Author: Andrew Sullivan

A reader writes:

I have been reflecting a lot on your response to the opinion expressed by Allahpundit regarding the Prop 8 decision. I like what you said with respect to the timing and your defense of the decision of Olson and Boies to bring on this lawsuit.  However, I think you could have challenged Allahpundit's other statements more fiercely. For one, it's true that the harm isn't "as egregious" as that experienced by blacks under Jim Crow. But there is a small minority of us who currently do experience a form of segregation.  I'm referring here to those of us in same-sex binational relationships who have been unable to procure a legal means to live together in the United States. 

Speaking for myself, I was unable to sponsor my British partner for immigration.  She had neither the wealth, the connections, nor the right profession to allow her to obtain a visa under any of the available categories.  I was forced to choose between living without the love of my life or leaving the United States to be able to live happily with my life partner.

While we are allowed to use any restroom or sit in any seat on public transportation when we visit the US, we can't live there if we want to spend our lives together as a couple!  Love or country?  Is that not a restriction in some sense as harmful to an individual as Jim Crow? 

It is even worse for people in my situation who don't have the alternative option of living in a nation as accepting as the UK.  There are people whose partners come from countries like Egypt or Pakistan where they are frequently denied even tourist visas to visit the US.

As for me, my professional training as a doctor is not recognized in the UK.  I am forced to either re-train, leave clinical medicine, or spend months out of the year working overseas to maintain my professional qualifications.  It's an urgent concern of mine to know whether it is worth re-training over the next four years or whether in a year or two I could legally return to the US with my partner.  Leaving the US has placed a tremendous financial and professional burden upon me and my partner – and all this during a recession!

Furthermore, let's imagine for a moment that Prop 8 is upheld by the Supreme Court – allowing states to define marriage as one man-one woman as they see fit – but Section 3 of DOMA gets overturned in the other recent legal battle.  Were that to happen, I could sponsor my partner for immigration to the US, but we could only live in one of the handful of states that allows gay marriage!  Is that not segregation? 

We should stop feeling apologetic because our civil rights struggle isn't "as bad."  It's still very bad for some of us.  We binational couples are a minority of a minority, and many of us are to afraid to jeopardize our tenuous legal status if we speak up.  Few people understand the complexity of this issue within the gay marriage debate.  Telling someone they can't live in the US with the one they love; that they have to find a new country to immigrate to if they want to live together; that they have to risk losing their careers and their savings in order to be together; this for some us, while different from Jim Crow, is on a par with the egregious inequality perpetuated by segregation. 

Is there assurance of a legislative solution? Overturning Section 3 of DOMA, as I mentioned, limits the states we can live in.  The only solution would be passage of the Respect for Marriage Act, UAFA, RFA, LGBT-inclusive immigration reform, or a federal civil unions bill (not on the table). And with the current dysfunction in our Congress and especially the Senate, I don't see any of these passing in the near future. 

So, this is urgent!  I just turned 40, and career decisions I make now will affect the next decade of my life and my ultimate professional contribution.  I weigh these decisions against an imaginary timescale whereby I might be able to return to the US, and I am increasingly coming to believe that I must resign myself to settling permanently in the UK.

There is only one group working tirelessly to end this cruelty. It's Immigration Equality and I sit on its board. You can donate here.

Michael Moynihan puts the Wikileaks founder through the wringer:

The problem is not just that Assange posted 91,000 documents online having, by his own admission, read only 2,000 of them carefully. Nor is the problem the reckless exposure of brave Afghans who would rather not live under the jurisdiction of a fanatical religious cult. The real lesson for the Wikileaks team is that while obtaining secret documents is an integral part of journalism, it is not by itself journalism. And contrary to Assange’s grandiloquent proclamations that he intends to “build a historical record, an intellectual record, of how civilization actually works in practice,” in its four years of existence he has produced a handful of interesting and impressive scoops, but the dreaded “mainstream media” has done far more.

So by all means, Julian, stump for more openness, publish more leaks, continue your attempts to “achieve justice.” But stop calling yourself a journalist.

"The beard is the male equivalent of child bearing hips," – Jack Passion, author of The Facial Hair Handbook. The illustration is in t-shirt form!

A reader writes:

I am no Sarah Palin fan that is for sure, but that video was something else.  The eye rolling at this women being a teacher was shameful but the unbelievably infantile mocking of this women at the beginning –“oh you wanted me to be your governor, I am honored!” – was too much to take.  I have not heard a taunt like that since grade school. When is this farce going to end?

When the money runs out and the MSM gets some balls. Another writes:

The eye roll said so much more than any word or carefully phrased talking point could have. It said: "Ohh, I see. You are a teacher. You are unionized (gee, I think I'm supposed to hate the unions?), you have a liberal bias, you teach school kids to not like me. You spend your time finding ways to put me down. You waste taxpayer money." 

As a teacher myself, I can't tell you how many times I have encountered a foxnews-ite who is immediately suspicious of my profession and makes assumptions about me based on my profession. I am wondering what you and other Dish readers think about this. Where does this come from? Where does the idea that higher education — or ANY education — equate to left wing liberal elitism?

Beinart kinda misses Bush:

The more pessimistic, less universalistic conservatism being born in the post-Bush era probably has something to do with the decline in American self confidence. In the early Bush years, when America’s budget deficit was still small, its military might was largely unchallenged, and the triumph of democracy still seemed like history’s inevitable course, it was easier to be optimistic about the future of Islam. That same ideological and economic confidence also made it easier to believe that the U.S. could assimilate immigrants coming across our southern border. Now conservatives are more aware of America’s limits. And when it comes to Mexicans and Muslims, that includes the limits of American decency, too.

A new study finds that contemporary mosques are a deterrent to Islamic terrorism.

The Chicago Tribune backs what Jon Rowe predicted would be Anthony Kennedy's ultimate decision:

This ruling, of course, will stand only if it is upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court, which would be a drastic and highly controversial step. But the justices might seize on the same middle option used by several states — civil unions. The court could rule that equal protection requires giving gay couples the same prerogatives granted heterosexual couples, but not by the same name.

That course offers a compromise that, while satisfying neither side entirely, accommodates each in its central concern. It would show a respect for democracy and a humility about the role of the judiciary.

Goldblog tries to do with the mosque controversy what I failed to do with torture:

One American politician who has always understood the difference between the mass of American Muslims, on the one hand, and radical Islamists on the other is President George W. Bush. … I would hope — especially now that he is finished writing his book — that he would speak out for Muslim enfranchisement in America, in particular in the wake of the "Ground Zero" mosque controversy. He should let American Muslims know that he accepts them as equal citizens under law, and that all Americans, but particularly members of his own party, should do the same. This is an important task, and I believe that George W. Bush is the best man for it.

He won't do it. But I sure wish he would.

So why was that news?

At least half a million barrels of oil and drilling fluids had been spilled offshore before the gusher that began after the April 20 explosion, according to government records. Much more than that has been spilled from pipelines, vessel traffic and wells in state waters — including hundreds of spills in Louisiana alone — records show, some of it since April 20.

Runoff and waste from cornfields, sewage plants, golf courses and oil-stained parking lots drain into the Mississippi River from vast swaths of the United States, and then flow down to the gulf, creating a zone of lifeless water the size of Lake Ontario just off the coast of Louisiana. The gulf's floor is littered with bombs, chemical weapons and other ordnance dumped in the middle of last century, even in areas busy with drilling, and miles outside of designated dumping zones, according to experts who work on deepwater hazard surveys.