You're Not Always Entitled To Your Opinion

So this blog post may go horribly wrong. But whatever.

I've recently found a new tumblr blog (tumblog?) entitled "I'm not homophobic, but..." It's essentially a collection of ignorant anti-gay comments made on Twitter and Facebook, whose authors still claim to (wait for it) not be homophobic.
So obviously this blog stimulates my various juices for a number of reasons, but the thing I'd particularly like to highlight is that political standby which is getting thrown around a lot in these posts: "yeah, I don't like gays, but that's my opinion! I'm entitled to it! Leave me alone!"

The assumption we often make when debating politics (well, when it's convenient to us) is that whatever our opinion is on something, we are basically entitled to hold it. But that's not actually the case. As much as it seems to go against a lot of what I stand for to admit it, there are some things you don't get to have an opinion on.
Take gravity. You cannot hold the personal belief that gravity does not exist. If you claim you do, then everyone will tell you that you are wrong. Because you are.
Also, murder. If someone believes that killing people for no reason is okay, they are a psychopath. They are mentally ill. You don't get to hold a personal opinion on murder.
And what of white supremacy? Would you say that it's okay to think that black people are inferior? Are racists entitled to these opinions? No.
(Side note: Can anyone explain to me why prejudice against black people is considered by so many to be so much more outrageous than any other prejudice? Anti-black racism is more taboo than sexism, homophobia, transphobia, even racism against other groups, like Asians, Hispanics and Eastern Europeans. Obviously I'm happy that anti-black sentiment is so almost-universally unacceptable, and it gives me hope that all prejudice will one day be seen like that. But I'm also curious as to why black people are so much more protected than any other persecuted group.)

So it seems people are not inherently entitled to every personal opinion they would like to hold. You do not have the right to hold a position which goes against damning scientific truth, or which goes against instinctive collective human morality, or which goes along the lines of "this demographic group of people is inferior to me".
So do you have the right to believe that homosexuality is wrong? Maybe, maybe not. Let's explore.
Firstly, when I say "instinctive collective human morality", I am referring to moral beliefs which all non-infant, non-mentally-ill humans hold intuitively, and which objectively and unambiguously contributes to the survival  and/or development of our species. This includes "do not murder", "do not steal", "do not lie excessively", "do not cause people physical or emotional harm if at all avoidable (or something)". "Do not engage in homosexual shenanigans" does not belong to this category, because a huge percentage of mentally healthy adults do not object to homosexuality, and because any attempt to show that homosexuality destroys humanity is invariably flawed and foolish. So that's the first point: you cannot claim that homosexuality is objectively wrong. The main objection to this point will be "it is objectively wrong, because God says it's wrong", but the problem with this is that even if God exists, no human genuinely knows what his will is. God's apparent prophets have a history of saying very different things, and all religious people must accept that their sacred texts are not objectively accepted to be God's word.
Despite this, you can hold a personal objection to homosexuality. While homosexuality is not objectively wrong, it is possible for people to hold emotional negative reactions to it, and it is okay to acknowledge that these exist. If homosexuality seems wrong to you, then it's okay to live your life by that assumption, because homosexuality is not objectively right, either. However: there is a difference between this reaction and the belief that it is wrong, the difference amounting to the fact that you have no right to teach others to abide by your objection to gay sex, or use the law to curb the rights of those who indulge in gay shenanigans. You must acknowledge that your reaction to homosexuality is not rational, nor objectively moral, but predominantly emotional.
But the most important thing is that you cannot believe that gay people are inferior to you. You do not have the right to any kind of prejudice, including homophobia. Discrimination based on demographic group belongs in the "objectively immoral" category, and genuinely does damage our species (hate crime, death camps, bullying-induced suicide, tribalism, have-have not polarisation). You have no more the right to discriminate in word or action against gays than a psychopath does to murder. If you have an instinctive urge to dislike people who are gay, then it is your responsibility to educate yourself and get used to the fact that gay people exist, because homophobia is a dangerous trait which will be damaging to your fellow human beings.

