In Uganda, a bill is about to pass. It will probably make homosexuality punishable by life in prison, or death. HIV prevention programs will be outlawed entirely, on the grounds of “encouraging homosexuality”. Supporters say that homosexuality is “evil,” “wrong,” and “unnatural,” and also that it is a choice.

“Hold on,” I thought as I read this. Apart from all the human rights and ethical concerns blatantly dismissed right there, isn’t “homosexuality is unnatural” a factual claim? Can’t that be definitively proven right or wrong?

And the answer is, yes, it is, and yes, it’s been proven not to be true. Science has proven that the brains of homosexual people are, from early ages, different from the brains of heterosexual people, for no specifc reason, and that it isn’t a conscious choice. So why is the Ugandan government still claiming this? That’s why I don’t understand people sometimes. Listening to a talk by skepticist author Sam Harris about morals, I thought about the belief that most of us are brought up with: that everyone has a right to their own opinions. He said that most values and morals can be reduced to facts, and that, by extension, these facts can be right or wrong.

He gives the analogy of corporal punishment: is it good to allow a young child to be hit with a wooden board, raising bruises, in order to improve that child’s character? Many people would say not, most research would disagree. Then perhaps we can dismiss this point of view as incorrect. Then, we can agree it’s a good idea to ban this practice in schools in the Southwest, and encourage teachers to find less violent ways of dealing with children.

Wait, I just agreed that a tradition hundreds of years old should be outlawed. Yes, I did: because trusted, proffesional research has shown it to be ineffective and harmful. Even respected cultures can have bad ideas about ethics.

“Who are we to pretend that we know so little about human wellbeing that we have to be nonjudgmental about this?” Harris asks. That isn’t to say there’s only one right way to, say, teach a student, but we know there are definitely bad ways as well.

Science and evidence are more than mere forces in our lives: they’re ways of knowing something is true. Like Michael Specter, a writer for the New Yorker, said, “You’re not entitled to your own facts.” I find it sickening that people like Fred Phelps can preach similar thoughts about homosexuality, that congressmen can disagree on the existence of climate change, and that 33 percent of homeopathic chiropractors can believe that vaccinations are useless.

Which brings us to another controversy. In 1998, a British medical journal published a study hinting at a connection between autism and a popular vaccine against measles, mumps, and rubella. Hundreds of follow-up studies were done, showing that the connection didn’t exist. Most of the paper’s authors admitted that they had made mistakes in reporting the data.

And yet, 12 years later, we live in the only country where the total number of measles vaccinations is going down, where thousands of parents are refusing to have their children vaccinated at all. Have these parents thought carefully, and decided that the possibility that their child could catch polio, whooping cough, tetanus, hepatitis, and cervical cancer, is worth a nonexistent risk? I don’t think so.

I don’t discourage skepticism. Of course, people should question everything they see — in this world, we have reason to. On the other hand, when they’re offered lots of convincing evidence, there is no reason for them not to believe it, even if it’s not what they originally thought. Just like there’s no reason to beat kids for not paying constant attention in school.

We know it just doesn’t work like that.