then held our initiation rites.

Every aspect of this built loyalty, even though I didn't know it explicitly at the time:

• The meetings were mandatory because I knew they wouldn't otherwise happen.  If you weren't physically there on time, you partied up with me or an officer who could watch your position on the map to ensure you were en route.  If you were offline, then no sweat; but if you were on, you were here.
• The meetings were in the Horde capitol but in an unused corner because many people had never seen the inside of this building before - it was an arena tucked away in the corner and no quests brought you there, so it was like a little secret, hiding in plain sight.
• The meetings were brief because I didn't want to sit for a bunch of annoying crap, and assumed nobody else did either.  It was strictly need-to-know information like policy changes and web site updates, as well as shout-outs for good deeds done by the members and/or upcoming events.
• The Rite of Initiation was a gang-style naked beat-in right outside the city gates:  the initiate and a senior member would remove all their gear and duel unarmed.  You didn't need to win, you had to participate.  But soon enough, initiates could be seen grinding the unarmed skill in the week leading up to their initiation, just to put on a good show come clobberin' time.
• The only requirement to be initiated was to attend one guild meeting.  You'd see it was quick, important, and best of all, followed by ritualized violence.  And then you were truly one of us.  We got many a new member from our initiation rites, just curious people running into town who wound up being good fits (or not).

Up-front token effort, reasonable demands, reasonable payoff, ritualized violence, and insider knowledge - the ingredients of any successful fraternity, minus the toxic masculinity.  I was completely unprepared for how well it would take off.

The Big Long Middle

We grew slowly but steadily for the first two years, quickly reaching a growth-rate plateau and holding steady at that rate for a long time.  My second-in-command set up a web site, opening up out-of-game communication channels; this also resulted in a lot of asynchronous roleplaying, further fostering community and group identity.  I actually listened to my guildmates, recognizing good ideas when I saw them and instituting them.  I delegated when I couldn't find the time or interest for a worthwhile initiative - and if nobody stepped up for a needed role, then we let it ride until someone willing did.  I didn't start arguments, or even end them - I moderated them, providing a venue to work out disagreements and find common ground.

By and large, I didn't put my foot down on much of anything (barring some notable exceptions to be discussed shortly).  I was a leader, not a boss - I wasn't in it for the glory or the power, I was in it for the community, and it so happens I just had to build that community myself.  More precisely, I created a space for the community, and then the people who were naturally attracted to this kind of community (after some intense up-front effort on my part) went and built it of their own accord.  It happened organically, too, with as little top-down direction as possible (except to say consistently that the guild should be built from the grassroots up).

This brings me to the one matter where I did repeatedly put my foot down:  what kind of guild should we be?  For the uninitiated, here is a quick breakdown of the general kinds of guilds you'll find in World of Warcraft:

• Player-versus-Player:  PvP guilds are like PMCs, focused on the various kinds of competitions between players of opposing factions and the rewards accrued thereby.  In general, a PvP guild respects cunning, battle prowess, and adaptibility - while there most certainly is a meta-game, those with the skill and time to experiment with it can constructively innovate in this area.
• Player-versus-Environment (Raiding):  Raiding guilds are like corporations, focused on the endgame content of building 40-person coalitions to take on the game's most demanding dungeons.  In general, a raiding guild respects consistency, battle prowess, and obedience - while there is room for flexibility, the overarching point of any PvE guild is to make steady progress through the endgame content in pursuit of a more or less predictable reward.
• Roleplaying:  RP guilds are focused on the characters in the guild and their relation to the world, in a way creating their own character-driven content rather than relying exclusively on the developers.
• Casual:  Casual guilds don't have a driving principle beyond hanging out and enjoying the game.  While less focused, they are also less prone to infighting and drama (though that can happen anywhere).  However, the lack of unifying purpose also tends to reduce the guild's cohesion and longevity.

While our guild was described as an RP/casual guild, because that's convenient shorthand, I really thought of it as a "community building" guild - but explaining that requires more or less this entire post, whereas the RP/casual description communicates sufficiently what the guild both is and is not.  So, fine.  The structure of the guild was also set up such that leadership was more public service than power hierarchy.  You got into leadership by showing a drive and desire to support and mentor those around you, not by putting in dues and then accruing authority.  We certainly did our share of PvP events and even a little bit of raiding, but it was more in the manner of a hobby within the game than the point of the game.

This is getting pretty long, so I'll divide it up into two posts.  Stay tuned!

The Importance of Perspective, or: Who WOULDN'T Want a Personal Slave?

I'd like to say two things up front: first, that I definitely sympathize with those who suffer from ennui, from wanting more out of life, from a numbing dissatisfaction with the way things are going; second, that I don't know these women from Eve and their situations are probably more complicated than they've even openly and candidly admitted.

That said, Rant: On.

This past Sunday, I read Delia Lloyd complain that modern life is hard work. Fucking surprise! I read two of the pieces she linked by Sandra Tsing Loh, one transparently escapist fantasy which I can't tell if Loh actually pines after or not, and one rather longer slice-of-life lament which smacks of teenage angst in middle-aged terms. I'm sympathetic to Loh, I really am - but for shit's sake, this lady has some growing up to do.

The cockles of my heart are not nearly so opening to Lloyd (and that ain't much to begin with), probably for this bit alone:

...here's what we ate: cold pasta covered with leftover Tikka Masala sauce (tomato sauce inexplicably AWOL in kitchen cupboard), some soggy carrots cooked four hours earlier for kids' dinner, and the coup de grace: canned sardines. Yum.

This may not strike you, General Reader, as particularly infuriating, but what you have to consider is context, which at present means, "whatever the Hell I was thinking about five minutes earlier." In this situation, the context is that I had just woken up from dreaming about snowmobiling, which I have never done but long to do, and I marveled at the fact that our intellects have afforded us as a species the opportunity to transform what would normally be a difficult and harrowing experience (i.e. trekking across harsh, snowy landscapes) into leisure activity. Awesome! And while thinking of this, I assembled for myself a breakfast of leftover chili with fried eggs and Tabasco sauce mixed in, topped with cheddar cheese and green chiles for garnish. It was delicious, and it was reheated leftovers.

So I hope you understand what I mean when I say that I find Delia Lloyd's attitude comparable to a moist, aromatic pile of dogshit. It's unpleasant to step in, to look at, to smell, just to be around in general.

