Did The Pill Really Do All That?

      The sexual revolution has been an unmitigated disaster. Since the oral contraceptive was introduced, there have been more out-of-wedlock pregnancies. Since abortion was legalised, there have been more out-of-wedlock births. The effects on the children have been appalling. Couples who approach marriage on the "try before you buy" principle have a much higher divorce rate. When I was growing up, there were three STDs you needed to know about, and they could be cured by antibiotics. Since then, I have lost count of the number of new STDs, most of which are highly resistant to treatment. One of them can kill you horribly if you don't keep it at bay with very expensive drugs for the rest of your life. The sexual revolution has been a failure even in what it promised. More sexual partners do not equate to more sex. Most sex still occurs in the bond of matrimony, but these bonds are breaking up faster these days. And a commonly expressed opinion is that it all started with the introduction of the contraceptive pill. But did it? I think the truth is far more nuanced.

We Didn't Need No "Consent" Lessons!

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OF COURSE, Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos!

     I wish I could say something which would make the world sit up and take notice, something that would turn viral, which would direct thousands of hits to my lonely blog. Take the case of Lori Alexander. Now, I have to admit, I had previously never heard of her, and I presume most other people would have said the same. Then, a year and a half ago she penned a short article entitled, "Men Prefer Debt-Free Virgins Without Tattoos", in which she discussed a letter someone had sent her on the subject. Suddenly, the fat hit the fire. Within three days she received 90,000 Facebook comments, a lot of them not just negative, but vitriolic, and at the time of writing the score stands at 126,000. Clearly, it touched a raw nerve with many people. As tends to happen when the opponent has no logical rebuttal, many of them caricatured her position, then argued against the caricature. Others had such a visceral reaction to the title that they apparently lost all reading comprehension, because they argued against statements she never made.
     Well, as a man, let me tell you that the title is absolutely correct. Not only that, it is blindingly obvious. It belongs to the same category as "Rain falls from the sky." It shouldn't be necessary to state it. Nevertheless, as George Orwell once said, "[W]e we have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men, " so here goes ...

Life Was Better in the 1950s and '60s (3 of 3)

     Every index of social disintegration has got worse in the last fifty years. In Part 1 I described what life was like in the 1950s and '60s. In Part 2 I explained why much of what is considered progress is, at best, a mixed bag. In the following article I shall list all the ways life has become much difficult and more challenging for those growing up than it was when I was a boy.

The High Cost of Preventing AIDS

     Currently, there are just over 25,000 Australians living with HIV, and the new infections number just over 1,000 each year. By and large, the incidence of AIDS is low because of the use of anti-retroviral treatment. As you are no doubt aware, HIV is the virus, and AIDS the active disease it produces after a lapse of five to ten years. No cure exists, but the disease can be held at bay by anti-retroviral drugs. It is a life sentence, because if once the medication is ceased, the virus is ready to swing back into action and destroy the immune system. Once that happens, an unpleasant death is certain. However, lately a new medication has come onto the market.

The Book Was Right: Breasts Are Meant to be Sexy.

     If you want to get your books sold, you have to be careful not to raise the ire of the social media mafia. Take poor old Alex Frith, the author of Growing Up for Boys, a guide to puberty. His publisher has just decided to pulp all the remaining copies because a wowser named Simon Ragoonanan raised a Facebook storm over three sentences: "Girls have breasts for two reasons. One is to make milk for babies. The other is to make the girl look grown up and attractive." Shock! Horror! How could he say such a thing? It makes it sound like women are wired for sex appeal. It's a pity they don't show the same outrage towards those sex education books which encourage unchastity.
    Well, as a trained behavioural scientist, I've got news for Mr Ragoonanan. The book is right!

Lies, Damned Lies, and Suicide Statistics

     Ages ago, when I submitted my scientific studies for publication, they were in turn submitted to a couple of anonymous reviewers who, I presume, had undertaken studies in a similar field, and they made recommendations - not all appreciated - on how my data could be presented, and their possible implications. Likewise, when I was asked to review someone else's paper, I also made recommendations - which I hope were appreciated. That is how peer review works. So how could a prestigious journal publish a paper whose data make no sense whatsoever?

