political compass test, part the second

In EDB’s previous post on the political compass test, we took a short look at the test and displayed, if for nothing else than shits and giggles, our own two graphs.  In this post, I’d like to take a look at the questions and explain why I answered them the way I did, perhaps with a smattering of further reading to elaborate on how some aspects of our ideology here are interpreted by the test.  All questions are from the version of the test found at www.politicalcompass.org as of the date of this post.

Jump to a section: Page 1, Page 2, Page 3, Page 4, Page 5, Page 6

Page 1 of 6

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

This might sound complicated if you’re not into economics and foreign policy, but it boils down to a fairly simple question.  Do you believe what’s good for corporations is good for people?  If you’re a CEO of one of these companies, or perhaps just a middle-aged white guy who sleeps with Ayn Rand books under his pillow, chances are you’d answer yes.  If you’re a woman who works in the maquiladoras in Juarez, or if you’re an oil-covered seagull from the Gulf of Mexico, you might think differently.  Until corporations reflect in their business practices a desire to serve humanity rather than to pay shareholders, they will continuously exploit the labor pool and the environment in the name of profit.  This is not a sustainable practice.

Suggested reading/viewing: The Corporation

I’d always support my country, whether it was right or wrong.

No one chooses his or her country of birth, so it’s foolish to be proud of it.

Patriotism has lots of definitions.  The first statement above is a definition that some people would use, but those people are stupid, and probably right-wing ultra-nationalists.  Patriotism begets nationalism, which begets jingoism.  Rather than supporting your country, right or wrong, why not support what’s right, and help your country get there when it falls short?  On the second, one could be proud of your country’s accomplishments, but being proud of yourself for being from that country is just silly.

“I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world.” – Eugene V. Debs

Our race has many superior qualities, compared with other races.

Oh, come on.  Really?

The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

This is just terrible reasoning.  Is the religious right an ally of the radical feminist movement just because they both want to do away with porn?  I’m no historiologist, but I’m pretty sure that’s been tried.  For another example, see America’s support for the mujahideen during the Soviet-Afghan war.  [Ed: EDB has just informed me that historiology is, in fact, a real word.  Who knew?]

Military action that defies international law is sometimes justified.

This is a bit tricky, because it largely depends on your opinion of international organizations like the UN, and whether or not unilateral action can be justified.  There are arguments for and against, I think, but for this question I come from the standpoint of a country which is currently conducting covert or overt wars in 6 different Muslim countries (Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Iran, and Afghanistan- 7 if you count Palestine, and since Israel is a US satellite state, you should).  Could the UN establish laws that restrict a country’s ability to act unilaterally in defense from an invading country?  It’s a possibility, but the UN Charter specifically allows military action in self-defense.  These provisions, such as Article 51, are often twisted and used in some pretty outlandish justifications for military action (Ronnie the Ray-Gun used it to justify our bombing of Libya after the 1986 Berlin disco bombing), but they’re there to make sure that a country’s hands aren’t tied when foreign boots land on the ground.  I guess I could see someone agreeing with this statement if you lived in or were familiar with a country that has been unable to defend itself because of the UN’s draconian laws and jackbooted enforcement mechanisms, but I think that multi-lateral agreement as a precursor to military action probably leads more often to stability and peace than it does to a hindrance of self-defence.

International law would look a lot better if the powerful countries abided by the same standards to which they hold the rest of the world, of course.  It’s a good question, any way you look at it.  I’m not really sure which direction you’d get nudged on the compass by changing an answer here.  I typically disagree, either strongly or weakly based on my mood that day.  I think my answer comes from a more utopian view of international law.

There is now a worrying fusion of information and entertainment.

I don’t really get why this question is here, but if you have two eyes and half a brain, I think you have to realize how fucked up the US is due in part to our decaying journalism industry.  The 24-hour news cycle not only buries important news before it’s had enough time to really sink in and agitate people, but it seeks out less important stories to drive ratings, because entertainment is more profitable than information.  The question is actually missing the mark- it’s not the fusion of information and entertainment, it’s the promotion of entertainment over information.

Page 2 of 6

People are ultimately divided more by class than by nationality.

