Medical experts today condemned reports that children born from sperm donors are to be given the right to trace their biological fathers. The move, expected to be announced next week by Public Health Minister Melanie Johnson, followed a review of fertility legislation, according to the Times.

Short on specifics, the White House nevertheless made it clear that the "healthy marriage initiative" is a response to pressure from conservative Christians who want the president to defend traditional marriage. But the initiative, unlikely to do much for the institution of marriage, is wasteful besides. And it could very well backfire as a political ploy.

Just in time for the State of the Union and the 2004 campaign comes word the White House wants to spend $1.5 billion on social programs promoting "healthy marriages." Give me a break. This is clearly a bow to the hard right's call for a constitutional ban on same-sex marriage, an issue that deserves not one day's debate. It allows W. to embrace traditional unions and mute the right's barking while supporting a ban "if necessary," whatever that means. What would make it necessary? An international invasion of gay couples simultaneously seeking U.S. citizenship? But here's my question. If the government wants to encourage marriage, why not start by ending its longtime "marriage penalty" for couples filing joint tax returns?

The Bush administration's idea of spending $1.5 billion promoting marriage is one of those rather expensive but basically symbolic gestures that presidents like to make in election years. Mr. Bush's advisers may also hope that it will divert social conservatives from pressing for a constitutional amendment banning gay marriages. But as meaningless sops to powerful voting blocs go, this one is particularly cruel.

The whole idea of encouraging poor people to get married and stay married through classes and counseling sessions ignores the main reason that stable wedlock is rare in inner cities: the epidemics of joblessness and incarceration that have stripped those communities of what social scientists call "marriageable" men. Women in poor neighborhoods may find bitter amusement in the idea that they need the government's encouragement to search for a husband, or that conflict resolution courses are the way to shore up troubled unions between two poor people.

Poor may be coaxed to marry
Bush considers faith-based plan

One problem with it may be that it's, well, wrong. Professor Edward Lenoski actually went out and studied battered children's parents, and compared them to a control group. He found that 91% of the battered children were planned, as opposed to 63% of the control group. Wanting your children is not the same as being a good parent. Indeed, it may lead to the problem that the desire is not fulfilled by the child -- which can endanger the child.

Local black clergy and community leaders met Thursday to get onboard President Bush's $1.5 billion proposal to promote marriage among lower-income couples, using religious groups to emphasize premarital counseling. One of those in attendance winced at suggestions that the initiative was timed to coincide with the presidential election season. "This is not about getting the governor's brother re-elected," said Norris Barr, headmaster of the Capital City Preparatory School. "It's about getting African-American men to be good husbands and African-American women to be good wives to make good families."

George W. Bush disappointed conservatives in November when, after Massachussets' highest court decided in favor of gay marriage, the president expressed only strong disapproval, as opposed to, say, implacable rage. And he's further vexed them by declining -- so far -- to push hard for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. So he needs, going into an election season, to burnish his credentials with the right. Hence his "healthy marriages" initiative.

Since the NYT article came out a few days ago I have read and heard all kinds of allegations that simply don't ring true, as in:

This is an attempt by the government to meddle more in peoples lives. Actually the marriage initiative could be seen as a government intrusion prevention initiative. It prevents visits to the child support enforcement office, divorce court, custody court, juvenile court, state and federal prison, the welfare office, etc, all of which are far more intrusive than participating in a marriage education class.

This is a conservative initiative promoting traditional family values. All of the curriculum I have reviewed that are approved by the Administration promote an equal regard view of marriage. Both men and women are taught how to become more emotionally and socially mature, capable of engaging in a respectful adult relationship. Gone are the days of men as dominating, controlling heads of households and women as steadfast, longsuffering servants.

One obvious problem is that when people hear the word marriage they think patriarchal domination and abuse of power. And for that I blame the inability of the marriage movement to successfully promote our views of what a healthy marriage looks like. Michael Trippet was dead on right -- the more moderate and progressive among us are an unseen, unrecognized group. Who are our campaign managers? Who are our lobbyists? Who are our radio and television talk show hosts? Who are our celebrity endorsers? Who is out in front of cameras every day saying "I am a part of the healthy marriage movement and this is what we stand for." The media mess we are now seeing is our responsibility. Yes they are getting it wrong. And we don't have enough media savvy professionals to get the right message out.

