Blaise, an interesting angle. As I recall Afghanistan did have an elderly King who commanded a certain respect and who was a symbol of the pre-chaos history of Afghanistan. Do you think the government could have made better progress had they attempted to reimpose the monarchy as some kind of benevolent despot place holder to establish security and lay the groundwork for eventual democracy*? Or do you think that wouldn't have had any impact either way?
*A note, I am well aware that this could never have flown with the American domestic audience.
Mark hit the nail on the head Tom. since asking for equal hospital visitation rules results in X resistance from conservatives and asking for civil unions also results in X resistance from conservatives and asking for full on marriarge results in X resistance from conservatives then ceterus parabus aiming for the largest return is the only sensible path.
Based on the feedback Tom I'd say that the current consensus is that the portion of DOMA that says that the states can't compell other states is federalist and the federal anti-ssm portion of DOMA is anti-federalist. So, DOMA supporters are, then, anti-federalist.
I would humbly respond that you have been playing scant attention to the matter then. Consider Wisconsin, for instance, Â where a civil register of same sex couples (in essence about the weakest and most toothless form of civil unions) has been challenged and assaulted by SSM opponents (and where the current conservative administration has declined to defend it).
We have seen this patterns consistantly. When there is no movement to SSM then civil unions are resistent; when there is no movement to civil unions then any form of government nod to same sex couples is resisted. It is no wonder that SSM advocates aim for marriage itself; if you're going to have a fight on your hands no matter what then then you might as well reach for the whole enchilada.
My deepest apologies Tom; I didn't mean to wound you.
I have always assumed that the subtle digs and pointed asides in your distinctive writing style are designed as metaphorical fishhooks to ensnare those who are easily enraged and inflamed by them. To be frank I've never seen any other reason that you would include them in what you write.
Hopefully, hospitals have fixed that BS about banning lovers from visiting, male or female or both.
Tom, I'd note that at this time, with regards to the practical questions of matters between SSM partners like hospital visitation and many other issues like it including asset ownership and funerary rights it is important to keep in mind that no these issues have not been resolved, there continue to be compounding and serious problems. The current preventative options for avoiding these issues continue to be complicated, expensive and at great danged of being overturned or delayed in courts and that the anti-ssm side of this debate continues to make absolutely no positive suggestions with regards to any of these problems. Your own, well meaning expression of hope that these problems are fixed puts you to the left of pretty much every policy maker or advocate who is opposed to SSM in this country.
I'm of the opinion that it is this fact; that current policy regarding SSM is actively doing empirically measurable harm to same sex couples (and their children!) while no one has so far been able to propose or demonstrate any empirically measurable harm that has been cause or will be caused by SSM that is one of the drivers of how quickly public opinion is crumbling out from beneath the feet of SSM opponents.
As an aside, though, I applaud you accurately placing the polygamy issue (where it belongs) in an entirely separate brief from the SSM issue.
Kenneth, if I might add a little advice to go along with Burt's question:
I've debated TVD occasionally and watched him and his conservative cohorts debated around these parts for a few years now. In many of these occasions I’ve watched their opponents get very indignant and heated, much as you have, in their interactions. I would advise (as a fellow liberal mind) that you should try to remember that this kind of reaction is exactly the kind of response TVD flourishes on. It reinforced his narrative that conservatives at the League are a besieged and persecuted minority; that Liberals are emotional unpleasant fulminators and that name calling is the best they can do against the iron logic of conservative positions. Note also that when you present your arguments in this particular tone is allows TVD (or anyone you debate) to sigh disdainfully at your tone and ignore the substance of your assertions. Your noise, in essence, is damaging your signal. You’re hurting your own (and my) position.
 If you would consider Tom’s icon please note how his magnificent sunglasses virtually glint with glee when you submit in this kind of tone. Rather, I would advise, if you want to keep your own blood pressure at a tolerable level and also get on well here at the League’s commentariate community I strongly encourage you to try to be temperate and mildly good humored despite how much something you may read may annoy you. It will serve you very well, I swear.
Again this is just my humble suggestion and is offered in the best of faith. I really do want you to succeed and enjoy yourself here if you choose to stay around the digs.
Tom, I'm curious as to whether you're aware that DOMA is a very blatantly non-federalist piece of legislation? It forbids one state from forcing other states to recognize SSM which I agree is a federalist move but it also sets Federal policy completely against SSM which is a very much non-federalist inposition on SSM recognizing states.
