Ten questions science must answer

For 350 years, the Royal Society has called on the world's biggest brains to unravel the mysteries of science. Its president, Martin Rees, considers today's big issues, while leading thinkers describe the puzzles they would love to see solved.

Today we celebrate the 350th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Society. It signalled the emergence of a new breed of people – described by Francis Bacon as "merchants of light". They sought to understand the world by experiment and observation, rather than by reading ancient texts. They were motivated by curiosity, but also engaged with the practical problems of their time – improving navigation, cultivating forests, rebuilding London after the Great Fire, and so forth. Over the last 350 years our lives have been changed beyond recognition by the application of science. In 1660, vast areas were terra incognita; today, rapid communication and travel makes the world seem connected, even constricted. Some of the changes have been less benign: this is the first century when one species – ours – risks irreversibly degrading the entire planet's environment. We are now in a time of challenges and adversity but it is also a time for scientific opportunity. Issues relating to global health and sustainability must stay high on the agenda if we are to cope with an ageing and ever-increasing population, with growing pressure on resources, and with rising global temperatures. The risks and dangers need to be assessed and then confronted. The need to develop "clean" energy, new vaccines and better resources means science has a critical role to play over the coming years. Helping to meet the challenges of the 21st century demands technological advancement – and an optimal use of existing knowledge. From the growth of the internet through to the mapping of the human genome and our understanding of the human brain, the more we understand, the more there seems to be for us to explore. We have learned so much over the last 350 years, but with every answer comes more questions. From a personal perspective I am disappointed that we have yet to really achieve a full understanding of the origins of life on Earth. What was the spark that, billions of years ago, kickstarted the process of evolution that has brought us life as we know it today? I hope that we will get some answers to that in my lifetime. Looking further ahead is notoriously difficult, but whatever breakthroughs are in store in the coming decades and beyond, we can be sure of one thing: there will be an ever-widening gulf between what science allows us to do, and what it is prudent or ethical actually to do. In respect of (for instance) human reproductive cloning, genetically modified organisms, nanotechnology, robotics and geoengineering, regulation will be called for, on ethical as well as prudential grounds. In terms of what we should be looking to achieve, a huge priority must be to decarbonise our energy needs. Whether it is to reduce our carbon-dioxide emissions or to prepare for when the coal and oil run out, we have to continue to seek out new energy sources. Science has a huge part to play in the development, and the very survival, of humankind in both the near and distant future. Some of the challenges are obvious and some of the solutions are already being worked on by scientists. New challenges will emerge and in science we have seen again and again that some of the greatest breakthroughs are the unpredictable outcomes of pure curiosity. As we look to the next 350 years of the Royal Society we have no crystal ball that allows us to predict the detailed course of scientific discovery. However, we can be sure that today's young people will live their lives in a world where science – and the way it is applied – will play a greater role than ever before. Martin Rees is the Astronomer Royal and president of the Royal Society.

Kathy Sykes What is consciousness?

Most of us have a feel for what we mean by it. But science hasn't managed to define or understand it. There are various theories; Roger Penrose suggests that quantum mechanics plays a key role, while Susan Greenfield postulates that it is similar to the "wetness of water", a property that emerges from the actions of individual molecules. But, even with advances in brain-scanning techniques, such as fMRI, we are really only beginning to fathom how our brains work, let alone understand what consciousness is. In the future, as we get better at synthesising organisms, or making empathetic robots, we may be challenged harder about what actually counts as "conscious". Even now, can we say with confidence which animals are "conscious"? Is your dog conscious? And what happens to our consciousness if we get progressive Alzheimer's, or if we become psychotic? And what about those "coincidences" or "unscientific" claims you hear about two conscious minds communicating at a distance? When someone "knows" that something awful is happening to someone they love? One day, could we have a tested understanding of consciousness that provides a viable mechanism? Maybe not, but it's a delightful thought that we might be connected to people we love – in a way we can't yet explain. Will we ever understand consciousness fully? Perhaps not. We are having to use the human brain to understand its own workings. But I hope in my lifetime that we will get closer to having some inkling about what and who we really are. Kathy Sykes is professor of sciences and society at the University of Bristol and co-director of the Cheltenham science festival.

Joan Bakewell What happened before the big bang?

To simply declare – as some scientists do – there was no space or time before the big bang and that the question is therefore meaningless is hard to accept, as it suggests matter was created out of nothing. But then if there was some kind of pre-existing primordial chaos that was fashioned into the universe by the hand of God, then where did the chaos come from? At the other end of the timescale, I'd like to know whether robots will ever supercede humans. We are told scientists have already created artificial intelligence that can respond to emotion, but will they be able to go beyond getting robots to affect responses and generate feelings spontaneously – such as falling in love? And will robots overcome their inability to physically reproduce by finding a way of replicating their components into newer models? Or will the same robots keep on regenerating themselves? Joan Bakewell is a broadcaster and writer.

Mark Miodownik Will science and engineering give us back our individuality?

If you do a quick inventory of what you own, you will find that most of it is mass produced. This is a result of the industrial revolution, during which we gave up the individually crafted object in return for factories, and in the process got extremely rich. The price was the acceptance of uniformity in every aspect of our lives: our pens, our clothes, our cars, even our homes are all mass produced. It is a dominant influence in our lives, and it shapes global capitalism. But now there is a technology coming out of university science labs that could change all this and set in motion a second industrial revolution that may reverse the whole process. The technology is called a 3D printer. What it does is this: it takes a design from your computer and makes it into a physical object. In other words, you press "print" and out comes a thing; this can be a functioning pen, a pair of glasses, or a hip replacement. This is not science fiction: I have a 3D printer in my lab and it works. At the moment the technology is in its early stages, but already hospitals are using it to make tailor-made implants for patients. Think what might happen if we perfect this technology. Why buy a phone, when you can design and print your own? Why buy a ring when you can express exactly how you feel by making one for your lover, or new cutlery for your mother? The possibilities are literally endless. But it has political and economic implications too. As soon as our desire for material wealth is no longer linked to mass production, factories may become redundant, and shops too. This technology is currently at the state that computers were in the 1980s. Will science and engineering deliver another industrial revolution by perfecting the 3D printer as it did the computer? Mark Miodownik is a physicist at King's College London and will give this year's Royal Institution Christmas lectures.

Tracy Chevalier How are we going to cope with the world's burgeoning population?

We can talk all we like about renewable energies, recycling and sustainable agriculture, but population is the issue that really matters. Yet it is the one on which so many people are silent. We have made the human right to reproduce unchallengeable: to do so is either to be eugenicist or – as with China's one-child policy – repressively authoritarian. But sooner or later we have to do something. No matter how much recycling we do, how much renewable energy we create and how much better we become at producing food, there has to come a time when the world's population makes the planet unsustainable. What's more, the pressure on resources is being maintained at both ends of the population spectrum; not only are more babies being born, people are living longer and longer. There are even suggestions some people may soon live to 200-300. This may be a triumph for medicine but it may be a disaster for the world. So I'd like to see scientists create a working model of population growth that can predict the planet's breaking point and for global policy to be framed around it. Tracy Chevalier is a novelist.

Marcus du Sautoy Is there a pattern to the prime numbers?

For 2,000 years mathematicians have been struggling to unlock the secret of the primes, numbers such as seven and 17 that can't be divided. Is there a pattern to these numbers that can help us predict where to find the next one, as we count higher and higher through the universe of numbers? Each generation has contributed another chapter in our odyssey to understand these fundamental numbers. There is a feeling that the answer to the enigma of the primes might finally be close. But the fun thing about mathematics is that you can never be sure when and from where the great breakthrough will come. I think many people believe that we must have solved all the big problems of mathematics, that Fermat's Last Theorem was precisely that: the last theorem. But that is far from true. Mathematics is a living, breathing subject because of the many problems we still can't solve. Numbers still retain many of their mysteries, none more so than the primes. Given all the problems that face the world – cancer, climate change, sustainability, energy alternatives – the problem of the primes sounds something of an esoteric, arcane place to be channelling one's scientific efforts over the coming decades. History tells us otherwise. The great technological breakthroughs, the science that has changed society, all have their roots in fundamental science pursued for its own sake. The primes are the atoms of arithmetic; from numbers you get mathematics; and from mathematics flow all the other sciences. It's answering the fundamental questions of science that has the greatest potential to transform society. Marcus du Sautoy is the Simonyi professor for the public understanding of science at the University of Oxford and author of The Number Mysteries.

