kramwest1
has a
Quite a profile in courage there.
Don't underestimate what Obama might do when he doesn't need to worry about reelection. He has an eye on his legacy.
Quite a profile in courage there.
Editor's note: David Frum writes a weekly column for CNN.com. A special assistant to President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2002, he is the author of six books, including "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again," and is the editor of FrumForum.
I WAS WRONG ABOUT SAME-SEX MARRIAGE
Washington (CNN) -- I was a strong opponent of same-sex marriage. Fourteen years ago, Andrew Sullivan and I forcefully debated the issue at length online (at a time when online debate was a brand new thing).
Yet I find myself strangely untroubled by New York state's vote to authorize same-sex marriage -- a vote that probably signals that most of "blue" states will follow within the next 10 years.
I don't think I'm alone in my reaction either. Most conservatives have reacted with calm -- if not outright approval -- to New York's dramatic decision.
Why?
The short answer is that the case against same-sex marriage has been tested against reality. The case has not passed its test.
Since 1997, same-sex marriage has evolved from talk to fact.
If people like me had been right, we should have seen the American family become radically more unstable over the subsequent decade and a half.
By the numbers, in fact, the 2000s were the least bad decade for American family stability since the fabled 1950s. And when you take a closer look at the American family, the facts have become even tougher for the anti-gay marriage position.
Middle-class families have become somewhat more stable than they used to be. For example: College-educated women who got married in the 1990s were much less likely to get divorced than equally educated women who got married in the 1970s.
What's new and different in the past 20 years is the collapse of the Hispanic immigrant family. First-generation Latino immigrants maintain traditional families: conservative values, low divorce rates, high fertility and -- despite low incomes -- mothers surprisingly often at home with the children.
But the second-generation Latino family looks very different. In the new country, old norms collapse. Nearly half of all children born to Hispanic mothers are now born out of wedlock.
Whatever is driving this negative trend, it seems more than implausible to connect it to same-sex marriage. How would it even work that a 15-year-old girl in Van Nuys, California, becomes more likely to have a baby because two men in Des Moines, Iowa, can marry?
Maybe somebody can believe the connection, but I cannot.
I remain as worried as ever about the decline in family stability among poorer Americans. But as for same-sex marriage, my attitude follows the trajectory described nearly 150 years ago by the English writer Anthony Trollope in his novel "Phineas Finn."
Two of his characters are discussing a proposed reform that has just been defeated in Parliament. The author of the reform is understandably dejected. His friend consoles him by pointing to the future:
"Many who before regarded legislation on the subject as chimerical, will now fancy that it is only dangerous, or perhaps not more than difficult. And so in time it will come to be looked on as among the things possible, then among the things probable; -- and so at last it will be ranged in the list of those few measures which the country requires as being absolutely needed. That is the way in which public opinion is made."
By coincidence, I am writing these words on the morning of my own 23rd wedding anniversary. Of all the blessings life has to offer, none equals a happy marriage. If proportionally fewer Americans enjoy that blessing today than did 40 years ago, we're going to have to look for the explanation somewhere other than the Legislature in Albany.
That's a nice piece. I can say that knowing that Saturday is my 22nd wedding anniversary.
Now only if America stops killing Iraqi and Afhgan civilians will we be getting somewhere.
Then clean up your toxic TV.
Then do something about your low ranking education system
Then lose some fuckin weight.
Associated Press
July 4, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO—
In a strongly worded legal brief, the Obama administration says the federal law that defines marriage as between a man and a woman is motivated by hostility toward gays and lesbians and is unconstitutional.
The brief was filed Friday in federal court in San Francisco in support of a federal employee's lawsuit contending the government wrongly denied health insurance to her same-sex spouse.
The Justice Department says Karen Golinski's suit should not be dismissed because the law under which her spouse was denied benefits — the Defense of Marriage Act — violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection.