Another thing I'd like to talk about, while I'm at it, is evolution. There is a disturbing number of people who demand that their right to not believe in evolution should be respected, which is very irritating. Because no such right exists.
By all means, reserve judgement until you have seen the evidence, and don't automatically believe anything that anyone in a lab coat tells you. But to shut your eyes and refuse to believe something in the face of the mountain of evidence we have, just because it is inconvenient to your theological disposition, is disgraceful. If the scientific community has found something to by true, then they have the right to teach you and your children about it.
The especially irritating comment I heard on Monday was a response to a casual mention I made that Charles Darwin might replace the Queen on money if we scrapped the monarchy (it was a long conversation). My conversational partner gasped with that gleeful outrage which only a certain type of person can manage, and gravely informed me of the scandals and controversy that would ensue if we replaced Elizabeth Windsor's beloved face with that of Evil Blasphemous Satanist Darwin.
Admittedly she was a Devout-Catholic-Toryface, and (by the sounds of it) most of her acquaintances are Devout-Christian-Toryfaces as well, so she probably has a slightly skewed view of what national sentiment towards such things is. But, annoyingly, I couldn't say she was definitely wrong. Let's emphasize this: Charles Darwin was a genius. He contributed more to scientific understanding of our world that almost any resident of his era. He did not set out to destroy religion, but to find the truth. If I believed in patriotism, I would undoubtedly consider him a credit to our nation. But because his findings are contrary to literal interpretation of the bible - despite the fact that his theory of evolution is embraced by every credible scientist on the planet - there are those who want him and his work to be uncredited and left in the sidelines. This is outrageous. An attitude like this to science is anti-intellectual, damaging to human development and, frankly, bigoted. I know that word gets tossed around a lot, but it's absolutely appropriate in this context.

So. After that little rant, it's time to conclude. Some things are true, and you don't get to hold a personal opinion on. Blocking out science and reason for ideological convenience is unacceptable. Saying "it's my opinion, leave me alone" is not a get-out-of-jail free card in any and every debate.

Until next time.

Free the Weed! Or something.

So legalising cannabis is a thing that I think should happen. Partly because I don't think that smoking cannabis is a greater moral evil or threat to society than smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol, and partly because illegalising recreation drugs fails spectacularly at doing what we want it to do and excels equally spectacularly at causing negative side-effects.

So let's address the first point first, even if it's kind of self explanatory. All medical evidence points to the conclusion that cannabis is actually less harmful to one's health that either tobacco or alcohol. You could also argue that it causes fewer social problems (or would do if it was legal, anyway) than drinking, because cannabis notoriously chills you out and makes you love the world like a hippy and whatever, whereas alcohol has the unfortunate habit of facilitating pub brawls. All in all, it seems absurd, ever for the UK's devoid-of-reason national government, that cannabis is a Class B illegal substance when cigarettes and alcohol are legal, taxed, and on display in every supermarket and corner shop.
Now, it's possible you could argue the other way to what I want to happen, and say that cigarettes and alcohol should be banned. But since we live in the post-American-attempt-at-prohibition era, no-one's seriously going to argue that, because we know it would work even less well than criminalizing cannabis etc. Also, I would argue that the government should be acting according to Mill's principle of only criminalizing an action which directly harms others, and not trying to protect the self from the self. Also, we haven't yet got on to the myriad benefits of legalising cannabis/disadvantages of illegalising it. So let's proceed at posthaste!

