All Mirka’s siblings, plus her father and her stepmother, and Mirka herself. This was fun to draw.

(Click on the image to see a bigger version).

Annie Lowrey in the Washington Post:

But what if the 100-member Senate were designed to mirror the overall U.S. population — and were based on statistics rather than state lines?

Imagine a chamber in which senators were elected by different income brackets — with two senators representing the poorest 2 percent of the electorate, two senators representing the richest 2 percent and so on.

Based on Census Bureau data, five senators would represent Americans earning between $100,000 and $1 million individually per year, with a single senator working on behalf of the millionaires (technically, it would be two-tenths of a senator). Eight senators would represent Americans with no income. Sixteen would represent Americans who make less than $10,000 a year, an amount well below the federal poverty line for families. The bulk of the senators would work on behalf of the middle class, with 34 representing Americans making $30,000 to $80,000 per year.

Imagine trying to convince someone — Michael Bloomberg, perhaps? — to be the lonely senator representing the richest percentile. And what if the senators were apportioned according to jobs figures? This year, the unemployed would have gained two seats. Think of the deals that would be made to attract that bloc!

Or how about if senators represented particular demographic groups, based on gender and race? White women would elect the biggest group of senators — 37 of them, though only 38 women have ever served in the Senate, with 17 currently in office. White men would have 36 seats. Black women, Hispanic women and Hispanic men would have six each; black men five; and Asian women and men two each. Women voters would control a steady and permanent majority — making, say, discriminatory health-care measures such as the Stupak Amendment and the horrible dearth of child-care options for working mothers seem untenable.

So in total, there would be 51 female Senators in this made-up world, compared to 38 who have ever been in the Senate in reality, or the 17 current female senators.

One thing that Lowrey didn’t bring up: religious representation. There would be fewer Jews in the Senate, alas — 2 (rounding up) rather than the current 13. About 50 senators would be Protestant, and 25 would be Catholic. 1 would be Muslim. About 15 Senators wouldn’t identify with any organized religion at all; I’m not sure how many of those would be openly atheist, or openly agnostic. (Source).

Here’s a page of art from the upcoming Hereville graphic novel. The graphic novel will be 139 pages long, of which 104 are inked and I’m not sure exactly how many (but a lot) are colored. If all goes well, all 139 pages will be complete five weeks from now. And I will be exhausted.

Which brings me to something I should have mentioned; I now have a collaborator on Hereville. Mr. Jake Richmond, my friend and housemate and excellent cartoonist, illustrator and game designer, is coloring Hereville. Thanks, Jake!

Anyway, here’s a preview page:

You can see a larger image of the page here.

Say what you want! Self-linking welcome.

The New York Times, in a story on the US’s large projected deficits in today’s paper, writes:

For Mr. Obama and his successors, the effect of those projections is clear: Unless miraculous growth, or miraculous political compromises, creates some unforeseen change over the next decade, there is virtually no room for new domestic initiatives for Mr. Obama or his successors.

This isn’t true. As the Democrat’s health care reform bill — which was projected to lower the deficit — showed, it is quite possible to propose significant new domestic initiatives even within the limitations of a deficit. The big limitation is political, not fiscal.

Click to see it bigger.

A likable essay in the Minnesota Star-Tribune by poet Bao Phi:

But then how do nerds of color like me fit in, and how do we deal with fellow nerds who don’t want to talk about things like race and class in comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies? I’ll be the first to admit, I got into all of that stuff for the escapism it allowed. It was invaluable to me, as a refugee from a war growing up in an economically poor urban area, to fantasize that I was someone else, somewhere else. I’d rather be a paladin with a war horse riding to battle a chimera than be the Vietnamese ghetto refugee nerd running from the dudes on my block who tried to jump me on my way to and from CUHCC clinic to get my teeth cleaned.

However, there was a discomfort about some of my own internalized issues. I always chose to ignore the weird feeling I got when I realized that, in my dreams, I was always, literally, a white knight. When I dreamt I was a superhero, I was a white dude with superpowers and the Mary Jane to my Peter Parker was always white. [...]

