The liberal New Republic provides a timeline showing Obama’s support for gay marriage back in 1996 when running for Illinois state senate (his statement at the time: “I favor legalizing same-sex marriages”) and then his subsequent move up the political career ladder and away from marriage equality, instead favoring civil unions for gays and holding that marriage is reserved for heterosexuals. Said presidential candidate Obama:
What I believe is that if we have strong civil unions out there that provide legal rights to same-sex couples that they can visit each other in the hospital if they get sick, that they can transfer property to each other. If they’ve got benefits, they can make sure those benefits apply to their partners. I think that is the direction we need to go.
As if hospital visitation and easier property transfer is what marriage is essentially about! Elsewhere in the New Republic, the magazine’s executive editor Richard Just calls Obama out on this non-profile in courage. Some of the NR’s commenters defend the president, saying marriage is a state, not federal, issue (sounding like Republicans!), and ignoring that it’s a federal law (the Defense of Marriage Act) that prohibits the federal government from recognizing same-sex marriage even after states have extended legal equality to gay people.
Yep, Republicans are worse. But all politicians elevate the will to power over principle, and treat the stances they take as a means to an end (their own advancement). The liberal ones are just fancier in their footwork. The lesson is to push back and make it cost them not to deliver—and that means playing hardball.
16 Comments for “Wrong Direction”
posted by Jorge on
Think it’s too late for DOMA modification to pass in the Senate yet? They’re on their recess.
posted by Travis on
Given the current political climate, how do you suggest we best play hardball? What’s the gameplan? What can we do and expect to score?
posted by John Howard on
As if hospital visitation and easier property transfer is what marriage is essentially about!
Right, it is essentially about being allowed to conceive offspring together, and the benefits and obligations flow from having that right with each other. But people shouldn’t be allowed to conceive offspring with someone of the same sex. Civil Unions could be defined as “marriage minus conception rights” to preserve the right of all married couples to conceive children together.
posted by Bobby on
“Right, it is essentially about being allowed to conceive offspring together, and the benefits and obligations flow from having that right with each other.”
—No it is not, stop with the heterosexist assumptions already! People get married for ALL KINDS of reasons. During the Vietnam war some people got married to avoid being drafted, others go to Vegas and get married away from their families, they elope, or they are renewing their vows. You don’t need to get married to have children, I know, I’ve lived in Latin-America and the breeders there conceive like rabbits.
posted by John Howard on
Right, just like some people get a driver’s license so they can get into bars or write checks or whatever. But the essential thing about a driver’s license is that it allows the person to drive. No one who is prohibited from driving is allowed to get one, even if they just want to buy alcohol with it. They have to get a state ID card that doesn’t allow them to drive.
posted by Jorge on
Hate to break it to you, Bobby, but the South Bronx is not part of Latin America.
posted by John D on
John Howard,
And I’ve lost track of how many times on how many blogs people have pointed out to you that people’s procreation rights are not wrapped up in marriage licenses. It’s a marriage license, not a procreation license.
Your claim is as connected as it would be if you were specifying a limited type of fishing license that did not include any free speech rights.
People, married or not, have a right to procreate. Plenty of unmarried people procreate (some would say too many). Your brand of crazy has nothing to do with same-sex marriage.
posted by Bobby on
I think Venezuela is part of Latin America, and I did live there for 20 years.
“Right, just like some people get a driver’s license so they can get into bars or write checks or whatever.”
—Actually, a lot of people get them so they can have ID. America doesn’t have a national ID, so driver’s licenses are very useful at the airport and many other places.
Besides, if marriage is about procreation why do drive-through weddings exists in Las Vegas? Why are all those cheap weddings so popular? Really Howard, you’re obsessed about tying marriage with procreation, tell me, did Bristol Palin married her impregnator? Nope. Did Monica Lewinsky marry Bill Clinton? Nope.
Even if you look at marriage from a historical context you’ll see that many times it had more to do with transferring wealth and ensuring diplomatic alliances than anything else. People like King Salomon often married foreign women to maintain the peace, the same can be said of marriages between the sons or daughters of the King of England with those of the King of France or the King of Spain.
Did you ever see the move Braveheart? It’s based on real events, such as the idea that the King of England had the right to deflower the women of other men on their wedding nights. See? In that case marriage was an excuse for fornication by a third party.
In the middle east and India the practice of dowries continues. Want to marry some good looking vagina? Buy her for only 10 cows! Has sex with your first wife gotten boring? Spice things up by marrying a 9 year old girl in Saudi Arabia! See? It’s all trade, it’s all business, even today heterosexual women are often looking for a “good provider” aren’t they?
Or what about the fabulous cougar scene? You really think these 40 year old women are looking to marry the 20 year old penises they’re dating?
Procreation is irrelevant, marriage in America is nothing more than a public celebration of love or an excuse to throw a $20,000+ party. Remember Chelsea Clinton’s wedding? Do you really think that $5 million dollar affair had anything to do with procreation?
