Category: Utah Humanist

Gerrymandering

Gina Eborn, President and one of the founding members of The Fair Redistricting Caucus of Utah (FRCU) was the featured speaker at our September general meeting The FRCU is a non-partisan organization that started in November 2016 with the goal of educating the public on the practice of gerrymandering and how it negatively affects all constituents regardless of political affiliation.

 According to Webster’s Dictionary Gerrymandering is:

• Manipulate the boundaries of (an electoral constituency) so as to favor one party or class.
• Achieve a result by manipulating the boundaries of an electoral constituency:

Another definition of gerrymandering is that it “allows politicians to choose their voters rather than the voters choosing their politicians.”

Historically gerrymandering has been around for centuries, but came to prominence under its current coined phrase in 1812, as governor of Massachusetts, Elbridge Gerry signed a bill authorizing the revision of voting districts in his state. Members of Gerry’s party redrew them in order to secure their representation in the state senate. They carved an unlikely-looking district with the shape of a salamander. According to one version of the coining of gerrymander, the shape of the district attracted the eye of the painter Gilbert Stuart, who noticed it on a map in a newspaper editor’s office. Stuart decorated the outline of the district with a head, wings, and claws and then said to the editor, “That will do for a salamander!” “Gerrymander!” came the reply. The image created by Stuart first appeared in the March 26, 1812, edition of the Boston Gazette, where it was accompanied by the following title: The Gerrymander. A New Species of Monster.

The new word gerrymander caught on instantly—within the same year gerrymander is also recorded as a verb. (Gerry’s name, incidentally, was pronounced with a hard (g) sound, although the word which has immortalized him is now commonly pronounced with a soft (j) sound.) Gerry ran for reelection in 1812, but was defeated, although his party went on to win the majority.

With every Census, all 50 state legislatures are required to redraw the borders of their congressional districts to accord with the Supreme Court’s “one person, one vote” rule and to make the districts as equally populous as possible. While the exercise is premised on equality, it presents an irresistible opportunity for political parties to tilt the playing field to their advantage. The party that controls the state legislature inevitably redraws the districts, with patchworks and shapes so bizarre that their creators nearly join the pantheon of postmodern art. The retooling of these boundaries boils down to one purpose: to maximize the number of seats their party can capture in the upcoming election. Bewildered by the complexity of other options, the Supreme Court has mostly upheld this arrangement.

The common misconception is to assume that gerrymandering allows parties to engineer safe districts for their incumbents, ensuring easy reelection. But the exact opposite is true. Redistricting’s real purpose is engineering safe districts for your opponent—to pack as many of them into as few districts as possible. It’s like Patton’s infamous maxim on war: you make the other poor bastard die for his country. If anything, redistricting by conservatives would make Republican House districts slightly less conservative in order to include Republican voters in districts where their votes are needed to win seats. The most common methods used to minimize the impact of a voting block are packing and cracking and there are two types of gerrymandering, racial and political. Racial is a protected class, however political is currently not.Packing concentrates members of a group in a  single district, thereby allowing the other party to win the remainder of the districts.

Cracking splits a bloc among multiple districts, so as to dilute their impact and to prevent them from constituting a majority. These methods are frequently used in conjunction with each other.

Racial

The term racial gerrymandering initially designated the post-Reconstruction practice which, like poll taxes and literacy tests, was designed to disenfranchise African-Americans. Legislative district boundaries were drawn with the aim of diluting the electoral power of newly registered voters from ethnic minority groups.

Following the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, this practice was prohibited; indeed, in many circumstances, the statute in fact requires the creation of majority-minority districts. The practice of drawing districts that would afford racial and ethnic minorities the opportunity for elected representation has come be known as affirmative gerrymandering or—in a somewhat ironic reversal—racial gerrymandering.

Political

Partisan gerrymander is typically conducted by the majority party to strengthen or maintain their electoral advantage. In a 5-4 decision in Vieth v. Jubelirer the Supreme Court rejected a challenge to politically gerrymandered districts due to a lack of justiciable standards, meaning that political gerrymandering can be conducted legally. Partisan gerrymandering is a serious problem in our democracy. In jurisdictions nationwide, legislators have drawn legislative maps so that they can choose their voters, instead of voters being able to choose their representatives. This is usually done in a secret office – away from the Capitol, the public, and the press – and then passage of their plan is rushed through the Assembly.

REDMAP

The idea behind REDMAP was to hit the Democrats at their weakest point. In several state legislatures, Democratic majorities were thin. If the Republicans commissioned polls, brought in high-powered consultants, and flooded out-of-the-way districts with ads, it might be possible to flip enough seats to take charge of them. Then, when it came time to draw the new lines, the G.O.P. would be in control.

The Increasing Need For A Legal Standard

It is clear the current redistricting process is undermining our democracy and partisan gerrymandering has become the political weapon of choice for legislators to maintain political power. The U.S. Supreme Court held that it has the authority and responsibility to decide partisan gerrymandering claims, and in 2006, a majority of justices agreed that excessive partisan gerrymandering violates the Constitution.

However, the Court has yet to adopt a standard for determining whether a redistricting plan constitutes a partisan gerrymander. Every proposed test to date has been deemed unworkable by the courts – too ambiguous and subjective to reliably identify the most objectionable plans. Without a legal standard, voters are free to challenge politically motivated maps in court, but judges, without clear guidance, ordinarily dismiss these cases out of hand. The result is voters are unable to hold their representatives accountable and reign in extreme partisan gerrymanders.

A Legal Challenge To Stop Partisan Gerrymanders Nationwide

CLC is part of a litigation team representing 12 Wisconsin voters who have challenged the state’s Assembly district lines as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander in Gill v. Whitford. Our case is the first purely partisan gerrymandering case to go to trial in 30 years. Through this litigation, the plaintiffs seek to establish for the first time a manageable standard by which courts nationwide can analyze partisan gerrymandering claims.