Seriously, this whining fuck-stain goes through a busy day doing things that most people regard as hallmarks of success, and complains at the end that she wants someone else to go through the boring parts so she doesn't have to. What is this happy horse-shit? She engages in a day's work of her chosen career path, has the resources to meet the wants and needs of her children, spends some quality time involving herself in her children's lives, then does a little more work before having a late dinner with her husband. Note that she does not reheat it at her option. And rather than just, oh, hire someone, she pines after someone to do the extra business of cooking, cleaning, and clothes-shopping for free? I am simply baffled by the... the... I dunno, the presumption of affluence, I guess? Maybe just the laziness.

To be fair, I'll bet she wasn't thinking about the day-to-day lives of our genetic ancestors as she went about her business. I'll bet she wasn't thinking as she prepared that day's meal, as I had been, of the marvels found in nearly every kitchen that allow us to prepare and store food from miles away, grown and prepared by someone we'll probably never meet, for consumption whenever we fucking feel like it. And I'll bet she also wasn't thinking about how children were our first retirement plans, about how the shotgun approach to child-rearing is regrettably still a necessity in certain parts of the world, or about how indulging the desires of said progeny is a luxury afforded to a precious and relatively modern few in the grander scope of our shared history.

In short, to understand Mrs. Lloyd's perspective, I have to concede an awful lot to general thoughtlessness. It's just a goddamned shame that she can't be more thoughtful in appreciating her life.

Then again, I guess I'm fucking lucky. I mean, my father taught me how to clean floors and sinks, but he also taught me the art of hinokishin. When I punched a hole through my bedroom door, he disciplined me by teaching me how to cut a door to size and hang it, making me fix the mess I had made. He taught me to thank lightning-struck trees for the wood they gave us for carving walking sticks, and to leave campsites better than I found them because it's the right thing to do and I'm not any more important than the next person to come along. And I guess Rant is Off now, because I find myself feeling sorry for these sorts of people who fantasize for something more without appreciating the full value of what's right the fuck in front of them.

Cross-Post: The Man with the Bag

My mom was fretting about there not being enough money this year for all the Christmas miracles she'd like to have happen. I tried to comfort her, so I asked what made Christmas magical in her youth, expecting that she'd reflect on things like family togetherness, a few nice surprises, and the hoopla of celebration; instead, she looked me in the eye and sadly said, "Santa," as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. My first thought was, "You child," but then I realized that calling her out on this would do no good, so I tried to constructively point out what really made Christmases good for her: the actual good things.

Anyway, the Santa Claus lie (and misinformation with intent to deceive is lying, no matter what your intentions are) is still being perpetrated upon my youngest siblings, so here's this.

Sometimes I feel like I'm the only one in my family who doesn't think it's OK to believe something false because it makes you happy. There are only two situations where we do this: the "Bunny, Tooth and Claus" trinity, and religion. My parents have asked me to keep mum once again about Santa Claus, insisting on perpetuating the myth in young E’s mind. I assured them that I would maintain my position of evasive neutrality – really, it would only do more harm than good at this point, and he’ll soon figure it out for himself, anyway. Plus, he’s not even my kid. After that, C’s practically in the bag. Next on the hit list: the Easter Bunny, and then the Tooth Fairy!

I want to take a minute to clarify something, though, lest it go misunderstood: I love winter festivities. Sure, a few people turn into raging dick-bags when discussing the proper etiquette of how to greet someone, and fuck the haters (I say “Happy Holidays” a lot because I don’t really identify with the religious reasons behind any of them and therefore don’t really wish well for any holy day in particular, but if someone wishes me Merry Christmas or Happy Chanukkah, I’m content to interpret that as a wish that I have a good time throughout the season), but by and large, most people get a whole lot nicer. Also, winter is awesome and gift-giving is one of my favorite traditions. On the one hand, yay free stuff; on the other, it helps you get to know someone and keep them in mind when you’re shopping for something you think they’ll enjoy. I also think that the history of the Santa Claus myth is a fascinating case study in memetic evolution; however, as with any other work of fiction, I think the myth is valuable as a myth and only as such.

A lot of people are willing to get on one’s case about such things (like my parents), and I find it puzzling that they treat this with such idiosyncratic uniqueness. One of the more idiotic attacks that I hear is that if I don’t endorse the systematic teaching of the Santa Claus myth to young children as fact, then I must hate fun. It should be obvious that one can enjoy an end without approving of every single means available to achieve it (disapproving of rape doesn’t mean that someone hates sex). Similarly, I don’t have to hate Christmas to harbor qualms about one or two aspects of certain groups’ celebration of it – for example, the over-commercialization of the season, of which many people of varying creeds disapprove.

A more subtle approach is to say that I’m simply being no fun on this one subject, in this one respect – I take it too seriously and am making a mountain out of a molehill. I can actually respect that position, so long as I’m afforded the opportunity to defend my own, which is my goal in this entry (and this isn’t really directed at anyone who’s likely to read it, it’s mainly shit I would tell my parents if I thought it would do any good). First and foremost, Santa Claus is a symbol, and symbols are important: they shape the way we think, teach us lessons, and often serve as paradigm cases upon which we may base more pragmatic beliefs or courses of action. As a symbol, I think Santa Claus is actually a good thing; it’s the treatment of this symbol – the teaching of it as literal fact to young children, the reasons for doing so, and the attitudes with which this practice is commonly regarded – to which I take exception.

I also want to take a moment to head off any accusations that this is a thinly-veiled rant against religion. I don’t want there to be any veil at all, really, but this isn’t about religion specifically - it’s about the perpetuation of a tradition which I think is both totally unnecessary and harmful to a certain degree, yet paradoxically enjoys what I think is an undue amount of respect in mainstream culture. It just so happens that this is the same kind of problem I have with religion. These two issues share a huge amount of overlap, I make no bones about this. However, I wish to confine the discussion here strictly to Santa Claus. Once again, this is a beef I have with parents in general, and mine in particular.

As I said, I like the Santa Claus symbol, because it appeals to the naïve intellect of children but also bears out on a more mature reading. He’s a magical man who lives beyond the reach of human civilization and gives gifts to people in accordance with their conduct by means impossible to us mere mortals. To the child, this translates as, “Behave well and get stuff you want.” And, really, I think that characterizes the experience of children in most decent households: good behavior is rewarded, bad behavior is reprimanded. Good symbol. Us adults know, however, that sometimes a severely unethical course of action, when rigorously pursued, can still net a positive result for the agent (for example, the Enron fiasco, wherein corporate pirates robbed a lot of innocent people of money they deserved and – injustice of injustices! – were only lightly reprimanded for it - the punishment in no way fit the crime).

