Race and gender and religion

Amer­i­ca is a very reli­gious coun­try, and has been for a long time.  Regard­less of broad cul­tur­al rev­o­lu­tions and trends in the cul­ture wars, about the same num­ber of peo­ple say reli­gion is “very impor­tant” in their lives today as 35 years ago.

Oth­er mea­sure of reli­gios­i­ty shift, as Gallup points out.  “Self-report­ed church or syn­a­gogue mem­ber­ship has drift­ed slow­ly down­ward over the past 70 years,” they found in 2007, a year when per­cep­tion of reli­gion’s influ­ence in soci­ety plum­met­ed.  Con­fi­dence in orga­nized reli­gion has dropped by a third since the ’70s.

But what­ev­er peo­ple might think of reli­gion, how much they think soci­ety val­ues reli­gion, how influ­en­tial they think a deity might be in the world around them, or how they take part in reli­gious prac­tices, Amer­i­cans con­sis­tent­ly believe in God and think reli­gion is important.

That fact has inspired a lot of fight­ing over how advo­cates of evo­lu­tion edu­ca­tion in par­tic­u­lar, and advo­cates of a skep­ti­cal mind­set more broad­ly, should deal with reli­gious Americans.

On one hand, there are folks who say that reli­gion is ubiq­ui­tous in the Amer­i­can pub­lic, and antag­o­niz­ing reli­gious folks by attack­ing reli­gion just makes it hard­er to con­vey a mes­sage about sci­ence.  On the oth­er hand, you have peo­ple who hold that reli­gion is anti­thet­i­cal to sci­ence and so should be attacked.  The first group gen­er­al­ly dis­putes the claim of an absolute oppo­si­tion between sci­ence and reli­gion, but that’s a top­ic for oth­er days.

This ques­tion is relat­ed to, but tends not to be linked with, broad­er dis­cus­sions about diver­si­ty in sci­ence and in skep­ti­cism.  Skep­ti­cal con­fer­ences have been get­ting bet­ter about acknowl­edg­ing that half of Amer­i­ca is female, and reflect­ing that diver­si­ty in the lists of speak­ers, and think­ing about how to get a more sex­u­al­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive audi­ence.  As a gen­er­al mat­ter, sci­ence skews male, though that varies by dis­ci­pline, and the gen­der gap is a top­ic of reg­u­lar dis­cus­sion.  Skep­ti­cal events and the com­mu­ni­ty of sci­en­tists are also notably white.  The skep­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ty’s response to the racial dif­fer­en­tial has­n’t been as force­ful as it has been with sex and gen­der, but there’s gen­uine concern.

It occurs to me that the dis­cus­sions about race and gen­der may not be so dis­tinct from the dis­cus­sion of reli­gion.  First, because these are all mat­ters of per­son­al iden­ti­ty, and it isn’t unrea­son­able to eval­u­ate com­mu­ni­ties based on their will­ing­ness to exclude cer­tain peo­ple based on deep mat­ters of iden­ti­ty.  Sec­ond, because reli­gios­i­ty is linked with gen­der and with race in com­plex ways.

It’s a com­mon find­ing in pub­lic opin­ion sur­veys that women are far more like­ly to be reli­gious than men, and they express that reli­gious iden­ti­ty dif­fer­ent­ly.  Gallup sum­ma­rizes:

A moun­tain of Gallup sur­vey data attests to the idea that women are more reli­gious than men, hold their beliefs more firm­ly, prac­tice their faith more con­sis­tent­ly, and work more vig­or­ous­ly for the con­gre­ga­tion. In fact, gen­der-based dif­fer­ences in respons­es to reli­gious ques­tions are far more pro­nounced than those between any oth­er demo­graph­ic cat­e­gories, such as age, edu­ca­tion lev­el, or geo­graph­ic region. The ten­den­cy toward high­er reli­gios­i­ty among women has man­i­fest­ed over sev­en decades of sci­en­tif­ic polling, and church mem­ber­ship fig­ures indi­cate that it prob­a­bly exist­ed for many decades pri­or to the advent of sur­vey research in the mid-1930s.

