So, I proceeded to follow the guy around, taking down and ripping up every hanger he put up. Along the way I passed a couple people who had picked up their individual flyers and were ripping them up in a more piecemeal manner. After one woman gave her ripped-up hanger to me saying “That’s what I think of that! But does he know you’re following him?” it occurred to me that he was so oblivious he hadn’t noticed, even after several buildings! So, I confronted him.

Me: “How does letting gay people get married hurt your marriage, or my relationship with my girlfriend, in any way?”
Douche: “…”
Douche: “… So, I take it you’re not in favor of Prop 102?”
Me: “Of course not! So this is pretty much just religiously-motivated bigotry and hatred then, huh?”
Douche: “Well I don’t see it that way, no.”
Me: “So what is it then?”
Douche: “…”

WTF? I talked to this guy for a while after that and he never told me anything about why he supported Prop 102, even though I told him several reasons why I didn’t. What type of human filth puts up these hateful flyers and then doesn’t have enough spine to defend themselves or even articulate their opinion at all when confronted? This guy was the smuggest son of a bitch I’ve seen in a while, and he looked a lot like Mitt Romney, in every way that someone can look like Mitt Romney.

Eventually I got him to leave by pointing out that he didn’t have any permission to do what was essentially littering on the complex, which is private property. Whether he subsequently got any such permission I don’t know, but I doubt it since the guy who works the front office is conspicuously gay.

“One man. One woman. That’s Marriage.” is their slogan, and pictures of happy family stuff is their argument. I worked with foster children in the Los Angeles court system, and if you really want to be pro-family, here’s what you do: Legalize gay marriage, legalize gay adoption, and promote it like crazy to the gay community. These kids need stable families and I dunno, maybe the couples who can’t biologically have children might want to adopt them?

Oops, I forgot that they’ll gay-ify the poor children with their gay germs! Fuck people who don’t think.

McCain’s health advisor stumbles on IVF question

This is what happens when you make policies about science based on willful ignorance of the facts and unjustified belief in nonsense. The idea that a clump of 6-8 cells has the same moral standing as an adult human being is ludicrous to anyone with even a modicum of a common sense. The irony here is that IVF is about as much of a feel-good, pro-family story as you can get: Modern science gives a baby to an infertile couple who desperately wants one. If you add in all the cool research that can be done on the unused blastocysts, it’s even more of a win-win. Consider that, in their zealous quest to deny some women the right not to have a child, the Christian right is actually in a position of denying other women the right to have a child.

You may not know (I didn’t) that many mainstream churches actively oppose IVF on the “life begins at conception” grounds. For example, here’s an analysis of the Vatican’s statement. It also a great example of religious people knowing that their basic argument is utterly uncompelling, and desperately overcompensating:

IVF violates the rights of the child: it deprives him of his filial relationship with his parental origins and can hinder the maturing of his personality. It objectively deprives conjugal fruitfulness of its unity and integrity, it brings about and manifests a rupture between genetic parenthood, gestational parenthood, and responsibility for upbringing. This threat to the unity and stability of the family is a source of dissension, disorder, and injustice in the whole of social life.

Wow, an uprising of anarchist test-tube babies. If that’s not a sound basis for science policy, I don’t know what is.

Though most people don’t realize it, this is a grave systematic mistake in the formulation of our democracy. This structural oversight has resulted in harm to the quality of lives of everyday Americans, and its repercussions undermine our government at every level. The fact is that America, pioneer of democracy and land of high-technology, has about the most primitive voting system imaginable.

All you can say is “I choose this one.” This is nothing less than a restriction on political speech when it matters most, inside the voting booth. Why is this such a big deal? First, extremely counter-intuitive outcomes can emerge that greatly hurt the nation. Second, it’s a self-perpetuating system that makes it nigh-impossible for serious minor parties to emerge (Think about the phrase “third parties.” It’s an oxymoron that shows how little we’ve come to regard the voices of dissent in this nation). In 2000, we all know that George Bush won Florida, and thus the election, basically because a small number of people “wasted” their votes on Ralph Nader. The result is that now, liberals warn their yet-more-liberal friends not to vote for Nader because they might inadvertently give the presidency to another guy like George Bush.

See what’s going on here? Because of the braindead nature of our system, expressing your true preference can result in a worse outcome for you than if you express a false preference. That should already make your brain hurt. The current system also nips minor parties in the bud, before they have a chance to grow and put real pressure on the major parties. This is especially insidious, because these parties are the ones likely to fix the system. The more obvious negative in this equation is the death of accountability. If we can learn anything from economics here, it’s that competition creates accountability. When consumers have real choices, they don’t tend to stick with companies that stick it to them.

Two (supposedly) diametrically opposed parties simply aren’t capable of producing enough competition. In America today, there are many, many people who won’t vote for the other party, no matter how bad their party treats them, because of one wedge issue like guns or abortion. This isn’t (only) a problem with the voters, it’s a problem with the lack of choices in the political marketplace, caused by the limitations on expressing preference. There was an article on the old LSH saying that Libertarians should vote for Obama, and maybe this is true under the current system. The full answer is that we should have a system that lets them vote for a Libertarian first, Obama second, and McCain third. This let’s them express their real priorities: free markets, yes, but not if it means warmongering and a loss of civil liberties.

What’s the solution to the madness? There are two sensible ones: run-offs and preferential voting. A run-off is simple: If no one wins a majority, the top two vote-getting candidates are pitted against each other in a runoff election. Since there’s only two of them, someone must emerge a majority winner (If someone wins a majority the first time, the election’s over, same as our system). Preferential voting is simple too: you just rank the candidates in order according to how much you like them. If your first choice doesn’t win, your vote goes to your second choice, and so on. Perhaps the most talked-about form of preferential voting is IRV (Instant-Runoff Voting).

So here’s the bottom line: Let’s put a stop to all the talk of “wasted votes” and fix this system. Check out .org’s like FairVote that are trying to make this happen. The good news (what little there is) comes from the few local municipalities and even states that are trying to implement these systems, or already have. While major candidates like Barack Obama and John McCain have at one point or another expressed support for IRV, nobody knows that, because it’s not in the public consciousness at the national level. Like almost all real (positive) change, it looks like this one will have to come from the bottom up.