Jonathan Rauch regularly has good ideas.  Now he has another one.  Here’s an excerpt from his article:

In 2008, California’s voters approved Proposition 8, which rescinded court-ordered same-sex marriage. Some angry gay activists then boycotted or protested businesses that employed Prop 8 supporters, even if all the supporters did was donate $100.  We don’t know how many people actually lost jobs because of these heavy-handed tactics. Probably very few. But never mind; the stratagem became the story. “Prop 8 Foes Turn to ‘Blacklist’ Tactics,” shouted a USA Today headline. Justified or not, fear spread in conservative circles that getting on the wrong side of gay marriage could cost you your job. “People tell us that their livelihoods have been threatened solely because of their public advocacy opposing same-sex marriage,” said Maggie Gallagher, founder of the National Organization for Marriage. “Fine,” say some gay rights activists. “If they’re going to be bigots, they should be afraid to speak out.” Wrong. What the gay-rights movement has always really stood for is a country where we can all express our identities and convictions without fear: a country without closets, gay or straight.  On precisely that principle, gay civil rights groups have for years pressed for laws protecting gays from workplace discrimination, with only spotty success. At the federal level, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act has been stalled for years. Cultural conservatives insist it enshrines “special rights.” Enter Ben McAdams and Derek Brown. And a new idea.

At the NYTs, an interesting post by Thomas Edsell on Gingrich and cultural conservatives.  I see the same thing that Edsell sees, and it is shocking.  Only a few years ago, Christian conservatives seemed genuinely outraged at Clinton’s sexual misconduct and, in general, seemed sincerely to place a high priority on supporting politicians who, at least publicly, were seen as sober, clean-living, family-oriented people.   But in South Carolina, anyway, Christian conservatives didn’t seem very enamored of either Santorum or Romney — each a poster boy from central casting for what used to be called “family values” — and instead largely voted for Gingrich, beside whom Clinton on his worst day seemed like an uptight Sunday School superintendent.  In fact, I think it’s fair to say that if Christian conservatives can accept Gingrich’s personal behavior, there is absolutely nothing, nada, in the area of personal sexual and family conduct that is unacceptable to them.  When exactly did this change occur, and what on earth does it mean?  I’m not sure, but one guess is that society as a whole, conservative Christians included, are changing their minds on nearly all things sexual and familial at what amounts in socio-political terms to warp speed.   I know there are other (and maybe more damning) possible explanations, but this strikes me as one of them, anyway. (Sigh.)   It seems quite likely that, after Florida, in the coming weeks, Gingrich, a truly awful man, will win or nearly win a number of primaries in the Deep South, largely on the basis of the male evangelical voter who used to be, but appears to be no longer, concerned with the issues of marriage and family.

But Dr. Elisabeth Sheff, a sociology professor at Georgia State University who has spent more than a decade studying kids from polyamorous homes, disagrees. “Many of the children in poly families are doing great,” she says. “All the attention they get and the access to shared resources helps them blossom. Research on single parents shows us that it’s too much work for one person. Polyamory comes at it from the complete other direction—that two people aren’t enough.” And polyandry gives a kid more father figures—perhaps not the worst family structure in a country where there’s an epidemic of fatherlessness.

Mayor Michael Nutter of Philadelphia on flash mobs and families:  Worth a listen.

Generation gap:

In response to Erica’s motherhood essay, Molly wrote that she spends “a ton of time with my children, never travel, barely work and am a helicopter parent like you can’t believe”. Now 32, she married at 25, and had three children – Max, seven, and three-year-old twins, Darwin and Beatrice … Molly writes in the anthology: “In the eyes of Erica Jong, I am a prude … a low-rent yuppie, shuttling my children back and forth to the various and sundry activities and involving myself in the Parents’ Association. I am the person my grandmother and mother would have watched in silent scorn. I sometimes tell my children that my most important job is taking care of them.”

To all the newlweds in New York today: congratulations and welcome to the club!

