This post from “LauraJMixon,” in the comments at Electrolite, has stuck to my mind since I read it:

I suspect that Mr. Berthold is someone who often wishes life had a “rewind and redo” button. It’s true, I believe, that we are all more than our worst moment; it’s unjust to have one’s entire life defined by a unwise three-second quip.

I recently posted “It’s the economy”, a rather lengthy article showing the association between Dutch unemployment and the rising non-marital birthrate in the Netherlands. I also showed the non-marital birthrates in numerous European countries rose as quickly and even more quickly than those in the Netherlands. This indicates the rate of change in the Netherlands does not stand out from changes in Europe as a whole.

In a response, Dr. Stanley Kurtz fixated on my discussion of Bulgaria. Previously, he claimed Bulgaria doesn’t count because Bulgarians have the lowest access to birth control in the Europe. I showed they have the highest rate of birth control use in the world. Kurtz now claims the fact Bulgarians use birth control at the highest rate in the world is irrelevant. Why? Because, poor teen Gypsy girls (those of the Roma minority) do not have access to contraception. Their behavior has caused a nationwide explosion in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate. In contrast, he says, the rise in the Netherlands is due to women choosing cohabitation over marriage (as a result of legalized same sex marriage.)

Can’t you just hear Cher singing “Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves” in the background?

I do not wish to give the impression that my argument hinges on Bulgaria; it does not. Even without considering Bulgaria, there are plenty of European countries whose non-marital birth rate rose as rapidly, or much more rapidly, than in the Netherlands. The rise in all those countries can be explained by factors other than legalized same sex marriage. In fact, Dr. Kurtz suggested economic distress contributed to the rise in many of these other countries, including Bulgaria. Yet, he ignores economic distress in the Netherlands. Logically, economic distress would be expected to have similar effects in any two countries. If it explains rising nonmarital births in European countries, including Bulgaria, then the greater severity of distress in Bulgaria explains why the Bulgarian out of wedlock birth rate rose more quickly than in other European countries, including the Netherlands. My argument is thus entirely consistent.

Still, it’s kind of fun to address the notions, and evidence, in Dr. Kurtz’s response.

Dr. Kurtz provided two hyperlink references to support his teen Gypsy girl theory. One is an anectdote posted on a geocities web page describing the wretched conditions of poor married and unmarried mothers in Bulgaria. The article provides absolutely no statistics explaining why the nonmarital birthrate has exploded.

Dr. Kurtz also refers to a report by Jaklina Tzvetkova Anguelova written in 2000. That report mentions that some of its contents are based on preliminary analysis of available data; some information is based on contents of earlier reports. The specific items Dr. Kurtz picks out are not based on Anguelova’s analysis or data, but are speculations cited from reports written well before Anguelova performed her analysis.

More recently, Anguelova wrote a report containing conclusions based on the final analysis of data collected by the Bulgarian government. It is available here: Anguelova 2001.

On page 11 you will find that Anguelova, after examining the data and reviewing the literature, attributes the growing non-marital birthrate to “consensus marriage”, i.e. cohabitation. In a 2004 study, The South Eastern European Legal Initiative (SEELINE) also attributes the rise in non-marital births to rising Bulgarian cohabitation. How much cohabitation do we find in Bulgaria relative to the Netherlands? Batalova and Cohen reported that a larger number of adults cohabit in Bulgaria than in the Netherlands. Of adults surveyed in 1994, 18.1% of Bulgarians reported they had cohabited; in contrast, 15.1% of Dutch respondents reported they had cohabited. Yet, despite the greater prevalence of cohabitation in Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz attributes the rising Dutch non marital birth rates to cohabitation, yet insists it has a negligible effect in Bulgaria!

Reading further in Anguelova, you will find she laments that no special statistics are available to describe the demographics of unmarried mothers. So the characteristics of unmarried mothers cannot be described. The fact that Anguelova specifically states she cannot describe the characteristics of unmarried mothers because no data are available suggest the older speculations taken from dated reports by others were not based on reliable data. (Many others have reported strong prejudice against the tiny Roma population, noting that Bulgarians often unfairly blamed the tiny Roma population for nationwide problems. Published speculations have sometimes been based on nothing more than prejudice.)

In any case, members of the Roma minority account for 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. Can anyone really believe the nationwide explosion in the nonmarital birth rate is dominated by their behavior? Could the 18.1% of adults who had cohabited all be members of the tiny Roma minority? Could nonmarital birthrates possibly rise to 42.9% because of the behavior of 2.6% of the population?

As in “Dutch Debate,” Dr. Kurtz suggests that women in Bulgaria cannot avoid giving birth. He does this by substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” and then providing some statistics on contraception to explain lack of birth control. As I showed in “It’s the economy”, he used this same verbal trick in “Dutch Debate”. The communist government did indeed limit contraception. In Bulgaria, abortion has always been, and unfortunately still is, a widely used method of birth control. (The abortion rate is falling as contraception becomes available.) Abortion is available to all Bulgarian women, married, unmarried, young, old and even members of the tiny Roma population. (Interestingly, the anecdote Dr. Kurtz cited describes conditions in a major hospital that acts as a combined maternity ware and abortion facility; this highlights abortion’s widespread availability in Bulgaria.)

