Like on a lot of other issues the country is divided on allowing same-sex couples to marry. To me the idea of two men or two women marrying one another is comical. But I’m not queer so what do I know.

I’ve read that there is evidence that homosexuals like the idea of being able to marry more than actually getting married. Whatever their motives it seems to me that we could all benefit from putting this issue behind us. So I’m offering a solution. Let’s allow them to narry instead of marry. (At first I was going to recommend the terms quarry, quarried and quarriage but decided it probably wouldn’t sell.) This should satisfy the same-sex couples without corrupting the institution of marriage.

Narriage would be legally equivalent to marriage except for one thing. I would incorporate into narriage an element not included in marriage. It’s difficult for same-sex couples to produce offspring (in fact, I don’t think it has ever been done) so I would provide a legal route for them to build a family. I would allow them to legally team up with another narried couple of the opposite sex. This team of two men and two women could then set about producing children for both narried couples. The details of how they do this would be left to them, except that the couple to have legal custody of a child would be declared before conception.

Ideally the two couples would function as an extended family. After all, the kids are all siblings, half-siblings or pseudo-cousins. If they stay close and visit often all the kids will have both women and men as role models. The kids could call their biological parents mom or dad even if they don’t live with them, and they could call the others aunt or uncle even if they do live with them.

Narriage then is marriage plus. It carries all the benefits of marriage and then some. So it’s put up or shut up time for same-sex couples. Do you really want the benfits of marriage or do you just want to make a political point?

I’ve decided that being stupid is a requirement for joining People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. In fact, I visited their website to try to confirm this but couldn’t find any way to contact them except through snail mail.

Their “Save the Sea Kittens” campaign convinced me that stupidity must be a requirement. The goal of this campaign is to replace the word “fish” with “sea kitten.” They believe this will cause people to start thinking of fish as warm and cuddly rather than slimy and thorny. They want us to think of them as pets rather than meals. They point out that most people would never consider hooking a kitten in the mouth and dragging it toward them. I agree but I’ve never found any kittens in the lake, river or sea (live ones that is).

PETA members and their sympathizers want to redefine reality. (Actually they most likely don’t know that’s what they’re trying to do. Remember, they’re stupid.)  They ignore or are unaware of the fact that warm and cuddly kittens grow up to be natural killers. Given the chance they will kill and eat a small animal in a heartbeat. In fact, they will kill even when they aren’t hungry. Male cats will kill their own male offspring to prevent them from becoming competitors when they mature. Yes, cats make nice lovable pets but they also remain true to their instincts.

Most fish eat other fish to survive. The fish you refuse to hook while thinking of it as a kitten stands a good chance of being swallowed by another fish before the day is over. If not it will eat several others before a hard-hearted fisherman comes along and hooks it. There are also fish that will attack and maim or kill you without a second thought. (Actually without any thought. Their IQ is comparable to that of a PETA member.)

These are the same people who presume to speak for cows in demanding that we stop eating beef. (Don’t confuse this with the Chick-Fil-A cows’ campaign.) If I were a cow I’d say don’t do me any favors. If we stop eating beef the only cows we might need are those producing milk and butter, but we have already learned how to produce that without cows.

I really don’t think PETA’s ”Save the Sea Kittens” campaign will succeed. As far as I know no one has perfected kitty litter that works underwater.

This morning I heard Jeremiah Wright on TV saying that a lot of people from different parts of the country use bad English but only black people get criticized for their bad English. Say whut?

He mimicked Presidents John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson in some of their more transport moments as an example. He amused me and I’m sure his audience thought it was hilarious. But like a lot of successful entertainers’ material, it is simply not true. White people from Boston and Texas are constantly ridiculed for the way they talk. White people from Maine and Indiana are ridiculed for the way they talk. People from one region are always making fun of people from another region because they talk funny — black or white. Blacks from the North make fun of blacks from the South and vice versa.

I remember when a colleague and I were on a business trip to Boston about thirty years ago. My colleague was from Mississippi and I’m a Florida Cracker. When my colleague started to order dinner one evening the waiter stopped him and called out to the other restaurant staff to “come listen to this dude talk.” We both thought, “these people think we talk funny?”

I’ve said in this blog that John Edwards, a fellow Southerner, talks like his mouth is full of grits. There are a lot of dialects in this country — among whites and blacks. Most blacks that I know talk more like me and other whites in the area than like the hip-hop generation in the big cities.

