My wife just sent me a fascinating article on Slate that I thought I would share with you. Some geneticists recently completed a study on how genes for homosexuality could continue to exist given that homosexual men tend not to procreate. They tested a number of theories against the data, and discovered that what seems to happen is that there actually isn’t a genetic marker for homosexuality, per se, but instead a series of genetic markers that lead to a dramatic increase in attraction for males. Women who have this set of genes tend to produce significantly more children than women who don’t have this set of genes; but if they pass those genetic markers to their sons, then those men are significantly more likely to be gay. (Which is not necessarily to say that most or even many of them are gay, just more than you would otherwise expect.) The study was only concerned with homosexuality in men, and does not address homosexuality in women at all.
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The House just passed a bill that would outlaw employment discrimination based on sexual identity. It’s a compromise bill in that it exempts groups with religious affiliations and does not protect against transsexual or transgender discrimination. Good for the House, and I hope it passes the Senate and becomes law.
In any case, the New York Times article on the debate had the following quote:
Representative Doc Hastings of Washington, who led the Republican effort to get a vote on the amendment, said he opposed the overall bill in part because many states already had similar laws and because he viewed it as intrusive. “I do not think it is the place of the federal government to legislate how each and every place of business operates,” Mr. Hastings said.
As They Might Be Giants once said, you can’t shake the devil’s hand and say you’re only kidding.
And yet that’s exactly what many conservatives are trying to do.
If you haven’t heard, last week the Conservative Political Action Conference met for their annual meeting in Washington. CPAC is a national convention of mostly young Republicans, and is one of the most prominent meetings of conservatives each year. This year, for instance, virtually every Republican nominee for President spoke at the conference, with the notable exception of McCain, who was criticized heavily for not speaking. On Friday, the next to last day of the convention, Ann Coulter gave the keynote speech. She was preceded by Mitt Romney, who had this to say about her:
“I’m happy to learn that after I speak you’re going to hear from Ann Coulter. That’s a good thing. I think it’s important to get the views of moderates.”
Obviously the moderate bit is a joke, but presumably he was actually happy to speak before her. After all, Coulter is a popular speaker among conservative circles and her speech at last year’s CPAC convention was generally well received. In her speech this year, however, Coulter made the following remark:
“I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot,’ so I — so kind of an impasse, can’t really talk about Edwards.”
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