Strike down domestic partnerships

(Note: I am behind on posting my newspaper column here. Here is my column from August 6th, the week that Doyle's domestic partner registry went into effect.)


Publication:Waukesha Freeman (Conley); Date:Aug 6, 2009; Section:Opinion; Page Number:10A

Strike down domestic partnerships

(James Wigderson is a blogger publishing at http://wigdersonlibrarypub.blogspot.com and a Waukesha resident. His column runs Thursdays in The Freeman.)


This week, Wisconsin’s 72 counties began the process of registering same-sex couples as part of a new domestic partnership registry. Wisconsin Family Action is suing to stop the registry, stating that the registry is prohibited by a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage.

They have a point. The amendment states, “Only a marriage between one man and one woman shall be valid or recognized as a marriage in this state. A legal status identical or substantially similar to that of marriage for unmarried individuals shall not be valid or recognized in this state.”

At issue is whether the domestic partner registry is “substantially similar” to marriage. Looking at the criteria used to qualify for the new registry, it would be hard to argue otherwise. After all, the criteria are taken directly from those used for marriage.

Each of them must be 18 years or older, no closer in family relations than second cousins, share or intend to share the same residence, and not be married or in another domestic partnership. Even the prohibitions on too-close family relations and bigamy are preserved.

We can debate the benefits that are granted to same-sex couples under this new law. We can argue whether they are achievable through private contracts or separate enabling legislation. We can even question the wisdom of granting some of the benefits during an economic recession, when the granting of those benefits may result in additional costs on the state and private employers.

That is not what this debate is really about. It is about an attempt to force the state’s, and thereby society’s, recognition and approval of same-sex relationships.

This has been the goal since author and gay activist Andrew Sullivan suggested legalizing gay marriage in 1989 in an essay in The New Republic. He wrote, “Legalizing gay marriage would offer homosexuals the same deal society now offers heterosexuals: general social approval and specific legal advantages in exchange for a deeper and harder-to-extractyourself-from commitment to another human being.”

Fine, but what of the cost to society when a pillar of the social structure is rendered meaningless? While blogger Zach Wisniewski is surely correct in noting that the “institution of traditional marriage as we know it (defined as being between a man and a woman) didn’t come to an end” since the registry began Monday, marriage as an institution has been weakened and there will be a long-term cost.

Defenders of gay marriage and civil unions like to point out the high rates of adultery and divorce as evidence that marriage is already losing its special significance. To them I would ask, if a tree is being cut down, would you save it by setting it on fire? Of course not, nor should we continue to enact the means of diminishing the meaning of marriage.

We should also point out that, until recently, divorce carried with it a substantial social stigma, and adultery still carries some social penalty. There is a visceral response that broken marriages are not in our culture’s best interests. This is reinforced by our knowledge of the actuarial tables regarding the relative impoverishment of women and children involved in divorce. While there are individual cases of success, the breakdown of the family is a leading cause of social ruin.

Proponents of the civil unions are crying foul at Wisconsin Family Action’s lawsuit claiming supporters of the amendment to ban gay marriage claimed it would not ban civil unions. True, provided those unions are not set up to be substantially similar to marriage, as the new law clearly is.

Despite some recent setbacks, support for the definition of traditional marriage continues to have broad support in our society. President Obama’s opposition to gay marriage has been often stated. African-Americans and Hispanics joined with traditional conservative constituencies to support a ban in California. And here in Wisconsin, nearly 60 percent of the voters supported the amendment even as the Democratic Party made gains across the state that year.

We should continue in the spirit of that bipartisan, cross-racial consensus to defend and even strengthen the institution of marriage.

And in the interest of defending our state constitution, the courts should strike down this domestic partner registry.

JAMES WIGDERSON

I just gained a lot more respect for Marty Peretz

Mickey Kaus, on his blog at Slate, publishes a thread from the infamous "Journolist," the liberal media e-mail discussion group trying to stay private and off the record. If this is the best Peretz's critics can come up with, he has nothing to fear from these intellectual lightweights.