As I got older, I wondered more and more about certain things: like, why Wolverine seemed to have an Asian fetish, why the only Asian men in the nerd worlds seemed to be the bad guys or some servant like Doctor Strange’s assistant Wong. I wondered why the only Asians in comic books, movies, and video games seemed to be ‘exotic’ Asian women. [...]

I became a fan of the new Battlestar Gallactica and yet wondered how Grace Park’s character seemed like a sci-fi stand-in for Miss Saigon, and despite my skepticism stuck with the series through its entire run and watched in horror as the show literally and figuratively dumped almost all of their characters of color out of an airlock by the time the show ended. I dug Firefly a lot, but was annoyed that Whedon predictably relegated Asian culture to a neo-Yellow peril future where the extent of China emerging as a superpower means that people throw in a couple of badly pronounced Mandarin words into their everyday conversations, and despite the idea of this looming Asian culture, there are no actual Asian characters to be seen.

None of this was easy for me personally, because I had to confront my own internalized racism. There was a part of me that said, no, don’t ask these questions. It’d be easier to just go with the flow. Don’t rock the boat. No one cares about this stuff. Do you really want to challenge yourself about how you want to be white? You’re a man of color from Phillips – are you really ready to out yourself as a self-hating nerd?

And you’d think that fellow nerds, regardless of race and gender, would understand given that our status as freaks and geeks and outcasts would give us some humility and common ground to stand on. Unfortunately, this is not often the case. Try bringing up issues of race, class, gender, and homophobia on a video game message board and see the vitriolic response you get, no matter how diplomatic you try to be. Bring up issues of representation and race to fans of Battlestar and Firefly and get told that you’re a killjoy or one of the “PC police” who doesn’t understand what their favorite show is trying to do.

The comments at the Star-Tribune include headings like “I really feel bad that people have to view everything view ‘colored’ glasses” and “It’s all economics, not racism,” of course. *rolleyes*

Recently, I asked in comments what now-Senator, then-candidate Scott Brown’s position on same-sex marriage. Robert replied:

Same as Barack Obama’s. So he’s either a sensible centrist doing what he can, or a hate-filled gay-killing bigot, depending on whether you know he’s a Republican or not. :)

Chris Barron of GOProud made a similar point:

What’s the truth about Scott Brown? I will concede up front, that Scott Brown doesn’t support same-sex marriage. Brown, however, has stated that same-sex marriage in Massachusetts is settled law and that he personally supports civil unions. Brown has also said that he believes marriage is a state issue and that each state should be free to make its own law regarding same-sex marriage. Sound familiar? It should, because it’s the same position taken by President Barack Obama.

So Brown is just like Obama on gay rights? Well, no.

The difference between Brown and Coakley is even greater on homosexual issues. Brown opposes “gay marriage” and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) and supports the military’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy and the federal Defense of Marriage Act. [...Brown] voted for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man, one woman. The amendment was defeated. Brown does support same-sex civil unions.

Because some Republicans talk a good game but support homophobic legislation when it counts — when they’re voting — conservatives tend to reduce being pro-gay or anti-gay to purely a matter of saying the right words, without regard to the actual policies being supported.

Both President Obama and Scott Brown have taken positions that are prejudiced against LGBT people. But there is a spectrum. Obama has never voted for anti-gay legislation, and — in his mild, gutless, and basically worthless way — has stated support for ENDA, and for ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the federal non-recognition aspects of DOMA. I don’t say this to defend Obama, who I believe is bigoted against LGBT.¹ But we can recognize that Obama is bad while and still recognize that Scott Brown is, in most ways, even worse.

But there are two ways Obama is worse than Brown. First: Obama, unlike Brown, harms LGBT people by sucking away LGBT activism and money with promises that he (so far) has not attempted to deliver on. Second, Obama, unlike Brown, harms LGBT by providing anti-gay Republicans with Brown with cover, because Obama’s position on marriage equality allows many anti-gay conservatives to deflect criticism by claiming to hold the same position Obama does.