Why the dif­fer­ence?  Some offer rea­sons root­ed in evo­lu­tion­ary psy­chol­o­gy, oth­ers point to dif­fer­ences in gen­der social­iza­tion, to dif­fer­ences in risk aver­sion, and to oth­er social fac­tors.  Regard­less of the caus­es, women are more like­ly to believe in reli­gious and spir­i­tu­al phe­nom­e­na, to attend reli­gious ser­vices, to belong to reli­gious orga­ni­za­tions, to read reli­gious texts, to see reli­gion as offer­ing answers to prob­lems, to find reli­gion impor­tant in their lives, to be com­mit­ted to their reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty, and to be engaged with their reli­gious com­mu­ni­ty.  While male belief that reli­gion is impor­tant has declined over the last decade, women have found reli­gion more impor­tant.

There are, of course, big­ger rea­sons why women often feel uncom­fort­able in sci­en­tif­ic and skep­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ties, but I won­der if a per­cep­tion of reli­gious intol­er­ance plays some role as well.

Sim­i­lar­ly, data from OK Cupid gives an inter­est­ing look at the role reli­gion plays in per­son­al iden­ti­ty in African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ties.  OK Cupid is a free online dat­ing site, and does the world a great ser­vice by pub­licly crunch­ing num­bers from its enor­mous data­base of demo­graph­ic data their mem­bers; it’s not a rep­re­sen­ta­tive sam­ple, OK Cupid mem­bers tend to be urban, younger, and of course sin­gle.  A cou­ple years ago, they looked at the dif­fer­ent lan­guage peo­ple from dif­fer­ent races used to describe them­selves, and found a sur­pris­ing dif­fer­ence in the role of religion.

In a ran­dom sam­ple of 526,000 pro­files, they found that African Amer­i­cans were at least twice as like­ly to men­tion reli­gious iden­ti­ties (God, Jesus, church, etc.) as oth­er racial groups.  This effect vast­ly out­strips gen­der dif­fer­ences.  One in six pro­files from oth­er races men­tioned reli­gion, while 2 in 5 pro­files by African Amer­i­cans did so.  “God-fear­ing” was among the most com­mon­ly used phras­es that shows up dis­tinct­ly in African Amer­i­can profiles.

This is impor­tant for two rea­sons.  It reflects gen­uine dif­fer­ences in reli­gios­i­ty.  Gallup finds that 53% of African Amer­i­cans con­sid­er them­selves “very reli­gious,” com­pared to 39% of whites and 29% of Asian Amer­i­cans; whites are more that twice as like­ly as African Amer­i­cans to iden­ti­fy as non-reli­gious.  But the dif­fer­ence between a poll response and a dat­ing pro­file is that the lat­ter shows how peo­ple see them­selves, and how they want oth­ers to see them.  The OK Cupid data tell us that African Amer­i­cans aren’t just more reli­gious per­son­al­ly, but that reli­gion plays a greater role as a social cue in that com­mu­ni­ty.  Dat­ing pro­files are all about sig­nal­ing what sort of per­son you are and what sort of per­son you want to be seen as; OK Cupid notes that Asian Amer­i­cans tend to use “I’m sim­ple as their go-to self-descrip­tion,” com­pared with “black men’s I am cool and Lati­nos’ I’m a fun­ny guy.”  The heavy empha­sis on reli­gion sug­gests that the African Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty sees reli­gion as a mea­sure of per­son­al virtue to a greater degree than the rest of Amer­i­can soci­ety.  And the rest of Amer­i­can soci­ety sees reli­gion as a very impor­tant sig­nal of per­son­al virtue!  This year is the first when more than half of Amer­i­can vot­ers claim they’d vote for an athe­ist can­di­date for president.

Giv­en this, it would­n’t sur­prise me to find that an unfor­tu­nate (and incor­rect) per­cep­tion of sci­ence or skep­ti­cism as anti-reli­gion would play a role in the gen­der and racial dis­par­i­ties that both sci­en­tists and skep­tics rec­og­nize and want to reverse in their com­mu­ni­ties.  Being more open to reli­gious peo­ple might help skep­tics and sci­ence advo­cates more effec­tive­ly reach out to under­rep­re­sent­ed communities.

