Month: April 2009

Why Maggie Is Optimistic

Dreher interviews Maggie Gallagher. After dismissing the big increase in public support for civil unions and marriage equality over the last decade, she insists:

Public opinion hasn't changed much at all. What's changed is the punishment the gay marriage movement is inflicting on dissenters, which is narrowing the circle of people willing to speak.

This is a very powerful movement, no question. Nobody understands that better than I do.

But in the end–and this is not necessarily "optimistic" -I think civilizations that can't hang onto an idea as basic as to make a marriage you need a husband and a wife aren't going to make it in the long haul.

So I'm not worried about the progressive myth that 200 years from now gay marriage will be the new world norm. I'm somewhat more worried about the kind of cultures around the world that might survive. It's not clear to me they'll have the virtues of American civilization for gay people or anyone else.

(Apologies for the messed up block-quote. Typepad strikes again. They really do make it much, much harder to blog.)

Settling The Bill

Dr. Rob, a blogger and doctor, writes about the uninsured:

If I could, I would just charge them enough to remind them they are getting a service from me that does take my time, training, and skill to give.

But it’s not that simple.  Even if I do discount my uninsured to minimal levels, the real problem for me comes when they need labs done, tests run, visits to consultants, or hospitalization.  My charge is nothing compared to the amount they can accrue in these other venues.  This ties my hands as to what I can do for them.  They don’t get the care they need because it is too expensive.

Susan At Easter

A reader writes:

I watched Susan Boyle over and over today. I'm so moved by it… her voice is simply beautiful, of course, but she owned that stage. She knew she belonged there – where the hell did that assurance come from?

I looked up her story: she was bullied terribly as a child, had or has a disability, has never been married, never been kissed, probably never been somebody’s most important person. After all that, and having just come out of serious depression on her mother’s death, what on earth gives her the confidence to get up there on the stage? Where did she find that courage?

And the self-belief that she can rock that audience… and the world it seems? I work with women in prison. I so wish we could bottle whatever it is that has made Susan believe she deserves – and can create – a different reality for herself; even one that is so seemingly out of reach and impossible. I am in awe of her capacity to do that. And I wish the world would be converted to the courage of the women I work with as much as they seem to be to Susan…

 Peace to you in this easter season. And may the impossible continue to unfold.

The emails continue to flood in. She touched something in all of us. While you're at it, Stavros Flatley is pretty marvelous as well.

Down The Memory Hole

Wolcott dings Glenn Reynolds and the tea baggers and recalls the massive pro-immigration rallies of three years ago:

The difference is that the Tea Parties, heavily promoted by Fox News and talk radio, are a white-people production, which ipso facto makes them more representative to Glenn Reynolds and associates of what “real Americans” think and believe than an ocean of brown-skinned people practicing civic activism. If any of the Tea Parties have a six-figure turnout, I’ll be impressed. But I suspect that you’ll have to blow up the aerial shot real large–until the film grain is as big as asteroid-sized Grape Nuts–to find a black or brown face in this particular Army of Davids.