A few days ago, a conservative pro-family group in Iowa started asking current presidential candidates to sign a pledge called “A Marriage Vow.”   Signers of the pledge commit themselves to a range of things, including being faithful to their spouse, working to lower the divorce rate, and opposing pornography, polygamy, Sharia law, and gay marriage.   So far, Michelle Bachmann and Rick Santorum have signed on.   (Funny aside:  Bachmann seems to be saying now that she hasn’t read the document yet.)

(Another aside: I learned of this document while it was still in the idea phase, and I urged for a number of reasons that it not be done at all, thereby demonstrating once again my amazing ability to influence events.)

Now, it turns out that the Institute for American Values appears in several footnotes in this pledge, including in regard to the statement in the original (now removed) preamble saying in flamboyant terms that U.S. Black family structure was more stable during slavery than it is today.  (Sigh.)  As you might imagine, this development has ignited controversy among people who follow these things, and among those who enjoy controversy.

Well, it turns out that our report which is  cited in the footnote says no such thing, and in today’s gotcha article in the Des Moine Register I am quoted as saying that.  Well, I actually stretch out and say a bit more than that:

“It’s too stupid a thing to say. I don’t think a serious scholar would ever say anything like that,” said Blankenhorn, who wrote a book arguing against same-sex marriage, a belief shared by Family Leader organizers. “It’s mystifying to me as to why they would’ve cited our report as evidence of that.”

(Note to reporter: nice touch on that ID.)

Troubled by a nagging sense of guilt, I got to the office this morning and looked through, for the first time in many years, Herbert Gutmann’s well-regarded book, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom.   Gutmann is a  leftist historian who published this influential book in 1976, inspired, he says in the preface, by his anger toward and rejection of the Moynihan Report of 1965, which had flamboyantly spoken of the Black family as “a tangle of pathology.”  Anyway, The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom is a long, complicated book, and many later historians have critiqued parts of what Gutmann said and have added new facts to his narrative,  BUT: — suffice it to say, that there is considerable evidence in Gutmann’s book to suggest that, indeed, probably a higher proportion of Black families were headed by two parents during and immediately after slavery than is the case today.

I still would never have said what the Iowa folks said in this document, especially not in the sharply polemical and polarizing way that they said it (they even managed to get in a swipe at Obama while saying it); and it remains true that our report that these folks cite does even address this subject; HOWEVER, Gutmann’s book is still there, written in defense of Black families by a serious man who, whatever else one might want to say about him, is not ”stupid.”

Mea culpa.

Recently in the New York Times, the reporter Kim Severson writes that Chick-fil-A, the Atlanta-based fast food company, “has given hundreds of thousands of dollars to national groups fighting same-sex marriage.”

I can’t speak with certainty, but I am fairly sure that this statement is untrue.  I have know the Cathy family — the family that owns Chick-fil-A — for years, and I am fairly familiar with their philanthropic goals and activities.   A major priority for the Cathys for many years has been improving the state of foster care in Georgia — they have helped thousands and thousands of desperately needy children — and they also support many community and church-based marriage-strengthening programs.   I know personally that opposing gay marriage is not a priority for them in their philanthropy, and as a result, to the best of my knowledge, Chick-fil-A has not in the past provided and does not today provide funding to organized efforts to fight gay marriage.

So why does Severson say what she says?  Here are the three possibilities, as far as I can see:

1.  What she says is true (and I am mistaken).

2.  She just said it for the fun of it, based on online chatter about Chick-fil-A that she has been reading.

3.  She figures that all money donated by Chick-fil-A to strengthen marriage that is not also explicitly friendly to gay marriage is the same as ”giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to national groups fighting same-sex marrige.”

All three are possible, but my money is on number 2.  In what passes for public discussion today, and especially on this issue, anyone can and does say absolutely anything, and fairness be damned.  Now, if anyone out there can offer evidence for numbers 1 or 3, I’d be glad to hear from you, and will amend my conclusions about Severson’s piece accordingly.

Barry says:

I’m not interested in calling anyone a bigot. As I said in my post, “during debates, I try never to say ‘you’re a bigot.’ … But I won’t hesitate to argue that an idea is bigoted; or a statement is bigoted; or a policy is bigoted.”

“Charging” a person with being a bigot is making the argument about what’s in that person’s heart. Should we really want to argue about that? I don’t care what’s in people’s hearts. I care about what’s in people’s policies.

