A Complaint-Free World

Mrs. G. handed me the paper. "This is a perfect Gruntled story." Christ Church Unity, in Kansas City, MO, started a project among their young people to see if they could go 21 days without complaining, gossiping, or criticizing. Each kid was give a purple rubbery wristband of the kind that is fashionable for causes of the moment, with the word "spirit" on it. The bracelet is worn on one wrist; if you slip up, you move the bracelet to the other wrist, and start over.

The little project has taken off. People heard about it by word of mouth, and so far they have shipped 9000 of them.

This is an idea whose time has come. I will endeavor to go through the New Year without complaining – not even about the current administration (ok, I may need to start over already).

The IM divide

The Associated Press and America Online have just released a survey of the generational divide in Instant Messaging (IMing) vs. emailing. Among the millions of Americans who use both, 3/4ths of adults email more than they IM; among teenagers, the reverse is true.

I can confirm that statistic in the Gruntled Family: our three under-20s use instant messaging as the main way they communicate with friends, sending dozens, if not hundreds, daily. Mrs. G. and I, on the other hand, send dozens of emails daily. My kids are probably among the 30% of teenagers who say they couldn't imagine life without IM. I used it once, and found it too cumbersome to repeat. IM seems to me to be the worst of both worlds – the expressive limitations of print, combined with the dead air and conversational filler of the telephone.

When I was facing the prospect of a house with two teenage girls, I thought I might never see my telephone. Technology has avoided this problem altogether. Between cell phones and IM, as well as the happy legal invention of the "no-call" list, our house phone is suffering from neglect.

My colleagues and I have noticed more students this year who have great trouble functioning in the morning, or even getting up for, say, my 8 o'clock class. Our best guess is that they routinely spend hours after midnight online. Some of that is spent doing homework. But at the same time, they are carrying on multiple IM conversations with groups of friends.

So I say to all IMing teens and college students: ease up on the IM circles, and let each other do homework and get some sleep.

A Safety Net for the Irresponsible

There is an interesting proposal in The New Republic that liberals and libertarians should form a permanent alliance. As someone who is neither, I can look on this proposal calmly. Brink Lindsey, of the libertarian Cato Institute, notes that millions of libertarians, growing disgusted with the big spending Bush Republicans, voted Democratic this time. He argues that all actual libertarian progress, such as easy abortion and easy immigration, have come about through liberal means.

Still, he admits that the stumbling block is over the social safety net. Liberals, and especially those who think of themselves as progressives, are most devoted to a social safety net for everyone. Libertarians, on the other hand, want individuals to be responsible for themselves.

What was right about the conservative critique of liberalism in the 1980s was the honest discussion of how government entitlements created dependence and perverse incentives to be even more dependent. The great welfare act of 1996 was driven by this realization. This is the great bridge between centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans. The progressives among the former, and the libertarians among the latter, didn't like it.

Here, I think, is the great divide between liberals and libertarians. Liberals think the government should provide for irresponsible and self-destructive people. Libertarians don't. Liberals err on the side of making some people worse than they otherwise would be, in order to have a supported society. Libertarians err on the side of letting some people fail, even die, in order to make a society of stronger individuals.

I don't think the two can make a long-term marriage.

Insecure Farting Grounds Airliner

I have been giving the final exam in my social class course. One of the points that always interests students is the claim that it is very middle class to be embarrassed about body functions. Today's news brings us a prime, ridiculous example. A woman on an American Airlines flight was so embarrassed by her own flatulence that she kept lighting matches. When the other passengers smelled the matches, they thought someone might be trying to light a bomb fuse, and told the flight crew. The plane made a quick landing and evacuation in Nashville. After questioning, the woman finally revealed the truth.

As Benjamin Franklin said, fart proudly.

Boys and Girls are Different, Even the "Gender Variant" Ones

The New York Times is running a fascinating story by Patricia Leigh Brown on children who act like, even want to be, the opposite sex. The story is mostly about the sad conflicts these children, and their parents, face.

