Texas Catholic Bishops on November 8 SSM Vote/Maggie Gallagher

here

"On November 8, 2005 Texans will be asked to vote on an amendment to the Texas Constitution that will prohibit the legalization of same-sex unions in Texas. The Catholic Bishops of this state share the conviction with most Texans that marriage is a lifelong union between one man and one woman. This relationship is unique among creation in so far as it is established by God. This fundamental truth ought to be recognized as such in law.

As Bishops, we have addressed this issue of marriage and same-sex unions in various documents at the national level. We have always appreciated the prayerful and thoughtful considerations many have given to this issue.

The Church's teaching on this matter is clear. Marriage is a basic human and social institution. In a manner unlike any other relationship, marriage makes a unique and irreplaceable contribution to the common good of society, especially through the procreation and education of children. Marriage did not originate from either the Church or state, but from God. Therefore, we believe neither Church nor state has the right to alter the nature and structure of marriage. What God has joined together let no one put asunder.

Our defense of marriage must focus primarily on the fundamental importance of marriage for children, families and society, not on other matters. Our support of this amendment is not motivated by animosity or discrimination toward any group. The Church’s teaching about the human dignity of every human person, including homosexuals, is also clear and strong. Homosexual persons are to be treated with respect and compassion (please refer to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, No. 2358). Our respect for them means we condemn all forms of unjust discrimination, harassment or abuse. Equally recognized is the Church's teaching about the meaning of sexual relations and their place only within the married life of one man and one woman. Any sexual activity outside of marriage is seen as immoral and we give witness to this moral truth. Our position that marriage is a sacred institution and to treat all of God's children with dignity and respect is not a moral contradiction. The Church's teaching on these matters is consistent. Namely that the Catholic Church believes and teaches that marriage is a faithful, exclusive, and lifelong union between one man and one woman, joined as husband and wife in an intimate partnership of life and love."
posted by maggie at 9:14 PM | link 2 comments

What about polyamory?/Maggie Gallagher

A vigorous discussion of how SSM does and does not lead naturally to polygamy by Ampersand and her readers. http://www.amptoons.com/blog/archives/2005/10/25/should-we-legally-recognize-polyamorous-marriages/
posted by maggie at 8:03 PM | link 0 comments

So Much for the Marriage Turnaround/Maggie Gallagher

CDC's preliminary data on 2004 birth. Almost 36 percent of U.S. births are now out of wedlock, a jump of almost one percentage point from 2003.

The good news is the decline in teen births continues. The bad news is this appears to be a decline in married teen births.

Total fertility rate increased slightly. BTW, although hispanics have significantly more children than blacks or whites, non-Hispanic white women in this country have 1.85 children, higher than any European nation (whose total fertility includes Muslim ethnic minorities). (When will the CDC routinely report marital fertility measures??)

Bad news is the Hispanic out of wedlock birth rate continue to rise. Its now 45 percent.

More data here: http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/pubs/pubd/hestats/prelim_births/prelim_births04.
posted by maggie at 7:33 PM | link 0 comments

Alaska Court Orders Civil Unions/Maggie Gallagher

A copy of the decision can be found on www.domawatch.org.
posted by maggie at 6:46 PM | link 1 comments

Cathy Talk on Gender/Maggie Gallagher

Cathy raises another interesting point: how can Andrew Sullivan talk so eloquently about the difference between men and women and then declare that no rational person can imagine any difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples that matters?

But the paradox goes even deeper. Another point I made on Volokh.com, that no-one has yet picked up on: sexual orientation as a category presumes that gender is a real and significant category--so significant all institutions must be remade to accomdate people who are uniquely attracted only to their own gender.

If gender doesn't matter, then Andrew Sullivan can marry a woman. What's his problem?

SSM as a civil right is based on the idea that gender really really matters, but only for gay people, and not for children.
posted by maggie at 6:21 PM | link 10 comments

More Cathy Talk/Maggie Gallagher

Cathy, if I'm not mistaken the Vermont study on fidelity intentions looked at straight siblings of gay people as the comparison group, no? If you ask a nationally representative sample of American men you get an even higher moral commitment to sexual exclusivity in marriage than 79 percent. I'm in Phoenix, not at my desk, I'll get you some data on that next week.

Here's my problem with your analysis: it presumes what is under discussion. Is Social Security age discrimination? No, because the whole purpose, which is a legitimate purpose, is to provide support for old people who we do not expect to work (even though some younger people may be more in need of retirement than some older people).

Advocates of SSM try to go straight to the equal rights discussion without answering the first question: why marriage at all? You need to have an answer before you can decide whether SSM is a right.

If hospitals are mistreating gay people, gay marriage is going to be a pretty inadequate response btw. Even gay people who are not married have a right to have anyone they want in their hospital rooms, and making medical decisions if they are incapacited.

A discussion of benefits and a discussion of marriage just aren't the same thing
posted by maggie at 5:03 PM | link 3 comments

CATHY YOUNG--MORE STUFF

Complementarity:
...So here's a question. Is it bigoted to regard same-sex relationships -- even aside from the issue of procreation -- as different to male-female relationships? ...

I admire Andrew's writings on homosexuality and same-sex marriage, and I find a lot of his arguments very powerful and persuasive. But I see a basic contradiction between his strong belief in deep, important, innate differences between the sexes and his equally passionate belief that same-sex relationships should be treated as fully equivalent to male-female ones. After all, if men and women are so different, then isn't there at least some rational basis for believing that one goal and one essential element of marriage is to bring these two profoundly different halves of humanity together in family units based on a mix, and a balance, of male and female traits?

more

Closing thoughts:
...Equal treatment for gay men and women is a laudable goal; dismantling "heteronormative" culture is a socially divisive utopia.

As various polls show, the vast majority of Americans now support full equality for gays in most areas of life. What's being debated now is equality not just for gays and lesbians as individuals, but also for same-sex relationships.

On one level, I believe this is a question of basic equality. When a gay man is barred from making medical decisions on behalf of his longtime partner; when a lesbian who wants to be a stay-at-home mom cannot get coverage under her partner's health insurance plan; when a same-sex couple is not allowed to pool their credit the way a married straight couple would be -- the injustice is obvious. What's more, for some gay couples, the unavailability of marriage effectively amounts to denying them the opportunity to live together. If I go to Russia, meet the perfect guy and decide to bring him home, I'm allowed to do that. If the same thing happens to a gay man, he's not. I would like to know how any non-homophobic opponent of equal rights for same-sex couples can explain to a gay man or a lesbian why this is right and why this is "moral." ...

