A Question of Will

It started out with a simple enough statement: "Abortion is not like ice cream." But that was, perhaps, where the simplicity ended. It was certainly long gone by the time the word "murder" entered the picture.

In a lot of ways the whole point behind the quip, "If you don't like abortions, don't have one," is that it's an assertion that while whether or not an abortion is a homicide is often debatable, in jurisdictions where the practice is allowed, when performed properly, it is not a murder. Murder is best taken as a legal term, not an ethical or religious one. And it's an important distinction to make. (This is, after all, one of the things that worries many secularists about the highly religious - the idea that given the chance, the faithful would force their beliefs on others by codifying them into law.) Because, when it really comes down to it, regardless of how distasteful an action may be, if it's not illegal - it's a choice. Pithy catchphrases are admittedly glib, but the reason that this particular one is so often used is that once you assume that the choice of which ethical or religious path one will chose from a number of options is a personal one, it's effect on the grand scheme of things is no more consequential. The same is not true of legality. I may choose to break the law, or I may not, but the very nature of the law means that this not merely a personal preference.

The Judeo-Christian/Moslem emphasis on the existence of an absolute truth and absolute obedience to the will of the divine is often at odds with a more secular understanding of the world - and even those of religious traditions that are less absolutist in nature. In the Bible, even in the new Testament, there is often a legalistic understanding of morality and ethics:

For whoever observes all the Law but makes a false step in one point, he has become an offender against them all.
The Letter of James 2:10

And this understanding has carried forward to the present. And this often creates friction for the same reasons that secular laws do - legalism doesn't care what one believes or thinks is legitimate or not. The Law is the Law. An action is either illegal or it isn't. It may be the work of weeks by an expert to determine which side of that line an action falls on, but it falls on one side or the other. It can be (imperfectly) analogized as a Boolean function - for any given action under a given unique set of circumstances, the question of whether or not it's legal must always be either "Yes," or "No." And this is precisely why legalism tends to lend itself to black and white thinking.

But once an action is determined to be legal, either because it's specifically allowed, or the law doesn't concern itself with it, under the law it's not much different from any other legal action, regardless of any other consequences that they may have. If I observe that my neighbor is in grave peril, the fact that United States law doesn't observe a generalized Duty to Rescue means that my choice of whether or not I decide to come to their aid is no more legally important than whether I have lemonade or white wine with dinner, even though from a moral and/or ethical standpoint determining whether or not another person lives or dies may be considered infinitely weightier than a beverage choice. It's possible to appeal to Natural Law, but until that earns a place in the criminal code, it's law in name only.

Given this, it's often difficult to talk about the choice of abortion in any other terms. If you don't believe that something is a "must not do," how else do you convey that, other than couching it in the language of choice? (There's a reason, other than simple euphemism, why it's called "pro-choice.") If you don't like abortions, then... what? What do you say to someone in that situation? What can be thought of as being both true to the idea that people should be allowed to decide for themselves and respectful of the idea that they shouldn't? (And vice-versa.) "If you are opposed to abortion, then they are not the right choice for you," sounds more formal, but is it really any different? As near as I can see, the sentiment is the same.

I don't know that there's ever a good way to bridge the chasm between absolutes and choices. Or the distrust that tends to fester in that abyss.

Untruths and Consequences

Sigh...

Yeah, it's "uplifting," but I doubt that it's real.

No, no... I get it, really I do, but can we please stop with the manufactured "tolerant-but-nameless-Pastor-with-a-message-of-love" garbage. Because there are plenty of churchmen (and women, for that matter) who have actually taken some very real (if somewhat small, in the grand scheme of things) risks to get out what they understand their deity's message is, and these sorts of fictionalized accounts, while they may make people feel good, don't give credit where credit really should be due.

I'm calling this particular monolog out as fictional because of the following:

Pastor: The bible doesn't say anything about the consequences of a homosexual lifestyle.

It doesn't?

And when a man lies down with a male the same as one lies down with a woman, both of them have done a detestable thing. They should be put to death without fail. Their own blood is upon them.
Leviticus 20:13 - Whatever translation of the Bible it is that my mother gave me.

I dunno... being executed sounds like a consequence to me. But I suppose that you could make the point that men having sex with men is different from "a homosexual lifestyle." After all, men in prison have sex with other men (given that there are no women around) and we don't consider them to be homosexual in orientation or lifestyle. But honestly, it seems like a stretch.