Picture this: you’re a working-class stiff in the States, maybe working some service job that pays $40-50K  year, with decent benefits.  Your life is pretty simple- you work, you go home and spend time with your family, you save up to buy a nice thing every once in awhile, and if you’re lucky you get to take a vacation or two a year to some boring-ass town in Arizona where your parents retired.  The CEO of your company, he lives in a 5400-square-foot ranch house in the summer, spends weekends in Vail, flies a private jet to D.C. when he has to testify before Congress, has an entire photo album of snorkeling off the coast of Fiji, and gets Lakers tickets sent to him from Phil Jackson (Lakers, that’s a sports team, right?  I’m going with it).  Who do you have more in common with: the CEO, who makes over $80 million a year, or the kid in India they’re about to outsource your job to for just under $3000 a year?

Controlling inflation is more important than controlling unemployment.

Look, I’m not gonna lie, for the economic questions, I usually just click which button I think Marx would click.  I’m woefully underequipped for thorough analyses of most of these points.  Feel free to point and laugh.  I tend to think that not working is worse than having your money lose some value, and cursory examination of the debate shows that people who rail the most against inflation are those who stand to lose the most- people with shitloads of money in savings that are affected by fluctuating inflation.  I don’t see very many people in breadlines happy that the dollar is rising against the euro.  I know this is a terrible, pathetic argument I’m making, but fuck rich people.

Because corporations cannot be trusted to voluntarily protect the environment, they require regulation.

If the underwater volcano of oil in the Gulf isn’t enough, there are countless other examples of environmental catastrophes perpetrated upon the earth by corporations who care more about short-term profit than long-term sustainability.  In 30 years when half of the world’s coastal cities are underwater, be sure to thank the world’s energy industry for being too goddamn stubborn to spend a few more fucking dollars a month on alternatives to greenhouse-gas-emitting technologies.

(And if you’re planning on ad hominem tu quoque-ing me because I use a computer to type this, my residential electricity comes from a wind farm.  Booya grandma, booya.)

“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is a fundamentally good idea.

How can you disagree with a dude who rocked a beard so harsh?  You gotta have at least a set of serious muttonchops before you step to him.

It’s a sad reflection on our society that something as basic as drinking water is now a bottled, branded consumer product.

Agreed.  I believe that all basic, life-essential commodities should be free, or kept to an absolute minimal cost.  The residents of Cochabamba agree.  Water is one of the most abundant molecules in the universe.  It’s an absolute necessity for life as we know it.  We came from water.  Two thirds of the earth is covered by it, and it falls from the sky, provided you live in the right places.  And yet, our dumb asses have been convinced that paying 3 dollars for a bottle of it is a fantastic idea.  Because of that, companies like Nestlé and Coca-Cola are stealing the water right out from underneath people in the Global South (the developing world) and bottling it up to sell to stupid white people.  Bottled water is probably one of the biggest scams in modern times.

Further reading: Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water

Land shouldn’t be a commodity to be bought and sold.

How many wars have been fought, how much blood has been shed, how many lives have been lost, all so that some person, or group of people, could draw a little squiggly line on a map around a bigger piece of land?  The earth has been here for 4.5 billion years, and it’ll be here for about 5 billion more.  How arrogant are we to place a stake into a piece of dirt, and say “Hah!  This is mine.  I own this.”  If the earth had a voice, I’m sure it would laugh.

Also, property is theft.

It is regrettable that many personal fortunes are made by people who simply manipulate money and contribute nothing to their society.

I agree with this, but really only because I hate rich people.  Sorry, no substantive arguments from me here.  Like I said, on economics I just play WWKMD.

Protectionism is sometimes necessary in trade.

Considering that pretty much every rich Western country got rich through government intervention in trade and rampant protectionism, I’d agree if capitalism is assumed.  The antithesis to this viewpoint is the neoliberal economics of the Friedman gang, and that’s just been working out fabulously for the developing world.

Further reading: Bad Samaritans: The Myth of Free Trade and the Secret History of Capitalism

The only social responsibility of a company should be to deliver a profit to its shareholders.

Yes!  This is a wonderful idea!  I would like to subscribe to your newsletter!

(Can you tell I get tired of the same questions, worded differently?)

The rich are too highly taxed.

I would temper my answer to this with a dose of standpoint analysis, but it’s really not necessary as the current highest tax rate in the world is Denmark, at 59%.  The US’s current top rate is 35% on incomes over $373,000.  Most people who whine and cry about the top income tax rates are: a) misunderstanding how progressive income taxation works, and b) not rich.  Rich people know better, they know they’re making a fucking mint right now, which is why they typically shut the hell up about it.  If people who whined about the marginal tax rate actually looked at what’s taxed in the US, they’d see that rich people are getting off nearly scot-free.

Those with the ability to pay should have the right to higher standards of medical care.

