Marriage for Maine

Stand for Marriage Maine’s Campaign page is here, click to donate: Stand For Marriage Maine. They deserve our support. Send this out to anyone you know who also might be able to help. A little from many can go a long way.

Meta-Announcement on John Hosty

Hello readership.

We have a very open policy towards posting here at Opine. Only the profane comments are deleted. Unfortunately from time to time we find that we need to take extra measures with certain personalities who get so emotionally involved in the discussion that they become a problem.

We openly encourage discussion on the subject matter at hand, and encourage disagreement. However, one of our more recognized commenters, John Hosty-Grinnell, has been engaging in some very open cyber-stalking, harassment, and phishing on our forum. For the sake of the readership, it is regrettably time to play Cyber-Nanny: He is banned from posting on Opine. If you are interested in seeing this behavior for yourself, start here.

It is regrettable, Mr Hosty has been a very open advocate on our forums. But understand this decision was reached after many weeks of observing him persevere in this behavior through many requests to focus on the subject material instead.

What Else Would the New Amendment Do?

I was reading through Peter Henderson's Reuters story and I noticed something very interesting about the language submitted to California state authorities in hopes of getting a ballot measure intended to repeal the California Marriage Amendment.

Trying to get confirmation, I went to the website of "Love Honor Cherish" and was linked to this piece by Seth Hemmelgarn, and the language is the same there.

[More after the jump.]

The proposal, submitted Wednesday night by Love Honor Cherish, removes Prop 8's language in the state constitution that says, "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California" and replaces it with "Marriage is between only two persons and shall not be restricted on the basis of race, color, creed, ancestry, national origin, sex, gender, sexual orientation, or religion."

Legally, most of this language is unnecessary for the claimed purpose of the ballot measure. All the measure needs to do is repeal the California Marriage Amendment, and by default brideless couples and groomless couples will be able to get marriage licenses again. Or, if it would make them feel better to actually have their own "positive" amendment, all it has to do is say that licenses "shall not be restricted on the basis of sex or gender" of either participant. Instead, they include race, color, creed, national origin, and religion – even though that is has long been effect in California already. Why? Likely as a marketing ploy. They will market the measure as preventing discrimination against people based on any of those categories.

But to me, the kicker is including ancestry in the list. Like race, color, creed, national origin, and religion, the law already doesn't care about ancestry when it comes to issuing marriage licenses, and those categories cover the ancestry issue. But how hard would it be for someone to successfully argue that since the state constitution prevents ancestry from being taken into account, marriage licenses must also be issued to incestuous couples upon request? And, thus, there is a "right" to incest between consenting adults, or even between a father and his minor daughter, who... ta-da!... he grants permission to marry... him. I'll be generous and say that’s not the intention of the authors. But it would still be law.

The proposed ballot language also prohibits courts from requiring priests, ministers, rabbis, or other religious authorities "to perform any marriage in violation of his or her religious beliefs."

"The refusal to perform a marriage under this provision shall not be the basis for lawsuit or liability, and shall not affect the tax-exempt status of any religious denomination, church or other religious institution," the proposed ballot language reads.

This is an attempt to get some of the "Yes on 8" voters to support, or at least not oppose, this new measure. They shouldn’t fall for it. If this were to be adopted into the state constitution, how long would it be before marriage neutering advocates would be working to get that clause restricted or repealed with arguments like, "How can we allow such discrimination against these marriages when these marriages are part of our state constitution?"

It is a bogus compromise. We already have that protection under the California Marriage Amendment. We don't need to go along with marriage neutering to get it. It would be like offering us "freedom of speech" if we go against our convictions and give them what they are asking. Gee, thanks.

Who Is On the California Court?

Carlos R. Moreno was the only member of the California Supreme Court to vote to overturn the duly adopted California Marriage Amendment. He was rumored to be under consideration for SCOTUS before a "wise Latina" got the spot. Maura Dolan of the Los Angeles Times has a profile piece on him, and I wanted to look at a few key parts.