"The official legislative record makes plain that DOMA Section 3 was motivated in large part by animus toward gay and lesbian individuals and their intimate relationships, and Congress identified no other interest that is materially advanced by Section 3," the brief reads, referring to the section in the act that defines marriage as between a man and a woman.
Although the administration has previously said it would not defend the marriage act, the brief is the first court filing in which it urged a judge to find the law unconstitutional, said Tobias Barrington Wolff, a law professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
The brief argues that gays and lesbians have been subject to a history of discrimination by federal, state and local governments and private parties. It also lays out the administration's position that sexual orientation is an "immutable characteristic," that gays and lesbians are minorities with limited political power, and that sexual orientation has no bearing on someone's ability to contribute to society and advances no legitimate policy interest.
Lawyers for a U.S. House of Representatives group that has stepped in to defend the marriage act's constitutionality did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution
We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic.
By R. ALBERT MOHLER JR.
The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it's facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.
To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can't Christians just join the revolution?
And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, "The Honor Code," moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we've witnessed on the question of homosexuality.
In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than "moral deficiency."
The liberal churches and denominations have an easy way out of this predicament. They simply accommodate themselves to the new moral reality. By now the pattern is clear: These churches debate the issue, with conservatives arguing to retain the older morality and liberals arguing that the church must adapt to the new one. Eventually, the liberals win and the conservatives lose. Next, the denomination ordains openly gay candidates or decides to bless same-sex unions.
This is a route that evangelical Christians committed to the full authority of the Bible cannot take. Since we believe that the Bible is God's revealed word, we cannot accommodate ourselves to this new morality. We cannot pretend as if we do not know that the Bible clearly teaches that all homosexual acts are sinful, as is all human sexual behavior outside the covenant of marriage. We believe that God has revealed a pattern for human sexuality that not only points the way to holiness, but to true happiness.
[howmohler] Getty Images/Comstock Images
Thus we cannot accept the seductive arguments that the liberal churches so readily adopt. The fact that same-sex marriage is a now a legal reality in several states means that we must further stipulate that we are bound by scripture to define marriage as the union of one man and one woman—and nothing else.
We do so knowing that most Americans once shared the same moral assumptions, but that a new world is coming fast. We do not have to read the polls and surveys; all we need to do is to talk to our neighbors or listen to the cultural chatter.
In this most awkward cultural predicament, evangelicals must be excruciatingly clear that we do not speak about the sinfulness of homosexuality as if we have no sin. As a matter of fact, it is precisely because we have come to know ourselves as sinners and of our need for a savior that we have come to faith in Jesus Christ. Our greatest fear is not that homosexuality will be normalized and accepted, but that homosexuals will not come to know of their own need for Christ and the forgiveness of their sins.
This is not a concern that is easily expressed in sound bites. But it is what we truly believe.
It is now abundantly clear that evangelicals have failed in so many ways to meet this challenge. We have often spoken about homosexuality in ways that are crude and simplistic. We have failed to take account of how tenaciously sexuality comes to define us as human beings. We have failed to see the challenge of homosexuality as a Gospel issue. We are the ones, after all, who are supposed to know that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is the only remedy for sin, starting with our own.
We have demonstrated our own form of homophobia—not in the way that activists have used that word, but in the sense that we have been afraid to face this issue where it is most difficult . . . face to face.
My hope is that evangelicals are ready now to take on this challenge in a new and more faithful way. We really have no choice, for we are talking about our own brothers and sisters, our own friends and neighbors, or maybe the young person in the next pew.
There is no escaping the fact that we are living in the midst of a moral revolution. And yet, it is not the world around us that is being tested, so much as the believing church. We are about to find out just how much we believe the Gospel we so eagerly preach.
Rev. Mohler is the president of the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
R. Albert Mohler Jr.: Evangelicals and the Gay Moral Revolution - WSJ.com
fascinating.
fascinating.
after reading the Reverend's 800 word essay
I can say
He is lying
and he knows he is lying.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg will officiate the wedding of two top city officials on July 24, the same day the new same-sex marriage law takes effect, NBC News reports.