    Take, for instance, the recent paper by Raifman, Moscoe, Austin, and McConnell, entitled

Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts,

 which was widely touted as proving that the introduction of same-sex "marriage" (SSM) in America reduced adolescent suicide by 7% overall, and 14% among homosexuals and lesbians. Right away, an alarm bell rang. How could even a large reduction among a very small minority result in such a large overall reduction? It was time to examine the document in detail.

What's Got Into the "National Geographic"?

     The National Geographic Magazine, to which my family has been subscribing since 1963, frequently contains article which are not, strictly speaking, geographic in nature. For many decades they have provided grants for the study of wild animals, the results of which have been published in the magazine, but at least they can be justified as being set in exotic foreign places. Ditto the forays into archaeology, and history. Nevertheless, it is hard to see the geographic justification of articles on the King James Bible (December 2011), food (December 2014), or beauty (January 2000). This is not to say that I objected to these articles; I found them very interesting. However, in January 2017 they dropped all lip service to their original charter, not to mention common sense, when they jumped onto the latest bandwagon, with an entire issue dedicated to the "gender revolution".

The Lunatics Are Taking Over the Asylum!

     According to estimates, between one in 20,000 and one in 7,000 men, with a similar order of magnitude for women, are transsexuals, that is they are seriously distressed about their biological sex, and feel in their hearts that they are "really" members of the opposite sex born in the wrong body. Of these, only a fraction go on to have an operation. It comes as a surprise, therefore, that I have met three of them, and so am sympathetic to their plight. Certainly, as long as we permit "sex change" operations, legal anomalies will arise which need to be dealt with. Hitherto, this has always been seen as a social problem: how to permit these unhappy people to live with some sort of dignity and peace of mind. But lately there have been strident calls to treat it, not as a problem, but as an issue of "rights" - which are defined very broadly, despite the fact that they are not self-evident, nor the result of community consensus. That is a route which leads to madness, which will ultimately rebound to the detriment of those it is intended to help.

Same-Sex "Marriage"?

     I see Warren Entsch's ill-advised cross-party bill on same-sex "marriage" has died a natural death - at least for the moment. Common sense should have told him that the Coalition had no choice but to refuse a "conscience vote" on the issue. For a start, you can't have a free vote on a moral issue, because it implies that it is legitimate to vote for an immoral law. (The same thing, of course, goes for a plebiscite.) Apart from that, the only reason "conscience votes" are called is to allow the government to get their way without splitting the party, and to deflect from the party itself the popular odium the law may bring. This is undemocratic enough when done by a government; it is ridiculous when it is contrary to government policy. What the minority of Coalition extremists wanted was the right to join with the Labor Party in the hope of overturning majority policy. Why would the majority agree to that?
     And the irony is, there has no renewed support for same-sex "marriage". All that has happened is that its proponents have been shouting more loudly in the wake of the Irish referendum and the decision of five of the nine people who really make the law in the US. But although a lot of people may be prepared to accept it, the only groups who really want it are (a) about half the homosexual community, equating to about 1% of the community, and (b) the extreme left, who will never vote Coalition anyway. However, the Coalition would lose a lot of their natural supporters if they supported this unnatural policy. So what on earth were the rogue Coalition MPs thinking? And why don't the rank and file come out in force argue against it? Well, since they don't appear to want to do so, here are the reasons. And - guess what? - they have nothing to do with religion.

Homosexuality in the Lower Animals?

     By popular demand. Well, not exactly, but a correspondent has suggested it is about time I made good on the promise made in my essay on the sex life of koalas:

Obviously, I am going to have to write another article in due course about the phenomenon, because non-zoologists do not understand that many species of animals use sex in manners not easily referable to human sexuality - or, indeed, to that of other non-human species. Homosexuality as we know it is extremely rare outside of humans.

     There seems to be a lot of interest in this lately. The Wikipedia article on the subject, for example, is accurate as far as it goes, but misses the big picture entirely. The natural temptation is always to equate it with human homosexuality. Indeed, it is clear that many people cite it in order to validate the human activity. One wonders how many examples they need to validate it: a hundred, or just one? And how the same method would not validate monogamy, harems, promiscuity, infanticide, and cannibalism, all of which can be found in the lower animals. In point of fact, every species, including the human species, possesses a social system adapted to its way of life. The presence of a specific behaviour in some other species does not validate it for human beings, and its absence does not invalidate it. Whether homosexual practices are a legitimate activity for human beings is a legitimate subject for debate, but you won't find the arguments in this essay.

