Sunday, November 30, 2003
Why Jonah Goldberg Should Support the FMA
I'm not sure what to make of Jonah Goldberg's writing on gay marriage. On one hand, although he believes (for some unsubstantiated reason) that "everyone agrees that we are well on our way to living in a country where allowing same-sex marriage is the law of the land," he laments that political considerations are almost certain to bring it about too quickly, by means of the courts:
But the federal and state courts are blazing ahead of the public and any chance of such compromises. As with abortion and affirmative action, both parties are so scared of seeming "divisive," they'd rather have an unelected judiciary make the tough calls for them. There's no easier dodge for a politician than "It's out of my hands." The end result is a public policy fait accompli, crafted and implemented without democratic input at any level.
On the other hand, he opposes the result of months and years of consensus building among those who share his opposition to court-imposed gay marriage: the Federal Marriage Amendment. I may be incorrect in the source, but it seems to me that Goldberg's been taken in by the (arguably deceptive) rhetoric of Andrew Sullivan. Consider this, from the first column linked above:
Marriage has a specific meaning: a union of a man and a woman. But the state shouldn't bar gays or anyone else from naming heirs or sharing property as they see fit.
What has gotten lost in this emotionally tangled wrangling is that gays aren't barred from doing either of these things. More germane to the discussion of the FMA, however, is Goldberg's "or anyone else." Despite his assertion that "many take ['legal incidence' of marriage] to mean civil unions as well," Goldberg need only read Ramesh Ponnuru's essay a couple of National Reviews ago to see that most of the disagreement — all of it, among those who oppose gay marriage — is about what types of civil unions the amendment will allow. Indeed, a sentence was recently added to the amendment to clarify that civil relationships can't be based on the presumption of sexual intimacy.
I've argued that states will still be able to pass civil union laws that include gender and consanguinity clauses, and it seems more than likely that the courts, as currently constituted, would allow those laws to stand. If this doesn't prove to be the case, then it wouldn't prove to be the case with any civil union laws. First of all, no civil union law could possibly exclude same-sex heterosexuals from entering into such arrangements; as Sullivan quipped with opposite intent:
How would a state legislature or the official granting civil union licenses know that? Short of putting videocams in people's bedrooms, they surely couldn't.
Second of all, same-sex family members would have to be included, as well. If the judicial system follows the logic of its own precedent on this issue (which, granted, may be a big if), then, in the language of the Massachusetts Supreme Court, a state would have no "rational basis" to exclude close family members, because there would be no chance of their conceiving a child. Simply put, also in the Mass. court's language, sexual orientation cannot be the basis for exclusion from a civil arrangement.
Another echo of Sullivan in Goldberg's latest column is that the marriage amendment would ban gay marriage "for all time." That's not true, and what makes it all the more jarring in this instance is that Goldberg immediately thereafter calls the FMA "a replay of Prohibition." The thing is: I went to a liquor store just yesterday and bought a case of beer. So much for "amendments are forever"! In the case of Prohibition, forever lasted just under fifteen years, at which time the twenty-first amendment repealed it. The main distinction, currently, is that Constitutional amendments have tended to be "progressive" — granting new rights or adding new specifics — whereas the FMA would solidify current law and require that the new rights that it forbids be granted by means of Constitutional amendment.
The fact of the matter is that the Federal Marriage Amendment will only do exactly what Goldberg wishes were the case without it: allow (force) the nation to take its time experimenting and debating. That he doesn't see this seems related to his unfair assumption that supporters of the FMA just want the whole debate to go away and think the FMA will accomplish that goal. Some may desire it to go away — although I'd suggest that many, many more supporters of gay marriage or undecided folks desire this — but they would be foolish to believe that it will.
About all the FMA does, if we take an objective view of it within the context of history, is state something that has been the law of the land all along and ensure that it does not cease to be the law of the land until a critical mass of Americans are convinced that a change would be for the better. This is what makes the other component of Goldberg's argument strike me as a bit odd:
I can't tell you what the unforeseeable consequences of such an amendment are because, duh, they're unforeseeable. But what I can predict with almost mathematical certitude is that the FMA will not make this issue go away. Rather, it will more likely serve to radicalize the anti-FMA forces in much the same way Roe vs. Wade radicalized anti-abortion forces.
Goldberg's own examples alone ought to give him reason to reconsider. Prohibition made illegal an activity that had been legal and that had deep roots in the culture. Actually, it wasn't so much an "activity" as a thing that became forbidden, and as such, the "radicalization" involved efforts to procure it. In contrast, does Jonah believe that the Mob will start performing gay marriages? If it does, then the mobsters won't be doing anything differently than what various religious and other organizations throughout the country already do. The marriages just won't be granted government recognition.
For its part, Roe v. Wade made legal a practice that had been illegal, and it did so in a way that disfranchised the large portion of the population that objected to it. As for radicalization, I have to wonder how much more radical supporters of gay marriage could become. The danger goes the other way on this one, I think. I know that the likelihood of judicial imposition of gay marriage certainly radicalized my views on the issue, and I worry about the extent to which it would radicalized others who start from a position of stronger opposition than did I.
That's not a threat, but it is a consideration. And considerations are all we have when addressing social and governmental change. Moreover, this is a change that will not remain unaddressed. In objecting to the only legally and politically feasible opposition to gay marriage, while acknowledging that the politics will ensure judicial activism, Goldberg has made himself objectively pro–gay marriage. Many Americans are reluctant to pick a side in this cultural battle, but I think that if Jonah Goldberg, for one, took some time to do additional reading and hard consideration, he would see that the FMA aligns with most of his proclaimed preferences.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:41 PM EST
Friday, November 28, 2003
Fourteen for Black Friday
Continuing with my CD drive to get out of debt, I've put the following discs on eBay. Please bid.
The Butthole Survers, Independent Worm Saloon
Nick Cave, Tender Prey
Nick Cave, Kicking Against the Pricks
Nick Cave, Live Seeds
Cheap Trick, You Can Have Sex in America
Chicago, Greatest Hits 1982-1989
Bobby Darin, The Bobby Darin Story
Neil Diamond, The Christmas Album
The Doors, Strange Days
The Doors, Waiting for the Sun
The Doors, Morrison Hotel
The Doors, The Soft Parade
The Doors, L.A. Woman
Firehose, Mr. Machinery OperatorNo Comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 08:46 PM EST
Giving the Amendment the Sullivan Treatment
There's a reason I try to avoid reading Andrew Sullivan's writing about social issues. Every time I do so, I come across arguments so horribly distorted, yet certain to be taken seriously by some, that I feel compelled to address them. Such is the case with his poorly characterized "fisking" of the Federal Marriage Amendment. Not to be subtle about it, Sullivan's piece is either embarrassingly incorrect or deeply dishonest. I don't see any middle ground.
Here's the FMA as it now stands:
Marriage in the United States shall consist only of the union of a man and a woman. Neither this constitution or the constitution of any state, nor state or federal law, shall be construed to require that marital status or the legal incidents thereof be conferred upon unmarried couples or groups. Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights, or immunities on the existence, recognition, or presumption of sexual conduct or relationships.
Regarding the first sentence, Sullivan writes:
This sounds simple enough. But the word "marriage" is extremely broad.
Sorry to break the flow so soon, here, but we really should take a moment to stand in awe of the audacity of this comment. A man who has argued for more than a decade that marriage — which is everywhere defined as involving members of opposite sex — really means a relationship between two sexually involved people of any gender is complaining that the word is "extremely broad" within this amendment that specifies its meaning. One must marvel. Moving on:
Its main problem is that it conflates both civil marriage and religious marriage. By not being specific that it refers to civil marriage and civil marriage alone, the wording of this first sentence could be subject to considerable doubt. Could this mean that a church that decided to marry two people of the same gender would be violating the Constitution? Isn't civil regulation of religious marriage against the First Amendment?
To be sure, we should give Sullivan credit for being sufficiently creative to insert confusion where it does not inhere. But then, that credit must be rescinded when we note that he answers his own question as he picks up rhetorical steam. The Constitution is civil by its very nature, and obviously the First Amendment already makes the clarification that Sullivan desires. (I've got some suspicion that Sullivan calls for this change for some deceptive reason, but whether it is spitting out misinformation in order to defeat the amendment, adding verbiage that can later be distorted, or both, I'm not sure.)
Now on to the second sentence of the FMA. Here's Sullivan:
Why this provision, one might ask? Isn't the first sentence clear enough? Ah, but the fundamentalist right is not content merely to ban civil marriage for gay couples in the United States. They want to ensure that gay couples get no civil recognition at all. ...