Embracing a novel theory, Moreno said he "legally and morally" believes that a measure that strips a minority of a key right can not be approved as constitutional amendment by a mere majority in an election. That's a stance the state court has never taken and, had President Obama nominated him to the U.S. Supreme Court, it could have doomed his appointment.

This means he was grasping at straws. The CMA was duly adopted and not in conflict with the federal Constitution. The court abides by the federal and state constitutions – it does not decide what belongs in them.

[Much more after the jump.]

Moreno, who has a gay nephew and lesbian niece, said in his dissent that the ballot measure was a threat to all minorities.

It's not relevant that he has homosexual people in the family. His sexual orientation isn't relevant. Most of us have homosexual people in our families. We also have children and married people in our families. Most of us will be married at some point in our lives. He probably has people in the family who voted for the California DOMA and then the Marriage Amendment. The laws apply to all of us.

"Feelings about same-sex marriage are really generational," Moreno said over lunch at a Peruvian cafe near his San Francisco chambers.

Perhaps, but younger generations get older and often move conservative.

Moreno also was the only member of the court to marry a gay couple before voters reinstated the marriage ban.

Conflict of interest?

Chief Justice Ronald M. George, who wrote the historic ruling that first allowed gays to wed in California, also had been asked to marry gay couples. He refused, saying it might create an appearance of conflict if Proposition 8 passed and came before the court.

Exactly.

This is the kind of thing we’re dealing with in California. Thankfully, the rest of the court, including people who overstepped their authority last year, decided they were only going to go so far and they deferred to clear meaning of the amendmended state constitution.

Try, Try Again

One of the marriage neutering activist groups filed paperwork to start the process to try to repeal the California Marriage Amendment. Shelby Grad reports in the LATimes.com blog.

Despite concerns from some gay-rights activists that it's too early to revisit the issue, one group today pushed forward with plans for a 2010 ballot measure that would repeal Prop. 8 and allow gay marriage in California.

As we've pointed out before "allow gay marriage" is misleading language. There is nobody stopping two or more people of the same sex from "marrying" right now. However, the state only issues marriage licenses to a couple consisting of one bride and one groom – in other words, an actual wedding party.

The group Love Honor Cherish filed ballot language with the state today for a measure to overturn the ban on gay marriage in the state.

Again, it isn't a "ban". Jack-booted guys dropping from black helicopters are not breaking up ceremonies, and separating same-sex partners who live together.

[Much more after the jump.]

That is the first step in getting the question on the ballot.

Why wasn't a ballot measure tried to begin with? I think we all know the answer to that. Looks like we're going to "vote on marriage", something we were told we "couldn't" do.

According to the group, if the state approves the language, they will begin the process of collecting the estimated 1 million signatures needed to get on the November 2010 ballot.

Looking forward to the ads.

"Starting today, there is new hope for committed gay and lesbian couples who want to get married," said John Henning, executive director of Love Honor Cherish, said in a statement.

Can't they take a trip to one of the handful of states issuing marriage licenses to brideless and groomless couples?

"We're back on the path toward full equality."

That's a false promise. License or not, without both the bride and the groom, it will never be equal to marriage. This reminds me of the man who undergoes a "gender reassignment", who always thinks the next surgery will make him happy and comfortable and feel like a woman – as if he could know what it feels like to be a woman and thus know when he has arrived at feeling like a woman. It's sad, really. While there are those activists who want neutered marriage licensing so that it can be wielded as a wrecking ball, other people seem to really believe that the license will make them happy, and will be what validates their relationship. But what really makes marriage the special thing that it is hinges on the uniting with the opposite sex. I can't help but feel sorry for someone who doesn't realize that, and is expecting a magical transformation with a state license.

The blog is accepting and posting comments, at least for now. Here are some of the early ones of note.

"Richard Ivey" wrote September 24, 2009 at 11:17 AM:

I am not gay but I will vote to overturn Prop 8, which violates the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution: "make no law respecting an establishment of religion"

Mr. Ivey seems to have discovered new aspects of applying the Constitution that none of the experts seems to have found before. Amazing. Of course, I'd like to know which religion the California Marriage Amendment comes from. One need not be the slightest bit "religious" to agree that marriage unites a bride and a groom. It is also interesting that he didn't include the phrase about "Congress". Congress has nothing to do with the California Marriage Amendment.