Efficiency Gap

Wasted votes are ballots that don’t contribute to victory for candidates, and they come in two forms: lost votes cast for candidates who are defeated, and surplus votes for winning candidates, but in excess of what they needed to prevail. When a party gerrymanders a state, it tries to maximize the wasted votes for the opposing party while minimizing its own, thus producing a large efficiency gap. In a state with perfect partisan symmetry, both parties would have the same number of wasted votes.

Suppose, for example, that a state has five districts with 100 voters each, and two parties, Party A and Party B. Suppose also that Party A wins four of the seats 53 to 47, and Party B wins one of them 85 to 15. Then in each of the four seats that Party A wins, it has 2 surplus votes (53 minus the 51 needed to win), and Party B has 47 lost votes. And in the lone district that Party A loses, it has 15 lost votes, and Party B has 34 surplus votes (85 minus the 51 needed to win). In sum, Party A wastes 23 votes and Party B wastes 222 votes. Subtracting one figure from the other and dividing by the 500 votes cast produces an efficiency gap of 40 percent in Party A’s favor.

On to the Supreme Court

On November 21, 2016, a three-judge panel in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin struck down Wisconsin’s state assembly district map. With this decision, plaintiffs have successfully alleged and proven that a state legislative redistricting plan is an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander for the first time in 30 years.

The ruling issued by the court stated the following: “We find that Act 43 was intended to burden the representational rights of Democratic voters throughout the decennial period by impeding their ability to translate their votes into legislative seats. Moreover, as demonstrated by the results of the 2012 and 2014 elections, among other evidence, we conclude that Act 43 has had its intended effect.”

The plaintiffs’ three-part test, which was adopted in this case, can now be used across the country to fight back against unfair partisan gerrymandering.

The state of Wisconsin filed their notice of appeal on Feb. 24, 2017 and their opposition to CLC’s motion to affirm on May 18, 2017.On June 19, 2017, the Supreme Court decided to hear oral arguments in Gill v. Whitford. The case is set for oral arguments before the Supreme Court on Oct. 3, 2017.

Utah Ballot Initiative

Better Boundaries intends to address the problem of gerrymandering in Utah through a redistricting ballot initiative for the 2018 election.

The initiative will modify the current system of redistricting by establishing an independent redistricting commission and prescribing redistricting standards and requirements. This improved system will reinforce our democracy by making our elected officials more accountable, increasing the competitiveness of our elections, reducing polarization, and strengthening voter participation and civic engagement.

However…In 2000, Arizona voters opted to turn redistricting over to a board made up of two Democrats, two Republicans, and one independent. The commission’s maiden effort, in 2001, was generally regarded as an improvement over previous plans. But by 2011 both Democrats and Republicans had figured out how to game the system, and Arizona’s experiment in bipartisanship devolved into ever more devious forms of ratfucking. One of the commissioners was accused of lying about contacts with Democratic Party officials. A group that claimed to be working for “fair” districts turned out to be funded by a Koch-brothers-linked conservative network. The Republican governor tried to oust the commission’s chairwoman, charging her with “gross misconduct.” The only basis for the charge seemed to be that the governor did not care for the way the new districts had been drawn.

Racial Gerrymandering–Utah

San Juan County has been ordered to redraw political boundaries, following a lawsuit by the Navajo Nation. San Juan County is Utah’s largest county and Native Americans make up about 50% of the population compared to 47% whites. The judge in this case is appointing an independent monitor in this case. San Juan County has been opposed to this option in the past, but says they welcome it.

There is also a second lawsuit over Navajo voting issues that the ACLU is taking on over “mail in” elections as Navajo is an unwritten language. Also there are limited polling places and limited people available to provide translation services.

 —Gina Eborn

As this newsletter is going to print the Wisconsin case of Gill v. Whitford…

---

President’s Message

I’ve always been a procrastinator, so I nearly always submit my message for the newsletter late. But this month Wayne needs it to be done early, (or at least not late). So, being a night person, I decided to start this message late Sunday night/early Monday morning, after finishing some domestic chores. I sat down with a snack and my Laptop. But first I turned on the TV to catch the news and the horror of the Las Vegas shooting was unfolding right in front of me on my 60-inch screen. At that point I knew I couldn’t word process anything. All I could do was watch. So now it’s the day after and I need to write my message and all I can think about is this incident which is being called the worst mass shooting in modern history. So, I’ll just have to write about it.

While I watched I took a few notes. First was that this killer was in a group the FBI call, “rare, random, and unpredictable.” He was 64, which is older than usual. He was wealthy. He left no note or manifesto, nor was he part of a group of any kind that they know of so far and he wasn’t religious. And in that sense that he is that rare uncharacteristic terrorist killer seems to have the media baffled. To think that it was just a common man who became insane at some point and quietly proceeded to plan and execute that plan is hard to fathom. He may well be one of the scariest kinds of killers, the ones who are normal all their life until they snap.

I also noted that as soon as I saw footage with sound, it was obvious that he had full auto weapons. At first, I thought “where did he get full auto,” then said to myself “duh, it’s really not that hard actually. “So far, they have found four or five dozen weapons and explosive material. So, it could be he was thinking about doing some bombings also.

Of course, there is already gun control talk immediately and rightly so. There is much that could be done to tighten up access and the prohibition of weapons and accessories that civilians should not own. At least not without strict licensing.

But I often say, in discussing gun control, that those who want to kill will find a way. Restrict guns somehow and the killers will get better at making bombs, or creating toxins, or just ramming a large vehicle into a crowd and of course as we are aware of, planes into buildings. Unfortunately, we have seen these other means to kill used throughout the world. One commentator said something about how sad it was that as startling and horrible these acts are, they are becoming almost routine.