Brian Cox Can we make a scientific way of thinking all pervasive?

This would be the greatest achievement for science over the coming centuries. I say this because I do not believe that we currently run our world according to evidence-based principles. If we did, we would be investing in an energy Manhattan project to quickly develop and deploy clean energy technologies. We would be investing far larger amounts of our GDP in the eradication of diseases such as malaria, and we would be learning to live and work in space – not as an interesting and extravagant sideline, but as an essential part of our long-term survival strategy. One only has to look at the so-called controversies in areas such as climate science or the vaccination of our children to see that the rationalist project is far from triumphant at the turn of the 21st century – indeed, it is possible to argue that it is under threat. I believe that we will only be able to build a safer, fairer, more prosperous and more peaceful world when a majority of the population understand the methods of science and accept the guidance offered by an evidence-based investigation of the challenges ahead. Scientific education must therefore be the foundation upon which our future rests. Brian Cox is a physicist at the University of Manchester and Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, in Geneva.

John Sulston How do we ensure humanity survives and flourishes?

This is the context in which all the exciting discoveries and explorations are going to happen. We certainly can survive but we can only do it by thinking in a rather larger and more collective way than we're accustomed to at the moment. The natural sciences will need to work in conjunction with the social sciences and governance if we are to ensure we will address challenges in an effective way. The challenges lie not so much in the natural sciences but in the social sciences and governance. Why might we not survive? We are hitting a number of very obvious resource limitations in terms of consumption and emissions. Some prefer to deny the importance or existence of anthropogenic climate change but I think there's no doubt at all. It's very clear that the framework is solid; we are heading for a warmer Earth and it is going to have a lot of consequences, among which will be increasing conflict and dangers of us not collectively surviving in the end. We need to head off the thing happening at all, if we can, and we need to head off the consequences in terms of conflict and ultimate conflagration. Underlying all our problems is that we are over-running the Earth. That's not to say that we should panic about it, but it is something we should discuss openly and manage. This is a challenge we can meet if we think more collectively. We're not good at doing that, especially in our current ethos. In the last 50 years, we have moved away from collective thinking: people are set up and educated more and more in the western style to compete. This is not a good way of solving these problems. On the small scale, and on a level playing field, the free-market structures are great; they're exactly what we need to flourish. But they don't work at all on the global scale, and it is there where we have to address the best way of going about it. We need a democracy that recognises that these large things matter. That's the conundrum, really, to see how we can use the security and individual freedom that comes out of the ballot box with sensible collective behaviour. That's something that is not been solved and it is a problem for social science and natural science working together. John Sulston is chairing the Royal Society's study on people and the planet.

Andrew Motion Can someone explain adequately the meaning of infinite space?

The idea of there being no end to space seems logically impossible. How can there be no limits to space? We know the universe is expanding, but what is it expanding into? Is it squeezing into something else and making that contract, or is the universe just venturing into nothingness? In which case, nothingness and somethingness appear to be much the same. We are also told the universe may contract in time; this raises similar questions. What replaces the space that was the something of the universe? On a more frivolous level, I'd also like to know whether my cat is fully evolved as a species. She certainly gives every impression of having pretty much everything she needs. Following on from this, I'd also like to know whether humans are the final step in the primate evolutionary ladder, or whether there will be another species running the world one day while we get locked up in zoos and forced to smoke cigarettes in laboratories. I'd die a happy man with answers to these questions. Andrew Motion is a former poet laureate.

Lionel Shriver Will I be able to record my brain like I can record a programme on television?

I would like to be able to re-experience something significant in my life, such as falling in love. (Think how much safer it would be to take a hallucinogen once and then just replay it when you were in the mood.) I would especially like to be able to record my dreams – and I do not mean the sad little journal jottings of what I barely remember. I want to see those images again, rewind, and contemplate where I got those amazing stories from. I would never run dry on fiction ideas again. Assuming that other people could also play your tapes in their brains, the technology would be rife with problems, providing the ultimate in invasion of privacy. Secrets of any sort could become impossible. Worst of all, other people could get their hands on how tawdry and dreary most of your thought processes really are. On the other hand, it would also make it possible to truly experience what it is like to be someone else – though that might put fiction writers out of business. Lionel Shriver is a novelist.

Piers Sellers Can humanity get to the stars?

In the next 100 years, we will have explored right to the limits of our solar system with people and thoroughly explored every nook and cranny with robots. I don't know when humans will start spreading out towards the stars after that; when someone can put a starship drive together – robots first and then people. We know there are planets out there and we know some of them live in the habitable zone. Robots will go out first to other stars and you will be able to see them in your living room. Humans will follow, though I don't know yet how they will keep people alive or frozen or whatever for the times and distances required. Even if humans creep around at 1% of the speed of light (and I'm sure we could do better than that over time), we will have spread out over the galaxy in 10m years. It's not hard to do. With 10% of the speed of light, we will have gone around the whole galaxy in 1m years. There will be people everywhere. Every advance in science has changed the human perspective, the way we see ourselves. The idea that the Earth isn't the centre of the universe and the theory of evolution both changed things. I'm pretty sure there is life out there somewhere and bumping into other lifeforms, intelligent or not, will be interesting. The descendants of the human race, whatever they are, will have to move away from this rock and this solar system to survive – stars have finite lifetimes. But that's a long way off: I wouldn't worry about selling your stocks and shares just yet. Piers Sellers is a British-born astronaut at Nasa.

BP Sued in Ecuadorian Court for Violating Rights of Nature

A coalition of environmentalists have filed a groundbreaking lawsuit in Ecuador against the oil giant BP for violating Ecuador’s constitution, which recognizes "the rights of Nature" across the globe. Plaintiffs include Nnimmo Bassey, the president of Friends of the Earth International, and the Indian scientist Vandana Shiva.

Vandana Shiva: "This morning we filed in the constitutional court of Ecuador this lawsuit defending the rights of nature, in particular the right of the Gulf of Mexico and the sea, which has been violated by the BP oil spill. We see this as a test case of the rights of nature enshrined in the constitution of Ecuador, which is why it’s about universal jurisdiction, beyond the boundaries of Ecuador, because nature has rights everywhere."

<Click the title to watch the video.>

U.S. Government Seizes 82 Websites: A Glimpse at the Draconian Future of Copyright Enforcement?