So much not to like

The AP reports a dude went to the head­quar­ters of hate group based in Wash­ing­ton, DC, and shot a secu­ri­ty guard:

Fed­er­al author­i­ties say Floyd Lee Corkins II told a guard at the Fam­i­ly Research Coun­cil, “I don’t like your pol­i­tics” before shoot­ing him in the arm. The guard and oth­ers helped sub­due Corkins, who was tak­en into custody. …

Author­i­ties found a box of ammu­ni­tion and 15 Chick-fil‑A sand­wich­es in his backpack.

Now, I under­stand that – as with the last mon­th’s mass shoot­ings in Auro­ra, CO, the Sikh gur­d­wara in Wis­con­sin, and near the Texas A&M cam­pus – the time is not right to talk about mak­ing it hard­er to get guns or ammunition.

Until that time, can we, at least, impose a wait­ing peri­od on Chick-fil‑A purchases?

Also, two spe­cial comments:

• Secu­ri­ty guards don’t nec­es­sar­i­ly share the pol­i­tics of those they guard.
• “I don’t like your pol­i­tics” is nev­er, ever, a rea­son to shoot someone.

The sec­ond should be obvi­ous, but bears men­tion­ing, since it seems not to be obvi­ous to people.

The first is impor­tant because it’s often folks like the secu­ri­ty guards or jan­i­to­r­i­al staff who bear the brunt of the abuse at protests.  When peo­ple are camped out in front of an office they find objec­tion­able, whether they’re object­ing to med­ical pro­ce­dures per­formed inside or the fore­clo­sure orders being issued there, the eas­i­est peo­ple for them to has­sle actu­al­ly have no say in the issue.  Folks like jan­i­tors, secu­ri­ty guards, and peo­ple mak­ing deliv­er­ies can’t decide whether a com­pa­ny will for­give delin­quent mort­gages, or change which med­ical pro­ce­dures it pro­vides, or alter the com­pa­ny’s stance on seg­re­ga­tion.  Blocked door­ways or van­dal­ized build­ings may send a sig­nal to some exec­u­tive some­place, but at the end of the day, the guards at the bar­ri­cad­ed door aren’t mak­ing pol­i­cy, and they and the under­paid jan­i­tors who have to clean off the graf­fi­ti are part of the pub­lic on whose behalf pro­test­ers are protest­ing.  Mak­ing them work hard­er does­n’t force any­one at the top of the org. chart to do the same.

So, many tac­tics that seem like they might be rea­son­able, real­ly require care­ful plan­ning if they’re to be used, to avoid plac­ing most of the bur­den of the protest on the wrong shoul­ders.  That’s a les­son that applies across the polit­i­cal spectrum.

The horror of Horowitz

Many cru­el things can be said about the men­dac­i­ty of David Horowitz. Few of them were not already said by the bril­liant Michael Bérubé, but he-of-the-accents does­n’t seem to blog any more, while D. Ho. remains as pro­lif­ic as ever in his search for Reds in the Ivory Tow­er.  RightWing­Watch observes Horowitz first sug­gest­ing that Antho­ny Wein­er is a s3kr1t Mus­sul­man*, and then that Holo­caust sur­vivor George Soros is a Com­mu­nist Nazi, or some­thing.  He told hate group leader Tim Wildmon:

George Soros, who is an evil man, who has evil designs on this coun­try, once said, he said he aspired to be the con­science of mankind. He knows that he’s a cor­rupt busi­ness­man who has caused a lot of pain and so he redeems him­self by being the cham­pi­on of the pro­gres­sive future. That’s what it does for them. If you look at his­to­ry you will see that all these ‘isms’—communism, social­ism, Nazism—they all emerge after Dar­win, that is after the decline of orga­nized reli­gion. They replace the reli­gious vision of a redemp­tion in the next life with a com­mu­nist vision with a redemp­tion in this life, and that is why they are so bloody dangerous.

This is fair­ly stan­dard wingnut­tery, but some­what fun­ny to see from Horowitz.  Horowitz is, after all, a pro­po­nent of a so-called “aca­d­e­m­ic bill of rights” which would func­tion as aca­d­e­m­ic affir­ma­tive action for con­ser­v­a­tives.  His argu­ment is that con­ser­v­a­tives are under-rep­re­sent­ed in the acad­e­my because mean com­mu­nist, Jew­ish, fem­i­nist, athe­ist pro­fes­sors exclude con­ser­v­a­tives from their ranks. 