I'd like to ask again if you have any thoughts on how, repeatedly now, the only evidence SSM opponents have been able to submit in these various suits that supports their position and also meets the requiremetns of court evidence and testimony are vague appeals to tradition? If I were opposed to SSM myself I would think this was very disturbing. Is this a case of lack of passion on the part of the anti-SSM sides of these various cases, some kind of special discrimination or bias in the old rules of evidence and testimony or some deep weakness in the foundations of their position?
Dunno haven't seem him in a while. Maybe he'll pop back up. Otherwise he can be an exhibit for the conservative crew's claim that the League thought police are rounding up the rightious in a left wing pogrom.
Hi Sam, I'd like to hop in here and offer some responses since this is an area where I've some experience. A warning this is likely going to be a tch lengthy, apologies in advance; off we go!
"Not surprisingly, I seem to have interpreted the Duncan article differently. The data, at least to me, seems to suggest that homosexuals don’t really want to marry after all. More likely is the case that symbolism, marriage equality, civil rights, what have you, largely trump the walking down the aisle reality of marriage."
The issue of marriage rates in the Netherlands specifically and the Scandinavians in general is considerably more muddled than Maggie's crew generally prefers to let on. For instance (and quite importantly) the options on the menu in the Scandanavian regions (and the Netherlands in particular) are not get married or not. In fact there are four options:
1-Don't get hitched in any way, live single.
2-Co-habit informally. You're considered in an "Unregistered partnership" there are various legal rights involved here particularily revolving around property rights based on when the property was acquired.
3-Co-habit formally. This involves registering as a geregistreerd partnerschap or, in essence, a civil union. There are more ramifications and rights involved here more than unregistered partnerships but less than full on marriage.
4-Marriage: maximal level of commitment and obligations but not a lot more rights really than #3.
So if you recognize this situation it becomes considerably more understandable why gays (and heterosexuals for that matter!) in the Netherlands (and Scandanavian countries in general are choosing less marriage; they have more options than the binary married/single systems elsewhere. If you include homosexuals who're choosing options #2,3 AND 4 you get numbers pretty much the same as everywhere else that has instituted SSM. If any lesson is to be learned from this it's that if marriage is important to you them instituting a series of marriage lite alternatives is probably a bad idea. In other news water is wet and the sun rises in the east.
MA is not really comparable on the other hand because what they have isn't really marriage but again a sort of marriage lite arrangement. None of the Federal implications of marriage are involved in MA marriages (and won't be courtesy of DOMA).
I think the major point that hasn’t been discussed is the legal ramifications of legalizing same-sex marriage. By signing same-sex marriage into law, that is a tacit endorsement and affirmation of homosexuality as a morally acceptable lifestyle, thus forcing Jews, Christians, and Muslims to accept something that is deeply, undeviatingly offensive and against their teachings. Etc...
This actually doesn't parse well at all. Consider, for instance, that there are currently religious groups (Universalists, Episcopalians...) who do allow SSM and bless those unions. By forbidding SSM the government currently is forcing those religious groups to condemn something they consider acceptable. If you open up this can of worms it simply doesn't work. You will never be able to set public policy in a way that'll please all groups of faithful all the time.
Mustn’t all laws enacted be legal AND moral? Or at the least give the appearance of such? The Scandinavian model accounts quite well for recent rise of marriage in those countries: newly married couples who were previously divorced; couples marrying much later in life; the slow, inexorable separation of marriage and parenthood.
Laws are by definition legal but as for morality it depends on who you're asking. Some Christian groups consider blood transfusions immoral, or vaccinations, or modern medicine, if you're talking to one of those groups the current laws aren't moral. The assertion falls apart under its own weight. Fortunately the country sorted this problem out long ago by banishing the theological dogma from the public square for the most part. Officially anyhow you need to be able to make arguements for policy on practical secular grounds. It's not enough that Jehova doesn't approve of this or that (depending on who you ask) you have to be able to convince everyone that a policy is good or bad without bringing up someone we can't ask you to show your work or give a reference that doesn't date back to 325 AD.
It wasn’t that long ago, that Andrew Sullivan was screaming from the mountain tops, just give us Federalism, let the states determine whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal and recognized. We’ll accept the will of the people.
