David F. Brooks, back from his Thanksgiving vacation, solves the gay wedding cake conundrum ("How Not to Advance Gay Marriage"):
the neighborly approach would be to say: “Fine, we won’t compel you to do something you believe violates your sacred principles. But we would like to hire you to bake other cakes for us. We would like to invite you into our home for dinner and bake with you, so you can see our marital love, and so we can understand your values. You still may not agree with us, after all this, but at least we’ll understand each other better and we can live more fully in our community.”
That "bake with you" is so precious! You build these relationships by emphasizing the things you have in common, you see, not the things that divide you, and as Brooks knows all gay men make these fantastic muffins and scones, and their ambition is to run a bed-and-breakfast in a charming New England town. With quilts. They'd disarm the baker with their respect for his technical expertise and artistry, and he'd quickly come to understand we're all the same under the skin. Better yet make it brunch, lubricated with Bellinis!
It's just like the way Oliver Brown invited the Topeka school board over for barbecue and gospel music, back in 1951 (in Brookstopia, not on our own sad planet), and they educated each other; Oliver teaching the board members about how his daughter was a human being as deserving of a good school as their own children were, and the board members teaching him about their deep religious belief in the separation of the races and their anxieties about cultural and economic change. It didn't get the Topeka schools integrated, but it was so warming and civilized, and made them feel so good about themselves, and they didn't have to bring a bunch of lawyers into it!
More, with bonus Frederick Douglass quote (he's done an amazing job and is being recognized more and more!), from Drifty.
Let's think about this intuitively. Do you believe a gay couple could have married in the United States in 1790? If not, what do you think would have been the justification for denial?
A same-sex marriage between the two men Pedro Díaz and Muño Vandilaz in the Galician municipality of Rairiz de Veiga in Spain occurred on 16 April 1061. They were married by a priest at a small chapel. The historic documents about the church wedding were found at Monastery of San Salvador de Celanova.
Seriously, "let's think about this intuitively" is like saying "let's just argue on the basis of our biases without considering any facts."
Presumably a marriage between two men could have been denied on the grounds that they must be intending to commit sodomy in violation of one of those rare laws that really does have a Christian source, like prohibitions on selling alcohol on Sundays or anti-blasphemy rules (although good old Wikipedia informs me that the Middle Assyrian Code of 1075 B.C.E. forbade intercourse between brothers-in-arms and punished it with castration, and we know they weren't part of the Judeo-Christian tradition). I don't think there would have been any justifiable grounds for forbidding two women to marry, since the sodomy laws didn't mention people without penises, though I suppose they might have refused to do it anyway if it had come up, the point being that it didn't.
“For every politician — Democrat and Republican — who is tut-tutting that [bigoted Kentucky county clerk Kim] Davis must resign, they are defending a hypocritical standard. Where is the call for the mayor of San Francisco to resign for creating a sanctuary city — resulting in the murder of American citizens by criminal illegal aliens welcomed by his lawlessness?
“Where is the call for President Obama to resign for ignoring and defying our immigration laws, our welfare reform laws, and even his own Obamacare?"
1. The mayor of San Francisco, Ed Lee, should not resign for creating a sanctuary city because, in the first place, he didn't create one; that was done 21 years before he became mayor, under Art Agnos, in 1989:
Move over black people, women, people with religions requiring them to wear special head coverings or smoke exotic substances, persons with disabilities, there's a new victim in town, cruelly ostracized by an unfeeling, narrow-minded society.
Senate Democrats are pushing an Equality Bill that says it is meant to add two new categories to the protected classes under the 1964 Civil Rights Act, sexual orientation and gender identity, but Andrew T. Walker of Ryan T. Anderson's Public Discourse blog finds that the actual secret intent of the bill is the opposite: far from protecting one oppressed group, it takes protections away from somebody else:
"No wedding cake for you, my pretty! I'll cake you!"
OK, here's old Baron Hans von Spakovsky, who you'll no doubt remember as the fabricator-in-chief in the Bush Justice Department Bureau of Spurious Voter Fraud Allegations, landed in a wingnut welfare gig for the Heritage Foundation where he's tasked with managing the spurious allegations of gay people infringing on our First Amendment rights, notably—since it's still the only fragment of a case they've got, apparently, the case of the Gresham, Oregon bakery Sweets by Melissa. Some newish information has been circulating about this case, which I'll summarize for anybody who hasn't seen it.
