February 10, 2015

WaPo columnist says it's "trivial to compare" Roy Moore's trying to stop gay marriage in Alabama to George Wallace's blocking the door to racial integration at the University of Alabama.

But which way is it trivial? I couldn't believe the columnist Philip Bump could possibly say that what Moore is doing is a much bigger deal than what Wallace did, to the point where anyone just saying they are at the same level was being trivial, and Bump's convoluted verbosity makes it especially hard to see what one finds hard to believe. But I slogged through it, and I survived to report that Bump actually thinks Moore's resistance to the federal court requirement that Alabama immediately issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples is a far bigger deal that Wallace's resistance to integration.

Bump's hard-to-understand argument has to do with Obama's reelection in 2012 and the Republican victories in 2014.
Moore's move is very much in the "states' rights" vein of the 1960s, a 10th Amendment argument that's seen a renaissance in the era of a president who is deeply unpopular with Republicans. But it's hard to point to Moore's action as being simply Wallace redux when you consider the national picture. Boehner and McConnell are necessarily arguing for the primacy of local priorities, representing states and districts, not the whole country. In those places, Obama is so unpopular among their constituents that 66 percent of Republicans opposed working with Obama in the wake of last year's election; the response to his actions was similarly predictable. For the next two years, we have a Congress that was elected by Americans to be Republican and a president that was elected to be Democratic. Moore's battle is with the Supreme Court, hardly an arm of the Obama administration, but the political fervor he's likely to leverage echoes the strains in national politics.
Sorry to call attention to something so badly slapped together and so blatantly partisan in the bemoaning of partisanship, but I think the utter badness of the column deserves some attention.

I was surprised to see that Roy Moore was back on the Alabama Supreme Court. He got kicked out back in '03 over that 10 Commandments business. I hadn't noticed — or I'd forgotten — that he got elected to the position again in 2012. If it weren't for the reappearance of Moore, I would have passed by this topic — the same-sex topic of the week. There are so many of these states, falling one by one, to the seemingly inevitable consequences of earlier constitutional law decisions. I see the headlines, but, even though I've been blogging profusely about same-sex marriage since early 2004, I don't feel the call to blog every new state that finds itself subject to a judicial ruling. But Moore kicked up some resistance, and he's getting attention in the style that made him famous back in the simpler times, when passions swirled rather innocuously around 10 Commandments monuments, which no one gets heated up about anymore.

And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

Meanwhile, "Clarence Thomas faults Supreme Court for refusing to block gay marriage in Alabama."
“This acquiescence may well be seen as a signal of the Court’s intended resolution of that question,” Thomas wrote in a dissent from the court’s order refusing to stay the weddings. “This is not the proper way to discharge our . . . responsibilities.”

He was joined by one other justice, Antonin Scalia, in saying the court should agree to postpone the weddings until the justices hear the same-sex-marriage case in April and rule by the end of their term in June.
Do we need any more "signal[s] of the Court’s intended resolution of that question"?

99 comments:

Patrick Henry was right! said...

Professor, two comments: 1) that's what lefties said about Roe v Wade, everyone will just get over it. They were wrong and we have have 50 years of national strife that was never necessary. 2) Many, many people are still fired up about the 10 Commandments line of cases, along wiht the entire tyranny of the federal judiciary problem. You should get out and meet real people and lawyers more often.

mikee said...

The government's interest in promotion of marriage has conflicts with its promotion of dependency on government. Which will win? I bet on dependency interests overcoming any and all obstacles to government supremacy in the lives of citizens. And gay marriage isn't even a piece of gum in the road, much less a speedbump, in that direction.

So we can have both gay marriage (yay, freedom!) and total dependence on government (make that gay wedding cake and like it, you peasants!).

I Have Misplaced My Pants said...

People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have, and life will go on.

If this were all there were to it, sure.

But it's not.

People who don't clap loudly enough have been, are, and will continue to be punished for their thoughtcrime.

You discuss gay marriage frequently, and express frustration and contempt for those who have reservations, and yet don't pay consistent attention to this EXTREMELY important aspect of the debate.

Very very very few gay marriage opponents of whom I am aware give two shits what happens in someone else's house or backyard or wedding chapel.

The problem, as has been explained to you approximately twenty trillion times, is when those who would prefer to ignore it, not participate, withhold their approval, are not free to do so.


Laslo Spatula said...

When IHOP now has Criss-Croissants I think the cow is pretty much out of the barn on gay marriage.

I am Laslo.

traditionalguy said...

IMO that 10 years has already passed by over the last 10 months. Gay people "being married" or not being married interests no one that has thought about it anymore.

I guess the Alabama folks miss having themselves a Lost Cause to create drama over.

Laslo Spatula said...

Will a cake-maker be forced one day to make Bruce Jenner a "Happy New Vagina" cake?

I just figure cake-makers are the new canary in the frosting.

I am Laslo.

MadisonMan said...

By 'trivial' the columnist means he doesn't have to think at all and he can knock off this column in 15 minutes and get down early to his favorite bar for a drink.

Tank said...

And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

And everyone will still know that gay marriage is not the same as marriage marriage.


The difference with the abortion issue is that the abortion issue is actually important.

MadisonMan said...

And everyone will still know that gay marriage is not the same as marriage marriage.

Which is another argument for Government to get out of the marriage-sanctioning business.

If I were King for a day, all marriage licenses from the State would be henceforth be called Civil Union Licenses. You want a Marriage License? Talk to your church.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past...

For some reason the phrase slouching towards Gomorrah just slouched through my brain.

SeanF said...

MadisonMan: If I were King for a day, all marriage licenses from the State would be henceforth be called Civil Union Licenses. You want a Marriage License? Talk to your church.

Do you think such a set-up would have prevented that gay couple from suing that bakery for refusing to bake their cake for them?

Balfegor said...

And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

I think that depends very heavily on whether space remains for private citizens to preserve their traditional understanding of marriage. If they are not, and legal recognition of gay marriages is followed by soft and hard legal compulsion that private citizens must valorize gay marriages on an equal footing with traditional marriages, I think we are in for decades of conflict. And it's obvious already that "live and let live" is not the outcome the activists are pushing for.

Saint Croix said...

some of the people will be gay, as they always have been

I think this is rhetorical excess not justified by scientific inquiry.

Bob Boyd said...

"People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on."

Wouldn't that be great.
But politicians never give up on a wedge issue. And activists are never going to go back to a "regular job."
War On Women and Black Lives Matter being two recent examples.

Brando said...

I agree with Ann--this issue is going away, partly because the people who care most about gay marriage are the gays who want to marry, and the antis are increasingly fall into the "it doesn't affect me so who cares" camp. Unlike abortion, you don't have a discussion about whether human lives are being murdered or women are being forced to go through with pregnancies.

Where there will still be a fight, though, is in the private sector "nondiscrimination" fights--whether venues will have to offer services to gay weddings on the same basis as traditional, etc. But I think the issue of whether government should acknowledge gay marriages in the first place will fade away.

Jason said...

I don't think business owners bankrupted by the gay protofascist movement seeking to make examples of observant Christians and others who don't want to bake their custom cakes for them will look back and see it as trivial.

Bankruptcies stay on individual credit reports for ten years and in public records forever.

tim in vermont said...

Doesn't Alabama know that resistance is futile to cultural imperialism?

tim in vermont said...

If I were King for a day, all marriage licenses from the State would be henceforth be called Civil Union Licenses. You want a Marriage License? Talk to your church.

Me too.

Laslo Spatula said...

Some people have a stick in their ass over this; others, a penis.

I am laslo.

MadisonMan said...

Do you think such a set-up would have prevented that gay couple from suing that bakery for refusing to bake their cake for them?

Anyone can sue anyone else. Would it prevented people who feel slighted, whether they are or not? I doubt it.

Could the bakery say "We don't make Wedding Cakes but have a dy-no-mite selection of Civil Union Cakes" and have everyone be happy?

Of course, to wed has a long non-religious history of use, so I'm not sure if Wedding Cakes could refer only to religious marriages.

Brando said...

"Doesn't Alabama know that resistance is futile to cultural imperialism?"

How is it cultural imperialism to require the government to make no distinction between gay and traditional marriages? Using the government to favor one over the other would be cultural imperialism.

Hell, if you want to be truly neutral and open minded about it, make it so the government doesn't define "marriage" at all. Let people's churches decide, and if they don't like it, take it up with their church or form their own church. We should be questioning why government should be involved in this at all.

MadisonMan said...

I need to wake up. Too many typos and omissions this morning.

Jason said...

If governors punt on marriage licenses, the gays will begin suing churches. It's already starting.

If that doesn't work immediately, they will start trying to craft public accommodations laws that will allow it.

Meanwhile, corrupt democrats and gay/lesbian IRS employees will put the kibosh on suspect churches' tax-exempt status applications while letting the UUs and "Thenter for Thpiritual Living" applications fly by.

Jason said...

Governments are involved in it because marriage has tax implications.

Every additional dollar of tax deductions granted to a same sex marriage is a tax expenditure, right, libtards?

I still haven't seen a cost estimate from those hypocrites.

Caroline said...

"...but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on."
Not so much -- because gay marriage means dismantling the legal scaffolding built to protect children by binding the man and woman who created them to each other for the mutual benefit of all. We're now advancing the proposition that biological ties are irrelevant to human flourishing, and thus exchanging the truth for a lie. Because there exist exceptions to this norm -- as have always existed -- we now propose that the exception should become the norm. This is just like Roe v Wade...the idea that sexual complementarity is an insignificant feature of marriage and family life is utter fantasy.

Saint Croix said...

The argument that gay people are born that way is a political calculation. It was done to copy the civil rights movement. They have hijacked the language of the civil rights movement, which of course is annoying to people.

What if it's not true, though? What if there are no gay babies, and homosexuality is just another behavior on a range of sexual behaviors?

Are you going to have to punish scientists who investigate the question? Because if your political regime is based on a lie, you have to protect the lie.

What I've noticed with these cultural wars is that a tremendous amount of denial, censorship, and repression goes along with it. You have to censor the pictures of aborted babies. You have to force the wedding photographers to go to the gay wedding.

Peter said...

In order to claim an equivalence between racial integration and gay marriage, you must assume that an individual's sex is no more biologically relevant than an individual's race.

BUT you can't really do that, can you? After all, sex is a biological essential, an irreducible characteristic of reproduction, whereas definitions of what constitutes a "race" are inherently arbitrary.

Balfegor said...

Re: Brando:

How is it cultural imperialism to require the government to make no distinction between gay and traditional marriages? Using the government to favor one over the other would be cultural imperialism.

That is not what cultural imperialism is -- cultural imperialism has nothing to do with your view of the merits of the underlying culture. It's about one group using its power to suppress the culture of another group. I think banning slavery is great! But it was clearly cultural imperialism for the Royal Navy to effect a ban on the slave trade in the early 19th century. It was cultural imperialism both when the Empire of Japan pressured late Joseon Korea to ban slavery, and when the Empire of Japan pressured Koreans to adopt Japanese names and abandon their Korean language. In either case, the Japanese exercised their power to suppress longstanding practices of Korean society.

If the population of a state want their government to recognize only traditional marriages and ignore gay marriages, that reflects the culture of the region. Forcing them to adopt alien cultural categories -- especially if you think those cultural categories are neutral and can't even see how they're not -- is the essence of cultural imperialism.

Unknown said...

MadisonMan , "Anyone can sue anyone else" is a pitiful canard. Else the U.S. government would be inundated with law suits over (you pick a subject).

tim in vermont said...

How is it cultural imperialism to require the government to make no distinction between gay and traditional marriages?

So you live your life completely free of value judgments then? Ha ha ha ha! What if I said that absolute human liberty included, for example, a right to make an agreement between consenting adults that one would work for the other below minimum wage? That would be fine with you too? If so, you are in a tiny minority of the movement to impose gay "marriage."

The lack of any kind of serious introspection from so many commenters is a constant source of amusement to me.

Balfegor said...

Re: Peter:

BUT you can't really do that, can you? After all, sex is a biological essential, an irreducible characteristic of reproduction, whereas definitions of what constitutes a "race" are inherently arbitrary.

My dear fellow, have you been paying attention? Sex is now whatever one wants it to be. A man can decide to be a woman if he likes, and once he's decided to call himself a woman you'll be pilloried for using the male pronoun. It's quite arbitrary these days, though a certain cohort of feminists is mounting a desperate last ditch resistance against this reduction ad absurdum of modern mores.

Also, as activists are fond of pointing out, maybe 1 in 20,000 men is born with an XX chromosome pair. Or maybe it was 1 in 20,000 people with an XY turns out physiologically female? I forget. And there are in any event sterile men and barren women. The existence of an exception to these "absolute" biological categories, howsoever infinitesimally small it may be, obviously invalidates the notion of such categories completely and how could you ever think otherwise? Everything is socially constructed, dear boy, everything.

We are through the looking glass now.

Marc in Eugene said...

I think AA is wrong here, and that in fact the imposition of this new 'marriage' regime by the judiciary will result in a (perhaps slowly growing) mountain of unintended consequences that will eventually result in its being discarded. I hope we are all here in ten years to discuss recent history. :-)

Guildofcannonballs said...

Perhaps a cheap way to avoid any moral culpability, or perhaps intelligent to a high degree, is the avoidance of any speculation of the consequences of an action or group of actions.

Hear no, speak no, say no: Who can blame you for the unintended, unforeseen, and unpredictable? No one, that's who.

The real question is why are right-wingers enraged homicidal maniacs now, unlike before, while at the same time Democrats keep trying to offer compromise and work toward the pragmatic middle on issue after issue?

Why are the wing nuts so damn polarized after Bush v. Gore? Why don't wing nuts treat Obama with the same respect Democrats showed President Bush 43? What causes the bitter-clinging out-of-control hatred on the right?

Saint Croix said...

I worked at a law firm with a lesbian who was getting married. This was 1999. Very nice woman, always smiling. Anyway, she asked me if she should circulate a wedding announcement in our workplace. I'm not sure why she asked me, probably because I speak my mind all the time. I said, "Sure, why not?" And she said, "I don't know, some of the attorneys are religious." And I said, "Well, worst case, they won't sign it."

I was happy to sign it. I like her, she's nice. She didn't invite me to the wedding, but I probably would have gone if she did. I like lesbians more than gay men, sue me.

tim in vermont said...

I like lesbians too. Their sexuality is often pliable, and sometimes they bring their friends.

Oso Negro said...

Althouse said And I know this will bother some of you, but I think it's pretty obvious that in 10 years, we'll look back on the swirl of passion over same-sex marriage as something even more of the past than getting heated up over 10 Commandments monuments. People will be living their private lives, as they always have, and some of the people will be gay, as they always have been, and life will go on.

Or we will be shaking our heads at state-mandated homosexual studies, plus experiential learning, for elementary school children and wishing we had stuffed this all back in the closet when we had a chance. Homosexuality is one variant of the great continuum of human sexuality. Why this particular perversion must be celebrated in our culture makes no sense to me.

Steve M. Galbraith said...

This isn't about private behavior this is whether the government - us - will publicly recognize for legal purposes a same sex marriage.

It's the force recognition, using the coercive powers of the state, of SSM.

I support that recognition but to characterize it simply as private behavior is absurd.

To use Isaiah Berlin's distinction, this is not negative liberty this is positive liberty. The government expands and increases it reach and not decreases.

That is what upsets people. It's not just private behavior.

And again, I support recognizing SSM but the way this is being done is troubling.

SeanF said...

MadisonMan: Anyone can sue anyone else. Would it prevented people who feel slighted, whether they are or not? I doubt it.

Could the bakery say "We don't make Wedding Cakes but have a dy-no-mite selection of Civil Union Cakes" and have everyone be happy?

Of course, to wed has a long non-religious history of use, so I'm not sure if Wedding Cakes could refer only to religious marriages.


In other words, your "solution" would't resolve any of the disagreements that are being had today. What kind of solution is that?

Ann Althouse said...

"Professor, two comments: 1) that's what lefties said about Roe v Wade, everyone will just get over it. They were wrong and we have have 50 years of national strife that was never necessary."

I would distinguish that because: 1. Roe v. Wade came much more suddenly preempting a political and social process that has taken place with same-sex marriage, 2. This who believe abortion murders an innocent baby have reason to fight forever, so the live and let live (or just try to persuade sinners to turn to the good) doesn't work for abortion.

"2) Many, many people are still fired up about the 10 Commandments line of cases, along wiht the entire tyranny of the federal judiciary problem. You should get out and meet real people and lawyers more often."

Law people fired up about legal precedents isn't what I'm talking about. The point is the monuments are there and, basically, what Justice Breyer said in Van Orden made practical sense to practical people. Politicos and ideologues aren't grandstanding about those monuments anymore. They've moved on to new hobbyhorses.

n.n said...

Selective exclusion or principled tolerance. And people think it's a religious (i.e. moral) issue. Well, it is. And the unqualified progress is irreconcilable.

tim in vermont said...

Can a baker be forced to put a cross, for example, on a cake for a gay wedding? Or a crescent moon or scimitar for that matter?

Ann Althouse said...

As for the "entire tyranny of the federal judiciary problem"... you sound like you think the Supreme Court required the monument to be ripped out. It didn't.

Ann Althouse said...

Moore's monument did have to go.

K in Texas said...

Many of the comments here have said (I'm paraphrasing here) things like gay marriage will dismantle the legal scaffold protecting children, or otherwise harm straight marriages. If someone could explain how/why gay marriage would do this? I'm not attacking anyone or demeaning anyone's position, this is an honest question.

buwaya said...

Althouse is right, in ten years this will seem like nothing. Unfortunately it will be because in ten years things will have slid so much further downhill.
This has always been, like the 10 commandments thing, a largely symbolic issue.
In this case it is a symbol of cultural rot. Abandonment of children, duty, and the future for the sake of immediate pleasure. Anti-gay marriage was always about stopping the rot. Gay marriage, an absurdity, was deemed normal by an alliance of powers with frivolous people, and they made everyone else accept nonsense as virtue. It is clear their opponents are no longer sufficiently powerful to keep order and impose duty.
The future is decline and barrenness. You already see this in collapsing US birthrates and marriage rates. These trends have greatly accelerated recently, especially among the wealthy and educated.

Saint Croix said...

I like lesbians too. Their sexuality is often pliable, and sometimes they bring their friends.

I think many women and men are responding to gay marriage in sex-specific ways. Women are thinking about love and marriage, while men are thinking about sex.

I'm basing this on a conversation I had with a woman, very traditional, nice Christian lady who supports gay marriage. And she asked me why I was opposed to love and marriage. And I told her, "It's not just love. There's also cunnilingus." And she said, "yuck."

She's thinking relationships, I'm thinking sex. My reaction is very sex-specific. Her reaction is more metaphysical, spiritual, and rather oblivious to the reality of it.

And she might be right, that's the funny part. But I got my lizard brain, so there.

MadisonMan said...

If they've been putting crosses on cakes in the past, I would suspect that they could be expected to continue to do so for a wedding between two same-sex partners. Is that the same as 'forced'? It depends on how pain-in-the-ass the client is.

I suspect a person who wants everything just so on their cake right down to the presence of a cross/moon/scimitar on a cake for a same-sex wedding is a royal pain for a lot of reasons unrelated to their pending same-sex nuptials. Reason #145 that I'm not a professional baker: People who are unhappy no matter what.

I would suggest any baker keep track of all interactions with a client so a paper trail that demonstrates the PITAiness is available should a lawsuit occur.

Titus said...

I was surprised by the Supreme Court vote-7-2.

tits.

Rae said...

The thing about same-sex marriage is that it's proponents want discriminating against behavior treated as if it were the same as discriminating against a race.

I fully expect that in 1-2 years, when the same-sex marriage advocates have been mostly victorious, there will be a big push to force churches to marry homosexuals. Because discrimination.

Somebody will say the 1st amendment will prevent that - and I will laugh, and wonder where they've been the last decade or so.

Wince said...

One lasting consequence would be if sexual orientation were to become a suspect or quasi-suspect classification with heightened scrutiny with respect to all constitutional issues.

What's the likelihood of that being the case?

RAH said...

Marriage predates the Constitution so I have an issue with a judge redefining marriage. I think the judicial branch has no authority and the authority to define marriage rests withe state legislatures

Titus said...

Mass has had gay marriage for over 10 years-we are pioneers!

It was a big deal back then, but no one gives a shit now-at least here.

Alabama may take another decade or two.

I mean they just legalized inter racial marriage only recently.

MadisonMan said...

there will be a big push to force churches to marry homosexuals.

Churches already marry homosexuals.

buwaya said...

I am in a curious position of, as a foreigner, living among a tribe I admire so much, seeing it in a time of inexplicable self destruction.
I am a spectator to an ongoing calamity, watching from a safe spot (there are lots of my own people, and many more on the way, no fear) right in the center (San Francisco) of the disaster. For most of the proper American people I know, there is no next generation. They are the last of their line, continuity is broken, what was greatness will never be seen again. Other people will come, and are coming to replace them, but they are not the same, or as great. Mine own have their qualities, but they aren't in the same league.
The frustrating part is the reason for this extermination isn't some physical disaster or annihilating enemy, fought with courage, but just a personal and social inability to breed. I can walk down the street, see a person, and know with near certainty that he is the last of his kind. Its a frustratingly dishonorable way to go.

buwaya said...

I am in a curious position of, as a foreigner, living among a tribe I admire so much, seeing it in a time of inexplicable self destruction.
I am a spectator to an ongoing calamity, watching from a safe spot (there are lots of my own people, and many more on the way, no fear) right in the center (San Francisco) of the disaster. For most of the proper American people I know, there is no next generation. They are the last of their line, continuity is broken, what was greatness will never be seen again. Other people will come, and are coming to replace them, but they are not the same, or as great. Mine own have their qualities, but they aren't in the same league.
The frustrating part is the reason for this extermination isn't some physical disaster or annihilating enemy, fought with courage, but just a personal and social inability to breed. I can walk down the street, see a person, and know with near certainty that he is the last of his kind. Its a frustratingly dishonorable way to go.

Saint Croix said...

Many of the comments here have said (I'm paraphrasing here) things like gay marriage will dismantle the legal scaffold protecting children, or otherwise harm straight marriages. If someone could explain how/why gay marriage would do this? I'm not attacking anyone or demeaning anyone's position, this is an honest question.

I think there will be serious problems with lesbians and sperm donors, and gay men and uterus-rentals. Men and women having sex and a baby are in nature. We are using technology to help homosexuals reproduce (while simultaneously scarring people's bodies so they will never reproduce, which is what a "sex change" operation is).

I think it's a common human behavior to try to play God. We can't resist the idea of trying to change the universe. Some of us want two men to reproduce, or two women to reproduce. We might say this insatiable drive we have to discover, to create, to control, is a good thing. But it also creates a lot of problems.

I don't think babies are well served by these new definitions of marriage. I think over tens of thousands of years we should have learned by now that family is important, and babies need mothers and fathers.

But, as Tank pointed out, a less-than-optimal family arrangement is nothing compared to a baby getting a knife in the neck. Compared to Roe v. Wade, this is minor stuff.

buwaya said...

Are you the last of your kind, Titus?
What comes after you?
Where is your tribe and kin?

K in Texas said...

Saint Croix, thank you for your response. I have a few more questions (not directed just to Saint Croix). On the issue of technology and reproduction, hasn't that "horse already left the barn"? Artificial insemination, surrogates, in-vitro fertilization, egg donation, are already out there. These technologies were developed for couples that couldn't otherwise have children. So, is it wrong for straight couples to use these techniques? And if a straight two parent home is the best for raising children, then should we not also ban single people from adopting children, or single straight women from using artificial insemination?

buwaya said...

What strikes a third worlder like me, on first walking the proper residential streets of San Francisco, is emptiness. There are no people, more specifically, there are no children, which elsewhere can be expected to be out playing in the sunshine. It is eerie. They do exist of course, but they are, most of them, carefully packed away like fragile, precious eggs. Because that's what they are really, being very very few.

Saint Croix said...

These technologies were developed for couples that couldn't otherwise have children. So, is it wrong for straight couples to use these techniques?

I think if we were more upfront and honest with people, they would have babies when they are younger, and we wouldn't have this mad desperation in your late 30's.

Brando said...

"So you live your life completely free of value judgments then? Ha ha ha ha! What if I said that absolute human liberty included, for example, a right to make an agreement between consenting adults that one would work for the other below minimum wage? That would be fine with you too? If so, you are in a tiny minority of the movement to impose gay "marriage.""

I have no problem with consenting adults agreeing to any wage for which they want to work. Maybe some pro-gay marriage folks are fine with heavy handed government, but don't include me in those ranks.

I still don't see why it IMPOSES gay marriage to prevent the state from determining that only traditional marriages are deserving of special benefits.

Caroline said...

K in Colorado, you are right, the horse has left the barn , with regard to reproductive technology. You're also correct to assume that those of us who oppose third party reproduction/art also oppose its use among heterosexual couples, for the same reasons: it places the desires of adults above the needs of a child-- the right of a child to know and be raised by the man and woman who created it.
Of course, this ideal isn't always possible -- and adoption makes the best of a broken situation. But to willfully deprive a child of knowing his biological parent is an injustice to the child, whether committed by heteros or homosexual couples.
ART renders the child into an object of desire, instead of a "gift" bestowed by nature or via adoption. The minute gay "marriage" is the law of the land, the "right" to have a child will follow close behind. This will involve making legal accommodations to ensure that language referencing "mother" and "father" are obliterated from birth certificates. Another factor is the growing consumer market for babies...further objectifying the unborn, and exploiting 3rd world women to use as "breeders." I hope readers here will take a moment to read some of the stories at the blog, "My Daddy's Name is Donor." The psychological burdens inflicted on such children are worth pondering. Apparently their biggest fear is becoming attracted to and marrying a sibling by mistake. Many of them wonder why they were permitted to come to term, when their "siblings" were discarded as unnecessary embryos.
The unique new problem posed by the gay marriage fiat is that the natural family must move off the stage as an ideal...and the exceptions seen as normal. Biological ties, masculine or feminine nature, these are now consigned to social irrelevance. This redefinition affects every family. It isn't all rainbows and unicorns.

Brando said...

"Forcing them to adopt alien cultural categories -- especially if you think those cultural categories are neutral and can't even see how they're not -- is the essence of cultural imperialism."

That's just it though--no one is really being "forced". (I'm not talking about legally requiring a pastor to perform a ceremony he objects to, or requiring the sale of a wedding cake--those are different matters) How is any private citizen in say Iowa forced into anything simply because their state can no longer ban gay marriages? I'm not seeing why this bothers so many people, unless it's more a matter of not liking the idea of leftists getting a victory of sorts.

Saint Croix said...

How is it cultural imperialism to require the government to make no distinction between gay and traditional marriages?

You are imposing an idea that there is no rational distinction between gay people and straight people. But there is a rational distinction. Straight people reproduce and have babies. This is a fundamental and important issue, the reproduction of our species.

I believe the sex impulse is a reproductive impulse, throughout the animal kingdom. We are humans and we have free will. But we're also animals with an innate and biological desire to reproduce. This is why heterosexuality is the norm.

You're imagining a state that is oblivious to gender, oblivious to sex. You imagine that will be a better state than the one we currently have. But these ideas are divorced from human experience. Every human being had a mother and a father. Respect that scientific reality, and have a little disdain for the master planners who have a better idea about how the world should be.

Saint Croix said...

good thread, by the way

Brando said...

"You are imposing an idea that there is no rational distinction between gay people and straight people."

Again though--where does the "imposing" come in if the state simply got out of the "we decide what a marriage is" business? Or at least the state determined that it would not distinguish which couplings were considered "marriages" under the law?

Unless the very existence of legal unions (or call them "marriages") of which you don't approve is an "imposition" on you, I really don't see how you're being forced one way or another.

Normally it's the Left that wants to use the force of the state to dictate what others do, and in such cases it's quite correct to lament their imposition on the private rights of others. I find this role revevrsal baffling.

Titus said...

"Are you the last of your kind, Titus?
What comes after you?
Where is your tribe and kin?"

I actually am the last of my kin. On my dad's side all my cousins are girls. I am the only male-so my Family's name ends with me.

My Grandma and Grandpa had Alzheimer's and didn't know much-but when I visited they always asked if I had a son yet....

Marty Keller said...

Buwaya puti said:

Althouse is right, in ten years this will seem like nothing. Unfortunately it will be because in ten years things will have slid so much further downhill.

This has always been, like the 10 commandments thing, a largely symbolic issue.

In this case it is a symbol of cultural rot. Abandonment of children, duty, and the future for the sake of immediate pleasure. Anti-gay marriage was always about stopping the rot. Gay marriage, an absurdity, was deemed normal by an alliance of powers with frivolous people, and they made everyone else accept nonsense as virtue. It is clear their opponents are no longer sufficiently powerful to keep order and impose duty.


As a native-born gay man, I must agree with this observation. At first I believed that I should have the civil right to marry the man of my dreams, and wondered what idiot could possibly disagree with this.

But as the debate wore on, because I am both a proud conservative and a classical liberal, I remained open to the arguments of the opponents, since they came from people I respected. I came to see that the proponents were disdainful of the concerns about the long-term impact on social support for the family, still the essential building block of human culture. I came to recognize what buwaya puti recognizes, that there is another game being played here, and that that game is a heinous one.

It is the New Left postmodernist determination to root out all the improvements brought about by the modern dignifying the individual over the tribe. In the name of "progress," this cohort of our fellow humans has set out to retribalize society by repressing individual freedom and liberty.

Many of the Althouse commentariat see this clearly. I believe that in the long run of human evolution such stupidity will be corrected by humanity's desire for transcendence, but as always the price tag for giving in to our fears will be tremendous.

Unknown said...

Bump's column evidently typifies the moral equivalence common to what passes for critical thinking on the left today.

buwaya said...

Titus, that is very sad. I don't know if you see it that way, but it really is.

I don't want to seem like I was responding merely for the sake of argument.

I don't know how young you are, but if you are on the good side of 50-ish there is probably still some way to remedy this. I urge you to have a good think about it, and consider things outside the usual for you.

ken in tx said...

Here is some information I believe to betrue from a trusted source in Alabama.

1. Justice Moore is not the boss of county probate judges in Alabama. They are locally elected officials, and short of an official court order, enforceable by a contempt of court citation, he can't order them to do or not do anything.

2. Probate judges are not required to issue marriage licenses to anyone, it is totally discretionary.

3. You do not need a marriage license in Alabama to get married. You can have any kind of ceremony you want and present documentary proof to the state dept of vital statistics, and they will register your marriage.

4. You do not have to do even that. Alabama is a common law marriage state. If you have ever held yourselves out as a married couple, you are married. If you break up, you have to get a divorce.

Lastly, Alabama did not even have marriage licenses until 1926.

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

Because people stopped caring about abortion by 1983.

Maybe we'll shrug and move one, maybe not.

mtrobertsattorney said...

If the proponents of same-sex marriage are convinced that they have the support of the great majority of Americans, then why not let the political process play out and let each state decide the question for themselves?

By the way, of all the states that now permit same-sex marriage, how many arrived at this position by democratic vote, and how many have had this new policy imposed on them by judicial fiat?

Saint Croix said...

Again though--where does the "imposing" come in if the state simply got out of the "we decide what a marriage is" business?

If five unelected attorneys impose it, it's imposing.

hombre said...

A respectable argument can be made that the Equal Protection Clause can be satisfied by civil unions without disturbing the statutory priorities of the states regarding marriage.

Of course, that will not suffice for the "gay rights" crowd. The idea is that holy matrimony be supplanted by cornholy matrimony. Obviously, if "matrimony" includes homosexual unions, it can no longer be considered holy.

In the world of the secular progressive we can no more have "holy" than we can have heroes.

hombre said...

mtroberts wrote: "If the proponents of same-sex marriage are convinced that they have the support of the great majority of Americans, ....?"

They aren't convinced of that. It is just a lie that the mediaswine help perpetuate. It's lefty taqiyya.

Saint Croix said...

A respectable argument can be made that the Equal Protection Clause can be satisfied by civil unions

It's so weird to say that sex discrimination is just like race discrimination. Do we need to have "strict scrutiny" when it comes to sex and human reproduction? Are we really to insist that noticing (and respecting) sex difference is malign? It seems so bizarre to me, particularly when 99.99% of us, including gay people, engage in this sex discrimination every day.

It reminds me of the French Revolution. History is wiped out, and we start over with a clean slate. We ignore things. We say we don't know what marriage is. We don't know what a person is. We don't know how babies are created. We have to pretend to be ignorant, for some reason. Fairness? And it's so "fair" we need unelected people to dictate this policy to us.

buwaya said...

The point of the whole gay marriage controversy is not the law, or rights, or actually marrying anyone (for the vast majority of those affected).

On both sides is entirely a matter of subtext, which is why arguments about legal process and legal nitpicks are obtuse. It is, rather, a cultural struggle fought with symbols, representing, on both sides, a host of things not actually being the symbol.

It is like old armies marking their positions with flags. A flag on a fortress is not the fortress. The army on the battlefield can see a position is taken when the flag is raised, or lost when it goes down.

Caroline said...

Spot-on analogy with the French Revolution, St. Croix. Recall that what History records as "The Reign of Terror" was merely a dictatorship of ideologues who called themselves the very anodyne sounding "Committee of Public Safety." We're under the thumb of the New Jacobins...and requiring that we all swear an oath to a Civil Constitution that no longer hews to the natural law...I can see it coming. Why can't Justice Kennedy?

mccullough said...

In 10 years, marriage will be for the wealthy, like country club memberships.

I think 18-20 year olds have a good argument that no alcohol laws against the violate equal protection.

Hopefully the Supreme Court's decision is broad enough so that this group can file successful lawsuits to strike down these ridiculous state laws. It's time we start taking equal protection seriously.

Renee said...

I guess I will always defend marriage in the anthropological context of man-woman, sorry to speak in 2003 terminology, but civil unions is lousy and insulting to non heterosexual couples.

Not only do I believe in different terms and definitions, but also different policy.

Sometime I hear marriage equality arguments state gay couples are denied hundreds/thousands of federal, but not all laws may benefit a couple even if equally applied.

There is a reason why some heterosexual couples choose not to marry, they do the math and determine legal marriage may actually harm them.

I know I repeat myself, when I say even gay kids have a mom & dad. But it isn't an irrational statement.

Because I acknowledge something as different, doesn't mean bad or desire to treat someone unjustly.

Matt said...

Justice Moore said that the federal district court's order could not bind Alabama probate courts because they were not before the court. I hope that plaintiffs' lawyer is researching the Alabama codes to make sure they sued the right party. I also hope that someone in the Alabama Attorney General's office is researching the rules regarding joinder and looking into a motion to dismiss (FRCP 12(b)(7)).

Titus said...

I am going to be 45 this year and I am a mess-50-please that number sounds hideous-most gays stop going out in public at that age.

Patrick Henry was right! said...

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Justice/2010/0301/Supreme-Court-lets-stand-order-to-remove-Ten-Commandments-monument

Professor, the federal judiciary, including the Supreme Court have ordered the Ten Commandments removed lots of times. People are still upset about it, people who believe in self government, rule of law and a limited federal government.

The day may soon come when a Republican Congress and a Republican President remove jurisdiction to issue injunctions from the lower federal courts.

Then you would see the application of the law of unintended consequences.

Revenant said...

Moore spent his career signing off on all manner of unconstitutional monstrosities... and *this* is what gets him to "take a stand".

What a goober.

Anonymous said...

Spot-on analogy with the French Revolution, St. Croix. Recall that what History records as "The Reign of Terror" was merely a dictatorship of ideologues who called themselves the very anodyne sounding "Committee of Public Safety." We're under the thumb of the New Jacobins...and requiring that we all swear an oath to a Civil Constitution that no longer hews to the natural law...I can see it coming. Why can't Justice Kennedy?

Sometimes, we are made blind on purpose, because there is a lesson that can only be learned through a particular struggle.

Getting outside to cut the grass on the weekend doesn't build strong moral character.

Deciding whether to let the starving family in from next door and share your food, and wondering whether they will slaughter your own family in the night, is a decision none of us ever wants to have to make.

But when society crumbles, it goes pretty fast. How many people in America do you suppose have gone an entire day without eating a meal?

What do you suppose would happen if suddenly half of the people in America were suddenly starving?

Ann Althouse is right. In 10 years, no one will be talking about gay marriage.

But it isn't for the reasons that she thinks.

Revenant said...

Abandonment of children, duty, and the future for the sake of immediate pleasure.

And preventing people from settling down and getting married *totally* shows your commitment to encouraging duty and family in our culture.

Somehow.

You want to know what actually undermined those things? People shacking up without getting married. The idea that moving people from the "shacked up" column to the "married" column somehow *accelerates* the downhill slide into a culture that doesn't respect family duties is full-on, pants-on-head retarded.

MadisonMan said...

I am going to be 45 this year and I am a mess-50-please that number sounds hideous-most gays stop going out in public at that age.

45 was a much more difficult birthday for me -- entering the 45-54 demographic -- than 50. Accepting your age is about to become a lot easier for you.

Titus said...

The Gay Law states gays over 50 should not be seen in public....unless in disguise.

Think Jackie O glasses, Huge Sun Hat, and enormous coat.

buwaya said...

Like I said, its all about symbolism, and the symbolic meanings are not necessarily what you want them to be.

Those fighting this symbol, as well as a very large number pushing it, attach a very different set of meanings.

The meaning that comes across is that homosexuality socially acceptable, and if so it is neither handicap nor misfortune. If the state gets to marry them one has to treat them as respectably married, which makes their condition respectable, which means those unmarried are, etc. and etc. in the inevitable and very rapid cascade.

Of course it is, biologically and socially, a tragedy, as it almost completely precludes reproduction. If this, being a dead end, is a good thing, then it overturns a great number of other things. Anybody can be their own variety of happy (well, for a while, maybe) dead end, and why not?

This is by no means the only symbol or concrete factor overturning social expectations for family formation, but its one of the few that could be opposed through democratic politics. Other things are much more significant but they are difficult to fight in this way.

Going on, if homosexuality is OK, then so is nearly any other sexual or mating behavior. This really does break every traditional rule, and there is no modern substitute set of rules.

Then its perfectly OK for any other non-homosexual people to avoid commitment and family formation as there is no way to create social pressure towards this, or teach the young that this is their proper aspiration. There is no valid guide, limit, or custom left. People cannot be taught to internalize a sense of duty if there is no common accepted definition of duty.

This is most destructive with younger people, who are spending their youth in the pursuit of pleasure, most of whom these days haven't a bit of desire to form a family. By the time a significant proportion of them figure out the truth they are infertile. I know quite a few women in this position.

The statistics here are terrible, fertility among white US women is becoming just as bad, or worse even, than most Europeans. Worst hit by far are, apparently, US Jews.

This is an auto-extermination through a cultural meme. At the moment it seems far more effective than nerve gas.

buwaya said...

I recommend dressing in a not-gay manner as that seems to work better, gay or not.
Suit and tie are very effective for all purposes.

Revenant said...

Going on, if homosexuality is OK, then so is nearly any other sexual or mating behavior

Do feel free to provide an actual argument for that claim.

buwaya said...

Sure, its obvious.
1. Consistency, or the lack of it. How do you tell a man, a libertine, to stick with one woman and start a family, if you do not insist that his gay brother do the same? Both can make a well-supported argument on the grounds of "nature". Or the third brother, a social recluse who obtains his satisfaction otherwise than from real women, can also claim "nature".
If one is excused his duty, you cannot credibly insist on a sacrifice from the others.
2. Prevailing customs and mass psychology. Break a powerful rule and the rest weaken. Truly, in practice how can the young men of your city be made to take wives, if there is such a blatant exception?

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Anonymous said...

Brando: How is any private citizen in say Iowa forced into anything simply because their state can no longer ban gay marriages? I'm not seeing why this bothers so many people, unless it's more a matter of not liking the idea of leftists getting a victory of sorts.

You're not seeing it, because you seem to have no idea what a culture is, and think that the particular form that marriage takes in a given culture is some sort of trivial epiphenomenon unrelated to any other aspect of that culture that people (even people like you) value.

People like you, and Althouse, "aren't seeing it", because you're lousy anthropologists.

Anonymous said...

Revenant: You want to know what actually undermined those things? People shacking up without getting married.

I'm glad to see you acknowledge that shacking up has larger, socially damaging consequences, and isn't only a private matter between "consenting adults" that can't possibly affect anybody else's life.

The idea that moving people from the "shacked up" column to the "married" column somehow *accelerates* the downhill slide into a culture that doesn't respect family duties is full-on, pants-on-head retarded.

What's full-on, pants-on-head retarded is believing that legally acknowledging a parody of marriage is supporting marriage.

In the novel The Children of Men, the Church of England has taken to conducting baptismal ceremonies for kittens. That is, what was once one of the sacred rituals of a flourishing culture with a confident claim on the future is now a palliative for a dottier subset of the sterile, dying human race, who nonetheless cling to the forms of the old rituals as if they still meant something.

Supporters of ssm tell themselves that it's just another milestone in the noble, one-way march of "non-discrimination" (which they apparently believe is the foundational, indeed the only, value defining our culture). It isn't. It's the equivalent of kitten-baptizing.

RonF said...

According to this analysis Justice Moore's legal reasoning is entirely correct.

http://www.grimbeorn.blogspot.com/2015/02/roy-moore-defiance.html

"What he said was that the Federal order explicitly limits itself to only the Attorney General and his agents, a class that doesn't include probate court judges (who not only don't work for the Atty General, but are of an independent branch of the government). A Federal judge could issue a new order, but for now he's technically correct: Alabama's attorney general and his agents have to stop enforcing the law, but probate court judges are still bound by it."

Links at the site.

Anonymous said...

Same sex marriage will never go away as an issue, because the intolerant thugs pushing it are pushing it in order to have a club with which to beat the rest of us. See AZ Wedding photographer, Oregon bakers, and the Marquette professor.