Identity

Another one of those posts from Andrew Sullivan that sparked a few thoughts of my own. I've probably taken issue with Sullivan on this before -- he spends a lot of time decrying "identity politics," particularly when engaged in by people he doesn't identify with -- but I have to hand it to him: he does spark some thinking from time to time. I'm not researching this one -- I'm just following the thoughts to see where they lead.

He says something that once again betrays a lack of depth in his thinking:

As to the broader issue, it is undeniable that our identity forms us; but it is still important in my view to aspire to something beyond it.

My question is, does he honestly think that people have only one "identity"? I'm positing this in full realization that his use of the term is fluid: there is any individual's identity, which is composed of any number of facets, and then there is the group identity that is generally being referred to in discussions of "identity politics." But these group identities are never monolithic.

The stellar illustration of that last observation is the gay movement: What started off once upon a time as "LGB" is now "LGBTQ" and growing. (I've seen extenstions of that one that stagger the imagination, but I've forgotten all the initials.) This is identity politics carried to the point where it no longer has a coherent identity, and no longer has any effectiveness as a mode of operation. If you don't believe me, just look at the overwhelming success of the national movement organizations in the past decade or so. Right.

Sullivan's use of the term is inevitably pejorative. It seems that no one who discusses movements and interest groups in those terms is in favor -- except of course, for their own movement and interest groups, which are by definition not based on "identity." (I'm sorry, but I can't resist: Does this mean that old, white, straight Christian guys don't have identities?) I mean, once again, what we're dealing with here is lazy thinking, this time apparently focused on Sonia Sotomayor, and I have to say that I'm amazed at Sullivan, or nearly: you have figure that if the far-right noise machine is saying it, it can't possibly be true. (This is based on empirical evidence, so is subject to change as new evidence becomes available. I'm not holding my breath.)

My problem with Sullivan's statement is that people, and even groups, do aspire to something beyond -- not only aspire, but achieve, regularly, and as a matter of course. Not to acknowledge that is not only lazy, but sloppy. You're going to come to the right conclusions only by accident because you've set artificial parameters for a discussion of real phenomena.

I'm not saying that identity politics is not real -- look at the alphabet soup that's the gay movement, or any one of a number of blogs that hew to the party line (whatever the party happens to be, and whatever the reality of the subject under discussion). In most cases that's a natural outgrowth of the demands of the situation: there's an issue at stake, and most issues do not affect 100% of the population. Those that do don't affect everyon the same way. Identity becomes a viable rallying point for a point of view.

This is sort of interesting:

I have long struggled to achieve a balance in writing about homosexuality - objective and subjective - and haven't always succeeded. But the point was trying. On this blog, I write passionately about the subject but I hope I do not do so out of a sense of victimhood or in a way that doesn't assume that heterosexuals can easily grasp and agree with what I'm saying.

As to Sullivan's "balance in writing" about homosexuality, why? I make no bones about the fact that I'm an advocate. Otherwise, I wouldn't be blogging. Frankly, I think that's pretty much the case across the board on the blogosphere. I'm a lot more fair than many bloggers (which regularly gets me trashed from both directions, when anyone bothers to notice), but I'm not at all reticent about my agenda.

My basis is different: I'm not apologizing. (And frankly, that surprises me in one regard: not that I'm unapologetic, but that Sullivan, who is substantially younger than I, is bending over backwards to make himself acceptable to non-gays. I guess it's not purely a generational thing after all.) I'm putting the shoe on the other foot: anyone who is going to be critical of me solely because of my sexual orientation has to prove to me that their opinion is acceptable and deserves attention.

That may very well be using identity as a club, but in a different way than is the usual case when discussing "identity politics." Sure, my politics, at least on social issues, particularly on the issue of gay rights, stems from my identity as a gay man. To be honest, I've never been very good at being a victim -- I'm just too damned ornery for that, and I don't have much patience for it in anyone else. My feeling is that if you're a victim, chances are you've been cooperating. (Don't take this as an absolute: there are certainly situations in which someone is a victim without any influence on their situation. Interestingly enough, those people don't seem to spend much time playing the victim card. They tend to sue.)

To loop back around to Sullivan's remarks and my objections to them, where this is leading seems to be one more blast at Sullivan for dismissing a perfectly legitimate strategic basis for activiy by what is a perfectly circular argument: the arguments are invalid because they are based on identity politics, and identiy politics are by definition suspect. (Full disclosure: as I noted at the beginning of this post, I don't know the circumstances that prompted Sullivan's post, but he seems to have jumped on the "affirmative action" bandwagon with regard to Sotomayor's career, which he now admits was wrong. "Affirmative action" is simply one of the mechanisms of identity politics.) In this case, the argument -- Sonia Sotomayor's successful career, and consequently her qualifications as a Supreme Court nominee -- has been given a suspect pedigree -- identity politics -- in order to carry out a radical right-wing agenda. I'm sort of surprised at Sullivan for being a party to it, but at the same time I'm not: it's Beltway thinking, after all.

The News

is just too gruesome. The commentary is even more gruesome. I'm sitting here trying to think of something a little more upbeat to post -- let's see: something nice to look at, a little light-hearted (or a lot), cheery and optimistic.

Aha!



In spite of the bit at the very beginning, this one's relentlessly upbeat. (But pay attention -- those flashbacks are really important.) I've done a Review in Brief of it here, and it's become one of my favorite things to watch when I'm really tired and need just to relax a bit.

If you want to watch the whole thing, it's available at Aarinfantasy (you have to join the forums and have BitTorrent or equivalent software to download anime) and it's on YouTube.

Another Pro-Marriage Video

From Louise at Pam's House Blend: short, sweet, and simple:

Keep Pushing

From Pam's House Blend, a note that Rachel Maddow does it again: nailing Obama on DADT:



I like the contrast with his campaign speeches. From November 29, 2007:



Unfortunately, instead of leadership, what we're getting from this commander-in-chief is headlong retreat. I like Maddow's comment: "I wonder what his [Obama's] record would be like so far if he weren't a fierce advocate for gay rights."

Add in this story about the Supreme Court refusing certiori on a DADT case -- at the administration's request -- and you start to see why I'm not real happy: I don't like the picture that's emerging here at all.

In the "don't ask, don't tell" case, the Supreme Court sided with the Obama administration, which had urged the justices not to hear the appeal against the policy, even though Obama is on record as opposing it. The court thus spared the administration from having to defend in court a policy that the president eventually wants to abolish pending a review by the Pentagon.

But the administration doesn't have to defend the policy -- it can elect not to. In fact, Obama has all sorts of options here that are not being explored.

I sort of wonder how much of Rahm Emanuel's influence we're seeing here? Somehow, having Mr. Republican-Lite as WH chief of staff doesn't reassure me a great deal. Whatever the cause, we voted for a leader, but got a Chicago politician.

"Disordered Appetites"

Ran across another anti-gay screed, this one from a Catholic, at Andrew Sullivan. (It says something that Sullivan has become a Place.) At the risk of boring you, I just want to point out once more the intellectual and logical poverty in these sorts of things. Here's just the first bit of the quote from Sullivan. (I'm not going to link to the article; Sullivan has a link and you can follow it if you want, but I've read it, it's the same sort of self-referential junk we'd expect, completely lacking any contact with objective reality.)

Some maintain that same sex attraction is a genetic predisposition. This is disputed. Even if it were the case, that does not give homosexual activity any more of a claim to being given a special civil rights status. Should we really give disordered appetites civil rights status under the law?

OK: four sentences, two huge holes.

1. The genetic basis of homosexuality is disputed. That doesn't mean it's wrong. The question is, who is disputing it, and on what basis? Granted, this is an opinion piece -- it would have to be, since I doubt that the author, Keith Fournier, could find any factual basis for anything he says, outside of Catholic dogma. The problem remains: opinions based on junk are worthless.

2. Disordered appetites. Another completely subjective and self-referential piece of garbage. (Sorry, but I don't feel like being any nicer about Fournier's ideas than he is being about me and my "appetites." You should all know by now what I think of the Catholic Church's hypocrisy when it comes to moral dicta, and especially the double-talk surrounding the Churcn's position on homosexuality, and frankly, to call a bit of doctrine "Natural Law" when it has nothing to do with nature is more than a little arrogant.)