Good behavior, on the other hand, often goes unrewarded for a very long time, and sometimes is never rewarded at all. Obviously, the karmic reciprocity embodied by Santa Claus holds little sway over real life, but I think that the symbol here serves not as a lesson, but as an example: should we not strive to make our society such that the good are recognized and rewarded, and the wicked are chastised? This is not a mechanism by which the world works, but rather an embodiment of values which I think many of us share. Reap what you sow, and all of that.

Additionally, I think there actually is a much deeper lesson that is instructive (as in the children’s example), rather than exemplary (for the grown-ups): you can cheat other people, but there’s no cheating reality. If you do a good job at something, then that will be reflected in the product of your labor; if not, then it’s garbage in, garbage out. There are exceptions to this, of course, but this is the general rule. OK, maybe this last one’s a stretch, but still.

The problems arise when we consider the teaching of this myth not as a symbol, but as a literal fact. In the first place, it’s a lie: misinformation with intent to deceive, plain and simple. This, on its own, is not much – it’s the context and the consequences of actions that determine their moral content, not their mere descriptions, but I think this should serve as a warning sign. Lies generally turn out bad. And let’s not forget the enormous, conspiratorial scale on which the Santa Claus myth is foisted upon young children.

When taken as literal fact rather than fable, the “be good, get stuff” ethic can be disheartening to children when compared to how things actually play out: if Santa Claus is really magical, and satisfies the wishes of children based on their behavior, shouldn’t you be able to get anything you want if you’re just good enough? And if you don’t get what you want, then doesn’t that mean you’ve been a bad child (or not good enough)? And how come Tommy, that spoiled brat next door, got what he wanted from Santa, but you didn’t? What’s this guy up to, anyway?

Of course, this isn’t the way it always goes down, but my point is simply that Santa isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. There’s also the fact that a lot of kids, upon learning that Santa isn’t real, are heartbroken: obviously, this is a cherished belief, since they’re not saying, “Huh, I thought there was something strange about that whole story, I’m kind of relieved to learn it was all hooey.” This effect has a double-edge, I believe – on the one hand, it provides evidence that belief in Santa is a good thing while that belief is maintained (and that’s the killer); on the other hand, the more cherished the belief, the harder it is to let go of it.

So yeah, Santa’s got his up-side, sure, but there’s also a down-side which I think a lot of people underrepresent. It’s kind of a wash, though, as most of this business goes down at an age that many don’t very clearly remember, so who cares? Let’s look at the ostensive reasons behind Santa, then; or, just what this myth is used for. “Be good, or Santa’s gonna give you a lump of coal in your stocking.” That’s a threat, right there. A fairly innocuous one, to be sure, and almost always empty. However, what strikes me as sleazy is that the source of the threat is externalized from the threatener: Mommy or Daddy is threatening to do something you don’t like, but under the guise that it’s a threat from someone else, an all-seeing and implacable judge of right and wrong who – wait, I said I wasn’t going to talk about religion.

The other side of that coin is that when the kid gets stuff they really like, who gets the praise? Not the people who did the actual work to make the Christmas Miracle happen, but the unseen benefactor in the sky – err, I mean, at the North Pole. Dunno what I was thinking there, innocent grin is me! (Look, I find it tremendously ironic that Santa’s like training wheels for a monotheistic deity, but so few outgrow the latter as they outgrow the former. No further comment on that, I promise.) In all seriousness, though, I do honestly think that the substitution of a false and magical justification for good behavior, in lieu of a rational and Earthly one, is a bad thing – both for the fact that it’s empty and wrong, and for the precedent it sets at such an impressionable age.

Look, one may say, all of this is small potatoes. The whole point of Saint Nick is that it’s an entertaining fantasy that’s fun for kids to believe while the magic of childhood lasts. Right? Still bad, says I. The fact that it makes you feel good to think something is true does not mean you actually ought to think it’s true. Take romance, for instance. Say one of your coworkers fancies another: do you think it would be good to make that person believe the feeling was mutual, knowing that that’s false? Of course not, you’re simply setting them up for disappointment – either quickly, when they start to act on those affections and get embarrassed, or gradually, as they wait for the other person to act on affections which are simply not there.

The same principle applies, and the same thing happens, with jolly old Kris Kringle. Perpetuating the illusion just adds to the let-down. And the whole “magic of childhood” tack kind of rubs me the wrong way, too. The message, as best I can tell, is that “magic is fun, reality is boring” (or “childhood is fun, adulthood is boring”). I find that false, and frustratingly so. If magic were real, then it would be like any other part of reality: discoverable, usable, investigable. There would be nothing special about it, just like there’s nothing special about computers (which, to my mind, are a kind of magic). As far as I can tell, what’s exciting about magic is not that it’s magic, but that it’s different. Kids who know there’s no such thing as Batman can still have fun playing Batman with their friends, or Hell, playing Cowboys and Indians when they know that they are not in fact cowboys or Indians. I did. Shit, I still do this stuff whenever I roleplay.

“Something Different,” every now and again, is exciting. It breaks up the routine. And you don’t need to think it’s true to have fun, you just have to pretend and have a functional imagination. Plus, reality is fucking exciting, too – you just have to know where to look. Boredom sets into the boring mind, and all that good stuff. Plus, the “magic” of childhood never really has to die, anyway. I find that, as an adult, I have more access to the stuff I liked doing as a kid, and now that the responsibilities are my own (which, to be sure, carries its own price – a price I pay gladly, by the way), I can determine when and how I do those things to a much greater extent than I could as a child. Being a grown-up fucking rules (and screw you, Mom, cake is a breakfast food!).

The point with all this is that I don’t have a problem with Santa decorations, or Santa floats in parades, or any of that nonsense. Go nuts. Really. Please, just, do whatever you like – I like the Santa myth, and adults know what’s up, so it’s all in good fun (for real). But when it comes to treating it like fact in a misguided attempt to "magic up" your kid’s childhood, I mean, nothing good comes of that which can’t be had by more wholesome means, and the bad stuff could all be rather neatly avoided by treating it like a superhero comic and telling your kid that it’s not true, it’s just a fun story. That’s really the source of my confusion: why the Hell isn’t Santa Claus treated just like Batman or Spider-Man?

Faith needs protection. No joke.

Kid gloves: off. Rant: on.

So there's a bunch on the 'tubes about atheist advertisements being complained into censorship, about atheists being vilified for trouncing others' beliefs, about the insensitivity of all us modern folk for criticizing each others' faiths, about the problem of everyone rubbing elbows while we disagree so vehemently on matters metaphysical, and a bunch of other nonsense that amounts to children whining that they don't want to hear this or that. "Boo-hoo, I don't wanna hear that stuff, wahh-wahh, why can't you just be quiet back-stage while I'm loud and in the spotlight?"