And as for the consequence for divorce having rocks thrown at the initiator - I couldn't find a passage that said as much. Granted, I'm not an expert on the Bible, or anything, but I suspect that even my Google-fu is strong enough that such a thing wouldn't stay hidden - there are a lot of people who would be invested in making sure that it saw the light of day. You can make the point that re-marriage after divorce is adultery, and adultery is punishable by stoning - but that's different than saying that divorce itself is punishable by stoning. Now this could be an actual transcript. But in that case, perhaps someone needs a new pastor. Of course, I could be wrong, and the passage is right under my nose... (Given a literal - or liberal - enough reading of the Old Testament, a good chunk of the population of the United States is due to be put to death any minute now. But even given that, the death penalty for divorceés seems like it would stand out.)

In any event, I don't think that Christian voices that teach tolerance on this issue are so few and far between that people need to make up new ones - especially not if it's too much work to do the research. Why not find the words of someone like the Reverend Oliver White on this subject? As someone who lost his church to foreclosure after his congregation abandoned him for speaking out in favor of marriage equality, wouldn't he have something to say that's just as compelling? And, more importantly, authentic?

P.S.: Oh, and by the way... that "couple of older males" thing? Yeah... that was laying it on just a smidgeon too thick. Next time, dial it back to "11," okay?

I Know You

I'm always somewhere between amused, bemused and a bit worried when laypeople (not to mention prosecutors) express confidence in the reliability of eyewitness identification. But it's just as easy to get it wrong in others ways, too.

An article on wrongful convictions was relating research connected to 250 men exonerated by DNA evidence and noted, "Of the 250, 76% were misidentified by an eyewitness — most of the witnesses having been led to that act by police and/or prosecutor, some of them badgered and threatened, others merely manipulated."

And while that's a fairly damning indictment of prosecutorial use of eyewitness testimony, it presumes that absent some sort of outside influence, the witnesses may have been more accurate, or realized that they didn't recognize anyone. I'm not sure I agree with that.

There are two pictures attached to this post. One of them is of me, who most people wouldn't know from a hole in the ground. One of them is of Mike Pondsmith, who's fairly well-known in tabletop roleplaying gaming circles as the author of Mekton and Cyberpunk. Now, we're both black, we're both into gaming and we both live in the Seattle area - I've run into Mr. Pondsmith at a few random places in the vicinity, from the beachfront to the Tulip Festival.

Since here's the part where I admit to borrowing this picture from Wikipedia, you can probably guess who this is.

Not from Wikipedia.

But the first time I encountered him was at NorwesCon, which is a local Science-Fiction and Fantasy convention. I was walking down the hall when someone stopped me and said that my panel would be starting soon. I was just about to ask the guy what the Hell he was talking about when Mr. Pondsmith walked up, and the convention staffer (and I) realized the error.

In the intervening years, I've been mistaken for Mr. Pondsmith on numerous occasions, to the point where I no longer bat an eyelash when someone walks up and addresses me as "Mike." I've had people even seek to continue conversations that they were having before. The first few times, they were met with blank looks and hurried interruptions, as I tried to figure out what was going on, but now I let them make their first point, and when they pause, I gently inform them that I'm not the droid they're looking for.

But this is the thing. People who are familiar and comfortable enough with Mike Pondsmith that they're willing to stop him in public and carry on a conversation don't realize that they're not talking to whom they think they're talking to.

Part if it is that Blacks aren't well-represented in tabletop gaming circles. Middle-aged Black guy... how many of them can there be in Nerd Central Station, right? And because we share certain interests, namely tabletop RPGs and science-fiction/mecha animé, we tend to move in intersecting circles and be seen in some of the same places. And if these photos are any indication, we have similar dress habits. (And I do, on occasion, wear my glasses.) But when people wisecrack, "All you people look alike," it's not as far off the mark as one might think it is. When we're not in the same place at the same time, the really distinguishing features, like differences in skin tone (even in the same light, our complexions are different), the fact that I have more gray, Mr. Pondsmith is taller and we wear our hair differently, simply aren't as apparent.

Given all of these things, I am never surprised to learn that an eyewitness identification turns out to be wrong. In fact, in light of my own experience and some of the research that's been done, I suspect that I should be surprised when they turn out to be right.

Familiar Story

The sign was white cardboard with legible, if crowded, tall black mixed-case letters.

Family of 4
Struggling
Please Help

She looked up at me, brightly, without a hint of suspicion. She was shorter "in person" than I would have guessed, with a round, freckled face, and long brown hair that streamed down to her hips in a long horsetail. She was just a bit too heavy to be considered average, yet not enough that she couldn't wear it well in a plain white t-shirt and nondescript blue jeans. For the past couple of months she'd been there, at the same corner between the Outback Steakhouse and the 76 station, perhaps two or three times a week, holding her sign and waving cheerfully to the passing cars that were headed for the expressway during the evening rush.

