Archives: General

A new movie about sperm donation- believe it or not from the child’s perspective- and with legitimate language like “father”.

The organization GLADD has launched a “Commentator Accountability Project” which promises to keep media organizations well informed about the true beliefs and motivations of 36 commentators in the media who, according to GLADD, in the name of commenting on gay marriage and other issues, say hurtful and untrue things about gay people.  Of the 36 people on the list, I think I know, either well or well enough to say hello to, about 8 or 9.  At least some of them, I am confident, should NOT be on such a list. 

But my question is (and it’s not rhetorical, I mean it as a question):  Should there be such a list?  I can think of valid reasons to make such a list, among them being an effort to rebut what is viewed as homophobic public speech.  And I don’t believe that making such a list in and of itself constitutes an effort to violate anyone’s right to free speech.  But something about these lists also makes me nervous.  Palmer had lists. McCarthy had  lists.  Hoover had lists.  There is something about these lists that smells bad. 

An excerpt from Jumped In by Jorja Leap (Beacon Press), available at HuffPost:

No one believes I’m in a gang. My mama don’t believe I’m in a gang. That’s because I’m a woman. And I got a baby. And that’s supposed to make me different.

This New Yorker article based on Dale Carpenter’s book on Lawrence v Texas is really interesting reading.

(Quick backstory for those who need their memories refreshed: In 1986, the Supreme Court upheld Georgia’s law criminalizing gay sex in Bowers v. Hardwick.

The majority opinion in Bowers, written by Justice Byron White, framed the legal question as whether the constitution confers “a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy.” Justice White’s opinion for the majority answered this question in the negative, stating that “to claim that a right to engage in such conduct is ‘deeply rooted in this Nation’s history and tradition’ or ‘implicit in the concept of ordered liberty’ is, at best, facetious.” [...]

A sharply worded dissenting opinion by Justice Harry Blackmun attacked the majority opinion as having an “almost obsessive focus on homosexual activity.” Justice Blackmun suggested that “[o]nly the most willful blindness could obscure the fact that sexual intimacy is ‘a sensitive, key relationship of human existence, central to family life, community welfare, and the development of human personality’”

17 years later, in Lawrence v Texas, the Court overturned Bowers. Justice Kennedy wrote for the majority: “Bowers was not correct when it was decided, and it is not correct today. [...] the Texas statute furthers no legitimate state interest which can justify its intrusion into the personal and private life of the individual.”)

The famous story behind Laurence v Texas is that cops looking for a gun instead found two men — John Lawrence and Tyron Garner — having sex in Lawrence’s bedroom, and arrested them. That story just isn’t true — Lawrence and Garner weren’t lovers and weren’t having sex. Read More

By Dahlia Lithwick, read it here.

And come to our event March 22nd at the Center for Public Conversation where I’ll host a conversation with the book’s author (and sometime guest blogger here at FamilyScholars), Dale Carpenter. Invitation here; be sure and RSVP today – I suspect we’ll have a full house.

A recent article from small town Illinois highlight support groups for families of those incarcerated.

The mothers who created the groups are clear:

“When this all started, we had no idea what we were doing. You’re just pretty much on your own,” Judy Gedzyk said. When Gedzyk and Niemo speak about their incarcerated sons, it is clear that they are mothers in pain, but also that they do not seek pity.  Their mission and the mission of the group to which they belong is to provide a safe place for families who have been affected and to raise awareness about their needs.”

One of the groups helps families learn how to talk about the person who is incarcerated because:

“For reasons including fear of being harassed by the community or harshly judged by family, co-workers and friends, many members of Jail Brakers are deceptive about the whereabouts of their incarcerated sons, daughters, grandchildren and other loved ones…other members admitted to telling family and friends that their loved ones “lived four hours away,” letting them assume that the person had gone off to college or moved for a job.”

Especially hard for the kids:

“People are afraid of transference. ‘Your dad or mom did this, so you must be bad.’ The kids especially can really be hurting,” Moller said.”

