Hell Week

I used to use that term to describe the times we were hosting traveling exhibitions when I was at Sotheby's -- at least one night during those weeks, I wouldn't bother to go to bed: no time, and I would be at O'Hare in the wee hours collecting the show anyway. (I was told after one reception that I was very charming and gracious and helpful in talking about the art. I don't remember that evening at all -- I was completely on automatic.) This week is slightly different: I have a horrific writing schedule over the next couple of months, and right now I'm on deadline for way too many reviews. (But remember to check out Green Man Review on May 31 -- lots of reviews of neat stuff, and the best continuity I've written so far.)

However, I did run across a couple of interesting things at AmericaBlog, both related to health care -- and the site, by the way, is a good place to keep up on that whole issue. Both Chris in Paris and John Aravosis are pretty much up on it, and Aravosis has some personal horror stories that I can relate to very easily.

Read and get mad.

Can You Say "Blind Partisanship"?

There is a certain black humor in this story from NYT:

While conservatives say they know they have little chance of defeating Mr. Obama’s choice because Democrats control the Senate, they say they hope to mount a fight that could help refill depleted coffers and galvanize a movement demoralized by Republican electoral defeats.

“It’s an immense opportunity to build the conservative movement and identify the troops out there,” said Richard A. Viguerie, a conservative fund-raiser. “It’s a massive teaching moment for America. We’ve got the packages written. We’re waiting right now to put a name in.” (Emphasis mine.)

In other words, it doesn't matter who the nominee is or what his or her qualifications might be. It's all politics, all the time -- Karl Rove style. There is something really wrong in getting ready to smear a Supreme Court nominee before you even know who it is.

The so-called "conservatives" just don't get it: they've lost the last two elections and are desperately trying to regain some power without, apparently, ever looking at the reasons they lost -- one of which is public disgust with the very tactics that they're preparing to use once again. If anything could convince me that the right wing is completely bereft of any ideas or any real philosophy, this is the sort of thing that will do it. The open cynicism about their motives is enough in itself to turn me off. Couldn't they at least pretend to have some principles and standards?

Reviews in Brief: Hinako Takanga's Love Round

It's no secret that I've been very favorably impressed by the yaoi of Hinako Takanaga. I've commented on several of her works here ("Reviews in Brief" here, here, and here) and at Epinions (see sidebar). So, I was looking forward to sampling her lighter works, starting with Love Round

Kaoru Komatsuna is small, very pretty, and has a "girly" name ("Kaoru" is one of those names in Japanese that may belong to either a man or a woman). The school boxing champ, Kubo, happens to pick up Kaoru's dropped notebook and makes a comment about his name that sends Kaoru over the edge: Kaoru turns around and floors Kubo with one punch. Kubo won't rest until he persuades Kaoru to go out for boxing. Kaoru is finally persuaded -- he's been a boxing fan for some time -- and then Kubo finds himself drawn more and more to Kaoru until he finally confesses that he loves him. And then things get really edgy.

As I noted above, this is a light comedy, without the depth of other works such as You Will Drown in Love or even Little Butterfly. The running joke of Kaoru's one-punch KOs gets a little stale after a while, and the characters don't display the depth one finds in her other works. It's an earlier work (first published in 2003) and, I think, simply lacks the polish of later books. This is also true of the graphics: Kubo and Kaoru fit into her usual character types but lack the intensity and range one finds in Tsukasa or Reiichiro.

It's not up to later works, but is still entertaining enough. The age rating is 18+, which I think is too conservative. There is one sex scene which is not at all revealing, and in general the story seems aimed at younger teens. (Keep in mind that this age rating is for an American audience; my understanding is that the Japanese are rather more relaxed about things than Americans, who tend to be extraordinarily hung up on sex.)

This one's from Deux.

"Offending" People

Vis-a-vis yesterday's FGB post, I noticed again this comment by Andrew Sullivan:

I don't want to offend anyone's religious convictions or in any way intrude on anyone's right to regard me and my civil marriage as an abomination and to stay as far away from it as possible.

I have no trouble with the second part of that. With the understanding that all rights have limits, I agree. But -- and I'm picking nits here -- "offending" someone covers a lot of territory, and if there's anything that represents a slippery slope, it's the concept of offense as something unthinkable. (And please, can we note how the religious right has co-opted offensiveness as something that's impermissible? At least, for those who don't agree with them.)

Excuse me?

Anyone's religious convictions are their responsibility, not mine -- I'm not a babysitter. My very existence offends some people's religious convictions. Too bad. Odds on that their convictions offend my sense of decency at least as much as mine do theirs.