Please, it was nothing but an excuse for the rich and famous to mingle with other rich and famous, to make political connections, to solicit future political donations, to eat fine food and drink fine booze and create the mythology of a political dynasty that never existed.
posted by John Howard on
We don’t have a right to procreate with anybody, and the people we don’t have a right to procreate with, like siblings, we are not allowed to marry. There has never been a single marriage in history where the marriage was allowed but the couple was prohibited from having sex or procreating together. We don’t have an equal right to procreate with someone of either sex, we only have a right to procreate with someone of the other sex.
John D, how many times will you continue to raise the same irrelevant objections without addressing the point I’m making, which is, again, that same sex couples shouldn’t have a right to procreate together? Face it, you don’t want to admit that there is a right that people should only have with someone of the other sex, and that right is the sine qua non right of every marriage. It is the essential foundational meaning of marriage to be allowed to procreate together, and same-sex couples shouldn’t have it.
posted by Debrah on
Here’s something you guys might want to check out.
Why Obama Sticks With Civil Unions from The Economist
posted by Bobby on
“We don’t have a right to procreate with anybody, and the people we don’t have a right to procreate with, like siblings, we are not allowed to marry.”
—Nobody has to get married to procreate, in fact, there’s nothing illegal about a man marrying one woman and having 8 girlfriends as long as he only marries one woman. As for siblings, there’s no law against them having sex and having kids. Want to marry your cousin? In most states you can.
“We don’t have an equal right to procreate with someone of either sex, we only have a right to procreate with someone of the other sex.”
—Who says? We have the right to abortion, in-vitro fertilization and even designer babies.
posted by John Howard on
I think that people could and should be prosecuted for fornication when it becomes public knowledge, and that we could and should prohibit labs from assisting in unmarried conceptions, where the sperm and egg are not from a married couple. I think we could prosecute the man with 8 girlfriends with adultery, he is certainly breaking the law. And the siblings would be guilty of incest in virtually every state and country in the world, and their children taken away to be raised by other people.
Those are all laws on the books in many states and prosecuted from time to time. Of course, we don’t have to prosecute fornication and adultery or incest, it isn’t necessary that we do, but we could. There is no right to any of that.
We do have a right to privacy which is what abortion and IVF rely on, there is no actual right to abortion or IVF though. As for “who says?”, it’s determined by examining human history and natural law to find “fundamental rights” and “basic rights of man”, and one of them is to marry and procreate. But you won’t find any historic right to create people in labs or try to procreate with someone of the same sex, so it can’t be claimed that it is a right.
posted by Pat on
without addressing the point I’m making, which is, again, that same sex couples shouldn’t have a right to procreate together?
Because it’s a silly point worth ignoring, that no rational person takes seriously. Even the ones who oppose SSM don’t think it’s an argument worth pursuing.
posted by John Howard on
Well, I agree that the people that demand same-sex procreation rights are irrational, but it certainly isn’t irrational to prohibit same-sex procreation and genetic engineering and preserve equal procreation rights for all people.
I don’t know why the “ones who oppose SSM” don’t all endorse my argument, but I have my theories. Some of them don’t like that I have proposed viable Civil Unions for same-sex couples, and feel that any recognition is too much, they oppose not just SSM but the homosexual lifestyle. Others seem to opposed to all government laws, especially federal laws, and reject the idea of a ban on genetic engineering on libertarian principle, even as they oppose same-sex marriage. Others reject the ban because they don’t want to rule out genetic engineering to make cure diseases and enable infertile people to have children and enable same-sex procreation, but they still apparently wouldn’t let them marry, or perhaps they would but are simply hoping that it never becomes possible. Perhaps they think there is nothing they can do about it. Still others I think are on a mission to keep marriage socially useful as the new reproductive technologies replace marital sex, and so they don’t like connecting marriage and procreation. I think they are all irrational.
posted by Pat on
No, John, you are missing the point. No one, except you apparently, believes that it is an issue. In other words, SSM happening or not will have absolutely zero with the issue you conjured up.
posted by John Howard on
Well, I agree that everyone except me is insisting that they are entirely separate issues, but I have shown how they are not, and why marriage must continue to protect the right of the couple to combine their own genes.
I left out that conspiracy theory: lots of the people supposedly “defending marriage” actually do not think that a married couple should necessarily be allowed to use their own genes to conceive. They are agents for eugenicists and “intelligent design” who want to be able to stop people with bad genes from passing them on to their children and force them to use improved genes or substitute genes. That’s a ways off perhaps, but they want to change marriage in advance by stripping it of the right to procreate, they want to subject all couples to a “safety test” and screen their genes. So they have installed themselves as the “defenders of marriage” for everyone, but they are using a fake argument and not really preserving the rights of marriage.
It is very important that all marriages continue to have the right to use their own genes, that no one is prohibited from procreating with their spouse with their own genes. That doesn’t mean they have a right to use any technology or procedures, it just means they can’t be prohibited from using their own genes.