Even when trying to side step the issue of birth control by substituting contraception statistics, Dr. Kurtz makes unsupported claims. He now claims that unmarried women have more limited access to contraception than married women. Yet, Klijzing, who Kurtz cited in “Dutch Debate”, indicated that married women in Bulgaria have much greater “unmet contraceptive needs” than unmarried women! (Klijzing noted that all Bulgarian women have access to birth control — in the form of abortion. Citing Klijzing to suggest Bulgarian women have limited access to birth control is another example of Dr. Kurtz substituting the term “contraception” for “birth control” in attempt to create the illusion that his thesis is supported by data. )

I think I have disproven Dr. Kurtz’s claims that Bulgaria is fundamentally different from the Netherlands because a) Bulgaria is filled with teen Gypsy girls and b) Bulgarians do not cohabit. Having done so, I need to emphasize that Bulgaria is not central to my argument. To draw away attention from other points, Dr. Kurtz tries to make it seem my argument hinges on Bulgaria. Next, Dr. Kurtz tries to say Bulgaria doesn’t count, because eliminating Bulgaria is necessary to support his thesis. In his attempt to find a reason to eliminate Bulgaria, Dr. Kurtz must repeatedly mislead readers by substituting statistics for contraception to describe access to birth control, which includes access to abortion. He further “buttresses” his argument by claiming the explosive rise in the Bulgarian nonmarital birth rate– to 42.9% –is due to the behavior of the tiny Roman minority, which makes up 2.6% of the Bulgarian population. To blame the problem on the Roma population he must ignore revised information in more recent reports by the very expert he cited.

Dr. Kurtz’s verbal, logical and statistical sleight of hand, accomplished by substituting terminology and omitting numbers may trick some. That he must rely on these sorts of tricks testifies to the weakness of his argument.

Over on Marriage Debate.com (and in a slightly longer pdf version on his organization’s website) Anthony R. Picarello, Jr. argues that same-sex marriage might be bad for free speech. He makes four points.

So what? Under current law, if a Catholic Church hires a divorced and remarried woman to be a teacher, they cannot legally choose to refuse her spouse the medical plan they extend to the spouses of all the other teachers.

Religious employers have a right to not be discriminated against because of their religion. They don’t have a right to ignore the same laws that all businesses, religious or not, have to obey.

Again, so what?

No one is denying the Salvation Army the right to their religious convictions. However, neither the Salvation Army, nor anyone else, has a right to be free of all consequences for their decisions.

Voters are free, through their elected representatives, to set up rules regarding who the government will and won’t sign contracts with (within Constitutional limits; voters are not free to make a “this city will never contract with Jews” law). All employers - religious or otherwise - can set their hiring rules so that they qualify for government contracts, or not. But when the Salvation Army or any other employer freely chooses hiring rules which exclude them from government contracts, then that’s their own decision, and they’ve freely chosen to suffer the consequences.

In this point and his previous point, Mr. Picarello isn’t calling for free speech for the Salvation Army. In effect, he’s calling for religious employers to be given an absolute pass from employment law. But enforcing the law exclusively against atheist and secular employers isn’t non-discrimination; it’s discrimination against secularists and athiests, which is just as wrong as discrimination against the religious.

It would certainly be wrong if anyone was found guilty of a hate crime just for preaching against gay marriage. But that will never happen in the United States, which - unlike Canada and Europe - has a strong First Amendment guarantee of free speech.

There is a long list of Canadian and European style hate speech laws which have never been made law in the US, because the First Amendment prevents such laws. There is no reason to suppose this will stop being true when same-sex marriage is made legal.

In Massachusetts, Justices of the Peace don’t have a legal right to turn down legal marriages, any more than county clerks have the right to refuse to issue legal marriage licenses. That’s because they’re government functionaries; their job is administrating marriage policy, not picking and choosing who can legally be married.

In contrast, a member of the clergy is free to refuse to solemnize any marriage for any reason. That’s because a rabbi or minister or whatever is not a government employee administering the law; they’re primarily acting as a representative of their religion, which is not a governmental organization.

To bring a real-world example in, Justices of the Peace in Massachusetts can’t legally refuse to perform an interfaith wedding just because they personally disapprove. In contrast, many Rabbis refuse to officiate at weddings between Jews and non-Jews. If Mr. Picarello’s legal theory were correct - if clergy didn’t have more freedom to discriminate than Justices of the Peace (and county clerks) - then Rabbis would have long ago been stripped of the right to solemnize marriages in Massachusetts. Unsurprisingly, Mr. Picarello’s theory is wrong, and Rabbis continue to have the right to choose.