They can maintain their right to think I'm scum. I will maintain my right to think they're assholes. But "offend"?

Sorry, Andrew, but that's part of the deal in a democracy -- you're going to be offended. Cope.

Insanity Break

There is something terribly appealing about this one, I'm just not sure what it is. "Azis, 'Bulgaria’s answer to Madonna, Michael Jackson, Boy George, Liberace, and Marilyn Manson all rolled into one colossal glitter-dusted, KY-oozing jelly roll'?"



Via Andrew Sullivan -- of course.

Sanity Break

A group I haven't listened to in far too long. Enjoy:



With thanks to Chris in Paris of AmericaBlog.

Light

I got a new lamp, and now I have to go out an buy a light bulb. It will, of course, be a new, energy-saving compact fluorescent. Something occurred to me as I'm considering this venture: they do burn out, and I have no idea how to dispose of them. They have mercury in them -- I can't just throw them in the trash.

And do you think vendors provide any sort of information like that? Of course not. I realize "corporate responsibility" is an oxymoron, but they're selling the damned things -- I think it's to a certain degree incumbent on them to make sure we know how to use them and dispose of them, which is much easier for a local seller than a national manufacturer.

I'm sure the information is out there somewhere, but I have to dig it up, as soon as I figure out where to look. The problem is that most people won't bother -- they'll just toss the dead ones in the trash and they will wind up poisoning the landfill, of which there is too much to begin with. At least the city, which regulates these things, should be a little proactive on it.

Why is life so damned complicated?

Friday Gay Blogging: (Gasp!) Friday Edition!

Two topics today. The first is "The fierce urgency of whenever" (and thanks to Andrew Sullivan for the title).

This is quite possibly the strongest post I've ever seen from Andrew Sullivan. He echoes most of my own feelings on Obama and gay rights:

As for the HIV ban, legislatively lifted by overwhelming numbers of Republicans and Democrats almost a year ago, this is the state of play from an Obama HHS spokesman:

“The Department of Health and Human Services has submitted for OMB review a notice of proposed rule-making to implement this change.”

Translation: we're doing the bare minimum to make us look no worse than Bush, but we have no real interest in this and are letting the bureaucracy handle it, and we guarantee nothing. On gay servicemembers, the president is writing personal notes to those he has fired and intends to continue firing. Will he write some personal notes to the people with HIV he deports? Will he write personal notes to the gay spouses suddenly without a home or their late spouse's savings or forced by his administration to relocate abroad because he has no intention of actually fulfilling his promises?

I recall my old, now dead, friend Bob Hattoy, who toiled in the Clinton administration. He was going to write a memoir of working with people who thought of homosexual rights as wonderful things to say you support (especially if you're fundraising or at a Hollywood dinner party) but far, far too controversial to ever do anything about, let alone risk anything for. In the end, of course, the Clintons enacted a slew of brutally anti-gay measures - passing DOMA, doubling the rate of gay discharges from the military, signing the ban on HIV-positive tourists and immigrants - and expected standing ovations as pioneers of civil rights. The pathetic gay rights leaders gave it to them, so delighted were they to have their checks cashed. The proposed title of Bob's book was a summary of the priorities of the Clinton years:

It's The Economy, Faggot.

As you might expect, most of us in Gay Blogistan are agreeing with Sullivan. Just a sample: John Aravosis:

I disagree with Andrew about the value of the Hate Crimes amendment. Having said that, he's right about one thing. It's the least important of our civil rights priorities at the moment, and I fear it may be the only thing we get in the next 4, or 8, years. And rest assured, it will be lauded over our heads to show us "how much" has been done for us, when in fact, it isn't that much compared to DOMA, DADT, ENDA and marriage - all of which, I fear, will be abandoned.

Pam Spaulding:

What would be welcome is a president willing to discuss our issues openly so they can be debated honestly. He's now silent. On purpose. Or worse, sending out his press secretary to fumble before the press corps with bullsh*t answers.

Here's Dan Savage:

See? Obama has acknowledged the breakthroughs in civil rights for gay Americans! He told a joke about it at the White House Correspondents' Dinner this weekend. (You were there, Andrew, didn't you catch it?) Barack Obama condescended to use marriage equality as a punch line; he made, essentially, a Chuck & Larry joke about two straight dudes—Obama and Axelrod—running off to Iowa to "make it official" with the queers and their "partners." And that's hilarious, you see, because Obama and Axelrod aren't actually homos! So they don't need to go to Iowa to make it official! They can get married—to women—in all fifty states! HA!