This is about the infrastructure of the marriage movement. We have a long way to go before we are a force to be reckoned with.

Reading the ongoing coverage of the president's proposal to dedicate $1.5 billion to marriage training initiatives targeted at the poor it's impossible to avoid being struck by the way all of this seems to be driven by the politics of homosexuality. It appears that Karl Rove is hoping (unsuccessfully, it seems) that this will convince Christian conservatives to stop pushing so hard for politically risky action on the gay marriage front.

I can't speak in detail about the merits of this proposal (Katherine Boo's article last August on "The Marriage Cure" made it sound to me that the women she was profiling were more in need of reliable bus service than husbands, but one narrative is hardly the last word here), but this obviously isn't a procedurally sound method of devising welfare policy. If you want to help lift people out of poverty, you need to think about how to create a well-designed anti-poverty initiative; if you want to stop gay and lesbian couples from getting married, you need to ban same-sex marriage. Mixing the issues together like this doesn't make much sense, though it does raise the question of why, if marriage is so great, gays and lesbians shouldn't be encouraged -- or at least permitted -- to get on the bandwagon too.

Sandy Rios may be out there but the analogy [between gay marriage and slavery] isn't totally off.

Those of us who oppose SSM and civil unions are not motivated by animus. We are motivated by love of the institution of marriage and, most importantly, love of children. Civil unions and SSM will (in all likelihood) undercut many legal and cultural norms that foster strong families: sexual fidelity, sexual complementarity in parenting and marriage, the norm that every child deserves a father and mother, the norm that fathers should not abandon their children, the norm that procreation belongs in marriage, the norm that marriage should (ideally) be procreative, and the list goes on.

But to get straight to the point you raise in your posting: Is SSM evil? Yes, SSM is evil insofar as it constitutes a rejection of the intrinsic goods associated with sexuality and the family. Specifically, it sanctions a deliberately sterile sexual relationship that (1) does not serve the common good, (2) undercuts the normative basis of the family, the fundamental basis for social order, and (3) encourages men and women to engage in behavior that is physically and psychologically harmful.

But let me clear: SSM is no more evil than casual divorce in a family, which does even more harm to society and to the parties involved than would SSM. Cultural conservatives have a lot of work to do regarding divorce, premarital sex, and the like. SSM is only the tip of the iceberg. Sad to say, these other topics usually get lost in our discussion of SSM.

"'Healthy marriages' sounds like a traditional value, which is red meat to married voters," said John Zogby, a pollster...."
...
John Green, a University of Akron political scientist who studies voting behavior, said the marriage initiative could have symbolic and real results. "It may be that this White House perceives married people as a key GOP constituency," he said. "To that end, it pays both to have more people married and to affirm the values and commitment of people who already are married."

"This is a ruse by the White House to make the social experiment of getting poor people married more palatable. You link it to gay marriage and say the initiative is about protecting and elevating the institution of marriage."

In the New York Times, I read something seemingly banal, but actually quite remarkable: "[The actress Kate Hudson] gave birth last week to an 8 pound, 11 ounce boy . . . The father is Ms. Hudson's husband, Chris Robinson . . ." I was stopped by the sentence "The father is Ms. Hudson's husband." Twenty-five years ago -- certainly 50 years ago -- that sentence would have been unthinkable. Unnecessary, rather. But it seems perfectly natural, and necessary, now, doesn't it?

I hear that other party using this term, "family values." But they use it as a way of dividing people, grading people, sorting them out. There's these good people over here, they're the family value people, and over here there's these other people, they're not the family value people. It's a way of separating people. I don't think that's the right way to use the term "family values."

Avoiding the words "heterosexual marriage", [Bush] administration officials are referring to "healthy" marriages.

Several prominent evangelicals said their concerns were not assuaged by a report that the White House was planning a $1.5 billion initiative to promote marriage.

Ms. Rios of Concerned Women of America said Mr. Bush had implicitly endorsed gay unions. "It is the same as saying the federal government doesn't want to weigh in on slavery, but if the states want to call it chattel that is O.K.," Ms. Rios said.

"...[the] Concerned Women of America, one of the largest conservative Christian advocacy groups...."

"Some women's groups like the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund...."

