Speaking of how the marriage segregationists have already lost, here’s a great video, via Andrew Sullivan, of Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal refusing to support an effort to amend the Iowa Constitution to forbid same sex marriage. Without his support, the amendment cannot move forward.
Please do not comment unless you accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people.
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This guy is absolutely terrific.
Iowa Senate Majority Leader Mike Gronstal refusing to support an effort to amend the Iowa Constitution to forbid same sex marriage. Without his support, the amendment cannot move forward.
Hm. You think it’s a good idea that one person has the power to do this?
Hm. You think it’s a good idea that one person has the power to do this?
I think the super-majority override to the governor’s veto is fairly clear expression of democracy, assuming you believe in the representative principle. There are many instances in governance where the factors add up to one politician or appointee playing a critical role. I am not sure how this instance is more or less undemocratic than any other.
I think the super-majority override to the governor’s veto is fairly clear expression of democracy, assuming you believe in the representative principle.
Let me point out before Ron does that you’re conflating IA with VT here: IA did it by a court decision, VT by the legislative process. I agree with the rest of your comment, though.
Eloquence speaks for itself!
To be fair, Ron, that one person is a democratically elected representative of the people. This is the way our government works, and has worked, for about two centuries. The judiciary ruled a law invalid. This can be overcome by the legislative branch initiating a change to the state constitution. The legislative branch, functioning under the rules and traditions it normally functions under, has decided not to change the constitution. It looks to me like our representative democracy has just worked the way it was designed to work. Just as it has in both Massachusetts and Vermont when the issue of SSM was addressed.
Is there an alternate form of government you would prefer that you think most US citizens would also prefer? Perhaps one where a vote, by the people and not their duly elected representatives, is required for every single function of government? If so, I encourage you to get the word out.
you’re right, my mistake.
RonF,
If Gronstal’s off-base, he’ll be duly punished through the democratic process: his colleagues will get heat from their constituents to replace Gronstal as Senate Majority leader with someone who will support such an amendment. Seriously, the system is set up to allow Iowans to make their feelings known to the legislature. If he’s *really* off-base, his own constituents will refuse to re-elect him. 2010 is going to be a quasi-referendum on the IA SC’s decision: will the justices up for retention get dumped? will the governor have to promise to appoint anti-SSM judges? will the legislature change hands as Iowans decide that SSM is so bad, they’d rather be represented by Republicans than live with it?
Governors veto laws all the time, and unless I’m remembering incorrectly, ‘one person’ describes 100% of the governors in the US.
Also, Ron, do you believe that you qualify to comment under the comment guidelines?
—Myca
That made me tear up and want to pump my fist in the air at the same time.
Myca @ 9: Also, Ron, do you believe that you qualify to comment under the comment guidelines?
RonF questioned whether a single member of a legislature should be able to block a proposed amendment. How does this question deny “the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people”? Or am I missing something?
Guys there is a great LGBT civil rights organization called the Empowering Spirits Foundation. They are very creative in how they approach this hot topic issue of gay marriage, in that they engage in service oriented activities in communities typically opposed to equal rights to foster thought and change for LGBT equality.
A friend of mine told me about it and I thought it was a great, positive approach to the issue. We had so much fun at the last event and it was great to give back to the community. Plus it was great to converse with others on the other side of the table in a way that wasn’t confrontational.
Anyway, this can be such a heated issue and I thought this was a unique approach.
Empowering Spirits Foundation
The standards aren’t about individual comments, but about the general positions and opinions of the commenter. It’s sort of my version of a feminist-only thread.
Ron may well accept the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people. If he does so, then it’s reasonable to treat things like dignity and equality as inherent goods worth defending and promoting. If he does not, then it’s a very different discussion, and an appeal to equality isn’t enough on its own but must include a specific argument as to why equality is good.
I’m looking for the first kind of discussion, and I was asking Ron if he thought he was qualified to participate in it.
—Myca
I think I understand the qualification you wish to impose on commenters for this thread, but I still don’t see why you singled RonF out. Does he have a history of comments that make you unsure of his commitment to the basic dignity, equality, and inherent worth of all people, that other commenters lack? I’m a newcomer to this blog–perhaps RonF has a reputation among the regulars here I’m not aware of. Because I fail to see how his post @2 could call into question his qualification to comment on this thread.