by Corynne McSherry

Over the past few days, the U.S. Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and nine U.S. Attorneys’ Offices seized 82 domain names of websites they claim were engaged in the sale and distribution of counterfeit goods and illegal copyrighted works.
Setting aside the due process concerns inherent in seizing any website without notice or appropriate recourse for the owner, it appears that the "raid" has swept up several sites that are hardly in the business of willful copyright infringement. For example, the the list of targets included OnSmash.com and RapGodfathers.com. Both sites are dedicated to promoting rap and hiphop, showcasing new artists and helping fans connect and share information about the music they love. According to the owners, they regularly and expeditiously process copyright infringement notices and take down links as appropriate. Indeed, OnSmash says the labels themselves are often the source of the links OnSmash makes available. In other words, they try to play by the rules. Moreover, the sites are not simply collections of links; rather, they provide a wide array of information and forums for speech, all of which was rendered inaccessible by the seizure.
This type of seizure is not unprecedented, but we haven’t seen it happen on such a broad scale before. This kind of mass action raises at least three concerns:
First, these seizures may be just a short preview of the kind of overreaching enforcement we’ll see if the Congress passes the Combating Online Infringement and Counterfeits Act (COICA). That bill, which was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee on Nov 18, gives the government dramatic new copyright enforcement powers, in particular the ability to make entire websites disappear from the Internet if infringement, or even links to infringement, are deemed to be "central" to the purpose of the site. Rather than just targeting files that actually infringe copyright law, COICA’s "nuclear-option" design has the government blacklisting entire sites out of the domain name system — a reckless scheme that will undermine global Internet infrastructure and censor legitimate online speech. As we’ve noted, one of the most pernicious effects of COICA is likely to be just what we’ve seen here: the takedown of legitimate speech.
Second, the seizures also show why this kind of enforcement doesn’t work; seized sites were available at other domain names within hours. If the United States government increases interference in critical DNS infrastructure to police alleged copyright infringement, it is very likely that a large percentage of the Internet will shift to alternative DNS mechanisms that are located outside the US. This will cause numerous problems — including new network security issues, as a large percentage of the population moves to encrypted offshore DNS to escape the censoring effects of the procedures outlined in COICA. Presumably the DOJ and the DHS should be committed to improving network security — not undermining it.
Third, it’s hard to believe that this kind of action is the best use of the Department of Homeland Security’s resources. What investigations didn’t occur while the DHS spent its time and energy pursuing the agenda of large media companies? Moreover, it’s highly unlikely that this publicity stunt will really help creators get compensated. The best way to help artists of every stripe get compensated for their work is to make sure that there is a thriving marketplace of innovative digital businesses to pay them — business like OnSmash, which is committed to promoting new and unheralded artists.
We hope the legislators considering COICA will take a hard look at these issues before they vote. In the meantime, government officials should take an equally hard look at their enforcement priorities before they spend more of our tax dollars chasing websites.

TSA invades House Party

Exclusive: TSA frisks groom children to cooperate with sex predators, abuse expert says

By Daniel Tencer

 

An expert in the fight against child sexual abuse is raising the alarm about a technique the TSA is reportedly using to get children to co-operate with airport pat-downs: calling it a "game".

Ken Wooden, founder of Child Lures Prevention, says the TSA's recommendation that children be told the pat-down is a "game" is potentially putting children in danger.

Telling a child that they are engaging in a game is "one of the most common ways" that sexual predators use to convince children to engage in inappropriate contact, Wooden told Raw Story.

Children "don't have the sophistication" to distinguish between a pat-down carried out by an airport security officer and an assault by a sexual predator, he said.

The TSA policy could "desensitize children to inappropriate touch and ultimately make it easier for sexual offenders to prey on our children," Wooden added.

Following an outcry last month over the use on children of "enhanced pat-downs" -- which involve the touching of genitals -- the TSA announced a new "modified" pat-down for children under 12. However, as the LA Times noted, the new rules are "unclear" on whether TSA agents can touch children's genitals.

Addressing the controversy over pat-downs of children last month, TSA regional security director James Marchand told the press the TSA was working on new practices to make children more comfortable during the pat-down process.

"You try to make it as best you can for that child to come through. If you can come up with some kind of a game to play with a child, it makes it a lot easier," said Marchand, promising to make it part of TSA training.

Wooden, who has testified before Congress on child safety issues on numerous occasions, says he was told by a TSA agent that the practice has been used.

"How can experts working at the TSA be so incredibly misinformed and misguided to suggest that full body pat downs for children be portrayed as a game?" Wooden asked in an email. "To do so is completely contrary to what we in the sexual abuse prevention field have been trying to accomplish for the past thirty years."

He added: "This policy is also incredibly insensitive to the countless victims who have already been traumatized by unwanted touching in their lives and could be re-traumatized by such pat-downs."

On Tuesday, TSA administrator John Pistole said the agency may change its screening rules for victims of sex abuse. He also said the TSA had no plans to continue expanding the airport screening process.

"I think we are at the most thorough that we will probably be in terms of our physical screening," he announced.

Close the Washington Monument

By Bruce Schneier
A heavily edited version of this essay appeared in The New York Daily News.

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there's no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options, but I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They're afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism -- or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity -- they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they're afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred. Perhaps they're right, but what has happened to leaders who aren't afraid? What has happened to "the only thing we have to fear is fear itself"?
An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers' inability to take that kind of stand -- and their inability to truly lead.

Some of them call terrorism an "existential threat" against our nation. It's not. Even the events of 9/11, as horrific as they were, didn't make an existential dent in our nation. Automobile-related fatalities -- at 42,000 per year, more deaths each month, on average, than 9/11 -- aren't, either. It's our reaction to terrorism that threatens our nation, not terrorism itself. The empty monument would symbolize the empty rhetoric of those leaders who preach fear and then use that fear for their own political ends.

The day after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab failed to blow up a Northwest jet with a bomb hidden in his underwear, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said "The system worked." I agreed. Plane lands safely, terrorist in custody, nobody injured except the terrorist. Seems like a working system to me. The empty monument would represent the politicians and press who pilloried her for her comment, and Napolitano herself, for backing down.

The empty monument would symbolize our war on the unexpected, -- our overreaction to anything different or unusual -- our harassment of photographers, and our probing of airline passengers. It would symbolize our "show me your papers" society, rife with ID checks and security cameras. As long as we're willing to sacrifice essential liberties for a little temporary safety, we should keep the Washington Monument empty.

Terrorism isn't a crime against people or property. It's a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. Terrorists use the media to magnify their actions and further spread fear. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed -- even if their attacks fail. But when we refuse to be terrorized, when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail -- even if their attacks succeed.

We can reopen the monument when every foiled or failed terrorist plot causes us to praise our security, instead of redoubling it. When the occasional terrorist attack succeeds, as it inevitably will, we accept it, as we accept the murder rate and automobile-related death rate; and redouble our efforts to remain a free and open society.

The grand reopening of the Washington Monument will not occur when we've won the war on terror, because that will never happen. It won't even occur when we've defeated al Qaeda. Militant Islamic terrorism has fractured into small, elusive groups. We can reopen the Washington Monument when we've defeated our fears, when we've come to accept that placing safety above all other virtues cedes too much power to government and that liberty is worth the risks, and that the price of freedom is accepting the possibility of crime.

I would proudly climb to the top of a monument to those ideals.

New York Daily News Version

Securing the Washington Monument from terrorism has turned out to be a surprisingly difficult job. The concrete fence around the building protects it from attacking vehicles, but there's no visually appealing way to house the airport-level security mechanisms the National Park Service has decided are a must for visitors. It is considering several options. Four would require a belowground entrance to the monument; the fifth would create an aboveground pavilion. All would detract from the clean lines a visitor sees on the current approach.
Instead of any of these, I think we should close the monument entirely. Let it stand, empty and inaccessible, as a monument to our fears.

The Statue of Liberty has been the center of similar security discussions. It was closed entirely after 9/11; then, Liberty Island was reopened, but there was no access to the statue itself. It wasn't until last year that visitors were again allowed to climb to the crown.

An empty Washington Monument would serve as a constant reminder to those on Capitol Hill that they are afraid of the terrorists and what they could do. They're afraid that by speaking honestly about the impossibility of attaining absolute security or the inevitability of terrorism - or that some American ideals are worth maintaining even in the face of adversity - they will be branded as "soft on terror." And they're afraid that Americans would vote them out of office if another attack occurred.

An empty Washington Monument would symbolize our lawmakers' inability to truly lead.

Some of them call terrorism an "existential threat" to our nation. It's not. Automobile-related fatalities - at 42,000 a year, more deaths each month, on average, than 9/11 - aren't, either. It's our reaction to terrorism that threatens America, not terrorism itself.

The day after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a Northwest jet with a bomb hidden in his underwear, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, "The system worked." I agreed. Plane lands safely, terrorist in custody, nobody injured except the terrorist: Seems like a working system to me. But politicians and journalists pilloried her for the comment (conservative critic Michelle Malkin, for example, showed Napolitano with a Photoshopped clown nose), and Napolitano backed down.