I'd also like to point out that I don't particularly agree with the idea that we must prove that same-sex attraction is innate before we are worthy of full citizenship. Sorry -- the overwhelming majority of us, like the overwhelming majority of any other group, are responsible, law-abiding, normal people who basically want to be left alone to play the hand we've been dealt as best we can. Frankly, no one ever gave me a choice on who I was going to be drawn to and who I was going to love. That's just the way it is, and frankly, as far as my civil rights go, it should be irrelevant.

It's another piece of drivel, beginning with the almost-required declaration of victimhood and citing the words of a man who facilitated child molesters for decades as moral authority.

Empty noise.

The "Legislative Process" Argument

I've long criticized Andrew Sullivan and Chris Crain and others who insist that legalizing same-sex marriage by legislation rather than "judicial fiat" is the best way to go. One of Ed Brayton's readers at Dispatches from the Culture Wars pointed out something that, I'm ashamed to say, I never thought of:

I'm happy to see this progress, but in some ways it worries me. What voters give they can just as easily take away; think about that before you start crowing too loudly about the superiority of legislative to judicial redress. Jim Crow laws and the tax laws restricting marijuana use, growth, and sale all passed with wide margins and even wider public support. The whole value of the Bill of Rights is that it states that those rights outlined, and many more not mentioned, are inherent to the individual; if the individual's rights are to be determined by legislative fiat, how secure are they really?

That's it, really. The point that the legislative process faction misses is that legislators are in theory accountable for their actions, but only in theory. We've seen too readily recently how voters will blindly follow what they're told rather than what they can see, and when that ideal comes up against reality -- well, it ain't pretty.

Let's face it -- most of us don't know what our representatives are up to on a day-to-day basis, and would probably be appalled to find out. And it's never a straight up vote on the merits -- it's always deal-making and horse-trading. Add in lobbyists and pressure groups, and you've got quite a mix, no?

It's odd to me that someone can rail against lawmakers' susceptibility to special interests (especially special interests with lots of cash) and still maintain that the legislature is the way to go on issues affecting fundamental rights.

Huh?

Health Care

A couple of good posts over at Crooks and Liars. First, John Amato on the single payer plan we're not hearing about. Second, Susie Madrak on efforts to kill any real reform.

From my own view, insurance -- the medical industry as a whole -- is a racket at this point. I've had my share of run-ins with insurance (one that still sticks in my mind is the "nurse's panel" suddenly deciding that a bite plate the insurance had covered for years was not "medically necessary"). The idea of having someone you've never seen nor ever had any contact with deciding what treatment you get is not one that sits well with me. And let's face it, health insurance, like journalism, is something that should never become a for-profit endeavor.

I Was Really Worried

I feel better now. And we could all use some good news:

The Earth could be habitable for another 2.3 billion years, extending previous estimates of life’s horizon by more than 1 billion years.

Giverny

What happens when a great artist designs a garden:



And here's some of the ways Monet saw it:









I've never been to Giverny. My one trip to Paris, there just wasn't time (and the gardens had not yet been refurbished). I did, however, see the water lily rooms at the Orangerie in the Tuileries Gardens. They were mesmerizing: it was like being there, completely surrounded by the pools and the flowers. Immense canvses mounted on the walls of two oval rooms. They were a gift by Monet to the French Republic.

And I live in Chicago. The Art Institute has what are probably the strongest holdings of Monet outside of France -- and its collection arguably rivals most of those in France. At one point they had a gallery at the top of the main stair devoted entirely to Monet, set up chronologically. Just the smaller canvases, of course. The large "Irises" and "Water Lilies" were still installed in the Impressionist galleries. But still.

Thanks to Chris in Paris at AmericaBlog for the video.

Reviews in Brief: Momoko Tenzen's The Paradise on the Hill

I find it hard to believe that I haven't noted this title here, since it's become one of my very favorite BL manga. The Paradise on the Hill is a romantic comedy by the creator of Seven, and it's just as spare and elliptical -- and even more unexpected -- than that one.

Kijima is a language teacher at an all girls high school that sits perched atop a hill above the city. He is reserved, quiet, and serious, although he's also a terrible tease. Ono is the new gym teacher, six years younger, tall, good-looking, and somewhat shy. He seeks Kijima's advice after Kijima witnesses a student confessing her love to the younger man. The two become friends, and then start reaching for something more.

This is a wonderful, charming comedy, completely motivated by the characters of the two men. The courtship is so tentative, awkward, and unsure that, under normal circumstances I'd get pretty thoroughly fed up, but Tenzen has handled it in such a way that not only are we captivated, but we find ourselves rooting for them. Each confesses to the other that he has feelings for someone, and it turns out that someone also has feelings for someone, and given the reticence of the two, we can see that circularity going on forever, if it weren't for the intervention of Tsuda, a fellow teacher who realizes she has no chance with either of them and gives things a nudge in the right direction just when they're about to come apart completely.

There is a side story, "Summer Rain," that is one of Tenzen's more serious efforts. Motomi Takase fell in love when he was eighteen, with an older man who had a wife and child. Their love was deep and intense, but Takase couldn't take responsibility for breaking up the man's family and fled. Ten years later, he is now back in town and has received a letter signed Hiroyuki Kasahara, his lover from long before, asking to meet. It begins to rain as Takase approaches the coffee shop where the meeting is to take place; there is only one other customer, a young man who's little more than a boy. They begin talking, which eventually leads to some serious revelations.

Underneath Tenzen's stories is what I'm coming to see as her ongoing theme: the price of happiness. It's always, it seems, involved with taking risks. In the case of Ono and Kijima, the fear of rejection almost destroys what they've been building. Takase's story is a study in the much greater cost of running away, of being afraid to pay the price. (And that story is quietly devastating.)

The drawing is up to the standard of Seven, although I still consider that one her best work to date (and by comparison with this one, that's only just barely). Graphically, Paradise is superb, not only in the character designs and renderings, but in the page layouts and visual flow, and especially in her variations in tone and shading, which add body and depth to her spare, evocative style. It's a pleasure just to look at the pages.

Another one from Juné.

Prop 8 Feedback

Got the following from reader PietB. I'm going to come back and comment on it, and really should have posted it before now (my bad). Piet's remarks seem to be right on point, and I think I may agree with him -- even though it means I may have been wrong in my previous comments. Well, it happens. (And unlike many, I'll admit it.)

The argument that was supposed to be being considered in this case was whether Prop. 8 was an amendment or a revision, not whether it pertained to a definition. The majority opinion stated and re-stated that the decision only restricted the word marriage to male-female couples, but in fact that assertion is the only way the opinion could be said to be doing that because nowhere in the reasoning did the Chief Justice actually discuss whether they were talking about a defining restriction, and the case wasn't about that. An amendment to the California Constitution is supposed to be about something like restricting the perch catch in the Delta in alternate months; a revision is used when a fundamental organizing principle of government is involved. If the Justices had actually been reasoning around that difference, they would have had to find that Prop. 8 was a revision because it does fundamentally change the way the State government operates by placing a restriction on the activities of the Justices of the Peace and County governments in general as to who may or may not receive a marriage license. In In re Marriage Cases, the Court properly found that the Constitution guarantees equal rights in all things to all State residents. The Court in that case made law by interpretation of the Constitution, which is what the Court is supposed to do.

