River Page:

On March 24, 1910, an eccentric researcher at the Department of Agriculture named Robert Irwin stood before the House Committee on Agriculture and declared: “Mr. Chairman and gentlemen of the committee, in studying the resources of our country for a good many years, I was led to the conclusion that we ought to have more creatures than we are raising here.” Irwin’s presence at the meeting was one of his own making. A long-time advocate of diversifying America’s livestock, Irwin had been the one who convinced Louisiana Representative Robert Broussard that hippos were the solution to both Louisiana’s invasive water hyacinth problem and an ongoing national meat shortage, leading to Broussard’s introduction of House Resolution 23261, better known as the “American Hippo Bill.” The bill — part of Irwin’s larger vision of populating the country with an array of exotic animals (Tibetan yaks in the Rockies, rhinos in the Southwest, dik-diks on family farms, etc.) — would appropriate $250,000 for the introduction of useful new animals into the United States, hippos among them. The bill was endorsed by President Theodore Roosevelt, who himself owned a menagerie of exotic pets, the New York Times, and others, but never passed.

Perhaps it’s for the best. Many of the animals Irwin wanted to import are large, dangerous and difficult to corral. Then again, so were the aurochs, ancient progenitors of the domestic cow. Irwin’s biggest shortcoming was that he didn’t have a plan to domesticate the animals once they were here. For much of human history, animal domestication has been a gradual and often centuries- or millennia-long process, and not always directed by humans. For example, it’s argued that cats “domesticated themselves,” based on DNA evidence. This same technology, genome sequencing, has allowed us to see the myriad of genetic changes that separate domesticated animals from wild ones. By identifying desirable genes during the domestication process, we could domesticate new species with greater speed and precision than our ancestors. That is, if we wanted to.

And we should want to. Although the United States has pioneered the captive breeding of some wild species on a commercial scale, like the American bison and American alligator, domestication isn’t mere captive breeding or even tameness. Many wild animals can be habituated to humans if captive-bred or taken from the wild at a young age, but that doesn’t make them domesticated. Domestication involves significant behavioral and morphological changes that are the result of human-directed genetic selection, not human interaction. In this sense Americans have never truly domesticated an animal — something ice-age cavemen and even Canadians have done.

So which animals should we domesticate? My husband says we should domesticate raccoons, opossums, skunks, capybaras, hyenas, bats, and manatees “because they’re cute,” and ravens, dolphins, and bears “because they’re useful.” (I’m not sure what purpose he thinks bears are useful for and did not ask for elaboration.) When I fielded the question on Twitter I got a variety of answers, but raccoons and ravens seemed to be recurring themes. Private ownership of ravens native to the United States is illegal because of the Migratory Bird Act of 1916. Theoretically, you could import foreign raven species to get around this law, but it isn’t ideal given the arduous regulations surrounding the import of foreign birds, not to mention laws in their native range which may prohibit their capture and sale. In order for a domestication project to work efficiently, you’d want to start with a large population from which the most genetically desirable could be selected. Foreign species aren’t really conducive to that in a highly regulated environment. Raccoons, on the other hand, are a perfect population to start with. Apart from their ubiquity in the wild, a small but long standing captive breeding population already exists due to fur farming and the exotic pet trade.

The raccoon could be domesticated in a similar fashion to the domesticated silver fox. In the mid-20th century, the fox, like the raccoon today, had a longstanding captive bred population that was selected mostly for size and color, producing some morphological changes but few behavioral ones. That started to change in the 1950s, when Soviet scientist Dmitri Belayev theorized that whatever genes were involved in the evolution of wolves into dogs might be present in their canine relative: the fox. He started testing the temperaments of silver foxes on fur farms across the Soviet Union, and noticed that within a few generations, some foxes were slightly more accepting of people than others. Excited about the prospect of creating a dog-like fox, he recruited a young researcher named Lyudmila Trut who acquired a population of foxes from fur farms, and in 1960 the two began selecting for the calmest 10 percent in their population. Within six generation, or about six years (foxes sexually mature at 10 months and have a gestation period of about two months), a subset of the foxes licked the researchers’ hands, whined when they left, and wagged their tails when humans approached. Basically, they were dogs. If this could be done in 6 years, a decade before the advent of genome sequencing in 1977,  imagine the speed in which we could turn raccoons into house pets, reducing aggression and (given the destructiveness of curious raccoons) trainability.