My favorite argument during the run-up to the passage of the Affordable Health Care for America Act was that it would lead to rationing.  RATIONING, they’d say.  YOU’RE GOING TO BE RATIONING HEALTH CARE!  As if everybody is getting an even shake at it right now?  No, my sweet little idiots, health care is already rationed.  It’s rationed on the basis of ability to pay, which will happen in a for-profit health care system no matter how much you subsidize piss-poor private insurance policies.  The only way to go is a nationalised health care industry.

So no, people with more cash shouldn’t get higher standards of medical care, because this privileges them in ways that probably don’t have anything to do with how hard they work, or how smart they are, or how vital to the moral fabric of our country they are. How about this: those who do all of our menial, shitty, grunt-work jobs should have the right to higher standards of medical care.  Tucker and Kayleigh from the country club can stand the fuck in line with everybody else.  How’s that for a meritocracy?

Governments should penalise businesses that mislead the public.

The converse of this statement is one of those absolutely insane Libertarian ideas, that governments should never, ever touch businesses.  If a business does something bad, people will find out, and the market will correct itself.  Horseshit.

There’s wiggle room here, if you think about times when a business has made misleading statements without going all the way into criminal acts.  So for instance, advertisements, which are about 95% bullshit- should the government step in and tell them what they can and can’t say in ads?  Considering how advertisers use psychologically manipulative tricks to get us to buy shit we don’t need, I’d say yes, yes it should.

A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies.

This is basically a semantics question about the definition of “free market”.  Is it one in which there is zero government intervention, or is it one in which fair and open competition is guaranteed by external market forces (i.e. governmental regulation restricting anti-competitive practices).  I’m not sure how this statement wiggles you on the scorecard, but I strongly agree.  Assuming that a market system is a given, restricting the formation of anti-competitive monopolies should be a priority.  If the market only works when there’s competition, it seems to me you’d want to make sure competition is actually happening.

The freer the market, the freer the people.

This is somewhat similar to the previous statement, and it depends on which definition of “free market” you’re coming from.  I start to get irritated at this point, because the test really seems to be assuming that I prefer a market-based allocation of goods in the first place, which I don’t!  Anyway, I believe this statement is assuming that “free market” means free of government intervention, and you can probably guess that I disagree.  I’m so weary of economic stuff at this point though that I can usually only manage a weak Disagree.  Some day I’ll probably take the test and record my answers, then change them to see which way certain statements shift you.  Depending on the semantics which I talked about, this statement could shift you left or right on the economic scale.

Page 3 of 6

Abortion, when the woman’s life is not threatened, should always be illegal.

Hah!  No.

All authority should be questioned.

The aim of this statement should be fairly obvious.  I can’t imagine the mindset of a person who would disagree with this, except maybe the clergy.  That’s an important point, because no revolutionary ideology can be subservient to any kind of authority.  That doesn’t mean you have to adopt an angsty, “No, fuck you, Dad” stance against anything that people in positions of authority tell you to do, but to assume that a person should be respected, or followed, or not put against the wall by virtue of occupying a position of authority reveals an authoritarian mindset.

An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

I believe a penal system should be built on rehabilitation, not punishment.  You’ve heard the saying: “an eye for an eye and a whole lot of fuckers get gooey eye-juice on their fingers”.  No one wants that.

Taxpayers should not be expected to prop up any theatres or museums that cannot survive on a commercial basis.

If commercial success were the ultimate arbiter of the artistic value of a piece of work, American Idol would be hailed as the greatest thing since Homer.  Just because people with money are too stupid to know what’s worth spending it on doesn’t mean the rest of us should suffer.  Take a totally market-based approach to the arts, and in 100 years we won’t know Starry Night from Twilight.  The sociological consequences of this should be self-evident.

Schools should not make classroom attendance compulsory.

This is an area where I’m going to have to slightly slip into my authoritarian jackboots, because I believe that education is so important, it shouldn’t be left up to people’s whims on whether or not they, or their kids, should attend school.  Of course, the kids who don’t want to be there probably aren’t getting much out of it anyway.  American schools are failing the lower class so catastrophically, something needs to be addressed.  Tossing kids to the wind by letting them drop out is not the answer.  It’s a difficult issue, no doubt.

Further reading/viewing: The Wire, Season 4.  Yeah, seriously.

All people have their rights, but it is better for all of us that different sorts of people should keep to their own kind.