1. I don’t know or care if Obama is bigoted against LGBT “in his heart”; when I say he’s bigoted, I’m referring to his political actions and policies. (back)

From Conor:

Only a partisan hack could deny that all aspects of this election bolstering my analysis happened to be most significant, whereas factors that cut against my thesis were ultimately irrelevant to the outcome. Let this be a lesson to my political and ideological opponents in future contested elections — insofar as it is advantages my policy preferences, what happened in Massachusetts is a harbinger of things to come in the 2010 midterms, and even in 2012. Meanwhile all precedents seemingly at odds with my national political proclivities were unique, and should be ignored.

I assume everyone is watching Massachusetts as anxiously as I am?

I’m somewhat desperately — is “desperately” too strong? Maybe. But maybe not — hoping that Martha Coakley wins the election today, because although the Democrats certainly can pass health care reform no matter who wins today, they might not if Scott Brown wins.

But if Scott Brown wins — as seems likely — I can see a silver lining. I don’t think a far-right tea-bagger type is likely to win a regular election in Massachusetts, so if Brown wins, he’s almost certainly a one-termer. In contrast, Martha Coakley — who has been exactly the sort of prosecutor I loathe, the sort who doesn’t give a damn about keeping innocent people in prison as long as her conviction record looks good — would probably be in the Senate until the day she dies.

(Related: The reason the Dems are in such deep shit today is mostly the economy and the usual mid-term problems. “To reinforce this point, try and list the times when the economy was in a downturn, but approval of the governing party was in an upswing. Outside of post-election honeymoons and the aftermath of the September 11th attacks, you simply are not going to find any examples. At all.”)

I really love this graphic, from National Geographic. The left side of the chart is how much each country spends on health care; the right side shows the average life expectancy in each country. The thickness of the lines indicates how many doctor visits per year the average citizen gets.

We’re just not getting good value for our money. We’re spending more than anyone, by a huge margin, but getting slightly below average results and relatively little access to doctors.

I don’t know about the rest of you, but for me the most exciting thing in the news is Perry v. Schwarzenegger, the lawsuit to overturn California’s anti-gay Proposition 8. (You can find a fairly complete background of this case in The New Yorker).

The trial began Monday, with testimony from the two couples (one lesbian, one gay) who are suing the state of California for equal treatment. On Tuesday, Harvard historian Nancy Cott testified.

First, Professor Cott provided a detailed historical account of how marriage restrictions based on race, ethnicity, and immigration status have been used “punitively” - to stigmatize and demean disfavored groups - in the same way that Prop 8 now stigmatizes same-sex couples. When these kinds of laws are enacted, she explained, many people believe they simply reflect “common sense” or God’s will. Only later is it fully apparent that they are in fact based on a failure to appreciate the full humanity of certain groups. The same is true of Prop 8.

Second, Professor Cott explained that in the past, marriage law imposed strict gender roles that sharply distinguished the legal rights and duties of wives and husbands. For example, at one time, married women were unable to sign legal documents or testify in court, because they were not considered to be individual citizens - once married, a woman had no legal identity apart from her husband. But today, the law recognizes that all adults should be given equal rights regardless of gender and should be able to choose for themselves how to allocate duties in a marriage. Because modern marriage law is gender-neutral in this way, permitting same-sex couples to marry doesn’t change the law’s basic structure.

Finally, Professor Cott showed that marriage has changed significantly over the years, and that most of those changes involve “shedding inequalities.” But the central function and purpose of marriage - to enable adults to create stable families that provide enormous benefits to the couple, to children, and to society - has endured. Professor Cott testified that based on the historical evidence, permitting same-sex couples would not undermine marriage, but instead would strengthen it. Both couples and the larger community would benefit.

Yale Professor George Chauncey also testified Tuesday; his testimony will continue Wednesday.