3. Secrets and lies. The anti-SSM right routinely trafficks in misinformation about gays and "the homosexual lifestyle," from "studies" showing that gays have an average life expectancy of 43 years to claims about the success of "reparative therapy." At the same time, some real facts relevant to this debate tend to be surrounded by taboos. ...

I think a University of Vermont study reported on Vermont's premier LGBT website, Out in the Mountains, should pass the smell test:

Seventy-nine percent of married heterosexual men felt non-monogamy was not okay, compared with only 34 percent of gay men not in civil unions and 50 percent of gay men in civil unions. Over 82 percent of the women in the study, regardless of sexual orientation, said monogamy was important.

...If a substantial number of legally partnered gay men do not regard sexual fidelity as an essential feature of marriage (and the 50% figure in the Vermont study is consistent with other studies I have seen), is this a problem worth discussing? Is there a need for a conscious effort in the gay community to deal with this issue as we head toward some form of same-sex marriage (whether as formal marriage or marriage-like legal partnerships)? If not, is it possible that as SSM gains more widespread acceptance, there will be a push for greater acceptance of open marriage as well? (Which, in my opinion, would qualify as a negative.) I have absolutely no doubt that a lot of gay men have relationships as loving and as committed as the strongest of heterosexual marriages. But it won't do to simply sweep the non-monogamy issue under the rug as an anti-gay slur. ...

As I said in my earlier post, preventing the legalization of same-sex marriage is not going to reverse the trends Gallagher and other social conservatives deplore. But social conservatives do want to reverse them at least somewhat and to return to a more marriage-centric culture and a more traditional vision of marriage; and I do think that, for better or worse, legalizing same-sex marriage will make that goal more difficult. I also think it's possible that SSM will lead to greater cultural and legal acceptance of other alternative family forms -- from polygamy and polyamory to child-rearing partnerships between straight women -- and while a part of me feels that society is resilient enough to survive such a development, the other part sees the proverbial handbasket headed to hell.

Perhaps the best response to Gallagher & Co. is that vague concerns about the possible social repercussions of SSM, and even vaguer hopes to roll back some of the cultural changes that conservatives believe have harmed families, are a pretty poor reason to deny a minority equal rights (i.e., at the very least, civil unions with all the basic "incidents of marriage"). On the other hand, the claims of some conservative SSM advocates such as Jonathan Rauch that legalizing SSM will strengthen the marriage culture strike me as rather strained.

quite a bit more
posted by Eve at 11:16 PM | link 3 comments

HEH: Dr. Johnson

"It is so far from being natural for a man and woman to live in a state of marriage, that we find all the motives which they have for remaining in that connection, and the restraints which civilised society imposes to prevent separation, are hardly sufficient to keep them together."

link
posted by Eve at 11:10 PM | link 0 comments

JULIAN SANCHEZ REPLIES TO MAGGIE'S VOLOKHBLOGGING

[Sorry, should have posted earlier --Eve]

here
posted by Eve at 11:06 PM | link 1 comments

Is Marriage Doing Fine? Academic Promises, HipHop Realities/Maggie Gallagher

My column this week. Maggie

IS MARRIAGE DOING FINE? ACADEMIC PROMISES, HIP-HOP REALITIES

I'm holding in my hand an amicus brief filed in the New Jersey same-sex marriage litigation. With their distinguished academic pedigrees, a group of highly credentialed scholars want to send a message on gay marriage to the New Jersey Supreme Court: Don't worry, no matter what you do to it, marriage will always do just fine:
"The ongoing evolution of marriage throughout New Jersey's history renders implausible the suggestion that marriage, which has survived so many changes, is too frail to endure the revision" of what these scholars refer to as "the anachronistic different-sex eligibility rule."

Implausible? Who are they kidding? Sure, after 40 years of social experiments on marriage in the name of sexual liberty, Princeton professors are doing just fine, thank you very much. But to find out whether marriage is doing just fine, the New Jersey judges might learn more listening to Kanye West.

His latest hit, "Golddigger," is the quintessential postmodern love story told from the male side, full of fantastic need and longing, punctuated by the grim reality of sexual betrayal and gender mistrust:

"If you f---in with this girl then you better be paid/You know why/It take too much to touch her/From what I heard she got a baby by Busta/My best friend say she use to f--k wit Usher/I don't care what none of y'all say I still love her."

On the other hand, "... If you ain't no punk holla, 'We Want Prenup'/WE WANT PRENUP! Yeaah!"

As Kanye matter-of-factly points out, "It's something that you need to have/Cause when she leave yo a--, she gonna leave with half." Not "if" she leaves you, but when. Men and women have to protect themselves from each other, from the foolishness of their own desire to love.

Moral ideals like sexual fidelity to a good man, or a good father who is not rich, are just ridiculous: "He got that ambition baby look in his eyes/This week he moppin' floorz, next week it's the fries." Kanye gives her the straight dope: "But you stay right girl/But when you get on he leave yo a-- for a white girl."

Faith, hope, trust, love are dreams. The reality is sexual barter. Men and women need each other but are destined to betray each other in pursuit of the satisfaction of that need. Children are innocent bystanders in this perpetual erotic warfare.

Marriage is civilization's great attempt to integrate opposites: male and female, mothers and fathers, parents and children, love and sex, heart and pocketbook, masculinity and dependency, eros and the vow. When a marriage culture fails, sexual desire no longer unites; instead it fragments.

Kanye West offers us a personal portrait of what happens when the fragging is done: Gender doesn't disappear, but the one institution -- marriage -- that bridges the gender divide largely has. This is not a racial issue, it is a human one.

So call me dubious: Right smack in the middle of this unprecedented marriage crisis, what should courts do to marriage, according to these distinguished scholars? Why, gut it of the presumption that marriage has something to do with joining the man and the woman who make the baby.

Why? In order to affirm "its core purpose of recognizing committed, interdependent partnerships between consenting adults."

These scholars do not seem to recognize the carnage this very idea -- that marriage is infinitely adaptable and primarily about adults' needs -- has unleashed. But I remember how the people who tried to protest this last round of social experiments on marriage, as it was happening, got called bigots too.

Perhaps it is possible that New Jersey judges can eliminate the one feature of marriage that has been universal in human history with the stroke of a pen, and marriage will do just fine.