* * *

UPDATE: Some readers may feel I’m overstating the case when I say Mr. Picarello is in effect “calling for religious employers to be given an absolute pass from employment law.” After all, it is only employment law as it relates to a religious belief that religious organizations would seek exemption from.
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I’m obviously fascinated by the subject of HR3313. The act is novel, and may or may not be constitutional. I was planning to re-post again when I’d accumulated a sufficient number of opinions. I am prompted to post by acomment by none other than Maggie Gallagher, a vociferous opponent of same sex marriage.

Maggie Gallagher suggests the law is likely is unconstitutional and would fail to block same sex marriage:

If her diagnosis is correct, opponents are wasting their time pushing the bill. That is, they are wasting their time if their purpose is to enact a law that will prevent same sex marriage. Ampersand and others have suggested introducing this bill is a political ploy.

Focusing on the law itself, questions seem to fall into two groups: Is the law constitutional? If constitutional, what are the effects of such a law?
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Maggie Gallagher recently posted a synopsis of reader email. One item struck me:

I am not surprised to learn children suffer when homosexuals marry opposite sex partners, become parents, and later find they can no longer tolerate the situation. I would not be surprised to learn these children suffered before, during and after their mommy and daddy’s divorce. Likely mommy and daddy suffered too.

This is one of the reasons I support legalizing same sex marriage.

As many read on Friday, (while I was nursing a really bad cold), Congress passed HR3313. This opinion from Oxblog:

For more, visit Oxblog.

I hope this law is unconstitutional. The idea that Congress can pass a law preventing the courts from ruling the constitutionality of a law is scary. I don’t care what the law is about. (Well, unless maybe the appoint me supreme monarch of the US!)

In his most most recent article “Dutch Debate” Dr. Kurtz does three things:

1. Reiterates his theory that the campaign for same sex marriage has caused marriage rates to decline and out of wedlock births to rise in Scandinavia and in the Netherlands
2. Claims there are data to support his theory.
3. Tries to refute Dr. Lee Badgett’s statistics which clearly contradict his theory.

It would take more than one article to illustrate the huge volume of distortions and outright errors in “Dutch Debate”. I will not attempt to do so in one. Instead I will focus on those errors associated with Dr. Kurtz’s interpretation of the data describing the rise in the out of wedlock birthrate in the Netherlands. Dr. Kurtz described these data in “Going Dutch”.

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Unfortunately, these links have been hanging around on my desktop long enough that I know longer remember the source for most of them. My apologies to everyone I fail to credit…

• Good article in The Chronicle of Higher Education, which begins…
  I went to a local megastore to buy a computer hutch for my oldest daughter, and, while I was there, I ran into one of the most talented students I have ever known. She graduated a year ago with a major in English and a minor in information systems. Now she works as a cashier. She wore a red smock and a little plastic nametag with the word “Target” on the bottom.
• I’ve been having a debate over same-sex parenting with David at Sed Contra. (If you make any comments, please be ultra-polite.)
• Good Arianna Huffington article on Teresa Heinz Kerry - “In Praise of Unruly Women.”
• Jonathan Dresner lists some things Bradbury correctly foresaw in Fahrenheit 451. Scary.
• I’m kind of fond of the whole Kerry and Edwards are secret gay lovers meme, which (oddly enough) is happening among pro-Kerry folks as well as among Republicans.
• It’s too early to say for sure, but Kerry is looking pretty damn strong.
• Mark Kleiman tells us What I Learned at the Executive Session on Gang Violence. Really interesting stuff. (However, Mark needs to proofread his titles a bit more carefully.)
• MaxSpeak discusses the need for a third party, and - more broadly - the need for a genuine left in American politics.
• Gay conservative Stephen Miller thinks that lesbians and gays should be pissed at the Democrats, and I think he’s right.
• Media Matters is a reasonably entertaining and well-done left-wing site focusing on examples of right-wing bias in the media.
• RHETORIC MATTERS: A typically excellent post at Body and Soul discusses how Bill Clinton could have done more to fight poverty. (Jeannie is responding to this post from Jack O’Toole, which I’m planning to respond to myself, sometime in the coming week.)
• Via Body & Soul, Slacktivist has an excellent post on why some Christians condemn homosexuality but eat pork.
• For everyone who has been watching the “panic in the skies” story (short version: 14 middle-eastern musicians + one racist right-winger + a plane ride = panic all over the right half of the blogoverse), be sure to read this coda to the story, via Political Animal. Funniest bit: Apparently the right-winger, Annie Jacobsen, was so obviously panicked on the plane that undercover air marshals suspected she was a terrorist plant: “… air marshals on the flight were partially concerned Jacobsen’s actions could have been an effort by terrorists or attackers to create a disturbance on the plane to force the agents to identify themselves.”

  Also, Respectful of Otters debunks the myth that the overly PC FAA has a rule against questioning more than two arab passengers on one flight.