One stan­dard riposte is to argue that con­ser­v­a­tive intel­lec­tu­als gen­er­al­ly don’t mea­sure up well against intel­lec­tu­als in gen­er­al.  There are few­er of them – the argu­ment goes – and those tend to be of low­er qual­i­ty, so they don’t advance in academia. 

And if we want­ed to point to evi­dence for this propo­si­tion, we could eas­i­ly point to Horow­itz’s his­tor­i­cal claim above.  Appar­ent­ly “the decline of orga­nized reli­gion” coin­cides with “Dar­win,” and com­mu­nism and social­ism and Nazism came after Dar­win so, post hoc ergo propter hoc, Dar­win caused the decline of reli­gion and the rise of com­mu­nism, social­ism, fas­cism, and Roseanne Barr.

Even if post hoc ergo propter hoc weren’t a log­i­cal fal­la­cy, this argu­ment falls apart.  Social­is­m’s mod­ern roots can be traced at least to Fouri­er’s ideas, which he began pub­lish­ing a year before Dar­win was born.  Com­mu­nism can’t have start­ed lat­er than 1848, when Marx and Engels pub­lished the Com­mu­nist Man­i­festo; it would be 10 years before Dar­win pre­sent­ed any­thing more rev­o­lu­tion­ary than a tax­on­o­my of bar­na­cles.  This isn’t “after this, there­fore because of this,” it’s “before this, there­fore because of this.”

Also, are we to believe that George Soros is both an inter­na­tion­al financier and a communist?

* Yes, Wein­er must be an apos­tate because he’s mar­ried to a Mus­lim woman who also hap­pens to be deputy chief of staff to Hillary Clin­ton.  Horowitz rea­sons (if we can apply that verb here):

Antho­ny Wein­er is a Jew. So accord­ing to Mus­lim law, either Antho­ny Wein­er has secret­ly con­vert­ed to Islam or Huma Abe­din has been giv­en a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion to mar­ry a Jew so she can infil­trate our government.

He’s a Jew, so he must not be a Jew or, like mag­nets, he and Abe­din would be unable to join togeth­er.  Make this man a professor.

Home to roost

Short­er Mar­tin Cothran, spokesman for Ken­tuck­y’s Focus on the Fam­i­ly affil­i­ate: Is Rom­ney chick­en on the same-sex mar­riage issue?:

Mitt Rom­ney does­n’t deserve con­ser­v­a­tive sup­port because did­n’t eat a chick­en sand­wich to demon­strate his anti-gay bigotry.

But real­ly, here’s Cothran’s argument:

Maybe some­one could explain to me why the peo­ple who stood in line yes­ter­day to show their sup­port for tra­di­tion­al val­ues should pub­licly sup­port Rom­ney when Rom­ney won’t pub­licly sup­port what they were pub­licly supporting.

To be clear, “stood in line…to show their sup­port for tra­di­tion­al mar­riage” means, when trans­lat­ed from wingnutese, “bought a chick­en sand­wich at Chick-fil‑a in order to sup­port a com­pa­ny’s dis­crim­i­na­to­ry prac­tices, its own­er’s big­otry, its finan­cial sup­port to hate groups, and its work to make mar­riage impos­si­ble for lov­ing cou­ples from an oppressed minor­i­ty.”

Mitt Rom­ney’s steer­ing clear of this because, even if he knows noth­ing else, he knows how to read which way the wind is blow­ing. It seems we’ve reached a point where a mediocre restau­rant chain is the last bas­tion of insti­tu­tion­al anti-gay bigotry.

Edit­ed to cor­rect a geo­graph­ic error.

Pro-choice only for infant formula

A con­ser­v­a­tive colum­nist writes at Town­hall: Bloomberg to New Moth­ers: You Real­ly Should Be Breast­feed­ing, You Know:

Appar­ent­ly, car­ry­ing a baby for nine months just isn’t hard enough. Don’t you think new moth­ers deserve a lec­ture about how to feed their baby.….just hours after they endure hard labor and are still in the hos­pi­tal? New York City May­or Mike Bloomberg has moved from his sug­ary drink ban onto the breasts of new moth­ers. That’s right, Michael Nan­ny Bloomberg is now ask­ing hos­pi­tals to lock up and strict­ly reg­u­late baby for­mu­la. He wants nurs­es and doc­tors to give moth­ers who ask for for­mu­la as an alter­na­tive to breast­feed­ing a “talk­ing to” about how breast­feed­ing is bet­ter for their baby.

