Jennifer Roback Morse: The “unintended consequences” of gay marriage in Washington D.C.

Via Julie Ponzi, we get Jennifer Roback Morse lamenting the “consequences” of the new gay marriage law in Washington D.C. Apparently one of those consequences is that some people don’t like the new law:

In DC, the Catholic Archdiocese discontinued offering health care benefits to spouses.Why? Because the Church does not recognize same sex unions as “marriages,” even though the DC City Council insists that they are. So, to keep from running afoul of the same sex “marriage” law, they will discontinue health benefits for spouses of newly employed workers.

Conform to the new regime. Or else.

It’s a shame that the Archdiocese decided to make a scorched-earth response to the law. But that’s the Archdiocese’s choice, and if Catholic officials believe that’s in keeping with their theology — well, who am I to argue?

But the fact that some institutions will take extraordinary steps to avoid coming under the law isn’t really an argument for or against the soundness of the law itself. When desegregation started really making waves throughout the South, many parents pulled their kids out of public schools and put them into private schools. It was widespread — and remains so, to some extent, today. Yet to argue that private efforts to avoid desegregation require the government to actually enforce segregation would be regarded as laughable. Similarly, there’s a few people who think that income taxes should be abolished — but almost nobody argues that taxes should be abolished because some people hire accountants to find loopholes in the code.

Finally, there’s no “or else” here that isn’t part of, oh, every law ever passed. It’s silly to pretend there’s something extra tyrannical about recognizing gay marriages.

On to Morse’s other “consequence”:

The marriage licenses in DC no longer say “bride” and “groom.”

Check it out: people are “legally married.” No one has the “status” of bride or groom, husband or wife. The natural concepts of husband and wife have been replaced with a purely legal concept. Thus does the state shove civil society aside.

Thus do certain conservatives require the state to be in the business of sacralizing their marriages. But that’s not what the state is for, is it? Churches and synagogues and mosques can offer a blessing upon a marriage — and they’re certainly not being required to bless same-sex marriages, even under the new law. All the state does is provide recognition of marriage and certain legal rights that go with it.

Weirdly, the rise of gay marriage is likely to brighten the lines between state-sanctioned marriage and religiously sanctioned marriage, pointing up the limits of the state in creating our society. It’s a notion that’s almost … conservative.

But the lack of “bride” and “groom” on the new marriage licenses is a bit of bureaucratic mehness that means far less than what Morse thinks it does. Very few people — if any — will be paying attention to the language on those licenses; very few people — if any — will let it influence their linguistic choices at church weddings. There will still be brides and grooms and husbands and wives … and they’ll be joined by brides and brides and husbands and husbands. The checklist on the local government’s application sheet really won’t change that. The idea that “civil society is being swept aside” is more than a little ridiculous.

And in any case: If these are the worst “consequences” of gay marriage that Morse can come up with on the first day of the new law, I’d say straights-only marriage proponents have a thinner case than we even thought.

The Supreme Court, campaign finance and petition secrecy: It could be worse than you think

Back in October, my conservative collaborator Ben Boychuk made the argument that voters will be fine if corporations are allowed to spend unlimited money in elections because, hey, we can all see what’s going on:

Transparency and instant Internet disclosure make most of the old objections and warnings about quid pro quo corruption irrelevant. If a political candidate receives the financial aid of large corporations, and public knows about it, then the question of undue influence falls to the voters to resolve. As it should be.

Theoretically, this sounds great. In reality, though, there’s a good chance that transparency itself is going to become extinct.

Why do I say this? Because the Supreme Court is being asked to rule that petition signers — 138,000 people who asked Washington State to hold a referendum to overturn the state’s law allowing domestic partnerships for gays — have a First Amendment right not to have their names made public. The court has blocked the release of those names until it rules on the case.

The rationale for blocking transparency? Gay marriage opponents don’t really want to be criticized. They’d like to be able to use government to deprive other citizens of rights without having to be made to feel uncomfortable about it.