It’s seems sad to me concerning the high number of incarcerated in our country that the support groups for the children and families of the incarcerated still consist of small, grass root groups.

From Roth Douthat’s interesting column today:

Wilson thrived, in other words, in precisely the kind of media-intellectual ecosystem — institutionalist, high-middlebrow, genteel — that Breitbart spent his career putting to the torch. Whether Breitbart was working for Matt Drudge or Arianna Huffington or building his own empire, his first loyalty was always to the sensational scoop, the wild-and-crazy stunt, the overcaffeinated public feud with whichever enemy happened to be hating on him …

It’s easy to see the shift from Wilson’s old-media conversation to Breitbart’s new-media circus — from public intellectuals to talking heads, from social science to showmanship, from The Public Interest and Commentary to blogs and tweets and gossip — as a straightforward story of cultural decline.  Certainly there is more noise in Breitbart’s world, more polarization and hysteria. It’s a climate in which the best often seem to lack a platform commensurate to their gifts, while the passionate intensity of the worst finds a wide and growing audience …

But [Breitbart's] world has virtues as well as vices: it’s less high-minded than the old-media era, but less stifling and conformist as well. More important, the circus is here to stay. Everyone who makes a living in the public square needs to accept its permanence, and reckon with the challenges it poses.

Sorry, not buyin’.   I did not know Breitbart, but many in recent days, including many I know and respect, have described him personally as warm, engaged, friendly, intelligent, creative, committed.  I don’t question that, and have no desire to diss him personally at this moment. 

But in my view, his entire mode of operation was toxic, destructive, deeply harmful to the possibility of civil society.  The fact that he was so good at it is, for me, neither here nor there.  And, contra Douthat, I do NOT accept that “the circus is here to stay.”  Who says?  I never got that memo, or that tweet.  If “the circus” means what currently passes for the quality and seriousness of our public conversation, then damn the circus and all of its ugly ways.  If that assessment comes across as unhip, narrow, crotchety, unconnected to the times, so be it.  I’m a Wilsonian, period.

I don’t want to degrade remembering Jim Wilson with some small-bore point about the NYTs, but good grief, here is a graf from his obit: 

But even his critics acknowledged that he was less an ideologue than a scientist; he supported the war in Iraq and wrote that marriage should be defined by the union of one man and one woman, but he dismissed criticism of Darwin and suspicion of the theory of evolution.

So, if you want to know whether someone who just died was more a “scientist” or more an “ideologue,” we can just ask:  Did he support gay marriage?  If the answer is no, that’s evidence that the deceased was an ideologue.   But Jim Wilson was a scholar anyway, despite leaning “ideological” on the marriage question.  All clear?

Even wondering the degree to which Jim Wilson was a scholar is like wondering the degree to which Marlon Brando was an actor, or the degree to which tigers can get along in the jungle. 

James Q. Wilson died yesterday.    His book, The Marriage Problem, was an important contribution, but goodness, he wrote so much, and so well, about so many important topics.  He was also a kind, good, strong man — unfailingly decent, part Marine, part professor, fully himself in both roles.  I’m very grateful to have known him and will miss him.

Join Elizabeth Marquardt in conversation with University of Minnesota constitutional law professor Dale Carpenter, author of a powerful new book — part case history, part detective story and rich exploration of 1980s Houston – about the Lawrence vs. Texas Supreme Court decision. The event will be at our Center for Public Conversation on Thursday, March 22nd from 5:30-7:30 pm. RSVP here.

I wrote a little diddy over at Public Discourse titled ‘Reproductive Technologies & The Quest for Immortality’. 

It’s important to explore people’s motivations for using donors and becoming donors if we’re going to offer alternatives and advocate in any capacity for the rights of the children created.

At Brookings, an interesting post on whether current marital trends are being driven mainly by economics or mainly by value changes.  My view is, value changes; these author argue, it’s mainly/largely economics.