Robert P. George, probably the most brilliant social conservative theorist in the country, argued that just as Lincoln persistently rejected the Dred Scott decision, so “we must reject and resist an egregious act of judicial usurpation.”
Faced with the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, Lincoln declared the ruling to be illegitimate and vowed that he would treat it as such. He squarely faced Chief Justice Roger Brooke Taney’s claim to judicial supremacy and firmly rejected it. To accept it, he said, would be for the American people “to resign their government into the hands of that eminent tribunal.”
Jihua shengyu haochu duo (Family planning has many advantages); Family Planning Leadership Office of Jilin Province, ca. 1975. Via NIH"s National Library of Medicine.
National Review's Ryan T. Anderson has fully caught the genuine People's Daily tone in this dek text, though I think "resolutely" might have worked better than "fearlessly" here.
The "redefinition of traditional marriage" you keep hearing about actually got started two or three centuries ago, as it transformed gradually from the management of the relations between the Greater Sex and the Lesser to a voluntary association between individuals, partners in the language of founding father John Adams, who always used that word to refer to Abigail, and eventually equals, as women slowly achieved property rights, parental rights, and generally civil rights meant to be on par with those of men.
Joseph Guisol of Toowomba, Queensland, and his bride, Honey, a golden labrador, 2010. "It's not sexual," Guisol told the guests. Via Animal Planet.
Sometimes Monsignor Douthat is really kind of brilliant, and today is one of those times, when he takes up the challenge of turning the mouth-breather Rick-Santorum man-on-dog argument about the slippery slope of marriage equality into a sophisticated, even wearily amused piece of high-class concern trolling.
Not saying, in fact, that allowing people to marry their same-sex partners will inexorably lead to dudes getting hitched to their pooches, but that it will most likely end up with legal polygyny, and then won't you liberals be sorry?
Because he recognizes that liberals won't like the idea of legal polygyny:
“You’re not seeking to join the institution, you’re seeking to change what the institution is."
How do you join an institution without changing it? When Jews wanted into the country club, couldn't it be argued that they were changing it from its identity as an institution without any Jews? "It's not that I don't like Jews, it's just that I like a place where I feel comfortable." No, of course, they didn't say that. Gentleman's agreement. They only said it out loud when it was about black people. And women—they still say it about women. "I can't really be myself if there are women all over the place. I can't really relax."
I wanted to add, to the discussion of old Brooksy's Deep Politeness column, that I am totally on board with the wedding exception to any legal sanctioning of discrimination against same-sexers. The problem isn't, to begin with, that the customer just has to screw that cake out of those nasty people, it's that she or he has to experience the humiliation of being told, in the middle of the complex negotiations, "Oh, are you one of those people? Afraid I can't do a cake for you. God, you know."
People with that point of view are not going to be good bakers or photographers and you don't, gay or straight, want to walk into their shop at all, but especially, if you happen to be planning a same-sex wedding yourself, to be forced to listen to some asshole telling you you're not qualified for one of their fucking cakes because they're just too morally exquisite for a wretched pervert like yourself. Hence the proposal that they should identify themselves, with a well-placed sign in the window, say, saying "We prefer not to cater to the sodomitical nuptial" or words to that effect. So you won't get trapped into any interactions that will leave you shaking with rage. It's only fair.
David Brooks thinks we ought to take our cue in not discriminating against religious bigots from the "deep politeness" of the broader Jewish community:
In the Jewish community, conservative Jews are generally polite toward Orthodox Jews who wouldn’t use their cutlery. Men are generally polite to Orthodox women who would prefer not to shake their hands. In the larger community, this respectful politeness works best.
Actually I think Reform Jews are pretty courteous in this context on the whole too, and Carlebachers and Reconstructionists, and Marxists, and even a lot of goyim, but that's not what I really wanted to say.
What I wanted to say is that the Orthodox woman takes on some of the responsibility for the politeness by identifying herself with the characteristic "modesty" of her dress, the stockings and the wig. You're not left having your hand rejected out of hand by some woman looking at you as if you were a leper, you know in advance not to extend it.
What Brooks calls "orthodox" Christians (no, I don't think he's entirely clear on the meaning of that one either) in the bakery or photography studio or what have you ought to render the same courtesy to those they are not comfortable serving, perhaps by wearing a wig and thick stockings, so you'd know to stay clear of them, and the mildewed flavor of their bigoted wares.