As we debate various aspects of marriage and parenting for same-sex couples, there is a group of people that we should not forget: those who do not easily fit our conventional definitions of gender. This includes the transgendered, people with an inner sense of gender identity different from their genetic sex, and the intersexed, people with physical characteristics different than their genetic sex or whose genetic makeup is not clearly male or female.

For a transgendered person, one important concern is the legal status of their marriage and parental rights during the change of gender. If we restrict legal marriage to male-female couples, it could have the unfortunate effect of nullifying a marriage when one partner goes through a gender change, even if the couple remains committed to one another and wants to stay married. Likewise, transgendered parents could be separated from their children if parental gender is a critical criterion for child custody.

The consequences of strengthening traditional gender roles in family law may be even more dire for intersexed people. It seems grossly unfair to insist that someone born with both male and female physical characteristics choose one gender or the other before they can be legally married, even more so if the law requires that their anatomies be surgically "corrected" to conform to one or the other gender norm. Likewise, the intersexed should not be denied access to reproductive technologies, which in many cases offer the only possibility of having children.

However we feel about gay men and lesbians forming families, I would hope we can agree that the outcome of the same-sex marriage (SSM) controversy should not adversely affect intersexed and transgendered people. If we develop a social consensus that SSM is not in our collective best interests, perhaps it would be better to specifically outlaw marriage for gay male and lesbian couples than to reserve marriage for male-female couples, since the latter would have such unfortunate consequences for people with nontraditional gender identity.

A group of 90 law professors and constitutional scholars from across the country...urged the state's highest court Monday to solidify its November ruling on gay marriage by rejecting a proposed civil union law.

In a friend-of-the-court brief...the group argues that the...Goodridge v. Department of Public Health [holding] was unambiguous in its conclusion that the state must allow homosexual couples to marry.

"I thought it was important, as did a large number of the best constitutional law scholars and legal historians in the country, to weigh in on whether there really is any ambiguity," [Harvard Prof. Larry] Tribe said. "I thought it was clear that there wasn't any."
...
Tribe said he hopes the brief will make the SJC "sit up and listen," noting that experts "spanning the ideological spectrum" signed the brief.

"MARRIAGE PROMOTION" [Ramesh Ponnuru]
My view on this is the same as my view of governmental efforts to help people with children: Maybe it's worthwhile in some circumstances, but it's not nearly as good as ending the government policies that weaken marriage and punish childbearing. Not only that, but the ameliorative proposals are nowhere near the destructive ones in magnitude.
Posted at 10:22 AM

GOVT SUPPORT OF MARRIAGE [John Derbyshire]
Charles Murray has said somewhere that government support of marriage will do for the institution what government support of religion has done for religion in European countries -- i.e. kill it stone dead.

I agree with this. If marriage needs active government support, the game is up.
Posted at 09:22 AM

I DON'T [John J. Miller]
Count me unimpressed by the Bush administration's forthcoming proposal to spend $1.5 billion promoting marriage. Isn't federal spending already out of control? Besides, what are they going to do, subsidize wedding-ring purchases? (Actually, they're going to sharpen "interpersonal skills." Good luck!) As fate would have it, the feminist enemies of marriage are trying their best to get me to support the White House on this one. Just look at this dimwitted comment from NOW: "Such programs intrude on personal privacy, may ignore the risk of domestic violence and may coerce women to marry." Oh please. Is it possible for both sides to lose this debate?
Posted at 08:34 AM

A new Bush administration election-year plan designed for straight couples only would provide at least $1.5 billion for training to help them develop interpersonal skills to sustain "healthy marriages," The New York Times reported Wednesday. Officials are weighing whether the president should promote the plan next week in his State of the Union address. The move comes as the Administration faces pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage in light of Massachusetts's highest court ruling that gay couples have a right to marry under the state's constitution. "This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives and to solidify his conservative base," a presidential adviser told the Times.

The Bush administration is calling for Congress to approve a $1.5 billion program to promote traditional marriage. But, religious conservatives say the plan doesn't go far enough and want the president to declare his support in the Sate of the Union address for a constitutional amendment to prevent same-sex marriage.