As I write this message there are 59 confirmed dead and over 500 injured, some critically. I don’t really have much else to say. At a time like this, the often-invoked cliché, “we have to move on” is inadequate but somewhat true. And we’ll be left with another infamous date.

—Bob Lane
President, HoU

---

 

Gerrymandering

The Salt Lake Tribune published the following letter to the editor on June 20, 2011. I wrote the letter in response to how our legislature dealt with their redistricting duty following the 2010 Census. Utah would have a fourth district for the first time! As I recall there were several publicly discussed options on the table. The most popular, at least in my circle of friends, had a “donut hole” of Salt Lake County for one district with the rest of the state pretty much divided into thirds. Just when it looked like reason might prevail, the legislature stepped in and created our districts the way they are today; protecting and amplifying Republican majorities across the board:

Re “Incumbent favoritism alters map”

Give our legislative leaders credit—they warned us. One of the first “message” bills of the 2011 Utah Legislature let everyone know that our form of government is not a democracy. The current redistricting process is prima facie evidence of that fact.

Utah Senate President Michael Waddoups says his first attempt at redistricting did a good job of keeping communities together, but it did not protect the entrenched Republican leadership, forcing a third of all incumbent senators to run against another one. So, he drew another set of boundaries to please the politicians instead of the people.

Apparently, defending the franchise of communities smacks too much of democracy. Yes, they told us Utah isn’t a democracy, and they are following through by disenfranchising both urban and rural populations.

—Wayne Wilson

---

President’s Message

This month my part of my message is personal; my life has changed significantly recently with my mother’s recent death. Many of you are aware that I have been a fulltime caregiver for my mother, but the caregiving goes back further in that Amy and I have been doing it for several years, first with her father and then, with some overlap, my mother. So, for the first time in a while there is no caregiving for someone in need. I’ve been telling people, that while there is plenty to do, it kind of feels like I’ve been leaning into an 80-mph wind and then suddenly, the wind is gone and you feel like your falling into a void of sorts. I could leave when I want and didn’t have to sleep with waking every time I heard something at night.

My Mom lived a long life, she was 96, with the resources to do what she loved to do and that is to travel. AT 85 she went to China and then to Mexico for the umpteenth time just a few months later. And she still traveled to U of U football game out of state until just a couple years age. The last month or so was very difficult, but she is through suffering.

When I moved back home with my mother to give full time care I had access to cable television for the first time in decades. Seeing too much of this disgraceful joke of a president is sickening and discouraging to say the least. So, you just have to stop watching at some point.

On the other hand, I’ve been watching The Weather Channel almost constantly since the beginning of Hurricane Harvey in Texas. That event became the biggest flood disaster in history. Now we have Category. 5 Hurricane Irma. And remember, a category 5 hurricane is not just 5 times bigger than a category 1 hurricane but rather 500 times stronger. Now as I write this message Hurricane Irma has been a category 5 for days and is breaking records as it goes. It is very potent and likely to impact Florida in a big way statewide. If that’s not bad enough, there is another hurricane named Jose that is a category 3 heading across the Atlantic. This will be a Hurricane season for the books, in a bad way.

Watching these storms also got me thinking about climate change. I have often cautioned people when they point to specific weather events as proof of climate change or global warming. But it is hard, as a geographer not to notice that this global warming makes for warmer waters, and warmer water is where almost all the energy for these Hurricanes comes from. It is not just a warmer climate with rising sea levels that global warming brings but also changing weather patterns.

Watching all this destruction found me admitting to myself that I’m not all that ready to evacuate if necessary for an earthquake or whatever. Preparedness is something we need to pay attention to. Perhaps we can discuss it as part of a meeting or at our book club.

Now that I will have more free time, I look forward to getting more involved in our chapter. I hope to see you at our next meeting. I might even find time to bake a cookie or two by then.

—Bob Lane
President, HoU

---

 

Live Long and Prosper

Elaine Stehel joined Humanists of Utah in 2009. She came to us from SHIFT, the University of Utah freethought group. She has been one of the most active people in our group; and that is an understatement!

Late last year her wife accepted a professional position in Vermont. July first Elaine packed up her car and drove across the country to be with her family. Significantly, she hosted an HoU event on June 30, the evening before she left.

At first as a student, Elaine recruited other young people to our chapter and attended meetings and events as time permitted. After graduating she became a regular and soon joined our Board of Directors. She has headed up our discussion groups, hikes, support of the Homeless Youth Resource Center, populated our booths at Pride and neighborhood fairs, wrote advice columns for our newsletter, earned credentials to be a Humanist Celebrant, and the list goes on.

Elaine has been active in a lot of other local and national organizations too. If you were watching local TV news stations around Christmas time a few years ago when gay marriage was legalized by the courts you probably saw her. She was one of the first couples to legally tie the knot here in Utah.

She reports that we may have been wrong all along; there is a Heaven and its name is “Vermont.” They to not clutter their highways with billboards, there are beautiful forests, and she says that she is very happy. Lucky Vermont, I’m sure it will become a better place with Elaine’s help.

In short, we miss her already but wish her long life, success, and happiness. We were fortunate to have her as long as we did.

—Wayne Wilson
on behalf of the
HoU Board of Directors

---

Plot Against America
~Book Review~

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth is an alarming story. In real life Charles Lindberg ran against FDR for President of the United States. Lindberg’s campaign was based on “America First,” which meant keep the USA out of World War II.

In the novel Lindberg wins the election by a landslide. He has a close personal relationship with Hitler that grows into a treaty that that the Axis Powers will not attack the USA and in return we will not supply Europe with any aid, domestic or especially military; isolationism.

The story is told from the point of view of Jewish families living in New Jersey. There are programs try to split up the families ranging encouraging young Jews to visit other areas of the country to a Homestead program where families are spread out and kept away from other Jewish communities. The Ku Klux Klan is there to prevent mixing.