Some have argued that it only prevents state or federal courts from imposing marriage rights on unwilling populations. But the wording is clear enough. It doesn't simply ban courts from construing state constitutions or the federal constitution to exclude gay couples. It includes state and federal law as well. And it doesn't say, "judicially construe." It says simply, "construe." The intent is clear: to stop any state variation on the subject of marital or couple rights, to impose on the country one single model for civil relationships--heterosexual marriage to the exclusion and abolition of all others. That, of course, means civil unions for heterosexuals as well.
This is a perfect illustration of what I meant, the other day, when I suggested that, among those who support gay marriage, "Contested assertions are reasserted as if they had not faced criticism." I've written before (here, for one) that Sullivan is simply wrong; this sentence does not "impose on the country one single model for civil relationships." Of itself, it would merely require that civil union laws (or any other "couple" laws) be designed without reference to marriage.
It is probable that Sullivan has come across this argument before, whether from me or somebody else, so one might wonder why he doesn't explain it as something that "some have argued." But then, one might stop wondering when it is noted that Sullivan now declares that "the intent is clear," whereas several months ago, he was arguing that it could "provoke genuine and deep disagreement" and therefore represented a "vague and sweeping amendment." Vague. Clear. Whatever.
Because Sullivan ignores what this sentence does clearly do, he is completely befuddled by the final, newly added sentence. Before addressing his analysis, which he uses as a springboard into delirious demagoguery, let's take another look at the sentence and interpret it based on its own language rather than Sullivan's:
Neither the federal government nor any state shall predicate benefits, privileges, rights, or immunities on the existence, recognition, or presumption of sexual conduct or relationships.
What this clearly means, as a pure function of the words and grammar, is that the government cannot base (i.e., predicate) the allocation of benefits on what a couple may or may not do in the bedroom. In essence, this merely adds reference to sexuality to my reading of the second sentence: "civil unions" could not be described in terms of marriage nor in terms of sexual or romantic relationships. There is probably room for discussion about whether this would allow a state to institute a law that specified most of the particulars tracking closely with homosexuality; I'd argue that it would. It seems to me that a state could specify that the arrangement is exclusive, limited to people of the same sex, involves people who share a household, and excludes immediate family members. In other words, something akin to the Vermont description of civil unions would, for essentially the reasons that I've previously argued, still be possible.
If you think about it, while there is certainly a social presumption of sex (and parenthood) for married couples, nothing in the law prevents a man and woman who are friends from getting married. This would still be a social possibility for gay unions. All the new sentence forbids a legislature or judiciary to do is to guess at whether the pair is romantically involved. Frankly, I think federal law as it currently exists would ultimately require that straight men (or women) who wanted to engage in a civil same-sex relationship be allowed to do so, for the same reason that homosexuals aren't currently prevented from marrying people of the opposite sex. As the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled in Goodridge, the state cannot deny "access to an institution of fundamental legal, personal, and social significance... because of a single trait... sexual orientation here."
It seems to me that activists could still work to create same-sex union laws in each state. Thereafter, homosexuals would be able to work to shape society's view of those unions. Now on to Sullivan's take:
It would be the first time that the word "sexual" is inserted into the Constitution of the United States.
Yes, it's a shame that it's come to that, but I don't see how people who wish to redefine marriage not in terms of the specific gender-based relationship that it has always represented, but to enable homosexual marriage, have grounds to object.
And what it is apparently designed to do is to reassure people that the second sentence of the amendment does not indeed do what it seems to do, i.e. ban all forms of civil union or domestic partnership. The religious right would, it appears, be willing to allow civil unions between brothers, or an aunt and uncle, or a son and mother, or two college roommates--as long as it was assumed that no sexual activity was implied in the relationship. By this deft move, the amendment would apparently allow gay couples to get civil unions--but only if they pretended that they were not gay couples.
Sullivan has it almost backwards. It isn't a matter of assuming "that no sexual activity was implied," but declaring that the law cannot distinguish between people based on the individual factor of their sexual behavior. Gay couples wouldn't have to "pretend" anything, but neither would straight friends who wished to procure a license. Sullivan, here, has conveniently forgotten the distinction that he himself drew between civil and religious marriage. Consider that the Vermont civil unions law ensures exclusivity in purely civil terms: "parties to a civil union" shall "Not be a party to another civil union or a marriage." It doesn't say that they shall not be romantically involved with somebody else. But hey, if advocates of gay marriage want to put strong adultery and divorce laws on the table, we social conservatives might be willing to reconsider.
Now here's where Sullivan really goes off the track:
What it amounts to, however, is a constitutional acceptance of any number of social arrangements short of marriage, as long as those relationships are asexual. How would a state legislature or the official granting civil union licenses know that? Short of putting videocams in people's bedrooms, they surely couldn't. So this is a kind of veil of ignorance, a pretense, that affirms the public appearance of a non-sexual relationship, while allowing it in reality. It's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" applied to the Constitution. It seems, on the face of it, to contradict the second sentence. But it doesn't. It merely underlines the fact that no sexual activity between two people can be a basis for a civilly recognized relationship except heterosexual marriage. It would make civil unions for straight people void as well, if those straight couples had the temerity to be in love or want to have sex.
As already explained, there is much arguable in what Sullivan says, and much that is just plain incorrect. It's not "Don't Ask, Don't Tell"; it's "Not Our Place to Care." This is why it's so bizarre for supporters of gay marriage to use the "what goes on in their bedrooms" rhetoric: marriage, as a civil arrangement, isn't concerned with what goes on within the bedroom, whether the couple sleeps in separate twin beds or has orgies in the garage. But I suspect gay marriage advocates are keenly interested in keeping the "videocams in people's bedrooms" rhetoric floating around in the air. It's a kind of veil of ignorance, a pretense, that seeks to obscure the fact that there is "constitutional acceptance" of all sorts of relationships that are not marriage — for various legal, business, and personal purposes — and that marriage is defined by gender, not sexual or emotional activity.
You can go read the rest of Sullivan's piece on your own, if you'd like to see how he catapults his false assumptions into an implication that the FMA is the next best thing to a gay Holocaust that we religious conservatives are able to effect (for now) within the United States. The last point I want to make is that I find it laughable that Sullivan accuses supporters of the amendment of being "divisive" when he wishes to impose the opposite side on the country. At least an amendment works within the representative and federalist system. Lying about the opposition while attempting to push the "culture war" through the judicial oligarchy is what is truly divisive in this scenario.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:40 PM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
The Redwood Review fiction piece of the week is "from The Toonijuk," by Bill Goetzinger.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:25 PM EST
Thursday, November 27, 2003
Thanking Those Who Keep Us Free
Dennis Prager's open letter to American soldiers in Iraq offers another way to think of being thankful today:
Though you may already know everything I am about to say, I need to say it for those of you who, after seeing fellow soldiers blown up or severely injured, may sometimes wonder whether these sacrifices are worth it. ...
In sum, you are carrying the great burden of history on your shoulders every day you serve in Iraq. That some of your fellow citizens do not understand this only means that the war for civilization is taking place as much here at home as it is in Iraq.
It surely is. But we waging the war on the cultural front should remember that we do so in relative comfort and keep our troops overseas in our prayers.
May God keep us all strong in our efforts.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:36 AM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
The Redwood Review nonfiction piece of the week is "Are Adults Too Old for Young Adult Literature?," by Len DeAngelis.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:29 AM EST
Being Thankful That We Can Learn from Other Cultures
Paying attention only to the mainstream media, one might get the impression that the most important thing to remember about Thanksgiving is that it's based on a bunch of lies. The Providence Journal, for example, has to remind us of the "real" history of Thanksgiving because, well, we're all given a false story by those jingoistic grade-school teachers.
In "The First Thanksgiving: More myth than reality," Paul Davis opens by informing us:
Before you bite into that turkey leg, you might want to chew on this:
Much of what we celebrate at Thanksgiving is based on myth, not fact.
Of course, most holidays have a mythology about them, to the extent that anybody cares why they get a day off from work. But one wonders who it is, exactly, that needs to be disabused of false conceptions.
Everett Weeden, a Rhode Island Indian activist, was among those who started, in 1970, a National Day of Mourning involving a vigil in Plymouth, Massachusetts. Weeden has since redirected his efforts: "My energies are still focused on changing attitudes, but I don't have to march through the streets to do it. I work in the schools now, with teachers and students."
