Everyone’s favorite high-profile victim is sounding the outrage alert again, this time over a doctored picture which photoshops a conservative talk radio host’s face onto baby Trig. It’s not much to tear your hair out over, but wingnuts are over-reacting to a degree that would be surprising if we weren’t talking about wingnuts. The real winner, though, is the Palin camp’s press release (emphasis added):
“Recently we learned of a malicious desecration of a photo of the Governor and baby Trig that has become an iconic representation of a mother’s love for a special needs child,” Palin spokeswoman Meghan Stapelton said in a statement provided to CNN.
“A lot of people in the last couple of days…they’ve mentioned ‘intellect,” Gibbs said. “I’m not sure what number they graduated in their class at Princeton, but my sense is it’s not second.”
Because we should all bow our knees and bang our foreheads when an Ivy League graduate comes near. Frankly, I think we mortals are fortunate that Sonia Sottomayor continues to bless us with her presence in this realm.
I mean, she finished second in her class! Has anyone ever done better than that? Um, well, presumably, if we could find the guy who finished first, he could criticize her. Though we’d migh have to compare SAT scores to determine whom to believe. I’m sure the richness of the experiences of this wise Latina woman would overwhelm whatever that guy had to offer.
Here’s Keith Olberman and Mike Musto providing America with a substantive entry in the national conversation about the Ms. USA controversy:
Yes, because when push comes to shove, the best way to fight for equality and equal recognition is to make personal cracks about Carrie Prejan’s boobs. You keep things classy, Keith!
Gay marriage supporters — among whom I count myself — deserve to lose. Keith Olberman is a disease.
Tom posted this at 9:54 AM EDT on Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 as Kulturkampf
Richard Socarides, an attorney and former senior adviser on gay rights to President Clinton, said the ruling carries extra significance coming from Iowa.
“It’s a big win because, coming from Iowa, it represents the mainstreaming of gay marriage. And it shows that despite attempts stop gay marriage through right wing ballot initiatives, like in California, the courts will continue to support the case for equal rights for gays,” he said.
1. I thought us folks in the middle of the country were somehow questioning the Americanness of others when we implied that the coasts are full of effete liberal snobs. I suspect that charge won’t be raised in the coming days when gay marriage supporters go on and on and on about how “mainstream” Iowa is.
2. I seriously doubt the Iowa Supreme Court represents the mainstream of Iowa, or, really, anywhere.
3. Is he calling California a “right wing” state? I think he is!
I’d also like to observe that every state high court that has mandated gay marriage (Hawaii, Vermont, Massachusetts, California, Connecticut, Iowa) is an appointed body. If you really want to show me that gay marriage has gone “mainstream,” win me a case in a state that elects it judges.
Apollo posted this at 11:26 AM EDT on Friday, April 3rd, 2009 as Kulturkampf
Over at The American Thinker, Charlie Nathan is worrying about the millenial generation:
According to the Josephson Institute for Youth Ethics 2008 survey on the ethics of American youth, 64 percent of high school students admitted cheating on a test during the previous year and 38 percent did so two or more times. 30 percent admitted to stealing from a store within the past year. Yet, incredibly, an astounding 93 percent of those same high school students said they were satisfied with their personal ethics and character.
My personal experiences have confirmed these statistics. I know of one instance where rich parents offered a brand-new BMW to an SAT tutor to take the test for their child, who was surely in on the scheme. The parents didn’t want their child to achieve on merit alone and encouraged cheating. The tutor declined the offer, but I am confident this is not the only case.
To share another personal example of twisted morality, two summers ago I was eating at a diner with some recent acquaintances. After we finished, I left a generous tip. As we were leaving, my companions started to laugh hysterically. I asked what was so funny and they revealed that they had taken my tip, a reward for service that was perfectly fine, and replaced it with a penny. These boys essentially stole the major source of income from a waitress, insulting her in the process — all to “teach me a lesson” about over-tipping.
