The Freedom Bulletin

Newt and Callista Gingrich, by Gage Skidmore

At tonight’s Republican debate in Iowa, all the candidates were asked at one point about their views on marital fidelity and whether it should be a factor in voters’ decisions. This comes shortly after Mitt Romney released an ad touting his 42-year marriage, children, lifelong Mormon faith, and work experience as evidence of his “steadiness and constancy.” New frontrunner Newt Gingrich has been married three times and started an affair with his current wife, Callista, before divorcing his second wife.

All six candidates answered more or less that yes, a candidate’s character does matter, and marital fidelity is an important part of character. That included Gingrich, who agreed with these sentiments, saying, “I’ve made mistakes … I’ve had to go to God for forgiveness.”

The best answer was Ron Paul’s. “If our marriage vows are important,” he asked, “What about our oath of office?” He then proceeded to change the subject to how politicians need to respect the Constitution, which I agree is a much more important topic than the candidates’ personal lives!

But to the extent that candidates’ personal lives should be a topic of discussion, I don’t think that Newt’s is a reason not to vote for him. Gingrich was married to someone whom, apparently, he was no longer in love with, so he decided to leave her and marry the woman he was in love with. Staying married to the same person is perfectly fine if that’s what makes you happy. So is staying single for your entire life, for that matter. All that Gingrich did was left a situation that wasn’t right for him and did what he felt was right for him and would make him happy. Although Newt may not have handled everything perfectly, doing what is right for you, especially when you know people will disapprove, takes courage, and that is not something to look down on.

Governor Deval Patrick signed a bill reforming Massachusetts’s alimony laws yesterday. The bill, overall, will decrease the amount of alimony people have to pay to their ex-spouses, limiting payments to a set amount of time based on the length of the marriage.

This bill, while it doesn’t go as far as I would, is a step in the right direction. I don’t think there should be such thing as alimony or spousal support at all. The way I see it, no adult has a right to be financially supported by another adult, and there is no reason why one person should be required to continue financially supporting another just because they have in the past. If one person agrees to financially support another, fine, but this is a favor, not a right, and the giver has a right to withdraw it at any time.

I’ve heard many supporters of alimony argue that stay-at-home spouses contribute just as much to the marriage as those who have jobs, and that they are making a big sacrifice by giving up their careers to take care of the house and/or children. Yes, housework does require some time and effort. But in my experience as a single person who both takes care of my house and has a full-time job, commuting to my job and spending the day in an office is way more tiring and time consuming than doing the cleaning, cooking, shopping, and laundry that I need to do. If I could choose between working full-time and not having to do any chores around the house, or doing all the chores and not having to work, I would definitely choose the second. Each type of work is work to some extent – I’m not trying to say that spouses who stay at home do nothing but sit around all day. But having a job – unless you have an unusually easy job – is simply more time-consuming and stressful than working around the house. For one spouse to be the breadwinner and the other to stay at home is just not an equal division of labor.

And yes, staying home for a long time is an impediment if you decide to go back into the job market at a later date. But it’s not exactly a sacrifice to receive the material goods you need for free, instead of having to work for them. Plus, unless someone forced you to stay at home, you don’t have a right to demand restitution for this because it was your own choice.

For one spouse to be allowed to live off the money of another is a windfall that they did nothing to earn. Even if someone freely chooses to do such a favor – and many people are pressured into it against their will – they should also be free to change their mind and stop the financial support at any time. Alimony punishes people for doing a favor for their spouse, and rewards people for having received financial support that they did not earn. If anything, the spouse who received the financial support should have to pay alimony as a way of repaying the favor that they received!

So while eliminating lifetime alimony is a good start, I hope alimony laws are changed even more in the direction of equality and justice.

Now that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy has been repealed, Harvard University is officially recognizing the ROTC as a student organization. Previously the university refused to allow the military to recruit or have offices on campus, saying that excluding openly gay people from serving violates their anti-discrimination policy.

But of course, Harvard being the notoriously liberal place that it is, there were still anti-military protests at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new Naval ROTC office. Many of the protesters objected to the fact that transgender people are still banned from the military, which is reasonable, because it makes sense that people should be allowed to serve regardless of their gender or sexual orientation. But others protested against ROTC simply because they don’t like armies or soldiers in any form. There were signs that read things like, “Don’t stain Crimson with blood,” “Say no to militarism at Harvard,” “Operation Enduring Freedom 1462 dead,” and “The military is ageist, classist, racist, homophobic, sexist, imperialist, transphobic.” People handed out filers criticizing Harvard for “cultivating militarism.” And another student said, ”I would oppose ROTC’s return to campus even if the military were an entirely inclusive institution.”

Despite the fact that the Assistant Dean for Student Life seemed to welcome and encourage protests, saying, ”We didn’t want people protesting on the outside, on the periphery of this day. We wanted them to be a part of this day,” this didn’t go far enough for one student, who complained, “To ask students not to protest the ribbon cutting to me is deeply disturbing.”

The protesters’ point about transgender rights is legitimate (although far from the most important equality and individual rights issue facing America), but it is hypocritical for people who extol the virtues of diversity and minority rights to demand that an organization be banned simply because they do not like militarism. It’s also wrong to hate on ROTC cadets because you disagree with the war. Welcoming the ROTC back to campus should be a happy occasion, a step forward both for equality and patriotism. Instead, a substantial number of people chose to view the entire day as something negative because current policies aren’t quite progressive enough for them.