Here's how one Rhode Island grade school engenders interest in colonial history:
At the Clayville Elementary School in Rhode Island, fourth and fifth graders each fall build English settler and Indian villages in the thick woods behind the school. Students and teachers have been doing it for 12 years.
"It's a good kickoff to Rhode Island history," says Betty Angelotti, the teacher who started the program. In some ways, her mission echoes the one at Plimoth Plantation. "My main goal was to teach students about the feelings the Indians have for the environment," she says.
The message of Thanksgiving seems to be that others should be thankful that they aren't us. The message to those of us who cannot help but be American is that we should concentrate on learning from others. The Projo's editorial staff suggests that Thanksgiving is valuable amidst our peculiarly American frenzy to remind us how much more enlightened are the Europeans:
The search for what F. Scott Fitzgerald called the "orgiastic future" is set aside to celebrate the now. So what an un-American holiday is the post-Calvinist Thanksgiving -- a sort of languid European feast. How much we could use more such days as we rush through the calendar going -- where?
On the op-ed page, Stephen Webber has a somewhat different take:
We are victims of our own success, since the American food supply is so abundant and food companies so efficient that we can afford to eat like kings and queens without going into debt. We have nobody to blame, then, but ourselves. What religions can teach us is that fast-food restaurants and giant food companies are only taking advantage of our human nature.
Thanksgiving only makes matters worse because it seems to be saying that overeating is what it means to be an American. We should be grateful for the variety of food choices we have in this country, but instead we go for quantity over quality.
Well, at least Mr. Webber reintroduces religion into the holiday — that we require Somebody to whom to be thankful. Pat Mack, of The Bergen Record, recently learned that.
Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. I like it because it has no religious connotations, even though it was founded by a religious community. You can be a Protestant, a Catholic, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Jew, even an agnostic or an atheist and still participate in this American celebration of gratitude for good fortune in your life.
A trip to Plimoth Plantation and a chat with Randy Joseph, history interpreter for its Wampanoag Education Program, helped to give Mack's views a somewhat more spiritual tint:
Thanksgiving has always been a tradition of Native Americans. They didn't learn it from the Pilgrims. Spirituality was and is a deeply sacred and personal part of Wampanoag life.
"From ancient times up to the present, we [Native Americans] have held ceremonies to give thanks for successful harvests and hunts, for good fortune."
I was especially interested in a celebration called Nickommo. It has a "giveaway" ceremony to show gratitude to the Creator who provides for "the people" [the tribe] and makes possible "the parade of blessings," Joseph said. The act of giving away material things shows respect and caring for others, while reminding the participants that material objects are only secondary to one's spiritual life.
Imagine that! A holiday in which people give each other presents in celebration of the gifts of their Creator. I'll tell ya: we sure could learn a lot from those Indians.
(That wouldn't be Saint Nickommo, would it?)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:01 AM EST
Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Fetuses and Gays, United in Their Struggle for Civil Rights
I sort of shrugged and went "Hmm" when I read the following from Ramesh Ponnuru in the Corner:
The op-ed made me wonder something I have wondered in the past: whether the pro-life cause will be stronger once it is divested from opposition to gay rights; whether, that is, opposition to abortion will lose some of the negative connotations of social conservatism and become more obviously a campaign for civil rights.
It struck me as a slightly peculiar notion for which I should keep an eye out in the future. However, Mr. Ponnuru just posted an email that has given me cause to take up the question now:
A thousand times yes! It's a theme a pro-life/pro-gay marriage conservative will need to develop, but this observation strikes me as on the money. Of course, I'm one of those who fits the description. I think being the (real or perceived) anti-gay attitudes of many conservatives makes it far more difficult for the pro-life argument to get a hearing, particularly in places like here in Manhattan. And in some ways I don't blame those who make the connection - I see the issue in both cases as one of civil rights.
I can fully appreciate that those people, however many there may be, who are pro-life/pro-SSM might perceive their support for gay marriage as a major barrier to full activistic unity with other pro-lifers, but is this really framing the debate across the divide? In other words, are there pro-abortion folks for whom conservative opposition to gay marriage is the deciding factor determining that a fetus is not a human being worthy of protection?
From a pro-life standpoint, the two issues are only related by way of a general moral platform tending to originate from a religious basis. At their most connected, I'd say, both stances are determined according to the rightful claims of children to place responsibilities on adults: to live with the "burden" of giving birth to and raising children who were not planned, in the one case, and to foster a society in which children are more likely to be raised within families consisting of their two biological parents bound by marriage, in the other. But this connection, to the extent that it exists, is a few steps beyond the reasoning done by most who hold both positions.
The connection between the two issues is much more centrally and obviously made from the other side, having to do with the supremacy of the individual. A woman has a right to determine the nature and consequences of her sexual behavior, including the right to abort unwanted children, in the one case, and two people have a right to demand public approval of their sexual relationship, including the right to disregard simple and obvious definitions of public arrangements, in the other.
In all of my arguing and reading around the issue of abortion, I have never encountered even the hint that the other side was shutting out the pro-life arguments because their advocates held other socially conservative views. Moreover, by every measure that I can think of, it seems far more likely that the weight goes in the other direction, with opposition to gay marriage being written off on the basis of its related social conservatism, primarily being pro-life. After all, many more liberal Manhattanites are personally affected by abortion policy than by gay marriage.
Yes, I would say that it will be good for the pro-life cause when social liberals stop seeing abortion as just a position that they must hold to be comme il faut — unlike those fundamentalists in the wilds of the nation. But no, I don't think social conservatives are going to further the pro-life cause by surrendering the gay marriage issue. Rather, were they to do so, I think they would set back their cause by furthering the argument that an individual's "choice" and transitory happiness are the single guiding principle of a "civilized" society.
ADDENDUM:
I just want to offer a note, here, that I am increasingly worried — and offended — by the attenuation of "civil rights" into a catch-all concept. It was bad enough when Andrew Sullivan was uniting the push for gay marriage with the battles against anti-Semitism (manifested the Holocaust) and racism (manifested in slavery and enforced segregation).Am I alone in finding it disturbing that some are now suggesting that the movement to prevent young human beings from being clinically murdered will gain a new relevance when it can be compared with the movement to grant a relatively well-to-do class of people a right that has never been thought to exist in the history of man, very probably at the cost of a basic social institution? I hope not.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 04:06 PM EST
Boys Marry Women Like Their Mothers
Over on the Marriage Debate blog (the direct links of which are not working properly), Eve Tushnet just goes ahead and makes a point that I have been holding in reserve, having not found an arguer on the other side who was willing to let me reach it in my logical procession:
For obvious reasons, I know more about fatherless households, so I'll stick with those: Sons say they never learned what it meant to be a man. (And they often try to find other, destructive roads to masculinity--like gang membership.) Daughters say they never learned what to look for in a man. Sons have a hard time learning how men fit into a family, why and how men are needed in the family. Daughters have a hard time learning how much they can ask of men--they often set their standards way too low and get taken advantage of. ...I think it would be bizarre if for some reason similarly powerful emotional effects were not felt in intentionally motherless households, although, like I said, I know a lot less about that because it's less common.
Men and women are not interchangeable as parents. But, again, you'll rarely maneuver a proponent of gay marriage into the position of having to answer this as a "yes" or "no" question.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:33 PM EST
Studio Matters Notes & Commentary
Continuing to prove that her tastes and capacity for analysis cover many forms and styles of art, Maureen Mullarkey's latest Notes & Commentary essay is "Martha Meyer Erlebacher at Forum Gallery." More images from the show about which she writes, including the painting of Adam and Eve can be found here.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:39 AM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:32 AM EST
The Enemy Offers No Points for Eloquence
There just seems to be some kind of connection between the global elite's fear that the masses will out-procreate them, which I mentioned earlier, and so many other issues that trickle down from the upper crust. Gay marriage is among those issues, as Sam Shulman hints when he closes a recent essay thus:
Severing this connection by defining it out of existence—cutting it down to size, transforming it into a mere contract between chums—sunders the natural laws that prevent concubinage and incest. Unless we resist, we will find ourselves entering on the path to the abolition of the human. The gods move very fast when they bring ruin on misguided men.
As I suggested earlier, helping the masses to "manage" their reproduction is one way keep from being overwhelmed by them. Another way is to break down walls that have limited certain behaviors among those who cannot afford their repercussions. Marriage schmarriage. Religion? Bah! Hard work? Self reliance? Self control? Those are merely traps, friend, to cage the natural being inside of you!