Sullivan has indeed been a long time advocate of SSM. Amusingly it's the anti-SSM side that has been shifting goalposts on this subject pretty much from the get go. When Vermont rolled out judicially mandated civil unions the SSM opponents screamed Why can't they just accept nothing? When MA instituted SSM by judicial decree the SSM opponents howled why can't this just be left to the legislature?? But now suddenly legislatures are approving SSM and suddenly opponents of SSM have lost their reverence for those institutions of the republic and insist that the only legitimate authority to enact SSM is by the clunky method of direct democratic vote of state populations in referenda? That's a lot of goalpost shifting and if current public perception and democratic trends continue they're going to loose that one too. The referenda have been increasingly "by their fingernails" in many states. When SSM is accepted by a referendum then what's next? Jesus has to descend on a fiery chariot and say gay marriage is cool by him?
Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened. And 11 states, by substantial margins, passed amendments defining marriage as the union of one male with one female. Hey, you still have 39 states to work on. Would that be acceptable? Is anything acceptable among the proponents of same-sex marriage that does not have Federal recognition of same-sex marriage?
I don't see why you feel that gays need, for some reason, to not have federal recognition for their unions inasmuch as heterosexuals do. Is there a reason to treat same sex unions different from opposite sex ones that doesn't rest on a holy text or some group of church elders puckered disapproval?
So far in the courts SSM opponents haven't been able to muster up... well.. anything really that can withstand cross examination. This is harsh but court rules are strict: things you assert have to be demonstratably true, you need empirics and numbers and you have to show your work.
In the public and political square SSM opponents have a better run of it. Allusions, gut feelings and dark veiled pronouncements about uncertain futures can be deployed without worrying about some judge or lawyer making you look like a fool on the court record. But even in this more friendly venue the ground is being ceded at a historic rate.
Now personally I'm amicable to federalism myself as a sop to the fundamentalists. My own preferred federal level solution would be to make a short list of rights and obligations and say that any resident of a state that provided SSM or a civil union equivalent that met those criteria would also be able to access the assorted federal rights and obligations of marriage. Those residents in states that didn't have it or have banned it would be out of luck (and preferably should relocate their energy and talent to a less antediluvian locale). But as always SSM opponents are going for all the marbles.
In my own lifetime their saga has been one of repeatedly spurned golden opportunities; if they'd have rolled out some kind of positive agenda during the Hawaii and Vermont days then some sort of civil union arrangement could have been instituted nationally. Gays by and large would have settled and straights would have considered the matter settled. Had some sort of compromise been offered from the commanding heights of the culture war they commanded at that time then SSM would probably have become a left wing issue that the majority mostly ignored. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for SSM supporters and gays [like myself]) their line of "No, no arrangement, no allowance, no legal standing, nothing ever for your kind. Please either pretend to turn straight or at least disappear" has never played well with the undecided. Soon my own position may well be considered the right wing position.
As for the gays, well it's obnoxious really how unremarkably normally they're doing. The religious fundies of the right and the queer studies professors of the left can scrunch up their collective faces in unified horror at how gay kids are growing up increasingly normal and unremarked upon by their peers; at how gay adults nesting, adopting kids and assembling families; at how the former gay enclaves and refuges are dissolving as it's becoming generally safe and comfortable to live anywhere you'd like. Yes the gays aren't coming anymore; they've arrived, and they've brought neither the societal collapse (and locusts) that the preachers on the right predicted nor the upending of mundane social order and the rewriting of sexual mores that the professors on the left feveredly imagined. Both sides are probably going to have to get over their disappointments, Maggie Gallagher will eventually have to find a new shtick (I'm sure she'll land safely back on her home turf of hectoring heterosexual couples) and as for me, I have to unload the dishwasher before I turn in.
I'm terrible with names and handles but also very curious Chris, do you have anyone in particular in mind? This isn't a challenge, just genuinely curious.
James, I don't have quite the fear you do. My own, admittedly amateur, read of American politics suggests that the GOP may be due for some time out of power. Maybe a really resounding loss is all they need. Obama could have been that loss but perhaps because he was so unusual (his race and especially his soaring overinflated post partisan rhetoric) gave them an excuse to double down and refuse to accept the electoral slap on the wrists. Then of course came 2008 and the recession beat down losses Dems suffered reinforced the GOP's extremist drift.
