Month: June 2003

It was good to see two stories intersect today: the president’s move to ban federal racial profiling in domestic policing and Canada’s decision to grant marriage rights to gays and straights alike. The reason they intersect is that they both affirm the same principle: that the government should treat its citizens as citizens, not as part of some ethnic or sexual group. The government should not treat blacks any differently than whites; and it should strain to treat gays exactly the same way as it treats straights. No special rights for anyone. Just equality under the civil law. Same principle again with regards to affirmative action. What, one wonders, has become of classical liberalism that this principle should still be so widely ignored or misunderstood?

AFTER CANADA, BRITAIN: The Canadian decision is indeed a watershed. I’m still elated about this breakthrough for civil equality. But it isn’t the end of the story. The Blair government is now accelerating plans for de facto marriage rights for gay citizens. They’re not calling it “marriage;” but the new unions will have exactly the same rights and responsibilities as heterosexual marriage. Both Blair and Chretien are Christians, by the way. Like many other non-fundamentalists, they seem personally committed to extending governmental recognition of gay dignity and humanity. And until gay people are accorded civil recognition for their relationships, no such equal dignity can exist. How long will it take before this country – whose Constitution enshrines freedom and equality – follows suit? As the Canadian Justice Minister put it, “We’re talking about essential freedoms here.” Yes: an essential freedom. Some of us are still fighting for it.

Here are a few more Iran-centric blogs and sites I’ve checked out: Iranmania is good place to start for news. Iranvajahan is more explicitly connected with the democratic opposition. (For a personal view, check out Oubai Shahbandar, whose blog has the wonderful name “rightwingarab”.) While I’m at it, here’s a recent Wired story on the role blogs have played in Iran’s nascent democratic uprising. And for an update, this BBC story is inspiring. The Beeb has, in fact, been exemplary in its coverage so far – better than most American media sources. Here’s how they relay the views of one young female protestor:

“When the time is right we will all join. I can smell it in the air. This time is different. I despise Islam and the mullahs even though I am officially a Muslim now. I don’t have the right to change my religion in Iran. I despise the regime and so do 90 percent of the Iranians. All the people who elected Khatami despise the regime and they thought he’d bring change. We fight for a referendum conducted by the United Nations. The masses support the students and are waiting for the right time to make the final impact.” She said she agreed with US President George W Bush’s comments that the demonstrations were “the beginnings of people expressing themselves toward a free Iran”. “Even though we wish for change without the need for war we need your support by not negotiating with a dangerous regime,” she said.

Amen to that. Another score for the “axis of evil” clarity of George W. Bush.

LEAVE IRAN ALONE: “It is a fact, like it or not, that the world of Islam regards the West and its intentions with the deepest suspicion. With that in mind consider the following conversation I had with an Iranian colleague. We were talking about the events in Teheran and I was ‘boosting for Britain’ criticising the government for not doing more, saying we should do this we should do that, we should do the other. He looked me straight in the eye and said “Does it never occur to the West just to shut the f–k up? Afghanistan is still a mess, Iraq has is fallen apart and now you want to screw us over too.” – more feedback on the Letters Page.

Bob Kagan and Tim Ash duke it out on British television. GavinsBlog has the transcript.

NPR’S BLINDFOLD: Check out NPR’s ombudsman, Jeffrey Dworkin, with regard to claims of liberal bias:

“There are certainly those who object to what they perceive as liberal bias on the radio. That is something of a constant these days. But my own view is that NPR has been quite careful to present voices from both sides of issues. If anything,” he says, “we may have put more conservatives on in recent months. I think what some people are reacting to is that when the Clinton administration was in office, we put on critics of those policies. That is normal. But we were accused of being too conservative. Now, with conservatives are in power, when our reporting includes critics of the Bush administration, we’re accused of a liberal bias.”

What planet is this guy on?

“Sexual eccentricity raises difficult philosophical issues for conservatives. On the one hand…we all have friends whom we know to be, or suspect of being, sexually odd in one way or another, and we do not want to say or write things that would hurt their feelings. On the otherhand, conservatives remember what much of the rest of society has forgotten: that even the most private of acts can have dire public consequences, as witness the epidemic of bastardy that has ravaged the United States over the past 40 years, and also of course the AIDS plague, spread in this country mainly by promiscuous homosexual buggery.” – John Derbyshire, lamenting buggers and bastards, National Review, June 30 print issue.

THE NOOSE TIGHTENS: On British anti-war campaigner, George Galloway.

O’REILLY AND THE EU: What do they have in common? A loathing of free speech on the web.

Gay marriage arrives in Canada, as the federal government declines to appeal the Ontario Court ruling.

Andrew Wilson has some sober reflections on campy, gay seminarians; and how they ended up leading far more serious and godly lives than he.

Here’s a way to send some moral support to the student insurgents in Iran. Check out their website, sign their guest-book. It’s a start. Jeff Jarvis has been on the case for a long time. Here’s a list of Iranian bloggers he knows and likes. Read them, email them. And don’t, of course, forget Pejman. Or Iraniangirl.

BOLICK’S CONSISTENCY: A superb and persuasive piece in the Washington Post today about the link between the Boy Scouts gay case and the sodomy law now under review at the Supreme Court. Clint Bolick outlines the principled conservative argument – that freedom of association should allow both the Boy Scouts to discriminate against gays and forbid the state of Texas from infringing on the right of gay Texans to freely associate in their own homes as well. That’s always been my position. Pity so many liberals want to use the coercive state to enforce their morality and so many alleged conservatives want to do exactly the same thing. But liberal and conservative prejudice – against free people – is a far more powerful force than principle, isn’t it?