But here's my message to the New Jersey Supreme Court: Don't bet the future of our children on it.

(Readers may reach Maggie Gallagher at MaggieBox2004@yahoo.com.)
posted by maggie at 10:58 AM | link 17 comments

Response to Cathy/Maggie Gallagher

Cathy, I found your comments insightful and debate-sharpening, thanks.

As a libertarian, you picked up on several key points, including that the rule in our tradition is that adults are competent to handle their own intimate relations without any supervision by (or benefits from) the state. Why is marriage the exception?

You acknowledge that, without a tie to procreation or children, the reason the law separates out certain kinds of unions--sexual, twosomes, male and female, unrelated by blood--becomes well, kind of hard to see or justify.

This is one reason I think marriage will eventually lose its legal status after SSM: incoherence. The second reason, which I did not blog on Volokh about, is that after SSM, the antimarriage left and the libertarian right, will gain a powerful new ally on the separation of marriage and state: a large bloc of Christian conservatives, who would prefer no marriage to SSM, and who also have legitimate fears about what state-sanctioned SSM is going to mean for their faith communities that do not and cannot recognize gay marriages.

You respond in two ways: first you say the benefits will remain, because people don't like benefits removed. (I don't think the benefits of marriage are very significant to most people for most of their life so I suspect this will not be much of a barrier--the big benefit of marriage is the public change in social status it makes visible to the partners and to the rest of society.)

Secondly you bring up what you (and many others) see as a fatal flaw: infertile and older couples are currently allowed to marry. If that hasn't changed the nature of marriage, why will allowing a small number of SSM couples?

On Volokh.com, in those 10,000 words I said two things:

1. Older and infertile couples are not an identifiable class. They send no social signal because they are part of the natural life cycle of marriage and have been from the beginning of our history. You got that part.

But I also said

2. Every man and woman who stays faithfully married serves marriage's procreative purposes because these are twofold: first, to encourage men and women to have and raise children together and second, to discourage men and women from having children apart and raising them seperately (unwed childbearing). Marriage's unique status in law and society regulates even people who are not married.

But there is a third reason as well:

3. Nobody put childless couples, or older couples into the marriage mix in order to express an ideological commitment to the proposition that there is no difference between these two types of couples and that anyone who says otherwise is an evil bigot, opposed to equality, or maybe just motivated by animus (Who says this? the Goodridge court, zillions of Zolokh bloggers.)

Ideas have consequences. What amazes me is that SSM advocates both promote the idea that SSM is a right, because no reasonable and well-meaning person could see any relevant difference between same-sex and opposite-sex couples that justifies marriage's definition-- but then refuse to acknowledge what making this kind of discrimination argument means in America today.

I too share your hope that we can have SSM and simultaneously figure out how to increase the likelihood that children in this country are born to and raised by their own married mom and dad.

What I don't see is why you are so hopeful.
posted by maggie at 10:38 PM | link 8 comments

CATHY YOUNG RESPONDS TO MAGGIE'S VOLOHKBLOGGING

...Take away procreation as a crucial element of marriage, and the rationale for special government sanction for marriage vanishes (and perhaps the rationale for cultural support, as well); it becomes just another private relationship in which society has no special interest. The end result, Gallagher predicts, will be "the de-institutionalization of marriage altogether." And like it or not, she has a point. Unless children are an issue, why should the government take an interest in whether we settle down with a steady partner in a sexual relationship? Yes, there is evidence that married people are happier and healthier than singles, but that doesn't necessarily justify government involvement; there is also plenty of evidence that people who have a network of close friends are happier and healthier than loners, but we don't have special legally mandated benefits for friendships.

I think Gallagher is probably wrong about the "de-institutionalization of marriage," if by that she means that the marital "benefit package" will be abolished. Taking away benefits people already have is never a popular move (which is one reason the legalization of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts is likely to stick). It is more likely that some of the benefits now associated with marriage will be extended to other close relationships. ...

If some of the benefits of marriage are extended to non-marital relationships, will it harm marriage? Probably not in any practical sense (how many people weigh their spouse's insurance policy as a factor in deciding to marry?), but marriage would lose its special status and hence, probably, some of its prestige as well.

A radical decoupling of marriage and procreation would bring about other cultural changes -- or rather, accelerate them, since they have been underway for some time. Straight couples would probably face less of an expectation that, once married, they will have children as a matter of course. ...

...Rauch would no doubt say -- and I think it's a strong argument -- that this young man's desire to raise children in a marriage even though he didn't biologically need a spouse for the purpose is actually a powerful endorsement of marriage as an institution. But one can see another side to this as well. Once you take away the ideal of the procreative couple, is there any reason to believe that the family unit best suited for raising a child is a pair whose union is based on romantic love? Sure, two caregivers are better than one, but why shouldn't the other caregiver be a relative or even a friend? ...

One more point to ponder: if the primary purpose of marriage is the romantic happiness and satisfaction of adults, then staying together for the sake of the children even if romantic passion and intimacy have one out of the marriage -- an ideal many people who are neither reactionary nor bigoted would like to reclaim -- becomes a far less tenable proposition.

The argument that procreation is a fundamental element of marriage, however, has a serious weakness: opposite-sex couples in which one partner is infertile, or in which the woman is past childbearing age, are permitted to marry. ...

Another important counterargument to Gallagher's reasoning is that the trends she deplores -- the shift toward a view of marriage centered around romantic love rather than procreation, divorce, single mtoherhood, the weakening of traditional sex roles in marriage and of social pressures to marry and have children -- are already here. So is de facto gay marriage (some churches and synagogues have been marrying same-sex couples for years). Preventing state recognition of same-sex marriage is not going to reverse those trends. But I think that for Gallagher and many other social conservatives, the legalization of same-sex marriage amounts to an official death certificate for traditional sexual arrangements and an affirmation that the forces of modernity have won.

more
posted by Eve at 8:14 PM | link 0 comments

The Adoption Thing/Maggie Gallagher

I've been described as "denigrating" marriage in adoption. Let me restate my position clearly

a. Adoption, while a great thing, is an ameliorative social institution, not a normative one. By which I mean adoption is not ideal because it takes place only after a child has been placed in a situation in which neither of its natural parents are able or willing to take care of it. It's a wonderful solution to either a tragedy or a crime in terms of parental incapacity or irresponsibility.