Shulman phrases some arguments well:
Why should I not be able to marry a man? The question addresses a class of human phenomena that can be described in sentences but nonetheless cannot be. However much I might wish to, I cannot be a father to a pebble—I cannot be a brother to a puppy—I cannot make my horse my consul. Just so, I cannot, and should not be able to, marry a man. If I want to be a brother to a puppy, are you abridging my rights by not permitting it? I may say what I please; saying it does not mean that it can be. ...
Insofar as I care for my homosexual friend as a friend, I am required to say to him that, if a lifelong monogamous relationship is what you want, I wish you that felicity, just as I hope you would wish me the same. But insofar as our lives as citizens are concerned, or even as human beings, your monogamy and the durability of your relationship are, to be blunt about it, matters of complete indifference. They are of as little concern to our collective life as if you were to smoke cigars or build model railroads in your basement or hang-glide, and of less concern to society than the safety of your property when you leave your house or your right not to be overcharged by the phone company.
That is not because you are gay. It is because, in choosing to conduct your life as you have every right to do, you have stepped out of the area of shared social concern—in the same sense as has anyone, of whatever sexuality, who chooses not to marry. There are millions of lonely people, of whom it is safe to say that the majority are in heterosexual marriages. But marriage, though it may help meet the needs of the lonely, does not exist because it is an answer to those needs; it is an arrangement that has to do with empowering women to avoid even greater unhappiness, and with sustaining the future history of the species
And I encourage you to read the whole thing, if you've got the time. Nonetheless, I have to admit that I bristled when I read him say, addressing the reason the issue of gay marriage is being pushed along the cultural fast track, "I have found myself disappointed by the arguments I have seen advanced against it." Well, I've been arguing this issue pretty regularly for a couple of years, and a phenomenon that I noticed specifically in Andrew Sullivan has now been taken up and amplified by most of the American media. Difficult objections are ignored. Contested assertions are reasserted as if they had not faced criticism. I've wondered, in the past, what it would be like to live in a world in which the truth is simply wished away, and on this issue, I've gotten a taste. Shulman's argument leaves the other side multiple escape routes.
So, while I do agree with Mr. Shulman and think he has made some valuable points, I get the feeling that he doesn't quite understand the hurdles — or the enemy, for that matter. The more ways in which we state the obvious, the better, but I think each of us does well to avoid entering the fray as if some eloquent, recast rhetoric will win the day, while others have merely contributed to the general apathy.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:02 AM EST
Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Censoring the Censorers
Lane Core has caught Teddy Kennedy suggesting that Bush's campaign ads are stifling dissent, even as his fellow Democrats pound their fists and declare that the commercials should be silenced.
Be honest, now, any Democrats out there: you can see this naked politicking for what it really is, can't you? Can't you?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:49 PM EST
Need Marriage?
Not surprisingly, Jay Nordlinger had much the same reaction as I did to David Brooks's gay marriage column. In an Impromptus that is even more worth reading than usual, Mr. Nordlinger writes:
The column, as I have read it, argues that we must favor gay marriage because we must favor fidelity — commitment, loyal love. Well, let me make the obvious point that no force on earth can stop people from being faithful if they wish to be. Certainly you don't need a marriage license for that. And no force on earth can stop people from being unfaithful if they wish to be — a marriage license is no barrier to that. Gay partners have been faithful to each other for millennia (presumably), without benefit of marriage. And married partners have been unfaithful to each other for millennia, with benefit of marriage. So, support gay marriage if you like, for whatever (sound) reasons you can come up with — but let's not pretend that a respect for fidelity has anything to do with it.
He also notes that Brooks's reference to the Biblical Ruth and Naomi makes the daughter- and mother-in-law sound like a lesbian couple. That brings to mind the claims of some homosexualist historians that the Catholic Church once sanctioned gay marriage. As I've suggested before, such claims prove, if anything, that "homosexuality is sexualizing, and thus destroying, the ancient idea of friendship."
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:45 PM EST
State GOPs Need a Few Lashings
A couple of weeks ago, Rod Dreher posted this email regarding the loss of the Republican gubernatorial candidate in Louisiana:
I think you are missing the bigger picture - the State Republican Party is a joke. This national talk of a Republican realignment is just hot air unless it can be translated into effective State Party organizations. With two low-key, non-controversial candidates, this race became a State party fight and, as usual, the State GOP had their ass handed to them. Let's face it - the Democratic Party in Louisiana has an organization built to win. until the State GOP becomes more than a coffee social for rich, old women, we will continue to lose.
A subsequent emailer wrote:
Just wanted to chime in on what another reader claimed about the Louisiana GOP - here in Washington, it's the same story. The Democrats play to win, and our party is filled with ineptitude from top to bottom thanks to a party apparatus whose professional personnel changes all the time, thanks in turn to rich old women who view the Party as some kind of knitting club where they can feel good about civic involvement but never really accomplish anything. I used to manage campaigns for state legislative candidates, but will no longer give one more minute of effort to the Party until the Reaper comes for much of the current leadership.
And, just to make it a complaint that truly covers the entire nation, I emailed the following to Rod:
I just wanted to chime in; when I read your comments about the state GOP, they hit close to home for me here in Rhode Island. One example: we've got a local guy who poses at least a minor threat to Pat Kennedy for Congress, and the other day, he held a media event (swimming the length of the district), and the only Republican to show up was a relatively well-known mayor from halfway across the state. Our Republican governor was busy filing papers for Bush's election, and our Republican U.S. Senator, well, he's Linc Chafee.
It's very disheartening, not the least because the monolithic local media (including, to some extent, talk radio) is content to let the little Republican attempts at momentum fizzle out, and as a result, the apathetic population isn't being shaken out of the stupor in which many just vote "D" out of habit, bitch about the insane policies of the state, and then go home to watch the Patriots.
I'm not sure how to feel about the whole thing. Some days, it makes me think that I ought to take personal initiative to force some change in my small state. Other days, I think that would be a fool's errand. And still other days, I think it would just be easier to move...
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:49 PM EST
Spinning Against Religion
The other day, Donald Sensing noted a University of Michigan study of religious trends. Giving evidence of the tremendous arrogance of Western intellectuals, the study's authors come across an apparent paradox:
In the book, Inglehart and co-author Pippa Norris put religion and spirituality in the U.S. in a global context by showing that while virtually all post-industrial societies have been moving toward more secular orientations for many decades, the world as a whole now has more people with traditional religious views than ever before.
"Though these two propositions may seem contradictory, they're not," Inglehart said. "Secularization has a powerful negative impact on human fertility rates, so the least religious countries have fertility rates far below the replacement level, while societies with traditional religious views have fertility rates two or three times the replacement level." As a result, those with traditional religious views now constitute a growing proportion of the world’s population.
The underlying presumption, perhaps not a conscious one, that academics seek in vain to reconcile with the facts is that secularization represents a more-correct way of viewing the world. Advanced nations (read: Europe) learn that God is a myth, so it is, therefore, a little puzzling that the trend should be toward increases of traditional religion.
Of course, "virtually all post-industrial societies" leaves out a huge wrench: the single post-industrial superpower society. That religion in the U.S. is the subject of the study perhaps presents evidence of the degree to which arrogant assumptions undermine rational, analytical thought. They've got two and two, but four is an answer that they reject out of hand.
Ah, say the academics, the ignorant religious people around the world breed like rabbits, and the U.S. has pushed its inhabitants toward the comfort of God because it withholds the comfort that ought to be offered by the socialist state! Therefore, you see, it is a paradox of the inherent superiority of the non-U.S.-post-industrial world that its worldview will decline in relative number of adherents.
This doomsday scenario of the Western elite fighting against the tide would seem to put paranoid rants about world overpopulation (and the need for global "family planning") in a whole 'nother light, wouldn't you say?
Stepping away from the presumption that the elite are not tragically deluded, one can see that the various theories and proclamations are but so much paint over the huge crack through their ideology. If the welfare state destroys religion, it is because it saps its victims of their humanity, not because it answers their bodily needs. As Rev. Sensing points out, "religious people are not merely more generous to religious causes and charities, they are very much more generous." Moreover, Michael Williams notes that "we [in the United States] export charitable giving all over the planet."
Somewhere in my daily reading, although I can't find it now, I came across another big piece of this puzzle, as explored in a New York Times article:
To put it bluntly, we are witnessing the decline and fall of the Protestant work ethic in Europe. This represents the stunning triumph of secularization in Western Europe the simultaneous decline of both Protestantism and its unique work ethic. ...
All this is the real reason that the American economy has surged ahead of its European competitors in the past two decades. It is not about efficiency. It is simply that Americans work more. Europeans take longer holidays and retire earlier; and many more European workers are either unemployed or on strike. ...
