The same people often assert both of the following propositions:

#1:  I may have intercourse with anyone at any time whenever I feel desire, because I am only a body.

#2:  It doesn’t matter whether I am having intercourse with the opposite sex, the same sex, or Martians, because I am not defined by my body.

We don’t often stop believing in God, then start looking for new sins to commit.  We become attached to sins we don’t want to give up, then start looking for reasons not to believe in God.

My lecture later this week in Arlington, Virginia

Evidence is piling up that women are attracted to different kinds of men when they are in the fertile phase of their monthly cycle than when they aren’t.  When ovulating, they more strongly prefer men who are masculine, intelligent, and competitive with other men.  By “smoothing” hormone levels throughout the cycle, the oral contraceptive pill cancels out the monthly surge in preference for men with these qualities.  To put it another way, female use of the pill is good news for males who are less masculine, less intelligent, and less competitive.

Men, in turn, find women most attractive precisely when they are most fertile.  By suppressing ovulation, the pill makes a woman’s average attractiveness to men over the monthly cycle lower than it would have been otherwise.

Must I list all the reasons why this is disturbing?

(Summarizing the results of Alexandra Alvergne and Virpi Lummaa, “Does the Contraceptive Pill Affect Mate Choice in Humans?”  Trends in Ecology and Evolution, Vol. 30, No. 10.)

Most Americans say that “private” moral character doesn’t affect fitness for public office.  Yet though many will vote for an adulterer, far fewer will vote for a wife-beater.

What this shows is that they do think moral character affects fitness for public office.  They merely don’t consider marriage vows important enough.

The problem lies not in the fact that they distinguish among vices, for some really are worse than others.  It lies in where they draw the lines, for it is hard to believe that a candidate will keep faith with his constituents if he cannot keep faith with his wife.

“He who is void of virtuous attachments in private life is, or very soon will be, void of all regard of his country.  There is seldom an instance of a man guilty of betraying his country who had not before lost the feeling of moral obligations in his private connections.”  --  Samuel Adams to James Warren, 4 November 1775.

Rules are necessarily biased; bias is in the nature of a rule. The rules of baseball are tilted in favor of skill, because skillful competition is what baseball is about; the rules of education, in favor of knowledge, because the extension of knowledge is what education is about.  Rules can and should be fair.  But the notion that fairness means neutrality is a fallacy.

But surely laws should be unbiased, shouldn’t they?  Certainly not.  Laws should be biased toward the common good, the first element of which is justice.  Lady Justice is blindfolded not because she has no criterion, but because she is blind toward all other criteria.  She uses her scales, not her eyes.