Its also not normative in the sense that if everyone did it, there would be no babies to adopt. Adoption is a great thing, but it is not the same thing, nor as core to survival of a civilization, as generativity.

b. Because adoption is ameliorative, not normative, whatever rules we set up for adoption will tell us relatively little about how we should conduct marriage. Marriage's main social mission is managing the reproductive consequences of sexual attraction, through the creation of a social ideal.

c. The stronger position in adoption law (that is the one that most strongly reinforces the marital norm) is that only married couples should be allowed to adopt. This is because adoptive married mothers and fathers replace what the state has taken away: a legal relationship to both a mom and a dad. A state who takes away a mom and dad from a child, should restore the loss to the best of its abilities.

d. This legal position has been rejected, because (people said) adopting it would relgate children to "no families." Single parents, straight and gay, are better for children than no parent at all. OK. I"m not entirely convinced this is empirically true, (that is that we don't have enough married parents to adopt all children in a timely fashion) but I'm in no position to contest the empirical proposition.

on the other hand

e. I'm willing to say I don't think opposite-sex couples who are not married should be allowed to adopt. Because they could marry, and don't, they are making a clear statement: they don't consider a shared child a good enough reason to marry. Surely we can do better for this child in need of parents than that.

So now what? Some people think that because I think unmarried opposite-sex couples should not be allowed to adopt, that must mean I think gay couples with children should be allowed to marry.

They think this not only as a matter of substantive policy, but as a matter of logical necessity. (like I said, brainlock).

I don't know if adoptive children with a gay parent would be better off if we changed our understanding of marriage such that that gay parent was allowed to legally marry. I can think of some reasons for imagining so. But marriage would not in itself establish any rights between the child and the stepparent. So if the issue is the child's right to a legal relationships with two adults, then second-parent adoption is the answer, one that is more targeted at the need of the child. I could be persuaded to make an exception at law to meet the needs of the small fraction of the population who cannot easily adapt to marriage norms.

My doubts about whether marriage would help children living with gay couples much are increased by the way that people for many years made the same argument about remarriages: more remarriages means more married parents for kids which would mean children would be better off. Really smart people made logical connections just like that. It turns out the evidence just doesn't support this happy view.

e.g. "[M]ost researchers reported that stepchildren were similar to children living with single mothers on the preponderance of outcome measures and that stepchildren generally were at greater risk for problems than were children living with both of their parents." Marilyn Coleman, et al., Reinvestigating Remarriage: Another Decade of Progress, 62 J. Marriage & Fam. 1288, 1292 (2000).

but in any case

f. Allowing the unproven hypothetical benefits of SSM to a tiny handful of adopted children to trump the broad mission of marriage in law and culture makes no sense, if children are your main concern. I'm primarily concnerned with what happens to the 99.5 percent of kids (or more) that are the products of sexual intercourse between men and women in a society that isn't dedicated enough to the idea that kids need moms and dads to preserve the historic understanding of marriage.
posted by maggie at 3:36 PM | link 6 comments

The Bonds of Common Ground
Ten areas of agreement among conservatives on marriage.

By Dale Carpenter
In National Review
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/carpenter200510250830.asp
The contending sides in the gay-marriage controversy often seem to talk past one another. They start from such radically different premises that it is hard to speak of genuine "debate" at all. One side says the issue is a matter of basic human rights; the other says it is about preserving a traditional form that is the basis for all successful human societies. On this issue, Left and Right differ dramatically on law, history, culture, social science, and philosophy.
...
In the interest of advancing the debate a bit, let's see if we can establish some common ground among conservatives on the subject of gay marriage.

There are ten premises in this debate that most conservatives, opponents and supporters of gay marriage alike, probably share:

(1) Marriage benefits society, and so anything that harms marriage harms all of us, whether married or not.

(2) Marriage directly benefits the individuals married.

(3) It is on average better for children to be raised by two married parents than to be raised by single parents or by unwed cohabiting partners.

(4) Because of the benefits identified in Premises 1-3 above, marriage should be encouraged by public policy and specifically should retain its privileged position in the law.

(5) It is socially preferable for gay persons to be in committed relationships than to be promiscuous.

(6) If any significant change to an important social institution like marriage is undertaken at all it should occur slowly and incrementally, state-by-state, rather than in one fell swoop (as by court-ordered, nationwide gay marriage), so that we can assess the impact of the change and adjust the direction of reform or completely halt the reform.

(7) Proposals for change in policy about an important social institution like marriage must take account of the social effects of the change, as observed or as reasonably predicted, not simply the "rights" and interests of those advocating the change.

(8) Proponents of change in an important social institution like marriage bear the burden of persuasion.

(9) Marriage should remain reserved for two adult persons not closely related by blood.

(10) Whatever public policy is adopted on the subject of gay marriage, churches and religious authorities must remain free to refuse to recognize such marriages if they wish to do so.

...
posted by maggie at 10:06 AM | link 3 comments

Texas Marriage Amendment/Maggie Gallagher

Claims of dirty tricks in Texas by pro-SSM forces.

http://www.gopusa.com/theloft/?p=87
posted by maggie at 9:56 AM | link 0 comments

DOES MODERN MARRIAGE REQUIRE A BAIT-AND-SWITCH?: Eve/Noli Irritare Leones

[I don't know that I agree with her framing, here, but I do think NIL is on to the essential question: How does a marriage culture get people to do the hard stuff? I guess my stance is that you can't lie to them. They'll figure it out. So the hard stuff has to be clear up-front. And, more interestingly, the hard stuff has to be made rewarding--a source of joy and a source of one's sense of self. That's typically how cultures get people to do hard things: by providing an identity, a role, which is honored for doing what's right. Anyway, here's NIL. --Eve]

...I found this argument interesting, because it suggests to me a certain cultural tension. If we emphasize too much the adult satisfaction aspects of marriage--romantic fulfillment, companionship, etc.--are we giving short shrift to the "hanging together and caring for the kids even when it's tough" aspect? On the other hand, if it's just about hanging together and caring for the kids, and if you don't get any of what Sanchez calls "the marriage fairy tale" with it, how many people would want to marry, for duty alone?

more
posted by Eve at 11:23 PM | link 6 comments

Sex Kill 30,000/Maggie Gallagher

That's the word from Eugene Volokh (as www.volokh.com):

