"We Love ALL Our Moms"

Utah teens from polygamous families call for an end to the ban on polygamy: The audio.
posted by maggie at 8:37 PM | Link |

Why I Like Eve Tushnet

Well, I like her for a lot of reasons, but see what they are saying about Eve Tushnet over on the Religous Left online.
posted by maggie at 10:38 AM | Link |

The Marriage Movement Losing its Way?

Thanks to Elizabeth Marquardt over at Family Scholars blog, I bid welcome to some new voices on marriage from the Religious Left:

"I think one of the great challenges in bridging the religious divide is fiiguring out how two sides view things differently. A recent post by conservative pundit Maggie Gallagher demonstrates part of that divide.

Gallagher, in response to Jonathan Rauch rejects the idea that any discrimination exists when you deny people legal rights that come with the state’s recognition of marriage. . .

What Maggie can’t seem to accept is that when the state creates rights related to the religious institution (or even social institution) of marriage, there are legal rights in jeopardy. When the state chooses to give legal rights and privileges to one group and not another, it’s discrimination. You can’t get around that, regardless of what religious, social, or mystical meaning that you place on marriage.

Maggie’s comments are indicative of something else I’ve noticed about so-called marriage advocates: they rarely talk about the real problems around marriage because they are so consumed with denying gays legal rights. Maggie barely mentions divorce anymore and she never talks about poverty. She’s SSM 24/7.

I will leave aside the fact that I made no religious arguments at all in the exchange with Jon (some people can't seem to believe I really mean what I say) and take up the latter point. It is very true I spend a lot of time on SSM. I'm not embarrassed about this in the slightest, because I think it's very important. (Jon and I agree about that at least!) But I would point out that in my weekly syndicated column, since January of 2006, I've written the following non-SSM related marriage columns:

Aug 8 "The Trouble With Men" (How men without college degrees are entering middle age without marriage)

July 11, "Divorce Not Terrorism Caused this Explosion"

June 20 "America's other Assimilation Problem" (about how children of immigrants are at high risk to enter America's degraded sexual/marriage culture

June 13 "Father's Day by the Numbers" on the latest stats on fatherlessness

April 25, "Welfare Reform At Ten" On the need to focus on reducing OWB.

March 28 "Victories in the Marriage Debate" About the role the Institute for American Values has played (and a new report by same) on the change in scholarly thinking on the importance of marriage

Feb 28: "Europe's Marriage Crisis and Ours" about the two faces of marriage crisis: explosion in out of welock births and depopulation

Feb 21: "NY Judge Would Make Divorce Too Easy" (Opposing Proposal to bring a pure no fault divorce system to New York":

This is not a comprehensive list. (I don't remember for example what my columns called "Hollywood Family Values" or "What is this thing Called Love?" were about and didn't take the time to check). It doesn't include my marriage related pieces in other venues, such as say Ave Maria Law Review or National Review online.

I don't blame folks for this perception SSM is sucking up alot of airtime. But my column is online for people to check their perceptions I've lost interest in marriage except for SSM. And even if I had it wouldnt' say much about the marriage movement, which is more than what Maggie Gallagher writes about. (check here for example).I'm just surprised editors let me write about marriage as much as I do.
posted by maggie at 11:54 PM | Link |

David Link: Why polygamy isn't (at all) like SSM / Jon Rauch

...If the husband died, would the wives continue to be married to each other? Why or why not? ... And every question like these leads to others. Assume the husband is alive, but relationships with him sour. Could some or all of the wives divorce the husband, but continue to be married to one another? Could they divorce one another? Again, why or why not? And if the answer is “yes,” how would that work? Who files what papers, naming whom? Would the various partners choose up sides in the ensuing divorce proceedings, and how would a court deal with that?...

The fact that we do not know the answers to these questions – and thousands of others – is at the core of why polygamy is dramatically different, as a matter of public policy, from same-sex marriage.

posted by Jon at 7:34 PM | Link |

John Corvino replies to Robert George / Jon Rauch 

...[George] confuses having “a principled objection” with having “an objection in principle.” ... This distinction is important, because once one moves from “no objection in principle” to “no principled objection,” it’s a short slide to “no serious objection”—and thus a bad misrepresentation of the position of mainstream gay-rights advocates.