• Speaking of Respectful of Otters, Rivka also has an excellent post discussing the abortion of disabled fetuses. If you’re interested in this topic, I highly recommend you read Bean’s comments on this “Alas” post, as well.
• Kip should write a book of essays about comics; there is no better or more interesting critic of the industry, in my opinion. Meanwhile, read this post on comics, fandom, and sex; and this post on the Image rise-and-fall.
• Amanda at Mousewords is kicking every ass in sight this week. I really don’t know which post to recommend, because there are so many great ones. So just go there and scroll, or if you’re looking for particular recommendations, read Amanda’s critique of ” the proper feminine reaction towards an abortion,” ; or Amanda on how today’s press would have covered the 1968 Democratic convention; Amanda on why Catholics in Politics are not like Evangelicals; Amanda on the mail order bride industry; Amanda on why men can never have an equal voice in the abortion decision; and Amanda on acceptable and unacceptable abortions. Here’s a quote I liked:
  Our need to have public displays of approved emotions from women doesn’t create anything but deceitful women. It always boggles my mind how we demand these displays and then turn around and cough up stereotypes about lying, deceitful women. We need to make up our minds.

  (One tiny criticism, Amanda: Have you thought about using bigger paragraph breaks, or at least indenting the first lines of paragraphs? It would make your blog much easier on the eye.)

• Larry Lessig does a good job documenting how Bill O’Reilly has been using his media megaphone to slander an ordinary private citizen, again and again and again, with an impressive disregard for truth.
• Congrats to Jay Allen for winning Six Apart’s “MT Plug In” contest. Jay deserved it; “Alas” is one of hundreds of blogs that couldn’t have comments if not for Jay’s MT Blacklist plug-in.
• Are parasites eating your royals? Don’t blame the pirates:
  So don’t talk to me about piracy. It’s not the pirates that have ripped us off of hundreds of thousands in lost royalties. It’s been “Real businesses” doing that thank you very much. The position of royalty eating parasite has already been taken.

  It’s the demographic of people who allegedly do all this pirating that’s been paying our bills. People with Internet connections who download games. They pay my salary. They are my overlord now. So I hope you can excuse me if I don’t lose sleep at night that some 15 year old might have downloaded my game while some executive at a company (or former company) is sailing on their boat paid for by my hard work. The software pirate can go to jail on a felony, the business executive who doesn’t pay royalties gets off the hook.

  (The last few links are via Boing Boing.)

From the San Francisco Chronicle:

Some initial thoughts:

1. Since the Republicans aren’t bothering to introduce a Senate version of this bill, it’s hard to believe that they’re serious about it. The Democrats are probably right to say that this has more to do with the upcoming election than with serious lawmaking.

2. The fact that they’re proposing this law shows that the anti-SSM Republicans in congress who, just last week, were saying “there is no alternative to amending the US Constitution” were acting in bad faith. (The idea for this non-constitutional path to protecting DOMA from the courts has been kicking around among Republicans for months).
3. If I narrowly consider only the SSM debate, I wish that this bill would become a law. It would take the “federal courts are going to force Tennessee to recognize Massachusetts gay marriages!” argument off the table, which I think would take a lot of wind out of the national anti-SSM campaign. Meanwhile, SSM advocates would remain free to pursue SSM through elected officials and through equal rights lawsuits.
4. Even if this bill becomes law, I don’t think it would slow down the progress of SSM rights. I’ve been convinced that the Full Faith and Credit Clause of the constitution would not, in practice, require any state to recognize another state’s same-sex marriages. (Gabriel Rosenberg has the full scoop on this).
5. I don’t think this bill has any realistic chance of passing both the Senate and House. Even if it did, the Supreme Court might find a way to overturn it. So there’s not much chance it’ll become law.
6. So it’s unlikely. But if this bill defied the odds and became law, I’d be frightened of the precedent. What would prevent Congress from using this law to shield all sorts of discrimination - against gays, and also against Jews, Christians, the disabled, women, minorities, and anyone else they take a dislike to - from court scrutiny? If Congress can shield its laws from court oversight, then it’s good-bye separation of powers.

UPDATE: Added item 5. Also, Trey, Kevin Drum and Andrew Sullivan have more on this.

In general, in my posts about same-sex marriage, I try to link to and criticize the very best arguments of the anti-SSM crowd. There are a bunch of reasons to do this: it’s more honest, it forces my arguments to be stronger, and it’s just better debating form.

But just for giggles, let’s look at some of the really, really dumb anti-SSM arguments. I won’t bother responding to any of these, because I assume that all my readers - even my anti-SSM readers - will recognize how dumb these arguments are.

First off, let’s look at how Gary Bauer explains the horrors SSM would bring about:

I love the $20 bill analogy; apparently Bauer beleives that marriages are a medium of exchange for goods and services, and as such are subject to the laws of inflation.