" An interesting article, S.H. Ebrahim, M.T. McKenna & J.S. Marks, Sexual Behaviour: Related Adverse Health Burden in the United States, Sexually Transmitted Infections, vol. 81, pp. 38-40 (2005), reports that sexually transmitted diseases were responsible for nearly 30,000 deaths in the U.S. in 1998. A third of the deaths were among women, and two thirds among men. By way of comparison, there were about 44,000 car accidents, a titch over 30,000 suicides, a little under 18,000 homicides, and a bit over 30,000 total firearms deaths (including suicides, homicides, and the few accidents). Three quarters of the deaths were from HIV, but nearly 5000 were from cervical cancer, which seems to be generally caused by some strains of human papilloma virus, and nearly 2000 were caused by sexually transmitted hepatitis and hepatitis-caused liver cancer. (The study purported to take into account the fact that not all hepatitis is sexually transmitted.) There were also over 100 deaths from syphilis and fewer than 10 from gonorrhoea (presumably from the very rare gonorrhoea-caused heart disease), but apparently modern antibiotics have done a great deal to limit death and serious illness caused in the U.S. by bacterial sexually transmitted diseases.

The study also reported that sexually transmitted disease causes some 600,000 cases of infertility per year (overwhelmingly among women); and of course hepatitis, cervical cancer, liver cancer, and HIV can be quite painful and disabling even when they don't cause death. . ."

That's ten times as many people killed by sex as by Islamic terrorists. . .

(Warning: tongue-in-cheek).
posted by maggie at 8:59 PM | link 1 comments

It's Not the Benefits, Stupid/Maggie Gallagher
Evan Wolson contra civil unions:

http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=23780

". . .we must make sure legislators reject half-measures or piecemeal responses that fall short of full inclusion and equality.

The right way to end discrimination in marriage is to, well, end discrimination in marriage. Not to create something new, different, lesser, or other. Not to take our nation, again, down the path of separate and unequal treatment for some. Not to say to some couples and their kids here in Washington, "You come in the front," while telling others to go around back. Couples seeking the freedom to marry deserve a clear and simple answer: marriage-same rules, same responsibilities, same respect."
posted by maggie at 10:38 AM | link 5 comments

THE UN-TIE-ABLE KNOT: From the Washington Blade

It's a sentiment not expected from a sex columnist but Dan Savage is hesitant about the whole gay marriage thing.

Before you send any e-mails filled with moral outrage, let's get the obvious out of the way: Savage supports same-sex marriage. His new book "The Commitment," which chronicles his and his partner Terry's struggles with and decisions about the institution, makes that crystal clear.

"We believe gay marriage should be legal, not mandatory," Savage writes. ...

Marriage wasn't something Savage considered as an option when he came out, he says. The world was a different place and there were certain assumptions he made about what would be available to him as a gay man. ...

"I wanted to document what it felt like to be part of that generation where everything we thought we sacrificed to be gay was suddenly available to us," he says. "We hadn't left it at the side of the road." ...

AS "THE COMMITMENT" illustrates, whatever reservations about marriage Savage may have, it was his son who eventually made the case.

At first D.J. is opposed to the idea, but Savage recounts an early morning conversation where his son is asking questions about marriage, divorce and love. Savage explains that marriage is a promise to stay in love and together.

It's that definition of marriage that brings him around and why D.J. wants his two daddies to do the thing Savage could not fathom as a younger gay man.

"A big part of it was our son," he says. "Suddenly it meant something to him for his family to reaffirm and strengthen the bond that is holding it together."

Savage pauses for a moment, smiles and rolls his eyes. Even as a married man (they went to Canada) he still finds it all a bit silly.

more
posted by Eve at 12:49 AM | link 10 comments

MY TRIPLE DELIGHT: Jackie Clune

...It's as if my triplets, my abundance of baby, brings a new breed of female hysteria crashing to the surface. It seems to me as though we have developed a very unhealthy attitude to child rearing in this country. It fascinates me. My own mum had four of us one after the other. That's four children under school age. It's what Irish Catholics do, until the doctor tells them they are going to keel over if they don't stop. I ask her how she coped. "I loved every minute," she says. Were things different then? She tells me that she could leave us with neighbours if she needed to do something, that she would stick us in the pram at the bottom of the garden, summer or winter, and let us cry if need be (the fresh air was good for us). ...

Babies are "hard work", they're "demanding" and "trying"--these verdicts are delivered with a hint of surprise. But surely it's in a baby's job description to be all these things and more, and just at the very time, post-pregnancy, when you are least fit for it? Did they not read the small print, these weary women at the swings? I say this not to chastise mums who are finding it hard but to remind us all--myself included--that babies are delightful, too, and that it's OK to enjoy them. It's not that difficult. They're just babies we're dealing with here, not nuclear reactors.

more
posted by Eve at 12:44 AM | link 1 comments

HARDCORE: "Ask Amy"

Dear Amy:

I just found out that my live-in boyfriend has a 2-year-old child. He wants nothing to do with her or her mother, who was pregnant when we began to date. He had already broken up with her and has not seen her since the breakup.

We have no desire to see this child. He may have to pay child support anyway. We had to change our telephone number when we moved to avoid the calls.

The problem is his friends and family. I found out about this child when I read an e-mail -- we share everything -- from a close friend just ripping him to shreds.

I want to send an e-mail to everyone on his list telling them to butt out.

What do you think?

Not Interested

Ewww. I think I need to take a shower.

Of course your live-in boyfriend will have to pay child support; furthermore, running from it (changing your phone number, etc.) is against the law.

This guy's friends and family aren't the problem.

He is. And you are.

Don't you get it? Guys who dump pregnant girlfriends and deny their children are sleazebags. And, just to be clear, when I say "sleazebag," I mean a giant bag of sleaze.

Women who do the dirty work for their sleazebag boyfriends are aiding and abetting in the commission of a crime against society -- and though it's not technically a crime, I certainly wish that I could make a citizen's arrest.

link
posted by Eve at 12:43 AM | link 25 comments

THE IRON WIRE ON WHICH THE BEADS ARE STRUNG: Eve (mostly written on Friday)

So, sometime in 2004 I became convinced (mostly by Maggie) that same-sex marriage was a really bad idea. I wrote this series of posts to give a sense of where my head was at, why I'd taken up this position. Re-reading them, I find that I really would not frame things the same way now: What I said was true, and I still stand behind it, but I understand the issues differently now and see different kinds of linkages between the various ideas I discuss. (E.g. marriage as a shaper of identity; the role of mothers and fathers.) So I'd like to try to map out where my head has moved to, in this series of posts. There will definitely be stuff that's familiar to people who have followed this website; I hope that my rephrasing will be helpful nonetheless. This is long but not comprehensive--there's stuff I won't be addressing, generally because I don't have anything to say about it that I haven't said already.