Arguably the biggest disadvantage of illegalising cannabis is that it is the most colossal waste of time we could possibly be engaging in. All the figures from the Netherlands, Portugal etc. show that prosecuting cannabis users does nothing to make less people smoke cannabis. Getting cannabis is easy enough that everyone I know/know of my age with the remotest interest in smoking weed can do so, and this will always always be the case. No matter how many growers or dealers you track down and lock up, there will always be more waiting in the wings. As long as there is a demand for cannabis, people will find a way of providing. To make the slightest dent in the drugs trade would require astronomical human and fiscal resources, which would be much better spent on other things.
And the talking about the drugs trade brings me onto the second point. Currently, a significant portion of the revenue from the drugs trade goes to fund much more serious forms of crime, like terrorism. Legalise even just one currently-illegal drug, and you suck funds away from armed criminal rings and terrorist organisations. But as it is, everyone who wants to smoke weed is smoking weed, and by doing so they are inadvertently funding THE FORCES OF EVIL.
Money brings me on to one of the biggest advantages of cannabis legalisation (God, I'm good at transitions!).  Not only is the government saving the henious amount of tax revenue they throw every year at the spectacularly useless war on drugs (or at least part of it), they will also raise considerably more tax money by taxing cannabis. Despite the government being, like, 50% idiotic and 30% evil, it's still good if they have more money, particularly if that money is obtained by means other than raising income tax or VAT. You know, that way they can spend more of hospitals and schools and job creation and suchlike. I feel like I'm beginning to state the obvious here. Moving on.
The other huge, wonderful benefit of legalising cannabis is that we get to use hemp. For those unaware, the hemp plant is the plant which cannabis is made from, which is why it's currently illegal to grow or use in most Western jurisdictions (even though you have to selectively breed the hell out of it in order to make it worth smoking, but whatever). Quite honestly,  hemp is potentially the solution to almost every problem the human race has ever faced. It's a sustainable, durable, carbon-neutral made-of-awesome building material that can be used to manufacture housing, cars, paper, plastic substitutes- basically everything we ever need to manufacture. Hemp milk is a ludicrously nutritious substance that could feed millions for millenia. Hemp oil does all of the things which crude oil does, with none of the evil. It's awesome. So awesome. Also if the UK (or any other country, I suppose) starts making exportable goods out of hemp, we will finally have the competitive advantage to match or come close to matching China's cheap labour, because of hemp's cheapness and sustainability. As such, we get to make more stuff, which leads to more jobs. So to reiterate: hemp is awesome. It's far too good a resource to continue not to use.

So, yeah. We should legalise cannabis immediately. But what of other drugs? Well, most of the things I've blathered about (waste of resources, terrorism funding, extra government income, etc.) apply loosely to all recreational drugs. I would definitely argue for legalising the softer drugs along with cannabis - if not as strongly, because they aren't made of awesome building materials - but I might just stop short of advocating full legalisation for substances like crystal meth. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with the government apparently endorsing stuff like this, or supermarkets being allowed to display it. So perhaps I would argue for decriminalisation, rather than full legalisation.
The other point I haven't mentioned, but is particularly relevant when discussing the effects of the stronger stuff, is that legalising recreational drugs makes it easier for addicts to get help. As it is, illegal drug users find it difficult to get support from anywhere, because making their drug use known to the authorities will probably result in arrest. Be legalising, or at least decriminalising, all recreational drugs, we will be able to help addicts properly, rather than just locking them up.

So, basically, cannabis should be legal. Illegalising it makes no sense and has pretty much only negative effects. Legalising it has a plethora of wonderful benefits.

And that wraps it up for this time, kids... Or something...

"Suffer and die, inferior person!"

So two people have died recently. Actually, millions of people have died recently, but of the people who have died recently, there are two which I would like to talk about. One is Whitney Houston, who died yesterday, as I'm sure you're all aware. The other is Isabelle Caro, who actually died a-year-and-a-bit ago, but for some reason the story came up today and it ended up making me think about a lot of the same things as Houston's death.

So when Houston died, the reaction of several people was not "this is sad", or "I am not very emotionally involved with this situation but recognise that it is regrettable", but "so what, she was an alcoholic drug addict, screw her!". This did not make me very happy with the human race. For some reason, we seem to have got it into our collective consciousness that people with substance addictions are fundamentally weaker and more flawed than everyone else, and, as such, it is not necessary to feel regret or sympathy when they suffer or die.

Here's the truth: anyone could develop a drug addiction. Anyone at all. People do not become drug addicts because they have different and grander flaws than everyone else, they become drug addicts because they have exactly the same flaws as everyone else. Also, once addiction takes hold, it is a mental illness like any other. It is stupendously ignorant to feel superior to someone who is struggling to come clean but hasn't managed it yet, because breaking a chemical addiction is one of the hardest things that any person can do.

