[Mod] LGBTQ Rights v1.2

NOW UPDATED TO v1.2 - SEE LINK TO NEW DOWNLOAD - 14/10/2013

LGBTQ Rights
A Democracy 3 Mod
By Elinor
v1.2

Download link: http://www.mediafire.com/download/unpklrnbidr493f/LGBTQModInstall.exe

Or in zip format:LGBTQ_Rights.zip (14.2 KB)
This mod adds in three policies and three dilemmas concerning LGBTQ rights. Set policies on same-sex relationships, LGBTQ discrimination and transsexual recognition. Decide whether to allow gays to serve openly in the military, whether to allow same-sex adoption and whether polyamorous marriages should be allowed.

With thanks to Iamthatis137 for the incepting idea!

CHANGE LOG:
v1.2:
Made Same-Sex Recognition policy uncancelable, and enabled by default. You now need to definitely decide to what degree you recognise same sex relationships.
v1.1:
Reduced health effect from gender transitions act.
New shiny installer to make things easier.
v1.0:
Following the 0.5 update, the sliders are correctly modded in. As such there’s no more overwriting of files and the mod can be easily completely removed. (Thanks Cliff!)

NOTE ON INSTALLATION:
To install, just run the installer and point it at your Democracy 3 directory (this should be the default option unless you changed it during your Democracy 3 install)

Here are the three policies:

[code]LGBTQ Discrimination Act
Prevents citizens being discriminated against on the basis of sexuality or gender identity. e.g. being fired for being gay.

Same-Sex Relations Act
Throughout history, same-sex relationships have seen varying levels of acceptance and legality. Supporters of same-sex rights argue that full recognition of same-sex relationships, including marriage, is important for equality and that same-sex relationships are as loving and supportive as heterosexual ones. Critics argue that statistics show that same-sex relationships are less stable and that marriage is about procreation, and some groups argue that same-sex relationships are simply unnatural or immoral.
Options range from allowing gay marriage to making all same-sex relationships illegal.

Gender Transition Act
Transsexual people are those whose psychological gender is mismatched with the biological sex they are born with. Many of these people wish to transition into and be recognised as the gender they identify as, and this act governs to what degree the law recognises this. Supporters argue that legally recognised transition is incredibly important for a transsexual person’s mental and physical well-being, while some conservatives and religious groups see it as a needless assault on traditional gender roles and societal structures.
Options range from making gender transition illegal to legally changing all records of a person’s gender.[/code]

Oh! And the dilemmas. Will you…

• Allow gay people to serve openly in the military?
• Allow same-sex couples to adopt children?
• Allow polyamorous groups to get married?

Known issues and plans for the future:

[code] Currently, adding dilemmas seems to make the crime situation in the UK a lot worse at the start. So this is inadvertantly an increased difficulty patch for the UK. Bug reported here: http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=38&t=8386

Same sex marriage is still a dilemma. I am hoping that this can be suppressed when more of the modding features are announced.

It'd be nice if the cost of marriage allowance could be affected by gay marriage. I will update if this becomes possible, as above.

YOUR SUGGESTION/BUG REPORT GOES HERE (or, hopefully, in the change log. The point is, if you have any ideas I would be pleased to hear them).[/code]

So that’s my first mod… Please give it a go! If you have any comments, thoughts or suggestions, please share them! Right now it’s fairly simple, and I’m sure it’ll improve as I learn more, but also with all of your lovely brains.

-El

Thank you so much for creating this mod! It sounds great! I can’t wait to try it.

I’ll be fixing slider modding in the next patch!

Thank you Ciffski! I’ll update the mod when the patch is released.

The mod has now been updated following Cliffski patching the game to make modding sliders work correctly. See the attachment on the OP for the update.

Thanks for doing this Cliff!

-El

A very nice little mod. A few wishlist items. I’m asking from something of a position of coding ignorance, so I don’t know if these can all be included in a mod package or no.

• The gay marriage policy makes the existing gay marriage dilemma redundant. I presume I can manually remove that somewhere; is it possible for the mod to do this?

• I may be missing the point, but I’d be interested to hear the reasoning behind the change in crime rate with gay marriage, and the health stat on the gender act.

• I was going to suggest the anti-discrimination act could be folded into the race discrimination act, but on reflection, the effects are different enough.

Good job!

Thanks very much for the feedback, Rick! I’m glad you like it. To respond to your questions:

• I’d like to remove this through the mod too, but at the moment it doesn’t seem to be possible. If that changes though, I’ll definitely update!
• The Same-Sex Recognition Act only has an effect on crime if you make same-sex relationships illegal. This is because some people will still have these relationships even if they are outlawed, so by making this illegal you’re making more people criminals. There are plenty of real life examples from around the world and from history to show this is the case.
• Similarly, health is affected by banning gender transitions because it prevents those transgender individuals affected from getting the treatment they need. This includes not just surgery or hormone treatments, but counselling other transition-related support as well. This leads to other health problems for this group.

Thanks again for the feedback.