My own guess: at some point (possibly as soon as 2012) the GOP is going to have themselves a Goldwater or Mondale style landslide loss and that's going to precipitate much pondering and reprioritizing within their party. One reason I hope against hope for a Santorum nomination is he strikes me as the perfect figure to lead the GOP to such a shellacking that'll really make the right rethink their strategies and positions. I desire this not only because it hopefully will make the right saner but also because having more moderated sensible opponents should help snap the Dems out of their lazy swanning all over the middle of the spectrum.
Only a couple things I'd like to toss into this discussion. Firstly that this is generally probably too meta. Second and more substantively I do not believe we've ever banned anyone liberal or otherwise for debating or arguing in the manner Tom does (I agree incidentally that Tom has some debating strategies, tics and tendancies that drive me crazy and sometimes make me think he's purposefully dishonest). I'm liberal leaning myself so I'd think I'd remember. Anyhow I don't think we've ever banned (or even had) a liberal version of Tom. I wish we did have one, the two of em would probably fight like scorpions in a bag.
Also for the record I don't think Tom should be banned for the way he argues, as he's wont to say the readers read the threads and draw their conclusions though yes sometimes I find him very uncharitable and it can get tiring pushing back his spin on things (and then trying to be temperate when he accuses you of spinning in turn).
It'd probably help is the SSM prohibitionists could muster up some witnesses to offer some concrete testimony on the stand that stands up to the factual requirements of testifying under oath. Been a pretty sparse field there for a long while. Poor Blackenhorn made an effort in the CA case but ended up reversing himself on the stand on all the particulars, poor fellow. The transcript was really uncomfortable to read, I actually felt some sympathy.
On “Afghanistan: what might have been.”
Thanks for the info, truely fascinating.
"
Blaise, an interesting angle. As I recall Afghanistan did have an elderly King who commanded a certain respect and who was a symbol of the pre-chaos history of Afghanistan. Do you think the government could have made better progress had they attempted to reimpose the monarchy as some kind of benevolent despot place holder to establish security and lay the groundwork for eventual democracy*? Or do you think that wouldn't have had any impact either way?
*A note, I am well aware that this could never have flown with the American domestic audience.
On “The 14th Amendment vs. Plato”
Mark hit the nail on the head Tom. since asking for equal hospital visitation rules results in X resistance from conservatives and asking for civil unions also results in X resistance from conservatives and asking for full on marriarge results in X resistance from conservatives then ceterus parabus aiming for the largest return is the only sensible path.
"
Likewise of course.
"
Based on the feedback Tom I'd say that the current consensus is that the portion of DOMA that says that the states can't compell other states is federalist and the federal anti-ssm portion of DOMA is anti-federalist. So, DOMA supporters are, then, anti-federalist.
"
I would humbly respond that you have been playing scant attention to the matter then. Consider Wisconsin, for instance, Â where a civil register of same sex couples (in essence about the weakest and most toothless form of civil unions) has been challenged and assaulted by SSM opponents (and where the current conservative administration has declined to defend it).
We have seen this patterns consistantly. When there is no movement to SSM then civil unions are resistent; when there is no movement to civil unions then any form of government nod to same sex couples is resisted. It is no wonder that SSM advocates aim for marriage itself; if you're going to have a fight on your hands no matter what then then you might as well reach for the whole enchilada.
"
My deepest apologies Tom; I didn't mean to wound you.
I have always assumed that the subtle digs and pointed asides in your distinctive writing style are designed as metaphorical fishhooks to ensnare those who are easily enraged and inflamed by them. To be frank I've never seen any other reason that you would include them in what you write.
"
Hopefully, hospitals have fixed that BS about banning lovers from visiting, male or female or both.
Tom, I'd note that at this time, with regards to the practical questions of matters between SSM partners like hospital visitation and many other issues like it including asset ownership and funerary rights it is important to keep in mind that no these issues have not been resolved, there continue to be compounding and serious problems. The current preventative options for avoiding these issues continue to be complicated, expensive and at great danged of being overturned or delayed in courts and that the anti-ssm side of this debate continues to make absolutely no positive suggestions with regards to any of these problems. Your own, well meaning expression of hope that these problems are fixed puts you to the left of pretty much every policy maker or advocate who is opposed to SSM in this country.
I'm of the opinion that it is this fact; that current policy regarding SSM is actively doing empirically measurable harm to same sex couples (and their children!) while no one has so far been able to propose or demonstrate any empirically measurable harm that has been cause or will be caused by SSM that is one of the drivers of how quickly public opinion is crumbling out from beneath the feet of SSM opponents.