In Strauss, the Court was supposed to be deciding the validity of the Proposition, not defining or re-defining the word "marriage". They assert that they are narrowly defining "marriage" in their decision, but in fact that wasn't presented for their deliberations. Nowhere do they substantively discuss the governmental effects of Proposition 8. And the wording of the proposition itself does not lead to considering it as a definition amendment; what it says is the only a marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized. It doesn't say, "but a civil union between two adults of the same sex is valid and recognized", and it doesn't present any remedy for the discrimination implicit in the ballot language. Kenneth Starr of evil memory argued for the proponents of Prop. 8 and an oilier performance I never have seen in a court of law. Under questioning, he cheerfully agreed that Prop. 8 set up two classes of citizens, but declined to agree that setting up two classes of citizens would affect how the government did its business. Justice Kennard, whose judicial history seemed to point to better sense than she displayed, insisted in her line of questioning that if a proposition were going to substantially affect how the government works it must have a quantity of language in direct proportion to the amount of effect, and implied that Prop. 8's few words (only fourteen) meant it had little effect. I sat down and wrote out several highly discriminatory ballot propositions that would have profoundly affected the way government works but had even fewer words that Prop. 8. The one restricting the vote to white male property owners had twelve words, two fewer than Prop. 8 but of course with much more profound effect on how the government would operate.

The "logic" in the opinions (both the majority opinion and the two concurring opinions) was so strained that I thought someone must surely have developed a hernia. When I say "shame on the Court", it's not because of the decision itself, it's for the intellectual dishonesty displayed in the opinions. The only one who seems to have considered the actual cause of the suit was the dissenter, Justice Moreno. Two of the Justices are up for re-election next year; if they have any personal integrity they won't run, but if they do I intend to work to remove them from the bench. I've spent all but six months of my life as a second-class citizen and I'm sick and tired of it.

As I say, I'll have to come back to this -- on deadline for music reviews (and be sure to check out the June 14 edition of Green Man Review -- major piece on Mahler coming up) and I really want to get this stuff off my desk.

What Kind of Person

Sends a wedding message like this?



This is what Jeremy Hooper got from Peter LaBarbera in honor of his wedding.

Which do you think best describes the giver?

1. Arrogant;
2. Self-Absorbed;
3. Tenuous grasp on reality;
4. Does not play well with others;
5. Rude and discourteous;
6. Probably has severe personality conflicts.

Note to Jeremy: While LaBarbera is a joke nationwide, his reputation at home in Illinois is even lower: he's known not only as a part of the lunatic fringe, but a total loser. He was booted out of the Illinois Family Institute (which, if I'm not mistaken, he founded) because he was completely ineffective -- not that they've done any better since. And neither has he.

Friday Gay Blogging: On-the-Run Edition

A quick one for today, and I'll probably come back with more over the weekend. This one pisses me off:

From an interview of President Barack Obama by Brian Williams of NBC, in response to William's question: "Do gay and lesbian couples who wish to marry have a friend in the White House?"



"I think gays and lesbians have a friend in the White House because I've consistently committed myself to civil unions, making sure that they have to visit each other in hospitals, that they are able to access benefits, that they have a whole host of legal rights that they currently do not have. I don't think it makes sense for the federal government to get in the business of determining what marriage is. That isn't traditionally the federal government's role."

As Pam Spaulding notes, the short translation is "No." This answer, from a constitutional scholar, is so full of holes that you could make cheese with it -- except the holes are too big.

First, he's endorsing once again second-class status for same-sex couples. Second, the federal government is already in the business of determining what marriage is: have you heard of DOMA, Mr. President? The law that you pledged to repeal and so far have done nothing about? And I mean nothing.

And note how he hems and haws his way through this one -- as though the question caught him flat. After the grillings that everyone in the administration in a position to make a comment on gay issues have been going through in recent weeks, how is that possible?

It's deja vu all over again: ask a simple question, and the president doesn't have an answer.

New Hampshire Makes Six

Yesterday's news, but I'm running a little behind (deadline time again).

From AP:

New Hampshire's governor has signed legislation making the state the sixth to allow gay marriage.

Gov. John Lynch was Surrounded by cheering supporters of the move as he signed the three bills about an hour after the key vote on the legislation in the House.

The law will take effect in January, exactly two years after the state legalized civil unions. New Hampshire joins Massachusetts, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont and Iowa in recognizing same-sex marriages, though opponents hope to overturn Maine's law with a public vote.

Apparently he's satisfied with the "protections" for religious organizations. I haven't seen the compromise language, but I sure hope it's more specific than his original proposal.

Marriage Videos

Blender Louise has been sharing these over at Pam's House Blend. Keep an eye out -- I'll try to get them here as well.

Here's the latest.

Terminology

This post by Waymon Hudson caught my eye over at Pam's House Blend.

I find myself cringing when I hear the word "homosexual."

Yes, I know it is a scientific term and meant to be clinical. And I know it is odd that this word bothers me when I embrace other words like queer, which is horribly offensive to some.

I know this may be in my mind, but I still have a guttural reaction when I hear the word. To me, it seems that more and more the word "homosexual" is becoming the new "faggot." It is being used by the religious right, conservatives, the media, and just about everyone else as a fill-in for a derogatory term.

I have pretty much the same reaction, tinged by a healthy dose of rage, but I have an easy answer for you, Waymon:

It's not the name we chose for ourselves. It's not the name by which we've asked to be known. To continue using it after that is indicative of, at the very least, lack of minimal respect for us as human beings. I won't go so far as to brand all who use that very clinical term with "hater," because I know many of them are not. They just don't know any better.

You're right that it's at least in part a generational thing, but perhaps not in the way you think. I'm thinking specifically of older friends of mine who are unsure as to what is correct. I try to steer them right, but we're talking about people in their 70s and older who have a lifetime habit to break -- and considering the word they are using, it's a lifetime habit of being nice about it, and they are trying.

Let's be very clear about it: the use of the term "homosexual" by the bigots you're referring to is deliberate and meant to be insulting. They do know better. You won't catch any of them referring to African Americans as "Negroes" -- at least, not in public. Their use of the term "homosexual" when referring to people is a deliberate insult, and they know it. It's a refusal to acknowledge that we have any say in our own role in society, and it's a deliberate attempt to diminish our humanity. And that's the compassionate part of their philosophy.

So, we keep educating those who can be educated, and fight the others. What else can we do?

Back Burner

Ran across this this open letter from Robin Tyler at AmericaBlog this morning, and I think I agree. It's getting to the point at which the national gay rights organizations, which Andrew Sullivan with some justification called appendages of the Democratic party, are bearing a more than passing resemblance to the Log Cabin Republicans.

It's not that I expected everything to be a done deal within the first hundred days, but I had hoped for some leadership. What we're getting from Obama and the Democrats is a headlong retreat from confronting gay issues. and I'm fed up. You can't be a leader if you won't even acknowledge events.

Interim

Sorry for the silence here, but I'm swamped, and I've only got this morning free. Whether that's going to result in an actual post I don't know. The three stories I've been following:

Prop 8/Marriage: I have a very strong and thoughtful e-mail from a reader that merits attention, and there is breaking news in New Hampshire. Irony of the day: Dick Cheney is to the left of Barack Obama on same-sex marriage. Pam's House Blend has had some decent coverage, but this one got buried by the next two.

George Tiller: It's sort of fun watching the demagogues on the right trying to get out from under this one, especially O'Reilly. Andrew Sullivan has been focusing on this one -- go back a couple of days.

Sonia Sotomayor: Once again, it looks as though the right insists on shooting itself in the foot, which is all to the good: the sooner the Republican party collapses completely, the sooner they can rebuild it into something worth having. Hilzoy and Digby have been giving this one good coverage.

Maybe by this weekend.

Ah, the Good Old Days

Hilzoy has a wonderful post on this article by Rod Dreher. If you read this blog regularly, you know that I'm not terribly impressed with Dreher's analytic skills, and this time is no exception. There are some huge holes in his reasoning here.

What could that mean for conservatives today? That we should consider what I’ve come to call the “Benedict Option”—that is, pioneering forms of dropping out of a barbaric mainstream culture that has grown hostile to our fundamental values. The case for traditional conservatives to make a strategic retreat to defensible perimeters, so to speak, has become even more appealing since 1999, when Paul Weyrich issued his famous fin de siècle call for conservatives to pull back radically from “a [cultural] collapse so great that it simply overwhelms politics.”