So the decline of work in Northern Europe has occurred more or less simultaneously with the decline of Protestantism. Quod erat demonstrandum indeed!
There's no need to get mired in the sectarian battle, although there is a discussion to be had among Christians. For the purposes of comparing secularism with religiosity, it is enough to note that European Protestantism has declined more dramatically than European Catholicism. At any rate, there has been a general decline in Christianity.
To summarize, people in less-religious post-industrial societies have smaller families with fewer children, don't work as hard, have slower economies, give less, demand more, and yet, I've seen no evidence that they're happier. In contrast, people in the more-religious United States have larger families, work more, give more, have more productive economies, and have more international confidence.
Somebody explain to me why our leading class looks to Europe for guidance?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:23 PM EST
Songs You Should Know 11/25/03
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "I Don't Want to Be Loved" by me. The recording is poor quality, and the instrumentation could do with some live instruments, but the depressed cynicism under the guise of ironic humor just about catches my mood today.
"I Don't Want to Be Loved" Justin Katz, Pop/Rock
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:51 PM EST
Just Thinking 11/24/03
My Just Thinking column for this week is "Thoughts at the End of the Day."
I'm calling it a day on the Just Thinking front. To any and all who've read the columns periodically or regularly, I thank you.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:57 AM EST
Tuesday in the Blog
Sorry about yesterday. Between the furnace going, the septic filling, work, parenthood, my column, and various other tasks, I've been spinning in circles. However, I have much to blog and intend to get through it all today.
Stay tuned.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:10 AM EST
Sunday, November 23, 2003
More False Responses
Given the refusal of many proponents of gay marriage even to fairly entertain reasoned argument against the innovation, it must be respected when the attempt is made. Unfortunately, I think the post by Mark Miller on Marriage Debate that I just came across misses a few central distinctions. Indeed, it seems to me to point to some shifting of logical threads that is endemic in this debate.
Mark responds to some responses by David Bianco to standard gay marriage arguments in the area of parental gender. For this post, the "standard arguments" are in bold, Bianco's response is in regular font, and Mark's response is in italics:
2. "Children need parents who love them. It doesn't matter if they are gay or straight."
I agree. I have no complaint with a lesbian who marries a man in order to raise children with him, for example. But having both a mother and a father is important. Ask yourself: If a child's parents were killed in an accident, all other things being equal, would it be better for that child to be raised by an aunt and an uncle, or by two aunts? If a little boy's mother died in childbirth, would it be better for him to be raised by his father and aunt or by his father and uncle?
Does he feel that a child with one parent who dies should be taken away and given to a two-parent (opposite-sex, of course) home. Or should the remaining parent be allowed to keep his/her child? In other words, should having two opposite-sex parents be the law in all cases?
Obviously, the damage done by tearing from one parent a child who has already experienced the loss of the other parent would dwarf any benefit that there might be to placing that child in a two-parent home. Frankly, I'm a little surprised that Mr. Miller would even think this comparable to Mr. Bianco's examples. At any rate, people whose spouses die can remarry. That is to say that being single is not an inherently permanent state, which is not presumed to be true of homosexuality.
3. "All the studies show that the children of gay parents are no more or less likely to be gay themselves."
Irrelevant, and ridiculous. Irrelevant because those studies (and there are also studies that say the opposite) focus on the sexual orientation of the parents, not the gender of the parents. And ridiculous because it just doesn't make sense. Given the number of people raised in repressive environments where coming out is less likely, doesn't it make sense that there would be some measurable difference just because gay parents aren't homophobic? Finally, my concern about same-sex parenting is not that it will make the kids gay, but that it will deny the kids a mother or a father.
I agree with David that these studies are irrelevant to this debate. Just as irrelevant as the studies that gay relationships are less stable than heterosexual relationships.
Mark's strategy, here, seems to be to cede the point, but to make a rhetorical consolation prize of one of the other side's arguments. The shift to the latter studies is mistaken because they address a separate dynamic of marriage. Bianco's comment has to do with whether children whose parents are in stable gay relationships are more likely to be gay, which is an outcome for the child that, to the extent that it is a possibility, may or may not be related to other factors of the child's well-being (all of which are relative to their probable state in different circumstances, such as an orphanage). The studies mentioned by Miller have to do with the actual stability of the parents' relationship, which is an entirely separate (and probably more important) factor.
Who would be a better bet for an adopted child: a couple that has been married for years with no significant problems, or a couple that is merely shacking up? Stability matters. (And no, this rhetorical question is not meant to characterize all gay relationships, just to illustrate a point.)
ADDENDUM:
Apparently, restrictions of the Blogger software make the posts over at MarriageDebate.com a little confusing. All posts are attributed, where posts are generally attributed, to Eve; however, the comments to which I've responded above were actually by Mark Miller, as indicated at the top of his post. I have changed the text above to correct my mistake.6 comments (click to link)
Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:50 PM EST
Blah, Blah, Blah, Blah, Blaaaah
Barry made a comment to my post about David Brooks's and Glenn Reynolds's support for gay marriage, and my response became sufficiently long and detailed that I thought I should make it a post of its own:
Barry,
Yes, arguing with those who take such stances is a lot like arguing with teenagers. I emailed my David Brooks post to Mr. Reynolds shortly after I read his and Brooks's opinions, and watching the updates that he's chosen to make instead gives me the impression of a group of people intent on merely stuffing more straw into the strawman, as if to validate the beating that they're giving it.
They've rejected all forms of cultural wisdom, which requires either deep and difficult thought or the willingness to accept some degree of social "because I say so," and disconnected themselves from all forms of influence that conflict with their emotional drives. Therefore, the only basis for judgment happens to be emotional/personal inclination. Thus, they can only imagine that people who believe differently are either repressed or domineering or both.
The email that he posts from Bruce Bridges is a perfect example of the type. It pushes and pulls without ever making a substantive point — without ever making a true or valid point, for that matter:
As a single man that has not found the right girl even at this late date, I am one of those that has been pulverising all that is private and delicate blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blaaaaaaaaah.
Frankly, I'm suspicious that Bruce has ever faced such an argument made to him. He certainly didn't listen well enough to understand what the other person was trying to say. Instead, he covers his incomprehension with "blahs." And then he takes it as a personal attack, not a suggestion about how he might improve his own spiritual wellbeing:
The problem with those that need to point out my failings is of course that they can't stop themselves. First it was gays, then single sinners and of course eventually, married people that are corrupt enough to venture beyond the missionary position.
Huh? Where is this guy getting his chronology? What world does he live in? Morality has been crumbling, not being further, and more-harshly, molded. And it's hardly been a matter of picking on the fringes of sexual deviancy and working in, rather the fringes are always expanding on corrosion already accomplished.
The republicans would do well to recognize that this way of thinking is what most of us think of as "fringe".
Most of whom? Is he kidding?
More often than not, it seems to me, these people provide, with their arguments, proof of that which they claim to disprove. Reynolds is hardly a spiritual man, so I don't know on what basis he objects to the suggestion that he committed "spiritual suicide." More universally, it's obvious that he and many others are willing to follow erronious ways of thinking as long as they coincide with their sex lives. They may very well be happy people, but the problem that they refuse to face is that the reason for institutional practices is that, over the centuries, mankind has learned that certain decisions come at a higher risk of a higher cost.
The wealthy and/or the very lucky can get through their earthly lives without feeling or having to acknowledge the weight of their sins. But even when the damage does come, there's always a convenient boogeyman (or strawman) to blame and a further corruption in which to hide, rather than the decision itself. Moreover, the real, lasting damage takes place over time, and we're quick to lose sight of its origin.
So many in our culture have been coddled in a broth of like-thinking. You can see it in the clichés to which they resort and in their inability to question themselves.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 03:50 PM EST
The "Objective" Advocacy Continues
The other day, I wrote a letter to the Providence Journal because this report about gay marriage is nothing short of advocacy. Here's my letter:
Was Edward Fitzpatrick's phone busted the day he penned "Hope reborn for R.I. gay couples" (November 20)? He doesn't quote a single person making an argument against gay marriage. He mentions the Defense of Marriage Act without noting that some question whether it will stand up to judicial review. He doesn't even go to the extent of quoting religious arguments that others will find easy to dismiss.
Between the one-sided rhetoric, the worst-case sob stories, and the maudlin language with which he opens, Fitzpatrick's piece puts the Providence Journal's news department clearly in the category of advocacy, rather than reportage. Is it the Projo's intention to leverage its monolithic press influence in Rhode Island, removing one side of the discussion entirely from "objective" reports, to forward the political agenda of a small minority of its readership?
