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Saturday, May 15, 2004
From the NYT's Robert Kirkpatrick: Just four months after an alliance of conservative Christians was threatening a churchgoer revolt unless President Bush championed an amendment banning same-sex marriage, members say they have been surprised and disappointed by what they call a tepid response from the pews.Yet more support for David's hypothesis. In fact, I think this is the third instance or so, so I can drop the "hypo" and just call it a thesis. Mr. Foreman of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force suggested that watching gay weddings in Massachusetts would make people more accepting, not less.Whatever the merits of the argument against gay marriage, I think Foreman's analysis is right. From CNS: "New Data to Show Growing Support for Traditional Marriage" I guess it's official, the word now is "traditional." What a shame, in my view. P.S. I'm in Malta next week, participating in an Islam/West dialogue. So, as they say, blogging from me will be light. "The Supreme Court has refused to block a controversial initiative in Massachusetts permitting the United States' first legal gay marriages beginning next Monday, according to lawyers involved in the case." In the WaPo, John Kerry tries to walk that thin line on SSM -- against it, but basically sympathetic and against those who are against it. Friday, May 14, 2004
LOVE STUDIES: Nice article ("It's Good to be Good") on the scientific study of altruism and the work of my friend Stephen Post and the (only think tank with an odder name than Institute for American Values)Institute for Research on Unlimited Love. "New Data to Show Growing Support for Traditional Marriage," says an article from the conservative CNS News. This, along with Maggie's column below, is more evidence that it's not just liberal journalists who use the term "traditional marriage" to refer to heterosexual marriage. And I still think it's an awful trend. Thursday, May 13, 2004
DISESTABLISHMENT CONT.): At MarriageDebate.com, Eve Tushnet takes aim at my comments on the possibility of disestablishing marriage. She makes very good points. I'll try to respond soon -- not in the sense of rebutting what she says, but just to say more about some of the possible advantages to this approach. I'm not sure it's workable; everything Eve says is true. It's just that I don't think any of the options before us are good ones. The American Sociological Association seems poised to adopt a resolution condemning the proposed federal marriage amendment and endorsing SSM. This sentence in the proposed resolution caught my eye: WHEREAS we believe that the official justification for the proposed constitutional amendment is based on prejudice rather than empirical research ...It must be comforting sincerely to believe that one's own opinions on complex moral-social issues are based on "empirical research," whereas opposing points of view are based entirely on "prejudice." What is funny, is that sociologists, of all people, should know better. No one who has seriously thought about epistemology and the sociology of knowledge would even pretend that facts can be neatly segregated from values, or imply that it is even theoretically possible to take the simplest human action or make the simplest choice based only on "empirical research." The professor who wrote that sentence should go back to Weber and start all over. He or she has a lot of intellectual catching up to do. From Boston: "In a move that could thwart out-of-state gay couples who plan to get marriage licenses in Boston City Hall next week, city officials announced yesterday that they will not accept marriage applications from gay couples who live outside Massachusetts or don't intend to move to the state. But the city will accept a couple's word, and not require proof of residency, officials said." Pew Forum Transcript: "The Ties That Divide: A Conversation on Gay Marriage with Andrew Sullivan and Gerard Bradley" Wednesday, May 12, 2004
From Israel: "The government has proposed a bill that extends by one year the order permitting men to take paternity leave instead of their spouses." From 365Gay.com: "Next week same-sex marriage becomes legal in Massachusetts, but two other states may not be far behind." FROM MASSACHUSETTS: "Governor Mitt Romney's top spokesman yesterday equated Provincetown's plans to marry out-of-state gay couples with marrying children, as rhetoric heated up over Romney's threat to take legal action if the town issues marriage licenses to gays who don't plan to live in Massachusetts." Tuesday, May 11, 2004
"Officials in Cape Cod's gay tourism mecca of Provincetown voted to offer marriage licenses to out-of-state same-sex couples, potentially setting the stage for another legal battle over gay marriage." FROM DOWN UNDER: Australian couples owe it to their country to have more children and should get on with the job, the nation's treasurer said on Tuesday. From MSNBC: "More women seeking romance online: Adult sites, online personals are changing the rules of romance" "Committed to marriage for the masses: Polyamorists say they relate honestly to multiple partners." Excerpt: Unitarians from Boston to Berkeley have opened another front in the liberal crusade to expand the definition of marriage and family in America. It's the new polygamy, and according to the Unitarian Universalists for Polyamory Awareness, their relationships are at least as ethical as other marriages -- gay or straight. "Polyamory is never having to say you've broken up," said Sally Amsbury of Oakland, whose sex and love life openly includes her husband and two "other significant others," known in polyamory parlance as "OSOs." Amsbury serves on the national board of directors of the Unitarian Universalist organization, which defines polyamory as "the philosophy and practice of loving or relating intimately to more than one other person at a time with honesty and integrity."My friend Dan Cere attended a marriage law meeting last year, and said that, for the progressives there, SSM was old hat, like kissing your grandma. For those who want to push the boundaries, polyamory is the new new thing. "For the first time under international law, a U.N.-backed court in Sierra Leone will prosecute forced marriage as a crime against humanity, officials said Monday." Monday, May 10, 2004
WEBCAST: The McGill Foundation and Focus on the Family recently co-sponsored Same-Sex Marriage: A Civil Debate, featuring Evan Wolfson and Glenn Stanton. |
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