God, Geese, And Ganders

After a barrage of criticism, Michigan's Democratic former governor tweeted uncle. She said she'd been kidding and apologized, and appropriately so. Any serious effort to associate God's intentionality with a potentially deadly natural disaster would have been poor theology and in poor taste.

But when conservative legal authority John Eastman made the same kind of comment after an earthquake at the Nixon library in June, quipping to thunderous applause that God agreed with his opposition to gay marriage, there wasn't a peep from Sean Hannity. Go figure.

On Second Thought

Our gay and lesbian brothers and sisters learn that with marriage comes the inevitable deluge of nosy questions about having children.

Not Exactly Chicken Little

Wayne Self says the Chick-fil-A boycott is about more than gay marriage:

It’s extremely frustrating that same-sex marriage is the great continental divide. People are judged according to how they stand on this issue, as if no other issue matters. Did you know that a person can be for same-sex marriage and still be homophobic? Did you know that a person can be against same-sex marriage and be gay? We all get categorized very quickly based on the marriage issue and maybe that’s not fair. But here’s what you should know:

-- In 29 states in America today, my partner of 18 years, Cody, or I could be fired for being gay. Period. No questions asked. One of those states is Louisiana, our home state. We live in self-imposed exile from beloved homeland, family, and friends, in part, because of this legal restriction on our ability to live our lives together.

-- In 75 countries in the world, being gay is illegal. In many, the penalty is life in prison. These are countries we can’t openly visit. In nine countries, being gay is punishable by death. In many others, violence against gays is tacitly accepted by the authorities. These are countries where we would be killed. Killed.

-- Two organizations that work very hard to maintain this status quo and roll back any protections that we may have are the Family Research Council and the Marriage & Family Foundation. For example, the Family Research Council leadership has officially stated that same-gender-loving behavior should be criminalized in this country. They draw their pay, in part, from the donations of companies like Chick-fil-A. Both groups have also done “missionary” work abroad that served to strengthen and promote criminalization of same-sex relations.

-- Chick-fil-A has given roughly $5M to these organizations to support their work.

-- Chick-fil-A’s money comes from the profits they make when you purchase their products.

Hot In The Kitchen

Writing anonymously, a gay Chick-fil-A employee who had opposed the boycott of the company takes an angrier view after experiencing Chick-fil-A Day:

I remember thinking, under stress, “I hope they choke.” That’s not true. Even though I did my best to make the salads and wraps extra-gay, I don’t want to harm the customers. (Otherwise I may have been moved to spit on their food. I didn’t, because that’s going too far.) The only thing that kept me going without screaming or storming off was simply knowing that I’m right. These people won’t choke on their food—I wouldn’t wish that, just as I wouldn’t wish anyone go hungry—but they will end up hurting. It’s going to be a long fall from the saddles of their high horses, once we do have equal marriage rights. Their descendants will be ashamed of them, just as I’m ashamed of my grandparents’ support of segregation. When their children and grandchildren ask, “How was it possible to be Christian and oppose equal rights?” their own words will choke them. They don’t need food to do it for them.

Will McAvoy, My Hero

For his new HBO series "The Newsroom," Aaron Sorkin has created an idealistic hero akin to President Josiah Bartlett of "The West Wing," this time a cable TV anchor played by Jeff Daniels. Here's McAvoy in a conversation with his boss, played by Sam Waterston:

I'm a registered Republican. I only seem liberal because I believe hurricanes are caused by high barometric pressure and not gay marriage.

Skipping Stone

Roger Stone, the ultimate Nixonite, explains why he's supporting former New Mexico Gov. Gary Johnson, the libertarian candidate in 2012:

[A] candidate for president who opposes the war in Afghanistan, favors a woman's right to choose, supports gay marriage equality, and backs the legalization of marijuana at the same time he supports deep cuts in spending, radical tax reduction, smaller government, gun owner's rights and an adherence to constitutional principles has a unique opportunity to impact the 2012 presidential race....