Meanwhile, check out this fundraising appeal from the Christian Family Coalition, courtesy of Boo blog. Here’s two of their predictions of what will happen if they don’t “WIN THE BATTLE TO PROTECT MARRIAGE!”:

Gosh, remember elementary school, when we took classes like math, history, social studies, and safe sodomy?

(If you enjoy fiskings, by the way, check out Dispatches from the Culture Wars’ take on the CFC letter).

Gary Bauer and the CFC are major players (compared to someone like, say, me). To find some even stupider anti-SSM arguments, I have to turn to someone as unknown as I am, a Ms. Tamara Wilhite, in an editorial on BushCountry.org. Ms. Wilhite explains the connection between same-sex marriage and… wait for it, wait for it… terrorism.

Now, you would think that this would be a pro-SSM argument - “if gays aren’t allowed to marry, then the terrorists have won!” But no. She’s arguing that we should pass the Federal Marriage Amendment to forstall a terrorist attack. In her opinion, it would seem, the last thing we should do is irritate the terrorists.

Oy.

I read Ms. Wilhite’s piece via Dispatches from the Culture Wars, which points out this even stupider SSM-and-terrorism article. I don’t even have to quote from the article; the title alone is enough.

Senators Defy Marriage Amendment: America’s Taliban Tyranny

Oh, heck, let me quote a paragraph anyway:

“Caliban,” by the way, is the author’s coined word for “California Taliban.”

Oy, oy, oy.

Amy Richards has been condemned a lot this week for this NYT article, mostly (but not exclusively) on the right half of the blogoverse.

Richards - who many Alas readers are familiar with as the co-author of Manifesta - was pregnant with triplets, and chose to abort two of the eight-week-old embryos so that she could give birth to only one child. From the article (which is not written by her, but “as told to Amy Barrett”):

Many folks - even pro-choice folks - have been very disturbed by this article. I don’t see what the problem is.

Not being of an original frame of mind today, I’m just going to quote some of the better comments I’ve seen. From Majikthise:

She goes on to make good comments about the medical issues - having triplets really isn’t as safe as having just one baby, for either the mother or the infant. Read the whole thing.

In the comments at Unfogged, FL wrote:

Also in the comments of Unfogged, PZ Myers - who also wrote a good post on his own blog - wrote:

This was followed up by a comment by Cardinal Fang, who wrote:

Kevin Drum writes:

Abortion is a means of controlling the number and frequency of bearing children. Richards’ reasons for wanting to control her reproduction were stated a bit flippantly by the writer, but they are not, as so many have argued, trivial. Wanting to have a career is not a trivial concern. The difference between raising a first baby and raising newborn triplets is not trivial. The health concerns that come with bearing triplets are not trivial.

That so many people - even some pro-choice people - were prepared to make a snap judgment that these are trivial or unimportant concerns convinces me, more than ever, that it would be a disaster to place the abortion decision in anyone’s hands but the mother’s.

* * *

In addition to the posts I linked to above, here are some other posts discussing Amy Richards’ abortion:

• Trish Wilson has a good, not-easy-to-quote-a-small-bit-of post on the matter.

• Professor Bainbridge gets the prize for most over-the-top pro-life comment: “It is hard to see how any one with normal human values could find common ground with the author of this essay, whose morality differs but little from Hitler’s executioners or the Rwandan genocidal killers.”
• The pro-choice UNF at Unfogged - whose readers had many super-intelligent comments, some of which I quoted above - is barely any better than Bainbridge. “… when you have the motives expressed in this article, you ought to be sent to jail. Because you’re certainly going to be sent to hell.” Yes, this woman wanted to have a career and control her own childrearing - how evil of her!
• Hugo Schwyzer is also pro-life, but he at least let a little humanity sneak into his judgment of Amy Richards, which makes him better than Bainbridge.
• Mousewords has a harsh - but I think often on target - critique of Hugo Schwyzer’s post.
• I disagree with just about everything on Sed Contra, but this post nonetheless struck me as the most thoughtful and interesting pro-life post I’ve read on the Amy Richards matter (although it’s also over-the-top in its comparisons to slavery, but if you read pro-life sites you get used to that sort of thing). Unlike the author, David Morrison, I have no problem understanding why the value hospitals give fetuses should depend on if the mother wants to go through with the pregnancy or not. Restaurants often cook food with great care for their customers, but throw out apparently identical food that is unwanted; I wonder if this practice also strikes David as contradictory?
• Feministing’s Hannah is more disturbed than I am, but comes (I think) to the right conclusion.
• Over at A Small Victory, I’m having a debate with a pro-lifer in the comments of this post. (If you go over there, please be ultra-polite.) I thought that this post, also on A Small Victory, was much more thoughtful and interesting.

In a discussion on this blog a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I used to be pro-life. Someone (Joe?) asked at that time:

Okay-dokey. Here’s the argument that changed my mind on abortion. (This isn’t the approach I’d necessarily take nowadays, however.)