The Science of Sexual Morality

There are some things which sound good at the time, but many generations of experience have shown that they don't work.

     That was a comment made by my mother when I was a teenager, with a veiled reference to sexual morality. There is a tendency is some circles, I have noticed, for what is termed "traditional sexual morality" to be regarded as some collection of irrational taboos, or at least something no longer applicable to modern circumstances. Sometimes it is called "Christian sexual morality", but that is a misnomer. It would be better to call it "human sexual morality", for it is the basic default system from which individual cultures tend to deviate. What Christianity introduced is a add-on: the idea that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. Committed as it is to sexual equality, Christianity has always been negative towards polygamy, divorce, and the major exception to the default system practised by civilisations: the idea that it is acceptable to have a pool of degraded, low status women ie prostitutes, as an outlet for otherwise "respectable" men. However, the desirability of chastity before marriage and fidelity afterwards is the general rule of all human societies.
     Some cultures, believe it or not, have sexual moral standards stricter than ours used to be, and attempt to restrict nearly all communications between the sexes. Where their standards are slacker, it usually means carving out exceptions to the general rule - exceptions which, as the proverb explains, imply that the rule exists. The unusual exceptions - the ones which titillate anthropologists - tend to disappear when we leave the small tribal societies and examine the major civilisations, and the reason is obvious. These are the successful societies; they have been around a long time, and each occupy a large section of the world's area and population. They have discovered, as we are now having to relearn, that if you don't keep sexual relations within the bounds of marriage, things start to fall apart.

Rates of Cure for Homosexuality

     Shortly after the powers that be declared that homosexuality was not a mental disorder, they proclaimed that dogma that it was also impossible to change. Prior to that, it was taken for granted among psychiatrists in the field that a cure for homosexuality was possible - difficult, time-consuming, and uncertain, to be sure, but definitely possible - and they had the case studies to prove it. Sexual orientation change therapy is neither new, nor restricted to religious zealots, not ineffective.
     There is a certain irony which is never mentioned. The naysayers have never come out with a study whereby the therapy has been applied to a large number of conscientious patients, and found to be 100% ineffective. On the contrary, there is ample evidence of cure rates of the order of a third to a half of patients. Indeed, in a high proportion of cases, change is spontaneous. Whitehead and Whitehead devoted a whole chapter of their book, My Genes Made Me Do It (downloadable here) to both spontaneous and assisted change. Dr Spitzer, who was largely instrumental in getting homosexuality taken off the list of mental disorders, nevertheless, to his surprise, discovered that a lot of people had made successful changes. More detailed is that of Dr Phelan, who quoted 100-odd studies, some very old, some very new. I am glad I copied it when I first encountered it, because now it can generally be found on the net only minus the long list of references which gives it its value. For your information, therefore, I enclose the full review. I am sure he would not mind.

Same Sex "Marriage" and the Australian Constitution

     The enemies of society keep a close watch on developments in Britain, Europe, and especially America, and anything they get away with overseas, they then attempt in Australia. So we should not be surprised that the push for same sex "marriage" has now reached our pristine shores. The Greens, of course, have been pushing it for ages, for reasons which have nothing to do with protecting the environment, and everything to do with promoting the personal perversion of their founder and head. The Socialist Left, and now the whole Labor Party, are also pushing it, because they follow the religion of political correctness rather than the party of Curtin and Chiffley, who are no doubt turning in their graves.
     However, at the risk of being called a spoil-sport, I should like to point out that such a law, if enacted, would probably fall foul of the Australian Constitution.
     To clarify the matter, let us look at a topic which may appear irrelevant but which, on further examination, will be found to be very germane. Section 80 of the Constitution states:

The trial on indictment of any offense against any law of the Commonwealth shall be by jury...