Brown cites some of the very few scholars who have studied what happens to these children later. The results for boys and girls, in this as in many other kinds of sex difference, are strikingly different. In some studies, about a quarter of "gender variant" boys grow out of it, a majority become gay, and the remaining small fraction come to think of themselves as transgender, or something else. Most of the girls, on the other hand, grow out of it. Brown cites Dr. Kenneth Zucker, who has treated some 500 gender variant children at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, who said that about 80% of his patients grew out of it – though she does not report if he had different results with boys and girls.

The science of sexual identity is still pretty mysterious. I take these early studies as further confirmation, though, that males and females are different from one another in how much of their gender and sexual identity is nature, as opposed to nurture. Men seem more polarized – either one way or the other – and more shaped by their biology. Women seem to fall more along a spectrum, and where they fall on it seems to be more amenable to change over time.

As I have read the evidence thus far, I don't think I could say anything more definite than that. I believe, though, that the more we know about the science of sex-anything, the more we will see differences between males and females.

Monoga Ginalogues

Eve Ensler, author of "The Vagina Monologues," is soliciting material for a new play about what women think about marriage. The following notice appeared in the Smartmarriages list.

Love, marriage and relationships in the 21st Century. Share your story of marital bliss, torrid infidelity, heartbreaking betrayal, hot monogamy, polyamory or celibacy. Are women better off married or single? We want to hear it all. Documentary Production Company seeks women of all ages and races to ultimately appear in sit-down on-camera interviews with Eve Ensler creator of The Vagina Monologues as we document her creating her next monologue play. At this point we especially want to hear from the Latina, African American, and Asian communities and brides to be. If you are interested in sharing your story or thoughts on the subject of marriage and relationships, please contact us immediately: lovemelovemenot@sbcglobal.net (lovemelovemenot "at" sbcglobal.net)
Thank you,
Arlene Nelson
Producer/Director

The "Vagina Monologues" is a regular production on Valentine's Day on my campus, and at other schools, too. It has become something of a ritual for young women to participate, helping them to talk about women's varied experience, especially with men. The monologues are varied, though I think the playwright selected more negative than positive material. This might reflect her own view, or just a natural desire to show the dramatic.

I think it would be a good thing if women with positive marital stories made a point of giving their testimony to Ms. Ensler. She will make a play of all the varied material that she gets. I think it is normal that we are more likely to rouse ourselves to complain about bad things than to express contentment and gratitude for the good. But if this new play has anything like the effect on young women that the "Vagina Monologues" has, I think we would all be better off if it contained a healthy dose of happy marriage stories.

Note to Church Dissidents: You Can't Seize the Building

First Presbyterian Church of Torrance, California, has been caught in an ugly property dispute, which was finally (I hope) resolved this week. One faction wanted to call a new minister who was under charges in his old presbytery. The loyalists pointed out, reasonably, that the church would be violating church law to call him under those circumstances. Alas, the dissidents wanted to call him anyway. Push came to shove – even during worship – and the two sides locked one another out.

This was the sign that the dissidents had gone over the edge:

The dissident faction proceeded to call the pastor — who during the dispute had renounced the jurisdiction of the PC(USA) — seized the Torrance building and filed suit against the presbyteries and synod to acquire ownership of the property.

This week a civil court ruled that they could not do that. You don't get the property by seizing it – not under civil law, and certainly not under church law.

On the other hand, dissents sometimes get what they want if they make a reasonable offer. Sometimes they don't, of course. And the law is on the side of the loyalists. Still, loyalists, of all people, don't want to divide the church with an ugly fight. Former Moderator Syngman Rhee went to Torrance himself to try to mediate this dispute, and he convinced the loyalist group to let the dissidents hold services in the sanctuary, while the loyalists retired to the fellowship hall, until the matter was settled. Loyalist will normally try to be accommodating.