Personally, I’d like to see the culpeo domesticated — or rather, re-domesticated. The fox-like canid has already been domesticated once by the Selk’nam people, indigenous inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego  — a remote area located at the southernmost regions of modern day Argentina and Chile. Information on the “Fuegian dog” or “Yahgan dog,” as it was called by Europeans, is relatively scarce, as it was wiped out within a few decades after European settlement in the region, which started in the late 1800s. However, existing depictions show that the species was clearly domesticated and well integrated into the Selk’nam way of life. Photographs and drawings from the time show the animals curled up next to their owners as well as accompanying them on hunts. These same depictions, along with a few surviving taxidermy specimens, demonstrate that the species had also undergone significant morphological changes, including curled tails and a wide variation in coat colors — traits which are also present in dogs and the domesticated silver fox. Although the lack of a captive population (apart from a small number of zoo animals) would likely necessitate capturing wild subjects, the species is common and widespread throughout South America. But, since scientists have already sequenced the genomes of both the Fuegian dog and the culpeo, an ambitious team, perhaps with the help of AI, could deduce which genes (or expressions thereof) were responsible for domestication — it would stand to reason that at least some of these genes would be found in the wild culpeo population. The next step would be to find a suitable population from the wild using DNA testing, perhaps through a catch and release program in which suitable subjects are maintained as part of a captive breeding population and unsuitable ones returned back to the wild. It would take time, but, uniquely, it would be a chance to actually resurrect an extinct animal that people could keep in their apartments, something you couldn’t say for other would-be Lazarus creatures for which much time and money has been spent, such as the wooly mammoth.

Although I support the domestication of animals purely for companionship, some species could serve a purpose apart from companionship. An organization called Envisioning Access (formerly Helping Hands) once trained capuchin monkeys to care for people with mobility-related disabilities. The monkeys helped with drinks of water, retrieving dropped or out of reach items, pushed buttons, flipped switches and even helped reposition wheelchairs. The organization says it was forced to shutter its program after 41 years “due to a number of federal and state laws that prohibit primates in homes.” While it’s unfortunate that exceptions weren’t carved out for the disabled, the laws have a point: even well-trained capuchin monkeys are still technically wild animals — potentially destructive and dangerous ones at that. Truly domesticating capuchins or some other small primate would remedy the need for such prohibitions, make training easier, and reduce the risk of attacks. Captive populations of many species of monkey, including the capuchin, already exist in the United States and other developed nations due to the pet trade, zoos, and their use in medical research. This would allow us to mitigate some of the logistical, legal, and ethical issues associated with capturing and importing wild-caught monkeys.

In his testimony to Congress over a hundred years ago, Robert Irwin said “There is not any reason why we cannot find a place in the United States for every one of the more than 100 species of animals that are in existence today and not domesticated.” Though the particulars of Irwin’s vision might have been questionable — hippos kill about 500 people a year and are far from the docile river-cows he portrayed them as — his ambition was admirable. The fact that much of the press and many major political figures took his ideas seriously is awe-inspiring. One can’t imagine such a thing today, in an America where all but the smallest ideas are derided as fantasies. This era of tiny thinking ought to end. We ought to have more creatures!

It would be interesting to see if domesticating certain endangered or threatened species — bats, for instance — might improve their populations.

Not included here is the fact that many communities ban ownership of the animals listed here beyond the aforementioned primates. Also not included here are the practicalities of having most of these animals as inside animals, meaning that they have to either be trained to go outside or be litter-trained inside, unless you want your house to smell like the monkey house at your nearest zoo. Obviously large animals — say, horses — can’t be kept in your house, but generally pets should be indoor pets because outdoor pets are easy to not give enough attention to them. (I’m pretty sure dolphins and manatees would have to be outside, however.)

Aaron Renn:

There was a minor online kerfuffle last week when South Carolina Rep. Nancy made made a joke at a prayer breakfast about rejecting her fiancé’s sexual advances that morning in order to make it to the event on time. This produced a bit of an online controversy about her cohabitating out of wedlock as an evangelical Christian while speaking at a prayer breakfast.

One particular tweet about Mace’s comments caught my eye. It was from Joel Berry, managing editor of the evangelical humor and politics site the Babylon Bee.

Maybe we “patriarchal, male-headship Christians” should reserve our ire for her loser fiancé who — instead of leading her spiritually and selflessly — is treating her like an unpaid prostitute.

I don’t know Berry and don’t want to overly focus on him. But this tweet is a sort of distilled essence of how many conservative evangelicals view gender relations.

There are a few of elements at play here. The first is how conservative Christian gender theology, which applies even to those who don’t claim the term “patriarchal”, puts the blame on men for almost everything. She’s the one making a public statement at a prayer breakfast, but her fiancé, whose name most people couldn’t even tell you, is the one who should be castigated. Undoubtedly, from the standpoint of Christian morality, he is also in sin. But that doesn’t make him responsible for her sin as well.

Berry isn’t the only one who talks like this. It includes pastors and theologians as well. Matt Schmucker, writing in a book called Sex and the Supremacy of Christ, edited by John Piper and Justin Taylor, said:

We do not want a brother standing at the altar on his wedding day looking at his beautiful bride only to imagine behind her the boys and men who took advantage of her and robbed her of the trust and confidence that she now needs for her husband. We do not want a sister standing at the altar on her wedding day looking at her handsome groom only to imagine behind him a string of relationships with girls and women he failed to honor, and knowing that images in his head from pornography use and past flings may stick with him for a long time.

Note that he blames men both for their own sins, and for the acts committed by women. Even for the bride, it is men who “took advantage of” and “robbed” her. The use of victim language here implies that she is not morally responsibility for her own action.

