Blade newspapers editor Chris Crain penned this editorial
defending ideological diversity - that is, inclusion of gay
conservatives - in his papers. At issue: a flood of negative
pushback from rather illiberal gay "liberals" after he ran
viewpoint columns such as this.
More Recent Postings
9/18/05 - 9/24/05
I rather like Connecticut's suggested wording for the pronouncement of civil unions, which become legal in that state next weekend. At the end of ceremonies justices are advised to pronounce couples "partners in life" rather than "husband and wife."
To date, as the Washington Post story notes, Connecticut is the first state, without court pressure, to pass a civil union law conferring the same state (but not federal) rights as marriage. Vermont is the only other state that allows civil unions; Massachusetts is the only state that allows same-sex marriages.
Dale Carpenter's newly posted take on the governator's pending
veto of California's marriage bill is here.
Jeff Cook, a gay small-government Republican, is challenging Rep. Sue Kelly, a GOP big spender, for New York's Hudson Valley congressional seat. Good for him! Kelly not only supported the pork-laded transportation boondoggle and favors expanding federal government funding for "the arts," but she also voted for the anti-gay Federal Marriage Amendment. Wrong on everything, she is (as Yoda might say).
"I have become really concerned in the last couple of years about the direction of some of the leaders in our party," Cook told The Hill. "If the Republican Party is unwilling . . . to stand up to the trappings and the temptations of big government, then who will? We've got to have a dividing line."
Cook opposes "larger and larger government" in both the fiscal
and social realms:
he opposes the Federal Marriage Amendment on the grounds that it's unconstitutional and contrary to his small-government philosophy.
Striking a careful ideological balance, Cook said families, not government, should make life's most important decisions - about schools, for instance- but offered an expansive view of "family" including adoption by gay couples.
Beating an incumbent is a tall order, but I'm glad to see someone advocating a consistent view of limited government and calling the GOP home to its roots (as the anti-slavery party, remember?).
More on Cook from Boi from Troi and Rick Sincere. And here's the campaign's website.
Further: A commenter notes this item
on the race from the conservative RedState.org site
We've posted an interesting column from philosophy prof. John
Corvino, In
Defense of Pleasure, which asks, provocatively, what's so
bad about feeling good? Nothing, says I, as long as you do no harm
to others and take responsibility for your actions - and maintain
the ability to self-discipline in the many areas where it's
necessary to do so for your overall wellbeing. Alas, too many
embark on the path of hedonism and spiral out of control, harming
themselves quite seriously. So, can you abandon yourself to the
fires of pleasure and not get burned?
HRC, the large abortion-on-demand lobby that targets gay and
lesbian donors, seems to imply in its
lastest broadside vilifying John Roberts that only anti-Roberts
votes are "principled" - suggesting that even stalwart
left-liberals like Sen. Leahy, who reliably vote HRC's way on
legislation, have taken an unprincipled stand by supporting Roberts
- the anti-gay Chief Justice nominee who inconveniently has no
anti-gay record and, annoyingly, did pro bono work on behalf of gay
activists.
The British gay rights group Outrage! stands alone, it seems, in exposing the latest example of the murderous homophobia of Iran's Islamic regime, while the gay international rights groups that are dominated by left-wingers decline to criticize an anti-American ally. Hat tip: Gay Patriot.
Update: A new Amnesty International report reveals "alarming and widespread police mistreatment of gays" - in the USA.
Also, as one commenter notes, on the website of the reliably
leftwing International
Gay & Lesbian Human Rights Commission, Iran's not exactly
highlighted.
--Stephen H. Miller
This
new article by Jonathan Rauch and Bill Meezan is one of the
best yet on same-sex marriage and gay parenting. Among the research
findings:
[T]here is no evidence that children of lesbian and gay parents are confused about their gender identity.
And:
[I]n general, children raised in same-sex environments show no differences in cognitive abilities, behavior, general emotional development, or such specific areas of emotional development as self-esteem, depression, or anxiety.
And finally, on the issue of being teased and
ridiculed:
The evidence is mixed, however, on whether the children have heightened difficulty with peers, with more studies finding no particular problems.
The PDF version includes a textbox describing the new study of
same-sex parenting by Patterson et al. - a true population-based
sample that should (but probably won't) put to rest questions
raised by anti-gay activists at the Family Research Council and
elsewhere about the methodology of earlier research.
Left-leaning columnist Keith Boykin has an even-handed look
at gay betrayals from the left and the right. He writes:
Maybe it's time we stop supporting Democrats who take our money but won't take our positions. Maybe it's time we stop sucking up to powerful Republicans just because they have power. And if we're going to sleep with the enemy, we should at least get something positive out of the relationship.
Also, from
an editorial in the Chicago Tribune:
Supporters of gay marriage need to build public acceptance community by community, state by state. That won't be accomplished by court edict. It may, however, be accomplished by dogged work in the legislatures, and Massachusetts may wind up leading by example.
And California, too, despite the veto.
Is it really "discrimination" to forbid a pre-operative transsexual from using the women's shower at a shelter for hurricane evacuees? Do the women-born-women who don't want to share the shower with a physical male have no rights? Judging from coverage like this, you'd suppose the answer is, no, they don't. If they're uncomfortable showering with a physical male (and too insensitive to see that their shower mate is psychologically a female), that's just too bad.
I'm not willfully insensitive to the struggles faced by the transgendered, but demands such as this are what make the public, not unreasonably, tune them out altogether.
Further: I agree, the arrest seems highly
unwarranted. Government isn't known for its sensitive handling of
these issues.
More Recent Postings
9/11/05 - 9/17/05
The Massachusetts legislature, meeting as a constitutional convention, on Wednesday rejected an anti-gay-marriage constitutional amendment 157 to 39.
That's good news, although some gay-marriage enemies also opposed the amendment because it would allow civil unions, and they've started petitioning for a stricter amendment that would ban both gay marriage and CUs. But the earliest that amendment could be voted into law is 2008.
Also on Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives unexpectedly backed a measure that would expand the federal hate crime program, adding sexual orientation, gender, gender identity and disability to a federal hate crime law that provides grants to the states to help prosecute such crimes.
The law does not mandate increased penalties for hate crimes, which some oppose as punishing thoughts rather than actions. Companion legislation awaits action in the Senate.
But some gay media think the big news is that the House-passed bill was "trans-inclusive." You wouldn't know from this headline that gays were also covered!
The comments problem: Sometimes (though, alas, not too often) we
have good discussions in our comments zone, and sometimes (alas,
far too often) those who abhor the center-right/libertarian view of
this blogger are brimming with such antagonism that discussion is
brought to a halt as name-calling is met with counter-name calling.
We haven't tended to interfere, except in cases of obscene
language, but we've been asked more than once to be more active in
moderating the discussion and deleting (or, to the extent we can,
closing the gates) on those who don't wish to engage in civil
discussion, or who so distort the comments of others (and of this
blog) that it makes serious discussion impossible. So, going
forward, we'll give that a try and see if it helps.
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