In the afternoon, Terri Stewart questioned Dr. George Chauncey, an expert in LGBT studies. Dr. Chauncey gave a lengthy discussion about discrimination and oppression of gay people in America.

Dr. Chauncey showed how the themes of Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaigns in the 70’s were successfully carried into the 80’s and 90’s and are the central themes of Proposition 8. He sees them as part of a continuum.

Stewart: Do you believe Prop. 8 ads perpetuate the stereotypes of the history you describe?

Chauncey: I think they do, but they are more polite than the Anita Bryant ads. Society has changed such that what you can say in polite society is different, but most striking is the image of the little girl who comes in to tell her mom that she can marry a princess. There’s a strong echo of this idea that simple exposure to gay people will lead a generation of young people to become gay.

This will be the fullest trial to date of the marriage equality issue, with both sides calling and cross-examining expert witnesses. (David Blankenhorn will be appearing for the anti-gay side.) One interesting question is whether or not the trial will be broadcast on YouTube; the Judge wants it to be, but Prop 8 proponents are trying to get the Supreme Court to forbid it. The Supreme Court has put a stay on the YouTube broadcasts, and will issue a final ruling sometime soon.

Overall, I think this lawsuit is a bad idea; it’s likely to go to the Supreme Court, and I doubt the Supreme Court (or, more accurately, Justice “swing vote” Kennedy) will vote for marriage equality. In the New Yorker, Nan Hunter (whose blog is excellent, btw) is quoted:

Nan Hunter, a law professor at Georgetown University, is skeptical about Olson and Boies’s chances. “As a purely formal matter, one could argue that Olson and Boies are correct,” Hunter said. “But invalidating roughly forty state laws that define marriage as between a man and a woman is an awfully heavy lift for the Supreme Court, and especially for Justices who take a limited role of the scope for the judiciary.” She added, “I fear that their strategy is: Ted Olson will speak, Anthony Kennedy will listen, and the earth will move. I hope I’m wrong about this—they’re excellent lawyers—but I fear, frankly, that there’s more ego than analysis in that.”

But sometimes unexpected things happen; maybe this time justice will win out. In the meanwhile, I expect the trial will be fascinating.

90 95 years ago today, the women’s suffrage movement lost an important vote in the House of Representatives. From the New York Times, January 12, 1915.

Mrs. Arthur M. Dodge, President of the National Association Opposed to Woman Suffrage, said after the vote was taken tonight:

“The deliberations of the House of Representatives today were, of course, of the greatest importance because the final vote was such as to persuade the country forever that the National Congress will not undertake to dictate to the various States what they shall do in the regulation of their franchise.

“In my opinion today’s work in the House demonstrated that from now on the wave of hysteria in which the suffragists have indulged or of which they have been the victims will be on the wane.”

Curtsy to Donkeylicious.

A new gossip book about the 2008 election has been getting lots of press for this report about Harry Reid:

He was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a “light-skinned” African American “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one,” as he said privately.

Reid has apologized for his choice of words.

I think Matt gets to the heart of the matter:

It’s good that Reid apologized, but at the same time you can’t really apologize for being the sort of person who’d be inclined to use the phrase “negro dialect” and it’s more the idea of Reid being that kind of person that’s creepy here than anything else.

Amanda thinks this shows a need for forced retirements of our more senior Senators. In contrast, Mark can’t see why people are objecting to Reid’s quote:

Other than using an old-fashioned word to refer to African-Americans (a word which was the standard word for about the first half of Reid’s life), what did Reid do wrong?

But “Negro” isn’t just “old-fashioned”; it’s a racist epithet. It’s true that a half-century ago, “negro” was commonly used by both Blacks and whites. But things have changed since then. From Wikipedia:

During the American Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, some African American leaders in the United States objected to the word, preferring Black, because they associated the word Negro with the long history of slavery, segregation, and discrimination that treated African Americans as second class citizens, or worse. During the 1960s Negro came to be considered an ethnic slur.