Let's get this straight, right off the bat: if you complain that something offends you, then you are whining. Offense is not harm. If you complain that something harms you, then your complaint is legitimate. And if something offends you and is harmful to you, then confine your complaint to the actual harm (as opposed to the pretend harm) or you will be seen as a whiner and the legitimate component of your complaint will probably be drowned out.

As Thomas "I owned slaves but still had relatively progressive values for my time" Jefferson said, "The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Tru Fax, right there - the very truest. There is a piece of the puzzle that is missing from the public discourse, one that makes sense of the whole debacle, and that piece is simply this: only stupid ideas need protection.

That sounds flippant, but I'm being perfectly serious here. And also flippant. Good ideas are backed by evidence and/or argumentation, and they get a foothold in the meme pool based on those merits. While they may not be as infectious, prolific, or enduring as others of their kin, these merits are all that good ideas need. Furthermore, it is these merits which cannot be taken from good ideas and cannot be conferred upon stupid ideas, and this is why faith needs protection. Faith does not have redeeming qualities as a rational idea or as an empirically supported idea, it only has the memetic merits of being infectious and communicable. These flaws make faith vulnerable to rational and empirically supported ideas, and acknowledging these facts in public discourse is anathema to the maintenance of faith in practice because cognitive dissonance is a bitch.

"Faith" is a great many things to a great many people. Let's take a quick tour along the continuum: faith is the hope of things unseen; faith is believing what you know ain't so (thank you, Samuel Clemens); faith is believing without or despite reason and/or evidence; faith is trust; faith is patience; faith is kindness. Atheists, skeptics, and humanists may all "argue in good faith," and this is not a problem for us faithless heathens, for "to argue in good faith" is to trust in one's argumentative partner. Same letters, different idea. I, as a humanist, place faith in the goodness of humanity, insofar as I expect us to do all the good that it is in us to do (though we often fall far short, I still have that faith as an expected standard - this is called "optimism" by some). I have faith in my brother, insofar as I believe that he will find happiness in his life; though I also recognize that he may in fact fall short of this. Faith, like all words, has multiple meanings.

I'm talking about one kind of faith here: belief without or despite reason and/or evidence. "Faith" is shorter, but you can replace every use of "faith" with "belief without or despite reason and/or evidence" if you ever find yourself confused as to what exactly I'm yelling about here (except, of course, for the last paragraph). That's the kind of faith that is stupid, and that's the kind of faith that needs protection. Faith is frail and weak; evidence and reason are enduring and powerful. Faith must be shielded from evidence and reason, for those things erode faith. Believers are humans, though, and humans have psychological needs, some of which include:

• To maintain an image of oneself as consistent.
• To maintain an image of oneself as rational.
• To maintain an image of oneself as intelligent.

These are all directly opposed to faith - it is not consistent, it is not rational, and it is not intelligent to believe something without reason or evidence. We require reason and evidence in all other areas of our lives: whether we're poking around on Snopes or looking up the latest health scare, we typically follow evidence and reason to form our beliefs. Nobody drives by faith, writes a grocery list by faith, balances their checkbook by faith, or does bids on e-bay by faith. In all of those activities, the overwhelming majority of people behave in a mostly-rational fashion for the overwhelming majority of the time (at least as far as the whole "forming beliefs about the way things are" activity is concerned). So faith is not consistent with our day-to-day lives.

Neither is faith rational, as a matter of definition. While I am defining my way to victory on this point (and deliberately confining my tirade to faith that does in fact lack or defy evidence and/or reason), I am not merely defining my way to victory here. This is a pertinent point for the simple reason that many people do in fact believe things without or despite reason and/or evidence, yet most people do have a psychological need to consider themselves as rational beings. We're complicated, you see. This kind of faith - which many people actually have - is directly opposed to this deep-seated bit of human nature. This matters, in other words, and no amount of cultural apologetics can fix it. Y'know, just in case there's anyone out there who cares to point out that there's no rule saying we have to be rational, or that humans aren't rational all the time; sure, the former point is true and the latter point is true, but faith is still a problem for this reason.

Last, faith is not intelligent. It's just not smart to believe something with all your heart but without or despite reason and/or evidence, The End. There are many different forms of intelligence, and trying to come up with a universally acceptable one is a fool's errand. Just the same, I challenge anyone to propose a workable definition of "intelligent" that allows for the behavior of "adopting a belief without reason or evidence and deliberately ignoring obvious questions that would undermine said belief." Pro Tip: This can't be done without special pleading or begging the question (or flat-out arbitration, I suppose). Conversely, I'll bet we could all come up with three definitions each of "stupid" that would cover such a behavior. Here's one: "failing, deliberately or otherwise, to adhere to rationality and general thoughtfulness; absent-minded or flighty in one's conscious thought processes." We're all guilty of stupidity from time to time (especially under this definition), and I'll be the first to admit that I have some pretty epic bouts of The Stupid. Here, watch: "I'm the first to admit having an epic bout of The Stupid! Neener-neener!" But that's part and parcel of the homo sapiens gig: we all make mistakes, and we don't stop until we die. Faith is still stupid, though.

And so we see that, because faith is a dumb idea, it needs protection from the good ideas that would otherwise supplant it. Faith needs tricks to keep itself in place. Faith can't survive on its own in a truly free marketplace of ideas. Faith is a crutch for when we lack explanation or authority but want it anyway, and when a real explanation or an actual authority is found, faith evaporates like dew in the morning sun. When the crutch is no longer needed, the patient needs to learn to walk unaided; for some, this will be a very painful and awkward process; for others, it can be easy. But there are those who wish to walk around with their crutch as a permanent fixture, they get so attached to the crutch that it seems an essential part of their sense of self, and they'll fight anyone who tries to take the crutch away or even say that they don't need it. To take the metaphor to its appropriately awkward conclusion, some of these folks even get upset at the very idea that some people live entirely crutch-less lives, it's so ingrained into their way of life.