The empty monument would symbolize our war on the unexpected, our harassment of photographers and our probing of airline passengers. It would symbolize our "show me your papers" society, rife with ID checks and security cameras. As long as we're willing to sacrifice liberties for temporary safety, we should keep the Washington Monument empty.

Terrorism is, foremost, a crime against our minds, using the death of innocents and destruction of property to make us fearful. And when we react out of fear, when we change our policy to make our country less open, the terrorists succeed - even if their attacks fail. But when we're indomitable in the face of terror, the terrorists fail - even if their attacks succeed.

We can reopen the monument when every foiled or failed terrorist plot causes us to praise our security, instead of redoubling it. When the occasional terrorist attack succeeds, as it inevitably will, we must fight to remain an open society. Like Israel, we must learn to mourn, move on and rebuild.

The grand reopening of the Washington Monument will not occur when we've won the war on terror, because that will never happen. It won't even occur when we've defeated Al Qaeda: Militant Islamic terrorism has fractured into small, elusive groups. We can reopen the Washington Monument when we've defeated our fears, when we've come to accept that placing safety above all other virtues cedes too much power to government and that liberty is worth the risks.

I would proudly climb to the top of a monument to these ideals.

Tea Party Nation President Says It ‘Makes A Lot Of Sense’ To Restrict Voting Only To Property Owners

Every week, the Tea Party Nation hosts a weekly radio program, calling itself a “home for conservatives.” Two weeks ago, Tea Party Nation President Judson Phillips hosted the program and discussed changes that he felt should be made to voting rights in the United States. He explained that the founders of the country originally put “certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote.” He continued, “One of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners”:

PHILLIPS: The Founding Fathers originally said, they put certain restrictions on who gets the right to vote. It wasn’t you were just a citizen and you got to vote. Some of the restrictions, you know, you obviously would not think about today. But one of those was you had to be a property owner. And that makes a lot of sense, because if you’re a property owner you actually have a vested stake in the community. If you’re not a property owner, you know, I’m sorry but property owners have a little bit more of a vested interest in the community than non-property owners.

Phillips is advocating a policy of voter disenfranchisement that has its roots in the 18th century. When the United States was first founded, ownership of property was one of the requirements to vote in most elections. Many of these restrictions were phased out by the 1820s and replaced with requirements that the voter pays taxes. By 1850, these requirements, too, were phased out. Nashville Scene blogger Betsy Phillips calls the Tea Party Nation president’s idea a “frivolous proposal designed to stoke intergenerational antagonism — as if the people who are older and can afford a home are somehow better citizens than the 18-year-olds who are going off to war to die for our country.”

Unfortunately, numerous major conservatives have advocated for rolling back the voting rights of Americans. Supreme Court justice Anthony Scalia, Gov. Rick Perry (R-TX), Rep. Paul Broun (R-GA), and Sen.-elect Mike Lee (R-UT) have all advocated for repealing the 17th Amendment, which would end direct election of U.S. Senators and return Senate elections to the purview of state legislatures. (H/T: Tea Party Nationalism)

POLICE STATE - TSA, Homeland Security & Tampa Police Set Up Nazi Checkpoints At Bus Stations

<What's next, before you drive your car? your bicycle? walking down the street? There is no stopping point. The term Police State is not used lightly.>

Mixed Blessing?

I read about an Eskimo hunter who asked the local missionary priest, ‘If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?’ ‘No,’ said the priest, ‘not if you did not know.’ ‘Then why,’ asked the Eskimo earnestly, ‘did you tell me?’

– Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, 1974

Government proposes to scrap need for scientific advice on drugs policy

Amendment removes requirement to appoint at least six scientists to Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs

Ministers will not be required to seek the advice of scientists when making drug classification policy in future, under new government proposals.

The police reform and social responsibility bill, published last week, contains an amendment to the constitution of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) that would remove the requirement on the home secretary to appoint at least six scientists to the committee.

A further amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 would allow the home secretary to place temporary controls on substances for a year by statutory instrument.

The proposals will be of concern to the many doctors and scientists who have criticised the government's treatment of scientific evidence in the wake of the sacking, last year, of ACMD chairman David Nutt. The then home secretary, Alan Johnson, removed Nutt from the post after the scientist criticised politicians for distorting research evidence and claiming alcohol and tobacco were more harmful than some illegal drugs, including LSD, ecstasy and cannabis.

At present, the ACMD is required to have a membership that includes representatives of medicine, dentistry, veterinary medicine and pharmacy, the pharmaceutical industry, and chemistry. It is also meant to include people with expertise on the social problems connected with the misuse of drugs.
"The government is ill-advised to hack away at science advisory structures," said Evan Harris, former Lib Dem MP and campaigner for evidence-based policy. "The solution to the poor relationship scientists and Home Office ministers have had is for both to follow their codes of practice, not for ministers to seek to abolish science advisers."

Imran Khan, director of the Campaign for Science and Engineering, said: "It's incredible that the government are trying to take us back to the time of 'Minister knows best'. Scrapping the need for expertise on the drugs advice is not only bad science, but it's also terrible politics."

He added that the status of the ACMD was still a raw nerve for the scientific community – six of its members resigned last year in protest after Nutt was sacked. "The Home Office would be hard-pressed to find a worse fight to pick with the science community," he said.

Crime reduction minister James Brokenshire said: "Scientific advice is absolutely critical to the government's approach to drugs and any suggestion that we are moving away from it is absolutely not true.

"Removing the requirement on the home secretary to appoint to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs at least one person with experience in six specific areas will allow us greater flexibility in the expertise we are able to draw on.

"We want the ACMD to be adapted to best address the challenges posed by the accelerating pace of challenges in the drugs landscape."

After David Nutt was removed, scientists called on the government to guarantee that any advice they offered to help make policy would remain free from political interference. More than 20 academics drafted guidelines that they said "would enhance confidence in the scientific advisory system and help government to secure essential advice".

The guidelines argued that "disagreement with government policy and the public articulation and discussion of relevant evidence and issues by members of advisory committees can not be grounds for criticism or dismissal."

Leonor Sierra of Sense about Science, which helped to publish the independent guidelines, said: "We are rather surprised that instead of improving on the scientific constitution of the advisory council to deal with any shortcomings in the original legislation this bill proposes doing away altogether with the requirement for scientists. Given the recent history, the government really needs to explain how it will maintain objective clarity around evaluation of substances, particularly new substances, in the face of sensationalist or knee-jerk debates."

Harris said the 1971 Misuse of Drugs Act was ahead of its time in embedding expert and scientific advice into policymaking. "In the forty years since then the need for good evidence to inform policy has increased, yet the government seem to want to go back to a pre-scientific era in policy terms."

Earlier this year, the ACMD members who resigned after David Nutt's sacking launched their own independent committee to provide definitive scientific advice on the risks of drugs. The Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs includes scientists, drug-treatment professionals and representatives from the police. It is committed to assess, in public, the evidence on the relative risks and harms of drugs without regard to political sensitivities.

De Young draws the line on sketching

John King

San Francisco Chronicle December 14, 2010 04:00 AM Copyright San Francisco Chronicle. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

 

Close your eyes and pretend you're in the gallery of an art museum. Now imagine the types of misbehavior around you that would cause a guard to intervene.

Pop quiz: Did those transgressions include a patron sketching an image of an admired artwork? On paper, in pencil?

Welcome to the strange world of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, where there's a ban on sketching in special exhibitions such as the wonderful "Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cézanne and Beyond" now at the M.H. de Young Memorial Museum.

The de Young's not the only museum with such a Pecksniffian prohibition, but it's the exception rather than the rule. An exception that mocks the way that art is transmitted from one generation of believers to the next, and mocks the stature of museums within our cultural landscape.

