Addendum to 'Hate Card'

This post consists of a few notes, prompted by discussion over at First Things Blog, for this post. 


The biggest thing I want to emphasize is that the problem with the Washington Post article is not a lack of examples, but the fact that individual events make for a very weak argument.

If the editorial was criticizing the people involved in the events, it wouldn't have merited the kind of analysis I gave it: the events certainly happened. However, both authors asserted not only that this is a) typical behavior of liberals, but b) that it indicates an inherent weakness in their position. This is a very strong claim and is vulnerable to counter-example, e.g. the website I suggested as a resource for learning about the pro-gay marriage position.

One commenter noted that some of the arguments listed are not really arguments for same sex marriage and he seems to be correct. The articles "Sexism and Gay Marriage" and "Racism and Gay Marriage" both assume agreement on the issue. Nonetheless, Arguing Equality is a good primer for that side of the debate.

I'm not sure I would have tackled this argument again, because I could do little besides note that the evidence is weak. I cannot really provide evidence the claim is false. There really isn't any way to provide proof liberals do not rely on "irritable mental gestures." For that matter, there really isn't any way to provide proof conservatives don't rely on "irritable mental gestures." I can tell you that, from my experience, there are people who present good arguments for both sides and people who present bad arguments.

I'd like to thank everyone who brought up these points and I welcome responses here or under the article I originally responded to.

The 'hate card'

This post is a response to "Liberalism and Irritable Mental Gestures" but mostly "In the gay marriage debate, stop playing the hate card," by Matthew J. Franck.

Reading Mr. Franck's and Mr. Reno's articles made me wonder if liberals really do avoid debate through calling their opponents "hateful" or "homophobic." I"m not concerned with the issues of gay marriage itself, just how the debate is conducted.

Ripped from the headlines

Mr. Franck opens his article with five examples: the religion instructor, the Christian group at a law school, a report from the Southern Poverty Law Center, a CBS sitcom, and the Manhatten Declaration app. All of these, he says, are ways "hate" is used to shutdown the voice of those opposed to gay marriage.

Most of these stories seem correctly presented, except for the SPLC report which I will get to in a moment. It is difficult to say whether or not these disparate incidents are indicators of the pattern; they are isolated and can't really be seen as part of a larger pattern.

Typical pro-gay marriage discourse?

Mr. Franck also references three blogs which, to him, indicate the standard level of discourse proponents of gay marriage use:

First, ignore the arguments of traditional marriage's defenders, that marriage has always existed in order to bring men and women together so that children will have mothers and fathers, and that same-sex marriage is not an expansion but a dismantling of the institution. Instead, assert that no rational arguments along these lines even exist and so no refutation is necessary, and insinuate that those who merely want to defend marriage are "anti-gay thugs" or "theocrats" or "Taliban," as some critics have said.

All three of these are websites, and aren't really the work of leading pro-gay marriage advocates. They don't really show typical arguments from the left. And while these writers don't address these, its not hard to find those who do. On the first page of search results* for "gay marriage," I found a website, Arguing Equality, addressing this question under "The Counter-Arguments." (Incidentally, I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn more about that side of the issue. Suggestions on a good resource for the anti-gay marriage side are welcomed.)

SPLC's report

One piece of evidence for Mr. Franck's thesis is the Southern Poverty Law Center's  "report" (which is really an article from an issue of Intelligence Reporter that covers anti-gay and anti-gay marriage positions and organizations) targeting groups against gay marriage for hate and propaganda. He writes:

The SPLC's report on "hate groups" gives the game away. It notes that no group is listed merely for "viewing homosexuality as unbiblical." But when describing standard expressions of Christian teaching, that we must love the sinner while hating the sin, the SPLC treats them as "kinder, gentler language" that only covers up unreasoning hatred for gay people. Christians are free to hold their "biblical" views, you see, but we know that opposition to gay marriage cannot have any basis in reason. Although protected by the Constitution, these religious views must be sequestered from the public square, where reason, as distinguished from faith, must prevail.

 Reading Mr. Franck, one might get the idea that the SPLC is against any group opposed to gay marriage. Yet Focus on the Family is mentioned as one of several that "moderate their views," and this is presumably why they aren't included in the list.

I personally found no evidence for SPLC advocating for groups against gay marriage being "sequestered," not in the report anyway. His quotation "kinder, gentler language" isn't in the article he linked to, but in a different article in the same issue of Intelligence Report, SPLC's magazine.  The SPLC's focus seems to be misinformation and stances against gays themselves rather than people who merely object to gay marriage.

The SPLC's article is, if anything, a counter-example, because it offers specific examples of how groups publish "propaganda," rather than declaring the groups hate-mongers and leaving it at that. SPLC also goes into detail in "10 Anti-Gay Myths Debunked" exactly why it thinks these claims are wrong.


Whether or not you agree with SPLC, it seems clear they aren't using hate as a tactic to end the debate.


So, is he right?