So how does faith get the protection it so desperately needs? It's called "social proof," and it's one of the bigger foibles of this whole brain-having business. I would argue that it's the main reason that most faithful aren't formally diagnosed with a delusional disorder: it's just not practical to classify most of a population as "delusional," even if one person alone would be so-classified, and so religion gets a special exemption. You see, when we come under the impression that a lot of other people think something, we tend to see that something as "correct," or at least "legitimate." It's that same old line, "Ten million screaming Elvis fans can't be wrong," but wearing a psychologist's hat and nodding sagely from a leather armchair while you talk about your childhood. It's also one of the reasons that Kitty Genovese died - contrary to popular belief, it is not urban depersonalization that made it possible for her assailant to repeatedly attack her in view of an entire apartment complex. Nor did all those onlookers simply assume that "someone else" would take care of things¹. The truth is more subtle and less satisfying.

Kitty Genovese died also because a large number of individuals saw a group doing nothing, and therefore assumed that "nothing" was the right thing to do². Absent a telepathic time machine, that's the best reconstruction we can get of the situation. This has been tested over and over, and it's why advertisers continuously show people using the advertised product: they're trying to hack your decision-making process by showing you, true or not, that other people do the thing that they want you to do.

Social proof is one of the biggest protections that faith has had in place for the last several thousand years running. The publicly acknowledged existence of happy, moral atheists is a direct and imminent threat to that. This is why the faithful can't stand to see a bus sign that even acknowledges that there are those who don't believe in God. This is why the faithful go into conniptions when they see atheistic displays during the holidays. This is why the faithful tell atheists to sit down, shut up, and keep their unbelief to themselves: our existence is a threat to their way of life, insofar as their way of life includes building up that wall of social proof around the useless bauble of faith. And soon, we shall see this power harnessed for good or for awesome as it gives Bill Donohue a pants-shitting heart attack, hopefully on live television.

This is also why the faithful oppose stem cell research, or evolution, or reproductive rights, or gay marriage, or anything that threatens their worldview: scientific and cultural progress of any kind erodes the protections they've built for their faith, because results are undeniable (and cognitive dissonance is a bitch). This is also why the faithful tend to accept the comforts of civilization they grew up with (thanks, science!), while decrying the imaginary iniquities of further-civilizing efforts: change for the better implies that there was a "worse" to come from, and that undermines faith. But the advances they grew up with are familiar, so those are seen as non-threatening. Did you catch that? Even though the "new and threatening" innovations are a natural outgrowth of the same principles that fueled the development of the "old and safe" innovations, they don't see scientific progress that way because they don't think about it enough (usually). It only goes as far as "new and threatening" versus "old and safe" for quite a lot of them. But public misunderstanding of science is another topic for another day.

In closing: Faith (as a belief held without or despite reason and/or evidence) really needs protection, not as a deontological maxim, but because it can't stand on its own. Social proof has historically been brought to bear in service to this task, but social justice and free speech and generally being civilized persons gets directly in the way of the social proof which the faithful so desperately crave. And so of course we shall be met with shrieking opposition every step of the way, because the better the situation gets for us, the worse it gets for the faithful, as their social proof collapses and exposes their frail faith to the better ideas that undermine it. They see this as "bad." It would be better termed as "growth." And, barring another Dark Age, it is inevitable.

Fuckin' hooray!

Notes:

1. This phenomenon has been identified and has nothing to do with urban environments (as opposed to rural environments), but rather large groups (as opposed to small groups), and it's called "diffusion of responsibility." From the Wikipedia article: "Diffusion of responsibility is a social phenomenon which tends to occur in groups of people above a certain critical size when responsibility is not explicitly assigned. This phenomenon rarely ever occurs in small groups. In tests, groups of three or fewer, everyone in the group took action as opposed to groups of over ten where in almost every test, no one took action." And for clarity, though the Wikipedia article states that diffusion of responsibility can manifest in a bystander effect, the bystander effect page lists diffusion of responsibility as just one of its multifarious causes. Hooray for overlap!

2. Yeah, OK, it's still more complicated than that. I know. But in Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Cialdini argues pretty much this idea in chapter four ("Social Proof: Truths Are Us"). He goes on, he lays out a great case, but the point is that this bystander effect is huge and not a lot of people really understood it until the studies were done. It's not just diffusion of responsibility.

Work Related

This is an actual snippet from this morning's conference call - I transcribed it just moments after it happened (details obscured for purposes of anonymity and intelligibility):

Client: Your agents have been doing [X] too much.
D: Oh. OK, how much do your own reps do [X]?
Client: Well, you're not that high, just a little on the high side.
D: Right, but you didn't answer my question: how much do your own reps do [X]? What's "normal" here? I need to know what we're shooting for.
Client: Well, we don't really track it on our side, we just think you guys are a little bit high.
D: Erm, well... OK, then what number would be better? What would you consider "not high" for doing [X]? What should I tell the team to aim for?
Client: Yeah, we don't really keep track of that. I don't know what to tell you.
D: OK, what I'm getting at is that if you don't define normal, then how do you know what's outside of normal?
Client: Well, we're just assuming it's high right now.

I had to literally bite my tongue (that hurts!) or the next thing out of my mouth would have been a drippingly sarcastic, "Well, that's not viciously arbitrary at all!" I was incredulous; this is a conversation I honestly never expected to have. God God Dammit Dammit! "High" is a relative term which only has meaning in relation to some other number! What's so hard to understand about this?!

They say that quitting cigarettes can be worse than quitting heroin...

... but I don't believe them.

I mean, I think drugs are awesome, but I won't even try heroin, because I'm worried that it might be that good. There is absolutely no fucking way that that's less awful than quitting cigarettes. Yet here I am, at five to two in the morning, and fretting over the fact that there's no place I can buy cigarettes in town. I mean, I have money... but no, says my super-ego, I'm supposed to quit this time. Wow. This is fucking tough.

Quitting cigarettes is supposed to be good for you, right?

SECKS: The "Bull-in-a-China-Shop" Approach to the Birds and the Bees

I think that we need to get laid. Like, every single one of us. I'm talking specifically here about the USA, but I suppose a good deal of this would apply to large chunks of Europe, as well as the "first world" in general. Consider how much our culture is steeped in sex, and how little we talk about it: advertisers make their money by literally preying on public perceptions of "sexy," underwear models adorn our buses, and we think nothing of the dating service ads and sex shops we see every day of our lives; but at the same time, we have people convinced that pornography is waging war on the human vagina, that breastfeeding in public is motherfucking dangerous, and that some people shouldn't be able to get a certain kind of contract signed by the state because of how they like to stick it in the naughty place.

This is fucking stupid.