A Goat Named Bambi for Christmas

A story about my niece and nephew, who are twin four year olds, as told by my sister (their mom):

Danny and Clara, falling into the "no matches, no reading" category of religious education student, were cast as birth-witnessing barnyard animals for the Christmas pageant. Clara was content to be a cow. After hearing me list the available parts ("cow, horse, donkey, goat, sheep, chicken, pig -- no, not pig,") Dan decided he wanted to be a goat with antlers. Sadly, and I knew this, Dan confuses goats and deer, as evidenced by his once declaring his preschool had a story about a goat named Bambi. So, what he actually wanted to be is a deer.

My amazing mother said "sure" and promptly made him an entire whitetail deer outfit with a suit, hood, and antlers. A fuzzy white belly, ears, and flappy tail, too. Adorable. Why there is a whitetail deer in Bethlehem we are not going to address because upon seeing his outfit, Clara reconsidered and might go as a unicorn with wings, so a deer is practically ordinary in comparison.

The antlers do tend to fall into his eyes, so I suggested taking them off until the pageant. "No," he said. "Then I would be a doe. I want to be a puck."

Excreting AIDS

On World AIDS Day I was reminded of a report by a colleague who had been studying AIDS transmission in village Kenya. He found that many men with AIDS thought that they had a certain amount of the virus in their bodies, and the more sex they had, the more of it they expelled. Therefore men with AIDS were more likely to seek out sex partners than other men were. These guys were particularly interested in sex with virgins, so the men would not pick up a new dose of the virus while they were "expelling" theirs.

Seriously scary.

The Third-World Laptop

The One Laptop Per Child project is ready to unveil a simplified, durable, rural-ready $150 laptop for kids in the developing world. Nicholas Negroponte, who has been pushing the project since his days as director of MIT's Media Lab, says governments of Argentina, Brazil, Libya, Nigeria, and Thailand have made commitments to buy and distribute the machines to help educate their kids.

The project has been opposed by big computer companies and some educators on the grounds that poor countries lack the school infrastructures to make use of these computers.

I think giving laptops to kids in poor countries is a great idea. I know they don't have the schools to go with them – but then again, neither do we. I think the real value of this project will be in the million and one unexpected things that kids think of when given access to the world's information. My friend Neil Gershenfeld, another big brain at the Media Lab, has shown that putting simple, tough fabrication laboratories in the hands of kids in the developing world releases some of them to make amazing things. I am confident that giving them computers and the web will do the same thing.

I think the people who should really worry about this project are oppressive Third World governments who wish their people did not have access to the world's information and connections. Who knows, Libya might turn into a leading free society down the road, from a peaceful revolution led by kids with laptops.

Pro-Life Club, Part Two

Yesterday's blog has led to significant conversation both on the blog and among the faculty. This has been very fruitful – it is just the kind of dialogue that we should have.

There were a few criticisms of what I had said that I think deserve an answer.

Some colleagues didn't want to sponsor groups with controversial positions because they thought doing so would compromise their objectivity, or their appearance of objectivity, in the classroom. I can see this worry. As the sponsor to the College Democrats, I do not share that concern. I think we can talk about anything in class without any of us – students or professor – having to become advocates.

Other colleagues argued that there are more positions on the abortion question than simply pro-choice or pro-life. I agree with this entirely. I believe that there are many middle positions on every polarized issue, and we would make better policy if we explored them. That is one of the reasons that I think someone should sponsor the pro-life club: having someone start the conversation will bring out more nuance than we now have. Still, when students say they want a pro-life club, they are looking for someone willing to take a position in favor of legally restricting abortion. For all the nuance that my colleagues and I have offered on this question, I have never heard one take that kind of pro-life position in public.

Which brings me to the other issue. I wrote " it is clear that there is almost no ideological diversity on this crucial issue." Several faculty members have taken me to task for not having sufficient basis for reaching this strong conclusion. I want to acknowledge that they may be right. So let me tell you what I know, and why I made this educated guess.