So, to be clear: Rauch, Carpenter, Varnell, and others have a principled objection to polygamy, but not an objection in principle. But here’s the kicker: neither does George. For George’s natural-law position is based on the requirement that sex be “of the procreative kind.” And polygamy is very much of the procreative kind....

posted by Jon at 6:52 PM | Link |

Colorado Marriage Battle Update

A titanic struggle, full of new strategies in state marriage amendment battles, taking place in Colorado, home of both Focus on the Family and the new megabucks pro-SSM Gill Foundation. Four marriage-related ballot measures were originally proposed. Seems like we are now down to two:

"Although it is early in the election season and campaign committees have yet to form for many issues, the fight over gay unions is shaping up to be the most expensive on the November ballot, with donors contributing more than $1.3 million to two ballot initiatives:

- Amendment 43 would define marriage as between a man and woman and place it in the Colorado Constitution. The same provision is a state law.
- Referendum I would legalize same-sex domestic partnerships, giving most of the legal rights enjoyed by heterosexual couples to gay couples.

Voters could approve the constitutional amendment barring gay marriage and approve same-sex unions in the same election.

. . .The Coloradans for Fairness Issue Committee, which opposes Amendment 43, collected more than $613,000 as of Aug. 2, according to campaign finance records on the Colorado secretary of state’s Web site (www.sos.state.co.us). The committee has gathered the most money of any of the state’s 57 issues committees.

Two issues committees supporting Amendment 43 — Coloradans for Marriage and the Colorado Family Action Issue Committee — have taken in a combined $750,720, according to the Secretary of State’s Office. . .

The Coloradans for Fairness Issue Committee, which opposes Amendment 43 and supports the domestic-partner initiative, received a $250,000 donation in June from gayrights advocate Jon Stryker of Kalamazoo, Mich. . .

Proponents of Amendment 45, an amendment that would also allow legalized same-sex domestic partnerships, pulled the amendment from the ballot Tuesday."

posted by maggie at 10:49 AM | Link |

Wash. Straight Couple Charges Orientation Discrimin

An AP story about an unmarried opposite-sex couple who charge that a company policy denying them domestic partnership benefits is "orientation discrimination." Unintended consequences of new state law? I suspect courts will hold that offering DP benefits to SS couples is not discrimination, because opposite sex couples may marry and get the same benefits. Otherwise companies may have to stop offering DP benefits to comply with the law (or expand themt o include unmarried coup0les):

"One of the first tests for Washington state's new gay civil rights law has an intriguing twist: The complaint was filed by a heterosexual woman.

The state's discrimination watchdogs are investigating the case, which claims unmarried straight people should get the same domestic partner benefits as their gay and lesbian co-workers.

But officials are treading carefully, Human Rights Commission Director Marc Brenman said, because upholding the claim could set a sweeping new precedent for Washington businesses.

"We have to proceed very, very cautiously because we could be creating new policy for employers and other entities in the state," Brenman said Tuesday.

The complaint, filed last week, is one of four that have spawned full-fledged investigations under the sexual orientation section of Washington's anti-discrimination law.

It was signed by Sandi Scott-Moore, a Redmond-based employee of manufacturer Honeywell International. Scott-Moore claims health insurance coverage for her male partner was denied because the unmarried couple are not of the same gender. Honeywell spokesman Robert Ferris said the company does provide health benefits for the partners of its gay and lesbian employees and has a zero-tolerance stand on discrimination. But the company disagrees with Scott-Moore, he said in a statement.
"We believe the claim filed with the Washington State Human Rights Commission is without merit and plan to vigorously defend our position," Ferris wrote.

posted by maggie at 10:44 AM | Link |

The Dems' Fertility Gap/Opinion Journal

Anything it takes to get opinion leaders interested in new solutions to the problem of generativity. . . in today's Opinion Journal, an op ed by Arthur C. Brooks, a Syracuse University professor:

The Fertility Gap: Liberal politics will prove fruitless as long as liberals refuse to multiply.