Perhaps the public debate won't degrade into dismissive and erroneous accusations of bigotry if reporters remember their training and maybe fix their phones. There are arguments against gay marriage — particularly if it's to be forced through the judiciary — and the Providence Journal ought to consider it a matter of duty to find them. (It isn't that hard.)
I tend to doubt that my letter brought it about, but today the Projo has at least reported on Courage, a Catholic group devoted to helping homosexuals to be chaste. But far from providing balance, it merely serves as a contrast by which to examine the advocacy. Whereas Fitzpatrick's piece was called "Hope reborn for R.I. gay couples"; the title and lead for the one today by Jennifer Levitz are: "Your libido is saying: Oh, come on; Oh, come on. If God allowed it, some members of a local group say they would like to be in monogamous relationships."
Bucking Fitzpatrick's one-sided strategy with his "Hope" piece, Levitz inserts contrasting statements from DignityUSA, another group of homosexual Catholics, but one that seems to think that God must be made to change His rules. (Somewhat ironically, the Dignity representative quotes mainly from the Old Testament to prove that the Church does not take a literal view of scripture, without noting that it took the birth, sacrifice, and resurrection of the Son of God to change the rules between the Testaments.) Most striking of all is the difference in tone. Here's how Fitzpatrick opens:
In many ways, the day was ideal.
With the June sun setting behind them, the Warwick couple stood barefoot on a beach, embraced by a semicircle of friends and relatives. Wearing white linen, they recited poems, exchanged vows and slipped gold bands on their fingers.
But the union lacked a crucial element -- the sanction of the state. As a same-sex couple, Nicole M. Jones and Iris I. Rodriguez could not be legally married.
Here's how Levitz describes a Courage meeting:
Rain fell on a recent night as the monthly meeting of Courage began in the rectory next to St. Charles Borromeo, a grand, church in the shadow of the Cranston Street armory in Providence.
The rectory looks like someone's grandmother's house. There is a picket fence around the garden and a yellow ribbon on the door. Inside, the kitchen was scrubbed clean and the tablecloth preserved with a covering of plastic. The windows were hung with ruffled curtains. The dark wood furniture was decorated with lace doilies. The coffee was on and the powdered doughnuts out. ...
At St. Charles, a loud, angry-sounding prayer could be heard through the closed door of the room where Courage was meeting.
I don't think one needs a degree in English to understand the picture being painted in the "Local News" section of the Providence Journal.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:21 PM EST
Saturday, November 22, 2003
The Gay Marriage Solution
I know this is presumptuous of some unknown blogger schmoe to say, but David Brooks completely misses the point with respect to gay marriage, almost to the degree that unthinking liberal blog-commenters have done. In other words, almost to the point of delusion.
The conservative course is not to banish gay people from making such commitments. It is to expect that they make such commitments. We shouldn't just allow gay marriage. We should insist on gay marriage. We should regard it as scandalous that two people could claim to love each other and not want to sanctify their love with marriage and fidelity.
When liberals argue for gay marriage, they make it sound like a really good employee benefits plan. Or they frame it as a civil rights issue, like extending the right to vote.
While I disagree as a theological matter, as a civic matter, I can't help but agree with Brooks's suggestion about demanding homosexual fidelity, and I do find it "scandalous" that it remains such an issue among people who claim to be no different in their desires except for whom they desire. However, Brooks ignores entirely whether his proposed strategy will have the effect, in today's America, that he predicts. It is still a very open question whether homosexual marriage would follow this pattern or would push the envelope on the extent of "contingency" that already exists in marriage, against which Brooks rails. As I've written before, while the data is perhaps thin, all indications are that homosexuals, even those who are "marriage material," are not particularly concerned about fidelity. This factor could — perhaps — change in the future.
As it happens, I do believe that people who are, or consider themselves to be, irrevocably homosexual ought to pursue the most committed relationships possible. And I believe that doing so of their own accord is how they ought to make their case for changing the definition of marriage to include them. However, at this time, with courts willing to redefine marriage on the basis of a vote of four lawyers, and with the American media apparently more united behind this cause than behind just about any other issue to come along in my lifetime, allowing homosexuals into an institution to be shared with married heterosexuals is reckless to the point of insanity.
If we are to leverage the law so as to encourage fidelity in gay relationships (in any relationships), let's not employ half-measures. Rather than simply loosening the rules that the stamp of civic marriage requires in order to approve of a relationship, let's tighten them. Being "married" in a land of no-fault divorce won't change homosexuals, so let's make civic marriage truly "'till death do us part." The only way appeals such as Glenn Reynolds's that gay marriage would strengthen "traditional values rather than harming them" are valid is if gay marriage forces us to strengthen the marital bond in the eyes of the law.
So what do you supporters of gay marriage think: we'll pass a law allowing it, but at the same time, we'll make divorce (in any kind of marriage) possible only under the most extreme circumstances. We're after fidelity, right, Mr. Brooks? Well then, how about fines or other penalties for extramarital affairs? Sounds like a great compromise to me.
Any takers?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:20 PM EST
Friday, November 21, 2003
A Dozen for Debt
Here are the first 12 CDs from the next tier of my CD collection:
Alice in Chains, Sap
Alice in Chains, Unplugged
Bad Company, 10 from 6
Dan Baird, Love Songs for the Hearing Impaired
The Band, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
The Band, High on the Hog
The Beatles, Past Masters Volume One
The Beatles, Past Masters Volume Two
Black Sabbath, Paranoid
Black Sabbath, Sabotage
Boston, Move On
Boyz II Men, CooleyhighharmonyAll proceeds go to... me.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:30 PM EST
My Personal Blog or an AP Styleguide?
John Cole links to an AP article that contains the following sentence:
The brazen, coordinated strikes at some of Baghdad's most heavily protected civilian sites defied a U.S. crackdown.
Now, compare that to this sentence from an AP account of a previous attack:
But the bold blow at the heart of the U.S. presence here clearly rattled U.S. confidence that it is defeating Iraq's shadowy insurgents.
Note the difference in language? What made me notice the former sentence was that I complained of the latter sentence when I first came across it, rewriting it thus:
The brazen blow at the heart of the U.S. presence here clearly affected U.S. confidence about the rate at which it is defeating Iraq's underground insurgents.
I know, I know, I can't take credit for every switch to the use of the word "brazen." But I can imagine, can't I?
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:24 PM EST
Bigotry Requires Obstinancy
Individual readers may or may not believe this, but I didn't expect, nor do I prefer, to post so much about the Mass. court ruling. We've anticipated the decision for months, after all. However, I'm coming to believe it imperative that we open up the way to honest debate. As it stands, the court, the media, and various "people on the street" are simply defining objections out of the discussion through appeals to our societal aversion to "bigotry."
The unabridged version of Merriam-Webster (the subscription-only version of m-w.com) defines "bigotry" as follows:
state of mind of a bigot : obstinate and unreasoning attachment to one's own belief and opinions with intolerance of beliefs opposed to them; also : behavior or beliefs ensuing from such a condition
The bottom line is that many of those arguing for gay marriage are presenting positions that more closely align with this definition than most of those who oppose the change. Even the Mass. court did this in its ruling:
The "marriage is procreation" argument singles out the one unbridgeable difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples, and transforms that difference into the essence of legal marriage. Like "Amendment 2" to the Constitution of Colorado, which effectively denied homosexual persons equality under the law and full access to the political process, the marriage restriction impermissibly "identifies persons by a single trait and then denies them protection across the board." Romer v. Evans, 517 U.S. 620, 633 (1996). In so doing, the State's action confers an official stamp of approval on the destructive stereotype that same-sex relationships are inherently unstable and inferior to opposite-sex relationships and are not worthy of respect.
Of course, I disagree with the court's reasoning, regarding the suggestion of "across the board" denial of protection based on "a single trait," but beyond that, consider the final sentence. Is the court claiming to be in possession of proof that same-sex relationships are not "inherently unstable"? I'd suggest that it's generally held that men are typically the "less stable" half of a marriage, so what happens when they enter into relationships with each other? The court simply dispenses with the question as a "destructive stereotype." As for the inferiority of a form of relationship, in a general sense, that's obviously a matter of opinion, but in a specific sense, what evidence does the court possess that one isn't preferable to another in particular applications — for example, fidelity or child rearing? Again, the debate can and should be had, but the court has ruled it beneath consideration.