I do not know for sure that there are any strong, ban-abortion, even ban-abortion-with-limited-exceptions pro-lifers on the Centre faculty. I suspect that there are, but they are very quiet about it. One colleague who objected to my generalization thought that not only is abortion itself a private and personal issue – "not anyone else's business" – this colleague felt the same way about one's position on abortion as a public policy issue.

I know that there are quite a few people, myself included, who would not ban abortion, but do have qualms about our current abortion law and practice. Some think Roe v. Wade was bad law and/or wrongly decided, preferring to leave that issue to the states and the legislatures. Others think that nearly all individual acts of abortion are bad choices. Some think that some kinds of abortion, such as the partial birth variety, should be banned. And one might add to this nuance. Still, even this group would be very circumspect about saying anything in public that sounded like claiming that abortion is immoral, or mostly immoral, even if it should be legal in some cases.

We did survey faculty and student opinion about a decade ago. At that time, students were about 2-to-1 pro-choice, though most were moderately rather than strongly committed to their position. The faculty were pro-choice by a larger ratio; more importantly, I think, the faculty were more likely to take a strong rather than moderate position on the issue. This survey is old, though, and perhaps things have changed.

We also have conversations about politics at the lunch table fairly often. These routinely involve a quarter or a third of the faculty over time. Here the evidence is slippery. Someone will criticize a politician as "anti-choice," in a tone that suggests that that is a settled matter and a clearly bad position. And usually this judgment will either be actively assented to, or passed over in silence. Perhaps all those being silent actually disagree. But even that proves the larger point of yesterday's post and Bob Martin's comments before that: in the public sphere among the Centre faculty there is almost no dissent from the pro-choice consensus. Perhaps I should say apparent pro-choice consensus.

All of which still leaves the pro-life club without a sponsor so far.

Who Should Sponsor the Pro-Life Club?

My colleague Bob Martin wrote in our local paper about the lack of ideological diversity in the faculty. He was approached by a student who wanted to start a pro-life student group, and was looking for a faculty advisor. Bob, a moderate libertarian on this issue, declined. But he was also struck by the realization that he was not sure any member of the faculty would be willing to advise such a club. In part, he was not certain what most colleagues' views on the issue were. In larger part, though, he knew that the overwhelming majority would not agree with the students – and suspected that our handful of pro-life faculty members would feel uneasy about sponsoring such a group in public.

Centre College is the most collegial college I know. We do have a range of views, and yet are quite civil to one another about our differences. As anyone who knows academia can testify, this friendly state of affairs is unusual. Still, like nearly every secular faculty we are heavily tilted to the left, though we teach a much more centrist student body.

Last year we were hiring a new dean of the faculty (called a provost some places), which is always a momentous event for a college. In the public Q & A with the candidates, several of us came to ask some particular question of each prospective dean. Some of the questions were clearly quite familiar to the candidates, such as "what would you do to promote racial diversity in the faculty?" All of them were for it, and promised vigorous efforts, which I applaud and have long participated in. My question, though, seemed to catch all of them off guard: "What would you do to promote ideological diversity in the faculty?" All of them said some variety of "I wouldn't," though I am happy to say that our current dean gave the most thoughtful version of "no."

Well, now that abstract issue is having a real consequence for our pro-life students. We have never used abortion as a litmus test for faculty selection, of course, nor even asked about it. Yet it is clear that there is almost no ideological diversity on this crucial issue. Worse, the few professors who do stand out against the consensus have qualms that they might be made to suffer if they buck the trend. An untenured faculty member who considered taking on the students' request said "this is one of the few positions that might actually threaten getting tenure."

The real point of seeking "diversity" is to get people who think differently to work together. All the other kinds of diversity are really just proxies for that goal. Students would be better taught by an ideologically diverse faculty.

Mixed Feelings About the Big Money

The New York Times has a fine piece by Louis Uchitelle on professionals who opt out of the comfortable money that their professions often bring, in favor of the huge money that comes from working for the top of the corporate heap.