The term is now considered archaic and is not commonly used, and is widely considered a racist slur. The term is still used in some contexts for historical reasons such as in the name of the United Negro College Fund. or the Negro league in sports.

I don’t want to make too big a deal of this; this isn’t a judgement on Reid as a person, or an indictment of his entire character. A sincere anti-racist can slip up and have a racist moment.

Nonetheless, it is racist for white folks¹ to casually use racial slurs as part of everyday speech, and Mark’s mistaken to think otherwise. It’s not even slightly unreasonable to expect that someone who is sharp enough to be the head of the Democrats in the Senate, who is one of the most powerful people in the world, would have learned sometime in the last four or five decades to stop using the word “negro.”

1. I’m ignoring for this post the question of Black people using the word “negro” ironically, or of elderly black people using the word non-ironically, because Reid clearly isn’t in either category. (back)

In an open thread, Ron and Rob discuss the prospect of a Constitutional challenge to health care reform, and in particular to the individual mandate:

Ron: Anybody have any idea how this might turn out? I’m trying to think of anything else the government forces me to buy. I have to buy car insurance if I buy a car, but then I don’t have to buy a car and if I don’t I don’t have to buy car insurance. I’m trying to think of anything that the government forces me to buy purely for the privilege of living in the U.S. and I’m coming up short. [...]

Robert: As for how the court challenge will go - I’m inclined to think the courts will be fairly sympathetic to the individuals not wanting to make the payments. The other side’s interest amounts to “We really really want health care reform and making people buy insurance is the only way we could find to make the political deal work”. That’s good enough for legislation, but not good enough to override people’s rights.

Of course, the government isn’t going to force RonF to buy anything. My possibly mistaken recollection is that Ron has a job that includes health benefits; if so, the individual mandate wouldn’t apply to Ron. But if it did apply to Ron, Ron still wouldn’t be forced to buy health insurance; he could always elect to pay a tax instead.

The constitutional arguments about the individual mandate hinge on two questions: whether or not Congress has the authority to create an individual mandate as part of health care reform, and whether or not Congress has the authority to tax individuals in this way. In both cases, the answer seems to be yes.

Conservatives have argued that the commerce clause doesn’t give Congress the power to mandate individual’s personal decisions. Jonathan Adler, writing at the conservative legal blog Volokh Conspiracy, writes:

As much as I oppose the various health care reforms promoted by the Obama Administration and current Congressional leadership (and as much as I would like to see a more restrictive commerce clause jurisprudence), I do not find this argument particularly convincing. While I agree that the recent commerce clause cases hold that Congress may not regulate noneconomic activity, as such, they also state that Congress may reach otherwise unregulable conduct as part of an overarching regulatory scheme, where the regulation of such conduct is necessary and proper to the success of such scheme. In this case, the overall scheme would involve the regulation of “commerce” as the Supreme Court has defined it for several decades, as it would involve the regulation of health care markets. And the success of such a regulatory scheme would depend upon requiring all to participate. (Among other things, if health care reform requires insurers to issue insurance to all comers, and prohibits refusals for pre-existing conditions, then a mandate is necessary to prevent opportunistic behavior by individuals who simply wait to purchase insurance until they get sick.)

Congress’ power to tax individuals is extremely well-established.

For further reading, see Michael Dorf’s articles at FindLaw (part 1, part 2); this statement from Max Baucus; Jack Balkin on taxing authority; the general discussion at Volokh; and especially this debate between David B. Rivkin & Lee A. Casey, and Jack Balkin.

But what about the Supreme Court — couldn’t they decide health care reform is unconstitutional? Remember Bush v. Gore — it’s within the Supreme Court’s power to make transparently partisan and unprincipled decisions.