In my youth - up to age 16 or so - I was abortion-agnostic. I didn’t really have an opinion one way or the other.

In late high school and early college, I was mildly pro-life. My argument was that it wasn’t possible for us to know for certain when “personhood” begins. Given that we are stuck with uncertainty, I thought it was logical and humane to err on the side of preserving life. Therefore, I argued, abortion should be illegal except when needed to preserve the mother’s life.

What changed my mind was reading an essay by some philosopher (alas, I no longer know the name of the author or the essay).

The author of the essay argued that, to judge abortion, we need to balance harm done to a woman forced to give birth, against harm suffered by an aborted fetus. However, in order to be harmed by the loss of its future, a fetus would need to have valued its potential future at some point in its existence. To value its potential future, it must have a history of

a) Awareness of itself as a being which exists across time, into the future.

b) Anticipating and preferring its own future existence.

If a fetus is not capable of both those things, then it is not harmed in any meaningful way by being aborted. All that it loses is a future it has never valued.

So that was the argument that switched me from being pro-life to pro-choice.

* * *

Now, I can anticipate three objections to this argument, none of which are very persuasive.
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For pure stupidity, just leave it to the Republicans.

The long and the short of it comes to the same thing, in the end: I’ve enjoyed blogging at Alas, but I don’t enjoy it anymore and so will be stopping.

When Ampersand first asked me to be a guest blogger (and later, a co-blogger) here at Alas, I was flattered and proud. I was writing lengthy comments on dozens of posts on dozens of blogs, and it was nice to know that someone had noticed. I leapt at the opportunity. I’d been thinking about starting a blog of my own but hadn’t made the plunge, yet. Blogging at Alas seemed like the next best thing or one thing better, I couldn’t decide.

Some time between then and now, my enthusiasm for blogs and blogging waned, plummeted, and finally died. You probably noticed; I never post anymore. Of the dozens of blogs that I read back then I now read eight. Only three of those blogs are political, and I’ll admit that they’re likely to be discarded in the near future. All of these blogs, both personal and political, are exhausting—there are only four that ever make me smile, sigh, or laugh: frogblog, One Good Thing, Waiting for Nat, and Back to Iraq. I can’t say why, but the reason is a tangent and is ultimately irrelevant to what I’m saying here.

As I said, I enjoyed posting here when I did. My heart isn’t in it anymore, though, so this is the end. I’ll likely still comment from time to time, but this will be my last post.

Thanks for everything.

For years, many concerned about human rights and disability rights have been trying to get countries like The Czech Republic (along with Slovakia, Slovenia, and Hungary) to stop the use of “caged beds,” often used to control those with mental illness and/or disabilities.

That was a quote from an article on July 7. A week later, The Czech Republic has made a move to eliminate all of it’s caged beds. What was the critical difference in making them change their minds this time?

A letter. Not just any letter, but a letter from a very influential person, calling for the elimination of these beds. So, who could this incredibly powerful and influential person be? Kofi Anan? Nelson Mandela? Madeline Albright?

No. J.K. Rowling. Yes, that’s right — a single letter from the famed children’s author was what prompted the change.

Family Scholars Blogger Tom Sylvester (who is pro-SSM) has posted a two-part series, “Whose Insight Is This?” (Part 1 and Part 2). Here’s a sample:

Anyone quoting Bronski to make that point would be misunderstanding Bronski rather badly. To quote Bronski, from two paragraphs before the bit quoted above:

Galligher and Kurtz are arguing that same-sex marriage will change too much; straights will stop marrying, illegitimate children will overwhelm society, the words “father” and “mother” will be wiped from the dictionaries, etc.. Bronski, in contrast, is arguing that same-sex marriage won’t change society nearly enough. The out-of-context quote Tom uses is funny, but the truth is that Bronski’s view could not be more opposite Galligher’s and Kurtz’s, and Tom’s post (unintentionally, I’m sure) obscures that fact.

* * *

More generally, Tom seems to be arguing that certain views - that same-sex marriage might make monogamy less a part of marriage, for example - aren’t necessarily homophobic, because if you look you can find gay people saying more-or-less the same thing.

There are vital differences between the gay scholars Tom quotes and anti-SSM folks; most importantly, neither Bronski nor Jonathan Katz (the other gay scholar Tom quotes) advocate unequal laws for straights and gays (Bronski questions whether SSM should be the movement’s highest priority, but he doesn’t question whether or not equal treatment is worth seeking at all).

So an idea like “the inclusion of lesbian and gay same-sex marriage may, in fact, sort of de-center the notion of monogamy and allow the prospect that marriage need not be an exclusive sexual relationship among people…” is not, in and of itself, bigoted or homophobic. However, using that idea as a pretext to advocate that lesbians and gays be second-class citizens is bigoted, in my view (regardless of whether or not the person making the argument personally has any animus against lesbians and gays).