His concern for his generation is admirable, but perhaps his diagnosis is misplaced. Hannah Arendt once observed that in every generation Western Civilization is invaded by barbarians, which we call “children.” People aren’t born good. It’s something that needs to be learned. Mr. Nathan seems to go off track when he writes:
From Enron to Madoff, we have witnessed the economic consequences of immoral behavior. The current financial crisis was in part caused by immorality: buyers bought homes they couldn’t afford, sellers sold homes to people who couldn’t afford them, and the government sat back, enjoying the show.
. . .
So far, we Millennials have not had much of a chance to step up to the plate and prove ourselves morally capable of becoming the leaders of the American economy. But we will have no choice and, unless we change our ways, our immoral behavior can have disastrous consequences.
There’s far more to criticize in what happened before the Millenials. They’re the children of the Baby Boomers, and have come by their narcissism because they imitated their parents. It seems a stretch of logic to go from “the younger generation has a selfishness problem” to “the institutions are failing because of the older generation’s selfishness.”
The logical connection, which Mr. Nathan nibbles around but doesn’t really get to, is that the older generation, which both trashed the institutions and raised the younger badly, is at fault. The Baby Boomers shortcomings are an explanation—but not an excuse—for the Millennials. How much the Millennials are like their parents will determine the course of the 21st century.
Deroy Murdock deserves worlds of kudos for his excellent column contrasting the marriage lobby’s obsession with SSM and obliviousness to AshleyMadison.com, a hook-up site for adulterers:
AshleyMadison.com calls itself a “dating site specifically designed to help married people cheat on their spouses.” Its slogan is “Life’s short, have an affair.” Its previous tag line was “When Monogamy Becomes Monotony.” It boasts 3.5 million registered users, among whom some 400,000 active members each pay up to $249 quarterly.
…
Over the last six months, for example, Rick Santorum appeared in 22 stories that mention “gay marriage,” but in zero citing AshleyMadison.com. Maggie Gallagher materialized in 41 gay-marriage stories and zero on AshleyMadison.com. Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney’s numbers are 276-0, respectively. For Focus on the Family, the score is 389-0. The phrase “same-sex marriage” yielded 24 hits for Santorum, 52 for Gallagher, 256 for Romney, and 449 for Focus. All of the above were absent from the 67 Nexis-archived stories on AshleyMadison.com between September 5, 2008, and March 5, 2009.
Clearly, straight-marriage fans fret about what two men wearing wedding bands might do to a man and woman with rings on their fingers. Whether this concern is scientific or superstitious, surely they must acknowledge that seeing Bob and Steve together in a porch swing is trivial compared to Adam philandering with his new AshleyMadison.com adulteress as Eve waits at home, watches dinner grow cold, and wonders why on Earth he’s so late.
Well said, sir.
Tom posted this at 6:53 PM EDT on Thursday, March 19th, 2009 as Kulturkampf
Jonathan Rauch and David Blankenhorn have co-written an op-ed on gay marriage. It’s somewhat like seeing Nancy Pelosi and Rick Santorum co-write on abortion. If there’s a conservative way to integrate gay families into the law, this is it:
We take very different positions on gay marriage. We have had heated debates on the subject. Nonetheless, we agree that the time is ripe for a deal that could give each side what it most needs in the short run, while moving the debate onto a healthier, calmer track in the years ahead.
It would work like this: Congress would bestow the status of federal civil unions on same-sex marriages and civil unions granted at the state level, thereby conferring upon them most or all of the federal benefits and rights of marriage. But there would be a condition: Washington would recognize only those unions licensed in states with robust religious-conscience exceptions, which provide that religious organizations need not recognize same-sex unions against their will. The federal government would also enact religious-conscience protections of its own. All of these changes would be enacted in the same bill.