Con­ser­v­a­tive web­site The Blaze joins in:

May­or Bloomberg…has gone a step beyond ban­ning sug­ary sodas and trans fats…. Now, it seems he is also try­ing to reg­u­late breast milk.

…Bloomberg is actu­al­ly push­ing hos­pi­tals to keep their baby for­mu­las “behind locked doors” so that new moth­ers will be more like­ly to breastfeed.

The con­ser­v­a­tive Project 21 puts for­ward a moth­er who objects:

May­or Bloomberg’s lat­est, his Baby-Friend­ly Hos­pi­tal Ini­tia­tive, is part of Bloomberg’s mode of reduc­ing choice for New York­ers and con­tin­u­ing to chip away at the free market.

Accord­ing to a CBS report, the ini­tia­tive will help hos­pi­tals edu­cate moth­ers on the ben­e­fits of breast­feed­ing over baby for­mu­la. The pro­gram is also spon­sored by the World Health Orga­ni­za­tion which rec­om­mends that moth­ers breast­feed for six months.

As a moth­er who breast­fed her chil­dren for an extend­ed peri­od of time, I com­plete­ly sup­port breast­feed­ing our babies; how­ev­er, that is entire­ly a moth­er’s choice and one which should be made in coop­er­a­tion with the baby’s pedi­a­tri­cian and her own physician.

May­or Bloomberg is now play­ing the role of pedi­a­tri­cian and neo-natal spe­cial­ist. While it is great to encour­age breast­feed­ing, the real­i­ty is that some women may not want to breast­feed their baby and is sim­ply their choice. The gov­ern­ment should not force them to do it.

And so forth.

Mean­while, the Amer­i­can Acad­e­my of Pedi­atrics rec­om­mends that all babies be fed exclu­sive­ly on breast milk for the first 6 months, and com­ple­men­tary breast­feed­ing and sol­id foods for the next 6 months or more. The World Health Orga­ni­za­tion rec­om­mends breast­feed­ing for the first 2 years.  “Infant feed­ing,” the AAP explains, should not be con­sid­ered as a lifestyle choice but rather as a basic health issue.” 

The AAP feels so strong­ly about the mat­ter that they urge physi­cians not to give pro­mo­tion­al mate­r­i­al about for­mu­la to preg­nant women.  The Sur­geon Gen­er­al has also weighed in strong­ly in favor of breast­feed­ing, and against allow­ing direct mar­ket­ing of for­mu­la to new moth­ers.  The Sur­geon Gen­er­al, build­ing on a code of behav­ior agreed to by the for­mu­la indus­try, observes, “Dis­plays of posters, prod­ucts, or dec­o­ra­tions from these com­pa­nies in a health care professional’s office or in a hos­pi­tal or clin­ic leave the impres­sion that clin­i­cians favor for­mu­la feed­ing over breast­feed­ing. Giv­en the health con­se­quences of not breast­feed­ing, clin­i­cians should not implic­it­ly pro­mote infant for­mu­la by pro­vid­ing venues for its advertisement.”

Bloomberg’s pol­i­cy sim­ply fol­lows the rec­om­men­da­tions of the AAP, the Sur­geon Gen­er­al, and oth­er pub­lic health and par­ent­ing experts.

On the oth­er hand, con­ser­v­a­tives are cel­e­brat­ing a court’s rul­ing in favor of a law in South Dako­ta requir­ing that women seek­ing an abor­tion be told that abor­tion rais­es the risk of sui­cide – a claim which is fac­tu­al­ly false.

At the con­ser­v­a­tive New Repub­lic, this is cel­e­brat­ed as “good news”:

The South Dako­ta informed-con­sent law is the first to require that women receive infor­ma­tion about a greater risk of sui­cide. The effec­tive­ness of this law remains to be seen. The lat­est research on informed-con­sent laws shows the most effec­tive laws appear to be those that raise the costs of the abor­tion — by requir­ing two sep­a­rate vis­its to the abor­tion clin­ic. That hav­ing been said, the fact that the Eighth Cir­cuit Court of Appeals upheld the South Dako­ta law is evi­dence of the good work pro-lif­ers have done over the past sev­er­al years doc­u­ment­ing the health risks of abortion.