Back in newsletter #77 I made similar observations about the way former superstar pastor Mark Driscoll talked about single mothers.

For all too many evangelical leaders, men are 100% to blame, 100% of the time.

As pastor Justin Buzzard put it in his book Date Your Wife:

Your wife isn’t the problem. You’re the problem. I’m the problem. Men are the problem. If you want to change a marriage, change the man. If you want to change your marriage, you must first see that you are the main problem in your marriage…You are what is wrong with you marriage. It’s your fault. This is the second most important truth to learn from this book: it’s your fault. You are the husband. You are the man.

This blaming of men is justified under the principle that the Bible makes the man the head of the marriage, and thus he bears responsibility for everything that happens within it. But as in the cases of Berry, Schmucker, and Driscoll, they do this even for men who aren’t married.

Evangelical teaching about male headship in marriage is typically heavily qualified to make very clear that the man is only the head when it comes to his actual wife – not to any other women. This is usually done so as to make clear that there is no obligation by women to submit to any man other than their actual husband. But what we see here is that they want to apply the responsibility they put on husbands onto men who are not married and whom they would say do not have the authority of a husband.

Lastly, I should note that while Berry says he is a patriarchalist, he apparently has no problem with Mace serving as a US Representative. Not only does he seem to think it’s ok for her to have a career, but to serve in the traditional male role of political leader.

My impression is that most people who describe themselves as believing in patriarchy actually do believe women should not work outside the house, or at least should be primarily oriented towards the domestic sphere. But outside of the relatively small neo-patriarchy movement, conservative evangelicals frequently take a feminist inflected point of view when it comes to women and the public roles they can perform.

The net result of this is that men are expected to live up to an extremely high burden of responsibility, self-sacrifice, servant leadership, etc. In essence, they are expected, from a responsibility perspective at least, to carry out the duties and bear the burdens of husbands from the pre-industrial or pre-feminist past. Whereas women are generally allowed to reject the majority of their old responsibilities as extra-Biblical anachronisms. They tell men to be a 1950’s TV dad like Ward Cleaver, but they’d never dream of telling women to behave like 1950s TV housewife June Cleaver. I describe this in more detail in my view of Sen. Josh Hawley’s latest book on manhood where he very much operates in this style.

I don’t want to attribute the views expressed in Berry’s tweet to all of conservative evangelicals. For those who commented on Mace, the ones I saw mostly criticized her. The vast majority would reject the label of patriarchal. And we should expect that Berry, because he works for the Babylon Bee, is going to post provocative and edgy takes. Although I disagree with him here, I don’t have anything against him personally, and enjoy the Bee from time to time. At the same time, the general thrust of his tweet is an echo of a very real and even dominant strain of thinking within conservative evangelicalism. In fact, that’s almost certainly where he got his ideas from.

Some pastors might argue that this is what the Bible teaches. If that is what they truly believe, then fair enough. We all have to align ourselves with what we genuinely believe to be the truth. At the same time, they should be fully honest about what they are actually teaching.

Why do I bring this up? It’s again because of the stark disconnect between the hordes of young men being drawn to online influencers like Jordan Peterson, Joe Rogan, and Andrew Tate, and the comparative lack of a draw to the church and other traditional institutions and authority figures. Given the vision of manhood put forward by the church, it’s no wonder so many men don’t want any part of it. Even if they can’t articulate exactly what’s wrong with what they are hearing, they can sense that there is something off. At the same time, we also see growing post-familialism not just in society but also within the church. This too represents a major challenge.

While I do not claim to have the complete answer, I do believe that there are substantive problems in the things conservative evangelicals teach about gender. In light of the trends I just mentioned, I believe this is one of the most important areas where the church needs to course correct.

That prompted this comment:

… So [women[ cannot be held responsible for any evil they do – it is all the fault of outside forces or circumstances and the only other group left to blame: Men. So men must be made responsible for ALL evil, including the evil committed by women. And women’s influence (indeed, takeover) over areas is lauded as a good and righteous thing because women are innately good so what they affect/control is automatically considered more civilized and good (or better than if men alone were to handle it).

This line of thinking is probably the biggest cancer of the last century in regards to gender and was ushered into the church in the 1970s through 1990s through the efforts of men like Gilder, Piper, and organizations like Focus on the Family – all who claimed to be “For the family” but in reality were pro-female, anti-male and absolutely anti-Biblical. Where the Bible is unapologetically pro-male (and pro-female too of course) with each person individually responsible for their own conduct, these men (and their acolytes) systematically subverted the traditional, Biblical, patriarchal balance to appease the shifting culture and appear more “enlightened”. They should be directly credited (blamed at least in part) for the abortion death toll, the divorce toll, fatherless epidemic, and the raging ravages of feminism in Christianity and culture at large.

And the men currently defending it (and perpetuating it) have zero excuse at this point in history.

And …

Perhaps it’s being in two sacramental churches (which as a feature don’t include 90-minute haranguing sermons on Sunday mornings), but I have never considered myself an evangelical, and never will. It is weird to see people considered politically conservative acting like men-hating leftists, but there it is.