Well, as far as I can see, it doesn’t — it can’t — ever work that way.  If we consult the dictionaries, we will learn that the word “bigot,” a noun, is defined as a person who basically (the various dictionaries each put this their own way) is prejudiced toward, and intolerant of, others.  And the word “bigoted,” an adjective, is defined as being characteristic of a bigot.  Now, unless we are going to start creating entirely new and ideosyncratic defintions of these old words, we simply must conclude, as a matter of simple logic, that a bigot is a person who demonstrates certain personal characterisitcs, and that something is bigoted whenever (and only whenever) that something is characteristic of a bigot. 

Therefore — and again, this is math, not opinion — the concept of bigotry, regardless of whether expressed in the form of a noun (bigot) or an adjective (bigoted), cannot be separated EVER from personal characteristics and the question of personal intentionality (what Barry calls “what’s in that person’s heart”).  

So it is a non sequitor to say “I am not saying that you are a bigot, but I am saying that the policy you support is bigoted.”  That doesn’t work. Or, to put it another way, it is not logically possible, if we are going to respect the basic definitions of these words, to argue that a non-bigoted person can support a a bigoted policy — since as we’ve seen, the essential defintion of bigoted is to be characteristic of a bigot. 

The closest you can get, Barry, as far as I can see, if you want to stick with these words without arbitrarily changing their meaning, is to say that person X, who may or may not be a bigot (you can say which), supports a policy that is favored by many bigots.  That, I think, can be true.  And in the case of SSM, I believe it is true.

P.S.  I just thought of an historical analogy.  In run-up to the Second World War, the U.S. Communist Party said constantly that Roosevelt’s policies were “fascistic.”  Whenever it was pointed out to them in debates that Roosevelt personally denounced fascism every day of the week and constantly described himself and his Administration as anti-fascist, the CP theorists basically replied that what is in Roosevelt’s heart is irrelevant; that all that matters is the effect of his policies; and that Roosevelt’s policies were in fact (this was their term) “objectively fascist.”   I think all of us today would pretty much agree that that particular CP argument was, to speak with fine scholarly precision, a complete crock.  But as far as I can see, they were playing the exact same game, semantically speaking, as those today who would similarly suggest that it doesn’t matter whether a person is in fact a bigot, it only matters whether the policy he or she supports is — dare I say it, “objectively” — bigoted.

The writer Jill Johnston has died, at the age of 81.  From her obit in today’s NYTs:

In the early 1970s she began championing the cause of lesbian feminism, arguing in “Lesbian Nation” (1973) for a complete break with men and with male-dominated capitalist institutions. She defined female relations with the opposite sex as a form of collaboration.  “Once I understood the feminist doctrines, a lesbian separatist position seemed the commonsensical position, especially since, conveniently, I was an L-person,” she told The Gay and Lesbian Review in 2006. “Women wanted to remove their support from men, the ‘enemy’ in a movement for reform, power and self-determination.

And this too:

Jill Johnston was born on May 17, 1929, in London and taken to the United States as an infant by her mother, Olive Crowe, after her father abandoned them both. She was reared by a grandmother in Little Neck, on Long Island. Throughout her childhood she believed that her parents had divorced, but in 1950, when The New York Times ran a short obituary about her father, an English bell maker named Cyril F. Johnston, she learned the truth. Her mother informed her that she and Johnston had never married. A lifelong fascination with this absent figure, whose company, Gillett & Johnston, supplied bells and carillons to churches and cathedrals all over the world, motivated her to write “England’s Child: The Carillon and the Casting of Big Bells” (2008), a biography of her father and a history of bell making.

At National Affairs, a useful summary of recently published scholarly articles on marriage and families.

A high-ranking leader of the LDS church, a 42-year old father of six, was murded in cold blood yesterday in California.  The motives of the murderer, who may have suffered from mental illness and may have been  a former church member, don’t seem yet to be clearly established.  Very sad, no matter how or why it happened.  One amazing thing, to me, however, is that the New York Times story on the murder says … absolutely nothing.  No coverage of it all, as far as I can tell.  Not a word. Like it didn’t happen.