David Frum goes after Andrew Sullivan. This should start a good "Blog War." Question number nine. Why haven't you got married yet?
FEB. 27, 2004: EIGHT QUESTIONS FOR ANDREW SULLIVAN
On his website today, Andrew Sullivan proclaims his support for the concept that a same-sex marriage license issued in Massachusetts could be void in the other 49 states. That would be a welcome compromise, especially if the Massachusetts courts ever managed to persuade the voters of Massachusetts to approve their judicially imposed social experiment - but let’s first test Andrew with some practical questions that follow from his idea.
1) A Massachusetts man buys a condo in Miami. He marries another Massachusetts man. The condo purchaser dies before he can write a new will. Who inherits the condo?
2) Two Massachusetts women marry. One of them becomes pregnant. The couple split up, and the woman who bore the child moves to Connecticut. The other woman sues for visitation rights. What should the Connecticut courts do?
3) A Massachusetts man is accused of stock fraud. The federal Securities and Exchange Commission subpoenas his spouse. The spouse claims marital privilege and refuses to answer the SEC’s questions. May the SEC compel him to answer anyway?
4) A Massachusetts woman marries another Massachusetts woman. The relationship sours. Without obtaining a divorce, she moves to Texas and marries a man. Has she committed bigamy?
5) Two married Massachusetts men are vacationing in another state. One of them has a stroke. The hospital concludes he will never recover. Local law requires the hospital to ask the next of kin whether to continue treatment. Whom should it ask?
6) A Massachusetts man marries a foreign visitor to the United States. Should the foreigner be entitled to US residency?
7) A Delaware family set up a trust for their son. The son moves to Massachusetts, marries a man, and then gets divorced. The trust is the son's only financial asset. Should the Massachusetts take the trust into account while dividing up the couple’s possessions? If yes, what happens when the Delaware trustees refuse to comply?
8) A Massachusetts woman married to another woman wins a lawsuit against a California corporation. She dies before she can collect her debt. Her closest blood relative demands that the corporation pay the relative, not the surviving spouse. Who should get the money?
I ask these questions to drive home this point: Americans may live in states, but they conduct their financial and legal lives in a united country bound by interstate institutions.
If a couple gets married in Massachusetts and that marriage goes truly unrecognized by any entity outside the state – well then the Massachusetts wedding ceremony is just a form of words, as meaningless as the illegal weddings now being performed in San Francisco. If you’re not married outside Massachusetts, then you are not really married inside Massachusetts either.
Somehow I cannot imagine Andrew and those who think like him reconciling themselves to that outcome. I suspect that “letting the states decide” will over time gradually evolve into a demand to allow the most liberal states to impose their social values on the others through the mechanism of a million petty lawsuits on a thousand different issues. That is why it is necessary and proper to settle this issue on a national basis. And since the proponents of same-sex marriage have chosen 2004 as the year in which to bring matters to a head, they have no fair complaint if the opponents of same-sex marriage choose make their reply in that same year.
11:38 AM
FEB. 27, 2004: LAST NIGHT'S DEBATE
Undemocratic Democrats
Talk about effrontery! In last night’s Democratic debate, Sen. Kerry purported to be offended by the very idea that same-sex marriage might be a legitimate topic for discussion:
“This discussion we've just had [about same-sex marriage] is exactly where the Republicans want us to spend our time.
“I just came from Ohio, from Youngstown and from Cleveland, where I met the steelworkers who are out of work. They don't have health care. They don't have jobs. Etc.”
Excuse me, but who introduced this whole subject in the first place? Not Republicans and not conservatives. It was put on the national agenda by liberal judges in Hawaii and Massachusetts – and by the lawless Democratic mayor of San Francisco. Republicans are responding to an attempt to circumvent the normal democratic process and foist a radical social change upon the country – without so much as consulting voters. And John Kerry thinks we shouldn’t even be allowed to discuss what has been thrust upon the nation.
