Rachel’s Musings

True Majority asks activists to sign a letter to the governors that calls for marriage equality. The call is framed as marriage equality being bigger than all other issues: “Marriage equality comes down to human rights.” I took issue with that and wrote them the following:

Thank you for your actions regarding marriage equality. As a single by choice, I take issue, though, with your framing marriage equality as a human rights issue: what human rights are we exactly defending by asking for marriage equality? The right to discriminate against other forms of relationships? Marriage is an institution; not a human right. People have human rights simply by being human, not by their relationship status. By expanding who can marry, we are perpetuating the inherent discriminatory policies that are endowed on people because they “tie the knot.” As a single by choice, I find it frustrating that people ignore that many of the 1,100+ benefits have nothing to do with human rights or protecting anybody. They simply privilege those who are in a state-sanctioned relationship, aka marriage. This discriminates against all of us who are in relationships other than marriages.

While I think that everybody who wants to marry should have the right to do so, I do not appreciate that this private commitment comes with a huge package of rights and benefits that are not available outside of marriage. I would love to see True Majority fight against singlism (the discrimination of singles) and marital status discrimination in all forms. We should fight for human rights for all people, regardless of their marital status, relationship style, sexual orientation, race, or gender.

     Continue reading this post » » »

It seems a bit strange to blog about an article about what blogging does to our brains. It feels like attending a BA – Blogger’s Anonymous – meeting: “Hello, my name is Rachel and I blog.” Scientific American recently wrote about writing in blogs. As Timothy Wilson in Strangers to Ourselves observed, writing about our experience can have therapeutic effects. Blogging, of course, is a form of writing, a way to express our thoughts and emotions about what is going on in our lives (some of us try to tie this all in with the world at large but it’s still our own subjective rambling).

     Continue reading this post » » »

Richard Eckersley presents in his book Well & Good “two scientific descriptions of the world, which represent the extremes of the modern scientific worldview” (220). At least that is his claim. He first presents a description by Richard Dawkins from his article God’s Utility Function in Scientific American:

In a universe of electrons and selfish genes, blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.

     Continue reading this post » » »

In her infinite wisdom, God has enabled the gay scientists at Pink Tiger to discover the gene that causes Christianity. Yes, really. Well, okay, not really but do check out the news report. It’s very funny and does have an important message: some things have genetic predispositions. Of course, an important ethical consideration is to decide if we would want to do something about a gay gene or Christian gene, if we were to isolate it, or an evil gene for that matter. Barbara Oakley’s warning regarding evil genes probably holds true for most other genes. The interaction of genes is far too complex and most genes have more than one job, so if we were to eliminate one gene because it contributes to something we don’t like, we probably would eliminate a slew of other things, some of which may be rather desirable.

(Thanks to JJ at Feminist Philosophers for finding this “news cast.”)

Ken at Open Parachute pointed out a post on Uncommon Descent that tried to show the absurdity of the claim that Darwin was necessary for the Holocaust. DaveScot pretended to call for papers that could be published in a science journal. As DaveScot stated in a comment to Ken’s post, even though the blog is promoting intelligent design, he intended to show “that the theoretical connection between Darwin and holocaust is not science, no legit science journal would ever publish it, and every rejection would be valid.”

     Continue reading this post » » »

Recently, I had the pleasure of meeting my pet dragons. It was a mixed pleasure, of course. Realizing what thoughts perpetuate my internalized singlism was somewhat frustrating (I thought I was over these!) but it was also good to see them clearly. After all, unidentified dragons are difficult to tame. “Dragons” are self-defeating thoughts that come up over and over again as repeating themes, sometimes with variations but usually easily identifiable on close inspection. Calling these thoughts dragons helps create enough distance to analyze them more carefully (although as Timothy Wilson points out that might be an uphill battle).

     Continue reading this post » » »