Look, Humanity: Sex was here before we were, and it's got squatter's rights. We absolutely have to concede that point, or we're not going to make any progress on this one. But nooo, some people get all squeamish about the S-word, or the P-word, or the V-word, or the I-word, or whatever fucking word you want to use to talk about fucking. The truth of the matter is that porn is not intrinsically exploitative of women (though many men are - and so are some women, for that matter!), otherwise sites like (SUPER NOT-WORK-SAFE WARNING!) Men in Pain, Bound Gods, Naked Kombat, and Butt Machine Boys wouldn't exist. (And that's just one porn company!) The myth that seeing a breast is bad absolutely stupefies me - everyone has nipples, OK? And ain't nothin' wrong with a tit - it causes no harm, there's no such thing as "moral fiber" for it to damage, and if someone gets a little tickle in their "down there" because of it, I say good for them! As for our culture being stuck in the mud when it comes to recognizing homosexual relationships as legal, ugh, I don't even know where to start on that one. I'll just say I fucking hate Utah and leave it at that (and if you're reading this and happen to live in Utah... umm... well, OK, you're an exception). We really need to get over our bad selves - and I know just how to do it!

Here's my plan: we make a fucking float (i.e. "a float that fucks," I'm not just being foul-mouthed here) and put it in the Macy's Day parade. I mean one man, one woman, missionary-style reproductive intercourse. 1v1 PVI. We do it this way so that nobody can claim it's not as God intended - we're pandering to the Fanatical Wrong now, we just don't let them in on the Master Plan. And there's no way they'll find out, because there's no way they're reading my blog. Anyway, if they say they're offended, we can just slap them and ask what's offensive about the act that brought them into the world. Then we'll ask how they feel about their relationships with their mothers.

Think about that: everyone's parents fucked. Even yours. Your friends, too: ever meet a friend's parents? They fucked. Oh, they got it on! In fact, they probably tried everything you've ever tried - and since they're older than you, they've had more time to try more things. Please, take your time in pondering this.

Oops, got a little side-tracked there. OK, so we've got our fucking float, and now we just wait for it to become de rigueur, and then we start putting in a fucking gay float, and a fucking bondage float, and a fucking threesome float, and so on and so forth. We'll have all these fucking floats and as soon as anyone complains, we'll just slap them and say that people come in all shapes, sizes, and flavors, and we've had the first fucking float for forever, so everyone else needs to be represented here, too. Turn it into an equality/inclusion issue, that will almost guarantee a victory. OK, so that's phase two. Also, I may or may not be making this up as I go.

Phase three is "a miracle happens" and phase four is "victory," and those are pretty self-explanatory. I actually think my problem is in phase one, since people think they'll be harmed by seeing a naked body or a clear representation of the physical act of love (it doesn't harm them to have a naked body, such as their own, just to see another one). So, sure, maybe some people are offended by the sight of a nekkid body. So what? I'm offended by clothing: the proposition that there is something wrong with the human body which needs to be covered up is morally offensive to me, and I can't bear to see a human body hidden from plain view. But people's bodies are their own, so we should be able to do as we like, says I. Problem is, that's a rational conclusion, and people well and truly aren't rational about sex. I don't think they're capable of it, in fact, for what I think are some pretty embarrassing reasons.

We're a race of sex-crazed maniacs. People, that is. All of us. Every single one of your genetic ancestors had to lie, cheat, steal, charm, and/or muscle his and her way into the next generation by fucking. Fair enough at that: natural selection being what it is, those who are best at something will tend to keep on doing it, and sexual reproduction is certainly something one may be good or bad at. To that end, so much of our lives has been brought into the courtship, mating, and child-rearing rituals we've needed to survive; our lives are tied up in sex, it is an essential part of who we are and our instincts have been formed accordingly.

There's a problem with this, though, and like so many other problems, it is not inherent in the situation but arises from a mis-match between two things. Intellectually and technologically, we're beyond this sexy nonsense. Culturally and psychologically, we most definitely are not.

This needs some unpacking. OK, so sex is the way by which genes are able to ensure their transmission into the next generation - by "the way," I mean simply that there are plenty of other ways to improve one's odds, but sex is necessary in a way that other things just aren't. A horse can be as strong, fast, or intelligent as it likes, but without a mate and some offspring, that horse's genes won't propagate themselves into the next generation. Animals, accordingly, often act as if the genes inside them are taking calculated steps to increase their likelihood of continued propagation; this is just so, for the simple reason that those genes which have a tendency to cause their hosts to act in such fashion will, in the long term, win out over those which do not.

But the goals which may reasonably be imputed to genes are so far removed from the goals that humans choose in their individual lives, this often isn't worth thinking about - yet this mis-match is exactly what's at issue here. In fact, if we were not able to intellectualize our lives and consciously reject what our genes would say we "ought" to do, then nobody would ever adopt a child and all men would seek to become prolific sperm donors. Each of us is a collective of dead-end somatic cells with two tenuous glandular connections to the germ line, and as such we have all these instincts clustered around maintaining these connections and seeing to it that they do in fact convey our patterned base pairs to the next generation.

Intelligence changed this - sort of. Once we were able to realize our place in the greater scheme of things, we were on to the game and could see sex for what it is. And, well, it turns out that we need to be a little sex-nuts to win at genesmanship; more precisely, those individuals who are sex-nuts will tend to win at sex for the same reason sports nuts tend to be better at sports than non-enthusiasts, and so genes and culture "for" being sex-nuts get propagated. But being sex-nuts is just like being any other kind of nuts, insofar as it's fucking crazy. We have all these cute little ideas about sex: it's a private thing, it's special, it's only for two, you're a loser if you don't get any, a whole bunch of truly legendary nonsense about the hymen, and so on and so forth. These are all myths and contrivances - they're complications we add to sex because we're complicated, and we project those complications upon things that matter to us.

Sex had good reason to be private back in the day when someone could fuck with your fucking - especially if you were the fucker fucking with some other fucker's fucking. But honestly, there's no reason it can't be out in the open - we know enough about it and can keep it safe enough that there's just no reason we can't fuck in the street. I'm not saying we should, and I'm not saying you won't get arrested for it; I'm saying that there's no purely rational reason outside our own ad hoc psychology that prevents sex from being a wildly public thing. The idea that it "ought" to be private is only in our heads. That in and of itself is sufficient reason to make it private, but what I'm saying is that we're not rational for being this way in the first place - we're simply programmed to be that way, it's not a reasoned conclusion we arrived at after any deliberation. It's simple fucking insanity to have this idea for no reason and with no support, and most people never fucking question it their entire lives. It's much the same story for how many partners a person ought to have at one time or throughout a lifetime, who those partners ought to be, how regularly those partners should be replaced, and on and on and on. We are all naturally insane about this, and it will never be diagnosed as such until it's tremendously unpopular, because questioning this insanity, ironically, is what will make you dysfunctional.