Here’s my proposal. On July 9, as many blogs as possible focus on the struggle for freedom in Iran. It’s the anniversary of the pro-democracy protests that have been going on for years. I’ll devote the week after July 4 to this issue, culminating in July 9. Please send me links, ideas, articles pertaining to the Iranian struggle in the next few weeks. If you’re an Iranian dissident and may perhaps read this somewhere somehow, get in touch, email your thoughts. If you’re an Iranian ex-patriate, let me know what you think we need to link to or include. If you’re a blogger, make your own plans, and let me know so I can link. Many people have theorized about the power of the web to bring about change and the young generation in Iran must know this as well as any group of people. So let’s try and use it – if only to send a symbol of solidarity with those resisting the theo-fascists who have wrecked Iran for three generations.

STILL PLAYING THE GAME: Here’s an interesting nugget that tells you a lot about Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her book contains many inflammatory charges about various political and judicial figures. In particular, Chief Justice Rehnquist is portrayed as a political hack rather than a principled justice. Fair enough. It’s a free country. Rehnquist wisely decided not to comment on the smears. But what’s remarkable is that Hillary herself, when contacted by the Washington Post, “declined to be interviewed about the political content of her book.” Huh? There she goes again. Even now, as a Senator in her own right, Hillary still pulls the First Lady schtick to avoid a political fight. Yet the book is highly political. It’s not some anodine memoir of private life. It’s a tough piece of political rhetoric. Yet she won’t allow the press or others to challenge her on the politics of it. She still thinks she’s above it all. Perhaps she always will.

CBS VERSUS NYT: Vicious p.r. offensive from CBS News, in response to a New York Times’ story about CBS’s alleged attempt to market Jessica Lynch’s story for news and entertainment purposes:

Unlike the New York Times’ own ethical problems, there is no question about the accuracy or integrity of CBS News’ reporting. CBS News does not pay for interviews and it maintains a well-established separation from other parts of Viacom. The letters selectively quoted by the Times, when read in their entirety, make that explicitly clear. The letters state: “CBS News maintains editorial independence from the entertainment division,” “we never tie interview requests to entertainment projects,” and “we wanted to make sure that CBS News’ proposal was being considered as a single entity.” Mysteriously, none of those statements found their way into the “newspaper of record.”

Ouch.

“Even the Tony show’s host, married Australian actor Hugh Jackman, has a gay connection. He’ll debut on Broadway this fall in “The Boy From Oz,” a musical based on the life of the late bisexual Australian songwriter and performer Peter Allen. The entire show seemed to announce that the powers that be in the theater community are steering the industry from mass culture to subculture. Broadway is no longer a stage. It’s a sewer.” – Brent Bozell, horrified that Broadway’s homosexuals no longer pretend to be straight in public. Here’s a simple question: is it still kosher in conservative circles to describe an entire group of people as representing a “sewer”?

IS THE NYT BETTER ALREADY? I have to say I agree with Mickey that reading the New York Times since Captain Queeg departed is much more pleasant. Yes, there are still liberal bromides, but they’re presented in the old NYT style of gentle uplift and furrowed brows, rather than Howell’s tone of shrieking paranoia and vendetta-mongering. The Op-Ed page is vastly improved under Shipley; and even MoDo has returned to blather about gender pop-culture. Here in Ptown, I don’t have the option of the Washington Post on dead tree and the Boston Globe is unreadable. So the NYT is all I got. But increasingly, it feels like its old self again.

THE LYNCH STORY: More complicated than we all thought. But no dramatization either.

Andrew Stuttaford has bravely roiled the waters at National Review and seesthe positive side of same-sex marriage. He takes on the Stanley Kurtz notion that gay men are incapable of monogamy and therefore should be barred from marrying (except marrying women, of course, where their ability to be monogamous would be even more sorely tested. Go figure.). Andrew asks whether the sex lives of gay men, given that they have never been given any social support for their relationships, should be directly compared to straight men who live in a culture which has actively endorses monogamous marriage for generations. Good point. Imagine for a moment if heterosexual marriage didn’t exist; if there were no legal commitments for a husband or a wife; no social cost to adultery; no enforceable legal responsibility for children; and so on. What do you think would happen to male heterosexual promiscuity? Of course it would soar. And if some heterosexual men, in that context, decided that they wanted to affirm monogamy, do you think conservatives would tell them to get lost? Or describe their aspirations as somehow socially destructive? Of course not. But some far-righters simply don’t seem to think of gay people as human beings like everyone else, susceptible to social norms and pressures and incentives.

LESBIAN MARRIAGE AS THE NORM: One other point: in Vermont, which is our best case study for something like gay marriage, two-thirds of civil unions are between two women. In other words, lesbian marriage will almost certainly be the most common form of gay marriage. And most lesbians are more monogamous than most heterosexuals. So the institution of same-sex marriage could well increase the monogamous nature of marriage as an institution. Conservative critics never seem to consider the lesbian angle – and I guess you can see why. In the decade-long campaign within the gay community to elevate the issue of marriage, I found lesbians to be more supportive than many gay men. In fact, I think a lot of gay men will decide not to marry; but those who do are likely to take it seriously, and so further tilt the norm in gay culture toward conservative values. Many of the left recognize this, which is why so many opposed gay marriage for so long. But the far right still prefers to see nothing but catastrophe. That’s their fear speaking, I think; not their rationality.