Louisiana Justice Denies Interracial Marriage

A justice of the peace in Louisiana will not marry interracial couples because "I don't want to put children in a situation they didn't bring on themselves. In my heart, I feel the children will later suffer."

So, so wrong.

Louisiana has given us more racial weirdness than any other state. Plessy v. Ferguson became a federal issue when Louisiana's counting of racial fractions pitted the "black" railroad car against the "quadroon" Homer Plessy. Louisiana law still recognizes racial fractions down to 1/32nd, though they are mostly dead letter. Mostly, but, as we see, not quite.

I hope this one can be laughed out of practice, and Justice Keith Bardwell can be shamed out of office.

Spirituality Makes Her Clothes Fall Off

I am not sure if this scientific study is really ripe, but it sure does have an interesting hook.

LiveScience, an MSNBC blog, reports on a study from Jessica Burris at the University of Kentucky on what correlates with sex for a sample of 353 undergraduates. Among other questions, Burris gave them a Spiritual Transcendence Scale measure (with which I am not otherwise familiar). This is the eyebrow-raiser:

For women, however, spirituality was the strongest predictor for the number of sexual partners, the frequency of sex, and the tendency to have sex without a condom.

Burris reads both spirituality and sex as ways women seek intimacy.

I am inclined to think that sexually loose college women get detached from the churches they were raised in, but didn't want to go all the way to atheism, so they stopped at "spiritual."

Either way, I hope someone follows up on this with a fuller study.

Death Penalty Sunday School

In Sunday School this morning we were honored with a real pro talking about the death penalty.

Steve Bright, a Danville native and now president of the Southern Center for Human Rights was talking about some truly dreadful death penalty cases. The big picture of the death penalty doesn't look much better. The people on death row and already executed are almost all poor guys with terrible lawyers. They are criminals, and did horrible things. The injustice is not that they are in prison. The injustice is that rich guys who do the same thing can afford competent lawyers who plead them into life sentences rather than execution. The further injustice is that many of the poor guys committed their crimes in the few places where the prosecutor seeks the death penalty - especially if you live in Houston, the death penalty capital of America.

The most striking sociological point that Bright made was that juries that convict in death penalty cases are mostly in white-flight counties around non-white cities. The fear that led to the flight in the first place gets played out in court when the overwhelmingly white juries sentence to death predominantly non-white vicious criminals with bad lawyers.

I asked if there were any practical way to reserve the death penalty for the most dreadful crimes - Timothy McVeigh, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson. Bright said, in effect, probably not. For one thing, the most dreadful criminals have been able to plead to life imprisonment in exchange for revealing further details of their crimes. For another, more important reason, it is up to the local, elected prosecutor to decide whether to seek the death penalty or not.

As a centrist, I think it would be possible to write a very narrow statute specifying when the death penalty could be sought that would distinguish cold-blooded mass murderers from stoned junkies who shoot clerks in the course of robbing liquor stores. That is a question best addressed by the professionals.

What was clear to me, though, is that even if you think that the death penalty is appropriate in a few rare circumstances, as I do, the current way we use the death penalty is grossly unjust.

Mind-Boggling Christo-Kitsch

A painter named Jon McNaughton has created "One Nation Under God." It shows Jesus, in glory, delivering the U.S. Constitution. He is backed by a body of dead patriots, some real and some symbolic. In the foreground are good people and bad people. My kind, alas, are presented in the latter group. Look for The Professor. He is the one right in front of Satan.

McNaughton explains all this symbolism in detail. There is a wonderful rollover feature on the picture itself, explaining each one. Even the sky is explained: "Fifty stars represents the fifty states of the union. Some shine brighter than others."

I do, seriously, praise McNaughton for a competent painting with a public meaning. I like this genre - the School of Athens is one of my favorite inspirational paintings. The text, alas, has many errors, both typographical and historical. But I appreciate the effort to make an argument in painting.

Two side notes:

Shame on the heirs of Martin Luther King for forbidding McNaughton to include King's image with the other Founding Fathers. McNaughton was obliged to name his exemplary soldier "King" in honor of MLK - surely a weird symbol-bearer for a notable war critic.