Update: Thanks, Steve and Tengrain, for the shout-outs, and a warm welcome to visitors. And hey, stick around for a minute, because today's a very special day!
From that store that I will never be able to visit because of Justice Alito and the 1993 RFRA.
So David Brooks is out with his 112th career use of the word "amazing" in today's Times, on behalf of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, not the one just passed into law by the Indiana state government, but the old 1993 federal one:
This moderate, grounded, incremental strategy has produced amazing results. Fewer people have to face the horror of bigotry, isolation, marginalization and prejudice.
Something tells me Brooksy isn't at all clear what the original RFRA did and didn't do.
I'm personally very glad that the right of Native American Church members to perform their traditional peyote ceremonies is established and the sacred character of Native American burial grounds in general protected. I'm also not sorry that it didn't protect the children of John W. and Faythe A. Miller of Sugar Land, TX, from having Social Security numbers, even though the Millers' religious belief held that such numbers would burden the kids with the Mark of the Beast as prophesied in Revelation 13:16-17. But I don't quite see where the horror of bigotry, isolation, marginalization, and prejudice (all of 'em, Katie!) come into it.
"This is not just a political issue. It is a biblical issue. And as a biblical issue, unless I get a new version of the scriptures, it’s really not my place to say, ‘Okay, I’m just going to evolve.’ It’s like asking somebody who’s Jewish to start serving bacon-wrapped-shrimp in their deli," he said. "We’re so sensitive to make sure we don’t offend certain religions, but then we act like Christians can’t have the convictions that they’ve had for over 2,000 years."
I know, I know, fuck Huckabee. I guess one would have to in order to make his analogy there work, assuming the deli owner was a strictly observant Jew; the only way to put Huckabee in a similar position with regard to gay marriage would to marry him off to some masterful dude and pop his tiny rectum, which I don't believe any supporters of marriage equality really want to do.
Everybody's talking about former Boy Wonder Ralph Reed not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, oh, not much:
“The battle looked like it was lost, but it really wasn’t,” Reed said of the immediate aftermath of the Dred Scott decision, which went on to embolden abolitionist activists. “And that’s kind of like where we are right now. Anybody heard lately that we’re losing the marriage issue? Anybody heard that argument? You notice some similarities? I’m not comparing slavery to same-sex marriage, OK? I’m just pointing out that when you have these fights, what’s interesting is that if you look at same-sex marriage, it’s now legal in 17 states....
I'm really happy about marriage equality, honest, and yet...
It's just the fact that it's written by somebody who 24 hours earlier stood for the destruction of the Voting Rights Act. What's up with that?
Kennedy can imagine what it's like to feel there's just one person in the world you want to marry and they have the same naughty bits as you do, but he can't imagine what it's like not to have a state-issued photo ID. I can only assume it's because the first is within the experience of wealthy people. After all, the Windsor case itself wasn't a heart-wrencher about hospital visitations—it was about the right not to pay what Republicans call a "death tax" of $363,000, a problem most of us, gay or straight, will never have to suffer through.
Owe $363,000 in estate taxes or be deprived of the right to vote? I'd want to know if I take the first one, how much will I have left over? No, wait, I don't think that will be necessary. Though if the only reason was my sexual orientation it would be extremely unfair. But I can't believe that constitutional principle demands option 2.
As you all know by now President Obama has shed those silly-looking gills and taken his flashy new lungs up onto permanent land residency; his lengthily evolving position on marriage equality has evolved itself right up to where some cavilers will say it should have been a year or three ago. Not me! And I'll tell you why.
Fins to limbs, from shark to Eryops. From McGraw-Hill Access Science.*
*Note by the way that the bottom three species—shark, coelacanth, lungfish—all still exist, while the others are extinct (the natural selection process is not, as vulgarizers of the theory and Tom Friedmans and the like continually allege, about new species replacing old ones but rather about new species exploiting new ecological niches).
Entertaining the question of whether Vice President Biden had jumped the gun by endorsing marriage equality earlier in the week,
“I had already made a decision that we were going to take this position before the election and before the convention,” Obama said in his interview with ABC News that aired this morning. (via Think Progress)
Do you see that weird little pronoun shift in "I" decided that "we" would take the position? This is not a mistake; it reflects the complexity of what we are talking about when we talk about "the" president; the citizen Barack Obama, the institution that is President Barack Obama (with the special US wrinkle that that is two institutions, the Head of Government and the Head of State), the forests of committees that carry out the institution's functions, and the fact that Obama really is, as poor George W. pretended to be, the "decider"—the ultimate chair of all those committees. Citizen-chairman Obama decided not just that the views of the institution were going to evolve, but which direction they were going to evolve in and how far.
