Homosexuality is either genetically or environmentally determined. Environmental influences are either intrauterine or postnatal. Behold the universe of possibilities! Sexual orientation probably results from the interaction of environment and genetic predisposition, but science, so far, explains only a little. Voluntarily choosing homosexuality cannot be discounted, although the more deeply embedded in genetics or early experience...
Author: Virginia Deane Abernethy (Virginia Deane Abernethy)
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“This Land Is My Land”
The pressures that swelling populations exert against natural resources often increase economic inequality. Fortunately, unequally distributed wealth and power can result in forms of ownership that achieve environmental protection—for example, the arrangements of Colombian ranchers in the province of Cordoba. As Juan Forero writes in the New York Times (August 6): “A few years ago,...
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Immigration Misinformation
The debate over immigration policy has been marked by inaccurate reporting in an astonishing number of instances. Errors and material omissions by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), the Census Bureau, and the Department of Education are only the beginning of misinformation about immigration. News releases and publications by experts, including some associated with...
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Great Expectations
Foreign aid, like other forms of aid, is a subsidy that distorts choice. The distortion takes many forms; for example, aid is sometimes put to uses unintended by the giver; it also lets the recipient pursue activities below their real cost. Since President Harry Truman launched the foreign-aid crusade, U.S. economic aid to developing nations...
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Family Formation in America
Parents, some say, are people who use the rhythm method of family planning. One might better say that parents are optimists, people who think that the present is good and the future probably better. People who look forward with confidence often have an extra child; those who think that their situation may worsen are cautious...
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Why Asian Population Growth Is Grinding Down
Asia’s currencies will not be the only things plummeting. Look next for a decline in fertility rates (the number of births per woman) in the countries affected by Asia’s financial meltdown. Most people want children, but not more than can be raised well given family standards. Caution about childbearing is widespread when resources and opportunity...
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The Cost of Madness
This compendium on immigration by editors of the National Research Council (NRC) includes the work of 14 scholars, among them economists, demographers, and sociologists. At least one of the contributors is a strong advocate of high levels of immigration, while another has recently criticized current policy for ignoring the decline in skills and levels of...
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The Stuff of Nightmares
Military involvement in Haiti is the stuff of nightmares. In comparison, the oil and arms blockade, reinforcements in the Dominican Republic, and sanctions against commercial airline traffic from Port-au-Prince occasion mere despair. President Clinton’s prodemocracy broadcasts delivered via helicopter-borne bullhorn and Quebec-trained Haitian police (fresh from human rights seminars) are but passing comic moments. No...
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Jobs, Politics, and Immigration
Unemployment and underemployment are trends becoming more noticeable as the 20th century draws to a close. Eighteen million new jobs were created in the United States during the expansionary 1980’s, but, ominously, structural unemployment—the seeming base level in our economy—was still redefined upward from 4.5 percent to 5.5 percent of the work force. Worse, new...
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Taking Root
Captain Thomas Santorno, who aspired to be chief of the San Francisco Fire Department, recently achieved fame, or notoriety, when he claimed that he legitimately changed his self-identification from Gaucasian (his father) to Hispanic (his mother). But Captain Roybal, also of the San Francisco Fire Department, alleged that Santorno falsified the grounds on which he...