The same goes for anorexia. We have the tendency, as a society, to look down upon people with eating disorders as obsessively narcissistic and superficial idiots, who will do anything to fit some deranged perception of beauty. But eating disorders go much deeper than that. Anorexia and bulimia are symptoms of deep-rooted mental illness, which, like all mental illness, is caused by a variety of complex factors which few (if any) of us understand yet. Which is to say that eating disorders are illnesses, not character flaws. The correct response to the revelation that someone is suffering from an eating disorders is not "ugh, that vain bitch", because that does precisely nothing to help the situation, and assumes that you as a person are immune to the social pressures and psychological trip-switches which cause damaging behaviour such as anorexia. The appropriate response is however you would react to learning someone had cancer, or bi-polar disorder.  
It's not hard to see why we like to think that addiction and eating disorders only affect "weak people". Part of the natural human response to learning about some new evil in the world is to think "oh my god, what if that happens to me?"; and one of the natural responses to that is to assure yourself that no, of course it would never happen to you, because you are too clever/strong-willed/healthy/darn important to be taken down by something like that. And so, we assure ourselves, those druggies and anorexics must simply be inferior to us, and we are on some higher level of humanity where we do not have to concern ourselves with such matters. It's comforting to think of addiction and mental illness as something that exists outside of you, that only affects other people. And so we stick to it, by whatever means necessary.

But we are, of course, bullshitting ourselves (to borrow a phrase from technical psychological jargon). Anyone could develop a drug or alcohol addiction, and anyone could be subject to just the right sort of pressure to make them starve themselves or self-harm. Just as anyone could be raped, or violently murdered, or killed by a car, or destroyed by cancer. And let's not forget that we're all going to die, and have our physical remains devoured by worms and maggots. This is the truth of the matter. We are all irrevocably flawed sentient beings subject to a wide variety of misfortune.

What is the point of reminding ourselves of this? To get over the dangerous tendency to think that misfortune only happens to the weak, and subsequently to react with scorn when we would do better to react with sympathy. Our assumption that drug addicts and anorexics have done something to bring their suffering upon themselves is another symptom of that "winners and losers" mentality which I hate so much. Yes, I know it's comforting to think that you are better than other people, but guess what: almost everyone is thinking exactly the same thing. And all of you are wrong. If you want to divide the world into winners and losers, without deluding yourself, then you must either place everyone in the "winner" category or the "loser" category. Why? Because we are all subject to the same internal flaws and external limitations that will stop us achieving everything that we want to achieve, and we also all possess amazing bodies and brains that we can use to better ourselves and our species and our family and our world.

So mourn Whitney Houston and Isabelle Caro, and recognise that they are not the victims of some internal weakness unique to them, but of the same human fallibility that afflicts and eventually kills all of us.

Gay Parenting

So something I don't understand is why so many people still assume that same-sex couples adopting kids is a bad thing. Gay couples are banned from joint adoption in the majority of countries, including France, Portugal, Italy, Greece, New Zealand, most of the US and most of Australia. Far fewer jurisdictions allow same-sex adoption that allow same-sex marriage, which I just don't understand. If you recognise, through the granting of nuptials, that same-sex relationships are equal to opposite-sex relationships, then why does that judgement not extend to the process of raising children?

This is of course an issue of the human rights of prospective homosexual parents, but I would make it clear that I agree that the right of people to parent children pales in comparison to the right of children to be raised in a healthy environment. So if there was any genuine proof that having two parents with the same genitalia damages children, I would put my hands up and step down from my soapbox. But this proof simply does not exist, and neither does any rational argument against the legalisation of same-sex adoption. A hasty google found me this list of "con" arguments from the UK-based version of "The Week" newsletter (quoted WFW):

• To grow up to be well-balanced adults, children need role models of both sexes. Boys without fathers under-achieve, especially since there are now fewer male teachers in primary schools.