"Aaron Bloom, Chair, Ballot Initiative Committee, Love Honor Cherish" wrote September 24, 2009 at 12:03 PM:

The campaign to officially repeal Proposition 8 and remove discrimination from our state constitution has officially begun.

I can't believe what a lightweight this guy is. If we removed discrimination from our state constitution, it would be meaningless. All law discriminates. Law says some things are illegal, and other things are assigned to government agencies to do (while others aren't). Both of those aspects are discrimination.

As a straight guy who will be celebrating his ninth year of marriage this December, I cannot even imagine what it must be like to not enjoy the liberty to marry the person you love.

So I guess anti-bigamy laws are out, too then, huh? And what about narcissists? Can they get a license without a partner? Siblings? Rock singer fathers and actress daughters? What if someone loves someone who doesn't love them back? Please don't be so sloppy with your language if you want to be taken seriously.

Marriage is a wonderful institution that provides stability, rights (and responsibilities) and strengthens families -- and two consenting adults should enjoy the freedom to marry regardless of their race, religion or sexual orientation.

Why only two? Are you a bigot?

We must stand up for one another to ensure that we are all treated fairly and equally under the law.

Which we all are now, and were last year, and were the year before that.

LGBT Californians pay taxes and contribute to society just like us straight folk.

How many clichés can this guy fit in? I pay my taxes, therefore I deserve to get a University of California degree even though taking more tests and completing more course loads doesn't suit me.

This is a human rights issue that all people should care about, even if they are straight.

A human rights issue? Why didn't MLK or Gandhi ever say anything about it? Why weren't any of the main "human rights" groups talking about this 20 years ago? What about our right to self-government and one vote per citizen? I have to wonder what new "human rights" will be disovered in the future.

"Lloyd Baltazar Web Director, SFV Equality.org" wrote September 24, 2009 at 01:23 PM:

Finally, the LGBT community have some validation as we fight to repeal Prop 8 in 2010.

You're right – there has been absolutely no validation of the LGBT community before this moment. None whatsoever. Yes, this and only this is what will validate the LGBT community. Everything else that supposedly validated the LGBT community before today has been a total sham and farce and meaningless, right?

Let's take back marriage equality for California in order to achieve lifestyle tolerance and cultural diversity as an American nation!

We are already tolerant, thank you very much. Perhaps you need to look up that word?

Looks like it is going to be an entertaining 13 months.

It's Not Quite Chynnatown

Promoting a new book, actress Mackenzie Phillips told Oprah that she engaged in a decade-long consensual incestuous affair with her father, singer John Phillips. This is in addition to him helping her abuse drugs (like he did) and perpetrating nonconsensual incest with her when she was 19 and drugged out of her mind (some would call that rape), on the eve of her wedding. The elder Phillips is no longer around to defend himself or confirm these claims. The younger Phillips says that she stopped the affair after she had her child aborted, unsure of the parentage and fearing her child's biological father was also the grandfather.

[Much more after the jump.]

Widespread public (in the media and online) reaction to the announcement of the consensual incest between two adults has largely been "eeeew" "yuck", "gross", "disgusting", "I can't imagine doing that", and so forth – so some variation of the "ick" response, along with "since it is icky to me, it is wrong."

Many of these same people feel that same way about homosexual behavior between consenting adults. They may admit this privately, if not to their "LGBT" friends/family members/coworkers. Yet they do not express it in the same public forums. (Standard disclaimer: I’m not saying homosexual behavior is the same as incestuous behavior.)

Why is that?

I suspect it is a matter of pressure from activists, not about right or wrong. Someone who honestly, openly expresses that the idea of homosexual behavior grosses them out is tarred and feathered by homosexuality advocates and other "tolerance" experts, even accused of wanting to kill LGBT people.