The lead story is of a $160,000 per year doctor, married to a better-paid manager, who instead leaps to Wall Street to consult on medical firms. He won't say what he is making, but it is likely to be at least ten times what he used to make, and his net worth is probably nearly $20 million. A story even closer to my heart is of a business professor turned Wall Street buyout guy, with a similar income and wealth jump. Since he and his wife are "serious Presbyterians," they are trying to avoid the gravitational pull of ostentatious living that their new peers often succumb to.

Both of these guys talk about the strong model of philanthropy that Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have created for the monstrously rich, as well as for the merely rich guys featured in this story. I am glad that the Carnegie standard of giving away huge wealth has returned to the very rich. I thank Ted Turner for leading the way with his billion-dollar gift to the U.N. (and I don't often find myself thanking Ted Turner). To have the same ethic filter down to the mere centimillionaires is a good thing.

My first reaction to the doctor's story, though, was that giving up a research career that might possibly have found a cure for cancer just to make more money seems to me to show distorted priorities. As the story added further detail, though – they had kids, he thought he had a better chance to do good by helping promising drug companies than by making promising drugs, and with a big pile he could give some of it away – I developed more sympathy for his choice. And underlying several of the cases cited in the article is the couple's desire for the family to afford to have the highly trained wife home with the kids when they were little. This is, I think, an honorable choice, and the most ancient Good Reason for him to want to make more.

So opting for the big money can be done honorably if the work itself is worthy, the family is helped more than hurt, and if you give a bunch of it away.

The Evangelizing New Atheists Will Lose More Centrists Than They Gain

The current crop of evangelizing atheists – most notably Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion), Daniel Dennett (Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon), and Sam Harris (Letter to a Christian Nation) – want to convince agnostics that tolerating religion is wrong. The time has come, they argue, to drive the delusion out.

They will probably convince some lukewarm atheists and agnostics to become militant atheists. But I think that, in the main, their project will backfire. It will fail not because believers will reject them – they will do that anyway. Rather, the new atheists will fail because there is a limited market for intolerance in the West these days, and there is almost no market for atheism anywhere else.

The center in our society is mostly composed of religious believers. Still, most of them are also willing to tolerate atheism and give full civil liberties to atheists. The center will draw the line, though, at any view that would require them to become intolerant. And they will lose patience with extremists who insist that, of all things, if they aren't extremists, they aren't rational.

A joke from Endub

Junior Gruntled #2 shares her father's sense of humor.

Lately the police have been disturbed by the number of sociologists they have found embedded in gangs of drug dealers and thieves. Each time the cops raid such a nest of villains, they expose the tweedy underbelly of society.

Borat Buffoons

Justin Seay and Christopher Rotunda, two members of the Chi Psi fraternity at the University of South Carolina, make drunken, misogynist, racist fools of themselves before the camera in "Borat." Just like Borat himself.

They got $200 for their troubles, and a world of embarrassment. Sacha Baron Cohen, who plays Borat, has a film that has taken in $93 million and counting. The frat boys have sued. Their suit will, no doubt, help the film earn even more.

In the whole film, these guys are the only ones who really embarrass the United States. Just about everyone else, I think, could be charged with an excess of politeness in trying to accommodate a rude, possibly clueless stranger.

The most puzzling part of this lawsuit is that Seay and Rotunda say they were told that the documentary would only be shown outside the United States. That, in their minds, makes it ok. Compare this with the storm that greeted the Dixie Chicks for saying that they were embarrassed that President Bush was a fellow Texan, and for saying it in London. If they had said the same thing in Austin, they would have gotten grief from Republicans, but it would have sunken to a minor difference of opinion among Americans.

No, I think Mr. Seay and Mr. Rotunda deserve their fifteen minutes of ignominy. They have, so far, offered no apology for any of their remarks, nor expressed any remorse for embarrassing their families, their fraternity, their university, and their country. Their only gripe is that they were tricked into revealing to their family, friends, and neighbors what they usually only show to their "brothers" – and, presumably, foreigners.

