2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/34828Recent attempts to resolve the ambiguity in the loop quantum gravity description of the quantization of area has led to the idea that $j=1$ edges of spin-networks dominate in their contribution to black hole areas as opposed to $j=1/2$ which would naively be expected. This suggests that the true gauge group involved might be SO(3) rather than SU(2) with attendant difficulties. We argue that the assumption that a version of the Pauli principle is present in loop quantum gravity allows one to maintain SU(2) as the gauge group while still naturally achieving the desired suppression of spin-1/2 punctures. Areas come from $j=1$ punctures rather than $j=1/2$ punctures for much the same reason that photons lead to macroscopic classically observable fields while electrons do not.An earlier paper (gr-qc/0305073) with a slightly different title received an "honorable mention" in the 2003 Essay Competition of the Gravity Research Foundation. This paper argues from geometric quantization for a spin-statistics connection even when the SU(2) under consideration to define ``spin'' is not that of rotations in 3 space dimensionsGeneral Relativity and Quantum Cosmologytext