Yes, the Court could overturn health care reform. But they probably won’t. At Volokh, conservative legal scholar Ilya Somin writes:

Current Supreme Court precedent allows Congress regulate virtually anything that has even a remote connection to interstate commerce, so long as it has a “substantial effect” on it. The most recent major precedent in this field is Gonzales v. Raich, where the Court held that Congress’ power to regulate interstate commerce was broad enough to uphold a ban on the use of medical marijuana that was never sold in any market and never left the confines of the state where it was grown. This regulation was upheld under the “substantial effects” rule noted above. As I describe in great detail in this article, Raich renders Congress’ power under the substantial effects test virtually unlimited in three different ways:

1. Raich holds that Congress can regulate virtually any “economic activity,” and adopts an extraordinarily broad definition of “economic,” which according to the Court of encompasses anything that involves the “production, distribution, and consumption of commodities.”

2. Raich makes it easy for Congress to impose controls on even “non-economic” activity by claiming that it is part of a broader regulatory scheme aimed at something economic.

3. Raich adopts so-called “rational basis” test as the standard for Commerce Clause cases, holding that “[w]e need not determine whether [the] activities [being regulated], taken in the aggregate, substantially affect interstate commerce in fact, but only whether a rational basis exists for so concluding.” In legal jargon, a “rational basis” can be almost any non-completely moronic reason for believing that a particular claim might be true.

Any of these three holdings could easily justify a federal requirement forcing people to purchase health insurance.[...]

…it is highly unlikely that the Supreme Court would invalidate a major provision of the health care bill, should it pass Congress. In addition to requiring the overruling of Raich and considerable revision of other precedents, such a decision would lead to a major confrontation with Congress and the president. The Court is unlikely to pick a massive fight with a still-popular president backed by a large congressional majority. Of course, it is still possible that the Court could invalidate some minor portion of the bill on Commerce Clause grounds. But even that is unlikely so long as the majority of justices remain committed to Raich. Five of the six justices who voted with the majority in that case are still on the Court. The only exception - Justice David Souter - has been replaced by a liberal justice who is unlikely to be any more willing to impose meaningful limits on congressional power than Souter was.

Even if you don’t buy that the Court would be unwilling to pick a major fight with the other two branches — or even if you don’t buy that Obama is still popular, or that Democrats will continue to hold a significant majority in Congress¹ — it’s still unlikely that a Court with five justices who voted for Raich plus Sotomeyor, will overturn Raich.

1. And by the way, if you’d like to discuss these questions, please take them to an open thread. (back)

Over on his home blog, Jeff has some good news:

Basically, everything is going as well as I could hope so far. Yes, surgery is painful and not fun, but I knew that going in, and it’s not debilitating. And I got Vicodin, just like Vikings quarterback Brett Favre used to be addicted to, so that’s cool. The surgery itself appears to have done exactly what it was supposed to with no complications, so that’s great.

The better news, however, is that the CT scan that they did on me last week appears to be clear. That doesn’t mean the cancer hasn’t spread, but there’s only about a 15% chance that it has, and that means I can likely avoid chemotherapy, at least at first.

So yay!

In other news, David Ellis Dickerson of “Greeting Card Emergency” fame — whose new book, House of Cards, was recently reviewed on “Alas” — provides this video:

(And here’s David’s post accompanying the video. Thanks, David!)

From the blog Alienated Conclusions, and via Shadow and Act, which in turn was via Womanist Musings:

What if suddenly, instantly, the power of white femininity were transferred to black women?

The answer is clear: Black women would represent value, purity; and based on their natural traits would be worthy of protection and instantly become the objects of universal desire. White women would represent the opposite.

“Beauty tar potion” would become globally popular to get the “black look.” “Dove” would be replaced with a black soap called “Raven” to help exfoliate the skin and bring out subtle hints of melanin.

White female features would be declared violent. Their “jagged” thin lips, “knife sharp” noses, and “harsh” jaw lines would be nature’s way of expressing why men have a natural preference for the soft features of black women. Soft lips, soft cheekbones, and soft, round noses would be proof of natural femininity. Full, pink lips and large, dark eyes would become associated with virginal black girls whose purity must not be compromised. Black female features would thus be said to represent youth.