Jason,
Here’s a suggestion: start by assuming that the mods aren’t trolling their own threads.
Now:
1) Yes. RonF has repeatedly opposed same-sex marriage, and offered other homophobic opinions on this blog.
2) If for some reason you want to discuss Myca’s moderation rather than the subject of this thread, then please find an open thread on which to make your comments rather than derailing this conversation.
Yes.
—Myca
Jason, are you sure you’re new to this blog? The last post on the blog linked to your blogger profile, which says it was authored by “Jason,” is pretty much a link plus cut-and-paste from one of Ampersand’s posts.
Well, that post that Jason linked to is one of the most-linked posts I’ve ever written; it’s possible that Jason read that individual post but didn’t become familiar with the blog as a whole at that time.
Regarding the video in the OP, it’s beautiful. I think Vermont is kind of a bigger deal, because it happened through the legislature, but events in Iowa are awesome and this statement is super-awesome.
Geez people, why do you have to jump on me like this?
Myca’s wanting to designate the comments section to a post as safe space for feminists, or, perhaps in the case of this post, LBGT people and their allies, is something I had not encountered on other blogs before, at least not in this way, and was curious about it on this blog. So when Myca brought up the qualifications for commenting, I asked for clarification, which he provided. That is all. I don’t see why it’s necessary to conclude that I think he’s trolling his own post, or that I’m trying to derail the discussion.
PG @17,
Yes, three years ago, I came across, by means I cannot remember, a post of Ampersand’s and wanted to share it with my co-bloggers on an abortive blog I used to have. I had not been following Alas, a blog before that post three years ago and have not followed it since. As far as I can remember, my comments today are my first ever here.
Please do not suspect bad faith or insincerity on so thin a reed of evidence. I started making comments on the blog because the posts interested me and I wanted to participate in a discussion relating to the recent victories in IA and VT.
Hi, Jason. Sorry if we’re all a bit jumpy — we’ve sometimes had troll problems in the past. Please do stick around and participate in discussions, and hopefully you’ll come to feel more welcome. :-)
As for which victory is a bigger deal, I guess that depends on whether cries of “unelected judges ramming same-sex marriage down people’s throats” or “just what you’d expect from dissipated coastal elites” is more effective in motivating opposition to same-sex marriage. My feeling from Prop. 8 in California is that the fact that the legislature had twice passed same-sex marriage didn’t really help the case much, so the fact that now the Vermont legislature has passed same-sex marriage shouldn’t be that much bigger a deal.
I think the biggest thing SSM has going for it is people living in or near jurisdictions where it’s legal and life continuing as before–it just becomes normal and so people’s fundamental value of fairness takes over and they say, “well why not?” Knowing LBGT people makes one more likely to support LBGT rights, and so knowing or knowing people who know same-sex married couples is likely to have the same effect for supporting SSM. In this way, IA might be a bigger deal because New England is already a more supportive region–the NH House recently passed an SSM bill, New York recognizes out-of-state SSM, etc. IA might be a catalyst for the even bigger deal of Illinois more than VT is to be on its neighbors, which can just be bracketed off in bigoted rhetoric as a godless, un-American corner of America.
And then there’s also the visual effect of seeing a map of the U.S. where SSM is legal and there being a big bright spot in the middle of the country, rather than a few specks in the corner.
Ampersand @20,
Thank you for your comment. Looking back, I can understand that someone trolling might have written things similar to what I did, and how people might have especially sensitive troll sensors, especially when the trolling strikes at the deeper target of who someone is rather than what they think.
Jason L.,
No suspicion of bad faith here — just thought you might have forgotten having read this blog before today. Sorry to have contributed to making you feel unwelcome. But if you want to avoid people’s “jumping” on you, you might want to avoid rather accusatory phrases like “you singled RonF out” when asking about the moderation policy.