The first thing I would start with is the question that motivates much modern political philosophy, and almost all science fiction: How much can we change about ourselves? Is there a human nature? If so, how malleable is it? If so, how much can we learn about its contours from history?

I have three premises on this subject. I won't be arguing for them here. My argument for them is, "Read a daggone book. Start with the Iliad and work your way up to Sabbath's Theater." Basically, this is stuff I see when I look at the world, at the cultures humans have created.

1. Yeah, there is a human nature. There's stuff you don't get to change. For example, you can't outlaw self-interest, or cure aggression. These facts aren't good, and they aren't bad; they're just there.

2. Men and women are different in ways that will always matter.

3. Biological kinship will always matter, both to parents and to children. Blood makes noise.

If you disagree with any of those premises, you will almost certainly disagree with what follows. (You might disagree anyway!) But I think it's worth stating them fairly baldly at the start.
posted by Eve at 12:39 AM | link 0 comments

LES LIAISONS DANGEREUSES--WHY HETEROSEXUALITY IS A FORCE FOR CHAOS: Eve

The thing about sex is, people want to do it. People want to do it for its own sake. They want to do it because it unites them more fully with their beloveds--what with us being enfleshed persons and all. But the problem with sex is that it doesn't always work out how you want it to. Sometimes you get hurt emotionally ("Before you tumbled me, you promised me to wed"/"So would I ha' done, by yonder sun, an thou hadst not come to my bed"). Sometimes you get a disease. (That's not a risk specific to sex, though.) Sometimes you damage yourself spiritually, using others and becoming trapped within the self, prideful and cruel.

And sometimes, if you're one of those people who are attracted to the opposite sex, something happens that is very wonderful but sometimes very terrible: An entire new human creature will begin. A new individual life will start--certainly without that individual's consent, and quite often without yours either. We need this to happen; that's the point of Europe's "demographic crash." We need new people. But (and this is where America's heterosexual problem differs to some extent from Europe's) we also need these new people to be well-cared for. By far the simplest way to do this is to make sure the children's own mother and father are committed to care for one another and the babies they make together. This is the way that requires the least government involvement, and also the way that is symbolically richest and therefore emotionally most sturdy, drawing on the deep biological ties I talked about in premise #3 above.

What people who sleep with members of the opposite sex have to do in order to avoid causing societal chaos is actually very difficult. Some large-enough number of them needs to refrain from sex outside of marriage and be fruitful within marriage. They need to have babies and raise 'em right. (We're doing better at the former than the latter; Europe to some extent the reverse.) They need--for the sake of the children who (in the common adolescent complaint) "never asked to be born!" and for the sake of their own society--to defer gratification, resist temptation, stay married despite personal unhappiness. The way societies have handled these needs--the way societies have managed the "can't live with it, can't live without it" nature of heterosexual sex--is through acknowledging and honoring a status called marriage.

Marriage emerges, cross-culturally, as a response to the point lesbian comedienne Lynn Lavner noted: "The Bible contains six admonishments to homosexuals and 362 admonishments to heterosexuals. That doesn't mean that God doesn't love heterosexuals. It's just that they need more supervision."
posted by Eve at 12:36 AM | link 7 comments

WHAT NEEDS DOES MARRIAGE UNIQUELY FULFILL?: Eve

These are the needs marriage uniquely fulfills for people who sleep with members of the opposite sex. Perhaps this explains why even many cultures that found an honorable or normal place for at least some forms of homosexual relationships did not consider these relationships to be marriages. Marriage was a separate institution that did other things. (There are a lot of more specific ways you can cash out my very general "you need to have babies and raise 'em right" point above: managing succession, legitimacy, and distribution of property are some specific examples of the general point.)

So I think it's worth asking, What needs does marriage uniquely fulfill for gay people in the one place where "gay marriage" has been sought--the post-industrial West?

There are a lot of possible answers to that question. (Government benefits, though, is the wrong answer. To know why, think about whether advocates of gay marriage would be satisfied with federal-level civil unions. In general, it's a sign of American faith in laws and lawmakers that we hear so much about government benefits in the discussion of gay marriage, since the primary ways in which marriage benefits both the couple and any children of their union are cultural, social, and perhaps biological [i.e. remarriages are not nearly as good for kids as the marriages of their own moms and dads--there's something about an intact family, a child's own married mother and father, that does much more than a family with marriage but not biological kinship]. Anyway, that's a digression.)

I think--and this is probably the most tentative part of this series of posts--that the primary benefit gay marriage provides to gays is a sense of existential acceptance. Gay marriage tells people who have suffered greatly from the belief that they are "not one of us" that in fact they are. Gay marriage is the answer to childhood alienation, to rejection from parents or religious authorities, to societal disapproval. Here's Andrew Sullivan saying so (and again here); and I think this quite poignant column from Jonathan Rauch has the same idea as one of its most important subtexts.

Kind of obviously, I find this desire very moving. I wrote a bit here about the ways in which an existential sense of alienation, definitely linked to my sexual orientation, shaped my childhood. (More, much less marriage-related, here.) It sucks, dude. It really does.

But notice a few things about this particular benefit of marriage: First off, in order for gay people to attain it, nobody actually has to get married. (That's especially true in the long run. In the short run, for gay marriage to do its work of existential acceptance, there need to be many beautiful and moving gay weddings.) Second, when the primary benefit of marriage is its relief of your own existential suffering or its promotion of your own well-being and sense of self, it is very hard to know why you should stay in your marriage when it begins to cause its own variety of deep personal suffering. A parallel misunderstanding of the primary benefits and purposes of marriage is, I think, part of what's damaging the general marriage culture now--when marriage is primarily about how wonderful it is that y'all are happy and in love, what happens when you're not? Third, the more acceptance homosexuality wins from the culture at large, the less necessary this benefit will feel. And fourth--I find this point powerful, though I know it's more suggestive than dispositive--this is a benefit of marriage that is both new and distinctively gay. It is only tenuously related to the rewards marriage has provided for millennia. (The tenuous relationship does exist--marriage is a marker of adulthood, and in that respect there's a definite sense that gay marriage marks the time when the individual gay person, and the gay community generally, has "grown up.")
posted by Eve at 12:24 AM | link 1 comments

HOW MANY MARRIAGE CULTURES?--CULTURAL CONFIDENCE REDUX: Eve

Well okay, but why can't marriage fulfill all these needs at once? A few reasons for doubt:

1. Gay marriage is being promoted specifically because, according to its proponents, heterosexual and homosexual coupling have no differences that are important to marriage. I really hope I've made clear that I think that's just not true. Both might be well and dandy, but they have obvious, big honking differences. (For one thing, in a heterosexual coupling, the risks the two parties run are very different; the man has a very different set of possible risks and rewards from the set the woman faces.) Again, this is why even cultures that did think at least some forms of homosexual coupling were a-okay did not institute same-sex marriage. Changing a universal social institution based on a falsehood strikes me as a really bad idea; maybe it's just me.