The more I think about the joke Obama told at the WHCD the more ticked off I get. We're witnessing rapid and historic progress in the fight for gay equality and Barack Obama, who campaigned on our issues and described himself as a "fierce advocate" of gay and lesbian equality, hasn't acknowledged the breakthroughs in Iowa, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine in a setting or a with comments that are in any way equal to the significance of this historic moment. The best he can do—all he's willing to do—is toss off an Adam-Sandler-level joke.



Frankly, I think an "F" is too generous.

The question here, by the way, is not that Obama has not repealed this, that, and the other during his first hundred days, but that he is backing off of gay issues -- and his campaign rhetoric about them -- at full speed. Thanks to Sullivan for calling bullshit on that whole scenario.

In case you missed it, here's my previous post on this issue, with particular reference to DADT.

The second topic is New Hampshire, same-sex marriage, and the drive to expand already adequate protections for religious organizations. This is one where I don't agree with Sullivan:

Readers know I favor strong legal language to ensure that no one's religious freedom can in any way be curtailed by civil equality for gay couples. That's why I think governor Lynch of New Hampshire is right to sign on to marriage equality - as he just did - as long as the following language is attached.

Sullivan includes Lynch's proposed amendment (which it appears the legislature has accepted) in his post. It strikes me as overbroad and loaded with the potential for litigation in aeternam. Dale Carpenter also sees some problems:

Here are a couple of initial thoughts. First, as broad as it is, the governor's proposed language does not apply to state workers. Second, it does not apply to "any individual," but only to those individuals "managed, directed, or supervised by or in conjunction with" a covered religious entity. Both of those are commendable limitations on the reach of the exemption, for reasons I've discussed previously. But the "in conjunction with" phrase — covering individuals and nonprofits associated in some way with covered religious entities — is potentially quite broad. Unlike other exemptions, it's not clear to whom it's supposed to apply.

Trust me -- the anti-gay right will try to make that section as broad as possible, enough to include anyone who ever set foot in a church. Scott Lemieux has, I think, the right take on Lynch's maneuver.:

And I think there's a strategic lesson here: just add some language to legislation ensuring that things that nobody was going to do anyway can't be done, and there goes the emerging silly pretext for opposing SSM.

Jeremy Hooper points out something that puts the whole thing in perspective:

Weird, str8 atheists have been civilly marrying for eons without special stipulations

The best footnote I can think of in this week's marriage notes is this one from Autumn Sandeen at Pam's House Blend:

We're all the same people, it's just that we think differently or we were born differently, and these people should be treated the same way as you would treat somebody else.

--Ethan, an eight year old organizing a marriage equality rally in Denver, Colorado

Aargh!

There actually was an FGB post in process which I lost. (I really need to get a new computer -- this old warhorse just is not up to it any more.)

Maybe I can reconstruct it later. Right now, I need to get moving.

"The fierce urgency of whenever"

The Obama administration is taking it on the chin on gay issues, from a surprising quarter: the MSM. Yes, boys and girls, the actual mainstream media -- Time's Jake Tapper, CNN's Jill Dougherty, and Bill Press, to be exact. From Pam Spaulding:

President Obama's absurd strategy on LGBT issues has left his press secretary Robert Gibbs completely unprepared to handle questions from journalists about marriage and DADT. At today's press briefing Gibbs was hit yet again with questions about the administration's untenable, illogical position that our Constitutional scholar President believes that separate is equal when it comes to marriage.

And DADT fares no better:

. . . President Obama has the power by executive order to cease the witch hunts, and to stop the discharges until Congress takes legislative action, as the Palm Center at UCSB report released this week, "How to End 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell': A Roadmap of Political, Legal, Regulatory, and Organizational Steps to Equal Treatment," outlines.

Andrew Sullivan has a follow-up on Lt. Dan Choi that sort of summarizes the president's position on gay issues -- now that he's gotten our votes and our money:

Lt. Dan Cho [is] another patriot who served his country with honor and with skills the military desperately needs, whose reward is to be stigmatized and persecuted for his integrity as a human being. Choi served in Iraq and speaks Arabic.

He was discharged by president Barack H. Obama, whose attitude toward the civil rights movement of his time appears to be "the fierce urgency of whenever."

Obama is a very cautious man, but that can backfire. He is already in danger of losing the leadership position on DADT to Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, who has introduced a bill to repeal the policy in the House. (That bill will be interesting to watch: I'm suspecting it will pass in the House, but Harry Reid is even more cautious than Obama, and certainly displays much less in the way of leadership ability.)

