Thursday, May 16, 2013

Study finds positive correlation between economic freedom and tolerance toward homosexuals.

It's a common talking point among both the left and the right that economic freedom and tolerance toward LGBT people are at loggerheads. A recent study suggests otherwise.

The study, performed by two Swedish researchers (see here and here), finds,

Cross-sectional and first-difference regression analysis of up to 69 countries reveals that economic freedom is positively related to tolerance towards homosexuals, especially in the longer run....
Of course, correlation is not causation; also, the data are derived from polls and therefore could suffer from the Bradley effect. Still, the study provides counter-evidence to an anti-freedom talking point.

Thursday, May 9, 2013

Today's vocabulary word: dialogue

dialogue, n. monologue: We need to have a dialogue about [pet topic].

Sunday, May 5, 2013

Stuff gay men supposedly like: 22. Being contrarian

I choked when I read this:
To a gay person, groups of people in complete agreement are scary. It’s what happens in a totalitarian state, a Catholic school, church, or worst of all, the suburbs. Since those places are all horrible, a gay person is committed to constantly come up with ways his opinions and political views are different from everybody else’s.
And the earth is flat. Go to a meeting of almost any mainstream LGBT organization, and you'll see just how afraid of groups of people in complete agreement gay people are. Soon after coming out, I learned the hard way that people would flip out over an expression of any idea outside of the group-certified orthodoxy, even something as apparently anodyne as "There are gay men in long-term relationships." As for any distinction between the LGBT community and those other locales, didn't someone once say something about fighting monsters and gazing into the abyss?