2. Because of the differences in "sexual ecology" between heterosexual and homosexual couples, different sexual ethics develop. Some needs are just much, much more pressing for people who sleep with the opposite sex, and so it shouldn't be surprising that the gay community has not developed the same sexual ethics as (the healthier parts of) the community at large. (I'm sorry for this switching back and forth between "gay" and "homosexual" and "people who sleep with..." terminology, by the way. I'm trying to use "gay" when I mean the contemporary conception of gay identity, "homosexual" and "heterosexual" only as adjectives, and "people who sleep with..." to indicate biological and to some extent social facts that don't vary based on what your underlying sexual orientation might be.)

I can't think of any actual gay person, off the top of my head, who advocates abstinence before gay marriage. (Assuming here not only legal marriage but e.g. religious commitment ceremonies.) I can only think of one actual gay person who says everybody should get married (Jonathan Rauch, of course). I mean, David Brooks might say all that stuff, and so if gay people want to do what David Brooks says then I'm sure his words will be quite effective.

But there's a reason the gay community has even less "cultural confidence" in the hardest parts of a marriage culture than the broader community does. It's not because gay people are bad. It's because homosexual relationships don't interact with the hardest parts of a marriage culture the same way heterosexual relationships do. Some of the hardest parts, homosexual relationships don't need as desperately: for example, the part about not having sex with anybody out of wedlock. Other "hardest parts" bring with them corresponding rewards that are less available to gay couples: for example, if you stick by your children's mother through thick and thin, it might be really painful but she's the mother of your children, and the reward of contact with one's own children is pretty huge. (Obviously, yes, contact with children who aren't yours biologically, but whom you love dearly, is also deeply rewarding--that's the source of all those custody disputes following breakups of same-sex couples. All I'm saying is there's an especial power in the biological tie. This reward is open to gay couples, it's just not as deeply embedded in muscle and blood and DNA. ...Also, it's a lot easier to understand why you should keep your family together when the choices are: kids raised by their own mom and dad, or kids raised by their mom and her new partner. It's harder to understand the moral weight that would impel you to stay if the choices are: kids raised by their own mom and her current partner, or kids raised by their own mom and a new partner she loves better. Again, there are still reasons to stay--the kids have grown to know and love you, for example--but there's a special responsibility to the children you create, the children who are the physical fruit of your union. Anyway, digressing again. My main point is that this often very difficult aspect is less compelling for gay couples--not "not compelling at all," but less compelling.)

A society's marriage culture should be judged on how well it gets people to do the hard things. What the hard things are will likely vary. Some cultures and subcultures will be wedding-obsessed, so getting people to the altar eventually is a lot easier than getting them to stick together once married; other cultures and subcultures will find it difficult even to get people to the nuptials.

3. At a time when the current crisis requires people who sleep with the opposite sex to undergo a serious attitude adjustment--at a time when they're the problem (i.e. most times, but especially now)--it seems to me that incorporating relationships that for understandable reasons have a different sexual ecology is a terrible idea. I believe the immediate result of gay marriage would be some conflicted combination of:
a. a two-tiered marriage culture. People who sleep with the opposite sex will still be exhorted to do all the very difficult things they need to do to prevent chaos. People who sleep with the same sex will have marriage as an option--an option which may well bring familial and social praise, but which is not an imperative, and in which the greatest rewards are personal and existential. The two tiers will have sharply differing expectations surrounding children (should you have 'em? how do you get 'em?), premarital sexual activity, and probably sexual fidelity. This possibility does at least attempt to respond to the underlying facts of human nature; however, it's very, very hard to have two things called "marriage" that have such different pressures and do such different things. Part of the point of naming something is to distinguish it from other things. If something has the same name as another thing, we expect them to be similar in the most important respects. Thus the respects in which they differ are considered unimportant; leading us to option b).

b. a genderless marriage culture, a.k.a. an untruth. Homosexual and heterosexual coupling will be treated as if they have the same sexual ecology, the same inherent risks and rewards. The importance of biological ties will be ignored, and people who insist that children need their own married moms and dads, not any set of "parents," will be stigmatized as bigots.

c. a total rejection of the concept of "gay marriage." Lots and lots of Americans just won't believe it--they won't think it's a real marriage. That will, as I said here, affect how they view "marriage promotion" and affect public schools' willingness to teach about marriage. On a broader level, the public consensus about which people are married will decay, and the public meaning of marriage will be further damaged. Lots of Americans won't understand why they're being asked to honor relationships they believe to be deeply morally wrong. Some, generally those related to people in gay marriages, will retreat into the belief that whatever makes their wonderful son/niece/grandchild happy can't be bad. Of course, that perspective doesn't really help you when the marriage doesn't make the beloved relative happy any longer. Many others will retreat into a sharp separation of the legal and religious aspects of marriage. This has happened before (cf. St. Valentine), but it hasn't been good--there's a reason every culture big enough to build cities has made law a major thread in the tapestry of its marriage culture.

Most people will end up in some muddled mixture of all three perspectives.
posted by Eve at 12:10 AM | link 21 comments

CODA: THE ATHEIST CATHEDRAL: Eve

Several years ago I read an account, possibly apocryphal, of a group of atheists who had been raised in the Episcopal church. They met every Sunday in, I think, upstate New York, to enact a pseudo-Eucharist. I think they might even have found a disused church to hold it in. There were incense, liturgical music, priestly garments. Through this ritual they honored their roots, or forged stronger community bonds, or I forget how they explained it. Basically, they knew that the church services of their youth had responded to a network of real human needs--among them the need for beauty, for tradition, for a sense of continuity with the past. Obviously the church had also responded to a host of other needs, like the thirst for God, the need to praise the Creator, the need for a visible gathering of the Body of Christ. These needs--which a Christian would likely see as the core of the experience, the reason for all the "smells and bells" that had so deeply stirred the atheists' hearts--the atheists of course rejected.