Michael Novak is right: this column by E.J. Dionne now looks pretty foolish. Granted, it took Obama until his fourth day in office to reverse the Mexico City policy, whereas Bill Clinton did it on his first, but for someone who talked during the campaign like he wanted to put the culture wars behind us, our new president sure used his first few days in office in a funny way. Almost as though he’s some sort of doctrinaire liberal on every issue and will govern as one.
Of course, some of us never fell for Obama’s smooth talk, and thought of those who did as suckers. The funny word of the day: Kmiec. Congrats, Doug, your pro-life candidate is now using your tax dollars to fund abortions in foreign countries.
Back in 1996, when supporting gay marriage was a very fringe position, Obama supported it. Now that it’s a fairly mainstream – though still minority – position, he says he opposes it. Which do you think is his actual position?
And, um, impressive how these things keep coming out. I suspect we’ll learn more about Obama’s past in the next year than we’ve learned in the last, and I suspect it will include several more things that might have been unpopular during the elections.
Eugene Volokh has a post about a woman who was fired from a state university for writing a piece which, among other things, opposed gay marriage and praised ex-gay groups. He has the text of the article, which hardly seems hateful or mean-spirited, and then writes:
Given this, how should people who share Ms. Dixon’s religious views, and who are trying to figure out how militantly to fight against pro-gay-rights causes, react? Of course, you might think the answer is “change your views, and accept homosexuality as perfectly proper.” But let’s assume that those who oppose homosexuality continue to disagree with you on that. What should a reasonable person in their shoes do, faced with the prospect that expressing their views — and quite likely expressing any opposition to pro-gay-rights policies, when the opposition rests on a claim that homosexuality doesn’t merit legal protection of various sorts — is becoming a firing offense as to a large range of jobs?
Indeed. The effect of various aspects of the modern left – labeling anyone opposed to gay rights a bigot, anyone opposed to racial preferences a racist – is to make large numbers of jobs available only to leftists and the most closeted of conservatives. Already the diversity officers that every corporation and university employs must be card carrying leftists, but evidently the rule is reaching out to swallow up all of HR. Once the entryway into employment is controlled by an ideological cadre of holier-than-thous, what are the chances that those of us who have conservative paper trails will get our feet in the door?
That’s obviously a few steps down the road, but the reality is that many jobs that ought not be ideological are already closed off to conservatives on ideological grounds. Volokh concludes with a wortwhile question: “But what should be the reaction of those who oppose homosexuality on religious grounds, and care a good deal about their and their coreligionists’ ability to express their views and act in accordance with those views in their private lives?”
If you stand to get fired for your views, even by a state employer, I guess the answer is to shut up. Yay freedom!
Apollo posted this at 10:13 PM EST on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 as Kulturkampf
This commits the ultimate sin of political parody: it’s not funny. That’s aside from the obvious tone deafness, refusal to accept that opponents are sincere people with beliefs of their own, and reveling in religious ignorance that one expects from politically active celebrities. All that’s missing is a suggestion that anyone in favor of Prop. 8 is a closet case, though I’m obviously not as smart as these people so it may have been there and just went over my head.
At least those who Christians voted for Proposition 8 are, according to one of the leading legal academics in the country. Not wrong or mislead, but “un-American.” I think he leaves as an open question the Americaness of non-Christians who supported Proposition 8.
Apollo posted this at 8:37 AM EST on Monday, December 1st, 2008 as Amer-I-Can!, Kulturkampf
So what happens when a long-time stalwart of the anti-abortion movement endorses Obama and then spends months writing op-eds explaining his decision? Doug Kmiec is no longer in the anti-abortion camp:
Sometimes the law must simply leave space for the exercise of individual judgment, because our religious or scientific differences of opinion are for the moment too profound to be bridged collectively. When these differences are great and persistent, as they unfortunately have been on abortion, the common political ideal may consist only of that space. This does not, of course, leave the right to life undecided or unprotected. Nor for that matter does the reservation of space for individual determination usurp for Caesar the things that are God’s, or vice versa. Rather, it allows this sensitive moral decision to depend on religious freedom and the voice of God as articulated in each individual’s voluntary embrace of one of many faiths.