-El

This mod looks fantastic, I’ll be installing it later this evening to try it out. I might even try my hand at some mods once I’ve had a chance to look through the modding guide.

Puffy, I hope you enjoy it. Please let me know what you think or any ideas you have. And definitely give modding a go! It’s not terribly complicated to make a simple mod, and I’d really like to try more of other people’s mods.

I see. I’d evidently miscalculated the crime effect for Same-sex relationships act. On reflection, it’s pretty obvious.

Did you consider attempting to model public attitudes towards LGBTQ people? What I’m imagining is a simulation value (I’m struggling for a good name for it, but I’ll go with ‘Tolerance’ for now). This would be increased by the proportion of liberals, conservatives and religious people; and by more permissive approaches the the policies and dilemmas included in your mod. High simulation values would please the liberals and increase their numbers. Low values would please the religious and conservatives, increase conservative numbers, and possibly increase violent crime (hate crimes, etc.)

With regard to the health effect from Trans Recognition. I don’t at all dispute that for the people affected, this is an enormously important health issue. However, I’m not convinced that trans people make up enough of the population for it to have a national effect. My 10 minutes on the internet doesn’t find tremendously accurate values for the numbers of trans people. This report from the EHRC (bbc.co.uk/news/10401629).

Even taking the upper limit, we’re discussing an issue affecting 0.8% of the populace. When you contrast that with the proportion of the populace who (for example) utilise the NHS, consume alcohol, drive cars too fast, or might be encourage to buy healthy food if it was made cheaper, I’m not convinced it’s a large enough effect to warrant modelling.

Obviously, it’s your baby! But there’s my tuppence, anyway.

Sorry, I’ve been busy with school and work. However, I did install the mod and have been playing with it in my games. I love it! It was definitely what I was looking for! The policies and dilemmas and their descriptions show you have a keen understanding of this topic. Also, the icons are very nice looking.

Thank you so much! I look forward to your future mods!

Rick, you make a good point. In retrospect, I think the effect size at least is a little big. My thinking was to give it some effect beyond just popularity, but I think this needs a bit of reconsideration. I will update when I get a chance. Thanks again for your thoughts!

Iamthatis, thanks! I’m really glad you like it. I’m glad it’s in line with what you were thinking too.

-El

-Apparently, you cannot remove the “Ban same-sex marriage” Dilemma manually or any original file because it makes the game crash. I assume because other objects are looking for the GUI but cannot find it. I’m not sure if at some point this will be supported for modding.

I do love how transparent and easily-modded Clifski made almost all of the game’s files. I am not a programmer either, but I do know how to manipulate files and change textual data! You can definitely change all the text that you would see in the game for continuity’s sake. I changed it slightly to be about whether ministers wishing to perform religious marriage ceremonies for same-sex couples should be banned from doing so, regardless of whether it’s legal. I figure that’s similar enough that it makes sense, remains consistent with the effects, and doesn’t clash aesthetically with El’s marriage policy. If you want to change the name as it shows up in the game, make sure you change it everywhere you see “Ban same-sex marriage”. Do NOT change the GUI name or any of the tags or the game will crash. But anywhere you recognize text you see in the game, you can change it to whatever you like. Youcan aslo easily edit effects, Political Capital costs, etc this way. You can find the file in the Democracy 3 folder> data> simulation> dilemma> SameSexMarriage. It’s a txt file that’s easy to edit. I would definitely back it up as well as anything else before you make any changes to it. I hope I’m not violating any kind of policy or engaging in risky behavior by telling you how to do that.

-There are two fairly recent real-world examples of crime being connected with same-sex relations being illegal in the U.S. (Unfortunately). Crime, I assume, would be any breaking of the law. Before the repeal of Section III of the Defense of Marriage Act (which still stands contrary to what so many were saying all summer), bi-national couples who were married in states where they legally could be, faced a very difficult problem. When the immigrant spouse’s visa expired, they were unable to receive a Green Card via their marriage to a citizen like an immigrant married to a citizen of the opposite sex can. While their marriage was recognized by the state where they married, it was not recognized by the federal government. What is very troubling is these marriages were sincere and not schemes entered into just to secure citizenship. In fact, it was the opposite. Being together meant possibly being torn apart. So, many couples had to go into hiding from the INS. Effectively, they were illegal immigrants and criminals.

Also, I really like that El called the most extreme restriction “SAME-SEX RELATIONS ILLEGAL”. Prior to the US Supreme Court case Lawrence v Texas (2005) 14 states had sodomy laws which could still be enforced. This means that adult men having consensual relations with each other with no pay involved were criminals… In the case of Mr. Lawrence, police actually entered his home without a warrant (under very ridiculous and embarrassing circumstances) and charged him for violating Texas’ “Homosexual Conduct” Law. Even though there are four different police accounts with two stating that there were no relations occurring. Luckily, that case overturned all sodomy laws that were on the books, making private same-sex relations between adults legal in all 50 states for the first time. Recently, public officials in the south have been strongly campaigning to have these laws reinstated. Because apparently it’s that severe of a social problem that citizens need to lose their privacy and be policed in their bedrooms. But yeah, there’s some perspective as to how outlawing certain kinds of relations in an otherwise ‘free’ and Democratic society can lead to crime.