I’ll agree with this only if white people are the ones who keep to their own, and everyone else gets to hang out and have fun.  I’m counting on my trace amounts of melanin to keep me out of the honky convention if that happens, of course.

Real answer:  Segregation sucks, multiculturalism is cool.

Good parents sometimes have to spank their children.

My hatred of kids make me want to concur here, but all of the psychological research from the last, what, 3 decades shows that using physical force to discipline your children is pretty unhealthy.  That brand of parenting, while successful for little shits who act the fool, just breeds more authoritarians.  It teaches that might makes right.  Sadly, I have to say that parents shouldn’t spank.

It’s natural for children to keep some secrets from their parents.

Again, your tendencies towards authoritarianism are being tested here.  Yeah, children should be able to keep some secrets.  This is a no-brainer.

Possessing marijuana for personal use should not be a criminal offence.

I’ve been sitting here staring at this statement for about a half an hour, trying to figure out a more erudite way to answer it than “Duh.”  I think the only way to disagree here is if you’re stuck in some crazy “Reefer Madness” kinda mindset, where you live in perpetual fear of immigrants and black people all hopped up on jazz cigarettes.  The hypocrisy of the US’s drug policy is so self-evident that an examination of it here would be a waste of bits.

The prime function of schooling should be to equip the future generation to find jobs.

No, perpetuation of the corporo-capitalist economy is not a good enough reason to send people to school.  Education should round us out as whole, learned individuals.  STEM field students (science, technology, engineering and math) who whine and cry about having to take “liberal arts” classes are big whiny crybabies.  You’re already gonna make like $50,000/year when you get out of school, you can stomach a semester or two of learning about poetry or sculpting, you big baby.

People with serious inheritable disabilities should not be allowed to reproduce.

Being an amateur scientician with lots of interest in evolutionary theory, it’s hard for me not to say we should take hold of homo sapiens‘s evolutionary path.  Eugenics is just not a good way to go though.  I don’t think there’s even a hypothetically possible group of humans who could administer that sort of policy without falling into the trappings of sexism, racism and classism.  Leave this sort of thing to the sci-fi stories.

The most important thing for children to learn is to accept discipline.

Haha, yeah.  While I think that this generation of children could do with more discipline, that comes from me being a cranky bastard who hates noise.  Authoritarianism is inherently inimical to the eradication of oppression.  The most important thing for children to learn is how to make sentences full of $10 words like that last one I just wrote.  That, plus the scientific method and critical thinking.

There are no savage and civilised peoples; there are only different cultures.

Gah!  I hate this question, cause it ties me up in knots depending on how you approach it.  Let’s just break this down into the two ways I see it.  First approach: White people in the west who look at the developing world and see “savage and uncivilised” peoples simply because they don’t drive SUVs and don’t pray to their White God.  To these honkeys I say: “Fuck you!”  That’s some racist-ass garbage, so on the test I’d mark Strongly Agree.

However!  There is another approach here, and that’s the argument with cultural relativists who will assert that you cannot categorically define certain cultural traditions or habits as harmful or disgusting, because “Well that’s just their culture!”  Look here: stoning women to death for adultery is wrong.  Genital mutilation of babies is wrong.  Denying your child medical care because you believe God will save them is wrong.  I don’t give a shit what culture you come from, wrong is wrong.  Now, some people might quibble with that stance over my culturally-ingrained ideas of morality, but there’s a pretty simple and universal litmus test.  Does it hurt someone else for no good goddamn reason?  If so, stop it.  Considering that, I’d disagree with the test question.

Those who are able to work, and refuse the opportunity, should not expect society’s support.

This sounds like such a Republican stance, but I’m fine with it actually.  I mean, if I were actually in a commune and someone wanted to benefit from the work of everybody else without contributing themselves, I don’t see why they should be carried by everyone else.  I think the difference between my attitude and that of the Right is where we draw the line on “able to work”.  I’m a lot more flexible on that.  If you’re injured, or handicapped, or even just unemployed, I have no problem spotting you some float time until we figure out something that you can do.  Give to society what you’re able, and you’ll get what you need.  I’ll agree with the statement, but not so vigorously that I start railing on “welfare queens” and whatever other racially-coded bullshit language the American Right uses.

When you are troubled, it’s better not to think about it, but to keep busy with more cheerful things.

I’m not sure what this kind of question is doing on a political compass test.  In any case, I disagree.  There’s nothing wrong with being depressed, and if you don’t think about things there’s no guarantee that they’ll work on our their own.  I think you have to grab your problems by the horns and deal with them until they’re solved.