So because people disagree over the subject, we can’t make laws protecting human life. You say it’s one thing, I say it’s the other, so let’s just let everyone do their thing. But of course, that’s the case for every law. If people always agreed with the laws, there would be no criminals. Because the mafia thinks extortion is a proper way of life, should that also be legalized? Who are we to judge how God’s voice is articulated in each individual’s voluntary embrace of one of many faiths?*
But of course, extortion isn’t commonly seen as a religious issue. Neither should abortion be seen as such, and it makes me cranky that Kmiec is now giving into the pro-abortion position that differences over abortion are simply religious differences. We’re not talking the final resting place of souls or at what point in time transubstantiation occurs. We’re talking about the willful destruction of things that can only be described as human beings. No one looks at murder or rape as religious matters, they are correctly seen as moral matters that should be addressed by people any or no faith. Abortion should be no different.
Even if every organized religion on earth said that abortion was permissible, that would not make it so as a moral matter. The faiths of the planet were once united behind the permissibility of slavery, but no one now addresses what the voice of God articulates to each individual about enslaving other men. Slavery is wrong because it is wrong; it defies and defiles the natural law that we all understand within ourselves, independent of our interpretation of the almighty.
So Kmiec here has done several wrongs. He has spent time encouraging those who oppose abortion to support the most pro-abortion** candidate in the history of the country. He has defined down abortion to a mere theoretical religious question to be bickered over, instead of a legal regime that allows millions of human beings to be destroyed. And he has talked himself into accepting the position of the other side in the most contentious social issue of the last two generations. This should indeed be a lesson for abortion foes who vote for a pro-abortion candidate and attempt to rationalize it.
*Isn’t that one of the most flippantly relativist lines imaginable? I can’t think of anything it wouldn’t excuse.
**Would anyone call a mid-19th century politician “anti-slavery” if he supported and defended Dred Scott’s expansion of legalized slavery over the whole of the country, but then said what we should be doing is persuading southerners to free their slaves under the current legal system? That is what Obama does when he calls himself “anti-abortion.” Slavery is wrong because it destroys the freedom of one human being for the convenience of another. If abortion is wrong, it is wrong because it destroys a human being for the convenience of another. If you believe that to be the case, you cannot support the legalization of abortion, even if you accept that others disagree. Such a position might make sense on tax policy or other issues where the moral imperatives are not so pressing. But if you think the destruction of human life is merely a matter of individual interpretation, you are not anti-abortion.
“Abstinence” means no masturbation? Admittedly, telling your friends that you can’t go out tonight because you’d rather sit around pleasuring yourself is several degrees of weird. But if the conservative answer to teen promiscuity is to gripe that too many teenage girls have taken up the banjo, we lose.
Two fight of center writers I generally like, Jennifer Roback Morse and Dorian Davis, both discuss gay marriage today in problematic pieces.
Morse’s column is more problematic. I normally like her a great deal, and I wholeheartedly recommend her pamphlet101 tips on a happier marriage. That said, here’s a bit of what she wrote today:
Well, it is official. You won. We lost. Same sex marriage is the law in California. We might win the amendment in the fall, but let’s face it. The momentum is on your side: the Inexorable March of Progress and all that.
Other states will recognize California’s same sex marriages? The Federal government will? (Answers: no and no.) Morse surely knows this, which is why much of the rest of her piece, giving advice to same sex quasi-married people has a less than happy tone:
Now that same sex couples can marry, there is no longer any excuse for the State of California to encourage non-marital cohabitation, by opposite sex couples or same sex couples. California should shut down the domestic partnership registries. Cohabitation is socially and privately inferior to marriage. The state should insist that couples either put up or shut up: get married or be single. No more half-way house of marriage-lite.