WHITE HOUSE -- MARRYING OFF THE POOR: The Administration is planning to spend $1.5 billion to "help couples develop interpersonal skills that sustain 'healthy marriages.'" The program will be targeted at "low-income couples." The money will be used for "advertising campaigns to publicize the value of marriage, instruction in marriage skills and mentoring programs that use married couples as role models." The plan was proposed because the President was "facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage." Tim Casey, a lawyer for the NOW Legal Defense fund said that "such programs intrude on personal privacy, may ignore the risk of domestic violence and may coerce women to marry." [emphasis added]

NY Times: "The [Bush Administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage, after a decision by the highest court in Massachusetts."

CAP: The plan was proposed because the President was "facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage."

As someone who has become more familiar with the "marriage movement" after plunging into the SSM debate, I was fascinated by your responses to the NYT article because I think they demonstrate an interesting political quandry. Prior to the SSM debate, my only real interaction with the "movement" was from your book, Fatherless America, which I used for a research project in law school on bias in custody disputes ... While I've come to realize that the "movement' includes many thoughtful, insightful, creative people, the reality is that for most Americans (and I would bet those in the Bush administration), the "marriage movement" has been defined by groups like Focus on the Family, the Traditional Values Coalition, and an amalgam of religious conservative groups who describe themselves "family rights organizations."

There is the political paradox. When your views are being trumpted by Lou Sheldon or the folks at Focus on the Family, you also get their baggage. FotF and TVC have made anti-gay legislation their "raison d'etre" in Washington. Anti-gay legislation (beyond SSM) is the focus of much of the evangelical Christian lobby in Washington and it is those people who have the ear of the White House. Therefore, any issue supported by those groups gets lumped into their work against gays and lesbians by the NYT and, frankly, by most people paying attention in Washington. FotF and TVC have a powerful presence in Washington and their voice, not the "movement's," is the one heard on the issues by the press.

As Andrew Sullivan recently pointed out, with the SSM debate raging, no one knows the work that the "movement" has done to change divorce laws, strengthen marriage, etc. Instead, it appears that all the movement is interested in is talking about preventing gays to get married. Call it ineffective p.r. or a single-minded press, but most people outside the movement aren't aware what the movement is doing.

The [Bush Administration] officials said they believed that the measure was especially timely because they were facing pressure from conservatives eager to see the federal government defend traditional marriage.

"This is a way for the president to address the concerns of conservatives and to solidify his conservative base," a presidential adviser said.
...
Ronald T. Haskins, a Republican who has previously worked on Capitol Hill and at the White House under Mr. Bush, said, "A lot of conservatives are very pleased with the healthy marriage initiative."

Some women's groups like the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund oppose government programs that promote marriage.

Dr. Horn said that federal money for marriage promotion would be available only to heterosexual couples.

As a dad currently laboring in the trenches with a three and a half year old and one year old twins I confess that I find it really hard to muster up sympathy for same-sex couples dealing with "endless, painful struggles with radical reproductive technologies". That same-sex couples must struggle to have children, in a way that the vast majority of heterosexual couples do not have to, is simply due to the fact that nature is so ordered that it takes a man and a woman to make a child. For two men or two women to "have" a child involves circumventing, or exploiting in an entirely new way, a wholly natural process. If I Was one member of a same-sex couple, I would EXPECT this to involve struggle.

Don't get me wrong -- I don't wish struggle or hardship on anyone. And I have a lot of sympathy for heterosexual married couples who, expecting to take part in the natural process of having their own children, find themselves unable to have children. But I do find it insulting to suggest that gay parents might have a leg up on the rest of us since they have such a tough time becoming parents. Gay couples who decide to use radical reproductive technology to have children do so of their own accord, and merit no special regard for doing so.

The study tackles a perplexing social-science question: How do we gauge the effect of any particular program on divorce rates? For one thing, there is no central collection point for divorce statistics, which means data has to be gathered state by state -- and even from individual counties. There also are dozens of confounding factors that have to be taken into account. And even tracking how a program is implemented is difficult, since leaders come and go and each community's approach is different. "We thought it was going to be easier," said Weed, who operates the institute from an office in the basement of his Taylorsville home. Weed, research associate Paul Birch and analyst Joseph A. Olsen independently collected marriage and divorce statistics for all 3,141 counties in the United States, relying on state Web sites and published reports for some data and personal telephone calls for the rest. Scott Stanley, a marital researcher at the University of Denver and co-director of the school's Center for Marital and Family Studies, said the institute appears to have taken an ambitious and solid approach. "The further you get out in the community and the further you get from the lab, the sloppier the conditions are for doing research and the harder it is to make conclusions," said Stanley, who has not seen the study. "This might be the first time that a wide perspective of this phenomenon might have been undertaken," said Stanley, who helped develop a marital education program used in Utah. Norval D. Glenn, a professor of American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and a widely regarded researcher, reviewed an early draft of the study and called it "extremely well-designed" and "cautiously interpreted." "I'm very impressed with it," Glenn said. "This is the kind of research that is very difficult to do. It is probably the best kind of research [on the subject] that I've seen. What he finds is a fairly modest but apparently real reduction [in divorce rates]."