There is a good satire of McNaughton's rollover text at Shortpacked.

This may truly be the most important new painting of the twenty first century. How do I know that? Because McNaughton says so in an "interview with the artist" that he has with himself.

Three Science Moms Win Nobels

Three women won science Nobel Prizes this week - Elizabeth Blackburn, Carol Greider, and Ada Yonath. All three are married mothers. After the dust-up over Lawrence Summers' entirely correct comments about the several factors that limit the proportion of women at the top of math and sciences professions, I have been particularly interested in women who combine biochemistry and family life. I think of all academic specialties, biochemistry may be the most unforgiving of family life - long hours in the lab, on a schedule dictated by the experiment, in an environment too dangerous to take little kids to, and years of it to get a result.

Mrs. G. and I often counsel ambitious young women that they can have it all - but not all at once. To have a marriage, kids, and a successful career is much easier if launched in that order. Careers for moms can get fully started later than for people who are not home with little ones, but life is long. Ada Yonath said that when she got news of winning the prize, she was with her granddaughter. Go Science Moms!

Keys to Longevity: He Should Marry Education, She Should Marry Job Status

Married men and women live longer. Better educated men and women live longer. Higher job status men and women live longer. These facts are all well established.

A new Swedish study found some interesting cross-sex nuances in this greater longevity.

Her education matters more than his education to his longevity.

His job status matters more than her job status to her longevity.

Men should marry educated women; women should marry high-status men.

Racial Preference in Dating is Bad News for Black Women

The online matching site OKCupid has a fascinating analysis of how likely people are to respond to one another by race. The headline finding is that women of all races are disproportionately likely to send messages to white men, and men of all races are disproportionately unlikely to respond to black women.

I am particularly interested in improving the black marriage rate. I was, therefore, also drawn to two other points in the OKCupid report. When asked "Would you strongly prefer to date someone of your own skin color/racial background?" women in almost all racial groups said yes more than men. The overall yes responses to this question were 46% for women, 34% for men. For African Americans, though, the rates were 22% for women, 11% for men. Black men have the lowest percent preferring to date in their own race of any group.

Putting these facts together we get some pretty grim news for black women's marriage prospects.

I do not read these results as simply showing racism - that is, an absolute rejection of another race. When asked "Is interracial marriage a bad idea?" only 6% say yes. I do read these results as showing the status structure. There is still a racial status structure in America, with whites on the top and blacks on the bottom. Most people, quite reasonably, wish to marry at their same status level or higher. The groups at the bottom of the status ladder are the least likely to marry.

Now, race is not the only aspect of status, and status is not the only consideration in marriage. I am confident that race is declining in significance in all things, marriage chances included. Class increasingly beats race. Nonetheless, every status hierarchy makes some difference in the mating market, and race is still a status hierarchy.

(Thanks to BA for putting me on to OKCupid.)

I Can't Tell "A" Work on a Multiple-Choice Test

I have been involved in an interesting project lately giving advice to an outside agency on how to set A, B, C, D, and failing grades on a multiple-choice sociology test. I have never used a multiple-choice test, and am not likely to. Nonetheless, I am glad I took part in this research project, because it helped me articulate why, exactly, I can't use a multiple-choice test.

My standard for B (good) work is that students show mastery of the assigned material. If they tell me back what I told them or assigned them, that is good. If they can do it in detail, that is very good (B+).

A (excellent) work requires B work plus something original. Their addition does not have to be absolutely original - not even Weber could do that every time. Rather, I want them to make their own connection between what we are studying and something else. I urge them to draw from other courses, their personal experiences, or at least material that we studied earlier in the term.

As a rule of thumb, I tell students that mastering the assigned material is a high school A and a college B.

A multiple-choice test only gives students room to show that they have mastered the assigned material. Even if they were able and ready to add original work, the format of the test gives them no place to show it. Thus, I can't tell A from B work on a multiple-choice test. And so should not use them. Which I don't.

Is Universal Health Care a Religious Issue?