Bloomberg will preside over the nuptials of his consumer affairs commissioner, Jonathan Mintz, and chief policy adviser, John Feinblatt. The ceremony will take place at Gracie Mansion.
The city announced Wednesday that the City Clerk's office would be open on the 24th, a Sunday, to accomodate the many same-sex couples that are expected to wed on the historic day.
"This is a historic moment for New York, a moment many couples have waited years and even decades to see – and we are not going to make them wait one day longer than they have to,” said Bloomberg, according to NBC.
Bloomberg has only officiated two weddings during his time as mayor, The New York Times reports-- once for his daughter, Emma, in 2005 and once for former mayor Rudy Giuliani (who, by contrast, recently went AWOL after promising to perform a wedding for a gay couple that once gave him shelter when his own marriage fell apart) in 2003.
Feinblatt and Mintz have been partners for 14 years and have two young daughters together, according to The Times. They worked closely with Mayor Bloomberg on the successful campaign to legalize same-sex marriage in New York.
I’m not sure what the reader means by saying that tolerance has to be achieved "from within." Is the argument here that the West should continue to welcome immigrants who preach death to gays, as that imam does, and should not actively resist the spread of such barbaric teachings? If so, I beg to differ.
A reader replies:
"Do you mean for this to be a call to deport or bar entry to people whose political views you find abhorrent? It's important to note that there is no law barring you from declaring that 'X group of people deserve to be killed,' as it is so general and obviously political that it does not constitute incitement. Essentially you are calling for the deportation of people who have broken no laws because they express abhorrent political views--this is a very radical authoritarian proposal and if you really mean to make it, please do so in plain English, not empty phrases like 'stick [our] noses in' and 'actively resist.' "
...[P]erhaps one needs to have spent some time in Europe, where attitudes like this reader’s have already resulted in palpable, alarming, and perhaps irreversible social changes, to understand that this is not an academic discussion...[E]very country has an immigration policy that favors some prospective immigrants over others. Perversely, the current immigration policies of most Western governments favor, in practice, people who have contempt for, and represent a threat to, Western values.
I agree with Bawer that our immigration policies shouldn't "welcome immigrants who preach death to gays," though I'd phrase that something more along the lines of "If a prospective immigrant has a history of advocacy which would land an ordinary citizen on the FBI's hate-group watchlist, that should automatically be a huge red flag to immigration officials." But it's unnecessary to create some new priority-sorting category for 'prospective immigrants freeing Islamic persecution;' that's what asylum is for. And Bawer's response to the gay Muslim commenter inquiring into his proposed "sorting mechanisms" largely strikes me as an alienating nonanswer; at the very least, "I’m not condemning Muslims; on the contrary, I’m supporting the right of Muslims to break free of oppressive Islamic structures" calls for some unpacking and qualification. If you're a gay Muslim Pakistani (or whatever nationality) immigrant, chances are you have fairly strong feelings in general about the right of your fellow country(wo)men and coreligionists to receive fair consideration for immigration too, not just those who are on precisely the same page as you on every social and theological issue, because they're still your people and your community in a meaningful way. And Bawer doesn't seem to me to be thoughtfully listening to or trying to understand the fear of and frustration over being held collectively accountable for the inevitable and discomfiting fundamentalist presence. I doubt he means to make sweeping sinister insinuations about Muslims as a group, but particularly if lifted out of context (and considering the prominence of the blog they're appearing on), it would be quite easy to parlay his words into such.Here’s what I was talking about: in most Western countries, the largest number of immigrants migrate thanks to a policy called “family reunification,” the intention of which is to enable people to live with their spouses, parents, and children. What this policy has led to, alas, is a pattern of forced marriages within patriarchal Muslim clans, whereby young Muslims in Europe or North America are wed to their cousins in South Asia or North Africa so that the latter can move to the West. Instead of favoring individuals from the Muslim world who seek to escape the stifling authority of their extended families and live in freedom, then, “family reunification” favors, in practice, the expansion of traditional Islamic patriarchies and the importation of their guiding values.