Voters ratified the law, but the conservative Christian groups that sponsored it want to keep the signed petitions that asked for the referendum out of public view because they fear harassment from gay-rights supporters, some of whom have vowed to post the names of petition signers on the Internet.

“We are pleased that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear this case that seeks to protect the rights of citizens who support a traditional definition of marriage to speak freely and without fear,” said James Bopp, Jr., lawyer for Protect Marriage Washington. “No citizen should ever worry that they will be threatened or injured because they have exercised their right to engage in the political process.”

So here’s my question: If the Supreme Court says that petitioners have a First Amendment right to keep their names private while supporting a public campaign, why on Earth wouldn’t that rationale also apply to people (and corporations) who donate to campaigns? Maybe there’s a good legal distinction, but I can’t think of one right now.

Ben’s right: The effects of corporate money flooding campaigns can be somewhat counteracted by know who is spending the money and where it’s going to. Soon, though, we might not even have that. And what we’ll have is millions upon millions of dollars being spent to sway voters without those voters having any understanding of how the system is really working. That’ll be good for corporations and the candidates they support. But it won’t be so good for the rest of us — or for our democracy.

When it comes to gay marriage, McCain is more liberal than Obama

Cindy McCain, that is. And now that her husband has nothing to lose — except an Arizona primary vote for Senate they may no longer feel quite as ardent about — she’s taking a stand for marriage equality:

The NOH8 Campaign on Wednesday announced that Cindy McCain, the wife of former Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, has posed to demonstrate her support of marriage equality. NOH8’s Adam Bouska has photographed thousands of subjects since California passed Proposition 8 in 2008. All of the subjects are photographed with duct tape over their mouths to symbolize that their voices aren’t being heard on the subject of marriage equality.

It’s perhaps churlish to note that in 2008 — when California was considering Proposition 8 — John and Cindy McCain had a really high-profile platform to make their voices heard on the subject of marriage equality. And they didn’t.

Still, this really, really airbrushed photo is more than raging leftist communist Barack Obama has offered in support of marriage equality. So there’s that.

Karl Rove gets a divorce. Gay marriage still illegal in most places.

Which wouldn’t be worth commentary, of course, except that he was behind President Bush’s lame and half-hearted 2004 effort to introduce a gay marriage ban into the Constitution.

It’s worth remembering what President Bush said in 2004 in the Rove-orchestrated attempt to capture the anti-gay vote:

A great deal is at stake in this matter. The union of a man and woman in marriage is the most enduring and important human institution, and the law can teach respect or disrespect for that institution. If our laws teach that marriage is the sacred commitment of a man and a woman, the basis of an orderly society, and the defining promise of a life, that strengthens the institution of marriage. If courts create their own arbitrary definition of marriage as a mere legal contract, and cut marriage off from its cultural, religious and natural roots, then the meaning of marriage is lost, and the institution is weakened. The Massachusetts court, for example, has called marriage “an evolving paradigm.” That sends a message to the next generation that marriage has no enduring meaning, and that ages of moral teaching and human experience have nothing to teach us about this institution.

Rove’s divorce, though, more or less proves that marriage is an evolving paradigm. No-fault divorce is, after all, a relatively recent phenomenon in Texas — I’m assuming, based on news reports, that neither Rove nor his wife alleged adultery or cruelty as part of the divorce petition — and across the United States. Before 1970 or so, here’s how divorce worked in the United States:

Prior to the no-fault divorce revolution, a divorce could be obtained only through a showing of fault of one of the parties in a marriage. This was something more than not loving one another; it meant that one spouse had to plead that the other had committed adultery, abandonment, felony, or other similarly culpable acts. However, the other spouse could plead a variety of defenses, like recrimination(essentially an accusation of “so did you”). A judge could find that the respondent had not committed the alleged act or the judge could accept the defense of recrimination and find both spouses at fault for the dysfunctional nature of their marriage. Either way, the judge could refuse to dissolve the marriage, although it was also possible for the judge to grant one or both parties a divorce.

