Month: May 2009

The View From Your Recession

A reader writes:

While things could be a good deal worse, the recession has been hitting my household quite a bit already.  Last year my wife and I had our first child, a pure joy and blessing.  My wife had arranged with her employer to take six months of maternity leave.  Unfortunately, business dropped off so much that after five months the owner called her to say that they couldn't afford to take her back, at least in the foreseeable future. 

This might have been illegal (not sure), but we don't hold any grievance — its a small business that has always operated on a slim profit margin.  Her boss even gave her a nice severance payment (more than he could afford I'm sure).  My wife is very qualified in her field, but has been unable to find work elsewhere.

We've also been helping out my wife's parents quite a bit.  Her father's contracting work completely dried up a year ago and they are facing destitution having used up most of their saving.  She has three siblings that also want to help out, but one is out of work, and another is in financial shambles due to a disastrously bad home purchase a couple of years back.  Between the other sibling and us we pay their rent so they can live on their social security money. 

My father-in-law is desperately looking for a job — any job — to bring in something so they don't have to take our money.  They are proud folks and it really hurts them to be dependent on their children in this way.  My own father had planned to retire but his retirement accounts have been decimated and now he will have to keep working for at least a few more years.

My salary is enough for us to get by on but we can't really get ahead either.  I take a bus to work and leave her to get around in our 8 year old car.  We had planned to buy a house this year but there's no way we can take that plunge now.  With only one income and so many responsibilities we need to keep our savings in reserve and our extra obligations to a minimum. 

I had hoped to provide more for my daughter — she should have a nursery, a yard to play in, a better neighborhood.  Instead I come home to our little apartment and whisper my apology to her on the changing table we've crammed into our laundry room.  She smiles back at me, all jolly, innocent, and happy just to be alive and well, oblivious to our stresses and insecurities.

Yglesias Award Nominee

"There are, of course, those who have deeply-felt moral objections to gay marriage and there are others who make a moral case for changing the law to allow it. I don’t share the former and I’m not completely persuaded by the latter, but as my general view is that morality ought, where feasible, to be a matter for individuals rather than the state, I’ll leave those controversies to others, pausing only to observe that changes in the law that bring a little happiness, resolve some painful practical injustices (from hospital visitation rights to the ability to benefit from the spousal Death Tax exemption) and help take the previously marginalized deeper into ‘regular’ society should, probably, be seen as a Good Thing.

The role of the Right should be to shape the way that this change takes place, by building in, for example, free speech and ‘conscientious objection’ protections to those who do not go along. If that’s the aim, a position of outright opposition is not the best place to begin," – Andrew Stuttaford, Secular Right.

The Tipping Point

Matt Baume on why we are winning the marriage equality fight:

What’s hastening along this shift in public opinion? Conversations. The more people talk about gay couples, the more comfortable they are with them. And it doesn’t even seem to matter what people say — lord knows, there’ve been plenty of anti-gay conversations lately — every conversation keeps nudging public opinion towards equality. So the anti-gay-couple groups like the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) are standing in quicksand: the more they keep struggling, the faster they sink. Next month, the California Supreme Court will rule on Prop 8 — and no matter the outcome, it’ll nudge public opinion yet again.

I couldn't help but notice the Vows section of the NYT yesterday. Here's one notice:

Jon Cooper and Robert Cooper were married Thursday at Binney Park in Old Greenwich, Conn. Ann S. Isaacson, a justice of the peace in Greenwich, officiated… Robert Cooper, 51, legally changed his surname 21 years ago, soon after the first of the couple’s five children was adopted. He is a member of the board of the Family Service League, a nonprofit organization in Suffolk County that offers assistance to needy families.

This couple has been together for more than two decades, seem like model citizens and have brought up five adopted children. At what point do gay people start getting the respect so many deserve?

(hat tip: Kincaid)

Mora’s Insight

This gets it about right, I think:

Alberto Mora says it’s “politically unthinkable” to criminally prosecute the top Bush administration officials who sanctioned torture. He also says it’s “legally unthinkable” not to hold them accountable.

If Charles Graner is in jail for following orders, why is no one accountable for giving them?

Dissent Of The Day

A reader writes:

I couldn't disagree more with your comments on Miss California.  Do we look at the historical views of people who viewed interracial marriage as an affront to God "not inherently bigoted"?  What about those who believe homosexuality is a disease (or even the cause of a major hurricane)?  What about all the rest of those perspectives which have ultimately been judged on the wrong side of human rights and equality?

I'm sure that Miss California is a very nice woman, and that those responding to her comments with vitriol and distasteful comments are wrong in how they show their disagreement.  But what she said was bigoted, plain and simple.