His position on marriage is going to prove embarrassing in short order: Vermont and Maine have legalized SSM in the past month, New Hampshire's bill is awaiting the governor's signature, the New York assembly has passed a bill, with a pledge from the senate leader that it will be introduced as soon as it looks as though they have the votes to pass it, Rhode Island is holding hearings, Washington state has done it's "in all but name" dance (and I expect that to last less than two years: marriage will come to the Pacific Northwest), and even Illinois is working on civil unions legislation (it's iffy here, but we'll have marriage within five years -- there is already pressure to alter the c.u. bill to marriage) -- and Obama and his spokesman are repeating "civil unions" as though it were some sort of magical formula. Sorry -- that's reaching the point where it won't even play in Peoria.

There has been a tendency among Democrats to take the gay community for granted, one that's been abetted, I think, by the national rights groups, who have, when it comes right down to it, allowed themselves to be co-opted. We got results when we hit the streets and started yelling, and stopped getting results when we started attending the right cocktail parties. The grassroots is beginning to take control away from HRC and its brethren (how pathetic is it that I can't even remember the other names and/or acronyms -- and I'm not what you'd call ill-informed; gives you some idea of their presence), and if Obama doesn't want it to get edgy, he'd better move. There's only so much time you can spend catering to panty-waisted old generals who get the vapors at the thought of young virile men in the shower and senators whose constituents believe in keeping sex within the family. They are, when it comes right down to it, a historical burp at this point, and maybe it's time Obama realized that.

(Geez -- I'm really pissy this morning. Who knew?)

Pathetic

I wish I could say I'm surprised: Obama's waffling on DADT. Looks like the radical Christianist generals are winning. from John Aravosis, it appears that no action is going to be the default:

Stephanopoulos asked Obama's National Security Adviser, General Jim Jones, if Obama will overturn the Don't Ask Don't Tell policy during his term - something Obama has repeatedly, vehemently, promised.

STEPHANOPOULOS: But it will be overturned.

JONES: I don't know. We'll have to - the president has said that he is in favor of that. We'll just wait - we'll have to wait and see - as a result of the deliberations and as a result of the - in the months and weeks ahead. We have a lot on our plate right now. It has to be teed up at the right time so - to do this the right way.

Aravosis says "not a ringing endorsement." To me it reads more like "I really wish you hadn't asked that question." (Remember, this comes hard on the heels of the flap over the administration altering the website language on DADT from "repeal" to "change." Not the same thing -- verbs are important, y'know?.)

It gets worse. Again from Aravosis, SLDN weighs in:

When asked this morning on This Week with George Stephanopoulos if "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" will be overturned, the president's national security advisor, General Jones, responded, "I don't know."

" 'I don't know?' The answer should have been a one-word answer ‘Yes,' said Aubrey Sarvis, executive director of Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.

"Jones's answer, along with Secretary Gates's remarks to the Army War College on April 16, make it clear that a calculated political decision has been made that the President is not going to take ‘Don't Ask, Don't Tell' on publicly-himself-and instead his defense team is doing it."

There should be no waffling in this Administration-whether from Jones or Gates, on whether repeal is going to happen. The discussions should be when and how. Recall what Obama said on the campaign trail in 2007:

America is ready to get rid of the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy. That work should have started long ago. It will start when I take office. America is ready to get rid of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. All that is required is leadership.(Fall 2007 to Human Rights Campaign)

That was then. This is now. The Center for Military Readiness (CMR)-which wrote in Human Events recently, "Obama administration officials appear equivocal on this issue"- is boasting about "changing the debate" and taking credit for intimidating the White House to back off DADT. Phyllis Schlafly, grandmother of the conservative movement, sits on the CMR Board.

Gay and lesbian soldiers continue to get fired on this President's watch, most recently Arabic linguist Army Lt. Dan Choi and 2nd Army Second Lt. Sandy Tsao. At the end of the day, this is what the debate is about-them and their families.

Also on ‘This Week', Senator John McCain indicated that a study or review should be conducted.

"A protracted study or National Commission is a cop out," notes Sarvis. "It is the way Washington ignores something it doesn't want to deal with. We hope Obama is not going along with this."

There have been almost a dozen studies on the topic. Going back to 1993, RAND did a study on the impact of openly gay and lesbian soldiers on unit cohesion. Their conclusion: no negative impact. Every scientific, credible study since then has come to the same conclusion.

SLDN had hoped this president would offer leadership, not give in to some throw away study or commission. The right approach would be a presidential working group that focuses solely on implementation and reports back to the president with recommendations within 90 days.

For a gay group, as Aravosis notes, or even a progressive group, this is pretty strong. Maybe people are finally getting fed up? Not with Obama specifically, although he's going to be the catalyst, but with the Democrats as a whole.

I sometimes wonder if I've gotten too cynical about saviors. I guess not.