Now you can argue that no-fault divorce came about as a result of “judicial activism.” It was the California Supreme Court that originally struck down laws stipulating the requirements for divorce. And you can argue the subsequent rise in divorce shows that the court was in error. But most reasonable people, I think, recognize that forcing two people to remain legally entangled in a marriage that one or both wants to leave would represent an abhorrent level of government activity in the private realm.

Of course, Karl Rove’s divorce doesn’t mean that gays and lesbians should have the right to marry. But in the absence of explicitly religious arguments against gay marriage — arguments the state isn’t allowed to make or use as justifications for its decisions, opponents of gay marriage have resorted to appeals to ” tradition” (as President Bush did above) or “natural law” to defend straights-only marriage as the unchanging and correct order of things. But marriage changes. It has always been changing. Karl Rove today is the beneficiary of that process.

UPDATE: RightPundits.com suggests I’m among the legions of left-leaning journalists rubbing hands “with glee” over the failure of Rove’s marriage. Not at all. Marriage is tough, and I’d never wish ill toward anybody else’s relationship — no matter how misguided I might think them on political matters.

But Rove made a concerted effort to push the marriage status of hundreds of thousands of Americans to the center stage of the political process. He treated the issue like a political plaything. Which is easier to do when it’s an abstract notion. Only problem is: For each one of those couples, it’s not at all an abstract issue. And if a politician’s private behavior is at odds with their political stances, well: It’s the job of journalists and pundits to point out that kind of stuff. Hypocrisy is rampant in Washington D.C., of course, but it still matters.

And hey, RightPundits readers! Welcome!

Gay marriage officially legal in D.C.

And all I can say is: Great.

DC Council approves gay marriage: Now Democrats face a gay rights test

From the Washington Post:

The D.C. Council gave final approval Tuesday to a bill to legalize same-sex marriage, setting off a wave of excitement in the gay community even as opponents vow to continue the fight on Capitol Hill.

I can’t imagine how frustrating it must be to live in Washington D.C., knowing that decisions made by your elected officials that affect your town and your town only can be overturned, essentially, if a senator from Kansas gets a little too interested and decides to use your town as a lab experiment for his ideological innovations. But it appears likely that Congressional Democrats will now get to show how committed they really are to gay civil rights: They control Congress. If Congress overturns DC’s marriage bill, the Democrats will be to blame.

New Jersey gays could get married if only Steven Goldstein wasn’t so annoying!

That’s the crux of this Inky profile of Steve Goldstein, one of the leaders in the fight to bring gay marriage to New Jersey:

Goldstein, 47, has been the most vocal, visible, and aggressive leader in the fight to legalize same-sex marriage in New Jersey. Some say he goes too far.

But Goldstein’s strident, some say overbearing, fervor has also hurt his cause among some lawmakers, including gay-rights supporters. As the push for same-sex marriage sputtered with a canceled vote in the full Senate, Goldstein faced a backlash from Democratic lawmakers who had confronted political threats and personal protests.

Even though Democrats make up the vast majority of his support, last month Goldstein angered some in the party by threatening political retribution – primary challenges in some cases – against same-sex marriage holdouts. Garden State Equality members further riled lawmakers Tuesday night by staging protests outside the homes of at least two senators.

In one case, demonstrators knocked on the doors of neighbors of State Sen. Thomas Kean Jr. (R., Union) and picketed his daughter’s fifth-grade recital. Sen. Shirley Turner (D., Mercer) also saw protests outside her home and the threat of a political challenge.

“That has totally repulsed me,” she said. “He’s turned a lot of people off.”

There’s a pattern that goes with most civil rights struggles, and that pattern is being repeated here to some extent. It goes like this:

• Group without civil rights decides it wants and can get those rights.

• That group tries to get the civil right. Everybody says no.

• Rather than give up, the group without civil rights decides to press for civil rights by doing things that make the power-brokers uncomfortable..

• Power brokers decry the discomfort, and suggest the group without civil rights is being too aggressive in seeking civil rights — if everybody’s patient, they suggest, progress will come in due time.

