Author: Andrew Sullivan

My death-match with Stanley Kurtz on the question of equal marriage rights in Scandinavia is beginning to remind me of Frodo and Gollum battling on the edge of Mordor with a marriage ring in their hands. Readers can make their own minds up. On one simple point: Kurtz now argues that I’m having it both ways, since I once called registered partnerships in Scandinavia “de facto marriage” and now claim that there is a small distinction – in what they are called, adoption rights, and how they would be perceived in the U.S. We’re into very fine distinctions here, as I have said before. But my previous piece was in part designed to argue that, despite predictions that gays cannot hack marriage, the evidence fron Scandinavia was that same-sex partnerships had a far lower divorce rate than heterosexual marriages. That strikes me as an interesting fact – and it stands on its own. (I’d love to know what the latest stats are – and whether this finding still holds up.) In fact, if such relationships last longer than straight ones, even while being consigned to second-class status, why wouldn’t they be even stronger if included within marriage? So my point is strengthened, not weakened. As to Stanley’s further arguments, they still amount to correlations, not causes. He does, however, come up with one new piece of evidence: there are higher rates of out-of-wedlock births in Norwegian counties where homosexual relationships are celebrated. Quod erat demonstrandum. So let’s do the same thing in America. Take two states with very different cultural attitides toward gay equality, Massachusetts and Texas. In anti-gay Texas, the divorce rate is 4.1 per thousand people; and the percent of people unmarried is 32.4 percent. In pro-gay Massachusetts, the divorce rate is 2.4 per thousand and the percent unmarried is 26.8 percent. By Kurtz’s Norwegian logic, if you want to save marriage, adopt Massachusetts values, not Texan ones. I think it’s more complicated than that.

THE FAIRNESS PRINCIPLE: But there is a substantive point: Kurtz argues that civil marriage is still for procreation, not coupling. As an aspiration, that’s defensible. As an empirical matter, it’s false. According to the Census, 52.1 percent of married couples are in households with no children present. Now many of these may be because the kids have grown up. Many are also because the couple has decided not to have children; or are re-married with no kids; or are infertile; or any other range of possibilities. (I haven’t been able to find any stats on how many marriages – second, third or first – never have kids. Can anyone help?) But that’s a lot of non-procreative marriages and married couples with no kids in the house. If coupling isn’t the de facto meaning of that relationship, what else is? That’s the living, breathing reality of civil marriage in America. Given that reality, how can civil marriage be denied gay couples? You could argue (and I think this is the crux of Kurtz’s case) that allowing marriage to gay couples makes this fact more explicit. But is it fair to deny one tiny group these benefits, simply as a means to promote an ideal that most heterosexuals don’t live up to anyway? Do you open the barn door and let out 98 percent of people, but close it back for 2 percent? Are gays, in other words, to be used instrumentally in this schema of social engineering? I’d say that that fails a very basic level of fairness and respect for the individual homosexual or gay couple. How can it not?

Must-read Stu Taylor column on college admissions. Senator Kennedy is proposing that all public institutions be required to disclose racial and income data on all their “legacy” or alumni admissions – exposing the unfair use of privilege to allow people into college. I’m all for it. But Taylor proposes a more extensive disclosure program, requiring all public colleges and universities also to provide data on their minority students – exactly how many GPA points you can get, for example, by being black or brown, how wealthy the successful minority students are, and what the real racial differentials are in academic achievement. It strikes me that all of this should be public knowledge, as it includes important data necessary to assess the various impact of both legacy and affirmative action admissions. But do you think colleges will agree? Of course not. The awful secret of university anti-racist racism would be exposed:

Most Americans don’t realize that the racial preferences at the University of Michigan Law School, upheld by the Supreme Court last June in Grutter v. Bollinger, are worth more than 1 full point of college GPA — catapulting black and Hispanic applicants with just-below-B averages over otherwise similar whites and Asians with straight A’s. Or that the average SAT scores of the preferentially admitted black students at most elite colleges are 150 to 200 points below the average white and Asian scores. Or that this SAT gap understates the academic gap, because black students do less well in college, on average, than do white and Asian classmates with the same SAT scores. Or that most recipients of racial preferences, unlike most legacies, end up in the bottom third of their classes and have far higher dropout rates than other groups. Or that, according to a study of 28 highly selective colleges by two leading supporters of preferences, some 85 percent of preferentially admitted minorities are from middle- and upper-class families.

