Author: Andrew Sullivan

“As a proud member of the VRWC, my only initial interest in Governor Dean was his strong political resemblance to George McGovern, who lost 49 states to the “evil” Richard Nixon in 1972. After seeing several interviews with the man, however, I am convinced that he is less like McGovern and more like Barry Goldwater. Dean’s positions on the issues are not entirely taken from the Old Left playbook. He believes that gun laws should be left to the states to decide, he recognizes the need for dramatic health reform that doesn’t involve transitioning to some Euro-style socialist state, and he is ahead of the game on recognizing civil unions, something that is inevitable in the long run despite the resistance of the paleocons.

The thing that dooms Dean’s political future, though, is the way he so carefully cancels out all of his interesting ideas with old, tired, worn-out leftist nonsense. His promise to raise taxes alone will destroy his candidacy in the general election. Combine that with his refusal to prosecute the war on terror and the Republicans may end up with the first 50 state victory ever.”- more feedback on the Letters Page.

THE UNIFIED THURMOND STORY: From the Onion.

Strom Thurmond dead. On the same day. It’s a funny old world, isn’t it?

Well over 100,000 visits yesterday. Thanks, Matt!

Antonin Scalia’s dissent in Lawrence vs Texas is, as usual, interesting and not quite as chock-full of animus toward homosexual dignity as in the past. It comes down to two arguments: that an assertion of “morality” is justification enough for any law anywhere, regardless of its rationality; and that a law that covers only same-sex sodomy is not discriminatory toward homosexuals. Both ideas strike me as wrong. On the first count, surely the government does need to provide some kind of reasonable justification for a law expressing “morality,” which doesn’t just rely on what people have always believed or always assumed. One reason that this law was struck down is because its supporters couldn’t come up with an argument that justified persecution of private sexual behavior, apart from the notion that stigmatizing gay sex was somehow good for families. Allowing sodomy for 97 percent of the population, while barring it for 3 percent cannot possibly be defended as a law designed to prevent or deter the immorality of sodomy. It was a law entirely constructed to stigmatize gay people. It had no other conceivable prupose. And when “morality” is simply a rubric under which to persecute a minority, then we don’t really have the imposition of morality at all. We have the imposition of a prejudice. At least the Catholic Church makes no distinction between heterosexual sodomy and homosexual sodomy. In fact, I know of no religious or moral tradition which makes the distinction that Texas law made until today. Scalia is not upholding any morality. He’s upholding prejudice. As to his notion that the law doesn’t single out gays because two straight guys getting it on would be criminalized as well, that’s like saying that a law banning Jewish religious services is not anti-Jewish since goyim could not conduct such services either. It’s the kind of sophistry you need to deny the obvious, hostile intent of the Texas law.

SCALIA’S INSIGHT: But he’s right about one thing. Once you acknowledge the dignity of gays as a social class, once you have conceded that their private sexual and emotional lives cannot be reduced to a single sexual act, once you have made the law equal with respect to the private sex lives of heteros and homos, the logic of same-sex marriage becomes hard to resist:

This reasoning leaves on pretty shaky grounds state laws limiting marriage to opposite-sex couples. Justice O’Connor seeks to preserve them by the conclusory statement that “preserving the traditional institution of marriage” is a legitimate state interest. But preserving the traditional institution of marriage is just a kinder way of describing the State’s moral disapproval of same-sex couples.

Of course, that precise moral disapproval of same-sex couples – not sex acts, mind you, but couples – is precisely the “morality” that Scalia purports to uphold. It isn’t a reasonable morality, since it allows the “sin” of sodomy for the vast majority of people but denies it only to people who have no non-sodomitic option in their sex lives. It’s a system of social stigmatization that has its own circular, prejudiced rationale. But getting rid of that incoherent prejudice does make marriage the obvious next step:

Today’s opinion dismantles the structure of constitutional law that has permitted a distinction to be made between heterosexual and homosexual unions, insofar as formal recognition in marriage is concerned. If moral disapprobation of homosexual conduct is “no legitimate state interest” for pruposes of proscribing that conduct; and if, as the Court coos (casting aside all pretense at neutrality) “when sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring”; what justification could there possibly be for denying the benefits of marriage to homosexual couples exercising “the liberty protected under the Constitution”? Surely not the encouragement of procreation, sinnce the sterile and the elderly are allowed to marry. This case “does not involve” the issue of homosexual marriage only if one entertains the belief that principle and logic have nothing to do with the decisions of the Court.

Precisely. Equality under the law means something. And now, it inescapably means the right to marry – for all citizens and not just those with power.

Again, it’s fascinating to see Clarence Thomas, a man I admire, take the trouble to point out that even though he voted with the minority on constitutional grounds, he is personally opposed to the law on political grounds:

If I were a member of the Texas Legislature, I would vote to repeal. Punishing someone for expressing his sexual preference through noncommercial consensual conduct with another adult does not appear to be a worthy way to expend valuable law enforcement resources.

This is the point Senator Santorum still won’t address. The reason for his silence is that he actually believes that the government’s policing of private sexual behavior is a good and important thing. Now we know how far out there he really is.

So the Supreme Court uses specifically the privacy argument to over-turn Bowers v Hardwick in a larger than expected 6 – 3 decision. It would be hard to find a more emphatic statement that gay men and women are a) human beings whose private lives deserve privacy and b) citizens who deserve the same treatment as everyone else under the law. A Reagan appointee, Anthony Kennedy, wrote the decision. I haven’t read it all yet so this is a preliminary take. But each day now, I can feel freedom dawning in this land again. The struggle of so many for so long is beginning to come true. What a privilege, what a joy, to be alive to witness it.