". . .Simply put, liberals have a big baby problem: They're not having enough of them, they haven't for a long time, and their pool of potential new voters is suffering as a result. According to the 2004 General Social Survey, if you picked 100 unrelated politically liberal adults at random, you would find that they had, between them, 147 children. If you picked 100 conservatives, you would find 208 kids. That's a "fertility gap" of 41%. Given that about 80% of people with an identifiable party preference grow up to vote the same way as their parents, this gap translates into lots more little Republicans than little Democrats to vote in future elections. Over the past 30 years this gap has not been below 20%--explaining, to a large extent, the current ineffectiveness of liberal youth voter campaigns today.

Alarmingly for the Democrats, the gap is widening at a bit more than half a percentage point per year, meaning that today's problem is nothing compared to what the future will most likely hold. Consider future presidential elections in a swing state (like Ohio), and assume that the current patterns in fertility continue. A state that was split 50-50 between left and right in 2004 will tilt right by 2012, 54% to 46%. By 2020, it will be certifiably right-wing, 59% to 41%. A state that is currently 55-45 in favor of liberals (like California) will be 54-46 in favor of conservatives by 2020--and all for no other reason than babies.

The fertility gap doesn't budge when we correct for factors like age, income, education, sex, race--or even religion. Indeed, if a conservative and a liberal are identical in all these ways, the liberal will still be 19 percentage points more likely to be childless than the conservative. Some believe the gap reflects an authentic cultural difference between left and right in America today. As one liberal columnist in a major paper graphically put it, "Maybe the scales are tipping to the neoconservative, homogenous right in our culture simply because they tend not to give much of a damn for the ramifications of wanton breeding and environmental destruction and pious sanctimony, whereas those on the left actually seem to give a whit for the health of the planet and the dire effects of overpopulation." It would appear liberals have been quite successful controlling overpopulation--in the Democratic Party. . ."

posted by maggie at 11:52 AM | Link |

New Poll: Plurality of NY Dems Favor SSM/365gay.com

August 22, 2006

"A new poll shows that 48 percent of likely New York State Democratic primary voters support same-sex marriage while 32 percent are opposed.

The poll was conducted of 602 registered Democrats by Pace University. Poll director Jonathan Trichter said that while more people supported gay marriage than opposed it, it was less significant than the fact support was less than 50 percent.
"When you talk about Democrats who vote in New York's primaries, you're talking about a very liberal subset of the general population so for gay marriage not to muster a majority among these liberal voters is significant," said Trichter.

The survey found that the most opposition to same-sex marriage came from African Americans. Only 31 percent of Black Democrats approve of gays marrying while 45 percent are opposed.

The majority of support came from the New York City area. In more conservative Upstate New York 45 percent of male Democrats are opposed wile 35 percent are in favor. . ."

posted by maggie at 11:29 AM | Link |

Beyond Marriage: The Heart of the SSM Dispute

Jon Rauch says "Society will only be able to discriminate in favor of marriage--as it should--if marriage is perceived as fair and inclusive (and is fair and inclusive)." and "Should gay people be conscripted to bear the cost of preventing heterosexual polygamy?"

This is the heart of our dispute. I don't believe marriage is discriminatory. I believe SSM is an attempt to divert marriage to solve a problem marriage did not create and was not intended to resolve: how to better integrate gay and lesbian people into society.

If society cannot over time be persuaded that marriage is not discrimination--that there is indeed something special about unions of husbands and wives that deserve special treatment in law and society; moreover that a social institution with the main public purpose of channelling the potentially procreative erotic behavior of young men and women is urgently necessary, in a way that regulating other sort of unions is not--then, Jon would be right. But in both of the questions he asks me to presume that winning this marriage debate is culturally impossible (because NOT TRUE!) and asks: what then?

I don't know. And I'm not sure that it matters. Losing that idea is (for me) to lose the marriage culture that matters.

I do not believe marriage discriminates against gay people. I do not believe Jon is entitled to alter this institution to make it fit the needs of gay people better.

Jon asks, what about civil unions? Here is what I believe about civil unions: if the core question now being raised at this cultural moment is: Is marriage discriminatory, then civil unions are (from the marriage culture standpoint) a distraction. You cannot buy the right to discriminate with civil unions. If marriage has a meaning, purpose and function that makes its historic definition necessary good and right (for gay people too, because they too depend on this social institution to carry the society in which they participate into the future), then the civil unions question shifts: It becomes, given there is a group of people who (they tell us) cannot marry, for whom marriage is not a live option, what should we do to meet their social needs?