It is a chilling tale, especially in light of the current administration’s nationalistic policies and goals. An interesting reading to say the least. And the appendices note how close to reality this really was.

—Wayne Wilson

---

Air Pollution = Alzheimer’s?

I think I may safely say that many of us in the humanist community have been dismayed at the federal government’s radical shift away from environmentally conscious and data driven policy since January. The administration has paradoxically said that the EPA’s essential mission is to “keep our air and water clean and safe”, and then appointed climate-change denier and petroleum industry firebrand Scott Pruitt as head of the agency.

This obvious double-talk compels us to ask what “clean and safe air” means. Do those of us who really care actually know? With that question in mind, for the June 8^th meeting our chapter’s book club discussed an article from the January 27th, 2017 issue of Science magazine, “The Polluted Brain” by Emily Underwood. The article summarizes some 11 studies correlating very fine particulate air pollution, PM2.5, with Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia.

Alzheimer’s disease and dementia have become major public health issues, costing the United States an estimated $259 billion in 2017 and expected to increase to $570 billion by 2050. If pollution accounts for, say, 20% of these cases, it is already costing us at least $50 billion a year.

(See http://act.alz.org/site/DocServer/2012_Costs_Fact_Sheet_version_2.pdf?docID=7161)

The article lists eleven different studies that link air pollution in general with increased chances of developing dementia, and describes some recent experiments that correlate PM 2.5 levels with brain inflammation and accumulation of amyloid b in mouse brains. It also mentions data that show an almost 1.8 times incidence of dementia in cigarette smokers over non-smokers. It lists other studies that show a sizable increase in dementia and cognitive problems in people who live close to major highways over those over live a few hundred meters away. There is, in short, a clear correlation between dementia and air pollution, much like the clear correlation between cigarette smoking and lung cancer that was published in 1959. The exact mechanism of how smoking caused cancer wasn’t known then, but the relationship was undeniable.

The article also gives an enlightening view of the modern scientific method with its multi-disciplinary approach to data collection and analysis, the mining of large existing data sets to answer questions that weren’t asked when the data were originally gathered, and how simple observations by a curious scientist can blossom into an unexpected and surprising conclusion. This area of inquiry was started by a neuroscientist observing the demented behavior of aging dogs living in badly polluted areas of Mexico City. Her initial studies led to recent research in Los Angeles collecting PM2.5 particles from air near freeways in Los Angeles and giving the collected particles to mice, then examining the brains of the mice microscopically. The mice breathing the pollutants show brain inflammation and amyloid b, a protein associated with Alzheimer’s Disease, accumulation over mice breathing unpolluted air.

After I read a condensed version of the article aloud to our group of 16, the floor was opened for discussion. Art King, a member who worked in measuring air pollution during his professional career, described the techniques used to collect and separate the different particle sizes, and pointed out that we haven’t even been able to measure PM2.5 until relatively recently. It is expensive and difficult, using Teflon filters that only came into existence in the 1990s (check this).

Other members spoke with dismay about their own experiences with pollution in their neighborhoods and how the political leadership in Utah seems beholden to the executives of polluting businesses, and dismissive of even examining thee threats to public health that dirty air and water bring. Bob Lane’s very colorful and humorous description of simple things like leaf blowers with their smoky 2-cycle engines blowing noxious clouds of dirt and dust into the air just to save a little labor in sweeping lawn clippings from sidewalks made us all laugh.

I think we all understood at the end that we as a society don’t know what “clean and safe” means. We don’t invest in understanding it, and we haven’t even had the means to measure and understand it until recently. The national political will to do study it was uncertain at best before the advent of Donald Trump, and is virtually non-existent since he took office. In Utah the fossil fuel industry only comprises a small percentage of the state’s economy, but possesses enormous political influence.

I hope we all left the meeting with a little more appreciation of the costs of pollution and the fact that we really don’t know what keeping our “air and water clean and safe” means. The closing sentence of the article states that with air pollution, perhaps “there is no safe threshold”.

—Steve Hanka

---

President’s Message

Greetings freethinkers, I hope that your summer is going well. The temperature here in Holiday, Utah was 101 yesterday.

But, first off, I must give a heartfelt thanks to board member Elaine Stehel who has by the time you read this message moved back East. For Me personally she made sure that our Tenth Annual Darwin Day and our participation in the “Pride Festival” were big success, at a time when I could not be much help. And I personally thank her for that. Elaine has put a lot of her time and energy (I don’t know where she gets it) into Humanists of Utah and I know the rest of the board members join in thanking Elaine for all she has done for the chapter. Good luck Elaine in your new life and we hope we can stay in touch.

Getting back to how hot it is, I was going to say that having moved back in with my mother to care for her does have some perks in that it is large enough and cool enough and has a swimming pool out back. So, I can’t complain about the heat. I mention this about my mother’s home to put into perspective how different one’s situation can be regarding healthcare. While my mother is fortunate to have Medicare, a supplemental insurance policy and personal assets that assure she get all the best care, there are many in our society who have little or none of that. As I have been watching more of what is going on with the Affordable Care Act I worry about all those individuals out there who must rely on Medicaid. I sure hope that our society can someday soon find a way to cover everyone. I personally think everyone should have something resembling Medicare from birth throughout their life.

I won’t be able to attend our movie night, but I think you will be seeing a weird little movie called Rubin and Ed, It is really funny. I am looking forward to seeing you all at our August BBQ.

—Robert Lane
President, HoU

---

 

Science is a Verb

Justin Morath, assistant professor of psychology at Salt Lake Community College and the Associate Director at the SLCC Creative Writing Center, was Humanists of Utah guest speaker at our May general meeting. His training was in animal behavior and human/animal cognition. He was also a co-organizer of the SLC March for Science. He is a social activist in other circles; LGBT+ rights, homeless youth advocacy, animal welfare etc.