The racial disparities are indeed shocking. But most people don’t know the facts. Let the light in, and a real debate can occur.

I fear it’s far too late to stop the Massachusetts bore from winning the nomination. But I have yet to find a single Democrat who’s actually enthusiastic about the pompous, do-nothing, faux-populist, Establishment blow-hard with the Vietnam obsession. Here’s Jack Beatty, NPR-style lefty, on having to sit through a Kerrython in New Hampshire:

Listening to him, I saw a long line of Democratic bores – Carter, Mondale, Dukakis, Bradley, Gore – who lost because people could not bear listening to them. John Kerry belongs in their dreary company. I fear he could talk his way out of victory – that, excited by his résumé, his panache as a war hero, Americans from coast to coast will be disappointed in the real man; that, just as we did at Dartmouth, they will long for him to stop his answers at the one-minute mark and by minute two will have tuned out and by minute three will pine for the terse nullity of George W. Bush.

John Kerry: resume without a cause.

Then there’s Mark Steyn’s view that “Kerry is this year’s Bob Dole – the guy you make do with.” I prefer the Internet line – anyone know who coined it? – that sums up the Dems predicament: “Dated Dean, Married Kerry, Woke Up With Bush.” The most entertaining Kerry-phobe, however, is Mickey Kaus. His blog will be unmissable this year – now that Mickey doesn’t have to deal with minor issues, like whether the country is going to be blown to smithereens by Islamist terrorists, and he can focus instead on the more pressing matters of Kerry’s past fudging on welfare reform. Go, Mickster! Jon Keller, in TNR, offers another version of Kerry’s potential:

Kerry wants to reimpose outdated Vietnam Syndrome on American foreign policy, reestablish an international order that collapsed on 9/11, and return Clinton-era phoniness to the White House without any of Clinton’s redeeming brass and Third Way creativity.

That just about sums it up. I wonder if there’s any Boston political journalist who isn’t a hopeless Democratic hack who has a kind word for Kerry? All the ones I come across don’t just dislike Kerry. They loathe him. I still think Howard Dean is a far better candidate for the Dems and actually more electable than Kerry. But, hey, I’m not a Democrat. And at the rate things are going, Kerry won’t even have to win this election. He can just hang around and wait for Bush to lose it.

TOTAL FRAUD: But of course, Kerry is on a crusade against “special interests” and lobbyists and all that uplifting sludge you hear spewing out of Bob Shrum’s Blackberry. Hmmm. If you’re spending a scintilla of a second considering whether this line is genuine, read this article. Money quote, which is, surprisingly enough, the lede:

Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), who has made a fight against corporate special interests a centerpiece of his front-running campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, has raised more money from paid lobbyists than any other senator over the past 15 years, federal records show.

If you’re a lobbyist, Kerry is the Real Deal. Please, Dems, take a second look at Howard Dean. He is the only candidate – including Bush – who has any intention of doing anything to restrain the current fiscal mess.

THE CULTURE OF DEATH: A couple of hundred people are dead because they were a little too enthusiastic about stoning the Devil. This happens every year. Is it culturally insensitive to ask whether there isn’t something profoundly awry about a religion that sends so many to their deaths as part of a religious duty? The Hajj minister in Saudi Arabia comments: “All precautions were taken to prevent such an incident, but this is God’s will. Caution isn’t stronger than fate.” Excuse me? God’s will to commit hundreds to their deaths? At the same time, Islamist fanatics murder scores by killing themselves in Iraq. What we have on our hands is, in some instances, not that far from a death cult.

AXIS OF EVIL WATCH: Gas chambers in North Korea. But Bush, according to the New York Times’ book reviewers, is more morally suspect than Kim Jong Il.

That’s Bush’s advantage over a generic Democrat in one of the most conservative states in the country. Not encouraging for the White House.