61% of Americans say they favor a government guarantee of health care for all, even if it means raising taxes.

When we get down to cases, the Pew Forum found that the proposals on the table split the population evenly - 42% for and 44% against.

A coalition of liberal religious groups, Faith for Health, backs universal health care. A coalition of conservative religious groups, the Freedom Federation, opposes government health care. Freedom Federation favors more choice and incentives, but holds back from saying the government should guarantee health care coverage for all.

The system we have now, in which the government guarantees health care for sizable hunks of the population - old people, children, poor people, veterans, government workers - is added to a system in which most people get their health insurance through work. That reaches perhaps 85% of the population. Some of the remainder are actually eligible for health insurance, but don't take it.

Still, even with a large government guarantee and a strong system of health insurance for workers, some fraction - say, 10%, or about 30 million Americans - are without health insurance. I don't see any good way to cover them without a government mandate and some kind of government money.

So, is universal health care a religious issue? The Washington office of my denomination, the Presbyterian Church (USA), says yes. 56% of mainline Protestants, including the PC (USA), say yes. I say yes.

I think a church that says yes to this question has two options. Either the church supports a state mandate for health insurance for all, or the church offers to provide health care for those who can't afford it.

Lex Luthor Buys Small Montana Town

A mysterious, and mysteriously well-funded "private security" company bought an unused prison in Hardin, MT for a "training facility." They are named "American Police Force" and use a double-headed eagle with a crown as their symbol. This is the same symbol that the sometime royal family of Serbia uses. Yes, nothing says American like a crowned symbol of European nobility.

This story reminded me of Blackwater, the Bush administration's favored mercenaries, who were led by a character right out of "Superman," Erik Prince. After Blackwater got lots of bad publicity for shooting civilians they changed the company name to Xe, heading further into the blackwater of comic book world.

Sure enough, American Police Force seems to be a spinoff of Xe.

"Loss of Consortium" Should Not Apply to the Dead

Kentucky law, like many states' laws, allows you to sue if someone incapacitates your spouse, causing you to suffer "loss of consortium." That means you are deprived of the "emotional and physical comfort" that a spouse can give - emphasis on the physical. If, for example, a hospital makes a mistake that leaves your spouse in a coma, you can sue for loss of consortium. The law does not apply, though, if your spouse dies.

Until now. The Kentucky Supreme Court ruled yesterday that widows and widowers can sue for loss of consortium. Judge Mary Noble, writing for the court, wrote that it "defies common sense" for the law to let you sue if your spouse is incapacitated, but not if your spouse dies.

No, it doesn't. If your spouse is incapacitated, you can't enjoy consoritium, and there is nothing you can do about it. If that condition is due to someone else's error, you can sue them, and rightly so. If your spouse dies, then obviously you can't enjoy consortium with them. But there is something you can do about that condition: get married again.

The loss of consortium law was not created to give people a legal right to sex. It was a recognition that marriage was meant to be exclusive and to last until death.

African American Marriage Index

Yesterday I posted on the National Marriage Index created by the Institute for American Values. They worked in conjunction with the National Center for African American Marriages and Parenting at Hampton University for produce a parallel index for black families. Each point on the African American index for 2008 is lower than the corresponding national number, and, therefore the overall index is lower - 39.6 vs. 60.3 (out of 100).

The main element dragging the black marriage index down are the rates affecting children. Nationally, 60.3% of children are born to married parents, and 61% of children are living with their own parents. The corresponding numbers for African American children are a dismal 28.4 and 29%, respectively.

The good news, though, is that the percent of intact first marriages among African Americans crept back up over the 50% threshold since 2000 - to 50.1%. This is movement in the right direction.

National Marriage Index

The Institute for American Values has produced a National Marriage Index. This is a valuable tool for charting the basic strength of marriage as an institution. It is composed of five measures:

• Percentage of adults married
• Percentage of married people "very happy" in their marriage
• Percentage of first marriages intact
• Percentage of births to married parents
• Percentage of children living with own married parents.