Few same sex couples have taken advantage of the opportunity to marry, even where it is legal. So far, Massachusetts has the highest rate of marriage among gay individuals: a mere 16% of the gay population has married. I somehow doubt that the remaining 84% are living celibate lives. Some of them are cohabiting. These high rates of same sex cohabitation have got to stop.
If there actually was genuine marriage available, I’d agree with her. But since there isn’t, I can’t. For sake of argument, I can’t marry a British man and expect the federal government to recognize the marriage for the sake of citizenship. We’re still dealing with marriage-lite right now. If a couple married in California moves out of state, I’d recommend they get a domestic partnership in their new state of residence because there’s no guarantee that their California marriage will be valid in Connecticut.
Still, I actually do agree with Morse on one key point in her column:
I have in my filing cabinet some model legislation that would make adultery a civil offense. That means that a faithful spouse has the right to sue an adulterous spouse for damages. Don’t get me wrong: no policemen will be peaking in people’s windows. The injured party gets to decide whether it is worthwhile, all things considered, to sue. My guess is that few people would bring such suits. But lawyers and marriage counselors who practiced back in the Bad Old Days before no-fault will tell you: the threat of such lawsuits deterred a lot of bad behavior. Now that gays can marry, you have just as great an interest in marital fidelity as the rest of us.
I’ve been looking for someone to introduce this legislation. Maybe if a member of GLBTQ caucus introduces the legislation, it will get some traction.
You who made the conservative case for same sex marriage convinced the public that same sex marriage would provide the same private and social benefits as opposite sex marriage. But marriage is more than just a set of benefits: marriage also is a set of obligations and constraints. Those of us in the Marriage Movement have been trying to help people see that there is freedom within those constraints. But it has been a tough sell. People want only the benefits and none of the obligations. People go for the short-term gratification and miss the Big Prize: lifelong married love.
Now that you can marry, I assume that you are on board. I look forward to hearing from you.
I’m not an elected official, but strengthening marriage with civil offense laws makes sense to me. Even though there isn’t gay marriage yet, of course. Given the confusing mishmash of state, local, and federal laws, today’s committed same sex couples get lots of extra obligations and fewer benefits. And I think having Dr. Morse speak at some couples’ retreats that I know some gay people do before commitment ceremonies would be a good idea. (See her pamphlet for more; I link twice because it really is among the best $4.77 you can spend.)
Dorian Davis (H/T) argues that Republicans should embrace gay marriage:
It also puts Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage on the losing end of a civil rights issue – the last place that Republicans can afford to be considering their already damaged brand. Indeed, the collateral damage from their same-sex marriage exploitation now could be the loss of much of a new generation of Republicans later – a fate more catastrophic, one could argue, than seeing Ellen Degeneres and Portia De Rossi married. In California, for instance, almost 70 percent of respondents under 30 support same-sex marriage, compared with just 35 percent of those over 65, according to the Field Poll. National numbers bare out the same idea. In their May 2008 poll, USA Today/Washington Post reported that almost 80 percent of the under-30 crowd considered same-sex marriage a “private” matter, while just 45 percent of seniors agreed. Of all the lost causes to pursue, then, a same-sex marriage ban seems not just futile but dangerous if Republicans hope to be competitive with the next generation of voters.
As I recall, the Equal Rights Amendment was also inevitable and had large majorities of the country behind it and then it flopped. Further, just because most people support an issue doesn’t mean that their support of it will determine their votes. For example, most polls show that gun control is popular in the nation at large; pluralities and majorities favor stricter gun control laws. But the gun owning minority cares much more about gun control as an issue, which is why most politicians try to be pro-gun rather than pro-gun control.
The overwhelming majority of people are straight, and most of them aren’t particularly hard-core supporters of gay marriage. I think most of us on this blog support gay marriage, but all of us (queer me included) are willing to vote for politicians who oppose gay marriage; it isn’t a make-or-break issue for us.
So, contra Morse, gay marriage isn’t here yet; contra Davis, it isn’t inevitable. Alas.
