Gay Marriage on the Sunday morning shows

With gay marriage due to be argued before the Supreme Court next week, the Sunday morning talk shows were a showcase for arguments.

On Face the Nation, Tony Robbins, head of the Family Institute, made the case that gay marriage like all social issues should be decided by the states and not the courts. If we were to formalize the argument, it would something like this:

P1:If the Supreme courts rules to require all states perform gay marriage, then the issue of gay marriage will be decided by the courts but not the state.

P2: But gay marriage should not be decided by the courts (nor should any social issue)

C:So the Supreme Court should not rule to require gay marriage.

P1 is pretty close to a tautology, so it is clear the work would have to go into criticizing P2. The natural path here is to say that the case of interracial marriage was an issue that was rightly decided by the courts, and so that P2 is false, or at least has an exception you can march a gay parade through.

 I have not seen any reporter bring up to this point, which conservatives routinely appeal to, is whether they think it was wrong for the courts to decide the issue of interracial marriage.  They would either have to day that the court was wrong to decide the issue of interracial marriage or that sexual orientation is somehow different than racial status. And the only way they could really argue the latter point is to say that sexual orientation is a choice, which is a claim I don’t think conservatives want to hinge the argument on because they know the science and public opinion is against them here. It is disappointing not to see this parallel pressed more.

Speaking of choice, the issue came up on Meet the Press, when Chuck Todd asked the two lawyers who brought the gay rights case to the California courts why, if the court approves of gay marriage they would not have to approve of polygamy. The first lawyer, David Boise, dismissed this as a silly question, a classic attacking the person/prejudicial language strategy, which is not really a response. Then he went on to not answer the question. The other lawyer, Ted Olsen, was much more  clear: sexual orientation is not a choice. There is clear evidence that this is genetic, and there exists no such evidence with polygamy.

Of course, this argument could be responded to by claiming that evolution tells us that males naturally seek out as many partners as possible. But this is an argument for another day

Another Tu quoque

As you can see from the blog, I have been encountering a fair number of tu quoque fallacies recently. To remind you once again, the tu quoque is best described as an appeal to hypocrisy that intends to discredit an opponent's position by asserting that the opponent is failing to act consistently with that position. 

"She will develop policies. In Iowa, she’d already delivered her top four, one of which is to take unaccountable big money out of politics. This is rather precious, considering that her supporters intend to raise $2.5 billion for 2016 alone and that the Clinton Foundation is one of the most formidable machines ever devised for extracting money from the rich, the powerful and the unsavory."

So the claim is that because Hilary is planning on raising tons of money for her campaign that it is hypocritical for her to want to take big money out of politics. How can she both want to take money out of politics and at the same time raise large amounts of money? Isn't she a hypocrite.

The reason we call the "tu quoque" a fallacy is that we think a person's argument deserves to be considered even if their actions are inconsistent with their position. But in this case, we do not even have a real incidence of hypocrisy. For the simple fact is that Hilary needs to raise money in order to get elected to institute the policy. It is not inconsistent for a country to call for nuclear disarmament while at the same time retaining its nuclear arsenal, since it would endanger its existence by unilaterally disarming itself. The same thing holds true for political candidates. Unless Hilary gets elected, she has no chance of pushing for a policy to get money out of politics. It is not hypocrisy; it is reality. And Krauthammer knows the difference

Et Tu Quoque, Carly?

Former Hewlett-Packard chief Carly Fiorina on Thursday blasted Apple CEO Tim Cook's opposition to Indiana's religious freedom law as "hypocrisy."

Fiorina, a potential 2016 GOP presidential contender, said Cook had a double standard and cited Apple's operations in other countries with controversial laws about gays and women in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

“When Tim Cook is upset about all the places that he does business because of the way they treat gays and women, he needs to withdraw from 90% of the markets that he’s in, including China and Saudi Arabia,” Fiorina argued. “But I don’t hear him being upset about that."

In the days after Apple CEO Tim Cook penned his WP editorial condemning the Indiana law, Carly Fiorina was not the only one to hurl the charge of hypocrisy at him. But she may have been the most high profile person to do so.

As you can see from the text above, the charge is that because Apple does business in countries that discriminate against homosexuals, Tim Cook has no right to criticize a law that would discriminate against homosexuals.

The first thing we need to recognize is the classic tu quoque nature of this charge. I just recently went through the tu quoque fallacy so I won’t go into excruciating details except to say that I commit the tu quoque fallacy when I accuse someone of being a hypocrite rather than deal with the argument they have put forth.

Now the reason this is a fallacy is that even if the person making the charge is hypocritical, this does not undermine the charge itself, which deserves to be considered by itself regardless of who brings it forth.

So the first thing to note is that this is about as clear an instance of a tu quoque fallacy as you are going to find.

Second, it is important to note that if there is a legitimate charge of hypocrisy this ought to be taken seriously from a rhetorical point of view, and the maker of the argument, though not the argument itself, deserves criticism.

But there is no hypocrisy here. I am a hypocrite if I say x and do not x, or say x in one place but say not x in another. But neither of these scenarios apply with Tim Cook.

He did not say he is against discrimination in Indiana but act to support discrimination by selling Apple products in China.Instead, in both cases he should be seen as further equal treatment of homosexuals as far as in his power. In Indiana, he merely pointed out the discriminatory nature of the law. The editorial stated that the Indiana law and laws like it go against the principles this country was founded on and are bad for business. And as Republicans have long argued, by engaging with repressive regimes and even doing business there we can best spread American values.

We can see this by asking Would Apple withdrawing from China really change China’s behavior in any way? Highly doubtful. But can the business community united change the law in Indiana. It seems so.

So both his stance about the Indiana law and the fact that Apple does business in China are consistent with a concern for freedom and equality for all human beings.

And Carly should know better.