As the younger Phillips has said, there are, no doubt, other adults engaging in consensual incest. I'd bet those people have negative feelings when they see how people have reacted to Phillips' claim. There are children whose parents are siblings or parent-child. How can we be so insensitive to their feelings and their desires to be consider a normal family that is just as good as any other family? Yet here we are as a society, screaming out that the behavior is sickening.

Once we abandon the standard that sex is for marriage, or merely deny that sexual relationships between adults are about children (even if not all of them produce children) as a corollary to the insistences that sex is not for marriage and that marriage is not about children, then how can we claim that incest is wrong because of the possibilities of what (heterosexual, adult) incest can do to resulting children? We can't use the "ick" factor as an indication it is wrong, because that has supposedly failed us before, leading us astray. That reaction of disgust or merely that the feeling that the behavior is wrong could be nothing more than evidence that we need diversity training and perhaps books for children with a title like Johnny's Mom and Dad Are Also His Aunt and Uncle, or Jane's Family Tree Looks Like a Wreath.

I can rattle off many reasons why incest is wrong, aside from my belief that all sex with someone other than your spouse is wrong. But can the people who insist that "consenting adults" is the standard that makes sexual activity okay, even that we have an obligation to promote it with a state-issued marriage licesnse as acceptable and a viable marriage model? If they can't tell us why incest is wrong without invoking the same arguments they dismiss when it comes to marrige licensing or the morality of homosexual behavior, but still publicly say "eeeww!" to Phillips' claims, can we rightly call them bigots?

One of the main problems with incest is how it affects the fabric of our culture in how families function eternally and with other families, how families are perpetuated, and how men and women relate within their own sex and between the sexes. This, by the way, is also one of the problems I have with homosexual behavior, and one reason why it is a mistake for the state to license same-sex pairings as "marriage". There is hardly anything else as important as the conditions in which we create and raise the next generation, and as part of that, how males and females relate to each other in their different roles that should be distinct. Your parents/children, siblings, and spouses should all be distinct categories and not act like they are in one of the other categories, let alone actually be in one of the other categories.

Nanny State Politics

Every now and again I find posts that transcend any particular issue, but have direct relevance to the debate on how our families are organized. These usually take the form of "father state" or "nanny state" political commentary, and it marks a conflict between expecting us to be parents of our children and the expectation of the government to become parents over its citizens. This is no exception. I think you will want to read the whole thing, but the real bullet is found in this paragraph by Wretchard,

It has become fashionable for governments to treat people — even adults — like children: children who consume too much, obey too little and remain too fond their imaginary friends. And their betters take it upon themselves to guard their speech, take away their dangerous toys and curtail their choices because they are prone to make unwise ones. And most of all they see to it that we should expect no better our lives but a little welfare gruel and some end of life counseling. Once upon a time mankind saw it as their birthright to wander the fields, swim in the streams and see what was over the next hill. Today we live penned up in dark houses warded by sour matrons and bloodless didacts who are forever seeking to administer their “teaching moments”.

My point in this is not that one should triumph over the other, but just how similar the governance of the country is to the governance of our households. So similar that we often see this conflict playing out over and over. My reconciliation of this is pretty straightforward, but I will save it for later.

Conservatives in the OC Will Support Marriage Neutering

The Orange County Register recently featured that implied claim in a commentary by Hans Johnson, a political consultant and contributing editor for In These Times magazine, and Chris Prevatt, publisher of TheLiberalOC.com and a "LGBT activist". I guess he hasn't gotten around to adding "QQUA" (Queer, Questioning, Undecided, and Asexual). Or Maybe he's just a bigot. I'm assuming Chris is male. But then, does it matter? Aren't we all just interchangeable anyway?

The approval of the antigay Proposition 8 by county voters last year is more an exception than the rule of recent developments in local politics.

The California Marriage Amendment was not "antigay". Going against what is favored by homosexuality political advocacy groups does not necessarily make something antigay. The CMA does not address homosexual behavior or orientation.

[Much more after the jump.]