As an aside, though, I applaud you accurately placing the polygamy issue (where it belongs) in an entirely separate brief from the SSM issue.
"
Kenneth, if I might add a little advice to go along with Burt's question:
I've debated TVD occasionally and watched him and his conservative cohorts debated around these parts for a few years now. In many of these occasions I’ve watched their opponents get very indignant and heated, much as you have, in their interactions. I would advise (as a fellow liberal mind) that you should try to remember that this kind of reaction is exactly the kind of response TVD flourishes on. It reinforced his narrative that conservatives at the League are a besieged and persecuted minority; that Liberals are emotional unpleasant fulminators and that name calling is the best they can do against the iron logic of conservative positions. Note also that when you present your arguments in this particular tone is allows TVD (or anyone you debate) to sigh disdainfully at your tone and ignore the substance of your assertions. Your noise, in essence, is damaging your signal. You’re hurting your own (and my) position.
 If you would consider Tom’s icon please note how his magnificent sunglasses virtually glint with glee when you submit in this kind of tone. Rather, I would advise, if you want to keep your own blood pressure at a tolerable level and also get on well here at the League’s commentariate community I strongly encourage you to try to be temperate and mildly good humored despite how much something you may read may annoy you. It will serve you very well, I swear.
Again this is just my humble suggestion and is offered in the best of faith. I really do want you to succeed and enjoy yourself here if you choose to stay around the digs.
"
Tom, I'm curious as to whether you're aware that DOMA is a very blatantly non-federalist piece of legislation? It forbids one state from forcing other states to recognize SSM which I agree is a federalist move but it also sets Federal policy completely against SSM which is a very much non-federalist inposition on SSM recognizing states.
I'd like to ask again if you have any thoughts on how, repeatedly now, the only evidence SSM opponents have been able to submit in these various suits that supports their position and also meets the requiremetns of court evidence and testimony are vague appeals to tradition? If I were opposed to SSM myself I would think this was very disturbing. Is this a case of lack of passion on the part of the anti-SSM sides of these various cases, some kind of special discrimination or bias in the old rules of evidence and testimony or some deep weakness in the foundations of their position?
On “My Year of Guns”
Powerful my Tod. Quite powerful. I agree with your Dad; it's a very good thing you didn't tell him at the time.
On “Radical Liberal Judicial Activist Usurps Democracy; Foundations Of Republic Itself Threatened”
Thanks Jay and Mark, though the comments seem to have come un-nested.
"
Dunno haven't seem him in a while. Maybe he'll pop back up. Otherwise he can be an exhibit for the conservative crew's claim that the League thought police are rounding up the rightious in a left wing pogrom.
"
Both groups no less will tell you no. Emphatically or wistfully depending on what sub-region they're from.
"
Hi Sam, I'd like to hop in here and offer some responses since this is an area where I've some experience. A warning this is likely going to be a tch lengthy, apologies in advance; off we go!
"Not surprisingly, I seem to have interpreted the Duncan article differently. The data, at least to me, seems to suggest that homosexuals don’t really want to marry after all. More likely is the case that symbolism, marriage equality, civil rights, what have you, largely trump the walking down the aisle reality of marriage."
The issue of marriage rates in the Netherlands specifically and the Scandinavians in general is considerably more muddled than Maggie's crew generally prefers to let on. For instance (and quite importantly) the options on the menu in the Scandanavian regions (and the Netherlands in particular) are not get married or not. In fact there are four options:
1-Don't get hitched in any way, live single.
2-Co-habit informally. You're considered in an "Unregistered partnership" there are various legal rights involved here particularily revolving around property rights based on when the property was acquired.
3-Co-habit formally. This involves registering as a geregistreerd partnerschap or, in essence, a civil union. There are more ramifications and rights involved here more than unregistered partnerships but less than full on marriage.
4-Marriage: maximal level of commitment and obligations but not a lot more rights really than #3.
So if you recognize this situation it becomes considerably more understandable why gays (and heterosexuals for that matter!) in the Netherlands (and Scandanavian countries in general are choosing less marriage; they have more options than the binary married/single systems elsewhere. If you include homosexuals who're choosing options #2,3 AND 4 you get numbers pretty much the same as everywhere else that has instituted SSM. If any lesson is to be learned from this it's that if marriage is important to you them instituting a series of marriage lite alternatives is probably a bad idea. In other news water is wet and the sun rises in the east.