At Town­hall, we’re told:

South Dako­ta is doing every­thing it can to let down­trod­den preg­nant women know there are bet­ter, health­i­er options than abortion.…

What South Dako­ta law­mak­ers under­stand is that a woman who choos­es to have an abor­tion needs to be aware of the incred­i­bly grave con­se­quences asso­ci­at­ed with that decision.

And yet this pol­i­cy, which inserts the state between a doc­tor and a patient, requir­ing doc­tors to say things that aren’t true in hopes of dis­suad­ing women from hav­ing a legal med­ical pro­ce­dure. The wide­ly-respect­ed Guttmach­er Insti­tute explains:

The court deci­sion on the South Dako­ta law requir­ing that women be informed of their increased sui­cide risk should they obtain an abor­tion is con­tra­dict­ed by the over­whelm­ing weight of the high­est qual­i­ty sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence available:

• In Decem­ber 2011, a sys­tem­at­ic review com­mis­sioned and pub­lished by the Acad­e­my of Med­ical Roy­al Col­leges (fund­ed by the UK Depart­ment of Health, and car­ried out by the Nation­al Col­lab­o­rat­ing Cen­tre for Men­tal Health at the Roy­al Col­lege of Psy­chi­a­trists) con­clud­ed that “rates of men­tal health prob­lems for women with an unwant­ed preg­nan­cy were the same whether they had an abor­tion or gave birth,” that an “unwant­ed preg­nan­cy was asso­ci­at­ed with an increased risk of men­tal health prob­lems” and that the “most reli­able pre­dic­tor of post-abor­tion men­tal health prob­lems was hav­ing a his­to­ry of men­tal health prob­lems before the abortion.”
• An August 2008 report by the Amer­i­can Psy­cho­log­i­cal Asso­ci­a­tion (APA) Task Force on Men­tal Health and Abor­tion con­clud­ed that “the best sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence indi­cates that the rel­a­tive risk of men­tal health prob­lems among adult women who have an unplanned preg­nan­cy is no greater if they have an elec­tive first-trimester abor­tion than if they deliv­er the pregnancy.”
• A com­pre­hen­sive review of the sci­en­tif­ic lit­er­a­ture, con­duct­ed in 2008 by researchers at Johns Hop­kins Uni­ver­si­ty, like­wise found that “the high­est-qual­i­ty research avail­able does not sup­port the hypoth­e­sis that abor­tion leads to long-term men­tal health prob­lems.” The Johns Hop­kins review also found a “clear trend” by which “the high­est qual­i­ty stud­ies had find­ings that were most­ly neu­tral, sug­gest­ing few, if any, dif­fer­ences between women who had abor­tions and their respec­tive com­par­i­son groups in terms of men­tal health seque­lae. Con­verse­ly, stud­ies with the most flawed method­ol­o­gy found neg­a­tive men­tal health seque­lae of abortion.”

…

Laws such as South Dako­ta’s, which are ground­ed in spu­ri­ous research rather than the best-avail­able sci­en­tif­ic evi­dence, not only rep­re­sent a gross intru­sion into the doc­tor-patient rela­tion­ship, they also endan­ger the health and rights of women, by inten­tion­al­ly mis­in­form­ing them on impor­tant med­ical mat­ters. It is high­ly unfor­tu­nate that, even when wide­ly rec­og­nized as such with­in the sci­en­tif­ic com­mu­ni­ty, dis­cred­it­ed stud­ies can have far-reach­ing consequences.

And, of course, they make hyp­ocrites of con­ser­v­a­tives.  Appar­ent­ly it’s OK to pass laws requir­ing doc­tors to mis­in­form patients and to reduce the qual­i­ty of the health care they pro­vide, but not to enact poli­cies mak­ing it eas­i­er for doc­tors to encour­age new moth­ers to adopt prac­tices which have been shown to sig­nif­i­cant­ly improve their own health and the health of new babies.

Woodwinds and strings

There’s a tale told about grand­par­ents who refused to take the grand­kids to see a clas­si­cal orches­tra per­form.  Asked why, they explained that it was a bad influ­ence.  Too much sax and violins.

