Month: June 2007

My relief was premature. If Genarlow Wilson were white, I’d bet he’d be free.

Jon Rauch reviews David Blankenhorn’s latest and most ambitious attempt to argue against extending the rights and responsibilities of civil marriage to gay couples. They’re both moderate social conservatives. As Jon concedes with typical civic spirit:

As I read, I made note of points on which he and I agree. I soon found myself running out of paper. Marriage, we both believe, is a vital institution, not just equal to competing family arrangements from society’s point of view but preferable; it is an institution embedded in society, not a mere contract between individuals; it is social, not just legal, and so cannot be twisted like a pretzel by court order; it has (almost) everywhere and always been heterosexual and entwined with procreation, and should be. Gay marriage, we both believe, is a significant change that entails risk (though we assess the risks very differently); but gay marriage, we also believe, is a supporting character in the much larger drama of shifting social values. We agree that heterosexuals, not homosexuals, will determine marriage’s fate and have handled matrimony pretty poorly without any gay help. And we agree that children, on average (please note the qualifier), do best when raised by their biological mother and father, though he makes more sweeping claims on that score than I would. That is a great deal of common ground, which makes it all the more interesting that we come out in utterly different places and that gay marriage, in some ways, turns out to be the least of our disagreements.

As always with Jon, the whole thing is worth reading and pondering at leisure.

A reader responds to the news report that amazingly was not in the Onion:

The next item on the GAY AGENDA is clear: we MUST obtain the plans for this bomb and blow it up in the largest city in every red state!  Let’s all meet at the usual top-secret, undisclosed location. Sorry, Mary Cheney, you’re not invited.

One reason that cable has become more about entertainment or live-video "happening-now" marathons than, well, news is that most people now get their actual information online. Increasingly, of course, most people get their news and opinion online. Hello, guys! Money quote from a media observer:

"We’re all pretty convinced that news doesn’t break on TV anymore," said Eric Bader, senior VP-managing director of digital connections at MediaVest. "Almost everybody across pretty much every economic and age demographic learns of breaking news online, increasingly on mobile."

Perhaps cable news isn’t thereby "assaulting reason," as Al Gore would have it. Perhaps cable content is merely adjusting to a new combination of technology and the marketplace. Reason and the information haven’t disappeared. They are just being served elsewhere. What has changed is the ability of a few media outlets to dictate to Americans what is good for them to watch and read, and to control the information flow for most Americans. I know why some liberals regret this. They often regret it when people have freedom to ignore their lectures and bromides. But any media that allows me to filter out Al Gore – or not, if I so wish – is fine by me.

A reader writes:

I’m no Mitt Romney fan at all, but, as an active Mormon who is reasonably well-versed in Church Doctrine, Romney isn’t back-pedaling here. Mormons believe that Jesus upon his return will both return to the Mount of Olives and come to the New Jerusalem in America. We don’t see these two positions as contradictory. Here is a good summation posted on a Mormon blog this morning.

This really is Yglesias-bait, but it’s pretty stunning to me that the NCAA won’t allow reporters to live-blog games.

It’s the category that can get lost in the faith-non-faith debate that is now raging. John Wilkins tries to revive it by re-posting Bertrand Russell’s classic, "What is an Agnostic?" Money quote:

I think also that all who called themselves Christians in an earlier time, and a great majority of those who do so at the present day, would consider that belief in God and immortality is essential to a Christian. On these grounds, I should not call myself a Christian, and I should say that an agnostic cannot be a Christian. But, if the word "Christianity" comes to be generally used to mean merely a kind of morality, then it will certainly be possible for an agnostic to be a Christian.

Larry Moran insists he can be both an atheist and an agnostic. Moran’s ammunition? More Russell.

New York, New York, 12.37 pm.

For an interactive gallery of Dish readers’ window views across the world, click here.

Yes, the military was seriously considering a project for a bomb that could turn enemy soldiers gay, and thereby presumably make them a less lethal foe. This was in 1994. And we wonder why the top brass couldn’t cope with openly gay servicemembers?

A reprieve for a teen sent to jail for ten years for consensual oral sex with another teen:

"If this court or any court cannot recognize the injustice of what has occurred here, then our court system has lost sight of the goal our judicial system has always strived to accomplish … justice being served in a fair and equal manner," the judge wrote.

Amen. The now-twenty-one year old has already served three years for getting a hummer.