The American people have never been offered a candidate who is a fiscal conservative and social liberal. If you voted for the Republican because you favored spending and tax cuts you also had to swallow a ban on abortion and opposition to gay marriage. If you voted for the Democrat because you were pro-choice, you also had to support fiscal policies that would bankrupt us.

Freedom Of And From Religion

My Episcopal bud the Rev. Susan Russell on this morning's ruling by a three-judge federal appeals court panel overturning the result of Prop. 8:

[M]ake no mistake about it: There will be much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the days to come from those in the marriage discrimination business about how their freedom of religion is being trampled on by today’s decision for equality. But the truth of the matter is they are just as free today to decide for themselves whether God equally blesses our marriages. What the 9th Circuit Court said today is that they are NOT free to decide whether the Constitution equally protects them.

A Roman Catholic priest is just as free to NOT marry a gay and lesbian couple as he is to NOT marry a divorced couple. Meanwhile, and in my congregation – All Saints Pasadena – we can now get back to the business of offering equal pastoral care for ALL couples who come to us for the sacrament of marriage – because today’s ruling affirms that the First Amendment protects not just freedom of religion but freedom from religion.

That Would Be 1982, BTW*

On Thursday a group of conservative religious leaders, including New York's Roman Catholic archbishop, Methodists, Lutherans, Southern Baptists, and the former Episcopal bishop who is now "archbishop" of the "Anglican Church in North America," published an open letter against gay marriage. They warn the like-minded that the government will try to make them knuckle under, not by forcing them to perform marriage ceremonies for gays and lesbians, which the signatories consider unlikely, but by punishing churches that deny benefits to gay couples, state-licensed adoption agencies that won't place children with the same-gender married, and state-accredited marital counselors who won't provide services to them.

Fred Clark, a Baptist Gen X blogger, doesn't just worry about how this kind of message from Christian institutions alienates gays and lesbians. He's afraid that eventually, it will alienate everybody. He writes:

Public statements like this exist only to take sides, draw lines and build walls. This letter serves no prophetic or pastoral purpose. But it is — unintentionally — useful and helpful for identifying the dead-enders determined to make exclusion and condemnation the hallmarks of their communities.

This pronouncement is an explicit “Unwelcome” sign hung on all of their churches.... [T]hat cramped inhospitality applies not just to the GLBT folks they’re demonizing here, but to “all Americans who dare to differ” with the letter’s signatories.

So in a sense what these signatories have just done is they have turned to nearly every American born since, say, Thriller came out*, pointed a long crooked finger and declared, “We don’t want your kind in our congregations.”

The Major Threat To Marriage

Ron Sider, president of Evangelicals for Social Action, opposes gay marriage. But he has this to say about the sins of the church:

We have tolerated genuine hatred of gays; we should have taken the lead in condemning gay bashing but were largely silent; we have neglected to act in gentle love with people among us struggling with their sexual identity; and we have used the gay community as a foil to raise funds for political campaigns. We have made it easy for the media to suggest that the fanatics who carry signs announcing “God hates fags” actually speak for large numbers of evangelicals.

Worst of all, we have failed to deal honestly with the major threat to marriage and the family: heterosexual adultery and divorce. Evangelicals divorce at the same rate as the rest of the population. Many evangelical leaders have failed to speak against cheap divorce because they and their people were getting divorced just like everyone else. And yet we have had the gall to use the tiny (5 percent or less) gay community as a whipping boy that we labeled as the great threat to marriage.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan

The Shortest Distance To The Altar Isn't Always Through The Church

An "Economist" chart showing changing attitudes toward gay marriage based on religious affiliation. The largest shifts in favorable thinking between 2008-09 and this year were among mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics. Oddly, the Pew Research Center polled Christians, Jews, and atheists but not Muslims.

"I Want To Get Married" Wins The Argument

Ross Douthat, the influential young conservative blogger who is now a columnist for the New York Times, when asked about gay marriage on Wednesday during a panel discussion about neoconservatives:

At first Mr. Douthat seemed unable to get a sentence out without interrupting himself and starting over. Then he explained: "I am someone opposed to gay marriage who is deeply uncomfortable arguing the issue in public."