Lt. Dan Choi

Read this post by Susie Madrak at C&L on Dan Choi -- one of the latest gay servicemembers to be kicked out under DADT. It's pretty powerful.

The core:

Two weeks after I appeared on the show, we had National Guard training. Basically, we went to marksmanship qualification. We shot our rifles. And I was leading some of the training as officer in charge, telling them to cease fire or fire, and I thought, for four days, nobody was saying anything, so maybe they don't watch TV or maybe they don't read the "Army Times." But at the end of the training, so many people came up to me, my peers, my subordinates, people that outranked me, folks that have been in the Army -- and this is an infantry unit, infantry men that -- coming up to me and saying, hey, sir, hey, Lieutenant Choi, we know, and we don't care. What we care about is that you can contribute to the team. And what leaders do, they look to see how can they make the best team before they go to war.

That's what they care about.

Sorry -- DADT is wrong. It is wrong in practical terms, it is morally wrong, it is wrong for Americans. Just wrong. And I'm pretty well convinced that Obama's going to need a fire lit under him to do anything about it.

Mr. President, if your ranking generals -- the same generals who OK sending Bibles to war zones to convert the natives and filming Christianist recruitment videos in the Pentagon -- are resistant to change, maybe you need some new generals.

Reviews in Brief: You Higuri's Gakuen Heaven (anime)

I've been indulging myself over the past few days with a bit of boys' love fluff, Gakuen Heaven, one of the most light-hearted and delightful anime I've run across. (Yes, I finally found the whole series online.) It's based on the PC game Gakuen Heaven Boy's Love Scramble, which has become a franchise that includes three PlayStation 2 games, drama CDs, a manga series, and this anime.

There are several interlocking story lines here, all centered on the story of Ito Keita (Japanese usage here), a fairly average boy who, out of the blue, receives a letter of acceptance (the "platinum paper") to prestigious Bell Liberty Academy (nicknamed "BL Academy"), a school that only accepts boys with special talents. Interwoven with the story of Keita's acceptance at the Academy is that of his growing relationship with Endo Kazuki, his neighbor in the dorm and his first friend at the school. Keita is also intimately, although unknowingly, involved in a power struggle between the school's new and very young Chairman and its Vice-Chairman, Kunanuma, who fears loss of his influence on the Board and sees Keita as a weak-point in the Chairman's defenses: Keita was admitted on the Chairman's special recommendation. (I should also point out that this thread involves a lot of behind-the-scenes activity, which adds depth to the story.) And, there is a mysterious agency that is stealing research data from the computer used by the biology teacher, Umino Satoshi, who is doing some important research on viruses.

The main idea here is to have fun, and fun it is: I'm not sure where to start. The characters -- and there is a large cast here, all of whom have important roles -- are a delight: clearly portrayed, each is a rather quirky individual, from the wild-man student council president, Niwa Tetsuya, to the most beautiful man on campus, Saionji Kaoru, cool, collected, and very, very shrewd. The character designs fit right in: these are all appealing young men, and there is a great deal of subtlety in the portrayals.



The subtlety extends to the BL aspects: they're very low-key, with only the occasional suggestive remark, but we do get a clear idea of some of the relationships here: they are not plainly pointed out, but through some scene openings (suggestive dialogue that resolves itself into perfectly innocent situations) and some backstory, we know who's with who. There are also a few pointed remarks directed at Kazuki to get his act together and stake his claim.

The general pace of this one is high-key, including the delivery of dialogue. Keita, in particular, seems to talk as though he were a machine-gun. It's not something that bothered me at all, and it sets a very different tone than what I've become used to: very upbeat and, as the subtitle notes, "Boy's Love Hyper."

The one major problem here is Kunanuma: like most cartoon villains, he is a bit much, and I find myself skipping his scenes on second viewing. (I think villains should not be allowed to laugh, and certainly never ever be allowed to gloat.) There are one or two places where it could be tighter, but on the whole, it's a winner: drama, suspense, romance, and a healthy dose of charm.

Licensed in North America by Media Blasters.