[Another] reader asks:
"…What is the sorting mechanism you intend to put in place whereby the vast majority of Muslims in the West who have nothing to do with the Imam you cited (even if many of them might find homosexuality morally abhorrent, a proposition no different from most Evangelicals in this country) are meaningfully distinguished from others of his ilk? I don’t believe it is Islamophobic to point out the existence of this problem, but it is Islamophobia per se if the intent is to hang on all Muslims the words and deeds of their most extreme elements and then make generalized demands that the community AT LARGE needs to change something about its behavior. I say this as a Gay Muslim who has had to waste so much energy unbundling rhetoric like yours from the far more complex and textured reality of Muslim life in the West. And it’s a waste of time precisely because it draws badly needed focus away from the need to create space within these communities for alternative points of view to thrive."
...[W]hen I criticize Islam in the West I’m not condemning Muslims; on the contrary, I’m supporting the right of Muslims to break free of oppressive Islamic structures and live as free individuals...Immigration officials must draw distinctions between people like that Toronto imam and Muslims who want to come to the West precisely to get away from people like that Toronto imam. The immigration system must strive to keep the former out and let the latter in.
...[Another] reader accuses me of diminishing Western evil while inflating Muslim evil; in fact he is one of many liberal and obviously intelligent Western Muslims (and I have heard from several of them in the last couple of days) who are loath to fully acknowledge the problems with Islam and the extent of the need for reform...This kind of reflexive defensiveness is dispiriting, because these liberal, intelligent Western Muslims are the very people who should be leading the effort to reform their religion.
HUDSON, New York (Reuters) - A town clerk in western New York has resigned to avoid being forced to sign marriage licenses for gay and lesbian couples, citing religious objections to same-sex marriage.
NFL Hall of Famer Michael Irvin is the latest athlete to come out in support of marriage equality.
Growing up, Irvin greatly admired his [gay] brother Vaughn, who was a successful bank manager while still living in “the ’hood,” says Irvin. That success made him “God” in his younger brother’s eyes. “He was the smartest, most charismatic man I’d ever seen in my life. We would all say, ‘Can you believe -- white people put Vaughn in charge of all that money?!’
The quarterback of Irvin's all-conquering team was Troy Aikman, infamously "outed" by sportswriter Skip Bayless in his 1996 book, Hell-Bent. Bayless wrote, "I had heard the rumor since 1991. An off-duty Dallas police officer who traveled with the Cowboys and worked security at their hotels first told me that the 'word on the street' was that Aikman was gay. Over the next four years, I heard the rumor from two more police officers who worked around the team, and I know they mentioned it to team officials."
Did Irvin and his teammates discuss Aikman's sexuality? Irvin pauses for a while before answering, "No, we didn't. I didn't think Troy was gay, but even if he had been, I think we could have handled it. Would it have affected the team? No sir. I was going to make sure of that."
Irvin wants to eradicate homophobia in every corner of American society. He points to churches that have skewed the word of God to persecute those who don't share their dogma; he shakes his head at the black culture he says has gone adrift in a sea of homophobia; and he said it's time to end the second class citizen status of gays in the eyes of the law.
"I don't see how any African-American with any inkling of history can say that you don't have the right to live your life how you want to live your life. No one should be telling you who you should love, no one should be telling you who you should be spending the rest of your life with. When we start talking about equality and everybody being treated equally, I don't want to know an African-American who will say everybody doesn't deserve equality."
Vatican Reverses Stance On Gay Marriage After Meeting Tony And Craig
July 13, 2011 | ISSUE 47•28
VATICAN CITY—In a stunning and unexpected reversal of long-standing doctrine, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed the Roman Catholic Church's unequivocal support for gay marriage Tuesday, just hours after meeting Stonington, CT couple Tony Ruggiero and Craig Housinger.