Mr. Douthat indicated that he opposes gay marriage because of his religious beliefs, but that he does not like debating the issue in those terms. At one point he said that, sometimes, he feels like he should either change his mind, or simply resolve never to address the question in public.

He added that the conservative opposition to gay marriage is "a losing argument," and asked rhetorically if committed homosexual relationships ought to be denied the legal recognition accorded without hesitation to the fleeting enthusiasms of Britney Spears and Newt Gingrich.

After the panel, Mr. Douthat told the Observer: "If I were putting money on the future of gay marriage, I would bet on it."

He added: "The secular arguments against gay marriage, when they aren't just based on bigotry or custom, tend to be abstract in ways that don't find purchase in American political discourse. I say, ‘Institutional support for reproduction,' you say, ‘I love my boyfriend and I want to marry him.' Who wins that debate? You win that debate."

Hat tip to the "Daily Dish"

Forming More Perfect Unions

During the Prop. 8 debate last year, the position of Barack Obama and Carrie Prejean (the former still in his job) was that gay and lesbian couples could enjoy equivalent legal and financial benefits by entering into civil unions. The idea was that the debate was just over the definition of the word marriage. Equivocal though I was about Prop. 8, I felt the civil union argument was a dodge, since studies showed that unions didn't provide couples anywhere near the same protections and benefits. A New York Times article today makes this abundantly clear.

Prop. 2008

From one of President Bush's former speechwriters:

For a commencement address at Furman University in spring 2008, Ed Gillespie wanted to insert a few lines condemning gay marriage. Bush called the speech too "condemnatory" and said, "I'm not going to tell some gay kid in the audience that he can't get married."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/20/bush-in-2008-im-not-going_n_292876.html

Welcome To The Pigpen

My colleague the Rev. Susan Russell has blogged about a report that the divorce rate in Massachusetts has dropped since gay marriages began five years ago.

A blessing that this is happening, whatever the reason. But I doubt it has anything to do with the uniquely mature or conciliatory qualities that gay and lesbian people may be bringing to their marriages.

Here's how you get that statistic. Lots of gay couples got married all of a sudden. Some were longtime, stable couples, ergo fewer divorces. Either way, the marriages are relatively recent, ergo fewer divorces. Both these factors would drive down the state average. Take the same measure in ten or 15 years (or even seven!), or constrain the samples by controlling for marriages' duration, and we shall see.

My guess is that, statistically speaking, gay people will make precisely the same muck of their marriages as straight people.

Truth In Positioning

The Today Show just did an item about Carrie Prejean's revealing photographs, saying that these "might not sit well with her conservative supporters." Interesting, however, that they didn't present testimony from any of them. Instead, to plumb the social conservative soul, NBC presented a reporter for E! News, who said:

She can continue to advocate for causes, but I don’t think these causes are going to advocate for her.

We'll see. As the Today Show knows full well, conservatives, sensing another MSM putsch against another of their icons, will probably rally around her all the more. It would have been more honest if NBC had reported, "We anticipate that her apparent hypocrisy on moral issues -- posing for racy photos while preaching against gay marriage -- will discredit her not among true-believing right-wingers but among open-minded people who may not necessarily agree with her views but thought that up until now, she'd been rudely treated." But that might make it look as though the Today Show had an agenda, huh?

Gay Marriage And "Ad Feminem Abuse"

Andrew Sullivan on the attacks against Carrie Prejean:

It's critical, it seems to me, that the marriage movement in no way seem hostile to religious freedom and conscience. We support religious liberty just as we support heterosexual marriage. And the fact is: this change unsettles some people. I understand that, and we need to be more cognizant of it, and sensitive to it, instead of engaging, as some sadly have, in ad feminem abuse. (Yes, I'm talking about Miss California, who may not be terribly smart but whose position is not inherently bigoted and whose qualms can be accommodated without obloquy).