First-generation immigrants can never be fully integrated within their new country.

What am I, Father Coughlin?  Get this xenophobic, nativist crap outta here.

What’s good for the most successful corporations is always, ultimately, good for all of us.

Mother of god.  Does anyone really think this?

No broadcasting institution, however independent its content, should receive public funding.

This is somewhat of a  rehash of the previous theater and museum question.  I disagree, with the caveat that publicly-funded broadcasting institutions should also be publicly-controlled.  A government newspaper could easily become a mouthpiece for pro-government propaganda, and that should be guarded against.  The irony in America is that our mainstream media are already pro-government propaganda platforms, and yet they’re private corporations.

Page 4 of 6

Our civil liberties are being excessively curbed in the name of counter-terrorism.

Jesus, where do I even start?  The Bush presidency saw the most significant expansion of executive power in the post-Watergate era, and the Obama administration is pushing that envelope even further.  Terrorism has been the boogeyman du jour for about the last decade to scare Americans into accepting all sorts of ridiculous shit that would have been hard to swallow otherwise, from endless wars in the Middle East to an expanded, corporate-sponsored surveillance state at home.  To those who would wave the specter of 9/11 in our faces, poverty is a bigger killer of people worldwide than terrorism could ever hope to be, but we don’t wage war on poverty (just the poor).

Further reading: The War on Our Freedoms, Noam Chomsky, Glenn Greenwald.

A significant advantage of a one-party state is that it avoids all the arguments that delay progress in a democratic political system.

Ah, the old “a dictatorship would be great as long as I’m the dictator” line of thinking.  While this is logically correct, a one-party state brings with it too many pitfalls.  The small advantage this situation would offer isn’t worth the risk of a totalitarian government.  This position is harder to defend in times like now, where a minority party in Congress is being a bunch of childish shits and deliberately sabotaging an entire branch of government.  But, if you give one party control today, there’s no guarantee that they’ll be on your side tomorrow, and people in power don’t voluntarily cede power back once they have it.  Multiple parties are necessary to maintain a free democracy.

Although the electronic age makes official surveillance easier, only wrongdoers need to be worried.

Yeah, and as long as you’re not Jewish, gay, handicapped, Roma, Socialist, or someone who likes to speak out against the state, you don’t have to worry about the Gestapo.

The death penalty should be an option for the most serious crimes.

No, the death penalty should be abolished along with the rest of the prison-industrial complex.  The state should not be in the business of meting out death to the people.  Some might see a contradiction between my anti-death penalty stance and my personal view that bloody revolutions are justifiable, but to them I say: “Up against the wall, pig.”

Also, here’s a little thing I like to point out about the death penalty and America’s place in the world.  Here’s a partial list of countries that America stands with in our attitudes and permissiveness towards capital punishment: Somalia, Zimbabwe, Sudan, Botswana, Ethiopia, Egypt, Libya, Uganda, DRC, Chad, Nigeria, Guinea, Afghanistan, Bahrain, China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudia Arabia, Syria, UAE, Yemen, Cuba.

Great company we keep!

Further readings: Amnesty International

In a civilised society, one must always have people above to be obeyed and people below to be commanded.

No.  No, man!  Shit no man, I believe you’d get your ass kicked sayin somethin like that, man.

Abstract art that doesn’t represent anything shouldn’t be considered art at all.

If calling a crucifix in a jar of urine “Piss Christ” and considering it art is wrong, I don’t wanna be right.

In criminal justice, punishment should be more important than rehabilitation.

Yeah, that’s working out really well for America, innit?  Compare recidivism rates between hardline countries and countries who build a penal system on rehabilitation to see what’s better.  (Hint: Their way is better)

It is a waste of time to try to rehabilitate some criminals.

That might be true (I can’t say if it is or isn’t), but that doesn’t mean that said criminals couldn’t be useful.  So we’ve got Hannibal Lecter in jail for life and we’re not gonna waste effort on rehabilitation.  That doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him, and see what makes him tick.  Information gained from this research could be used by psychiatrists, law enforcement, and the penal system.  Giving up and executing them seems like the real waste.

The businessperson and the manufacturer are more important than the writer and the artist.

Call me crazy, but I’d like to live in a society that has more to offer people than being mindless, soulless drones whose only purpose in life is to be cogs in the corporate, capitalist machine.  That’s not to say that manufacturers aren’t important.  The printing press is a fantastic invention and humanity is probably better off for it, but it takes a writer to write books to print.  The camera is a great thing in and of itself, but an artist can use it to show us things that are truly, soul-touchingly beautiful.