I didn’t see what many are calling a disastrous performance by Howard Dean on “Meet The Press,” but I know from observing him and debating him once that he’s an intemperate, arrogant bully. Will Saletan is onto something here. It’s a trait bad doctors have. They are used to being in such controlling positions vis-a-vis their patients that it goes to their heads. Good doctors resist such an obvious temptation. And then there’s Dean’s looseness with the truth. I’d say Fred Barnes scores a few hits with this column. Here’s one Dean quote Fred exposes: “Karl Rove and others have talked about going back to the McKinley era before there was any kind of social safety net in this country.” Now Karl Rove has talked about McKinley – but only, so far as I know, in respect to electoral campaign politics, not policy matters. Maybe one of the Dean blogs can put me right on this. Defend Dean’s statement; or somehow persuade me this isn’t an obvious deceptive smear. Email me, Deanies. Stand by your man. Or keep him honest.

WHERE ARE THEY – CTD: Josh Marshall responds to my recent arguments about the administration’s pre-war WMD rhetoric and arguments. He makes a decent point:

If the ‘better safe than sorry’ doctrine is what we’re now operating under, there shouldn’t be any need for exaggeration. The president might just have said, “They had chemical and biological weapons in the past. It’s a brutal regime that’s used these weapons in the past. They probably have them now. They might even be trying to develop nuclear weapons or strike up ties with al Qaida. We don’t have much evidence on these latter points. But the possibility is just too dire to chance. Better safe than sorry.”

Yet the administration seems to have understood that this wouldn’t quite cut it. So they tried something different. At best, they kept the ‘better safe than sorry’ reasoning to themselves. They decided it was better to be safe than sorry in their arguments to the American people. And, to make sure, they stripped all the ambiguity out of the evidence and removed it from the public debate.

Not quite. I absolutely support an investigation into whether anything was actually deliberately faked or egregiously spun. The reason is that I want us to be credible the next time we have to make such an argument. But so far, the evidence for blatant deception is extremely thin. Blair’s chief spin-meister denies any impropriety apart from one screw-up. And each day we hear of new clues as to the extent of Saddam’s WMD program. Another Watergate? I think that says more about the desperation of the Democrats and bitterness of the anti-war crowd than anything about this administration. But we’ll see, won’t we?

THE BEST COLUMN: On Sandra Day O’Connor’s logic is Mike Kinsley’s. If you haven’t already ready it, you should.

RELATED ADVERTIZING LINKS: You know opponents of equal marriage rights are in trouble when an editorial against them is followed by ads touting “Casual Civil Unions in Vermont” and “In Depth: Homophobia.” And in the Washington Times no less! The market trumps ideology every time.

THE NYT AGAIN: Yes, it’s better, although its coverage of the affirmative action decision bordered on the triumphal. But how about this headline: “Blair Offers More Troops for Iraq Despite Killing of 6 Britons.” Huh? Why the “despite.” Why not “because”? (It reminds me of the headline a while back that reported a decline in crime despite record numbers in prison. It simply didn’t occur to the Times’ editors that the relationship might be the reverse.) The answer is that the Times now has a rubric for the post-war Iraq situation. And it’s the same one as pre-war and during the war.In fact, it’s the same one forevery foreign engagement the United States ever gets involved in. Yes, it’s Vietnam! That’s the assumption of many of the liberal editors and reporters at the NYT: if we couldn’t make the war look like Vietnam, we’ll make the peace look like it. Expect more of the same.

HEADS UP: I’ll be on NPR’s Talk Of The Nation around 2pm EST to discuss the SCOTUS sodomy ruling.

Two leading libertarians take on the neo-cons.

THE NEW BLOGGER: Of course, it sucks. For a week now, after an overhaul, every other post ends up being given some weird future date and cannot be published. The time zones appear to be random; and the publishing is completely erratic. C’mon, Google. Surely you can do better than make a decent thing impossible to use.

THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: “When life hands you lemons, head down the hall, hide in the closet of your enemy, wait until they get a papercut, then leap out shouting BANZAI and crush the lemon in your hand right over the papercut. Save the peel. Go downstairs to the bar. Order a vodka. Use the peel. Yum!” – James Lileks today. He’s saying dark and gloomy things about some mysterious person who hates “The Bleat.” Just give us a name, James.

It would be hard to find a more appalling example of racial animus than in Maureen Dowd’s column this morning. For some reason I guess I do understand, Clarence Thomas isn’t just opposed by many on the Left; he is hated. He is hated because he is, in Dowd’s extraordinary formulation, guilty of “a great historical ingratitude.” The good negroes, in Dowd’s liberal-racist world, are those grateful to their massas in the liberal hierarchy: they are grateful to Howell and Gerald and Arthur; and they know their place. For them to express the psychological torment of being advanced for racist reasons, to explain in graphic, brave and bold terms the complexity of emotions many African-Americans feel as ‘beneficiaries’ of racial preferences, is unacceptable. To describe such a person who has been courageous enough to put these feelings into a powerful dissent as “barking mad” is nothing short of disgusting. Yes, there are all sorts of psychological inconsistencies in Thomas’ journey. But that, in part, is the point! If Dowd supports “diversity” as a good thing in elite institutions, why isn’t it a good thing for one black Justice to contribute his own experience as part of a landmark judicial ruling? Of course I don’t know whether Dowd supports diversity in this sense. That would require her to argue something – of which she is apparently incapable. And then Dowd, of all people, complains that Thomas is more interested in his own personal dramas than “bigger issues of morality and justice.” When was the last time you read a Dowd column that grappled with “bigger issues of morality and justice”?