"So." I said. "What's your story?"

It turned out, it was one I'd heard before. For a time, I had even been a supporting character. Difficult home life, stint as a ward of the state, jailed father (she had put him there), and bitter mother leading to banishment to the streets at eighteen. In the intervening years she'd failed to find a steady job, but she had found a husband; now a disabled veteran; and had two children. It was for them that she panhandled on the corner. Child Protective Services took a dim view of children living in cars with their homeless parents, she told me. I already knew. Children and Family Services hadn't been much more understanding. Of course, the climate of Northern Illinois is less forgiving than the Puget Sound. She'd traveled the breadth of the country, from California to Florida, searching for a better life, before returning closer to home. Close being a relative term - the bus ride was nearly two hours each way. But this corner, she told me, was the only place she'd found where people cared for her.

Of course, caring was easy - a good number of the SUVs, sedans and sports cars that drove by bore the nameplates of Audi, Infiniti and Lincoln. She was on one major local thoroughfares, which in the evenings teemed with educated, well paid, knowledge workers - the sort who would never miss the amount of money that she needed to scrape together every day just to keep a roof over her head - and those of her husband and children. Still, getting enough to pay rent on a day-to-day basis was by no means a sure thing.

I gave her the collection of one-dollar bills from my wallet, built up over the course of the week so far.

She took them, gratefully.

"God bless you," she said. "I'll pray for you."

I'm not a believer, I didn't say. Instead, it was the little voice in the back of my head. If this deity of yours answers prayers and grants blessings, you should keep them for yourself. You are in greater need than I. I knew that it wanted me to repeat after it. I refused. I'd never given in to it before, and saw no reason to start then. She meant well, and I saw no reason to tell her that her benediction was for naught. She didn't need me to rain on her. The gathering clouds were preparing to take care of that, if only softly.

Instead, I smiled. "Take care of yourself, and stay safe," I instructed, my voice taking on the gently commanding tone that I'd spent years using in my past life as a child care worker. The youngest of the children I once worked with would now be her age.

I turned and left, and she resumed her cheerful waving at the drivers stopped at the light.

Security and Lies

People are distrustful of [people in government] because they are LIARS.

It was a simple enough statement. With a simple enough answer:

So, more than likely, are you.

Part of the problem is that we tend not to prioritize the truth very highly - it's a means, not an end. When we feel that someone really needs to do something, it's really important to protect them from harm or we're convinced that they just can't handle the truth, we tend to lie instead, and hope to be forgiven later if we're found out. My father taught me to distrust activists, on the grounds that they were likely to highly prioritize getting me to support "the cause," and if that meant not telling the truth... He didn't distrust their motives, simply their facts. He even condoned deceit at times. If a lie was what it took to stir someone to action against an intolerable condition, then that's what it took.

I know that I would be on the horns of a dilemma if I had to choose between being honest with someone or getting them to believe a falsehood that I thought would save lives. And I think that this is what's going on with government. As slimy as we want to see government operatives, I'll bet a lot of them sincerely believe in the rightness and necessity of what they're doing. If another lie would have prevented the Boston Marathon bombing, would YOU want to be the person on the hotseat, explaining why you placed a personal principle over life and limb? I don't know that I would want to be that guy. And, while we're at it, do you think that you'd be praising them for their commitment to the truth. It's easy to teach that honesty is the best policy. But we rarely teach that it's worth any real inconvenience - let alone death or dismemberment.

And that's what makes all of this so dicey. Yes, they're liars. Likely, most of the people you trust are. We want to believe that we're so special that only people with malevolence in their hearts would find a reason to lie to us. Once upon a time, I thought that, too. Then, the real world came knocking. (I think I was twelve at the time.) It's easy to say that security should never require falsehood - that there's always a way to be honest - but nothing is impossible for the man who doesn't have to do it themselves and isn't accountable for the outcome.

And that, of course, is the real danger. The stereotype of the openly wicked, mustache-twiddling dictator who disappears people for sport and tortures people because it's better than sex is a fallacy. They may have open contempt for people's intelligence, competency or maturity, but many of people that we regard as the worst in the world sincerely, if inaccurately, believed that they had their citizens' best interests at heart. Just like your mother, parish priest or teacher did when they lied about what you happen if you misbehaved, or adopted the wrong values.

The problem isn't when governments decide that we don't know what's best for us. Your parents and other people in authority over you all thought the same thing, at some point in your life. The problem is when governments stop making a distinction between what's best for them, and what's best for us - that their interests are what's best for everyone around them. The point behind insisting on transparency and openness is not to keep them on the right side of the line - it's because we don't know exactly where that line is, until after it's been crossed.