Also,
The legislature’s passing SSM in CA didn’t help because it was irrelevant; the voters already had prohibited SSM by referendum, and a voter referendum cannot be superseded by legislative statute. The CA legislature was seen as trying to override the expressed will of the voters. In contrast, while VT was pushed toward civil unions by its courts, there never has been a successful backlash against SSM there.
I don’t wish to join the conversation about who should or should not post.
I would like to say that I admire what Mr. Gronstal had to say, not because of his position, which I agreed with, but because he listened to his daughter and was willing to imagine a world where people of his generation and his mindset were no longer in charge. Something terribly difficult for all of us to do.
This made me tear up.
I have never been happier to have been made to feel old.
My tiny baby-bust generation will soon be made superfluous, superceded by the much larger generation following us? Well, good. Excellent. They don’t suck half as bad as we do.
[used to post as DonaQuixote but got tired of having different handles on different sites]
yay yay yay yay yay yay!
Also, CA, my dear precious homestate, you’d better catch up quick!
(sorry, not the most incisive comment I could have thunk up)
Yes, they’ve already lost, and YES! I agree that gay marriage makes straight marriage stronger, but I have to divert a bit from his argument. It’s not ABOUT love, really; it’s about equality. We cannot legislate love. Gays and lesbians ALREADY love; it’s the political rights that are lacking. We need to take this conversation away from love (and religion!) and land it right where it belongs – in fairness and equality for ALL citizens. This is a political debate, not an emotional one, and we all know that love has precious little to do with politics.
Agreed with Mrs. Chili — the government has no business in whom you love or don’t, but it has an obligation to treat all people equally and with neutrality regarding race, sex, religion, etc.
That was a great speech! I love the ending, how it was just thrown in there “Oh yeah and no, I won’t help you take the rights of my fellow humans away, thanks!”
OT, but I cannot resist…
But how can you decide. Both DonaQuixote & Dymphna are great. Have I mentioned that Dymphna is my favorite of all the saints?
http://www.natlshrinestdymphna.org/history.php
If I’m ever in Canton, OH, I’ll be sure to visit her national shrine there.
http://www.natlshrinestdymphna.org/location.php
The patron Saint of Mental Illness? I’d have thought that they’d name her the patron Saint of Mental Health, but what do I know? I guess it’s not so surprising when you consider that her priest & teacher, St. Gerebernus is the patron Saint of fever and gout. Wow, what an odd way of titling patron saints.
I agree with this, and I noticed that about the way he framed his statement, but at the end of the day, I think it’s both. Certainly, for the supporters of SSM and especially for people actually in same-sex relationships, the package of rights that comes with legal marriage is extremely important. For opponents, though, I don’t think their opposition has anything to do with the consequences of people of the same sex being able to file joint taxes or even extend health insurance to their partners. It’s always seemed to me that their concern is that extending legal recognition is a de facto declaration that gay people are normal and their relationships are qualitatively the same as straight relationships. So no, you can’t legislate love, but I don’t think Gronstal’s wrong that this is about recognizing love between two men or two women. It’s about recognizing that their love isn’t fundamentally different from the love between a man and a woman. (Which is why you haven’t seen these mysterious people PG asked about, those who don’t object to gay marriage, only to it being imposed by the courts, cheering the Vermont decision.)
Update on that: I hear that Vermont doesn’t count because its civil unions were court-mandated (December 20, 1999, Vermont Supreme Court in Baker v. Vermont), and 9 years of civil unions gave SSM proponents an “unfair” advantage in making their case.
So apparently New Hampshire may be the first state that, wholly unsullied by judicial processes, has approved civil unions (2007) and this year hopefully will approve SSM.
In related news, the latest issue of National Review is going all out in offending infertile and childless-by-choice couples: “Governmental recognition of marriage is pointless except as a way to nurture the vital but delicate relationship between sex and the raising of children. Same-sex marriage does not expand the institution so much as empty it of content.”
Your marital sex life isn’t breeding offspring? You don’t deserve legal marriage!
Man, that judicial activism is pernicious stuff.
As I so often am, I’m pretty much in agreement with Chingona.
As I’ve said before, I don’t think that there are any coherent secular arguments against gay marriage (they usually rely on out-and-out logical fallacies like Appeal to Tradition or on clear cases of special pleading like “marriage is for procreation”), but seriously, the chief argument against gay marriage doesn’t need to be coherent to be powerful, and that argument is, “Gays! Ick!”