If you buy Dreher's assumptions -- and there is really no reason you should, and I don't -- this perhaps makes a modicum of sense. The first red flag, of course, is the appeal to "fundamental values." I hear a lot about these things, and no one ever seems willing to tell me exactly what they're talking about. Backtracking a bit:

The Catholic philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre famously ended his landmark 1982 book After Virtue with a gloomy meditation about the collapse of a common moral sense in the West. He suggested that we were too far gone into nihilism and relativism to save and that those devoted to the traditional virtues should consider hiving off, as Benedict and his followers did in Rome’s final days, to build communities that can withstand the incoming tide of chaos and despond.

"Common moral sense." I wonder when we've ever had such a thing. Of course, Dreher is quoting a Catholic philospher, so I guess we are supposed to figure that the world hasn't changed at all since the Reformation except for now, when it's all coming unglued. And of course, the assertion that we're all sunk in the cesspit of "nihilism and relativism" should be an automatic response by now, except that we're not. Not even most of us. Let me put it this way: I'm not Catholic, nor even Christian, and yet I don't think I'm bereft of morality. In fact, I think I'm a lot more deliberately and consciously moral than an institution that has regularly condoned completely appalling behavior throughout its history.

Dreher goes on to recount a dream involving the poet Constantine Cavafy, whom he professes not to know much about at all, which is probably what leads to one of those blinding ironies that so beset conservative pundits: Cavafy, as anyone who knows anything about the poet's life knows full well, was gay. And quite unapologetically so, at least in his verse.

The nut of this article, for me, and the part that throws into relief the major flaw in these sorts of screeds, is here:

Conservatives have worked so hard over the past few decades to fight for civilized standards against a short checklist of modern barbarisms—abortion, gay marriage, political correctness, and so forth. What we failed to consider was that we had become barbarians ourselves.

With the possible exception of abortion, I fail to see how anything else he lists counts as "barbarism." It seems to be another case of being Humpty Dumpty: "It means what I say it means --until I change my mind."

Trouble is, MacIntyre really is right, and so was Weyrich. From a traditionalist perspective, we truly are living through an astonishing, and astonishingly rapid, cultural collapse, living as free riders on the residual vestiges of Christianity.

There is a tendency on the right (that is to say, among "traditionalists") to view any time of cultural ferment as the final collapse of Western civilization. That is, as far as I can see, a matter of choice: you can take it as ruin, or as a chance at transformation. Traditionalists such as Dreher seem to have, somewhere in the back of their minds, the idea that what they imagine the world to have been like in the past is some sort of Eden, and anything that's happening now is by definition a disaster. Of course, the history they imagine never existed.

Hilzoy's commentary comes from a different direction than this one, but I think we're arguing the same point. In my view, Dreher's "fundamental values" are those of exclusion, privilege, hostility toward the Other, a readiness to condemn, and unquestioning obedience to authority.* Those are qualities you would have been as likely to find among the followers of Atilla the Hun as among the defenders of the Empire. And frankly, for my part, he can keep them. I don't consider myself a barbarian, although I'm starting to consider that he might be.

* By way of comparison, I was raised with what I like to consider real traditional values -- and I think one can consider them true values, not merely a fixation on centuries-old tribal taboos -- that have served me in good stead. They include respect for others, acceptance of their differences, delight in their virtues, independence and self-reliance, generosity in helping others, and grace in accepting their generosity. That's just a start. Frankly, if I and those like me are barbarians, the world is in good hands.

Tooting My Horn

The latest issue of Green Man Review is up today, including a mini-story by me I'm very pleased with (it starts right after the introduction).

And if you scroll down to the reviews listing, you get to read my three (yes, count 'em, three) reviews of The Books of Magic, a pretty wonderful graphic novel series by Neil Gaiman, John Ney Rieber, and others.

It's an interesting issue anyway -- be sure to read our recommendations on best fantasy/science fiction series.

I've also updated the Epinions listing in the sidebar -- quite a few new yaoi reviews there.

Reviews in Brief: Youka Nitta's White Brand

Continuing my tour of the works of Youka Nitta, I recently got hold of her collection White Brand a group of stories first published in 1998. It's a bit of a mixed bag.

One problem with this collection is that there's not much to tie it together, except the various neuroses on prominent display. The two parts of the title story involve Keshiki and Izuru, cousins who were best friends as children, until a tragic accident took Keshiki's father and ruined their friendship. Keshiki came away from the trauma with an aversion to dark things, and Izuru is dark: dark hair, dark eyes, and brown skin. Now they're attending the same high school, and Izuru has decided enough is enough.

White skin figures in "Teal End," about Keith, an American who has come to Japan to learn lacquer painting. Keith really wishes he were Japanese -- although his talent is remarkable, he's not truly accepted by his fellows, except for Takeshi, the master's son, who himself has no aptitude for his father's trade. Even though all obstacles are eventually overcome, this one has a funny little coda that throws the issue into sharp focus.

The remaining three stories are all quite strange and not so satisfying as the first two. I think, however, this is largely because they're as much sketches as anything else: more development would have solved most of the problems here: they're all kind of bare bones and elliptical, and all could use more development.

The graphic style is gorgeous -- not so finished nor as rich as later works such as The Prime Minister's Secret Diplomacy -- at this point, in a class by itself -- but still tremendously appealing. Nitta's characters have smiles that light up their entire faces. And of course, they're all gorgeous. Her sex scenes tend to be fairly explicit, but that's not much of an issue here -- there's very little sex.

I'd recommend this one simply because it's Youka Nitta. It is very interesting to see earlier work by an acknowledged master of BL manga. From Juné.

Sotomayor: A Brief Comment on the Opposition

So let me see if I'm understanding this correctly: you've got a convicted criminal and a draft-dodger with a drug history leading the attack against Sonia Sotomayor, and the MSM are uncovering their lies and deceptions.

Well, no. The first part is right. The MSM are just doing what they've been doing for the past fifteen years: acting as stenographers for the right.

So of course, the Obama administration decides that the correct way to counteract this is to pull a Clinton.

Prop 8: The Fallout

Andrew Sullivan's first post on this immediately got my hackles up.

It would have been dreadful if voters were retroactively told their valid vote was somehow null and void - it would have felt like a bait and switch and provoked a horrible backlash.

What part of "limited sovereignty of the people" do you not understand? That has always been an intrinsic part of the process of this republic, from the time the Constitution was adopted. Sullivan twists the comment by prima facie naming the vote "valid." In spite of the Court's ruling, there are serious questions as to whether the rights of a minority can be granted or revoked by a plebiscite, and most legal scholars are going to tell you "No." This is Sullivan buying into the hypocrisy of the radical right in the face of legality and of history. (Does anyone remember any of the anti-gay groups, when the first Arizona amendment was defeated, saying "Oh, well, the people have spoken. Time to pack up." Don't hold your breath waiting for that reaction when they lose.) The fact that the Court chose to make the narrowest possible interpretation of the language of Proposition 8 should be a clue that this is a political decision, not a legal decision, and that the politics involved are not of the grand, broad, theoretical kind that Sullivan seems able to deal with.

Andrew Koppelman has a much more intelligent take on the decision

The bottom line is that sexual orientation remains a suspect classification in California. Same-sex couples can’t be disadvantaged in any tangible way without a compelling reason. And a constitutional amendment that restricted their rights more than Proposition 8 did might – the Court won’t say – be invalid. Not a good day for same-sex couples, but hardly a disaster.

If the Court found it political inexpedient to overturn the Proposition, Koppelman's comments seem the best on-the-spot analysis: cut the effect to the bone and let it stand. (I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility that the justices were happy to hear about a federal case in the offing -- that moots the whole thing.)

Eugene Volokh has a persuasive comment on the amendment vs. revision question, and the mechanics of what happened:

In any event, what makes those provisions wrong is not that they are legally "revisions" rather than "amendments" and thus illegal. What makes them wrong is that they are morally wrong and thus immoral. But ultimately that judgment about what is morally wrong, as I mentioned, is under the California Constitution left to the sovereign people, and not the sovereign's servants in the state supreme court.

Dale Carpenter's comment is also worth reading.