As a teacher of the scientific method he became more and more interested in scientific literacy. Especially in the community. And the current Director of the CWC ultimately offered him the AD position. Because they were interested in expanding out of English. And it fit in perfectly with his goals.

He said that if a school board tried to require me to present my art as equally valid as the well refined works of Klimt in a classroom, we would all rightfully cry foul. But the point is, that budding process of the aspiring artist is important to nurture, as is the aspiring scientist.

The originating force behind the CWC is the work of Paulo Freire. Whose main contribution was the book Pedagogy of the Oppressed. Freire was an educator in rural Brazil in the 1960s. Looking through the lens of a Post-Marxist liberation theology, he saw that the education system mirrored the other oppressive systems in place to maintain class hierarchy. And that education was part of the problem, what he termed the “Banking Education” model. Where the teacher holds (or owns) the objective information and the pupil passively accepts this from the teacher as she dumps it into their head. Teacher owns the truth and “gives” it to the pupil to graciously accept. “This is art.” “This is fact” Or to quote the rapper Nelly “I know something you don’t know. And I’ve got something to tell ya…”

He argued that the act of learning does not need to be this way and that education can be a liberating force and does need to come from these gatekeepers of knowledge. Therefore, the CWC’s motto is “Everyone Can Write.”

What does this have to do with science? Because they fall from the same process. A process of discovery and of asking the questions and finding answers.

Science is not a noun; a person place or thing. But a verb. Here’s the thing: once we make it a thing, a noun then it becomes something we can possess. We can own nouns, not verbs. Even in the abstract. A process or an action is a participatory event that all can do- it’s radical and revolutionary. But a noun, can be held by a gatekeeper.

Which is why we have such ridiculous arguments going on in the scientific community about whether Bill Nye is a “scientist” or not. Bill Nye MadLibs. Insert noun here. Arguing whether Bill Nye is a scientist based on his degrees and career is arguing about nouns for the purpose of being a gatekeeper to knowledge. I’m not saying definitions don’t matter, but in this case, it’s a clear example if it being used for the purpose of withholding knowledge in order to “bank” it to the privileged few. “I hold the knowledge that I may grant to you about what is deserving of the scientist nomenclature.”

Whether you are a kid playing in the backyard admiring your sample in a jar, a disheveled post doc, a R01 holding pharmacology P.I. you are doing science. Again, to varying degrees. But that’s fine. We likely all agree.

Here is where the piranhas might come out to get us. Even someone with a blatantly false understanding about something, like an anti-vaxxer is engaging in the same process. They are asking questions and making connections about their world.

We are an inquisitive species. We want to learn and figure out our world just for the sake of it. He went to a Sherlock Holmes immersive exhibit at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science over the holiday break with my family. As a scientist, most interested in our social world, instead of participating in the activity where each person would mill between stations and try to figure out Whodunnit, I sat back and watched the participants. Everyday people were paying very good money to learn and figure out something. They know it is fiction, but they wanted to figure it out and know the ultimate answer.

Of course, the ultimate answers that are found may be completely wrong. So, what do we do in a situation like this…where villains are apparently injecting our vegies with food coloring? Seriously this is like a whole trope—vegies getting injected with scary needles. A google image search for GMOs and half of what pops up is this. There’s clearly an anti-vaxxers undercurrent going on here. But by pitting “science” (as a noun) from the “anti-GMO” or whatever, we are imposing this well entrenched banking model of education onto the debate. We are now claiming to be gatekeepers that simply need to bestow upon the ill-informed the necessary information to fix the problem. This deficiency re: banking model has been shown for the last 40 plus years in psychological research to not work that well. So not only are there implicit issues of class and power in this model (as per Freire) but it’s also not very effective. And in many cases, will actually backfire on you.

This isn’t a controversial statement, but here is a claim that is: Someone who believes in a crackpot conspiracy or bad pseudoscientific claim is also doing just this. They share the same desire to know as the most rigorous scientist. And that’s ok, so long as it is the starting point—not the end point to the question they ask. Because face it; thoughts are cheap and most things we first believe are wrong regardless of your title, status, or expertise.

Most of the time scientists are wrong too. We fail to reject the null hypothesis for a myriad of reasons, and it’s all set up this way on purpose. The difference between science and junk it that the process is set up to tease out the bad and refine the brush strokes to get closer to an objective truth, like a well-trained artist. And ultimately let go of the bad answers.

Because we all do use critical thinking, when it is to our advantage in protecting our preconceived beliefs. We can all do it. It’s not something that can be “banked” onto us. Yes, like art it takes practice and guidance to get better at it. But ….

There are a myriad of ways that we as humans protect ourselves from the fact we have bad answers. Such as to quote Upton Sinclair here or Jim Carrey in Dumb and Dumber when…Science ideally is a systematic set of check and balances to tease these out. But it is still an ultimately human endeavor.

• Understanding how we prevent change matters:
• Content is second to process.
• If you want the facts to matter, don’t worry about them so much.
• Accept that we are all wrong most of the time.
• No one should be a gatekeeper.

Banking, or the deficiency model, is problematic and doesn’t really work anyway.

Know that we all have the same reasoning/critical thinking capabilities and we all use them.

—Justice Morath
Salt Lake Community College

---

What Science Tells Us About Religion

Sharon Nichols wrote a conclusion from her article titled, “What Science Tells Us About Religion.”

I live in the South. Here, the first question people ask you upon meeting you is, “What church do you go to?” I have decided that my blow-away answer is, “Oh, we don’t go to church much,” which lets the asker of the hook without committing me to something I don’t believe in (weddings and funerals are still in churches, after all!” I try not to close the door on the discussion unless someone is being rude. Don’t be afraid to engage the religious in discussion. Don’t debate though, because that only tends to harden already held beliefs on both sides. Prepare a few points ahead of time that you can state in nonjudgmental terms, such as: “I am a naturalist” (and/or humanist, atheist, agnostic, etc.) reflecting your true stance. “I follow science rather than believe in religion” or “I find much greater mystery in science than in religion. “Be true to yourself—without going so far as to place yourself in danger.