As I've suggested before, if fidelity is any measure of a relationship's suitability for marriage or child-rearing, then it manifestly is not mere bigotry to express concerns about families constructed around homosexual relationships. That a state court actually excluded consideration of this entire area of inquiry is among the most disturbing aspects of this whole controversy. That it is so difficult to make the "tolerant" people see where they are being intolerant is among the most frustrating.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:16 PM EST
The Redwood Review Fiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:21 PM EST
The End of an Old Trend Often Looks Like the Beginning of a New One
Lane Core quotes from a New York Times editorial that contains a factoid that I've heard quite a bit over the past couple of days:
In recent years, support for gay rights has sharply increased. A newly released poll found that although most Americans oppose gay marriage, views vary a lot by age. Older people oppose it 4 to 1, while young respondents are equally divided. That strongly suggests that eventually the views expressed by the Massachusetts court will be widely held. And Americans will come to regard this week's decision as they now do Loving v. Virginia — as a statement of the obvious.
The 4-to-1 versus 50-50 statistic is top-of-mind for those who support gay marriage, and as does the Times, they see it as evidence that gay marriage is in our future. But the language used for the statistics ought to perk up eyebrows; what are the cut-off points for "older" and "younger"? The first AP report to cite the study claims that opposition "grew steadily as people's age increased."
But perusing the actual Pew poll, one comes across this line graph of the actual results, which illustrates that the AP's view of "steady" is inaccurate to the point of being misleading. (Particularly if my suspicion is correct that a five-year "moving average" will tend to smooth out the curve.) Opposition to gay marriage shoots up almost 30% from those aged 32 to those aged 39; it then stabilizes among fortysomethings, dropping back down to about 55% (with some turbulence) by the early/mid 50s, but climbing back in the late 50s; it then climbs another 25% by 70 and plummets 30% from ages 70 to 80, before making up much of that loss by age 85.
Either a view of increasing conservatism with age or a gradual change in acceptance of homosexuality would seem to merit a smoother line. To make some sense out of these slopes, we have to consider that there are two ways to consider age-based data: as indicative of historical cultural trends, or as indicative of a single-person's lifeline. Although both are important in all cross-sections, I'd suggest that the significance of the lifeline view fades with age, while the significance of the historical view increases. For one thing, older people have been "formed" and "settled" for longer. For another, younger people are more in the midst, so to speak, of the cultural change, so they'll track more closely to the cultural elite's position on the issue itself.
Frankly, my historical knowledge is sufficiently lacking that I'm a bit puzzled by the huge drop in opposition among those who came of age in the 1940s. From personal experience, my sense is that people in this age group are more amenable to the comparison of the gay marriage movement to civil rights issues, seeing it in light of their generational experience with the Holocaust and racial segregation in the United States. This would seem to find some support in the fact that uncertainty (as indicated by the "don't know" line) shoots up from almost 0% to almost 30% for this age group.
More important to the future of the issue of gay marriage, however, are those born after 1940. Within this limited field, the largest dip in opposition comes among those in their late 40s to early 50s. This is the group of people who were born around 1950 — Boomers who hit college-age just at the ripe part of the 1960s. This is also the group that began coming into power in the early 1990s, when the push for gay civil rights really picked up steam... with increasingly ratcheted support from cultural elites.
It seems to me that their onslaught would have hit hardest among those in their 20s and early 30s, the same group, as it happens, that is evenly divided. I can't say for sure, but I would opine that this factor has gone a long way toward keeping opposition among this group so much below the middle line around which everybody else seems to hover. The question that I entered into this analysis to address is what this means for their future opinions.
Well, of course, the greatest determination will be what happens over the next decade or so. Nonetheless, if we assume that the lifeline, as opposed to the historical, analysis is strongest among this group, some hope emerges for conservatives: Uncertainty, here, is higher than for any other section under 70 years of age. Moreover, the "don't know" line more or less increases with age, before dropping dramatically among early thirtysomethings — the very same group that initiates the nearly 30% climb in opposition to gay marriage.
We can't put too much weight on this single poll — or on any polls for that matter. Society is in constant flux. But it seems to me at least plausible that, as this group enters into full adulthood — with all of the experiences and responsibilities that it entails — it will rebound to at least the median line. My own opinion, as a conservative Catholic convert who is still a few years away from the age at which the opposition to gay marriage currently takes off, is that mine will prove to be the most socially conservative generation that the country has seen in many decades.
Once we've fully shaken off the cultural dictates of the Boomer establishment, we'll see the fantasies through clarity provided by first-hand experience of their repercussions. No illusions have we. We have witnessed the horrible results that wishful-thinking weakness can beget, crystallized in attacks that killed or threatened many of our number. We are finding religion only to experience the scorn of our nation's elite. We are watching as popular culture hits the bottom and begins clawing at it, and while high culture and academia drift off into palpable nonsense.
All of us could have been aborted on a whim; some of us will learn, or have learned, that our siblings were. The wet dreams of our parents have been saturated with danger for us; we've felt that cold sweat when the blood results arrived. Our parents have divorced — some to enter into homosexual relationships.
To be sure, none of this belongs on the shoulders of people who are gay. Yet, it falls there because so much of it comes together in the issues in which they are involved. Mine has learned from previous generations that people ought to be free to live in ways with which we disagree. However, we have seen for ourselves that this freedom taken too far begins to affect us all, that the society does have legitimate claims on behavior the public sphere.
No honest thinker can deny that deception and delusion abound as our cultural pendulum swings out beyond the supporting beams of society. We who are "equally divided" have a central perch from which to watch attempts to sweep away a tradition that we are just beginning to explore, with the speed of change apparently justified on the basis of some strange fairy tale about a world without consequences.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:03 AM EST
Thursday, November 20, 2003
Ambushed in Confidence Place
Ambushed: Why George Herbert Walker Bush Really Lost in 1992 by Anne DuBose Joslin is the latest addition to Confidence Place: The Timshel Arts Store. For more information about the book, see the author's Web site: 7 Omega.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 02:25 PM EST
The Standard Piece Succeeded
Do you want to know what's really notable about today's New York Times article about the Weekly Standard report about the Iraq–al Qaeda link? No, not that the Times used every method to discredit everybody along the chain that brought this information to the public. Rather, the part I've italicized here:
"If you don't understand how intelligence works, you could look at this memo and say, `Aha, there was an operational connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda,' " a Pentagon official said Wednesday. "But intelligence is about sorting what is credible from what isn't, and I think the best judgment about Iraq and Al Qaeda is that the jury is still out."
The public opinion jury had been back for quite a while. Now it's left the room again.
(Of course, that poor jury is getting a lot of exercise. As I've pointed out, in 1998, the Times reported the verdict in a headline: "US Government - Bin Laden and Iraq Agreed to Cooperate on Weapons Development.")
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:11 AM EST
The Redwood Review Poem of the Week
This one comes very highly recommended; it is certainly worth a few minutes of your time.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 10:52 AM EST
Would a Dictionary Solve the Problem
I've taken the time to read the actual Massachusetts gay marriage ruling so that I can better address the truly horrible arguments that are being made on its behalf. I'll tell ya: it almost makes you want to throw up your hands and say, "Fine, let's just tear the whole damn thing down and have done with it!"
The first thing to note is all of the previous judgments — good and moral judgments — that have been coopted into this cause. Every measure to help usher children into stable environments, right down to "grandparent visitation," has been thrown in. (And yet, elsewhere, the court argues that marriage is fundamentally about the spouses, not the children.)
At bottom, the entire thing is a sleight of hand. The court agrees that marriage means and has, for our purposes, always meant (in the words of M-w.com) "the state of being united to a person of the opposite sex as husband or wife in a consensual and contractual relationship recognized by law." Therefore, one could legitimately go through and, at every instance of "marriage" in the precedent, change it to "heterosexual marriage," because that is what was meant. Thus, we see that every argument of the court is either a non sequitur or beside the point; homosexuals are not discriminated against in their right to enter into heterosexual marriages. Neither are people who have no interest in marriage.
In order to give the appearance of getting around this, the court has absolutely opened the way for any arrangement between two people (the number limit applying arbitrarily for now). If anybody scoffs at the notion that we'll be able to marry siblings, you can be certain that they haven't understood the argument put forward by this ruling. Yes, there are spots in which consanguinity is mentioned, but the argument in full completely undermines its inclusion. (Indeed, what laws about consanguinity are on the books are exclusively opposite-sex, as might be expected since there was no such thing as same-sex marriage.) This court has dismissed the opposite-sex intent of every use of the word "marriage" in Massachusetts law ever, and its own logic practically requires subsequent courts to do the same with any other restrictions that this court, itself, places on the definition.