MA is not really comparable on the other hand because what they have isn't really marriage but again a sort of marriage lite arrangement. None of the Federal implications of marriage are involved in MA marriages (and won't be courtesy of DOMA).
I think the major point that hasn’t been discussed is the legal ramifications of legalizing same-sex marriage. By signing same-sex marriage into law, that is a tacit endorsement and affirmation of homosexuality as a morally acceptable lifestyle, thus forcing Jews, Christians, and Muslims to accept something that is deeply, undeviatingly offensive and against their teachings. Etc...
This actually doesn't parse well at all. Consider, for instance, that there are currently religious groups (Universalists, Episcopalians...) who do allow SSM and bless those unions. By forbidding SSM the government currently is forcing those religious groups to condemn something they consider acceptable. If you open up this can of worms it simply doesn't work. You will never be able to set public policy in a way that'll please all groups of faithful all the time.
Mustn’t all laws enacted be legal AND moral? Or at the least give the appearance of such? The Scandinavian model accounts quite well for recent rise of marriage in those countries: newly married couples who were previously divorced; couples marrying much later in life; the slow, inexorable separation of marriage and parenthood.
Laws are by definition legal but as for morality it depends on who you're asking. Some Christian groups consider blood transfusions immoral, or vaccinations, or modern medicine, if you're talking to one of those groups the current laws aren't moral. The assertion falls apart under its own weight. Fortunately the country sorted this problem out long ago by banishing the theological dogma from the public square for the most part. Officially anyhow you need to be able to make arguements for policy on practical secular grounds. It's not enough that Jehova doesn't approve of this or that (depending on who you ask) you have to be able to convince everyone that a policy is good or bad without bringing up someone we can't ask you to show your work or give a reference that doesn't date back to 325 AD.
It wasn’t that long ago, that Andrew Sullivan was screaming from the mountain tops, just give us Federalism, let the states determine whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal and recognized. We’ll accept the will of the people.
Sullivan has indeed been a long time advocate of SSM. Amusingly it's the anti-SSM side that has been shifting goalposts on this subject pretty much from the get go. When Vermont rolled out judicially mandated civil unions the SSM opponents screamed Why can't they just accept nothing? When MA instituted SSM by judicial decree the SSM opponents howled why can't this just be left to the legislature?? But now suddenly legislatures are approving SSM and suddenly opponents of SSM have lost their reverence for those institutions of the republic and insist that the only legitimate authority to enact SSM is by the clunky method of direct democratic vote of state populations in referenda? That's a lot of goalpost shifting and if current public perception and democratic trends continue they're going to loose that one too. The referenda have been increasingly "by their fingernails" in many states. When SSM is accepted by a referendum then what's next? Jesus has to descend on a fiery chariot and say gay marriage is cool by him?
Well, guess what? That’s exactly what happened. And 11 states, by substantial margins, passed amendments defining marriage as the union of one male with one female. Hey, you still have 39 states to work on. Would that be acceptable? Is anything acceptable among the proponents of same-sex marriage that does not have Federal recognition of same-sex marriage?
I don't see why you feel that gays need, for some reason, to not have federal recognition for their unions inasmuch as heterosexuals do. Is there a reason to treat same sex unions different from opposite sex ones that doesn't rest on a holy text or some group of church elders puckered disapproval?
So far in the courts SSM opponents haven't been able to muster up... well.. anything really that can withstand cross examination. This is harsh but court rules are strict: things you assert have to be demonstratably true, you need empirics and numbers and you have to show your work.
In the public and political square SSM opponents have a better run of it. Allusions, gut feelings and dark veiled pronouncements about uncertain futures can be deployed without worrying about some judge or lawyer making you look like a fool on the court record. But even in this more friendly venue the ground is being ceded at a historic rate.
Now personally I'm amicable to federalism myself as a sop to the fundamentalists. My own preferred federal level solution would be to make a short list of rights and obligations and say that any resident of a state that provided SSM or a civil union equivalent that met those criteria would also be able to access the assorted federal rights and obligations of marriage. Those residents in states that didn't have it or have banned it would be out of luck (and preferably should relocate their energy and talent to a less antediluvian locale). But as always SSM opponents are going for all the marbles.