Jan Moir at the Daily Mail wrote a column the other day devoted to bashing French people because of the (alleged) actions of Gerard Depardieu and Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

She writes, “If someone is going to urinate like a horse in the aisle of a packed international flight taxiing along a runway, then that someone is going to be a Frenchman. You could bet your last croissant on it. No doubt about it…A Frenchman every time.” And, she adds, “any Frenchman worth his sel de mer always feels that the rules do not apply to him.”

Even if you ignored the fact that Depardieu didn’t really have a choice about what he did if he had to go to the bathroom and the plane crew wouldn’t let him into the bathroom or off of the plane, and the fact that Strauss-Kahn is looking more and more likely to be innocent of what he is charged with, it is ridiculous to condemn an entire nationality because of two people. If someone wrote something like this about Hispanics or African-Americans, for example, there would be a public uproar and they would be fired. In fact, that is essentially what happened to radio host Jay Severin, for example, when he called Mexicans “primitives” and “criminaliens.” Why is it considered OK for Moir to write what she wrote about French people?

On the subject of DSK, he’s awaiting a hearing tomorrow where the District Attorney’s office is looking increasingly likely to move to dismiss the charges against him. Prosecutors will meet with his accuser, Nafissatou Diallo, today, and her lawyer is planning to ask the judge to disqualify D.A. Cyrus Vance from the case. This comes after allegations that, contrary to earlier claims that Strauss-Kahn’s friends were looking to pay off Diallo’s relatives to make the case go away, her lawyer, Kenneth Thompson, actually approached the defense team, offering for her to stop cooperating with prosecutors in the criminal case in exchange for money. DSK and his lawyers apparently refused that offer. I would love to see the reaction of Moir and other French-bashing people if DSK is freed once and for all.

In yesterday’s Globe, there were two stories that made me kind of mad, for reasons that are, in a strange way, related.

One was about a federal government panel’s recommendation to require all insurance plans to ”offer female patients free coverage of prescription birth control, breast-pump rentals, counseling for domestic violence, and annual wellness exams and HIV tests,” as well as ”screening for gestational diabetes in pregnant women; more sophisticated testing for a virus, known as HPV, that is associated with cervical cancer; annual counseling for sexually active women on sexually transmitted infections; and multiple visits to obtain preventive services if they cannot be provided in one annual examination.”

Supporters of these recommendations say that they will improve people’s health, prevent unintended pregnancies, and possibly prevent large expenses in the long run. But what people really need to think about is what is fair. None of these services will be truly free, of course. Requiring insurance companies to cover them with no co-pays or deductibles equals requiring everyone, regardless or whether or not they use them, to pay for them. This is simply not fair. Contrary to what many people seem to think, sex is not something that people need to live; it is an activity that people can choose to participate in, or not, just like playing sports, reading, blogging, or buying a house, for example. It is unfair for everyone to be required to subsidize some people’s choices.  These recommendations would force people who do not have sex (who may be a tiny minority but do exist) to pay higher insurance prices with no added benefits.

It is also worth mentioning that because the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force “has historically paid less attention to gender-specific recommendations, the law’s drafters required that the Department of Health and Human Services issue a supplementary list for women.” This is extremely sexist. Men and women should be treated equally in all respects, and giving women special treatment and attention is both unfair and insulting. Would men have to pay for contraception and STD treatment under the new recommendations, while women wouldn’t? That is precisely the kind of thing feminists should oppose.

The second article in the Globe that made me mad was Jeff Jacoby’s column arguing in favor of population growth. He writes that ”the birth of virtually any baby is cause to rejoice” because ”human beings…usually create more than they destroy” and “when human beings proliferate, the result isn’t less of everything to go around.” He quotes economist Bryan Caplan, who said, ”The world economy is not like a party where everyone splits a birthday cake; it is more like a potluck where everyone brings a dish.”

While possibly true about some things, for the world’s most important resources this is completely false. No matter how inventive, hardworking, and talented people may be, they cannot create more land, more water, more oil, or more coal. There is simply a finite amount of these things, and it is a mathematical fact that the more people there are, the less of these things each person will have. I have seen with my own eyes houses being torn down to make way for condominiums, more people packed into the same amount of space. The Earth is not merely full, as Thomas Freidman at the New York Times wrote, it is beyond full. Although Jacoby calls opposition to population growth a “persistent and popular superstition,” I believe it is unpopular but right. He may call people like me “churlish” and “misanthropic,” but he is the real misanthrope for wanting people to be condemned to a world with inadequate space, nutrition, and fuel.

This might seem like an odd pair of beliefs for one person to have: opposing making birth control free but also opposing population growth. But it really isn’t. I thought of two ways to solve the problem of overpopulation which may not be practical or popular, but which I believe are truly fair:

1. Health insurance should only cover medical services that are necessary and that were not directly caused by a person’s own actions. Some of the things mentioned in the recommendations, such as domestic violence and STD counseling, are not exactly health services. Others, such as contraception and pregnancy-related services, are not needed to live, because the decision to have sex and/or have children is a choice. And others, like STD testing and treatment, are only needed as a result of certain decisions that people make. The purpose of insurance is to cover large, unexpected expenses. Covering things that are discretionary or that are predictable and preventable results of people’s actions, is unjust to all of the people who pay into the insurance pool.
2. If making birth control more easily available is unfair, how can the world solve the problem of overpopulation? In my opinion, the best solution is simply to enact a tax on having babies. Creating a new person is not a fundamental right; it is a choice that has negative externalities because it reduces the available amount of land, water, and fuel. Internalizing this externality is a perfectly fair way to get the world’s population under control.

July 22 update: The L.A. Times has an op-ed about exactly this topic, arguing that population growth is a huge problem that the public and the media ignore. I really like most (but not all) of it; check it out!