TAKING THE TEST: So I took Dan Drezner’s cue and went to the Presidential Match Guide, which asks various questions about public policy and then determines whom you should vote for. I was a little taken aback. It’s probably my liberal instincts on things like the death penalty, gay rights, and immigration, but George W. Bush ended up my last choice – after every single Democrat. He’s behind Al Sharpton! Of course, they didn’t have a question like: do you think a race-baiting demagogue would be a good president? Or: does the mental stability of former generals play a role in your decision? Still, I’m struck that I turn out to be such a Democrat on the issues. For the record: my computer-generated preferences were in descending order: Lieberman 100 percent, Kerry 95, Clark 90, Edwards 88, Sharpton 86, Dean 83, Kucinich 76, Bush 61. I think this basically debunks the entire exercise. Or else it’s more evidence that I am one conflicted political animal. But then you knew that already.

PICKING A NIT: I’ve wrestled for a few days with whether I should post a correction about my comments on Josh Marshall’s recent review essay on American “imperialism.” A few readers have pointed out that, despite my assertion to the contrary, there is too a mention of 9/11 in Marshall’s essay. He refers to it once at the beginning of the piece, and incidentally once thereafter – so I’m an idiot. Can I read? Nyah, nyah, nyah, etc. Of course, I am aware that there is a single chronological mention of the date in an essay of several thousand words. I wasn’t engaged in linguistic computer analysis of the piece. My point was and is that the event plays no role whatever in Marshall’s analysis. It might as well not have happened. You can make your own mind up about the piece, which is why I provided a link. But my reading, I think, is a completely cogent one. Now technically speaking, there is one direct mention of 9/11 in a piece of several thousand words. For the record, I feel bound to correct that. I also made a dumber error that I do not proffer as an excuse, just an explanation: I intended “nary” to mean “barely.” My original version of the item – on my draft document sheet – says simply ‘not.’ Realizing that was technically not true, I changed it to “nary” on the blog, thinking that would cover it. Not according to the dictionary. My bad. Here endeth the penance. My nit is hereby picked.

My interview with Front Page and my Time magazine piece on Bush’s penchant for micro-managing people’s lives are now posted opposite.

Here’s the choice we may face in November. It’s how John Kerry understands the threat of terrorism:

The war on terror is less — it is occasionally military, and it will be, and it will continue to be for a long time. And we will need the best-trained and the most well-equipped and the most capable military, such as we have today.
But it’s primarily an intelligence and law enforcement operation that requires cooperation around the world – the very thing this administration is worst at. And most importantly, the war on terror is also an engagement in the Middle East economically, socially, culturally, in a way that we haven’t embraced, because otherwise we’re inviting a clash of civilizations.
And I think this administration’s arrogant and ideological policy is taking America down a more dangerous path. I will make America safer than they are.

Back to the 1990s or post-9/11 Bush. Law enforcement versus war. It’s a clear and important distinction. Let’s put it at the center of this debate, where it belongs.

ABC News, hardly a pro-war outlet, details Saddam’s bribes.

Good for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

The very idea that gay people are trying to tear down marriage is nonsense; heterosexual people are doing quite fine on their own in that regard and hardly need the assistance of others. Gay people have not caused the divorce rate to soar. Gay people haven’t caused the rise in single-parent families. To make gay people the scapegoat for the problems that plague modern marriage is absurd on its face.

In fact, to the degree that gay Americans wish to join in marriage, it ought to be seen as an endorsement of the institution, as a recognition that the civilizing merits and rich emotional rewards of marriage appeal not just to people of all cultures, races and ages, but to people of all sexual preference as well.

The interest of gay Americans in getting married is a celebration, a validation of marriage. It is not a threat.

Ten, 20, 30 years from now, we’re going to have to go back into the Georgia Constitution to pull this hateful language out. And some of the very politicians who today will vote in favor of that language will no doubt be there when it is repealed, sheepishly trying to explain how it wasn’t really about hate and discrimination, how back then they were just worried about protecting marriage and the family.

And you know what? Nobody will believe them. Nor should they.

I sure won’t.

Even in New Hampshire.