A musing Beam

Gender and Sex are different While watching all the silliness surrounding people's angst at Caitlyn Jenner's receipt of an award for courage, I've realized that many people simply don't understand that "sex" and "gender" are two different things (though they usually have a high degree of correlation).   "Sex" is an anatomic distinction based on chromosomes and body parts.   Gender is a question of social identity as it relates to ideas of what the spectrum of female and male signifies. This is important because it appears that many who get upset about transgender people imagine that they look down, see one set of parts, and then somehow decide they have another set of parts, evidently in something like a psychotic break. For what it's worth, I'm sure some people actually do that, and I would generally agree that those people have serious mental health problems. But the vast majority of people that are transgendered have no su

First Principles on the Right to Religious Freedom in the U.S. The is the second in my two-part series on recent religious freedom laws.  The first covered the more practical considerations of how to think about the laws.  This entry is about first principles:  What is the history of religious freedom in the U.S., and what are our rights? Overview The 1st Amendment to the U.S. Constitution makes us consider religion as something special, trying to keep it free from entanglement with the government.  The government can neither help nor hurt religion.  What that means has been debatable, but in general everyone has long agreed that it definitely applies to complete liberty of belief and complete exclusion of a national religion.  Neutral laws that happen to affect religious observation, such as drug laws, have generally been held to be okay, but the laws cannot be aimed specifically at religion, except that Congress and the states can carefully craft exceptions for religious exempt

Introduction I'm writing a two part series in how to think about the new Religious Freedom law discussions.   The first will cover the more practical considerations of "how to think about" the laws and the situations that they are obviously contemplating.   The second post will cover more "first principles" on First Amendment rights and history to give some context. The federal RFRA (Religious Freedom Restoration Act) was passed in the wake of a 1993 case ( Employment Division v. Smith ), which upheld the firing a Native American for failing a drug test due to religiously motivated peyote smoking.   Justice Scalia, speaking for SCOTUS in Smith , said that generally applicable laws that incidentally (as opposed to purposely) impair religious exercise are not impacted by the 1st Amendment.   The states and the federal government can, but are not required to, make exceptions. RFRA attempted to change this decision by making the government have to have a comp

Bash evil acts.  Stop using the Koran to bash Muslims.   I frequently see people bash Muslims and act as if Islam is simply evil.  Having known several people who considered themselves Muslim who were wonderful, and having known many more horrific people who considered themselves Christian, I find this Muslim-bashing to be disturbing at the human level, the investigation level (who is doing bad things), and the practical level (who are we ostracizing). Often these bashes are simplistic, Fox-news-esque swipes.  Slightly less lazy people will often use decontextualized verses from the Koran.  You know the type of statement, where somebody says, "Look, true Islam says you should kill the infidel." The point of my post is to show that decontextualized verses can easily make any religion -- definitely including Christianity -- seem evil. Remember, though: Religions aren't entities, so they can't really be evil.  People can be evil. BEFORE THE VERSES Before I get i

(An excerpt from a hypothetical) Open Letter to Saddam Hussein (from sometime pre-2003 invasion): It has come to our attention while observing the discussions concerning your possible programs of weapons of mass destruction that you may not fully understand our constitutional system.  Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution -- the power to make binding international agreements and the power to make war -- which you should seriously consider. ... (In case you can't read between the lines, you are an idiot that could not possibly have asked any of the lawyers in your country that specialize in international law ... or your U.N. Ambassador ... or any 1L ... or even most high school students that paid attention in Civics ... or, you know, read the document yourself.) (Also, this has absolutely nothing to do with internal politics, and you should ignore the fact that I'm a junior senator who just started my first term, that I actually

When it is okay to be skeptical? I run into this question all the time.  In which areas should you be skeptical, and where should skepticism not be allowed?  Science, religion, public discourse, family relations, friend relations .... Let's start with a couple of terms: Fact: Whether something did or did not happen in a certain way at a certain time, etc. Opinion: "I think that X" or "I believe X" or "I feel X." In my opinion, the level of skepticism should remain high for facts and low for opinions.  While it is technically a fact that Bessie feels X (maybe she is lying and doesn't really), I'm virtually always willing to take her at her word, without trying to investigate further, say through a lie-detector mechanism.  Facts offered, however, need some proof to be persuasive.  The more unintuitive or important the fact, the more proof it needs.  "The grass outside is green" will generally need little proof ... unless you