How do thinking people who rely on reason counter anti-intellectualism and anti-science, and anti-modernity trends? It is incredibly frustrating to attempt to deal with anti-intellectualism and anti-science; they are so contrary to common sense and reason. A strategy that is less fraught with frustration is that of “planting seeds.” Exploit an opening and use communication skills to plants seeds of reason and doubt. Seeds can crack boulders; surely, they can root out unreason. Have you ever seen a blade of grass growing in concrete? It is the same with doubt. Think of religion as a differential terrain: some of it will “wash away” in the same way that weaker rock layers rode before stronger rock layers will. This can eventually lead to canyons of doubt. Every drop of doubt that is added erodes religion further, until religious belief is no longer tenable.

The more books and articles revealing religions weaknesses, pious lies, and evils, the more likely someone teetering on the edge of doubt will eschew religion, and step into the light of reason. It may happen gradually, much more too slowly for some of us, but it will happen. It is already happening. The spate of religion protection laws in the United States are part of the backlash caused by the religious realizing they are losing ground. Let us hope that we may see the end of religious privilege in American in our lifetimes.

I believe we must be in the real world, and not that of make-believe, wishful thinking and unreason. The alternative is to turn the corner on knowledge itself and I for one do not intend to sit idly by while the human cultural world slides into the abyss of willful ignorance and chaos.

—Craig Wilkinson, MD
Board Member, Humanists of Utah

---

A Better Life – Film Screening and Discussion

On Friday, June 30, The Humanists of Utah are pleased to invite filmmaker and photographer Chris Johnson, creator of the film, A Better Life: An Exploration of Joy and Meaning in a World Without God, based on the interviews found in his book, A Better Life: 100 Atheists Speak Out on Joy and Meaning in a World Without God. There is no God. Now what? If this is the only life we have, how does that affect how we lives our lives, how we treat each other, and cope with death?

As a follow-up to one of Kickstarter’s most successful publishing projects, photographer and filmmaker Chris Johnson introduces us to some of the many voices from his book. In this fascinating documentary—learn the stories behind the book in interviews with some of our greatest thinkers.

Join Chris as he explores issues of joy and meaning and travels around the globe meeting people from all walks of life and backgrounds who challenge the false stereotypes of atheists as immoral and evil.

From Daniel Dennett and A.C. Grayling, to Julia Sweeney and Robert Llewellyn —learn the various ways many atheists have left religion to a better life filled with love, compassion, hope, and wonder!

Learn about Chris’ project and purchase your copy here:

https://www.theatheistbook.com/

Friday June 30 6:00 PM to 10:00 PM
Salt Lake City Public Library
210 E 400 S, Salt Lake City

— Elaine Stehel

---

Robert Lane’s President’s Report will resume next month

---

 

HUMANIST ESSAY

Censorship and Obscenity in the Arts
Is the Cutting Edge Too Sharp?

By M. Ray Kingston FAIAMember
National Council on the Arts
1985 -1991

“Any music banned by the Church is bound to be a lot of fun”

 Occasionally, a piece of music comes along that is so outrageous it is banned from the airwaves. Back before radio, a young composer by the name of Bach, played music so unconventional it earned him severe reprimands from the Protestant Church. Today we call it Classical Music. Experience it for yourself, live at Symphony Hall.”

This tame and slightly humorous quotation from the inside cover of a program of the Utah Symphony, written to entice a new, younger audience to symphonic music, is quietly symbolic of a debate currently raging in America about what constitutes art, what constitutes “acceptable” art, whether our uniquely American form of government should concern itself with art and if so, what kind of art is to be deemed appropriate for government funding. This debate had reached a shrieking crescendo, its noisy volume battering the walls of Congress and the American sensibility with the dark and dangerous politics of intolerance and fear, and with counter-charges of censorship. The combatants in the debate had drawn their battle-lines at the doors of the National Endowment for the Arts, the federal agency whose mission is to support, foster and provide wide access to the arts in America.

The following is in the code of the Declaration of Purpose written into the National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities Act of 1965.

“The Congress hereby finds and declares:

• that the encouragement and support of national progress and scholarship in the humanities and the arts, while primarily a matter for private and local initiative, is also an appropriate matter of concern to the Federal Government;
• that a high civilization must not limit its efforts to science and technology alone but must give full value and support to the other great branches of scholarly and cultural activity in order to achieve a better understanding of the past, a better analysis of the present, and a better view of the future;
• that democracy demands wisdom and vision in its citizens and that it must therefore foster and support a form of education, and access to the arts and the humanities, designed to make people of all backgrounds and wherever located, masters of their technology and not its unthinking servant;
• that is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to complement, assist and add to programs for the advancement of the humanities and the arts by local, State, regional, and private agencies and their organizations;
• that the practice of art and the study of the humanities requires constant dedication and devotion and that, while no government can call a great artist or scholar into existence, it is necessary and appropriate for the Federal Government to help create and sustain not only a climate encouraging freedom of thought, imagination, and inquiry but also the material conditions facilitating the release of this creative talent;
• that museums are vital to the preservation of our cultural heritage and should be supported in their role as curator of our national consciousness;
• that the world leadership which has come to the United States cannot rest solely upon superior power, wealth, and technology, but must be solidly founded upon worldwide respect and admiration for the Nation’s high qualities as a leader in the realm of ideas and of the spirit;
• that Americans should receive in school, background and preparation in the arts and humanities, to enable them to recognize and appreciate the aesthetic dimensions of our lives, the diversity of excellence that comprises our cultural heritage, and artistic and scholarly expression; and
• that, in order to implement these findings, it is desirable to establish a National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities.