In my own lifetime their saga has been one of repeatedly spurned golden opportunities; if they'd have rolled out some kind of positive agenda during the Hawaii and Vermont days then some sort of civil union arrangement could have been instituted nationally. Gays by and large would have settled and straights would have considered the matter settled. Had some sort of compromise been offered from the commanding heights of the culture war they commanded at that time then SSM would probably have become a left wing issue that the majority mostly ignored. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for SSM supporters and gays [like myself]) their line of "No, no arrangement, no allowance, no legal standing, nothing ever for your kind. Please either pretend to turn straight or at least disappear" has never played well with the undecided. Soon my own position may well be considered the right wing position.
As for the gays, well it's obnoxious really how unremarkably normally they're doing. The religious fundies of the right and the queer studies professors of the left can scrunch up their collective faces in unified horror at how gay kids are growing up increasingly normal and unremarked upon by their peers; at how gay adults nesting, adopting kids and assembling families; at how the former gay enclaves and refuges are dissolving as it's becoming generally safe and comfortable to live anywhere you'd like. Yes the gays aren't coming anymore; they've arrived, and they've brought neither the societal collapse (and locusts) that the preachers on the right predicted nor the upending of mundane social order and the rewriting of sexual mores that the professors on the left feveredly imagined. Both sides are probably going to have to get over their disappointments, Maggie Gallagher will eventually have to find a new shtick (I'm sure she'll land safely back on her home turf of hectoring heterosexual couples) and as for me, I have to unload the dishwasher before I turn in.
All the best.
"
oi, replace the F with a j, don't know how that slipped past me..
"
I had a classmate growing up who was saddled with the last name Fercof. Up to that point I'd thought my own Finck was a harsh last name to carry.
"
Power to them the darlings. I like having some red meat liberals around. It helps me and my weak tea liberalism feel more fiesty.
"
I'm terrible with names and handles but also very curious Chris, do you have anyone in particular in mind? This isn't a challenge, just genuinely curious.
On “Friday Blognado: The downward spiral”
James, I don't have quite the fear you do. My own, admittedly amateur, read of American politics suggests that the GOP may be due for some time out of power. Maybe a really resounding loss is all they need. Obama could have been that loss but perhaps because he was so unusual (his race and especially his soaring overinflated post partisan rhetoric) gave them an excuse to double down and refuse to accept the electoral slap on the wrists. Then of course came 2008 and the recession beat down losses Dems suffered reinforced the GOP's extremist drift.
My own guess: at some point (possibly as soon as 2012) the GOP is going to have themselves a Goldwater or Mondale style landslide loss and that's going to precipitate much pondering and reprioritizing within their party. One reason I hope against hope for a Santorum nomination is he strikes me as the perfect figure to lead the GOP to such a shellacking that'll really make the right rethink their strategies and positions. I desire this not only because it hopefully will make the right saner but also because having more moderated sensible opponents should help snap the Dems out of their lazy swanning all over the middle of the spectrum.
"
I think your original post came in but ya didn't see it. Browser hiccup?
On “Radical Liberal Judicial Activist Usurps Democracy; Foundations Of Republic Itself Threatened”
Only a couple things I'd like to toss into this discussion. Firstly that this is generally probably too meta. Second and more substantively I do not believe we've ever banned anyone liberal or otherwise for debating or arguing in the manner Tom does (I agree incidentally that Tom has some debating strategies, tics and tendancies that drive me crazy and sometimes make me think he's purposefully dishonest). I'm liberal leaning myself so I'd think I'd remember. Anyhow I don't think we've ever banned (or even had) a liberal version of Tom. I wish we did have one, the two of em would probably fight like scorpions in a bag.
Also for the record I don't think Tom should be banned for the way he argues, as he's wont to say the readers read the threads and draw their conclusions though yes sometimes I find him very uncharitable and it can get tiring pushing back his spin on things (and then trying to be temperate when he accuses you of spinning in turn).
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It'd probably help is the SSM prohibitionists could muster up some witnesses to offer some concrete testimony on the stand that stands up to the factual requirements of testifying under oath. Been a pretty sparse field there for a long while. Poor Blackenhorn made an effort in the CA case but ended up reversing himself on the stand on all the particulars, poor fellow. The transcript was really uncomfortable to read, I actually felt some sympathy.
On “Follow The League on Twitter or Facebook”
Ya know, Tolkein? Good guy land, bad guy land? Ugh... I think I geek out too reflexively. How about Romulan to their Federation? That any better?
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What Plinko said. Plus I'm in love with that girls pink sweater in his icon.
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