Heck, I can be harsher and more on target than these guys. All anyone has to say is, "Al Gore."

Obama scores a perfect ten

President Obama reached a height his vice president can only dream of. When The New Republic created the "Biden Gaffe-o-meter" they explained the 1 to 10 scoring:

When Barack Obama selected Joe Biden to be his running mate, he knew--just like he knew about the hair plugs and that we’d all be hearing about the quiet dignity of riding the Amtrak--that there’d be times when Biden would stray hopelessly off-message. But there’s off message, and then there’s off-message. So, we’ve created the Biden Gaffe-O-Meter to rate just how damaging a particular slip of the tongue is, with a 1 being not at all damaging, and a 10 meaning that he should remove himself from the ticket and take out a full page apology in The New York Times for insulting the handicapped children of the world and the ghost of Mahatma Gandhi. {emphasis added}

Get the gaffe meter out:

PRESIDENT Barack Obama has apologised to the chairman of the Special Olympics for a joke on a late night talk show in which the president compared his poor bowling skills to the performance of athletes with disabilities.

During a Thursday night appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Mr Obama, who was mocked during the election campaign for his performance in a Pennsylvania bowling alley, joked that he still scored poorly despite practising in the White House.

“It’s like – it was like Special Olympics, or something,” he said to laughter from the studio audience.

Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver said yesterday that the president called him from Air Force One to apologise even before the show was broadcast.

“He expressed his disappointment and he apologised in a way that was very moving. He expressed that he did not intend to humiliate this population,” Mr Shriver told ABC’s Good Morning America.

“I think it’s important to see that words hurt and words do matter. And these words that in some respect can be seen as humiliating or a put down to people with special needs do cause pain and they do result in stereotypes.”

Using the New Republic scale, Obama and his teleprompter pinned the needle.

Following the New York Times

The New Republic's Gabriel Sherman has the complete background on the New York Times' story on John McCain and how it came to print. This a great article showing just how unusual this story is:

Beyond its revelations, however, what's most remarkable about the article is that it appeared in the paper at all: The new information it reveals focuses on the private matters of the candidate, and relies entirely on the anecdotal evidence of McCain's former staffers to justify the piece--both personal and anecdotal elements unusual in the Gray Lady. The story is filled with awkward journalistic moves--the piece contains a collection of decade-old stories about McCain and Iseman appearing at functions together and concerns voiced by McCain's aides that the Senator shouldn't be seen in public with Iseman--and departs from the Times' usual authoritative voice. At one point, the piece suggestively states: "In 1999 she began showing up so frequently in his offices and at campaign events that staff members took notice. One recalled asking, 'Why is she always around?'" In the absence of concrete, printable proof that McCain and Iseman were an item, the piece delicately steps around purported romance and instead reports on the debate within the McCain campaign about the alleged affair.

What happened? The publication of the article capped three months of intense internal deliberations at the Times over whether to publish the negative piece and its most explosive charge about the affair. It pitted the reporters investigating the story, who believed they had nailed it, against executive editor Bill Keller, who believed they hadn't. It likely cost the paper one investigative reporter, who decided to leave in frustration. And the Times ended up publishing a piece in which the institutional tensions about just what the story should be are palpable.

Ron Paul's racist past

The New Republic article is out and its pretty damning of presidential candidate Ron Paul. The Ron Paul record is one of numerous articles published under his name, whether he authored them or not, that cannot be described as anything but racist.

I wanted to re-read The New Republic article before I commented, but the one thing that struck me is how much of the garbage passed out under his name occurred after 1988 when he was the Libertarian Party presidential candidate. That so much of it occurred before 1988 reflects poorly on Libertarians. But after Ron Paul had assumed a national stage and a national party role this type of racist trash continued to be published under his name.

Following revelations of Paul's acceptance of tainted money and his strange belief that the Civil War should never have been fought, and now these revelations, I think it's time Ron Paul supporters ask whether they want to stand behind a candidate more sympathetic to men wearing white sheets and burning crosses than the freedom fighting history of the party - and the country - he hopes to lead.