Month: February 2004

Andrew Sullivan employs some sloppy reasoning in his latest defense of gay marriage. Understand, please, that I believe that gay marriage is the right thing to do. (And keep movin’ on down the street with your limp-wristed “civil union” compromise — half way is half right, and why stop at half right?) Here’s Andrew’s basic argument:

If the Constitution guarantees equal rights for all, and marriage is one of the most basic civil rights there is, and gay couples can and do fulfill every requirement that straight couples can, what leeway does any Court have? I’m constantly amazed by these claims of judicial “tyranny.” Was Brown v Board of Education tyranny? It’s exactly the same principle as operates here: separate but equal won’t do.

Here’s the problem with Andrew’s argument: Unless you believe the Constitution to be a “living document” (and Andrew, it appears, does not), the Constitution does not guarantee “equal civil rights for all.” Rather, the Constitution only guarantees certain civil rights. These are the civil rights that are specifically ennumerated in the Constitution. “Gay marriage” was not among them. (Racial equality was among them, however — in the 13-15th Amendments — which is why Andrew’s reference to Brown v. The Board of Education is a red herring.)

Even if you believe that the Constitution’s meaning was not fixed at the time of its drafting, however, Andrew’s argument still isn’t as self evident as he tires to portrary it. There are dozens of “basic civil rights” that even proponents of a living Constitution do not endorse.* Some are arguably more basic than the right of gays or straights to marry. Such as: The right to a job. The right to have adequate shelter. The right to an education. The right not to be discriminated against — in the workplace, in your personal life, in government, etc. — based on your looks, or your intelligence, or your athletic prowess, or the color of your hair, or the color of your eyes, or the shape of your earlobes, or the noises you make when you walk**, etc., etc.

It doesn’t matter that people are probably born gay. People are also born with blue eyes, rotten earlobes, and (to an extent) good looks — and yet the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination on those grounds in marriage, school, or work. Instead, the issue is whether the discrimination is based on an innate characteristic is worthy of protection. The Constitution clearly protects against discrimination based on your being born Black (again, see the 13th-15th Amendments). Whether the Constitution protects against discrimination based on your being born gay, is, well, much less clear . . . .***

The task of those who support allowing gay marriage through judicial (rather than legislative) means is to demonstrate that gays fall into a category deserving of specific protection under the Constitution. I think that’s a case that can be made. But Andrew Sullivan doesn’t make it with a platitude and a quick cite to the Brown decision.

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Been holding this one back until the numbers were clearer. BTW, I did manage to get the winners of SC and OK right, guessed very badly wrong on DE, sorta badly about Dean in general (he came pretty close in AZ to picking up delegates, but not quite, and didn’t do nearly well enough in NM) and more or less called it about Edwards and second place. IOW, ehh.

Now, according to my I-don’t-think-I-screwed-anything-up numbers, and assuming that the statewide pledged delegates go the way of the rest, the delegate breakdown went like this (as 12:14 AM, February 4, 2004):

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Make or break time for some of the candidates and time to face reality for most of the rest. Let’s chat, shall we?

(Poliblog, a site that needs blogrolling, was most helpful for all this)

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Thanks to the suddenly-ubiquitous Wonkette* it has been revealed that John Kerry was apparently once a bass player for a garage band, not to mention Norwegian:

From the liner notes, you might think Electramania [the high school band Kerry was in] was about to sweep the nation.

“All in all, the listener should find little more to be desired from this recording,” someone named P.W. Johnson wrote, before introducing each member of the band. Kerry, whose father was a career diplomat then stationed in the Netherlands, is described as “a resident of Oslo, Norway, and the producer of pulsating rhythm that lends tremendous force to all the numbers.”

So what does it sound like? Let’s put it this way: Kerry shouldn’t run on this record. Then again, he shouldn’t run from it, either.

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