It’s what underlies the Boy Scout ban on homosexuality, it’s what underlies marriage segregation, it’s what underlies criminalizing sodomy … and it’s stupid, and deep-rooted, and emotional, and since it’s illogical, it’s impossible to argue against logically. The best argument against it can’t be logical, it has to be emotional and rooted in empathy. I think that, “Gay people are just people who love each other and golly, look at this elderly lesbian couple who has been together for 40 years, and they’re both 75 now, and they just want to get married, and doesn’t it just make you want to cry how much they love each other,” is a pretty good counter-argument.
—Myca
That makes no sense–if SSM didn’t work, then presumably the 9 years would have given SSM opponents plenty of ammunition. That the 9 years worked to the benefit of SSM is a factor of inputs, not of the process.
I like this result. In many respects I like it the best of any of the recent SSM advances, mostly because it is the closest to a direct democratic vote and I like that type of process.
I think it’s the power of stasis/ status quo: if a non-democratic force changes the institution, then you get used to the institution’s being different and new nomenclature isn’t that big a deal. After all, VT civil unions were required by the court to give the same benefits and duties of marriage to same-sex couples. The only people for whom a regime in which same-sex couples have marriage in everything but name is worth preserving is that tiny minority who want same-sex couples to have equality but squeam out over calling it marriage (I mean people who believe that sincerely; politicians like Obama who try to have it both ways by being pro-equality yet anti-SSM don’t count, as I assume they’re just being sleazy on the issue, not that they’re really that silly).
For people who don’t want same-sex relationships recognized at all, changing from civil union to marriage is an “ouch” but not functionally a big deal; for people who wanted same-sex relationships recognized, they pretty much won in the courts 9 years ago and the change in name just allows them to clean up the statutory law (instead of having a whole section on what this “civil union” thing is, the marriage law is simply sex-neutral).
Don’t you think, though, at some point we’ll be looking a challenge to DOMA? I would think we’ll see that once you get a certain number of states with real-live-actual gay marriage, not civil unions, and an even larger number of states recognizing SSM from other states, and in that context, I would think there is significance to having marriage and not civil unions. Thoughts?
chingona,
The federal DOMA already has been challenged in federal courts, and thus far has been upheld. I think Obama made a campaign promise that if Congress rescinded the law, he would sign that legislation, but Congress hasn’t done so yet.
There’s a longstanding informal exception to the full faith and credit clause that allows State A not to give full faith and credit “to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings” of State B if B’s acts/records/proceedings are contrary to the public policy of A. For example, in Loving v. Virginia, the Lovings had been married in Washington, D.C., but the Commonwealth of Virginia refused to recognize their marriage. There never was a successful challenge to VA’s anti-miscegenation law based on full faith and credit (FFC); instead, the Supreme Court said that Virginia itself must allow interracial marriages, not just give FFC to out-of-state ones. The Supreme Court thereby overruled the public policy of VA that forbade miscegenation on Equal Protection and Due Process grounds, without any mention of FFC.
I agree that the anti-ssm position is illogical, which is why the Iowa court ruling was so fantastic. It did the only really effective thing one can do in the face of that: it laid out the logical flaws in the anti-ssm argument clearly and decisively.
I’m guessing a full-throated effort to challenge DOMA with SCOTUS won’t happen until there’s a change in the composition of the court. Its chances with the current justices seem to me to be rather slim. A state-to-state strategy seems more worthwhile at this point.
And OT: Thanks for the props, and the links, Jake. I wear her medal most days. And I agree, the “patron saint of mental illness” sounds a bit off. I have a similar reaction when I hear things like “we’re doing a fundraiser for AIDS.” When actually it’s just the opposite, right?
Dymphna,
I have a similar reaction when I hear things like “we’re doing a fundraiser for AIDS.” When actually it’s just the opposite, right?
Florence King on that sort of unfortunate construction:
That would invalidate most marriages of more than 25 years — including mine. I guess there’s another reason I’m all teary-eyed.