Recently a broad coalition of Lesbian, Gay Bisexual, Trangender (LGBT) leaders and progressive organizations united around a 3-year effort to win back marriage equality in California by repealing Prop. 8 in 2012. The drive holds a chance for O.C. voters to reconsider their stand on the equality of committed same-sex couples under state law and whether they want the image of intolerance, however deserved, to be a lasting legacy.

If there was any intolerance exhibited by voters, it was against judicial usurpation of their power. We are broadly tolerant of homosexual behavior. Nonmarital associations are not equal to marriage, even if marriage laws are extended to them. This is an issue of basic reality.

This patronizing attempt at scolding Orange County conservatives is ridiculous.

Right-wing politics is losing its hold on the long time hotbed of conservatism and home of the Nixon Presidential Library.

First, marriage affirmation is not necessarily right-wing. Secondly, what evidence is offered to back up this claim? Read on...

County voters evicted former Congressman Bob Dornan from his Garden Grove-area House seat 13 years ago.

Uh, yeah. Because a controversial, bombastic Congressman lost his seat under questionable votes (possibly by noncitizens), this is supposed to mean we're all ready to chuck the idea that marriage is different from nonmarriage?

Just last fall, the Obama campaign reduced to a mere 30,000 votes the traditional "Orange bounce," or the margin of more than 200,000 votes by which the GOP, as recently as 2004, has carried the county in presidential elections.

This presumes that all conservative voters got out and voted in an election where their basic choices were Obama and McCain.

Rank-and-file conservatives need to grapple with issues of liberty inherent in rejecting marriage equality through a popular vote. Should government interfere in denying some couples the same respect and rights that others enjoy through marriage?

Yes, it is perfectly legitimate for the law to treat different kinds of voluntary associations differently – to treat different behaviors differently. Much law is based on exactly that. Regardless, California has a domestic partnership law that treats domestic partnerships like marriage. So this push in California is mainly about a minority of a minority hijacking our language for political and social engineering purposes.

Should the constitutional amendment process be used as a tool to target the freedom and equality of any group of Californians – and by majority vote restrict it?

No such thing was done. We are all subject to the marriage laws, regardless of our sexual orientation. The CMA did not create a separate set of laws for any group.

Prop. 8 passed last fall with 52 percent of the vote.

That was with a high turnout of Obama voters and young voters, too.

The paper printed some letters in response:

Michael R. Sumners of Santa Ana wrote:

The passage of Proposition 8 had far more to do with other people of faith, minorities who were Obama Democrats, than it ever did with O.C. Republicans.

And as far as gay issues go, Orange County for years now has been a hotbed of tolerance. But tolerating something, or being required to tolerate it under the law, is a far cry from being forced to accept it as "normal" or just the same as.

In the case of Prop. 8 that something is that gay relationships are just the same as straight relationships, when it is self-evident that they are not.

Right on the mark.

Is it possible that more conservatives in Orange County are going to roll over and let marriage neutering advocates have their way with our laws? Perhaps – and we should work against that, reminding people why marriage matters and why we need to fight the counterfeiting of marriage. However, I think the writers are grasping straws. This is yet more of the same "don't vote your convictions, vote my feelings, or you're a bigot" talk.

Ben & Jerry & Chuck & Larry

Ben & Jerry’s Ice Cream has celebrated Vermont's marriage neutering by offering the flavor "Hubby Hubby".

While I support a company's right to market products as it sees fit as long as I have my right to not support them, I do have to wonder... do you think they support ice cream equality? Do you think they'd celebrate it if I froze some tap water with food coloring in it, and sold it as "Ben & Jerry's Ice Cream"? Or would they be bigoted and sue me to impose their beliefs about ice cream and word meanings on me? What would be the harm if I did that?

Ironically, the redundancy of the flavor name - a play on the flavor name Chubby Hubby - illustrates precisely what is wrong with neutering state marriage licensing. There's no bride mentioned.

Milking It

I'll get this out of the way right away: I condemn murder. With that said, I want to look at Eric Bailey's article from a couple of weeks back in the Los Angeles Times on a push to get an official "Harvey Milk Day" in California – currently as SB 572. Yes, this is the kind of thing legislators are doing while the state goes through what they themselves call a budget crisis.