Mothers may have careers, but their first duty is to be homemakers.

Help!  I’m trapped in the 1850’s and I can’t get out!  Also, cholera really sucks!

Multinational companies are unethically exploiting the plant genetic resources of developing countries.

Yeah, this is an inarguable truth, not an opinion question.  Monsanto and other companies are destroying the agricultural industries in India and other global south countries by patenting the genomic sequences of plants that farmers have been growing for generations.  If that’s not unethical, there’s no such thing as ethics.

Making peace with the establishment is an important aspect of maturity.

This is something that tired old people say when they can’t take the fact that changing the fucked-up world we live in takes effort, and that to make things right you often have to give up some material comforts.  I mean I don’t want to be all punk rock/teenage angst  about it, but fuck the establishment.  If the establishment stands behind what’s right, good for them.  If they’re in the wrong, keep making molotovs.

Page 5 of 6

Astrology accurately explains many things.

I like the questions I don’t even have to think about.  If you think astrology can explain anything, much less many things, I have a few simple experiments I’d like you to run.  Astrology is ridiculous gobbeldygook, and we ought to be ashamed that so many people take it seriously.  A person who believes in the predictive power of astrology is a person who doesn’t understand the scientific method.

Further reading: Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan’s Cosmos: A Personal Voyage

You cannot be moral without being religious.

Horseshit.  And actually, I’d argue that an external morality, a code of ethics that’s forced on you from the outside, is one that’s less internalized, less yours than one that’s formed from within.  Yes, you heard right, I’m saying the morality found among non-believers to be superiour than that of the believers.  To any godly types reading this: what if God commanded you to murder?

Charity is better than social security as a means of helping the genuinely disadvantaged.

If you’re already charitable, then taxes on you to pay for social security (the generic term here, not the specific American public retirement fund) shouldn’t bother you that much.  If you’re not charitable (for no good reason), fuck you.  Progressive income taxation is a perfectly justifiable system for creating social safety nets.

Some people are naturally unlucky.

Disagree!  There’s no such thing as luck.  I don’t know how this relates to positions on the compass, but in my view believing in some external, ethereal force called Luck that guides whether or not good things happen to you is just magical thinking dressed in rational clothes.  Oh sure, you could say that finding a $20 bill on the ground is “lucky”, but to think of a person as unlucky, as if it’s some invisible raincloud hanging over their head, is ignoring the fact that there are probably actual, concrete factors that make that person’s life what it is.

It is important that my child’s school instills religious values.

How do you transcribe the sound of a guffaw?  Is it “HAW HAW”?  That’s the sound I’m making right now.  HAW HAW HAW!

Page 6 of 6

Sex outside marriage is usually immoral.

Do I even need to bother at this point?

A same sex couple in a stable, loving relationship, should not be excluded from the possibility of child adoption.

Equal rights for LGBTQ folks.  No ifs, no ands, no buts.  Also, this study.

Pornography, depicting consenting adults, should be legal for the adult population.

Oh boy.  Porn, porn, porn.  Where to begin on porn.  No, I’m not in favor of banning it, but I do advocate for a transformation of society whereby there will be no demand for porn, and thus, porn will disappear entirely.

Further reading: I Blame the Patriarchy, Rage Against the Man-chine

What goes on in a private bedroom between consenting adults is no business of the state.

I don’t see how you can disagree with this statement on any other grounds than “Eww, gays are icky!”  I mean really, is there a rational argument in support of sodomy laws?

No one can feel naturally homosexual.

Considering the multitudinous examples of homosexuality in animals, I’d have to give this a big fat thumbs down.  More importantly though, who cares if it is “natural” or not?  If people are born homosexual or just choose to be at some point later in life, who cares?  Saying “but we’re born this way” makes it some kind of natural affliction that should be tolerated only because you had no choice in being afflicted by it.  From birth or not, there’s nothing wrong with it, and it doesn’t hurt anyone.  Unless you don’t use lube, that is.

These days openness about sex has gone too far.

Ah, how I long to return to those halcyon days where every part of our body from the waist down was considered shameful and filthy.  I love referring to my crotch as “down there.”  Openness about sex hasn’t gone far enough, if you ask me!

Well, that wraps up the test in its current incarnation.  Hope that’s a little more illuminating, and remember:  if there’s a position more to the left of you, you’re probably wrong!