As far as the health effect of progressive transgender policies, I think it would not only help the transgender people themselves but increase the overall health and well-being of society. I get your point about the very small population. However, it may mark a dynamic shift in gender constructs and strict gender roles. Which would be better for everyone’s sanity, in the least. Also, and most important of all: coming up with formulas for the effects you want is REALLY HARD!!!

Hi is it ok if I package this up into an installer and list it on
positech.co.uk/democracy3/mods.html
Cheers

Hi Cliff. I’d be totally happy for you to do that, yes! I’ve actually packaged it up into an installer as part of my update to v1.1. I wanted to see how easy it was, and it turns out it was fairly easy.

Thanks,

-El

A few more thoughts on the mod now that I’ve had time to run it a few times.

The dilemmas are great; very well worded so that both sides are shown, and they really do make me think. I find the discrimination act very useful (provided the hardliners aren’t trying to blow me up).

As a human being, I’m in favour of fully legal gay marriage. I’m also fairly supportive of the trans recognition issue (by the slider, I flip-flop between post- and pre-op recognition). The thing is, with Democracy being an idealism-crushing simulator, I haven’t used each policy once apart from a test run to see the effects. I sort of end up viewing it like maternity leave or consumer rights; something that’s nice to have that I’d like to implement, IF I have some spare political capital around. Depending on my ministers, I find that after the political honeymoon wears off, I normally stabilise with a maximum capital of 26-28. That puts the gay marriage act out of reach. With that in mind, I’d suggest two options.

A) Make gay marriage’s implementation cost slightly lower. It might be that my capital maximum is unusually low, but if not, then dropping it even two points greatly increases the chance it’ll be used.

B) I think a strong argument could be made for keeping gay marriage and trans rights as mandatory policies. In a way, it’s like alcohol; the government MUST have a stance on whether or not this behaviour is going to be allowed. I suppose the counterpoints are policies like Legalised Prostitution/Gambling, but in that case, the “Not allowed” option is stated by not enacting the policy.

Rick, you make a couple of interesting points.

First of all, I’m glad you like the dilemmas. I did quite a bit of thinking and research to write them, and I’m glad other people think I did an okay job representing both sides. Perhaps unsurprisingly given I created this mod, I’m probably more than a little biased on the issues involved, so it was something I was concerned about.

Having played with this mod more, I’m increasingly sympathetic to dropping the implementation cost of the gay marriage to maybe 25, as I think those 5 points could be the difference between it being expensive to implement and not being really practical to implement. I think it’s also a fair suggestion to say that this policy maybe should be mandatory, as pretty much every country legally recognizes marriage, so needs legislation on what it will call marriage. I’ll have a play around and think about that, make one of those two changes.

I’m more resistant to making the trans rights policy mandatory, because many countries don’t have this kind of policy. Gender transitions aren’t illegal, and people are allowed to present themselves as a different gender to their birth sex, but there is no formal legal recognition of this. Birth certificates, etc., can’t be changed. There’s just no recognition within the law for it. This is true even in some western, first world countries. An example of this is the Republic of Ireland, which currently has no mechanism to allow a transsexual person to alter their birth certificate or other legal documents but doesn’t ban the practice.

EDIT: Also, thinking about it a little more, I think the fact that you often don’t feel you have the capital to put some of these policies into place is another interesting example of Democracy 3’s status as an idealism crusher. You’re prepared to ignore this section of the community because there are other issues you see as being more important most of the time. This is true even if you support their rights in principle. That’s kind of exactly crushing your idealism with practicality. (This isn’t a judgement on you at all, by the way, I often do exactly the same thing in the context of the game)

Thanks very much for your feedback, and if you have any other thoughts I’d certainly be interested to hear them!

-El

Is it possible for you to make the mod available as a zip file that I can just drop in the mods folder? Just means I can run it on my linux machine.

Good points. On further consideration, I find I agree with the suggestion to make gay marriage a mandatory policy, but leave trans recognition optional.

Democracy 3 is satisfying, but a gradual grindstone applied to my soul. In 2, I could turn Freedonia (eventually) into a full fledged utopia. Budget running a fractional surplus, deficit paid off, all metrics at the best possible level, and all the ‘desirable’ policies (space program, etc.) fully implemented. In 3… even by the endgame, it’s all hanging by a thread. Suddenly, a market meltdown pushes that surplus into a threatening deficit, and I have to consider boosting taxes again. I’ve eradicated poverty, but then the welfare minister quits, knackering all the welfare policies and bringing it back to 0.2 or so.

Honestly, I’m becoming increasingly impressed every time a government minister appears without the thousand-yard stare!

Rick and Puffy, both of your wishes are granted! I have updated to 1.2 with Same-Sex Recognition now mandatory with heterosexual marriage only by default and offering both a packaged .exe installer and a compressed zip download for your convenience. See the OP for both.

Enjoy!

-El