The post-Impressionist treasures are on loan from the Musée D'Orsay, a Paris institution that, for the record, assures us on its website that "freehand pencil sketches" are allowed. But during the months the artwork resides within Golden Gate Park, "sketching, photography, videotaping, and cell-phone cameras are not allowed," according to the de Young's website.

Nor is this one of those rules that exists only in cyberspace. I wasn't packing graphite during my visit, since stick figures are as artistic as I get. But I know at least two people who were and, when they stood or sat quietly trying to render hints of the magic around them, were told not to draw in their (small) notepads.

While the de Young does allow sketching and photography in the permanent collections, the special exhibition curbs apparently have existed for years - a defensive posture that puts it in the company of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. But most institutions that I checked with have no such edict in place.

Pencils are allowed in all nooks of New York's Museum of Modern Art, for instance, and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston only concerns itself with serious replication (as in, "you must obtain a written permit to copy using oils or acrylics, and/or to use an easel"). San Francisco Museum of Modern Art? As long as you don't use a pen, you're fine.

Heck, the Berkeley Art Museum goes so far as to have pencils available at the counter where you buy your ticket.

At the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, Clare Kunny of the education department was surprised I even called to ask.

"This is something we highly encourage," Kunny said. "It's an age-old tradition."

Bingo.

The person who pauses at a painting like Paul Cezanne's "Gustave Geffroy" and sketches a personal response isn't guilty of copyright infringement, an absurd justification for intervention that security guards are known to use. They seek comprehension through emulation, as artists have throughout time.

This sort of person is far less of a distraction than the museum-sanctioned flocks of gallery-skimmers wearing headsets that transmit $7 "audio tours" - people who ricochet from one numbered destination to the next, waiting to be told what to see.

But the headset hordes are revenue generators, so they're allowed. The main concern with sketching in special exhibitions seems to be a pragmatic question of crowd control. Museum directors want blockbusters, galleries stuffed with ticket-buyers and once you enter the gift shop, you can't retrace your steps.

This attitude is especially galling at the de Young because it is a public, city-owned institution in a public park.
Nor is it a stony, fenced fortress: One of the many things I like about the redone de Young is the generosity of the architecture by Herzog & de Meuron and the surrounding landscape by Walter Hood. The design pulls the park into the folds of the building, drapes sculptures and play space around it; large portions of the ground floor are ticket-free, as is the observation tower.

Yes, you buy a ticket to cross certain lines. But the sense is that of a communal space where we can explore the intersections of art and society, art and self-discovery, art and personal expression.

The implicit message: We aren't just consumers or drones. Unless, of course, a special exhibition hits town. Then, you'd better hope the painting that inspires you also inspired a gift shop postcard.

Explosive-laden Calif. home to be destroyed

By JULIE WATSON

 

ESCONDIDO, Calif. – Neighbors gasped when authorities showed them photos of the inside of the Southern California ranch-style home: Crates of grenades, mason jars of white, explosive powder and jugs of volatile chemicals that are normally the domain of suicide bombers.

Prosecutors say Serbian-born George Jakubec quietly packed the home with the largest amount of homemade explosives ever found in one location in the U.S. and was running a virtual bomb-making factory in his suburban neighborhood. How the alleged bank robber obtained the chemicals and what he planned to do with them remain mysteries.

Now authorities face the risky task of getting rid of the explosives. The property is so dangerous and volatile that that they have no choice but to burn the home to the ground this week in a highly controlled operation involving dozens of firefighters, scientists and hazardous material and pollution experts.

Authorities went into the home after Jakubec was arrested, but encountered a maze of floor-to-ceiling junk and explosives that included 13 unfinished shrapnel grenades.

Bomb experts pulled out about nine pounds of explosive material and detonated it, but they soon realized it was too dangerous to continue given the quantity of hazardous substances. A bomb-disposing robot was ruled out because of the obstacle of all the junk Jakubec hoarded.

That left only one option — burn the home down.

San Marcos Fire Chief Todd Newman acknowledges it is no small feat: Authorities have never dealt with destroying such a large quantity of dangerous material in the middle of a populated area, bordered by a busy eight-lane freeway.

"This is a truly unknown situation," said Neal Langerman, the top scientist at the safety consulting firm, Advanced Chemical Safety in San Diego. "They've got a very good inventory of what's in there. Do I anticipate something going wrong? No. But even in a controlled burn, things occasionally go wrong."
He said the burning of the house would provide "an amazing textbook study" for bomb technicians in the future.

San Diego County authorities plan to burn the home Wednesday but need near perfect weather, with no rain, no fog, and only light winds blowing toward the east, away from the city. They have warned residents in the danger zone that they will be given less than 24 hours notice to evacuate their homes for a day, and that nearby Interstate 15, connecting the area to San Diego, will be closed.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency, and hospitals will be on standby in case there is a rash of people getting sick, Newman said.

Some 40 experts on bombs and hazardous material from across the country and at least eight national laboratories are working on the preparations.

They have analyzed wind patterns to ensure the smoke will not float over homes beyond the scores that will be evacuated. They have studied how fast the chemicals can become neutralized under heat expected to reach 1800 degrees and estimate that could happen within 30 minutes, which means most of the toxins will not even escape the burning home, Newman said.

The county has installed 18 sensors that will measure the amount of chemicals in the smoke and send the data every two minutes to computers monitored by the fire and hazardous material departments.

Experts also have mapped how far the plume will travel and predict it will not go beyond Interstate 15. They calculate that if there is an explosion, it would probably throw the debris only about 60 feet.

"It certainly would not be a detonation that would level a neighborhood," Newman said.

Crews are clearing brush, wood fences and other debris that could cause the blaze to spread beyond the property in a region hit by wildfires in recent years. They also are building a 16-foot-high fire-resistant wall with a metal frame between the property and the nearest home, which will be coated with a fire-resistant gel.
Firefighters, who will remain 300 feet away, are placing hose lines in the front and back yards and will have a remote-controlled hose aimed at the nearest neighbor's home. Ambulances also will be parked nearby.

The Sheriff's Bomb Squad will ignite the fire remotely with a sequenced series of incendiary devices, Newman said.

Air pollution control experts have installed a portable weather station on a nearby fire station that will tell them immediately when the weather shifts, while authorities observe the burn from helicopters overhead.

Afterward, officials will monitor the air and groundwater for toxins. Hazardous material crews will be brought in to remove the top layer of dirt on the half-acre property, possibly digging down as much as 6 inches.
"It'll be a tedious process that will probably take a long time," Newman said.

It also will be expensive, he said, although no one knows yet how much the price tag could run or who will pay for it. They could not be reached for comment.

Prosecutors said the chemicals in the house include hexamethylene triperoxide diamine (HMTD), erythritol tetranitrate (ETN), and pentaerythitol tetranitrate (PETN), which was used in the 2001 airliner shoe-bombing attempt. The home has been declared a public nuisance and therefore the county does not have to reimburse the owners, who were renting the house to Jakubec.

Authorities also found a grenade mold, a bag with pieces of metal, a jar with ball bearings, three wireless doorbells with remotes, molds of human faces, handguns and a blue Escondido police shirt, among other items, according to court records.

Jakubec, who is being held without bail, pleaded not guilty Monday to eight federal charges related to making destructive devices and robbing three local banks.

The federal grand jury alleges that Jakubec made nine detonators and 13 grenade hulls containing high explosives. They were discovered in the home after a gardener was injured in November in a blast that occurred when he stepped on chemical residue in the backyard, authorities said. Mario Garcia, 49, suffered eye, chest and arm injuries.

Little is known about Jakubec, a 54-year-old unemployed software consultant. His estranged wife has told the San Diego Union-Tribune that he became increasingly unstable since losing his job several years ago.
 
His attorney, Michael Berg, told reporters outside the courthouse Monday that his client "is anxious to tell his side of the story" but now was not the right time. Berg said Jakubec wants to apologize to anyone who will be adversely affected by the destruction of the house and that he is upset he and his wife will lose everything inside the home.

Neighbors say the couple did not draw attention.

