Month: November 2013

John Culhane examines the state of the civil union:

As I explained here in Slate last year, for the pioneering hetero couples who chose the civil union, marriage wasn’t a choice that appealed to them. Their decisions to elect the civil union over marriage were fueled by a mix of reasons: the association of marriage with religion; its dismal history relating to gender roles and rules; the view that the law didn’t do enough to recognize other kinds of family forms; and solidarity with same-sex couples who couldn’t marry. These couples didn’t want to marry then, and many of them still won’t want to, even though the gays can now do so.

And the early word is that they won’t have to. The new Illinois law allows those in civil unions to convert them to marriages, at no cost, but doesn’t require them to do so—they can hang onto their civil unions. But Illinois didn’t stop there: Going forward, both same- and opposite-sex couples will continue to be able to choose between marriage and civil union. This is a first, but Illinois won’t be alone for long. The marriage-equality bill in Hawaii is even more interesting, because the legislature has determined to retain not only civil unions, but also an earlier legal status, the reciprocal beneficiary designation, that was created out of the compromise that led to banning same-sex marriages in the mid-1990s. In Hawaii, couples will soon have three options: marriage, civil union, and reciprocal beneficiary (a status that confers certain limited rights and is much easier to exit than the other two).

I think this is a mistake.

It’s a mistake for the gay civil rights movement because it attaches our desire for civic inclusion with weaker quasi-marital institutions that will weaken the bonds between two people, and lower the amount of responsibility they need to take for each other. These two issues are unconnected. We long had one institution for spouses, marriage, an institution that brings families together, and integrates rather than balkanizes, and legally protects a commitment for life. One small segment of society was excluded from it as a mark of stigmatization and inferiority. Mercifully, that has ended in many states – but obviously not enough.

It is a logically distinct and different argument that marriage itself is so burdensome a mutual responsibility – or so freighted with ideological baggage – that we should offer a variety of different options for couples. That will weaken marriage, both gay and straight. We’ll see how many straight and gay couples choose a civil union over civil marriage … and this may turn out to be a small phenomenon. Or it could turn into France, where civil unions may even supplant civil marriages in the near future.

Yes, this makes me a moderate social conservative. But I always have been one on this subject, as well as a classical liberal believer in civil equality.

(Photo: Getty Images.)

In an interview that was, overall, his usually canny defense of the ACA, he urged the president and the Congress to fix the law to keep the clear promise the president made when making the case for the law. Listen:

Perhaps amending this portion – for the individual market – would entail a whole host of other implications. But look: if you made a promise, and it turns out to be empty, you have two options. You can apologize for misleading people, which really does have a corrosive effect on your credibility as president; or you can fix the law so that your promise remains intact. Again, I don’t know what the full policy implications would be – but if this affects only 5 percent of Americans and the issue can be compartmentalized, the politics could help the law, not hurt it.

I’d recommend reading the full context of the remarks and the full video – because it will be distorted by some and the soundbite will be the only news there is. Here’s the summary from the Ozy editors of the interview:

1. The country is better off with the Affordable Care Act than without it.

2. The enrollment website problems are not unlike enrollment issues during the Bush administration’s Medicare drug benefit rollout in 2006. Even though it was less complicated, it was considered a disaster – but in time, it was fixed.

3. People living in states with Republican governors who took advantage of the Supreme Court’s decision to allow them to opt out of the healthcare law’s Medicaid provision are going to experience a bizarre situation. Individuals with incomes between 133 and 400 percent of the poverty level can buy insurance at new, lower premiums, but working people with incomes under 133 percent of the poverty level will have no coverage. This will then stress hospital emergency rooms. Once this becomes evident, more and more states will flip their position and join the program.

4. “If you like what you’ve got, you can keep it.” This is a promise young people heard clearly, and it’s one President Obama needs to keep — even if it requires a change in the law.

“A Warren candidacy would bring a fresh level of scrutiny to both Hillary and Bill Clinton’s relationships with Wall Street, and they will have to deal with that. There is a clear tension between what the Clintons say and what lines their pockets. They have become fabulously, unimaginably wealthy” – an anonymous “progressive Democrat” noting the Clintons’ many well-paid speeches to banking groups.

Poring through the cultural, historical and genealogical attributes of America’s regions and states is not a new phenomenon. But it’s always fascinated me. The different brands of religion that colonized different parts of the country in stages, the interaction with existing institutions, and the very different approaches to politics help explain why this fantastically diverse country comes close to being ungovernable as a whole. What Colin Woodward has done is create eleven states of North America and focus on their attitudes toward violence. Here’s the map:

He has a book out explaining his analysis – but here’s the essay’s money quote:

Most scholarly research on violence has collected data at the state level, rather than the county level (where the boundaries of the eleven nations are delineated). Still, the trends are clear. The same handful of nations show up again and again at the top and the bottom of state-level figures on deadly violence, capital punishment, and promotion of gun ownership.

Consider assault deaths. Kieran Healy, a Duke University sociologist, broke down the per capita, age-adjusted deadly assault rate for 2010. In the northeastern states—almost entirely dominated by Yankeedom, New Netherland, and the Midlands—just over 4 people per 100,000 died in assaults. By contrast, southern states—largely monopolized by Deep South, Tidewater, and Greater Appalachia—had a rate of more than 7 per 100,000. The three deadliest states—Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama, where the rate of killings topped 10 per 100,000—were all in Deep South territory. Meanwhile, the three safest states—New Hampshire, Maine, and Minnesota, with rates of about 2 killings per 100,000—were all part of Yankeedom.

It’s this regional disparity that helps explain the impossibility of federal gun control of any bite. And on many issues, like stand-your-ground laws and the death penalty, deep cultural legacies about the permissibility of violence still propel the debate:

Of the twenty-three states to pass stand-your-ground laws, only one, New Hampshire, is part of Yankeedom, and only one, Illinois, is in the Midlands. By contrast, each of the six Deep South–dominated states has passed such a law, and almost all the other states with similar laws are in the Far West or Greater Appalachia …

The pattern for capital punishment laws is equally stark. The states dominated by Deep South, Greater Appalachia, Tidewater, and the Far West have had a virtual monopoly on capital punishment. They account for more than ninety-five percent of the 1,343 executions in the United States since 1976. In the same period, the twelve states definitively controlled by Yankeedom and New Netherland—states that account for almost a quarter of the U.S. population—have executed just one person.

The North-South rubric is way too crude. And the reality shows why federalism is the only workable system for this deeply divergent congeries of religion, culture and history.