But despite those posthumous accolades, a legislative push to create a day of recognition for Milk became one of the most contentious issues in the Capitol this year.

Recognizing individuals with a special day is reserved for people who have done something positive for society in general.

In addition to being a murder victim in a personnel dispute, Harvey Milk is notable because he was the first openly homosexual person to be elected to such an important office. So because he was attracted to men and/or because he engaged in homosexual behavior, he should be honored with a special day? What if someone who announced that he likes to stick peeled bananas into his ear gets elected - should he get a special day, too? What's the difference?

[Much more after the jump.]

One proposal before the Legislature would let transgender Californians alter their birth certificates to reflect a new identity.

Really? Say I want to claim that my birth occurred somewhere else than it did – can I change that, too? What if I really, really felt like I was born there?

Conservatives are pushing hard for Schwarzenegger to veto Leno's legislation, which would proclaim Milk's May 22 birthday a day of recognition and encourage schools to consider commemorating his life.

If anything, his story should be presented as a workplace violence issue.

"Harvey Milk is and was a terrible role model for kids," Randy Thomasson, president of SaveCalifornia.com, said before a Thursday news conference outside the Capitol.

Thomasson calls Milk a "public liar" because Milk twisted the truth while running for office about his military career, and a "sexual anarchist" who had multiple boyfriends, one as young as 16.

Randy, Randy, Randy – none of that matters to these people. Or rather, if anything, to them that is all the more reason to celebrate him.

As the article hints, this is part of a piecemeal uh... backdoor end-run around the California Marriage Amendment. For example, an official state Harvey Milk Day would make it more difficult for parents to prevent their public school children from being subjected to marriage-neutering propaganda presented with school resources during the school day.

Background on the "Twinkie Defence" murders

Dafydd has noted:

Ever since yesterday -- when Squeaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Haight-Ashbury, 100%) tearfully warned us that Republicans plotted to launch a wave of political violence and assassination, just like in "the late seventies" in California -- I've heard more than a dozen explanatory references to "the assassination of Harvey Milk."

Is that a sign that there is rage by the marriage supporters that might turn into the next round of abortion clinic bombings? I don't know if that is her dog whistle here or not. We'll just have to see. I will be happy to include the police in any conversation I hear about from either side of this issue will condone or promote violence ... just saying.

Even if such a case is brewing, lets remember (as Dafydd explains) Harvey Milk case is often misunderstood. Read his writeup for the underling reasoning, but I will present his conclusion here...

But it's simply wrong to say that White assassinated Milk because Milk was gay, as well as saying that White's attorneys claimed that eating Twinkies and other junk food drove him crazy.

And can we please remember poor George Moscone -- White's first victim, and the forgotten man of the Dan White murders?

Gay Marriage Rage

Maggie Gallagher notes the continued seething rage behind those who want to tear down marriage equality -- the expectation of equal participation of each gender in each marriage -- for their own self-interests.

Reading her angry e-mails, Monica "wept." She won't care for my sympathy, but nonetheless, she has it. You have to experience it to understand -- it is shocking to discover the waves of hatred now aimed at forcing conformity with the gay marriage party line. Either you are for gay marriage or you are a bad person who should be repressed, humiliated, hurt, marginalized and excluded. "What's next, a piece on how a KKK leader is just 'someone next door' and 'really a nice person'?" as one outraged Post reader put it.

Read it all...

Marriage, but not marriage

Chairm has a great way of pointing out what happens when we try to merge non-marriage (i.e. a form of relationship which is not a marriage) with marriage. We essentially end up with a non-marriage de-facto result.

Here's the other angle. What happens when people try to re-create marriage out of non-marriage? From Masculinisme...

Of course if there had been a male pill available, and Tom was using it he would not have been fooled by this woman's trickery and deceit. Even if he hadn't been taking the pill the knowledge of it's existence might have prevented the woman from trying to dupe him into 'fatherhood'.

Feminist's main objection to the male pill is that women might not trust their partners to remember to take it. A fairly pathetic argument given all the contraceptive methods already available to women. If a woman is really that worried about her partners memory, she has lots of other options she can choose unilaterally.