A couple of readers replied to my post yesterday about Democratic inconsistency.
One said that the Democrats are being perfectly consistent, in their own unique way: They “support” marriage while opposing the Federal Marriage Amendment in just the same spirit that they “supported” the war on terror – but oppose the Patriot Act, Iraqi reconstruction, and almost everything else we need actually to win the war.
Another pointed out that if Edwards and Kerry were serious about their professed commitment to letting each state decide for itself, they could match their opposition to the Federal Marriage Amendment with an endorsement of a constitutional version of the Defense of Marriage Act, the 1996 law that relieves the federal government and each of the states of any obligation to recognize same-sex marriages performed in another state. Of course Edwards and Kerry will not do that, because they are not serious about their words they speak – indeed, their words are meant only to deceive.
It might also be wondered where the Democratic candidates' respect for the rights of states to settle controversial social issues goes when the controversial social issue is abortion. And yet the case for state-by-state determination of abortion rights is far stronger than for state-by-state determination of marital status. It’s perfectly possible to imagine how the country would work if abortion were legal in New York and illegal in New Jersey – in fact, that’s the country did work in the early 1970s. But it’s obviously impossible to imagine how the country would work if a couple were regarded as married in some states and not others, or if they were considered married at a state level and not at the federal level.
Think about what it would mean in practice for each state to “decide” for itself:
If one same-sex spouse were to die in say Massachusetts, his survivor could inherit as a wife or husband does – but not if that spouse were to die in any other state.
If one spouse were charged with a crime, the other spouse could be forced to testify against him in federal court but not in the state courts of any state that recognized their marriage.
When they applied for a loan, they would be considered married by local banks but not by national banks.
The results would be not merely unworkable, but absurd.
With marriage, to adapt Lincoln’s words, the country will soon be all one thing or all the other. “Letting the states decide” is code for submitting to a process whereby a few unelected, hyper-liberal judges force their personal preferences upon an entire continental nation. In that one sense, I suppose, Edwards and Kerry are consistent. They are for the rule of judges. With abortion, the most effective way to ensure that the judges rule is to federalize the issue. With same-sex marriage, the most effective way to achieve that same end is to “let the states decide.” In both cases, however, the Democrats’ true allegiance is to the snobbish values of an unelected few – and the unvarying target of their hostility is the democratic many.
Edwards On Second Thought
A personal reaction to the debates: I’m finding that Senator Edwards is not wearing well. When Dick Gephardt dropped out of the race, my reaction – shared with a whole pack of slavering fellow-journalists – was that Edwards represented the Dems best chance in 2004. I’m changing my mind. He seems to me to be flunking the Hollywood test: He can’t fake sincerity, not over the longer haul anyway. Kerry may be a stereotypical Massachusetts liberal with a tendency to talk down to the voters. But at least that’s something. What is Edwards? Do I believe that he inwardly opposes NAFTA? No I don’t. Has Edwards convinced me that he believes his own heart-rending stories about Little Match Girls crowding the streets of America frozen and starving? Each time I see him, I become more certain that he is speaking for effect. I’m getting to the point where I’m doubting whether even the accent is wholly for real.
12:30 AM
FEB. 26, 2004: FMA II
I’m sorry to have broken my promise to post more yesterday – I was felled by another round of computer trouble. I feel like Walter Matthau in “A New Leaf,” whose beautiful sports car is always stalling out because of carbon on the valves. Anyway, more on the FMA.
Let’s leave President Bush aside for a moment. What is the Democratic position on the amendment? As near as I can tell it amounts to this. They say they oppose same-sex marriage – but then they also oppose the constitutional amendment necessary to prevent same-sex marriage. Oppose it? That understates the case: They regard the amendment as bigoted, hateful, cruel.
Here for example is DNC Chairman Terry McAuliffe earlier this week:
"It is wrong to write discrimination into the U.S. Constitution.”