There's plenty of ground to question the decision in Marriage Cases, and to support today's decision in Strauss as correct on the revision/amendment distinction. And I think the protections provided to gay families under the rubric of "civil unions" or California "domestic partnerships" are a huge advance that can't fairly be likened to a new form of segregation. But it seems to me that, given the rationale and rhetoric of the first decision, the court disingenuously minimized the deprivation in the second.

I have to go along with this -- on the strict, limited grounds that the Court chose, I think they were right, but it's worth pointing out, I think, that this decision in no way closes the issue -- it just punts, and leaves a major hole in place. See Timothy Kincaid's analysis, which it pretty much the way I feel about it -- except I see it as a major vulnerability to the decision in Strauss standing for any length of time.

Via Autumn Sandeen has put together a link dump of reactions -- looks like no one's happy.

As for the central question -- rights granted/revoked by plebiscite, the federal case filed by Ted Olson and David Boies should be clue enough that there are substantial questions here.

My initial reaction echoes that of Dale Carpenter:

As for the timing of the suit, Olson said that recent decisions by the U.S. Supreme Court “make it clear that individuals are entitled to be treated equally under the Constitution. I’m reasonably confident that this is the right time for these [injustices] to be vindicated.”

I doubt Olson is right about the timing, but no doubt this ups the ante on any future Supreme Court vacancies for Obama. (There's already a challenge to the federal DOMA in the First Circuit.)

Of course, by the time this case gets to the Supreme Court, who knows who will be listening to the arguments? (Although I doubt that Obama will feel any particular pressure on gay issues from this case.) It's rather sad, actually, that the Supreme Court is in such a state that we can no longer count on it to defend basic civil rights. That's what we get for "up or down votes."

Pam Spaulding has a fairly complete post on this, with a very interesting communication from a law professor that points out something that may torpedo the federal suit right off the bat: there is a ruling precedent that precludes the court from hearing suits of this nature.

There's more to come on this -- especially some comments on the reaction of the national gay rights organizations to the federal suit -- but I have to run off and do something with a time limit on it right now.

Later. . . .

Prop 8 Round-Up

I decided, since the news was coming so fast and furious and I needed time to digest the Court's opinion in upholding Proposition 8, to make it this week's Friday Gay Blogging.

Building on my original post, here's the opinion.


Prop 8 Ruling -

One thing to keep in mind in this discussion, which Eugene Volokh quotes Chris Geidner as stating quite clearly:

First, this is not a ruling about whether marriage equality is correct or just. This is a ruling about whether the California Constitution allows a measure like Proposition 8 to be voted into the Constitution by the people. Even if there is some overriding federal claim that marriage equality is guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, it was not raised by the parties here....

Here's Geidner's post in full. The bulk of it is a plea for -- I'm not sure what to call it: restraint, I guess, although I note that his call for restraint is directed toward the gay community and its allies, while the religious conservatives, much more prone to violence in pursuit of their aims (see this post by Sara Robinson [and this follow-up, which provides some much-needed (apparently) definitions], which strikes me as somewhat alarmist, but not outside the bounds of reality -- I mean, look at who our domestic terrorists have been over the past 10-20 years.). I'm tired of being told to calm down when faced with opponents who have no standards, no ethics, and no morals. (This is not name-calling: this is merely a reasonable conclusion based on recorded fact.)

Mary L. Dudziak makes the same point in her first post on the decision:

The court carved out space for the rights of same-sex couples protected in the Marriage Cases, emphasizing: "among the various constitutional protections recognized in the Marriage Cases as available to same-sex couples, it is only the designation of marriage - albeit significant - that has been removed by this initiative measure." (emphasis added). Taking into account the "actual limited effect of Proposition 8 upon the preexisting state constitutional right of privacy and due process and upon the guarantee of equal protection of the laws," (emphasis added), the court found Prop 8 not to be a constitutional revision.

Andrew Koppelman reaches a similar conclusion. He raises some other points that I will come back to.

Dale Carpenter raises a point in his comments that troubled me as well:

So marriage wasn't really the main issue in Marriage Cases, it was convenient shorthand. Elsewhere, the Strauss court tells us that Prop 8 has only a "limited" effect, carves a "limited exception" to the right to marry, changes the content of a right in "one specific subject area," diminishes only "one aspect" of a fundamental right, and so on. This is another way of saying that what gays lost in Prop 8 -- "marriage" -- wasn't all that important.

Read his whole post -- the contrast between the section he quotes from the decision in In re: Some Marriages and the relevant passage in Strauss vs. Horton (the official title of the new decision) is striking: after building a large portion of its reasoning on the effect of the word "marriage," the Court essentially bent over backward to say that wasn't really what it meant.

(Carpenter also notes that there is nothing in the Strauss decision that prevents the voters of California from revoking domestic partnerships by referendum -- which, I agree, would be the next logical step for the anti-gay right, if they weren't already on alert that they're going to have to go back to the Mormons for funds to defeat the next, pro-marriage referendum), but my take is, that's not going to happen.

Two thoughts on this:

First, the decision in Strauss is a disaster in terms of basic civil rights guarantees. Granted, it will have limited effect, but in California at least, it is now on the table that any well-organized, well-funded group can strip fundamental rights from a minority by the kind of campaign we saw for Prop 8: distortions, misrepresentations, and outright lies all dressed up in expensive ads with lots of air play. (Fortunately, most state constitutions are more difficult to amend. The California method is insane, but it's theirs and they're going to have to deal with it.)

Second, the reasoning vis-a-vis the word "marriage" is fairly scandalous after the effort the Court put into delineating the importance of the word to the status of the institution in Some Marriages. Let's not be fooled by this one: it's as much a political decision as a legal decision, as far as I can see. The acrobatics here remind me of nothing so much as the New York Supreme Court's decision in their marriage case, in which the reasoning was, to put it mildly, strained. It's also worth noting that the California Court is not the only one to recognize the importance of the word as an essential part of the institution.

And the Court has now said that, in California at least, separate is good enough, whether it's equal or not.

And then there are the couple whose marriages are still valid. This is going to be fun to watch. (I can't help but wonder whether the Court is hoping for a law suit that's going to bring the question back to them in a less potentially explosive form.)

There will be more on this. People are still posting about it, and I have a lot more material to go through. But I decided you do get dessert today, a totally fiery treat from Queerty:

Obama's Promises

From Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog:

Apparently, your president thought it was kinda funny. He made a joke about the protest during the event, according to the New York Times:

“One of them said, “Obama keep your promise,’ ” the president said. “I thought that’s fair. I don’t know which promise he was talking about.”

See Sudbay's post for the video.

Maybe that's going to be his excuse for not keeping any of them.

Sotomayor

I've not commented specifically on the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court. There's not a lot to say. I don't doubt for a minute that she's at least as qualified as the bulk of the sitting justices, nor that her sex and ethnicity were an important consideration. What's of most -- albeit diminishing -- interest here is the right-wing histrionics that we're going to be subjected to.

The Great Pimple on the Butt of the Republican Party has already christened her a "racist," which, considering his standards, should probably be taken as a compliment. I did note, in my update to yesterday's post on rebranding the Republican party, just how pathetic the attempts to smear Sotomayor have already become. And the real smear attempts have nothing to do with her qualifications or even the "affirmative action" aspects of the nomination. (That's another one designed to play to the base.)

Jeffrey Rosen gets the gold star for dragging the discourse into the muck as quickly as possible -- in fact, he managed to do it before Sotomayor was even nominated. Digby:

But TPMDC missed the one individual who has certainly gained the most in the early going of this nomination - New Republic writer Jeffrey Rosen. After all, his use of gossipy talking points has driven the entire discussion in the media, and made him ubiquitous even if he hasn't graced the camera with his presence. And though his reputation ought to be in tatters for pushing such demeaning talking points into the mainstream, as it turns out, he has the lead story in this week's New York Times magazine.

(There is a problem with Hullabaloo, at least on my system: random YouTube videos get plopped into strange places. In this case, I can't get to the link to Digby's post, but it's titled "The Early Winner in the Sotomayor Battle." If I can get to the link at some point, I'll get it in here. It's worth reading (and it's up today, so you can just go to the blog and look.)