The debate shifts from rights and entitlements to social concern and consideration. In my opinion, civil unions, if enacted should be limited to SS couples (or at a minimum, people not eligible for marriage). The structure and functions should allow for the possiblity (as say Connecticut's law does not) that the form of law best suited to meet the needs of gay and lesbian people (or at any rate the default contract) might actually be different from marriage. Domestic partnerships as an institution should be allowed to evolve on its own.

But there is no substitute for winning the marriage debate, and no escaping the realization that this is the debate we are now in.
posted by maggie at 9:44 AM | Link |

Marriage-Jacking the GLBT Agenda/Washington Blade

Some reaction to the recent failures of SSM in the gay community was probably inevitable. I don't know how representative this sentiment is, but, well, ouch:

"For the most part on the pro-gay marriage side, the debate is being blindly driven by rich, white gay men with the biggest bully pulpits in the GLBT community, along with gay politicians and gay advocacy organizations. . .But in spite of what our “leaders” want us to believe, the decision to get married for most gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people ranks far below deciding on what deodorant to buy. Many of us can easily say, “Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt and now using it as a dish rag.”

We are more concerned with finding a job, or keeping the job we have, finding doctors who consider practicing medicine rather than discriminating, or going to the grocery store without getting beaten to a pulp. First and foremost, all we really want is to have a safe and secure life, with a roof over our heads and food on the table. Marriage doesn’t mean diddlysquat compared to that.

People can live without marriage, but not without food. How much simpler can it get?

THE ‘SAME-SEX MARRIAGE JACKING’ of the real concerns of GLBT people has to stop, but it won’t anytime soon.

posted by maggie at 12:09 PM | Link |

Beyond Marriage: Reply to Jon

Jon says, "But the culture might and, I hope, will interpret SSM as a statement that everyone should have the opportunity to marry, a position that polygamy militates against."

This is Jon's sincere hope but I think all the indicators are that gay marriage is part and parcel of a trend toward family diversity, as Sharon Minter suggested. I see no evidence that gay marriage leads to stronger support for marriage as the preferred mode of childbearing in a society. I think there's a reason for this:

There are three major arguments being made for gay marriage: a rights argument, a love argument and a children's rights argument: e.g. "gays have a right to marry and its wrong to exclude them"' "why would you interfere with love? Love makes a family"; and "our children have a right to the protections of marriage, too." Of these three pillars of SSM, the last two, if accepted as reasons to redefine marriage, clearly push towards a principle of family diversity.

And because accepting the first principle requires downgrading, if not rejecting, the importance of generativity as the foundation of public purpose of marriage, SSM reduces if not eliminates the public basis for the channelling function of marriage. On what grounds do we prefer one marriage form to another? Personal preference for certain forms of intimacy seems, well rather weak next to the right to love as one wills doesn't it?

Once we move to SSM, we must rely on consequentialists arguments to defeat a rights claim to polygamy or polyamory and as Cass Sunstein has noted, these tend to sound speculative compared to a rights claim. e.g. We're Americans. Just because polygamy in traditional societies had these negative consequences is no good reason to assume (and the burden of proof will be shifted to us anti polygamists, as the folks proposing to interfere with a right to marry and love as one chooses, and to withhold from children of polygamists the same rights that other children enjoy) that the new liberal polyamory (women too!) will have the same negative consequences as the old patriarchal forms of polygamy. Besides, men can already acquire multiple women through serial divorce, or cohabitation. What's wrong with men trying to accept legal responsibility for these multiple women instead of jettisoning them (the Big Love proposition. . .)?

So while it is possible to argue against polygamy and be in favor of SSM, the rights claims generated by the SSM debate, if accepted, do considerably weaken the possibility of sustaining any particular marriage form. Or so it seems to me.

Jon makes two more important arguments "Society will only be able to discriminate in favor of marriage--as it should--if marriage is perceived as fair and inclusive (and is fair and inclusive)." and "Should gay people be conscripted to bear the cost of preventing heterosexual polygamy?"

I'll respond to these in a separate post.
posted by maggie at 10:39 AM | Link |