The Act further states that:

“In the administration of this act, no department, agency officer, or employee of the United States government shall exercise any direction, supervision or control over the policy determination, personnel or curriculum, the administration or operation of any school or other non-federal agency, institution, organization or association. In implementing its mission, the Endowment must exercise care to preserve and improve the environment in which the arts have flourished. It must not, under any circumstances, impose a single aesthetic standard or attempt to direct artistic content.”

Programs in the Endowment include support to the fields of: Dance, Design Arts, Expansion Arts, Folk Arts, Literature, Media Arts, Museums, Music, Opera-Musical Theater, Theater, Visual Arts, Arts in Education, State and local partnerships.

To accomplish its work, the Endowment utilizes a peer panel review system in which ‘peers’ in each field meet and determine which applications or proposals they deem to have substantial artistic and cultural significance, and which recommends their approval and a funding level to the National Council on the Arts, a group of 26 presidentially-appointed artists, patrons, and citizens. This Council reviews the panel recommendations and after discussion and debate, makes their own recommendations to the Chairman of the Endowment, who makes the final determination.

The budget of the Endowment in l990-91 was $174 million, or approximately 65 cents per American citizen.

When the Endowment was established in 1965, there were very few state arts agencies. Through the catalyst of direct state block grants, there is now an arts agency or council in every state and territory in America. This encouragement of state and local arts agencies has been instrumental in the encouragement of state governmental support of the arts totaling over $220 million dollars in 1989, a figure which, at the time, exceeded the federal arts budget by 50 million dollars.

Taken as a whole, the leveraging effect of NEA support was 10 to 1 in economic impact.

What was the cultural result of the Endowment’s efforts in numerical terms?

• Theaters:     In l965, there were 56 nonprofit theaters in the U.S. In l988, there were over 400.
• Dance:        In l965, there were 57 companies, generally located in New York City. In 1988, there were 250 nationwide.
• Museums:   More than 1/3 of the national sample of art museums in l988, had been founded since l960.
• Orchestras: In 1965, there were 60 professional orchestras. By 1988, 163 orchestras received funding out of the 212 orchestras which applied.
• Opera:         From l965, to 1988, professional opera companies had doubled from 45 to over 100.
• Choruses:   In l965, there was only one professional chorus. By l988, there were 57.
• Artists-in-Schools: The NEA, through its programming and advocacy, was the re-birth of interest in establishing arts education as basic requirements in our public schools.
• Local Arts Councils: By l988, there were 3000, created as a direct result of the Endowment’s catalytic financial support.

During its history of the first 25 years, (to FY ‘89-‘90), the Endowment had awarded over 83,000 grants, approximately 3000 per year.

Of this total, 20 grants had raised some form of controversy. However, with the public exhibitions of the work of Andre Serranno, in 1987, and Robert Maplethorpe, in 1989, what had been a minor issue, exploded into major cultural warfare. The issues of government censorship of the arts and what comprises obscenity in the arts became front-page fodder.

Andres Serrano, Artist/Photographer, created “Piss Christ” in l987, which was shown in a competition called “Awards in the Visual Arts”, sponsored and managed by the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art, in Winston Salem, North Carolina. The competition was funded by Equitable Life Assurance, the Rockefeller Foundation, (a nonprofit philanthropy), and through a general grant from the NEA.

Robert Maplethorpe, Photographer’s work was shown at the “Institute of the Contemporary Art”, on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. The “Institute” was funded through a general grant from the NEA.

North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms, California Representative Dana Rohrabacher and the “Reverend” Donald Wildmon, founder of the conservative “American Family Association”, in Tupelo, Mississippi, began firing fusillades of invective against the NEA. It is no secret to anyone familiar with this history, that the real agenda of these politicians and their allies was to gain more political and economic power through the destruction and abolition of the National Endowments for the Arts and Humanities, the perceived ‘soft underbellies’ of Federal Government.

During my seven years of service, beginning in l985, on the National Council, I was witness to efforts of a few congressmen, led by Texas Representative Richard Army to find any scrap of material which they could use as the focus of a campaign against the Endowment. They demanded that their respective staffs be allowed to rummage for months on end through the Grant’s files of the Endowment. To their own enormous disappointment, they were unable to locate the piece of “rotting meat” around which to frame their earlier attack – until Serrano and Maplethorpe. One had to question the ETHICS of these pork-barrel politicians, who, while vilifying the National Endowment for the Arts, had, for years, forced down the throats of American taxpayer’s the subsidization of the growing of tobacco, long after it was proved to be one of the great killers of men, women and children throughout the world.

Rev. Wildmon’s behavior also begged credulity. Here was a man who, in the name of Christ and the American family, claims a moral position against obscenity, and at the same time supported full-page advertisements (in U.S.A. Today, and other major publications), filled with inaccuracies, distortions, “Fake News”, and falsehoods depicting a total ignorance of the history and value of the Endowment, and which made statements expressing a maniacal, raging intolerance. He also asked for a $15.00 per person contribution to the “American Family Association” war-chest.

Again, one has to wonder if this is not simply a way for some people to gain notoriety and fortune at the rest of America’s expense. Perhaps this was the evangelist’s and the Christian Broadcasts Network’s way of regaining an income-source to replace possible losses to their cause as a result of the “Great Fall” of Jimmy and Tammy Faye Baker.

These behaviors are the real obscenities, their perpetrators using cold-blooded and calculated deception to advance a personal political and monetary agenda, while at the same time proposing selected censorship and an attendant abrogation of the principles of our Bill of Rights.

These “intellectual terrorists” advocated holding the artists of America hostage as sacrificial offerings to the “pork-barrel gods” of political ineptitude, and to the double standard of political leadership, which has created a climate in America of raging, self-serving intolerance and greed.