Could the feminist's real reason be more along the lines of protecting lying women like this one, so that they can extort money out of unsuspecting men?

What do you get? A lot of potential for abuse of either gender. That is why marriage equality means the quality of participation of each gender in each marriage.

The other side of the marriage gap

Kay Hymowitz, as I've said before, wrote the best essay on marriage equality I've ever read. In it she pointed out the marriage gap, the difference in money and means that married people have raising children compared to the unmarried. Feckless digs up some interesting facts that suggest that the gender gap (the disparity between wages earned by women vs men) is really the marriage gap in disguise. The following is just a taste of the facts in the articles linked to in this post...

1. When I did the research for Why Men Earn More in 2005, I discovered that nationwide never-married women who had never had children earned 117% of the wages of never married men who had never had children.
2. The statistical analysis, which included these and other variables, produced an adjusted gender wage gap between 4.8 percent and 7.1 percent. The gap shrinks to almost nothing when men and women of equal backgrounds and tenure are compared, according to another study of young, childless men and women.

Have a happy 9-9-9

NOM News digest

I don't usually post NOM news, but this week had a few points of interest...

First item, an exchange in Maine between Maggie Gallagher and a radio show host highlights the equality paradox we discuss quite often here at Opine...

Maggie pointed out that you cannot say both that gay marriage is about “equality” and then turn around and claim that ”it’s not going to affect anyone else.” Equality arguments don’t lead to live-and-let-live tolerance. They lead to the expansion of government power to repress “bigotry”–i.e., the traditional understanding of marriage. [...]

Ethan (a substitute host filling in for Ken) had a real hard time hearing what Maggie was saying. [...] “What you are saying sounds like bigotry to me,” he more or less told Maggie. (I’m doing this from memory; I don’t have a transcript, so forgive me!)

[...] “I’ve come to understand, reluctantly,” she told him, “that people like you do hear ideas like ‘Marriage is a union of husband and wife because kids need a mom and dad’ as bigoted. That’s why I want everyone else listening to understand very clearly: When they say ‘equality, equality, equality,’ they are telling you that gay marriage is going to have real consequences for everyone who disagrees with the government’s new definition of marriage.”

The second item "I have a question for you: What if they announced gay marriage and no one showed up? That’s the question being raised by Vermont’s tumultous passage of a gay marriage law last spring."

See the AP story “Slow Start: No Rush for Same-Sex Weddings in Vermont,”

Thirdly, they take a clear stand on involvement by the LDS church in their organization.

The LDS church is not responsible for NOM’s formation, and NOM has never received any promise of assistance from Salt Lake. We would welcome such assistance, as we would from other faith communities. But Salt Lake is not responsible for NOM’s activities and the continued press suggestions are unfair to the the LDS church leadership and to Mormons in America generally.

Inequalities in income and household chores disappear when you account for a few relevant facts

Another look in our series on marriage equality...

Feckblog brings us a Devil's dictionary sort of definition of feminism:

Feminism is the theory that men and women are equal in every respect--except for those in which women are superior. The trick is to interpret every social indicator as though it demonstrates arbitrary male privilege or genuine female superiority. Fortunately, a little bit of ignorance is all it takes to accomplish this feat.

But the article Feckless points to is even more interesting:

In fact, this is precisely what the studies show, when looked at carefully. It has been said that the gender wage gap is not a measure of discrimination; it is a measure of ignorance. The more you know about the determinants of income, the smaller the gender wage gap becomes, to the point of insignificance.

Controlling only for crude time factors--number of hours worked per week, weeks worked per year, and years worked in a career--will account for all but about five or ten percentage points in the gender wage gap in most occupations. Willingness to travel, and to relocate for a promotion, are also important. So is field of work, educational qualifications, and--importantly--risk of injury or death. About 95 per cent of occupational deaths in Canada occur to men; even if that isn’t an employment opportunity you want to see equalized, at least concede men a risk premium for the kind of work that makes that statistic a reality.