The bad news is that index is only 60.3, a straight-line decline from 76.2 (out of 100) from 1970. The good news is that the declines in two of the five items - happy marriages and kids living with the parents - have leveled off, and one - intact first marriages - has increase since the turn of the century.

Roma Can't Kidnap Kentucky Girls For Marriage, Even if it is Their Culture

A Kentucky girl whose family is from Bosnia was kidnapped by a South Dakota family, also from Bosnia, to marry their son. She was 14. Both families appear to be Roma (gypsy), though that has not been declared officially. The girl's parents pressed charges, the girl was returned, and the South Dakotans were arrested.

Arranged marriages of young girls are common among European Roma. The girls are not normally kidnapped - this case came to light only because the boy's parents neglected to secure the consent of the girl's parents. But the arrangement is common, even among Roma immigrants to this country. The girls normally drop out of school after they marry.

Sometimes we get ourselves into a tangle trying to be accepting of other people's cultural practices. This is easier when they do those practices Over There. When they bring them to this country, though, American expectations start to kick in. This is how we discover the real limits to our cultural diversity.

Kidnapping children to make them marry your children is beyond the pale.

Religous Nones Are Not Anti-God, But Disconnected From Institutions

The report "American Nones: The Profile of the No Religion Population" from the American Religious Identification Survey shows that a growing percentage of the population list no religion. Barry Kosmin, the lead researcher, projects that perhaps as many a 20% of Americans will be religious "nones" by 2030, up from the low teens now.

However, very few (7%) are atheists. Most are skeptics. They seem to me to be skeptics of institutions even more than of theology.

I have noticed in other research that unmarried people tend to be less attached to other institutions, as well. The nones are 39% unmarried, compared to 25% of the adult population as a whole. The nones are also much younger than most Americans, and many of them will affiliate later. Still, even adjusting for age, the nones are 33% unmarried, compared to 28% of their age-adjusted cohorts.

Elizabeth Marquardt found that children of divorce are less likely to affiliate with religious institutions. This report does not show the marital status of the respondents' parents. However, children of divorce are more likely to put off marriage, which is one reason that the children of divorce tend to show higher proportions unmarried at every age. I think it likely that the nones are disproportionately the children of divorce. They are skeptical of many institutions of traditional adulthood. But they don't reject the belief that lies behind them.

I think a large proportion of the religious nones are institutionally disconnected. When they find a way to connect to one institution, they are likely to connect to others, as well.

Cell Pun Box

Gruntled Son made a cell model for his high school biology class, as thousands of students had before him. But he had a wonderful, terrible idea of how to do it.

I particularly like the two George Clooneys.

Just-In-Time Teaching

One of the things that I enjoy the most about teaching at Centre College is being part of a community of teachers who really care about teaching. Yesterday we had the first in our annual series of "pedagogy lunches." About a quarter of the faculty assembled for lunch, and (partly) paid for the privilege, to hear our colleague, Jason Neiser, talk about his success with "just-in-time teaching."

Before each class, Neiser sends the 60 students in his two sections of introductory physics two "warm up questions" to help them think through the concepts covered in the reading for that day's class. He also has an open-ended question that lets them raise further points they were curious about. These are low-pressure assignments - if they do a bunch over the term, they get a discount on the final. The grading is on a simple scale, and is based not on the correctness of the response but on how well they engaged the material. The J-I-T element comes in the hard part for the professor: he reads all of these responses before each class, and adjusts his teaching accordingly. The students' responses let him know if there are common misconceptions or pressing questions.

The real benefit, he reports, comes in the high level of conversation in the class. The students come in talking. They drive the discussion. He said he does not actually lose any time in teaching content, because they really learned most of the content from the reading and warm ups. And at the end of the term, when students take a concept mastery test that physics professor across the country use, his students show much larger gains than students in traditional lecture classes do.

The best part of the lunch workshop for me was the way that most of the professors there immediately started thinking of how they could apply this in their own classes. I had a thought about how I could adapt a journal assignment I am having my social theory students do this term. Other colleagues in a range of disciplines engaged the details and imagined the possibilities. Many of us will, no doubt, decide that this particular approach does not quite fit what we are doing.