Happy Thanksgiving to All

The peculiar custom of the Gruntleds is to have the Thanksgiving meal a day early. Last night we were short the eldest Junior Gruntled, who was picked up from college by Grandma. We were up two students, though, who added to the cheer.

Today we sit by the fire and read. And eat leftovers.

We are flying the Kentucky flag today, which has the wonderful state motto, "United We Stand, Divided We Fall." May you all stand – and sit, and lounge about, and perhaps go play in the brisk air – together this day.

Here's To Assortative Marriage

Men and women are increasingly likely to marry someone with the same educational background. It used to be that college women were less likely to marry than were less-educated women. Women born after 1960 – that is, my cohort and after – however, are more likely to marry if they are college graduates than not.

One of the pieces of life advice I give to students is "smart men marry smart women." This claim has a double sense. One sense is just to describe assortative marriage: educated men are likely to marry educated women, and vice-versa. The other sense is more prescriptive: men who are smart will seek to marry women who are smart. Beauty fades; brains endure. You will probably be married a long time, so find someone you can talk to. This advice is true for women, too, of course. In fact, since women actually do the selecting in the final analysis, it is really smart women who choose smart men. But the men have to make an effort first. Since women are usually ready for marriage sooner than men are, those men who are ready to settle down earlier get first pick. I urge them to pick for brains.

So as we settle in for the Thanksgiving holiday, one of the things I am most thankful for is Mrs. Gruntled – B.A. with highest honors, Yale lawyer, mother of my smart kids, and, at the moment, baking pumpkin pies. And we share jokes. May you all make the most suitable marriage that Providence allows.

Gay Marriage and Polygamy Tie the Knot

The law is capable of fine distinctions. A society could legalize homosexual marriage and not legalize polygamy, or vice-versa. But politics is not really capable of fine distinctions. If the proponents of same-sex marriage convince the courts that all adults have an equal-protection right to marry one another, then those same courts will conclude that any number of consenting adults have the same right. The political movement to keep the state out of the bedroom applies not only to the gay bedroom, but to all the adult bedrooms in the house.

I cite as just the latest evidence John Pomfret's Washington Post article, " Polygamists fight to decriminalize bigamy." Pomfret cites multiple ways in which the gay marriage and polygamous marriage movements are closely tied – whether the former want it or not:

Consciously taking tactics from the gay-rights movement, polygamists have reframed their struggle, choosing in interviews to de-emphasize their religious beliefs and focus on their desire to live "in freedom."

The U.S. Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Lawrence v. Texas, which voided laws criminalizing sodomy, also aided polygamy's cause because it implied that the court disapproved of laws that reach into the bedroom.

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University … has written two op-eds for USA Today calling for the legalization of bigamy -- and same-sex marriage. "I find polygamy an offensive practice," said Turley, who has become something of a celebrity among polygamists in Utah. "But there is no way its practice among consenting adults should be a felony."

Turley is right – the political movement to let consenting adults marry any way they want to is a potent one. The action in polygamy prosecution has shifted recently as a result of these new political realities. Even the Attorney General of Utah, who is on the front line of this struggle, has publicly announced that he will not enforce the state's bigamy laws. Instead, he only goes after polygamists for rape, incest, and welfare fraud – as he would with non-polygamists, too.

Proponents of gay marriage are usually liberal. Proponents of polygamy are usually conservative. If they had their way, they might each write the law to include their kind of marriage and exclude the other kind. But the political movement they are both riding – marriage is a private choice of individuals that society should just accept – is a tiger they are holding by the tail. If they don't let go, the tiger will eat both movements, and much more beside. And then we will have no marriage at all. Only whatever private contracts any consenting adults want to make.

Reviving the Draft Just to Make a Political Point Would be a Terrible Idea, Congressman Rangel.

'Nuff said.