Since the incident, Patti Harrison has stared at the home on the knoll in front of her own and wondered what went through Jakubec's mind.

"When I saw those pictures at the meeting with authorities I thought 'oh my goodness, that's just crazy,'" she said.

Harrison and her husband bought their home in 1974, when it was surrounded by avocado groves. She is grateful that they have home insurance. For the evacuation, she plans to close the windows and pack her family's important records and treasured items.

"I've decided because God protected us all this time when we did not know what was there, that he will do the same now," she said.

She said she is praying for the best: "I would like all the homes to be here when they're done."

Espionage Act makes felons of us all

Dear Americans: If you are not "authorized" personnel, but you have read, written about, commented upon, tweeted, spread links by "liking" on Facebook, shared by email, or otherwise discussed "classified" information disclosed from WikiLeaks, you could be implicated for crimes under the U.S. Espionage Act -- or so warns a legal expert who said the U.S. Espionage Act could make "felons of us all."

As the U.S. Justice Department works on a legal case against WikiLeak's Julian Assange for his role in helping publish 250,000 classified U.S. diplomatic cables, authorities are leaning toward charging Assange with spying under the Espionage Act of 1917. Legal experts warn that if there is an indictment under the Espionage Act, then any citizen who has discussed or accessed "classified" information can be arrested on "national security" grounds.


According to the Act, anyone "having unauthorized possession of, access to....information relating to the national defense, or information relating to the national defense" which "could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" and "willfully retains" that information, can be fined or imprisoned "not more than ten years, or both."

Benjamin Wittes, who specializes in legal affairs, blogged, "By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations. It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them-in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents. Taken at its word, the Espionage Act makes felons of us all."

This may be why the State Department has warned certain people not to read or to discuss WikiLeak content on social media -- not unless they wished to be considered a security risk. CNN reported that "unauthorized federal workers and contractors have been warned not to attempt to read the classified documents on WikiLeaks." According to the recently hacked Gawker, an anonymous tip revealed that the U.S. military warned soldiers not to read "about the Wikileaks disclosures-or read coverage of them in mainstream news sites." Even students at Columbia University that might wish to be hired by the State Department were warned not to comment upon or post links to the WikiLeak cables.

Although Cablegate and the leaked secret cables might be embarrassing for the government, Wittes noted that the majority of them don't contain information that directly relates to "national defense." The Espionage Act does not "cover the overwhelming bulk of the material that Wikileaks disclosed," he stated.

A recent report from the Congressional Research Service (CRS) suggests that there may be sufficient legal precedent to keep the news media from being held liable. The EFF stated, in an effort to oppose online censorship, that the CRS is a "must read" for anyone who reports on, mirrors or hosts the U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks. "Hopefully, this information will help counter much of the fear that our government's so-called 'war' against Wikileaks has generated."

Legal challenge to police 'kettling'

The police tactic of "kettling" to confine protesters during public demonstrations, such as those in London last week, is to be challenged at the High Court.
 
Leading the challenge is Bethany Shiner, daughter of a high-profile human rights lawyer, who was kettled during tuition fee protests last week.

Ms Shiner is launching proceedings against the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police after being detained on Thursday in Trafalgar Square.

She is the 23-year-old elder daughter of Public Interest Lawyers (PIL) solicitor Phil Shiner. Ms Shiner and four sixth-form students, one of whom is a minor, are seeking a ruling that the use of kettling "as a standard response to protests" is unlawful.

They complain they were detained for hours in sub-zero temperatures and not released until 7pm. Birmingham-based PIL is applying for judicial review on their behalf, saying their treatment was "a matter of serious concern". Mr Shiner said: "Because I was in London I was able to advise Bethany and get her sorted so that she could eventually get out of the kettle."

The concern was that the Metropolitan Police "are now using kettling as a stock response to all public protests and appear to have authorised kettling in advance of this particular protest".

He said: "The police are required to have a range of lawful responses to different scenarios and not just resort to the most coercive tactics at the first sign of trouble. The policy on kettling needs to be stuck down."

Ms Shiner said: "I was with a group of young people who behaved at all times perfectly properly and lawfully. We then found ourselves kettled in sub-zero temperatures. I managed to get out only because I went to the rescue of a young man who had a head wound after being hit with a police baton. It is outrageous that the police should resort to such tactics against all protesters, most of whom were acting peacefully."

PIL has written to the Commissioner warning they will argue in court that the police are using kettling in a way that involves multiple breaches of the European Convention on Human Rights. These include a breach of Article 5 - the right not to be unlawfully detained; Article 10 - the right to freedom of expression; and Article 11 - the right to freedom of assembly.

At the heart of the challenge are allegations that, on Thursday, the police knew in advance all about the protest. They had previously used kettling on other recent occasions, including against student protesters in London on November 24, and appeared now to be using it as a standard response to public protests.

10 Hateful Anti-Gay Myths Debunked

Exploring 10 key myths propagated by the anti-gay movement, along with the truth behind the propaganda.

 

Ever since born-again singer and orange juice pitchwoman Anita Bryant helped kick off the contemporary anti-gay movement more than 30 years ago, hard-line elements of the religious right have been searching for ways to demonize homosexuals — or, at a minimum, to find arguments that will prevent their normalization in society. For the former Florida beauty queen and her Save Our Children group, it was the alleged plans of gays and lesbians to “recruit” in schools that provided the fodder for their crusade. But in addition to hawking that myth, the legions of anti-gay activists who followed have added a panoply of others, ranging from the extremely doubtful claim that homosexuality is a choice, to unalloyed lies like the claims that gays molest children far more than heterosexuals or that hate crime laws will lead to the legalization of bestiality and necrophilia. These fairy tales are important to the anti-gay right because they form the basis of its claim that homosexuality is a social evil that must be suppressed — an opinion rejected by virtually all relevant medical and scientific authorities. They also almost certainly contribute to hate crime violence directed at homosexuals, who are more targeted for such attacks than any other minority in America. What follows are 10 key myths propagated by the anti-gay movement, along with the truth behind the propaganda.

MYTH #1: Homosexuals molest children at far higher rates than heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT: Depicting gay men as a threat to children may be the single most potent weapon for stoking public fears about homosexuality — and for winning elections and referenda, as Anita Bryant found out during her successful 1977 campaign to overturn a Dade County, Fla., ordinance barring discrimination against gay people. Discredited psychologist Paul Cameron, the most ubiquitous purveyor of anti-gay junk science, has been a major promoter of this myth. Despite having been debunked repeatedly and very publicly, Cameron’s work is still widely relied upon by anti-gay organizations, although many no longer quote him by name.

THE FACTS: According to the American Psychological Association, “homosexual men are not more likely to sexually abuse children than heterosexual men are.” Gregory Herek, a professor at the University of California, Davis, who is one of the nation’s leading researchers on prejudice against sexual minorities, reviewed a series of studies and found no evidence that gay men molest children at higher rates than heterosexual men.

Anti-gay activists who make that claim allege that all men who molest male children should be seen as homosexual. But research by A. Nicholas Groth, a pioneer in the field of sexual abuse of children, shows that is not so. Groth found that there are two types of child molesters: fixated and regressive. The fixated child molester — the stereotypical pedophile — cannot be considered homosexual or heterosexual because “he often finds adults of either sex repulsive” and often molests children of both sexes. Regressive child molesters are generally attracted to other adults, but may “regress” to focusing on children when confronted with stressful situations. Groth found that the majority of regressed offenders were heterosexual in their adult relationships.

The Child Molestation Research and Prevention Institute notes that 90% of child molesters target children in their network of family and friends. Most child molesters, therefore, are not gay people lingering outside schools waiting to snatch children from the playground, as much religious-right rhetoric suggests.

MYTH #2: Same-sex parents harm children.

THE ARGUMENT: Most hard-line anti-gay organizations are heavily invested, from both a religious and a political standpoint, in promoting the traditional nuclear family as the sole framework for the healthy upbringing of children. They maintain a reflexive belief that same-sex parenting must be harmful to children — although the exact nature of that supposed harm varies widely. 