But it is great to be part of a learning community.

Air Force Women Divorce More

The Air Force are more married and less divorced than the general population is - for men. Air Force women are more divorced than the general population - 12.5% vs. 11.6% of American women in general.

Deployments are a big factor in military divorces, for men and women. This has long been known. The surprising finding a new study is that flight nurses - the most female part of the Air Force, and among the most likely to be deployed overseas - have the highest divorce rate, at 11.6%. Combat doctors, who are overwhelmingly men, are only 3.3% divorced. (Officers in general have a much lower divorce rate than the enlisted, at 4.4% overall).

I think I know what this means. Men are most jealous of the possibility that their wives would be sexually unfaithful. Military nurses in combat would be subject to more pressure, and temptation, to sexual infidelity than those same women would be at home, and more pressure and temptation than deployed men would be. Even if deployed female nurses are not, in fact, less faithful than they would be at home, it is reasonable to expect that some of their husbands would suspect that they were. Since another effect of deployment is to make communication much harder, dealing with those suspicions would be hard in that situation. Adding to the problem is the fact, also reported in this study, that non-military husbands at home are much less likely to use the Air Force's marriage support program than non-military wives are, the home husbands of deployed wives are more likely to do things that lead to divorce.

Michelle Obama Decided To Make the Adjustment

An excerpt from Barack and Michelle: Portrait of An American Marriage by Christopher Andersen has been published in the New York Post As he was building his political career and she had the main responsibility for raising their two daughters, while working herself, Michelle Obama came close to walking away. She wanted more sharing of family responsibilities. He said he was building for all of their futures.

The turning point is described here:

But there was no question that they were a couple and a team. In time, Michelle made the conscious decision that, in fact, she would be the one to adjust to the circumstances he created - and not vice versa.

"This was the epiphany," she said. "What I figured out was that I was pushing to make Barack be something I wanted him to be for me. ... I was depending on him to make me happy. Except it didn't have anything to do with him. I needed support. I didn't necessarily need it from Barack."

Michelle decided to approach the problems in her marriage the way she would approach the problems she faced daily at work. "I had to change," she said. "So how do I stop being mad at him and start problem-solving, and cobble together the resources? I also had to admit that I needed space and I needed time. And the more time that I could get to myself, the less stress I felt."

Michelle Obama made the decision that many women make. The situation is complicated by the fact that they both thought he could change the world in important ways. Still, in most of the cases that I know of, she is the one to make the adjustments to make the family work. There are a few cases that I know of of very high achieving women whose careers depended on husbands who made big career sacrifices. The Thatchers are the best case I can think of.

What happens if one of them doesn't make the adjustment? I think in 99 cases out a 100, neither of them reaches the heights in public life that one of them might have reached. Most parents will judge this worth it. But I think that is a real choice that couples with the potential for stratospheric achievement have to make - one of them has to be the main family makers. And, in my estimate, in at least 8 couples out of 10, she will be the one who chooses to make the adjustment. Not forced. But chooses, all things considered.

Civil Union Commission Rejects Civil Unions, Wimps Out On the Hard Part

The Special Committee to Study Civil Unions and Issues of Marriage of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) has just issued its draft report. They spend 30 pages reviewing the issues of marriage and homosexuality familiar to anyone who has been involved with this issue.

In the end, they come to two conclusions:

First, we should stay in covenant relationship with one another in the church despite our disagreements [my paraphrase]. Second, quoting the report,

We find that the compromise suggestion of civil unions/domestic partnerships offers no true solution to the struggle around same-gendered partnerships. Civil unions/domestic partnerships provide neither the state-sanctioned benefits nor the societal acceptance that marriage (expanded or not) offers.

The review of the debate that the committee offers is not bad. The conclusion that we should stay and work with one another, rather than call each other names and leave, is worth saying again. The conclusion that civil unions will not work is a substantive conclusion.

BUT what the committee leaves the church with is this:
You have two hard painful options.
We reject the compromise that is on the table.
We do not choose either option.
We offer no other compromises.
Good luck.