Rights are like a good backyard barbeque. Once you get a whiff, you simply won’t be satisfied until you get your share. I note this in response to the failed attempt to pass the FMA and my utter disgust with all the Democratic leadership who went so far out of their way to make clear they don’t support gay marriage. Here are a few examples (the BBQ analogy makes a brief return, don’t fret):
“In South Dakota, we’ve never had a single same sex marriage and we won’t have any,” [Senate Democratic leader Tom Daschle] said. “It’s prohibited by South Dakota law as it is now in 38 other states. There is no confusion. There is no ambiguity.”
and this frightful cop out on the part of both Kerry and Dodd
“The unfortunate result is that the important work of the American people — funding our homeland security needs, creating new and better jobs, and raising the minimum wage — is not getting done,” [John Kerry] said.
[…]
Echoing Kerry, Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said, “The issue is not ripe. It is not needed. It’s a waste of our time. We should be dealing with other issues.”
I know this is politics and I know some folks will be dumbstruck that I see this as anything other than a victory, but there’s a smokey mesquite aroma wafting down from Massachusetts, and I’m not so terrified of the Religious Right or their stranglehold on the Republican Party that I’m going to let such cowardice go uncriticized.
Daschle, Dodd and Kerry are flat out wrong and they are cowards. They simply must know they are on the wrong side of history. Polls indicate that the next generation of Americans will look much more favorably on gay marriage, and when it does arrive (as I am confident it will) generations to come will look back at the Kerry’s, Daschle’s and Dodd’s and judge them very harshly. I hope their biographers dip their pens in the most acerbic of inks and portray them as the gutless wonders they are.
Pass the cornbread.
Hear Hear. While I have my concerns about my position on abortion, I have no such concerns about supporting marriage for all. IMO God made people the way they are and it is not a test for homosexuals to deny their natures, but rather a test for heterosexuals to accept that nature.
But on BBQ note, I’ll suggest that California Mahogany harvested from downed trees above 10,000 ft. in the Sierras makes for a much more satisfying aroma and crust on anyone’s baby-backs than mesquite ever did.
I note this in response to the failed attempt to pass the FMA and my utter disgust with all the Democratic leadership who went so far out of their way to make clear they don’t support gay marriage.
Sharing your disgust, yes. It’s as absurd that political leaders should still have to be ostensibly anti-gay marriage as it is that they should still have to be ostensibly anti-choice. When most people in the US accept, sensibly, that if the man next door wants to get married to another man it’s nobody’s business but their own (and their families, to a certain extent: people are naturally involved when a friend or a relative gets married), and when most people in the US accept, sensibly, that if a woman needs an abortion she should be able to have one without being treated like a criminal, it’s ridiculous that the Religious Right should have turned this into a megaissue the other way round.
But I do see this as a victory – a small one, because I really never seriously expected the amendment to pass, and now I doubt it ever will: but a large one, because if by some horrible chance it had remained a live issue, if by some stout campaigning work on the part of a mad-with-fear BushCheney campaign it had passed, it would have been so completely shameful to the US that such an amendment could be enshrined in the Constitution.
You have every right to criticize. “The best lack all conviction, the worst are full of passionate intensity”, example no. 17846A.
Kerry could have stopped the proposed Massachusetts amendment singlehandedly. Robert Travaglini, the state Senate President, would have followed his lead. Kerry could have made the same arguments about not amending the constitution to take away people’s rights–the Massachusetts constitution is older than the U.S. constitution; John Adams helped write it. I don’t think it would have posed any great risk to his election.
We may be able to stop it anyway–the polls showed majority support of Goodridge when it first came out, and I suspect people will decide against actually ripping up people’s marriage licenses when push comes to shove. But maybe not.
I don’t understand why political courage has to vanish in a puff of smoke when you run for president, but it seems almost universal.
As for Daschle, five words:
Durbin for Senate majority leader.
I suspect people will decide against actually ripping up people’s marriage licenses when push comes to shove
That concerns me actually. Not at all sure what that might look like, but I suspect it would make Stonewall look like an ice cream social.
Senator Mark Dayton’s remarks are a nice contrast.
As for Daschle, five words:
Elect Thune to the Senate!
I hate hate hate “history will vindicate me” arguments. There’s no reason to think people in the future are so much smarter than we are. Daschle is a coward because he won’t take the morally correct position, not because he won’t take the position that people will agree with 20 years down the road.
Grow up people – I would rather Kerry get elected saying what he said – than being a hero amongst the 10% who think and wind up an also-ran!
Remember odd as it may sound, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day! There are all kinds of warriors – I prefer live ones, with all limbs intact to a dead one anyday!
If he said otherwise, the Right would whip up a fury in the Bible-belt and use his words to string him out to dry like freshly caught fish – they’re still baiting him, and with advice like all the above, he may have a tough time refusing the bait.
I’m not calling for Kerry to make a clarion call for gay marriage. I wouldn’t mind if he did, but that’s not the issue. The issue is that he enabled an actual constitutional amendment in Massachusetts that may cause actual people to lose their marriage licenses. It’s not just rhetoric.