THE FACTS: No legitimate research has demonstrated that same-sex couples are any more or any less harmful to children than heterosexual couples.

The American Academy of Pediatrics in a 2002 policy statement declared: “A growing body of scientific literature demonstrates that children who grow up with one or two gay and/or lesbian parents fare as well in emotional, cognitive, social, and sexual functioning as do children whose parents are heterosexual.” That policy statement was reaffirmed in 2009.

The American Psychological Association found that “same-sex couples are remarkably similar to heterosexual couples, and that parenting effectiveness and the adjustment, development and psychological well-being of children is unrelated to parental sexual orientation.”

Similarly, the Child Welfare League of America’s official position with regard to same-sex parents is that “lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents are as well-suited to raise children as their heterosexual counterparts.”

MYTH #3: People become homosexual because they were sexually abused as children or there was a deficiency in sex-role modeling by their parents.  

THE ARGUMENT: Many anti-gay rights proponents claim that homosexuality is a mental disorder caused by some psychological trauma or aberration in childhood. This argument is used to counter the common observation that no one, gay or straight, consciously chooses his or her sexual orientation. Joseph Nicolosi, a founder of the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, said in 2009 that “if you traumatize a child in a particular way, you will create a homosexual condition.” He also has repeatedly said, “Fathers, if you don’t hug your sons, some other man will.” A side effect of this argument is the demonization of parents of homosexuals, who are led to wonder if they failed to protect a child against sexual abuse or failed as role models in some important way. In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm said he was about to release a related study arguing that homosexual couples are more likely than heterosexuals to raise gay or lesbian children.

THE FACTS: No scientifically sound study has linked sexual orientation or identity with parental role-modeling or childhood sexual abuse.

The American Psychiatric Association noted in a 2000 fact sheet on gay, lesbian and bisexual issues that “no specific psychosocial or family dynamic cause for homosexuality has been identified, including histories of childhood sexual abuse.” The fact sheet goes on to say that sexual abuse does not appear to be any more prevalent among children who grow up and identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual than in children who grow up and identify as heterosexual.

Similarly, the National Organization on Male Sexual Victimization notes on its website that “experts in the human sexuality field do not believe that premature sexual experiences play a significant role in late adolescent or adult sexual orientation” and added that it’s unlikely that someone can make another person a homosexual or heterosexual.

With regard to Schumm’s study, critics have already said that he appears to have merely aggregated anecdotal data, a biased sample that invalidates his findings.

MYTH #4: Homosexuals don’t live nearly as long as heterosexuals.

THE ARGUMENT: Anti-gay organizations want to promote heterosexuality as the healthier “choice.” Furthermore, the purportedly shorter life spans and poorer physical and mental health of homosexuals are often offered as reasons why gays and lesbians shouldn’t be allowed to adopt or foster children.

THE FACTS: This falsehood can be traced directly to the discredited research of Paul Cameron and his Family Research Institute, specifically a 1994 paper he co-wrote entitled, “The Lifespan of Homosexuals.” Using obituaries collected from gay newspapers, he and his two co-authors concluded that gay men died, on average, at 43, compared to an average life expectancy at the time of around 73 for all U.S. men. On the basis of the same obituaries, Cameron also claimed that gay men are 18 times more likely to die in car accidents than heterosexuals, 22 times more likely to die of heart attacks than whites, and 11 times more likely than blacks to die of the same cause. He also concluded that lesbians are 487 times more likely to die of murder, suicide, or accidents than straight women.

Remarkably, these claims have become staples of the anti-gay right and have frequently made their way into far more mainstream venues. For example, William Bennett, education secretary under President Reagan, used Cameron’s statistics in a 1997 interview he gave to ABC News’ “This Week.”

However, like virtually all of his “research,” Cameron’s methodology is egregiously flawed — most obviously because the sample he selected (the data from the obits) was not remotely statistically representative of the homosexual population as a whole. Even Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, has called Cameron’s methods “just ridiculous.”

MYTH #5: Homosexuals controlled the Nazi Party and helped to orchestrate the Holocaust.

THE ARGUMENT: This claim comes directly from a 1995 book titled The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, by Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams. Lively is the virulently anti-gay founder of Abiding Truth Ministries and Abrams is an organizer of a group called the International Committee for Holocaust Truth, which came together in 1994 and included Lively as a member.

The primary argument Lively and Abrams make is that gay people were not victimized by the Holocaust. Rather, Hitler deliberately sought gay men for his inner circle because their “unusual brutality” would help him run the party and mastermind the Holocaust. In fact, “the Nazi party was entirely controlled by militaristic male homosexuals throughout its short history,” the book claims. “While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism,” Lively and Abrams add. “To the myth of the ‘pink triangle’ — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the ‘pink swastika.’”

These claims have been picked up by a number of anti-gay groups and individuals, including Bryan Fischer of the American Family Association, as proof that homosexuals are violent and sick. The book has also attracted an audience among anti-gay church leaders in Eastern Europe and among Russian-speaking anti-gay activists in America.

THE FACTS: The Pink Swastika has been roundly discredited by legitimate historians and other scholars. Christine Mueller, professor of history at Reed College, did a line-by-line refutation of an earlier (1994) Abrams article on the topic and of the broader claim that the Nazi Party was “entirely controlled” by gay men. Historian Jon David Wynecken at Grove City College also refuted the book, pointing out that Lively and Abrams did no primary research of their own, instead using out-of-context citations of some legitimate sources while ignoring information from those same sources that ran counter to their thesis.

The myth that the Nazis condoned homosexuality sprang up in the 1930s, started by socialist opponents of the Nazis as a slander against Nazi leaders. Credible historians believe that only one of the half-dozen leaders in Hitler’s inner circle, Ernst Röhm, was gay. (Röhm was murdered on Hitler’s orders in 1934.) The Nazis considered homosexuality one aspect of the “degeneracy” they were trying to eradicate.

When the National Socialist Party came to power in 1933, it quickly strengthened Germany’s existing penalties against homosexuality. Heinrich Himmler, Hitler’s security chief, announced that homosexuality was to be “eliminated” in Germany, along with miscegenation among the races. Historians estimate that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. These men were routinely sent to concentration camps and many thousands died there.

In 1942, the Nazis instituted the death penalty for homosexuals. Offenders in the German military were routinely shot. Himmler put it like this: “We must exterminate these people root and branch. … We can’t permit such danger to the country; the homosexual must be completely eliminated.”

MYTH #6: Hate crime laws will lead to the jailing of pastors who criticize homosexuality and the legalization of practices like bestiality and necrophilia.

THE ARGUMENT: Anti-gay activists, who have long opposed adding LGBT people to those protected by hate crime legislation, have repeatedly claimed that such laws would lead to the jailing of religious figures who preach against homosexuality — part of a bid to gain the backing of the broader religious community for their position. Janet Porter of Faith2Action was one of many who asserted that the federal Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act — signed into law by President Obama in October 2009 — would “jail pastors” because it “criminalizes speech against the homosexual agenda.”

In a related assertion, anti-gay activists claimed the law would lead to the legalization of psychosexual disorders (paraphilias) like bestiality and pedophilia. Bob Unruh, a conservative Christian journalist who left The Associated Press in 2006 for the right-wing, conspiracist news site WorldNetDaily, said shortly before the federal law was passed that it would legalize “all 547 forms of sexual deviancy or ‘paraphilias’ listed by the American Psychiatric Association.” This claim was repeated by many anti-gay organizations, including the Illinois Family Institute.

THE FACTS: The claim that hate crime laws could result in the imprisonment of those who “oppose the homosexual lifestyle” is false. The Constitution provides robust protections of free speech, and case law makes it clear that even a preacher who suggested that homosexuals should be killed would be protected.

