From the cover of Wilder Voice, volume 5, issue 8
We already know that opponents of gay marriage employ incoherent arguments, but here is some empirical evidence that shows that opponents of gay marriage employ at least one incoherent argument.
Is gay marriage a threat to breeder marriage? Nate Silver runs some numbers (via Ezra Klein):
Overall, the states which had enacted a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as of 1/1/08 saw their divorce rates rise by 0.9 percent over the five-year interval. States which had not adopted a constitutional ban, on the other hand, experienced an 8.0 percent decline, on average, in their divorce rates.
Of course, correlation is not causality, and I have a hard time imagining what it is about gay marriage that would have any non-trivial effect on divorce rates. It's more likely, I imagine, that there is some common cause that makes states more likely to both ban gay marriage and have higher divorce rates. So it's evidence for the hypothesis that gay marriage has positive effects on heterosexual marriage; it's just disconfirming evidence for the hypothesis that the gays are comin'! the gays are comin'!
Up next, Chinese critics aren't wild about Avatar (via Tyler Cowan at Marginal Revolution):
In the film, the indigenous race Na’vi on planet Pandora has to be rescued by Jake, a paraplegic former marine of the human race. Huang argues this is yet another evidence of Eurocentrism prevalent in western films. ... From Madame Chrysanthème to Last Samurai to Avatar, when could Westerners stop seeing foreign cultures as female and themselves as male? And when could they stop the cross-cultural narcissism that, no matter how unsuccessful the Western man is, he will be loved by the Oriental woman?
But it isn't just the Chinese that see problems. Says Annalee Newitz (via Chris Hayes, via Tyler Cowan):
Jake is so enchanted that he gives up on carrying out his mission, which is to persuade the Na'vi to relocate from their "home tree," where the humans want to mine the unobtanium. Instead, he focuses on becoming a great warrior who rides giant birds and falls in love with the chief's daughter. When the inevitable happens and the marines arrive to burn down the Na'vi's home tree, Jake switches sides. With the help of a few human renegades, he maintains a link with his avatar body in order to lead the Na'vi against the human invaders. Not only has he been assimilated into the native people's culture, but he has become their leader.
This is a classic scenario you've seen in non-scifi epics from Dances With Wolves to The Last Samurai, where a white guy manages to get himself accepted into a closed society of people of color and eventually becomes its most awesome member.
...
Think of it this way. Avatar is a fantasy about ceasing to be white, giving up the old human meatsack to join the blue people, but never losing white privilege. Jake never really knows what it's like to be a Na'vi because he always has the option to switch back into human mode. ... When whites fantasize about becoming other races, it's only fun if they can blithely ignore the fundamental experience of being an oppressed racial group. Which is that you are oppressed, and nobody will let you be a leader of anything.
Fair enough. It sure was pretty though! If I could add my thoughts, it isn't helpful to the environmental movement to so completely strawman opponents of environmentalism. People who want to exploit natural resources with little thought of the impact may be bad, but they're not as bad as the bad guys in Avatar.
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