We can make sex safer from STDs than ever before, we have the luxury of terms like "unwanted pregnancy" which would make no sense in the wild, we can check our DNA against that of our alleged offspring, we can fertilize an egg with a sperm in a test tube, we have mapped the human genome and we're hard at work demystifying embryonic development. We know so goddamned much about sex and we've made it safer and easier than ever before, yet while nobody bats an eye when a man wants to jam his peepee in a vajayjay, a lot of those same people absolutely lose their shit when a man wants to shove his wing-wong into another dude's manhole, or when a woman wants to do anything to another woman's hoohoo (this last one's way more popular on the internet, though). For the sake of social cohesion, we should call all of these activities "normal," as well as anything else that consenting adults care to do to each other; but in reality, it's all fuckin' weird. All of it. We're all just as weird as everyone else, only some people are weird in popular ways and other people are weird in unpopular ways. "Normal" is an invented, bullshit term.

This is exactly what I'm talking about: the fact of the matter is that people come in all sorts of shapes, sizes, and flavors, and they have all sorts of desires and perversions and proclivities, yet we think sex "ought" to be this or that way because that's how we like it or that's how we were taught. That's fucking nuts! What is wrong with people? Worse still, we go and pass fucking laws about who's allowed to pair off with whom, and how and when we're allowed to stick it in the naughty place. We need these strictures, in the "just-so" sense that of fucking course we'd go and make rules about sex; but we need them because we can't be rational about sex, and these rules show just exactly how much we can't be rational about sex.

The rules aren't right, they're not rational, they're not just, they're fucking crazy. But so are we. I guess what I'm saying is that we need to accept that we're all bat-shit loco and just live with that - but then again, part of our butt-puckering insanity is that we can't just live with it, we angst over it and primp and preen ourselves and try to put on a show and act like we know what's what, when we're all just as confused as anybody else. Welcome to the human race, where nobody knows what the fuck they're doing, but everybody acts like they do, anyway. People are fucking complicated, The End.

My vitriol gland just ran dry, so I guess rant is off now. I don't really have a solution to any of this, I just wanted to yell and holler about how we're all necessarily crazy about this one stupid thing, because it was driving me batty. But I'm done now. Y'all have a good one!

Fun Fact: I used the words "fuck," "fucked," "fuckers," and "fucking" a combined total of 37 times in this post. All were legitimate; not one of them was necessary. As Penn and Teller put it, sex is an end in itself and everything around it is what's gratuitous.

An Open Letter to the Pepsi Corporation

Dear PepsiCo,

I am an avid drinker of sugary carbonated beverages. Recently, I noticed with great pleasure that you have been selling both Pepsi Cola and Mountain Dew with "real" sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup, and with the original logos on the cans. These drinks have become progressively more difficult to find lately, so I think it's a reasonable guess that you were doing a market test to see how well it did before making the decision to permanently sell it or not. I wanted to take this opportunity to share some "regular person on the street" information with you, saving you a lot of time and effort.

Selling your drinks with real sugar and the old logos is a good move, no two ways about it. You should keep doing this, and as long as the Coca Cola Corporation doesn't make a similar move, you will have cornered the market on this, especially if you are able to continue to undercut their prices (your drinks are cheaper at the local gas station than Coke's). In fact, you could probably sell them for even more.

With Pepsi Cola, it's not a very big deal - the Pepsi can design, in its most recent incarnation, looks fairly hip & cool (mainly because it's not too busy), and Pepsi still tastes good. However, you really need to take another look at Mountain Dew. Nobody thinks that "Mtn Dew" looks cool with those stupid spiky peaks on the can. It's dumb and you know it, and everybody else knows it, and nobody cares because - this is important, so pay attention - nobody gives a shit what's on your cans. Not one single person. As long as I can tell what's inside it by looking at it, nothing else matters in the least. Every person in every focus group who ever told you that the latest can design is an improvement in any way at all is a sycophantic twit who was just telling you what you already wanted to hear: they were stroking your metaphorical cocks like cheap hookers, and that's all. You know what a logo update means to normal people? It means that you artificially increased the production cost of your product by paying some asshole easy money to do something which nobody wanted you to do in the first place. You can fire every single graphic designer who has ever worked on a Mountain Dew logo since 1990, and make sure someone slaps the guy who decided to abbreviate it to "Mtn Dew" on the way out. That guy is a real shit.

I drink Mountain Dew because it is sugary and heavily caffeinated, not because it looks cool. It doesn't look cool, and it can't, because you can't make a drink look cool when it tells everyone in eyesight that I was up late doing something silly the night before. Kids who have had Mountain Dew will continue to demand it from their parents, no matter what it looks like. Parents who don't let their kids drink Mountain Dew will continue to withhold it, no matter what it looks like. Adults who drink Mountain Dew will continue to drink it, no matter what it looks like. And adults who do not drink Mountain Dew will not start because of a logo change, no matter what it looks like. Nobody will ever care what Mountain Dew looks like, with the possible exception of your advertising executives, period. The appearance of your cans in no way affects your sales. I promise.

Going with the older logo, you at least acknowledge that all these misguided attempts to look "extreme" or "edgy" are foolish and unnecessary. You know those jocko-homo assholes in Harold and Kumar go to White Castle? They were assholes, and everybody thinks so. Nobody wants to be those people, but you continue to act like you're selling Mountain Dew to those people. This is stupid and a waste of your money. Everybody knows what Mountain Dew is, so you don't need to advertise it. You could save a shit-ton of money by simply going with the old logo, ceasing all advertising campaigns, and just keeping it on store shelves. You already have all the market penetration you will ever get, and nothing is going to affect this as long as Mountain Dew is for sale.

One last note: someone really needs to tell you that a "throwback" is a term to describe a fish that you "throw back" after catching it, because it's not worth keeping. When describing something old, calling it a "throwback" means that the thing being described is antiquated and obsolete, a useless relic of a bygone era. This is not something you want to associate with your product, believe me. But ultimately, it doesn't matter what you put on the can, as I've said before: people will buy it anyway. It well and truly does not matter.

Please continue to sell Mountain Dew with real sugar, because it actually tastes like citrus that way, instead of being bogged down by the cloying taste of high fructose corn syrup. And please continue to sell it with the old logo, because the more you change it, the more ridiculous it gets (I mean that literally: it is worthy of ridicule). Just take the word "throwback" off the can, and you've got everything you need: the name, and shit else. As for Pepsi Cola, I prefer it with real sugar, but it still tastes OK with high fructose corn syrup. I'd like to be able to keep buying it with real sugar, though, and I'll tell you something more - I promise that as long as you make your drinks with real sugar, until or unless Coca Cola does the same, I will never buy a Coke product again, because you'll really have something that they don't.