Oh, Just 15 More Questions, Please

Ken Connor worries that asking any of these questions may soon be considered poor form or worse. I know what I hope the answers are, because I'm rooting for those, many of them friends and colleagues, who are seeking marriage equity. But do we know all the answers? The first question, especially the "inevitably," is a cheap shot:

Is it in society's interest to jettison the historic heterosexual model for marriage and embrace a new paradigm that includes homosexual unions (and, inevitably, other kinds of unions that are fashioned by other kinds of sexual impulses)? What are the implications for children of such unions? Are moms and dads merely superfluous, or do men and women both provide important role models for children? Will children suffer from gender confusion without heterosexual role models? Will gender have meaning in the future? Is gender identification important in preparing children to take their proper place in society? How will society be reproduced? Will we do it the old fashioned way or will we resort to brave new world technology? How will we regulate such technology? Will increased demand for such technology lead to designer children? Will fathers play a role in the lives of their children or will men be reduced to the status of mere inseminators? Will mothers become an anachronism? Will we embrace a definition of marriage which makes it a simple contractual relationship between two independent adults who are "in love?" If so, can the contract be amended? Will the definition of marriage be further amended?

Steve Schmidt: Equality Now, Marriage Later

Sen. McCain's senior campaign strategist, Steve Schmidt, speaking to Hugh Hewitt:

I am personally supportive of gay marriage. I believe that if you believe that people are born with their sexuality, as I do, that it is wrong for them to be disenfranchised for what I think is a central element of our national creed, the pursuit of happiness, which I think marriage is a key component of.

But I said in [my recent] speech that I understand number one, my view’s a minority view in the Republican Party, and two, it will be for some time. What I did say is that the party ought to be respectful towards gays, it ought to show tolerance towards gays. That is important to so many suburban voters in parts of the country where we were once strong but no longer are.

And I talked in the speech that as far as it goes for employment protections and extending legal protections to same sex partners so they can make end of life decisions for one another, or they can benefit from tax code status that everyone else benefits from, that they ought to be treated equally there.

Tell Laura They Love Her (After All)

Surveying the right's underwhelming reaction to the legalization of gay marriage in Iowa and Vermont, Frank Rich at the New York Times detects a sea change:

On the right, the restrained response was striking. Fox barely mentioned the subject; its rising-star demagogue, Glenn Beck, while still dismissing same-sex marriage, went so far as to “celebrate what happened in Vermont” because “instead of the courts making a decision, the people did.” Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the self-help media star once notorious for portraying homosexuality as “a biological error” and a gateway to pedophilia, told CNN’s Larry King that she now views committed gay relationships as “a beautiful thing and a healthy thing.” In The New York Post, the invariably witty and invariably conservative writer Kyle Smith demolished a Maggie Gallagher screed published in National Review and wondered whether her errant arguments against gay equality were “something else in disguise.”

More startling still was the abrupt about-face of the Rev. Rick Warren, the hugely popular megachurch leader whose endorsement last year of Proposition 8, California’s same-sex marriage ban, had roiled his appearance at the Obama inaugural. Warren also dropped in on Larry King to declare that he had “never” been and “never will be” an “anti-gay-marriage activist.” This was an unmistakable slap at the National Organization for Marriage, which lavished far more money on Proposition 8 than even James Dobson’s Focus on the Family.

Devesting Ourselves Of The Power Vested In Us

Visiting St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church in Studio City, California, the Rt. Rev. Gene Robinson says the church should call a truce over gay marriage by confining itself to blessing prior civil marriages:

Robinson said he favored the system used in France and other parts of Europe in which civil marriage – performed by government officials – is completely separate from religious vows. In the U.S., the civil and religious ceremonies are often combined with the cleric signing the government marriage license.

"In this country, it has become very confusing about where the civil action begins and ends and where the religious action begins and ends, because we have asked clergy to be agents of the state," said Robinson, the bishop of New Hampshire.

Works on paper. But American couples are pretty attached to having their preachers tie the knot. I doubt they'll want to give it up to solve the church's nettlesome theological debate.