Art, as distinguished from the popular culture of entertainment, is nearly always a reflection of the human condition. Artists peer deeply into our world and make observations of what they see. Some artists do their work well, others may miss. But, generally, their work is a series of mirror images of our culture, our value systems, our political, economic, social and environmental agendas. If we don’t like what we see in these reflections, we should take steps to alter the source of their images, our own course and culture as a nation.

These “terrorists of the mind” are telling Americans that art, created in part through support of the National Endowment for the Arts, does not enjoy the protection from censorship provided under the Constitution and Bill of Rights, simply because this support involves “tax-payer’s dollars”. Does this mean that all governmental agencies are free to act outside the limits of these documents? Is this contradiction of law and values what we, as Americans are willing to accept? NO must be our answer to this question.

What can we do? First, we can inform ourselves and others about this debate. We can demand that our elected representatives clear away the intolerant rubbish of this debate and look to long-term values in their votes. Second, we must infuse back into our institutions of higher learning and into our public schools the proper balance of learning in the arts and humanities, a proper balance to the current love affair with scientific research. If the nuclear age has taught us anything, if Hiroshima, the Holocaust and the Joseph Stalins of the world have opened our eyes a little, if Chernobyl has shown us the “black hole’ of the policy of unlimited growth and unbridled energy consumption, if the Savings and Loan’s feeding-frenzy-of-greed has shown how we have robbed our treasury of the potential for education and the expression of human compassion, then, these catastrophic world-altering and crippling atrocities must point out the necessity for a change of course in our educational priorities. Paying cruelly, misleading lip-service to the value of the arts and humanities in our colleges, universities and public schools is no longer sufficient.

What is needed is a re-direction of financial and administrative support for these disciplines, for the re-introduction of required courses in history, philosophy, ethics (particularly ethics), and aesthetics for every student who expects to leave a university or college with a bachelor’s degree, or for students graduating from our secondary schools. It is these disciplines which stimulate creativity, teach basic principles of compassion, of civilized, tolerant human behavior and instill a basic habit in all of us of simple ethics in politics, business, in our professions and all levels of human interaction. Unless we do this, and soon, I fear that the ultimate ‘mirror-image’ depicted of our society by the “ultimate Artist” will reflect the crucifixion of our world on the world’s stage, with the blood of life running off its apron onto all of us who remain as silent spectators of these events.

This would be the ultimate obscenity, and no amount of censorship of this play will alter the finality of the final curtain.

---

President’s Report

This month I have three items to touch on, one humorous, at least to me, another serious and one about me.

I have mentioned before that for the last twenty-five to thirty years I have not had cable TV What little came over the air was enough for Amy and me. Now that I’m spending much of my time at my mother’s home, I have been watching a lot more TV and the commercials are something else. I think one of the most hilarious is the marketing of razors. I mean really, how many times and ways are there to improve the razor. Have they made one with five blades yet? Soon they’ll be laser guided. I know it’s stupid thing to write about, but I can’t help it.

Speaking of stupid things, I want to get to the serious thing I want to address, that being our new administration. I realize the as a 501c3 organization we must avoid using our resources for political reasons. But I don’t think I’m barred from giving my opinion. I can say what I have on my mind in a few sentences. We have a president who seems to only function in an adversarial mode. That along with the politics of fear and hatred appears to have brought us to a point where the whole world is angry and on edge. All this fear and hatred is not new or all his fault, but this president has added a lot of fuel to the flames. Is this a good way to govern? Where every issue is a battle to always give HIM a chance for a “victory.”

Moving on. Board member Sally Jo asked me help her put together a bio of myself for last month’s newsletter. That didn’t happen so this month I thought I would answer one of the questions she asked me to review. First on the list is where I have lived and my favorite place.

I have lived here in Salt Lake City all my life except for about a year when we moved to California just a mile and a half from Disneyland. I was eight years old then and met a kid who knew how to sneak into Disneyland. But that’s a whole story of its own. However, I did spend four years in the United States Air Force, where I was stationed in Texas, Colorado, Utah, Thailand, New Jersey, California and Oklahoma.

The second part of the question, “my favorite place,” has more than one answer, or at least two. When it comes to cities, there is no doubt it is San Francisco and the bay area. My other favorite place is far different from the highly compact and highly populated streets of San Francisco, and that is the Red Castle area of the High Uintah’s Wilderness Area here in Utah. It is a beautiful area where you will be camping about eight miles from the nearest dirt road at around 10,000 ft. and still be looking up at the top 2 to 3 thousand feet of mountain tops. I could go on and on about the beauty of this area, but there isn’t room.

But there is room for one little anecdote about being an experienced backpacker who meets up with friends who are not so experienced.

Soon after I began backpacking I determined that I was going to always go it alone as far as equipment and meals. Sharing was too problematic and I sometimes went in a day ahead of friends. So, I always packed rather heavy (seventy pounds) with extras like “real food” and a tape player for music and to record notes for my geomorphology studies. The real food I would bring along was a medium size potato, a small onion, a small can of mushrooms, some butter, salt and pepper. Plus, enough Aluminum foil for cooking in the fire. Plus, I also had a flask of B&B.

After setting up camp, I would go fishing first thing and usually catch a nice sized fish for supper. You can imagine the envious looks I got as I stuffed onions and mushrooms in the fish, surrounded it with the cut-up potato added salt pepper and the butter and wrapped it in a few layers of foil. Then after rolling it around in the coals of the fire for about a half hour you open up a real treat, especially welcome after hiking in eight to ten miles. I would share a taste but only a taste to those who came with light packs and nothing but freeze dried meals and granola as they tried to cook freeze dried chili (at 10,000 ft) long enough that the beans weren’t crunchy.

See you at our next meeting.

—Robert Lane
President, HoU

---