I am concerned with factual accuracy here, not ethics or morals. So, is Mr. Franck factually correct? He seems to have misrepresented SPLC's position, but the other incidents are more or less accurately described. However, they don't really point to an ongoing trend, and substantive debate on the issue is a Google search away.

"Irritable Mental Gestures"


The First Things writer R.R. Reno "Liberalism and Irritable Mental Gestures" cites Mr. Franck as an example of what it calls "irritable mental gestures"--assumptions and tactics used in arguments that are fundamentally unsound. In other words, logical fallacies.

Indeed, these "mental gestures" Reno cites would be irritable and are certainly lazy and poor thinking. The stereotypes/assumptions he mentions are easily examples of Ad Hominem attacks and using the "hate card" to avoid confronting serious challenges to your position is poor argumentation.

However, Reno provides no examples of liberals committing these errors (save those mentioned in Mr. Franck's article, addressed above). Neither does he show how they "use this control to ruthlessly exclude conservatives." It isn't difficult to find people in "media, foundations, [and] universities" who espouse conservative viewpoints. Conservatives may be relatively scarce in universities, but this isn't necessarily the result of systematic oppression. Conservatives seem to be well-represented in the media (see this story on Fox News). I'm not sure about "foundations"--there doesn't seem to be any evidence conservative organizations or conservatives in organizations are subject to prejudice/marginalization.

Final thoughts

While both Reno and Mr. Franck raise problems that certainly exist in some parts, the evidence they provide doesn't live up to their sweeping claims; their incidents are just that: incidents. The events mentioned by Mr. Franck barely rise above the level of anecdotes and Reno provides no examples at all. Information I found myself doesn't seem to point strongly towards their views, either.

Finding evidence of consistently poor logic on the left proved difficult and neither author provided much in their articles. Therefore, I am inclined to say that, barring further evidence, their claims are implausible and unsupported by available evidence.

*Which page of results Arguing Equality is on may change over time due to Google's algorithm.

Britain's Weather and Global Warming

This is primarily a response to "Global Warming Hysteria: 2000–English Children Will Not Know Snow–2010: Oops, Nevermind!" by Wesley J. Smith.

As part of his ongoing critique of Anthropogenic Global Warming* (AGW), Mr. Smith unearthed a claim by Dr. David Viner that snow in England is soon to be a thing of the past--in 2000. If you've been following the weather in the UK recently, you'd know that this is a bit off.

The Prediction

What was Dr. Viner's prediction, exactly? First he's quoted as saying that snow will become "a very rare and exciting event," to the point children don't know what snow is. This claim would seem to be a bit of an overreach, given the recent weather.

His other prediction is that snow will become catastrophic when it does happen by around 2020, ostensibly because the UK will have lost the ability to deal with snow and because snow will become more extreme when it finally does arrive.

Paging Dr. Viner

I decided to look into Dr. Viner's research. Aside from a snippet in a 1999 report on climate change's effects on tourism across the world ( PDF), little of his peer-reviewed research relates to his prediction for declining snowfall in the UK. The report speaks rather generally, saying that warming could negatively impact snow cover in Scotland, hurting the skiing industry. Then it has this on page 26:

" ...The early years of global warming might lead to an increase in snow days, provided that the warming in winter is small enough to maintain sub-zero temperatures (Palutikof, 1999)."

This leads me to think his statements predicting a quick decline might have been him misspeaking, or the journalist misunderstanding. Of course, he may have changed his mind about a short-term increase in snow days, but it seems odd it wasn't mentioned in the article.

Interesting was this article on last winter, which was similarly cold. Dr. Viner stuck to his prediction, saying that snow will soon be on the decline. Basically, he admits he was wrong about the timescale, but not the overall trend.

The main explanation for the cold weathers seems to be Arctic Oscillation (AO), explained in this New York Times article and halfway through this NOAA essay. So there are reasons the overall warming trend would be overcome and we'd see harsh winters, even as the planet as a whole continues to warm. These may have already been consider by Dr. Viner, given the quote above, even if that possibility didn't make it into the 2000 article.

The Larger Picture

2010 was the warmest on record, according to NOAA and the Independent. The past decade as a whole was also increasingly warm--see this graph by NASA. Even if the cause isn't agreed upon, the earth's warming seems to be well-supported by the available data.

Mr. Smith was correct in pointing out that ten years on, Dr. Viner's prediction has not come true. However, because the AO is a temporary phenomenon, Dr. Viner's prediction taken broadly remains plausible, even if he was wrong about how soon it would happen. Therefore this incident could be taken to indicate "hysteria," but it really says little about AGW as a theory since Dr. Viner over-extended himself when making the initial claim. That and the possibility Dr. Viner's predictions were misrepresented means this is hardly the smoking gun Mr. Wesley wants readers to think it is.

The Inaugural Post

I have already been fact-checking under the name "Glau" for about a month. I've wanted to have a "home base" if you will for my fact-checking. Explanation, details, full sources, etc. will all be posted here. I will also post resources for research and fact-checking that I use and can recommend.

See you then.