I think you can do that for a while. For a while, people who grew up in a beautiful church culture will carry out the rituals in the absence of belief. But eventually, either belief must be rediscovered or the beauty will no longer be enough to compel participation. The more sacrifice the beautiful thing asks of you, the sooner it will be abandoned, once you no longer believe in the core around which its traditions and characteristic lovelinesses accreted. I bet you the children of the atheist Episcopalians were about evenly divided between believers and nonbelievers; but I bet you none of the latter category went to church.

So too with marriage. There is a lot of beauty and a lot of honor accreted around it now. The high estimation in which we hold marriage comes, I believe, from the abundant bounty it provides to society, from how much we need it, and from the frequent difficulty with which it is accomplished. (My favorite line about marriage might be from Maggie's Abolition of Marriage: "It is the Song of Songs, and the Crucifixion.") I think all three options described above for cultural responses to gay marriage (with the possible exception of a), the least tenable option over the long term) will diminish the estimation we give marriage, because its core will have been abandoned. I think even Jonathan Rauch (who is absolutely the best advocate of gay marriage) will eventually look back, if he wins, and wonder where his cathedral went.
posted by Eve at 12:08 AM | link 0 comments

A Question for People Who See No Mechanism/Maggie Gallagher

Do you have a theory or conception about how law and culture interact?

This is a real question, not a rhetorical zinger.

I'm suspecting, and I could quite well be wrong, that for many people who see no mechanism, "law" and "culture" are conceptually two quite different and separate things.

For libertarians in particular, the bright line between "law" which is public and "culture" which is private is one of the pillars of their political theory, and often worldview.

Political liberals by contrast understand quite well how to use the law to move the culture. (Bill Eskeridge is very eloquent on this point, if we bother to read him).
Well and good. They know what they are doing and will tell you so, if you listen.

But what is odd to me is the way that libertarians are now often endorsing these kind of power moves, on liberty grounds.

Marriage (and family) is of course particularly challenging for libertarians (and classical liberals) because it is a pre-liberal institution. Which John Stuart Mill understood very well, but Reason no longer seems even to glimpse.
posted by maggie at 11:16 AM | link 2 comments

Equality v. Liberty/Maggie Gallagher

A particularly vivid example of how the equality argument, unfolding in public life, structures thought is the Larry Summers flap at Harvard.

Are men, on average, more likely to be exceptionally gifted mathematically than women?

This is a question that, at Harvard at least cannot be entertained. Good people don't ask questions like that, because they have a prior commitment to the absolute equality (in the sense of sameness) of men and women.

Social and/or legal punishment are important to maintaining that kind of cognitive boundary. (Which is why those Harvard women professors threw such an amazing public hissy fit. The boundaries of taboo must be rigorously policed or the taboo fails. You have to pay a cost for even raising this question if unquestionability of the premise is going to be sustained).

But the institution of androgyny is self-enforcing at its core. Good people internalize the cognitive boundaries. We don't ask questions like that, only bad people do.

If we accept the moral logic of SSM, then (as many of the comments in Volokh.com made crystal clear) a similar new cognitive boundary will be redrawn around same-sex and opposite-sex couples; these two things are now declared "equals." Under equality principles, we will start from the cognitive premise (now encoded in law) that there is no difference of any social importance between these two things. Any difference that exists must be downgraded in importance (if it is real, it is not significant and so is conceptually disregarded) if this cognitive boundary is going to be sustained.

People who raise big, obvious differences between same-sex and opposite-sex couples will find the cognitive screens against this information are very high. Perhaps there is some level of empirical evidence that could persuade people that there is something of significance about the fact that when men and women have sex, they can make a baby. But it is hard to see what.

People who are able to screen this out, to flatten their perception (in obedience to their cognitive, moral commitment to equality)so that some really big, obvious facts (like when men and women have sex, women often get pregnant; or if you don't have enough babies, your society will die out) become difficult for people to see, in the sense of attributing any importance to.

I've always wondered about the way public debate now works in America. People who propose something utterly untested (like SSM) have no obligation to provide any evidence at all. Meanwhile, if you are going to go into the public square and say anything that is remotely traditional (like, "marriage matters" or "children needs mothers and fathers"), you need a mountain of social science evidence (which given the inherent limitations of social science as a discipline, will often be disregarded anyway as not amounting to irrefutable proof, the only standard of evidence that can support a proposition that is not radical.) Traditional requires evidence amounting to proof. Radical innovation requires no evidence at all; it is self-evident.

The answer has something to do with the kind of cognitive screens against information people internally construct, in obedience to moral principles.
posted by maggie at 10:47 AM | link 12 comments

Mere Words/Maggie Gallagher

If social institutions are cognitive in essence, then words matter a great deal.

Words classify in ways that organize the structure of thought.

One of the readers of Volokh.com suggested as much by asking "Why don't we redefine the word couple to mean either two people, or three people?"

What would happen if the government ordered a change in the word "couple" so it now means at least two, but possibly more?

Possibly we would all just laugh at the government. (This must be what people who can't see any "mechanism" for how officially changing hte meaning of a word can matter, mean. SSM will be about access to the government institution but the private undersandings will remain intact, because the law can't touch those. ). Even so, one can envision that because law has a certain weight and power, this official revision would cause a certain amount of static, or interference in everyday life. Every time the government said "couple" you'd have to do a kind of mental double-shift to retain your meaning while understanding its.

One thing SSM would certainly do: Make the older conjugal understanding of marriage a merely private understanding. This in itself is a powerful mechanism.
posted by maggie at 10:21 AM | link 2 comments

The Equal Protection Lock Box/Maggie Gallagher

So, take this adoption thing. Some people reason like this: "If adopted children are better off with married moms and dads, then that shows biology isn't everything, which means children of gay parents would also be better off if their parents were married, which means given that you allow married parents to adopt, you have to let gay parents get married." Clink!

Q.E.D. Brainlock.
posted by maggie at 12:08 AM | link 8 comments