The point of the criticism that Wright is alluding to is that if, for example, a young black man wants to become a TV commentator he will have a better chance of success if he learns to speak standard English. This of course applies to a young white man as well.

Fresh out of college I went to work at Eglin Air Force Base. It was culture shock from the outset. Even though the base is only thirty miles from where I grew up, many of the people I had to work with were from different locales and backgrounds. I saw right away that I had to listen and learn and adapt. Most of the blacks working there were in the same boat with me, and they adapted too.

There’s a lot of talk about uniting the country these days. One way to do that is to maintain a common language. How can we have a nationwide conversation on race if we can’t understand one another?

The Associated Press reports that a mother in Wisconsin tried to drown her newborn twin boys in a bathtub and succeeded in killing one of them. To me this is clearly a tragic event. But, philosophically, how different is this from partial birth abortion?

Fox News reports:

"Currently only about one in three African-Americans who goes to an American law school passes the bar on the first attempt and a majority never become lawyers at all," says UCLA law professor Richard Sander.

In an article published in the Stanford Law Review, Sander and his research team concluded several thousand would-be black lawyers either dropped out of law school or failed to pass the bar because of affirmative action.

Known as the ‘mismatch’ effect, Sander claims students who are unprepared and whose academic credentials are below the median are admitted to law schools they are unqualified to attend. If those same students instead were to go to less elite or competitive schools, more would graduate, pass the bar and become lawyers.

There are challengers of Sander’s findings, but it seems to me that his findings should be intuitively obvious. By definition, the recipients of AA admissions to the law schools don’t start out evenly with the other students. If they were approaching law school with knowledge, skills and abilities on par with the other students they wouldn’t need AA help.

It is reasonable to expect that some of the AA students will possess the determination to succeed despite starting with a disadvantage. It is also reasonable to expect that many of them won’t.

Making the grade at Harvard or some other prestigious university is great but there is nothing wrong with graduating with a good record at your local State U. In fact, most of the people that keep this nation running come from the "lesser" schools. I graduated from a very small state college and had a successful career as a mathematician for the United States Air Force. I’m not rich and famous but I’m happy with who I am and what I achieved.

According to the Associated Press the sky is falling in Virginia. Last August Senator George Allen used the term “macaca” in referring to a man of Indian descent who was working for his political opponent. Now a state legislator, Frank D. Hargrove, has “sparked outrage” by saying that “our black citizens should get over it (slavery)” and telling a Jewish colleague that his skin is “a little too thin.” These last remarks were made during the debate of a proposed apology by the state to descendants of slaves.

I won’t defend or condemn Hargrove because I don’t know the tone or complete context of his remarks, but I do believe that it would be better for Virginia and the whole country if we could all just move on. Slavery was a deplorable practice. It should never have happened in a civilized society. But now it has been almost 150 years since anyone was held as a slave in this country. No one alive today was a slave or owned a slave in this country. Who is going to do the apologizing and to whom are they going to apologize?

Are whites in general expected to apologize to blacks in general? If so, isn’t that profiling? None of the ancestors of many whites ever owned slaves. None of the ancestors of many blacks were ever slaves. In order to be politically correct any apology would have to be watered down to the point that it becomes a non-apology — like those we are accustomed to hearing from politicians and celebrities: On behalf of all who inflicted harm through the institution of slavery in America the state apologizes to all those harmed.

The Washington Times and Britain’s Independent report that:

Britain’s Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynecology has called for debate on whether to allow euthanasia of severely disabled newborns.  The college says there is some support for the move by some parents, medical ethicists and geneticists.  In a request to the Nuffield Council on Bioethics, the college says active euthanasia should be considered for the overall benefit of families, who would otherwise suffer years of emotional and financial stress.

Looks like I may need to modify my Life-Choice Scale.

(via PowersPoint)

Where do you stand on abortion? Are you for it, against it or don’t care? Millions of people feel strongly that a woman should have the right to abort her unborn fetus. They are said to be pro-choice. Millions of other people feel strongly that a woman should have no such choice. They are said to be pro-life. But there are also millions of people who are unable to say unequivocally that they are either pro-choice or pro-life. For them there is a middle ground somewhere between absolutely pro-choice or absolutely pro-life. Some of them might accept abortion only in the first six weeks of pregnancy. Others might accept all forms of abortion except partial-birth abortion. Others even go beyond opposing abortion and actually oppose the use of contraceptives.

