Month: February 2004

San Francisco files suit to challenge the constitutionality of the state’s discrimination against gay couples in marriage. There is nothing illegal about this. But it opens a whole new front in the legal and constitutional fight for equal marriage rights. Not so long ago, I thought I had a handle on this movement. But now it has a life of its own. When freedom begins to emerge, its momentum is hard to stop. But it now seems almost certain that the president will try.

The gay agenda is revealed.

“The difference is that many other nations, America included, want to like Germany. The same cannot be said of France under Chirac.” Eurosoc analyzes France’s continued slide in influence in Europe. Germany now wants Britain at the big table. The upshot of the Iraq war may well be a realignment of internal European power – to America’a advantage. Credit: Bush/Blair.

No, I’m not taking this poll that seriously. When a poll of likely voters shows a bigger Democratic lead than among registered voters, it’s a little suspect. But I have absolutely no doubt that there has been a profound mood-change in the country toward president Bush. Some of this is a result of the Democrats’ dominating the media during primary season. But much of it is also due to the president’s extraordinary drift, incoherence and – at the same time – cockiness. That’s a lethal combination. People have registered that the WMD issue has undermined one argument for the war. But instead of acknowledging this forthrightly and making a strong case for the war’s morality and the importance of Iraq’s democratization, the president has fallen back on self-satisfied platitudes. People know that public finances are in a terrible shape. But the president first denied the problem, then minimized it, and then argued that tax cuts would cure it. No one is buying it. There has been little coherent defense of the education bill, or of the administration’s environmental policies. There is, in short, no argument for a second term. Instead, we’re told that the re-election theme will be: I’m a strong leader in a time of change. But leading where? We don’t know. If the president wants to get re-elected, we should.

EDWARDS IS WINNING THE SMART VOTE: Or so says Noam Scheiber:

Less sophisticated investors just pick the stocks whose prices they’ve heard are going up. More sophisticated investors actually do some research about the companies they plan to invest in. Up until yesterday, Kerry was that tech stock that the girlfriend of the cousin of the guy down the street said was a can’t-miss opportunity, while Edwards was the unheralded stock of a company with a little-known but solid product.
Judging from the way Kerry timed his victory speech last night to bump Edwards off the air mid-sentence, it sounds to me like he’s getting scared.

I still haven’t met a clued-in Democrat who’s enthusiastic about Kerry. But Edwards hasn’t yet clinched the deal. He’s got two weeks.

The former Clinton aide and writer, Sidney Blumenthal, calls on John Kerry to sue the London Sun for libel over the intern story. It’s easier in Britain.

ONE JUDGE IS GAY: Judge James L. Warren in San Francisco is responsible for ruling on the marriage cases. He’s also the grandson of Earl Warren, has ruled in favor of gun manufacturers and enraged some in the gay community by his ruling in a recent dog-mauling case. Oh, and he’s gay.

IRAQI DEMOCRACY IN ACTION: Another example of how it can work. The Washington Post’s coverage of post-war Iraq keeps getting better.

MORE INCLUSIVE VAGINAS, PLEASE: Just when you think the far left couldn’t get any sillier, they go and protest a production of the “Vagina Monologues,” because it isn’t “diverse” enough. Among the protesting slogans … well you can read about it all here. (Hat tip: David Kaufman.) DO NOT GO THERE if the “c-word” offends you.

Another email makes a different point:

“Often we lawyers speak of good faith in distinguishing those actions which are punished and those that are not. I think the difference between Judge Moore and Mayor Newsom is simply that concept.
Moore had no possible good faith argument for what he was doing. The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled against displays like his. While the Court has not been a font of consistency in its Establishment Clause jurisprudence, it has consistently ruled against Judeo-Christian displays which have no secular nexus. Moor’s had none and thus could in no way be justified.
Given recent trends in litigation, I do think Mayor Newsom has a strong argument that a court could well find the California law violative of equal protection. After the Massachusetts Supreme Court interpreted its constitution as requiring no marriage distinctions between gay and straight, and with similar judgments by the highest courts in Hawaii and Vermont, I think there is no question that the Newsom could in good faith say that California’s courts will in all probability overrule the statute which makes marriage only for a man and a woman. Basing his action as mayor on that seems to me in keeping with any officeholder’s oath which first and foremost binds them to the Constitution rather than to other laws.”

What this debate may be coming down to is that, under almost any rational understanding of equal protection, civil marriage has to be extended to gay couples. That’s why court after court has ruled thus. But popular feeling among at least a plurality of voters holds that marriage for gays is abhorrent to them, a threat to marriage itself – or, in the words of Laura Bush, “very, very shocking.” Given equal protection guarantees, the only viable option, then, for those opposed to marriage rights for gays is to change the constitutions – state and federal – to carve out an exception to equality under the law. So that the U.S. and state constitutions would say: Every citizen is equal under the law, except when it comes to gays marrying. Or, more bluntly: all people are equal but some people are more equal than others. And this Orwellism we put into the founding document of the country. That may emerge as the choice we face.

COULTER FIGHTS BACK: I’m no fan of hers, but this column is relentless. I’m glad it’s not me she’s after.

As seen by the Onion. Priceless.

I’ll be on Hardball tonight with Chris Matthews.

Suddenly, the race really does look more competitive.

Check out Jacob Levy’s devastation of the radical, indeed revolutionary, aims of the Federal Marriage Amendment. The amendment is a dramatic step to gut states’ rights, undermine states’ autonomy and forbid any civil benefits for gay couples anywhere:

The FMA was oddly written in an attempt to meet social conservative aims under cover of shoring up the separation of powers and respecting federalist principles–and while avoiding the appearance of extremism that would be created by banning civil unions altogether. The attempt to do all this simultaneously failed. We’re left with an amendment that achieves social conservative aims by subverting both the separation of powers and federalism.

Once again, a battle between conservative principles and religious right extremism.