Thank you for your consideration.
- D

Poison for Your Brain: Trix aren't just for kids, and marriage isn't just for straights, you ignorant homophobic bitch.

On Wednesday, the California Supreme Court decided that the citezenry's passage of Proposition 8 was a legal maneuver. Fair play to them - the challenge was based on whether or not such a change to the state's constitution could be made by a general vote, or whether it had to be done by the legislature, so we kind of have to give it to them. I need to stress here that the judges were not voting on whether or not Prop 8 was good, but whether its enactment was done in proper legal fashion. Proposition 8's supporters - or, if we wish not to mince words, anti-gay bigots - had a few choice words to say about it. There is so much that is horribly wrong with this:

source

At 1:22 in the above video, one Nadia Chayka said, "I want my children to know that there is a mom - a woman - and there is a man - a father - and that's where children come from, from that union. And I don't want them to be confused about where children come from." That's right: this dumb shit is glad that the rights of millions are being held back so that her children can learn a biology lesson.

Shame on you, Nadia. You have missed the point entirely. You simpleton. You fool. You loathsome, disgraceful, unthinking twit. I don't care what your IQ or level of education is, you are an idiot for being unable to see past your own prejudice on such a clear-cut moral issue, and for allowing such thin rationalizations to gain any foothold upon your mind.

First of all, if this is what Nadia wants her kids to think, then she can damn well explain it to them. You don't need the state to uphold your prejudice in order for your children to learn about the birds and the bees. Additionally, if what she means is that she wants to pass on her bigotry to her kids, then that's an entirely different matter and her children are quite frankly able to make up their own minds on that.

Furthermore, the lumping together of these two things, marriage and sexuality, is nothing but an artifact of the lingering confusion that marriage is "about" hetero sex or "about" making babies. Marriage isn't about sex any more than a cell phone contract is about talking to your friends. Sure, it's something you do within the scope of the contract, but lots of people were doing it before they signed their contracts and that's OK, too. I don't even understand why religious ideas are even brought to the table here, because marriage isn't even a religious practice! Sure, plenty of religions have marriage rituals, but that doesn't make marriage into a religious issue any more than books are religious just because religions have those. And if marriage were about children, as it's been said countless times before, then infertile persons would not be allowed to marry, either. They clearly can, so it's clearly not.

And don't even bother trying to tell me that sterile couples are capable of having children in principle - I know that, and you know that, and we both also know that for the "in principle" to become "in reality," you'd have to mess about with the plumbing of at least one of those persons. But any two persons could reproduce sexually if you only messed about with their plumbing, so this distinction is meaningless, as there's no principled way of deciding upon a privileged method of messing about with a hetero couple's plumbing that could not also be applied to homo couples for the same results. (Pro tip: it's because excluding homosexual couples is always an arbitrary choice, since you must rely at some level on personal, cultural, or religious prejudice in order to have any reason to do so in the first place.)

This is kind of a weird thing to say, maybe, so I want to offer a proof of concept: imagine a woman who, for whatever reason you like, has had her uterus and ovaries compromised; her entire reproductive tract is shot and needs to be wholly replaced to restore her fertility. Maybe she was born that way, maybe she developed cancer at a young age and had the organs in question removed. In order to become a good Christian baby factory, all she needs is a set of functioning organs, right? Except there's an immune complication - she can't accept transplants. Again, the specific reason is unimportant, but the result is that all potential donor organs will certainly be rejected. She cannot be made fertile due to contingent circumstances, though she could be in principle. If she can marry a man (and good luck finding someone to say she couldn't - she's still a woman), then so can any man, and here's why. If you could somehow get a functioning set of organs inside her body, then she could bear children; and the same goes for every male on the planet. Men wouldn't even need a birth canal, since in vitro fertilization and caesarean sections are common procedures. Therefore, all men are capable of reproducing in principle in exactly the same way as our hypothetical woman who would be allowed to marry men, too. Therefore, because infertile couples are allowed to marry and some infertile couples could only be fertile in principle by means which could also make homosexual couples capable of reproduction, marriage being "about" reproduction completely and utterly fails to exclude homosexuals, except on the basis of preexisting irrational prejudice. I win!

Prohibiting same-sex marriage is legalized bigotry, plain and simple. Every argument against gay marriage that holds any logical water is dependent upon unfair prejudice to do so, and therefore inadmissible in our theoretically egalitarian society. The End. Now grow the fuck up and come join us in the twenty-first century - the mere fact of other people doing the things you do in ways that you personally don't like to do them in no way prevents you from continuing to do them the way you've always done. Homosexuals have become the Trix rabbit - yearning so desperately for such a simple thing, but denied it at every turn by childish reactionaries who take that very same thing for granted and continue to withhold it for no good goddamned reason.

Imagine any other social privilege, and any other demographic ("children" don't count, because everyone starts out that way and grows out of it in the exact same sixteen, eighteen, or twenty-one years, depending on the privilege in question), and see how abjectly horrifying these statements are: [Group X] can't do [activity Y], because [activity Y] is about [non-group X] getting [benefit Z which has nothing to do with whether you're a part of X or Y]. Blacks can't drive, because driving is about white people going places. Jews can't live in apartments, because apartments are about gentiles finding affordable rental properties. Women can't watch porn, because porn is about men getting their rocks off. Six-fingered people can't be taught to read, since literacy is about five-fingered people learning things. Atheists can't hold public office, because public offices are about pandering to the masses. Oh, wait, that last one's actually true (in the USA, anyway). But now see that the statement, "Gays can't marry, because marriage is about straights contractualizing their love or whatever," and somehow people aren't as shocked and revolted as they would be by the other statements.

Why? Why?! I can't understand this for the life of me. Are "normal" people so impervious to cognitive dissonance that they can truly hold in the same frame of mind the two thoughts, "I oppose gays being able to marry," and, "I am a decent human being?" Or do they just not think, not even consider the ramifications of their ideas, not even doubt the justice of their actions, before trampling so deliberately and callously over the dreams of other human beings? And which of the two alternatives is worse?

The point, Nadia, is not that these specific statements are discriminatory and obviously awful, but that this entire class of statements should be seen as equally disgusting and barbaric and backwards and just plain wrong. So fuck you, and fuck anyone who thinks like you, you atavistic inhuman slime.