I was remind­ed of that joke by fan­ta­sy author George R. R. Mar­t­in’s reply to those con­cerned about the graph­ic sex in his books (and the TV show based on them) (via Boing­Bo­ing):

“I can describe an axe enter­ing a human skull in great explic­it detail and no one will blink twice at it. I pro­vide a sim­i­lar descrip­tion, just as detailed, of a penis enter­ing a vagi­na, and I get let­ters about it and peo­ple swear­ing off,” he said.

“To my mind this is kind of frus­trat­ing, it’s mad­ness. Ulti­mate­ly, in the his­to­ry of [the] world, penis­es enter­ing vagi­nas have giv­en a lot of peo­ple a lot of plea­sure; axes enter­ing skulls, well, not so much.”

I agree entire­ly with Mar­tin, which puts me at odds with var­i­ous groups, not least the MPAA, which assigns movie rat­ings.  You can stab, shoot, maim, beat, spin­dle, and spool movie char­ac­ters with­out get­ting an R rat­ing, but show them hav­ing sex or using lan­guage that real peo­ple use to non­vi­o­lent­ly release anger, and you’ve got a restrict­ed audi­ence.  Dit­to for TV: astound­ing num­bers of peo­ple on TV are shot, stabbed, and maimed, but heav­en for­fend we should see Janet Jack­son’s breast for a moment, or that some­one should drop an f‑bomb.

This was brought home to me last week­end, when I pre­sent­ed at and attend­ed the annu­al meet­ing of the Amer­i­can Sci­en­tif­ic Affil­i­a­tion.  ASA is a group of sci­en­tists who are also evan­gel­i­cal Chris­tians.  They are most­ly squared away on evo­lu­tion, though there was a siz­able pres­ence from the ID cre­ation­ist Dis­cov­ery Institute. 

I’ll have more to say about the con­fer­ence anoth­er day, but there was a moment dur­ing a keynote which seemed emblem­at­ic of the expe­ri­ence.  The con­fer­ence’s theme was “Sci­ence, Faith & the Media: Com­mu­ni­cat­ing Beyond Books,” so they invit­ed a Hol­ly­wood pro­duc­er in to address the crowd.  The speak­er, an evan­gel­i­cal Chris­t­ian, has pro­duced block­busters includ­ing 4 Star Trek movies and X‑Men movies, but also pro­duced the Left Behind movies (a Rap­ture fan­ta­sy based on the world’s worst books) and the cli­mate change deny­ing Cool It!  He praised Glad­i­a­tor as his favorite movie, and men­tioned Mel Gib­son’s bloody Pas­sion of the Christ favor­ably.  He also spoke high­ly of Big Bang The­o­ry as an exam­ple of Hol­ly­wood get­ting sci­ence right.

The first ques­tion from the audi­ence asked why the char­ac­ters on Big Bang The­o­ry were so sex-obsessed, a cri­tique he grant­ed freely.  Lat­er, he was asked how his Chris­tian­i­ty informed his pro­duc­ing deci­sions; he explained how he’d replied to evan­gel­i­cal crit­ics of witch­craft when he pro­duced Hocus Pocus, and how he’d got­ten unspec­i­fied swear words out of the Wolver­ine script.

Did he do any­thing to tone down the bloody vio­lence of Wolver­ine?  It nev­er occurred to him to say any­thing on the top­ic, despite the mur­der­ous ram­page which took place less than 24 hours ear­li­er at a screen­ing of the lat­est Bat­man movie.  He felt no com­punc­tion about cit­ing Glad­i­a­tor as his favorite film, despite the gore that movie spreads across the screen.  Nor did any­one from the audi­ence have any­thing to say on the sub­ject of vio­lence in movies, even though sex, lan­guage, and witch­craft had their moments in the sun.

To be clear, I think we can afford to take Amer­i­can soci­ety’s con­cern about sex, vio­lence, and lan­guage in movies down sev­er­al notch­es.  My con­cern here is the imbal­ance, the taboos ban­ning sex and strong lan­guage, while treat­ing vio­lence as rou­tine and accept­able.  As I think about how I want to intro­duce TV and movies to my baby as he grows old­er, I’m far less con­cerned about let­ting him see lov­ing, con­sen­su­al sex or real­is­tic lan­guage than I am about him see­ing vio­lence offered as a solution.