However, if I were criticizing the homophobia of the anti-SSM position, that’s not the main criticism I’d make. I’d focus instead on how most anti-SSM arguments seem to share an unstated assumption that the needs of same-sex couples and their children simply aren’t important, while the needs of heterosexual couples - however far-fetched or theoretical - are of overriding importance. Johnathan Rauch put it well (emphasis added):

Tom is well aware of this, of course - he made a similar criticism of Maggie Galligher only last week.

That said, I should clarify that it doesn’t matter to me if SSM opponents are homophobic or not. Even if every SSM opponent in the world is a saint with absolutely no animus in their heart, the policy they support is still a policy of legal inequality between gays and straights, and that would still be wrong.

In the end, this issue isn’t about if SSM opponents are homophobic in their hearts, or if (as prominent SSM opponents often imply) SSM advocates have selfish hearts and don’t give a damn what happens to children. It’s not about what’s in people’s hearts; it’s about what’s in the law. The bottom line is, regardless of hearts, it’s unfair to use the law to discriminate against same-sex couples and their children.

I wonder if Mr. Tolley approves of the Nazi Party? I would assume not, and yet…

As Mr. Tolley is probably aware, the Supreme Court has ruled that, when it comes to civil rights, the Nazis have a right to equal treatment under the law. Yet I doubt he feels compelled by this legal fact to treat the Nazi Party with the same respect he’d treat (say) the Democrats or the Republicans.

Ordained ministers of the Church of Jesus Christ, Christian (a racist, white supremacist church) perform weddings just other ministers do, and the resulting marriages are equal in the law to all other marriages. Does Mr. Tolley feel that this legal equality has forced him to respect the CJCC as much as he respects his own church? I somehow doubt it.

When we say Nazis and White Supremacists have equal legal rights, we are not “proclaiming to future generations” that it “really doesn’t matter” if those children become Nazis or not. We are not declaring that the Nazi party and church are just as good as any other party or church. We are not storming into the schools and ripping up textbooks that dis the Nazis.

All we’re saying is that, legally, Nazis and White Supremacists are entitled to the same legal rights as everybody else. Legal equality is not an endorsement, nor is it approval; it’s legal equality, nothing else.

Of course, I am not saying that same-sex couples are Nazis or White Supremacists. (I’m fairly certain that most Nazis and W.S.s oppose SSM). But the Nazis are useful to illustrate the principle. SSM opponents often claim that legal equality is the same thing as endorsement, and that’s simply not true.

As I pointed out in my earlier response to Mr. Tolley, the same-sex marriage (SSM) debate is not about “should same-sexers have the right to reproduce.” Same-sexers do; that right is not, thank goodness, in much doubt in the USA. The SSM debate is about fairness and equality; but since they’re unable to make credible arguments against fairness and equality, SSM opponents resort to discussing children instead.

All right then. Let’s discuss children.

Characterizing the view he opposes, Mr. Tolley writes:

Here, Mr. Tolley is accurate. It is indeed my view - and, I think, the view of virtually all pro-SSM folks - that there is no “right” to be raised by a mother and father.

But I wonder if Mr. Tolley is using the word “right” in a way I’d recognize.

Children have a right to not be cruelly neglected, nor cruelly beaten. Children have a right to be fed and cared for. Children have a right to an education.

One way I can tell that children have these rights is, in our society, parents who lock their children in the basement or beat them or won’t feed them or care for them - are subject to having their children taken away by the government, by force if necessary. In other words, we can tell that children have these rights because we enforce those rights.

In contrast, I’m not - and I hope Mr. Tolley is not - prepared to endorse having children taken away from loving same-sex parents by force in order to have the children raised by heterosexual strangers. I’m not going to throw a lesbian in a committed relationship in jail for illegal use of a turkey baster. I’m not prepared to make single parents marry people of the opposite sex whether they want to or not.

That is what having a “right” to being raised by a mother and a father would entail. It’s self-evident, I hope, that children do not - and should not - have any such right.

Mr. Tolley also writes:

(Aside: I love the way Mr. Tolley defines what a “lesbian couple” is. Who is he writing for, that he imagines they’ve never heard the word “lesbian” before? Gosh, I guess red America really is different.)

Mr. Tolley is mistaken. A lesbian couple is not saying that “a father is not a critically vital and necessary part of any child’s development.” They’re saying that a father is not a critical part of their own child’s life. For a different child - one being raised by a heterosexual couple, or by two gay men - the child’s father (or fathers) is essential.

This may seem like minor quibbling over words, but it’s not; it brings to light an essential difference in the world-views of those opposed to and in favor of same-sex marriage. To pro-SSM folks, people are individuals; what matters is if Suzy and Jenny are loving, kind, capable parents.

To anti-SSM folks, people are judged not by their traits as individuals but by their sex. Suzy and Jenny have matching genitals, therefore they are BAD parents. Mary and Bob have non-matching genitals, therefore they are GOOD parents.