Digby also has her usual incisive look at the question of personal experience shaping judicial decisions. That's one I wonder about myself: is anyone really dim enough to think that white men don't have personal experiences? Or that any judge's opinions are not shaped by those experiences? (Or anyone's anything, for that matter.)

Don't let anyone doubt that this is a political process, and the Republicans are going to attempt to play Karl Rove as much as they can -- granted the sitting senators are in the hot seats on this one, but, as Digby points out, their surrogates are already going full speed ahead. Let's hope they run into some really big torpedoes.

Prop 8 Reaction

Look for mine as this week's Friday Gay Blogging post. There's a lot of material to digest, starting with 185 pages of court opinions.

Rebranding a Lost Cause

Here's an article by B. Daniel Blatt (a/k/a GayPatriotWest) on the Republicans' attempts to "reframe" the question of same-sex marriage. I think it suffers from one fatal flaw, as exemplified in this statement:

Many conservatives believe (and judicial decisions in several states bear them out) that liberal jurists have just such a “personal agenda” that these jurists will discover a “right” to government recognition of same-sex marriage in the penumbrae of the federal constitution. By asking the president’s judicial nominees to address this supposed “right,” Judiciary Committee Republicans could reframe the issue not as one of gay marriage per se, but as one of separation of powers — whether the legislature or the judiciary should define gay marriage.

There are a couple of problems I see here. The first is one that I've mentioned any number of times: You need to ask the right question. In this case, the question is not whether there is a "right to government recognition of same-sex marriage," but whether there is a "right" to government recognition of any marriage whatsoever. I've read the Constitution any number of times, especially the Bill of Rights, and I don't recall any such provision. If we're going to concede that the right to marriage (to use a short form) exists -- and the courts have held that it does -- it falls under that "penumbra" that so-called "strict constructionists" love to hate. And if there is a right to marriage, then it must be a right held by all citizens, under the due process provisions of the Fourteenth Amendment -- unless the government can show a compelling reason to limit it. The government has not done so, to my knowledge -- and I've followed these cases fairly closely for years.

This is sort of funny:

The American people would rather courts didn’t resolve such social issues, preferring the matter be left to the elected legislature.

First, all else being equal, the American people would rather not deal with these issues at all -- they're happy with the status quo, which is why it's the status quo. Second, when elected legislatures do take action to approve same-sex marriage, the usual suspects -- the conservative anti-gay "religious" organizations -- start muttering about "elites" taking the decision away from the people. There's an old controversy here between me and Blatt on popular sovereignty: the idea that the "will of the people" is some sort of ultimate authority in this country is structurally indefensible, and I mean that quite seriously. That is reflected in the responsibility of the courts to uphold the rights of disfavored minorities. (It's also implicit in the fact that we have a Bill of Rights -- if the "will of the people" could be trusted, we wouldn't need it.) He and I don't necessarily see eye-to-eye on this (chuckle), and I won't accuse him of the kind of radical anti-Americanism you'll find from the likes of Matt Staver or Peter LaBarbera, but as I see it, that's the basis.

No matter what the American people would rather, it is the courts' job to resolve such issues. One need only do a fast review of the history of the judiciary in this country to realize that. As a pre-emptive counter to the argument that court decisions to not change attitudes, I want to point out that none of these phenomena exist in a vacuum: there is a synergy involved here that partakes of social attitudes, legislative actions, and court decisions, and to try to separate them is a fool's errand: you're not going to come up with a correct analysis. Would the black civil rights movement have happened without Brown vs. Board of Education? Probably -- eventually. But that decision gave the movement a legal rationale. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, and the Voting Rights Act the next year, most people in the country were opposed. Anti-discrimination laws have generally run ahead of social attitudes, but no one can tell me that they have no effect. Most of those anti-discrimination laws have somewhere in their genealogy a court decision. And as attitudes change, it becomes easier for legislators to do the right thing. (It goes without saying that most legislators don't have the cojones to buck prevailing attitudes, and to think that constitutional considerations are high up on their list of concerns is something worse than ingenuous.)

Back to reframing:

Should the GOP reframe the issue (as many have tried) as one of separation of powers, with our party favoring a legislative resolution, this can turn this issue to their advantage without unnecessarily antagonizing supporters of same-sex marriage.

I think there's a mistaken assumption here. Court actions on civil rights issues are not generally the result of some liberal deciding that it's time to screw the majority. They happen out of necessity: parties to a suit have no other option. And there is the fact that, conservative wishes to the contrary, that's what the courts are for. (Well, one of the things.) The reality is simply that everyone would prefer a legislative resolution but that's not always an option. (Blatt leaves out the fact that the California legislature has twice passed bills legalizing same-sex marriage, only to have them vetoed by the Republican governor. Note that Gov. Lynch of New Hampshire is threatening to veto that state's SSM bill unless it incorporates stunningly broad "protections" for religious objectors. And note also the fact that the legislature in Vermont legalized SSM by overriding the governor's veto. A veto is only one pitfall of the legislative process -- it's subject to a lot of deal-making that has nothing to do with the desirability of a particular bill as policy.) Parenthetical concerns aside, however, yes, it would be a wonderful world if our legislators would just say "OK, this is not fair and we should fix it." The reality is that they have to be goosed.

And in regard to social attitudes, Blatt notes something that I think undercuts his argument:

In 2004, after Massachusetts’ highest court ruled in favor of such recognition, thirteen states voted for ballot initiatives designed to thwart such judicial recognition, with 73% of North Dakota voters favoring the initiative.

Two years later, however, after the highest courts in New York and Washington ruled against such recognition, only 52% of voters in South Dakota, demographically similar to its neighbor to the north, favored the initiative.

I don't see this as a reflection of the voters' reaction to court decisions so much as a general trend that's become more and more prevalent around the country: Prop 22, which the California Court overturned, passed with 62% of the vote. Prop 8 managed to pull 52% after an intensive campaign by the Mormon Church and the Knights of Columbus. The Arizona provision racked up similar numbers: we're long past the days of 70% majorities in favor of "traditional" marriage.

For the GOP to reframe SSM as an issue centered on separation of powers is at best a stop-gap, and not terribly persuasive. And to be quite honest, after the Bush II years, Republicans framing anything as an issue of separation of powers is hysterically funny -- or would be if it weren't so patently self-serving.

I quite honestly see this as a matter of the Republican party having painted itself into a corner: it's become dominated by the socially regressive religious conservatives, who are increasingly losing the support of the Great Middle, and while Democrats have done a half-assed job of it, they've managed to assume at least partial ownership of gay civil rights (in spite of Obama's back-pedaling, and mostly through inertia). I have no solutions for them, because I don't have any particular hopes for their future as a party (although I truly wish I could be presented with candidates who would cause me at least to consider going back to splitting my ticket, which was my habit until about 2000, when I became a "lesser evil" voter) -- the collapse of a political party until it reinvents itself seems to be some sort of natural process. The idea that rebranding gay civil rights as a matter of separation of powers to revitalize the party doesn't really strike me as viable -- unless the party is prepared to toss the Dobson Gang overboard. Good luck on that.

Update:

If the Republicans want to rebrand themselves, they've got a long way to go. From Alexander Bolton at The Hill:

Sotomayor also claimed: “For me, a very special part of my being Latina is the mucho platos de arroz, gandoles y pernir — rice, beans and pork — that I have eaten at countless family holidays and special events.”

This has prompted some Republicans to muse privately about whether Sotomayor is suggesting that distinctive Puerto Rican cuisine such as patitas de cerdo con garbanzo — pigs’ tongue and ears — would somehow, in some small way influence her verdicts from the bench.

Curt Levey, the executive director of the Committee for Justice, a conservative-leaning advocacy group, said he wasn’t certain whether Sotomayor had claimed her palate would color her view of legal facts but he said that President Obama’s Supreme Court nominee clearly touts her subjective approach to the law.

“It’s pretty disturbing,” said Levey. “It’s one thing to say that occasionally a judge will despite his or her best efforts to be impartial ... allow occasional biases to cloud impartiality.

I'm not sure if that was satire or not.