The papal decree—which authorizes priests to administer the sacrament of holy matrimony to same-sex partners and explicitly states that "homosexual relations between two consenting adults is not, and never has been, a sin"—was reportedly a direct result of the pope sharing an afternoon of engaging conversation and hearty laughter with the gay couple.
"Not only are Tony and Craig complete sweethearts, but anyone who spends more than two minutes with them can see they're clearly perfect for each other," said Benedict, who in the past has described homosexual behavior as a grave disease that threatens all of humanity. "They're fun, gracious, and simply wonderful company. And you can tell they have something special just by the way they look at each other."
"They're soulmates, really," added the pope, smiling. "Allowing them to formalize their union in the Church is the least we could do for them."
Vatican officials said the vacationing couple and the Supreme Pontiff met during a routine papal audience at St. Peter's Basilica, and "really hit it off" after discovering shared interests in photography, the piano, and Spanish cuisine.
Enlarge ImagePope Benedict XVI claims that any law respecting the wishes of Tony and Craig is "a law I support wholeheartedly."
Though sources said the 84-year-old Benedict, a lifelong scholar of antigay ecclesiastical law, initially appeared skeptical upon meeting the pair, he was reportedly put at ease after Housinger spoke a few humorous lines to the pope in his native German and Ruggiero effusively complimented his gold cuff links, touching off a friendly conversation that effectively upended 2,000 years of Roman Catholic teachings.
"They were witty and cultured, but also very friendly—I really don't meet too many people like that," the pope said of the couple, who excitedly suggested to him several off-the-beaten-path sights and "to die for" restaurants after he mentioned an upcoming trip to Buenos Aires. "Craig has a great passion for Italian painting, and I learned a lot from him about the Church's collection of Caravaggios. He's a real Renaissance man."
"I know what scripture says about homosexuals, but when I stop to think about it, I can't get past the fact that the Bible is just a book, and Tony and Craig are real people," Benedict added. "Love is love. Man-woman, man-man, woman-woman—who cares? The Catholic Church recognizes it's not the Stone Age anymore."
Invited on a personal tour of the Vatican, Housinger and Ruggiero were said to have charmed the College of Cardinals with amusing anecdotes from their seven-year relationship, displaying a playful yet tender affection for each other that deeply moved the clergy.
High-ranking officials within the Holy See said they were pleased to learn both partners were practicing Catholics who attend mass regularly, and were surprised to discover Housinger was employed as a general contractor, a profession none of them considered gay at all.
According to reports, the highlight of the afternoon came when the couple shared photographs of their adopted 14-month-old Cambodian daughter, Lorraine, whom the swooning clergy universally described as "angelic."
"Even if you just meet Tony and Craig for a few minutes, it's easy to see how supportive and patient they are," said the Most Rev. Francesco Coccopalmerio, the Vatican's top expert on canon law, who noted the two partners have a stronger bond than some of the married couples he knows. "You can tell they've created a perfect household for a child to grow up in. I just wish everybody could be raised by parents as devoted and caring as them."
Following a warm farewell in which Ruggiero hugged Benedict—an incident the Holy Father described as "not even weird or anything"—Vatican leaders are said to have unanimously agreed that it was "completely hypocritical" for anyone, especially those who have taken a vow of celibacy, to tell people whom they can or cannot share their lives with.
"If Tony and Craig want to exchange vows before God and their friends and family, where's the harm in that?" Benedict said. "It's not as if they're offending the sanctity of life, like those wicked birth control users who will toil for all eternity in hellfire."
Vatican Reverses Stance On Gay Marriage After Meeting Tony And Craig | The Onion - America's Finest News Source
The Senator might also look into that statistics concerning children raised by single mothers. It is indeed troubling.