The goal isn’t just to get Democrats elected, it’s to improve people’s lives. If this issue would swing the election to Bush maybe this would be understandable. It won’t. How many votes would Kerry really lose? I suspect very few. Most people in the country barely paid attention to the Federal Marriage amendment debate, let alone the Massachusetts one. Very few people would cast their vote only on this issue. Almost all of the people who are up in arms about this–not just uncomfortable, but up in arms–already believe that abortion is murder and the Democrats support it. Anyway, they are not going to be won over by a states’ rights argument they perceive as insincere.
Grow up people – I would rather Kerry get elected saying what he said – than being a hero amongst the 10% who think and wind up an also-ran!
Remember odd as it may sound, he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day! There are all kinds of warriors – I prefer live ones, with all limbs intact to a dead one anyday!
I don’t buy it.
It’s like saying, we don’t have the votes to free the slaves, therefore I’ll go on record as anti-abolition just to save my seat in the senate. When something is morally wrong and you hedge your bets, sacrificing the dignity of those you should be fighting to help, you are a coward.
There are some fates worse than losing your senate seat…and, if legend is correct, some involve pits of fire and pitchforks.
Also, there’s a real advantage in defining the terms of the debate. People can be convinced.
Libertyguard, just when is that “other day” going to come about? What happens when keeping their heads down to stay in power becomes the defining characteristic of the Democratic party? Or is that horse already out of the barn? Bush is already working hard to define Kerry as a “flip-flop”. What do you think that means, and why do you think it works on voters? Bush’s major campaign theme is “Strong Leadership”. Retreating to fight another day is going to work against this strategy how?
Katherine: Also, there’s a real advantage in defining the terms of the debate. People can be convinced.
I think the upper echelon of the modern Democratic party has largely forgotten this. I don’t get the impression that they see any causal relationship between the overwhelming lopsidedness of the public debate and polls showing strong public sentiment against gay marriage.
Indeed, people can be convinced but unfortunately, in the supercharged climate before the elections it will not happen – if the Dems/Kerry are reasoned and nuanced they will be described as long-winded; so everyone will talk in sound bites; the GOP will contort the Democrat’s statements eitherway; there’s no winning and being reasonable at the same time with only 100-odd days to go.
I read Senator Mark Dayton’s speech and it is true as true can be, but what can be said by a Senator from Minnesota and by a Dem nominee that actually grabs the big prize will always differ. If Kerry says even a tenth of what Mark Dayton said, he will be swiftly labelled too soft to carry the big stick – but then again, he may surprise us and do both.
Its the black-and-white analysis on the right that got us into the war, when we should have used a milder give-some-take-some approach; the left is forcing Kerry into making similar black-and-white pronouncements on this issue.
We all would like him to fly – but human that he is he will only be able to take one step at a time to the end goal.
I’d ask by e-mail, but I’ve not been able to get outgoing e-mail to connect to smtp all morning (again), though incoming seems to be working. I’d be curious what thoughts you might have on this issue, the outing issue, Edward (and anyone else).
Really good question Gary.
I, too, go back and forth (Punsters…leave it).
When I lived in DC I was struck by how many Hill staffers were gay. Lots and lots and lots of them, and many in quite powerful positions too.
In a vaccuum, I don’t feel anyone should ever be outed. It’s hard enough to do on one’s own, on one’s own schedule. And doing it at the right time makes life much easier for both parties in any such revelation.
Even in a political firestorm like that surrounding the FMA, I don’t believe outing folks is justified. They still need to earn a living, and they still deserve their privacy.
The only time I think it would be appropriate to out someone is if they were overtly hypocritical in their publically stated views (i.e., a gay Hill staffer from Massachusetts who married his/her partner in secret, but still tried to pass in DC, who went on to write a pro-FMA speech for their Congressman). In such cases, it’s fair to point out the hypocrisy. Short of that though, I’d say leave them alone.
Edward, I think I agree with your test, but not how you applied it, because a staffer is never writing his own speech– he (or she) is writing a speech for the Member of Congress. So I think outing may sometimes be appropriate for hypocritical Members but not for staffers.
I’m still not entirely sure how I feel about outing — I’m sort of reflexively against it, but not for well-thought-out reasons, so I don’t necessarily trust my own instincts — but I tend to agree with Edward’s formulation. A gay staffer writing speeches for a pro-FMA conservative should be no more acceptable than a black staffer writing speeches for David Duke. Or, since you can’t be a closeted black, let’s say a Jewish staffer.
But I’d go, in theory, a little farther than Edward, and say that — if you accept outing as a strategy — you don’t have to limit it to the overtly hypocritical. While people deserve their privacy and the ability to earn a living, they don’t deserve to have them when they use them in the service of denying other people their rights, whether they’re hypocritical about it or not.
While people deserve their privacy and the ability to earn a living, they don’t deserve to have them when they use them in the service of denying other people their rights, whether they’re hypocritical about it or not.
I think there’s a fine distinction here, and it’s why I partly disagree with Doh on this point: So I think outing may sometimes be appropriate for hypocritical Members but not for staffers.
If the staffer is actively working to deny the benefits to other gay people that he/she enjoys, then it’s fair.