The Obama who favored same-sex marriage when running for the Illinois State Senate in 1996 was clearly Citizen Barack; and so was the one who rejected it in 2004, running for the US Senate and presumably thinking about voters black and white from outside his own sophisticated district (and not being very brave, perhaps, but not being exceptionally dishonest either).
The candidate, anyway, is never just presenting his citizen-self to the public, but is trying out for the role of the committee chair, whose speech must be more circumspect. This is a political thing, and it is not far removed from seeking out political positions that get votes, but it is not quite the same thing if the candidate is doing it the right way.
Willard Mitt Romney's Etch-a-Sketch approach is drawn from his corporate business background; it is basically applying for a job by offering to be a total toady for whatever your employer wants, personally or publicly. It's not very dignified, in comparison to applying on the basis of one's ability to carry forward the work of the firm, and it's really not wise to hire such a person, though I guess that's how the Masters of the Universe roll, recruiting their fellow psychopaths, measuring their ability to bully in the future by their ability to grovel today.
Obama's campaign technique is to sketch out a range of territory where he would be interested in acting, in such a way as to attract the most possible voters of course, often including some who are going to feel burned by what he actually does. Sometimes he cannot find a very broad range at all, as with closing down Guantánamo, and sometimes he can, as with the throwing together of all the different kinds of civil-union and marriage options.
After the inauguration, the citizen and the chair have to start negotiating their respective roles and contributions, which can get pretty complicated; it's here that the turning-round-an-ocean-liner metaphors come into play. The marriage equality issue was an especially easy one in some senses: Citizen Barack's views were on record (that would of course not bother Romney, who would simply deny that he had said anything of the sort), very important sectors of campaign money (Hollywood!) were for once on the radical side, and so were the rapidly moving trends of public opinion.
There was only one force arrayed against against marriage equality, but it was a very powerful one: the super-lagging indicator, Cokie's hairdresser, or the Village, or the Conventional Wisdom, or what I would like to start calling, after Flaubert, Received Opinion ("les idées reçues", from Bouvard et Pécuchet).These people were not themselves actually against marriage equality, or anything else for that matter—they never are—but they asserted without qualification that it couldn't be done, that it wasn't "politically possible", words that strike terror into the hearts of the Committee to Manage the President's Secret Identity.
This is where things stood in 2010 when Obama made his declaration that his own views on the subject were "evolving", and I think everybody should have understood exactly what he meant, instead of complaining about the coyness of the expression: that Citizen Obama had seized the tiller on this issue and would be leading it in his own preferred direction. There was only one direction in which it could be said to "evolve" in any case; bird species may on occasion stop using their wings, but they do not transform them into tiny velociraptor claw arms.
So for this week's announcement, it basically looks earlier than supporters had any right to hope—before the campaign even starts when I would have been betting on 2014. It's great news!
OK, Mr. P.? I've totally got your back on this one—now, can we start talking about holding prisoners without charges, and persecution of whistle blowers? Any evolution going on back there?
The New Jersey state legislature is certainly more courageous than their truculent governor Christopher Christie, in bringing forward a marriage equality bill favored by only 52% of the population (Christie wants to submit it to popular referendum, apparently so nobody can say he had anything to do with it), but why do they have to call it the "Marriage Equality and Religious Exemption Act"? Because the exemption, apparently, is as important to our civil rights as the bill itself:
The bill includes a religious exemption stating that no member of the
clergy of any religion authorized to solemnize marriage and no religious
society, institution or organization in this state shall be required to
solemnize any marriage in violation of the free exercise of religion
guaranteed by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution.
It also includes another religious exemption stating that no religious
society, institution or organization in this state serving a particular
faith or denomination shall be compelled to provide space, services,
advantages, goods or privileges related to the solemnization,
celebration or promotion of marriage if such solemnization, celebration
or promotion of marriage is in violation of the beliefs of such
religious society, institution or organization.
Can't you just see the horror of life without these protections? Leather-clad Chad and Todd grabbing some helpless Baptist minister by the elbows, grinning sadistically, while a police officer mutters, eyes downcast, "Sorry Reverend, you have to do it—it's the law."