Crew:

Director: Yukina Hiiro
Series Composition: Natsuko Takahashi
Script: Daisuke Watanabe, Natsuko Takahashi, Yoshifumi Fukushima, Yukina Hiiro
Music: Kazuya Nishioka
Original Character Design: You Higuri
Character Design: Yumi Nakayama
Sound director: Hiromi Kikuta
Key Animation: Akiko Kawashima, Chiyuki Tanaka (OP), Hisami Teshima, Junko Abe, Keiko Nagamine (OP), Setsuko Unno, Yoshiko Nakajima (OP), Yuki Nomura, Yukie Akitani
Theme Song Performance: Masaaki Fujioka (ED), YAMOTO (OP)

Cast:

Jun Fukuyama as Keita Ito
Takahiro Sakurai as Kazuki Endo
Hirofumi Nojima as Takuto Iwai
Hiroshi Kamiya as Kaoru Saionji
Katsuyuki Konishi as Tetsuwa Niwa
Ken Narita as Jin Matsuoka
Ken Takeuchi as Kakeru Ozawa
Kenichi Suzumura as Shunsuke Taki
Ryotaro Okiayu as Koji Shinomiya
Shinichiro Miki as Yukihiko Naruse
Takahiro Mizushima as Wataru Ozawa
Tomohiro Tsuboi as Omi Shichijo
Tomoko Kawakami as Satoshi Umino
Toshiyuki Morikawa as Hideaki Nakajima
Ayumi Tsunematsu as Kazuki Endo (child)
Daisuke Kirii as Hiroya Yoshizumi (eps 12-13)
Masayuki Katou as Watanabe
Shigenori Sôya as Kuganuma
Takashi Oohara as Nagahara
Touko Aoyama as Keita Ito (child)
Yasuhiro as Construction Worker, Naoi, Track Team Captain
Yuuichi Nakamura as Ishizuka (secretary)

Am I Too Cynical? -- an FGB Post

The problem with reports like this is that you start to wonder what kind of game they're playing -- at least I do:

"I don't think a person who acknowledges that they have gay tendencies is disqualified per se for the job,” Sessions tells Mark Halperin on Morning Joe.

That doesn't really answer the question of whether he thinks somebody who is openly gay, as opposed to struggling with those "tendencies," is qualified, though I think he meant to indicate he wouldn't pick that ground to fight on.

It gets even more knotty when you mix this into the recipe:

In a move that will surprise gay activists and liberals, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, a top religious right group, tells me that his organization has no problem with GOP Senator Jeff Sessions‘ claim today that he’s open to a Supreme Court nominee with “gay tendencies.”

The spokesperson confirms the group won’t oppose a gay SCOTUS nominee over sexual orientation.

“We agree with Senator Sessions,” Bruce Hausknecht, a spokesperson for Focus on the Family, which was founded by top religious right figure James Dobson, told me a few minutes ago. “The issue is not their sexual orientation. It’s whether they are a good judge or not.”

Their sexual orientation “should never come up,” he continued. “It’s not even pertinent to the equation.”

I don't know that I'm as willing as John Aravosis to take this at face value, but it's sure an interesting development.

And maybe Aravosis is right: the right is beginning to realize that their anti-gay stance is turning rancid and that most people in the country don't agree with them in the least on most issue relating to gays. But to admit it publicly? (Which is what this amounts to.)

What's happening in the world?

(The issue, of course, is what factors are going to go into Obama's pick: I'm going with Ben Smith and figuring that he's going to avoid the openly gay candidates, simply because that seems to be the issue he's most frightened of, even though it's a winner for him.)

(Sessions' comment gives a clue, I think, and it's something that Ben Smith touches on: they're recasting the whole issue, downplaying the sexual orientation bit, because it has backfired badly. The tactic now is going to be, once again, to blur definitions. The "gay tendencies" comment is indicative: to the Christianist right, no one is really gay, everyone is really straight, although one can be tempted into homosexual behavior. Watch for it -- it's going to be entertaining.)

Footnote:

Even Tony Perkins is avoiding Teh Gay. Must be hard when your trademark issue is a big negative for you.)

Torture Note: Better Late Than Never

This is interesting. I won't comment on the lateness of it -- the two commenters so far (as of this posting), as well as the reporter, have done that.

But what I find interesting is that Land refers solely to our founding documents, and not any teachings of Christ. I'm not sure what that means.

(There doesn't seem to be a link anywhere to Land's full statement -- otherwise, as you know full well, I would have included it -- so my comment about the content of Land's remarks has to be taken as provisional, although I'm sure if Land had made any reference to the basic beliefs of Christianity, it would have been reported.)

Marriage in Maine

It's a done deal. Gov. Baldacci signed the bill.

Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog has a good report with Baldacci's statement.

Note: Take today's posts as "Friday Gay Blogging: Early Edition." I probably won't have time tomorrow.

Worth Reading

A review by James Davidson of Alan Bray's The Friend, a follow-up and in many ways a defense of John Boswell's Same-Sex Unions in Pre-Modern Europe. Lengthy, detailed, intelligent, and well worth reading, but leave yourself some time.

Marriage Note: WTF?