Not long ago, a politician who used the word "moral" was about to talk about "permissiveness" and "cultural decline." But the new "moral majority" being forged on the campaign trail is built on a yearning for community and a promise of social justice.

At a rally in Altoona on Sunday, Sen. John Edwards, an underdog who is rising in the polls, spoke of the nation's obligation to "35 million Americans who are living in poverty."

"This is not about economic issues," he insisted. "This is about right and wrong." Reducing poverty, Edwards said, is "a moral responsibility."
...
[J]udging by what the candidates are saying and the response they're getting at one event after another, the red-blue divide that matters this year is a different one. It pits a stark individualism against community.
...
A century ago, progressive Christians developed what became known as "the Social Gospel" to address the inequities of an industrializing America. This year's primary campaign has called forth a new Social Gospel -- nonsectarian and less explicitly religious, but no less important.

In the last few years, some liberals have also expressed interest in marriage-education programs. They say a growing body of statistical evidence suggests that children fare best, financially and emotionally, in married two-parent families.
...
"We know this is a sensitive area," Dr. Horn said. "We don't want to come in with a heavy hand. All services will be voluntary. We want to help couples, especially low-income couples, manage conflict in healthy ways. We know how to teach problem-solving, negotiation and listening skills. This initiative will not force anyone to get or stay married. The last thing we'd want is to increase the rate of domestic violence against women."

Most honor killings revolve around run-away marriages or relationships between two people from different castes. There were several instances of a groom or bride being killed by irate family members for marrying someone from a so-called lower caste.

In NR's eyes, gay couples are not the civil, moral or spiritual equivalent of straight couples. Britney and Jason are always the moral superiors to a lesbian couple caring for each other for years. You listening, Mary Cheney? That's what they think of us. So the gay relationship is relegated to the 1950s status of room-mates - where the social right feels more comfortable. This is the fundamental difference. It is motivated entirely by animus for gay couples. You think the religious right was interested in providing civil benefits to straight room-mates before the issue of same-sex marriage came along? You think they were thinking of passing a constitutional amendment to strengthen marriage before the threat of gay equality? The bottom line is that NR's editors consider gay relationships inferior as a civil matter to straight ones. They think that the most honorable and profound gay relationship is worth less than Britney's 55 hour marriage. Why cannot they say this? My relationship with my boyfriend will never be as good as Britney's to Jason - and it's worth amending the very constitution to affirm that for ever. Ponnuru may not like conceding this. But it's true. The fight is between privilege and equality. NR, not for the first time, backs privilege. That's why gay people and their families will fight this amendment to the very end. Because it's about writing us out of the meaning of America - for ever.

When those in favor of traditional marriage start proposing measures that would infringe on heterosexual abuse of marital privileges, I'll take them seriously.

Intrigued by divisions within conservative ranks, gay-rights strategists are trying to portray a proposed constitutional ban on same-sex marriage as a radical step that true conservatives should oppose. The Human Rights Campaign, a national gay rights group, is targeting conservatives with a radio and print ad campaign starting Monday in 10 areas, including Omaha, Neb.; Indianapolis; Tampa, Fla.; Milwaukee; Las Vegas; and Philadelphia. "Be conservative with the Constitution," the ads say. "Don't amend it."

What is progressive masculinity? It has something to do with what the linguist George Lakoff calls "nurturant parenting." All the great liberal Presidents of the past century were nurturers (their weakness for war notwithstanding). But conservative leaders follow another model; Lakoff calls it "the strict father." The appeal of this harsh, punitive style is directly related to anxiety. People kept in a state of constant stress will sacrifice their best instincts and even their real interests for the illusion of safety--and sheer sexiness--that a bad dad can provide. That's why the Republicans put such energy into arousing anxiety and displacing it onto Democrats.