Are Debates about “Morality Policy” Really about Morality? Framing Opposition to Gay and Lesbian Rights

A growing number of studies identify “morality policy” as a distinct category of public policy and have tested several related hypotheses. This article reexamines morality policy as a conceptual category and an empirical phenomenon. As others have pointed out, we should distinguish morality policy from other policies by how political actors frame issues rather than by its substantive content. In the first part of the article, I argue that we should view morality “policy” as one of two broad strategies for framing issues, rather than try to fit it into existing policy typologies. Next, I move beyond viewing morality policy as a single, broad category by identifying several distinct subtypes of morality frames. In the second part of the article, I challenge a basic assumption of the morality policy paradigm—that advocates frame morality policy issues by engaging in moralistic discourse that reflects their basic beliefs and values. Gay rights issues are a strong test of this claim because the literature cites them as typical examples of morality policy, and gay rights opponents would seem especially likely to engage in “morality talk” in framing these issues. Very few studies of morality policy actually observe framing behavior and what it reveals about the political strategy of each side. Congressional and state‐level data reveal that opponents usually do not frame gay rights issues in terms of the morality of homosexuality or religious injunctions against it, even in most states where we would expect to find it. Instead, they emphasize frames that focus on alleged negative social consequences from gay rights and procedural arguments about who should make policy and how it should be made. Although many opponents of gay rights disapprove of homosexuality on moral and religious grounds, their framing behavior reflects more complex strategic considerations. I speculate that opponents deemphasize morality talk because it is politically disadvantageous compared with other kinds of frames, and because of greater acceptance of gays in society. In reducing gay rights debates to moral and religious judgments, the morality policy perspective obscures the complexity of advocates' framing strategies and ignores many of their most important arguments.     

Post-Roman crop production and processing: Archaeological evidence from Goldthorpe,South Yorkshire

The remains of a ditched field system dating from the late Iron Age to the early post-Roman period, and two associated corn drying ovens (dating to the 5th–6th centuries AD) were revealed during archaeological excavations at Goldthorpe, South Yorkshire. The site was excavated during 2012 and 2013, during which bulk environmental samples were taken in order to retrieve any surviving botanical remains from deposits associated with the corn drying ovens, and other features across the excavated area. Early post-Roman occupation is under-represented in the archaeological record, especially in northern England, as such human activity and subsistence during this period are currently not well understood. This paper combines evidence for the field system, the physical remains of the corn drying ovens and their associated botanical remains to further understand early post-Roman change and continuity in landscape use and crop production and processing practices.     

Control of Indigenous Archaeological Heritage in Ontario,Canada

Few Indigenous peoples have control over their heritage, despite international recognition of this right in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2007. In Ontario, Canada, the Ontario Heritage Act, R.S.O. 1990 regulates archaeology and grants licences to archaeologists to investigate archaeological heritage. Indigenous people want more control of their archaeological heritage in Ontario. To uphold Indigenous rights to archaeological heritage in Ontario, heritage legislation and policy needs to be revised and site protection increased. This paper recommends that Indigenous archaeological heritage in Ontario would be best protected by strengthening Ontario government land development policy and legislation to require the free, prior, and informed consent from affected Indigenous communities before removal of significant archaeological sites and remains from their ancestral territories.     

Are Ukraine’s reforms breaking its state capture? An agenda for genuine change

Abstract

Ukraine is one of a handful of post-communist countries that has a lower Gross Domestic Product today than in 1990, according to the World Bank. The problem is that it has seen too little reform. The country has experienced three serious periods of reform, but none has been as important as the reforms of 2015. The big question is whether Ukraine has finally broken out of persistent state capture. This paper by long-lasting Ukraine-watcher Anders Åslund suggests that Ukraine has carried out greater economic reforms than ever before with the unification of energy prices, large budget cuts, floating exchange rates, halved payroll tax, and a major bank purge. Yet, the question remains whether Ukraine has really broken out of state capture and whether it will be able to turn to a steady course of high economic growth of 5–7% a year.     

Accurate sex identification of ancient human remains using DNA shotgun sequencing

Accurate identification of the biological sex of ancient remains is vital for critically testing hypotheses about social structure in prehistoric societies. However, morphological methods are imprecise for juvenile individuals and fragmentary remains, and molecular methods that rely on particular sex-specific marker loci such as the amelogenin gene suffer from allelic dropout and sensitivity to modern contamination. Analyzing shotgun sequencing data from 14 present-day humans of known biological sex and 16 ancient individuals from a time span of 100 to ∼70,000 years ago, we show that even relatively sparse shotgun sequencing (about 100,000 human sequences) can be used to reliably identify chromosomal sex simply by considering the ratio of sequences aligning to the X and Y chromosomes, and highlight two examples where the genetic assignments indicate morphological misassignment. Furthermore, we show that accurate sex identification of highly degraded remains can be performed in the presence of substantial amounts of present-day contamination by utilizing the signature of cytosine deamination, a characteristic feature of ancient DNA.     

‘Keeping a Line Open’: Britain and the 1979 Coup in Grenada

On 13 March 1979, the first unconstitutional change of power in the Eastern Caribbean occurred in Grenada, a member of the Commonwealth, when the radical New Jewel Movement overthrew Prime Minister Eric Gairy. This article examines the policy of the British government towards the new People's Revolutionary Government (PRG) during the first month of the ‘revolution’. It demonstrates that in contrast to the alarmist reactions of some of Grenada's neighbours, and the United States' intense concern about the PRG's pro-Cuban leanings, British policy was more optimistic and relaxed and designed to ‘keep a line open’ to Grenada.