• We are a 'Christian' country - even if few go to church, our values remain based on Christian teaching. Two parents are axiomatic - 'Honour thy father and mother', invokes the Fifth Commandment.

• Children raised by gay parents are offered only one partnership model and are therefore (some argue) more likely to be gay.

• If Roman Catholic adoption agencies close rather than allow gay couples to adopt, the number of adopted children will decline, leaving more in the unsatisfactory care system.

• Some areas of life cannot be legislated for and must be left to individual conscience. A sufficiently large minority simply find gay parenting 'wrong'; the practice therefore should not be enforced on all.

None of which make the slightest molecule of logical sense to me. The first argument is one which is thrown around a lot, but doesn't seem to be based on anything other that the debator's personal assumptions."Boys without fathers under-achieve"- where is the evidence or even the logical reasoning behind this statement? Are we so hysterically obsessed with the concept of gender roles that we think it normal to assume that no male child can be taught or inspired to live his life well by a woman?
The argument from Christianity falls flat on it's face- why, if you've already admitted that the majority of Brits don't attend church, would you still argue for enforcing Christian morality on the entire population? Not to mention the dubiousness of the bit of the bible used to argue against same-sex adoption, or the fact we've already legalised divorce, abortion, civil partnerships, etc etc etc.
The stupidity of the third argument make me want to throw up in someone's face, and I'm pretty sure anyone reading this is intelligent enough to see through it, so I'm not even going to bother going into it. As for the closing of Catholic adoption agencies... while this has the potential to be a regrettable outcome of SSA, I don't understand the logical step between this and the claim that "fewer children will be adopted". The children with these agencies won't stop being put up for adoption, they'll just be put up with a different agency. Prospective parents won't suddenly give up their search because the agency they were working with has closed down, either. Not to mention that if an agency is more concerned with hating gay people than finding homes for children, we might not want the nation's potential adoptees in their hands anyway... Aaand the last point isn't something I can even get my head around. A minority of the population find a thing wrong for no reason other than their own emotional bias, therefore no-one should ever do that thing ever? What? Seriously, what?

Blanketly assuming that all same-sex couples are unfit to raise children isn't just damaging to gay people, it's damaging to children. By turning away so many prospective parents, you are seriously damaging a child's chances of growing up in a family. I can't remember the source for this statistic, so please feel free to discard it if you wish, but in this country we currently have something close to eight children in foster care for every set of prospective adoptive parents. If we were suddenly to ban same-sex adoption, then that many more kids would spend their entire lives in children's homes.
(For the record, I know there isn't a serious motion to ban SSA in the UK, I'm just using said hypothetical situation to try and demonstrate why SSA is a good thing.)

So the urge to ban same-sex couples from adopting kids is irrational and invariably based on prejudice, and doing so hurts kids up for adoption as much as it hurts gay people. There is one last thing I would like to address, because it pisses me off.

So. Many. People. When wailing in opposition to same-sex adoption, or even just same-sex marriage, waggle their demonic blame-filled fingers towards the homosexuals of the world and scream "you're stealing babies from their birth mothers! Children have a right to be raised by the man and woman who created them! How could you deny them such a thing?!"
I have a cool, concise and rational message for everyone who has ever said anything along those lines: SHUT UP AND DO YOUR FUCKING HOMEWORK.
Do you honestly thing ANY gay person is so desperate to undermine the heterosexual paradigm or whatever that they are going to use legislation to adopt children right out of the homes of their birth family? Do you have any idea how the process of adoption works? Are you the slightest bit aware of how many children are in line to be adopted by prospective parents right now?
For the record, children cannot be adopted unless they have been given up by their birth parents, or their birth parents have died, or they have previously been removed from their birth parents for the sake of their welfare. No gay couple has the power to demand that a child be removed their birth family just because they want to adopt them. And I'm pretty sure no gay couple would, either. This argument betrays a pathological paranoia and hatred towards gay people which paints them as soulless demons who rip apart families for fun.
It kind of irks me, in case that wasn't clear.

Well, this is a disappointingly angsty way to end a blog post! To cheer everyone up again, here's a copyrighted picture of some toast: