How NOT to gain the support of people like me

Very recently I got an appeal, by mail, from the Human Rights Campaign, an organization whose main purpose, equal rights for people of all sexual orientations, is one which I support. However, the letter is one I would say was counterproductive with me, and would be to all people who generally agree with me.

The letter starts right off with two paragraphs ending with “Just take a look at what we're up against,” and follows it with an anti-homosexual quote from the Texas GOP platform and a homophobic quote from an unnamed member of a Tea Party group. And a few paragraphs down, it has praise for President Obama — the same President Obama who took three years to come around to recognizing the unconstitutionality of DOMA! — contrasting him with “the Republican leadership in Congress.” Granted that it's unfortunate that they did choose to try to defend the indefensible DOMA; but there is not a single word in the entire letter saying a good word for any Republican — though three Republican Senators have come out in support of same-sex marriage — or a bad word about any Democrat — especially President Obama, who sat on all gay rights issues for three years, though he had the power, for example, to end “Don't Ask, Don't Tell” on Jan. 20, 2009.

There was an enclosure in the letter, featuring a quote by President Obama, and listing, as people who have spoken out in favor of marriage equality, such Democratic political figures as Hillary Clinton, Senator Al Franken, and Newark Mayor Cory Booker. No mention of a single Republican, though they could have given such people as Senators Rob Portman, Mark Kirk, and Lisa Murkowski. Any such Democratically partisan mailing is hardly guaranteed to elicit any sympathetic response from me.

One more sensible decision

As I've said before, I am far more sympathetic with the Republican Party on most issues than with the Democrats. And that is primarily because the Republicans favor limiting the role of Government and allowing individuals more freedom. But I've always thought that the attitudes of so-called “social conservatives,” that Government should impose their norms on everyone else, is quite counter to this, and I've wished that their influence on the GOP could be reduced. For that reason, I've looked askance on John Boehner's decision to take on the case of the defenders of the mislabeled “Defense of Marriage Act” before the Supreme Court when even the Obama administration accepted its unconstitutionality. DOMA should be allowed to die a peaceful death.

On the other side of the coin, I'm happy that Republican Senators are coming out in favor of same-sex marriage. First Rob Portman, then Mark Kirk has done so, and now one more Republican Senator has joined them: Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. Of course, in the wake of what happened in the 2010 election, some may call Sen. Murkowski a RINO, but she's the kind of Republican, I think, I would like to see more of. Thank you, Sen. Murkowski, for making the decision to ignore the bigoted “social conservatives” in the party and take the pro-freedom position on this issue.

Somehow, I fail to understand it

There is a post by Matthew Franck on the “Real Clear Politics” site dated June 19, 2013, with the title “Same-Sex Marriage and Religious Freedom, Fundamentally at Odds” that seems totally nonsensical to me.

First of all, the post concedes that in any state that legalizes same-sex marriage, no priest, rabbi, or other clergyman will be forced to solemnize a marriage that would be invalid under his religion's rules — but he considers this meaningless because the First Amendment would make it illegal to force them to do so; which seems to mean that the “religious freedom” aspect of the First Amendment is being taken into account. So far, I see no conflict with “religious freedom.” So let's see where he finds it.

It seems that Mr. Franck feels it would be an interference with the religious freedom of a baker to make him bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple, or an interference with the religious freedom of the owner of a hall to make them open it to a wedding reception for such a couple. But they are not being forced to recognize, in any formal way, that marriage. Does such a baker now request a marriage license before baking a wedding cake? I doubt it. He could simply be asked to provide a cake, of the style he normally does for a wedding cake, for a party, and even if he does not think there is a legitimate wedding involved, I think he would bake the cake. Similarly, the owner of the hall would simply be letting out the place for a party which the couple involved is calling a “wedding reception,” even if the hall owner thinks of it simply as a party. I doubt that anyone would be engaging in “immoral conduct” in the reception hall itself!

Similar refutations apply to every single case that Mr. Franck raises. A college that provides housing to married couples probably also has housing for roommates; if those roommates are gay, what they do behind closed doors is not, normally, something of which the college is aware anyway. If they choose to call themselves “married” and the State agrees, the college doesn't have to do so. It can simply call them roommates.

I really do not see how anyone's religious freedom is affected here. I'd like to be enlightened.

There is even a reference in Mr. Franck's post to the termination, a few years ago, of Catholic Charities' provision of adoption referral services in Massachusetts. The chairman of the board of directors for Catholic Charities of Boston at the time, Peter Meade, says otherwise:

Like many of my fellow Catholics, I believe our greatest commandment is to help those who are in need and to love our neighbors as ourselves. That call is why I joined the board of directors of Catholic Charities of Boston.

I was especially proud of our work facilitating the adoption of abandoned and neglected children.

Catholic Charities used the one and only criteria that’s appropriate for adoption agencies — the best interest of the child.

For nearly two decades, Catholic Charities arranged adoptions to families who would provide safe, loving homes for the children we worked with, many of whom were from difficult backgrounds and harder to place.

We placed kids according to their needs and to make sure that they would find a loving and stable adoptive home. The kids always came first.

Most of these children, as a matter of fact, were adopted by straight couples, but during 15 years, about 13 were placed in the stable, secure and loving homes of same-sex couples.

Then in 2005, tragically, and out of the blue, the Vatican told our agency to cease using the single criteria of “best interest of the children.”

They ordered us to stop facilitating adoptions to households headed by gay men and lesbians.

I objected.

First and foremost, the Church hierarchy was telling us to ignore the best interests of the children we were trying to place. But just as important, the bishops were telling us to ignore decades-old anti-discrimination laws.

Catholic Charities had signed a contract with the state and accepted taxpayer money to provide adoption services for hard to place children. Some of these kids were older, had behavioral issues or chronic medical conditions.

When organizations accept taxpayer dollars, they have to follow anti-discrimination laws that are in place to make sure everyone is treated equally. If we excluded qualified families simply because they were gay or lesbian, we would violate those laws.

When taxpayers are footing the bill, you can’t discriminate against people. It is part of the contract to do the work.

The decision had nothing to do with marriage, and the conflict would likely have occurred regardless of whether same-sex couples could legally marry.

The board reacted strongly to the Vatican’s order, voting 42-0 against excluding gay and lesbian families from adoption services. From the board’s point of view, the decision was wrong for children and a violation of longstanding law.

When the hierarchy persisted in its demand, the organization had little choice but to end adoption services. They had made the decision to put other interests ahead of what was best for the children we served.

Along with seven other board members, I resigned.

While the adoption services Catholic Charities had provided were immediately filled by other social service agencies, the decision broke my heart.

It is simply untrue to claim that legalizing marriage for same-sex couples caused any of this to happen.

Catholic Charities had been facilitating adoptions for gay families for 15 years before same-sex couples could marry in Massachusetts. And ending that practice was a choice made by Catholic Charities under extreme pressure.

As a Catholic, my faith continues to call me to serve the neediest among us, and to treat every person as a child of God.

What happened in Massachusetts was wrong because the hierarchy lost sight of our mission to serve children, and it could have been avoided. But I cannot allow what happened with Catholic Charities to become a weapon against allowing same-sex couples to receive a marriage license in Maine.

It’s a terrible shame that opponents of marriage are willing to distort and twist the truth to achieve a political victory by scaring people into thinking that allowing two loving, committed people to marry will somehow turn the world upside down.

Can one really say that it is more in violation of Catholic dogma to allow a same-sex couple who is married according to State law to adopt a child than to allow a couple to adopt who is just living together? And Meade confirms, as I've read elsewhere, that Catholic Charities had been doing that for years. So it's clear that same-sex marriage did not abuse freedom of religion there.

Media bias, the NSA, and the last two administrations

There's an interesting post by Richard Benedetto on the Real Clear Politics site, dated June 18, 2013 and entitled “Media Cut Obama Slack They Denied Bush on NSA.” While the emphasis is mine, I quote it in its entirety. It shows just how biased the media are:

In recent days, there has been discussion about how Democrats and liberals, once severe critics of anti-terror surveillance programs when Republican President George W. Bush was conducting them, have been more careful, and less critical, when responding to the massive data collection sweeps that have come to light under President Obama.

“It is jarring to see the left so compliant now that the surveillance has been sanctioned by a Democratic president,” Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote Sunday.

Milbank raised a valid point. But perhaps even more “jarring” are the carefully chosen, softer words used by the news media when reporting on the Obama program, compared to the inflammatory and alarmist language used when his predecessor was in charge.

When news broke in December 2005 that the Bush administration was engaged in phone wiretaps (without court orders) against suspected terrorists, the major news outlets almost immediately labeled the program “domestic spying.”

“In address, Bush says he ordered domestic spying,” said a Page One headline in The New York Times on Dec. 18, 2005.

The Washington Post, reporting on the same radio address, used similar wording in its headline: “President says he ordered NSA domestic spying.”

The Times and Post news articles each went on to use the word “spying” — which has dark, sinister connotations — four more times, although Bush, in his speech, never used it once. The Post followed up with an editorial: “Spying on Americans.”

So use of the word “spying” was the media’s choice, not the president’s. But the stage was set. From then on, The Times, The Post and other major news outlets continuously used the phrase “domestic spying” when reporting on the Bush wiretap program months after the initial outburst.

Bush, apparently frustrated by what he saw as media failure to fully explain what was really going on, tried to clarify in a Jan. 23, 2006 speech at Kansas State University. He hoped to get rid of the “spying” label and convince Americans that he was not listening in on phone calls to their mothers.

“I'll repeat to you, even though you hear words, ‘domestic spying,’ these are not phone calls within the United States. This is a phone call of an al-Qaeda, known al-Qaeda suspect, making a phone call into the United States.”

The presidential explanation didn’t work. Here is the USA Today headline on the speech: “White House steps up defense of domestic spying.”

Fast-forward to June 2013. Obama, thanks to an explosive leak by a National Security Agency contractor, finds himself embroiled in a similar flap over the gathering of domestic intelligence. This time, he is in charge of what appears to be the most sweeping “domestic spying” mission ever undertaken. “Unprecedented” is a word Obama likes to use. That’s what it is. And while the news media have not shied away from covering the controversial program and its citizen-privacy ramifications, the style, tone and use of language are far different from the Bush days.

Mostly gone from the reporting is the loaded phrase “domestic spying.” Instead, we find a flurry of euphemisms such as “call monitoring,” “data collection,” “data mining,” “data gathering” and “electronic surveillance.” Most news outlets that continue to use the word “spying” when referring to the current U.S. intelligence gathering programs are foreign newspapers and broadcasters.

“Top official tries to quell US spying scandal,” said a headline in the June 10 New Zealand Herald. Moreover, many of the reports repeatedly remind us that the programs in question began under the Bush administration. So, by implication, it’s not really Obama’s fault.

Last Sunday’s Washington Post front page had a nearly 2,000-word story on the surveillance controversy headlined “NSA Surveillance: The Architecture.” It strongly reiterated the point that this is what Bush wrought.

There were no photos on the front page, but when you jumped inside there was a four-column picture of Bush, Vice President Cheney and two other top aides in a 2008 visit to NSA headquarters at Fort Meade, Md. There also were smaller headshot photos of two Bush legal and security aides and one more picture of protesters at a 2007 Senate hearing wearing oversized sunglasses with the message “Stop Spying.” The witness at that hearing was then-Bush intelligence director Mike McConnell.

Oddly, many news stories on the current surveillance controversy do not feature photos of Obama unless he is directly addressing the issue. It conveys that while this is a serious problem, it is not necessarily Obama’s problem. He’s busy showing the world that he’s doing other things. That’s the way he likes it. And so, apparently, do the news media.

A good observation. And one that needs to be given more publicity.

The new Iranian president

It seems that the Iranian people have resoundingly elected Hasan Rowhani as president — he received an absolute majority, which in an election with so many candidates is an amazing result. Since Rowhani was the most nearly moderate candidate of the bunch, the fact that the Iranian people chose him so overwhelmingly is good news. But the bad news is that no truly moderate candidate was even allowed to run, and that the Iranian president has no real power if the Supreme Leader wants to do otherwise from what he wants. So the election really doesn't let the Iranian people control their destiny.

Unless they have a counter-revolution, though, this is the best news we can hope for from Iran.

The New Jersey special election

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has decided that the replacement for the late Senator Frank Lautenberg will be chosen in a special election to be held in October, three weeks before the November general election. And many people are howling “foul” about it. Interestingly, the people complaining are primarily Democrats who seem to have no problems with President Obama's using every trick in the rules to get his way.

In fact, Pres. Obama sees to have gone beyond the rules; consider the “recess appointments” that were ruled unconstitutional because the Senate was only taking the weekend off, and not truly in recess. But I suppose if you're a Democrat, anything goes. By contrast, what Gov. Christie did was totally within New Jersey law, and seems to be very minor to me. The Senate election will probably go to Newark mayor Cory Booker. It would go to Booker no matter when it was held. The only thing that the October special election does is that the extra voters who will come out to vote for Booker because he is the African-American mayor of Newark — African-Americans and Newarkers — may not come out again three weeks later. They would likely, if they did vote in a gubernatorial election, vote for Gov. Christie's opponent. But Christie is so far ahead in the polls that this would only reduce his margin.

So what Gov. Christie did doesn't even change the likely winner of an election. All it does is make his likely victory margin bigger, so he'll have more to show. This is hardly of a piece with what Pres. Obama did — appointing people who would not pass Senate scrutiny, by claiming a “recess” that doesn't exist. I don't think anyone has a right to complain.

Appointing Susan Rice

President Obama is appointing Susan Rice as national security advisor. Many people have pointed out that she's really not very qualified; for one example, see K.T. McFarland's column on the Fox News site. But that's not too important to this president; after all, this is the president who said: “I think that I’m a better speechwriter than my speechwriters. I know more about policies on any particular issue than my policy directors. And I’ll tell you right now that I’m gonna think I’m a better political director than my political director.” He doesn't need a national security advisor, as he sees it; he knows more about national security than anyone he appoints.

But he wants to stick it to his political opponents. He's wanted to stick it to his political opponents ever since he went into politics. And because he wanted to nominate Susan Rice — a consummate Obama loyalist, willing to lie to protect the President — as Secretary of State, but found her attacked in the U. S. Senate severely enough that he had to withdraw the nomination, he found an equally prestigious post that required no Senate confirmation. And if there is one thing that Barack Obama knows how to do, it is to use the rules (or even bend the rules, as he did with those “recess appointments” when the Senate really wasn't in recess!) to his own advantage. He doesn't know how to be a President according to the Constitution's strictures, but he knows how to do whatever it takes to accomplish what Barack Obama wants to do.

Barry Goldwater vs. Ronald Reagan

The two heroes of the conservative wing of the Republican Party are Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan. Both were the most conservative of the people contending for the nomination, Goldwater in 1964 and Reagan in 1980. But while many people point to the similarity between the two, I would like to call attention to one big difference. (And I do not mean that Goldwater lost, but Reagan won — though I think that the difference which I intend to cite probably was a big reason why Goldwater lost, but Reagan won.)

Goldwater rejected the idea of the “big tent,” while Reagan embraced it. As evidence for the first, one can point to the famous speech before the 1964 Republican convention in which Goldwater proclaimed:

Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

His choice of an obscure Representative, William Miller, whose only special qualification for the vice-presidency was his sharing of Goldwater's extreme conservatism, accented this attitude. As I said in an earlier post:

I was one of many Republicans who did not vote for Goldwater that year — I felt I was being read out of the party, though this was my first year of eligibility to vote.

Let us compare Ronald Reagan. His choices for vice-president were diametrically opposed to Goldwater's. In 1976, when he did not really have a shot at the nomination because Gerald Ford was the incumbent, nevertheless, he appealed to the moderate wing of the party by selecting Sen. Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania, one of the best known moderates in the party at the time. Four years later, knowing he had the nomination, he picked the very person who had led the moderate opposition to his nomination: George H. W. Bush. And he kept Bush on the ticket four years afterward, and strongly backed him for the Presidency after his own Presidency was forced by the Twenty-second Amendment to terminate. Reagan's rhetoric was different from Goldwater's, too. While Goldwater, in 1964, read the moderates out of the party with his “extremism” speech, Ronald Reagan made a very different point about the moderates in the party:

"The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally — not a 20 percent traitor."

When the hard-right conservatives realize this, they will help the GOP become a majority party again.

Scott Walker in 2016?

Today I saw a column by Byron York in the Washington Examiner called “Looking to 2016, Iowa GOP gets jazzed about Scott Walker of Wisconsin” in which York mentions that lots of people, both those who supported Mitt Romney last year and those whose choice in the GOP nomination contest was “anyone but Romney,” are becoming enthusiastic about Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin for the 2016 nomination. While I have said, and I still maintain, that the best choice for the nomination would be Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, I would not be unhappy with Walker as a nominee. He is rather more conservative than I am, but he's gotten his programs — including the well-known reforms that got organized labor so hot under the collar that they mounted a recall campaign against him — through and written into law in a very blue State. And that counts for a lot. Anyone who could survive the viciousness of that recall campaign as Gov. Walker did deserves credit. So, while I prefer Christie, I would certainly be willing to support Walker if he were the nominee, and I would not want to work against him while he pursues the nomination, if he does, any more than any other rival of my preferred choice. He's not like Bachmann or Perry in 2012, who were anathema to me.

Points about abortion

One reason that, although I am closer to the so-called “pro-choice” side in the debates on abortion than the so-called “pro-life” side, I still cannot accept all the ideas of the former, is that to me the primary issue is not “a woman's right to choose,” as most “pro-choicers” make it. For me, in fact, the big issue is a First Amendment freedom-of-religion issue.

The Catholic Church (and some Protestant groups) wants to impose its view of “personhood” on others. The idea that “human life begins at conception” is clearly the tenet of a particular religious community. (In Judaism, for example, there is a point — not clearly fixed in time — when the neshama [approximately translated as “soul”] is put into the developing fetus by Divine intervention; prior to that it is not considered human.)

Because I see this as a religious freedom issue, I am perfectly willing, say, to accept laws that forbid the State from forcing Catholic hospitals or Catholic medical doctors to perform abortions, because they too have First Amendment rights. Because I see this in other terms than “a woman's right to choose,” I am willing to allow some people other than the pregnant woman to be involved in the decision. (I have no problem with parental-consent laws when the pregnant “woman” is in fact a girl who would not herself be empowered to consent to some other forms of surgery on her body. I honestly believe that, when a married couple conceive as a result of an act entered into voluntarily, if the husband wants the child he should be able to insist that the birth take place.) So I feel uncomfortable with both sides' positions in the abortion debate.

While we have no way of knowing when the neshama enters the fetus, I feel that the best clue to when to consider it a new human being is the viability criterion — if you could deliver it, and it could survive outside the uterus, then it is a new human being; not before. Some argue that technology changes; we could deliver a baby in 2013 that would not have survived in 1963. I say “so be it.” We do not judge the doctors who attended Pres. Garfield as murderers, because they did not conform to modern standards of antisepsis, although it is clear that their filthy hands were actually the cause of his death. Since, at that time, the role of infection was becoming known, they come in for some criticism. But not what doctors in 2013 would incur if they did as those doctors did. The standards of any particulat time must apply.

Virginia's governorship race

Only two states elect governors in the immediate post-Presidential-election years: New Jersey and Virginia. While New Jersey is likely to be a rout (some polls put Chris Christie more than 30 points ahead of his Democratic opponent!), Virginia is going to be close, if appearances bear out. And it's a terrible dilemma for Virginia's voters.

Virginia Republicans have held their convention and picked Ken Cuccinelli, the current attorney general. The main reason they had a convention, rather than a primary, is that moderate lieutenant governor Bill Bolling might have won a primary, and diehard conservatives wanted to ensure Cuccinelli's nomination. While I applaud some things Cuccinelli has done, like fighting Obamacare, he is a strong “social conservative,” and I thing the Republicans will only be a constructive force in this country if they abandon “social conservatism.”

But then I look at the Democrats. They haven't had their primary yet, but Terry McAuliffe seems to have no serious challengers. (In fact, he has no challengers, period! Nobody else has filed for that primary.) And McAuliffe is best known for heading Bill Clinton's re-election campaign. He's strongly allied with the whole Clinton family — he was a big supporter of Hillary Clinton's bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination. That alone hurts him in my eyes.

If I were a Virginia voter, I'd be stumped. Cuccinelli is more extreme than I'd like, and McAuliffe is actually fairly moderate for a Democrat. But I'd hate to see any Democrat win in an election where it might be construed for support for the Obama Presidency — and to the extent it's not so construed, it helps set things up for Hillary in 2016.

A lull in the posting rate

I've not been posting much lately — only once a week or less often. And I notice that most of my favorite blogs, like Dennis Sanders' “Big Tent Revue” and Tom Bowler's “Libertarian Leanings,” have also slacked off. I wonder if this is because Barack Obama's Presidency is going to last till 2017, and nothing we say can change that? (And of course, even Congressional elections are 1½ years away.)

Next month, the Supreme Court will probably issue its decisions on Hollingsworth v. Perry (the California Prop. 8 case) and United States v. Windsor (the case challenging the so-called “Defense of Marriage Act”). I will certainly post comments on these decisions once we know what they are. But until then it is mere speculation. I know how I would rule. On Windsor, it is clear to me that DOMA is unconstitutional, because it conflicts with the Tenth Amendment-based right of States to define “marriage.” On Hollingsworth, my feeling is more nuanced. Because of that Tenth Amendment argument, it is not appropriate to declare same-sex marriage legal everywhere in the 50 States. Appeal to the precedent of Loving v. Virginia is attractive, and probably if there were more than 11 states with same-sex marriage on the books, would make sense. But clearly there is not a nationwide consensus on this issue. I think, if I were a Supreme Court Justice, however, the precedent I would follow is Romer v. Evans. Basically, to take away rights that people already have is unconstitutional, and this is what Prop. 8 did. And on this basis, the Court would, in my opinion, be right to invalidate Prop. 8, while not forcing those states without laws authorizing same-sex marriage on the books to institute it.

But this is my position. i cannot get inside the heads of the nine Supreme Court justices. So I cannot comment on their decision until they issue it, probably next month.

It's rather amazing

It should not be too surprising that the way the media cover a political story depends on their own political orientation. But how severely it does is amazing. There were three different stories about the Obama administration's actions that monopolized the headlines in recent weeks: The IRS' interference with “Tea Party” groups (but not similarly situated groups on the left) in their quest for tax-exempt status, the harassment of the Associated Press, and the Government's attempts to mischaracterize the Benghazi attacks in order to minimize its security weaknesses. In each case, papers such as the Washington Post and New York Times took the positions that there was really no scandal, that the only thing wrong was that Republicans in the Congress were making it one. Their attitude was that “Watergate” was a real scandal; this was nothing even resembling it. Well, to my way of thinking, if there is any reason to say that the two things were qualitatively different, it was the opposite. “Watergate” was nothing but a couple of overly zealous people doing a burglary attempt on the Democrats. yet it forced a President to resign — a far better president, I believe, than the current occupant of the White House. At Benghazi, four Americans died, including a highly respected ambassador, because of lax security precautions; nobody died from “Watergate.” The IRS business could legitimately be characterized, as was “Watergate,” as a few overly zealous people trying to help the political chances of the President. But in “Watergate” it only involved the offices of the Democrats, and hardly prevented them from doing their business. The IRS actually held up the tax-exempt status of some of these organizations so long that they folded! And as for the AP — well, freedom of the press is what one part of the First Amendment is all about; it's considered one of our primary liberties. The left-wing press says it's ridiculous to compare these scandals to “Watergate”; I think, if anything, they, especially taken together, make “Watergate” look like small potatoes.

The Kermit Gosnell decision

Kermit Gosnell has been convicted of murder. And the anti-abortion (or as they would have it, “pro-life”) people are happy with the results. But in fact, the Gosnell verdict was totally in conformity with what I, who oppose them, have maintained. A viable fetus is a real person. Some of these babies were, in fact, already born, not just “viable.”

My reply to the anti-abortion crowd has always been “if this is a baby, deliver it, then see if you can keep it alive.” In this case, several deliveries had been done, and then the babies were killed. So obviously, what Kermit Gosnell did was murder, under my own definition. And I agree with the verdict. But this says nothing about Roe v. Wade. Gosnell's attorney tried to invoke Roe, but the jury didn't buy it. And I think that no appeals court would, either.

More progress on the "marriage equality" front

In the last few days, Rhode Island and Delaware have passed marriage equality bills. Of course, this makes it even more the case that geography is the big divide. Nearly all the states north and east of the Potomac now have marriage equality (calling the District of Columbia a “state,” which for this purpose it in effect is). Just south of the Potomac you have states like Virginia and North Carolina, which have shown open hostility to the concept. And heading westward, most states haven't really done anything one way or the other. (Iowa has, and Illinois is probably about to, institute same-sex marriage. Colorado just started civil unions, which ultimately seems to lead to marriage, as it did in the state that invented the concept of civil union, Vermont. And the big one, California, is the subject of the big Hollingsworth v. Perry case, which the Supreme Court will rule on, probably in a month or so, so supporters of marriage equality are awaiting this decision with bated breath. (Of course, the Court might rule on Hollingsworth v. Perry in a way that brings about marriage equality nationwide. I doubt that they will. I don't think it's time for a ruling like Loving v. Virginia involving sex instead of race, yet.)

Why Matt Lewis could never be a liberal, and my own (general) agreement

Today I saw a post by columnist Matt K. Lewis of The Week's site, entitled “Why I could never be a liberal.” And, although I don't consider myself a “true conservative,” I align myself with conservatives on enough important issues that I estimate my position as more conservative than not. And much of what Lewis said resonates with me.

He begins with a comment, just below the title, but above the column itself:

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. But I'm not about to switch sides.

I'm not about to quote the entire column (please follow the link if you want to read it) but there are specific points he makes that I would echo:

…though my friends on the activist Right may sometimes drive me nuts, I've never ever entertained the thought of going over to the dark side of the Left. David Brock might have garnered a lot of attention and publicity by switching sides, but for me, the Left is never an option.

This isn't just because I believe conservatism will lead to a more prosperous and virtuous society, but also because — in the unlikely event either side were to obtain carte blanche authority — the Left scares me more than the Right.

There's no shortage of examples. Melissa Harris-Perry, for instance, recently revealed a terrifying tenet of the Left, which says our children belong to the collective, not to parents or families. As I wrote, this sentiment was so feared by George Orwell that he included it in both 1984 and Animal Farm. I should have also mentioned Aldous Huxley's Brave New World.

Look at extremists abroad: From Stalin to Castro to Chavez, some on the Left have consistently displayed not just a tolerance for heavy-handed authoritarian regimes (as the Right has admittedly sometimes also done) but also an admiration of them.

In recent weeks, some on the Left have mourned the death of Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, even while cheering the death of Britain's Margaret Thatcher. And a similar sentiment was on full display when Jay-Z and Beyonce, perhaps naively, enjoyed Cuban hospitality — without noticing the dissidents or the gulags they conveniently avoided on their vacation.

I will skip a couple of paragraphs, with which I don't really agree, about liberals' disregard for the Divine and about abortion, and resume with his next paragraph:

We live in a fallen world. I do not expect any party — or any ideology, for that matter — to have all the answers. I don't put my faith in politics. There will be no utopia on earth. We cannot immanentize the eschaton.

Neither side of the political spectrum has all the answers — and both sides have fringe elements they'd rather not highlight, as well as moments in history they'd rather leave unspoken.

I've probably had more public fights with my friends on the Right than with my adversaries on the Left in recent years. This is probably natural. As Anthony Trollope wrote, "The apostle of Christianity and the infidel can meet without a chance of a quarrel; but it is never safe to bring together two men who differ about a saint or a surplice."

I get in fights with my fellow conservatives all the time. Immigration is but one example. But still, for me, the Left is never an option.

There are specific points where I differ with Lewis. But by and large, I approve this column.

The Kermit Gosnell case

Self-styled “right to life” advocates have been bewailing the lack of media coverage of the trial of Philadelphia doctor Kermit Gosnell. They accuse pro-abortion media of suppressing it because of their own biases. The only thing is — the trial is going on, local authorities have charged Gosnell with murder, and even under the standards of Roe v. Wade, if Gosnell is found to have done what he is accused of doing, he will be convicted of murder and possibly put to death. So it is not an instance of the issue they would like to feature, the justifiability of Roe v. Wade. The point is that Dr. Gosnell is accused of ending the lives of babies, already delivered and likely to have survived if the acts in question had not been performed by Dr. Gosnell and his staff. Even if you have the most thoroughly pro-choice mindset, once it passes the threshold of viability, it is not a mere fetus but an independent human being.