Neither do hate crime laws — which provide for enhanced penalties when persons are victimized because of their “sexual orientation” (among other factors) — “protect pedophiles,” as Janet Porter and many others have claimed. According to the American Psychological Association, sexual orientation refers to heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality — not paraphilias such as pedophilia. Paraphilias, as defined by the American Psychiatric Assocation, are disorders characterized by sexual urges or behaviors directed at nonhuman objects or non-consenting persons like children, or that involve the suffering or humiliation of one’s partner.

Even if pedophiles, for example, were protected under a hate crime law — and such a law has not been suggested or contemplated anywhere — that would not legalize or “protect” pedophilia. Pedophilia is illegal sexual activity, and a law that more severely punished people who attacked pedophiles would not change that.

MYTH #7: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly would damage the armed forces.

THE ARGUMENT: Anti-gay groups are adamantly opposed to allowing gay men and lesbians to serve openly in the armed forces, not only because of their purported fear that combat readiness will be undermined, but because the military has long been considered the purest meritocracy in America (the armed forces were successfully racially integrated long before American civilian society, for example). If gays can serve honorably and effectively in this meritocracy, that would suggest that there is no rational basis for discriminating against them in any way.

THE FACTS: Homosexuals now serve in the U.S. armed forces, though under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT) policy instituted in 1993, they cannot serve openly. At the same time, gays and lesbians serve openly in the armed forces of 25 countries, including Britain, Israel, South Africa, Canada and Australia, according to a report released by the Palm Center, a policy think tank at the University of California at Santa Barbara. The Palm Center report concluded that lifting bans against openly gay service personnel in these countries “ha[s] had no negative impact on morale, recruitment, retention, readiness or overall combat effectiveness.” Successful transitions to new policies were attributed to clear signals of leadership support and a focus on a uniform code of behavior without regard to sexual orientation.

A 2008 Military Times poll of active-duty military personnel, often cited by anti-gay activists, found that 10% of respondents said they would not re-enlist if the DADT policy were repealed. That would mean some 228,000 people might leave the military in that instance. But a 2009 review of that poll by the Palm Center suggested a wide disparity between what soldiers said they would do and their actual actions. It noted, for example, that far more than 10% of West Point officers in the 1970s said they would leave the service if women were admitted to the academy. “But when the integration became a reality,” the report said, “there was no mass exodus; the opinions turned out to be just opinions.” Similarly, a 1985 survey of 6,500 male Canadian service members and a 1996 survey of 13,500 British service members each revealed that nearly two-thirds expressed strong reservations about serving with gays. Yet when those countries lifted bans on gays serving openly, virtually no one left the service for that reason. “None of the dire predictions of doom came true,” the Palm Center report said.

MYTH #8: Homosexuals are more prone to be mentally ill and to abuse drugs and alcohol.

THE ARGUMENT: Anti-gay groups want not only to depict sexual orientation as something that can be changed but also to show that heterosexuality is the most desirable “choice” — even if religious arguments are set aside. The most frequently used secular argument made by anti-gay groups in that regard is that homosexuality is inherently unhealthy, both mentally and physically. As a result, most anti-gay rights groups reject the 1973 decision by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. Some of these groups, including the particularly hard-line Traditional Values Coalition, claim that “homosexual activists” managed to infiltrate the APA in order to sway its decision.

THE FACTS: All major professional mental health organizations are on record as stating that homosexuality is not a mental disorder.

It is true that LGBT people suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression, and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population. But studies done during the past 15 years have determined that it is the stress of being a member of a minority group in an often-hostile society — and not LGBT identity itself — that accounts for the higher levels of mental illness and drug use.

Richard J. Wolitski, an expert on minority status and public health issues at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, put it like this in 2008: “Economic disadvantage, stigma, and discrimination … increase stress and diminish the ability of individuals [in minority groups] to cope with stress, which in turn contribute to poor physical and mental health.”

MYTH #9: No one is born a homosexual.

THE ARGUMENT: Anti-gay activists keenly oppose the granting of “special” civil rights protections to homosexuals similar to those afforded black Americans and other minorities. But if people are born gay — in the same way people have no choice as to whether they are black or white — discrimination against homosexuals would be vastly more difficult to justify. Thus, anti-gay forces insist that sexual orientation is a behavior that can be changed, not an immutable characteristic.

THE FACTS: Modern science cannot state conclusively what causes sexual orientation, but a great many studies suggest that it is the result of biological and environmental forces, not a personal “choice.” One of the more recent is a 2008 Swedish study of twins (the world’s largest twin study) that appeared in The Archives of Sexual Behavior and concluded that “[h]omosexual behaviour is largely shaped by genetics and random environmental factors.” Dr. Qazi Rahman, study co-author and a leading scientist on human sexual orientation, said: “This study puts cold water on any concerns that we are looking for a single ‘gay gene’ or a single environmental variable which could be used to ‘select out’ homosexuality — the factors which influence sexual orientation are complex. And we are not simply talking about homosexuality here — heterosexual behaviour is also influenced by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors.”

The American Psychological Association (APA) acknowledges that despite much research into the possible genetic, hormonal, social and cultural influences on sexual orientation, no evidence has emerged that would allow scientists to pinpoint the precise causes of sexual orientation. Still, the APA concludes that “most people experience little or no sense of choice about their sexual orientation.”

In October 2010, Kansas State University family studies professor Walter Schumm said he was about to release a study showing that gay parents produced far more gay children than heterosexual parents. He told a reporter that he was “trying to prove [homosexuality is] not 100% genetic.” But critics suggested that his data did not prove that, and, in any event, virtually no scientists have suggested that homosexuality is caused only by genes.

MYTH #10: Gay people can choose to leave homosexuality.

THE ARGUMENT: If people are not born gay, as anti-gay activists claim, then it should be possible for individuals to abandon homosexuality. This view is buttressed among religiously motivated anti-gay activists by the idea that homosexual practice is a sin and humans have the free will needed to reject sinful urges.

A number of “ex-gay” religious ministries have sprung up in recent years with the aim of teaching homosexuals to become heterosexuals, and these have become prime purveyors of the claim that gays and lesbians, with the aid of mental therapy and Christian teachings, can “come out of homosexuality.” Exodus International, the largest of these ministries, plainly states, “You don’t have to be gay!” Another, the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, describes itself as “a professional, scientific organization that offers hope to those who struggle with unwanted homosexuality.”

THE FACTS: “Reparative” or sexual reorientation therapy — the pseudo-scientific foundation of the ex-gay movement — has been rejected by all the established and reputable American medical, psychological, psychiatric, and professional counseling organizations. In 2009, for instance, the American Psychological Association adopted a resolution, accompanied by a 138-page report, that repudiated ex-gay therapy. The report concluded that compelling evidence suggested that cases of individuals going from gay to straight were “rare” and that “many individuals continued to experience same-sex sexual attractions” after reparative therapy. The APA resolution added that “there is insufficient evidence to support the use of psychological interventions to change sexual orientation” and asked “mental health professionals to avoid misrepresenting the efficacy of sexual orientation change efforts by promoting or promising change in sexual orientation.” The resolution also affirmed that same-sex sexual and romantic feelings are normal.

Some of the most striking, if anecdotal, evidence of the ineffectiveness of sexual reorientation therapy has been the numerous failures of some of its most ardent advocates. For example, the founder of Exodus International, Michael Bussee, left the organization in 1979 with a fellow male ex-gay counselor because the two had fallen in love. Alan Chambers, current president of Exodus, said in 2007 that with years of therapy, he’s mostly conquered his attraction to men, but then admitted, “By no means would we ever say that change can be sudden or complete."

Evelyn Schlatter is a research fellow at the Southern Poverty Law Center. She is the author of Aryan Cowboys: White Supremacists and the Search for a New Frontier, 1970-2000.

Robert Steinback is deputy editor of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Report magazine and Hatewatch blog. Prior to joining SPLC, he worked for 24 years at The Miami Herald as a reporter, editor and columnist.