Heather MacDonald over at Secular Right has come up with one of the most bizarre arguments against same-sex marriage I've ever seen. This is pretty much unbelievable:

If the black illegitimacy rate were not nearly three times the rate of whites’, I would have few qualms about gay marriage. Or if someone can guarantee that widespread gay marriage would not further erode the expectation among blacks that marriage is the proper context for raising children, I would also not worry. But no one can make that guarantee.

Why might it further depress the black marriage rate? There is a logical reason and a visceral reason. First, it sends the signal that marriage is simply about numbers: it is an institution that binds two (for the moment) people who are in love. It erases completely the significance that marriage is THE context in which the children of biological parents should be raised. And there are undoubtedly many other subtle meanings and effects of gay marriage that we cannot even imagine at the moment—which institutional shift is something that conservatives should be most attuned to.

Why don't these people just admit that they don't like fags instead of engaging in these double back-flips to try to come up with "rational" reasons to limit marriage to heterosexuals? (Which they never seem to manage anyway.)

First off, she's taking a severe problem in the black community, making some assumptions that may or may not be justified, not examining the factors that contribute to the problem (does she mention poverty? Does she mention the role of welfare, which actually penalizes married couples? Does she mention the role of matriarchy in black culture? No, of course not.), and using it as a springboard to condemn same-sex marriage, which has absolutely nothing to do with the rate of illegitimacy in the black community.

Second, she makes completely unwarranted -- and insupportable -- statements about same-sex marriage: marriage does not become "simply about numbers" if same-sex couples are involved. It certainly does not erase the significance of marriage in raising children. And note that she's pounding on the biological parents drum here, which is largely irrelevant to the argument: people don't need a marriage license to make babies, as her comments about the illegitimacy rate among blacks point up. I agree, however, that a stable home with married parents is still the best way to raise children, no matter who gave birth to them. Nor, as we know from legitimate research, does it matter whether the parents are a man and a woman, two men, or two women -- although there is some slight and probably not statistically significant evidence that two women are the best at it. There's something really primitive about this "conservative" insistence on biological parents. Sure, in the usual course of events, that's what's going to happen. About 25% of the time at present. Think about that. (That's an old number and may not be accurate, but it was an appalling statistic a few years ago: about 25% of families in this country fit into the fringe right's definition of "traditional.")

Fortunately, I don't have to dissect MacDonald's post in any detail -- her readers have already done that, and pretty much raked her over the coals. (It's worth reading the coments on this one -- quite good across the board.) Reader willybobo eviscerates MacDonal's conservative stance:

Or perhaps it’s that you have a different framework for considering the role of the government and individuals. You seem to speak of marriage as if it’s a benefit that the government discretionarily hands out to individuals. Therefore, before we extend that benefit to more citizens, namely gay citizens, we ought require a compelling case to be made that such citizens are worthy of the right, including proper consideration of the potential negative consequences a detailed plan — a guarantee in fact — that these consequences can be avoided.

If that’s your default operating framework for government, it seems to me decidedly not conservative. For I believe the conservative position starts from the basis that individuals have a natural right to freedoms in their affairs, and that the essential role of government is to protect these rights, imposing limits upon them only when such rights can be shown to interfere with the rights of others or the collective good.

In the case of marriage, then, I think your assumed default position is exactly counter to a conservative stance. The onus should be those who seek to restrict an individual’s right to marriage to demonstrate why such a right interferes with the liberty or well being of the collective as a case against it. Failing such a compelling argument, the government ought take no position. Here you seem to be arguing for the opposite: an activist role for the government in regulating marriage, with your fundamental point being that we ought subject the freeing of some of the regulation (the prohibition against same sex partners) to higher scrutiny prior to agreeing to it.

However, my bottom line remains the same: this was a particularly brainless post.

Bits

Don't have the focus for my usual penetrating, incisive post today, but I keep running across things:

Via Booman, this (quoting Byron York):

The accusations of racism seem to come from a single sentence in the piece: "But if a new survey by the New York Times is accurate, the president and some of his policies are significantly less popular with white Americans than with black Americans, and his sky-high ratings among African-Americans make some of his positions appear a bit more popular overall than they actually are." I wrote my post because of the striking numbers in the New York Times poll. Those numbers raise a question: What if a president were wildly popular with one group, and only middlingly popular with another group and yet was often portrayed as being hugely popular with the whole group?

Aside from the Alice-in-Wonderland quality of the whole statement, it's obvious that York doesn't get why he is being called a racist: he is so blind to it, in fact, that he doesn't see how nonsensical his original statement was. I'm not going to harp on the "racist" aspect of it, but the semantics: I guess my point is, looking at the highlighted text, this is empty noise: if the numbers are reporting a certain degree of popularity, then that's the degree of popularity, by definition.