I’m offering a scale that will assign a value to a postion on abortion — or more accurately, on life versus choice. I will call it the Life-Choice Scale. My purpose is to enumerate a range of positions so that you can decide where you stand. The scale won’t address abortion performed to save the life of a woman or to prevent severe injury or severely degraded health. I think most people agree that the need for such abortions is settled law.

The Life-Choice scale:

LC1: You believe that when children reach puberty they should start having sex and producing babies, and continue to do so without the use of contraceptives for the rest of their reproductive lives, in order to maximize the opportunity for life.

LC2: You believe that only adults should have sex, that they should use neither contraceptives nor the morning-after pill, and that all pregnancies should go full-term and result in the delivery of a live baby.

LC3: You believe that only adults should have sex, that they may use contraceptives but not the morning-after pill, and that all pregnancies should go full-term and result in the delivery of a live baby.

LC4: You believe that only adults should have sex, that they may use contraceptives and the morning-after pill, but that all pregnancies should go full-term and result in the delivery of a live baby.

LC5: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy, but only in the first six weeks of that pregnancy.

LC6: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy, but only in the first twelve weeks of that pregnancy.

LC7: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy, but only in the first 24 weeks of that pregnancy.

LC8: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to abort an unwanted pregnancy at any time during that pregnancy up to but not including the day of delivery.

LC9: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to have a partial-birth abortion performed, where a partial-birth abortion is the act of killing the baby before the entire baby is clear of the birth canal.

LC10: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to insert one of her baby’s legs into her vagina and then kill the baby within two weeks of her baby’s birth.

LC11: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to kill one of her offspring at any time.

LC12: You believe that a woman should be lawfully able to choose to kill one of her offspring and her offspring’s father at any time — if she knows the father and can find him.

(Modified 10/26/06:  LC2 – LC4 were changed.)

Wikipedia says: “In philosophy, moral relativism takes the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Moral relativists hold that no universal standard exists by which to assess an ethical proposition’s truth.” Well that’s a pretty safe position to take. Universal is a very strong word. Isn’t that about the same as saying that there is nothing with which everyone will agree?

But there is this Christianity thing and this Islam thing, among others. About a billion people derive their morality from Christianity and about a billion people derive their morality from Islam. Although the morality of Christians and Muslims differ, they both believe that it is absolute, that it comes from God. Clearly they both can’t be right but they both believe that they are. So, what it comes down to is that if there is an absolute standard on which to base our morality we can’t agree on it.

Some ask: Who are we to judge the value systems of other cultures? I say we don’t have to judge who is right and who is wrong; we just need to determine if a culture is compatible with ours. And we should not encourage the immigration of people with moral values radically different from ours. I’m not necessarily suggesting that different cultures shouldn’t mix, I’m suggesting that those with conflicting beliefs and practices shouldn’t try to coexist.

For example, I’ve read that some forms of Islam allow (require?, encourage?) the stoning to death of adulterers and honor killings of children. These practices clearly conflict with US law. Are Muslims living in the US willing to give up these practices? We allow the killing of babies. Can Muslims live with that — even considering that they want be forced to commit abortions? We seem to be encouraging homosexuality and at least one state allows same-sex marriage. Can Muslims live with that?

Some cities in the US are already having problems with Muslim taxi drivers that won’t pick up passengers carrying alcoholic beverages or passengers accompanied by dogs. Dogs?? I know they don’t like hogs but was unaware that they have a problem with dogs.

To lighten up a little: Have you ever noticed how many _isms there are? Just related to this topic I’ve found moral absolutism (kind of the opposite of moral relativism), moral realism, moral naturalism, descriptive relativism, meta-ethical relativism, emotivism, universalism and ethnocentrism. More evidence that students are running out of thesis and dissertation topics.

Are you impressed when some gazillionaire gives a ton of money to some charitable foundation? I’m not. No, I’m not impressed when someone with twenty billion dollars gives away ten billion. There’s the fact that they still have ten billion, so what kind of sacrifice is that? On the other hand, someone like Thomas Sowell or Walter Williams could probably make a convincing argument that a person capable of accumulating that much wealth would help society more by keeping the money and continuing to invest it. I am impressed when someone with only a thousand dollars gives five hundred of it to a person he or she believes needs it more than they do.