Teddy Kennedy echoed the point: George Bush, he said, will “go down in history as the first president to try to write discrimination back into the Constitution.”
Hillary Clinton issued a statement through a representative: “I do not support amending the Constitution to address this issue. The Constitution is a sacred document and should not be used as a tool to divide the American people."
John Edwards, campaigning as the candidate of down-home values, nonetheless unrelentingly opposes the FMA as well: “This dispute can be resolved in California without amending the federal Constitution.''
Senator Kerry’s spokeswoman complained that the president is "using wedge issues and the politics of fear to divide the nation."
Harsh. But not so harsh as the spotlight that the Democrats’ words throw on their own true interior convictions, or lack of them. By now it’s clear that the state-by-state formula endorsed by Democrats is a formula for letting the most liberal state courts in the country write their preferences into the law of the nation – the whole nation. The ritualistic affirmations of marriage mean nothing. When support is needed, the national Democrats all line up on the other side.
Their strategy for the same-sex marriage debate is basically that of a crooked boxer in a prize match: They are pretending to throw some punches in defense of marriage. But from the first, their inner plan has been to throw the fight.
12:08 AM
FEB. 25, 2004: RETURN FIRE
President George W. Bush opened his campaign Tuesday with a speech to Republican governors in the State Dining Room at the White House. He opened with some good jokes: “The Governor of California is new to politics, so he's still getting used to all the cameras and lights.” Then he opened his campaign.
What do we learn from the speech? First, as Mickey Kaus shrewdly observed, Bush is readying himself to attack Senator Kerry as a weak-willed opportunist rather than a nutso Massachusetts liberal, the reincarnation of Michael Dukakis. (Probably a good move for an electorate that is less conservative than it was in 1988.)
As might be expected, the president laid great stress on the war on terror – and the character of the chief executive to lead the nation through the war. What was unexpected was his repeated reference to private accounts in Social Security as a point of differentiation between him and Senator Kerry – leading to hope that this long-promised reform might have a place in a second term. Now that would be a difference worth bragging about!
For the FMA
But the big news of the day is of course the president's announcement yesterday of his full support for the Federal Marriage Amendment. I'll be posting more on this later today, but let me start with one observation provoked by this morning's lengthy statement of outrage and indignation by Andrew Sullivan. The Federal Marriage Amendment is a defensive act. The country is attempting to protect something that is to many people religiously sacred and to many others an essential guarantee and protection for children - not to single out or persecute anyone.
More later this morning.
12:49 AM
FEB. 24, 2004: MEMORIES
“NORILSK, Russia — The bones appear each June, when the hard Arctic winter breaks at last and the melting snows wash them from the site of what some people here — but certainly not many — call this city's Golgotha.
“The bones are the remains of thousands of prisoners sent to the camps in this frozen island of the Gulag Archipelago. To this day, no one knows exactly how many labored here in penal servitude. To this day, no one knows exactly how many died.”
This story from today’s New York Times resonates on many levels. Canadians of a certain age will remember, however, that it was a visit to the city of Norilsk that prompted then-prime minister Trudeau to wonder why Canadians had never managed to settle the Arctic as the Soviets had. As we recover the memory of the Soviet Gulag, so ought we to remember the Gulag’s Western apologists.
07:24 AM
FEB. 23, 2004: RALPH'S NADIR
Boy, I’d sure like to believe that Ralph Nader’s announcement yesterday on Meet the Press delivers the election to President Bush. But I have a feeling that Nader’s vote-catching success in 2000 won’t be repeated in 2004.
Four years ago, the Clinton administration was a fresh memory – and many Democrats, especially left-wing Democrats, were very embarrassed by it. The Clintons’ high living and big money – their endless scandals – and then finally their poor record of delivery on left-wing agenda items – all together persuaded many Democrats that 2000 would be a good year to vote their consciences rather than their party loyalty. (Many Republicans felt the same way in 1992.)
This year, though, few liberals and leftists seem inclined to vote their consciences – as witness the implosion of the Howard Dean candidacy.
