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.

Apollo posted this at 1:59 PM EDT on Saturday, October 18th, 2008 as Kulturkampf, Lord, What Fools These Mortals Be!

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“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.

Apollo posted this at 9:39 AM EDT on Tuesday, August 12th, 2008 as Kulturkampf, Pop Culture Is Filth

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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 pamphlet 101 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.

Hubbard posted this at 11:41 AM EDT on Tuesday, June 24th, 2008 as Kulturkampf, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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Rebecca Walker, daughter of Alice, writes about feminism.  Her childhood was uncommonly dysfunctional, but it sounds like she’s going to be a good mother because she’s learned what not to do from her own childhood:

Ironically, my mother regards herself as a hugely maternal woman. Believing that women are suppressed, she has campaigned for their rights around the world and set up organisations to aid women abandoned in Africa  —  offering herself up as a mother figure.

But, while she has taken care of daughters all over the world and is hugely revered for her public work and service, my childhood tells a very different story. I came very low down in her priorities  —  after work, political integrity, self-fulfilment, friendships, spiritual life, fame and travel.

My mother would always do what she wanted  —  for example taking off to Greece for two months in the summer, leaving me with relatives when I was a teenager. Is that independent, or just plain selfish?

I was 16 when I found a now-famous poem she wrote comparing me to various calamities that struck and impeded the lives of other women writers. Virginia Woolf was mentally ill and the Brontes died prematurely. My mother had me  —  a ‘delightful distraction’, but a calamity nevertheless. I found that a huge shock and very upsetting.

According to the strident feminist ideology of the Seventies, women were sisters first, and my mother chose to see me as a sister rather than a daughter. From the age of 13, I spent days at a time alone while my mother retreated to her writing studio  —  some 100 miles away. I was left with money to buy my own meals and lived on a diet of fast food.

Alice Walker sounds like a modern day Mrs Jellyby (I haven’t quoted the most disturbing parts of Rebecca’s essay).  So much hurt—but at least there’s hope.

Hubbard posted this at 9:26 PM EDT on Friday, May 23rd, 2008 as Kulturkampf, Excruciatingly Correct Behavior

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This story is pure class.

The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute….Need I say more? It’s extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves, Slutbucks.

I think Slutbucks says it all.

I can’t imagine a man who doesn’t get excited by a drawing of a woman with scales on her legs. Well, maybe Hubbard, but I suspect this drawing has crossover appeal. Doesn’t that just look inviting? It’s perhaps the most erotic thing I’ve seen since the last time I read the phrase vagina dentata.

Apollo posted this at 10:32 PM EDT on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 as Kulturkampf

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It lookes like the California Supreme Court has legalized gay marriage:

California’s supreme court ruled that a ban on gay marriage was unlawful Thursday, effectively leaving same-sex couples in America’s most populous state free to tie the knot in a landmark ruling. In an opinion that analysts say could have nationwide implications for the issue, the seven-member panel voted 4-3 in favor of plaintiffs who argued that restricting marriage to men and women was discriminatory.

“… limiting the designation of marriage to a union ‘between a man and a woman’ is unconstitutional and must be stricken from the statute,” California Chief Justice Ron George said in the written opinion.

I’d like to read the opinion (warning: link in PDF) for details.  That’ll take time, since it’s 172 pages. 

My reaction so far is mixed.  Good: there’s gay marriage. Yay!  Bad: it’s from the courts.  I’m not a fan of using the courts to reshape society.  Must read the opinion—and brace for the inevitable appeal.

Hubbard posted this at 2:03 PM EDT on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 as Kulturkampf

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In light of a previous post, I think it’s worth pointing out that Stop-Loss is petering out and will probably fail to hit $11 million at the box office. This is well short of the paltry $15 million that Lions for Lambs brought in. That movie starred Tom Cruise, Meryl Streep, and Robert Redford, and was the 126th best grossing movie last year, so I’m not sure what the studio expected from Ryan Phillipe when they bought this movie a Super Bowl ad spot.

Two amazing facts:

1. We are five years into a war that has been the top news story almost every single day, and we’ve only recently passed the 4,000th American death.
2. We are five years into a war that has been the top news story almost every single day, and there has not been a single studio movie portraying American soldiers or the American war effort in a positive light.

Apollo posted this at 10:14 PM EDT on Thursday, April 24th, 2008 as Kulturkampf

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