Conservative critics say that a willingness to rule on the basis of personal values instead of the law and legal precedent is at the core of judicial activism. And some Senate Republicans have said a nominee with a clear propensity toward activism would deserve a filibuster.

Odds on these are the same people who think Judge Roy Moore is a top-notch legal scholar.

And this landed in my e-mail, courtesy of Bill Wilson's The Dailiy Grind:

Barack Obama needs to go back to the drawing board and see if he can come up with a Supreme Court nominee who is something other than a self-declared racist termagant.

What a pathetic bunch of losers.

Limits on Free Exercise

No, this is not about good deals at the gym. I ran across this post from Andrew Koppelman late yesterday and wanted to comment on it because it touches on a topic I've addressed, although not substantively, in the past.

Koppelman's concern here, as you can see (because you did follow the link and you did read the post, didn't you? And do go back and read the posts Koppelman links to -- they're important here) is religious exemptions written into civil rights laws, specifically laws legalizing same-sex marriage.

Religious exemptions from antidiscrimination laws are fairly costless, I’ve argued: as long as the religious dissenters are idiosyncratic outliers – and they generally will be, based on the scant number of accommodation claims we’ve seen – they’ll have no effect on gay people’s opportunities, and so they can harmlessly be left to live out their ideals in peace.

What Koppelman is missing here is that we are not dealing with a few outliers -- we are dealing with a well-organized and amply funded group ($40 million to support Prop 8; $165 million on the attempt to repeal marriage in Massachusetts) who are not prepared to play fair.

In another post, Koppelman refers to something that bothered me about Gov. John Lynch's proposed amendment to the New Hampshire marriage statute and that directly contradicts Koppelan's assumption:

Some are uncomfortable with the practice of singling out religion in this way, but the narrowness of the religious exemption is precisely why it is so clear that we can afford it. If a broader set of people were able to bring exemption claims, then we would have a less tractable conflict. In the contemporary United States, the claims for a conscientious right to discriminate will almost always be religious claims. Only a small minority of discriminators will be able to defend themselves on this basis. Most employers do not want to announce that they discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation, and so this defense is unavailable to them. (Emphasis mine)

This is exactly what Lynch's amendment jumped right into, feet first. (For my comments on Lynch's language, see here; scroll down to "New Hampshire Note." A follow-up is here.) I remarked at the time that the language was overbroad, as well as being redundant: in effect, it made any association with any group claiming to be "religious" in nature grounds for legalized discrimination in any aspect of daily life.

Religious freedom is guaranteed in this country under the Establishment Clause and the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment, and the courts have generally bent over backwards to accommodate claims of religious discrimination: that's not something we like in this country. By the same token, as I've said any number of times, there are limits to any right, no matter how fundamental it is. Part of the process of democracy is establishing those limits, which is something we've done over the course of time and something the religious right has been challenging. Thus, the Catholic Charities were organized as a separate entity legally somewhat removed from the Catholic Church specifically to enable it to accept government funding to carry out its work without violating separation of church and state. Suddenly, Catholic Charities makes a big deal out of abandoning its adoption services because placing children with gay parents would violate its religious doctrine. (They may have been refusing to do so for years, but the key factor here is that we'd never heard of it until they began screaming "religious discrimination" and bailed, which only happened within the past couple of years.)

To go back to Koppelman's original post, I think he's misreading the situation in New Hampshire:

There are people who are reprehensibly embracing self-aggrandizing fantasies that are hurting real people. But I’m sorry to say that they’re not the Christian conservatives. They are the people on my side, the gay rights side, who are willing to sacrifice the hopes of New Hampshire gays who want to marry, out of pure malice toward their political opponents.

Can I call this an overstatement? My reading of the situation in New Hampshire is not that anyone is interested in beating up the religious conservatives, no matter how much they deserve it, nor to I think malice is involved (unless one chooses to read the legislature's annoyance at being dictated to by the governor as "malice," which is a stretch). I think there is a legitimate concern over extending religious protections beyond what is reasonable or workable. Let's face it, Lynch came up with that language as political cover, and it is overbroad -- including that amendment as written would lay the groundwork for years of litigation, count on it. (And I do not discount the idea that Lynch did it on purpose -- he opposes the statute but doesn't really have any legitimate grounds for a veto.) The limits that I mentioned above seem to me to be perfectly workable -- the distinction between providing a public accommodation that is subject to antidiscrimination laws and one's personal religious beliefs has been fairly clear in the past, and it's only the effort by the religious right to take more and more territory that has blurred it. Koppelman is rather ingenuously buying into this campaign by assuming that religious objections to recognizing same-sex marriages will be few and far between (although I'll be the first to admit he might be correct, which would be wonderful) and all perfectly legitimate, and condemning those who quite rightly want to maintain a workable status quo as "bigots," when the history of the religious right argues just the opposite.

Prop 8

The California Supreme Court upheld Proposition 8. Here's the story in the LA Times.

Strangely -- and I think fatally -- the Court left the 18,000 or so same-sex marriages solemnized under the previous law intact.

I don't want to comment further until I've had a chance to read the opinion -- I really have no idea what sort of logic the justices employed to come to this conclusion. If anyone has any insight, I'd love to hear about it -- that's what the "Comments" section is for.

Here's the part that I think makes the Court's ruling fatal:

Even with the court upholding Proposition 8, a key portion of the court's May 15, 2008, decision remains intact. Sexual orientation will continue to receive the strongest constitutional protection possible when California courts consider cases of alleged discrimination. The California Supreme Court is the only state high court in the nation to have elevated sexual orientation to the status of race and gender in weighing discrimination claims.

Update: Andrew Sullivan has the opinion up. He also has a take on the decision that I think is absolutely wrong:

It has been upheld. The 18,000 same sex marriages performed in California are still valid. For my part, I will leave the fine legal analysis to those trained in these matters (and link to them). Politically, this seems to me the perfect decision. It would have been dreadful if voters were retroactively told their valid vote was somehow null and void - it would have felt like a bait and switch and provoked a horrible backlash.

What he doesn't address is the question of whether it is proper for a majority of 50% plus one to strip fundamental rights from a minority -- in this case, a minority that the California Court itself has deemed deserving of protection.

I'll get into this later.

More on Schulman

The man's developed a fan club. Check out this post from Echidne -- one of my points, more fully developed:

First and most importantly. Note very carefully that the piece is not about general kinship systems. It's about PATRILINEAR kinship systems. A matrilinear system wouldn't care about the identity of a woman's (voluntary) sexual partners, because all her children automatically belong to her extended family. It is the patrilinear system which has to guard the sexuality of its women so that inheritance and patrimony can be guaranteed to pass in the male line. This point is crucial. Crucial. Schulman wants to talk about a patrilinear inheritance and kinship system, not about how to protect women.

Second, the systems he so lovingly paints for us are not, in fact, intended to protect women. All those systems allow for prostitution, rape happens in all of them and in many the husband can throw away an unsatisfactory wife as if she was a snotty used tissue. Virginity before marriage does protect women in traditional societies, often from their own male relatives (think of honor killings). But its main objective is to make certain that men know who their offspring are.

Brad at Sadly, No! also has some fun with it.

Jesus Christ. Does Mrs. Schulman know that her hubby considers their marriage to be “the longest journey” that is “attired in chains” and that tragically forces Sam to “surrender” from realizing his “immediate erotic desires?” Does this sound like a well-adjusted person who should be giving marriage advice to, like, anyone?

Jim Burroway weighs in.

And Dougj at Balloon Juice calls it "a true work of genius."

The reaction seems to range from hilarity to -- well, hilarity.

The title of TBogg's piece says it all: "I will keep your vagina safe and warm."

Why Do I Do This To Myself?

I think one of the problems with the "received wisdom" mindset -- and it's a major problem -- is the idea that, if some authority figure says something, it's true. Now, if you're a regular reader here, you know how I'm going to react to something like that -- when I finally stop laughing.