Straight, blond hair would be considered “wild and unruly” because when the wind blew, it did not stay in place. Women with naturally straight hair would hide their “unruly” and “wild” stick-straight hair in public. The desire for “lightweight hair” that defied gravity would permanently end the use of blow dryers. Keeping one’s natural blond hair wild and straight would become indicative of a political statement.

The anti-aging properties of black female skin combined with soft, curvy bodies would be proof of the overall reproductive health of black women. Scientists would argue that black women were naturally preferred as long term mates and mothers because they were “healthier.”

There’s more at the original post.

Clicktrigger in the comments at Shadow And Act added some more (click over to read all her suggestions):

…there’d be a whole new kind of nose job.

…the default colors for underwear would be black, brown and tan. Dead-white bras would barely even exist. You’d have to order those off the internet or something. And black cotton panties would be a symbol of feminine innocence.

…the irreversible skin-darkening (and iris-browning) caused by the prescription drug Latisse would go from being a heavily downplayed, barely-mentioned negative side effect to being the primary selling point. It would be sold OTC, with little to no regulation or FDA input. Everyone would just shrug and say “why would anyone put that dangerous stuff on their skin/in their eyes?!” even as dark skin and brown eyes are aggressively promoted as the ideal. [...]

…the meanings of certain words would change. “Fair” would simply mean “light-colored.” The “beautiful” meaning would fall out of use, and the archaic word “ebon” would come back to replace it. Poets would pine for their muses with “ah, she was so ebon, so ebon!” (We’d also go back to using the word “just” instead of “fair.” Kids would whine, “He got more than me! That’s unjust!”)

From the LA Times:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton won praise in June after pushing to extend many federal benefits traditionally provided to diplomats’ spouses to gay and lesbian partners.

Since then, unmarried heterosexual couples have been lining up to ask for benefits too. They have approached the State Department’s personnel office and the diplomats’ union, arguing that they are entitled to equal treatment. At least one couple has threatened to challenge the rules in court as discriminatory.

The U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which is responsible for policy on federal workers, is weighing such an extension of benefits, U.S. officials say — to the consternation of conservatives.

This is predictable. If same sex couples cannot marry, then “marriage-light” policies have to be created for same-sex couples. But why should “marriage-light” policies exclude heterosexual couples?

Marriage laws, fundamentally, are how we turn someone unrelated to us, into our legally recognized closest relative in the world. I don’t think that purpose is undermined by opening marriage lite provisions to straight couples.¹ However, there’s no doubt that conservatives who oppose equality for gay people do see marriage lite laws as diluting marriage, which makes it ironic that their actions make the continued growth of marriage lite arrangements inevitable.

In somewhat related news, the DC group Full Equality Now! has walked back its initial opposition to anti-gay ads on public buses (which they now say was just a draft), after the Gay and Lesbian Activists Alliance and the ACLU stood up for the free speech rights of anti-gay groups. Good for GLAA and the ACLU, and good for FEN! for being willing to back off their mistake (even if they did it a little ungracefully).

Hat tips to Marriage Debate.

1. Although I can see a disadvantage to having a multiplicity of marriage and marriage-lite laws; the more such laws there are, the less they will be universally understood, which makes them less useful. (back)

Shorter Naomi Seligman: “Fashion magazines, designers, and talk show hosts are too supportive of fat people, and should do more to make fat people feel like crap.”

More goodness in her post: A funny fat pun in the post title. Because that hasn’t been done a zillion times before. I bet that if she wrote a post about comics, it would be called “pow! Zing! Comics!” or something like that.

And the idea that people who are fat-positive are making money off fat people. It’s true, in the sense that anyone who appears on TV or in a magazine, and is paid for it, is making money. But the money to be made telling fat people that they suck is exponentially larger.

2010.01.02, or if you prefer, 01-02-2010. It’s one of only 331 palindronic dates in the YYYY-MM-DD (or MM-DD-YYYY) format. The next one will be on November 2, 2011; after that, there won’t be another until February 2, 2020. The next one to take place in January will take place a bit over a century from now.

Just mentioning.  Consider this an open thread.