Democrats are voting tactically this year. They want to win much more fiercely than they did four years ago. They are making compromises and facing facts. Fact number one is that there is no mass movement of angry, disaffected nonvoters out there waiting to be galvanized by a charismatic populist. Howard Dean spent $41 million – and pulled fewer than400,000 people to the polls to vote for him before he quit for good. There's a lesson there, and the angry anti-Bush constituency has learned it. My guess is that the dropoff in Nader’s vote between 2000 and 2004 will be even sharper than the plunge in Ross Perot’s. If President Bush is to win this race, he will have to do it on his own power.
Those San Francisco ‘Marriage Licenses’
Perhaps you have heard the argument that the Sixteenth Amendment was never properly ratified – and that therefore Americans are not legally obliged to file income-tax returns? Tens of thousands of Americans have been deluded (or deluded themselves) into believing this absurd argument. At one point in the mid-1990s, tax-deniers owed as much as $540 million the IRS. Vigorous enforcement and public education seem since then to have discredited the tax scam.
San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom is following in the footsteps of the antitax buncombe artists. He has not even the shadow of authority to issue same-sex marriage licenses. California law declares as plainly as plain can be that marriages can only be contracted by opposite-sex couples. Perhaps someday some bold plaintiff will convince the California Supreme Court to strike down this law. Perhaps that day will never come. But until it does come, the law is the law.
Mayor Newsom’s decision to dispense marriage licenses to same-sex couples is not merely lawless, but actively ridiculous. He has no more power to marry these people than he does to declare them members of the British House of Lords.
Wonders Never Cease
On the good news side, consider this: On Sunday, the Washington Post published an oped coauthored by 1970s ultra-feminist Phyllis Chesler, for whom Barbra Streisand funded a professorship at Brandeis University, and Donna Hughes, a women's studies professor and activist against the sexual exploitation of women. Chesler and Hughes argue that feminists should drop their instinctive mistrust of their own country and society and recognize the threat to the freedom and equality of women posed by Islamic extremism. They warn that the romanticization of Third-World anticolonial movements is tempting feminists and the left into an acceptance of anti-Semitism. And most astonishingly of all, they conclude:
“In the past, when faced with choosing allies, feminists made compromises. To gain the support of the liberal left, feminists acquiesced in the exploitation of women in the pornography trade - in the name of free speech. The issue of abortion has prevented most feminists from considering working with conservative or faith-based groups. Feminists are right to support reproductive rights and sexual autonomy for women, but they should stop demonizing the conservative and faith-based groups that could be better allies on some issues than the liberal left has been. ….
"Twenty-first-century feminists need to become a force for literate, civil democracies. They must oppose dictatorships and totalitarian movements that crush the liberty and rights of people, especially women and girls. They would be wise to abandon multicultural relativism and instead uphold a universal standard of human rights.”
If this is sisterhood, then it is indeed beautiful.
And then there's that moneylending thing ...
The New York Review of Books devotes its lead review this issue to An End to Evil. The reviewer is Thomas Powers, author of many fine books on intelligence and in most respects a very level-headed person. Richard and I will have more to say about the Powers review in the forthcoming issue of NR. But one theme in the review does raise eyebrows.
In the course of the review, Powers scolds Richard Perle at some length for his "hardline" views. And what is the defining element of these views? "'Hard-liners' share an Old Testament view of the world, promise an eye for an eye, know what they want, and never forget an injury."
I suppose it's pointless to note that the Old Testament is the book in which Amos, Isaiah, and Micah are gathered, or that the New Testament contains passages every bit as implacable as anything in Leviticus: "In flaming fire taking vengeance on them that know not God, and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ: Who shall be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power." (2 Thessalonians 1:9)
But it is perhaps not pointless to wonder why of all possible descriptions of the way "hardliners" think, this was the one that sprang to Powers' mind?
12:40 AM
nationalreview.com |