Here is one of the most egregious essays pointing out the inevitable failure of same-sex marriage that I've ever seen, by one Sam Schulman, who seems to have no qualifications whatsoever to address this issue. I'm willing to be generous and ascribe Schulman's comments as an outgrowth of complete and stupefying ignorance rather than any nefarious purpose. (And in the pages of Weekly Standard, why am I not surprised?) I don't usually link to wasted space such as Weekly Standard -- you'll find more intellectual integrity from Dick Cheney -- but this is just too much to pass up.

The train-wreck starts here:

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

Well, no, to put it succinctly. Those qualities are exactly what marriage fosters, and the main reason most people get married.

The entity known as "gay marriage" only aspires to replicate a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage.

That's the only kind there is.

The fact is that marriage is part of a much larger institution, which defines the particular shape and character of marriage: the kinship system.

We'll come back to this one. He throws in a what looks like a series of digressions but is actually the foundation of his argument, which that need dismantling.

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood--and sexual accessibility--is defined. Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon.

Let's go back to that "culture-bound" part. In this case, the Old Testament patriarchal culture -- or, actually, any patriarchy will do. This is a fairly shallow reading of what's going on in that aspect of so-called "traditional" marriage. (I almost used the German word "sogenannte," which has the proper disdainful ring to it.) It's about property, stupid. The only reason to safeguard a woman's virtue is not that there's anything intrinsically wonderful about virginity -- and there are any number of cultures in which virginity is no big deal in or outside of marriage -- but to insure that a man's own children are the ones to inherit his property.

Second, kinship modifies marriage by imposing a set of rules that determines not only whom one may marry (someone from the right clan or family, of the right age, with proper abilities, wealth, or an adjoining vineyard), but, more important, whom one may not marry. Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one's few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints.

It's not, really. Incest prohibitions are rather more deep-seated than even hinted at here. There's a biological process called "exogamy" -- the imperiative to mate outside the group -- that exists in a much broader context than human marriage. There also seem to be psychological factors that stem from being raised together that work against seeing a sibling -- whether biological or adoptive -- as a prospective mate (romantic fantasies notwithstanding.) So far, he's batting zero. (Although I have to admit, I'm basing my comments here on observed reality, so they probably don't count.)

There is another factor here that I might as well mention now: implicit in the phenomena I mentioned above is the idea that a kinship system is not a purely biological thing. Keep that in mind.

Third, marriage changes the nature of sexual relations between a man and a woman. Sexual intercourse between a married couple is licit; sexual intercourse before marriage, or adulterous sex during marriage, is not. Illicit sex is not necessarily a crime, but licit sexual intercourse enjoys a sanction in the moral universe, however we understand it, from which premarital and extramarital copulation is excluded. More important, the illicit or licit nature of heterosexual copulation is transmitted to the child, who is deemed legitimate or illegitimate based on the metaphysical category of its parents' coition.

I have to admit, my first reaction to this paragraph was, again, laughter. Let's reprise the "culture-bound" mantra, shall we? Whether sex is licit or illicit is purely a social construct, and whether a child is legitimate or illegitimate depends entirely on the parents laying claim to the child. Lordy! I mean, really -- "metaphysical category of its parents' coition"? Can this man be serious? (Please note that this is a purely religious argument, no more and no less, whether Schulman admits it or not. Outside of dogma, the licit nature of a relationship of any kind is purely dependent on whatever criteria we establish as a group. Actually, that holds true of religious dogma as well. To point to a somewhat wobbly status quo as an eternal verity is more than a little ludicrous.)

Fourth, marriage defines the end of childhood, sets a boundary between generations within the same family and between families, and establishes the rules in any given society for crossing those boundaries. Marriage usually takes place at the beginning of adulthood; it changes the status of bride and groom from child in the birth family to adult in a new family.

Tell this to any Jewish boy who's ever had a bar mitzvah. This paragraph is total bullshit, and there's not a psychologist, sociologist, or anthropologist who can call him- or herself such who would go along with it. I mean, this is so wrong I don't even know where to begin. Check any source you like, and you'll discover that the beginning of adulthood, in almost every culture known, is quite separate from marriage. Both are life stages, both mark the assumption of a new role and status in the group, but they are not the same role or the same status.

Marriage is also an initiation rite. Before World War II, high school graduation was accompanied by a burst of engagements; nowadays college graduation begins a season of weddings that go on every weekend for some years. In contrast, gay weddings are rather middle-aged affairs. My impression is borne out by the one available statistic, from the province of British Columbia, showing that the participants in first-time same-sex weddings are 13 years older, on average, then first-time brides-and-grooms.

Considering that same-sex marriage has only been legal anywhere for less than ten years, this hardly bears comment. What one needs to look at here is not how old the participants in first-time same-sex marriages have been since such were legalized, but how long they had been together before they were able to marry -- in some cases it's forty years or more. And there is also the fact that it's only with the upcoming generation that marriage is on the table -- none of us before now has been able to even contemplate the possibility as any sort of potential reality. Talk to me again in a generation, and see how the statistics break down -- I can easily envision a pair of high-school boys getting engaged at their senior prom.

And can we point out that straight couples are tending to marry later now? Particularly among professionals and others intent on pursuing careers. Schulman's point here is completely meaningless.

Gay marriage may reside outside the kinship system, but it has all the wedding-planning, nest-building fun of marriage but none of its rules or obligations (except the duties that all lovers have toward one another). Gay spouses have none of our guilt about sex-before-marriage. They have no tedious obligations towards in-laws, need never worry about Oedipus or Electra, won't have to face a menacing set of brothers or aunts should they betray their spouse. But without these obligations--why marry? Gay marriage is as good as no marriage at all.

This is simply not true. Let's talk first about biologically based kinship systems. On that score Schulman is totally off base: people have parents. Many of us have brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, cousins (I've got so many cousins I can't keep track of them, and I keep finding new ones). So I have to ask, just what is this mythical "kinship system" composed of? Schulman is at pains never to describe it in any detail, except to point out what gay couples don't have -- except that they do. (You'd better believe that if I ever find a suitable husband, he's going to be saddled with my outrageous and delightful father, my equally delightful step-mother, and my loosey-goosey sister -- and that's just for starters. Remember all those cousins? On the downside, I fully expect to have a mother-in-law.)

And regarding kinship as a non-biological construct, there is a facet of gay culture of which Schulman seems to be completely unaware (make that "another facet" -- the man doesn't seem to know anything at all about gays): we have a history of building our own families. It's not as prevalent now, when being gay is a little less likely to get you cut off from your biological family, but it is still a major factor in our lives. Any husband of mine is also going to wind up having to deal with my friends. (And the term "friends" among gays has a very special and profound meaning.)

If that's not a kinship system, I don't know what is.

The rest of Schulman's essay is drivel, based on the drivel I've commented on here. What matters is that the core of his argument is garbage. The rest is a castle in the air built of -- garbage.

Thanks (I think) to Chris Bodenner at the Daily Dish. Bodenner also cites a take-down by Isaac Chotiner which is worth reading, as are the comments there.

Obama and Gay Civil Rights

A fairly strong OpEd from NYT on Obama's lack of movement on all that stirring rhetoric. Not as pointed as I would be, but for NYT, it's devastating.

The most common rationale for his current passivity is that his plate is too full. But the president has so far shown an impressive inclination both to multitask and to argue passionately for bedrock American principles when he wants to. Relegating fundamental constitutional rights to the bottom of the pile until some to-be-determined future seems like a shell game.

As Wolfson reminds us in his book “Why Marriage Matters,” Dr. King addressed such dawdling in 1963. “For years now I have heard the word ‘Wait,’ ” King wrote. “It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’ ”

The gay civil rights movement has fewer obstacles in its path than did Dr. King’s Herculean mission to overthrow the singular legacy of slavery. That makes it all the more shameful that it has fewer courageous allies in Washington than King did. If “American Idol” can sing out for change on Fox in prime time, it ill becomes Obama, of all presidents, to remain mute in the White House.

I have a slightly different take: the most intelligible rationale for Obama's passivity is that he's a Democrat, and as far as gay civil rights go, the Democrats are long on talk and short on everything else. Besides, they're all terrified of the 20% of the country that still call themselves Republicans.