Baca!

Orrin Hatch (R-Guantanamo) is against empathy.

Hatch found fault with a 2005 floor statement by then-Senator Obama on the requisite qualities of a Supreme Court justice. Obama said that a justice's "deepest values, one's core concerns, one's broader perspectives on how the world works, and the depth and breadth of one's empathy" come into play in deciding some cases.

"The real debate is about whether judges may decide cases based on empathy at all, not the groups for which they have empathy," Hatch wrote.

It gets worse:

Hatch raised concerns initially that Obama was using “buzz words” for a liberal activist justice by suggesting he wanted someone who had “empathy” for the country’s problems. But Obama told Hatch “that was not what he meant, and I take him at his word ... and that he assured me that he would not be picking a radical or an extremist for the court that he was very pragmatic in his approach and that he would pick somebody who would abide by the rule of law.”

First off, like Hatch or any other Republican has any concept at all of the rule of law. Right. Second, "empathy" translates to "extremism." WTF?

I seem to remember hearing that the ideal was justice with mercy.

In spite of pressure to drop the matter, Spanish Judge Garzon has decided to pursue a war crimes invstigation against Bush administration officials:

In a ruling in Madrid today, Judge Baltasar Garzón has announced that an inquiry into the Bush administration's torture policy makers now will proceed into a formal criminal investigation. The ruling came as a jolt following the recommendation of Spanish Attorney General Cándido Conde-Pumpido against proceeding with a criminal inquiry, reported in The Daily Beast on April 16.

Good. At least someone's doing what needs to be done.

You Have to Wonder: The Obligatory Torture Post

After reading about people like this -- the most successful interrogators in WWII who never even raised their voices against their subjects -- what kind of sickos did we have in the White House for the past eight years? And I mean sickos.

John Cole got the info from Sullivan (which somehow I missed), but runs with it:

Via two posts from Sullivan, I have learned that the two most successful interrogators and spybusters from WWII, one German and one British, never harmed an inmate.

No German won as many intelligence coups as Hanns Scharff. Scharff worked for the Luftwaffe interrogating allied pilots and bomber crews, so successfully that the U.S. military taught his methods decades later.

Colonel Robin “tin eye” Stephens was a “bristling, xenophobic martinet” who ran a famously successful counterinelligence operation for MI5 out of a basement in London.

Neither of them ever harmed a subject, committed to physical violence against them, no degradation -- the sort of thing that became routine during the Bush administration just wasn't on their list of working methods.

Look, it's common knowledge -- since the heyday of the Inquisition -- that the only information you get from torture is whatever the victim thinks you want to hear. Everyone knows that, everyone knew it going in, so what's the fascination with hurting people who can't defend themselves? (I won't go into the latest poll that shows that regular church-goers think torture is OK: there's this whole thing in Christianity about physical torment that I think is kind of sick to begin with. There's also the fact that there's only a twelve-point spread, which I find appalling in itself -- what have we become?*) I suppose from a frat boy who thinks blowing up frogs with firecrackers is funny, that's maybe par for the course.

So now, of course, the Republicans -- and certain Democrats -- don't want to turn this stinking muck heap because it will be "divisive." This from a bunch of jokers who live on divisiveness -- they don't have any other strategy. (The Democrats, of course, are just trying to cover their asses -- they're as culpable as anyone on the right side of the aisle on this.)

Listen up, boys and girls: you punish war criminals. You investigate and you try them and you punish them. Calls to "move forward" are merely demands that we validate this status quo -- we'll torture people if we feel like it -- as acceptable behavior for America, and I ain't buying it.

* Update: A little amplification on this: My own opinions of Christianity and its focus on death and mortification of the flesh to the side, I've noticed several posts citing this poll, all dwelling on the fact that the more conservative and observant the respondent, the more likely they were to condone torture, but no one seems to have mentioned the fact that the spread is not so wide.

More than half of people who attend services at least once a week -- 54 percent -- said the use of torture against suspected terrorists is "often" or "sometimes" justified. Only 42 percent of people who "seldom or never" go to services agreed, according to the analysis released Wednesday by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life.

White evangelical Protestants were the religious group most likely to say torture is often or sometimes justified -- more than six in 10 supported it. People unaffiliated with any religious organization were least likely to back it. Only four in 10 of them did.

"Only" 42%? ONLY? In total, half the people in this country think that torture is often or sometimes justified. Only a quarter think it is never justified. And this is somehow OK?

What the hell have we done to ourselves?