     But what is a jury? This becomes an issue when state courts try a federal offense, because South Australian law permits verdicts by a majority of 10 jurors out of 12. The crunch came in the High Court decision of Cheatle v The Queen (1993) 177 CLR 541. The judges examined the entire case history, and established that unanimous verdicts had been a requirement in jury trials since 1367, and so were therefore required by the Constitution. The point was, that "jury" had an established meaning at the date the Constitution was written (1900), which could not be changed by Parliament. When you look at it, this is plain common sense. If Parliament could define any group, however determined, to be a "jury", and any method of decision making a "trial", they would be able to whittle away, and eventually destroy, the very safeguards the section of the Constitution was intended to provide. As the court explained:

It is well settled that the interpretation of a constitution such as ours is necessarily influenced by the fact that the provisions are framed in the language of the English common law, and are to be read in the light of the common law's history.

    The same rule held for the Federal Parliament's jurisdiction over trade marks in section 51(xviii). That also had a specific meaning in 1900. As explained by Chief Justice Griffith in "the Brewery case" of 1908 (6CLR469 at 513):

With regard to this species of property the power of Parliament is absolute ... but they cannot by calling something else by the name trade mark, create a new and different kind of industrial property. 

    What has this got to do with same sex "marriage"? Plenty. Because section 51(xxi) of the same Constitution gives the Federal Government jurisdiction over marriage. Unlike the situation in the U.S., in Australia there cannot be as many marriage laws as there are states. State and Federal Governments can choose to give married and unmarried couples the same rights and services in any area under their respective jurisdictions, but only the Federal Government can tell us who are married. But this does not mean that it can take control of any grouping by calling it "marriage". As Justice Brennan put it, in the case of Fisher v Fisher (1986):

[C]onstitutional interpretation of the marriage power would be an exercise of hopeless circularity if the Parliament could itself define the nature and incidents of marriage by laws enacted in purported pursuance of the power. ...  [T]hose words do not empower the Parliament to legislate upon the customary incidents of marriage so as to affect the nature of the marriage relationship.

     Marriage had a specific meaning under the common law at the date of the Constitution - and it goes back not simply to 1362, but as far as human memory runs.
     And what is that meaning? I shall merely cite the relevant case law prior to 1900. We shall start with an early one: Sir William Scott's comments in Lindo v Belisario (1795), 1 Hag. Con. 216 at pp 230-231:

It is held by some people that marriage is a contract merely civil - by others, that it is a sacred, religious, and spiritual contract, and only so to be considered. The jurisdiction of the Ecclesiastical Court was founded on ideas of this last described nature; but in a more correct view of this subject, I conceive that neither of these opinions is perfectly accurate. According to juster notions of the marriage contract, it is not merely either a civil or religious contract; and, at the present time, it is not to be considered as originally either one or the other. It is a contract according to the law of nature, antecedent to civil institution, and which may take place for all intents and purposes, wherever two persons of different sexes [my emphasis] engage, by mutual contracts, to live together. Our first parents lived not in a political society, but as individuals, without the regulation of any institutions of that kind. It is hardly necessary to enter something of a protest against the opinion, if such opinion exists, that a mere commerce between the sexes [ie sexual intercourse] is itself marriage. A marriage is not every casual commerce; nor would it be even in the law of nature. A mere casual commerce, without the intention of cohabitation, and bringing up of children, would not constitute marriage under any supposition. But when two persons agree to have that commerce for the procreation and bringing up of children, and for such lasting cohabitation, - That, in a state of nature, would be a marriage, and in the absence of all civil and religious institutes, might safely be presumed to be, as is popularly called, a marriage in the sight of God.

     He said much the same thing 16 years later, in the case of Dalrymple v Dalrymple (1811), 2 Hag. Con. 54, at 62:

Marriage, in its origin, is a contract of natural law; it may exist between two individuals of different sexes [emphasis added], although no third person existed in the world, as happened in the case of the common ancestors of mankind: It is the parent, not the child, of civil society.