The question is, should the law treat Suzy and Jenny as individuals, or should it ignore everything about them but their sex?

* * *

Legal questions aside, are opposite-sex parents “essential”? I’d have to say not.

Think of it this way: suppose you had a child that could be placed in one of two adoptive families. Family A is a loving, economically stable gay male couple. Family B is a heterosexual couple in which the man brutally beats his wife every night, and plans to do the same to any children he’s put charge of. For the sake of this example, suppose no other couples are available.

Which family should be allowed to adopt the child?

Okay, now imagine the same situation, only this time family A is a loving, economically stable lesbian couple, and family B is a heterosexual couple who live in a large cardboard box, survives by eating scraps out of garbage bins, and has no prospects for economic improvement. For the sake of this example, suppose no other couples are available. Which couple should be allowed to adopt the child?

Would any sane person give the child to family B, in either of these situations?

I assume not. That’s because we can recognize the difference between what’s essential and what’s not. It’s essential that a child not be abused; it’s essential that a child be housed and fed. Compared to these things - things that are genuinely essential - it becomes clear that being raised by opposite sex parents isn’t.

It’s about treating people as individuals versus treating people as their sex. Someone who is pro-SSM looks at a family and says “Doug and Joe seem to be doing a swell job raising little William. Will is happy and well-fed and loved and cared for, and that’s what matters. Maybe Will doesn’t have absolutely everything he’d have in an ideal life, but he has everything he needs.” Someone who is anti-SSM looks at that same family and says “Will is being raised by two men, therefore he is being deprived of something essential, and I don’t need to know anything more. Asking if Will is happy and well-cared for would be irrelevant.”

Which view is more child-centered? Heck, which view is more human?

Likely, some of you are aware that Spain may be the next European Country to enact same sex marriage. The government passed a preliminary resolution on July 7; it seems likely same sex marriage will be available next year. (See Washington Blade.)

The Roman Catholic Church is not pleased. Last Month, The Pope expressed his displeasure during a meeting with Spain’s Prime Minister Zapatero. Today, Expatica reported:

I’ve Googled trying to find details describing the precise nature of the injustice. I have failed.

The Expatica article does list these three objections:

To point 1, I would responds, that marriage between a man and a man or a woman and a woman is also the “expression of a love which represents the communion of two people”. Regarding point 2, I wish he would elaborate on the specifics of this complementary nature. What exactly is it? Why does it need to be demonstrated? If it needs to be demonstrated, why must it be demonstrated through marriage? Every marriage? Point 3: How does it represent a threat to the social order?

Maybe the Bishops have given answers to these questions. However, it seems whatever they are saying is alienated 1500 Spanish Catholics who sent letters renouncing their faith.

It looks like the Catholic Spain will, indeed, enact same sex marriage.

Via Family Scholars Blog, this (no doubt well-meaning) editorial in the New Hampshire Union Leader, by a Mr. Tolley, repeats a couple of frequently-used anti-Same-Sex-Marriage arguments that are worth examining in detail.

Does Mr. Tolley believe that the debate is about if lesbian and gay couples should be “allowed to be parents”? If so, he’s badly misinformed. But it’s hardly a new mistake; anti-SSM folks argue that same-sexers should not raise children all the time, even though (to my knowledge) they don’t propose that the government take children away from same-sex parents.

This conceptual difficulty is common in anti-SSM rhetoric: they say they’re here to discuss same-sex marriage, but then they actually discuss same-sex parenting.

But although the two issues are linked, logically they are distinct. Banning SSM will not stop same-sex parenting; it just denies the children of same-sex couples from having the legal protections that children of married couples have. So therefore, even if they establish that same-sex parenting is a problem (which they have not), forbidding SSM isn’t a logical solution to the problem.

So why is Mr. Tolley talking about same-sex couples being “allowed to be parents?” Because he, like the anti-SSM movement as a whole, has no credible response to the real subject of the SSM debate. The basic demand of the SSM movement - that same-sex couples and their children to be treated no better than and no worse than opposite-sex couples and their children - is so moderate, so reasonable, and so obviously just and fair that SSM opponents are struck dumb. They have no response, and rather than admitting they have no response, they change the subject. Never mind fairness and decency and justice, they say - let’s talk about children!

It’s rhetorical jujitsu. It’s a devious appeal to old bigotries against homosexuals - every single anti-gay law in American history, after all, has at one time or another been justified by an appeal to “think of the children!” And it’s fundamentally dishonest, because what we’re debating is not the legal right of same-sexers to reproduce.

What we’re discussing is the right of same-sex couples and their children to equal treatment under the law. We’re discussing live and let live. We’re discussing having the law treat gays and straights the same. We’re discussing giving the marriages performed in a Reform Jewish Shul the same legal status as the marriages performed in a Roman Catholic Church.

It’s about equality. It’s about fairness. And until the opponents of same-sex marriage are prepared to discuss equality and fairness, they’re not prepared to seriously discuss this issue at all.