• Progress doesn’t come in due time, and the group has to keep pushing.

Now: Protesting a fifth-grade recital? Yeah, that’s a little over-the-top. Outside a legislator’s home? It’s probably not fun to be the legislator, but I think that’s within bounds.

But you also have legislators suggesting a backlash against Goldstein specifically and perhaps gay marriage generally because Goldstein has promised primary challenges against them if they vote against gay marriage. To which I can only respond: Grow up. You’re either for civil rights for gays or you aren’t, and either way you’re going to take a political beating from people who disagree with you. If you’re going to vote against those civil rights simply because Steven Goldstein is a jerk, you’re doing a grave disservice to your other gay constituents — and rendering your own commitment to those civil rights rather suspect.

Annise Parker, Houston’s openly gay mayor

It’s really nice that Annise Parker won the election to be Houston’s mayor — a sign that even in Texas (yeah, Texans, I’m going there) many people really do believe in that “content of your character” business. On the other hand, there’s just a hint of a patronizing odor here: “Yeah, you’re qualified to run our city,” the voters of Houston have said, “but your relationship and family are entitled to neither our recognition and respect.”

I mean, tolerance is nice. But you know what’s nicer? Actual civil rights.

Tiger Woods’ prenup, gay marriage and the law

I was going to avoid commenting on the Tiger Woods scandal. But this story about Tiger’s prenup, combined with yesterday’s rejection of gay marriage in New York, made me reconsider.

Seriously. Get a load of the prenup:

The Daily Beast has learned exclusively that the beleaguered golfer is negotiating an immediate $5 million payout to his wife—and revising her prenup to give her as much as $55 million more to stay with him two more years.

“The links legend’s spouse is reportedly being paid a hefty seven-figure amount—immediately transferred [sic] into an account she alone controls—to stick with her husband,” Zwecker wrote. “At this point, the couple needed to remain married for 10 years in order for Woods’ wife to collect a splitsville settlement of $20 million. I’m being told that time frame has been shortened—and the dollar amount increased ‘substantially.’”

The lawyer familiar with the couple’s negotiations told The Daily Beast that Tiger also has agreed to shorten the original prenup to seven years from the date of marriage, meaning it will vest in another two.

So: Tiger cheated on his wife, probably multiple times. He’s paying her millions of dollars to stay with him. They’re in legal negotiations over financial terms of their continued marriage. If she stays with him another couple of years, she’ll be “vested” — you don’t usually hear that term outside of 401(k) hearings — and receive the full amount of a settlement.

I’ll grant you, this is an extreme case. What Woods and his wife call “marriage” looks more like a cold and calculated contractual business partnership from the outside. In the eyes of the law, that’s essentially what marriage is: A contract between two people that gives them certain rights as a couple and responsibilities to the other. There’s nothing mystical or sacred about it from the state’s viewpoint.

But the extremity of Tiger’s case helps clarify, a bit, what the gay marriage fight is all about: The right of two people of the same sex to make a contract with each other. Legally, it’s not about “sanctity” or “sacredness” or any of that stuff because the law doesn’t — shouldn’t — concern itself with such things. Certainly, it appears, Tiger Woods hasn’t. Yet his contract with his wife receives the respect of the law. It’s all a bit bewildering.

New York Senate votes against gay marriage

And Maggie Gallagher is celebrating:

This is a huge victory. As Brian Brown, NOM’s executive director, just said, this win “puts the nail in the coffin of the idea that gay-marriage advocates can persuade a majority of Americans their cause is just.”

There is, of course, a difference — sometimes a rather large one — between the justness of a cause and the ability to persuade a majority of Americans of that justness. Gay families are already here, regardless of what the law says, and while they’ll never comprise a majority of the population, I suspect they will in the not-too-distant future become prevalent enough that the rest of us will find it increasingly untenable not to give those families the same rights and recognition we claim for ourselves. Tradition is a powerful force in our society, and understandably so, but customs are changing. The law will have to catch up to that sooner or later.