There is a question, about which responsible citizens can disagree, as to when the existence of a new human being begins. “Pro-life” people may claim that it is at the moment a sperm unites with an egg, but I've discussed how fallacious I believe this is. It is clear to me that, until a fetus has reached the point where it can be delivered and would survive without being attached to a placenta, it is simply a piece of parasitic tissue in the mother's body, not an independent human being. Where Dr. Gosnell betrayed his oath as a doctor of medicine is that he took the lives of those who, by this criterion, were independent human beings. This has nothing to do with the morality of abortion in general, nor with whether Roe v. Wade is good law — under the Roe decision Dr. Gosnell went too far! So there is no reason to bring up this case in discussions of Roe or abortion in general.

And the NRA wins again

The Senate has refused to pass the Toomey/Manchin gun control law. It was pretty weak to begin with, but we might have gotten something. But too many people are too conscious of the NRA's demands.

Obviously, as long as we have the Second Amendment in our Constitution — and it's not going to be possible to repeal it, though I wish it had never been incorporated into the Bill of Rights in the first place — there are people who are going to claim that being free to shoot at anyone is a “right” as precious as freedom of speech, press, and religion. Nobody thinks of our right to live without the fear that someone will shoot at us (even accidentally)! The NRA seems to believe that law-abiding people will use guns responsibly. Law-abiding people, by and large, don't even own guns, or know how to fire them!

I have no legitimate reason to kill someone, and thus I have no legitimate use for a gun. Nor does anyone else, outside the police and military.

For once, I agree with President Obama — but we can't simply retire those lawmakers who voted against gun control as he would like, because the alternative is lawmakers whose positions on so many other issues are so evil that they cannot be considered worthy of election. So I don't know how this problem can be solved.

Margaret Thatcher

Yesterday, Margaret Thatcher died at age 87. While I normally talk in thid blog about our own country's political leaders, Baroness Thatcher's service as Prime Minister deserves more than my usual degree of attention. Britain had been in decline; with her accession, it became an important and reliable ally, which we could rely on to work alongside us toward our common goals.

With some pride, I have to say that she was originally trained as a chemist (as was Angela Merkel of Germany). In this country, it seems lawyers dominate politics; it might be nice to find more people with a scientific background. (True, Thatcher became a lawyer eventually. But her first career was in chemistry.)

Chronologically, her Prime Ministry coincided in large part with Ronald Reagan's Presidency here. These two paragons of the Right, of course, found it easier to forge a tight alliance than peope on opposite sides of the ideological spectrum might. But even Labourite Tony Blair saw a need to keep the alliance together — of course, much of Blair's service coincided with Bill Clinton's Presidency, so again they were close.

But back to Thatcher. I believe that she was the greatest — in the sense of improving the strength of the British nation — prime minister since Winston Churchill, and not many could compare with him!

Vale, Baroness Thatcher.

Another GOP senator endorses gay marriage

A while ago, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio endorsed gay marriage, becoming the first sitting GOP senator to do so. He was just joined by Sen. Mark Kirk of Illinois. This is an important development.

Until Portman, it seemed as though the Democrats had the monopoly on this side of the issue. And it took his son's coming out to convince Portman. Now with Kirk as the second one, the GOP is moving in the direction it ought to: getting rid of the dominance by “social conservatives” — a code word for “religious bigots trying to impose their views on others.” We even have the spectacle of Speaker of the House John Boehner hiring an attorney to defend DOMA before the Supreme Court, because the Obama Administration accepts its unconstitutionality!

The Republican Party is generally the party in favor of freedom of the individual. But because of the “social conservatives'” power, it has taken the wrong stance on issues like abortion, gay rights, and such. That two sitting GOP senators have decided to push against the “social conservatives” can only be praised. Hopefully, they will be joined by more. The GOP needs to stand up to the “social conservatives.”