     If a marriage has been made under some other jurisdiction, other than the common law, is it still valid under the common law? Of course it is, and always has been - provided that it satisfies the definition of "marriage" in the common law. As expressed by Lord Brougham in Warrender v Warrender (1835), 2 Cl. & Fin. 488 at 531:

But marriage is one and the same thing substantially all the Christian world over. Our whole law of marriage assumes this; and it is important to observe, that we regard it as a wholly different thing, a different status, from Turkish or other marriages among infidel nations, because we clearly never should recognise the plurality of wives, and consequent validity of second marriages ...

     Very well, it is established that polygamous marriages are never marriages under the English common law - and so cannot have been included in the meaning of the word in section 51(xxi). (This also makes it difficult to see how the union of two men or two women could be included.) But what happens in the case of "potentially polygamous" marriages; that is, a monogamous union contracted under a jurisdiction which permits a second wife? The issue came to a head with the case of Mr Hyde, an Englishman who went to Utah, married a Mormon, then afterwards left both the religion and his wife, and now wanted a divorce on the grounds of her adultery. It was ruled that the marriage had never been valid in the first place. As Lord Penzance put it in Hyde v Hyde & Woodmansee (1866) L. R. 1 P. & D. 130 at 133:

I conceive that marriage, as understood in Christendom, may for this purpose be defined as the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others.

     22 years later the same issue arose when a Christopher Bethell presented having married a woman of the polygamous Baralong tribe of Africa, according to its customs. However, according to Justice Stirling in Re Bethell, Bethell v Hildyard (1888), 38 Ch. D. 200 at 234:

I am bound to hold that a union formed between a man and a woman in a foreign country, although it may bear the name of marriage, and the parties to it may there be designated husband and wife, is not a valid marriage according to the law of England unless it is formed on the same basis as marriages throughout Christendom, and be in its essence "the voluntary union for life or one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others".

     Two years later, the matter arose again, this time in the case of a marriage contracted in Japan. Again, Justice Hannen ruled, in Brinkley v A-G (1890) 15 P. D. 76 at 79:

A marriage which is not that of one man and one woman, to the exclusion of all others, though it may pass by the name of marriage, is not the status which the English law contemplates when dealing with the subject of marriage.

     His Honour then went on to determine that, since Japanese marriages do indeed follow this pattern, they are automatically valid under the common law. He also pointed out that, although it is often called "Christian marriage" as a shorthand phrase, Christianity need have nothing to do with it.
    This, then, was the legal meaning of the term, "marriage" when the Constitution was written, and to which Parliament is bound. Parliament can legislate regarding the age of marriage, the rights of married couples, the dissolution of marriage, and the maintenance of children, but it cannot change the nature of marriage. The fundamental nature of marriage in Australia was neatly expressed by Justice Sugerman in Ng Ping On v Ng Choy Fung Kam (1964) N.S.W.R. 953 at 954-955, and even though it was written long after the Constitution was written, it sums up the pre-Constitution situation perfectly:

The expression "Christian marriage" does not connote in this context that the parties are Christians, or that the rites observed are Christian rites. It is possible to have a "Christian marriage" in the relevant sense to which neither party is a Christian, and which is not celebrated according to the observances of any Christian denomination. The expression means, rather, a marriage in the sense in which that relationship is understood in Christendom. This is a reference to the character of the marriage - to its being, in the words which Lord Penzance used in Hyde v Hyde and Woodmansee, "the voluntary union for life of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others". Unions of a polygamous character are, of necessity, outside this concept of marriage. Their exclusion therefore depends, not upon the husband's having taken more than one wife in fact, but upon the character of the marriage - upon whether, by the very terms of the marriage compact, a second marriage is a thing allowed to the husband and no cause of complaint to her who has acquiesced in that compact. Marriages, not as yet polygamous in fact and perhaps not likely to become so, but polygamous in character, in that they admit of the taking of further wives, are generally referred to as potentially polygamous, and it is on this ground that they are to be distinguished from Christian marriages in the sense earlier mentioned. A marriage once "Non-Christian" is always Non-Christian; it takes its character at the time when it is contracted under the law according to which it is contracted, and that character remains unaffected by subsequent events.