The delusion on which this decision hinges is captured naked in the following statement, which caused me to sit up in my chair and wonder who these robed tyrants think they're kidding:
Alarms about the imminent erosion of the "natural" order of marriage were sounded over... the introduction of "no-fault" divorce. Marriage has survived all of these transformations, and we have no doubt that marriage will continue to be a vibrant and revered institution.
Lord, please help us.
(Note: the words that I've cut from that final quotation were "the demise of antimiscegenation laws, the expansion of the rights of married women." I agree with both changes, and I agree that marriage survived despite the warnings of the opposition. But I didn't want the court to slip in "no-fault" divorce as if that a) is equivalent to the other rights-based issues or b) didn't damage marriage dramatically.)
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:22 AM EST
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
Seven Score
Lane Core marks the 140th anniversary of the Gettysburgh Address.
I'm sometimes amazed at how truly young our nation is, yet how distant the past seems. It's odd to think that, when my grandmother was a girl in Virginia, there were still veterans of the Civil War walking the Earth. To her, the Civil War is like World War II to kids now.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 06:20 PM EST
Make It Go Away!
I'm sorry if you've had enough of the gay marriage talk from me, but there's just so much to say (after even more head shaking). On the anti-gay-marriage side, people are looking for ways to discuss the point with those who reject religious arguments out of hand. On the pro-gay-marriage side, there are folks proving (check the comments) that they are just as willing to reject non-faith-based arguments out of hand (i.e., on faith), although they'll pretend to be interested in hearing them.
Meanwhile, somewhere in the middle are people like John Cole (who has been rapidly moving up my list of to-read blogs), who seem just to turn the issue off:
I officially refuse to become mired in the gay marriage debate because I simply do not care what consenting adults do in the bedroom. Unless it is my bedroom, thank you very much.
Let me say this one more time (with feeling): Marriage is not exclusively, or even primarily, a bedroom relationship. In fact, that the gay marriage initiative seems to encourage this thinking strikes me as prima facie evidence that it is already serving to diminish the institution.
Yet, folks with strong libertarian streaks seem to wish the whole thing merely to go away. Perhaps it hits too close to a huge weak spot of libertarianism: that government cannot be defined without reference to morality, whichever way that morality goes, and that the society to be governed has a right to influence that definition.
I don't believe that this applies to John, but it seems to me that, for a great number of these people, their libertarian streaks are an echo of the liberal call for tolerance uber alles. They are emotionally disposed to recoil from strongly made moral statements, so they are loathe to explore whether those statements have an intellectual basis. Everything in their reaction points to an emotional justification for pushing the issue away so that they don't have to reconcile what they say with the likely real-world results of their advised policies.
For example, if opposition to gay marriage is purely opposition to what is done in the bedroom, and if one rejects that as a criterion, then what is done in the bedroom could be nothing. That is, marriage could be between anybody and any number of people. Whether or not they find this possibility objectionable, it may push the libertarian sorts to seek to end the conversation there by declaring that the government has no role in marriage (an argument that I once flirted with). This, in turn, moves to the heart of what government is, should be, and cannot help but be.
Once again, however, it is much easier simply to declare the thing a "non-issue" and ignore any and all repercussions. That's a very disappointing attitude to find among people whose opinion one respects.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 01:36 PM EST
That Incorribly Right-Wing Talk Radio!
Local talk host Steve Kass was discussing the Massachusetts gay marriage issue, and over the course of an hour (which is much more time than I have to spare), I was more and more inclined to call in. Kass is in favor of gay marriage, as is everybody whom I've come across in the Rhode Island media. He sort of reminds me of my grandfather, although Kass is quite a bit younger, in his approach. He sees ours as an evolving society, and he can't imagine people choosing to be gay. Therefore, he concludes that society can justly evolve such that people can be happy no matter the cards that they've been dealt.
However, I don't think he understands how much the culture and the youth environment has changed since he was young. For my grandfather, this generation gap is most pronounced with race. Far from being a monolithically oppresive nation for gays, in regions of our country, certainly the one in which I grew up, there was undoubtedly a gay caché. Even if that weren't true, people choose all sorts of lifestyles that others see as undesirable. Devout Catholicism, for example.
This relates to something that really hit me — smacked me upside the ear — as I listened to the show. Kass's call-screener, a young guy named Jeff, came on the air and ranted about how he's sick of sitting there listening to "crazy" people quote from the Bible. "Just go away," he said. "Go live in Bibleland."
I don't think we have instruments capable of measuring the speed at which that kid would have been whipped out the door if his comments were the reverse. Can you imagine? "We've been sitting here for an hour listening to these crazy people talk about their perverse lifestyles. Just go away. Go to Queerland."
So, anyway, I took a few minutes to calm down, and then I decided that I would follow through with my previous intention, which had been to make a non-Bible-based argument against gay marriage — something that, amazingly, nobody had done comprehensively. I dialed. A gruff-sounding Jeff put me on hold. He came back, and I explained the essence of my point. A minute later, Steve Kass said, "Okay, let's go out to Portsmouth." The phone clicked and I said, "Good morning."
And I discovered that I'd been disconnected. When I turned on the radio, Kass was speaking with some woman. Now, I don't know if I was the Portsmouth person whom he mentioned. I don't know whose finger hit the wrong button and disconnected me. And I certainly can't claim that it was intentional. Isn't it suggestive, though?
Rather than try again, I just sent the following email to Kass. We'll see what he says:
I tried to call, but was disconnected. I'm a better writer than speaker, anyway, and your screener certainly added a level of anxiety to making the call.
My first point is that the Mass. court decision does open the way wide for any type of arrangement: "the right to marry means little if it does not include the right to marry the person of one's choice, subject to appropriate government restrictions in the interests of public health, safety, and welfare." I don't see how brothers, for example, wouldn't have a legitimate claim on that basis.
My larger point reflects, as you said, that society changes, evolves, and it's proven more than a little reckless to let this swing like a live wire. This is why it isn't valid to argue that it won't affect my marriage; the question is whether it will affect my children's marriage — my children's society. I think that's beyond doubt, but it represents a worthwhile discussion.
But I don't think the argument is at the point of addressing that. We're still figuring out the forum for the debate. It is simply wrong to declare that the law has nothing to do with morality. It is impossible to avoid it, and indeed, a presumption of morality, however derived, is a founding principle of our nation. But the fact that the written law cannot apply with undue discrimination is why the legislature makes the laws, not the courts. If the courts can decide what's right, proper, or "where we are as a people" — changing the definition, as you admit, of what "marriage" means — then we could save a whole lot of money and time by dissolving legislative branches.
Personally, I'm sympathetic to committed gay couples, but I don't think it's yet been proven that they are the rule, or that they are enough of the rule to prevent corrosion of the institution. It's also pretty clear that there's no reason society will brake after including gays in the institution. In other words, it isn't gay marriage, necessarily, but what comes with it. Consider the degree of reinterpretation of the Bible that came with Bishop Robinson; more to the point, consider that he added extra-marital sex and divorce into the mix of Episcopalian acceptance. At the very least, gay marriage is bringing with it a judicial oligarchy. What else will it bring with it? Well, that's an argument to be had, not dismissed.
Frankly, I think Jeff illustrated the future of this movement with his "just go away" comment. "Go live in Bibleland?" People who quote the Bible are "crazy"? As offensive and unprofessional as his comments were, I think they're more important as a warning of a mindset that has no patience for differing opinion. Canada (a nation that the Mass. court cited in its opinion) already has multiple examples of acceptance of homosexuality in private and religious spheres being mandated.
Well, this is such a nexus of an issue that I could go on, but this is long enough as it is. Frankly, I'm beginning to worry that many in the media have no interest in conveying the less-easily-dismissed arguments of the other side. I guess there's always Bibleland... or perhaps a backlash in America that goes beyond what most Christians would like to see.
One thing's for sure. I'm not calling in to this station anymore, with the foreknowledge that the screener thinks I'm a hateful lunatic. That being the case, I don't know that I've got much reason to listen, either.
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 12:24 PM EST
The Redwood Review Nonfiction of the Week
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Posted by Justin Katz @ 11:59 AM EST
Songs You Should Know 11/18/03
The Timshel Music Song You Should Know this week is "Hessian Foxtrot" by You; the song is closer to out-there jazz than rock, but it sure illustrates the versatility of the band.
"Hessian Foxtrot" You, Alternative Rock