     What else needs to be added? If polygamous and potentially polygamous unions, which have a long and venerable history, and have been practised by a majority of the world's population, are not recognised by the common law, or section 51(xxi), what chance same sex unions, which have never been treated as marriages except in a few small societies in aberrant times?
     Not only that, but the parliamentarians know it - or should know it. In 2002 they sought legal opinion on the subject. (The opinion has since been removed from the Parliamentary website.) The conclusion was that, although there was not complete unanimity in the High Court, the majority opinions suggest that such a law would have a very hard time passing muster. Furthermore, there would be many people who would have standing to contest it: a state government, an heir or next of kin sidelined by such a "marriage", a public servant who objects to registering it, or a celebrant who may be forced to celebrate it.
     The social deformers are pretending that marriage is the product of the law, and is merely whatever grouping of people the law wants to consecrate. But it isn't. As Sir William Scott pointed out as far back as 1795, it is the fundamental basis of society, which pre-dates the law (and probably the human race), which the law recognises and regulates for the benefit of society, but which it does not create.
     That is why I have consistently put "marriage" in quotation marks when referring to same sex unions. It is all a game of "let's pretend". But, as Abraham Lincoln is alleged to have said: "How many legs has a dog? Only four. Calling the tail a fifth leg doesn't make it one."

Postscript: It is good to see that great minds still think alike. Quite independently of this post, four South Australian lawyers made a submission to Parliament in August 2011 on the same lines, but with much more detail about twentieth century case law from the High Court.

Update 28.9.12: When proposed legislation redefining marriage failed (predictably) in the Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull was on record as saying he would like to see civil unions introduced as a fall-back option. I hope Mr Turnbull, who was once considered smart enough to lead a political party, will one day get around to reading the Constitution, which makes no mention of civil unions. This does not mean they can't be instituted, of course - only that they would be limited to Federal jurisdictions. If the Federal Parliament wants to use civil unions in determining Centrelink pensions, the administration of the Commonwealth public service, or anything else under its jurisdiction, it has the legal power to do so, but they would not apply in state jurisdictions. Likewise, civil unions legislation enacted by a state - like the Queensland legislation our Premier promised to rescind, but didn't - have no validity outside the state in question.
     I am also pleased that the Tasmanian Upper House has just rejected the state same sex "marriage" bill. The Government claimed to have legal advice that it was constitutional, despite former state chief justice, Bill Cox weighing in with the reverse opinion.
     When people tell you they have "received legal advice" about a questionable course of action, it is time to  switch on your BS-detectors. What legal advice you get depends on what you ask for. You can say:
     (a) We want to do such-and-such. Is it legal? What is the most reasonable interpretation of the law, and the course of action most likely to pass muster with the courts?
     or
     (b) We want to do such-and-such. Can we get away with it? Please provide the best legal justification your devious mind can think of for the planned action.
    The advice obtained by the Greens for this bill bears all the hallmarks of (b). Essentially, it ran: state law runs concurrently with Federal law under section 51. If state law conflicts with Federal law, then the Federal law prevails, but the states are free to legislate on anything covered by section 51 which is not covered by Federal law. Since the Marriage Act specifies marriage as being between one man and one woman, the states are free to legislate on same-sex "marriage". Indeed, it was claimed that, the specific amendment to the Act left a "window of opportunity" to same sex "marriage" which may not have been present before.
     The hollowness of this argument can be seen as soon as it is taken to its logical conclusion: since the Marriage Act specifies one man and one woman, the states are free to legislate for polygamy.
     The point, of course, is that the Commonwealth Parliament has legislated on marriage, so its definition is conclusive. Also, they seem not to understand what concurrent legislation really means. The Constitution gave jurisdiction to the Commonwealth over certain areas stipulated by section 51. But all the former state laws in those areas did not suddenly become invalid on the date of federation. That would have resulted in chaos. The states are free to legislate in those areas until the Commonwealth Parliament gets around to it. In the case of marriage, it took 60 years.
     However, there is one area regarding marriage which Commonwealth legislation does not cover: registration of marriages. The states are still registering them on behalf of the Commonwealth. They don't have to. If the Commonwealth Parliament were so rash as to legalise same sex "marriages", the states could tell them to do their own registering.

Update 12.12.13 As expected, the High Court unanimously rejected the ACT same sex "marriage" act as unconstitutional. It would have been incredible if any other ruling had been made.